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1. Out of Your Narrow Mind – Graham Day
The public lapped it up, and music journalists too, and the idea became
entrenched that rock and roll was a young person’s game, which in many ways it
was. If you earned your stripes, paid your dues and got in a few scrapes along
the way, then maybe you’d be forgiven the crime of getting old, especially if
you continued to behave as if you hadn’t. Otherwise – unless you were really talented – the surest way to ensure mythic status was to pop your clogs
prematurely.
These days age doesn’t seem to be an issue. Sleaford Mods are in their
50s, but nobody cares. Jarvis Cocker will be 60 next year, yet we still expect
him to make records. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards are almost 80, but if the
Stones go on another tour people won’t think anything of it. Such behaviour used
to invite derision at worst, suspicion at best. It’s the same with beards.
Graham Day is no
spring chicken – he used to be in a garage rock band called The Prisoners back
in the 1980s – although you wouldn't know it from ‘Out of Your Narrow Mind’. He
recorded it on his own during lockdown, which was a challenge
(the recording, not the lockdown). He’s described the difficulties faced in not
being able to record live and having to overdub the various parts using
a proprietary software package called Logic Pro X. He did the drums last, otherwise there’d be
nothing to play along to, but because Logic Pro works in perfect time Graham couldn’t
be as loose with rhythm as he ordinarily would have liked. (It's why some musicians hate click tracks.)
I found ‘Out of Your Narrow Mind’ on a playlist somebody posted on
Twitter in May (@contra_flow). I had already started my annual compilation by
then and provisionally earmarked ‘Wade in the Water’ by Ramsey Lewis as the
opening track. I did so because it serves as the introductory music to Nairn Across Britain, which I’d been watching on YouTube. This was in February,
around the time my Cornish friend and I went on a Nairn’s London
inspired pub crawl (commencing at The Victoria in Bayswater, moving on to The
Barley Mow in Marylebone, The Grenadier in Belgravia, The Red Lion in Mayfair,
and ending in disappointment at The Salisbury off Covent Garden). Ian Nairn was
an architectural critic, writer, presenter, and an odd character. I doubt he
chose ‘Wade in the Water’ to usher in his architectural ramblings, although I
could be selling him short.
Meanwhile Ian Svenonius was promoting last year’s album, Rated Z,
through the same medium. I wasn’t sure about Escape-ism, but then in late
January Ian posted the entirety of ‘Rocker’s Delight’ – all 10 mins and 47
seconds of it – accompanied by a video shot by Douglas Hart (formerly of The
Jesus and Mary Chain), and I was convinced. It’s certainly the best Escape-ism
record thus far, and it may even be the one of the finest things Ian’s ever been
involved with: up there with the final Make Up album, the Scene Creamers, If
You Can't Beat 'Em, Bite 'Em by Weird War, and the last Chain & the
Gang LP.
In March The Quietus published an excellent piece on Ahmed Abdul-Malik,
written by a chap called Daniel Spicer. On the 28th of March I placed an order
with Jazzman Records for what appeared to be the only vinyl copy of East
Meets West left in the country. Ahmed Abdul-Malik started out playing bass
for the likes of Art Blakey, Thelonious Monk, Earl Hines. Claiming his father
was from the Sudan (he wasn’t) Ahmed put together his own ensemble to play a
fusion of jazz and Middle Eastern folk. He’s not the only person to do this –
Yusef Lateef springs to mind – but he does seem to be the only jazz musician to
have developed the theme so entirely.
I was pleased
with how my compilation was panning out, but I wasn’t making huge progress with
it so decided to listen to the expanded edition of Nuggets: Original
Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965–1968 on Spotify. I didn’t
bother with Disc 1, because that covers the original anthology, which I already
possess. It wasn’t until I got halfway through Disc 3 that I found something
that grabbed me. A lot of this music can sound much the same, but what sets
‘Primitive’ by The Groupies slightly apart is the slower tempo, pounding drums
and the reverb.
In early April I stopped by Shak’s Stax of Wax in Kingston upon Thames who happened
to have on Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller) by Captain Beefheart and the
Magic Band. Captain Beefheart is an artist I thought I couldn’t get on with,
like The Sex Pistols, Primal Scream, The Ramones or Nirvana. This turns out not
to be the case. ‘Candle Mambo’ was the tune that caught my attention, but on
listening to the whole album that very evening I deemed ‘Tropical Hot Dog Night’ to
be the choice track.
On the same day, driving either to or from Kingston, I heard ‘Sisters’ by
Cate Le Bon on the radio. She had a new record out, which induced the DJ to play
something from her 2013 album, Mug Museum. ‘Sisters’ is one of my
favourite tunes on this playlist, and I believe it to be a very strong
playlist. I also like how it follows on from Beefheart. Le Bon’s vocal isn’t as
manic as Van Vliet’s, but it is as eccentric in its own way.
Later in April my partner and I took off to Eastbourne for a few
days. I hoped that maybe I’d encounter new music, but didn’t. At around the
same time, Spotify made some adventurous suggestions of songs I might care to
add to my compendium, such as ‘Spectrum is Green’ by Solid Space. I’m surprised
it’s even on there because Solid Space wasn’t ever much of a band, releasing
just a single record entitled Space Museum in 1980. ‘Spectrum Is Green’
is a reference to Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, which really is what the
song is about: ‘Immediate launch, Angels two and three, standby Symphony and
Rhapsody. I’ll contact Scarlet immediately, and tell him to follow in the
S.P.V.’ The music itself is an example of what’s been termed ‘minimal wave’,
and that might also apply to Escape-ism – hence the backdated position in the
running order.
Barbara Manning used to be in a group called 28th Day who
were active in the early-to-mid 1980s. In June, Sam Knee uploaded a song of
theirs called ‘Pages Turn’. Very good it was too, but my subsequent
investigations revealed an even better one – ‘I’m Only Asking’. 28th Day only produced one record but Barbara Manning has gone on to record plenty
of other stuff since.
About two weeks earlier I’d been in Kingston again and to Banquet Records
on Eden Street. They had on the new double album by the musical duo Beach House, specifically its
opening title track, ‘Once Twice Melody’. Songs don’t always live up to your
first memory of them but this one did, and its cinematic arrangement is a
precursor to what comes next.
Beachy Head, Eastbourne
‘Holy Are You’ by The Electric Prunes is surely one of the highlights of The Ladies of Varades, the compilation I made in the year 2000. Why then did it take me 22
years to delve into the works of David Axelrod, the man who wrote it? ‘The
Human Abstract’ is from his second studio album, Songs of Experience, released
in 1969 – a kind of symphony, inspired by the poems of William Blake. It’s not
as grandiose as ‘Holy Are You’ but still possesses the same quasi-religious
aura that typifies Axelrod’s oeuvre.
The segue between the last song and the next is the best on this playlist. ‘The
Human Abstract’ winds down gradually, leaving you guessing as to whether or not
it’s actually finished. A pause, and then the strings that initiate Ramsey Lewis’s
cover of ‘Julia’ by The Beatles drift in out of nowhere, proceeded by the flourish
of a harp. Ramsey comes in on piano, Maurice White (of Earth, Wind and Fire) with
drums, Cleveland Eaton on bass. Things get really interesting at 1 minute and
10 seconds, whereupon Maurice White moves up a gear. This is the segment The
UMC’s sampled on ‘It’s Gonna Last’, testifying to anyone who doubts it that
sampling is a genuine artform.
Ahmed Abdul-Malik prompted me to give Zafer Dilek another listen, a Turkish
guitarist, arranger and composer known for combining elements of contemporary
Western music with classical Turkish ones. I knew about him by way of The
Gaslamp Killer, who uses the riff from ‘Yetke’ as the basis for ‘Nissim’, which
kicks off my 2016-17 anthology. ‘Tulum’ is taken from the album Oyun Havalari
which Dilek put out in 1979. Notice the unusual time signature and the sudden
chord changes.
‘Johnny’ by Jim Sullivan was another Spotify recommendation. Again, the
drums are integral – Earl Palmer doing the job – as are the strings, but it’s folk
rock as much as anything else. Jim Sullivan made two albums but neither sold very
well, which perhaps explains why he went missing in 1975, somewhere in New Mexico.
His presumed death at the age of 34 has ensured a cult following. Only Sullivan
could have told you whether it was worth the sacrifice.
In October I returned to Fontainebleau in France with my bouldering fraternity and
was introduced to Fruit Bats by The Florist, who played them in the van he drove
us around in, on shuffle. Due to the random nature of the delivery, I didn’t
know what I was listening to but have since been informed that it was Absolute
Loser, which dates back to 2016. There are several tunes from this album
that I considered for inclusion, but I settled for the title track. Its pensive
mood feels indicative of the environment in which I initially heard it and begins
with the line, ‘Your long distance van driving in the waning day.’
For all my talk
of Spotify a lot of what it throws up is wide of the mark. ‘Sylvie’ by Sylvie
wasn’t. It’s a cover of a song by Matthews Southern Comfort but was also performed by Ben Schwab’s father, with his group Mad
Anthony. Ben Schwab is Sylvie’s notional leader and he put the band together
as a sort of homage to his old man’s unreleased endeavours and to the Laurel
Canyon milieu in which they were recorded.
‘Die Todten Reyten Schnell’ by The Prats. Certain members of this
Edinburgh based (post) punk outfit were as young as 15 when it was written,
voices not yet broken, which gives it an edge. As with Solid Space, The Prats
didn't last long, issuing one EP and two singles before packing it in towards
the end of 1981. You can imagine The Prats being fans of The Fall and that the
feeling could have been mutual. Mark E Smith would surely have approved of the
references to Germany, neglected graveyards, demons, and the hunting of ‘venison
or rabbit for a meal’ (echoes of ‘Jawbone and the Air-Rifle’).
I came upon these last two tunes in July either side of a record-breaking
heatwave. Meteorologically, 2021 had been a disappointment, but 2022 was
shaping up to be a formidable year. March was all right, April and May were
decent if not spectacular, while June topped out at an impressive 31 degrees. The
first week of July was about average, and then the heat began to build, culminating
in an unprecedented high of 40 degrees on Tuesday the 19th. Thereafter, the
temperatures fell back to the mid-to-low 20s and rose again towards the end of
the month and into August. By Wednesday the 10th we were back into
the 30s, at which point I was in Northern Italy where it was hot but not unpleasantly
so. Conditions remained above average for the rest of the month, holding out
long enough for a second Nairn-themed pub crawl on the 28th (starting off at The Prospect of Whitby in Wapping and ending at The Windmill on
The Cut in Waterloo, via Rotherhithe, Bermondsey, Shad Thames and London
Bridge).
So it’s a shame that on the 28th of May – the day a crew of us
attended the Wide Awake festival in Brockwell Park – the maximum temperature
was a meagre 18 degrees. The Florist had the idea after it was announced that
Primal Scream would be headlining, to play Screamadelica in its
entirety. I deliberately used Primal Scream as an example of a band I think are
overrated, which I stand by. I do, however, like Screamadelica. Anyway,
the tickets weren’t particularly expensive and Sweeping Promises were supposed
to be playing.
A few weeks prior to the event, Sweeping Promises pulled out, dampening
my enthusiasm. The day began well enough, wandering around Brixton for a bit
and then stopping for a couple of pints at the Effra Social, where the sun came
out. The sun stayed out long enough for us to see Yard Act in it, who were
great. As were Primal Scream. I thought Bobby Gillespie would struggle in an
outdoor setting like Brockwell Park, but he didn’t. Screamadelica was even
better than I remembered, there had been a nice atmosphere about the place
throughout, and we went home satisfied.
Milan
At the end of October, I went to The Lexington in
North London for ‘Chickfactor 30’ featuring Seablite, Birdie and The Umbrellas.
Debsey Wykes from Birdie used to be in Dolly Mixture, and I’d seen in her ‘in
conversation’ with Gary Crowley at The Exchange in Twickenham on a wet and
windy night back in February, which seemed an age ago now. The contrast between the winter and the exceptionally hot summer, as well as the excursion to Fontainebleau that brought with it unseasonably warm weather, only added to the sense of imparity and displacement of time. The Umbrellas, who appeared
on my compilation for 2021, were the main draw. Seablite, on the other hand,
were an unknown quantity. They reminded me of Split-era Lush – my preferred vintage – but with better hair (not that Lush had bad hair). A terrific gig all round in a year that wasn’t short of them.
I’ve never seen The Brian Jonestown Massacre live but will do in 2023 (in
the company of the former cohabitant from Brighton, in Brighton). ‘#1 Lucky
Kitty’ is taken from Fire Doesn’t Grow on Trees, which came out in June,
although ‘#1 Lucky Kitty’ has been up on YouTube since late 2020. Anton
Newcombe is in his mid-50s but shows no signs of letting up: Fire Doesn’t
Grow on Trees is The Brian Jonestown Massacre’s tenth album in as many
years.
On the 1st of May I went to see Tindersticks at Royal
Festival Hall. They didn’t play 'Nectar', 'Marbles' (regrettable), 'Talk to Me', 'Cherry Blossoms' (understandable), 'Bathtime', 'Can We Start Again?' or anything from The Hungry Saw
(perplexing). We did get 'City Sickness', 'Her', 'She’s Gone', 'My Sister', 'Another
Night In', 'Harmony Around My Table' and 'How He Entered'. On balance, not
a bad return, although I only acquainted myself with those last two songs
earlier in the year when I booked tickets for the gig in question. Truth be
told, I lost track of what Tindersticks were doing after The Hungry Saw
in 2008. Yet their first three records have a hold on me to this day, they’re
not getting any younger, and it's reasonable to suppose that I might never see them
play live again.
