Don't Call Them Twee....

Spools Paradise Recipe....

Equipment Required - One Blender....

Ingredients - An equal mixture of The Ramones, Mary Chain, The Velvets, Blondie and The Shangri-La's....

Blend all the ingredients together and you should end up with the following....

End Result - Glasgow's finest C86 combo, The Shop Assistants....

Honey drenched wall of sound guitars, one classic album, beloved of yer man Peel and Morrissey, proudly paying homage to pop in its purest form and makers of one of the finest Scottish singles ever made in Safety Net....

The Shop Assistants - Safety Net

Something New....

A while back I received an email from a fellow blogger who has a site called Ghost Olympics where he posts his own music.

He describes himself as :

"I'm a man who does music, sometimes, and has a lot of unfinished business. By "business", I mean "songs", and by "songs" I mean "fannying about with computers, sequencers, guitars and four-track tape recorders making rudimentary dance music and indie fringe-flopping, sometimes at once."

There are certainly some interesting sounds on his blog here so why not pop over and have a listen. There's bits of techno, pieces of ambient and enough samples to satisfy anyone interested in music that is innovative and sounds as though he had a lot of fun making.

This is my own personal fave below.

Slow Down, You're Taking Me Over....

Sadly there are some gigs from back in the day that I went to that I have no great recollection of due to a spot of over indulgence beforehand. Back in the early 90's we would regularly go to three or four gigs a week on a good week and one that always sticks out for me was Suede at the now defunct Plaza Ballroom. As a couple of mates had a flat just round the corner it was an ideal venue for us and we made the most of any gigs that took place there. In fact the first gig I ever went to with my wife was to the Plaza when we were courting (!!) but that's for another post.

Feted as the 'best new band in Britain' before they'd even released a single, for a short while Suede more than lived up to the hype. Wearing their Bowie and Morrissey influences proudly on their sleeves, Brett Anderson and Bernard Butler foisted their debut album upon the Great British public in the early 90's and produced one of the best albums of the "Britpop " era. Where it really came together was, however, on stage where Suede took the studio sounds to a different level.They were charismatic, gloriously sleazy, glamorous and, above all, exciting.

They had great songs, an incredible guitarist and a front man who knew how to put on a performance. Fair enough he may have believed his own hype but a good chunk of the arrogance was justified.

Although I saw quite a few bands at The Plaza this was the one that always stood out for me - just don't let on to my lovely wife.

Suede - The Drowners

Last Night There Were Skinheads On My Lawn....

You must be doing something right if you have one of your tracks covered by the likes of Teenage Fanclub and The Manics. In the case of Camper Van Beethoven they were certainly doing something right back in '87 when they recorded the wonderful Take The Skinheads Bowling.

Still not sure about the "wanna lick your knees" line but Skinheads sounded unique, almost defiant and extremely quirky back upon its original release and still sounds all of those and more to this day. I hadn't heard it for ages until it randomly appeared on the headphones today. There is an energy and rawness to the track that helped make it one of the most iconic tracks of the late 80's. The track is pretty much timeless and in my humble opinion pretty close to perfection.

Many times covered but never bettered, Take The Skinheads Bowling is overflowing with an attitude and swagger that those pesky Gallagher brothers could only dream of.....

Camper Van Beethoven - Take The Skinheads Bowling

Underwhelmed....

I have just read and listened to the artists on the BBC Sound Of 2012 list and can't remember a time when I have felt so fucking underwhelmed by a list of so called breakthrough artists. They are not all bad but if this is the best the BBC can find I'm away to listen to my Smiths box set again.

Michael Kiwanuka can certainly sing, with more than a hint of Bill Withers and John Martyn to his voice, but just doesn't convince me. Nice but no cigar. I can, however, understand his placing on the list but most of the others are just baffling. Excepting the mighty Spector. Now these cats are onto something. Hints of Roxy Music and Pulp entwined with the more obvious Strokes influence lend something of an 80's sheen to the Spector sound. Takes a bit of balls to name your band after possibly the greatest producer of all time, but Spector could prove to one of the best new bands this year.

My other tip for the tip pop pickers has to be Cold Specks. I was blown away by the voice of Al Spx when she performed on Later last year. Her "doom Soul" sound on Holland was something special and hopefully 2012 will be the year that the world catches onto the beautiful and disarming sounds from Toronto's finest.

Spector - Never Fade Away

Lush,melodic gorgeousness.......

For most listeners to the NME's C81 cassette it was the lush melodic sound of The Sweetest Girl that was the biggest surprise. Up until that point Scritti Politti had released material that was scratchy, noisy and lacking in anything resembling a melody.

Opening with some lovely piano courtesy of Robert Wyatt, and with Gartside shedding his previous, frail, Wyatt-inspired voice for a sweet soul falsetto, Green Gartside, seemingly from out of nowhere, released a track that the New York Times cited as one of the best tracks of '82, and is one of those rare tracks that sounds like nothing else. Just gorgeous.

Scritti Politti - The Sweetest Girl

Not Really A Guilty Pleasure....

Spools Paradise doesn't do guilty pleasures but if it did then Laura Brannigan's "Gloria" would certainly be one of them. Not really sure what it is about Gloria but it came on the radio the other day and I was transported back to the early 80's and loved every minute of it. No pretensions just a great pop song that you just feel the urge to sing along to.

Three days into 2012 and there goes whatever street cred I had....

Laura Brannigan - Gloria

Just for a bit of balance here's a great recording of the inimatable Patti Smith recorded at Latitude....