BIG STAR - NUMBER 1 RECORD

Well this is a lot like putting on a old pair of slippers or a comfortable pair of track pants that you might wear around the house after work, lounging pants if you will, pants that might have ketchup, beer and other such stains on them.

Unfortunately the first pressing also sounds like a pair of slippers. Memphis label Ardent obviously had other things to spend their money on besides quality shellac. Luckily this album has been released and re-released so many times that there is forced to be a half decent pressing out there somewhere.

So what can you possibly about this album that hasn't been said before? Well quite a lot if you don't like an impossibly forced close to nasal vocal style. Luckily it would appear that I do, which is odd because the mere thought of Geddy Lee is enough to turn my stomach.

'Number 1 Record' is basically 'hit' after 'hit'. It's an exercise in perfectly honed and fully focused guitar or power pop. I would stop short of saying that it rocks though because it doesn't. The internationally used 'Scale of Rock' has Cheap Trick representing 'absoulte zero' IE: The very least rockingest sound possible and this, 'Big Star' falls short of that. Now this isn't a bad thing. As a band they are aeons away from the demented and dull twatishness of Cheap Trick but do they rock? No, not really.

Big Star 'roll', and this isn't a weak joke aimed at the bands admitted love for the 'doob' either. They have a rolling sound, a sound that rolls.

So what's on the album? Well there's that song that Cheap Trick borrowed for 'That 70's Show', there's the blue print to Scottish Indie janglers Teenage Fanclub's entire back catalogue. There is also 'The Indian Song' which I flag because it's always stood out for me. Not necessarily as being any better than the rest of this truly solid offering but because it sounds like it doesn't belong. You could very easily drop 'The Indian Song' onto 'Forever Changes' and give it a Brian McLean vocal credit as it would sound perfectly at home there.

So is it all good? No, there almost has to be a weak link and that weak link is 'Don't Lie To Me'. That's what happens when a 'Rolling' band tries to 'Rock'. It just goes horribly wrong.

Now according to Google this album actually exploded when it was released which is news to me, I was under the impression that it was one of those under-peforming slow-boilers, something that wasn't given it's due credit until years later. But apparently not. So why didn't smash the charts? Turns out Stax (Ardent owners) had problems distributing the record so nobody could actually buy it.

To be honest it took me a good few years to 'get' Big Star. I'd owned it more than once (It's a pre-requisit for working in a record store) due to the fact that it came up in conversation on an almost weekly basis. The first time I gave it a spin I remember it just washing over me in the same way The Replacements and the Soft Boys still do. It was dull, wishy washy nothing special, I didn't get it. I do now.

GALAXIE 500 - THIS IS OUR MUSIC

God this is fay. There has been a Galaxie 500 shaped gap in my listening since I scrunched my face up as I heard a cassette of theirs around 1992. Anyway, I decided I needed to revisit said band just to make sure I wasn't missing out on something wonderful. I was not.

Yeah it's totally passable if you like the Pastels. If you don't it's way too wishy washy and forgettable.

Jingly-jangly guitar, a very slow-tempo and production that favors the Bowie circa 'Raw Power' 'recorded from behind the sofa' method. It's unsubstantial, instantly forgettable and too dreamy. I mean I like dreamy, Mazzy Star did it to perfection, this is just kind of annoying though. It's the soundtrack to a frail lactose-intolerant teenage boy falling down a thick-pile carpeted staircase in slow motion.

The reason for my revisitation is that in print they would often get mentioned in the same sentence as Rugby's world changing and ever (almost ever) awesome Spacemen 3. Maybe it's because of vocal similarities or maybe it's because both bands have numbers in their names. (I could easily have ended up with Maroon 5 playing on my walk home).

The reason for me specifically choosing 'This is Our Music' was the Ornette Coleman album of the same name, i wondered if there might be some head-nod or similarity. Unsurprisingly there is not.

What to say other than if I was a female college student doing a degree in 'Social Studies' circa 1990 I might really like this. I could eat fried Tofu to it while I brush my hair into my face to hide myself from the world. At best I could have bad and instantly regrettable sex to it with some guy with shoulder-length hair that I met at a party whose name might be Ian to it.

...And Ian would not call me back.

SIMPLE MINDS - REEL TO REEL CACOPHONY

Not sure why the song 'Changeling' came into my head while I was on nappy duty but it did. It got me thinking about the power of early 80's Simple Minds, the clinical majesty of their original unfettered vision and I felt compelled to commit my thoughts to pen and paper (virtual pen and paper).

The album 'Reel to Reel Cacophony' was one of the first I ever owned. I bought it on cassette whilst on a caravanning holiday with a former school friend in Bridlington. Given that by this point Scotland's finest had already released 'Once Upon a Time' starting with their second album might come across as ambitious. Given Jim Kerr's haircut on the back of the prior album 'Life in a Day' it could even be considered brave and or bold.

Unfortunately it was none of the above. It was however £3.49 from Woolworths, a whole pound cheaper than any of their later albums. This might seem paltry but back in the heady days of 1985 and aged 11 a crisp and green pound note was a fuck lot of money, a veritable kings ransom.

Anyway, I bought it, played it in the caravan and came away a bit non-plussed. This wasn't the Simple Minds of Top of the Pops, It certainly wasn't the band I had been hyping the fuck out of to my friend. At one point during playback I decided it must be faulty, but no. Over the following weeks I found myself revisiting the album drawing a similar conclusion each time - I should have ponied up the extra quid and bought 'Sparkle in the Rain'. I kept playing it though because at that stage in my music based habit, owning circa ten albums and about the same amount of pre-recorded cassettes every inch of music counted.

Eventually, thanks to the arrival of newer predominantly 'metal', specifically Kiss records I could afford to give up on it. In time I forgot about the album, or at least I thought I had.

I re-bought it for a couple of Euros in Germany a few years back and put it on to see how it faired. 'Reel to Reel Cacophony' came before the critically re-assessed period of the groups history, it's prior to 'I Travel' and 'Theme For Great Cities', no electronic anthems or obvious Hoxton floor fillers here. Anyway, needle goes on record and fuck me if I didn't remember almost every word, every single change and beat. I still have no idea what any of the songs are about but that 'Reel to Reel Cacophony's' content has spent the last 25 plus years sat in my head waiting to be called into action is no mean feat. And just when I think it's over, that I'm done with that mysterious album with it's plain blue textured sleeve it pops up again without warning.

Beyond being a reminder of days gone by, of a cramped caravanning holiday, a friend who turned out to be an utter dick and his mum who I think I wanted to fuck, this is a killer album. Well not killer, that's the wrong word. It is however solidly built, unusual, well balanced and totally under-rated.

BLUE CHEER - VINCEBUS ERUPTUM

So exactly what the difference between 'the birth of heavy metal' and a dull and elongated electric blues jam is I do not know. 'Vincebus Eruptum' is cited by some as the starting point of all things metal, a pre-cursor to Sabbath a slow distorion-laden exercise forming the 'A for apple' at the start of the heavy metal alphabet. So why does it sound so much like 'boogie woogie'?