For many years now I have been a big fan of Springsteen with Nebraska in particular being amongst my favourite albums...over the years there have been endless covers of tracks by The Boss including this from Vampire Weekend
Not really a name I would normally associate with a Springsteen cover but this is a great cover...a bit mellower than the original and different enough from the original to make it worthwhile the song just seems to suit the band....the track also contains one of Bruce's finest lyrics about the end of a relationship...
We sit in the car outside your house
I can feel the heat coming ’round
I go to put my arm around you
and you give me a look like I’m way out of bounds
well you let out one of your bored sighs
Well lately when I look into your eyes
I’m goin down
Today is the 66th birthday of the one and only Robert Wyatt...
Wyatt first came to prominence as the drummer in late 60's art rock band, The Soft Machine before starting a solo career in the early 70's...it was not long in to his solo career that he fell from an open window at a party and fractured his back resulting in him spending his time since in a wheelchair...his first release after the accident is generally considered to be his finest work, the beautiful and charming Rock Bottom...
In the mid 70's he made his first appearance on TOTP with a bizarre cover of I'm a Believer...initially the Beeb refused to allow him to appear on the show as he was in a wheelchair (as if the nation would be horrified by seeing a singer in a wheelchair) but relented after much pressure from the music weeklies...
For much of the remainder of the 70's Wyatt did not record much but in the 80's inspired, in part, by Thatcher coming to power, he came back with a vengeance and recorded some of the best music of his career, most notably his version of Shipbuilding...for the entirety of the song his voice sounds on the verge of breaking but is sung with such depth and honesty that it literally brings me to tears every time I listen to it...if he had never recorded anything else this track alone raises Wyatt head and shoulders above most other singers...
Wyatt pretty much records when he wants to...paints, writes, devotes himself to left wing causes and manages to enlist some pretty decent fellow musicians to collaborate with him...step forward Paul Weller,Phil Manzanera, Brian Eno to name a few...
Happy Birthday Robert Wyatt...we need more like you...
Mix together a little sprinkling of hardcore punk, some chiming guitars, a bit of The Buzzcocks, a bit of Jake Burns, even a bit of C86 and you are close to the sound of the debut album from Dylan Baldi under the moniker of Cloud Nothings...hard to believe that he is only 19 and wrote and recorded the entire album himself...he only uses other musicians when playing live
There are some fairly average moments on the album but when he gets it right it's a pretty decent debut...tracks such as Understand At All and Not Important are well worth a few minutes of your time...hook laden, full of potential, you get the feeling there is better yet to come from Baldi...with one track clocking in at the minute-ten mark you can't really go wrong...
In the early to mid 80's I would devour every music paper/mag that I could lay my hands on...N.M.E., Melody Maker, Smash Hits...you name it I would buy it...basically anything that featured music I would buy and with my fellow music fan mates we would discuss the latest new bands, learn all the lyrics in Smash Hits and try and get anyone else on board that would humour us..
It was while buying my weekly collection in '83 that I first spotted Jamming! magazine...50p for articles on Dexy's, Aztec Camera, Cocteau Twins...these were the bands that I was starting to listen to at the time on Radio 1 and there it was,a mag with all my bands in one place...thought I had died and went to heaven there and then...coming back on the train from Glasgow I read the mag from back to front and then realised the previous edition had been a full YEAR ago...what to do until the next edition but thankfully Jamming! was moving to bi-monthly after this edition..so only 2 months to wait...seemed like a bloody lifetime to wait then...
Over the next two and a half years or so Jamming! was THE mag to buy...anyone who was anyone was featured...cover stars included Madness, Pete Townsend, The Faith Brothers, Talking Heads, Lloyd Cole and in the final edition a cartoon of Elvis..
I had a fair few flexi discs that you would get free with Jamming! but over the years I seem to have lost them somewhere or other, which featured bands including 10,000 Maniacs, Big Sound Authority, Faith Brothers...this was just another reason to buy Jamming!...
As time went on Jamming! sadly lost its way with some of the writing becoming increasingly conceited and losing a lot of the passion that was there at the start and becoming indistinguishable from the weeklies...until early '86 when fed up with the lack of direction and lack of financial support Tony Fletcher and the publishers pulled the plug on what had once been the best music mag being produced in the U.K.
I have a lot of fond memories of Jamming! but only one copy exists from my collection and perhaps ironically that is the very last edition from Jan '86 which featured amongst others New Order , Madness , Prefab Sprout , and the man who went on to be my favourite author, Raymond Carver ...
Great writing and passion for what they were writing about set Jamming! apart from the pack...Tony Fletcher has a website called iJamming that is always worth a look and has some of the great articles that graced Jamming!
There are many great soul singers but few as good as Garnett Mimms....he could turn his hand just as easily to ballads or up tempo numbers and has one of the most expressive, soulful voices you are likely to hear...he is as good as Jackie Wilson or Sam Cooke but somehow success eluded him...
I first heard Garnett Mimms on the Stateside album I posted about last week and then bought a Best Of just to see if the track on the Stateside album was a one off...it wasn't....if you don't own anyhing by Garnett Mimms head over here and pick up a copy of Warm and Soulful...you will not be disappointed...this is classic soul music and an album that has it all....fantastic arrangements,great songs and some of the finest joyous soul vocals you are likely to hear...
Dressed in a teddy boy outfit with a pint of beer in hand and delivering variations on the same joke in a monotone style, usually starting with "I was walking down this road the other day", may not sound like an evening of fun...add in a few unique interpretations of some chart hits like She Loves You however and you have an evening with one of Britain's most unique talents in the person of Ted Chippington.
I first came across Ted Chippington via some tracks played by John Peel and at first thought what the hell is this...he either had audiences pained with laughter or completely bemused ...initially I fell into the latter camp but after buying his only album,Man In A Suitcase, I was firmly placed in the former....he was truly a one off neither fitting in with the alternative comedy scene or working men's club comedy...he was out on a limb and all the better for it...
Bizarrely he was championed by,of all people, Radio 1 DJ Steve Wright who was very taken with Ted's cover of She Loves You and was largely responsible for Ted receiving some TV appearances in the mid 80's....after that he gave up on comedy to drive trucks in the U.S. of A....before returning to live performance in 2006...
He one commented that he only started doing his routine to "annoy people"..to a large extent he achieved his aim as he did face a fair amount of hostility during his shows but for the ones who got him he was an entertainer of the first degree....and a national treasure
When you think of great British female vocalists the name of Julie Hawden is not usually one of the first to spring to mind...but it should be...Julie's excellent vocals graced the few singles and one album released by another forgotten band from the 80's....Big Sound Authority first appeared on a compilation album on Weller's Respond label and then toured with other Respond artists such as Tracie and The Questions...before signing to Source Records
Their first single is the track most people remember them for and what a track to be remembered for...This House sounds terrific at full volume, full of energy with a great brass section all topped off with the exquisite vocals of Julie Hawden...
Today's post was inspired by a posting last week by Davy over at The Ghost Of Electricity blog on the awesome track by Garnett Mimms, As Long As I Have You. I first heard the track on a complilation album that I picked up in Fopp sometime in the late 80's called What's Happening Stateside .From the opening track by The O'Jays, Working On Your Case, to the closing track by Homer Banks, A Lot Of Love, there is not a duff track on the album.
This was THE album that got me listening to soul music...real soul music..none of this watered down shit that passes as soul today...some of the tracks on this album are amongst the best released by the artists...
I have never seen the album on CD but if you can track a copy on vinyl down on ebay do yourself a favour and get one...this is as good as any Atlantic, Stax or Motown compilation...16 tracks of unadulterated joy...including this track that the NME once described thus, "you'd have to be virtually dead not to love this record"...precisely
Due to being laid up in bed for a few days I had an opportunity to read Patti Smith's wonderfully evocative account of her friendship with Robert Mapplethorpe who sadly died from an AIDS related illness in 1989. A chance meeting between the two in 1967 led to romance and a lifelong friendship. The backdrop to the book is the New York of The Chelsea Hotel, Max's Kansas City,Coney Island, Brooklyn and Warhol's Factory. Just Kids adds something new to the many books that have been written about this era, this is written from the heart and soul of Patti Smith and is mainly about two kids who made a pact to always look out and care for the other no matter what...two lives completely intertwined...
Being an outsider as a child it was probably inevitable that Patti Smith would end up in New York...their is no sentimentality in Smith's descriptions of their early days when they struggled to even eat...the writings on the Chelsea and Max's are wonderful accounts of a time and place littered with many iconic names from a very creative time in New York's history...
Would either of them achieved the success they did without the other is open to debate but what shines through most clearly from the book is that Smith has written a very honest and moving account of their lifelong relationship...who would have thought that Patti Smith would be such a gentle and sensitive narrator...one of the many high points of the book is how far removed this is from celebrity culture...and all the better for it
For a change I thought I would write about some new bands, namely three bands that I would like to see do well in 2011.....one from New Zealand, one from Nashville and one from London...
First up are The Naked And The Famous, a Kiwi band that took their name from a Tricky lyric...the description of them as like MGMT at their most populist is fairly apt...skillfully mixing a bit of shoegazing with a bit of Chemical Brothers with a bit of synth pop this five piece have covered all bases....I have a feeling they will be appearing at most of the festivals in the summer.....
Next,from the home of country I present Mona, pounding drums, ringing guitars,gutsy, passionate vocals and great songs...this band exude passion with a capital P....hell they may not win much on the originality stakes but who cares with songs as good as this..
Probably helps that he has a look of Strummer about him...another band that will be gracing the festivals....there is a bit of every decade there starting, of course, with the 50's but they still sound very fresh and now...
Last, and by no means least, The Vaccines...the new darlings of the media...again they are not going to win the top prize for originality but if you like your music with a mix of Ramones, Beach Boys, Phil Spector, Libertines et al then this is the band for you...complete with 25 minute sets a la Mary Chain...yet to see them live but will be adding them to the list for 2011...
There are many other new bands that should be huge in 2011 but I'll stick with these three and hope they get the success they deserve....
