Without the writing how would you know?

 I have been trying to teach the inner workings of the uk music press to a group of 16 year old students. Students who have been living through exponential growth in digital interactions – who don’t write things down but communicate through speed and shape – texts and expressions – image and colour – url and sound bite. They have never read an in depth interview with Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine trying to break America with pithy commentary by Steven Wells. They have never seen a photograph of Elastica in a public house in Camden. Their lives are neither better nor worse for it.

I can’t imagine growing up without a world of type and bombast. I still like to read the music press – well Mojo – it’s gotten to that stage – I’m not slick or hip enough to find the new sounds – I don’t want nostalgia but seem to be content to read about Black Sabbath’s 1978 appearance at Hammersmith Apollo or the transition of Floyd from acid fuelled psychosis to hip atom muthas. The press shaped conversation and tastes and allegiances, fashions and faux pas (should you admit to liking U2), opinions and confidence. It filled hours – it hinted at tantalising finds – obscure gems – and future sounds. I’d sit in bedrooms, common rooms, classrooms, front rooms and back ones discussing the writing about sound – thinking what purchases to invest in that weekend – oh whether my teenage hate would boil over at another feature about St Etienne. Paul would be reading Melody Maker, I was on Sounds, the NME waiting to be opened as we read about The Beasties tour of Japan, or the Scream in America.

It pulled the money from our pockets. Which we spent on records recommended in reviews in the views of the privileged and hip. Money heading straight to the labels and stables of future dreams. So they could put out more vinyl and more words would be written and more money spent – does your money go round, does your money go round?

The young ones don’t get it really.

This class of difference.  This idea of interviews as text – as features and follow ups – they don’t get it. They can tell I was passionate about it all – but they can’t see the reason that it felt exciting to walk into town and roll into WH Smith. You see, if Lady Gaga wants to speak to them – she can – it’s 140 characters and instant connection. It doesn’t require a plane trip – the journalist swagger or a photographer in tow. It’s Instagram representation and a chance to unite the masses. In some ways every artist I ever read about would have benefitted from this social media madness. The press was just a way to connect with the band – maaaan – you know find out what they were about – it could be politics – it could George Michael’s favourite pizza topping – it was snippets and insights – stories and highlights – rocksteady and uptight. That has been swept aside in the relentless speed and efficiency of bringing you 24 hour solid music news – its one thing after another.

You know they found a story last month in Robbie Williams mouthing off about the late shoegaze and emerging Britpop scene – as if he was still stuck in a spat with Adorable and he couldn’t let it go. You know he’d been rounded on by Echobelly in 1993 and he still felt bitter – like George Costanza – all rage and fury and ready to get his line in despite the time between the slight and his retort (hey  - the ocean called and they’re all out of you). They ran with this – because it fills a page – this generated content – this updateable site – it needed a story. It needed a celebrity and a spat – the tabloids communicate like that – so we better had too.

Sounds came out once a week. Sounds had an irreverent quality – it didn’t take itself quite as serious as the NME – it felt like a daft teenager itself. It was hip enough. It had news stories – it filled pages – but its stories had words and words and words. We like it in short bursts now. They like being taught that way too. I don’t know how they’d be able to sustain that level of reading these days – it might be just the ‘kids’ in front of me – they’re skewing my view – but have you read an NME these days? You’re lucky to get two pages of writing about anything. You don’t need that many words now – you get it from the horses mouth – from the artist – unmediated (well less mediated) – so why wait for the week to be over and the next column written. If I want to talk to Stuart Kidd and Marco Rea – I can – then I can click on over to Soundcloud and get the demos – they’re The Wellgreen by the way.

They are brilliant. But without the writing – the recommendations – where do you go – how do you know?

I’m set in my ways in a digital age.

You see I got The Barne Society CD through the post. Five pounds for twelve songs. A cottage house industry producing beautiful sounds for a few pounds. My words won’t give it the column inches it deserves – it’s got a new Wellgreen track on it – and that was the prompt to purchase I guess. That and a message to check out the site – so you visit – you have a listen and point and click – and then it’s there on the mat – dropped through the letterbox by your postman. He hadn’t heard of the Barne Society. Well he might have done – but for the sake of this writing I need him not to have – so he hasn’t.

He might have heard of this lovely, honest and fragile label – if it was getting the inches across the weekly ‘rock’ rags that it actually deserves.

But the press don’t work that way – it’s quite a simple relationship – sell more newspapers on the back of building up a scene that may or may not exist. It becomes a self-fulfilling madness – invent a scene – big it up and knock it down. The Barne Society don’t deserve any of that  - they don’t need writers decamping to Scotland with A&R in tow – calling the shots – renaming it all. The press would call this the Sound of Scotland (revisited) make references to the second, third or fourth coming. They would hang it on a notion that Postcard records was the template for all the ‘scottish’ things – you know – they might have had that idea anyway. Talk to Stephen McRobbie – he’s quietly got on with just releasing wonderful music. And so have these guys.  

There’s a sense of that eclectic Scottish culture – borrowed and proud – there’s spoken word and melancholic tones seeping through the expertly designed sleeve and CD – this is the whole package my friend. This is a fragile Scotland – with confident undertones. Songs with spaces and silences – muted moments in late nights and early mornings (hear Linden ‘My Beating Heart’ for a little of that).

Sometimes you just want the music out. And it should be – everyone should hear The Springtime Anchorage – it’s not a name that trips of the tongue – but it relocates that west coast jangle to the west coast of this isle. It’s The Byrds without the sun – psychedelic (haggis) suppers – The Junipers ‘They lived up in the valley’ is a beauty – understated and simple – okay so it has a little of the ‘glen’ in it – but why wouldn’t it. It represents – do ya get me? Kontiki Suite – will be one of my summer tunes – sunlight fading – driving through the countryside  – because I’m the music man – maaaaaan. There’s a power in that there tune.

But it’s always The Wellgreen – I come back to. My first love – I guess – partly because I wasn’t expecting it. I said in a previous piece way back then when I went to watch Euros Childs that The Wellgreen kind of blew my mind – there was this sense of accomplished musicianship combined with a playful energy and a smile on the faces of those making the music. I like authenticity – not earnestness – and they made you feel ‘up’. They properly entertained with their two man pop voyage. I had them down as The Everley Brothers for a modern day man. But I’m hearing so much more Bacharach in there – jumps in time signature and wonderful scales – they really are pleasure to listen to. Either in a room with them living or in a room with them singing from speakers.

You will listen to them as well.

I spent many a summer in Scotland – so there’s an inherent fondness for it all - except I was East coast (not exactly leather trousers and VU shades – but close). You need a wee bit of Scotland in your soul too? (Okay I know the Barne Society has other bands on it – from other places  - but I wanted to write that line – so I have)

So let’s support The Barne Society. Let’s all go buy their records. 

This isn't on the compilation - you can find that via the links embedded in the post. This is from The Wellgreen album. You can buy that at their site too. 

I want to hear some hip hop

I wouldn’t recognise the stars of the hip hop world these days – the status and credibility of the artist. I would only hear the sounds of their spittin’, the beats they be rhyming over and the samples peppering the track. I have no idea who’s cool and who isn’t – I have no idea.

There was a time when the hip hop beats were a constant thud in the inner brain y’all. When the latest beats were spun on the ones and twos. This is not the life I lead at the moment. It may be the fact that I have this young family – these innocent and creative minds and I am yet to fill it up with the magic of the gravediggas and NWA. That time might come – it might not. I can’t really say what they’ll listen to and I’m certain I won’t know how they’ll listen. You can’t tell ‘em what to like. It doesn’t work like that – I might have to leave a few Velvet Underground records lying around – but you certainly can’t tell them. It’s safe to say that my parents were not as excited by the latest Sha la la flexidisc from Remember Fun, than I was. I couldn’t see my Dad marvelling at the wonder of Phuture’s Acid Tracks as much as I may have done. We were family – but we had different tastes. It should be like that really – although I hope that my children dig The Beach Boys – you know right through their whole career – not just the hits, hits, hits.

I was talking with a class of mine about the music press – it already sounded antiquated and old in this world were the stars and the gagas tweet to audiences larger than Brazil – who needs a Paul Morley, Julie Burchill, Steve Sutherland or Alex Petridis to tell them what to like or think? You know Morrissey wouldn’t know where to send his letters anymore – saying that he’d probably have a tumbler account. All borrowed shots from the sixties, scraps of poetry from Yeats and few choice words about meat eaters. I might set it up actually. It may get more readers than this.

But it was good to have gatekeepers – you know – it was good that someone was doing some of the filtering – it’s fucking hard to find out anything these days. We’re drowning in sound – not waving. So this brings me back to my dilemma – this age thing maaaan. I have forgotten how to find new sounds and where once I had claimed on here that it was no nostalgia rides – it seems that the modern world may just have got the better of me.

I’m seeking out those old school beats. It’s by the far the simplest thing to do.

I like my hip hop with a touch of honesty and humour rather than misogyny and glamour. I can’t do sunglasses indoors, helicopters and furs, ‘I'm sick of bitches shakin' asses, I'm sick of talkin' about blunts,

Sick of Versace glasses,

Sick of slang,

Sick of half-ass awards shows,

Sick of name brand clothes.
Sick of R&B bitches over bullshit tracks,

Sick of swoll' head rappers

With their sicker-than raps

Clappers and gats

Makin' the whole sick world collapse’

But there was a student I taught back in the Midlands. Quiet. Piercing eyes but utterly enthralled to the underground. You could tell he was a music fan. You could sense it. He was soaking it all up and mixing it all together in his head. I can spot them a mile off – the ones who listen with prejudice. He felt the intensity of music and bands and sounds and styles. It has to be at that age – to catch a fire – to light the fuse. Otherwise you may as well keep on buying the NOW CDs and claiming you like a little dance now and again.

You could tell he’d get into a debate about whether Bulhoone Mindstate was by far a superior long player than Three Feet High and Rising. Which it is by the way – but we can talk about The Daisy Age another day.

Because taking sides – weighing up the odds - thinking about this and that – and hoping it has worth lends itself to critical thinking – acts of choice and not being part of the flock (of seagulls). He still thinks about sounds now – about layering this with that – scratching that needle back and forth, back forth –because out of that student emerged Beatmasta Bill. A Nottingham DJ of distinction – a warrior on the 1210s running the gamut of groove to provide a soundtrack for your waking hours. I’ve never heard him playing in a club – I should have really – but it wasn’t to be – see – I moved down here and these things happen – plus I was his teacher and you know hanging out with the kids – getting down in the street – well that just ain’t fly – I don’t need to tell you why.

But we are both older now and he still spins the records. I remember when he and his brother and another student tore into Bring tha Noise in a school hall. There was that sense of freshness and just trying things out – that’s what you get with Bill -a sense of freshness and trying things out. So it was a pleasure to hook back up with those sounds through fibre optic cables and late night searches. There is a sense of adventure and play in all of his mixes and remixes – a knowing nod to the source and a twist of the (odd) future. There's a wonderful hip hop scene in Nottingham - it gets called UK rap - but its different from city to city. It seems to turn up this eclectic approach to things. The Midlands is like that - it's far from water.  

So listen to the end. It changes – it prompts different reactions.It is good music. It is good music selected by Beatmasta Bill for you to listen to.

McCarthy never had the internet at their disposal

Well Thatcher died.

And it’s all been pomp and circumstance and bowed heads and lowered voices round here – these London streets and grey brick buildings. They’ve sold it as a memorial for a mother (mutha) whilst forgetting the union flag and horse drawn carriages and coppers waiting to stave your head in if you feel like disagreeing. Or was that at Orgreave?

And it throws me back to that humdrum town. That did its best to drag me down – hold me down – spin me round. I was a teenager when the hair helmeted bag-clutching woman ruled the (air)waves. They were banning records under her then – but relax (don’t do it) that wouldn’t happen now. So an old tune fails to make the top spot – the BBC won’t play it – lives will not be changed – weren’t going to anyway, anyhow or anywhere.

Ding Dong.

It was an odd climate during the 1980s. You couple a selfish politics with a teenage angst and you get what? A rollercoaster ride with The Smiths and Rick Astley and  Wham and the Bunnymen. If there’s a legacy from that era it’s the mixtapes and mis-purchased 7 inch singles from shops in precincts all over this green and pleasant land. As I’ve said before it was about taking sides (it’s what you do when you’re young – perpetual opposition to this and that) and feeling passionate about things – well that was just the teenage me – forever passionate - you’d wake up to a (beautiful) morning and fill it with everything she would set about dismantling – you’d read a newspaper or a book from the library – go to your comprehensive school with your friends from down the road  - closing your door on that council house and make decisions. A great deal seemed possible then – a lot less seems possible now.

I don’t recall the moment I thought she was wrong. You have to remember I was 8 when she was voted in but it  didn’t take Billy Bragg or assorted red wedgers to open my eyes to the inequality in England’s dreaming. It was there in the culture of the everyday. I was born looking at the furnaces. Which sound kind of blues – except our delta started on Frodingham Road – do ya get me? And if I’m honest I was born in Yorkshire – but hey hum you’ve gotta have a bit of artistic licence aintcha? And as I’ve stated before – it’s all about repetition, repetition, repetition  - this isn’t some Northern rant about the values of Middle England and overpaid City types not caring about our New England. Believe me there were plenty who respected that woman in my own street.

It’s all muddled now – it was then those politics and industry. I’m currently reading How Soon is Now? By Richard King, a weighty tome – but an easy read about the ‘mavericks’ in the music business (in readiness to manage The Pale Blue Dots  - that’s a lie – a possibility – but a lie nonetheless) Already his depiction of the world then so contrasts with the world now – except it still doesn’t listen. But you kind of had goodies and baddies – the ones you trusted and the ones you couldn’t stand. The Queen is dead, tramp the dirt down, Free Nelson Mandela, Reggae fi Blair and whose side are you on boys? You know where you stood. On solid ground – not sinking sands – I am not a changed man. I had a plan – I wasn’t waiting for it.

I hated hectoring, lecturing and holding forth. But I did it anyway. I once extolled the reasons why love didn’t exist in a lesson based on social mobility and class in  A-level Sociology – I was fun to be around. Not knowing now how much that means when you look at your own children and wonder what you’ll do when they fly the nest (which they won’t – I won’t let ‘em) Or actually how much The Beach Boys can save your life when you’ve  just been dumped and feel your heart would break. Nonsense the lot of it – but music finds its way to worm and wriggle inside you.

All the while sounds accompanied my moves as policies eroded my liberties. Trade unions diminished and people set about mistrusting each other – they might be HIV Aids ridden junkies or different in colour, pro abortion or Greenham common missile stompers, Argie sympathisers or flare wearing lefties. You were fucked with a beard in the eighties – unless it was designed mind you – you’re welcome with a fucking beard today - you can join Mumford and Sons and that. I was sifting through tapes over Easter – of interviews and live performances – of excitement and not knowing then what I know now. But it seems everything we did had a political bearing someway on what we do now. From small time fanzine writing – to starting chain letter collectives – and record labels and distribution channels – perhaps we were just mini Thatchers  - perhaps we wanted the big time after all – I honestly wanted equality and art and aesthetics and understanding to rule the day. I was (not) naive I was thinking.

It just seems you can’t think like that anymore.

Which brings me to McCarthy.

McCarthy would have been massive had they had the internet at their disposable. The enraged would have inherited the earth. What is apparent is that not everyone wanted to play Live Aid – that music didn’t have to be over-produced and conveyor belt built – it could be both thought provoking and wonderful to listen to. I remember venturing over to see McCarthy in Leeds - the Duchess –it’s closed now – it’s got a shop in it – I’d been rehearsing a play all day – Andy Capp – in the sixth form – all cloth caps and pints – which is fairly reminiscent of today – but that’s another story.  Made the train station just in time – my brother already there – long gone without me, mainly because The Impossibles were supporting. I wasn’t completely familiar with McCarthy at the time but I was happy enough to surround myself in melodic guitar and honest – yet brutal lyricism with these four comprehensive Barking blokes making that great leap forward in musical manifestos to the downtrodden and class divided masses.

At the time I thought they were massive – I mean they were on a tour – selling out The Duchess – they had t-shirts and that – to me their message was reaching the people (and more power to them). I found my meandering words about them from that time – my inept sermon on politics and pop (I’m continuing it now) – and I focus on the slide show – the cut up images and slogans that accompanied their set – and there’s a line – written twenty five years ago – and it states simply that – it would be nice to imagine that everybody in Leeds who saw them that night- woke up and realised that things could change – and in my own strange way I enjoyed it for that political element.

They confronted in jangles and rhymes.

Nicky Wire has said of the band: "McCarthy - the great lost band of the '80s they redesigned my idea of politics and pop, it could be intelligent, it could be beautiful. They were frail, tragic, romantic idealists. The songs soothed your body but exercised your brain. They were my education, my information and they are partly to blame for the realisation of the Manic Street Preachers.’ Once I would have considered that abhorent – but I’m glad Nicky Wire formed the Manics because of McCarthy. There’s always been a sense of opposition with the Preachers rock n roll.

Couldn’t fail to be really.

Maybe it was living through all of this and that – her sleights and mistrust of us – of an emerging selfishness in others – in ourselves maybe -  in this Northern town that politicised and energised us – caused argument and offence – shaped outlooks and opinions. All this youth power – not divided by gender – or gimmick felt so very real at that moment. And then came acid house – and we forgot our anger – we organised and caused chaos with grins on our faces. But they had us by then – they had us all where they wanted.

There was no going back.

Thatcher’s dead. There’s no going back. So let’s listen to McCarthy – we’re all bourgeois now aren’t we?   

We all want to join The Pale Blue Dots

You know how things seem to turn out strange and wonderful – how worlds collide and odd things happen? That’s been my walk through the world of music – down those streets that we slip through I’ve chanced and happened across music that shakes the very soul. That resonates and runs rings around (the world) and me. And throughout these journeys into sound there’s been constants - obviously a brother hip to the sounds of the underground has always brought new sounds to this London home but there’s been a friend from way back when who’s always been making art maaaaan.

Always had a tune up his sleeve. He’s got a whole load more these days.

He’s in The Pale Blue Dots.

You’ll want to join them by the end of this.

Now imagine a chance encounter. A slip of fate that brings him and a super furry animal together in 2013. In cold viewing rooms these headz imagine a return and an extension of pop pop pop music. A new Wilson brothers with a dollop of boogaloo, a Spectorish vision with a ramalama attitude.Well that's how I like to imagine it. I guess it was less romantic - you know just conversations and that.Extra expressos and hellos to the catering staff as words about music flowed. So he’s wringing out these orchestrated beauties from the grey streets of London and Bunf is laying siege to soundscapes and strumming – something’s going to happen – do get me?

They’re both an interesting bunch of groovy fuckers. That’s a given. Eclectic and knowledgeable – and that’s what seeps into their music.

https://soundcloud.com/the-pale-blue-dots/additional

You see - they start swapping tunes – fragments – pieces of this and that – strings and guitars – ooh ooh oohs and la la las. They start making music these two men of the world. They start making music with a nod to the past and an eye on somewhere else. It’s not about global superstardom – it’s about honesty and integrity. It’s about making that transition to shed the cocoon and fly fly fly.

For a day at least.

To be honest it all came out of the (pale) blue. I received an email. There was a track Thermos. It was all harsh and electric. Two chords and mumbles. It was great like that. Bunf wielding the ‘goldie’ – that heavy rock Les Paul ethic. All angular and growls. It seems the Super Furries have been up to lots – independently from one another but somehow connected in that love of the different. I mean they haven’t released an album in five years – or so- but there’s a connection in what they are all doing in that time away from one another.

And now it’s Bunf’s turn too.

He’s in The Pale Blue Dots now. So suddenly I was party to this transformation – this beginning – I’ll hopefully be there at the end too. What I like about this band – is that they’re my age – you know don’t expect leather jackets and angst ridden lyrics. It’s just mining something else – like I said – a nod to the past with an eye on something else. And each day I would awake with a message from Richard – an idea here – a first take there - and then another and then the gates opened and tunes were and are winging across wires in the world to rooms and headphones leading to smiles and tears.

http://soundcloud.com/the-pale-blue-dots/its-alright

They’ve put them up – on soundcloud – they say ‘work in progress’. I guess they are – Richard likes to work a tune – play around with the sound. I swear Richard’s always been a writer – making music – just letting it flow. I’ve sat in bedrooms in Scunthorpe and played the very guitar he’s writing with - the one  Bunf rates – it’s always had tunes hidden inside it - Mick's guitar. And it was always on the cards that we'd be singing his/ their songs -  then as it is now – except he’s holding a running flush this time. This is not smalltime.

http://soundcloud.com/the-pale-blue-dots/beetroot

And I said it before, I was a late adopter to the sounds of the Furries – Paul turned me on to them – this subversive bunch of Welsh psychedelics, wizards and ravers. Here was a band that was writing music for the future. I don’t really see how they got all that Britpop pigeon holed coverage – SFA were doing something differently then and still are now. The Super Furry Animals should have been bigger than Oasis – they’ve got the tunes and the attitude (and the furry suits)

And that’s basically what you get in all the The Pale Blue Dots songs, well apart from the furry suits.

They’re doing something differently to what people expect. As I said it’s got a touch of the Nilsson about it – all Brandy Alexanders and nods and winks - late night sessions - white outs and floorboards. What could turn out bombastic has simplicity – and a groove sitting under that Wilson percussion and (good) vibrations. It’s a Lennon and McCartney vibe writ large in 2013 – but infused with Alexander ‘Skip’ Spence, Joe Meek and Bolan. The list goes on and on and on - they listen to music much more than me. This is not a parody – an attempt to weld some sixties aesthetic onto modern living.

It’s a bunch of good tunes. That a band can play.And you can sing.

I’ve lived with these sounds – these songs for a while. And believe me there are plenty more out there/ in there. You see a test of a tune is whether the kids will sing it. It’s that simple – and they’ve got a huge stomping rocking and rolling boogaloo of tune in ‘Devastation’ – it’s a Bunf and Chester triumph. They haven’t put that one on Soundcloud yet. You should pester them to do so. Because we sing it on a daily basis. We shout it out in the car.

I’ve got a feeling it’s going to be a smash.

So what I’m saying is have a listen. There’s a whole heap of stuff on the soundcloud site. Recordings of generators next to piano stompers, reckless drumming and heartfelt strumming.

It’s a gas maaaan. This is all going to be word of mouth. You hear it. You like it. You tell somebody else. Eventually someone will stop you in the street and tell you about The Pale Blue Dots.

It's just going to get around (from town to town)

http://soundcloud.com/the-pale-blue-dots