Just dug this one out #16 - The Hounds of Love by Kate Bush

Posted on May 16th, 2008 by Andy


Kate Bush, Hounds of Love

I’d been a fan of Kate Bush pretty much since the beginning, but it was a fanaticism that I kept to myself…she was making music that was far removed from most of what I was listening to at the time. Kate Bush was an artist I admired on my own and it stayed that way for a long long time.

The Hounds of Love was the first album I ever bought on CD and it seems a shame that I chose to make my first steps into the modern world of shiny, silver, plastic discs by buying an album that is so clearly an album of two sides, an album made for vinyl. Two sides that are so different and both so stunning - the pop side and the prog side, the safe side and the experimental side, “The Hounds of Love” and “The Ninth Wave”. There was a period of probably a year or two where I listened to The Hounds of Love every night - it was the album that I went to bed with but never slept until it finished (if I did doze off “Waking the Witch” would generally bring me back to consciousness).

Hazel is a huge Kate Bush fan and in the discomfort and awkward uncertainty of our fledgling relationship I found comfort in our mutual love of Kate Bush. It was something that we could talk about passionately and open up about, something that we could “try out” our relationship on, something that allowed us to see if there was more to this…and there was. I distinctly remember one of our first lunchtimes at the Nelson where I gushed uncontrollably about Kate and particularly about The Hounds of Love, in times of panic my mouth can occasionally run away with me because talking is better than awkward silences.

The album sounds as stunning now as it did on its first listen. It doesn’t sound dated and for an album released in the dire depths of the 80s to avoid the hellish taint of that time is testament to Kate’s genius. It is too rich and deep, too layered and arranged, too lush and clear, too real, too organic to sound anything but timeless. Until Joanna Newsom’s Ys was released a couple of years back there was no other album that could make as excited and enthralled by music the way that The Hounds of Love did…and still does.

If there’s one down side to the album it’s the sadly uninspiring sleeve but as Hazel pointed out a while back Kate has always had a tendency to wrap her masterpieces in “naff” sleeves.

Posted in Music, just dug this one out | No Comments »

Just dug this one out #15 - Parallel Lines by Blondie

Posted on April 16th, 2008 by Andy

Today I woke up with Blondie’s Parallel Lines in my head. In my post from a couple of years ago where I picked out my favourite bands over time there were a few important acts that slipped through the woodwork. Blondie were one and, for a short time in 1978 and 1979, were just about my favourite band.

Listening to Parallel Lines now it feels so comfortable, so timeless unlike pretty much anything Blondie/Harry did subsequently. Parallel Lines was the second Blondie album I bought, Plastic Letters was OK, a couple of gems but all a little rough and patchy to make it a classic. Parallel Lines was a whole different ballgame. At lunchtime today Hazel suggested that there was only “three good tracks” on it (she meant “Hanging on the Telephone”, “Heart of Glass” and “Sunday Girl”) but surely to dismiss “Pretty Baby” and “Picture This” and “11:59″ and “Will Anything Happen” is just ridiculous, each of them as good as anything else on the album. To be honest, with the exception of the utterly dire “I Know But I Don’t Know” there isn’t any reason to reach for the skip button. This is as close to perfect as a pop album can get.

In February 1979 I went on a miserable ski-ing holiday with the school, I was sick, homesick, the food was rubbish, we had power cuts and barely enough snow to ski. Add to all that the embarrassment of falling over on my first day on the snow and not being able to get up, and being a woeful failure at using the drag lift, most of my memories of the trip and not good ones. The only exception is that “Heart of Glass” was on the hotel jukebox and we listened to it pretty much constantly over the whole week, no matter how sad and miserable I felt that track made me feel better. It pretty much still works now.

Posted in I heart/I hate, Music, just dug this one out | 1 Comment »

Just dug this one out #14 - When I Was Born for the 7th Time by Cornershop

Posted on February 28th, 2008 by Andy

cornershop
cornershop
originally uploaded by mediaeater

My mum was Anglo-Indian, she grew up in Calcutta with an Indian mother and a British father and they had a huge family. Ten or eleven brothers and sisters and all the aunts, uncles, cousins and nephews that comes along with that. And a good chunk of that family lived in or around London so I grew up tolerating huge family get-togethers, regular trips to Southall to shop, eating curries and hearing music that was different to the music I liked. Cornershop were a band that made the indie guitar music I liked but in amongst it were the sounds of those family get togethers or those trips to Southall.

“When I Was Born for the 7th Time” made it to my best albums of 1997 list but I very rarely listen to it these days while it probably didn’t deserve that accolade I’ve enjoyed listening to it a lot more than I expected I would

There are gems…”Sleep on the Left Side” is a fantastic opener, the moment when Paula Frazer arrives in “Good to Be on the Road Back Home” is almost perfect “make way for a lady”, and I love “Norwegian Wood” ever if it does have a slightly tacked-on-the-end-as-an-afterthought feel. Brimful of Asha hasn’t yet been ruined by over-familiarity and that Norman Cook remix…here’s the proof…



Posted in Music, just dug this one out | No Comments »

Just dug this one out #13 - If You’re Feeling Sinister by Belle & Sebastian

Posted on February 7th, 2008 by Andy

Belle & Sebastian’s If You’re Feeling Sinister was released at the tail end of 1996 but all its memories for me surround the couple of months after Adam was born in May 1997. Adam came as a bit of a shock for a couple of lazy people resigned to not having children (probably because we thought it would be scary and hard work)…it was a good shock (and one we probably needed!) but a shock all the same.

The first few months were utterly exhausting, particularly for Hazel who had to spend the days (and nights) trying to deal with getting the reluctant little beggar to feed and to stop crying because he was hungry. I’d come home from work and retrieve Adam so that Hazel could get some shut-eye. So…many of my evenings (and nights, and early mornings) that summer, were spent walking up and down the living room trying to get him to sleep. Accompanying me on that walk were Belle & Sebastian.

I don’t think the album was chosen because it was necessarily an appropriate one for the job, just that it was an album that I thoroughly enjoyed listening to (and singing along to!). It was (and still is) a beautifully effortless listen. Coincidentally it turns out that it probably was an appropriate album for the job, perfect for a rocking, swaying walk and gentle singing along, no shocks or jars…sweet sounds and clever and funny lyrics.

At some point Adam started eating better and consequently sleeping better and I listened to the album less and less - I still dig it out periodically but this week was probably the first time for a few months that I gave it a spin. All those memories can’t help but give the album a nostalgic and slightly dated feel - more about me than about the music. None of B&S subsequent albums had the same impact but I have them all, and there are bits of all of them that I love (although not a lot of Dear Catastrophe Waitress) - but If You’re Feeling Sinister has nothing that has me reaching to skip a track or turn it down. It’s pretty close to perfect…and with the glory of hindsight I can forget the crying and the utter exhaustion and just remember my tiny little boy nestled in my arms listening to me singing “Get Me Away From Here I’m Dying”…

Posted in Music, just dug this one out, my family | 1 Comment »

Just dug this one out #12 - HUP by The Wonder Stuff

Posted on December 5th, 2007 by Andy

Wonderstuff
Wonderstuff
originally uploaded by mark benney

I can’t even imagine the point in my life when The Wonder Stuff fitted in. HUP was released in 1989, the same year that I first heard Galaxie 500 and the year after Sonic Youth’s “Daydream Nation” was released. And yet here it is in my record collection and I have memories of seeing them two or three times including a drive down to see them at the dire Brighton Centre. They are certainly a band from my previous life, the one were I went to gigs with old school friends instead of new work mates, The Pogues, The Waterboys and The Men They Couldn’t Hang also fit into that category, and I guess like all of those bands it was the live experience more than the records that mattered.

Listening to the CD now it’s baffling that I ever really liked it, occasionally the cathcy-pop elements sneak through and “Golden Green” had me nodding along. The intro to “Piece of Sky” also got my hopes up but ultimately it descended into the same chant-a-long, fist-waving, bouncy, jangly guitar pop that the rest of the album is overflowing with and which becomes tiresome quite quickly.

This is the second post in row to have raided Mark Benney’s Flickr stream for it’s accompanying shot. Mark has uploaded a stack of great photos taken in the early 90s that seem to cover so many of the bands that I was seeing around then.


Posted in Music, just dug this one out | No Comments »

Just dug this one out #11 - Birdbrain by Buffalo Tom

Posted on December 4th, 2007 by Andy

Buffalo Tom
Buffalo Tom
originally uploaded by mark benney

Maybe this series name should be changed to “I just dreamed one up” because this morning I woke with another blast from the past rocking around in my head. There was a time when I really liked Buffalo Tom…for two or three years Stuart and I saw them a stack of times - growing from tiny stages to the last time at the Shepherds Bush Empire in the mid 90s. But that suddenly stopped - and it really was sudden…I remember standing outside The Empire that last time wondering what made me think that I ever liked them. The chunky, insistent guitars, the strained vocals, it seemed to have nothing in common with anything else I was listening to and seemed tired and old…and so early 90s. It seems odd that a lot of the music I listened to in the late 80s and early 90s seems timeless and yet Buffalo Tom seemed to date so badly and so quickly.

So I dreamt last night I was at a Heavy Metal play with all the greats of HM acting and playing their greatest hits - I can’t remember the story but I’m pretty certain there was one…and then Bill Janowitz came on stage - only by now the stage was a great expanse of grass. I wanted to take a picture but everytime I tried to the camera refused to work…I could take pictures of anything else but every time I pointed it at Bill it refused to work. That was it - a rather uninteresting dream had planted Buffalo Tom in my head. I got up and while zipping through the feed of my contacts photos on Flickr this morning came across a bunch that James Cadden had taken of Buffalo Tom in NY.

It seemed that everything was trying to make me dig out Buffalo Tom today - I was astounded to discover that I had their first four albums (plus one singles compilation). I’ve dragged the whole pile to work with me thinking I’d give them all a listen but their debut album is really not all that good and I gave up half-way through - its an out and out grunge album and I never realised that I’d got that into grunge. Birdbrain is better, still grunge but less grunge-by-numbers than their debut (it’s no surprise to discover that J Mascis had his fingers in those first two pies). The title track which opens the album is how I think of Buffalo Tom but then, like with the first album, the tiring strain of the vocals and the repetitive guitar sounds just have me drifting off and yearning for something with a little more subtlety and variation (feel free to sneer at the Galaxie 500 fan yearning for variation!).

I’m starting to realise that maybe it was the live shows that I liked most about Buffalo Tom, I remember them in small venues being astonishingly powerful and I suspect that those shows saw my last visits to the edges of the mosh-pit. But “power” and bashing shoulders with other men is something that I was growing out of by 1993, much preferring a more introspective gig experience so as the venues got bigger and I got older it became clear that Buffalo Tom and I had nothing left for each other.

“Fortune Teller” gave me little pangs of nostalgia and I will make it through to the end of the album but suspect I’ll save the other two albums for another day or another dream.


Posted in Music, just dug this one out | 1 Comment »

Just dug this one out: #10 - The Doors

Posted on October 14th, 2007 by Andy

I often wake up with music in my head and no real understanding how it got there, more often than not it’ll be Bohemian Rhapsody or the theme from Terry and June. Today it was The Doors. I haven’t listened to The Doors for many MANY years. Part of stretching my musical awareness beyond what the radio or my parents played involved listening to The Doors, as well as Neil Young, The Velvet Underground and stacks of heavy metal. So for a short while in the 5th and lower 6th I listened to The Doors quite a lot. Mostly it was Ray Manzarek (and to a lesser extent Krieger) that kept me listening, not Jim Morrison - in fact I probably stopped listening at the point where I became more aware of Morrison.

I bought a couple of CDs in a sale a few years ago (at least 15 years!) as the records were boxed up somewhere and it was easier to buy cheap CDs rather than hunting down the LPs - but I’m not sure I ever played them…until this morning…when The Doors inexplicably invaded my head.

So the debut album, The Doors, was still astonishingly familiar considering how long it was since I’d dug it out. It was still Manzarek’s keyboards that pulled it all together and it was still Morrison’s voice that started to grate after a while. But while it occasionally drifted into the tiresome (End of the Night) or just plain daft (Alabama Song) I found myself surprised to be quite enjoying a dip into a part of my musical coming-of-age that I have pretty much ignored for the last 20 years.

I pulled out La Woman too but think I might shove it back on the shelves unplayed until next time The Doors get into my head.

Posted in Music, just dug this one out, last.fm | No Comments »

Just dug this one out: #9 Nord Express

Posted on September 13th, 2007 by Andy

Nord Express Loveland sleeve

Many moons ago someone sent me a tape with a lot of Nord Express tracks on because anyone who loved Galaxie 500 would surely love Nord Express - it was true, I did love them - but it was a very careless love, and like so much stuff that I had on tape, it sort of fell down the back of the sofa when my tape Walkman was replaced with a CD walkman and then an mp3 player.

Ron Harrity of Nord Express provided a fantastic version of Cold Night to the Galaxie 500 List tribute album (and offered to help out - an offer I shamefully turned down, a decision that contributed to the album’s (very) long lead time…)

This post on Lunapark6 gave me a kick and inspired me to track down some Nord Express…and that tracking down turned out to be a bit problematic as not only finding the tape was difficult but digging out something to play it on was likely to be a pain. Luckily Peapod Recordings have released “Loveland”, a compilation of unreleased material and also link to the Slumberland website were you can buy their previous releases. So the time has come to fill my boots with lovely indie guitar music. More modern music lovers can grab all(?) three releases from eMusic
 and iTunes.
MP3: Half a dozen of them at Nord Express on Peapod records

Posted in Music, a nostalgia trip, just dug this one out | No Comments »

Just dug this one out #8 - REM

Posted on August 7th, 2007 by Andy

OK - it wasn’t an album I "just dug out" - I haven’t listened to an R.E.M. album for so very long, it is a bit frightening to think how much I listened to them from Reckoning to Document and then suddenly stopped. I kept buying the albums and giving them a chance up until Up which was the final straw.

Anyway I was having a major clear up at work and found a CDR of REM live in Hyde Park in 2005 and gave it a listen and occasionally got the buzz that reminded me why I liked them back then. But mostly I was astounded by just how fucking huge they became, I knew they got big in the time I stopped paying attention - but I was thinking a-couple-of-nights-at-the-Hammy-Odeon big not filling-a-royal-park-in-London big! Hearing the audience chanting along to The One I Love or Losing My Religion was just astounding to the point of sending shivers up my spine.

I think I might dig out a CD or two tomorrow…just for old times sake…


REM in Hyde Park - 2005
(originally uploaded by thesneakerpimp)

Posted in Music, just dug this one out | No Comments »

Just dug this one out #7 - The Men They Couldn’t Hang

Posted on July 2nd, 2007 by Andy

There was a period from about 1984, after I had drifted away from Heavy Metal, when the music I listened to was driven by three important factors…

  1. It was an exhillarating and energetic live experience.
  2. It was lyrically a little more challenging than most of the music I’d listened to before.
  3. The more beer that had been consumed the better it sounded.

There were two bands that pretty much filled those criteria perfectly and for a couple of years were the bands I listened to and saw above any others. While I can still occasionally dig out and enjoy the first three The Pogues albums, I have found listening to The Men They Couldn’t Hang to be a more problematic thing.

For a couple of years we were seeing TMTCH regularly, possibly 20 or 30 times (maybe more) between 85 and 88 and most stick in my head as memorable and exciting experiences - although they had a following of a few unpleasant and aggressive fans who seemed to want to rule the moshpit and build tiresome human pyramids at every show.

They had some great songs but outside of the sweaty, agressive live shows the albums now sound weak, occasionally formulaic and often politically naive or unsubtle (that’s not to say the politics was wrong just that it was often not fully developed). Listening now it is still difficult to separate some of the songs from one live show or another. I suspect that my enjoyment of them at the time was driven by the fact that I wasn’t really listening to an album but re-living the excitement of those live shows.

How Green Is The Valley is probably as near to a perfectly balanced album as they managed to produce. The songs are mostly good, the production is clear, the sound occasionally drifts too close to The Pogues (I suspect they suffered comparisons) and it has their two real political gems in The Ghosts Of Cable Street and Shirt Of Blue.

The Men They Couldn’t Hang split up - they really did, I distinctly remember it happening - it was after I’d stopped following them - probably after the poor Silvertown album. I’m not sure when they reformed but it seems likely it was shortly after that split but by then they were completely off my radar. They still seem to be doing the rounds although I have no desire to re-acquaint myself with them live because that’s something that’s so special I wouldn’t want to risk ruining those memories (the same would apply to The Pogues).

Sadly YouTube has very little to offer from that classic period short of this clip of them on The Old Grey Whistle Test.

Posted in Music, just dug this one out, last.fm | No Comments »

« Previous Entries