Sounds from the overground - solitary rants from the listening man No.5

I've been flagging lately - illness rolling around these bones  - you know the chills mutiplying - losing control. 

So in order to keep some semblance of writing happening here - it's a short post - i'll be updating very soon - longer and possibly diving back into the recording process and dates and stuff. 

So here you are then - happy new year - (class) war is not over. 

I have been spending far too much time making compilations of Euros Childs, Jonny, Teenage Fanclub and The Well green

Stuart Kidd is a beautiful musician. Honest, creative with songs to sing along too. You should look up his band camp site. There’s a wealth of lovely things there – a genuine wealth.

I came across The Wellgreen.

Euros continues to produce the most consistently beautiful sounds you could ever wish for and I have decided that next year I’ll interview him for this blog. A new twist in 2013. He doesn’t know it and hopefully it will be as good as my J Mascis interview conducted when I was mere youth. It was five words long. Bloody grungers.

I have listened to EPMD Never Seen Before exiting from the workplace – because I’m street like that.

Students I once taught have provided soundtracks to my waking hours – you all should check out Clouded Judgement, Beatmasta Bill and Monkeysteak.

Inkrument have failed to follow up a seminal long player. Pull your fingers out fellas.

The Super Furries have emerged on the periphery of my being.

Richard Chester is the new Brian Wilson or Spector or Joe Meek – take your pick really. We love him in this house.  

I missed The Fall, Orbital, The Stone Roses, The Primitives, and The Beach Boys this year.

My brother continued to see Adam Ant and saw The Stone Roses.

I’ve played Denim a great deal.

Summer Special is my No.1 album of 2012

I have avidly listened to Duglas’ recommendations on Twitter.

I have tuned into FNOOB – and got down to the Orb Sound System. 

I am pondering whether to get a Primal Scream ticket for March. 

I've got two music books to read - one called Telling Stories the other all about the mavericks in the independent scene from 1975 til 2005. 

I bought five cds for one pound yesterday – I am currently playing Simian Mobile Disco’s mixed set for Bugged Out. It is very good – bass and bleeps. 

The ever popular Denim

Not many people write about Denim as they do about Felt. These are bands by the way – not fabrics. I haven’t changed the nature of the writing. It’s still about music. Lawrence – as it simply is - gets all fawned over for the Felt beauty whilst the throbbing and bubbling glam stomping pure rock n roll of Denim is seen as an aberration – a record that poured scorn on the sensitivity and style of Felt. Saying that it’s not as if Felt get written about a lot. Although recent ‘media’ interest in a film with Lawrence (of Belgravia) made a few headlines in the back pages of music magazines. This is of course not true because music magazines don’t put those sort of things in the back of the papers. And if I’m honest I don’t read music magazines – or as they were called in my day – the music press – the papers as avidly anymore. So I may have missed a six page feature on the Rise and Fall of Lawrence. I somehow feel that I haven’t – but you never can tell.

Paul and me used to buy the music papers – you know - read it in the press.

There was a lot of them back when we wore donkey jackets to protect us from the cold on our walk into town. Broke and on the dole. Just hanging around. Uptown. We would buy nearly all the music papers every week – there was writing in there. Lots of words about records and that - it was relevant and irreverent.

We would only buy Sounds if we had too. It was a bit metal in the eighties. We weren’t metal. But each to his own. Paul did once own an Iron Maiden picture disc and I bought Gillian’s New Orleans on 7 inch in Boots. In the precinct – just down from WH Smiths – I think you can say that made us ‘metal’ for a week or so. But I never could take to the clothes. You need creases in your trousers – give it an iron and that – and the denim is so faded – I like mine dark.

I couldn’t get enough of Denim when I first heard them. The excitement had been building for months in our Scunthorpe bedroom - as Paul (my brother) and I read of Lawrence’s plans to form this group, this rocking behemoth of a band. Two drummers. Synthesizers and guitars and Lawrence’s studied coolness. Denim were so much more Britpop than any of that unnecessary nonsense that came out in the nineties. They were British and they made pop music. Not eccentric or located in the past. Pop music for the day which referenced their youth. Arppeggiated synthesizers and theme tune melodies wrapped in a disdain for the eighties – beautiful really. And again if I’m being honest - sounding so much better than Felt.

I had a wonderful friend at university – who loved Felt. You know - felt Felt – if you get me. I admired his patience – his integrity. You either get it or you don’t. He formed a wonderful band – part in his head – part in real life – Bellevue – they would have been brilliant. They had a master plan – like Felt did.

Except theirs and Felt’s never came off.

Saying that I wanted Denim to be huge – but it wasn’t to be.

If I remember rightly – and I seldom do. So I’m told. We ventured to town – along Ashby Road – past The Beefeater and over Howden’s Hill to Record Village. The home of ‘smart. music – this wasn’t their slogan – I just made it up. But you get my drift – you could buy those alternative sounds of the underground there. You could find good music (if you liked good music – do you like good music?) And we wanted to buy the long player by Denim all bright blue and 70s fonts.

It was the song title ‘I’m against the eighties’ that had chimed with us all. It was everything we had felt in this disposed decade – Thatcher’s ruin. The running down of every public service and any act of collectivism – of organising and protesting – was the norm. You know you’re a teenager and you’re growing up feeling fairly hopeless. Just as she had wanted. Because you can be crushed then – and we are now. This was being left out in the cold and Lawrence channelled all of that into a fix of pop. I took a look around there was nothing going down in the ‘80s. As I have stated previously – music cannot change the world but it can chime with a thought and a feeling. I’m sick of winklepicker kids - mary chain debris. Lawrence achieved that on Back in Denim – this reflection on things past as ‘Robin’s Nest’ synths bubbled and squelched and guitars riffed. Or Middle of the Road that challenged all that coolness and being hip.

I hate to be hip – I want to be square. So there.

I wish I could have seen them perform live. I remember video tapes at the ready for a performance on ‘Later’. They were wonderful. This was what Denim had sounded like in my head. They were making glam rock for a modern age – they were taking a bit of care. This was a band that signed to Boy’s Own at the time. Taking the idea that they were a dance band – rock music was finished – this was about doing it differently. You need different strokes for different folks.

Yet Back in Denim cost so much to make that Boy's Own went bankrupt. Or so they say. Denim were never going to hit big. That was until EMI said they would sign Denim if Lawrence came up with hit material. I mean imagine that – the band already had an album’s worth and here were these A&R fuckers asking for the hits. So he gave them one – a bubblegum pop called Summer Smash.

EMI loved it. It was Radio 1's single of the week.

"It was all set to come out on a Monday," remembers Lawrence. "Then Princess Di died on the Sunday before. EMI melted all the singles down."

Cursed – some might say.Lawrence would go on to form Go Kart Mozart. They're brilliant too. Lawrence tends to add that touch of magic.

So here’s to a Denim revival. It’s 2012. Let’s all have a bit of Lawrence in our lives.

Oh and stick with the clip – I think the beginnings some programme on Spanish television but suddenly Lawrence appears. You can look up the recorded version on line – if you like the beauty and soul in this performance.

This bird has flown.

I used to ride my bike out and about the sallow streets of Scunthorpe. People to see, places to be – busy busy busy me. There was a sense of freedom in having a set of wheels that could propel you from A to B (then down to Zee). I never progressed to a moped – or a Honda 50cc – it was pedal power. I would cycle out to Normanby Hall up and over that steeltown to pastures new and fresh. Escape the town. Searching for some tranquillity, well some privacy. And when you are young and run free [keep your teeth nice and clean] you feel alright.

You feel that anything just might be possible.

And I’ve been thinking about this green and pleasant land somewhat. England’s dream an all that. Those flashes of countryside and the urge to go running through fields and meadows – all bowlheaded youth and innocence.

You know when I look at this town – brings me right down.

Which brings me to Kes.Most things eventually arrive at that film’s door. It’s why I do what I do I guess.

I can’t exactly pinpoint when I saw this film. I feel I lived it. It felt incredibly alive to me. That opening sequence of shadow and silence – as bags filled with newspapers are shipped round streets by children on bikes and worn out shoes. I used to post the papers. I used to post the letters. Solitary jobs with banal chit chat in between.

I’ve spent my life doing that.

And I mean the chit chat is banal whilst at work. It’s hard to get to know a person when you wear the suit and carry the clipboard. Well ipad these days – we’re all hyperlinked now maaaan.

But back to the film with the bird in.

It’s a film that seeps beneath the skin. All extinguished hope and brutality. And this is where the score is so important. I am fan of the sound in film. The need to guide and explain through timbre and tone. I like its absence and its abundance in the frame – it helps a film if you can feel it to. John Cameron’s pastoral shadings grounded in the blown and plucked instrumentation of a quintet ready to conjure up hope and cheer whilst ultimately pegged to the melancholic and solitary, is both haunting and exhilarating. I wanna be free – free as a bird. This combination of simple instrumentation that documents the countryside and floats on air whilst tethered to that fragile state on land makes my heart bleed.

As I get older – and believe me it seems to becoming thick and fast – swift and sharp I return to that beautiful film and wonderful score. Emma bought it for me. A simple CD of soaring tunes. Untethered in Jarvis Cocker’s words as John Cameron composes and conducts this five piece to flight. English composers need sharing. We don’t share enough of this. This music is not about winning competitions. This is cold houses and bingo callers, booze in pubs and fights and chips. It is not a fairytale. It is music to soundtrack the humdrum – the inevitable - yet it asks us to want that little bit more.

It is socialist in sound – egalitarian in spirit.

I caught a moment of Downton or some other serialised shit that only has the working class as servants. There are no other depictions of them – of us these days. Unless you count the horrorshow of public aping and baiting from Jeremy Kyle to Britain’s got Talent. You see Hines had a care – Loach had this film made. They want us to have a voice even if we fucking choke it ourselves. There’s nothing wrong in being eduated you know. Nothing wrong about that. It gives you some choice – not a great deal – but something better.

There is thought in every moment of this film.

This is not a soundtrack of the time. It resonates now. Thought given to frame and direction as Cameron scores this tragedy from beginning to end. They used a clip from the film in the Olympics they didn’t use Cameron’s score. Missed opportunity – and I thought Cocker was involved.

Having children and being so close to those pit villages when I was younger and swaddled in this industrial life reminds me that choices might have changed for the youth but the class system still fucking grinds you down. And Cameron’s music serves to remind us that we deserve better. There’s nothing wrong in escape – of wanting some beauty in your life. Casper wasn’t looking to tear down this existence – he wasn’t a poster boy for Thatcherism – Casper sought his beauty in nature – in the opposite of the filth – he was still full of fury though.

We’re all full of fury at times. Little fury things.

There’s no real point discussing the film here. You either know it or you don’t. Suffice to say that it’s in most things that I do – the humour, the politics and the style. I once taught a Film Studies class who bought me a signed poster by the cast, Hines and Loach as a leaving present. It wasn’t ironic – they loved Kes too. I want it shown on the BBC on a monthly basis – so it gets stumbled upon by the unassuming. Either that or it goes head to head with the X Factor.

The bird wins every time.

I want my children to have some opportunities. I want them to be able to listen to music like this. I want them to do what they want. I will not let them have their wings clipped.

John Cameron re-wrote Whole Lotta Love too – the TOTP theme tune. That was different from this. But you know there’s a few sides to everyone.

This is from Kes. Listen.

This is a raving POP blast

Back in those distance pasts when cardigans ruled and a quiff was the order of the day – I would make contact with like-minded souls through ink and roughly recorded cassettes. Scrawl out your ideas and hope that reciprocation was the order of the day – much like this hyper-writing on here. So letters were sent and songs exchanged and gigs attended.

I’m not certain how I first heard The Groove Farm – it may have been on John Peel, it may have been a flexi-disc taken from the hand of another fanzine writer, a cassette from a friend or in the flesh – but I’ve been thinking about them recently.

I guess that’s because through some odd quirks of fate I was suddenly reacquainted with that heady bunch of beatniks through the vagaries of social networking. A picture posted from the past – tagged with a friend and then suddenly comments from groove farmers and rosehip(sters) arriving in inboxes and awakening memories of fuzzy pop and feeling.  They really were quite a group – I saw them more as a collective if I’m honest – I was a little afraid of them -  if I’m honest – looking back they couldn’t have been that much older than me – but they already had the indie cultural competence tucked under their belts. Tours and vinyl, sessions and interviews – a real pop band in bleak times adding excitement and simplicity  - a raving pop blast to our humdrum lives.

As is the way - independent pop music post C86 was characterized as a shambling – rambling discordant bunch of no hopers giving rock a bad a name. Now don’t get me wrong I found it hard to revel in the fey and the flowery – but that isn’t really representative of the scene. Although I will go on record that I was a bowl headed youth who once wore a paisley pyjama top as a shirt. I’d like it to be viewed as a confrontational fashion statement – a nod to the sartorial send ups of PuNk rock. It wasn’t. It was a pyjama top left in a charity shop from the relatives of a dead old man.  Not that anyone would ever admit that there was a scene by the way  – it was a scene with no name. Commonalities and connections – shared interests and recommendations.

It was friendship across cities and fields.

And whilst I don’t find myself diving for blasts of that teenage anguish in the same way as I used to – there are moments when those tunes come rolling down the streets and right into my heart. Simple as that really. There’s always space for a Pastels tune somewhere, for The Sea Urchins, the Razorcuts, Remember Fun and The Groove Farm.

And this is about The Groove Farm as I said. A band of Bristol troopers. Creating their own brand of buzz soul glam stomp shouters. You see it’s hard to categorise a band like The Groovies – no one by the way ever referred to them as this – and to be honest no one will ever again. But they make you feel playful and daft and want to write all that daftness down. Not that you could or shouldn’t take them seriously either. But they weren’t out for the studied cool of the Velvets – although they had an edge. You get me – they weren’t CUD – they had an edge. The Groove farm were a noisy guitar pop band made in 1986 -  making things happen on the cheap, with handmade sleeves, and hand coloured labels. It felt personal and honest. This DIY punk spirit seeping into our sore heads and happy hearts. But live was where it was at – there was a control of the cacophony and rock to its roll. Garage punk played fast and loud with ba ba baaas and sha la la laaas.  They could work an audience. They could play  - sometimes on the verge of disintegrating or coming to a grinding halt but somehow rescuing the collapse and building something ba ba ba better. I saw them a fair number of times as they made their way up North to play Arts centres, public houses and polytechnics. It was that kind of time. We – that is The Williams – supported them – we were loud and jangly  - they were simply ace. Good times. I know the whole Subway records ordeal is not considered the pinnacle of pop for The Groove Farm  - but Alvin is King was/ is a stomper. A record that should be in your record collection.

And now through chance posts and pictures from my past I’m suddenly connected to Andrew (of the Groove Farm) and reacquainted with that energy and purpose they made. He’s still making music  - I expect they all are – but I’m not that well connected – moved on to a different place – like we all do – you can buy his records by searching for Our Arthur. There’s an honesty and in all his tunes – that goes right back to that Kvatch flexidisc.  You should have a listen. I have. And I liked them.

There’s also a covers album of old Groove Farm songs that Andrew has put together. I’ll get round to buying that soon.  The Williams weren’t asked to contribute – but we used to do a mean version of ‘In the Summertime’ – in a cold rehearsal room in an Ashby church.  

So in the spirit of connecting with the past – but trying to look forward. This is a raving Pop blast. 

There’s a natural mystic in the air

I stumbled across Golden Clouds today. A Perry/ Orb collaboration that borrowed from one tune and cheekily became another over four minutes. The subtle sequences of fluffy clouds laying host to Scratch’s observations and overstanding. As this red, gold and green wizard kicked off his shoes and walked in ponds and streams to bring his musings on things that floated.

I like Lee Scratch Perry. He’s a nutter. But I like him.

I wrote some time back about jury service in industrial ports. Of Grimsby streets and barbaric youth stood up in docks made from wood not ones that produced ships or unloaded goods. I was young myself then. I was judging not being judged. Unlike now as I wait for the suits and the clipboards to hasten an exit from a profession I am actually good at but they will fail to see. But that’s another story. And I’m telling this one.

I have talked about purchasing Linton Kwesi Johnston’s sounds. I have yet to tell of the second tape purchased from that record store – which is now a simple stolen shot that I find hard to recall. A shop on the streets full of sounds and surprises. As I said before I was looking for tapes – digging the crates – to fill the journey on hard train seats from Grimsby to Scunthorpe. A scenic route as yet to feature on any holiday programme or Portillo’s travels by train. It’s all blast furnaces, coal trucks, articulated lorries and corrugated sheds.

It was my vista. Show me yours.

And there nestled in the ‘reggae, reggae’ section with UB40 and Aswad was a little tape. Red and green – the gold being the music – do you get me?  An almighty allegiance with the Mad Professor – all gated reverb and twisted pitches  - dubbing them crazy. It spoke to me at that time – and listening to it now it talks again – all version and sound sound sound. This upsetter was making me happy through dub workouts and smoked up sounds – (duppy) conquering. There was something magical in licks and rolls, the snatches and snippets of bass and drum heavy in reverberation that tickled and soothed my brain.

I’ve always liked those dub sounds – as tapes melted and heated and expanded and sounds merged and extended with rimshots and bursts of melody. It’s a Jamaican ting. This warmth of sound in the warmth of the sun. Yet it translates to concrete streets and struggles. It’s excursions and versions sound tracking our resistance and anger. You can understand why PuNk got it. As I said in a post about P.I.L – John didn’t have a support act – he simply had some dub. It starts deep and takes you deeper.

There used to be a wonderful public house in New Cross. By the university, all smoky corners and pool hall bravado and simple reggae sounds. The Tavern – a haven for the Goldsmiths’ underground – well a place to drink after hours. You would hear a mighty tune in there of an evening. It was a mellow place. As I have aged I think I’ve become more aware of the trouble that bass can cause – as it seeps under floorboards and through walls. But this was a public house – you can play that kind of stuff there. I don’t pull out my Augustus Pablo records or King Tubby 12s these days. Even though we’re end of terrace – it doesn’t seem fair on the neighbours. As the grey hairs come thick and fast you just buy better headphones.

There’s a wonderful book heavy in weight and attitude called Bass Culture. It rides the beginnings of bass right through those West Indian struggles and leaves you feeling knowledgeable about politics, race and sound. You should read it – you probably have done. Scratch pops up in there from time to time. A pioneer, a seer, a shaker and a maker. His imprint sitting in all things reggae. You can’t ignore his presence and what presence he has.

And over the years Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry has bubbled and popped up across a variety of records I’ve bought. Through Trojan sets, MC battles and blissed out ambience Scratch can be called on to provide that sideways stomp. The unexpected. Not lyrically  - his musings and bubblings have a familiar ring – but his philosophy is one of not compromising.

Build it up. Burn it down.

I don’t buy into all that mysticsm – I don’t need a God to explain a thing – we’ve got scientists for all of that. And I like them. But possibly not chatting on records. This crazy witchdoctor can provide that and the Mad Professor can man the mixing desk. Dubbing it crazy for those who like their bass on the heavy, heavy, heavy side.  The professor really is an academic of dub. He can twist and tickle a line – make it say something else – educate the mind without words – through sounds.

I like Lee Scratch Perry. I like the Mad Professor. I like them working together.

This is was on the tape. Now it’s in your house.