For the first time in a good wee while, this week’s blog features six tunes from artists who have never featured on WIS previously. Enjoy!
Quiet Heart – Go-Betweens (1988)
So I am starting the blog this week by righting a wrong and finally playlisting a track by one of my favourite bands, The Go-Betweens. On 12 February 1958, Grant McLennan was born in Rockhampton in Queensland and he went on to found the Go-Betweens with Robert Forster in Brisbane in 1977. Between them they wrote virtually all the music the band recorded in the two phases of the band’s existence – up to a split in 1989 and a return between 2000 and 2006. The second period came to a tragic end when McLennan died from a heart attack at the age of just 48. In my view, the band made their best music in the first period with the wonderful Lindy Morrison on drums and Robert Vickers on bass. I was hugely impressed by their 83/84 single releases – the curious time signature of McLennan’s Cattle and Cane and the dreamy angst of Forster’s Part Company. But it wasn’t until 1986 that I invested in their brilliant fourth album Liberty Bell & The Black Diamond Express, recorded in London. It probably contained their best selection of tunes but it was the arrival of Amanda Brown on violin and oboe which really took their songs of romantic depression to new dramatic heights on 1987’s fifth album Tallullah. When the singles from these two records failed to provide the much sought-after hit, they decided to head back to Australia and recorded what was to be their last record together with the original line-up. 16 Lovers Lane was their pitch at commercial success with more direct and accessible song structures. But the splintering had begun – the difficult end to Morrison and Forster’s relationship and the tension of McLennan’s new relationship with Brown was eventually too much. In the end, no hits came but there were two killer tracks to go out on. Forster’s wistful, forlorn Dive For Your Memory would normally have been the stand-out had it not been up against the hopelessly romantic Quiet Heart penned for Brown by McClennan. They remain the only band I have ever seen play live in the splendour of Govan Town Hall. I have also passed under a bridge named after them in a water taxi on the Brisbane River.
Show Me How – Foo Fighters (2023)
The one downside with a passive retirement hobby like writing a blog is that it involves too much time sat on your arse in front of the laptop. So you need something to balance that and for the first time in my life, I have a gym membership. I try to go three times a week and do some stretching, a little bit of strength work and some cardio on the cross trainer – all at an appropriate level for a man of my advancing years while catching up on some sounds on the headphones. But, because my stint on the cross trainer is so dull, I’ve tried to find ways of distracting myself from the pain of watching that clock slowly count down as I gasp for air. I tried watching some videos on my phone but my eyesight is shot so that’s no use. I tried The News Agents podcast but it gets too depressing. I’ve never done audiobooks but I recently gave it a try and found that listening to Bob Mortimer read his autobiography And Away… was a hoot and helped distract me from the clock. Looking around for another book, I stumbled across Dave Grohl’s book The Storyteller. Now, having enjoyed the buzz of Nirvana at their peak in the early nineties, I began a slow drift away from that noisy rock music stuff as I hit my mid thirties. So, Foo Fighters were a band I was aware of but I wasn’t a fan and I don’t own a Foo Fighters record. But the little I knew about Grohl was that he seems a good enough bloke so I thought I’d give it a whirl. After 10 hours and 35 minutes, I finished it this week and I must say I thoroughly enjoyed it. Once you get past the rock band cliche stuff and accept him for the ‘kick-ass dude’ he is, Grohl tells really entertaining, well-written stories of his life with a warmth and humanity that really surprised me. There are frequent ‘laugh out loud’ moments and his awestruck enthusiasm for being in a band is balanced by some really tender moments about his love for his children and also about those he has lost along the way. I’m playlisting an atypical Foos single from 2023’s But Here We Are LP, their first record after Taylor Hawkin’s death, which features Grohl’s daughter Violet on harmony vocals.
Say No Go – De La Soul (1989)
A year ago this week, a guy called David Jolicoeur died – not a familiar name but he was one of the magic number of three in hip hop group De La Soul, where he went under the name Trugoy the Dove or Plug 2. Trugoy (yogurt spelled backwords) met Kelvin Mercer (Posdnuos/Plug 1) and Vincent Mason (Maseo/Plug3) in high school and formed their group there in 1988 in Long Island, New York. Having got into the dance rhythms and clever sampling of early rap music through the likes of Grandmaster Flash and then moved on to Eric B & Rakim’s laid-back hip hop beats, I was less enamoured by the rise of gangsta rap with its gun-toting rage and confrontational bragging. I still enjoyed what I heard by so-called jazz rap acts like A Tribe Called Quest and Dream Warriors but it was the eclectic sampling and quirky wordplay of De La Soul that really struck a chord with me. To name their brilliant debut album as a play on the title of a Johnny Cash song – and to sample his “how high’s the water, mama?” line on the record – showed this was the hip hop group for me. Back then, I used to feel it was important to decide on my “record of the year” and 3 Feet High and Rising was the winner for 1989 by a long, long way. The playful lyrics, the innovative sampling and the joyous day-glo positivity of the resulting tunes were just irresistible. It is quite unlike any other rap album and many critics have put it on their ‘greatest ever’ lists, referring to it as a psychedelic hip hop masterpiece. It’s a bit off its nut – but it’s brilliant. The sample list is long and diverse with the expected James Brown and Funkadelic joined by The Monkees, Steve Miller and Liberace. I could have playlisted the childish joy of The Magic Number or Say No Go, their re-building of Hall & Oates I Can’t Go For That into an anti-drugs anthem. But I am going for the loping, romantic vibe of Eye Know where Steely Dan’s Peg is taken on a journey straight to your heart: “Now it’s time to let this rhyme style get somewhat poured in the mould/Hold my hand and we’ll pick my plantation of daisies for a bouquet of soul” And yes, that’s Otis Redding’s whistle from Dock Of The Bay you can hear looping in the background. Genius.
My Ever Changing Moods (LP Piano Version) – The Style Council (1984)
Only one track from The Jam has ever made it on the blog and nothing from Paul Weller’s post-Jam work has landed. As we have tickets to see the great man on the small stage of the Alhambra in Dunfermline in April, I suspect that will change. But before then, I’m going use the excuse of the release of My Ever Changing Moods by The Style Council as a single on 12 February 1984 to get some more music from the Guv’nor on here. Weller’s move from The Jam to The Style Council was probably one of the most controversial changes in…erm… style of an artist since Dylan plugged in that electric guitar in 1966. There were many hardened Jam fans shouting “Judas” at the time but somewhat unfairly. Weller’s journey from fired-up punk-mod to something more soulful and musically expansive was well underway by the time he split the band, got on his bike with Mick Talbot and went full Cappaccino Kid on his fanbase. The final Jam LP, The Gift, was full of horn-driven Stax-like sounds and even the bass line to mega-hit A Town Called Malice was borrowed from The Supremes’ You Can’t Hurry Love. By the time My Ever Changing Moods was released, the Style Council had produced four singles, two of which had gone top 5 in the UK – debut Speak Like A Child and double A-side Long Hot Summer/Paris Match. The jazzy French feel of the latter was to be replicated in their first album Cafe Bleu which the Moods single preceded by a few weeks. The single also went top 5 and the 7inch and 12inch versions were full band recordings of the tune. But I am playlisting the recording included on Cafe Bleu which is a slightly slower piano and vocal version which really allows the typical Weller lyric to shine: “Evil turns to statues, and masses form a line/But I know which way I’d run to if the choice was mine”. Weller still performs the song in his sets today and, as an added bonus, cop a listen to the orchestral version of Moods, which he did with the BBC Symphony Orchestra back in 2021.
What Do You Want From Me – Monaco (1997)
Best known as the bassist and co-founder of Joy Division and New Order, Peter Hook reached the ripe old age of 68 this week. He has an unusual style of bass playing, using it as a lead instrument and playing the song’s melody lines high up the fret board. He claims he adopted this approach when he started playing with Joy Division because the first speaker he bought for a tenner from his former art teacher was so poor he had to play that high to be able to be heard over Bernard Sumner’s loud guitar. The shift to playing melodies was driven further by New Order’s increasing use of sequencers to create bass-lines in the late 80s and 90s. Hook was born in Salford and was one of the many Manchester based musicians inspired by attending the now legendary Sex Pistols gig at the Manchester Lesser Free Trade Hall in June 1976. I suspect the capacity of the hall is far exceeded by the number of people who have claimed to have been there that night. Next day, the story goes that Hook borrowed money off his mum and bought a bass, going on to form the band Warsaw with Bernard Sumner. And the rest, as they say… Despite their enormous success, New Order were famously argumentative and their career is scattered with personal disputes and walk-outs. The band went on hold in 1993 while side projects begun in recent years were pursued full-time – Hook formed Monaco with the decidedly Sumner-sounding David Potts. After reconvening in 1998, New Order went on to more success but split again when Hook walked out in 2007 and did not return in the second reformation in 2011! Since then, he has performed with his own band, Peter Hook and the Light, and written a couple of books on his time in Joy Division and New Order – I saw him doing a very funny interview at the Book Festival in Edinburgh. Instead of reaching for a track from those days, I’ve playlisted him doing his Hooky thing on the hit single from his days with Monaco. Flashback to a peroxide TFI Friday performance here.
A Little Crazy – Nicole Atkins (2017)
This was the week that brought us St Valentine’s Day which somehow relates a martyred Roman priest to cards with pink hearts, emblazoned with school-age love poems – do youngsters still do that SWALK thing in the digital age? Who knows, but I’ve decided to dedicate this last track on the blog to Lynn, my much, much better half. Since I started scribbling all this nonsense nearly a year ago, she has also stopped working, which is great as we have been on a couple of big trips together with more planned. However, it also means that she can now see just how long I spend on the laptop writing the blog! Despite a few frowns when it has got in the way of something (like getting the tea ready for her coming home), she has been really supportive of me doing this. She even reads the damn thing! She is as big a fan of music as I am and although our tastes differ there is sufficient overlap to allow her to be my gig buddy for a good proportion of my live music events. It’s probably one of the things that has kept us together since we met nearly forty years ago. Other than swap (tasteful!) cards, we didn’t do anything for Valentine’s Day but we did spend the evening before (Shrove Tuesday) making excellent savoury crepes with our delightful (but boomerang) daughter, Louise. The soundtrack to the evening was provided by Lynn’s fantastic Girl Power playlist (yeah, she makes them too) which currently has nearly 100 eclectic tracks by a wide range of female singers. I’m playlisting this brilliant track that I’d never heard before by Nicole Atkins, about whom Lynn knew nothing other than she heard it and liked it. A quick Google gives the basics – Atkins is a New Jersey born singer-songwriter with a fascination for the sounds of the 60s and Brill Building style of songwriting. The stunning noir ballad A Little Crazy opens her fourth LP from 2017 called Goodnight Rhonda Lee and she wrote it with her friend Chris Isaak. Patsy Cline meets Roy Orbison is my take on it – see what you think.
Last Word
So next week will see the blog reaching the milestone of being one year old. Seems to be a good excuse to drop into celebratory theme mode and come up with six tunes with the word ‘year’ in the title – but I suspect that might have to be extended a bit to include the plural or I am going to find myself with Busted or Johnny Logan on the list! We’ll see what plays out…
The Monster playlist rolls ever onwards like a Sodastream, providing an endless stream of fizzy pop. Get busy!
AR
Week In Sound 
Leave a reply to Alastair Davidson Cancel reply