december 3rd extract-electric light orchestra

December 3rd extract from "Totally Shuffled-A Year of Listening to Music on a Broken  iPod"

Electric Light Orchestra-Mr Blue Sky  

  

ELO existed within a weird sort of other type music. Post-Glam. Pre-punk. Post punk. Prog. But not prog. Pop. But not really pop. Overblown album sleeves and mad art concepts from a bunch of old rockers from Birmingham. Birmingham, U.K., not Birmingham, Alabama. If any band was never hip or cool then ELO was that band. Some prog bands (such as ELP and Yes) and old hippies (such as Fleetwood Mac were) rightly ridiculed and dismissed as old irrelevant dinosaurs by the advent of punk but ELO remained unscathed. I don’t think that it was because there was an affinity between ELO and the new guard (not so new as it turns out but that’s another question altogether). It was because that ELO were irrelevant in that good way. They were as relevant to the issue as say, a record by James Last. It’s not as if they were beneath contempt but they didn’t seem to register as a worthwhile target.

But ELO were massively popular. Incredibly popular. They’ve sold over 50 million records worldwide but I’ll bet you’ll never find anyone admitting to being a big fan of ELO. ELO were not just solely listened to by sales reps who drove Ford Granadas and who only possessed albums on 8 track tapes. You may get a few people letting on that they’ve had a few ELO records but no-one will ever say that they’re their favourite band. What’s more you’d never get any “serious” music afficiando giving ELO the time of day. There never seems to have been a retrospective of their work in any of the monthly music magazines: Mojo, Q, or even that odd one that deals with “Rock” with a capital R  ELO are still somewhere “out there” to this day,existing an stange sort of parallel universe and not fitting neatly into any sort of category.

I’d guess though that more than a few of those 50 million records were bought by lank- haired, great coat, flare-wearing fans of Yes and Led Zeppelin. And the same goes for fans of The Clash, The Pistols and rest of the scorched-earth safety pin brigade. Likewise with everyone else. All those deep and intense music critics such as Paul Morley, Julian Cope, everyone who writes for The Wire magazine and The Quietus will have a ELO record or two.  I’ll wager that nestled close to Crass’ “Penis Envy” and The Fall’s “Perverted by Language” on someone’s shelves that there’s an ELO compliation. Mine.

I’ve got to be honest here. ELO aren’t one of my favourite bands either. Not even close. But I do love their singles. This one, “Evil Woman”, “Telephone Line”, “Wild West Hero”, “Don’t Bring Me Down”-how can anyone not fail to love these songs? If any band was ever destined to deserve a “Best of” album then ELO are that band.

A final thought. The Beatles were praised for being one of the first British bands to sing with a non-American accent. (I can’t really hear it myself). Listen to this track though. ELO sung with a Brimingham accent! How brilliant is that! And on the break in “Hold on Tight” they sang in French with a Brummie accent. Now that can’t be bettered.  

Get/see/read the rest of "Totally Shuffled... " here... 366 other tracks by 366 different artists. 592 opinionated pages about 30-odd years of buying and listening to music. Wasted hours in record shops and everything from the wildly obscure to the highly commercial. Every single genre of music really. Just whatever the first track that shuffled up on the (broken) iPod every day for a year turned out to be.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Totally-Shuffled-Listening-Broken-ebook/dp/B00CJYZ3CA/ 

 

         

November 26 extract-Harry Pussy

(extracted from my book "Totally Shuffled-A Year of Listening to Music on a Broken iPod")

Harry Pussy-Stop-Live

This is quite possibly one of the most badly recorded tracks there is on the iPod and probably one of the worst quality recordings that I’ve got amongst all my 1000’s of CDs, tapes and vinyl. This isn’t because, like a fair few others, that it’s been transferred and copied over and over again from old C90’s to pc’s and then converted to mp3’s and then burned to cheap CDrs from Asda or Tesco and then finally ripped back onto another PC, converted to an m4a and plonked onto the iPod, but it’s just genuinely a poor, poor quality recording.

It’s from a live 10" album by Harry Pussy, recorded at their final ever show at Churchill’s (I guess that was a club of some sorts), Miami, Florida in 1997. 

I think that the concept of a mixing desk was quite alien to them-everything is overloaded to fuck; the needles must have been continually boucing in the red. The only production credits on the album sleeve state that it was mixed in L.A. by some chap called Tom Smith from live tapes recorded at Churchill’s by the lovely-named Rat Bastard.

Now, I do have the distinct impression that Mr. Bastard just happen to be some pisshead who had just collapsed in a corner of the club, had some sort of recording device thrust in his hands and told to press the red button when the band came on stage. He must have fiddled with some dials as well-probably from the sound of it, totally at random. Things keep dropping out and then suddenly distorting beyond belief. At one point all that can be heard is the sound of a bass played by someone who sound as if they are either wearing oven gloves or if they have never picked up the bass (or any instrument before).

I get the feeling that old Rat Bastard spent a lot of time wandering around the venue with the microphone stuck in his pocket and it does sound as if, for a couple of songs at least, he decamped to an adjacent underground car park where the happy tunes of Harry Pussy seeped through the concrete like some primeval sludge. Between each song there isn’t even what you could describe as a faint smattering of applause. There’s odd bits of clapping and a bit of murmering and, unlike many gigs in America, there is certainly no whooping, whistling or hollering.  

At the end of each song the drummer and singer, Adris Hoyos, mutters something along the lines of “we’re Negative Atomic Dust and this next song is called Drop the Bomb”.. Each time she refers to themselves as a different band and the song titles bear no resemblance to what they actually play. Every song seems to just start half way through something and judders to a halt for no apparent reason. Maybe it was because it was their last ever gig, but a general air of boredom and indifference emmanate from the band and and it all seems to be reciprocated by the audience who, from the sound of the record appear to consist of about three or four hardy souls, wandering around in a drug- enchanced haze.

White noise seems to be the prevalent sound on the record and even when it’s not, there’s a contant undercurrent of just distortion.

“Harry Pussy Live” is a brilliant record and is what rock music is all about.


Get/see/read "Totally Shuffled" here:
Kindle http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00CJYZ3CA
Paperback: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Totally-Shuffled-Listening-Broken-iPod-/dp/149495687X

november 29th extract

Paul McCartney-No More Lonely Nights-All the Best!   

Now here shuffles up someone who has definitely got more than one good song in them. Actually, it’s hard to think of a bad song, a really truly naff and awful song that he’s written. I even include The Frog Chorus, Maxwell’s Silver Hammer and Mull of Kintyre within that. These, I guess are some songs of McCartney’s that are roundlyand widely seen as beyond the pale, trite, slushy, sentimental and nonsense. I honestly believe that even these songs are ten times better than most other relevant songwriters could come up with. Granted, they aren’t the best songs he’s ever written but there’s a certain amount of charm in there; it’s difficult not to finding yourself humming along to “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” or ending up with “Mull of Kintyre” going through your head all day ,even if you simply have just heard a snippet. As for the “Frog Chorus”- isn’t it just possible that there might just be a bit of snobbery involved? In the hands of say, Brian Wilson or some other recognised eccentric, it would be considered as a bit of wackiness and even as a clear sign of undoubted genius. However, because it’s a song that Paul McCartney wrote and just because it is Paul McCartney, universal scorn is heaped upon it and perversely it’s seen as a yet another clear sign of his unredeemable naffness.

 There’s another point that should be made along the way. Paul McCartney made much better music post-Beatles when he wasn’t hampered by the other three moptops. To me it’s clear that Wings were a much better band than the Beatles. If you just look at the Beatles albums; “Rubber Soul” and “Revolver” are pretty good, there’s bits on “Sgt Peppers” and “The White Album” that are brilliant (but those really are onlythe tracks that McCartney had a strong hand in) and “Abbey Road” and “Let It Be” would have been much more coherent and made much more sense as solo McCartney albums. (The early Beatles albums can now easily be discounted as mere historical curios that won’t stand the test of time).Overall, whenever I find myself listening to any Beatles album I end up fast fowarding or skipping quickly through tracks written by Lennon or Harrison to get to McCartney’s songs.  There’s so much wrong with Lennon and Harrison’songs that I could go on and on for ages, but here’s just two examples. Firstly, imagine what it would be like now if some rich pop star wrote and released a song whinging and moaning about how unfair it is that they have to pay so much tax? And on top of this they coated themselves in some mystic Eastern hippy shtick?  Secondly, and this is just stating the obvious, isn’t there just a tinge of irony about a multi-millionaire making even more money by releasing a song imagining there’s no possessions? Lennon was always held up as the true artist within the Beatles but that’s only due to his association with Yoko Ono. He couldn’t write a tune to save his life and when faced with a blank canvas in his solo career to come up with something fresh he banged out a set of tired rock and roll tunes with Phil Spector. It was McCartney who was not only the real tunesmith but the sole member of the band who was (and still is) prepared to try something wilfully uncommercial (see “Carnival of Light” which the release of was nixed by Harrison and his solo work with Youth as The Fireman). On top of this is the fact that Lennon, Harrison and Starr all professed themselves just to be lads from Liverpool and kept banging on about the city years after they all pissed off somewhere else. McCartney is the only one who maintained his links with his birthplace and actually did something of real, lasting value for his hometown.

Listen to any Wings or Paul McCartney solo records in comparison to anything by the Beatles and if it was a choice of one or the other what would it be?   

november 17th extract

Louis Jordan-I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead You Rascal You

There’s an awful lot to be said for any song that uses the word “cabbage” in the lyrics. If it is then rhymed with the word “savage” then you’re getting close to perfection. If you then combine it with someone like the great Louis Jordan then you’re even closer. What’s needed to top it all off, to put the cherry on the icing on the cake is to have someone such as Louis Armstrong duetting with Jordan. That’s what you’ve got with this song-all those elements combined together to produce something that’s probably up there with one of my favourite songs of all time. It only lasts three minutes but it’s impossible to hear without tapping your toes and wishing you owned a really crisp sharp suit in a coulour that would be impossible to wear in the street without fear of ridicule-bright pink say, or maybe an especially lurid shade of green. Purple would do as just as well. This is as close to rap as any record recorded in 1956 could be. The two Louis’ exchange verse for verse in a sort of call-and-response manner. What works particularly well is the contrast between Armstrong’s well known gravelly tones and Jordan’s undoubtably smoother performance. (Actually, anything would be smooth in contrast to Armstrong on this record-he could make Howling Wolf sound like Andy Williams.) Half way through the Jordan’s first verse Armstrong shouts “Talk about it, Jordan, talk about it” and at the end of the first verse Armstrong is chomping at the bit, “Let me talk about it for a while”. Within the middle of Armstrong’s verse, Jordan literally raps over Armsrong’s line about ”There ain’t no point in running, you old rascal you” with “Run,Satch,run!”. It’s fantastic. This is all before the horns and drums kick in big style and Jordan tells them to, “Blow it out, blow it out!” 

november 10th extract-siouxsie & the banshees

Siouxsie & The Banshees- Mirage

Mmm…Siouxsie & The Banshees. The band that launched a thousand Goths. I suppose that they have a lot to answer for. I really can’t be bothered into looking deep into the history of Goth. Did it really start with the Banshees or was it a home for disillusioned metal fans? I’ll bet that there’s a whole bunch of theories and learned papers about it all; there’s probably even a chance to study it at post-grad level at some second tier university.

Whichever way it is and whatever the extent that goth has entered the mainstream-see the Twilight books and films to catch a glimpse of how all-pervasive it’s become-it’s clear to me that goth is one of those subcultures that will hang around for a long time. There’s been thirty or so years of this nonsense and it shows no signs of abating. What is really worrying is that it keeps switching from generation to generation. Most sensible people who have a brief flirtation with goth; an odd dabble with black nail varnish for example or a tendency to only wear black clothes and big boots seem to grow out of it and after a few years spend their Sundays trooping around Ikea for bookcases named Billy. (I wonder if Ikea do a range of sofas called Eldritch; that would be ironic. Or maybe iconic. If they did they’d only be made out of velvet and come in one colour.) Most people don’t hang around in the goth environment for too long. It’s more of a rite of passage. You see the odd few forty year olds desperately hanging on with their crimped hair and bad tattoos but that’s like anything else-there’s still vestiges of 60- year old mods whizzing around on scooters and even older teddy boys refusing to hang up their crepe-soled shoes. But goth is something else altogether. It seems to have gained a life of it’s own and just refuses to stop.

As sub-cultures go though, I don’t actually mind goth too much. I generally feel a bit paternalistic about it. It is ridiculous-there’s no doubt about that but as it’s generally only a fleeting obsession for kids who move onto something else I don’t think that it does much harm. If anything it does make me smile-goths seem to take it all so seriously. I do have a bit of part to play in the inexorable rise of goth though because I was one of the early contributors to the Banshees coffers when I bought their first album. In my defence though, at the time I couldn’t see what it would all lead to. I just thought I was buying an album that had garnered rave reviews and was seen as “disquieting” and “unsettling”. I’ve just listened to it once again merely as background for this piece and putting aside the crystalline production work by Steve Lillywhite (which goes to show that it is actually possible to polish a turd) it now just sounds daft.