Seventy Minutes From GL11

Back in February Todmorden's Gold Lion pub celebrated its 11th birthday with a weekend of entertainment with Hot Chip's Joe Goddard on the Friday night and on Saturday Deeply Armed playing live upstairs and David Holmes downstairs. The afternoon also had us playing, The Flightpath Estate, from 2pm through until the evening. We had plans to recreate our entire set but for various reasons that hasn't happened but I'd pulled my parts of the set together and it occurred to me that rather than them sitting unused I may as well sequence them together as one piece and share them here. So this is a twelve song selection of what I played at The Golden Lion- Dan, Martin, Baz and Mark's tunes are all missing I'm afraid- keeping track of  what I played is hard enough- and maybe one day we'll sort the full setlist out and post it.

Adam's Flightpath Estate Set From GL11

• Arrival Ft. Kevin McCormick: Common Place (Thought Leadership Remix)
• Cluster: Zum Wohl
• Captain Beefheart and His Magic  Band: Observatory Crest
• Cowboy Junkies: Sweet Jane (Mojo Filter Junkie Re- Love)
• A Mountain Of One: Innocent Reprise
• Thurston Moore: Asperitas
• Warpaint: Disco// Very (Richard Norris Remix)
• X- Press 2: Witchi Tai To (Two Lone Swordsmen remix)
• Doves: Kingdom Of Rust (Prins Thomas Remix)
• Pandit Pam Pam: Tarantula
• Secret Soul Society: See You Dance Again
• Mark Lanegan: Ode To Sad Disco

Arrival's 12" single came out at the start of January, the year's first essential release for me, two tracks from the Stockport duo with the wonderful guitar playing of Kevin McCormick at their core. Thought Leadership, also a guitarist and also from Stockport, remixed Common Place pulling many different threads into one piece of music. 

Cluster's Zum Wohl is from their 1976 album Sowiesoso, a favourite of mine, an album where Cluster and Conny Plank regrouped in rural West Germany and made pastoral ambient electronic/ synth cosmische. 

Captain Beefheart's Observatory Crest made a late jump into my digital record box for the Lion's 11th birthday. I fond myself humming it in the week leading up to the event and it fell into the afternoon vibe I was aiming for. It came out in 1974 on his Bluejeans And Moonbeams album, an uncharacteristically accessible and mainstream sounding record for the good Captain. 

Cowboy Junkies' cover of Sweet Jane came out in 1988 on their majestic Trinity Sessions album. It gained Lou Reed's approval, the song done the way it should have been back when The Velvet Underground made Loaded. Cowboy Junkies have spent the last two week's touring the UK and they played Manchester last Sunday. I was really tempted to go but also tickets were £53 plus fees and it felt like a lot of money. Mojo Filter's Balearic edit is from 2015 and he doesn't do too much to it, just add a subtle electronic undercarriage and a bit of a sunset sheen. 

Innocent Reprise is from A Mountain Of One's EP2, originally out in 2007 and then compiled with EP1 as Collected Works. Lovely sunbaked Balearic folk. 

Asperitas is from an album Thurston Moore put out in early February this year, six long guitar instrumentals inspired by skyscapes of the British Isles, an album called Guitar Explorations Of Cloud Formations. Asperitas is several guitar parts, some controlled feedback and a primitive drum machine. It's a really good album ranging from chilled and krauty to noisy and if by any remote chance he's reading this, vinyl please Thurston. 

We played in rotation at GL11, three tracks each and then handing over to the next Flightpather. Richard Norris' remix of Warpaint came later on in the afternoon, the pub filling up a bit and I can't remember who went before me or what they played but it must have inspired me to turn the bpms up a little and go into dancier territory. Back in 2014 Warpaint were very much a going concern, their California post- punk/ dub sounds getting lots of attention. Richard's remix is one of his best- an indie rock gone Balearic monster.

Two Lone Swordsmen's remix of X- Press 2 is from 2006, Andrew Weatherall and Keith Tenniswood heading into the garage rock/ rockabilly sounds that would come to fruition on 2007's Wrong Meeting. Witchi Tai To is a Native American chant that Jim Pepper turned into a hit single in 1971. Recorded in 1969, peyote jazz fusion. 

Doves Kingdom Of Rust was from the 2006 album of the same name. The Prins Thomas remix of the song is a beauty, the guitars and bass circling round each other, Jimi's windswept vocal nailing a certain type of Mancunian melancholy with references to black birds and cooling towers and then the strings swoop in...

Pandit Pam Pam is from Sao Paulo. His cover of Colourbox's Tarantula came out in February this year. The wandering trumpet line and bubbling bass dance around each other.

Secret Soul Society's edit of Neil Young's 1992 song Harvest Moon dropped into my inbox a few weeks before GL11, the line 'I wanna see you dance again' going round and round, a dub/ disco version of 90s Neil Young.

Mark Lanegan's Ode To Sad Disco always works. New Order- esque dance/ rock from 2012's Blues Funeral, a throbbing sequencer bassline, synths and guitars and packed with very visual lyrical imagery- one of those songs that always hits the spot for me. 

Oblique Saturdays

A series for Saturdays in 2026 inspired by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's set of cards, Oblique Strategies (Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas). Eno and Schmidt created them to be used to unblock creative impasses and approach problems from unexpected angles. Each week I'll turn over an Oblique Strategy card and post a song or songs inspired by the suggestion. 

Last week's Oblique Strategy was Go to an extreme, move back to a more comfortable place. I posted various extremes- Gnod, Extreme Noise Terror and The KLF, Napalm Death, Husker Du, Steve Bicknell and Lords Of Afford- and a more comfortable Richard Norris ambient piece. Suggestions via the comment box and social media came in and included Cornelius, Extreme's horrific More Than Words, Allen Toussaint, Bad Brains, Durutti Column and Boards Of Canada (and this made me realise that in over fifteen years of blogging I have never once posted anything by Boards Of Canada- how strange). . 

I turned over today's Oblique Strategy card and it said this...

Imagine the piece as a series of disconnected events

That gave some food for thought and then something began to form in my head and selecting songs based on events fairly randomly, this happened...

Wednesday Morning 3 A.M.

Simon and Garfunkel's Wednesday Morning  3 A.M. is the last song on their debut album of the same name, a record that came out in 1964, sixty two years ago. Which has no real connection to this....

$1000 Wedding

Gram Parsons' $1000 Wedding is from Grievous Angel, a posthumous 1974 album with the groom stood up at a cheap wedding and going on a drinking spree. 'It's been a bad, bad day'. Which is fairly unconnected to this...

Captain's Holiday

Captain Beefheart went on holiday in 1974, surprisingly accessible funky rock from Bluejeans And Moonbeams. There's no connection between that and this....

Extinction Event Souvenir T- Shirt

Glasgow's Broken Chanter have been to the end of the world and have the souvenir t- shirt. The song came out in 2021, crashing and driving and ultimately uplifting Glaswegian indie rock. Which is not particularly connected to this....

Hard Ending

Hard Ending is by Sweden's Echo Ladies, a synthy dreampop song from a 2018 album called Pink Noise. 

Which just leaves the photo at the top of this post... one I've been waiting for nearly a year to use and been unable to work out how it could possibly illustrate or accompany a post and which is in no way connected to any of the songs. 

Last April we went to Morocco for five days and one day we went to a resort on the edge of the Sahara desert. The resort was  very new, not even finished and had a restaurant, a swimming pool, sun loungers and a spectacular view of the desert. The couple in the photo arrived not long before we left, both young, influencer looking and clearly benefiting from hours in the gym. They wandered round the site, looking for the best spot and having located it, the man took his top off to display his V- shaped torso and the woman began taking photos of him from behind, his body framed by the pool, the horizon and the Sahara. It was amazing to watch- they were so lacking in self- consciousness about what they were doing. 

Feel free to make your own suggestions of songs in response to Imagine the piece as a series of disconnected events in the comment box. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Mercury Rev

Mercury Rev had a brief flurry of fame/ renown in 1989- 1991, often in conjunction with fellow travellers The Flaming Lips. In 1993 founder member David Baker left the group and Jonathan Donohue and Sean Grasshopper Mackowiac carried on, playing experimental psychedelic rock until they collapsed in 1996/7. Grasshopper retreated to a Jesuit guest house in upstate New York while Donahue sat around listening to children's music and playing melodies on a piano. He was invited to play with The Chemical Brothers on the track that became The Private Psychedelic Reel and when he returned to the US contacted Grasshopper and from all the wreckage- debt, psychedelic and experimental rock that made them a cult band but seemed to be bus constantly hurtling out of control, drugs, lost members and management, depression, broken relationships- they regrouped in the Catskill Mountains pulled the songs that became Deserter's Songs into being. Deserter's Songs is one of the best albums of the 90s, a heartfelt, concise, weirdly affecting record that harks back to the songs of the 1930s and '40s. It also featured a pair of musicians from The Band, Levon Helm and Garth Hudson. Garth died two weeks ago, the last survivor of the men who made Big Pink. 

RIP Garth Hudson.

Last year Mercury Rev released an album called Born Horses, an album I bought and which divides me- half of it I don't like at all, easy listening pastiche with Donahue abandoning his upper register  singing for something deeper and half of it I really like, a few genuinely revelatory songs a bout birds and horses that are like nothing else. 

For this Sunday mix I've focussed mainly on the years 1998- 2004 and the trio of albums they made in those years- Deserter's Songs, 2001's stunning All Is Dream and 2004's mixed bag The Secret Migration. These three, well the first two, are albums that everyone should own and which bear repeat playing. I don't know if the end of the century/ millennium things was a factor in their creation but it seems like a good story, that pre- millennial uncertainty fed into Deserter's Songs, sent them back into America's weird past, and the new century gifted them All Is Dream. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Mercury Rev

• The Dark Is Rising
• Holes
• Observatory Crest
• Endlessly
• Tides Of The Moon
• Diamonds
• Opus 40
• Delta Blues Bottleneck Sun (Chemical Brothers Remix)
• Dream On

The Dark Is Rising is the opening song on 2001's All Is Dream, a song infused with both fragility and strength, in those huge Hollywood strings, a piccolo and Donahue's so human voice. It's a late night, freak- you- out song that in some ways has become mixed up with my feelings about Isaac's death, my grief and especially those mornings when I wake up having dreamt about him. 'I dreamed of you on my farm/ I dreamed of you in my arms/ But my dreams are always wrong', are the lines that hit me. 'I always dreamed I'd love you/ I never dreamed I'd lose you' too. A friend who has been through a similar experienced pointed me to the end of the song though and the last line- 'In my dreams I'm always strong'- and I started to see it differently. Tides Of The Moon is from the same album, an album that closes with the seven minutes epic Hercules which I tried to fit in here too and failed. 

Holes opens Deserter's Songs, a truly stunning piece of music, orchestral pop with a saw wobbling its way through it and Donahue's voice and lyrics, not least the break down and extraordinary moment where he sings, 'Holes/ Dug by little moles/ Angry jealous spies/ Got telephones for eyes', and makes it sound deeply profound. 'How does that old song go?'

Observatory Crest is a cover of a 1974 Captain Beefheart song, recorded for a 2001 Peel Session and included on the 2006 compilation Stillness Breathes, complete with birdsong. 

Endlessly is from Deserter's Songs too. I could have included Goddess On A Hiway instead. Both are highlights from an album packed with them. Endlessly seemed to fit with the feel better, the sound of the 1940s cinema/ 1890s theatre/ psychedelic Willy Wonka/ late 90s alt- rock crossover. 

Opus 40 is also from Deserter's Songs, possibly its peak, tripped out psychedelic/ silver screen freakery with the line, 'I'm alive she cried but I don't know what it means', as fine an eleven word summation of the human condition as any.  

Diamonds is from The Secret Migration, released in January 2005, an album that flirted with Tolkien- esque imagery and which was probably a few songs too long, a song of nature, love and devotion.

Delta Blues Bottleneck Stomp was an upbeat way to end Deserter's Song (apart from the hidden track that came after it), a joyous harpsichord/ piano riff that sounded like they'd heard it on a late 80s house record and repurposed it for an album recorded in the woods of upstate New York by men dressed in late 19th century clothes with two former members of The Band. The Chemical Brothers repaid the favour Donahue had done for them on The Private Psychedelic Reel by remixing it, one of their best. 

Donahue also sang on Dream On, the closing song from The Chemical Brothers' 1997 album Surrender, an album not short of guest vocalists- Bernard Sumner, Noel Gallagher and Hope Sandoval all show up. Dream On is a sleepy, half asleep, blissed out and gently building psychedelic finale, and in some way completes this mix by going back to the start, a dream sequence. It also has a false ending and after a period of silence the song wakes up again briefly.

She Decided To Drive Up To Observatory Crest

One of the gems hidden inside Andrew Weatherall's mix I posted last week was this Captain Beefheart song- cosmic, trippy, romantic and beautiful. Anto rates it as a hangover curer. It was on the Captain's 1974 album Bluejeans And Moonbeams which disappointed many Beefheart fans when it was released- they thought it was too commercial, too mainstream. Listen to this to ease your way into Monday morning and reflect on that for a moment. Then click play again.

While The City Was Busy We Wanted A Rest

Mercury Rev recorded at the BBC's Maida Vale studio in 1999 for a Peel Session, with a lovely laidback cover of Captain Beefheart's Observatory Crest, perfect for this time on a Sunday when the light's gone, and 'Monday's coming like a jail on wheels'.

03 Observatory Crest.wma

Zig Zag

Bagging Area has been zig-zagging all over the place recently, from 80s indie, to rock, to vintage hip hop to acid house, post punk, Irish punk and God knows wherever else. Eclecticism- we got it. Or randomitis.

Anyway - tenuous link ahoy!- here's Zig Zag Wanderer from Captain Beefheart, a zippy piece of souped up r'n'b/fast electric blues. As everyone knows Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica is a work of unparalleled genius. If I ever manage to listen to it all the way through I'll let you know if I agree. This song is from the much more listenable Safe As Milk album, and let's be honest, the man and his band at this point looked sharp. Very, very sharp.

Zig Zag Wanderer.mp3