>Sweet

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Pete Molinari- Medway delta bluesman and owner of many very dapper coats and hats- with his most gorgeous moment, Sweet Louise. Yeah, he could be described as Dylanesque but everyone’s got to be influenced by somebody and when the song, singing and playing are this good, who cares?

Sweet Louise.mp3

>Check Your Sheds, Check Your Sheds, I Think I’ve Lost My Mind

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For Webbie and any other interested readers- Half Man Half Biscuit played one of their rare gigs in Leicester on Thursday night. There was a full first team plus substitutes of middle aged men in Dukla Prague away kits and HMHB’s merchandise stall with cassette singles from the eighties still being offered. Echolocation, friends of mine were supporting them, and played their customary experimental set, being greeted with both applause and bafflement. HMHB arrived on stage at 9 ish and then played 29 songs in under two hours. Opening up with a tribute to two recently departed icons (Poly Styrene and Fred Titmus) they played songs from their whole back catalogue, from The Trumpton Riots up to new and unreleased ones, with top quality between song banter- especially the bit about an argument guitarist Ken had at Bradgate Park about whether you should have salt on boiled eggs. Speaking to Geoff, manager and owner of Liverpool’s Probe (shop and record label), he said the new album should be out in September with at least eleven new songs. However by this point I had drunk quite a lot, and my memories are a little blurry. H, guitarist in Echolocation and long standing campanero of mine, recorded the whole gig from the mixing desk. Towards the end, during the song Them’s The Vaguaries, my drunken voice shouting out the next line of the song (‘Bin Men, thin men , lexicographers’) is clearly audible during the breakdown in the middle of the song. Apologies for that. This is set closer (I think, it was towards the end if not the final song) We Built This Village On A Trad Arr. Tune, live in Leicester two nights ago. How’s that for blogging service? This song contains more great lines than most people manage over an album- the title of this post for example, ‘Yonder the deacon in misguided trousers’, ‘It fills me with joy to see moshers out jogging, it fills me with joy to see joggers out moshing’, ‘It’s a cricketing farce with a thickening plot, Act One Scene One Brenda Blethyn gets shot’ among them. They may be our finest folk band I think.

we built this village on a trad arr. tune (live in leicester april 2011).mp3

>The Return Of Friday Night Is Rockabilly Night 13

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I was going to post something pithy about that wedding but frankly, I can’t be arsed, so I’m going to ignore as I have all day. It’s Friday night, on with the rockabilly.The Johnny Burnette Trio made some of the best rockabilly stuff there is, and this song Honey Hush is one of them. The guitar sound and tone on this this song may well be perfect.
Full report and music from Half Man Half Biscuit to follow.

Honey Hush.mp3

>You’re Going On After Crispy Ambulance

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After work tonight I’m driving down to Leicester, jewel of the East Midlands, to see Wirral’s finest Half Man Half Biscuit play a rare gig. They’re at The Auditorium and being supported by Leicester band Echolocation, some of whom I know. I just hope there isn’t a running order squabble fest.

‘Half past four, half past four, you said half past ten to us’

‘No dry ice, no dry ice, hey Jason they’ve got no dry ice’

‘There’s no way on earth they should be on after us, they haven’t even got an album out’.

‘CND? CND? We’re not going on after Chas ‘n’ Dave’

running order squabble fest.mp3

>Beastly Brothers

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Posting the Beastie Boys’ Egg Man the other day led me to dig out Hello Nasty, the follow up to their crossover Ill Communication album. Hello Nasty has got plenty of the ‘three men shouting funny stuff over a funky break with a clever sample’ thing that they do so well (Super Disco Breakin’, Intergalactic) but it also shows them spreading their wings- there’s some loungecore, the beautiful ballad I Don’t Know, the spooky and minimal Instant Death and this track- Dr. Lee PhD. Recorded with Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry it’s a lo-fi, low key, shuffly, dubby, reggae tune- just a drumbeat, some organ, some funny noises and a load of Lee Perry’s profound nonsense lyrics, which finish with ‘it’s the beastly brothers, and the beastly boys, with their beastly toys’. It’s a groovy, addictive little track. I also realised that this record was released in July 1998, the long summer before the birth of our first child and listening to it, the album seemed like a glimpse into a former life.

21 Dr. Lee, PhD.mp3#2#2

>Ska Train

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Chik-chik, chik-chik.
Everyone on board, pick your seat, the train to skaville.
Chik-chik, chik-chik.

Beep-beep, beep-beep, the train to skaville.

Thanks to Davy H at The Ghost Of Electricity for the prompt.

02 Train to Skaville.wma#1#1

>Poly Styrene

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Poly Styrene, X-Ray Spex, warrior in Woolworth, germ free adolescent, R.I.P.

3rd of July 1953- 25th of April 2011.

07 Germ Free Adolescents.wma

>Bob State

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Today’s post is from 1993, when 808 State had kind of passed their sell-by date (in the eyes of the press anyway), this 12″ single from the Gorgeous album has balaeric guitars, a cracking breakbeat and plenty of melodic summeriness.

Plan 9 (Guitars On Fire Mix).mp3

>People

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Alfie were a Manchester band from the end of the last century, who formed partly in reaction to lumpen Oasis copycat bands. They played a kind of folky-indie, befriended Badly Drawn Boy and signed to Twisted Nerve, eventually jumping to Parlophone where it ended as these things often do- not big enough sales to satisfy a major record label, then splitting up. They made some good little records. This one, People, was a single in 2003.

01 People.wma

>Easter Egg Man

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Happy Easter. Enjoy the eggs.

Egg Man.mp3#1#1