Just dug this one out #31: Out of the Blue by Electric Light Orchestra

Posted on September 2nd, 2009 by Andy

Picture nicked from The Lost Planet

Of all the albums I owned in the days before Motorhead, Out of the Blue was certainly the one that had the longest lasting affect on me. If you asked me to name any albums from before my heavy metal Damascus (In late 1979) I’m sure I could name very few. And I suspect that the only one that was a real album, as opposed to compilations, was the Electric Light Orchestra’s finest hour.

I spent too much of last night lying awake with Mr Blue Sky swimming around my head and so decided that today was the day I should reacquaint myself with Out of the Blue, I wanted to hold the album with its colourful gatefold sleeve and its gorgeous blue vinyl (and the space station cut-out I’d forgotten about). Sadly holding it was out of the question, I’d guess it’s getting tatty and dusty in my dad’s shed with too much of my past.

So the next best thing to holding and stroking and smelling was to give it a listen. So I headed over to we7 and settled in for a morning wallowing in the lush and layerd (and over-lush and over-layered) album of my past. I enjoyed it much more than I expected to. With metal came a dismissal of all that went before, and ELO where probably the most thoroughly shut out. I would suggest that I haven’t heard the whole of OotB since I first heard Overkill.

I’ll not leave it so long again.

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My top 6… punk tracks

Posted on August 26th, 2009 by Andy

This list was inspired by my finding the “Best Punk Album In The World… Ever” in my collection. Given that only two of these six songs are on that compilation I think we have to assume that the title is misleading (and given that The Motors and the fucking Tubes are on it!!). Punk, for the sake of this list, is going by a fairly narrow definition – music made in the late 70s and early 80s by young scruffy people with guitars.

I was never a punk, I liked punk music and owned Clash and Damned albums and a fair few punk singles, but I was a headbanger (which is probably why the punk bands I generally liked were very much on the rock side of punk rock – see my previous ascii illustration).

But for all my denim and leather and loud music and lusciously thick and greasy hair (swoon) I still loved pop music. Top of The Pops was still regularly viewed right into the mid 80s and I still bought singles in Boots and Smiths which is where a couple of these tracks stem from.

There is no Clash or Damned or Buzzcocks because none of them made songs that I love as much as these (except maybe The Buzzcocks who came very close to being on this list and would definitely be here if it was a Top 7).

• The Members – The Sound of the Suburbs
  I have enduring memories of The Members performing Sound of the Suburbs on Top of The Pops (although it wasn’t this performance so they must have been on twice – or it was on a different TV show). They looked so ordinary. Sound of the Suburbs is like a punk version of one of my other favourite songs, Pleasant Valley Sunday.
• The Rezillos – Top of the Pops
  I love Faye’s voice, I love the anti-corporate lyrics and the gorgeous irony of their ToTP appearance (and the major label that it was released on), and I love just how it makes me feel.
• Fatal Microbes – Violence Grows
  I suspect there’s a whole swathe of people who have John Peel to thank for their love of Violence Grows, I’m one of them. Honey Bane’s delivery is perfect. I also remember Peel playing it years later as a comparison with Wipe it Away by Bleach. Didn’t Boy George write about his love of this song in Take it Like a Man?
• The Slits – Typical Girls
  I’m pretty certain that I came late to Typical Girls (and The Slits), I do own a 7″ somewhere but bought it at a record fair years afterwards. I di remember a school friend lending me Cut (I guess I probably had to smuggle it into the house) and I had a tape of it around but probably never listened as much as I should have.
• The Newtown Neurotics – Blitzkrieg Bop
  I saw The Newtown Neurotics a couple of times in the mid 80s. This is obviously a cover of The Ramones track but has a wonderful anti-war lyric and one of my favourite song endings ever… “and we’ve gone”
• Television Personalities – Part Time Punks
  Part Time Punks was all I knew of the Television Personalities until quite recently. I can’t remember how or when I became aware of this song and it wasn’t until the TVPs back-catalogue arrived on eMusic that I discovered that they were much more than just this one track.

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The Eagle has landed

Posted on July 20th, 2009 by Andy

Adam and I have been fascinated by the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission to the moon. I have vague memories of watching it first time around – although those memories could easily have been of later missions. We’ve spent a lot of time listening to the “as live” broadcasts played on the We Choose the Moon website (although some “as live” telly would have been nicer). An hour or so (+40 years) back the Eagle landed in the Sea of Tranquility… I was thrilled!

Over the last few days I’ve been randomly using Blip.fm (and The Hype Machine) to post vaguely related songs to Twitter… for no one’s enjoyment of my own and for the same reason I’ll repost here. I was going to create a Spotify playlist but it failed at the first hurdle (ballboy) so I shan’t bother…

• 1:39 PM Jul 16th: Getting ready for the moon launch by listening to the few space related songs I have – Essential Wear for Future Trips to Space by ballboy ♫ http://blip.fm/~a11ub
• 4:12 PM Jul 16th: Two hours to launch ~ psycho helmets on ~ Silver Rocket by Sonic Youth ♫ http://blip.fm/~a15of
• 4:47 PM Jul 16th: Just over an hour to launch – time to load up the Spacemen 3 (sorry!) #apollo11 ♫ http://blip.fm/~a16tp
• 5:31 PM Jul 16th: 30 minutes to launch ~ Space is Deep by Hawkwind #apollo11 ♫ http://blip.fm/~a18fv
• 6:08 PM Jul 16th: Off into outer-space you go my friends, we wish you bon voyage. #apollo11 ~ Galaxie 500 – Moonshot ♫ http://blip.fm/~a1a6k
• 6:33 PM Jul 16th: Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space #apollo11 ♫ http://blip.fm/~a1bik
• about 10 hours ago from Blip.fm: “Just to be in space would be the important thing” ~ ballboy – A Day in Space #apollo11 ♫ http://blip.fm/~a9r38
• about 9 hours ago: “It’s time to fly… into life’s mystery” Jonathan Richman http://hypem.com/track/577181 #apollo11 #hypem
• about 7 hours ago: The colours of the moon #1 – Pink – Nick Drake – #apollo11 ♫ http://blip.fm/~a9xl1
• about 7 hours ago: The colours of the moon #[2] – Blue – Big Star – #apollo11 ♫ http://blip.fm/~a9xoj
• about 7 hours ago: The colours of the moon #3 – Red (and Low) – Belly – #apollo11 ♫ http://blip.fm/~a9xuv
• about 7 hours ago: “It’s time to go somewhere we’ve never seen” - Luna’s cover of Jojo’s Fly Into the Mystery http://bit.ly/RX7TB #apollo11
• about 6 hours ago: The colours of the moon #4 – White (and Trash) - Kristin Hersh – #apollo11 ♫ http://blip.fm/~aa3ct
• about 6 hours ago: The colours of the moon #5 – Blue (revisited) – Cowboy Junkies – #apollo11 ♫ http://blip.fm/~aa3im
• about 1 hour ago: Tranquility base here, the Eagle has landed (REM) #apollo11 ♫ http://blip.fm/~aaslv

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Happy birthday dad!

Posted on July 15th, 2009 by Andy

Here’s this year’s birthday card! Have a great day…

Love,

Andy, Hazel & Adam

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Just dug this one out #30: English Settlement by XTC

Posted on May 8th, 2009 by Andy

I’m not entirely sure how I became a fan of XTC but for a very short period of time in the early 80s I was. At the time I was listening to, almost exclusively, heavy metal. The two exceptions (that spring to mind) were XTC and Kate Bush. I’ve regularly listened to Kate over the years since but very rarely revisit XTC. My love of XTC covered their Black Sea, English Settlement and Mummer albums, at which point it pretty much stopped. I do own a copy of Skylarking but honestly couldn’t name a track off it and suspect it was bought second-hand in a fit of nostalgia in the late 80s and filed away barely listened to.

English Settlement always felt like the archetypal XTC album: It had their best single (Senses Working Overtime); Their most recognisable cover (the Uffington White Horse); and from title to tracklisting has that Englishness that was XTC.

The last time I gave English Settlement a listen was in 2006 when I took my first (and only) shot at NaNoWriMo. My awful (I mean really awful) novel, Plan 4, featured a chapter where the three protagonists decide to hunt down the chalk carving on the front of XTC’s English Settlement and spend a night there.

“Are you sure it’s a real thing Anna? I mean…they could have just made it up”, Spirit was not convinced of the plan as yet.

“Of course it exists, it’s a chalk carving.”

“But it’s not a photo, it’s only a drawing, maybe they just doodled it.”

“For fucks sake Spirit, it is real!”

(You get the idea with that)

View Larger Map

I remember being disappointed in it back then, so disappointed that when my characters reached the White Horse they chose to listen to My Bloody Valentine. Listening today though it seems so much better than then. There are annoyances and it occasionally shows its age but for the most part it stands up pretty well, I’ll probably not leave it three years before I listen again.

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Just dug this one out #28 – Hanoi Rocks

Posted on March 28th, 2009 by Andy

OK – I haven’t really dug anything out…but a sudden wave of uncontrollable nostalgia inspired me to post this to the Galaxie 500 Mailing List – which got (mostly) the whistling silence it’s astonishing off-topic-ness deserved. I thought it really ought to live here where it can offend no one…

Back in the early 80s (I might have mentioned a few hundred times before) I was a huge metal fan – but the metal I liked wasn’t the tight-trousered, eye-liner-wearing glammy type; I liked my metal a bit grubby. But as a music obsessive I considered any band that passed through Guildford as fair game which meant that I saw lots of bands that it would be cool to boast about but I barely remember the gigs (e.g. The Jam, Buzzcocks (I think), SLF, Pretenders) and lots more forgettable crap (or crap I wish I could forget (Gary Moore, Budgie, Toyah)).

Anyway Hanoi Rocks came through town and they wore girly-clothes and make up, they were not all hard and manly like I liked my rock, but we went along anyway expecting to snigger, and probably heckle. But they were awesome – they rocked so hard, they played for hours, Michael Monroe, the lead singer, looked great (something I probably wasn’t ready to admit out loud at the time…I liked my rock stars like Lemmy remember!) and played a saxophone, and clambered up the PA and just gave us an awesome show. Most of the audience left before the second encore, I could never figure out why, which just made the ending so much more special because we got 20 minutes more just for the 50 or so of us who stuck around. I think they covered Train Kept a-Rolling.

I bought albums but they were disappointing and I never saw them again – shortly afterwards Razzle, the drummer, died in that Motley Crue related accident and it seemed that my Hanoi Rocks love was destined to be all about a couple of hours at Surrey University in 1984.

So today, on the back of this nostalgia trip I found myself at YouTube thoroughly enjoying the stacks of Hanoi Rocks videos from that period and seeing exactly why this gig is one that I never forgot. I’m about to reacquaint myself with a couple of albums but am expecting to be disappointed.

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Lux Interior

Posted on February 5th, 2009 by Andy

Lux Interior, Cains Ballroom, 1980

There was a time in the early/mid 1980s after Fast Eddie Clarke left Motorhead and before The Pogues released Rum, Sodomy and the Lash were I was lost in a frustrated grasp to find a musical place for myself. For a short time during that aimless wander through the obscure and unloved musical movements I decided that maybe ‘psychobilly’ could be where I settled. I went to three or four gigs at the Clarendon in Hammersmith and the energy and noise was exceptional, I saw The Guana Batz and The Meteors and a myriad of lesser (in fame and quality) bands. I sadly never got to see The Cramps but they were the band that defined that music more than any other, and I suspect that if I had seen them maybe I would have taken a different course.

The Cramps albums got filed away and to be honest I’ve listened to very little since then and had pretty much forgotten that nine months or so until I read today that Lux Interior had passed away and I was filled with a desire to hear The Cramps (thanks last.fm) and a regret that I never did see them live.

R.I.P. Lux Interior

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Buddy Holly

Posted on February 3rd, 2009 by Andy

Today is 50 years since Buddy died in that plane crash and given that I’m not yet 50 obviously his death wasn’t really something that had any sort of impact on me…but his music did. I grew up with a lot of Buddy Holly, my dad had a pile of original albums (that I think he acquired from his brother and that are now in my posession/shed). There was a period in the mid 70s where me and school friend Dave would spend an awful lot of our breaks talking about Rock ‘n’ Roll. I remember we smuggled a cassette player in on one school sports day and sat on the field listening to some great music during the events we weren’t required to be a part of.

Dave, Greg and myself met up in Woking to go and see The Buddy Holly Story and then got chased around the streets of Woking by some hooligans – TheyDave and Greg lived in Woking so I dived on a train at the station and they probably got chased home. I enjoyed the film if not the after film entertainment.

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Just dug this one out #21 – Be Seeing You by Dr Feelgood

Posted on August 31st, 2008 by Andy

My dad used to volunteer at the local St John’s Ambulance book sales and for a while in the late 70s and early 80s you’d always find a pile of records at these sales that had clearly been donated by some local, music industry insider. Stacks of unplayed promos and, being a St John’s Ambulance sale, I was probably the only person under 50 and therefore got the opportunity to plough through and fill my boots without any competition. A flick through my record collection even now would reveal a fair few with “Promo only – not for resale” stickers.

One such record was a 7″ single of She’s A Windup/Baby Jane by Dr Feelgood and, like a fair few of the records I got from the sales, it went a good many weeks unplayed. A school friend was a huge Feelgood fan and so I offered it to him because he would obviously appreciate it more. He said he would gladly take it off my hands but insisted that before I even thought about giving it away that I really ought to listen to it so I went home that afternoon and had another one of those life-changing moments – the awesome opening guitar riff just blew me away…I still have the single and treasure it.

Suddenly I was a Feelgood fan and ploughed backwards through their catalogue, went to gigs (well into the 80s) and discovered Wilko Johnson (who had left the band before I discovered them) and saw him even more and even longer. Even now I occasionally dip my feet into that river and get a buzz that is more than just nostalgia.

Be Seeing You probably isn’t my favourite Feelgood album, the lyrical obsession with sex gets tiresome and borderline misogynistic (moreso than on any of the other albums) most notably I guess in the song that got me into them. Some of the songs are pedestrian or formulaic (”That’s It, I Quit”, “Sixty Minutes of Your Love”, “As Long as the Price is Right”) but in Windup, “Looking Back” and “Baby Jane” there is so much energy and thrill that I understand what happened to me when I put on that single all those years ago.

A few years later my life was changed again by a record I found at the St John’s Ambulance sales…REM’s Reckoning.

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Just dug this one out #20: Me & Mr Ray by Miracle Legion

Posted on August 12th, 2008 by Andy

Ken turned me on to Miracle Legion and I picked up a CD of Me & Mr Ray at an indie record shop in Epsom and over the next months filled in a collection. This is probably my favourite though (actually…no…thinking about it now Surprise Surprise Surprise is much, much better) , probably because it was the first album I’d heard and because it was just Mark and Mr Ray when we saw them that first time being supported by The Breeders.

It’s another album (and this series is filling up with them) that has slipped off my radar so it was quite peculiar going back to it – it still sounded good but Mulcahy’s delivery grated after a while. The songs I remembered liking first time round, “Ladies from Town” and “If She Could Cry” I felt less comfortable with than I had back then but “You’re the One Lee” and “Old and New” still sounded exceptional (although the woo woo woos at the beginning of the latter had me leaning for the skip button).

Brian recorded the demos for the first album “Understand” in a crappy house just off the Hanger Lane Gyratory System (as it was called back then I think it might just be a “junction” or a “roundabout” now) we set up all the equipment in the damp smelling living room and while Ken and Niall pulled together the songs my task was to try and get the hang of the Tascam Portastudio, Alesis Quadraverb and a drum machine proficiently enough to get decent enough recordings onto cassette.

One long afternoon/evening session descended into farce as Niall and Ken started bickering over the intro to a song that hadn’t been written – one (and I can’t remember which one) of them wanted to have a spoken intro like “If She Could Cry” has (”Shall I tell you how it is?…I’ll tell you how it is…) the other didn’t and what started as one of them voicing a half-baked idea descended into bickering, shouting, storming-off to the kitchen, long charged silences, more storming off…

Eventually we withdrew to LA Pizza and laughed at the idea that a band could fall apart over the intro to a song that hadn’t even been written. At that moment I was, as Ken would later often point out, Brian’s Derek Smalls – I was the lukewarm water between them.

When Understand was finally released there was no song with a spoken intro and Niall (Nigel Tufnell?) was no longer a part of the band.

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