Nostalgia for the lame

Just Kids
Stargazer
Walden
Kip Of The Serenes and Heavy Petting
Forty Years On
The Pudding Shop
Kerouac Ginsberg and The Beatles
The World About Us
The Arts Lab

Quote

“I feel and indeed am from “another time”. Everything I believe in is “so far away”. John Fowles believed that culture ended in 1951. Louis MacNiece ridiculed popular culture in his later poems and I feel suffocated by the respectable and unreal desert of what passes for our popular culture.”

S.D. 2008

Quote

“and we thought things were bad then – little did we know we were on the brink of ever more bland nonsense – & that the eighties would last forever and dylan thomas wouldn’t even be able to say bugger all backwards even if he was close to a wireless.”

S.D. 2007

Current listening: Jon Redfern – “Don’t worry”

Beating all those year long favourites from out of nowhere. From 2008 in fact, and easily missed – but blimey, so good.

It is a strange fact that I know now that for so long as I am alive, and for so long as she is singing I will keep investigating and keep searching out music featuring the voice of Becky Unthank. She has a voice which is just timeless. It’s not that it is terribly technically competent or strident or that she is able to hold her notes, in fact it is none of those. It’s a voice which is strong and empowered and at the same time fragile and emotional. “Blue Bleezing Blind Drunk” is the epitome of the first, and this song the second, and yet both carry all of those elements. It’s an overused cliche but it is a voice which is like a force of nature.

This tune starts off with Jon Redfern singing his own song – a perfectly lovely fine little thing. Then there are these harmonies in the background which make you realise there is someone else in the room and then in comes Becky with that voice which turns the song into a lullaby and a celebration and a melancholy reminiscence but not crowded achieving all those things with so much space to breathe. Its a voice which goes straight to the marrow of your bones, a voice beyond its years, the voice of a young girl and a wise old woman, an innocent and a seer.

“I’ll always love you, love you forever, however long that is”

Quote

“The strongest man in the world is the one who stands alone.”

H.I. via D.F.

Current Listening: Gossip “Heavy Cross (Fred Falke Remix)”

I have been coming back to this one all year. Unlike so many things it does not get less powerful over time it just gets better. I expected to be slightly disappointed sticking it on for the first time for a month or so – those gut wrenching thumps and screams might have lost some of their impact. But no. I had it on in the car on the way to work this morning and it just lifted me up out and into some other beautiful space. Somewhere between a fist in the stomach and the thickest rush of mass unconditional communal celebration. Banishing the demons of this time of the year instantly. Nearly as good as the best beer fuelled mindless fuck you ever had. More intensity than you can almost bear – like you are going to explode with the sheer raw energy and lust involved.

It’s the nineteen eighties. It’s synths and more synths and a wailing banshee. It’s Joan Jett. It’s Blondie. It’s Pat Benatar. It’s Patti Smith fucking Giorgio Moroder in Cream in 1994.

It takes two its up to me and you to prove it.

I think I may have killed the car stereo system I played it so loud.

Life

The garden has reached that peak of lush golden exuberance where everything is striving to make the most of the last few days of sunshine before the cold and darkness sets in.

Current listening: The Unthanks “Sad February”

For me “Here’s the Tender Coming” is less consistently perfect than “The Bairns” which for me is nigh on impossible to better but it is still head and shoulders above 99.99999% of other releases which will come out this year. Just another wonderful feat of imagination and beauty and humour and honesty. This track is my current favourite. Another bleak moment in the Unthanks canon (and I do think of The Unthanks as they now are as the real successors to the Frost and Fire era Watersons – music of the seasons) but which post sung song heads off into a lush parallel world of brass and strings. Putting one in mind of Gone To Earth or Spirit of Eden. Like some of the hazier songs off At the Corner of Miles and Gil. Really beautiful.

Current listening

02:28. Erol Alkan mix. It is like a mutant techno piano in a broom cupboard version of one of those Italo Piano House hands in the air anthems from back then. When we were young. You. Yes, you most definitely know what I mean. You know when the beat cut or faded, everyones feet stopped moving and most looked at the roof of the warehouse, nightclub or basement. At the sweat dripping back onto them from the rafters or at each other. The sweetest smile of pure pleasure plastered across their faces just waiting for that moment when the bassline the klaxon or the drums would hit, fully anticipated but still taking everyone ten feet into the air and the whole place would go beserk. Pure. Ecstatic. Energy.

Indie Disco 1991

Freak Scene
Debaser
The Only One I Know
Taste
Can’t Be Sure
Crash
Loads of Roses Carpets James
Step On
Pacific State
Some Weddoes
Probably Fine Time
You Made Me Realise / Feed Me With Your Kiss (Will the fringes please take to the dancefloor)

Fuck I miss the Festive Fifty