1985 Singles # 3 R.E.M.

 

'I saw a treehouse on the outskirts of the farm. The powerlines have floaters so the airlines won't get snagged. The bells are ringing through the town again. The children look up all they hear is sky blue bells ringing.'

I've never had a band that inhabited me the way that R.E.M. did between 1983 and 1987. I never will again. I listened to other music. Saw fims and read books but they occupied my waking hours in a way that was quite spectral looking back. I'm deeply grateful to the four of them. They were doing the same for any number of others. It wasn't just me. They were inspirational. The primary responsibility of great cultural artists.To encourage others to create themselves. 

Driver 8 was another song that occupied me in a remarkable way. A driving riff. A phenomenal momentum and power. I played it again and again and wondered where it came from. What it was saying. R.E.M. were not a band that answered questions like this. They were all mystery and enigma. Like the best things in life. Where was the train going to. Who was Driver 8? What was the Go Tell Crusade? As with Dylan the questions were the beautiful and key thing,

Song(s) of the Day # 4,008 Nadia Reid

 

Nadia Reid's latest album Enter Now Brightness has a rather uninspiting cover. A picture of the back of Nadia Reid's head. It's a perfectly nice head and the back of it is fine. But it hardly inspires the casual listener to pick the record from the racks and take it home. New records are an investment these days and the cover isn't really that persuasive in encouraging neutral parties to attach themselves to Nadia's narrative rather than going to M&S and getting a pair of jeans instead.

Still 'You Can't Judge a Book by its Cover' as the man says, so I'm giving Enter Now Brightness a listen now. It's not bad at all.  Reid is from New Zealand and is a singer songwriter of an immediately recognisable stripe. Her songs are unembroidered and hail most obviously back to the likes of Joni Mitchell and Jill Saint John. Vashti Bunyan.

She talks and sings about relationships. Friendship and love. How they're like plants and need to be tended. Cared for. As you would the plants in your flat or garden or they can wilt, wither and die.Something to be avoided They're songs crafted and embroidered with poetry, melodic touches and poetry. This is good unadorned work which will appeal to those who have invested previously. Perhaps it lacks the extraordinary to lift it into the essential but it's quality product. 

Leonard Cohen

 

101 Essential Rock Records # 13 Bob Dylan - Blonde On Blonde

 

Dylan routinely revolutionised popular musicon an annual or even semo-annual basis during his heyday.

1985 Singles # 4 Jesus & Mary Chain

 

It took me a while with Jesus & Mary Chain. I was suspicious of hype and there was a definite element of hype to them. Alan McGee was involved. They played a notorious gig at the campus of my university in my furst year. I didn't go. I confess partly due to the notoriety of their name. OK, I had a fairly religious upbringing and felt somehow my mother might disapprove. Things like this still had an impact until you were some way into your twenties.

But I regret not going.Though I'm not one for regrets on the whole.  By all accounts it was something else. And the quality of their songs became stringer and stronger. In many ways the Reid brothers songs had something of the Brill Buikding about them. That's the ones that were noy directly inspired by The Stooges and The Ramones. This one was pure gold. A needle and a blackened spoon. True dark romance. Things I didn't and still no little about . I'm lucky. 

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 95 Felt - Forever Breathes the Lonely Word

 

Today there's increasingly heated debate about which ayr the best Felt albums. Back in the day nobody really wanted any of them. Theywere never the next big thing, Though theur records were consistently good. Take Forever Breathes the Lonely Word. It's poetic. And melodic. And perfectly formed. But the world wasn't listening.

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,658 Sting - Dream of the Blue Turtles

 

Check out the brains on Sting ? What a big head. Listening to this record again for the first time since it came out in 1985 when frankly it was ubiquitous for a year and my brother and best friend played it all the time.. I loved The Police. Certainly their early records but Ghost in the Machine too. At .the time and still. 

I played Outlanders a couple of days ago and it still stands up as truly great Pop Music if verging on the  preposterous in terms of its wordplay. Never mind the Reggaeisms which sometimes move towards slightly questionable cultural appropriation. The kind of impressions you shouldn't really make. Ones that cross lines . Hey. Mick Jagger was there fifteen years earlier. .Pop Music is supposed to be daft. And reward theft.  

But Sting took the ludicrous aspects of his personality, particularly his gargantuan narcissicism up a mountain track of his own devising as The Police grew and he began to think 'do I really need these guys'. I could have this whole pie to myself'. He decided he not only wished to be an enormously rich Pop Star at the wheel of a Rock & Roll  juggernaut. He wanted to be considered a Literary Artist too with not only a considerable intellect but a fabuous sense of humour. Not to mention a fairly enviable codpiece (see Dune)

By 1985 I was off to university and Sting's ego was off into orbit. The Police had split and he wished the world to know that he was not only incredibly erudite and sensitive and even  understood Jazz. He wanted to take ownershop of it. He was more than just Pop now. He was a seer. So he recruited a troup of top class players to prove it  and drifted off into orbit, Meglomaniac.

Don't get me wrong  Dream of the Blue Turtles is a really good record.A lot of the tunes are really great toetappers and masterfully and inventively crafted pieces for the chattering classes. It's beautifully presented. So polished. But boy does it preen.It never stops preening for a single moment. Stand still Sting ! He can't. Each song takes up a different academic dilemma. Sting is clearly stung my his own myriad, fantastic qualities. He juts his jaw at a different critical horizon for each song he tackles and slays each one in turn. What does love mean? Are the Russians good people? Why do people go to war? Why am I so cool and hunky? OK I made that last one up. He never bloomin' stops. I still like it though. 

Song(s) of the Day # 4,007 Manic Street Preachers

 

'Libraries gave us power. Then work came to make us free.'

Over the years I've gone backwards and forwards with Manic Street Preachers. I never really attached myself to their comet's tail as many did. They always had something but it wasn't always for me. Their name was always great . Somewhere between Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood and a comic book treatment of The Old Testament.  A truly great Rock & Roll band name. 

The Richie Edwards incarnation with which they appeared was never really my thing. He was the important player in that band until he went missing and I'm afraid he never appealed to my sensibility. What I was looking for.He was an artist in distress and I had plenty of problems of my own at the point of my life.

 As for their sound. I always liked The Clash but never particularly took to bands who took them as a guiding inspiration any more than I gravitated to bands who blindly followed Joy Division or The Fall..Why not just listen to The Clash, Joy Division or The Fall if that's what you identify with.  They had the idea first. 

The Holy Bible is often considered the go to MSP record but I missed it at the time. I found some of the things Richie was going through and getting up to fairly repellant and disturbing I confess. I went tp one concentration camp. I won't be back I've only come to it the record itself  in retrospect. It's damned impressive. One of the few records genuinely worthy of critical comparison with the two Joy Division albums in terms of harrowing intensity and full blooded engagement . Living genuinely on the edge. Artistic bravery of the ultimate kind. It's an incredibly compelling record. 

Design For Life is actually the Manics album that means most to me. It came out and I bought it at a time when I was going through a genuinely deeply upsetting break up that did me some damage for a number of years. I remember vividly  listening to the title track while smoking a cigarette at the window of my room in my parents house. Genuinely distraught at what I was going through, 

They were quite the right band for a moment like that. To soundtrack the intense, threatening moments in peoples lives. To offer consolation and solace to those in apalling distress and crisis of identity. To put out a hand to hold just when it's needed. They deserve respect. 

Anyway, I got over it and didn't really follow the Manics much thereafter, Their sound is ultimately a little too monochromatic despite its relentlesss artistic commitment for my tastes for the most part. I don't care for James Dean Bradfield's voice and though their lyrics are always  the real deal their tunes often pass me by . They can be bland. Quite self consciously, But I genrally opt for more stylistic variation. Colour is not their thing.

Still here is Critical Thinking. Their 15th studio album after almost 40 years.Good for them. They didn't seem like a band that would survive. But against the odds they have. They're incredibly resilient. Durable.  I gave it a listen this morning and it's not bad at all.. They're an interesting band to listen to in these Post Truth Days.. They engage, the record is called Critical Thinking which is the essential skill if you're not going to lose your moorings in these times and get carried away in the remorsefless flood by the distractions of deluge and lies.

But as much as I enjoyed listening to the record it falls short of being an essential one for one key reason. The band sound contented these days. Even happy. Good luck to them. But really the best Manic Street Preachers records came from  places where  they clearly weren't . I'll give it seven and listen to the stand out tracks agin where thy reconnect to their unforgettable fire once more. They won't be forgotten. 

FYI that woud be to the title trackwhere they update the zeitgeist Irvine Welsh 'choose life' monologue of the Trainspotting film for an even more perilous age. Hiding From Plain Sight where Nicky Wire at last takes the mic and does so with some emotional and rigorous aplomb. I hope people will notice this. They're a band that stand apart. They understand Art and its importance. Community. The winds of change. They know their Orwell from their Gramsci. Their Walter Benjamin. How many bands can you say that of? How many people for that matter. I don't. But I'm glad they do. Respect.

101 Essential Rock Records # 12 The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds

 

A few weeks ago when I got back my flat after a Christmas break away, Los Angeles was burning in catstrophic wild fires and it seemed like a good time to listen to Pet Sounds.It's a beautiful elgaic album at the best of times. At the worst it can be almost painfully poignant. But it's also immensly consoling. An incredible work of art.

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 96 The The - Infected

 

Matt Johnson didn't really hold back with 1986's Infected. Almost forty years on it's still pretty much spot on. Worse really. But we still muddle by. Cool tunes and lefrfield raging.

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,659 Pretenders - Learning To Crawl

 

The Pretenders were two down, two left standing by 1984. Chrissie drafted in Robby McIntosh, a fine guitarist (Though James Honeyman Scott of course was quite irreplaceable) and they held their own with  Learning To Crawl. Lots of backs to the wall guitar duelling. 

It doesn't hold together as well as it might, but it's plenty enjoyable. Two fine singles, including a wonderful Christmas one. A neat cover of Thin Line Between Love & Hate  and Middle of The Road which is passable. They were doing well to survive, 

1985 Singles # 5 Prince

 

My rundown of 1985 is full of Indie also rans who put out great records that were general noticed by people like me Janice Long, Kid Jensen and John Peel. I don't think Peely played Prince. He was the star of the commercial heavens. With Michael Jackson. Madonna. Springsteen. But Prince was far more leftfield by instinct than any of them. He put this our in 1985. I have the single somewhere. So much remarkable stuff happens in three minutes. 

Songs Heard on the Radio # 443 The Beatles

 

I've discontinued this series for the best part of a year. Not sure why. But I fancied a change this morning and this popped out ar me. It was a reminder of people. Of times. Of the importance of love.And most of all The Beatles. They're ones to write off at your peril.

 

Song(s) of the Day # 4,006 Denison Witmer

 

'Sunday Morning ! Praise the dawning.' Let's find a record. No. Not Lou this time. Don't like the look of the new Bartees Strange. How about Denison Witmer. There's a name to conjour with Anything At All. That will do.

Then you take a listen and you realise very quickly that it will more than do. It's a small treasure. Fruit falling in the Sufjan Stevens orchard. Sufjan plays on a couple of tracks. Older and Free the second track sets the scene.

'Down by the lake it's all queen and lace. Up in the hills it's wineberries. Stopped at a farmstand along my way. Picked up a pint of wild cherries.' How good is that? What more  do you need. What more could you need. The scene is set. Autumn has arrived early.

My bath can wait. I'll listen more to this. It's poetry,'Beholden to no one but me. For the first time in weeks.' The record progresses in awe and wonder. Positivity, Endeavour and craft. Denison was born and raised in Lancaster, Pennsylvania and he clearly has the gift. Anything At All is magical American Folk Pastoral. Splendid !.

Labelled With Love - A History of the World in Your Record Collection - # 35 OHR

 

Fab Krautrock, Tangerine Dream and Ash Ra Tempel

101 Essential Rock Records # 11 Rolling Stones - Aftermath

The album that forced Jagger  and Richards to write. And where they proved they'd be fine. And stay ahead of the pack..

 

 

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,660 The New Pornographers - Twin Cinema

 

Sharp, angled power Pop from Vancouver. I like this very much ! I might have to mention my favourite current word. 'Nuance' . I like a bit of nuance.

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 97 The Smiths - Meat is Murder

 

 

' Life is not a Morrissey song.' A girlfriend. On our split. Early nineties.

'Morrissey is the Hilda Ogden of pop: harrassed, hard done by and constantly surrounded by woe.' NME Review 1985

"Morrisey (sic) and co have once again delved into their sixties treasure-trove, and produced a visceral power capable of blowing the dust off Eighties inertia. The majestic ease of Morrisey's melancholic vocals are tinted with vitriol, as they move through vistas of misery with plaintive spirals around the pulse of Johnny Marr's vibrato guitar. The string's muted strains conjure wistful signs that bridge the schism between crass sentimentality, and callous detachment. Each repeated phrase intensifies the hypnotic waves, with results that outflank anything since "This Charming Man". Catharsis has rarely been tinged with so much regret, and shared with so much crystalline purity." Melody Maker Review 1985

'Oh I didn't realise that you wrote poetry.
I didn't realise you wrote such bloody awful poetry' Morrissey lyric 1986

 

     "The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there."   

                                             L.P. Hartley, The Go Between 1953

 

When I was 17 and 18 I had very specific routines. On Thursdays I'd buy a music paper, usually the NME. I'd watch Top of the Pops on Thursday. Generally The Tube on Friday. On Sunday afternoon I'd listen to the chart countdown. I listened to and recorded David Jensen and John Peel during the week in the evenings. Sometimes I'd take a small transistor to college so I could listen to Janice Long running through it again during the week. This may strike a chord with people who were doing similar things at a similar point in time. We were almost unknowingly living through a time of great change. And not just the one that was going on inside ourselves. The government was bad. I've never known a worse one.Perhaps I actually have since come to think of it. 

 

'Fifteen minutes with Morrissey? Well, even on Warhol's clock I wouldn't say no.' 

 

A particular NME Thursday sticks in my mind. This one. I can date it because helpfully it tells me in the top left hand corner - February 1984. Alarmingly this is almost 30 years ago. I bought a copy from W.H.Smiths, took it to Richmond Green, sat down on a park bench and read what Morrissey had to say. Thousands of fey youths up and down he country were probably doing pretty much the same thing as me at pretty much the same time.

 

 

Re-reading the article at this remove is a rather odd experience. It starts with a quotation from Jean Genet. Fair enough. He was apparently the inspiration for this, which in turn was a major inspiration for Morrissey himself but still. It's an indication of just how much the world and music journalism has changed. NME journalists don't quote Jean Genet anymore. Music journalists don't generally either except if they're amateurs and have blogs of their own like me.

 

Music seems divorced from all this stuff now. Almost as if it's been neutered. Compartmentalised into a sealed, boxed category all of its own. A consumer option that is a world away from the tortured poets in box room attics of the late seventies and early eighties who dreamed of nothing else but appearing on television on Thursday evenings, recording sessions for Jensen and Peel and expounding their views on everything at enormous length to like-minded NME journalists who secretly (or not so secretly) fancied themselves as romantic novelists .

 

This stuff is loaded with compressed, resonant, personal memories. I watched The Smiths performing this on Top of the Pops later on that same year. I seem to recall David Sylvian's video being shown on the same show. Angus McBean, directed by Anton Corbijn. Cocteau would have been proud. See what I mean? People pushed the boat out back then.

 

After it was over, the girl next door Emma Pailthorpe came round and rang the bell. She was very upset, almost tearful as her cat had captured and killed a small bird. I went over and we buried it in a box in her back garden. We then watched Some Like It Hot. All very innocent. Quite Morrissey. Emma Pailthorpe, here's to you wherever you are!

 

The world opened up for The Smiths and their looks in 1984. The music press had been waiting for their arrival unknowingly for years. Top of the Pops and the charts which had been just wonderful between 1978 and 1982 were on the wane. It was all becoming quite Thatcherite. Glossy, vacuous salesmen selling product. Wham !, Spandau Ballet, The Thompson Twins, Howard Jones, Nik Kershaw. A pox on them all.

 

 

 The things that had been worth believing in were gone or were going. The Clash, The Jam, The Specials, Joy Division and the Teardrops had all packed it in. The Bunnymen, Banshees, Associates, PiL and Simple Minds were in decline. U2 were not the answer, much as they wanted to be. New Order were self-consciously plain.

 

Though for me personally R.E.M. and The Go Betweens emerged at the same point and I loved them as much and sometimes more than The Smiths, they were never going to mean the same to a sea of pale British youths looking for a cause and icons. An ideal an image and identity to believe in and follow. The Smiths ticked all the boxes.

 

                                                 

 They did it all that year. Except that they didn't release the undeniably great studio album that everyone, themselves most of all, knew they were capable of. I remember feeling their first, self-titled record seemed a little flat given the hype despite some great songs, great statements and a great cover. I've come round to it over the years but I wasn't alone in my initial judgement The compilation of singles, b-sides and session tracks Hatful of Hollow which was released later in the same year made up some ground and captured a lot of that early energy and brilliance but there was a sense that The Smiths, despite all they'd achieved, still had something to prove as 1984 became 1985.

 

 

At which point I moved here. To a hotel in Locarno on the Italian border of Switzerland where I worked for six months in my year out before university. I got letters from my sister letting me know what was happening and there was one shop in town where they had back issues of NME and Melody Maker but for the most part whatever was going on music-wise in the UK during this time passed me by and so I missed this...

 

 

 I came back just in time for Live Aid where The Smiths were notable by their absence. Boris Becker won Wimbledon for the first time. Emma Pailthorpe moved away. So did I shortly afterwards. Up to Norwich to university for the big adventure. The Smiths released The Queen is Dead at the end of my first year which realised once and for all their promise.

 

 

 

My girlfriend at UEA had a cassette copy of Murder which we listened to alongside Prefab Sprout, Lloyd Cole, Go-Betweens, R.E.M.  and Jesus and Mary Chain. Perhaps things weren't so bad after all. But I didn't own the album myself for years afterwards and only got myself a vinyl copy last year. In the intervening period though I've come to appreciate it more and more and so plan to record that appreciation here as best I can .

 

The cover of the album is typically stylish but perhaps as bold a statement as the band ever made with their artwork. We were used to or became used to Northern kitchen sink or TV icons, Warhol derived or art school images. They were all beautifully realised but in some ways deserving of the adjective tasteful. This was something different. A photograph of marine Michael Wynn taken during the Vietnam War. The original statement on his helmet,' make war not love,' doctored by the band to show their album title. Hardly a hippie statement.

 

"Where did the image come from on the cover of the LP? That makes a link between war and, well, meat is murder.
"Yes, it does. And the link is that I feel animal rights groups aren't making any dramatic headway because most of their methods are quite peaceable, excluding one or two things. It seems to me now that when you try to change things in a peaceable manner, you're actually wasting your time and you're laughed out of court. And it seems to me now that as the image of the LP hopefully illustrates, the only way that we can get rid of such things as the meat industry, and other things like nuclear weapons, is by really giving people a taste of their own medicine."

- Melody Maker, March 16, 1985

 

'Sir leads the troops. Jealous of youth.'

 

'If you dropped a pencil you'd be beaten to death. It was very aggressive. It seemed like the only activity of the teachers was beating the students.' Morrissey on his schooldays.

 

The first song on the album was every bit as uncompromising as the cover. As Simon Goddard puts it in his excellent, Songs That Saved Your Life, it's a throwing down of the gauntlet.

 

'Belligerent ghouls run Manchester schools.'

 

  Try to watch this famous clip from the late 60s Ken Loach film Kes on which opening track The Headmaster's Ritual is surely partly built. See if you get right the way through. It's not very easy to do so even though it is darkly funny if you like that kind of thing. Especially if you have within you the knowledge of the film's bleak deadening ending where the sad main character's dream of escape is murdered along with his kestrel.

 

It's very hard-going because the brutality of it is true for thousands of kids who went to school in the fifties, sixties and seventies. Listening to The Headmaster's Ritual is a much more pleasant and enjoyable experience at least for me because it has an unstoppable tune, breakneck momentum and poetic, funny lyrics. Music can sweeten these things. It's no less real for all that.

 

 

 

 

For me Meat is Murder gets under the skin of the English character better than any of their other albums. Even the much lauded Queen is Dead. The Headmaster's Ritual takes you back onto the playing fields of secondary schools when you were thirteen on wet winter afternoons. As someone who was notoriously inept at football I'd be put at right back and told to stay there. Never mind the cross country runs around Petersham tow paths and back lanes straggling at the back, panting asthmatically with the other under-achievers. 

 

I wasn't whacked on the knees, kneed in the groin or elbowed in the face. This was the late seventies so sports teachers couldn't anymore. I'm not sure they wouldn't have done so if they could have got away with it. My experience wasn't so brutal but it's not a part of school routine I look back on very fondly. I've said elsewhere that I'm generally nostalgic but I'm very grateful I won't be going back there. As for the song. It hits its targets square on. This relives secondary school from this era and just before and all its crouching horrors better than anything else written in music for me.

 

 

When my parents brought us back to Britain in the early 70s we lived in Nottingham for three years up to 1975. Every year in October they held the Goose Fair on the Forest Recreation Ground. It dates back 700 years. In the early 70s it was all toffee apples and candy floss, waltzers, dodgems, haunted houses and helter skelters.  I imagine it still is. Truly British experience.

 

 

 

Second track Rusholme Ruffians inhabits this territory just as Headmaster inhabited its but the song is populated by an older cast than me and my soft-centred memories of Goose Fair when I was eight. It's all about the teenage initiation of fair night and there's more casual brutality and violence in store with a teasing bit of sexual intrigue and cheap romance thrown in for good measure. Morrissey is steeped in this culture and it all just trips off his tongue, this time accompanied by a musical arrangement that whirls and reels like the rides itself. There's a big dollop of Presley's His Latest Flame here. One of Morrissey and Marr's favourites. 

 

For me the initial inspiration for the song seems taken at last partially from That'll Be The Day, the nostalgic rock'n'roll movie that was a big hit in the early seventies. Morrissey is so adept at taking a basic template from films or books, populating it with his own people and way of looking at and commenting on the world and setting it off. The song is so well realised that it almost makes you giddy. Morrissey appears to be beaten up at the end. The senses being dulled are mine. Poor fellow. But his faith in love is still devout. You can almost smell the grease in the hair of the speedway operator. I could quote the whole thing line by line but really it speaks for itself so I'll just post a link.

 

' and the air hangs heavy like a dulling wine...'

 

I've barely mentioned the other players in the band yet and it's remiss of me because they're every bit as  important to me as Morrissey in the realisation and greatness of the album. It's all sounds so effortless throughout though I'm quite sure it wasn't.. I'm not sure Andy Rourke will ever get the credit he deserves for bringing funk to indie kids and making sure they enjoyed it whether they were ready for it or not. Mike Joyce never does anything flash but that's exactly what's required.

 

Marr meanwhile, as for much of his Smith's career just operates on a different level from any other guitarist I can think of. It's the sensitivity of his playing that gets me every time. Versatility too. It says everything about the partnership and how much Morrissey missed him that I don't think I've ever really noticed the musicianship on his solo records even though I enjoy plenty of them.

 

It is strange how words and music go together in The Smiths. A literal interpretation would end up sounding like one of Nico's bleaker albums and that certainly isn't the case . It's one of The Smiths breeziest records. Paul Du Noyer puts it well in his NME review of the album.

 

"It's not as if the words and music sound 'made for each other': they don't. Of course, they don't clash or contradict, they simply work independently of each other. Morrissey's singing preserves a quality of solitude; the instruments and voice operate in eerie detachment, but often to beautiful effect. Morrissey and Marr don't so much sink their talents into one as give you two for the price of one."

 

When I saw Morrissey for the first time a couple of years ago, (sadly and unforgivably I missed out on The Smiths), he set off with I Want the One I Can't Have, so he clearly holds it dear. I don't blame him. It says a great deal of what he's about in just over three minutes. Yearning, poetry, melody, life, emotional anguish. Whatever you think of him, and there's a whole great constituency who can't abide him, he tapped into a whole way of writing about emotional experience that no-one had touched on before and barely anyone has come close to since, though I'd doff my hat to Jarvis Cocker . Still. Morrissey wears the crown.

 

'One memorable couplet from your new record: "A double bed, a stalwart lover for sure/These are the riches of the poor."

Morrissey: That came from a sense I had that, trite as it may sound, when people get married and are getting their flat - not even their house, note - the most important thing was getting the double bed. It was like the prized exhibit; the cooker, the fire, everything else came later. In the lives of many working class people the only time they feel they're the centre of attention is on their wedding day. Getting married, regrettably is still the one big event in their lives. It's the one day when they're quite special...

Isn't that a mite condescending?

Morrissey: Yes it does sound condescending, but it's a fact I've observed.
I do know people who have no money, marry and live in very threadbare conditions and have threadbare requirements. I'm glad I'm no longer in that situation myself. It sounds very snotty but what can I say?'

NME Article, 1985

 

 

 

Wrong album but it made me laugh out loud so I had to share it!

 

What She Said is described as sub Heavy Metal by both the NME and Sounds reviews of the time. I can't hear it myself. It sounds far too melodic to me. It is the most full throttled musical attack so far from all three players and is less a song than a reel but it keeps the pace and standard high. It makes me think of how The Byrds take on James Williamson of the Stooges might sound. Williamson is Marr's long acknowledged hero and inspiration.

 

How come someone hasn't noticed that I'm dead.

And decided to bury me. God knows I'm ready.

 

Morrissey meanwhile is piling up the references to the Northern British  working class underbelly. 'The tattooed boy from Birkenhead', who 'really, really opened her eyes.' And also adding to the almost endless list of lines that only he could ever write / purloin. 'I smoke because I'm hoping for an early death.'.

 

Both this and the 'How come someone hasn't noticed that I'm dead and decided to bury me,' line are both redrafted (perhaps slighty shamefully) from Elizabeth Smart lines in By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept. The band meanwhile go hurtling onwards into the side's mirthless finale. 'That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore' often mentioned by Marr as amongst his favourite Smiths tracks.

 

If you ever want to change the mind of a Smiths or Morrissey sceptic, don't play them 'That Joke', because it's Morrissey at his most bleakly relentless and for once The Smiths come and meet him halfway and even compliment him in their sour tone. It's a great, evocative, eerie even profound track but it should surely never, ever have been a single.

 

What were they hoping for? Top 5 and heavy rotation on the Simon Bates and Steve Wright shows? To be played last song but one at the Student Disco in between Come on Eileen and New York, New York. Please trust me. I went to student discos in the mid-Eighties and they really did play these songs as last and second last song on a regular basis. That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore meanwhile didn't get a look in.

 

Time's tide will smother you...

 

I don't know what Philip Larkin's poetry is like but I imagine there's a fair serving of the ingredients that make this up in there. Alan Bennett would surely also approve. It's great British Northern miserabilism. I think it's wonderful but in some ways it's only Marr's and the other musician's astonishing sensitivity that keeps it buoyant and afloat. The reprise is great. And it's even greater if it's raining which it is as I type. 

'Each household appliance. Is like a new science. In my town'

 

Nowhere Fast, Side 2 Song 1 could hardly provide a greater contrast. So what if Morrissey's shovelling on more miserabilism. He surely doesn't mean it. He sounds almost chirpy. That comment about dropping his trousers to the Queen is probably meant satirically though given his well publicised opinions of them it probably actually isn't.

 

This song was also mooted as a single. I think it went as far as the pressing stage. On balance it probably had a better shot at the charts than That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore and had it made it onto Top of the Pops could have provided one of the truly great Smiths moments. They might have even got some drunken freshers onto the dancefloor towards the end of that student disco. The Youtube film I've posted above is superb and I'm very grateful to be able to use it to brighten up my blog. Thanks to those responsible. Time very well miss-spent. 

 

This is the fierce last stand. Of all I am...

 

Round about here is where Meat is Murder is reputed, according to received wisdom to drop in terms of quality and dip below classic status. Not with Well in Wonder as far as I'm considered. It's one of my favourite of all Smiths songs. The arrangement is stately grace. They actually made the genius move of recording the sound of rain here, and layering it behind the song as it builds and fades. Rain is such a British sound and such a central feature of our condition.

 

I hope you get my meaning here and I don't come across as pretentious. It's not something I could really explain without writing a PhD and frankly I don't have the energy, brains or money and no-one needs my thesis. Still. I love the arrangement. I love the rain on the track. I love the song. I like the way it has no chorus. I love the nagging unknowable dilemma of whether you enter the consciousness of someone who you will never see again. I think the emotion presented of someone who is almost dying wracked in anguish by the grief of rejection is magnificent. I love Morrissey's falsetto. Please help the cause against loneliness. Please keep him in mind!

 

A crack on the head. Is what you get for not asking...

 

I'd be willing to wager that if a poll was carried out amongst Smith obsessives as to the weakest track on Meat Is Murder that Barbarism Begins at Home would win by a country mile and would be obliged to have done the walk of shame minutes before we reached the funk bass solo. It's mentioned as the lowpoint on virtually every review of the album I've ever read. I haven't as yet managed to track down any dissenting voices so might as well provide my own.

 

It's got a great title. Morrissey's performance is excellent. There are some great guitar effects and it allows Andy Rourke in particular but Mike Joyce as well to come into their own. It's no less than their due. Their treatment within the band at the hands of Morrissey and sadly Marr too from all I can gather is little short of shameful as from everything I can see they were absolutely integral parts of the band from pretty much the word go whether they wrote the songs or not. They certainly played on them and did a mighty job.

 

They also have good names which I may have mentioned is important in a group and they looked right. They never let the side down in fact made them much stronger than they could conceivably have been  be had it been Morrissey and Marr and session musicians or Morrissey and Marr and musicians that didn't look right or fit. They made up the gang which was what Morrissey so desperately wanted and needed. Respect to them both.

 

 

 

There was a lot of bass crime in the 1980s. Jaco Pastorius was a formative influence for many who wielded the instrument then and Mark King in particular did things during the decade which should have ensured he did time. Nothing Rourke does here even comes close. It's just within the context that The Smith's existed which was an incredibly white one that jaws dropped and eyebrows were raised amongst the indie fraternity. Good for them. They were much too good as musicians for such constraints.

 

 It's overlong but I've just listened to it and it's fine. It's not When I'm Sixty-Four bad or Hippie Boy bad or as bad as the Bill Wyman song on Their Satanic Majesties Request. It's far, far better than all of these. It's just funk indie kids. Get over it! It is the weak track mainly because it's too long but doesn't topple the album's claim to greatness by any means. Perhaps the weakest thing about it is that it makes domestic violence sound like quite good fun which is surely not the driving idea behind it.

 

Heifer whines could be human cries

Closer comes the screaming knife

 

So to Meat is Murder. I love the track while it has no impact whatsoever and never has had either on my nervous system or conscience. I'm a confirmed meat eater and was never likely to stop being one at the behest of a pop star - great as Morrissey is at being that. It seems he didn't convince his colleagues in the band either. I won't get into the whole morality debate here. It's not a subject that I can get very heated about. 

 

I cannot understand the Morrissey quote I posted earlier in the article on the subject. It doesn't make any ethical sense to me. Morrissey seems to love animals but not love people too much if at all. If you listen to his lyrics he seems unable ever to establish this connection. It's one of the factors that makes him such an incomparably great artist in my eyes. He has an unresolvable dilemma. He's constantly reaching out for something he'll never attain. He wants the one he can't have. And it's driving him mad...

 

This track doesn't outstay its welcome in terms of its length as Barbarism probably does .The sound effects, a whole barnyard of animals and the sense that some of it may well have been recorded in an abattoir so close does the sound of their braying get particularly at the end makes it highly effective.

 

So that is pretty much that. Unless you think How Soon is Now is part or should be part of this album. It was on the American release and has since been added to the UK listing of the CD at least. I don't see any reason why not. It's an incontestable great track up there in both Marr and Morrissey's finest career moments.

 

'You shut your mouth...

 

It exists on a slightly different plane from other Smiths songs. To me it sounds almost as if its the work of a completely separate band. It would certainly raise the status of the album to undeniable greatness. So it's in. I think it's generally placed at the beginning of Side 2. I'd prefer it between Nowhere Fast and Well I Wonder.

 

A footnote to all this. The titles for the reviews of the album in the three music titles successively were Top of the Chops, Meat on the Ledge and Steak Your Claim. Hmm!

 

So that's it. Meat is Murder. I hope I've argued the case for its greatness with some conviction. The next two albums are quite wonderful too and as I said I've come round to the first of late. However, I couldn't review any of them without repeating myself at great boring length. I regret somehow writing so much about Morrissey here and neglecting the rest of The Smiths somewhat because to me they were always a band first and foremost. I lost interest in all parties concerned for a long time on the break up.

 

So back to the initial question. Is life like a Morrissey song? Well no. She was a very wise woman and was quite right as she was about most things.  But it is sometimes something like a Smiths song. And all the better for it too.

 

1985 Singles # 6 Big Audio Dynamite

 

Initially Mick Jones flourished a great deal more after the split in The Clash than Strummer and Simenon. Big Audio Dynamite were great. Samples, tunes and attitude,

Song(s) of the Day # 4,005 Richard Dawson

A couple of years ago I was sitting one evening in The Bodega, a fine pub  just around the corner from my flat where I live in Newcastle.  Supping a pint. Half watching a football match. Local music figure and legend Richard Dawson walked past me on the way to the loo. Instantly recognisabe figure Richard.

I stopped him and we had a chat. Or more accurately he listened to me rattle on at infinite length as I was in my cups. He was incredibly generous with his time as I muttered on and on about the state of the world and anything else that came to my mind. I don't like bothering people, but at the end of the evening I went across to thank him before I left. He was sitting enjoying an evening out with some friends of his. He leapt up and his friend took a couple of pictures of us. Gurning at the camera. Smiling.

He's a lovely man. Also an incredible artist. With a considerable body of work stretching back almost twenty years now, End of the Middle is his latest album and it seems set to extend his considerable reputation, cult and influence. He's a one off. Working in a particular Folk tradition but at the same time etching out his own space as any artist of note should. Creating a body of work. A portfolio. Something which will outlive him.

He focuses on the quotidian. How the ordinary is extraordinary. How we struggle through the trials of life and take refuge in the detail. Apparently trivial daytime encounters with others; disturbing and consolatory ones. Daytime TV. Being at home with family. Allotments. Daily stresses and joys.

He's a National Treasure. That much abused and overused term but that's Richard. Nobody does quite what he is doing though there are others in his field. He is at once a paragon of simplicity and a complex, nuanced and thoughtful performer.

He will not be for everybody. Your Auntie might not like his stuff. He doesn't attempt to sing in tune or tidy up his work for mass consumption. Quite right too. He's an Ivan Cutler for The Internet Age. End of the Middle will be much treasured and celebrated. Quite right too.

Labelled With Love - A History of the World in Your Record Collection - # 34 Mute Records

 

A remarkable story with many chapters. 

101 Essential Rock Records # 10 Simon & Garfunkel - Sounds Of Silence

 

'One of the most curious career jumpstarts in the history of popular music. Subjects included loss of faith, suicide, the consequences of poverty, and the isolation of individuals in modern society'

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,661 Editors- The Back Room

 

Editors. Joy Division for millenium real estate people.

 

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 98 Talk Talk - The Colour of Spring

 

I'm listening to this as I make mt way through my Fridays from lesson to lesson. It's  inspiring. They're a band which paints wuth a rareand rich  palette.

1985 Singles # 7 The Go Betweens

 

The Go Betweens sailed on magnificently. Though the fact wasn't recognised outside music papers, the hearts of fans and on evening radio sessions. Liberty Belle & The Black Diamond Express was a fantastic Literary Pop Album . Just like Spring Rain. 

Song(s) of the Day # 4,004 Horsegirl

 

Horsegirl ! Looking through the release schedule on Friday morning to fimd something that takes my fancy. There is Phonetics On & On the second album from the young Chicago marvels. Something to fasten myself onto as I transition towards Friday's lessons. Produced by Cate Le Bon. What more could anyone want.

The record  has a big 2 on the front cover. It immediately rattles along the tracks with a jagged immediacy and carefree spark that motors us onwards from 2022's Versions of Modern Performance, They're an inspiring band and this is a joyful experience to immerse yourself in. Start to finish.

If you watch the band's recent What's In Your Bag appearance it tells you all you need to know about Horsegirl. They're great listeners. Enthusiasts and here innovators. I'll be seeing them a few months down the line in Glasgow on my way to Denmark. Excellent stuff !

101 Essential Rock Records # 9 The Who - My Generation

 

One of the louder, more significant splashes of the later British Genration.

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,662 Lady Gaga - The Fame Monster

 

What I did Last Night - Amelia Coburn & Hamish Hawk at the Digital

 

We can't help but be dictated to by the times, the age we are living through. It would be naive of us to think otherwise. Specks of dust in a vast and bewildering universe. We need to orient ourselves to things to help us make sense of what we're going through. I love my partner. I need a lover. I'll focus on my work. I'll listen to that record. Watch that fim. Read that book. Get drunk . Often the alternative is too genuinely bewildering. 'And you may ask yourself. Well how did I get here.'  .

The times we are living through are particularly bewidering. Look at our leaders. Look at our media. Music for me remains a still, comforting centre to anchor my day around. I'm up with the larks ready to start my day. Looking for a new record for my Song of the Day on here. A record for me to play while my bath runs. To prepare me for what lies ahead..

I'm teaching online these days. German businesspeople in Dusseldorf, Hamburg and Berlin.That's my primary focus. Don't get me wrong. I care about Gaza. Human Tragedy as a Real Estate opportunity for the one percent. Bundle them off into another space so we can tear it all down and build holiday homes and resorts for elites. 'Now I want a holiday in the sun...'  Nothing ever changes. Power just shifts it shape and finds a new way to fleece the masses. You've got to laugh. Or else you'd cry.

Anyway. Where was I? Oh yeah. My bath. My lessons. I spin Stereolab's Emperor Tomato Ketchup while I prepare for my day. I try to avoid comparisons generally when thinking about and trying to write about music. But in this case screw that! Oasis ?!? You must be joking. Why would anyone listen to Oasis when they coud listen to Stereolab. Or Kraftwerk for that matter 

Why would anyone listen to a pair of self obsessed bowl headed coke fiends from Burnage who care not one whit for anything but themselves. Then and now. I know I'm not kind when I talk about that band but they started it folks. They decided to go for a career in music rather than just carrying on signing on or roadying for the Inspiral Carpets for the rest of their lives. I know it's worked out well for you lads but what about the universe? Wanton cruelty pure and simple. 

Anyway. My students. I've got a sub today for South African Jessica.  I don't know exactly what Jessica is up to right now but I've been parachuted in and asked to prepare a lesson on Business Meetings. It's a fun one. One of the best things about my job is meeting new people / students and trying to keep them happy . Make them feel They're getting something out of the experience. 

Anyway I like Elena and Sandra and I think they like me. We find out about each other and then I try to help them with their Business Engish and their grammar and vcobulary. That's all there is to it. Plenty of people might try to overcomplicate matters but after 35 years of doing this I'd be fairly insistent. 

That's all you need to do. You need to have a certain amount of researching and planning and then you need to teach. Entertain and educate and be educated and informed. Ask questions and encourage them to ask questions to each other. Listen and react. Then do the paperwork to keep the middle managers happy.

That's what I do with my reguar 11.30s too.The conversation goes a different direction to talk a bit about the world outside and what Germany should do about it given that there's a General Election coming up in a few weeks now which I imagine the whole world will be watching with intent concentration. Me and my 11.30s don't come to any great conclusions and bid each other farewell.

I've got a few hours to kill. So I call mum and text friends and play records. KC & The Sunshine Band, Associates and Blondie if you're keeping notes. Which I imagine you are. Darkness falls and it's time to head out to Digital for Amelia Coburn and Hamish Hawk. 

When it comes time to go I don't feel like going really. It's cold out and the sky looks forbidding. The thought of staying in and watching The Magnificent Seven yet again is tempting. But I put my coat and hat on and I'm off out into the night . It has to be done. This is why we're alive. 

The Digital night club is five minutes from my flat. Across Times Square. Just before the Discovery Museum. Digital has changed since I first went there. To see Sunflower Bean and Big Thief years ago now. It used to be a small venue with a bar and a small stage. Now it's expanded and transformed into a dark and sleek club. Soaking up the audience and the bands and events which used to feature at the Riverside. On erm Newcastle Riverside.

I'm not sure I like Digital as much as I used to, The staff are friendly, the sound system. is great. The crowd are affable too. Slightly older than previously. It's all a bit more corporate. Yeah like so much. Sleek and smooth and slightly faceless. If you want the alternative in Newcastle go to the newer Cooperative ventures. The Cobalt Studios. The Lubber Field. There you'll get value for money. Somewhere to sit. There aren't actual seats here. Just bars and  booths where you can check your phones or chat to company.

Stil, I'm here to have fun. New York Dolls and Eurythmics are playing on the sound system and Amelia Coburn is shuffling onstage with her band. Amelia is really the reason I'm here, I don't know headliner Hamish Hawk very well.BBC 6 Music is the key here. I've stopped listening to BBC 6 Music recently. It used to fill my musical horizons. But something changed and now my Record Player and Spotify do that for me. 

If asked to narrow things down further I'd mention Wet Leg. A few years ago when I tuned in I found they were invariably playing Wet Leg. I mean I like quirkiness as much as the next person. I have a Lene Lovich record. Plastic Bertrande. But I don't listen to them non stop. I got tired of Wet Leg after 3 listens to each song  rued 6 Musics decision to make the best djs at the station Marc Riley and Gideon Coe do a show together to give more radio time to John Peel's son. No John Peel. Let's put it that way.

Anyway Amelia is plucking away at what looks like a mandolin and her band are tucking into choice cuts from her rather wonderful debut album Between The Moon & The Milkman,. And I'm happy. Edging into a space a couple of rows away from the stage and texting to an old school friend. I don't care what my mother says. I can multitask as well as the next person.

 Amelia Coburn exemplified for me exactly the kind of artist I'm most interested in. She's articulate and ambitious.Draws on a set of influences that are interesting and broadly inspiried and bode well for a long and productive career. I recognise Jacques Brel, Jake Thakeray and she speaks in interviews of literary inspirations Graham Greene, Romanticism. The Brontes. Victorian Fiction,She's made for my tastes frankly

Between songs she mentions minging lovers she's discarded. Well she is from Middlesborough, Valentine's Day is a couple of days away. She talks about Vinegar Valentines .and suggests it might be an idea to bring them back. In Far From The Madding Crowd Bathsheba Everdene sent a mischievious Valentine Card to William Boldwood and it led him inadvertently to the gallows. Don't do it kids. Be nice !

But the half hour with Amelia is as good as I could have hoped for, Her songs are twisting and nuanced. Fascinating. She's one to watch. I retreat to the bar taking care not to actually walk into a pillar or fall over anybody. It's too dark in here for my liking. I don't care if this place gets an award.  It might also attract ambulances.   

 Hamish Hawk I don't really know though Amelia says he's fab and a friend whose taste I trust has said he's good. He must be on a 6 Music Playlist. Hamish. Not my friend. I'm not quite sure what to expect. When he and his band head onstage I make my way through the crowd and get a decent view of the Hawk experience. I take a couple of close ups of Hawk and his band on my Smartphone to send to others and to record the moment. I wouldn't have dreamed of doing this when I first started going to gigs in the Eighties. But hey, I can go with the times.

I'm not sure about Hamish and his band initially but I'm drawn in. The key to this seems to be persona. Persona used to be a great guiding principle of Art inclined British music. Bowie, Roxy, John Lydon, Edwyn Collins, Bily McKenzie, Morrissey, Brett Anderson. I imagine you can keep the list going if you're that way inclined.

The key reference to Hawk's persona seems to be to be Howard Devoto. He's a suaver and less alien and angular Howard Devoto. An incredibly confident and outgoing performer. Throwing shapes and namedropping to demonstrate his broad reading and education. His cool. It's never annoying and frankly quite impressive. I'll get to know his records better because he's good.

But I've got my money's worth and this is a school night so I'm on my way. Keep an eye on Amelia and Hamish because they'll do well. To  BBC 6 Music Playlists and beyind !