Mars, Arizona

Long time reader Spencer got in touch last week with a proposal- he picks a tune and sends it to me. I write about it. ‘Start with how it makes you feel’, he said, ‘then it could be a memory… or the visceral sense of hearing it for the first time’. 

I said I was game, it’s an interesting idea for an irregular series and we can see where it goes. Then he sent this, a remix of a 2005 Jon Spencer Blues Explosion song…

Mars, Arizona (DFA Remix)

I knew it but hadn’t heard for years- I can’t remember the first time I heard it but as I clicked play it came flooding back. At the point it came out DFA were riding the crest of a wave, reinventing post- punk and indie dance in a post Twin Towers New York (DFA was formed in 2001 after James Murphy and Tim Goldsworthy met while working on David Holmes’ Let’s Get Killed album. Murphy went on to put together LCD Soundsystem in 2002 and release their definitive and debut single Losing My Edge later that year). 

DFA don’t do things by halves and don’t spare the senses either. This is a ten minute slab of noisy mid 00s dancefloor action. It kicks in instantly with fuzz and static and then a crash of a piano falling over. Drums and shaker are dropped in and we have a groove, with more bent out of shape piano stabs and a gnarly bassline, the sort of bassline you can feel. It’s tense and urgent but aimed at having fun, making people twitch and dance. 

The voice Jon Spencer eventually appears, singing/ howling his 21st century blues, ‘I wanna tell you everything I’m thinking of/ Well I can’t talk now with my mouth full of love’. The piano bangs away and the bassline writhes, a storm gathering, before the breakdown at five minutes thirty, a long piano chord fade out and then we’re into the second half, the drums come back and a distorted synth sound takes over, knobs being turned all the way round the dial and back again and again and again… It’s a glorious, hot, noisy mess, the soundtrack to nights of sticky floors, lost jackets, a pre- smoking ban world, missed buses, drunken kisses, ripped jeans, The Fall fed through a synth workshop in early 21st century Brooklyn. 

Half An Hour Of Steve Mason

The subject of today’s thirty minute mix is Steve Mason, the man whose doleful  vocals defined the songs of The Beta Band when they suddenly appeared back in 1998. Since they broke up he’s recorded as King Biscuit Time and Black Affair and made four albums under his own name- Boy’s Outside, Monkey Minds In The Devil’s Time, Meet The Humans and About The Light, every one of them chock full of great songs. In the first lockdown Steve stated on Twitter that he was going to start a chat show and asked followers to suggest what it should be called. I replied quickly that it should be called ‘Meet The Human’ which Steve declared the winner and replied to me to say I’d be on the guestlist when he next came through Manchester. It’s not happened yet but I’m still hopeful. 

The songs that make up the thirty- three minutes below are taken from his solo albums/ singles, taking in anger and politics, existential dread, depression, celebratory anthems, a dubbed out Weatherall remix and a song that is utterly desolate and which always moves me. Alive is the opener to 2016’s Meet The Humans. Fight Them Back, from 2013’s Monkey Minds In The Devil’s Time, with the sampled voices of Tony Blair and David Icke was written out of frustration and disgust at the political situation and in the aftermath of the riots of 2011, a song urging revolution and taking to the streets. I think he later said he regretted the violence in the lyrics but there’s no doubting it’s a powerful piece of indie/hip hop/ agitprop. I Go Out was a one off single, fantastic driving psyche- pop with Emiliana Torrini and Steve on co- vocals and Brighton psyche rockers Toy kicking up a storm behind them. Boys Outside, was a stripped back, melancholic, at times fragile album tackling Steve’s own experiences of depression. Weatherall’s pair of dub remixes of the title track are both superb and push the song somewhere else entirely. Walking Away From Love is from 2019’s About The Light, infections guitar pop driven by a Bo Diddley riff. America Is Your Boyfriend came from the same album, with the remix released on an EP called Coup D’etat, remixed by Tim Goldsworthy (who was in UNKLE and LCD Soundsystem). 

Come To Me is from Monkey Minds In The Devil’s Time, a gorgeous, metronomic, heartbreaking song that offers redemption (or maybe comfort) in some form. I’m not sure whether it’s about loss or depression and think it can be read either way. Many years ago this blog and several others had regular comments and contributions from a reader based in Leeds who went by the name of Dick Van Dyke. His contributions were frequently hilarious, often insightful, and many times better than the original post they were attached to. Dick (not his real name) suffered the devastating and sudden loss of his wife. A few of us were in contact with him via email for a while but things drifted as they often do and I haven’t heard from him for some time now. I hope he’s still out there and that he and his daughter are OK. I once posted Come To Me for him- it seemed to fit with how he was describing the loss and grief he was experiencing and I thought it might help him in some way. The opening lines ‘This is about the rest of us/ the ones you left behind’ struck me then (and still do now) and the chorus too- ‘and when you come to me/ in the dead of night/ and I convince myself it will be alright/ and when you hold me close/ as the night unfolds/ and I convince myself how we’ll grow old’. 

Now of course I’ve experienced my own loss. Isaac died five months ago yesterday. The grief and the sense of loss are still as present today as they were on 30th November 2021 but here we are five months on. Come To Me has the ability to completely undo me. It was able to do this back in 2013 and it really does it to me now but there’s catharsis in listening to it. I’m not even sure it is a song about loss and the verses aren’t entirely clear to me but it’s become a song about loss for me- it was back then and it is now- and posting it today seems fitting for Dick van Dyke (wherever he is) and for Isaac. 

Half An Hour Of Steve Mason

• Alive
• Fight Them Back
• I Go Out
• Boys Outside (Andrew Weatherall Dub 2)
• Walking Away From Love
• America Is Your Boyfriend (Tim Goldsworthy Remix)
• Come To Me