Cool Blue Shed - Music Shelf

This blog has now closed.

Dave’s new blog can be found at http://www.coolblueshed.co.uk/

I’m closing down the Cool Blue Shed.

Just for a while. (If all goes well it’ll just be for a few hours.)

When it comes back, it’s going to be different. It’ll just be one blog (again), but not a personal blog. The new Cool Blue Shed is going to concentrate on comedy. A few of the older posts will remain, but most will be humanely destroyed (after they’ve been copied on to a CD).

Why the change?

The Cool Blue Shed was originally envisaged as a way of getting me to write. The title was deliberately obscure, so I could write about whatever I wanted.

Back in April, I launched a page dealing exclusively with music. I put a lot of effort into it. I redesigned the site, thought about what I was going to write about and spent weeks working out a plan. And no one read it. 6 or 7 weeks after launch, it was barely registering 10% of website traffic.

Less than three weeks ago I launched a comedy page. I put very little effort into it, spent no time redesigning the site and even less on what I was actually going to write about. Just days after the launch, website traffic was dramatically up and the comedy page was responsible for 75% of all hits.

I think I’ve found my audience.

I could continue as before, but having the different “shelves” somehow dilutes the site’s impact. Better to concentrate on one thing, I think.

So, the Cool Blue Shed now has an agenda.

The Cool Blue Shed is a blog written by a comedy obsessive.

I’ve always been one of those and I reckon I always will be.

I’ve just had one of those moments when a long-forgotten memory has suddenly resurfaced with amazing clarity.

I was working on the comedy section of this blog, writing a review of the new BBC 3 show, Massive (basically, I’ve suggested that it isn’t very good.) I had my iPod connected to the hi-fi and set to “shuffle”. I do like to be in shuffle mode when I’m working. I get to hear tracks that I don’t listen to that often. Old friends are rediscovered, which is the whole point of having a music collection.

Following something from Nick Cave, Another Flavour by The Sundays started to play. Ah, I thought to myself, The Sundays. I like The Sundays. They were first band I saw in London. A cold night in February at the Town and Country Club in Kentish Town. I was there with good friend Robert to see Throwing Muses. The Sundays were the support. It was a good night. I bought a Town and Country mug. Had it for years, until the handle fell off.

And then, a minute or so into the song, I suddenly remembered that Another Flavour was the theme music to the 90s comedy show Newman and Baddiel In Pieces. At the time, Rob Newman and David Baddiel were huge - big enough to do the UK’s first arena comedy gig - and many a journalist proclaimed that comedy was the new rock and roll.

I had completely forgotten that. I hadn’t heard that song in years. But suddenly I could remember everything about it. The title sequence, based on Edvard Munch’s The Scream was there in front of my eyes. I love those little moments.

Links

Aidan Smith on YouTube

Search for Aidan Smith at Amazon UK or Amazon USA

Northern Portrait are three lads who hail from the fair city of Copenhagen.

They sound a bit like The Smiths. Actually, they sound quite a lot like The Smiths. And that’s ok, as far as I’m concerned. (Anyone remember Gene?)

Yet more wonderful jingly-jangly pop from the good folk of Scandinavia. I must go there one day.

Northern Portrait have recently released their second single - the Napoleon Sweetheart EP - on Matinee Recordings. And a damn fine record it is too.

Links

Northern Portrait - MySpace
Matinee Recordings - MySpace
Matinee Recordings - Official Site

Search for Northern Portrait at Amazon UK or Amazon USA

I rather enjoyed this article in today’s Independent.

Currently record of the week on Mark Radcliffe and Stuart Maconie’s Radio 2 show. I’m rather fond of it. Taken from the album Allotments, which is out now on Humble Soul.

Links

Aidan Smith on YouTube
Aidan Smith - MySpace
Aidan Smith - Official Site
Humble Soul - MySpace
Humble Soul - Official Site

Search for Aidan Smith at Amazon UK or Amazon USA

Being a bit of a muso, it is mandatory for me to state that I like vinyl. I do. I love the stuff. For the last ten years, though, I’ve been without a turntable and so my record collection has resided at my mum and dad’s house. I rarely get to listen to my records, which is a sad state of affairs, I know.

Vinyl has been making a bit of a comeback over the last few years. It never really went away, with dance music in particular relying on the stuff. An interesting juxtaposition that, I think. Digital music relies on an analogue medium, whereas analogue music (ie, guitars) has moved for the most part to digital.

Even in the world of guitar bands, though, a lot of indie labels now proudly boast that their products are available as CDs, downloads AND vinyl. Our struggling record shops are increasing the floor space allotted for these big black circles. Why is this? Vinyl sounds better, but only if you have decent equipment to play it on, so it’s not just that. More likely, it’s because vinyl feels nice. You buy vinyl, you buy something to treasure. CDs and downloads are more throwaway. Vinyl needs looking after. It appeals to the treasure hunter that resides deep within us.

And then, of course, there’s album art. The cover of a 12 inch record provides a decent sized canvas to play with, and over the years some very talented souls have got the pencils out and done some very spectacular playing. Album covers get hung on gallery walls, get turned into T-shirts and lavish coffee table books.

I love a good album cover and am delighted to stumble across Sleeveface. Begun last year by a group of friends in Cardiff, the idea is simple – I’ll borrow the description from the site itself – “one or more persons obscuring or augmenting any part of their body or bodies with record sleeve(s) causing an illusion.”

Go to www.sleeveface.com to see what they mean.

Click here to view video.

In the previous post I talked about The Smiths’ song, Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want, and referred to a story I once heard that Rough Trade refused to release it as a single due its short running time. Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want runs for one minute and fifty seconds, which is actually not too much shorter than a fair number of rock ‘n’ roll classics, and indeed is even slightly longer than one or two of them. Eddie Cochrane’s 1958 hit Summertime Blues runs to just one minute and fifty three seconds. The Rolling Stones cover of the Buddy Holly song, Not Fade Away, only gets as far one minute and forty eight seconds before, well, fading away. Adam Faith’s What Do You Want? has the honour of being the shortest UK number one, with a run time of one minute and thirty eight seconds.

The problem with Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want is that it feels short. Two quick verses and a mandolin solo and that’s your lot. No sooner has it started than it becomes just a memory.

Hey Yo Square Eyes by Tiger Force is the opposite. It runs to just one minute and twenty seconds, and yet it feels longer. Not massively long, of course, the listener is fully aware that this isn’t an epic, but when it draws to a close it certainly feels as though it has broken through the two minute barrier.

Why is this so? It’s probably because there’s so much going on. Games console beeps from the days when three moving oblong shapes on a screen could be sold to the public as “tennis” quickly give way to a trashy, trashy guitar. A distorted voice sings, a morphed chorus responds, the song stops, then the refrain “I don’t like telephones” kicks in. I haven’t got a clue what it’s about, but it’s all rather glorious.

Hey Yo Square Eyes was released as a 7” single and can also be found on the mini album, Wasp In A Jar, both released by Marquis Cha Cha.

Links

Tiger Force on YouTube
Tiger Force - MySpace
Marquis Cha Cha - Official Site
Marquis Cha Cha - MySpace

Search for Tiger Force at Amazon UK or Amazon USA

I read somewhere once that The Smiths wanted to release the closing track off their Hatful Of Hollow album, Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want, as a single. Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want is a fabulous song – stunningly simple, stunningly intricate and stunningly beautiful all at the same time. It still sounds tremendous today, but it’s difficult to convey now just how different it sounded when it came out in 1984.

Back in the eighties, people were generally only interested in instruments they could plug in. The height of New Romanticism had long since passed, but the new romantics had left in their wake a world that yearned to be plastic. Up and down the country, traditional English pubs were closed, gutted and transformed into neon spaceships and given non-traditional names like Buzz Bar, Fridays and The Zone. Music was pumped out at ear shattering volumes and big fat televisions hung from the ceilings, endlessly showing Peter Gabriel’s Sledgehammer video. (Within a decade the neon would itself be ripped out and the Buzz Bar would thankfully revert back to calling itself The Old Cock.)

This was the age when pop musicians felt the need to fill every little bit of space during the song. If the singer paused between the first and second line, you could guarantee that the keyboard player would instantly insert a “boingggg” or a “wherrpp” into the gap. Watch a few movies from the eighties and you’ll quickly see what I mean.

Keyboard players probably thought they were the kings of the universe back then. For the first time since the fifties, guitars were relegated into the background and often were even disguised to sound like keyboards. This fate particularly applied, for some reason, to bass guitars, which throughout much of the eighties sounded more like toys than proper instruments.

Pop musicians cleaned up their looks (if not their acts) and wore loose fitting shirts and suits that were, on average, twelve sizes too big for them. They looked more like golfers from Mars rather than pop stars.

At the time, everything about the eighties felt very modern. It also felt rather naff. It was as if the modernist promises of the sixties and seventies had been kept, but by the wrong people and for the wrong reasons. We felt we were entering a space age, but one that was terribly empty. Welcome to Planet Thick.

It was from within this environment that The Smiths presented us with Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want. This, the gentlest of songs, stood tall, squared its shoulders and punched plastic culture right in the face. For a start, it was acoustic. Bands didn’t do acoustic in 1984. They made “boingggg” and “wherrpp” noises on their keyboards. But here was something that had a mandolin solo! The fact that The Smiths were invited onto a lunchtime television show just to perform the mandolin solo is a good indication of how rare acoustic music had become on mainstream television and radio.

The lyrics too went against everything that was happening, everything that was current. This was the age when Cyndi Lauper told us that Girls Just Want To Have Fun and when both Van Halen and The Pointer Sisters wanted us all to Jump. Here Morrissey simply and quietly wishes for the future not to be as bad as the past. These are private, introspective thoughts, not some senseless rallying cry to be shouted and screamed in bars and clubs up and down the land.

And yet this song, and The Smiths music in general, did become a rallying cry. Thousands of school kids, students and music fans heard it and felt less alone. There were others out there, others that felt the plastic culture of the eighties was awful as well.

Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want was not released as a single, at least not by The Smiths. Their label, Rough Trade, felt that it was too short. The story goes that in order to be released as a single, Rough Trade felt it needed extending to another verse. The Smiths refused, believing that the song was perfect as it was. They were right. Within a year of its release, The Dream Academy made a stab at a cover version and proved that sometimes less is more. Their instrumental version of the song, however, is much better and was later used in the gallery scene in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

Links

Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want on YouTube
The Smiths on YouTube
The Dream Academy on YouTube

Search for The Smiths at Amazon UK or Amazon USA

Search for The Dream Academy at Amazon UK or Amazon USA

Click here to view video.

Remy Lamont and Paul W. Parker were once the rhythm section in the band Father Of Boon.

Don’t worry if you’ve never heard of Father Of Boon. I hadn’t either. And they’ve split up now anyway, but echoes of the stuff they did can still be found on the web. (I’m rather fond of the track I Am Entirely In Agreement).

Remy (guitar) and Paul (drums) have moved on and now go by the name of The Bleeps.

I like bands that inject a bit of humour into their work. Too often bands sound angry for no apparent reason. The Bleeps seem to be enjoying themselves.

I’m not sure whose idea it was to build a miniature drum kit on a skateboard and then for the guitarist to pull the drummer around Europe on a rope, but whoever it was should be declared a genius right now and be given the freedom of whichever city they call home.

When I started out on this little web journey of mine, in search of new material, eager to unearth stuff that makes me glad to be alive, the video for Dull Thud is exactly what I was hoping to find. This is the sort of thing that I want to watch when I switch on my television on a Saturday night. This is the sort of thing that makes me grin from ear to ear. Look at me now. I’m grinning from ear to ear.

I’m not sure what the guy in the pig mask has to do with anything, but I think it’s him doing an impressive bit of stage diving at the end.

Links

The Bleeps on YouTube
The Bleeps - MySpace
Otter Recordings - Official Site
Otter Recordings - MySpace

Click here to view video.

Anyone familiar with the BBC’s motoring show, Top Gear, will know the routine. If a car review starts off on a positive note, it’ll end badly. If a review starts off on a negative note, it’ll end with the car being declared an absolute triumph of engineering.

Each Top Gear review hinges on a central “but” moment.

“The exterior is a step backwards from the previous model and the interior looks like it was designed by the same people who design cafeterias in hospitals, BUT… if you want something that is simply fun to drive, no more, no less, then you have to buy one of these.”

And so we move onto today’s post.

The Mighty Roars make that certain sort of short, sharp, sexy, girl-fronted rock ‘n’ roll that’s become almost a cliché over the years. Remember Elastica? Remember early Blondie? Remember Suzy Quatro? What The Mighty Roars do isn’t particularly new or unique. It isn’t groundbreaking…

…BUT…

…if you’re after some of the sexiest and fastest indie rock we’ve seen on these shores in a while, then look no further.

The Mighty Roars are a London based three-piece consisting of David Pringuer on drums, Martin Pilkington on guitar and the fabulously gorgeous Lara Granqvist on bass and vocals.

The trio met in Berlin and signed to the Munich based label Little Teddy in 2005. Their debut album, Swine And Cockerel, was released on One Little Indian in 2007.

Links

The Mighty Roars on YouTube
The Mighty Roars - MySpace
One Little Indian Records - MySpace
One Little Indian - Official Site
Little Teddy Recordings - MySpace
Little Teddy Recordings - Official Site

Search for The Mighty Roars at Amazon UK or Amazon USA

Click here to view video.

Anyone care for a slice of life affirming pop?

This could be a contender for the sound of the summer of 2008. It has all the right ingredients (including a bass line that’s not a million miles from Talk Talk’s Life’s What You Make It). All it needs now is for lady luck to flash a sexy smile. Whether lady luck is prepared to give that smile… well, only time will tell.

Pop Levi (real name Jonathan) was tipped for major success by fair number of music writers and general media types at the start of last year, but it never really happened. His debut album, Return To Form Black Magick Party, met with mostly mediocre reviews.

He hasn’t given up, however, and is currently plotting his resurgence. The new single, Dita Dimone, is out on June 23, with the second album, Never Never Love, scheduled to appear on July 14. Both will be released on Counter Records, an imprint of the London based Ninja Tune label.

Links

Pop Levi on YouTube
Pop Levi - MySpace
Counter Records - MySpace

Search for Pop Levi at Amazon UK or Amazon USA

“We are not spoons,” proudly boast Sonic Anaphones on their MySpace page. A fine boast indeed and one, I trust, that can be backed up by fact.

Sonic Anaphones are an unsigned trio from Manchester, consisting of Mike Anaphone on guitar and vocals; Ollie Anaphone on bass, backing vocals and lap steel guitar and Jamie Anaphone on drums, glockenspiel and washboard. Good to see the washboard in there. The ghost of Deryck Guyler will be smiling tonight.

Nice guitars, good lyrics and great bass playing - it fair puts me in mind of The Wedding Present.

I’ve just checked their MySpace page again. There, under influences, fifth one down – The Wedding Present. I thought so.

Links

Sonic Anaphones - MySpace

Back in the days of vinyl, there were plenty of ways that bands and labels could make their releases more memorable. There were the big gatefold sleeves (how I used to love a gatefold sleeve), fully printed inner sleeves, coloured vinyl, picture discs, messages scratched into the run-off groove (anyone remember “A Porky Prime Cut”?), music trailed into the run-off groove and double grooves, so you never knew which song you were going to get (a bit of a pain, if you liked one track a lot more than the other).

CDs offered less scope for that sort of thing. There’s basically just the one “trick” and it occurs again and again and again. I’m talking of course about the hidden track. The last song ends, but the CD doesn’t stop. On it and on it spins, for several minutes sometimes and then, all of a sudden, there’s another song. Oh joy.

The hidden track is a total pain in the arse. Firstly, it artificially extends the run time of the disc. “Wow,” you might think to yourself, “this album is 72 minutes long. What tremendous value for money.” Then you realise that 11 out of the 12 published tracks have flown by in little over half an hour. You try to persuade yourself that the final track could be an absolute epic, but you know that it won’t be and that the disc contains at least twenty minutes of silence.

Secondly, in my experience, the hidden track is never worth waiting for. Sometimes it’s a whole song, but more often than not it won’t be. It’ll just be a few seconds of some random sounds taped during the recording sessions. On Paul Weller’s debut solo album, you have to wait ten minutes or so just to hear Paul grumpily mumble “bring back vinyl”. (You also have to listen to sound of someone turning a record over between tracks 6 and 7 – I actually quite like that bit.) On The Stone Roses second album, there are 86 silent tracks, each one just 4 seconds long. The album proper finishes on track 12. A 6 minute work-out known as The Foz, appears on track 90. The Flaming Lips album Hit To Death In The Future Head ends with an irritating noise loop that goes on an on for just over 29 minutes.

Thirdly, hidden tracks are intensely annoying when you rip a CD onto an MP3 player and you have to waste valuable file space with the sound of nothing. Often, it’s easier just to leave the last track off, but if that final track is one of the album’s highlights, you either have to put up with the wasted space, or you have to get your hands dirty with some sound editing software and chop the thing up yourself, which kind of goes against the ease of use ideology of modern technology.

There are entire websites devoted to this sort of thing. There’s even a list of CDs with hidden tracks on Wikipedia. Judging from various message boards, I’m not the only person who finds the hidden track an irritation. Surely someone can come up with a better idea.

Japanese noise merchants Melt Banana had a go a few years ago. On their debut album, Speak Squeak Creak, the final track consists of the previous 24 tracks all played at the same time. Thankfully, most of their tracks are very short.

Links

Melt Banana on YouTube
Melt Banana - MySpace
Melt Banana - Official Site

Search for Melt Banana at Amazon UK or Amazon USA

Click here to view video.

Some weeks ago I was talking to good friend Robert about Camera Obscura’s third album, Let’s Get Out Of This Country. Robert proclaimed it to be the band’s best release to date, whilst I felt that it wasn’t as good as album number two, Underachievers Please Try Harder. Robert was right and I was wrong.

I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to get into this record, but that moment when it finally clicked, when it all fell into place… it was a big one. I love this album. I spent most of yesterday driving and constantly had it on the car’s CD player.

Maybe I was expecting too much. Many, many months ago, the BBC’s 6Music played Lloyd I’m Ready To Be Heartbroken and I liked it instantly. This sounds like Camera Obscura, I thought to myself, and I was pleased when the DJ confirmed the fact.

I suppose I was expecting the whole album to be as upbeat as that track, but the reality was that it was much more understated. Lloyd and the title track begin each side (I still think in terms of vinyl) and shine out like shimmering sisters – it’s fairly easy to confuse one for the other. They perhaps remain the standouts, but the other and for the most part quieter moments have started to unfold and give up their secrets. This album has far more going for it that my initial listens suggested. To be honest, I’d almost given up on it. Damn, what a fool I was.

And while we’re here, what a good title for a song – Lloyd I’m Ready To Be Heartbroken. Older readers may remember the subject matter – the final track on Lloyd Cole’s debut album. Are You Ready To Be Heartbroken is a fine slice of 1980s jingly, jangly pop. Never released by Cole as a single, it became a minor hit in 1986 when it was covered (rather excellently) by Sandie Shaw.

Links

Camera Obscura on YouTube
Camera Obscura - MySpace
Camera Obscura - Official Site
Elefant Records - MySpace
Elefant Records - Official Site

Search for Camera Obscura at Amazon UK or Amazon USA

Two days after the Eurovision Song Contest is probably not a good time for an English guy to write about music from mainland Europe. It’s around this time of year that the British Isles feel far more distant from Europe than the geographic reality would suggest.

We are trying to be more European, we use more French and Italian words for food than ever before, but there are some things about Europe that we just don’t get. Why, for example, do European women like dark haired men dressed in white shirts, white trousers and white shoes (with the shirts unbuttoned to the naval, showing off Amazonian forests of chest hair and huge Inca medallions)? Whilst the ladies of the med swoon, we gag and laugh at the cliché.

We laugh at the European Song Contest, whilst most of Europe sees it as a major, prestigious event. To be fair, I think we’re right on this one. The European Song Contest, to be blunt, is bloody awful. And I’m not saying that because the UK doesn’t get any votes any more – it always was bloody awful. I still watch it, though. It’s a unique spectacle that seems as though it’s coming from another planet – a planet inhabited entirely by halfwits.

The European Song Contest is tacky and far removed from the utopian image we English have of the sophisticated, continental lifestyle. Europe, we feel, should be about reading paperbacks whilst sipping coffee in pavement cafes; reading paperbacks whilst lying on beautiful, breezy sand dunes and reading paperbacks whilst sitting on trains passing through scenes of snow capped mountains and bright, blue skies. (There are a lot of paperbacks involved.)

We dream of riding trams through cosmopolitan cities, skipping up cobblestone steps to quaint little courtyards, drinking beer from a tall thin glass, driving along empty roads lined with silver birches and eating exquisite meals in candlelit restaurants.

This is also the world inhabited by Lonely Drifter Karen, a pan-European trio based in Barcelona, featuring an Austrian vocalist, a Spanish pianist and an Italian drummer. Listening to their music transports you to a tiny basement cabaret club, where the wine flows well into the early hours and the air is full of joie de vivre. Blissful, is a word that springs to mind.

Lonely Drifter Karen set out to entertain in a quirky, eccentric way. It’s probably not for everyone, but I’ve very definitely fallen under their spell.

European Song Contest? What on earth is that?

Links

Lonely Drifter Karen on YouTube
Lonely Drifter Karen - MySpace
Crammed Discs - MySpace
Crammed Discs - Official Site

Search for Lonely Drifter Karen at Amazon UK or Amazon USA

Click here to view video.

I quite fancy going to Perth – that’s Perth, Western Australia, not Perth, Scotland. I’ve been to the Scottish one and very nice it is too; a lovely, small town nestling on the banks of the River Tay.

The Perth in Western Australia is very different from its Scottish namesake. It’s possibly the most isolated metropolitan area on Earth – a dynamic, ultra-modern, high-rise city surrounded by absolutely nothing. The nearest, large Australian city to Perth is Adelaide, over 1300 miles away. That’s pretty isolated.

This isolation has led to the development of a vibrant local music scene. In a place like Perth, if you want to see a live band, they’re going to have to be local. Perth is often missed off the tour itineraries of larger acts – it’s just too darn difficult to get to. This resulting vibrancy has led some to dub the city “the new Seattle”.

Don’t expect a hotbed of grunge, however. If there’s a trend in current Australian music, then it seems to be a yearning for sixties west-coast melodic, harmonic pop. And that’s no bad thing.

The Bank Holidays immediately strike the listener as, well, not very Australian. If anything, they sound like a lot of the stuff coming out of Scandinavia at the moment. And then you discover that one of their members, Bekk Reczek, is Norwegian. How on earth do you end up in Perth if you’re Norwegian?

Oh well, let’s not dwell on that now. If good melodies and Beach Boy style harmonics are your thing, you should give ‘em a try.

And coincidentally, here in the UK, today is a Bank Holiday. Yay!

Links

The Bank Holidays on YouTube
The Bank Holidays - MySpace
The Bank Holidays - Official Site
The Lost And Lonesome Recording Company - Official Site

Search for The Bank Holidays at Amazon UK or Amazon USA

Click here to view video.

Here’s another of those single guy recordings with hired band for gigs situations that seems to be in vogue at the moment.

School Of Language is the current high-priority project for David Brewis, whilst his former band, Field Music take an extended hiatus.

Released in 2007, the album Sea From Shore picked up its fair share of fine reviews, with the NME calling it “one of this year’s most innovative exciting and original albums”. The album was released on Memphis Industries in the UK and by Thrill Jockey Records in the US and the rest of Europe.

The use of vocals at the start of Rockist Part 1, the album’s opening track, invites immediate comparisons with The Futureheads, which is no coincidence, bearing in mind that both acts hail from the same town – Sunderland. And that David’s brother Peter was once himself a Futurehead.

School Of Language’s live incarnation can be seen at a handful of small gigs throughout the summer and at The Metropolis Festival in Rotterdam on 6 July, The Green Man Festival in Hay on 16 August and the Electric Picnic Festival in Laois on 31 August.

Links

School Of Language on YouTube
School Of Language - MySpace
School Of Language - Official Site
Memphis Industries - MySpace
Memphis Industries - Official Site
Thrill Jockey Records - MySpace
Thrill Jockey Records - Official Site

Search for School Of Language at Amazon UK or Amazon USA

I was looking at the gig listing for The Bull And Gate in London’s Kentish Town. I followed a few links to a few MySpace pages, but nothing much caught my eye (or ear). I’d almost given up, when I came across Andy Devine, or just Andy as he seems to prefer.

On his MySpace page, Andy currently offers four demos of the homemade variety - he plays all of the instruments. The standout, for me, is Something Better Than This, with it’s nice, gentle riff. It’s the sort of thing I find very easy to play over and over again.

Changes seem to be afoot. Andy, it appears, now has a band. They’re called Super Somethings.

Links

Andy - MySpace
Super Somethings - Official Site

On the 27th February this year at Sotheby’s London, a photo-painting called Kerze (candle) by artist Gerhard Richter was sold for £7.1 million. The estimate was a mere £2.5 million. (I think I might have that behind the sofa, let me just check. Ah, no, it was five penny piece and an old Starburst, lime flavour. My mistake.)

Gerhard Richter’s Kerze adorns the cover of Sonic Youth’s 1988 double album, Daydream Nation, ignored by most at the time and now regarded as a classic. (How often does that happen?)

The CD version I have in my collection dates from many years later and features liner notes from artist and one time Sonics bass player, Jutta Koether.

I like liner notes. For years, I thought they were called “linear notes”. I hadn’t made the connection with what was meant in this case by the word “liner”. It suddenly dawned on me one day – liner, as in sleeve. Ah, that’s it. Even though I’ve known the correct phrase for a while now, whenever I see it written my brain still reads it as “linear notes”. I’m happy with that. I don’t mind my mind playing tricks on me.

There have been some classic liner notes written over the years. It’s a subject I may very well start to explore on this blog. In the early days of British rock ‘n’ roll, bands often put out e.p.’s of cover versions after they’d had one or two hits of their own, and these always came with picture sleeves and picture sleeves always meant liner notes.

“These lads from London,” the notes would usually say, “know a thing or two when it comes to making our dancehalls swing.”

Jazz liner notes are always incredibly complicated and arty farty. On CD booklets, they often run and run for pages, as though the writer is tackling the subject for a college course dissertation . “The double saxophones which arrive at 4:19,” they might say, “provide relief from the otherwise sparse timbre and therefore represent new growth in the otherwise scorched earth scenario that the listener has hitherto been submerged.” Yeah, right.

If arty farty is your thing (and I have to say, as an occasional visitor to Tate Modern, I don’t mind a bit of arty farty myself) then you’ll enjoy Jutta Koether’s liner notes for Daydream Nation.

“…Feeling and perception are translated into spatial terms, reclaiming euphoria and surfacing reality.”

Confused? Ah well, just listen to the record. It’s a good ‘un.

Links

Sonic Youth on YouTube
Sonic Youth - MySpace
Sonic Youth - Official Site

Search for Sonic Youth at Amazon UK or Amazon USA