There is a glorious luxury to settling in to a lazy Saturday. Not a Saturday full of tasks around the house, no chores, no pressing need to battle the great unwashed in the shopping center. Saturdays waking slowly, slightly hung over from the relief of Friday evening, drinking in the sounds of the birds, soft light of Spring through the silk of the curtains. Saturdays rituals, reading Blind Date in the Grauniad app, debating whether to get up and get croissants from the bakery down the road, pondering the culinary choices for the weekend. Looking forward to the Fulham game, this year has been odd, not just because we have to get used to the expectation of winning but because success brings the attention of Sky and games moved to Friday nights, Sunday lunchtimes and 1.30Pm kick offs. Today is a treat, a normal British Saturday 3.00pm kick off which fills the end of my French afternoon nicely.
Dressed for an unhalfbricked Saturday morning
I dont want to go all Nigel Slater and confessional but one of the other treats is wandering through the cookery tomes to find inspiration. I have flétan, Atlantic Halibut, from the football loving fish guy at the weekly market. I also have the last remaining cabbage that survived the winter, or survived me harvesting them too early assuming they were struggling, sweet potatoes and a large cauli to do something with. Coffee and one of the French biscuits that they call “Petit Dejeuner”, which are whole grain and have chocolate nibs and nuts, accompany a catch up with Private Eye. I know my biases are just being confirmed but the journalism of the Eye is the one consistent investigative effort holding the despicable and corrupt ruling Conservative party to account as they undermine or destroy what is left of the England I had the good fortune to grow up in. It’s ironic that at this very moment, across the plagued island there are many of my peers reading through their Saturday’s Daily Mail or Daily Telegraph feeling the same disgust and distaste but about whoever their target of their privileged ire is today, likely some part of the woke, liberal elites that are in their eyes undermining their world.
Tomorrow France goes to the polls to elect the President for the next 5 years and by the time you read this we hope that we are not reliving that sense of bewilderment that we felt when the desperate and angry elected Donald Trump and voted to leave the EU. There are many desperate and angry French people who Marine Le Pen has spoke to with resonance about their cost of living, their frustrations when they fill up their battered old Peugeot 208’s with diesel to drive the 40 minutes to their poorly paid job. They blame Macron. They blame the establishment. They blame them for their lack of the piece of the western liberal pie they feel they deserve, they blame the dark skinned people for taking their jobs, for causing crime, for not being French and Mme Le Pen nods along with them and smiles in agreement when they vent their spleen. She promises France Unicorns like all populists, “tous et n’importe quoi’, no taxes for the under 30’s, reduced VAT on diesel, no hijabs, no benefits for foreigners, standard stuff. The divisions across Europe and the Western World that are exploited by the Populists are thanks in no small part to the efforts of Mr Putin aided and abetted by the uncontrolled greed which powers social media to be such a sustained force for evil. However, globalisation and capitalism has failed all but a moderately sized slice of French society and that is reflected in the polls where over 60% has voted for either far left or far right candidates. If there were such options in the USA we would probably see that kind of reflection too.
Saturday is also a day to reflect on what music have I been listening to or newly discovered this week, new vinyl arrivals have been slower of late as I am trying to be less compulsive. I got the quite lovely Wet Leg album this week and its no surprise they are the darlings of the rock media currently, as well as the new Jack White which is a nice and quite surprisingly good return to form. It’s also a day to dig through the back catalog and revisit old favorites. I consume vast amounts of music but quite a lot of it blends into itself. I definitely have different preferences for different moods and contexts.
As my Saturday moves sleepily at first it gathers pace and then late morning the coffee kicks in and energy levels go up so this playlist brings its game from folky to funky to just fun, enjoy!
Buxton in Derbyshire is what is laughingly referred to as a spa town. The English do not really do spas like here in France, where taking of the waters is not only normalized but forms part of the basic health care system. Nor like the Germans where, in combination with self flagellation with particular shrubs and bushes and rolling naked in the snow, spas are a much loved healthful activity. For a gallant few years in Regency England the upper classes went to towns like Buxton, Cheltenham, Lymington and of course the longest running show in spaszle-dazzle, Bath. I can confidently assert that after the fall of the Romans the baths in Bath were an underused resource, the English not being overly fond of water or strong on personal hygiene. So when the Regency court decreed that “taking the water” cured all ills the fashionable ‘ton’ took off to stay in these genteel sleepy country towns, see and be seen, and drink the naturally occurring waters that flowed from the local springs. Like Bridgerton, but with mineral water and less multicultural sex. Note that ‘taking of the waters’ was to drink it, still at this point we were not too keen on getting into it and cleaning off any accumulated dirt and detritus.
Buxton in January 1981 was a sleepy forgotten town, this predated the English rediscovery of drinking bottled water so the spa element of the town’s history was reduced to the public rooms like the hotels and council offices forming the original Crescent, a copy of the one in Bath, and the Pavilion Gardens. I had recently discovered the latest thing to come out of Liverpool, Echo and the Bunnymen, through their remarkable debut album ‘Crocodiles’. The closest place to where I was living at the time to see them was Buxton and thanks to the NME and a special invite off we forayed. They played under a camouflage net and had this serious nothing can touch us attitude, part Scouse, part being on that crest of acclaim that comes with Peel sessions, positive noise from NME and Sounds. Their sound live back then was driven by Pete de Freitas machine gun drumming, fills and rolls and the bass and guitar chugging the rhythm along, this was not a band to come to see if you wanted long guitar solo improvisations. At this point in their career Ian McCulloch’s voice was reasonably strong, before the booze and cigs ripped out what little range he had. Live, they drove a hard sound anchored in the drums but with the ‘Heaven Up Here’ album, which they were starting to play tracks from, the bass heavy Echo of their best period was to the fore. The closed the set with Over the Wall and All My Colours (or Zimbo as most of us know it as). McCulloch loved to improvise the endings with snippets from hits by the Stones, Del Shannon and the Velvets sprinkled among the original words. The audience laps that shit up as you all know the words and sing along. Will Sergeant wore sunglasses throughout the whole gig.
‘Heaven Up Here’ even now is a regal album, full of confidence and brimming with creative energy. They knew they were good and enjoyed showing off. ‘Porcupine’ was the follow up, more doom and less pop, They were tired out and starting to get tired of each other, Ian Broudie was guitarist Will Sergeant’s flatmate and his upbeat production could not make it a happy album. Iceland was the ideal backdrop for the album artwork and the videos that supported it and they look miserable, cold and lacking inspiration amongst the stalactites and frozen waterfall backdrops.
They released some great 12″ singles over this mid 80s’ period and you got an interesting sense of where and how they were experimenting on the B-sides. They somehow got over their creative hump and ‘Ocean Rain’ the 4th album did good box office and creatively expanded their sound to a richer more symphonic swell. Whereas the debut ‘Crocodiles’ was all scratchy guitars, ‘Heaven Up Here’ hard bass and drum driven anthems, ‘Porcupine’ was the angular peaks and troughs of dark days, ‘Ocean Rain’ was acoustic guitars and string sections, brushes not bass drums, it even included glockenspiel and xylophone . They still maintained the elemental graphic image, this time on a boat in a cave in Cornwall. The album produced two classic singles, The Killing Moon (much abused in every werewolf movie and tv show but they obviously need the royalties) and Seven Seas.
Nocturnal them
And then it all went a bit pear shaped. Any band that records, tours and plays nonstop for 7 years gets tired. They all react differently to the fame, the pressure for repeat success and the underlying hard work takes its toll. As I said as much as McCulloch’s voice and lyrics, his world view, whether dark or romantic, was the sound of Echo, the anchor was Pete De Freitas’s drums and Les Pattinson’s bass. De Freitas had major mental and drug issues by the time they were pressurized to record a new album by Warner Borthers (WEA) in 1987. And not just produce any old album but to do their version of Gabriel’s ‘So’, Will Sergeant was apoplectic that Warner executive Rob Dickens played them Gabriel’s album, declaring “I want you to sound like this!”. So not much of a surprise then that the next album was crap.
They could not even be bothered to come up with an interesting title. I couldn’t be bothered to buy it, I got the cassette at some point of “Echo and the Bunnymen’ but it was released in 1987. They got two hit singles off it in the US, ‘Bedbugs and Ballyhoo’ and ‘Lips Like Sugar’. They got some movie song exposure and then it became the last real Bunnymen album. McCulloch was sick of it and left the band. The other three tried to continue – which was ironic in that De Freitas was a paid employee rather than in the band for the last year due to his drug and health issues. They brought in another singer and made a terrible album.
And then De Freitas got killed in a motorbike accident so it really was over. Will and Ian made an album in 1995 as ‘Electrafixion’, which was pretty rubbish, they then worked with Les Pattinson again and made another 7 albums, not one of which I have bought or listened much to. They obviously worked out how to co-exist as creators together for the long haul, they both have done solo projects and Will Sergeant has done lots of atmospheric instrumental stuff. There have been several remixes and numerous Echo compilation albums and they still play live, usually for the summer festival and 80’s revival crowds.
La Chute – The camou years
For me though, they will always be the dark heroes under the camouflage net in Buxton Pavilion Gardens in January 1981. You can hear how great they sounded that night yourself as 4 songs were released as the live EP ‘Shine So Hard’. I owned this as a Cassette single in a cigarette box style packaging and had no idea where it had been recorded. Later it got re-mastered in 2003 and the credits listed the location and I realized I had actually been there.
Here then is my selection of the best of Echo: Listen here.
Pictures on My Wall [Original Single Version] 1979. The original Echo as in the drum machine, catchy little pop number!
Rescue – 1980. The spiky guitar sound appears first
All That Jazz – 1980. That drum sound first appears (Shine So Hard live version from Buxton)
The Puppet – 1980. …and it all comes together on this single
Show of Strength – 1981. Heaven Up Here opener.
A Promise – 1981.
Over The Wall – 1980 (Shine So Hard live version from Buxton)
All My Colours – 1982 (the best version is Live at Womad with Burundi Drummers but too random for Spotify so this is also from Buxton)
Broke My Neck -1981 B-side to A Promise single
Fuel – 1982 – B-side to The Back of Love
The Cutter – 1983 Opener to Porcupine
The Back of Love -1983
Clay – 1983
Heads Will Roll – 1983 yes, they added strings to their bow
The Killing Moon – 1984 ( John Peel session version without strings)
Angels and Devils – 1984 (B-side to Silver)
Nocturnal Me – 1984 ( John Peel session version without strings)
A little bit of France in Odessa, Duc De Richlieu getting some cover
Well, that went from crappy to ‘end of days’ whatthefuckery very quickly!
It’s tough not to have a sense of everything just got very trivial compared to what is unfolding less than 2500 kms to the east. I have experienced a mix of emotions.
Mostly dark, accepting the full despotic nature of not just what Putin has done but the complete propagandist twist of every evil action into something for the ordinary Russian to cheer on. The lower levels of disgust experienced in looking at the British government’s spinning of their decision not to enable Ukrainians to come into the UK in any numbers or at the Republicans and their facilitators at Fox News glibly parroting Putin’s line while using the situation to take shots at Biden. The pride in the constant, unrelenting, unperturbed resistance that the Ukrainian nation has shown. The immense balls of Zelensky, the immense balls; contrast his behavior with the puffy little guy in the jacket and tie at the end of the 50′ table in a bunker? The smile when Anonymous does the type of hybrid technical hacks that we expect to get from Russian. The amazing response of people all across Europe; nearly every town in France has collection points for support and aid for Ukraine. Towns like La Rochelle, donating 55 hospital beds and delivering them to Ukraine, towns organizing to rent buses and providing drivers and support to go and pick up a bus load of women and children to welcome them to their homes.
I hope that somehow we take something good out of this carnage and destruction, maybe Putin is done at some point in the near future and his regime crashes down with him and then all the other tinpot despots, propped up by Russia, in Kazakhstan, Belarus and Turkmenistan tumble over too. It would also be timely if the oil and gas price spike encouraged a quicker transition to sustainable energy rather than a rush to start fracking everywhere again and augur a commitment to address the climate crisis.
In the meantime I have been distracting myself with this playlist of music. It’s a selection from the various albums old and new that I have been playing this grey and cold March. Let’s listen to it while doing something to help Ukraine!
Jarvis Cocker – Save The Whale – Mister Deltoid Remix – Sheffield’s favorite son in groovy deep remix of one of his confinement classics on the 2020 ‘Jarv Is’ album
Animal Collective – Prester John – the three strangely named guys from the Collective back with new toons and familiar fey electo-pop. Rachel and I saw Panda Bear play at a barn behind a winery in Napa. We rented an AirBnb that the hostess tried to pretend the place was ours in privacy, only to find she had snuck in during the night to sleep in the other bedroom…..
Black Country, New Road – Concorde – uniquely English noisy jazz poprock. The angsty sounding lead singer managed to screw the collective pooch by announcing he was leaving the 7-piece band on the eve of the new album’s release; his voice is a big part of their sound so how they transition will be interesting.
Cate le Bon – Running Away – the one time I managed to fly Concorde Simon and Jasmin Le Bon were the only celebs on the same flight, or at least the only ones I recognized.
Chudahye Chagis – Binasoo+ – Holly’s friend Suzie introduced us to the rabbit-hole that is Korean Folk music. So this, to stretch the allegory, is as Fairport Convention is to Dolly Collins, as these new Korean artists are to the 16th-17th century folk songs. The singer Chudahye Chagis is part of the SsingSsing band whose visuals are fabulous.
Talking Heads – The Overload – as this downbeat song overlooked on the superb Remain In Light album describes today’s terrible days – “The gentle collapsing of every surface’
Ian Sweet – Sing Til I Cry – Jill Medford’s songs are always double sided and this is that slow building, take down that is classic Sweet. Her best recent song is of course F*ckthat but this flows rhythmically better.
Eno – Fat Lady of Limburg – I was introduced a couple of weeks ago to the live 801 album from 1976 which I had probably written off at the time as being ridiculous, old school Prog, on my drive for the new wave at the time. It is a fabulous window into a time when some very clever musicians came together for a very short period of time and luckily, for posterity, they were recorded live on a real soundboard. They did a super version of this song but Spotify of course does not have it so I went back to the original, to share.
Big Thief – Time Escaping – these folks are the archetypal new hippies in many ways. They ‘woodshed’ most albums, even before Covid times; they include former lovers amongst the line-up yet are insanely productive, so no spats but the energy is working for sure. This is from the latest double album and well, yes….
Lana Del Ray – Dealer – this is a throw away track on Blue Bannisters, its from aborted sessions with Alex Turner and Miles Kane’s side project the Last Shadow Puppets. As most of you know I am a massive Lana fan and try not to miss an opportunity to preach the gospel of Norman Fucking Rockwell.
Findlay – Strange One – trailer for the new album, “The Last of the 20th Century Girls”, which is a title that could be applied to Putin.
Soul Coughing – Screenwriter Blues, another old song but as you might have spotted from a prior blog the line about its “5.00am and you are listening to Los Angeles” is from this on the money take down of Glitter Town.
Leenalchi – Tiger is Coming – yes, its Korean folk again and if you do not listen to this and start dancing you need to drink more. Here is an essential video.
Butcher Boy – Carve a Pattern. I heard this first on the excellent The Culture Bunker podcast, chosen by Stuart Murdoch of the much loved institution that is Belle & Sebastian, they are a fellow Glaswegian band.
Joy Orbison – swag w/ kav. Some gorgeous grungy UK dance from a superb album: Still Slipping Vol 1. which is on Bandcamp here
Ural Thomas – Dancing Dimensions. As war is about to break out over the Urals an 80 year old soul singer from Portland OR is getting us to dance, what more can you want?
Squid – G.S.K. – a song about drugs in a name check that I am sure Pharma giant Glaxo Smith Kline would rather do without, just keep channeling nice Lucazade thoughts…
Yard Act – The Overload – another overload in the same playlist, how lazy is that! The hottest thing out of Yorkshire since Bielsa has been thrown to the curb. More angry young British lads speak/singing; but if you had to endure their government you would be driven to protest in any way possible. Yet again I am so embarrassed about my fucking generation and how we have destroyed a nationstate in the pursuit of personal self gratification. ” What does tomorrow’s world have for me?” what indeed?
Mannequin Pussy – Drunk II – if you have not been drinking more in the past two years it can only be because you have taken the pledge. This song demonstrates why we probably should drink less.
Jarvis Cocker/Hot Chip – House Music All Night Long – To finish up, dance away with two acts from an earlier more dishonest time when we celebrated English exceptionalism as if that was something to be proud of rather than serially embarrassed about. Another remix but the original album is so good if it nudges you to check it out, my mission is complete.
“Who the hell would live in a house like this? Head deep in the basement, one foot on the pedal bin This ain’t easy listenin'”
“My Dad got a Fender Telecaster when I was 7, before that he would goof around on a crappy keyboard and a drum set, he got from a surfer buddy, but the look of that Telecaster, man, I was hooked.” Nate Wrigley didn’t get his own until he was 22, he had played cheap copies, “Walmart guitars” as he called them. He didn’t mind as he liked the trashy sound. He had never decided what he would do with his life, therefore was hesitant to attend college. After high school, Nate wrote songs and played with bands in the preternaturally surf obsessed backwater that was Pacifica. His comrade in arms in the struggle not to conform to the corporate drudge was his cousin Kyle.
Kyle grew up surfing in Seal Beach. His mother, Nate’s aunt Amy, had settled there after college and married a handsome and democratic-leaning refugee from Orange County. Kyle was smart like his Mum, and got into Long Beach State University and chose without much thought to study Marketing. The one thing he had enjoyed at CSULB was volunteering at the performing arts center, the school had a quietly impressive performance space sponsored and named after the Carpenters, who were alumni. The arts and artists themselves were, as you would expect, targeted at wealthy locals rather than the students so it ran the gamut of Al Jarreau, the Beach Boys, Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion and the odd classical artists not able to make the big leagues in LA. They would sashay up in their Lincoln Navigators and E-Class Mercedes convertibles with the casual SoCal mix of blue jeans, (men and women), sparkly tight shirts and big hair for the women, suit jackets, open neck dress shirts with bouffant chest hair and chains for the men; deep tan compulsory for all. This was Long Beach after all, not real LA and yet it somehow could never create its own identity. People made good money there in the port and real-estate but never Hollywood money, never stupid money. Kyle liked working the sound board and backstage. Even if he was not a big fan of Al Jarreau or Journey getting to work alongside their roadies and technicians was a good learning and like Nate, he was into music and playing drums or bass guitar. He never played at the Richard and Karen Carpenter PAC but played the working bars down by the container port at weekends with various short-lived bands.
They played bar-room rock, 60’s covers and in the summer of his junior year Nate had spent the whole summer crashed at his apartment and they both played with what was basically the band Wavves, but missing a couple of folks. Wavves were a band that had some success the year before but were having to take a hiatus after the abrupt cancellation of their first European tour, after the lead singer, off his face on valium and ecstasy insulted the Spanish crowd, started to fight the drummer midway through their third song and got driven off stage with an avalanche of water bottles. So Kyle and Nate played drums and guitar and did some vocals with the rest of Wavves while the lead singer and main man did some long overdue rehab at his record company’s expense and the drummer left to join the Scientologists. They got to taste touring life, as in driving around Southern California and Arizona in a rental van, staying at Motel 6s and playing larger bars and clubs as the warm-up act the Broken Wavves.
That came to an abrupt end in September when, rehab successfully completed, the mainman returned alongside two old buddies from Jay Reatard’s band and promptly fired Kyle and Nate after their last gig as Wavvers in Barstow. They got paid off but their career in the lights came to a bumpy end as they had to go home via Greyhound, Nate’s Walmart guitar in its carry case, the drums were the band’s luckily, so that was one thing less to schlepp across the Imperial Valley.
Nate went home to Pacifica and nothing much and Kyle finished his last year at CSULB. After 4 years of learning about 20-year-old ad campaigns for detergent, cars and cereals and mid-20th century management science he graduated. He looked around at what the world was offering a young man in 2008 and the answer was not a lot.
He tried out for several ‘marketing’ jobs but that seemed to be code for him sitting in a Dilbert cartoon doing call center work with a bunch of equally desperate young graduates trying to really get excited about their monthly call quotas. The world of Monday morning sales ra-ra sessions with bad muffins, neon orange juice and coffee strong enough to strip paint may have worked briefly as a motivation tool during the 1980s but it was a self-parody by the time Kyle was in his third customer service job. It was servicing a TV cable and internet bundling giant, and of course it wasn’t actually a good job with benefits for the actual giant, publicly-listed company. It was an hourly paid job for an outsourced service provider, working out of an anonymous 5 story office building in an equally anonymous office park without sidewalks, or stores or places to eat, in a suburb of Reseda.
The San Fernando valley was hardly the place of your dreams, unless they were pornographic. It seemed far from the beach and the SOCAL lifestyle he had grown up being part of, but the rent was cheap. He shared a condo with Kent, a college buddy in Canoga Park who had an accounting job in a shiny glass office building with manicured lawns and a fountain out front in Westfield Village. Still no sidewalks, or stores or places to eat but that was standard developer chic and its LA, so everyone has a car to go and get some food to bring back to their desk and eat, quickly and guiltily. His roommate was chill, low maintenance and being Korean American had family in the Valley. Kent would be away most weekends with them and would bring back mounds of Tupperware containers, full of insanely good homecooked food; as long as you didn’t mind chile, spice and garlic you were golden. With his roommate gone he could practice drums for hours, he had to use pads to prevent the neighbors from wanting to kill him but technique wise, it taught him better control than just pounding with hammers.
After they had been in the apartment for a year Kent came up with a strange proposition. It turned out he had a girlfriend Shayla, who he had actually been spending most of the ‘family’ weekends with. Shayla was a petite, bouncy, blond Mormon from east Texas who he met waitressing at the Applebee’s near his office. Kent’s deeply religious parents wanted him to marry a Korean girl, who had a degree in a real subject like accounting or life sciences and who was evangelical in outlook. Shayla was striking out on all three of these so she had become the secret girlfriend. Kent’s cunning conundrum solver was to have Shayla pose as Kyle’s girlfriend and for them all to move in together. They talked it over some brewskis and the deal was sealed. They would move into a larger house and Nate became the 4th roommate. If and when Kent’s parents came over to visit, Shayla was Kyle’s life problem and in return Kent got regular guilt free sex, Shayla moved out of her shithole converted motel and Nate could get the band together again.
They rented a down at heel large 3 bedroom 1950’s ranch-style house in Northridge with the only items of mid-century life style that no-one , other than the Maytag Guy, to this day wants: a 1950’s electric stove, washing machine and fridge. More importantly it was detached and had a garage which became the practice room. Shayla decided that maybe she would learn bass as her shifts were mainly evening now, she got better tips, so she had time in the day to futz around and practice chords. She had no noticeable musical talent but stuck at it and she had a pretty good sense of rhythm. Kyle kept up the customer service job listening to the elderly customers struggling with the switch from the cable box that had not changed in 40 years to a new controller and all the joys the newly accessible interwebs brought them. Mostly they just wanted someone to talk to and Kyle would do that. He was compensated for talking to people and as long as he got high service scores, which he did, he would listen to their gripes and family concerns, just as if they were technical issues to be resolved.
Nate got a job in Kinko’s, doing photocopying for harassed parents working on their kids’ homework projects, solving minor technical issues for the many realtors working out of their homes, accepting parcels, selling office supplies, generally being nice.
They started writing songs, in their minds crappy pop songs about their crappy lives but their relentless optimism cut through and when they got asked back to play the same pubs, bars and small rock clubs around the Valley people liked their songs. They played a couple of times as the Beach Bunnies then found out someone else already had a band called the same, then settled on Tiny Bunny. They played 2 or 3 gigs a week, all booked by their own efforts asking for slots, then promoting with their own hand designed and laid out posters, luckily they knew where to get printing done cheap. They didn’t exactly build up a following or anything but they noticed, even as 3rd on the bill at Country Club in Reseda or the Glass House in Pomona, people would actually listen to their set not just studiously ignore them and shout, talking to their friends with their backs to the stage. One night the following summer Kyle, Nate and Shayla had come off stage to almost a round of applause after their 20 minute 6 song set of self-penned instant classics. They were finishing their free beers with Kent, who by this stage was booker, roadie and manager by night, still staff-accountant by day, when an unattractive guy in his lost 30’s sporting a Road to Ruin t-Shirt and a bleached white denim jacket came over to them and said “Caught your set guys, you write this stuff yourself?” When they managed to nod affirmatively he introduced himself. “I’m Jake Gaines, I do A&R for Mom and Pop Records, we are looking for rock pop acts so we might be able to help each other, can I buy you a drink”.
The fact that he said the magic words A&R and drinks ensured they were all smiles and they took their drinks out back to the smoking room, more commonly called the garden. Kent did most of the talking in his manager role. He looked the part as he didn’t dress like the others because he had come straight from work and had basically removed his tie from his button-down work shirt as the only nod to casualness. Nate’s sported his surfer dude meets Kinko’s look and Shayla and Kyle’s more obvious efforts to be pop stars was mainly on-stage attitude rather than a look but they went as far as the ubiquitous black t-shirts, jeans and Chuck Taylors.
Kent got slightly pissed when Jake spent most of the time addressing Shayla’s chest rather than look at him or the other two. But Gaines dropped the right names of bands he had signed Freelance Whales, Tokyo Police Club and Shadow Shadow Shade, who they had supported a couple of time as Beach Bunnies, so they felt at home to be associated with, if not kindred spirits maybe folks they admired.
Two days later they found themselves in the downtown offices of Mom & Pop. The address was actually in Culver City but as they drove through the shiny skyscrapers atopped with big media company names they exchanged glances and “Dude!” exclamations. The four of them were a little disappointed when the directions turned them away from the glitz and glamour down a slightly seedy back street and to the office. It was a beige, 2 story 1970’s office building that would not look out of place hosting a dry cleaners or a realtors, not very rock and roll at all. The record company was actually based out of New York so the LA office was smaller, on a cheaper budget and more sleepy than they expected. They were greeted by the receptionist and walked through the 3 quietly working young kids to the brown glass Board Room and offered sodas and coffee. At least in here it was a bit more R’n’R with 2 framed gold records (not anyone they had heard of) and framed tour posters of acts on the roster. Jake walked in wearing a slightly sheepish grin followed by a heavily tanned and gold chain bedecked slim guy in his 50’s wearing what could best be summarized as pimp casual. “Marvin Klein, heard a lot about you guys, thanks for coming in today, you got coffee, soda, what can we get you?”. He welcomed them, sat them down and told them how excited they were to have them sign to their label, how much Jake had sung their praises and how their accessible pop rock sound was something that’s missing from their label. Jake then excitedly jumped in and explained that they would start promoting them on YouTube and getting them touring slots with real stars, and threw out names Andrew Bird, White Stripes, The National, LCD Sound System. This was starting to sound more like a teenage dream rather than a business meeting. Marvin asked whether they felt they had enough material for an album. Nate tended to be the mouthpiece, so he explained they had 10-12 songs they really liked that they had played live, and the audience liked, and they had been playing with some new ideas adding a keyboard and effects. The others sat there oscillating between sheepishly looking down in their laps and checking out the ridiculous showbusiness style and way of talking that Marvin had, holding court. Shayla again got loads of eye contact and Kent squirmed. He felt a fraud as the pretend manager, which was not helped when Marvin described how he would get them a real manager who would help them “monetize your merchandise and get your brand going, we gotta get several revenue streams going, get you exposed on all the platforms like Spotify and I-tunes”. After what seemed like the whole morning flew by, but actually turned out to be 48 minutes from entering the door and falling back through it into the morning sunlight, they stood on the sidewalk with a 14 page document that they should take to their attorney and if ok, sign and send it back, “so we can get going and make Tiny Bunny the hottest band around, make you guys famous, and make us all a shit ton of money!”
They stood outside and looked at each other, no-one said anything for what seemed like a moment in time frozen until finally Kyle, who had not said a word finally said. “I don’t know guys, I would go on tour, but I never really took this as a serious job up until a couple minutes ago. We have to decide if we really want to make an effort at it. It’s been a real long, slow practice over the years to get here, I am not sure I am ready to just do this. What if we fuck up? What if I fuck up, what if I am just not fucking good enough? Nate and I have been doing this shit since we were kids and we don’t have 10-12 songs we have 7, 7 fucking songs after what? 10 years?”
It was all giggles, applause, and stage lights in the eyes as a break from mundane day jobs until then. Now it was a job and none of them had really trained for it. What sounded so carefree and fun in the room with gold disks and the smooth guy with gold chains and silky speech now seemed like a slip’n’slide to serious work and growing up.
Just as the tools of on-line collaboration have brought long lasting changes to the working dynamic that are still working their way through into permanence (regardless of the ridiculous flailing of the commercial real estate establishment, and their arm twisting support efforts by politicians of every colour, but that is a blog on its own) the same tools have engendered collaboration, cooperation and creation musically regardless of location. Musicians have swapped files for ages on thumb drives, CDRs and even tape, broadband has allowed fully detailed files of massive size to be bounced back between people working together. The video-tools have allowed on-line equivalents of jamming in person to riff on ideas. The confinement itself brought the conscious forming of bubbles for band mates, ‘woodshedding’ of the old school type. On line releases of videos or tracks through everything from Spotify or Fortnight through to Bandcamp or YouTube brought a much needed spontaneity and immediate feedback. Lana Del Ray shelved a complete album after pretty dour feedback on the three tracks trailed, that may be career saving as artists can now avoid the label-induced rushed release that manages to completely miss the zeitgeist.
There is a lot of talk in the various Best Of lists in December about how the confinements, whether enforced or voluntary, have brought forth a veritable outpouring of creative output.
The other thing that is happening is the destruction of music industry categories that help A&R and marketing folks to sell artists to radio stations, immediate and unfiltered access means that cool songs can be shared on social media regardless of ‘genre’ or label. Lots of the 2021 Best Of lists were remarkable for their diversity of talent and music, even if I did not really like Taylor Swift, Turnstile, Tyler the Creator or Mdou Moctar’s records the fact that they appear in many lists, together, is great.
The commercial success in terms of sales does not depend on critical approval, which is both depressing but unsurprising and it would be worrying if the tastes of a 60-year-old white dude living in rural France had any relevance on what sells. For interest here is the Apple Music top 20 for December by sales:
Encanto (OST- Disney)
30 – Adele ( Pop)
Sing 2 (OST)
Magic – Nas (Rap)
An Evening With Silk Sonic – Bruno Mars, Anderson Paak & Silk Sonic ( R&B/Pop)
Dangerous – Morgan Whallen (Country)
Sour – Olivia Rodrigo (Pop)
The Contract – GTA Online (Game soundtrack – Hip Hop/Rap)
Red (Taylor’s Vrsion) – Taylor Swift (Pop)
RWBY, Vol 8 -Various Artists (Game soundtrack)
The first thing that is obvious with this is that Apple’s sales are dominated by its sales in the US and this represents a snap shot of main stream ‘Merica. More interesting is what gets streamed by Spotify although, thanks to their annoying habit of placing songs into people’s streams that record companies pay them to insert, there are limits. These are the 10 top streamed songs:
Butter – BTS
good 4 u – Olivia Rodrigo
Levitating – Dua Lipa, DaBaby
Kiss Me More – Doja Cat, SZA
Montero – Lil Nas
Bad Habits – Ed Sheeren
Leave the Door Open – Bruno Mars, Anderson Paak & Silk Sonic
Peaches – Justin Bieber
Save Your Tears – The Weeknd, Ariana Grande
déjà vu – Olivia Rodrigo
I think this gives a much broader snapshot of what young people are listening to in more than just the US. More urban, more dance driven and other than Ed Sheeren and the Beeb, very diverse as in not a bunch of skinny young white guys. The Apple list seemed to be what the average middle American Mom and Dad have been listening to while driving the family mini-van, the Spotify most streamed is more fun if not necessarily what I would listen to, Korean boy bands are definitely not my bag, baby and in the top 100 streamed songs for last year not only did none of my choices for ‘best of’ make an appearance I can honestly say that only two – Glass Animals and Big Red Machine would be found in my music collection so I am reassuringly out of touch and not down with the kids.
Anyway, for what its worth I thought 2021 did deliver some really cool music of many stripes and so here is my selection. There is a playlist on Spotify here but for the purist the links by the album are to Bandcamp.
Self-Esteem – Prioritise Pleasure – fun pop music with an indy attitude and a self deprecating sense of humour dealing with all the issues a 30 year old woman juggles with in a Britain that has been run by the Tories since 2011. I love the harmonies but my daughter dismissed them as a bit too musical theater. This is the link to all the sources, including Tidal, which will please Pete Martin.
Kissed Her Little Sister – sleeping giant– electronic folk pop – Jeff Morisano has been making personal pop music for over 10 years, generally under the radar. This last album has the same pop hooks but inspired by the successful recovery from a difficult birth of his son it is consistently upbeat and a good soundtrack to looking outwards after 2 years of locking down.
Jane Weaver – Flock – indie synth driven with some overtones of prog and Stereolab rolling melodies. Jane has been around a few years on the edge of getting recognition and this album building on 2017’s Modern Kosmology’s positive vibe got her that wider acclaim. Ignore the fact that Coldplay sampled her, nothing much in common.
Matthew E. White – K.Bay – southern rock – big bold songs with band and lots of swaggering arrangements. It still is southern rock but more swampy Nawlins, more Dr John than Skinnerd. Works out of Virginia with a bunch of longstanding sidemen and another one to have been around a few years but this is very cool.
Hayden Thorpe – Moondust For My Kingdom– synth pop. Since the sad demise of Wild Beasts the two prior vocalists Thorpe and Tom Fleming have released solo stuff, Fleming under One True Pairing which took a more rock approach. Thorpe’s stuff has been lighter and poppier and synth driven but still that interesting melody and rhythm mix that made the Wild Beasts so compelling.
Liars – The Apple Drop – Electronic – Now Liars is just Angus Andrew and he has moved back to Australia from Brooklyn they are technically an Aussie band. They have never made two albums sounding the same, relentlessly experimental, slightly crazy, he is a great example of confinement being anything but confining.
Lump – Animal – Electronic Folk- Laura Marling has obviously got bored with singer-songwriter/folk stylistic limitations and this, the second album with Mike Lindsay, the former Tunng creative force playing all manner of keyboards is a further step to more interesting ground. She uses her voice like a soundscape as well as just writing and singing the lyrics. If you have seen her play live you know she hates the tropes, encores and all that so collaborating with someone has produced good results.
Squid – Bright Green Field – Shouty post-rock – They use the term punk with this type of music which is a misnomer for those of us old enough to have lived through punk, as in the original noise fest that was 1976-78 and not GreenDay or any of the pop pretending to be punk that came after. These are bright young men wearing their learning on their arty sleeves and the music delivers large chunks of angst and excitement, Brighton meets The Beasties, some harks back to XTC or Talking Heads. Interesting mix of instrumentation includes brass and keyboards, funky meets post-rock in that quiet, quiet, loud, bop, loud, quiet way. Odd connection is that Martha Skye Murphy, aka daughter of Karl Hyde of national art institution Underworld does vocals on one track.
Black Country, New Road – For The First Time– Jazz-noise – I keep getting people trying to persuade me that Jazz is worth listening to again and arguably the attention from diverse musicians it is getting has attracted new younger talents to a genre that did everything it could to live up to Zappa’s eternal put down “Jazz isn’t dead, it just smells funny”. These guys are groovy, loud and manic, its is definitely not the art of the cool.
Sault – Untitled (Rise)– Soul? This is a gorgeous collection of soul funk songs with a mix of jazz, grime and hip-hop influences. Sault is a collective of London based musicians shepherded by the producer Inflo, I am not a massive Little Simz fan but his stuff with Michael Kiwanuku I loved. Great live drum sound and just a solid groove throughout, a very upbeat happy journey which considering all the collective crap we have been through in the last 2 years is very welcome. They released two albums in 2021 and Untitled (Black) is just as rewarding, incredible creative output showing how collaboration can really keep energy levels high.
Dry Cleaning – New Long Leg – Alt-Rock? Guitar, bass and drums making a good hard racket with spoken word vocals, not everyone’s cup of tea normally but the unusual, acerbic at times, sparkling takes on modern life of Florence Shaw make it a compelling listen. I have a soft spot for ‘Sprechgesang‘ and love the stuff done by the Canadian Myra Davies with Gudrun Gut as well as Tenesha The Wordsmith.
A veritable smorgasbord of songs that will hopefully strike a chord, if not with all maybe a selection and perhaps it will introduce someone to you that may otherwise have slipped off the radar of Spotify’s suggestions and prompts into musical oblivion. 2021 had lots of issues but it certainly delivered some amazing music. I am sure 2022 will also build upon this as stuff that has been worked on in studios and bedrooms gets to be toured and played in front of actual people at last. Get out there, buy some product, see some live music, get the t-shirt!
Have you met any famous people? I met John Cleese twice. Once, on a school trip to London, we saw him in line at the bank under Harrods, we did the obligatory silly walk past him three times and he ignored us. On reflection I am not sure that counts as ‘meeting’. I did sit next to him in the basement of a packed restaurant around the corner from Lord’s at lunch a few years later, while at a test match with a customer. He had an earpiece and a ‘transistor radio’ and so I asked him for the score as we were all late back. Apart from my subterranean encounters with Cleese, I asked Rod Stewart for suggestions on where to go for a night out, I also gave my views on baseball to Tommy Lasorda, Ian Dury tried to serenade my girlfriend with J.J.Cale songs. My daughter, Holly and the ex-wife shared seaweed baths with Tim Booth (of James fame) and anonymous girlfriend. Holly got hit on by Thierry Henry, Rachel got hit on by Tarrantino and Vincent Gallo; all of these encounters happening in LA so that’s where you need to be, obviously, to be celebrity adjacent.
I was wondering whether Mark E. Smith ever met Frank Zappa.
Mark obviously liked Frank’s music and The Fall regularly played Hungry Freaks Daddy, the geeks tell me they played it live 33 times in fact. Mark also wrote “I’m Frank” which was supposed to be guitarist Craig Scanlon’s tribute to Zappa. They have quite a lot in common. Both were ridiculously prodigious. The Fall released 32 studio albums over a 38-year period with 42 Live albums and 51 compilations. The reason behind the vast compilation catalog is that Mark tended to burn through record companies almost as fast he went through band members. Frank Zappa tended to mix live and studio work so it’s hard to subdivide his vast catalog which includes both releases under his own name, releases as The Mothers of Invention or a mix of the two but there are 62 albums and 82 compilations. The Zappa estate, which is a story in itself, continues to release material so Frank’s musical catalog starts in 1967 and continues to this day so 54 years, 55 albums have been released officially since his death. Both men were chain-smoking auto-didacts, self-educated in the fringes of culture. Zappa was a fan of Varese and music concrete, a fan of Camus and existentialism but also finding it pretentious as fuck. Smith had a fascination of the macabre writings of H.P. Lovecraft, Wyndham Lewis and M.R.James. The band’s name is from the Camus book, ‘La Chute’ although that was said to be fellow band founder Tony Friel’s fascination and Tony lasted just over a year.
Both Frank and Mark loved a good cover song, which tends to suggest they had that purist’s view of music, they reserved the right to like or detest anything, popular or otherwise.
The Mothers covered quite a lot of doo-wop, ‘cheesy music’ as Frank thought of it but a reminder for him of growing up in the 1950’s. Mark had a soft spot for 50’s rockabilly, the Fall were referred to mistakenly for a while as “punkabilly”. The Mothers released an album of self-penned doo-wop “Cruising with Ruben and the Jets” as well as covering the Four Deuces “WPLJ” and Jackie and the Starlites “Valarie”. They regularly played live Richard Berrie’s ‘Louie Louie’ and the song Plastic People on We Are Only In It For the Money is based openly on the same riff. The Fall covered the Big Bopper’s ‘White Lightning’ and Tommy Blake’s “F’olding Money”. They both were fans of garage music from the 60’s, the difference being Frank actually was in the garage in Lancaster, CA making that noise with the Captain, Don Van Vliet while Mark was discovering the Other Half and The Sonics from the Nuggets compilations in the 80’s but “Strychnine” and “Mr Pharmacist” were live staples of The Fall. They both liked to take a popular song from one genre and make it their own. The Fall had pop chart success with covers of the Kinks’ “Victoria” and R.Dean Taylor’s “Ghost in My House”. I had the original 1974 single which was memorable as at the time he was the only white artist on Tamla Motown. One of my favorite Fall covers is Sister Sledge’s “Lost in Music”. Zappa took on the staples of Classic Rock radio the Allman Brothers Band’s “Whipping Post” and played “Stairway to Heaven” relatively straight as a live number, although I think that was his bizarre way of showing he could outplay Page and the ‘rock god’ guitarists.
They were both interesting if tough interviews for journalists, both always good for some snide line about the music industry. Frank’s famous quote about journalists defined his sense of disdain for them: “Writing about rock music is like dancing about architecture”. Mark was not unpleasant per se, he was just oblique, and interviews famously involved trying to drink with him, or you paying for Mark to get shit-faced. Woe betide the young journo from NME who fetched up in Prestwich to chat to Mark over a quiet drink in the Forester’s, only to be poured into a taxi to get to the train back to London several pints and several hours later. Frank was famously abstemious, made it a point of honour to not take the drugs always on offer. Mark was an alcoholic and suffered in his later years with broken bones due to one too many drunken falls. Both died of cancer as poster children for the concept of not eating well or treating your body with any sense of propriety. Naturally skinny and workaholics neither had any body issues to shame them into taking better care of themselves until they became ill.
Domestic Bliss
They both found love through music, or in Zappa’s case frequent sex. Mark had a relationship with Una Baines in the original line-up, followed by Brix Smith who he married and brought some commerciality to the band, after their divorce he married Saffron Prior, who was running the Fall fan club. He then dated the keyboardist Julia Nagle, but after a fraught drunken assault on the other band members that came to an end. His next partner was Eleni Poulu, who played keyboards and they were married from 2002 until 2016. In his final years his partner was his manager Pamela Vander. Frank was married straight out of high school but that was over by the time he was making music. He married Gail Porter, who worked at the Whisky-a-Go-Go in LA and was a self-confessed groupie. They were married in the 8th month of her pregnancy carrying Moon-Unit, the first of 4 kids. Frank indulged his penchant for groupies for the rest of his life, he celebrated groupies in his songs including the “Jazz Discharge Party Hats”, most of the Live at the Fillmore album, “Magdalena” and of course, the glorious “Road Ladies”.
Both Zappa and Smith were egotistical and self-centered in the way you have to be to get up and take center stage night after night for a living. They both burned through band members, both metaphorically and in many cases physically, very few former Fall or Mothers/Zappa sidemen went on to have a successful career outside of the original band. Lowell George and Steve Vai being major exceptions but no-one from the Fall seemed to be that enamored with rock music to pursue it as a lifestyle option. They both had interesting artwork on their music releases – either unique graphics and art or portraits of the band and/or them featured prominently, yet always not just a flattering good light shot, an odd view. Frank played live from 1960 until 1988 regularly, prior to his final live gigs in the new Czech Republic in June, 1991. Mark played his first gigs in 1976 and his last on Saturday, 4 November 2017, at Queen Margaret Union, Glasgow, 42 years on the road, the last gigs from a wheelchair and clearly still wanting to be there.
They both brought not just the music, they brought an ethos, an approach to music and life, completely uncompromising. Frank changed his band when he got bored of their limitations, Mark changed the band when they exceeded their limitations, before they got too good. Mark famously said “no fucking improvisation” whereas Frank had his bands drilled to respond to elaborate hand signals to foster improvisation and unlikely key changes. In their own way they had an inner drive to create that was both uniquely personal and unrelenting. If they did ever meet I am not sure whether they would hate each other for being so self-assured that they and only they were doing the right thing, doing it the right way, or they would have got on famously, due to a mutual respect of a true artist. They would have shared a cigarette, Mark would have asked if there was anything to drink and if the answer was no, probably headed off elsewhere, down the road.
I realized recently that my musical taste took an odd sabbatical in the 90’s and much of the music from that era that I enjoy today I discovered only in the last 10 years. It prompted some reflection as to what was happening to me while I was studiously ignoring all this great music. Suburbia is what happened. Being a parent of very young children in the USA forces one into suburbia, that plus the British desperation to live somewhere else than a rainy and grey island off the north coast of France. So we had to have a house with a pool, which was above my pay grade in San Francisco or New York and so we lived in Moraga for the first half of the 90’s and Weston in rural Connecticut for the latter half. Moraga is only 45 minutes from San Francisco but pre-Uber it might as well have been 4 to 5 hours. In the first half of the 90’s I saw three live concerts, in the second half one. That’s as a big a statement about how my musical commitment had waned as any. I saw Costello at Concord Pavilion, one of three occasions I saw him live over the years and probably the most enjoyable as Nick Lowe came on for the encore, they played Lowe’s “What’s so funny about peace, love and understanding?” so I went home happy. I saw REM there too. The strangest choice of the only gig that we actually ventured into San Francisco to see was with our 19-year-old English au-pair to see The Orb at the Regency Ballroom which was, and still is, in one of the shittiest parts of downtown. We were the only people in the audience not enjoying better living through chemistry, and two middle aged dudes on a relatively empty stage, behind a table covered in laptops and the odd keyboard, is hardly compelling entertainment.
The one time we went into New York from Weston to see a live act in the 4+ years we were there was to see St Etienne, at the Bowery Ballroom, who were touring Good Humour. We went with Eric, a friend and neighbor, and his wife, as Eric was looking to do production for them. We actually got on the guest list and went backstage after, which was cool, even though I am sure everyone else could smell the suburbia coming off us. Giana, Eric’s wife, got completely shit-faced at a bar afterwards and spent most of the drive back up to CT throwing up. Eric played on and produced Heart Failed (In The Back Of A Taxi), the standout track on their next album but they never used him again. What was completely weird was reading an interview with Bob Stanley after the album Finisterre was released in 2002 where he said that the vibe that he was looking for was the feeling of Heart Failed, which Eric produced, so I always wondered why they didn’t just work with Eric.
The most obvious influence on my musical explorations during the 90’s was having babies and then young kids in the house.
I studiously avoided the hard edges of guitars and loud drums for more pop and quieter music in general. This led to some embarrassing diversions into chill singer songwriter territory and dare I say the words, verging on “Alt-country”. I favored pop and dance to some degree especially as they got older. So I played more ‘Exit to Guyville’ than ‘In The Aeroplane Over The Sea’, more ‘Dummy’ than ‘Slanted and Enchanted’. Julia Fordham sadly figured more than PJ Harvey and for that I have no excuse.
I was also isolated from good influences not the least being the depressing rigidity of US ‘format’ radio. This is where the US radio market, being commercialized, dominated by national chains and franchise driven is rigidly broken into quite tight genre segments where each station has a target segment and only plays approved songs for that segment. The obvious benefit lies with the large record companies and the radio station owners and not the listening audience. You only really appreciate the chaotic genius of the late, departed much loved John Peel and the likes of other Radio 1 DJs and now Radio 6 in the UK, where you can enjoy eclectic mixes of the new and varied as opposed to the old and cliched. I had started to be dependent on the British rock magazine ‘Q’ which had its own heroes and biases. I had a subscription and so a month or so after the UK publication the new magazine would rock up in my mailbox; but as Zappa had aptly critiqued music journalism “writing about music is like dancing about architecture”. On my few forays into record stores I was buying CDs that I had read were good from ‘Q’, blind buys really and like all rock music publications they were driven by what they thought was the hot new thing. Hot and new trumps good far too often. The other thing that happens when you are isolated from good diverse influences is that you get stuck on former favorites, buying music from the fag-end of an artist’s career, live sets and b-sides collections as opposed to the new outburst of the young and angry, desperate to thrust their way to stardom. So, my music collecting in the mid 90’s became a mix of Zappa re-issues, Neil Young’s 3rd effort at Harvest, Costello’s descent into self-parody, REM’s increasingly focused study of their navels mixed with dancy, techno-pop that the kids would enjoy on large car journeys.
We missed most of the excesses of Brit-Pop so that is something to be thankful for, I had the Oasis first album (What’s the Story) Morning Glory but never really liked their Beatles-lite power pop. I did enjoy Blur’s Park Life and its Who-lite power pop. My daughter was an aficionado of the Spice Girls, so we had that bouncing around in the background and who could not like Bjork? I did get into Pulp and enjoyed all of their excesses; Common People is an incredibly well-judged dig at the ruling classes that still resonates. I was happy to hear that Jarvis Cocker has lost none of his splenetic wit, his latest outing as ‘Jarv Is’ is excellent. I started to get more into electronic and dance music as the 90’s rolled on which was at times the most innovative and interesting things I could get hold of. It was certainly more innovative than grunge which I studiously ignored. That’s probably why I ended up at The Orb gig, I loved that trippy spacey “Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld” and played to death “ Little Fluffy Clouds” with the Rickie Lee Jones sound bite. I managed to completely miss the marvelous Richard James, much to Rachel’s mystification although I do have a batshit Aphex Twin remix he did of Underworld’s Born Slippy, with Pink Floyd and Woodstock soundtrack dubs. I was introduced much later, by Dan when he went off to college, to the world of 90’s old-school hip-hop but again I was not really exposed to it during the 90’s. I tried blind buys of LL Cool J and Common, both highly rated but they left me cold, who knows what would have happened if I had heard Biggie Smalls, Tribe or Digable Planets then, maybe another avenue would have opened.
The joy of discovery of new music that the interwebs have brought us has allowed me to get better acquainted with what I missed in that decade in suburbia. The recent renaissance of vinyl has provided timely 20th Anniversary excuses for much of the good stuff from that decade to be re-issued on vinyl as well as numerous CD box sets. The following is my selection of 20 great songs that the decade offered us, looking back from the distance of these 20 odd years. “Great”, as defined primarily as what has aged the best and worth exploring again, but also biased towards the bouncy and braggart. Some of these folks are still churning out good material, some disappeared back into obscurity. Half of it I remember fondly from that time, half I missed completely and have had the joy of discovering them since. Enjoy it here.
To dance or not to dance? This was an active decision many young men were forced to take at some point between the age of 14 and 18. For most boys of my generation dancing just got in the way of their newly acquired drinking habit. The nightlife of most of England was centered around pubs and enduring the struggles to get taken seriously and allowed to buy beer while the girls never seemed to have any problems. It was partially a question of how you dressed, partially your own development physically – were you tall, did you have facial hair other than ‘bum fluff’? Were you wearing your uncle’s tweed 1950’s great coat over your Levi denim jacket? Smoking helped you look older as long as you didn’t cough or choose Consulate or other menthol brands. Pubs basically split into those who looked the other way and those who took the legal drinking age seriously and in Frome that split was over 60% biased to the former so it was not that difficult.
We had one ‘club’ in town, the Hexagon Suite which was built into the back of the Grand cinema and it was open until 1.00 am on Friday and Saturday so of course you went at least one night a weekend if you were working. Girls danced around their handbags and the boys would stand around the edge of the dance floor letching and talking. The bravehearted would swoop in for a quick dance when the music slowed down, with various pleasantries shouted into each other’s ears. We would occasionally get touring minor acts, usually on their way down and never anything but pop and the odd Radio 1 Roadshow. The only act I remember that actually progressed their careers upwards after playing the Hexagon was The Real Thing who are still touring their one big hit, “You To Me Are Everything” to this day.
It was always going to be difficult dancing in front of people you went to school with or played rugby with so my desire to impress girls with my moves was latent until the anonymity and newness of university life changed all that. There were kindred spirits who not only loved dance music but actually dancing, not just girls but other equally bumbling young men. 1975-1978 was the era when disco, universally ridiculed, became funk, if not loved at least tolerated. The golden years of funk brought not only the dance grooves that later drove much of early hip-hop. It brought with it an exuberance and style that was uniquely African American. Regardless of the terrible demand to Play That Funky Music White Boy the music was solely the domain of musicians from Detroit, New York and once Motown moved its headquarters there, to LA. Funk had a fashion that was equally as flamboyant as the music, the economy was booming, and the flares became bigger, the shoes became platformed and the lapels dived groundward. For some reason the waistband went higher and had 3 belts, the local bouncers in Bradford were un-impressed though. I managed to annoy their sense of what men should or should not wear and my funk inspired choices were an affront. I was refused entry for wearing a red pair of what were an exaggerated version of Chuck Taylors, as the bouncer informed me “You’re here to dance, son, not fuckin run”.
The fact I was a gobby southerner with an earring was probably as offensive as my sartorial choices, although I do remember wearing my mother’s 1950’s box shouldered fur coat one winter over bellbottom jeans and multi hewed jumper, to visible derision by the locals. However, Bradford had a tradition of dance through Northern Soul so if we could get into the clubs they were cool with us dancing. The local girls were luckily more forgiving of my fashion disasters.
This was an era of big dance hits that have since become the fodder of bad movies and wedding playlists: Stevie Wonder’s ‘Superstition’, Wild Cherry’s ‘Play That Funky Music’, Isley Brother’s ‘Summer Breeze’, Donna Summer’s ‘Love to Love You’, The Commodores ‘Brick House’. We also used to do those bizarre dances that involved sitting on the floor in lines, Gap Band’s ‘Oops Upside Your Head’ demanded that for some reason. Being a music nut of course meant that my choices were more esoteric and the cool guy feeling soared when you asked a DJ for something like Lenny Williams’ ‘Choosing You’ and they gave you a big thumbs up and with a beaming smile produced a 12” from their bag. I had been introduced to Lenny Williams when he was lead singer with Tower of Power, whose ne plus ultra horn section was backing Little Feat, Santana, Journey, Aerosmith and Rufus among many others, basically if there was a brass section on a song between 1972 and 1990 it was probably the Tower of Power horns.
There was obviously a lot of white kids listening to this music as became evident over the next 15 years when white synth bands took the classic bass heavy funk rhythms and created a new genre of electronic dance music. Tom Tom Club openly acknowledged the debt owed to James Brown and Bohannan on “Genius of Love”. There is a direct line through James Brown to disco and funk and the electronic dance anthems of New Order, Depeche Mode, Chemical Brothers and onto the sample heavy SoulWax, DJ Shadow and Steinski. Old School Hip Hop was based around disco and funk riffs sampled and chopped up. As much as I loved various different rock genres I was and remain to this day committed to dance music is what you dance to, work out to, or just go a little funky when the mood strikes.
The play list on Spotify is here. You do not need to sit down on the floor in lines to enjoy this celebration of the funky, you do not need to change into bell bottoms, but you do need to shake your tailfeather. It is in chronological order and transitions from the originals to the synth driven versions around 1980. The actual playlist starts with George Clinton’s insanely good One Nation and appropriately ends with Deelite’s Groove in the Heart with a cameo by Bootsy Collins, James Brown’s former flamboyant bassist and court jester of funk.
Anecdotes and Antidotes in Burgundy 