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. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Cover Versions Part Two

Last Sunday's cover versions mix worked well enough for me to undertake a second. I started with Jah Divison and went from there, a succession of dub and reggae covers, wasn't happy with it and scrapped it and started again, setting off again with Jah Division but heading in a noisier, more guitar laden direction, all a bit more shambolic. Then it slows down and blisses out before kicking up a storm again for the finish. 

After I posted last Sunday's mix Steve from Andres y Xavi messaged me to say he had a series of cover version mixes called Under The Covers, up at Mixcloud. The latest, his ninth, covers a lot of ground from Lady Blackbird to The Droyds with Isaac Hayes, Bobby Womack and Jose Feliciano among the people sandwiched in between. Plenty to enjoy. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Cover Versions Part Two

• Jah Division: Dub Will Tear Us Apart
• The Fall: Mr Pharmacist
• The Jesus And Mary Chain: Surfin' USA
• Sonic Youth: I Know There's An Answer
• Sonic Youth: Computer Age
• Hardway Bros: 1979 GLOK Remix
• Andy Bell: Our Last Night Together
• The Liminanas: Ou Va La Chance
• The Vendetta Suite: Who Do You Love?
• Fontaines DC: 'Cello Song

Jah Division is a Russian reggae band, formed in Moscow in 1990. This is what it says in Wikipedia. It also say that the founder of Jah Division, Gera Morales, was the son of Leopold Morales, an associate of Che Guevara's. Elsewhere (Bandcamp) it says Jah Divison are from Brooklyn and their 2004 12" of four covers of Joy Division songs is their sole release. According to Bandcamp Jah Divison features members of Onieda and Home, began as a joke and the four tracks were recorded in the shadow of the Williamsburg Bridge. Take your pick. None of which stops Dub Will Tear Us Apart from being a genius cover version whoever recorded it. 

The Fall's Mr Pharmacist is a cover of a song by Los Angeles 60s psyche garage band The Other Half, a 1986 Fall single from the Brix period and produced by John Leckie. The original was on an early 80s Nuggets compilation. Mr Pharmacist was also on The Fall's Bend Sinister album, an opinion splitting album derided by Mark E. Smith and John Leckie.

Surfin' USA was a Darklands outtake, all feeedback, rough and rowdy drums, breaking glass, East Kilbride sneers and TV preachers. The Reid brothers knew how to cover a song. The original was a 1963 Beach Boys single...

... and I Know There's An Answer was a 1966 Beach Boys album song (from Pet Sounds). Sonic Youth's cover comes from 1989, recorded for a Brian Wilson tribute album released in 1990 and sung by Lee Renaldo- no one else could sing it according to Lee who says J. Mascis helped out in the studio too. Appropriately squally and rather wonderful. 

Sonic Youth also recorded a Neil Young cover in the same time frame for a Neil Young tribute album, The Bridge (a superb album). They chose a song from Neil's most misunderstood album, Trans. Like the Mary Chain, Sonic Youth instinctively know what makes a good cover version. Computer Age is a gem in the SY back catalogue. 

Sean Johnston's Outre Mer label is an outlet for Hardway Bros recordings. In January 2024 he released an EP called My Friends which included a cover of Smashing Pumpkins 1979 (a song which is itself pretty much a New Order tribute). A remix EP saw GLOK tackle 1979, and has a massively overloaded guitar sound that makes you check your speakers are OK. 

Andy Bell's covers EP Untitled Film Stills contains four covers- Our Last Together is an after hours beauty, impressionistic, woozy and moving. Well, it moves me. 

The Liminanas featured in last week's mix and they're back today with a song from this year's album Faded. Ou Va La Chance is a cover of a Francois Hardy song, closing the album in fine style.

The Vendetta Suite are from Belfast and their 2021 album The Kempe Stone Portal is packed with electronic, acid house, Balearic and cosmische sounds plus this slowed down, electronics and feedback rumble version of Bo Diddley's classic (also covered by The Mary Chain back in the 80s). The Vendetta Suite's Gary Irwin goes all the way back to David Holmes and Iain McCready's nights at Belfast's Art College in 1990 and has worked with Holmes on and off ever since. 

Fontaines DC's cover of 'Cello Song has featured in at least three previous Sunday mixes- a Nick Drake one, a Fontaines one and an end of 2023 mix. I make no apologies for its re- appearance here. They take Nick Drake's 1969 song, a beautiful poetic song and retune it, turning it into a modern rock 'n' roll thrill with Grian Chatten finding new meaning in Nick's words. Both versions, original and cover, struck me quite profoundly in the time since Isaac' died, these lines in particular...

'For the dreams that came to you when so young
They told of a life where spring is sprung

So forget this cruel world where I belong
I'll just sit and wait and sing my song

But while the Earth sinks to its grave
You sail to the sky on the crest of a wave'

And that's where we're ending today. 

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. 

Forty Five Minutes of Sonic Youth

One of the evenings out in Fuerteventura, while pottering around, having a drink and getting ready to go out for tea, I had a sudden urge to hear Teenage Riot by Sonic Youth. One of the wonders of the internet age and mobile phones is that almost any song is only a few seconds and clicks away and within a few seconds the sound of Sonic Youth's 1988 masterpiece, the New York band's imagining of an alternative USA with Dinosaur Jr's J Mascis as President, was filling our hotel room. From there a worked my way through a few of my favourite SY songs, some of which I've pulled together into a forty five minute mix here. This could easily have been twice the length- or a part two could appear at some point. It focusses mainly on their 80s and early 90s output, the Sonic Youth of my youth- and their singles mainly too, not too many deep cuts. There's lots of 21st century Sonic Youth that's worth investigating and maybe I'll come back to it. 

Forty Five Minutes of Sonic Youth

• Teenage Riot
• Youth Against Fascism
• Computer Age
• Kotton Krown
• Death Valley '69
• Kool Thing
• Bull In The Heather
• Sugar Cane
• Dirty Boots

Teenage Riot is from 1988's Daydream Nation, a standard setting 1988 double album, an album which felt like the culmination of something, everything coming together. I could have included half the songs from it on this mix- Silver Rocket, Eric's Trip, Candle, Hey Joni... all indie- punk songs blending the art, noise and alternate tunings with  verse/ chorus melodies. Teenage Riot- one of the songs of the 80s.

Youth Against Fascism- how apt eh? A 1992 single and song from Dirty, the album from the same year, and one that shows the band engaging with politics, twelve years into Republican presidencies in the USA, Kim Gordon's bass a constant grinding menace, Thurston and Lee's guitars distorted and buzzing and Minor Threat/ Fugazi's Ian MacKaye guesting and doubling up on vocals. Sugar Cane is from the same album, the video filmed at a New York fashion show which had a Marc Jacobs grunge collection. It is also Chloe Sevigny's first appearance on film.

Computer Age is a cover of a Neil Young song, one from Neil's mind blowing 1982 album Trans. Sonic Youth take a song with vocoders and keyboards and reverse it into Neil's Crazy Horse backyard, a squealing lesson on how to do a cover version. Their covers of Within You Without You, Electricity and Superstar and as Ciccone Youth, Addicted To Love and Into The Groove are all similarly good. Computer Age was one of several highpoints on The Bridge, a 1989 Neil Young tribute album that also featured Pixies, Psychic TV, The Flaming Lips, Loop, Nick Cave, and Dinosaur Jr. 

Kotton Krown is from Sister, their album from 1987, an album loosely based around the writings of Philip K. Dick. Sister is one of the art rock/ noise milestones of the 80s. Kotton Krown is a blur of dreamy psychedelic noise.

Death Valley '69 is on 1985's Bad Moon Rising, written by Thurston who duets with Lydia Lunch, screwdrivers rammed into the necks of guitars, The Stooges summoned up, along with Charles Manson and the Spahn Ranch.

Kool Thing is from 1990's Goo, the first album released after singing to a major label, one of the album's standout songs. Kim wrote it after an uncomfortable interview with LL Cool J, two people coming out of New York music with very different perspectives. 'Are you gonna liberate is girls from male white corporate oppression?', she asks. Public Enemy's Chuck D responds. 

Bull In The Heather is from 1994's Experimental Jet Set, Trash And No Star, produced by Butch Vig. Kim wrote it with a viewpoint of seeing passiveness as a form of rebellion- 'I'm not going to participate in your male- dominated culture, I'm just going to be passive', she said of the lyrics. By 1994 Sonic Youth were big business in the indie/ alt- rock/ fashion/ video/ MTV worlds. Bikini Kill's Kathleen Hanna stars in the video. 

Dirty Boots is from Goo, the opening song and one that features every SY hallmark- tunings, noise, distortion, drawled vocals, building to a massive release several minutes in when the chorus finally hits, 'I got some dirty boots!'

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

Forty Five Minutes Of Saint Etienne

When Saint Etienne appeared in 1990 they seemed too good to be true. Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs love of 60s pop and kitchen sink drama, 70s TV and films and late 80s dance music blended together into a dizzy, heady style of dance/ pop/ indie- dance, knowing but inclusive, cool but not taking itself too seriously. Their first few singles were all totally loveable and Foxbase Alpha remains one of 1991's best albums- a year stuffed full of great albums. They kept it up into the mid- 90s, So Tough and Tiger Bay, with Sarah Cracknell firmly now part of a trio. This forty five minute mix focusses on those early/ mid 90s records, songs in love with pop music in all its forms, with samples from their extensive record collections and a real sense of joie de vivre. There's nothing wrong with much of what came later but these early songs have a thread running through them that the late 90s ones (and onwards) don't. 

Putting this together made me think of several other things. Firstly, a second Saint Etienne mix pulling a lot of the remixes of their songs together might work (and one dealing with their post- 1998 songs). Secondly, I have a load of Two Lone Swordsmen dubs of Heart Failed (In the Back Of A Taxi) that should show up int he Weatherall Remix Friday series. Thirdly, I've been meaning to go back to 2021's I've Been Meaning To Tell You for some time and promised a post about it here ages. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Saint Etienne

• Speedwell
• Girl VII
• Everlasting
• Mario's Cafe
• Kiss And Make Up (Midsummer Madness Mix)
• Conchita Martinez
• Like A Motorway
• Only Love Can Break Your Heart (A Mix Of Two Halves by Andrew Weatherall)

Speedwell was the B-side to third single Nothing Can Stop Us from 1991. A lovely deep sound, warm bass, vocal sample from an old gospel record. There were a pair of remixes by Dean Thatcher and Jagz Kooner too, the Flying Mix one of the sounds of summer 1991. 

Girl VII is from Foxbase Alpha- any of the songs from that album could have shown up here, the freshness of the songs, the samples, Sarah's singing, the sheer fun involved in them. In Girl VII Sarah reads out a list of places, 'June 4th, 1989, Primrose Hill, Staten Island, Chalk Farm, Massif Central, Gospel Oak, Sao Paolo, Boston Manor, Costa Rica, Arnos Grove, San Clemente, Tufnell Park, Gracetown, York Way, Videoton, Clerkenwell, Portobello, Maida Vale, Old Ford, Valencia, Kennington, Galveston, Holland Park, Studamer, Dollis Hill, Fougeres, London Fields, Bratislava, Haggerston, Lavinia, Canonbury, Alice Springs, Tooting Graveney, Baffin Island, Pollard's Hill, Winnepeg, Plumstead Common, Hyderabad, Silvertown, Buffalo', one of my favourite lists in any record ever. 

Everlasting was supposed to be a single with You're In A Bad Way as the B-side. THeavenly disagreed and wanted You're In A bad Way as the single and Everlasting was unreleased until the 2009 CD re- issue of the album. 

Mario's Cafe and Conchita Martinez are both from 1992's So Tough. Mario's Cafe is instant 1992 with its KLF references and very located in London, specifically a cafe in Kentish Town. Conchita Martinez samples Rush. 

Kiss And Make Up is a cover of a song by The Field Mice, one of 1990's essential 12" releases, in its EU flag sleeve but in green and white. The remix 12", in reverse coloured sleeve, green stars on a white backdrop, came with two remixes, the Midsummer Madness and midsummer Dubness remixes, both by Pete Heller. 

Like A Motorway is from 1994's Tiger Bay and a single too. The band hid themselves away in the Forest Of Dean to write the album, thinking they'd come back with some pastoral folk songs. They were planning on writing an album of death songs too. Like A Motorway is a sleek gliding rush of Morodor- esque synth- pop, borrowing the melody from a 19th century folk song, Silver Dagger. Once you realise the vocal is about a death not the break up of a relationship it changes it somewhat. The line, 'She said her life/ Was like a motorway/ Dull, grey and long/ Til he came along' is a cracker. The 12" came with a David Holmes remix that can shatter dancefloors, full on acid- techno. 

Only Love Can Break Your Heart was their debut single, a cover of Neil Young's 1970 classic. Saint Etienne turned from a waltz time song into one with a four four house rhythm and changed Neil's major chords to minor ones. Summer 1990 gold. Andrew Weatherall's remix is one of his best, the song turned into a dub with the dub half first and the song half second. Andrew pulls the dubby bassline to the fore, adds an Augustus Pablo inspired melodica line (played by Loft/ Weather Prophet Pete Astor) and the pair of samples from Jean Binta Breeze's Dubwise ('cool and deadly' and 'the DJ eases a spliff from his lyrical lips and smilingly orders... cease' sending sample spotters down a rabbit hole or two, and not for the last time). The song is pre- Sarah, with Moira Lambert on vocals. 

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. 

An Hour Of Weatherall Covers

We all love a good cover version don't we? The reconstructing of a familiar song in a new form, the buzz of hearing someone do a song differently, irreverently or lovingly, and the nodding of the head to influences and inspirations. At times cover versions can also seem a bit lazy, a way out of writer's block or something thrown together for B-side at a late hour and under pressure, but when done well and with the right intent, they're a joy. 

In two weeks time it would have been Andrew Weatherall's 60th birthday had he lived. There are a series of events taking place nationally throughout April to celebrate this- a full on night at Fabric in London with a huge line up of DJ talent together with nights in Glasgow, Belfast and Todmorden, all places with strong Weatherall connections and crowds. I'll come back to the Todmorden one nearer the time (29th April) with more details but it does include a second ride out for The Flightpath Estate DJ team (which includes yours truly). I expect to run several Weatherall posts over the next few weeks- that's probably not much different to usual round here, he does tend to feature fairly often- and thought I'd kick off with this one, a mix for Sunday of cover versions Andrew either recorded as an artist himself or other other artists he remixed. It is not surprisingly a fairly eclectic bunch of songs and artists. It now occurs to me that I should have put the originals together as a mix too so maybe that will follow at some point a companion piece.

Fifty Five Minutes Of Andrew Weatherall Cover Versions

• Carry Me Home
• Only Love Can Break Your Heart (A Mix Of Two Halves)
• Witchi Tai To (2 Lone Swordsmen Remix)
• The Drum (Andrew Weatherall Remix)
• A Love From Outer Space (Version 2)
• Sex Beat
• Slip Inside This House
• Goodbye Johnny (Andrew Weatherall's Nyabinghi Noir Mix)
• Faux/ Whole Wide World

Carry Me Home is a cover of a Dennis Wilson song from 1973, a wracked funereal blues for a dying soldier in Vietnam that was written for the 1973 album Holland but was left off. 'Life is meant to live/ I'm afraid to die', he sings. Primal Scream's version which Andrew produced is from the Dixie- Narco EP, a very downbeat and beautiful way to pay homage. Andrew and Hugo Nicolson's mix of instruments and production is stunning, Duffy's electric piano at the start and the acoustic guitar and cello in the end section especially so. 

Only Love Can Break Your Heart is a Saint Etienne cover of a Neil Young song. I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that. Andrew's remix sent the song into a dubbed out bliss, Augustus Pablo- esque melodica in the first half (played by Pete Astor of The Weather Prophets), the Jean Binta Breeze dub poetry sample in the middle cutting the track in half, and then the song appearing in the second (along with the Jean 'cool and deadly' sample). 

Witchi Tai To was a 2007 single by X- Press 2, the Two Lone Swordsmen remix adding the live drums of their sound from that period and matching the Wrong Meeting albums of the same year. The original was a a 1971 single by Jim Pepper, a Native American singer and saxophonist who took a peyote chant his grandfather taught him and turned it into a hybrid jazz/ Native American song. X- Press 2's cover was sung by Tim de Laughter of The Polyphonic Spree. 

The Drum was a single for The Impossibles, an Edinburgh duo who made early 90s jangly indie- pop. The original is a Slapp Happy song from 1974. Weatherall's remix, from 1991, is a lesser known one from his early 90s hot streak, a tour de force of throwing whatever is at hand in the studio/ imagination at a remix and it working. Andrew was ably assisted by Hugo Nicolson on this one too. 

A Love From Outer Space was the calling card from the 2013 album by The Asphodells, the outfit he formed with Timothy J. Fairplay after they had bene working together on remixes and their own material and realised they had enough for an album. Andrew's vocals were a big feature of The Asphodells (following on from the Two Lone Swordsmen records of the previous few years where he stepped up to the mic for the first time since the early 80s). A Love From Outer Space also became the name of his traveling club night, with compadre Sean Johnstone, a night never knowingly exceeding 122 bpm. The original song is by late 80s one offs A.R. Kane, a duo of dreads who made spaced out dub/ dreampop. 

Sex Beat was a Two Lone Swordsmen single in 2004 and on the From The Double Gone Chapel album of the same year, a radical shift in sound and style after the pure electro of 2000's Tiny Reminders. Andrew and Keith Tenniswood becoming a garage band with Nick Burton on drums and Chris Mackin on guitar. Sex Beat was such a blast when it came out in 2004, an energetic swerve in the road to somewhere new. Sex Beat was on The Gun Club's 1981 debut Fire Of Love, a blues/ rockabilly/ Southern Gothic classic. Leader, singer and writer Jeffrey Lee Pierce pops up again in this mix in the form of Goodbye Johnny.

Slip Inside This House is a cover of The 3th Floor Elevators song from their 1967 album Easter Everywhere, the second song on Primal Scream's 1991 opus Screamadelica, a juddering statement of acid house intent after the rock n' roll opening of Moving On Up. Hypnotone's Tony Martin was involved in the production of this track too. It was sung by Throb. Bobby Gillespie is said to have bene suffering from 'acid house flu'.

Goodbye Johnny was on Primal Scream's 2013 album More Light. It came from a covers project that paid tribute to Jeffrey Lee Pierce. Weatherall's spaced out remix tips its hat to the Nyabinghi sound of African Head Charge, a big influence on Andrew. 

Faux/ Whole Wide World comes from a Radio One session from 2004. Faux was the first single ahead of From The Double Gone Chapel, a scuzzed up slice of electro- rockabilly, combining rapid programmed drums and fuzz guitars with Weatherall vocals and lyrics about the love of his life, Elizabeth Walker. As a touring band Two Lone Swordsmen had a habit of working Faux into Wreckless Eric's Whole Wide World, a peerless 1977 single. At the time Andrew was recommending the new album then just released by Eric, Bungalow Hi, a record Andrew described as 'like Duane Eddy meets Aphex Twin'. The recording here is ripped from a radio session, never officially released. There was a version on the Rotters Golf Club website for a while too, part of a three song session they recorded playing at the Bloc Weekender. Of all the lyrics that swirl around Andrew's world and outlook, 'I don't do faux', is as good as any. 

Half An Hour Of David Crosby

David Crosby died on Thursday aged eighty one. Given the sometimes chaotic nature of his life it could be seen as a miracle he made it to eighty one. That he did so still railing against the world, former bandmates, Donald Trump, slights and injustices, seems all the more admirable- he never gave into old age or mellowed, he carried on being the same wilful and difficult man he was when The Byrds fired him back in 1967 for being wilful and difficult. His talent as a songwriter, singer, player and arranger of harmonies meant that he was usually worth listening to although I'll happily admit there are sections of the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young back catalogue I've avoided and will probably continue to. But when he was good, he was so very good. 

I started listening to The Byrds as a late teenager, aged eighteen in 1988. The Byrds were in the air (lol) back then, their Rickenbacker jangle, fringes, beads and sunglasses and acid/ folk rock chiming with the guitar bands of the day, the Creation bands and The Stone Roses. I started with a cassette, a compilation with all their songs in a random order and then picked up Fifth Dimension and Younger Than Yesterday on vinyl second hand. Crosby's songs were rarely the most obvious, rarely the ones with the shimmering twelve string chords and the perfect 60s verse/ chorus structure. His songs were sometimes in odd tunings or had strange time signatures, dreamlike songs, trippy and hallucinatory. 

In photos he often looked like The Byrd out of step, the round face contrasting with the other four's chiselled cheekbones and perfect hair, the only wearing a cape when the others were all in Levi's jackets or three button suit jackets.  His parents had tried to get some discipline into him as a young teenager when he was developing a strong anti- authoritarian streak and this seems to have followed him his whole life, a man who followed his own course, often to the detriment of his health and friendships. His 1971 solo album, If I Could Only Remember My Name, was made with an all star backing cast (Neil Young, Graham Nash, Joni Mitchell, some of Jefferson Airplane, Santana, the Grateful Dead) and by rights should be a  disaster but is one of those albums that exists on its own terms and in its own world a nine- song, beautifully weird, psychedelic folk masterpiece. 

David Crosby, one of a kind. R.I.P.

Half An Hour Of David Crosby

• Everybody's Been Burned
• I'll Feel A Whole Lot Better
• Long Time Gone
• Music Is Love
• Wild Mountain Thyme
• Ohio
• Orleans
• Guinnevere
• Wooden Ships
• Tamalpais High (At About 3)

Everybody's Been Burned is from The Byrds 1967 album Younger Than Yesterday, a slow burning, mysterious, jazz influenced written a couple of years before he joined the band. The opening lines were borrowed by Tim Burgess for The Charlatan's 1990 single The Only One I Know, The Byrds very much in the ether at the time. I'll Feel A Whole Lot Better is from1965, the B-side to their second single All I Really Want To Do (a Dylan cover) and was written by Gene Clark. It's the best 60s Rickenbacker, guitar jangle pop song bar none. Wild Mountain Thyme was on 1966's Fifth Dimension, one of the folk standards they played. 

Long Time Gone, Wooden Ships and Guinnevere are all from the first Crosby, Stills and Nash album in 1969, all Crosby songs. Guinnevere was about three women in Crosby's life, one unnamed, one Joni Mitchell and the third his girlfriend Christine Hinton who was killed in a car crash in 1969. Crosby identified her body, after which according to Nash, Crosby was never the same. Wooden Ships imagines the survivors of a nuclear apocalypse meeting and asking 'who won?'

Music Is Love, Orleans and Tamalpais High (At About 3) are all from If I Could Only Remember My Name. Orleans is a reworking of a traditional French song from the 15th century sung in round. Tamalpais is a mountain in California, mentioned by Beat writers Jack Kerouac and Gary Snyder in their works. 

Ohio was a Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young single written by Neil Young following the Kent State University shootings in May 1970 where four students were killed by the US National Guard at an anti- Vietnam War protest. Crosby's backing vocals stand out as he cries out 'Four!' and 'How many more?' as the song fades out. According to Young, Crosby was in tears after recording them. 'Tin soldiers and Nixon's coming/ We're finally on our own', is as good an opening line as any protest song has. 

Twenty Four

Today would have been Isaac's twenty fourth birthday. I can't find the words to adequately express myself about this at the moment. The weeks leading up to today have been awful at times and the thought that he's dead still has the power to stop me in my tracks and leave me trying to catch my breath. Isaac loved birthdays- cards, cake, presents, going out for tea, all the routines and traditions. I hope in years to come we can celebrate him and the twenty three birthdays that he had with us but right now it just feels like a date filled with massive loss. 

Often on his birthday I'd post songs relevant to the age he was turning, so today should have been songs with twenty four in the title or in the lyrics. I thought I may as well go ahead with this. Neither Joy Division's 24 Hours nor Happy Mondays' 24 Hour Party People seemed to strike the right note. I'm not really a fan of Gene Pitney's 24 Hours From Tulsa. Half Man Half Biscuit's Twenty Four Hour Garage People plays on Happy Mondays in the title and lyrically takes in the Rollright Stones, Talk Radio, Pringles, Marmite, scotch eggs, Kit Kats, motoring atlases, Leadbelly, various sandwich fillings and the worker at the all night garage. It is a song which can still, twenty two years after it was released, make me laugh out loud and today of all days that's a big deal. 

Twenty Four Hour Garage People

Neil Young's Old Man contains the line 'Old man, look at my life/ Twenty four and there's so much more'. Neil wrote the song after he bought the Broken Arrow ranch with the proceeds of his songwriting success. He was shown round the ranch by Broken Arrow's caretaker Louis Avila. The line is about Louis' incredulity that a young man could buy a $350, 000 ranch in 1971. When asked how he afforded it Neil told Louis, 'just lucky, Louis, just real lucky'. It goes elsewhere, as Neil Young songs often do, musing on the similarities between the old man and the younger man, that their basic needs and desires are the same- 'Old man, take a look at my life/ I'm a lot like you/ I need someone to love me the whole night through'. This version is from the legendary Massey Hall gig in 1971, a solo acoustic show in Toronto in January 1971. 

Old Man (Live at Massey Hall 1971)

Happy birthday Isaac. Love you. 

It's All Illusion Anyway

I'm following on from yesterday's Neil Young post with some Pixies and some more Neil. The first time I heard Winterlong was the cover version by Pixies on a tribute album to Neil called The Bridge which came out in autumn 1989. There was a brief rash of indie tributes to 60s artists compilations around this time- I had a tribute to The Byrds but at some point that has departed from my record collection and I remember a Jimi Hendrix one but I didn't buy that one. There were several Velvets ones too I think. They were very hit and miss. But The Bridge was well worth getting and holding onto featuring as well as Pixies, Soul Asylum, Victoria Williams, The Flaming Lips, Nikki Sudden, Loop, Nick Cave, Sonic Youth, Psychic TV, Dinosaur Jr, and Henry Kaiser. That list alone brings back the smell and feel of the Melody Maker's pages. There are plenty of good covers in that cast and Sonic Youth probably take the gold medal but Pixies absolutely nail Winterlong, Black Francis and Kim Deal duetting over some deliciously fried guitars. 

Winterlong

Neil's own version of the song was not released until Decade came out in 1977. He'd been sitting on it since at least 1970- apparently it was likely recorded in 1974 during the On The Beach sessions but it didn't fit on that album so he held it back. I first started buying Neil Young albums in summer 1988, taking advantage of the Price Cuts discount label that was widely available then- Harvest and After The Goldrush could both be bought new for £4.49, risk free purchases for a poor student. I don't remember getting a copy of Decade until many years later- triple albums were expensive and it wasn't easy to find. 

Neil takes Winterlong at a slower pace, his voice yearning for his lost love and the guitars and performance less manic with a pedal steel guitar in the instrumental break. It's gorgeous, right up there in terms of definitive Neil Young songs. 

Winterlong

There's some really good Pixies on TV clips from the late 80s, a period where they were unmissable and didn't really sound like anyone else. Surfer Rosa and Doolittle were a unique pair of albums, a band with a sound, a worldview and four very different members completely in tune with each other. The song's topics and lyrics were coming in from the outer reaches of Black Francis' imagination and together sounded like nothing else, the rhythms, the frantically scrubbed acoustic guitars, the dry, sparse sound with violent explosions, Joey's crazed solos and David's drumming plus Kim's sheer joy at playing/ singing- they had that chemistry that some bands find for a brief period that makes them briefly unique. I lost interest after Doolittle. They couldn't match it. Bossanova felt flat to me, a bit tamed, and I didn't bother with Trompe Le Monde. People tell me the re- union albums are worth getting but I don't have the interest, I don't need any Pixies albums other than Surfer Rosa and Doolittle (and Come On Pilgrim of course). They've appeared twice recently on TV programmes, firstly this clip of them playing on BBC 2's Late Show in 1989, Monkey Gone To Heaven played late at night with no audience other than Kirsty Wark or whoever was presenting that night and the camera crew.

The Late Show must have had some bookers who were well into their NME and Melody Maker at this point. Between 1988 and 1991 they were many memorable performances. The Cramps played a deadly two song set with Lux resplendent in black leather and bra in 1990, Jane's Addiction rocked out with Been Caught Stealing, R.E.M. did a stunning performance of Half A World Away and Belong in 1991, Public Enemy and Ice T both appeared and famously in 1989 The Stone Roses blew the sound limiter and as Tracey MacLeod tried to cover the show's blushes and move to the next item Ian Brown harangued the studio with shouts of 'amateurs, amateurs' eventually deciding 'we're wasting our time here lads'. 

This clip comes from British TV, not the Beeb. I'm not sure which ITV programme this was- Pixies doing Hey. 

While looking for all of that I found this, Pixies on Dutch TV in 1988, a five song set taken from Surfer Rosa. How good is this? Very very good.  

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... 

Drums And Bumpers

While everything has been going on for us for the last three weeks the real world has been continuing to spin on its axis. The death of Michael Nesmith was a sad loss. If you grew up in the 1970s you couldn't escape The Monkees TV show (and why would you want to?). Mike was a talented songwriter and before he even appeared in The Monkees had written his classic song Different Drum, although he wouldn't record it as a solo artist until 1972. Linda Ronstadt and The Stone Poneys had a big hit with it in 1967 but I think the first version I heard was a cover by The Lemonheads in 1990. Evan Dando drawling 'You and I/ Travel to the beat of a different drum' over some crunchy early 90s indie- rock makes a good claim to be the definitive version of the song. 

Different Drum

The Monkees 1968 film and soundtrack Head are legendary, a trippy, satirical attempt to throw off their pop image. As We Go Along is one of the soundtrack's highlights and although it's sung by Micky Dolenz rather than Mike Nesmith I thought it was worth posting here today regardless. There's a bit of an all star cast playing on this one- Neil Young, Carole King and Ry Cooder. 

As We Go Along

Also gone is Robbie Shakespeare, a man whose basslines run through my record collection like the writing through a stick of rock. As half of the Sly and Robbie rhythm section he's appeared on more great records than most. Take Grace Jones in 1980 as as good an example as any. 

Pull Up To The Bumper

Cool And Deadly

Jean 'Binta' Breeze, Jamaican dub poet and storyteller, died a couple of days ago aged sixty five. Jean's poetry took her around the world, her performances described as 'a one woman festival'. Her 1991 album Tracks was produced by Linton Kwesi Johnson and Dennis Bovell, a proper pair of UK dub/ poetry heavyweights, and opened with this- forty nine seconds of street smart, earthy, Jamaican poetry.

Dubwise

If you're anything like me the first time you'll have heard this poem (or two excerpts from it) will have been on this record also released in 1991 where Andrew Weatherall sampled Jean and sent Saint Etienne and Neil Young to dubbed out splendour. 

Only Love Can Break Your Heart (A Mix Of Two Halves By Andrew Weatherall)

''The DJ eases a spliff from his lyrical lips and smilingly orders... 'cease' ''

RIP Jean 'Binta' Breeze

Vacancy

Neil Young's new/old album Homegrown came out last month. It was recorded in 1974 and 1975 and then Neil shelved it, despite the quality of the songs and the presence of both Crazy Horse and his other rotating cast of musicians including the likes of Ben Keith, Emmylou Harris and Robbie Robertson. It was too personal for Neil, some of the songs dealing with his recent breakup with Carrie Snodgrass and the pain and anguish it caused him.

A handful of the songs recorded for Homegrown made it onto other albums- Star of Bethlehem, White Line, Little Wing and Love Is A Rose all turned up elsewhere throughout the next decade and a half- but seven of them sat in Neil's house unheard and unshared, until Neil's decision to release Homegrown as he intended it to be back in 1975 but in 2020. This one has been worth the wait. Vacancy sounds as fresh as it was the day it was recorded, the band crunching their way through a mid- paced, twin guitar, stomp with Neil's voice floating over the top, 'I look in your eyes/ and I don't know what's there...'. The way the guitars lock together after the verses and the ringing guitar solo at the end is wonderful, pure Neil Young in '75.



The only moment on Homegrown that misfires is Florida, a two minute soundscape with Neil muttering over the top about cities and gliders but if you're on the homegrown there's a good chance some stoned ramblings will occur. Even so, it somehow works in the context of the album.

Homegrown should have been released after Harvest, when his acoustic guitar, singer- songwriter star was at its highest. Instead it lay in the vault for forty five years and he put out On The Beach (an album that deals with Charles Manson and has songs called Vampire Blues and Revolution Blues) and Tonight's The Night (and album recorded in the direct aftermath of the deaths of roadie Bruce Berry and guitarist Danny Whitten, Neil shaken to the core by both). Having shelved Homegrown for being too raw, he released two of the bleakest albums he ever made. That's where Neil was in 1975.

For The Turnstiles was on On The Beach, a sparse but sprightly banjo moan, Neil lamenting the price of fame and the artistic costs of arena rock via the metaphor of baseball.

For The Turnstiles

Audrey Witherspoon

I mentioned the remixes Andrew Weatherall made his name with yesterday. In the early 90s remix culture became the big thing, record companies throwing thousands of pounds at club DJs to stick dance beats underneath a song. Weatherall's remixes never took the easy road, were never formulaic. In most cases the remixes were better than the source material and he was still producing superb remixes until recently.

Primal Scream have put out several Best Of/ Greatest Hits, one only last year. The one they haven't released and would be the contender for the best Best Of would be the one that compiled Weatherall's work for the group. The AW/PS compilation wold start with Loaded, a remix so groundbreaking and gigantic it created an entire scene and gave the Scream a career. Andrew's remix of Come Together is monumental. I once said here that there are days when I think it is the single greatest record ever made and I don't see any reason to argue with myself.



'Today on this programme you will hear gospel and rhythm and blues and jazz. All these are just labels, we know that music is music'

The rest of Screamadelica that Andrew produced would be on this Primal Scream Best Of too- Inner Flight, Shine Like Stars, Don't Fight It Feel It (and the amazing Scat Mix where Denise Johnson's voice is chopped up and scattered over the track) and the Jah Wobble bass of Higher Than The Sun (A Dub Symphony In Two Parts). Then this, ten glorious minutes of slow groove, horn driven spaced out house, from the Dixie Narco e.p.

Screamadelica

His knob- twiddling on the other two songs on the Dixie Narco e.p. brought two other classics in the shape of Stone My Soul and their cover of Dennis Wilson's Carry Me Home, one of the very best things Bobby Gillespie and co ever did. Primal Scream's follow up was their Rolling Stones record. Weatherall produced remixes of Jailbird. Trainspotting from Vanishing Point. The far out Two Lone Swordsmen remix of Stuka. The pair of productions he did on Evil Heat- the gliding shimmer of Autobahn 66 and the mutant funk of A Scanner Darkly. Two TLS remixes of Kill All Hippies. Bloods. The ten minute remix of Uptown, a signpost in 2009 that Weatherall was back at the remix peak. The remix and dub version of 2013. The stretched out remix of Goodbye Johnny. That's the Primal Scream Best Of.

In the early 90s his remixes broke genres, chucking in the kitchen sink, its plumbing, the work surface and all the white goods too. His dub remix of Saint Etienne was a moment of clarity for me, the doorway to another world, the two halves glued together by the sample 'the DJ, eases a spliff from his lyrical lips and smilingly orders ''cease!'' '

Only Love Can Break Your Heart (A Mix Of Two Halves)

Andrew's remixes from this period are full of little moments to raise a smile, samples from obscure places, huge basslines, sudden changes in pace or tempo, piano breakdowns and thumping rhythms. Almost every single one is worth seeking out and almost every single one has been posted here at some point. In no particular order- S'Express' Find 'Em, Fool 'Em, Forget 'Em, The Drum by The Impossibles, a mad pair of remixes of Flowered Up's Weekender, the magnificent The World According To... for Sly And Lovechild, his work for One Dove (that produced some career high remixes in the shape of Squire Black Dove Rides Out and the Guitar Paradise version of White Love and his production work on the most beautiful and most lost of the lost albums of the 1990s Morning Dove White), his remix of My Bloody Valentine's Soon, on its own a justification of remix culture and two reworkings of The Orb's Perpetual Dawn that take his and The Orb's dub roots into pounding new places. Roots music.

Perpetual Dawn Ultrabass I

Perpetual Dawn Ultrabass II

Add to all these his remixes of Jah Wobble, three versions of Visions Of You, spread over twenty five minutes of vinyl and two remixes of Bomba that have to be heard to be believed. Decades after first hearing this one I found the source of the madcap intro (Miles Davis) when it had been there in the title all along.

Bomba (Miles Away)

His remixes of The Grid's Floatation are also sublime. As a fan of The Stone Roses the moment when he drops John Squire's guitar part from Waterfall into the ending of the track brought things together for me perfectly.

Floatation (Sonic Swing Mix)

There are so many more. The speaker shattering thump of Fini Tribe's 101. His long tribal workout of Papua New Guinea. The sweet smell of didgeridoo on Galliano's meandering Skunk Funk. The wide eyed mixes of A Man Called Adam's CPI. Indie, ambient, house, dub, everything from the fringes of music's past, ready to sample and plunder to make something new, with a sense of possibility and openness. This would all be mere nostalgia were it not for Weatherall's continual left turns and about turns in the following years. His remixes from the last decade, again almost all posted here at some point, are of a similar high standard but he rarely if ever repeats himself. There are similarities in tone and palette but always with an eye looking forward and perpetual motion. The remix of MBV's Soon and his remix of Fuck Buttons Sweet Love For Planet Earth seem somehow linked to me, the manipulation of noise and the intense melodies found within over crunching dance floor rhythms. I've not even begun to touch on his remixes with Sabres of Paradise, the treasure that lies within Sabres own records (Sabresonic, Haunted Dancehall, Theme, Wilmot, oh man, Wilmot- we were at Cream once waiting for ages for Weatherall to arrive and eventually word came through that he was delayed, wasn't going to make it. Resident DJ and owner Darren Hughes played on and dropped Wilmot, unheard by us at that point, the whole back room skanking to those wandering horns).



Then there was Two Lone Swordsmen whose remixes were harder, purer somehow, more focused, less obvious. It took time sometimes for them to reveal themselves. The TLS albums from The Fifth Mission onward, the stoned hip hop grooves of A Virus With Shoes, the double album of juddering bass and London machine funk of Tiny Reminders, Swimming Not Skimming. My favourite of the TLS albums from this period has become Stay Down. Released on Warp from its cover art, a painting of a pair of deep sea divers, to its memorable song titles (try Hope We Never Surface, Light The Last Flare, Spine Bubbles, Mr Paris' Monsters and As Worldly Pleasures Wave Goodbye for starters- that last one has just made me gulp) it is a self contained mini- masterpiece. Stay Down is an abstract album of short tracks, weird, rhythmic, minimal ambient music, sounding like it has been submerged and then recovered from the deep, humanised analogue IDM. Never standing still, always moving forward.

Light The Last Flare

These Are Dark Days That We're Living In

I suppose at the least one thing was made very clear yesterday, 28th August 2019, and that is that there can be no doubts now about where we all stand. The hard right wing of the Tory Party that have taken over government of the UK, an unelected government and Prime Minister, have no fear of getting rid of democracy to impose their will on us. The decision to prorogue parliament, no matter what they say about the Queen's speech, normal process and preparing legislation for domestic policies, has been taken to enforce a No Deal Brexit. The trio who visited the Queen yesterday to tell her to sign the paperwork to approve suspending parliament, to prevent it from challenging the government and it's No Deal fanaticism, have shown what Johnson and his government are. This is an undemocratic, right wing coup. If this was happening in another country, another Western liberal democracy, the media would be reporting it as such, and portraying it as a step on the road to dictatorship. Yet still we see vox pop interviews on the TV news with ordinary people saying that Brexit must be delivered whatever the cost. The cost is democracy.

The government and its advisers care for nothing else except delivering Brexit at the end of October. The constitution, democracy, the United Kingdom (Scotland will surely depart in the next five years), peace in Northern Ireland, everything else, is collateral damage. This also illustrates the weakness of the British political system and fragility of an unwritten constitution. Tradition and convention have been bent out of shape and there is no actual system of checks and balances to protect us from a power grab by the executive. We have a constitutional monarch who cannot interfere with politics. At least in a republic the head of state has legal powers to prevent executives from running out of control. From the palace's point of view, I guess it has at least distracted everyone from that nasty business with Prince Andrew, the underage girls and the dead paedophile.

This is and always has been about the Tory party. In the 90s pro and anti- EU Tories split the Major government. They've been arguing about it ever since. One Tory Prime minister offered a referendum because the Tory party were frightened of the far right UKIP. Another attempted to appeal to both wings to get the UK out of the EU after the referendum. A third is now going to suspend parliament to drive No Deal through (partly in response to the battering the Tory party got from Farage at the elections in May). A few hundred thousand Tries chose the latest Prime Minister despite his history of lies and incompetence. We are all now paying the price of the Tory party and it's problem with Europe.

The opposition are hopelessly split. Individual MPs speak sense but cannot collectively agree on a strategy. There is no precedent for a legal challenge and the media have been undermining the courts since the 2016 vote (Enemies Of The People anyone?). The Labour Party has spent three years fudging the issue. A vote of no confidence looks unlikely to succeed- the maths doesn't add up; a government that doesn't care about parliament would probably attempt to ride it out anyway; a date for a general election would be determined by the Prime Minister and my guess is he'd go for some time after 31st October.

Following the moment in May 1970 that the US army acted against it's own people, shooting four students dead at an anti- Vietnam demonstration in Ohio, Neil Young sang 'tin soldiers and Nixon's coming/We're finally on our own'. I think that is where we're at, finally on our own. We have to take to the streets. Last night's protests can only be the beginning.

At the start of this 1993 Sly and Lovechild remix the voice of the Reverend Jasper Williams speaks out over some piano- 'these are dark days that we're living in, bad situations, a world of tensions and frustrations, joys and sorrows, violences and upheavals, you don't know hardly which way to turn... but you've got to have a determination that I'm going on anyhow'.

The World According To... Weatherall (Soul Of Europe Mix)

Joni's In The Tall Grass

Sonic Youth's Daydream Nation turned 30 this year, a double album that was some kind of apex of US indie-punk. I tested it out this week, seeing how it sounded after not having heard it for years. It's front loaded with Teenage Riot, their most essential song and the few that follow it are almost as good- Silver Rocket, The Sprawl, 'Cross The Breeze and Eric's Trip- but not quite as good. Lee Ranaldo's Hey Joni was the one that stood out to me, a noisy, full throttle tribute to Joni Mitchell (possibly) or a girl from Lee's past (possibly) that breaks down towards the end, twin overdriven  guitars feeding back, with Ranaldo saying 'It's 1963, it's 1964, it's 1957, it's 1962.... put it all behind you, now it's all behind you'. Lost youth.

Hey Joni

Their 1989 cover of Neil Young's Computer Age is a blast and a joy, pretty much my favourite Sonic Youth track (and somehow typical of them to cover a song from Neil's most misunderstood record, his 1982 vocoder and synths album Trans, an album that baffled his fans and record company alike). Sonic Youth rewire it for guitar and burn it up. 

Computer Age

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'