I took a punt on this recently in the ALFOS section in Piccadilly Records, a four track 12″ by Maurice and Charles. Released at the end of last year, the A-side is a trippy, bleepy electronic chugger called Sofa Love plus a remix. The B-side is this tribute to John Carpenter, mixing a dirty bassline, some Eno-Byrne My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts style sounds and some vocal samples from Escape From New York. A moody, funky groove you’ll want to play all over again as soon as it finishes.
In 2011 Maurice and Charles put this out, a sort of acidic disco tribute to Giorgio Moroder.
I’ve had a week or two off the rockabilly, but here it comes again. It’s getting quite difficult to keep coming up with stuff for this slot but I was reminded of this cover version recently and couldn’t find it anywhere on the internet other than Grooveshark. I don’t know much about Grooveshark but I think it’s semi-legal at best.
This is The Clash’s Bankrobber done as a rockabilly song by The Pistoleers, which makes it sound like they did it first and The Clash later covered it dub reggae stylee. It’s a good cover version. I can’t get the plug-in thing to work but you can listen to it here. It’s worth the click through. I can’t find anything that works to rip it with at the moment so no mp3 either.
I got a new bike for my birthday- yes, that does make me sound like I’m ten years old. It’s a road bike, giving me an entire world of cycling jerseys and other bits of kit opening up. Mainly jerseys though and some of them are lovely. In a fit of velo fever I decided that as we were going to Sheffield for a few days I should cycle there while Mrs Swiss and the kids went in the car. South Manchester is pretty flat and the Snake Pass between Glossop and Sheffield is anything but flat and I fancied a go at a hill. The hill rising out of Glossop goes up to 565 metres (or 1680 feet in Imperial). And it’s a fucker to ride up let me tell you. But the ride down is something else. I got a lift to the end of the mtotrway and then left the BP garage in Mottram on the bike riding through to Hunter’s bar in two hours and five minutes. My cycling app told me that I recorded my fastest speed so far (down that hill) and also my slowest (up that pigging hill). I would have ridden back yesterday but it was sheeting down.
While in Sheffield I heard this in a shop-Black And White Town by Doves, from 2005, and it sounded really, really good.
I have shamelessly purloined some of this post from a comment thread at Sun Dried Sparrows. The man in the photo above, who looks like he could have been pictured yesterday, is Lewis Powell (or Payne). He was a Confederate soldier who attempted to assassinate William H. Seward and one of four people hanged for their part in the Lincoln assassination conspiracy. Powell, from Alabama, was photographed unwillingly in his cell while awaiting the noose and his stare through the camera is stunning, utterly contemporary and one of the reasons I find portrait photography from the mid 19th century through to circa the 1930s so interesting. The people look out at us, from another time, boxed off in history but still alive and human. There’s more if you do an image search.
I’ve run out of bandwidth at Boxnet- you may have noticed. I did think about getting a second account with a different email but haven’t got round to it. Luckily there’s tons of stuff on the internet- like this roots reggae style Prince Fatty remix of Manu Chao’s of Politik Kills. And politik kills or killed Lewis Powell.
Manu Chao grew up in France after his parents fled from Spain, his grandfather sentenced to death by Franco’s regime. Busking led him eventually to Mano Negra, a French group inspired by The Clash. Their hybrid of French, Italian, Arabic and Spanish music along with punk, ska, and rai led to success across Europe (except here pretty much). After Mano Negra he spent several years touring central and south America in a train. Manu’s music is punk in spirit and global street sounds in style. Almost any of his albums are worth checking out.
We are off to the Peoples’ Republic of Sheffield for a couple of days and I’ve not set up any posts for while I’m away. Originally we planned to camp but the forecast has dissuaded us. See you in a couple of days.
This an excerpt from an absolutely lovely, ever-so-slightly moody electronic throbber from the combined talents of Black Merlin and Timothy J Fairplay, off an ep of remixes, out on vinyl soon or now. Not sure which. I’m assuming it’s an excerpt as it’s only two and a half minutes long; it certainly needs to be longer- about five minutes longer.
I was listening to Julian Cope’s Sunspots yesterday on Youtube and saw this linked in the sidebar- a full gig live from The Ritz in 1987 (NY Ritz I think rather than Mcr). Cope’s mid-80s black leather clad pop period is brilliant. He could knock out classic songs and singles at the drop of a motorcycle hat. Sunspots is superb, borrowing a couple of 60s riffs, and adding a recorder solo, some great organ and his cool vocal delivery… ‘I’m in love with my very best friend’. I’m sure if he put his mind to it he could still do pop hits today.
There’s an hour’s worth here including Sunspots plus, amongst others, Trampolene, Bouncing Babies, Spacehopper, The Greatness And Perfection Of Love and his 80s period anthem World Shut Your Mouth.
Be My Baby is, quite clearly, an utterly fantastic pop record derived from the imagination of Phil Spector and the combined voices and attitudes of The Ronettes. It has one of the form’s definitive drum beats (which it is impossible to get tired of).
It is also- and this is a fact- a song that can be put on any mixtape/compilation cd, before or after any other song by anybody, and still work perfectly. Try it.
There’s something about 90s rave that’s really doing it for me at the moment. It lacks knowingness, it’s not arch or referencing the past, it just is what it is. Breakbeats. Pianos. Massive vocals. Euphoria. Highs and lows. For people round here who are five years younger than me this is their clubbing music. That’s not exactly a generation gap but it is a sign of how the music that hits you when you start clubbing is the one for you and a sign that for them, rave is their classic house/acid house/techno.
It’s a curiously sexless type of club music, or at least not deliberately sexy. Despite the fact that clubs at this time were full of people who were semi-naked (blokes topless, women in fluffy bra tops and hotpants). I suppose it wasn’t aimed at the groin but at the feet.
On Youtube a commenter has opined that this isn’t rave but Commercial Happy Hardcore. No type of music split into mini-scenes, genres and labels quite like dance music. I can live with Commercial Happy Hardcore. I may go into HMV in the Trafford Centre and ask for some.
This version, as Paul Bob Horrocks pointed out recently, is an ace piece of slow rave- ideal if you’re after a spot of euphoria while washing the dishes.
I quite fancy listening to Baby D’s Let Me Be Your Fantasy now.
I’m sure none of you would consider voting for Ukip and I’m sorry if I’m preaching to the converted here but… there are some people who think that a vote for Ukip is just a protest vote, merely a rejection of the big parties and their grey-suited, all-the-same policies and their featureless leaders. That somehow they are sending a message that ‘the people’ need to be listened to and here’s an ‘outsider’ who can shake things up a bit. And he seems like a decent chap, likes a pint and a smoke, speaks common sense, says what people are actually thinking.
But… a vote for Ukip is not just a protest vote. It is a vote for small mindedness, for a petty Little Englander outlook, for people who think they can turn the clock back to some imaginary 1950s idyll of whiteness and conformity and tidy front gardens, it is a vote for intolerance, for distrust and for bigotry, for conservatism, for backwardness.
Timothy J Fairplay has made and contributed to a lot of good music recently but I don’t think he’s made anything stranger, more out there, than this. Bubbling sounds, off key horns parping, a krautesque keyboard riff, busy drumming and time changes. It’s tagged on Soundcloud as Zombie Dub and… hey, why not.
Bagging Area 