The second guest blog in March comes from the cultured pen of Ken Macdonald with an ace selection of unfamiliar tunes. Enjoy!
First Word
For anyone who hasn’t depped for AGR45rpm yet, be warned that this is a tough gig. First you have to overcome the notion that this is Desert Island Discs. You’re not trying to sum up your entire life in six hot waxings (although just for the record, my book would be Alasdair Gray’s Lanark and my luxury a solar powered shortwave radio). Originally I toyed with a pretty dark theme, inspired by Buddy and Ritchie and Jape getting on that doomed flight in Clear Lake, Iowa in a February 65 years ago. Who knows what might have happened if they’d landed safely in Minnesota? Would Buddy have gone on to be a MAGA fanatic with a Vegas residency? Or would he have embarrassed his fans in even more ghastly ways? Which led me to thinking about which of our musical heroes might have benefited from what Gore Vidal described, upon being told that Truman Capote had died, as a “smart career move”, so preventing them later espousing political opinions or musical styles that made us cringe. Thus I began mentally handing out boarding passes for an imaginary, rickety biplane to former greats who’ve really let the side down. But then I thought “too dark even for me”. Also, lawyers…
On a completely unrelated note, there’s no Morrissey this week.
Dead Meat – The Tubs (2023)
Hang on – is that Richard Thompson standing in for the late Tom Verlaine? No, it’s actually The Tubs’ frontman Owen Williams with the title track from their debut album. Dead Meat is a heck of a calling card, a relentless slice of tuneful indie jangle with some of the most deliciously judgemental lyrics so far this century:
“You wake up/and you’re back/in a repulsive life/in a repulsive flat…”
By the time we get to the chorus “you were dead before I met you”, we realise this isn’t sunshine, lollipops and rainbows. Instead it’s a product of Gob Nation, a loose collective of maybe a dozen South London musicians who in various permutations make up perhaps ten different bands of confusingly but enjoyably differing styles. These glory in such names as Ex-Vöid, Sniffany & the Nits, Garden Centre, Porridge Radio, the GN Band, and the Snivellers. And they said all the best names were already taken. Only one thing mars this jewel of a track: it’s only 90 seconds long when it should last all day. Lads, even the Fire Engines could stretch some of their stuff out beyond a couple of minutes…
From The Underworld – The Herd (1967)
The Sixties. I was there, and I can remember them. Admittedly I was still at primary school and was caning nothing more hazardous than Spangles, but you knew that something momentous was happening to music, especially when this came out. Even the BBC Light Programme had to sit up and take notice (Radio 1 was still a month in the future). From The Underworld was co-written and produced by Ken Howard and the fascinating Alan Tudor Blaikley. The latter did not follow a traditional rock’n’roll career path, being born in Hampstead Garden Suburb, educated at Wadham College Oxford, and editing a literary quarterly on the way. But he discovered he knew his way around a tune too, writing number ones for the Honeycombs and Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich. This one didn’t top the charts but is still the all-time champion. That bell! That piano figure! That choir! That plectrum-ed bass! That double tracked vocal!! (There was one in each stereo channel, although you couldn’t tell that on medium wave). That was 17-year-old Peter Frampton, that was. The Herd didn’t outlast the Sixties by much. Frampton went on to yacht-rock stardom and his bandmate Andy Bown – who had even better cheekbones than Frampers – eventually joined inveterate chuggers Status Quo. He co-wrote “Whatever You Want”, which doesn’t sound like it could have taken him too long.
Comin’ Home Baby – Mel Tormé (1962)
Hey, hip daddy-o, let’s get fingerpoppin’ to this! Despite the fact that they seem to be written by stubbly young men whose online shopping appears to extend to buying Red Dwarf t-shirts but not underarm deodorant, algorithms can be useful sometimes. But not for suggesting music you might enjoy. Algorithms are likely to force you down well-worn, unsurprising musical pathways. Far better to have a real human offer you something they find interesting – or a forgotten gem like this. And I had forgotten it for about 60 years. So it’s thanks to Guy Garvey on BBC 6Music for reminding me (he wasn’t even born when it came out, the whippersnapper). I remember liking it a lot when I heard it way back when I was five years old but hadn’t really clocked who the vocalist was at the time. I filed it mentally alongside Hit the Road Jack by Ray Charles – same feel, same call-and-response from what they referred to in those less enlightened days as ‘chick singers’. But it wasn’t Ray but the hitherto rather more staid jazz crooner whom I called – on zero evidence – Mel Toupée. It’s one of the few instrumentals to have been improved by adding lyrics. The 1961 nae-words single by the Dave Bailey Quintet isn’t bad, but Mel’s rendition nails it. He wasn’t too keen on recording it, but he deferred to his new label Atlantic and producer Neshui Ertegun, brother of Atlantic’s presiding genius Ahmet. A couple of days ago I was surprised and delighted to discover that the chick… er… female vocal group was the Cookies, a New York combo who had backed Ray Charles before the Raelettes turned up. So not so far from Hit the Road Jack at all.
Old Note – Lisa O’Neill (2023)
Sometimes the best songs creep up on you and don’t so much invade your consciousness as infect your subconscious. So it is with this, the third track on O’Neill’s fifth album All Of This Is Chance. It was her first release for five years, somehow giving her the air of overnight success. Old Note begins beguilingly, laying a bed of lush strings. They announce that something wonderful is about to happen, which it does when we hear her remarkable voice (and County Cavan accent). The melody is more cunningly complex than it sounds at first. And those lyrics…
“Feathered friend dig up and resurrect me/I long to live among the song of birdies/A lawless league of lonesome, lonesome beauty…”
What’s it all about? Music, memory, stars, birds, so much more. One critic has called the lyrics ‘confounding’, which is the posh way of saying ‘I’m not sure what’s going on here’. Like swathes of James Joyce, perhaps it doesn’t matter too much. Just lie back and let it all wash over you.
“You hold the note, the note just moves the movement/Let go of the note and so move everything.”
What does it mean? And what’s that bairn (her niece) saying at the end? By then it hardly matters.
Besides, I’m told Cillian Murphy likes it too. So there.
Telephones – Mo Kenney (2014)
This song was the result of one of those lovely chance encounters. I’m ashamed to admit I’d never head of Mo Kenney before last year when they (singular – this is the modern world) were on the bill alongside Elephant Sessions and the Kinnaris Quintet at the Orkney Folk Festival. The Pickaquoy Centre in Kirkwall might not seem the most rock’n’roll of venues but Mo reached out across the floor of the sports hall with nothing more than an acoustic guitar and a strong yet versatile voice. This is a cover of a song by the band Mardeen – like Mo, they’re from Halifax, Nova Scotia – but this gently rocked-up studio version tops theirs, bringing out the best from a song about an ennui-riddled relationship: “you used to make my Mondays Saturdays”. The video is a hoot too. Let this be your introduction to the wonderful world of Mo. They’re an accomplished songwriter – try her song Sucker as your entry level drug – and have toured with Canada’s topmost tune genius and firewall-tempter Ron Sexsmith, which must count as a seal of quality. Listen to this a couple of times and you’ll be humming the hook all day:
“When we’re alone together talking like babies/I know just how to keep you in my head/If I had another lover could I keep you on the side?”
She gets the tone just right – an accomplished piece of lighthearted heartlessness.
I Trained Her To Love Me – Nick Lowe (2007)
There’s nothing lighthearted about this heartlessness though. It’s a cold, hard, first-person tale of a man who woos women just to dump them:
“This one’s almost done/now to watch her fall apart/I trained her to love me/so I can go ahead and break her heart”.
Nick co-wrote this with the late Robert Treherne, better known to some as Roogalator, Cowboy Outfit and Van Morrison drummer Bobby Irwin, and you pray that this song wasn’t autobiographical on the part of either of them because it’s a chilling but brilliant portrait of a sociopath:
“I’m gonna start working on another after this/and when I get that one in a state of bliss/betray her with a kiss”.
It’s less than three minutes long and as meticulously constructed as a Swiss watch, right down to the merest hint of self-reflection just before he spots his next mark:
“Here comes a prime contender for my agenda/if ever there was one/and I’m gonna train her to love me/until it’s time to do what must be done.”
In a last, desperate lunge at topicality, let us note that March 24th is Basher’s 75th birthday. There should be a public holiday to celebrate his greatness as a performer, producer and above all songwriter. His middle name is Drain, you know.
So let this stand as the darkest song in this selection. Although the darkest and most starkly shocking line in all popular music had already appeared on Sun Records in 1955 when Johnny Cash sang “I shot a man in Reno / just to watch him die”. Like, how more black could that be? None. None more black.
Last Word
The problem with guest blogs is that you have to follow them and getting back behind the laptop next week and scribing anything will be a real struggle after this one. I’ve been swapping tune recommendations with Mr Macdonald since we were at school and yet he still comes up with a couple of great tracks that I hadn’t heard before. And the only reason I knew three of the others was that he had shared his discovery of them with me over the last couple of years! We are both long time admirers of Nick Lowe, right back to So It Goes (BUY1) – and even before with the Brinsleys – so I couldn’t agree more on the proposal for St Basher’s Day. The alternative Alternative National Treasure.
Now topped up with two week’s worth of guest tunes, the Master Playlist remains a puzzling odd number of top tracks to tickle your earbuds with.
AR
Week In Sound 
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