Hello? Landcroft House...

"Hello Landcroft House, it's Miles and Alex from The Last Shadow Puppets here..."
Hello Miles and Alex. Can you answer me a question?
"We'll try..."
Tell me, what is the greatest record ever made?
Miles: "I always pick a Beatles record."
Alex: "I’m not sure."
Miles: "I’m pure just into the Beatles things that I love."
Alex: "I’m thinking about a few..."
Miles: "I love Anna and This Boy, really early Beatles’ tunes."
Alex: "I like No Reply from Beatles For Sale – I’m right into that at the moment.
Miles: "I’ve been having that and Rock & Roll Music a lot too. And I’ve been deep into Abbey Road too. I love Because, it has this mad organ on it..."
Alex: "And Polythene Pam too..."
Miles: "Yeah, that’s just Lennon having a buzz!"
You're only allowed one.
"Oh, OK."
Thanks for calling, bye!

South Korea's Got Talent

Sungha's 11 years old. How soon can I get Scrap playing, do you think?

Hello Old Thing, Hello Even Older Thing: 4

Turnstyle: Trot (Pye, 1968)
Psych-pop breakbeat diggers don't seem to have got as far as this sneery, nose-thumbing piece of proto-punk grooviness yet - at least, not to my knowledge. The picture, you'll notice, features the A-Side, but this, surely, deserves some wider attention (like the 18 people who look here once a month)? Unsure of what it's really trying to be, Trot never really fuses into the sort of thing that the milkman will whistle, but it's a great reminder of what excellent silliness could be obtained by sticking some herberts in a studio, filling them full of Tizer and pressing Record.


Buddy Rich Quartet feat Flip Phillips: Broadway (Verve, 1958)
I'll tell you what, that Buddy Rich bloke was alright at the drums, wasn't he? This features the great Ronnie Ball on piano. That's what I love about jazz records - you can say, "the great Ronnie Ball" and people sort of go, "Yeah, Ballie was the business" when, in reality, no one's ever heard of him before (apart from geh, naturally). Anyway, there's much more of this here. Innit.

This Record Is Quite Nice, Actually: 5

Grace Jones: My Jamaican Guy (12" Mix) (Island, 1982)
It is, of course, hilarious to read how Jones allegedly bashes things up and generally acts the goat, but it's worth remembering that, oh dear me, she really was a great pop star too. Has any artist ever appeared in a more startling fashion on their own record sleeve than Lady Jonesworth? Has anyone been more fantastically paired to the material than Jones vs Sly And Robbie (as found on this excellent compilation)? Has anyone else ever behaved less appropriately at Disneyworld?

Bless her...

Seasonal Cheer

We are having tea and cake at James and Antoinette's house and trying to decide whether to go and see American Gangster or The Darjeeling Limited tonight. It's rather nice only having such simple things to think about.

We are now, officially, on our seasonal holidays and wish the whole lot of you the very best and all that.

Have a good one...

Basement Crates: 25 & 26

Yargo: Bedtime For Rio (London, 1987)
Yargo were one of the first bands I really loved that I knew precisely nothing about. All I was sure of was that they were from Manchester, I loved the track Bodybeat and that Basil Clarke - that's him over there - had a really fantastic voice. They were a bit jazz, a bit reggae and a bit indie and, in 1987, that was more than enough. Later, I went with a few friends to see them at Dingwalls in Camden. I remember it for two reasons:
1. I wore a cap-sleeve New Model Army t-shirt, not a sight often seen at a Yargo gig I'm sure.
2: I got so drunk the bouncers didn't even want to let me in. Then, when I did get in, I nearly got chucked straight out again for, well, messing about... Oh the shame...

Anyway - they were great! Now, sadly, there's nothing on You Tube, Wikipedia or Myspace. Basil did a great one off single in about 1993 that I have somewhere, other than that, there's almost nothing.



Lewis Parker, Supa T, Braintax & Profound: Easter Island Heads (SSR, 1999)
Londoner Lewis Parker is a bloody genius and this, fairly obscure track, from a fairly obscure compilation (I think) neatly shows why. For one, it's absurdly funky. For another one, the production (by Braintax) is fatter than a fat woman's fat bits on a particularly fat day of an otherwise hugely fat month. For another, the rappers are all straight from the top drawer. Look, just have it, listen to it, enjoy the lyric about having a "coke'd up twat yapping in my ear" and tell me it's not fantastic... And it is! So don't bother even trying...

Kelly's Heroic

R Kelly is many things - a lot of them, apparently, dreadful - but one thing he definitely is is entertaining. Here he is, in the studio, doing a song called Real Talk. If Bret and Jemaine Conchord haven't seen this already they may want to learn it pretty damn quick...

Oh, Hang On, This Record's Really Nice

Tom Waits: Burma Shave (Elektra, 1977)
I was out the other night - out! imagine! - and, for reasons I can't quite remember we got to talking about Tom Waits. Now, I've loved TW for years and years and years, but he's one of those people who you know you love with such certainty that, often, you don't feel like you actually need you need to listen to them very often. Well, having got home I decided to change that and - a little unsteadily - made for Foreign Affairs. And then headed straight for this track, a total beauty recorded at the point where Waits was moving from the jazz-bum troubadour to the more eccentric character we now know (and some of us love). This track is utterly beautiful, so simply realised yet brilliantly delivered.

Thanks Tom...

Hello Old Thing, Hello Even Older Thing: 3

Alan Parker: Frozen Stream (KPM, 1973)
Pictured here is the original 1973 sleeve from the KPM Library files. However, in a mixed-media presentation that would wow even those who know all about mixed-media presentations - someone like Natasha Kaplinsky maybe, or Ronnie Corbett? - I've purloined this from a marvellous (and a great deal easier to access) reissue on Tummy Touch that I would warmly recommend if - like me - you are interested in instrumental music that conjures up the majesty and mystery of the Dark Continent through the liberal usage of some none-more-fluid guitar lines and a breakbeat I fully expect to hear turned into a hit single by Christmas.


John Barry: Alone Blues (CBS, 1965)
As you may have surmised from the picture, this perfectly-poised slice of Barry-ology comes from the brilliant soundtrack to Ver IPCRESS File, innit. As soon as you hear this you'll want to put on a mac and smoke filterless gaspers while trolling about various London locales but that - CAUTION! Gag Approaching! - is caused purely by my skilful Induction of Psycho-neuroses by Conditioned Reflex Under StrESS.

Do you see what I did there?

Rescued From The Bargain Bins Of History: 3

Mort Garson's Electronic Hair Pieces:
Aquarius
Walking In Space
(A&M, 1969)

A general rule of thumb when buying junk shop LPs: if the record was made between 1966 and 1973 and the cover is interesting, buy it. If the cover features a crazily made-up woman / mannequin character with wires coming out of her head, really buy it. If the LP features envelope-pushing cover versions of hits of the day played by a balding man in thick spectacles playing a synthesizer bigger than your own house, run to the counter with your money and get it in the bag quick.

I got this little gem in the Scope shop on the Goldhawk Road. I can't pretend I was a huge Mort Garson fan because I wasn't - I'm still not - but when you see a sleeve like the one for his Moog experiments upon the soundtrack to hippie musical Hair then the only sensible thing to do is to get your 25 pence ready and invest. Not because the record is amazing from beginning to end - it isn't - but because your pennies are buying you a brilliant piece of history. Released the same year I was born, this LP comes from a time when so many millions of people bought so many millions of LPs that ridiculous, utterly un-commercial nonsense like this could get recorded and released by otherwise quite sensible labels (A&M made most of their money from Herb Alpert). This was a time of plenty when even a late middle-aged Canadian slap-head like Garson could get bunged a tasty few quid to record the noodlings he squeaked out of the crazy, new-fangled instrumentation he kept in his garage.

I salute you, Mort. I salute your A&R man too. What a generous, easily excitable, cheque-book-at-the-ready time that must have been.

Anyway, these people seem to be in the right mood...

Records I Can't Stand: 12

10cc: I'm Not In Love (Mercury, 1975)

"It's just a silly phase I'm going through..."

Download it, listen to it all the way through then tell me what you think.

:(

New Music Tuesday

I opened my post and this was in it. Literally, hurray! King Creosote's last album was an absolute doozy. And this 4 Track sampler would appear to suggest that:

1. It was a rather decent warm up
2. Old KC has quite a lot - well, at least four - great new songs in him
3. There was a budget you could feel between your fingers
4. You've No Clue Do You is The Hit Single in waiting
5 Spysticks will be next year's Festival Anthem
6 Home In A Sentence ("Hold onto her / Stay focussed / Keep her in your sights / Don't stray out of her eyes") might sound impossibly romantic, but it's actually a right little bastid...
7 Nooks sounds the precisely the sort of piano and violin croon-a-long you'd like to enjoy in a convivial Anstruther pub.

A full copy of the album should be here tomorrow...

Literally hurray, again.

Rescued From The Bargain Bins Of History: 2

The Last Poets: Oh My People (Cellulloid, 1984)

I don't know if you ever went through one of those stages in your life where all you wanted to do was score yourself some important records. Well, I did. In fact, I spent years doing it. And, if it's I Predict A Griot, pre-hip hop verbal dynamism you're after (and, hey!, who isn't?), then it doesn't get much more weighty than The Last Poets. By the time they made this one in 1984 the band had split into two camps. This is not, generally speaking, a good sign, though it does mean I got this for pennies from that huge charity shop that used to be on Shepherds Bush Green, rather than pay the inflated prices for their earlier (more consistent) stuff. Anyway, much of this record is a bit ropey (I would recommend you avoid the proto-rap abomination, Get Movin as if the life of your loved ones depended on it), but Oh My People is great: a pulpit-levelling call to (no) arms slung, with street-military precision, over a bass line bubblier, and more vivacious, than a pink shower-capped Bubbles Rothermere whacking back cava by the shaving-mug full in a fast-running foam bath. On ice. And drugs. Oh yes...

Enjoy!

Rescued From The Bargain Bins Of History: 1

The Tribe: Here Comes The Sun (Pickwick, 1971)

Ten odd years ago I used to buy a lot of records, mainly from car boots sales, charity shops and the bargain bins of Record & Tape Exchange in Shepherds Bush. I had very, very little money to spare, so I never dropped more than about 50p a pop. That financial discipline meant I had to really put the hours in (time wasn't a problem then) to find stuff to sample and DJ with. Often, I just ended up with nothing, but sometimes I got an absolute killer. Whenever I got something good I'd take it round to Ronnie's house off Brook Green - Jonny Trunk worked in the antiques shop at the end of the road - and we'd try to do something with it. Then I'd leave it there and we'd go to the pub.

Well, yesterday it was Ronnie's birthday. He had a party at his house (a different house, some miles away). All these records of mine were upstairs. Stuff I'd not seen for, at least, ten years. I went straight up to his studio and pulled about 50 LPs off the smart black shelves and the cover of every one I found made me beam.

I remember getting this in a Scope shop on the Goldhawk Road, it cost about 20p. It's a cash-in to exploit George Harrison's Concert For Bangladesh fans. It's been done so quickly and cheaply that they're called The Tribes on the back cover. Stealing from charities is not the most altruistic idea ever, but these were simpler times. What this record taught me is:

1. Here Comes The Sun is a really good song.
2. It's clearly really hard to play. The guy (I love the way he sings, "Here come the sun...") trying to pull off this solo version only just manages to keep it together.

These two fare somewhat better...

Records I Can't Stand: 11

Suzanne Vega: Marlene On The Wall (A&M, 1985)

We were getting ready to leave Cornbury at teatime on Sunday when Suzanne Vega came on stage. She was very good and absolutely everyone was loving her. Except me. I can't stand her songs, hate them all, but especially this one.
I grabbed Scrap and ran for the exit, fast as I could.

A Pleasant Weekend In The Country

I had visions of Cornbury being a rain-lashed nightmare featuring a distinctly unhappy wife and spud-biter. In actual fact - it was lovely pretty much from beginning to end. It was full of nice people. Charlbury Pre School had cooked up a load of hogs that they knocked out in soft white baps at £3 a pop. Some nice pop groups played. Of course, the thing about taking a three year old to a festival is that you're there two hours before anyone plays and you leave two hours before the headliner's on, but I can tell you this much:

1 The Waterboys were fantastic.
2 Echo & The Bunnymen were amazing - David Cameron was the talk of the site the next morning after being spotted frugging energetically to the demi-Gods of Cosmic Scouse.

3 The Proclaimers have never written a bad song. Even if you're listening to their ouvre when your child (that's him being a dragon) has slipped out of your sight and you're holding increasingly frantic conversations with security officials they still sound good (btw, a very nice lady called Sara found him and delivered him to the Information tent - they were both crying).

4 If you complain about having a bad time in Swindon, the lady at the Swindon Travelodge will give you a bottle of wine.
5 It's easy to have a bad day if any of it involves going anywhere near Swindon.
6 Having funfairs and children's theatre and the like at festivals is a really good idea.
7 Being outside for two days is good for the mind.
8 The Feeling are a bit good, innit?
9 Did I mention the hog roast?

Next year I would camp and just bring Silvana and The Scrap up for a day trip. And I'd have him attached to me with unbreakable metal chains.

Hooray!

Records I Can't Stand: 10

Foreigner: I Want To Know What Love Is (Atlantic, 1984)
Robert, obviously, really knows his onions when it comes to music. On the whole, I like whatever it is he plays me but sometimes I think he gets it really, really wrong. He announces a song as 'an absolute classic' when it's clearly really lame. He once had this thing for this shocker of a track by Jo O'Meara - yes, I said Jo O'Meara, though this was before she became a Racist Thug - and played it to everyone who came over. Of course, everyone shook their heads and said they couldn't see the appeal and the song didn't even make the top 100.

Anyway, he loves this awful song. Anyone shed any light on it for me?

Hello Old Thing, Hello New Thing: 14

Louis Armstrong And The Mills Brothers: My Walking Stick (Decca, 1938)
I've been meaning to steal, wholesale, a track from these people and their very excellent album of 30s, 40s and 50s music for quite some time. But today, as the clouds gathered and broke and gathered and broke (again) outside the window, this particular track just leapt out. I think there's a double meaning to this whole, "I like my walking stick" thing - not a very rude one, no - but I might be wrong. Anyway, this is an Irving Berlin ker-lassic and it will please you on contact. It will!


Piroth: Emily (Oma Gusti Records, 2007)
This has been sat on my desk for about three weeks and it's only today that I finally got around to playing it. And it's really good! My goodness Piroth are good. If you liked the Meg Baird or Dawn Landes tracks you will be sold immediately. I'd tell you to buy the album, but it barely exists on the internet yet. There's more of 'em here though. Anyway, the mighty 'Roth are sisters Nina and Johanna. It says here that they grew up in Stockholm and have Finnish and Austrian family roots. Important info, right? They sing and play stuff and you sort of want to have a lie down and a bit of a gaze into space when you listen to them. As you are about to discover...

Enjoy!

Ahhhh

Have you seen that advert for ipod+itunes with Paul McCartney playing his mandolin?
How sweet and happy is he?
That Heather Mills is a damn fool if you ask me.

Hello Old Thing, Hello New Thing: 13

Tindersticks: Raindrops (BBC Session, 1993)
Neil Fraser (that's him on the cover of Tindersticks' second album) used to work as a rep for MCA Records and, in doing so, drove an estate car full of Teddy Riley, Tom Petty and Mary J Blige (or whatever) records. He would visit various chart-return record shops in the south west London area and leave piles of his wares on the counter. To be honest, we didn't really want them and he clearly couldn't stand them, but that's business, right? Anyway, one day he left and the next thing we knew he was staring out of the pages of NME, Melody Maker and Volume. His lot were an immediate hit and I never saw him again. So, hello Neil, hope you're well. Tiny Tears is taken from this excellent compilation. What a great band...

Little Dragon: No Love (Peacefrog, 2007)
Well, there's a surprise. This new band I really like come from Sweden! Who could have imagined that? Anyway, Little Dragon are a bit unconventional, reminding me of a sort of Court And Spark era Joni Mitchell with some indie-pop, dub and funk add-ons. Like I say, a bit unconventional. Anyway, the album is out in September and they are well worth your attention...

Enjoy!