Cowboy Time

Mike Wilson records as 100 Poems, straight outta Kildare, Ireland. Since January 2024 he's released six albums of music sample based songs, edits and original compositions, straddling the wiggly line between Balearic, dub and all sorts of electronic delights, and earlier this year throwing some acid boogie, Americana and cosmic country and western into the stew. His newest album, Rodeo Disco, came out last week and continues down that route, with uptempo floor fillers, dub basslines and some more Western cowboy business. For Mike, music is about creating but also about facing life full on and in his own words, there to help 'shake off the black dog'.

Rodeo Disco opens with a pair of bangers, the Doobie Brothers cosmic funk house of Let The Music Play and an Elvis sampling Rockin' Dub Music, Elvis coming to us from an interview in 1953 being asked about juvenile delinquency over slo mo beats and whooshes. On Freedom Fears Nothing there are acoustic guitars and more slowed down tempos and Martin Luther King, recorded speaking the night before his death in Memphis, a speech that almost prefigures his assassination the following day.  Sister Dave's Rodeo Show goes Western and gospel- acid beats and a Brian Christopher vocal and La Danse De Mardi Gras spins us back onto the floor with fiddles and Cajun dance. 

The final two songs bring the album home in emotional fashion and demonstrate Mike's range. On Big Purple Hands there is a Seamus O'Rourke vocal, reading from his book Leaning On Gates, a novel from Leitrim with home truths, booze, bedsits in Dublin, work in New York and an author/ narrator finding out his place in the world. Mike's drums and synths provide a clattering backing that veers into cosmic territory, a splicing of genres and cultures that works really well, O'Rourke's conversational style making it sound like you're sitting in a pub listening to him while tow bands compete to be heard, a cosmic country and an Irish jig outfit. On the closing song Wand'rin' Dub, Lee Marvin's famous number one single, Wandr'in' Star, is reworked with Lee's gravelly voice embellished with waves, acid beats and bleeps, dub space and a ticking drum machine. Wandr'in' Star was played at the end of Joe Strummer's funeral which adds a certain poignancy to it- the anniversary of Joe's death is coming up next month. 

You can find Rodeo Disco at Bandcamp, a free/ pay what you want deal. Any monies raised are going to support two mental health charities close to Mike's heart. 

The Western theme on this 100 Poems album and my Soundtrack Saturday post last weekend have brought a cowboy and Western themed vibe to Bagging Area. There are lots of songs and artists with the word Cowboy in my music folders. Cowboy Junkies and Cowboys International have both featured here before and Midnight Cowboy was a Soundtrack Saturday post earlier this year as was Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid. Here are some more cowboys...

Cowboy George

Cowboy George is from The Fall's Your Future Our Clutter, their twenty seventh studio album, released in 2010 (which also featured a cover of Wanda Jackson's rockabilly Western song Funnel Of Love). Taut slide guitar, rumbling bass and clattering drums with the inimitable Mark E. Smith in rampant form with lines about low fat Limeys, broken bottles and Robin redbreast. 

Cowboys Are Square

It's been ages since I posted any Billy Childish, like Mark E Smith a total one off with a prodigious work rate and idiosyncratic worldview. Cowboys Are Square was on Thee Headcoats 1990 album The Kids Are Al Square: This Is Hip! In the last few months Billy has reunited Thee Headcoats and released a new album. They've probably recorded a new one in the time it took to write this blogpost. Billy's anti- cowboy obviously, cowboys are square, Indians are best.

Cowboys

Cowboys was the opening song on Portishead's second album. Claustrophobic and dense, hip hop/ jazz noir with Beth's lyrics eviscerating the British establishment. 

Cowboys And Indians

Cowboys And Indians is Pearl Harbour and The Explosions, a 1980 rock 'n' roll single in the Jerry Lee Lewis style, and also from the album Don't Follow Me, I'm Lost Too. Pearl arrived in London, had a relationship with Kosmo Vinyl, married Paul Simonon, supported The Clash and got members of The Clash, The Blockheads and Whirlwind to play on the album along with BJ Cole. 

Hey Cowboy

Lee Hazlewood recorded Cowboy In Sweden in 1970, a collection of country/ cowboy songs but done with that psychedelic, cinematic sound Lee pioneered. Nina Lizell sings with Lee on Hey Cowboy. 

Paul Simonon is a big Lee Hazlewood fan and was married to Pearl Harbour. Lee Marvin was played at Joe Strummer's funeral and is on the final track on 100 Poems' Rodeo Disco. The connections are everywhere. Sometimes these things just come together as I write them. 

Thirty Five Minutes Of England Mix

I’m really not a very patriotic person at all, it being as Oscar Wilde said, 'the last refuge of the scoundrel'. The markers of patriotism have always felt like nonsense to me- the flag (either of them, the cross of St. George and the Union flag), the national anthem, the monarchy, the Little England attitudes, the English exceptionalism, all of it does nothing for me. It makes no sense at all that someone who was born in Carlisle, Dover or Chester is in some way better than someone born a few miles away in Wrexham, Calais or Dumfries. Pride in one's country and it's achievements is I suppose OK to an extent but that pride often tips over into nationalism and exceptionalism and has a habit of hiding or ignoring some parts of a nation's history too. 

Supporting the England football team has always been tainted with all of the nonsense too. It's not necessarily the team's fault, they're partly just the vehicle for it. Tabloid controversies about whether the players are singing the national anthem with enough ‘passion’. Songs about winning two world wars, ten German bombers and no surrender to the I.R.A. Grown men dressed as crusader knights. The England band (thankfully now missing). Car flags and cheap red cross on white background bunting sagging in the summer rain. The booing by their own fans of players taking the knee to protest against racism. The deluge of racist messages that Bukayo Saka, Marcus Rashford and Jadon Sancho received after missing their penalties in the 2021 Euro final. This was almost the last straw as far as I was concerned, ‘fans’ who would have been dancing in the streets if the penalty kicks had been a few inches one way or the other, taking to social media to racially abuse the young men who were taking part in a game was sickening and reflective of the wider culture- of Reform and UKIP, of Tory Little England politics, of the immigration narrative that Farage and Johnson and others fuelled by the tabloid press have spewed into British politics and English culture, of the nationalist nonsense that is only ever a sentence away from racism and the 'I'm not racist but...' brigade. 

The football team have dragged me back in over the last four weeks. I've tried to remain a bit arm's length from it, not get too invested. I boycotted the Qatar World Cup, hardly saw any of it, so it passed me by completely. But there was a sweet pleasure in watching the England penalties against Switzerland last Saturday, as five black and mixed race young men calmly slotted home their penalty kicks, the first and second generation descendants of immigrants putting England into a Euro semi- final. Where, as someone asked on social media after the match, are the racists now? Another of those children of immigrants, Ollie Watkins, scored the winner on Wednesday night, in the last second of the last minute of normal time.  

Tonight, England play Spain in the final of Euro ’24 in Berlin. This is a major achievement, the second consecutive Euros final. Those of us who grew up watching England in the 80s and 90s have seen little but failure from England teams. Sometimes they have been truly awful- the Euros in ’88, ’92 and 2016, the World Cup in 2014. Sometimes they’ve been massively overinflated and departed meekly beaten by clearly better sides- tournaments in 2002, 2006, 2010, 2012. Sometimes they’ve been engulfed by (in)glorious failure with a sense of injustice- Mexico ’86, France ’98. Sometimes they’ve not even qualified for tournaments- 1994, 2008. Very occasionally they’ve pulled it together and almost but not quite got to the final- 1990 and 1996. But on the whole, even if you can ignore the nationalist bluster that surrounds them, they've been not very good. 

Recently they’ve been better and if nothing else Gareth Southgate has changed the story around the England team, blocked out ‘the noise’ as he puts it. I’ve learned to limit my expectations of England. Reaching Euro finals twice in three years is something no other England manager or team has done. Hopefully, maybe, they can go one step further tonight and put to bed the endless burden of 1966 and all that. 

This is a thirty five minute mix of songs about England with a couple of England football songs. I'm sure some of you won't go anywhere near it but I like to think of it as the antithesis of Three Lions.

Thirty Five Minutes Of England For Euro 24

• Billy Bragg: A New England
• The Clash: Something About England
• The Clash: This Is England
• Care: Sad Day For England
• Black Grape: England's Irie
• Shuttleworth ft. Mark E. Smith: England's Heartbeat (Brazilian Ambush)
• The Vermin Poets: England's Poets
• Big Audio Dynamite: Union, Jack
• New Order: World In Motion (Call The Carabinieri Mix)

Billy Bragg's A New England is his 1983 calling card, a song about being twenty two and looking for a new girl, wishing on space hardware, and life in the early 80s. I probably should have included Kirsty McColl's cover which in some ways is the definitive version. In 2002 Billy addressed a load of the flag, nationalism, immigration, tabloid press, racism and England football shirts in his song Half- English- this only occurred to me while writing this part of the post. 

Something About England is from The Clash's 1980 album Sandinista!, a song that opens with the more resonant than ever lines, 'They say the immigrants steal the hub caps of respected gentlemen/ They say it would be wine and roses/ if England were for Englishmen again...' It's a truly great song, one where ick and Joe sing in character, Mick a young man leaving a bar and Joe an old man huddled in rags in a shop doorway. They then give us a history of the 20th century, war, depression, class struggle, disaster, all set to Clash punk/ music hall. 'Old England was all alone', they conclude.

A few years later, Mick and Topper both sacked, Joe recorded the final Clash album, Cut The Crap. The only song you really need from it is This Is England, the last great Clash song, Joe giving a state of the nation address, five years into Thatcher's government, economic depression and unemployment, with drum machines, guitars and chanting football crowds.  

Care was Paul Simpson (who will be back at this blog soon) and Ian Broudie. In 1983 Paul formed Care after The Wild Swans split for the first time. Sad Day For England was the B-side to the 12" My Boyish Days, one of only a handful of releases by the pair before they split in 1985. 

Black Grape's England's Irie was an unofficial Euro '96 song, a song that brought together Shaun Ryder, bez and Kermit with Keith Allen and Joe Strummer (and Strummer's only Top Of The Pops appearance). Shaun delivers several memorable lines, not least 'I'm spectating my wife's lactating/ It's a football thing'. I'm not sure it's aged particularly well but I thought I should include it. 

Shuttleworth were a one off band of Mark E. Smith, Ed Blaney and Jenny Shuttleworth who recorded this song for England's adventures at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. Apparently the FA approached him to do it (!) but then decided against having an official song so Mark put it out anyway. Mark wrote a few football related songs- Theme For Sparta FC is a classic- and on one occasion read the full time results on the BBC. 

In the 2010 World Cup England were dreadful in the group stage, finishing second behind the USA. They lost the next game in the knock out round to Germany, 4- 1. 

The Vermin Poets were one of Billy Childish's many, many groups. Their album, Poets Of England, came out in 2010, garage rock/ psyche pop. I don't think it's among Billy's best work but anything by Billy is worth paying at least some attention to. 

Union, Jack was on Big Audio Dynamite's 1989 album Megatop Phoenix, their fourth album and the last made by the original line up. 'Make a stand/ Before you fall/ You country needs you/ To play football', Mick sings, slipping in lines the empire, pints of beer, a green and pleasant land, and all for one. A Mick Jones late 80s football song that tries to re- imagine the football song after some terrible 80s ones sung by England squads with perms, mullets and in leisure wear. Mick would find himself trumped a year later though...

World In Motion needs no introduction really- New Order, Keith Allen, John Barnes, the summer of 1990, Italia 90, a dire group stage, wins against Belgium and Cameroon and then ultimately disappointment, penalties and Germany. This version is an Andrew Weatherall and Terry Farley remix from the remix 12" that came out a week after the main one. New Order had wanted to reflect the zeitgeist of 1990 by calling the song E For England, a step too far for the FA. They had to settle for the chorus, 'love's got the world in motion'. The FA wanted it changed to 'we've got the world in motion' but New Order stood their ground and love it was. 

Saturday Theme Ten

Today's Saturday theme is the Wolf Howard Theme, Dole Drums. 

Dole Drums (The Wolf Howard Theme)

Dole Drums is an instrumental piece of low- fi, organ- led beat pop, thumping drums courtesy of the titular Wolf Howard, sticksman for Wild Billy Childish And The Musicians Of The British Empire. Dole Drums is from their 2008 album Thatcher's Children, an album that had two stone cold 21st century Childish classic- He's Making A Tape and Back Among The Medway Losers and sleeve art by the legendary Jamie Reid (of Sex Pistols cover art fame). 

The song was featured in Andrew Weatherall's Double Gone Chapel Vol. 1, an hour's worth of top tunes selected by Andrew back in October 2008 and hosted at the Rotters Golf Club website. Double Gone Chapel Vol. 1 set the standard in some ways, the perfect sampler for what he was listening to in the first decade of the century- surf instrumentals,  rockabilly, post punk, Balearica, solo tracks, remixes and 7" singles that came his way via Rough Trade East. Double Gone Chapel Vol. 1 (Vols 2 and 3 followed in 2009) includes Calvin Cool, The Dawn Breakers, The Tall Boys, Sleaford Mods, S.C.U.M., Lykki Li, Basement 5, Lark, Thee Oh Sees and Billy Childish as its finale. You can find at Mixcloud or here if you want a download to keep forever. 

Sixteen

The little girl in this photograph, our daughter Eliza, turns sixteen today (coincidentally also the day she takes her last GCSE exam). The toddler in The Clash t-shirt seems a long time ago now. In recent time honoured fashion she has booked a day ticket for the Leeds festival, a rite of passage for today's teenagers. Happy birthday Eliza- enjoy the physics exam and your last day at school.

For many years Eliza and her friend have gone to dance classes, joined the team and performed locally and at shows. I've often gone to pick them up in the car from the classes. On one occasion when they were both much younger I had Misty Waters by The Kinks playing on the car CD player. They latched onto it and started singing along. It then became a thing, playing Misty Waters and all of us belting it out on the drive back from dance. We were still doing it a few weeks ago.

Recorded by The Kinks in 1968 Misty Waters was an outtake- an outtake!- that failed to make it onto either Four Well Respected Gentlemen or The Village Green Preservation Society and only turned up much later on The Great Lost Kinks Album.

Misty Waters 

Amps cranked up and at double the speed, Billy Childish and The Buff Medways covered the song for their 2000 album Steady The Buffs, about the time I started to get into Wild Billy Childish and his enormous back catalogue.

Misty Water

Coffee

I'm a tea drinker. I drink multiple cups of tea a day- since giving up the cigs I think it's only the tea that keeps me going sometimes. But there aren't any songs about tea on my hard drive. Coffee on the other hand is well represented. Coffee is cooler than tea, more sophisticated- to us Brits coffee is the continent, pavement cafes, and frothy milk. Now the high street is littered with coffee shops selling a bewildering array of coffees all served by your expert barista who's happy to stamp your loyalty card. Our first cup is served by Lalo Shifrin, an unsettling instrumental from the film Bullitt (hence the picture of Steve McQueen at the top).

Just Coffee

The caffeine is kicking in now. The Bullitt soundtrack can be a bit jittery even without a shot of the black stuff. In 1994 James Lavelle put out a double vinyl ep called The Time Has Come, a bunch of remixes from Howie B, Portishead and Plaid. Plaid did this, breakbeat- jazz- trip hop that isn't a million miles from Lalo Shifrin..

Coffeehouse Conversation (Plaid Remix)

In 1989 Edwyn Collins released his Hope And Despair album, a lovely collection of songs. This one, drum machine led and with a lovely circular guitar riff, builds for nearly five minutes as Edwyn croons. Gorgeous.

Coffee Table Song

Blur's 1999 album 13 was a reaction to the Britpop thing. Graham Coxon sings and wrote it, describing his battle with alcohol over a chirpy indie-pop tune with a sqwarky, string-bending guitar solo. A bit of an ear worm.

Coffee And TV

To finish before the barista chucks us out for nursing one cup for an hour, here's Wild Billy Childish And The Musicians Of The British Empire, from the magnificent Thatcher's Children album, and a three chord rush tirade sung by Nurse Julie...

Coffee Date

The Meek Ran Wanton

Ok, I give in. Here's a Christmas post. What was your office party like?

I haven't posted any Billy Childish for ages and his take on Christmas in the late 70s is wonderfully jaundiced. Green vinyl, 7". Of course.

Christmas 1979

Another Christmas Post

Another Christmas post, this time from the king of festive cheer Mr Billy Childish. I saw him do this song live in London, on a very warm day in May, a few years ago. Good fun. As Billy sings repeatedly over a killer guitar riff, merry fucking Christmas to you all. Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, whoever you're doing it with- have a good Christmas.

Christmas 1979

Dulce Et Decorum Est

I am off on a school trip to the battlefields of the First World War today, taking in various trenches, cemeteries, memorials and museums around the Somme and Ieper (Ypres, Wipers). I've visited parts of the Western Front before, including Tyne Cot, the largest British and Commonwealth War Graves cemetery in the world. It is unforgettable and a trip well worth taking.

I don't get back until late Monday night so don't expect any Bagging Area blog action until Tuesday at the earliest. I can't think of any more songs with Latin titles- four is as far as I can get. This song is played by Wild Billy Childish, from a radio session a few years back. Keep Your Lamps Trimmed And Burning is a blues song from the 1920s, usually associated with the Rev Gary Davies and Blind Willie Johnson.

Keep Your Lamp Trimmed And Burning

Kentish

Do you want to see some of my holiday photos?

We were in Kent last week, staying on Romney Marsh. I've only ever travelled through Kent before en route to Dover but exploring it was fantastic. As a bonus the weather was good too. Just down the road is Dungeness, one of the bleakest and most beautiful places in the country. Plus it's got an enormous nuclear power station which adds to the drama along with the masses of shingle flats and a pair of lighthouses. This one, the older of the two, is open and you can climb to the top.

Dungeness is also home to a community of artists and bohemians who live in a scattered collection of wooden cottages, some converted railway carriages. This one, Prospect Cottage, was the home of Derek Jarman.

Kent's coastline is dotted with reminders of the past and it's relationship with France, only twenty-five miles away. During the Napoleonic wars a string of Martello towers were built, against the threat of invasion. This one is Martello tower number 24 and is situated in a car park next to a small amusement park.

From a later conflict and threat of invasion, this World War Two era pill box looks out over the marsh.

Right behind the site we were staying on are some sound mirrors. The listening ears were constructed in the late 1920s, a form of acoustic sound detection and early warning of approaching enemy aircraft. Within a few years they were superceded by radar. There are three at Romney; this thirty foot concrete dish next to a smaller one and a two hundred feet long curved concrete wall. They've been closed off to the public due to vandalism and damage, now marooned on a man made island in a nature reserve. There's a swing bridge for guided tour access (but not while we were there). 

Musically, Kent means Billy Childish to me. We didn't get to Chatham, it's north Kent not south. This song is from the second album he did with his wife Nurse Julie and Wolf Howard as The Chatham Singers, a blues-gospel thing.

The Good Times

Christmas Eve

                                                                Merry Christmas from 1945

It's too late- the shops are shut, apart from the all night garage and the Nisa local. If you haven't got it by now, you're not going to get it. So sit down, pour yourself a drink, put your feet up, put some music on and mute the TV.

I'll be seeing family and going away for a couple of days. To all the people who come here and read this blog, the lurkers and the shy (pop in and say hello lurkers! You just have to leave something in the comments box) and all my internet friends- Ctel, Drew, Davy, DVD, George, Charity Chic, Simon, Ally, Dirk, Echorich, Walter, Luca, London Lee, The Cynical Farmer, Anto, Mondo, Max, and any others I've missed from this list who leave the comments that make this blogging lark a two-way thing rather than just me staring at a computer screen- I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas. See you in a few days.

A Poundland Christmas

In recent years Billy Childish has become part of the sound of Christmas round our way.

Gallows Eyes

One of my favourite Billy Childish songs today. In 2005 Billy produced yet another album, this time sidestepping the three chord garage-punk to make an album of two halves. Most of the album is poetry readings, many of them nakedly honest, some funny, some quite uncomfortable to listen to. The first seven songs are something else entirely. Recording with Wolf and Nurse Julie as The Chatham Singers, they strip it right back and play seven songs of ragged Delta blues, Billy coaxing some lovely warm guitar tones and Wolf and Julie keeping time on bass and drums. If they sound like they were recorded in his kitchen, it's probably because they were. This one is particularly good.

The Man With the Gallows Eyes

By Land Sea And Sky

In this short film Billy Chyldish and family launch thirty-one CTMF dazzle ships into the Thames estuary. Each dazzle ship carries one green vinyl 7" CTMF single. A reward in cash or 'other printed matter of apparent value' will be paid for each one recovered. Goodness only knows what this week's storm has done to the dispersal of these ships, all named after an area of the shipping forecast. The film, soundtracked by Sibelius, is very lovely indeed.

The Poet's Muse

                                                                 The Poet's Muse by William Oxen

This is from an e.p. called Today, Tomorrow And Forever Pete Molinari did with The Jordanaires a while back, a cover of Billy Childish's loveliest moment- Pete keeps it acoustic and sings it well, a bit smoother than Billy does it. He's on tour in Ireland and playing London soon. Come up north Pete- and when's that new lp coming out?

The Poet's Muse (Acoustic)

Lanterne Rouge

I've been really enjoying watching the Tour de France this year. Those gruelling climbs in the Pyrenees and the Alps, the flat racing around the city of Tours recently, the sprint finishes, the helicopter shots of them breezing along at 35 mph through beautiful French countryside, the way that two or three riders make a break early and hang on for ages and then a few kilometres from the line the peloton appears like a swarm of brightly clad bees and just swallows them up. I especially like the lanterne rouge, the award given to the man finishing last. Given that he may be last out of 180 odd riders, the lanterne is highly sought after. After all, the rider has to finish within a percentage time of the man finishing first, so the lanterne rouge winner has cycled 3000 plus kilometres and shown huge endurance and had to compete within a set time. And in a world (our whole world, not the cycling world) where winning, being first, being top dog, being the outstanding candidate, is more and more the be all and end all, I think it's great that the last man in gets a prize, for finishing and not dropping out. Three cheers for all those who come last and still succeed.

My favourite song about cycling is this Billy Childish classic, Medway Wheelers- a song about the cycling club his mother was a member of in the 40s and 50s. Cracking video too.



I've posted Medway Wheelers before so we'll have a different Billy song for today's mp3. Billy's new band The Chatham Forts (or CTFM) have recently released an lp and two singles. It's a bit of an angular, '79 punk style thing, apparently having been inspired by finding a book of lyrics Billy wrote 36 years ago and deciding to record them as an album.

I Should Have Been In Art School

Childish Forts

I got the new 7" from Billy Childish's latest group The Chatham Forts in the post while I was away. It's very cool, sharp chords and plenty of vim, and featuring The KLF- Jimmy Cauty on bass and Bill Drummond on xylophone. Needless to say it doesn't sound anything like The KLF. This has turned up on Youtube, not as angular as the single All Our Forts Are With You, but chugs away very well...



This was The KLF's greatest moment, still sounding monumental 23 years later.

What Time Is Love?

Wild Billy Childish And The KLF

An recent email from Damaged Goods reveals another new Billy Childish band (The Chatham Forts) and a limited edition 7" single in April. The new band sees Billy return to vocals and a 'sound that is more akin to The Mighty Caesers / Headcoats with even a little of The Pop Rivets in there as well, a slightly angular, new wave approach'. 

So far, so good- nothing too unexpected though. The excitement and mind-boggling bit comes with the final line of the message- 'We will have the album to follow in the summer......oh yeah, it also has Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond on it as well…that’s the KLF to you'.

Billy Childish and The KLF?! I know! And yet... what will it sound like? Garage rock crossed with stadium house? Or what? 

This song is from Bill Drummond's solo lp The Man- a song named after Dumfries' football team.

Queen Of The South

Advent Post Number Two

It's not that I'm against Christmas, more that I'm against Christmas music; there's just so much tripe. Sadly the 'alternative' Christmas song has become a bit of a cliche too. But door number two on the Bagging Area advent calendar opens- slightly badly I'm afraid, the perforations are not very well cut and it's ripped the face of the calendar as well- to reveal actress Clara Bow, a dog and Mr Wild Billy Childish mixing up The Who's A Quick One mini-opera with some yuletide mod rock.

A Quick One (Pete Townshend's Christmas)

Dreggs On The Radio

News just in- Billy Childish's Spartan Dreggs celebrate/promote the release of their new albums (Dreggredation and Coastal Command, buy them both get a third Tablets Of Linear B free, from Damaged Goods) with an appearance on Marc Riley's show at BBC Radio 6 tonight, starting at 7.00pm. Three songs. On the iPlayer for a week afterwards.

Singing Loins

For some reason, in the early 1900s this deep sea diver appeared at Winchester Cathedral. Those deep sea diving suits are both very cool  and very terrifying. Must have been nerve wracking walking along the sea bed in lead boots and huge helmet with an air pipe attached. The cover of the new Singing Loins lp- Here On Earth- has a deep sea diver painted by Billy Childish. Medway folkers The Singing Loins are into their third decade as a band. This is the video for one of the songs off the album, Monsters Ashore, and I rather like it...



Billy Childish, relatively quiet of late, has suddenly released three Spartan Dreggs albums on the same day. You can get them at Damaged Goods. A few years ago Billy and the Singing Loins recorded an excellent album in a kitchen. This is one is one of Billy's standards redone Singing Loins style.

Pocahontus Was Her Name

Steady The Buffs

The Who mini-fest continues: first up this performance of My Generation from Germany's Beat Club in the mid 60s, mod smarts, windmills, guitar and mic stand abuse and pounding rhythm. It all started here.



I promised Billy Childish's cover of A Quick One the other day. There's a version on Billy's Christmas album but the superior one is this one from 2002's Steady the Buffs lp.

The Buffs were the Royal East Kent Regiment, one of the oldest regiments in the British army dating back to 1572. Wild Billy Childish and The Buff Medways (named after the regiment and a local variety of chicken) released Steady The Buffs on Graham Coxon's Transcopic label and it's got to be one of the best Childish albums- among the twelve songs there are career highlights Archive From 1959 and Troubled Mind, the trash mod rock of Sally Sensation and Dawn Said, the very great Strood Lights and the breakneck cover of The Kinks' Misty Water. It finishes with Ivor (the two minutes twenty two seconds cover of A Quick One, although it's only the final section to be fair). Steady The Buffs is highly, highly recommended as a Childish starter if you're a novice.

Ivor

Mr Childish modelling summer 2012's look. Pay attention now Gok Wan acolytes- this is the perfect look for beer gardens, festivals, summer barbecues and your two weeks off in the English sun.