A new reason for not recently posting – I’ve been on holiday. So busy was I before the break, that I’ve ended up posting this three days after I got back.
Where have I been? Well, when Mrs TGG and I decided to book this one, two songs lodged in my head.
Should be back with a Seen ‘Em Live post in the next day or two. With a bit of luck.
TGG
If the various lockdowns hadn’t have happened, I might not be writing about this song now. The thing is, until the end of 2020, I can’t recall ever having heard it. That’s when, twiddling my thumbs at home, because we were in some Tier or another that meant all the pubs were shut, I was idly scrolling through Facebook when a “Suggested For You” item took my attention.
The Synth World Cup: Forgotten 80-84 was the title of what turned out to be a very interesting group and concept. What was being planned to start early in 2021 was a knockout competition involving a few hundred synth tunes that had never made the UK Top 40. Even better than that, there were YouTube playlists including at least 95% of the nominated tracks so that members of the group could listen prior to voting. All of this organised by a guy called Jeremy who lives in the South-West and has subsequently gone on to run a series of club nights called Computer World down there.
With these playlists featuring everything from near-misses by artists who did have some hits to stuff that was really obscure, and all stations in between, the quality level varied significantly. What I got from it, on a number of occasions, was a “Crikey, that was good, I wonder why I’ve never heard it before” moment. Which is where this comes in.
I can’t recall ever noticing that Japan’s bass player had made a solo album after the group’s demise. I was familiar with a single he recorded with Midge Ure in 1983 (After A Fashion), and I’d heard something by the band Dali’s Car, with which he teamed up with Peter Murphy of Bauhaus – although I wasn’t sure at the time who from each of the bands was actually in that outfit! There were a number of other works that also passed me by, prior to Karn’s death from cancer in January 2011.
Sensitive reached the dizzy heights of #98. It probably wasn’t an obvious fit for radio play, but I like its general mood and somehow or another I do find myself singing bits of it for some time after I’ve heard it. It’s possibly the song I’ve played most over the last couple of years, since I discovered it.
I was surprised to discover when researching this piece that the aforementioned After A Fashion only reached #39 in 1983. This is a track I have played frequently over the last 40 years and is another that seems to get lodged in my head whenever I hear it. So, as a bonus, here’s a link to that as well.
There may well be other discoveries and tracks from the Synth World Cup: Forgotten 80-84 making it into this series. You could say it partly inspired the series. For the record, Sensitive made it as far as the 3rd Round and the overall winner was the rather splendid Let Me Go by Heaven 17. The group continues on Facebook, albeit under a slightly different name and no World Cups currently taking place. It’s a group that has led me in a number of directions and rekindled my interest in B-Movie among others. Here’s a link if you’re interested.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/936749170080609
It wasn’t meant to be a month between posts. Life has just been a little hectic of late for one reason or another.
TGG
Another Saturday, another visit to Manchester’s Albert Hall. Also another visit to the Pizza Express on King Street, sitting somewhat incongruously among the high-end eateries in that area, such as Gotham, Rosso and other places where you may encounter the less publicity-shy Premier League footballer or soap star. Oh, and Gordon Ramsay appears to be opening a place there at some point, as well.
This time it’s to see Peter Hook & The Light. We’ve seen them a couple of times before at Rewind North, an 80s retro fest that takes place 6-7 miles north of chez TGG. So it’s rude not to go – it’s almost like a local party in the park given the number of people we know from our town who we see there. Hooky and his band have impressed when we’ve seen them. Then again, when others on the bill include someone who used to be in Five Star (One Star?)…. In fairness, it’s a mix of cheesy (ideal for queuing up for food), half-decent and people I would (and do) go and see perform their own gigs.
There are those that dismiss acts such as Peter Hook & The Light and From The Jam as glorified tribute bands. You may well agree with that point of view, and I understand that argument. I take a more generous view, though, that such acts are offering a chance to see a full set of songs from those classic bands with at least one person who was actually involved with the original recordings. I would of course like to see New Order if they were to tour again (*1), but I can’t see The Jam reforming any time soon.
This performance is the third of three consecutive nights at the Albert Hall. On Thursday, they performed Unknown Pleasures and Movement and on Friday it was Closer and Power, Corruption & Lies. I quite fancied Thursday, but a combination of work commitments due to the financial year-end and Mrs TGGs unfamiliarity with the finer points of both albums led us to the sell-out Saturday show where they were to play both of the Substance albums from Joy Division & New Order.
This meant that we knew the set list in advance, and with the New Order album definitely getting more play in our house, I did have to double-check the Joy Division running order. Handily, I did get an email with the running orders and what was included in the encore during the course of the day! I guess it’s useful for those who drink a lot at a gig and can’t remember what they’ve heard, and also a useful aide memoire for someone who wants to write about it afterwards. For the record, I rarely drink alcohol at a music event – largely because I’m a picky real ale drinker and most venues don’t sell anything I like.
The first set is pretty no-nonsense. Straight on stage, a quick “it’s good to be home” and then on with Warsaw. There are pauses only for dedications prior to Transmission and Atmosphere – the former for Tony Wilson and the latter for Nora Forster. All too soon, we reach the end of the set with a song who’s intro always gives me goose bumps – Love Will Tear Us Apart. You don’t really need me to tell you the response it gets from the audience.
After what I recall was only around a 15 minute break, the band are back out to work their way through the somewhat lengthier New Order set. There’s certainly a greater element of the crowd joining in with the songs here – I put it down to a combination of alcohol consumption and familiarity. Everything is delivered in an energetic way and Hooky is taking a regular wipe of the forehead with a towel. The nature of the Albert Hall does mean that it gets a lot warmer in there as the evening progresses – I know the same can be said of many venues, but it seems more noticeable here. We reach the encores and as well as the published Regret and Crystal, we also get Vanishing Point.
Gig over, milking the applause. Hooky takes his shirt off. He’s ten years older than me, but I have a lot to do if my physique is to be as good as that at 67. He then throws the shirt into the crowd. Mrs TGG tries to work out how many people will leave with a piece of that very sweaty shirt.
All in all, an enjoyable evening. We knew what we were getting and the band delivered. What it did allow was a chance to see how the sound of early Joy Division evolved into the New Order mid-80s style, courtesy of them being played by the same group of musicians in chronological order in a live setting. It also struck me (and I’ve no idea why it hasn’t before) that all the way through there’s been a focus on simplistic song titles, with very few having more than a couple of words.
Here’s some old footage of them doing Transmission.
(*1) On and off, it’s taken me a couple of days to write this piece, during which time I’ve learned that New Order have announced some UK dates later in the year. Nearest so far is Leeds, but if anything closer to home is announced and we’re free on the date in question, I may end up doing a bit of compare and contrast.
TGG
Saturday 1st April 2023, chez TGG, sometime before the City v Liverpool match. “You’re not seriously going to wear that. I thought you’d chucked it out. Where’s it been? Does it even fit you?” Mrs TGG was once again taking a dim view of my antics. Incurring her wrath on this occasion was the fact that I had not, as she supposed, disposed of an old T-shirt that she was never very fond of. A band T-shirt. One that I acquired back in 1990. More than that, I planned to wear it that evening whilst watching said band at the Albert Hall in Manchester. The offending item was (and still is) a fading yellow T-shirt with a crazy cow’s head on it and the legend “MOO!” printed underneath. Yes – we were off to see Inspiral Carpets.
This was their first tour since 2015, their first tour without drummer Craig Gill, who sadly passed away in 2016.This was them back in Manchester for the first time since December 2015, at what is a great venue. It’s the sort of place that can generate an amazing atmosphere (most recently experienced by me when watching Sparks there just under 12 months ago). More into, if you’re unfamiliar with it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Hall,_Manchester
The good news was that the T-shirt does still fit me – I tried it on more in hope than expectation if I’m honest, but that was it, my mind was set and even continued grumblings from my other half weren’t going to stop me.
We arrived in good time and were near the front of the inevitable queue that snakes along Peter Street, up on to Bootle Street and beyond. We also spotted Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester, in the vicinity – hadn’t realised he was a fan, but I suppose by the law of averages there must be some politicians who have reasonable taste in music.
The doors opened at 7pm and once inside, DJ Dave Sweetmore was already on stage playing a mix of 80s and 90s classics that fitted the evening, mostly from Manchester-based acts.
Support act Stanleys were on at 7:45pm. They are from Wigan – as both they and Dave Sweetmore mentioned to us. They were a good fit. Jaunty indie-style music that wasn’t pushing any boundaries, but was pleasant enough to listen to. They played what they said was a new song called Maybe, which I liked, but I can’t find a YouTube link to it, so you’ve got this instead.
After that DJ Dave was back, ramping up the popularity level of the tunes as we headed towards the 9pm arrival of Clint Boon and co.
A chorus of “Moo”‘s greeted the band as they walked out on stage and off they went, launching into early single Joe to get things under way. The 17 song main set and 3 song encore leaned towards their earlier output, although all 3 singles from 1994’s Devil Hopping made an appearance and one track from the 2015 comeback album as well. The latter (Let You Down) had a recording of Dr. John Cooper Clarke played in and from the former, the barnstorming I Want You had the words from Mark E. Smith as part of the intro.
What was apparent as the evening progressed was the reaction from the crowd, which was getting more and more boisterous. This was clearly finding its way to the band. Clint Boon said that when he first went to a gig at the Albert Hall, he was regretting that the Inspirals would never play there, but now it had actually happened it was a great experience, and one can only assume was exceeding his expectations. This was certainly becoming a superb homecoming gig.
The closer for the main set was Dragging Me Down, one of their better-known songs and one which was performed with oomph by both band and crowd alike. The band departed and guess what – there was a lot more Moo-ing from the crowd. Of course there would be. Even the video screen at the back of the stage kept displaying the word. Until suddenly it didn’t. Suddenly Craig Gill’s image appeared and there was film footage of him in happier times, with “Craig Gill 1971-2016” displayed at the bottom. You can only imagine the reaction from the crowd.
The band reappeared and announced that there would be a guest drummer for the first song of the encore (Commercial Rain) – Craig’s son, Levon. He came on, drumsticks in hand, did a “Manchester!” shout to the mike and took his place on the drum stool. He did his old man proud – the drumming gene has been passed down. What a great, and emotional, reception he received when he stepped down.
Next in the encore was a cover of 96 Tears (as included on their 1988 Planecrash EP) and a shout out to local radio personality Mike Sweeney, a long-time supporter of the band. They rounded off with the soaring Saturn 5, singing-along levels so loud that it’s a wonder that the venue still has its stained glass windows fully intact.
I’d expected a good night, but this was great, and once again the Albert Hall’s unique environment had contributed to the experience. We skipped the after show party at the Deaf Institute (I still have my unused wristband that I was handed whilst queuing), where Clint Boon was going to be doing a DJ set, and demonstrating commendable levels of energy. Mrs TGG had an 8am start on Sunday and as out-of-towners, we travel in via Metrolink from the Park & Ride at East Didsbury. Sadly the later trams never started up again after Covid.
I hope they won’t leave it too long before touring again as I could really do with another night like that. I’ll leave you with Commercial Rain and some old footage.
TGG
I was going to call this series The Underachievers, but that almost felt like it was being critical of someone, be it artist, record company or even the Great British Record-Buying Public. That isn’t what I’m trying to do. It’s meant to be more a celebration of songs I’ve liked over the years, but which, at their initial time of release at least, didn’t capture the hearts and minds of too many other folks.
To qualify, a song must have:
a) been released as a single in the UK
b) failed to make the UK Top 40 Singles chart – ever (unless I make an exception and allow a very low Top 40 placing)
c) been feted by me to various people over the years – with reactions ranging from “I can see why no-one bought it” to “did you know they’re still together – fancy seeing them?”, and most stations in between.
And so to #1…
Around 15 years ago, there was a flurry of 80s Lyric Quiz things flying around the office. These generally had some of the more interesting excerpts of songs from that decade that we were then invited to guess. Obviously most were taken from the well-known material that is still played on retro stations around three times a day (so I’m told – I rely on people who are subjected to this sort of stuff in their workplaces to keep me abreast of such developments. I’m so glad I work from home apart from a couple of days per month).
One lyrical excerpt I’d love to have seen in one of those quizzes was: “and when I die, will you build the Taj Mahal, wear black every day of your life – I doubt it”. It certainly beats the vast majority of the lyrics that did make the cut. But it wasn’t there, because it comes from a ditty that only ever got to #51 in 1989, and that was via a re-recording after two earlier peaks of #87 (1986) and #86 (1987). All of these were released on Chrysalis, but there was an earlier 1986 release on Backs Records. It seems there were others out there who really believed in this one, not just me. Looking at Discogs, I seem to have the 1986 Chrysalis version, which is reassuring, because that’s what my memory was telling me. Wikipedia seems to recall it slightly differently however, noting only the Backs release in 1986, and not the Chrysalis one that I actually have. I know this because the 1987 release had a different sleeve.
The band were formed in Cambridge in 1985 and the name I always associate with them is that of Boo Hewerdine, who wrote the song along with Tony Shepherd. Hewerdine has gone on to have a lengthy solo career, and my recollection is that there has been significant acclaim for his solo output, although I must confess to not having explored it too deeply.
Would that solo career have happened in quite the same way if Graceland and subsequent singles had fared better sales-wise?
For me, Graceland sounded a little Smiths-y, which is probably what drew me to it in the first place – and may well have turned others off it. I think it’s the pick of The Bible’s output prior to their break-up in 1989 (they have reformed twice since then and appear to be an entity at the time of writing). It lags well behind later single, Honey Be Good, in terms of Spotify plays though, which surprised me. Of course mentioning the word Graceland in 1986/7 would have prompted people to mention the then current Paul Simon album of that name, whose global success far eclipsed this humble track. I like both, but given the choice of only playing the one, this wins hands down.
TGG
I’m fairly sure I was aware of The Go-Betweens before I landed at Uni in 1984. Aware of their existence, that is. I was reading enough of the music press to be aware of many bands from whom I’d heard no output – indeed in some cases, I probably still haven’t. But as I recall it, the press coverage around The Go-Betweens had always been fairly positive.
Therefore, I was rather delighted one day when browsing the Uni radio station record library, looking for something that I’d decided to play, when I stumbled across The Go-Betweens’ debut album, Send Me A Lullaby. Not that I realised at that point that it was their debut. I found some spare studio time to give it a listen at some point and quite enjoyed it, but no more than that. Nevertheless, it was good to see an album from a couple of years earlier released on Rough Trade in the collection, as there were still plenty of prog-rock loving Engineering students around, and the record library reflected this.
My next recollection of hearing The Go-Betweens was when I Just Get Caught Out appeared on an EP that came free with Sounds (research tells me this was on 28th February 1987). According to the sleeve notes, this had been specially recorded for the EP. This was the second track on the B-side of said EP, following offerings from The Cult, The Fall and The Adult Net (who may also feature in this series at some point). For a free EP, it was one of the better ones I’d acquired in this manner, but it was track B2 that I kept going back to for another listen.
That version of I Just Get Caught Out was not the version that ended up on their next album, Tallulah, which is a shame as I prefer it. But that album and follow-up, 16 Lovers Lane, cemented The Go-Betweens as the sort of band I’d enthuse about to other people – usually to complete indifference. I re-listened to Send Me A Lullaby and got a lot more from it this time, and I investigated the albums in between that I’d missed.
And then they only went and split. How dare they? I’d only just got into them. I felt royally cheated.
So that is why, upon learning of a debut solo release from Grant McLennan around 18 months later, I rushed out to purchase the album, without having heard anything from it. I can’t fully recall what the 25 year-old TGG was expecting from the album – I imagine it would have been something that picked up where The Go-Betweens left off. Listening to it now, it doesn’t exactly do that, and I guess that’s what I thought back then as well. The difference is that now I can appreciate the album on its own merits, but in 1991, in the context of the relatively recent demise of The Go-Betweens, I’m not entirely sure I would have been capable of doing that.
It’s certainly one that following the initial flurry of plays after buying it, didn’t trouble the cassette player of the Fiat Uno I had at the time. That, I think is the reason that I was keen to revisit this so early in this series. Basically, I don’t think I was mature enough to appreciate an album like this at that time.
The one song I did remember from the album without any prompting was “Haven’t I Been A Fool”, the first single taken from it, I now learn. I was however a little surprised that my memory had failed me, as I thought it was the lead track, but it isn’t – it’s the second track on side 1. This is one that I had added to a couple of playlists on Spotify as for whatever reason, it has stayed in my head despite not playing it for a number of years. The first track is actually Word Gets Around, which is a decent way to kick things off.
Listening through the album, the track Black Mule had me singing along to it well before the end, dredged from somewhere in the back of my brain – did I actually play this album more than I’d realised? Listening now, the standout track is Easy Come, Easy Go, which bizarrely, I had absolutely no recollection of whatsoever. This was also apparently a single. Once I’d played the album in its entirety, I went back and picked out favourite tracks for a further listen – all of the above plus Sally’s Revolution and Putting The Wheels Back On (which has surprisingly few plays on the aforementioned streaming service).
Overall then I was pleased to have revisited Watershed. It was never going to be a replacement for a new Go-Betweens album back in 1991 and if I did expect that perhaps it was me being the fool, but there is enough of their sound there (not really a shock), whilst to me, it does go somewhere slightly different.
What I didn’t do was purchase any further Grant McLennan solo albums – they have now joined the lengthy Things I Need To Listen To list (which exists only in my head – were I to write it down, I fear it would be a never-ending task). I was however fully on board for the Go-Betweens reunion in 2000, until Grant’s untimely death in 2006.
And what of Robert Forster? Somehow his pre-millennium solo output had avoided my radar until I started fact-checking this article. Guess what’s also now on that very long list.
There wasn’t meant to be such a long gap between the Taking Stock post and this one. Life.
I notice the colour on my photo isn’t the best – that’s down to me taking a shot in poor light rather than having left the cassette exposed to bright sunlight for a number of years!
TGG
After setting up this page as long ago as 2017, it took until the 19th December 2022 before I actually posted anything on it. I’ve had plenty of ideas and created numerous lists over the five year gap. I’m not entirely sure what prompted me to start typing that evening, but I have found that stationing myself at the PC in the titular study and listening to and writing about music and various linked experiences has been quite helpful in coping with a number of stresses, including the ongoing situation with my mother’s health.
After a break during the second half of January, when I was routinely falling asleep at the times when I’d wanted to type something, I was glad to get back to it. What also pleased me was that visitor numbers actually increased upon my return, which was not what I’d been expecting at all. However, I feel that the quality of recent posts hasn’t perhaps been that great, and one or two pieces have felt like a bit of a chore when I was writing them. This seems to be borne out in visitor numbers, which have dropped off a cliff since the beginning of March. Not that I can complain – I’ve not been visiting my usual blog haunts that much in the last month or so either. I’m writing this primarily for myself, as a way of formalising my thoughts and memories about music, but I’d like to think I can do that in a way which others find entertaining. There are a couple of recent posts that I can barely re-read myself, so why should I expect anyone else to look at them?
So where to go after 18 posts and 21 YouTube links?
I have listened to another Cassette Album, so that is most likely the next thing I will write about, and I made a lot of notes whilst listening. I’m not sure if everything will make the cut, but it was one I picked out as something that I really wanted to revisit after a long time of not playing it, so I do want to do it justice.
There will be some more Seen ‘Em Live – including a couple that I’m really looking forward to writing about if the gigs are half as good as I’m hoping they will be.
I also want to start a new series – The Underachievers. This will focus on records that for whatever reason failed to make the impression in terms of UK Chart position that I feel they should have done. It may be that they did well in other countries or have done well years later or whatever. My blog, my rules as to what constitutes underachievement. Obviously this will be time-locked to the period when I took an interest in what was actually making the Charts, so that will feature music from the 20th Century. I’ve got five song titles noted down so far – and many more in my head.
And then there is what seemed like a good idea at the time – picking something from the Discover Weekly playlist based on matching the date and the number on the list. It had its moments, but last week it threw up a Top 10 hit from 1987. A song I hadn’t consciously heard in 36 years. A song so awful I opted not to share a link or write anything about it. A song that I hope I don’t hear for another 36 years (if I make it that long, I will be 92 and will probably be past caring).
But Discover Weekly will stay with different rules, and it may not necessarily appear every week. My focus with this now will be genuinely on something I haven’t heard before that’s made a positive impression on me and that I feel I want to share. I will be taking into account the full playlist and not just the track that matches the date. Bear in mind I don’t listen to the radio all that much these days, so my knowledge of new stuff is not what it was. My definition of “new” is pretty much anything recorded since 2010! Comments mocking my levels of being out of touch will of course be warmly welcomed. There was a song from 2017 on this week’s list that may feature, but I want to play it a couple more times before I decide.
So after Taking Stock, hopefully there are treasures still unlocked.
At which point Echo & The Bunnymen become the first act to feature twice on the blog.
TGG
And so it takes until the 10th of these before a track doesn’t get added to a playlist. I’ll be honest – I like 10cc. I grew up in Manchester and Stockport and so from an early age, saw them as a “local” band. In my twenties, I even drank occasionally in the pub across the road from their Strawberry Studios (where I’m Not In Love was recorded).
I was probably too young to realise that the band had split and that by the time Dreadlock Holiday hit #1 in 1978, two members of the band had already recorded an album of their own. In fact, I’d have been totally stumped if you’d asked me to name any members of the band. But then, I was 12 in 1978 – and I could only name a couple of Sex Pistols because I’d seen their names printed in a suitably frothing-at-the-mouth article in the Daily Mail.
It wasn’t until 1981 and the Top 10 success of Under Your Thumb, that I got to know the names Kevin Godley and Lol Creme. That’s a tune I still like a lot and the cod soul of follow-up Wedding Bells is OK as far as I’m concerned. I purchased their parent album Ismism. If I put it on the turntable today, two tracks would be a lot more crackly than the rest of the album. I’ll leave that there.
I became aware of this track around the tine that Under Your Thumb was being played on the nation’s airwaves. Presumably some enterprising DJ decided our knowledge of the duo needed broadening.
It had been released a couple of years earlier to complete indifference in the UK, but bizarrely made the Top 10 in both Belgium and the Netherlands. For me, it’s an OK song, but I find it slightly irritating – a bit like the occasional 10cc album track. So that’s why it won’t be making its way onto any of my playlists.
This is of course an early example of the video-making that would give Godley & Creme a parallel career.
As a footnote, Lol Creme has recently been playing in the Trevor Horn Band. A group that performs Video Killed The Radio Star, Two Tribes and Owner Of A Lonely Heart without batting an eyelid. Trevor Horn will introduce Creme as “this old specimen” and then the band do a great version of Rubber Bullets. I’ve caught them a couple of times at Rewind North.
This was #20 on the 20th February playlist.
TGG
Those of you who read #4 in this series will be familiar with a former work colleague who was a major fan of Super Furry Animals (and may well still be, but I haven’t seen or heard from him in 22 years). He and some of the music press of the time, were also swept away with the band who featured at #13 on 13th Feb playlist. To be honest, I didn’t really get it at the time.
I’m not entirely sure I get them now. I did purchase the follow-up single, Bring It On, but it’s spent many years in an inaccessible box, which perhaps tells you how I feel about this band. Nothing wrong with them, but there seemed to be a whole load of hype around them – and they were never seriously going to be the new Blur or Oasis.
As someone who gets ever so slightly obsessed with numbers, this has been added to a playlist of songs that peaked between 31 and 40 (#35 in 1998). It’s pleasant enough, but the hype at the time did the band no favours.
TGG
Still playing catch-up with this (and I have things to say about each track so I am going to persevere). This was #6 on the 6th Feb playlist. I don’t intend to say much about the song or the artist, as both will be well-known enough I’d have thought, with the song being a UK #10 hit in 1974.
What I may just need to explain is why it’s ended up on my “Discover” playlist. It’s down to me and the rules I’ve put around the numerous playlists I’ve created. I won’t bore you with all of them, but I’ve limited the number of songs by a particular artist on many, in order to provide variety when I listen. I do chop and change tracks from time to time as well.
My main playlist started out as a simple Top 200 tracks of all time, limited to two per artist. Then it got a bit of mission creep. So much so that the mission blew right off course and it now boasts 1,839 tracks with a maximum limit of five tracks per artist. It’s name is a nod to Douglas Adams: The Increasingly Inaccurately Named Top 1,500. I was going to cap it at 1,500 at one point – then I figured I’d be spending half my life trying to work out what to remove when I realised I’d missed something that I now I really wanted to add.
If you’ve followed my ramblings above, you will have deduced that this does not feature in my top five Stevie Wonder tracks of all time, so it’s not one of the 1,839. I have also never set up a specific ’70s Soul playlist. My wife would probably like that, so maybe it’s one to look into at some point. Luckily, I do have a catch-all for anything that I can’t add to a playlist due to my rules, so it’s joined It Just Don’t Fit – an understandably esoteric collection of tunes.
I did think about listing the top 5 Stevie Wonder tunes, but it might be more fun to have that as another thread and discuss why those are my favourites, along with other artists have made it to five tracks on the master list. I should also reassure you that I Just Called… and Ebony & Ivory are not present.
TGG
The Peak District town of Buxton is about a 35 minute car journey from chez TGG. It’s a pleasant drive through steep hills, deep valleys, roads with deep drops to the side and lots and lots of sheep – the type of countryside that few people associate with Cheshire, with the Derbyshire border only being reached just before arriving in the town. It’s got some decent restaurants, cafes, pubs, bars, a park that the lads loved to play in when they were little – and even a decent brewery. It also has an Opera House. We’ve been as a family to watch family-oriented productions and in more recent times my wife and I have seen various acts perform there. But we’ve never seen any opera there. I assume it does stage operatic productions, but we’re not overly keen on opera.
Neither of us is all that bothered about traditional folk music either. Last Thursday, we went to see Suzanne Vega at said venue in Buxton – the first time either of us had seen her. The support act was a guy called Sam Lee who came on stage with a keyboard player, whose name I can’t recall, and enquired gently of the audience as to whether we’d like to listen to a few folk songs. There was clearly no escape as we were stuck in the middle of a row of seats and any hasty dart for the bar would be a little obvious – and rude.
As it transpires, Sam sings the first couple of songs very well and we, along with the rest of the audience, are warming to him. He’s very engaging and talks quite bit between his songs. Firstly about nightingales and the book he’s written about said bird and the nightingale song walks that he conducts in the south of England. Then we learn about the extensive research he’s done to record old (particularly Romany) folk songs before they are lost for ever. He’s even got a song on a forthcoming soundtrack to a film that stars Jim Broadbent. These lengthy anecdotes are delivered with charm and there’s even an audience participation song, with The Lady Behind Me singing along in such a way that I feel slightly awkward about my deep monotone drawl of a voice.
Sam has a Wikipedia entry, should you wish to discover more about a very interesting character. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Lee_(folk_musician)
His own website is: http://samleesong.co.uk/
Suzanne Vega is joined onstage by a guitarist (plugged) while she opts for an acoustic guitar. Starting with Marlene On The Wall (and wearing a top hat for said song), she is quick to inform the audience that she’ll play a lot of old songs early on in the set so that “no-one gets anxious”.
She plays mainly older stuff, but does perform a song she’s recently written, entitled Mariupol, which is very moving. There are plenty of anecdotes, which I won’t put here as I wouldn’t want to spoil anything for anyone going to see her in future. These are delivered with great charm. We do discover a link between two of her songs recorded some years apart, with a couple of linked anecdotes to support it – all very interesting. For the encore, Suzanne includes a cover of what she says she feels is the ultimate New York song, Blondie’s “Dreaming”. Coincidentally my favourite Blondie song.
One of my favourite songs by Suzanne Vega was also played, and I hadn’t previously realised it was written as an homage to Elvis Costello. Suzanne and her guitarist illustrated the fact by synching in and out of Lipstick Vogue halfway through the song.
You’ll just have to imagine how that one worked.
All in all, a great evening’s entertainment – followed by a stressful drive back due to the fog up in them there hills.
TGG
January 30th’s playlist and the final track on it. A band I’m familiar with, but a song that I’ve never previously heard.
I don’t know about anyone else, but the first thing I ever heard from Split Enz was their 1980 UK hit single I Got You. It hung around in the Charts for a few weeks and narrowly missed out on the Top 10. I think the only reason I didn’t buy it was the fact that I was 14 and most of my cash was being spent on stuff by The Jam, Madness and the like. Oh – and Love Will Tear Us Apart joined the record collection around that time as well.
But something struck me about that song – I can’t really say what it was, there was just something about it – and Split Enz joined my mental list of “bands I want to hear more of”. To be honest, in the ensuing 43 years, I can’t say I’ve done all that well on that particular front. I do recall a song from the following year, History Never Repeats (and indeed it didn’t, as it peaked at #63) – this would become an early purchase from the iTunes Store in 2006. I did go so far as to buy their 1982 single Six Months In A Leaky Boat, the release of which unfortunately coincided with a lot of very large boats sailing from the UK to the South Atlantic, and thus lost out on airplay, so as not to upset anyone. Or something.
At no point have I ever purchased a Best Of, listened to anything earlier than 1980, or played any of their albums on Spotify. In fact their later albums aren’t actually available on that streaming service, save for the odd track, which is where the Discover Weekly list kicks in
This one’s from 1983 an I’d not heard it before. I can see why it wasn’t commercially successful, when I think of what was getting radio airplay around that time, but I like it very much and once again it’s another direct hit for the DW algorithm.
Oddly, as you’ll be aware, the next project for the Finn brothers was Crowded House, who I was into from the off, even before I was aware of the connection. I have all their albums and saw them live with Mrs TGG a few times during the 90’s. Not even that prompted me to investigate the Split Enz back catalogue.
Once again, they’re on a mental list of “bands I want to hear more of”. This time I need to deliver on that.
TGG
I’ve ummed and aahed about trying to write a series under this heading, but having gone to my first live concert of the year on Saturday, in Nottingham, something happened that made me decide that there might be some mileage in this.
Mrs TGG and I used to go to lots of live gigs both before and after we met in 1992. We even attended the same David Bowie and Prince concerts at Maine Road in Manchester two years prior to meeting. Gig-going came to an abrupt halt in 1998 as our first son arrived – the final show being Paul Weller in Manchester with a 6-month bump accompanying us. Our other son is almost exactly two years younger than his brother, and the two did lots of activities together as they were growing up. Particularly competitive swimming. This is a huge time commitment for swimmers and their parents with several training sessions per week and galas most weekends. Even more so when the parents get involved with coaching (Mrs TGG) and being Treasurer, Gala Manager, Announcer and Chair of two swimming leagues (me). That meant there wasn’t time to go and unwind by watching a band – not until the lads did their A Levels and retired (as many do at that age, other than the elite swimmers – and we had one of those at our Club).
Since 2017, we’ve been making up for lost time a bit. The enforced Covid break saw a massive pile-up of rearranged dates as well as some new ones we booked during that time. Somehow we avoided any clashes, and we did do three gigs in a week at one point. We have mostly been catching up with acts we know from the 80s and 90s. One exception was my lads and I going to see The Coral together – which was great. Most of the acts are well-known and so I couldn’t see what I could write about on here, but as I said something happened in Nottingham on Saturday.
I should also point out that we live in the south-east corner of Cheshire and we mostly go to see bands in Manchester, Salford, Buxton, Leek or Stoke-on-Trent. The concert we saw on Saturday, as I’ve mentioned, was in Nottingham. There had been a Manchester date on this tour, but it was at the Academy, which means standing up. This isn’t a problem when you’re 6′ 1″ like me, but Mrs TGG is at least a foot shorter and so she gets to see nothing. The days of me being able to lift her up for most of a Crowded House gig are long since gone (she’s not got any heavier, I’m just a lot more feeble these days). So Nottingham it was (with a night in a Premier Inn) at the Royal Concert Hall to see Belinda Carlisle supported by The Christians.
This one was for my my wife. She’d seen BC before, in around 1990, and we’d both seen The Christians at Rewind North a couple of years back. Before the gig, I made a comment about loving it if BC played a particular song, but that I wasn’t holding out a great deal of hope of hearing it. Oh, me of little faith.
Belinda (who I have to say was very good and had energy levels that belied her age) mentioned that she’d first played in Nottingham back in 1980 with the Go-Gos, supporting The Specials and Madness. And yes, she mentioned Terry Hall and the song he wrote with her band-mate Jane Wiedlin, a song apparently written by the two of them sending letters to each other. And then of course, she played it, to my, and clearly a lot of other people’s, delight.
The Christians were OK, rattling though their few hits, with Garry taking time between songs for a bit of banter and (so he said) to get his breath back. I correctly guessed that they’d round off with their version of Harvest For The World, which for me doesn’t really add anything to the Isley Brothers original. I did get a little concerned that they’d miss out my favourite of theirs, but when they “asked for requests”, this was the one that got shouted out by the audience.
We’ve got another concert later this week. I may write about that as well – I sort of feel I ought to now I’ve started this.
TGG
Still playing catch-up with #23 from 23rd January, and a band I can’t say I knew anything about until the early 2000’s.
That was when I started being asked to provide a music round for a pub quiz, and on a few occasions, provide a complete music quiz of several rounds’ duration. Fine, I thought, I’ve got lots of CDs and vinyl that I can easily copy bits from onto a cassette. Problem – I’ve got a great selection of stuff that I like, but which to a “normal” person is quite obscure. There was nowhere near enough material that was suitable for a quiz where an average person could sit there recognising a tune, but not being able to name it straight away. There was just a lot of stuff that would have people asking if next week’s quiz could be easier, please.
My solution was to visit various record emporia and buy up as many cheap / cheapish CD compilations of as many music genres as I could think of. That’s why I’m the proud owner of a 16 track compilation entitled The Golden Age Of Swing, featuring Woody Herman and Django Reinhardt, among others. And a 3CD compilation of records that only reached #2 in the UK Charts – bought for a specific series of rounds in the hope that no participant had the same set of CDs. Yes, it does include Vienna (Disc 1, Track 8).
There were also some compilations, proclaiming themselves to be of the Punk / New Wave variety, with the term New Wave being stretched to pretty much breaking point in some cases. It was on one of those that I first heard a cover version of River Deep, Mountain High that a band called The Saints had very much made their own. At some point subsequently, I have learned that the band were Australian. My iTunes library has also acquired their only UK Chart entry, This Perfect Day, and their debut single, (I’m) Stranded. All decent tunes and the latter two have made it onto Spotify playlists.
Therefore it shouldn’t have surprised me to see one of their tunes being offered for me to “discover”. Not that it did surprise me. It was this track, which was released as a single in the UK in 1978, and is from the Eternally Yours album released in the same year.
To me, it does seem a little more accessible than the other songs I’ve mentioned, and maybe the record label felt the same as it is the album’s lead track. Definitely another successful “discovery”.
Sadly, Chris Bailey, who was the main songwriter and vocalist / guitarist passed away in April 2022. The band appears to have been performing live certainly up until 2021 (albeit with nearly as many ex-members over the years as The Fall).
#7 in this series will also feature a band from the Southern Hemisphere.
TGG
“Problem – I’ve got a great selection of stuff that I like, but which to a “normal” person is quite obscure.”
Yup. Got me fired after just the one week of compiling the quiz!
Chris Bailey was a personal favourite of Nick Cave. There’s an excellent single from an otherwise underwhelming Bad Seeds album on which Chris sang a co-vocal.
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Firstly – it’s been a while. Longer than I intended. Thanks to those of you who commented regarding my mother. She is currently being reassessed (or is it re-reassessed? I’m losing track) and this is meaning regular visits. Additionally I’ve been busy with meetings for the Campaign For Real Ale (if you’ve no idea what this is, it’s probably best not to ask!) and for a beer festival that’s being run later in the year. And on top of all that, for some strange reason, Mrs TGG likes to spend some time with me. I have an increasing number of ideas for posts, etc to the point where I’m now filling bits of paper with them, so things will continue, but probably in an erratic manner.
So to the weekly discovery and the next one (#16 on the 16th January playlist) was not a discovery in any way – apart from seeing the video for the first time in order to include it here. I assume it’s the first time as I have no recollection of ever seeing it before.
Early 1986 and in our student house (a big old place that accommodated 8 of us), I and a couple of others were the music obsessives, blowing most of our student grants and racking up some decent overdrafts on a significant amount of vinyl. The music weeklies (another regular expense) were as ever getting quite excited The Next Big Thing. Depending on what you read it appeared to be either Sigue Sigue Sputnik or We’ve Got A Fuzzbox And We’re Gonna Use It. I’d heard both and wasn’t entirely convinced by either.
One of my housemates wanders in with an EP, Rules And Regulations, by the latter. He’s excited. I hide my lack of enthusiasm and encourage him to play it, whilst calling the other music obsessive to the front room. I make a positive noise about having heard John Peel play one of the tracks. It plays, we listen. “Yeah, but I like the way they look, yeah?” says the guy who’s just blown tonight’s beer money on said disc. He is the most extreme of us in terms of hairstyle and charity shop clothing, so this comment does not come as a complete surprise.
I don’t believe it ever got played again on the communal stereo system.
Fast forward three years or so and not only are we no longer students, but we’ve smartened ourselves up and got jobs in order to start paying off those overdrafts (and also in order to keep purchasing records in the volumes to which we have become accustomed). We’ve Got… have also had an image change and moved to a major record label who perhaps see them as a UK version of Bangles. They are now just referred to as Fuzzbox. They have a hit with International Rescue. I purchase it. And this one as well.
I must confess to still liking this one quite a lot. A jolly, jaunty pop tune. It’s just that when putting Spotify playlists together, I’d completely forgotten about it – perhaps that was the point. It’s very much of its era, but that just happens to be an era that Spotify (and if I’m honest, writing this blog) is dragging me back to on a regular basis. Oh, that and seeing various bands from the 80s and 90s fairly frequently too. I’m planning a series about those who Mrs TGG and I go to see live – some may make more interesting reading than others.
Pink Sunshine has now managed to find a place on a playlist. Another victory for the algorithm.
TGG
It’s taken almost a week to get round to writing this. Not because I can’t think of anything to say (that’s a rare occurrence) or because there’s any great difficulty in saying something about the next tune in this series. I had the Cassette piece in my head and wanted to get that done first. And then, for the second time in three months, my mother has been admitted to hospital.
I won’t go into it too much but my mother’s residence, and indeed the hospital, are around 40 minutes away from me. My sister lives a lot closer and has taken on a lot of the visiting duties, but I’ve been heading up when I can. My sister and I have had some lengthy phone calls around various aspects surrounding this hospital admission as it’s looking more serious than the previous one. So spare time and motivation to write have been limited this week.
Anyway.
9th January saw a new list and sitting in 9th place on the playlist was…no…surely not…I MUST have got that on a playlist somewhere! But I hadn’t (please note the use of the past tense there – the situation has now been rectified).
Despite the fairly traumatic nature of this week, this song has been going through my head pretty much all the time when I haven’t been listening to anything else.
How on earth this has evaded any previous listing, or indeed that its absence had failed to come to my attention, is beyond me. I’d even gone to the trouble of putting Juxtapozed With U from the same album onto a couple of playlists.
Super Furry Animals are a bit of a strange one for me. I like pretty much everything I’ve ever heard from them and have five of their first six albums, including the one from which this is the title track. But if you asked me to list my Top However Many Favourite Bands, they’d be some way down the list. I’ve been thinking about this and have a couple of thoughts as to why this might be the case.
1 – I used to work with a guy, a few years younger than me, who had heard the band before I did and was genuinely an enormous fan. I mean, he even used to name his Fantasy Football teams after their songs – what greater accolade can there be? Any liking of the band on my part paled into insignificance in comparison, and they didn’t feel like “my” band.
2 – They were at their peak in the late 90’s / early 00’s, just as small people that demanded constant attention were appearing chez TGG. I know full well that I didn’t spend the time with albums purchased during this period in the same way that I did in the previous fifteen to twenty years. As as result, bands from this era spring less readily to mind when coming up with those lists.
Whatever – it’s a top quality tune and if you’ve clicked on the link at any point whilst reading this, I’ll wager it’s well and truly lodged in your head now. And I don’t feel sorry about that at all.
TGG
As CC said.
I’m also with you on SFA in that I have and really enjoy all of the early albums; I’ve seen and loved them in the live setting. But if I was to compile a list of may all-time favourite acts, they wouldn’t make the Top 50…..maybe not even the Top 100.
I’ve too much affection for the late 70s/early-mid 80s music to not have it dominate, while lots of singers/bands of the 21st Century have made a huge impact on me as the blogging days got underway and have continued. SFA, like many others, fall in between two stools.
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It was early March 1987. Probably (*1).
My then-girlfriend (Mt-g) and I are just starting the two mile walk from the one large supermarket in the city centre back to her student house. A VW Transporter van pulls in just ahead of us and I recognise instantly the face that appears out of the front passenger window. “Hey!”, I say, “It’s Karl Wallinger!”. I rush over to said van, barely noticing that Mt-g hasn’t actually moved at all. “Hiya, we’re looking for the King’s Head”, says Mr W. I politely inform him that there isn’t a King’s Head – does he perchance mean the King’s Arms, known for having rooms to let? He confers with the driver. They decide that it might be the King’s Arms. “In which case the bad news is that you missed the turning for it a couple of blocks ago. And the even worse news is that you’ll have to go right round the one way system to get to it now. Sorry – mad I know” (Thinking to myself all the time that I curse whoever came up with this bloody road system because I’ve just had to give some bad news to a guy who appears on some records that I own). Mr W seems quite chipper given the earth-shattering inconvenience that I’ve just made him aware of, thanks me very much and bids me good day. And off they drive.
I return to Mt-g. “Was he one of those people from your course? I thought you didn’t bother with them. (*2) What were you talking about?” Perhaps a little too smugly, I advise her as to who I’ve just been speaking. “Why didn’t you ask for some tickets for the gig tomorrow?” My next words are way too smug. “Er, because it’s pay on the door”. “Well you should at least have got his autograph”. At some stage in my life, I have taken to carrying a pen round with me all the time. This episode predates that. My response of “Haven’t got a pen on me” ensures an unusually quiet walk back to her house.
We did go to the gig – sadly, there was no dedication to “that guy in the audience with the glasses and the overcoat who gave us directions yesterday”. Half the audience were probably sporting overcoats. A reasonable percentage were probably bespectacled.
Private Revolution, purchased on cassette at some point in 1987, is an interesting album. Wallinger’s influences from the Beatles and Dylan among others, are very obvious, and it’s a very un-1986 album (apparently its year of release), given that students seemed to be the target audience. World Party were neither C86 nor goth, which covered petty much everyone else who performed there that term. I’d bought the title track as a 12″ single after seeing a clip on the TV and really enjoyed all the tracks thereon. Having played the album in its entirety twice over the last few days, there was a real familiarity which suggests I’d played it a lot more than I realised back in the days of cassette. I wouldn’t have said it’s my favourite World Party album (and all the ones I have were cassette purchases, so my view may change as I revisit those) but I’ve certainly reconnected with the song World Party, which I’d forgotten how much I liked. Sadly, Spotify users disagree and at the time of writing it has around 1% of the plays that Ship Of Fools has.
I’ll probably come to Ship Of Fools in a series I’m planning for the future about songs that never made the UK Top 40, but seem to have done a lot better elsewhere – or something along those lines. It’s an idea and no more right now. I’ll leave you with the title track that started my liking for this band.
*1 – the gig I refer to is not on Setlist.fm, but there were other Uni gigs that month, so March 1987 it was. Probably.
*2 – Mt-g and I had been an item for long enough that she knew pretty much all of my acquaintances. She thought it odd that I didn’t socialise with anyone who was on my course, but just with other music geeks, the radio station crowd and some board gamers. “But they only ever want to talk about the course”, I said, “and frankly I don’t. It’s bad enough going to the bloody lectures….” I got a third.
TGG
Mine are buried in a corner of the study mentioned in the blog title. I had to move all manner of things out of the way to take some quick photos of the ones I felt I might want to write about. I find their presence reassuring. Mrs TGG does not.
On a separate note, remiss of me not to have your blog on my list. I’ll add it on once I can remember how to do it.
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‘I find their presence reassuring. Mrs TGG does not.’ Very relatable.
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From around 1982 until 1993 or thereabouts, I purchased several albums on cassette. The majority of my purchases, certainly until 1988 were on vinyl, but I do have a significant number of pre-recorded cassette albums.
The albums from the early years, up to July 1988, were bought mainly because my record emporium of choice at the moment of purchase didn’t have said album available on vinyl, or the cassette version was in a sale (I was a student between 1984 and 1987 and again for a brief spell in early 1988, so I was easily swayed by discount offerings).
July 1988 saw me purchase my first car (a dilapidated 9 year-old VW Derby, nicknamed the “Debris” by my mates as bits used to regularly fall off it – door handles, wing mirrors, random bits of metal from underneath….). But it did have a radio / cassette player, which probably accounted for about half the value of the vehicle. It was at this point where a total proliferation of cassette albums began. Why bother buying the vinyl when I’d have to transfer it onto a cassette to play in the car? I could just get a pre-recorded cassette instead – one or two even had bonus extra tracks!
It all ended abruptly in July 1993, when the future Mrs TGG and I started living together. To celebrate this momentous occasion, we splashed out on a CD player to add to our collective hi-fi equipment. Blur’s Modern Life Is Rubbish heralded the new dawn of what is a scarily huge collection of CDs. Within a couple of years, we had cars with CD players and the cassette albums have been pretty much gathering dust ever since, grand survivors of Mrs TGG’s many culls of “your crap”.
Some of those albums have been replaced with CD versions over the years – pretty much everything by R.E.M. and The Smiths among others. But many of those albums have not been played by me in their entirety for over a quarter of a century. I’m not sure what state the cassette tapes are actually in these days, and the sound quality of the one remaining device we have which is capable of playing them is somewhat grim. Thank goodness for streaming services.
This new series will see me revisiting these albums and seeing which, if any, I really wish I’d listened to a lot more over the last twenty-five years.
I’ve just listened to the album about which I intend to write the first article, and it will include a mention of a brief chat I had with the lead vocalist of said album (don’t get too excited, it’s unlikely to feature in his memoirs).
For some reason, this tune has been going through my head whilst typing the above.
TGG
My freshly curated playlist on Monday 2nd January had a song by Australian band, Flash And The Pan as its second tune.
For the UK reader with a long enough memory, Flash And The Pan are only really remembered for their 1983 #7 hit, Waiting For A Train. This was an annoyingly catchy tune that I bought early on in its rise up the Charts and was heartily fed up with it by the time it departed. I think thereafter it sat on the shelf, unplayed, for the best part of a decade. Absence made the heart grow fonder and I do now allow myself occasional listens, smiling all the while at the erratic music-buying patterns I had as a 17 year-old. At the ripe old age of 56, they haven’t really moved on all that much if I’m honest.
Anyway. That’s not the tune on my playlist. Nor is the featured tune their other UK Chart entry (yes it’s true, they’re not quite a one hit wonder). That tune is Down Among The Dead Men, from their 1978 debut album, which got to the giddy heights of #54 that year, although for some reason it was called And The Band Played On with the other title in brackets when released as a single in the UK.
The featured track is also from the debut album and was the b-side to their first single a couple of years earlier. At first glance when I looked at the list I thought it said Waiting For A Train. Then I cleaned my glasses and realised it was actually Walking In The Rain. Playing it, it seemed very deadpan and downbeat and also vaguely familiar. Was it a Waiting For A Train prototype? Well, possibly, but, no, there was something else. That’s it – Grace Jones! She did a cover of it on her 1981 Nightclubbing album (it’s the lead track).
Familiarity leads me to preferring Ms Jones’ version, but in all fairness I’d find some entertainment value in Grace Jones menacingly reciting a telephone directory to music.
So this Flash And The Pan track is unlikely to make it onto any of my existing playlists, largely because one of my “rules” is not to have two versions of the same song on any of them. But it’s here with an unofficial video as it was just a tad too early for MTV to be a consideration.
TGG
And so we lose another talented musician at far too early an age.
There will be others who are far more au fait with the early Associates output than I am. Party Fears Two was my conscious introduction to the band, although I may have heard tracks before then without them registering. I certainly made efforts to explore the earlier recordings once they did cross over into the Top 40, and have enjoyed those songs for may years since.
I can’t see any videos for the pre-Sulk songs, which doesn’t exactly come as a surprise, so I’ll let the music do the talking on this link.
Hopefully a more cheerful post next time.
TGG
Back after a short break to allow for Christmas and the added complications my sister and I are currently dealing with – our mother having recently been admitted to a care home, supposedly on a temporary basis….
Perhaps not the best time to start a blog, but it does at least take my mind off things.
The latest Discover Weekly landed on Boxing Day morning, but I’ve only just looked at it, and specifically at the 26th song on the list, Boxing Day being the 26th December and all that.
My initial thought was along the lines of “Oh, bother – that’s just trampled all over another piece I was going to write in a forthcoming series”. The Spotify algorithm is good I have to say – picking up on things I like, without me having obviously demonstrated any liking for it on that platform.
Mrs TGG and I both like Prince. We actually attended the same Prince gig at Maine Road, Manchester, a couple of years before we became aware of each other’s existence. However, there’s no question that one of us is more favourably disposed towards the track at #26 on this week’s Discover Weekly. And that will be me.
For the uninitiated, Hindu Love Gods was a one-off project featuring R.E.M. and the late Warren Zevon. The story goes that these recordings came about after some alcohol had been consumed in the small hours and everyone started playing some cover versions. Including this. It’s a cut above the average covers band, with Zevon snarling out a vocal as only he could.
I’m not the world’s biggest fan of cover versions, it has to be said. For me, what is absolutely key is that the act doing the cover should make the song their own, and that certainly happens here.
Not previously playlisted, I’ve added it to my Should Have Been A Hit? playlist – I can’t see any evidence of it hitting the Charts in any territory where it was released.
The forthcoming series I referred to is The Cassette Albums, of which more in the coming days. My (re)appraisal of the one and only Hindu Love Gods album may now have to wait a little.
TGG
This is what is intentioned to be a weekly series (although as previously mentioned, I’m not good with self-imposed deadlines, so it will appear when it appears).
I had only vaguely noticed a playlist on Spotify entitled Discover Weekly and had never really bothered with it. That was until J (age 24), the elder of my two sons, alerted me to it, largely because his version of said playlist seemed to have a lot of stuff that I like on it. To be fair, his main playlist owes a lot to stuff he’s heard me playing over the years – I’ve schooled him well!
Anyway, I’ve started exploring my own Discover Weekly as a result. I can generally categorise the 30 songs on each week’s list as follows:
My worry is that entries in this series may get a bit “samey”, but hey, let’s give it a go.
I’ll pick a tune each week and jot a few lines about it. The tune will be selected by using the date the playlist was released (if it’s the 31st, song 30 will get picked). This week’s list was out on 19th December, so song 19 it is.
My initial reaction was that I hadn’t got the faintest idea what this was. A spot of research confirmed an initial hunch that Michael Penn is indeed related to Sean Penn (brother). This did little to raise my expectations of what I was about to listen to. Once I started playing it, it sounded somewhat familiar, possibly because it’s been in my iTunes library since 2015, picking up 3 (presumably random) plays in that time. It deserves to be there. It’s a likeable, catchy tune from 1989 – not ground-breaking, but pleasant. It puts me in mind of Crowded House a bit, and that’s not a bad thing.
The song, released in 1989 didn’t trouble Chart compilers in the UK, but did reach #13 in the US. It’s from his debut album “March”. Quite how it got onto my iTunes library, I cannot explain. I can only think it was on a compilation of some sort that I loaded in. Anyhow, I’ve listened to the song more times in the last four days than I had in the previous seven years, so the algorithm certainly got that one right.
TGG
I’ve loads of things on my laptop hard drive that I’ve obviously downloaded from other blogs at some point over the year, but have no recollection of when and from where. It’s funny how often I then give such a song a listen again many years later and wonder what possessed me in the first instance!!
Just to say, welcome to the blogging world. Good luck and have fun.
The fourth post on the blog, and the second obituary. Not really what I was planning.
Martin Duffy is perhaps best known for his work on keyboards with Primal Scream and from 1996 with The Charlatans. For me though, the impact of his keyboard playing will be best remembered in mid-80s Felt (a band I will almost certainly revisit on this blog). This is the lead track from the 1986 album Forever Breathes The Lonely Word.
TGG
I hadn’t really expected to be doing a post like this so early in the life of this blog. Having seen the news late yesterday evening, I have had time to read many tributes to Terry Hall during various pauses during my working day. And many there have been from both fellow musicians and fans alike. For me, as a 13 year-old, hearing Gangsters as it entered the Charts, The Specials seemed exciting, different, dangerous. The attitude of punk, the words a little clearer and a tune you couldn’t help but dance to. They were a band I stuck with until their demise just two years later. Terry’s next project, Fun Boy Three, also caught and held my attention – his deadpan vocals covering a multitude of edgy topics.
After Fun Boy Three ceased to be, in my head I was paying less attention to Terry and his work. Until today, when I realised that along with records by The Specials and Fun Boy Three, he also features on CD or vinyl in my collection with The Colourfield, Terry, Blair & Anouchka, Vegas and as a solo artist. Then there are the guest appearances with the likes of Gorillaz and the couple of tracks I downloaded from his collaboration with Mushtaq. I’ve spent a lot of time listening to his music.My only regret is never seeing him live. I had a ticket to see The Specials in Manchester in September 2021 – only to test positive for Covid a couple of days beforehand and to have to pass the ticket on to a mate.
I’ll leave you with a couple of tracks – my favourite one from Fun Boy Three and a solo favourite from 1994.TGG
As an easy way of getting started, here’s something I wrote for the now defunct blog When You Can’t Remember Anything, back in 2017:
My parents were born in the mid-1930s. They met in the early 1950s, before rock ‘n’ roll was a thing, and by the mid-1960s when I rolled up, they had amassed a record collection which would have served well as a playlist for the new Radio 2 station at its launch the following year. There was nothing by the Stones (despite Paint It, Black being No. 1 on the day I was born) and only one Beatles record (bizarrely, the Twist & Shout EP). The Hollies were OK though – there were a few of theirs, presumably because unlike the Fab Four, they hailed from the “correct” end of the East Lancs Road.
Throughout the next eighteen years, additions were made, with albums from the likes of Andy Williams, Perry Como, James Last and Richard Clayderman appearing on a regular basis. With that background, it probably doesn’t come as much of a surprise that I was a very early starter in the “liking music your parents don’t” stakes – at the age of five to be precise. Seeing T. Rex performing Hot Love on what I presume must have been Top Of The Pops was my eye-opener and I clearly remember my father’s horrified reaction when I pointed at Marc Bolan and announced that I wanted to be like him when I grew up.
So, by April 1984, just a month or so shy of my eighteenth birthday, my parents had grudgingly accepted that this wasn’t a phase I was going through and that I had acquired a lot of vinyl that they didn’t want anywhere near the stereo in the living room.
That was when something rather strange happened as we ate our evening meal. I presume there must have been a lull in the usual conversation, which would have been around the seeming lack of revision I was doing for my forthcoming A Levels (a conversation that is strangely being repeated right now with my eldest…). My father suddenly asked, “Echo And The Bunnymen – are they one of those groups you listen to?”. Bracing myself for some sort of sarcastic remark, I looked at my sister, rolled my eyes and replied in the affirmative. “Their new one’s very good”, he stated. My sister and I looked at each other.
It was she who took the initiative, guessing at what she thought was going on. “The Killing Moon is their old one, Dad”, she said, “they’ve got a new one out now”. My father put down his cutlery, clearly affronted by her comment. “No”, he said very pointedly, “I mean the new one. Something to do with fingertips”.
The ensuing conversation revealed that in the timber yard where my father worked, the radio was on pretty much constantly in the various buildings on the site. In recent years, as the average age of the workforce had lowered in relation to my father’s, Radio 1 had become the station of choice, exposing him to some of the “rubbish” he believed I listened to.
My father didn’t really elaborate too much on what it was he liked about Silver, but there was a post-A Level conversation where he described Seven Seas as “another good one”. He had started buying cassettes to play in the car around that time and had moved onto The Eagles among others – maybe this had paved the way to him liking the works of Ian McCulloch and co.
So that’s Silver and what it means to me. I never did sit my father down and play Ocean Rain to him as I did OK in those A-Levels, went to Uni and those family evening meals became a thing of the past. I’m not sure if he’d have liked all of it, but I always think of him when playing tracks from it.
As a footnote, my father passed away a few years ago after a prolonged illness. He lost interest in most things, including music. However, my mother has picked up the mantle of surprising the offspring with musical observations, declaring Biffy Clyro’s original Many Of Horror to be far more “real” than the version by the bloke who won the X Factor….
TGG
Wasting time in the study 
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