Happy New Year

Just a quick, but heartfelt, thank-you to anyone who has taken the time to stop by over the past 12 months. Have a magnificent 2013.

To sing us out, here's a relatively recent discovery at Swede Towers, Lord Huron. I've been digging their debut album 'Lonesome Dreams' since it hit the shelves in the States a couple of months back. Look out for a UK release in January. 

The Strypes

We live a fairly low-key life, I'll admit. We haven't owned a TV for 10 years. I rarely even buy a music magazine these days. But, hey...I don't live under a rock, so how comes I'm the last person on Earth to have heard The Strypes? I followed a link to this very performance in total ignorance just a couple of weeks ago and in very short order my chin was resting on the keyboard. I really thought I'd stumbled onto something unknown, but it seems that the whole world is talking about them. Where have I been?

The average age of this band is 15....15 fer flip's sake! But if you think they look young here, check-out their 2011 version of 'Taxman' elsewhere on YouTube, which makes them now look like grizzled old men by comparison. I realise theirs is probably a carefully calculated image, put together by someone with access to an excellent record collection (their parents...or grandparents?) and that there is a suspicion of a extra guitar being twanged behind the scenes somewhere, but I absolutely refuse to don my cynical hat. How exciting are The Strypes in this world of talentless X-Factor wannabes to which we've all  become accustomed?

It appears that, until recently, their set largely consisted of many of the same R&B covers that the Stones, Beatles, Who & Kinks cut their teeth on all those years ago, but now they've started writing their own stuff and if 'Blue Collar Jane' is anything to go by, they are no slouches.


When they become huge, as they surely will, The Strypes will no doubt drift off my radar and onto every bedroom wall in the country, and quite rightly so. For now though, it's enormous fun to hear these tunes bashed out as they should be - with youthful verve and abandon. I'll be back in 2017 to check out their psychedelic period.

Gerry Anderson R.I.P.

The products of Gerry Anderson's incredible imagination lit up my childhood, all the way from Fireball XL5 in 1963 to Space 1999 in the mid-1970s. These weekly sneak-previews of the future (as I was convinced they were) captivated me at a time when I had no more serious concerns in life than what style of  hover-scooter I'd require when I grew up and whether or not caps with flip-down communication devices would be available in my size.

Thank you, Mr Anderson, for the countless hours of pleasure. F.A.B., S.I.G., P.W.O.R.

Seasonal Scratch

So here it is, Merry Christmas, everybody's having f.....hang on a minute.....I've heard Nod & Jim's seasonal perennial so many times during the l-o-n-g build-up to the big day, that the words just roll out automatically. In all seriousness though, I really would like to wish all and sundry a splendid festive period, however you choose to celebrate it.

We'll be spending tomorrow with Mrs S's Dad and Nan. I'm driving, so no drinking for me until we get home in the evening, but I've heard tell that there'll be cheese, crisps and similar savoury snack-treats aplenty to keep me happy - I'm easily pleased. I will, however, be taking a bag of Bolivia Finca Canton Uyunense Teodocio Mamani (catchy name don'tcha think?) and a cafetière though. I can live without wine, but no-one's Christmas would be very merry if I couldn't have a decent coffee or two during the day! 

I'll leave you with a 1985 seasonal greeting from this blog's most regular contributor, Lee Perry. Saturday Scratch will return as a slightly more occasional feature in the new year.

Have fun and stay safe.

The Tracks of My Year

A few weeks ago, I was surprised and honoured to be invited, by the fine folk over at Tune Doctor, to come up with three of my favourite songs of 2012 for inclusion in their year-end round-up. A year of music condensed into three tracks - a tall order? A hellishly difficult task more like. Or, as flycasual wryly noted, a process akin to 'dumping your friends.'

I started with a very long list, whittled away at it until I was left with just 20 titles and from there chopped and changed until eventually settling on my three tunes. Of course, ever since I sent the email listing my final choices, several tracks that I'd overlooked have re-emerged from the cobwebs of my memory, but I'm very happy with the three that made the cut, which you can check-out here.

Thank you again to the Tune Doctor posse for inviting me to contribute.

T.Rexmas 1972 (Part 3)

So the very first band I ever saw on a concert stage were...Bees Make Honey. The pub-rock outfit were T.Rex's support act on the evening of December 22nd 1972 and were greeted with a mixture of apathy and abuse - a tough crowd for sure. A few records (including 'All the Young Dudes' with the entire audience shouting the '... I got T.Rex' line) followed, before Radio 1's own Emperor Rosko was wheeled out to introduce Marc & Co in much the same fashion as he had at the Wembley shows earlier in the year, forever immortalised in the film 'Born to Boogie.'

The noise level was astonishing. The band alone was louder than anything I'd heard up to that point in my young life, but, with addition of the relentless wall of screaming, it soon became impossible to communicate with my pals John and George. My initial feeling was one of mild panic. It was hot too - a couple of thousand over excited kids were leaping around and working up a sweat, while many dutiful parents sat alongside their offspring, with fingers in ears. Condensation ran down the walls.

And so to Marc Bolan, Mickey Finn, Steve Currie and Bill Legend. Forty years on, in the cool light of 2012 and with hundreds of concerts under my belt, I can safely say that T.Rex in 1972 weren't a great live band. Legend and Currie certainly earned their £25-a-week, maintaining some form of structure to the music, indeed for long periods of the evening they were the band. Bolan did as he pleased, everyone was there to see him after all. Sometimes, as in the opener 'Chariot Choogle', his playing was sharp and tight, while at other times, notably during a 15 minute 'Hot Love' and 20+ minute 'Get It On', he became hopelessly self-indulgent, soloing endlessly and running a tambourine up and down the frets, creating cacophonous howls of protest from his guitar. Quite often he'd do nothing, he didn't need to. Just being in the same postcode as him was more than enough for most of us. Mickey Finn? He inaudibly hit a bongo occasionally, but spent much of the show throwing mini-tambourines out into the audience - hundreds of them, each one fought over to the extent that I doubt that any whole tambourines made it out of the hall in one piece at the end of the night, splinters and scraps must have been all that remained.

Having said all that, if I remove my 21st century hat (which could almost be a line from a T.Rex song), the show that night could not have been any more perfect for this 12 year-old boy and his chums. It was colourful, loud and exciting, featured an seasonal fake-snowstorm that engulfed the stage and part of the audience and starred a man at the peak of his popularity who, from our perspective, had seemingly beamed in from another galaxy. The evening was a musical rite of passage for us. We entered the Edmonton Sundown as boys and left.....as very sweaty boys, with our ears ringing! It was an overwhelming experience and, for me at least, a life-changing one.

(Postscript. When it was over, Dad was waiting for us outside in the appointed spot. We got into the car soggy, steaming and hoarse and drove home in exhausted silence. As we dropped them off at their respective houses, John and George wished Dad a Happy Christmas and thanked him for buying the tickets. I did too - and I hope I also remembered to thank him for trusting us, by not getting a fourth ticket for himself, which would have allowed him to chaperone us inside and throughout the whole show - where he would have sat, no doubt, with his fingers in his ears.)

T.Rexmas 1972 (Part 2)

I think I actually wept with joy when I opened the envelope. An early Christmas present from Mum and Dad. I genuinely had no idea, no clue whatsoever that they had purchased three tickets to see T.Rex at the Edmonton Sundown on December 22nd, one for me and one each for my two closest friends, John and George. Before Dad sent off the postal order (for £3.75!!) and all-important stamp addressed envelope, Mum called the parents of my chums in clandestine fashion to OK the whole adventure. None of us had ever been anywhere at night on our own, so it would've taken a bit of planning to get us there and back, even though the venue was only six miles from where I lived.

Come the 22nd, Dad rounded us up and drove us to Edmonton. Outside the theatre, there were people everywhere - confused, excited, disoriented young people, much like us. I had no idea what to expect and nothing with which to compare the experience. We had some money, probably given to us by relatives who were in on the secret from the beginning, so while Dad waited, we ran off to buy some of the quality merchandise on offer - a poster, a four page programme, a faux-silk scarf...a plastic pendent..! All good stuff! We threw our haul into the back of the car as Dad repeated, for the zillionth time, where and when we were to be after the show so that he could collect us. Then he was gone and we made our way inside.

One of the first things I noticed upon taking our seats, was the number of kids my age...accompanied by at least one of their parents! At the time I felt for my peers and was even amused by their predicament, but with hindsight I realise what a big step it must have been for our folks to give us our space and let us go into the gig alone. We were 12 years old, in an unfamiliar environment, with a couple of thousand strangers, in a strange town with no idea how to get home had we needed to. No mobile phones, no GPS, no Oyster cards. (To be continued.)