"I never travel far without a little Big Star"

I’ve been listening to Big Star. In fact I’ve been learning to play some Big Star tunes – they can have that effect on you. And Big Star are one of those early 1970s bands that time forgot (for a while). You know there are heaps and heaps of neglected bands – releasing songs of beauty and warmth – songs that bring you to your knees. Yet no one at the time had the time – do you get me? I mean the Velvet Underground hardly sold a record back in the 60s heyday – too New Yoooorrrrkkk man.  But Big Star – signed to Stax – having No.1 hit maker Box Tops Alex Chilton in the fold – really never sold any records.

No one wanted to listen to them. 

They couldn’t give them away.  Oh they had the reviews. Those who write about pop liked them. But not the regular (hey) Joe. It’s probably safe to say that Manson or Heavy Stereo sold more of their tunes in their day then Alex, Jody, Chris and Andy sold in theirs. Which is criminal – there is no other way to put it. This is a band formed in Memphis and in love with the simplicity of The Beatles and the power of pop that released three beautiful long players of honesty, integrity and invention. If you don’t own ‘em – then you should do.

And you will do when you’ve had a listen.

So where does it start. Once again with pale saints and late nights in Leeds.  Graeme Naysmith taped Dinosaur’s first album on one side of a cassette and ‘Third/Sister Lovers’ on side b and sent it winging it's way from Harold Avenue. This hallucinatory and untidy masterpiece of Chilton and Stephens  recorded at Ardent Studies – was just tucked away on tape. This must have been 1988. Before Teenage Fanclub had begun to mine that beautiful swamp rock and chime of Chilton’s gang and bring Big Star to the masses – to all us lads and lasses. Well I’m sure Teenage Fanclub were regular listeners up in the concrete jungle of Glasgow. But I’d never heard such fragility and beauty in Scunthorpe – it was all furnaces and smoke – heavy. Do you get me? It was the utter desolation in Chilton’s voice – notes stretched and broken – enquiring and imploring over guitars that break and howl and collapse in on themselves. Yet there’s a brooding rock n roll inherent throughout.

A menace in the misery.

I mean they had a rock n roll number called ‘Holocaust’. It wasn’t for the faint hearted – yet theres wonderful baroque like chiming guitars on songs like Kizza Me or Stroke it Noel and ‘Thank your friends’ sitting next to the desolation of Kangaroo. You know this a story blighted by mistrust, wrong moves, failing friendships, paranoia and drug abuse. It was always going to be.  

Actually – now I’m beginning to write about this discovery – this chance encounter with Big Star  - it starts earlier. A seven inch single – bought from Record Village – This Mortal Coil – 4AD super group singing super songs – Kangaroo. Possible heard on John Peel but bought by Paul and played in back bedrooms on Scunthorpe streets. Tapping into adolescent hopefulness and that feeling of falling in love. I first saw you , You had on blue jeans , Your eyes couldn't hide anything , I saw you breathing, oh. What seems just a surface emotion running ever deeper. Alex Chilton is the master of all that. He captures love as it emerges and flourishes and ends and breaks – in car parks and diners. Or if you were growing up in a steeltown in bus shelters and school corridors.

Big Star always manage to find a way into the car. I don’t mean they’ve got a spare set of keys – or I find them on the back seat – but they feature on many compilations – CDs to drive away to. From On the street and the high glam of No1 Record, to I’m in love with a girl, September Gurls and currently Thirteen.

Thirteen is simply beautiful.

A guitar and harmonies. There’s a post out there beyond these walls that Thirteen refers to when Alex first saw The Beatles. It captures that innocence and defiance of the time with his reference to Paint it Black and parents on his back, it’s both free and tense at the same time – like a child just shooting off their mouth. This pretty tune and it is pretty - is imbued with tension and beneath lurks the energy of a young man. There’s something doomed lurking in the spaces on the track.

There was something doomed about Big Star. They reformed for a while – but it didn’t last. Their music will though. I’m just passing it on. Like Graeme did on that tape.

Thank you friends. 

I'm digging your scene (in between)

It’s been a mixed up, muddled up sequence of months. I can’t seem to find the in to write about sound. There’s old Junior Boy’s Own mix CDs in the car, back to back with a compilation of Horrible Histories numbers – all wonderfully sung and set up and they are jostling with three separate CDs for the kids  - hand picked for the holidays – Adam Ant, The Pale Blue Dots, Dion, Floyd, The Mamas and the Papas, Euros Childs, The Wellgreen and The Velvets and The Ramones – their choices – not mine – and I don’t need to buy them childsize t-shirts to prove a point – they just like the tunes  - and they are competing against downloads of every Festive 50 from 1977 with J Peel’s dulcet tones telling me that Mega City Four are at number 47 and all that. And then chancing across a Planetary Assault Systems Archives Two CD in a second hand shop in the ‘village’ – all adds up to a mixed up muddled up month of this sound and that.

So where to begin?

Sam Knee has a book coming out – book, well collection of photographs and interviews and recollections. It’s called ‘A Scene In Between’. It documents in colour and print this heady mix of youth rebellion neither post-punk nor grunge – not acid house or Britpop. It documents those that existed out there in cities and towns (guaranteed to bring you right down) dressing in secondhand clothes – not ‘vintage’ – we weren’t trying to start a fucking fashion trend. We weren’t stockpiling and ebaying as a business – it was what we wore. We had no money.

The clothes in Oxfam, The Salvation Army, Banardo’s and piled high on jumble sale tables – smelling faintly of death –reflected our 1960s and 1970s mentality. Not mining our past but repositioning style in an age of rampant commercialization and greed. We didn’t pay over the odds for our fabrics and fashions – it was a 50p t-shirt and an old fella’s anorak. Preferably brown.

We had home cut hair and found Chelsea boots in Shoefayre. It wasn’t a scene you could get just off the peg. There wasn’t ‘Urban Outfitters’ – you couldn’t even get it at the time in one place – not Topman nor Clockhouse (note intentional 80s referencing) We did not want to dress like Spandau or Duran Duran. We just wanted something that little bit different – shaped by our musical musings – our attentions drawn to the screech of feedback and threat of rock n roll.

And I guess – as Sam documents so well – it was a scene.  A whole freak scene – this in between lark. We were like minded youth dotted across the country. Of course there was that odd emergence of brutal working class thuggery – I remember in the final days of The Smiths – coach trip to Nottingham – when football chants merged with the chords of The Queen is Dead. Or those throwback misogynistic ogling and bellowing at the blonde singer in whichever ‘shambling’ band was hitting the charts that week.

Now I haven’t seen Sam’s book yet. I’ve read about it – and I hope you have too. I was goint to get myself along to the ‘release’ party – all private invites and nods and winks from publishing companies. It’s hard to imagine that photographs of bowlheaded youth and bands playing the Hull Adelphi and Kool Kat’s in Nottingham suddenly becoming worthy of a private launch – but here we are. Those photographs of an emerging scene – The Pastels or My Bloody Valentine snapped on cheap cameras (110 film anybody?) with cube flashes attached suddenly winging their way around the world into your arms.

But they are.

Sam’s got Stephen Pastel deejaying down at Rough Trade – ba baa ba ba ba baaa (that’s love). Heaven’s above.

It will be a great night I’m sure. I can’t get there. Other commitments. It’s what happens when you get older – but my photographs are in there. I guess yours are too. But seeing those snapshots of past times and fond crimes (against fashion and hair) had me return to the sounds of those singers and strummers of independent pop music. Music on the outside – yet to reach the charts. As I said earlier – way back at the start – my brother managed to get hold of the Peel Festive fifties. Ranging from 1977 right up into the 1990s. And I haven’t listened to it all – I never will – if I’m being honest. But I can read the entries – you don’t have to wait for each night when Peel played them. It’ a simple stream of songs. I  never voted in the Festive fifty. I remember a form in the NME – I think – it may have been a different end of year thing. Anyway you could fill in your choices and send then to John Peel. He would compile and count them. I believe he genuinely counted the votes. You’d just make it up now – you’d have a phone vote and rig the results.

Apologise, take the money and carry on regardless.

But it was that scene – the one from in between – that 85, 86 and 87 thing. Peel’s fifty begins to hint at the crossover – where in between becomes mainstream. Now don’t get me wrong there’s nothing untoward in being popular. Every artist wants the recognition. Just on whose terms is where the line is blurred. But you can sense the change – where Mega City 4 and The Weddoes becomes The Roses and De la Soul. I like the change. But you can we were entering different times. Flares were coming back. I don’t think you’ll see a pair of flares in Sam’s book. You might. Duglas was a true hipster – so you never know what to expect.  Yet I have a feeling I won’t see a pair. That was a scene too far.

Yet I was one of those bowlheaded youths in Sam’s book. And the connections made in the past resonate in the present.  We were all out of time and step with the modern world. We weren’t trying to recreate a sixties – we were just having our phase of experimentation with jangling guitars and stand up drums. It was a backlash to mass production. We were sick of style over substance – of that wake me up before you day-glo sheen on our screen when the Tory government were tearing down everything the spirit of ’45 had overseen. You know common sense prevails in the face of socialism – because it just wouldn’t work. Oh well – better listen to the Sea Urchins then – takes your mind off the fact the factories were closing and you were on free school meals. Or it just might have focused it.

Different strokes for different folks see. 

Sam’s book is a majestic affair – an affair of the heart. I can see why we all contributed those photographs from the past. Because back then it mattered. It felt we weren’t just part and parcel of a system that serves to commodify and homogenise culture. We were politicised – we talked about equality – we wanted a different system.

My Bloody Valentine feature in the book, you know that Dave Conway era – slightly airbrushed and rewritten now. But MBV offered something different beneath it all, and the Mary Chain, and The Pastels – and  and and.  MBV can’t even get nominated for an industry award these days – because they’re still on the outside looking in – well actually not looking in – looking away.

Looking the other way. Just as we did back then. Here’s to more scenes in between – they unite the fray(ed) and the fucked up.

As it’s been a while here are three songs to listen to.  They represent the scowl and the menace – the aesthetic and dedication to find glamour in the faded towns we all grew up in. 

Summer is here

It’s that hot part of the year. That hazy wind down time and feeling on your knees as summer finally arrives in this profession of pace and progression. I’ve found myself turning to the sounds of nature to calm and revive me. I was listening to a youtube film of a thunderstorm yesterday – there was ten hours of it.

I mixed Satie and Eno in there too in some sort of attempt to create an ambient super group – or was that System 7?

I’ve always listened to these sounds. Melting brain and mind moments. Today it’s the Aphex Twin – seeking refreshment in layered tones and liquid rhythms. When radio was FM – actually when it was AM – you could scan the airwaves and happen across tones and sounds and tests and trials. I have a cassette tape somewhere of birdsong – just endlessly going on and on – channelled through the airwaves – saying that  - I might just have taped the outside world rather than the sounds I thought were coming from my radio. You’re head gets like that when you’re young.

But laying restless in the night – all hot and bothered – I become ever more aware of those patterns and rhythms – screeches and squelches – distant engines and drifting conversations taking place in space. I’m enthralled to the sound of the city. And in the heat all that is solid melts into air. It may be the fact I work in a school – those drifting lessons – science lectures and shouts – open doors and the ever present gated reverb of corridors built in concrete.

It’s like a Joe Meek and Spector soundclash.It’s a sound I like.

I used to make ambient tapes – way back when I couldn’t (still can’t) mix. I’d use tones and stretches of sound to meld into something else. A tape loop or a found sound merging with a Beaumont Hannant track or Autechre (first album folks – on vinyl too) and make my super friend Daryl listen to it in post comedown revelry on drives from Venus (the club – not the planet) as we wound back to our communal town of shite and steel. Just listening as lights went out and the sun came up. Heady – easy days – my friend. That late eighties early nineties explosion of sound. It seems an age ago. Do you know what I mean?

It is – in fact twenty four years ago.

Nineteen ninety four was twenty four years after The Beatles – they  seemed ancient then – so I guess me blethering on about The Orb and all sorts of sonic business – must sound like that old lag in the bar – harping on about the ‘real’ stuff. Richard (composer – one part Pale Blue Dot) and I once met a guy in a local public house reminiscing about the festival circuit – we named him ‘Tone Henge’ – we all know an ‘Anthony Henge’. I’m becoming one – except I’m talking about sequencers, samples and psychedelia.

I haven’t ever seen the Aphex Twin. I don’t want to really. I also don’t know that much about him. Every now again an interview will surface and revere the sounds and add to the status. Which is fine by me. They’ll be an allusion to his time in a bank vault – or when he played sandpaper at a concert – it’s all fine by me. Because Richard James has made some incredibly interesting – non conformist electronic music over the decades. I was listening to Daft Punk – at home – they hadn’t come to play at my house – it was just a CD. And I was lazily invoking Kraftwerk and Adonis and DJ Pierre and Master at Work. They have made something of this ‘electronic music’ lark and then suddenly – I’m switching from Daft Punk to the true pioneers and I’m mining the Richard James back catalogue – and here you see that uncompromising approach to electronica – there is no sympathy for the modern world. This is a Kraftwerk feeling that a future full of robots is actually quite a daunting prospect – Kafawerk – see what I did there?

Or on the other hand it might just be that the Aphex Twin likes a minor key. I dunno.

Caution: failed artist attempt sentence approaching. I once made a sound installation with a wonderful artist – it was just someone walking up the stairs – just walking around – played over a projection of a room – I hid the speakers in the ceiling. There were no stairs in the room. It was unnerving. In my mind anyway – Aphex seems to tap directly in to that feeling – Xtal wheezys and gasps for breathe and beats pound relentlessly as your chest tightens – ambient sounds for the asthma generation. Wave your inhalers in the air. It combines that Vicks loosening congestant with rave culture capital.

It suits that state of mind here at the start of summer.

Richard D James has released so much music under so many monikers it would be impossible to document the scale of electronic manipulation and creation that has come from his mind to yours (ours) but I often find myself returning to those early ambient works. Those moments of genuine freedom when he wasn’t necessarily thinking of careers  - there’s that wonderful feeling of possibility when you’re young. You’ve yet to reference Stockhausen, you didn’t have immediate access to the back catalogue Kraftwerk or Transmat Records or Metroplex Records – you’re just trying to make sounds that exist in your mind a reality so you can play them to someone else – well even play them to yourself. You just let time disappear as you endlessly change an LFO modulation or move the VCO to change the frequency.  Days ran into weeks when I became wrapped in the micro manipulation of wav forms that emitted squeaks and bleeps from my Roland Juno 6.

You just make music.

The Juno 6 sits in the garage now. Alongside sequencers and old drum machines, tape reverb systems and blown speakers. But it’s not me I’m concerned for -  with the start of the holidays that Gove wants to snatch away from children – you worry for the future Aphex Twins – in bedrooms with time on their hands and sounds in their minds. You need to lose time as well as sleep to commit sounds to tape.

You need to have no other distractions. Let the summer begin. 

And here is Xtal from Selected Ambient Works 82 - 95

It’s what’s different that makes them strong

I’m going to write about The Pastels properly this time. There’s a post buried in here (the blog – not these words) about the honesty and integrity of a great Scottish band but I want to say more. I grew up in a steeltown. You should know that by now. Where we jostled for meaning in our lives as mighty furnaces blew smoke and sulphur into the air.

I was never going to be part of that shift scene (6 – 2 then 2 – 10 and 10 – 6 and back again) – believe me I wasn’t harking after a 9 to 5 slot either (I didn’t want to become one of those steps on the boss man’s ladder - You know I had dreams they could never take away.) I had music in this England’s dreaming - growing up was shaped by music – the difference and diffidence of youth movements. And you can only chose from what’s around – I wasn’t going to form a new sub cultural existence in Scunthorpe was I? I mean how could we? The Pistols hadn’t played here. You need that sort of shit to rebel and set up Factory records – oh and a job in television and that. That was the other side - the west – we were strictly East coast – Slaughter and the Dogs and Sham ’69.

So those early eighties were spent immersed in all sorts of cultures (clubs) – the bootlace tie blues with Elvis and Shakin’ Stevens, I was wearing grey pointed shoes, pleated trousers and new romantic ruffs whilst listening to OMD, Duran Duran and Kraftwerk. I was jitterbugging with Wham. I dabbled with a touch of Madness. I even bought two U2 long players. And Paul was digging the Velvets, the Bunnymen, The Cure, The Fall.

It was a trajectory that was always going to lead to The Pastels.

I cannot recall when I first heard The Pastels. It certainly would have been around 1986 – because they were so C86 maaaaaan. Of course they weren’t – they weren’t invented by the NME – they were invented by Rock ‘n’ Roll. I never quite get all that shambolic nonsense – I know the band I was in wanted to be able to play – we wanted our noise chaotic but controlled. The fact I couldn’t play didn’t help – but in my head I played the right notes. I always thought that The Pastels were pretty tight as a band – as a unit – as a community. It might not have been over produced – but it had a beat – you could bug out to it.

Anyway it might have been earlier – sort of Million Tears, Truck Train Tractor, Crawl Babies time – which I think spans a few years. There is nothing twee in their approach. It’s as barbed and controlled as The Velvet Underground. Just because Stephen never rolled on the floor – took his top off and told us he wanted to be our dog – didn’t mean there wasn’t/ isn’t that sense of urgency and confrontation in the music of the Pastels.

Listen to their cover of Pablo Picasso.

So during that time of finding friendships and all the fumbles and smiles and letters and mixtapes through the post and passed between lovers - The Pastels would invariably work their way into the fabric of my existence in that steeltown.

There was a time that making or receiving a tape cassette from someone was as complex a decoding mission as that of those at Bletchley Park. The cues - the codes – the inferences and comparisons – the melody and lyric – a message to you and you alone because you had the tape – it was given to you - made for you.

Constructed with you in mind.

Each song ringing with subtext because this was made for you by someone else. I still want to compile – to set one song against another – it’s list making for other people. It’s thinking about them. But do you remember that feeling when you placed a song next to another and another and another that inescapable feeling of falling in love? The need to be involved in the physical act of selecting, or rejecting a song. I have fallen in love many times to the 45 revolutions per minute of a 7 inch single, or the whirring of the tape spools as they passed through and over the heads of whatever tape player I could find that worked. Finding those hidden tunes on records as you flipped them over and released the b-side. I once had a friend – who never played b-sides – he couldn’t see the point. I expect his record collection consists of all the NOW albums – just the hits my friend- just the hits.

I’m not sure you get that on Spotify – it’s not a mixtape. Recommendations not real revelations.

Which brings me back to The Pastels – you were probably wondering where they had gone. A real revelation. That first listen to The Pastels was most likely on a tape cassette from some other lonely (planet) boy or girl who was stuck in Derby or Durham or Doncaster. A tape hissing and whirring with Baby Honey secreted on Side Two – it had to go there – it was quite long see – and you wouldn’t put that on side one would you?

And then a 7 inch brought home from Record Village – I remember Paul and I just looking at the postcard that came with Comin’ Through. The Pastels – apart from having one of the coolest names in pop looked super fucking cool too – a gang – a gang that embraced all. This was not macho – this was egalitarian rocking out (with rucksacks) and then a 12inch from Leeds or York – adding to our knowledge of superior pop. And that first wonderful long player ‘Up for a bit’ – and we where up for a bit – who wouldn’t be at that age? There was a playfulness in the title – with an air of menace. You don’t survive in Glasgow without it. You don’t survive any city that ain’t that pretty without a slice of the solid. You had to look after yourself in those days. You could get a pasting from the ‘bouncers’ on the Baths Hall doors for having a bowlhead – well maybe not the haircut. I think I got a pasting for calling them ‘cunts’ but that’s another story.

I made a t-shirt – because you couldn’t buy one – you couldn’t just look it up on Amazon. I had to make a stencil and spray paint it. Paul stole it though. He was slimmer than me then. And then a journey to Leeds – The Duchess of York. With Stephen all crepe soled shoes and dazzling shirts – there simple was nothing that couldn’t be done. They were all conquering – as I’ve said before I thought selling out the Duchess pretty much meant the road to superstardom. And then with them at the ULU – early days into my university existence – all friends down to the smoke and drinking Thunderbird wine and rolling around on floors and other people’s beds. The Pastels providing the soundtrack. Ride may have made their debut at that gig - but it was The Pastels who triumphed. They had moved it on a notch. They weren’t looking back – they never had. They’d been (sittin’) pretty forging out a new sound - great songwriting, showmanship and shoes – see when that comes together how can it fail? The Pastels live was and is exciting. A cacophonous sound and a band with women in – no patriarchal rock monsterism on show here. Equality in feeling and expression.

He sings – she sings – they sing. This is a band who take risks – they still do.

I’ve been listening to Slow Summits recently – a record from outsiders – risk takers – not chancers. There's a big difference. It’s got this backwash of sound and structure that is both exploratory and familiar. It’s pastoral and filmic, melodic Morricone meets Russell soundscapes for the masses. Uplifting music for people – all the people – all the time – you can hear it coursing through Slowly Taking Place. All six minutes thirty three seconds – with those simple harmonies breaking through at the bitter end making you want it to carry on for another six minutes.

And then take a song Night Time Made Us – it brings you to your knees. This is not an example of a throwaway pop mentality - as always with The Pastels they didn’t make tunes to be forgotten. You know you don’t hang around for thirty years without a great deal of understanding. Night Time Made Us is so warm – so supportive a tune – father and son – mother and daughter – being born and growing older. I simply love it.

Summer Rain’s outro has a kind of Kes meets Intastella vibe – all weaving flutes and drones. You see it’s what is different that makes them strong. Stephen said that – I can’t claim to have written that – but he’s right. Honesty and truthfulness – this band has never set out to deceive –its eyes were always on what might come along up ahead. Not how to play the corporate game. As I said early – they are outsiders making music to warm your inside. This is not twee, nor calculated marketing. Just because you want a change of ideology you don’t have to cover it in symbolism and anger. You just make things that have a beauty for everyone – you bring about change collectively.

And it seems that The Pastels are being discovered again. A shift in the collective consciousness. Long live the internet and the chance to pass things on. We may not shout about it in fanzines anymore – but you can get a piece of this and that – right here on the screen. Slow Summits is hopeful – it’s got humanity at its heart.

So here’s ‘Check your heart’ the first glorious single from Slow Summits – it resonates in so many ways – you know I’m getting older – I should have my heart checked.

A song in love with the pop moment. A record to dance to. Dance to with the kids. Because I do a lot of that these days. And I want to play ‘pure popcorn’ moments with them because that’s the dad I am. We dance – we sing – we laugh together.

I like taking risks when The Pastels are in involved.

You can read a wonderful interview with Stephen here by Jenn Pelly for Pitchfork  

You can find out all about his 'baker's dozen' here - it's a great trawl through thirteen of Stephen's favourite albums. 

Here's the great video for Check Your Heart. Check out Duglas dancing near the end (alongside others)