The Return Of The Free CD Box

Today's post is another raid on the box of free CDs that with magazines, a random selection of three tracks from two CDs, both coincidentally from December 2021. First is Will Sergeant, Bunnyman and solo artist. Themes For 'Grind' originally came out in 1982, Will going analogue synth and experimental ambient, an album of  eleven tracks. At first all were titled Untitled but since all have been named Scene followed by a Roman numeral, I through to XI. 

Scene V

Scene V was on Electronic Sounds Best Of 2021 CD, a double album with both new and re- issued music from that year starting with cover star LoneLady and finishing with Me Lost Me. Scene V is early 80s, Cold War/ Liverpool experimentalism, the sound of someone spending some time alone with a room full of synths. Theme For 'Grind' is available to buy in full at Sgt. Fuzz's Bandcamp page. 

Over at Mojo in December 2021 the cover stars were hoary old Led Zeppelin in all their 70s pomp. The free CD however was compiled by Idles, titled Acts Of Resistance, and pulled together a disparate fifteen artists and songs from that year's releases and re- issues, kicking off with Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds' The Mercy Seat and wending its way through Bush Tetras, Idles, Au Pairs, and James Holden among others, with these two finding themselves transferred from disc to my hard drive. 

Fisherman's Blues (Live In Toronto 1989)

In 1989 The Waterboys were riding the crest of a wave, the Big Music replaced by traditional Irish and Scottish music, a move partly due to fiddle player Steve Wickham joining the band as well as Mike Scott's move to Dublin in 1986. The album Fisherman's Blues was a huge success, crossing over and winning new fans. The title track is Dylan- esque, the band in full reel behind Mike and the lyrics all about escape- 'I wish I was a fisherman/ Tumblin' on the seas/ Far away from dry land/ And it's bitter memories... I wish I was a brakeman/ On a hurtlin' fevered train'- and conclude with 'Light in my head/ You in my arms'. The live recording was from Toronto's Masonic Hall, 11th October 1989, a long way from home but in sweeping form. It came as part of a seven CD boxed set of the group in 1989- 90, Fisherman's Blues and Right To Roam album, a huge number of live recordings, versions, remasters and outtakes. 

1000 Miles

1000 Miles is by Dirty Three and their 1996 album Horse Stories. Jim White, Mick Turner and Warren Ellis formed the band in 1992, instrumental music on guitar, drums and violin. 1000 Miles is cinematic, but one of those films that stays with you afterwards leaving you slightly disturbed. 

This Is The Sea

Sparked maybe by listening to the new Bill Ryder- Jones album Iachyd Da and to Bjork's Post album from 1995, plus now I think of it Durutti Column's Domo Arigato, I've been subconsciously searching out music with strings recently, big music with orchestral instruments. I only started joining the dots when I started writing this post. As well as those above (none of which seem to be that directly related to each other sonically or thematically) last week took me to Penguin Cafe's 2023 album Rain Before Seven and to The Waterboys. I think maybe these connections are unrelated and as much prompted by links on blogs and websites but listing them does seem to reveal a pattern and I'm into that as an idea. I'll come back to Penguin Cafe another time though because today is all about The Waterboys. 

For some reason last week I had an urge to hear Fisherman's Blues, the 1988 album where Mike Scott did an about turn and headed away from The Big Music to Ireland and to traditional music, led at least partly by fiddle player Steve Wickham and also partly by the view from the top of the mountain, from the stadium tours supporting Simple Minds and U2 that This Is The Sea led him to. Mike decided he'd done enough of that, it wasn't a goal to pursue anymore and decided to follow his nose elsewhere. But back to This Is The Sea is where I headed after playing Fisherman's Blues (I'd forgotten incidentally how much of Fisherman's Blues I knew inside out, an album that was an essential part of late 1988. In our first term at university in Liverpool I had a friend who played it constantly and the music you hear at that age runs deep- Fisherman's Blues does for sure). 

After playing Fisherman's Blues a couple of times and enjoying it immensely I headed back to my copy of This Is The Sea, Mike's 1985 masterpiece, the culmination of several years work and songwriting, pulling together the sounds in his head and the themes in his writing with the ability, musicians and people to realise them fully. On This Is The Sea Karl Wallinger played a key role musically, a one man orchestra according to Mike. The album is also something of a state of the nation address, a record of important songs that takes in English politics and Thatcherism (on Old England), spirituality, meditation and shamanism (The Pan Within, Spirit), environmentalism (Don't Bang The Drum), love (Trumpets) and on The Whole Of The Moon a song started on the back of an envelope when his girlfriend asked him if writing a song was difficult and which turned into a tribute to an inspirational, mythic figure, a chart hit and a future end of the night Balearic anthem. All of this blasted its way through the speakers last week, all texture and dynamics, lyrics and vision, songs with an epic quality that I don't always go looking for in music but which has a real power on this record in Mike Scott's hands. The title track was the one which really cut through to me though...

This Is The Sea

The final song on the album, the end of the journey, the thrum of energy powered by a wall of acoustic guitars and a panoramic sense of scale, a fiddle and the poetry of the words- 'These things you keep/ You better throw them away/ Turn your back on your soulless days/ Once you were tethered/ Now you are free... That was the river/ This is the sea'- a song about renewal, about letting go of the old and embracing the new. 

With A Torch In Your Pocket And The Wind At Your Heels

This is a record that was and is a bit of an opinion splitter. The Whole Of The Moon was recorded and released in 1985 when Mike Scott and The Waterboys were pursuing The Big Music and then gained a second life a couple of years later as an end of the night crowd pleasing favourite at various dance clubs, it having that widescreen, wide- eyed, anything goes Balearic vibe. It then gained a third life in 1991 when the record company (Chrysalis I think) decided it should be a big hit and indeed it was, crashing the top three in the UK charts. It became a bit ubiquitous at that point and radio stations the world over ensure that Mike Scott's royalty cheques must always be a pleasant surprise. Lots of people I know/ have known love The Whole Of The Moon. Some people, a minority perhaps, are vociferous in their dislike of it- I know some of them too. The sax, the fireworks going off after the 'You came like a comet' line, the dirginess of it, too much, too big.

Me, I love it. 

The Whole Of The Moon

Mike's told an interviewer recently that the song was written when a girl he was with asked him if writing a song was easy or difficult. 'Easy', he replied and came up with the line 'I saw the crescent/ You saw the whole of the moon' on the spot in the back of a taxi. He then finished the lyric back at the hotel. The final section is where he really takes flight, the words becoming a torrent of imagery-

'Unicorns and cannonballs, palaces and piers/ Trumpets, towers and tenements/ Wide oceans full of tears/ Flags, rags ferryboats/ Scimitars and scarves/ Every precious dream and vision/ Underneath the stars, yes, you climbed on the ladder/ With the wind in your sails/ You came like a comet/ Blazing your trail/ Too high/ Too far/ Too soon/ You saw the whole of the moon'

Lindsay Was My First Love

I was never a massive fan of The Waterboys- I appreciate what Mike Scott was doing, the Big Music and Celtic influences, and I've danced to The Whole Of The Moon just like the rest of you have- but when Fisherman's Blues came out I was never able to play it all the way through and fully enjoy it. Having said that I love A Bang On The Ear. I'm a sucker for those rat-a-tat-tat narrative songs, where the rhythm and the rhyme rattle along, telling stories, especially in this one where Mike looks back at the girls in his past he's loved.

A Bang On The Ear

To pick a verse almost at random-

'Deborah broke my heart 
And I the willing fool
I fell for her one summer
On the road to Liverpool
I thought it was forever
But it was over within the year (oh dear)
But I send her my love
And a bang on the ear'

I like the way he throws in the homely and prosaic (chicken soup say). I like the reflective quality of the words, the lightness of touch and the wordplay. It's also in the way the song fades in and out, like it could have started earlier and carried on longer.

I suppose the daddy of these songs is Dylan's Tangled Up In Blue, a tour de force in painting pictures with words, rhyming couplets describing a life lived (whether it's Dylan's actual life, an imagined life or a composite of people's I don't know). Tangled Up In Blue switches between tenses, the present and the past, while Dylan narrates a number of scenes that got him to where was then-

'She was married when we first met
Soon to be divorced
I helped her out of a jam I guess
But I used a little too much force'

and later...

'I had a job in the great north woods
Working as a cook for a spell
But I never did like it all that much
And one day the axe just fell
So I drifted down to New Orleans
Where I happened to be employed
Workin' for a while on a fishin' boat
Right outside of Delacroix'

and later still...

'I lived with them on Montague Street
In a basement down the stairs
There was music in the cafes at night
And revolution in the air'

What both these songs have is an authority and the voice of experience. What we get is the rush of words, a pile up of images and autobiography that becomes universal but with different names and places. And you can picture them being written- once the first line is there and the rhythm gets going, it all coming out in a flood, fingers banging away at typewriter keys.

Tangled Up In Blue

Then there is 88 Lines About 44 Women by The Nails, an obscure 1984 single from a US post-punk band. Over a pleasingly basic Casio backing track Marc Campbell delivers deadpan narration, describing each one of 44 women in 2 lines, (some  he admitted were real and some imaginary). In a 2018 light you could argue that reducing women to a single characteristic, often based around sex, in a list for comic effect is a little sexist but this is so well done with so many good lines that I think it stands.

An excerpt from the middle-

'Pauline thought that love was simple
Turned it on and turned it off
Jean-Marie was complicated
Like some French film-maker's plot
Gina was the perfect lady
Always had her stockings straight
Jackie was a rich punk rocker
Silver spoon and paper plate'

88 Lines About 44 Women

John Peel loved it. In a nice twist, 30 years after writing the song, Campbell got in touch with one of the women in the song through Facebook (Tanya Turkish, she of the leather biker boots) and they became a couple.