- That’s the Way It’s Got to Be – The Poets
- Entry of the Gladiators – Nero & the Gladiators
- Pretty Ballerina – The Left Banke
- Song for Jeffrey – Jethro Tull
- Christine’s Tune (aka Devil in Disguise) – The Flying Burrito Brothers
- Rhyme the Rhyme Well – Beastie Boys
- Outdoor Miner [album version] – Wire
- Sunny Sunny Cold Cold Day – Herman Dune
- Warning Sign – Talking Heads
- Insight – Joy Division
- (Intro/Tokyo) City Girl – Kevin Shields
- Cruiser’s Creek [Peel Session] – The Fall
- Record Collection – Comet Gain
- Come Back Jonee – Devo
- King of the Rodeo – Kings of Leon
- Mod Lang – Big Star
- Road to Nowhere – Hearts and Flowers
- Angel – Rod Stewart
- Tell Me Why – Neil Young
- It Kills – Stephen Malkmus
- Mental Poisoning – Weird War
- Silly Girl – Television Personalities
Record
stores come and go. Growing up in Plymouth, I used to shop at HMV and Our Price
on New George Street, Rival Records on Royal Parade, and Virgin Megastore on
the corner of Cornwall Street and Armada Way. I say ‘shop’ but I’d mostly go just
to look, often on my way home from school after taking an unnecessary detour
via the city centre, thus postponing the laborious task of tackling the
homework set that day. Later, once I found a use for secondhand material,
I’d frequent Purple Haze at Drake Circus, the Music and Video
Exchange in the Pannier Market, Different Class on Frankfurt Gate (not so
much), and Really Good Records back when it occupied one of a row
of Victorian tenements next to Plymouth Library.
The
only one of these businesses still doing business is Really Good Records. After occupying a plot in the now defunct Bretonside Bus Station, it can now be found on Exeter Street just above. A guy called Mike runs the place
and he won’t open up before 10:30 – or at all if it’s a Monday. He is very
persuasive. If money was tight I’d think twice about paying a visit knowing
that I might leave with more than I literally bargained for. In 2005, I dropped by to look for a specific Jethro Tull album and left with two (This Was and Aqualung), as well as a
psychedelic/garage rock compilation entitled Illusions from the Crackling Void,
and only narrowly avoided adding something
by The Seeds to my collection. When I returned some months later for Devo’s
first album I also came away with Real
Life
by Magazine.
This
sort of thing could happen on any one of my tri-annual sojourns to Plymouth to
see family and catch up with friends. These apportioned visitations would reveal sudden physical changes to my hometown’s landscape, often to my dismay, occasionally
my pleasure. Some were more substantial than others. When the council finally
gave permission for the old Drake Circus to be redeveloped it came down very
quickly, as most buildings do once the wrecking ball moves in, radically
changing the terrain in and around. The planning process had been so drawn
out that by the time the new Drake Circus Shopping Centre opened in 2006, it
was immediately considered démodé. Not that I imagine the shopping obsessed
hordes particularly cared; only those of us who remembered fondly Arcadia,
Olympus Sport, Purple Haze or The Unity were in any way bothered by it.
Illusions
from the Crackling Void turned out to be quite
the coup. It is a collection of late 1960s psychedelic rock released on
the Bam-Caruso imprint, the same people who put together the Rubble anthology comprising the same
sort of thing, which was in turn inspired by the Nuggets series begun by Elektra and continued by Rhino Records. Most
of it is fairly obscure, although The Poets, who were from Scotland, were
probably one of the better known groups of the freakbeat scene, which was
really just a British term for psychedelia with a mod-ish slant.
'What the hell is this?' quoth my lady friend; 'It sounds
like clowns on acid!' The song, written by Czech composer Julius Fučík, had indeed found fame as
a circus march, but why the allusion to hallucinogens? Nero & the Gladiators belong to that tame
strain of instrumental rock & roll that was popular for a time in the early
1960s, as exemplified by groups like The Shadows, The Tornados, The Ventures.
The source in this case was a long player entitled Decade of Instrumentals: 1959~1967, which was one of a number of
the records the former cohabitant from Brighton brought over for me to listen
to when I was living at 27 Hanworth Road. A man who moved house
often, his records had since become an encumbrance and so he decided to pass
them on to me. 'Entry of the
Gladiators' starts with applause, then the spoken words, 'Hey, say there
Brutus man, like, here come the gladiators,' before a woozy, reverb-drenched
guitar kicks off the tune’s chromatic scale, making sense of my female
companion’s startled appraisal. In
retrospect, I’m surprised it never made it onto The Heroes of Hanworth.
Baroque
pop is music that utilises traditional classical instruments, such as
strings or harpsichords, and may employ strategies more usually
associated with classical music. The Beatles were arguably the genre’s most
accomplished exponents – 'In my Life', 'Eleanor Rigby', 'Fixing a Hole', etc. (it seems to be
more McCartney’s thing) – but the Stones contributed too, probably at Brian
Jones’s behest – 'Play with Fire', 'Lady
Jane', 'She’s a Rainbow'. It wasn’t by any means a British phenomenon. Love
dabbled, and The Beach Boys too, but it was perhaps New York band The Left
Banke who came the closest to being defined as an actual baroque act. 'Pretty Ballerina' is the last track on Illusions
from the Crackling Void. In the 1967 television documentary Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution, Leonard
Bernstein cheerfully observed that it incorporated, 'a combination of the Lydian and Mixolydian modes,' although did
then go on to urge us to, 'never forget that this music [as in popular music] employs a highly limited musical vocabulary.' But he was right to
single out 'Pretty Ballerina', even if
I don’t understand his reasoning.
I purchased the Jethro Tull album This Was specifically for 'Song for Jeffrey' after seeing it performed on The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus (which funnily
enough opens to the sound of 'Entry of the Gladiators'). As I have said, I was also cajoled into buying Aqualung, but This Was is a nicer object. The cover depicts Jethro Tull dressed up as
old men surrounded by dogs, as if in a forest or wood. On the reverse the band as
they are, laughing, not in colour as on the front but in a monochrome, yellowish green with their name and the album title writ large in red.
It’s gatefold and so on the inside we get a picture of the group playing live on stage. The outer sleeve has a pleasing lustre. (Aqualung is drab by comparison, but it's probably the better record.)
1968 was transitional phase for The Byrds. Having removed
David Crosby from the fold, they were struggling to perform The Notorious Byrd Brothers in a live
setting to a satisfactory standard. Enter Gram Parsons, initially on keys and
then guitar. Gram had already cultivated a country-rock sound with his group
The International Submarine Band, so it was a willing combination. By August,
The Byrds had recorded and released their next album, Sweetheart of the Rodeo, regarded by some to be the first pure
country-rock record. I bypassed this album – for now – and went straight for
The Flying Burrito Brothers, the band Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman formed
shortly after the release of Sweetheart
of the Rodeo. Whereas The Byrds had become Roger McGuinn’s band, The Flying
Burrito Brothers was certainly Gram’s. I can only assume Chris Hillman enjoyed
playing a supporting role, which is not to undermine his contribution or even
how his contribution was perceived: just as Hillman is given credit
commensurate with McGuinn on The
Notorious Byrd Brothers, so he is with Parsons on The Gilded Palace of Sin (Sweetheart of the Rodeo consists mostly of covers). Band
politics aside, the movement of staff doesn’t impact much on the music. Both Sweetheart of the Rodeo and The Gilded Palace of Sin are sincere
exercises in fusing rock and roll with country and western, demonstrating a
complete disregard for the psychedelia or R & B that was more fashionable at the
time. One wonders why 'Christine's Tune'
wasn’t released as a single like 'Marrakesh Express' was, which featured
David Crosby on harmony vocals.
It had been six years since the release of the Beastie Boys’
last album, Hello Nasty, and I hadn’t
listened to much hip hop in the intervening period. My youngest brother burned
me a copy of To the 5 Boroughs,
with some Jurassic 5 tacked on the end of it, which I took back to London, along
with all the stuff I’d purchased from Really Good Records. The album
is more minimal than Hello Nasty, and 'Rhyme the Rhyme Well' is a good example of this. Save for the sampling of Chuck
D’s opening salvo on 'Public Enemy No. 1',
the track is built around nothing much more than a strong thumping beat and a
weird descending keyboard effect. Country rock and hip hop aren’t the most
complimentary of styles but the pared down sound of 'Rhyme the Rhyme Well' allows it to follow on from 'Christine's
Tune' without too much bother.
To supplement my modest income I’d been attending focus
groups on a fairly regular basis. They typically paid in the region of £50 for
a couple hours of your time, give or take, and there might also be free food
and drink. Since the last June,
I’d offered my thoughts on Anadin paracetamol, Burger King, Twix, Foster’s lager,
Threshers off-license, Right Guard, the BBC website, iced tea, Budweiser, and cigars. I
didn’t even smoke cigars.
The day after expatiating on the subject of cigars, for which
I was awarded £60, I was back in London to see Herman Dune at the 100 Club with the chap who introduced me to Sarah Records. This means that he would have
already made me the compilation that included Herman Dune’s 'Sunny Sunny Cold Cold Day' as well as 'Outdoor Miner' by Wire (the album
version). Wire had the same look that a lot of those early British
post-punk bands had: Gang of Four, Magazine, Joy Division, and Siouxsie and the
Banshees to an extent. It’s a very simple, understated look made up of plain
shirts, suit jackets, sensible shoes and slacks in muted colours. I’ve often
wondered where it derived from. Was this a deliberate attempt to eschew the
showier visage of early punk: the torn fabric, piercings and sculpted hair of
bands like the Sex Pistols, The Clash and The Damned? Or was it a nod to the
drab functionalism of Dr Feelgood and the pub rock scene? Television, Blondie
and Talking Heads manifested it too – all of them American – so maybe not. That aside, 'Outdoor Miner' by Wire doesn’t
sound much like Wire – they’re not normally so melodic – but how is this for an
opening stanza:
No blind
spots in the leopard's eyes,
Can only help
to jeopardize,
The lives of
lambs, the shepherd cries.
Talking Heads: I’d owned the live
album Stop Making Sense since my
first year at university (on tape). In 1998, I bought True Stories on a hungover Sunday
morning with the guy who used to own many indie tapes, who by now owned as
many CDs. The intent was always there to explore the group’s back
catalogue in more detail, but the Stones, David Bowie, The Byrds, Led
Zeppelin, jazz, funk and ska must have got in the way.
I purchased More Songs
About Buildings and Food on a whim in 2005 after finding it in the
‘£5 or less section’ of HMV in Hounslow. The front cover intrigued me – a group
portrait made up of 529 individual Polaroids. Its date – 1978: the same
year of Plastic Letters by Blondie and
Q: Are We Not Men? A:
We Are Devo! by Devo – inferred the album might exhibit
the sort of new wave qualities that appealed to me: intelligible vocals,
keyboards, rhythmic guitars. On playing the CD this was found to be true. I
was taken aback by how good it was and how so few of the
songs had been released as singles (just one: 'Take Me to the River', a cover of an old Al Green song). I liked the record so much that I quickly surmised it might be one of my
favourites.
'Warning Sign' is a very highly strung tune. It starts with Chris Frantz
knocking out a few bars on drums, Tania Weymouth then embarks on a wandering
groove, David Byrne’s guitar gradually chimes in before Jerry Harrison on second guitar. After 1 minute and 7 seconds of this, the whole thing shifts: Byrne mutates his
instrument into a discordant siren and starts ranting on about how he’s got money now and that we should look at his hair because he likes its design. It could be a comment on how wealth corrupts the
individual, but I can’t be sure.
What Brian Eno brings to More
Songs About Buildings and Food is comparable to that which Martin Hannett
lends to Unknown Pleasures. Both
producers subject their musical constituents to echo and delay, with a
particular emphasis on drum and bass, to create a sort of industrial sonority. However, the prevailing mood on Joy Division’s record is very different. Insight: a distant drone, a faint whir
and the sound of a door being opened and shut – a prison cell is implied.
Cymbals and guitars gradually fade in, then Peter Hook’s bass in a register
diametrically opposite to Tina Weymouth’s. The variance between the respective
vocals is even more pronounced. Where David Byrne offers abstruse verbalism,
Ian Curtis’s tone seems to be one of resignation.
His inflection is more nuanced than he’s given credit for, and
nowhere is this more true than on 'Insight', his bass-baritone sounding at moments almost fragile.
I used to watch more movies in those pre-internet days, like Lost in Translation. If I had been connected to the internet
then I would have downloaded 'City
Girl', but I had to buy the film’s soundtrack, and did so for this
song alone. When it came to including it on Aka ‘Devil in Disguise’ I was unable to physically dissociate it from 'Intro/Tokyo', a segment of ambient sound
that wouldn’t feel out of place on the second side of David Bowie's “Heroes”. This turned out not to be a bad
thing, providing a dissonant bridge across from the relative clarity of 'Insight' to the melodic oddness and
distorted guitar of 'City Girl'. It’s a
song that doesn’t really resolve itself. The same chord cycle repeats
itself four times, without any real regard for what might be a verse or a chorus,
except each time the tempo is increased slightly. I could listen to it all day.
For my birthday, The Wilkinsons very kindly gifted me The Fall: The Complete Peel Sessions 1978–2004. The Fall was
known to be 'my' group. In truth, I hadn’t listened to them much over the last
five or so years and hadn’t bought any of their records for longer than that,
but I welcomed the prospect of reacquainting myself with the world of Mark E
Smith. These Peel Session tracks would proceed to form the
backbone of the ‘Best of The Fall’ playlist I subsequently compiled and prompted me to purchase a few of the earlier albums that had previously escaped my attention. For the
time being, 'Cruiser’s Creek' features here.
Comet
Gain are another by-product of the compilation the
chap who introduced me to Sarah Records put together. The song 'Record Collection' tells of not being
able to listen to certain records because they remind the protagonist of his
ex. Sarah Records guy and I have a shared appreciation of many such moments:
the sudden shift from Gbm to D in 'Marbles'
by the Tindersticks; the strained harmonies in 'Solace' by The Sea Urchins; Arthur Lee pleading that, 'we’re all
normal and we want our freedom,' towards the end of Love’s 'The Red Telephone'. On the other hand, whereas I’m interested
in rhythm, Sarah Records guy is all about melody. If there’s a space where we meet in the middle, Comet
Gain occupy it. He took me to see them at The Water Rats in King’s Cross at the
beginning of the year, and I understood perfectly.
I doubt
very much the chap who introduced me to Sarah
Records has much time for Devo. This is because he would perceive them to be a comedy band, and if there’s one thing he can’t stand it’s that. But he wouldn’t be quite right. There’s
certainly a humorous element to Devo’s act, but it’s equally kitsch, subversive
and satirical. Not that that would impress Sarah Records guy either – as far as
I know, he has no time for Weird War. Myself, I have no problem mixing music with mirth. How I laugh to myself every time I catch a glimpse of the back
cover of Q: Are We Not Men? A: We
Are Devo! depicting various band members with stockings pulled over
their heads (actually a stilled image from the band’s extended music video The Truth About De-Evolution, which I
recommend highly).
It might appear that I was still avoiding
contemporary music but this is only partly true. In September I saw Stephen Malkmus touring his latest album, Face
the Truth, supported by a band called Clor. My
friend who passed out in Debenhams pointed me in the direction of Tom Vek. Field Music, who had impressed in support of The Go! Team the
previous year, released their debut album. Weird War had a new record out. They
even played twice in support of it: at the Camden Underworld in May and again at the Highbury Garage in November. Aside from Illuminated by the Light by
Weird War, bought within days of its release, it took me a while
to absorb the rest, but ultimately I did.
In the meantime I purchased Aha Shake
Heartbreak by Kings of Leon on double 10” vinyl. It is a nice object and a good album. The
drums are sometimes off the beat, the guitars often in opposition to the melody,
and Caleb Followill’s vocal delivery is intense. My only complaint is that lyrically they seem to be interested in nothing more than sex,
drugs and rock & roll. This ended up being somewhat true of The Strokes too.
Barcelona
Early in the year I thought I’d have another stab at Big
Star. I took a chance on #1 Record
and liked it so much that within a matter of weeks I’d bought Radio City.
It can be hard to discern from my playlists what sort of
thing I might have been into at the time I compiled them. Generally speaking
there’s no particular strain of music that predominates, but sometimes there
is. I’m alluding to music in the wider sense, encompassing its broader
aesthetics. For example, the collective presence of Blur, The Jam, the
Small Faces, early Rolling Stones, Love, The Beatles, Herbie Hancock, The
Yardbirds, and Saint Etienne on Carrington
Classics and The Heroes of Hanworth
is indicative of the Britpop scene and its many cultural accoutrements: Fred
Perry polo shirts, V-neck jumpers, desert boots, anoraks; films like Blow-Up and The Ipcress File; cafes; a Ballardian relationship with one’s
environment; a sense of irony; whatever Graham Coxon was into. By the time I’d
made Bully for Bulstrode these inclinations had dissipated. After the eclecticism of the French Gite compilations my view began to narrow once more (although this didn’t really
take hold until after my travels in 2002/03). The artistes this time around
were The Byrds, Gram Parsons, Neil Young, Syd Barrett, The Amboy Dukes, Led
Zeppelin, Big Star, golden era Rolling Stones, and, as we have seen, a miscellany of psychedelia,
garage and country rock. It was something approaching Americana and found its representation in: pale-blue denim, checked shirts,
Cuban heels and black leather bomber jackets; films like Zabriskie
Point and Buffalo 66; the works of Hunter S Thompson; the tattered reputation
of Richard Nixon; my American road trip of the 2004, which was basically the
enactment of some sort of fantasy; Keith Richards sat outside the burnt hulk of his Redlands estate in cut-off denim
shorts and a tight-fitting shirt with the sleeves rolled up. These are trivial
matters, but when I look back over certain periods of my life, to the
clothes I wore, the places I ventured, the music I listened to, the films I
watched, then suddenly there’s meaning where there didn’t appear to
be in the moment.
Anyway, Big Star: I’d explored power pop without having to
resort to Cheap Trick or The Knack.
Let’s all give Mike at Really Good Records a big round of
applause. The third and final track taken from Illusions from the Crackling Void – and there could easily
have been more – is 'Road to Nowhere'
by Hearts and Flowers. A Goffin/King composition, you might call it country rock, and it could be seen as the climax
to the compilation.
As much as Rod Stewart’s personality can be slightly nauseating,
he’s undoubtedly a great singer. There’s a folksy feel to 'Angel' that follows on from 'Road
to Nowhere' nicely, although it was Jimi Hendrix’s tune originally, concernng his mother. Ronnie Wood’s guitar playing is loose, sometimes behind, sometimes ahead of the beat, always deliberately so. The verse builds to a
crescendo and at the moment of release we get congas.
A lot of country, folk and psychedelic rock is fairly interchangeable
(excepting the strain of British folk rock that developed into the Canterbury
Scene, but that’s not relevant here). Take Neil Young’s work with Buffalo
Springfield. At the time it could conceivably have been characterised as folk
rock with a psychedelic edge. When Young went solo he jettisoned the
psychedelic and rockier elements in favour of a more country inflected sound,
and yet you’d be hard pushed to call it country rock in the vein of The Byrds or The Flying Burrito Brothers. Nor could you call it southern rock, a
derivative of the genre that was gathering pace. What you might call it is country folk. Pedantic taxonomy
aside, I added After the Gold Rush to
my collection and sought to include a track on this compilation. Still beholden to
MiniDisc, I was going to go with 'Cripple
Creep Ferry' but found I had almost three minutes to spare after opting for 'Silly Girl' by Television
Personalities, at 2 minutes 45 seconds, ahead of 'Cross-Eyed Merry' by Jethro Tull, which comes in at 4 minutes and 6
seconds, and so settled for 'Tell Me Why',
which lasts 2 minutes and 54 seconds.
I was initially a bit disappointed with Weird War’s Illuminated by the Light. It lacks the urgency,
the mania and the effect pedals of its predecessors. However, its lethargic funk grew on me and the material worked well live. But Svenonius was
done with Weird War. He took a break and returned four years later with a new
outfit, called Chain & the Gang.
In October my partner and I moved to the more salubrious environs of St Margarets, Twickenham.
I didn’t want to but circumstances dictated that we did. I had liked living in
Isleworth, having the Red Lion as my local, St John’s stores at the end of my road, the
H37, ‘St John the Baptist’.
'Silly
Girl' by the Television
Personalities, courtesy of the chap who introduced me to Sarah Records. I’ve
only got two Television Personalities songs to go on: this and a track called 'Back to Vietnam' which the chap played to me around the time he introduced me to Sarah Records, and did so with a smirk. I don’t know what to make of them and haven’t invested the time to
find out, which I should probably put right.
