Vampire Weekend -extract from "Turn Left at The Womble"

There was a brief intro tape of some rap stuff as they ran onto the stage and strapped on their guitars and then, under the clearest bluest sky, it all clicked. All the flummery of La Roux and Flo was swept away on waves of pure infectious happy pop in the space of less than two minutes. Right across the crowd people were grinning, bopping away and singing at the top of their voices. I looked across at Amy and Sacha and we all grinned like loons. ”This is just fantastic! This.  Is. Just. Fantastic!”

A Track A Day

A track a day from "Totally Shuffled"-today it's the January 1st entry and The Clash with "English Civil War"

Update-Planning for Glasto

Planning for Glasto

It’s been too long, much too long since I’ve updated and/or posted anything here. There are no real excuses except that I’ve just been spending the last three weeks or so finally editing “Totally Shuffled” and getting it published. In fact, the editing was done between January and March and I spent nearly all of April just trying to come up with a title. But it was done in the end, and it’s that “finally put it to bed” feeling and onto the next one. Which I have no idea about, and probably will leave starting properly until I get back from Glastonbury in July.

And that takes me neatly onto Glastonbury-which is something I said I would blog about more and more as it got closer, yet I don’t really seem to have done. Maybe back in October or January or February it still seemed too far away. Maybe because the winter seemed to have dragged on for so long that it all seemed abstract and a little bit absurd to be thinking too much about something in July, when hopefully, memories of rain, sleet and snow will be long gone. (However, knowing the way the weather has been recently, it wouldn’t be totally surprising if Mumford and Sons were pelted with snowballs during their Sunday night set come June. I’ll be the one at the back making sure that there is enough ammo). Maybe it was that even though I knew I had a ticket in October, it was really only when the final payment was made that it all seemed real.  Maybe it was the announcement of the line up that crystallised things or just seeing confirmation this week that tickets are going to be sent out with effect from 6 May. Maybe I’ll only really believe that I’m going when the tickets arrive or when I have all the gear together. Maybe it’ll only fall into place when I set off on the journey. Or probably just that magical moment when I walk through the gates.

But between then and now there seems to be a lot to do. And it’s only six weeks away. Part of the Glastonbury dream turning into reality is the gathering together of everything that’s needed and/or buying stuff to replace things that I ditched back in 2011, because it was either ruined with the mud or I couldn’t be arsed lugging it back home. So here I am with a new pair of wellies, new tent, sleeping bag, air-bed and torches. Some of the smaller stuff I’ve still got from earlier years; kettle, stove, chair, spare lighters and an Olbas Oil sniffy inhaler thing. Not that I’m expecting to have a cold or anything like that come the end of June, but two quick snorts of it up the nostrils before braving the Glasto toilets works wonders. From now on in it’s just a few things to get and I’ll be all set.

I’m looking out of the window at the moment and pondering if this good weather will hold up over this weekend. I really do have to give the tent a dry run. Actually that sounds more impressive than it is and is in opposition in reality what the true position is.  I have to practise ham-fistedly how to put up the tent. This will involve a lot of frustration, headscratching, swearing and stupid questions being asked. Much coffee will be drunk and many cigarettes will be smoked. Quite pertinent doubts will be cast upon my capabilities as a tent erector and I’m sure that the words “maybe you should have got a pop-up one” will be uttered. However, I am very confident that I can do it (even typing that fills me with dread and I know I am fibbing) and come the end of June I’ll be standing in a field in Somerset with a rough approximation of what a tent should look like.   

Totally Shuffled -A Year of Listening to Music on a Broken iPod

New book finally, finally edited and published on Amazon Kindle!!

It's been a long time coming and after nearly 16 months it's a pretty good feeling to be able to listen to music just for the sake of listening as opposed to writing about it as well!

Here's a link

www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00CJYZ3CA  

thoughts about vinyl on Record Store Day

Peel famously retorted to someone who complained that a track he was playing had too much surface noise with the reply that “Life has surface noise” and Neil Young similarly refused to record using digital equipment for a very long time. This is without mentioning Jack White issuing singles on his own label as 7” singles, rather than in any other format and the retro love-in for 180g album reissues on vinyl. (The latter costs a fortune by the way, and I think that unless you’ve got high-end equipment to play it on (I haven’t) and very good ears (not me, too much loud music over the last 35 years) then the record companies are selling us the Emperors’ New Clothes). Whilst we may go all misty-eyed about 12” albums and great sleeve art that’s all now been made redundant by the birth of CD and digital formats and we similarly mourn the loss of 7” singles with all their juke box connotations, let’s face it-it was all a pain in the arse. Most of the sleeve art for albums was crap design or sub-Roger Dean hippy stuff and 7 “ singles were always a nuisance to store and find. There was nothing more frustrating than finding your favourite record being so scratched or warped that it was unplayable and not being able to get another copy without spending a lot of money or time. Give me mp3’s any day-I can live without surface noise.       

Totally Shuffled-Clannad & folk music

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

August 31st

Clannad-Two Sisters

I find myself thinking that there isn’t really any genre of music that I don’t like and that I haven’t got at least a few examples of.

Is this a sign therefore that I am not really discerning and that I haven’t actually got an ability to discriminate between what is good and not so good? 

It's possibly a tendency to have a magpie-type mind, to flit from one thing to the next and to have that sort of collectors’ type mentality where there can never be enough music. It's kind of like searching for a Holy Grail of music in a constant effort to find the next big thing, or at least to find something that gives that sense of a thrill and a shiver down the spine. Possibly it’s some subconscious attempt to get back to that moment when I first heard a piece of music that moved me and provoked a reaction. 

Whatever it is-and it’s probably no good trying to over-analyse it- I honestly cannot think of any sort of music that Ieaves me totally cold and unimpressed. Scrolling through the iPod as this track popped up, there appears to be representatives of every possible genre on there. It’s a bit like the United Nations of music and probably as organised as inefficiently as they are. (Out of the nearly 10,000 tracks it holds,there does appear to be a lot that, because of my inefficient manner of putting  them on, are simply labelled as unknown artist and/or unknown title.) 

There are, of course, some genres of music that I appreciate more than others, and I think that I will always do. Blues, for instance, will always top opera, and dub probably has the edge over heavy metal. But there are some examples of Wagner and Verdi floating around, and AC/DC aren’t an unknown quantity to me. 

It’s all a bit Top Trumps. I suppose the thing is, that within particular genres, there are artists and music who I do like and those who I have less time for. Blind Willie McTell as opposed to B.B. King for example. Led Zeppelin in comparison to Black Sabbath. (I’m trying to think of a Goth band who are ok and I’m sure there is one-but anything really looks good when stood next to the Sisters of Mercy. How about the Virgin Prunes-are they Goth enough? They’ll do).

There is a bit of blind spot however for me and that’s folk music. That’s folk with a capital F. I know that I should like it and that’s why this track from Clannad has cropped up. 

It was in an attempt to widen my already scattered, and frankly not well thought out, musical horizons. I am aware of the indebtedness of most American popular music, from the blues to jazz to country and western and therefore to everything else, to folk music. I’ve read countless thick books about the roots of Bob Dylan’s music and lyrics and how much he absorbed from 19^th century English and Scottish music. I know all about Dylan’s tramping around the folk clubs of New York and his connections with the likes of Pete Seeger and Euan McColl. I’ve even spent a lot on Harry Smith’s seminal “Anthology of American Folk Music” box set and love the oddness and weirdness of it all. 

But I just don’t get it at all. It’s not that I don’t enjoy the old pre-war recorded up-in-the hills stuff (maybe I like that just for its sheer esotericism-that’s a whole different question); it’s this fingers-in-the ear, Arran sweater, pipe- smoking, 1950’s style revivalism stuff. 

It’s the earnestness, but ultimate falseness, of it all. 

And it still carries on. It never went away in the 60’s and 70’s (see Clannad) and  now we’ve got fuckers like Mumford and Sons and Fleet Foxes trying to breathe life into the corpse.            


Get/see/ read! "Totally Shuffled" 
as Kindle book here: 
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Totally-Shuffled-Listening-Music-Broken-ebook/dp/B00CJYZ3CA

or as paperback here:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Totally-Shuffled-Listening-Broken-iPod-The/dp/149495687X 

June 11 extract

Freddie Hall-This Crooked World-Chance Records 7” single

This was originally issued on the Ebony label as a 78 in about 1952 (this is kind of unclear, as for a long time the only known copies were the re-issues on Chance in 1954). Until recently the only known link to Ebony were the matrix numbers on the Chance single indicating that it had originally been an Ebony 78.  As this year progresses, I fear that I will become increasingly trainspottery about old records, and fully expect that by mid-October I’ll have started subscribing to Record Collector.

Although there are no known photographs of Freddie Hall and his last recordings were 3 singles for the tiny CJ Record label in 1959, he sounds like he was a bit of a lad if the evidence from the label on the Ebony 78 is to be believed. He is named as Freddie “Bama Boy” Hall with his Gadsden Band. (He was from Gadsden, Alabama, which was named in 1989 as one of the seven worst places to live in the United States. Like St Helens in the Deep South I guess). Anyway, unlike the Chance reissue, the Ebony 78 proudly claimed that Freddie was “Gadsdens Gift To The Girls”. This was printed on the label where they usually gave advice about how to keep the record dust free and which needles to use for best phonographic sound. (It would be interesting if today’s rock stars similarly promoted themselves. Imagine-“Mark E Smith-Salfords Gift to Pigeon Fanciers” or “Muse-Devons Gift To The Sadly Deluded”?). Maybe Freddie decided to tone it down a bit when he got the chance to release his record on a bigger label. He also dropped the “Bama Boy” nickname as well. Probably for the best, as I can only speculate exactly what a “Bama Boy” is (or was). I’m sure that there are some latter day rap artists who would love to go by the moniker of Bama Boy.

This track however, is entirely built upon Freddie Hall warning the listener that the whole world is corrupt and only after money.  Any idea of records from the past not being cynical and hardbitten are blown away when you listen to this. Lyrically it’s like something Immortal Technique could record minus the swearing. All the great and the good are accused of duplicity and thievery just for a quick buck. Even Jack and Jill going up the hill are not immune as Freddie warns us that, “Jill came down with a ten dollar bill, if you know what I mean.” I think we do, Freddie-the inference is clear. He is known as a blues shouter, but to me, it has the sound more of a big band/swing record with Freddie bellowing rather than singing,and with a couple of great saxophone solos thrown in for added effect. The whole thing only lasts for two minutes or so -and that includes the sax solo. I don’t know if the brevity is due to the fact that it was originally a 78, or that Bama Boy said all he needed to in such a short time, but it’s a great record nevertheless.