Update

Regular readers will have noticed that posts have become increasingly infrequent over the past couple of months. The main reason for this is that I have been working night shifts for the past month, and have had a lot less time to listen to new music, let alone write about it.

This has made me wonder whether I actually still have the enthusiasm to keep the blog going. With my epic singles project now done (there was no way I was going to abandon that before it finished), the way ahead is clear for a rethink about what direction to take things.

It’s more than just the blog. With a record collection of more than 4000 albums, there’s such a lot of stuff that I haven’t listened to for years, and equally loads that I will probably not listen to for years to come – if, indeed, ever. And yet 90% of what I play is new stuff, either with a view to review it or because it’s at the front of my mind, so to speak. So do I embark on a voyage of rediscovery of what I’ve got, or continue to listen to as much new stuff as I can, or try to strike a better balance than I am currently doing?

What I haven’t lost is my enthusiasm for music in general, and hearing brilliant new stuff in particular. And when you hear brilliant new stuff, you tend to want to share that with people. But I feel that things have become too structured – trying to write 200 word plus reviews on everything and trying to keep things in a framework. I need to be looser, and not be afraid to sum up things in a sentence, and equally not get into a rut of writing reviews as if they were for a published magazine. They’re not, and this is a hobby, and not a portfolio for a job application!

So from now, expect a less structured blog, but hopefully a more frequently updated one and perhaps a more inspired one.

A Few Forthcoming Releases June 2010

June 7th

• A CERTAIN RATIO – Mind Made Up (LTM)
• ASTRAL SOCIAL CLUB – Happy Horse (Happy Prince)
• BORIS – Soundtrack from film Mabuta No Ura (Essence Music)
• BRENDAN PERRY – Ark (Cooking Vinyl)
• HARVEY MILK – A Small Turn of Human Kindness (Hydrahead)
• ISAN – Glow In The Dark Safari Set (Morr Music)
• JUAN ATKINS – 20 Years of Metroplex (Tresor)
• LITTLE AXE – Bought for a Dollar Sold for a Dime (Real World)
• MELVINS – The Bride Screamed Murder (Ipecac)
• MERZBOW – Camouflage (Essence Music)
• PAN SONIC – Gravitoni (Blast First Petite)
• SCION – Arrange and Process Basic Channel Tracks (Tresor)
• SHACKLETON – 3 Eps (Perlon)
• WOLFGANG VOIGT – Freiland Klaviermusik (Profan)

June 14th

• CHEMICAL BROTHERS – Further (Freestyle Dust)
• CLOGS – The Creatures in the Garden of Lady Walton (Brassland)
• JOHN ZORN – The Goddess: Music for the Ancient Of Days (Tzadik)

June 21st

• JOHN FOXX & LOUIS GORDON – Neuro Video (Metamatic)
• PHIL OCHS – On My Way: The 1963 Demo Sesions (Micro Werks)
• RED SPAROWES – Fear Is Excruciating,But Therein Lies The Answer (Sargent House)
• WINDSOR FOR THE DERBY – Against Love (Secretly Canadian)
• WOVENHAND – Threshing Floor (Sounds Familyre)

June 28th

• HAFDIS HULD – Sychronised Swimmers (Red Grape)
• LAURIE ANDERSON – Homeland (Nonesuch)

July 5th

• GYÖRGY LIGETI – Works (Sony)
• MATMOS – Treasure State (Cantaloupe)

July 12th

• DANGER MOUSE & SPARKLEHORSE – Dark Night of the Soul (Parlophone)
• ELIZA CARTHY – Gift (Topic)
• TERROR DANJAH – Power Grid (Planet Mu)

July 19th

• ORIOL – Night and Day (Planet Mu)

August 2nd

• ARCADE FIRE – The Suburbs (Mercury)

August 9th

• PVT – Church With No Magic (Warp)

The M M & M 1000 – part 64

Here’s the final batch of Music Musings and Miscellany’s unapologetically subjective selection of the twentieth century’s best 1000 singles.

CANDI STATON – Young Hearts Run Free / I Know (Warner 1976)
Looking back at their careers, I would hazard a guess that most of the great soul singers would probably look at their disco period and cringe a bit. You can count on the fingers of one hand how many of the best disco singles were made by established soul stars. Young Hearts Run Free is a glorious exception to that rule, a tale of ‘don’t do what I did’ that sounds euphoric rather than full of regret. Soulful and cheese-free.

BOB & MARCIA – Young, Gifted and Black / version (Harry J 1970)
It was common practice in the late sixties and early seventies in Jamaica to take the latest hot new soul and R&B tunes and cover them in a reggae style. Very occasionally, the cover struck a chord more neatly than the original. That was the case with Bob Andy and Marcia Griffiths’ Harry Johnson produced version of the Nina Simone anthem, certainly in the UK. Possibly because it sounds purely celebratory and untinged with the weight of history, or perhaps because it just fits with the island rhythms.

CLOVERS – Your Cash Ain’t Nothin’ But Trash / I’ve Got My Eyes On You (Atlantic 1954)
A funny song about the come-uppance of a blameless fellow who thinks he’s going to enjoy his new roll. Wrong. Even the mugger sees him as pitiful. It sounds like classic Lieber & Stoller, but in fact was written by Atlantic veteran, the multi-talented Jesse Stone. The Clovers saw themselves primarily as a ballad group, but with one or two exceptions, it’s their uptempo and humorous numbers that still resonate more than half a century later.

KRISTIN HERSH – Your Ghost / The Key / Uncle June And Aunt Kiyoti / When The Levee Breaks (4AD 1994)
I think Hips and Makers is a neglected masterpiece, every bit as good as any Throwing Muses album (bar the first). With Michael Stipe aboard (and remember, REM were just about the biggest band on the planet in 1994), this was definitely a calculated push towards the mainstream. It didn’t quite happen. Stellar guest aside, it’s simply a great song.

LOVE – Your Mind and We Belong Together / Laughing Stock (Elektra 1968)
Forever Changes bombed in the US when it came out. It didn’t in Blighty, but even so, it’s one of those weird quirks of history that a record so venerated down the years was a commercial failure on its release. The band were falling apart, and by the time Four Sail came out in 1969, Arthur Lee had gotten rid of the lot of them. This 45 was a last hurrah by the classic line-up, and although it’s probably owned by hundreds of thousands of people in the form of bonus cuts on their CD copies of Forever Changes, it’s still obscure. But they’re great songs – a little ragged, perhaps, but certainly deserving more than postscript status.

THIRTEENTH FLOOR ELEVATORS – You’re Gonna Miss Me / Tried To Hide (International Artists 1966)
That weird burbling noise is the electric jug, a sound pretty much unique to history’s greatest acid-drenched garage band. Lysergic punk of the highest order.

ESG – You’re No Good / UFO / Moody (Factory 1981)
These three songs originally comprised the first side of ESG’s debut mini LP for 99 Records. Factory took them, and put them out as a seven inch in the UK. Sparse and airy, and dominated by Leroy Glover’s walking bass line, the Scroggins sisters sounded like nothing else around before or since. Absolutely hypnotic music. I saw them nearly a quarter of a century on at ATP, and live they were just incredible.

JAMES CARR – You’ve Got My Mind Messed Up / That’s What I Want To Know (Goldwax 1966)
An apt title for a singer who struggled with severe depression all his life. When it comes to the southern soul ballad, nobody can touch Carr – not even Otis. He should have been a huge star, but it never really happened for him, partly because of his mental health problems.

RIGHTEOUS BROTHERS – You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’ / There’s a Woman (Philles 1964)
I’m not a huge fan of Spector’s Wall of Sound productions. Granted they were tailored for AM radio, but too often they sound like they were recorded at the bottom of a well. This one works, though. Serious melodrama on an epic scale. The birth of the power ballad?

MIRACLES – You’ve Really Got a Hold On Me / Happy Landing (Tamla 1962)
Nearly ten per cent of this list is accounted for by the Motown group of labels, so it’s fitting to end with one of the songs that really put them on the map.

And that, my friends, is that. This list started in October 2008, and the whys, whats and wherefores were all dealt with here. I hope that I’ve inspired a few people to dig out old tunes they’d forgotten, or to seek out stuff they’d not heard.

My disclaimer at the beginning of each part that it’s a purely subjective list is important. Nobody’s trying to be definitive here. And if I did it again, I’m sure there’d be plenty of changes. No Beatles – well that probably seems absurd to most people. I’m not being deliberately iconoclastic. I just don’t like any of their singles as much as I like these ones. If Tomorrow Never Knows, Within You Without You, Helter Skelter or A Day in the Life had been 45s, they’d have been in – no question.

A few stats. My favourite year appears to be 1966 with 55 entries. By decade, they break down as follows:

1900s – 0
1910s – 1
1920s – 25
1930s – 12
1940s – 23
1950s – 81
1960s – 274
1970s – 222
1980s – 218
1990s – 144

Top act is the Temptations with 11.

Finally, the honoury 1001st 45 goes to Limmie & the Family Cooking’s You Can Do Magic (Avco 1973). A breezy pop soul tune, and the first single I ever bought.

The M M & M 1000 – part 63

Here’s the penultimate batch of Music Musings and Miscellany’s unapologetically subjective selection of the twentieth century’s best 1000 singles.

COASTERS – Yakety Yak / Zing Went the Strings of My Heart (Atco 1958)
Teenage rebellion and the generation gap were big themes in the fifties. Sure, the young had always rebelled – the jazz age flappers, the bright young things, the zoot suiters and the like. But this was the first generation where there was a clear divide between the young and their parents across the whole class and race spectrum. Lieber and Stoller, as usual, took a humorous look at the issue with the put upon teen getting the usual grief that anyone who’s been fifteen can identify with. King Curtis’s saxophone work is a sublime mix of comedy and jazz-chops.

MARVIN GAYE – You / Change What You Can (Tamla 1968)
STEVIE WONDER – You Are The Sunshine of My Life / Tuesday Heartbreak (Tamla 1973)
MARY WELLS – You Beat Me to the Punch / Old Love (Motown 1962)
SUPREMES – You Keep Me Hanging On / Remove This Doubt (Motown 1966)
A quartet of classic Motown. You sees Marvin Gaye in rare uptempo mode with a pleading vocal performance that has echoes of Levi Stubbs. Back in the early seventies when Stevie Wonder was at his creative zenith, he could pitch warm, celebratory love songs without coming over all sentimental and cloying. Mary Wells, Motown’s first superstar, is seemingly only remembered in the mainstream for My Guy, but there was so much more to her than that. You Beat Me to the Punch is one of those lyrically clever Smokey Robinson compositions that you just know was built from title downwards. My favourite of the four, You Keep Me Hanging On has a brilliant morse code single chord that almost physically holds the song up before the rush to the chorus, adding real drama to the piece. I could have opted for Vanilla Fudge’s sublime cover, too. It’s a sludge tempoed prog beast that builds the song up to some kind of sub-apocalyptic epic.

ARTHUR ALEXANDER – You Better Move On / A Shot of Rhythm & Blues (Dot 1962)
WILLIAM BELL – You Don’t Miss Your Water / Formula of Love (Stax 1962)
It could be argued (too mealy mouthed? – OK, I would argue) that 1962 was a pivotal year for soul music, when it fully emerged from its rhythm and blues roots as a new and completely separate genre. These two songs have become soul staples over the years. Arthur Alexander is a neglected figure these days, best known for two songs, Anna (covered by the Beatles) and this one (covered by the Stones), that epitomised the way that the new generation of British groups were drawing not just from the blues, but from a new generation of African American music. William Bell’s You Don’t Miss Your Water is the foundation stone of country soul, with Booker T Jones’ churchy organ underpinning a ballad full of regret.

THE SOURCE FEATURING CANDI STATON – You Got the Love / mixes (Truelove 1991)
You can judge the impact of a dance track by the number of times it’s been reissued and remixed. This has been out in various forms any number of times in the last twenty years. The recipe is simplicity itself. Take an acapella version of an eighties Gospel tune sung by the inimitable Candi Staton. Take an instrumental mix of a Jamie Principle / Frankie Knuckles house tune (Your Love). Mix thoroughly and allow to settle. The result is a timeless upbeat anthem that has survived countless remixes and remakes (Joss Stone anyone? Thought not).

MY BLOODY VALENTINE – You Made Me Realise / Slow (Creation 1988)
More infamous now for the mid section full on noise burst (known as the holocaust in MBV circles) than for the song itself which has become merely a vehicle for the centrepiece. Without it, though, it would still stand up as a rare uptempo tune by the band that still has the melody and muffled mystery intact.

NANCY SINATRA – You Only Live Twice / Jackson (Reprise 1967)
If Robbie Williams deserves our hatred for just one thing, it’s his lifting of the classic string intro of You Only Live Twice and basing his own pisspoor song around it, leaving it the only memorable bit. Nancy S had a decent song to go with it, and a great, dramatic one too.

KINKS – You Really Got Me / It’s Alright (Pye 1964)
Punk rock year zero? Maybe. Heavy metal year zero? Maybe? One of the most exciting and influential tunes of the twentieth century? Without a doubt. Everything about is perfect. The riff, Dave Davies’s ripped speaker cone fuzztone, brother Ray’s snotty vocal delivery and the boldly basic tune.

SAM COOKE – You Send Me / Summertime (Keen 1957)
Cooke’s first hit, post Soul Stirrers, and a song that effortlessly fused rock, doowop and R&B styles into something smooth and new. Listen to this and then listen to the Miracles and the Impressions to see how influential it was.

JESUS & MARY CHAIN – You Trip Me Up / Just Out of Reach (Blanco Y Negro 1985)
OK, here’s something to ponder. Who in rock music history has produced the best treble of opening singles?. Elvis? That’s Alright and Mystery Train are a given but the third one – I couldn’t say what it was without looking it up. Chuck Berry? Again, brilliant first two (Maybellene and Thirty Days) but a relatively anonymous third. The Pistols? Definitely up there, as are the Clash (but only if you discount CBS’s bizarre and disowned decision to release Remote Control as a 45). The Smiths and Frankie Goes to Hollywood – definite contenders. For me, though, Upside Down, Never Understand and You Trip Me Up are the unbeatable trio. Raw energy, screeching feedback and underplayed but memorable melodies are the cornerstones of all three. As a unit – immense.

Album: INTERNATIONAL HYPER RYTHMIQUE – Uncity Nation (Ocean Music 2010)

“You’ve got dead ears, mate”. OK Russell Crowe is a bit of a tit, but what a great line (said to Mark Lawson during a BBC interview, as you no doubt know). Mine aren’t dead, but are feeling somewhat tired. A lot of the stuff I’ve been going through in my ‘to review’ pile has been, well, meh! 30 seconds in and you just want to fast forward to the next tune. You feel like you’ve suddenly got the attention span of a goldfish, but the reality is that the music simply doesn’t hold the attention. It’s just mediocre – nothing particularly bad about it, but pretty much forgotten within seconds.

International Hyper Rythmique’s debut album Uncity Nation isn’t perfect, but my trigger finger stayed off the FF button. The band are a Toulouse based sibling trio of Claire, Jean and Laurence Martial-Guilhem who deal in a kind of chilled experimental pop. Laurence (that’s a girl Laurence not a boy Laurence) has an engaging, if not necessarilly distinctive, voice and sings in English. The eleven tracks range from the ethereally floaty opener to more standard indie-pop fare, but maintain a cool charm throughout. There are a few songs that pass by shyly avoiding attention, but there are enough standouts to make the album worthwhile.

Curiously, there are two instrumentals in the centre of the record that both grab the spotlight more than many of the songs around them. City Nation is a beautiful piano / bass / field recording piece that has an airy feel of a city waking up to a new day. It’s followed by the Richard Brautigan inspired The Smallest Snowstorm, a bright and breezy guitar-led piece. Of the songs, it’s the first two and final two that shine. Fucked Up has a kind of polite anger about it that you’d have thought was a more English trait than a French one. My Love ends with the words take my hand and jump through the window. Now that’s a terrific parting shot.

Tracks
1 Monday 7.24 3:58
2 Carry Out 4:51
3 Les Yeux de Juin 2:19
4 Folka 2:48
5 Monday Morning 2:21
6 City Nation 3:15
7 La Plus PetiteTempête de Neige 3:26
8 Six AM 3:04
9 Grand Whiskey 2:50
10 Fucked Up 2:52
11 My Love 3:44

Websites
ocean-music.com
www.myspace.com/internationalhyperrythmique

The M M & M 1000 – part 62

Here’s the latest batch of Music Musings and Miscellany’s unapologetically subjective selection of the twentieth century’s best 1000 singles. The last of the Ws

TRIFFIDS – Wide Open Road / Time of Weakness (Hot 1986)
Being the most geographically isolated city in the world, there are a lot of wide open roads heading out of Perth in Western Australia, hometown of the Triffids. The nearest major city, Adelaide is 2100km away. That’s not far short of the distance between London and Athens (or New York and Houston). Driving such a distance gives you a hell of a long time for reflection, and this song captures that perfectly.

JOE VENUTI & EDDIE LANG – Wild Cat / Sunshine (Okeh 1927)
Before Grappelli and Reinhardt there was Venuti and Lang, two Italian-Americans who made the violin and guitar jazz instruments. Their best work together was as a duo. In the pre-amplification days, both instruments struggled to make themselves heard over horns and drums, so they work best without those distractions. Wild Cat is dynamite – frightening fast exremely hard to play. It sits somewhere between an old time country hoedown, hot jazz and show-off virtuosity of the Paganini kind.

TROGGS – Wild Thing / From Home (Fontana 1966)
The song’s ridiculous. The riff is mega. Hendrix concentrated on the latter, the Goodies on the former on covers that were both true to the original in their own way. British garage rock at its finest.

CARTER FAMILY – Wildwood Flower / Forsaken Love (Victor 1928)
One of the best loved Carter Family songs, and with good reason. I think its Sara who sings lead with a heavily accented but beautiful tone, but it’s Maybelle’s guitar that steals the show. It was credited as an AP song, but it’s really an arrangement of something much older. More than 80 years on, it sounds absolutely fresh.

SHIRELLES – Will You Love Me Tomorrow? / Boys (Scepter 1960)
Teen girl songs of fifty years ago tended to disguise the pubescent hormonal rush in something sickly sweet. Think Born Too Late or 16 Candles. Carole King took the formula and gave it some much needed grit, although she was obviously bound by the strict censorship and conventions of the day. On the surface, Will You Love Me Tomorrow? is a classic teen weepie that sticks to the template. But the underlying message of teenage sex (gasp) and the real fears of a girl worrying whether she lost her virginity in a one night stand or if the boy was serious about her is much more realistic, caged as it had to be by a heavy disguise.

SABRES OF PARADISE – Wilmot / mixes (Warp 1994)
A looped horn sample paired with a stuttering dub beat, this Sabres’ tune has a slightly nightmarish quality about it, like some hallucinogenic voodoo.

JIMI HENDRIX EXPERIENCE – The Wind Cries Mary / Highway Chile (Track 1967)
A kind of psychedelic blues ballad that’s slightly disorientating. A world away from the heavy blues of Hey Joe or the trip-rock of Purple Haze. But just as great.

APHEX TWIN – Windowlicker / Formula / Nannou (Warp 1999)
The video was so outrageous and unforgettable, that the actual track was almost relegated to its soundtrack. A cheeky demolition of the clichéd hip hop video with the bootylicious babes turning into scary RJD-a-likes. The tune also warps convention, twisting Timbaland type beats and plastic R&B keyboards into something monstrous. A total mind-fuck on every level.

BOMB THE BASS – Winter In July / mixes (Rhythm King 1991)
Unfairly derided as the poor man’s Coldcut, whizzkid Tim Simenon made some startlingly good tracks. Winter In July is a ballad that would sit quite comfortably on Blue Lines and predated the trip hop clone army of the likes of Morcheeba, Sneaker Pimps, Mono (not the Japanese band) by some time. Singer Loretta Heywood is still active, but has never really made it beyond being guest vocalist on other folk’s records. It’s a shame, because she has a great voice.

SAM COOKE – Wonderful World / Along the Navajo Trail (Keen 1960)
Pop-soul at its finest

WHO – Won’t Get Fooled Again / I Don’t Even Know Myself (Track 1971)
WAR – The World Is a Ghetto / Four Cornered Room (United Artists 1972)
Neither of these songs are best represented by their single edits, especially Won’t Get Fooled Again which was cruelly butchered to sit on the side of a 45. The World Is a Ghetto, too, works much better when its full ten minutes are allowed to slowly unfurl.

KATE BUSH – Wow / Fullhouse (EMI 1979)
Wow is like a stage musical about the life of an ageing, failing actor crammed into three minutes. Magnificently dramatic.

Two to go!