Undertones Birmingham Academy

Saw The Undertones 11/12/04 at Birmingham Academy 2. On principal I’m not a big fan of bands reforming, especially without the original singer and especially if they were one of my favourite bands whose first 2 albums seeped into my being, like balti on your Naan hand. However the last lp, Get What You Need, has some belting songs on it and the new singer has more than a touch of the Feargal tones.

In the moments before the band came on I was surprised at just how excited I was. It had been 21 years since I’d seen them and here I was in a smaller venue than I’d ever seen them before with an audience of old Punk Rock dads and their kids. It was an excellent gig. The band seemed to be having a lot of fun and seemed surprised at the bouncy enthusiasm and backing vocals of the audience. The guitar sounds were crunchy and it was great to see John and Dee O'Neil, still manhandling their guitars like they were slightly too big for them and Micky’s trademark move that consists of bouncing his knees because his boots are too heavy for him to move his feet and dipping his bass up and down slightly. Watch and learn Kiss. You too Steps. They were always a great live band and still are. Singer Paul’s special moves include gurning and wiggling with his back to the audience.

The old songs were drawn overwhelmingly from the first 2 lps, with 2 from Positive Touch, nothing at all from The Sin of Pride. The 4 songs from Get what You Need fitted in well with that sound and the 2 brand new songs they played were built round a Paper Back Writer style riff.

I’d seen them 7 times between 1981 and 83 and I enjoyed this gig as much as any of them and in fact, thinking about the set list, they played more of the songs that I liked. The band played really well, although Julie Ocean suffered when they band dropped down a gear (Remember seeing them play it at Manchester Apollo in 1981 before Positive Touch came out and loving it’s Velvet Underground fragility) …but they recovered and came back with chunky guitars, quivery vocals, hugely entertaining backing vocals and more of those funny, bittersweet songs about girls.

These are the songs I can remember. Some are even in order. It’s a fair night out!

Family entertainment, You’ve got my number, Girls don’t like it, I need your love (the way it used to be), Male Model, I’m recommending me, Girls that don’t talk, Tearproof, Rain’s gonna fall, My perfect cousin, Get over you, I know a girl, Ride the rough escalator, Joyland, Thrill me, Wednesday week, Jump boys, Here comes the summer, Julie ocean, Teenage kicks, When Saturday comes, True confessions, Mars Bar

John Peel

Really saddened by the news of John Peel’s death today. Most of the music that I like today can be traced back to his radio show and the attitude that he brought to music. He didn’t over analyse it in musical terms, but looked for and played the music that, interested and excited him and was preferably new…and preferably the B-side. And when there were records from his past or those that gave him an emotional response, then he’d tell the listener. Music is massively important and needs sharing, and people use it to reflect and make sense of their lives.

My musical education really started with his show. I was 13 in 1977 and I used to tape it on an old reel-to-reel tape, with a mic against the radio. I can remember hearing The Ramones Sheena is a Punk Rocker and the Clash Capitol radio for the first time on it and a Stranglers session with Hanging Around. My friends and I used to laugh when he played records at the wrong speed/wrong side or twice in a row. I stopped laughing eventually but he still did it.

When we released Electric Ladland, I sent a copy to him with a chatty letter about the Gang of Four, Blue Orchids and The Fall. One night in the Onionhead house Jules summoned me with the words “Sammy …it’s John Peel for you”. He’d phoned to say that he’d already got a copy of Ladland, didn’t think he liked it but he would listen to it again. Class. But the main reason for the call was to relay the information that the (superior) session versions of Fall songs that later turned up on Grotesque were not being released on Strange Fruit because Mark E Smith wasn’t happy with the recordings

A few days later he sent me a Peter Powell postcard (autographed by the Powellster) with the topical news that Sid James daughter had been one of the women on the cover of Hendrix’s original Electric Ladyland.

He also phoned Nick before he was Onionhead manager, and was in fact a celeb-pestering schoolboy on a day trip to London. Nick and his mates found Peelie sheltering from the rain in Covent Garden and told him they were in a band and on the up. A year later Peel phoned Nick to check their progress. As there had been neither band nor progress they talked about football instead.

You had to love him for making the effort really. Apparently he kept all the numbers he was given.

So many of the thing’s he played ended up as being amongst my favourites, Undertones, The Fall, (for me only up to mid 80’s) and even though I thought I’d found Country Soul for myself, he played it too.

I liked his phrasing and descriptions too. He described his love of Liverpool FC as being so intense that he’d “Take in washing for the club.”

I was listening to Nick Cave talking to Mark Lamarr last night and he was saying that with the passing of Joe Strummer, Nina Simone and Johnny Cash, the world was not only a poorer place but was it a place that could produce their like again?

Peel’s contribution had been to play awkward music and to challenge the listener. The sessions especially in the years before cheap recording technology were often the only way many bands would get in the studio.

I grew up with his show and musically…he made me.

Eno - Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy

Puncture repair nightmare puts me back on the bus, and the journey gets me half way through Eno’s Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy.

I like his pop glam albums best but always go for this one over Before And After Science or Here Come The Warm Jets. It’s the impeccable played but ramshackle quality of the arrangements that I really like. The song titles are fantastic cut up nonsense (My evidence for the prosecution includes Burning Airlines Give You So Much More, Mother Whale Eyeless and Put a Straw Under Baby). The vocal style is sly camp and the lyrics are obviously never going to connect with too many people as they break all the rules of Pop. I mean…where are the love songs?…What can the little girls understand?…Where is the cheatin’ lyin’ and slippin’ around?

It breaks the rules but still sounds warm and involving and indeed you do want to get involved. You want to hear the stories from this other world, even though you’re only catching snippets that maybe you’ll never understand. Back In Judy’s Jungle has treated guitars, rattley drums and a one-note bass with lots of space. It sounds like an Oompah band about to fall over

The guitar playing throughout is fantastic with scratchy, rattley rhythm playing. I’ve a horrible feeling the excellent drumming (It’s not just loose, it’s positively floppy) may be down to Phil Collins. If it is YOU’RE STILL NOT FORGIVEN.

I love the bass playing on Third Uncle. It starts with 1 bass note that gradually gets echoed as the manic scratch rhythm and clattering percussion take over. There’s an 8 note bass run that seems to come out of nowhere and goes straight back there. He only does it twice but to my (bass players) ears it just seems to crank up the song far more than seems possible. And then there’s the one note again …but dropped down lower and flatter. And the only vocal line that stands out is “I thought it was you”

Put A Straw Under Baby has an impossibly woozy feel, with scraped, discordant string arrangements (Vic Chestnutt or even Junco Pardner from Sandanista). In many ways it’s like a nursery rhyme or one very scary lullaby.

Much is made of Eno’s legendary non-musician status and call me sceptical but I bet he’s picked up a few tricks over the years. By the time he recorded this he’d done the first 2 Roxy Music and his own first 2 solo albums. He’d obviously surrounded himself with some top players but the best trick was to (lets use a soul cliché here, and we might as well because I don’t think there’s any musical clichés on the lp) to get it to sound so wrong but feel so right. This albums 30 years old and it still doesn’t sound like anything else. I’ve been going back to it for 22 years now, and it’s my all time favourite warped pop record ever.

Detroit Cobras

It’s an album I’ve passed onto a few people but it’s not had the same effect on them as it has in me. It’s basically a Detroit garage band with a female vocalist doing rough covers of 60’s soul songs with a tendency to go for the obscure rather than the obvious. There that’s sold it to me all over again. Punk Rock Soul.

It includes covers of Stupidity (Solomon Burke)
Cry On (Irma Thomas and also the singer who vocalist Rachel Nagy’s style is closest to)
Shout Bama A Lama (I think Otis Redding wrote it for Arthur Conley)
Hey Say Lo Ney (I know a version by Micky Lee Lane…but there may be others)
Boss Lady (don’t know the original).

Shout Bama Lama and Boss Lady are my favourites. I always like records about dances, and Boss Lady itself manages to list the Watusi, The Dog, The Jerk, The Monkey and all in a song that owes a fair bit to Do You Love Me.

When singer Rachel Nagy says she’s the “Queen of the hot sauce”. I believe her. I also believe I would.

Shout Bamalama works because of the way the song repeatedly builds up and then breaks down again, a pause and then a rolling guitar bringing it back in. Again the nonsense lyric (sorry Otis) is given an urgency and an importance…. Yeah we all need to do it.

The album has a monochrome cover of a woman singing into old fashioned looking broadcast mike, wreathed in cigarette smoke and it’s on a great sounding label, Sympathy for the Record Industry.

Detoit Cobras also released 7 Easy pieces and Mink Rat or Rabbit (or as my mail order receipt called it Mink Rat or Rabbi…now that’s a better title). Similar formula but not as good. The far superior Life Love and Leaving though sounds like a band belting through some great songs which they obviously love, but aren’t afraid to shake up a bit. In my book, that makes for better performances than reverence and exact mimicry.

I’ve just looked round the net and there’s a new single Cha Cha Twist (Meg White apparently in the video), out in October and some UK dates. I fancy that…I don’t just listen to old music…I also like new bands doing old songs.

New York Dolls

Things came full circle after I watched the video of the New York Dolls at Manchester Move festival recorded over the summer.

It’s one of the most joyous, outrageously rock ‘n’n roll performances I can remember by a band who can’t believe they’re still alive and still playing. (Sadly Arthur Kane died shortly afterwards.)

Personality Crisis (and yes it is my favourite New York Dolls song, although I also find it hard to resist Pills with it’s line “The rock ‘n’roll nurse is making it worse”) was just inspirational. David Johanson seemed to be wearing some form of apron and Sylvain was wearing a denim suit with massive turn ups and a cap….lots of pointing, at each other, at the crowd, at stray seagulls, mouthing along to the words and frantic guitar rifferama. So far so Status Quo. What elevated it to genius though was the part where the other guitarist let go of his guitar to wolf whistle (as the song needed it) and then when everyone threw their hands up to go “woooh”. Again the song demanded it.

It was full circle for me though because it brought me right back to where I’d first seen them. Aged 17 around 1981 I used to lurk and loiter (and occasionally buy something) in the Record Peddler on Swan Street in Manchester. Videos were then the cutting edge of technology and the owner had amassed a stack of Bowie, Pistols and other live performances and promos. And that is when I first saw The Dolls (I think it was the Old Grey Whistle Test footage) doing Jet Boy. I was quite anti guitar heroics then, but forgot all principles at the sight of Sylvain wrestling with this semi acoustic that dwarfed him and yet still finding time to pull ridiculous poses. A risky business given the height of his heels….and with all that satin and nylon under the studio lights the band could have spontaneously combusted. The vision is so fresh though, and as that video got rewound several times that day, the story should really end with me searching out their records and turning into a Morrissey figure of Doll adulation. I didn’t though…I expect I just bought another single by The Fall.

Mekons Where Were You

There has never been enough written about Mekons Where Were You. I bought it on the same day as Siouxsie and The Banshees Staircase mystery single (was that 79?) and remember showing my haul to a mate who I saw on the bus going home. He already knew it and loved it, but I don’t think I’d heard it before and I can’t remember why I bought it. I’ve played it hundreds of times since though and it’s still one of my favourite singles.

As a record it’s got everything. Smudgy cover, optimistic gold discs on the front and a great label (Fast). A love song stripped down to the absolute bone…but no sex.
“I wanna talk to you all night, do you like me
I wanna find out ‘bout your life, do you like me
Could you ever be my wife do you love me?”

“I was standing in the queue did you see me
I was standing in the queue did you see me
You had yellow hair did you see me”

What a fantastic, moronic line that is. Impress girls…tell them you love their yellow hair. Go on ….I bet you it works. Better still though it’s a pop song without a chorus. Well what it has got is …

“I was waiting at the bar where were you, I was buying you a drink where were you.”

…But the tune doesn’t change so it might not convince anyone outside the band or the wilfully obscure that it’s a chorus up there with Lennon and McCartney and The Cheeky Girls. Works for me though.

The vocals sit on top of the one chord backing, with a 1 note (it might even get up to a crazy 3 at times) guitar line and then the only change in melody is a 2 chord link back. It’s the 3 chord trick, the 8 bar blues. The records short. It begins with lone guitar and the worlds longest drum roll. Once the songs got going the bass and guitars don’t really change, so it’s the increasingly busy drums and the vocals that push the song to it’s climax and then it just finishes (exhausted) with the guitar hammering on a single note.

The B side is the (I’ll just have to) Dance then on my own. Much more complex, ringing guitars, and a predecessor to The Fire Engines, Big Flame, Josef K sound, with Beefheart as an ancestor. I’ve got to admit, it doesn’t get played very often. But then I never liked any other Mekons record as much as Where Where You.

Whenever I play Where Where You I always think of (and usually play) The Scars Adultery (also on Fast) and Blue Orchids Work. But that’s another story.

How I stopped worrying and learned to love Ocean Colour Scene

If you've followed the links back you'll have realised that I don't just spend all day thinking about pop music, but I also played bass in what AC/DC would have referred to as a "97 decibel rockin' band". We just called ourselves Onionhead though as it fitted on the posters better.

In the early days the paths of Ocean Colour Scene and Onionhead crossed frequently. After they became more successful than us, I suffered a medical condition commonly known as "jealous as Fuck". Pre becoming OCS they were called The Fanatics and specialised in Beatley,Velvety Undergoundy type songs. While the Velvet's Mo Tucker had shades,The Fanatics female drummer had a penchant for Mickey Mouse sweatshirts...and drumming. The guitarist was known to one and all (well, us mainly) as Moonfaced Paul Wilkes (on account of his Moon face andthe fact that he was called Paul Wilkes) and he'd got a few George Harrisontricks up his sleeve. Even at this stage Simon Fowler was obviously massively talented and a really engaging front man. Damian's appalling zippy boots also had stage presence of their own....but not in a good way. The only original members who would make it through to the OCS stages then were Simon and Damian.

The first time we played with them was summer 88 at Birmingham Irish Centre, where Steve Craddock was also playing guitarwith his band The Boys. In fact with me looking at it as an outsider it was probably Craddock that made the difference to OCS not just through his excellent playng but his persisitence. After a reviewer had said The Boyswere shit, Steve phoned him up to ask how they could be better. The usual answer to that is..."Don't be shit". He also persisted with Paul Weller, got paid and yet persisted some more with OCS. I thought that was admirable, as I'd always known that I'd do anything to keep my band going.

We played with them about 10 times in 1988. They put a single out which included Suburban Lovesongs and My Brother Sarah which I don't remember as being particuarly well recorded. We still lolloped enthusiasticly after them though as at that time they were the only other band we knew. The band made a huge leap when Steve Craddock joined. Jules (Onionhead's singer) saw them at Birmingham Poly 89ish shortly after Steve had joined and had raved about the new guitarist and the sounds he was teasing out. Later, while we were recording our own songs soon after, we listened to the tracks they'd recorded earlier at the same studio. OCS weren'thappy with them though and were coming back to redo it. Beatles Revolver era but sounded good to us.

They'd got caught up in the whole baggy Madchester sound though and through a mixture of disinterest and jealousy I stopped paying any attention. The first lp came out...I didn't listen to it. They played to packed venues and indeed our friends Karen and Kate went to more of their gigs than the band's van driver (so girls must have liked them) but the press were suspicious, the snidey reviews started and they were soon filed and tagged as dull jobsworths who were boringly good at playing their instruments. A label they're still living with. I didn't pay attention again until saw them twice in 94 in Brirmingham at the Jug of Ale and Edwards when they were fantastic. They had a really powerful chunky Small Faces sound and did a terrific version of If I Were A Carpenter with stop start powerchord guitar.

By now they'd been dropped bytheir label, the big tours had been toured. Ed (Onionhead's guitar wrestler) played football with them occasionally and Simon, althoughreguarly spotted out and about in Moseley, was incapable of speech but an expert at druggy incoherence.. At this point they were cooking up what would be Moseley Shoals with the money from Steve Craddocks paper round wthPaul Weller.

When they came back it was 86, I was working night shifts in a care home and doing a comedy walk in tracky bottoms after a plum pounding motorbike crash. My game plan had been for either Onionhead or Tenderloin to take me on a rock 'n' rollercoaster ride playing great music to an eager world. Care homes in Smethwick didn't come into it. I was hounded by theRiverboat Song (which I dislike today as much as I did then.....like an antichrist Hovis advert) but cheered by You've Got It Bad, The Day We Caught The Train and The Circle. It actually took me 7 years to buy Moseley Shoals despite liking so many of the songs and I didn't buy any of the subsequent ones or see them again after those gigs in 94. They were excellent at those two gigs....of course 10 years on I can't remember what they played, it was probably all the songs I didn't think I liked or wouldn't have liked if I 'd heard them on the radio. I played MoseleyShoals again last night and it's got some really good, well arranged and played songs on it. Last night it was Get Away that stood out. Ultimately though the band are too reverential about the music and it feels like the songs are assembled from the best bits of the best bands they like. Get Away has got a Who bit followed by a Led Zep bit.

So OCS were never going to challenge preconceptions or change the way people thought about music,but then how many bands do? I don't listen to Captain Beefheart and Pere Ubu (and I don't go near blether and squawk free jazz) as often as I listen to Gram parsons or southern style country soul with aching brass parts, warm electric piano sound, and a twangy guitar. Sometimes you just want to hear music that's "right". That "rightness" is probably what OCS thought they were doing. So what...It ends up reverential. We did the same as Onionhead/Tenderloin.

And I'm not jealous as Fuck anymore.

Undertones

The Undertones were my favourite band for years.  There are some records you know so well that you don't need to play them and the first 2 Undertones lp's are like that for me.  I'd  revised them thoroughly in my teens and  it's all still there (unlike the stuff I should have been revising)....but I was pleasantly caught out by technology.  I'd had the cd reissue  of the first lp and knew it had b sides on as the extra tracks.....so I was not expecting to hear the most definitely A side quality You've got my number.

The lyrics are either a lesson in brevity, or else there was a lyric shortage in late 70's Derry and John O'Neil's mum forgot to queue up. The entire lyrics are ....

"You've got my number why don't you use it
  you know my name, you won't abuse it
  If you wanna wanna wanna have someone to talk to.
  I'll pick you up in my car, I'll  take you home it's not far.
  Why don't you ring my number
  To say goodbye I couldn't stand it,
  you've got my number why don't  you useit" 

 
I could still picture the sleeve, with it's one sided cut out for thepicture label to show through.In true stealth buffet style...I had to play it again.  (Twice nightly Richard Whitely)

Of course it all get's better because the next track was it's b side Let's talk about Girls.  The Undertones version is very close to the original. (Can't remember who did it first but it's on Nuggets)  It's a great garage rock record and I remember the Undertones playing it on their last tour in 83. The last minute or so is just the line "Let's talk about girls" repeated over and over , occasionally changed to "Let's talk about women"  before settling back to "Let's talk about girls." With  Feargal's "Honest , I'm not a virgin" toy tough  vocals and  boy boisterous ("How come the girls have all gone?") backing vox you just get the feeling that they're talking about girls because they don' t actually know any.  Which makes it a great pop record because, as we all know....The best songs are either about getting or not getting the girl.

Which brings us neatly to the  Ramones.
"Everyone else sang about cars and girls....but we didn't have cars or girlfriends"
What else is there to say apart from 1.2.3.4.

Devo/Elastica

Devo...Played the first lp, originally issued in a bewildering aray of different coloured vinyls. I didn't buy it at the time, but my older and richer collector mate at school did. So I taped his. He also went to see them and I remember asking what instruments they used, my 14 year old self imagining they must have used strange futuristic instruments. No at Manchester Apollo, they reportedly used "Just normal" instruments. 25
years later and the reissue sounds great.. A look at the Production credits also answers why I asked that question all those years ago. In two words... Brian Eno.
Uncontrollable urge is worth it just for the call and response vocals
"I've got an uncontroallbale urge"
"He's got an uncontrollable urge"

Space junk and Slap your mammy are just excellent sounding space pop songs and can there be a better single than Jocko Homo and Mongoloid? Double A side and doubley offensive

Elastica

Played the first lp this morning....(not that there was any chance of me playing the abominable second album), Line up sounded great, with it's metallic Jean Jaques Burnel bass line. In fact Waking Up owes more than a chorus and riff to No More Heroes and I think it went to court.. Wire definitely got a settlement for the Connection/3 Girl Rhumba ahem tribute.
Annie I like just because it's got a band member name in it. (My favourite example of this though is The Fall's Wonderful And Frightening World album which not only has Stephen Song but also Craigness)

I like Allnighter a lot....not enough Pop Punk songs about going to the allnight garage while trying to cop off.

And then of course theres the serious question that needs resolving.....Indeed I would.

The Darkness

Guilty pleasure on the bus, Confession time. Listened toThe Darkness hoping that no-one could tell either through the guilty smirk on my face or the sound from leaky headphones. There's some fine rhythym playing and great little riffs under all the guitar squawling. The lyrics throughout are fantastic "My hearts in overdrive and you're behind the steering wheel" (I believe in a thing called love) while the only possible way to improve a
chorus like "Get your hands off my woman motherfucker" is to lead into it with a mega decibel falsetto scream "You cunt". Good job that's what they did.

However, there is absolutely no need for a Scorpions, lighters in the air type song like Love is only a feeling or the fine named but foul sounding Holding my own. Although I suppose it is in their job description to write them...Top Metal bands even if they're Top Pantomime Metal bands still need a power ballad. This has always been the way. Just as it's every righteous citizens duty when confronted by a stray or suffering Power Ballad to put it out of it's misery.

Top 10 cover versions

Slits - Heard it through the grapevine
Happy Mondays - Step on
Siouxsie and the Banshees - Helter skelter
Dexy's - Breaking down the walls of heartache
Clash - Police and Thieves
Raincoats - Lola
Cowboy Junkies - Powderfinger
Tricky - Black steel in the hour of chaos
David Bowie - Lets spend the night together
Flying Burritos - Dark end of the street
James Carr - To love somebody
Johnny Cash - One
Television - Fire Engine
Rubinoos - I think we're alone now
Stranglers - Walk on by

Links

www.onion-head.co.uk

morefunthanwork.blogspot.com


luckypierre.blogspot.com

Mott the Hoople

A twisted knee kept me off the bike to work this morning and put me on the bus. Good opportunity for listening to music and in true Stealth Buffet style, I took it. Mojo's introduction Mott the Hoople has probably more Mott than you're likely to need in a lifetime (hmmmm), it's also got All The Way To Memphis which has got one of my favourite parping sax parts, which fades in and out
of the mix as the sax player struggles to keep control of his instrument. (This post has turned into a Finbar Saunders entry?whoops there I go I go again). I never really got to grips with jazz and I never liked the famous pop sax moments like Baker Street, Hazel O'Connor Will You? Oh no. I like the tooting and parping sax sounds like Four Top Same Old Song, Isley Brother
This Old Heart Of Mine.

Back to Mott though?The Glam singles like All, The Young Dudes, All The way To Memphis, Honoloochie Boogie sounded fantastic but the line that made me smile was the hooker with a heart of gold song Alice with it's line "I wonder if she wonders if I wonder if she wonders"

Jim Ford/ Gang of 4/Scritti Politti

After the Euro 2004 final I clocked up some cd time....Jim Ford's Harlan County is a furious paced country soul song which cheerfully outlines the worlds hardest life "Where the cold winds blow and the crops don't grow and a mans tired of living when he's 20").

Obviously county music is famous for hardship, and 60's weeping and wailing soul singers were never afraid of a musical sob story. This has got troubles by the tractorlaod though. Verse after horn driven verse sees the hero working in a coalmine ("I was digging hard coal at 12 years old"), Papa "Couldn't even get a job with a shotgun"and caught cheating at cards and shot for "15 cents to buy a loaf of bread" It's even got a key change In fact for out and out misery it's only rival is Patches by Clarence Carter. "And then one day a strong rain came and washed all our crops away, At the age of 13 I felt I had the weight of the whole world on my shoulders, Mama knew what I was going through"
The cd it's from is also called Harlan County and although nothing else is as (or possibly could be) as good as it's
title track there is a good cover of To Make My Life Beautiful (there are not enough songs in the world about thinking aloud when you're shaving) and the marvellously monikered Dr Handy's Dandy Candy.

Bit incongruous but followed that with the second gang of 4 lp Gold. Only recently bought the reissue of it as when it originally came out I didn't like it as much as their first one (Entertainment). I was wrong. Well sort of ....it's not as good but it's still a great record. Bands like the Chilli Peppers have obviously been (and admitted) listening hard.
With the likes of Franz Ferdinand (who I'm not convince about, although they did seem to be repeated endlessly on the TV Glastonbury coverage)there are other bands using that sound but the G of 4's approach to the bass drums and guitar still sounds revolutionary. Also really enjoyed the political lyrics. The titles say it all Outside the trains don't run on time , History is bunk or he'd send in the army. It's unusual now, and in
hindsite the band probably weren't as clever as they thought they were.
On a related theme keep meaning to dig out Scritti Politti's Songs To Remember. Big fan of the music but also there was also the great lyrics written by an ex young communist with an interest in philosophy and deconstruction who also understood that sometimes a love songs can just say it all better. A Green Gartside quote that I also like (for that's who we're talking about) relates to when he recorded The Beatles She's a Woman with
Shabba Ranks. Green said " I just kept thinking what does it mean when Shabba sings "Love up your woman now"

Dexys Midnight Runners

Bought a best of Dexys "Lets make this precious" for the 2 new tracks "Manhood" and "My life in England". Manhood is a winner (even if there are echos of Bye Bye baby in the melody) with plenty of spoken asides from Kev and the feeling that he is desperate for you to know the latest news from his therapist's couch

Evil dead

Not really a stealth buffet moment...because last nights task was to watch Evil Dead on dvd...which is exactly what i did. Lots of trapdoor rattling and "We're gonna get you we're gonna get you."
The film had some of that too!