Fifty Minute Midwinter Mix

A mix for the winter solstice, the longest night and shortest day, and to celebrate the fact that we'll start to get a little more daylight every day. Songs with winter in the title are plentiful and there are quite a few that didn't make it into this mix for various reasons- I wanted to keep this mix largely ambient/ ambient inspired (although that goes a bit off piste in places as you can see from the tracklisting below). Aztec Camera's Walk Out To Winter, The Bangles/ Simon and Garfunkel's Hazy Shade Of Winter and Teenage Fanclub's Winter just didn't fit and A Certain Ratio's ten minute drone epic Winter Hill was too long and cutting it down/ fading it out didn't seem right. 

Fifty Minute Midwinter Mix

• Joanna Brouk: Winter Chimes
• Pye Corner Audio: A Winter Drone For Christmas
• SUSS: Winter Light
• The Durutti Column: Sketch For Winter
• Trentemoller: While The Cold Winter Waiting
• Michael Head And The Red Elastic Band: Winter Turns To Spring
• Stockholm Monsters: Winter
• The Pictish Trail: Winter Home Disco
• Saint Etienne: Her Winter Coat
• Neil Young and Crazy Horse: Winterlong
• Vashti Bunyan: Winter Is Blue
• Glass Candy: Warm In The Winter

Winter Chimes is from a 1980 Joanna Brouk album, The Space Between. It is atmospheric and enchanting, just chimes and piano sitting somewhere in the space where ambient crosses into New Age.

Pye Corner Audio's Winter Drone For Christmas- the title is exactly what it is- is from Christmas Eve 2023, five minutes of low key synth loveliness. 

Winter Light is from Promise, the 2020 album by SUSS, an ambient Americana trio from New York. Highly recommended.  

Sketch For Winter is from The Durutti Column's 1980 album, The Return Of The Durutti Column album, Vini Reilly's debut long player. Vini was pushed into Cargo Studios in Rochdale by Tony Wilson during a period when he was suffering from severe depression. Tony thought it might save Vini. In the studio was Martin Hannett and a van load of new equipment. The album, Fact 14, was housed in a Situationist inspired sandpaper sleeve, and contains ten tracks of Vini playing guitar and Martin playing 'switches' (as the sleevenotes say). It's recently been remastered and re- issued and sounds better than ever, a foundational album for Factory and UK post- punk (not that it sounds post- punk but it is- Vini says, doing what he did could only have happened in the space that opened up after punk). 

Trentemoller's 2006 album The Last Resort was the Danish producer's debut, an electronic album that sounds very live.

Michael Head and The Red Elastic Band's Adios Senor Pussycat still sounds like one of the best albums of 2017 and of that entire decade. Winter Turns To Spring is Mick on piano and singing, a change of sound from the rich, full band scouse folk rock that makes up most of the album. 

Stockholm Monsters were from Burnage and signed to Factory. Winter is from 1984's Alma Mater, a record produced by Peter Hook and largely ignored in 1984, one of those albums that is a lost gem. A dark, monochrome sound, led by the bass guitar, very poetic and very Factory. 

The Pictish Trail is Johnny Lynch, who operates out of a caravan on the Isle Of Eigg, Scotland and was part of the Fence Collective and the man behind Fence Records, an open minded, folk influenced label started by Lynch and King Creosote. Winter Home Disco kicks in with a drum machine but the folk and psyche follow quickly. A rather beautiful song from 2008 which all of a sudden seems a long time ago. 

Her Winter Coat was a 2021 single by Saint Etienne, Pete Wiggs creating a Christmas sounding song without going full Xmas cheese. Icy and quietly epic.

Neil Young and Crazy Horse's Winterlong came out on Decade,a  triple lp compilation from 1977 that was only the start of Neil's career long trawl through his unreleased vaults and shelved projects. Thinking about it, I'm pretty sure I heard the Pixies cover of Winterlong, released on a 1989 tribute album called The Bridge, before I heard Neil's. Neil and Crazy Horse recorded Winterlong in 1973 at Neil's Broken Arrow Ranch. It is perfect in the way only Neil and Crazy Horse can sound- slightly frazzled, slightly out of tune, ragged and dreamy and psychedelic, searching for something- love, fulfillment- before concluding, 'it's all an illusion anyway'. 

Vashti Bunyan's Winter Is Blue is lyrically dark- winter and loss of love, life having no meaning. The guitars and arrangement are deceptively jaunty, a trick folk music often pulls. This is the Immediate version, recorded it for Andrew Loog Oldham's label in 1967 and unreleased until 2007. Vashti re- recorded it for her 1970 album Just Another Diamond Day, a record so poorly received that she packed it all in and went to Scotland by horse and cart and then to Ireland for several decades before its rediscovery in the 21st century. 

Warm In The Winter is a joy- Glass Candy released it as a single on Italians Do It Better in 2013. Giddy synth pop, a song in love with life and with itself, 'Crazy like a monkey/ Happy like a new year'. Partway through Ida sings, 'You're beautiful. You came from heaven. We love you!' and the synth arpeggios build, and the song skips and swoops, and the darkness gets pushed out and, once again, winter passes. Happy solstice. 

Twenty Two

Eliza is twenty two today. The picture above was a school photo taken in about 2008 at a guess, so quite some time ago. Eliza came home from university a year ago and got herself a job straight away, working at the day care centre that Isaac used to go to, working with adults with a variety of special needs and disabilities. It's not a job everyone can do. In March she handed her notice and booked herself flights to and from Bali, travelling solo, spending nearly four weeks backpacking. Since she came home she's been looking for work, applying for various jobs with all the hassle and frustrations that job hunting involves. She's stuck at it, been penniless for the last few weeks, and has recently found a job at an SEND school. Her resourcefulness is a good quality and she gets stuff done. Happy birthday Eliza. Enjoy it. 

Twenty two is a funny age. Eliza joked (half- joked maybe) that she was having a quarter life crisis. I remember being twenty two and being a little adrift, university behind me and now being, as far as the world was concerned, an adult- but not really sure what I wanted to do or what the future might hold, feeling too young to start a professional career job, not having much money, living in a series of short term rented flats/ house shares. It's a tricky age I think. 

In 1969 Iggy acknowledged twenty two's difficult status on the opening song of The Stooges's debut album, a song that sets out perfectly the band's modus operandi. Noise, distorted wah wah, sludgy riffs, primitive thumping drums and this- 'Last year I was twenty one/ Didn't have a lot of fun/ Now I'm gonna be twenty two/ Oh my and boo hoo'.

1969

It's 1969. America is burning. Iggy's bored and sarcastic. 

Ten years later Neil Young and Crazy Horse recorded one of their epics, Neil slipping back into the past to deliver a song about war, family, death and youth. I always assumed it was set in the time of the American Revolution, the 'red means run son' a reference to the British army and their red coats. The narrator's family have all fallen by the way, Daddy's gone, Neil's brother's out hunting in the mountains, Big John's been drinking since the river took Emmy Lou. There's just Neil, his Daddy's rifle in his arms and just turned twenty two, wondering what to do...

Powderfinger

There are several other twenty two songs- Taylor Swift's 22, Lily Allen's 22 (same title, different tone), The Flaming Lips' When Yer Twenty Two and Bright Eyes' Land Locked Blues that contains the line, 'The world's got me dizzy again/ You'd think after twenty two years I'd be used to the spin'. Not really mate- twenty two is still ridiculously young. We'll finish with Billy Bragg and his 1985 calling card- 'I was twenty one years when I wrote this song/ I'm twenty two now but I won't be for long'. 

A New England

The opening line is a borrow/ steal from Simon and Garfunkel's Leaves That Are Green, a 1966 song about lost love. Billy places A New England in the early 80s, Thatcher's Britain with youth unemployment, the bomb, the miner's strike and the Falklands War as his backdrop. Among all of that he doesn't even want to find a new England, he's just looking for another girl. 

'I saw two shooting stars last night/ I wished on them/ But they were only satellites/ it's wrong to wish on space hardware/ I wish I wish I wish you cared'. 

I'm not sure there are many better lines in popular music than that. 

Monday's Long Song

Last weekend's aurora borealis lit up a lot of people's Friday nights. I was asleep, unaware this multicoloured, massive global electrical storm triggered lightshow was taking place. I woke up to it the next morning via a phone full of images taken by people near and far. The following night they said we'd see them again but Manchester's skies were cloudy last Saturday night- quelle surprise. But the afterglow of the northern lights has led to this track recorded by San Francisco's Marshall Watson, an eight minute synth journey titled Beautiful Light. Marshall says it's got more than a hint of Rick Smith and Underworld in it- which it has- but it's more than good enough to stand on its own two feet. The synths kick in immediately, in rippling waves and long euphoric chords with a kick drum providing propulsion. More synths enter at two minutes, dancing melody lines like those flashes of purple and green and blue in the sky. The ghost of a voice appears a little late, hinting at the track's title. Beautiful skies indeed. Get it here. 

In 1979 Neil Young and Crazy Horse released Rust Never Sleeps, an album that was in some ways a response to punk and in some ways, int typical Neil Young fashion, a reworked version of Chrome Dreams (which didn't come out in the mid- 70s but finally appeared last year). Pocahontas starts with the line 'Aurora borealis/ The icy sky at night', Neil setting the scene for a massacre of Native Americans, Neil describing the people being killed in their teepees, babies left crying on the ground, and then the buffalo being slaughtered too. 

Pocahontas, known to her people as Matoaka, then becomes the subject of the song as it jumps about jumps about in time, taking in the Houston Astrodome and TV, and then a line about wanting to sleep with Pocahontas 'to find out how she felt', a line which felt a little uncomfortable to listen to whenever you first heard it, never mind now in 2024. It ends with Marlon Brando, Pocahontas and Neil. Marlon Brando refused to accept an Oscar for his role as Don Corleone in The Godfather in 1973 in protest at the treatment and portrayal of the Native Americans, sending Sacheen Littlefeather to attend in his place. It's a beautiful song, one of the centrepieces of Rust Never Sleeps, and one that I always hear playing in my head at any mention of the aurora borealis. 

Pocahontas

Saturday Live

Neil Young's ongoing release programme shows no signs of letting up- he's recently appeared live again and still records new albums with Crazy Horse and whoever else is around. The recent brand new/ re- release of Chrome Dreams is either his 44th album or the first official release of an album that he shelved in 1977 (but was widely bootlegged). Or both. He recycled some of the songs and some of the recordings afterwards, some of them dating back to 1974 (like Star of Bethlehem) and some recorded for Zuma (Sedan Delivery) but then turning up on Rust Never Sleeps (albeit in faster and rawer form, a response to punk). Too Far Gone didn't see the light of day on an official release until Freedom in 1989. Chrome Dreams does sound like a 'great lost' Neil Young album, some songs played acoustically next to an audible campfire and some with an amped up Crazy Horse. The album starts with Pocahontas and Will To Love, then Star Of Bethlehem, Like A Hurricane, Homegrown, Captain Kennedy, Sedan Delivery, Powderfinger and Look Out For My Love. The asking price of £44 for three sides of vinyl is a step too far for me though. 

There's never a bad time to hear Like A Hurricane. It was recorded at Neil's Broken Arrow ranch with Crazy Horse in the autumn/ winter of 1976, eight minutes of guitars, thudding drums and Neil's lovelorn vocals. When Chrome Dreams was shelved Like A Hurricane appeared on American Stars And Bars in 1977 and has been played hundreds of times live ever since, including at Sheffield Don Valley Arena in June 2001 when I saw him. 

Like A Hurricane

According to the internet Neil's most played songs are (in order from the top) Heart Of Gold, After The Goldrush, Old Man, Needle And The Damage Done and Cinnamon Girl. There are many Neil Young live albums worth hearing. In March 1970 Neil and Crazy Horse played two nights at Fillmore East, the last tour with guitarist Danny Whitten, who died in 1972. This is the full on sixteen minute version of Cowgirl In The Sand from the Live At The Fillmore East album (officially released in 2006).

Cowgirl In The Sand (Live At the Fillmore East)

In 1971 Neil toured on his own, just acoustic guitar and harmonica, road testing many of the songs which would make it onto run of classic albums in the early/ mid 70s. Ohio was written in the immediate aftermath of the Kent Sate University shootings, Neil's anger and sadness backed on the studio version by David Crosby's howling backing vocals. The full album Live At Massey Hall came out in 2007, recorded decades earlier in Toronto, Canada on January 1971. Ohio came out as a Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young 7" single in June 1970, just weeks after the shootings. 'Tin soldiers and Nixon's coming', Neil sings, 'We're finally on our own...'

Ohio (Live At Massey Hall)

Jumping forward two decades a revitalised Neil and Crazy Horse toured the world, playing the classics with songs from the pair of then recent albums Freedom and Ragged Glory. This performance at Buffalo, New York, captures them on fire, cranked up and dealing with the detritus of the Reagan and Bush administrations, the Gulf War, the turn of the decade and their rediscovery by a new generation of bands and fans. 

Monday's Long Song

I've got lots of Neil Young albums, the majority the studio albums he released on his run of work from his self titled debut in 1969 through to Ragged Glory in 1990 and a handful from after that point- but clearly at some point in the early- to- mid 2000s I began to wonder if I really needed the new Neil Young album and decided I didn't. Apart from Homegrown (2020's long awaited release of the album Neil shelved in 1974) I think the last one I bought was Living With War in 2006. I can't say I've kept up with his Archive releases either but I have got the first two in that series- Crazy Horse Live At The Fillmore 1970 and Neil Young Live At The Massey Hall 1971, both pretty essential (I've got a few other live albums but all predate the Archive series). Looking at a list of the Archive live albums I'mo not sure why I didn't get Live At Canturbury House 1968 or Roxy: Tonight's The Night Live but it's difficult to keep up and as I said before- how much Neil Young do I need?

The new album Barn, recorded with Crazy Horse last year, has had good reviews and I've heard two songs on a freebie CD that I enjoyed so maybe the answer is one more. In fact I suspect Neil Young albums is the same as the old adage about bicycles for cyclists- the correct number you need is n +1 (with n being the number you currently own).  Neil Young is clearly one of the 20th century's great artists and to keep it going for over two decades of the subsequent century is impressive. The live album with Crazy Horse from 1971 at Fillmore East is the stuff of legend, Neil and the original Crazy Horse line up on stage and in the groove, their particular and unique brand of crunching, chugging, heads down acid rock with extended moments- minutes- of explosive guitar playing shown off at its best. This set includes one of Neil's greatest songs, Winterlong, a song in typical Neil fashion he chose not to release until his first career compilation Decade came out in 1977. Much of the rest of the gig is built around the first Crazy Horse album Everybody Know's This Is Nowhere. It concludes with a very long song, a sixteen minute take of Cowgirl In The Sand, Neil and Danny Whitten duelling on guitar while Ralph Molina and Billy Talbot keep it straight and simple at the back. 

Cowgirl In The Sand (Live at Fillmore East 1970)

In contrast, the Live At Massey Hall 1971 album is just Neil, an acoustic guitar or piano and a microphone and what his long term producer David Briggs said should have been the album he put out instead of Harvest (although many of the songs he plays would eventually turn up on Harvest). Just to show Neil can do brevity as well as expansion here's a superb version of Don't Let It Bring You Down, originally from 1970s's After The Goldrush, complete with the guitar being retuned into the double drop D tuning at the start. Don't let it bring you down/ It's only castles burning

Don't Let It Bring You Down  (Live At Massey Hall 1971)

Writing this I began wonder what my ten Neil Young songs for an ICA would be and I came up with this list for starters- The Loner, Cinnamon Girl, Winterlong, Powderfinger, Down By The River, Don't Let It Bring You Down, Cowgirl In The Sand, Only Love Can Break Your Heart, Sugar Mountain, Heart Of Gold, Old Man, Mansion On The Hill, Tonight's The Night, Like A Hurricane, Cortez The Killer, Pocahontas, For The Turnstiles, Ambulance Blues, Barstool Blues, Fuckin' Up, Revolution Blues, Hey Hey My My, Crime In The City, Love And Only Love... 

Cowgirl In The Sand

I was in a record shop the other day- I know, fancy that, a record shop- and this song was playing over the shop's speakers and it sounded super. I love hearing a song I've not heard or played for years unexpectedly, in a different context. At that point Neil Young and Crazy Horse in 1969 playing on and on around a couple of chords and coming together for the verses every couple of minutes... let's just say it sounded like the best thing I'd heard that day.

Neil and Danny Whitten both play solos throughout this song but it never feels like those kind of virtuoso guitar solos (that on the whole I really can't stand). It is looser and less planned, less flashy than that. And even though it goes on for ten minutes it never really feels like it. Neil apparently wrote Cowgirl along with Cinnamon Girl and Down By The River in a single day when he was ill with a high temperature.

Cowgirl In The Sand

Eighteen

At 7.37 am on the morning of November 23rd 1998 our eldest Isaac forced his way into the world, two weeks early. Today he turns eighteen. Some of you know his background. He was born with an incredibly rare genetic disease, Hurler's Disease (MPS1), which saw him taken off to intensive care immediately and he didn't come out for a week. Hurler's disease is caused by a missing enzyme which leads to all kind of difficulties- deafness, learning difficulties, physical disabilities and gradual loss of functions to an early death. There is no cure. Aged eighteen months he went through two bone marrow transplants that have put some of the missing enzyme into his body, a treatment that has given him the life he has now. He's had numerous operations for skeletal problems. One unforeseen consequence of the bone marrow transplant was that the chemotherapy used to enable his body to accept the donor material also destroyed his immune system which then failed to grow back. Aged ten with a weak immune system he got pneumonia which turned into meningitis, which floored him. Back into intensive care and not expected to survive the night. Coma and eventual recovery but with his hearing completely wiped out. It's been a long road.

But that's only some of the story. He is in good health currently, goes to special needs 6th form college, has trips out with friends, knows more people than I do and is having a party on Saturday where we are expecting roughly 150 guests to show up. We are transitioning into adult services from children's, both hospitals and social care, which for us is daunting. He just gets on with it. The remarkable thing isn't his continued determination to carry on against the odds or his resilience in the face of disability (though they are pretty remarkable). The remarkable thing is the connections he makes with people, the impact he has on them and the joy he gets from them.

Eighteen years ago I was totally unprepared for this- having a child is change enough. Having a disabled child is another world. Looking back now I'm not sure how we coped with some of the things he and we went through. But here we are. One of the things he wants the most on becoming an adult is to have a pint poured for him (which he won't drink but it'll be poured and sat with). So if you're raising a glass of anything tonight, have one with us.

When I drove Mrs Swiss to hospital eighteen years ago the last song that played on the car stereo cassette player was this, Cinnamon Girl- still I think my favourite Neil Young song (which I don't have on the hard drive right now).

'A dreamer of pictures
I run in the night
You see us together
Chasing the moonlight
My cinnamon girl'

Thirteen Today

Our son Isaac is thirteen today. He was born at 7.37 am on November the 23rd 1998, changing our lives forever. Isaac spent the first two weeks of life in an incubator with unspecified breathing difficulties. At eight months, already wearing two hearing aids and having had several minor operations, he was rushed to Manchester Childrens' Hospital with hydrocephalus, had his head punctured and drained and a shunt fitted. A few days later he was diagnosed with Hurlers' Disease (MPS 1), a degenerative condition leading to death by the age of ten. The only partial treatment available was bone marrow transplant, which at that point had a fifty per cent success rate and a twenty per cent mortality rate. BMT has made major advances since then, in both success and mortality. Two bone marrow transplants followed in 2000, the second one successfully restoring the missing enzyme but leaving him with a host of issues and needs, and frequent hospitalisation. Since then he has had major spinal surgery, knee surgery, shunt removal and replacement, continuing bi-weekly infusions to replace his still absent immune system and a cochlear implant. In 2008 he contracted pneumonia, then meningitis (causing him to have a mini-stroke), which very nearly did for him. So turning teenage is a big deal for us and him not least because there have been times when he wasn't expected to survive the night, never mind reach teenage years.

Today he is a walking, talking, somewhat hyperactive, short statured bundle of energy who brings joy to those who meet him, and Isaac meets many people. He just approaches them and starts asking them questions. He is currently full of teenage hormones- his main interests are breasts, Manchester United, breasts, crisps (prawn cocktail flavour), Lego, breasts, ladies wearing make up and high heels, chips, chocolate and breasts. Not so different from the rest of us maybe, although he says exactly what he thinks whereas the rest of us can internalise some of our thoughts about these topics.

Happy 13th birthday sunshine. May you continue to beat the odds.

This was the last song the compilation tape played in my old dark green Ford Escort on the way to hospital just before he was born, sometime in the early hours of the morning thirteen years ago.

'A dreamer of pictures

I run in the night

You see us together

Chasing the moonlight

My cinnamon girl'

Still, I think, Neil Young's best song.

Cinnamon Girl

I'm In Love With Your Daughter

In 1990 Neil Young reunited with Crazy Horse and released the gloriously ragged Ragged Glory album, which included a cover of Farmer John (originally by 60s garage band The Premiers). Neil and Crazy Horse's Farmer John is unbelievably good- big, crunchy, stupid, fun.

http://download878.mediafire.com/c9exd173gdwg/uws8oc8brqc4j6b/Farmer+John.mp3