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.