Soundtrack Saturday

As a child in the 1970s I was pretty much raised on TV Westerns. My Mum was/ is a huge fan and they were on television all the time. With fewer channels but also a smaller back catalogue of programmes, repeats of 60s films and TV shows was a way for air time to be filled cheaply. My childhood TV and film memories are a blur of cowboys, the prairies, Plains Indians, gun fights, saloons, wagon trains and the theme tunes connected to them. Rawhide was one of my Mum's favourites, a black and white show that ran from 1959 to 1965 and featured a young Clint Eastwood. The theme tune, sung by Frankie Laine, the life of the cowhand depicted with some realism, is a staple...

Rawhide

The Hollywood Westerns films had big themes. The Magnificent 7 seems to have been on a permanent loop of Saturday afternoon TV, the all star cast riding in to help out a village of Mexicans and save them from bandits. John Sturges' 1960 film, with Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen (who disliked each other apparently) plus Charles Bronson, James Coburg, Robert Vaughan and Horst Buchholtz, never fails to bring about a Proustian Rush, and Elmer Bernstein's theme tune is epic Western personified...

The two big Western TV shows were Bonanza and The High Chaparral, seemingly on loop on the BBC. Bonanza was my Mum's favourite, those Cartwright boys making a living out west for fourteen seasons and 431 episodes, from 1959 through to 1973. Adam was eldest Cartwright boy. Make of that what you will. At least I wasn't named Hoss. Or Little Joe. The theme tune is a twiddly joy. 

The High Chaparral was a rival studio's challenge to Bonanza's weekly TV 60s supremacy in the States, with Big John Cannon and his family trying to make a go at ranching in Arizona, in Apache territory. The Native Americans were not always portrayed as sympathetically as they should have been in either series but in The High Chaparral they sometimes got the upper hand and Big John's disagreements were sometimes with the army whose treatment of the Indians was much worse. Big John had more of a live and let live attitude. David Rose's The High Chaparral theme tune is cut from similar cloth as the Bonanza one (both were orchestrated by Rose)... 

We had one of those Great Western Themes albums that knocked around by our Dansette when we were children along with some Beatles singles, Baron Knights 7"s, a compilation of 60s hits played by top London studio session musicians (the first pop songs I can remember were on this- Windmills Of Your Mind, Get Back, Harlem Shuffle and The Boxer are the ones that stuck with me). Those Western Themes albums were massive charity shop fodder, along with Tijuana Brass, marching bands and Paul Young, but I don't own one now. Maybe I should hit the chazzers and find one. 

In 1977 Star Wars came along, the 1960s Star Trek were early evening TV gold and in 1978 a friend passed me a copy of Starlord, the British sci fi comic that later merged with 2000AD. Both had a kind of sci fi realism/ dystopia, horror and social comment mixed with science fiction and fantasy and from that point, science fiction began to replace the Western. 

Sherwood

Tuesday brings a pair of Adrian Sherwood mixes for your listening pleasure. The first is his dub mix of Monkey Mafia's after hours classic from 1998, their cover of the Creedence Clearwater Revival song As Long As I Can See The Light. Echo, delay, melodica, the full Sherwood dubbed out business. A lovely way to start the day.

As Long As I Can See The Light (Adrian Sherwood Dub Lighting)

My own personal Woodentops revival continues- the band haven't been far away from my stereo for most of 2018. Sherwood remixed several of Rolo and co's songs. This is my favourite, vocals up front, crunchy guitars dropped in and out and frenetic pace maintained.

Love Affair With Everyday Living (Adrian Sherwood Mix)

Zenith

In a week's time I'm going to Gorilla to see Wooden Shjips, creators of the most blissfully cool guitar album of 2018 so far, supported by Carlisle's The Lucid Dream (who have made 2 of the year's most impressive singles, SX1000 and Alone In Fear, acid house and techno influences to the fore). Their album Actualisation is out in October and ahead of it comes a third single- Zenith (part 2). This one puts them firmly back in the northern psyche-rock territory with a growly bassline and vocals smothered in echo, tense and urgent and electric. I'm hoping, almost expecting, that the pairing of Wooden Shjips and The Lucid Dream will be gig of the year.



Another Zenith first appeared in 2000 AD in summer 1987, a 19 year old British superhero in the Watchmen anti-superhero mode, and a story involving the Second World War, Maximan versus the Nazis, a 1960s team with a Jim Morrison lookalike (below), and Zenith himself, a cocky late 80s flying generation gap with a quiff.

Comic Shop

I was up in the loft the other day, which is full of boxes of stuff that have now survived two house moves. Getting up and down there requires some precarious balancing on the top of a step ladder, even more risky when hauling boxes up and down. I brought down four large boxes of comics and a biggish box of cassettes. In the mid 80s I was a big comics fan. I started as a young kid reading 2000AD and then moved onto Marvel and DC. I decided the time had come to sell them, especially as money is tight, there's a few things I'm after at the moment and raising the money out selling things seemed the best way to do it. Going through my comics collection (all filed in alphabetical order by title and then in chronological order, many of them in indivdual plastic bags) was a real Proustian rush job. I recognised some of the covers straight away and got a bit of a shiver, confronted with a much, much younger me. This younger me stared back in the shape of a few photo albums that came down as well. Look at a picture of yourself aged 17 and then tell yourself you haven't aged. I pulled out a few comics that I thought I'd keep (for, erm, sentimental reasons) including the run of Daredevil comics illustrated by David Mazzucelli (pictures above) and written by Frank Miller, a few X-Men, the full set of original Watchmen, a handful of others. The rest have gone up on ebay. The two big boxes (several hundred comics, buyer collects etc) sold pretty quickly. A run of Alan Moore written Swamp Things went last night and a pile of 2000ADs (variable condition) that have got some interest. I suspect the big boxes have gone to  a dealer who will make more money out of them than I have but I'm not going to start attending comic fairs and conventions to sell them individually and the amount I've raised will buy, ooh, that Clash Sound System boxed set for instance and a bit more besides. Although part of me is sorry to see them go, the rational part of me says 'they've been in the loft for twenty years, you'll never read them again- let them go'.

I also found a pile of Deadline magazines- an attempt to marry comic strips, satire and acid house. Tank Girl was Deadline's most famous character but there are interviews with clubby-comic crossovers and cartoon strips of 'real' people wearing MA1 flying jackets and ripped 501s (some by Jamie Hewlett of Gorillaz) with references to ecstasy. Strange days. I'm keeping these too.

The cassettes went up on ebay too- not all look like they'll sell but some Joy Division and New Order cassettes, My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts and one or two others have gone for anywhere between £2 and £8.50. These are albums I've got several times, in multiple formats. I'm slightly bemused that people will pay for two decade old cassettes (a pretty poor way to listen to music, let's be honest).

Cut Copy, remixed by Audrey from a year or two ago.

Sun God (Andrew Weatherall Remix)