Is that a year already? Blimey, Jings and Odds Bodkins! I have a thousand excuses for not osting anything for so long, but I won't bore you with them.
Stand by for some new posts soon. Meanwhile, to keep you occupied, here are some classic women's punk clips I've found recently,
Featuring Viv Albertine
Au Revoir...
"Yeah Yeah ... Uh, No: Exploring the Audiovisual Phenomenon of Beatles-Lookalike Long Playing Albums"
Entertaining and informative, I think you'll agree. So we can forgive the huge gaff about Capital's Meet The Beatles being the first US Beatles album, when any fool can tell you that Vee-Jay's shoddy Introducing the Beatles hit the shops a full ten days earlier, on 10 January 1964. Tut.
Where the hell have I been?
There's nothing more shameful than the Neglectful Blogger's Hat that I've been wearing for tha last few months. I have no real excuses. Even worse, I'm only posting this so that I can tweet — and, erm, 'book? face? Is there a single-syllable put-it-on-facebook verb yet? — this bit of video.
I promise I'll be back soon with some posts of substance.
Fame is fickle, and history is fickler. More fickle. Ficklest. Anyway, what role will people think of when they hear the name Rita Moreno, in a thousand years time?
Will it be Anita, in West Side Story? Zelda the snitch in Singing in the Rain? Googie Gomez ("Hot Bitches") in Dick Lester's 1973 bath-house farce The Ritz? Compassionate Sister Peter Marie in Oz?
So Lilly Gave to Solly, just what Billy gave to Molly.
No of course not. Here's the performance that will last a thousand years. Here is a touch of distilled musical genius. Here is her crowning achievement: playing Lilly in the Electric Company's Billy Lick A Lolly. Got a hangover? Turn the volume right up: this will burn right through it, pal.
Blossom Dearie is no more: http://tinyurl.com/bs2zj6
Here's her wonderful I Walk A Little Faster:
Hey Fred! I fixed it!
This blog’s getting a little too valedictory. Goodbye Blossom. I walk a little slower.
Lux Interior 1948–2009
Well when I die don't you burry me at all,
Just nail my bones up on the wall,
Beneath these bones let these words be seen,
“This is the bloody gears of a boppin’ machine”
—“Rockin’ Bones”
Here’s an old documentary on the Rezillos I found on Google video.
I was a big Rezillos fan back in the late seventies, and I've seen them a couple of times since they reformed. If anything, I'd say they were now even better: Faye & Eugene's singing voices are certainly more powerful, and richer, too. And I'd forgotten what a good guitarist Jo "Luke Warm" Callis is, in that lead-and-rhythm-together style of, I dunno, erm, Mick Green? Wilko Johnson? (music journalism hat falls off).
And —swoon— I got to stand next to Faye & Eugene in the audience at the last Bis Christmas show at Oran Mor. Too starstruck to actually say anything, though.
Anyway here they are being interviewed in 2001, before they reformed, talking about the band's history, including their intermediate "Revillos" project. With some hard-to-find archive footage.
To watch in a bigger window, or download it, go to Google video here.
Go Raj!
I reckon the death of the Mighty Oliver Postgate will be all over the web for the next few days: or at least the Blighty Web. I couldn’t let the occasion pass without comment, but I don't want to just repeat what everyone else is saying: “Blah blah Bagpuss blah blah great loss blah blah distinctive voice blah blah narrator of our collective childhoods blah blah grandson of George blah blah soup dragon blah blah Peter Firmin blah blah Nogbad the Bad blah blah.”
So instead here's his cousin, Angela Lansbury, on the George Gobel Show in 1956.
Why have I posted this inconsequential stuff? Well I actually wanted to post a long and fascinating interview with Angela which is available chopped up into chunks on YouTube, but embedding's disabled, so you'll have to click here to see it.
And if you want to experience Oliver’s powerful, magical voice, here's the start of the BBC's Alchemists of Sound, a documentary about the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, narrated by the late, great Mr. Angela Lansbury’s Cousin.
The whole programme is on YouTube, in chunks. And Don’t get me started on the blessed Delia...
I went to a double birthday last Saturday night (Hi Bryan! Hi Alison!), and as I often do, made up a mix CD to give as a cheapskate-but-personal present to both parties. No discernible theme here: it's a catholic mixture of stuff I've found and liked recently. Mostly cheesy soundtrack instrumentals, with some hillbilly rock, country, calypso, and so on.
In the past, I would make up a couple of dozen copies of my mix CDs for distribution among friends, but I'm doing it via the WibblyWobblyWomb this time for various reasons:
So here's Hippy Bardot via Rapidshare
Download ZIP archive (79.7 MB).
Track list
The cover and title are a variation on the classic “Hippo Birdy Two Ewes” birthday card, with my own mix of pictures. I used a Photo of Bryan himself on his copy: but I couldn't get my hands on a picture of Alison, so had to substitute a picture of the most famous Alison I could think of: Ms. Goldfrapp. That's the version included here.
I don't have the time or inclination to make every track available in playable form on this page, but I had to give you at least one: here's the gloriously, monotonously daft The Mechanical Man by Bent Bolt & The Nuts:
Listen:
Download Bent Bolt & The Nuts – The Mechanical Man MP3 (rapidshare)
Thanks to all my various sources (mostly in the I Don’t Hate list on the right).
Note for Bébé and Alison Goldfrapp fans, who might have googled there way to this article: no material from Brigitte or Alison is included.
“Maybe it wasn’t very good, but it was awful loud, wasn’t it?” — Jean Shepard.
The gateway Trio are an example of American mainstream folk music in the early sixties, before Bobby, Joan and their bath-avoiding beatnik buddies stormed the citadel. It's the sort of clean-cut, button-down, blue-eyed balderdash that is parodied so, – I dunno, what's sweet and sour at the same time? Sour Gums? – so tartaric-acidly, by Christopher Guest and troupe in A Mighty Wind.
It's from the same cheap & cheesy movie (Hootenanny Hoot) as my previous Johnny Cash Clip. The plot is the eternal movie musical standby: putting on a show. In this case, the show is a Hootenanny Circus. Which I suppose should go some way to explaining why the Gateways are performing... while gently bobbing on a trampoline. have a look:
Download The Gateway Trio – Foolish Questions AVI (rapidshare)
If, for some unaccountable reason, you want to know more about them there's a pocket biography here. Looks like they're still going, too (probably not on the trampoline, though) if the old geezers on this site are the same band.
Johnny Cash? Yes, I've been a big fan of the man in Black for decades. I'm in a tiny minority of Cash fans, though: I really didn't think much of the Rick Rubin American Recordings period. The whole project struck me as a mixture of novelty ("Listen to this old guy sings songs written by young guys!") and car-crash ("Listen to how frail he's getting! How much longer can he last?"). "Hurt" I particularly detested. Lyrically, the song is soaked in egotistical self-pity, expressing a young man's callow emotions, full of self-regard, but without the maturity and reflection to realise that this self-regard is the main obstacle to the resolution of his pain. Such callow words sound frankly grotesque in the mouth of an aging, reflective man like Cash.
So enough of this: time for a bit of vintage Johnny, singing "Frankie & Johnny" from Hootennany Hoot!, a frankly farcical let's-put-a-show-on-right-here musical made in 1963.
Download Johnny Cash – Frankie & Johnny MP3 (rapidshare)
Always remember to ask your mother
I had to borrow Revolt into Style from my Dad, for my last bit on Mike Sarne (my copy is lost in the permanent revolution of books in my house). When my mother heard me talking about Sarne, her response was surprising: "Oh, the one who had an affair with Brigitte Bardot?" she said. I was a little taken aback, since I'd found no mention of this in my research. So I shoved my head back into the packet stream, and came out with... not much. There's a mention of an affair in this pretentious twaddle: looks like it happened while they were filming À coeur joie (Two Weeks in September) together.
Anyway, I'm pretty sure he wouldn't have sung this song to Bébé:
Download Mike Sarne — Dodgy Looking Bird MP3 (rapidshare)
Bad timing can make the best of us look like fools.
George Melly has the humility to point out his own turn as History's joke, in Revolt Into Style, (1971) his groundbreaking study of popular culture of the fifties and sixties. George quotes himself in an Article for the then-young New Society Magazine in October 1962, as readable as he always was, and making smart, funny and pointed observations, he came a cropper when he saw what he thought was the future of pop music.
He was suitably dismissive of the anodyne pap that filled the charts in the backwash of Rock & Roll and Skiffle: the various clean cut Bobbys (Vee, Vinton, Rydell etc.), Helen Shapiro, and the stuff of Children’s Favourites. The only interesting stuff he saw in the charts were the hard-edged and witty songs about real life from the likes of Bernard Cribbens (Hole in The Ground and Right Said Fred) Anthony Newley (Pop Goes the Weasel) and Mike Sarne (Come Outside), all using an early form of that adapted, adopted Cockney of Youth, later pinned-down as Estuary English or Mockney .
Spare a thought for George: in the 1971 book, he graciously owned up to his mis-prediction. He didn’t try to mitigate his faults at all, although he could have. Yes, he should have spotted the potential of the proto-Beatles playing interval beat sets at then-jazz-club The Cavern when he played there: and the Beat and Blues Booms (led by the Fabs and the Stones) scoured a lot of rubbish out of the British (and international) music charts: but there was a lot of prosaic wit and humour still around in the world of beat music. Ray Davies of the Kinks moved rapidly from ersatz R&B to British barbed whimsy as the sixties progressed. And both Freddie and the Dreamers and Herman’s Hermits developed successful pop-comedy formulas. You might not like me including minnows like Peter Noone and Freddie Garrity in with cultural blue whales like John, Paul, Mick and Keef, but remember, I’m talking about how things looked then, not how they look from here. I will draw a veil over the Barron Knights.
Here’s Mike’s hit Come Outside, with vocal contributions from Wendy “Miss Brahms” Richard. I can’t seem to think of her as “Pauline Fowler” at all. Maybe it’s just my age, or maybe the performance on the record is much more Miss Brahms to Mike’s Mr. Lucas/Trevor Bannister character. And who was Trevor Bannister replaced by on AYBS? Mike Berry—a sixties pop star! It’s all coming together. A bit.
Download Mike Sarne – Come Outside MP3 (rapidshare)
What? Not enough about Mike? Well he had a few more minor hits like Just for Kicks, Code of Love (which i can’t find), acted a bit, in The Avengers, Man In A Suitcase, and The Bill: and he directed a few films, most notably Myra Breckinridge.
Oh look: here's Judge Dread's dismally unfunny rude version.
My record shelves are peppered with them: if you’re a charity-shopping, jumble-sale-haunting vinyl fan like me, yours will probably also have a few. I’m talking about those records with fabulous covers you’re willing to gamble a few pennies on. You don’t know the artist: you don’t know the label: you can’t tell the genre. But the cover demands to be yours.
Of course they usually turn out to be musical mince when you get around to playing them, but every once in a while, every now and then, you’ve found a gem.
Here is such a gem, courtesy of my pal Cat (Hey Catherine!) who found this album Surprise Party Rive Gauche in a Barnardo’s Charity Shop, so many years ago she’s forgotten exactly when. There are a few pleasant numbers on this seemingly arbitrary French compilation, but the big standout track has to be “Bad Boy”: a fairly standard jazzy doo-wop arrangement, it’s the lead vocalists extraordinary ability to sound like a muted trumpet which makes it fab.
That LP itself is difficult to place; not least because of the bizarre arrangement of information: tracks titles are listed in one place (with a dance category: cha-cha-cha, charleston fox, etc.), while artists are listed elsewhere. I initially assumed that this was a cheap knock-off for tourists: local cabaret artists covering big international hits. But when I consulted the TCP/IP soothsayer, I found that The Jive Bombers were a New York band, and “Bad Boy” was a big US hit for them in 1957.
And the Song? Written by Lil Armstrong (neé Hardin), Louis’ second wife, it was originally titled “Brown Gal” in her version. The Jive Bombers recorded it first as “Brown Boy” in 1952, then the hit version here, now racially defused as “Bad Boy”, in 1957.
Download Clarence “Bad Boy” Palmer and the Jive Bombers—Bad Boy from Rapidshare
Here’s Lil’s original “Brown Gal” on YouTube, complete with lyric captions:
Perhaps I’m a little biased, but I’ve always been aware that Scottish Pop Music is the best in the world. Not to mention our choreography, costume design, and television production. Too prove it, here’s Lulu making a guest appearance on Shang-a-Lang, the Bay City Rollers’ astonishingly good TV show from the mid-seventies.
“Home of the Brave, Land of the Free
Oh why won’t they let him be what he wants to be?”
I heard this song only once, thirty years ago, but those lines from the chorus have been stuck in my head ever since. John Peel was playing selections from an album of Phil Spector rarities on his weekday-evening show, and this one stuck out. Of course human memory is fallible: I distinctly remember the artist as “Ronnie and the Relatives” which of course was the name Veronica (Ronnie Spector) Bennet, Estelle Bennet and Nedra Talley used before they became the Ronettes. But then, they had become the Ronettes before they’d even met Crazy Phil. Who knows; maybe Peelie also played a Ronnie & the Relatives track that night, and my faulty memory conflated the two.
I’m not alone in this confusion: any online discussion of this little gem of a record sooner or later has somebody stating that Bonnie is Ronnie Spector as an absolute fact. Hey, even Ronnie herself is on record as agreeing. But now I can actually here the record again, I’d have to disagree: there is a similarity, but that’s mostly in the Spector wall-o’-sound treatment (actually produced by Spector protogé Jerry Riopelle). This vocalist sounds like Ronnie would if you took the Washington Heights out of her voice. And who on earth would want to do that?
No, the packet switching muse tells me that Bonnie is in fact Charlotte O’Hara, a talented singer and songwriter who never really made it, and died tragically young.
So why did it stick in my mind all these years? It’s a good bad-boy song in the manner of He’s a Rebel or even Leader of the Pack (but no death, though). Seems like a reasonable Spectory production, although this copy is particularly poor quality, and wall-of-sound quickly turns to wall-of-mush once we move too far from the hi-fi. But the main reason has to be the sentiment. Us pinko limey bastards, like all foreign bleeding-heart liberal cowards, have a love-hate relationship with Yankee Culture. We Hate the Rednecks, but in our hearts of hearts we know that nobody ever heard a good commie rock and roll record (Well, apart from Stalin Wasn’t Stallin’ maybe). But here we have a pop record comparing and contrasting the USA’s Liberty-loving rhetoric with the reality of deeply conservative conformist suburban culture.
If you’re having trouble hearing the lyrics, you can always try Jody Miller's hit version from the same year (1965).
I’m trying out a new way of embedding the sound here: I’d appreciate comments if you can’t play this, or even just to confirm that you can. Thanks!
Download Bonnie and the Treasures—Home of the Brave from Rapidshare
Mention Janie Jones, and people about my age think “He’s in love with Rock & Roll whoah...” the song Janie Jones from the first Clash album. If you’re a bit younger, you may be be thinking of the lazy carbon-copy Babyshambles cover version (Look! there’s Janie!). Or if you’re older, you'll perhaps remember the scandal and the vice: court cases accusing her of attempted blackmail (got off) running a brothel (got off), and sex payola (banged up).
But you real old codgers out there might remember this: the nearest thing she got to a hit (Number 46) in her short mid-sixties pop career.
Janie never seems to settle into a consistant vocal style, floating in a grey area somewhere between Terry-lovin’ Twinkle and Commie-lovin’ Eartha Kitt. Backing vocals sound like average sixties beat boys. The music has a relentless, piano-driven simplicity, like a lounge band who’ve been asked to cover a Velvet Underground song. And mixed heavily over the whole thing, a gloopy, burbly, bubbling sound wash, supposedly representing the witch’s, erm, brew, but it sounds more like a malfunctioning cistern to me. Glorious.
Listen:
Download it from rapidshare: Witches Brew.
A pop star once asked what my favourite Jonathan Richman album was. I reckon it was a test to find out if I was a true believin’ JoJo Junkie, or just a Hipster Dilettante. I fluffed the test a little: while my choice was suitably obscure (Jonathan Sings from 1983), I spoiled the effect by forgetting the title of the album: “Erm, the one with Not Yet Three on it.” was my reply.
So here’s Not Yet Three, a minor Jonathan Masterpiece, about his little daughter’s ravenous hunger for life. Like all Jonathan’s best songs, it dances skillfully on the sublime knife-edge between maudlin sentimentality and subtle joy. Even bitter childless cynics like myself cannot resist.
But I don’t enjoy Jonathan’s live gigs anymore: on the rare occasion he gets to my town, the audience is jammed with loud, sycophantic JoJo Boosters. I feel a rant coming on…
Listen punks: I love Jonathan at least as much as you: I’ve got at least as many of his records as you: I know the words to most of his songs like you do: but I didn’t come here to show off about it: I came to hear Jonathan sing; and I won’t sing along because his songs are living, changing things, and every time he comes, the songs have changed, polished, evolved, twisted: but I CAN’T HEAR THE CHANGES because you’re BELLOWING OVER IT. it’s like spray-painting “I’M MARK ROTHKO’S BIGGEST FAN” all over a Mark Rothko canvas.
Rant Over. Enjoy.
Listen:
Download it from rapidshare: Not Yet Three.
More lazy shoving-in of stuff other people have found. Here's I Met The Walrus, a short animation based on a conversation with John Lennon taped in 1969 in Toronto by 14-year-old a Jerry Levitan. It's a good example of Lennon's mercurial, infuriating, never boring, constant, rapid shifting between hippie mysticism and political astuteness; wrapped up in animation that refers to both sixties psychedelic surrealism and today's post-everything dada-cynicism.
Directed by Josh Raskin, Pen work by James Braithwaite, digital illustration by Alex Kurina.
Credit where it’s due: I found this on Jack Shedd’s Big Contrarian blog.
I try to avoid just shoving in stuff I've found elsewhere, but I can't avoid showing you this. After all it's got two iconic "hate-to-love-to-hate" figures of mine: Lucille Ball (of course), and driving her around Swingin' London in his motorbike & sidecar, the great Tony Newley.
All credit to Will Kane's splendid World of Kane blog, and the unhealthily obsessive Lucy in London fan site.
Zigzag 86—August 1978
Back at my folks’ house a few weeks ago, my Dad gave me a box: inside were various bits of paper, notes, magazines, fanzines, and concert programmes from the late seventies: the last kibble left behind when I left home.
Among the gems (more later) was this Zigzag. Founded by Pete Frame in 1969, this well-respected British Rock Journal had, by 1978, come thoroughly under the Punk Spell, thanks to new editor Kris Needs.
The layout is a curious hybrid: text is mostly properly typset (which in those pre-DTP days meant professional) but the subject matter and the then-current DIY aesthetic meant that layouts also included felt-tip scribbly headlines, rules and page numbers, giving a more fanzine-ish feel.
Like everybody else, I know in my heart-of-hearts that the music being made when I was in my teens is the absolute, ultimate, best ever. So if you’re in your mid forties like me, you’re sure to enjoy these articles on The Raincoats, Suicide, John Otway, Steel Pulse and The Human League. Even the piece on cover stars The Rich Kids is an interesting bit of “Slik-Pistols-Vox-Visage-Pistols-again” history. And there’s a column by the great John Walters to boot.
But the best piece has to be the interview with my then-favourite band, The Rezillos, by Cramps Legionnaire Lindsay Hutton. Here’s the Rezillos piece (click for bigger, readable pages):
...and here’s the whole magazine, rapidshared:
In Acrobat format
In Comic Reader format
As a ZIP archive of JPEG pages.
The magic number is
