Swear I'll Be There

We spent a very pleasant Sunday afternoon drinking beer and wine in the sun and listening to music at a friend's house. After a while the person in charge of Spotify started asking for requests and we ended up with a bunch of mid-to-late 80s songs, as you might expect given the age of the people present, and eventually a run of Aztec Camera songs. This one didn't get played but it should have if time and had permitted. Roddy Frame's bittersweet kiss off to punk (and a major inspiration on Johnny Marr, tuning in, a couple of hundred miles south). This is the single version, with production and horns that sound dated- but the song is divine.

Walk Out To Winter

Days Of Speed And Slow Time Mondays

That's Entertainment always strikes me as a bank holiday song, easily singable in a beer garden on a rare early May Day of sunshine, pub jukebox cutting through the TV sport and noise. Paul Weller admits to writing it drunk, home from the pub, in half an hour and it's easy to picture- once a couple of lines of the lyric came to him and the rhythm was there in his head, it must have just poured out. He even manages to make the 'two lovers missing the tranquillity of solitude' line work in among the urban and suburban poetry. Each line could describe a British bank holiday too from the screaming siren of the police car to feeding the ducks while wishing you were far away, from a kick in the balls to cuddling a warm girl and smelling stale perfume. Weller and The Jam at their best, although the demo version off Snap! always sounds better than the re-recorded one on Sound Affects.

That's Entertainment (Demo Version)

No! Say It Loud, No!

Today, Pete Wylie. Yesterday The Vinyl Villain published a post on the third member of The Crucial Three- Pete Wylie and his Mighty Wah! a blogpost so comprehensive and with comments so good I rewrote my planned post for today. So instead of what I had partly written I'm revisiting a version of a Mighty Wah! song I have posted before, a brilliantly executed re-edit of The Mighty Wah's The Story Of The Blues (Part 2) from the Edit Service people. A long electronic drum intro, the female backing vox and then Pete Wylie's spoken part, including that quote from Jack Kerouac- 'I remember something Sal Paradise said 'the city intellectuals of the world were divorced from the folkbody of the land and were just rootless fools'' and Wylie's message, 'you've got to hope for the best and that's the best you can hope for' and ultimately say 'No!'. If you love the original, you'll love this too. Promise.



By the way, I apologise for the appearance of the letter U and the number 2 in close proximity in the picture accompanying this post.

Forty Four

It's my birthday today. I am forty four. This is a song pulled more or less at random from my downloads folder- Rocket by The Jesus and Mary Chain, a b-side from the Crackin' Up single in 1998. Having ruminated since the middle of last week I've decided I'm definitely up for the Psychocandy gig in November. It's hard to believe they were Smash Hits cover stars- 'loud, spotty and weird'. There's a good line up in that issue- The Smiths, Billy Bragg, the Bangles. Five Star. And a pull out poster of Samantha Fox.

Rocket