TRANS AM - RED LINE

This album is proof positive that when a band stops pretending to be robots they can do something that stands the test of time...

Okay not the complete test of time becuase that probably involves some intricate mathematical equation taking into consideration the dark and lonely infinity of space but 'Red Line' sounds way better in 2009 than what came before (the good but dated Futureworld) and after it (the very dreadful TA).

They still lapse into spats of 'I'm a robot' stype singing, rigid and klangtonesque keyboards but every now and again theres something on 'Red Line' that can't help but make TRANS AM sound like an honest to god band. The drums for instance, theres some awesome tribal-circle stick work going on here and the synthesisers are used in a way that doesn't mean you feel post modern or ironic for listening to them.

I wonder what would happen if say there was a band of robots pretending to be real people? Actually that would probably be really shit and a lot like the JONAS BROTHERS.

ATTILA - ATTILA

So it would seem that North Korea is now a legitimate 'Nuclear Power', it has joined the arms race, albeit the little leagues. According to the newspapers the country now has the where with all to strike against South Korea and Japan, maybe both at once if it was feeling particularly saucy.

This really is a minor revelation next to discovering that BILLY JOEL is lead singer and organ grinder of Attila ...I thought these fuckers were Dutch, it would seem not. They certainly sound Dutch.

Anyway, Attila: At worst they sound like THE SWEET having unconcentual sex with DEEP PURPLE in a dirty men's toilet. At best they sound like THE SWEET having unconsentual sex with DEEP PURPLE in a dirty men's toilet. 

At times they get close to greatness but at separate times either a desperate willingness to sound conventional or the professionalism of Joel's voice stop proceedings short. Not to sell the band short, at different times Atilla are 'kicking your faces in' and 'hiding their weed'....wait, i think they are spitting on me now.... and apparently the future singer of 'Uptown Girl' is a phoenix rising from the flames.

Plus there's the record sleeve: Two longhaired dour faced ancient warriors hangin' tough in a warehouse full of meat. 

The last track on side 1: 'Amplifier Fire - Part II - March of the Huns' has it's charms and with the aid of some druid like moaning almost nails it, as does 'Rollin' Home' Side 2's opener.

There's just something a little staged about the whole thing almost as if two trust fund boys have been given a shot at the big time by their label owning uncle and in order to make the most of this golden opportunity they concoct an insane MSP, something to endear them to the kids....

'Dude! I know! the kids love Attila the hun! The kids love meat! The kids... erm, the kids love organs. I think our shit is totally coming together, let's stop at the fancy dress shop on the way to the studio.' 

Anyway, however it happened, it happened and this spectacular and mostly forgettable misfire was born.

DA CAPO RECORDS OF BERLIN

This looks like such a fucking awesome shop. It's in the right part of town and the window suggests a whole world of exciting plastic awaiting you. Inside, it's properly unkempt, not dirty but culturally ripe, good looking, inspired. There's some interesting pieces on the wall and the racks are suitably full.

Sadly two things kill it stone dead... First off it's 'violently over priced': the records are so unjustly expensive that I actually felt angry flicking through them. 

Hugely unrealistic pricing structure out the way gripe number two would be the woman that served me. I pulled the reissue of the first SUICIDE album from the racks and conceded, I have zero German, but you would have thought that anyone would understand:

 'Flexi?...23 Minutes over Brussels mit schallplatten?' 

She looked at me like I'd fucked her dog. Spoke German at me and then at her colleague who kindly translated.

'No this is not a flexi disc, it is a normal record. This is not a flexi disc.'

Come fucking on. You work in a proper record shop and you know what I am talking about. 

'No, sorry, I mean does it have the flexi disc with it. This originally came with a 10" INSERT HAND GESTURE HERE flexi disc with it.'

More German backing and forthing, more dirty looks. 

'Do you want the record?'

No I did not want the record.

This aside my personal other highlight was a copy of the reissue of the Spring album on Arkoma - 50 Euros.

I left empty handed. Good looking shop over enthusiastic pricing gun. But to be honest and in fairness to the moody staff I hadn't found anywhere much better than this seven shops later. Berlin is not a good place to record shop. Then I got to thinking why? Capitol city, vibrant scene, world class hipsters and bars better than almost anywhere on earth so why no record shoppy shoppy? Then it hit me.

The 39 year period from 1961 to 1990 pretty much covers the vast majority of all the music that I currently listen to: Sinatra and a spattering of early Jazz to 'Goo' by a SONIC YOUTH and 'Frigid Stars' by CODEINE. Interestingly enough Berlin was a fucking prison island, a city divided, behind the iron curtain and surrounded by the Eastern Block for the exact same period of time. So whilst obviously there were records and record shops in West Berlin during this period, practicalities would dictate that it would never have the same scene as Hamburg, Dusseldorf of Frankfurt. And now however many years later the fall-out from the WW II, the cold war and an unwanted Socialist state is finally hitting home in the shape of shitty record shops.

SATWA - SATWA

So according to more than one review this is Brazilian psychedelic folk genius. It is also supposed to be somekind of pagan celebration of the black arts. I like it, it's got an awesome sleeve and even has a little devil's face on the label which you can watch as it spins round...

It's sunny outside and if the weatherman is to be believed (let's hope he's not an over enthusiastic reviewer of Brazilian music) then Summer is finally here and it's about fucking time. Winter was endless, Spring was again non-existent, add to that the fact that the first world seems to be falling apart and I need to be swimming in a river somewhere nice and warm more than ever. Right now even one of those 'Do Not Swim Here - Danger of Drowning' rivers would do... the ones with the reeds that get entwined with your legs and pull you under, the ones with the sharp and rusty old cars at the bottom waiting to gash a major artiery, the ones with the killer fish like in that film about the killer fish...

I read somewhere that this guy (Lula Cortes) made his own instrument which would go some way to explaining why it sounds like he's playing a broken guitar/sitar. I can imagine the recording session, all two hours of it.

Niw ni niw ni ni ni niw ni niw ni n niw niw ni niw... And home in time for lunch.

This record is over romanticised because not many people have a copy, the psych enthusiasts who big 'Satwa' up probably do so to justify the inflated price they paid for it. Don't get me wrong, I like it, it's very listenable but psychedelic folk genius? You can't bat that kind of wordige around, if you do what adjectives are you supposed to use to describe INCREDIBLE STRING BAND?

MACHIAVEL - JESTER

I really don't want this 'blog' to turn into a worthless list of over-weight fanboy gushings but shit in my hair if this isn't a two in a row of me being nearly lost for words.

I am at work, I am pretending to work, I am staring across an empty car park from a port-a-cabin watching a girl in a green t-shirt limp past the window with the aid of a crutch. My desk is a mess of papers and I hate myself for giving in and buying a bottle of diet coke from the violently over-priced vending machine. I was thinking about how meaningless my existence was, and how if only I could do one awesome thing before this all turned to ashes then maybe things wouldn't be so bad. But then I got thinking, who exactly judges whether something is worthwhile, whether something has succeeded in being awesome, who? Is it enough to do something truly awesome if it is left unappreciated by a wider audience, by the populous, by your piers? And then I got thinking about the album Jester by the band Machiavel.

'Jester' is huge, it's gigantic, it's the worlds biggest shark eating a nuclear submarine.... So why hadn't I heard of it until a couple of weeks back? Okay, I won't profess to be anything more than a keen novice, an ignorant but willing observer of the 'Prog' scene, but surely I should have heard of this already?

Given the endless 'Hot 500 albums ever' lists I have scanned for new music based information over the years, I would have thought that just one person would have thought to include this at some point, but no. After all, as things come in and out of fashion and musical culture is re-assessed such artifacts do find their way into 'best of ever' lists.

Example: ten years ago none of the likes of Mellow Candle, Trees or Vashti Bunyan could get a sniff, but today Acid Folk is something of a buzz word, a hip name to drop to your mates as you sip cider outside the 'Spack and Carrot' in Soho... So why haven't I seen anybody cycle past me on a fixed gear bike wearing a MACHIAVEL t-shirt yet? Okay, it could be the album artwork...

'Jester' will get it's props, Moog and ARP driven folk tinged singer/song writing with drum breaks... it has to. But back to my opening gambit, if everyone involved is dead by then, wasn't it something of a pointless task, I mean male Prog groupies and bad drugs aside? Where exactly is the justification the acknowledgement of awesomeness? Maybe to suggest that acceptance and awesomeness go hand in hand is wrong but if you truly are your own judge then what's to stop you destroying the filter and proclaiming everything you do to be awesomeness? It can't and doesn't work that way either... I mean was it really enough for them to make this album, it be largely ignored, them die, the entire thing be forgotten? Maybe it was. I just know that if I were Machiavel I'd much rather be playing this album in full to a packed out audience at one of those 'Don't Look Back' events than eating beans from a tin and selling carpet cleaning products door to door.

I am of course over analysing this. I should just be happy that I have at 35 discovered and been excited by an album in a way that I haven't in a very, very long time. The down side of course is that if fuels the fire, justifies the endless days spent shuffling between the moldy smelling men, the mutterers, the nut-jobs and the fucking beat collecting 'crate diggerz' for a look at the 'Just In' box.

WALTER FRANCO - REVOLVER

I just killed a fly.

Well it wasn't strictly a fly but it was a small winged bug type creature non the less. I went to the bathroom, there was something wrong with my eye so I gave it a bit of a poke in the mirror then when I was done I washed my hands. I saw what I thought was a bit of hair, a blip or something so I motioned it toward the spiraling water. It smeared and limped, it was not a blip, it was a flying creature. Now that creature is dead and I feel bad... And I still have no idea what is wrong with my eye. Looks like a swollen tear duct or something. Still as the fly-thing will testify things could be so, so much worse.

Walter Franco is Brazilian, I don't know much about him other than he has a penchant for the white suite and long hair combination currently sported by France's favorite son Sebastien Tellier. 

The album 'Revolver' starts off with some late Seventies sounding John Lennon business, actually that's being unfair to Walter. It is what Lennon might have done were he not busy disappearing up his own ass. (If he hadn't had Yoko to ground him, my bet is it would have happened a lot sooner. It's quiet probable that he would have completely vanished before they had finished filming 'Magical Mystery Tour')

Talking of Sebastien Tellier, the second song 'Eternamente' isn't a million miles off his awesome Eurovision entry from last year... The backing's the same at least. If Walter had thought to sing in a language that the first world might understand this would no doubt be a genre classic. 

Anyway, 'Revolver' moves on, stranger and stranger each track its own entity. 'Mamae D'agua' comes and goes and I feel better about being a fly killer. I imagine the fly shrugging it's shoulders in a 'them's the breaks' look on his face to the sitar and piano of said track before going to insect heaven. Goodbye fly that I did not know...

Stand out on side 1 is the closer 'Toque Fragil', was not expecting that - Guitar loop, phazed chanting and repetitive keyboard stabs.... oooh! and some reverse tape loop action... 

This album just keeps getting better and better.  Now he's singing in English! Oh, it's gone, we're back to Portuguese. This record is huge! The adventure continues on Side 2. It's like swimming into a magical underwater cave full of music, but only you have a torch on your head and you can see all of these amazing corals and other cool cave stuff like say stalactites or pirate treasure or something? Anyway, 'Revolver' is surprising, exciting and the kind of thing that puts many a supposed musical sacred cow to shame, I could list them but I wont, needless to day 'Sgt. Poopers' is in there right along side 'The Wall'. Walter Franco destroys both of them with his little finger... kind of like I did with that fly.

I paid 16 Euros for this from the newly opened Copacobana records in Nuremberg, listening to it has been the highlight of my weekend which says more about me that I am comfortable letting on...

GURU GURU - KANGURU

That I have time to write this on a Saturday says a lot of things, is it that I lead an empty life or have an unstoppable obsession? On this occasion I will go with option one. Today I am feeling one dimensional, doubting the path that I have chosen. If there was an afterlife, if we really were judged in some kind of spiritual rapture: The worthy ascending to a life of cloudy happiness the failed cast out forever left to live out their days in the knowledge that they have been rejected by some colossal planet shitting god... I wonder where I would end up? Would the giant bearded cybertron view this, my life as one well spent or would he laugh his humungous mouth in my face and leave me behind with the rejects?

The part of me that is attempting to defend this thing that I do, a time consuming obsession close to out of hand but never as of yet damaging would say that we few, we merry band of record obsessed idiots are seeing the world from a far richer perspective than many others. We are immersing ourselves in a facet of popular culture to a degree that will have baring on our ever day lives, arming ourselves with 2oth century reference points that can only serve to improve our understanding of that which surrounds us...

The other part of me, the devil on my shoulder tells me that for every day I have spent obsessing about some record or other, wandering aimlessly around some record shop or city, scouring the internet, for everyday I have wasted in this manner I will be forever haunted with reminders of what I could have done with that time: rock climbing, country walks,  cycling, white water rafting, exhilarating pass times that don't involve shuffling through bleak second hand shops on the off chance that some black plastic holy grail might peek from behind yet another top of the pops album and show itself.

Today I am retrospective, today I am melancholy. Today I am listening to 'Kangaru' by GURU GURU. I managed to pick up a clean copy on Thursday night after years of looking for one at a reasonable price. It starts well, 'Oxymoron' the opener brings to mind TORTOISE, a healthy sounding slide guitar gives way to some nice Krautrock wanderings. The second track is a winner as well as long as you can forgive the frustrating fairground ride sounding guitar solo. Track one side 2 and GURU GURU are HAWKWIND. Nice effect on the voice, kind of an echo, obvious guitar but a nice repetitive chug that ensures simplicity wins out to the noodling that is always just around the corner. 'Baby Cake Walk' turns into the albums closer 'Oooma Gooma' and it's back to a more comfortable tempo, nice bit of repetition and some piano. Four songs is a perfect length for an album. It ensures the tracks are substantial but not over-baring...

'Kanguru' is a good album, I enjoyed listening to it... But has it enriched my life? Has it provided me with a glimmering knowledge that will allow me to now see every day events with a wisdom that was not there previously? Seriously, I have no fucking idea.

HUDSONS RECORD AND TAPE SHOP OF CHESTERFIELD

This was i suppose my first ever record shop. I have memories of others: Record departments in Woolworths, Littlewoods, Top Shop in London even. But I am almost adament that this was my first one. The beginning of a sad obsession, the start of a beautiful distraction that would see me through the hardest of times and the reason that every time I move house the words 'logistical nightmare' are thrown around by whomever I discuss it with. In retrospect Hudson's was something of a life line and without it I might have ended up 'football' or tractor crazy spending all of my money on die-cast scale model's of early John Deere farm rigs. This place is at least partially to thank for me being here, right now and writing this...

I didn't buy my first record from here, that came from a weird pickwick-esque swivel stand on some indoor market, (Belle Stars - Sign of the Times 7inch) but pretty much everything I bought after that for a few years came from either Hudsons, Planet X or the market. (Planet X deserves an entire webpage and I will sooner or later at least do it the justice of including it here)

Hudsons in Chesterfield has been there forever. It rememebers the 60's. It probably remembers two world wars... fuck it, it probably remembers the civil war. For me it will forever be defined by the awesome and slightly see through yellow 13inch bags with the black Hudsons logo on them. In later years I used to play 'name that record' through the piss like hue that masked the album inside.

Even now years later I remember the staff that I used to annoy with my ridiculous requests, the once everyday records that filled the racks, some of which I would gladly fill my time machine with as and when it gets built. 5.99 an album, doubles 7.99, Japanese imports 14.99. There was the girl I always had a crush on who only seemed to work weekends, I used to try and impress her by bringing random hip US indie to the counter. Keith the owner, a deadpan local with a radio voice: I remember him giving Our Price Records a lengthy berating the week it opened a few doors down. His daughter worked there too, don't remember her name but I do recall her putting things aside for me, metal things, Motley Crue things.

This little shop saw me buy Now That's What I call Music 2 (The first one came from Martin's now John Menzies), It saw me through my metal years, my stint as a wanna be white rap-singer, my US indie years.

Today it's something of a compramise, one that the current climate has seen as necessary. Half of it is musical instruments the other half CDs and the tiniest of corners reserved for the stores former main stay. back in 1983 it was a shop of two halves, a shop of two doorways, one for the vinly boys and another for the more technologically advanced... the cassette lover. over time, the cassette side made way to cds, then dvds and now, now I have absolutely no idea as I couldn't bring myself to go in. I don't know if it was the explosion of memories waiting for me inside or that I feared being recognised and having to summarise the past twenty or so years, whatever it was that glued my feet to the cobblestone pavement it wasn't letting me inside that shop. The best I could do was take this picture as proof that I didn't dream the entire thing.

Ms.45 DISCO SCENE

For some unknown reason we are in the middle of a trend that sees a positive re-appraisal of everything Abel Ferrara ever did. Well I call 'bullshit' on the Guardian, Mark Kermode and every body else. Ferrara is not a good film maker: His work is not dark broody, challenging and atmospheric, it is poorly lit, badly acted and dull. Before I remind myself this site is supposed to be about music let me throw a 'fuck you!' out there to Werner Herzog as well.

Right rant over, what is the end scene from Ferrara's instantly forgettable rape-o-revenge movie Ms.45 (also known as 'Angel of Vengeance') doing here?

It's here because of the awesome Halloween party scene!

I have no idea who the band is or who wrote the music and rather than do any kind of real research I will merely speculate. The band might be MIGHTY DON LIEDEN AND THE 3RD DEGREE BURNS and the song could be called 'Piranha.'

Either way I would shoot myself in the leg to be invited to a No Wave Halloween party as awesome as this one.

I used to have an original Warner 'big box' VHS tape of this film, I got lucky and found a copy for a few quid at a now extinct video rental store in Halesowen. At the time it was particulary hard to come across due to it being refused certification. Anyway, It got played a couple of times while I was at college specifically because of this end scene, the dancing skeletons, the moody nun but mostly the killer saxomophone attack!

If anybody does have any information on who the band really is, please keep it to yourselves. The truth will never be as kick ass as the MIGHTY albeit imaginary DON LIEDEN.

STEVE REICH - OCTET MUSIC FOR A LARGE ENSEMBLE VIOLIN PHASE

I think this Jpeg is from the CD version because I'm pretty sure my record doesn't have the 'ECM New Series' writing at the bottom of the sleeve.

Important stuff out the way, the catchily titled 'Octet - Music For a Large Ensemble - Violin Phaze' came to my attention quite randomly a few years ago. I had illegally downloaded some Steve Reich stuff in the hope that it might somehow make me a better, fuller person, then I forgot all about it.

Then I was walking to work one day in Spring when I was living in New York and the first song/composition from the above came on my ipod. For the first few blocks I was to use the New York beat poet terminology of the mid to late Sixties 'Diggin' it' and then for the next few I was reaching around in my rucksack for the skip button, eventually I gave up on this and slowly got back to the 'Diggin' it'.

The first track sounds a bit like somebody playing the best bit from MIKE OLDFIELD's 'Tubular Bells' over and over again. The second track also sounds a bit like this. The third track sounds a bit like the first two tracks.

I am confident in the above being the least well informed and flattering review of Reich's music ever written. There is quite probably politics in there, something about being Jewish, something about his parents getting divorced early in his life and him being bullied into piano lessons. Sadly all I am hearing is what sounds like lots of violins playing the same passage over and over with very slightly differrent starting times (Quite possibly the reason for me not getting that job reviewing for WIRE magazine)... And I like it.

When I first heard the name Steve Reich I automatically assumed he was the lead singer of an early Eighties US punk group possibly called The Abortions. Despite having one of the coolest names in music he is a quite a serious modern classical composer by all accounts... And according to the internet he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for music on monday so good work Steve... Even if it would have been so much more awesome if you had recieved that prize for the self titles 'The Abortions' album and not 'Double Sextet'.

Not only is 'Violin Phase' a wholly passable soundtrack to the early morning streets of New York city it is also perfect bathroom cleaning music. You can actually scrub mirrors, tiles and toilets in time to the bow being drawn back and forth across the strings. And if that isn't a solid gold 'buy me now!' endorsement I don't know what is.

LINDSTROM - WHERE YOU GO I GO

According to his website this was originally called 'Lindstrom Likes Them Boobies part 2' but in yet another attempt to suppress Lindstrom's party loving 'frat boy' image his record company insisted he change it. They seem to be in genuine fear of the truth reaching the hip 'new ambient space disco avanteurs' or whatever the dance music in-crowd is calling themselves this week. The truth that much like Kid Rock, Lindstrom can drink at least fourteen Heinekens is apparently not something that would sit well with the dance music chin rubbers.

I was also lucky enough to see out takes from the photo session that the sleeve shot came from, they are further revelation. In the three negatives taken before the shot they settled upon (above) Lindstrom has his track top undone to reveal a LIMP BIZKIT shirt. Add to that his well concealed 'Party Cake Forever!' tattoo (no I have no idea what that means either) and the real Lindstrom, the one I know, couldn't be further from the DJ hype magazine friendly one portrayed to the disco boogie woogie masses.

It's a lot like seeing those smiley happy pictures of Oasis, the ones taken before their photographer had the idea to make them into the mono-browed sneering volcanos of Northern attitude that we all know and erm...know, or like the revelation that NWA's (Nigger's With Attitude and not North Western Airlines) manager was a white Jew. In all cases, some of the magic dust has been forever vacuumed away.

But would the ability to make those pictures of Lindstrom and Fred Durst hanging out at a titty bar mystically vanish into the ether make this album any less awesome? Probably not.

Lindstrom delivers, Lindstrom always delivers, he's like a musical paper boy, he know's what we want. We want the soundtrack to a 70's soap about doctors who used to be in love but aren't anymore and who in an attempt to forget themselves go on endless trips in east european car's to foggy destinations by rivers made out of Campari. He delivers this, just like I for a very brief period in the mid 80's delivered the news. Unlike me, Lindstrom does not however quit after a week and owe the paper shop three pounds forty due to mis-deliveries.

I think if Lindstrom called me up and said:

'Hey! If I let you change one thing about my new album what would it be?' 

I would say,

'Hey Lindstrom! That's a good question. I think the one thing I would change would be the size of the album...I would make it slightly bigger.'

'What you mean like 13"'

'No Lindstrom you panty stealing partyboy idiot, I mean make it a triple album with maybe four additional slightly shorter tracks, y'know, material that could act as a way in for some, a compromise for others and appeasement for the dance music idiots who want to 'play you out'...and some sleeve notes, I have a genuine desire to read about what you are doing... but not in a gay way.'

And Lindstrom would be all like

'So do you wanna do a bong shaped like the leaning tower of Piza?'

BIG BLACK - ATOMIZER

it's a sign of the times when you 'google' BIG BLACK and the first image is of some fat rapper and a skinny white skateboarder. not sure where it all went wrong. Steve Albini's 'that was then this is now' attitude doesn't help. Steve is sat on the kind of musical history that anyone in their right mind would shoot themselves in the cock to whore out. But no. No remastering, no posthumous live albums, demo's or unreleased material. It all ends with the final chords of 'Bombastic Outro' form 'Songs About Fucking'....Well okay 'Pigpile'.

Anyway, now Steve's got the often disapointing SHELLAC and his seemingly wayward producing career and he's made it clear he doesn't need me or any one else stuck in 1986 to tell him it should be otherwise. Fact remains BIG BLACK top my list of bands I would do anything to see live.

I came to Big Black fairly late in the day and it would have been 1991/2 by the time I bought the Blast First re-issue of this. It was from Nottingham's mighty Selectadisc, back when they pretty much owned that entire street with a singles shop at one end and the collossal three story enormo-store at the other. Then a trip to Nottingham was a proper twice yearly treat: Endless wandering, fish and chips somewhere a pint or two, some record shopping ending at Selectadisc and then a few happy hour cocktails at the now defunct Old Orleans. I remember carefully slipping the insert out of the sleeve and feverishly reading the sleevenotes while sipping from a particularly gay looking, long strawed and umbrella stuffed cocktail. No doubt the epitomy of the end consumer the band had envisaged.

Anyway, I went home listened to it and I'm still listening to it, my copy is battered and fucked from late night scream alongs and early morning wake up calls. it's survived a million cullings and will no doubt still be there in however many more years. It's just such a fucking solid album, even if it does end on a random live version of 'Cables'. It's one of those records that you can never listen to loud enough, the kind of record that they haven't built a stereo powerful enough to fully accomodate yet. The thing is fucking artillery, I have to believe that it paid no small part in at least one of the two Iraqi wars.


To this day, the only song that I am garanteed to dance to on a night out is 'Kerosene'.

PHIL SPECTOR VERDICT - GUILTY!

Wow! so Phil Spectrum creator of the early 80's super computer, battery powered idiot cart and collector of awesome wigs is GOING DOWN for 20 to 10 in the pen!

...Wait, I just Googled this guy and it turns out he's actually somekind of musical alchemyst from yesteryear, an American Joe Meek if you will. Ha! Only kidding, I knew that already, I was just fucking with you. Fucking with your head...kind of like Phil Spectrum did in the above pictures. i can picture the verdict:

'Mr Spectrum, you have been found guilty of murder, with a gun...to the face, of a woman. the maximum sentence for this crime is death but given your awesome and ever changable hair I have recommended that this sentence be reduced to life imprisonment, Monday through Friday, giving you the weekends to go see your wigmaster in order to continue the now rich tradition of blowing peoples minds with your choice of hairpiece.'

'Thankyou your honor, you are as fair as you are wise.'

I honestly thought this guy was untouchable given the proverbial bullets he has dodged in the past but it appears not.

What really saddens me is the fact that the last thing he did, the cherry on his proverbial producers cake was his work with musical abortions STARSAILOR. I wonder if they will let him work from prison?

Anyway, good luck in there Phil Spectrum, can't wait to hear that wall of sound now theres barbed wire on top of it and guard towers at either side.

POSSIBLY THE GREATEST RECORD SHOPS IN THE WORLD (#1 in an occasional series) JUMP JUMP RECORDS OF PORTLAND OR

I know what your thinking. Your thinking 'This looks like an empty campaign office'. The perfectly centered Barrack Hussein Obama sticker in the window and matching door and roof. Set on tree lined road of trees in one of the less fashionable suburbs of Portland what else could it possibly be?

Even though I had already called the guy to check he was open, scribbled the address in black biro on the back of my hand and checked it against the door number and street it wasn't until I pressed my face against the (locked) door and saw the racks inside that I was sure...

This was 'Jump Jump Records'.

Jump Jump records is basically a guy's front room filled with records. It's kind of like my front room but with no regard for the practicalities of seating or allowance for a coffee table.... and it's got way more records.

I forget the guys name but he was most helpful and he had a friendly record shop dog (record shop dogs are hugely underrated) allowing for the dreadful dixieland jazz he insisted on playing and the Woody Allen references he was the perfect host right down to the bulk discount.

The first time I went to Jump Jump it was pretty much an exercise in kicking myself. I had been living in Portland for nearly three years and I had decided to wait until my final week in the city before getting around to paying the guy a visit. By stark contrast in the same time period I had managed to get to Crossroads Records approximately fifteen times, each time leaving disappointed and empty handed. (It's a bit shit). My reasoning was two-fold: ten years proir my cousin had had a most succesful visit to said shop and on first arriving in Portland I witnessed a guy pull an underpriced copy of Rastakrautpasta from the racks. This led me to believe that there was magic, however well hidden at Crossroads Records... There is not.

Anyway, I bid farewell to the fair city and vowed that on my return Jump Jump would be my first port of call. Four months later I was true to my word. I arrived in Portland in the middle of the night, got a few hours sleep and headed straight for Jump Jump, just in time for opening.

I could describe the entire episode in lurid adult magazine readers letters detail. I could talk about the arousing and heady aroma of mildly musty cardboard sleeves mixed with the occasional record from a smoking household or running my hands across the racks, the edges of the rigid plastic sleeves caressing my palms as I rubbed their length.

I could tell you about the sensation in my finger tips as I began to slowly at first flick through the racks, speeding up only when I was sure I had exhausted everything that each section had to give. The slowly growing pile of horizontal records, their plastic sleeves rubbing against each other sliding around in danger of toppling.

I could do that but I wont because there is something fundamentally incorrect about masturbating to record shop reviews... no matter how right it feels.

Jump Jump Records is my favorite record shop in Portland Oregon. It is a contender for best record shop in the Pacific West.

GUY FROM 'RECORD FRIEND' AMSTERDAM

"Hi, I'm the dude from 'Record Friend' where Matt got his 'Earth and Fire album', my shop is pretty awesome even if my Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds albums are a bit over priced. Anyway, come visit me in my shop and then we go fuck hookers yes? ...I like it mostly when they make sexy piss in my beard."

EARTH AND FIRE - SONG OF THE MARCHING CHILDREN

I grew up thinking this was the first 'Earth, Wind and Fire' album, the one before 'Wind' joined. By the same logic i assumed there was a 'Wind' solo album out there somewhere, I had spent hours imagining what the sleeve could look like and what it might be called but sadly it does not exist.

When I eventually learned this had absolutely nothing to do with Chicago soulsters and champions of the classic chemical compound table I assumed that given the title and use of font it was some wayward forerunner to the whole NER neo-folk /'were not nazis honest' scene. Again assumption, wonderful as it is failed me as this has nothing to do with DEATH IN JUNE what so ever.

Earth and Fire are from Holland. This isn't a great start, unintentional comedy act GOLDEN EARRING and there 33 album back catalogue are from Holland, U2 sound-a-likes and all-round musical spastics BLOF are from Holland. Brainpower is from Holland, BEEF are from Holland... I could go on but I won't.

Needless to say the Dutch contribution to the broader spectrum of what can be considered as 'Popular music' has been fucking embarrassing. The God of music, if he exists is way beyond the point of appeasement with a mere virgin sacrifice. He would be quite within his rights to call upon Poseidon and demand he swallow up the entire sorry little country, a watery grave for every man, woman and child. I imagine the only thing stopping him is the twice annual record fair in Utrecht.

This then came as a pleasant surprise. Musically it fills a gap between the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA's self titled album and 'Cauldron' by FIFTY FOOT HOSE. The singer has a very listenable voice, one sufficiently tainted by Americanisms to ensure that she is unable to conjour any nightmare images of rat infestation, shit food, collaboration or windmills. In fact the only thing that gives this away as Dutch is the writing on the rear of the sleeve. 

'Song of the Marching Children' relies heavily on a repeat marching drum motif but unlike say one of those Grenadier Guards albums your Granddad used to have it does seem to work. Nice bit of organ and analogue synth as well. Combine that with track after track of utterly ridiculous lyrics and what sounds like a Theremin and you have really nice little album. 

Then there's the picture on the inside of the gatefold sleeve: A one eyed triangle giving birth to giant sky babies in front of an evil unicorn drowning in a sea of blue flames and skulls. This obviously gets a big 'thumbs up'.

'When will be the crack of doom?

Is it tomorrow? 

Is it tomorrow?'

...Dude I have absolutely no idea.

If you want to buy this album it comes up on Ebay from time to time and isn't super expensive. I got mine from 'Record Friend' in Amsterdam for 25 Euros, fat guy with a beard sold it to me. Unlike the majority of record shops left in Amsterdam 'Record Friend' is well worth a visit, they have listening facilities and if you have any money left the red light district is just over a minutes walk away.

TANGERINE DREAM - CYCLONE

I think if I was a robot I would like this even more.

The best way of describing it might be ‘Space aged Tubular Bells done by slightly angry sounding Germans’.

Why does it sound like a space aged Tubular Bells? Because it was made by awesome German robot-men with a penchant for phaser-heavy ambient electronic soundscapes.

Why are the German’s slightly angry sounding? In 1978 the year of the album’s release Germany was a seriously fucked up place, bang smack in the middle of the ‘Iron Curtain’ chapter of country’s history and only months away from a summer of terror at the hands of the Baader Meinhof gang. A vast majority of those responsible for the Third Reich would still be alive and the ‘apologist’ era would be in full swing.

Edgar Froese and Klaus Schulze the group’s most prominent players were members of Germany’s first post war generation. That is as I am sure you will agree some seriously heavy shit.

Perhaps then heavy shit is what is needed to produce good music. Perhaps lack of heavy shit can be cited as a reason for the endless stream of wretched and pointless guitar music that washes up like vomited from the shores of Great Britain? Maybe if we had just got our asses kicked and the world hated us THE CRIBS, THE KOOKS, THE ARCTIC MONKEYS and all their acne skinned, twat haired and gym pump wearing counterparts might not sound so secondary and pointless. The inherent shame and guilt by geographical association might be reason enough for these idiots to do something believable and new.

Sadly, short of becoming a cult of personality, instigating an ambitious land grab with a nice sideline in ethnic cleansing there is little I can do to fix the great British music scene.

Cyclone is consistent, three songs long and well worth the three Euros I paid for it.

I’m pretty sure that ‘Bent Cold Sidewalk’ the album’s opener was originally called ‘Brent Cross Sidewalk’ after the London shopping center.

EROC - IV

now this isn't anywhere as crazy as it looks. you see a man wearing a winter cardigan, headbutting a xylaphone in what looks like a cave and you would be forgiven for thinking 'this is going to spazz.' it does not 'spazz'.

rather misleadingly we have a strictly spazz free ambient/accordian x-over album and bad as it sounds, it's actually quite enjoyable.

eroc is the guy that used to roll with 'krautrockers' GROBSCHNITT, i use '' because people seem to label everything to come out of germany between 1969 and 1983 as krautrock. i'm pretty sure there are qualifying factors other than ethnicity otherwise strictly speaking ACCEPT are also krautrock. anyway, much as i enjoy the genre i do not know specifically what defines it, i mean, when does it start to become 'rock' rock, 'prog' rock or plain shit? from my listenings GROBSCHNITT undoubtedly also fall into the latter sub-genre.

anyway, onto eroc, formerly a member of said band. this is very different to EROC 1 and 2 which are quirky, 'krauty' and interspersed with spoken sound-bites.

when i first put this on i walked off to the kitchen and started doing kitchen stuff, unloading the dishwasher, wondering why the hob looked so dirty and trying to find a mysterious odour. then i was distracted by the music, something i had put on with the full intention of it being 'background'.

you really don't expect something 'pretty' to live within this sleeve but it does. eroc IV is like the soundtrack to some romantic parisienne adventure. listening to it i am wearing a black and white striped sweater and chewing on some french bread between hearty swigs of red wine. i am having sex with a particularly enthusiastic french girl in islington back in 2000, i am on a camping holiday with my family in marseille aged 12, a few years later i am backpacking and drunk wondering how long 100 francs will last me if i factor in buying pornography...

then the music stops and the smell from the sink brings me back to 2009.

for a long time i resisted buying anything from this guy for two reasons, first that fact that his previous band was so underwhelming and second because of his name. E ROC: he always sounded like some particularly bad circa 87 west coast rapster. anyway, i'm glad i got over both of those sticking points because much as this seems to be sidelined in favour of the guys first two or three albums its really rather good even if it is sadly spazz free.

whilst i do fully endorse EROC IV i cannot guarantee that listening to it will make you think you are having sex with an attractive french girl.

DAVID BOWIE - LOW

so this recorded followed the coke fuelled 'station to station'. bowie called it low due to the fact he had curtailed his gak intake to a much more managable degree and was because of this feeling a little bit low.

so i listened to 'low' with a tomato flavored cup-a-soup to see if it might enhance the experience. to be honest it didn't make much difference. i had kind of hoped it might take things to the next level but aside of the warm tomatoey taste in my mouth it was bowie based business as usual. i mean the soup was nice, watery but still totally drinkable, it just didn't do anything to re-contextualize the music.

i've had conversations with pink floyd idiots about the time they took *INSERT DRUG HERE* while listening to 'dark side of the moon' and they had somekind of out of body experience, a cosmic revalation that made them re-evaluate not just music but the very fabric of their existence. the sad reality is that pretty much anything could improve both 'dark side of the moon' and 'the wall'.

'yeah, i listened to dark side of the moon whilst repeatedly punching myself in the face and y'know what? it sounded soooo much better.'

the answer is, stop listening to 'dark side of the moon'. stop listening to 'the wall' they are dispicable records and roger waters is so fucking ugly just looking at his face on the sleeve of 'piper at the gates of dawn' (admittedly a great record) makes me want to build a time machine go back in time to mr and mrs water's house and forsively sterilize them to provent the world having to see such an ugly, ugly, ugly child. seriously how many teeth does he have? he looks like the guy that played jaws in the bond films but only less attractive. he looks like he has eaten everybody elses teeth. i need to find a happy place so i dont google him and start spitting at the monitor again.

'low' is quite literally a work of two sides, the second side being (with the exception of some quite annoying wailing) entirely instrumental. i'm sure i read somewhere that he had intended to add lyrics but forgot or ran out of time or just got really bored and went partying around berlin with iggy and eno instead. i could look it up but being in posession of the facts isn't always as much fun and can, as i learnt with 'balaklava' actually have a damaging effect on the overall listening experience.

bowie's hair is looking particulary good here, the sleeve shot was originally taken as a promo photo for the 'the man who fell to earth' film. i've thought about trying to re-produce the bowie low hair but i just think it makes anyone who isn't bowie look like a ginger NED'S ATOMIC DUSTBIN fan. that aside, low ranks as bowie's second best album sleeve behind 'lodger'.

side one is owned by 'sound and vision' and 'be my wife'. the instrumental that closes the first side 'a new career in a new town' is also a winner. i have a question though, why not relegate this to side two if it's an instrumental? it would make for a much cleaner picture.

a lot of people go on about 'warazawa' the opener of side 2 and it's nice that joy division liked it so much they names themselves after it but it's never really grabbed me to be honest.

so in conclusion, great sleeve, bowies best hair, good album with or without cup-a-soup but bowie's best album? not sure.

in closing and i also have the 1999 remastered CD and it sounds way fucking better than my vinyl copy. there, i said it.

PEARLS BEFORE SWINE - BALAKLAVA

i have after years of searching finally found a decent early copy of this to replace my dirty italian reissue. it's a very nice clean dutch press on e.s.p/fontana. the sleeve is good as new and with the exception of the light fire-side crackle that lasts for the first half of 'translucent carriages' and the more than acceptable light sleeve rub on the rear its flawless.

i picked it up in amsterdam at a tiny record shop in one of the back streets of the jordaan. it was sold to my by a very cheery and cigar smoking dutch man who in the hour or so i was in the store managed to regale me with tales of the german occupation, most specifically the time he and his mother were hidden BY german soldiers from the baying dutch locals, who were at the time paid cash for every jew they turned over to the occupying army. i don't remember reading about that in the anne frank 'hide and seek' museum.

so anyway, it turns out that this is apparently an 'anti-war' concept album. i found out barely ten minutes ago when i was checking the release date on the internet.

 i thought the entire thing was supposed to be about the events at balaklava in 1850 whatever when lord cardigan led the truly stupid and massively fatal charge of the light brigade. turns out this theme only carries as far as the albums name and opening 17 second track a bugle call taken from a wax cylinder recording of one trumpeter lanfry (one of the original buglers from the battle). the rest of it is just loose anti-war statement, the kind that were in 1968 tired and ten a penny.

it's a real shame and i really wish i had stayed on the dark on this. i loved the willfully obscure idea of an entire album about the charge of the light brigade, the fact that it was recorded by some american hippies out of new york in the summer of love only added to this. it was brilliantly perverse.

i used to imagine that 'i saw the world' was the song of a dying horse soldier and the inclusion of leonard cohen's 'suzanne' a poem to a wife or girlfriend left at home. most of all i thought 'translucent carriages' was a song about the dead being taken away from a cold and dark theater of war, a field stinking of death; bits of horses, dying soldiers and beautifully tailored uniforms smeared with gore. the heavy breathing that runs through out the track the death rattle of some unfortunate. the line 'jesus...raise the dead' what else can it possibly be about?

turns out 'translucent carriages' is just some east coast hippy shit, probably about drugs, body painting or flip-flops. when tom rapp sings 'every time i see you, passing by, have to wonder whyyyy?' as much as i had grown up thinking this was the ghost of one of the dead soldiers asking lord cardigan why the 'charge' had been called, it is far more probably about some stoner guy who burnt tom's lentils.

and what a fucking shame.

i shouldn't bitch and moan too much. balaklava is still up there, i mean it's truly brilliant and 'i saw the world' is one of the best songs ever written, it's just that with what i though to be the original intent of the piece turning out not to be the case it's just lost a bit of it's sheen.

 

BRIAN ENO - BEFORE AND AFTER SCIENCE

as usual i have no idea what brian's on about here, the lyric about sausages does not help his cause. that said, doesn't stop me thinking this is really good. it took me a while to get past his voice. i was at college in the fair spa town of cheltenham the first time i heard it. i bought a copy of 'taking tiger mountain (by force)' from a guy off loading his record collection on the floor of an independent mid-range stereo separates shop. it wasn't as random as it sounds he worked there and was 'up grading' to CDs. cheltenham was in retrospect a really nice place to go to college, not least because of the six or so record shops that peppered the town in 1995. anyway, there it was sandwiched between remnants of the HELDON back catalogue and from what i recall everything MOUSE ON MARS ever did.

the sleeve of 'taking tiger mountain' is enough to sell it on it's own but then this review isn't about 'taking tiger mountain' so i will shut up about it. for a while i left my eno based exploration at that one solo album and two of his roxy music records. it wasn't until i was, post college working in a used record shop that somebody played the (at the time) recently released CD box set and i heard 'needle in the camel's eye' that i resumed my search and sweep of all things ENO.

this is less coherent than the other albums from this period. both 'taking tiger mountain' and 'another green world' are a lot more successful at conveying there own more message, they flow more easily and play like concept pieces. this for me is a more blatant attempt at fusing the ENO magic with more pop based sensibilities, this is most obvious on 'king lear's hat'.

quite unfairly that is usually the track that gets singled out when people talk about this album. it's not bad if you like the annoying art-funk of TALKING HEADS, if you don't it's a skipper. for me the real magic's on side two, specifically the last three songs on here: 'by the river', 'through hollow hands (for harold budd)' and 'spider and i'. they sit on their own, airy, lush and perfectly formed making what proceeded them seem almost incidental.

i wonder if the hi-fi shop guy has managed to re-buy all of the records he sold yet? i do hope he didn't pay silly money for the richard pinhas related stuff.

...anyway, 'before and after science' - overall bitty but equally as good as three of the albums he made before this. i'm not including 'discreet music' (1975) here cos it's a bit shit.

ISAAC HAYES - HOT BUTTERED SOUL

It’s pretty obvious who would win in a fight between Isaac Hayes and Isaac Newton, Newton was a fat frilly-haired fuck. I wonder if Hayes would nail Newton in a side to side comparison of achievements as well? Gravity Vs Isaac Hayes’ version of ‘walk on by’… Luckily I am not on the panel of judges for that one particular bout as it’s going to be a close call.

The first time I heard this I was very much into the kind of short, punchy and instantly gratifying soul that the likes of the four tops, the supremes and the temptations would so effortlessly deliver. This was then something of a shock: Only four tracks two of which last about the same length as the entirety of THE DWARVES album ‘blood, guts and pussy’. Initially I dismissed it as elongated fuck music, a kind of exaggerated excursion into the realms of a leaner meaner BARRY WHITE. Then about then years ago I came back to it.

The production on ‘hot buttered soul’, the work of Stax long-timer Al Bell is so good that I can’t really talk about it without sounding like an excitable puppy dog faced with his first stick might if he could talk. Personally I can take or leave the two original tracks here, one is stupidly titled too funky and the other ‘one woman’ is good but obvious. To be fair, under normal circumstances they would probably hold up well but the fact is that they are sandwiched between two giant and sprawling monoliths of soul perfection, Hayes’ versions of ‘walk on by’ and ‘by the time I get to phoenix’. There is no doubt that both of those songs are on the tape God plays when he breaks up with a girlfriend.

For a long time this album was indescribably colossal, then in the early nineties a project co-sponsored by Stax records and the US government was undertaken. Experiments were conducted to see how big ‘walk on by’ would be if it were converted from music into land mass. The scientists eventually concluded that that one song was bigger than the whole of Spain. (Including Ibiza, Menorca and Majorca, but not Gibraltar.)

Add that staggering nugget to the fact that Hayes’ was also an early champion of the whole ‘beard and no hair’ look and my prediction is that Newton is going down in the third to a knock out punch.

SLAYER - REIGN IN BLOOD

I was in one of those shitty high school heavy metal bands that changes it’s name every second week. Given that at the particular catholic school I attended there were six or seven people with instruments and a shared interest in all things metal the band usually consisted of any five, six or all seven of us. We used to practice in my mum and dad’s garage. Practice was peppered with quarter hourly ‘fag’ breaks and people randomly quitting the band, practice would usually end prematurely when the bass players amp blew a fuse and we would have to get a bus into town to replace it.

When it finally occurred to somebody to buy the fuses in bulk, practice ended prematurely due to a mutual craving for cheap lager, custard creams and family sized bags of crisps. These would be summarily gorged upon under a bridge (just like in that song) between my house and the local corner store.

On getting back no other excuse was needed not to play music as it was late and we were too noisy for late. Instead the evening would disintegrate into TV and more alcohol and in later years a trip to a pub called the anchor. Drunk, bored or tired we would retire, the rest of the ‘band’ sleeping on my bedroom floor or on camp beds.

And that’s when it would happen. Invariably and given that the alternatives were zero whoever had decided to quit the band that week would have over the course of the evening decided that he wanted to be back in the band. It was rare for anyone to object. There was only one hurdle facing the now ‘new member’.

I was fourteen when I first heard slayer ‘reign in blood’ the week it came out, totally dismissing it as being ridiculous. I believe the money went on a copy of Cinderella ‘night songs’ instead. Then a few weeks later a girl friend said she didn’t like the record and did I want it? To be honest I didn’t but it did mean my meager collection of records was now one louder so I said yes. Over time it grew on me and eventually led to an obsession with ‘thrash metal’ and then ‘hardcore’.

slowly the sound of rain and drums would fill the dark, silent and over-crowded bedroom. The rain and drums would be followed by a familiar high-scale and distorted guitar riff, shortly after came a second more highly pitched guitar and then, and then all fucking hell would break loose.

Deal was if you wanted to be back into the band you had to be ‘slayerfied’, being ‘slayerfied’ meant having the living shit kicked out of you for the duration of the title song ‘reign in blood’.

Looking back it was hugely gay: a pile of partially and invariably sweaty bodies clammering with fists, punching and occasionally kicking each other as dave lombardo’s drums beat out an unholy rhythm that non of us could hope to follow.

Despite the imagery, there were no hand jobs.

Aside of the two unknowns, of those sometimes involved, one became a chef, one does stuff with computers, one emigrated and one died.

‘reign in blood’ is really fucking good.

MILES DAVIS - IN A SILENT WAY

i just wrote the most awe inspiring review of the above and my log-in timed out before i published it. i logged back in and it said 'blog succesfully published', i clicked on my page and there was no blog. there was no blog.

my tribute to miles davis and what has to be contender for his greatest album is now gone, vanished into the nothingness. i'd like to think i could pull something cathartic from this experience, walk away from it like a buddhist monk might his sand drawing, tossed to the wind. as it is i am wiping spit from my monitor and cursing with fucks.

...and it's such a fucking shame. after today saw me sitting silent and lunch-less due to the worst offering of food this side of wormwood scrubs i likened 'in a silent way' to a cure for bad food, to a potential soundtrack to my daily canteen fuck-pit.

talked of years gone by where i would sit in the bath not fully understanding what i was listening to, can of cheap lager in hand.  shriveled penis, the water luke warm at best, the boiler being on the blink and the bath itself being  from the turn of the century and made of wrought iron. i would get out and dash wet foot prints across the sticky red rented carpet in order to turn the record over and hear the title track before returning to that shitty bath, bubbles fading due to the residue of cheap soap and beer turning to flat.

i like in a silent way, i think i bought my copy from relay records in bristol. relay was a great shop with great staff. i think it's a multi-storey car park now, i wonder if the guy with the long hair still pays in THEE HEADS.

BEGGARS OPERA - ACT ONE ...IT'S SHIT

picture the scene, i am in nuremberg's 'music von cd und lp' or whatever it's called scouring 'act one's' sleeve notes between being wowed by the truly brilliant gatefold sleeve when i decided that i had to have this record. never occurred to me to play the record on the 'ten minutes and fuck off' in store listening post. the sleeve turned me into a true cavalier, i handed the guy the cash money and thought 'it's on VERTIGO and the sleeve is absolutely incredible how can this possibly go wrong?'

well at least there is no longer a 'beggars opera' shaped gap in my musical learning. 'act one' is a truly fucking rancid album. sounds like really, really bad ELP: orchestral prog taken to the edge of music school based wankery. honest to god, you can almost hear them sucking each other off.

if you are ever in a record shop and you see this record and you think 'i know, i'll check my *INSERT INTERNET FRIENDLY MOBILE PHONE HERE* and read the reviews on rateyourmusic.com' don't. those guys are fucking liars who got sucked into the same 'awesome album sleeve' trap that i did.

instead take the sleeve from the racks, ask to see the record and then rather than inspecting it for scuffs, spindle marks and scratches, place it carefully on the floor, pull down your pants, take a big fat steaming shit on it before calmly leaving safe in the knowledge that you have done god's work.

CLAUDINE - COLOURS

i knew the 'merry, merry month of... march' was special for something. it is, give or take a few days the 33rd anniversary of caludine longet's famous ski lodge 'mishap'.

march 21st 1976, aspen colorado - following a gak fueled argument claudine shot and killed her then husband vladimir 'spider' sabich (not to be confused with the drummer of 'comedy metal band' BAD NEWS, this 'spider' was in fact an olympic skier). anyway she walked and the state pen's lesbian communities loss was our gain. having intimate relations with with robert f and andy williams obviously pays dividends as well as gas bills. sadly she never kicked out the jams again opting for a quiet life away from the limelight... and one would like to think the powder.

the above, 'colours' claudine's 4th album bombed on release peaking at 155 in the US charts and sinking shortly afterwards. perhaps opting for the true english spelling of the album title confused the american music buying public sufficiently to condemn it to a premature death in the cut-out bins.

'coloooors, what the fuck is colooooors? i used to dig that claudine chick but colooooors. fuck that shit i'm buying me some sergio mendes, at least motherfucker knows how to spell.'

anyway. i like 'colours' and amongst the many softly spoken and aft whispered gems on here is what is for my money the best ever version of 'scarborough fair' (scarborouge fair, what the fuck is scarborouge fair?) and if that's not enough the record has one of those inter-active sleeves like phil collins' seminal 'no jacket required' that you can hold up to your face in front of the mirror and pretend to be said artist.

i pretended to be claudine for the first few tracks of 'colours' and can honestly say it was the kind of fun that really isn't so easy to come by in this the year of our lord 2009. it was a truly magical experience and almost like being there.

anyway, the rest of the album is just as good as 'scarborough fair' and ms. longet has to be commended for the kind of 'hauntingly sexual' delivery that you can only otherwise get if you order pizza from a dead hooker.

if i had anything else by said fair french maiden this would surely be the start of 'claudine week' but i don't so i cant. i might post her doing 'nothing to loose' from that racist peter sellers movie 'the party' though... if only for her utterly perfect hair and billion dollar legs...

you can still get this pretty cheap on ebay and there are re-issues out there, though if you get a re-issue there is every chance that you will spend eternity roasting in the black pits of hell, so don't say i didn't warn you.

ELVIN JONES - POLY-CURRENTS

there i was in mississippi records in portland OR on an end of the month and totally skint 'i really am just looking today, this is strictly an exercise in browsing' type exercise when i happened across this bad-boy in the racks, 'alvin jones poly-currents'.

i think it was the look on his face that said 'take me home' and after all nothing says 'buy me' quite like a cheeky looking black guy in a leather waist coat accompanied by a very attractive asian lady hiding behind a rock.

...and i would love to know what was going on during the album sleeve shoot, some kind of free jazz game of hide and seek.

'elvin! can you see me? can you see me?'

'shut up woman and hand me my drum sticks.'

'poly-currents' is basically great.

drums... flute, drums!.. drums!.. drums!.. more drums!.. flute!

trumpet!... drums!... cymbals! (i think that strictly speaking cymbals falls under 'drums')

'agenda' the 13 minute 55 second opener says it all really. closer 'whew' is also something of a highlight, nice clean trumpet stabs and subtle brush drums until the saxophone comes in and takes things 'off road.' well worth not eating for a day or two for and as leonard feather the sleeve note guy says:

'time has already told us enough to make the point; all it takes is time expended in listening, carefully and repeatedly, to the music of Poly-Currents and the marvel of Elvin Jones'.

well there the fuck you go.

buy 'poly-currents' dress like a disco bin-man and maybe you to will find an attractive asian lady hiding under a rock, sure beats using mailorderbride.com.

JOHN AND YOKO'S EXCELLENT 'BED'VENTURE

turns out it is 40 years to the day that john lennon and more importantly yoko ono staged their 'bed in'. plan was to stop the war in vietnam by staying in bed and doing precisely 'shit all'. sadly and with great surprise to all involved it didn't quite work... but the BEATLES did break up less than a year later so it wasn't a complete waste of time.

i used to live just around the corner from the hotel in amsterdam where they did the whole bed in thing and people used to say to me 'hey is that the place where john and yoko did that whole 'bed in' thing?' and i'd say 'yes, yes it is.'

five days of sitting in bed can get messy in all sorts of ways. i have often wondered but do not know what the toilet arrangements were, did going to the bathroom constitute a violation of the 'bed in' manifesto, was john forced to shit where he sat? (for those of you interested in hearing what that might sound like listen to the 1973 album 'rock n' roll', partially produced by wall of soundster and ladykiller phil spector)

what you also have to remember is that they were, at this point newly weds and that yoko ono, despite having the biggest bush in music (see 'two virgins' lp sleeve) was pretty hot. this would lead me to conclude that there was some kind of sex, potentially in front of the ever present media. this brings me neatly onto the above picture. now whilst they are obviously not having full intercourse something else may well be going on. if you look closely you will see three, not four hands, yoko's right hand is missing, under the sheets. add to that the vacant smirk on lennon's face and i know what you're thinking:

'OMFG! all round important artist, member of the fluxus movement, author and sometimes musician YOKO ONO is pulling off that guy out of the beatles in front of the world's media!'

and you are probably right...what we have is an honest to god hand-job and that hand job was 40 years to this very day.

DON CHERRY - HEAR & NOW

I'd like to say i bought this to see what trumpet blower and all round jazz master Don Cherry was doing in the year that the SEX PISTOLS broke and punk rock came into it's own. I didn't, i bought it because Don Cherry looks like a mildly retarded boy scout wearing his mom's christmas jumper on the front cover and I thought 'If this sounds even one tenth as good as it looks then this could be a contender for my all time hot fifty.'

Sadly it does not.

...This is not to say that 'Hear and Now' is bad by any means, it's just not the sound of a cross-dressing idiot boy with a thing for the scouting movement. It actually sails dangerously close to 'jazz fusion' and at times even 'funk'. it sounds scary but luckily there are moments of bizarre brilliance in there that manage to level it out into something exciting and listenable.

There's a theremin, some steel drums, a nice bit of what i shall call 'soul scatting' and the first track 'Mahakali' even even gets some heavy guitar, also and back to the heart of the matter there is no shortage of truly formidable trumpet work courtesy of the guy on the sleeve.

I wonder if he made that necklace himself?

I am listening as i write this and i have to say 'Surrender Rose' side 2 track 4 is lovely. Harps and angels, harps and angels. 

What 'Hear and Now' lacks is any kind of lengthy jam, most of the songs hover around a very respectable 5 minutes which means nobody can really break loose and destroy shit... And shit needs to be destroyed as don himself would tell you were he not busy looking like a cross between a children's TV presenter and the vacant and fully indoctrinated member of some transglobal love cult.... 

Oooh! congos and a Fender rhodes. 

I like this and can totally justify the 20 euros i paid for it off of ebay.de

In closing i rate it 52.6 out of  jazz

 

HOUSE BY THE EDGE OF THE AWESOMENESS

i just re-watched 'house by the edge of the park' which features the above scene and the song 'do it to me (once more)' which i am guessing is by RIZ ORLANDI the guy behind the rest of the soundtrack ... guessing. i could check the titles but i prefer the uncertainty, the mystery.

anyway, sometimes at boring parties or on long car journeys people do that whole 'if you could invite anyone dead or alive to a dinner party....' thing and people always say bullshit stuff like:

my dead grandad, einstein, jesus, pat benetar and john wayne...

fuck that shit. i have my answer right here.

...and i want dancing lessons off of giovanni radice.

for those of you who haven't seen 'house on the edge of the park', go see 'house on the edge of the park'. if you don't want to go and see 'house on the edge of the park' but want to pretend to people that you did see 'house on the edge of the park' so you can look cool at parties i have prepared the below:

SPOILERS

lady with short hair and white dress gets raped

brunette with red dress is about to get raped but doesn't and then later decides she wants it anyway

bald black chick says 'hot diggidy'

midget guy with girl hair and tall guy also with girl hair both get beaten up

awesome dancing dude gets stabbed with a straight razor but lives

guy from 'last house on the left' gets shot in the cock and does not live

hot diggidy.

SPANDAU BALLET TO REFORM

wowzers! first TG and now SB. in this latest move of awesomeness from god we see SPANDAU BALLET get back together! its as if somebody read my secret wish list of secret wishes.

in all seriousness if they handle this right, ie: not like duran duran did. this could be both very lucrative and well worth a look.

i saw duran duran

'play rio! play rio!'

simon le bon ' hey fellas! let's play 'astronaut!''

and whilst it was a teenage girls wet dream they just didn't seem to understand the basics of a nostalgia based reformation... plus they canned andy taylor again a few months later making the appeal of ever seeing them again about zero.

anyway, tony hadley has promised us a 'new spandau ballet' and given they managed a visual rethink for everyone of at least the first four albums the judges really are out on which way this one might swing.

...just give us leather and fur and make sure you do 'communication'.

PLASTIC ONO BAND - LIVE PEACE IN TORONTO 1969

lets get the unpleasant part out of the way. side one of this live album is fucking junk. with the exception of 'cold turkey' it reads like a list of musical 'dont's'....

'blue suede shoes'

'money'

'dizzy miss lizzy'

...matters are compounded by the inclusion of eric 'slowhand' clapton  in the line-up. it's dirty, bad dirty.

side two on the other 'slow' hand is this fantastic watershed moment. 

it starts with john lennon addressing he crowd with a note of uncertainty in his voice, 'were gonna let yoko do 'er thing now!' shortly thereafter yoko does ''er thing'.

what makes this side of the album so wonderful is that the crowd are obviously there to hear BEATLES songs or at least watch the boy clapton wank his stratocaster but what they get for the latter part of the set is yoko turning her shit up to eleven.

yoko succeeds in challenging the crowds perception of popular music before the album ends in a hailstorm of feedback and more wailing. 

i like to imagine her standing there just before she starts up looking at the crowd thinking 'right you canadian college boy fucks, i am going to eat you and when i am done eating you i am going to take drugs and have sex with your favorite beatle.'

apparently there is accompanying video footage for this performance as well.

i rate it 47 out of 5.