31 Oct
And a little bit of blog tennis with Ally and a version of a track I only knew by Odyssey for years. Here’s that legend of soul Lamont Dozier with his beautiful version of Going Back To My Roots. I never knew he wrote it; I can almost hear Levi Stubbs singing it…
26 Oct
Regular readers will know how much I love my old soul, there has been plenty of Northern Soul on these pages. There are several sources in my life for this love. Paul Weller was a huge influence, Dexys were another. And then there was a radio show where Joboxers played loads of their favourite tunes that had a huge impact.
But there’s another band that got me into Northern Soul even before I knew what it was and that was Soft Cell. They first came to mainstream notice and to massive massive success around the world with Tainted Love, which was a cover of an old Gloria Jones classic. And later one of their singles was a cover of What, originally performed by Judy Street (there’s a demo version of A Solid Bond In Your Heart by The Jam which steals the intro funnily enough from the same year).
Soft Cell are one of my favourite bands of the early 80s. I was a synth kid back then, a love which returned when dance music took off. I’d just never heard anything like those sounds before, and even now I get shivers when I listen to some of those tracks. And there’s something about synth tunes that lends itself to extended versions. Soft Cell, like the Human League and Spandau Ballet, were at their best on extended versions of the tunes. In Soft Cell’s case their 12″ versions weren’t remixes or even simple extensions where the drums carry on for five minutes. They were very different versions, with more of the song, more of the synths and on another fave Say Hello Wave Goodbye a beautiful instrumental passage that is simply spine tingling.
I’m on a bit of an 80s kick right now so expect several more tunes over the next couple of weeks.
Meanwhile here is the extended 12″ version of Soft Cell and ‘What!”
9 Oct
Friday night in with the family watching the soaps eating pizza and jumping up and down. Look, it makes the little guy laugh ok? Anyway, there was some class Northern tunes in the background on Corrie thanks to Craig Charles and his soul loving character. And this was mentioned:
I’d forgotten this version. It’s great, a nice little groove, much better than the Marvelettes version.
And it makes a good start to the return of Sounds For Sunday. Which might not be on a Sunday. Or it might. You never know….. 
3 Oct
“We stole the burning sun in the open sky,
We stole the twinkling stars in the black night,
We stole the green belt fields that made us believe,
We stole everything that we could see.”
I’ve been listening a lot lately to Jamie T, both his latest album and the first album. It’s quite easy to dismiss him as another Lily Allen or Streets – that is if you don’t like either of those: and I do.
But for all the modern trappings, the street slang and hip hop influences, Jamie T, a lot like Lily or Mike Skinner, harkens back to older music. The sort of music that features in this blog and plenty of the others listed to the right.
The first Lily Allen album is covered with Specials influences. She even sounds like Rhoda Dakar on some of the songs. Mike Skinner again recalls The Specials, but also Madness. Jamie T reminds me of nothing more than Weller, Strummer, and strangely on some songs Billy Bragg.
Here’s a handful of tunes, two from the first album and two from the latest. Back In The Game does early one man and his battered guitar Bragg on a dodgy sounding bass; If You’ve Got The Money is pure Strummer and Jones with the line about the ‘Buddy Holly hiccup on the karaoke’ evoking Joe so much that it’s spooky. Meanwhile Sticks N Stones references The Jam and is almost a rewrite of Thick As Thieves; and Chaka Demus reminds me of Mick Jones in Big Audio Dynamite, with a lovely Northern Soul/Hip Hop groove.
Magic stuff.
Jamie T – Back In The Game
Jamie T – If You’ve Got The Money
Jamie T – Chaka Demus
Jamie T – Sticks ‘N’ Stones
25 Sep
Well not quite, but House In The Small Town isn’t quite as snappy. I would never have believed I could live somewhere that wasn’t London. Anybody who has known me over the years would be surprised to see me opening the curtains and smiling at a misty morning in a small town. I’m liking the fact that people say hello to me on the street.
I’m not quite a stranger here though. Family and friends on the Wife’s side live nearby, and about half a dozen people I work with live out this way and commute into town. That’s a little weird, especially as people I’ve known for years through work know members of my immediate in-laws – a fact I wasn’t aware of until recently.
The psychedelic folk acoustic path my listening has been walking on continues, and it does feel suitable for misty morning train rides through the countryside.
Here’s a little taste of what I’m digging. Man.
10 Sep
Or something.
Some blog tennis with those lovely people Ally and Davy.
I love those Small Faces guys. Steve Marriot is one of my favourite singers ever, and I just love the sound, that crunchy guitar, the solid but swinging rhythm section, and the Hammond organ. And most of all some of my favourite songs from the 60s. All that fuss over the Beatles or The Stones. I love them, but for me Townshend, Davies and Marriot/Lane are the Top Trumps. I wish somebody would work some of that remaster magic on the Small Faces catalogue.
A couple of useless facts. Steve Marriot was born five years later but shared the same birthday as my dear old mum. Who lived next door to the Small Faces in Pimlico. Where I was conceived.
Probably a little too much information eh?
8 Sep
Well August came and went. And with it came a fairly big house move; one that took me somewhere else. I’ve been offline for nearly three weeks as well, thanks to the joys of getting anything done without a computer.
I’ve missed you lot!
The move has left me with a journey that is, shall we say, longer than it was previously. Long enough to catch up on books I’ve had sitting there and to listen to albums in their entirety instead of twenty minute snatches here and there. I’m still trying to work out where I am in the world, and not quite feeling at home yet. But it’s good. I’ve watched the sun rise over fields this week, which is a damn sight better than the early morning faces on the tube I have to say.
All is well.
However, I’ve still not unpacked my precious back up drive which has my music on it so there’s no tuneage for you today. Just a little hello as we get some unexpected September sunshine.
Hello!!
2 Aug
For those of you who don’t read the comments…. well sometimes you really should, you’re missing the best bits……
Courtesy of
“Ah Primary School. It was the late 60s for me, but the sentiments remain the same ….
The schoolyard. Aged 4. Short pants. Tarmac, trepidation and snot.
I remember the obligatory boy with the white patch of sticking plaster over one eye. His hideous black-framed NHS spectacles sat upon his wart-infected ears. My new shoes were rubbing already.
The older kids in the corner mischievously sang that summer’s bizarre novelty hit, “There Coming To Take Me Away Ha-Haa!” Mum had cut my hair around a basin and I had a lop-sided fringe. I smelled of camomile lotion following the recent spotty Chicken Pox affair. 2lemon bon-bons gathered lint in my pocket.
The teachers looked about 55; looking back, they were probably 26! ‘Maybe they’ll teach me how to become a real Thunderbird?’ I wondered. (I had imagination – what more would I need in life?)
And the girls. Lots of girls. Mostly pig-tailed, missing their front teeth and ugly as sin; but one or 2 were worryingly pretty. Handstands against the wall with knickers on display. It was all too much! I’d never considered that girls existed before. I had football, a dog and a tortoise – girls had never been necessary.
The bell clanged. This was it.
“You’re a big boy now. These are the best days of your life”. (Had I known about God then, I’d have asked him to help me). I so desparately wanted to cry when my mother said goodbye. That wretched stomach through a mangle feeling.
She spat on a handkerchief and wiped my grubby face one last time and she was gone.
I noticed a pile of freshly steaming sick was being covered by a man with a shovel and a bucket of sawdust. Some boys were still sobbing into their mothers’ aprons. My bottom lip wobbled precariously – but I must’ve somehow realised that future playground pecking order and classroom kudos could not be gained by wailing like a ‘puff’.
Besides, I’d previously learnt how to be ‘mummy’s brave soldier’ when TV’s Andy Pandy show ended, and the heart-wrenching signature tune had played .. “Time to go home, time to go home .. Andy is waving goodbye … Goodbye”.
On that very first morning at school, I remember learning 2 important things:
Lesson 1 – If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands.
Lesson 2: Don’t sit next to the boy who’s shit himself.
As I’ve said before kiddo, you’re not alone.
Much love.”
1 Aug
I’ve been looking around myself this past year. So many things have changed as I turned 40, before and after. I’m not looking at the same landscape I was last summer. New arrivals, big changes at work, at home. Friends have left town or are leaving. Other friends are leaving each other.
This week my old primary school burnt down. A huge chunk of my life gone. Probably the last marker of my childhood gone. My old part of town has been knocked down and built up so many times. You don’t expect bricks and mortar and concrete and glass to be so transient.
Anyway I’m sitting here, watching Field Of Dreams, a beautiful film about the past and putting things right, coming to terms with who we are and what we have done. And I’m reminiscing and getting a little blurry.
Lets see, what was there going on back then? What do I think of when I was at Primary School? The summer of 76, too hot to sit out in the playground, everyone sticking to the shade, water from the taps being too hot to drink.
J, (like a Lloyd Cole song most of the important women through the ages have been inital J…)who was in the same class as me throughout. Looking back over old photos she was a pretty little thing but she grew up to look like her mother. Who looked like a potato.
D, my best friend at primary school, whose surname was the same as the first name of my best friend at secondary school. One day I went to knock for him and the flat was empty. He had moved and hadn’t told me it was happening.
Monkey, with one of the best theme tunes ever, the talk of the playground the monday after.
Another D, the school nutter, from a family of nutters. Who for some reason always liked me so I never felt the terror of his presence like some people did. He looked like Paul Weller, which put me off The Jam for a long while. He ended up in prison and came out a preacher.
O, who had a huge crush on me and whose brother was in one of the Guy Ritchie movies years later.
The Dump, the site of a demolished Victorian tenement, where my little gang congregated on weekends, having wars and reading our treasure trove, a stack of porn that somebody had stolen from a nearby newsagent and thrown over the corrugated iron fence of the Dump to pick up later. A stack that we arrived one Sunday morning to find burning.
And Star Wars. Batman (parka hood up, buttoned at the neck). Spiderman. Never being chosen for football. Playing kiss chase one last time on the last day of school. Getting a slap around the face from J because I finally kissed her.
And then there’s my mum, bringing my sister and me up single handed, with all the things that brought, including my inclusion into the free school meals gang. Getting called a tramp was a quick way for the person doing the name calling to get a punch in the face…
London Bridge is falling down but they’ll keep building a new one in it’s place.
