Where did I come from?

Earlier this year I was at the picture framers, having my Christmas present from Adrienne put in a frame suitable for hanging at work. The woman who took my order made some observations about the unusual nature of the name "Stan", and was it a family name (it isn't), and did I know how it came about. (Generously, she also told me a story about the appearance of the name "Stan" in her own family, although I hadn't asked her to and, on balance, would probably rather she had just measured up the picture and given me a price.) I kind of shrugged and made the sort of noncommittal noises one makes when one isn't the kind of person who likes talking to complete strangers, particularly in a business or commercial setting, about personal matters.

As it turns out, I do know something about how I got to be Stan. There is a long answer and a short answer. The short answer is that my mother said to my father, "Call him whatever you like, just as long as it's not Arthur." (I probably wouldn't have minded being "Art", or "Artie", but I'm sure I would have been given even more hell at school than I was actually given; "Stan" doesn't carry a lot of baggage that country high school kids could readily latch onto and throw back at you. It's not common, but on the other hand it's also not a signifier like, say, "Adolf".)

The longer answer gets to the same punch line, but by a more circuitous, although not necessarily scenic, route. It is a tale that was related by my cousin Max (at my mother's direction) at my 21st birthday. I was only half listening then (or, more likely, I was listening but in a state of extreme self-consciousness on account of its being about me, thus causing the story to drift into one ear, pass straight through and out the other side, leaving little or no trace), and I have since lost the piece of paper which had most of the story sketched out on it, and my 21st birthday is a generation ago now, and neither of my parents have been around for a long, long time, making it impossible for me to seek clarification of the details. But, from what I do remember, it is kind of a good story. And what does it really matter if it is not 100 per cent fact?

According to Wikipedia, nothing interesting happened on Sunday, 3 May 1964. And yet there I was, at Foster Hospital, preparing to make my big entrance into the world. Trouble was, my position was such that I was folded around on myself, like a piece of tiny human origami, so that every time I moved I kicked myself in the head. (This perhaps explains some things.) Medical facilities in a small country hospital at that time being, it is fair to assume, somewhat rudimentary, my mother's doctor, having decided that I probably wasn't coming out that way any time soon, or not alive, anyway, determined that there was nothing for it but to send her (and the incipient me) to Melbourne, a two-hour drive away.

At this point, a number of "degree of difficulty" factors presented themselves. The regular ambulance driver was on holiday. The relief driver had a heart condition. The ambulance had a heart condition of its own, namely a failing battery. It also had a non-functioning radio. Oh, and its siren didn't work. Nevertheless, our mercy dash seems to have gone smoothly, until the driver went to turn onto Swanston Street, in order to take us across the city and thence to St Vincent's Hospital. The good people at Foster had rung ahead to advise of our mission, and arrangements had been made to close Swanston Street to ease our passage through the city. Unfortunately, on account of there being no working radio on board, there was no way of communicating this to the driver, who, entirely understandably, thought, "Crikey" (or words to that effect), "the flamin' road's closed. What do I do now?", thus putting unnecessary strain on his already strained ticker, and adding valuable minutes, or tens of minutes, to our trip as he sped off up Flinders Street to find another way through, along roads that would have been more congested than they would normally have been, given the closure of Swanston Street (my fault; everything has always been my fault), and unable to alert other drivers of the urgency of his mission, given the lack of a siren. (In the interests of verisimilitude I should point out that all of this isn't quite as dramatic as it sounds; the events in this story took place many years before there were any signs of life to be found in the city on a Sunday afternoon, aside from the destitute and those travelling from one side of Melbourne to the other.)

At the end of this ordeal, the ambulance arrived at St Vincent's, only to find (there must always be one further complication in a story like this) that the maternity ward turned out to be on the other side of Victoria Street from the rest of the hospital. Well, this wasn't anything that a speedy U-turn couldn't fix, of course, and by that stage our driver must have thought he was a cardiologically challenged Evel Knievel. (I can only hope his trip back to Foster was less eventful.)

I, after all that, was born. My spine has been slightly twisted in a couple of places ever since, and I required two blood transfusions (all I know is that my mother once told me they weren't for "the usual reason", whatever that may have been), but in any event I survived. As did my mother, somewhat against the odds. At some point, after I had been taken away and mum had emerged from whatever sedation she had needed (if any; I have always assumed she had passed out somewhere along the way), my father said to her, "What are we going to call him?", to which she replied, "Call him whatever you like, just as long as it's not Arthur." At which point my mother fell asleep for a long, long time. (Three days later, she looked at the nurse and said, "Do you think I could see the baby?" It would appear that that minor detail was overlooked in all of the other excitement.)

And so it was that I became "Stanley".

(My middle name, "Bruce", on the other hand, has always been a bit perplexing. Could there be any good reason for naming your first (and, as things turned out, only) child after Sir Stanley Melbourne Bruce, the man who was, at that time, the only sitting Prime Minister to have lost his seat at an election? (As readers with long enough memories will know, this is no longer the case, which alleviates me from that particular burden, but also kind of proves the point: can you imagine Mr and Mrs Smith calling their little boy "John Howard Smith"? Well, I suppose there would have to be somebody, somewhere. There always is.) I imagine that in my case it was simply a matter of innocent and probably subconscious word association. The world will never know.)

Song of the day

"Simpletons", by The Bats.

I neither expected, nor had knowledge of, a new album by The Bats. And yet, lo (behold, even), here one is: "Save All The Monsters", on the resuscitated Flying Nun label. (Nor did I know that they were playing Melbourne and Sydney last weekend, or I would have urged you to get out and see them.) With the exception of a relatively fallow couple of years in the early nineties, when, for misguided but perfectly understandable reasons, they took the commercial option, a new Bats album has always been a thing of joy. And this is no exception.

The thing about The Bats is, they are at their best not when they try to push the boundaries but when they stick to their formula. They are slowly moving towards creating the perfect Bats song. Three and a half minutes of understated pop bliss. And when they get there we will be able to discard everything else and listen to that one song, on an endless loop, forever. But until that point is reached we have quite enough very fine Bats songs to be going on with.

Ooh, look, here comes one now.

Song of the day

"Terrible Angels", by Charlotte Gainsbourg.

As good as this song is (and it really does bounce along), you can see why it wasn't included on her last album, "IRM". While that album was in name and execution a Charlotte Gainsbourg album produced by Beck, this song is almost pure Beck, save for the vocals. If you close your eyes, you might think you are listening to something from "Modern Guilt". Which is not a criticism. The music works well with the post-Michael Jackson dance routines of the video, which you may now watch (spoiler alert: it has a somewhat alarming ending).

Not every coincidence is a happy one

During the weekend I intended, but ran out of time, to make a Song of the Day entry for "Lyke Wake Dirge", a song off Pentangle's "Basket of Light" album. I was going to make some light-hearted crack about how it reminds me of the scene in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" where the monks are walking along, chanting and hitting themselves on the head with wooden planks.

And then I woke up this morning to the news that Bert Jansch has died. (It probably suits his famously reticent nature to have had his death overshadowed by that of a certain world-changing computer entrepreneur.)

Here is a different Pentangle song, "Train Song", highlighting Jansch's quicksilver guitar playing:



And here he is, alone, doing a song called "Angie", from his first album:

And here is what Sasha Frere-Jones has to say.

Song of the day

"Still Cold", by Mazzy Star.



I have always secretly loved the way that at around the 3'30" mark this song finally does what it has been threatening to do all along: morph into Boston's "More Than A Feeling". Only for a fleeting moment, really, but it's enough.

John Zorn 2010 - Third Quarterly Report

Getting back to a project we started some time ago and then lost sight of, viz., tracking the progress of John Zorn in his attempt to release an album a month over 2010. We can now say with some certainty that he did achieve that goal (the one we have deemed to be the December release may not have turned up until the new year, but we should cut the guy a bit of slack: even eleven albums in a year isn't something normal people could manage). But we will for now confine ourselves to July-September.

First up was "Haborym", the most recent in the ongoing Book of Angels series.

You probably know the story of Masada; how Zorn wrote a couple of hundred tunes (I believe they may be called "heads") based on some mutant -- but inspired -- combination of Ornette Coleman's harmolodics and klezmer music, and put together a knockout quartet to record a few of them. Over time, thanks both to the original studio albums and to any number of (legit and otherwise) live recordings, many of these tunes became almost standards -- well, in our house, anyway -- so that, by the time Zorn started bringing in different combinations of musicians to interpret them, the amazing thing was not the tunes themselves but how they could be pulled apart and put back together in any number of ways and still hold up.

And then one day Zorn, who may or may not be easily bored, woke up and said to himself, okay, I think I will write another 300 or so of these things. And I will call it the Book of Angels.

And he did.

By this time, though, the original quartet had disbanded, so instead of starting with a solid and uniform template through which to introduce the new pieces, and from which variations could later spring, variations this time around are all we have. On each album a different combination of (mostly) "downtown luminaries" is brought in to interpret, under Zorn's watchful eye, several pieces from the Book of Angels. Practically none of the pieces have appeared more than once. Because of this, and because for the most part these pieces themselves sound like variations on the ones from the Masada songbook, the Book of Angels was always going to struggle to gain the recognition of the original Masada tunes.

Not that that would stop John Zorn. This album, the 16th (!) in the series, is an encore performance by my favourite of all of Zorn's journeymen combos, the Masada String Trio. Double bass, violin, cello. For what can be difficult music, it is seemingly effortlessly played, and cleanly recorded: there is not much more to be said. If you have crossed paths with these characters before, you absolutely know what you are going to get.

Masada and its offshoots, for me, are the core of Zorn's repertoire, and, although a certain, perhaps quite large, contingent of his followers might label it "conservative" (and perhaps, by his earlier standards, they would be right), well, outside of American politics that isn't necessarily a bad thing.

The next disc to come along, in August, was "The Nobel Prize Winner", aka volume XXIV in the Filmworks series. This recording is something of a showcase for the piano playing of Rob Burger, who sets up an understated, melancholy mood, with little room (or need) for disruption or tension. (Although, this being Zorn, you do get a little of both.) Zorn regulars Kenny Wollesen (drums) and Trevor Dunn (upright bass) provide a rhythm section when called upon, with the overall effect that of being at a better class of smoky piano bar. If you find yourself thinking of Vince Guaraldi during some tracks, and Philip Glass during others, you are probably not alone. And, yes, I know the Tzadik website blurb mentions both of those surnames, but that doesn't make them wrong or not independently verifiable. (Besides, how do we know they weren't referring to Hopey Glass and, erm, Charlie Guaraldi?)

September, on the other hand, spawned a monster. "Ipsissimus" is the fifth release in the Moonchild series, and an altogether more raucous affair than the above two records. (It doesn't rupture your spleen as completely and instantly as "Spy Vs Spy", say, but we're all a lot older now.) Dunn again appears on bass, this time utilising electricity and amplification, alongside Joey Baron on a much abused drum kit. The two of them (over)drive these tracks, with their odd time signatures and thrash metal tropes. Texture is provided variously by Marc Ribot (in meistershredder mode), Zorn himself on sax, and Mike Patton's, uh, "versatile" vocal cords. On the one hand I was listening to this kind of thing 15 years ago courtesy David Brown and his pals. On the other hand it is still pretty freakin' awesome. (Note, especially, the Morricone-meets-"Rango" desert twang of "The Book of Los".) Best consumed loud -- very loud -- while wearing oversized shorts, runners and a black t-shirt bearing your choice of antisocial message, and using your free hand to throw a whole mess of devil's horns.

Song of the day

"Misery", by Veronica Falls.

Veronica Falls sound variously like The Raincoats, The Wedding Present, The Cannanes, The Bats (and if you are going to do a song in homage to that particular pocket of the Flying Nun sound, you might as well call it "Stephen") and The Ampersands (the Melbourne ones). But what they might lack in originality they certainly make up for in verve. Their just-out self-titled debut album is full of it. If we were 20 years younger we would be bouncing around the living room. Heck, we are anyway.

You can't watch the official video for "Misery" on YouTube in Australia (what's with that?) but you can watch them playing it live:



(They make a bit of a meal of the vocals in the first chorus but just bear with them. Also, the recorded version -- download it here! -- ends with a very sweet bit of acapella, sounding more like Steeleye Span than any of the names listed above.)

Song of the day

"Penobska Oakwalk", by Quilt.



The best that I can say about this song, which is quite new although it doesn't really sound it, is that it starts off good and gets better. I think what really won me over is how, tucked away in the dusty corners of their sound, you can hear the faintest trace of Galaxie 500.

Downloadable from Altered Zones. Take note of the obligatory band photo: at least two of the members are smiling. That will never do.

Song of the day

"Caught in a Landslide of Love", by Debra Jackson.

Here is a curious thing. The first 38 seconds suggest nothing you would ever wish to listen to again. But then it turns on the head of a pin and becomes something that, if you were able to blot out the entirely inappropriate piano, and replace it with some charmingly rudimentary guitar playing, might well have come out of the "twee" side of the Pacific North West scene of the late 80s / early 90s. (It's actually from 1984.) The final two-part harmony, for example, is pure Softies.

Un-YouTube-able, so download it here.

Warning: hardened cynics need not apply.

Song of the day

"Kick The Can", by The Junior Boys.



Isn't it strange how, the first time you hear a song, all you can think of is "Smalltown Boy", and yet by the tenth time you have heard it, "Smalltown Boy" no longer registers at all, the trace of melody (okay, in this case a bit more than a trace) having been absorbed into the fabric of this new song. It is probably the music fan's equivalent of composting.

(If the same melody appears in another song in 10 years time, will the music fan say "that's 'Smalltown Boy'", or will he say "that's 'Kick The Can'"? I guess that will be the real test. But right now I am reaching for the new Junior Boys CD, not Bronski Beat.)

Song of the day

"One Million Year Trip", by Laetitia Sadier.



I have been listening to quite a lot of the elaborate prog-pop of Elektra-era Stereolab recently. I always assumed that Stereolab operated a bit like I understand Portishead do, in that the guys (or "guy" in the case of Stereolab, that guy being Tim Gane) came up with the music and, at some point thereafter, Laetitia Sadier threw down some kind of Marxist-Leninist tracts to sing over the top. But listening to her solo album, "The Trip", I can see that this wasn't in fact the case: there is a lot of the Stereolab sound on this record, not least on this song, which I interpret, lyrically and perhaps musically (most evidently in the backing harmonies), to be "about" Mary Hansen, who went on her own million-year trip as the result of a cycling tragedy in London, after which Stereolab were, understandably, never quite the same. (Although their last few albums nevertheless contained enough good-natured pop experimentalism to keep me coming back, and I do miss them.)

There is also something in this song, a particular chord change or guitar line perhaps, that reminds me of "Two Rivers", by The Meat Puppets, a song that I am always happy to be reminded of. Oh, look, here it comes:

Song of the day

"The Town Halo", by A C Newman.



This song has some of the most rockin' cello since the golden days of ELO. That's all you need to know, really.

Conspiracy theory of the day

We haven't received an issue of the New Yorker for over a month. This is bad. (Adrienne is climbing the walls over the sudden absence from her life of "Talk of the Town".)

Now I notice the following two documents, which I have liberally borrowed from Sasha Frere-Jones's tumblr.

I have put two and two together, and reached the following conclusion:

OUR POSTIE IS A SC**NT*L*G*ST!!!

[editor's note: all good conspiracy theorists use lots of exclamation marks]

I would just like to point out that I most certainly did not read the "expose" in question; even if I did read it, I most certainly did not enjoy it; and even if I did enjoy it, I most certainly did not share it with and/or recommend it to anybody.

Honest.

Can we please have our New Yorkers back now?

Where It's At

People like me: you have my sympathy. You should also read this recent Pitchfork column by seemingly erstwhile scribe William Bowers. You will recognise many of the thought processes, anxieties, petty rationalisations and antisocial tendencies contained therein. (You will also note, with misguided satisfaction, that you are not the only person to obsessively alphabetise your "collection", and to know who sits next to whom on the shelves.)

One qualification, though. In the case of Maggie Gyllenhaal, I think I could turn a blind eye to the occasional Jim Morrison poster.

Song of the day

"Trilogy", by Sonic Youth.

There can be nothing more pathetic than the sight of a wizened 47-year-old man in a nondescript gray suit, standing at a bus stop in Canberra, playing silent air guitar like his life depended on it, to a song that is going on 25 years old.

Reader, that was me.

Fortunately the bus arrived before things got too out of hand.

The first part of the trilogy you can see/hear below.

Song of the day

"Be All Be Easy", by Woods.



"Elegant Chaos" may have been a song by Julian Cope, but it also neatly sums up what you get with Woods: more or less classic pop stylings wrapped up in ramshackle instrumentation and deceptively absent (but in a good way) production, uh, "values". All of which is on offer here. What I like, in particular, are the keyboards that quietly sneak in towards the end of the song and then take over, like a benevolent dictator taking power in a bloodless, but rather exciting, coup.

Or perhaps you would prefer the live experience:



You knew there would be facial hair.

Song of the day

"Candyskin", by Fire Engines.

Where is the YouTube love for this song? Come on you guys. In the meantime direct download it here.

Anyway the lame excuse (if one were needed: NOT) for posting this song is that we had two fire engines at our house on Sunday night, on account of smoke in the living room and some kind of electrical smell. It must have been a false alarm (the house is still standing). One boy was understandably freaked out. The other was out there in his PJs staring in awe at the trucks. I had been, for a short while, in a state of desperate panic as I raced around the house looking for the flames I was certain I would find.

In hindsight it was probably my amplifier burning out. For the second time this year.

Song of the day

"Come On", by Melted Toys.

There is something particularly endearing about this song. It's a bit like if you took The Cat's Miaow, added a couple of extra guitars and tripled the length of their songs. It has a bit of that good ol' understated charm about it.

Here they are doing it live:



Style note: it would appear that floppy fringes are back. Perfect for hiding behind if you are a reluctant lead singer uncomfortable with the idea of "projection".

YouTube of the day

This is a long clip of Battles doing a song called "Wall Street" live in a big old building somewhere in Paris.



Sometimes you have to watch a band in order for them to make sense. Battles on CD can be somewhat less than transparent. It helps to discover, or be reminded, that all that sound, with its fragile structures and thrilling runs, is being made by three guys. And man, that drummer.

The new album, "Gloss Drop", is well worth your time. I think we can safely say that, "Atlas" notwithstanding (easily the best song of whatever year that was), this is the Battles we wanted all along.

YouTube of the day

The video for one of the finest songs of the twenty-first century, rendered entirely in Lego (albeit with digital effects, purists):

For comparison purposes, here is the original:

Unfinished Business

There are numerous threads that have not yet been tied up. To wit:

The quarterly round-up of John Zorn's album-a-month release schedule for 2010 stalled at the end of the second quarter.

I still have something like 18 Neil Young albums post-1980 to listen to.

Darren's list of 1,111 songs (give or take a few) is up to number 19. So there is a bit of work to go there. (We love understatement.) (This was never intended to be a public project, but as each of these songs was personally chosen with me in mind, it seems only fair that I give them all proper consideration, and that  generally requires utilisation of the written word.) Number 20, for those who think two years (almost to the day, coincidence fans) is long enough, is Jose Feliciano's string-laden take on "Light My Fire".

We love old-school lounge music at our house, so this by its mere existence is uncritically awarded full marks. (His version of "California Dreamin'" might just tip this out of the number one slot, but who's counting?)

(Another fine version of "Light My Fire" is by The Free Design.)

(As a general rule, my only problem with The Doors is Jim Morrison.)

If I ever get anywhere near the end of these projects, I plan to turn my mind to Ed Kuepper's Prince Melon Bootleg Series of live recordings and outtakes; Bob Dylan's recorded works post-"Blonde On Blonde" with the exception of "Blood On The Tracks" and "Time Out Of Mind", both of which should be sufficiently well known (and loved) to require no further comment; and, once I have really taken leave of my sanity, David Bowie's catalogue since "Lodger", which is where I happily got off. Oh. That would require tracking down and listening to the Tin Man albums. I may not be man enough.

One thing led to another ...

"Ghost Town", by The Specials. (Note: best song EVAH.)



"Torch", by Soft Cell.



"Temptation", by Heaven 17.



"Confusion", by New Order.



"Stool Pigeon", by Kid Creole and The Coconuts.

Song of the day

"Mind Your Own Business", by Delta 5.



aka more words of advice Rupert Murdoch would have done well to follow.

Be sure to stick around for the very Gang of Four guitar slashing at the end.

Road Trip

We are heading off down the highway for a few days, so it figures that things will probably be a little quiet over here at Farmer In The City Central. Chances are that we won't so much be having a holiday as packing up our troubles and taking them to another location, but a change is as good and all of that.

What we won't be doing is travelling in one of these:

(Right click etc to enlarge.)

Two things to be said about this ad (from the New Yorker, mid-1961). One: nowhere does it use the word "Kombi". Two: Volkswagen have been doing fabulous, frequently self-deprecating magazine advertisements for more than 50 years. That is pretty impressive, no?

Song of the day

"News of the World", by The Jam.



Or maybe you would prefer "Sunday Papers", by Joe Jackson.



Or, and this is particular favourite that needs no bogus topical excuse, "Rupert Murdoch", by The Reels. I couldn't find it on the 'Tube, but it's short and it's sweet and you can download it here.

Song of the day

"I Might", by Wilco.



Hey kids, it's a new song by Wilco.

One of the things that has impressed me about the last couple of Wilco albums (both, in my opinion, essential purchases, although many would disagree) is the way they have managed to do so little with so many. In a good way. Once again, there is a lot of space in this song, but everything that needs to be there is there, and your brain will infer the rest. Spoon come to mind, in the taut starkness of the thing. The Smiths also come to mind, in the way the bass and drums do a lot of the melody work.

The b-side is a cover of a Nick Lowe song, proving that they also have impeccable taste.

Song of the day

"Keep You", by Class Actress.

In the chilly bleakness of another Canberra winter, this is a song that will warm your heart. The only thing I know about it is that it is brand new. Can't even find it on the 'Tube. You can (= should) download it here. (Right-click etc.)

News item of the day

From Harper's Weekly Review:

[A] woman driving down Vroom Street in Jersey City fell asleep at the wheel and crashed into a mattress store.

Isn't that just a little too perfect?

Feeling Moog-y

Even in your darkest hours, you can find enlightenment in:

cover versions of early 70s songs played by John Keating on the Moog.

Such as:



And:



And:



And if you were wondering whether you needed to own the entire album: you probably don't. Much of the rest of it comprises original compositions, which generally speaking haven't survived the passage of time as well as the covers have. Plus it contains an entirely unwelcome version of "Jesus Christ Superstar". Perhaps you had to be there. (Come to think of it, I was; and I had no time for it then, either.)

My dad would have been 85 today. That has nothing to do with any of this, but it is, of course, worth noting. He was a fine man.

Charles Adams New Yorker cover of the day

Coincidence of the day

I read both of the following sentences within the last 72 hours.

From "Dream Machine", by Rivka Galchen, in the New Yorker, 2 May 2011, page 39:

In the early nineteenth century, a "computer" was any person who computed: someone who did the math for building a bridge, for example.

From "Cryptonomicon", by Neal Stephenson (1999), page 827:

At this point in history (April of 1945) the word that denotes a person who sits and performs arithmetical calculations is "computer."

The curious thing about this is that I have been reading "Cryptonomicon", off and on, for over a year, so the chance of my stumbling upon this particular sentence, buried within a 900-page book, within a couple of days after having read Galchen's piece from the New Yorker must be pretty small. Mathematically speaking.

Song of the day

"That's What I Heard", by Robert Scott and Adalita Srsen.



While we're on a bit of a Dunedin kick, here is a rather nice little song of recent vintage by Robert Scott, he of The Bats, The Clean, Magick Heads, and assorted solo projects, and Adalita Srsen, who is evidently the singer for Magic Dirt. (I know nothing about Magic Dirt.)

Song of the day

"Tangled Line", by Brave Irene.



Brave Irene are Rose Melberg's new band. Rose may be best known to you as a member of the too-short-lived K Records band Tiger Trap. Or as one half of The Softies. (Sigh.) But here she is, many years after her last "band" project, bringing together a bunch of like-minded dudettes in order to channel the sound of 1980s Dunedin as if she owned it.

I wouldn't be surprised to discover that somebody from the band had flown to New Zealand to borrow the actual organ that appears on all of the classic Flying Nun records.

The (likely) fact that they are named after a William Steig children's book (and one that we own, too) only adds to their charm.

I Want The One I Can't Have

There are four stories of The Smiths.

The first is that of the improbably iconic rock band, fanatically embraced by a legion of hyper-loyal followers. Rarely could even an English football team have been supported in such a partisan, proprietary manner. Hordes of teenage and post-teenage males (in a kind of gender-reversed Beatlemania) lost their bearings over either the insecure, sexually confused, gladioli-toting totem of a lead singer, or the jesus-of-cool guitar player. (Who were the other two again?) These Smiths were the second coming of The Only Gang In Town.

The second story of The Smiths is the story of the band that released four studio albums of original material. This would be the Smiths that most middle-aged, chin-stroking, Mojo-reading music fans would recognise, and most of those would hold these Smiths in very high regard, particularly given the status of one of those albums, not unreasonably so, either, as a "classic".

The third Smiths are the Smiths that brightened up the radio between 1984 and 1987. I can't think of any successful pop group in the post-Beatles era to have released so many non-album singles, and to have consistently charted so high with them; this is particularly so when you consider that neither "This Charming Man", nor "How Soon Is Now", two of their best-known songs, were initially included on albums. In fact, if you only knew The Smiths as a singles band, you nevertheless knew them as one heck of a band.

The fourth story of The Smiths falls somewhere between the cracks of the other three. These Smiths are a band that have been forever shaded by their early demo recordings. I can vividly recall hearing these Smiths coming through the airwaves on a very patchy 3RRR one night while I was back at the farm during university holidays. This was long before they had any records out, and I had no knowledge, and crucially no mental image, of Morrissey or Marr, and no sense of any "hype" that may have been building around them. The Smiths were just a name. And it seemed to be a particularly fitting one for purveyors of such no-nonsense, back-to-basics, four-guys-in-a-room rock and roll. The NME, then my eyes and ears on the British music scene, arrived at Eastaways Road eight to ten weeks after it was written, so by the time I saw their name in print The Smiths were well and truly off and running.

From this distance it is impossible to imagine how revolutionary those early recordings sounded. By late 1983 the radio, even "alternative" radio, had ossified into a very pale imitation of the synth-pop that I had grown up on, all style over substance and not a lot of style at that. What The Smiths did was, on the one hand, strip all of that away and, on the other, write some stunningly original songs. It was a combination that had to set the world on fire.

Awash with anticipation, I marched into the original Missing Link Records, in Flinders Lane, on the day of release in this country of the first, self-titled album. I bought it, took it home and played it. A noose of expectation hung around its neck. I listened to it end over end, for weeks, and I can to this day run it through my head from start to finish without, I don't think, missing a note. I tried to convince myself it was everything I had hoped, and expected, it would be, but something of their vitality seemed to have been sapped in the process of making it. I couldn't help but compare it with those demos that I had heard on the radio, and the comparison wasn't kind.

Was mine a minority opinion? In any event, The Smiths went from strength to strength. A friend of a friend brought the first known copy of "Meat Is Murder" to one of our house parties at 166 Nicholson Street. Side one, on first listen and in the context of mild inebriation / boyish enthusiasm, was incendiary. (It still sounds that way in the cold light of 2011.) This was what I wanted The Smiths to be. But when the record eventually came my way all I could think was that by the end of side two they had sacrificed all of the momentum they had built up for uncharacteristically trite "statements", and abattoir sound effects. (The seven minutes of stilted funk that made up "Barbarism Begins At Home" didn't attract it to my young, post-punk-infused ears, either, although now I hear it quite differently.)

There appeared to be two separate realities running along in parallel to one another. In one, the hit singles kept coming. In another, The Smiths were a band perpetually mired in controversy. (Although it is possible the one fed the other.) Somewhere in the middle of all this "The Queen Is Dead", their third album, appeared. Yes, it is the masterpiece everybody says it is, but by then they were so huge they were no longer "my" Smiths in any way (at that stage I was subsisting on an unhealthy diet of The Fall, Nick Cave, Tom Waits, Sonic Youth, Husker Du, Big Black, Einsturzende Neubauten, Butthole Surfers. And, uh, Lloyd Cole and the Commotions), and I confess that I didn't even hear "Strangeways, Here We Come" until I bought it second-hand several years later. (It turns out to have been a very good record, after all, possibly only slightly shaded by "The Queen Is Dead". It somehow sounds like a final album -- not that the wind had gone out of their sails, but there is a sense that they knew it was over. There is probably another essay in this. I am not going to be writing it, though.)

And that was it.

It was probably inevitable that my favourite Smiths album would be "Hatful of Hollow", where some of those radio phantoms that had beguiled and eluded me (or something sounding very like them) sit next to a string of their best singles. I always took the existence of "Hatful of Hollow" as amounting to an admission by the band that they themselves weren't entirely satisfied with how the first album came out. (I am prepared to entertain the idea that I might be wrong about this.)

It might be because of the way that the four albums, in isolation, fail to tell the true story of The Smiths. It might be because a collection of just the singles leaves too much out. It might, I suppose, be because there continues to be money in it. But the unending stream of Smiths compilations, starting, I suppose, with "Hatful of Hollow" itself, probably bears witness to the fact that there is no single way of listening to The Smiths that tells anything like the full story. The best attempt thus far, and the one that is probably a necessary purchase even if you have every Smiths record ever released, is the two-disc version of "Sound of the Smiths". It does such a good job of bringing together the best bits of each of the different Smiths narratives that, after listening to it in its entirety, you do feel that, yes, that was The Smiths. I might be wrong about this, but I understand that  this is the first post-Smiths Smiths compilation in which a member of the band actually had a hand. It may be no coincidence.

Not long ago something funny, or at least serendipitous, happened. I was reading one of Mark Richardson's "Resonant Frequency" columns on Pitchfork. In it he was writing about The Smiths, and the peg on which the article hung was a recently surfaced bootleg vinyl release entitled "Unreleased Demos & Instrumentals". You can find digitised versions of it on the Internet. (Well, duh.) It has a cover that makes it look for all the world like an authentic Smiths release. It spans the length of their career. And it turns out to be the Smiths record that I had been vainly searching for since the night I first heard The Smiths.

I suppose every band evokes its own time and place, but I can't help thinking that the metallic, harshly bright sound of the records of the middle of the 1980s, presumably a response to the new-found possibilities inherent in compact-disc technology, and a corresponding inability amongst studio boffins to leave anything alone, was particularly damaging for The Smiths. Added to this, in the case of The Smiths, were some questionable choices of producer, and "embellishments" (piano parts, assorted overdubs) that didn't so much embellish as get in the way. If any band should have been heard unadorned, it was The Smiths. And this is what this bootleg, for the most part, gives you. (There are still strings where and when you need them: one cannot be that much of a purist.)

Richardson does a better job of analysing the record than I ever could. What these recordings do is bring the listener back to the idea of The Smiths as four highly talented, individual but sympathetic musicians, together in a room, making the best music they could make. You can practically hear them glancing across at each other and grinning in amazement at what they were capable of doing. You can hear, in the distance, the faint but unmistakable ringing sound of future cash registers. 

Or can you?

This is where we finish up, then: in the field of discourse known as "art versus commerce". Would The Smiths have been as successful as they were if these essentially unadorned recordings were what was presented to the wider listening public? Would they have made the leap from late-night public radio to megastardom without the backing of a record label and the inevitable compromises, artistic and commercial, that that backing brings? Maybe this bootleg is special (to me) purely because it represents a path that wasn't taken. These recordings are never likely to be commercially released. But The Smiths continue to be an important touchstone, and "Unreleased Demos & Instrumentals", I reckon, is the clearest picture we have yet had of why, as four people in a room, they stood out enough for those commercial forces to sit up and take notice, and why The Smiths still matter. At the very least, it will brighten up your day.

YouTube of the day

I seriously don't know what to make of this.

Song of the day

"Robot High School", by My Robot Friend.



Just for fun.

There is a little bit of Devo in there somewhere, I suspect.

I find the video a bit disturbing, but you can always listen with your eyes closed.

Song of the day

"Message To Pretty", by David Kilgour and Martin Phillipps.

One of my favourite Dunedin records (I have a lot of favourite Dunedin records) is the self-titled five-song CD by a one-off sixties covers project called Pop Art Toasters, spearheaded by David Kilgour and Martin Phillipps. Thus I was surprised, nay, delighted, to discover recently the existence of another sixties cover (the original is by Arthur Lee's Love), this time by just the two of them. (I don't know who is playing the harmonica but I am glad somebody did.)

Both the Pop Art Toasters record and the tribute album on which this song resides came out in 1994. Were they recorded at the same time? Did one spin off from the other? And, if the latter, which is the chicken and which is the egg?

In any event, the song is absolutely gorgeous. Trust me.

I can't find a clip anywhere, so here's a download.

The other Martin

Martin Rushent died last week. If you are 47 years old, and maybe even if you aren't, his name will appear on more of your favourite records than you would expect. "Dare" is the obvious one, and enough of a feather in the cap for any one person on its own. But if you add to that crucial records by The Stranglers, The Buzzcocks, XTC and Altered Images, plus reputedly coming up with the concept plan for the League Unlimited Orchestra, well, it's not a bad life's work.

Reynolds has a nice cache of YouTube links. There's not much point reinventing the wheel, so I suggest we all head over to his place. I'm sure he won't mind.

Song of the day

"Tijuana Taxi", by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass.



Hours, well at least minutes, of mirth at our house yesterday morning, thanks to the "random" (boys' word) saxophone honk that appears intermittently throughout this song. Now it's your turn.

Honk.

Music sub-genre of the day

Denis and I spent some productive time yesterday trying to come up with names of bands that released songs that had the same name as the band itself. We didn't get very far. I know there are quite a few out there.

The story so far:

"Laughing Clowns" by Laughing Clowns.
"Talk Talk" by Talk Talk.
"Radio Heart" by Radio Heart. (Technically by "Radio Heart featuring Gary Numan" but what the heck.)

Denis came up with a beauty, but it must be knocked out on a technicality: "Bo Diddley" by Bo Diddley.

He also mentioned Icehouse, who as Flowers released a song called "Icehouse" and then changed their name to Icehouse.

 I know there are a bunch of disco-era singles where they would get a few people together in a studio, kock out a dance-floor banger, and as an afterthought come up with a one-size-fits-all name for the song and the "band".

Check out this YouTube of "Radio Heart". If ever a song, and a video, screamed "EIGHTIES" louder than this, I have yet to see/hear it. Numan busts some of his best moves ever. There's a keytar. The suits are stylish as. (As for the girls, well, what were they thinking? Girls could look good in the 80s. Clare Grogan. Shaz on "Ashes to Ashes" (okay, that was reconstructed 80s).)

Back to work.

YouTube of the day

"The Bottle", by Gil Scott-Heron.



A sad end to a sad life. I read a New Yorker profile of the man last year. He still had dreams and ambitions, but he also couldn't move too far from his crack pipe. I can't recall any other New Yorker profile where the subject had a crack pipe in his living room. Drugs might screw you up, but if it is the music industry that hooks you on those drugs, what (or who) is really doing the screwing?

Song of the day

"Evergreen", by John Foxx And The Maths.



In which John Foxx, who has been quietly making records for much of the time since he disappeared from the scene in the mid-80s, teams up with a guy calling himself Benge (not to be confused with the similarly named Benga, dubstep artist; nor, presumably, with Mrs Robert Wyatt), who seems to have accumulated an arsenal of what would appear to be called "vintage" analog synths, and produced an album that sits quite nicely, in terms of mood and, uh, aesthetic as much as actual sounds (and how gorgeous those actual sounds are), between "Metamatic"'s steely futuristic pop and the lush maximalism of "The Garden". Rejoice.

Bob Dylan: scaring the children since 1961

As well as being the year of Bob's seventieth birthday, this year marks the fiftieth anniversary, give or take, of his emergence onto, uh, "the scene".

But kids' music?

And yet here he is, doing "This Old Man" (right click etc to download; normal click to listen), taken from a Disney compilation released to raise money for children with AIDS. A worthy cause, indeed, but I'm not entirely sure Dylan's gravel-throated growling, and wailing harmonica, entirely suited the (presumed) target audience.

The Wiggles he ain't.

Happy seventieth birthday, Bob

"Dylan's music is not inspired. His melodies and arrangements are derivative, and his one technical accomplishment, a vivacious, evocative harmonica, does not approach the virtuosity of a Sonny Terry. His strength as a musician is his formidable eclecticism combined with a talent for choosing the right music to go with a given lyric. The result is a unity of sound and word that eludes most of his imitators."

-- Ellen Willis, from "Dylan", published in Cheetah magazine, 1967.

(Well, it was either run with that quote or be the seventy thousandth blog to link to a YouTube clip of "Knocking on Heaven's Door" or "Not Dark Yet".)

Hammond be thy name

Jimmy Smith.

Mission Impossible.

QED.

Song of the day

"Satellite (The Bug Remix)", by The Kills.



I don't know squiddly-did about The Kills, but I have a hunch the original sounds very little like this. The Bug, aka Kevin Martin, has been pushing the boundaries of sound, often in several directions at once, for as long as I can remember. Here, he sends the concept of dub out somewhere towards the stratosphere. Bass is the place.

Hands up anyone who can hear elements of "Fisherman", by The Congos, buried in the mix.

Record cover of the day

It's not just a record cover ...

... it's a philosophy.

YouTube of the day

"Look Back In Anger", by David Bowie.



I can't recall ever having seen this video before.

The thing that makes this song transcendent, aside from the very sprightly drumming, is the guitar riff that comes in just before the half way mark. Sublime.

2011 is not 1961 - or is it?

The first thing that strikes you about this advertisement is how it could have been written in 2011. (It, and the following two ads, actually appeared in the New Yorker magazine in May, 1961.)

The second thing that strikes you is how nice the graphic design is. (This was the era of "Mad Men".)

(Click on the pictures for bigger versions.)

When you have finished providing clean drinking water for everybody (it has only been 50 years, and we're not nearly there yet) you can take a break. Why not fly Pan Am to Rio. Or Buenos Aires. (The sound of bossa nova is in the air.)

Or take the whole family bowling. (This one does contain some text on the next page, but it's the picture, innit.)

Neil Young song of the day (6)

Whether by intent or necessity (it was later revealed that at this time Neil Young was coming to terms with being the parent of a seriously disabled child; and we have some knowledge of how draining, physically and mentally, that can be) "Hawks & Doves" bears the devil's mark of "contractual obligation". Not without some justification: it was to be his final album for Reprise before jumping ship for an ill-fated run with Geffen Records. It must have come as a grave disappointment for Young's loyal fan base, or whatever of it remained, coming as it did after two albums ("Comes A Time" and "Rust Never Sleeps") that suggested that Young had pulled himself out of the malaise of the Ditch Trilogy (proved by time not to have been a malaise at all, especially so with "On The Beach", perhaps now recognised as Young's crowning achievement) and got his career back on an upward path.

It is, unequivocally, a very slight record, clocking in at barely 30 minutes, with four songs that failed to make the cut on previous albums and an entire side of seemingly tossed-off knee-slappin' hoedowns.

Yet, perhaps on account of its brevity, I find it hard to get too cranky about this record. It has a good-natured spirit, a lightness of touch, a degree of "bounce", perhaps, which makes its short playing time pass like a breeze.

There is a song called "Lost In Space" which sounds at one point like Neil is auditioning for the Franciscus Henri circuit. "The Old Homestead" occupies a quarter of the album, and amounts to a shaggy dog story (not so far away from "After The Goldrush", if you think about it) involving naked riders, telephone booths, prehistoric birds and someone or something called "the shadow" -- the kind of thing that could easily have been a fever dream brought about by too much spicy food. It may or may not include a dig at David Crosby. It does include a musical saw, an instrument that always puts me in mind of Mercury Rev's "Deserter's Songs", which is a record I am always happy to be put in mind of.

I will neatly sidestep the politics of the five songs on side two. It is not possible, though, whether you agree with the sentiments or not (assuming you can figure those sentiments out), to fail to sing heartily along with the "You Ess Ayyyyy, You Ess Ayyyyy" backing vocals on the title track (which also features one of the few appearances on the album of Young's trusty electric guitar).

Today's song, though, is the final number from the first side, "Captain Kennedy". It is very simple. Just Young and his acoustic guitar. He underplays the vocals, to the song's detriment. I would love to hear this covered by somebody like Mark Lanegan. Or Mick Harvey. I think either of them would really bring it to life.

There are roughly ten thousand people doing this song on the YouTube, but none of those people are Neil Young, and all should be avoided. They are not what I had in mind at all. Instead, you can, for a short time, download it here (right click etc).

Song of the day

"Undeadman, ReMMix by Mordant Music", by Shackleton.



Cabaret Voltaire for the 21st century.

Specifically, the Cabaret Voltaire of "2x45".

Mind you, Cabaret Voltaire were so far ahead of their time that they themselves might as well have been called "Cabaret Voltaire for the 21st Century".

In which case, what would you call this? Yesterday's tomorrow's music today? My brain hurts.

Is it "irony"? Or is it just sad?

From Harper's Weekly Review:

"Two imams en route to a North Carolina conference on anti-Muslim prejudice were removed from a commercial flight because their manner of dress was making the pilot uncomfortable".

Song of the day

"Blue Star", by Seapony.



Those roads from today's music that don't lead back to Look Blue Go Purple seem to lead back to somewhere not far away from The Cat's Miaow. Which, obviously, can only be a good thing. It's just kind of funny.

Song of the day

"Mubu", by Alberto Baldan Bembo.



You are sitting in a discreet corner of a dimly lit piano bar. You are with your new friend. His name is James Bond. He is drinking a martini. His martini is shaken, not stirred. You, too, are drinking a martini. Your martini, too, is shaken but not stirred, because you are drinking with James Bond. This might well be the music playing in the background.

Song of the day

"Le Coeur au bout des Doigts", by Jacqueline Taieb.



A fine little song to get you moving on a Monday morning, and perhaps to start you thinking about the excitement machine that is Eurovision 2011, coming to a telly near you this weekend.

Neil Young song of the day (5)

It was as if, after spending the entire ten years since "Rust Never Sleeps" wandering along diverse musical paths by turn moribund and bizarre, embracing everything from electronic music to rockabilly and all (disap)points in between, as if by a miracle all of Neil Young's stars fell into perfect alignment, because in 1989 he delivered "Freedom", a record that surprised everybody by being a Very Good Neil Young Album.

Of course, it was not free from strangeness -- the second song, "Crime In The City (Sixty To Zero, Pt 1)", strays rather too close to that necessary electrified boundary fence between (1) all music that doesn't sound like Dire Straits, and (2) Dire Straits; and when Neil Young decides it's time to put his own personal stamp on "On Broadway" it's hard to know whether to laugh or cry, although in the end what one gains is a clear mental image to go with the word "ham-fisted" -- but he seems to have regained both his sense of wistful lyricism and his ability to pull unfeasible noises out of an electric guitar.

You already know the quietly anthemic "Rockin' In The Free World" (it appears twice, not unnecessarily). You should now acquaint yourself with "Eldorado", yet another in Neil's series of Aztec / Inca fantasias/allegories, and a good one (and watch for one of those -- in this case fleeting -- unfeasible guitar noises, which comes from out of nowhere just before the end of the song).

There goes another veteran of the punk wars

RIP Poly Styrene.

Neil Young song of the day (4)

On the other hand, some Neil Young songs are just good wholesome fun. This is as close to punk rock as Neil ever got, I think: even "Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black)", which famously name-checks Johnny Rotten, is more black sludge than punk (but in a good way). And so what if it was "only" 15 years after the event; and anyway it's not as if he wasn't listening).

"Piece Of Crap".

Neil Young song of the day (3)

Neil's 2005 album, "Prairie Wind", harks back to acoustic country-folk outings like "Comes A Time". But you would probably be happier going back to "Comes A Time" itself, given that this time around the acoustic-guitar-driven ballads, though of a uniformly high quality, are interspersed with, uh, other types of songs. One comes across as some kind of a paranoid-conspiracy song. One is, let's not mince words, a hymn. In the traditional sense. One is an extended riff about Elvis, complete with Elvis-type voiceovers. (Surely one of the main problems with being "Neil Young" is that nobody is there to put their hand on your shoulder and say "Bad idea, Neil.")

Which leaves the title track, seven and a half minutes of fine acoustic-guitar playing, great brass lines, and a "chorus" (if that's what it is) sung in gospel style by a wall of female singers. Note the space between the verse lines, long even at the start of the song but even longer in the second half. Like, I'm going to take my own sweet time doing this. The theme, like that of much of the album, is one of looking back. (This, one assumes, has to do with a life-threatening medical condition Young suffered during the making of the record.) It appears that the song has not been YouTubed, so you can download it here (right click, save as, etc) for the time being. It is well worth listening to, but you really have to be in a position where there are no pressing demands on your time and you can afford to just allow it to wash over you. Like the best Neil Young songs, it will distort your sense of the passage of time.

Neil Young song of the day (2)

It would be wrong to call "Trans" Neil Young's most divisive album, because pretty much everybody agreed that it was awful. Including his record company. I hadn't listened to it until last week. I would like to be the one to tell you that it has improved with age, that it is not as bad as people have made out. But I really can't. What was he thinking? We can only guess. Young seems quick to wrong-foot any audience he has picked up. Maybe it was just one of those. Maybe it was a concept album that didn't work. ("La Noise", too, was musically something of a concept album. Maybe some people don't like it either.)

As you already know, it features prominent use of Vocoder, an instrument that came back into vogue a couple of years back. (Auto-tune will be the next decade's Vocoder. Or the decade after that.) But it isn't really as electronic as it was held out to be. You can hear elements of Kraftwerk, sure, and obviously Giorgio Moroder, and even something that sounds not unlike Jean Michel Jarre's "Oxygene". But there is also a touch of (ashamed to admit to recognising this one) Supertramp, and even some early Talking Heads. (If you listen closely there are also bits that sound like Neil Young.) There is also a song that, if it had been recorded a little bit differently, and been released at another time, on another album, would surely be regarded as one of Young's great songs: "Like An Inca".

But we are here to pay respect to "Transformer Man", the track on which the whole electronic vibe meshes with the kind of emotional soul-wrenching that Young does better than almost anybody else. He pulls more emotion out of (mostly) pure electronic sounds than anybody since, well, Kraftwerk I suppose. Or, more recently, Junior Boys (who -- coincidence alert (or is it?) -- are also Canadian). So: "Transformer Man". Feast, as you listen, upon the Rockies-in-the-fifties-meets-Tron cover art. Which perhaps serves also as the best clue to where the record was coming from, and where it was meant to go.

Neil Young song of the day

Astute readers will remember that a couple of years ago I almost got lost in a spiral vortex of Neil Young obsession, specifically 1970s Neil. Conventional wisdom (which is sometimes correct, just as cliches had some meaning before they became cliches) has it that "Live Rust" was the end of an era, and that from that point on Young lost his way, if not entirely then for the most part. (One listen to 2010's "La Noise" should be enough to disprove that notion.)

Spurred on by the recent appearance in Mojo of a list of the 50 best Neil Young songs, as chosen by musicians and industry types, and which included a surprising number of post-1979 tracks, I thought it might be a bit of masochistic fun to have a listen to the many and varied Neil Young albums released since then, to see if there are gems in the rough (and perhaps to discover if it is not actually the rough).

So, over the next little while, time and enthusiasm permitting, I hope to make you the benificiaries of my hard work by throwing in your direction the things that happen to catch my ear. I have a couple filed away already, and there are still a truckload of albums to listen to.

Today, we have "Natural Beauty", from "Harvest Moon", which is one of Young's front-porch pastoral records, hailed as a "return to form" (beware those words) but with its share of songs that don't quite cut it. This one stands out for me, by reminding me of Gillian Welch's "I Dream A Highway", one of the Greatest Songs Of All Time. The similarity is one of tone, and in the way that it takes you on a long, slow journey, where you are surprised to find, after it has ended, that 10 minutes have passed.

Where has the embed code gone from YouTube clips? Curse you, Internet.

Song of the day

"Blitzkrieg Bop", by The Ramones.

Punk rock barrage? Not a bit of it. This is pure pop.


Happy Easter. May all your bunnies be made of Haigh's chocolate.

Department of Nobody Tells Me Anything

What? Charles Shaar Murray has discovered the internet and I didn't know about it?

(I wonder how long he will keep it up.)

Along with Paul Morley and Ian Penman, CSM's writings for the NME in the early eighties turned me into the hairy brute I am today.

I'm optimistically adding a link over there on the right.

Song of the day (3)

"All I Want", by LCD Soundsystem.



Last weekend I was lucky enough to catch, by chance, the last three songs of the last LCD Soundsystem concert, which was streamed, in a somewhat professional manner suggesting DVD release in the near future, on Pitchfork. This song, fittingly, was one of those last three songs.

LCD had a fascinating career arc, going from total non-"band" in the early '00s to being, by the end, one of the few bands of the endlessly fragmented internet era to genuinely matter. Murphy is either an incredibly astute businessman or a very lucky guy. (If nothing else, he knows, in a way that few people know, how to build a song. Maybe that knowledge was all it took.) There are very few people, in music as in so-called "elite" sports, who can recognise that they are as good as they are ever going to get, and who have the guts to act on that recognition by calling it quits. So he gets points for that, too.

I loved their run of early singles. I loved the second and third albums. There are many songs of theirs that make me cry. This is one of them. I have no idea why: it's a collection of (astutely and cleverly) borrowed ideas, coupled with lyrics in the nature of "All I want is your pity / All I want is your bitter tears" (but then, I have never responded on an emotional level to lyrics in songs). But something about it gets me every time.

There are also, of course, LCD Soundsystem songs that make me smile, often for their sheer audacity. "He can't get away with that. He got away with that." Now he's going to get away with disbanding the greatest group of its era, before any of the rest of us were ready. And he will probably get away with whatever he does next, too. Bastard.

Song of the day (2)

"Saga Of The Ageing Orphan", by Thin Lizzy. (NOT "Saga Of Ageing Orphans", as the YouTube says. Also, this is a different version from what appears on the album, but I think I quite like it.)



This one is dedicated, well, I could just as easily dedicate it to myself, I suppose, but this time it is dedicated to my cousin Gay, whose mother, my Auntie Margaret, died last week. I wrote at some length a while ago about Uncle Ray, and I don't really have anything more to add to that, except to say that this really is the end of an era, as there is now nobody left of that generation on my mother's side of the family. I guess it falls upon us cousins, now, to be the ones that the next generation looks up to. (Not that I have any answers to anything. Maybe the others do.)

(We will, though, choose to ignore the word "ageing" in the song's title. Does Not Mean Us.)

Song of the day (1)

"Deeper Understanding", by Kate Bush.



It's not every day that you get to say "Here's a new Kate Bush song." And I suppose you can't quite say it here, as what this really is is New Kate Bush For Old. Her forthcoming album is a reworking of old material, but what is particularly exciting for this listener is that the two albums that she is revisiting, "The Sensual World" and "The Red Shoes", both appeared at a time when I was not a Kate Watcher. In case you were wondering, I have been a Kate Watcher three times: first, as a not-quite-teenager, completely mesmerised by "Wuthering Heights" and "The Man With The Child In His Eyes"; then during the tail end of the post-punk era, when she gave us her two most necessary albums, "The Dreaming" and, a little later, "Hounds Of Love"; and, prompted (as so often) by Marcello Carlin (best of luck with the book, fella), with her reappearance, after so many years, with "Aerial".

So, for all intents and purposes, these are (for me) new Kate Bush songs, and if this one is any indication I don't feel I am missing anything by not having the comparison points of the old versions. It's just plain good.

(Listen, particularly, around the four-minute mark, with Mick Karn's timeless bass playing, the swirling electric piano, is that an auto-tuned harmonica?, and Kate's voice getting a bit feral on us. She is, I think this record makes clear, a little bit mad, and a little bit genius. (And the latter is not a word we toss around lightly in these parts.))

Laughing Clowns times two

Found a link to these high-quality live Clowns tunes on the Prince Melon website. This is living.

"Everything That Flies":



"Come One, Come All":

YouTube of the day

"Safety Net", by The Shop Assistants.



This song is as strong a blast of fresh air today as it was 25 years ago.

I actually saw someone wearing one of those Boy George caps the other day. I guess everything comes back.

Song of the day

"Smoking Her Wings", by The Bats.



Let's take a trip back to 1988, a time when Dunedin bands were capable of unfeasible greatness. (And haven't New Zealand done well in the cricket World Cup? Cue the immortal words of Mike Williamson, in a different sporting context: "I tipped this!")

I fell in love with this song the first time I heard it, to the extent that if I ever get back to the list of 50 most important songs in my life, it will be on there. Featuring Alastair Galbraith on violin, not that you can hear it on this video, which is about as lo-fi as you can get (which is somehow fitting for those faraway, home-made days).

Thanks to whoever taped this from Rage and then had the good sense to throw it up on the 'Tube.

The hot new thing that's got the whole world talking

The only thing better than listening to The Beatles is listening to The Beatles In Mono. (Hint: click on the cover pictures for more of what you fancy.)

Ever since I bought my first complete set of Beatles albums on vinyl, in the early eighties, I have been vaguely troubled by the fake stereo separation evident on, particularly, the early albums. You kind of knew that Ringo wasn't really sitting by himself in the far left corner of the room bashing away on the drums while the others were huddled over to the far right, somehow coming together in the centre for the vocals. (You could always fake a mono set-up by pressing the "mono" button on your amplifier but it isn't quite the same, a bit like watching a black and white movie on a colour TV and getting distracted by the residual colour tints on the screen.) And so "The Beatles In Mono" is the answer to a lot of problems. It is also, if you read the hype, The Beatles as The Beatles originally intended. Which, if true, must surely count for something.

A song like "Please Please Me" -- any of them, in fact -- sounds so incredibly fresh and alive today, nearly fifty years later,  that it's impossible to imagine how revolutionary it must have sounded in 1963. "Beatlemania", kids, wasn't just some cynical marketing ploy.

This goes with that (antipodean edition)

The second album by Grinderman is, to my ears, far more satisfying than the first. The perceived intention behind the first album was to locate the precise nature of the change in direction forced upon the Bad Seeds by the departure of Mick Harvey. The brilliance of that plan was borne out by the success of "Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!!", the resultant Seeds record. Thus, in a sense, Grinderman's purpose had been served. And yet Nick Cave, restless old soul that he is, has opted to pick up his guitar for a second time (cue sound of actual musicians the world over gritting their teeth) and, possibly feeling liberated by the fact the Grinderman was no longer a (side) project with a specific job to do, gathered the hirsute rabble together for another album of late-middle-aged sexual angst and disparate shards of noise. Yeah, I like it. (Some people prefer the Bad Seeds. Some liken Grinderman more to the heady days of the Birthday Party. I don't agree with that, but right now I don't see that a stated preference for one aspect of Cave's persona over another serves any useful purpose. It's a bit like (well, not really, but bear with me) Graham Greene, who wrote serious novels and interspersed them with what he called "entertainments": at the end of the day they're all Graham Greene novels.)

Listening to "Palaces of Montezuma", though, I was struck by one thing in particular: musically it is a dead ringer for, albeit slightly more mellow (you heard that right) than, "Theme From 'Mad Flies, Mad Flies'", by the Laughing Clowns. It is so close, in fact, that you half expect those exhilarating Laughing Clowns horns to burst in on cue and disrupt the proceedings and/or take them to a higher plane.

[Sorry, this appears to be the best available on YT. You might have to listen a little more closely than with the studio original but I hope the point is still made.]

It is as if some of the Ed Kuepper magic rubbed off on Cave during Ed's recent(ish) stint as guitarist-for-hire with the Bad Seeds (and, as you know, there are few internal organs I would not have been prepared to part with in return for the chance to see that set-up in action, but, alas, 'twas not to be), and seeped into this song, perhaps by osmosis (or perhaps by design). So what you get is something like two Australian classics rolled up into one neat-o package.

Three songs

One:

"Calamity Song", by The Decemberists.



This is perhaps the least representative song on their new album, and it doesn't include what, for me, is the record's main drawcard, viz., the backing vocals of Gillian Welch. What it does have is Peter Buck on guitar, and, for all of the band's protestations that they weren't going for an REM sound as much as a "Peter Buck" sound, this song carries REM's DNA right down to its bootstraps. The vocal phrasing has more than a fleeting nod to Michael Stipe. The song itself is straight out of the "Fables of the Reconstruction" playbook. And it carries the listener along with the same sense of sweeping exhilaration that REM, once upon a time, did like nobody else (think "Driver 8").

Two:

"Biking Up The Strand", by Peter Baumann. (Click to play; right click to download.)

If I were ever to do another radio show (I won't), this would be the opening track each week. At least, until I got sick of it. Which isn't likely to happen any time soon. A lost gem of (although not really "of") the post-punk era.

Three:

"Limit To Your Love", by James Blake.



It's difficult to know what to make of the self-titled debut album by James Blake. It has been the centre of such a media shitstorm in the UK, and a lightning rod for so many divergent (and vehement) opinions, that it is probably going to take a while to assess it on its own terms. (It seems from this distance like half of London wants to put him on a pedestal and the other half wants to tear him limb from limb.) And it's true that releasing this song, a cover of the much-loved Feist original (from the thinking person's mother's-day present of 2008), as a teaser for the album was always going to be an accident waiting to happen, whether Blake knew it (unleashing his inner McLaren, perhaps) or not (the latter being more likely, I suspect).

It seems to me that the album is being subjected to much more weight than it was ever intended to carry. When you consider how different the album is from the EPs that preceded it, and how different the EPs were from each other, the picture is that of an exceptionally talented young artist trying on different clothes in an effort to figure out which ones suit him best, and this album is merely the most recent of those changes of clothing.

I deliberately avoided hearing the song until I could listen to it in the context of the album, but, even so, "Limit To Your Love", which sits literally and figuratively at the centre of the record, burns so bright that it sucks all of the air out of everything around it. (When the dub(step) drops, you realise you are witnessing something special.) It will take some time for it to find its place, but time is something that this album has on its side.

Song of the day

"The Great X-1", by The Informatics.

(Click to play. Right click to download.) (Somebody please let me know if this works. I am experimenting with something.)

With synth wave, cold wave, minimal wave or whatever wave being one of the flavours of 2010/11, it is worth remembering that Australia had a very strong synth-band contingent back around the start of the 80s.

Imagine: the small bar at an inner-city pub. The band: a shocking sight. No drums. No guitars. A couple of people on synths and a programmed drum machine. Guys in the band: extremely thin with severely fringed haircuts. Girls: black skirts and stockings, maybe with a horizontally striped t-shirt. Black and red perhaps. Quite possibly somebody up the front wiggling around and bashing a Syndrum (tm) to the second and fourth beats. As Phil Oakey sang, these are the things that dreams are made of.

This song is a good example of what this country was capable of. In fleeting moments it gets a bit proto-Kids In The Kitchen, but those moments soon pass. I think they were from Melbourne but I might be wrong. Biographical information is hard to come by.

You can also listen here, while looking at a typical early-80s post-industrial-type picture:

Song of the day

"Sticky Music", by Sandii & The Sunsetz.



Some things just stick in your mind.

Surprisingly, this was something of a hit in Australia. Surprisingly not because it isn't a very catchy song (it is), but because Japanese acts (I think it's fair to say; no research undertaken) tend not to do well here. Which is our loss, considering that they are at least the equals of anyone else in the world in so many genres of music, from psychedelic freak-outs to reggae to doom metal to noise to the sheer genius that is j-pop. In some ways it is a crying shame that Japan is not a part of Eurovision. Except that it would end up winning every year, thus spoiling everybody else's fun.

Haruomi Hosono (YMO) wrote the music for, and produced, this song. Curiously, there is a strong David Sylvian connection with Sandii & The Sunsetz. I had no idea. I love the internet.

YouTubes of the day

Comic Relief edition.


In which Noel Fielding channels his inner Kate Bush:





and Adrian Edmondson portrays the dying swan (with some help from another familiar face):

Commercial Zone

Get these while they're hot.

Always check the asterisk.

Found in the New Yorker, early 1961.

Click to enlarge.

Ain't no sunshine when she's gone

Yesterday we said goodbye to Ella, the little black St Kilda street cat who has been with us almost forever. She has been an integral part of our family for all of the boys' lives, and well before that, and we will miss her. We were lucky to have her around for so long, I suppose, but just now that's not how we are feeling.

YouTube of the day

"United Provinces of India", by Cornershop.



You may have thought that Cornershop released "Brimful of Asha" back in 1996 and then stopped. You would be wrong. They have released two albums and several singles since then, all of them excellent. They might have raised a middle finger to the music industry, but that's not the same thing. This clip would appear to be a track from their forthcoming album and is as infectious and uplifting as ever.