Streets Of Minneapolis

Bruce Springsteen wrote this song nine days ago, last Saturday, recorded it a few days later and released it the following day, Thursday 28th January. In that sense it is a protest song of the 60s tradition, topical folk protest articulating the issues of the day coupled with burning anger and righteousness, sent out to people quickly to support a movement. It names the dead, Alex Pretti and Renee Good. 

Bruce's song, Streets Of Minneapolis, is Dylan- esque, a rising tide of rage against a regime that has crossed the lines, building slowly with voice, guitar and drums, then backing vocals, 'In our home they killed and roamed/ In the winter of 26/ We'll remember the names of those who died/ On the streets of Minneapolis'. Bruce goes on to name the perpetrators, those who give the orders and sanction and excuse the murders- Trump, Miller, Noem- and he goes on, the song rising in a sea of raised voices- 

'In chants of ICE out now Our city’s heart and soul persists Through broken glass and bloody tears On the streets of Minneapolis

Oh our Minneapolis, I hear your voice Singing through the bloody mist Here in our home they killed and roamed In the winter of ’26 We’ll take our stand for this land And the stranger in our midst We’ll remember the names of those who died On the streets of Minneapolis'

Streets Of Minneapolis ends with the chants of the crowd, 'ICE out ICE out ICE out...' Bruce giving the people the final word...

I've not really ever been a fan of Bruce Springsteen. In the mid- 80s the whole stadium rock, saxophone solo, chest beating Bruce did nothing for me and although people said look beyond that, listen to Nebraska, I never did. In recent years I've tiptoed closer, found some songs I can enjoy and have appreciated him as an authentic voice and as a decent voice in US political life. I found myself singing along to Dancing In The Dark and Born To Run a while ago, hearing them in a pub, and actually enjoying them shorn of their 80s MTV major label rock sheen. I have always liked the 1993 song Streets Of Philadelphia and this new song has been something of an eye opener for me. Recently I heard this, a remix of Bruce's State Trooper by Trentemoller that I'd not heard before and it's given me another little opening into Bruce Springsteen's music.

Streets Of Minneapolis has gone to the top of the charts (streaming) in nineteen countries at the time of writing so Bruce has very much struck a chord. More power to you Bruce Springsteen. 

Something may have tipped in Trump's fascist USA in the last week, the murders of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in broad daylight by paramilitary thugs marking a change in the public mood, something that even Trump, the authoritarian with no controls or bounds on him other than his 'own morality', has had to back down from. I am teaching A Level History classes at the moment a unit on Germany 1918- 1945, a time and place where gangs of armed, uniformed paramilitaries stalked the streets and demanded to see the papers of people who looked different or who had an accent, to see if they were truly German. Those who could not pass that test were bundled off to camps. Some were killed in broad daylight. If only we could learn from the recent past. 

In November 2024, on the day of the presidential election, I wrote this at a post here. 

People sometimes shrink from using the word fascist. It's too extreme, it's student politics, it's an exaggeration. Perhaps the culture around the fascist dictators of the 20th century is partly the reason-  Hitler was a fascist and this blinds us to modern equivalents. No one can be as bad as Hitler can they? Therefore, no one else can be a fascist. But Trump's actions and words are fascist- the demonisation of minorities, the talk of genetics and purity, the desire to have unlimited and unchallengeable power, the cult of the leader, the assaults on democracy, the rampant nationalism, the cosy relationship between big business and power- all these things are fascist. I think we should call it what it is. 

A lot of you agreed. Elsewhere a friend countered that Trump's not a fascist, that the state planned economy of the 20th century fascist states is absent in the USA, that it's an exaggeration to throw the word around. I still don't think so. I think it's entirely apt and describes Trump's second term exactly- the use of violence, the shutting down of critical voices in the media, the state sanctioned lying by government mouthpieces, the racist language and policies, the use of paramilitary organisations to abduct and kill in the streets, the kidnapping of foreign leaders, the bullying and threats to sovereign states, the belief that might gives right- it's fascism. 

Over here in the UK we have our own problems at the moment, political, social and economic. It'd be nice to ignore a country thousands of miles away and say it's nothing to do with us but unfortunately what Trump and the US does affects us all. We are all drawn into this fascism. 

I feel for those Americans who are anti- Trump, who are appalled by their government and the failure of the Constitution to provide a check on Trump's power, on his fascism. I take some small comfort in the knowledge that at some point in the future (and three years away does feel like along time I know) he will be gone- by his term of office ending and by democratic process (fingers crossed) or by nature taking its course- and that something better comes in his place. I hope that the anti- Trump and anti- ICE feelings of the last week provide some glimmer of hope and that Bruce Springsteen adds a little more. 

Fifty Minute Midwinter Mix

A mix for the winter solstice, the longest night and shortest day, and to celebrate the fact that we'll start to get a little more daylight every day. Songs with winter in the title are plentiful and there are quite a few that didn't make it into this mix for various reasons- I wanted to keep this mix largely ambient/ ambient inspired (although that goes a bit off piste in places as you can see from the tracklisting below). Aztec Camera's Walk Out To Winter, The Bangles/ Simon and Garfunkel's Hazy Shade Of Winter and Teenage Fanclub's Winter just didn't fit and A Certain Ratio's ten minute drone epic Winter Hill was too long and cutting it down/ fading it out didn't seem right. 

Fifty Minute Midwinter Mix

• Joanna Brouk: Winter Chimes
• Pye Corner Audio: A Winter Drone For Christmas
• SUSS: Winter Light
• The Durutti Column: Sketch For Winter
• Trentemoller: While The Cold Winter Waiting
• Michael Head And The Red Elastic Band: Winter Turns To Spring
• Stockholm Monsters: Winter
• The Pictish Trail: Winter Home Disco
• Saint Etienne: Her Winter Coat
• Neil Young and Crazy Horse: Winterlong
• Vashti Bunyan: Winter Is Blue
• Glass Candy: Warm In The Winter

Winter Chimes is from a 1980 Joanna Brouk album, The Space Between. It is atmospheric and enchanting, just chimes and piano sitting somewhere in the space where ambient crosses into New Age.

Pye Corner Audio's Winter Drone For Christmas- the title is exactly what it is- is from Christmas Eve 2023, five minutes of low key synth loveliness. 

Winter Light is from Promise, the 2020 album by SUSS, an ambient Americana trio from New York. Highly recommended.  

Sketch For Winter is from The Durutti Column's 1980 album, The Return Of The Durutti Column album, Vini Reilly's debut long player. Vini was pushed into Cargo Studios in Rochdale by Tony Wilson during a period when he was suffering from severe depression. Tony thought it might save Vini. In the studio was Martin Hannett and a van load of new equipment. The album, Fact 14, was housed in a Situationist inspired sandpaper sleeve, and contains ten tracks of Vini playing guitar and Martin playing 'switches' (as the sleevenotes say). It's recently been remastered and re- issued and sounds better than ever, a foundational album for Factory and UK post- punk (not that it sounds post- punk but it is- Vini says, doing what he did could only have happened in the space that opened up after punk). 

Trentemoller's 2006 album The Last Resort was the Danish producer's debut, an electronic album that sounds very live.

Michael Head and The Red Elastic Band's Adios Senor Pussycat still sounds like one of the best albums of 2017 and of that entire decade. Winter Turns To Spring is Mick on piano and singing, a change of sound from the rich, full band scouse folk rock that makes up most of the album. 

Stockholm Monsters were from Burnage and signed to Factory. Winter is from 1984's Alma Mater, a record produced by Peter Hook and largely ignored in 1984, one of those albums that is a lost gem. A dark, monochrome sound, led by the bass guitar, very poetic and very Factory. 

The Pictish Trail is Johnny Lynch, who operates out of a caravan on the Isle Of Eigg, Scotland and was part of the Fence Collective and the man behind Fence Records, an open minded, folk influenced label started by Lynch and King Creosote. Winter Home Disco kicks in with a drum machine but the folk and psyche follow quickly. A rather beautiful song from 2008 which all of a sudden seems a long time ago. 

Her Winter Coat was a 2021 single by Saint Etienne, Pete Wiggs creating a Christmas sounding song without going full Xmas cheese. Icy and quietly epic.

Neil Young and Crazy Horse's Winterlong came out on Decade,a  triple lp compilation from 1977 that was only the start of Neil's career long trawl through his unreleased vaults and shelved projects. Thinking about it, I'm pretty sure I heard the Pixies cover of Winterlong, released on a 1989 tribute album called The Bridge, before I heard Neil's. Neil and Crazy Horse recorded Winterlong in 1973 at Neil's Broken Arrow Ranch. It is perfect in the way only Neil and Crazy Horse can sound- slightly frazzled, slightly out of tune, ragged and dreamy and psychedelic, searching for something- love, fulfillment- before concluding, 'it's all an illusion anyway'. 

Vashti Bunyan's Winter Is Blue is lyrically dark- winter and loss of love, life having no meaning. The guitars and arrangement are deceptively jaunty, a trick folk music often pulls. This is the Immediate version, recorded it for Andrew Loog Oldham's label in 1967 and unreleased until 2007. Vashti re- recorded it for her 1970 album Just Another Diamond Day, a record so poorly received that she packed it all in and went to Scotland by horse and cart and then to Ireland for several decades before its rediscovery in the 21st century. 

Warm In The Winter is a joy- Glass Candy released it as a single on Italians Do It Better in 2013. Giddy synth pop, a song in love with life and with itself, 'Crazy like a monkey/ Happy like a new year'. Partway through Ida sings, 'You're beautiful. You came from heaven. We love you!' and the synth arpeggios build, and the song skips and swoops, and the darkness gets pushed out and, once again, winter passes. Happy solstice. 

I Am Running Out Of Time

Danish producer Trentemoller has been moving towards a new album for some time, drip feeding singles/ tracks over the last year. The album, Memoria, is out soon and this song has been released ahead of it- No More Kissing In The Rain, a gorgeously melancholic, sweeping piece of 21st century shoegaze with singer Lizbet Fritze sighing, 'My dear, I am running out of time'. 

It puts me in mind of Kid Wave, a Swedish fourpiece, who caused a minor solar flare of interest back in 2015 in certain corners of the internet with some slow burning indie- pop/ shoegaze- a similar sound and feel, that windswept, rain sodden walk through town at night with your headphones on. These two songs were on their only album, Wonderlust, which came out on Heavenly. After its release singer Lea Emmery moved to Los Angeles and the first line up of the group split up at that point. She re- appeared the following year with a new version of the band, recruited in LA, and although they toured in 2017 nothing's happened since. 

All I Want

I'm Trying To Break Your Heart

Go!!!

Back in 2010 Andrew Weatherall remixed Danish producer Trentemoller's track Silver Surfer, Ghost Rider, Go!!! At that point Timothy J. Fairplay was Andrew's studio right hand man, a partnership which would result in their album as The Asphodells (the superb Ruled By Passion, Destroyed By Lust, named after a shlocky gladiator porn movie). One of the key influences at the time, all over the Trentemoller remix, was the glam rock stomp, a wonderfully retro sound derived from twin sources- Big New Prinz by The Fall and Let's Get Together Again by The Glitter Band, 'the men in satin trousers it's ok to like' Andrew quipped after playing the song on one of his radio shows at the time (that's The Glitter Band not The Fall obviously). 

Big New Prinz is a remarkable piece of Brix- era Fall, built around Glitter Band drumming, some really grimy bass and vicious guitar lead lines, a song that developed from a 1982 song (Hip Priest) and was reworked for their 1988 I Am Kurious Oranj album, a record that combined some kind of tribute to William of Orange's ascension to the English throne in 1688 and the soundtrack to a Michael Clark ballet along with a version of Jerusalem. Meanwhile Mark riffs about rock records, drinking the long draft, big priests and the self referential refrain, 'He/ Is/ Not/... Appreciated'. 

Big New Prinz

Let's Get Together Again is 70s social club manna, a football chant and double drumkit stomp, sax and Les Paul. No mp3 I'm afraid but I've found it on Youtube- there's another clip on Youtube where they perform the song on Top Of The Pops and are introduced by a well known sex offender/ DJ but we don't need to see his face here.

Andrew and Tim channelled these sounds into the Trentemoller remix, one of those tracks you wish could loop endlessly whilst you go about you daily business. 

Silver Surfer, Ghost Rider, Go!!! (Andrew Weatherall Prinz Remix)

There is a second Weatherall/ Fairplay remix, the Sky 81 remix, which is less Glitter stomp and more echo- laden, submerged, Wobble era- PiL take on the original. Both remixes, the original and two other mixes can be bought here. And for completion's sake here are the twin heroes of the Trentmoller song, from the golden age of Marvel and the pens of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. 

Kempe Stoned

The Vendetta Suite, the one man project of Northern Ireland's Gary Irwin, has just put an album out, titled The Kempe Stone Portal (the sleeve adorned with an 1849 painting of the Kempe Stone, a prehistoric tomb on the Dundonald road near Belfast). Gary grew up with Belfast's acid house scene in his ears and started working for and with David Holmes all the way through to Holmes' magnificent The Holy Pictures album in 2008. The album is the result of ten years work, twelve tracks taking in electronic pop with echoes of New Order, dub techno reminiscent of Sabres Of Paradise, a few lovely Balearic moments and some chugging 4AD style shimmer rock. This one is Morning Star and is currently hitting all the sweet spots. 

Halfway through the album there is a slinky cover of The Jesus And Mary Chain's cover of Bo Diddley's Who Do You Love. The album is available in vinyl and digital formats at Bandcamp.

The Reid brothers knew how to cover a song, usually in a ton of feedback and snarl. Their version came out in 1988 and I wore out my cassette copy of Barbed Wire Kisses playing side two's first four songs over and over- play, rewind, play, rewind (Sidewalking, Who Do You Love, Surfin' USA and Everything's Alright When You're Down, some B-sides better than many of their peer's A-sides). 

Who Do You Love

If you want to find another updated version of the spirit Jim and William Reid recast for 2021 the new two track release from Danish producer Trentemoller should satisfy. The lead song Golden Sun is all pattering drum machines and sunlit melodies, slow paced synth work and a lovely late 80s indie guitar line, shades of the Cocteau Twins and The Cure .

The flipside, in every way, is Shaded Moon, a stuttering drum machine just like the Mary Chain circa 1988, a Joy Division bassline and then some William Reid indebted guitar work, all sounding referential but thoroughly now too. Buy both tracks here. 

I Said Never

Warpaint's bassist Jenny Lee Lindberg released a solo album in 2015, an album steeped in post- punk and gothic influences. Stella, Warpaint's drummer, played on it and as a result the album is very bass and drums led with Jenny's voice layered on top. The single Never was the best moment, a clattering, splintered Cure- indebted song for 2015, the guitars sending little shards of light into the monochrome rhythms. One to dance to in the Batcave.  

Never

In 2017 Jenny Lee wrote a song with Danish producer Trentemoller. This version, the so called Blissed Out Mix, is sparse and spectral, the synths adding texture rather than tunes, the goth psychedelia of Siouxsie recast for the 21st century. Less overtly pop than the main mix and rather good. 

Hands Down (Blissed Out Mix)

I'm So Tired

Events are moving very fast at the moment- the government is reactive, constantly running to catch up with the virus. The announcement about schools yesterday means we'll all be at home from after school tomorrow. I don't feel any elation about this, there's no real joy in having time out of work under these circumstances. I feel some relief- it's been difficult coping at school this week as staffing numbers have fallen and those of us in school have been more and more stretched. Staff and children feeling anxious with an impact on the behaviour of some. Not an easy situation to manage.

Record Shop Day 2020 has been put back from April to June, another casualty of the Coronavirus. One of the announcements I was interested in from the initial lists was this single from Jennylee, Warpaint's bassist- a cover of Fugazi's 1999 song, a piano ballad from a band who played hardcore US punk. 'I'm so tired the sheep are counting me' Ian MacKaye sings before checking out with a bleak final line. Jennylee doubles the length of the song, picking out the melody on the bass and the two voices, hers and another, entwine around each other.



Back in January Warpaint sneaked a new song out on the soundtrack to a film called The Turning. The Brakes seems to be evidence that Warpaint are still a going concern and harks back to the sound of their early records, sparse and brittle but with that liquid, rolling groove and slightly stoned vocals they do so well.

The Brakes

Jennylee sang on a song on Trentemoller's album last year, a very mid- 80s synth pop homage, Depeche Mode and New Order via Copenhagen and L.A. in the 21st century. I hadn't heard this until I heard the RSD cover (or the soundtrack song) so I got three new Warpaint related songs in one go. Which is nice, as that man on The Fast Show used to say.

Hands Down

This came out on line on June 1st and is what happens when Danish dance producer Trentemoller gets Warpaint bassist Jenny Lee Lindberg to sing on one of his tracks. You could argue that this is so in thrall to The Cure, Siouxsie and early 80s goth-rock that it's almost a Batcave tribute act but that would be churlish because this is so well done and so good that you should just let it push your buttons while you career around flapping your arms like a chicken. It wins, yes, hands down.

More Audrey

Last year Bagging Area's patron saint Andrew Weatherall remixed Danish electronica wizard Trentemoller's Silver Surfer, Ghost Rider, Go! single, turning it into a supercharged glam rock stomp. He also provided a second remix, the Sky 81 Mix, a dreamier version, more echo and more submerged. I listened to an internet interview with Weatherall a month or so ago where he said this second remix had never been released. But, look, here it is...

Silver Surfer, Ghost Rider, Go! (Andrew Weatherall Sky 81 Mix)

New To Me

I do like it when I discover something new- last Friday Drew at Across The Kitchen Table posted a new Weatherall remix, one I knew nothing about. I must be slipping. I'd get over to Drew's place sharpish if I were you. It's a remix of Silver Surfer, Ghost Rider, Go, Go, Go !!! from Danish artist Trontemoller's album Into The Great Wide Yonder, and very good it is too. The 12" turned up on Saturday morning, with the original version, Trentemoller's own remix, Weatherall's stomping 50s inspired mix and Lulu Rouge's dubstep remix. Not having my finger on the pulse of the Scandinavian electronic scene suddenly I've got a whole new thing to go at, knowing I'll be shelling out for both his albums and other stuff besides. This track is Shades Of Marble, also from Into The Great Wide Yonder, and is a lovely piece of melancholic but pacey electronica, with great swathes of 50s tremelo guitar popping up.

shades_of_marble-cmg.mp3