Springsteen versus metal machine music

The BBC Iplayer is down at the moment, so I have been unable to listen to radio 6 or plays on BBC 4 extra. I have been reduced to buying music or listening to books on libervox (thanks)

One album I recently got was Bruce Springsteen first: Greetings From Asbury Park Normally I hate boss.



OK, hate may be a bit strong. I was aware some of the older albums were interesting. Marc Riley played its hard to be a saint in the city from his first album. So on the strength of that I got the album. I do like it, but I can see the style that would become his standard stadium rock style. The live version I have embedded above is really great though.

So as a comprise after listening to the boss, I also finally purchased Lou Reed's, metal music machine, which I love, but I can only listen in 10 minute segments, before I go a bit insane.

Incantation at White rabbit in Plymouth

I felt the need for live music on Tuesday night. I was that the White Rabbit venue in Plymouth was hosting an American death metal band called Incantation. everyone needs a bit of death metal in their lives.

I went to the venue after work. The doors opened at 19:30 and I got there just after 20:00. The place was dark and gloomy. I couldn't see a thing as I walked into the venue. The smoke machine was puffing smoke out and everyone was dressed in black. There was a grinding sound from the sage. The first band: Carcinoma were playing. I started having a panic attack, so I went to the bar for a beer to help me calm down. I liked the sound, hopefully the video below is of the correct band.
The next band up were Warcrab. They wanted more energy from the audience. But it was an older crowd and their energy level was low. By the magic of the internet I see that Warcrab are baed in Plymouth. Next up were the band called Supreme lord. My eyes were used to the gloom.

Finally Incantation started their set. I liked their sound, but I only managed to listen to 4 songs, because my legs were getting tired from standing up.

Too extreme for the freakzone

I was listening to the Freazkier zone this morning, where I heard that Stuart Maconie claimed that the track: Patty Waters - Black Is The Colour Of My True Loves Hair was too extreme for the freakzone radio show. Is that possible, given that the freakzone plays some fairly weird stuff? I think that Mr Maconie's brain has been addled by listening too to much prog music.

I did find on Amazon the album by Patty Waters, but you can't download the track in question. You have to buy the physical CD. It was starting to look like a conspiracy! Luckily, the people at google
have not deleted the uploaded track from youtube (not yet anyway).

On listening to "Black is the color of my true love",  I can sort of see Stuart's point.





One of my ambitions was to get a requested song banned by the DJ on the freakzone. The only thing I could thing of was:
David Koresh__ Mad Man In Waco. I own a CD with this on, but I am never sure whether it is a real or not.

Sleaford mods

I used to buy a lot f music, but since I started to listen to radio 6, I mostly just stream stuff. I did recently but two albums by the Sleaford mods. They were recommended by a writer in the Guardian. I really the sound. Also they have a really great video below.

A night out at White Rabbit

When I lived in Liverpool I used to go out to gigs about 2 or 3 times a week. When I moved to Glasgow I used to go out once or twice a months to see live music. When I moved to Germany, I used to go out to see live music perhaps once or twice every year. You can see the pattern emerge.

Last night I went out to see some bands play at the White Rabbit venue in Plymouth.
The bands playing were:

• RANDOM HAND 
• DUST BOWL JOKIES 
•  SOUNDS OF SWAMI 
•  THESE CREEPS

I got to the venue about 21:00. I think that the sounds of Swami band were playing. This band was a great hard core band. I usually stand at the back of the crowd at venues. One guy pushed his way to the front,  threw a full glass of beer over another guy and started "slam dancing" at the front. I thought that a fight would break out, but it didn't. When I used to regularly go to gigs, this was totally normal.

The next band was the "Dust bowl jokies". I wasn't really in the mood for this type of American rock, even if the band was from Sweden. At another time, with a different audience, I would have been  more into it.

At the end was "Random Hand" a punk/ska band played. I liked their energy and interaction with the audience.

I am getting too old to stand up for an entire gig.

Guy Clark

I have been going through a big Townes Van Zandt phase of my life. I just love his songs, but obviously I wouldn't let him in my flat. He was fucking crazy after all, but no doubt polite about it.

I am hoping that my new Guy Clark obsession will work out better for me. I just love the song below. It is depressing to hear the small amount of applause at the end.



And he sings about a knifes as well

Boy were they hard those song writers in Texas.

Yeah, but what about a little Townes van Zandt

Me and the fall

I feel in a bit of music rut. I just purchased the latest Fall album: Re-Mit Luckily it is a great fall album. I first heard about the fall in the mid 80s. The TV played the video for Mt Pharmacist



I had never heard of the fall at the time. One of my sister's friends said something like: "The same old Mark E Smith". Given that the fall had only been going 6 years by then. I was not in the cool crowd or I would have known about them in 1979. So I only occasionally buy Fall album's because they can be a bit shit sometimes.

I was so surprised to see how old Mark E Smith looked, when people tried to interview him when John Peel died. Getting old is natural of course and he likes to sup his beer as well. I have seen the fall play only twice. They played at the Liverpool and at a festival in Glasgow. You see I am not a total fanatic.

Listening to Liquid swords on a Sunday night

I felt like listening to some some rap music. In my Amazon music collection I found a Wu Tang Clan album, which I must have purchased some time during the last 15 years.

I really liked the Wu Tang Clan. Amazon recommended Liquid Swords -- this is rap music mixed with Japanese martial arts (mostly involving swords). It is a solo project of one of the Wu Tang Clan. It is great!

On the loudness of the Swans

Like every normal Englishman I hate goths, so I have always been a bit suspicious of a band called the swans, because they always dress in black. But I think they were too angry to be goths. Now that I read the wikipedia entry on the Swans, I see that Gira hates people to head bang.

One of my sister's friend introduced me to the swans while I was at University. I liked one particular song called "God damn the sun" the best. It was a slow almost acoustic number. It took me a long time to track it down in the days before youtube.



The Swans also have a reputation of being a very loud almost drone like band. I have read gig reviews where the sound is painfully loud. I did go and see them play in Edinburgh. The venue was near the railway station and all the bands seemed to play very loud, so quite often I had problems hearing the next day.

Anyway the point of this post is that I really like the new Swans album: The Seer. Somehow I originally liked the slower acoustic stuff of the Swans, but this new album need to be played loud!

Into the void with Monika Kruse

Do you think I am cool. I have not really enjoyed the last few new years eves. Even on  holiday last year, I didn't manage to stay up to till 12:00. This year I noticed that there was an electronic music festival on 31st December. The festival is called void.

Umm,  my knowledge of electronic music stops at Tangerine Dream, but there is month, Looking at the ine up, there is Monika Kruse


I am not sure about Monika, but will listen more.
Hopefully there will be beer there, rather than bottles of nasty water. Perhaps I will turn into a cool techno dude and pull some e-chick. Or more likely, someone will call me grandad. I am not sure I will be there at the end at 6:00.

Why I loved Shrimper records

Nowadays I seem get most of my new music from Radio 6. I hardly buy any music, but just stream music from the radio or listen to radio plays.

When I was living in the US I sometimes purchased a lot of cassettes via mail order. I got a lot of cassettes from a label called Shrimper which was run by  Dennis Callaci. At that time I was reading a lot of fanzines as well and I guess that was the way I got into it. Most of the music on Shrimper seemed lo-fi and all of the bands were interesting.
Dennis used to write short notes when he sent me the cassettes, so we had some kind of written conversations.

There were great bands on Shrimper, such as Simon Joyner and the Mountain Goats. My all time favorite was Paste. This was one guy with a guitar intensely playing. I can still hear in my mind one
song about "greasy hair". Dennis Callaci was the man in paste, but he moved on into other bands
on his label.

Before the Internet it was a big struggle to find some album that you wanted. I spent many years trying to find a Swans album. Now it is a lot easier to track a tune down, usually via Youtube. However I don't see too much from Shrimper. My impression was that Dennis would not have liked the convenience of the Internet from music. I do see that there was a gig for the 20 year anniversary of the creation of the  Shrimper label posted on Youtube, so they must be still going.

Unfortunately I got rid of a lot of my tapes when I moved to Germany. Stupid me.

There are a few web sites with more information about Shrimper Records, such as this one.  There is a small amount of information about Shrimper on the wikipedia site. This page has a proper history of the label.

I just downloaded from Amazon a MP3 ssampler of the Shrimper stuff.

So here is some Refrigerator, one of Denni's bands to get some idea of the Shrimper label/

Cat Power

There is a great quote in a Dylan Thomas story where a young man says "I still loved her, although he didn't like anything she said or did." I always though this was a bit harsh.

In a similar vein, I obviously love Cat Power, but if I was in her presence, I would be unable to speak, just gurgle a bit and probably faint. Looking at the article in the guardian about Cat Power, I am not sure I would be able to keep up with her and I doubt that she would be happy drinking beer while watching Dr Who episodes.

I first heard of her work when I was living in the US. Shew has a new record out soon. From the free track made available she sounds in good form. I am not sure I like her new hair cut.





Here is some classic Cat Power.

In praise of Dr Feel good

I watching Punk Britania on the Iplayer. Personally I have seen so many histories of punk in the UK that I don't find it that interesting. Particularly as they never mention bands influential bands such as can. Also these program tend to stop at punk, but never mention post punk bands such as wire, that I now think are more interesting.

I enjoyed the first episode that featured "pub rock". There was a clip of Dr Feel Good. For some reason I though that Dr Feel Good was a black soul band for a time, but I heard a track by them in the past and I thought it was fantastic. I liked their stage presence even more. Although it is a little bit bluesy for my taste.

The magnetic fields are back in my life

When I used to buy CDs, I used to really love a CD by the Magnetic fields. The CD was was called "69 love songs".

I was listening to the Marc Riley show and he had the Magnetic Fields  in session. I really enjoyed the interview, because the singer had a "dry wit." Although I was bit worried when he said he had written a song below when he was so drunk he didn't remember it (but perhaps the wit was then not so dry).

In the interview, he said he preferred to play acoustically -- but why I thought call yourself the magnetic fields, if you hate electricity. Now that I read the wikipedia entry the band was named after a  Breton novel (that I might have read a long time ago). OK I am sure I have read a Breton novel, but probably not the magnetic fields

On being cool  musically

I like to think that I have fairly wide musical tastes. However, I don't follow what is happening in the charts, mostly because I listen to radio 6, and mostly hate the output of radio 1. I do occasionally see newspaper articles about pop stars, such as lady gaga and various winners of talent shows, but I mostly ignore them.

I did hear about some woman called Adele. because she was having problems with her voice. My mum played me a track over the X-mas break and there is something in that I liked. So I even got her latest album from Itunes. Gosh, I am now finding music from my mum. Where will it end? Perhaps soon you will hear me say, I am really looking forward to Paul McCartney's  latest piece of bilge. So this is middle age. Well perhaps just because something is popular doesn't make it crap.

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So I want to be willfully obscure. The freakzone on radio 6 last week had the featured album of  

Don Bradshaw-Leather

that was never released as a CD. Also no one really knows who the guy is. The album has the scariest cover ever. It sounds a bit weird.

Anni Rossi

The video is of Anni Rossie. I think she is playing a Viola, something that the web tells me is a violin with a non-standard size. I like her sound anyway.

Bill FAY

Today the freakzone radio show featured a forgotten Bill Fay album. I think he is great!

New music

Back before the internet, one way to find new music was to go to the library and borrow tapes. Then you copy them. This is how I first heard Robin Trower. I have always felt a bit ashamed of liking Trower, because he was a bit hippy and cosmic. That was a bit uncool growing up after punk. But I really like his guitar sound. He is really gritty blues, so I am not sure what my younger self was worried about. I was reminded of my repression of my love for the music of Trower when a track was played on one of the freakzones on radio 6.

On a more modern front I really like the curtains of night a female death metal band from the US. They don't want to be friend on myspace. Perhaps I scare them. or perhaps they think I will compare them to babes in Toyland.

Love Cast Out All Evil

Friends can you remember the time before the internet, when the only way to find new music was to walk around a record shop. I used to buy CDs or tapes that looked cool, but then I wouldn't know much about the artist. In some sense this was a better time, it does effect my judgement when I find out about an artist, rather than just listening to their sounds.

When I used to live in Kentucky I found a CD by Roky Erickson, and it was loud explosive and awesome. After that I would look out for CDs, and buy then whenever I found them. He was never that prolific though.

With the Internet I now know of Roky's rocky history with mental illness. I did try to listen to the "13th floor elevators" the famous band he was in during the 60s, but I didn't get too much into it. However, I really like the electric jug playing that you can see them play on Youtube.

Anyway Roky Erickson has a new album out and it is great! I have been listening to it as I walk to work. Forget the Guardian review

On Jazz

I probably own less than 10 Jazz CDs, I wouldn't say I dislike Jazz. Occasionally I have come across a part of Jazz concert on TV and I have been put off by the long solos. Too much technique

There have been odd exceptions. In that I really like John Coltrane, but mostly I have not really tried to get into Jazz.

I was amused one time to hear that Alistair Cook who did the letter from America slot on the radio5 for many years tell a story, about playing a Jazz record to his mum. She burst into tears, because she regarded Jazz as for criminals and drug fiends. (This was before pop and rock I might add). This struck me as cool. There is a Jazz connection to the wildness of the Beat generation of course. But while their life style was wild, I was unconvinced by the music.

After having my musical tastes broadened by the freakzone radio show, I found that I like Free Jazz. Some people think it is chaotic, but that is what I like about it. The video below is by Ornette Coleman (Dancing In Your Head). Its groovy.