Monday Long Song

In January, a notable anniversary slipped quietly by while I was looking the other way - David Bowie's 'Station to Station' turned 50. It can be terrifying stuff, this aging malarky. The album came a mere 10 months after 'Young Americans' and just a little over 4 years after my proper introduction to the man via 'Hunky Dory'. In real time, the gaps between Bowie's releases felt unremarkable because, as Paul Weller noted, '...life is timeless, days are long when you're young...', but looking back at his extraordinary 1970s output (which for me actually begins with 1969's 'Space Oddity' and ends 9 months into the 1980s with 'Scary Monsters'), it's clearly unsustainably prolific in the long term. 13 studio albums, 2 live sets, a clutch of stand alone singles plus all of the unreleased material that has surfaced subsequently, is considerably more than most artists create over an entire career. What a time to be alive. Such is the stuff from where dreams are woven.

Station to Station

Monday Long Song

Cosmic Appalachia isn't a descriptor that you come across every day, though in the case of Eight Point Star's 2021 self-titled debut, it's an apt one. Following last year's terrific 'Tom Winter, Tom Spring' LP, created in cahoots with long time favourite of this parish C. Joynes, I've been dipping in and out of American fiddler Mike Gangloff's extensive back catalogue, some of which I was familiar with, but, given the sheer breadth of his collaborations, much of it I was not. Eight Point Star is, as of this writing, a one-off project, with Gangloff and fellow Virginians Tim Thornton, Matt Peyton and Isak Howell on a variety of guitars, fiddles and sruti boxes, creating a series of far-out ragas that effortlessly burrow their way into earworm territory. Take the descending fiddle refrain in 'Winchester's Dream' for example - it's catchy as hell, but trickier than it seems and just lately I find myself unconsciously trying to whistle it, without success.

Eight Point Star - Winchester's Dream

Friday Photo #75

Fate had a damn good crack at scuppering my birthday week plans. Firstly, while dressing for work the week before last, my back went into spasm, both agonising and scary given that it came out of the blue. I couldn't really move without considerable pain for a few days, after which it gradually eased, though a fortnight on it still isn't right. I never pull a sickie, so my boss knew it must be something serious when I called the store in some distress. By Thursday I was mobile enough to welcome my cousin and her husband for their long planned stay, during which we enjoyed a number of local excursions in the warm, spring weather, including a jaunt over to Snape Maltings where Barbara Hepworth's 'Family of Man' looked particularly majestic standing before the reedbeds of the Alde estuary. The last time I visited Snape the piece was absent, so it was nice to see it back in situ. The hand of fate hadn't quite finished trying to put a spanner in the works though, as a Tube strike had been belatedly announced for the very day of the family reunion in London that I mentioned in my previous post. But, in spite of all the obstacles, each of us somehow made it to the Euston pub at roughly the appointed time and enjoyed a memorable, if all too brief, few hours together.

Steve Wynn - My Family

Clickety Click

Whoever it was that said time passes more quickly the older you get was bang on the money. In October I'll have been living in this place for six years and 2027 will mark a whole decade of working in the supermarket. The fourteen years I spent running my own little record shop in my 20s & 30s felt like an eternity, but this past ten years of shelf stacking has absolutely flown by. I enjoy my job tremendously, though these days I have to admit that it takes a lot out of me. 15-18000 steps per shift is not uncommon, plus the constant bending and lifting - I'm not sure how many more years at the sharp end of retail I have in me. Mind you, I still seem to run rings around many of the youngsters, so maybe I've got a handful of Christmases in the old bones yet.

The reason for all these random ruminations? Today I turn 66....sixty bloody six! My cousin and her husband arrive from New York for a short stay in a few hours and before they fly out next week we're going to attempt a unique meet-up with a further two far-flung cousins, one from the Midlands and the other from the South coast. They're both over ten years older than me and, as I've noted, time is marching on, so we're aiming to convene for a long pub lunch in London, before jumping on our respective trains to head home. There are another two cousins along the South coast who can't make it this time round, so hopefully we'll have another chance someday, because, although our Fathers were brothers, we've never all been in a room at the same time.   

Rick Nelson & the Stone Canyon Band - Life

Monday Long Song

Devon Irons originally released 'Ketch Vampire' as a 7" single on Lee Perry's Black Art label in 1976, but the following year Scratch piled on the reverb, added a toast by Dr Alimantado and reissued the whole shebang as, simply, 'Vampire'. The song comments on the then pervasive 'false rasta' phenomenon, where imposters wore dreadlocks as a cover for all manner of nefarious activities.

'...a true Rastaman no fire no long gun, a true Rastaman no throw homemade bomb, a true Rastaman him no drink fi drunk, a true Rastaman do not gamble...'

This peculiar version, from a 2022 Lee Perry compilation, features the 12" mix of 'Vampire' with 'Ketch a Dub', the non-reverbed flip-side of the 1976 7", crudely tacked, after an uncomfortable pause, onto the end. A mighty tune for sure, but quite an odd presentation. 

Devon Irons - Vampire

O’er the High, High Hills and Down Yon Dowy Den

It's way too early to speculate on what might end up being my favourite album of 2026, though I'd put good money on Goblin Band's newly released 'Clyde Water' finishing the year as my favourite single. 'Clyde Water', a Scottish ballad dating from the early 19th century, has been interpreted previously by a range of notable artists such as Kate Rusby, Martin Carthy, Ewan MacColl, Anaïs Mitchell and Jon Boden, though for me no-one grasped the epic tale by the throat in quite the way that Nic Jones did. The song appeared on Jones' 1980 masterpiece 'Penguin Eggs' as 'The Drowned Lovers', an alternative title that is a bit of a plot-spoiler to be honest and indeed its original title was duly restored for the release of two subsequent live versions. 

Nic Jones - Clyde Water 

Friday Photo #74

My heart sank a little on Martin's behalf when he mentioned a bunch of chattering gig-goers in his recent review of an Echo & the Bunnymen gig in Norwich. We've all experienced them at one time or another I'm sure. The constant blathering of a small, inconsiderate minority can so easily take the shine off of an otherwise good night out. But what's the best course of action in such a circumstance? Confront or try to ignore? It's a tricky one.

In October last year, I attended a gig that was almost comically polar opposite in terms of audience kerfuffle. Modern Nature played a basement show in front of a sell-out crowd of 60 uber-polite spectators, who remained so respectfully quiet during and between songs, that Jack Cooper felt the need to break the silence with a light-hearted remark every now and then. The band's 'The Heat Warps' was one of my favourite releases of 2025 and thanks to the particularly attentive audience that night, we could all fully appreciate every nuance of every tune.

Modern Nature - Pharaoh