Some comments would be nice...

... come on people. A couple of hundred downloads in the last two months and only two comments???

What Are These?

Maybe some of you might know one or two of these little ditties...
They're from various radio or TV shows, cassettes, lost CD's and there's even a digital knock up I made meself because my attempts to describe the advert and the music have met with a collective blank expression so far. It was one of those great "Public Information Films" about the hazards of leaving stuff visible in your car and being a crap crook. Bung your far flung knowledge, or even guessage, into the comments and I'll post the Rubaiyat Of Dorothy Ashby.



What Are These Choons?

Bam! Mustaphas Play Stereo

and time dictates that April ain't got much time for action either.



So, given current fascination with crazy Balkan music in great city of London here is nugget from 1985. This is debut from 3 Mustaphas 3! Visionary orchestra from where it played at Crazy Loquat Club, in mystery town of Szegerely, before members were transported inside refrigerators to England. To a swimming pool in Islington, actually, where, it is claimed, this was recorded. However, reader must consider speculation that Ben Mandelson, Colin Bass, Ray Cooper and Lu Edmonds are plot by Import/Export authorities to trick Mustaphi into revealing where they come from and where they now.

Bam! Mustaphas Play Stereo

March was Minimalist month!

... did you hear it?

Anthology of American Folk Music

Not strictly Country but definitely Yee Haa which, if you remember, was the exact theme of this month. These famous recordings were compiled by Harry Smith from his collection of 78's recorded between 1927 and 1932. The anthology was released by Folkways in 1952. It had a huge effect on the folk scene of the 50's and 60's and you can tell that Bob Dylan and Nick Cave have given these tunes a good few spins. Bobby Gillespie digs it too.
These are the 3 releases which Folkways put out. There was a fourth volume of work songs released in 2000 which isn't included here.

Vol 1 - Ballads

Vol 2 - Social music

Vol 3 - Songs

Brian Eno - Apollo

WTF! Eno in Cuntry Month! HELL YEAH!
It's Cuntry, Jim, but not as we know it.
It's just Cuntry viewed from really really high up.

I've only put in 3 tracks from the album 'cos the rest just ain't CUNTRY enough.

And the tracks are a bit more sophisticated than the tone of this post might suggest...

Eno listened to C&W on USAF radio as a kid. "Its sound is the sound of a mythical space, the mythical American frontier space that doesn’t really exist anymore."

Daniel Lanois accompanies with pedal steel and guitar on these tracks.



Apollo

BJ Cole & Luke Vibert - Stop The Panic

This is another duet with a steel guitar player! 'cept it's not yer regler CUNTRY style duet 'cos it's a duet with Luke Vibert... BJ Cole is a UK pedal steel player who has played with so many names that it ain't even worth listing them. Luke Vibert, for the country purists, is one of the UK's more prominent electronic whizzkids who also happens to have an ear for all manner of eclectic zzounds from the vintage vaults. After being introduced to Vibert's music by David Toop, Cole decided that Vibert was worth checking out as a pardner. This is the result of two musicians from vastly different musical backgrounds getting together for a few sessions with a bag of weed.

Stop The Panic

Jimmy Bryant & Speedy West - Country Cabin Jazz

This is the first album released by Jimmy Bryant and Speedy West and consists of singles recorded for Capitol between 1951 and 1956. The fact that West isn't named on the cover suggests that he was regarded as a supporting musician on these sessions. This is odd since the album wasn't released till 1960 by which time West had very clearly established his position as a leading musician on the Capitol roster. And Jimmy Bryant was dropped in 1956, just after these recordings were made, for being a "Hellraiser". So I don't know who the cowboy on the cover is...

Country Cabin Jazz

Buffy Sainte-Marie - I'm Gonna Be A Country Girl Again

This is Buffy's 1968 shot at a C&W album. After establishing herself as a darling of the American folk/protest scene in the 60's she commanded enough respect to head down to Nashville and record with some of the people she admired. The Jordanaires, Lloyd Green, Grady Martin and Sonny Osborne, to name a few, are all on this session. On the surface it may sound like regular Nashville but there was no way she was ever going to trot out a generic C&W album. She always did everything a bit Buffy and you can detect elements of the hippy folky cree native protester threaded throughout.

Robert Cristgau slated it in '68 referring to it as "assimilated music at its emptiest"... Well, he's a prick. There are a number of tunes here that have plenty of depth and attitude - and, where the lyrics tend towards cloying escapism, the composition often lifts it back to great songwriting - the title track being a grand example. And, as ever, her soul is in it. Nevertheless, it didn't do well... possibly because it stood across genres. I suspect a lot of the grumbling came from blinkered C&W purists and diehard folkies bemoaning the decline of the protest movement.

And, to be honest, some of Buffy IS a little hard to take.

If it doesn't work for you, you could always just gawp at the photos of Ms Sainte-Marie on the back - or try her crazy 1969 psyche gem "Illuminations" which isn't suitable for country month.


I'm Gonna Be A Country Girl Again

You ain't frum 'round here are ya boy?

Hmmm... February... where to start? Ok. February is CUNTRY MUNTH!

This is already digitised so
20 Great Country Recordings of the 50's & 60's
can start this monthly theme of Amerkin Yee Haa. I picked this up in the '80's during the C&W revival which was pushing a pile of stuff into London at the time. It's a comp on a label called Cascade which must have died pretty quickly after releasing a bunch of R&B, Rockabilly and Country albums. This contains a few obscure tracks by well known artists as well as stuff by people I'd never heard of. There ain't a bad track on it. Even the bad ones are great. I've tried tracking grabs of it down without any luck so here it is:

20 Great Country Recordings of the 50's & 60's

Slim Galliard - Opera In Vout

Slim Gaillard was a fine bop musician with a good line in hep cat scattery as well as a tendency to slap a laugh out of his favourite subjects: food and language. He and bassist Bam Brown kicked up a fair bit of dust around the bop scene billing with Parker, Gillespie, Kerouac and injecting vout into a number of films from the forties onwards. His daughter, Janis, was married to Marvin Gaye.
The hipster anthem "Opera In Vout" was originally released in 1946 on the Clef lable, as four 78's, and has appeared on countless issues since. This album kicks off with those and includes most of his well known later Verve material. The cool cover has been wheeled out for a number of different releases but was originally, I think, the reverse side of the Clef set.

I've included the "Opera" performance as a single file and as 3 seperate tracks.

Co-incidentally, and I really didn't know this when did the Smiley Culture post, Slim Gaillard ALSO appeared in the film Absolute Beginners...

How Vouty is that?

Opera In Vout

Smiley Culture - Cockney Translation

Here's Smiley's first single - 1984, Fashion Records.
Lyrics/translation, if you need them, here:

Cockney Translation

Smiley Culture - Police Officer

This is the follow up to Mr Culture's first hit "Cockney Translation" and, I think, a far superior bit of chat. It came out in 1984 and was a hit in the UK despite it's references to ganja, running cops over and "The Real Sensimania". I guess the UK censors couldn't understand what he was on about since it got considerable mainstream radio and TV exposure at the time. The choon got him onto Top of The Pops and helped him get his own Channel 4 show, "Club Mix", in 1985. If you need help translating you could check his first single (which probably won't help but might raise a grin) or go here:

Despite a minor role in the film Absolute Beginners, Smiley ran out of chat ideas pretty quickly and, apparently, now works in advertising. Level vibes, seen?

Police Officer

Death Dealers

I've decided that, in order to apply some order to this blog, I'm going to put it in some kind of order. And it's going to be a monthly theme. This first month has, inadvertantly, ended up with a vaguely comic thread so I'm going to continue in that vein. Not sure what I'll do next month but I'll try to digitise a fair bit of the old vinyl. Ripping vinyl albums is a right old pain so I'll get out what I have time for and, hopefully, provide something interesting.

Meanwhile...

I found this whilst looking for the great "California Hippy Murders" By Red River Dave. Lucky for me it's also got a couple of Eddie Noack tunes, although they ain't his best.
The album is a collection of songs inspired by serial killers interspersed with interviews of the actual nutters 'explaining themselves'. The cover is a painting of Elvis by John Wayne Gacy...

Death Dealers

Jilted John - Jilted John

For some reason this is often overlooked as one of the great punk moments...

Produced by Martin Hannett - in 1978 it reached Number 4 in the UK charts and was introduced on Top Of The Pops by David Jensen as 'one of the most bizarre singles of the decade'

Written and performed by Graham fellows aka Jilted John aka John Shuttleworth.

Jilted John

John Shuttleworth - Incident On The Snake Pass

Wierd British comedy meets vintage organ "samba".

Incident On The Snake Pass is actually the 'B' side. I heard, and loved, this when it first came out in the 80's but didn't get my arse into gear quick enough. So I coveted it until I went to see him gigging in London about ten years later. He didn't play it but, during the show, he mentioned that he was hungry so I got my daughter to go and give him a biscuit. Which allowed me to easily wangle a chat with him in the interval. I mentioned that this tune is how I knew of him and how I regretted not buying it when I could. Mr Shuttleworth, who was about a foot taller than I'd imagined, said he was sure he had a few at home and would send me one. He did so and this is it.
I've included the 'A' side, Swimming With Sharon but there are a couple of spoken word tracks which, frankly, I didn't think worth the agro of grabbing. If you really think you need them I'll stick 'em up.

Incidentally, in case you didn't know, John Shuttleworth use to be Jilted John of the punk single "Jilted John" fame. It's a banger. I might post it next...

Incident On The Snakepass
Swimming With Sharon

Boy Wonder I Love you.

So I'll start with this, as much a test as anything else.

It's a 1967 recording of Robin (Burt Ward) reading out some fan mail over a Frank Zappa scribed backing and chorus. Produced by Zappa with band credits including Elliot Ingber, Jimmy Carl Black and Roy Estrada. The flipside is a cover of Orange Coloured Sky and showcases Robin's interesting vocal "talents". I wonder if he was wearing the kit when he did it...

Boy Wonder I Love You
Orange Colored Sky