In 1977, as Lee Perry and The Congos worked
on the legendary 'Heart of the Congos' LP,
Jeremy Marre, an English film maker, was in
Jamaica gathering footage for a BBC
documentary entitled 'Roots Rock Reggae'.
When Marre knocked on the door of The Black
Ark and asked if he could film some
musicians at work in the studio, Scratch,
Junior Murvin, The Congos, The Upsetters and
The Heptones obligingly improvised a tune
for the camera crew entitled, 'Play On Mr
Music'. It was subsequently assumed that the
song remained unfinished, with the only
evidence of it's existence captured in these
brief, priceless moments from the
documentary.
In 2012, however, the DVD release of 'Beats
of the Heart; Roots Rock Reggae'
unexpectedly included a complete version of
this most sought after of lost Black Ark
nuggets amongst it's bonus features. Now, 35
years later, the tune is finally available for all
to enjoy. One can only imagine what other
gems might be stashed away in the Black Ark
vaults.
BBC Radio 6 Music is currently running a David
Bowie week, with liberal sprinklings of
familiar and not so familiar archive
material scattered through it's schedule. In addition, it's also
broadcasting a handful of one-off programmes
dedicated to the great man and his music.
One I'm particularly looking forward to is
on Sunday at 4pm and is hosted by well known
Bowie fanatic Adam Buxton.
When 6Music was facing the very real possibility of termination a few years ago,
Buxton, with help from Tom Robinson, quickly
produced a little song in the style
of his hero to encourage people to show
their support for the station. Needless to
say, people power eventually won the day and
6Music was saved. Wuzza wuzza wuzza wuzza, wuzz wuzz wuzz.....
Check out the BBC iPlayer
for all the David Bowie goodies on offer
this week.
Nikki Sudden, of D.I.Y. post-punk pioneers
Swell Maps, died, as the result of a heart
attack, seven years ago today, soon after
concluding a performance at The Knitting Factory in New
York. His prolific career continued long
after the band split in 1980 and he went on
to release over 30 albums, including
collaborations with members of Waterboys,
Wilco and REM.
I initially selected a couple of songs from his later work, but found neither of them available to stream,
so have gone back to The Maps by way of a
tribute. Neu! meets Buzzcocks on Sudden's
pulsating 'Blam!!', from the 1979 debut LP
'A Trip to Marineville', while the
brilliant and eccentric 'Steven Does', from
a bonus EP issued with the same album and
vocalised by fellow Map Phones Sportsman, is
quite simply one of my favourite songs of
the period. Listen out for Nikki's unique
acoustic guitar solo.
Lee Perry pieced together much of the
Upsetters LP, 'Double Seven,' at Chalk Farm
Studio in London, during the winter of 1973
and you don't need a crystal ball to gauge
Scratch's opinion of the unfamiliar climate
in which he found himself, as the album
contains the titles' 'Hail Stones' and, this
week's featured tune, 'Cold Weather.' 40
years on, in the grip of a winter that
refuses to end, it seems an appropriate
selection.
Here's a great clip of Brian Eno, seeming
uncomfortable in the spotlight, but looking
every inch the latter-day glam-rocker while simultaneously sounding every inch the
proto-punk. The tune is his 1974 single
'Seven Deadly Finns', which I bought on
release, but subsequently lent to a friend
and, of course, never saw again - d'oh!
Do please feel free to join in towards the
end of the song, with, what Julian Cope once
described as, Eno's 'psychedelic yodeling.'
(A tip of the titfer to the good folks over
at Tune Doctor, for posting my true story of
Ramones rage! Read all about it here.)
Saturday January 27th 1973 - now there was a
good night for telly. At 8.15 that evening,
having pleaded with my parents to to remain
silent for the duration, I settled down,
portable cassette player at the ready, to
watch the Cilla Black show with special
guests Kenny Lynch, Cliff Richard (singing
that week's unsuccessful contender for the
Eurovision Song Contest) and, my only reason
for tuning in, T.Rex. Their appearance was a
very big deal for me and my chums. In those
days pop and rock bands just didn't do this
kind of prime time, TV variety show and
furthermore, with no single to plug, we had
no idea what they would play.
In the event, and extremely excitingly, the
band mimed to a brand new song, after which
Marc Bolan sat down with Cilla herself to
perform 'Life's a Gas' as an acoustic duet.
Seconds after the programme's conclusion,
and finally able to breath again, I began a
frantic series of phone-calls to friends. We
played our cassette recordings of the
performance down the line to each other and
tried to make out the lyrics. 'What was the
title of that new song?' 'Something about
magnolias I think...' It was another two
months before we would own an actual vinyl
copy of the song, 'Mad Donna', when it
appeared as the opening track on side two of
the LP 'Tanx' - released forty years ago
today.
Speedy Wunderground is a new label, created and curated by producer Dan Carey, knob-twiddler for such artists as Django Django, Yeasayer, Hot Chip, and Bat for Lashes. The label's aim is to record a series of 7" singles in sessions lasting no longer than one day (with no lunch breaks) and release the results in limited editions of 250, in the shortest possible time. At the end of the year a compilation album of these recordings will be made available.
If this first release is any indication of what's to come, Speedy Wunderground is a label to keep an eye on. 'I Go Out', an utterly inspired collaboration between Steve Mason, Emiliana Torrini and Toy, is nothing short of epic in it's duration and ambition - and all put together in one day. A seven minute sonic assault, as one review accurately described it.
Check out Steve Mason's latest 'official' single amongst the other goodies on offer over at Tune Doctor.
Over the weekend, I fired up the i-Player and
listened to a short Radio 4 documentary
about the song 'Shipbuilding'. It was an
enjoyable programme and while I
didn't learn anything new, I was reminded of
something I'd forgotten, namely, that Suede
had covered the tune for 'Help', the War
Child Charity album, in 1995. Robert Wyatt's
original and Elvis Costello's own versions
are hard acts to follow, but Suede deliver a
pretty good take, recorded, as was the rest
of the album, in one day.
The first time I saw Hawkwind live in concert was 8 months after my family had relocated
from London to Ipswich. My mate and I were
each 15 years of age and found that our
tickets for the show had us placed in the
same row, but on either side of the aisle.
Sat on my right, exuding patchouli, was an
exotic young lady, perhaps a couple of years
older than me, wearing a cheesecloth shirt
that virtually matched my own (this was 1975
folks!) and very little else. Soon after
taking my seat, she began to lean into me,
linking her arm through mine and talking
quietly, close to my ear, in a slow, husky
drawl. My pal across the aisle looked on in
envy, while I beamed over at him in gloating
disbelief, despite feeling way out of my
depth in this highly charged situation.
An hour or so later, when Hawkwind took to
the stage, the audience rose to their feet
as one. I tried to stand, but the young lady
grabbed me, pulled me back into my seat,
held me close, looked deeply into my eyes,
threw up all over me and passed out face
first in my lap. A security guy was on the
spot and took her out to the foyer of the
venue, where she quickly recovered, having
'overdone it' earlier in the evening. I
washed my clothes as best I could under the
tap in the toilet, but was a bit of a smelly
mess for the remainder of the gig - it was a
dank, sweaty, dry-ice clouded affair though,
so I doubt if anyone noticed the additional
fug in the air. My mate thoroughly enjoyed
my misfortune and can still be relied upon
to recount the story with amused relish 38
years later.
A quick flick through old ticket stubs and
diary entries confirms that I saw Hawkwind
in concert on five separate occasions
between 1975 and 1979, the first four of
which featured the unique presence of
novelist, poet, singer, songwriter, and
showman, Robert Calvert in the driving seat.
I initially picked up on Calvert a full two
years before the evening of the vomitus
maximus incident, via a 7" single purchased
for 12p in late 1973, from the reduced price
section at Woolworth's in Walthamstow. I must
have been aware of 'Silver Machine' at the
time, but that was the extent of my Hawkwind
knowledge, so I have no idea what attracted
me to the fantastic 'Ejection' by Captain
Lockheed & the Starfighters (essentially
Hawkwind plus Twink and minus Dave Brock),
perhaps the oddity of a, then rarely seen,
picture sleeve single. Over the past 40
years, the song has been described variously
as kraut rock, space rock, even nascent punk
rock. It's all of these and more.
Robert Calvert died from a heart attack in
1988 aged just 44. Had he lived, today would
have marked his 69th birthday, so here's a
little something extra to remember him by,
'Spirit of the Age', a Hawkwind classic from
1977.
A pinch of prog, a dash of psych and a sprinkling of folkiness - check out 'All Returns', the first release from Wolf People's third LP, 'Fain', due for release at the end of April.
Even in 1972, the Marsha Hunt LP 'Woman
Child' was something of a holy grail for us
T.Rex fans. It had only been released the
previous year and we'd all read about it, but I
didn't catch my first sight of a copy until
I picked one up second-hand at the dawn of
the 1980's. The reason we were all so
excited was not just the three Marc Bolan tunes
covered on the album, but also a fleeting,
ghostly, cameo by the main man himself on a
version of 'My World is
Empty Without You', a hit for The Supremes in 1966.
'Woman Child' is a bit of a hodgepodge,
drawn together from sessions spread over
three years, helmed by as many producers and
featuring guest artists ranging from Pete
Townshend to the Count Basie Orchestra. It
does have some great moments though, not
least a rambunctious romp through the re-titled, pre-Tyrannosaurus Rex Bolan composition, 'Hot Rod Poppa'.
(For a deeper look at 'Woman Child' and more
tunes from the album, check out this
excellent piece.)
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