The Cedar Lounge Revolution

This Weekend I’ll Mostly be Listening to… the NME, Department of Enjoyment, 1984 May 11, 2013

Here’s a compilation from 1984/5 which I first heard being played by alastair – once of this parish. A man with eclectic tastes, and there’s no question that this compilation catered to precisely that eclecticism. It’s a sort of run through of mid-1980s groups. The Smiths – a live version of Girl Afraid, The Moodists. There’s Husker Du’s ‘Real World’ – which I kind of think is their finest moment bar none and almost the platonic ideal of where hardcore met other. There’s the Waterboy’s, back when they/he was brilliant, with an excellent version of ‘A Pagan Place’, The Prisoners, Orange Juice. Lloyd Cole and the Commotions, The Cocteau Twins, Billy Bragg, Wah, The Art of Noise ( a revelatory nod to the future ), Nick Cave, Dr. John, Wynton Marsalis, and on it goes. There are, of course, others who glitter somewhat less illustriously at this remove. Who were Time Zone? And what of the Boothill Foot Tappers? Who mourns for them?

The selection is excellent, though they have that murky cassette tape sound which seemed to be perfectly formed for the murky guitar production of the mid-1980s – I’m looking at you David Gedge. Probably not a surprise three decades later.

This was one of a series of same from the NME that stretched across the decade in one form or another and collectively they build up into a picture of both the styles of the times but also – and this is I think crucial – the way in which music companies attempted to shape tastes (though in a way that’s been covered in a previous TWIMBLT).

And tastes these compilations shaped. There’s been a previous post long long ago which dealt with compilations, but more the ones issued by record companies themselves – for yes, at that time they were mostly ‘record’ companies. Pillows and Prayers is an obvious example, as is the less well known Creation sampler from 1988. And Creation had a fair few such samplers.

But sticking with tapes, music magazines like Vox magazine, now long since gone – and others as well. Where else would I have heard the Field Mice? Or Megadeth’s Hanger 18? NME itself, Sounds before it (I think I still have some of their vinyl flexidisks with Voivod, McCarthy and others on them). Melody Maker.

I do wonder though did they lose their utility when there was the transition to digital downloads. Suddenly it was easier to get music without purchasing the magazines as increasingly groups themselves started to upload samples for people. It was farewell the middle mag. And YouTube, obviously, was part of a further shift, where music became much more accessible. That said even today you’ll still find CD’s on the front cover of many music magazines.

I used to have boxes of the cassette tapes from the late 1980s when I started buying the Melody Maker and later NME on a regular basis, up to the arrival of CDs. Sadly in a fit of madness (and pop-cultural vandalism) in the early 2000s I got rid of the cassettes – thinking that there’d be no way to digitise them. More fool me, I see now that there are cassette to MP3 players for next to nothing. Ah well, never again to hear that Melody Maker Romo compilation from the 1990s. And although there’s something of an home industry ripping these comps and posting them up online that one hasn’t turned up. My loss, I guess.

Any other great compilations from music magazines or fanzines that have stuck with people?

Cocteau Twins: Millimillenary

Waterboys: A Pagan Place

Orange Juice: A Place in My Heart

Nick Cave: I Put a Spell on You

The Prisoners: Reaching My Head

Husker Du: Real World

The Smiths: Girl Afraid

The Art of Noise: BeatBox (Diversion One)

The Moodists: Some Kind of Jones

This Weekend I’m Mostly Listening to… Twelve Tracks + 1 and a bonus track too… April 27, 2013

Nothing particularly special about the selection or order of these, just tracks I’ve heard (or listened to again) over the last while or so that I liked. A bit of a retrospective aspect to them because I transferred a lot of old CDs into iTunes.

Oneohtrix Point Never – Describing Bodies

Monotonal keyboard. Shoegaze by way of synth. Nothing so crass as beats on this track. From a couple of years back and an excellent album.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – Finishing Jubilee Street

As noted previously I’m not one to worship at the shrine of all things Cave. Last album of his I really enjoyed was The Good Son, but this on the Bad Seeds album released two months ago is excellent. And the album is impressive. BTW, Barry Adamson plays bass on this and one other track – his first appearance with them since Your Funeral, My Trial which I tend to think is the best Nick Cave album in any of his incarnations.

Steve Kilbey – Pitstop

This is entirely atypical of the rest of the tracks on Kilbey’s most recent solo album. But there’s something about it’s hippyish inflections…

Sonic Boom – Rock and Roll is Killing my life…

A cover of the Suicide track by Mr. Boom, late of Spacemen 3 and now better known as Spectrum, from around 1990 IIRC. I like it. It strips down the original even further and yet throws in more Rock and Roll elements. That keyboard/organ line sounds just a bit rubbish and yet simultaneously perfect for the version.

And here, as a bonus, is Suicide’s original

Nash the Slash – Dead Man’s Curve

In a similar vein to Boom from 1980/81 was a song I loved at the time, and kind of still do – a reworking of the old Jan and Dean classic from Nash the Slash who made his career by playing electric violin swathed in bandages. A dirty job but someone had to do it.

Icona Pop (feat Charli XCX) - I Love It

So out of touch am I these days, bar unfortunately getting a first hand example of a developing One Direction fan, etc, that I first heard this on Need For Speed – Most Wanted shortly after it had been released. Always liked disposable pop and it doesn’t come much more disposable than this (nothing else that they do comes close to this), released last Summer, co-written by Charli XCX – go to woman for such matters, loved on Pitchfork etc, big hit, title track for tv show of dubious merit (for which read none at all), and now that it’s summer once more worth listening to all over again.

Eddie Gale – Black Rhythm Happening

This and the album it is from is so good that it easily deserves a This Weekend all it’s own. 1969 or so, free jazz meets soul meets gospel. The guitar is particularly good.

And a bit more from Blue Note, from a year or so later. Brazilian bossa nova, soul, pop for those days when one goes on a trip transamazonica.

Antonio Adolfo & A Brazuca – Transamazonica

Bob Mould - Star Machine

More partial to the electronica/dance inflected material he has put out in recent years, but this from his latest album brings back happy memories of Sugar. It’s quite some knack he has of apparently almost effortlessly producing one great song after another.

Function - Inter

Function (aka David Sumner), one of those centrally involved in the Sandwell District collective (now sadly defunct, and something that will be dealt with in an upcoming This Weekend…), along with such luminaries as Silent Servant and Regis. This is fantastic. From his (first!) album Incubation released earlier this year – though this track appeared last year on EP. A sort of reworking/updating of Aphex Twin to good effect.

Amon Duul II – Archangels Thunderbird.

Question: Hawkwind and Amon Duul II (well really Amon Duul I but whatever)… which came first? Best not to ask, perhaps. This is from Yeti from 1970 and very fine it is too. Who could not but love this attempt to meld proto-prog/pop/psychedelia (is that the ghost of Louie Louie in the riff that underpins the track) and rock? Who indeed?

The Doors – Verdilec

This is a bit of a curiosity, from a post-Jim Morrison album put out by the Doors, one of two IIRC. Variable quality overall, the loss of his voice was in no way made up for by the contribution of the others stepping up to the plate and microphone. But… some interesting stuff on it including this fusion of pretty much everything they had to hand at the time. I can understand that some would find it deeply irritating but I kind of like the mix of silliness and instrumental competence.

Casino Royale Theme

Just cos… though this 60s thing is beginning to worry me. I usually find Bacharach a bit too…well… depressing. But this, it’s that bassline/keyboard thing I think.

This weekend I’ll also be listening to… songs about Thatcher and Thatcherism April 13, 2013

There are many, so feel free to add to them as you see fit. I’ll start off with some obvious ones, Robert Wyatt’s version of Elvis Costello’s Shipbuilding which is still at this remove a stunning piece of work, and with it the pretty great Heaven 17 and Fascist Groove Thing, and by the way Heaven 17 were a remarkably political group too and one deeply antagonistic to Thatcherism. Also fans of Tony Benn.

This Weekend I’ll Mostly Be Listening to… Fatima Mansions, Against Nature and more. April 13, 2013

Cathal Coughlan’s output from 1989 is a perfect artefact for the week that Thatcher shuffled of this mortal coil (coincidentally I’d had this post ready for a couple of weeks and ready to roll in this slot today).

Always loved Microdisney and when they split it was heartening to see that Coughlan was quick to return in the guise of the Fatima Mansions. I’m tempted to suggest that that name alone was perhaps the best of any Irish group. In anyone else’s hands it would have been glib and condescending, but with Coughlan it was just right. First album Against Nature was a blast of modulated power. Toned down were the countryish stylings that Sean O’Hagan had brought to the feast and instead here was something that threw a raft of different instruments into the mix including synths. But that voice, an instrument in itself, hardly changed, still oscillating between an howl of cynical rage and a more measured, sometimes melodic, but no less excoriating tone.

Add to that the sheer range of approaches. Only Losers Take the Bus with a propulsive synth beat underpinning it and pushed along by harpsichord and snarling guitars with vocals that were political, explicitly so. 13th Century Boy musically appeared to be an homage, of sorts, to the Pet Shop Boys. The Day I Lost Everything with a chorus that could have comfortably sat on any of the Microdisney albums, but the verses? Not so much. You Won’t Get Me Home also had that tinge of Microdisney with a fantastic verse which the chorus matched perfectly. But something was different, something was more insistent and urgent and the lyrics were more weary and in a sense downright nasty.

Valley of Dead Cars, a speedy albeit to my ears overly soft precursor to much that would come afterwards. Big Madness – Monday Club Carol returning to a more reflective pace with a genuinely lovely keyboard arrangement. Note the political content of the lyrics. And so on with all eight tracks this curious balance between suppressed power and melody.

But it was the former which would be emphasised on the superb Blues for Ceaucescu, namechecked earlier this week, a raging track released initially as an single/EP which revelled in Coughlan’s more – er – metallic/punk side. Again this was political, but the message was closer to home than some might think on first inspection. As he sang… “Meanwhile in London things stay the same – the untenable must be maintained”. Six minutes, powered along by a massive riff and lyrics that meant a damn sight more than most, building to a crescendo of feedback and drums before starting again and then stopping.

Though I listened to the subsequent albums I’ve rarely returned to them as frequently as I do to this. Without question there are great tracks on them but they never held together for me as well as these. And that’s not to dismiss the albums, but this selection of songs and records – for records they were – seemed to present the purest distillation of his output. Perhaps their strength was precisely In a way they were transitional offerings, shifting from one stage to another, and in doing so encompassing that broad range of approaches mentioned above.

13th Century Boy

Only Losers Take the Bus

You Won’t Get Me Home

The Day I Lost Everything

Big Madness Monday Club Carol

Blues For Ceauşescu