Currently playing

1. Neko Case: Man

I heartily recommend Neko Case's recent album, The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight, The Harder I Fight, The More I love You. The song Man seems to send a nice anti-macho message with lyrics from different gendered perspectives, and overall is just quite simply a rousing great pop-rock tune. The album also has a high point in the graceful but catchy Calling Card.

2. Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros: X-Ray Style

This song keeps getting jammed in my head, since I went to a recent Strummerville night, with Ray Ganges on decks playing this, plus a bunch of other Strummer-related material, good reggae, old punk, and so on. I feel like as I get older, I prefer the work Joe Strummer did post-Clash, for the many more moments of tenderneess, intimacy and easygoing, breezy, calm sense. See also:

3.Joe Strummer: Sleepwalk

4. Viv Albertine: The Madness of Clouds

Really enjoying Viv Albertine's unique approach to music making - interesting sounds and her style of playing guitar and singing. Greatly anticipating her new rock biography too - not many books around that are by female musicians, frankly, plus there is that female perspective of punk that seems to have been written out of history.

5. Robyn Hitchcock: Keep Finding Me

Any excuse for a song by Robyn Hitchcock, really. This is a recent discovery of mine as I still have so much to explore of his glorious canon of work. He is rarely off the stereo in this house.

6. Go Kart Mozart: 

Only Lawrence could cover a Roger Whittaker song with such electric pop panache and perfection. But just when will Go Kart Mozart play London again... Last tour didn't even include a London date and got cancelled. We're waiting! Also, Go Kart Mozart are forever the mightier, better band of his career and we will never fathom this reverence for Felt this has been going on in recent years. Lawrence would agree too! Recommend all the band's albums (plus his work on Denim as well - synth pop excellence). I was going to link to Electric Rock and Roll on here, but Youtube doesn't have that one.

Autumn songs

 

'Now it's getting colder, my hands chilled to the bone...'

 

(Barney and Me, by Boo Radleys)

 

 

                                          (NY Doll, by Robyn Hitchcock)

Lovely, wistful, warming, autumnal feeling songs, both.

Robyn Hitchcock's nearly-60th birthday gig tonight!

Listening to choice songs off each of the Robyn Hitchcock albums that I own, in anticipation of tonight's special gig. He'll be playing a song off every album he's released (not sure if that'll include Soft Boys or not). It's Robyn Hitchcock's pre-60th birthday celebrations.

Really, really hope for opener of The Man Who Invented Himself - seems apt! I am still yet to complete my collection (which is fine by me and really nice actually, as I still have stuff to look forward to), but out of what I do own, I would hope for a setlist including:

The Man Who Invented Himseelf
Sounds Great When You're
Dead Balloon Man
Linctus House (or Queen Elvis)
So You Think You're in Love
Full Moon in My Soul
Adventure Rocket Ship (or NY Doll)
Falling (or Saturday Groovers, with its 'I heard you cleaned your act up, you old trout' lyric)
August in Hammersmith (or Light Blue Afternoon)

It would be so excellent if I got to hear So You Think You're in Lovelive, finally, as it works best live, as this brilliant old American TV clip will demonstrate....

I would also hope for a throwing in of I Saw Nick Drake, as it is so tender - or the most lyrically superb achievement of his career to me - 1974, though I'm incredulous to realise that they both were outtakes and not on an official album, I forgot that. And now I am reminded that I still have even more Robyn Hitchcock material to discover and buy, even though I have so much. I hope there's a record stall at the gig.
Shall pack a few copies of the fanzine, with my in depth Robyn Hitchcock interview and articles in, in case I come across anyone who wants to buy one. Edit: ah but I just reremembered the songs won't be played in year or album order - shall be a very interesting evening!

Record shopping joy / Robyn Hitchcock heaven again

I'm on a post-record shop high. I've come back with original 80s vinyl albums, a recent-ish vinyl single, and a live CD album, plus various flyers and free music magazine publications that I otherwise would not come across - plus importantly, I feel much cheered up.

In the current times, I was half-wary that I might walk up London Road to find Collectors Records shutdown, but thank god it was still there. Some good chat with Keith the owner as usual. When he consults his Record Collector book to assert facts, it's kind of humbling and wonderful - because young people would just whip out their mobile phones and hit on the Wikipedia website. It's sad to think that actions like that might not live on many more years. But you cannot beat in-person knowledge that you also get in record shops, and the click of like-minds.

I'm afraid I can't boast an eclectic roster of purchases to dazzle you with, as the allure of the H section of vinyl led to surprise finds of original Robyn Hitchcock albums, and I was hooked as usual. It's funny that for a stretch of a couple of years I could not track any of his albums down, even on CD, but in the last year they seem to be like psychedelic painted buses. I hadn't intended to spend as much as I did, but I know that had I turned my back, they would be gone by my next visit. I'm well aware that all these songs were re-released digitally via his site, and I even own a run of three or four songs from the first of the tracks here - but damn, the vinyl sound, all the tracks I don't know (for it is a compilation and not a standard album), the splendid artwork, and the mad liner notes which I will later get a certain person to read out to me perfectly later....

The album cover in its vinyl-size glory bowled me over to prove irresistible too. Robyn Hitchcock offering me a bunch of radishes, how can I refuse? AKA, they don't make overwhelmingly imaginative pop stars like this no more:

I also took up Groovy Decoy, a revised version of (plus bonus tracks) Groovy Decay, the latter being one which I had been thinking about needing recently. The album art for Groovy Decoy isn't nearly as marvellous as the original Groovy Decay, and I need to hear it as it orignally was, so that shall have to be bought up at some point too, despite how its seen by author, and others.

Listening to the above now. Getting giddy about the next Robyn Hitchcock gig again - his 60th brithday celebrations.

There are countless ingenius song titles from Hitchcock. Favourite tonight is: Point it at Gran.

The other records I bought were Nighthawks at the Diner, a live album by by Tom Waits, which is jazzy, mellow but amusing so far. And I took a risk on a new release seven inch single, because I needed change for the train machine! Not a convincing excuse, but... I always try to buy even just a little something when I am near Banquet Records in Kingston, a fanzine, a single... This was by Teenagers in Tokyo, which sounds so Cure-like with its sweet pop keyboards and perfect bass, I love it, the b-side of Long Walk Home, mainly.

Robyn Hitchcock is yelling: Kevin! Supper's ready! now, so I've got to go....

www.collectorsrecordskingston.co.uk

Love From London

I absolutely love the image Robyn Hitchcock has painted for his new album, Love From London:

I like the joy of my perceived meanings behind it, and of course the skill of the artwork alone. On a personal level, it resonates/represents something to me as well. The t-shirt too:

In times when download vouchers are given to me as birthday presents, or I overhear people justifying their 'still' buying CDs as if it is absurd unheard-of behaviour, it's a fine feeling to fall in love with album artwork. I've written before about the wonder of bands like Joy Formidable who use the art of physical music artefacts to their advantage in selling records - selling one-off hand-painted/numbered Christmas singles, or specially wrapped live albums that come with one-off band t-shirts, or the absolute: selling a new release in limited quantities with broken bits of the singer Ritzy's smashed-up-on-stage guitar! And British Sea Power are the epitome of/experts in releases/design/merchandise, and it really adds to the feeling of uniqueness/romance about the band.

Needless to say, I have fervently rushed to order both albums by Hitchcock and BSP couple of months before release date - the latter direct from the band; former from the noble Yeproc Records. It's very rare that I take excited interest in the very release date of a new album nowadays, but this feels very much like an event, combined with Robyn's 60th birthday shindig gig set for the end of the month - as does the upcoming British Sea Power tour and album. It was luxury and reward to be able to spend the first bit of my wages on some things as wonderful and life-affirming as these. If I could, I'd travel the country a fair bit following both tours.

I love the many songs that Robyn Hitchcock has written about London, and how in recent years the timing and locations have had such poignancy to me, and make the very streets I tread reverberate with meaning, poetry, definition. I suppose spotting him about, or hearing of his frequenting/enjoying certain corners adds to enjoyment and love of these areas that perhaps haven't been celebrated so much, particularly by recent songwriters.

The new songs from Robyn have come right up and hugged me. A recent session on an American radio show was just perfect, and I'm looking forward to catching up on the Daytrotter stuff he did last Friday too.

And again and again and again, if I could be in a band with anyone of any mindset, it would be someone like Robyn Hitchcock - only there is no one like him.

Recent music-related birthday gifts:

I had wanted the Soft Boys live LP (on the left) for some time. By chance, spotted it in a record shop for the fairly high sum you'd expect - was told it had been brought in that week by a former band member, and I instantly recommended a loved one buy me it as a gift, and it was bought (lucky me!). And I personally bought Globe of Frogs, by Robyn Hitchcock which I was just as glad to have (Balloon Man and Flesh Number One (Beatle Dennis) are on repeat - Can you name any better song title than the latter? Can you name any other song than the former that merrily slips in a lyric about hoummous and chickpeas?

The live LP is the Soft Boys at Cambridge Portland Arms. It took place a couple of years before I was on this earth. It's as raucously joyous and off-kilter as you please, as one would expect. Plenty of jokey direct interaction with the audience, surreal stories spun, in-between-song banter, fond moments breaking into traditional acapella folk, and even a spot of ghastly mellow saxophone. The size of the venue lends the LP a cosiness; Soft Boys in your living room. In fact, the Portland Arms pub has recently undergone transformation and had building works in order for the gig room to be extended. I haven't seen it yet, but I can't help feel sad. Such a historical building, and its charm was how extremely tiny the back room was, and that you were crammed right in, right up against audience and band. I used to live there and it was a second home, one of my most treasured tiny snug venues for bands starting out. Anyway, imagine you were there in 1978, etc !

The Yann Tiersen LP (top right) was an album I'd wanted a while too. This LP comes with a CD version. This is the thoughtful, melancholy yet uplifting music I crave for autumnal times.

A friend got me up to speed on his recent music obsessions, giving me the albums by Wu Lyf, Crocodiles, and Dead Skeletons. By turns, holy, fuzzy, droney.

And I'm embarking on obtaining Edwyn Collins albums. I need to hear the most recent one, but here was Gorgeous George. I would not have appreciated this album in 1994, but now the slower songs and the tenderness, and the variety, and his more adult-orientated song-crafting are just great. I liked the pop of Orange Juice when I was a teenager - they hadn't been re-assessed as cool or directly ripped off much at that point.

The Last Stop Standing film was bought from Borderline Records in Brighton when I was there. The book was a fascinating journey in record shops/shopping. Even though I well knew it, I still got a genuine set of tears when the screen flashed up how there used to be over thousands of record shops in the UK, now the number scrapes a couple of hundred. Worth watching by any music fan. It makes you want to support any and all independent record shops even more (as if that were possible with me).

Cops and Robyn Hitchcock

I was virtually running round the house last night when I read about this gig:

November 17, 2012 – Kensal Green, London, at the Lexi Cinema. Robyn Hitchcock plays a one-off show, co-starring with the 1973 Clint Eastwood movie Magnum Force. The film – depicting an epic duel of personalities between ‘Dirty Harry’ (Eastwood) and his nemesis, Briggs (Hal Holbrook) – will stop at various points and Robyn will sing a song triggered by whatever has just happened in the story.

This is the gig of a life-time, and I have not been this excited about a gig in years! Robyn Hitchcock is a genius in the greyest of times, but he'll be bonkers brilliant joy for this. I wish I had the means to be a bootlegger!
I'm now set to wondering if the perfect, magical acoustic gig RH did last Autumn ever did make it onto DVD?