Monday's Long Song

Jane Birkin died yesterday aged 76. She was a genuine counter culture superstar, an actress and singer and the voice of Je t'aime... Moi Non Plus, a 1969 show stopper of a single recorded with Serge Gainsbourg. In 1971 Serge recorded Historie De Melody Nelson, a thirty minute concept album about an affair between a middle aged man and a teenage girl (something that would be received very differently if released in 2023). The album is a tour de force musically. Jane takes centre stage on the cover and is present on vocals. The lush, orchestral sounds are coupled with grimy funk bass and superb sounding early '70s guitars, spoken word vocals and choral backing vox. There are few other albums from that time or since that sound much like it. This is Cargo Culte, the seven and a half minute finale, a sublime piece of groove and feel, the guitar as good as any electric guitar anyone else put down on tape.

Cargo Culte

Jane appears on this song, the much shorter Ballade De Melody Nelson, a duet with acoustic guitar and strings. 

Ballade De Melody Nelson

In 1997 David Holmes sampled the tile track Melody for Don't Die Just Yet. When it was released as single it came with some tasty remixes- this one by Mogwai for instance.

Don't Die Just Yet (Mogwai Mix)

In 1985 Jane covered Kate Bush's Mother Stands For Comfort, a song originally from Kate's Hounds Of Love

Mother Stands For Comfort

As well as continuing to make music and films, Jane was a French national and resident of Paris long after her relationship with Gainsbourg ended. She was an activist and campaigner for Amnesty International, migrant support groups and Aids charities. There isn't a bad photograph of her. RIP Jane Birkin. 

Forty Minutes Of Wooden Shjips

Wooden Shjips, one of three bands Ripley Johnson leads as guitarist and singer, are an ongoing psychedelic blur, Ripley's distorted, buzzsaw/ Crazy Horse guitar tone droning and riffing complemented by the motorik rhythms of drummer Omar Ahsanuddin and the swirly organ. The songs sound like the heat of high summer, the tranced out escapism of lying on your back staring at the hazy blue sky with nothing to do and nowhere to go. Ripley's voice sits somewhere inside the mix, a presence as much as a vocal.

Forty Minutes Of Wooden Shjips

• Red Line
• Contact
• Motorbike
• Rising
• Back To Land
• Eclipse
• Crossings (Andrew Weatherall Remix)

Since 2006 they've released five albums (plus two compilations) with 2018's V a peak of spaced out, shimmering psychedelia. Red Line and Eclipse are both from V. I saw them play live at Gorilla when they toured to promote it- they were in the groove and on fire.

Contact was a standalone 7" single in 2009, a cover of the Serge Gainsbourg song (originally sung by Brigitte Bardot in 1968 which later on was up on David Holmes' Essential Mix). It was later compiled onto Wooden Shjips Vol 2.

Rising is a slow riot of backwards sounds and is on 2011's West, the album where their numbed out repetition began to become warmer and more polished. Crossings is from West as well and was remixed by Weatherall, the 12" seeing the light of day in 2012. It's one of the pinnacles of his later remixes, a version that strips Wooden Shjips sound down, adds a hissy drum machine and some of his dubby/ sci fi sounds and a huge loop of bass guitar. 

Back To Land is the title track from their 2013 album, The Velvet Underground if they'd come from San Francisco and not New York. 

And if all this psychedelic rock isn't festive enough for you here's the band doing O Tannenbaum, adding sleigh bells to create a nine minute long, minimal, motorik Christmas, organ drone. 

O Tannenbaum

Contact

Listening to and posting the rather excellent new song from Wooden Shjips, Staring At The Sun, made me go back to some of their other releases. I dug out their 2011 album West, a noisy, psychedelic San Franciscan monster, only seven songs long, but what a stretched out, trippy, echo laden seven songs they are- not just monotonous one chord grooves either but beautiful repetition coupled with melodies and riffs. Ripley's monotone, numb, half asleep vocals float over the top. Perfect driving music I've rediscovered. Black Smoke Rise was the album's opening song/vibe...



At this point it is worth spending some time being reminded of Andrew Weatherall's superb remix of Crossing (also from West), one of a series of remixes that showed that back at the star of the decade he was properly back in the game. His remix of Crossing has a kind of grimy grandeur feel to it, San Fran via East London.

Crossing (Andrew Weatherall Remix)

And as an bonus weekend extra, a couple of years ago Wooden Shjips released a limited edition two track 12" on white vinyl, one side being a suitably stoned cover of Serge Gainsbourg's Contact, eight minutes of fuzz and awe.

Contact

La Horse

I can't let this week's festival of Frenchness go by without some Serge Gainsbourg. This is a funky instrumental from the soundtrack to a film (La Horse) from 1970, with a banjo breakdown. Zut alors.

La Horse

En Vacances

Right then mes amis- cheerio! See you all in two weeks. Shortly we hit the M62, Hull to Zeebrugee, long drive through France to Lake Annecy where we are camping for eleven nights; wine and cheese, the Alps, Dijon, Lyon, a potential day trip to Italy, near bankruptcy on our return....

Here's some French songs to send us on our way, first one from the lovely Francoise Hardy...

Strange Shadows

And something from Serge...

Requiem Pour Un Con

And that's pretty much how I expect the French to look.

Cargo Culte

I was in Beatnik Shop in Altrincham on Saturday afternoon chatting with one of the men who run it (who it turns out was on the same PGCE course as me, twenty years ago), and a Serge Gainsbourg album was playing (Histoire De Melody Nelson which I haven't heard before, shocking admission I know) and as the final song played out over its seven and a bit minutes I was struck by how much of it David Holmes pilfered for Don't Die Just Yet. I mean, I like David Holmes, a lot of his stuff is great, but there's sampling and there's sampling.

Cargo Culte

Bonnie And Clyde

And to be fair Warren Beatty didn't look that much like Clyde Barrow either.

While rummaging through boxes and shelves of cds (and having a cd storage problem that is not yet resolved) I found a load of freebie music magazine cds from the last decade- one from 2003, Mojo's 18 Tracks From The Year's Best Albums (almost none of which came from albums released in that year). Tucked towards the end of it was this classic from Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot- breathy duet vox, 1968 vibes and some great whooping backing vocals.

Bonnie and Clyde

What Is It Holmes?

David Holmes's 1997 album Let's Get Killed was a mixed bag, as all his albums have been. The single, Don't Die Just Yet, was superb- trippy and moody with dramatic strings, and a Serge Gainsbourg sample. This is from the cd/12" single, Don't Chant Just Yet, where Holmes remixes his own track assisted by Tim Goldsworthy.

Don't Chant Just Yet