Songs To Learn And Sing

Episode 373

2011-11-04T09:50:00.000Z

Songs To Learn And Sing - Episode 373

Back after another hiatus. Last night's show featured some great new music from Burrows and Dark Captain along with some mid-80s Creation highlights from Peter Astor's The Loft and The Weather Prophets - Why Does the Rain still sounds amazing to these ears. We also played Odessa (City on the Black Sea) by the Bee Gees. Released in 1969, Odessa is the opening track from the the album of the same name. Odessa was their sixth album and for those of you only familiar with the band's 70s disco output, check out the video below.

Dark Captain (formerly known as Dark Captain Light Captain) have just released their new album Dead Legs & Alibis on LOAF Recordings and the East London quintet have come up with the goods again. Dead Legs & Alibis is the band's follow-up to their 2008 debut full-length Miracle Kicker, which harvested critical praise across the board, and was one of my favourite albums of the last few years. Submarines, the lead single off the new album has been on repeat play round my place for the last few weeks. Check out its video below.

Burrows is the nom de plume of Kate Glavey and In Winter is her debut album. The album is described as being, "Inspired by shifting weights and the music of Dirty Three". In Winter was arranged and mostly recorded in Granny studios in Waterford by Kate and John Haggis. Hand-printed CDs and a limited run of vinyl are available. Check out the title track below.

<p>&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://burrowsinwinter.bandcamp.com/album/in-winter"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;In Winter by Burrows&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;</p>

Episode 373 - 03/11/11

Playlist

PatrickKelleher – Finds You (Thread Pulls Remix)

PatrickKelleher & His Cold Dead Hands – Gouge

16Horsepower – Clogger

CharlotteGainsbourg – Terrible Angels

Crystal Stilts – Shake the Shackles (playing Grand Social, Fri 04)

Crystal Stilts – Silver Sun

Bee Gees – Odessa (City on the Black Sea)

Burrows –In Winter

Burrows –Wartime

DarkCaptain – Submarines

DarkCaptain – Fade

Future Islands – On the Water

Casiokids –Olympiske Leker

Jape – TooMany People

Richmond Fontaine – Lost in the Trees (playing Workman's Club, Fri 04)

RachaelDadd - Balloon

Ladytron –Ace of Hz

ArthurRussell – Let’s Go Swimming (Gulf Stream Dub)

High Places– Dry Lake

TremblingBells – Man Is As a Garden Born

Josef K –The Missionary

The Loft –Why Does the Rain

The WeatherProphets – Your Heartbeat Breathes the Life Into Me

Canon Blue– Chicago

TheDecemberists – E. Watson

BonniePrince Billy – Black Captain

The Band –The Weight

Dum DumGirls – Just A Creep

The Flaming Lips, Cornelius

2011-11-03T15:55:00.002Z

The Flaming Lips, Cornelius - Dublin 1999

Transmissions: A Fortnight of New Digital Sound was staged at Dublin's Olympia from August 31 to September 12, 1999. Some amazing gigs were held as you can see from the flyers below. It was also the first time that an Irish audience got to see Wayne Coyne's fake blood, glove puppet and minature camera routine that became a feature of most Flaming Lips' gigs for the following couple of years. Cornelius supported the Flaming Lips and were mind-blowing. The video below is from a show in North Carolina also supporting the Flaming Lips about two weeks prior to the Dublin date.

The Go-Betweens

2011-08-30T20:21:00.000+01:00

The Go-Betweens - Streets of Your Town 7'' (Limited Boxed Edition) + Ticket Stubs

Following a great Go-Betweens post over at the Underground of Happiness I thought I'd post some scans of the Beggars Banquet Boxed Edition of the Streets of Your Town 7''. Streets of Your Town was taken from the band's sixth album 16 Lovers Lane and released as a single in 1988. Beggars released the single in a number of different formats: 7'', 12'', CD Single and this 7'' Boxed Edition. The label released a number of these 7'' boxed editions for their artists at the time. I remember seeing one for The Fall's Jerusalem single and I can only assume that the reason behind the different formats was to ensure that fans bought multiple copies of the single to help it achieve a higher chart placing.

The Go-Betweens - Streets of Your Town 7'' (Limited Boxed Edition BEG 218B)

The different copies of Street of Your Town sold enough to give the band their highest charting single in the UK: it reached No. 80 on 8 August 1988. The Go-Betweens box housed the 7'' single along with a band photograph, a street plan and a button badge. Streets of Your Town would be re-released the following year but the second edition only charted at No. 82.

The Go-Betweens - Streets of Your Town 7'' (Front)

Streets of Your Town remains one of my favourite Go-Betweens tracks. I bought the 12'' single and played it to death on my old PYE record player, I always loved the contrast between the beautiful upbeat tune, Amanda Brown's poppy backing vocals and Grant's dark melancholic lyric:

"Don’t the sun look good today?
But the rain is on it’s way
Watch the butcher shine his knives
And this town is full of battered wives."

The Go-Betweens - Streets of Your Town 7'' (Back)

Band Photograph from Streets of Your Town 7'' (Limited Boxed Edition)

Street Plan from Streets of Your Town 7'' (Limited Boxed Edition)

The street plan is of Sydney's King Cross area with a note at the bottom: "Dear Banquet, we all, well most of us, live somewhere on this map. You guess where. Johnny"

Streets of Your Town - Button Badge

The Go-Betweens - The Mean Fiddler, 3 June 1997

I got to see Forster & McLennan play live in Dublin in 1997. After the gig Grant autographed my ticket stub: "To the boy". My friend had her stub also signed by Grant: "To the girl".

Forster & McLennan - Vicar Street, 4 June 1999

Two years and one day later the guys returned to Dublin for another amazing night. The band filmed two different videos for Streets of Your Town, below is the lesser known first version.

Metropolis II

2011-08-27T08:01:00.003+01:00

Metropolis II directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman

Metropolis II is a short film directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, the directors of 2010's Catfish. Metropolis II is named after its subject Chris Burden's die cast Hot Wheels cityscape. Burden has created a completely functional miniature cityscape of overlapping and interweaving roadways that contains 1,200 cars speeding around at up to 230 miles per hour. He’s also installed electric trains, ending up with something that resembles Fritz Lang’s vision of the future, hence the name Metropolis II. It took Burden four years to create his kinetic sculpture and it is currently being moved to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art where it will be reinstalled.

In an interview with the New York Times last year Burden revealed that Metropolis II includes, "1,200 custom-designed cars and 18 lanes; 13 toy trains and tracks; and, dotting the landscape, buildings made of wood block, tiles, Legos and Lincoln Logs... every hour 100,000 cars circulate through the city... It has an audio quality to it. When you have 1,200 cars circulating it mimics a real freeway. It’s quite intense."

Joost and Schulman use two beautiful pieces of music to soundtrack their hypnotic film: Tortoise's Ten Day Interval and Windmill International A by Mahogany. Check out their film below, I highly recommend sitting back, turning up the volume and watching in full screen.

Brett Bert wrote a brilliant article for Vanity Fair on Metropolis II back in January.

Episode 363

2011-08-26T10:57:00.001+01:00

Songs To Learn And Sing - Episode 363

This episode revisits Heartbeats by Grimes. We first played this on the show back in March when Halfaxa, the debut release from Grimes was released on Lo Recordings. I've been playing Halfaxa a lot recently and I think that Claire Boucher aka Grimes has produced one of my favourite releases of 2011 so far. If you've yet to have the pleasure of falling under the spell of Grimes then check out the Laurel Halo remix of Heartbeats and the brilliant video of the track.

Grimes - Heartbeats (Laurel Halo Remix) by Lo Recordings

This episode also featured new music from Gothenburg, Sweden. Next Stop: Horizon are Pär Hagström & Jenny Roos and She's a Ghost is taken from the duo's debut album We Know Exactly Where We Are Going.

Dirk from Tapete Records has the following to say about their music: "Their music is so special that I had to really, really rack my brain a bit to come up with some composition of words to possibly explain their sound. Here‘s what I got down on paper: 'Kurt Weill-esque, achingly unique, anarchic and melodramatic music of bizarre beauty.' I would also like to add that their music sounds archaic and totally contemporary at the same time. How the hell they do this is beyond me… but it's true." Dirk Darmstaedter, Tapete Records. There's nothing I could write that would better Dirk's description of the music created by Next Stop: Horizon, so watch the great live version of She's a Ghost and listen to a few tracks from the album.

Next Stop: Horizon - We know exactly where we are going by Tapete Records

Episode 363 – 25/08/2011

Playlist

Hauschka - Iron Shoes
OMD - Electricity
Dark Captains - Submarines
Metronomy - The Bay (Erol Alkan's Extended Rework)
The Doomed Bird of Providence - Fedicia Exine (I Am a Vowel Mix)
The Field - Looping State of Mind
Seeland - Local Park
Bjork - Crystalline (Omar Souleyman Remix)
Grimes - Heartbeats
Elephant - Ants
Astrid Williamson - Pour
Connan Mockasin - Forever Dolphin Love
Ingrid Olava - Warrior Song
Smoke Fairies - Hotel Room
Trumpets of Death - The Press Gang
Ann Scott - Universe
Next Stop : Horizon - She's a Ghost
Scott 4 - Deutsche LP Record
Efterklang - Falling Horses
Beach House - Lover of Mine
Tarwater - In a Day
Roll the Dice - Idle Hands

Sonic Youth & Nirvana - Sir Henrys 1991

2011-08-20T18:34:00.003+01:00

Sonic Youth & Nirvana - Sir Henrys 1991

It's been exactly 20 years! It's one of those gigs that has taken on mythical status. Truth be told not an awful lot of people were there for Nirvana's performance, but the place was stuffed by the time Sonic Youth took to the stage. I had bought my ticket earlier that summer and was really excited about Sonic Youth playing my home town. I had gotten into Sonic Youth around the release of Goo and had worked back through their back catalogue to Daydream Nation, Sister and Evol. I didn't know who Nirvana were but I can clearly remember Krist Novoselic wearing a purple Dinosaur Jr t-shirt and thinking that was kind of cool. Sonic Youth were amazing. I brought along a disposable camera to the gig and took no photographs of Nirvana - that's how much I cared about them! Out of 24 snaps the above shot is the only remaining photo.

The great thing for me about this photo though is that you can clearly make out Thurston's Brendan Behan t-shirt. A friend of mine had a stupid altercation with a bouncer and was thrown out of Henrys before Sonic Youth came on stage. He walked around to the front of the Grand Parade Hotel and met the band. He told them what had happened and they let him watch the gig from the side of the stage and afterwards Thurston gave him the Brendan Behan t-shirt. When we came down the stairs out of the venue there he was holding his treasured t-shirt. Footage from the Henrys gig can be seen on Dave Markey's 1991: The Year Punk Broke, his film chronicling the Sonic Youth tour.

Kurt takes a nap during soundcheck, Sir Henrys, Cork

Postscript: My good buddy Jim Comic has just informed me:

I designed and printed the tickets. I'll always remember the promoter, Des Blair, bringing in a fax of the Nirvana logo (you can see the fax lines on it), as you'll recall faxes were pretty poor quality, plus the logo was tiny (no such thing as e-mailing high res eps or pdf logos back then). My first reaction was, "Who are they?" Then I said "this won't be great, you sure you want it on?" He said, "I don't know but it's in the contract so I have to include it." So I photocopied it, we made a bromide of it and pasted it on to the design by hand with pritt stick and made the plates from a new bromide of the entire ticket.

Episode 362

2011-08-19T14:20:00.001+01:00

Songs To Learn And Sing - Episode 362

This episode featured The Dream Machine by Sukia a record I haven't played in years. The Dream Machine is taken from Sukia's one and only album, 1996's Contacto Especial con el Tercer Sexo. This was one of my favourite records of the 90s, it still sounds brilliant, completely fresh, and totally nuts. The record was produced by The Dust Brothers and the late Jerry Finn and released on The Dust Brothers' Nickel Bag label in the US and on Mo Wax Records in Europe. My vinyl copy of the album came with an extra 12'' of remixes of The Dream Machine. Sukia, who took their name from an Italian satanic vampire paranormal porno comic book, were from California and combined Moog-driven grooves, analogue synths, toy keyboards, found samples and space-age pop aesthetics to create a darkly humourous album that is definately a lost classic.

Episode 362 – 18/08/2011

Playlist

Dutch Uncles - The Ink
Mint Julep - Aviary
Bjork - Cosmology (Matthew Herbert Remix 1)
Bjork - Crystalline (Serban Ghenea Remix)
Bjork - Crystalline (Matthew Herbert Remix)
Black Sheep - Leila Khaled
Brian Donor - Get Off Your Pretty Face
Amon Duul II - What You Gonna Do
Vessels - Meatman, Piano Tuner, Prostitute
65 Days of Static - Dance, Dance, Dance
Actress - Paint, Straw and Bubbles (Zomby Remix)
Fever Ray - Seven
Rachel Dadd - Balloon
Channel One - Soubresaut
Seefeel -Faults
Grinderman - Heathen Child (Weatherall Remix)
Konk - Baby Dee
Sukia - The Dream Machine
Link Wray - Jack The Ripper
Microdisney - Singer's Hampstead Home
Iggy Pop - Nightclubbing
That Petrol Emotion - Scum Surfin'
Erland & The Carnival - Map of an Englishman

The 10 Best Music Memoirs

2011-08-16T14:16:00.002+01:00

The 10 Best Music Memoirs - A Highly Subjective List

I mentioned both Julian Cope's Head-On and Bill Drummond's 45 in a recent post on Zoo Records and this got me thinking about great Rock 'n' Roll memoirs. Ian Hunter's Diary of a Rock 'n' Roll Star is always mentioned when people write about the greatest music books, having never read it It's not in my own Top 10. Here's the list...

No. 10

White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960s by Joe Boyd

2005 Serpent's Tail

White Bicycles is Boyd's brilliant memoir of how he got started in the music business. He toured Britain with Muddy Waters in 1964 and by the decade's end he was producing Fairport Convention and The Incredible String Band for his Witchseason production company. In between he produced Pink Floyd, co-founded the UFO Club, supervised Dylan's electric debut at Newport and launched the career of Nick Drake. Considering what Boyd went on to do in the following decades (producing soundtracks for Deliverance and A Clockwork Orange, and producing albums for Nico, Vashti Bunyan, Billy Bragg, REM and 10,000 Maniacs among others) a second or third volume of memoirs would be just as captivating.

No. 9

Renegade: The Lives and Tales of Mark E. Smith by Mark E. Smith

2008 Penguin

Renegade is ghost written by Austin Collings and is fasinating and frustrating in equal measure. Fasinating for the honest, no holds barred detail on one hand and yet frustrating for the way other details are never touched upon. Renegade is however hilariously funny and at times comes across like a 240 page rant from a man consumed by his art. Smith delivers words of widom ("If you're going to play it out of tune, then play it out of tune properly") and put-downs ("I remember Nick Cave when he used to write on heroin, he'd show me lyrics. I'd be like, 'Nick, what you doing?'") like no other. Renegade is really complemented by Dave Simpson's The Fallen.

No. 8

Things The Grandchildren Should Know by Mark Oliver Everett

2008 Abacus

Things the Grandchildren Should Know tries to answer the question: "How does one young man surive the deaths of his entire family and manage to make something of his life?" The Eels frontman's memoir is an inspiring story that's really well written with an unflinching candor that allows the reader to trust the writer completely. Compared to most of the books on this list, where it helps if you're somewhat familiar with the artist's music, you definately don't need to be a fan of Eels to become completely absorbed in this brilliant book. One thing is for certain though if you aren't already intimate with the Eels' back catalogue you'll be checking it out after reading this. Also highly recommended is Parallel World's, Parallel Lives the 2007 documentary, in which Everett talks with physicists and his father's former colleagues about his father's Many Worlds theory of quantum mechanics.

No. 7

Black Vinyl, White Powder by Simon Napier-Bell

2001 Ebury Press

Napier-Bell's memoir of 50 years in the music business. A behind the scenes account from the man who at various times has been a songwriter, producer, manager and journalist. Napier-Bell co-wrote Dusty Springfield's You Don't Have to Say You Love Me, and managed The Yardbirds, Marc Bolan, Japan and Wham! Black Vinyl White Powder is an incredibly authoritative, brilliantly researched, fantastically entertaining and really well written book. His account of the planning and staging of 1985's 'Wham! in China' tour, the first by a Western pop group, is worth the cover price alone.

No. 6

What's Welsh For Zen by John Cale

1999 Bloomsbury

Officer of the Order of the British Empire, John Cale's What's Welsh For Zen is co-written by Victor Bockris who has also written biographies of Lou Reed, Andy Warhol, Patti Smith and William Burrroughs. Bockris also co-wrote Uptight: The Story of The Velvet Underground. Dedicated to Velvets bandmate Sterling Morrison, What's Welsh For Zen is not only a really well written book, it's also beautifully designed and illustrated by Dave McKean. Cale takes us from a house in the foothills of the Brecon Beacons to New York in the 60s, from the Velvets to Paris 1919 and the Island Years, from key productions and collaborations to CBGB's in the late 70s, from the disastrous Velvets reunion to the critical success of Songs For Drella.

The cast list along the journey is incredible: Aaron Copeland, Andy Warhol, La Monte Young, Nico, Patti Smith, Nick Drake, Brian Eno, Lou Reed, Terry Reily, Iggy and The Stooges and The Modern Lovers to name a few. Cale is one of the few artists from the era that is still relevant and writing fantastic new music rather than falling back on past glories, indeed since the publication of this memoir Cale has released two fantastic albums, HoboSapians (2003) and blackAcetate (2005) which rank up there with any of his previous work. A new 12'' EP is due to be released in September on Domino's Double Six imprint and a new album will follow in 2012.

No. 5

45 by Bill Drummond

2000 Little Brown

45 was written as Bill Drummond entered his 45th year and takes the form of a series of short essays about various stages of his career, including stories about Echo and the Bunnymen, The Teardrop Explodes, the KLF and the K Foundation. We also get accounts of making soup in Belfast, ordinance survey maps and the wars in former Yugoslavia. Worth reading alone for his account of travelling to Nashville to get Tammy Wynette to record her vocals for the KLF's Justified and Ancient: "'How's it sound Bill?' came the voice from the other side of the glass. How do you tell the voice you have worshipped for the past twenty years, one of the greatest singing voices of the twentieth century... that it sounds shit? 'It sounds great, Tammy.'" 45 is highly entertaining and if he ever sits down and writes the full story we will have an amazing memoir.

No. 4

Black Postcards: A Rock & Roll Romance by Dean Wareham

2008 Penguin

Black Postcards, Wareham's memoir of his time in both Galaxie 500 in the 80s and Luna in the 90s, is a remarkably honest account of Wareham's time in both bands, we get the thrills and excitement of life in a band but he's also not afraid to write about the downsides of touring in a moderately successful band. At times Wareham portrays himself entirely unsympathetically and this makes the story so much more believeable. Ultimately Black Postcards completely deflates the Rock 'n' Roll myth. A great companion piece to Matthew Buzzell's 2006 Luna documentary, Tell Me Do You Miss Me.

No. 3

Head-On: Memories of the Liverpool Punk-scene and the story of The Teardrop Explodes (1976-82) by Julian Cope
and
Repossessed: Shamanic Depressions in Tamworth & London (1983-89) by Julian Cope

1999 Thorsons

Head-On was originally published in 1994 and was re-published back-to-back with Repossessed in 1999 as a "twofer" (you can flip Repossessed over and start Head-On on the other side). Quite simply Head-On and Repossessed are two of the best books ever written about Rock 'n' Roll. Head-On, as the subtitle suggests, covers the Liverpool punk scene and the rise and fall of The Teardrop Explodes. It is an essential read for anyone interested in the UK punk and post-punk music scenes. Repossessed picks up the story after the demise of The Teardrops, when Julian retreats to his family home in Tamworth, releases the two Mercury solo records before signing to Island records and storming the charts once more with a string of hit singles from his 1986 album, Saint Julian. Both books are extremely entertaining, hilariously funny and full of self-deprecating humour. After reading these memoirs you will have simply one question: where's part three?

No. 2

Bad Vibes: Britpop and My Part In Its Downfall by Luke Haines
and
Post Everything: Outsider Rock and Roll by Luke Haines

These are the two most recently published books in this list. Bad Vibes covers the story of The Auteurs whilst Post Everything covers the Black Box Recorder and solo years. Both books are brilliantly written and hilariously funny. Haines comes across as completely egocentric and totally bitter and twisted, the anecdotes come fast and furious and absolutely destroy the Britpop myth. These are laugh-out-loud books which send the reader straight back to the back catalogue to rediscover why we always loved Haines to begin with. At one point in the narrative Haines is recording three albums for three different labels when he gets a call from his manager telling him that he's lost his record deal, "Which one?" he retorts. Brilliant stuff.

2009 William Heinemann

No. 1
Nico: Songs They Never Play On The Radio by James Young

1999 Arrow

Songs They Never Play On The Radio isn't a biography of Nico in the traditional sense, it's James Young's memoir of his time as her keyboard player between 1982 and her death in 1988. In 1982 he was a student at Oxford when Alan Wise, a Manchester promoter and old school friend asked him to join Nico's band for a short tour of Italy. So begins a crazy seven year journey, touring the world and recording with the former Warhol starlet. Young has written a simply wonderful memoir occupied by losers, addicts, outsiders, musicians and drifters. The book is quite bleak and tragic at times but is also really funny, and gives us amazing fly-on-the-wall detail of life in a touring band in the margins of the music business. John Cooper Clarke, Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg and John Cale all appear in the story. Cale actually admits in his own memoir (What's Welsh For Zen, No. 6 above) that Young's unflattering depiction of him is entirely accurate for the time. I love this book, I've two copies of it - I lent my first copy to so many people over the years it's now nearly falling to pieces.

Young has described Songs They Don't Play On The Radio as: "A marginal book about marginal people, it wasn't like being on tour with Madonna. Ultimately I suppose it was an ‘Andy Warhol’s Velvet Underground’ kind of thing...copping off on someone else’s fame. I did try to get Nico’s name off the cover. The title was simply ‘Songs They Never Play On The Radio’ and I definitely didn’t want a picture of Nico on the jacket either. Bloomsbury absolutely did not see it my way. There was a stand-off...don’t get published, return the advance, or hitch your trailer to the Warhol wagon."

Episode 361

2011-08-12T11:04:00.000+01:00

Songs To Learn And Sing - Episode 361

This episode featured a couple of tracks from Mice Parade's 2010 album What It Means To Be Left-Handed. I didn't really get into this record when it was released last year but I've come back to it over the past few weeks and it's really growing on me. The album is book-ended by two beautiful tracks. I love the cover of Tom Brosseau's Mary Anne which closes the record. The album opens with the gorgeous, frolicking Kupanda, performed by Mice Parade and kora player Abdou with Swahili vocals from Rwandan/Ugandan-descended singer Somi. It's great stuff. Track eight on the record is Mallo Cup, a Lemonheads cover and below is a nice solo acoustic version by Mice Parade's Adam Pierce.

Mice Parade - Kupanda by FatCat Records

Mice Parade "Mallo Cup" from BeatCast on Vimeo.

Episode 361 – 11/08/2011

Playlist

Eat Lights : Become Lights - Monorail
Damon & Naomi - How Do I Say Goodbye
Ann Scott - Universe
Smoke Fairies - Hotel Room
Agnes Obel - Riverside
Elephant - Allured
Elephant - Ants
John Stammers - The Fridge (Band Version)
Crystal Stilts - Through the Floor
Patrick Kelleher and His Cold Dead Hands - Gouge
Metronomy - The Bay
Dark Captain - Submarines
Crystal Fighters - Plage
Comet Gain - Working Circle Explosive!
Comet Gain - Herbert Huncke Pt2
Bjork - Crystalline (Omar Souleyman Remix)
Bjork - Tesla (Omar Souleyman Remix)
Patrick Cleandenim - In My Baby's Eyes
Seeland - Local Park
Richmond Fontaine - The Chainsaw Sea
Darren Hayman - It's Easy to Hang With You
Sleeping States - Gardens of the South
Sleeping States - Showers in the Summer
Darren Hayman & the Secondary Modern - Nothing You Can Do About It
Mice Parade - Mary Anne (UK Surf Version)
Mice Parade - Mallo Cup
Kurt Wagner & Cortney Tidwell - Picking Wild Mountain Berries

eX-Girl - Flyers

2011-08-10T12:22:00.000+01:00

eX-Girl - Flyers

In July 2002 eX-Girl played Ireland for the first time and I was lucky enough to catch their gig at The Lobby Bar in Cork. Now a lot has been written about this infamous little venue, and sadly it shut its doors a number of years ago. I saw some amazing gigs there over the years: Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, The Handsome Family, John Cooper Clarke and Peter Bruntnell. I also saw Cat Power perform probably the worst gig I've ever witnessed. When I think about The Lobby Bar however the one gig which always comes straight to mind is eX-Girl's 2002 performance.

The band played a stormer of a gig that night. It was a balmy summer's evening and The Lobby was absolutley stuffed, the place only held about 110 punters comfortably, and the windows were opened to leave in some air. I can remember looking to my right out the window and spotting a load of people dancing on the traffic island in the middle of Anglesea St. in front of the City Hall looking up at the Lobby and watching eX-Girl on stage in through the open windows. A crazy night. It was also the first time at a gig that I saw a band sell a load of homemade merchandise, people went mad for the tote bags the band had brought from Japan. Below are some flyers from a couple of different eX-Girl shows.

Zoo Four - To The Shores Of Lake Placid

2011-08-09T12:06:00.003+01:00

Zoo Four - To The Shore Of Lake Placid

Following last week's post on Bill Drummond's The Man I've pulled out this wonderful compilation album from 1982. Bill Drummond was the bass player in Big In Japan and he formed Zoo Records with David Balfe (who played keyboards with The Teardrop Explodes) in 1978 to release Big In Japan's single From Y to Z and Never Again. Zoo Records would go on the release singles by The Teardrop Explodes, Echo & the Bunnymen and others.

The label released two albums. Fire Escape in the Sky: The Godlike Genius of Scott Walker (Zoo Two, 1981) was an album compiled by Julian Cope and this compilation, To the Shores of Lake Placid (Zoo Four, 1982), a label compilation. Zoo One and Three were never issued. I found my copy of To the Shores of Lake Placid at a record fair in Cork in the mid-90s and as a huge Cope and Bunnymen fan I was absolutely over the moon. This is a beautiful gatefold package with a four page stapled insert of band photographs. The compilation is a mixture of previously unavailable tracks, b-sides and session tracks. Favorites for me, apart from the Bunnymen and Teardrop tracks, are Those Naughty Lumps' Iggy Pop's Jacket and Big In Japan's Society For Cutting Up Men, videos for both tracks are below.

Big In Japan

The sleeve has the following inscription: The music on this record has been taken from the play 'To The Shores Of Lake Placid', which ran from August 24 1978 to February 21 1981. The play is the first in a trilogy, the second of which, as yet untitled, began on November 10 1981 at 'Club Zoo', 'The Pyramid', Liverpool, and will close at 'Erics', Liverpool on November 15 1983. All titles are performed by the original cast.

Echo & the Bunnymen

The Teardrop Explodes

The New Mersey Beat an episode of Rock Family Trees, Pete Frames's series for the BBC, focused on this period of music from Liverpool. The episode tells the interweaving stories of the Liverpool bands from the late 1970s, and the scene that centred around the local club Eric's where most of the bands played. All the main Zoo Records' players, apart from Julian Cope, are interviewed. It's a predictably hilarious episode of the programme: my own favourite bit is when Will Sergeant and Ian McCulloch discuss Ian's decision to quit the Bunnymen in 1988: Will is determined to continue telling Mac that loads of bands have continued with new lead singers. "Name one," says Mac and Will replys, "Mud." Legends.

Bill Drummond would go on to publish the brilliant 45, his memoir which covers some of this period. Julian Cope's Head-On memoir also recalls this period. David Balfe would launch Food Records, sign Blur, sell Food Records to EMI in 1994 and escape to "a very big house in the country." Mac obviously rejoined the Bunnymen and released the classic comeback album, Evergreen. They bring their "Ocean Rain - with Strings" tour to Dublin's Olympia in September. I'm excited!

Episode 360

2011-08-08T15:10:00.000+01:00

Songs To Learn And Sing - Episode 360

This episode featured a couple of tracks from Comet Gain's latest album, Howl of the Lonely Crowd (Fortuna Pop! Records). It's been six years since album number five, City Fallen Leaves but it's business as usual for David Feck and Co. Howl of the Lonely Crowd was produced by Edwyn Collins and Ryan Jarman of The Cribs and hasn't been out of my car stereo in two weeks.

Comet Gain - Working Circle Explosive

Episode 360 – 04/08/2011

Playlist

The Turtles - House On the Hill
The Left Pictures - Go Simon, Go!
Dark Captain - Submarines
Crystal Fighters - Plage
Comet Gain - Working Circle Explosive
Comet Gain - In A Lonely Place
Comet Gain - The Weekend Dreamers
Grimes - Heartbeats
Patrick Cleandenim - Radio Heartbreak
Bjork - Crystalline (Omar Souleyman Remix)
Eat Lights : Become Lights - Monorail
William D Drake - Me Fish Bring
The Ravonettes - Forget That You're Young
Air Castles - Gold
The Dead Trees - Arrows
The Czars - Get used To It
Darren Hayman - Cuckoo
North Sea Radio Orchestra - Berliner Luft
Cat's Eyes - Not A Friend Lifespan
Julia Kent - Overlook
Connan Mockasin - Faking Jazz Together
Herman Dune - The Rock
Patrick Kelleher & His Cold Dark Hands - Gouge
Crystal Stilts - Through the Floor
Richmond Fontaine - Lost In the Trees
Josh Ottum - Secret Age
Jóhann Jóhannsson - They Bring Death Yet Speaketh
This Is The Kit - Sometimes the Sea
Thisa Is The Kit - Earthquake
Catlin Rose - Shanghai Cigarettes

Bill Drummond - The Man

2011-08-01T17:13:00.001+01:00

Bill Drummond - The Man

I've been listening to The Man. After running Zoo Records and managing Echo & the Bunnymen and The Teardrop Explodes Bill Drummond was hired as an A&R man for WEA Records, a position he resigned when he was 33 and a 1/3 years old. His next move was to record The Man. The album, best described as a country/folk record, was released in 1986 on Creation Records in the UK and Bar None Records in the US (mine's a Bar None copy). The musicians on The Man were The Triffids (sans leadsinger, David McComb).

The Man features a brilliant version of Goffin and King's Going Back but is probably most notable for the track Julian Cope is Dead in which Drummond fantasises about shooting Cope to ensure that The Teardrop Explodes' frontman will gain mythical status and the band will end up selling platinum records instead of gold. The song is often described as a riposte to Cope's own Bill Drummond Said from 1984's Fried.

Now, Julian Cope is dead,
I shot him in the head,
He didn't understand,
The glory of the plan,
Now, Julian Cope is dead.

We'll have platinum records not gold,
To hang on our walls at home.
When the neighbours come round,
I'll always break down,
Repeating the stories of old.

The whole notion of rock stars gaining mythical status after death is a topic Drummond has often ruminated upon. When Domino Records reissued The Triffids back catalogue Drummond was asked to pen a few words, he explained: "the reason why I have been asked, is not because I have written glowingly about The Triffids in the past, but because I worked with them, using them as a backing band on an album that I made in 1986, called The Man. This record sold less than any record that the Triffids ever made, but when I then went on to sell a few million records around the globe, in another guise and musical universe, this seemed to give my opinions on things some sort of standing."

"Now, I was never a big fan of The Triffids, never had more than a couple of their records; only saw them play live the once and that was because I was doing a number with them. But, and this is a major BUT, in David McComb they had everything you could ever want from a dead rock star. And we need dead rock stars more than we need living ones. Some dead rock stars are crap at it, the bloke out of INXS and Freddie Mercury are shit at it, but David McComb is perfection... The reason why David McComb, is such a perfect dead rock star, is that he failed in his life time, but left a pristine body of work behind that was all about loss and longing, about failed relationships and love gone wrong."

The Man is a great record, a pure one off, afterwards Drummond would hook up with Jimmy Cauty and form the JAMMs and the KLF, the rest as they say is history.

Episode 359

2011-07-29T10:00:00.001+01:00

Songs To Learn And Sing - Episode 359

Ben Watt with Robert Wyatt - Summer Into Winter EP

(Cherry Red, 1982)

This episode featured the blissful Aquamarine by Ben Watt and Robert Wyatt from 1982's Summer Into Winter EP. Ben Watt would folow this EP up with his amazing solo record North Marine Drive in 1983 both records are now compiled onto one CD from Cherry Red. Massive success followed with Everything But the Girl.

Episode 359 – 28/07/2011

Playlist

Gruff Rhys - Take a Sentence
Crystal FIghters - Plage
North Sea Radio Orchestra - I a Moon
Patrick Kelleher and His Cold Dead hands - Too Many Harsh Words
Crystal Stilts - Shake the Shackles
Metronomy - Corinne
Thee More Shallows - Freshman Thesis
Bearsuit - When Will I Be Queen
Bjork & David Arnold - Play Dead
Cornershop - Double Decker Eyelashes
Dum Dum Girls - He gets Me High
Dum Dum Girls - Coming Down
Emmy the Great - Dinosaur Sex
Julianna Barwick - Keep Up the Good Work
Julianna Barwick - White Flag
Arbouretum - The Highwayman
Ben Watts and Robert Wyatt - Aquamarine
Motion Sickness of Time Travel - Late Day Sun Silhouettes
Luke Abbott - Trans Forest Alignment
Agnes Obel - Close Watch
James Blake - Order
Aidan Moffat/Bill Wells - The Copper Top
Esben and the Witch - Warpath
Catherine Wheel - Chrome
Herman Dune - Ah Hears Strange Moosic
Richmond Fontaine - Lost In the Trees
Boa Morte - Spade Song
Paul Burch & the WPA Ballclub - Carter Cain

Morrissey - Irish Ticket Stubs

2011-07-27T10:00:00.002+01:00

Morrissey - Irish Ticket Stubs from the 1990s

Morrissey's 2011 tour reaches Ireland today for a few dates in Cork and Dublin before moving on to the Isle of Man for a gig in Douglas next week. Tonight he plays the Savoy Theatre in my home town of Cork, a venue he last visited with The Smiths way back in November 1984 whilst promoting Hatful of Hollow. Regardless of what people think about his recent recorded output (personally I thought Years of Refusal was a strong album) the man can put on a great live show so in celebration of this week's gigs here's some old tricket stubs from previous Morrissey Irish shows in the 1990s. I know it's been written about so many times before but ticket stubs were so cool before the horrible ticketmaster generic stub came in.

The first gig of the Kill Uncle tour. This was Morrissey's second ever solo gig after the Wolverhampton Civic Hall gig of December 1988 and his first with new bandmates: Boz Boorer, Alain Whyte, Gary Day and Spencer Cobrin. The guys had all played with various rockabilly bands including, The Polecats (Boorer), The Sharks (Day), and The Gazmen (Whyte). The support band was the Stephen Street-produced and Peel favourites The Would Be's. Morrissey would return to the National Stadium on the Swords tour in November 2009.

This was the second leg of the Kill Uncle tour, in the bigger Point Depot. Support was from Phranc, the American singer-songwriter and the backdrop was the famous Cecil Beaton photograph of Edith Sitwell.

It was just over four years before Morrissey returned to play in Ireland this time supporting David Bowie on his Outside tour in the Point. Morrissey was promoting Southpaw Grammar and the songs from that album sounded really amazing live. This was a strange gig with the audience very much split in two. The Bowie fans stayed in the bars for Moz's set and likewise an awful lot of Moz's crowd left once Bowie hit the stage.

It was another four years before Moz came back to Ireland. This time he toured around the country, something he hadn't done since the November 1984 tour with The Smiths. The Dublin gig was moved to The Olympia Theatre from the National Concert Hall and the support band for this tour was Sack. The front of the tour flyer (above) used the full photograph of boxer Kenny Lane that was earlier cropped for the cover of Southpaw Grammar.

Richmond Fontaine - The High Country

2011-07-25T10:00:00.001+01:00

Richmond Fontaine - The High Country

Richmond Fontaine - The High Country (Decor/El Cortez, 2011)

Last week Willy Vlautin was in Dublin on his way to the Galway Arts Festival to do a reading with Roddy Doyle and play a gig. We had a quick chat about The High Country, the forthcoming Richmond Fontaine album. The High Country is described as "a song-novel, in which a gripping tale is spun with fully fleshed-out characters, changing scenes, snippets of radio and spoken word passages." The album is a gothic love story, "between a mechanic and an auto parts store counter girl, whose secret love inspires an effort to escape the darkness of the world that surrounds them - drugs, violence, madness, loneliness, and desperation set against a backdrop of endless logging roads and the remains of a forest brutalised by logging."

Willy explained the concept of the record for me: "It's a linear story about a woman who lives in a small town, is married to a really rough guy and falls in love with another guy. It's very gothic, there's light versus dark, the romantic songs I think are really over-the-top romantic, and then there's a really twisted dark side to the record. So those live next to each other and it gets to the point where one song will be kinda romantic and then the next song is really dark, but I think it makes sense. It's probably our most ambitous record, I guess, our wildest record and probably the most fun to make... The woman lives in a gully of this logging town under these huge trees. I live next to a bunch of logging areas and you just get lost under the trees. Her dream is to just get out of there, everynight when she goes to bed she dreams of "the High Country," dreams that she's not stuck in the gully of some small dying town."

The High Country is released in September and Richmond Fontaine will return to Ireland in November for a full tour. In other related news Willy's first novel The Motel Life has been filmed by the Polsky Brothers, starring Dakota Fanning, Stephen Dorff, Emile Hirschand and Kris Kristofferson and will be released next year.The interview with Willy can be heard below.

DECOR025 Richmond Fontaine - The Mechanic's Life by Trash Aesthetics

TA708 Richmond Fontaine - Lost in the Trees by Trash Aesthetics

Episode 358

2011-07-22T10:00:00.001+01:00

Songs To Learn And Sing - Episode 358

E.M.A.K. 1 (Originalton West, 1982)

E.M.A.K. 2 (Originalton West, 1983) E.M.A.K. 3 (Originalton West, 1985)

This episode featured three tracks from E.M.A.K. (Elektronische Musik Aus Köln), Cologne’s "synth-core/minimal-wave/deutsche electronische group." E.M.A.K. released three ground-breaking albums between 1982 and 1985 on their own Originalton West label. The three albums came housed in identical sleeves distinguishable only by the colour. Three essential records if you can find them. If not, check out this brilliant compilation from Soul Jazz Records. As they proved with the Deutsche Elektronische Musik: Experimental German Rock and Electronic Music 1972-83 compilation Soul Jazz know their stuff.

E.M.A.K. - A Synthetic History of E.M.A.K. 1982-88

(Soul Jazz, 2011)

From the Soul Jazz sleevenotes: "E.M.A.K. (Electronische Musik aus Köln) was founded in Cologne in autumn 1981. Situated in the basement of a music store called ‘Hört-Hört’ (‘Listen-Listen’) was a small 8-track studio run by Matthias Becker. It was here at the ‘Originalton West’ studio that Becker and Kurt Mill, along with Michael Filz and Klaus Stühlen, formed E.M.A.K. and here also where Becker launched the Originalton West label with the release of ‘E.M.A.K.1’ in January 1982.

E.M.A.K. originally functioned more as a collective of individuals than a traditional group. Filz and Stühlen worked on tracks individually and Mill and Becker worked on material at the studio. Kurt Mill and Mathias Becker were the producers and chose all the tracks and final mixes.

Matthias Becker: 'I grew up to the music of Kraftwerk and Amon Düül. I remember that in 1970, when I was 15, there was a ‘Kommune’ living in the house next door and shortly after the release of ‘Kraftwerk’ for more than a week or two each day the sounds of ‘Ruckzuck’ and ‘Stratovarious’ vibrated through the walls of our living room, (very much to the irritation of my parents).'

Although E.M.A.K. were not part of any larger electronic scene in their local city, Cologne was nevertheless still the base of Can, and Holger Czukay’s own studio was barely 200 metres from Originalton West. There was also nearby Johannes Fritsch’s ‘Feedback’ Studio. Fritsch was a serious composer of ‘Neue Musik’ who had collaborated with Stockhausen, who - incidentally - lived and worked in Kürten, a small village about 35 kms from Cologne."

Episode 358 – 21/07/2011

Playlist

John Stammers - Your Good is as Guess as Mine (The Kramford Look Remix)
Elephant - Allured
Elephant - Actors
Crystal Fighters - Plage
Thomas Truax - A Gold Star For Miss July
North Sea Radio Orchestra - Beliner Luft
Patrick Kelleher and His Cold Dead Hands - Miracle Candle
Patrick Kelleher and His Cold Dead Hands - Contact Sports
Patrick Kelleher and His Cold Dead Hands - Broken Up Now
Discodine feat. Jarvis Cocker - Synchinize (extended version)
E.M.A.K. - Auf Immer
E.M.A.K. - Slow Motion
E.M.A.K. - Tanz In Dem Himmel
Alvarius B. - Well Known Stranger
Cut Copy - This Is All We've Got
Cut Copy - Pharaohs & Pyramids
Andrew Pekler - First
ARP - Pastoral Symphony 1. Domineos 2. Infinity Room
Damon & Naomi - Ophelia
Willy Vlautin interview pt 1
Richmond Fontaine feat Deborah Kelly - Let Me Dream of the High Country
Willy Vlautin interview pt 2
Richmond Fontaine - Lost In the Trees
Willy Vlautin interview pt 3
Richmond feat. Deborah Kelly - The Eagle's Lodge
Willy Vlautin interview pt 4
Jóhann Jóhannsson - Freedom From Want and Fear

Patrick Kelleher and His Cold Dead Hands

2011-07-20T16:32:00.000+01:00

Patrick Kelleher and His Cold Dead Hands - Golden Syrup

(Osaka Records, 2011)

Tomorrow night's show will feature a couple of tracks from Patrick Kelleher's new album Golden Syrup. The album's just out on Osaka Records and follows last year's You Look Colder remix album, that was in turn a reworking of Kelleher's 2009 debut album, You Look Cold. As much as I enjoy his debut and indeed the remix record, Golden Syrup is the first recording to truly capture the sound that Patrick and His Cold Dark Hands create on stage - that sound is dark, moody, gothic synth-driven tunes, effects-laden vocals, driving bass, and some brilliant wigged-out guitar playing all crashing together to create 10 blissful pop songs.

Osaka describe the record as, "moving on from the previous more DIY/lo-fi sound we now find them embracing a more gothic, minimal synth sound. Reminiscent of lesser known early 80s electronics pioneers such as Robert Rental and John Foxx." Golden Syrup is definately a huge step up from You Look Cold. The last time I saw the band play was supporting Future Islands and it was obvious from the tunes played that night that the next record was going to be one dark beast and indeed last year's Skinny Wolves, Contact Sports 7'' also hinted at where the band were taking their sound. When Patrick came up to the radio station to chat about the remix album he played records by Holgar Czukay, Ariel Pink, Harmonia and Echo & the Bunnymen on the show and Golden Syrup is akin to throwing all of those different sounding artists into a blender and liquidising. It's a collection of really strong songs that have been brilliantly recorded. Broken Up Now and Seen Me Blue, two of the slower tracks on the record, are two of the best songs I've heard all year.

Photo by Ivan Rynn

Patrick Kelleher & His Cold Dead Hands-Too Many Harsh Words by osakaRecords

Patrick Kelleher & His Cold Dead Hands-Miracle Candle by osakaRecords

Pop (Do We Not Like That?) - Various Artists

2011-07-19T08:26:00.001+01:00

Pop (Do We Not Like That?) - Various Artists

Various Artists - Pop (Do We Not Like That?) (Too Pure, 1994)

I played Laika's 44 Robbers on last week's show and hearing it again made me go and fish out this absolute gem. Pop (Do We Not Like That?) is a 1994 compilation from Too Pure records. I hadn't listened to this is years and was really pleasently surprised at how well most of these tracks still stand up. The album was the label's 34th release, it carried the catelogue number Pure 34 and featured one track each from: Stereolab, PJ Harvey, Th' Faith Healers, Laika, Minxus, Moonshake, Pram, Seefeel, Voodoo Queens and Düsseldorf's Mouse On Mars (the label's first international signing). It's a great snapshot of mid-90s UK indie and electronic music prior to the advent of all that Britpop nonsense.

It's an incredible compilation considering some of the landmark records these bands would go on to produce. PJ Harvey obviously moved on to Island records and her discography speaks for itself, indeed this year's Let England Shake has garnered some of the strongest reviews of her career. Stereolab, Mouse On Mars, Laika, and Seefeel would produce four of the strongest albums of the 90s in, respectively: Emperor Tomato Ketchup (1996), Silver Apples of the Moon (1994), Autoditacker (1997) and Succour (1995).

Too Pure would go on to release brilliant records by Jack, Long Fin Killie, Hefner, Billy Mahonie, Mclusky and Scout Niblett. The label was always affiliated with 4AD records, indeed 4AD's Ivo Watts-Russell is said to have contributed a cash infusion by purchasing a third of the imprint prior to the release of PJ Harvey's debut album Dry. In 2008 the Beggars Group wound down both Too Pure and Beggars Banquet and transfered their artists to 4AD records. Too Pure is still an imprint of the Beggars Group and continues its monthly 7'' Singles Club. The charactertures below are taken from the album's insert.

Son Lux - We Are Rising

2011-07-17T13:03:00.001+01:00

Son Lux - We Are Rising

Son Lux - We Are Rising (Anticon, 2011)

My Son Lux coloured vinyl arrived and its beautiful! Son Lux (aka Ryan Lott) rose to NPR's All Songs Considered's challenge to write and record an entire album, from start to finish, in the month of February. Ryan explained how the challenge came about in an article for In Digest.

"In 2006, a small New Hampshire-based publication called The Wire inaugurated the "RPM Challenge," an open charge to songwriters to make an album in the month of February... Toward the end of January this year, I got an email from Robin Hilton, producer of NPR’s All Songs Considered... The subject line read, “You busy?” The gist of his email was this: NPR wanted to cover the growing RPM Challenge phenomenon, but rather than just write about it, they thought it would be cool to follow along with an artist actually participating. So they hit me up to see if I would join in the fun. If so, they would follow along via the All Songs Considered blog and make a big fuss about it."

It's a great article in which Ryan muses upon the writing and recording process, self-imposed time-limitiations, improvisation and experimentation. After completing the album he asked The Made Shop design team to make the album's artwork. The guys from The Made Shop decided, in the spirit of the album's 28 day turnaround, to design the album, "from build-out to photoshoot to final design and layout - in only 28 hours." The video below documents the process.

As I mentioned last month We Are Rising is the follow up to the great At War With Walls and Mazes from 2008. I picked up that album after Son Lux's show supporting Why? in Andrews Lane Theatre in Dublin in November of that year at a Foggy Notions promoted gig. At War With Walls and Mazes is one of my favourite records over the last few years and after a few listens to We Are Rising I think I can confidently predict that it's going to be on my albums of 2011 list.

Rising by Son Lux

The Turtles - Present the Battle of the Bands

2011-07-16T08:48:00.000+01:00

The Turtles - Present the Battle of the Bands

The Turtles Present the Battle of the Bands is the band's fourth album and was released in 1968 on White Whale Records and the follow up to the Happy Together album. Battle of the Bands is a concept record with the Turtles pretending to be 11 different bands, playing different styles in a "Battle of the Bands" competition. We get some surf music, bluegrass, country, hard rock and some psychedelic pop all performed by different "bands". The Turtles dressed in evening dress on the album's cover act as hosts of the "Battle of the Bands". The inside gatefold showed the Turtles dressed up as the 11 different bands.

The album was produced by Chip Douglas, who had played bass with The Trutles in 1966 and also masterminded some of The Monkees biggest hits. While the album bombed at No. 128 in the US Billboard Chart compared to its predecessor's top 30 placing it did produce top big hit singles in Elenore and You Showed Me. Both singles charted at No. 6.

The album was poorly received upon its original release, something which frustrated co-frontman Howard Kaylan. "Battle of the Bands was our Sergeant Pepper. It was actually a wonderful idea," Kaylan told Altsounds, "it still bugs me, all these years later, that it was under-appreciated by the music critics upon its release, despite yielding two top ten records. We performed in the styles of all these different bands and took costumed photographs of each group - quite the concept, but some people, like Rolling Stone at the time, thought that we were trying to rip off the Mothers of Invention for some reason. Baffling. I was happy with it then, and I still think it's the strongest stand-alone album that the band ever recorded."

The 11 bands featured on The Battle of the Bands were:

1. The U.S. Teens featuring Raoul,

2. The Atomic Enchilada (a trippy 60s psychedelic sound),

3. Howie, Mark, Johny, Jim & Al (this band's cointribution to the "Battle" was Elenore),

4. The Quad City Ramblers (an old-fashioned country band),

5. The L.A. Bust '66 (progressive, White boy blues),

6. The Fabulous Dawgs' (heavy guitar fuzz and a Hammond organ on this instrumental),

7. The Cross Fires (a tribute to surf-rock and The Beach Boys),

8. Chief Kamanawanalea and his Royal Macadamia Nuts (a jam song),

9. Nature's Children (singing the Byrds' Preflyte-era You Showed Me, a huge hit for The Turtles),

10. The Bigg Brothers,

11. Fats Mallard and the Bluegrass Fireball (bluegrass country music).

12. The final song on the record is credited to "All" (hippie ecology, folk-pop anthem).

The U.S. Teens featuring Rauol - The Battle of the Bands

(Opens the album, kinda like the opening of Sgt. Pepper's.)

The Atomic Enchilada - The Last Thing I Remember, the First Thing I Knew

(Psychedelic)

Howie, Mark, Jonny, Jim and Al - Elenore

(The big hit off the album and followed Happy Together into the Top 10)

Quad City Ramblers - Too Much Heartsick Feeling

(Country Music)

Surfer Dan - The Cross Fires

(Surf Music)

Nature's Children - You Showed Me

(Written by Roger McGuinn and Gene Clark of The Byrds,
this was the last major Turtles hit)

The band would return in 1969 with their last album, the brilliant Ray Davies produced Turtle Soup. The Turtles wound down their career in 1970 and Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan joined The Mothers of Invention as Flo & Eddie (White Whale Records had copyright over The Turtles name and the names Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan in a musical context).

Episide 357

2011-07-15T08:35:00.001+01:00

Songs To Learn And Sing - Episode 357

This week's show featured a couple of new tunes from John Stammers, Motion Sickness of Time Travel, The Advisory Circle, The Horrors, Washed Out and Umpire. We also played three tracks from Battle of the Band's the 1968 concept album from The Turtles. X Marks the Spot by Michael Head and the Strands from one of my all time favourite albums, The Magical World of the Strands also featured.

We finished this episode with the brilliant Pour by Astrid Williamson from her forthcoming album Pulse.

Astrid Williamson - Pour (One Little Indian, 2011)

Astrid, the Shetland born, former singer with Goya Dress, collaborates with guitarist/ambient man Leo Abrahams on Pulse. The press blurb explains: "Astrid witnessed Abrahams perform as part of Brian Eno's Pure Scenius project at 2010 Brighton Festival. Inspired, Williamson sent him a dozen demos she had been working on. Lyrically Pour deals with affairs of the heart; musically a watery, spine-tingling piano motif weaves elegantly amongst techno beats and electronica."

Astrid Williamson - 'Pour' (Original Version) by One Little Indian Records

Episode 357 – 14/07/2011

Playlist

Eat Light : Become Lights - They Transmit
North Sea Radio Orchestra - The Earth Beneath Our Feet
Harmonia and Eno - Luneburg Heath (The Field Remix)
John Stammers - The Fridge (Band Version)
The House of Love - The Girl With the Loneliest Eyes
Michael Head and the Strands - X Hits the Spot
Gillian Welch - Six White Horses
Comet Gain - Working Circle Explosive!
Crystal Stilts - Shake the Shackles
Crystal Stilts - Through the Floor
Bjork - Crystalline
Motion Sickness of Time Travel - Luminaries
The Advisory Circle - Learning Owl Reappears
The Horrors - I Can See through You
The KVB - Hide and Wait
The Turtles - Elenore
The Turtles - Battle of the Bands
The Turtles - Surfer Dan
The Primitives- Rattle the Cage
The Go! Team - Ready to Go Steady
Laika - 44 Robbers
Aidan Moffat/Bill Wells - Glasgow Jubilee
William Elliot Whitmore - Bury Your Burdens in the Ground
Bon Ivor - Perth
Umpire - Streamers
Washed Out - Eyes Be Closed (Star Singer Remix)
Metronomy - The Bay
Elephant - Allured
Astrid Williamson - Pour

North Sea Radio Orchestra - I a Moon

2011-07-13T13:20:00.000+01:00

North Sea Radio Orchestra - I a Moon

North Sea Radio Orchestra - I a Moon (The Household Mark, 2011)

Following last year's wonderful Arch Garrison album Craig Fortnam returned to concentrate on recording NSRO's third album. I've played a few tracks from I a Moon over the last few weeks on the radio show and to put it simply - I'm hooked. It's a great record and more-or-less follows the template laid down on the band's previous two releases (orchestral chamber pop), but this time there's also a Krautrock influence.

The band have explained a number of changes in their approach for this release, "firstly, that the album would have a darker, less pastoral sound with new influences including Krautrock and Deerhoof (and with more emphasis on synthesizer and percussion than previously). Secondly, that there would be a move away from setting poetry in favour of setting self-written lyrics." The results are fantastic.

Garry Mulholland sums the record up brilliantly: "the overall effect makes I a Moon feel like the world’s first baroque-Krautrock-folk-rock-Michael Nyman-madrigal-Kate Bush-electro-pop album. But more than all that, it is genuinely very beautiful.

New Order - Clash Magazine

2011-07-12T15:13:00.001+01:00

New Order - Clash Magazine

In the latest edition of Clash magazine Paul Morley interviews the four members of New Order about their latest release, the Joy Division/New order compilation Total. He chats to them about their current activities but the piece is really an opportunity for Bernard, Stephen and Gillian to have a go at Hooky for his recent Unknown Pleasures and Closer tours with The Light.

New Order art director Howard Wakefield was commissioned by Clash to create a cover that celebrated 30 years of New Order. The above graphic is his response. The good people at Creative Review have produced the images below which give us the original 12'' sleeves alongside Wakefield's cover.

Wakefield explains his creative process: “For this month's cover, I was asked to celebrate thirty years of New Order. I have been fortunate enough to design (with Peter Saville) New Order sleeves for twenty of those years and this was a real honour. But one image to illustrate thirty years? When I think about imagery and New Order, I instantly think of all the sleeves; Joy Division and New Order sleeves are often referred to as being iconic designs, but rather than showing a montage of them, which have been much seen, admired and recognised, I wondered how recognisable are they? I was curious to find out, if I reduced them in some way, could the still be recognisable?

I tried blurring and distorting them, but they rapidly became something else. However, by simplifying them to their basic colour elements, they appeared to remain true to their iconic designs. I found I could reduce them a great deal - so far in fact to just nine simple squares."

The New Order edition of Clash Magazine is on sale now.

Oasis - Knebworth Setlist

2011-07-10T19:37:00.000+01:00

Oasis - Knebworth Setlist

I worked at Páirc Uí Chaoimh in Cork for the two Oasis concerts on 14 and 15 August 1996. I was one of the local crew hired to help the Oasis road crew setting up the band's backline. The band had arrived in Cork following two concerts on 10 and 11 August at Knebworth where they had played to an estimated audience of 250,000. Three million people had applied for tickets for the Knebworth gigs. Lo and behold, what did I find gaffa-taped to one of the amps...

Episode 356

2011-07-08T10:33:00.001+01:00

Songs To Learn And Sing - Episode 356

Elephant - Allured/Actors (Memphis Industries, 2011)

This episode featured Allured by Elephant. It's the second single form the Anglo/French duo of Amelia Rivas and Christian Pinchbeck the follow up to Ants which was released back in January. They're been making music since meeting back in May 2010 and Allured is a fantastic track.

This episode also featured A Woman, A Woman, A Century of Sleep, one of the stand-out tracks from Emmy the Great's latest album Virtue

And finally a classic from Jessica Griffin's Wood-Be-Goods. The Camera Loves Me is the title track from the band's debut album released by él Records in 1988. The Wood-Be-Goods in 1988 was Jessica backed by The Monochrome Set. Very much of its time but still sounding absolutlely brilliant to me.

"Another gin and tonic and I'm yours for sure
They never took my phototgraph like this before!
My single lens reflex is a little bit slow
I'll put another film in and we'll give it a go"

Episode 356 – 07/07/2011

Playlist

Aidan Moffat/Bill Wells - Let's Stop here
Bon Ivor - Calgary
Björk - Crystalline
Mark Hollis - Watershed
Gillian Welch - The Way It Will Be
Gillian Welch - Down Along the Dixie Line
Gillian Welch - Six White Horses
Dakota Suite - Signal Hill
Dakota Suite - The Ladder
Fleet Foxes - Battery Kinzie
David Ackles - Another Friday Night
Jóhann Jóhannsson - They Being Dead Yet Speaketh
Jürgen Müller - Das Unfassbare Seepferdchen
Jürgen Müller - Jenseits Des Stromes
Charanjit Singh - Rage Lalit
Charanjit Singh - Raga Megh Malhar
White Ghost - Holy Ghost
Umpire - The Canyon
Elephant - Allured
Astrid Williamson - Pour
North Sea Radio Orchestra - Berliner Luft
Oluf Arnalds - Jonathan
Wood-Be-Goods - The Camera Loves Me
Emmy the Great - A Woman, A Woman, A Century of Sleep
The Vaselines - Sex With An X (playing Whelan's Jul 12)
Damon and Naomi - Embers

Jóhann Jóhannsson - The Miners' Hymns

2011-07-07T09:19:00.000+01:00

Jóhann Jóhannsson - The Miners' Hymns

Jóhann Jóhannsson - The Miners' Hymns (FatCat Records, 2011)

Tonight's show features Jóhann Jóhannsson's They Being Dead Yet Speaketh taken from his latest FatCat release The Miners' Hymns. The album is the soundtrack to Bill Morrison's film of the same name.

The Miners' Hymns is an elegy, in film and music, to the coal mining history of north east England, Morrison has collaged archive film footage to celebrate the labour, endurance, vibrant community and rich culture that characterised the lives of those who worked underground. The music of The Miners’ Hymns is predominantly brass-based material evoking traditional colliery brass bands. The soundtack was performed live last year at a screening of the film in Durham Cathedral during the city's International Festival.

The Miners' Hymnes directed by Bill Morrison (BFI, 2011)

According to FatCat Records: "The Miners’ Hymns’ project was initially commissioned for Durham County Council’s 'Brass: Durham International Festival', which incorporated the Durham Miners' Gala into a programme celebrating the culture of mining and the strong regional tradition of brass bands. Once the biggest trade union festival in Europe, attracting up to a quarter of a million people, the annual Gala continues despite the fact that coal is no longer mined in a county that was built on it."

"Created from BFI, BBC and other archive footage and produced by the British arts organisation, Forma, Morrison’s ‘The Miners Hymns’ film celebrates social, cultural, and political aspects of the extinct industry, and the strong regional tradition of colliery brass bands. Focusing on the Durham coalfield in the North East of the UK, the film is structured around a series of activities including touching on the terrible hardship of pit work, the role of Trade Unions in organising and fighting for workers' rights, and the pitched battles with police during the 1984 strike as Thatcher's government sounded the death knell for the industry. Whilst almost entirely composed of black and white archive footage, the film also includes two contemporary sequences shot in colour from a helicopter hovering over the sites of former collieries."

Laura Cantrell Flyers

2011-07-06T10:35:00.000+01:00

Laura Cantrell - Flyers

Laura Cantrell - Kitty Wells Dresses (Spit & Polish, 2011)

Laura Cantrell's back with a new album. It features nine Kitty Wells covers and an original, Kitty Wells Dresses - the title track written by Cantrell and Amy Allison. According to Laura, "I've been a Kitty Wells fan since childhood…I always responded to the fundamental feeling in Wells’ singing, her way of sounding both emotional and restrained at once, as if she were hanging on despite life’s many hardships."

These flyers come from various stages in Laura's career. I particularly love the redrawn New York subway map with female artists that Laura admires. The title track of the new album, Kitty Wells Dresses can be downloaded below the flyers by signing up to Laura's mailing list.

From the Archives - The Belles Interview

2011-07-04T12:08:00.001+01:00

Songs To Learn And Sing - The Belles Interview

The Belles - Omertá (2004, Eat Sleep Records)

Omertá the debut album by The Belles was released in March 2004 and I interviewed Chris Tolle, the band’s singer and guitarist, for Songs To Learn And Sing when they were gigging in Ireland that year. Chris chatted about growing up in a small University town in the U.S. Midwest, American novelist Wally Lamb's influence on the album's name, The Pernice Brothers and songwriting.

Chris also enthused about his love of The Replacements. “I probably got Let it Be when I was maybe 13 or 14 years old,” he said. “It was definitely a huge, huge influence seeing bands like the Replacements. It made me realise that to be in a rock band and write songs you didn’t have to be KISS or have a big gimmick, just be regular people making music and it really kind of helped to shape that idea in my head. Minneapolis was six hours drive away from where we were from (Lawrence, Kansas) so there were a lot of things that they were singing about which connected with us.” Omertá is a lovely Americana record: laidback acoustic arrangements, no-frills, great harmonies, sweet melodies and still sounds totally brilliant. The interview is below.

The Belles - Never Say Anything (2004, Eat Sleep Records)

Atomic Cafe - Original Soundtrack

2011-07-02T08:01:00.000+01:00

Atomic Cafe - Original Soundtrack

Atomic Cafe, Radioactive Rock 'N Roll, Blues, Country and Gospel is the soundtrack to 1982's Atomic Cafe a documentary directed by Jayne Loader and brothers Kevin and Pierce Rafferty. The film edits together loads of old public information films about nuclear warfare and fallout, army training films, news clips, adverts, radio programmes and other footage to present a history of the atomic age and to create a lasting record of how the "Bomb" entered American folklore. The film also ilustrates the often bizarre ways that the media sold the atomic arms race to the American public in the 1940s and 1950s.

I was lucky enough to pick up a great secondhand copy of this record a few years ago and have often played a few tracks on the radioshow. The soundtrack compiles a collection of early rock 'n roll, blues, country and gospel songs about the Bomb. The origins of this musical sub-genre are explained by legendary country music historian Charles Wolfe on the back of the album: "On August 6, 1945 President Harry S. Truman ushered in the atomic age by announcing to the world that the United States had dropped an atomic bomb on Japan. At once Americans were faced with an awesome new power in their lives, and with the need to somehow grasp its meaning, to relate it to their everyday lives. One way was through music. Within months the first country and gospel songs about the Bomb were recorded, and in the next fifteen years, through the fifties, Bomb songs emerged as a lively sub-genre of pop music."

The LP comes with a four page insert with detailed notes also written by Charles Wolfe. His scholarly aproach to the historical context of the songs and artists is fascinating and he expertly charts the development of the sub-genre. In relation to one of my favourite tracks from the record, The Five Stars 1957 hit he says, "With songs like Atom Bomb Baby the integration of the atomic image into American consciousness was, in a sense, complete. Where songs of 1946 had seen the bomb as a strange awesome force to be feared, songs like these used the bomb to describe the most intimate sexuality."

The film can be watched below and check out three of the cuts from the record.

Atom Bomb Baby - The Five Stars (1957)

"Atom bomb baby, little atom bomb
I want her in my wigwam
She's just the way I want her to be
A million times hotter than TNT"

Atomic Cocktail - Slim Gaillard Quartette (1946)

"It's the drink that you don't pour
Now when you take one sip you won't need anymore
You're small as a beetle or big as a whale-BOOM-Atomic Cocktail"

Atom And Evil: The Golden Gate Quartet (1947)

"I’m talkin’ ‘bout Atom, and Evil
Atom and Evil
If you don’t break up that romance soon
We’ll all fall down and go boom, boom, boom!"

Episode 355

2011-07-01T08:12:00.000+01:00

Songs To Learn And Sing - Episode 355

Skalpel (2004, Ninja Tune)

This episode featured Break In by Skalpel from their self-titled 2004 Ninja Tune album. Skalpel is Marcin Cichy and Igor Pudło, two DJs from Wrocław in Poland and their music is a fasinating blend of hip hop beats, laced with samples from Polish jazz records of the 1960s and 1970s. This is essential stuff as is their second album from 2005, Konfusion.

This week's episode also featured Amsterdam Remnants 1 from Deepchord's latest release: Hash-Bar Remnants Pt 1. The 12'' features two tracks omitted from the soon to be released album Hash-Bar Loops.

Also featured this week are a couple of Steve Moore related tracks. Moore is one half of Pittsburgh space-rockers Zombi and Cosmic Powers is from Spirit Animal, their 2009 Relapse release. Orogenous Zones is from Moore's latest solo record Primitive Neural Pathways. Also check out Moore's amazing remix of Washed Out's Eyes Be Closed, the original of which can be found on the album Within and Without.

Orogenous Zones by steve moore

Washed Out - Eyes Be Closed (Steve Moore Galaxy-Class Remix) by steve moore

Episode 355 – 30/06/2011

Playlist

Demdike Stare – Repository of Light

Fout Tet – My Angel Rocks Back and Forth

Them – Gloria

New York Dolls – Jet Boy

Steve Moore – Orogenous Zones/Feel the Difference

Zombi – Cosmic Powers
Washed Out - Eyes Be Closed (Steve Moore Remix)

Metronomy – The Bay

Deep Chord – Amsterdam Remnant 1

Burial – Street Halo

Jane Weaver/Demdike Stare/ The Focus Group – Europium Alluminate

The Cosmic Jokers – Interplay of Forces

Skalpel – Break In

Son Lux – Weapons

Son Lux – Rising

Johan Agebjorn with Sally Shapiro – Outer Space Woman

Appaloosa – Another Lonely Night

Aidan Moffat/Bill Wells – Ballad of the Bastard

Emmy the Great – Trellick Tower

Wye Oak – Two Small Deaths

Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy – There Is No God

Privilege - Original Soundtrack

2011-06-29T16:42:00.001+01:00

Privilege - Original Soundtrack

"A film so bizarre, so controversial it shall crucify your mind to the sea of conscience"

They don't write straplines like that anymore. Privilege was directed by Peter Watkins and released in 1967. The film is set in the near future where entertainment is controlled by a totalitarian government, and tells the story of a disillusioned pop star Steven Shorter (played by Manfred Mann's Paul Jones) who is manipulated by the church and state, who seek to turn him into a symbol of national unity. Shorter's music and image are then used to channel the impulses of rebellious youth.

The previous year Watkins had won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for The War Game, his powerful drama depicting the effects of nuclear war on Britain which was banned by the BBC. Watkins quit the company in protest and was looking for another project. A proposed film with Albert Finney about the 1916 Rising collapsed at an early stage and then Watkins was asked to film a screenplay by Johnny Speight. Watkins rewrote Speight's screenplay with the American novelist Norman Bogner and they retitled it Privilege.

A number of musicians including Marc Bolan and Eric Burdon did screen tests for the role of Shorter with the part ultimately going to Paul Jones who had recently left Manfred Mann. The part of Vanessa Ritchie, as an artist commissioned to paint a portrait of Shorter, went to "supermodel" Jean Shrimpton. Both Jones and Shrimpton's acting was heavily criticised upon the film's release.

Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will proved inspirational to Watkins, the ticker tape scene when Shorter arrives in Birmingham for a concert and the evangelical concert in the football stadium (second clip below) are directly inspired by Riefenstahl's film. The film is extremely powerful, and I'd argue that its ultimate message, the power of the mass media to manipulate an audience, is as timely today as it was in 1967. The last clip below sums up the whole idea of the movie brilliantly: Shorter tries to stop the government control of his career but Andrew Butler, charirman of Steven Shorter Enterprises, takes him onto his balcony looking over a highrise urban landscape and explains that the millions of people below need to be harnessed and guided:

"You! You are our chance, Steven. They Identify with you - they love you! Steven, you can lead them into a better way of life - a fruitful conformity."

The first version of Free Me early in the film, performed by "Steven Shorter"

The second version of Free Me from the film. This time, official government approved pop star "Steven Shorter" performs a new Christian version of the song.

The soundtrack is great, some really over the top and bombastic tracks - that's the point. Free Me performed by Paul Jones is fantastic and a cover of the track was recorded by Patti Smith in 1978, retitled Privilege (Set Me Free) and made No. 13 in the Irish charts. Peter Watkins would go on to direct the brilliant Punishment Park in 1971, anyone interested in his work or his views on the Mass Audio Visual Media (MAVM) should read his statement Media Crisis.

Extraction! Comix Reportage

2011-06-27T10:38:00.002+01:00

Extraction! Comix Reportage

Extraction! Comix Reportage was published by Cumulus Press back in 2007 in a short print run of only 500 copies. The book features four stories about four different mines, which extract four different minerals, written by a number of journalists collaborating with artists to tell these remarkable stories. The journalists were sent on assignment to investigate four mines owned by a Canadian company. Their reports were then translated into script form and illustrated by four award-winning comics artists.

The four reports cover the oil sands of Alberta in Canada, a gold mine in Guatemala, bauxite mining in India and uranium exploration in Quebec. Frédéric Dubois explains the goal of these reports in the book's introduction: "Extraction! delves into the implications of Canadian mining practices. It considers the communities affected by them. It is certainly not anti-development, but it adopts a critical and journalistic view of all actors involved in some significant tragedies of our time."

extract from Oil: From the Botton of the Pit

(Reportage by Petr Cizek, Comix by Phil Angers)

Extraction is an extremely powerful piece of comics journalism, and follows a long line of reportage on mining produced in different media, from Orwell's 1937 Road to Wigan Pier to Barbara Kopple's 1976 Academy Award winning documentary Harlan County, USA. Extraction! Comix Reportage can be read below or downloaded from here.

Harlan County, USA (1976, Barbara Kopple)

Episode 354

2011-06-25T14:41:00.001+01:00

Songs To Learn And Sing - Episode 354

This episode featured The Boy With the Perpetual Nervousness by The Feelies, the first track from the band's debut 1980 album, Crazy Rhythms. I hadn't heard this album in about 15 years but recently picked up the Domino Records vinyl reissue. The track still sounds fantastic and the album was definately years ahead of its time. The band reformed a few years ago and released a new album, Here Before on Bar None Records back in April to great reviews.

Let Go by Son Lux is taken from We Are Rising on Anticon Records. Son Lux is Ryan Lott and he creates a beautiful blend of chamberpop and electronic music. We Are Rising is the follow up the the great At War With Walls and Mazes from 2008, around that time Son Lux played a really good gig in Dublin supporting Why? Ryan wrote a really interesting article for In Digest recently about the making of We Are Rising. Hear the album below.

Episode 354 – 23/06/2011

Playlist

North Sea Radio Orchestra – Berliner Luft

The Fall – Touch Sensitive

The Fall – Inevitable

Lawrence Arabia – The Crew of the Commodore

Wildbirds & Peacedrums – The Lake

Damon & Naomi – Shadow Boxing

Cats Eyes – The Best Person I Know

Devon Sproule – The Weeping Willow

Charles Douglas – Summertime

Easterhouse – Whistling in the Dark

The Feelies – The Boy With the Perpetual Nervousness

Life Without Buildings – Is Is and the IRS

Explosions in the Sky – Human Qualities

Adele – Rolling in the Deep (Jamie XX Reshuffle)

Oh No Ono – Icicles

Charlotte Gainsbourg – Heaven Can Wait

William D Drake – The Rising of the Lights

The Horror The Horror – Wilderness

Curve – Fait Accompli

David McCallum/David Axelrod – The Edge

Errors – A Rumour In Africa (Gold Panda Remix)

Son Lux – Let Go

Flying Saucer Attack – Outdoor Miner

Extra Life – Ripped Heart

Shugo Tokumaru – Drive-Thru

Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues

The Decemberists – Why We Fight

Halves – Only Safe Landings

Memorials in former Yugoslavia

2011-06-23T00:25:00.004+01:00

Memorials in former Yugoslavia

Unknown Mortal Orchestra - Unknown Mortal Orchestra (Fat Possum, 2011)

Unknown Mortal Orchestra are a Portland-based trio that have just issued their self-titled debut on Fat Possum Records. Insound's description of "break-beats together with 70s pop harmonies and a minimal Krautrock rhythm section" sounds spot-on to me but it was the album cover that really caught my attention.

The photograph on the cover of their album is of a monument at Petrova Gova in Croatia. This is one of countless monuments that were commissioned by former Yugoslavian president Josip Broz Tito in the 1960s and 1970s to commemorate sites where WWII battles took place. They were designed by different sculptors and architects to convey a powerful visual impact and to show the confidence and strength of the "bortherhood and unity" of Tito's Socialist Republic.

Petrova Gora

Petrova Gora (Jan Kempenaers, 2006)

In the 1980s, these monuments or "Spomenik" attracted millions of visitors per year, especially young pioneers for their "patriotic education." After Yugoslavia fell apart in the early 1990s, the monuments were completely abandoned, and their symbolic meanings were lost.

From 2006 to 2009, Belgian photographer Jan Kempenaers toured around the republics of the former Yugoslavia with the help of a 1975 map of memorials. His photographs were published in the 2010 book Spomenik, which can be viewed here.

Kozara (Jan Kempenaers, 2007)

Kozara

Makljen

More Spomenik can be viewed here and here.

? from Unknown Mortal Orchestra on Vimeo.

Pixies - Point Theatre 1991

2011-06-21T11:30:00.000+01:00

Pixies - Point Theatre, 19th June 1991

I hitchhiked from Cork to Dublin with a friend for this gig. It's hard to believe that it was 20 years ago. It was my first time in Dublin for a gig and to say I was excited would be a huge understatement. Support bands were Power of Dreams and Chimera who both played well. At the time I thought the Pixies put on a great show but looking back on it all I can really remember was a brilliant version of the Mary Chain's Head On. I still remember having pints in the Stag's Head earlier in the day and spotting Mike Scott of The Waterboys at the end of the bar. I recall getting really excited, "Jesus, it's Mike Scott." Innocent times.

Thomas Truax's Monthly Journal

2011-06-20T09:14:00.002+01:00

Thomas Truax's Monthly Journal

Thomas Truax's Monthly Project #1 to #6 (2011, Psychoteddy/SL Records)

On last week's show we played the latest track from Thomas Truax's Monthly Journal. The Monthly Journal is Truax's attempt to record and release 12 tracks in 12 months, in January Thomas described the project as follows: "Unlike an album released when finished in the usual way, the Monthly Journal will be a living, mutating organism taking placew in twelve intervals over 2011. Tracks will be informed by any number of things: the vibe, feeling, texture, atmosphere of the changing seasons, the expanding and contracting lengths of days and nights, weather, news, dreams, personal or world events as they unfold. I'll respond to these with a piece that will be created, produced and released within the window of each month."

Six months in the quality has yet to dip. June's instalment is called Lost In The Month of June, and according to Thomas is, "a breakup song. I phoned it in from the moon. If you don't believe me, listen to the song. It was born from a naive melody on a lightweight Casio PT-20 with its built in rhythm and automated backing chords, I turned it into a big production with a multitude of things including timpani, strings and the Hornicator."

Lost On The Moon In June by Thomas Truax

The Fall - The Marshall Suite

2011-06-18T09:15:00.001+01:00

The Fall - The Marshall Suite

This weekend I shall mostly be listening to...

"They say what about the meek?
I say they’ve got a bloody cheek"

Finally it arrived. The BBC Robert Elms session tracks didn't materialise, turned out the BBC couldn't locate the tapes, so the artwork had to be redone and hence the delay. It probably was remiss of Cherry Red to announce the tracklisting before they knew for sure if the BBC still had the tracks but nonetheless the reissue sounds great and is housed in a lovely multi-foldout digipak. The 12 page booklet has liner notes by Daryl Easlea in the style and format of the Sanctuary reissues.

The Marshall Suite was the band's 21st album originally released back in 1999 on Artful records. Following the departure of a few band members (particularly Stave Hanley) the previous April after the New York scandal on the American tour, nobody thought Mark E. Smith could regroup and come back with such a fantastic album. But he did, The Marshall Suite is easily one the band's best albums and has been long out of print so this reissue comes highly anticipated.

The Marshall Suite also contained two classic Fall singles. Touch Sensitive, which bizarrely ended up soundtracking a Vauxhall Corsa advert, and F-'Oldin' Money, a cover of Tommy Blake's 1959 rockabilly track.

Episode 353

2011-06-17T14:38:00.001+01:00

Songs To Learn And Sing - Episode 353

We return after a few weeks hiatus. This episode features London band Left With Pictures' June installment of their In Time project. In 2010 the band recorded a track each month and the 12 tracks were compiled onto the In Time album and released back in March. This track is one of my favourite's from the album and I love the above video. June McCree is the object of the singer's attention and he compares her "to other ladies that have inspired classics from pop's past: Billie Jean, Alison, Delilah and Mrs Robinson." The repeated hook is an adaptation from the theme from Terry Gilliam's Brazil, Ary Barroso's 1939 song Aquarela do Brasil.

The Smithereens - Green Thoughts (1988, Enigma Records)

This episode also featured three tracks from 1988's Green Thoughts, the second album from New Jersey's power pop masters. For me this is even better then their fantastic debut, 1986's Especially For You and is up their with Love Junk by The Pursuit of Happiness, which was released in the same year, as one of my favourite American albums. The band still tour and have just released an album entitled 2011, their first new record in 11 years.

Episode 353 - 16/06/2011

Playlist

The Human League – The Things That Dreams Are Made Of (Programmed and Produced by Martin Rushent RIP)

The Fall – Lost in Music

Teenage Fanclub – The Concept

Left With Pictures – June

Colourmusic – Yes

Lift to Experience – With Crippled Wings

Swans – No Words/No Thoughts

Thomas Truax – Lost On the Moon in June

North Sea Radio Orchestra – Berliner Luft

Alexi Murdoch – At Your Door

The Phoenix Foundation – Bitte Bitte

The Smithereens – The World We Know

The Smithereens – Drown in My Own Tears

The Smithereens – Especially for You

Julia Kent – The Toll

Connan Mockasin – Megumi the Milkway Above

North Sea Radio Orchestra – Heavy Weather

William D Drake – In an Ideal World

Kelley Stoltz – Baby, I Got News For You

Rozi Plain – Humans

Nik Freitas – Hold That Thought

Peter Yorn – Sans Fear

Vashti Bunyan – Hidden

Colourmusic – Dolphins and Unicorns

The Human League – Hard Times Love Action (I Believe in Love) (Remixed by Martin Rushent RIP)

From the Archives - James Yorkston Interview

2011-06-16T15:17:00.002+01:00

Songs To Learn And Sing - James Yorkston Interview

2011 Domino Press

I've just finished reading It's lovely to be Here: the Touring Diaries of a Scottish Gent by James Yorkston. It's a great read and is up there with recent excellent music memoirs by Dean Wareham and Luke Haines. This tour diary is made even more enjoyable because James describes towns and venues in Ireland that I'm very familiar with from years of gig-going. I laughed when James described a sound engineer friend of mine as being, "nice enough, chatty and efficient." On hearing this the sound engineer in question reckoned, "that's like saying I don't sweat much for a fat c**t."

Postcard - Moving Up Country (2002, Domino Records)

The best praise I can give this book though, is that it made me want to go back and listen to a couple of James's albums. I hadn't played James's second full length album, 2004's Just Beyond the River, in years and had forgotten how beautiful it is, a gorgeous stripped-down classic. I interviewed James when he played in Whelan's, Dublin around the time of the album's release and asked him how he came to get labelmate Kieran Hebden (aka Four Tet) to produce the record: "We went with Kieran because when he heard that we had an album ready to record he said that he was interested. I was a bit shocked and I thought that I don’t really want to do an electronica album but he said, ‘nah don’t be daft James, I don’t want to do one either, I want to do a really stripped down raw album.’"

Postcard - The Lang Toun 10'' (2000, Domino Records)

James continued, "That’s exactly want I wanted to do so I went to his house and we played each other some music and I just thought that if we could get along with each other in a working way. He played me some demos he had dome for somebody else and they just sounded very raw, there were no effects, there was no reverb or anything like that, it had just been recorded really well with good microphones. So that was exactly what I was after. I wasn’t after a producer who was going to stamp his personality on the record, I just wanted somebody who would let the instruments and the songs speak for themselves and I think that’s what we got with Kieran."

James was a really great man to chat to and over the course of the interview we also touched upon, signing with Domino Records, the success of Franz Ferdinand and what it meant to the rest of the roster on the label, King Creosote, Lone Pigeon and the Fence Collective and the landscape and weather of Fife and West Cork. The full interview can be listened to below.

James Yorkston & the Athletes - Surf Song

Episode 343

2011-04-08T14:43:00.000+01:00

Songs To Learn And Sing - Episode 343

Conrad Schnitzler - Zug 12'' (2010, m=minimal Records)

This episode featured Conrad Schnitzler's Zug a 20 minute opus that was originally released back in 1974 on the legendary "Red Cassette" and finally got a proper release last year on the first m=minimal 12''. The release also featured two remixes by Pole and Borngräber & Strüver. Schnitzler was an early member of Tangerine Dream and also one of the founders of Kluster (upon Schnitzler's departure Moebius and Roedelius renamed the band Cluster). Zug is a really important track in the history of minimalist music. The video below is for a shorter version of Zug that later appeared on Schnitzler's 1978 album Con. That album has now been rereleased as Ballet Statique.

This episode also featured three tracks from Cat's Eyes. I've been listening to the self-titled album all week and am getting really hooked. Cat's Eyes are a duo formed by Rachel Zeffira, a Canadian opera soprano and classical multi-instrumentalist based in London, and Faris Badwan, the singer from psychedelic-rockers The Horrors.

Cat's Eyes - Cat's Eyes (2011, Polydor Records)

The album was produced by Steve Osbourne and all the artwork is by Chris Cunningham. The record has a real late 50s early 60s feel about it and it's really obvious that both Faris and Rachel appreciate Girl Groups and Phil Spector. In saying that it's also a very modern, experimental sounding, romantic record. This is definately going to be one of the soundtracks to my summer.

Episode 343 – 07/04/11

Playlist

Grinderman – Palaces of Montezuma
Trumpets of Death – Cruel Ships Captain
Joan As Police Woman – The Action Man
Lykke Li – I Know Places
Josh T. Pearson – Woman When I’ve Raised Hell
Eat Light : Become Lights – Monorail
Metronomy – The Look
Moon Wiring Club – The Victorian Butter Boat
Steve Moore – 248 Years
The Dirty Three – Obvious is Obvious
The Auteurs – Bail Out (Cello Mix)
Kaija Saariaho – Petals
Andrew Peklar – First
Luke Abbott – Trans Forest Alignment
Tune-Yards – Bizness
Antonymes – Landscape Beyond an Open Window
Conrad Schnitzler – Zug
Burial, Four Tet, Thom Yorke – Ego
Spaceman 3 – Take Me to the Other Side
Hal Blaine – Hallucinations (April)
Cat’s Eyes – Cat’s Eyes
Cat’s Eyes – The Best Person I Know
Cat’s Eyes – Over You
Left With Pictures – River Avon
The Decemberists – Down by the Water
Nancy Elizabeth – Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want

From the Archives - Guy Chadwick Interview

2011-04-05T21:30:00.000+01:00

Songs To Learn And Sing - Guy Chadwick Interview

Guy Chadwick released Lazy, Soft & Slow his debut (and only) solo album in February 1998, five years after Audience With the Mind, the last House of Love album. Lazy, Soft & Slow is one of those great albums that just gets better and better with age. I go back to it every couple of years and am always blown aways by its subtle beauty. This is an album that slowly gets under your skin and then grabs you. It was produced by Robin Guthrie and features a great cover of Iggy Pop's Fall in Love With Me. I interviewed Guy around the time of the album's release for Zeitgeist magazine. The article is below. A few years later Guy and Terry Bickers reformed The House of Love and released Days Run Away. They toured in 2007 playing their debut album in its entirety.

Guy Chadwick - Lazy, Soft & Slow (1997, Setanta Records)

Lazy, Soft & Slow

I wrote the songs on acoustic guitar and that set the tone of the record. I had decided from the outset that I wanted the feel of the songs, whether they were played by a band, in a band situation or not, to have an acoustic feel. I didn’t have a sound in my head and I wasn’t listening to a lot of country, I was more concerned with my voice being intimate and upfront. They are soft songs for the most part, so naturally that effected the way they were recorded and the choice of instruments that we used.

Recharged

I wanted to do it all and I had been waiting for the right time, I was motivated. I wasn’t expecting the great reviews the album has been getting. Because I’ve been away from the whole thing for a while, I’m fully recharged, and now I’ve got a really good band which I’ve put together this year and we played our first gig about two-and-a-half weeks ago in Paris which was great. I’m doing a few House of Love songs and it all sounds really, really good and they fit in well with the songs from the new album. It’s a nice development for me because I’m going to be making another album this year and I don’t want to make the same record again, I’ll be working it a different way but it’s sort of setting things everything up nicely for it.

Guy Chadwick - You Really Got a Hold On Me (1998, Setanta Records)

Solo artist

Keith Cullen, of Setanta Records, was pretty persistent in getting me to make a record; I was very impressed by him because he had a good handle on how I should be at a time when I was a bit unsure about what I should be doing. He said make a solo record. It’s five years since The House of Love split up and becoming a solo artist has been a very gradual process for me, it’s still ongoing in a way but making the record was a kind of awakening for me and it’s been enjoyable putting the new band together. For the first time in years I feel that I’m doing and working as I should be. So I feel good about things rather than awkward.

Robin Guthrie

The reason why I did the record with Robin Guthrie was because I didn’t want to make a House of Love record and he didn’t want to make a Cocteau Twins record. He really liked the songs which was the main thing, I had demoed them all and the arrangements had been worked out. So it was quite easy to decide where we were going to go and we worked fairly quickly. We were in total agreement about things and he hadn’t made a record for a while we it was a fresh experience for both of us.

Nick Drake and Leonard Cohen

I’m very flattered when people mention Nick Drake and Leonard Cohen; they’re respected people aren’t they? I haven’t got any Nick Drake records but a friend of mine always plays him when I call around but I’m a big Leonard Cohen fan and I’m very aware of the influence that he’s had on me and the sound and everything. I just love him so that’s bound to come out.

Guy Chadwick - This Strength (1998, Setanta Records)

The House of Love

At the moment I’m working with Mercury on a ‘Best of The House of Love’, it’s pretty much 16 or 18 tracks and they’re the ones that anyone who was into The House of Love would expect to be there. But I did choose one track that was a demo which was originally rejected for the third album and it’s one of the best songs that I ever wrote. It’s very simple, the band playing very well in quite a laid back kind of way, very few over dubs and close vocals and ironically it sounds like it would fit really nicely on the new album. Unfortunately, particularly in the later period, The House of Love did over-produce the records, there was too much going on and it didn’t need to be that way. We were quite mellow and played quite well in a mellow way but we got pushed into being a more rocky-sounding band, and ultimately that’s why we split up because we weren’t producing the music that we wanted to.

A mellow record

Lazy, Soft & Slow is not an album that jumps out of the speakers at you on the first listen, it’s mellow unlike most of the music that you hear on the radio at the moment which is harsh and aggressive sounding, and I didn’t want to make a record like that. The record’s a grower so stick with it.

Episode 342

2011-04-03T08:40:00.000+01:00

Songs To Learn And Sing - Episode 342

This episode featured a couple of tracks from Elmer Bernstein's soundtrack to one of my favourite films: Alexander Mackendrick's Sweet Smell of Success. The 1957 film concerns J.J. Hunsecker, played by Burt Lancaster, the most powerful of the New York columnists, whose items can make or break a career and Sidney Falco, played by Tony Curtis, a press agent who supports himself largely by getting items into Hunsecker’s column. The film was seen as a thinly-veiled attack on Walter Winchell, who for decades had been the most famous and reviled gossip columnist in America.

Elmer Bernstein wrote the score that incorporates the beguiling jazz of the Chico Hamilton Quintet (who play live in several night club scenes). The Chico Hamilton Quintet were one of the last really important West Coast jazz bands and were really popular at the time of filming. Martin Milner plays Steve Dallas, the jazz guitarist and leader of the band who is dating Hunsecker’s sister.

Elmer Bernstein - Sweet Smell of Success (Orchestral Themes)

(1957, Decca Records)

Two soundtracks were released one featuring Bernstein's orchestral score and another featuring the jazz tunes of The Chico Hamilton Quintet. "These are the sounds of a small section of New York. The section lies between Columbus Circle and Times Square. This is the world of Sardi's, Toots Shor and the Twenty One, Lindy's, Reuben's and the Stage Delicatessen. This is the world in which adolescent dreams of sucess in bright lights must be implemented in work, endless interviews in producers offices and the quick wit of the press agent and columnist. In this tiny empire lives are made and destroyed by the public, critics and columnists... This then is the world. The music reflects the tempo, anguish and frustration in a contemporary, popular idiom. Therefore we find one of our central characters, Sidney Falco, characterized by the kind of musical sound that could be coming from any of the many night spots such people frequent" Elmer Bernstein, 1957.

The Chico Hamilton Quintet - Sweet Smell of Success (Jazz Themes)

(1957, Decca Records)

Hamilton spoke to Bill Mackowski of Jazz Times for a 2001 article about filming the movie and working with Mackendrick: "He was a helluva director but the lines that I had to deliver were just not right. For instance, at one point I was supposed to say about Marty Milner’s girlfriend, ‘Throw a rope around her and keep her here while I go get him.’ And I told the director, ‘Man, musicians don’t talk like that! As far as I’m concerned, it’s dumb.’ And he said, ‘Well, what would you say?’ So I told him, ‘Well, I’d probably say something like, ‘Cool this chick here while I go get him.’ And he said, ‘Good, good, we’ll use that.’"

Chico Hamilton Quintet/Elmer Bernstein - Sweet Smell of Success

(Jazz and Orchestral Themes)

(2008, él Records)

Both soundtracks were eventually reissued on one Cd by él Records in 2008. Upon its release Sweet Smell of Success was received with mixed reviews from critics. Audiences who had the year before been thrilled by the high-flying acrobats of Lancaster and Curtis in Trapeze were left struggling to pick a hero from two evil manipulative characters. When the film was screened by a North California audience, one viewer wrote on her preview card: “don’t touch a foot of this film. Just burn the whole thing.” The film flopped.

Episode 342 - 31/03/2011

Playlist

Mazes - Most Days (supporting Dum Dum Girls, Whelans's April 1)
Wolf People - Silbury Sands
Trumpets of Death - The Press Gang
Connan Mocakin - Forever Dolphin Love
Left With Pictures - This Light
Colourmusic - You For leaving Me
Joan As Police Woman - The Action Man
The Raveonettes - Recharge and Revolt
Ladytron - Destroy Everything You Touch
Flying Saucer Attack - Outdoor Miner
Ebsen and the WItch - Marching Song (playing Crawdaddy April 8)
Dum Dum Girls - Wrong Feels Right (playing Whelan's April 1)
Errors - A Rumour In Africa (Gold Panda Remix)
Metronomy - The Look
Eat Lights : Become Lights - Musik for Motorways
Lia Ices - Loce Is Won
Gablé - Too Fat to Fart to Fight
Gablé - Unbeatable
Gablé - My Diamond Pond
The Unthanks - Close the Coalhouse Door
The Memory Band - A New Skin
Gruff Rhys - Sophie Softly
The Go! Team - Apollo Throwdown
Tune-Yards - Bizness
Cornershop - The Biro Pen
Elmer Bernstein - The Street (Main Theme)
Elmer Bernstein - Sidney And Susie
Elmer Bernstein - Hunsecker's Price
Arbouretum - The Highwayman
That Petrol Emotion - Abandon
Tim Cohen - The Flower

Hip-Pocket Records - The Box Tops

2011-03-30T09:29:00.001+01:00

Hip-Pocket Records - The Box Tops

HP-27 The Box Tops (The Letter/Happy Times)

Following on my recent post about Alex Chilton and The Box Tops here's another version of The Letter. This time it's a Hip-Pocket flexi-disc. Marketed as "the most portable form of music" Hip-Pocket Records were 4'' flexi-discs produced by Philco (a division of Ford Mortors) between 1967 and 1969. Each flexi-disc was double-sided and came housed in a 5'' x 6.25'' picture envelope. In total 41 different titles were produced and The Letter by The Box Tops was No. 27 in the series. A children's series of 12 flexis was also produced.

HP-27 4'' Flexi-disc

"Buy the hits you missed - 25 to 50 hip pocket records can be carried in pocket or purse - Hip pocket records can be mailed with greeting cards as a gift - They will outlast a regular 45 - Drop them or sit on them...they are almost indestructible - Take them to parties or to the beach or picnic...they are the most portable form of music - Don't let the small size fool you...the sound is amazingly big - Start your collection of hip pocket records today."

The back of HP-27

Philco also manufactured a portable minature record player to play the flexis, the Minature Radio Phonograph or Mini Radio Phono as it was known. The 2-speed units were also capable of playing 7'' and 12'' records. Needless to say the Hip-Pocket records never really took off and the the series was abandoned after the HP-41, but the concept of making record collections portable would stay alive. My own copy of The Letter by The Box Tops has actually lasted really well considering its age, is still playable and sounds pretty damn good. Check out one person's great Hip-Pocket collection below.

Episode 341

2011-03-27T17:21:00.010+01:00

Songs To Learn And Sing - Episode 341

This episode kicked off with Yesterday the Dog by Inner Dialogue from their self-titled 1969 album. It's a great lost record and its mellow, dreamy, pop psych sounds will be loved by any Stereolab fans. A Rate My Music reviewer described the record as, "a superb sunshine pop album, with some baroque touches. Two women singers and their intertwining vocals weave complex vocal parts around top rate arrangements. This record could give the Free Design a run for their money any day."

Inner Dialogue - Inner Dialogue (1969, Ranwood Records)

Inner Dialogue's B. J. Ward (vocals), Lynn Dolin (vocals) and Gene Dinovi (dulcitron/piano)

B. J. Ward - Vocal Ease (1974, Catfish Records)

On this episode we also played Keep it to Yourself from B. J.'s 1974 solo album, Vocal Ease. The LP's a jazzy mix of funky soft-rock tunes and an original goes for silly money, possibly because apart from lending her vocals to Inner Dialogue, B. J. also was the voice of Velma from Scooby Doo. The LP's a mix of upbeat covers of Neil Young, Tom Jones, Gerry Rafferty and The Beach Boys alongside some originals.

This episode also featured Aliens in Our Mist by Sacramento's The Twinkeyz. The psychedelic pop garage band was formed in 1977 by Don Marquez (aka Donnie Jupiter), Walter Smith, Tom Darling and Steve Bateman. They only released a few singles and one LP, 1979's Alpha Jerk splitting up in 1980.

The Twinkeyz - Cartoon Land (2002, Anopheles Records)

Donnie describes the band's sound on his website: "The Twinkeyz music consisted of slightly skewed song structures held together with twisted pop hooks and treated with a more than liberal dose of noise and effects. The Twinks’ never met an effect box they didn't like." I came across Cartoon Land in Spin Dizzy Records in Dublin a good few years ago and was hooked after hearing opening track, Aliens in Our Midst. This clear vinyl LP is limited to 1000 copies and comes with new artwork by Donnie, who is now a very successful cartoonist.

Episode 341 - 24/03/2001

Playlist

Inner Dialogue - Yesterday the Dog

B. J. Ward - Keep it to Yourself

John Cameron - Training Kes (from Kes OST)

Dum Dum Girls - He Gets Me High (Playing Whelan's April 1)

Cornershop - The 911 Curry

Errors - Bridge or Cloud (the Field Remix)

Halves - Only Soft Landings

Cut Copy - Alisa

The Human League - Never Let Me Go

The Loves - King Kong Blues

Spectrals - Peppermint

Gruff Rhys - Sophie Softly

Esben and the Witch - Swans

Low - Witches

Eat Lights : Become Lights - Dark Master

Brad Medhidau - Things Behind the Sun

Seefeel - Faults

Spokes - Canon Grant

Grinderman - Palaces of Monteuma (Cenzo Mix)

Hotels - The Bat Watusi

Lukke Li - I Know Places

Arbouretum - The Empty Shell

Life Without Buildings - Let's Get Out

Josh T. Pearson - Woman When I've Raised Hell (Playing The Workman's Club March 26)

Janice Whaley - Jeane

Joan as Police Woman - The Action Man

Mazes - Most Days
Wolf People - Silbury Sands

The Twinkeyz - Aliens in Our Midst

From the Archives - All's Fair in Love and Vinyl

2011-03-21T11:15:00.002Z

Songs To Learn And Sing - All's Fair in Love and Vinyl (audio package)

I was at the Music, CD and Record Fair last Saturday and picked up a few gems which can be viewed below.

The record fair is staged in Dublin a few times a year and is a mecca for vinyl enthusiasts. Back in 2004 I produced a feature on the record fair for Segments, a radio show I co-produced for Dublin City FM. Segments was a weekly series of documentary shorts reflecting different aspects of Dublin life. This particular feature was recorded at the record fair when it was staged at the Marine Hotel in Dún Laoghaire.

It's a simple audio collage of interviews with record dealers and collecters, chatting about what records they're after and what sells well. It gives a unique glimpse into the mind's of vinyl collecters. Brian O'Kelly the organiser, also chats about what records people always ask for. 1973's Early One Morning by Mushroom (Aonghus McAnally's prog/Celtic rock outfit), that a few of the dealers mention in the feature was reissued on CD by Radioactive Records in 2006. I wonder has the reissue somewhat deflated the £300 asking price that vinyl copies of the record were going for back in 2004? The feature can be heard below. Check out Irish Record Fairs for the date of the next fair.

Bongwater - The Power of Pussy (1991, Shimmy Disc)

The Power of Pussy, Bongwater's third and finest album features their version of The Weavers' Kisses Sweeter Than Wine. Bongwater was Ann Magnuson and Kramer and they released four albums between 1989 and 1992.

Marvin Gaye & His Girls (1969, Tamla Motown)

A compilation of Mavin Gaye deuts with Mary Wells, Tammi Terrell and Kim Weston. Despite its cheesy title this is simply wonderful and also festures one of my all time favourite tracks, You're All I Need to Get By by Marvin and Tammi. This album was released on Marvin's 30th birthday.

The Beach Boys - Surf's Up (1971, Caribu Records/CBS Records)

Surf's Up is regarded by many as being Brian's masterpiece but it also features Bruce Johnson's Disney Girls, one of my all time favourite Beach Boys tracks. Years ago at a gig in the Lobby Bar in Cork Peter Bruntnell led the audience in a singalong to Disney Girls. It is still to this day one of my most memorable gigging experiences - how sad it that! I love this record.

Amon Düül II - Live in London (1973, United Artists Records)

Recorded live at The Greyhound in Croyden on 16th December 1972, on the band's first UK tour this is a great set from Amon Düül II, kicking off with a brilliant version of Yeti's Archangels Thunderbird. This is the original pressing in pristeen condition and the sleeve is just absolutley nuts - a giant alien insect with a German stormtrooper's helmet destroying london, the Post Office Tower in its left claw and flying saucers in the background. Julian Cope described this sleeve as "the greatest Krautrock image of all."

The Beach Boys - Wild Honey/Friends (1975, Capital Records)

A 1975 Capital Records reissue of 2 Beach Boys LPs in a gatefold sleeve with the orange Capital labels. This was a nice find in mint condition, the inner gatefold is really nice and has pictures of all The Beach Boys back catologue. All in all a nice haul for a Saturday morning.

The Beach Boys - Wild Honey/Friends - Inner Gatefold

Episode 340

2011-03-18T08:52:00.003Z

Songs To Learn And Sing - Episode 340

Julian Cope - The Jehovahcoat Demos (2011, Head Heritage)

This episode of the show features two tracks from Julian Cope's latest album, The Jehovahcoat Demos. The album is a collection of 15 previously unreleased tracks that were recorded thoughout 1993 "in direct response to having been dropped by Island Records the previous October". Head Heritage describes the Jehovahcoat Demos as, "an intense 65-minute journey through the music and mind of the Archdrude during his research period for both Krautrocksampler and The Modern Antiquarian." The booklet also features five previously unpublished poems.

Julian Cope's aforementioned Krautrocksampler, published in 1995, was a great resource in a pre-internet era. I can happily admit to being turned on to the extraordinary sounds of Ash Ra Tempel, Cluster, Faust, Neu!, Harmonia, Cosmic Jokers and Popol Vuh after reading about their records in Cope's Cosmic Field Guide. This episode also featured three tracks from Florian Fricke's Popol Vuh. The tracks are all from Werner Herzog films and feature on three of the five albums that were recently released in a lavish boxset: The Werner Herzog Soundtracks.

My copy of the boxset arrived this week and whilst my photo isn't as nice as the promo shots it does have a certain out-of-focus charm to it. This boxset does not disappoint, the package and contents are of the highest quality. The boxset contains soundtracks to Heart of Glass (1976), and the Klaus Kinski-starring Aguirre (1972), Nosferatu (1979), Fitzcarraldo (1982) and Cobra Verde (1987) and a 96 page hardback book with essays, commentaries, notes from Herzog and others. A beautiful package put together with care and does the wonderful music justice. A fantastic companion piece to Anchor Bay's 2004, Herzog/Kinski DVD boxset.

The Outlaws - Dream of the West (1961, HMV)

We finished this week's episode with The Outllaws by The Outlaws from their Joe Meek produced 1961 instrumental album Dream of the West. The Outlaws were meek's house band and played on a lot of the hit singles that came out of Meek's 304 Holloway Road studio.

The Outlaws - "the Outlaws"

Episode 340 - 17/03/2010

Lykke Li - Unrequited Love

Grimes - Devon
Eat Lights : Become Lights - They Transmit
Julian Cope - Sun Honey
Arbouretum - When Delivery Comes
Grinderman - Palaces of Montezuma (Cenzo Mix)
Suicide - Dream Baby Dream
The Go! Team - Super Triangle
The Pains of Being Pure of Heart - Heart in Your Heartbreak
Bat for Lashes - Howl
Wye Oak - Civilian
Popol Vuh - Aguirre 1 (Aguirre, the Wrath of God)
Popol Vuh - Morning Sun (Nosferatu)
Popol Vuh - Engel der Gegenwart (Heart of Glass)
Catherine Wheel - I Want to Touch You
Ladytron - Fighting in Built Up Areas
The Smiths - How Soon Is Now? (Italian 12'' Version)
Dum Dum Girls - He Get Me High (playing Whelan's, April 1)
Best Coast - Crazy For You
Centro-matic - Liquidation Heart
Neil Young - Tonight's the Night
Palace Brothers- Horses
Smoke Fairies - Riversong
Smoke Fairies - Living With Ghosts
Julian Cope - Theme From Jehovahcoat
Smog - A Hit
The Outlaws - The Outlaws

The Box Tops - The Letter

2011-03-16T09:21:00.002Z

The Box Tops - The Letter b/w Choo Choo Train

"Alex Chilton - One of the most distintive voices in pop music. He sounds rough and gravelly most of the time, but when he sings a ballad he reveals an unexpected tenderness and sensitivity. He has the mischievous and subtle charm of a young tiger who still doesn't realize his full strength" - from the sleeve of Stiff's 1978 reissue of The Letter.

The Letter b/w Choo Choo Train (1974, Bell Records - France)

Tomorrow is the first anniversary of Alex Chilton's passing. This post is in tribute to the singer of one of my all-time favourite songs - The Letter by The Box Tops. It's 1 minute 53 seconds of greatness and still sounds absolutely amazing. I never tire of this track no matter how often I play it. My own copy of this 7'' is a 1974 French pressing of The Letter backed with the band's fourth single Choo Choo Train in a beautiful picture sleeve with the band standing on some train tracks literally waiting for "a fast train".

The Letter was written by Wayne Carson Thompson and was a worldwide hit in 1967 selling over four million copies. It was No. 1 for four weeks in the U.S. and reached No. 11 in Ireland. Thompson also wrote the band's second single, Neon Rainbow but he is probably best known for co-writing, alongside Mark James and Johnny Christopher, Always on My Mind. Below you can see some other picture sleeves of The Letter from different countries.

The Letter b/w Cry Like a Baby (1978, Stiff Records - UK)

Reverse of the the Stiff reissue

The Letter b/w Happy Times (Italy)

The Letter b/w Happy Times (France)

The Letter b/w Happy Times (Japan)

The Letter b/w Happy Times (Germany)

The Letter b/w Happy Times (Sweden)

From the Archives - Mazarin Interview

2011-03-13T18:42:00.008Z

Songs To Learn And Sing - Quentin Stoltzfus of Mazarin Interview

Mazarin - We're Already There (2006, Bella Union Records)

Mazarin played the Sugar Club, Dublin on April 5, 2006 in support of their amazing third album We’re Already There. Before the gig I interviewed Mazarin’s principal member and songwriter, Quentin Stoltzfus. We chatted about Quentin’s background, his work with other bands in Philadelphia, his approach to songwriting and collaboration, the Mazarin open door policy of band membership and his mother’s time in a Gospel trio with her sisters.

“They used to sing a lot of traditional songs Cater Family songs and traditional gospel songs and a lot of that stuff has been popping up in the last five years,” explained Quentin. “When I started getting into that stuff I got one disc in particular called American Primitive which was put out on the Revenant label. When I bought that record I was amazed by how many of the songs I knew, because my Grandmother used to sing to me as a kid also.”

American Primitive Vol. 1 (1997, Revenant Records)

Quentin was a real gent, you couldn't hope to meet a nicer interviewee and Mazarin went on to play a great gig later that night in the Sugar Club. It was a really memorable gig not least for the fact that I even got to meet Kevin Shields at the bar!

Mazarin would eventually play their final show later that year on December 2, 2006. Bizarrely another band called Mazarin had formally issued a cease and desist. Quentin’s Mazarin didn’t have the resources to retaliate so suggested both bands should simply co-exist but the other Mazarin and their attorney decided: either cease and desist, or we go to court. Eventually Quentin’s Mazarin and their management concluded “the whole predicament was so sad and despairing that instead of dragging out a lengthy litigation, which they had neither the time nor money to commit to - fuck it.”

Quentin currently resides in Philadelphia, where he is working as a recording engineer and producer in addition to still creating his own new music.

Episode 339

2011-03-11T09:42:00.003Z

Songs To Learn And Sing - Episode 339

Various Artists - Before The Fall (2011, ACE Records)

Another week another Fall compilation! Not quite, this one is actually worth investigating. Before The Fall is a 24 track compilation of tracks that have been covered by The Fall since the mid-80s. I was first introduced to R Dean Taylor, The Saints and The Monks from cover versions that The Fall had recorded and this album gathers tracks by those artists along with some more obscure originals that have graced Fall albums and sessions over the years.

It's an incredibly diverse selection, in fact on their own they really don't belong together - where else would you find Sister Sledge alongside The Kinks or The Sonics. However this nugget is worth it for the really hard-to-find tracks that The Fall have covered: I'm Going To Spain by Steve Bent (as covered on 1993's The Infotainment Scan), Jungle Rock by Hank Mizell (as covered on 1997's Levitate), or the original of one of The Fall's most popular tracks, Mr Pharmacist by The Other Half (as covered on 1986's Bend Sinister). As always with ACE Records you get a fabulous booklet with well-researched liner notes and scanned ephemera. This is definately one compilation that fans of The Fall should consider getting. A 1977 Top of The Pops appearance by Brisbane's The Saints performing their hit This Perfect Day is below. The Fall covered the track on 1999's The Marshall Suite. We will be back to The Marshall Suite in April as it's finally being re-issued.

Centro-matic/South San Gabriel - Eyas EP (2010)

"Hanging on the hinge of a syrupy and sweat-soaked summer, we are proud to announce the release of the important safety parachute to Dual Hawks' sprawling plume. "Eyas" is a seven song follow-up EP from those sessions, and includes offerings from both of our bands, Centro-matic and South San Gabriel. We were proud of these songs from the start. We wanted them to see the world." This is how Will Johnson, the Centro-Matic/South San Gabriel mainman describes last year's Eyas EP. It features four Centro-matic tracks and three South San Gabriel tracks including All Night Long, the Lionel Richie cover. I can't get enough of this version of All Night Long.

All Night Long by South San Gabriel

The ever-prolific Johnson has also just released a new Centro-matic album, Candidate Waltz. Apart from playing in two bands, Johnson is also a huge baseball fan and has created a series of baseball-themed paintings to honour some legends of the game. His paintings can be viewed here.

Ernie Banks by Will Johnson

Episode 339 - 10/03/2011

Playlist

Extra Life - Strong Brother, Weak Brother
Shugo Tokumara - Rum Hee
Vessels - The Trip
Eat Lights : Become Lights - Dark Matter
Crazy Horse - Gone Dead Train
Crazy Horse - Beggar's Day
The Memory Band - A New Skin
Lykke Li - I Follow Rivers
Lykke Li - Get Some (Beck Remix)
Errors - Bridge or Cloud? (The Field Remix)
Cut Copy - Take Me Over
Ladytron - Tomorrow
Halves - Growing & Glow
Dum Dum Girls - He Get Me High
Wye Oak - The Altar
South San Gabriel - All Night Long
Easterhouse - Whistling In the Dark

The Harvest Ministers - Cleaning Out the Store

Revelino - I Know What You Want

Grimes - Heartbeats

Steve Moore - Primitive Neutral Pathways

Hotels - Smith Lands On the Casino Planet
Essie Jain - Midnight Starship

Guy Chadwick - You Really Got A Hold On me

The House of Love - Crush Me

The Saints - This Perfect Day

Stereolab and Tortoise, Nancy Spains, Cork 1996

2011-03-07T12:49:00.001Z

Stereolab and Tortoise, Nancy Spains, Cork 1996

Flyer: Stereolab, Nancy Spains, Cork 1996

It's fifteen years since this gig. It really doesn't seem like that long ago. I worked for Frontline Promotions in Cork when we brought Stereolab and Tortoise to Nancy Spains in 1996. I remember the gig for loads of reasons not least because I had to pay Tortoise's John McEntire £50 for their perfomance, as support band they were simply getting a nominal fee for their gig. I then had the cheek to ask the great man for a t-shirt and in fairness to the guy, he gave me one. I remember being totally thrilled to walk around Cork with the logo from the Gamera 12'' on my t-shirt.

For a lot of people it was one of those gigs where the support band outshone the main act. Indeed within a few months Tortoise's Millions Now Living Will Never Die was gaining word-of-mouth plaudits and people who had been introduced to them in mid-1996 couldn't believe the band had played to a small but appreciative crowd on Barrack Street. When Stereolab were booked we didn't know who they were bringing as support, hence Tortoise weren't even mentioned on the gig flyer. Nancy Spains had a small enough stage and I've never seen so much backline packed onstage. Headliners Stereolab were brilliant, at the top of their game, they totally grooved. The setlist below is from the night. The split tour 7'' was a pressing of 1,500 copies on blue vinyl and goes for stupid money these days. An unforgetable night.

Postcard: Stereolab

Setlist - Stereolab, Nancy Spains, Cork 1996

Stereolab/Tortoise - Split 7'' (1996, Duophonic Records)

Episode 338

2011-03-04T08:46:00.000Z

Songs To Learn And Sing - Episode 338

(2005, ACE Records)

This episode of Songs To Learn And Sing kicked off with Ashes, the Rain and I by the James Gang. The song is the last track on the band's second album 1970's, James Gang Ride Again and also features on the above compilation from ACE Records, 2005's Hearing is Believing: The Jack Nitzsche Story (1962-1979).

James Gang - Ashes, the Rain & I

(Strings Arranged by Jack Nitzsche)

It's a beautiful song not least for Nitzsche's sting arrangement. Some people might recognise its string melody as sampled by Fatboy Slim on his track Right Here Right Now. This was Jack Nitzsche’s only time working with the James Gang, he spent most of 1970 touring with Crazy Horse, playing electric piano, and he went on to produce their first sans-Young album in 1971. Nitzsche is of course well known for his work with Buffalo Springfield and Neil Young but his story is an amazing history of popular music in its own right.

He co-wrote Needles and Pins with Sonny Bono in 1963, he was an arranger and conductor for Phil Spector. He orchestrated River Deep, Mountain High’s ambitious Wall of Sound for Spector and Ike and Tina Turner. He worked with the Rolling Stones on a number of their albums and contibuted the choral arrangements to You Can’t Always Get What You Want. He was also a prolific film orchestrator and wrote the soundtracks to both Performance and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. He also won an Academy Award for Best Song for co-writing with Buffy Sainte-Marie Up Where We Belong from 1982's An Officer and a Gentleman. He died in 2000 and the ACE compilation along with its companion CD, Hard Workin’ Man: The Jack Nitzsche Story Volume 2 are essential purchases.

This episode also featured two tracks from the debut album by Eat Lights : Become Lights. Autopia is released on Enraptured Records and comes in a beautiful clear green vinyl, limited edition. The album arrived earlier this week and hasn't left the CD player yet. It's a hypnotic blend of fuzzed guitars and driving beats. The label themselves put it perfectly when they explain that ELBL share "a deep love of classic German electronic acts of the 1970s, evoking classic kosmische bands but making the sound very much their own, creating an ever-changing synesthesic landscape of harmony and melody, feedback & drones, played against a driving motorik beat." Definately one of the best albums of the year so far.

Eat Light : Become Lights - Autopia

(2011, Enraptured Records)

Episode 337 - 24/02/2011

Playlist

James Gang - Ashes, the Rain & I
Darren Hayman & the Secondary Modern - Winter Makes Me Want You More
Seeland - Abraham, Martin And John
Seeland - Underpass
Edwyn Collins - Losing Sleep
Eat Lights : Become Lights - Machine Language
Eat Lights : Become Lights - Muzak for Motorways
Dum Dum Girls - There Is A light That Never Goes Out
Alvarius B. - You Only Live Twice
Abouretum - The Highwayman
Janice Whaley - Bigmouth Strikes Again
Grinderman - Palaces of Montezuma (Cenzo Mix)
Hal Blaine - Kaleidoscope (March)
Wye Oak - Dog Eyes
Lykke Li - Rich Kid Blues
Owen Pallett - Lewis Takes Off His Shirt (Dan Deacon Remix)
Yuck - The Wall
James Blackshaw - Part 2
Appaloosa - Intimate (Another Lonely Night)
Cassius - Brotherhood
If By Yes - You Feel Right (Cornelius Mix)
Deepchord presents Echospace - Elysian
Cocteau Twins - Tishbite
Esben and the Witch - Light Streams
Cold Cave - The Great Pan Is Dead
Eels - Spectacular Girls

From the Archives - Trashcan Sinatras Interview

2011-03-03T13:26:00.010Z

Songs To Learn And Sing - John Douglas of the Trashcan Sinatras Interview

Flyer: Trashcan Sinatras - Weightlifting (2004)

The Trashcan Sinatras played an instore gig in Tower Records, Dublin on June 2, 2005. I spoke to the band's guitarist John Douglas after the performance about their fourth album, Weightlifting and the long gap between its release and A Happy Pocket in 1996. "We were way off the radar," said John, "we didn’t really do anything for a good five or six years except sit at home and write and get back to a bit of normal life," The band had spent the previous ten years on the Go! Discs label touring and recording. In 1996 Polygram acquired a majority stake in the label, and the label folded not too long afterwards.

John explained what the band got up to in the intervening years: "About 1997-1998 when Go! Discs folded we found ourselves with a lot of time on our hands and not a lot of money so we just went back to normal life and struggled to pay the bills, made friends. We started going out into town and being local people rather then these guys who would show up every three months and disappear again. That was the nice aspect of it; we got really grounded in reality again and got back to being normal human beings." The interview can be heard below.

Setlist: Nancy Spains, Cork, November 1995
(A to Z Tour)

The above setlist is from a 1995 tour. It was dubbed the "A to Z Tour" and the Cork date was the third date of the tour. I can't remember what cities made up the other letters but I know I've a poster somewhere which I'll have to pull out. This marked the band's second gig in Cork, the previous summer they had played at the Féile Festival 1995.

Photo: Promo shot of Trashcan Sinatras

(circa I've Seen Everything, 1995)

Episode 337

2011-02-28T12:57:00.010Z

Songs To Learn And Sing - Episode 337

This episode featured two tracks each from Connie Converse, The Memory Band and Rachel Grimes. We started the show with Rachel Grimes. The tracks are taken from her 2009 album Book of Leaves. This is Rachel's first solo album having previously played with Louisville Kentucky's Rachel's. A sparce collection of solo piano songs mostly under three minutes, it's a beautiful album.

Rachel Grimes - Book of Leaves (For Solo Piano)

(2009, RuminanCe Records)

The two Connie Converse tracks are taken from the album How Sad, How Lonely. Connie was a singer songwriter active in New York in the 1950s but who disappeared in 1974. Her recordings, which were recorded in the late 50s and early 60s were released in 2009. Lau derette Recordings describe Connie as "the quintessential musical enigma – an artist before her time, forgotten, and disappeared without a trace over 35 years ago. If you stripped away the sharp literary mind, the precision of the songcraft, the bare honesty of her humble recordings, you would still be left with an unanswerable question: Where did she go? Why did she pack her belongings into a car, write goodbye letters to her friends and family, and vanish?" Her amazing story can be read here. If you like Talkin' Like You below, then the album is highly recommended. It's a beautiful package with extensive liner notes from Philip Converse (Connie's brother), Gene Deitch (who recorded Connie in the 50s) and Daniel Dzula (producer of the 2009 CD).

Connie Converse - How Sad, How Lonely

(2009, Lau derette Recordings)

Finally this episode also featured two tracks from Oh My Days, the latest album from Stephen Cracknell's The Memory Band. The line-up is ever-fluid and this times includes rhythm from bassist Jon Thorne and drummer Tom Page and an all-new vocal frontline featuring Jess Roberts, Jenny mcCormick, Hannah Caughlin and Liam Bailey. Demon Days and Ghosts are two of the ten originals on the record that also includes covers of Sandy Denny's By the Time It gets Dark, Graham Bond's Love is the Law and Jeff Alexander's Come Wander With Me. It's a fantastic record which easily sits alongside their 2006 masterpiece Apron Strings.

The Memory Band - On My Days (2010, Hungry Hill)

Episode 337 - 24/02/2011

Playlist

Rachel Grimes - Every Morning
Rachel Grimes - Mossgrove
Vessels - All Our Ends
Strands - Awake
Strands - Chow Bell
Thomas Truax - February What Ya Doin To Me
Josh T. Pearson - Sweetheart I Ain't Your Christ
John Stammers - Baby Dea
Darren hayman & the Secondary Modern - Winter Makes Me Want You More
Nickel Pressing - Beck is Back
The Fall - Cruiser'e Creek
The Fall - Couldn't Get Ahead
Best Coast - Crazy for You
Connie Converse - Johnny's Brother
Connie Converse - Man In the Sky
Metronomy - She Wants
Pete Yorn - Precious Stone
Dutch Uncles - Fragrant
The Memory Band - Demon Days
The Memory Band - Ghosts
The Go! Team - Buy Nothing Day
The Go! Team - Tornado
Tim Kasher - I'm Afraid I'm Gonna Die
Transept - Leopard Slug Love Song
The Phoenix Foundation - Buffalo
Mt. Desolation - Departure
The Walkmen - Angela Surf City
The Duke & the King - No Easy Way Out
Johnny Flynn - The Water
This is the Kit - Sometimes the Sea
Grinderman - Palaces of Montezuma (Barry Adamson remix)

Whipping Boy - Heartworm

2011-02-26T11:33:00.000Z

Whipping Boy - Heartworm Flyer

Niall Connolly, recently reviewed Whipping Boy's Heartworm album for We Are Noise. His brilliant review made me go back and play the album again. It still sounds incredibly fresh and exciting 16 years later. Here's a couple of scans of the original flyers advertising the record's release and a brilliant performance of We Don't Need Nobody Else from French TV. Niall's latest album, the excellent Brother, The Fight Is Fixed is available from cdbaby.

From the Archives - 16 Horsepower Interview

2011-02-20T11:37:00.001Z

Songs To Learn And Sing - David Eugene Edwards of 16 Horsepower Interview

Secret South, 16 Horsepower’s third album was released in 2000 on Glitterhouse records and the band played their first Irish show on March 21, 2001. The gig started with the track American Wheeze and just thinking about the sound that David Eugene Edwards managed to elicit from his Chemnitzer concertina still sends shivers down my spine. I still regard this as one of the greatest gigs I've ever witnessed. Before the gig I interviewed David Eugene Edwards for the long defunct Zeitgeist magazine. The article is below.

16 Horsepower feature two Americans (David Eugene Edwards and Steven Taylor) and two Frenchmen (Jean-Yves Tola and Pascal Humbert), and the band has been fusing Appalachian folk with intelligent post-punk since 1992. The band signed to A&M in 1995 and released two albums for the label (1996’s Sackcloth & Ashes and 1998’s Low Estate). When A&M was taken over by Universal the band were let go, one imagines confused record company executives trying to figure out how to market a band that play traditional instruments (concertina, banjo, hurdy-gurdy, mandolin and upright bass) but who sound as intense as Joy Division or Nick Cave. Glitterhouse are soon to release a live album, Hoarse, that was recorded in Denver and Paris and features songs culled from the first two records together with three covers: Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Bad Moon Rising, Joy Division’s Day Of The Lords and The Gun Club’s Free Spirit. The album is nothing less then astonishing. I spoke to David Eugene Edwards and asked him about the live album and the band:

Hoarse:

“People were always asking for it, you know, pretty much since we started people were like 'Oh, ye should make a live record', and I don’t really care for live records, to tell you the truth so I had never really thought about it but people kept talking about it so we said OK and I haven’t really heard it ‘cause I can’t even listen to it. We were just making it available for the people who came to the shows, as something special, that only they could get there, but then they started selling it through the mailing list at Glitterhouse and it did well enough so now they’re releasing it everywhere.”

16 Horsepower's sound:

“I’m a modern person, I live in the world that we live in but at the same time I’m really drawn to things that are from the past. Pretty much as far back as I can go, especially with music – I’ve always had an interest in traditional music from all over the world, primarily Appalachian music was really important to me for a long time but at the same time I like heavy music as well so I think that the music we make is a mixture of the two. I can’t really put myself fully in to one or the other so I kind of mix them I guess.”

Cover versions:

“It’s just particular songs that I really like and it doesn’t make a difference to me where they come from and what type of music it is – if it’s a good song, then it’s a good song. We don’t play cover songs that often; it’s just something that we’ve recently started to do, for fun really. We just chose songs that have some meaning to us that we think we can do it some justice to as far as playing them.”

Self-producing Secret South:

“The first three records we did were on A&M records, and they (A&M) were pretty sceptical about having us produce the records ourselves, they let us chose whoever we wanted as far as the producer was concerned and that was great – I love to work with people, when I admire what they’ve done. But no matter who it is, the sound of your music is going to change and you just have to realise that before you go into it. You have to surrender it up in a way, but if you trust these people than it can be a really good experience. The first album was produced by Warren Bruleigh, who has worked with the Violent Femmes and Lou Reed. John Parrish produced the second record. We liked both of these people and we had a great time working with them but we really, really wanted to do it ourselves, to make sure that if we had any complaints, they were our fault and nobody else’s. We were pretty confident that we could do it and we were really happy with the outcome.”

Americana:

“In America there is a big resurgence in, whatever you want to call it – alternative country music and there is a lot of good music within that genre. I don’t really put our music in there, we have been associated with that in America, that’s pretty much where we get put – in the alternative country category – which is fine but I think there is a lot of really good music out there which is more roots-based, whether it’s country or gypsy-based or whatever. Irish and French music have been doing this forever – bringing traditional music into the more modern music. America has more of a separation between music. Word of mouth in Europe is a lot quicker and people travel a lot more between country to country so we end up doing so much better in Europe then America. We end up spending so much time over here, which is great. The only drawback is that I hate being away from home but at the same time I want to go where people want to hear what we have to play.”

Episode 336

2011-02-18T08:56:00.001Z

Songs To Learn And Sing - Episode 336

Strands - Chow Bell EP (2011)

This episode featured the Vision Air remix of Chow Bell by Strands. The original version of Chow Bell can be found on the Strands self-titled debut album released in October last year. Strands is the solo project of producer and Halfset member Stephen Shannon and the Chow Bell EP features some great remixes of one of the standout tracks from his album. Rod Tyler's video for Chow Bell is pretty fantastic.

This episode also featured two tracks from Richard Davies' 1997 album Telegraph. Davies was the creative force behind Australian band The Moles. Untune the Sky, their debut album from 1991 was reissued last year by Kill Shamem records and is a fantastic psychedelic pop/punk record. After The Moles disbanded Davies formed the short-lived Cardinal with Eric Matthews. We're often played tracks from their self-titled record on the show but for this episode we focus on Davies' solo masterpiece, 1997's Telegraph. This was one of the first albums I was given to review when I wrote for a magazine in Cork in the late 90s and it has remained a firm favourite of mine, I even used the opening bars of the album's first track, Cantina as an intro jingle for an Arts magazine show I presented on community radio in 1999. Cantina still sounds fantastic today. Richard Davies is now an Attorney-At-Law in Massachusetts.

Codeine are another favourite of ours here at Songs to Learn and Sing. Back in 1994 a flatmate bought White Birch, the band's second album and ever before we had heard the terms slowcore, sadcore or post-rock we knew there was something startingly original about this record. It remains a bleak, melancholic masterpiece and is an essential listen, a landmark 90s album.

Episode 336 - 17/02/2011

Playlist

Josh T. Pearson - Woman, When I've Raised Hell
Lift to Experience - When We Shall Touch
Lift to Experience - Falling From Cloud 9
British Sea Power - Living is so Easy
Halves - Darling, You'll Meet Your Maker
The Black Heart Procession - Silence (Mr. Tube Remix)
Vessels - Meatman, Piano Tuner, Prostitute (Rolo Tomassi Remix)
Codeine - Vacancy
John Stammers - Idle I'm
John Stammers - Hit You From Behind
The Godfathers - She Gives me Love
The Mountain Goats - Damn Those Vampires
Hotels - Lonely Islands
Seefeel - Rip-Run
Moon Wiring Club - The Victorian Butter Boat
Japan - Life Without Buildings
Colin Blunstone - Caroline Goodbye
Colin Blunstone - Say You Don't Mind
Richard Davies - Cantina
Richard Davies - Papillon
Richard Davies - Great Republic
Strands - Chow Bell (Vision Air Remix)
Dean & Britta - I'll Keep it With Mine (Scott hardkiss Remix)
Ladytron - Ghosts (Cassette Jam Remix)
Dum Dum Girls - Wrong Feels Right
Essie Jain - I'm Not Afraid of the Dark

From the Archives - Clayhill Interview

2011-02-13T10:18:00.003Z

Songs To Learn And Sing - Clayhill Interview

Clayhill - Acoustic (Eat Sleep Records, 2005)

A number of months ago I played The Dream Academy's version of Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want on the show but an even better version of the song can be found on Clayhill's 2005 Acoustic record. Clayhill's cover also plays over the final scene of Shane Meadows' This Is England.

Clayhill are a 3-piece folk band featuring Ali Friend, Ted Barnes and Gavin Clark. Ali had been in Red Snapper and also wrote and played with Ted on a number of Beth Orton albums before teaming up with former Sunhouse vocalist Gavin. The band's EP Cuban Green was released in early 2004 and was followed by Small Circle, the brilliant debut album in September of that year.

This interview with the band was first broadcast in September 2004 on Episode 2 of the programme. Clayhill were in Ireland doing a few gigs and had just come off stage having opened for Paddy Casey in Dublin's Olympia Theatre. "It's weird doing gigs like that when there's a lot of chatter going on, but we really enjoyed it, in some ways it makes you play better," admitted Gavin.

Shane Meadows had also directed a short film for the band and Gavin explained how the colaboration with the director came about; "Years ago we met at Alton Towers, when we were both working there, I worked in a chip van and he was a face painter and we started writing songs together but he went away to college and started making these really mad films, one thing lead to another and I started putting music to his short films. When we got this record together we thought it would be a really good thing if he could do a short film for us." The resulting 2005 film, Northern Soul was screened at a number of cinemas in the UK followed by a Clayhill performance.

The band would also contribute music to Meadows' Dead Man's Shoes and the aforementioned This is England. Afterlight from the soundtrack of Dead Man's Shoes is a demo of Alpha Male, the opening track on Small Circle.

Clayhill's second album, Mine at Last was released in 2006 and currently they seem to be on a hiatus with the band members working on other musical projects. Gavin has contributed vocals to a number of UNKLE tracks and with Ted has also continued to collborate with Meadows, writing music for his 2008 feature Somers Town.