JANUARY PLAYLIST

This month the walls of Monkey Mansions have shook to the sound of...

1.  Powder - "Turn Another Page" (1968)

Good to see Californian anglophiles Powder back in focus thanks to a new compilation on Big Beat, Ka-Pow! An Explosive Collection and their story told in detail in the new issue of Shindig! magazine. I'm not messin', these boys were superb. Part The Who, part Simon & Garfunkel, all parts immaculate pop music. If you don't know them, check 'em out pronto.

2.  Ike Turner & The Kings of Rhythm - "Ghetto Funk" (1969)

The part of the ghetto Ike acquired his funk was the smoother section if A Black Man's Soul is anything to go by. It's a mighty fine instrumental album - nominated (i.e. didn't win) a Grammy - and even if not as tough as titles "Getting Nasty", "Up Hard" and "Nuttin' Up" suggest, it moves in all the right places.

3.  Scott Walker - "It's Raining Today" (1969)

From Scott 3. Been reading No Regrets: Writings on Scott Walker in which different writers contribute pieces on the various periods of Walker's career. The chapter "A Dandy In Aspic" by Ian Penman, looking at the largely ignored Middle Scott MOR years (post Scott 4 to The Moviegoer in '72) is music writing at its most brilliant: imaginative, thought provoking, poetic. And means I've now got some gaps to fill.

4.  The Fabulous Counts - "Dirty Red" (1969)

The Fabulous Counts came out of Detroit in 1969 and in Jan Jan made one the most bad ass organ funk LPs these honky ears have ever had the pleasure of encountering. Mose Davis was the organist but the whole band cook and swing and groove and get down and do all the things you'd want on covers and their own compositions. It's a big fat horny sound they create with jazz licks a plenty. Every track a house party winner.

5.  Reverend Charlie Jackson - "God's Got It" (1970)

Rev. Jackson plugs his guitar into a small portable amp and lays down an incessant beat for the congregation. If John Lee Hooker played churches...

6.  Fred Wesley & The JBs - "I'm Paying Taxes, What Am I Buyin'" (1974)

Fred & The JBs cut Damn Right I Am Somebody during the same session that produced James Brown's The Payback album and Mr Brown is never far away, ensuring he gets a cut of the writing credit no doubt. JB introduces the record by saying "To me, happiness is Fred Wesley playing his horn". Mr Wesley left Mr Brown's employment the following year. 

7.  MFSB - "Freddie's Dead" (1973)

A clue to Freddie's death is helpfully provided on the front cover of the Mother Funkin' (cough) Sons of Bitches debut album: a gigantic syringe laying in an open coffin in a graveyard surrounded by red poppies. Subtle. Fantastic symphonic version of Curtis's classic.

8.  Squire - "You're The One" (1983)

Out of the bands spawned by the '79 Mod Revival, Squire were more 60s orientated than the majority. By 1983 and their swansong album Get Smart they had 60's pop nuggets down to a fine art (so much so that for years I thought their "Jesamine" was a cover). Difficult to select a highlight from the LP but "You're The One" meshes The Who's "So Sad About Us" to touches of the Byrds, the Beatles and the Hollies. That'll do. 

9.  Superfood - "Superfood" (2014)

We've now reached such a distance from baggy and Britpop that bands now include members who weren't even born when Blur stumbled around on Top of The Pops with a chicken's head on a stick. Superfood's Don't Say That is an album that falls between the two periods and unashamedly pilfers from both and even throws in an echo of "Sympathy For The Devil" for good measure. I'm all in favour. Tonight I'm gonna party like it's 1991. 

10.  Peter Doherty - "Flags of the Old Regime" (2015)

Wasn't Pete supposed to die ten years ago? He's still here but death still stalks our troubled troubadour. When I read this was a tribute to Amy Winehouse I had visions of Pete mumbling along to the Daptone horns, but no, this is a sensitive, moving and even graceful piece of work. Getting new stuff of out him is a bit like getting blood out of one of his collapsed veins but it's usually worth the wait. 

POWDER - GLADLY (1968)

You can tell when I've nothing much to say because I stick up a youtube clip. If you've not heard Powder before, here's your chance. Take it.

AUGUST PLAYLIST

Been having a dig back through some oldies this month, helped by a mysterious white cat.

1. Ed Bruce – “I’m Gonna Have A Party” (1964)
According to Wikipedia, Ed Bruce is a country music songwriter and singer best known for his 1975 hit “Mama Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys”. I’ll have to listen to that one in bit but around here he’s best known for a couple of big voiced, string laden singles for Wand including this morose mid-tempo mover where he invites only heartache, blues, misery and memories of you to his party.

2. The Graham Bond Organization – “Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Wolf?” (1965)
Bond, Baker, Bruce and Heckstall-Smith all hurtle headlong into Jimmy Smith’s instrumental desperate to steal the limelight. Bond wins of course, managing to play organ and mellotron simultaneously, and then organ and alto simultaneously. Magick.

3. The Distant Cousins – “Let It Ring” (1965)
I always imagined The Distant Cousins as a groovy moptopped beat combo a la Standells. They weren’t. Raymond L Bloodworth and L Russell Brown actually looked disappointingly square, not that you’d ever have guessed from this infectious and irresistible would-be Merseybeat stomper.

4. Etta James – The Same Rope (1967)
The indomitable Ms James has a message for her wayward lover: “The same rope that pulls you up – sure can hang you”. Consider yourself warned, boy.

5. The Us Too – “The Girl With The Golden Hair” (1967)
Like countless others, Cincinnati band The Us Too served up covers to the local kids at the hop. What those kids made of this moody garage rocker with a wonky organ and a runaway flute is anyone’s guess.

6. Powder – “Gladly” (1968)
I’d forgotten how brilliant Powder were until revisiting their Biff! Bang! Powder compilation the other day. The closest thing the US had to The Who in their pop art pomp.

7. Big Joe Turner – “Two Loves Have I” (1969)
“Two loves have I, and both of them are you”. Big Joe’s ode to his schitzo girlfriend was a big hit around Shoreditch and Old Street back in the halcyon days of 2002. “Shoobie-doo, shoobie-doo”.

8. The Stairs – “Fall Down The Rain” (1992)
Seems appropriate.

9. The Coral – “Two Faces” (2010)
Sounds more like an amalgamation of The Byrds, The Hollies and Buffalo Springfield than even Crosby, Stills and Nash.

10. Pocketbooks – “Sweetness and Light” (2010)
Who or what replaced yuppies? Pocketbooks sound like a bunch of them who, when collecting Joshua and Honeypot from playgroup, pinch their kids’ instruments and tunelessly lisp passages from their novels-in-progress over the backing of toy drums and Bontempi organ. I can find no rational explanation for playing their Flight Paths album at least twenty times this month but I have, and bizarrely love it.