Oblique Saturdays

A series for Saturdays in 2026 inspired by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's set of cards, Oblique Strategies (Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas). Eno and Schmidt created them to be used to unblock creative impasses and approach problems from unexpected angles. Each week I'll turn over an Oblique Strategy card and post a song or songs inspired by the suggestion. 

Last week's Oblique Strategy card said Abandon normal instruments.

I conjured up Einsturzende Neubauten, Sabres Of Paradise, The Beatnigs and Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy and Tom Waits, a variety of power tools, car bonnets, chains, grinders and bits of metal being used in place of or alongside normal instruments. The Bagging Area community offered a slew of suggestions- Split Lip Rayfield, Nana Benz du Togo, Kraftwerk, Shane Parrish, Thirteenth Floor Elevators, Split Enz, Gruff Rhys and Tony da Gattora, Gasper Nali, Tools You Can Trust and Matthew Herbert. This is Gasper Nali playing on the shores of Lake Malawi. Thanks to Chris, anonymous, Swanditch, Al G, C, Rol, Weareliz, Ernie and Charity Chic for their  contributions. 

This week's Oblique Strategy is this- Do nothing for as long as possible

And part of me did wonder about just leaving the post there and doing nothing further. 

But while that seemed conceptually correct it didn't bring any music into play. I can imagine in the studio musicians turning that card over and it becoming a Mexican standoff. Who breaks first? The drummer? The guitarist? I think bass players could stay out of things for a while, their patience levels are quite high. How long could you keep a track/ song going without doing anything?

The Specials released Do Nothing as a single in 1980, a slightly downtempo song for the band, a Lynval Golding and Jerry Dammers co- write about stasis, nothing ever changing, a life without meaning, police harassment- 'I walk and walk and do nothing' 

Do Nothing

It also gave us the only acceptable appearance of Christmas jumpers. The Specials were not a Do nothing for as long as possible type of band- everyone was very active all the time, all playing at the same time. 

There are quite a lot of songs where the band pause, the silence and a tease, a doing nothing, a moment of tension, before they crash back in. I'm not sure what the longest one is- mostly they aren't able to do nothing for as long as possible for very long. The pause in the extended freak out at the end of I Am The Resurrection is a good example...

I Am The Resurrection

The song started as a joke, Mani playing the bass riff to taxman backwards. Eventually Reni suggested working it up into a song. Ian and John found lyrical inspiration on a church noticeboard in Chorlton and when they got the song figured out Ian suggested the other three should keep playing, a funky/ Hendrix outro that could keep going and going. The do nothing for as long as possible part comes at 5.21 and lasts four seconds. Maybe that was as long as John, Mani and Reni could manage.

It's a good song for tomorrow too- Easter Sunday and resurrections are famously linked. 

Underworld's Second Hand is a ten minute ride, the synths set up and playing and repeating for nine minutes- once those loops are in motion there isn't much to do, the odd tweak here and there for Rick Smith and Darren Emerson, occasionally bring an element in or out, higher or lower in the mix. Karl Hyde is very much not doing very much at all, just the odd delay FXed guitar part. One of my favourite Underworld tracks, an absolute joy.

There a loads of songs about nothing or with nothing in the title. In 1992 Sandals, a London beat poetry/ dub/ progressive house/ acid jazz four piece put out Nothing (with Leftfield assisting on programming, keys and production), a funky, laid back, stoned groove with state of the world lyrics- worth remembering when one turns on the news at the moment, we were despairing about war and US foreign policy in the early 90s as well as in 2026 (and in the 60s and 70s and 80s and 00s...)

Nothing (Extended Version)

'Old man what have you done?' a voice asks over and over. The reply, 'Nothing'. 

Feel free to drop your do nothing for as long as possible suggestions in the comment box. I'm sure you can come up with more apt ones than I have. 

Fools

Some fools for April Fool's Day. All Fool's Day is a tradition in many countries but there doesn't seem to be any real agreement about where it originates from- an association between 1st April and foolishness is mentioned by Chaucer in The Nun's Priest's Tale where a vain cock is tricked by a fox into believing it is 32nd March. Some scholars inevitably disagree and put this down to a mistranslation. 

A 16th century French poet mentions poisson d'Avril (April fool or literally April's fish) and a Flemish poet, Eduard de Dene, referenced a nobleman who sent his servants on foolish errands on 1st April. The first agreed British reference is from 1686, John Aubrey mentioning 'fooles holy day'. 

Pop culture is littered with fools. In 1973 Lee Hazlewood, the cosmic cowboy, asked a foolish question...

Poet, Fool Or Bum

In 2019, a reactivated Sebadoh saw Lou Barlow return with some typically ramshackle, melodic indie rock reaching the point where he 'won't be a fool in your eyes'. 

Fool

Gallon Drunk weren't a band to do things by halves. A noisy, chaotic early 90s blur of suits, guitars, sideburns, noisy blues and jazz. Some Fool's Mess was Single Of The Week in the NME in 1991, back when these things really mattered. The live recording here is from 1993 when they toured the US supporting PJ Harvey

Some Fool's Mess (Live In Chicago)

Escape- Ism is Ian Svenonius' latest vehicle for deconstructing music and overthrowing existing power structures. Last year's Charge Of The Light Brigade was one of my albums of the year. In 2021 they released Rated Z, their fourth album, a casual combination of arrogance and minimalism. Electronic rock 'n' roll reduced to its barest elements. 

Suffer No Fool

Lastly I need to direct you here to Bedford Falls Players where Mr BFP has done an entirely unofficial edit of Walking On Sunshine and Fool's Gold, Rockers Revenge and The Stone Roses mashed together in an unholy and total trip, seven minutes of Fool's Gold- En.  Free/ pay what you want. 

On 23rd November 1989 The Stone Roses made their one and only Top Of The Pops appearance, gatecrashing the shiny world of the BBC studios and the top ten with the groundbreaking indie funk of Fool's Gold. The fall of the Berlin Wall, The Stone Roses on Top Of The Pops- the 1990s started here. 

The photo at the top is the corridor of a hotel we have actually stayed in. I felt lucky to wake up in the morning and 

Edit: that last sentence for some reason was never completed. I got distracted and forgot to finish it. It should have read something like this...

The photo at the top is the corridor of a hotel we have actually stayed in. I felt lucky to wake up in the morning and not have been sold into some form of modern slavery. The hotel was a one night stopover and was cheap. The fire escapes had groups of men hanging around them smoking and the fire escape was in our bedroom- in the event of a fire the escape route was through our room. Off our room were two further rooms, one with a broken window that would not close and the other a cell. As I was about to put the light out to go to sleep and huge spider ran across my pillow. It was grim but also very funny. 

Oblique Saturdays

For the last three years I've had yearlong Saturday series running- last year was a year of film scores and soundtracks, Saturday Soundtrack, and before that Saturday Live (artists playing live) and VA Saturday (Various Artists compilations). I had a couple of ideas for 2026 and have settled on this- Oblique Saturdays.

In 1975 Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt came up with a set of cards designed to promote creativity and break moments of studio deadlock. Oblique Strategies were available for general sale on several occasions and in various editions. The most recent was in 2013. Each card contains a gnomic suggestion which must be interpreted to break a deadlock or resolve a dilemma. Various artists have gone public about their use of the Oblique Strategies cards- Eno himself during  Bowie's Berlin triptych, The B- 52s, LCD Soundsystem, Blixa Bargeld (a similar system of cards called Dave), Bauhaus, MGMT, Phoenix and, um, Coldplay. 

I was thinking about the Oblique Strategies a few months ago while reading an article about Eno and the words strategy and Saturday merged, suggesting this as a series. At some point before each Saturday I will go to the Oblique Strategies website, click onto it and reveal a card- without much thought, I will then post the song that first came to mind. I've no idea how this will play out, it's being done on the hoof. The first Oblique Saturday suggestion card I turned over was this...

Reverse 

In 1988 The Stone Roses discovered the joy of reversing the tapes of songs they'd recorded in the studio and they played around with them. Eventually this resulted in Don't Stop, for me one of the highlights of the debut album, Waterfall reversed with a new drum track and Ian Brown singing new words (the lyrics were written by John Squire listening to the backwards vocals of Waterfall and writing down what they suggested). The first backwards track they released was a B-side to Elephant Stone, Full Fathom Five.

Full Fathom Five

The sucking sound The Roses managed to obtain from their backwards guitars and drums is a trip, the whoosh and rush of music, the feel of and energy of gigs and clubs. On Full Fathom Five Ian's backwards vocals sound like a new language, the drums thump and skitter and it's like being in a bubble. 

Ian and John gave an interview at some point in the late 80s where they described driving out to the roads on the edge of Wythenshawe late at night, parking as close to Manchester Airport's runway as they could and lying on the bonnet of the car. They said that the whoosh of jets taking off directly overhead was the sound they were trying to replicate with the backwards tracks. Full Fathom Five is noise but it's noise as psychedelic sound/ music. 

If you reverse Full Fathom Five you'll find it's an alternate version of Elephant Stone. John Leckie encouraged them to experiment with reversed tapes and this would lead to several more experiments- Simone, Guernica and Don't Stop. Full Fathom Five is named after a Jackson Pollock painting- Elephant Stone was the first single to be housed in one of Squire's Pollock style paintings. 

Feel free to drop your own Reverse suggestions into the comment box. It would be interesting to see how other people interpret the oblique strategy. 

I'd Love To Do It And You Know You've Always Had It Coming

Mani's funeral took place just before Christmas, an outpouring of love and respect for The Stone Roses bassist, a man that no one seems to have had a bad word to say about. This song appeared on Soundcloud at the same time, a wonderful cover of Shoot You Down by Alfie and kids from Crowcroft Park Primary School in Longsight that dates from a north west BBC TV show at some point in the early 00s. Listen here. 

There's something about the massed choral voices of primary school children singing the words to Shoot You Down that is a bit counter- intuitive and also very affecting. 'I'd love to do it and you know you've always had it coming... I never wanted/ The love that you showed me/ It started to choke me/ And how I wish I said 'no'/ Too slow/ I want you to know/ I couldn't take that too fast/ I want you to know'.

The recording is from a cassette tape, taped off the radio (BBC Manchester) so sonically it's not the best but it doesn't really spoil it too much. The hunt for the masters is on apparently. Also, at the end it cuts into the show and Terry Christian's voice appears, something you don't necessarily want to hear every time you listen to the song. 

Here's the original from 1989, nestled away towards the end of side 2 of The Stone Roses, between Made Of Stone and This Is The One, a song where the rhythm section of Reni and Mani show their strengths, subtle and blues/ jazz influenced, and John finds a smoky, low key Hendrix vibe, all three building while Ian croons sweet kiss offs and rejections.   

Shoot You Down

Alfie were a Manchester band, formed in 1998, who made four albums before calling it a day in 2005. They were part of a late 90s/ early 00s scene that included Doves, I Am Klute and Elbow. Doves and Elbow especially both went onto big things. It never really happened for Alfie. 

These pair of songs are from their 2005 album Crying At Teatime. The first, Your Own Religion, is the albums opening song, punchy and melodic, guitars and pianos powering out of the speakers, cymbals splashing and singer Lee Gorton drawling and cool. 

Your Own Religion

On Wizzo they sound superb, confident and full of life. They split up not long after the release, Lee saying 'it's hard to keep the faith when it feels like no- one's listening'. The major they'd signed to, EMI,  wanted a Coldplay style song from them and they didn't feel like they could do it. 

Wizzo

Mani

The Stone Roses were one of those bands that, in the overly dramatic words of the youth and the music press, changed your life. In 1989 they changed the way I looked at the world, they changed my relationship with music, made it deeper and more intense (and I was already pretty far gone before that). The news yesterday that bassist Mani died suddenly aged 63 is hard to take- a Stone Rose, Mani the rogue Rose, gone. Awful. 

Picture credit where it's due- the photo above was taken by my friend Darren when The Stone Roses played Manchester's International 22 in 1987, a youthful Mani caught staring out into the crowd, paint splattered bass at hand. Thank you Darren for letting me use it. 

Edit: Darren shared this one with me too, Mani and Ian at the same gig...

I first saw The Stone Roses at Liverpool Polytechnic (the Haigh Building, now demolished), 4th May 1989. At this point I had a couple of singles- Sally Cinnamon was my first encounter with them. They changed going to gigs for me that night, they were electrifying, four young men with absolute self belief, locked in and playing the songs which would make up the debut album (the album was released the same week as the Liverpool gig). Mani's bass was as much a part of that sound, that late 80s psychedelic sound, bolstered by the best rhythm section in town, as John Squire's guitar playing and Reni's out of this world drumming. The rumble of bass that slowly brings I Wanna Be Adored in. The instant hit of the bass intro to She Bangs The Drums. The heavy Hendrix grove of Standing Here. The subtler dynamics of Shoot You Down. The thrill of the bassline and snare that opens I Am The Resurrection and the epic twisting, funked up groove of its extended instrumental ending. All these things took hold of me that night at Liverpool Poly- in some ways it's the gig I judge all gigs since against. 

At the start of that year they appeared on Tony Wilson's late night, north west only Granada TV music programme, The Other Side Of Midnight playing Waterfall, a band as cool as fuck and who know it, the genuine article. Mani, paint splattered Rickenbacker bass, black and white striped t- shirt, flicking his fringe out of his eyes, a group on the cusp.

By the end of 1989 they world was theirs. The appeared on BBC 2 early evening show Rapido, interviewed at Battery Studios in North London and wandering round the streets. At one point Mani nips into a hairdressers to wash his locks. Fools Gold turns up in the studio playback, a monster of a song driven by a monster of a bassline- the breakbeat, the guitars, the whispered vocal are all vital but the thing that moves Fools Gold, that drives it, is Mani's bass. 

Fools Gold took them to Top Of The Pops, a night that felt seismic, The Roses and Happy Mondays crashing into the chart world and inanities of early evening pop music television, Mani in red swinging his bass around, flares flapping around his legs. A nation of indie kids get up and dance. 

I saw them again- Spike Island, the Apollo in 1994 on the Second Coming tour (Reni was gone by that point) and then in 2011 at the re- union warm up at Warrington Parr Hall, an amazing night. Mani looked as pleased as anyone that it had actually happened, bounding onto the stage and celebrating like he'd scored a winning goal in injury time and then, in front of his bass cabinet and amp adorned with his collection of Toby jugs, that familiar rumble of bass notes faded in, dum dum dum dum/ dim dim dim dim/ dum dum dum dum/ der de der... 'I don't have to sell my soul he's already in me...'.

1990's single One Love came with this B-side, a seven minute swamp groove with Mani's bass central to the sound...

Something's Burning

By 2016 the Roses re- union rolled on and they did four shows at the Etihad (playing at Manchester City's ground was surely a shocker for Mani, a life long match going United fan). By this point they were being adored by two generations of fans. I took these two pics as mayhem ensued around us...

When the Roses ended Mani went onto Primal Scream, giving that band a much needed shot in the arm (poor choice of phrase possibly), dragging his bass onto Vanishing Point and giving them an energy and a sound they'd missed. Live Primal Scream were untouchable with Mani on board- his bass playing part of the guitar army era of Andrew Innes, Throb and Kevin Shields. Mani said that other than The Roses there were only three bands he'd consider joining- Primal Scream, The Jesus And Mary Chain and The Beastie Boys. I'd have happily seen him play with the other two as well...

There's so much more I could write. The Stone Roses- Ian, John, Mani and Reni- have been a central part of my musical life for over three and a half decades. Their music rewired me, changed my DNA. I feel privileged to have seen them back then and to still have that debut album and the songs from those singles, from 1988 through to 1990, to still get so much enjoyment from them when I hear them and play them. There's something special about those songs that stadium tours and late stage capitalism can't tarnish. The Roses were from round here, they were us on stage, us on record, four ordinary Mancunians but also they were something else, something so un- ordinary that they transformed themselves when they played together- and by doing that they transformed us too. 

Where Angels Play

Gary Mani Mounfield. RIP. 

Standing There

At the end of last week these appeared on Youtube, John Squire's isolated guitar tracks from a handful of Stone Roses songs. Hearing just John's guitar was a bit of a moment, revelatory in some ways. The first one I found was the guitar from Standing Here, a 1989 B-side and a song that is the equal of anything else they released in '89.

Standing Here always sounded like John had been listening to Hendrix, the Are You Experienced? album, and then went straight into the studio to put his guitar down. The opening squall of feedback notes and then the bluesy riffing is pure Hendrix in 1967 filtered through late 80s Manchester. Take Ian's vocals and Mani and Reni's bass and drums away and it's like being in the studio hearing him play. The blissed out coda from three minutes sixteen is even more so, John's chorus pedal and picked out notes repeating (and it is difficult not to hear Ian singing 'I could park a juggernaut in your mouth/ And I can feel a hurricane when you shout/ I could be safe forever/ In your arms as it plays but on it's own it is very lovely). 

The next one I clicked on was the guitar from Bye Bye Badman, even more of a revelation- John barely plays what you think of as the song's melody, his fingers dance around the harmonies and the choppy part at one minute six through to one minute twenty five (the chorus essentially) is wonderful. There are more than one guitar parts on this I think. If one had a sampler and the inclination, one could take parts of this and construct a completely new version, an angelic Balearic sunset version of Bye Bye Badman....

The isolated guitar from Don't Stop is a joy to listen to, the backwards guitar from Waterfall on its own. Less of a jawdropping moment when first heard compared to the two above but lovely to listen to. This one lays bare the recording and writing process- you can imagine them playing the guitar part back, backwards, and then Reni drumming along with it, the cowbell being added, then the bass and then Ian's vocals (John wrote the lyrics by listening to the vocals from Waterfall backwards and transcribing what the backwards swirl suggested). 

The last one is the guitar part from the full nine minute 12" version of One Love from 1990. Shorn of Reni and Mani's huge funked up rhythm parts the guitars sound less typically 1990. John runs through his bag of tricks, riffs and solos, wah wah and distortion, chords for the chorus, runs up and down the neck. The second half where the song becomes an extended jam on disc, funky drummer and piledriving guitar and bass, sounds more experimental in isolation, choppy 70s parts, squeals of feedback, trippy harmonics and muted strings. You could do something else with some of the parts of this- sample them, loop them, reverse them... 

It's Curtains For You

When The Stone Roses- The Remixes came out in October 2000 I was very much not interested in it.It seemed to be yet another Silvertone cash in on an album and a band they'd been bleeding dry for over a decade, by a record company the band took to court to part company with. Remixes of the songs from the debut album also seemed to me to be an inherently un- Roses thing. Sacrilege. Heresy. Those songs don't need anything else doing to them. Why would someone even think of it? 

I'm not a person who dislikes remixes either as has been well established over the lifetime of this blog- I often prefer the remix to the original track (depending on the remixer obviously). The Stone Roses- The Remixes also came at a time when it felt very unlikely that there was any involvement from the band in this. Squire and Brown weren't talking. Reni was whereabouts unknown. Mani was heavily involved with Primal Scream. Ian's solo career was well under way and they all seemed happy to move on. 

I've shifted my attitude to this album twice, once a few years ago when I heard the Justin Robertson remix of Waterfall out in a bar and found myself enjoying it. Justin didn't do anything too radical to it, a skippy acid house drum beat, some atmospherics and a xylophone, and then the guitar riff comes in with Ian's vocal, those lyrics about a girl dropping acid and boarding a cross channel ferry, leaving 'the filth and the scum/ this American satellite's won'. There's a spaced out and stripped down state to Justin's remix that I like now.

Waterfall (Justin Robertson Remix)

A few weeks ago my friend Spencer sent me a link to the Soul Hooligan remix of Shoot You Down. Curiosity won and I clicked through. Lots of reverb, the strum of a guitar isolated, a loop of brushed drums, Ian's hushed vocals, the hum of an amp switched on behind everything. Ian's line, 'I'd love to do it and you know you've always had it coming', gets looped up, the guitars pile up a bit, cymbals splash- it's nicely done and, again, not a radical re- working but different enough to hear the song anew.

Shoot You Down (Soul Hooligan Remix)

Soul Hooligan are/were Austin Reynolds, a producer from Essex. I played their remix of Shoot You Down at The Golden Lion last weekend. 

After finding that I enjoyed that one I went back in and have dipped in and out of the some of the rest. This one, Kinobe's remix of Elizabeth My Dear stood out...

Elizabeth My Dear (Kinobe Remix)

Ian and John's anti- monarchical ditty opens side two of the debut album, the circling Strawberry Fayre guitar part re- purposed with Ian wishing death upon the monarch, all less than a minute long. A statement as much as a song. Kinobe turn it into a sweetly 60s psychedelic folk song, looping, delaying and FXing it out for nearly five minutes. 

A Midsummer Mix: Forty Minutes Of 2025 So Far

There's some big news coming tomorrow which some of you will want to act on- if you were one of the people that bought a certain compilation album last year, you might want to be back here bright and breezy on Monday morning. Full details to come in twenty four hours time. 

It's the end of June tomorrow also, halfway through the year- I've no idea how the last six months have gone so quickly- but it seems like a good point to do a 2025 So Far Sunday Mix, not a definitive Best Of 2025, rather some of the tracks and songs I've enjoyed the most so far this year. 

A Midsummer Mix: Forty Minutes Of 2025 So Far

• Death In Vegas: Chingola
• Andy Bell: Pinball Wanderer
• Adrian Sherwood: Cold War Skank
• Demise Of Love: Carry The Blame
• 10:40 presents Retro Fit: An Alternative History (Lavender Mist)
• Escape- Ism: Last Of The Sell Outs
• Klangkollektor: Isle Of Stonsey
• Four Tet: Into Dust (Still Falling)

Chigola is a five minute ambient techno intro to the latest Death In Vegas album Death Mask, an album which does not hold its techno punches and which is a machine music tour de force. Richard Fearless poured a lot into the making of Death Mask, some personal losses reflected and worked through. It's an overloaded and emotional trip. Chingola is few minutes of scene setting, calm before the storm. 

Andy Bell's latest solo album Pinball Wanderer came out in February led by a cover of The Passions' I'm In Love With A German Film Star with Dot Allison and Michael Rother on board. The album's title track is an instrumental delight, a circling guitar part beamed from late 60s folk into Andy's 2025 motorik/ cosmsiche/ electric shoegaze. 

Adrian Sherwood's four track dubplate 10" came out recently, led by title track The Grand Designer and has been on steady rotation round here ever since (though I missed out on the vinyl). Cold War Skank is a moody dub/ guitar workout.

Demise Of Love is a three man modern electronic meeting of Daniel Avery, Syd Minsky- Sergeant (Working Men's Club) and James Greenwood (Ghost Culture). They have, like Adrian Sherwood, released a four track 10" EP that merges acid house, some intense techno sounds, industrial noise and the flickers of what New Order could have been had they kept heading away from the light. 

An Alternative History was written as an imaginary Stone Roses song, based on a blogpost by some blogger or other that imagined a world where the band didn't blow it but kept their heads and kept making music, avoiding the pitfalls of The Second Coming. Jesse's new Roses song came in three versions. Lavender Mist is the backwards one. 

Escape- Ism is Ian Svenonius' latest revolutionary outfit, a duo aiming to rewrite modern culture/ indie- rock with stripped down, scuzzy guitar/ drum machine/ keys/ vocals. The album- Charge Of The Love Brigade- is one of my favorites so far this year, a thirty five minute manifesto. Last Of Sell Outs is the best song on it, a meditation on commerce, art and musical integrity and the price of selling out. 

Klangkollektor is Lars Fischer from Numremberg. The EP Dubplates Vol 2, out on Manchester's Jason Boardman's Before I Die label, is a chilled Balearic dub masterclass ending with Isle Of Stonsey with pedal steel/ Hawaiian guitar sailing out into the cosmos. 

Four Tet's latest single samples Mazzy Star to achingly beautiful effect, a Four Tet track that hits all the spots, capable of moving me to tears. 

An Alternative Resurrection

A day late for an Easter Sunday resurrection but bank holiday Monday feels more appropriate- you might remember that in January 2024 I wrote a piece about an imagined alternative future for The Stone Roses, one where after the release of One Love in June 1990 they didn't blow it. You can re- read An Alternate History first if you want to. It was a post that seemed to download itself into my mind while out on a bike ride, a fully formed version of the 1990s where Ian, John, Mani and Reni had better advice, clearer heads and didn't get immediately bogged down in a post- Spike Island slump and court case, a world where they moved on, signed to Heavenly and released a series of singles and EPs, side stepping the drama and overbearing weight of delivering a second album. In my alternate history they end up at the millennium, back where they started in Sale, south Manchester, with an album that delivered on the promise the band had in that space between the release of Elephant Stone in October 1988 and then One Love/ Something's Burning in 1990. 

Elephant Stone

One of the spin offs from the post took place in Stockholm, Sweden. Scandinavia is a place rich in Roses lore. The band toured there in 1987, a bonding trip for the group and then they returned in 1990 for some warm up shows before the big definitive, generational statements at Spike Island and Glasgow Green. There was a memorable article in Q Magazine by Adrian Deevoy who took a trip with the band in their 1990 pomp, playing gigs, imbibing substances and dancing like fish (all doubled down on by United winning the European Cup Winner's Cup in Rotterdam as the interview and tour took place). 

The 2024 Stockholm spin off was from Jesse, the man behind 10:40, who read my post and was inspired to write a new/ lost Stone Roses track, titled An Alternative History. He sent it to me in the middle of last year and for a while there was a plan that I might sing on it but that came to naught (due to me it has to be said). Jesse released his three track EP yesterday, an Easter Sunday resurrection and also his birthday, three versions of his Stone Roses alternative history, under the banner 10:40 presents Retro Fit.

The original version is a five minute song that sounds like John Squire's next step in 1989, a song they band never quite finished perhaps- chorus pedal and chiming guitar, Reni's kick drum and snare and a very familiar voice coming through the line, straight outta Chorlton singing 'She's waiting...'. 

The lead version of the song on the EP is An Alternate History (Retro Fit Resurrection), an eight minute dance mix that spirals through time and space, landing back in the heady days of 89/ 90, the permanent summer of our youth- fringes, love beads, flares, long sleeved t- shirts, nights lost at the indie disco, clubbing and guitar bands clashing on the floor under the strobe light, maracas and wide eyed joy, Jesse's chiming guitar lines and 1990 shuffle lighting up the room... Ian's there, sucking in his cheeks and doing that loose limbed dance, 'There's a time and a place for everything/ I've got to get it through'....

Lavender Mist completes the EP, Squire's love of Jackson Pollock at the fore, evident on the sleeves of all those records and the titles of Roses B-sides Full Fathom Five and Guernica.

Lavender Mist is not just the Pollock Roses but the experimental, backwards tapes Roses too, a backwards effects version of An Alternative History to follow Don't Stop, Simone, Guernica and Full Fathom Five; a heavenly, spun out and blissed out version of the song with loops and echoes, Ian's voice spun backwards and the guitars reversed, the rhythms both forwards and backwards, everything a great, trippy whirl. Isn't it funny how you shine?

10:40 presents retro Fit: An Alternative History is here. Go get it, you'll love it. Tell Jesse I said hello. 

xiM sgnoS sdrawkcaB fO setuniM eviF-ytrihT

Thirty- five minutes of backwards songs.

This mix occurred to me a few weeks ago when I posted David Holmes' remix of Andy Bell's The Sky Without You, a remix of the opening song from Andy's 2022 solo album Flicker. Reversing the tapes and playing them backwards is an age old technique- The Beatles used it in 1966 on Rain and then perfected it on Tomorrow Never Knows (although both of those merely contain backwards elements/ instruments- most of what's included below is entirely backwards). They went the full hog on The White Album with Revolution 9. Those backwards noises- the sound of cymbals splashing in reverse, the trippy whirl of guitars backwards, the weird throb of bass- are all very evocative and possibly suggest too long spent in the studio, indulgence maybe, but when done well are superb. I've loved it as a sonic whoosh, an aural WTF?, since my first exposure to The Stone Roses and their B-sides in 1989 and Don't Stop. This mix will I suspect be an opinion splitter- you'll either roll your eyes and quietly close the page and go elsewhere for your Sunday morning music fix or you'll love this. I've played it through several times and each time can convince myself it's the best Sunday mix I've ever done. 

xiM sgnoS sdrawkcaB fO setuniM eviF- ytrihT

• Andy Bell: The Sky Without You
• The Stone Roses: Simone
• The Clash: Mensforth Hill
• The Stone Roses: Previously Unheard Backwards Track 3
• The Stone Roses: Full Fathom Five
• Andy Bell: The Looking Glass
• Andy Bell: The Sky Without You (David Holmes Radical Mycology Remix)
• The Stone Roses: Guernica
• The Stone Roses: Don't Stop

The Sky Without You opens Flicker, Andy Bell's solo album. It was a deliberate nod to The Stone Roses, Andy looking backwards to Don't Stop and the B-sides of Elephant Stone, Made Of Stone, and She Bangs The Drums. Most of the rest of Flicker is fully crafted, 'proper' songs, from the lovely Something Like Love to the wistful Way Of The World. Halfway through, the start of the second disc on the vinyl version, is another backwards track, The Looking Glass, Andy's voice, guitar and what sounds like some organ fed backwards through the looking glass. I'm guessing it's one of the songs from Flicker flipped. 

Simone is Where Angels Play played backwards and for many years was only available as the B-side of a U.S. import version of I Wanna Be Adored, which found its way into U.K. shops in 1989. It was buying this 12" single for this one song, a 12" priced at £5.99 (a huge amount for a 12" single then) that made me realise I was in deep. Where Angels Play was the 'lost' song from the golden period of 1989- 1990, the song that didn't make the album but was often bootlegged live. It was eventually released on a 12" of I Wanna Be Adored, put out by Silvertone as a money spinner when the band and label were in dispute- a dispute that led to a court case that led to the band signing to Geffen and to the end of the group ultimately.  

By the time The Clash had committed themselves to an album which would comprise six sides of vinyl  and to having six songs for each side, they were in very deep indeed. Studio experimentation, Joe's lyric writing bunker, and hours through the night of recording dubs and versions with Mikey Dread were the order of the day. I've said it before and I'll say it again- London Calling may be their 'best' album, punk purists will go for the debut, some of the class of '78 will always argue for Give 'Em Enough Rope, but Sandinista! is where the true, questing spirit of The Clash is to be found. It's a treasure trove and as Joe says in Westway To The World, it's 'a magnificent achievement, warts and all'. Mensforth Hill is Something About England played backwards with studio chatter at both ends. 'Shall we do another one then?' asks Joe at the end. Yes please!

Previously Unheard Backwards Track 3 is She Bangs The Drums played in reverse- it came out as an extra on the 20th anniversary release of The Stone Roses (the one with the lemon shaped USB stick- no, I didn't buy it). 

Full Fathom Five (a nice coincidental link to Duncan Gray's album Five Fathoms Full that came out last week) is Elephant Stone backwards (the Peter Hook produced version of Elephant Stone, so if you can reverse the reversed version, you've got Hooky's mix of the song too). I think this is a little more than just flipping the tape round- Ian's vocals are unclear but recorded and dropped in forwards. Full Fathom Five is the name of a 1947 Jackson Pollock painting, one of his earliest drip paintings, a masterpiece, and a clear influence on John Squire's Roses sleeve art from this period. 

The Sky Without You has already appeared once here. For his Radical Mycology Remix David Holmes took all of Andy's backwards Roses swirl and took it further, adding forwards drums, a blurry sunny day feel and sirens. One of my favourite records of recent years. David's name for the remix came from some mushroom based experimentation he undertook during lockdown, dealing with some growing up in Belfast related PTSD

Guernica is Made Of Stone backwards with Ian singing a new vocal forwards- 'If you wanna hurt me stop the row' (or similar), can be made out fairly clearly. This one feels like a step towards Don't Stop. You can imagine them in the studio with John Leckie working their way through the songs backwards, hitting on certain ones, trying new vocals, flipping parts around and eventually getting it all together when they reversed Waterfall. There was an interview with Ian and John in '88 or '89 where they said they used to drive out the road under the flightpath at Manchester airport (I know exactly which road they mean too), sit on the bonnet of the car and wait for the jumbo jets to take off over head, and then try to replicate the roar of the engines with their reversed tapes. Guernica is a painting by Pablo Picasso, depicting the Spanish town that was obliterated by the Nazi's Condor Legion, Stuka dive bombers deployed to aid the fascists in the Spanish Civil War. 2024; see Gaza.

A Spanish Civil War Sunday mix anyone?

Don't Stop is more and more, as each year passes, the highlight of The Stone Roses debut album- don't laugh- the one where the experimentation, delight in backwards tapes, a modern psychedelic guitar band was fully realised. Reni's drums and Ian's vocals are both forwards, recorded over Waterfall played in reverse. There's more to it than just reversing the tape- the guitars are slowed down, sounding like an actual waterfall, and the fade in has been added from elsewhere. Things are out of sync. The flow of the backwards guitars and bass, bubbling, lightly drilling, is a rush and Reni's cowbell tapping away gives so much. John wrote the lyrics by listening to Ian's vocal for Waterfall played backwards and then transcribed what Ian's blurred voice seemed to be suggesting.Ian then sang them- the lyrics are among the best too- 'hey blues singer/ just the guitar/ from the top/ what can I steal/ what can I feel/ I wake/ ease into my heart/ one of us/ don't stop/ isn't it funny how you shine?'. Andy Bell used this technique on Flicker. Which is where we came in....

V.A. Saturday

Jon Savage is a writer who fully deserves the status legendary attached to his name- since the early days of punk he chronicled the music and the subculture, a  writer and journalist who knows his stuff and who cares. His Sex Pistols book England's Dreaming is probably the definitive account of account of UK and US punk and his oral history of Joy Division, This Searing Light, The Sun And Everything Else,is the best account of that band's trajectory and story bar none. He has had for many years a sideline as a Various Artists album compiler, including some VA albums that have had repeat plays round here over the years: Fame- Jon Savage's Secret History Of Post Punk 1978- 1981 and 1966 Jon Savage's The Year The Decade Exploded are both Bagging Area favourites and his recent one, Do You Have The Force? Jon Savage's Alternate History Of Electronica 1978- 1982, is a genre busting, futuristic compilation that finds proto- electronica in Throbbing Gristle, Soft Machine, UFO, PiL and The Flying Lizards among others. 

In 2015 Caroline True Records released Perfect Motion: Jon Savage's Secret History Of Second Wave Psychedelia, 1988- 1993, a treasure trove of the period across four sides of vinyl, a snapshot of guitar bands, pop acts and dance music that to Jon, was what the title suggested- a new wave of psychedelia. Jon found it in Shack, The High and The Stone Roses (for this release the head spinning track Full Fathom Five, Elephant Stone played backwards, named after a Jackson Pollock painting), he found it in Deee- Lite, Pet Shop Boys, 808 State and Joi, he found it in Saint Etienne and Electronic and he found it in 'the scene's resident genius', Andrew Weatherall (Clock Factory by Sabres Of Paradise, Andrew's remix of Sly And Lovechild and his production on Screamadelica, in this case Slip Inside This House, Primal Scream's cover of a first wave of US psychedelia band, The Thirteenth Floor Elevators).

Full Fathom Five

Jon takes some delight I think in stretching the boundaries of the genre he's compiling, in finding what he's looking for places some people wouldn't. His latest compilation for Caroline True Records, out at the end of last year, is titled Jon Savage's Ambient 90s, a concept and compilation that's very up my street. True to form Jon stretches the definition of ambient so far it almost snaps the fabric of music to pieces, but it all makes sense too. In 1992 Jon started sending articles to Jockey Slut, fired up by the new music being made- 'a new way of looking at the world, a new language', he said at the time. Jockey Slut were more than happy to publish 2000 words on the importance of Aphex Twin by the man who saw Joy Division at the PSV. 

On Ambient 90s he compiles tracks by William Orbit, Aphex Twin, Underworld (Blueski from Second Toughest In The Infants, three minutes of Karl Hyde's blues guitar looped and distorted), Sandoz (Richard Kirk from Cabaret Voltaire), React To Rhythm's Intoxication (a huge progressive house track with a vocal sample whispering, 'this works almost instantly', a track so rhythmic and thumpy it can't be really called ambient but let's go with it), U-Ziq and several others. It closes with this by Biosphere, a 1994 release by a Norwegian artist on a Belgian label that starts out with background noise and acoustic guitar and floats away on ambient waves, synths and washes of sound ebbing and flowing as the acoustic guitar keeps time. 

En- Trance

An Alternate History Of The Stone Roses

Last weekend I heard the second song by the pairing up of John Squire and Liam Gallagher, a song called Mars To Liverpool. I heard the first, Just Another Rainbow, a couple of weeks previously. They both sound like I thought they would. 

While out riding my bike on Sunday morning, having just heard Mars To Liverpool before leaving the house, I started thinking about The Second Coming, the second Stone Roses album, the much delayed and highly anticipated follow up to the band's debut five years earlier. I've changed my position on The Second Coming several times and currently think of it as a handful of good songs surrounded by a lot of sub par filler. Tensions that developed during the recording of it broke the band apart, Reni leaving in 1995 and Squire in '96. They stopped talking, rarely in the same room at the same time, four men on four different drugs with no one to tell them how to fix it. I wrote a post here many years ago where I opined that, rather than going too far with The Second Coming, actually they didn't go far enough- they should have created a full on psychedelic rock experience, handed all the tapes over to Future Sound Of London or The Orb and told them to pull it into one seamless piece of music, forty minutes long, the promise of the first few minutes of Breaking Into Heaven (burbling ambient field recordings, fragments of guitar squiggles and studio experiments with Reni's percussion coming in before it breaks into the guitar heroics of the song) turned into the full album, the best bits of the album mixed together in a sonic Stone Roses stew. I still think that could work. But while riding my bike through the lanes of Cheshire I began imaging an alternative history of The Stone Roses, one where they didn't blow it but actually followed through from the high watermark of 1989/90...

... a few weeks after the Spike Island and Glasgow Green gigs in the summer of 1990 Ian, John, Mani and Reni meet and sack manager Gareth Evans. They confront record label Silvertone about the highly restrictive contract they signed a few years earlier. Silvertone boss Andrew Lauder meets his lawyers who advise him the contract is a restriction of trade and very harsh, that a judge will find for the band and he'd be better to cut his losses now. The band settle quickly and start looking for a new label. US giant Geffen have promised millions but wiser heads around the band prevail. 'Forget the money lads', you' ll make money anyway, go for the songs, make the records', friends tell them and for once this most strong-headed and willful of groups agrees. Creation are interested but the band meet Jeff Barrett from Heavenly and like his talk, the promise of complete control and the young Heavenly label's outlook. A few months later The Roses are in the studio and in early 1991 release a 12" single, Ten Storey Love Song, the chiming guitars harking back to the debut but with a more muscular bass and drums backing. The 12" rides high in the chart and a short UK tour in spring '91 sees the group rapturously received by their fans. 

By now the weight of recording a second album weighs heavily on them but the recent run of singles- Fool's Gold/ What The World Is Waiting For, One Love and Ten Storey Love Song- shows them a different way to work. 'We're gonna release some singles and EPs', Ian tells the NME, 'one after the other'. Autumn 1991 sees them record another EP, John's predilection for heavy Led Zeppelin style guitars and riffs all over the tapes and songs. Heavenly link them up with Andrew Weatherall and in 1992 an EP of Weatherall produced songs, the Led Zep riffing underplayed now, plus a remix hits the shelves, the chiming 60s psychedelia of the first album now expanded by Andrew's singular remix vision of the early 90s. 

Following the success of the EP the band are tight, spending time with each other and enjoying each other's company. Creative juices flow, Ian and John writing together daily. They meet Brendan Lynch, then recording with the about to be reborn Paul Weller and he produces several songs, three of which come out as a 12" in '93. They have side stepped the nascent Britpop stirrings of Blur, Oasis and Suede and now look to expand in other directions, the less tribal, more genre hopping world of the mid 90s pulling them in other musical directions. Ian eases up on the weed, John eases up on stronger stuff, clarity prevails. Hit and run recording sessions, working quickly with different producers is working. They stop overthinking and start enjoying it. A session with Goldie takes Reni's drums to completely new spaces. Heavenly's connections with The Chemical Brothers opens doors and minds and the band spend several weeks in the studio, Ed and Tom flitting between their own sessions and those with The Roses. A stockpile of songs is built up, a four track Chemical Roses EP seeing the light of day in summer 1995, a few weeks before The Chemical Brothers' Exit Planet Dust comes out. Blur and Oasis argue about the number one slot with two average songs, but The Roses are streets ahead, making mid 90s dance/ guitar crossover psychedelia, pushing boundaries as they once did with Fool's Gold. They still miss out on headlining Glastonbury, John breaking his collarbone, cutting short an otherwise successful tour of the US. An invitation to headline Reading the following year is turned down- the group have reverted to their stance of only playing shows on their own terms. 'We don't want to be part of somebody's else's gig', John says, the truculent interview technique of 1989 resurfacing. Instead they do a tour of seaside towns, fifteen dates in the summer of '96, starting in Bridlington, then heading down the east coast and round the south coast, several dates in Wales, and then Blackpool, Southport and Morecambe, ending in Barrow. 

In autumn 1996 they spend a few weeks in the studio with Portishead's Geoff Barrow and while not much is achieved two new songs are finished, one a dusty, cinematic trip hop groove, Reni and Mani looped by Barrow. The process of write, record and release 12"s and EPs works, the pressure of recording an album lifted and the band free to follow their noses. In 1997 Steve Hillage produces several sessions and though only a few songs are released everyone enjoys the sessions and the liquid, fluid but focussed psychedelia is well received. Several more songs sit in the vaults. 

In 1998, they falter but pick up with a tour of Europe and then record an EPs worth of songs with Mick Jones (The Clash/ BAD), Mick encouraging them to play facing each other, bashing out several songs of loose, ramshackle but melodic guitar pop. John declares that no more than two guitars are on any of the songs, hardly any overdubs and most of the songs sound like the work of a single guitar player. He switches from Les Paul to Telecaster and the thinner sound suits him and the new tunes. Mani helps Primal Scream out with some bass for their Vanishing Point album. In return Martin Duffy plays piano and keys with the Roses and another set of songs are recorded. 

As the millennium approaches the group see what they've achieved and eye the new century with a feeling of ten years of success behind them. They record some more songs, the influence of The Beta Band showing, Ian and John and Ian and Reni's occasional combustible disagreements quickly solved by Heavenly's laid back approach to managing the group. Mani and Reni find new inspiration in Neu! and Can and the band hit the studio again, Michael Rother (once a resident of Wilmslow so no stranger to north west England) at the controls. The Roses go kosmische, John playing in straight lines rather than blues, Reni in the motorik groove, his shoulders rolling as he plays.  

As New Year's Eve approaches plans are afoot and on NYE 1999 drinkers at Chorlton Irish Club are bemused when a truck pulls up in the afternoon and three men begin hauling gear in. The Stone Roses turn up and begin playing at 8pm, opening with I Wanna Be Adored and then flitting between the songs from the debut album and the dozen single and EP releases since summer 1990. They finish at 9.30pm by which time word has spread and fans are arriving. Packing up quickly they head to Sale and set the gear up again in the scout hut at Raglan Road, the venue where John and Ian first played together as The Patrol in 1980. Simon Wolstencroft is there, manning the door with Cressa. Fans arrive, first come first served, about one hundred packed into the scout hut, sweat already dripping from the walls and ceiling. At 10.30 the band appear and begin to play, shimmering dance rock, motorik grooves, light headed psychedelia, backwards songs, and chorus heavy guitar pop. They finish with a cover of White Riot, John's guitar squealing its last as the clock strikes midnight. 

They release their second album the next day. In typically Roses style they mess it up- it's New Year's Day in the year 2000, no record shops are open. When fans finally get the album (unburdened by a heavy and ludicrous name like The Second Coming, it is titled Angry Young Teddy Bears) they find it is a triple disc record. Inside the gatefold is a piece of paper announcing the end of the group. They have nothing more to do. The album contains some of the songs released over the previous ten years and many unreleased from the various sessions, songs recorded with and produced by The Chemical Brothers, Brendan Lynch, Geoff Barrow, Mick Jones, one from a session with Lee Scratch Perry that no one can remember much about, two with Jagz Kooner, several with Steve Hillage and one ten minute epic with Michael Rother. The third disc contains a previously unreleased Weatherall remix from 1991, a Sabres Of Paradise remix from 1996, and a dubby, horn- led Justin Robertson remix. On the final side of the album is a twenty three minute track, the fruits of two different sessions joined together by John Leckie, the first ten minutes the result of a collaboration with Bjork and Graham Massey, John's guitar and Mani's bass and Reni's drums locked in a vaguely 808 style groove, while Ian and Bjork sing a duet. In the second half of the song, Jah Wobble's bass appears and Mani and Wobble trade rubbery basslines, the drums and FX pedals spiraling around, while Ian whispers sweet nothings about space exploration, conquistadors and new centuries. Sinead O'Connor is on backing vocals. The fade out is a long languid groove that could happily go on forever.

A few weeks after the split there are rumours of a series of dates in Scandinavia but nothing happens. All four men are seen together socially, friends still and happy to leave the music industry behind, having achieved what they set out to- play gigs, make records, look good, give journalists a tough time in interviews, do it on their own terms. After all of that, from the halcyon days of 1989 when they broke through, and their constant desire to keep reinventing their sound through to 1999, there's nothing left to do, nowhere left to go-  they've done it all. 

Breaking Into Heaven

More Bands In Places They Shouldn't Be

Following my two previous posts in this series, the first here and the second here, today I offer you some more television appearances from bands whose pluggers and record labels booked them onto tv programmes that may in retrospect have been a little ill advised. The mid 80s was a golden period for this sort of thing with bands miming on lunchtime television, early evening chat shows and children's tv in order to shift more singles.  

In October 1985 Prefab Sprout appeared on Hold Tight, filmed and broadcast by one of Scotland's regional independent broadcasters. The actual appearance was at Alton Towers, the Staffordshire theme park. Prefab Sprout are playing their classic 80s single When Love Breaks Down. It doesn't look especially warm. The crowd are seated in temporary seating, swaying on demand and largely out of time. Paddy McAloon attempts to hide his embarrassment behind a pair of aviators. The band spend much of their time concentrating on remaining steady on the swaying, springy platforms. 

On 5th January 1980 The Clash, who famously refused to do Top Of The Pops because they wouldn't mime, appeared on TISWAS, ITV's Saturday morning kids tv show.  The four members are interviewed by Sally James and offer a copy of London Calling as a prize for a lucky viewer. Sally keeps talking, presumably in an attempt to make sure no one swears. Topper is clearly stoned. At two minutes thirty nine seconds Paul leans over to spit on the floor in front of a group of small children. It's all over fairly quickly, probably to everyone's relief. 

In 1990 Ice T appeared on BBC2's art programme The Late Show. Nothing that incongruous in some ways- it was an arts programme after all- but somehow Ice T, at that point the leading exponent of gangsta rap, guns, chains and women in tiny bikinis, appearing on a fairly staid and stiff arts programme more used to hosting panel discussions of the writings of Salman Rushdie, is all kinds of dissonance. In this section, closing the programme, Ice T does Lethal Weapon. His rapping, done live, is flawless and the sense of LA menace is palpable in front of a completely, sterile empty BBC studio. 

The show was already a music lover's dream, if not for the right reasons. In November 1989 The Stone Roses were riding the crest of a very large wave and pitched up on The Late Show midweek, an accident waiting to happen. The programme went out live, Tracey MacLeod introducing the fourpiece playing Made Of Stone live, the band looking impossibly cool and sounding on it as well. As they hit the first chorus John Squire's guitar hits the BBC's noise limiters and the sound cuts out suddenly. Drummer Reni begins giggling. Ian begins to ask questions. Tracey returns to the camera and apologises, moving on to the next item (about photographer Martin Parr). 'They ask you to come and then they mess you about', Ian complains behind her. 'We're wasting our time lads', he goes on, and then louder, 'Amateurs, amateurs'. It is brilliant TV, and let's be honest, much better and more memorable than if they'd just played Made Of Stone. 

Forty Minutes Of Justin Robertson Remixes

A few of Justin Robertson's early 90s remixes today, chunky beats and tempos, samples and trumpets- lots of trumpets- and indie bands transformed into dancefloor monsters. Ideal for the spring sunshine that has finally arrived this weekend in this part of the world. 

Forty Minutes Of Justin Robertson Remixes

• The Sugarcubes: Birthday (Justin Robertson 12" Mix)
• The Stone Roses: Waterfall (Justin Robertson's Mix)
• Bjork: Big Time Sensuality (Justin Robertson Lionrock Wigout) 
• Lionrock: Packet Of Peace (No More Fucking Trumpets)
• Yargo: The Love Revolution (Justin Robertson's Scream Team Remix)
• Inspiral Carpets: Caravan (No Windscreen Mix)

Justin's remix of Birthday by The Sugarcubes turns singular Icelandic post- punk oddness into seven minutes of dub loveliness. Released on vinyl in 1992 along with remixes from Jim and William Reid and Tommy D.

I was of the opinion once that remixes of songs by The Stone Roses were totally unnecessary. I've come round to some of them, not least this remix of Waterfall, Reni's drums replaced by a skippy drumbeat, some echo- laden cymbal splashes and Ian's voice sitting above the music with John's guitar drizzled on top.

Big Time Sensuality was inescapable in 1993, not least in Manchester's clubs and bars, and enjoyed every time. I met my wife on the dancefloor at Paradise Factory dancing to it. Justin's remix, in his Lionrock guise, was a big hitter too, a slo- mo groove, with those massive trumpets and Bjork's barely contained sense of gleeful abandon.

Justin, Mark Stagg and rapper MC Buzz B were Lionrock. Packet Of Peace was their 1993 12". The remix here is Justin's own Lionrock remix of Lionrock and clearly by the title,  he'd had enough of his signature trumpet sound by this point. I can keep enjoying those trumpets ad infinitum.

Yargo were Manchester's best kept secret, an urban funk/ soul/ blues group graced by the honeyed voice of Basil Clarke who are probably best known for their song of the same name being the title music to Tony Wilson's Other Side Of Midnight, a semi- legendary music programme from the late 80s (which The Stone Roses appeared on, playing Waterfall- see above). The Love Revolution came out as a 12" in 1990 with co- vocals by guest singer Zoe Griffin and samples the drums from Fool's Gold. Yargo's 1987 album Bodybeat is something of a lost classic. The follow up, 1989's Communicate, didn't manage to crossover outside Manchester but is (again,) one of the period's lost gems. As is this remix

I posted this Justin Robertson remix of Inspiral Carpets a couple of weeks ago, a 1991 acid house banger complete with the 'you play consciousness expanding material' vocal sample and general '91 madness. A numbered 12" vinyl release in a run of 10, 000. 10, 000!

Not All Roses

I'm interrupting the regular Saturday Theme series this week for an account of an event I went to on Thursday night, an event which started only two hours after the announcement of the death of the Queen (which had some strange parallels that occurred to me as I walked home). Dave Haslam- DJ, writer, journalist, man abut town- has been writing a series of mini- books over the last few years, published by Confingo, an independent publishing house based in West Didsbury. The books fit in your pocket and are a quick read, more an essay than a full length book and in Dave's words 'tell stories that haven't been told'. All You Need Is Dynamite deals with a terrorist cell based in Moss Side in 1971 linked to the Angry Brigade. Another deals with Sylvia Plath and the few weeks she spent in Paris in 1956. We Are The Youth tells the story of Keith Haring's adventures in New York's nightclub world and Searching For Love deals the truths and rumours concerning the six month period Courtney Love spent in Liverpool in the early 80s. His latest book is called Not All Roses, the life and times of Stephen Cresser aka Cressa, the man who was the fifth Stone Rose, an ever present in their live performances and photo shoots in the 1989- 90 period, where the band went from being local heroes to a phenomenon. Dave has arranged a run of A Conversation With Cressa events, one being up the road from me in Stretford at head, a bar in a former bank on the Chester Road facing side of Stretford Arndale. 

Cressa has quite the story to tell and over a series of interviews and conversations Dave pulled it together. Cressa grew up in Firswood, a mile north of Stretford and became a member of the Happy Mondays road crew, a Hacienda face, the man who danced on stage with The Roses and operated John Squire's FX pedals. In the mid 90s he tried to get his own group- Bad Man Wagon- off the ground and failed trying (Dave said in his intro this was almost what the book was about, the band that didn't make it whose story is as interesting as the ones that did). More recently Cressa became homeless and addicted to heroin, begging on the streets of the city centre and this is where the public conversation begins, Cressa speaking openly, honestly and passionately about the situation he got himself into. Cressa is a livewire, Dave asking questions, being the butt of the jokes at times, steering Cressa back towards the story and keeping the freewheeling conversation on track. 

Cressa talks of his first musical experiences, albums by The Stranglers, and the time in the 80s when he first encounters and becomes friends with the people who would several years later become magazine front cover stories. On scooter club runs he meets Ian Brown and John Squire and they become firm friends. At the Hacienda, at a time when a crowd of two hundred people was considered a good turn out, he meets members of Happy Mondays and starts to go with them when they play gigs outside the city, the man in the back of the van who eventually gets paid to carry amps and instruments into and out of gig venues. He speaks warmly about Derek, Shaun and Paul Ryder's dad, the man who was the band's one man road crew. He talks about John Squire giving Cressa the job of operating his guitar pedals, a job that seems unnecessary in many ways as most guitarists operate their pedals themselves with their feet- he thanks John for doing this and says that when it came to it there was no choice between staying with the Mondays and joining the Roses, it was The Stone Roses every time. Cressa introduces them to some of the musical influences that would hone their sound, 60s psychedelia, Jimi Hendrix, The Nazz, The Rain Parade. The three way friendship between Ian, John and Cressa comes across as the glue that held the group together in the late 80s. He then talks about how after the gig at Glasgow Green, 9th June 1990, that was it- the band stopped functioning. No more gigs, no more records for five years and Cressa suddenly out of the set up. 

As well as the heavier serious stuff- heroin addiction, homelessness, generation defining guitar bands and the way that they blew it after having it all- Cressa, emotions always close to the surface, is also witty, sparky and warm, still able to talk affectionately about the good times. He appears with The Stone Roses on Tony Wilson's late night, north west only music programme The Other Side Of Midnight, the band's first TV appearance with the group in their cocky prime playing Waterfall, their dreamiest moment. Cressa by this point is wearing flares, a sartorial pioneer of the bell bottomed jeans in Manchester. In the clip the rest of the group are cool as you like, looking like a 60s/ late 80s street gang, but definitely not wearing flares. Cressa is dancing behind John's amp, doing the loose limbed rolling shoulders shuffle, his wide legged trousers hidden from view. Six months later, as Cressa grins ruefully at Head, they were all wearing them, Ian in famously 22" bell bottomed jeans. 

There was an interview in the NME around that time, when The Roses were making their seemingly effortless ascent. In '89 they often came across as a political band, talking about lemons as protection against CS gas as sued by riot police, the Paris riots of Mai '68, anti- monarchical and anti- establishment. They placed great store in being against the monarchy. In the interview they talked about the ravens at the Tower Of London and the myth that if the ravens leave the tower, England would fall. Ian (or John) mentions wanting to be at the Tower, shooting the ravens. The interview then goes onto the subject of trousers and their width- in the 80s flares were a big deal, they had been so unfashionable for so long that wearing them was a statement. 'Flares', one of them says in the interview, 'are as important as England falling actually'. 

Their debut album came out in early May 1989 and they toured extensively to support it, Cressa there every night, part of the gang, the man who gave them a strong part of their look, dancing away behind John Squire. When you flipped the record over, side two opened with this.

Elizabeth My Dear

And here we are, several decades later. 

Scooters, flares, homelessness, heroin, cough medicine, the Festival of The Tenth Summer, albums by The Stranglers, the Hacienda, Bez, Joe Strummer... you can find it all in the book here priced only eight pounds. 

Another former Stone Rose present at Head was Andy Couzens, another man who suddenly and unexpectedly found himself an- ex Stone Rose. Andy took his guitar and went off to form The High. I had a brief chat with him, told him how much I liked his records and said I saw The High play at Liverpool Poly in 1990, a gig he said he remembered. Talking to Dave afterwards we both mentioned the Newcastle gig on the same tour where singer John Matthews was taken ill and Cressa, by this point touring with The High, was persuaded to go onstage and fill in on vocals. The gig ended in what the NME described as a riot. They never quite got the sales to match their still wonderful sounding 1990 debut album, Somewhere Soon, a record with three shimmering guitar pop singles in Box Set Go, Up And Down and Take Your Time. This song, chiming guitars and reverb soaked vocals, is one of the period's lost gems. 

Take Your Time

I Hear My Song Begin To Say

Ten years ago last night I found myself standing in the packed Parr Hall in Warrington along with about one thousand other lucky souls watching the return of The Stone Roses. In November 2011 they announced their reformation at a press conference and then three sold out shows at Heaton Park in June 2012. Suddenly, on the morning of 23rd May 2012 they dropped word that the first 1000 people who arrived at the Parr Hall booking office with a piece of Roses memorabilia (a record or CD or a t- shirt) would get a wristband to the warm up show. If there's one thing the group excelled at first time around it was creating an event, gigs that were out of the ordinary (Blackpool, Spike Island, Ally Pally), a group capable of doing something  a little different (blowing the sound up live on BBC, throwing paint around the offices of their former record company, signing to a major label and then seemingly doing nothing for five years). The gig at Parr Hall fell into that kind of territory, for sheer unexpectedness if nothing else. 

I was at work and for some reason got home fairly early, opened the email, got changed and straight back into the car and drove over to Warrington, not expecting to get a wristband but at least giving it a go. I parked up near the centre of town and crossing a square heading towards Parr Hall a man younger than me, heading the other way, spoke to me as we passed each other- 'the wristbands have all gone mate'. I nodded and said something in reply. Then he said, 'I've got one but can't go. Make me an offer'. I paused for thought, wondering what he thought was fair/ derisory. I had no cash on me so it would involve a trip to a cashpoint whatever I offered. 

'Twenty quid?' 

'Done'.

And with that I got the cash, handed it over and he wriggled the wristband off his wrist and I slipped it on to mine. 

Standing around the square outside Parr Hall I had a slight sense of disbelief that it was actually happening, that this was some kind of elaborate prank. The pubs around the square began to fill up, people standing outside in the warm May sunshine. It occurred to me that almost everyone waiting to enter the hall had no idea at all when they woke up that morning that they would be seeing The Stone Roses that night. It seemed unreal. I texted a couple of people and then bumped into one of my brothers and his then partner, both with wristbands. Across the square I spotted friend of the band, journalist and Membrane John Robb plus former dancer/ FX man Cressa. It started to seem more likely this was actually happening. The hall doors opened and we filed in. No support band, a DJ spinning house records. The crowd downstairs nodding heads and beginning to shuffle and jig about. The room was full of expectancy, a buzz you could feel. When the DJ played Strings Of Life the energy levels rose again, the crowd upstairs on the balcony bouncing. A camera crew (Shane Meadows it turned out) moved around the room. On stage, a familiar looking drum kit, twin bass drums with lemons printed on the front, a bass amp covered in Toby jugs and guitar amps to the right. The Supremes' Stoned Love began to blast out of the PA and eventually a roar as four middle aged men took the stage, Mani entering like he'd just scored the winner at Wembley, John Squire with his face semi- obscured by his fringe and heading for his guitar, Reni in a home made head dress taking his seat behind the drums, and front and centre Ian Brown, pink Stone Roses t- shirt and jacket, waving and telling everyone to put their phones away, 'You'll miss making the memory of this while you filming this' or words to that effect. Shane Meadows film (Made Of Stone) caught their arrival on stage and the audience reaction, and then the beginning of I Wanna Be Adored. It captures it all very well. 

They played for just under an hour, the set largely based around the first album and the surrounding singles and B-sides, kicking in with the long bass- led intro to I Wanna Be Adored and Squire's liquid guitar lines drizzled over the top. As the bassline bumps along the crowd started to bounce with it, instantly picking up on what was happening. At the end of the song, as it faded out in a wave of guitar noise, Ian waved to his parents sitting up in the balcony, a huge grin saying 'look, we did it, we're back'. Then it was straight into Mersey Paradise ,the sun dappled psychedelia of 1989 spinning round the by now manic, hyper crowd, the song and crowd surfacing together to sing the refrain, 'you see it in the sea/ river cools where I belong'. A singalong, beefed up Sally Cinnamon. The epic cool guitar lines of Made Of Stone. The bedsit indie of Sugar Spun Sister and Where Angels Play. It all seems like a dream now- never mind that it was ten years ago, the fact it happened, in a small venue like the ones they played back in '89, seems unreal (moreso given the next time I saw them was with 80, 000 other people at Heaton Park and the one after that in a football stadium- they'd given up on out of the ordinary venues by 2016, taking the safer route). Reni's drumming was less fluid and rolling than it had been back in the late 80s possibly, the drums being played harder and with more punch- two bass drums would do that. Mani was grinning throughout the set, his basslines a key part of so many Roses songs. Squire his familiar inexpressive self, peeling off guitar lines and riffs nonchalantly as if thinking bout something else entirely. Shoot You Down was a pause for breath, the bouncing up and down calming a little for the hushed singalong part, the crowd caught somewhere between disbelief and delirium. Only two songs from The Second Coming made it into the set- Tightrope, subsequently dropped (Ian found it too hard to sing apparently- you can probably insert your own joke here), and set closer Love Spreads. In between the twin highlights of the gig songwise- the dizzying, bouncing, spellbinding psychedelic guitar pop of Waterfall with the crowd singing the guitar line to accompany Squire as he plays it during the end section of the song and then She Bangs The Drums, Mani's instantly recognisable bassline driving the song, guitar chords sprayed out, drums punching along and Ian grinning this way through. They finished with Love Spreads, just eleven songs in under an hour, no Fools Gold, no I Am The Resurrection, no Elephant Stone or This Is The One (all played later on during the massive reunion shows). They had to keep something in reserve I guess. No encore either, lights up straight away and everyone spilling out into the Warrington night, pinching themselves, hugging, unable to quite believe what they'd just seen. I stood waiting for my brother to emerge and a group passing by invited me back to theirs (I didn't go by the way)- it was that kind of night. 

She Bangs The Drums

A month later they played Heaton Park, three nights of 80, 000 people, all sold out, with full support line ups and fireworks at the end as Resurrection faded out. It was good fun, the band played really well and gave a full set, with a fifteen minute version of Fools Gold, the song twisting and turning itself inside out, and the traditional set closer of I Am The Resurrection with the full on extended funk/ rock outro.  The whole thing felt like a celebration. It was great for people who didn't see them first time round to get the chance, a chance for others to relive the glory days of youth (which I suppose is what heritage rock is really or at least partly for), good for the band to get a payday (after being screwed over by Silvertone on album sales especially). At one point at Heaton Park I turned around to look behind me (we were fairly near the stage). There must have been 60, 000 people behind me, stretching all the way back as far as the fence hundreds of yards away. I wondered how much they were getting out out of it, whether seeing bands in big fields where you end up watching the screens as much as the stage, is ever that good. I've no doubt that seeing them at Parr Hall took the edge of Heaton Park for me- it was good, I wouldn't have missed it, but Parr Hall- the unexpectedness of it, the intimacy, the excitement and energy of the crowd and the band- was something else. I hope that doesn't sound elitist, or 'I was there and you weren't'- it's not meant to. I know I really lucked my in to Parr Hall, I could easily have not passed the man who sold me the wristband and moped around for a while before either driving home or deciding to stand outside the venue and listen from there, almost but not quite at the gig.