Solaar return

Following my Grimshaw horror of yesterday – which sounds pleasingly suggestive of an H.P. Lovecraft excerpt, The Grimshaw Horror,

‘Running from the room with my nerves jangling, all my senses in appalled revolt, I had but one phrase worming through the synapses of my shattered mind. That thing… IT HAD NO EARS.’

and so on. It’s ok, it’s ok. I’m over it. It does disturb me, but I’ll rise above it. Actually, between changing CDs this morning (Outgoing: Purple Rain) I was partly pleased to note that Grimly commences his ‘Wakey wakey People of Britain’ 7am segment with a spoiled Pharaohe Monch jingle (“G-G-Get Up!”). ‘Partly pleased’ and ‘spoiled’ in that although reminding me of a great tune it was a radio Bowdlerisation, a coy approximation of a daring choice, and in that it was about to be followed by Kelly Clarkson, which is kind of semi-proof of something, I ah-ha’d at the radio, as if proof or indeed semis are needed at such a time in the morning on one’s way to work in the car.

Look, I have to put up with this stream of bollocks all the time. Listen to the babble, bobbing pink and playful across the pebbles.

– a more subtle flow of musical consequence insinuates itself today. As I wound the car through Ryedale, I was listening to the CD I’d changed to: MC Solaar, the Prose Combat album.

Prose Combat was one of my lost Golden Age collection, part of a batch of CDs stolen from a flat in Partick, Glasgow late last century, along with everything else from L to Z, a consequence of partly-shelved alphabetisation and hurried thieves. About a couple of months ago I found a copy, incongruously, among the Kelly Clarkson and Steps albums in the ‘three for a pound’ CD section at the St. Leonard’s Hospice shop in Acomb. Le result! Delighted.

Solaar, Claude M’Barali, is a Senegalese/French rapper, born in Dakar, brought up in France and a Francophone rapper. He’s still recording, according to the online, so I shall be pleased to chasse down some of his later works, of which I have been ignorant.

Prose Combat is nearly 20 years old but it still sounds very fresh, some era-specific early ’90s soul jazz warbling on quelques tracks notwithstanding. The rapping in particular is funny and articulate, offering a welcome contrast to some contemporary commercial rap – such as the new 50 Cent single, My Life, which I have observed on radio and video a charmless three times this week. Fiddy’s tune also features Eminem, who is in typically vituperative form, and quite cheesily, Adam Levine, the singer from Maroon 5, who in his refrain adds unwelcome notes of Jamiroquai where you were already hoping for less as more.

I mean, not to get too sidetracked here – and I do not pretend to any kind of authority in matters rapular, incidentally, it’s just mes pensées, in’tit? – but, as an aside, the appeal of 50 Cent kind of baffles me. With regard to this particular record, you have self-consciously stagey ‘like a movie’ references indicating a degree of sophistication, distance, and the ‘who hunts the hunted?’ helicopter chase motif in the video adds some sort of sense of a commentary on fame/artistic drive paranoia. Yet these jostle for attention with a humourless and aggressive street “sewer entrepreneur” persona, literally a peddler of shit, that spends its time bullying the listener into ‘accepting and respecting’ the unpleasant content. A kind of witless and insistent hustling. In fact, if this IS a persona, added to the knowing asides about ‘confusion’ and ‘illusion’, the whole is actually quite contemptuous of its audience.

My Life, as well as sounding like the score to a movie that would just make you sigh with despair at the protagonist’s relentless will to consume (as distinct from hunger), with a video that does everything possible to amplify this, has lyrics that are resoundingly, epically angry, the sound of their fury as a consequence signifying nothing. They seem to be offering a glimpse into the mood of a colossally wealthy writer, rapper and producer, who, as he drives around in a big, expensive car, contemplates how, since he became successful a decade ago, is now, mysteriously, being snubbed by former protégés and overlooked by the public, despite – perhaps, paradoxically, because of! – having sold 40million records, furthermore threatening to flip out and go ‘Michael Myers’ on those opposing, as if all this doesn’t make him sound like a sort of irate attention-seeking Ronald McDonald of rap, armed and up a water tower on the brink of psychotic carnage because someone said his burgers taste awful.

This response is not intended to be ‘full of hate’, per the lyrics, and I am certainly not threatening to kill anyone because they might disagree, but seeing as 50 Cent seems to be addressing by extension all critics in My Life, I think it pertinent to enquire by return why one might be expected to, never mind respect, actually give a fuck about such monotone posturing.

More bollocks! Bob-bob-bobollocking along, pink and floaty, clacking in the foam, shining in the sun.

Anyway, back in the car, the sun, mais oui, was shining off the snow in the valleys and warming my face as I drove along the long and winding road, motoring through the villages of Yorkshire en route to work, digging the beats. MC Solaar juggles his themes mellifluously, with wit and dexterity. At one point I was actually giggling at the facility, the lightness of touch with which MC Solaar delivers lines like these:

Oh! Belle, elle est belle, elle est bonne, elle a du bol la demoiselle,
Elle se trouvait des défauts, je trouvais qu’elle était belle.
J’en garde des séquelles mais je sais qu’elle sait
Que le silence est d’or, et dort, alors, je me tais.

–From the song Séquelles

(My cack-handed translation:
Oh, she is beautiful, she is fine, she’s lucky, this girl,
she finds faults with me, I find her beautiful.
I keep the aftermath in mind, but I know that she knows that
silence is golden, and she’s sleeping, so I just shut it.)

Something like that? It’s also all in the delivery. In fact, here’s a nifty video from the YouTubes, with further traduction of the paroles, Ms Gainsbourg playing the Belle, and MC Solaar’s voice, all of which are a far better use of your temps.

MC Solaar, Séquelles:

 

Grimshaw and soul limbo

Driving to work this morning up the B1363, lots of twists and turns, long hills, a light dusting of snow on the ground, I had Radio 1 on. Nick Grimshaw is the current Breakfast Show DJ. Here’s “Grimmers” from his twitterfeed.

He was doing the usual Breakfast Show DJ nonsense, this was all fine. Couple of not bad tunes in there. Then he introduced a segment about sport, using Soul Limbo by Booker T. and the MGs. He said, during it, that he loved it from growing up and had been disappointed to learn that it wasn’t an actual pop record. He only knew it, as generations of British kids who watched any kind of sport on telly ever would also be familiar, as the music from Test Match Special. The “cricket theme”. Oh, you KNOW:

“Grimmers” then starts having a five-minute discussion with the studio extra, who pointed out that it was, in fact, quite well known as a separate entity, “back in the day”. He sounded a bit embarrassed, to be fair. The piece about sport ensued. Meanwhile I am having an increasingly shrill imaginary conversational Q&A with “Grimmers”. It is one of those rhetorical rounds where a series of statements of fact are ended with an interrogative because you CANNOT BELIEVE that the person with whom you are speaking is unaware of this information:

‘It’s called Soul Limbo. By Booker T. and the MGs? Booker T. and the MGs, you know?’

‘They were the house band at Stax? Responsible for most of those classic soul/R&B sounds?’

‘They did a really famous song called Green Onions?‘

‘They were the backing band in The Blues Brothers?’

‘You are telling me that you got to be nearly 30 YEARS OLD, and a DJ on national radio, and you DO NOT KNOW the name or performing artist of one of the most iconic pieces of music in recent British media history?’

In my fever’d mind, Grimshaw, who has been nodding at me open-mouthed, responds:
‘We be, uh, jammin?’

GAH!

 

For the record

While loath to send traffic towards the Daily Mail’s website – as if the Keyword Kings of Northcliffe House need the help – this article about “vintage” record bags was forwarded to me. It is worth a look, if you can bring yourself. I tried to find a tumblr account with similar images, but couldn’t, sorry.

Alors, it stirred some interesting thoughts about records. Actually, the first thing it made me do was turn around and look at this on the wall behind me:

That’s a carrier bag from Satisfaction, which was a second-hand record emporium in Gothenburg, Sweden. The bag-in-frame is situated above my record collection, illustrating a decorative taste for the obvious that can be seen also on the other side of the room, where I have a bag from Gosh! comics, London, above the comics shelves.

So, bags. The Daily Heil article of course touches on the seeming demise of record shops over the last 10 years, as new means for the mass production and distribution of pop music are embraced. Regular readers of The Mortal Bath may recognise a theme relating to hard copies, in particular the superiority of vinyl/CD/cassette over many aspects of e-music, for want of a better all-encompassing term. I’ll not grumble too much about it: there’s a lot to commend the digital age, but a lot of ways in which It Just Ain’t The Same.

It doesn’t take much to make men of a certain age and demographic wax prolix and nostalgic about stuff in any case (or sleeve). I remember the colours of the WHSmiths bag shown in the article. The first single I remember buying myself came home in a WHSmiths bag just like it. I’d like to say it was one of the Adam and The Ants’ records, but I’m pretty certain it was Brown Sauce’s ‘I wanna be a winner’.

Written by B.A. Robertson (my childhood’s second-favourite B.A.) Brown Sauce was loveable Cheggers, the lovely Maggie Philbin, and N**l Ed****S, off Swap Shop. I think it safe to venture that my purchase proves the diabolic power of TV on impressionable young minds.

Smiths is probably not on many people’s list of go-to places for records now, although they do still stock a Top 40, I think. Further mental baggage includes leaving Our Price, Harrogate, with carriers containing They Might Be Giants (Lincoln on vinyl, an absurd £1.99 in the sale and one of the best spends ever)… singles by The Wedding Present (most of The Hit Parade as it came out) and Manic Street Preachers’s Motown Junk, which I heard on Steve Lamacq’s Evening Session and was totally smitten with, HAD to have it, one of the rare occasions I have actually gone out the next day to buy a record I heard on the radio.

Our Price has closed too, along with pretty much every other record shop in Harrogate. I understand the relatively-recently-arrived HMV is still holding on by the skin of its teeth, although it’s probably only a matter of time before it and all its brethren and sistren are turned into earphones-and-mobile-phone-skins shops by the new owners. Mutter, bah, grumble.

I visited Satisfaction when holidaying in Sverige with pals. Ah, happy memories. The record in the bag was some version or other of Rarities Volume 1 by The Who.

I could have spent about 10m Kronor in there, but I only had 70 SEK spending monies spare. Discovering little troves like that and making a small deposit (“A MONETARY deposit!”) are part of the glory of wandering about in the real world, perhaps an increasingly rare experience in many places. Finding record shops, I mean. Discovering just now via the magic of the webs that Satisfaction has closed down, with the magic of the webs a possible contributing factor, gives me all sorts of contradictory feelings. Much like the Brown Sauce record, in fact.

Yet there are pockets of resistance to this march towards the Musical Singularity. Local-to-me shops in York, UK, such as the excellent Inkwell and Rebound Records (both on Gillygate) or Attic Records (near the market), to name the three I can think of right now, are troves similar in ethos and layout to Satisfaction. As I mentioned in a previous post about jukeboxes, charity shops here remain quite reliable sources for yer vinyl fix, although often they have fallen prey to using Record Collector to price their Fair or Good Copies at Near Mint prices. Hiss, crackle!

When I go a-browsing I tend mostly to have my own bag with me these days, but if I find a shop en passant that has an appealing design on their carrier, it might well end up decorating a wall. And you can’t do that with a zipped folder, kids.

 

If you see a songwriter…

Ah, the music the kids of today are into. What a load of rubbish. Wait though! This isn’t a grumpy thirty-something’s venting about pop music. I’m not talking about Rihanna or Rita Ora, One Direction or Bruno Mars, or your other chartists. Actually I like quite a bit of all that, although reasons for the continuing success of Jessie J or The Script continue to elude me.

No, this is a grumpy thirty-something’s venting about nursery rhymes and children’s songs. I’ve been muttering and grizzling about this since gaining a nephew and nieces, initially baffled by what to me are new-fangled songs about winding bobbins and dingle-dangle scarecrows and so forth.

As I type this I’m singing the songs and chuntering away about them, and I’ve just been told that the “wind the bobbin up” song is actually quite old. I don’t remember it from my childhood (“Maybe that’s because your childhood was such a long time ago,” yes, yes, very good), but given my short-term memory cells took such a battering during my 20s, I’m prepared to accept that. And scarecrows are quite old-fashioned concepts as well, I suppose.

Of course, since having one of my own – a child, not a scarecrow – I’m actually quite getting into this pointing to windows and doors, ceilings and floors. Apart from the hilarious fun aspect of singing, it’s a very important part of speech and language acquisition. Dr Miriam Stoppard writes:

Children who are sung to, have nursery rhymes repeated to them, have rhythms in speech emphasized, and are involved in singing and rhyming games, speak more easily and better than children who don’t.

“Better”, that’s what we want! Although I still harbour uncertainty about the relevance of bobbins to contemporary children. Well, in the UK, anyway. “Yeah, all my shirts are hand-made in Bangladesh.” Hmmm, a different, more serious article, perhaps.

ANYWAY, my main knick-knack paddywhack, give the dog a bone of contention today is with “Row, row, row your boat”.

Row, row, row your boat,
Gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a dream.

Simple, yes? Boat, rowing, gently down the stream, merrily, bosh. Yet this classic has been augmented. Countless new versions, whereby the third and fourth lines are replaced by instructions to be carried out in the event of seeing various creatures, such as crocodiles or lions.
e.g.
“If you see a crocodile
Don’t forget to scream.”

Steve Irwin is spinning in his grave, perhaps wrestling a spectral croc. We should be teaching our children to know and respect nature, not row around being terrified by it, or making distressing noises. Yet it gets worse. Yesterday, my best beloveds attended a mother and baby class, where I am told they sang of rowing their boats “…gently across the puddle… teddy bear …cuddle”

I cannot even bring myself to write it out in full. IT DIDN’T EVEN SCAN PROPERLY! Appalling.

Send for Herman Dune!

Next week: The Sinister and Perplexing Machinations of Dr Fell.

 

Where are we now?

David Bowie, or Derek, (“I suppose it’s another quotation from Derek Bowie, is it?”) has released a new song. It made the news today – oh boy! You can see it at his website.

Is it any good? Well, that’s up to you. I like it. It occurred to me that I could blether on at length offering my opinion on the tune, Bowie’s importance and cultural context, perhaps making some pithy remarks on the music media commentariat in the UK, but it occurred further that there’s no point. This is David freakin’ Bowie we’re talking about! “If you have to ask…” …as the Red Hot Chili Peppers once suggested.

I’ve liked Dame David for a long time. I had a couple of teachers at school who used to obsess about Bob Dylan and David Bowie, getting me into them and a bunch of other ‘cultural touchstone’ bands through careful pointers. One of them created a memorable tape compilation for when I was leaving sixth form, called ‘I remember when all this were fields’. I sometimes say that when looking at the YouTubes, “I remember when all this were compilation tapes”.

These were the two Bowie songs on that compilation:

You betcha! And a version of this, which makes me wish we’d had the YouTubes back then:

Given his near half century of professional superness, I think it doesn’t really matter if David Bowie’s new song could maybe be more awesome. He’s still moving, doing it. On the rare occasions people have tried to argue with me regarding Bob Dylan’s continuing relevance, while I’m on the DB/BDs, I’ve said that anyone who managed to come out with Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde, in the space of 18 months, is allowed to do what they like as far as I’m concerned. The same goes for Bowie.

“Hunky Dory, 1971. …Ziggy Stardust, 1972. Aladdin Sane, 1973. Shush.”

History will show that Coldplay performed at the 2012 Olympics closing ceremony, but everyone was more bothered that Bowie did not. That is all. You betcha!

 

Viewerslave

Alt title: “…but we need the eggs.”

Thanks to the numbercrunchery provided by WordPress, I am able to get granular with my viewing stats. Nitty gritty, fine details about who’s turning up and looking at what when. By far the greatest number of views I get each day is an article what I wrote about Iron Maiden.

I quite like it… it’s one of my more sincere pieces, and they’re almost always the most effective. I’d like to think that my unique combination of wit and waffle has endeared this post and further writings to the clickers of the world… Seriously tho! I get Slovenians, Colombians, Russians, South Koreans, Americans, people from all over. One might consider the global reach of this technology and feel a small tear issue from the corner of one’s eye… something something that’ll be the granularity something see the world in a grain of sand, something.

However, I strongly suspect that the high number of clicks for that post in particular is actually due to me having used an absurdly large image of an Iron Maiden album cover in it.

You find me on the horns of a dilemma as to whether to get rid of the massive image of Derek Riggs’ lovely artwork and replace it with something smaller that may give a more reliable, but less satisfying, view/visitor ratio… or not. I mean, am I that shallow that I’m even thinking about this? Who gives a fuck, right? Well, why bother writing in a public forum then? It’s all about the clicks, innit? Not the false clicks! Hmmm, band name… This process of finger chewing of course triggers wider artistic and existential concerns, such as subjects, style, justification for turning your fingers to the keyboard, getting out of bed… and wasn’t there some shopping you were supposed to do? And hang on a minute, why are you referring to yourself in the third person? Rapidly whistling up to a boiled kettle shriek of WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?

Et bleedin’ cetera. Indecisions, indecisions! Hypnotised by this rope trick plait entanglement of self-esteem and clickcount… I shall listen to this:

…and give the matter further consideration. While going to the shops for more loaf.

 

Key words

The BBC provides a comment piece, 2012′s pre-Pre-Budget Report report (“The Autumn Statement”).

In it, James Landale begins by wafting allusively at words by “Hilaire Belloc and the Mötley Crüe.” Belloc’s hapless Jim, who ran away from his nurse and was eaten by a lion, represents Conservative/Lib Dem policies. Labour/Mötley Crüe suggest it is ‘time for change’. The James Landale asserts that:

“It is through this prism that the politics of George Osborne’s Autumn Statement should be viewed.”

Somewhat disappointingly, the prismatic humorous verse/hair metal analogy is not sustained beyond the opening paragraphs. Indeed, sadly, there is precious little humour or rockin’.

The article is perhaps an attempt at aping the Daily Mail school of ‘New Rihanna Bum Outrage’ hit maximisation through extensive and (mis)leading headlines, URLs and carefully captioned images. Such cheap ploys are surely the mark only of desperate attention hounds.

RiRi feels bum underwear stage etc etc etc

Whatever the point was, aside from that, the James Landale commits a schoolboy error in assigning Mötley Crüe an unnecessary definite article. AND their first single was ‘Stick To Your Guns’. If you’re going to draw on stuff outside the ‘proper’ frame of reference to make a point, at least develop it properly.

A shame, then, the James Landale. A missed opportunity. It would be great if ‘serious’ commentators went absurdly pop-lit for no good reason all the time. I would find this sort of approach to political discourse much more agreeable.

One might look forward to future op. eds. such as Nick Robinson’s “Trident II: Stanley Holloway or the Iron Maiden?”

What, waste all our lives raising children? To feed ruddy lions? Not me!

 

The Great British Songbook

Yesterday, going about some business in the centre of York, I discovered to my pleasure that in April 2013 York Barbican plays host to ex-Simply Red frontman Mick Hucknall.

The pleasure derived from knowing where not to be in April 2013, I should add. Forewarned, etc. However, my interest was piqued by the proposed content. Phucknall is touring with his current solo album of covers, ‘American Soul’, which has received lukewarm reviews.

I thought immediately of Rod Stewart’s interminable ‘Great American Songbook’ series, and similar ‘foolish things’ by male singers of a certain age. I suppose it is a rite and right that artists pay homage to their influences, but that “American classics = proper songsmithing = me serious chanteur”… it’s all been done.

What I’d really like to see is an album by Rod, or Tom Jones, or someone, stretching themselves by celebrating Great British songs. Not your Novello, Coward, etc, as revived in nouveau music hall entertainments going on as I type. I mean proper British songs: “Henery VIII”, “Any Old Iron”, “Burlington Bertie”, “Leaning on a Lamppost”, that sort of thing. Arguably, anyone can croon a torch song. Comic timing takes real genius.

We do not need the likes of Hucknall reducing “That’s How Strong My Love Is” to a pomme puree. We DO need Bryan Ferry singing “With My Little Stick of Blackpool Rock”.

 

Juke Box Drooling

Saw the film The Prestige via Lovefilm the other week. I wasn’t sure what to expect as it passed me by on original release, but we (J and I, as usual) ended up quite liking it. Magic! Bowie! Two of our favourites. And, in a nice bit of musical synchronicity that same day, I had chanced upon a Prestige Juke Box and been enchanted.

The Prestige Juke Box in question was a 1982 model, holding 80 7″ singles. For those few of you unacquainted with seven inch singles, these were one way people used to get their own copies of recorded sound… At time of writing (late 2012) they have been pretty much superseded in the mass market, first by CD singles in the 80s and 90s, and now by mp3s and other formats.

Bear with the level of detail, and a perhaps slightly starey eye on “the reader”, whenever this may find them. I’m labouring the contextual point because when I saw this juke box… well, let’s come back to that. Let’s start with where I saw it, which was in Handicraft Hall, in Ripon, Yorkshire.

Handicraft Hall, indeed. Why, this seems a sort of name JK Rowling might devise, I thought cynically on entering. It looked discouragingly wholesome, in concept and execution. Basically, it was a large, former department store-sized premises, filled with stalls touting arts and crafts, nearly new items… Shortbread and apples and gingham, oh my! However, like The Prestige, it was actually quite good. While there was over-priced organic food and a certain amount of what I shall term for kindness’ sake trucs bijoux frou-froux, pardon my French, the whole Hall set-up was a good idea, well-enacted. Small and medium-sized enterprises collaborating to utilise an unused space: whodathunkit?

Making my way further inside, I was drawn by audiomancy to the stall of jukebox lender and second-hand-record vendor, Betterdaze Juke Box Hire. The second thing that caught my eye was their prices for the second hand jazz records. A mere “£2”, which is what Oxfam and the like used to sell their sides for before they began to price themselves out of the cheapskate old sound hound market, with stupid Record Collector prices for stupid records in stupid nowhere near collectible quality.

Actually, I’ve wanted to mention this for ages, so, side-bar Exhibit A: One Spike Hughes and His All American Orchestra LP. I bought a copy out of Oxfam or the Sally Army or something for £0.99, near-perfect condition. Super.

Recently, a damaged copy in Oxfam, Micklegate, York, was going for £9.99. I mean, really damaged, though. The cover looked like it had been gnawed by rodents. This was when I stopped buying records from Oxfam. I also understand that Oxfam pulp books that “won’t sell”. It’s probably not just them, and I’ll continue to give them my cash periodically, but that’s a bookseller that *destroys books*, instead of, say, whacking them all in boxes on a trestle table and flogging them three for a pound, or something. It’s not as if they cost them anything, and it’s all ‘money in the tin’, isn’t it?

I digress testily. Betterdaze in Handicraft Hall had plentiful records, in v. good nick, for an acceptable price. It was only a consequence of me having spent a tenner on, like, indispensable books in the St Michael’s Hospice shop up the road that I didn’t avail myself of a handful. That and the fact that we don’t have a record player, something J pointed out patiently as I dribbled on the vinyl. A record player is currently on my ‘laters’ list, joining the growing assortment of mid-life crisisery to follow when Junior eventually goes to college, or requires their synapses jacking into the Neuroframe, or whatever vastly expensive future child education cost scenario it may be.

However (wakey, point imminent), the first thing that had drawn me over to the man with the records from Betterdaze was the selection of fine, fine looking juke boxes, which you can hire out, with a record selection of your choice, for any and all social functions. Check out their website, it’s quite impressive.

The Prestige had a price tag of £750 on it, which I thought was a bit steep for hiring, but I asked and the man said no, this was a sale price. Lordy. As if I need anything else to covet and nearly but not quite be able to afford. We had a nice chat along these lines before I went back to browsing the records.

Then, and this links to all that contextual overkill from earlier, a guy of about my age brought over a sceptical-looking teen lass to talk to the salesman. He said she wanted to know what a juke box was, is.

Three other people of about my age looked up, over-hearing the same thing, from their vinyl browsing. Glances and wry smiles were exchanged. “This one’s just about to change,” smiled the salesman, gesturing at a Wurlitzer model with a gleam of magic in the eye. The turn of the disc, the whirr of gears, the sound coming out of a speaker. Seven pairs of eyes watched it, dewy.

Juke boxes are ace. 7” singles are ace. They have two songs (usually), art work, sometimes a pithy messsage scratched into the run-out groove (check to see if any of your disks were ‘A Porky Prime Cut’!) and the kind of tactility that no amount of roundel icons can ape. Imagine not having had the joy of 7” singles – never mind just jukeboxes, but at home, dancing in bedroom, perhaps a stack of them on the autochanger… perusing the sleeves… Imagine only knowing digital juke boxes, where thousands of tracks are available because the landlord has outsourced their imagination. I think there is an impoverishment that comes from virtually unlimited choice, from reducing everything to an easily-attainable facsimile.

Well, anyway. I do like a well-stocked juke box. The right juke selection can trigger moments of afternoon triumph, as the value track that lasts three times as long as other people’s choices comes on. Even CD juke boxes have a similar kind of appeal, the album selection (like in the Note or Sleazys in Glasgow, for two examples) saying a lot about the venue, clientele, ethos.

A great example of what a venue can do with it is the one in Bradley’s Spanish Bar, one of London’s worst-kept secret best-kept secret pubs. A Prestige is the model used there. It had a splendid singles selection on it last time I was in, and the pub itself is a well-loved, nicely dog-eared establishment. If you’re in the West End you could do much worse than spend an afternoon sat in the window seat reading and feeding pound coins in to generate soundtracks while you drink yourself squiffy.

It was just such a dewy-eyed reverie that prompted me to imagine what sides would go on my Prestige when I get it. I think I dig the Prestige more than a Wurlitzer because it’s my era, maybe because the colours and lines mirror scuffed 70′s/80s architecture of the future. I’m not going to analyse the list, oppa Nick Hornby style. It is as it is, to paraphrase the Pope on Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ. You have to imagine starting an argument in my pub. “Why haven’t you got…?” Inscrutably, I point to the suggestions box on the end of the bar.

For such arguments’ sake, for such choices will have to be made – because it will be mine! Oh yes. It will be mine… – here it be, in alphabetical order:

…and we’re puttin’ it on wax…

A Guy Called Gerald – Voodoo Ray/Arcade Fantasy
Adam & The Ants – Stand and Deliver/Beat My Guest
Herb Alpert – Up Cherry Street; Numero Cinco/Mexican Shuffle; The Girl from Ipanema
Anthrax – Anti-Social/Parasite
Baccara – Yes Sir I Can Boogie/Cara Mia
Baccara – The Devil Sent You To Lorado/Somewhere In Paradise
The Beach Boys – Wouldn’t It Be Nice?/God Only Knows
Beastie Boys – (You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party!)/Paul Revere
The Beatles – She Loves You/I’ll Get You
The Beatles – Paperback Writer/Rain
Chuck Berry – Maybellene/Wee Wee Hours
Blondie – Heart of Glass/Rifle Range
Bomb The Bass – Don’t Make Me Wait/Megablast
David Bowie – Starman/Suffragette City
David Bowie – Drive-In Saturday/Round and Round
The Bug – Killer/Version
The Charlatans – The Only One I Know/Everything Changed
The Crimea – Lottery Winners on Acid/Heads I Win, Tails You Lose
Cypress Hill – The Phuncky Feel One/How I Could Just Kill A Man
Dead Kennedys – Kill The Poor/In-Sight
Dr Hook – The Millionaire/(?)
Duran Duran – The Reflex/Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me) (Live)
Bob Dylan – Subterranean Homesick Blues/She Belongs To Me
El-P – Deep Space 9mm/Tuned Mass Damper*
Fleetwood Mac – The Chain/Go Your Own Way*
Grandaddy – A.M. 180/Here
The Heptones – Equal Rights/Ting ‘A’ Ling
Buddy Holly – Brown Eyed Handsome Man/Rock-A-Bye Rock
The Honeycombs – Have I The Right?/Please Don’t Pretend Again
Iron Maiden –Wasted Years/Reach Out
Iron Maiden – Twilight Zone/Wrathchild
Ivy League – Tossin’ and Turnin’/Funny How Love Can Be
Michael Jackson – Don’t Stop ‘til You Get Enough/I Can’t Help It
The Jimi Hendrix Experience – Crosstown Traffic/Gypsy Eyes
The Kinks – You Really Got Me/It’s All Right
The Kinks – Waterloo Sunset/Act Nice and Gentle
Led Zeppelin – Good Times, Bad Times/Communication Breakdown
Led Zeppelin – Black Dog/Misty Mountain Hop
Madness – One Step Beyond/Mistakes
MARRS – Pump Up The Volume/Anitina
Madonna – Borderline/Think of Me
Madonna – Ray of Light/Has to Be
Manic Street Preachers – Motown Junk/Sorrow 16
The Mooney Suzuki – Oh Sweet Susanna/Say Man, What Time Is it?
Giorgio Moroder & Phil Oakey – Together In Electric Dreams/Instrumental
Musical Youth – Pass the Dutchie/Give Love a Chance
Oasis – Cigarettes and Alcohol/I Am The Walrus (live)
OMD – Maid of Orleans/Navigation; Of All The Things We’ve Made
Prince – When Doves Cry/17 Days
Prince – Girls & Boys/Under The Cherry Moon
Prince – Pop Life/Girl
Public Enemy – Fight the Power/Fight the Power
Queen – We Are The Champions/We Will Rock You
Queen – Bicycle Race/Fat Bottomed Girls
Rainbow – Since You Been Gone/Bad Girls
The Rapture – House of Jealous Lovers/Silent Morning
Lou Reed – Walk on the Wild Side/Perfect Day*
S’Express – Theme from S’Express/The Trip
Sly and the Family Stone – Stand!/I Want to Take You Higher
Soft Cell – Tainted Love/Where Did Our Love Go?
Britney Spears – Toxic/Toxic (Instrumental)
The Specials – Ghost Town/Why?; Friday Night, Saturday Morning
Dusty Springfield – I Close My Eyes And Count to Ten/No Stranger Am I
Bruce Springsteen – Badlands/Candy’s Room*
Bruce Springsteen – Prove It All Night/Factory
The Stone Roses – Made of Stone/Going Down
The Stone Roses – Fool’s Gold/What The World Is Waiting For Donna Summer – I Feel Love/Can’t We Just Sit Down?
Strawberry Switchblade – Since Yesterday/By The Sea
Super Furry Animals – The Man Don’t Give A Fuck/ The Man Don’t Give a Fuck, The Man Don’t Give a Fuck (mixes)
Super Furry Animals – Ice Hockey Hair/Smokin’
T. Rex – Hot Love/Woodland Rock
Talking Heads – Road to Nowhere/Television Man
Unit Four Plus Two – Concrete and Clay/When I Fall In Love
The Wedding Present – Dalliance/Niagara
The Wild Bunch – Danger! High Voltage/Neurocameraman; She’s Guatemala
Whitesnake – Here I Go Again (US Single Remix)/Guilty of Love
The Who – Substitute/Circles
The Who – Summertime Blues/Heaven and Hell
Amy Winehouse – You Know I’m No Good/Monkey Man
ZZ Top – Gimme All Your Lovin/If I Could Only Flag Her Down

SO, my dream juke box list… for my dream jukebox. I should probably set my sights on a normal turntable first, of course, but if I should happen magically upon £1,000 and a larger house, this is totally happening.

What would your selection have to include?

“Fool’s Gold, mate. Seven minutes.”

*The inevitable annotations:
Beatles choices: I know, I know. I really, really would like to have the single version of ‘Revolution’, but it’s got ‘Hey Jude’ on the other side [shakes head sadly].
El-P – Was this actually available as a 7″? I’ve got the 12″ version, but that wouldn’t really work, obvs.
The Fleetwood Mac side was Disc 2 of a special double single for ‘Everywhere’, so I didn’t just make it up.
I almost couldn’t believe it might be possible to get Badlands and Candy’s Room on one single, but the French did it. Un-deux-trois-quatre!

Harvey Pekar: See this page at Metabunker for an excellent write-up on Pekar and his work.

 

Little victories

I wasn’t kidding when I suggested that Civilization II was a menace to one’s productivity (which is down, so I suggest building a Factory). It has now been uninstalled, and normal life can resume. Let us never speak of it again.

Friday last, 22nd June 2012, to the Etihad Stadium in Manchester, UK, to watch Bruce Spingsteen and the E Street Band.

Regular readers of this blog will be aware of the high esteem in which I hold The Boss. You might wish to cast an eye over this post, part of the interminable “25 albums that changed my life” series, on Born in the USA or the one about The Big Man, the late Clarence Clemons. If you’re on the Mortal Bath homepage, you could also click on the ‘hey ho rock n roll deliver me from nowhere’ tag, a Bruce quote that serves as one of my enduring prayers.

We arrived in a moderate fluster about five minutes after he was supposed to start, realised he hadn’t, sauntered in, grabbed a beer, made our way down to the pitch, looked around a bit and then he came on pretty much immediately. Timing’s everything. Venuewise, the stadium is a big prefab-looking number, everything one might expect from a building sponsored by an airline, with all the warm permanence of a concession stand in a Departure Lounge. Nice lines, just a bit plastic-looking.

Bruce, and the E Street Band, are more durable. With a combined age of about 10,500, they still played for pretty much three and a half hours. This is standard – they managed four and a half at a gig in Madrid. Watching the BBC’s Hackney Weekend festival footage over the weekend after, I was hard pushed to name more than about three artists that might be capable of or inclined to doing the same thing. Different ball parks, perhaps different leagues, perhaps not even the same sports.

Ah, look, anyway, Bruce was great. Sincerely uplifting, as a collective experience and as a personal experience. I couldn’t believe no one else around me was as excited that they played The E Street Shuffle!

Maybe they were, they just didn’t shriek with joy and do the Snoopy dance for 10 minutes.

The only thing I can add to any of this is a couple of clips, 20 minutes of performance, filmed by YouTube users LucyMearns and Outrightunlawful – thanks to whom for their sterling work. It’s all here: crowd dancing, James Brown-esque faux-fatigue, panto cameo by Miami Steve and his Magic Sponge, triumphant shirt removal, beautifully judged tribute to Clarence… oh, and two pretty amazing songs.

“Bootleggers! Roll your tapes!”

…and Hey ho, rock n roll! Delivering us from nowhere.