Discover Weekly #8

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

February 28, 2023

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Seen ’em Live #2

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

February 22, 2023

Discover Weekly #7

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

February 18, 2023

1. 

   JC

   February 21, 2023

   I can only ever recall ‘I Got You’…..a real ear-worm of a tune.

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Seen ’em Live #1

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

February 14, 2023

1. 

   JC

   February 21, 2023

   Fair play to both BC and the Christians for giving the audience what they wanted. It does increasingly seem to be the way with the ‘nostalgia’ acts, but then again given what many of them charge for tickets, it should be a given.

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Discover Weekly #6

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

February 8, 2023

1. 

   JC

   February 21, 2023

   “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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Discover Weekly #5

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

February 5, 2023

1. 

   Khayem

   February 7, 2023

   I’ll admit to enjoying both incarnations of Fuzzbox. I really liked their attitude and they were a breath of fresh air compared to the likes of Five Star, to be honest.

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2. 

   JC

   February 21, 2023

   I’m with Khayem.

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