I Put A Spell On You

There’s no shortage of either charity records or versions of I Put a Spell On You.

The version released by Shane MacGowan and Friends is a fundraiser for Haiti and is a bit of belter. The friends include Nick Cave, Mick Jones, Glen Matlock, Chrissie Hynde, Bobby Gillespie, Paloma Faith, Eliza Doolittle , original Pogues bassist Cait O’Riordan and Johnny Depp.

Screamin’ Jay was the original Pop horror ham, with a joke shop full of gimmicks. Skulls on sticks, climbing out of coffins…you can draw the line from Hawkins to Crazy World Of Arthur Brown and Alice Cooper to Marilyn Manson.

The original Screamin’ Jay Hawkins version released in 1956 has clipped piano and sax and a really disconcerting and unexpected laugh that would have you changing seats on the bus. He’d originally recorded the song for Grand which had had flopped, but the version on Okeh had the full and maverick promotion of the Rock ‘n’ Roll era. The moans on the opening bars were supposedly deemed “Cannibalistic” by radio stations and so yet another version was recorded. This time Djs were told they would be compensated if they were fired for playing the record.

In Gerri Hirshey’s wonderful book Nowhere To Run The Story Of Soul Music, she watches him play to a bemused audience supporting the Stones in the early 80’s. (He’d re-recorded a version with Keef in 1979.) He goes straight home after his set to watch the wrestling on tv, but when she gets to his house to interview him he shows her a letter from Tom Fogerty with a return address of “Creedence”.

“My brother John and I had our minds blown the first time we heard I Put A Spell On You”

The Creedence Clearwater Revival cover from 1968 is my favourite version. Fogherty’s wonderful wind tunnel bellow is a threat to double glazing but it’s the guitar that really makes the song. Half of the song is given over to stinging guitar lines. The best bit comes when he seems to have run out of notes and is just left bending the ghostly feedback. It’s physical and it sounds like you should actually be able to see the feedback, like a shaft of light across the studio.

There a couple of other references that tie the Creedence version into it’s own era rather than the 50’s. It’s got a swirl to it like the Animals cover of House Of The Rising Sun but more tellingly it’s got the spindly drum and ratata guitar building up at the end of the verses which sound like Love.

The Shane MacGowan and friends version owes more to Nick Cave’s sound, a man who can make a record wheeze and clang like the meat store scene in the Long Good Friday.

Shane Macgowan sings the opening lines and in many ways it’s just good to hear he’s still alive. Paloma Faith leaves her usual kookie cabaret act at the stage door and really throws herself into her lines. She probably comes with a lot of baggage and definitely a lot of hat boxes. Nick Cave has played this song before as there’s a version on an NME cassette Department of Enjoyment from 1984. I think Nick Cave has borrowed from Screamin’ Jay Hawkins in his own vocal style, but strangely enough he’s not doing it in this song.

Chrissie Hynde sounds great and looks cool (and vice versa). Her voice is a source of wonder and is usually better than most of the records she’s made. You just know that she still totally and unironically believes in Rock ‘n’ Roll…which is quite touching really. As for Bobby Gillespie, I always think he talks a better record than he actually makes. I always seek out his interviews but rarely listen to his records. So he whoops a bit, bangs his knees together and is probably playing an imaginary tambourine.

Johnny Depp confounds all expectations by adding guitar wangery and making women interested in bearded men. Ok then, just the one bearded man.

You can see the song at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cf69vIQL_u8 and if you’re feeling ghoulish and are looking for a reason to stop drinking you can see Shane attempt to talk about the record at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSahS9k9zqw

Jimmy Webb & Webb Family Birmingham Town Hall 8th November

There's a great Graham Nash (as in the Hollies and Crosby, Stills and the other one) quote about song writing. "We're all fishing in the same river, but Bob Dylan is further upstream and he's catching all the big ones." Well Jimmy Webb's knows a good spot too and has landed some whoppers.

Songs like the Glen Campbell versions of Wichita Lineman and By The Time I Get To Phoenix are like Elvis and Johnny Cash...we sneered at them as adolescents but eventually we realised our parents were probably right. Webb’s songs are grown up songs about grown up subjects. I mean, The Wichita Linesman even has a job. Mind you so does the Highwayman which is tonight's set opener

The tour was billed as The Webb Family and was a neat way round a few potential pitfalls facing an aging performer known as a songwriter rather than a singer and whose drinking buddies had been a thirsty Harry Neilson and a parched Richard Harris. His sons have put out albums as the Webb Brothers, including the excellent Maroon lp.

He'd also brought along Cal Campbell (Glen's son) on drums and Romeo from the Magic Numbers. Which means you get a great sounding band, the complementary style of the Webb Brothers own songs intermingled with Jimmy's own, and other vocalists to take the pressure off Jimmy for any parts he didn't fancy singing. And plenty of time for the stories and between song chat and what stories they were.

Around a third of the gig's running time was chat....and not a word too many. What there wasn't too much of though was an audience. It was a painfully empty Town Hall (or Parthenon as Jimmy referred to it as). but the gig itself was a bit of a treat. Webb Snr looking great in pinstripes, stayed at the piano. Son Jamie though had the last word in a cream jacket with a painted floral design. It looked good enough for Gram Parsons.

The band sounded really good, but restrained and unfussy considering how much was going on, bass, drums, 3 guitars, pedal steel, keyboards and Jimmy Webb’s piano. My favourite instrument of the night though was the Melodica type instrument with a flexible tube to blow through, that the Webb brothers passed around like prison porn. When James played it in his Nashville attire, he looked less like Augustus Pablo and more like an Ood in a Nudie suit. (That’s one for the Dr Who fans)

Jimmy introduced If These Walls Could Speak as a song he'd written specifically with Waylon Jennings in mind, and described at length and with great humour how it was perfect for Jennings’s voice, although the song ended up being sung by Amy Grant, Nanci Griffith and countless other female singers. He also, tellingly, described how he thought he'd written it about a house in New Jersey he'd lived, but had ended up realising that the song "Was actually about me"

Jimmy Webb introduced Galveston as a song written during the Vietnam War. Jamie sang it in a much higher key than Glen Campbell’s version, if anything a reminder of the easy confidence of Campbell’s vocal style. When the song finished everyone left the stage to be replaced by the voice of Jimmy’s own father singing Red Sails In The Sunset. After a bit of Webb reminiscence about his dad coming back from military service smelling of Old Spice (the 2 anecdotes may not necessarily be linked) Jimmy started talking about his own experiences as a father and the mistakes he had made. The song No Christian No was in recognition of the way he'd spoken to his own son as a child. Apparently it was one of Kurt Vonnegut’s favourite songs.

Aah yes the name dropping was extravagant. But there again why shouldn't it be? He's Jimmy Webb and he wrote those songs. One particular anecdote which must have spanned 10 minutes, veered from Richard Harris (the telegram read "Jimmy Webb come to London. Make record!") to The Girl he was trying (and failing) to impress (Miss Wales, later Miss World) to the song he wrote for her (she thought it was "silly") so he gave it to Art Garfunkel. He played that unaccompanied on the piano.

When the band bounced back on stage they inexplicably (apart from the fact that he wrote it) played Up Up And Away. It may be perfect slice of 60's silliness and the soundtrack of choice for all local news programmes about ballooning, but I wouldn't have played it and left out Do What You Gotta Do.

Wichita Linesman and By The Time I get To Phoenix were introduced by the line that "If it wasn't for Glen Campbell then we wouldn't all be on stage here tonight". Almost on cue Cal Campbell responded with "If it wasn't for Glen Campbell I wouldn't be here tonight". Rehearsed spontaneity. And still funny.

The set closer was the still baffling Macarthur Park. The Beatle savvy Webb Brothers turned the mid section into a slice of Abbey Road style languid loveliness, before the frantic Bond theme style final section. If that song is bonkers, then the Richard Harris album it came from (yes, Jimmy Webb did go to London) A Tramp Shining is very odd indeed. But then you would expect that given another of Webb’s anecdotes. During a Rolls Royce road trip round the Irish west coast Harris boomed "We'll stay at my sister’s house. You can sleep in the bed where I was conceived"

They encored with a stunning version of Without You which was sung really well by Jamie. Webb talked about how much he missed Nilsson (the boys used to call him as Uncle Harry) and that singing it was way of invoking Nilsson’s name so he can remain immortal, as the ancient Greeks would have done.(yes the Town Hall/Parthenon analogy had really got to Webb). Without You is one of those songs that I usually think I’d rather appreciate from a distance rather than listen to. It’s just too rich and there’s just too much of it. (And despite what my old neighbour thinks the human heart has never been broken badly enough to merit playing Without You followed by Lorraine Ellison’s Stay With Me Baby. Continuously. And on repeat!)

Overall then, a good gig. Jimmy Webb’s songs speak for themselves and if they couldn’t then he certainly can.

Highway man
Bad Things Happen To Good People
I Could Turn The Stars Around For Us
If These Walls Could Speak
Hollow Victory
Kick it like an old tin can
Galveston
Red Sails In The Sunset
Christian No
All I Know
Up Up And Away
PF Sloane,
Witchita Lineman
By The Time I get To Pheonix
The Worst That Could Happen
Macarthur Park

Without You
Adios

Generation Kill

Generation Kill is the Iraq war mini series written by David Simon and Ed Burns based on the book by journalist Evan Wright

It’s only got 6 hours or so of telly to play with so it’s never going to be able to replicate The Wire’s range of characters and themes (there was more to the Baltimore drama than “Buy drugs, sell drugs”) but it does bring something new to the War Movie genre. And like The Wire, the dialogue is fantastic and the whole thing feels utterly authentic.

In a peaceable life I’ve worked my way through enough war films to get flashbacks. Each of those landmark films will have a scene or idea that brings something new or captures something different about war and the people caught up in it. And of course, other filmmakers, journalists and soldiers will pick up on it too. There’s an interesting podcast at http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/they-tried-make-me-go-sangin-i-said-no-no-no-at-war-with-ipod-generation-afghanistan#comments with Patrick Hennessey a former Guards Officer who served in Iraq and Afghanistan who describes the moment when they were inadvertently and then deliberately recreating the swimming sequence in Hamburger Hill with Otis Redding as the soundtrack.

Generation Kill feels like it’s certainly seen it’s fair share of films

The first episode is hard work as the viewer can get disorientated by the amount of kit, characters and military slang. But stick with it. After all you had to with The Wire.

The dialogue shows up the social, and racial tensions amongst the United States Marine Corps and the (terrifying and inept) chain of command. As you’d expect from the writers of The Wire, the Military dialogue is baffling, funny, foul and poetically obscene. Whisky Tango (white trash) Marines (grunts) curse POG’ s (Person Other than Grunt). The owner of an untidy and non-regulation moustache (grown during the morale boosting, pre invasion moustache growing competition) is told to “Police that moustache”

There are a lot of characters to get used to but once it settles down, the series works because you get the claustrophobic view of the troops in the Humvee. This claustrophobia is one of the things that Generation Kill does differently. It’s a war film in a desert that feels like a submarine movie…and everyone likes a submarine film don’t they!

The commanding officers are as big a threat to their troops as the enemy and the unhinged Captain America is a war crimes investigation in waiting. Godfather is the Corleone voiced Lieutenant Colonel who lost his voice to throat cancer. A non-smoker. “I guess I just got lucky”, he’s actively trying to manoeuvre his men into risky and ill advised missions, like a zealous middle manager trying to commandeer the photocopier for the glory of his team

Inside the Humvee though it’s not much better. James Ransone (he played the excellent Ziggy Sobotka character in the second series of The Wire) is the Humvee driver speeding through Iraq on an over the counter stimulant called Ripped Fuel. He’s literally fighting a war on drugs. There’s the camel shooting farm boy who just wants to kill something, while Evan Wright is the Rolling Stone journalist who was only accepted by the troops when he told them he used to write for Hustler (“You wrote Beaver Hunt?”) The Iceman is the Sergeant, one of the elite Recon Marines and the only one of the bunch who actually knows what he’s doing…he just can’t believe he’s doing it with such a useless crew)

The night vision fire fights are tense, terrifying and wouldn’t have happened in earlier wars and the films made about them. It almost doesn’t happen in this one either as the troops don’t have enough batteries for their night vision goggles.

Vietnam was fought and lost on television and military chiefs have been trying not to let that happen again. However cheap technology means that troops themselves are filming it. Patrick Hennessey on the Word podcast describes how important these video diaries and home made films have become to troops. This runs right through Generation Kill too. Again this makes Generation Kill seem more relevant

The closing credits for each episode are genius. If you think of those classic TV sequences where the credits tell you about the programme itself, you’ could go from Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads, to The Sopranos to The Wire. In an inspired less is more leap, the credits for Generation Kill are just radio transmissions, voices amidst busts of static.

Generation Kill is a contemporary war film about a contemporary war, with plenty of scenes that not only add to the war film genre but also made me glad I wasn’t there…and wished they weren’t there either.

David Simon at the Hay Festival 30th May 2009

If he’d have turned up at my front door I’d have given him money. As it was I had to go to the Hay Festival to see David Simon. To pay and pay homage. I would have travelled further as I don’t really think about much else now apart from The Wire.

Basically it was an hour or so of David Simon in conversation with Mark Lawson from the Late show and answering a few questions from the audience.

He was there to plug his book Homicide and the HBO mini-series The Corner.

Two sides of the same city and both sides would feed in to The Wire itself.

Homicide is the result of his years of crime reporting for the Baltimore Sun and captures the aggressive humour of Baltimore Police speak, while The Corner is filmed as a fly on the wall documentary and focuses on the daily grind of drug addiction in the Baltimore row houses where people are too busy being addicts to put the work into being funny.

So once you get to The Wire, you can get 60 hours of ambitious, gripping telly that expects the viewer to put the work in, pay attention and not to expect a neat plot resolution at the end of each episode.

It moves between the lives and work cultures of the Baltimore Police Department police and the drug gangs that they’re chasing. For both sides, it’s just business as usual and they’ve all got their own bureaucracies and work pressures. It then pans out to take in the roles of the schools, local politics and the press. You get a real feel of a city and society, disastrously going about it’s work.

The dialogue is fantastic. Foul mouthed and funny with properly inventive swearing. The potty mouthed work of people who spend too long doing observation in unmarked cars and standing on corners selling drugs. Both sides, dealing out the banter, just to pass the time. Both sides spending a lot of time just waiting. Both sides just doing their jobs.

The Wire has some fantastic characters, and even the minor characters seem to have had some care and effort put into them. My favourite character at the moment is Proposition Joe, who runs a drugs empire from his TV repair shop. He takes time out from fixing a toaster (he looks like he’s had a
few pieces himself) to remind one lucky individual that he was nearly a “cadaverous muthafucker"

The main thing that came out of the evening was David Simon’s ongoing love affair with journalism. He talked about starting out and just being in awe of the other reporters who were “Older than me, knew more than me, could drink more than me and were funnier than me…It was like a lost weekend that went on for years. Good job I took notes”

There was the pride in the fact that after his years in the job he knew exactly how to get the different sides of a crime story, through the fact that he had all the Police contacts, he knew where they drank and who would talk to him and about what. And who had an axe to grind or maybe just a different view.

One of the themes running through Series 5 of The Wire is the decline of the local paper. The problems of the Newspaper industry in Baltimore are echoed in local papers in the UK.

Although Simon acknowledged that a media based on dead trees may not be the most efficient way of delivering News he wondered what could replace it. Would an army of Citizen Bloggers have the skills, the time and the resources to find, follow and break a story? Because of course he was proud of his own skills and experience, but as he pointed out…he got them because he was paid and there was a newspaper industry that was willing and able to pay him.

His explanation of how The Wire came to be funded was really interesting. He talked about an executive at HBO who explained that it didn’t really matter how many people watched it (and by extension any of the other HBO shows). They just needed to have enough programmes that people would be interested in and would sign up for.

The company weren’t interested in whether you’d subscribed to the channel for The Sopranos, The Wire, boxing or indeed anything else…just so long as there was at least one programme in the schedule that would make you pay your subscription. Which of course turns the whole British TV ratings game on it’s head.

He claims to be surprised at how well The Wire was received in the UK (1200 people in a tent at Hay for starters) but put it down to “American dystopia plays better the further away you get from it”.

I was pleased to hear him talking about another Baltimore phrase that I loved from the series. Cops would describe themselves as being “A Police.” He said Martin Amis had been criticised for using it but Simon stood by it as a Baltimore phrase.

He talked about the importance of getting it right, the stories and the dialogue and about how the worlds of his characters were often only a few blocks away. But you are never going to go to Lafayette (where The Corner is set) as a tourist. He described The War On Drugs as a war against the underclass.

My next Box set is his Iraq drama Generation Kill and his next project is based Hurricane Katrina. Again you can see the parallels in his other work. Stories of failure by Government and Corporations and the effect on communities. Using drama to ask questions and show what is going on.

As he put it, after 40 years of talking about it, why are Baltimore schools still failing?

When he was asked about other writers he admired, he talked about Chekhov….because his characters don’t always do what they are supposed to do. By which I think he meant that the character isn’t just there as part of the plot. Which brings us back to The Wire and it’s huge and hugely entertaining cast.

Start working your way through the box sets. It may change the way you live. There’s a lot more swearing over breakfast after a night watching The Wire. Family punishments are harsher too.

That Petrol Emotion Birmingham Acadamy 1st July

That Petrol Emotion split up in 1994 long after the world had lost interest.
Judging by the amount of elbow room at the Academy on the opening night of
their first tour since they split, the world may still not be interested.
Shame on the world. They were always an excellent band live and they've
still got all their powers.

I wouldn't trust them to set the video though. The first song Blue to
Black should have started with a sample...And indeed it did...Once singer
Steve Mack had found the play button.

Steve asked who remembered the name of the pub where they'd played their
first gig in Birmingham. That would be the Vine in Aston. I didn't go to
that but I do remember buying the first single Keen, downstairs in the old
Virgin Shop on Bull St where the assistant was enthusiastically promoting
the gig. Actually he probably was the promoter.

They were definitely amongst friends. Old friends. Over 30's friends,
many well acquainted with their 40's. Steve Mack still looks exactly the
same, all sinew and flailing limbs occasionally breaking into a kind of
hopping dance with a finger in the air. Guitarist and Undertone Damian's
sole concession to the ageing process seems to be a pair of glasses. He's
probably just wearing them as a show of solidarity with the rest of us

It looked like the gig was going well, for both band and audience. Steve said, "They say you should never go back to your old lover, but I'm beginning to change my mind".

It's A Good Thing would have me heading straight to Friends Reunited. It's a great example of how TPE built a joyous celebratory Pop out of awkwardness. One of the constant things about the band is they way they use discordant words. (Scum Surfin’, Chemicrazy...even T shirts that proclaim TPE to be renegades in Pop redux. I'm sure you are…but you probably told your mums you were astronauts, as it was easier to explain.) So in It's A Good Thing you get a line like "Our flesh feels fresh, That's the beauty" It's geekily awkward, and like unscientifically but enthusiastically
dissecting a frog. Just poking it to see what works. But you do get this
great high/ low sing song chorus from Steve and then just as the song
should be building, it breaks down as the guitars stumble into each other
before building up again. Calculated chaos. Obviously it doesn't finish
with a chorus (after all if you've got a great chorus...why would you want
to play it 3 times. That would be Pop insanity?) Instead what you get is a
blissful Ahhh ah vocal and Ciaran doing 4 bars of rolling drum thunder.
And that'll do instead of a chorus. And it does. Magnificently.

Looking out at the low numbers, Steve cheerfully announced, “next time we
do this, shall we just do it in somebody’s yard? We’ll have a barbecue,
bring a barrel of beer. It’ll be cheaper for all of us.” He gestured to
the rest of the band “…and if these fuckers won’t come, I’ll bring an
acoustic”

The band barrelled through the hits that got away, the likes of Big
Decision, Abandon, Hey Venus, Sensitize. It’s a toe in the water come back
tour, nothing to promote except their legacy. Great Pop tunes with
scratchy, scouring guitar lines to take the edge off the sweetness.
Another mishap with an intro sample to Catch A Fire brought anguished cries from the band. “This is what you’ve got look forward to…the doddering Petrols playing the same song 10 times”

Scum Surfin’ was an exhilarating hair pin drive, as the track built momentum
with the guitar powering out of the corners. Get it onto a video game,
boys. It can be your pension plan. Lifeblood comes from the first album
when their sound was closer to the Pere Ubu/Captain Beefheart template.
Closing tracks Last Of The True Believers and Detonate My Dreams sounded
fantastic as Damian's white Les Paul seemed to have turned into a white cat
which he was enthusiastically strangling. And the choker is that these
were the tracks that they had released after the world had lost interest.
And that, to my shame, included me.

These are the tracks I can remember...not necessarily in order

Blue To Black
Gnaw Mark
It's A Good Thing
Big Decision
Hey Venus
Tingle
Abandon
Head Staggered
Sooner Or Later
Sensitize
Life Blood
Catch A Fire
Scum Surfin'
Last Of The True Believers
Detonate My Dreams

There's TPE treasure trove at http://www.myspace.com/thatpetrolemotion and http://www.thatpetrolemotion.com/

That Petrol Emotion

All bands reform. It’s inevitable, unavoidable and there are laws of physics that have less supporting evidence.

I’ve learned to live with gravity but my will to live has been tested by Spandau Ballet reforming. Actually that particular and unwelcome reformation has opened up the possibility of time travel for me. I really do feel exactly the same about them as I did when I was 16. Seething resentment and unlikely to be stopping off at the kilt shop.

Some bands rumble on for years after anyone has stopped caring and yet they can still catch you out when they reform. Like a fetish you didn’t know you had.

The Undertones split up after the world had stopped caring (one of the band described the final John Peel session as a “cover, a b side and the sound of 5 pairs of hands enthusiastically scraping the bottom of the barrel”). That Petrol Emotion were Sean O’Neil’s attempt to make more aggressive, politicised music. (Early singles had sleevenotes about strip searches and plastic bullets).

Late period Undertones had been shaped by the bands love of Soul and Psychedelia (and quite right too!) but That Petrol Emotion were more of the sound of the songs they loved to cover. Beefheart's Zig Zag Wanderer, Pere Ubu’s Non Alignment Pact, Television’s Friction, Neil Young’s Cinnamon Girl and In A Rut by The Ruts. Discordant and churning.

Initially the vocals were shared between bassist Damian (who’d joined after his post Undertones outfit Eleven had petered out) and guitarist Reamann O'Gormain. I saw this line up at the Mean Fiddler in 1985 but when I saw them a few months later at Thames Poly with The Nightingales they’d recruited gangly American singer Steve Mack. I saw them a lot over the following couple of years. Although at that point Mack wasn’t convincing as a singer (but he got a lot better over the years) they were a phenomenal band live. I saw them with The Long Ryders, The Woodentops in Deptford, Stump in Wolverhampton. The records weren’t as good as the gigs but songs like It’s A Good Thing proved that there was always joyous celebratory pop lurking under their swampy sound. They just couldn’t help it!

Now where it gets difficult is also where it got interesting…and actually where I lost interest. All the band wrote (great for quickly gathering up material…. and even better for arguments in the studio) and they were trying to bring in the Hip Hop and Dance records that they were listening to.

Actually, as band they were probably quicker off the mark than most in terms of the unloved and little lamented Indie dance crossover. So you’d get the “Agitate, educate organise” lyric from Brother D and The Collective Effort shoehorned into their own song Big Decision and a fair bit of sampling and remixing.

Sean O’Neil left after the 3rd album, End Of The Millennium Psychosis Blues and Damian moved back to guitar. Subsequent albums Chemicrazy and Fireproof were more focused than this sprawling sonic ragbag of styles but the law of diminishing returns is almost as fixed as the law about bands reforming. The band split in 94, still on ferocious live form.

The band played a couple of gigs in London and Ireland last summer and have just announced a full tour. If they’ve still got their live form then it should be a treat and I think it’s going to be the scene of much misty eyed reverie for those of us of a certain age. The baby sitters will be much in demand…but actually the baby sitters need to be watching live bands of this calibre for themselves.

http://www.myspace.com/thatpetrolemotion

Dag For Dag

Dag for Dag are an American brother and sister duo now living in Stockholm. Sarah Parthemore Snavely and Jacob Donald Snavely have rediscovered the Joy Division sound of the spindly guitar, teetering on the edge of musical collapse and given it a bit of Gothic dressing up with the Woo hooOOOH (It’s all a bit scary isn’t it) vocals.

Shooting FromThe Shadows is a “full chunky ep” (that’s bass player Jacobs description) which is released on Conor Oberst’s label Saddle Creek. Main track Ring Me Elise has the kind of single line, distorted guitar snakery of Joy Divisions Transmission or Novelty. They also feel like an amped up Violent Femmes or the Cramps.

Barney’s guitar playing always sounded like he was playing beyond his actual ability and so part of the paranoia and gruff terror of Joy Division was that they were actually all going to be found out at any moment Of course Violent Femmes could all play like demons, they just liked sounding rough. And The Cramps? They need no justification.

With Dag For Dag there is a sense of glee to Sarah's playing and a pleasure in making it snort. You get the same feeling from the way the J Mascis sets about his guitar in Dinosaur Jr despite his apparent problem staying awake.

Silence Is The Verb sounds like a Country ballad version of Atmosphere. It’s a creepy boy girl duet with some heroic (and occasionally in tune) guitar twanging over a probing chiming bass line…The guitar sounds a bit like Frenz by The Fall and yes the bass line does sound like Atmosphere.

There is a version at http://www.dagfordag.com/

I have to approach Joy Division quite cautiously now. Whilst I can go back to New Order quite happily, I just can’t play a whole Joy Division album. I think about them quite a lot still but I just can’t face the hard work.

I did once hear an excellent story about the Joy Division tribute band who realised that the audience wasn’t quite sharing the intensity of the experience. The band ground relentlessly and terrifyingly through Day Of The Lords, with the singer giving it the full blown Ian Curtis gravitas.

The portentious lyrics “Where will it end, where will it end?” rang out and as the band seemed to be shaking before the fast approaching apocalypse, the audience was in fact doing a conga through the upstairs room of the Hare and Hounds.

Doves

Doves are just so much better than they should be. The 4th album Kingdom Of Rust
looks like it's going to be more of the same big faced earnestness, chiming guitars and generic Northern glumness (do Elbow have a funny bone?) tempered with a dancefloor euphoria.
Here it comes, the swelling chorus, arms in the air, dancefloor drugs
rather than dance floor dancing. They keep the vocals mixed down low and
in interviews the singing bassist Jimi Goodwin has talked about deliberately
keeping the lyrics open ended and fuzzy to allow the listener to add their
own interpretation. (Actually that's often the defence of the
lyrically useless or the songwriter who is still scribbling while the
studio clock ticks and the keyboard player is practising their drumming

The feeling you get from Doves songs is that they are singing about the big
stuff. They sound like songs about leaving: hometowns and lovers,
travelling and movement....but the thing is I think they're going for a
feeling rather than a definite. If there is a Northern quality, then it’s
as much about place names in song titles (Northenden, Salford Quays, Winter
Hill) as much as the way they sit geographically and sonically with
Manchester bands like Elbow and The Chameleons with their middle distance
peering or Liverpool bands like Shack or The La’s with their more
traditional song structures. There is a terrace feel to them too.
Pounding was regularly played at Man City games and they’ve recorded a
version of Blue Moon. So there is more to them than earnestness.

What lifts them up as a band is their attention to detail, with a clever mix of guitar
sounds, little tricks and treatments. The first 2 albums sound compressed
and claustrophobic. The textures are really good but while you can hear the instruments you can’t hear the air move. You don’t hear the sound of speakers or drum skins pushing the
air around them, you don’t have the sound of fingers on guitar strings or
the clicks and pings of musicians making music. In fact I should hate the
sound of it…but I don’t

Catch The Sun from the first album Lost Souls has a warm fuzziness and an
elliptical bass line under the chorus of “Everyday it comes to this, catch
the things you might have missed, You say, go back to yesterday”. It’s a
line and a sound that pretty much captures what the band are about.
Wistful, regretful but oddly uplifting. It’s the kind of glumness you can
live with.

Second Album The Last Broadcast contains my favourite song of theirs (and probably yours) There Goes The Fear. With the drug references of the title and the line “Think of me when you’re
coming down” and a hefty 6 minute running time, it packs it all in.
There’s a U2 chukka chukka guitar sound and a really surprising moment as
the delicate “There goes the fear again” vocal line descends towards the
chorus. As the guitar line drops down it sounds like he’s fluffed the
line, and skipped a note, but then they repeat it through the rest of the
song. Which makes me warm to them as a band? Keep the mistakes.

The third album Some Cities has a drier sound and includes Black And White Town which sounds
like Heatwave by Martha and the Vandellas.

These soulful leanings shouldn’t be too much of a surprise. Before
reinventing themselves as Doves they were Sub Sub and released Ain’t No
Love Ain’t No Use in 1993. It’s a phenomenal record. It sounds like
hotpants and has earrings the size of mirror balls. It’s one of those
records that jumps out of the radio and whisks you straight out of the
kitchen/garage/hole in the road and drops you in the middle of the dance
floor of the best night of the best club. Still holding your washing up
brush/paintbrush.

The new album Kingdom Of Rust was recorded over a fraught three years on a Cheshire farm, within ear shot of the Manchester airport and the motorway. The title track has come out as the single and while it is still obviously Doves, there are some new twists. There’s a Mariachi feel and this time round they are actually using volume. Yes the guitar solo is louder than the part that
preceded it! Revolutionary and it sounds great. It also sounds like a
cross between Zager and Evans In The Year 2525 and Love. Psychedelic
Spaghetti Country and (North) Western. I’ll have some that!

Candi Staton Birmingham Town Hall 21st Feb

Young Hearts Run Free is the song that defines her in England. It was the soundtrack to Candi Staton's 70's domestic turmoil and over the years it's also been the dance floor mood uplifter, the Hen Party Staple and karaoke hell. The Source used her vocal on You've Got The Love which has been a hit 3 times over the last 18 years. It's as seasonal as Slade! She's spent the last 20 years banging out a Gospel album a year and then there's her peerless and genre defining Southern Soul recordings from the late 60's. So who is exactly her audience? Actually where are her audience? The Town Hall is 2 thirds empty and one of the 2 backing singers has just introduced her as Candi STAYton and told us that he's heard that Birmingham is one of the loudest audiences anywhere. Ouch! This could be painful.

She opened with Nights on Broadway (well that's one hit out of the way) and it's immediately apparent that her voice is absolutely still intact and the band is sympathetic. Bass, drums, guitar, keyboards , 2 backing vocalists, sax and trumpet. It all sounds right, authentic and uncluttered. Whenever I watch old singers I always think of Paul McGrath's knees and wonder if the vocal veteran is using an old pros tricks and anticipation to keep themselves out of trouble (or in the right place) like the knackered knee knock 'em backer did at the end of his career. Well, not in Staton's case. Her voice still has the quality of those early recordings. There's a bruised, hurt quality which is incongruous coming from the smiling 65 year old woman walking round the stage with her arm outstretched as if carrying an invisible tray. And even better, she's going to talk. I always enjoy between song chat and Staton is talking her way though each song, explaining bits of musical history, who recorded the song and lots of talking to the ladies about men.

I Feel The Same is a Bonnie Rait song from Staton's new album and has the swampy Blues feel and the rising horns and backing vocals of her classic Muscle Shoals period. Towards the end Staton ad-libs that “You try and pick up the pieces, but there ain't no pieces left”.

I'm Just A Prisoner (Of Your Good Loving) is just such a Muscle Shoals classic. Staton finishes the song with the line “Sometimes it's worth being being a prisoner, if he loves you all night. Am I right ladies?” Considering that her interviews always go back to the failed and abusive marriages and Young Heats Run Free, it's the first of many often contradictory but usually entertaining statements.

I'll Sing A Love Song To You is mercifully brief but Elton John in cheesiness. She's singing it for those who have stayed with her since 1969

Later she talks about how in the 60's and 70's women singers could only sing songs about being hurt by love and begging men to stay and suggests that the record company must have spent a lot of money to make Jean Knights Mr Big Stuff a hit. Sexism and payola? What? In the Music Industry?

She lets slip that covers of In The Ghetto (she actually did perch on a stool to sing that one) and Stand By Your Man were both nominated for Grammys but my favourite line was when she talked about her first single I'd Rather Be An Old Man's Sweetheart (Than A Young Man's Fool) selling 750 000 copies “Before they realised it wasn't Aretha. But I got over it. Like a fat rat!”

The Town hall is a seated venue and she encouraged people to get their shoulders working but of course what the audience was really waiting for and what brought them to their feet was stretched out versions of Young Hearts Run Free and You've Got The Love. The band introductions brought the welcome revelation that the keyboard player was in fact former Style Councillor Mick Talbot, which of course shouldn't be that much of a surprise. His subtle keyboards had been a big part of why Staton's band sounded so good. On first listen Southern Soul seems to be just about the brass and a guitar that can either sting or twang. But the keyboard is crucial. Just think of the ghostly organ in Aretha Franklin's Do Right Woman Do Right Man and that piano. It's churchy and runs the rhythm, missing notes and paddling away like a syncopated seal. And of course Mick Talbot knows that stuff and indeed, his stuff.

She encored with the dancey and upbeat Hallelujah Anyway (so that covered the Gospel segment) and left with the announcement that Gods got a plan and that we should hang in there... and something about the President.

Shameful turnout aside, it was a really good gig and a treat to see a singer who's not only still got it but looked like she was still interested. You should have been there.

Nights On Broadway
I Feel The Same
I'm Just A Prisoner (Of Your Good Loving)
I'll Sing A Love Song To You
Breaking Down Slow
Suspicious Minds
Who's Hurting Now
I'd Rather Be An Old Man's Sweetheart (Than A Young Man's Fool)
Stand By Your Man
In The Ghetto
Young Hearts Run Free
You've Got The Love

Hallelujah Anyway

Candi Staton

Of course not quite of all the best music came out on Stax and Motown….that would be a ridiculous notion. The rest came out on FAME and was recorded at Muscle Shoals. Sweeping generalisations aside, Candi Staton’s 6 year association with the label produced some of the definitive Southern soul recordings. That gospel and country influence, the multi racial band and the clarity and sweetness of the vocals playing (away) against the songs about cheatin’, lyin and slippin’ around. After all Country songs weren’t just about death, divorce and drinking.

Candi Staton's life story reads like a manual of how to be a definitive female soul singer. Born in Alabama, picking cotton, alcoholic dad, Gospel back ground, first solo in church at 5, touring with the Jewel Gospel Trio from the age of 12 until she was 17 when she started a relationship with Lou Rawls. When that ended she then married the first of her no good husbands, but after leaving him she tried to resestablish her career. She met and married Clarence Carter who was on FAME. Clarence Carter was never shy of a gimmick. Not only was he a blind blues singer but he also had a back up gimmick. A fruity filthy chuckle and a habit of breaking away from a song to stress the importance of “Making luuurve.” He introduced her to FAME owner Rick Hall and a similar deal to his own, whereby the FAME recordings were licensed to a major. In Staton's case Capitol

FAME drew from were incredibly talented pool of musicians and song writers. Original Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section bassist Tommy Cogbill played on Dusty in Memphis and on the Elvis Memphis sessions and his replacement David Hood (his son Patterson plays in the Drive By Truckers) knew a couple of good notes as well. Her early material included songs written by FAME house writer George Jackson and Clarence Carter. Just like County, Southern Soul likes to take a title, add some brackets and a bit of a twist. You’ve got to play with the words and add some humour to the heartbreak, so you get titles like I’d Rather Be An Old Man’s Sweetheart (Than A Young Mans Fool), Mr And Mrs Untrue, Another Man’s Woman Another Woman’s Man.

One of my favourite Candi Staton songs from that era is Evidence.

“Lipstick on your collar the smell of perfume that I never use,
Hotel matches in your pocket boy and a strange door key too”

The backing track is a miracle of hi fidelity infidelity. It’s got all my favourite sounds in. The contrast between the stinging guitar, the pad of the electric piano and the accusatory horns. The call and response vocals take their lead from the vocal interplay of Aretha Franklin and The Sweet Inspirations. And you don’t get better than that

Candi Staton also tackled C and W standards such as Stand By our Man and did a fine version of In The Ghetto. However, by 1974 the southern sound had fallen from favour, The Stax label was collapsing. Records sounded lusher. It was both the time and the sound of Philadelphia and the beginnings of disco

She moved to Warners. She’d been racking up the domestic misery, after splitting up from Clarence Carter and marrying husband number 3. Songwriter David Crawford wrote Young hearts Run Free based on the horror stories she’d told him, “I was in a very abusive relationship at that time He was a promoter, but I didn’t know he had a dark side. Before he met me, he was a big con artist. He threatened my life many times and did a lot of dirty things to me. I began to tell David about these things, and he wrote Young Hearts Run Free based on that. It was like my life-story in a song…”

After the disco era records like Young Hearts, Victim and Nights on Broadway she settled down to some serious drinking and husband number 4. “Your real role model is not an artist or an entertainer, it's your parents. And what you see them do, usually it comes down through the generations. I saw how my father would drink and abuse my mother and they would fight all the time. Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew it wasn't right, but you pick those same kind of men. I've married the same man over and over again. He just looked different and wore different clothes."

Eventually she quit both drinking and secular music, released a string of gospel records through the 80’s and 90’s and became a televangelist hosted the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) weekly series "Say Yes" from 1986 to 2004.

Her secular career received a bit of an unlikely kick in the 90’s after The Source sampled her Gospel track for “You’ve Got The Love”. She did put out a non gospel album in 1999 called Outside In

But if it was the church that took her out of secular music it also gave her a way back in. “ My pastor sat me down in the 90s. He said ‘I need to talk to you. Candi, those songs that you did in the 70s and in the 80s, they’re not bad songs. They’re good songs. Some of them you couldn’t sing because of the way you live now. Young Hearts Run Free wasn’t bad; Stand by Your Man – those songs are classics. Those songs were blessed. They raised your children, they bought you home. Rethink it. You could go out and bless people again with those songs’. It took me about five years to think about it. Eventually, when the compilation came out, that’s when I began to really think seriously about doing them again. Now I have a new gospel and new secular albums coming out.”

Honest Jon’s re issued her Fame recordings in 1994 and are also behind her secular albums His Hands from 1996 and the forthcoming album Who’s Hurting Now?

What has helped Staton this time round is that the people involved have tried to recapture the essence of what made those early records sound so good but also to allow Staton to feel comfortable with the material. She’s said that she wants to stay away from the cheatin’ songs but there’s still a wealth of heartbreak out there. "There will be some religious folk that will come against me, and even maybe some DJs. They'll be disappointed maybe that I'm singing love songs. But I call them life songs. Just because you go to church you're not alienated from life."

Mark Nevers from Lambchop produced and recorded her latest albums at his house in Nashville with a band including, Candi's son Marcus Williams on drums, daughter Cassandra Hightower on backing vocals and Barry Beckett from the original Muscle Shoals houseband on the Hammond organ.

There’s material from Dan Penn, Bonnie Rait and Mercy Now by Mary Gauthier (while we’re on the subject of Gauthier seek out I Drink. It’s not a tribute to Staton’s thirsty years but it is as harrowing a depiction of wet the bed/forget to collect the kids from school alcoholism as you are ever likely to need)

The title track His Hands is written by Will Oldham, known to his mother as Bonnie Prince Billy. A man who knows his Country and his Western and can do clever songwriting that can charm or scare. (Johnny Cash covered I See A Darkness. Strangely enough I’m not aware of anyone covering the song he did as Palace Music on the Arise Therefore album….You Have Cum In Your Hair And Your Dick Is Hanging Out)

Young Hearts Run Free hid it’s tale of domestic abuse under a soaring escapist tune and the chorus of of “Say I wanna leave a thousand times a day”, but Oldham’s song His Hands does it in a 3 act play over 6 harrowing minutes, as the hands change from The Lover, to the Wife beater to God. Musically it’s got a bit of nod to King Heroin by James Brown. On her website Staton describes it as “As a kind of a gospel song and it's kind of not. It ends up pointing you to the Redeemer, but it starts out telling you about a normal, natural man and what he would do to you in an abusive situation. I enjoyed singing that because it's so much like my life. I've lived through every line of that song."

His Hands is on Youtube and it’ll scare you to death

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7LdJGhf2XI


There are songs from the new album (released next month) at http://www.myspace.com/candistaton

She plays Birmingham Town Hall on 21st February. And I can't wait.

Hold Steady Wolves Civic 15 Dec 08

It had been a long time coming but I did finally get to see The Hold
Steady. I'd fancied seeing them since their appearance on Jools Holland
last year and then the original Wolves gig was postponed after guitarist
Tad Kubler was hospitalised with pancreatitis. Now that could have been worse.
Gillian Taylforth ended up in a libel case after administering on the spot relief
for her hubby's pancreatitis on a motorway hard shoulder. Seems the Police
and the medically unqualified tabloid press couldn't tell the difference
between a Florence Nightingale act of mercy and a Hugh Grant lewd act.
Amazingly she lost the libel case when she tried to correct The Sun's
misconception.

There would have been room for a few more punters at Wolves Civic. Young
people and women had stayed away. The Hold Steady's audience reflect the
band themselves. Over 30, male, not too cool and gratefully glad to be
out. Still, I can talk....I was taking notes!

From the opening and barnstorming Constructive Summer, Craig Finn was a
whirl of geeky dervishness. Jumping , pointing, mouthing off mike and
looking like Sgt Bilko. At one point he swung an imaginary baseball bat.
After 5 songs he took his guitar off (he hadn't played it for the first 4)
but soon put it back on again. To give it some more of the silent
treatment

Keyboard player Franz Nicolay was also hugely entertaining. Sporting flat cap,
jacket and moustache combo and an arsenal of magicians gestures. At one
point he covered his eyes and then struck a pose as the keyboard swirls
rose. As if he couldn't quite believe the magical power in his
fingertips. Part snake charming, part twerpery.

The epic Lord, I'm Discouraged from the new album featured accordion and
the first appearance of the Tab Kubler's double neck guitar. Normally the
beast with two necks is best left in the hands of Led Zep or the Eagles
and is about as welcome as home brew. I mean it's nice that someone does
it, but you just don't want to be around when it comes out. The guitar
solo itself wasn't so much unleashed as unzipped. Full blown Rush style
rock pompery. And even more impressive from a man who's casual air made it
look as if he was just looking round for somewhere to put an awkward shaped
box he was carrying and would rejoin us in a minute. And I do like the
line "...Excuses and half truths and fortified wine"

I think this is the thing about the Hold Steady. Craig Finn is essentially
writing short stories. We don't actually need to believe they are
autobiographical, either for him or for us (if we are the sing along type).
He may look like he is someone's dad picking up the pieces afterwards rather than the actual housewrecking party dude....but then I suspect Nick Cave has also eased up on the murdering in recent years. Finn is too geeky to convince the under 20's. Young men won't want to be him
and their actual audience, of older and more beard capable blokes are
rather afraid that they already are him.

So with the Hold Steady what we've actually got is a cross over Rock band.
They're rawk enough for the Mid West but lyrically interesting enough for
Word magazine. On record, the keyboards can be a bit too flowery for
my tastes and the backing vocals sometimes have a bit too much wah and
wahoo. Fine for a stadium but not necessarily what I'd want at home . But
any doubts I have about the band are just barged aside by the quality of
the songs and performance. And they're still my favourite band of the
last couple of years.

Here's the set list....and an alternative review of the gig is at http://www.thestirrer.co.uk/the-hold-steady-1812081.html

Constructive Summer
Hot Soft Light
Sequestered In Memphis
Cattle And The Creeping Things
Massive Nights
Knuckles
Joke About Jamaica
Sapphire
Ask Her For Adderall
Lord, I'm Discouraged
You Can Make Him Like You
Chill Out Tent
Don't Let Me Explode
Stevie Nix
Chips Ahoy
Your Little Hoodrat Friend
How A Resurrection Really Feels

===========

Arms And Hearts
Stuck Between Stations
Stay Positive
Slapped Actress

Joe Strummer. The Future Is Unwritten

Julian Temples Sex Pistols film The Filth And The Fury is one of the best Music films. It snatched the Pistols story back from his own highjacked Great Rock N Roll Swindle which Malcolm McClaren had turned into his own revisionist comedy.

Temple's film about Joe Strummer manages to be an affectionate and honest film about a contradictory, difficult man who was one of the best front men in one of the best bands. And like the Pistols, the myth of the Clash is as big as the music. And just as important. As a fan you buy the records. But for inspiration you buy into the myth.

The opening sequence is terrific. Strummer is in the studio singing an unaccompanied vocal to White Riot. The backing track drops in, powerful, ragged and naïve. But instead of the expected clips of The Clash careering round the stage or stock footage of urban chaos what you actually get is a young John Mellor kicking leaves in the garden with his diplomat dad.

The Future Is Unwritten is the story of the contradictions and the story of Strummer before and after The Clash. It is told through brilliantly edited archive footage and the recollections of those who knew him gathered up in camp fire interviews. During the 90's building campfires had became symbolic for Strummer allowing him to gather friends and new people around him. Temple carried out new interviews around campfires to allow contradictory reminiscences to sit side by side with the image of Strummer. And Strummer really did build his own image. Not only with the name changes (from John Mellor, to Woody to Strummer) but he also was naturally left handed but played guitar right handed because he thought it looked better.

Strummer described himself as being one of the boarding school bullies, but the school friends gathered round the camp fire remember him as a boy who stayed out of trouble because he knew how to handle people.

His ex girlfriend described him as a boys own adventurer who would "Sleep under the starts when it was totally unnecessary." Another ex, the more pragmatic Palmolive from The Slits describes looking out the window and wondering who the wino sleeping in the garden was….and then seeing the pointy shoes and realising it must be Joe.

He inspired great affection and loyalty among people, but he was ruthless about firing band members and distancing himself from his Pub Rock band the 101ers and his early 70's squat buddies. When he bumped into them they said it was like the shutters had come down. It was almost impossible for him to get out of character. The next chapter had started. .

An early Clash interview showed him projecting the image of a man of few words and fewer syllables. He answers a question about morality with "I'd never steal money from a friend…" There's a long pause, but you just know, that he's always known exactly what he was going to say…but just wants the camera to get that moment. "….But I'd steal his girlfriend".

There's no playfulness about it. This was strictly sullen era Clash. And away from the camera, Strummer was certainly partial to girlfriend poaching as Topper Headon testifies. But if Strummer was living the part of the Punk Rock mumbler, it was a 24 hour business. When he first joined the band Topper felt that they were trying to intimidate him with an early band meeting punctuated only by the sounds of Simonon spitting on the electric fire through the gap in his front teeth. He says Strummer didn't actually drop the act with him and talk honestly until Strummer and Headon were in an American jail cell together charged with stealing motel pillows.

But Strummer really could talk. His images and enthusiasm for the world came tumbling out in the clips, in quotes from the broadcasts he did for the BBC World Service and in his own description of Punk Rock history.

"The Pistols had to come in and blow everything away. They were the stun grenade into the room before the door kicked in. They came out of nowhere and they came to support us one night at the Nashville Rooms"

There's a great sequence of a recent Mick Jones interview (less hats, less hair) where he's looking out of his gran's Ladbrooke Grove tower block flat. You can see the lights of the city and the Westway snaking through it. Jones looks out and says "There's the roar of a city. It does sound like our music"

The end of the Clash is pure soap opera. As Topper's song Rock The Casbah becomes a hit, Topper is out of the band, replaced by original stand in drummer Terry Chimes for a tour of American enormodomes with the likes of The Who.

On one hand Strummer had got everything he could have hoped for as music fan who never really was Bored Of The USA but he also felt squeezed and compromised. A thoroughly unhappy looking Strummer and Jones sporting full Combat Rock regalia and wearing hats that span military campaigns from The American Civil War to Korea say the music industry is "No worse than any other prostitution business"

The film cuts between a full colour stadium version of Career Opportunities to a black and white early version. It's as if they won the caravan on Bullseye but would have been happier with the toaster.

As Should I Stay Or Should I Go plays (Oh the irony-Mick Jones's witless song about ex girlfriend and Meatloaf duetter Ellen Foley, where he ponders, quite literally, whether he should stay or indeed go) Strummer sums up the bands career.

"The success goes to your head pitfall. The ego trap pitfall. You think you're geniuses. You become drug addicts. You make indulgent records. You overdub the sound of ants biting through a wooden beam. All these things we've gone through, each and every one of them. And that's why we've come out a depleted force."

"We turned into the people we'd tried to destroy"

The film is still really interesting after the demise of the Clash, when Strummer was essentially lost. One afternoon he decided to cut down on his drinking but then that evening agreed to stand in for Shane MacGowan on a Pogues tour. I'm glad he did, if only for the version of Straight to Hell I saw them do at Aston Villa leisure Centre.

He made soundtracks and recruited musicians on a whim for his Latino Rockabilly War and Mescaleros projects.

The first time Strummer saw future Mescalero Antony Genn was when Genn was the Glastonbury streaker during Elastica's set in the mid 90's

He thought he'd found his ideal drummer. He hadn't heard him play but he liked his name. "He's got to be good. His name is Ramone Baharandra"

Anthony Kiedis thought that it was odd for Strummer to try to recruit ex Red Hot Chilli Peppers drummer Jack Irons who was in a mental institution at the time. "It'll be Ok. We'll get him a ride to and fro, he'll come into the studio, he'll have a job and we'll make this record"

After he'd made Earthquake Weather he really needed all the industry support he could muster. However on the day of the play back when the studio execs were due to come and listen to it, he didn't show up to the meeting. He'd left a note pinned to his front door. "I've gone to the desert"

Fittingly the last gig Strummer played was a benefit for striking firemen. Mick Jones got up and played too. The closest there was to a Clash reunion. Strummer died shortly afterwards at home after walking the dog. Cause of death was an undetected and congenital heart defect that could have killed him at any time in the preceding years.

The film does a fine job of telling Strummers story and allowing him to be both a very fallible human being but also Punk Rock hero. There are 2 good quotes from the extra interview footage that comes with the DVD. One is from Mickey Gallagher who felt that he and fellow Blockhead Norman Watt Roy should have had a credit for their work on the Magnificent 7. Strummer had made all the right noises but ultimately nothing had happened. (Before we all get too judgemental remember that The Clash actually took a royalty cut to subsidise the low price of Sandinista). Gallagher said "Joe Strummer was a hero but John Mellor was a coward"

The nicer quote though is a story about what happened when Strummer spotted Monica Lewinsky in a nightclub. It shows both his ability to both say the right thing but also the unexpected thing. As soon as Strummer saw her he told his friends he had to go and say something to her. They were worried about what he could possibly say. He bounded up to her; she looked nervous and didn't know who he was. "I'm Joe Strummer. But you're Punk Rock"

Ronnie Spector Last Of The Rock Stars

Ronnie Spector's album Last Of The Rock Stars is a conscious effort to make art out of her life. Released 2 years ago, but a decade in the making, it uses songs and guest artists that reflect Ronnie Spector's life and it's influence.

Ronnie Spector is a proper icon with a look and a sound. Madonna has said she wanted to look how Ronnie Spector sounded. But Spector was also the sound of an era and the sound of New York. Stick a beehive on the Statue of Liberty and call it Ronnie Spector.

Veronica Bennett started singing with her sister and cousin and had huge hits with Baby I love You and Be My Baby. Their producer Phil Spector turned into a recluse in 66, hurt, astounded (and probably driven insane) by the idea that his production of Ike and Tina Turners River Deep Mountain High hadn't been a bigger hit. Unfortunately Ronnie married him and got the benefits of a controlling and abusive relationship to rival Ike and Tina's. A paranoid and jealous Phil Spector made Ronnie keep a life size model of himself in her car and tried to make sure that everything was delivered to the house so that she wouldn't need to go out. Deliveries also included their adopted children. She says he pointed out 2 children playing in the park and asked if she liked them. Next day he brought them round saying the adoption had gone through.

When she finally did escape after 5 years, she was barefoot. He'd taken all her shoes to stop her leaving.

But whilst Tina Turner escaped Ike and then went on to make a string of appalling records, Ronnie Spector spent her time in court battles over custody and royalties. Now Phil Spector is on trial for murder

Last of the Rock Stars opens with Never Gonna Be Your Baby. The titles a nod to her past, but the guitars are spikier. The lyrics have grown up from teen romance. "It smells of crime it smacks of sin I give a little more each I give in"…. and you just wait for the first trademark "Wo oagh oagh"

All I Want is a terrific song about a poisonous, desperate relationship. It manages to blend Girl Group lines like "I don't want flowers or fancy things, I gave up on a diamond ring" with the adult sexual complexities of "You turn to me at night, like you think everything's alright, and it is, til we turn on the lights and real life returns." It's a great line and her phrasing is fantastic. That song in particular (written by Amy Rigby who is married to Wreckless Eric…who wrote a song called Veronica) just feels like it was written with her voice and history in mind.

Keith Richards plays guitar on All I Want but also does a great knock about fun duet on Ike and Tina Turner's Everything's Gonna Work Out Fine. It's a battle of the sexes, song , very much of it's time.(like Otis Redding and Carla Thomas duets) She's making wedding plans and he's stalling. I particularly enjoy hearing her sing "Darling" and him sing talking in reply "Yes Ronnie" On the fade out she says "You're the best…Give it to me" and the wrinkly old man replies "You do the work Baby", amidst cackles of laughter

Here Today Gone Tomorrow is a Ramones song, and of course, under the leather jackets and the songs about glue the Ramones were really a Girl Group. Which is why they were so good.

She does a really good version of Johnny Thunders You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory, with Joey Ramone. Patti Smith also crops up on the album and Ode To LA features The Raveonettes, whose debt to Ronnie Spector is almost as great as their debt to The Jesus And Mary Chain.

Girl From The Ghetto is Spector's defiant vindication. Jenny may be from the block, but Ronnie reminds you exactly where she's from with the repeated line "Spanish Harlem". It's lyrics about triumph over adversity and Phil Spector include the lines "I hope your cell is full of magazines and everyone has a picture of me."

The Ronettes singles are Pop jewels. Instantly recognisable (Just think of that opening drum beat on Be My Baby…it's a Pop Quiz safe bet, you'll name it in seconds). The wall of sound and the discipline of having all your songs about boys and girls not only defined a view of American Teenage but made Pop Music that New York Punks could still love 20 years later.

Steve Van Zandt (bald under a bandana in the E Street band and bald under a quiff wig in the Sopranos) sums it up best. "Everybody loves Ronnie Spector…it's one of the byelaws of Rock 'n' Roll

Hot Club Of CowTown Glee Club Birmingham 23rd Sept

The Hot Club Of Cowtown promise "Hot jazz and Western Swing". It's an offer I can't refuse.

The original trio of guitar, stand up bass and violin started in New York in 96 before moving to Austin. Classically trained violinist Elana James and classically shit hot guitarist Whit Smith were aiming for the feel of the songs of the 30's, as played by the likes of Bob Wills, Stephane Grappelli and Django Reinhardt and a dollop of Country. I didn't know whether to wear a hat or spats. After 5 albums the band split up for 2 years. Now they're back, refreshed and swinging with a drummer in tow.

The opening song Ida Redd is a traditional; song featuring a girl who'll take a shovel to your head and it pretty much encapsulates the Hot Club approach. The vocals of James and Smith bounce off each other and there's a whopping and a hollering from bassist Jake Erwin. Smith plays fluid and scuttling guitar lines on a coffee table sized semi acoustic, James violin swoops and skips through a range of different sounds and the bass rattles like a train.

They covers include Long Way Home by Tom Waites, Duke Ellington's I Got It Bad (And That Ain't Good) and Georgia On My Mind. The songs themselves are often a stepping off point for utterly joyful, utterly skilful musicianship. It's like a particularly well run orgy…Everyone gets a turn and everyone's part is appreciated.

I Can't Give You Anything But Love is the kind of breathy playful sultriness. Part Marilyn Munroe Happy Birthday Mr President, part Jessica Rabbit. What's The Matter With The Mill ploughs a filthy furrow. Apparently there's lots of corn but they can't get no grinding done.

Their own song Forget Me Nots with it's lines about going to the mountains "Forget me nots and mountain columbine… I'm leaving you behind" would have sat happily on a Gram Parsons album. Which makes sense really as both bands were trying to draw in the folkier, traditional roots of Country rather than the rhinestones.

The actual Hot Club name throws up some interesting references. There's the original Hot Club of France with Reinhardt and Grapelli, Emmylou Harris and The Hot Band and the Hot Teens who are currently sending me 200 e mails a day. The latter must have a keen manager and an enthusiastic plugger.

They play 2 sets with a half hour break spent lurking round the merchandising stall. I like the idea of bands being directly involved in selling. It keeps the money closer to them, but rather than just cds and posters I'd like to see bands branching out into car valeting, dry cleaning or crystal therapy between sets. Actually I'd have pretty much signed up for anything with fit as a fiddler Elana James and her spotty dress.

The personal problems behind the original split are referred to when James announces this series of 22 consecutive gigs is the longest they've ever done, but they're still all getting along. Smith just sighs and says "Aww don't say that."

What makes the band special though is the feeling of spontaneity. You really do get the feeling that they're reading each other musically and are ready to take a song into a different direction. They have a great trick of building up and snapping into each others solos. It's subtly done, an extra drum beat here or a fuller chord there, but it did feel that the band were stepping up to something rather than having a rest from singing!

Jake Erwin's upright bass playing was a joy to watch, moving between a rockabilly train slap and a jazz club chug. I waited all night to see him use the bow. It was there hanging off his bass, swinging like Iggy Pop's cock. And just like an Iggy gig, the audience knew, the bow was there and knew that it probably did come out at some gigs. But that night the bow stayed in. Wonder what it would have sounded like.

Last song of the night was Orange Blossom Special was astonishingly powerful. It's a song you've probably heard many times before but Hot Club really stoked it, building up the power for the first couple of minutes, before letting it go. Like a fiddle frenzied Metallica.

There's a best of album which draws together material from the previous 5 albums which is a good place to start and you can see a version of Orange Blossom Special from Jools Holland's Later at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jr8My5Uo0gE

Sam and Dave and Isaac Hayes

When Isaac Hayes died recently there was a surprising (but deserved) amount of coverage. It may have been testament to his massive contribution to music but also to the fact that with his various roles as musician, songwriter, performer, iconic baldy, actor and voice of chef meant that there were simply more good stories about him. Death by treadmill didn't hurt the copywriters either!

Great things about Isaac Hayes.

The fact that he wrote 200 songs for Stax (and you do know a lot of them), the cover of Hot Buttered Soul with the bald head and chain and the fact that the lp only had 4 songs on it including By The Time I Get To Phoenix. With it's generous 18 minute running time, there was a fair chance you could actually get to Phoenix by the time Ike had finished the spoken intro. The slight pause as the monologue ends with the line "He said" and then the song slides into the opening line of the song. A classic soul moment, only bettered by the sweetness of the strings as it gets to the line "She'll laugh when she reaches the part that says I'm leaving"

Obviously Theme from Shaft was great. Even better was the fact that he was lifted onto the stage by a hydraulic ramp to play it at the 1971 Oscars. That's less Soulsvile USA. More like Kiss and Detroit Rock City. You've got to give credit for the fact that he had a tuxedo made of chains and also wrote a song called Pursuit Of The Pimpmobile. Oh yes. And the tooling up sequence in I'm Gonna Git You Sucka. The scene gets longer and the weapons get bigger. After being so involved in the whole Blaxploitation genre here was Hayes sending himself up.

But there's more to it than the stories and the songwriting. And more to it than great songwriter writes great song. I think what he did with Sam and Dave is even more interesting.

Hayes and song writing partner Dave Porter took an underachieving soul duo who had been signed by Atlantic's Jerry Wexler (who also died very recently) and forced them to go against their own instincts as singers. The resulting string of singles that Hayes and Porter wrote for them between 1965 and 69 are pretty much as good as it gets. Backed by a multi racial band on a white owned label that aimed at Black audiences (while in the North, Motown was the Black owned label aiming at White audiences) Sam and Dave had the Gospel fire, and the contrast of Sam Moore's pleading tenor contrasting with Dave Prater's gruff roar.

I Take what I Want
You Don't Know Like I Know
Hold On I'm Coming
You Got Me Humming
When Something Is Wrong With My baby
Soul Man
I Thank You
Everybody Got To Believe In Somebody
Soul Sister Brown Sugar

No duffers there! Hearing any of them would make anyone's world a better place. Sometimes you don't have to dig out the rare and obscure. Sometimes the best stuff was actually the hits!

Sam Moore started out singing Gospel and was all set to tour with the Soul Stirrers as a potential replacement for Sam Cooke. He changed his mind after seeing Jackie Wilson and wanted to do a broader range of material. In 1961 he was compering an amateur night in Miami he was joined onstage by Dave Prater still in his baker's whites from his day job. Prater was so nervous he dropped his mike and Sam caught it.

They'd signed to Roulette but the whole thing didn't really come together until they were signed by Jerry Wexler in 1964 and sent to Memphis....which is where Isaac Hayes came in. The hits that Hayes and Porter wrote for them forced them to sing outside their natural keys.

Sam Moore has said "The funny thing was I didn't like any of our hits when Hayes and Porter played them for us. I liked the ballads but I didn't understand their kind of music. I was looking for the straight Rock 'n' Roll and they'd come up with all these changes, horn lines doing this and we'd be doing that. Chords where you'd really have to grit your teeth to sing it"

But of course that straining gave an urgency to the sound. The horn lines, guitar and vocals were all going hell for leather. The band were doing call and response in the same way that Sam and Dave were. Hayes and Porter were writing songs for them that captured the fervour of Gospel but with celebrations of heartbreak and lust. Songs that built the Soul Man tradition. Testifying and testosterone. Sometimes he's a Broke Down Piece Of A Man (actually it's a Steve Cropper song rather than Isaac Hayes) but more likely it's Hold On I'm Coming.

Listen to the wail and flail of I Thank You, and it's opening plea for "Some more of that ooooold Soul clapping". Now go and play Black Grape's In The Name Of The Father. A record that could not have existed with Sam and Dave.

Thing is Hayes also had to convince the label owner. "Jim Stewart just did not like minor keys. Yeah yeah. The bread and butter of Gospel and Blues. He hated them in fact....Of course you couldn't be at all funky and innovative if you didn't use some of those options. So we were always at work sneaking them in"

As a live act they were legendary. They were Double Dynamite, with the non stop, athletic dance routines, the call and response vocals, feeding off each others lines and moves. I remember seeing a clip of Hold On I'm Coming where they make loosening a tie seem like a choreographed act of Soulful intensity, rather than just a way of breathing more easily.

In Gerri Hirshey's book Nowhere To Run (a terrific book on Soul that should be on the national curriculum) there is a lot of Sam and Dave...and sweat.
Prater saw it as proof that he'd worked for his pay and Moore said "Unless my body reaches a certain temperature, starts to liquify, I just don't feel right"

But despite their onstage chemistry the pair had a volatile relationship. Moore was a long term heroin addict. In 1968 Prater shot his wife during an argument. Prater's wife survived but he was never prosecuted. Moore wouldn't speak to him again. "I said I'll sing with you but I'll never talk to you again ever. So for 12 years our lives were completely separate"

In 1970 Moore recorded a solo album for Atlantic, backed by the cream of Atlantic and Stax musicians including Bernard Purdie on drums, Aretha Franklin on keyboards, Donny Hathaway and the Sweet Inspirations. Plenty Good Lovin' didn't get released until 2002.

Moore himself didn't remember making it but he did remember going to see the albums producer King Curtis in 1971. "Unfortunately when I got there he was ...ahh...getting murdered"
King Curtis Sax player (on everything from Yakety Yak to Memphis Soul Stew) and producer was carrying air conditioning equipment into his Harlem apartment when he was stabbed.

Moore remembers "Aretha was sitting across the street and I was walking towards the apartment. I could see King screaming at this guy to get off his steps....Aretha got out of the car and screamed but at the time I wasn't so clean. I was carrying stuff I didn't want any one to find. I ran before I saw him die

Sam and Dave continued to work with each other on and off through the 70's. There were various reunion tours and ill advised re recordings of their hits. The success of the Blues Brothers prompted another short lived reunion before Moore got a job serving Warrants and Prater worked for a Pontiac dealer.

Moore talks about those 70's gigs in a recent interview at http://www.zani.co.uk/Interviews.aspx?id=56 to plug his recent Overnight Sensational album (I'd go for the release of the 1970 album myself....it doesn't feature Sting or Jon Bon Jovi)

"Oh my god it was real bad. You've got to understand it wasn't a promoter that broke Sam and Dave, it was us. Sometimes Dave would show up, and I wouldn't. Sometimes I would show, and he wouldn't. We'd get up on stage, but it wasn't like the old days when we connected, and say to each other "Let's go and get them". We were getting high, I was pimping my girlfriends at the time. It wasn't such a good life then."

The Sam and Dave act had led to a myriad of male duo acts. Sam and Bill, Sam and Dan, Sam and Sam, Eddie and Ernie. At one point Dave Prater was touring as Sam and Dave with Sam from Sam and Dan.

There were legal shenanigans when Sam Moore stopped Atlantic from releasing a Sam and Dave album in 1985 that featured Sam Daniels. Moore himself felt the weight of legal process when he was ordered to stop performing Dole Man in support of Bob Dole. Sadly he was not stopped from recording Soul Man with Lou Reed. Prater had the misfortune to sell crack to an undercover policeman and then worse luck when he died following a car crash in 88.

The popularity and impact of their hits and their own personal problems meant that they were stuck with each other and their hits even when they weren't together. Although the sweat and intensity of their live shows was down to their own talent, it was the song writing of Isaac Hayes and Dave Porter
that gave them the hits that they could never escape from. Their story has some of the most thrilling moments in Pop, squandered talent, unseen chances and their own poisonous relationship.

It's like Rod Hull and Emu.

Bombay Bicycle Club

When Lemmy and his wart were young and handsome, they decided that they should be part of the Rock n Roll world because, instead of all the people telling you what you couldn't do…"These guys told you what you could do. Which is a lot more fun. And there were all the cute chicks"

Bombay Bicycle Club on the other hand formed to play at their school assembly when they 15. "We weren't very good. The school assembly was a bit of a disaster, and afterwards we messed around for a year."

They're still only 18 though and have played at V and Reading festivals and supported the Young Knives. Between exams they've also put out 3 singles. And here's the thing. They're very good. It's 2 guitars, bass and drums sound, with tuneful Sonic Youth intertwining guitars, and Jack Steadman's reedy, quavery vocals sung into the middle distance. He sounds like Mr Magoo or Marc Bolan (The Glam Larry the lamb)

New single Evening/Morning is full of unexpected musical twists and turns. It starts quietly with a steadily building drums roll and a mix of ringing, guitar picking and some coarser strummage. As it reaches a crescendo it drops back to just a filthy bass. It squeezes a few more stop starts and a great false ending into a great 3 minutes. It sounds tense and it reminds me of Drink The Elixir by Salad. I doubt if they remember it though. When that record came out the band were still too young for the ball pool.

All their records have been produced by Arctic Monkeys producer Jim Abiss. How Are You, from last years How We Are ep released on the own Mmm label has more stop start trickery and has a bit more of a Dinosaur Jr feel especially the drums.

The chiming discordant guitars of Open House from their debut single Boy I Used To Be (also from last year) are more like The Strokes.

They're a band with loads of potential and I do like to hear band talk about their exams nearly as much as their records. I bet Lemmy does too.

http://www.myspace.com/bombaybicycleclub

The Hold Steady

On the few occasions recently when I haven't been thinking about The Wire, I've mostly been thinking about how much I'm looking forward to the new Hold Steady album. I was really taken by them after seeing them on Jools Holland last year. Their last album Boys And Girls In America was their breakthrough album. Bruce Springsteen meets AC/DC as opposed to their first 2 albums which were Bruce Springsteen meets Husker Du. Stadium indie played by a bunch of Brooklyn blokes who comfortably manage to pull off the look of being a bunch of 30 something blokes who know their way around a bar, a bar band, a hotdog stand and quite possibly did see the Bears games on Saturday. They are the best new old band of recent years with just the right mix of classic rock moves, the Punk Rock sensibilities to keep all that Rock in check and the terrific lyrics of Craig Finn. Part Springsteen/Strummer declamatory roar and part pissed poetry.

Stuck Between Stations was the stand out track and single from their last album Boys And Girls In America and contains more good ideas than you generally need in a song. Kerouac quoting, AC/DC riffing and the lyric "Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together. Crushing one another with colossal expectations" Phew!

The ascending riff leading into the chorus is just monumental and straight out of the Angus Young's notebook. It is the cock of the school of rock. It was one of my favourite records of the year but some ear discretion is advised. Some of the keyboards are less E Street Band and more Bruce Hornsby and his bastard Range. So if you are Bruce averse (either Springsteen or Hornsby) then you need to concentrate more on the first 2 albums Almost Killed Me and Separation Sunday where the taut relentless guitars roll like tanks. There are crunching guitars and shouty bloke tales of suburban casualties where often the same characters run like a thread through his lyrics. War vets and party casualties and more painkillers than a celebrity "My Hollywood Hell" edition of Heat.

You wouldn't want him at your wedding...when the vicar asks if there is an any cause or just impediment, loose lips Finn would be bellowing out an eye watering story from the staggy!

The single from the forthcoming album is exactly what is required. Sequestered in Memphis seems to be a Police interview. (A parallel to Jenny Was A Friend Of Mine by The Killers) Something has gone badly wrong after picking up a woman in a bar. "We didn't go back to her place, we went to some place where she cat sits"

Finn leads into each chorus with a variation of "I'll tell the story, again…"

And as for the chorus itself, it's a 6 line distillation of what's great about the band. "Subpoenaed in Texas, sequestered in Memphis" A blend of legalese and geography. Craig Finn, the Replacements fan from Minneapolis is still so in love with Rock 'n' Roll that he thinks it's just enough for him to invoke the names Texas and Memphis and for that to be just enough to carry the song. In this case it is.

The American legal terms may be familiar to British ears through years of exposure to their legal system through films and telly (It's been like distance learning for me. I wouldn't exactly claim to be qualified, but I reckon I could pace around an American courtroom) but it really is not what you expect to hear in a chorus. Generally I look for a chorus that promotes cars, girls or shaking either booty, that thing or even the room.

Either way it's a great record and exactly what I want to hear from them. The new album Stay Positive is available on ITunes but I'm holding out until the 14th for the physical release, the digipack and the extra tracks.

There is more Hold Steady at http://www.thestirrer.co.uk/ps1405071.html


Stuck Between Stations is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Cem1ME-OvQ

Sequestered In Memphis is at http://www.myspace.com/theholdsteady

Zutons - You Can Do Anything

The Zutons are back. Like the first cheeky bollock peeking out of the shorts of summer. Not quite want you want to see all the time, but the occasional view is always funny. I do like the band, although they may not appreciate being compared to cheeky bollocks. They started it though by calling their last album Tired Of Hanging Around.

This time round they've lost a guitarist, gained a producer (George Drakoulias who produced The Black Crows and Primal Scream) and singer Dave McCabe has had a new beard fitted.

The album cover has the band in the desert playing second fiddle to a giant silver Z. Now there is a proud tradition of monuments in Pop Culture from the monolith in 2001 A Space Odyssey, Spinal Tap's Stonehenge, and the monument on the Cover of Who's Next that seemed to be both public and convenient. The giant silver Z just feels more like a left over prop from a car advert though and I end up looking at Abi's legs rather than the fine corporate branding.

The albums is less odd ball than Who Killed The Zutons and doesn't have anything as good Valerie or Oh Stacey (Look What You've Done) from the last album, but there's still plenty to like. Starting with McCabe's hoarse yearning vocals and Sean Payne's excellent drumming.

My swaggering greasy Southern Rock A Boogie requirements have usually been satisfied by The Black Crows, rather than a bunch of Scouse Beefheart botherers. I'm not complaining though. Harder And Harder is a great opening track with slide guitar and gamely honking sax and really is only a few footsteps away (over the on stage Persian carpet) from The Black Crows. And if that's the Drak influence then I'm all for it.

What's Your Problem is a stomping brassy pop soul affair ushered in with jabbering sax and guitar riffs with plenty of" Huh" and "Yeahs" for backing vocals.

Always Right Behind You sticks it's thumbs in it's belt loops and rocks like a vintage Top Of The Pops. All slide guitar and platform shoes. It's extremely silly and you really shouldn't like it as much as you will

McCabe's lyrics on this album have come in for criticism as being clichéd and poisonous. Bumbag opens with the line "Raise a glass now to the person who invented the word called scum"

Family Of Leeches is a Shameless episode set to music. All asbos and hearts of gold. Maybe he's having problems with the neighbours of the house he bought with the proceeds of Valerie.

The first album definitely had odder lyrics though with it's images of zombies, Dirty Dancehalls and the self referential Zuton fever. McCabe claims he wants to write stories you can dance to and always writes about "trouble and mischief".

Valerie is "About our mate Valerie getting done for drink driving and about telling her to come and see me, give her a hug, kind of thing. 'Cos she's got ginger hair too. It's obviously her, it's very literal."

I quite like literal. One of the best tracks from the last album was The Little Things we do. Literally about hangovers, it's a wry look at the problems of sandwich making after hay making and it may not have been prize wining poetry but id did have a sax part that sounded like it was hurtling down the hallway to hurl.

There are plenty of songs of trouble and mischief on this album though.

Freak is a Gigolo song while Put A Little Side is a tale of funny money and bogus jobs.

"5 times a year I'll return with the fake pay packet that I didn't earn. I'm the one who works the oil rigs but clearly I'm not".

My favourite tracks are the up-tempo, rockier ones like Harder And Harder and Always Right Behind You. But I've made a little room in my life for Don't Get Caught. It is pickety country folk, that's part Everybody's Talkin' that sits comfortably on a cushion of perfectly judged keyboards. I also like Give Me A Reason with it's George Harrison guitar

There are sample tracks at http://www.columbia.co.uk/listen/the_zutons/you_can_do_anything___the_times_online

They've been playing a series of gigs at Forestry Commission sites (come on wouldn't you rather go to an arboretum than an auditorium) and play at Cannock Chase 28th June

Vic Goddard and Subway Sect

Subway Sect were the Punk band that got away. Artier than their contemporaries, they were Post Punk before Punk had even happened. But whilst the similarly influenced and awkward Wire left a legacy of great records, the original Subway Sect just left the 2 singles: Nobody's Scared and Ambition. The debut album was scrapped and through a mixture of mismanagement and contrariness Vic Goddard's records and song writing style veered through big bands, swing and Northern Soul. Eventually he ran out of genres and became a postman.

However last year he re-recorded songs from the planned debut aiming for the sound and feel of that era. Released last year as 1978 Now, it's a really good record, and I dearly wish it had been around in 1978! An accompanying series of gigs included Leicester Firebug, which was a bit of a treat

www.thestirrer.co.uk/gom1911071.html

School friends Vic Goddard and guitarist Rob Symmons formed the band after seeing the Sex Pistols at the Marquee. Malcolm Mclaren paid for their early rehearsals to get them ready for the 2 day Punk festival at the 100 Club in September 76. In those early days, audiences may have been small but they were all forming bands, as Sex Pistols gigs became the focus for the curious and disaffected.

“I thought the Sex Pistols were the end of Rock n Roll but as it turned out they weren’t. Steve Jones had obviously learned to play from the New York Dolls but we wanted to sound like the Velvet Underground or The Seeds. Nothing remotely heavy. We never used ordinary guitars, a Gibson or a Strat. We used Fender Mustangs because they have a trebly sound. We became quite purist. Our guitarist refused to allow any macho Rock ‘n’ Roll attitudes on stage"

Subway Sect's instruments were on HP but even more onerously they were managed by Clash manager Bernie Rhodes. They were on The White Riot tour in 1977 with The Clash, Slits and Buzzcocks.

Nobody's Scared came out in 1978 on Braik records (Rhodes own label). It's a thrilling and god-awful racket, with the drums working overtime and the other instruments quite keen to put in the hours too!

The opening line "Everyone is a prostitute, singing the song in prison, Moral standards the wallpaper" fits in with Goddard’s aim to change the way that Rock songs were written. “To pare it down, take out all the Americanisms. I didn’t mind what went into the songs as long as the language was different. No “yeahs” and “baby”.

The call and response vocal lines and non Rock ‘n’ Roll language of that debut would also crop up in bands like Gang Of 4 or Au Pairs

Subway Sect’s influences were Johnny Thunders and Jonathan Richman, Erik Satie, Debussy and Dada. Slightly compromised by the fact that they still couldn't really play and the gigs were chaotic.

"The Sex Pistols represented what could be done but they had really been practising since 1974 so they really could play quite well while we literally not only couldn't play, we weren't even the sort of people who would be in a group in the first place and still aren't! I wouldn't look twice at an amplifier! We tended to try and do everything in a different way just because we couldn't do it in a proper way. We had a big thing with the Buzzcocks, we were totally on the same wavelength and the Prefects as well. We came out of the same mould. They were Birmingham, we were London and the Buzzcocks were Manchester but we were very similar, we'd all started from scratch”.

Rough Trade's Geoff Travis issued the second single Ambition later in 78. “Subway Sect were so literary. Vic is the great lost soul of the era. His nihilism is more extreme than anyone’s. He seemed to have seen through the circus, which he was being enticed into, from day one. He saw all the contradictions and didn’t want to be a pop star”

This makes what happened next all the more extraordinary. The band were recording what should have been the debut album at Gooseberry studios (Linda Lusardi's brother was the engineer), Bernie Rhodes basically sacked the rest of the band scrapped the album and then kept Goddard on as a songwriter (£100 per week for 10 songs…. regardless of quality) for a planned stable of acts.

Ambition was the only thing released from those sessions. It still ranks as one of the great Punk singles but at the time the band hated it. Not just the ones who'd been sacked. Goddard wasn't too keen either. Symmons thought that it sounded like "Just a great big Rock record". Well it didn't. But it certainly didn't sound quite like anything else that Punk had produced either, with it's guitar crashing opening chords, plinky keyboards and bubbling electronics (the latter was added by Rhodes and had the same grisly appeal as the horrible jug sound of the 13th Floor Elevators)

Still tied in with Rhodes, Vic Goddard released What's the Matter Boy in 1980 using many of the songs that would have been on the lost album. It's slick, a bit gimmicky and a long way from The Velvet Underground. Goddard has described his “reluctant cooperation” in making it and calls it a skiffle album. It features original Clash drummer Terry Chimes and his bass playing brother and also The Black Arabs (as featured on the great Rock n Roll Swindle Soundtrack…. oh yes Goddard’s world was still spinning on a McLaren/Rhodes axis)

Stop That Girl is a really good song though and I think long time fan Edwyn Collins definitely cocked an ear to the arrangement of Stop That Girl for his own songs on the first Orange Juice album. Orange Juice also covered Goddard’s song Holiday Hymn.

The line up of Subway Sect for the Songs For Sale album included the musicians that would later make up Joboxers. I saw them at Manchester Apollo in 1981 supporting Altered Images. A soon to be Joboxer asked the audience “Is Vic there?….cos he aint fucking here!” before launching into funny, clever and downright musical set of instrumentals. Without the elusive Goddard.

He recorded an album T.R.O.U.B.LE as a big band with the musicians who’d backed Joe Jackson on his Jumping Jive album but it didn’t get released until 86. Loss of impetus, loss of interest and so he was off to the Post office.

There have been projects since including an album The End Of The Surrey People produced by Edwyn Collins, a musical with Irvine Welsh and the albums Long Term Side Effect and Sansend.

Thing is I’m biased. I was much more interested in the prospect of original Subway Sect songs played as they were meant to be. He’s still an unlikely looking figure, as befits a man who sang We Oppose All Rock N Roll. At the Leicester gig drummer Mark Laff (one of the original Subway Sect drummers, who later joined Generation X) announced that there would be an encore but “Vic’s having a cup of tea” Rock ‘n’ Roll Phew! A chance to see a genuine Punk one off I’ll drink to that!

There are good interviews (well I’ve plundered them) with Goddard and Symmons at
www.punk77.co.uk/groups/subwaysectvicgoddardinterviewsep2001.htm

http://www.3ammagazine.com/musicarchives/2002_nov/interview_vic_godard.html

http://www.vicgodard.com/

There are streamed tracks of Nobody’s Scared, Ambition and Chain Smoking at

www.last.fm/music/Subway+Sect/_/Nobody%27s+Scared

He plays at Kings Heath Hare and Hounds on 30th May