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.      

blind willie mctell

I'm writing about Willie McTell today but sometimes mere words can't do justice...