- Speed of Life – David Bowie
- Use It Before You Lose It – Bobby Valentin
- Phoenix City – The Skatalites
- Woman of the Ghetto – Phyllis Dillon
- Night and Day – The Maytals
- On the Road Again – Canned Heat
- I Hate You – The Monks
- Paint it Black – The Rolling Stones
- The Man Who Sold the World – David Bowie
- Household Names – Stereolab
- Conquistadors – Chico Hamilton
- Mizrab – Gabor Szabo
- Viva Tirado – El Chicano
- Eye of Danger – Michigan & Smiley
- Blackout – David Bowie
- Happiness – Teenage Fanclub
- I am Pentagon – Make Up
- Broasted or Fried – St. Vincent Latinaires
- Little Red Rooster – The Rolling Stones
Our flat
in Brentford was nice enough but short on space. My fainting friend was holed up
in an even more diminutive tenement in Hounslow. We arrived at the conclusion
that one-bedroom flats didn’t come cheap and, if the three of us shared, a two
bedroom dwelling would afford us all a higher standard of living – which it
did.
Our new lodging – near Osterley but
officially designated as Isleworth – was about 10 minutes’ walk away from the
residence of the friend who used to own a pager, which was a wonderfully grotty
apartment on London Road spread across two floors that some assumed to be a
squat. The nearest pub was The Milford Arms, a traditional type of boozer that
should have made for a pleasing local. Unfortunately, it was run by a couple of
idiots who favoured certain customers over others and treated the place like an
extension of their living room. When this began to grate we fell back on old
favourites: The Rifleman, The Town Wharf, and The Royal Oak on Worton Road just
opposite Mogden Sewage Works. We also knew people who’d recently moved to South
Acton, conferring upon us the opportunity to drink in Chiswick – at The George IV, The Duke
of Sussex, The Rat and Parrot, and The Crown & Anchor (frequented for a
while by ‘Ant and Dec’).
We were socially more itinerant back
then. Wouldn’t think twice about starting off at The Rifleman in Hounslow only
to then move on to Baroque in Ealing (Friday, 26th January), or
having a few pints in Kingston upon Thames before jumping on a train to Clapham Junction
(Saturday, 22nd September). Midweek drinking was also the norm. I
don’t mean to suggest that we lived dissolute lifestyles, merely that we were
younger then and more carefree. Not that I held my health in complete contempt. I was playing football occasionally with work colleagues, weekly games of badminton
with the lady, and a secondhand bike allowed me to cycle to and from work. I
was also eating well, making regular trips to Bunny’s Tandoori, The
Kyber Pass, Pizza Express and The Coffee Pot.
Great West Road - Osterley or Isleworth?
2000’s The
Ladies of Varades and 2001’s The Boys of Summer should be seen as companion pieces. They follow similar musical themes,
drawing upon jazz, funk, Latin vibes, reggae, soul, ‘60s rock and contemporary
indie. They were also conceived of with the specific intent of being listened
to while holidaying in the Loire Valley.
I like to introduce my compendiums with
something upbeat – 'Zambezi' by The Fun Company in the case of The Ladies of Varades – but with The Boys of Summer I’ve begun with the oddity that is 'Speed of Life' by
David Bowie, a jolly instrumental that also kicks off the album it’s
taken from – Low. However, I quickly
follow up with 'Use It Before You Lose It'
by Bobby Valentin, an exuberant stab of boogaloo. The Latin music of North
America and the Caribbean is very different to the bossa nova, samba and Tropicália of Brazil, and this is a good
illustration as to how.
I’ll then lay off slightly, to
the point of delivering something mellow by about the fourth or fifth track in.
In this instance I’ve started with ska, in the shape of 'Phoenix City' by The Skatalites, taken from the Soul Jazz compilation
Studio One Rockers. Warming to the
theme, I’ve reached for another Soul Jazz compendium – 100% Dynamite – and borrowed 'Woman
Of the Ghetto' by Phyllis Dillon and 'Night
and Day' by The Maytals. The inspiration in the first instance would have
been the guy who used to own a pager, although the Studio One Rockers album was/is my own. This run of ska and
rocksteady eases us into the mellifluous blues of Canned Heat’s 'On the Road Again', which my lady friend pejoratively
thinks sounds like somebody using an electric razor (the sound she is referring to is in fact a tambura).
Now it’s time to wind things
back up, and 'I Hate You' by The Monks more
than serves this purpose. Taken from their seminal 1966 album Black Monk Time, 'I Hate You' is a spiteful barrage of fuzz-tone distortion and bitter
incantation. (The Fall covered this track on their 1990 album Extricate, which is how I initially came
to be aware of it, but I bought Black Monk
Time after I saw a copy hanging in the window of Intoxica Records on the Portobello
Road on a Saturday.) Having released such energy I am committed to drawing it
out, and do so with 'Paint it Black' by
the Stones. This is what the second phase of a playlist of this length is often
about – making a noise, or throwing poppy melodies out there to keep the listener
hyped.
We need to talk about David (as in Bowie). Nobody had much to say about him at school or when I arrived at university. It was the
guy with the tapes who finally broached the subject. His then girlfriend included 'Queen Bitch' on a mixtape she
sent him when we were living together on Hanworth Road. Having already
established myself as a fellow Velvet Underground fan – 'Queen Bitch' is Bowie’s homage to them – I took note, but not to the
extent that I immediately did anything about it. I’m not sure what prompted me but
at some point in the year 2000 I bought a secondhand copy of Hunky Dory. I’m assuming it was after
July because nothing features of it on The
Ladies of Varades, and I would have surely have included 'Andy Warhol' given the opportunity.
I purchased my copy of Low
in Penzance, which dates it to the end of August bank holiday of that same year.
I’d liked Hunky Dory but wasn’t
dazzled by it. Low – the first side
at least – really grabbed me. I was aware that Bowie had written Low on returning to Europe, in an effort
to escape the ruinous, psychotic lifestyle that taken him over in Los Angeles,
but wasn’t alive to what this had actually entailed (the album Station to Station points the way,
should you wish to mount your own chronological campaign). I was taken with the
simplicity and strangeness of some of the lyrics, the fragmentary nature of the
songs’ structures and the general mood of the thing – which was ‘low’. Bowie’s
vocal delivery is measured; the timbre boarders on the melancholy. Conventional
arrangements are dispensed with. In 'Sound
and Vision' the nearest thing approximating a chorus is heard just twice: once
at the beginning of the song and again at the end, bookending what passes for a
verse. 'Breaking Glass' consists of
two verses and a single chorus, if it can be called that. In parallel
to all of this, Bowie had ditched many or his sartorial eccentricities and taken to
wearing plaid shirts, jeans and sensible shoes. His hair was still orange
though.
By the time I’d begun compiling a playlist
in readiness for a second gite-based holiday I’d added “Heroes” to my collection. The B-sides of both Low and “Heroes” are
comprised largely of ambient instrumentals but, despite both albums forming
part of Bowie’s ‘Berlin Trilogy’, their A-sides aren’t remotely similar. “Heroes” is louder, more aggressive,
the tracks are longer and the lyrical content more verbose. Robert Fripp’s
guitar is let loose all over it while Eno’s noodlings take a back seat. I’m not
sure which album I prefer. I definitely find the second side of “Heroes” more stimulating than side two
of Low but it is the first sides of
both that hold all the aces. In this respect, side one of Low just about edges it on account of there being seven of them – aces, that is – to “Heroes”’ five.
The first version of this compilation had Bowie's 'Breaking Glass'
following on from 'Paint it Black', but
I decided to replace it with 'The Man
Who Sold the World' after everybody got quite into it on our trip to France
(courtesy of the guy who used to own a pager). It was a simple exercise to
delete 'Breaking Glass', record 'The Man Who Sold the World' and then rearrange the running order on my MiniDisc.
Hunky Dory
We’re at a crucial stage of our anthology
now – the third quarter – and in this instance I’ve turned to jazz to sustain
the listener’s interest. Jazz has an epic quality that I think sets a
compilation up nicely for the final run in. You can’t just drop it in willy-nilly, so I’ve used a Stereolab tune, with their complex arrangements and fondness
for vintage keys, to pave the way. Stereolab had a new album due out at the end
of August, but our French holiday couldn’t wait that long and so I reached for the
EP they released in May 2000, The First
of the Microbe Hunters. Thereafter, Chico
Hamilton’s 'Conquistadors' segues into
the jazz-raga of Hungarian guitarist Gábor Szabó’s 'Mizrab'. It’s a natural progression as Gábor plays guitar on both.
I’ve got nothing against The Beatles but consider this: August 1965 and the Fab Four have just recorded Help!, their fifth studio album. The
same year Chico Hamilton releases El
Chico, his 23rd. I’m not going to argue that El Chico is a better album than Help! but it’s hard to make a case for,
say, 'Ticket to Ride' being anywhere
near as sophisticated as 'Conquistadors'.
Gábor Szabó’s guitar playing is far more accomplished than either Lennon’s or
Harrison’s, not because he’s more talented necessarily but because jazz simply
offers more room for manoeuvre. It’s not so much a case of which music is
better but what’s more interesting. (Ironically, one of Gábor’s first releases
as a band leader was a cover of the Paul McCartney schmaltz-fest 'Yesterday'.)
It was Earl Gateshead
who introduced me to El Chicano’s take on jazz standard 'Viva Tirado', which they make their own. The slice of Hammond driven Chicano rock serves to ramp things up before 'Eye
of Danger' kicks in, a menacing slab of late 1970’s dancehall that needs to
be kept apart from the more delicate intricacies displayed by Gábor.
'Blackout' off of “Heroes” succeeds Michigan &
Smiley’s 'Eye of Danger'
because it is frantic and noisy enough to cope with the responsibility. It also
signals the beginning of the end – the last quarter.
While one needn't save the best until last, it is advisable that your compilation builds toward a climax of sorts. 'Happiness' by
Teenage Fanclub could fairly be described as an uplifting track. It has proper
singing on it, rather than shouting, screaming, grunting or whimpering. The
same cannot be said of 'I am Pentagon' by Make Up. I’ve already noted that the Make
Up and the Stones shared a sort of muscular licentiousness – or at least their
frontmen did – but this is only partly true. It is correct that Mick Jagger and
Ian Svenonius, as well as having big hair, commit completely to their physical performance.
However, where Jagger seeks to convey primitive urges, Svenonius brings humour.
His shtick is tongue-in-cheek but played with enough conviction to make you
think twice; it is not parody. It’s more like if a young Jonathan Meades had
joined the Weather Underground and been possessed simultaneously by the spirits
of James Brown and Prince.
The penultimate track, 'Broasted or Fried', is taken from the
same record as the second: a miscellany of 'Latin
breakbeats, basslines & boogaloo' to which it lends its name. 'Broasted or Fried' is a monster of a tune, driving forward with an
intense ferocity that feels conclusive.
Considering the effect Exile on Main Street had on me, you would have thought I'd have hastily hunted down copies of Beggars
Banquet, Let it Bleed and/or Sticky
Fingers. Instead, I mined my father’s record collection and came away with both The Rolling Stones’ eponymously titled debut album and the compilation LP Big Hits (High Tide and
Green Grass) – hence 'Paint it Black' and hence 'Little
Red Rooster'. 'Little Red Rooster' was almost new to me, whereas 'Paint it Black' already held associations with my second year at university drinking in The Chariot. I should have tried harder, but it is a good tune and does work well in this context
Why ‘The Boys of Summer’? It had been my intention to include the Don
Henley song of the same name but I couldn't get hold of it. In hindsight, it was probably for the best.
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