Easy, As You're Waiting

As the winds increased still further and the rain began to fall in sheets, Mrs S & I retired with haste to the nearest cover. It was one of those ancient, wooden, open-sided huts that were once omnipresent on the promenades of our coastal resorts, but are now only found in the most gentile of seaside towns, relics of a bygone age. This one must have stood unchanged for a hundred years or more. As we sat sheltering from the deluge, something blurred past us and up into the rafters causing a flurry of excited screams, before blurring back past us out into the rain. It was a swallow's nest, just a few feet above our heads. We watched the parent (or parents) come and go a half a dozen times within the space of a few minutes. I was thrilled and mesmerised. If Mrs S hadn't pointed out that the rain had eased up, I'd be sitting there still.

In between parental visits, three little heads peered silently and expectantly from the gloom. I optimistically fired off at least 20 shots into the semi-darkness - just one came out with any clarity.

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I was inordinately fond of Los Halos for a few years in the early noughties and, if your tastes run in something of a Sparklehorse direction, I can thoroughly recommend any one of their first three LP's. 'Easy, As You're Waiting' is taken from my favourite of those three, 2002's 'For Ramona'. If you like this tune, check out (and/or pay what you like for) the whole album here.

Los Halos - Easy, As You're Waiting

Coast Ghosts

 

From the end of the pier

You heard it here first. As exclusively predicted earlier this week on these very pages, Mrs S & I headed the few miles over to the coast on Wednesday, in order to celebrate her birthday. It was an exhaustingly windy day, one of those days where your face becomes stuck in a weird contorted grimace as you walk into the howling gale, but we were determined to enjoy the break from our normal routine and joined a few other hardy souls for a walk on the beach and along the pier. I don't know where all the holidaymakers were, tucked up snugly indoors probably, but it felt like we almost had the place to ourselves. It was tough just holding the camera steady in the wild weather, but I managed fire off a couple of shots to mark the occasion. Click on any of 'em to blow them up to a reasonable size.

Yes, we got wet

 Only the gulls remained unfazed by the wind

It's her birthday and she'll paddle if she wants to

From The Kramford Look's debut LP '1970', confusingly released in 2011, this is 'Coast Ghost'.

The Kramford Look - Coast Ghost

Red Gold & Green #22 - Ken Boothe

It's Mrs S's birthday. I'm writing this a few days ahead of time and we've not yet decided exactly what we're doing by way of celebration, but if I were a betting man I'd stick a fiver on it involving a coastal walk, a pub and a big plate of chips. We're easily pleased.

Here for Mrs S, on her special day, is her favourite song by her favourite reggae artist, Ken Boothe's 1973 cover of Syl Johnson's 'Is it Because I'm Black?'

Ken Boothe - Is It Because I'm Black?

Version City #65 - Nancy Wallace sings Doris Day

'Secret Love' was composed by Sammy Fain & Paul Webster for the 1953 film 'Calamity Jane', Doris Day's performance becoming a No.1 single and winning the Oscar for Best Original Song the following year. A few other artists also took 'Secret Love' into the charts during the 1950's and 1960's, including Slim Whitman, Kathy Kirby and Billy Stewart, while the song has continued to prove popular with contemporary performers such as George Michael, Sinead O'Connor, Ry Cooder and k.d.lang.

My own favourite version of 'Secret Love' is by Nancy Wallace and was only released in minuscule quantities on a limited edition Rif Mountain CDr compilation in 2010. Her interpretation really is a thing of beauty. I've waxed lyrical about Nancy's music on these pages several times over the years and if you like what you hear, I would heartily encourage checking out her Bandcamp page.

Nancy Wallace - Secret Love

Bright Phoebus

Unless something really extraordinary occurs between now and December, 'Bright Phoebus' by Lal & Mike Waterson will be my reissue of 2017. On its original release in September 1972, the LP was met by a wall of anger and bafflement from a devout folk establishment that believed exclusively in the passing down of traditional songs from generation to generation and held no truck at all with singers who wrote their own material. That Lal & Mike's remarkable set of  self-written songs were frequently, if indirectly, informed by that very tradition was a fact apparently overlooked by all but a very few, less blinkered souls.

During the course of its 40+ years of unavailability, 'Bright Phoebus' has steadily gained a reputation for being the lost masterpiece that it truly is. I've had an iffy quality bootleg CDr of the album for around 25 years and had long since given up any hope of ever holding a bona-fide copy in my hands, but thanks to the good folk at Domino Records, here it is. The full story of how the songs came to be written and how the recordings came to be made is brilliantly told by Pete Paphides in the accompanying booklet (read an excerpt here), plus there is also a deluxe edition of the reissue which includes a further 12 previously unreleased performances from the period.

If you have any interest at all in the English folk and folk-rock scenes of the late 1960's and early 1970's, you really do need to hear this album. Richard Thompson, Martin Carthy, Ashley Hutchings, Tim Hart, Maddy Prior, Dave Mattacks, Bob Davenport and Norma Waterson all lend their considerable respective talents to the recordings, which gives you some idea of the quality threshold we're talking about. And then there's the songs. It's all about those songs. By turns they're dark, desolate, mysterious, beautiful and even, as in the case of the title track, positively jaunty. I honestly can't recommend 'Bright Phoebus' highly enough.

Lal & Mike Waterson - Bright Phoebus

Red Gold & Green #21 - The Dubwood Allstars

The mysterious Dubwood Allstars originally released 'Under Dubwood' in 2012 and I featured it on these very pages at the time. When a mash-up works it can be an utterly inspired thing and here is one such example - Richard Burton's narration of 'Under Milk Wood' is laid over King Tubby's 'Ali Baba' riddim with spine-tingling results. Now news reaches me that a third repress of this unique single will be made available on August 4th. Read all about it and / or order a copy here.

Hotter Colder

New LPs these days, eh? Often released on limited edition coloured vinyl, usually with gratis downloads and sometimes even enhanced with enticing free bits and bobs - but how many arrive with a tea towel designed by a member of the band? Not many I'll be bound. My copy of 'Moonshine Freeze' did though. It's the 4th album by the consistently terrific This is the Kit, a band I've championed long and loud plenty of times in the past, so I won't bang on too much, other than to note that this time around they appear on the Rough Trade record label and are produced by long time PJ Harvey cohort John Parish. Buy it, is my frankly straight forward advice.

Here are Kate Stables and Rozi Plain risking pneumonia for our entertainment.