LINER NOTES: THE UNLOCKDOWN TAPES [2021]

 
 

      1.   I Can’t Sleep – The La’s
      2.   What You Isn’t – The Brian Jonestown Massacre
      3.   Flat of Angles – The Fall
      4.   Sovereignty Flight – The Gories
      5.   Snowball – Devo
      6.   Cross Me Out – Sweeping Promises
      7.   The Crack – Goat Girl
      8.   Scratchcard Lanyard – Dry Cleaning
      9.   She Buys Herself Flowers – The Umbrellas
    10.   Heartlow – Jane Weaver
    11.   Je Suis Venu Te Dire Que Je M'en Vais – Serge Gainsbourg
    12.   No Cigarettes – Withered Hand
    13.   I Don’t Rate You – Sleaford Mods
    14.   Copyshop – Applescal
    15.   Abidjan – Ray Barretto
    16.   Music De Carnaval – Magdy El Hossainy
    17.   Change of Direction – Brian Bennett
    18.   Ellis Island – Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger & The Trinity
    19.   Hallogallo – Neu!
    20.   Yoga Town – Superstate (feat. Graham Coxon & Valentina Pappalardo)
    21.   Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah – The Wedding Present
    22.   Emotional Devotion Creator – Peel Dream Magazine
    23.   New Dawn – The Lovely Eggs
 
 
Not much separates patriotism from nationalism. As with the nationalist, the patriot will blindly extoll the virtues of being from a specific place, regardless of where that place is or what it’s actually like. Both will take pride in past glories, despite having made no contribution towards them. Each have the potential for atrocity, perpetrated in the name of the state they slavishly defer to, turning against those they hitherto considered benign. They may also celebrate the indigenous landscape while at the same time complaining about the weather and electing to holiday abroad. Both are articles of faith. The practical difference between them is that patriots don't make such a song and dance about it.

I’m not either of these things, yet where football is concerned I am unable to shake off the fealty that I am supposed to hold for the territory in which I happened to have been born. I cannot bring myself to join in with the songs that often go along with it – demanding that a mystical deity save a marginally less mystical head of state; insisting that we, as a people, will never be enslaved; not surrendering to the IRA – but will rejoice when England score. I just can't help it.

I have rarely been compensated for my unwavering support but there have been moments, mostly in World Cups. The European Championships have reaped fewer rewards. Only Euro ’96 offered anything like the exhilaration of reaching the quarter finals of Mexico ’86 and the semi-finals of Italia ‘90, or even the second round of the 1998 tournament where England were unlucky to lose against Argentina on penalties.

Then 'Euro 2020' happened.
 
Lockdown again but without the agreeable weather, the novelty of it or the social distancing. Only in the heart of the West End is the situation manifestly apparent. Unlike in November – the lockdown that wasn’t much of a lockdown – I was put back on furlough. When conditions allowed, I would go for long walks and longer bicycle rides, sit on Richmond Green drinking coffee, and visit my Cornish friend in Isleworth to listen to BBC Radio 6. This was how I came across 'I Can’t Sleep' by The La’s, played on the 28th of February by Amy Lamé. If she hadn’t told us otherwise, we might have mistaken it for a genuine slice of 1960s Merseybeat.

I also continued to trade records on eBay and Discogs. A mint copy of Revelation by The Brian Jonestown Massacre showed up, so I bought it. Two of its tracks have already appeared on two of my compilations: 'Vad Hände Med Dem?' in 2015 and 'Nightbird' in 2016-17. We can now add 'What You Isn’t' in 2021.

This was in March. Before that, in January, I purchased Dragnet by The Fall. The reason I did not already have this album is because I assumed it to be in the same vein as the group's first – Live at the Witch Trials – which I’m not keen on. I was wrong. Dragnet is up there with The Fall’s best, and it could be said that the lo-fi production, courtesy Grant Showbiz, was ahead of its time.

The equally lo-fi The Gories came later in May after ‘sceneinbetween’ (Sam Knee) posted something about them on Instagram. Again, if you didn’t know better you could be forgiven for assuming that what you were hearing was authentic 1960s garage-rock. 'Sovereignty Flight' was in fact released in 1989 on the album House Rockin. Back to January, and I took a punt on Hunger for a Way Out by Sweeping Promises after Monorail advertised its third pressing on Twitter. With a similarly raw feel, you can imagine these two bands playing on the same bill. I guess this is reason enough for having a presence on social media.

In December 2020, I sold my copy of Duty Now For The Future by Devo for £12. In April I paid £12.99 for the group’s third album, Freedom of Choice, which is the better record (albeit not as good as Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! or New Traditionalists). In 2021 Devo was nominated for inclusion in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame but didn’t make the cut. I’m not sure these things really matter.

Pubs shut, my partner and I resurrected our Friday night sessions listening to music and having a little drink. These simulacrums of an evening down the local boozer took place on our landing, sat at a table, using her iPad set to shuffle. That became our routine, but in February she played a couple of tunes she’d come across on YouTube. First up was something off of We're Gonna Miss You: An Aussie Tribute to Roky Erickson & The 13th Floor Elevators. I don’t even know what song it was, so you won’t find it here.

Up next was 'The Crack' by Goat Girl, who we’d seen play at the High Tide music festival in Twickenham, 2019. They were good live but I hadn’t liked them enough to buy any of their records. The Crack asked that I reconsider.

Finally, 'Scratchcard Lanyard' by Dry Cleaning. I’d heard their first single, 'Magic of Meghan', during the first lockdown and had been in two minds about it. No such hesitation the second time around. 'Scratchcard Lanyard' is one of those tunes I’ve tried not to play excessively, lest I grow tired of it. As it is, I can recite most of Florence Shaw’s fragmented lyrics, which is unusual as I don’t have a great memory for verse: 'It's a Tokyo bouncy ball, it's an Oslo bouncy ball, it's a Rio de Janeiro bouncy ball. Filter. I love these mighty oaks, don't you?' And listening back to it now, I should have persisted with 'Magic of Meghan'.
 

Covent Garden

The theme for Euro 2020, as it was resolutely called despite being put back to 2021, was bridges. That is what's supposed to be going on in the logo: the trophy, surrounded by fans, on a bridge. Each host city had its own version featuring a specific local bridge – Tower Bridge in London's case. Appropriately, but not deliberately, I too have used an image of a bridge on the ‘front cover’ of this year’s compendium: Westbourne Bridge, which traverses the railway lines that run out of Paddington, connecting Westbourne Terrace Road with Westbourne Terrace. I cycled there while on lockdown and liked the look of it.

Not to be confused with either the Australian jazz combo of the same name or American indie-rock group Umbrellas, The Umbrellas are from San Francisco and sound not unlike the British groups that fell under the umbrella – pun intended – of C86 and the associated scene. They look the part too. I’m not entirely happy with the transition between this song and the last, but I couldn't find a better combination, so we live with it.

'Heartlow' by Jane Weaver received much airplay during lockdown. I also heard it on the radio while driving from Plymouth to Dorchester in August, part of a six-day tour of the West Country to see friends and family, primates and tanks. The segue into 'Je Suis Venu Te Dire Que Je M'en Vais' is sudden and effective. I chanced upon this song in May, playing in Oliver Bonas in Kingston upon Thames. I didn’t realise then it was Serge Gainsbourg, although it figured. 'I came to tell you that I'm going away,' sings Serge softly (in French) and about half way through the girl he’s telling this to starts weeping. It might be the best track on this compilation, and if that’s true then we must also give credit to the (mostly British) musicians that helped make it so: guitarist Alan Parker, bass player and founding member of Manfred Mann Dave Richmond, Australian percussionist Chris Karan, composer and keyboard player Alan Hawkshaw.

The previous December, the chap who introduced me to Sarah Records recommended 'No Cigarettes' by Withered Hand. I almost tacked it on to the end of that year’s playlist but thought better of it – too much time had passed. As you might expect from someone calling themselves Withered Hand, No Cigarettes is a sad sounding song, but not without humour.

Sleaford Mods for a third year in a row: 'I Don't Rate You' from the album Spare Ribs. Released in January, I had to wait until February before I could listen to it. My de facto brother-in-law, who bought it for me, had it sent to his own address instead of mine. It was worth the wait. On a related note, I finally got around to seeing Bunch of Kunst after it was made available on some viewing platform, which was also worth the wait.

A gloomy Friday evening spent listening to BBC Radio 6 with my Cornish friend. Tom Ravenscroft played something catchy but we weren’t sure what because the live feed on the screen wasn’t in sync. Retrospective analysis determined it was a track called 'Copyshop' by a Dutch artiste named Applescal. Pitchfork describes his work as springy tech house, but ambient techno might also do. I downloaded it from Bandcamp the following day.

There are two versions of the LP Hard Hands by Ray Barretto: an album released in 1968 and a compilation issued twenty years later. I purchased the latter in 2019 from Collector’s Record Centre in Kingston (now called Shak’s Stax of Wax) and ended up playing it a fair bit during lockdown. 'Abidjan' appears on both records, and it’s certainly the outstanding track on the edition I own. Ray Barreto was an exponent of boogaloo, a genre I’d flirted with around the turn of the century when I picked up a compilation entitled Broasted Or Fried: Latin Breakbeats, Basslines & Boogaloo, and I’d been meaning to check him out ever since I’d identified his track 'Ritmo Sabroso' which features in the film Mean Streets.
 

I cannot recall a wetter, colder month of May, a month that can usually be relied upon. By the time Euro 2020 had commenced the weather had picked up. I watched England’s opening game against Croatia on a large screen in a sweltering beer garden in New Malden, and came away feeling cautiously optimistic.

I was right to exercise caution. England were poor against Scotland and middling against the Czech Republic. Then, as the weather again deteriorated, England’s form improved. They deserved their 2-0 victory over Germany, playing a more fluid game that was easier on the eye. In the quarter-finals, Ukraine were torn apart. Denmark proved to be formidable opponents and it wasn’t a game I much enjoyed. For once, it was the result that mattered, and England reached their first major tournament final in 45 years.

The best team won. England's performance was good but Italy's was comfortably better. Where Italy took one or two touches and kept the ball moving, England dithered, passing sideways and back. They had the chance to rectify this at half-time but didn’t, casting aspersions upon Gareth’s Southgate’s, apparently limited, tactical acumen. Why after scoring in the second minute did England seem incapable of hitting the Italians on the break? Why did Southgate wait until the 70th minute to make a substitution, and until the 99th to bring on Jack Grealish? Why did he not have his penalty takers in order? England had one shot on target – Luke Shaw’s goal – in the whole game, and only six in total. Italy managed 20, six of which were bang on.

If England had won on penalties, as opposed to nicking it in extra time, I’m not sure how I would have felt. Just as I’m not too bothered when England lose and deserve to, neither am I when they win and they don’t. So I didn’t feel too bad about it, but I might have had we fallen at the penultimate hurdle, against Denmark.
 
In September I travelled down to Brighton to meet up with the former cohabitant, who had moved back there after a two-year stint in Somerset. We arranged to meet in The Heart and Hand, one of my favourite Brighton pubs. It hadn’t changed much – same posters, same plump cat, same jukebox featuring ‘Version 1’ of 'It's all Over Now Baby Blue' by The Byrds (see The World'll be OK).

My train was delayed. Engineering works compounded by signal failures; par for the course. I had intended to do a sweep of the record shops in North Laine but only had time to visit Resident Music on Kensington Gardens. Fortuitous, because they were playing something interesting: 'Music De Carnaval' by an Egyptian chap by the name of Magdy El Hossainy, from a double-album compilation entitled Habibi Funk 015: An Eclectic Selection of Music from the Arab World, Part 2. I knew this because there was a sign that said ‘now playing’ with the record displayed beside it. Had there not been I would have been none the wiser and 'Music De Carnaval' wouldn’t have ended up on this playlist.

Gilles Peterson has an annoying habit of talking intermittently over the music he’s playing. He’s not the only DJ who does this, but his manner is particularly irritating. Just when you think he’s done, off he goes again, providing too much information. Still, he plays some decent stuff, and did so on the 23rd of October. A tribute to Alan Hawkshaw, no less, who had recently passed away. Aside from his work with Serge Gainsbourg, Hawkshaw was a prolific session player, as well as a composer in his own right. You may have heard him without having heard of him, and what you may have heard will depend on what you’re into. For instance, if you like hip hop (or went clubbing at Blow Up in the mid-to-late ‘90s) then you will probably be familiar with 'Champ' by his band The Mohawks – or at least the bit of it that’s been sampled so extensively. If television is more your thing, you might recognise 'Chicken Man', which was used as the theme tune for Grange Hill. Likewise the music for Channel 4 News and Countdown. Alan Hawkshaw also worked with The Shadows for a while, starting with their 1967 LP From Hank, Bruce, Brian and John, and he even toured with them. This is how he came to be involved with Brian Bennett’s 1969 solo album, Change of Direction, the title track of which Peterson played in homage to Hawkshaw’s talent.

I can’t remember how I discovered 'Ellis Island' by Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger & The Trinity but it might have been after listening to their cover of 'Light My Fire', which kicks off a compendium entitled Version Excursion, another record I revisited during lockdown. It could equally have been the video to 'Black Cat', which routinely does the rounds on social media. At any rate, I gave the album Streetnoise a listen, where the aforementioned cover of 'Light My Fire' derives from, and found 'Ellis Island'. Julie Driscoll takes a back seat on this one – it’s all about Auger’s keys.
 

The Heart and Hand

Football attracts trouble in the way other sports typically don't. There's something about it that goes beyond the mere act of spectating. Consider that the Serb Volunteer Guard (a paramilitary organisation active throughout the Yugoslav Wars) was put together by members of Delije, the name adopted by hardcore supporters of Red Star Belgrade. Or that the National Front and the British Movement gained traction among English football hooligans in the late 1970s and early ‘80s, and that Scottish hooliganism is, or was, driven by sectarianism.

Yet beneath the surface there’s probably as much racial antipathy to be found at a rugby or cricket match or even a round of golf. It's just that the people who gather to watch sports like these tend to be better off, and they’re not in the business of finding scapegoats or venting spleen; they’ve too much to lose. Maybe that's what separates patriotism from nationalism. Might the patriot merely be a well off nationalist, and therefore less vociferous, has no need to be vociferous?
 
In July I went to see The Lovely Eggs at The Garage, a gig that was meant to have taken place in April 2020 but had been pushed back several times because of Covid. Live music isn’t just about the actual performance but the event as a whole: the physical location – Highbury in this instance – the pubs visited beforehand – The Lamb, The Hen & Chickens Theatre Bar – and the venue itself. As is customary, prior to The Lovely Eggs taking the stage, and after the support act, records were played – The Modern Lovers, Sleaford Mods, Neu!. The track by Neu! was 'Hallogallo', a tune I'd previously thought about including on one of my compilations. The reason I hadn’t is because it goes on a bit, but it sounded so good within this context that I resolved to make room for it now.

There’s a section of the A303 – a sort of proxy motorway for anyone travelling from the South East to the West Country –  that doubles up as the Amesbury Bypass. As you approach the turn-off into Amesbury proper, the road downgrades gradually to reveal Salisbury Plain. It was along this segment of road that I heard 'Yoga Town' by Superstate. Superstate is actually the name of a graphic novel and the ‘soundtrack’ Graham Coxon’s put together to accompany it. 'Superstate is a story of escape in a society where war rages between the forces of negativity and positivity, encouragement and discouragement. Where only the struggle from oppressions, chaos and brutality leads to the fragile road to freedom… to a planet called heaven.' I just liked the song.

The Wedding Present should think about re-releasing Watusi on vinyl. I wasn’t into them when it came out in 1994 so missed out. 'Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah' was the album’s lead single and utilises the A-B-A-B rhyming scheme with an enjambment at the end of the fourth line preceding the chorus: planned/and... coconut/but... get/yet... my heart says YEAH! There’s also a natty interchange in the chorus between D and Bm.

Eel Pie Records don’t have a ‘now playing’ sign in their shop, or if they do they rarely use it. Fortunately, when I went there in July I wasn’t in a rush to meet anybody and so asked them what was on. 'Agitprop Alterna' by Peel Dream Magazine. They reckoned it sounded like Stereolab, I thought more Yo La Tengo. You decide.

When I went to see The Lovely Eggs I’d already determined that this anthology would finish with 'New Dawn', just as it rounds off I Am Moron. The song terminates abruptly, as if the needle of the record player has become stuck, which doesn’t lend itself to placing it anywhere else.

[Listen to here.]

LINER NOTES: THE LOCKDOWN TAPES [2020]

 

    1.     Side Street Walker – Dolly Mixture
    2.     Splashing Along – Jesse Garon & The Desperadoes
    3.     Bad Night at The Whiskey – The Byrds
    4.     I am So Blue – The Poets
    5.     Four Women – Nina Simone
    6.     George Hamilton’s Dead – The Golden Dawn
    7.     The Helicopter Spies – Swell Maps
    8.     No (Personal) Connection – Soft Walls
    9.     Stepping Stones – Johnny Harris
    10.   A Ra – Joao Donato
    11.   Nonstop Disco Powerpack – Beastie Boys
    12.   McFlurry – Sleaford Mods
    13.   Dry the Rain – The Beta Band
    14.   French Press – Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever
    15.   Televised Mind – Fontaines D.C.
    16.   In Dreams – Peggy Sue
    17.   Black and Brown Blues – Silver Jews
    18.   Plastic Bird – Galaxie 500
    19.   Sand – Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood
    20.   Old World – The Modern Lovers
    21.   Broadway Jungle – The Maytals
    22.   Glue – Bicep
    23.   Leave the Planet – Galaxie 500

 
 
It happened quickly. On Tuesday, the 17th of March, I was advised that my place of work was likely to close within a week, by the afternoon this became a certainty, then on Wednesday it did. At the same time the Government was advocating that the public avoid communal spaces. The pubs around my way were noticeably quieter, although in central London they were reportedly as busy as ever. Come Friday, pubs, bars, restaurants, cafes and gyms were ordered to shut up shop. You could still walk the streets freely, but then that changed too. On the 23rd it was announced that you could only leave the house for the purpose of buying victuals or for daily exercise. In other words, lockdown. Airplanes continued to offload passengers unchecked.

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 to re-watch My Secret World: The Story of Sarah Records, which prompted 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 had 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 might 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 the genre. It’s an emotive tune but delicately rendered, until Nina lets rip with the last line: 'MY NAME IS PEACHES!'

 
Early May, and there is cause for optimism. Despite the Government’s manipulation of the statistics (in which direction remains unclear), reported deaths ‘with’ COVID-19 have been on a downward trend getting on for three weeks. In other news, the gormless article we call our Prime Minister is back at work having spent a week in intensive care, and another two recuperating, after an attack of the covoids.

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 now 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 Stevie Wonder’s Music of My Mind to someone 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 stood out 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. (You could get it 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.

 

June: the weather has become unsettled, and it seems that lockdown is entering its third phase. Pubs and cafes are still shut, although some are offering take-outs. Non-essential shops have yet to open but are preparing for it. Museums, galleries, cinemas, theatres, hairdressers and sports and leisure facilities remain resolutely closed. On the streets, however, life appears to have returned to how it once was. A number of factors have contributed to this: a declining infection/death rate; a relaxing of the rules regarding meeting up with other households in an external setting; Dominic Cummings showing a disregard for the regulations and the Government sticking by him, the social contract broken.

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, all 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

Pubs have been permitted to re-open as of the 4th of July. Some will but others won’t, perhaps because they’ve not been given enough notice to sufficiently prepare, or maybe because they want to see if it’s worth the hassle. Many people are against it. Others – myself included – are enjoying drinking in parks, on greens, in gardens, and feel ambivalent. Moreover, this latest liberty comes with terms and conditions: table service, no standing, strict social distancing and prodigious amounts of hand sanitizer.

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 there’s footage of his band, The Shed Dwellers, paying tribute to the late David Berman down 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 on any ska and reggae anthology.
 

The summer ended abruptly: temperatures pushing 30 degrees one weekend, scraping 15 the next. Nights drawing in, falling leaves, jumpers on. If that wasn't bad enough the Government imposed a ten o'clock curfew on all pubs and restaurants and made it a requirement that customers wear masks until they sat down at their table. Such measures made little sense. If public houses were that dangerous then they shouldn't have been open at all, and the curfew merely encouraged people to head out an hour or so earlier. What's more, because pub owners were overly mindful of the new arrangements, everybody was forced to leave at exactly the same moment, whereupon they loitered in streets and maybe accepted an invitation to continue drinking back at someone's house – the night was young, after all.

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 felt pertinent to the 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. '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.

[Listen to here.]