We’re going to a wedding tomorrow. It won’t be a rockabilly wedding but I hope Dave makes a bit more effort than the groom pictured above. A suit wouldn’t have gone amiss.
Mel Robbins recorded Save It in the 1950s, making the short hop from honky tonk to rockabilly- that bandwagon won’t be around for long, better get on board. Save It is piano led with a thumping solo and a giggly, hiccuping, heavy breathing vocal.
Brody Dalle is one of those punk girls our mothers used to warn us about- fags, tattoos, black eyeliner, bad attitude. Which only made them more attractive. She was in LA punks The Distillers and then the more alt-rock Spinnerette; both have engine revving guitars and a massive drum sound, her big husky voice and Joan Jett looks. If my LA punk gossip knowledge is correct she was married to Rancid’s Tim Armstrong and is now married to Queen Of The Stone Age’s Josh Homme. Brody has a solo album coming out- there is a song below to listen to (with Shirley Manson and Emily from Warpaint on backing vox). I quite like it in a regressive shoutalong kind of way.
Westworld crossed Eddie Cochran with beatboxes and had a few chart hits in 1987, the best known being Sonic Boom Boy. This one, with a slowed down Bo Diddley riff and a cracking vocal from Elizabeth, only reached number 47 but was just as good. I picked the 12″ up recently, in pristine condition, in a charity shop for 50p- both a bargain and a charity shop classic.
And doing the promotional rounds on Pebble Mill At One here. Is it just me or have Youtube changed the embedding thing? Can’t get it to work. Never mind- you can click. It seems bizarre now that bands would travel to Birmingham or wherever Pebble Mill was for a two minute slot at lunchtime, mime their way through their latest offering in between a few light items and some news, for the benefit of… who? Pensioners, the unemployed, students and some stay-at-home parents ( I resisted typing housewives there although in 1987 it was probably fairly accurate) . Who of these was going to rush out to buy Silvermac? The pluggers must have worked all the way through lunch to get the Pebble Mill slot as well.
Today’s song is a beautiful cover of the Velvet Underground’s Candy Says by British folk star Kathryn Williams. I had this on a compilation cd but can’t find it, can’t even remember what the cd was, it came with a magazine I think but I didn’t get around to buying the album. Anyway, this is quite lovely. I always thought it funny that she didn’t hit the high notes that Lou Reed did.
Billy Nicholls is one of the forgotten men of 1960s pop and as such has an album that is one of those legendary, hard-to-find records- his take on Pet Sounds, shelved by Immediate just before it was due to come out (Andrew Loog Oldham’s label ran into financial difficulties).This song is an absolute joy with blistering guitar parts from Steve Marriott, the rest of The Small Faces thumping along and a superb vocal from Billy.
The lyrics take some beating too…
She came from New York in the summer
We went to the zoo
She said that London was lovely
We had a good view
I called her at four in the morning
She came to the phone
We met in a park as the dawn came
I picked her a rose
Some how we found the time
To love each others mind
Monday morning- let’s start the week with Martin Denny’s 1959 instrumental hit Quiet Village, a song which summarises the 1990s (and beyond) ironic, lounge/exotica revival in three minutes and thirty six seconds of piano, woodblock and parrot noises. Very nice.
Echorich frequently leaves the most considered comments here and the man also has exquisite taste. When i posted A Man Called Adam’s Barefoot In The Head he offered the opinion that that record and this one here today were among the three best songs of their ilk. The Beloved’s Sun Rising is a peach, a song that sounds like it’s title. It has been remixed to death but sometimes the original mix is all you need. The bass, whispered vocals and electronic rhythm- sublime.
Polar explorer Tom Crean must have seen many sun rises though possibly not in the altered state that The Beloved were writing about. Got to love a man in sub-zero temperatures who still smokes his pipe.
My most read post at Bagging Area this week has been the one about Manchester City Council’s plans to despoil library walk, blocking it off with gates and a glass box. Unlike me, who just sits and types and moans, Manchester Modernist Society are doing something about it and more importantly YOU CAN TOO. You need to write a letter. An actual letter, on paper with a pen and post it too, costing you 60 pence for a first class stamp, but I think it’s worth it. Because a) they shouldn’t be able to block off a public right of way b) they shouldn’t be able to spoil two Grade II listed buildings, a much loved feature of our city centre for eighty years and c) they are numpties for even thinking it was a good idea. Details are here. We can oppose the stopping up order, triggering a legal review by central government. You don’t even need to be a resident of Manchester. But you do need to be quick- all letters must be received by Friday 28th February. Pens out people! Save beautiful architecture and fight the power, fight the powers that be!
This concrete brutalist building is a nunnery in Yucatan, Mexico.
This is a dub-disco re-edit of Echo And the Bunnymen’s The Killing Moon by Something For Kate. It is superb. You didn’t know you needed a dance floor version of this song… and yet you do. Mac never bettered himself lyrically than with this song- heavy duty, time shifting, portentous nonsense.
Bagging Area 