ГОРЯЩИЙ АКВАРИУМ

The World Won't Listen

2012-01-28T19:00:00.001Z

Johnny Marr later revealed that the back cover was Morrissey’s intentional visual joke; a portrait of four teenage girls whose faces bore an uncanny resemblance to the individual members of The Smiths. Left to right, the girls supposedly represent Joyce, Rourke, Marr and Morrissey. ‘We didn’t discuss it,’ said Marr, ‘but I understood'.
From Songs That Saved Your Life by Simon Goddard

The sleeve was designed by Morrissey, using a photo by Jürgen Vollmer from the book Rock 'N' Roll Times: The Style and Spirit of the Early Beatles and Their First Fans.

Here's a link to a ~~lossless download of the LP.~~ a selection of funky FBI / Ministry of Justice / IRP badges.

http://sradams777.blogspot.com/2011/10/smiths-world-wont-listen-2011-remaster.html

All Links Are Dead...

2012-01-25T20:10:00.001Z

Secret Sound Machine

2012-01-25T19:40:00.000Z

Here's a chance to catch Secret Sound Machine if you're in the South/ West Wales area:

Next gig is with the acoustic circus at Lord Nelson, Kidwelly on Friday 3rd February... Hope you can all make it :-)

Thats The Lord Nelson, Lady Street, Kidwelly, Carmarthenshire SA17 4UD- see you there!

Also I'm hoping to catch up with The Machine next week to get an exclusive interview...

Sharing

2012-01-23T12:27:00.000Z

I'm not trying to be alarmist.
I haven't been able to access Multiupload for 2 days now. http://www.downornot.com/ tells me it's ok (most of the time...)
I've checked a lot of links- files have been removed, servers temporarily not available etc.
Looks like a bad time to be sharing music.
I've always adhered to the view of the late lamented Joao Kartoshka that we should support the obscenely wealthy global music industry whenever possible as they recycle and repackage material at the maximum cost to you and the minimum outlay for them.
As I wrote in an earlier post , Burning Aquarium is essentially about giving people the opportunity to appreciate music that they might otherwise have never heard- either because it’s not widely covered or no longer readily available.
Essentially this is an extension, on a much larger scale, of the days when I used to give my mates in the pub a tape and urge them to check it out.
Anyhow, let's wait and see what unfolds.
Maybe i'm just paranoid.

Patti Smith - Boarding House, San Francisco, CA (1976) Hey Joe/ Piss Factory (1974)

2012-01-21T09:28:00.000Z

I'm going to write something here about Patti Smith being one of the most influential figures in post 1970 popular music. And I'm going to do this without referring to Bob Dylan or Rimbaud... Fuck!

Here's a bootleg recording from 1976:

We're Gonna Have a Real Good Time Together; Privilege; Ain't It Strange; Kimberly; Redondo Beach;

Free Money; Pale Blue Eyes; Louie Louie; Pumping (My Heart); Time Is on My Side;

Flying Saucers Rock and Roll; Gloria; My Generation

And here are two early tracks that were her first release in 1974 (not ripped from the original 7" tho...)

My Predictions for 2012 # 1

2012-01-18T08:42:00.001Z

The bank holiday for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee will be on Tuesday 5 June. To form a long weekend of celebration the late May bank holiday will be moved to Monday 4 June.
So here's my prediction- Thatcher dies June 4th, giving the masses a true cause to celebrate on the 5th.

Image from Walker & Jones

Streets (Beggars Banquet Compilation)- (1977)

2012-01-17T10:46:00.000Z

I remember this LP, the first ever release on Beggars Banquet. It's a great compilation.
Must have sold my copy years ago, but thanks to the excellent 666 Music For Life
blog you can get it here:

Death- For The Whole World To See ( 2009- recorded 1974)

2012-01-15T06:28:00.000Z

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. When I was told the history of the band and what year they recorded this music, it just didn’t make sense. Ahead of punk, and ahead of their time.
Jack White- quoted in The New York Times (2009)

A remarkable record - a kink in the linear history of rock music.
The Hackney brothers started out as an R&B band, but, inspired by Alice Cooper, switched to rock (after Death they would play gospel and later reggae).
Ignore Wikipedia- this was recorded in '74, not '73 (the liner notes have the dates of the songs as being written in October- December '74), demos for an LP that was never released, not least because of the group's unwillingness to compromise over their name.
Black musicians from Detroit playing fast punk (but with a degree of musical polish) in 1974- I still can't get my head around it.
New York Times article here.

David Hackney – guitar; Bobby Hackney – bass, vocals; Dannis Hackney – drums

The Smiths live at The Hacienda July 6th 1983

2012-01-13T09:21:00.000Z

Another repost with restored links:

It's a pity you didn't sign the Smiths…
God to Tony Wilson, in the movie 24 Hour Party People.

Here's another film:

In 1982 Factory Records impresario Tony Wilson opened a nightclub in a disused Bollywood cinema . It was named The Hacienda (the name comes from a slogan of the radical group Situationist International: "The Hacienda Must Be Built", from Formulary for a New Urbanism by Ivan Chtcheglov) and given the Factory catalogue designation FAC 51.

This was The Smiths 14th gig, their 2nd at the Hacienda. To date they had only released one single. Two days previously Morrissey had given his first national radio interview on the David Jensen Show.

Press:

Smiths sign to independent label Rough Trade
The Smiths, generally considered one of the brightest prospects to emerge this year, have signed a long-term deal with Rough Trade Records. They say this "represents a conscious decision of preference" for the independent label, which was competing against three major labels, one of whom offered a six-figure cash advance. Their single 'Hand in Glove' has already been released, and they are currently in the studio with producer Troy Tate recording tracks for their first album and follow-up single.
New Musical Express, July 9, 1983

Why the importance in carrying flowers?
Morrisey: "They're symbolic for at least three reasons. We introduced them as an antidote to the Hacienda when we played there; it was so sterile and inhuman. We wanted some harmony with Nature. Also, to show some kind of optimism in Manchester which the flowers represent. Manchester is so semi-paralysed still, the paralysis just zips through the whole of Factory..."
Sounds, June 4, 1983
Line up for those born too late or just plain indifferent:
Morrissey- voice
Johnny Marr- guitar
Andy Rourke- the bass
Mike Joyce- drums

These are AVI files. I play them on DivX player.
Use Windows Media Player?
Have a look here.

The Dictators Go Girl Crazy (1975)

2012-01-11T10:20:00.001Z

My name is Malcolm McLaren
I have brought you many things in my time but the most successful of all
was an invention of mine they called punk rock.

So Malcolm Mclaren tells us in his movie The Great Rock n Roll Swindle that he invented Punk Rock.
Jon Savage, in his excellent study of Punk, England's' Dreaming, states:
In the autumn of 1975 British Punk had begun at 430 Kings Road...

The earliest reference to print to 'punk rock' came in the early 70's, and the Garage bands of the 60's were retrospectively given the label by Lenny Kaye, writing the sleeve notes for the Nuggets album in the autumn of 1972. For the etymology of the term punk rock see Jon Savage's blog.
The Ramones made their vinyl debut in the USA in April 1976, but of course, no homegrown 'Punk' records appeared in the UK until the Damned released New Rose in October 1976 .
Listening to John Peel's Punk Rock Special (December 1976) we can hear the sort of things that punks were listening to, and much of it had been around a while (in rock n roll terms) by the time the Pistols released their debut (Anarchy in the UK) in November 1976.
Look at the first few (pre Sex Pistols) issues of Punk (which first appeared in January 1976); the mag covers Lou Reed, The Ramones, Talking Heads, Patti Smith, Television, David Johansen, Richard Hell, The Heartbreakers, Blondie, Iggy Pop, The Dictators and Eddie and The Hotrods...
Ah, whatever. Looks like there were two things happening at the same time, New York and London. Both trying to put a bit of life back into rock, probably the first post modernist take on pop music (although Ziggy Stardust has a valid claim to this). And at some point (the release of The Ramones?) they inevitably came together.

Here's a great American LP from the pre- punk days:

Review from Punk

The Dictators were formed in New York City in 1973.

There's a rehash of John Holmstrom's 1977 write up on The Dictators here: http://www.thedictators.com/punkmag.html.

There Is No Authority But Yourself...

2012-01-09T21:45:00.000Z

Anarchy is a personal choice, an act of commitment, a decision in your own head to pursue a life that is ENTIRELY your own, free of restriction, free of fear, free of intimidation. OK, so you won’t change the world tomorrow by becoming an anarchist today, but it’s a start.
Everything has to start somewhere, where better than in yourself?
Crass, It’s Your Life, Live It (flyer) c.1980

‘There Is No Authority But Yourself ’:The Individual and the Collective in British Anarcho-Punk
Rich Cross
Music & Politics 4, Number 2 (Summer 2010)

The Cramps Live at Napa State Hospital (1978)

2012-01-06T22:10:00.000Z

This is a repost from 2009 along with restored links:

In much the same way that I still refer to all recorded music as ‘records' I am still inclined to refer to any moving picture media as ‘a film’. I may post the occasional film, but it won’t happen that often.
The other day I was leafing through The British Journal of Psychiatry and I came across an article on music therapy for in-patients with schizophrenia
(2006 189: 405-409. doi: 10.1192/bjp.bp.105.015073 if you’re interested) that reminded me of this film.
Whatever you want to call that genre of raw B- movie horror punk that has its roots in early rockabilly and still flourishes to this day, The Cramps bestrode it like a 60 foot woman. The Cramps coined the phrase Psychobilly (or rather, lifted it from a Johnny Cash song). How about Rock n Roll?
Napa State Hospital, California a 500-bed, four-story, Gothic-style asylum opened in 1875, when the institution in San Francisco became overcrowded.
In June 1978 The Cramps gave a free concert for patients at the Napa State Hospital that was recorded on a Sony Portapak by the San Francisco collective Target Video.

Line up:
Nick Knox- drums
Lux Interior – vocals
Poison Ivy -guitar
Bryan Gregory –guitar

In his treatise Meanings of the Intellect al-Farabi (872–950), dealt with music therapy, where he discussed the therapeutic effects of music on the soul. Robert Burton wrote in his 17th century classic work, The Anatomy of Melancholy, that music and dance were critical in treating mental illness, especially melancholia.So how about this?

These are AVI files. I play them on DivX player.
Use Windows Media Player?
Have a look here.

Fixed Links...

2012-01-04T12:23:00.000Z

The links for the 2009 music posts are now fixed. For some I have added links to alternative sources. There's videos of The Smiths and The Cramps that I will renew very soon.
I'll tackle the 2010 posts later this month. Meanwhile if you come across a dead link let me know, it's a big help.
Enjoy the music and thanks for your ongoing support.

Jeffrey Lewis - 12 Crass Songs (2007)

2012-01-03T20:15:00.001Z

Exactly what it says on the cover, 12 Crass songs covered by Jeffrey Lewis.

You can have a listen by downloading it from the cosmozebra blog.

Бригадный подряд (1986)

2012-01-01T16:41:00.001Z

Kolya Mikhailov — vocals, guitar
Dima Babich — bass
Sasha (Santer) Lukyanov — guitar
Igor (Said) Sayikin — drums
Fedya (Hippo) Lavrov — percussion, sound effects.

Leningrad, The Soviet Union, 1986. The city was at the forefront of the Soviet underground music scene.
Cracking, raw hardcore sound here, heavy distorted guitars, some Oi type chanted vocals. Only 192 kbps but hey, this was Leningrad.
The group's name transliterates as Brigadni Podryad , which is, by my reckoning, something like 'mercenaries' (hired brigades)?

Dead Links...

2011-12-28T23:10:00.000Z

New Year. As good a time as any to attend to the broken links, of which I'm sure there are many. If you find any dead links please let me know. I don't want disappointed visitors.
I'll keep you updated regarding the progress made in renewing the links.

The Milkshakes Sing and Play 20 Rock & Roll Hits of the 50's & 60's (1984)

2011-12-28T16:56:00.001Z

A genius.

When I listen to a Billy Childish record I want to play my guitar.

When I see a Billy Childish painting I want to paint.

When I read a Billy childish poem I want to write poems.

When I see Billy Childish I want to grow a fine moustache

and ride an old bicycle.

That's how much I like Billy Childish.

Camper Van Beethoven -Telephone Free Landslide Victory (1985)

2011-12-26T11:31:00.000Z

This is the expanded 2004 reissue.
Quirky Indie rock interspersed with instrumental tracks that sound like Russian Ska Music. In fact one of the bands from which Camper Van Beethoven evolved was called Estonian Gauchos - if there were gauchos in Estonia I can imagine them producing the sort of music featured here. Remarkable.

David Lowery -lead vocals, rhythm guitar
Jonathan Segel - violin, keyboards, guitar, backing vocals
Chris Molla -guitar, backing vocals
Victor Krummenacher -bass, backing vocals
Anthony Guess -drums

2011-12-17T12:15:00.000Z

That's probably going to be it from me until after the holidays. Have a good time folks. Do your bit to promote freedom.

This Is Big Audio Dynamite (1985)

2011-12-16T20:51:00.000Z

You can hear this coming if you listen to Combat Rock and Rat Patrol by The Clash. A sophisticated groovy sound laced with soundtrack samples.
The first words heard on the LP are Get three coffins ready, spoken by Clint Eastwood in Per un pugno di dollari . I've often wondered if Mick was thinking of his former bandmates there...

The outstanding E=MC²references the films of Nicholas Roeg, with soundbites from one of my all time favourite movies, Performance.

United we stand, divided we're lumbered-Johnny Shannon as Harry Flowers

I like a bit of a cavort, I don't send 'em solicitor's letters. I apply a bit of pressure - James Fox as Chas

At the death, who is left holding the sodding baby?- James Fox as Chas

Don Letts - sound effects, vocals
Dan Donovan - keyboards, photos
Leo Williams - bass, vocals
Greg Roberts - drums, vocals
Mick Jones - vocals, guitar

Colin Ward Reader...

2011-12-14T19:20:00.000Z

Why do people consent to be governed? It isn't only fear: what have millions of people to fear from a small group of politicians? It is because they subscribe to the same values as their governors. Rulers and ruled alike believe in the principle of authority, of hierarchy, of power. These are the characteristics of the political principle. The anarchists, who have always distinguished between the state and society, adhere to the social principle, which can be seen wherever men link themselves in an association based on a common need or a common interest.

Colin Ward

Holidays coming up. Get a bit bored? Fancy a bit of reading, all for free?
A selection of works by Colin Ward.
Credit to the original poster.

The Housemartins- London 0 Hull 4 (1986)

2011-12-12T09:30:00.001Z

I've been thinking a lot about the eighties recently. Spent some time with my good friends Jim and Karl last week, first time, we reckon, since about 1988, that we'd all been together. That's what started it (or cranked it up, to be honest I'm always thinking about the eighties). And this LP has featured prominently in those recollections. Decency, virtue, honesty. I was never a big fan of the acapella stuff. When I heard them first I thought they were going to be bigger than The Beatles...

I went to the shop and I bought a brass door knocker in the shape of Marcel Proust's nose.

P.d. Heaton – lead vocals, guitar, harmonica, melodica; Hugh Whitaker – drums, vocals; Stan Cullimore – guitar, vocals; Norman Cook - bass, vocals.

Miserable Old Bastard Speaks...

2011-12-09T09:35:00.000Z

Actually that title is well wide of the mark. I've never been happier in my life.
I was having a chat with Gruff from Secret Sound Machine the other day and he asked me what my album of the year so far was.
I told him without hesitation that I didn't listen to new music. I thought about this statement later on and realised how true it was, and that the only 2011 release I have is Dim Problem by Conductors.I didn't even get the last Scroobius Pip record that came out...
In fact I just looked at what I thought was the only vaguely recent stuff I have- it's all about 4 years old.
It really is a case of there being too much old stuff that I want to listen to. I just haven't got the time or energy to take on any new stuff. Have you noticed how many times I used the word stuff there? Three times.
As I type this I'm listening to Rockabilly music from about 1959.
Oscar Wilde died when he was my age. So did Baudelaire, Antonio Gramsci , Roscoe Arbuckle. Tony Hancock didn't even make it this far...
So, I wear old fashioned clothes and listen to old fashioned music, stuff from twenty or thirty years ago generally speaking. I don't go to football because you can't stand up, I think that it stinks that you can't smoke in planes, trains, restaurants. I don't watch TV because I detest insincerity and I think that life is a shallow enactment.I don't know the first thing about most bands who debuted this century. I know there's a lot of soulless, boring dross around. You can't avoid it.
Some music I love. I love the raw energy of Punk and Rockabilly, I love the simplicity of delta blues. ( More pertinently at present I love the joyful poppiness of Secret Sound Machine).
But most music I simply haven't got the time for.

Manchester, So Much To Answer For (1990)

2011-12-08T14:17:00.001Z

The Fall Eat Yourself Fitter Buzzcocks What Do I Get

The Frantic Elevators Hunchback Of Notre Dame The Chameleons Second Skin (Films)

The Passage Dark Times Blue Orchids The House That Faded Out

Tools You Can Trust Working And Shopping Twang Big Dry Out

A Witness I Love You Mr. Disposable Razors Big Flame All The Irish Must Go To Heaven

The Smiths Handsome Devil Happy Mondays Mad Cyril Inspiral Carpets Directing Traffic

The Railway Children Consider Dub Sex Swerve A Certain Ratio Do The Du

A Guy Called Gerald Rockin' Ricki Ruthless Rap Assassins Three The Hard Way

Kiss AMC Rawside New Fast Automatic Daffodils Big

I bet you've all been dying for a bit of Mick Hucknall on here?

A bit of a cash in on the (then) massive impact that Manchester was having on the popular music scene.
Flaws? A Manchester comp covering roughly 1978-1990 with no Joy Division / New Order?

Stone Roses never played a Peel Session so they're not here either. Similarly absent and more of a loss - The Durutti Column and Frank Sidebottom . Anyway, what's here is, generally speaking, good. In places the sound quality is not great I'm afraid. (One of those 90's CDs that's turned a funny yellow colour...)

Secret Sound Machine

2011-12-05T09:37:00.000Z

If you're in the West Wales area on Wednesday 7th December you could do a lot worse than get down to the Parrot, King St, Carmarthen, give the man £3 and get to see a very exciting pop group. Secret Sound Machine
will be supporting Songdog on the night.

If you like mature literate pop, blonde bouffanted flautists or just good old baroque and roll Secret Sound Machine should be just your cup of tea. We'll be seeing more of them at Burning Aquarium soon, meanwhile, catch 'em while they're fresh!

Socrates Brasileiro Sampaio de Souza Vieira de Oliveira (1954- 2011)

2011-12-04T14:30:00.000Z

Johnny Cash With His Hot and Blue Guitar ! (1957)

2011-12-02T20:25:00.000Z

They used to call me Rockabilly

all of us ran through

When Elvis opened up the door

with a pup-and-pup-and-boo
I didn't ever play much rock and roll

cause I got so much country in my soul

Johnny Cash

This will ease us out of Rockabilly mode for a while. As Johnny himself said, he was never anything other than Country, but the Country and Rockabilly sounds got pretty close in Memphis back then.

This was the first ever LP on Sun Records, and a lot of the characteristics of the early Rockabilly sound are strongly in evidence.

Johnny Cash - Guitar, Vocals

Luther Perkins - Electric Guitar

Marshall Grant - Bass

A Third Rockabilly Selection...

2011-11-30T15:13:00.000Z

So, that was Rockabilly month.
I've learned something from it- that what I look for above all else in music is excitement, and listening to these acts from the early days of Rockabilly has certainly given me plenty of that. It has also reinforced my view that music gets its power from simplicity.
My belief in the importance of Elvis has also been renewed- the right man in the right place at the right time, he ignited a cultural phenomenon that has shaped the lives of millions of people over almost sixty years. Rockabilly was happening anyway, but it would have remained a rather obscure form of country music without the transcendent impact of Elvis.
I hope that some of our readers have taken the chance to listen to some really great artists who they might otherwise have missed, in particular Mr Rockabilly himself, the great Mr Charlie Feathers.

Rock And Roll With Mom And Dad Bill Davenport & His Circle D Ranch Hands; I Need Some Lovin' Harold Allen; Lovin' Honey Gene Morris; Shook Shake Ken Davis; Betty Ann Cruisers; Rattle Shakin' Mama Mel McGonnigle; Shake It Up Baby Frankie Dee; Be My Baby F.D. Johnson With The Missouri Valley Boys; Hang Out Lloyd Arnold; It's Rock And Roll Jack Winston & The Hi-Jacks; Rock N' Roll Saddles The Whitecaps with Johnny Edwards; Sugar Sweet David Houston; If You Love My Woman Jimmy Witter & The Shadows; I Hate Myself Al Sweatt With Johnnie Cale & The Valentines; Hey Jibbo Art Wood; Robinson Crusoe Bop Sonny Cole & The Rhythm Roamers; Full-Grown Cat The McCoys; Rhythm Guitar Carl Miller; Love Bug Crawl Jim Billington; Rock, Baby, Rock Bob Hicks & The Fenders; Barefoot Baby Janis Martin; Rock-A-Bye-Baby Skeeter Bonn; Oooh-Wee Ric Cartey; Jungle Rock Hank Mizell; Rakin' And Scrapin' Dean Beard; Flying Saucers Rock 'N' Roll Billy Lee Riley; A Red Cadillac And A Black Moustache Warren Smith; Brand New Cadillac Vince Taylor; Red Hot Billy Riley And The Little Green Men; Stutterin' Papa Buck Griffin; Matchbox Carl Perkins.

I know Vince Taylor was English, but I just love the number!

Drummers...

2011-11-29T10:28:00.001Z

Purists often insist that acoustic rhythm guitar, electric lead guitar and stand up bass are all you need for the authentic rockabilly sound. No drums. The percussive effects come from the slap bass -consider That's Alright- the seminal Rockabilly disc-Elvis Presley vocals and rhythm guitar, Scotty Moore on lead guitar, and Bill Black on upright 'slapped' bass. The recording contains no drums or additional instruments.

Even the great Charlie Feathers said:

And drums don't really work with rockabilly. They collide with the bass. It isn't really rockabilly if you use drums. That turns it into just rock. Well, drums are OK on rockabilly if it's just a running lick, like Buddy Holly's 'Peggie Sue' - that's rockabilly, when you keep that flow going. That's what Scotty Moore (sic) and them gave Elvis. But if it's laid-down, straight backbeat, like Carl Perkins had, that isn't rockabilly. Half the drummers don't know how to drum, to start with. They're timekeepers, that's all they are, with no dynamics. And dynamics, that's part of the show in rockabilly. That is exactly what it's all about, right there.

But check out the drumming of D. J. Fontana on Elvis' 'My Baby Left |Me'- sublime. Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps, Carl Perkins, The Rock n Roll Trio (on record at least,The Rock n Roll Trio used session drummers for recordings) all featured drummers.

W.S Holland was Johnny Cash's drummer for about a million years. His illustrious career started out with Carl Perkins in a most unusual manner. Holland would beat out a rhythm on the body of Jay Perkins' bass:

"On a Saturday night, Carl said, 'We've got an audition at Sun Records next week,'" Holland remembered. "'Get some drums and go with us.' I told him I'd never played drums, but I borrowed a set the next day. I set them up backwards, because I didn't know the difference. Tuesday, I went and played with them at the Cotton Boll. Thursday morning, we went to Memphis...On the way back to Jackson, we were all laughing about it," Holland said. "I mean, the second time I ever sat on a drum stool in my life, I played on a record."

DJ Fontana was staff drummer for the Louisiana Hayride. Country Music had no place for drums in those days- not visible drums at least, and DJ played behind the stage curtain. The first time he played with Elvis and the Blue Moon Boys was on October 16, 1954. He played behind the curtain as usual, but after that date he played out in front with the rest of the band, and joined Elvis' group full-time in August of 1955.

In Gene Vincent's 'Be-Bop-A-Lula,' an undeniable rockabilly classic, Vincent's Blue Cap drummer Dickie Harrell demonstrated that it wasn't necessarily the volume of the beat that made it work, but the manner in which it was delivered. In 'Be-Bop-A-Lula,' a Top 10 hit in 1956, Harrell used brushes instead of drumsticks and created a sexy, circular snare drum rhythm. He moved the song along with innuendo and cool dynamics. A very hip drum part, it's a perfect example of the way restraint in drumming can give the music momentum and power.

Max Weinberg - Let There Be Drums sleeve notes.

Cliff Gallup (1930-1988)

2011-11-28T21:23:00.000Z

With the utmost respect to Scotty Moore and Paul Burlison, I'm not going to argue with anyone who claims that Cliff Gallup was the most exciting guitarist in Rockabilly. Cliff's place amongst the true legends of Rock music rests on the 35 surviving tracks from 9 sessions with Gene Vinvcent And His Blue Caps at Bradley Film & Recording Studio Nashville, with Ken Nelson at the controls.

May 4, 1956
1. Race With The Devil Released on single CAPITOL F 3530 (1956). Tab

2. Be-Bop-A-Lula Released on single CAPITOL F 3450 (1956). Tab

3.Woman Love Released on single CAPITOL F 3450 (1956). Tab
4. I Sure Miss You Released on the LP Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps CAPITOL T811 (1957)

June 24, 1956

5. Jezebel Released on the LP Bluejean Bop CAPITOL T764 (1956)
6.Crazy Legs Released on single CAPITOL F 3617 (1957)
7.Peg O' My Heart Released on the LP Bluejean Bop (1956)
8. Wedding Bells (Are Breaking Up that Old Gang Of Mine) Released on the LP Bluejean Bop (1956) .

June 25, 1956

9.Waltz Of The Wind Released on the LP Bluejean Bop (1956) .

10. Up A Lazy River Released on the LP Bluejean Bop (1956) .

11. Ain't She Sweet Released on the LP Bluejean Bop (1956) .

12. Gonna Back Up Baby Released on single CAPITOL F 3530 (1956).

13. Race With The Devil (unissued / lost track)

June 26, 1956

14. Who Slapped John Released on single CAPITOL F 3558 (1956) and the LP Bluejean Bop (1956) .

15. Jumps Giggles And Shout Released on the LP Bluejean Bop (1956) .

16. Bluejean Bop Released on single CAPITOL F 3558(1956) and the LP Bluejean Bop (1956) . Tab

17. I Flipped Released on the LP Bluejean Bop (1956)

June 27, 1956

18. Bop Street Released on the LP Bluejean Bop (1956) . Tab

19.Well, I Knocked Bim Bam Released on the Compilation LP Teenage Rock CAPITOL T1009 (1958)

20. You Told A Fib Released on the LP Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps (1957)

21.Jump Back,Honey,Jump Back Released on the LP Bluejean Bop (1956)

October 15, 1956

22. Teenage Partner (version 1) Released on the LP A Gene Vincent Record Date, CAPITOL T1059 (1958)

23. Blues Stay Away From Me Released on the LP Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps (1957)

24. Five Feet Of Lovin' (version 1) Released on the LP Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps (1957)

25. Cat Man Released on the LP Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps (1957)

October 16, 1956

26. Double Talkin' Baby Released on the LP Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps (1957)

27. Hold Me, Hug Me, Rock Me Released on the LP Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps (1957)

28. Unchained Melody Released on the LP Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps (1957)

October 17, 1956

29. B-I-Bickey-Bi Bo Bo Go Released on single CAPITOL F 3678 (1957)

30. Pink Thunderbird Released on the LP Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps (1957)

31. Pretty, Pretty Baby Released on the LP Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps (1957)

32. Cruisin' Released on the LP Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps (1957) Tab

October 18, 1956

33. Important Words (version 1) Released on single CAPITOL F 3617(1957)

34. You Better Believe Released on the LP Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps (1957)

35. Red Bluejeans And A Pony Tail Released on the LP Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps (1957)

36. Five Days, Five Days Released on single CAPITOL F 3678 (1957)

Cliff used a flat pick and fingerpicks on his middle and ring fingers, and operated the vibrato bar with his small finger.
Guitar =1955 Gretsch 6128 Duo-Jet

Amplifier = Standel 25L15 (26-Watts tube amp with a single 15-inch speaker)

In the mid sixties Cliff Gallup and his group, The Four C's, released an LP, entitled Straight Down the Middle. It's very hard to find! Haven't even located a rip of it.

Interesting to read that Cliff , who being a family man was reluctant to go on the road, went back to working in school maintenance. His obituary made no mention of his music career.

There's some good info on Cliff's set up here: http://www.rockabillyhall.com/soundlikecliff.html

Here are all the surviving tracks that Cliff Gallup recorded with Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps:

Plundered from many sources!

Corky Jones- Hot Dog (1956)

2011-11-27T17:17:00.000Z

I didn't say I wasn't gonna do rockabilly. I just said I ain't gonna sing no song that ain't a country song. I won't be known as anything but a country singer.
Buck Owens.

Lots of rockabilly artists came from a Country music background, others, such as Charlie Rich and Wanda Jackson enjoyed success in Rockabilly and then returned to the Country genre when the craze for Rockabilly subsided.
Country music legend Buck Owens released one Rockabilly 45. He used an alias because he didn't want to alienate his country music following.
These tracks are not ripped from the original, they're MP3s.

Rockabilly Stars, Volume 1

2011-11-26T09:43:00.001Z

The following is lifted from a review of the 1982 compilation LP Rockabilly Stars, Volume 1:

With hindsight and experience we now can recognise how the foundations of rock n roll were to be found all over the thirties forties and fifties...
Rockabilly, as a musical genre, corresponds emotionally and, for the most part, geographically and temporally to that segment of Elvis’ career that stretched from (That’s Alright Mama) until his induction into the army in 1958.
The early rockabilly artists, raised on a diet of White Country and Hillbilly music, began, at the urging of Elvis’ mentor, Sam Phillips, of Sun Records, to listen to Black Blues and jazz, and affect black vocal styles…
And they made extensive use of the instrument that became literally and metaphorically the voice of a generation- the amplified electric guitar.
Though recorded electric guitar solos date back to the thirties…by the fifties Les Paul had ‘whitened’ and began to popularise the sound. The Rockabillies’ more forthrightly sensual lyrics grafted perfectly onto the guitar sound that was raw, aggressive and devoid of soft sentimentality. It was a sound that established the existence if a generation. Young peoples feelings and fantasies were codified and publicly expressed. The artists spoke for as well as to their audience. And when the slithering, sensuous music was universally condemned, it took on still greater meaning as a challenge to the morals and aesthetics of the older generation.

Tom Bentkowski New York Magazine 25 Jan 1982

So am I posting the record? Nope. The curious thing about the album is that it's not really Rockabilly! Throughout there's lashings of fiddles, slide guitar, honky tonk pianos, even saxophones and chorus backing singers. Generally speaking what we have is a lot of 1950's (ish) country-pop and straight Rock n Roll with all the trimmings. I'm sure loads of Rockabillies in the 80's must have been mightily frustrated on hearing this selection. Look elsewhere if you want a slice of the authentic music that the review refers to but which is curiously absent from this particular disc.

If you want to check it out for yourselves it's posted here: http://avaxhome.ws/music/rock/rnr_rock_n_roll_roots/rockabilly/va__rockabilly_stars1.html

Elvis Presley- The Sun Sessions (1954- 55)

2011-11-25T12:40:00.000Z

Beale Street- 'Colored Memphis'

Dewey Phillips of WHBQ- listeners sometimes mistook him for an African American. A white DJ who played black music. The first DJ to play an Elvis record on the radio and the first person to interview Elvis.

Elvis' friend and bodyguard Jerry Schilling:
We can never forget that rock and roll was born out of segregation. It was dangerous for us to go down to Beale Street to buy our records. Our parents would have grounded us forever if they found out. It was a totally segregated society. Beale Street was black. Main Street was white. In the middle of all of that, Dewey Phillips played a record called 'That's All Right Mama' by a boy from Humes High School. He had to say Humes High School, because the audience would then know that he was white. Dewey played predominately black music. When 'That's All Right Mama' came on the radio, it was so exciting. It rolled it into something to be a part of.

Taken from elvis.com.au:

'Down in Tupelo, Mississippi', Elvis told a white reporter for 'The Charlotte Observer' in 1956, he used to listen to Arthur Crudup, the blues singer who originated That's All Right, Elvis' first record. Crudup, he said, used to 'bang his box the way I do now, and I said if I ever got to the place where I could feel all old Arthur felt, I'd be a music man like nobody ever saw'. It was statements like these that caused Elvis to be seen as something of a hero in the black community;in those early years. In Memphis the two African-American newspapers'The Memphis World' and 'The Tri-State Defender', hailed him as a race man- not just for his music but also for his indifference to the usual social distinctions.
In June 1956, 'The Memphis World' newspaper reported, 'the rock 'n' roll phenomenon cracked Memphis's segregation laws by attending the Memphis Fairgrounds amusement park 'during what is designated as 'colored night'.Elvis also attended the otherwise segregated WDIA black radio station's annual fund-raiser for 'needy Negro children' at Memphis' Ellis Auditorium.

From a transcript of The Biography of America.

You've got to understand, Memphis is an interesting place. It's a convergent point really for two immigration movements. The immigration of whites, of Scotch-Irish and Irish descent through the Appalachian Mountains
We often call their music hillbilly music, okay? Rockabilly they often called it. At the same time lots of these people were living in Memphis.
And just below Memphis, all the way down from Memphis to Vicksburg, is a place called the Delta, the great cotton planting region of the South at the time of the Civil War. And Memphis is a cotton-exporting center. And there's a lot of poverty in the Delta, but there's rich music coming out of the Delta. Howling Wolf, and all the early greats like B.B. King, blues singers are coming out of there.And they're migrating to a place called Beale Street, which is almost an all-black entertainment section in Memphis. And Beale Street fascinates Elvis. And he and his friends started to go down there along with another -- a couple of other white rebel kids. And then more and more of these kids started to go there.
And the interesting thing is that a lot of the black clubs wouldn't let white kids in. They started to let them in, but they roped them off into a separate section. Then all of a sudden, the music gets going, the rope goes down and everybody's out there dancing.
And that's taboo. This is the solid south, the segregationist south. And Memphis is a bastion of segregation. So this is a strange city for a revolution like this to take place.

And a revolution it was, because people like Elvis were not only playing black music; but when Elvis hit it, and he hit it because he got hooked up with a guy named Sam Phillips. And Sam Phillips was an interesting kind of entrepreneur. He wasn't a social revolutionary; he was out to make a little money. He was a record producer with Sun Records.
And he used to say to himself, "What I need, if I really want to make a lot of money in this section of the country is, I need a white kid that can sing like a black guy." And Elvis happened to stumble into his studio one day and cut a record, That's All Right Mama. And Phillips said, "There's the guy, there's the guy." And Elvis simply took off after that. And people are listening to his music. But get this, they're white kids listening to his music, and the white kids are picking up also on the black music...

Some more Elvis stuff:

An interesting blog...

Downloadable audio files of interviews with Sam Phillips...

Elvis at Sun, the 1976 release of Elvis' early recordings (lossless)

Hats off to the sterling work of the original posters...

Mac Curtis

2011-11-24T18:53:00.001Z

Texan Wesley Erwin "Mac" Curtis, Jr. fronted a Rockabilly trio when he was in high school. One of their shows was stopped due to the 'lewd and sexually suggestive' gyrations that Mac made on stage.

There's a story that has a friend of Mac's interrupting a practice session with the news 'there's a guy that sounds like you and he's got a record on the jukebox at the Dairy Queen'- the record in question being by Elvis Presley.

Mac played on Alan Freed's 1956 Xmas show while still at high school.

Here are some sides that Mac cut for the King label in 1956 and 1957.

Wanda Jackson -The Queen of Rockabilly (1956-1963)

2011-11-23T16:56:00.001Z

Oklahoma's Wanda Jackson had her first hit in 1954- a Country number. As an 18 year old she toured (chaperoned) with Elvis Presley, who encouraged her to sing more Rockabilly . Most of her output at this time was a hybrid of Country and Rockabilly, usually a Country number on one side of a record and a rocker on the other, but by 1957 she was rockin' full time.
In the first half of the 1960's she was known as The Queen of Rockabilly, with producer Ken Nelson (who had turned her down for Capitol in 1954 on the grounds that Girls don't sell records ) modelling her sound on that of Gene Vincent.
In 1965 she returned to singing Country.

Tracks: Baby Loves Him; Mean Mean Man; Fujiyama Mama; Cool Love; Honey Bop; I Gotta Know; Let's Have a Party; Money Honey; Long Tall Sally; Hot Dog! That Made Him Mad; Searchin'; Savin' My Love; Kansas City; Hard Headed Woman; Tunnel of Love; My Baby Left Me; Sticks and Stones; Who Shot Sam? ; There's a Party Goin' On; Brown Eyed Handsome Man; You Don't Know Baby; Tongue Tied; Riot in Cell Block # 9; Slippin' and Slidin'; Fallin'; Rip It Up; Rock Your Baby; Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On; Honey Don't; Man We Had a Party

Johnny Carroll

2011-11-22T09:28:00.002Z

Texan Johnny Carroll had very little commercial success during the heyday of Rockabilly, but enjoyed a new lease of life in the 1970's due to the attentions of European Rockabilly aficionados and a well received Gene Vincent tribute.

He did , however, enjoy the 'distinction' of appearing in the 1957 movie Rock Baby Rock It, which was a showcase for Dallas Rock n Roll acts held together by a very dodgy storyline.

Tracks: Hearts Of Stone; Why Cry; Love Is A Merry-Go-Round; Stingy Thing; Crazy Little Mama; Sexy Ways; Cut Out; You Two-Timed Me One Time Too Often; You Made Me Love You; Hot Rock; Rock 'n' Roll Ruby; Wild Wild Women; Corrine Corrina; Crazy Crazy Lovin'; Tryin' To Get To You; Rock Baby, Rock It; The Swing; Bandstand Doll; Rag Mop; Run Come See; Crazy Crazy Lovin'.

Another Rockabilly Selection...

2011-11-20T22:17:00.000Z

Rockabilly was a marriage of blues and hillbilly styles that caused a ruckus in the country music community as soon as it hit the market.

Coming fast and hard out of the south…rockabilly offered young and restless but still country rooted performers a chance to stretch and cut loose musically in ways never previously imagined. Rockabilly- for a few white-hot, powerful years, widened the scope and gave the younger generation a music all their own.

Rockabilly ignited at the point where country & western merged with blues and R&B.

Given the intense, raw energy the music produced, the simplicity of it all is astounding. At rockabilly’s core was the rhythm- a strong and steady beat made with just a guitar and a stand up bass played in a slapping style. An electric guitar cut through like a sharp knife, and on top of it all was a hillbilly hepcat singer packing a punkish attitude and an assortment of lurid yelps, hiccups and raspy cries- not to mention swaggering dance moves- that gave the music the threat of danger, that made it sexy.

Taken from: You Can't Catch Me: Rockabilly Busts Through the Door. In Country music: The Rough Guide

Kurt Wolff, Orla Duane - (2000)

Snaggletooth Ann Gene Norman & The Rocking Rockets; Phone Me Baby Bill Woods; Duck Tail Joe Clay; Red Hot Mama Wayne Williams & The Sure Shots; Oakie Boogie Hank Swatley; Spaceship Life Blackie Jenkins & The Satellites; Rosie Let's Get Cozy Dave Rich; Star Light, Star Bright Nan Castle; I'm A Mean, Mean Daddy Paul Carnes; Rocking With The Rhythm And Blues Ronnie Haig; You Don't Bug Me Terry Daly & The Nu-Tones; Rock On The Moon Deacon & The Rock-N-Rollers; Moo Mama Myrick Ben Hall & The Country Drifters; Music To My Ear Speck And Doyle; That's The Way I Feel Jimme Pritchett; Goshmody Whatabody Glen Goza & The Damangos Impact; Down At Big Mamma's House Rex Hale & His Rhythm Masters; How Can You Be Mean To Me Dale Vaughan & The Starnotes; Eager Boy The Lonesome Drifter; TV Hop Morgan Twins; Nuthin' But A Nuthin' Jimmy Stewart & The Night Hawks; Hepcat Boogie Fletcher Hanna With Red 'Joe' Rayner & His Ozark Playboys; Hep Cat Larry Terry; Let's Rock To-Nite Jimmy Grubbs & His Music Makers; Sweet Love Orangie Ray Hubbard; Just A-Walkin' Andy Starr & The Casinos; I'm Gonna Rock Some Too Hodges Brothers; That Ain't Nothing But Right Joey Castle; Hootchy Cootchy Curtis Long & The Rhythm Rockers; Lovin' Honey Gene Morris.

Carl Perkins

2011-11-19T11:53:00.000Z

Carl Perkins' background was typical of the early Rockabilly star. From a family of poor Tennessee sharecroppers, Carl first played music on a cigar box guitar. He graduated to a second hand Gene Autry guitar and learned some blues off an African American field worker, John Westbrook, who Carl knew as "Uncle John." Legend has it that Carl re-tied his broken strings, which made sliding impossible, so he would bend to get his blue notes.
Here is the LP 'Best of The Sun Years':

Eddie Cochran

2011-11-18T17:15:00.000Z

Modern Rockabilly fans love authenticity, and when it comes to guitars you can't get a much more Rockabilly look than this:

Eddie's Gretsch 6120 Chet Atkins would have cost him $385 when he bought it from Bell Gardens Music Center in his hometown, Bell Gardens, CA. in 1955 ($3,160 at 2011 prices).
http://www.myspace.com/eddie_cochrane/blog/527946885

Tracks: Long Tall Sally; Pink Peg Slacks; Cut Across Shorty; Twenty Flight Rock; Jeanie, Jeanie, Jeanie; Nervous Breakdown; Skinny Jim; Sweetie Pie; C'mon Everybody; Somethin' Else; Summertime Blues.

A Rockabilly Selection

2011-11-16T19:05:00.000Z

Rockabilly can be identified by the appearance (or absence) of a number of elements … devotees seem to advocate adding points for the following elements:

Obvious Presley influence
Performers with a country music background
Identifiable country and rhythm and blues inflections
Blues structures
Use of echo effect
Strong rhythm and beat
Emotion and feeling
A wild or extreme vocal style
An energetic blues influenced guitar solo
Upright bass, especially if played in a slap manner.
Moderate to fast tempo
A date of 1954, 1955 or 1956
Southern origin

Points are often removed for the following reasons:

Obvious commercial intent
Condescendingly juvenile lyrics
Chorus groups, especially female
Harmony singing
Bland or uninvolved singing
Saxophone
Electric bass
Piano, unless it is Jerry Lee Lewis
Weak rhythm
Black performers
Slower tempos
Every year after 1957 (until the revival)
Northern origins

The following elements score bonus points:

The performers perceived commitment to rockabilly (double if the performer is Charlie Feathers): this may be bolstered by hair, clothes, posture, or vintage instruments in accepted rockabilly fashion
Acoustic guitar and electric guitar and upright bass but no drums
Obscurity
Sun label or Memphis origin
The influence of Eddie Cochran, Gene Vincent or The Rock n Roll Trio ( for revival performers)

From: Go Cat Go!: Rockabilly Music And Its Makers by Craig Morrison (1996)

Tracks: Sixteen Chicks- Joe Clay, Born To Love One Woman- Ric Cartey, Six White Horses - Stan Johnson & The Blue Chips, New Shoes- Lee Denson, Little Boy Blue- Hoyt Johnson, Drugstore Rock 'n' Roll- Janis Martin , Woodpecker Rock - The Braves, Catty Town- Dick Glasser, Honey Bunn - Larry Donn, Baby Sittin' All The Time - Bob Hicks & The Fenders, Honky Tonk Mind- Tommy Blake, Teen Billy Baby – Sprouts, Don't Bug Me Baby- Milton Allen, Now Stop- Martha Carson, Milkcow Blues- Jimmie Rodgers Snow, I'm Hungry For Your Lovin' -Danny Dill, Heart Throb- Ric Cartey, One And Only- David Houston, I've Got A Dollar - Jimmy Dell, Rock Ola Ruby - Sonee West, Sweetest Thing - J. Mikel & The Fenders, Lonesome Baby Blues - David Ray, Sweet Rockin' Baby - Sonee West, Mary Nell- Autry Inman, Juke Box Rock - Dick Seaton & The Mad Lads, All Night Long - Tommy Blake, Rockin' Bones - Elroy Dietzel & The Rhythm Bandits, Just Thought I'd Set You Straight - Ted Harris, Dry Run - Parker Cunningham, Goodbye Train - Jim Floey & The Big Beats

Jerry Lee Lewis and his Pumping Piano

2011-11-14T17:45:00.000Z

Mr. Jerry Lee Lewis (Employment Permit)

House of Commons Debate, 25th June 1958

Sir Frank Medlicott asked the Minister of Labour on what grounds the United States singer Mr. Jerry Lee Lewis was recently given a permit to enter this country for a six-week tour of theatres and music-halls.

Mr. Iain Macleod: A permit was issued for this man under quota arrangements which have been agreed by my Department and with the Variety and Allied Entertainment Council of Great Britain for the employment of foreign variety artistes.

Sir F. Medlicott: Is my right hon. Friend aware that great offence was caused to many people by the arrival of this man, with his 13-year old bride, especially bearing in mind the difficulty that others have in obtaining permission to work here? Will he remember also that we have more than enough "rock-'n'-roll" entertainers of our own without importing them from overseas?

Mr. Macleod: This was, of course, a thoroughly unpleasant case, which was ended by the cancellation of the contract and the disappearance of the man. But, at the time the matter was before my officers, it was purely a question of a permit for employment, and his case was treated under the ordinary arrangements which apply to anybody.

Hansard (vol 590 cc420-1)

Jerry -Lee Lewis' pumping piano was unusual in guitar dominated Rockabilly, but it was much copied and also provided a link with the music of the black RnB performers who inspired the early rockers (I'm thinking Little Richard, Fats Domino, Ike Turner). Jerry- Lee was very much in the country music tradition, and Hank Williams, Moon Mullican, Bob Wills and Jimmie Rodgers covers featured prominently in his repertoire.

Tracks: You're The Only Star In My Blue Heaven; Big Blon' Baby; Pink Pedal Pushers; Breathless; Little Queenie; Ubangi Stomp; High School Confidential; Wild One; Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On; Good Rockin' Tonight; Pumping Piano Rock; Great Balls Of Fire

Charlie Feathers

2011-11-11T14:47:00.000Z

The first ever recorded rockabilly song was in 1949- it was called ‘Tongue Tied Jill’ .There was a store on Chelsea Street that had a recorder in the back room. I cut the song there as a demo...
Now let me tell you where rockabilly comes from. It comes from the cotton patch blues, and from bluegrass.
Charlie Feathers.

Charlie Feathers was from Mississippi. He learned guitar off a friend, a Blues player named Junior Kimbrough. Charlie was a lifelong champion of the Rockabilly sound, and was the master of the much imitated hiccuping and stuttering vocal style.
What we have here is a collection of sides he recorded for the King label in 1956 and 1957 and a version of his Meteor Records single Tongue Tied Jill , also from '56.

Tracks: One Hand Loose; Nobody's Woman; I Can't Hardly Stand It; Too Much Alike; When You Come Around; When You Decide; Everybody's Lovin' My Baby; Bottle to the Baby; Bottle to the Baby * ; I Can't Hardly Stand It *; One Hand Loose; Everybody's Lovin' My Baby * ; Everybody's Lovin' My Baby * ; Too Much Alike *; Tongue Tied Jill
* Alternative Takes

Here's Wedding Gown of White- a country number that Charlie recorded in 1955, with a slide show put together by his daughter Wanda:

Elvis Presley

2011-11-08T10:19:00.002Z

Rockabilly came from Memphis, man, and the biggest damn thing that ever happened was Elvis. Sun Records, Elvis Presley, end of the damn story.

Charlie Feathers

If I could find a white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel, I could make a billion dollars.

Sam Phillips

He was white, but he sang black. It wasn't socially acceptable for white kids to buy black records at the time. Elvis filled a void.

Chet Atkins

I usually try and post stuff that I think deserves a wider audience, and it might seem strange to see Elvis Presley here. But in writing about Rockabilly you just can't ignore Elvis and the impact that his early recordings made.
In fact you ou can't ignore the importance of Elvis in 20th century culture full stop. But the Elvis that most people think of now is the bloated Vegas Elvis, the global superstar, the creation of Colonel Tom Parker.
What we have here, recorded in 1954-1956 is the real Elvis, a man of incredible charisma who showed a wider audience something that they had never seen before.
As Charlie Feathers said: Let me tell you something - in 1954 when Elvis Presley's first record came out, it was just like when they found gold in California. But then in'55 when Elvis went from Sun Records to RCA - well, after that, Elvis wasn't Elvis no more. Yep, the Elvis we knew died back in'55 - and that was the beginning of the end for music.

In 1956 when Elvis had made the big time with his first RCA single, Heartbreak Hotel , Colonel Parker took him to Vegas and it was a disaster:
For the teen-agers, the long, tall Memphis lad is a whiz; for the average Vegas spender or showgoer, a bore. His musical sound with a combo of three is uncouth, matching to a great extent the lyric content of his nonsensical songs.

Bill Willard Las Vegas Sun

The poor response of the mature audience led The Colonel to cut the booking from four weeks to two and Elvis considered this to be one of the worst moments of his career.
In my opinion this was when Colonel Tom Parker decided to maximise Elvis' commercial potential by making him a pop singer, a lounge singer to appeal to a different, more conservative audience. He was lost to Rockabilly.
If by any chance you are not familiar with these early works, take a listen and you might be pleasantly surprised.
Here's an Elvis blog: http://www.elvis-history-blog.com/index.html

His energy was incredible, his instinct was just amazing. ... I just didn't know what to make of it. There was just no reference point in the culture to compare it...

Roy Orbison

And you know, Elvis was so good. Every show I did with him, I never missed the chance to stand in the wings and watch. We all did. He was that charismatic...

Johnny Cash

His kind of music is deplorable, a rancid smelling aphrodisiac. It fosters almost totally negative and destructive reactions in young people.

Frank Sinatra

Hearing him for the first time was like busting out of jail.

Bob Dylan

None of us could have made it without Elvis.
Buddy Holly

The Rock and Roll Trio (The Johnny Burnette Trio) - Rockabilly Boogie (1956-57)

2011-11-05T19:13:00.074Z

The Rock n Roll Trio were formed in Memphis in 1952 as The Rhythm Rangers. All three members were successful amateur boxers.
The Trio were reputedly showing a distinct Rockabilly style by 1954, but their major break came in 1956 when they appeared on a TV talent show. They toured extensively and the public, stirred by the breakthrough of Elvis Presley earlier in 1956, were hungry for the rockabilly sound. Despite being acknowledged as an influential force in Rockabilly music, The Trio never achieved major chart success.
The Trio were plagued by disagreements over their name: When the Burnettes had suggested The Burnette Brothers Burlison suggested The Burlison Brothers; they were variously billed as The Rock n Roll Trio, The Johnny Burnette Trio, Johnny Burnette and The Rock n Roll Trio or even just plain Johnny Burnette. Dorsey Burnette quit in late 1956 - he was peeved at the use of the name Johnny Burnette and The Rock n Roll Trio as he sang lead on a number of songs- he favoured keeping the name The Rock n Roll Trio even though they now had four regular members. After leaving the band Dorsey actually set up his own group called...Dorsey Burnette and The Rock n Roll Trio.
The Trio split up towards the end of 1957. Johnny Burnette went on to enjoy some success a solo artist.

Paul Burlison (1929-2003) guitar (welterweight)
Dorsey Burnette (1932-1979) bass, vocals (welterweight) - replaced by Johnny Black late 1956
Johnny Burnette (1934-1964) guitar, vocals (lightweight)
Tony Austin - drums- joined c. September 1956

Tracks: Rockbilly Boogie; Please Don't Leave Me (Alt) ; Rock Therapy ; Lonesome Train (On a Lonesome Track) ; Sweet Love on My Mind ; My Love, You're a Stranger; Your Baby Blue Eyes ; I Love You So (Alt) ; The Train Kept A-Rollin'; All by Myself; Drinking Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee ; Blues Stay Away from Me ; Honey Hush; Lonesome Tears in My Eyes ; I Just Found Out ; Chains of Love; Please Don't Leave Me; Lonesome Train (On a Lonesome Track) (Alt) ; I Love You So ; If You Want It Enough ; Butterfingers ; Eager Beaver Baby; Touch Me;Tear It Up ;Oh Baby Babe; You're Undecided ; Midnight Train ; Shattered Dreams

... a wild, hepped-up meeting between country & western music and early rhythm & blues.

2011-11-04T19:22:00.003Z

On the road in 1957- Paul Burlison , Johnny Burnette, Gene Vincent, Johnny Black

Rockabilly was a wild, hepped-up meeting between country & western music and early rhythm & blues. It was one of the very first forms of rock & roll, and it was the first one performed predominantly by white musicians (almost all of whom came from the South). Rockabilly was played with spare instrumentation: a twangy electric guitar and an acoustic stand-up bass whose strings were snapped percussively in a technique dubbed "slap-back" (which sometimes made drums unnecessary). Rockabilly had a thumping, jumping beat that easily made it the most propulsive, visceral, and implicitly sexual style of "white" American music up to that point. Essentially, it made rock n roll accessible to white audiences, thus touching off a cultural revolution the effects of which are still being felt. The genesis of rockabilly dates back to the early '50s, when Bill Haley started fusing electrified country boogie with jump blues. But the style truly crystallized on Elvis Presley's 1954-56 recordings for the Sun label, which captured the manic, primal energy that would become a rockabilly staple. They also established rockabilly's signature production style: echoed vocals, loads of reverb, and a warm, crisp ambience that became the Sun label's trademark. Haley's "Rock Around the Clock" broke rockabilly into the big time in 1955, making it possible for Sun owner Sam Phillips to sell Presley's contract to RCA for a substantial sum of money. Presley became a superstar in 1956, touching off a tidal wave of copycat recordings that, while low on budget and innovation, still inspire rockabilly fanatics with their crazed DIY enthusiasm; additionally, many straight country singers began making rockabilly records, some for the style's popularity, others for its wild excitement. Meanwhile, Phillips used his Presley dollars to gather a stable of rockabilly artists that was second to none: Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis (who broke from the rockabilly norm by playing piano), Roy Orbison, and singers like Johnny Cash and Charlie Rich who were really country artists at heart. Other significant rockabilly artists were Buddy Holly, who brought melodic pop sensibilities to the music; Gene Vincent, whose crack band featured rockabilly's fastest lead guitarist in Cliff Gallup; Eddie Cochran, whose wry stories of teenage rebellion were overshadowed by his untimely death; and Johnny Burnette, who waxed some of the wildest rockabilly sides ever before finding greater acceptance as a pop idol. As rock & roll evolved into a slicker commercial enterprise, and as the music itself mutated (very quickly) into new forms, rockabilly was left in the dust, largely disappearing from the charts after 1958.
Lifted from All Music

Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps (1956-1963)

2011-11-01T21:46:00.002Z

To me Gene Vincent was the perfect Rock n Roll singer, more balls than all those other guys that Jimmy Savile used to play on a Sunday afternoon, there was an air of fairground menace and sexual predation about him.

Willie Williams- rhythm guitar
Jack Neal - upright bass
Dickie Harrell - drums
Cliff Gallup - lead guitar
Johnny Meeks - lead guitar (replaced Cliff Gallup in 1957)

Tracks: Double Talkin' Baby; Red Bluejeans And A Ponytail; Who Slapped John; Be-Bop-A-Lula; Cat Man; Flea Brain; Jump Back, Honey, Jump Back;I Flipped; Rip It Up; Say Mama; Git It; Bluejean Bop; Teenage Partner; Race With The Devil

November is Rockabilly Month!

2011-11-01T21:45:00.000Z

And why not.
By the 1970's, when my real interest in music was developing, the music and culture of the 1950's had already been endowed with a nostalgic veneer of respectability. When I listened to the Rock n Roll music that they played on the 'golden oldies' features on the radio, it all seemed rather tame. To go with this we had parental tales of naivety and Usaphillia, of better times...
I had a punk mentor who told me about the importance of early Rock n Roll, and at first I couldn't follow his reasoning. He was talking about the directness of bands like Sex Pistols, Ramones and The Clash and comparing their impact to that of early Rock n Roll. Of course, it was a long time before I understood what he was driving at. My ears had been subjected to some sort of intertextual prejudice at the hands of DLT, Jimmy Saville and co. The fifties were presented in a pastiche form: cadillacs, jukeboxes, milkshakes, That'll Be The Day, Happy Days, Grease, pantomime Teds like Mud and Showaddywaddy...
Recently I've been reading a lot about the origins of Rock n Roll, and I found that a great many writers concern themselves with seeking out some Holy Grail- the first Rock n Roll record. They cite Bluesmen like Arthur Crudup or gospel singers like Sister Rosetta Tharpe, saying that such and such disc was the first to contain all the elements of what we consider to be a Rock n Roll song.
Bullshit.
The preshistory of rock music stretches way way back, the elements were always there, check out the Early Influences section in that reliquary of turgid dross The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; Blues recordings since the wax cylinder, country music in the 1930's. Even the artists who we now accept as being among the founding fathers of Rock n Roll, African American artists such as Little Richard and Lloyd Price,were producing RnB that is indistinguishable from Rock n Roll years before the term was in use. Take a random sample of RnB hits from the pre Rock n Roll era, the erstwhile Race Records- surely they're Rock n Roll? (Regarding white artists: Isn't Bill Haley's Rocket 88, released in 1951- just as much a Rock n Roll number as his later hits?)
Heylin (1992) identified three components of a song: melody, time signature, and chordal progressions. If we look at the proto rock genres, particularly RnB, the three elements that we associate with Rock n Roll predominate:
Melodically both Blues and Rock N Roll rely heavily on minor pentatonic scales.
They share the 4/4 time signature, a strong backbeat and a swing eighth-note rhythm between beats. Rock n Roll rhythms are also built on the same I - IV - V chord progression as Blues.
So the music itself was nothing new.
In terms of fashion, the identity of the subculture most closely assosciated with Rock n Roll in the UK, the
Teddy Boys, was already well established before the term Rock n Roll entered the common idiom.

The most significant statement in the history of Rock n Roll?
If I could find a white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel, I could make a billion dollars- Sam Phillips
It had to come out into the open. The musical elements were always there. But a white man had to make the records in order for them to sell, in order for them to be given airtime. Rockabilly was essentially made by whites for whites.

Anyway, I've decided against going off along the path of rockabilly scholarship, and I haven't got the brains or the inclination to analyse the racial discrimination that shaped American society in the 1950's, so over the next few weeks I'll just be posting a few songs from the early days of Rock n Roll, before the commercial aspect emasculated it and cleaned it up too much. The sort of records my old mate was talking about when he said see, that's punk, really, innit?

Rendezvous In Black...

2011-10-29T23:35:00.000+01:00

In Cornell Woolrich's 1948 noir thriller JOHNNY MARR is on a mission to avenge the death of his sweetheart- there are 5 suspects and he tracks them down in turn- number 4 is Bill MORRISSEY!

Lews Tewns and Nobsta Nuts with Slicerman - Poverty Is Thirsty Work (2003)

2011-10-28T13:22:00.000+01:00

No excuses. This is a great album and I think more people should hear it, but I've only got it in this format- 128kbps- generously given to me by Slicerman a few years back when I asked him if I could put some of his work on Burning Aquarium. This is everything that hip hop could have been, a DIY form for the underclasses, and very humorous.
Straight outa Swansea/Llanelli.

Bad Brains (1982)

2011-10-24T09:26:00.000+01:00

Hardcore punk. Speed, energy, directness. Bad Brains, African American devotees of Rastafari.
Massively influential- one of the classic albums of any genre.

At their best, Bad Brains are a band to make the hairs on the back of your neck ripple in awe. Rastafarians from Washington DC by way of New York City, Bad Brains play a groundbreaking, incendiary mixture of raging hardcore punk, deftly thudding metal and heartfelt, liquid reggae, bristling with spiritual fervor. Visionary frontman H.R. (Paul Hudson) has the lungs of a lion, able to morph from sweetly soulful crooner to fiery banshee wailer; guitar wizard Dr. Know erupts with serpentine squealing leads and charging, crunching chords; the churning heartbeat rhythms are forged by limber bassist Darryl Jenifer and stoic drummer (and H.R.'s brother) Earl Hudson. Trouser Press

The unlikely influence of the pioneer of personal success lit, author of Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude (1960) Napoleon Hill...

Attitude

Don't care what they may say we got that attitude.

Don't care what they may do we got that attitude.

Hey we got that PMA

Bad Brains peaked early...This ...showcases the BB's (sic) at their furious peak, and every single note on this record is clasic. The Brains flawlessly shift between revved-up punk and spaced out dub. Indespensable.
Chris Knowles Clash City Showdown

H.R. - vocals
Dr. Know - guitar, backing vocals
Darryl Jenifer - bass guitar, backing vocals
Earl Hudson - drums, backing vocals

Naked City- Naked City (1990) Grand Guignol (1992)

2011-10-19T22:53:00.000+01:00

Naked City started with rhythm and blues/Spillane type things then went into this hard-core thing... because I was living in Japan and experiencing a lot of alienation and rejection... My interest in hard-core also spurred the urge to write shorter and shorter pieces. John Zorn

Having earlier created hardcore punk influenced interpretations of Ornette Coleman's compositions , John Zorn turned to the more extreme formats of hardcore and grindcore for his works with Naked City. Influences cited by Zorn here include Napalm Death, Extreme Noise Terror and Carcass.

John Zorn – alto saxophone
Bill Frisell – guitar
Fred Frith – bass
Joey Baron – drums
Wayne Horvitz – keyboards
Yamatsuka Eye – vocals
Bob Dorough - special guest vocalist on Grand Guignol

Stiff Little Fingers- The Complete John Peel Sessions (recorded 1978-1980)

2011-10-15T11:32:00.003+01:00

Johnny Was
Law And Order
Barbed Wire Love
Suspect Device

Transmitted -18/09/1978

Wait And See
At The Edge
Nobody's Hero
Straw Dogs

Transmitted -17/09/1979

No Change
I Don't Like You
Fly The Flag
Doesn't Make It All Right

Transmitted- 25/02/1980

Jake Burns - Guitar, Lead Vocals
Henry Cluney - Rhythm Guitar, Backing Vocals (Lead Vocals on No Change )
Ali Mcmordie - Bass, Backing Vocals
Brian Faloon - Drums, Concussion (tracks 1-4)
Jim Reilly - Drums(tracks 5-12)

Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band- Lick My Decals Off, Baby (1970)

2011-10-12T22:01:00.026+01:00

Gazing across pop music's stale horizons, past all the cynical ineptitude, pseudo-intellectual solemnity, neurotic regression and dismal deadends for great bands, there is one figure who stands above the murk forging an art at once adventurous and human: Don Van Vliet, known to a culture he's making anachronistic as Captain Beefheart.

Though there are still lots of people around who just don't read the Cap at all, who think his music is some kind of private joke or failed experiment (or as a local teen band told me, "Most of that's the kind of stuff musicians do when they're just fucking around") or merely a porridge of noise, the appearance of Trout Mask Replica last year was a real musical event, a signal that there was finally something new in the air. And even people averse to contemporary "avant-garde" music might find in Beefheart a continuation of traditions they loved and a sensibility refreshingly healthy in these days, when so many experimental artists feel compelled to shroud their innovations in manifestations of madness and destruction.

Beefheart may be verbally obtuse and look like a trasher of everything "beautiful" (or euphonious) in centuries of Western musical tradition, but what he's really doing, along with people like Cecil Taylor and Albert Ayler and the early Velvet Underground and the Tony Williams Lifetime, is creating a whole new musical vocabulary out of the ashes and dead air left by a crumbling empire of exhausted styles. Instead of destroying, Cap is taking forms with no seeming mileage left and reworking them into prophesies of tomorrow which will be as far-reaching for rock and the new free post-idiomatic music as Ornette Coleman's radical divergence was for jazz a decade ago.

The comparison with Coleman is apt on more than one level: both ushered in new decades with conceptions of ensemble improvisation so unheard of as to raise wide controversy; both have concerned their music with the rising spirit of man, the unforced compassion and insight that led Coleman to write songs like "Lonely Woman" and "Beauty is a Rare Thing," Beefheart to "Frownland" and "I Love You, You Big Dummy"; and most significantly, no matter how far out both have gotten, the primitive American blues heritage has always been implicit in everything they've done. The essential cry of joy/anguish that courses through Coleman's plaintive birdlike squawks is merely genius echoing the earliest changing moans in an age of atonality and distortion. And the more you listen to it, the more you realize that for all the rambunctious waywardness of Beefheart's woolly excursions, the seeming cacophony always swings as surely as the finest in the jazz and rock traditions it draws on. The rhythms may be shifting a lot, and the players all jutting off at squiggly angles, but that heartbeat always rocks on as surely as an old up-and-down boogie.

People who want to hear some music that breaks through the sound barrier without tromping on their sensibilities, who shy from Archie Shepp's black rage, from Sun Ra conducting his Arkestra through the Nova galleries like a Babylonian priest from some old Hollywood epic, from Alice Cooper's geek-feast and Iggy Stooge's torpedo microphone ("Here's your throat back/Thanks for the loan"), should find a more congenial spirit in Beefheart. Which is not to say that he's more nor less valid than any of the aforementioned, but simply that in an age of pervasive artistic negativism, we have in Cap a new-old man refusing to discard the heart and humanity and essential innocence that Western culture has at least pretended to cultivate for three thousand years and which our electrified, relativistic generation seems all too willing to scrap as irrelevant sentimental bullshit. When Cap beams: "My smile is stuck/I cannot go back to your frownland/My spirit's made up of the ocean/And the sky/And the sun and the moon/And all my eyes can see...Take my hand/And come with me/It is not too late for you/It is not too late for me...." he stands at a point of pristine enlightenment that acid can't confer.

This is primal instinct rather than mutant flash, and showers its wisdom on us from the ingenuous eagerness to share what he's found, sans false pride. Because even if he has The Answer, Cap is not Mr. Natural. His humor is lusty, Rabelaisian and perennial: "Mama was flattenin' lard with her red enameled rollin' pin...." Anybody who ever dug Looney Tunes or W.C. Fields should be able to relate to that, as surely as any Luther Burbank of bush and snatch should pick up on "Sweet sweet bulbs grow/All in my lady's garden," and the whole state of mind that was the 1950s becomes surrealistically animated in lines like:

"When she drives her Chevy/Sissies don't dare tuh glance.../Her two pied pipes hummin' carbon cum..."

Vast scholarly dissertations could be written on Beefheart's brilliant new approach to song lyric. Leaving in the dust both post-Dylan "poetic" pretensions and the primitive approach which too often mistakes simplemindedness for simplicity, Cap's lines are magic flashfloods of free-association that somehow never get murky, strange jewel-like clusters of images, hilarious little vignettes from the lives of raffish louts and juicy mamas, half-muddled mamma's in coveralls and zoot suits. Robert Crumb could draw them, though in his vision they'd be vaguely threatened or threatening. This scene is simultaneously Beefheart's own inner world which blooms as wildly as a Van Gogh landscape, and something very like America, from "bowed goat potbellied barnyard" Pappy to Mrs. Wooten and Little Nitty cutting revival capers under the Vermont moon to the Ishmael homecoming after being "shanghaied by a high-hat beaver mustached man" -persona in various chapters of an American dream revealed as richly affectionate even though the Captain sang, in his own sort of crunching "Tears of Rage": "I cry/But I can't buy/Yer Veteran's Day poppy..."

In Lick My Decals Off, Baby (Straight Rs-6420) this vision is extended, and even though the sonic textures are sometimes even more complex and angular than on Trout Mask, the lyrics have taken an added universality, many of them stepping back a stride from the kaleidoscopic image-clusters of last year's songs. "Lick My Decals Off, Baby" is just great bawdy music, as sanguinely sexual as a tale out of Boccaccio: "Rather than I wanna hold your hand/I wanna swallow you whole/'n' I wanna lick you everywhere it's pink/'n' everywhere you think/Whole kit 'n' kaboodle 'n' the kitchen sink..."

The spirit behind that proposition is one of primal orgasmic joy, sung with all the sly tongue-slithering glee of an old Delta bluesman at a backyard barbecue. Despite the possible "kinkiness" of what he's asking her for, the sex is celebratory, affirmative, in the dying tradition of seduction through laughter, Tom Jones and Moll Flanders. The sense of desperation which runs like a bruised nerve through modern art's handling of sex, from Couples, and Naked Lunch, to the downtown skin flicks, never shows in Beefheart's universe.

The new album radiates the Beefheart wit all the way: "I Love You, You Big Dummy"; "Woe-is-a-me-bop"; "I Wanna Find a Woman That'll Hold My Big Toe Till I Have to Go." Who has titles like that? Who else would think of them, when they're so obvious they're classic, real rock 'n' roll song titles that tell you that the music behind them no matter if it aims for the stratosphere, has that gutbucket Little Richard/Chuck Berry ethos running through its veins. "Big Dummy" spotlights some of Cap's ripping harp and ecstatic falsetto counter-whoops, while "Woe" is an amazing little progression that crinkles along mechanically like walking Tinkertoys, making good use of the marimba introduced on this album to underscore a [words lost] whose syllables hook together and twist like "the-legbone's connected-to-the-knee-bone." Again, it seems to hearken to the jive talk stanzas of some early 50s R&B and farther back into Mezz Mezzrow's "Really The Blues" Harlem streetcorner jargon and the Joycean word-stew of Black folklore.

But this album hardly finds the Beefheartian vistas curtained by levity. It also shows an organic maturation of the environmental concern which was only hinted at in songs like "Bill's Corpse" on Trout Mask. "Petrified Forest" compresses an outraged indictment of the polluters and a hair-raising picture of an Armageddon-like natural revolt, all in 1:40: "Suck the ground!/Breathe life into the dead dinosaurs/Let the past demons rear up 'n' belch fire into the air of now/The rug's wearing out that we walk on/Soon h will fray 'n' we'll drop....If the dinosaur cries with blood in his eyes/'n' eats our babies for our lies/Belches fire in our skies/Maybe I'll die but he'll be rumblin' through/Your petrified forest.."

Ever since Dylan wrote "The Times They Are A Changin'," minstrels, poets and pretenders by the truckloads have failed in a thousand righteous songs to make the crucial distinction between art commenting on society and flat polemics. That song is art.

And lest you think that only the defoliating captains of American industry (villains as handy to the self-righteous myths of the 70s as the Prejudiced White Southern Redneck was the to the Brotherhood liberals of the late 60s) fall into the sights of Cap's topical pen, dig "Space-Age Couple": "Space-age couple/Why don't you flex your magic muscle⁷Why don't you drop your cool tomfoolery/And shed your nasty jewelry?/Cultivate the grounds/They're the only ones around....Hold a drinkin' glass up to your eye after you've/scooped up a little of the sky/'n' it ain't blue no more/What's on the leaves ain't dew no more..."

If all the propaganda of the counter culture is true and there really is a New Man, perhaps enlightened by acid or Esalen and mutated by these and the beneficent proximity of millions of freaks just like him past the materialism, waste and cannibalistic selfishness of the old world; if all of that is true, it seems that the Movement should be finding some alternative to the desperation and romanticized rage which now prevail, and "our" People relating to something beside each cabal's separate pocket of fantasy. Beefheart will challenge the myths and lies of the counter culture as unflinchingly as he spurned that "Veterans Day Poppy" and paid the dues down to "Dachau Blues"; it's up to us to find the difference between a Space Age Couple and Maggie and Jiggs with long hair and sweet smoke. The song ends with a terse twist that sums it all up and seems to comment in passing on our increasing chemical alienation from our bodies: "Space-age couple/Why don't you do just that?"

The Beefheart sound moves trough Lick My Decals Off in two main streams: relatively mainstream songs like "I Love You, You Big Dummy" and the strange, ominous "The Buggy Boogie Woogie" tone down the baroque structures of Trout Mask, but on the other hand many of the songs, especially on Side Two, leave at least an initial impression of diffused energies that make Trout Mask's wildest excursions seem relatively tame. "Japan in a Dishpan," for instance, is a crashing jam built on an obsessively repeated sax riff that sounds sort off like some "Aooh-gah!" horn from an old auto. Subsequent listenings, however, clarify songs that hit you like a tidal wave at first, sorting out the brilliant comers of collective improvisation and revealing all those incredible lyrics.

Captain Beefheart takes some getting used to at first, just like Ornette and Ayler and the Velvets and even the Stooges (and didn't Dylan sound pretty strange the first time we heard him?). But if it does sometimes require some patience and close attention, is also one of the most rewarding musical experiences available today. The fact is that this man's music, probably more than that of anybody else working in rock now, is breaking ground for an awesome superhighway leading us away from the decadent era of Superstars into a future where every man shall have ears to hear music beyond our wildest dreams, music like nobody's heard on earth before. I don't want to get into apocalyptic statements, but I think the time is rapidly approaching when almost all styles but free music, music encompassing everything in our traditions (even harmony and lush lyricism - dig Pharoah Sanders' new stuff) and transcending it, will begin to exhaust themselves. The same old song can keep grinding outa the AM tubes and FM tuners from here to Alphaville, but more people are getting restless to move on all the time. So I'm gonna go not so very far at all out on a limb and say that Captain Beefheart is the most important musician to rise in the Sixties, far more significant and far-reaching than the Beatles, who only made pretty collages with material from the public domain, when you get right down to it; as important, as I said, for all music as Ornette Coleman was for jazz ten years ago and Charlie Parker 15 years before that, as important as Leadbelly was for the blues Cap teethed on. His music is a harbinger of tomorrow, but his messages are universal and warm as the hearth of the America we once dreamed of. That's a combination that's hard to beat.

Lester Bangs Creem March 1971.

Captain Beefheart (Don Van Vliet) - vocals, bass clarinet, tenor sax, soprano sax, harmonica

Zoot Horn Rollo (Bill Harkleroad) - guitar and glass finger guitar

Rockette Morton (Mark Boston) - bassius-o-pheilius

Drumbo (John French) - percussion, broom

Ed Marimba (Art Tripp) - marimba, percussion, broom

Conductors- Philistines (2011)

2011-10-09T14:52:00.002+01:00

Greetings Friends,
Carmarthen Alt Rockers Conductors wish to give you a gift of a song!
Here is a FREE mp3 from our Debut Album 'Dim Problem' which is out now on http://www.deathmonkeyrecords.com
Be Sure To Like Our Facebook Page Here And Join Our Mailing List http://www.facebook.com/conductors if you like the track!
Kind Regrads
Aled, Dom And Rhods x

Big thank you to Aled, Dom and Rhods for their permission to feature this free MP3 track here.

The Pretty Things (1965)

2011-10-07T09:40:00.001+01:00

When Dick Taylor was at Sidcup Art School he formed a band called Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys with fellow students Keith Richards and Mick Jagger. The three then joined Brian Jones and Ian Stewart to form The Rollin' Stones in 1962.

Taylor left the Stones when he moved to London Central School of Art, which is where he formed The Pretty Things.

They released their debut LP in 1965. The American version included the single Rosalyn (also included here). They released 7 singles between 1964-66, but only touched the top ten once.

After a million line up changes they are still going today. Why they aren't up there with the likes of The Animals, The Yardbirds, The Stones and The Who is a mystery to me.

Being a fan of Billy Childish I really enjoy this.

Line up here:

Phil May - vocals, harmonica
Dick Taylor -guitar
Brian Pendleton- rhythm guitar
John Stax -bass
Viv Prince -drums

Later the band would record soundtrack music for the De Wolfe Music Library under the name Electric Banana.

A 1999 compilation of Electric Banana tracks from 1967-1969 can be found here:
http://psychedelicobscurities.blogspot.com/2011/02/electric-banana-1967-ish-blows-your.html

Public Image- First Issue (1978)

2011-10-05T10:52:00.001+01:00

The singer was in another band before, but this band was better (discuss...)
The guitar player was in The Clash before they were famous.
The bass player was one of the best ever.
The drummer was the drummer.

John Lydon - vocals

Keith Levene - guitar

Jah Wobble - bass (vocals on "Fodderstompf")

Jim Walker - drums (vocals on "Fodderstompf")

Their eponymous debut album (sic), where Lydon was joined by guitarist Keith Levene and virtuoso dub bassist Jah Wobble, was nightmarish. Brutal and frequently unlistenable, it was a raw howl of intent that stretched way beyond a simple flicked V at the music industry. Far from being a random assault on people's nerves, PiL were creating a New Music with something approaching scientific vigour. Arguably the first post-rock group, they traded traditional rock influences for something far more interesting. Can, Lee Perry and Captain Beefheart replaced The Who, The Stones and Eddie Cochran, and brought a densely layered and fiercely rhythmic sound.

January 11, 1999

My Top Ten Albums (well, almost)...

2011-09-25T18:53:00.002+01:00

Well, my special guests are going to have to be much more restrained than me when it comes to identifying their Top Ten Albums. Even when I cheated, allowing myself a Joy Division compilation, I still failed to narrow it down past 12, er 13... I wouldn't say that they're in any particular order , apart from the #1 slot.

1 The Clash - London Calling (1979) I think that this is the best LP of all time. The release of London Calling was the high point in my life as a consumer of music- everything being perfectly right at the time - the eager anticipation, the discussion of the songs on the schoolyard, the sense of belonging to some huge gang whose members were spread across space and time.

2 The Specials - Specials (1979) The fact that I find this record as invigorating now as it was 32 years ago says it all...

3 Orange Juice - You Can't Hide Your Love Forever (1982) The blueprint for indie music for the eighties and beyond- literate, nostalgic, funky.

4 The Gun Club - Fire of Love (1981) Sex and death- according to Freud (who's theories I detest) these were everything. Everything in it's place. A scintillating punk blues hybrid.

5 The Smiths - Hatful of Hollow (1984) Strictly speaking I suppose this is a compilation. This record saved my life.

6 Happy Mondays-Squirrel and G-Man Twenty Four Hour Party People Plastic Face Carnt Smile(White Out) (1987) A toss up between this and Bummed. I chose this one because it's more raw and the music is quirkier. Love the bass on this LP.

7 Pixies- Doolittle (1989) Memories of vainly trying to convince all those lads who were raving about Nirvana that this was by far the superior model (those same lads had been listening to Guns n Roses when this came out).

8 The Monochrome Set - Strange Boutique (1980) Overlooked, literate... as I have written before the Monochrome Set's lack of success will astound me until the day i die.

9 Joy Division- Substance (1977-1980) Ok, I cheated here, I could have picked everything by Joy Division (and even one or two of New Order's earlier LPs). It's a compilation and it's absolutely brilliant.

10 The White Stripes - Elephant (2003) When I first heard this I was 38 and didn't expect to get blown away by a record in the way that I had been as a young teen.

11.The Birthday Party-Prayers on Fire (1981) I think that this was the first LP that made me realise that pop music could be serious art and that songs were poems.

12.Buzzcocks- Another Music in A Different Kitchen (1978) Punk rock and the DIY ethos in practice. Listening to this you could believe that you and your mates could form a band with instruments from the Marshall Ward catalogue and that you could make it onto the radio or even TV.

oh, and Kilimanjaro by the Teardrop Explodes (1980)... because it's lovely and it transports me back to a time when life seemed full of promise.

So, an epic fail on my part. When I get back from my vacation we'll have some special guests telling us about their Top Ten Albums...

The Birthday Party - Prayers on Fire (1981)

2011-09-22T11:31:00.001+01:00

This album made me want to write...

Nick Cave - vocals, saxophone, drums
Rowland S. Howard - guitar, vocals, saxophone
Mick Harvey - organ, piano, guitar, vocals
Tracy Pew - bass, clarinet, double bass
Phill Calvert - drums

With:
Phillip Jackson - trumpet
Mick Hauser - tenor saxophone
Stephen Ewart - trombone

John Peel's Top 20 Albums...

2011-09-16T06:25:00.000+01:00

In 1997 John Peel identified his personal top 20 Lps for The Guardian newspaper.
Whereas most of us would struggle to do this, for Peel it must have been virtually impossible.Striking omissions? Nothing from The Fall. No early rock n roll. Here's the list, along with links to blogs where you can sample the sounds.

1. Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band: Trout Mask Replica (1969)
2. Velvet Underground: The Velvet Underground and Nico (1967)
3. Ramones: The Ramones (1976)
4. Pulp: Different Class (1995)
5. Misty In Roots: Live At Counter Eurovision 79 (1979)
6. Nirvana: Nevermind (1991)
7. Smiths: The Smiths (1984)
8. Neil Young: Arc Weld (1991)
9. Jimi Hendrix Experience: Are You Experienced? (1967)
10. Wawali Bonané: Enzenzé amazingly there don't appear to be any rips or torrents of this record out there- but apparently you can buy it for 11 Euros- other writers on this topic have similarly failed to locate it. Phone up Andy Kershaw...
11. Pink Floyd: Piper At The Gates Of Dawn (1967)
12. Dreadzone: Second Light (1995)
13. Four Brothers: Makorokoto (1988)
14. Dave Clarke: Dave Archive One (1996)
15. Big Black: Songs About Fucking (1987)
16. PJ Harvey: Dry (1992)
17. Richard and Linda Thompson: I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight (1974)
18. Elastica: Elastica (1995)
19. Hole: Live Through This (1994)
20. Rolling Stones: The Rolling Stones (1964)

Burning Aquarium isn't as generous as The Guardian, and we'll soon be kicking off an occasional feature in which 'guests' select their Top Ten LPs.

Hole- Live Through This (1994)

2011-09-13T09:58:00.001+01:00

Eric Erlandson - lead guitar
Courtney Love - vocals, rhythm guitar
Kristen Pfaff - bass, piano, backing vocals
Patty Schemel - drums
Dana Kletter — additional vocals
Kurt Cobain - backing vocals on Asking For It and Softer, Softest

Hole's album Live Through This expresses a standpoint that may articulate a third-wave feminist consciousness. However, as a work that critiques the masculine discourses of our society through an ironic performance of gender, it has the potential for reinscribing the very hegemonic ideology it seeks to resist. This analysis leads me to question epistemic privilege and argue that third wave feminism's tenet of individualism represents an appropriation of feminism under the regime of late capitalism.

Matthew Morris (2009). "Writing (Courtney) Love into the History of Rhetoric: Articulation of a Feminist Consciousness in Live Through This"

Гражданская Оборона-Игра в бисер перед свиньями (1986)

2011-09-09T06:09:00.001+01:00

September 10th marks the birthday of the late Yegor Letov (1964-2008).
Playing The Game of Pearls Before Swine is an acoustic punk set recorded at The University of Omsk June 1st 1986.
Egor Letov - vocal, guitars, bass, drums
Evgeny Filatov - bongos, harmonica, recorder

All totalitarians- left, right, of all colours and stripes- fuck you.

The Bard of Ely- You're A Liar, Nicky Wire (200?)

2011-09-07T10:43:00.001+01:00

I came across this when reading about The Bard of Ely on Anthony Brockway's excellent Babylon Wales blog. Steve Andrews (the first man to grow a pineapple in Wales) has a dig at the food and booze prices at a Manics gig- the resultant record was banned by a leading Cardiff record store (taking the piss out of superannuated sixth form socialists The Manics in Cardiff is a bit like trying to sell cartoons of the Prophet at Mecca). All good fun.

	Bard of Ely - You're a Liar, Nicky Wire

	Found at Genius MP3 Music Search Engine

Green-bearded ageing hippie (in his own words).

Nicholas Allen Jones.

Orange Juice- You Can't Hide Your Love Forever (1982)

2011-09-05T19:21:00.003+01:00

One of my very favourite Lps of all time, consistently in my ever changing list. Hugely influential on all 'indie' music, and four years before C86. Wistfully lyrical, gorgeous fractured funk. These qualities might just emerge from this rip of a rather worn old vinyl.

Mona- I think it was you who was looking for The Orange Juice- there's a big selection here:
http://killingmoonmusic.blogspot.com/2011/05/orange-juice-coals-to-newcastle-2010.html

And a contemporary article from Zig Zag courtesy of Highlander here: http://cactusmouthinformer.blogspot.com/2011/09/zig-zag-feb-1982-orange-juice-general.html

The Three Johns- Atom Drum Bop (1984)

2011-09-03T10:24:00.001+01:00

A repost, lossless vinyl rip.

The Fatima Mansions- Viva Dead Ponies (1990)

2011-08-31T22:28:00.000+01:00

Vitriol delivered in a smooth package. A poisonous soft centre. Bugs Fucking Bunny- what a great title that would have been. John Peel famously said that he could listen to Cathal Coughlan singing the 'phone book. And he's a clever songwriter as well. More than a touch of the Scott Walkers- I'm rapidly exhausting my stock of Cathal Cloughlan cliches.
This album- the years 1990-c 1994- desperate times. Fear, unhappiness, my friend Jimmie and his brown leather bag, the bed and breakfast man, wandering around the country, occasionally turning up and always playing his battered cassette of this LP.
I don't drink and I don't do drugs but I'm still plagued by that nervous hunger. I must learn to conquer fear. Enjoy.

Fixed links

2011-08-27T22:36:00.000+01:00

The links for posts from 2009 are now almost all fixed. One or two I have failed to do because I had deleted the files containing the rips- there's a couple of vinyls I'm going to re rip when I get the chance. For some I have added links to alternative sources.
I've already started replacing dead links for the 2010 posts and I hope to actually post something new in the next couple of days.
Enjoy the music and thanks for your ongoing support.

Portishead - Roseland NYC Live (1998)

2011-08-22T11:05:00.000+01:00

When I was a young boy my father was a lorry driver and I used to go for trips with him during the school holidays. I went to Portishead a few times in the early to mid seventies.Crossing the Severn bridge was the high point of the trip (literally) looking down at the estuary from the high cab.
This album was recorded in 1997 and 1998 , featuring the Bristol trio in collaboration with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.

19.08.11

2011-08-17T10:08:00.003+01:00

John 'Jac' John and Leonard Worsell, killed by the army.

In August 1911 The Worcestershire Regiment fired on unarmed protesters who were supporting the Railway Workers' Strike at Llanelli in South Wales. 2 men were killed and two others injured. During the following days four more people lost their lives following an explosion in the railway yard. Order was restored in the town center by troops with fixed bayonets.

Dead Links

2011-08-16T15:45:00.001+01:00

Gorky's Zygotic Mynci - Pentref Wrth Y Mor (1994)

2011-08-16T09:33:00.000+01:00

Gorgeous. Lyrics in Welsh and English: http://www.gorkys.freeserve.co.uk/gorkys/disco/lyrics/npentref.htm

Bratmobile- Peel Session September 10th 1993

2011-08-14T06:19:00.000+01:00

In all things, the supreme excellence is simplicity- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Molly Neuman- drums, backing vocals
Erin Smith - guitar
Allison Wolfe -vocals

There's No Other Way/No You Don't
Bitch Theme
Make Me Miss America
Panik

MC Tunes (feat. 808 State) - The North At Its Heights (1990)

2011-08-11T12:06:00.000+01:00

This album is credited to MC Tunes only- tho 808 State provide the music and production.

MC Tunes vs 808 State- Tunes Splits The Atom (1990)

2011-08-09T09:38:00.000+01:00

Madchester. Might sound like New York but with the lovely bass loop from I Am The Resurrection by The Stone Roses and a sample from Testone by Sweet Exorcist (Sheffield) it's a very English affair.
Younger readers mightn't know that 808 State took their name from The Roland TR-808 Rhythm Composer,one of the first programmable drum machines, made between 1980 and 1983 (TR standing for Transistor Rhythm).

Nicky Lockett aka MC Tunes.

Riots

2011-08-08T22:49:00.001+01:00

As an anarchist it would be hypocritical of me to remain silent during the rioting that is going on in London. I don't have anything enlightening to add to the millions of words that have already been written about the situation.
But , confronted with images of buildings on fire, of lawlessness and disregard for property and the sight of the Police outnumbered and losing control of the streets- I have to say- GREAT STUFF.

Interactive Democratic Justice (Revenge)

2011-08-07T23:53:00.000+01:00

I think I've come up with a solution to delivering justice (or should that be 'revenge') along the democratic lines favoured by the hysterical keyboard jockeys who are petitioning the government.
1- Trials (a)- dispense with all the boring old courtroom stuff- let's make it a more viewer friendly process. There is great potential for nail biting, drum rolls and anguished expressions in close up as we await the results of phone polls and online voting on both the verdict and sentencing.
2- Trials (b)- reintroduce trial by ordeal and trial by combat.
3- Trials (c)- select juries (judges even) from those who have a particular interest (or a particularly strong thirst for revenge) in the type of crime involved. So if you've had your car nicked you can apply to pass judgement in car crime trials (minimum sentence for TWOC should be at least ten years!)
4- Cops - 'a life for a life'- everytime a cop kills a member of the public we are allowed to do one of them in without getting the rope. They probably owe us a few already.
5- The current system will still be available. Assumed consent will be in operation, so unless you inform the Ministry of Justice that you wish to 'opt out' (fee payable) you will be subject to the new system.

e petition to free me from impotent rage.

2011-08-05T22:24:00.000+01:00

Ever been Incandescent With Rage? It needs capitalization.
IWR.
There are many causes:
Billions (not millions, billions) of pounds been paid out in housing benefit to incomers from EU countries. Sharia law being declared in what was once a good working class neighbourhood. The possibility of Formula One being shown only on Sky. Prisoners having 'human rights' and playing the X Box 23 hours a day. People not supporting 'our troops' in the 'war' in Afghanistan.
A characteristic of the 'rage' in IWR is that the sufferer is actually impotent to act on this rage in any meaningful way. They might kick in the TV, or beat the dog, or the wife, or the kids when things that were beyond their control annoyed them. Or they could even explore alternative outlets like decking someone in the pub or joining a fringe neo nazi organization.
But the times they are a changing! Now when you're in the grips of IWR you need no longer suffer the concomitant feeling of it being an Impotent Rage. Because now you can create an E PETITION! https://submissions.epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/new
The other night I was sat at my computer, IWR (and an impotent rage it was brothers!) at the thought that some smug cunt wanted to rekindle the debate on capital punishment. Even if we in the UK do not enjoy the privilege of living in a Secular Republic at least the state couldn't murder us. (Not in a predetermined manner, only if you got in the way of it's tools). What made me rage even more was that the fool in question had appealed to the lowest common denominator in wanting it brought back for child killers (if the child is killed in the line of duty, apparently. oh yeah, and for people who kill cops?).

The wannabe imitators of this petition are riotously funny. One twit has asked for the 'reintroduction of capital punishment for capital offences'- which of course do not exist in the UK as we have no capital punishment.
Of course, many decent upstanding folk want to hang the local kiddie fiddler or drug dealer. Why even bother with the judicial process?
Nice to see this ones doing well, tho. Twice the number of signatories as Mr Staines' twisted effort: http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/1090
One day pricks like this will get the Totalitarian Fascist Dictatorship they deserve, but until then its either piss your knickers cause you don't rule the world you muppet or start an e petition!.

Goldie Lookin' Chain- Half Man Half Machine (2004)

2011-07-27T08:37:00.000+01:00

Guest blogger time! Nixon Newman (seriously) writes from Wetherspoons (probably)...
I remember the first time I heard this I was working in a mental hospital. I was in this lad's room about to give him a clopixol jab and this came on the radio.
I went to Cardiff with the ex missus a few days later and bought the single in Spillers in The Hayes.
We went for a few drinks and I was sitting in these various pubs watching all these young blokes in their cheap looking suits and their lilac shirts having a pint in their lunchbreaks. Like one pint of Carlsberg or something. The penny dropped. I was never going to be like that - I knew that once I'd started drinking I could never stop until I was pissed, and I drank everyday. It was a massive turning point .
Anyway, I listened to the record over and over, as if I was 14. They're quite clever I think, musically and lyrically.

Shelagh Delaney (1960)

2011-07-23T23:20:00.000+01:00

I know this is a rather lazy way to go about the blogging, sticking up things from video sharing sites, but this will be of interest to admirers of The Smiths and Morrissey ( and, of course, admirers of Miss Delaney and literature of the 1950's and 1960's, the whole so called Kitchen Sink genre, the New Wave of British Cinema... it will interest social historians, historians of Salford, of Manchester; students of popular culture, of Ken Russell...)
From Monitor (1960) Directed by Ken Russell.
Tall, ain't she?

Ian Dury - New Boots And Panties (1977)

2011-07-19T21:12:00.001+01:00

Ian Dury- Vocals
Chaz Jankel- Guitars, Keyboards
Norman Watt-Roy - Bass
Charley Charles - Drums

with: Davey Payne - Saxophones
Edward Speight - Ballad guitar
Geoff Castle - Moog Synthesiser

When Ian Dury was an art student in Walthamstow in 1961, Peter Blake, who was teaching there part time, asked him what sort of things he liked. Dury listed rock and roll, boxing, wrestling, tits and bums, gangsters, teddy boys, Jayne Mansfield and Marlon Brando.
No bonuses here- the original 10 tracks. A genuine masterpiece.

News Of The World

2011-07-16T22:02:00.000+01:00

Hats off to Ian Bone- issue one out now!

http://ianbone.wordpress.com/2011/07/16/heres-the-new-news-of-the-world/
http://www.datafilehost.com/download-3d38c207.html

On the Passage of a few People through a Rather Brief Moment in Time: The Situationist International 1956-1972

2011-07-12T12:47:00.000+01:00

Napalm Death- Scum (1987)

2011-07-09T21:50:00.001+01:00

Back in the early 80's I remember Discharge getting a slating in one of the righteous music weeklies because 'three lines doesn't make a song'. Emerging from the hardcore/ anarcho punk scene Napalm Death took the blast beat/ noise element of the music to its logical conclusion and pioneered the 'microsong'. These minimalist numbers made Discharge's efforts seem like sprawling prog rock epics. This album includes their greatest song- You Suffer... But Why?
Drummer Mick Harris recalls the bemusement of early audiences who weren't sure if they were 'serious' band or a wind up.

Side one:
Nik Napalm-vocals, bass
Justin Broadrick-guitar, vocals
Mick Harris-drums
August 1986

Side two:
Lee Dorrian– vocals
Jim Whitely – bass
Bill Steer– guitar
Mick Harris– drums, vocal
May 1987

Swans- Filth (1983)

2011-07-06T09:05:00.000+01:00

Michael Gira- bass, vocals, tapes
Jonathan Kane - drums, percussion
Roli Mosimann- drums, percussion, tapes
Norman Westberg- guitar
Harry Crosby - bass

Genres... fuck 'em. I was going to label this 'punk' in the same way I might label early Sonic Youth 'punk'.
This is the LP that gave Mick Harris of Napalm Death the idea for 'grind' as in 'grindcore'. It rumbles like a menacing machine. Delightfully the Swans were also known to play at very high volume, which, of course enhances the effect of doom. I was going to write impending doom, but it's not impending at all, it's already arrived.

On Insanity...

2011-07-03T22:54:00.001+01:00

Frances Farmer (1913 – 1970)

I didn't think then that I was sick and I still don't...If you're treated like a patient, you're apt to act like one.

Y Triban -Paid a dodi dadi ar y dol (1968)

2011-07-01T22:51:00.000+01:00

Conductors unveil new Website...

2011-06-27T22:56:00.000+01:00

http://www.weareconductors.co.uk/weareconductors/Conductors.html

Winstanley (1976)

2011-06-24T17:00:00.001+01:00

Regular readers will be aware of my admiration for the Diggers and Gerrard Winstanley.
Kevin Brownlow's 1976 film Winstanley is well worth a look- painstaking authenticity in depicting 17th century life. Winstanley's writings are used throughout.

The Clash - Rat Patrol From Fort Bragg (1981)

2011-06-21T06:31:00.000+01:00

All I can add to the billions of words written about the greatest band ever are my personal recollections of the way in which their music brought a bit of light into a gloomy adolescence in the late 70's and early 80's.
I've always held Combat Rock by The Clash in the very highest esteem. The release of London Calling was the high point in my life as a consumer of music- everything being perfectly right at the time - the eager anticipation, the discussion of the songs on the schoolyard, the sense of belonging to some huge gang whose members were spread across space and time.
I know that a lot of 'purists' felt that The Clash lost their way (and Sandinista was a bit of an effort) but I was absolutely bowled over by the lyricism and funky groove of Combat Rock.
Here's the album as produced by Mick Jones in 1981, a famous bootleg.

Brian Haw (7.1.1949 – 18 .6.2011)

2011-06-19T10:22:00.002+01:00

Chumbawamba- English Rebel Songs 1381-1984 (2003)

2011-06-17T09:18:00.000+01:00

An album of folk songs by an anarcho punk group. Minimal accompaniment or acapella singing. Very pleasing it is too. The songs range from the time of the Peasants Revolt up to the Miners Strike of 1984 (I'm sure you've worked that out from the title...).
I'm not going to write about the songs- there's a wiki page about the album and the details are on there.

Anyone who cares to indulge in a bit of pedantry can delight in the inclusion of a Welsh and an Irish song...

On Insanity...

2011-06-14T22:29:00.000+01:00

Clara Bow ( 1905- 1965)
If life has frightened you by its cruelty and made you distrust its most glittering promises. You must make living a sort of gay curtain to throw across the abyss into which you have looked and where lie dread memories.

Adam and The Ants - In Bondage (1978-79)

2011-06-11T10:17:00.001+01:00

Tracks 1-4 Demos & Live Recording Studio, August 1979
Tracks 5-9 Demos, August 1978
Tracks 10-25 -Live @ The Marquee Club, London, January 12, 1978

Line up: (unless you know different?)
Adam Ant - vocals and guitar
Matthew Ashman - guitar
Andy Warren - bass
Dave Barbarossa - drums

Adam and The Ants- Dirk Wears White Sox (1979)

2011-06-07T18:11:00.000+01:00

Before adopting a pantomime brand of new romanticism Adam and The Ants were an S&M obsessed punk outfit , very much in the Chelsea milieu of the early punk scene, managed by Jordan, supporting Siouxsie and The Banshees, featuring in Derek Jarman's Jubilee.

Line up:

Adam Ant – all voices, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, piano, harmonica

David Barbe – percussion

Matthew Ashman – guitar, piano

Andrew Warren – bass

Serge Gainsbourg- Histoire De Melody Nelson (1971)

2011-06-04T21:09:00.003+01:00

The late, lamented Joao Kartoshka had this up on his excellent blog, but the link is dead now (does anyone know what happened to Joao himself?).
Anyway, here's what JK wrote:
Serge Gainsbourg (1928 –1991)- Histoire de Melody Nelson(1971) . When driving his Rolls Royce , a middle aged man knocks a 15 year old girl off her bicycle. Naturally, in the world of Gainsbourg, this leads to seduction and romance.

Gainsbourg's 25 year old wife Jane Birkin provided the vocals for Melody, and is also the cover star.

Musical director was Jean - Claude Vannier.

Now acknowledged as Gainsbourg's most influential work, the LP was not a commercial success.

ГОРЯЩИЙ АКВАРИУМ

The World Won't Listen

All Links Are Dead...

Secret Sound Machine

Thats The Lord Nelson, Lady Street, Kidwelly, Carmarthenshire SA17 4UD- see you there!

Also I'm hoping to catch up with The Machine next week to get an exclusive interview...

Sharing

Patti Smith - Boarding House, San Francisco, CA (1976) Hey Joe/ Piss Factory (1974)

My Predictions for 2012 # 1

Streets (Beggars Banquet Compilation)- (1977)

Death- For The Whole World To See ( 2009- recorded 1974)

The Smiths live at The Hacienda July 6th 1983

The Dictators Go Girl Crazy (1975)

There Is No Authority But Yourself...

The Cramps Live at Napa State Hospital (1978)

Fixed Links...

Jeffrey Lewis - 12 Crass Songs (2007)

Бригадный подряд (1986)

Dead Links...

The Milkshakes Sing and Play 20 Rock & Roll Hits of the 50's & 60's (1984)

Camper Van Beethoven -Telephone Free Landslide Victory (1985)

This Is Big Audio Dynamite (1985)

The outstanding E=MC2 references the films of Nicholas Roeg, with soundbites from one of my all time favourite movies, Performance.

Colin Ward Reader...

The Housemartins- London 0 Hull 4 (1986)

Miserable Old Bastard Speaks...

Manchester, So Much To Answer For (1990)

Secret Sound Machine

Socrates Brasileiro Sampaio de Souza Vieira de Oliveira (1954- 2011)

Johnny Cash With His Hot and Blue Guitar ! (1957)

A Third Rockabilly Selection...

Drummers...

Cliff Gallup (1930-1988)

Corky Jones- Hot Dog (1956)

Rockabilly Stars, Volume 1

Elvis Presley- The Sun Sessions (1954- 55)

Mac Curtis

Wanda Jackson -The Queen of Rockabilly (1956-1963)

Johnny Carroll

Another Rockabilly Selection...

Carl Perkins

Eddie Cochran

A Rockabilly Selection

From: Go Cat Go!: Rockabilly Music And Its Makers by Craig Morrison (1996)

Jerry Lee Lewis and his Pumping Piano

Charlie Feathers

Elvis Presley

The Rock and Roll Trio (The Johnny Burnette Trio) - Rockabilly Boogie (1956-57)

... a wild, hepped-up meeting between country & western music and early rhythm & blues.

Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps (1956-1963)

November is Rockabilly Month!

Rendezvous In Black...

Lews Tewns and Nobsta Nuts with Slicerman - Poverty Is Thirsty Work (2003)

Bad Brains (1982)

Naked City- Naked City (1990) Grand Guignol (1992)

Stiff Little Fingers- The Complete John Peel Sessions (recorded 1978-1980)

Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band- Lick My Decals Off, Baby (1970)

Conductors- Philistines (2011)

The Pretty Things (1965)

Public Image- First Issue (1978)

My Top Ten Albums (well, almost)...

The Birthday Party - Prayers on Fire (1981)

John Peel's Top 20 Albums...

Hole- Live Through This (1994)

Гражданская Оборона-Игра в бисер перед свиньями (1986)

The Bard of Ely- You're A Liar, Nicky Wire (200?)

Orange Juice- You Can't Hide Your Love Forever (1982)

The Three Johns- Atom Drum Bop (1984)

The Fatima Mansions- Viva Dead Ponies (1990)

Fixed links

Portishead - Roseland NYC Live (1998)

19.08.11

Dead Links

Gorky's Zygotic Mynci - Pentref Wrth Y Mor (1994)

Bratmobile- Peel Session September 10th 1993

MC Tunes (feat. 808 State) - The North At Its Heights (1990)

MC Tunes vs 808 State- Tunes Splits The Atom (1990)

Riots

Interactive Democratic Justice (Revenge)

e petition to free me from impotent rage.

The outstanding E=MC²references the films of Nicholas Roeg, with soundbites from one of my all time favourite movies, Performance.