This month’s blog comes with an official ‘get a cup of tea’ warning as, somewhat implausibly, it is even longer than normal. Enjoy!
First Word
The first half of this month’s epistle is dominated by a trip to London at the very end of September to attend the Public Service Broadcasting Race For Space 10(+1)th anniversary show at the Alexandra Palace. My son Angus and I began the festivities by suffering the Slovenia v Scotland game with a couple of pints of Tennents in a Scottish pub, appropriately located on Caledonian Road. At the time, I was most of the way through Andrew Hagan’s novel of the same name, so it felt like the.. erm.. universe was aligning for the gig in the evening. After the final whistle, a trip to the PSB pop-up merch store at the Star of Kings pub a short walk away gave us our only Apollo 13 moment of the weekend. The problem was the queue to get in was stretching some way around the block. A quick comms with my daughter’s partner at Mission Control East Dulwich suggested we set the co-ordinates for Highbury and Islington and get another pint there. Which brings us to the first record…
Little Sister – Elvis Presley (1961)
Tumbling out the station at Highburgh and Islington in the late afternoon, we did the ‘pubs near me’ thing and up popped the Hope & Anchor. As it is high on my ‘London venues to see a gig in’ list, we headed off to see the Grade 2 listed building, while I bored Angus with its history as a legendary pub-rock and punk venue. Although now owned by Greene King, it was reassuringly scruffy inside and while we got our drinks, I asked the girl on the bar if I could get into the basement to see the famously cramped performance room. Seemingly the manager was late so I got fobbed off but I then spotted some guys with guitar cases in the bar and got on the chat. Turned out they were Proper, a mod band of a certain age who were the support for the gig that night – and a really nice trio of well-filled Fred Perrys they turned out to be. I helped them carry their gear down the tortuously narrow staircase into a low-ceiling roomed that was even smaller than I had imagined. They suggested I should get up on the stage where so many have stood and band-leader Ivano handed me his Gibson Les Paul – I am not ashamed to say photos were taken!
As well as a belated Stranglers Live album, the venue is famous for the pub rock/punk Front Row Festival Live double LP which was recorded over various nights in late 1977 and features XTC, The Saints, X-Ray Spex and… erm… Dire Straits. The tiny venue was also used to film the claustrophobic videos for The Damned’s New Rose and One Step Beyond by Madness. But I have a fondness for the venue from a terrific ‘Radio 1 In Concert’ performance in May 1980 by Elvis Costello and the Attractions, which I taped off the radio. With keyboard maestro Steve Nieve injured in an accident, the band had drafted in the great Martin Belmont, guitarist with The Rumour, making the live versions of the songs on the setlist quite unique. EC was in the middle of his Get Happy!! soul period and, in addition to rollicking versions of High Fidelity and I Stand Accused, the band slotted in some rare covers. The band tackle Marvin Gaye’s One More Heartache and The Temptation’s Don’t Look Back (both written by Smokey Robinson) and do a blistering take on Sonny Boy Williamson’s Help Me. But it was Little Sister, a song which was a UK No1 for Declan’s adopted namesake that caught my ear. I had never heard it before and was blissfully unaware that Belmont was reproducing the guitar riff originally played by Hank Garland in RCA Studio B in Nashville in June 1961. As he introduces it, Costello tells the packed basement crowd “I hate to tell you that the tunnel has actually collapsed and we’re trapped. This is a little number by an unknown singer from Tupelo, Mississipi…”
I played my tape to death as the recording has never had an official release but thanks to a guy called Craig the whole glorious thing is available to listen to at:
https://archive.org/details/elvis-costello-1980-05-14-london-fm
The Mauritian Badminton Doubles Champion 1973 – Hamish Hawk (2021)
With all the Hope & Anchor shennanigans and grabbing something to eat, we were a bit later then planned jumping on the train again up to the Alexandra Palace station. It was a beautiful late summer evening, with pink clouds in the sky from the sunset as we emerged from the station. As the light slowly faded, we followed the crowds winding their way up the hill, along the tree-lined road. It’s an amazing way for the full drama of the venue to be revealed as you near the top and the trees thin out. Suddenly you are standing below the BBC transmission mast which towers over north London as a monumument to the early days of the organisation whose core mission was to inform, educate and entertain – which just happens to the the title of the Public Service Broadcasting’s first album from 2013.
The long walk around the perimeter of the building to reach the entrance, plus the inevitable need to find the facilities, meant we missed the first song of Hamish Hawk’s support slot. Edinburgh-based Hawk had supported his label-mates PSB at their Barbican gig last year with a solo accoustic set but brought the full band on this big occasion. I’d been listening to his music since the singles from breakthrough 2021 LP Heavy Elevator got him some airplay on 6Music. But I’d only seen him once before, performing his amazing Ivor Cutler one-man show at the Edinburgh Book Festival in 2025 when this blog was on a sabatical. Faced with a blank stage and a huge expectant crowd in the hall, the band quickly won them over with a short, punchy set of their best tunes from the last few years. Two new songs from his forthcoming album also got an outing, including the live debut of his excellent current single Ice-like Empty. But I am playlisting one of those 2021 singles which highlights Hawk’s off-beat lyrics and ear for a sweeping melody. The band left the stage to great applause and many new listeners in the hall around me were audibly enthusing about the set.
Postscript. Ten days after the gig, Lynn and I attended the new stage adaptation of Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie at the Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh, featuring an outstanding performance in the lead role by Gayl Rankin. A belated rush for an interval ice cream found me standing next to none other than Hamish Hawk! A short but delightful conversation ensued as I enthused about his music in general and the PSB and Ivor Cutler shows in particular. Lovely bloke and I’m looking forward to his new album launch show next April.
Gargarin – Public Service Broadcasting (2015)
And so to the main event. Public Service Broadcasting have featured on the blog five times in the past which tells you something about my love of their unique blend of archival speech (and video), electronica and post rock. I subscribe to their Patreon page (for bands like PSB, every little helps!) where leader J Willgoose Esq writes regularly, amusingly and very honestly about life as a group of musicians trying to scrape a living from their talents. Over the last year or so, subscribers were able to witness all the blood, sweat and tears that went into taking the decision to put on the 10(+1)th anniversary show for their much loved 2015 album The Race for Space. The decision to attempt this at the largest capacity venue they have ever played was a leap of faith that delightfully paid off when the 10,000 tickets sold out in a few hours.
As the title suggests, The Race For Space is a (roughly) chronological sequence of songs constructed around the cold-war super-power battle to put the first man on the moon. Right from the off, Willgoose was clear that, while they would play all the LP tracks, they weren’t going to perform it in order as history didn’t suit the pace of the set. And they also wanted to supplement the LP with other… ahem… ‘hits’. Also, inspired by recent Radiohead gigs, Willgoose told us he had composed about 35 minutes of new music featuring unedited mission audio from Apollo 11 which would be used to build the atmosphere before the show began. The excitement in the darkness of the packed hall was palabable as this ambient soundtrack swept around our heads. It ended with a countdown sequence before control screens crackled into life all round us and the LP title track sampling Kennedy’s 1962 “We choose to go to the moon” speech hung in the air.
Lift-off came with Sputnik, the pulsing “voice of the Russian moon”, as a model of the satellite with flashing lights took off over the stage and traversed the length of the Ally Pally ceiling, to the delight of everyone. From that point on, the band were flying with many of the songs having brilliant added extras. E.V.A. came with an extended disco jam and Spitfire had a great extended outro. People Let’s Dance featured additonal spacemen graphics and real roller skaters dancing on stage. EERA played throughout and sung on Progress while Andreya Casablanca sang Blue Heaven and The Fun of It, the latter on the second stage near us in the middle of the hall. My highlight among many was the beautiful ode to the first woman in space, Valentina, performed with the lush vocals of the Smoke Fairies centre stage – just jaw-dropping. With its much-loved dancing spacemen, the horn-driven funk of the playlisted Gargarin (“The whole world knew him and loved him”) was saved until the encore. And the night ended with everyone back on stage, including Hamish Hawk, for a spirited rendition of Mike Scott’s The Whole of the Moon, while the spacemen threw giant moon balloons out into the audience, in the style of The Flaming Lips. Crazy!
The thrill of the night before took us back up to the Star of Kings pub on Sunday to sift through what was left of the merch shop, on the promise that the band would show up hung-over in the afternoon. This they duly did (especially the hung-over bit) and, in their post-gig euphoria, they were kind enough to sign my TRFS 10(+1) gig poster and have quick chat. And yes, I went all fan-boy and had my photo taken with them…
Boise, Idaho – Bonnie Prince Billy (2025)
The final link to the PSB London weekend for this fourth track is tenuous in the extreme, as it relates to being on the train into King’s Cross heading homewards and sitting next to a guy sporting a baseball cap bearing the words Boise, Idaho. And it reminded me of this plaintive song. Yup – that’s it. And mercifully it does not entail a long complicated story like the other songs this month as I don’t know much about the wonderfully named Bonnie Prince Billy, other that his real name is Will Oldham and Johnny Cash covered his song I See A Darkness on American III: Solitary Man in 2000. When looking for a stage name, the Kentucky-born singer/songwriter apparently loved the romantic sound of the name given to Charles Edward Stuart, the young pretender to the British throne, who led the Jacobite rising of 1745. So he adapted it for himself.
A prolific writer and musical collaborator since the early 90s, Olham has been the lead or co-performer on over 40 albums of primarily dark, Appalachian Americana. Boise, Idaho appears on The Purple Bird LP released in January 2025 and it is a song of heartbreak and regret. As countless songs inhabit this familiar space, I asked myself why this particular one struck such a chord with me when I heard it. It’s partly how his fragile voice blends with Brit Taylor’s backing vocal on the haunting melody but it’s also the beauty of the arrangement. The gentle harmonics on the guitar, the careful placed cymbal rolls, the way the pedal steel is delicately intertwined with the accordian and the fiddle – it’s just a masterclass of understated production.
Burn It Down – Dexy’s Midnight Runners (1980)
So I know you’ll struggle to believe this but I wrote a lengthy piece (no, really) in WIS 21Jul23, where I explained my love for Dexy’s Midnight Runners in the 80s and for the mad genius that is Kevin Rowland. I followed that up with a second love letter to the band in WIS 23Aug24 where I disected the craziness of Until I Believe in my Soul, the emotional centrepiece of the second LP Too-Rye-Ay. This post was prompted by seeing Rowland performing it on the TV during their Glastonbury set and it was that performance that was in my mind in the spring when I got tickets for their show at the Concert Hall in Glasgow this month. Sadly, the letter this time is more one of lost love than anything else.
My view of Rowland’s new writing since he started putting together versions of the band again in 2003 can be summed up as ‘patchy’. The latest recording by the latest version of the band was released in September and is called LOVE. Despite some critical lauding, I think it falls below ‘patchy’ and is well down the road to ‘bang average’. With few exceptions, I find the songs both lyrically and musically bland. Long gone is the eccentric wordplay of Rowland the wild-hearted outsider and the power and drive of his musical associates is MIA. The song titles tell the story – You’ve Got The Love, It’s Over Now, I’ll Always Love You, I Want to be Holding You Next Christmas – all presented with a synthetic T.S.O.P. gloss. Listening to it made me yearn for Dexy’s 1981 single Liars A to E and it’s enigmatic plea: “Quick, nip next door to the vendor of charisma”.
I convinced myself that a live setting would lift the songs but as I took my seat I was slightly aghast at a stage musical set up of drums and two keyboard synths with no sign of a bass guitar or even a guitar. The first half of the set was mostly delivered using this skeletal set-up to knock out half a dozen or so of the new tunes. Yes it was better hearing them live, but not much. The synth bass plodded and very occasional guitar licks appeared mysteriously out of the ether. One first half highlight was the aforementioned Liars A to E with one of the keyboard players playing a sax supplemented by a trombone player (sadly not Big Jim Patterson). We also got a terrific blast of horns on The Teams That Meet In Caffs, a title obviously not from the recent record!
The second half made much more use of the horns and focussed on songs from their 80s heyday – I’m not usually a ‘play the hits’ man but this time it was essential. There was balance, however – versions of Eileen and Geno were in there but so was a belting Breaking Down the Walls of Heartache. And the fifteen minute encore of the glorious This Is What She’s Like was as batshit crazy as ever, sending me home in a much better mood. But I’m going back to where it all started and playlisting the crucial re-recording of the 1979 debut single Dance Stance, renamed as Burn It Down for the first LP. It’s soul manifesto opening has a minute of radio static with snatches of Deep Purple, the Sex Pistols and the Specials, before Rowland shouts “Big Jimmy? (Yeah!) Now? (Yeah!) For God’s sake, burn it down…” Horns blow into a chorus listing great Irish writers and Pete Williams’ bassline positively bounces. Take note, Kevin…
At Last! – Etta James (1960)
It’s been a busy old month which came to a crescendo when one of my oldest friends got married last Sunday in a small venue, deep in the heart of the old town in Edinburgh. Marion was one of a group of teenage pals I hung out with back in Paisley in the mid-70s and, unlike many in the west of Scotland at that time, moved away from home through to Edinburgh to study at the University there at the tender age of 16. Our long friendship really began when I decided to take a job in the capital in 1984 and got the spare room in a flat Marion was renting with others in Bruntsfield. We’ve shared many, many glasses of wine, parties, gigs and holidays in the forty-odd years since then. In time, not only did she become a much-loved “auntie” to my kids, she even had a stint on WIS as a guest blogger – see WIS 10Nov23. If you click the link, you’ll see it was an entertaining and erudite read, notable for her use of the word “threnody” in her First Word intro. Needless to say, I had to look it up again to remind myself of what it meant. You’d never guess her degree was in English!
Her bulging address book tells you that she developed a very wide circle of close friends over the years, but it wasn’t until 2009 that she met someone who turned out to be the closest friend. John soon moved in with her and they’ve been happily together ever since. So, it was to the surprise and delight of those in that address book when they announced last year that they had decided to get married. And so it came to pass that, on the weekend of two named storms, Lynn and I accompanied by our children and their partners joined the 80-strong group of family and friends who defied the weather to be there for this very special and joyous occasion.
Given our shared love of music, Marion asked me to help her and John plan the music around the ceremony itself. A playlist was developed, initially comprising some fun tunes to build the atmosphere in the room as seats were taken – if I tell you the playlist was titled I Knew The Bride, you’ll get the vibe. When Marion and John walked down the aisle together, the play shifted to the gentle sound of Jagger/Richards’ Wild Horses. They signed the register with the Rev Al Green’s beautiful Let’s Stay Together playing and Marion’s sister Helen’s reading was the John Cooper Clarke poem I Wanna Be Yours. However, as the celebrant ended the ceremony and the happy couple’s family and friends burst into wild applause and cheering, there was only really one tune that could be played. Etta James’ signature song At Last! is a glorious blast of joy, a timeless arrangement with a stunning vocal performance. The perfect way to tie the knot and seal the deal!
Last Word
Very few last words this month as there have been far, far too many words already. Thanks for getting this far if you did. All songs featured on the Master Playlist – link below.
AR
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