9th March 2024

Titus writes:

 

When Lex told me that he was going to play some punk on 15 March, I had only one band in mind for my blog – The Damned.

 

The band is still going strong today and was set up in London in 1976, by Dave Vanian (vocals), Brian James (guitar), Raymond Burns a.k.a. Captain Sensible (bass, guitars, vocals), and Chris Millar a.k.a. Rat Scabies (drums). They are unique in that they were the first punk band from the United Kingdom to release a single - ‘New Rose’ -  5 weeks ahead of the Sex Pistols’  ‘Anarchy in the UK’. Incredibly, nine of the band’s singles made the Top 40. They released a studio album called ‘Damned Damned Damned’ in 1977 and also toured the United States of America.

 

They made a follow up album in 1977 called ‘Music for Pleasure’, produced by Pink Floyd’s Nick Mason, but the music press didn’t take to it, and the band then called a halt to their short career. However, they got together again pretty quickly  and released ‘Machine Gun Etiquette’ in 1979, followed in the Eighties by ‘The Black Album’ (1980), ‘Strawberries’ (1982), ‘Phantasmagoria’ (1985), plus ‘Anything’ (1986). The band by this time were moving away gradually from pure punk into a gothic rock style. They have often been hailed  as the major influence shaping British and American hardcore punk. Some of the more commercial stuff that they produced in the nineties and after didn’t really appeal to me as much as the raw 1970’s offerings, but hey, each person to their own!

 

Not a lot of people know that prior to 1976, three members of The Damned plus Chrissie Hynde had been playing in a group called Masters of the Backside. I’m not saying “You heard it first here”, merely that not a lotta people know that! Similarly, there was a music critic called Ned Raggett who commented on the ‘B’ side of ‘New Rose’ – a fast version of a well known Beatles’ tune called ‘Help’ - saying “This is a deathless anthem of nuclear strength romantic angst”. Many people know of course, that The Damned also made their television debut in 1984 in ‘The Young Ones’, performing ‘Nasty’.

 

All in all The Damned have released 12 albums between 1977 and 2023, and have had quite a few changes in their line up, with various members leaving, and then re-joining, such as Sensible and Scabies. In January this year, they announced that for the first time in over three decades, they would be doing a North American tour with the 1980’s line up of Dave Vanian, Captain Sensible, Rat Scabies and Paul Gray. The tour will comprise ten shows and is due to happen in May & June 2024.

 

It will come as no surprise to you that I have requested Lex to play that amazing first single ‘New Rose’. Enjoy, it’s a truly great record IMO.

8th March 2024

Click HERE to listen again or to download (downloading & playing is more reliable). 

TapTaK - I'm Gone
Blues Lawyer - Nowhere To Go
INXS - The One Thing
Swansea Sound - Twentieth Century
Merci, Mercy - Silver Lining
The Cavemen - Booze, Ciggies 'n Drugs
The Smithereens - Up In Heaven ~ Not Only Here
The Dollyrots - Da Doo Ron Ron/The Sponge/I Wanna Be Sedated
English Teacher - Nearly Daffodils (Tune of the week)
Mozart Estate - Low Life
South of Savoy - Premium Shuffle (Live in Viljandi)
CHUCK - Nothing Matters to Me Now
Carrie Newcomer - A Great Wild Mercy
Skott - Overcome
Whalebone - Nebraska (See blog by Titus below)
Of Monsters and Men - Circles
Ethan & Maya Hawke - We Don't Run

2nd March 2024

Titus writes:

 

This week I am compiling my blog on a band much closer to my home in Shropshire, than last week’s band The Yeah Yeah Yeahs from across the pond.  I refer to Whalebone, who are an acoustic guitar duo comprising Steve Downs ( my boss on the Severn Valley Railway – Steve is Station Manager at Eardington Station) and Charlotte Watson. They were originally a duo, with violinist Sarah Ibberson joining to make up a threesome, but then Sarah left a few years ago.

 

They have been writing & recording instrumental music since 2007, and have been inspired by the natural world, folklore in general, and their lovely surroundings in Shropshire. Much of their music has its roots in Celtic folk music of Britain, with some tunes rock-infused, indeed many classic rock tunes seem suited to the 2 acoustic guitar format. Since 2021, the 2 guitarists have been concentrating not only on the work of Whalebone, but also creating new music as The Bare Bones and Earthbone. I am told that since 2021, that they have had around 30 million streams on Spotify alone. To this end, Steve & Char have in 2022 released (as Whalebone) ‘What they Do’ and (as The Bare Bones) ‘The Bare Bones’.

 

They have assisted the Arts Council in 2019 with music & poetry, with poet Jean Atkin, in the making of ‘Understories’.  They also linked up with Kate Innes in ‘Flock of Words’, and have shown conscientious concern for the environment e.g. covers for their recordings are made from 100% recycled card with no shrink wrap.

 

I won’t name all of their albums, EP’s etc (including those made in the names of The Bare Bones and Earthbone) but I can assure you all, that collectively they realise a double figure total. I have seen the band play both as a threesome, and also as the two guitarists and can honestly say that like their enthusiastic followers , I have always enjoyed their gigs.  In 2020 the band played their 800th live performance, and released an album called ‘Totally Plucked’, which featured on BBC Radio 3. These days however, Steve & Char are concentrating more on working from their rural Shropshire studio rather than doing live gig.

 

They have their own web site here, and I would encourage you to purchase goods via that medium –you won’t be disappointed! The track I am requesting lex to play this week is ‘Nebraska’ from the ‘Totally Plucked’ album. This album features 14 tracks covering many musical moods and is Whalebone’s first guitar duo album since ‘There to Here’. The album is augmented in parts with in addition to steel and nylon string guitars, there is mandolin, bouzouki, tenor guitar, bass, shruti box & low whistle.

1st March 2024

Click HERE to listen again or to download (downloading & playing is more reliable).

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Date With The Night (See blog by Titus below)
Blue Lucy - Last Year in Amsterdam
Scriabin - People Like Ships
Siobhan Cotchin - Give It Up
Skepta - Can't Play Myself (A Tribute To Amy)
Kee'ahn - Catch the Night
Dane Tutty ft Jen Buxton - Church
The Moving Stills - Volcano
Angie McMahon - Letting Go (Tune of the week)
Camila Cabello - Havana (Feat. Young Thug)
Caravan - Let It Shine
Colbie Caillat - Midnight Bottle
MAY-A - Something Familiar
Ira Marlowe - Losertown
Dust - Close Your Eyes And Smile
DMA'S - Step Up The Morphine
Ellen Soffe - Who Says?

25th February 2024

Titus writes:

 

I’ve listened to nearly all genres of music over the last seven decades, and I always feel blessed to have enjoyed most of these. I don’t like placing things in “bags” or “genres” – I’d rather just decide whether it’s good ....or not so good. In the case of punk, or post-punk, I was always excited about such and still am. I’ll not mention by name AGAIN, the Radio 1 DJ whose show I first heard this next lot on, but it was fairly early in the career of the band, and comparatively late in the DJ’s life. I refer to The Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

 

The band was formed in my favourite city in the whole world, New York City in the year 2000, and was made up of vocalist & piano player Karen O. (I somehow don’t think this was the name endorsed upon her birth certificate – it was, I am told,  Karen Lee Orzolek); guitarist,, keyboard player Nick Zinner and percussionist Brian Chase. So far they have made 5 studio albums and unusual to announce in this blog, 4 of these have been nominated for Grammy Awards. The albums were entitled ‘Fever to tell’ (2003); ‘Show your Bones’ (2006) ; ‘It’s Blitz’ (2009); ‘Mosquito’ (2013); and finally ‘Cool it Down’ (2022). Early in their career, they supported The Strokes and The White Stripes, and Karen’s quest for them to become a “trashy, punky, grimy band” was gaining momentum. Some say that they can hear Blondie, The Pretenders & Siouxsie & the Banshees in their work, and I have to agree.

 

Sorry folks, but I have to use his name now – John Peel was mightily impressed with them and this resulted in their solitary BBC session in 2002. John played many of their records, and listeners were so impressed that the band reached the iconic Festive Fifty at Number 12 in 2002 with ‘Bang’ and Number 18 in 2003 with ‘Maps’. Against all odds, they gained rapturous reviews from the U.K. following their appearance at Glastonbury in 2009, at ‘All tomorrow’s Parties’ in 2006, and at the All Points Festival at Victoria Park, London in 2018. Much of their live work has been recorded and added to You Tube’s videos.

 

I am astonished that a garage/punk/raucous alternative band such as the Yeah Yeah Yeahs has received so many awards and nominations. I suppose it’s part down to the growth of the internet, social media and “spreading the word”. I’m just looking at the Antville Music Awards from 2013 and see that not only were the band nominated for ‘Best Performance Video’, but also WON it! Similarly ’Zero’ won the ‘Best Rock Video’ in 2009, and Karen herself won an NME award in 2011 entitled ‘Hottest Woman’.

 

They have a wide range of their music available online and indeed have their own website. I love the complete unpretentious, unpolished rawness of their sound, and in particular a track recorded live in 2004 at The Fillmore, San Francisco called ‘Date with the Night’, and this is the one I am requesting lex to play this week.

24th February 2024

Paul Mason writes about Northern Soul:

“It’s the first law of sociology,” said Paul Mason near the end of Northern Soul - Keep the Faith (BBC). “All youth subcultures eventually come back.” Mason was talking about the remarkable Wigan Young Souls, a gang of bright-eyed teens who, in 2013, are dressing sharp and dancing all night to soul records that were never hits.

What's miraculous is how Northern Soul happened in the first place, in the 1970s. Mason, until recently the economics editor of Newsnight, was there. So his documentary was authentic, personal, thorough and fun, the polar opposite of the rock-lifting, what's-all-this-nonsense attitude TV often has towards those funny little cultural blips that mean everything to the participants. If the Northern Soul faith is indeed kept and passed on this film will be there, lurking on YouTube, waiting to draw new converts in.

Northern Soul, a genre of American pop named after the English nightclubs that were the only places in the world to play it, was a secret club with thousands of members. It came out of Mods listening to Motown: among the early NS favourites are records made and discarded by the likes of Marvin Gaye, or recorded by artists who were on Berry Gordy’s roster but never made it big. Then it went deeper, into singers whose names mean nothing, who never had any commercial success, who never got played on the radio, but their rough, cheap recordings spoke to people in the north of England, like a crackly shortwave broadcast from a parallel world.

Northern was deliberately based on singles that had been overlooked, partly due to the common impulse to react against whatever is popular: “No one wants to be spoonfed shite from the charts, do they?” as Elaine Constantine, director of the upcoming feature film Northern Soul, put it to Mason. But it was more than stubborn contrarianism: it was the romance of underdogs in obscurity, making their art in the hope that someone, somewhere would one day have their life changed.

The scene had its own style. Devotees wore a sort of souped-up, souled-up Mod, with vests and ever wider trousers servicing the practical need to dance all night. And the dancing! Disciplined but expressive, macho but emotional, a mix of Bruce Lee kicks, aerobics and showboating on the balls of the feet. One contributor to Mason's program said Northern was essentially the same as rave culture: people ignoring the mainstream and gathering in thousands to take drugs and dance to music with a flat 4/4 rhythm. He was wrong, because that beat was less than half of Northern Soul. The songs have titles like Lonely for You Baby, I'm Stepping out of The Picture, The Girl across the Street, I Hurt on the Other Side, You Can't Have Your Cake, Long after Tonight Is All Over: universal tales of dreaming and yearning and bottomless, everyday heartbreak. At one of the all-nighters that still run across the country every week, we saw a lad in his 20s who wasn't just dancing to You Should’O Held On by Frankie Karl and the Chevrons; he was mouthing every word.

Mason, who has recently, brilliantly documented how youth movements and social media drove protests across the world in the Arab Spring and beyond, explained exactly how records made in the poverty of Detroit and Chicago rang a bell in Wigan, Warrington and Stoke. But he was more interested in how the music had deeply affected individuals. He met Wigan Casino veteran Fran Franklin, who misted up when she recalled how Northern had been her ticket out of a tough upbringing in Edinburgh: “The minute the soul scene started, my mum was like: OK, that’s your outlet, off you go.” Mason danced with her, in a social club somewhere: square panels on the ceiling, chairs and tables pushed to the edge of the parquet, sunshine flaring through the window. Fran and other soulies were filmed in beautiful slow motion; Mason himself did a pretty decent triple spin.

A middle-aged man reconnecting with when he felt simply, vividly alive, Mason put his own soul into it - witness the joy in his eyes when Elaine Constantine described the collective rush of a packed floor all hitting a break in the music together. He ended on a montage of him performing his spin on a cobbled street, by the sea, under a railway bridge, in a deserted club. “On the dancefloor, it felt like freedom. It felt like finding a new family. A small part of me is still always there.”

23rd February 2024

Click HERE to listen again or to download (downloading & playing is more reliable).

Wasback, Coopex & Chris Burke (feat. Becky Smith) - Party Til We Die
Mahmut Orhan (feat. Sena Sener) - Feel
Mika - Relax, Take It Easy
The Silver Shine - Angels to Some
Paul Camilleri - In The Middle Of The Night
Counting Crows - Mr Jones
Spacey Jane - Hardlight
Dune Rats & Friends - Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again (Cover)
Troye Zillia - Cholovik Propyv Indyka
Sex Clark Five - Alai (See blog by Titus below)
Fader - The Temper Trap
Puddle Of Mudd - She Hates Me
Skegss - Stranger Days
Flight Of The Conchords - Carol Brown
Madi Diaz - Same Risk (Joint tune of the week)
Dust - Lean (Joint tune of the week)