Why I hate The Doors

I had wondered around Pere Lachaise clocking and checking the important, the famous and of course the dead - Comte had been first – it’s a sociology thing – founding father and all that. Inevitably though you stumble across old Mr Morrison in a corner of the cemetery. All incense sticks, cigarettes and armed guards. It’s an odd state of affairs to have an armed gendarme protect the ‘soul’ of the Lizard King but he’s there each day – at the ready in case some immaculately stoned youth decides to scrawl their own poetry over the headstone and further add to our misery.

It’s a depressing sight – you’d think in a cemetery it was always going to be – but there’s something fevered in the response of the visitors to this dead centre. I don’t think I’ve seen any other rock n roll graves – it’s not something I’ve taken an interest in to be honest. You know check out Bolan, Curtis, Ogden’s graves. I did read once that Andrew Innes had been sick at Elvis’s ‘shrinestone remembrance area’ [tm The Colonel] in Gracelands’ getting himself, Duffy and the Throb thrown out as a result. I thought this was an honourable way to recognise the impact of the King. Excess and reverence and retching rolled into one. But I haven’t really gone in for the whole great and the dead tour – laying 45s at the final resting places of the decadent and confused.

We happened across his big old grave to be honest – there was some foreign exchange student all wild eyed and haired staring intently at the stone – strung out on LSD and just going with the flow – no headphones – no ipod – just the soundtrack of his mind. I hope he didn’t have a Jefferson Airplane moment that brought him crashing back to reality – it can happen you know. Anyway he was giving the grave the wide eye and the guard was guarding – he may well have had his own soundtrack going on in his mind – it was hard to tell. He did look mightily bored though – I guess it doesn’t help the esteem when you’re down the local tabac and you say you’re pretty much security for someone who already took the bullet.

Except Jim never took a bullet – he took a bath. And died in it.

Not exactly like Marat is it? Not as important - although it was clear from the historical archives that Marat needed a wash – he’d been down in the sewers. It’s probably fair to say that Jim needed a sponge down too – what with all the leather and the blubber he’d piled on. And I’m not saying you can’t be large and a rock and roller – once again ladies and gentleman I give you the King. There’s a whole mythology that runs riot with Morrison all mystical musings and predictions and contradictions about words and actions and this is why I guess I hate the Doors. Because you don’t happen to find the Doors – no paths lead there. You are told about the Doors by a guy who’s finding his inner Native American and his experimentation has opened up the way to discover truths and that about himself, and America and the people [because they’re strange right?] and that he once looked at the skies above Arizona and Jim spoke to him.

And that person always wears a pair of leather trousers and will invariably drink ‘bourbon’ and will harangue you at your first university party.

I once had a pair of leather trousers and long hair. I hadn’t meant to tap into the Jim zone – I hadn’t witnessed a car load of dead Native Americans on a dusty Scunthorpe street – I had just grown my hair and bought some trousers from Daryl because he didn’t want them – it was more a club thing – the trousers were from William someone – bought in Manchester or Covent Garden or something – not Camden.

Anyway there were those that lost their way to the JD and the poetry of the Californian highway – I had made sure that I wasn’t one of them. I think it’s the studiedness of it all that grates with me – the elevation of a few choice words and phrases that taken as a ‘gospel’ and enlightened look at the now or in this case the ‘then’. I get the feeling Morrison was the Madonna of the 1960s – soul less and shallow but justified by those around him because they felt they should know a few references to this book and that he’d read and quote. I had a moment of transcendence with The Doors – found myself feeling quietly safe at a party in Brockley when Jim and the boys were playing – mild freakin’ whenever the Pixies were played. I got through it. Ended up throwing fried chicken across the streets of Lewisham – funny how the Doors can lead to that.

Wild abandon in a vacuous manner.

So as I said I think the overblown [American] saga that goes with the Doors and constant elevation of ‘god like’ status galls me and may well be the barrier to actually listening to them. Coupled with the fawning over Ray Manzarek’s keyboard action [I have a recollection of reading endless articles in some musical instrument magazine found in my local music shop] and already the gander is up. There’s a nod to the leftfield on the cover art that rankles me as well – and I can’t find the inclination to find out more. Perhaps I like my cool from the East coast – a different kind of leather.

However alongside this irrational hatred of The Doors comes the acceptance that they pretty much invented the ‘baggy scene’. And though it pains me to admit ‘Peacefrog’ is a groove that’s good to get down to. It rolls and it trips – jangles and jumps in simple lines and fluid bass. It’s like The Charlatans early demos. I haven’t heard them – but I guess this is what they would sound like.

So whilst inviting you in to hate The Doors with me. I give you this a testimony to the enduring ability to forgive and not take sides. I’m too old for that. I’m 41 today – so here’s The Doors. I’m a changing man.

This is new electric pop and soul

When I was in my twenties – Paul – my brother and Ian – our bassist – and of course friend – used to fantasize about seeing the return of Brian Wilson. Not the Eugene Landy version – although we thought the ‘Brian Wilson’ album was sublime in places – it was just the digital production that was letting us down. That momemt when the keyboard sounds over enhanced or the reverb is too crisp and lacks the warmth [of the sun] we had become accustomed to from repeated listens to Today and Summer Days Summer Nights. 

No we collectively channeled our desire into seeing the real Brian ‘back’. Our late night haze creating the set lists that Brian would sing as Mike Love took a kicking from all of us for stepping on Brian’s [vocal] chords for all those years.  We never thought it would happen though – much like hearing Smile – it was the stuff of dreams.

Those holy grails of pop.

Yes we had bought the Smile t-shirt from Pet Sounds in Newcastle – postal orders duly sent off – we had the artwork – just not the tunes. Well not the real finished item. Somehow we had acquired tapes and bits and pieces of unfinished teenage symphonies to God – mainly from Duglas from the BMX Bandits – a lovely listener and unselfish sharer of sounds all the way from Scotland on handwritten C90 cassettes. He made bleak days in steeltowns somehow seem sunny.

But it happened. Paul and I – unfortunately not with Ian – it should have been with Ian – but he wasn’t ‘on the scene’ then. First witnessing the beauty of Pet Sounds in fourth row seats in a Nottingham hall to finally shaking Van Dyke Parks hand as Smile was aired for the first time in London. And we were there. Witnessing that Brian was well and truly ‘back’.

So Smile was dutifully bought and loved beyond reason. I guess it wasn’t the real Smile – but it was a Smile made with love and [mercy] and affection – it felt like it belonged to Brian and therefore it mattered to us. It wasn’t 67 but it was still breathtaking and ‘out there’.

Blew my mind – phew – with all its good vibrations.

And this got me thinking to all those lost gems – those mythical musical monsters that we’ve heard excerpts and snippets from. Records like the legendary third My Bloody Valentine album – although to be honest they have released four albums but Berlin squalls and Lazy simplicity don’t seem to count in that story. It’s the Creation years – the big bankrupt stories – the perfection and re-re-re-recording of guitars and bends. And now it looks like it will eventually see the light of day – somewhere in Shields sonic schedule we’ll get to final bathe in the bliss of blended guitars and claustrophobic beats.

Then there’s the maverick Maver’s and that second La’s long player – but even with sprinkles of sixties dust on monitors and mixers has yet to be finished. You can find bits and pieces – scattered over limited CD releases and bootleg files that do the rounds on the internet. But it isn’t the album we were meant to – going to hear – it certainly isn’t the record that Lee wants to hear – otherwise it would be here. Now.

But the one that keeps me up at night and would have kept Paul, Ian and me up all night is mention of World of Twist’s second album. The Twist were a wonderful Manchester band of real entertainers and dreamers. They were the future of rock n roll – an acid Manc MC5. Looking forward with an eye on the past. All of that and so much more.

Genuine pop potential. They never made it big. Their first album ‘Quality Street’ is a treat. Popping and fizzing with shock and awe all over its tracks. Except it sounds shit. No bottom end – all treble and no amps turned to 10. They made up for it live though – you forgave everything when they performed. They had it. Simple as that. So even though I often play Quality Street and I’ve written about the Twist before – I stumbled over something at the weekend that blew my mind again.

When Tony Ogden – the lead singer of World of Twist died I was gutted. Paul as ever had tracked down his recent excursions into the studio – most likely situated in his bedroom – and purchased Escape from the Love Machines by placing a tenner in his hand – a tenner that most likely went on hedonism and good times. And I thought there was that returning beauty in songs like Honey and then he goes and dies. Dead. No more tunes. Over. Obituaries written and mention of a second glorious World of Twist album, John Robb rubbing it in that it lived up to all those expectations we had – a Manchester ‘Smile’.

So another trawl through the internet – a hopeful google search and a set of redundant returns. Hoping that one day someone – perhaps the Adge would just put it out there – not looking for a return. And so to Soundcloud – I was looking for something else  - that’s sure fine looking man – something like a Carl Craig mix when a fleeting unguarded moment meant I’d typed the twist into the search facility.

And there it was. Nine tracks – mostly instrumental – but nine tracks of new World of Twist material. Nine new ones. I immediately rang my brother. I asked him to record it – he has his ways and means. I was shaking when I said what I’d found. It’s 2012 and I found the fucking Twist. This was the culmination of what the internet was invented for – that and shifting your old Adam Ant badges [but that’s another story about how I invented social networking and ebay before other people’s minds caught up]

I know it’s not in its final mix and they’ll be no unveiling at the Royal Festival Hall – but this one chimes right up there with sitting and hearing Smile played in it’s entirety by Wilson and friends. It is simply the World of Twist making music that begins to hint at how it should have sounded. It’s an Indiana Jones moment when you chose the right grail – it’s Tony and friends making pop music.

It is as simple as that. I will not describe it. You’ll either get it or you won’t.

There are some things that should never be lost to the masses.  There is no youtube link – this is a soundcloud file.

Play it and listen to it all. 

Watching the Eurovision Song Contest

I watched the Eurovision song contest on Sunday. It was a ‘likely lads’moment – without the spoiled ending. I had spent the best part of Saturday night and the whole of Sunday avoiding the media coverage – to relive it ‘live’ in the comfort of my front room with Emma as she couldn’t be there on the Saturday. We have watched the Eurovision song contest for some time now. We watched it before we met. Now we watch it together.

I don’t watch it with ironic detachment.And neither does she.

I watch it as a pop show – a popular cultural moment. I know it doesn’t define Europe – or the ever widening boundaries of Europe. I know that Turkey’s charts are not filled with little numbers like their entry – all limbs and eastern Oliver as guys break danced in cloaks and formed boats. I get that – but there is a wonderful blurring of the popular boundaries and a reaffirmation that pop is just pop – ephemeral – a zeitgeist moment of simple melody and other people’s tunes.

Sweden won it.

I missed putting a bet on. I had it tipped. A David Guetta number it seems – with a few hairy dance moves courtesy of the local dance class from around my way. Not Kate Bush as some had suggested. I can see why it won – it tapped into that euphoric ‘club’ feeling but was lit in chiaroscuro and dressed in rags – all very austerity. Germany’s entry was shit though – economic power horse see – thought they could get away with murder.

But the Eurovision song contest has a place in my heart. And as I say it’s not that kitsch thing – or the misunderstanding of kitsch. You have to be sincere for kitsch to work. That’s why John Waters films work – they don’t reflect of revere. They just are. And that’s how I watch the programme – that’s my point of consumption. There’s always a moment in between the final acts and the scoring that sets the creative minds of host countries soaring in cirque to soliel excess. As if Leni Refienstal is back in style and the more pompous and bombastic the ‘filler’ is will result in regime change and the start of a new ‘european’ order. It kind of happened on Saturday/ Sunday as the boyfriend of the President’s daughter sang his new single – that seemed to sound like last year’s winner – amidst the history of the musical heritage of Azerbaijan and lasers. You’ve got to have some lasers. For the dark bits.

Yet on the semi final show [see I told you there is no irony here] on Thursday they brought together the previous five winners and segued into Waterloo. I didn’t need Scott Mills and that professional northerner Sara Cox adding witticisms from the comfort of their broadcasting box to make it work – or see it’s significance.

It was priceless and classy and utterly right.

Still the politics of the show are wonderful – not in a who’s voting for whom way – but in the way the songs reflect the current times. It’s better than Dylan. You get me? There’s lyrics reflecting chances and change and cold times ahead. There’s the frivolous and two fingered. There’s regret and national identity. It’s kind of Newsnight with tunes.

But there was one tune that was missing. Well two if you count the Netherlands – but they haven’t qualified for six years. Shame really. However, I am talking about Israel – all Prince – but more ‘queen’ playing a simple pop tune with integrity and a hint of show bizz. Not as grubby as T-Rex but as tubby when the Bolan was bingeing. These phone votes skew the system see – they rely on the immediacy of technology – of whim. Oh and of course the politics of it all.

Still it was a tune I would like to hear again.

But as ever with the fleeting, transient nature of pop – it bursts and melts into air. Some things aren’t meant to be saved- except they can be now – trawled up and held for prosperity – after the event. It’s not like home taping – but that’s another piece of writing for another day. So here’s to Israel. They didn’t make the cut on Thursday but they were in my Sunday final along with Engelbert – lost in the first flourishes of the final. A Johnny Cash twang to  a simple ballad that deserved more than it got.

Like this tune.

The Lincoln Imp and the possibilities of live performance

I have noticed how much of this writing is tinged with the buzz buzz buzz of live performance. Of witnessing [tha fitness] the moment a band, a singer, a this or a that gives you that moment of sincerity and you fall head over heels in love with them again. Or even love them more.

There is a small local public house in Ashby – well not even Ashby – just sort of deposited in a road behind some houses – with a small drag of shops servicing nobody these days. I mean it’s not on Broadway – do you get me? I used to do boxing there – under the bar. All blood, sweat and tears. Leather gloves and Scunthorpe thugs.

I lasted a few weeks.

Head ringing in the ring. All Tom and Jerry birds circling heads – which is something my boys have taken to saying when they pretend or actually hit their heads – ‘can you see the birds, daddy? ‘ Well I have done. Downstairs in that public house. So I packed it in and most likely started listening to Frankie goes to Hollywood on a regular basis. It was always about extremes with me. However, I would venture there again – not down the steps to the ring but across the carpeted backroom – well I think it was a side room – and to the stage – let leash the sounds rehearsed in bedrooms, garages and church halls. All feedback squall, or glitter beat glam and acid modernism – to audiences of ten or more. There was both a sincerity and pomposity in it all. Small time promoters in small town situations – but you felt like Andrew ‘Loog’ Oldham - shaping a scene with a sprinkle of ‘pop’ magic.

It wasn’t just the Lincoln Imp mind you – there was Bentleys, The Crosby, The Royal Hotel, The Bridge, The Wortley or the Baths. There were others as well - local WMCs putting on bands  – all honky tonk C&W and synthesizer duos called ‘The 2 of Us’ or ‘Mirror Mirror’ – our anorak culture from 1985 – 89 wasn’t suited to that really. But I would have my taste at the Snooker club dances held throughout the year as Mandy tottered on heels and I put on a shirt to eat pie and peas and ‘jive’ with the best of them to the latest act booked by Sean Coleman’s dad or mine at a club located opposite a cemetery with my secondary school a stone’s throw away for walks home in the dark.

And each one of us would aim to put on a night of this and that. Some live – some just playing records. Nonetheless the possibility of live performance fuelling our minds with super rock stardom and pure adoration spurred us onward. It was a Scunthorpe scene maaaan. But as I’ve previously stated there is something explosive about sounds happening in the real. When things can fall apart or the edge [not The Edge] in the room gets soaked up in the songs.

I haven’t been to a gig for a while. I was going to go and see The Primitives this week – keep it in the past Alan, keep it tucked right back in the past. And time races by in bedtimes and bottles and kisses and cuddles. I still might go and see The Primitives this week. It’s on Friday at the Borderline – a venue I seem to find myself in once a year – as old artists’ audiences shrink and deplete and only the most ardent are prepared to pay the ticket price. That’s if there any tickets left.

I once followed The Primitives around the North and the Midlands, taking in the heady rush of bass and fuzz, fuzz, fuzz guitar coupled with simplistic rhythms and bittersweet vocals. In an orange Hillman Imp driven by a wonderful friend named Darryl. That thrill of it all – entering a venue – I was 16 at the time all underage and ready for booze and shouting. In a positive manner that is – not a late night Scunthorpe brawl in a tarmaced car park off Doncaster Road. You could smell the cigarettes and spilt drinks worn in from endless nights of energy. It’s what the youth did. Does.

My love of The Primitives live experience stretched to Paul and I hopping on a train down to London for an all dayer at The Boston Arms in Tufnell Park [The Impossibles played too – I think our love knew no bounds for them] Nowhere to stay but up for it anyway – all wide eyed and green – but we managed it – sleeping rough in some school grounds until the first tube trains started running. You do that kind of thing when you’re young – I couldn’t imagine it now – or letting my kids do it. But we did.

And we returned. Safe and sorted.

I would stay out far past my bedtime in this capital city on many occasions since then – but that was the first time. And all of those fears and teenage trepidation where outweighed by Tracy Tracy singing (We’ve) Found a way (to the Sun) just for me. I know it wasn’t - but it always felt that way. And that’s what I get from those moments when the notes collide and the feedback lingers longer than the producer would ever allow. It’s the live ‘feelin’ – it’s being there. From the small stages in steel towns to aircraft hangers we watched The Cure in time and time again there’s a feeling that goes with the territory that you can’t emulate at home. Paul sent me all the Velvet Underground records sometime last month. Buried within the mp3s was a live album that has Lou and co just rocking uptown with the glamorous and fawning. But you can tell this is a band who are at the top of their game – confident – inventive and not feared to take a risk. Switching from the chug and fug of basic guitars whilst feedback howls and things get spiked up to the simplicity of Mo Tucker sticking with you through it all. And in all of that is a super funked exploration of Waiting for my Man – all fluid and loose with rolling bass and guitar licks. It’s incredible – but not Andy’s vision for the album. I know I wasn’t at the gig – but I can feel it. There’s something special taking place in the room. I’m not certain that always happened at The Lincoln Imp – but it has to start somewhere – so credit to the owners of all those local establishments who allowed us to promote and gloat and float our ideas out there. We might not have quite been the velvets but it was all about experimenting.

Should I go to see The Primitives this week? I think I’m convinced already.

Are you coming down the front?

Here’s the Velvets. It takes a while to get going. But stick with it. This is a faster version than the one on the bootleg album I was writing about above but I think it rolls particularly well.

If it all disappeared

I was reading Ed Vuillamy’s piece for Record Store Day in The Observer last week or even weeks ago – after Emma had finished the crossword [I might be able to recall the various Rephlex releases but I can’t do crosswords – that’s a real mental activity] and in it he details that his attempt to ship his record collection back to ‘dear old Blighty’ ended in disaster. The shipping company having failed to fill in the necessary paperwork pretty much gave the US customs department a right to destroy everyone of his 1600 records [and his books as well – but here we’re just talking about the music].

And in this piece of Sunday filler was an attempt to communicate the essential pull these pieces of plastic have on us. He was replenishing the stock – long player by long player – the same versions – the same labels – not swapping for a digital age – and obviously this chimed with the whole record store day vibe. And it set me [stinkin’] thinkin’ about all that vinyl upstairs, in no particular order and gathering dust – how I would feel if it simple disappeared one day. It’s not that I’d forget it – it would just be gone – not tangible – like the tunes on my phone.

There and not there.

In some ways those tunes up there [in the house – not in the ether] are not physical anymore – they exist in memories and snatches of sounds lodged [way] in my brain [way in my brain] and the act of playing them is lost in the day to day of living. If I am honest I even missed Record Store Day – I forgot amidst the Saturday playing out and the relevant madness of fatherhood – although I had made time for a stop in Reckless Records on Wednesday as I strolled back through Soho to Charing Cross. It was a glance at the racks and weighing up the odds of releasing some of my stock back to the river.

But I had those pangs – that only hoarders feel. It’s hard to give them up. Even the ones that I cringe at when I see a front cover and memories come flooding back of mis-timed dances and chances and unbearable angst and romances. Odd how plastic makes you feel. And part of me couldn’t imagine having to re-build it all – I guess I like to think that I’d just accept it and move on. But deep down I’d be gutted if I lost all my records.

So with it comes the question of what you would save [family accepted – and the cats]. That dilemma of saving the few over the many – hey – we’d all burn together. As Buffalo Springfield melted into LFO and dripped down over My Bloody Valentine and Denim. A whole heap of new genres emerging.

So today I am going to pick one. A simple tune to be plucked from the burning shack or the hands of the US customs. I have always had time for hip hop headz – for listening to beats and the bile that MCs be spittin’. And Gang Starr where clearly way up there in terms of their hip hop credibility – incendiary – you get me? And around the turn of the nineties through G&Ts and Acid Jazz emerged Guru’s take on the Blue Note era – this back to the beginning approach to reconstructing the songs – through risk and improvisation.

And Jazzamatazz at the time was seen to be a whole new way of mining the lineage – the joining of what was hip to the hop of the 90s. Hepcat callin’ from around tha way. On that album is a tune with him, D.C Lee and Ronny Jordan – by rights its call to an obsessive work ethic shouldn’t be a tune worth saving – but somehow it resonates and transports to days sat in The Honest Lawyer and smoke filled rooms and blissful dreams back in that steel town. Of flat fronted trousers and loafers. Loafers – bought on the cheap in Leeds – snakeskin tops with a patent feel, square toed and light. Ankle cut beige slacks a with a Ben Sherman short sleeve red plaid shirt topped with a wrangler press stud untreated denim jacket – no vents – fitted with no real room or movement – so no punches being thrown.

Just a simple expression. No more – no less.

And that’s what resides inside No Time to Play

The simple – honest rolling guitar ‘lick’ – kind of endlessly looping back in on itself – just gets me every time. It isn’t quite jazz – I found that hard going to be honest – but maybe when Paul and I started with Love Supreme – it was always going to be a struggle. Nowadays – I get Jelly Roll Morton and the gang – but Coltrane’s strains where a learning curve from the chord changes of the Stooges.

Guru offered that ‘in’ without the spin and for some reason reading that article brought me to saving this tune. It isn’t my favourite – I could most likely live without it. D.C Lee offering up the refrain that we’ve got to keep movin’ everyday. A call to do stuff – make things happen. I guess the physical existence of the thing means it carries some sentimental worth – an object. If I’d just downloaded the code I wouldn’t care so much. I could replace it with a click. However – I know it’s there – upstairs with the rest of the ‘collection’ – running the gamut from mainstream to downstream.

They’ve just released John Peel’s collection online - all ‘Nathan Barley’ and hyperlinked in THE SPACE – amidst home videos and talking heads. We all collect records here – they fascinate us for the sounds on them – not the notes we make about them. Although that’s what I’m doing here – pouring words over sounds. Ultimately we want the music to affect us and no matter how many words we chose to discuss and explain it – you know you just want to put the record on and make up your mind.

But as I said sometimes listening is not enough.

I wonder what John would have saved?

I got a letter this morning.

There’s a long history of rock and the post office – a long history.

I had returned from university and found myself temporarily in charge of a red framed bicycle and post bag. My degree had been in Sociology and Communication Studies and wandering back into Goldsmiths’ to pick up my ‘award’ for best UK animation etc and explaining to my previous tutors where I was currently at I was met with the line – ‘well it is a form of communications I suppose – the post office’.

Yes thank you for the support – it was reminiscent of Casper receiving his careers advice. Still I had to leave the capital [Exit this Roman shell] at that time – I had those empty pockets and I couldn’t afford the beer.

I used to sing to myself when I was on the post round. Post rounds have that kind of freedom. I was living out a Bukowski phase of my existence. The round was a means to an end – the round was clouded in the rounds I’d had the night before.

Bagging up and off into the emerging morning – sometimes wide eyed from the night before or tired eyed from the weekend – that sense of camaraderie and then emerging isolation all thrown into one. Shouting out inanities as letters were thrown in racks and bandied up in elastic and then just you and your bike – riding to deliver the good, the bad and the ugly.

I used to get a whole heap of things through the post.

Having attempted to write [insightfully] about music on the page – and then thrust it on unsuspecting bowl headed youth at gigs and concerts – somehow my late night ramblings as to the power of The Impossibles to change the world or how the next Clouds release would bring down western capitalism had broken into the ether and people would scrawl letters and sellotape fifty pences to card asking for a copy from all over the world.

Letters with suggestions of bands and sounds – places to visit and voices that chimed with mine. It was an indie scene see? All wrapped together with staples and photocopies. It was the Post Office uniting minds and [teenage] dreams [so hard to beat] so that we felt part of a gang – a movement – a wave – even if we walked our sodden towns’ streets alone.

I didn’t by the way – I had friends – real ones.

But postmen – like me - would have to deliver these letters with scrawls about ‘that’s love ba ba ba ba’ or ‘see it glow and paint a rainbow’. Our own S.W.A.L.K as we borrowed Stephen Pastel’s words to give our ideas a voice. It was fun really. And inside these delicate envelopes came outpourings of independence – of fight and fury as we rallied against the world with our band allegiances proudly displayed on our [t-shirt] sleeve or in my case [my college folder – lever arch maaaan] You had to wait for a letter – a correspondence between two minds – feverishly trying to drop a new piece of indie news into a letter. Have you heard Dolly Mixture? Here’s a tape of my band – a friend’s band – my dad’s band. It was counter to all the NME blurgh – it was social networking without technology. It was different. We didn’t ‘like’ one another’s page see – we wrote letters to each other – if we disagreed – we either worked it out in ink – or stopped writing. No flaming or trolling for us. So sounds emerged slowly, with less fanfare. You could argue that it gave everyone time to make a decision about music – about selecting and rejecting – living with the listening rather than flipping and shuffling. You had a cassette from someone – they’d taken some time to tape it – it deserved a listen – a real listen – you were going to have to write back.

I ‘liked’ a page on Facebook this morning – and then had a quick skip through a ‘deep house session’ on Soundcloud that I was directed to from the page and haven’t really given any of it my attention. I left with little opinion. But when Stephen from Middlesborough wrote and asked again what it was I didn’t like about the tape he sent – I had to return and listen - form judgements and write down my reasons – perhaps this naïve correspondence of hurt feelings and the race to impress shaped my thinking processes – perhaps I just pause for thought sometimes.

You have to take a breath to read - to listen.

Which brings me to this – a simple song – that I discovered through a shared love of anoraks and bowlheads – or should that read rock n roll and anger. And of course Paul’s recommendations too. There wasn’t anything twee in digging The Pastels - it was about the real rock in roll. There’s that simplicity in all The Pastels songs – chugging guitars and heartfelt responses. Melodies that linger and race around your brain.

Stephen and Aggi making beautiful noise and shared cassettes and memories scrawled down on paper making connections.

They’re raising the price of the post. No more time to pause then.

Put away your pens.

Sounds from the overground - solitary rants from the listening man No.3

I have heard the British Eurovision entry by Englebert Humperdink


I played my children a selection of advertisements – including the mighty Opal Fruits jingle – made to make your mouth water


I read about Steve Marriot and felt that utter despair as he crawled into the airing cupboard and not out the front door. However, I did read that he rocked the denim look from 1974 onwards after having put it into the public domain supporting The Who at Charlton Athletics’ Valley stadium.


I watched a documentary about Public Enemy and sang loudly to Fight the Power.


I searched the internet for references to Hard Times in Mirfield and ended up downloading a set by DJ’s Tom Wainwright and Miles Holloway.


I have continued to write lies about George Harrison


I played a selection of live tunes by Echo and the Bunnymen from the early eighties.


I found a load of old set lists from Pale Saints, The Razorcuts, The Pixies, The Siddeleys and The Rosehips.


I read some letters posted to me in the 1980s


I contemplated buying a ticket for The Primitives in May


I found some old photographs of The Housemartins at the Scunthorpe Free Rock Festival.


I uploaded all the Velvets and Lou Reed albums to itunes – I didn’t have the John Cale ones.


I played Metal Machine Music to some students.


I played No bed for Beatle John again.


I downloaded some Andrew Wethearall and Carl Craig sets


I read a Spiritualized review.


And I listened to this after finding it again on a CD in Cancer Research. It is simply an acid grower and it samples Marshall Jefferson. Simple really.