Hey Joe! I Got The News Tonight

Pete Wylie's 1986 single Sinful is one of those records, one of those songs that is central to my musical DNA. It was the debut Pete Wylie single, the record company thinking that Pete's own name might lead to a hit rather than one of the increasing numbers of Wah! names Pete had used previously. You don't need me to tell you how great Sinful is or why it is. It just is. 

In the past I've posted the 12" mix, the Tribal Mix, a Zeus B Held production that thumps in for several minutes with widescreen production, throbbing bass, heartbeat kick drum synths, building and building and then sustaining the excitement . Today, here's the single mix, a song that reached number 13 in the UK charts. 

Sinful

A few days ago Pete posted a link to a newly discovered piece of film, Pete playing (miming) Sinful in Verona in 1986. Everything about this clip is a joy- Pete, Josie and the band in their black leather and big hair phase, an enormous stage with huge lighting rig, a packed to the rafters Roman colosseum of enthusiastic Italians clapping and waving, Josie's pop art guitar, the sense that everything is happening in some mid- 80s hyper- reality...

I'm a big fan too of the Sinful promotional appearance that took place on The Wogan Show in 1986, Pete giving it the full scouse rock star on early evening chat show vibes. A clip with fewer over- excited Italians but more dancing nuns. 

Go Easy Step Lightly

The big stack of CDs that came free with magazines that I wrote about a few weeks ago continues to give up the goods as I work my way through it. It seems that people at Uncut and Mojo were well connected to Pete Wylie- Pete and Mighty Wah! songs have turned up on several CDs. 

In 2011 Mojo came accompanied by a CD called Panic- 15 Tracks Of Riotous '80s Indie Insurrection!, a fifteen track compilation that opened with Madness and included Billy Bragg, The Three Johns, Robert Wyatt, Half Man Half Biscuit, Orange Juice, Redskins, and Felt among the line up. Halfway through was this...

The Day Margaret Thatcher Died (A Party Song)

At the point this CD was given away (and until this year with the release of Teach Yrself Wah!) Panic was the only physical release this song got. In the song Pete imagines the celebrations that would ensue with the news that Thatcher had died. He wasn't wrong either- when she died in April 2013 there were indeed places that celebrated. There has been some revisionism in political and popular culture over the years, Thatcher portrayed in some televisual accounts of the 1980s as a slightly eccentric but loveable Prime Minister with big blow dried hair, a handbag and blouses with big bows who did the UK a lot of good. This rose tinted view of Thatcherism, her governments, their policies and the 1980s is also propagated by various right wing rags and is one of the few things the factions in the current Tory Party agree on. But let's not kid ourselves- the Thatcher governments were hard right wing, authoritarian and deeply unpleasant, pushing a set of policies that among other things demonised huge sectors of the British working class, talked about the 'managed decline' of a city (Liverpool), gave their friends huge tax cuts (paid for by North Sea gas and selling off nationalised industries), ran down entire industries in the name of 'the market', creating the subsequent social problems which the people living in those communities were then blamed for. Trickle down economics- wealth doesn't and hasn't trickled down, it's flowed up. On top of that she deployed police as the military wing of the Conservative government and was very friendly with all sorts of unpleasant and murderous dictators and regimes (Pinochet, apartheid South Africa). Also, Clause 28. So, no thank you to the revisionist view of Thatcher. 

The song is great with Pete in fine form- crunching guitars, rousing vocals, and a chant, 'build a bonfire/ paint the sky/ come on down/ I'll tell you why/ She's gone/ and nobody cried'. Celebrating anyone's death may seem needlessly callous but for many people who lived through the 80s, Thatcher is an exception. 

In April 2000 Uncut magazine gave away Unconditionally Guaranteed 2000.4, sixteen songs for the fourth month of the new millennium, opening with Chappaquiddick Skyline and ending with Mercury Rev. Five songs in was Pete Wylie and The Mighty Wah!'s Disneyland Forever. 

Disneyland Forever

This is Pete at his biggest and grandest, a huge sounding song with widescreen production, massive chiming guitars, pounding drums and Pete's soaring vocal. The song originally came out on Wah!'s 2000 album Songs Of Strength And Heartbreak. Pete tells the story of the inspiration for this song when he plays it live. He met Gerry Conlon backstage at GMex, a Stop Sellafield show set up by Greenpeace with a line up including Big Audio Dynamite, Public Enemy, Kraftwerk and U2. Gerry Conlon had spent fifteen years in prison as one of the Guildford Four, wrongly convicted of being an IRA bomber. Gerry and the other three of the Guildford Four were released on appeal in October 1989- much to the chagrin of the Thatcher government. The Birmingham Six, similarly locked up on invented charges and police incompetence/ corruption, were freed not long after in 1991. Pete spoke to Gerry backstage, a man who had spent a decade and a half in prison for something he didn't do, wrongfully convicted by the British justice system. Gerry struggled with life after being released, suffering from mental health issues, drugs and alcohol dependency, and a suicide attempt. When they spoke backstage at GMex they talked about life inside and injustice and Pete asked Gerry what he was going to do. As Pete tells it, Gerry said, 'I don't know for sure but whatever happens its going to be Disneyland forever'. Pete found this inspiring, a man who could be consumed by hate and bitterness seeing the world and the rest of his life in that way. Gerry died of cancer in 2014 aged sixty having recovered from some of his issues and becoming a campaigner for those who have suffered miscarriages of justice. The song is Pete's attempt to do justice to the man- and justice he does. 

The third Wylie/ Wah! song from my pile of freebie magazine CDs was from 2003, a CD titled White Riot Vol Two (A Tribute To The Clash), sixteen Clash covers and a Joe Strummer song. The covers include Jesse Malin, The National, Joy Zipper (posted a few weeks ago), Sparks, Billy Bragg, Stiff Little Fingers, and Nouvelle Vague. It also had Pete Wylie captured live at The Railway, Haddington Festival in 2002, covering Mick Jones' Stay Free, just Pete, his acoustic guitar and more passion than can be measured.

Stay Free (Live)

Pete Wylie And Wah! Live At The Deaf Institute And A Forty Minute Mix

Pete Wylie is touring again, playing the hits and the misses of his and Wah!'s back catalogue with a full band, promoting along overdue Best Of album, Teach Yourself Wah! Pete may not have the biggest back catalogue and has had a few bumps in the road over the last four and half decades of making music, but his best songs are as good as anyone's and there are several which I hold very dearly. We arrived at The Deaf Institute last night before 8.30 to find Pete and the band on stage, Pete mid- anecdote (Pete Wylie is perpetually mid- anecdote, his stand up/ stories/ tales are as much part of the Wah! live experience as the songs and he is sharp, funny and candid). It was a bit frustrating to arrive late and it became clear we'd already missed Come Back (a favourite of mine and I was gutted not to hear it) and the room was packed, so we ended up crammed in by the door, unable to move much or get to the bar and constantly bumped into as people came and went including a bouncer who caught me off balance and sent me careering into the couple standing next to me. 

The first song Pete played after we arrived was the 1983 single Hope (I Wish You'd Believe Me), Pete in fringed cowboy shirt, leather kecks, top hat and green Telecaster, and in good voice. The songs are legendary, one after another, Pete prefacing each with the comment, 'the record company thought this would be a big hit... it wasn't' followed by laughter. There is much laughter at Wylie gigs, he's a natural raconteur and story teller- sometime sits difficult to tell if its songs separated by talk or talk separated by songs. The songs are full of love and heart, Pete mentioning friends who have gone before many of them- an emotive FourElevenFortyFour is dedicated to Josie Jones. The first song of the encore, Seven Minutes To Midnight is dedicated to John Peel and he speaks warmly and movingly about his friend Janice Long before singing for her. He tells a long and very funny story about Tony Wilson's funeral and the enormous bouquet that arrived with the message With Love From Liverpool accidentally ordered in two foot high letters, dominating every other floral tribute at the funeral, Peter Hook approaching him with the words, 'you wanker'. Disneyland Forever is done solo on acoustic guitar, a song written after meeting Gerry Conlan, one of the Guildford Four, backstage at a gig GMex in the early 90s. Gerry told Pete how much John Peel's radio show meant to them when they were in prison and how Pete's songs were part of that. When Pete asked Gerry what he was going to do after being unjustly imprisoned for sixteen years, Gerry replied he didn't know but it would be Disneyland forever. 

Pete launches into The Day Margaret Thatcher Died, the Prime Minister who was on record as saying she wanted the 'managed decline' of Liverpool, with as much venom as ever, ending it with Michael Gove, Jacob Rees Mogg and Esther McVey inserted into the song. Mid- set they play Sinful, my favourite Wylie song, guaranteed Bagging Area catnip, and trailed with the remark, 'the record company thought this would be a big hit... and it was!' Arms aloft, everyone cheers and amusingly they then mess the opening up, have to stop and start again. Behind him there are projections and loops of videos and clips from TV, young and beautiful Pete Wylie and Josie Jones from the 80s looped as 2024 Pete sings and plays. They play is hometown epic Heart As Big As Liverpool, a song that a room full of Mancunians (and a good number of scousers) respond to enthusiastically. 'It's a song about community and belonging', Pete says, 'and optimism and we need that today'. Free; Falling In Love With You from 2017's Pete Sounds is Pete and Wah! channeling Neil Young and Crazy Horse. Wah! do the encore without leaving the stage, Pete saying the steps to the backstage are too much for his knees. Seven Minutes To Midnight is electrifying, urgent, clanging 1980 Cold War dread repositioned for 2024 and we finish, with the curfew approaching, with The Story Of The Blues, Pete's biggest hit and the song he'll always be known for. If it was the only song he'd ever written it would be enough.

Today's Sunday mix was a fairly obvious choice. Pete solo, in various Wah! incarnations and with friends, songs of strength and heartbreak as one of his albums had it. 

Forty Minutes Of Pete Wylie And Wah!

• Imperfect List (Version 1)
• Hope (I Wish You'd Believe Me)
• Don't Lose Your Dreams (Excerpt From A Teenage Opera Part 154)
• Sinful (Tribal Mix)
• Come Back
• FourElevenFortyFour
• Make Your Mind Up (Time For Love Today)
• Talking Blue (The Story Of The Blues Part Two)

Imperfect List, a 1990 single, was a Wylie record done with Cocteau Twin Robin Guthrie and Josie Jones as Big Hard Excellent Fish. For the 12" it was remixed by Andy Weatherall , four mixes under the title Rimming Elvis The Andy Weatherall Way. Josie recites a list of hates, some universal, some very 1990, some very specifically Liverpudlian, all very relatable. Pete's story about Morrissey's usage of it as walk on music and his associated anecdotes about the singer are very funny and on point. 

Hope (I Wish You'd Believe Me) was a 1983 single, backed with a cover of Johnny Thunders' You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory. Wah! do pop soul.

Don't Lose Your Dreams was under the name Pete Wylie and Wah! The Mongrel, a 1991 single and hasn't made either the tracklist for the Best Of or the setlist for the gigs. Which is a shame as I love it, massive early 90s guitars and synths, Pete at his optimistic best, 'Don't you ever lose your dreams/ No matter how far you may tumble/ When people criticise your schemes/ Your wild extremes/ Don't ever lose your dreams'. Another Wylie song that mentions Jack Kerouac. Should have been a massive hit. 

Sinful was a 1986 single and a big hit. Pete promoted it on Top Of The Pops and on Wogan, memorably aided by Josie on Paul Weller's pop art guitar and three dancing nuns, the Sisters Of The Anfield Road. The Tribal Mix is even better, seven minutes of dancefloor gold, a thumping proto acid house drum track and Pete's vocal. The Tribal Mix was remixed by Zeus B. Held. 

Come Back is a magnificent and stirring love song to his city and a plea to those who have left to look for work elsewhere in the unemployment ravaged early 1980s, a 1984 single and the emotional centrepiece to the Word To The Wiseguy album from the same year. A massive if Springsteen was scouse sound and a hugely, defiantly northern record. 

FourElevenFortyFour was on the 1987 album Sinful, an overlooked album. This song has some very 80s production but gets away with it, a love song with a title and chorus that references the enigmatic 4- 11- 44 number. 

Make Your Mind Up (Time For Love Today) is the opening song on 2017's Pete Sounds, an album partly crowdfunded by fans- I was one of them- and recorded at Pete's Liverpool studio Disgracelands. A friend tells me Pete has a piece of carpet from the actual Gracelands. 

Talking Blues (The Story Of The Blues Part Two) is the second half of the 1983 smash hit The Story of The Blues, Pete talking over the looped Phil Spector sound, talking about people being thrown away, about those with power, about hope and pocketbook psychologists, class struggle, love and everyday life and 'something Sal Paradise said'. That's the story of the blues. 

Big Weekend Incoming

It's a big weekend of music related activity coming up, starting tonight and running though until Sunday evening by which point I will be in need of a lie down. We'll go in reverse order. As the flyer above shows on Sunday The Flightpath Estate DJs (on this occasion Martin, Dan and me) are returning to Blossom Street Social in Ancoats for our third mission there, playing records from 3pm until 8pm. We are joined by guest Rob Fletcher, the man responsible for legendary 90s Manchester techno and electronic music club night Herbal Tea Party. The four of us will be playing back to back, three tracks each and then switching and it will be a seamless showcase of our track selection and turntable skills. Obviously. 

If you're in Manchester on Sunday afternoon, please come down and say hello. Dan has a test pressing of our forthcoming double vinyl album Songs From The Flightpath Estate Volume 1, the album we're putting out with The Golden Lion featuring Two Lone Swordsmen, Justin Robertson, Andy Bell, The Light Brigade, Justin Robertson, Sons Of Slough, 10: 40, Richard Sen, Rude Audio and Hardway Bros, so some of those tracks, if not all, will get their first airing in public. 

On Saturday night I'm at Manchester's Albert Hall to see Echo And The Bunnymen who are touring to celebrate 1985's Songs To Learn And Sing, Mac, Will and the rest of the current line up playing two sets with a short gap in between. I've seen them a few times in the last ten years and when they're good, they're very good. 'Lay down thy raincoat and groove', was the advice of the Bunnymen back in 1983 on the release of Never Stop- decent advice still. 

Never Stop (Discotheque)

The night before the Bunnymen (tonight in other words) we're at Manchester's Deaf Institute to see a second member of The Crucial Three, Pete Wylie, on tour with a full band promoting Teach Yourself Wah!, a Pete Wylie and The Mighty Wah! best of. A small venue, Wylie's between song storytelling and patter, some of the best songs of the 1980s, good reviews coming in from other gigs on the tour.. . I'm really looking forward to it. 

Seven Minutes To Midnight

Seven Minutes To Midnight came out in 1980, the second/ final single of Wah! Heat, a clanging, clamorous post- punk single written in the aftermath of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the subsequent moving of the hands of the doomsday clock to 11.53. In the intervening forty three years the clock's hands have moved back and forth a little and were altered most recently in January 2023, now set at ninety seconds to midnight. That apocalypse just creeps closer. 

Bands Performing In Places They Shouldn't Be

Three weeks ago I posted a clip of Echo And The Bunnymen promoting their then new single Bring On The Dancing Horses on early evening entertainment and chat show The Wogan Show. Ian, Will, Les and Pete got away with it with their customary cool and casual indifference to their surroundings. I said it might make a good idea for an irregular series, Bands Performing In Places They Shouldn't Be (or rather Bands Being Booked Onto Inappropriate TV Programmes By Their Record Companies To Sell Their Wares). There were quite a few suggestions on the comments and I've got a few of my own so we'll work our way through them over the summer. 

Firstly, and I've posted this before but it definitely stands up to repeat posting, before we leave Terry Wogan and his shiny studio environment we should recall that in 1986 Pete Wylie appeared on The Wogan Show to lip sync Sinful. 

It's magnificent stuff, Wylie in black leather, Josie Jones (also in black leather) on Paul Weller's pop art guitar and three dancers dressed as nuns/ three hot nuns dancing. Sinful is a superb record and one of this blog's theme tunes and signature songs. Miming on Wogan does not diminish it at all. 

In July 1987 Spear Of Destiny's press officer had the brilliant idea of booking them on a kids show called Get Fresh, live from Fistral Beach, Newquay, Cornwall. The single they were promoting was Never Take Me Alive, epic guitar rock from their Outlands album. The appearance on the beach at Newquay is bizarre and hilarious, something the band have cottoned on to. Kirk Brandon smirks and laughs his way through the brief interview and the performance. At one point they are surrounded and then joined by a group of Medieval knights, some of whom mime guitar with their swords. 

Trying to mime the words 'Mother I killed someone/ It wasn't that I hated him/ You see he was trying to stop me/ But he found out/ I've gone the whole way... They'll never take me alive' with any kind of post- punk menace under these circumstances is all but impossible. 

Pebble Mill At One was a long running BBC TV programme, early afternoon light entertainment broadcast from the foyer of the BBC's studios in Birmingham. In 1983 Aztec Camera had the privilege of performing Oblivious to the studio audience. Oblivious is wonderful obviously. Roddy is resplendent in fringed buckskin, Western shirt and 60s mop. They make the best of it.

Three weeks ago The Swede left a comment saying that Ian Dury made several appearances on Pebble Mill. Really Glad You Came was a 1983 single, sans Blockheads. Ian manages to style it out, making lunch time TV in the early 80s look like a good place to be. 

Tramps Like Us

More mid- 80s Liverpool following yesterday's Pink Industry song- today Frankie Goes To Hollywood's over the top, everything turned up to the max cover of Bruce Springsteen's Born To Run. When Trevor Horn and Frankie recorded 1984's double album Welcome To The Pleasure Dome the massive hit singles Relax and Two Tribes had already dominated the airwaves. The Power Of Love and 1985 title track single were further smashes. This left the rest of the album being a bit of a ragtag bunch of skits and covers with a few originals. 

Springsteen's anthem with its dreams of flight and escape from dull lives and dead end jobs- 'this town's a death trap, a suicide rap'- was possibly felt very keenly in mid- 80s Liverpool, a city abandoned by the government into 'managed decline' with high unemployment, derelict buildings and a falling population. For Springsteen the highway offers freedom, even if it's 'jammed with broken heroes... everybody on the run tonight/ But there's no place left to hide'. Holly Johnson gives it his all vocally, a screaming, high octane performance as the drums, bass and guitars pound and squeal, 'tramps like us/ baby we were born to run'. 

On the album and sadly missing from the mp3 below there's a brief bit of dialogue to plant Frankie's cover firmly in Liverpool rather than New Jersey, a man signing on at the dole office and getting short shrift from a DHSS employee who threatens to put him on daily sign on. The humour of that brief exchange places the song and Springsteen's outsider road anthem in a slightly different light. You can get in the car, hit the M62 but they'll stop your giro and you'll be skint very quickly. 

Born To Run

The population flight from Liverpool was something Pete Wylie noted in Wah!'s epic single, also released in 1984, Come Back, a home made epic on a Springsteen scale and a plea to his fellow scousers not to go elsewhere but to stay, stand your ground and fight. 'Come back/ I'm making my stand/ Come back'.

Come Back (The Return Of The Randy Scouse Git)

Monday Mix

A mix for Monday, my seventh for Tak Tent Radio who broadcast out of central Scotland with a range of contributors and guests. This one, has music from a lot of artists who have graced the pages of this blog this year- Mark Peters with Dot Allison remixed by Richard Norris, Pete Wylie and Wah! The Mongrel from 1991, Pye Corner Audio remixed by Sonic Boom, Andy Bell remixed by David Holmes, Gabe Gurnsey, Jazxing, Jezebell's recent edit of Laurie Anderson, Carly Simon, Dirt Bogarde and Boxheater Jackson. In short- starts ambient, goes Balaeric and ends up dancey. Listen here or here.

• Mark Peters and Dot Allison: Sundowning (Richard Norris Ambient Remix)
• Pete Wylie and Wah! The Mongrel: Don’t Lose Your Drums
• Pye Corner Audio: Warmth Of The Sun (Sonic Boom Remix)
• Andy Bell: The Sky Without You (David Holmes Radical Mycology remix)
• Gabe Gurnsey: To The Room
• Jazxing: Fala
• Jezebell: Re- birth (Edit)
• Carly Simon: Why (Extended 12” Mix)
• Dirt Bogarde: So Far Away
• Boxheater Jackson: Don’t Complicate

Blue Velvet Shoes, Jack Kerouac And Roman Candles

Of all of Pete Wylie and his different versions of Wah!'s lost singles, this one from 1991 is perhaps the most lost. In 1991 Wah! had become Pete Wylie And Wah! The Mongrel. This single, Don't Lose Your Dreams, spearheaded the album Infamy! Or How I Didn't Get Where I Am Today. It's a beauty, jam packed with classic Wylie trademarks and touches not least a ridiculously long title... 

Don't Lose Your Dreams (Excerpt From A Teenage Opera Part 154) Seamless... bursts in with synths and sitar, followed by crunchy Wah! guitar, some big '91 drums and multi- tracked vocals, a Wah-ll of sound. The song has everything- those massive, ringing Wah! guitar chords, layers of female backing vocals and Pete belting the verses out, including memorably this one- 'Blue velvet shoes/ You'll never lose/ Blue velvet shoes /Cos every time you lose, you learn/ Go tell them Jack Kerouac just said/ The Roman candle burns'. The chorus is a big singalong of Wylie wisdom, 'Don't lose your dreams/ No matter how far your tumble/ When people criticise your schemes/ Your wild extremes/ Don't you ever lose your dreams'. In lesser hands this could sound corny or overblown. In Pete's it sounds huge and beautiful. It fades out with echoes of The Who, Baba O'Reilly style. Thirty two years later, it sounds like the song 1991 forgot about. 

Don't Lose Your Dreams (Excerpt From A Teenage Opera Part 154) Seamless...

The CD single has two B-sides, Imperfect and Don't Lose Your Drums. Imperfect is an alternate version of Big Hard Excellent Fish's Imperfect List from the previous year, a beatific, loved up version of that track with a completely different vocal courtesy of Domino. 

Imperfect 

The third track is an instrumental remix of the original, a very nice, blissed out version. 

Don't Lose Your Drums (Excerpt From A New Age Opera Part 2001) 

There were several versions across the vinyl and CD formats. The 12" had a pair of excellent Cabaret Voltaire techno remixes and a 10" presented two very 1991, Danny Rampling acid house remixes. All seem to be out of print and unavailable digitally. Second hand copies of all are cheap and easy to find online. Someone needs to tidy up Pete/ Wah!'s back catalogue, re- issue the albums and do a career round up/ Best Of/ B-sides package. 

It's All Up To You

Pete Wylie and the latest version of The Mighty Wah! played at Night And Day in Manchester on Sunday night, a sold out gig at a small, capacity 250. Taking the stage in a red, white and blue Sex Pistols shirt and black hat he sees as pleased to see us as we are to see him. The stage at Night And Day is tucked into the corner at the back, really intimate as gig spaces go with the audience gathering round the front and the side as Wylie laughs off some technical issues, a repeating loop of feedback clearly audible which they can't get rid of and are just going to play over the top of. Pete starts singing the Johnny Thunders song You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory, and that's the cue for both me and Lou to start welling up. Then the band launch into Come Back and we're off into Wylie- land. He promised 'all the hits' and that's exactly what we get, an hour and a half of Wylie back catalogue interspersed with plenty of talk, Pete talking, telling stories, explaining the background to songs and cracking jokes- he says he's writing his memoir (his Mem- Wah) and if all he did was transcribe his between song chatter he'd have the first draft already done. The tales come thick and fast, and among others I can't recall now include the story of why The Story Of The Blues missed out on reaching number one, a misadventure involving backing tapes, the Musician's Union and Duran Duran, and a very funny anecdote where Wylie, Ian McCulloch, Julian Cope and Pete Burns all go to the same dole office to sign on in the late 70s. All four are asked what job they want. Burns, 'in full regalia', replies to the DHSS officer, 'shepherd'. 

There is a long explanation of the CIA and their attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro which inspired the song Better Scream, a 1980 single, and a blistering version of the song. The Day Margaret Thatcher Dies gets a big response (Pete says he was writing a song about Liz Truss but she'd resigned before he finished it). Free; Falling (In Love With You) from 2017's Pete Sounds has echoes of Neil Young and Crazy Horse. Sinful, prefaced as an 'all purpose protest song', is a massive sounding outsider anthem which segues into Bowie's Heroes halfway through and then back into Sinful. He talks movingly about Janice Long, a friend and a champion of Wah!, who died last year, and of Josie Jones and Andrew Weatherall, dedicating an emotive Four Eleven Forty Four to them, with Pete's daughter Mersey's backing vocals present virtually. Heart As Big As Liverpool, not necessarily a song you'd expect to get a rousing reception in Manchester, is played and sung along to, Pete saying it's about a feeling not a place (even though we know it's about a place too). Then we get a magnificent romp through The Story of The Blues, a roomful of middle aged men and women singing every word back to the band. The encore takes place immediately, the band staying on stage, as Pete says, because 'they can't arsed going down those little stairs and then back up again'. Seven Minutes To Midnight, all loud, ringing guitars and Cold War fear, fills the room.

Come Back (The Return Of The Randy Scouse Git)

Pete Wylie may not have a massive back catalogue but the songs he has written and that get played tonight cut through, striking chords and hitting home, emotive songs about life, love and social injustice. More power to him. Pete, Wah! and his songs should be much better known than they are. 

Live music has a huge effect on me at the moment- I've said before at various points this year how often I've cried in response to songs at gigs in the aftermath of Isaac's death. Live music transports me too, lifting me out of it everything. In a small room, with enthusiastic crowds and songs that mean something, drums and guitars and vocals filling the space up, somehow for a short period I'm somewhere else. Several times tonight Pete Wylie's songs trigger tears, making me well up and wipe my eyes. They're those sort of songs and we're in that sort of place. Today is Lou's birthday, tickets to the gig were part of the celebrations. We've had a rough few days and today will bring its own difficulties- it's her first birthday since Isaac died, and his birthday and the anniversary of his death are fast approaching. But we're trying to celebrate too and as Pete sings in Come Back, 'Well did you ever hear of hope?/ A small belief can mean/ You never walk alone/ And did you ever hear of faith? It's all up to you/ Yes, it's all up to you'. 

Happy birthday Lou. 

David Holmes At The Golden Lion: Recreated

A trip back in time to two weeks ago for today's Sunday mix and a much longer offering than usual. You might remember- I do- that on Saturday 1st October a group of us supported David Holmes at the Golden Lion in Todmorden and had quite the night. David came on at about nine and played a four hour set that took the proverbial roof off. Using the power of our memories (hazy, intermittent, vague and unreliable admittedly) and those people who had the presence of mind to use Shazam in the building at the time, we've attempted to put together David's setlist from that evening and then I've slung the ones we've been able to identify together in a one hour and forty seven minutes long, fifteen track mix, in roughly the order we recall them being played. It's missing a lot of tracks clearly- Holmes played for four hours- and it's not anywhere near as skillfully mixed but it's here to give a flavour, a short recreation of David at the Golden Lion a fortnight ago. I've listened to it a couple of times since finishing it midweek and it works for me- if I do say so myself. 

David Holmes at The Golden Lion recreated by The Flightpath Estate

• Alex Kassian: Spirit Of Eden (Bill Laswell Remix)
• Roberto Rodriguez: Mustat Varjot
• Carte De Sejour: Ouadou
• Axel Boman: Klinsmann
• Pete Wylie and The Oedipus Wrecks: Sinful (Tribal)
• Dornbirn 78: Dancing In The City
• Suuns: Up Past The Nursery (Ivan Smagghe Edit)
• Ettika: Ettika (Version Maxi Inedite)
• Hans Zimmer: Inception (Junkie XL Remix)
• John Talabot: Depak Ine
• The Blow Monkeys: La Passionara
• David Holmes: It's Over, If We Run Out Of Love (Darren Emerson Huffa remix)
• Unloved: Turn Of The Screw (Erol Alkan Rework)
• David Holmes and Keith Tenniswood: I Am Somebody
• Orbital: Belfast (David Holmes Remix)

Alex Kassian's Spirit Of Eden came out as a 12" last year, my favourite release from last year I've only discovered this year. The original and the Bill Laswell mixes are superb. Roberto Rodriguez's Mustat Varjot is from a 2012 compilation EP called On the Latch. Carte De Sejour is Italian disco/ funk from 1984. The vinyl rip included here is crackly as fuck but I think it actually adds to the fun. Klinsmann by Axel Boman, a tribute to a very well known German footballer perhaps, is from 2013. Sinful (Tribal Mix), one of the night's highlights, is a 1986 single remixed by Zeus B. Held- the definitive version. I'm going to see Pete Wylie a week today and if he plays Sinful I will be very happy. 

Dornbirn 78 released Dancing In The City in 2019, a cover of Marshall Hain's 1978 song. Ivan Smagghe's edit of Suun's Up Past The Nursery is from 2013. Ettika is French disco from 1985. John Talabot's Depak Ine came out on his 2012 album Fin. The Junkie XL remix of Hans Zimmer's theme from the film Inception is from 2010. La Passionara is a  Balearic classic from 1990 by The Blow Monkeys.

The Darren Emerson remix of David Holmes' It's Over, If We Run Out Of Love was part of a remix package from earlier this year, with Raven Violet on vocals. Raven also sings on Unloved's Turn Of The Screw, from The Pink Album, out shortly on vinyl and already available digitally. The Erol Alkan remix came out as part of an EP recently. David's track with former Lone Swordsman Keith Tenniswood is currently unreleased and appears here courtesy of a rip from Holmes' wonderful Desert Island Disco mix for Lauren Laverne back at the start of the year- it has the voice of Andrew Weatherall at the end talking about acid house as gnostic ceremony. The David Holmes remix of Orbital's Belfast was the 'one more tune' track at The Golden Lion and came out a couple of months ago as part of Orbital's 30 Something compilation. 

Hey Joe, We Ought To Try And Turn The World Around

Sometimes, rarely but sometimes, everything comes together, the stars align and the streams cross and you find yourself at the centre of something magical. The offer of a DJ support slot months ago for the five of us that admin The Flightpath Estate, a Facebook group set up to share the music of Andrew Weatherall, at The Golden Lion in Todmorden with David Holmes headlining was something that seemed unreal. As the months and weeks ticked by it became increasingly more real and then suddenly it became imminent, a matter of having to pull together some music, burn some CDs and think about how it might actually work. 

The Golden Lion is a traditional pub in an old mill town, tucked in the hills on the Lancashire/ West Yorkshire border. Run by Richard Walker and his partner Gig it has a history of nights with DJs and bands plus excellent Thai food, a one off place that is now stitched into legend, Andrew Weatherall and Sean Johnston's ALFOS nights here especially so. An older gentleman (a retired teacher) standing at the DJ booth in the early evening told me, 'this place is a portal. Outside is Todmorden, in here it's another world'.

A quick guided tour of the equipment, the relief that CDs burned at home worked on the CDJs and then we got into the fun of starting to play to an almost empty pub at 2.30pm. Some familiar faces arrived- hello Claire and Si- and the afternoon drifted into evening, the five of us taking turns to play. Baz played his set including songs from The Pogues, The Animals, Chain And The Gang. Martin played rockabilly and folk. I played half an hour of dub (see Sunday's post) and then some Weatherall inspired songs plucked from his NTS radio shows and mixes, some Durutti Column, Coyote's Weatherall tribute The Outsider, Section 25, Joe Gideon And The Shark's Civilisation and this sublime, ghostly cover of Fun Boy Three/ The Go Go's Our Lips Are Sealed

Our Lips Are Sealed

Dan took over for some properly mixed leftfield dance music as the afternoon became early evening and then Mark 'Rude Audio' Ratcliff played, dubby dance filling the pub. At around eight, and who knows where the time went, we stated swapping on and off and then David Holmes arrived. I always assumed that Mark would be the one to do the immediately pre- Holmes part, building the warm up and then handing over. For reasons I still can't unpick, I ended up behind the decks just before David made his way to the DJ booth and began to sort his stuff out, the pub now full with expectant revellers. Mark had played Sabres Of Paradise Lik Wid Not Wit and then I put something else on and then as David continued to get set up, I played L.U.P.O.'s Heaven Or Hell, classic 1990 Balearic house, and then went into Song For Denise by Piano Fantasia, assuming he'd be then wanting to get playing straight away. 'Great track', David said to me, 'Stick another one'. 

No pressure there then. So I played Hardway Bros' Argonaut, a Come Together referencing feel good Balearic chugger inspired by a boat trip in Croatia Weatherall and Johnston played. And with that, a brief chat with Mr Holmes, and then I'm standing next to him as he starts to play. Which is not what I expected to happen when I set out earlier that day.  

Holmes' set was astonishing, a roof raising four hour set with non- stop dancing from an ecstatic crowd, with some choice remixes of his own music, some Afro- beat, some acid disco, some funked up French stuff and then somewhere in the middle (I lost track of time a bit it has to be said), a song to get a middle aged, leftfield crowd punching the air and singing along...

Sinful

It was quite a moment. Much later and much fun having been had dancing, David finished with his recent remix of Orbital's Belfast, twelve minutes of sweet 1990 euphoria written after the Hartnoll's played at Holmes' Sugar Sweet club in Belfast, at a time when a lot of artists swerved Northern Ireland. 

We left the pub at some point, making our way through the town and up the hill to the place we were staying, one of those nights that seemed to go on forever but was over so quickly, amazed and honoured not just to have been there but to have been part of it. I think we're all still buzzing slightly from the excitement while still unable to believe it actually happened. Serious life goals stuff. 

Eleven

This blog is eleven years old today. Somehow I had the presence of mind to start it on New Year's Day which makes remembering when it's birthday is easy even if some years I've been a tad fuzzy headed when waking up to it. Not so much of a problem today. 

Back in November I posted 11 Years by The Wolfgang Press (a pair of Sabres Of Paradise remixes of their song) so there's not much point posting them again so soon. I've got this pair of elevens instead, the first from Pete Wylie in 1987, a soaring, anthemic love song with it's roots way back in the blues and the slums of New York in the late 19th century

Four Eleven Forty Four

This one is the so called Eleventh Untitled Song from R.E.M.'s major label debut Green back in 1989. The musicians swapped instruments for this, Pete Buck playing drums and drummer Bill Berry playing guitar. Stipe sings his heart out, a song about missing someone while being away. It's simple and direct and one of their most affecting songs. 

Eleventh Untitled Song 

Happy new year. 

A List And Your Love

The clocks went back last night, ending British Summer Time for another year. As the jokes on Twitter have been having it, if you're a Brexiteer you can set yours back to 1973 or some imaginary time before you were born when England won the world war and immigration hadn't been invented. If you're a supporter or member of the current government you can reset your clock back to the nineteenth century when letting children go hungry was all part of good old Victorian values. Funny how for a group of people so often vilified as overpaid, useless and insensitive, the most effective campaigner for the impoverished in Britain in 2020 is a footballer. Hats off to Marcus Rashford.

It's funny as well how many Tory MPs are now tripping over themselves to attack him and to accuse him of 'virtue signalling'. There's a list here of all the Conservative MPs, three hundred and twenty- two of them, who voted against extending free school meals vouchers into the October half term and Christmas holidays. Next to their name, constituency and party is a column detailing the amount they have claimed on expenses from the public purse for dining and entertaining since June 2019. Jake Berry, the MP for Rossendale and Darwen and a man who was a big proponent of the so- called Northern Powerhouse, for instance claimed over £60, 000. Vicky Ford, the Minister for Children and MP for Chelmsford, claimed over £50, 000. Three of them claimed over £80, 000. Matt Hancock, role model for over- promoted car showroom middle managers everywhere, claimed over £60, 000. I'm sure that for these MPs, raised on Thatcherite ideology about dependency culture and the managed decline of northern cities and propelled into government by the Brexit culture wars, voting against poor children getting a £3.00 a day lunch voucher while supping subsidised drinks in the House of Commons bar and eating out at London's top restaurants is a moral circle they can square but for many of us it is the worst kind of hypocrisy. 

This list compiled by Pete Wylie and Josie Jones as Big Hard Excellent Fish back in 1990 and remixed by Andrew Weatherall summons up the right kind of disgust and shows how little progress we've actually made in the three decades in between then and now.

The Imperfect List (Version 1)

Anyway, onto happier things... today is my wife Lou's birthday. This is the kind of thing she likes to dance to given the chance. There hasn't been much dancing recently. We did get drunk a few weeks ago and play some records a little too loud in the dining room while our daughter cringed upstairs. In 1987 Frankie Knuckles and Jamie Principle released Your Love, a thumping, hands- in- the- air, genuinely inspiring and uplifting piece of early house music, a record that shows that the world can be a better place even if it's only for a few minutes.

Your Love

In 2014 London goth rock 'n' rollers The Horrors covered it for a session at Radio 1 showing what good taste they had and how a great song can translate from one form to another. 

Your Love 

Happy birthday Lou. Let's make it a good one despite Tier 3 and all the rest of it. 

Isolation Mix Twelve

I'm not sure that the title of these mixes holds true any more but onward we go. This week's hour of music is coming from the punk and post- punk world and the long tail that snakes from the plugging of a guitar into an amplifier and someone with something to say stepping up to the microphone. Some Spaghetti Western as an intro, some friendship, some politics, some anger, some exhilaration, some questions, some disillusionment, some psychedelic exploration and some optimism to end with.

In History Lesson Part 2 D. Boon explains his friendship with Mike Watt, the importance of punk in changing their lives, the singers and players in the bands that inspired him and, in the first line, the essence of punk as he experienced it.

'Our band could be your life
Real names'd be proof
Me and Mike Watt played for years
Punk rock changed our lives

We learned punk rock in Hollywood
Drove up from Pedro
We were fucking corn dogs
We'd go drink and pogo

Mr. Narrator
This is Bob Dylan to me
My story could be his songs
I'm his soldier child

Our band is scientist rock
But I was E. Bloom and Richard Hell
Joe Strummer and John Doe
Me and Mike Watt, playing guitar'

Ennio Morricone: For A Few Dollars More

Minutemen: History Lesson Part 2

Joe Strummer/Electric Dog House: Generations

X: In This House That I Call Home

The Replacements: Can’t Hardly Wait (Tim Outtake Version)

Husker Du: Keep Hanging On

The Redskins: Kick Over The Statues

The Woodentops: Why (Live)

The Vacant Lots: Bells

The Third Sound: For A While

Spacemen 3: Revolution

Poltergeist: Your Mind Is A Box (Let Us Fill It With Wonder)

Echo And The Bunnymen: Ocean Rain (Alt Version)

Pete Wylie: Sinful

Carbon/Silicon: Big Surprise

Say It Loud 'No!'

I woke up recently with Pete Wylie's single Sinful running through my head. Sinful came out in 1987, a hit that saw him return to Top Of The Pops with Josie Jones and three backing dancers dressed as nuns.






Ace isn't it? The song, the Zeus B. Held production, what looks like Paul Weller's pop art Rickenbacker, the performance, the presenters (John Peel and Janice Long), the sheer Wylie spirit. I've posted the Top Of The Pops clip before but shockingly, and in a clear breech of the bloggers convention that all music blogs must post Wylie or Wah! at least once in any given calendar year, there hasn't been any Wylie or Wah! to date in 2019.

Sinful

Here the same line up perform/mime on Wogan. Magic.



I've got an uneasy feeling that we're all going to wake up on Friday morning in a very unpleasant state. There isn't anything I've seen over the last few weeks that makes me feel optimistic about the result of the election and I think we going to be saddled with five years of Tory rule with a lying, racist, homophobic and vacuous Prime Minister.

In 1982 Pete Wylie, then operating under the name Wah!, wrote a song called The Story Of The Blues. It was partly in response to the then Conservative government and the portrayal of life and unemployment under that government in Alan Bleasdale's series The Boys From The Blackstuff. The Blues of the title can be interpreted as the Tories. The first part of Wylie's song is an exhortation to people who are about to give up, who have been kicked and kicked again, to be positive and strong, to organise and resist.

'First they take your pride
Turn it all inside
And then you realise
You've got nothing left to lose

So you try to stop
Try to get back up
And then you realise
You're telling the story of the blues'

Wylie was also expressing his frustration with his record company and the way they were trying to market Wah! and reduce the multi-faceted, rough edged group down into a single, shiny marketable product. Everyone hated their record labels in the 1980s didn't they? It was par for the course for those inspired by punk to sign to a major for the advance and the distribution and then face battles in everything they did.

Wylie and Wah! recorded an extended version which took the pop single, full of female backing vocals and violins, further with a long spoken word section- The Story Of The Blues (Talkin' Blues) and they run as one song on the 12". In this section Wylie blasts the news media for selling Thatcher's economic policies and for criticising people, young people especially, for being unemployed, as if being in the dole made you less of a person. These were all big issues in the early 80s- unemployment, the right to work, the destruction of manufacturing industry and the jobs that went with them, the throwing of people onto the scrapheap.

'...well that's my story and I'm sticking to that. So let's have another drink and let's talk about the blues. Blues is about dignity, it's about self-respect, and no matter what they take away from you - that's yours for keeps. I remember how it was, how every medium - T.V. and papers and radio and all those people were saying: 'you're on the scrap-heap, you're useless', and I remember how easy it was to start believing that. I remember how you'd hear people take it for granted that it was true - just 'cause someone with an ounce of power said so. And that's a problem now, too many oddballs, too many pocketbook psychologists and would-be philosophers with an axe to grind. But there's a solution, it's not easy, but it's a matter of coming to terms in your heart with situation you're in, a matter of choosing how things go for you and not having things forced upon you. There are plenty of forces against you, forcing you against your will, your ideals - you've got to hope for the best, and that's the best you can hope for - you've got to hope against hope... I remember something Sal Paradise said, he said: 'the city intellectuals of the world are debauched from the full body blood-of-the-land and are just rootless fools'. So listen, when the smile, the condescending pat-on-the-back comes and says: 'we're sorry, but you're nothing, you've got nothing for us and we've got nothing for you', you say: 'No', and say it loud: "NO!", and remember, people who talk about revolution and a class-struggle without referring explicitly to everyday life, without understanding what is subversive about love, and what is positive in the refusal and constraint...since people have a corpse in their mouth..."

In 2013 the I'm A Cliche Edit Service website presented an unoffical re-edit of The Story Of The Blues, credited to It's A Fine Line (Tim Paris and Ivan Smagghe). This is a killer re-working of Wah!'s original with a long looped opening section, the backing vocals fading in behind the violins and then Wylie's words. The last few minutes are quite heady and when you get to the end it's very easy to just click replay and listen to it all over again. Several times. Even better, it's still available to download for free. 



I was going to go full Pete Wylie and post Come Back and Imperfect List as well but maybe we should come back to them another day. Come Back is a political love song, an anthem and call to arms and Imperfect List a purging, a shitlist of all the things Wylie and Jones hated (two versions, one in 1990 and one in 2013). But I think I'll come back to them another day. 

Where Were You?

In 1989 Big Hard Excellent Fish, a duo of Josie Jones and Jake Walters, were asked to write a piece of music for the punk ballet dancer and choreographer Michael Clark. Josie asked her then boyfriend Pete Wylie to help out and they recorded Imperfect List, with Robin Guthrie of The Cocteau Twins producing. It was released in 1989 and then again a year later with remixes by Andrew Weatherall (subtitled Rimming Elvis The Andrew Weatherall Way). I've posted the Weatherall remixes before (or at least a couple of them, there are four on the 12" single). This is the original version.

Imperfect List

In Imperfect List Josie lists 64 things that her and Wylie hated starting with Adolf Hitler and taking in various other named or famous people from Terry and June to Bonnie Langford to 'fucking bastard Thatcher' to Stock, Aitken and Waterman, some unnamed people (macho dickhead, accusing ungrateful mate, weird British judges, tasteless A&R wanker and the dentist), some daily irritants (lost keys, neighbours- or is that Neighbours?), some entirely appropriate late 80s targets (the Tories, Hillsborough, Heysel, the poll tax, apartheid, acid rain, Clause 28, Nelson Mandela's imprisonment) and some universal hates (cancer, miscarriage, loneliness, hunger, murder, gut wrenching disappointment, the Sun newspaper) and plenty more besides.

'Where were you?' Josie asks at the end, leaving the question hanging and unanswered.

Four Eleven Forty Four

The last day of August is always depressing- the end of summer, end of school holidays, changing seasons, nights drawing in, all that stuff. We need something heroic and valedictory to see us through- and Pete Wylie is the answer I think. I was going to post Sinful, his 1987 single, a real fists in the air, all together now moment, but while looking for that I found this one (also a single from 1987).

Fourelevenfortyfour

Otherwise known as 4-11-44, a love song and one of those songs that can convince you Wylie is some kind of genius. The roots of the phrase 4-11-44 are in the African American community of the USA in the 19th century. 4, 11 and 44 were popular numbers chosen when gambling on illegal lotteries,a three number gig that rarely came up and would therefore give a large payout. According to Urban Dictionary and at least one other source, the numbers are slang for the penis, particularly among black Britons.

Oh go on then, here's Sinful as performed on Top Of The Pops back in '87, presented by Peel and Long, with Josie Jones (sadly no longer with us)  and 3 dancers dressed as nuns (which brought a complaint from Mary Whitehouse). We need more of this type of thing.

Down The Docks The Talking Turned...

...'As some are striving to survive, the others thrive'

I posted this song last year and once before that as well but sitting watching one of the Top Of The Pops reruns last week I was struck  (again) by the brilliance and magic, the faith and devotion of Pete Wylie's Mighty Wah! in the mid 80s. Come Back sounds like a love song but the verses read as a clarion call, a stand against Thatcher and forces of greed, a call for community and to stand together, a shout to those forced out by economic forces beyond their control to return to the city and to their roots. That reads as much for 2017 as it did for 1984. Pete said on Twitter recently that he wrote and played every instrument of Come Back except for the backing vocal by partner Josie Jones. In the TOTP clip Josie looks amazing, hands on hips, alongside Pete in his leather trousers and blow dried hairdo.

Sadly Josie, a big figure on the Liverpool art and music scene, died in 2015. She had also been the voice of Big hard Excellent Fish's Imperfect List, which I've also posted before here and in its updated form here.

Come Back (The Return Of The Randy Scouse Git)

How good is that? How could you ever get tired of hearing that? 'It's all up to you, yes it's all up to you!'

Come Back

Pete Wylie has a version of The Mighty Wah! back out on the road with a handful of gigs this month and bunch more in November. It is a blogging requirement by constitution and tradition that The Story Of The Blues is posted by music blogs at least once annually. I've posted it before and a very smart re-edit version which some of you enjoyed a lot. In a break with expectation instead I'm posting another 12" Wylie epic from 1984.

Come Back (The Story Of The Reds) and The Devil In Miss Jones (Combined and Extended)

And The Question Is Answered

This is an updated version of Big Hard Excellent Fish's Imperfect List from a couple of years ago. The original came from the combined talents of Pete Wylie, Robin Guthrie and Josie Jones (and on the 1990 version Andrew Weatherall). The original list had range of targets from the late 80s and the re-worked list brings things up to date while also showing how little has changed.

Both versions mention Hillsborough. The justice the families of the 96 have been finally been given this week is truly right and proper. It also sadly confirms what many of us have known all along- that football fans in the late 80s were treated worse than cattle and seen as scum, that we were despised by an establishment that was engaged in something that was tantamount to class war and governed by a lying and corrupt government that colluded with a lying tabloid press that actually hated its readers, and that events were manipulated and covered up by at least one, probably two, corrupt police forces.

In 1989 I lived in Liverpool while at Liverpool University. I shared a house with a friend who was at Hillsborough, not the Leppings Lane End but another part of the ground. He returned home with both parts of his ticket- no one checked him into the ground. The Saturday after the disaster we were in Liverpool city centre. At six minutes past three the city centre stopped in absolute silence. Nothing moved and nobody spoke. It was one of the most moving, emotional minutes I've witnessed. As a Man United fan I've always felt deeply ashamed by the songs some of 'our' idiots sing and the heart of the matter is while it happened to be Liverpool fans who were unlawfully killed at Hillsborough in 1989, it could have been any of us, at another match, in another ground. Yes- this is justice for the 96 and for their families. But it is also justice for all of us.

Remember- don't buy The Sun.