In a first for the WeekInSound blog, guest blogger Fraser Maxwell takes the controls for this week’s collection of tunes. Last Word by me, though. Enjoy!
First Word
The pressure! I know how genuinely passionate Alan is about his music and his blog, so there’s some nerves in taking over for a week. I’m very conscious my music knowledge isn’t as extensive or as detailed as Alan’s too (and I’m a few years younger!) so it feels like there’s a bit of a shift to perhaps more recent and mainstream this week. But I sincerely hope that you enjoy the six songs and my effort at some chat around them, and the boss (Alan, not Bruce) will be back next week, no doubt inspired after his trip down to the Black Deer Festival.
Evil – Interpol (2004)
The National’s High Violet album was referenced in WIS 5 May as probably their best album, and I think about Antics by Interpol in the same way. I’d heard both bands before these albums, and have really liked what they’d done since, but for me both of these are superb albums with the highest quality songs all the way through – all killer, no filler. Two things about this particular track that help make it stand out are the lyrics and who they reference, and the video, which feels unrelated to the lyrics but is brilliant and developed a story all of its own. Although Interpol hail from Manhattan, the lead singer (Paul Banks) was born in England and has an apparent fixation with serial killers. The song is apparently about the serial killers Fred and Rose West. They lived and committed their horrific crimes in the 70s and 80 in Gloucester which is not too far from where Banks was born. The opening bass line is superb, and then lyrics kick in “Rosemary, oh, heaven restores you in life” and “I spent a life span with no cell mate”. Thankfully the video takes a different angle, but is no less striking, with the band wanting something as creepy and unnerving as the song itself. The opening scene is of a car crash, the song’s vocals are performed by a life-size animatronic puppet that fans would later christen “Norman” who then dances in a flailing and twitchy way all the way to the operating theatre in hospital. I think it’s brilliant, please check it out if you haven’t seen it. The postscript to the video is that Norman developed cult hero status with Interpol fans, got lost for ten years, then swapped hands at various auctions, and now hosts videos on a YouTube channel.
Jane S Piddy – Rodriguez (1970)
I sent a few potential songs to Alan before starting to write this week’s blog, and the one artist that he hadn’t heard of was Rodriguez (or Sixto Diaz Rodriguez to give him his full name), so that made this song a dead cert for inclusion. And no matter what he thinks of the song, at least he’s getting to listen to something new. I hadn’t heard of Rodriguez’s music until a friend put me onto the brilliant 2012 Searching for Sugar Man documentary a few years ago – the movie trailer can be watched here. It won both a BAFTA and then an Oscar for best documentary in 2013, and I’d encourage anyone to stop what they are doing, find it (I think both Amazon Prime and Netflix have it), watch it, and soak it all in. Aside from the unscrupulous record company angle, you’ll not find a more uplifting and joyous musical documentary. He recorded two albums, Cold Fact (1970) and Coming From Reality (1971) in the US but they met with little fanfare, and he enjoyed some modest success in Australia and New Zealand, touring there a little. A third album was in progress but never completed. But without him realising it, his music was incredibly popular in South Africa, reportedly outselling Elvis. While his music career in the US stalled, various rumours spread about his apparent demise, including an on-stage suicide, and the documentary charts the efforts of two Cape Town fans to find out what had become of him. The documentary is a hugely uplifting watch, and having watched it (spoiler alert, he wasn’t dead) I’m not surprised that Rodriguez declined to attend the Oscar ceremony, feeling that he’d overshadow the film-maker’s achievement – it says a lot about the man. The bass playing of I Wonder before he makes his stage entrance to his first South African gig is a genuinely emotional moment. His nasally singing definitely reminds me and others of Bob Dylan. This track is the closer on Cold Fact and also the soundtrack to the documentary, but it hits the hardest with some brutal lyrics – “Drifting, drowning in a purple sea of doubt / You wanna hear she loves you / But the words don’t fit the mouth” and “I saw my reflection in my father’s final tears”. I wonder if Alan the only person not to have seen it or to have heard of Rodriguez?
Tonight The Streets Are Ours – Richard Hawley (2007)
Richard Hawley headlines the Black Deer Festival on the Sunday, so we may hear next week if Alan caught his set. I hadn’t heard of Richard Hawley until watching the Arctic Monkeys winning the 2006 Mercury Music Prize, and Alex Turner exclaiming ‘someone call 999, Richard Hawley’s been robbed’ as the band accepted their prize, with Hawley missing out for his LP Coles Corner. I loved the Sheffield tribalism and friendship in their moment of glory, and I took that as enough of a recommendation that I should check out his stuff. He’d previously been in Britpop band the Longpipgs and then Sheffield-based Pulp with friend Jarvis Cocker. But when he struck out on his own, there’s a real balladeer feel to his voice and ‘a northern Roy Orbison’ seems to be the most frequent touchstone I’ve seen used to describe him. The song is from the album Lady’s Bridge (his fourth album), the third album in his ‘Sheffield Trilogy’ – Lowedges is a suburb of the city, Coles Corner is a popular Sheffield meeting point for couples, and Lady’s Bridge is Sheffield’s oldest bridge over the River Don connecting the richer and poorer parts of the city. However, Hawley himself admits that Sheffield is ingrained in all his songs, perhaps not surprising for a fella who sells Henderson’s Relish (a Sheffield equivalent to Worcestershire Sauce, but ‘Strong and Northern’!) on his website. He’s gone on to write an acclaimed musical Standing at Sky’s Edge (another location in Sheffield, a hillside with views over the city), based on three families living in the Park Hill council housing estate in Sheffield across 60 years – a place famous for the I Love You Will U Marry Me’ graffiti , now considered iconic in the city. It’s a song where I was gobsmacked to see the background to the lyrics, as I’ve had a totally different interpretation since I first heard it, and to be honest, still do! To me it’s a pure unadulterated love song, with lyrics making me think of the first throes of a romance, the desire to stay up all night kissing under streetlight, or romantic walks through the darkened streets – “I need to know you want me / I couldn’t be without you / And the light that shines around you” and “These lights in our hearts they tell no lies”. Maybe it’s the romantic in me. But it’s actually a song about anti-social behaviour on the streets, ASBO culture, the demonisation of youth by the Government, inspired by a TV news programme that Hawley saw. Let me know what you think in the comments below…to me the lyrics and music will always suggest a love song but I’ve seen it described as Hawley’s angriest song? And rather randomly it’s featured in The Simpsons episode Exit Through the Kwik-E-Mart after featuring in the Banksy documentary film Exit Through the Gift Shop.
Fall On Me – REM (1986)
When Alan and I worked together, he was a civil engineer and I was (and still am) an environmental consultant. Alan was always aware and positive towards environmental issues, and the team that I worked in. I’m delighted to hear (and jealous) of his recent dolphin spotting in Fife, and I’d echo his concerns about the New York State wildfires mentioned in last week’s blog, the influence of climate change in these. As I write there’s a second significant wildfire in Scotland wreaking its devastation. Our children’s future – what have we done? In the same way that Alan is a Wilco fanboy, I feel that R.E.M. have been the same for me for most of my life. I first remember hearing them for the first time with The One I Love and It’s The End of World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine) from the Document album around 1987, and being sucked in at that point. It was then a case of discovering what had come before. It’s recently been the 40th anniversary of R.E.M.’s debut album Murmur, so I was tempted to include something from that. If you’re only familiar with R.E.M. from the Out of Time and Automatic for the People era, then I really encourage you to check it out. Cryptic and mumbled lyrics, jangly guitars, and melodic baselines – it’s still to this day like nothing else I’ve heard and has a really raw feel. Rolling Stone magazine had it as the best album of 1983, beating War by U2, Michael Jackson’s Thriller, and Synchronicity by The Police. But this song from Life’s Rich Pageant (five years and two albums before Out of Time) caught my attention as a young teenager, being an early R.E.M. composition about environmentalism. It was specifically about acid rain (the lyric being ‘don’t fall on me’), though Michael Stipe later went on to say that it was about any form of oppression. The ‘feathers hit the ground before the weight can leave the air’ lyric is also referencing Galileo’s gravity experiments undertaken at the Leaning Tower of Pisa. I think that combination of lyrics opened my musical mind more than a little, and I still find the triple harmonies towards the end of this song an absolute joy. Michael Stipe has said on various occasions that this was his favourite R.E.M. song, and I may just agree.
Living On The Ceiling – Blancmange (1982)
I have three elder brothers near enough the same age as Alan, and I’ve got vivid memories as a kid of the weekly Top of the Pops ritual on a Thursday night. I guess that was my introduction to finding new music and due to my brother’s influence I’m still listening to some of the bands that they introduced me to around that time – The Smiths, Depeche Mode, The Jam, Blondie, and Talking Heads. So this is a nod to Alan really, and his blog, and to the new music that I’m finding every Saturday morning over breakfast – a huge thanks, it’s been great. This is a song that I remember vividly from around that time watching TOTP. It was released as a single from their debut album Happy Families, and got to No.7 in the charts, with one of my brothers buying the vinyl single. The tablas and sitar add a different to the other bands that I remember from the time. And in a throwback to more innocent times, on one of their TOTP appearances, the band had to change the lyrics from “Up the bloody tree” to “Up the cuckoo tree”. Not quite the controversy that would come two years later with Frankie Goes to Hollywood! The band broke up in 1986, but having reformed in 2011, they have released nine new albums and are still getting good reviews for their live shows. Since returning to the stage, Moby has claimed Blancmange were “the most under-rated electronic act of all time”. And the singer Neil Arthur still plays football with Malcolm Ross from Orange Juice and Aztec Camera when he’s up in Scotland!
Donnie Darko – Let’s Eat Grandma (2018)
Last Friday, the sun was shining, I was cycling home from work, had cold IPA in the fridge and this came on a Spotify playlist. When I got back, the house was empty and I love playing this LOUD….so on it went. What a great way to end the week. Let’s Eat Grandma are Rosa Walton and Jenny Hollingworth (both 16 when they wrote this and the album – amazing!), and together they make self- proclaimed ‘experimental sludge pop’. I hadn’t heard of them until their second studio album I’m All Ears was released in 2018. It seemed to garner widespread acclaim and then feature heavily in the end of year ‘Best Of’ lists. I loved the whole album, but to me they save the best to last with this eleven minute slow-burn belter that closes the record. The track is named after the 2001 American psychological thriller film, which spawned the inspired Gary Jules cover version of Tears for Fears’ Mad World. Walton and Hollingworth’s music on their track really soars, but the lyrics are about loneliness and losing control – ‘desperate and sad but still hopeful’ is how they describe it. It feels a little indulgent to add an eleven minute song, but I think it’s worth it.
Last Word
Well that was a blast, wasn’t it? Thanks so much to Fraser for his guest blog which I hope you found as interesting and entertaining as I did. Let’s Eat Grandma has to be one of the best names for a band ever and those Stipe/Mills/Berry harmonies at the end of Fall On Me are indeed a joy to behold. I’ll be back on the decks next week with a selection of tunes inspired by the artists I see on stage at Black Deer. This may or may not be a good thing given the quality of this week’s playlist!
The Master Playlist has now benefitted from Fraser’s tunes and is now a whopping 90 songs and well over six hours long. Add it to your Spotify library right now!
AR
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