Back on the wagon this week where the tunes are linked to events of the week – albeit somewhat tenuously… Enjoy!

A reminder that Spotify plays from this box in the annoying ‘Preview’ mode with short excerpts of each track. Please click the icon in top right corner to open the full playlist in a separate Spotify window.

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Mother And Child Reunion – Paul Simon (1972)

As well as using my increased leisure time to start scribbling this blog, I have also taken to cetacean spotting. Our location here on the Fife Rivieria is perfect as the Forth Estuary supports a number of mammals from seals and porpoises to dolphins and the occasional whale. It was the appearance of a humpback whale a couple of winter’s back that got me into this pastime, in particular a memorable afternoon where it put on a amazing display with a spectacular full breech. Dolphins are much more common and easier to see and my first spot last summer was a large pod of about a dozen on the coastal path just west of Elie. There is a Facebook group where those with an interest alert others and record the movements of the mammals. In the last week they have been particularly active hunting sea trout very close to the shore with some amazing footage posted last Thursday from watchers at Kinghorn. I went along for an hour last Friday lunchtime alerted by some activity nearby and I was lucky enough to see a mother and her young calf swim by very close to the shore. As I watched them rise and fall from the calm water, tucked tightly together in perfect harmony, it was this 1972 single by Paul Simon which started playing in my head. Taken from his first solo LP after the break with Art Garfunkel, Simon was keen to experiment away from his established style. Simon was a big reggae fan particularly liking Desmond Dekker and Jimmy Cliff and cited Cliff’s Vietnam, where a mother receives a letter about her son’s death on the battlefield, as the inspiration for this song. The track was recorded in Kingston, Jamaica with Jimmy Cliff’s backing band. As a 12 year old hearing this UK top 5 hit on the radio, I didn’t know I was listening to a famous white singer promoting reggae but I knew a good tune when I heard one.

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Tropic Morning News – The National (2023)

The National have had a couple of mentions in the blog over the last few weeks, initially in relation to guitarist Aaron Dessner’s production work with Taylor Swift. And then last week, it was their collaboration with Phoebe Bridgers in the piece on boygenius. So the release last week of their wonderfully named new album First Two Pages Of Frankenstein gives me a good reason to include them in the 5 May 23 playlist in their own right. I discovered the band through a work colleague of mine who raved to me about High Violet their 2010 LP and once I listened to the songs on there I was hooked. They were five albums into their career by this point and from their third record they were getting rave reviews by the music critics for their slightly sombre drum-driven, art-rock sound. This new record is their ninth collection of songs and arrives 22 years after their debut. While the acclaim by the critics has fallen back a bit since the ..erm.. high of High Violet, they remain a popular and influential, if somewhat melancholy, group of musicians. There are two sets of brothers in the band – Aaron and Bryce Dessner writing the music on guitars, along with a rhythm section of Bryan and Scott Devendorf. This leaves singer and lyricist Matt Berninger as the odd one out and a listen to his literate, expansive and very personal words, you could agree with the term ‘odd’. I have chosen the lead single from the new album as the track for the playlist which sounds like a plea for forgiveness and a cry for help. Atypically set against what sound like a drum machine playing a straight beat (no signature rolling toms), Berninger’s inimitable warm baritone announces obliquely ” I’ll be over here lying near the ocean/ Making ocean sounds/Let me know if you can come over/And work the controls for a while”. The collaborators on the record include members of Bon Iver, the wonderful Sufjan Stevens and the aforementioned Ms Bridgers and Ms Swift. Taylor’s vocal on duet The Alcott slightly lightens the musical mood but it’s still a downbeat song about a damaged relationship – see it here. Some readers will find them all a bit too serious and intense but I really like them. They were superb the night they played the ‘Summer Nights’ gig at the Kelvingrove Bandstand a couple of years back in torrential Glasgow rain that soaked everyone to the skin. It was coming down like stair rods, as my Dad used to say…

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Under Pressure – Karen 0 & Willie Nelson (2020)

Last week’s blog featured an octogenarian who is still active in the music business but this week Ian Hunter gets trumped by nonagenarium Willie Nelson. Nelson was born on 29 April 1933 and his 90th birthday this week was marked by an outpouring of love and respect for the grandfather of outlaw country. In a career which began with him playing with polka bands in high school, he moved to Nashville and began writing the hits that would follow him through the years, many for other artists eg Crazy (Patsy Cline) and Hello Walls (Faron Young). Throughout the 60s, he wrote and recorded for RCA Records and played regularly at the Grand Ole Opry. But he became tired of the controlling corporate world of the Nashville establishment and moved to Austin, Texas at the start of the 70s where he developed his own creative freedom and began the rootsier outlaw country sub-genre. Nelson and Waylon Jennings were the leading lights of this movement and they worked together frequently until the latter’s death in 2002. Nelson is a prodigious writer who, in later life, loved to experiment with other genres of music. He was an avid collaborator – a quarter of his 100 albums were done with others. There was an inevitable birthday concert which ran over two nights with everyone from Emmylou Harris, Kris Kristofferson and Roseanne Cash to Neil Young, Beck and even Snoop Dogg. Keith Richards made a surprise appearance on the second night appropriately duetting with Nelson on Live Forever – watch the older of the two run off a tidy solo on his battered ‘Trigger’ guitar here! Nelson would regularly guest on other artist’s records and my idiosyncratic choice of a Nelson song for this week’s playlist comes from a recent collaboration he did in 2020 with Karen O, the singer with New York indie rock band the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Despite Bowie’s input, the bombastic Under Pressure was not a track I ever really liked. But when I heard this contemplative, acoustic version with minimal percussion and a pedal steel in the mix, I discovered the song hiding in plain sight. It’s an odd duet between a comparatively youthful Korean immigrant raised in New Jersey and the old-timer born in depression-era Texas. They start by trading lines but it becomes something different when they both sing the outro section, slightly out of time with each other. An enjoyable curiosity, I feel.

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5:15 – The Who (1973)

So last weekend was the Mayday Bank Holiday which my daughter spent in London with her boyfriend. They decided to do what I consider must be a very London thing and get the train down to Brighton for the day. I’ve been to Brighton a couple of times in the distant past, but it wasn’t on a Bank Holiday weekend. While looking at their pictures of the pier and the waterfront, I couldn’t help but think of the town’s place in the youth culture of the sixties. And more specifically of Quadrophenia, the 1973 ‘rock opera’ album by The Who which tells the story of the young mod Jimmy with what would nowadays be called mental health issues – “Schizophrenic? I’m bleedin’ Quadrophenic”. Released as a double LP with a gatefold booklet sleeve of amazing grainy monochrome images which illustrate the story, Brighton features strongly. There is the high of the amphetamine charged Bank Holiday trip down on his scooter with his mates to skirmish with the rockers and go dancing. And then there’s the terrible low of his return when, having walked out on his friends and family, he returns by train loaded up on chemical stimulants and seeking the previous highs, only to find when he gets there that everything he believed in before is false. It’s the only Who album where all the tracks are written by Townsend and he uses multi-track synthesizers to get the range of sounds he wanted, although he also taught himself the cello during the recording! I’ve chosen this track for the playlist which is the start of Jimmy’s journey back to Brighton, on the 5:15 out of London. Having smashed his scooter and thrown away his parka, the sleeve image shows him sat between a pair of bowler hatted city gents “out of his brain on the train” having disjointed memories of his life as a mod. The only track worked up by the band together in the studio, it was released as a single in the UK where it reached the top twenty after this performance on Top Of The Pops. The vocals are live but when the equipment starts getting trashed at the end in true Who fashion, it is painfully apparent the backing track is not. Townsend finishes up gesticulating wildly to the complaining studio floor manager and the BBC promptly banned them from the show.

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Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool – The Bluebells (1982)

As we enter May, the Hyacinthoides Non-Scripta are most definitely in bloom in a woodland somewhere near you. The UK is home to about half the world’s population of the humble but much loved Bluebell, although this non-botanist understands that there is another species called a Scottish Bluebell (Campanula Rotundifolia) which flowers later and has a much paler blue flower. While seasonally relevant, all this plant talk is a ploy to include a tune from the joyous, jangly Scottish band The Bluebells on the playlist. The group were formed against the backdrop of the Postcard scene in Glasgow in the early 80s by songwriter Robert Hodgens who styled himself as Bobby Bluebell. The band included the McCluskey brothers (Ken and David) as well as bass player Lawrence Donegan, who would leave to join Lloyd Cole and the Commotions before the Bluebells gained some modest chart success. I saw them supporting Elvis Costello & the Attractions at Tiffanys in Glasgow in September 1982. Impressed by their pop sensibilities, EC had befriended them and produced a couple of their early tracks. Their debut single Forevermore came out the following month on London Records, with the wonderful image of Billy from Ken Loach’s Kes on the cover. I bought the 12″ version to get this glorious extra track – all harmonies, harmonicas and twanging guitars with the great coda section vocal of “this boy will never be your fool, I will not ever be your fool”. The atmospheric EC produced Aim In Life was also on the b-side and is worth a listen to illustrate why this great pop band were so much more than the wedding disco staple Young At Heart. Bobby and the McCluskeys are back playing together and a new record appeared earlier this year. Writing this post has reminded me that I need to try and catch them live again. So many great pop tunes – I love this grainy VHS tape of them in their bright shiny youth doing the incredibly catchy Cath!

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Amateur Hour – Sparks (1974)

Back in the dark days of the early 70s before the internet, or MTV or even affordable video recorders, setting your eyes on live musicians performing outside a gig relied on three channels of ‘cooncil telly’. Music shows were not frequent, the exception being Top Of The Pops which broadcast every Thursday evening at 7.30pm. This made it ‘must watch’ and pretty much everyone did, despite its terrible production of miming bands, gormless Radio 1 DJs and awkward dancing studio audiences. This appointment television was powerful stuff and on a Friday morning every school playground, works canteen or office kitchen was alive with conversations about what had been on the night before. My most memorable TOTP moment wasn’t Bowie doing Starman with his arm around Mick Ronson, although that came close. It was the first time I saw Sparks. Having released their third LP Kimono My House on Mayday, they appeared on that week’s programme performing the single This Town Ain’t Big Enough For The Both Of Us. It might look tame on that video link now but to say it was jaw dropping at the time, is an understatement. Ron Mael’s performance sat at the keyboard, turning his head and staring at the camera with his trademark ‘tache combined with brother Russell flouncing around with his flowing locks and scarf singing at an impossible pitch was the talk of the playground. I’m sure there were parents the length and breadth of the country spluttering in their tea cups at it all. The story goes that John Lennon was watching at home and he called Ringo Starr saying “You won’t believe what’s on the TV – Marc Bolan is playing a song with Adolf Hitler!”. In my playground, there was lot’s of negativity from the boys into ‘serious music’ like Deep Purple but I was with all the girls who absolutely loved it. Later in life when I saw them live, I realised that I had probably had a man-crush on Russell, but the less said about that the better! I’ve not chosen This Town for the playlist but have gone for Amateur Hour, the amazing second single from the album which also made the UK top 5 that year. I absolutely loved the bouncy glam stomp provided by Martin Gordon’ bass and Dinky Diamond’s drums while Adrian Fisher picks out that great guitar part on top of Ron’s distinctive piano. Russell’s vocal is sublime and the whole thing is just so uplifting. It’s easy to forget how huge Sparks were in the UK in 1974/75 but this video of them playing at the Fairfield Hall in Croydon shows them having to clear the stage of screaming girls to allow them to play this song as the encore. Their five decade underrated career and the huge esteem that the band are held in by other artists was captured in an excellent documentary The Sparks Brothers in 2021. The link takes you to the fabulous trailer for the Edgar Wright directed movie where you glimpse Beck, Vince Clark, Alex Kapranos and New Order all lauding the influence of the Mael brothers. At 1:06 in, the Lennon/Starr conversation is played out using stop motion animation. Brilliance!

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Last Word

I was going to include reference to this on the post on the Bluebells above but I didn’t want it to detract from their wonderful music. So I’ve added it hear as a nostalgic anecdote about the old STV advert for Scottish Bluebell matches. It featured a troop of English Redcoats attacking a Highland castle in the rain, and the clan chief roars out “Will ye hurry up wi’ that boiling oil!”. A young clansman wails the legendary line “Ah cannae get the matches tae light!”. The chief roars in response “Ya dunderheid, I telt ye tae use Scottish Bluebells!” Once said matches are used, the fire lights, the boiling oil gets poured on the English soldiers, and their commanding officer shouts in a posh accent, “Back, lads, they’re using Scottish Bluebells!” Genius!

Don’t forget the Master Playlist which now has over four hours of tunes to shuffle into your next long road trip – you know it makes sense…

WeekInSoundMaster

AR