Extracted from "Totally Shuffled-A Year of Lisening to Music on a Broken iPod"
Paddy McAloon-I Trawl the Megahertz-I Trawl
the Megahertz
When I started
this book on January 1st one of my self-imposed rules was that I
would only write about one track per artist. Now, as I have already shuffled
upon Prefab Sprout, writing about a solo Paddy McAloon track is kind of
breaking the rules somewhat. I do have an excuse though; maybe I’m bending
rather than breaking the rules.
In 2003 there
were rumours spreading across the internet-well, not really flooding the
internet, just the couple of sites that had the residual hardcore of a few
hundred Prefab Sprout fans(including myself), hanging on for any news of
anything new-of a new recording from Paddy McAloon or Prefab Sprout. After a
while it became clear that this new recording was about to be unleashed and it
was going to be a solo McAloon effort rather than something under the Prefab
Sprout banner. Speculation grew rife-there were theories that he had completed
one of his long lost album projects (the life story of Michael Jackson or “Total
Snow”-the Christmas album (never seen and now Kate Bush has beaten him to it, I
think that one’s dead in the water. Who’d have thought that Kate Bush would
beat anyone in to releasing a similarly themed album to her? The only person
who’s slower at working is Mr McAloon himself), or that he’d gone totally
country and Dylan-esque with a sort of “Self Portrait” thing. Some strong
rumours circulated that he was working with Pete Waterman on a techno record or
collaborating with Extreme Noise Terror on a 78 track 28 minute long trash
epic. Nothing however, could have prepared the world for what actually became
the “I Trawl the Megahertz” album.
The first sign
of anything happening-the only sign beforehand- were a couple of grainy photos
of radio antennae on the Prefab Sprout website. This website hadn’t been
updated for years; I’m sure that it said it was best viewed using Netscape.
Anyway, there were these two black and white photos of what looked like
military-type radio dishes. Nothing else;no narrative and no explanation. Then, a week before the album was
released, there was something about the title of the album and an interview
with Paddy McAloon on a late night programme on Radio 3. Radio 3! I’d worked
out by then that it wasn’t a collaborative effort with ENT or Pete Waterman and
the country angle had died a death as well. He rabbited on about how he’d
fallen out of love with pop music and had been listening to a lot of classical
music, but it was one of those interviews where it seemed to go on for a while
but nothing was really said. There were a few snippets from the album
broadcast, but nothing could have prepared me for when I first heard this
track-over twenty minutes long with a spoken narrative by a female actor backed
by stringed (classical) instrumentation. This was so far away from Prefab
Sprout that it was like listening to a different artist altogether.
a (very) short extract from "Left Again at the Womble-The Adventures of a Middle-Aged Dad working at the Glastonbury Festival". This was the moment of arrival...
A
touch of nervous anticipation permeated throughout the coach and the laughter
and general jollity seemed to diminish somewhat. I was not immune from this. Another
point of no return. This was really, really it. I half-remembered that the
roads were quite hilly the closer that you got to the festival site itself, and
as the coach crested hill after hill, passing empty coaches coming away from
the site in the opposite direction with “Glastonbury” as their destination, I
knew that we were nearly there. One final hill and there it was; lying like a vast
twinkling beautiful bedspread of lights in front of me.
Seeing it from that
view, the sheer size of the place was overwhelming, not just for me, but I
think for everyone else on the coach. For a few seconds, not a sound could be
heard apart from the noise of tyres on tarmac and the low, constant thrum of
the engine.
The final part (for now). I'm fairly certain that there may be some others along in a bit but for now...
16. Bruce Springsteen & The E Street
Band-Live 1975-1985
In many ways Bruce Springsteen is the
antithesis of one of my other favourite artists, The Fall. I cannot imagine
that there is much commonality between the two of them-on the surface at least.
I certainly wouldn’t imagine that Mark E Smith has many Bruce Springsteen
albums in his record collection and I’d guess that Bruce has never heard of The
Fall. Even if he had, even the Fall’s most commercial output wouldn’t figure in
his in car entertainment. Springsteen is famous for covering other artists
songs in concert but I’m not expecting a version of “Who Pays the Nazis?”
complete with the full E-Street band to crop up soon. I can live in hope
though-it would be interesting. But liking both The Fall and Springsteen not to
the point of obsession but close enough is, at times, I think an odd choice,
and a little bit schizophrenic.I do
find it difficult to switch from a Fall track to one by Springsteen; there has
to be a bit of a buffer between them, some sort of transition. It’s similar to
that feeling I get when having driven a hire car on holiday that’s properly
serviced and virtually brand new, with pedals and controls that require the
lightest of touches to returning to my 10 year old, 140,000 miles-on-the-clock
Citroen and having to drive it with the equivalent of lead boots and arms of
steel just to change gears. Both cars do what I need them to do i.e. get me
from A to B; it’s just that they do it in different ways. Well, that’s the same
thing with Springsteen and The Fall. Both make music unlike anything else and
both are utterly unique-but for that reason they are more similar than you
might expect. (More of this later).
My interest in and love for
Springsteen’s music goes back a long way though, unlike that with The Fall,
there have been peaks and troughs and many years that I’ve either not been
bothered or unfairly dismissed it. Thinking about it there are actually three
distinct phases.
It really started when, back in early
1980, when a friend introduced me to “The Wild, The Innocent and the E Street
Shuffle” album as being something I should marvel at. Now, I usually took their
judgement as impeccable, but being at the time of post-punk and the height I
suppose of my blinkered approach to music, I was dead set against it from the
start. To convince me that I was wrong somehow-Ican’t remember how as this was the before the
time that videos were generally available- they managed to show me the famous
clip of Springsteen playing “Rosalita”
live-the one where there is a stage invasion at the end. I think that this was
recorded sometime in the late 1970’s and broadcast on the BBC at sometime. This
is where we must have caught it. I was reluctant to admit it, but there was
something about it, about the sheer exhilaration and passion that did make a
lot of the music I was listening to at the time seem a bit grey and lifeless. I
did compartmentalise it to a corner marked “American Guitar Rock” for a good
few years although I always kept a soft spot for that song. (Maybe it was pure
sentimentalism based upon memories of good times-I’m just not sure.)
It all went quiet though for me
Bruce-wise until 1986 and the release of the 5 LP Live 75-85 box set.I hadn’t been convinced of any of his
supposed greatness and was still writing him off as a mere chest-thumping anthemic
stadium filling U.S. star, devoid of any true soul or real insight. (I was
possibly also influenced by Prefab Sprout’s “Cars and Girls” where Paddy
McAloon dismissed Springsteen as writing only about those two topics. That’s
how easily influenced I was at that time. I hadn’t actually really listened to
any Springsteen but merely based my dislike of his music on irrational and
ill-founded assumptions.) But the box set was issued and received a 5 star full
page review, in of all places, NME. It did therefore cross my mind that I’d
been missing something. Always ready to fall for a good review and with £30
that I’d got from work as a birthday present, I toddled off to HMV, pondered
long and hard as to whether it would be a stupid extravagance to blow it all on
one live box set, worried if I was somehow betraying my “punk roots” (how
naïve, but that’s how it was) and ending up going home with the whole 3, nearly
4 hour collection.
I really didn’t expect that much and
thought that I would end up forcing myself to like it as it had cost me that
much.(£30 was not a small amount at the time.) I needn’t have been concerned.
It was a revelation from the start. A 1975 recording of “Thunder Road” is the
first track, side one and I was blown away by the sheer poetry of it all. It
wasn’t what I anticipated at all. As I listened to disc after disc it dawned on
me that this was so much more than I could have hoped for. Even the tracks
recorded in the stadiums were something special. As the massed audience sing
the first two lines of “Hungry Heart” and as a huge cheer rises when
Springsteen sang about New York in “Jersey Girl” I felt a lump in my throat and
tears in my eyes. Even today, after hearing a lot of Springsteen’s live music
there’s something about those two tracks that takes me back to that moment and
still provokes the same emotions. I’d always thought until then that The Velvet
Underground’s “Live 1969” was one of the best live albums ever but I revised my
stance after hearing Springsteen’s box set. (I do have a bit of a dilemma now
because of Dylan’s “Live 1966 Albert Hall” album.
Maybe I could qualify things
by saying that the Dylan album in the greatest live show recorded and the
Springsteen is the best live compilation. A bit of a cop-out but it works. Sort
of.)
However much I was, and still am,
enamoured by the Live 75-85 box set, there was a long hiatus before I bought
another Springsteen record or truly got it. There was always a lot of other
music to hear and a lot of other records to buy and for at least 15 years the
Springsteen box set was Bruce’s only representation in my record collection. I
rationalised it by thinking that it was a good representation of his output and
that nothing could really live up to it anyway. But for some strange reason I
can’t recall about ten years ago, my interest in Bruce Springsteen suddenly was
re- awakened. This has led until now (and shows no signs of diminishing) to me
getting all the studio albums and at least 150 live recordings from the
internet. I can’t believe that for so long I closed my mind to this great,
passionate music.
And that’s the connection between The
Fall and Bruce Springsteen for me. Irrespective of whether you like either of
them, what they make is produced seemingly out of a deep need to communicate
and with no eye upon prevailing fashions.
It’s just something that they have to
do and it’s made with honesty and truth and love.
17. Blue
Angel-Blue Angel
A bit of a surprise, this one.
An album with Cyndi Lauper which stands
completely well in comparison to anything else on this list.
Cyndi Lauper?I think that back in the 1980’s she was seen
somewhat as a bit of a ditzy sub-Madonna clone-mad hair and bonkers clothes
etc. I think that she could have been bigger than Madonna, but didn’t seem the
way she wanted to go. By the way-I’m not going to start slating Madonna here;
I’ve always liked her stuff, but it’s a bit too easy to directly compare the
two of them.
As far as I can see the only thing that
they had in common is that they were about the same age, both female solo
artists who became successful at the same time and were both from New York.
That was it. They both did totally
different things. Madonna lined herself up with the best writers and producers
of the time; Cyndi Lauper was much more of a musician. She was (and is) a
brilliant songwriter and has a fantastic voice. One of very few artists who
have perfect pitch.
This track is from a little-heard album
by her first pre-solo success band, Blue Angel. It’s a pure straight up rock
and roll/rockabilly record and stands up well against anything that Elvis, Gene
Vincent or Eddie Cochran ever recorded in the 1950’s. Seriously, it’s that
good. Most of the songs on it were written by Lauper although there are some
well -chosen covers as well. It doesn’t sound like some terrible 50’s pastiche however
and that what’s makes it so special. It’s just a brilliant piece of music.
Above all that is the sound of her
voice which is truly spectacular. One particular track on the album, “Anna
Blue”, always brings a tear to my eye.It’s that good it would make an angel cry as well.
18. The
National-High Violet
My love of The
National was really all triggered by going to the Glastonbury Festival in 2010.
After finding out some of the artists that would be playing and whom I hadn’t
heard before, I thought I really should try to hear at least a bit of their
music before I went. I didn’t want to really spend hours standing for hours in
muddy fields listening to bands that I didn’t have a clue about. (In the case
of Muse I’d have rather spent hours head first in a muddy field than listen to
them.) Anyway, it was very hot and sunny with no mud in 2010 so that question
didn’t really come into play. I had got hold of the latest albums of some of
the bands, figuring out that probably would be fairly representative of what
they’d be playing.
And this
included The National’s most recent release at the time, “High Violet”. I only
half-listened to it before we went and then only a couple of times. It was kind
of lost within the general rush before we went. To this day, I just cannot
understand why. Of all the bands and artists that I’ve ever seen live, watching
The National at Glastonbury is probably the most revelatory musical experience
of my life. I don’t think that it was just because we were at Glastonbury in
perfect weather on a beautiful summer afternoon.
There was more
to it than that.
There’s
something fiercely intelligent, life-affirming and tightly focussed about The
National-not just on that Saturday in June-but deep within and throughout every
record they have made. It’s just a shame I took so long to discover them and I
know that this record will always be up there for me.
19. The Flaming Lips-Yoshimi Battles The
Pink Robots
As with The
Fall, it’s difficult just to pick one album by The Flaming Lips. It is quite an
arbitrary process and really any of their records would suffice. It’s not one
album or one track that has been inspirational for me but virtually everything
that they’ve done. It’s not only the music but their whole process; from how
they interact with their fans, what they stand for, their work ethic-just
everything about them.
(I pondered a long time about including their
2012 recording “7 Skies H3” but it does last for a straight 24 hours and
although I do love it as it wasn’t issued as a straightforward album I don’t
suppose it would count.)
So, I picked
this album really because it contains one of the best yet happiest songs about
death ever, “Do You Realise???” It’s possibly one of the Flips best known songs
and despite (or because of) the fact that it’s a staple of their live shows and
possible over-played, I still love it. Whilst I have an unfortunate reputation
within the family (one which they all-and especially my children- find
hilarious) for choking up and blinking tears away when anything remotely
sentimental is either on the TV or in a film or a particular song is played
(see “Abide with Me” at the Cup Final as a prime example) this track by the
Flips always does it for me, right from the very first chord. But because it is
such a fantastic song I really don’t care. Listen to this song and tell me that
the world isn’t a better place because it’s there. Above all, the Flips tell us
that everything will be alright.
20. The
Fall-The Complete Peel Sessions
The greatest compilation by the
greatest band ever.
I was going to write reams and reams
about The Fall and found it really difficult to pick just one album. I‘ve kind
of hedged my bets by choosing this one but for me the best work that the Fall
have ever done was their Peel Sessions.
Disc Two. Tracks 5-7. “Smile”,
“Garden”, “Hexen Definitive/Strife Knot”. A triptych of perfection that for me,
not only stands above most other recorded music, but above every single album
on this list.
I am listening to the tracks as I type
and still find myself thinking, “How can anything be this good? Where did this come from?” If The Fall had only ever
recorded three songs ever, then these alone would warrant their inclusion as
some of the greatest art ever produced by humanity.
Nothing more needs to be said.
Twenty Albums of Inspiration.
To anyone who has stumbed across all this,whether by accident or design, thanks for reading it all. Hope you have enjoyed it, and I'm sure that you have albums of your own that are similarly inspirational.
There's a lot more similarly worded musings and ramblings about music in my book "Totally Shuffled-A Year of Listening to Music on a Broken iPod" where I wrote about whatever track out of tens of thousands cropped up first on shuffle on my old iPod. For 366 days there were 366 different tracks by 366 different artists;some of whom are part of these 20 albums of inpsiration.
