oldnarkoverian

Tell Me A Story

dave.heasman@blueyonder.co.uk — Fri, 29 May 2009 21:49:27 GMT

Way back when I first got broadband and hadn't yet found WFMU I was casting around for web radio stations. I came upon one named KPIG out of Texas which played what I suppose you'd call alt-country. KPIG as it was has disappeared, if you google it now it's in California playing similar but worse stuff.
Anyway, I was greatly taken by a couple of records - a live version of Slaid Cleves' "Breakfast in Hell" and a studio version of James McMurtry's "Choctaw Bingo". This was 8 years ago.

And last week I found 'em again. Except it was a live "Choctaw Bingo" and a studio "Breakfast".

Still good. Lots of words. I'll put the blog links here rather than point directly to
r**Sh*re or M**load, in case the Journal police pounce.

http://dogl-freeformfarm.blogspot.com/2007/10/slaid-cleaves.html

http://dogl-freeformfarm.blogspot.com/2007/10/james-mcmurtry-heartless-bastards.html

Tonight I have been mostly downloading Egberto Gismonti, 18 albums, accessed via this wonderful but ugly aggregator

http://chewbone.blogspot.com

A 1 Gb disc now costs £70. That holds a lot of Egberto

Gloria

dave.heasman@blueyonder.co.uk — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 23:49:52 GMT

I didn't hear "Tainted Love" by Gloria Jones until way after I'd heard it by Soft Cell. I'm not sure it was even released in the UK in the 60s.
I don't think much of it either way, though it's a funny song to give a 19-year-old black girl to sing. It was written by Ed Cobb, who was leader of the "Four Preps" in the late 50s/early 60s. They had several preppy hits and one great B side the name of which eludes me, the A side was "Big Man". They also recorded "More Money for You and Me," a rather brilliant parody record, but I digress. (Freda Payne's "Band of Gold" was similarly weird but she was more grown up. But I digress.)

The Gloria Jones record I did know was "Heartbeat", a double-sided thumper which came out on Capitol here for Christmas 1965. And very pleased I was to pick up the album

Bah, it doesn't display the piccy.

This is the album -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:GloriaJonesComeGoWithMe.jpg

for £1.50 in 1972. The "Heartbeat" on the album is a single unfaded 4 minutes 30 seconds of joy.

In 1973 I had a decent reel-to-reel recorder and access to Camden public libraries so when I saw a Gloria Jones album had come out on Motown I ordered it from the library, recorded it and thought it brilliant.
It's the one reel-to-reel (out of 2000+) I intended to get down from the loft and load onto the computer.

But I googled "Gloria Jones" "Share My Love" about 30 minutes ago and a veritable cornucopia showed up including, morphic resonance fans, the fact that "Share My Love" has just come out on CD.
And it's all over YouTube, officially. And it's as good as I remember it, if not better.

This is the title track - a couple of slight skips at the beginning -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1QLranasnw&feature=related

She has loads of tracks from the album up on YouTube and a couple of lipsynchs to "Heartbeat"
and one live version which is rather a revelation.

Wikipedia says "Heartbeat" was recorded before "Tainted Love". I have always thought the 1964 recording date was a bit unlikely, the recording technique sounds as if it was a little later and also the song's lyrics sound a bit creepy now, and would have been very creepy indeed for 1964.

This guy - http://everything2.com/title/Tainted%2520Love

reckons, and he seems sure of himself, that Cobb offered the song to the Standells (must have been 66 or 7) and they didn't like it so " Ed Cobb took the song and recorded it with an R&B singer named Gloria Jones and it was released in 1968 on the Champion label."

And it is on Champion, here's a label shot -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktiguw5e8AY&feature=related

whereas the album I have from 65-6 is on Uptown. If "Tainted Love" had already been recorded and released I'd have expected it to have gone on the album, it has a good dance sound it's just the lyrics that put me off and the damn album has only 10 tracks, doesn't last half an hour.

A lot of fuss over a song I don't like.

Cobb has more history than his Wikipedia entry of course; Lincoln Mayorga played piano on the Preps' records and he & Cobb formed the Piltdown Men, recorded Ketty Lester's "Love Letters", and in the late 70s formed Sheffield Labs which specialised in direct-to-disc recording.

There's more to Gloria Jones, too, of course. Her later, post-Bolan, albums I don't think are up to much. She's not to be confused with the older Gloria Jones from the Blossoms/Cookies/Raelettes, and I think there's a third Gloria Jones too.

So Long, Pal

dave.heasman@blueyonder.co.uk — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 17:55:30 GMT

Jonny Cross, RIP

Out and About again

dave.heasman@blueyonder.co.uk — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 13:23:22 GMT

Redundancy-induced enforced leisure meant that Thursday morning at 10.30 found me at the new Kings Place venue, up York Way from Kings Cross. To see two 45-minute concerts by Abram Wilson, a trumpeter from New Orleans who now lives in London.
(He looks like a shorter Paul Ince - with a shiny mullet). The first show was an exploration of the music in New Orleans at the turn of the 20th century, and the second a recital of Louis Armstrong standards of (mostly) the 20s.
It used to be rare for black artists to perform the "heritage" repertoire, apart from the Preservation Hall setup which was half-white anyway, but lately there's been that all-black banjo band and a couple of other examples that currently evade me.
Anyway, Wilson was pretty good. It takes some nerve for a trumpeter to schedule a concert for 10.30 in the morning, but his lip seemed pretty secure as he tootled around some ragtime parlour favourites accompanied half the time by a "straight" piano player and the other half by Peter Edwards (?) who was pretty good. He opened, unwisely, with a version of "Flight of the BumbleBee" that had a few fluffs and unwanted elisions.
The Armstrong set followed on - it takes some nerve for a trumpet player to schedule 2 45-minute concerts for a weekday morning - with Edwards and a bass player and drummer whose names I didn't catch. The usual problem with modern players doing the 20s repertoire is that they can't avoid throwing in modern harmonies. Wynton Marsalis' album of Jelly Roll Morton stuff is full of it; English trad bands make a better fist of this material because they don't have the harmonic sophistication. Anyway, Wilson and band obviously can play outside these songs, but they manage pretty well to avoid doing so, and it's all the better for it. A very good cheerful set that held the attention. Nice short pieces.
It's invidious to judge on the basis of these two uncharacteristic performances, but it seemed to me that Wilson doesn't yet have his own fully-formed sound. He's pretty good, plays with humour and swing, keeps things moving along nicely, it's just that he's not got a unique voice yet.

Oh, and the venue is great. Two good concert halls - we went en masse Sunday night to hear a harp quartet - decent gallery space, cheap cafes, decent signage, plenty of staff. And it was packed, Thursday morning and Sunday night. I'd not expected that, it seemed a terrible risk and I wasn't sure there'd been enough publicity. Shows what I know.

The Past is Another County

dave.heasman@blueyonder.co.uk — Mon, 12 May 2008 22:23:58 GMT

They do things much the same there.

A couple of weeks ago in Waterstones on Ludgate Hill looking for the Rough Guide to Andalusia where we didn't go, I spotted this

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Re-make-re-model-Michael-Bracewell/dp/0571229859/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1210630562&sr=8-1

and so I read the relevant chapters.

And I must say, if anyone wanted for some reason to know what life was like at Reading University between 1965 and 1968 for those few folk who made some effort*, they'd get a good idea from this book. I was incredibly impressed; all the people I knew and hadn't seen for years sounded just as I'd remembered them.
Sadly though, it reinforced my theory, which seems to remain mine alone, which is that nothing of any significance has happened in any Western art form since 1970.

* Obviously I don't mean academic effort..
====

Can't be bothered to make a new post for this, but Sunday arvo the Radio 3 request show played this -

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Russo-Street-Music-William/dp/B000060O5D/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1210630853&sr=1-1

and it's been a long time since I sat in the car, with the shopping festering and melting, waiting for a piece of music to end.

Heart's ease

dave.heasman@blueyonder.co.uk — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 18:58:23 GMT

There's a school of thought that says that Cilla Black's version of "Anyone Who Had a Heart" is better than Dionne Warwick's because it's more credible.
Warwick sounds like someone who knows that it would be no surprise if the love of her life would suddenly just leave. Black sounds like a bellowing schoolgirl caught totally on the hop.

Anyway, this from the Jazz list -

(caught Shelby Lynne at the State Theater Monday; she got her record
company to press vinyl records. yeah. mmm c'mon. When she came out I
wasn't sure if she wasn't drunk and hadn't forgotten the words to
"Just a Little Lovin'" The longest pause. Then the chorus. Just get
the damn record, ok? Even if you don't like Dusty Springfield. Or at
least check out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuaHN1p8F9E Is that a Thorens?)

Rendering the unacceptable palatable

dave.heasman@blueyonder.co.uk — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 19:39:09 GMT

That's art, innit?

http://www.videofantastica.com/view_video/31903/

It goes on a bit, but the first minute is great.

Bob's back

dave.heasman@blueyonder.co.uk — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 23:42:10 GMT

On t'radio that is. Downloads here -

http://www.mp33pm.co.uk/2007/09/season-two-links-to-all-of-bob-dylan.html

A few bob via Paypal to him wouldn't hurt.

Everything but the Tail and the Oink

dave.heasman@blueyonder.co.uk — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 22:22:56 GMT

We've always been a bit leery about going on long weekends to Eastern Europe. Budapest was great, highly recommended, but our fairly-undemanding dietary demands appeared incompatible with the signature dishes of those former outposts of Stalin's empire.
We'd even formulated a shorthand for dismissing these places - "it'll be all pig's knuckle and rancid cabbage".
Well, last Thursday we went to hear the London Gypsy Orchestra at this Romanian restaurant in Old Bailey. Proudly on the menu - Pork Knuckle & Beans.
We had the fish.
The place was packed, very heterogenous collection of folks, very good house wine, and the Gypsy Orchestra was pretty damn good. A few too many inaudible violins, a 23-piece band and the trumpeter couldn't stay in tune, but the vocals were dead good. Highly recommended for less than a tenner entry. I doubt they were on union scale.

This weekend I'm on call (fx - cash register) after spending all last week on the first course ever after 6 years in this job - Fund Management for Dummies. So how come I'm still broke?

Exploitation or Empowerment?

dave.heasman@blueyonder.co.uk — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 22:49:55 GMT

Or neither? I'm conflicted.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMnk7lh9M3o

Someone sent out for Cecil B DeMille, the pillars will be here shortly.

A knee-jerk reaction

dave.heasman@blueyonder.co.uk — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 14:47:36 GMT

"Vatican cardinal calls on Catholics to stop funding Amnesty"

from http://www.guardian.co.uk/religion/Story/0,,2102583,00.html

From googling "amnesty" to joining online takes 2 minutes. That's what I did, anyway.

It's been a long time..

dave.heasman@blueyonder.co.uk — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 16:56:22 GMT

..since I saw a black man playing a banjo.

There's no real reason for it to be rare; the instrument was invented by black people; it's very useful, like the accordion, for playing outdoors, because it can be bloody loud. But still, apart from perhaps Taj Mahal you don't see it.

The bill at the Barbican last Thursday was the Preservation Hall Band and Allen Toussaint.
Toussaint opened, which surprised me, played a lot of his hits (I would have liked to have heard Freedom for the Stallion and Wonder Woman and could have done without Southern Nights, but then) and was very profesional in his raconteuring, despite only starting performing live again quite recently. Well worth the £25. After the interval the Preservation Hall band. Very corny to start with - like that twerp Max Collie, making massive claims to authenticity while doing the Ted Lewis schtick - but the piano player was good, throwing Herbie Hancock licks into the hackneyed predictable standards. Then they did the funeral bit, with lengthy explanation about the "mournful out/cheerful in" procedure, and struck up a very slow "Just a closer walk" and Toussaint came out to sit in on piano. It was astonishing how well he fit in; added a sentimentality and simplicity that the other guy wouldn't have been able to fake. Things rather took off from there. The tempo speeded up and they went into a longish medley featuring each player. As well as the jazz favourites (The Saints was writen in 1939, it just sounds very old) they dropped in some Prof Longhair, sung by the banjo guy - Carl Le Blanc his name - and it really did the trick. The horns marched round the theatre, dozens of 40-year-old schoolteachers "danced" behind them, a good time had by all. Life-enhancing and thoroughly recommended.

Camera, Action, Do It Again - As Farce!

dave.heasman@blueyonder.co.uk — Thu, 24 May 2007 09:00:45 GMT

They're making a fillum about the young Karl Marx. His life from 1830 to 1848. It says so here :

http://crookedtimber.org/2007/05/24/karl-marx-the-pre-beard-years/#more-5900

This comment is what caught me : -

"I think the biggest problem with the film will, indeed, be casting; where, after all, can you find actors with left-wing sympathies who can realistically portray an ambitious young dilettante with pretensions of political grandeur?"

France Gall says "Drop 'Em"

dave.heasman@blueyonder.co.uk — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 15:01:02 GMT

Had been pondering this title; it has the merit of being true, the demerit of being juvenile. Oh well.

The only Tarantino film I've seen was "Jackie Brown". Never felt the need to see another. It was only that Mick Patrick posted the trailer for the new one to Spectropop that made me have a peep : -

http://www.hyfntrak.com/deathproof/gupta/

The first track really rings a few bells, don't it?

"April March" has a site here : -

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=48062724

which has a free download.

France Gall? Oh yes : -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4lFJrpYYMc

Tribute Bands

dave.heasman@blueyonder.co.uk — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 16:41:06 GMT

Very popular, no? Try to sound like someone else, do their songs, they've done your marketing for you, profit ensues. Sometimes quite a big profit, e.g. Bjorn Again, sometimes less so, but the pubs are full of them.
'Twas ever thus; you could say that the Goodman band playing Fletcher Henderson charts was a Henderson tribute band, and in the early 60s there were things like Ral Donner doing Elvis impersonations.

1961 England was a pale shadow; Cliff Richard was a pale shadow and Dave Sampson was Cliff's pale shadow. Sampson tried to sound like Cliff at his drippiest. Which was plenty drippy. "Sadly" Sampson was on the same record label as Cliff, so he wasn't likely to get the pick of Cliff-suitable material. Short career for Sampson, though he's still alive and playing revival shows now.

Anyways, Sampson had a backing band, the Hunters, and they had their own recording contract, on Philips (or Fontana, anyway the label was blue and the records didn't get played on Luxembourg), they did instrumentals and I bought one, "Teen Scene". Imaginative title, probably a product of the Philips A & R Dept. I thought it was good, almost as good as a Duane Eddy record and way better than anything by the Shadows.
I never realised they'd made an LP. In fact they made 2, now remastered & re-released as a double and downloaded from Yahoo out of curiosity by me.
It's worth what I paid for it, maybe a bit more. The main fault is material, mostly they play covers of current-ish hits, but the execution is really very good. Lots of variation in tone, definitley some real thought went into the use of cheap (well, bloody expensive with 33% purchase tax, but YKWIM) instruments and really good drumming. I was pleasantly surprised & shan't wipe it.

Giant Steps

dave.heasman@blueyonder.co.uk — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 23:50:13 GMT

It's nearly 47 years old. It's still pretty good.

This animation is incredible. She's edited out the piano solo.

http://www.michalevy.com/gs_download.html

"I'd much rather be with the girls..

dave.heasman@blueyonder.co.uk — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 08:41:25 GMT

...than with boys like you" yodels Donna Lynn.

It's track 49 or so of "One Kiss Can Lead to Another" a 4-CD Rhino masterpiece that's been the soundtrack of my journey to work these last few days.
Utterly brilliant, although there are very few hits on it, and very few songs I know, every song I've played so far has been a gem.
One such is Toni Basil's first record "I'm 28" recorded in 1966 when she was 23. An obscure Graham Gouldman song, it brought me up short this morning when it rhymed "unguent" with "pungent". You don't hear that every day, and either word would be a knockout if you were playing one-word Name That Tune.

Best track so far - Carole King's demo of "Crying in the Rain".

A world record

dave.heasman@blueyonder.co.uk — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 15:11:28 GMT

Finished the Private Eye crossword for the first time in 40 years. Obviously it's not the same since Tom Driberg died, but still.

And another thing. I see a "senior Downing Street aide" was moaning at the weekend that the police initially said the bribery & corruption investigation would be over by the autumn and then by Xmas and it keeps slipping.
Well, Mr/Ms Downing Street aide, doubtless the investigation would have progressed more quickly had it not been for people like you perverting the course of justice.

Bob's moved again

dave.heasman@blueyonder.co.uk — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 23:11:49 GMT

his radio shows, that is.

Now he's at http://dsp.vscht.cz/pavelka/TTRH/

Then it's Rapidshare.com downloads. Not to be confused with rapidshare.de

Is it just me?

dave.heasman@blueyonder.co.uk — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 16:28:13 GMT

I suppose every LiveJournal posting ever could have that heading. But.

We hear in this "terror trial" that the police had had these guys under constant surveillance for the best part of a year. They followed them to a camp, they bugged their conversations, they had them in their sights all the time. But they still let them make bombs, get on trains and buses with bombs, and it was only luck the bombs didn't explode, killing dozens.
Not reassured.

In other news, a very nice Greek bloke paid cash for the juke box and seemed very happy with it.

Byrds live at Monterey

dave.heasman@blueyonder.co.uk — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 23:20:23 GMT

http://tela.sugarmegs.org/_asxtela/Byrds1967-06-17.asx

Just the audio.

Better than you'd think, but much obnoxious posturing from Crosby, and poor drumming.

It's back

dave.heasman@blueyonder.co.uk — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 12:49:48 GMT

Dammit.

Bloody "buyer" didn't buy the jukebox. So it's relisted.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ih=013&sspagename=STRK%3AMESE%3AIT&viewitem=&item=230075498112&rd=1&rd=1

It's pretty good, if not as highly-polished as it might be.

So if Santa has been good to you in the moolah department don't delay, buy a bigger house and install a jukebox or two.

(What happens on the internet if you die? I'm assuming my buyer bid while drunk and got cold dishonest feet, but what if he pegged out? Gone to meet his maker with a damning feedback report?)

Art, innit?

dave.heasman@blueyonder.co.uk — Mon, 25 Dec 2006 00:41:52 GMT

A medium I don't have time for, an environment I feel contempt for, people I instinctively shy from, creating transcendent stuff. It goes on a bit too long, but this is astonishing.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=8tYaI7UL_NE

Merry Christmas, and that.

So long, old pal (let's hope)

dave.heasman@blueyonder.co.uk — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 11:21:46 GMT

(On the cheap I don't know if my LJ account will show the piccy.

But anyway : -

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ih=013&sspagename=STRK%3AMESE%3AIT&viewitem=&item=230060965194&rd=1&rd=1

Thanks George

dave.heasman@blueyonder.co.uk — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 22:55:23 GMT

http://www.myleftwing.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=11760