Fianchetto

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Originally uploaded by battez
Music never lets you down

Puts a smile on your face

Any time, anyplace…

(and especial thanks to Daze who ran through the crowd to get the autograph)

Lying in bed, warmed by an oil heater and an hour of smiths singles. Sound sooooo good on my mega hifi setup; remastered;repackaged;remembered!

“Just to let you know on 9 November between 5 and 6 pm GMT on Jazz FM Radio the Johnny Mathis single “I Love My Lady” is to be played by DJ Ralph Tee as a special favour to me. He’s actually got the whole album but because of legal reasons is unable to play it or let anyone else hear it.”

best album you have never heard!

Simon has commented on this justifiably, I omitted his name from the quote - my apologies, Simon. I was in some excitement

Norma Jean CD with Chic Organization selling on eBay at a good price of £30 GBP - considering Amazon has it from several people at 200€ euro plus!!!!

It is a great Chic CD, with all the extended mixes Norma Jean and Chic came up with. Features some classic Nile and Bernard stuff on Saturday, Sorceror and High Society. It’s got evrything Chic and Norma Jean Wright did together.

I have recently been lucky enough to DISCO-ver this tune by Teri de Sario on Casablanca label, and written of Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees. It is a big-toothed belter of a tune, with soaring strings, loping irrepressibility and moving lead vocals.

I admit it , I’m really a dreamer
And I’m reachin’ for a star too high up there for hangin’ on
And baby , I believe in ‘for all time”
and the miracle of your love and mine
It’s a lonely feelin’ when the meaning’s gone

I’m confessin’ , I don’t wanna let you go
And I’m burnin’ for the love
that you don’t show me anymore
And all of the dreams that we whispered about
They went into my heart and they never came out
And a love like this can die if we don’t let it grow

Wind and fire and fallin’ rain
I’ll be comin’ through
There ain’t nothin’ gonna keep me from you
My love (no nothing) ,nothin’ gonna keep me from you , my love
I’ll find you
Anyplace where you may hide
I’ll be by your side
There ain’t nothin’ gonna keep me from you
My love (no, nothin’) ,nothin’ gonna keep me from you,my love
I’ll find you

Heaven and earth I will move for you ,darlin’
Whatever it takes to be where you are
With a stronger love , let me flow through you , baby
You ain’t got the power for breakin’ my heart
And forever you’ll be my paradise
And I’m reachin’ for a dream when you don’t even want me to
And baby , I believe you need me there
for the miracle of love we share
And tomorrow I will still be followin’ you

ha..[r], as I saw they were nominated but didnae win the ever-blander mercury music prize this year. They didnt deserve to winit, neither did “klaxons” (silly name, silly band) — I knocekd this review out back in the Spring - it was an interesting album and I liked the mix of MBV with more some dancey trancey things. Woxy.com play it all the time now, and I enjoy hearing it when it is on, but it’s not Neu! or Can anything really. Like to see what the guy comes up with next.

Maps:

We Can Create

With James Chapman’s first full-length album, the psychedelic, cosmic pathways of the mind are delineated (a bit), although I actually suspect “Maps” is probably titled after some nickname that the Northamptonshire musician has. And the shoegazey English Shire (alright, that’s not a real genre) sound of Spiritualized and My Bloody Valentine actually gets an effective update by Maps here.It’s pretty good for a first record too, mastering lots of elements of its clear influences, while often coming up with something fresh and different. The album unfolds in a kind of hazy, druggy glory that brings to mind, mid-90s Yo la Tengo , Air, and sometimes on the (thankfully, few) meandering tracks, labelmate Moby. But also there are catchy Stone Roses and Charlatans-like vocals, and the melodies are indeed tuneful, and memorable. It weirdly manages to have the admirable Britpop tunefulness of Badly Drawn Boy and co., without getting stuck in that Nineties sound at all. In places the music is really excellent - Nyman style repetitions on a Theme and it could well be a bit of a mellow classic, I suppose, the album never going beyond a mid-tempo as it is. And the record benefits from its tracks similarities in acquiring an overall unity, that a lot of contemporary stuff just can’t muster, and the track order is really satisfying, and I found myself happily letting it play through to the end. I must say, titled with an earnest epithet like “We Can Create”, I thought this album was going to be more annoying, and the lyrics were actually alright - not too grating, but ploughing a kind of unspecific cosmic sense of glory. (I blame drugs, or perhaps religion?). The vagueness only becomes too much on Don’t Fear, which almost spoils (”Feel like Someone, Somehow, Come On”) the track’s pleasant layering of texture. With references to “Songs that write themselves”, Mr Chapman perhaps refers to the escapist pleasures of sequencing electronic tracks, or even the obvious lightness he felt in composing such a succession of catchy tracks when making it. So if you’re looking for a summery album of refined - yet, not overblown - anthems, definitely try and listen to some of this.

I have just got a *mega* Nokia E61 mobile. And, well, I was bored and made up some edits of intros of tracks I might like to use as ringtones, you can have them all to download if you want your phone has m p three ringtone capability. (Probbaly will if bought in the last year).

they’re still the greatest.. reissues of most albums now out on Wounded Bird records! Need more proof? Check Nile talking about ‘em:

Oh, here’s a pretty damn wonderful live version of Rockit by my old acquaintance, Herbie Hancock. There are some key 80s fashions in this video, including MIRRORED shades…ouch

Glasgow’s The Reservoir wanted people to review some stuff so I wrote a review - here it is in all its turgid glory…

(the reservoir music site will be back up soon we are told)

Television Personalities - My Dark Places, on Domino records 2006
————-

It’s 2006 and to save us from Babyshambles with some real shambling it’s the Television Personalities again! Mixing a determined punk attitude with those stereotypical English things feyness, whimsy and being amateurish. If you have not heard of them, and they are still a bit obscure, by far the key member of all the line ups is singer and songwriter Dan Treacy. With a band name that sneered at reality TV culture back at a time when Alan Partidge was probably still enjoying life, Television Personalities began as part of the spiky blossom that was the late 70s British punk scene, their first record in 1978 featured the witty and jaunty “Part Time Punks”. Since then they have released several albums of lo-fi punky, prickly, part-time pop - and become a fave of many respected music lovers, like Stephen Pastel, Alan McGee and John Peel, as well as acquiring a tribute album from floppy C86 combos.

The TVPs’ Dark Places involve pills, crack, Orange one-to-one(!), ex-girlfriends, bitter asides/cliches, bits of arguments, all-too-brief hopes and sweet dreams and the persisting pain of being bullied at school. Things go “all Pete Tong” in the world of Treacy and “good things never last”. Against this, the songs are somehow assembled by dolorous piano figures that come and go alongside melodicas, guitar fuzz, drum patterns, providing the backdrop for the closely miked vocals.

Tunes never seem to properly start, rock out or finish. Neither, it is plain, were they intended to. A drum machine seems to have been casually flicked on for a part of a song, then just as lazily turned off. Puerile puns like “Uptown top wanking” (whereby the singer turns despairingly on an earlier quoting of “strictly roots”) and playground melodies pepper the tracks, but there are also some lovely lyrical bursts, and the sustained mood of “Knock it all Down” is a nice highlight. The song’s King loses his crown and gets it back, all to a stately dirge of a beat. After reading about Dan Treacy’s experiences with the law, homelessness and addiction over the past decade, it is all the more evocative listening. The spoken jottings (words here are rarely sung) amount to a fragmented journal of a difficult existence.

There are also several humorous bits that Coldplay et al could learn a thing or too from - “They’ll have to catch us first” is a great little Mario Kart themed romp. “Velvet underground” is a pleasing, jonathan richman/modern lovers homage - LOL! Occasionally I found Treacy’s accent grating, but, and the affected tone doesn’t sit well for me with the relentless satire.

Of course the album does sound like earlier TVP records, but at the same time not really being as impressive overall, but this is original and unsettling music (”All The Young Children On Smack, All The Young Children On Crack”), and treats listening well with its show of sheer difference.

Not really into morbid-o-blogging but I’m gonna make an exception here.

I’ve just heard the sad news that Luther Vandross has died. In the last couple of years I have discovered what an amazing singer he was - I sought out his early albums after I realised he did so much with Chic, and knowing that I liked some of his famous tracks. Luther was early on in a band with Fonzi Thornton*, performing on Sesame Street (!) at one stage, before Luther went on to meet Bowie when he was investigating RnB music for his change of direction on Young Americans. Bowie actually used a song of Luther’s on that album!

Fonzi and Luther would get together again to add vocals to some of Chic’s best work, and in 1980/1 I think, Luther joined a disco group - Change - and recorded Glow of Love, which has a lovely vocal, totally light and joyous, over a Chic-like riff that Janet Jackson used later. It was then he began his solo career proper with the Never Too Much LP.

That album is a great place to start if you want to hear classic Luther, and is a real album’s worth of soul - the title track is well known, but the whole record hangs together well. My favourite from this era is Forever, For Always For Love, which has a pink hued cover and is kind of the template for the sensitive, high production romatic soul that followed, but has still a bit of the discofunk music that was where Luther had been in the previous few years. You can pick up his albums pretty cheap these days - think the medallion men who bought them to seduce the chicks must be feeling a bit past it (or have updated to David Bedingfield) as I see the LPs in Glasgow charity shops all the time for a quid or so.

His recent album is pretty good too, the duet with Beyonce is actually pretty ace, and is a real achievement considering he had had a stroke just before. Goodbye Luther, you’ll be missed!

A Post-war record label in Nashville, Memphis and Muscle Shoals. I have come across them as I was looking for Shirley Brown albums. Shirley B was the last hit record artist Stax had in the 70s, with the classic Woman to Woman. But in the early 70s she had recorded with Excello, who were primarily southern soul at that time. There has been some re-issues of this stuff by AVI records in the 90s — Tom Moulton mixed and remastered the stuff, and it sounds great!

Shirley Brown is as talented as Candi Staton, who I’m seeing at Triptych, and with a similar warm and evocative voice, although she does belt it out like Aretha on many tracks - sometimes a little too much. The Arista album I have is very fine, with Al Green’s backing singers and Duck Dunn helping out. I was going to track down some of the later Malaco records until I saw she had done stuff with Excello and (?) A-Bet records before Stax. The album Uptown Down South reissue looks good, as does the Heart of Southern Soul CD.

The label Excello started out as gospel then moved into R & B, and Southern blues.

Also one under-appreciated female vocal soul talent to look out for is Doris Duke, more info on this fine soul blog I have recently discovered.