Funtime

You may well be aware of this, but I've only stumbled upon it comparatively recently. It's a short video comprising extracts from David Bowie & Mick Jagger's 'Dancing in the Street' clip.....minus the music. The uploader removed the song, then added various incidental noises for comic effect - and it's a hoot. Apparently Bowie himself even thought so. This is Ben Monder, who played guitar on 'Blackstar', recalling the atmosphere during the recording sessions. 'I remember us watching this thing...somebody did a series of music videos without the music. Somebody did one of those for the video he (Bowie) did with Mick Jagger for "Dancing In The Streets." But there's no music, just footsteps and grunts and burps and stuff like that. He thought that was hilarious and would just have us watch the whole thing.'

Bowie's entrance gets me every time.

Saturday Scratch #54 - Jimmy Riley

Saturday Scratch, an occasional series that shines a light on a selection with a Lee 'Scratch' Perry connection. 

And so we bid farewell to Jimmy Riley at 61, yet another musical great lost to cancer. His career was a long one, stretching back to the mid-1960s, during which time he worked with many legendary names in Jamaican music, including Bunny Lee, Sly & Robbie, Duke Reid and a brief stint with Lee Perry. Here are a couple of tunes produced by Scratch, who also duets with Jimmy on 'Yagga Yagga'. Rest easy Mr Riley.

Martin Carthy

On Sunday evening, in a basement space little bigger than my living room, Martin Carthy gave a two hour folk tradition masterclass to a riveted 50-strong audience. From 'High Germany', the very first track on his very first album in 1965, to 'Her Servant Man' from 2014's 'The Moral Of The Elephant' (his most recent LP, recorded with daughter Eliza), Carthy cherry-picked tunes from a vast repertoire, offering extensive background information to every song as well as crediting all the relevant sources in each case. 'The Bedmaking' from 1976's 'Crown of Horn', an epic 'Famous Flower Of Serving Men' from 2006's 'Waiting for Angels' and 'Georgie' from 1998's 'Signs of Life' were a few of the many high-points, as was an acapella romp through 'Oor Hamlet', which was a complete hoot that had us all in stitches. Best of the lot though was 'Bill Norrie', a tragic ballad originally recorded for 'Right of Passage' in 1988, but these days delivered at a considerably slower pace, an arrangement that only adds further gravitas to the sombre subject matter. This poor quality audience recording of 'Bill Norrie' from last year merely hints at how jaw-dropping Martin's performance of the song was on Sunday.

Saturday Scratch #53 - 80 Years Young

The mighty Lee Perry turns 80 tomorrow and to celebrate here's one of my favourite Scratch vocals. 'Jah Jah Ah Natty Dread', from 1978's 'Return of the Super Ape' LP isn't his best song, production or performance, but it always makes me smile. Musically it's oddly clunky and primitive. The band sounds as though they might have heard of reggae at some point, but have never actually played it before - this is The Upsetters though, so one assumes that they're deliberately trying to sound that way. Then there's Lee's vocal, barked like an irate market trader and barely pausing for a massive sneeze just short of the two minute mark. It's all reassuringly bonkers - and we wouldn't have him any other way. Happy birthday Scratch!

Liima

The core members of the fine Danish band Efterklang are currently working as Liima and 'ii', the début LP under this new moniker, is issued today on 4AD. The record, pressed on neon green vinyl, contains 10 songs written in Finland, Berlin, Istanbul and Madeeira. Liima tour Europe in April.

Cracker and the Art of the Hidden Track

Oh what fun bands had when the CD format really started to take hold at the beginning of the 1990's. Hidden bonus tracks began to be concealed at the end or, more irritatingly, before the beginning, of increasing numbers of albums. I'm sure there are still CD's in my collection featuring hidden tracks that I've yet to discover. A particularly time-consuming example of the trend was Cracker's second album 'Kerosene Hat', issued in 1993. Tracks 1-12 are quite straight forward, forming a very worthy successor to the band's self-titled début, released the previous year. The end of the album proper is followed by two short tracks of silence before 41 seconds of random noise entitled 'Hi-Desert Biker Meth Lab' appears to bring proceedings to an end. But no, oh no, the fun is only just beginning. Next comes no fewer than 54 tracks, each comprising between 3 and 6 seconds of silence, before the epic 'Euro-Trash Girl' bursts from the speakers. Then another 19 short silent tracks leading into 'I Ride My Bike' and a further 11 (taking the bewildered listener to Track 99!) before the whole shebang really does conclude with a half-hearted demo of the album's title track.

'Euro-Trash Girl' was already a live favourite with Cracker fans before the release of 'Kerosene Hat' and would rise to even greater prominence the following year as the title track of a 5 song EP.

Keith Emerson RIP

I'm tremendously saddened to hear of the death of Keith Emerson. Emerson Lake & Palmer were a fundamental cornerstone of my broadening musical world-view throughout the early to mid-1970's and although many records from that period would later disappear from my collection during the great punk cull, ELP's self-titled debut, 'Tarkus', 'Pictures at an Exhibition', 'Trilogy' and 'Brain Salad Surgery' never left the family.

The quality of this clip is quite poor, but just watch those fingers go.

Here's Keith (and Carl Palmer) on the Oscar Peterson show, performing Keith's 1976 solo release, 'Honky Tonk Train Blues'.