FEATURE: Too Good to Be Forgotten: Songs That Are Much More Than a Guilty Pleasure: Kenny Loggins - Footloose

FEATURE:

 

 

Too Good to Be Forgotten: Songs That Are Much More Than a Guilty Pleasure

Kenny Loggins - Footloose

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IT is hard to believe that some songs…

are dismissed or seen as guilty pleasures! I am selecting Kenny Loggins’ Footloose today, as I have seen a few articles where the song has been dismissed as being cheesy; something one should not admit to loving. It is a fantastically fun and memorable track. I especially love epic and timelessly brilliant songs from film soundtracks. Nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song (with music and lyrics by Loggins and Dean Pitchford), there is no denying that Footloose is a great track! Starring Kevin Bacon, if you are not familiar with the plot of 1984’s Footloose, then there are plot details online that should assist. One need not be familiar with the scene in which the title track plays. You can hear the song in any context and time and feel lifted and motivated! I am not one who believes in guilty pleasures, though I do think that there are songs that are a little cheesy. That is not the case with Footloose. It is a terrific song. I am going to end up with an article that tells how Loggins performed Footloose last year to raise COVID-19 response funds. Before that, AllMusic spoke with Footloose bassist Nathan East on the thirtieth anniversary of the song to share his memories:

“AllMusic: On to "Footloose." How did you start playing with Kenny Loggins?

East: It came abruptly in the early eighties when his bass player was either sick or had to leave suddenly, and I got a call from the road saying, “Can you get out here as soon as possible, we have some shows to do,” so I jumped out there on short notice and started doing some touring with him, which led to recording a few albums with him, one of which was the Footloose soundtrack.

AllMusic: What were you doing at the time?

East: I’ll never forget that the day I left to go tour with Kenny Loggins, I had just received my first call from Quincy Jones to play on a Michael Jackson album he was doing, Thriller, and I couldn't record the Thriller album. Around that time, I was starting to get the session career going, so I was working with Julio Iglesias, Whitney Houston and all these people who were going around then. Fortunately, the second time the call came around [for Bad], I was able to make it.

AllMusic: What was going on when the call came in to do a song for Footloose?

East: We had done one record, Vox Humana, and so we had been in the studio, and I was in there recording with Lionel Richie, I did a bunch of Pointer Sisters sessions around that time. On Vox Humana, I’d co-written some songs with him, and we were becoming brothers in music. It was prior to Live Aid that we went in and he got the soundtrack for Footloose, which won Song of the Year at the Grammys in 1985. I think by summer ’83 we were running around and practicing it on the road. Every day on the road we heard, “OK, we have this movie, Footloose—Footloose, Footloose…”
He started coming up with little bits and pieces at a time, and it was really pretty tedious, because over the course of a summer tour, everywhere we went, we’d have to find a place in the hotel, like a banquet room, where we’d go and set up our gear and run the song. I remember dialing in the part a little more each day, so when we went to the studio to record it, it was only one or two takes. We were glad to get that out of the way.

AllMusic: How much direction was given about the style of the song and how much it should tie into the movie?

East: The bottom line is since it was called Footloose, it was going to be a dance film, so it had to be an uptempo, active-feeling song. There was a screening after it was all put together, but not until then did we actually see the movie. Kenny probably met with the directors prior to going on tour, so he had all the intel on what he needed and wanted. A lot of times what they’ll do is have temporary beats in the film, and you can use that. I’m sure what they had at the time was the [sings “Footloose” beat], that was the direction they wanted. On my end, and maybe it was out of boredom, but every day I was trying to add more to this bassline so it becomes this driving, forward motion that made sense, and would be something that could be identified with the song as well.

AllMusic: How much of that was to actually serve the song and how much was out of boredom?

East: I think it was about 50-50. After a couple of weeks, when you’d be in rehearsal and see his lips form the word “Footloose,” you start to get a little twitch. We definitely knew that song inside and out when we went into the studio to record it, and that made it all the more solid for the film.

AllMusic: And was it a hit immediately?

East: Pretty much. Having a motion picture as your video for a song definitely doesn't hurt. At that point, the movie came out, the single came out, and it shot to the top, it was one of those times when you couldn't turn the radio on without hearing that song.

AllMusic: Even though you were a little tired of it, was it fun to play live?

East: We played it at Live Aid, and that’s one of the first times I met Eric Clapton. He was standing at the side of the stage, listening to the band, and then he immediately approached me when I got offstage about getting together. I think when we played it live, it was one of those undeniable home run hits where everyone was responding to it, and after all that hard work, it felt good. You’d break into it at the show, and it was like a hypnotic trance people would get in and just start dancing.

One fun thing with “Footloose” was that he included the band on the little breakdown section, we each got a line. Steve [Wood, keyboards] sings, “You've got to turn me around,” and I sing, “And put your feet on the ground.” That was a big line, the first record I ever sung on was a Number One record. And I do it live, too, as well. It was on the radio the other day, and my son said, “Wait, daddy, here comes your line!” He made us all listen to my little solo singing line”.

I don’t think Footloose will age in terms of its impact. Whereas the film is not talked about much these days, the song has taken on a new life and continues to thrill people. Kenny Loggins performed Footloose last year. This article explains more:

“The artist performed Saturday night at the iconic Hollywood amphitheater and sang some of his biggest hits, including "Footloose," the single he co-wrote for the hit 1984 Kevin Bacon film of the same name.

The unique concert was part of an ongoing fundraiser, RWQuarantunes, which takes place each weekend on a private Zoom call.

Talent agent Richard Weitz and his 17-year-old daughter Demi are the brains behind the concert series, which they say has raised more than $3 million for food banks, hospitals and related Covid-19 relief efforts.

"To think that two months ago when Demi and I started the RWQuarantunes that we would go from our kitchen to the Hollywood Bowl is not only surreal but very humbling," Weitz, a partner at William Morris Endeavor, told CNN.

Saturday marked the 10th benefit concert that RWQuarantunes has done but the first to use the Hollywood Bowl. Although the venue is shuttered for the 2020 season, Weitz managed to get permission for Loggins to perform there. Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti also attended.

Much to the delight of viewers, Bacon also made an appearance on the virtual fundraiser Saturday from his home.

"When we were making the movie, we didn't have the song yet," Bacon said while introducing Loggins. "In the middle of shooting, Kenny was still writing the song. It was just Kenny on an acoustic guitar, that was the demo ... I heard the song and was like, 'Yeah, That's cool.' It just hits you. I did what I could, but I don't think the movie would have been what it was without it".

If you are one of those people who thinks Footloose is a guilty pleasure song or that you can’t bring yourself to listen to it, I would advise you to get back into it. It has such energy and verve that one is helpless to resist! Songs from film soundtracks do not always endure, though Kenny Loggins’ smash will survive and get people moving for decades more. It is a song that has the power to lift the mood…

NO matter what.

FEATURE: The Lockdown Playlist: Brandon Flowers at Forty

FEATURE:

 

 

The Lockdown Playlist

PHOTO CREDIT: Taylor Jewell/Invision/AP 

Brandon Flowers at Forty

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ANOTHER big music birthday…

 IN THIS PHOTO: The Killers/PHOTO CREDIT: Robert Ascroft

is coming along in the form of Brandon Flowers’ fortieth. The Killers’ frontman is forty on Monday (21st June). To honour that, I am going to put together a selection of his best tracks – not only with The Killers but solo too. Before getting there, AllMusic help out with some biography about the incredible lead of The Killers:

“Brandon Flowers was the most popular frontman of the new wave revival, which swept through America and England during the early 2000s. As frontman of the Killers, he helped popularize a genre that hadn't been fashionable for nearly two decades, drawing influence from a number of '80s synth pop bands -- including New Order, Echo & the Bunnymen, and the Psychedelic Furs -- while writing the songs that comprised his band's multi-platinum debut, Hot Fuss. Flowers also proved to be a super-sized media personality, gathering headlines for his clothing choices (which ran the gamut from neatly tailored suits to bizarrely feathered shoulder pads) and controversial, outspoken opinions on rival bands. Although the Killers retooled their sound with each album, the group rarely subscribed to convention -- and Flowers, who launched a solo career in 2010, seemed happy to be the most unconventional of them all.

Flowers grew up in the Southwest, spending his first eight years in the Las Vegas suburbs before moving to Utah with his parents. He returned to Las Vegas several years later, where he finished high school and landed a job working as a bellhop at the Gold Coast Hotel. He began spending his free time playing keyboards in a synth pop band, although he lost his position in the group when his bandmates all relocated to Los Angeles in 2001. Flowers remained in Las Vegas and began working with local guitarist Dave Keuning, with whom he pieced together a new band that relied on guitars as much as keyboards. The Killers' lineup was officially cemented in August 2002 with the arrival of bassist Mark Stoermer and drummer Ronnie Vannucci, and their glossy debut album -- released on both sides of the Atlantic in 2004 -- made the Killers one of the decade's biggest pop bands.

With their open-armed embrace of synthesizers, icy atmospherics, and other trappings of the '80s, the Killers were placed into the same retro category as groups like Franz Ferdinand and the Rapture. For the band's second album, though, the guys shifted their focus to the heartland rock & roll of Bruce Springsteen. Released in October 2006, Sam's Town found Brandon Flowers modeling his performance after the Boss and Bono, and the album (although not as popular as Hot Fuss) went platinum across the globe. While on tour the following summer, Flowers had his first son with wife Tana Mundkowsky, whom he'd married two years prior.

After releasing a rarities compilation, Sawdust, in late 2007, the Killers began working on a third album. Day & Age arrived in November 2008 and became another worldwide hit, with "Human" hitting the Top Ten in several countries. Flowers' second son was born while he was on the road in support of Day & Age, and his mother passed away in early 2010. Both experiences inspired him to keep writing, and he decided to launch a solo career later that year while the rest of the Killers enjoyed a short hiatus. Flamingo, his first album of solo material, was released that fall. Flowers returned to the Killers for 2012's Battle Born but resumed his separate solo career in 2015 with The Desired Effect, a record produced by Ariel Rechtshaid”.

A happy fortieth birthday in advance to Brandon Flowers. As The Killers put out their sixth studio album, Imploding the Mirage, last year, they will be keen to bring it to the stage. Let us hope they will have the chance to do that later in the year. It leaves me to wish a very happy birthday to…

THE incredible Brandon Flowers.

FEATURE: Vinyl Corner: SOPHIE - OIL OF EVERY PEARL'S UN-INSIDES

FEATURE:

 

 

Vinyl Corner

SOPHIE - OIL OF EVERY PEARL'S UN-INSIDES

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IT is especially tragic…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Charlotte Wales

that the world lost the pioneering and remarkably influential SOPHIE at the age of just thirty-four on 30th January, 2021. Her only studio album, OIL OF EVERY PEARL'S UN-INSIDES, was released in 2018. I have been meaning to include the album in Vinyl Corner for months. It has been hard to find it on vinyl. Rough Trade describe the album like this:

“Sophie’s debut album Oil Of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides is released via Transgressive Records. The album is the next step in Sophie’s incredible and unorthodox career, following the Product EP and is a bold artistic statement that establishes Sophie as a pioneer of a new pop sound. It is sprawling and beautiful, while still keeping the disorienting, latex-pop feel of her fascinating production technique. The worlds of commercial pop and electronic music have never converged in quite the way they have with Sophie. Oil Of Every Pearl's Un-Insides, Sophie's first proper album, presents her artistic vision in a purer form than anything she's done before. It is at times unapologetically poppy, beginning with the opening power ballad, It's Okay To Cry. But it's also utterly, defiantly weird, flouting conventions of rhythm, composition and, perhaps most of all, taste”.

There were copies available through Rough Trade until very recently. One can find a copy for not too much at Discogs. It is a little pricey, though I would recommend people spend some money on a future classic. Alternately, keep your eyes peeled in your local record store and sites like Rough Trade.

It is hard to define or categorise OIL OF EVERY PEARL'S UN-INSIDES. Such is its eclectic nature, one listens to it over and over and gets new things. An album that will inspire artists for many years to come, one wonders where SOPHIE could have headed and what she could have achieved. Rather than mourn or become too morose, it is worth celebrating an album that stunned critics in 2019. She released the compilation album, Product, in 2015 – so people knew kind of what to expect. I feel OIL OF EVERY PEARL'S UN-INSIDES is one of the greatest debut albums we saw in the 2010s. It is no surprise that there is an abundance of remarkably positive and effusive reviews. I want to bring in a couple. This is what AllMusic had to say about OIL OF EVERY PEARL'S UN-INSIDES:

“Considering SOPHIE's influence on electronic and pop music in the 2010s, it's hard to believe that Oil of Every Pearl's Un-Insides is only the producer's debut album. The music collected on Product emphasized whimsical artificiality, using it as candy-coated armor that expressed SOPHIE's queerness and originality in equally affected and affecting ways. On the producer's first proper album, SOPHIE juxtaposes shiny surfaces and what lies beneath them.

Oil of Every Pearl's Un-Insides begins with the manifesto "It's Okay to Cry," a single that, upon its October 2017 release, felt and sounded drastically different than the producer's previous music. Instead of the helium-pitched vocals, it features SOPHIE's own voice for the first time while softly unfolding synths turn small but profound realizations into something epic. While nothing else on the album is quite so vulnerable, or close to conventional pop, "It's Okay to Cry" is the perfect prologue to Oil of Every Pearl's Un-Insides. Working with pop stars ranging from Charli XCX to Madonna hasn't blunted SOPHIE's music in the slightest -- in fact, it's even bolder, particularly on the album's first half. On "Is It Cold in the Water?" and "Infatuation," the producer embellishes on "It's Okay to Cry"'s widescreen intimacy, transforming deep synth grooves and diva vocals into mutant pop ballads that are all the more gorgeous for their strangeness. SOPHIE complements these reflective moments with the hard-edged mischief of "Faceshopping," which uses ever-changing lyrics and torquing synths to express how an authentic identity can be created through aesthetic choices, and the raunchy "Ponyboy," which sets the erotic possibilities of those identities to a heaving beat.

Despite these radical shifts, SOPHIE never sounds indecisive. Where Product felt like a collection of alien pop hits, Oil of Every Pearl's Un-Insides abounds with interludes, passages, and major statements that allow the producer to dig deeper on the album's second half. The dissolution telegraphed by "Not Okay"'s malfunctioning rhythms and vocals morphs into the liminal space of "Pretending," a six-minute dronescape that suggests an idea -- or identity -- coming into being with a mood that's equally blissful and anxious. The dualities grow even more complex on "Whole New World/Pretend World," a collage of sugary pop, sirens, self-destructing electronics, and clouds of wordless vocals that falls somewhere between a beginning and a warning. Fortunately, SOPHIE takes a moment to celebrate the joys of imagination and reinvention on "Immaterial," a shout-out to misfit boys and girls that sounds like a party with Prince, Basement Jaxx, and Hatsune Miku at the top of the guest list. While SOPHIE's music has never been simple, Oil of Every Pearl's Un-Insides' complexities and reinventions make it a remarkable debut album that reveals more with each listen”.

I think the first time I heard OIL OF EVERY PEARL'S UN-INSIDES in full was a few months after it was released. I did not know much about Glasgow-born SOPHIE. I was moved by OIL OF EVERY PEARL'S UN-INSIDES and compelled myself to check out other stuff she had done. I can recommend buying OIL OF EVERY PEARL'S UN-INSIDES on vinyl.

Just before closing things off, I want to quote from a particularly deep review of OIL OF EVERY PEARL'S UN-INSIDES. I might write more about the album, as it is Pride Month and SOPHIE identified as a trans woman. I will end with a review from Tiny Mix Tapes. Go and read the entire review if you can (I have selected a few parts that I feel are important):

“Pop music is built on a history of love songs and becomings, of a desire to find oneself in another. Madonna wrote “Material Girl,” an anti-love song that is inevitably also a love song to herself, singing “Boys may come and boys may go/ And that’s all right you see/ Experience has made me rich/ And now they’re after me,” a material world building a self through fleeting impressions of and with others. SOPHIE, also perhaps inevitably, writes “Immaterial,” the truest Pop Song on a Great Pop Album, a euphoric number in the classic PC Music hyperpop register that offers, “Without my jeans or my bra/ Without my legs or my hands/ With no name and with no type of story/ Where do I live?/ Tell me where do I exist?” Even when she’s not writing bangers like this song, the pop-drive permeates, this reaching toward another person or thing through codified and socially-coded but endlessly reworked musical forms, through chords and melodies that evoke heartfelt emotional responses through well-worn but ever-fresh routes.

In this music, there is nothing without a signifier; a body is immaterial, a body is raw material for experience, for boys. But here, there is another, and it sings, “You could be me and I could be you,” it sings, “anything, anyhow, any one, any place, any time,” “and no matter where I go, you’ll always be here in my heart.” There are jubilant horns. Auto-tuned vocals leap upward far past the range of unmodified human voice. Is there an unmodified human voice, a voice free of the pressure of vocal training and social training? There is real joy in this fucked-up non-body, these beings of sound and play and fear.

The album ends in a warzone with “Whole New World:Pretend World,” a 10-minute, blasted-out shell of largely percussion-free sonic aggression and down-mixed gravelly vocal intonations interspersed with chirpy exclamations of the title. It’s endlessly repetitive, but nothing ever repeats without being reworked or retuned, tiny cycles of new worlds opening and disappearing in sonic violence. It dissolves into hissing and buzzing. It’s a pretend world, a pop world, a Real World. Fractured, inconsistent, broken, torn, OIL OF EVERY PEARL’S UN-INSIDES aims toward the stylistic grandness of High Pop, and in that inconsistence, it achieves it.

In its flows and breakings, it echoes and repeats a fractured self, locating this fracture as something aimed toward futurity, toward a new image of pop music, toward a new mode of being and becoming, toward a new way of moving limbs on a dancefloor with others. It’s incredible”.

Nearly six months since the world lost the visionary SOPHIE, I feel there is a new appreciation for her sole solo album, OIL OF EVERY PEARL'S UN-INSIDES. It is a masterful and hugely accomplished album that everyone needs to own on vinyl – regardless of their musical tastes. Even though its creator is no longer with us, OIL OF EVERY PEARL'S UN-INSIDES is…

A stunning work that will live forever.

FEATURE: Inspired By… Part Fifteen: Kylie Minogue

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Inspired By…

Part Fifteen: Kylie Minogue

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I normally wouldn’t include…

so much biography but, when it comes to Kylie Minogue, there is so much to dissect and discuss! As an artist and actor, she has had such a long and busy career. She is someone who has influenced so many other artists. I will end with a playlist consisting of songs from those who owe some form of debt to her. Before then, I want to draw from AllMusic and their biography of the extraordinary Kylie Minogue:

“Born in Melbourne on May 28, 1968, Kylie Minogue began acting in television dramas at the age of 12. Although the small roles brought her a fair bit of exposure, it was her 1986 debut on the insanely popular soap Neighbours that catapulted her to stardom. In Australia, Minogue's role as the tomboy Charlene won her a number of awards, but in Britain, the exploits of that character and her love interest -- played by the actor Jason Donovan -- attracted record numbers of television viewers, and made the Aussie drama one of the most watched shows in the U.K. Understanding Minogue's megastar potential, as well as her ability to vamp and sing, Mushroom Records signed her to a contract in 1987. Her success was immediate, as her debut single, "The Loco-Motion" (a cover of the 1962 Little Eva hit) rocketed to number one and eventually took the globe by storm, hitting the upper reaches of the charts in many countries.

Minogue then headed to England and partnered with the production team of Stock, Aitken & Waterman. The first track the group released with her, "I Should Be So Lucky," dominated the Australian and U.K. charts, did well on a number of charts in Europe, and hit the Top 40 in the U.S. Her pop status was further consolidated with her debut album, 1988's Kylie, which topped the charts in the U.K. and did very well in many other places, including Australia. As the '80s drew to a close, Minogue's stature worldwide only grew. Her duet with Jason Donovan, "Especially for You," sold over a million copies in 1989, even while being critically panned. A second full-length, Enjoy Yourself, was also released that year, along with a handful of singles that managed to further dominate charts in both hemispheres. In the midst of this pop success, Minogue also appeared in her first feature film, The Delinquents.

Many things would change for her in the frenetic decade of the '90s. She began to trade in her cutesy, bubblegum pop image for a more mature one, and in turn, a more sexual one. Her relationship with the late frontman of INXS, Michael Hutchence, and her shedding of the near-virginal facade that dominated her first two albums began to have an effect, not only on how the press and her fans treated her, but in the evolution of her music. Released in 1990, Rhythm of Love, its worldwide hit single, "Better the Devil You Know," and its follow-up, "Shocked," took her out of the stifling world of teen pop and brought her into the more adult world of dance music and nightclubs.

Minogue's career was not without its ebbs, however. As she began to flex a bit more creative muscle, her relationship with Stock, Aitken & Waterman felt restrictive. Their sound had dominated music for a number of years on both sides of the Atlantic, but the scene was beginning to move on, and Kylie's fourth and final album with Mushroom and the production team, Let's Get to It, would sell disappointingly. Freed from the yoke of both a production team and a mainstream pop label, Minogue began a long trend of collaborating with up-and-coming and hot producers and songwriters, which not only allowed her to roll with cultural trends and stay current in an extremely fussy and fickle genre, but allowed her to branch out into new areas of performance unheard of by most pop singers of her style.

Now signed to the dance label Deconstruction, Minogue released a much more mature and stylish dance-pop record in 1994's Kylie Minogue. The singles "Confide in Me" and "Put Yourself in My Place" were slicker and more stylish than anything she had previously recorded. While the record sold well and Kylie made more movie appearances (1994's Street Fighter and 1996's Bio-Dome), the next couple of years were fairly quiet except for the hit single (and unlikely collaboration) with Nick Cave entitled "Where the Wild Roses Grow." A dark ballad about a murder (with a video based on the Millais painting Ophelia) -- the duet featured Cave as the murderer singing his point of view and Minogue as the victim singing hers -- the single was widely successful in Australia and the U.K, earning Kylie a new set of fans and a new sense of respect.

Her eagerness to expand on this collaboration led to the work that would make up her 1997 album, Impossible Princess. While the lead single, the more rock-tinged "Some Kind of Bliss," was the result of working with James Dean Bradfield and Sean Moore of Manic Street Preachers, the rest of the album (for the most part) consisted of further collaborations (with Brothers in Rhythm co-founder David Seaman, for instance) and efforts to expand on the dance-pop that was her bread and butter. The album, soon retitled Kylie Minogue in England due to the death of Princess Diana, was successful, but her attempt at developing her sound met firm resistance critically, with many radio stations and journalists writing her off, figuring her career had run its course. Obviously, this was not the case, as Minogue toured the world for the album, selling out stadiums (as usual) and appearing in a number of specialty concerts over the next two years.

In 1999, having been dropped from Deconstruction but signing to Parlophone, Minogue shed the indie influences that guided Impossible Princess and set about creating dance-pop that was more disco than anything in her catalog. The resulting album, Light Years, and its lead single, "Spinning Around," were huge successes, bringing her critical acclaim and winning a new generation of fans.

Her place in pop music history would be consolidated in 2001, and she would be reintroduced to America after more than a decade. That year's album, Fever, and its massively successful (and aptly titled) single "Can't Get You Out of My Head" were the first to be released in the U.S. since Enjoy Yourself, and the single managed to chart stateside at number three. Even the Grammys began to recognize Minogue, as the first of many nominations (eventually she would win for "Come Into My World" in 2002) finally happened that year. While her next album, 2003's Body Language, was not as big a seller as Fever, it was another successful attempt at broadening her sound, this time with electro and hip-hop influences. A greatest-hits package (her second), 2004's Ultimate Kylie, acted as a catalyst for her worldwide Showgirl tour, but that was to be set aside after her diagnosis with breast cancer.

In 2005, she underwent successful surgery and follow-up chemotherapy, and eventually made a full recovery. She started out slowly, but would eventually finish her Showgirl tour, and in 2007 she released her tenth album, X. It was well-received and sold enough to convince Minogue that 2009 was the time to undertake her first tour of the United States. Although limited to a few dates and select cities, the North American jaunt was a rousing success, and an Internet-exclusive album of the New York show was made available at the end of that year. As X was making waves in 2008, Minogue was also honored by Queen Elizabeth with an OBE (Order of the British Empire) for her services to music. She released her 11th full-length, Aphrodite (a set executive produced by Stuart Price), in 2010. That same year, she guested on songs by Hurts ("Devotion") and Taio Cruz ("Higher"), and released a holiday EP titled A Kylie Christmas.

In 2012, Minogue celebrated her 25th year in the music biz with a greatest-hits collection (The Best of Kylie Minogue), a new single ("Timebomb"), an exhaustive singles collection (K25), and an album of her hits reimagined for a small band and orchestra (The Abbey Road Sessions). She also found time to restart her acting career with an appearance in Jack & Diane and a leading role in the acclaimed Holy Motors. Not one to take a rest, Minogue spent a busy 2013 appearing on Laura Pausini's single "Limpido," signing with Jay-Z's Roc Nation management firm, and recording a new album. In early 2014, she began appearing as a coach on the U.K. version of The Voice. Her 12th album, Kiss Me Once, which featured songwriting and production from the likes of Pharrell, Sia, and MNDR, was released in early spring of 2014. Soon after, she hit the road on an ambitious concert tour that took her from Istanbul to Madrid to Perth, with many stops along the way. The tour was documented on the 2015 CD/DVD Kiss Me Once Live at the SSE Hydro.

Minogue kept up her breakneck pace for the rest of 2015, appearing on Giorgio Moroder's single "Right Here, Right Now" and hitting the top of the dance charts with a spot on Nervo's "The Other Boys." She had roles in the ABC Family show Young & Hungry and the film San Andreas, released an EP with producer Fernando Garibay titled Kylie + Garibay, and finally, in November, ended the year with her first full holiday album, Kylie Christmas. In the summer of 2016, Minogue returned with a contribution to the Absolutely Fabulous movie, the theme song "This Wheel's on Fire."

Minogue signed to BMG in 2017 and began working on a new album, her 14th. Recovering from heartbreak, she took the suggestion from one of her team to try writing and recording in Nashville. For the first time in her career, she co-wrote all the songs and teamed with writers and musicians there (and a team of producers in London including Biffco and Sky Adams) to craft a sound that was a hybrid of modern country and her more traditional dance-pop. The resulting record, Golden, was released in April 2018. The following year saw the arrival of Step Back in Time: The Definitive Collection, Minogue's fifth major greatest-hits album. The compilation featured 42 tracks, including the previously unreleased "New York City," which was recorded during the sessions for Golden.

In 2020, she returned with fresh material for her 15th official album, including the singles "Say Something" and "Magic." These nostalgic throwback tunes landed on the aptly titled DISCO, which returned the pop diva to the dancefloor in a major way. Primarily written and recorded at her London home during the COVID-19 lockdown, DISCO also marked the first time Minogue handled engineering duties herself.

Here is a short playlist from some great artists who, in some way, have been moved and impacted by Kylie Minogue. With every album, she seems to undergo evolution and transformation. It is no wonder what she has…

COMPELLED so many artists.

FEATURE: EMI vs. Fish People: Will Kate Bush’s First Three Studio Albums Ever Be Reissued?

FEATURE:

 

 

EMI vs. Fish People

Will Kate Bush’s First Three Studio Albums Ever Be Reissued?

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THERE are three reasons…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Trinity Mirror/Mirrorpix/Alamy

as to why I am bringing up a subject I covered a couple of times. Revisionism and reissues is something some artists get involved with. I am going to bring in an article from 2011 soon that asked whether Kate Bush’s albums pre-The Dreaming will ever be reissued. When she remastered her studio albums and brought out unheard material in 2018, I guess that was a way of taking more control of her back catalogue - but also giving fans something they may not have heard. The greatest hits compilation, The Whole Story, is thirty-five in November. I think that, rather than another greatest hits compilations, perhaps reissuing those early albums would be a better idea. I am also thinking of holding a celebration of Kate Bush next year. 2022 marks forty-five years since The Kick Inside was recorded. It is also forty years since The Dreaming was released. Because of that, I have been thinking about her earlier albums and the fact there has not been a lot of revision. Bush, as she set up her Fish People label, has the rights and ownership of The Dreaming to modern-day. I also think that radio stations will never really break from their rigid playlists and limited exposure of Kate Bush’s music – just the singles and the songs that we all know. Having albums out with additional material and context might well compel them to explore her catalogue more thoroughly.

For every album, there would have been demos and material that was either cut or did not really make the grade. As I have said before, perhaps Bush feels that releasing music that was not meant to see the light of day is illogical. She will be able to resist any attempts at repackaging her post-1982 albums, though EMI will be able to have a little more say with albums prior to then. I am going to conclude in a bit. First, I wanted to pull in an article from Record Collector. Although there has been some revisionism since 2011, there has not been a lot of retrospection and reissuing regarding her studio albums:

“Which brings us to date. As Kate has now taken over the rights to her post-Dreaming albums and decided to reissue The Dreaming and Hounds Of Love in virtually unaltered form through her new Fish People label – Hounds Of Love will apparently feature the Special Single Mix of The Big Sky in lieu of the original, though we can’t be sure if this will be the remastered version overseen by EMI in 1997 – the likelihood of expanded editions of these albums seems minimal. We wonder if EMI might exercise their control over her pre-Dreaming work and go ahead with the expanded editions planned in 2000 independently of Kate’s approval. It would be wonderful to see editions of those early albums presented in the way that Universal recently handled The Cure’s back catalogue – each album offered in remastered form in carefully planned packaging with a bonus disc full of unreleased material from the relevant era and accompanied by a booklet of outtakes and notes.

As we’ve seen, there’s more than enough material for such a project. We haven’t even begun to touch on the wealth of Kate Bush video material that needs to be unearthed, preserved and presented to the public. All we can do is hope that Kate may soften to her past and to the whims of her fans and give the go-ahead for the vaults to be rifled. We live in hope”.

It is a shame that so much needs to be tied to anniversaries. 2023 marks forty-five years of The Kick Inside and Lionheart; Never for Ever turns forty-five in 2025. It is a long time to wait! I would love to see, next year, long-awaited expansions of those first three albums, with booklets, photos and maybe a two/three-vinyl package for each – there could be interviews and demos/rarer tracks combined. We did get to hear some of those lesser-heard cuts on the Remastered series (and on The Other Sides), though there is a lot left in the archives that have not seen the light of day. Another reason why I am thinking of it now is how the pandemic has been a time when more and more people have connected with Bush’s work. There might be a conflict and coming together if EMI decide to reissue expanded editions of The Kick Inside, Lionheart and Never for Ever without her permission. It is less likely Bush will put out reissues of her other albums. Ahead of The Whole Story’s anniversary, it would be a way to sort of clear the cupboards and that way there will be no need in the future to address the question. It comes down to how Bush feels about putting out material she was not completely happy with. I think EMI could release her first three albums without cashing in and being insensitive. So many fans would love to hear those albums alongside demos and B-sides. Alongside photos from the time and extras, it would help spark new interest in her music. At a time when radio stations only play the hits and many people do not dive deep, a few reissues would help address that. Putting out a few of her albums – or most of them – in a new vinyl package would be…

A real treat.

FEATURE: Modern Heroines: Part Fifty-Five: MARINA

FEATURE:

 

 

Modern Heroines

Part Fifty-Five: MARINA

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I wanted to include MARINA…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Atlantic Records

in this Modern Heroines now as her fifth studio album, Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land, was released on 11th June. I think that it is her best work yet. It has received more positive reviews than 2019’s Love + Fear. I think she has really hit a peak on the new album. You can buy it here. It is a fantastic album where MARINA proves she is one of modern music’s finest Pop artists. I have been following her career for years and feel she is going to be an icon of the future. Before coming to some interviews and a couple of reviews for Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land, it is wise to include some biograph about MARINA:

“Marina Lambrini Diamandis (/ˌdiːəˈmændɪs/; Greek: Μαρίνα-Λαμπρινή Διαμαντή; born 10 October 1985), known mononymously as Marina and previously by the stage name Marina and the Diamonds, is a Welsh singer, songwriter, musician, and record producer.

Born in Brynmawr to a Welsh mother and Greek father, Diamandis was raised in Abergavenny and moved to London as a teenager to become a professional singer, despite having little formal musical experience. In 2009, she came to prominence upon placing second in the BBC's Sound of 2010. Her debut studio album, The Family Jewels (2010), incorporated indie pop and new wave musical styles. It entered the UK Albums Chart at No. 5 and was certified gold by the British Phonographic Industry. The album's second single, "Hollywood", peaked at No. 12 on the UK Singles Chart. Her follow-up record, Electra Heart (2012), was a concept album about a character of the same name which became her first No. 1 project in the UK. The album was certified gold in the US and UK, with its singles "Primadonna" and "How to Be a Heartbreaker" becoming international hits.

Diamandis's synthpop-inspired third studio album, Froot (2015), became her third top 10 album in the UK and her first top 10 entry on the US Billboard 200, where it charted at No. 8. Produced entirely by Diamandis and David Kosten, it was praised for its cohesive sound and introspective lyrical content. In 2018, she was featured on Clean Bandit's single "Baby", which reached the top 15 in the UK. Her fourth studio album, Love + Fear, was released on 26 April 2019. The album charted at No. 5 on the UK album chart. She is set to release her fifth studio album, Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land, in June 2021”.

Rather than do a history of MARINA and her albums, there is an interview from 2019 that I want to start with. It is from DAZED. It is quite an extensive interview - though there are parts of it that I wanted to mention:

“Her work, both past and present, has always been “pop cultural” rather than straight-down-the-line pop in that sense. While chart music, the kind made by Diamandis’s conforming contemporaries, is made to slide seamlessly into the public realm ready for consumption, she was able to take the well-mined tropes of contemporary society – self-obsession, overexposed celebrity culture – and show us exactly what was so shitty about them through her songs. She was criticising the very system she naturally had to assimilate into. “I was this opinionated person who wrote my own songs, but at the same time I loved the idea of following the zeitgeist,” she says when I point out that dichotomy to her. “Sometimes, those two things don’t necessarily cross with being a pop star.”

Being something of an underdog earned Diamandis swathes of fans, who passionately respond to every one of her posts on social media. But when you’re taking a break from the pop world, little nuances – like those behind her subtle name change, for example – are something the most fervent ones don’t take note of. Sifting through her mentions, you’ll find pop stans gunning for viral fame, joking that her hiatus has lead to her becoming “poor”. “For the most part, my fans are all intelligent and nice, and it might just be the nature of being young and online, but there’s a lot of misogyny that I see – even in my own fanbase,” Marina says. She knows much of it is said in jest, but petty comments about financial status never wind up in the mentions of men taking a break, only the kind of women who fans think will work faster to appease those they don’t know.

As a result, she’s learned to step back, and only share what’s absolutely necessary with those who might love her but don’t know her IRL. “I have boundaries now,” she says. “I love and adore all support for my music, but people online don’t own me, and I won’t give them any illusion that they have any kind of entitlement.” It’s a noble stance for a pop star to make when the line between life, art, and commodity is continually blurred. “I think it’s really unhealthy to play into that, so I don’t post about my personal life online at all. Any other stuff that’s not about my music, I can just... put on a private Insta!” So, Diamandis has a finsta? She suddenly takes a keen interest in whatever's on the ceiling, before bursting into a fit of laughter. Next question.

Away from the rigid structure of the album cycle, in early 2017 she started MarinaBook: a project that saw her channel the emotion that once went into her music into blogs about her encounters with anxiety, and navigating life as an artist on hiatus. It’s interesting, I say, that her private life is off limits on Instagram, but is dissected in fine detail on that blog, one she updated sporadically before taking a step back at the end of 2017. “I think that’s why I didn’t go back to it, because it freaked me out!” she says, laughing at how nauseous the experience was for her. She sees the long-term benefits of it now, though. Dissecting the human psyche, both within her music and as a person, has always been something that has fascinated her, so much so that she decided to enrol on a psychology course at Birkbeck University in London. For a few months, if you were to wander into the school's library, you could find Marina Diamandis writing essays on modern psychology and theories of personality.

I wonder if the degree was a conscious decision for Diamandis, a curious person in professional limbo, to try and make better sense of herself or to help those around her. She claims it was both, but a course on attachment theory really struck her personally. “It helped me understand a lot of my own motives and my childhood much more.” She pauses for a sip of her now lukewarm coffee. “I’ve done a lot of therapy, and that definitely brought something new to me.”

Times have changed now, and a pop star discussing their mental health so openly is no longer such a taboo subject, but is Diamandis, who rose to fame before this transitional period in pop, comfortable with talking publicly about therapy? “I think so, because I just told you – and we just met!” she grins. “But maybe I wouldn’t have before, because I was always keeping up this perception of an artist that was so narrow. I haven’t done loads of therapy, maybe only two years of it in total, but I, like many in our generation, have had a lot of struggles with my emotional health since I was very young. Perhaps I’ve gravitated towards that subject naturally because I always wanted to solve it”.

It has been exciting charting the career of MARINA and how the music has evolved through the years. As I mentioned, I feel like she has hit a real high with her fifth studio album. Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land, is one that I would recommend to anyone.

It is interesting focusing on an interview from Vogue. Published last year, it was centred around the release of the single, Man’s World. The song was written by MARINA (Diamandis), and it brought to life by an all-female creative team. The percentages of women producing and engineering in studios was mentioned:

“Women currently make up only 2% of producers and 3% of engineers across popular music. Why do you think this industry has been so slow to recognize women behind the scenes?

In my own experience, one of the reasons I think there are so few female producers is because female artists or songwriters don’t get credit. It’s a very interesting thing that I’ve had to navigate. On the first record I got no production credits because I didn’t even think to ask for them, but the fact is that I helped shape every record and I was precious about getting each song to the shape that I wanted it. If I hadn’t been in the room, these records would’ve sounded very different.

I could see the lines getting blurred when there’s enough people in the studio throwing out ideas.

There’s such a blurred line. Obviously you’re hiring a producer, but that doesn’t mean that your contribution is nil. My experience has varied along the way because on the second record I didn’t really have a role in the production since I was working with massive pop producers. You were hiring them to give you something that you thought you couldn’t produce, which was, like, radio hits in America. Then with Froot, I tried to scale it back and coproduce with one guy. But I think a big part of it is women don’t think they have the right to ask for a credit that symbolizes or represents their contribution. It’s up to us to ask for the credit.

You said earlier that each record is sort of the opposite of the previous one. What feels different this time around?

Love + Fear was such a different record and it was highly collaborative on the songwriting front, which is what I needed at the time. At that time in my life, I just felt very unsure about everything. I was coming off two years of just feeling very depressed in ways where I started to doubt my decision-making. But I feel very different on this record. I think I’m much more confident and my life’s more balanced. I’ve made several changes in my professional life and that always translates to the art, if you have a team facilitating your ideas and helping you create what you want. I feel in control. It feels so liberating and strengthening not having to fight with your label to hash out your ideas”.

  PHOTO CREDIT: Atlantic Records

I am going to finish with a playlist comprised of some of the best songs from MARINA/Marina and the Diamonds. With a gem of an album out, it is no wonder that it is being received with such acclaim and appreciation! In their review, this is what The Line of Best Fit had to say:

“A whirlwind of an opening, and also setting the tone for the albums first half, the title track is a re-actualization of Muse’s "Uprising" - sharing thunderous percussion and a sense of urgency with the former. MARINA’s voice soars across a rambunctious bass line, her angelic soprano launching into orbit as she senses the advent of a revolution. A sense of hard-earned confidence rises to the surface: the ebullience of the first track and the fruits of its introspection are echoed in the second, a sassy self-empowerment call to arms that only grows more hectic with time. “Why be a wallflower when you can be a Venus flytrap?”, MARINA ponders in jest.

Her vocal dynamism translates particularly well in rock-leaning settings, where her leaping registers make their way through enthralling kicks and mean guitar riffs. She flies across second single “Purge The Poison”, confronting turbulence with ease and getting her every word in despite the constant menace of being overthrown by an instrumental neurosis.

It’s precisely those moments of maximalism across Ancient Dreams that glue the collection of tracks together. The relentless "New America" is the hymn of a country ready to confront its demons: anthemic and critical at the same time, it pushes the idea that the social reckonings of last year should amount to more accountability and action at a systemic level. MARINA spells the end of an era of willful naivete: “America, you can’t bury the truth / It’s time to pay your dues”.

Despite a relatively short runtime two distinct albums seem to be vying for the listener’s attention: a socio-politically charged alternative pop rock epic on one side and a more tender intimate narrative following heartbreak on the other. It's the ballads of Ancient Dreams that bear the brunt of this slight schizophrenia. "Highly Emotional People" might be rooted in a specific past relationship with Clean Bandit’s Jack Patterson but it’s hard not to hear it as a broader statement about masculinity, even more so considering the track’s placement–wedged in between the intense "Purge The Poison" and "New America". There’s a disheartening simplicity in lyrics like “people say men don’t cry” that only scratch the surface of a topic that’s become a touchstone of popular culture.

But, some good comes from personal musings getting turned into grander ideas - whether intentional or not. Pandora becomes a feminist icon, reclaiming control over her own fate in "Pandora’s Box". The ancestral representative of the world’s woes transcends the misogyny of the original myth into a symbol of power and independence in MARINA’s hands. The track proves that somewhere amongst the ruins of Ancient Dreams lies a path to merging the album’s twin souls into one”.

It will be good when MARINA can take Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land to the stage – as the tracks, I feel, are designed to fully come to life in this arena. The second review for the new MARINA album comes from CLASH . They were (clearly) impressed by it:  

“Now, Marina returns with her fifth studio album, ‘Ancient Dreams In A Modern Land’, a 10-track wonder that is a more mature and eclectic take on her gloriously femme and thundering electro-pop. The record opens with the carnivalesque and neo-classical: title-track ‘Ancient Dreams…’ is infused with dry, desert landscapes and sounds that are earthy and elemental. Marina attributes these colour compositions, her choice of rich magentas and blossoming greens to classical portrait artist John William Godard, a strong inspiration on the visual element of this project.

‘Venus Fly Trap’, ‘Man’s World’ and ‘I Love You But I Love Me More’ lyrically revive the Marina from the days of Electra Heart (“I’ve got the beauty, got the brains, got the power, hold the reins. I should be motherfucking crazy.”), a project that in its prime, was wildly defiant and wonderfully juvenile. At its peak is sensory ephemera ‘Purge the Poison’, with remix featuring Pussy Riot, and a heady, visual world of chains, leather and female power.

We are brought back down to earth with ‘Flowers’ and ‘Goodbye’ two ballads dominated by piano and Marina’s spiraling vocal twangs. These tracks certainly change the momentum of the record, but in a way that doesn’t feel unnatural or forced. Marina makes a strong case for embracing a change of trajectory: in life, music and art. There is something to be said for the Art Of Quitting. Or at least detaching ourselves from the things in life that no longer bring us joy”.

 I am a big supporter of MARINA, and I get the feeling that she will be putting out albums of the highest calibre for many years to come. Already an icon to many, that will expand and reinforce as albums such as Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land resonates and causes ripples. It is a remarkable album that sits alongside…

THIS year’s very best.

FEATURE: The June Playlist: Vol. 3: Good to See You, Ms. Ross

FEATURE:

 

 

The June Playlist

IN THIS PHOTO: Diana Ross

Vol. 3: Good to See You, Ms. Ross

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THIS is a busy and big…

 IN THIS PHOTO: BANKS

weekly Playlist that should add some brightness to a wet weekend. There is new music from Diana Ross, BANKS, Tyler, the Creator, Denise Chaila, Leon Bridges, and Kojey Radical. Throw into the mix some Laura Mvula (ft. Simon Neil), Little Simz, Natalie Imbruglia, Aldous Harding, Mykki Blanco, and Vince Staples. That makes for an eclectic and quality-rich selection! If you require a boost and kick to give you some weekend lift, then I hope that these songs help do the trick. Even if the weather is not great today, these tunes are sure to brighten the day and bring some heat. With so many gems in the rundown, one cannot help but…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Tyler, the Creator/PHOTO CREDIT: Luis ‘Panch’ Perez

FEEL motivated.   

ALL PHOTOS/IMAGES (unless credited otherwise): Artists

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Diana Ross – Thank You

BANKS – The Devil

Tyler, the Creator – LUMBERJACK

Leon Bridges – Why Don’t You Touch Me

PHOTO CREDIT: Róisín Murphy O’Sullivan

Denise Chaila – 061

Kojey Radical – Woohaa

Little Simz - Rollin Stone

Laura Mvula (ft. Simon Neil) - What Matters

Natalie Imbruglia – Build It Better

Griff – Shade of Yellow

Mykki Blanco – That’s Folks

PHOTO CREDIT: Clare Shilland

Aldous Harding – Old Peel

Vince Staples – LAW OF AVERAGES

Orlando Weeks – Big Skies, Silly Faces

Jennifer Hudson - Here I Am (Singing My Way Home)

Kings of Convenience, Feist – Catholic Country

Olivia Rodrigo - The Rose Song

Pip Blom - Keep It Together

H.E.R. – Hard to Love

PHOTO CREDIT: Shervin Lainez

TORRES - Hug from a Dinosaur

Liz Lawrence – Saturated

Yves Tumor – Jackie

Mabel – Let Them Know

The Go! Team - A Bee Without Its Sting

Joy Crookes – Feet Don’t Fail Me Now

Hope Tala – Mad

PHOTO CREDIT: Pooneh Ghana

La Luz - In the Country

Wet Leg - Chaise Longue

YONAKA – Raise Your Glass

Honey Mooncie – Here for Me

Rhett Nicholl – Love in Vain

Tara Lily – The Things You Do

Cathy Jain – cool kid

PHOTO CREDIT: Percy Walker-Smith

FEET - Library

PHOTO CREDIT: Callum Walker Hutchinson

Gia Woods - Enough of You

 

Eliza Shaddad - The Man I Admire

PHOTO CREDIT: Cornelia Wahlberg

Tove Styrke - Mood Swings

Kamasi Washington - Sun Kissed Child

FEATURE: Groovelines: Frankie Goes to Hollywood - Relax

FEATURE:

 

 

Groovelines

Frankie Goes to Hollywood - Relax

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THERE are a couple of articles…

that I want to bring in to illustrate and explain the recording and success of Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s monster hit, Relax. As it is Pride Month, I wanted to spend some time with this L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ classic. Before coming onto some interesting articles, Wikipedia provides some backdrop and biography about one of the greatest songs of the 1980s:

“The hit version, produced by Trevor Horn and featuring the band along with other musicians, entered the UK Top 75 singles chart in November 1983 but did not crack the Top 40 until early January 1984. Three weeks later it reached number one, in the chart dated 28 January 1984, replacing Paul McCartney's "Pipes of Peace". One of the decade's most controversial and most commercially successful records, "Relax" eventually sold a reported two million copies in the UK alone, easily ranking among the ten biggest-selling singles ever. It remained in the UK Top 40 for 37 consecutive weeks, 35 of which overlapped with a radio airplay ban by the BBC (owing to lyrics perceived as overtly sexual). In June 1984, bolstered by the instant massive success of the band's follow-up single "Two Tribes", the single re-entered the Top Ten for a further nine weeks including two spent at number two (behind "Two Tribes"). At that time Frankie Goes to Hollywood were the only act apart from the Beatles and John Lennon to concurrently occupy the top two positions on the chart. Several 12-inch single versions fed the "Relax" phenomenon. The single re-entered the UK Top 75 in February 1985, and, more successfully, in October 1993, when it spent three weeks in the Top Ten”.

When thinking about these anthems and songs that defined a time, I feel Relax is especially influential and important. It is definitely one of the greatest U.K. number-one singles. When The Guardian ranked the finest U.K. number-ones, they placed Relax at thirteen. This is what they said:

 “In 1983, Margaret Thatcher swept to general election victory on a moralistic platform of “Victorian values”. The Victorians are well-remembered for their culture of sexual repression, and – as a direct result – their obsession with sex and erotica. So perhaps Thatcher should have seen it coming: mere months later, the country’s No 1 single was the most gloriously filthy in chart-topping history.

Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s Relax, the ultimate banger about banging, made little impact on its first release on ZTT Records in late 1983. But after a performance on Top of the Pops in January 1984, it shot to the top of the charts and stayed there for five weeks, beginning a year of total chart dominance for the Liverpool group. It remains the sixth bestselling single in British history, beaten only by Band Aid, Candle in the Wind, Bohemian Rhapsody and some novelty songs. Its immense success proves that, besides charity, nothing brings the UK together quite like extreme horniness”.

With not only its flagrant innuendo, but its wide-open synths, and swooning, psychedelic disco structure, the song was a complete wildcard – and the band performing it even more so. Frontmen Holly Johnson and Paul Rutherford were both openly gay, still a rarity in pop at the time, and courted controversy with the use of fetish wear in their performances and videos. Famously, it was censorship from the BBC that propelled the song to its peak: when it was at No 6 in the charts, BBC Radio 1’s breakfast DJ Mike Read yanked it off air after taking a cursory glance at the lewd lyrics and cover art. He declared he’d never play it again. The BBC backed him by banning it across all its shows – including TOTP. For five weeks, Frankie were announced as No 1 – and then the show played out on a different track.

The song’s runaway success was testament to the fact that censorship and repression don’t work. It was a powerful message at the dawn of the Thatcher era: this was towards the beginning of the HIV/Aids epidemic that would devastate the LGBT community and lead to a dangerous increase in homophobia, and just three years before Thatcher would introduce the regressive Section 28 amendment. It was an era of hate, in which homosexuality was pushed even further to the fringes of society than it had been before. And yet, Frankie Goes to Hollywood prevailed”.

Prior to wrapping up, there is a very deep and intriguing article from Sound on Sound that explored Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s hit. I am not bringing it all in (as it is very long) - though there are a couple of portions that I wanted to source:

“It was in 1983, while producing at a small studio named the Producer's Workshop on London's Fulham Road, that Steve Lipson received a call asking him to spend a couple of days engineering for Trevor Horn. This would be at Sarm West, where an SSL E-Series console was supplemented by a couple of Studer A80 tape machines.

"I knew who he was," Lipson remarks, "but I just didn't want to do it. By then I wanted to be a record producer, and so engineering, for me, seemed like a black hole. At the same time, I also wanted to achieve success on my own terms, not through anybody else, and I was therefore anti the whole idea. Still, the job was for just two days, so I took it even though I had no interest in being there. I basically adopted a couldn't-care-less attitude, but what transpired was that Trevor is the kind of producer who loves the people around him to get on with their jobs. That meant I was inadvertently doing exactly what he wanted me to do — it was weird. And after two days, without either of us saying a thing, we just kept going."

Having already tried to record 'Relax' with Frankie and the Blockheads, as well as with Frankie alone, Horn was now attempting to give the song some fresh impetus, and to that end he'd recruited the engineering talents of Lipson, along with keyboard player Andy Richards and Fairlight programmer JJ Jeczalik. Initially, three weeks were spent on trying to re-fashion the track, while also working on 'Ferry 'Cross the Mersey' and editing The Art Of Noise. Yet it wasn't until he took a dinner break during a 'Ferry' session that Horn came to appreciate Lipson's musical abilities.

"That song didn't have a guitar part yet," Lipson recalls, "so I plugged in my guitar and began playing something for the middle eight. All of a sudden, Trevor ran into the control room and asked whose sound he was hearing. I said, 'Oh, it's me.' He said, 'You never told me you could play the guitar,' and I said, 'Sure, I did, but you didn't appear interested.' Now he was. And this brings us back to 'Relax', which at that time bore no comparison to the finished record, even though the song itself was similar. Trevor had obviously gleaned its essence from the band, but he'd also incorporated some ideas from the Blockheads, along with a few sounds that were in the Fairlight."

These included bass hooks recorded by the Blockheads' Norman Watt-Roy, and a bass pulse sampled on a Fairlight CMI at Battery Studios a couple of years earlier by session musician Mark Cunningham. But Trevor Horn still had an ace up his sleeve.

Upon its initial US release, 'Relax' only peaked at number 67 in the spring of 1984. Yet in the UK, where Frankiemania was in full cry, it remained on the charts for 42 consecutive weeks, including a revival in the summer of that year when it climbed back to number two while the band's follow-up single occupied the top spot for nine weeks, having entered the chart at number one. Not that the aforementioned follow-up had been very easy to find.

"Sarm was a busy and expensive studio, so rather than mess around there trying to come up with a new song, Trevor asked me if I knew a cheaper place where we could go with the band," Lipson recalls. "I told him about the Producer's Workshop in Fulham, and so we all decamped for there. Even though he'd already figured out what the next single should be, it was a real long shot. The song was 'Two Tribes', and I remember when we first heard it we all looked at him like he was mad, but he said, 'It's all about the bass line.' He completely got it. He was firing on all cylinders, whereas the rest of us were completely in the dark.

"For one thing, there wasn't much to the song, and for another, the demo wasn't any good. However, out of all the material it was the only track that he could envision being the follow-up single — it wasn't a positive choice, but one made out of necessity. The thing about the bass part on the finished record is that it drops an octave, whereas the original bass part didn't do that. It sounded like kids were playing the song, and they were. What Trevor loved about it was the beat, and so after we went down to the Producer's Workshop and the band members did their thing, they then left and again it was down to the four of us — Trevor, Andy, JJ and me — all feeling depressed as anything because it just sounded terrible. We therefore set up and played it ourselves, and interestingly the only part that ended up being retained from the Producer's Workshop was my guitar.

"I played a sort of harmony, and that, together with dropping the bass down on those notes and sequencing it, as well as Andy then coming in with the chord movement — a minor chord to a fourth and back to the minor — were the key elements. Once these were all in place, we then moved back to Sarm to work on the track, and while we were in Studio Two, figuring out how to make the bass sound good, Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley were mixing an album in Studio One, and they then went away to record another album, came back to mix it, and we were still working on the bass. We were looking for sounds, trying to get the articulation right”.

I was born the year before Relax was released. I have listened to the song a lot through the years. It has this timeless quality but, at the same time, it seems to be rooted at a particular time and place. For this Pride Month-inspired Groovelines, it was great reconnecting…

WITH the amazing Relax.

FEATURE: Second Spin: Cyndi Lauper - Sisters of Avalon

FEATURE:

 

 

Second Spin

Cyndi Lauper - Sisters of Avalon

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SOMETIMES, you get these albums from, major artists…

that are not given the credit and exposure they deserve when they are released. That is the case with Cyndi Lauper’s Sisters of Avalon. Released worldwide on 1st April, 1997, the album tackles issues of complacency and ignorance in popular culture, and the discrimination of minorities, gays, and women. There are big and serious themes covered on Sisters of Avalon. Say a Prayer, for instance, concerns the AIDS epidemic. Not as lauded and popular as earlier albums like 1986’s True Colors, Sisters of Avalon is a great album that deserves another spin. Maybe the album seemed a bit too heavy for some people. There are so many highlights on Sisters of Avalon. From the title track to You Don’t Know, Sisters of Avalon is an album that you need to hear. There are very few reviews available to read. Among the ones that are there, there are those that are mixed and not convinced by the album. I will bring in a couple of reviews that are more positive. Before that, there is an archived interview - where Lauper discussed the recording of Sisters of Avalon:

“At the height of her career in the mid-'80s, Lauper sang upbeat pop tunes about love, relationships, and having fun. She still deals with the same themes today, but has evolved into a more mature artist by experimenting with hip-hop, electro-reggae, and jazz.

On "Sisters of Avalon," she weaves together six-strings and violin; drum loops and accordion; and synthesizers and mandolin. The album was written and recorded in Tennessee and Connecticut and finished in an old mansion in Tuxedo Park, N.Y., where she lived and worked at that time.

Lauper says she loves to write and record music at her home. "It's your own thing. It's calm. You get up at 4 a.m. and record this guitar part," she says.

To improve from her last album, "Hat Full of Stars," Lauper says she "needed it to be more cohesive." She accomplished this by writing with one person, not the usual crew of 10.

And Lauper says she worked well with her writing partner, Jan Pulsford, who is one of her band members.

"It has a wild energy to it that takes you on a journey," she says. Persuaded by her producer, Mark Saunders, Lauper recorded her music on the computer instead of tapes.

"It's kind of weird when you're working with a bunch of cyberfreaks. There wasn't a lot of get-together, sit-down, and talk," she says. In fact, there was so much equipment that there was no space for a living room in the house, she says”.

If you are someone who is a bit unsure of Cyndi Lauper’s cannon and where to start, I would say that an album such as Sisters of Avalon is as good a place as any. It is not a depressing or too heavy listen by any means. Showcasing Lauper’s remarkably strong and versatile voice, there is much to love about Sisters of Avalon. I think one of the issues was the lack of promotion for the album. It did not perform well in most markets. In the United States, the album debuted at 188 on the chart. In the U.K., Sisters of Avalon was released in February 1997. It got to fifty-nine and did not make much of an impression.

It is a shame that Sisters of Avalon was not given much of a chance. I feel it is a very fine album that should be played by more people. There are a couple of short reviews that I want to drop in regarding Sisters of Avalon. This is what Entertainment Weekly wrote in their assessment:

“Judging from the soaring self-assurance of ”Sisters of Avalon” to the love-wounded quiver on ”Unhook the Stars” (the title track of the recent Nick Cassavetes film), Lauper remains an intoxicating pop siren. Her sixth album — and first release of all-new material in four years — is a wonderfully eclectic affair that has the gorgeous sound of sweet comeback in every cut”.

Even if you are not a massive Cyndi Lauper fan, I reckon you will discover gems and songs you’ll love on Sisters of Avalon. I will end by sourcing this interesting review. Despite some more muted review, there are those who have kind things to say:

“Cyndi Lauper's newest album, "Sisters of Avalon," has to be the greatest album I've ever heard. From the dance hit "You Don't Know" to the groovy title cut, this album has it all. The songs range from tender ballads such as "Fall Into Your Dreams" and "Fearless" to harder pieces like "Love to Hate." "Sisters of Avalon" also contains a host of funky dance grooves such as "Ballad of Cleo and Joe," "You Don't Know" and the pulsating title cut.

Cyndi's dizzy voice is sounding better than ever these days, reaching lower notes and higher, tear-jerking pitches on "Say a Prayer." She is accompanied by Bush's Nigel Pulsford on lead guitar on "Love to Hate" and "You Don't Know." The lyrics are lush and the accompaniments are thick with electric guitars and synths along with acoustic strings

"Sisters of Avalon" is Cyndi's best work since "Girls Just Want To Have Fun." I haven't been able to stop listening to it. I highly recommend it to any music lover - I promise you'll love it”.

Go and spend some time with Cyndi Lauper’s fifth studio album. Nearly twenty-five years old, it is an underrated and tremendous album that has not dated or lost any of its impact. For those who have ignored or underestimated Sisters of Avalon, I would urge them to give it…

ANOTHER look.

FEATURE: The Lockdown Playlist: June Songs

FEATURE:

 

 

The Lockdown Playlist

PHOTO CREDIT: @artic_studios 

June Songs

___________

AS we are well into June now…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Kaizen Nguyễn/Unsplash

I wanted to put together some songs with the month in their title. We are half-way through the year and many of us are looking forward to the summer. The weather is pretty nice at the moment, so many people are taking advantage of it. As we look ahead to the rest of 2021, I wanted to stay in June and combine songs that are influenced by the month. If you require a playlist for June, I think that this one should set you up and motivated. There are a variety of interesting and eclectic track that have the month of June…

 PHOTO CREDIT: @linkhoang/Unsplash

AT their heart.

FEATURE: Childhood Treasures: Albums That Impacted Me: Michael Jackson - Bad

FEATURE:

 

 

Childhood Treasures: Albums That Impacted Me

Michael Jackson - Bad

___________

THIS new series…

might seem a little self-indulgent, but I think every music lover has those albums that came to them during childhood that impacted them and changed how they felt about music. In terms of the earliest albums, Michael Jackson’s Bad was a huge one for me. I know there is a bittersweet and slightly controversial nature discussing Jackson today. I am not going to talk about accusations of sexual abuse that have been levied at him. I am discussing an artist and album that delighted and enthralled me as a child. Bad is Jackson’s seventh studio album. It was released on 31st August, 1987, nearly five years after Jackson's previous album, Thriller (1982). It was the third and final collaboration between Jackson and producer Quincy Jones. In terms of Pop albums, I think Jackson was the master. He could pen these songs that got straight to the heart. There is this debate as to which Michael Jackson album is the best. Many would say Thriller, whereas others gravitate towards Off the Wall (or another one of his studio efforts). I feel Bad is an underrated album that might have been compared to Thriller too heavily. Maybe critics were expecting something similar to that album in 1987. Bad, to me, is a more consistent album. I do not think that it is perfect. Tracks like Just Good Friends are not among Jackson’s best.

I think there has been reappraisal of the album, seeing as a lot of time has passed by. Many artists have cited Bad as a key album to them, so critics have returned to the album and judged it on that basis. There are sites that ranks the tracks on Bad. It is an album with some obvious highlights. I think Man in the Mirror, Dirty Diana, Bad, Smooth Criminal, Leave Me Alone and I Just Can’t Stop Loving You are Jacko classics. The album is balanced so you get incredibly strong songs on both sides – not just a case of top-loading so that you get all the quality at the front and then it is diminishing returns. I latched onto the album from the age of six or seven. That would have been a year or two after Bad was released. With the ability to write instantly catchy choruses that, plus Jackson’s vocal tics and incredible vocal range, ensured  Bad resonated and got under the skin. I really love the album and listen to it a lot today. I want to finish by sourcing from a positive review of the album. As I said, it is underrated and did not get the wonderful reviews across the board. It is impossible to narrow down to the best three songs, for instance - though there are tracks that hit me harder than others. I especially love Another Part of Me and Leave Me Alone. Every time I listen to the album, different songs elicit new reactions and images.

Before closing with a review, it is worth knowing a bit more about the history of Bad and its creation. The Atlantic revisited Bad twenty-five years after its release. I am not going to use all of the article - though there are portions worth illuminating:

“Beginning in 1985, the media became increasingly vicious toward the artist. "They desire our blood, not our pain," Jackson wrote in a note in 1987. Tabloids soon began disparaging him with the nickname "Wacko Jacko" (a term Jackson despised). It was a term first applied to the pop star by the British tabloid, The Sun, in 1985, but its etymology goes back further. "Jacko Macacco" was the name of a famous monkey used in monkey-baiting matches at the Westminster Pit in London in the early 1820s. Subsequently, the term "Jacco" or "Jacco Macacco" was Cockney slang to refer to monkeys in general. The term persisted into the 20th century as "Jacko Monkeys" became popular children's toys in Great Britain in the 1950s. They remained common in British households into the 1980s (and can still be found on Ebay today).

The term "Jacko," then, didn't arise out of a vacuum, and certainly wasn't meant as a term of endearment. In the ensuing years, it would be used by the tabloid and mainstream media alike with a contempt that left no doubt about its intent. Even for those with no knowledge of its racist roots and connotations, it was obviously used to "otherize," humiliate and demean its target. Like Ralph Ellison's "Battle Royal" scene in Invisible Man, it was a process by which to reduce Michael Jackson the human being and artist, to "Jacko" the minstrelized spectacle for avaricious amusement. (It is significant to note that, while the term was used widely by the white media, it was rarely, if ever used by black journalists.)

Jackson called his home studio at Hayvenhurst "the Laboratory." This is where the magic was created with a small group of musicians and engineers, including Matt Forger, John Barnes, Chris Currell, and Bill Bottrell (often referred to as the "B-Team"). It has now become the stuff of legend that Jackson wrote "100 million" on his bathroom mirror, the number of albums he expected Bad to sell. The figure was more than double the number of what Thriller had sold to that point. Such was the scope of Jackson's ambition.

However, it wasn't just commercial success he was after. Jackson wanted to innovate. He told collaborators he wanted to create sounds the ear had never heard. Exciting new synthesizers were coming on the scene at the time, including the Fairlight CMI and the Synclavier PSMT. "It really opened up another realm of creativity," recalls recording engineer Matt Forger. "The Fairlight had this light pen that could draw a waveform on the screen and allow you to modify the shape of it. The Synclavier was just an extension of that. Very often we would end up combining two synthesizer elements together to create a unique character. You could do that within the Synclavier, but you also had the ability in a very fine increment to adjust the attack of each sound character. And by doing that you could really tailor the sound. We were doing a lot of sampling and creating new sound characters and then creating a combination of sample sounds mixed with FM synthesis."

What makes the Bad album so timeless, however, is the way Jackson was able to compliment this technological innovation with more organic, soulful qualities. In "The Way You Make Me Feel," for example, the relentless steel-shuffling motion of the beat is juxtaposed with all kinds of natural, improvisational qualities that give the song its charm: the vocal ad libs, the finger snapping, the blues harmonies, the percussive grunts and gasps, the exclamations. Recording engineer Bruce Swedien speaks of how he left all of Jackson's vocal habits in as part of the "overall sonic picture." He didn't want to make the song "antiseptically clean" because it would lose its visceral effect.

In so many ways, Bad was Jackson's coming-of-age as an artist. Quincy Jones challenged him at the outset to write all the material and Jackson responded, writing nine of the 11 tracks that made the album and dozens more that were left off. "Study the greats," he wrote in one note to himself, "and become greater." He spoke of the "anatomy" of music, of dissecting its parts. He was also reading a great deal, including the work of Joseph Campbell. He wanted to understand what symbolism, myths, and motifs resonated over time and why.

Twenty-five years later, the results speak for themselves. Videos like "Bad" and "Smooth Criminal" are among the finest the medium has to offer. Songs like "Man in the Mirror," "The Way You Make Me Feel," "Dirty Diana," and "Another Part of Me" remain staples in Jackson's vast catalog. Hearing the remastered album, included in the three-CD Bad25 set out September 18, is a reminder of its singular personality and pleasure. Listen to the propulsive bass lines, the layers of rhythm, the vocal experimentation, the cinematic narratives, the signature exclamations and invented vocabulary, the sheer vitality and joy. This is pop at its most dynamic, and it stands, along with the best work of Prince, as one of the best albums of the 1980s.

Bad is a portrait of the artist in peak form—bold, creative and confident. Now as then, "the whole world has to answer”.

To end up, there is a glowing review that I want to spotlight. AllMusic assessed Bad in 2012. They are a lot fairer towards the album than a lot of critics – maybe because twenty-five years had passed and allowed for a fresh perspective:

“The downside to a success like Thriller is that it's nearly impossible to follow, but Michael Jackson approached Bad much the same way he approached Thriller -- take the basic formula of the predecessor, expand it slightly, and move it outward. This meant that he moved deeper into hard rock, deeper into schmaltzy adult contemporary, deeper into hard dance -- essentially taking each portion of Thriller to an extreme, while increasing the quotient of immaculate studiocraft. He wound up with a sleeker, slicker Thriller, which isn't a bad thing, but it's not a rousing success, either. For one thing, the material just isn't as good. Look at the singles: only three can stand alongside album tracks from its predecessor ("Bad," "The Way You Make Me Feel," "I Just Can't Stop Loving You"), another is simply OK ("Smooth Criminal"), with the other two showcasing Jackson at his worst (the saccharine "Man in the Mirror," the misogynistic "Dirty Diana"). Then, there are the album tracks themselves, something that virtually didn't exist on Thriller but bog down Bad not just because they're bad, but because they reveal that Jackson's state of the art is not hip. And they constitute a near-fatal dead spot on the record -- songs three through six, from "Speed Demon" to "Another Part of Me," a sequence that's utterly faceless, lacking memorable hooks and melodies, even when Stevie Wonder steps in for "Just Good Friends," relying on nothing but studiocraft. Part of the joy of Off the Wall and Thriller was that craft was enhanced with tremendous songs, performances, and fresh, vivacious beats. For this dreadful stretch, everything is mechanical, and while the album rebounds with songs that prove mechanical can be tolerable if delivered with hooks and panache, it still makes Bad feel like an artifact of its time instead a piece of music that transcends it”.

I will cover albums in this feature as the weeks go by. Bad opened my eyes to Michael Jackson’s music and it has remained with me ever since that first experience. So many gems can be found on The King of Pop’s seventh studio album. It has inspired so many artists and fans since 1987. I feel Bad will continue to do so…

FOR generations to come. 

 

FEATURE: Station to Station: Part Fourteen: Emma Barnett (BBC Radio 4)

FEATURE:

 

 

Station to Station

Part Fourteen: Emma Barnett (BBC Radio 4)

___________

RATHER than feature…

 PHOTO CREDIT: BBC Radio 1

a broadcaster on a music-playing radio station, I am focusing on someone who is more known for talk radio. Though, of course, BBC Radio 4 plays music, Emma Barnett is one of the hosts of Woman’s Hour. Though the show has been in the news regarding Zara Mohammed experience on the show, and the fact Sinéad O'Connor pulled out of an interview recently, Barnett’s presenting is excellent and hugely popular. She presents Woman’s Hour alongside Naga Munchetty. I will come to an article regarding both and what the reaction has been like to their introduction – they replaced Dame Jenni Murray and Jane Garvey this year. Before getting to an article and a couple of interviews, here is a little background about Emma Barnett:

“Emma Barnett (born 5 February 1985) is a British broadcaster and journalist. She has been the main presenter of Woman's Hour on BBC Radio 4 since January 2021 and is one of the regular presenters on BBC Two's Newsnight.

Barnett worked for BBC Radio 5 Live for six years, beginning in 2014, after three years working for LBC. Between 2016 and 2020 Barnet presented 5 Live's mid-morning weekday programme. Before beginning her broadcasting career Barnett worked for The Daily Telegraph firstly as its Digital Media editor and latterly its Women editor, being credited with bringing a more serious edge to the coverage of women's issues in the paper. Between August 2016 and 2020, Barnett was a columnist for the The Sunday Times and, from June 2017, a co-presenter of BBC One's Sunday Morning Live. In autumn 2017, she co-presented the live discussion programme After the News on ITV”.

A multi-talented broadcaster, writer, author and writer, Barnett is someone you should follow on Instagram. I have been listening to Woman’s Hour for years. I loved when Murray and Garvey hosted. Although Barnett and Munchetty have different styles to their predecessors and one another, they are fantastic hosts. I am surprised there are not more interviews online with Emma Barnett. She is one of the most important broadcasters we have in the U.K. I am keen to pull from an interview and a review of her and Munchetty hosting Woman’s Hour. Just before that, I want to bring in a little more detail regarding Barnett’s radio achievements – in addition to her valuable charity work:

“Emma was named Best Speech Broadcaster of the Year 2020, winning Gold, at the Radio Academy Awards. She was also named Radio Broadcaster of the Year by the Broadcasting Press Guild in 2018 for her agenda-setting interviews. The Emma Barnett Show (Monday-Thursday 10am-1pm) won Gold at the the Radio Academy Awards 2018, for Best News Coverage of real-life stories. She was also named Broadcaster of the Year 2017 by the Political Studies Association.

On radio Emma makes documentaries for BBC Radio 4 and the World Service - in which she has investigated a wide range of subjects including: the march of military women to the front line; the personal hypocrisy within religion; the rise of mindfulness and whether we have a right to be forgotten in the digital age. She started her broadcasting career on LBC radio - where she used to host the Sunday drive-time programme and for which she was named the best new radio presenter at the Arqiva commercial radio awards 2012.

She then landed her first BBC radio show on Sunday evenings for Radio 5 Live called The Hit List - which revealed the 40 most shared and talked about stories of the week - before transferring to her own named programme in the station’s daily schedule. Emma writes a monthly column for the i Paper. For 4 years, she wrote a weekly column for The Sunday Times Magazine. Entitled Tough Love, she advised readers who came to her with their deepest problems - from difficult children to even worse partners”.

Emma is a patron of Smartworks, a charity which helps economically disadvantaged women get back into the workplace through interview training and having the right outfit to make the best first impression. She has been a volunteer dresser for more than a decade - helping women discover the best outfit to land the job - and in 2017 was very proud to become one of the charity’s patrons.

She also supports Endometriosis UK, a charity dedicated to helping women suffering from Endo navigate each day and raising money for much-needed research into this incurable disease”.

It seemed like a natural progression to appoint Barnett as one of the hosts of Woman’s Hour. She has settled into the role really well. The news stories about guest complaints takes nothing away from her talent and suitability. In fact, I feel like she will be helming the long-running show for many years to come. It would be nice to know a little more about the woman behind the microphone. I was interested reading Mark Lawson’s reaction to the new hosts of Woman’s Hour. He was writing for The Guardian on 4th January, 2021:

“Barnett started by reading out a letter the show had solicited from the Queen, congratulating Woman’s Hour on its 75th anniversary this year: a counterintuitive traditionalism from a 35-year-old presenter, although segueing to a specially recorded song by the former Spice Girl Mel C suggested a desire to cover the generational bases. Munchetty also started with music, reading her menu of the items coming up over a thumping drum’n’bass track, which seemed mainly designed to make the show sound different from Barnett’s reign, and from Munchetty’s other gig on BBC One Breakfast News.

The opening monologues spoke identically of “looking forward to getting to know” the listeners, part of the greater tendency of modern broadcasting towards emotionalism: the question used most often by each presenter to interviewees was: “How do/did you feel?”

Unusually, the recruitment of two women does not alter the gender balance of the airwaves; the 10am time-slot has had women simultaneously in charge on Radio 4 and Radio 5 since 2016, when Barnett took over mornings on Radio 5. And both have previously done holiday shifts on their new programmes, but having the front door keys, and being able to redecorate, is a very different proposition.

Barnett’s 5 live style was built around politics, showbiz and debates fuelled by social media; on Monday, it felt as if she was craving more texts to interact with. But, as her appearances on 5 live and Newsnight were aimed at the entire audience, the most intriguing question was to what extent she will acknowledge the implication in the title of Woman’s Hour (anachronistic to some, controversial to others) that it has a restrictive remit.

Barnett started very Westminster, with what was billed as the “first interview” with Sonia Khan, the Treasury aide dismissed by the former chief Downing Street aide Dominic Cummings. This was less of a scoop than it might have been. Surprisingly, as Barnett thrives on live radio, the chat was recorded, perhaps because of BBC legal fears about discussing the shortsighted Durham explorer without an editing safety net. Khan then repeatedly refused to “get into what happened back then” when Cummings sacked her, preferring to “focus on the learnings”. (Might the show have seen this coming, as the ex-aide recently reached an out-of-court settlement with the government?)

PHOTO CREDIT: BBC Radio 4/PA 

Barnett used her considerable interviewing skill, but sounded increasingly frustrated, at one point somewhat tetchily telling Khan that she “must have” a view on Cummings. In retrospect, the second item should have been first. Daringly for Woman’s Hour, and possibly indicating Barnett’s intended flexibility with content, it was a conversation between two men – the admirable Richard Ratcliffe, whose wife, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, remains under house imprisonment in Iran, and the former foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt.

But, on first-day form, the BBC has two sharp programmes with high-class presenters, although radio overlords may become concerned that these shows seem much closer in sound and content than when Murray and Barnett were going head to head. There seems a clear risk as well that Barnett will find herself in turf wars with the Today programme for subjects and guests, given that her core interests overlap so much with its.

The solution to those problems may be that within a few years, Barnett and Munchetty will be sitting around the Radio 4 studio breakfast table. For each of them, these new shows, which opened very enjoyably, feel like steps rather than destinations”.

I wonder whether Barnett will pursue other opportunities and ventures in the coming years – or whether her time on Woman’s Hour is going to take too much time up. It will be interesting seeing Barnett’s career bloom and evolve as the years go by.

I want to end by quoting a few questions from an interview that was conducted by The Guardian earlier this year. It was a quick-fire interview…though it did provide some interesting answers and insights:

“What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
Impatience.

What is the trait you most deplore in others?
I loathe people who are stingy with their time, their contacts or buying a round. I loathe people who don’t listen properly, and I loathe people who lie

What is your most treasured possession?
My glasses. I’m blind as a bat.

What makes you unhappy?
Having no plans in the diary.

What is top of your bucket list?
To catch a huge fish somewhere remote and beautiful, and gut, cook and eat it.

What does love feel like?
Very hard, meaningful kisses.

Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
Perhaps. If I may. Thank you for your time. I’m just trying to understand.

If you could edit your past, what would you change?
Not being able to have a baby for two and a half years. Lots of people say it made me a better person; I think it made me worse. You go to a very dark place with your friends because they are having kids, and you want to be happy for them but you’re not”.

I shall leave things there. It has been great spending a little bit of time with a hugely important and talented broadcaster. Although there are many strings to her bow, I am focusing on the radio side of her career. As she is so young, I think that Emma Barnett will work for a number of different stations. Her work on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour is exceptional. Though she (and Naga Munchetty) have big boots to fill (taking over from Dame Jenni Murray and Jane Garvey), they are making the show their own. Barnett is helping to bring Woman’s Hour to…

A whole new audience.

FEATURE: All I Want: Joni Mitchell’s Blue at Fifty

FEATURE:

 

 

All I Want

Joni Mitchell’s Blue at Fifty

___________

I shall try not to repeat…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Redferns/Getty Images

what I did with a recent feature about Joni Mitchell’s Blue turning fifty. It is such a remarkable and important album, I wanted to bring in some other features regarding the album and its story. I know that, on 22nd June, people all around the world will celebrate the genius fourth studio album from Mitchell. It is a flawless piece of work that hits you in different ways the more you listen. To me, Blue is one of the most personal and raw albums there has been. This article from Hotpress goes into the confessional nature of it. The interview was originally published in 2000. There are some interesting paragraphs and sections I wanted to pull together:

“Joni Mitchell may not have actually started the singer-songwriter phenomenon, but she sure as hell moved the genre centre stage. In terms of the "confessional" nature of the Lyrics, and the use of language that is so precise and so poetic there isn't room for a wasted syllable, her 1971 album Blue was a watershed.

"The emphasis on lyrics, I think, began with Dylan" she suggests. "That's where I picked up the gauntlet. I always wrote poetry, but I never liked poetry! I only wrote it when I was emotionally disturbed. Like, when a friend of mine in high school committed suicide. Or something like that. There were things that would make me go home and write. And then I'd put it in a drawer and, sometimes, when I had to turn them into English class, I would. And it was recognised, in High School, that I was a writer. But I never based my identity in that. Besides, I liked to dance! So, for a dancer, the Lyrics didn't really matter. 'Tutti Frutti' was fine by me" Joni admits that when Bob Dylan first arrived on the scene she was not impressed! Mostly because he seemed, to her, like little more than a copycat of Woody Guthrie.

"I have this need for originality," she explains. "It's actually in my stars. I was born on the Day of the Discoverer and that, I believe, had a profound influence on this need to be original. And also, because I've always been a painter, there is the painter's need to discover a new voice. Whereas musicians go into a tradition, with no need for discovery. But there came a point when I heard a Dylan song called Positively Fourth Street and I thought 'oh my God, you can write about anything in songs'. it was like a revelation to me."

Joni Mitchell suddenly becomes more contemplative. "But, seriously, I have felt the sting of religious hypocrisy. I was sick a lot, as a child. In Catholic hospitals. Yet, on the other hand, a Sister Mary Louise, once said to me 'you're exactly what I need'. She thought I was like a Thomas Merton, tried to get me to convert to Catholicism, thought I was divinely inspired until my work got quite carnal. But before that happened, I did play at Nuns' conventions for her and she really believed I had, as I say, some kind of divine spark."

Reflecting further on that "acid, booze and ass/needles guns and grass" line, does Joni understand why more and more people these days might turn to drugs for a "high", fearing that all true spirituality has gone from contemporary society?

"I understand," she says, softly. "I've never done junk but it is a kind of velvet blanket that has this internal comfort. Yet, better not to start. What if you liked it?"

Kilauren is the daughter Joni was singing about in 'Little Green' from Blue. "The time of her birth really was traumatic for me," Joni continues. "That's why I could identify with the women who were sent to Magdelene Laundries in Ireland, which I wrote about in that song for Turbulent Indigo." "But, to get back to why I wrote those songs on Blue, the point is that soon after I'd given up my daughter for adoption I had a house and a car and I had the means and I'd become a public figure. The combination of those situations did not sit well. So I kind of withdrew from music and began to go inside. And question who I was. And out of that, Blue evolved. I guess I was being a 'shrink' to myself! And if I, in the process of doing that, found something I thought was universal I was willing to open up at that level."

Joni Mitchell pauses. But only to take a drag from one of her seemingly ever present cigarettes. "There wasn't much illumination in psychology books at that time. I'm not sure there is now," she continues. "There was a lot of pigeon-holing and labelling, nothing very useful if you were really thinking. There didn't seem to be anything good to hang onto. Even the good books. And believe me, I searched through a lot of them. Dao-ism, what-ever. I became a seeker. I also was contemptuous of the kind of pseudo-spirituality afoot at that time which I found unsettling. So the point was that if I was to discover any illumination, it had to be backed up in the character of someone. I wasn't setting myself up as any sort of guru! But if I was to find a revelation, I felt it was more honest to present it, with a character, which I was drawing off myself. A character that was vulnerable and lost”.

There is no doubting how seminal and seismic Blue is. Since its release in 1971, it has influenced so many songwriters and resonated with so many people outside of music. As I have said before, the lyrics are personal to Joni Mitchell - though they also mean a lot to so many others. Not to mangle this article from Far Out Magazine, but they look at a 1990s interview (where she spoke about the acoustic guitar):

“There are two prominent motifs that run through Joni Mitchell’s iconic 1971 record Blue, an album that came out on this day some 49 years ago. The two profound themes are a perfect summation of Mitchell as a songwriter, firstly her intent to share herself more than ever before on this album and secondly to do it while using the often forgotten instrument the dulcimer.

It’s hard to imagine Joni Mitchell without her acoustic guitar in front of her. The image of Mitchell using the classic instrument to share her soul is so ubiquitous with her iconography that it is difficult to envisage her playing anything else.

However, Blue rests on one unusual instrument, the dulcimer. Mitchell picked up her first dulcimer in 1969 at the Big Sur Festival and instantly began playing it, though she admits speaking with Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers that she never really knew how to play one.

“I had never seen one played,” remembered Mitchell. “Traditionally it’s picked with a quill, and it’s a very delicate thing that sits across your knee. The only instrument I had ever had across my knee was a bongo drum, so when I started to play the dulcimer I beat it. I just slapped it with my hands.

“Anyway I bought it, and I took off to Europe carrying a flute and this dulcimer because it was very light for backpacking around Europe. I wrote most of Blue on it. Some of the album’s best songs were composed on the instrument including ‘A Case of You,’ ‘All I Want’ and ‘California’ and Mitchell’s connection to the instrument runs deeper still.

It can be quite revealing being very honest in a record. Maybe Mitchell, looking back, felt quite exposed. She revealed more about how hard it was to be so open on an album such as Blue:

Mitchell continued to shed light on the deeply personal moment of the record: “It begins with a sense of isolation and of not knowing anything, which is accompanied by a tremendous panic. Then clairvoyant qualities begin to come in, and you and the world become transparent, so if you’re approached by a person, all their secrets are not closeted.”

The ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ singer continued: “It makes you see a lot of ugliness in people that you’d rather not know about, and you lie to yourself and say something nice about them to cover it up. It gets very confusing. In that state of mind, I was defenceless as a result, stripped down to a position of absolutely no capability of the normal pretension that people have to survive.”

It was a state of mind that even concerned some of her closest friends who were worried Mitchell was giving too much of herself to the audience. “I played it for Kris Kristofferson, who said, “God, Joan, save something of yourself.” He was embarrassed by it. I think generally at first that people were embarrassed by it, that in a certain way it was shocking, especially in the pop arena.” It’s not an arena for truth in Mitchell’s eyes, “It’s a phoney business, and people accept the phoniness of it. It’s fluff, it’s this week’s flavour and it gets thrown out, and it isn’t supposed to be anything really more than that”.

 IN THIS PHOTO: Joni Mitchell playing an Appalachian dulcimer in 1971/PHOTO CREDIT: GAB Archive/Redferns

Just before I round off, there is another article that I feel deserves some attention. Treblezine dove deep into Blue and how she progressed as a musician after its release:

“Blue isn’t necessarily flawless, but even the less dynamic moments speak to something vulnerable and real. In fact, the title track, “Blue” is one of the weaker moments on this wonderfully raw record. It reminds me of her earlier music actually—slightly unsure of where to go. Perhaps this parallels her physical situation of not knowing where to travel to next, or her just-ending relationship with James Taylor. Her voice, which can be so quiet and susurrus at times, is warbly and, as my mother says kindly, occasionally screechy. Mitchell—having used many of her paints as album covers—no doubt brings in some color symbolism here and there. “Blue,” with its elegant piano playing, is by no means a bad or poorly written song; it gets Mitchell’s point of feeling isolated across (though “River” also does this with great results), but it doesn’t soar above the sorrow. Yet, as she puts it herself, “sometimes there will be sorrow.”

After the success of Blue, Joni Mitchell delved deeper into jazz. Court and Spark and Mingus show a move away from folk melodies. However, their themes of love and everyday things like coin rolls or summer lawns or cars on hills or a brood mare’s tail can be traced back to her earlier projects. Her concerns with relationship dynamics or being a prisoner of the “free freeway” appear in Blue. In “A Case of You” she considers the idea of being constant as a northern star and makes a quip about being constantly in darkness. Tasting “so bitter and so sweet,” Mitchell is “still on [her] feet” even after heartbreak, disillusionment. In Mitchell’s music everything is about being connected, about how things join together and fall away. Her melodies come and fade and come again. Her style of playing and her way of layering her tunes with harmonies sung by herself is classic; it’s uniquely her own. Though she changes and shifts her musical aspirations, Mitchell is constant as a northern star in the way she employs music and verse to relay genuine emotion.

At 50, Blue might not have the same dynamic punch, the newsworthy drama of a recent breakup, but it still contains all the emotions and ideas that accompany a relationship in its final throes. Listeners can still learn something about life, about healing and living with grief without it taking over—which can feel especially poignant following a year like the one we just experienced. Blue is atmospheric at times, melody-forward at others, and her guitar and piano playing is top drawer, refined and thoughtful. Nothing is left to chance, even in her jazzier moments. Mitchell is a true pioneer, pushing boundaries and returning to old structures—like the faux “Jingle Bells” bit at the beginning of “River”—and Blue is a monument in her career. It is by no means an end, but it marks a peak, a high point where her talent mixed with raw emotion to create something special, something indelible”.

I would put Blue in my top-twenty favourite albums. I have always loved Mitchell’s songwriting and voice - though I think it is at its best on Blue. Some would argue that other albums are finer and a better representation of her immense talent. There is no denying the place Blue holds in the history books and what a remarkable work it is. Fifty years after its release, one still uncovers gems, layers and elements that they might not have heard on previous listens. Listening to it now, and the sensational Blue has lost…

NONE of its power.

FEATURE: The Spirit of Love: Kate Bush: The Hair of the Hound at Thirty-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

The Spirit of Love

IN THIS PHOTO: Whilst The Hair of the Hound was released on VHS in the U.K., it was released on laserdisc in Japan

Kate Bush: The Hair of the Hound at Thirty-Five

___________

I try to capture ‘big anniversaries’…

PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush 

when it comes to Kate Bush. In June, we have one in the form of Sat in Your Lap. That song turns forty. It was the first single from Bush’s fourth studio album, The Dreaming. Sat in Your Lap marked a real sonic change for her. I have written a few features already about that song – and I will mark its anniversary on 21st June. Although it might not rank alongside the anniversary of a single or album, I wanted to mention a video collection that was released after Hounds of Love’s success. On 16th June, 1986, The Hair of the Hound was released. I like the title – whether it refers to the term ‘hair of the dog’ (meaning alcohol that is consumed with the aim of lessening the effects of a hangover) or meaning a taster of the album as a whole –, and I know there would have been a lot of demand for the VHS back in 1986. It wouldn’t be until 27th October of that year until people got a new Bush single in the form of Experiment IV. On 10th November, the greatest hits collection, The Whole Story, was released (Experiment IV was a new track on that greatest hits package). Not that The Hair of the Dog is inferior in any way. It was designed, I guess, to keep the momentum for Hounds of Love going. More than that, it allowed people to view four excellent videos!

I have said how Bush could have released more than the four singles from the album – Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God), Cloudbusting, Hounds of Love, and The Big Sky are the singles. As each video is very different and Bush directed the last two singles herself (and would continue to direct videos until the 1990s), it would have been a real treat. Whereas I feel a track from Hounds of Love’s second side, The Ninth Wave, could have been released as a single – And Dream of Sheep? Watching You Without Me? -, the four singles that were put into the world did well. Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) reached number-three in the U.K.; Hounds of Love went to number-eight; The Big Sky went to number thirty-seven (which was unexpectedly low – perhaps owing to the fact many people had the album already and did not buy the single); Cloudbusting reached twenty. Because Hounds of Love did reach number-one in the U.K. and was such a successful album, I can see why the video collection was compiled. I am turning to the always-reliable Kate Bush Encyclopaedia for assistance. Let’s get an overview of The Hair of the Dog first:

“Collection of music videos by Kate Bush. It contains all four of her music videos from the album Hounds Of Love. It was released on 16 June 1986.

The Hair Of The Hound' features the following music videos:

Running Up That Hill

Hounds Of Love

The Big Sky

Cloudbusting”.

I will conclude and give more thoughts at the end. It is worth knowing more about the videos and stories behind the four singles featured on The Hair of the Hound – ahead of the thirty-fifth anniversary of the collection. First up is the iconic Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God):

“'Running Up That Hill' was intended as a fond farewell to dance, at least as far as Kate's video appearances were concerned. The music video, directed by David Garfath, featured Bush and dancer Michael Hervieu (who won an audition after Stewart Avon-Arnold was not available due to other commitments) in a performance choreographed by Diane Grey. The pair are wearing grey Japanese hakamas. The choreography draws upon contemporary dance with a repeated gesture suggestive of drawing a bow and arrow (the gesture was made literal on the image for the single in which Bush poses with a real bow and arrow), intercut with surreal sequences of Bush and Hervieu searching through crowds of masked strangers. At the climax of the song, Bush's partner withdraws from her and the two are then swept away from each other and down a long hall in opposite directions by an endless stream of anonymous figures wearing masks made from pictures of Bush and Hervieu's faces. MTV chose not to show this video (at the time of its original release) and instead used a live performance of the song recorded at a promotional appearance on the BBC TV show Wogan. According to Paddy Bush, 'MTV weren't particularly interested in broadcasting videos that didn't have synchronized lip movements in them. They liked the idea of people singing songs'.

'Running Up That Hill' was one of the first songs that I wrote for the album. It was very nice for me that it was the first single released, I'd always hoped that would be the way. It's very much about a relationship between a man and a woman who are deeply in love and they're so concerned that things could go wrong - they have great insecurity, great fear of the relationship itself. It's really saying if there's a possibility of being able to swap places with each other that they'd understand how the other one felt, that when they were saying things that weren't meant to hurt, that they weren't meant sincerely, that they were just misunderstood. In some ways, I suppose the basic difference between men and women, where if we could swap places in a relationship, we'd understand each other better, but this, of course, is all theoretical anyway. (Open Interview, 1985)”.

Rather than put the videos in chronologically (Hounds of Love was released after Cloudbusting, for instance), they were assorted so that Hounds of Love’s title single came second. It was the first music video directed by Kate Bush. I really like her directing style. As she had wanted to direct for a long time, there must have been a certain amount of pressure. What she does with the video is quite extraordinary:

“The music video (directed by Bush herself) was very much inspired by Alfred Hitchcock's film 'The 39 Steps'. 'Hitchcock' also features in the video (a nod to the director's famous cameo appearances in his movies).

In the song 'Hounds Of Love', what do you mean by the line 'I'll be two steps on the water', other than a way of throwing off the scent of hounds, or whatever, by running through water. But why 'two' steps?

Because two steps is a progression. One step could possibly mean you go forward and then you come back again. I think "two steps" suggests that you intend to go forward.

But why not "three steps"?

It could have been three steps - it could have been ten, but "two steps" sounds better, I thought, when I wrote the song. Okay. (Doug Alan interview, 20 November 1985)”.

Although it was the poorest-performing single from Hounds of Love, The Big Sky is my favourite track. I also love the Bush-directed video. With some wild editing and jam-packed scenes, it is quite frenetic and busy video:

“The music video was directed by Bush herself. It was filmed on 19 March 1986 at Elstree Film Studios in the presence of a studio audience of about hundred fans. The Homeground fanzine was asked to get this audience together, and they did within two weeks. Two coaches took everyone from Manchester Square to Elstree studios early in the morning, after which the Homeground staff, who were cast as some of the aviators, were filmed, and finally the whole audience was admitted for the 'crowd scenes'. The scenes were repeated until Kate had them as she wanted.

'The Big Sky' was a song that changed a lot between the first version of it on the demo and the end product on the master tapes. As I mentioned in the earlier magazine, the demos are the masters, in that we now work straight in the 24-track studio when I'm writing the songs; but the structure of this song changed quite a lot. I wanted to steam along, and with the help of musicians such as Alan Murphy on guitar and Youth on bass, we accomplished quite a rock-and-roll feel for the track. Although this song did undergo two different drafts and the aforementioned players changed their arrangements dramatically, this is unusual in the case of most of the songs. (Kate Bush Club newsletter, Issue 18, 1985)”.

Ending up with the brilliant Cloudbusting. There are many reasons as to why the video is so brilliant. Not only does it feature Donald Sutherland…the video seems like a film in itself. It is a beautiful video indeed:

“The music video was directed by Julian Doyle and was conceived by Terry Gilliam and Kate as a short film. In it, Canadian actor Donald Sutherland, portrays Wilhelm Reich, and Kate Bush, portraying his son Peter. Filming took place at The Vale of White Horse in Oxfordshire, England. Bush found out in which hotel Sutherland was staying from actress Julie Christie's hairdresser and went to his room to personally ask him to participate in the project.

The video shows the two on the top of a hill trying to make the cloudbuster work. Reich leaves Peter on the machine and returns to his lab. In flashback, he remembers several times he and Peter enjoyed together as Reich worked on various scientific projects, until he is interrupted by government officials who arrest him and ransack the lab. Peter senses his father's danger and tries to reach him, but is forced to watch helplessly as his father is driven away. Peter finally runs back to the cloudbuster and activates it successfully, to the delight of his father who sees it starting to rain.

In the UK, the music video was shown at some cinemas as an accompaniment to the main feature. Due to difficulties on obtaining a work visa for Sutherland at short notice, the actor offered to work on the video for free. Although the events depicted in the story took place in Maine, the newspaper clipping in the music video reads "The Oregon Times," likely a reference to Reich's home and laboratory Orgonon. The Cloudbusting machine in the video was designed and constructed by people who worked on the Alien creature and bears only a superficial resemblance to the real cloudbusters, which were smaller and with multiple narrow, straight tubes and pipes, and were operated while standing on the ground. In a reference to the source material of the song, Bush pulls a copy of Peter Reich's "A Book of Dreams" out of Sutherland's coat.

“It's a song with a very American inspiration, which draws its subject from 'A Book Of Dreams' by Peter Reich. The book was written as if by a child who was telling of his strange and unique relationship with his father. They lived in a place called Organon, where the father, a respected psycho-analyst, had some very advanced theories on Vital Energy; furthermore, he owned a rain-making machine, the Cloudbuster. His son and he loved to use it to make it rain. Unfortunately, the father was imprisoned because of his ideas. In fact, in America, in that period, it was safer not to stick out. Sadly, the father dies in prison. From that point on, his son becomes unable to put up with an orthodox lifestyle, to adapt himself. The song evokes the days of happiness when the little boy was making it rain with his father. (Yves Bigot, 'Englishwoman Is Crossing The Continents'. Guitares et Claviers (France), February 1986)”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari

I wanted to spend some time with a video collection, as I discovered Bush through the greatest hits VHS, The Whole Story. That is where I saw the video for Wuthering Heights (aged, maybe five or six). A love affair was born. In 1986, aside from music television, one did not have access to music videos. People might have already owned Hounds of Love - though they may not have seen the videos for the singles. The Hair of the Hound was a way of owning those incredible videos. Even though there is some duplication when it comes to The Whole Story – every single bar The Big Sky is included there -, owning The Hair of the Hound would have been an essential purchase for every Kate Bush fan. In terms of video compilations, there was The Hair of the Hound and The Whole Story in 1986. This Woman's Work: Anthology 1978–1990 (released in 1990) was not accompanied by a VHS. In 1994, Live at Hammersmith Odeon was released. Taken from a Hammersmith set during 1979’s The Tour of Life, the video and C.D. contain twelve songs from the tour, consisting mainly of songs from The Kick Inside and Lionheart. In terms of any DVD since the 1990s, it has been a bit sparse. I think fans would welcome a chance to see all of Bush’s music videos on a DVD. For that reason, I feel it is important to look back at compilations such as The Hair of the Hound, as it was a chance to have those videos on a physical format. With four wonderful videos from Kate Bush’s most-successful album, it is left to me to wish The Hair of the Hound…

A happy thirty-fifth anniversary.

FEATURE: The Lockdown Playlist: Paul McCartney Solo Gems

FEATURE:

 

 

The Lockdown Playlist

PHOTO CREDIT: Mary McCartney

Paul McCartney Solo Gems

__________

I can’t recall…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Collier Schorr for GQ

whether I did a similar playlist last year on Paul McCartney’s birthday. As he turns seventy-nine on 18th June, I wanted to put out a playlist containing his best solo tracks (I have excluded his work with The Beatles and Wings and collaborations with other artists. I am including music he recorded with Linda McCartney). Before getting to that playlist, in case you need it, here is some biography about the great man:

“Sir James Paul McCartney CH MBE (born 18 June 1942) is an English singer, songwriter, musician, and record and film producer who gained worldwide fame as co-lead vocalist and bassist for the Beatles. His songwriting partnership with John Lennon remains the most successful in history. After the group disbanded in 1970, he pursued a solo career and formed the band Wings with his first wife, Linda, and Denny Laine.

A self-taught musician, McCartney is proficient on bass, guitar, keyboards, and drums. He is known for his melodic approach to bass-playing (mainly playing with a plectrum), his versatile and wide tenor vocal range (spanning over four octaves), and his eclecticism (exploring styles ranging from pre-rock and roll pop to classical and electronica). McCartney began his career as a member of the Quarrymen in 1957, which evolved into the Beatles in 1960. Starting with the 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, he gradually became the Beatles' de facto leader, providing the creative impetus for most of their music and film projects. His Beatles songs "And I Love Her" (1964), "Yesterday" (1965), "Eleanor Rigby" (1966) and "Blackbird" (1968) rank among the most covered songs in history.

In 1970, McCartney debuted as a solo artist with the album McCartney. Throughout the 1970s, he led Wings, one of the most successful bands of the decade, with more than a dozen international top 10 singles and albums. McCartney resumed his solo career in 1980. Since 1989, he has toured consistently as a solo artist. In 1993, he formed the music duo the Fireman with Youth. Beyond music, he has taken part in projects to promote international charities related to such subjects as animal rights, seal hunting, land mines, vegetarianism, poverty, and music education.

McCartney is one of the most successful composers and performers of all time. He has written or co-written 32 songs that have topped the Billboard Hot 100, and as of 2009, had sales of 25.5 million RIAA-certified units in the United States. His honours include two inductions into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (as a member of the Beatles in 1988 and as a solo artist in 1999), 18 Grammy Awards, an appointment as a Member of the Order of the British Empire in 1965, and a knighthood in 1997 for services to music. As of 2020, he was one of the wealthiest musicians in the world, with an estimated fortune of £800 million”.

To mark the birthday of the greatest songwriter the world has ever seen, here is a selection of fantastic songs from Paul McCartney’s long and…

ILLUSTRIOUS solo career.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Loraine James

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

Loraine James

___________

IT is interesting discovering…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Sophie Barloc for Loud and Quiet

artists that are really hitting their stride and you know will go far. That is the case with Loraine James. I will pull in a couple of reviews of her latest album, Reflection. Her 2019 sophomore album, For You and I, was lauded and marked her as an Electronic artist to watch closely. As a Black artists in that sphere/genre, perhaps opportunities have been fewer than they would have been for others – imbalance and racial exclusion still exists here. If you are new to James and not sure what she is about, then I can assist with a couple of choice interviews. The first comes from a very recent piece from The Guardian. They highlighted Loraine James on the release of her much-anticipated and terrific third album:

“Raised in a tower block in Enfield, north London, James has been inspired by electronic music since her mid-teens, allured by IDM greats like Squarepusher and Telefon Tel Aviv: “I was always intrigued by melodic IDM, and wanted to replicate it,” she says, sitting among the craft-beer-sippers in a bar in Hackney Wick, east London. But James has gone far further than mere replication.

“I’m very much a living-room producer,” she says. “I had a keyboard my mum bought when I was younger. From my flat, I could see the London skyline, so I’d jam on the keyboard for hours, overlooking the sky.” James’s tracks have a paradoxical crafted deconstruction: they might initially feel disjointed until you realise that every hit and beat is intentional. She mimics the controlled chaos of free jazz, adopting the dissonance and odd time signatures through beats and glitching synths. “My music is a bit rough,” she says. “A lot of it sounds a bit scrappy, but I don’t re-record it, because I like how it sounds.”

Her 2019 album For You and I garnered widespread critical acclaim, topping end-of-year lists in the Quietus and DJ Mag. James assumed that her Hackney Wick gig, around, around the corner from where she’s sitting today, was destined to be the start of her breakout year. “People only caught on to me when the end-of-year lists came out, so I wasn’t known properly until last year” – and then the pandemic hit. “It’s like I came up and then suddenly disappeared. It’s kind of shit.”

With touring cancelled, James was forced to contemplate the state of her life, hence Reflection. “Sitting there with your thoughts for a year

James is in a predicament in which a lot of Black alternative musicians find themselves: facing routine exclusion from predominantly white electronic music spaces, while feeling as if she will never be Black enough for Black ones. This transitional position has been tough for her to navigate. “I’m still learning to fully appreciate my Blackness because I’ve always felt like I was different,” she says. “I’ve been called an Oreo” – white on the inside, black on the outside – “and other things.” Despite being noticed by prestigious publications, James wishes she could be recognised by the Black community: “Even the Mobo awards don’t have a rock or electronic genre at all”.

If you do get the opportunity to see James perform live, then it guarantees to be a rewarding experience. She is someone who is making music that is very much her own. It is revealing, powerful and hugely impactful! I feel she is someone who will continue to put out music and grow even stronger. As someone who seems to be near the top of her game, to realise she might grow even stronger is exciting indeed!

There are some good interviews out there that James participated in - so I would advise people to do some additional reading and research. In this interview with Loud and Quiet from late last year, we get a nice insight into the mind and music of a remarkable young artist:

“Despite the wealth of stuff she’s put out – largely pay-what-you-want, no less – she’s still self-effacing: “I should probably concentrate on the proper releases.” We’re ostensibly here today to talk about one of those “proper releases”. Directly after the release of For You And I, James uploaded unfinished songs onto a private Soundcloud account with the idea of reaching out to potential collaborators via Twitter, who would later sift through the available tracks for anything that captured their interest. The resulting EP, Nothing, sounds like a greatest hits sampler, containing sonic elements and preoccupations of James’ past work condensed into a single disc. This isn’t to say she was convinced of each track’s potential at first. “I wasn’t feeling the instrumental to ‘Don’t You See It’ at all,” she says. “I wasn’t really into it at the time and wouldn’t have recommended it to anyone.” Luckily, Jonnine Standish of dynastic Australian group HTRK took the gauntlet anyway. “Jonnine sent me her vocals and we reworked the song a bit. Everything started falling into place.” Curiously, with its gut-punching piano, choral pads and sputtering beat, paired with Standish’s R&B-inflected vocal and lyrical melancholia (“Summer is a traitor / ’cos Summer’s moving on”), James hasn’t sounded this tenderly accessible since ‘Sensual’. “I’ve definitely heard a few people call [‘Don’t You See It’] kind-of-pop. I get where they’re coming from, it’s definitely one of the more straightforward songs I’ve done.”

James’ mother is also to be credited for her eclectic listening, if not her cross-genre approach to her own music, having played everything from Calypso to Metallica in the home. As such, you can’t click on any of James’ YouTube videos without seeing a top comment from an ‘S James’: “Loving this from my daughter,” they tend to read, followed by two flame emojis. “She doesn’t listen to electronic music or anything,” laughs L James, “but I’m grateful that she checks out my stuff. I’d sometimes get embarrassed if she’d come down to gigs but it’s fine, and obviously my last few gigs have been clubbier ones that run until one or two o’clock so she’d be in bed anyway”.

There is a 2019 interview from Pitchfork that interested me. The response to the first question really struck me. I hope that things have improved since 2019 - though one feels that there is still a way to go:

“What did you make of the queer scene in London? There’s not a lot of spaces for women.

There isn’t. There’s, like, women’s nights—wow, a night!—but it’s shit. Heaven’s mainstream as hell, so there’s a lot of straight people in there anyway. My guy friends always find someone, and it’s like, “That’s great…” [laughs] When I was single, I would see these women standing in the corner looking very intimidating and be like, “What did I do?!” They literally have their arms folded, watching everything, not having a good time. Or there will be the straight girls.

You said your first album, Details, was more of a technical exercise. Was For You and I your first attempt at making really personal music?

Yeah. Though I didn’t know what direction it was going to go in, and it wasn’t intentional. At the start, the album was called Disjointed. I changed it literally when I sent the masters to Hyperdub because I listened to it whole, and the name didn’t make sense any more.

I didn’t initially have a personal feeling towards a track like “So Scared,” but then I added in vocals that I recorded a few years ago [“You’re over there/You’re fucking scared”]. That’s probably the most vulnerable track on there. It’s basically about public displays of affection—obviously being queer, dealing with verbal abuse or physical abuse, and always being afraid of that. A lot of the time, when I walk around with my partner, I wouldn’t even touch her. I’m a quiet, shy person as it is, I don’t like attention. So that just feels pretty shitty. Sometimes I look at straight couples, and I get a bit like—it’s not fair. Something so easy, I have to think twice about. Even to listen to that song now, I feel like I’m in that situation”.

It is no surprise that Reflection has resonated with critics. It is a remarkable album that one cannot help be moved and entranced by. If you have not got a copy, then it is definitely worth owning one. This is what Rough Trade say about Reflection:

“Made during summer 2020, Loraine James’ second Hyperdub album, Reflection, is a turbulent expression of inner-space, laid out in unflinching honesty, offering gentle empathy and bitter-sweet hope. Reflection further develops a unique pop sensibility realised on last year’s Nothing EP, while tones of Drill and R&B seep through into this collection too. In contrast to the brash splashes of 2019’s For You And I LP and the grimey anger of Nothing, Reflection is pared-down and confident, taking the listener through how last year felt as a young black queer woman in a world that has suddenly stopped moving, the arc of the album peppered with Loraine's diaristic confessions. Starting positively with the gentle pop-trap of ‘Built To Last’ ft Xzavier Stone, into the bumpy instrumental of ‘Let's Go’, the album switches tone with ‘Simple Stuff’, followed by regular collaborator Le3 bLACK amplifying Loraine's vulnerability on the downcast drill of ‘Black Ting’, then ‘Insecure Behaviour And Fuckery’ is a techno glide which pairs Nova's confrontational plea for respect, delivered in monotone autotune, against deep Drexciyan chords. With Baths on vocals, the weightlessness of ‘On The Lake Outside’ soothes numb feelings, and Eden Samara explores the shadow world of anxious dreams on the airy R&B of ‘Running Like That’. Closing track ‘We're Building Something New’ with Manchester rapper Iceboy Violet brings the album together, confidently suggesting a new world is in reach. Reflection is a brave step forward for a unique and creative 21st century musician”.

I am going to wrap up in a second. Beforehand, CRACK were very positive when they sat down to review one of this year’s very best albums – from an artist who is catching the eyes and ears of a whole new wave of fans and admirers:

“With its fractured beats and shy confessionalism, London producer Loraine James won hearts with her acclaimed Hyperdub debut For You and I in 2019. Since then, James has zeroed in on her craft, self-releasing a string of multi-track collections and even put out another EP, titled Nothing, for the revered London label. The arrival of her third album, Reflection, feels like a culmination of all these projects; it’s an open-hearted work by an artist that has undoubtedly levelled up.

Featuring her vocals far more prominently than ever before, James flits between doubtful introspection and open vulnerability. On Simple Stuff, she lays it bare and declares, “I like the simple stuff/ We like the simple things/ What does that bring?” over spliced beats. Building on the album’s tender energy, James enlists the layered harmonies of emo-pop electronic producer Baths for On the Lake Outside.

But Reflection’s emotional catharsis goes beyond the personal. Written during a period of lockdown-induced focus, the album carries within it the broader collective anxieties that came to define 2020. This is most noticeable on album closer We’re Building Something New, which sees Manchester rapper Iceboy Violet anatomise the grief felt throughout the Black community through stark imagery (“breaking bread and cable ties”). Dedicated to “all the victims of police violence”, the track’s ascetic rhythms make room for flourishes of warm piano, like resilience giving rise to something approaching hope. It’s a fitting end to an album that shores up James’ position as one of the UK’s most compelling producers”.

Actually, it is worth highlighting one more review. I feel that Reflection is such an interesting album, hearing a couple of different angles is important. This is what The Quietus remarked in their review:

“The gorgeous ‘On The Lake Outside’ (a collaboration with Baths) shimmers into a calm lullaby-like ode to the outdoor world, while on ‘Change’, James asks herself: “What are you gonna do about it? Huh?” as she snaps to her feet by focussing on rebuilding a future better than the past. The question drives James and lifts her from self-doubt to assurance and the frenzied sparseness of earlier tracks is replaced by soaring affirmations.

It’s perhaps seen most strikingly on the album’s standout, ‘We’re Building Something New’, with Manchester rapper Iceboy Violet. “One million views of Black bodies bruised and you’re acting so confused? / The seeds they sowed bare strange fruit / They tryna bleed us for that juice,” Violet raps as they circle back to where James started on ‘Simple Stuff’ and ‘Black Tings’. But here, Violet and James offer a vision of hope for the future via airy R&B and soaring club synths: “The seeds we sow bare beautiful fruit / We’re building something new....sharing building supplies til we touch the sky.”

Reflection is a striking step forward for James, who has reaffirmed herself as one of the UK’s most talented young IDM artists. Lockdown led James to interrogate every aspect of her identity and the vulnerability she felt in doing so is a feeling many will be able to relate to here; so too is the bitter-sweet hope she finds at the end. This is both a call to change and a call to reflect; without the latter there can’t be the former, James says, on this brave, ambitious and challenging new album”.

I shall leave it there. Go and follow Loraine James and check out her new album. Let’s hope that she is able to gig as much as possible. As a breakthrough artist, last year should have been a really big and exciting one for her. I can understand how anxiety-making the stress of the pandemic would have been. When things open up, she will be able to make up for lost time and strike. That will be…

THRILLING to witness.

_______________

Follow Loraine James

PHOTO CREDIT: Ekua King for Pitchfork 

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/setfiretoloraine/

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/LoJamMusic

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/lorainejamesmusic

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https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcNXCJCHrXEmtR071dR4kPA

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https://lorainejames.bandcamp.com/album/reflection

FEATURE: Vinyl Corner: The Stooges - Fun House

FEATURE:

 

 

Vinyl Corner 

The Stooges - Fun House

___________

FOR this Vinyl Corner…

I am focusing on an album that I am a big fan of. The Stooges’ Fun House was released in July 1970. The second studio album from the Iggy Pop-fronted band, it remains hugely important. Musicians such as Mark E. Smith and Nick Cave have named it as their favourite album. Songs from the album have been covered by a range of artists. Featuring seven tracks, one might feel Fun House is too lean to make an impact. There is great focus and economy on the album, though a couple of the tracks (Dirt and Fun House) exceed seven minutes. There is an urgency and thrill to the album that wowed fans ands critics in 1970. Over fifty years later, Fun House remains so exhilarating and important. I would urge people to buy it on vinyl. At the moment, one can get the vinyl through Discogs. It is harder to find it at your standard record shop. Let’s hope the band/Elektra release Fun House or remaster it very soon. One does not need to be familiar with The Stooges to appreciate Fun House. It is an album that, once heard, stays long in the head. Rather than bring in a feature about the album and its creation, there are a few reviews that tackle the album is different ways. It is rewarding seeing how such a classic has resonated with so many people.

In this expansive and fascinating review, Elliot James provided his take, thoughts and opinions on Fun House back in 2017. He makes some great observations and points:

“What makes Fun House so great? You can start by appreciating the howling craziness of one Ignatowski “Iggy” Pop Music “Pop.” Fun House is his most inspired performance of all the Stooges’ records. On opener “Down on the Street,” he is a cheetah on the prowl, crooning and swaying until BAM, he unleashes his fury and lets you know what you’ll be dealing with for the rest of this record. When he’s not singing like a greaser angel he is positively unhinged, a detail I noticed when I was sitting on the deck with my baby listening to Iggy scream like a maniac, leading me to fear judgment from my neighbors in their backyard who might think I’m purposely polluting my daughter’s mind with traumatic music. But those neighbors have motorcycles, so their opinion on literally anything in life is null and void.

Iggy’s yelps and squeals come between lyrics that boast of his strengths and inadequacies as a lover and as a human being. He might brag about being “Loose,” and he sees pretty things “Down on the Street.” He also spends seven minutes telling us he’s been “Dirt,” but he doesn’t care. It’s no accident that he sounds much more believable when he runs himself down as opposed to when he’s building himself up. There’s too much eagerness in his proclamations of grandeur, it’s like he’s over-compensating. The Stooges were dirtbags in an era when being a dirtbag didn’t sell records. The big rock bands in 1970 were larger than life, or at the very least appeared to have their shit together. Even the Stones were less ragged than this.

The rest of the band pounds out careening feedback and menacing rhythms that don’t go far to soften the blow of Iggy’s wildness. They mostly favor insistent rhythms like “T.V. Eye,” where Scott Asheton just never stops hitting the snare, or “Loose,” which rumbles forward with no mercy. Only on “Dirt” do they bring things down in a jam that is decidedly not punk, but does tap into a feeling of alienation most punk bands could only dream of imitating. Bassist Dave Alexander is absolutely essential to the success of this record, as his basslines provide the melodic foundation upon which everyone else just goes nuts. The title track is a jam and a half, but that bassline is key. By the time they get to album closer “L.A. Blues,” everything has fallen apart and no one wants to play together anymore. It’s five minutes of unorganized chaos, and even if it’s not the most listenable track in the world, it acts as a funny final statement: we can only be nice for so long until we explode”.

I am going to wrap it up soon. I wanted to convince those – if it was needed at all – who have not heard Fun House to give it closer investigation. I think that it ranks alongside the very best albums of the 1970s. Welcoming in a new decade with something so explosive must have stunned people. I think of Fun House as a Punk album, though it predated the movement. It is hard to genre-lise the album and define it. It was definitely a wake-up call to so many other musicians. In their review, this is what AllMusic had to offer:

“The Stooges' first album was produced by a classically trained composer; their second was supervised by the former keyboard player with the Kingsmen, and if that didn't make all the difference, it at least indicates why Fun House was a step in the right direction. Producer Don Gallucci took the approach that the Stooges were a powerhouse live band, and their best bet was to recreate the band's live set with as little fuss as possible. As a result, the production on Fun House bears some resemblance to the Kingsmen's version of "Louie Louie" -- the sound is smeary and bleeds all over the place, but it packs the low-tech wallop of a concert pumped through a big PA, bursting with energy and immediacy. The Stooges were also a much stronger band this time out; Ron Asheton's blazing minimalist guitar gained little in the way of technique since The Stooges, but his confidence had grown by a quantum leap as he summoned forth the sounds that would make him the hero of proto-punk guitarists everywhere, and the brutal pound of drummer Scott Asheton and bassist Dave Alexander had grown to heavyweight champion status. And Fun House is where Iggy Pop's mad genius first reached its full flower; what was a sneer on the band's debut had grown into the roar of a caged animal desperate for release, and his rants were far more passionate and compelling than what he had served up before. The Stooges may have had more "hits," but Fun House has stronger songs, including the garage raver to end all garage ravers in "Loose," the primal scream of "1970," and the apocalyptic anarchy of "L.A. Blues." Fun House is the ideal document of the Stooges at their raw, sweaty, howling peak”.

To round things off, there is a review from Classic Rock Review that I felt I needed to include. Fun House is one of those albums beyond fault. No matter what your tastes, one has to bow to its majesty and genius:

“The influence of some of the more intense numbers by The Doors can be felt in the opening “Down on the Street”, with a strong interlocked bass and guitar riff holding the backing track for Iggy Pop’s reverberated vocals and chants. Although this song feels raw at first listen, it is more refined than anything that follows and may be the most traditionally produced track on Fun House, even to the point of having Ron Asheton guitar overdubbed during the lead section. “Loose” follows with an interesting drum intro by Scott Asheton as he finds the upbeat groove which, overall, leans more toward the yet-to-be-developed punk genre with a starkly honest lyric.

“T.V. Eye” features a bluesy riff while the vocals are still energetic, wailing and (occasionally) screaming. This very repetitive song builds a tension which never really breaks but does reach a bit of a crescendo late in the song, just before an abrupt stop and restart. Iggy Pop has said he was channeling blues legend Howlin’ Wolf while recording “T.V. Eye”. “Dirt” has a long drum intro by Scott Asheton as Alexander’s bass and Ron Asheton’s guitar slowly join in to this overall soulful rocker. Here, Iggy Pop sounds similar to Eric Burdon of The Animals on this one while it is an overall showcase for Ron Asheton, especially during the multi-textured, wah-wah fused guitar lead.

It is quite obvious that the second side of an album derives from a singular jam which now includes saxophonist Steve Mackay, and Gallucci laid this out in side-long linear fashion. On “1970”, the rhythmic drums and bass provide backdrop for a pseudo-blues bark on a jam that does provide differing chord structures for the chorus and post-chorus. Late in the song Mackay makes his debut, adding a distinct and original element to the overall sound and vibe. On “Fun House” Mackay is more of an integral part of the sound while Scott Asheton’s drumming is a fine adhesive for the overall jam and Iggy Pop’s vocals are more strained and desperate than ever, as he technically makes his lyrical finale on the album. “L.A. Blues” wraps things up with, effectively, five minutes of noise, screams and off-beat chops as all five members desperately search for a common ending before settling on a sustained feedback loop by Ron Asheton.

Although Fun House has sold under 100,000 copies to date, it has influenced numerous other artists, with many specifically citing as this as their favorite album. The Stooges and their individual members, soon entered a tumultuous period and it would be nearly three years before they followed up Fun House (with the critically acclaimed Raw Power) but that album was sandwiched in between a pair of band breakups”.

Go and get Fun House on vinyl if you have not done so already. It is a little pricey, though I think it is worth the investment. As I said, I hope that there is another release soon enough. Although 2013’s Ready to Die was the fifth album from The Stooges, I think their best albums were the first three: The Stooges (1969), Fun House (1970) and Raw Power (1973). Make sure that you own…

A masterpiece from The Stooges.

FEATURE: Long Players: Writers on the Albums That Shaped Them: Tom Gatti’s Revealing and Insightful New Book

FEATURE:

 

 

Long Players: Writers on the Albums That Shaped Them

IMAGE CREDIT: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC 

Tom Gatti’s Revealing and Insightful New Book

___________

IT is not often that I focus on a book…

IN THIS PHOTO: Bernardine Evaristo/ PHOTO CREDIT: David Levenson/Getty Images

but a fascinating new release arrived on Thursday. There are a lot of books dedicated to great albums and why they are so important. We do not often read about albums that are important towriters. I think that every album affects people differently, though it is interesting learning why different people have different reactions. Tom Gatti has released Long Players: Writers on the Albums That Shaped Them. As the title suggests, it is a book where a series of writers discuss why particular albums are important to them. It is a book that every music lover should have on their shelf. Waterstones tell us a bit more:

“From Bernardine Evaristo to Neil Gaiman, fifty of our finest writers divulge their favourite album and the story behind their adoration in this addictive love letter to the power of music.

Our favourite albums are our most faithful companions: we listen to them hundreds of times over decades, we know them far better than any novel or film. These records don't just soundtrack our lives but work their way deep inside us, shaping our outlook and identity, forging our friendships and charting our love affairs. They become part of our story.

In Long Players, fifty of our finest authors write about the albums that changed their lives, from Deborah Levy on Bowie to Daisy Johnson on Lizzo, Ben Okri on Miles Davis to David Mitchell on Joni Mitchell, Sarah Perry on Rachmaninov to Bernardine Evaristo on Sweet Honey in the Rock.

Part meditation on the album form and part candid self-portrait, each of these miniature essays reveals music's power to transport the listener to a particular time and place. REM's Automatic for the People sends Olivia Laing back to first love and heartbreak, Bjork's Post resolves a crisis of faith and sexuality for a young Marlon James, while Fragile by Yes instils in George Saunders the confidence to take his own creative path.

This collection is an intoxicating mix of memoir and music writing, spanning the golden age of vinyl and the streaming era, and showing how a single LP can shape a writer's mind.

Featuring writing from Ali Smith, Marlon James, Deborah Levy, George Saunders, Bernardine Evaristo, Ian Rankin, Tracey Thorn, Ben Okri, Sarah Perry, Neil Tennant, Rachel Kushner, Clive James, Eimear McBride, Neil Gaiman, Daisy Johnson, David Mitchell, Esi Edugyan, Patricia Lockwood, among many others”.

There is a connection between the world of literature and music. I feel a lot of artists are inspired by literature and books. Writers, in return, take influence and motivation from music. Gatti’s book brings together authors and songwriters to get their take on particular albums. Not only does it provide us with fresh perspectives on well-known albums. There are going to be albums mentioned that many of us have not heard. That fresh discovery is so rewarding for the reader. As much as I love hearing authors speaking about albums and why they are loved, having a collection of testimonies Long Players: Writers on the Albums That Shaped Them provides a different angle.

It is no surprise that Gatti’s tome is already accruing some positive reviews. I have ordered the book and feel like it will compel other authors to embark on similar projects. In their review, The Guardian observed the following:

“Perhaps unsurprisingly it turns out that writers tend to value literary effects and skills, and to draw literary comparisons. Deborah Levy, who chose Ziggy Stardust, calls Bowie a “great writer” who has influenced her “more than Tolstoy ever will do”. Sarah Hall compares Radiohead’s OK Computer to “a great short-story collection” and Musa Okwonga loves Outkast’s Aquemini as he loves “the collected short stories of Kurt Vonnegut – every time I return to both works, I find some new way of looking at the human condition”. In less celebratory mode Daljit Nagra links Morrissey – “grudgingly” via the Smiths’ Meat Is Murder and the 80s yobs who smashed his parents’ shop windows and painted the shutters with racist slurs - to Philip Larkin. “Like Larkin, I’d have Morrissey leave the limelight, so I can love the best work before he smashes the shopfront of his own great tenderness.”

The entries can be just a few hundred words long – some of them began life as a column in the New Statesman where Gatti is deputy editor – but throw up some vividly disparate autobiographical vignettes. In the mid 80s the teenage David Mitchell, who’d “never been in love, much less fallen out of it”, first heard Joni Mitchell’s “raw autobiography” of California heartbreak, Blue, on his Walkman while wandering around his hometown of Malvern. His encounter with the great and dark Christmas breakup song “River” came on a June day “halfway across the golf course”.

Around the same time Will Self was in a cavernous flat off the Cromwell Road in west London “with a needle stuck in my arm, the barrel of the syringe full of blood” as Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks “strummed his heart strings”. The poet Will Harris recalls how his father once made him “sit through the eight-minute album version of Donna Summer’s ‘I Feel Love’” which, very indirectly, led him to Warren G’s Regulate ... G Funk Era.

Taken as a whole, the collection’s many observations and angles amount to a richly textured snapshot survey of artists on art. And at their best the pieces reveal something useful about the writer, the music, the world at large and the world at that moment. For Linda Grant, Joni Mitchell’s Hejira clearly laid out “the great paradox of 70s feminism”, the desire for independence from men and also for a “love that sticks around”. It also crystallised the strange and powerful relationship between the listener and the artist: “I never saw her perform live. I don’t want to. I’ve no interest in sharing her with total strangers because none of this is about her, it’s about me”.

Long Players: Writers on the Albums That Shaped Them is a really immersive and compelling book that gives us some very personal takes on particular albums. It has made me think more carefully and personally about particular albums. Normally, I listen to albums and do not really consider why they mean a lot to me. If we all think about it, our favourite albums are so loved because they affect us in a specific way – or they are attached to special memories. Given the great reviews that many have afforded Long Players: Writers on the Albums That Shaped Them, there will be plenty of demand for…

A sequel.

FEATURE: Second Spin: The Human League – Crash

FEATURE:

 

 

Second Spin

The Human League – Crash

___________

IT is strange how…

some bands produce an incredible and faultless record and then, on their next couple of releases, sort of slump. Not to say that is what happened to Sheffield’s The Human League after the release of 1981’s Dare. That album is such a classic and it contains some of their best tracks – The Sound of the Crowd and Don’t You Want Me among the gems. 1984’s Hysteria was the next studio album. It wasn’t really up there with Dare. Despite some strong material, critics did not react as positively. Following Hysteria, the band delivered Crash. That title might be ironic: considering some of the reviews, many felt it was a bit of a disaster. I don’t think it is the best album from The Human League, though it is one that has some great moments. This year will see many people revisit Dare on its fortieth anniversary. It seemed that Crash was a difficult album to record. During a period where things were quite tense in the band, one can understand why there is a slight lack of focus and quality. Released on 8th September, 1986, Crash does contain some pearls. It is hard to find many reviews of the album. I will bring (a mixed) one in soon. I do think that people should seek out Crash and give it another chance. Bringing in some background, and one gets a sense of how The Human League developed and adapted after the release of Hysteria:

“After spending two years recording their fourth album Hysteria, which met with only moderate commercial success, the band struggled to record further material. By 1985, musician/songwriter Jo Callis had left the group. Virgin Records, worried by the lack of progress in one of their leading acts, called the band principals to a meeting where a solution was sought. As the problem was perceived to be the lack of production, it was suggested that the band take up an offer to work with Minneapolis based production duo Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. Jam and Lewis had written for and produced the S.O.S. Band, Cherrelle and Alexander O'Neal, and had just finished working on Janet Jackson's breakthrough album Control. They had developed an interest in The Human League after the success of their US releases; they were also seeking an opportunity to cross over into mainstream pop and saw The Human League as the perfect opportunity.

In February 1986, The Human League were flown out to Minneapolis to work at Flyte Time Studios with Jam and Lewis. After initial enthusiasm on both sides, the working relationship began to break down. Jam and Lewis had total control over the final album and insisted that their own tracks take precedence over the band's material. Jam and Lewis were also intolerant of the band's laid back working methods and their lack of musical technical ability.

After four months in Minneapolis, a sidelined Philip Oakey pulled the band out of further recording and they returned to Sheffield leaving Jam and Lewis to complete the album using session musicians. Oakey said later:

We like to be in control in the studio. We don't like giving that up to a producer. That's why we had a big, final argument, and we just decided to go home and leave them to finish it off. It just got to the point of who had the power, and in that instance...They were the men behind the mixing console, so they had ultimate control.

Keyboard players Philip Adrian Wright and Ian Burden also had been sidelined by Jam and Lewis. Wright would not recover from the humiliation and immediately left the band upon their return to the UK. Burden eventually quit the band in 1987.

The album name was taken from a moment in the studio during the recording. Oakey described it thus:

It's from a crash cymbal, because it's a disco album again with lots of cymbals. One day somebody said “what sorts of cymbals do you want, a ride or a crash?”, and we thought, “what a great title!”

Although at the time the band had all but washed their hands of the album post production, when released it quickly became an unexpected success. One of the Jam and Lewis compositions, "Human", was released as the album's first single and became the Human League's second number-one on the US Billboard Hot 100 and their first UK top-ten hit in over three years (no.8). Follow-up singles "I Need Your Loving" and the 1988 UK-only release "Love Is All That Matters" were less successful, failing to reach the UK Top 40. The album itself peaked at number 7 in UK (where it was certified Gold for sales in excess of 100,000 copies) and number 24 on the US Billboard 200 album chart. Oakey, with hindsight, states that it was this album that saved the band's career and one of the main reasons they are still recording today.[citation needed] However, he also stated in 1995 his disconcert with the record, saying: "The Jam and Lewis album [Crash] was just like being a puppet for four months. It was interesting to pick yourself out of the industrial north of England and dump yourself in Minneapolis. Great experience, but it just wasn't our album".

I have a lot of time for Crash. It is an album that has some weak spots, though it is not as bad as some people say. I opened by remarking how bands can produce a classic and then not live up to that standard very soon after. If Dare is the masterpiece from The Human League, I think that Crash is an album that is worth listening to. I want to source one review for Crash. This is what AllMusic wrote in their assessment:

“The Human League turned to American R&B producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis in the wake of their success with Janet Jackson's Control, and the combination brought the group its second number one hit with the Jam-Lewis composition "Human," which harked back to the earlier "Don't You Want Me," albeit with a gentler tone. The album's second single, the Control-soundalike "I Need Your Loving," was also a Jam-Lewis song (as was the U.K.-only third single, "Love Is All That Matters"), but the bulk of the album was made up of group-written songs with appealing backing tracks that maintained their dance appeal while eschewing the overtly synthesized sound of previous albums. That made Crash an improvement over the lackluster Hysteria, but still not on a par with Dare”.

Human is the big hit and success from Crash. I also feel that there are four or five other tracks that are really good. Overall, I would say Crash is an album that has its moments and should not be seen as a disaster. It wasn’t until the band’s eighth album, Secrets, of 2001 where they recovered some of their form and got back on track. That being said, I do think that 1986’s Crash is…

WORTHY of some more time.

FEATURE: An Impossible Choice: The Best of the Best: Kate Bush’s The Whole Story

FEATURE:

 

 

An Impossible Choice

The Best of the Best: Kate Bush’s The Whole Story

___________

THE year 1986…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1985

was a very interesting one in Kate Bush’s career. The previous year, she released her masterpiece fifth studio album, Hounds of Love. After promoting the album quite heavily (including interviews in America), she was one of the most popular artists in the world. Not to say that her previous four albums were overlooked. Hounds of Love was a huge declaration and incredible release that took her to new heights. It was her biggest album to date in America, and there would have been decisions as to what came next. I am going to do more features in the run-up to its thirty-fifth anniversary on 10th November. The Whole Story was what came in 1986. I feel like the greatest hits compilation was a definite end of a chapter. It would be three years after the album until Bush released another album. 1989’s The Sensual World was a new stage for Bush. I have spoken before about Kate Bush greatest hits collections. There have been others since 1986 – including 1990’s This Woman's Work: Anthology 1978–1990. Although The Single File 1978-1983 arrived in 1984, that was just an assortment of singles to that point rather than a greatest hits package. Hounds of Love’s success and brilliance inevitably led to calls for a greatest hits album. Bush might have been reluctant to put one out earlier in her career. Before continuing, here is some critical reaction regarding The Whole Story – in addition to some comments from Bush regarding the album:

“Roger Holland in Sounds (UK): "Over the last nine years and five albums, Kate Bush (...) has matured into quite the most sensual, expressive, and creative artist this country can now boast". Colin Irwin, Melody Maker (UK): "This glorious retrospective collection... she's playing a high-risk game, and more often than not her irrepressible flair, her instinct for a hook, and her gift for unusual and gripping arrangements carry her through." John McReady, NME (UK): "More useful and more enjoyable than the constipated jangling of a hundred and one little lads with big mouths and even bigger clothes allowances. Such people are not worth a carrot. Meat or no meat, Kate Bush is streets ahead." Andy Strickland, Record Mirror (UK): "A monumental tribute to this craziest, coziest girl-next-door. (...) One of the most refreshing compilation LPs it would be possible to put together."

Kate about 'The Whole Story'

Yes, I was [against the release of a compilation album] at first. I was concerned that it would be like a "K-tel" record, a cheapo-compo with little thought behind it. It was the record company's decision, and I didn't mind as long as it was well put together. We put a lot of work into the packaging, trying to make it look tasteful, and carefully thought out the running order. And the response has been phenomenal - I'm amazed! (Kate Bush Club newsletter, Issue 22, December 1987)

It wasn't chronological because we wanted to have a running time that was equal on both sides, otherwise you get a bad pressing. In America, where I'm not very well known, they didn't realise it was a compilation! ('Love, Trust and Hitler'. Tracks (UK), November 1989)”.

I am excited about the anniversary later in the year, as it will provoke questions whether it is time for another greatest hits album. I think, after ten studio albums and a career that has exceeded forty years, there is definite scope for an expanded collection that takes us from 1978’s The Kick Inside through to 2011’s 50 Words for Snow. In my view, it must have been exceedingly hard narrowing down the tracks to include on The Whole Story. What we do have with the twelve tracks is a representation of Bush’s incredible talent and progress.

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a still from the 1986 Experiment IV video (which she directed)

I want to discuss the tracklisting and importance of The Whole Story. Before that, there is a review of the album from 2018. Marking forty years since Bush’s debut album  arrived, this article examined a hugely important album:

“40 years ago, the world was blessed with one of the weirdest and most wonderful artists it has ever seen. The world was blessed with a frizzy haired 19 year old singing about Emily Bronte’s novel Wuthering Heights whilst dancing in a forest wearing fantastically bold red lipstick and green eyeshadow. The world was blessed with Kate Bush.

With five albums worth of material to work with, The Whole Story sees Kate take the best of her brilliant early catalogue and assemble it into one amazing compilation. 32 years on, this record has not aged a day, with every track still proving timeless, fuelling its listeners with all of Bush’s raw emotions.

The Whole Story takes the listener away on a musical ride through some of Bush’s most iconic moments from the beginning of her career. Hearing Bush’s early work in particular showcases the evolution of her wonderfully wavy vocals and wild imagination. From her softly sung piano ballad ‘The Man With The Child In His Eyes’, written at the age of just fourteen, to her spacey-orchestral experiment track ‘Wow’, taken from her second album Lionheart.

Bush uses The Whole Story to really showcase the formation of her now trademark quirkiness. With tracks like ‘Babushka’, (about a woman romantically fooling her husband) and the iconic pop anthem ‘Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)’, being flawless demonstrations of her ability to continually surprise listeners and push boundaries. Every track on The Whole Story shows the pure creativity and song-writing talent possessed by Bush – a skill heard in every one of her song’s piano notes and every drum beat.

Opening this compilation is the genius ‘Wuthering Heights’, which Bush remixed and re-recorded herself for this project. This remixing was done purely with the intent on giving the song a more mature sound, replacing Bush’s original vocals for the track when it was released in 1978, when Bush was just 19. This minor alteration in sound really does highlight the subtle change in vocal depth and resonance Bush developed in the eight years between the original track release to the polished and perfected iteration heard on The Whole Story.

Kate Bush creates magical worlds through her music, vocals and lyrics that has the fantastic ability to transport you away to a wondrous place where anything could happen. A place where Catherine and Heathcliff are together; a place where God will let you be another person to escape from the excruciating feeling of loving someone too much. The Whole Story is a vessel that ultimately transports the listener to the depths of Kate Bush’s imagination.

Kate Bush is not a singer, she is an artist. In fact, she is one of the most important artists of our time, and one that will continue to shape the music industry forever. Listening to The Whole Story is all the proof you need”.

It must be strange for an artist to have a greatest hits album out. They might feel like it defines them or is a bit of a full stop. It was clear Bush had a lot of material left in her. Rather than it being a chance to cash in on the success of Hounds of Love, it allowed new fans to discover her previous work. It also provided people the opportunity to see how Bush, from album to album, produced very different sounds and songs. I will explore Bush in 1986 a bit before the anniversary of The Whole Story. Although there were singles released and activity, it was a less busy and eventful year than the one previous (there was another 1986 release, The Hair of the Hound, which featured all four of her music videos from the album Hounds of Love. It was released on 16th June. Bush also appeared during the Comic Relief live shows in April, performing Breathing and singing the duet, Do Bears..., with Rowan Atkinson). Whereas greatest hits collections are meant to bring in the most successful singles and, to a degree, most accessible songs, I think Bush has some fascinating deeper cuts. With only two songs from The Kick Inside – the singles, Wuthering Heights (with a new vocal) and The Man with the Child in His Eyes -, some might have felt that album was short-changed. Some might say that including The Dreaming’s title track (which only charted at forty-eight) might have denied other tracks. That album’s Suspended in Gaffa would have been a good selection. Hounds of Love’s The Big Sky is also missing. Narrowing it down to a dozen tracks means that some cuts miss the grade. Listen to the five albums prior to The Whole Story, one realises that there are so many non-singles that are also worthy.

As it traditional with greatest hits collections, there is a new track. It is a chance for an artist to give a new song a home or give the listener extra incentive to buy the album. I have already spotlighted The Whole Story’s new track, Experiment IV. I may revisit it ahead of 10th November. I love the track and wonder where it could have sat if it was available for inclusion on Hounds of Love. I think the song has an element of Peter Gabriel’s Shock the Monkey (the first single from his fourth eponymous album of 1982) – an artist that Bush worked with several times. I forgot to mention that, in addition to The Whole Story, 1986 saw Bush appear on the Peter Gabriel song, Don’t Give Up. The powerful diet appeared on his So album. The single was released on 27th October (the same week as Experiment IV). I love the fact that Bush had two singles out from two different albums that are very different themselves. Although I said 1986 was fairly quite or Bush, she actually had quite a bit on! I wonder how much say Bush had regarding choosing songs to appear on The Whole Story and whether she would have preferred some non-singles being in the mix. I feel EMI could have stretched The Whole Story to fifteen tracks. That might have meant it needed to be a double vinyl/C.D. release. I will leave it there. As it is five months until the thirty-fifth anniversary of The Whole Story, I am going to pepper a couple more features in beforehand. If you have not heard the album then do so now. It gives new context to the songs and the albums they are taken from. It must have also been hard deciding which tracks to put where, but I feel like there is a great balance - so that tracks from the same album are not bunched together and there is nothing jarring and disjointed in terms of the sonic flow. It is a fitting tribute to an artist who, on her first greatest hits compilation, had a dozen of her finest songs…

ALL in one place.