Forty Minutes of Belfast

This occurred to me as an idea a few weeks ago. I've been playing Orbital and Mike Garry's Tonight In Belfast a lot, it's become one of those songs for me. The idea of segueing different versions of Belfast together popped into my mind driving home from work. I did wonder if it might be too much, an overload of Belfast but there are some things you can't have too much of. I toyed with some kind of Easter mix for today, and almost went with all the versions of A Man Called Adam's fabulous Easter Song but on Friday (Good Friday) this mix came back to me and I thought I'd resurrect it for today. Roll that stone away and immerse yourself in Belfast. Happy Easter. 

Forty Minutes Of Belfast

• Belfast
• Belfast/Wasted
• Tonight In Belfast
• Nothing Compares 2 Belfast

Orbital released Belfast in January 1991, one of three tracks on their III EP along with Satan and LC1. Belfast was discovered by David Holmes and Ian McCready after they booked the Hartnoll brothers to play their Space Base night in May 1990. Orbital left a tape with the track on, later on named after the city they had a great visit to and night out in. The vocal sample, also widely heard in The Beloved's Sun Rising single that year, is of soprano Emily Van Evera, singing O Euchari. The chiming synths, bubbling bass and operatic vocal combine to produce something genuinely moving, ecstatic and otherworldly- one of British house/ dance music's great moments.  

Belfast/ Wasted features the voice of Gavin Fulton, available on the CD/ booklet series Volume (Volume 3, 1992). It then came out as a single in 1995 and then on the Wasted best of compilation. Gavin's vocal takes the track into a new area. 

Tonight In Belfast has the voice of Mancunian poet Mike Garry, speaking the words to his poem Tonight. It's one of the best and most affecting single tracks I've heard this year, Mike's words perfectly accompanied by David Holmes' magnificent and euphoric remix of Belfast from Orbital's 30 project, their thirtieth anniversary box set. Mike's words and Orbital's music came together on the suggestion of DJ Helen. Mike's words come over like a eulogy, a hymn to a lost love- sometimes I find it difficult to hear it without thinking of Isaac. 

'Tonight

I just wanna paint pictures of you

Write poems and songs just about you

I wanna hold you up so high you're gonna need a spacesuit

I love to speak your name aloud

Simply because I love its sound

And it feels like I'm kinda calling you

It feels like I'm kina talking to you

It feels like I'm trying to break through

You know across this divide

I'll tell you what

Let's slip beyond the confines of this world

Let's forget every single thing we've learned

Let's rewrite the way this world does turn'

Nothing Compares 2 Belfast is from David Holmes' NTS show that he did in tribute and in memory of Sinead O'Connor following her death last year, Belfast with Nothing Compares 2U, with Sinead's voice at the end speaking directly and openly in the way she did. 

An Hour Of Music Inspired By David Holmes At The Golden Lion In November 2023

Last November I wrote a post about the launch party held at The Golden Lion for David Holmes and Raven Violet's album Blind On A Galloping Horse, a memorable night in all sorts of ways. Refresh your memory here if you like. Not long afterwards Jeff Barrett of Heavenly Recordings got in touch out of the blue. Heavenly have just launched  a zine, HVN zine, a beautifully put together and produced magazine with art, photos, lists, articles and ephemera by and from various people at Heavenly. Physical products are nice and the production of an A5 zine in a digital world feels like something worthwhile. HVN zine 1 was published in the autumn with the second lined up for January 2024. Jeff said that some people from Heavenly were at The Golden Lion that night, one of them had read my blogpost and said I captured the vibe of the night and could he publish it in HVN zine 2. Which I didn't need to think about for very long, obviously. 

You can buy it at Heavenly's Bandcamp for the princely sum of 50p or get it free with any purchase from them. It's a beautifully put together magazine, lovely to look, nice paper stock (these things are important) and made by people, who care about pop culture and more besides. 

Today's mix is an approximation, a version of some of what David played at The Golden Lion back in November. It's inspired by rather than an attempt to recreate- some of the tracks may not be the actual ones played but it pulls some of what happened that night together. 

An Hour Of Music Inspired By David Holmes At The Golden Lion November 2023

• Golden Bug ft. The Liminanas: Variations sur 3 Bancs
• Jo Sims: Bass- The Final Frontier (David Holmes Remix)
• Prince: Sign O' The Times
• Khidja: Do You Know This Record Marius?
• Roe Deers ft. Wolfstream: Can't Remember
• Pete Shelley: Homosapien
• Decius: Masculine Encounter
• David Holmes and Raven Violet: Yeah x 3
• Sinead O'Connor: Jackie (Rich Lane Edit)
• Roberto Rodriguez: Mustat Varjot
• Radio Slave Vs Audion: Mouth To Mouth

Variations sur 3 Bancs, a collaboration between Golden Bug and The Liminanas came out in 2021. The EP came with remixes by Pilooski and Superpitcher and this one, the original mix. This wasn't the first record David played that night, he played some spaced out sax jazz but this came on fairly early. 

Jo Sims Bass- The Final Frontier was a 2023 release on Pamela Records. One of my favourite 12"s of last year, for what it's worth. David's remix is supercharged sci fi house.

Prince's Sign O' The Times was a 1987 single and the title track of the studio album of the same name, a Fairlight synth, simple drum machine and clipped, blues guitar riff and Prince's take on the issues troubling the USA in the 80s- gangs, drugs, AIDS, poverty, space shuttle explosions, hurricanes, nuclear war. 

Khidja's Do You Know This Record Marius? came out in 2023 as part of an EP called Transmissions 1. I'm not anywhere near bored of it yet. I'm not 100% sure that this is the Khidja track David played at The Lion but he's played it twice at NTS since then so I think there's a good chance it is. 

Roe Deers and Wolfstream's Can't Remember came out in 2022, on an album I reviewed at Ban Ban Ton Ton. I'm not sure if this is the track David played but it fits in this mix well enough.

Pete Shelley's Homosapien was a 1981 single, a groundbreaking solo single for the former Buzzcock. I don't think this is the Pete Shelley song David played, I'm sure I would remember if this had been pumping out of the Lion's sound system, but I've got it digitally and again, it fits in pretty well here. 

Decius' album Decius Vol 1 was one of 2022's highlights, a basement/ bathhouse/sauna riot of electronic sounds and beats. I don't think Masculine Encounter II was the track David played but I can't remember which one he did play- just as likely it was off one of the three 2023 Decius Trax EPs.

Yeah x 3 is from David's Blind On A Galloping horse album, a hymn to positivity, family, friends and life and love set to a kosmische/ pop electronic/ Spector musical backing. There were a bunch of excellent remixes by X- Press 2, The Vendetta Suite, Panda Bear and Sonic Boom and Jordan Nocturne. 

Jackie was on Sinead's 1987 debut album The Lion And The Cobra, a song narrated by a ghost, written when Sinead was just fifteen. Rich did his edit to play at a gig. David heard it when I posted it here following Sinead's tragic death last year. 

Mustat Varjo is from 2012 and a House Of Disco four track compilation titled On The Latch. Classic 2010s nu house/ disco/ dance music, finding itself somewhere in the space between ecstasy and melancholy.

Radio Slave remixed/ re-worked Audion's 2006  minimal techno floor filler last year and it goes on and on, tension building, bassline buzzing, freakiness freaking, for over ten minutes. 

Saturday Theme Eight

Back in 1991 Acid Jazz collective Young Disciples released a killer single- Apparently Nothin'- and an actually very good album called Road To Freedom. Marco Nelson and Femi Williams married 'real' instruments and samples to Carleen Anderson's voice to create something that drew on soul, hip hop, funk and jazz but was very British. The album concluded with Young Disciples Theme, a two minute version of this longer take (which came out in 1990 on the Get Yourself Together 12"). Ex- Style Councillor Mick Talbot plays some very cool organ, the thumping bassline kicks in and there's a lovely jazzy flute part. Young Disciples cleverly sampled Prince from Sign Of The Times for the vocal hook- 'get down with', the vocal goes before the Prince sample 'gang called the Disciples' finishes the line off and Battersea rapper MC Mell'O steps up to the mic. It's something I haven't listened to for years and thirty one years later sounds very good indeed. 

Young Disciples Theme

Monday's Long Song

Raspberry Beret is not an especially long song by Monday's standards and it's an 80s 12" version which takes the original single and stretches it out adding three minutes in but it's an irrepressibly upbeat summer song and we could all do with some good vibes at the moment. In 1985 Prince was in his psychedelic pop phase. Raspberry Beret is the pinnacle of this sound, a cherry coloured pop song about teenage romance, first love, Saturday jobs that drag, second hand hats and the kind of girl who 'comes in through the out door'.

The 12" version has an extended intro with finger cymbals clacking before the strings come in, the song bursting at it's seams, and an lengthy instrumental section at the end with the finger bell percussion (sounding like the bell on he bicycle he gave her a backie on as they rode down to Old Man Johnson's farm coughing) some coughing and shakers, wheezy harmonica, the strings being brought back in and then dropped out again. Effortless brilliance.

Raspberry Beret (12" Version)

August 1987

I've become a little obsessed with the repeats of Top Of The Pops running on BBC 4, especially the episodes recently stuck in the summer of 1987. Specifically I've become obsessed with the new depths to which the show sinks every week, presenters and audience desperately trying to pretend this is the greatest time to be alive despite almost every studio performance and video proving otherwise. A couple of weeks ago I wrote about New Order's appearance in the studio playing True Faith as being the only bright spot in a dismal run of bands, artists and songs. But then in mid- August something else happened, two good songs, two weeks running, both shown by video. As I watched the two videos they also seemed to suggest something fundamental about the two artists and maybe also about differences between the smart end of British and American pop culture in summer 1987. 

Pet Shop Boys hit their stride the year before with West End Girls and Suburbia and then marched into their imperial phase with It's A Sin. In August What Have I Done To Deserve This? reached number two. The single features Dusty Springfield on vocals, then a long vanished presence in the music world, and is archetypal Pet Shop Boys. Neil has two vocal parts, a sung part starting with 'You always wanted a lover/ I only wanted a job...' before Dusty joins in on the second verse. Neil's spoken word section before the chorus- 'I bought you drinks, I bought you flowers, I read your books, we talked for hours...'- perfectly enunciated and high in the mix is peak Tennant, as important to the song as Dusty's great contribution. Chris Lowe's music is peerless electro-pop, from the synth drum opening beats to his Roland synth and keyboard parts. This song stood out amidst the dross of summer 1987 but it would have shone in almost any company.

What Have I Done To Deserve This?

The video is very British, filmed in a theatre with a chorus line and a pit orchestra, a nod to a pre-pop music world, curtains, drapes and feathers. 

In the chart at the same time and on Top Of The Pops in the same two weeks was U Got The Look by Prince (a single from the Sign Of the Times album). U Got The Look is hyper 12 bar rock, strutting about with a massive Linn drum and, like the Pet Shop Boys, a shared vocal- Prince and Sheena Easton. It is super funky, highly stylised, a song about sex and sexiness- in the video, also shot in a theatre, everyone is shot drenched in colours (from neon lights, from overhead lights, in shadows). Almost everyone is barely half dressed in tight, minimal bodycon clothing. Sheila E manages to steal the show from Prince in her outfit, not an easy task. In response Prince throws in a guitar solo so over the top and so processed it's almost a parody. It is wonderful stuff, seductive and funky and fun and so un- Britain in 1987, especially when compared to the knowing, raised eyebrow of the Pet Shop Boys and the world depicted in their video. 

U Got The Look

U Got The Look reached number two in the US but only number eleven in the UK. Both records glisten like diamonds among the supporting cast in the chart- Whitesnake, Sinitta, Kenny G, The Firm, Wet Wet Wet, Rick Astley, Samantha Fox, Def Leppard. Motley Crue, Marillion, Shakey, Bruce Willis, Spagna, Heart, Los Lobos... 

Paisley

I don't know if this is an idea that could run or not but...

This song off Prince's 1985 album Around The World In A Day came up recently and knocked me sideways a little- genuine lightfooted brilliance, a mid-80s funked version of 60s pop-psychedelia about the joys of childhood.

Paisley Park

'Admission is easy, just say you
Believe and come to this
Place in your heart
Paisley Park is in your heart'

In 1996 the first full length Two Lone Swordsmen album, The Fifth Mission (Return To the Flightpath Estate), contained this track as its closing statement, a loopy, stoned trip through the aforementioned flightpath estate at dawn. The synth chord sequence just after two minutes, and then recurring throughout the eight minutes plus, is rather wonderful. 

Paisley Dark

Prince Paul And King Paul

I saw this recently, an excerpt from Bob Mehr's excellent sounding new book on The Replacements, and it made me smile...

'Prince was rumoured to have lurked in the shadows at some of the Replacements shows at First Avenue, but it was in the bathroom of a club in St. Paul where Westerberg finally ran into him. 

"Oh, hey," said Westerberg, seeing the dolled-up singer standing next to him at the urinal. "What's up, man?"

Prince turned and responded in cryptic fashion: "Life."

Paul Westerberg called time on The Replacements re-union recently having fell out of love with it again. He called the re-union 'whoring himself'. I've said it before- The Replacements were such a great little band. Paul's gone straight back to work, recording and releasing an album with Juliana Hatfield as The I Don't Cares. This upbeat song has clanging Westerberg guitars, a bitter-sweet lyric and drawly vocals from the pair of them. Good stuff.

King Of America

I Was Just In The Middle Of A Dream

Sometimes the songs that seem to be the obvious songs to post are indeed the ones that are obvious songs to post. It is Monday. Prince wrote Manic Monday for Apollonia 6 but pulled it and offered it to The Bangles.They then Banglified it, turning it into a number two hit in both the UK and the US in 1986.

Manic Monday

This Top Of The Pops performance has Susanna Hoffs achieving peak Hoffsness.

Seven Hours And Fifteen Days

The death of Prince was shocking. Growing up in the 80s he was inescapable and while I was never a huge fan I liked some of his singles/songs- you couldn't not like at least some of them. I saw him play in Manchester two years ago, a friend had a spare and it seemed like a good opportunity to see a legend. Over the two hours he blew the audience at Manchester's indoor arena away, song after song after song. The thing that really struck me was the crowd. I'm used to going to gigs that are attended by roughly 60%-80% middle aged men, many either in leather jackets or cagoules depending on the band. Prince's audience ranged from younger teenagers to people in their 60s, racially mixed, glammed up twenty-something couples, gangs of forty-something women, obsessive men on their own, gay and straight- the most socially diverse gig crowd I've ever been a part of. I've since grown to love some of his songs that previously were just part of my musical wallpaper. The energy he put into the show, dancing, playing guitar, singing was immense- partly why it is so shocking that he's died less than two years later aged just 57.

I have always liked this one.

Alphabet Street

There is a Jesus And Mary Chain cover version of Alphabet Street which, trust me, you don't want to hear right now. It doesn't do anyone any favours.

If you were around in 1990 this Prince penned song was inescapable too.

Prince

I'm going to see Prince tonight. Yup. A friend got tickets and asked me if I wanted to go with him and you don't pass up opportunities like that do you? I wanted to post the video to Alphabet Street or Let's Go Crazy, both of which I really like but I'm assuming the Purple One has an issue with Youtube because there don't appear to be any of his videos there, other than live clips and TV performances (which he doesn't own the rights to I suppose). I found Let's Go Crazy on a German video sharing site but the quality was poor and Alphabet Street doesn't seem to exist anywhere on the net. Most strange.

This is The Artist Formerly Known As The Artist Formerly As Prince when he played Manchester in February with his new band 3rd Eye Girl (3RDEYEGIRL is how they prefer it but it doesn't look right to me.)

Post 1999

These blog anniversaries keep coming- this is my 1999th post. And this is from Big Audio Dynamite II, a live release called Class Of '92, with Mick and the boys covering Prince's famous end of millennium song.

1999 (live)

Class Of '92 is coincidentally also the name of a recent film concerning the class of 1992- Paul Scholes, Nicky Butt, Gary and Phil Neville, David Beckham- of whom it was famously said 'you'll win nothing with kids'. Bloody kids. They did win something though didn't they? United could do with some of them kids right now.

I Had Dreams When I Was Your Age

Back to yesterday's postees Wendy and Lisa (as drawn by comic artist Jaime Hernandez, thus cleverly tying in with the post about comics earlier this week). Wendy and Lisa escaped from Prince's sticky clutches in 1987, fed up with the way The Revolution were changing (too male, too macho, not enough credit). Staring At The Sun is a piece of summer-y, slightly psychedelic pop that could only have been made in 1990- just listen to those drums- and it appeared on their Eroica album. If truth be told I prefer the remix from The Orb but this has a good groove, a nice chunky guitar riff and cracking vocals.

Staring At The Sun

I'll probably get shot down for this but I never cared too much for Prince- I don't dispute the man's way with a tune early on, Purple Rain and When Doves Cry are, y'know, good and I did like Sign Of the Times (the song), and Cream and Get Off are funky. I don't believe I own much by him other than a couple of 7" singles that I must have been given at some point and an album.

Edit- there's been some problems with Mediafire so here's the song on Youtube (which you could always rip yourself though I wouldn't condone such practices)