LINER NOTES: IT BEATS FOR YOU [2015]

1.    I Forgot to be Your Lover – William Bell

2.    Wedding Dress – Pentangle

3.    Jungle Fever – Chakachas

4.    Pretty Thing – Bo Diddley

5.    It Beats 4 U – My Morning Jacket

6.    Vad Hände Med Dem? – The Brian Jonestown Massacre

7.    Ping Pong Affair – The Slits

8.    My Rush – #1 Dads

9.    Light Flight – Pentangle

10.  Can You Get to That – Funkadelic

11.  Paint it Black – Africa

12.  If Not Tomorrow Maybe Some Day – Daniel Bortz

13.  Huarache Lights – Hot Chip

14.  Toxic Love – Popof

15.  Mr Noah – Panda Bear

16.  Need You Now – Hot Chip
17.  I’ll Never Cry for Another Boy (Rehearsal) – The Majestic Arrows

Comprised of just 17 tracks, 2015’s It Beats For You is my shortest compilation (not including The Hanworth of Heroes, which is a fabrication). I had been in two minds whether or not to continue into 2016 and create another biennial edition, but decided against it. I’d rather my playlists were on the short side rather than unwieldily epic.

I was still taking inspiration from Spotify except there was someone new feeding into it: a lovely Australian guy with an eclectic musical palate. Over time, this would affect the sort of tunes that appeared on Discover Weekly, which probably made for a more interesting assortment. 2014’s The Big Nod had been too narrow in scope to ever be a favourite of mine, and I looked forward to shaking things up a bit.

I don’t think we have the antipodean to thank for William Bell’s 'I Forgot to be Your Lover'. It could have just as easily been derived from the soul music I occasionally put on at work. Regardless, it’s a nice way to begin this playlist. This song would also turn up from time to time over at the St Margarets Tavern, who were more than likely playing Spotify playlists of their own, contrived to create a mellow vibe for their clientele to drink to.

I’ve referred previously to American country, folk and psychedelic music by way of The Byrds, Neil Young, Gram Parsons, Bob Dylan, and so on. There was also a distinctively British interpretation of the genre manifest in groups such as Fairport Convention, Pentangle, The Strawbs and the associated Canterbury scene, which came later, morphing into what would become known as progressive rock. In its earlier stages, British folk rock took inspiration from American country and folk music, the blues, psychedelia, traditional English folk music, as well as the improvisational tendencies of jazz, which is maybe why Fairport Convention's first album reminded me of Jefferson Airplane. (Their fourth, Liege & Lief, is supposed to be their masterpiece, but I never got that far.) Pentangle sound to my ear quite different, and the various listening habits of their members may explain why. Double-bass player Danny Thompson and drummer Terry Cox were grounded in jazz, guitarist John Renbourn was interested in the more traditional elements of folk, whereas Bert Jansch had a taste for blues. How that all works itself out I couldn’t tell you, although it sounds to my ears that 'Wedding Dress' exhibits more the influence of traditional folk music whereas 'Light Flight' reveals the rhythm section’s fondness for jazz.

(The/Les/Los) Chakachas were a group of Latin-soul studio musicians, from Belgium of all places, responsible for this saucy number. 'Jungle Fever' was a big hit in the US but was banned by the BBC soon after its UK release. It featured in the film Boogie Nights and has been sampled a number of times, normally within the realm of hip hop.

Bo Diddley is often cited as one of the originators of rock and roll, alongside Bill Haley, Little Richard, Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis. Bo Diddley is probably the classiest guy among that lot, and there’s a groove to 'Pretty Thing' that you might struggle to find in the music of his co-conspirators; signs that maybe he remained closer to the source, cleaving more keenly to the blues. 'Pretty Thing' was released in 1955, and a mention should also go out to the guy playing the harmonica, Lester Davenport.

Discover Weekly does not discriminate, and nor do I. The transition from blues driven rock and roll to the space-rock of My Morning Jacket’s 'It Beats 4 U' works surprisingly well. This was what I was missing out on in 2005 by not listening to contemporary music, other than The Bees and Kings of Leon. 'It Beats 4 U' would have sat comfortably on the previous year’s playlist too, maybe alongside the Besnard Lakes or Papercuts.

Despite my enthusiasm for The Brian Jonestown Massacre compilation Tepid Peppermint Wonderland: A Retrospective, which I’d seized upon in 2007, the only other record of theirs I’d purchased was Give It Back! in 2011. I’d lost track of what they were up to, but in 2014 they released their 13th studio album, which had found its way onto Spotify. 'Vad Hände Med Dem?' sounds like The 13th Floor Elevators on uppers, which, knowing Anton Newcombe, could well have been the intention.

When I’d included The Slits on 2011-12’s The World’ll Be OK I’d opted for the obvious with 'Typical Girls'. Listening to them now, it struck me that 'Ping Pong Affair' was the more interesting song. The drums jerks back and forth, and Viv Albertine’s vocals turn in unusual directions. It’s also a clear indicator of the influence that reggae and ska had on British new wave and punk.

#1 Dads are an Australian, alternative band that weren’t introduced to me by the Australian work colleague with a taste for alternative bands. 'My Rush' is taken from the 2014 album About Face. The group appear to be defunct, possibly because they were never more than a side-project anyway, devised by a guy called Tom Iansek who more usually plays in a band called Big Scary.

Pentangle again, time signatures jumping all over the place, vocalist Jacqueline McShee doing an excellent job. I’ve already commented on how the influence of jazz makes itself known on 'Light Flight' and will leave it at that.

NYC

Turning 40 isn’t as bad as turning 30. Turning 30 draws to a close a period of abandon and of avoided responsibility that characterises one’s twenties in a psychological, tectonic shift that can induce mild panic, even angst. Such qualities have more traditionally been associated with reaching 40 – the archetypal mid-life crisis – but these days it's more an excuse for a party.

Or a holiday. Back to New York City. Funkadelic have no specific connection with the place – they based themselves in Detroit – but they sit nicely in it. Yet I came by 'Can You Get to That' at work, via Spotify, possibly because I’d been feeding their algorithm James Brown and The J.B.’s. It’s a very pleasing and fortuitous thing, then, that rather than reminding me of work, Funkadelic makes me think of New York.

When I first heard Africa’s cover version of 'Paint it Black' it took me a while to discern what song it actually was. This is because I was in the St. Margaret’s Tavern at the time and there was ambient noise to contend with, and also because their version is a departure from the original. Further, so often has this tune been covered that it wasn't easy finding out who was responsible in this instance, but it’s from an album called Music From “Lil Brown” released in 1968. Africa themselves were formed from the ashes of a number of rhythm 'n' blues backing bands who’d obviously had enough of it and wanted to cut loose playing a sort of Latin fusion of psychedelic funk.

The tracks that follow were all suggested by Spotify under the influence, I suspect, of The Australian. There were some things that The Australian used to play that didn't do it for me: Australian hip hop, The Black Keys, Queens of the Stone Age (although I suppose Songs for the Deaf provides the occasional moment). Electronic stuff such as 'If Not Tomorrow Maybe Some Day' by Daniel Bortz, on the other hand, I liked. Or maybe The Australian had nothing to do with it and Spotify just shoehorned it in there.

I am generally indifferent towards Hot Chip but the single 'Huarache Lights' strongly appealed to me. I’m not sure exactly why, because from what I know of them it doesn’t represent much of a musical departure, but I was reminded of the band Clor, or a more upbeat Tom Vek. An improvement, as opposed to a change, the drive towards innovation is no longer the main imperative.

More instrumental music: the techno flavoured 'Toxic Love' by a French DJ/producer called Popof, taken from the Summer on Mars EP released in 2008. I can take it or leave it, but it compliments what comes before and after and helps carry the final quarter of my compilation towards its conclusion.

Panda Bear – aka Noah Benjamin Lennox – is an experimental sort of artist, experimenting mostly with synthesisers, samplers and sequencers. 'Mr Noah' is a violent tune that incorporates the barking of dogs, but the vocal is pleasant enough, completely at odds with the canine cacophony that persists in the background.

Hot Chip's 'Need You Now' is a smoother, slightly mellower effort than 'Huarache Lights'. It samples Sinnamon’s 'I Need You Now', which is tagged as post-disco but could also be identified as a precursor to house. You shouldn’t read anything into this conspicuous enthusiasm for Hot Chip, and electronic pop music generally, because it would never have come to pass if it wasn’t for where I was working, and has since dissipated.

In August my partner and I took ourselves off to Malaga, which intentionally coincided with the finish of Stage 3 of that year’s Vuelta Espana and unintentionally with the Feria de Málaga. Peter Sagan won the stage, while the Feria brought Spanish holiday makers to the coast and teenage drinkers onto the streets.

In October my bouldering buddies and I drove to Fontainebleau in France to climb up rocks and were blessed with fine weather for the three days that we were there. Climbing on actual rocks is a different proposition from climbing indoors – technically more difficult, physically more demanding and sometimes scary. But the rolling forests and gentle valleys of Fontainebleau are a joy in themselves, and the post-climb beers felt well deserved.

I bought a steel bike with integrated shifters to replace the one I'd ridden from London to Brighton, which only had six gears and was slightly too small for me. In December, my Cornish friend and I met for our annual Dickensian pub crawl, a tradition we'd initiated in 2010, but none of our invited guests turned up.

The version of 'I’ll Never Cry for Another Boy' by The Majestic Arrows is a rehearsal, which gives this soul tune an almost folksy feel. It’s a deliberately off-kilter finish to a compilation that was running out of steam. Although I’d succeeded in my remit to diversify musically, it had been a bit of an effort to find material good enough for inclusion. Maybe I hadn’t looked hard enough, or had been distracted by my vacations, cycling concerns, festive pub crawls, and turning 40.

[Listen to here.]

STADIA: ESTADIO LA ROSALEDA, MALAGA, AND ESTADIO DE MESTALLA, VALENCIA

The Estadio La Rosaleda, home of Málaga CF. I recollect the football ground from Inglis’ great work The Football Grounds of Europe, but it is much altered since that was published. You might come at it from a southerly direction, along either side of the Rio Guadalmedina. If it is summer this river will be dry, dusty, dormant. The area around the stadium itself is residential in nature but the watercourse allows a clear view of the mountains to the north. La Rosaleda occupies its own space, contrary to the dense and moderately high-rise surroundings. Because of its riparian setting, you may regard it from a variety of angles.

The structure itself is typical of many a Spanish stadium (although this may not hold true for those constructed over the past decade). It possesses a Modernist aesthetic: the rectilinear concrete struts attached to the two main stands support the roofs in the same way many mid-20th century buildings employ a series of reinforced concrete columns to bear their loads. Such a retrospective approach towards architecture – if you choose to see it that way – has precedence elsewhere. I am considering in particular Valencia's Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias, a concrete extravaganza, albeit one mantled in white paint. Valencia's City of Arts and Sciences is considered something of an architectural indulgence. Conceived of and built in the 1990s it should not be tied too neatly to the strain of thinking that elected to work so prominently with reinforced concrete in Malaga: José Segui Pérez, if it was indeed he who was responsible, did not opt to have La Rosaleda painted white – or painted at all.

It must be emphasised that these concrete abutments are primarily functional: they support the roofs and partition the executive boxes that run along underneath. We know this because before they were built, between 2000 and 2005, the upper tiers adjacent to the touchlines were set lower than those facing the goal-lines. Initially they weren’t. Instead, the curves of the second tier rose upward away from the main stands only to stop abruptly at the point where they might be expected to join the lower, shallower rake of the upper tiers overlooking the goal-lines, as if anticipation that the upper tiers were to be extended upwards at a later date. The upper tiers of the main stands could not be raised to the same height because of the road behind one of them and the river to the rear of the other. This is where these more solid concrete columns come in. The roofs could have been set at the lower height of these opposing tiers but would have then been subordinate in aspect to the rest of the stadium – you should be able to imagine why this was undesirable. To allow, then, for the height of the new roofs to correspond with the uncovered upper tiers behind each goal, the struts were angled outward to overcome the spatial restraints on the ground. Furthermore, this permitted the inclusion of the executive boxes in the newly created space between.

You sense these days that architects are a little bit funny about exposed concrete. Perhaps they think it looks cheap – cheaper than the rough paint or cladding commonly used to cover over it up. The point can be taken on board within a climate harsh upon the patina of this material, but Spain generally doesn’t have to worry about such precipitous scarring. The 38 concrete columns – 19 either side – at Estadio La Rosaleda have been left proudly exposed. The opportunity has been taken to build a concourse around the stadium using similar techniques, although the concrete supports in this instance have no reason to be anything other than perpendicular and are much more slender, conveying a sort of lattice-like quality to the surrounding colonnade.

With a capacity of 55,000, the Valencia C.F.’s Mestalla Stadium is the fifth largest stadium in Spain. As at Estadio La Rosaleda, it comprises of a rectangular concrete bowl with rounded corners, and a flimsy, brown corrugated roof covering what might be reasonably described as its ‘grandstand’. The lower tier is continuous, the second tier is not. The second tier of the grandstand recedes backward and upward to expose much of the tier that lies beneath (the Tribuna Baja) and therefore stands taller than the second tier sections overseeing the goal-lines (the north and south ends), but not the portion of the second tier facing it (the east side of the ground), which rises to approximately the same height.

At least this is how the stadium looked in 1997. The logical thing would have been to extend the north and south tiers backward so that they lined up with the already augmented east stand. Instead, a disjointed third tier was added following the existing edges of the north, east and south stands, thus replicating the irregularity that existed prior to expansion; it appears as if the third tier of the east stand has been cut away and moved diagonally backward by 15-odd rows. The grandstand remained as it was, on account of its shallower rake. Strangely, its shabby (cantilevered) canopy meant its visual impact as the ground's focal point was undiminished. Resting upon a dense trellis of metal, it is hard to make out exactly how the roof is supported. The two glass fronted pavilions (or ‘radio cabins’ as Inglis refers to them) that sit either side of the top tier look to have nothing to do with it, and the impression is one of weightlessness.

Until relatively recently the seating used to be mostly a tasteful shade of blue (the lower tier’s seats were white) which contrasted well with the brown of the roof. These have since been replaced with predominantly orange ones: the grandstand is completely orange, the rest a mixture of orange and white, save for black chairs forming the image of a giant bat stretched over the three tiers of the Mestella’s east side. The exterior of the stadium has been given a similar treatment. The breezeblock walls and concrete lattice structure have been painted black, the underside of the balconies and metal gates orange, and the railings lining the balconies white – as have those within the ground itself, of which there are many, especially among the seats of the very steeply raked third tier.

The Mestella is an exercise in the economy of space. It’s also in thrall to the concrete that forms it, and probably why it’s been painted so exhaustively. Trees line its perimeter, roads run around it, and residential blocks sit opposite. It is a wonderful stadium, and the lack of available space must make for a delightfully claustrophobic – and intimidating – atmosphere, especially after dark.

In 2007 Valencia C.F. began work on the ‘Nou Mestella’ only for the project to be put on hold  after the financial collapse of 2008. It’s getting to the stage, apparently, where the structure may be unsalvageable: the concrete skeleton has been left exposed to the elements for too long. This new ground is/was intended to hold 61,500 spectators – just 6,500 more than the present stadium. You wonder whether it was ever really worth pursuing.