Here are my top 10 albums by women or fronted by women. I'm only doing one per artist because Patti Smith made eleven studio albums so that wouldn't be fair to anyone else. Nevertheless, I begin with my favourite Patti Smith album. The links are to tracks from each album but not necessarily the version on the album.
1) Gone Again - Patti Smith.
Choosing my favourite Patti Smith album is an herculean task. Do I pick the first one I ever owned? (Easter) How about the one that was on rotation on my mp3 player in the days when I had no choice but to take a daily 2 hour bus journey to and another from work? (Radio Ethiopia) Or the one with my favourite track on it? (Close fight between Horse - Land; Gone Again - Summer Cannibals; Gung Ho - Glitter in their Eyes) Or maybe the most personal one? (Dream of Life). In the end, I let my subconscious (whose name, as many of you know, is Emily) choose.
2) Cut - The Slits
Time was, if I wanted to eat, I'd have to go visit my friend Tom who was a cook. Whenever I did, there were three artists he would play over and over again. One was an obscure poet from Plymouth whose name I've forgotten. One was the Birthday Party and the other, the greatest of the three was the Slits. This album is part of my musical DNA.
3) Mambo Nassau - Lizzy Mercier Descloux
You know me. You know there will be foreign stuff, don't you. But did you expect this?
4) Germfree Adolescents - X-Ray Spex
I may have mentioned this before. I saw X-Ray Spex at Cambridge Corn Exchange when they were promoting it.
5) Feast - The Creatures
It was hard to decide which of Siouxsie's albums to choose. It could be several both by the Creatures and by the Banshees. In the end, this one shades it for sheer quantity of jaw-dropping awesomeness.
6) Def, Dumb and Blonde - Deborah Harry
On the other hand, I didn't find it even a little hard to choose my favourite Deborah Harry Album. I admit there are great tracks on most of Blondie's but as an album... well this is it.
7) Trøllabundin - Eivør
Another foreign one. Eivør Pálsdóttir is just amazing and the song Trollabundin, where she sings, growls and plays a frame-drum still makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck. This is not the version on the album. On the album, she was accompanied by the Danish Radio Orchestra.
8) Ya Nass - Yasmine Hamdane
It was a tossup between the last Soap Kills album, Enta Fen or this, and given this is about female albums and much of what makes Soap Kills special is the keyboard work of Zeid Hamdane (no relation).
9) Fleshwounds - Skin
As in many cases the question is, how do I choose between Skunk Anansie/Skin albums. I have no idea how, but I played this until the CD wore out so yannow, this is it.
10) Beautiful Garbage - Garbage.
Shirley Manson... what can I say, she's awesome..
And it hurts hurts HURTS to leave out, Imogen Heap, Bjork, Ute Lemper, Nouvelle Vague, Kate Bush, Peaches, Anais, Sandra Nasic/Guano Apes, Joan Jett, Nico, Julie Fowlis, Sinead O'Connor, Hazel O'Connor, Tatu, Bessie Smith, Billie Holliday, Mahalia Jackson, Grace Jones, Fatal Microbes, Poison Girls not to mention some personal friends such as Phoenix Chroi, Sleaze Asylum, Yur Mum and GUTTFULL.
Sunday, 15 April 2018
Sunday, 19 March 2017
Chuck Berry
Charles Anderson 'Chuck' Berry died yesterday at the age of 90. He was survived by: Themetta, his wife of 68 Years; four children, Ingrid, Chuck Junior, Aloha and Melody; and by Rock'n'Roll to which he gave birth on a lonely road outside Chicago Illinois in 1955.
Okay, that's an exaggeration. It was Chess Studios and not a lonely back road. The song was Maybellene and without it things might have been so different.
Charles was born into a Middle Class black family in St Louis Missouri on 18 October 1926. His father, Henry Berry was a carpenter and a deacon at Antioch Baptist Church while his mother, Martha was one of the few black women of his generation to go to college. In those days, St Louis was so segregated that, growing up in the Ville, a self-contained community where all businesses and churches were run by black people, Chuck was three years old before he saw white people for the first time when some white firemen came to put out a fire.
One musician who said Chuck Berry was a great influence, was Keef Richards. Although I'm pretty sure Keef never did the duckwalk like Chuck. As well as Keef, Chuck Berry often played with other musicians, such as John Lennon (and Yoko Ono), Tina Turner and even Gerry and the Pacemakers
I think my favourite song from Mr Berry was 'Memphis Tennessee': yes despite the cutesy or creepy (depending on point of view) ending. In 1972, he recorded a version for Top of the Pops on BBC TV which was one of the funniest attempts at making the miming obvious, not equalled until the Stranglers.
Of course, Chuck famously sang Can't Catch Me back in 1956 but the truth is, he did get caught and was incarcerated several times, in 1944 for armed robbery while still at high school. He served three years in a reformatory during which time he learned to box (something Keef Richards would later learn to his regret) and formed a singing group.
He was released from the reformatory on his twenty first birthday but he also had further periods in jail as an adult. 1n 1959, after he allegedly had sexual intercourse with a fourteen year old girl who he had hired as a hat check girl and transported across state lines he was sentenced to five years in jail. However, his appeal that the judge was biased on the grounds of his racism was upheld and after a retrial with a different judge, he was sentenced to three years of which he served 18 months in 1962 and 63. As a result of his conviction, when Chuck was awarded the Polar Music Prize in 2014, Queen Sylvia and her youngest daughter Princess Madeleine of Sweden refused to attend the award ceremony in Stockholm.
In 1972, Chuck released a novelty single "My Ding-a-Ling" which he had often played as "My Tambourine". This was castigated by Mary Whitehouse' Viewers and Listeners Association, now known as Mediawatch-UK who claimed it was about masturbation. Chuck never lost popularity though, even playing in the White House for Jimmy Carter in 1979.
A month after playing for the President, Chuck again went to prison, this time serving 4 months and 1000 hours of community service (the latter consisting of free concerts.)
He continued performing write until the end but on 18 March 2017, police were called to his house and found him unresponsive and he was declared dead at 10:40AM (17:40 GMT).
Okay, that's an exaggeration. It was Chess Studios and not a lonely back road. The song was Maybellene and without it things might have been so different.
Charles was born into a Middle Class black family in St Louis Missouri on 18 October 1926. His father, Henry Berry was a carpenter and a deacon at Antioch Baptist Church while his mother, Martha was one of the few black women of his generation to go to college. In those days, St Louis was so segregated that, growing up in the Ville, a self-contained community where all businesses and churches were run by black people, Chuck was three years old before he saw white people for the first time when some white firemen came to put out a fire.
One musician who said Chuck Berry was a great influence, was Keef Richards. Although I'm pretty sure Keef never did the duckwalk like Chuck. As well as Keef, Chuck Berry often played with other musicians, such as John Lennon (and Yoko Ono), Tina Turner and even Gerry and the Pacemakers
I think my favourite song from Mr Berry was 'Memphis Tennessee': yes despite the cutesy or creepy (depending on point of view) ending. In 1972, he recorded a version for Top of the Pops on BBC TV which was one of the funniest attempts at making the miming obvious, not equalled until the Stranglers.
Of course, Chuck famously sang Can't Catch Me back in 1956 but the truth is, he did get caught and was incarcerated several times, in 1944 for armed robbery while still at high school. He served three years in a reformatory during which time he learned to box (something Keef Richards would later learn to his regret) and formed a singing group.
He was released from the reformatory on his twenty first birthday but he also had further periods in jail as an adult. 1n 1959, after he allegedly had sexual intercourse with a fourteen year old girl who he had hired as a hat check girl and transported across state lines he was sentenced to five years in jail. However, his appeal that the judge was biased on the grounds of his racism was upheld and after a retrial with a different judge, he was sentenced to three years of which he served 18 months in 1962 and 63. As a result of his conviction, when Chuck was awarded the Polar Music Prize in 2014, Queen Sylvia and her youngest daughter Princess Madeleine of Sweden refused to attend the award ceremony in Stockholm.
In 1972, Chuck released a novelty single "My Ding-a-Ling" which he had often played as "My Tambourine". This was castigated by Mary Whitehouse' Viewers and Listeners Association, now known as Mediawatch-UK who claimed it was about masturbation. Chuck never lost popularity though, even playing in the White House for Jimmy Carter in 1979.
A month after playing for the President, Chuck again went to prison, this time serving 4 months and 1000 hours of community service (the latter consisting of free concerts.)
He continued performing write until the end but on 18 March 2017, police were called to his house and found him unresponsive and he was declared dead at 10:40AM (17:40 GMT).
Wednesday, 1 February 2017
Phase Transition
For too long, I've been toiling away at a shitty job with the Department of Health. Yesterday was my last day. Wahey! And so on to vistas new, but first let me 'review' my own leaving do, because I loved it. We played at the Alleycat, under Regent Studios in Denmark Street - the original Tin Pan Alley, where the Rolling Stones cut their first album and where the Kinks recorded, You Really Got Me.
Because I'd hired the venue not for a commercial gig but for a private party (although I kept the doors open for anyone who wished to come in) the barman/soundman did not know what to expect. I told him to expect punk. "Ah but what kind of punk?" he asked so of course, I told him. New York Punk. I'm gratified that he instantly came back with "Like Richard Hell and the Void-Oids". Yeah, a lot like that I hope.
I had planned originally to begin with Edelweiss Pirates UK but with Sho and Chris on their own tour in India, John Giltrow and I played the shortstaffed version. In the past, John and I have played as the shortstaffed version of e-Cog Zero so last night, we decided instead to be, just for one night, "Weaponised Kafka" (since John has been a vaping activist since he stopped smoking two years ago).
There's no recording of us as yet, but much of what we did was covers, beginning with Bella Ciao and ending with Edelweiss. I messed up several times, forgetting words and once or twice getting lost. Didn't matter cause we played it for laughs and even had one song (Effervescing Elephant) where I did nothing.
Next came Spirit of the Age, despite the name, they cover Hawkwind but they're not a tribute band, they're more punkadelic than psychedelic. Imagine if you will, Hawkwind played by Devo. The acoustics in the Alleycat is such that I could hear every word Paul Maybin spoke or sang.
Next came e-Cog Zero and this time, I made no mistakes. We sang eight of the nine songs we'll be recording on our forthcoming album, which we will be recording in March. We're still working on number nine, Lipgloss, but in its place we played our beloved Cherry Bomb and then for an encore, Sympathy for Lilith.
Finally along came Guttfull, womonfully stepping into the breach due to the non availability of the Wimmin's Institute, who split up this month.
Guttful were marvellous. I've seen a review suggesting singer, Moe sounds like Kathleen Hanna, and the band does have some resemblance to Bikini Kill, but in my head, the resemblance is more to Honey Bane and the Fatal Microbes. Regardless of who they sounded like, they were awesome.
So a great evening was had by all and as my bass player said, We'll have to get Guttfull to play at Tottenham Chances because they are brilliant and will soon be big... and we've got to get Spirit of the Age to play there because it would be awesome to have them play with Captain Rizz.
Watch this space.
Because I'd hired the venue not for a commercial gig but for a private party (although I kept the doors open for anyone who wished to come in) the barman/soundman did not know what to expect. I told him to expect punk. "Ah but what kind of punk?" he asked so of course, I told him. New York Punk. I'm gratified that he instantly came back with "Like Richard Hell and the Void-Oids". Yeah, a lot like that I hope.
I had planned originally to begin with Edelweiss Pirates UK but with Sho and Chris on their own tour in India, John Giltrow and I played the shortstaffed version. In the past, John and I have played as the shortstaffed version of e-Cog Zero so last night, we decided instead to be, just for one night, "Weaponised Kafka" (since John has been a vaping activist since he stopped smoking two years ago).
There's no recording of us as yet, but much of what we did was covers, beginning with Bella Ciao and ending with Edelweiss. I messed up several times, forgetting words and once or twice getting lost. Didn't matter cause we played it for laughs and even had one song (Effervescing Elephant) where I did nothing.
Next came Spirit of the Age, despite the name, they cover Hawkwind but they're not a tribute band, they're more punkadelic than psychedelic. Imagine if you will, Hawkwind played by Devo. The acoustics in the Alleycat is such that I could hear every word Paul Maybin spoke or sang.
Next came e-Cog Zero and this time, I made no mistakes. We sang eight of the nine songs we'll be recording on our forthcoming album, which we will be recording in March. We're still working on number nine, Lipgloss, but in its place we played our beloved Cherry Bomb and then for an encore, Sympathy for Lilith.
Finally along came Guttfull, womonfully stepping into the breach due to the non availability of the Wimmin's Institute, who split up this month.
Guttful were marvellous. I've seen a review suggesting singer, Moe sounds like Kathleen Hanna, and the band does have some resemblance to Bikini Kill, but in my head, the resemblance is more to Honey Bane and the Fatal Microbes. Regardless of who they sounded like, they were awesome.
So a great evening was had by all and as my bass player said, We'll have to get Guttfull to play at Tottenham Chances because they are brilliant and will soon be big... and we've got to get Spirit of the Age to play there because it would be awesome to have them play with Captain Rizz.
Watch this space.
Saturday, 31 December 2016
These are the dead
It sure seems to have been a bumper year for daisies being pushed up by those who have mattered to us, musically. Here are a few, and no, not all because I'm not that kind of obsessive.
1) Bowie
1) Bowie
- The year began with Blackstar and the end of Bowie.
- Suddenly, the buskers of London, who for as long as I had been here had played House of the Rising Sun, began playing Starman. Not as well as Bowie but what the hey!.
- We had a gig early in January and we'd already planned tributes to Lemmy, namely Silver Machine and 1916 so there was no room for a Bowie tribute song so what did we do?
- Instead I inserted Future Legend into Abyss and we played a chorus of Jean Genie in the middle of our version of Sympathy for the Devil.
- I never got Bowie when he first came out. I saw Space Oddity on Top of the Pops as a child and liked the SF theme because that was my specialist subject at age nine but I never understood Bowie after that until Heroes came out and I saw the blessed Nico doing it.
- Around the same time, I saw Christiane F and understood Christiane's obsession with him as he stood above the adoring Berlin crowds and sang Station to Station.
- So then I looked at Bowie's back catalogue and discovered such brilliant gems as Running Gun Blues, Panic in Detroit, John I'm Only Dancing and Rebel Rebel.
- And I'd forgotten how good Mick Ronson was!
- Prince too, what is the world coming to?
- Not much of his work is available out there on the Internet.
- I love 1999, and When Doves Cry and Sign O the Times
- But here's Purple Rain!
- Of course, another artist associated with Prince, namely Vanity also died this year.
- But this was the year that we were reminded that you don't need to be a celebrity for your death to be heard worldwide. When Viola Beach plunged into a Swedish Canal and died along with their manager in February, their songs Boys That Sing and Swings and Waterslides went straight into the charts.
- In August their debut (and only) album "Viola Beach" reached number 1 in the Album Charts.
- Vi Subversa aka Frances Sokolov died in February aged 80.
- Not only was she a punk icon in her own right in Poison Girls, but she was also the mother of Pete Fender and Gem Stone of Fatal Microbes and later Rubella Ballet.
- Just after Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize, I remember saying it should have been Leonard Cohen.
- Shortly afterward Leonard Cohen died. Here are some of the songs that made me love his lyrics so:
- The Traitor; If It Be Your Will; The Future (here shown in Natural Born Killers); First We Take Manhattan.
- But the song we chose to cover in tribute was Democracy, of course, what with him dying after the Presidential election.
- The thing with Cohen though was that despite a marvellous voice, his songs bring out marvellous covers from other singers.
- I particularly love Imogen Heap's version (the one they used when Marissa died in the OC).
Friday, 8 April 2016
Chinn and Chapman top 5
Chinn
and Chapman were powerhouses in seventies pop. I for one, think I
might have enjoyed the seventies more than I did if they had composed
more of the music that formed the soundtrack to what I experienced as
an horrific decade. These are my top five.
1.
Can the Can by Suzi Quatro was the song that had everything.
Starting with those lovely drums. And then Suzi's voice, and the
clapping in time, and the words and the images it invokes. This to
me was beautiful. Suzi was beautiful. Hell, she still is!
2.
Heart of Glass by Blondie brought delicious irony to disco. Or
rather, it made explicit the irony that had already been there. I
love this. It's my karaoke party piece.
3.
Teenage Rampage by Sweet well what can I say? From the start with
the sinister sounds of the Sweet fans, calling for them as if they
were fascist dictators, Sweet wanted to do hard rock but Chinn and
Chapman made them do pop. Yeah but it was magnificent pop. Hard
pop. Dirty, rocky pop. Love it? Not 'arf!
4.
Mickey by Toni Basil! Oh Mickey you so fine, you so fine you blow my
mind! Toni may have been a one hit wonder but Chapman definitely was
not.
5. Love is a Battlefield by Pat Benatar is more lovely pop. I first saw it on a mixtape sent by a dear friend just after she went home to St Paul Mn. (glad to say she lives in Portland Or. now). And then it was used in 13 going on 30. It reminded me of the adolescence of the girl I never was but longed to be.
5. Love is a Battlefield by Pat Benatar is more lovely pop. I first saw it on a mixtape sent by a dear friend just after she went home to St Paul Mn. (glad to say she lives in Portland Or. now). And then it was used in 13 going on 30. It reminded me of the adolescence of the girl I never was but longed to be.
Hurts
to leave out. Devil Gate Drive, Living Next Door to Alice, Ballroom
Blitz, Fox on the Run. Probably more but I got distracted and
listening to Queen and smiling and remembering good times.
Friday, 18 March 2016
Pogues Top Five
The Pogues. What can I say. Not my favourite band of Irish musicians but they WERE the band that got me listening again as an adult to music I'd only listened to as a kid because I had no choice because it was part of my heritage. I borrowed my brother's cassette copy of Rum Sodomy and the Lash and in the year I kept it, I damn near wore it out. These are my favourites, probably, although this is subject to change.
1) A Pair of Brown Eyes
My folks, those who came from Ireland, had, I believe I've said before, left before Wolfe Tone was a hop in his father's beer. This song speaks to me in clear tones with ancestors speaking to a transplanted son in another bog with forty different shades of green. We're drunk we are, so many of us and everything is as everything should be, and we should have fought but we never did. And the shame of it could have killed us, or it could have been the making of us. And the only thing that I could see was a pair of brown eyes that were looking at me, but when we got back, labelled 'parts one to three' there was no pair of brown eyes looking for me.
2) Thousands Are Sailing
To leave home and become an immigrant. That's the thing that happened to so many. And it happens still. I could have been an economic migrant myself and many of my ancestors were. That is why in my mind, refugees are always welcome here even if we hadn't cause them all ourselves. A song like this, so beautiful, so brave. I wonder how it would sound in Arabic, or Syriac or Pashto?
3) Body of An American
A song my feet won't sit still for and words that are poetry to stir my heart. There's many a wake from my time as a child. I remember them as better than weddings because at weddings the whole clan was on its so-called best behaviour. Not for a wake though. No not for a wake. Come on lads, "I'm a free-born man of the U S A".
4) If I should Fall From Grace With God
These tinker feet were made to dance to this. A perfect dance tune oh yes it is, and the lyrics are so damned good, a prayer to a god who isn't listening. What's not to like? A scream a scream and a rebel yell.
5) The Boys From The County Hell
Traditional this one so it is, and there has to be something traditional with a band that worked so hard to keep the old traditions even as they screamed the rage of PUNK! at the city in which they found themselves. London Irish at its best.
Hurts to leave out... Sally MacLennane, Sick Bed of Cu'chullain, London Lullaby, Dirty Old Town, And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda, The Leaving of Liverpool, The Irish Rover and yes, of COURSE A Fairytale of New York.
1) A Pair of Brown Eyes
My folks, those who came from Ireland, had, I believe I've said before, left before Wolfe Tone was a hop in his father's beer. This song speaks to me in clear tones with ancestors speaking to a transplanted son in another bog with forty different shades of green. We're drunk we are, so many of us and everything is as everything should be, and we should have fought but we never did. And the shame of it could have killed us, or it could have been the making of us. And the only thing that I could see was a pair of brown eyes that were looking at me, but when we got back, labelled 'parts one to three' there was no pair of brown eyes looking for me.
2) Thousands Are Sailing
To leave home and become an immigrant. That's the thing that happened to so many. And it happens still. I could have been an economic migrant myself and many of my ancestors were. That is why in my mind, refugees are always welcome here even if we hadn't cause them all ourselves. A song like this, so beautiful, so brave. I wonder how it would sound in Arabic, or Syriac or Pashto?
3) Body of An American
A song my feet won't sit still for and words that are poetry to stir my heart. There's many a wake from my time as a child. I remember them as better than weddings because at weddings the whole clan was on its so-called best behaviour. Not for a wake though. No not for a wake. Come on lads, "I'm a free-born man of the U S A".
4) If I should Fall From Grace With God
These tinker feet were made to dance to this. A perfect dance tune oh yes it is, and the lyrics are so damned good, a prayer to a god who isn't listening. What's not to like? A scream a scream and a rebel yell.
5) The Boys From The County Hell
Traditional this one so it is, and there has to be something traditional with a band that worked so hard to keep the old traditions even as they screamed the rage of PUNK! at the city in which they found themselves. London Irish at its best.
Hurts to leave out... Sally MacLennane, Sick Bed of Cu'chullain, London Lullaby, Dirty Old Town, And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda, The Leaving of Liverpool, The Irish Rover and yes, of COURSE A Fairytale of New York.
Sunday, 14 February 2016
5 de Brel et 5 PAR Brel
I first came across Jacques Brel in my teens when I saw the film Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris directed by French-Canadian wunderkind, Denis Héroux. The film was released to universal critical disacclaim (or whatever the opposite of acclaim is) but to pretty, fifteen year old unreconstructed Emily (my good self), it was marvellous.
I'm going to begin with my favourite covers of Brel because that means, I get to listen again to my favourites from Héroux's film, and dear old Joe Masiell and Mort Shuman. Alors!
1) The Port of Amsterdam by Dresden Dolls.
It's the Dresden Dolls, the fucking Dresden Dolls. Brel was invented for Amanda Palmer, and she was invented for Brel. This is my favourite song by Brel and this is my second favourite version (and my favourite by anybody whose name is not Brel)
2) The Bulls by Nastascia Diaz
Now I can't find the version by Joe Masiell from the film (obviously) Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris. I could see why the bull was pissed off that day. I was snorting and growling along with him and with Joe Masiell's Marine. And so, here's one from a live version of the film. Ms Diaz brings different qualities to the song, and yet, I am just as delighted by this version.
3) The Statue by Joe Masiell
When I first watched THAT film, I barely noticed this one, but now, listening through. I come to this and think, yeah. They make statues of the assholes, and even the assholes weep. I love it, and so...
4) The Old Folks by Elly Stone
I loved Brecht's September Song, which ploughs a similar furrow, but this is horribly beautiful. You always live too far away when you've lived lived so long. Elly's voice is clear as a bell and the words pierce straight into the centre of the brain, and that barb carries Brel's delicious venom. The old folks never die, they just go to sleep one day.
5) Jackie by Camille O'Sullivan
I first heard Camille covering Nick Cave's the Mercy Seat. I once dragged my wife to Edinburgh JUST because Camille was playing at the festival. Still never saw her then though. And so, this too makes the cut.
And so, without any of Marc Almond's fabulous oeuvre. Without Mort Shuman's version of Amsterdam. Without Bowie. Without Piaf. Yes, it hurts to leave all those out but you know what? It is Brel himself that matters most.
And so let's carry on to see my top five numbers by Brel himself.
1) Le Port d'Amsterdam
Time was, my favourite would have been les Taureau until a Greek friend sent me a link to the video in which Brel sings so passionately the song which has become my favourite. Brel is so deliciously ugly that Emily pines for him and so filled with passion that when Brel sings this, I too want to sing. Marvellous.
2) Ne Me Quitte Pas!
There are so many cover versions of this that I could take or leave, but this, the original with Brel himself singing. Mois je ne lui JAMAIS quitterai. Never would, never could. How could anyone.
3) Les Bourgeois
I love it when Brel sings these vicious little pieces in such a jolly voice. It sounds like a song you could sing along to... and yet, listening to the words, we are reminded that Brel was a punk and a beautiful punk at that.
4) Jef
There is always that we have lost. There are always times we wish to smile and show we have no regrets. This is sharky for me. A trigger but I love it. Et moi je ne regrette rien!
5 Les Désespérés
I heard this for the first time today. A song of broken hope. Of course I'm going to love it and listen until the blood comes out of the dansette. And some time from now, this may become my favourite.
And it hurts to leave out every song I mentioned in the covers, plus Quand Maman Reviendra, and Seul, L'Amour et Mort, Fernand, Jojo, Mathilde, Marieke, Ces Gens La, A Suivre and so on and on.
I'm going to begin with my favourite covers of Brel because that means, I get to listen again to my favourites from Héroux's film, and dear old Joe Masiell and Mort Shuman. Alors!
1) The Port of Amsterdam by Dresden Dolls.
It's the Dresden Dolls, the fucking Dresden Dolls. Brel was invented for Amanda Palmer, and she was invented for Brel. This is my favourite song by Brel and this is my second favourite version (and my favourite by anybody whose name is not Brel)
2) The Bulls by Nastascia Diaz
Now I can't find the version by Joe Masiell from the film (obviously) Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris. I could see why the bull was pissed off that day. I was snorting and growling along with him and with Joe Masiell's Marine. And so, here's one from a live version of the film. Ms Diaz brings different qualities to the song, and yet, I am just as delighted by this version.
3) The Statue by Joe Masiell
When I first watched THAT film, I barely noticed this one, but now, listening through. I come to this and think, yeah. They make statues of the assholes, and even the assholes weep. I love it, and so...
4) The Old Folks by Elly Stone
I loved Brecht's September Song, which ploughs a similar furrow, but this is horribly beautiful. You always live too far away when you've lived lived so long. Elly's voice is clear as a bell and the words pierce straight into the centre of the brain, and that barb carries Brel's delicious venom. The old folks never die, they just go to sleep one day.
5) Jackie by Camille O'Sullivan
I first heard Camille covering Nick Cave's the Mercy Seat. I once dragged my wife to Edinburgh JUST because Camille was playing at the festival. Still never saw her then though. And so, this too makes the cut.
And so, without any of Marc Almond's fabulous oeuvre. Without Mort Shuman's version of Amsterdam. Without Bowie. Without Piaf. Yes, it hurts to leave all those out but you know what? It is Brel himself that matters most.
And so let's carry on to see my top five numbers by Brel himself.
1) Le Port d'Amsterdam
Time was, my favourite would have been les Taureau until a Greek friend sent me a link to the video in which Brel sings so passionately the song which has become my favourite. Brel is so deliciously ugly that Emily pines for him and so filled with passion that when Brel sings this, I too want to sing. Marvellous.
2) Ne Me Quitte Pas!
There are so many cover versions of this that I could take or leave, but this, the original with Brel himself singing. Mois je ne lui JAMAIS quitterai. Never would, never could. How could anyone.
3) Les Bourgeois
I love it when Brel sings these vicious little pieces in such a jolly voice. It sounds like a song you could sing along to... and yet, listening to the words, we are reminded that Brel was a punk and a beautiful punk at that.
4) Jef
There is always that we have lost. There are always times we wish to smile and show we have no regrets. This is sharky for me. A trigger but I love it. Et moi je ne regrette rien!
5 Les Désespérés
I heard this for the first time today. A song of broken hope. Of course I'm going to love it and listen until the blood comes out of the dansette. And some time from now, this may become my favourite.
And it hurts to leave out every song I mentioned in the covers, plus Quand Maman Reviendra, and Seul, L'Amour et Mort, Fernand, Jojo, Mathilde, Marieke, Ces Gens La, A Suivre and so on and on.
Sunday, 29 November 2015
Nirvana Top Five
As Kurt Cobain fades into history and poor old Courtney remains to be withered by age like the rest of us, Nirvana become less a band and more an icon. Cards on the table city. I own a copy of Bleach but for some unreason never bought Nevermind. Nevertheless, I do love both and I'm not going to just pick from Bleach, cause I'm not that kind of pretentious.
1. Lithium - There is little I can say to this. I love this because I've lived it so often and so long. When Kurt died, well you know, it's only because Courtney said "A fucking lie" as she read his suicide note. Courtney saved a lot of lives that day. This is my favourite.
2. Sliver - Still hurts so damn good to listen.
3. Heart Shaped Box has beautiful lyrics and beautiful music to compliment Kurt Cobain's lovely, lovely voice. I love the way the guitars shred as Kurt's voice starts to change from melancholy melody to an angry fractious scream.
4. Smells Like Teen Spirit - I am not one of those people who pretends not to love this because it's been done to death. So no, Weird Al, this song does make sense to me and I love everybody's version, even Paul Anka's, but nevertheless, Nirvana's performance of this was seminal.
5. About a Girl, in which Kurt Cobain sings melodically like Neil Young's choirboy and on Bleach there was some awesome guitar work to back it up, but yannow, thought I'd give the unplugged version a go, cause I loves it so.
Hurts to leave out In Bloom, Tourettes, You Know You're Right, Sifting and that's just the ones I'm thinking of right now. Oh wait, Come as You Are, can't forget Come as You Are can I? And on and on it goes.
1. Lithium - There is little I can say to this. I love this because I've lived it so often and so long. When Kurt died, well you know, it's only because Courtney said "A fucking lie" as she read his suicide note. Courtney saved a lot of lives that day. This is my favourite.
2. Sliver - Still hurts so damn good to listen.
3. Heart Shaped Box has beautiful lyrics and beautiful music to compliment Kurt Cobain's lovely, lovely voice. I love the way the guitars shred as Kurt's voice starts to change from melancholy melody to an angry fractious scream.
4. Smells Like Teen Spirit - I am not one of those people who pretends not to love this because it's been done to death. So no, Weird Al, this song does make sense to me and I love everybody's version, even Paul Anka's, but nevertheless, Nirvana's performance of this was seminal.
5. About a Girl, in which Kurt Cobain sings melodically like Neil Young's choirboy and on Bleach there was some awesome guitar work to back it up, but yannow, thought I'd give the unplugged version a go, cause I loves it so.
Hurts to leave out In Bloom, Tourettes, You Know You're Right, Sifting and that's just the ones I'm thinking of right now. Oh wait, Come as You Are, can't forget Come as You Are can I? And on and on it goes.
Sunday, 27 September 2015
Music of Irish Origin
Layzangentlefiends. I get asked so often to come up with a top five of a particular artist. Sometimes I copy them here, sometimes I don't, but this week, for the first time in ages, I said no. No Ladies and Gentlemen, I am NOT going to do a Todd Rundgren top five. Ain't gonna happen. Nosirree Bob!. Instead, I'm going to do my very own MOIO (music of Irish origin) awards. So without further ado, here they are.
And rather than begin with a number one, I thought why not begin with a theme tune for the whole show. I'm not judging this tune at all, merely placing it, as a traditional tune at the beginning and end. So we begin with a version by the Dubliners. So take your seats as you listen to the traditional song Oró sé do bheatha 'bhaile. This is the modern version updated by Padraig Pearse, who among other things changed the leader who will come with a thousand warriors from Séarlas Óg to Gráinne Mhaol
1 Let's begin with Sinead O'Connor. Well obviously, of course I'm going to choose Sinead. The question is, will I choose, "This is a Rebel Song", or "This is the Last Day of Our Acquaintance", or maybe "Troy"? All of those are marvellous songs but I'm going to pick "Famine", which tells the truth about the Great Hunger, often called the 'Famine' by those who would call it a natural event. I confess that my own Irish ancestors left Ireland long before the Hunger, and even before the Wolf Tone Rebellion and became travelling people, but that doesn't mean this song doesn't make perfect sense to me.
2 I've noticed that with this one exception, I've chosen solo artists. But my favourite Irish band is Stiff Little Fingers, and in defining them as such, I have of course defined Ireland with the most inclusive possible definition. Might as well pick this one then mightn't I? Alternative Ulster!
3 Christy Moore wrote some brilliant songs, such as "Viva La Quinta Brigada", many find themselves sung by crowds, but he's also a fine singer. And a man who sings that which is Truth to those who need to hear. This is my favourite "If They Come In The Morning"
4 Shane McGowan produced some brilliant work in his career, from that Christmas Song that gets played so much we have to pretend we don't like it, to The Snake With Eyes of Garnet, but my favourite is this. A Pair of Brown Eyes.
5 Luke Kelly cannot be missed from any list of Irish music. A singer so great, a man so famous, they names a bridge after him. A man loved on all sides and here he sings Patrick Kavanagh's "On Raglan Road".
There are so many I regret having to leave out. Teenage Kicks by the Undertones. Much of Mary Black's Gaelic work. The Wolfe Tones, even the Boomtown Rats but that's all there is so let's go back to the theme tune. It's a song sung by so many Irish artists. I could have had Sinead or th Wolfetones singing it but let's go for the great Mary Black. Goodnight.
And rather than begin with a number one, I thought why not begin with a theme tune for the whole show. I'm not judging this tune at all, merely placing it, as a traditional tune at the beginning and end. So we begin with a version by the Dubliners. So take your seats as you listen to the traditional song Oró sé do bheatha 'bhaile. This is the modern version updated by Padraig Pearse, who among other things changed the leader who will come with a thousand warriors from Séarlas Óg to Gráinne Mhaol
1 Let's begin with Sinead O'Connor. Well obviously, of course I'm going to choose Sinead. The question is, will I choose, "This is a Rebel Song", or "This is the Last Day of Our Acquaintance", or maybe "Troy"? All of those are marvellous songs but I'm going to pick "Famine", which tells the truth about the Great Hunger, often called the 'Famine' by those who would call it a natural event. I confess that my own Irish ancestors left Ireland long before the Hunger, and even before the Wolf Tone Rebellion and became travelling people, but that doesn't mean this song doesn't make perfect sense to me.
2 I've noticed that with this one exception, I've chosen solo artists. But my favourite Irish band is Stiff Little Fingers, and in defining them as such, I have of course defined Ireland with the most inclusive possible definition. Might as well pick this one then mightn't I? Alternative Ulster!
3 Christy Moore wrote some brilliant songs, such as "Viva La Quinta Brigada", many find themselves sung by crowds, but he's also a fine singer. And a man who sings that which is Truth to those who need to hear. This is my favourite "If They Come In The Morning"
4 Shane McGowan produced some brilliant work in his career, from that Christmas Song that gets played so much we have to pretend we don't like it, to The Snake With Eyes of Garnet, but my favourite is this. A Pair of Brown Eyes.
5 Luke Kelly cannot be missed from any list of Irish music. A singer so great, a man so famous, they names a bridge after him. A man loved on all sides and here he sings Patrick Kavanagh's "On Raglan Road".
There are so many I regret having to leave out. Teenage Kicks by the Undertones. Much of Mary Black's Gaelic work. The Wolfe Tones, even the Boomtown Rats but that's all there is so let's go back to the theme tune. It's a song sung by so many Irish artists. I could have had Sinead or th Wolfetones singing it but let's go for the great Mary Black. Goodnight.
Sunday, 13 September 2015
Roy Orbison
So here they are, the favourite five, the fervid fantastic feeling-fuelled five, the best of Roy Orbison as he exists in my head.
I Drove All Night
Beautifully sad, fascinating. I mean kinda creepy as well yeah, but I know how he feels. I know how she feels as well. This is the best kind of pop music, the kind that makes you cover your ears and rip your own heart out with a nailfile even while you love it beyond reason. Even while you shouldn't. Cause it IS kinda creepy.
Pretty Woman
I think I don't like this song. Maybe think I hate it even, but then I listen and remember that, yeah actually I do. It's camp and kitsch and beautiful. Roy Orbison sounds as though he ought to be wearing a red coat at Butlins, but the truth is, he's what they would sound like if they could get the best to play and sing for them. He is the Uber Redcoat.
Running Scared
Yes. I know this fear. The knowledge that I'm not good enough for you. The knowledge that you'll always choose the other over me. And so I play this song and by the time it reaches the crescendo, the bath is full. But before anything bad happens, I have to go pick up the arm and move the stylus back to the beginning again. Thank God they never invented MP3s.
Crying
I sing this in the bath. There, that's a confession from me. And Emily says to say she loves the version where Orbison plays with the delicious K D Lang. This is splendid. It's delightful and everything pop should be. So what happened?
In Dreams
I love it, I hate it. I want to kill this song. I want it to kill me. It is so brilliant. Do I want it at number 1 or number 5 or a number so large it's stretched to Peoria with the numbers on my screen. It's sad, it's great. God, I thought I was going to have trouble finding five Orbison songs I love. How was I to know I'd love the ones I hate? Thanks Mr Orbison for being.
And do you know which one it really hurts to leave out? End of the Line, by the Travelling Wilberries because it celebrated Roy's life and marked his end.
I Drove All Night
Beautifully sad, fascinating. I mean kinda creepy as well yeah, but I know how he feels. I know how she feels as well. This is the best kind of pop music, the kind that makes you cover your ears and rip your own heart out with a nailfile even while you love it beyond reason. Even while you shouldn't. Cause it IS kinda creepy.
Pretty Woman
I think I don't like this song. Maybe think I hate it even, but then I listen and remember that, yeah actually I do. It's camp and kitsch and beautiful. Roy Orbison sounds as though he ought to be wearing a red coat at Butlins, but the truth is, he's what they would sound like if they could get the best to play and sing for them. He is the Uber Redcoat.
Running Scared
Yes. I know this fear. The knowledge that I'm not good enough for you. The knowledge that you'll always choose the other over me. And so I play this song and by the time it reaches the crescendo, the bath is full. But before anything bad happens, I have to go pick up the arm and move the stylus back to the beginning again. Thank God they never invented MP3s.
Crying
I sing this in the bath. There, that's a confession from me. And Emily says to say she loves the version where Orbison plays with the delicious K D Lang. This is splendid. It's delightful and everything pop should be. So what happened?
In Dreams
I love it, I hate it. I want to kill this song. I want it to kill me. It is so brilliant. Do I want it at number 1 or number 5 or a number so large it's stretched to Peoria with the numbers on my screen. It's sad, it's great. God, I thought I was going to have trouble finding five Orbison songs I love. How was I to know I'd love the ones I hate? Thanks Mr Orbison for being.
And do you know which one it really hurts to leave out? End of the Line, by the Travelling Wilberries because it celebrated Roy's life and marked his end.
Saturday, 8 August 2015
Polly Jean Harvey
So. P J Harvey. Damn was it really only eight albums? It feels like eighty eight. Achtentachtig! It's like she's everywhere. Somebody you forget when thinkign about your favourite records because she's as everywhere as Elvis. Damn but I love you Polly Jean!
THE WHORE'S HUSTLE AND THE HUSTLER'S WHORE. Polly Jean does rock and roll and she does it brilliantly. I would love to cover this. So would Emily. Maybe one day. Maybe one day soon. For now though. Love it. P J Harvey at her best.
IN THE DARK PLACES almost my favourite song by her. Another day it would be, but today, well who I am today is who I am. Let it be said though, that this is a song I love. It rips out my heart with a rusty bayonet and then buries me in beauty.
DOWN BY THE WATER is the song I hear in my head when somebody says, 'P J Harvey'. It's not the first of hers I heard but that chorus about her lost daughter is beautiful, evocative and enough to drive me even crazier than I already am.
IS THIS DESIRE? Well yes it is. Minimalist and beautiful. That's the thing about Polly Jean. Voice is good, yeah but the music comes not from musical instruments but from Polly Jean's Oh so human heart.
MAN SIZE takes a while to get going but it is full of perfect humour and perfect spirit and PJ's perfect sense of rock n roll timing and of course, her perfect voice, and words that make the paper bleed.
Hurts to leave out: Horses in My Dreams; One Line; Big Exit; Shame; Bitter Branches; White Chalk; The Words that Maketh Murder, and that's only the solo stuff.
THE WHORE'S HUSTLE AND THE HUSTLER'S WHORE. Polly Jean does rock and roll and she does it brilliantly. I would love to cover this. So would Emily. Maybe one day. Maybe one day soon. For now though. Love it. P J Harvey at her best.
IN THE DARK PLACES almost my favourite song by her. Another day it would be, but today, well who I am today is who I am. Let it be said though, that this is a song I love. It rips out my heart with a rusty bayonet and then buries me in beauty.
DOWN BY THE WATER is the song I hear in my head when somebody says, 'P J Harvey'. It's not the first of hers I heard but that chorus about her lost daughter is beautiful, evocative and enough to drive me even crazier than I already am.
IS THIS DESIRE? Well yes it is. Minimalist and beautiful. That's the thing about Polly Jean. Voice is good, yeah but the music comes not from musical instruments but from Polly Jean's Oh so human heart.
MAN SIZE takes a while to get going but it is full of perfect humour and perfect spirit and PJ's perfect sense of rock n roll timing and of course, her perfect voice, and words that make the paper bleed.
Hurts to leave out: Horses in My Dreams; One Line; Big Exit; Shame; Bitter Branches; White Chalk; The Words that Maketh Murder, and that's only the solo stuff.
Sunday, 2 August 2015
Janis!
Twenty seven years old, and you know what, when she died, I hadn't a clue WHO Janis Joplin was, and that's okay, because I never knew who Jim Morrison or Jimi Hendrix were when they died either, or for that matter, Buddy Holly, Eddy Cochran, Ritchie Valens or even the Big Bopper.
And in retrospect, I never even knew who I was when I was twenty seven although I sure wanted to die. I was writing and sending off to publishers these short stories and the nice people at Interzone would send kindly notes back explaining what was wrong with them and so I was getting a kind of education. Unlike Fear Magazine and 2000AD who never sent stuff back despite the stamped self addressed envelope, which pissed me off. But the letters from Interzone, they could be like the apprenticeship I wanted, a chance to practice and get good and get great and build a great career (even though every letter felt like they ripped out another little piece of my heart, cooked it and ate it). So I guess I graduated as a short story writer when Interzone wrote back and said, "This is a good story and moves along well but is not suitable for Interzone." I died that day, twenty seven years old but unknown. I got in the bath and cut my wrists wrong way and then began to make plans to blow myself up, if only I could think who to take with me. Never knew, never did, still here, still alive more than 27 years later.
So that makes number one pretty obvious.
1) PIECE OF MY HEART - I love this song so much that I would love to give it all fifteen points, but I guess that isn't possible, so it's just number one, with a bullet fit for a president.
2) BALL AND CHAIN - recorded at the Monterey Festival in 1967. Love the intro, love Janis Joplin's voice. Feel those weaponised teardrops flowing down like angel falls. Oh my. I can only watch, open mouthed and wait fro angels to fly in. This is why it's unfair that I was only ten when she died and never got to wonder what she'd produce next.
3) SUMMERTIME - I love to sing this song myself when they'll let me, which pretty much means in the shower these days. George Gershwin, an excellent composition, performed over and over by so many. Here it's Janis and Jimi. Rock music? Sure but this is exactly what jazz should be about as well! Love and Peace to the both of them.
4) TELL MAMA - Oh my goodness there's not much to say about this. Watch the video.Be still my heart. Emily loves this and she's screaming in my ears to make it number one. Well sorry Emily, it's number four but that doesn't mean it ain't brilliant. Janis plays fast and loose with the so called rules and makes those little notes sit up and BAYYYug.
5) I NEED A MAN TO LOVE - now just listen to this. This was done when it was. There was no reason for much of the seventies, for blue eyed soul, for disco, for Blood Sweat and Tears, for so much of the music that was around in the seventies (you know the kind, the stuff that in retrospect makes you imagine that music wasn't all THAT dire in the seventies). There was no need for any of it, because Janis had done it all before. I pick this at number 5 as a generic track of hers, not a particularly brilliant one, but one that shows how damn GOOD Janis was.
And in retrospect, I never even knew who I was when I was twenty seven although I sure wanted to die. I was writing and sending off to publishers these short stories and the nice people at Interzone would send kindly notes back explaining what was wrong with them and so I was getting a kind of education. Unlike Fear Magazine and 2000AD who never sent stuff back despite the stamped self addressed envelope, which pissed me off. But the letters from Interzone, they could be like the apprenticeship I wanted, a chance to practice and get good and get great and build a great career (even though every letter felt like they ripped out another little piece of my heart, cooked it and ate it). So I guess I graduated as a short story writer when Interzone wrote back and said, "This is a good story and moves along well but is not suitable for Interzone." I died that day, twenty seven years old but unknown. I got in the bath and cut my wrists wrong way and then began to make plans to blow myself up, if only I could think who to take with me. Never knew, never did, still here, still alive more than 27 years later.
So that makes number one pretty obvious.
1) PIECE OF MY HEART - I love this song so much that I would love to give it all fifteen points, but I guess that isn't possible, so it's just number one, with a bullet fit for a president.
2) BALL AND CHAIN - recorded at the Monterey Festival in 1967. Love the intro, love Janis Joplin's voice. Feel those weaponised teardrops flowing down like angel falls. Oh my. I can only watch, open mouthed and wait fro angels to fly in. This is why it's unfair that I was only ten when she died and never got to wonder what she'd produce next.
3) SUMMERTIME - I love to sing this song myself when they'll let me, which pretty much means in the shower these days. George Gershwin, an excellent composition, performed over and over by so many. Here it's Janis and Jimi. Rock music? Sure but this is exactly what jazz should be about as well! Love and Peace to the both of them.
4) TELL MAMA - Oh my goodness there's not much to say about this. Watch the video.Be still my heart. Emily loves this and she's screaming in my ears to make it number one. Well sorry Emily, it's number four but that doesn't mean it ain't brilliant. Janis plays fast and loose with the so called rules and makes those little notes sit up and BAYYYug.
5) I NEED A MAN TO LOVE - now just listen to this. This was done when it was. There was no reason for much of the seventies, for blue eyed soul, for disco, for Blood Sweat and Tears, for so much of the music that was around in the seventies (you know the kind, the stuff that in retrospect makes you imagine that music wasn't all THAT dire in the seventies). There was no need for any of it, because Janis had done it all before. I pick this at number 5 as a generic track of hers, not a particularly brilliant one, but one that shows how damn GOOD Janis was.
Monday, 27 July 2015
Leonard Cohen's Covers
So many people have covered Leonard Cohen. His popularity with musicians is comparable to Elvis, or the Beatles, to Jacques Brel or Brecht and Weil. So to try to come up with a top five Cohen covers is going to be hard, perhaps harder than picking a top five of his own tracks. Difficult or not, let's have a go
Beautiful though it is, 'HALLELUJAH' is not one of my top five Leonard Cohen tracks... his own version is special and so is Jeff Buckley's but listening to IMOGEN HEAP's breathy acapella version, it becomes something new, something that is entirely her own. Beautiful.
When she first came to the notice of the media, I decided I didn't like TORI AMOS without even really giving her a listen. That was wrong of me, as I realised when I heard her singing along with Maynard from Tool in their version of Mohammed My Friend. After that, I listened to much of her stuff and among her lovely covers was a cover of Mr Cohen's "FAMOUS BLUE RAINCOAT"
NICK CAVE's version of I'M YOUR MAN is so firmly fitted into his own ouevre that for a moment, one might forget it's Leonard Cohen's. And yet it's one of Cohen's finest songs as well. Both bring something wonderful to the party. I love it. What more can I say?
BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE doing "THE PARTISAN" is something wholly different. A free woman of the Piapot Cree Nation singing of resistance to the invaders has a different ring to it. And of course, Buffy's voice is something extraordinary, partaking as it does of the prairie winds themselves.
Sorry that Mr Cohen is speaking over this, but it's lovely. I love Antony's voice and it feels so, so very right for this song. ANTONY HEGERTY of Antony and the Johnsons singing "IF IT BE YOUR WILL".
Hurts to leave out. Loads including multiple versions of Hallelujah, The Partisan, and Famous Blue Raincoat.... And if anybody asks, I may add a link to the one I forgot.
Saturday, 25 July 2015
Leonard Cohen
Oh my my, Leonard Cohen. What can I say. Ever since my music teacher, Marijke turned Class Three Y at Deliverance Grammar School (which included me) onto Cohen back in 1974, I've been a bit of a fan. never heard a song of his I didn't like. Never found a band that'd let me do covers of his work (bastards! - whatever my favourites are, I wanna do a cover of The Traitor).
So... top five Leonard Cohen sings Leonard Cohen's songs? Now that is HARD!
Leonard Cohen was a telepath and a prophet. He could see into our hearts but even more, he could see the future in his crystal ball. He was so RIGHT. He still is. There's a whole load of shit gonna come down this river before the clean meltwater of the former icecaps gets here, Ladies and Gentlemen! THE FUTURE
Oh! How I was wrong! You see I did not miss the attack. I was waiting for the bus to picket the Stockport Messenger back in 1983 and I was kissing a girl I thirsted for. But I was not what I should have been and I bid farewell and joined my comrades for a futile battle. I was wrong and I hate to sing this song, but I know I should, in penance. THE TRAITOR
Tears drip like acid down my ravaged cheeks as I listen. I don't know how I know how it feels but somehow I do, and I think Cohen had a lot to do with that. Over and again, they pour across the border (or maybe win by 'democratic' means) and we're cautioned to surrender, but that would break our hearts and sear our souls. THE PARTISAN
Oh how Leonard gets me. He knows where I feel so often. The love that wants to sacrifice, to demand, to offer all and beneath the promises well... I was always a beggar for love, but you know I'd howl just like Leonard. Yeah I'M YOUR MAN!
Suzanne was somebody I knew when we were still children of 20 (and yes twenty IS a child) and we would spend nights together in her room talking until the world tasted of coffee and cigarettes and yeah, like the song, she got me. I was a one and she was at worst a seven so I couldn't imagine why she'd want to know me. Anyway, this was our song. SUZANNE.
Hurts like cancer (and yes I know) to leave out: "So Long Marianne"; "Gypsy Wife"; "Famous Blue Raincoat"; "Dance Me to the End of Love"; "Bird on a Wire"; "Stranger Song", "Waiting for the Miracle"; "Halleluiah"; "Darkness"; and so many more. But oh forget cancer, some of these hurt like gangrene (no, I had to ask my wife about that one).
Saturday, 20 June 2015
Elton John
Elton John was never one of my favourites when he first appeared on the scene, but he wasn't one of those acts who made the seventies particularly horrible either. That sounds like I'm praising Elton John with faint damns or damning with faint praise but that's not true either.
Mr Dwight was a superstar and there was nothing mediocre about him. I found myself getting bored later on, especially when he started eulogising Princess Diana but that was later. Many was the time I listened to him on Radio Caroline or even Luxembourg and many are the times I thought, 'Hmm, nice one'. So the fact he was not my cup of tea does not diminish his greatness, nor even my recognition of said greatness, in any way.
So here's my top five.
1) Under the covers on a Friday night, by torchlight on a cheap transistor radio. That was how I would listen to the radio and this was one of the songs that made me feel really good. Lazengenlmen! Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting.
2) This could be a personal anthem for any of those of us who crawl out of the alligator infested swamp of an abusive childhood to stand on Sunset Boulevard and growl at passing cars. With fist raised in salute. "I'm still standing, better than I ever did, looking like a true survivor, feeling like a little kid." Yep. I'm still standing
3) Tommy was one of my favourite musicals. And this song gives me goosepimples. Added to which, there was a time when I stood in front of the pinball machine in Cambridge YMCA for two hours only to see Tim Cyanide beat my top score. I know just how the champ feels. Pinball Wizard.
4) Okay, confession time. I always thought this was kinda cool but no more, and only because of Bernie Taupin's lyrics, but then I heard Big Bill Shatner's cover version and it made sense, and so did Elton John's version, so yes, I do love this. Rocketman
5) A sad and thoughtful one. Not to my taste. But I can imagine this played on an acoustic guitar by somebody like Emmylou Harris and suddenly I realise, this is a brilliant song. It's not Elton's fault I dislike the arrangement (okay it is, but it's still going in). Something About the Way You Look Tonight.
Hurts to leave out? Well I wouldn't go that far but there are other songs of his that I might have included in my top five. Sacrifice for example, or I Guess That's Why They Call It The Blues.
On the other hand I would not dream of including though either the Princess Diana version of Candle in the Wind or the version of Yellow Brick Road dedicated to Princesss Di as 'English Rose'.
Mr Dwight was a superstar and there was nothing mediocre about him. I found myself getting bored later on, especially when he started eulogising Princess Diana but that was later. Many was the time I listened to him on Radio Caroline or even Luxembourg and many are the times I thought, 'Hmm, nice one'. So the fact he was not my cup of tea does not diminish his greatness, nor even my recognition of said greatness, in any way.
So here's my top five.
1) Under the covers on a Friday night, by torchlight on a cheap transistor radio. That was how I would listen to the radio and this was one of the songs that made me feel really good. Lazengenlmen! Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting.
2) This could be a personal anthem for any of those of us who crawl out of the alligator infested swamp of an abusive childhood to stand on Sunset Boulevard and growl at passing cars. With fist raised in salute. "I'm still standing, better than I ever did, looking like a true survivor, feeling like a little kid." Yep. I'm still standing
3) Tommy was one of my favourite musicals. And this song gives me goosepimples. Added to which, there was a time when I stood in front of the pinball machine in Cambridge YMCA for two hours only to see Tim Cyanide beat my top score. I know just how the champ feels. Pinball Wizard.
4) Okay, confession time. I always thought this was kinda cool but no more, and only because of Bernie Taupin's lyrics, but then I heard Big Bill Shatner's cover version and it made sense, and so did Elton John's version, so yes, I do love this. Rocketman
5) A sad and thoughtful one. Not to my taste. But I can imagine this played on an acoustic guitar by somebody like Emmylou Harris and suddenly I realise, this is a brilliant song. It's not Elton's fault I dislike the arrangement (okay it is, but it's still going in). Something About the Way You Look Tonight.
Hurts to leave out? Well I wouldn't go that far but there are other songs of his that I might have included in my top five. Sacrifice for example, or I Guess That's Why They Call It The Blues.
On the other hand I would not dream of including though either the Princess Diana version of Candle in the Wind or the version of Yellow Brick Road dedicated to Princesss Di as 'English Rose'.
Saturday, 13 June 2015
Gil Scott Heron
So, Gil Scott Heron. A top five might take some work because there is One song I would like to give all Fifteen points. The first is obvious. There can be only one. This is a work of genius. I love this. It's probably the best soul record ever.
1) The Revolution Will Not be Televised
The second is a brilliant cover of my favourite song by Robert Johnson. When I came back to music after a 21 year retirement, this was the first song I sang. Oh yes and this is an AWESOME video.
2) Me and the Devil
Okay, for the third, I have said so many times that this is not my world and I want to go home. Gil Scott-Heron sums up my feelings in this song so it has to be included.
3) Alien (Hold on to your Dreams)
My mother was crazy but not an alcoholic... but her father was an alcoholic and that's why she didn't drink. Turns out the demons are not in the bottle, they're in the person drinking from it. That said, this next is another fantastic track.
4) The Bottle
My last choice is one I love for the lyrics. The music is 1970s. I hated the seventies, everybody knows that. Punk took TOO long coming but if I'd been listening to the lyrics, this would have been an exception. These words are wonderful.
5) Winter in America
Hurts to leave out? No, nothing really. There are other tracks I love, pure poetry that I would love to hear shrieked by banshees and rapped by angry hiphoppers but to be honest, I only know their names when I hear them, because the first thing about soul to me is the dull elevator music played underneath these beautiful blistering battlefield lyrics.
I love your words so much Gil Scott Heron, but I wish I could also love your music.
1) The Revolution Will Not be Televised
The second is a brilliant cover of my favourite song by Robert Johnson. When I came back to music after a 21 year retirement, this was the first song I sang. Oh yes and this is an AWESOME video.
2) Me and the Devil
Okay, for the third, I have said so many times that this is not my world and I want to go home. Gil Scott-Heron sums up my feelings in this song so it has to be included.
3) Alien (Hold on to your Dreams)
My mother was crazy but not an alcoholic... but her father was an alcoholic and that's why she didn't drink. Turns out the demons are not in the bottle, they're in the person drinking from it. That said, this next is another fantastic track.
4) The Bottle
My last choice is one I love for the lyrics. The music is 1970s. I hated the seventies, everybody knows that. Punk took TOO long coming but if I'd been listening to the lyrics, this would have been an exception. These words are wonderful.
5) Winter in America
Hurts to leave out? No, nothing really. There are other tracks I love, pure poetry that I would love to hear shrieked by banshees and rapped by angry hiphoppers but to be honest, I only know their names when I hear them, because the first thing about soul to me is the dull elevator music played underneath these beautiful blistering battlefield lyrics.
I love your words so much Gil Scott Heron, but I wish I could also love your music.
Sunday, 3 May 2015
Massive Attack
Believe it or not, I've never been to Bristol but somehow, when I speak to someone with a Brizzle accent, or watch television series such as the excellent Skins, or I listen to local acts like Hazel Winter, Annette Berlin, Hysterical Injury or, of course, Massive Attack, then I feel right at home.
So, my Massive Attack top five shouldn't be all that hard. I first heard of them working with the awesome Tricky so my starting point is naturally going to be Protection, isn't it?
1) But of course, I defy expectations. And Teardrop is just beautiful in so many ways. There are versions with so may singers. I wish one of them could be me. So if you read this Massive Attack, any time, any place, anywhere, Emily would love to do 'Teardrop' with you.
2) You all know me by now. Big fan of lyrics and the lyrics in Protection are awesome but what's really brilliant is the beats themselves. But... big fan of Bristol too, and of Tricky, So let's have not the version from the album of the same name but a live version played in Bristol and featuring not only Tricky, but also the less brilliant (in my opinion) Portishead. But still. "Stand in front of you, take the force of the blow, protection."
3) And next comes a song that with many another band would be number one but this is Massive Attack and they've done so much more. Meine Damen und Herren - Babel.
4) Oh and this one too. Another song that calls me to the dance floor and then whispers in my ear and speaks of philosophy. So YES. I'm sure I want to be with you and I have nothing to give either. We are what we are. This is it Comrades, delightful rhythms, spine chilling vocals and delight in between. Bey & beyum, meine Damen und Herren, Mesdames et messieurs. Karmacoma
5) Oh but I loved Mezzanine, and the only question is what song to choose from that album. Ladies and gentlemen, here it is. Black Milk.
AND oh gods, it hurts to leave out, Invade me, Unfinished Symphony, Silent Spring, Dissolved Girl, Angel, Paradise Circus, Safe From Harm and Man Next Door. And that's only the ones that were in my top five before I deleted them due to my renowned ability to count.
So, my Massive Attack top five shouldn't be all that hard. I first heard of them working with the awesome Tricky so my starting point is naturally going to be Protection, isn't it?
1) But of course, I defy expectations. And Teardrop is just beautiful in so many ways. There are versions with so may singers. I wish one of them could be me. So if you read this Massive Attack, any time, any place, anywhere, Emily would love to do 'Teardrop' with you.
2) You all know me by now. Big fan of lyrics and the lyrics in Protection are awesome but what's really brilliant is the beats themselves. But... big fan of Bristol too, and of Tricky, So let's have not the version from the album of the same name but a live version played in Bristol and featuring not only Tricky, but also the less brilliant (in my opinion) Portishead. But still. "Stand in front of you, take the force of the blow, protection."
3) And next comes a song that with many another band would be number one but this is Massive Attack and they've done so much more. Meine Damen und Herren - Babel.
4) Oh and this one too. Another song that calls me to the dance floor and then whispers in my ear and speaks of philosophy. So YES. I'm sure I want to be with you and I have nothing to give either. We are what we are. This is it Comrades, delightful rhythms, spine chilling vocals and delight in between. Bey & beyum, meine Damen und Herren, Mesdames et messieurs. Karmacoma
5) Oh but I loved Mezzanine, and the only question is what song to choose from that album. Ladies and gentlemen, here it is. Black Milk.
AND oh gods, it hurts to leave out, Invade me, Unfinished Symphony, Silent Spring, Dissolved Girl, Angel, Paradise Circus, Safe From Harm and Man Next Door. And that's only the ones that were in my top five before I deleted them due to my renowned ability to count.
Saturday, 18 April 2015
Desert Island Dicks
I've been asked to do Desert Island Disks... obviously not the real deal on Radio 4, because that is for people with voices, people who get listened to and that is something I'm not. Nevertheless when somebody asked me about this, I thought, why not, I can share it with all my acquaintances in blogspotland.
My childhood was shit. Literally, I would often piss or shit myself and get beaten for it. This probably happens to a load of children but in my case, it lasted so long that I can remember it. My parents would beat me. Once they said I had pneumonia but it wasn't pneumonia, it was a broken rib. Sounds horrible and yes it was but sometimes my father would take it into his head that it was time to listen to some music. He would bring out his paltry record collection and, in the dark with the record player plugged into the light socket, we would listen to the music. The only thing that remotely approached rock and/or roll was Poor Jenny b/w Send a Message to Mary by the Everly Brothers. But I'm not going to take that to the desert island with me because there's something that brings memories much more unique to those interludes of decency in a life that held precious little. And of course, added to that link is the fact tat through Mme Ferrier I learned of Gustav Mahler and his marvellous Kindertotenlieder (Child Death Songs). Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Kathleen Ferrier singing "Blow the Wind Southerly"
At school we learned to sing. I remember some of the songs we would do, such as Halleluiah I'm a Bum (from the Big Red Song Book - yes really) and a bowdlerised version of Big Rock Candy Mountain (some of you may have heard me singing it with the Sweet smelling swampies. But the one that really sticks in my memory was Mary Hopkin's rendition of a Russian folk song translated as 'Those Were the Days'... Not only because we had to learn it but also because it gave me the ambition to get on stage and perform for an audience, so although I might fondly imagine it was the Partridge Family that ignited my desire to sing, the truth is, it was way back in the days of school concerts. And of course, because I'd had all the noise literalyl beaten out of me along with the piss and the shit, I was quiet. It was so hard for me to raise my voice enough to be heard but this song released me to a degree and there I was a nine year old singing lyrics about lost youth and the disappointment of surviving. That's the story of my life but here instead of Mary Hopkin is the Leningrad Cowboys with the Red Army Choir singing "Those Were The Days".
And then along came the seventies. It was full of disco music, northern soul (and sorry Sally but I disliked soul with a passion because it didn't speak to me). Here I was, this Gypsy/Irish Traveller kid (I'm descended from both) raised as an outsider in a violent household and having been taught that anything I openly desired could be used against me, so no wanting for me and it follows no songs about sexual desire. The first single I bought was not one of those ubiquitous love songs we were supposed to rave about in the school disco, it wasn't even T-Rex or Slade. No, the first record I ever bought was Hello, Hooray by Alice Cooper. But I'm not going to play that now, instead, here is the b-side, a beautiful song about madness and suicide Ladies and Gentlemen Alice Cooper singing "Luney Tunes".
So here I was, living in Science Fiction worlds and determined not to have to live in the world that my hormones would desire. Truth is, I thought I was the wrong gender, but knew I didn't want to be the other gender either. I've never been happy with binaries. In the real world, either/or is a choice foisted upon us, a form of oppression that seeks to force us to ignore the myriad other choices out there. It's possible that I made a mistake in the choices I made, but on the other hand, maybe it's not. Suffice to say, in my teens, when all the music was about love and I knew that was a place from which I was excluded, I didn't listen to music. The only exceptions were soundtracks of the science fiction in my head. So, I loved Hawkwind, I loved Kraftwerk, and I loved this one glorious song by Queen. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Brian May singing his own composition, "39". If you'd offered me the chance to be one of the "score brave souls inside", I'd've bitten your arm off. It was my fondest ambition to go to sleep for a hundred years and awaken when all my so-called friends were dead.
And then along came punk. Punk taught me so much about politics, about why it is really really fucking stupid to campaign for people not to vote in a general election (maybe I was right, maybe there was no difference between Callaghan and Thatcher but in this case, being right would have been even worse. But before that, all of the choices that would make up my life were laid out upon a plate, no this is not going to be the Black Angel's Death Song, it will be the story that described my life. There I was, seventeen years old, living in a movie and already I'd seen the closing credits. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Patti Smith singing "Piss Factory".
And punk carried on, I've been a punk more or less ever since. I might not dress punk, I may work in Whitehall, I may have even joined a political party, namely the Greens, but inside, I still have this anarchist black heart that knows down to the depths that whoever puts his hand upon me to govern me is a tyrant and a usurper. This is why there is another punk song here, one that sums up my politics. Comrades, I give you Vi Subversa with Poison Girls singing "Persons Unknown".
And then comes my life and it's so hard to choose one song to sum up the last thirty years. Not least because any song that would fit is probably a monstrous dirge about drudgery, frustration and wishing for things I never strove for. All those wasted years waiting to emerge from the shadows and join the oh so inevitable revolutions. Well you know what, this time I'm NOT going to do that. I'm going to go with something beautiful, something to show how it might have been if I'd let myself go and expressed my emotions out there in the mundane world instead of the virtual world in which I found myself. Sometimes you have to scream it all out bitterly. Yes, I could have been venus as a boy, I could have been all the things I wanted to be but I spent too long in the shadows. I never got laid until I was 29, possibly because I was shy, possibly because my desires were all mixed up and poisonous. But that doesn't have to be ugly, that confusion can be beautiful and bright, scouring the skies of sunshine. It can be like this. Ladies and Gentlemen I give you Sinead O'Connor singing "Troy"
And finally we come to the song I want them to play as they cook me on Gas mark 10 for long enough to make me tender and nice when they eat my age-raddled flesh. (Or throw my body into the sea or wastefully burn it, or lower me into the ground as wormfood so a tree can grow from my remains). There is no choice in this and tha's the way I like it. Choices only bring guilt and disappointment and when I'm dead I don' want to leave anything like that behind. Here's Skunk Anansie boys and girls. Here's "You'll Follow Me Down".
So, since this is desert island dicks, I get to choose a book and a luxury too. Apparently the Bible and Shakespeare are already there but here in a room with around two thousand books, how the hell am I supposed to choose only one. Well you know what? I can. I have a favourite book. Sometimes there are others that I get obsessed with but over and over again, I go back to this. My book is Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner, written in 1979, it's a pretty accurate depiction of the days we live in.
The luxury though. And they told me I couldn't have a lover which is a shame. I could take an infinite supply of paper and pencils, but that doesn't help me if I never get out of there. Instead, I'll take a musical instrument. Most of the ones I have are stringed or require batteries and that doesn't help if you leave me here forever and they go out of tune, so I want something with keys, something highly portable. I'll take my sansula thanks, a form of African thumb piano.
My childhood was shit. Literally, I would often piss or shit myself and get beaten for it. This probably happens to a load of children but in my case, it lasted so long that I can remember it. My parents would beat me. Once they said I had pneumonia but it wasn't pneumonia, it was a broken rib. Sounds horrible and yes it was but sometimes my father would take it into his head that it was time to listen to some music. He would bring out his paltry record collection and, in the dark with the record player plugged into the light socket, we would listen to the music. The only thing that remotely approached rock and/or roll was Poor Jenny b/w Send a Message to Mary by the Everly Brothers. But I'm not going to take that to the desert island with me because there's something that brings memories much more unique to those interludes of decency in a life that held precious little. And of course, added to that link is the fact tat through Mme Ferrier I learned of Gustav Mahler and his marvellous Kindertotenlieder (Child Death Songs). Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Kathleen Ferrier singing "Blow the Wind Southerly"
At school we learned to sing. I remember some of the songs we would do, such as Halleluiah I'm a Bum (from the Big Red Song Book - yes really) and a bowdlerised version of Big Rock Candy Mountain (some of you may have heard me singing it with the Sweet smelling swampies. But the one that really sticks in my memory was Mary Hopkin's rendition of a Russian folk song translated as 'Those Were the Days'... Not only because we had to learn it but also because it gave me the ambition to get on stage and perform for an audience, so although I might fondly imagine it was the Partridge Family that ignited my desire to sing, the truth is, it was way back in the days of school concerts. And of course, because I'd had all the noise literalyl beaten out of me along with the piss and the shit, I was quiet. It was so hard for me to raise my voice enough to be heard but this song released me to a degree and there I was a nine year old singing lyrics about lost youth and the disappointment of surviving. That's the story of my life but here instead of Mary Hopkin is the Leningrad Cowboys with the Red Army Choir singing "Those Were The Days".
And then along came the seventies. It was full of disco music, northern soul (and sorry Sally but I disliked soul with a passion because it didn't speak to me). Here I was, this Gypsy/Irish Traveller kid (I'm descended from both) raised as an outsider in a violent household and having been taught that anything I openly desired could be used against me, so no wanting for me and it follows no songs about sexual desire. The first single I bought was not one of those ubiquitous love songs we were supposed to rave about in the school disco, it wasn't even T-Rex or Slade. No, the first record I ever bought was Hello, Hooray by Alice Cooper. But I'm not going to play that now, instead, here is the b-side, a beautiful song about madness and suicide Ladies and Gentlemen Alice Cooper singing "Luney Tunes".
So here I was, living in Science Fiction worlds and determined not to have to live in the world that my hormones would desire. Truth is, I thought I was the wrong gender, but knew I didn't want to be the other gender either. I've never been happy with binaries. In the real world, either/or is a choice foisted upon us, a form of oppression that seeks to force us to ignore the myriad other choices out there. It's possible that I made a mistake in the choices I made, but on the other hand, maybe it's not. Suffice to say, in my teens, when all the music was about love and I knew that was a place from which I was excluded, I didn't listen to music. The only exceptions were soundtracks of the science fiction in my head. So, I loved Hawkwind, I loved Kraftwerk, and I loved this one glorious song by Queen. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Brian May singing his own composition, "39". If you'd offered me the chance to be one of the "score brave souls inside", I'd've bitten your arm off. It was my fondest ambition to go to sleep for a hundred years and awaken when all my so-called friends were dead.
And then along came punk. Punk taught me so much about politics, about why it is really really fucking stupid to campaign for people not to vote in a general election (maybe I was right, maybe there was no difference between Callaghan and Thatcher but in this case, being right would have been even worse. But before that, all of the choices that would make up my life were laid out upon a plate, no this is not going to be the Black Angel's Death Song, it will be the story that described my life. There I was, seventeen years old, living in a movie and already I'd seen the closing credits. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Patti Smith singing "Piss Factory".
And punk carried on, I've been a punk more or less ever since. I might not dress punk, I may work in Whitehall, I may have even joined a political party, namely the Greens, but inside, I still have this anarchist black heart that knows down to the depths that whoever puts his hand upon me to govern me is a tyrant and a usurper. This is why there is another punk song here, one that sums up my politics. Comrades, I give you Vi Subversa with Poison Girls singing "Persons Unknown".
And then comes my life and it's so hard to choose one song to sum up the last thirty years. Not least because any song that would fit is probably a monstrous dirge about drudgery, frustration and wishing for things I never strove for. All those wasted years waiting to emerge from the shadows and join the oh so inevitable revolutions. Well you know what, this time I'm NOT going to do that. I'm going to go with something beautiful, something to show how it might have been if I'd let myself go and expressed my emotions out there in the mundane world instead of the virtual world in which I found myself. Sometimes you have to scream it all out bitterly. Yes, I could have been venus as a boy, I could have been all the things I wanted to be but I spent too long in the shadows. I never got laid until I was 29, possibly because I was shy, possibly because my desires were all mixed up and poisonous. But that doesn't have to be ugly, that confusion can be beautiful and bright, scouring the skies of sunshine. It can be like this. Ladies and Gentlemen I give you Sinead O'Connor singing "Troy"
And finally we come to the song I want them to play as they cook me on Gas mark 10 for long enough to make me tender and nice when they eat my age-raddled flesh. (Or throw my body into the sea or wastefully burn it, or lower me into the ground as wormfood so a tree can grow from my remains). There is no choice in this and tha's the way I like it. Choices only bring guilt and disappointment and when I'm dead I don' want to leave anything like that behind. Here's Skunk Anansie boys and girls. Here's "You'll Follow Me Down".
So, since this is desert island dicks, I get to choose a book and a luxury too. Apparently the Bible and Shakespeare are already there but here in a room with around two thousand books, how the hell am I supposed to choose only one. Well you know what? I can. I have a favourite book. Sometimes there are others that I get obsessed with but over and over again, I go back to this. My book is Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner, written in 1979, it's a pretty accurate depiction of the days we live in.
The luxury though. And they told me I couldn't have a lover which is a shame. I could take an infinite supply of paper and pencils, but that doesn't help me if I never get out of there. Instead, I'll take a musical instrument. Most of the ones I have are stringed or require batteries and that doesn't help if you leave me here forever and they go out of tune, so I want something with keys, something highly portable. I'll take my sansula thanks, a form of African thumb piano.
Saturday, 11 April 2015
Iggy and the Stooges Top Five
When I was seventeen, I sold all my old Deep Purple cassettes and, clutching my £4.50, I went to Woolworths and bought two new albums (the 'New Wave' compilation album and Iggy and the Stooges' "Raw Power". I played that album so many times that I'm surprised the grooves have not eroded as deep as the Grand Canyon.
There was a band with James Williamson on guitar, and I'm not one to cream my jeans over guitar technique - I'm a voice fan myself but Williamson's guitar was nothing short of brilliant. Then there was the solid gold rhythm sector of Ron and Scott Asheton... and then Iggy himself. What is not to love about the Stooges.
I am tempted to pick five from Raw Power, not to neglect their other work but because it is so awesome.
Here is my Iggy and the Stooges top five.
1) Search and Destroy
This is the seminal punk anthem. Williamson's guitar screams as if in the midst of passion. The Ashetons move with a rhythm of pure joy and then there are such perfect narcissistic lyrics from the initial "Street Walking Cheetah with a heart full of napalm" to the final incoherent scream of the 'forgotten boy'.
2) I Need Somebody
From the beginning, the music before the words, and it's so rare I say or even imagine saying that. And then in come the the words. "I am your crazy driver, honey I'm sure to steer you wrong. I am dying in a story, only living to sing this song." I like lyrics and I'm not usually a fan of Iggy's but these are so lush and so louche. I was seventeen remember and I could feel the truth of this, like it was the story of my life, the story that could destroy.
3) Penetration
It's the whole package. Williamson and Iggy, Pop and James and the ashetons behind, and those GORGEOUS fucking (and I use the world appropriately) lyrics.
4) Gimme Danger
Oh so sleazily lovely, so S&M, so love, so social disease. And the voice man, yeah... and the drums... oooh yeah it drives me into an incoherence of my own. Whips and Chains and Gags Oh my! Yeah! Little Straaaaaaaaaaangerrrrrr can you feeeeeeeeeeel me?
5) I Wanna Be Your Dog
Same driving rhythms as Search and Destroy. Same deliciously incoherent rantings of Iggy Pop, and James Williamson's guitar caress but somehow it's more knowing and that is both its glory and the reason this is not much higher. This is though, my favourite track that's not on Raw Power.
And yeah, looks like I'm rubbish at resisting temptation, but there is so damn much. It aches like a severed left temporal lobe to leave out...
Sick of You, Death Trip, I'm Bored, Lust for Life, China Girl, Raw Power (the track), Dirt, TV Eye,Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell...
Hell, it even hurts to leave out the Passenger and the Stooges version of Louie Louie and that cheesy duet of Did You Ever (All the Time) that Iggy did with Deborah Harry.
There was a band with James Williamson on guitar, and I'm not one to cream my jeans over guitar technique - I'm a voice fan myself but Williamson's guitar was nothing short of brilliant. Then there was the solid gold rhythm sector of Ron and Scott Asheton... and then Iggy himself. What is not to love about the Stooges.
I am tempted to pick five from Raw Power, not to neglect their other work but because it is so awesome.
Here is my Iggy and the Stooges top five.
1) Search and Destroy
This is the seminal punk anthem. Williamson's guitar screams as if in the midst of passion. The Ashetons move with a rhythm of pure joy and then there are such perfect narcissistic lyrics from the initial "Street Walking Cheetah with a heart full of napalm" to the final incoherent scream of the 'forgotten boy'.
2) I Need Somebody
From the beginning, the music before the words, and it's so rare I say or even imagine saying that. And then in come the the words. "I am your crazy driver, honey I'm sure to steer you wrong. I am dying in a story, only living to sing this song." I like lyrics and I'm not usually a fan of Iggy's but these are so lush and so louche. I was seventeen remember and I could feel the truth of this, like it was the story of my life, the story that could destroy.
3) Penetration
It's the whole package. Williamson and Iggy, Pop and James and the ashetons behind, and those GORGEOUS fucking (and I use the world appropriately) lyrics.
4) Gimme Danger
Oh so sleazily lovely, so S&M, so love, so social disease. And the voice man, yeah... and the drums... oooh yeah it drives me into an incoherence of my own. Whips and Chains and Gags Oh my! Yeah! Little Straaaaaaaaaaangerrrrrr can you feeeeeeeeeeel me?
5) I Wanna Be Your Dog
Same driving rhythms as Search and Destroy. Same deliciously incoherent rantings of Iggy Pop, and James Williamson's guitar caress but somehow it's more knowing and that is both its glory and the reason this is not much higher. This is though, my favourite track that's not on Raw Power.
And yeah, looks like I'm rubbish at resisting temptation, but there is so damn much. It aches like a severed left temporal lobe to leave out...
Sick of You, Death Trip, I'm Bored, Lust for Life, China Girl, Raw Power (the track), Dirt, TV Eye,Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell...
Hell, it even hurts to leave out the Passenger and the Stooges version of Louie Louie and that cheesy duet of Did You Ever (All the Time) that Iggy did with Deborah Harry.
Friday, 20 March 2015
So, somebody asked me about my Patti Smith top five. Can you people see just how cruel that could be? I mean this is Patti Smith!!! The woman I voted for in the Sounds poll for 1976 as the sexiest woman, man, androgyne or any other kind of gender. The woman I worshipped when I was a downtrodden, broken up bullied and gender dysphoric fifteen year old. THAT Patti Smith!
First things first then, thinking of the ones it absolutely hurts to leave out. Naturally that begins with Piss Factory. There was no rap in those days, or if there was, I'd never heard of it, and I heard this, poetic, beautiful, ripped still bleeding from the pages of Babel (and that, OMG THAT was the book it really hurt to sell when I was so desperate for food that I walked with a suitcase full of books from Leytonstone to Barking to Rodney's, a shop I knew would give a good price. Selling that book was like ripping out my own heart). So that's the first, number one I guess.
1 Piss Factory
So then what comes next. Another beautiful lyrical injection of Patti's words perhaps? Something iconic? Oh and yes of course, I remember watching Millennium as Land was shot as a 9 minute music video while Lara Means lost her mind. It's also the reason I bought Julie Burchill and Tony Parsons' book "The Boy Looked at Johnny". This is a rollercoaster, steam roller, JUGGERNAUT of a song, that rolls over Georgia and leaves smoking ruins in its wake. Of course I love it. I hate it too (of course I do, I wish to Gahd I'd written it!) but mostly I love it.
2 Land
Two monsters of songs that bleed into my skull and leave my brain wrung out and bleeding with the pain of such an early comparison with all the shit I'll ever write myself. Even though this comparison was what brought me closer than anything else I have ever thought of experienced to suicide. They are just too beautiful. I am reluctant to include a song that Patti didn't write for herself, even though she took this into the charts and made 1977 more tolerable for me than it might otherwise have been. It was decades before I found out that she had written this with Bruce Springsteen. In the end though, I couldn't leave this one out even though my heart will bleed to leave out others in its wake.
Desire is Hunger is the fire I breathe
Love is the banquet at which we feed
And this was recorded AFTER she recovered from a broken back.
3 Because the Night
You all know where I grew up by now. The place that I call Deliverance. Listen to the lyrics to this one. Feel the rhythm. Dance to it and feel the taste of human flesh as it clings to your teeth. Feel the lust that binds you, the sex that makes it feel okay before they rip the flesh from you in sacrifice.
And I laid upon the table, another piece of meat!
4) Summer Cannibals
And now we come to the final place and I know that when I say 'hurts to leave out' this time, I mean it. I am so torn about this. There are at least three songs that are holding me hostage and demanding that each of them get the last place. Well sorry songs, much as I would love to, you can only have one. And I guess that the big time sensuality of Distant Fingers beats out both the spiritual excess of Dancing Barefoot and the politico-economic clarity of Glitter in their Eyes.
5 Distant Fingers
Hurts to leave out... and this time it's not just a formality. I Can hardly bring myself to leave out the aforementioned Dancing Barefoot - a glorious song about woman as angel and woman as drug. And of course Glitter in Their Eyes - a lovely song about the theft represented by international trade agreements.
Yes but that's not all, I ache to leave out: Ask the Angels; A Room In Lebanon; People Have the Power; Privilege (Set Me Free); Tramping; Peanuts; Ain't It Strange; Boy Cried Wolf; Space Monkey; Waiting Underground; Frederick; Kimberley; I think you get the picture. It broke me as a child to know that I could never grow up to be her, even if I could find some musicians to work with that even half understood what was in my head. I hate and love and worship and wish... but that is sharkbait.
First things first then, thinking of the ones it absolutely hurts to leave out. Naturally that begins with Piss Factory. There was no rap in those days, or if there was, I'd never heard of it, and I heard this, poetic, beautiful, ripped still bleeding from the pages of Babel (and that, OMG THAT was the book it really hurt to sell when I was so desperate for food that I walked with a suitcase full of books from Leytonstone to Barking to Rodney's, a shop I knew would give a good price. Selling that book was like ripping out my own heart). So that's the first, number one I guess.
1 Piss Factory
So then what comes next. Another beautiful lyrical injection of Patti's words perhaps? Something iconic? Oh and yes of course, I remember watching Millennium as Land was shot as a 9 minute music video while Lara Means lost her mind. It's also the reason I bought Julie Burchill and Tony Parsons' book "The Boy Looked at Johnny". This is a rollercoaster, steam roller, JUGGERNAUT of a song, that rolls over Georgia and leaves smoking ruins in its wake. Of course I love it. I hate it too (of course I do, I wish to Gahd I'd written it!) but mostly I love it.
2 Land
Two monsters of songs that bleed into my skull and leave my brain wrung out and bleeding with the pain of such an early comparison with all the shit I'll ever write myself. Even though this comparison was what brought me closer than anything else I have ever thought of experienced to suicide. They are just too beautiful. I am reluctant to include a song that Patti didn't write for herself, even though she took this into the charts and made 1977 more tolerable for me than it might otherwise have been. It was decades before I found out that she had written this with Bruce Springsteen. In the end though, I couldn't leave this one out even though my heart will bleed to leave out others in its wake.
Desire is Hunger is the fire I breathe
Love is the banquet at which we feed
And this was recorded AFTER she recovered from a broken back.
3 Because the Night
You all know where I grew up by now. The place that I call Deliverance. Listen to the lyrics to this one. Feel the rhythm. Dance to it and feel the taste of human flesh as it clings to your teeth. Feel the lust that binds you, the sex that makes it feel okay before they rip the flesh from you in sacrifice.
And I laid upon the table, another piece of meat!
4) Summer Cannibals
And now we come to the final place and I know that when I say 'hurts to leave out' this time, I mean it. I am so torn about this. There are at least three songs that are holding me hostage and demanding that each of them get the last place. Well sorry songs, much as I would love to, you can only have one. And I guess that the big time sensuality of Distant Fingers beats out both the spiritual excess of Dancing Barefoot and the politico-economic clarity of Glitter in their Eyes.
5 Distant Fingers
Hurts to leave out... and this time it's not just a formality. I Can hardly bring myself to leave out the aforementioned Dancing Barefoot - a glorious song about woman as angel and woman as drug. And of course Glitter in Their Eyes - a lovely song about the theft represented by international trade agreements.
Yes but that's not all, I ache to leave out: Ask the Angels; A Room In Lebanon; People Have the Power; Privilege (Set Me Free); Tramping; Peanuts; Ain't It Strange; Boy Cried Wolf; Space Monkey; Waiting Underground; Frederick; Kimberley; I think you get the picture. It broke me as a child to know that I could never grow up to be her, even if I could find some musicians to work with that even half understood what was in my head. I hate and love and worship and wish... but that is sharkbait.
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