1. Side
Street Walker – Dolly Mixture
In December, before COVID-19 officially became a thing, Dolly Mixture
reissued the album Demonstration Tapes and also put out Other Music,
a collection of alternative takes and unreleased demos. By the end of the month these
limited pressings had sold out, but not before I got my hands on a pair. They
are splendid records and it was hard to choose just one song for inclusion on
my annual compilation. 'Side Street Walker' is as good a choice as any and functions well as a lead-off track.
Lockdown coincided with a bout of unseasonably warm weather. This was
something of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, being out of doors in the sunshine kept people's spirits up, on the other it meant that parks and
greens were mobbed, which defeated the object. The roads, though, were clear and
I cycled into town regularly on a single-speed bike I'd purchased in
February. I also found myself going to the supermarket on an almost daily basis, savouring the reduced capacity. By night the streets were deserted and the air smelt fresh. In these respects,
lockdown was a rather pleasant experience.
There’s only so much cycling and shopping you can do in a day, under any
circumstances, so when my partner was summoned back to school in late April,
to supervise the children of key-workers and provide online lesson plans for
everyone else’s, I had to contrive alternative ways to while away the days. One
idea was re-watch My Secret World: The Story of Sarah
Records, which was a more satisfying experience the second time
around. This precipitated a series of email exchanges between myself and the chap
who introduced me to Sarah Records, who then passed on a link to a website screening
Teenage Superstars. This documentary focuses on the
independent music scene in Glasgow from 1982 to ’92 and features the likes of Teenage Fanclub, The
Pastels, The Vaselines, BMX Bandits. A group called The Shop
Assistants are mentioned along the way, and I asked the chap who introduced me to Sarah
Records whether they were worth bothering with. He thought not, which surprised
me, and instead pointed me in the direction of Jesse Garon & The
Desperadoes, an Edinburgh band from the same era. I was
indifferent to the song he provided as an example but found another that I liked a lot: 'Splashing Along', the group’s debut single, dating back to October
1986.
I uncovered 'Bad Night at the Whiskey' by The Byrds in April. I was
trying to track down one of Roger McGuinn’s better haircuts and found it on a
programme called Playboy After Dark, hosted by Hugh Hefner. The Byrds
play 'You Ain't Goin' Nowhere' and 'This Wheel's On Fire', the latter
taken from the 1969 album Dr. Byrds & Mr. Hyde, a record I’d
previously ignored; Chris Hillman and Gram Parsons had recently left The Byrds
to form The Flying Burrito Brothers and only McGuinn remained from the original
line-up, so I doubted its quality. The band’s performance on Hefner’s show
corrected my mistake. Clarence White, who had worked as a session musician on
The Byrds’ previous three albums, was by now a fully paid-up member, while John
York replaced Hillman on bass and Gene Parsons took over from Kevin Kelly on
drums. The Whiskey in question
is a club called Whisky a Go Go in West Hollywood, California, where The Byrds
once performed badly. We don’t know what was so bad about it because the
lyrics pertain to something else entirely.
I’d been furloughed and made the decision to sell some of my lesser played records, effectively so I could purchase others. One of the discs I elected to get shot of was a compilation entitled The Clouds Have Groovy Faces, released
via the Bam-Caruso imprint in 1986. As the title suggests, it’s a compendium of
1960s psychedelia, and fairly obscure psychedelia at that, but not the best. 'I
Am So Blue' by The Poets is the standout track, so I added it to this
playlist for posterity. (Readers of my liner notes may recall that The Poets
kicked off my 2005 anthology with 'That’s the Way It’s Got to Be'.)
The Nina Simone tune came later after listening to BBC Radio 6 in the
company of my Cornish friend on a Sunday afternoon, drinking cans of lager and
a parting shot of Drambuie, which became a kind of (socially distanced)
lockdown ritual. I’d always found Nina Simone intriguing but never came
across anything by her that especially appealed. In June I did. 'Four Women'
is the only song on the 1966 album Wild is the Wind that she
wrote herself – a perfectly normal state of affairs within genre. It’s an emotive tune but delicately rendered, until Nina
lets rip with the last line: 'MY NAME IS PEACHES!'
There are generally two schools of thought concerning the efficacy of
lockdown. The first – and it seems to be where most people stand – is that we
were a good two weeks late in shutting things down but have managed to contain
the virus and less people are dying. The other is that COVID-19 has been
doing the rounds since the turn of the year, many of us have already had it
asymptomatically, that the whole thing is a waste of time and we’re going to be
worse off for it in the long run; we will be poorer and more people are going
to die as an indirect result of lockdown than would’ve otherwise perished from
the disease itself.
I’ve just been into Richmond to post my sold copy of Stevie Wonder’s Music
of My Mind and to pick up groceries, and it looked like an awful lot of people had the same idea.
Yet we’re only in what I’m calling the second phase of lockdown and we’re told
there’s still a very real threat lurking out there. Is everybody bored of
staying in, or has there been a shift in their thinking?
Placing 'George Hamilton’s Dead' by The Golden Dawn directly after 'Four
Woman' works surprisingly well. It’s one of a number of
tracks that grabbed me when re-watching My Secret World: The Story of Sarah
Records. I cannot understand why the chap who introduced me to Sarah
Records never made me aware of it, for it amuses in a way that satisfies the
both of us. The song also dispels the myth that Sarah was all about
jangly guitars and heightened sensitivity. (The same goes for 'Dirty Mags' by
Blueboy, another new find that I came very close to including on this
compilation.)
I’d been meaning to look into Swell Maps for ages, so when Stephen
Pastel alluded to them in Teenage Superstars I got on the case. They only recorded two albums, the second being 1980’s …In “Jane
from Occupied Europe”, which I’d like to buy on the strength of the title
alone. I can’t find a copy on-line, so for now I’ve downloaded 'The Helicopter Spies', the fifth track from its first side. Sounds like Magazine, but better.
In 2020 Soft Walls released Not as Bad as it Seems on
vinyl (it was available on cassette in 2019). I pre-ordered the record in December
and it arrived late January. This was supposed to tally with seeing them in April but the gig was cancelled outright. Perhaps when all this is over I’ll
try and get down to Brighton and see them, because they don’t come to London very
often.
Richmond Green is proving to be a particularly pleasing environment.
Despite the heavy clouds and occasional rain, it is fairly warm and
there’s a pent-up energy about the place. The Cricketers is selling takeaway draught,
although financially it makes sense to bring your own. Towards the end of
the month the heat begins to build again. While I cycle to Parsons Green to
meet up with a couple of my bouldering buddies, half a million people travel
down to Dorset to hang around on beaches. That’s the price the Conservatives pay for letting their PR man keep his job.
I don’t really get the point of Twitter, but I’m on there nonetheless. If
I wasn’t then I may never have found out about the Scottish
composer/arranger/producer Johnny Harris. Someone had been playing the album Movements in their car and tweeted a link to Harris’s impressive cover of 'Paint it Black' by the Stones; further
investigation proved another track, the self-penned 'Stepping Stones', to
be more so. It's hard to know what to call this sort of music but there are
elements of jazz, rock, and even funk, with a psychedelic undertone. You can
imagine it appearing on the soundtrack to a film set in the swinging sixties.
The guy who used to own a pager now owns a boat. Prior to lockdown we saw Das Boot on it and the other day we watched Jaws. After
watching Jaws we put on music. The guy who used to own a pager was
under the impression that he introduced me to Joao Donato around the period we were
listening to the Blue Brazil series (Blue Note in a Latin Groove). That
was approximately 20 years ago so it’s possible he did, although of the two of us I
have the stronger memory. I don’t recall having heard 'A Ra' so it
can go on this compilation.
In between watching films documenting obscure indie-pop and hanging out
on boats, I’ve been reading the Beastie Boys Book, its hard-backed 570
pages having remained undisturbed on my shelf since December 2018. The parts that
reference the trio’s final record, Hot Sauce Committee Part Two, made me
realise how little I’ve listened to it, which is something else I’ve put right.
The album's concept was to use invented samples that were subsequently
credited to fictional songs by imagined artistes. 'Nonstop Disco Powerpack' is the exception, which is a shame because it’s the best track on
the album.
It was my birthday the other week so I’ve got the Sleaford Mods’
compilation All That Glue to listen to, personally delivered by one of the chaps from Eel Pie Records. I’m familiar with about half the double-album's content. I know and like 'Fizzy', and contemplate including it on this compendium, but decide that the novelty of either 'Snake It' or 'McFlurry'
would be more appropriate, and opt for the latter.
Das Boot
A few weeks before lockdown, Mr Wilkinson and I were climbing at Urban Ascent
near Parsons Green when a song played we both recognised but couldn't name.
It came to me later: 'Dry the Rain' by The Beta Band. Smashing tune and
the way it starts off allows it to follow on from Sleaford Mods quite freely.
'French Press' by Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever sounds like Shaun
Ryder singing over War on Drugs if Shaun Ryder could actually sing a bit. They’re
an Australian 5-piece incorporating three guitarists, not counting bass, and 'French Press' is
the title track of an EP they issued in 2017. I discovered them at the
beginning of April by way of another track of theirs called 'Cars in Space'. I preferred 'French Press' and decided early on that I
wanted this tune to appear further down the running order, due to its
uplifting nature (musically at least; the lyrics concern estranged siblings).
Since the release of their debut LP a little more than a year ago,
Fontaines D.C. have told us they’ve been kicking back to the sounds of the
Beach Boys. You wouldn’t know it from the single 'Televised Mind', nor
from the two singles that preceded it. 'Televised Mind' is a ridiculously
simple ditty, but I kept hearing it on the radio throughout the summer and was
slowly won over by its sheer doggedness.
I happened upon 'In Dreams' by Peggy Sue listening to the radio with
my Cornish friend just days before lockdown. Peggy Sue are in fact two ladies
from Brighton, and their music sounds a bit like Dolly Mixture as if produced
by Phil Spector. As with 'French Press', it occurred to me that this tune
would be better placed towards the end of this compilation, marking the point
at which I begin to wind things down.
The actor and musician John Henry
Westhead – best known for playing Olaf the Russian Metalhead in the art-house
comedy film Clerks – lives somewhere around my way. I know this because he’s
posted songs relating to Isleworth on YouTube, and I’ve seen him drinking in the Red
Lion. He's also part of a two-man band called The Shed Dwellers and there’s
footage on YouTube of them paying tribute to the late David Berman at the Cross
Lances in Hounslow. This is how I came by the song 'Black and Brown Blues'
by Berman’s old band, Silver Jews.
Dissatisfied
with my Levi’s denim jacket I started looking on eBay for another. I
searched specifically for the slimmer fitting 70500, identified one that was
'new with tags', made an offer, was counter offered, paid for it and then
sold my 72334 to someone in Aberdeen for the same price – a neat piece of business. For some reason I
associate denim jackets with a certain type of indie music, and I ended up mulling over the gaps in my knowledge regarding the group Galaxie 500 and then buying their second album, On Fire. An ostensibly dull turn of
events, but it's worth pondering how one seemingly innocuous thing can lead to
another. Consider also the possibility that anyone reading this might go about
acquiring On Fire and be equally affected by the song 'Plastic Bird'
as I am, all because I fussed over my wardrobe while on furlough.
Actually, by the time I received the denim jacket I was back at work.
This coincided with the Government postponing a number of lockdown-easing
measures scheduled to start at the beginning of August and simultaneously
introducing this thing called Eat Out to Help Out. I didn’t think anything of it
back then, but as the rate of infection slowly began to rise, and quarantine
measures were introduced for people returning from selected foreign
territories, the absurdity of the scheme became retrospectively apparent.
Apropos of nothing, I decided to put on a CD my partner gave to me
some years ago: These Boots Are Made For
Walkin' - The Complete MGM Recordings by Lee Hazlewood. The songs therein
predate Hazlewood’s partnership with Nancy Sinatra but include some that were later
re-recorded with her. 'Sand' is one such tune, appearing first on 1966’s The
Very Special World of Lee Hazlewood, featuring the vocal of Suzi Jane
Hokum, and in 1968 on Nancy & Lee. The collaboration with Nancy Sinatra
edges it, not so much because of her intonation but more the song’s bizarre
arrangement and orchestration. Producer and guitarist Billy Strange was
responsible for this, and I assume it's his deranged guitar playing backwards during the instrumental breakout.
In August I resolved to sell my copy of The Original Modern Lovers
and replace it with The Modern Lovers, the version released in 1976 five
years prior to the so-called original. It’s generally accepted that the ’76 iteration
is the definitive article, and I wouldn’t disagree with that. 'Someone I Care
About', 'Pablo Picasso' and 'Old World' are all missing from the Kim Fowley
produced record, although he does give us 'I Wanna Sleep in Your Arms',
but it’s John Cale’s superior production that makes the real difference.
Frederick 'Toots' Hibbert passed away on 11 September 2020, the same day
as stage 13 of what turned out to be an enthralling edition of the Tour de
France. At some point in the stage Stefan Kung, wearing number 54, was out
front, which got ITV presenter Gary Imlach thinking: if Kung finished first and
Dries Devenyns, sporting number 46, came in second, it would present the
perfect opportunity to play out with '54-46 Was My Number'. In the event,
Daniel Martinez won the stage and so 'Broadway Jungle' was used instead –
or 'Dog War' as it was originally known when The Maytals cut the tune in
1964. Unbeknown to them, the track was leased to Island Records who
retitled it 'Broadway Jungle', credited it to The Flames and put it out in
the UK. The new name stuck but has been re-attributed to (Toots &) The Maytals whenever
it's appeared since on any ska and reggae anthology.
On the 24th of September – the date these restrictions came into effect – I tried to have a drink with my partner in the pub over the road. Twenty
minutes after our arrival we were still trying, and so departed. As we waited, 'Glue'
by Bicep came on. My Cornish friend introduced me to this tune in early March
and it took a while to decide how much I really liked it. I understood that
this was dance music, but was it too repetitive? In the end it
grew on me, and there’s a wistful quality to it that feels pertinent to the current situation.
And I was going to leave it at that, but I like odd numbers and fancied more
Galaxie 500 – undoubtedly the discovery of the year. A lot of this has to do with the
rhythm section: Damon Krukowski’s irregular drum patterns and Naomi Yang’s counter-melodies
on bass. I’ve heard On Fire described as an ‘ambient’ rock record,
and it’s not a bad way of putting it – certainly more indicative than terms
like slowcore or dreampop. You need to factor in Dean Wareham’s
reedy vocals, which aren’t to everybody’s taste but are to mine. 'Leave
the Planet' is mellower than 'Plastic Bird', and shorter too, which is
a good note to end on before we're all locked down again.
