Neon Lights

I don't know why, but sometimes I get musical ideas in my head which just won't go away, and this is one. I am a huge fan of both Kraftwerk and Guided By Voices, and sometime back I had the crazy idea to put together "A Salty Salute" and "Neon Lights," and so here it is. I really like it.

A Love Supreme

I stumbled across this the other day, while searching for another Branford Marsalis link to email to a friend. How I managed to avoid seeing it all these years is anyone's guess. I once had the pleasure of seeing Mr. Marsalis in a trio configuration (with Jeff "Tain' Watts, also featured here, though his piano player, Kenny Kirkland, was away touring with Sting) at the University of Memphis Field House (a glorified gymnasium) with my dad, very shortly after arriving back from Japan in 1990. The acoustics were terrible, and the audience was mostly comprised of over-excited young African-American students, who had clearly come to hear the theme from the Spike Lee film "Mo' Better Blues," which was immensely popular at the time. In contrast, here was the intellectual, musicologically-minded Branford, intent on doing his thing, with a piano-less trio. I recall a particularly challenging 15-minute rendition of Ornette Coleman's "Garden of Souls," which left the audience fidgeting and chatting loudly. After a few numbers, punctuated by incessant requests for the hit song, Branford finally lost his cool, albeit in a very cool manner. I recall him saying to the restless audience, in a clearly frustrated, but very measured, way, "We're going to play what you want to hear, but first we're going to play what we like, because this music is important, and you need to hear it."

This is an audacious and stunningly heartfelt interpretation of perhaps the jazz cannon's most intense and deepest work. As all worthy interpretations should, this one takes a lot of liberties, while remaining unwaveringly true to the spirit of the original. It is 17 minutes longer than the original album, and in some ways is more intense. The musicianship throughout is impeccable all around, though for my money, the real stand-out is Jeff "Tain" Watts, who is, in technical musicological parlance, "a motherfucker."

Nunhead American Radio

This is a podcast of my second appearance on the irrepressible Lewis Schaffer's "Nunhead American Radio" program on Resonance FM, 25th June, 2012. The only thing missing was co-host, the beautiful Lisa Moyle - otherwise, it was a very fine program. I got to play some Linda Heck music, Lewis blew my mind with his knowledge of Memphiana, and I met the lovely Matt Roper, Anna Crockett and Richard Guard. We all went for a drink afterward, and the latter two, from the legendary East Dulwich Ukulele Club, very kindly gave me a lift home, and we had a very good laugh along the way. More salutary lessons in keeping one's head out of one's ass.

Half -Life

I had the great pleasure of seeing these guys a couple of weeks back, thanks to my good friend Gazza, the only other person I know as a committed guitar freak with a day job in telecom. The gig was an album release party at the very atmospheric St. Pancras Old Church. This song sounds like a hit to me, and I think we will be hearing a lot more from them in the near future.

Thank Goodstock

Four weeks ago tomorrow, I played my first-ever proper UK gig, at my younger daughter's school fundraiser, branded "Goodstock" (the school is called Goodrich, so the pun was really screaming to be used, though interestingly no one had landed upon this idea until recently).

I opened the evening with a 30-minute set on electric guitar and vocals, accompanied by the astonishingly talented Steve Watts on upright bass. He didn't know any of my songs, and we only had a half-hour sound check to get to know each other musically. We played a tastefully-selected set of eight covers, and he was an absolute trooper, a real joy to play with. The audience, probably somewhat baffled by the opening number, listened attentively, and smiled on occasion. After all was said and done, there was a genuine warmth and appreciation from them, and a number of people have since given me some very kind appraisals of the set.

Photo by Julia Hamilton

Photo by Julia Hamilton

In the next set, I played drums with The Graduates, featuring my friend and neighbour Paul Betts, who recorded my guitar parts for the Linda Heck album at his place, and the lovely Jim McAllister of The Popes. It was great fun, and people liked it a lot. 

The third band, Dad Company, were great enough to let me use their drum kit, and I have since gotten to know a few in their ranks as well. Great guys, and I'm a at a complete loss to understand why I've never encountered them before.

Which all begs the uncomfortable question, "Why have I had my head up my musical ass for the past 17 years?" My beloved East Dulwich is chock-full of talented people looking for interesting things to do, and I have quite a few in mind. A couple of them have indicated an interest in getting something together on the back of this event, with the aim of having fun and kicking ass - both noble pursuits. If there is a lesson from all of this, it's that interesting people have a much easier time finding you if you make yourself visible, and remain open to new possibilities. 

And so tomorrow, I jet with my girls to Memphis, where I will, in a couple of weeks' time, play this awesome gig - a gig which almost wasn't. Maybe it's just the looming arrival of a certain key birthday, but I feel more appreciative of my friends (old and new), my family, and of life itself, than ever.

 

Shocker in Gloomtown

Even if you're not a fan, this early edit of what later became "Watch Me Jumpstart" will still be interesting and entertaining, due to the personalities and wit of the band, and the highly unusual story of how it came to be known outside of its small circle, or how it almost didn't. Mitch Mitchell's grandmother anecdote at 7:30 alone is worth the price of admission. As an added bonus to Memphibians everywhere, I'm 99.999% sure that in the opening seconds of the film, Bob Pollard is wearing an Easley-McCain Recording t-shirt. I used to have one too - now added to the list of Things I Won't Keep/Sad if I Lost It.

Scenes from London life

Music for Films

For anyone finding themselves in the midst of a stressful work week and in need of a soothing cold towel to wrap round their head, plug in the earbuds, ignore your colleagues, and inhabit a calmer place for 41:06. As with so much good music, I was introduced to this by my friend and early musical co-consiprator, Mark Edwards. It inspired me in my youth, and I still return to it frequently.

Goodstock

My first-ever UK gig, and the first time I've ever played solo in public. A fundraiser for my younger daughter's school, it somewhat bizarrely ended up getting a promotional plug on BBC 6Music. Life never fails to amaze.

The Visitor

I'm not really sure what this is, but it's how I occupied myself while steadfastly ignoring the Jubilee. Most sounds are by me, with a few found sounds (numbers stations recordings, giant wind chimes, space noise, and HAL, of course) in the mix.

Scenes from London life

Towers of London

Well, I thought we had pretty much exhausted the XTC-related content a while ago, but how wrong I was, and how pleased I am to be so. This extraordinary documentary from 1980 gives the fan a lot of insight into the people and process (including an impossibly young and chain-smoking Steve Lilywhite) behind the music, and also a great view of what constituted "state of the art" recording at the time of the "Black Sea" album. It's all great, apart from the desire to punch Branson any time he makes an appearance, but I reckon that's just a sign of being a normal human being.

Question of the day

Does being older than "Pet Sounds" somehow make one timeless, too? Released 46 years ago today, I had heard bits and pieces of this in my youth, but only really discovered it during my second year in Japan. When I did, I listened to it every day for at least six months. I guess if I'm honest, there haven't really been that many albums which genuinely changed my ideas about music forever, but this one is very near the top of the list. At the time, I found it somehow sustaining on some deeper level, and I guess that's probably the best tribute an artist can have.

 

Scenes from London life

Duck Dunn

Maybe it's just me, but it sure feels like we're losing the greats at an alarming rate recently. I awoke to news of the passing of Donald "Duck" Dunn, who died is his sleep after a gig in Tokyo - still spreading what a friend rightly calls "God's music" right to the end. Simplicity and elegance is a rare form of genius, and Duck Dunn was in full possession. For my money, if you could only cite one example, it would be "I've Never Found a Girl," which sent a shockwave down my spine the first time I heard it, and still does every time I listen to it. There's a lot to love in the song, but listen closely and it's really the very sparse bass accents on the one and three which actually propel the song. Whereas the tendency among most bass players would probably be to play along in the same groove with the rest of the band, Duck introduces some space and tension into the mix, which both anchors the song and allows it to fly at the same time. It doesn't come any better.

Binghampton Vice

I made this a few weeks back, just a bit of fun on a quiet weekend. I'm not quite sure how I ended up with the title, apart from the fact that the piece sounded like yet another theme to a non-existent detective series from the past. Then Binghampton popped into my head, as it does at some point most days. Binghampton was where I had some amazing experiences at a ghetto school in the black side of the area, but across the railroad tracks along Scott Street, the white Binghampton was where I later spent a lot of time involved in music.

The white Binghampton always struck me as some sort of ghetto for white immigrants from the country, at least that was the impression I got from the locals who drank at Fred's Hideout, the legendary hotbed of musical ferment in 1987. They all seemed to have come up from Mississippi, presumably during more promising times in the job market. The white Binghampton was also home to a number of fixtures on the music scene: Linda Heck lived there on a couple of occasions, as did The Brewers, Monsieur Jeffrey Evans, the late and much lamented John Eatman (a.k.a. Johnny Singer), and a number of others at various times. I also lived there for a few months in 1991, during which time I discovered in a local thrift store a treasure trove of Style Wooten-produced records, including the immortal "I Found My Love in Memphis." And when it came time to play my first gig in 16 years, on New Years' Day, 2010, I once again found myself in Binghampton, albeit in an almost unrecognizable remodelled Fred's Hideout (now The Cove) on a much-gentrified Broad Street.

Checking the Wikipedia entry for the neighborhood just now, it seems appropriate that I imagined this as a cop show theme, given that section 3.1 is entitled "Random shootings at cars."

Aretha vs. The Squares

As a child/young man, I was fortunately never particularly sickly, but inevitably, two or three days a year, I would be laid low by some stomach bug or another. Apart from feeling like shit, I actually kind of relished these days, because I got to stay home and immerse myself in the strange world of daytime television, which back then consisted largely of game shows. It always felt odd and wrong, because I knew I was joining a parallel universe comprised of the economically disenfranchised, the elderly and disabled, and frustrated housewives (who must have grated at being name-checked in this episode as having the third most tedious occupation in the country, while trying to escape said tedium). Still, it was a guilty pleasure, and I always liked "Hollywood Squares," because of the ever-shifting array of B-list and declining A-list celebrities, and the witty repartee they exchanged. Watching this episode from 1976, I am struck by a number of things:

• Everyone looks much younger to me than they did at the time;
• Some of the celebs are genuinely amusing, and the humor is still very tame;
• The prizes are all pretty modest by the standards of modern hyper-consumerism and bling;
• Joan Rivers is still recognizable as a member of the human race;
• Shit, that's (Memphis-born) Aretha Franklin up there!

R.I.P. MCA

Song of the Day: Jackie Mittoo "Freak Out"

This song reworks Eddie Floyd's epic "I've Never Found a Girl," placing the guitar break of the original right up front, retaining the horn lines and the hook, while never actually stating the melody line. The horn line in "I've Never Found a Girl" itself references (or is referenced by, I haven't been able to work out the chronology) "Time is Tight," and is apparently ultimately a thinly disguised appropriation of "Theme From 'A Summer Place.'" Thus endeth the lesson.

So Long, Skip

I had the pleasure of meeting Skip Pitts over dinner in 2005, backstage at the Barbican. He struck me as a very animated person, with a mischievous sense of humor. I can clearly remember, as I'm sure others of my age can, too, the first time I heard the opening bars of "Theme from Shaft." The combination of the insistent, swishing hi-hat and the electric rattlesnake whip of the wah-wah guitar was both alarming and exciting. I loved that song from the very first time I heard it, and I was not alone - my hopeless 8th grade band class at Lester Jr. High in Binghampton used to love murdering it (as opposed to the rest of our limited repertoire, which we merely battered), and it was a real point of honor among the percussion section to be the guy playing the hi-hat figure. Never mind that the school's dilapidated instrument store contained no hi-hats - the resourceful kids of Binghampton would replicate the sound by placing a small crash cymbal on the floor, alternately muting and un-muting it with their feet. Surely Skip's opening wah-wah figure here is one of the most instantly-recognizable "sound logos" of the modern age, all over the planet. Rest easy, big man.