It's a wonder tall trees ain't laying down
Neil Young - Comes A Time
In any sensible world, a fair measure of a person would be whether they like Neil Young or not. Unfortunately, it's like we did opposites day when the wind changed direction and we got stuck in the current shitshow. Turns out T***p is a massive Neil Young fan. How am I supposed to assimilate this information? You'd think it would be like a Labrador listening to Beethoven (I nicked that simile off Stuart Lee.)
At least Neil Young thinks T***p's a cunt.
This album has Young returning to his country-folk stylings. It's supposed to be one of his favourites of his own records.
Comes A Time, the song, is so good.
My red dream is everything
McCarthy - Red Sleeping Beauty
A bloke I worked with in the Post Office, was mad into McCarthy, Half Man Half Biscuit and the Wedding Present and the tapes he did for me became the soundtrack to my time trudging round my walk as a postie or flying round on my bike like a maniac.
McCarthy had the best political lyrics. Red Sleeping Beauty is one of the three best Thatch songs (along with Shipbuilding and Tramp The Dirt Down). I still wonder that they remain so relatively unknown.
When I was putting the record back in its sleeve, I noticed it had a stamp on the inside. My extensive research tells me that 376 Pitt St, Sydney is no longer the home of Ashwoods record store, but of Silver Fox massage parlour ($100 for 30 mins, apparently.)
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Errol Thompson Goes Off In Kingston
Joe Gibbs & the Professionals - African Dub All-Mighty, Chapter 3
Despite the line-up of reggae royalty playing on this album, POTM goes to engineer, Errol Thompson, who, basically, goes fucking bananas and dubs it past the defence, through the legs of a hapless goalkeeper and into the back of the fucking net. Ten times.
This is an album so full of joy, it's hard to describe. My favourite dub album by a country mile.
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We got one there. We got one there.
John McLaughlin - Electric Guitarist
I believe that this was the first proper jazz-fusion LP I bought. I remember picking it up in JiFS Records, Chadwell Heath in about 1984. (Man, I'd fucking love to go back and have a dig in that shop again!) I was an avid reader of guitarist magazines at the time and kept reading about McLaughlin and his Gatling gun playing-style, and just had to hear it. There was no way of hearing it before buying in those days, so it was a bit of a gamble, although to be fair, I knew I was going to love it.
All the big guns are wheeled out in support of McLaughlin on this album and they all get a fair shake of the sauce bottle.
The second track, Friendship, is a frequent spinner on my earworm jukebox, and has been for some 40 years now.
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A patchy album
The Incredible Bongo Band - Bongo Rock
I listened to the Apache episode of Andrew Hickey's podcast The History of Rock Music In 500 Songs the other night and, being as meticulous as he is, he included the version from this album. And rightly so.
I first became aware of the Apache sample when it was used in Double Dee & Steniski's Lesson 3, being played by Jonathan More at Caister Soul Weekender in the 80's.
To be honest, there's very little else of any value on this album, and it's a bit of a chore to play all the way through. Especially on my barely adequate Italian pressing.
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Flash Kunte
The Revolutionaries - Kunte Kinte (Kentaro Remixes)
Tokyo's DJ Kentaro is one hell of a turntablist and, on this 12" from 2009, he throws the Kunte Kinte riddim around like a fucking blindfolded juggler on a unicycle...on a tightrope...over a tank of piranhas. It's all very fancy.
There's nothing at all wrong with that, in my book, but then I'm a complete sucker for the Kunte Kinte riddim however it arrives to me, although this does seem like a lot of hard work at times.
I'm also partial to a lock groove. Saves you having to get up to turn the record over.
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Floating like a bird am I
Chick Corea and Return to Forever - Light As A Feather
The second RTF album, with Flora Purim on vocals, her husband Airto Moreira on percussion, Stanley Clarke on bass, and Joe Farrell on flute and saxophone, has them gliding through really complex Brazilian-jazz-fusion flavours, without compromising on complexity or losing the groove - a very hard balance to achieve.
It's one hell of an album, even on my rather shitty Australian pressing.
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A Massive Tromboner
Robin Eubanks - Different Perspectives
In 1988, when this album came out, I had a mate who was a rep for a record company, and I would leave his flat with my pick of whatever records/CDs he was promoting at the time. That's how I got this.
This was Eubanks' debut album and it holds up well, despite being festooned with slightly jagged eighties rhythms.
Eubanks is a player of some aplomb and is one of FOUR trombonists on this album. That's a lot of trombone.
There's a fucking awesome version of Stevie Wonder's Overjoyed, where Eubanks and his guitarist brother, Kevin, interact beautifully, and which I frequently experience as an earworm.
You can't beat free tunes, man.
#NowPlaying
#Vinyl
#Jazz
#RobinEubanks
#JMT
#StevieWonder
#Trombone
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I don't want no tears in the end
Roberta Flack - Killing Me Softly
I thought I'd play a bit of Roberta Flack to mark her death earlier this week and discovered this LP, released in 1973, which I'd picked up somewhere and forgotten about.
For an album with an all-star cast of jazz players and arrangers, and dedicated to Rahsaan Roland Kirk, it's a remarkably low-key, MOR affair. There's nothing here that'll frighten the horses. Which is a shame, because she was at her best (IMHO) when she was in a less languorous mood.
The title track is still so much better than its better-known cover version, and her version of Leonard Cohen's Suzanne really works.
My copy has a slightly pointless die cut sleeve where a piano is overlayed on the cover in two flaps. I have one flap missing.
The only way is Essex
Squarepusher - Feed Me Weird Things
It's an indication of how many of my musical boxes Squarepusher ticks that I can clearly remember the first time someone played his music to me and how it felt so exciting and new.
This is the 25th anniversary edition - double LP and a 10", with a booklet containing more information than you would ever care to read.
Twenty-five fucking years, man! (More now). Still sounds fucking great.
And her mother heard the din - O
Planxty - Cold Blow and the Rainy Night
In case you're not already aware: all Planxty albums are great.
Things I love about this, their third LP, recorded in 1974:
- It was recorded in Whitechapel, a place close to my heart. (Although Bohemian Rhapsody was recorded in the same studio and I think that's wank.)
- The cover has a cartoon portrait of the band, which is...unflattering.
- It has a killer version of one of my favourite folk songs - the title track. What a timeless tale of humanity's flaws and mistakes that is?
If you've got it, you'll get it
The Headhunters - Survival of the Fittest
A Herbie Hancock produced Afro-space-funk project.
If You've Got It...takes me back to listening to pirate radio in London in the late '80s.
Alas, this is just a reissue.
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They all dressed up in nice suits and clothes and things.
In about 1985, my mate Tim and me went off to the 100 Club to watch Phil Guy & Jimmy Dawkins. This remains one of the best gigs I've ever been to.
As a result of that I picked up this LP when I saw it for sale (in Our Price Records in Romford, I reckon, which rather oddly had a decent #blues section.)
Dawkins' guitar tone is class - I'm a sucker for an ES-335 - his playing is never fancy, but always delightful.
Tinselwig
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