The Fischers gig

The Fischers launch their great - well, it is - debut single, Down The Days, this Friday at The George Tavern.

Lead Fischer Jamie Holman has asked me to mention it (come on, London-dwelllers, what else are you going to be doing?) and directed my attention to this youtube treat: Come The Early Hours live session

Youtube fans may also want to watch a video for Down The Days.

THE GEORGE TAVERN,
FRI 2ND NOV, 2007 8.00pm
373 COMMERCIAL ROAD
STEPNEY
LONDON E1 0LA
The Loves + The Fischers + The School

Psychedelic Horseshit

Just when you thought America was about to spend the next decade staring at its shoes through lank hair and playing terrible dirges that go on for years without ever getting close to a tune, SHITGAZE is here to save us.

It’s not the most, uh, appetising genre name, I agree, but drastic times – people all over the USA are acting like shoegaze never happened! It did, and we in the UK lived through it so that others don’t have to again – call for drastic measures. You might prefer – as I do – the epithet Practice Rock, or even a description like Uneasy Listening; whichever way you put it, right now this is essential listening.

Psychedelic Horseshit – again, not the most appetising name – sound like those vital early post-punk releases from Flying Nun. Think of the barbaric, corrosive nihilism of The Gordons' Future Shock, and the jagged, penetrating, caustic tunes of The Clean’s Boodle, Boodle, Boodle ep and imagine them recorded on a primitive Dictaphone in a damp basement and you have the breathless invigoration of Psychedelic Horseshit's new album, Magic Flowers Droned.

Short songs played fast, great tunes fucked up – you just know how good Bad Vibrations with its Beach Boys influence is already, don’t you? Fuck yeah! This is the sound of the Jesus and Mary Chain playing Dylan rather than Spector, of My Bloody Valentine’s raw feedback and melodic impulse recorded quickly in one take, and of a world where The Blue Orchids mean more than The Fall (and that world is always a better place).

Psychedelic Horseshit’s hometown (Columbus, Ohio) sparring partners Times New Viking – not much effort, you suspect, was spent thinking up that name – have got the commercial end of the practice rock scene stitched up by signing a deal with Matador. If you want to hear early Pavement tunes fed through a two-dollar amp and beaten to a bloody pulp (and why wouldn’t you? It sounds, of course, fucking fantastic!) then make TNV your port of call. Round my way, though, it’s Psychedelic Horseshit every time. Hmm. Wonder if they do t-shirts? I’d like to impress friends and colleagues at all Christmas functions this year.

Robert Vickers on Grant McLennan

Even when it was snowing, he would wear a T-shirt and jeans jacket, the same thing he wore at the height of summer. He ate sparingly and consumed large amounts of alcohol. And he loved to talk.
Vickers on McLennan

Robert Vickers – what’s not to love? He always looked 14 years old, got his haircut and dressed like he was in The Beatles (not too far off, as it goes) and trained as a mystic after leaving The Go-Betweens.

Vickers wrote a lovely tribute to Grant McLennan last year, which I’ve only just seen:

For my friend Grant McLennan who died in his sleep
I played in a band called The Go-Betweens with Grant McLennan for five years (January '83 to December '87), but it was much earlier, before that time, when I really got to know him. We had met in Brisbane, Australia in the late Seventies. A cultural starved and politically repressive place where a corrupt government and a violent police force ruled. We were all turning twenty and desperate to 'do' something, and to get out of town. I managed to get out of town first, ending up in New York City, in a popular band managed by the owner of CBGB's and produced by a member of Blondie. It seemed like a dream. When Grant said he'd like to visit, I was happy to share that dream with him. For a month, he shared my tiny apartment and got a dose of the wild, early '80's New York. A bar tab at CB's, free entry into clubs like Danceteria, the art scene, the birth of hip hop and the kind of bohemian urban lifestyle we had only had fantasies about in Brisbane.

(full obituary here)

The Verlaines

The Verlaines, whose first loves were punk’s desperate urgency and classical music’s high romanticism, released a series of increasingly poetic but always enthralling records between 1982-1996, mainly for Flying Nun, have been preparing a new album.

Anyone who heard Graeme Downes’ – the chief songwriter and the only constant in the band’s history – superlative solo album for Matador, 2001’s Hammers And Anvils, will know that new output from Downes is long overdue; anyone familiar with The Verlaines’ back catalogue will, like me, be rejoicing.

Although named after the French poet Paul Verlaine rather than Television’s Tom Verlaine – who himself, born Thomas Miller, adopted the poet’s name – The Verlaines shared the furious spirit and classic guitar rock played by firebrands that make Marquee Moon such essential listening. Or, as the line in The Verlaines’ masterful Pyromaniac goes, “Totally written off but there's laughter at chaos."

The Verlaines’ debut single, Death and the Maiden, with its "Verlaine" lyrical motif inspired Downes to later say, “I haven't read much Verlaine. I like Baudelaire, Yeats, Eliot." More tellingly, Downes explained that he found “the image to be an interesting one, the image of innocence, and not knowing how to handle it, and facing some of the hairier issues that come along with maturity.”

The ingredients of some great music are there, no? To keep up with progress of The Verlaines' comeback (and progress is slow) there’s a comprehensive site here; or see the Death and the Maiden video, along with other Verlaines songs, here.

On a related note, I was talking to Lawrence a few years ago and I asked him about Tom Verlaine being a Felt fan. It was true, he smiled, Tom Verlaine did go up to the stage right after a Felt gig and shake Lawrence’s hand. After the gig, Verlaine’s girlfriend was saying how odd it was as he didn’t do that sort of thing. In fact, it was the only time in his life he had ever done such a thing. Lawrence, understandably, was still rather proud.

The wisdom of the Irish

Thank you, Microdisney.

This post self-destructs in the good humour in which it's posted sometime around 9.40pm tomorrow.

The Lost Side of Bobby Byrd

“Soul Brother No. One-And-A-Half”
(Fred Wesley)

Bobby Byrd, founder of the Famous Flames, co-writer of some of James Brown’s most enduring funk classics and the man who told the world to “get on up” millions of times thanks to his vocal in Sex Machine, died last month.

With a good claim to being one of the hardest working men in show business, Byrd also managed a decent solo career. His most famous song, I Know You Got Soul, owes its popularity to being one of hip hop’s staple samples, most famously in Eric B and Rakim’s – wait for it – I Know You Got Soul.

About two months after that 1987 sample (and before Public Enemy’s use of it for three different songs), Mr X and Mr Z used the same backing for Drink Old Gold. Old skool aficionados will be amused remembering the lines “It ain’t what you’re drinkin’/It’s where you drink at”.

The solo compilation from 1990 Finally Getting Paid hinted at Byrd’s frustration at losing royalties from both sampling culture and James Brown’s swindling him out of 40 co-writing credits (the claims didn’t stand up as they were deemed too old; however, Brown alluded to Byrd writing the songs in a number of interviews).

The b-side to 1971’s I Know You Got Soul, It's I Who Love You (Not Him Anymore), is my favourite Bobby Byrd song and one that is bafflingly omitted by ‘best of’ compilers. Ironically, given its – ahem – passing similarity to Dark End Of The Street, the songwriting credits should probably give a nod to Spooner Oldham and Dan Penn, but for Southern grit, gospel-infused soul and gut-wrenching emotion, they don’t come much better than this.

The Candees Hot Hits (part two)

Right, viewers. Those of you who are interested in mid-80s mod pop girl group (non) sensations The Candees may remember that I wrote about them in April and offered to post their songs from the Hot Hits compilation if there was interest.
There was, and I posted them in August.
I still get people asking, so here they are again, only not ysi-format, so they'll stick around a bit longer.
The Heart Parade
Little Miss Rainbow

To the people who write in asking me to post the Episode Four songs, after I offered to post the ep one weekend in January(!), you are far, far too late (about ten months) for that one.

The good news is that other people got the songs from me and have posted them on the world wide web, so seek and ye shall find.

This case is closed!