Kevin Ayers

Kevin Ayers passed away this week. I was introduced to his work by Ultramarine knowing Robert Wyatt beforehand but not Kevin. Some damn fine stuff in his solo back catalogue. This is Ultramarine's version of Hymn with Kevin on vocals. The ep release has some really good remixes as well as a wonderful vocal on the lead version by David McAlmont.

Here's Kate Mossman's Word interview from 2008.

His Socks Often Fell To His Ankles

Working from home today and as Loafson and Loafdottir did their best to delay the walk to school we got a text offering Loafson a ticket to Leicester Vs Forest with his mate at the Walkers Rosebowl Soccer Stadium. Just one ticket. Not one for his dad. The football hating dad. Me. What?!?!?

He's only six whereas I was ten when I first went to Meadow Lane to see City eek out a 0-0 draw with Notts County. This was a few years after Elvis had left the building and some jug eared clown fond of potato snacks may have played that day. My lasting memory was the terrace, the stench from the toilets and the terrible, terrible stench from the burger van. Over the next couple of years I went to Filbert Street a number of times with my older brother and Dan D's family. Dan was and still is, a great chap leaving a well paid job to take up a job at the local care home. Him taking us to the football was especially good of him. Our dad had just died and so his generosity went further than a ticket and a burger. Him taking the boys out of the house meant my mum could have a bit of peace with my younger sisters. Well, she bought the drum kit!

So Loafson's going to his first ever professional game without his dad. So did I.




Anyway, I went down the club shop at lunchtime and bought him a wooly hat featuring the logo Frankie boy wears above. Don't tell him or his mum, it's a surprise. Tears? Nah, just a bit of moisture mate.

People!

A beat combo that I associate with tread the same boards as Mark Gardener ex of Ride on Wednesday this week with the man heading to Manchester at the weekend. Manchester? Sorry I'm meant Salford.Also on the bill is Pete Bassman (alright Dave!) and Stella Grundy, actress, dj and former singer with Intastellar a band that were quite fantastic, people.

Intastella had some success at around the same time as fellow travellers World of Twist but crucially, Intastella managed to release significantly more records cut from an exoteric cloth of quality and girth. Manchester made so much more sense than the Thames Valley. Still does.

Lovely Rita

Rita Wright aka Syreeta Wright aka Mrs Stevie Wonder. If you like your soul with added squelch and Little Stevie backing yelps then this should certainly float your boat. A serious check your pulse moment if it does nothing for you.











Here's Stevie's version which I don't think hold a candle to Syreeta's.

This Sitar Kills Time

I've got to plug my turntable in. I've got to. There's so much stuff there, so many unplayed gems, so much fluff and so much music which is music, both rhythm and blues and jazz as someone may have once sampled. I'm selling Vinyl on eBay. It's a thankless task and who knew that obscure indie would go for silly money whilst anything that would make you shake your hips shows no sign of moving. Kids today....

Meanwhile, I've found a file of vinyl rips from a few years ago.

I learnt to play guitar by listening to Orbital, John Squire & Gabor Szabo.  Orbital? Uh-huh. The way Orbital songs build gives the amateur guitarer loads of space to w4nk about on the guitar. The Second Coming was all about w4nking about on the guitar. Sophisticated Wheels is all about posh w4nking about on the guitar, the sitar and Jazz "thingys" (I think they might be called scales but I'm no theorist). It's actually an ace piece of Eastern influenced Pop Jazz, yeah.

Obviously I have no interest in the associated LP sleeve. Spots and checks? What was he thinking?

Folk Getting Funky.

Well he's just an average guy.....he's not really is he?

The video below is a live version of You Goin' To Miss Your Candyman from What Color Is Love which I got into about 10 years after hearing Ordinary Joe & Take A Look At Me Now whilst on the Mod/Northern scene. It features Jim Mullen on guitar who I copped a load of technique from which the man himself may have copped from Wes Montgomery.




Terry saw a resurgence of interest on the back of the 80s Mod/Acid Jazz crossover but before that there was this courtesy of Wikipedia...

Callier was born in the North Side of Chicago, and raised in the Cabrini–Green housing area. He learned piano, was a childhood friend of Curtis Mayfield, Major Lance and Jerry Butler, and began singing in doo-wop groups in his teens. In 1962 he took an audition at Chess Records, where he recorded his debut single, "Look at Me Now".[2] At the same time as attending college, he then began performing in folk clubs and coffee houses in Chicago, becoming strongly influenced by the music of John Coltrane.[3] He met Samuel Charters of Prestige Records in 1964, and the following year they recorded his debut album. Charters then took the tapes away with him into the Mexican desert, and the album was eventually released in 1968 as The New Folk Sound of Terry Callier.[2][4] Two of Callier's songs, "Spin, Spin, Spin" and "It's About Time", were recorded by the psychedelic rock band H. P. Lovecraft in 1968, as part of their H. P. Lovecraft II album.[5] H. P. Lovecraft featured fellow Chicago folk club stalwart George Edwards, who would go on to co-produce several tracks for Callier in 1969.[5]

The plot thickens with Urban Speicies featuring MC Solar that lifts the original Candyman riff and uses it wonderfully in "Listen". I find a lot of the Acid Jazz & Talkin' Loud stuff has dated badly but this piece of Angle/French rap still hit's the Dijon.



And you all know The Original Ordinary Guy don't you? From First Light? I just can't teach you cats anything can I.....

Misterlee Destroyed My Retinas

A blatant plug for the Leicestershire's Gentleman's Gentleman of choice, Misterlee. The man himself has probably been "at it" since he was a child mainly behind the traps with Misterlee being him on his todd since 2002 with additonal live support courtesy of guitarist Jamie Smith and Michael Oxtoby on violin & bass.

Oxtoby moved to Cornwall leaving Lee & Jamie to play this gig back in 2009, one that I was in the audience for that subsequently became the subject of the ill-informed Loaf versus Musician Blinded By The Light cival case the details of which will not sully this post....go to 2.00mins or so for the first half of Stags Of Schipol - Live!



It was the lead off single from third album The Disquiet Dog and frankly, I've no idea why a 9 minute ode to Amsterdam's darker tourist delights didn't make daytime radio. Having said that the next single, We're Alive Here, swings like no other and is well worth buying the album for.

Magnesium Horses is from 2005's Night Of The Killer Longface and gives a taste of the more soulfull side of Misterlee, an Alternative Rock Act (wtf?) from Leicester.



Fun Filled Trivia Fact - It is assumed that Lee has recorded with Bill Drummond but he's far to much of a gentleman to ever admit it in public.

His Punishment For Deceiving Him: He Went And Shot My Dog.

Another Moviedrome inspired post. To be read in the voice of Sissy Spacek as if a 15 year old Texan reading from pop comics:

He was 25 years old. He combed his hair like James Dean. She was 15. She took music lessons and could twirl a baton. For a while they lived together in a tree house. In 1959, she watched while he killed a lot of people.

Carl Orff's Musica Poetica is used by Terrence Mallick in his film Badlands from his story based around the Charles Starkweather & Caril Fugate murders in the 50s. The film influenced Tony Scott's True Romance (written by Tarantino)via it's girl and boy on the run from the law story but more obviously through it's soundtrack.



Orff is worth reading up on. Definitely not a black and white story. His most popular work, O Fortuna from Carmina Burana, you will know I assure you.

Oh, yes, this is classical music something I know very little about. It reminds me of Smokebelch (Beatless Mix). Does that make me a pleb?

But nothing still has altered just the seasons ring a change

I love Ronnie Lane. Who couldn't. I don't like Rod Stewart. Who could. Stone was a Lane song from The Faces First Steps album that was also re-recorded and completely rearranged by Ronnie Lane for the Slim Chance album from '74 a year after he left the Faces due, in no small part, to Sir Roderick of Stewart (RIP Tom Hibbert). In a constant, yet ridiculous quest for the definite article (of anything!), I'd given up on the Faces version for Plonk's. Listening back today the Faces version is just as good and could certainly show any beardy serious young man a thing or two about doing it with swing. Rod's a wailing away in the background as Marriott used to a year or two before in Ronnie's former beat group. Stay cool won'tcha.

Saw your picture in the paper. My, you're looking pretty good.

Odessey and Oracle by The Zombies is unquestionably the greatest album ever made so don't even think about it Sonny Jim. Released after the band split up, running time of less than 35 minutes, spelling mistakes, layers of mellotron and organ underpinning the plaintive voice of Colin Blunstone. It's bloody gorgeously fleeting and it wasn't until my mid thirties that I heard it. Where had it been all my life? You can take your Sid Barrett, Who, Kinks, Beatles & Stones and shove them. This was the real deal.

Colin Blunstone's solo back catalogue, at first glance, seems as sparse as his former band's so hoping to find further gems was always going to be tricky. Some guy called Neil MacArthur covered the Zombies She's Not There in a fantastically baroque over the top style with a fine imitation of Blunstone's voice but then the trail goes cold....





....so anyway, Caroline Goodbye featured on Blunstone's debut, One Year, it was one of a number of self penned songs alongside Argent, Mike D'arbo and Tim Hardin choices. It gives me a chance to post a lovely picture of Dr Phibes Return's star, Caroline Munro. Buy the album.

Rod Argent soon.

Who's Pushing The Pedals On The Season Cycle?

I'm fighting it. The loss of the season. The Green Man moves on. The Roman calender tells me that the 23rs of September is the end of summer time. We don't need no stinking calender to tell us that the harvest is in and the red and brown will soon slip over the land touching even the city. But to hell with the cold, one more weekend by the sea will do me, one more weekend.

Funky Is As Funky Does

Records used to have a mystique that has all but disappeared with compression, up then downloading and instant online information on any song that has ever been recorded.

I can't imagine the one up-manship of finding a rare unheard of '45 or album track exists anymore. This I first heard on a mid 80s Chess Best Of. It took me 5 years or so to track down the original Cadet '45 and now you, dear reader, just have to click that mouse to listen to the single which differs from the Youtube album version.

Every second of the song has just a funk about it, building and building with each instrument trying to tear away into a new groove.

I'm still not uploading my original It's Grimm Up North mind.

I'm Not Going Lie To Myself So Please Don't Talk About My Age

If anything is going to knock some sense into my alcohol addled head it's Dr Phibes & The House of Wax Equations. Same again next weekend? Go on then.

Oh and here's the source material all uploaded by some kind soul. Bit to scary for the boy on a Sunday afternoon. Obviously when I was his age the Second World war was in full "swing" or so my brother and I believed having a dad who had been in the Med in 44/45, Uncle Ray in the Baltic convoys with two other uncles killed in Italy. That, the Action Men, Sunday afternoon war films and comics were enough to fool any child into thinking that the dirty hun were going to come over the garden wall at any moment.

Me and my dad were actually in more danger from my brother who decided that a 4 year old me being able to tree climb higher than him was an afront to his dignity, pushing me out of the tree, knocking me out and running in to our post first heart attack dad shouting "Dad! Dad! I've just killed Edmund!". Tell that to kids today and they'll have you on the list before you can say "it was doll without a willy".

Looks like I picked the wrong year to start a blog

Ed's a busy boy. Valentine's day spent away from home - damn those card shops. Kids missing me loads and me missing the kids. They sleep now. Ah well.....

You Do The Walk

I was reminded of Moviedrome the other day whilst watching The Limey. "Here's a film" I thought "that would sit nicely in a Sunday night Moviedrome bill."

What, that terrible Mockney gangster film? Yes, that wonderfully stylistic revenge piece. If The Limey was a song then I'd only be able to comment on the lyrics. The actual film itself I'm completely wrapped up in like a Motown 45 unaware that there are drums, bass, tambourine, piano all playing separate parts. But Terrence Stamp is a Marvin Gaye vocal. The look. Harrington jacket, dark polo shirt, black 501s with turn ups and what may be brothel creepers or may be DM shoes. He's not very clever. An armed robber with at least three prison terms behind him, you can tell...

Just look at his walk.

Does he walk like a camel? It's no cock sure swagger, its the walk of a man who serves rather than commands. Everything you need to know about the character can be picked up in that walk.

Singing In A Band. Talking To The Man(TM)

My cousin was diagnosed with cancer three weeks ago and is going through the first heavy, five day dose of chemotherapy. It's in his chest but not in his brain. He's 34 and built like an out house with a lust for life despite supporting Millwall. He lost his sister to Leukaemia when she was 11, she'd been sick for some years. I can't think what he, his mum and dad are going through. Absolutely fucking horrible.

I'm no expert, on anything, but I believe hope comes from many things and if someone wishes to believe in something "up there" far be it from me to point, laugh, mock or vilify their beliefs. Extremists, they're all arseholes no matter what side they follow.

Parades where I'm from are small collections of shops that haven't really changed since the 1970s when the new estate was built. This isn't about a small parade of shops. Damn funky though.

The Crown Of The Despot Shines

Kingdoms by Ultramarine featuring Robert Wyatt. The music on offer from Paul Hammond and Ian Cooper was a beautiful, bucolic take on Electronica. Gently knead in Robert Wyatt's plaintive take on Ernest Jones' Chartist Poem ,Song of the Lower Classes and you have a timeless piece of pop.


Song of the Lower Classes

We plow and sow, we're so very, very low,
That we delve in the dirty clay;
Till we bless the plain with the golden grain,
And the vale with the fragrant hay.
Our place we know, we're so very, very low,
'Tis down at the landlord's feet;
We're not too low the grain to grow,
But too low the bread to eat.

Down, down we go, we're so very, very ow,
To the hell of the deep-sunk mines;
But we gather the proudest gems that glow,
When the crown of the despot shines;
And when'er he lacks, upon our backs
Fresh loads he deigns to lay:
We're far too low to vote the tax
But not too low to pay.

We're low, we're low -- we're very, very low --
And yet from our fingers glide
The silken floss and the robes that glow
Round the limbs of the sons of pride;
And what we get, and what we give,
We know, and we know our share;
We're not too low the cloth to weave,
But too low the cloth to wear.

We're low, we're low, we're very, very low,
And yet when the trumpets ring,
The thrust of a poor man's arm will go
Through the heart of the proudest king.
We're low, we're low -- mere rabble, we know --
We're only the rank and the file;
We're not too low to kill the foe,
But too low to share the spoil.

Notes to the People, 1852

The wonderful Wyatt had previous in Electronica - seek out Pigs, In There? if you haven't heard.

I'm Going To Take You On A Journey To Venus And Back

I'm no huge fan of ACR's early work but their album MCR hit a note and then some around these parts. We were crossing from raves to clubs with Nottingham being the usual Saturday night haunt. The Garage became Kool Kat and then the Garage again first with Graham Park and then Alistair "Is A Mixer Genius" Whitehead. From there it was a short skip to Venus which really was the best club in the country until the over zealous door policy, probably put in place to keep ravers out, became too much of a pain. The last night featured an Underworld set, not that I saw it as I bailed into the back of Ad's camper van after downing several pints and a bottle of 20/20 - not your usual clubing fair.

Many records sound-tracked the to and fro of a Saturday in Notts. MCR and in particular Good Together picked us right up. Featuring Shaun Ryder on backing vocals and Bernard Sumner in the chair, a wasted sample eases you into a euphoric builder with a proper pop song behind it. The soprano sax still doesn't grate after all these years which is rare. No idea whether it was actually played in the club. Now, where's me inhaler............

'course you should always try before you buy

A Wigan Classic?

I wouldn't have known it was a Wigan number until I searched Youtube, being only twelve when they knocked down the Casino and thirteen when I started to get into Soul. Larry over at Funky 16 Corners covered James Coit's storming political piece earlier last year.

Why am I posting something that's already been well covered?

Haisie was working for John Manship, one of the leading Northern dealers back in the 80s, and I gave him a list of ten or twelve songs I was after. All but one were either Jazz or R&B, the runt of the litter being Black Power. I agreed £4 for it back in '86 but was more than a little miffed when Haisie handed over a 7" with a cream label sporting the title and artist in black felt tip pen. "That's not a proper record!" said I. "It's this or nothing" he countered as I handed over the cash and sulked out of the shop feeling more than a little diddled. What a rotter.

As any fool can see from the Youtube clip, the record label should be red with proper printing and not some off white number with hand writing. What a dummy.

Guitar, Bass, Drums & Voice

 I should use Google. Ok..........so I'm Allowed comes from Buffalo Tom's 93 album Red Letter Day. Post grunge and Bill's dad was unhappy that there wasn't enough guitars on the album. That last bit is a fact remembered rather than a googled memory.

Now what I really like about the recording of this song is the lack of a string section. If the band had been British, signed to Creation and three or four years younger then there would have been an almighty string section all over this pushing it from alt-rock ballad into wannabe anthem. Instead a bit more guitar does the work of nine string sessionaires earning by the hour.

They do, however, walk a fine line with the minor chords at the beginning suggesting more than a hint of some Irish band that shall remain bigger than their cheesus. Also reminds me of Eric Matthew's Fanfare which, rightly so, has been covered by many a blog over the years.