Friday Photo #77

Ah, the old double exposure. When the film didn't wind on completely and you ended up with a photo of a zebra superimposed over that lovely view of your garden. I have a few such happy accidents in my own family archive, though I strongly suspect that today's anonymous example is a very deliberate one. I can offer no information or explanation for the shot, other than it was part of a job lot of similar ephemera that I purchased at auction a decade ago, though one can imagine an enthusiastic offspring directing their parents to remain completely still while moving their respective heads from one shoulder to the other between clicks.

-------------------------------

A considerable amount of record company money was thrown at young guitar bands in the mid-1990s. Good, bad or indifferent, many were given a chance to make a single or two and perhaps, if they were very fortunate, a whole album. Coming straight outta the Lake District, TC: Hug was one such band, who gave it their best shot for a couple of years before falling off the map. They deserved better. Their songwriting was strong and they weren't afraid to throw in the odd curveball every now and then. 'Two Heads' initially appeared on the b-side of TC: Hug's debut single 'Day Today' in the summer of '96, before being rejigged (to its detriment I reckon) for their one and only album 'Pie-MONDO' early the following year. This, needless to say, is the first of those versions.

Two Heads

Monday Long Song

Anita Ward went to No.1 on both sides of the Atlantic in 1979 with 'Ring My Bell' and, before the year was out, UK lovers rock trio Blood Sisters put out a bass driven cover of the massive hit. They really were blood sisters too - Ouida, Moira and Yvonne McCarthy. Keeping the family theme going, the band on the recording consisted of five brothers - Errol, E. Lloyd, Jerry, Trevor and Paul Robinson, who would go on to issue a couple of albums of their own in the early 1980s, under the One Blood moniker. E. Lloyd Robinson's bassline is even more prominent on the flipside of the 'Ring My Bell' 12", titled, not unreasonably, 'One Blood Dub'. Blood Sisters issued a mere handful of singles during their recording career, though, as of late last year at least, they are still performing in and around London.

I found 'One Blood Dub' lurking on an old hard drive in an anonymous folder of similar vinyl rips. I've no idea where I got it from and in truth the contents are a bit of a mixed bag, but it does contain one or two other dubs worthy of attention that I might swing back to somewhere down the line.

One Blood Dub

Friday Photo #76

Milkweed is an experimental gothic folk-noir duo, responsible for 'Remscéla', an LP created with banjos, loops, found sounds and glitchy, unsettling vocals. It was very possibly my album of 2025, certainly one of my most played. At the end of the year, they also reissued two earlier cassette only releases, 'The Mound People' and 'Folklore 1979', on vinyl for the first time. The band's lyrics are inspired by folkloric texts and their music is is lo-fi and haunting, claustrophobically enveloping the listener like a dense fog. I was lucky enough to see Milkweed perform twice last year, the first time was in my own home town, where the photo above was taken. 

Exile the Sons of Uisliu

How Conchobor was Begotten

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