Friday 19 April 2019

#AprilSongs #19 Good Friday


As it's Good Friday and some of us have the day off, I thought I would do a Google search for songs about Good Friday and every link was about religion and hymns. Now don't get me wrong, I was expending a big proportion but not everything, and really Good Friday is a bit of a misnomer for who it's supposed to be remembering and what for. Luckily for me, in my collection I have a song called "Good Friday" by The Black Crowes and I found a live take with Chris Robinson doing an impression of The Man.

So this is today's #AprilSongs entry, and today I actually had a lie in until eight o' clock. I still haven't got dressed or showered but I will do as soon as I publish this.

I am still reading "White Wolf's Son" by Michael Moorcock and enjoying it although it does swirl around a bit and points me in the direction of more books by the author that I need to catch up on, but this weekend I am one of the lucky ones to have four days away from the work environment and I am definitely going to enjoy them a lot.

Have a Good Good Friday everyone.

Thursday 18 April 2019

#AprilSongs #18 Thursday


Next in the #AprilSongs sequence is "Thursday" by The Pet Shop Boys ft Example. While I'm all for collaborations (check out FFS) sometimes it just seems to be about making the product more marketable to consumers rather than any artistic exploration and adventure.

I'm surprised The Pet Shop Boys have not appeared in the blog before as they are relatively local to me, and the finest purveyors of sequencer / arpeggiator based tunes probably ever , with a dry sense of humour and a sense of occasion. Example is the stage name of Elliot Gleave who extrapolated his name from his initials E.G. (exempli gratia ("for example")) so obviously more than a little intelligence on both sides.

So just a short post on this beautiful looking day (or it will be when the cloud completely burns off)

Enjoy your Thursday everybody.

Wednesday 17 April 2019

Rock Samplers


I've been meaning to write this, as I discovered, or got access to a lot of great music from the loss leader rock samplers in the late sixties and early seventies. I have been looking on Discogs and a lot of them can be picked up at very reasonable prices.

While I am semi tempted by some of them , the reality is that I have all the music digitally and the reason that these albums were put out was to tempt you to actually buy the albums. THe prices were as little as 50p with some of the double albums maybe hitting £1.99.

Sometimes these albums contained previously unreleased songs such as "New Age of Atlantic" which contained "Hey,Hey, What Can I Do" a stunning Led Zeppelin non-album song (although it did appear on later compilations, and a take of Simon and Garfunkel's "America" by Yes, ten minutes of it.

I'm going to put up ten covers of some compilations that I either have or have had, I still have a copy of the Island compilation "Nice Enough To Eat" which I loved so much I put together my own CD compilation so I could listen to it digitally as well, but the vinyl copy is downstairs and that will always be part of my collection.


Another favourite was the United Artists double compilation "All Good Clean Fun" which also had a booklet with it, but I have forgotten what was in it so need to track that down at some pome point.

The were many double sets such as Island's "El Pea" and "Bumpers", Vertigo's "Suck It And See". Harvest's "Picnic:A Breath of Fresh Air" (containing the , at the time, Pink Floyd rarity "Embryo")

Many of these are now available digitally and there and now often free digital downloads available to tempt you to buy more, but these all hold a lot of fond memories for me. The images link to Amazon but you can probably track them down on Discogs.

These are just a very small sample and you will probably have your own favourites but delving into these can bring some wonderful music into your life.

#AprilSongs #17 Wednesday Evening Blues


For the #AprilSongs sequence I have been surprised how many options there are for each day. At the beginning I was sure "Blue Monday" by New Order would be in here, it probably won't. I though I may have to include the Inspector Morse / Endeavour Theme by Barrington Pheloung because Morse's boss in Endeavour has a surname of Thursday, but I have a long list of Thursday songs.

Today we are going with "Wednesday Evening Blues" by John Lee Hooker another blues song like the one we opened with "Stormy Monday Blues" by T-Bone Walker.

So as it is a Bank Holiday Weekend we are more than half way through the week and I am well past halfway in the #AprilSongs sequence, which has surprised me a little from when I first had the idea, though it goes to show you never know if something can be done until you actually try it.

I'm sure I will have other ideas to make me write, but for the rest of April this will keep me occupied.

Tuesday 16 April 2019

#TenAlbumsInTenDays #4 - 9 and 10


Today I completed my #TenAlbumsInTenDays #4 and the last two I posted were "Another Day on Earth" by Brian Eno and "What Came From Fire" by Sound of Guns so I did manage to just include albums for this Century / Millenium.

As I have said your natural propensity is to go back to your teenage years and choose albums from when your musical opinion was being formed, so I did try and and limit my choices to lstuff from the last 19 years (although originally I wanted to do it from from the last ten years but the Carbon/Silicon album was from the last decade but still within this millenium.

The Brian Eno album struck me with the killer opening song "This" which is just based on a rhythm built by repeating the word "This". The rest of the album is just as good but that is a fine example of a killer opener and was his first song based album in about ten years.

I saw Sound of Guns at The Hoults Yard festival with my daughter Kirsty in Byker many years back, which was great but under advertised. There were a lot of great bands on but Sound of Guns weren't one I knew or had even heard of. They are used on a base jumping video  by Turbolenza  so I will include that video which features the songs "Sometimes" and "Alcatraz" plus a love video of "This" .

Enjoy your Tuesday.


#AprilSongs #16 Groovy Tuesday


First time I hears The Smithereens it was a compilation and the song was "Behind The Wall of Sleep" which is fairly dark haunting American country rock with Lovecraftian overtones to the title, so today I am going for their excellent "Groovy Tuesday" which is just more of their excellent sound , brooding and not taking any prisoners.

The Smithereens are a band I've never seen but if they come back into my vicinity I will definitely make an effort. I do have an anthology in my collection, but it's one of those things having a large collection , it's seldom you accidentally come across new music because you usually buy an ablum for a particular reason.

It used to be great when you would get the loss leader samplers such as "Nice Enough To Eat" or "All Good Clean Fun" which meant you could get new music for little investment , then that would hook you to buy more.

I now need to do a post about samplers don't I ?

Have a great Tuesday.

Monday 15 April 2019

#AprilSongs #15 Monday Night


The #AprilSongs is sort of a bit of a chore but I am determined to complete it and it has made me revisit and discover music in my collection live today's selection "Monday Night" by The Golden Palominos from their eponymous album.

The Golden Palominos are (or were ) a fluid inventive and adventurous musical collective led by drummer Anton Fier  with a core set of musicians featuring Bill Laswell and Nicky Skopelitis, but among their guests were Michael Stipe, John Lydon and Fred Frith, as well as many others.

I first got into them when I bought "A Dead Horse" probably on the basis of a John Peel play or NME review or both, and was blown away by the way it was both incredibly polished but so far away from the rock norm while also being very close to it, with stunningly clear production.

I am now wondering whether to treat myself to a vinyl copy, because my record player sounds so good, but I can also listen to it on the walk to work or from my network, so maybe that is just another thing that I don't need to buy, but we shall see.

So it's Monday morning and time to drag myself out to work.

Have a good one everyone.