Back to the tunes being driven by the week that was which results in six diverse but top quality tracks for your weekend listening pleasure. Enjoy!
The Secret Life of Arabia – David Bowie (1977)
To mark the 46th anniversary of the release of Heroes this week, I have forgone the all too obvious choice of the brilliant and timeless title track and reached for something less well known. The Secret Life Of Arabia is the final track on what was Bowie’s twelfth album, famously recorded in Hansa Studios in Berlin under the guidance of Tony Visconti and Brian Eno. While tracks like V-2 Schneider and NewKoln were German influenced and hence quite stark and sombre, the final song looks east for inspiration. This results in a much lighter sounding track than the rest of the LP with vague Arabic-influenced imagery: “You must see the movie, the sand in my eyes/I walk through a desert song when the heroine dies”. Written by Bowie, Eno and guitarist Carlos Alomar, the band produce a tight, funky backing track which musically looks back to the Dame’s Young Americans ‘white soul’ period. Like most of the album, the track was developed and arranged in the studio from ideas on chords and rhythms with no real knowledge of the vocal lines or lyrics that Bowie would add later. And when he does, the melody lends the song an almost joyous feel. His lead vocal is almost camp – listen to him drawing out the song’s title phrase over an octave jump and fall – and the sound is enhanced by the arrival of the backing vocals by Antonia Maass towards the end. But for me, Visconti’s fade on the track just after the repeated “Arabia” refrain is just too brutal. So, when Billy McKenzie threw his amazing voice at the cover he recorded with BEF in 1982, I was pleased that the version on the NME004 Mighty Reel tape had an extended outro with Billy jumping those octaves as only he could.
Closer To Fine – Brandi Carlile & Catherine Carlile (2023)
The problem with being an old bloke writing a blog based on anniversaries and loose connections with events of the week is that it all tends to be a bit historical as I dip into my dim and distant past. Despite my best intentions, I find staying abreast of new music more and more difficult. So I went searching for something to make me seem less disconnected and what could be more 2023 than lifting something from the Barbie soundtrack. I’d love to say I’ve seen the movie and really get that it’s a fun feminist fable, full of smartly written, knowing dialogue which simultaneously celebrates and de-constructs it’s subject matter. But I can’t. I couldn’t really be arsed with it all, to be honest. Oppenheimer and then the re-mastered Stop Making Sense means two trips to the pictures already this year – surely that’s enough for a grumpy old git like me? In reviewing the Barbie soundtrack, I found plenty that left me cold but I quite liked the sound of the HAIM track Home. In the end I’ve plumped for the musical force of nature that is Brandi Carlile, even though her track is only on the deluxe issue of the album. I’ve talked before on the blog about Carlile’s style, her activism and her support for other young artists but not actually playlisted anything by her until now. And even then, she is covering a much loved old song by the Indigo Girls which I bought as a 12 inch single back in 1989. So me being more up to date is all a bit of con really, but I do like what Brandi and her partner Catherine have done with the track. The original is driven along by a strummed acoustic guitar supporting the wonderful harmonised vocal tracks. The Carlile’s version keeps the harmony but takes the pace off the tune with a gentle picked guitar, adding piano and rolling percussion to give it more dramatic light and shade to what remains a great song.
Damaged Goods – Gang Of Four (1978)
By 1978, the punk bandwagon was getting overloaded with latecomers to the party and the major record labels were signing up any snotty nosed kid with a sneer and an E chord. So this was the year that ‘post-punk’ emerged blinking into the sunlight, the term first coined by writer Jon Savage in Sounds. Taking the energy of punk but determined to experiment with non-rock, avant garde sounds from a range of musical styles like funk, electronica, jazz, dub and disco, a series of bands began making records. The Edinburgh independent label Fast Product, run by producer Bob Last, issued the first records by a number of influential post-punk bands from Northern England. Their first single FAST 1 was Never Been In A Riot, the debut by Leeds band The Mekons and FAST 3 was the glorious Being Boiled by unknown Sheffield electronic band Human League. FAST 4 was released this week in 1978 and was the incendiary debut EP by another Leeds band, Gang Of Four. Lead track Damaged Goods was an indie chart No 1 and is playlisted as the re-recorded version from Entertainment! their brilliant first LP – click the YouTube link above to hear the raw Fast Product version, recorded in what sounds like someone’s kitchen in Rochdale! Whatever version, it is one of my desert island discs – that funky bass line, those tight drums, the jerking angular guitar, those counterpointed vocal tracks all build to that crescendo of an ending when I immediately want to play it again. In reviewing Entertainment!, Paul Morley accurately described their music as being “studded with awkward holes and sharp corners”. One of the most exciting live bands I’ve ever seen, my mate Mark and I saw them touring the LP in the tiny bar area of the Glasgow College of Technology Union in early 1979. Unforgettable stuff.
I Want To Take You Higher – Sly & The Family Stone (1969)
I’ve mentioned before that writing this blog takes you down rabbitholes and, while the journey can be long, you do discover some great things. While writing one blog, I uncovered references the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival which took place in Mount Morris Park over six summer Sundays at the same time as Woodstock. I then found out that the festival had been filmed and there was a documentary made using this and background social commentary called Summer of Soul. Directed by Questlove from The Roots, it was released in 2021 and got rave reviews from the crtitics – on the BBC, Mark Kermode called the film “the greatest music documentary he had ever seen”. Last Monday night, Channel 4 broacast the movie and I can see why it got those reviews – it is fantastic and has deservedly won a raft of awards including the 2022 BAFTA and Oscar for Best Documentary. A look at the trailer here will have you hooked. There are so many highlights – Stevie Wonder playing drums, David Ruffin’s voice, Rev Jesse Jackson talking about the death of MLK, Mavis Staples and Mahalia Jackson dueting, Gladys Knight dancing with the Pips and Nina Simone being Nina Simone. Standout for me was Sly & The Family Stone who headlined on one of the Sundays and they closed their show leading the crowd in an incredible pounding version of I Want To Take You Higher from their 1969 LP Stand! Watching Sly Stone perform you can see where Prince got the funk-rock-soul ideas from. He’s also sporting a large pair of purple sunglasses – just sayin’! By chance, the now 80 year old Stone published his autobiography this week, titled after his song Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) – another great tune weirdly but brilliantly covered by Magazine in 1980.
Jumping Jack Flash – Rolling Stones (1968)
Since Wednesday of this week, the UK has been in the grip of the unusually named Storm Babet which has brought some terrible weather to most of the country. But the North East coast of Scotland has been taking the brunt of it and two people have sadly died. I wondered about the choice of name and discovered that the naming of storms is shared between the UK Met Office, the Irish weather service Met Éireann and the Netherlands weather service KMNI. Normally they draw the names from a shortlist of favourites submitted by the public but this year they have begun naming some storms after prominent scientists and meteorologists and those “who work to keep people safe in times of severe weather”. Hence, although there may never be a Storm Michael (Fish), Storm Agnes was named after Agnes Mary Clerke, an Irish astronomer and science writer. Babet, however, was named after a woman who visited an open day at the KMNI headquarters in Utrecht and put her own name forward “because I was born during a storm”. As Deacon Blue’s Born In A Storm is only a very short intro to their Raintown LP, I’ve decided to playlist the Stones’ track with that brilliant opening line: “I was born in crossfire hurricane”. Since this was written about Keith Richards being born in Dartford in 1943 during a World War II bombing raid, its not strictly applicable but it is a great lyric. Released as a non-album single in 1968, it was seen as a return to their bluesy roots and is the song they have played most often live – here from that year’s Rock and Roll Circus TV gig. Named after Richard’s gardener at the time, the distinctive guitar sound on the song was achieved by deploying two acoustic guitars with different tunings. Both were recorded using an old Philips cassette recorder with the mic jammed into the guitar body through the sound hole. The beauty of analogue.
Jerusalem – Steve Earle (2002)
Although the blog is based on weekly events, it is rare that I tie a tune to something in the news that is overtly political. But I’ve made an exception this week as the horror of the unfolding human tragedy in the Middle East has continued to shock the world. Among the acres of news coverage and the increasing polarisation of the two sides, the title track to Steve Earle’s 10th studio album from 2002 has been playing in my head. Recorded during the second Palestinian intafada and just after the US coalition had invaded Afghanistan, the record was an anti-war manifesto. The song John Walker’s Blues was written empathetically about the the captured American Taliban fighter John Walker Lindh and created contoversy in the US. However, it was the title track’s simple but heartfelt plea for peace in the Holy Land which really struck a chord with me. Written in his trademark style with guitar strumming, harmonica wailing and his voice like gravel, the lyric admits he may be a foolish dreamer in his views. And twenty odd years later, as this interminable conflict increases in intensity and barbarism, this seems sadly true. However, this shouldn’t stop us holding on to the hope he expresses: “And there’ll be no barricades then/There’ll be no wire or walls/And we can wash all this blood from our hands/And all this hatred from our souls/And I believe that on that day all the children of Abraham/Will lay down their swords forever in Jerusalem.”
Last Word
Next week will be my last blog for a few weeks and preparations are well underway for guest bloggers to step into the breach until I return from afar. More details to come but I know you are going to be in safe hands.
With some long journeys ahead, I have a feeling that the master playlist might well get a couple of outings, shuffled on to my headphones. Why not give it a try yourselves.
AR
Week In Sound 
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