Jerry Lee Lewis - High School Confidential (Live)

ORIGINATION "Live" At The Star-Club Hamburg
RECORDED IN 1964
LAST LISTENED TO October
RATING ★★★★★

In 1964, Jerry Lee Lewis had been recording music for nearly a decade, was several years from his last hit, had been more or less ostracised for his marriage to his teenage cousin and was out of fashion. Rock 'n' roll was dead, just a teen fad that had had its turn. The odds were clearly not in his favour on the one night he played with a pick-up band in the club that helped make The Beatles name. Yet against those odds, he not only prevailed, he recorded was must be one of the best, if not the best rock 'n' roll album. To be sure, the competition for that title is not fierce, yet even so there is no question that this would surely rule because Jerry Lee, The Killer, is absolutely on fire. Solid gone. His frenzied performance is barely contained, so much so that his young backing band can barely keep up with him, even though they give it a hell of a try. It is a manic performance, utterly deranged, and an absolute necessity for anyone with even a passing interest in rock 'n' roll, hell, with even a passing interest in music. Nothing has ever rocked quite like this and it is unlikely anything ever will again.

High School Confidential is one of Jerry Lee's hits from his period on top, before events turned against him. A fast-paced tune to begin with, here he attacks it without mercy, tearing to shreds. The band do their best to keep up but even so, around two minutes into the song you can hear them hurrying to catch the madman. You also get to hear that madman yelling at 'himself to play that thing' during his solo, before referring to himself in the third person. Deranged. Irreplaceable. Genius.

The Stooges - Cock In My Pocket

ORIGINATION Head On
RECORDED IN 1972
LAST LISTENED TO a week ago
RATING ★★★★★

Yesterday I read a news article by a journalist who was either very pushed for time, or just plain lazy. It parroted and assertion made by the music industry that the recently-published decline in physical music sales in the UK is due to online piracy. Not only is this impossible to prove, indeed there never seems to be any proof attached to these statement but some of the proof available actually points to the opposite truth – that online piracy has led to an increase in consumption of paid-for music by these very pirates themselves. On top of that, there is the heavy irony of the music industry accusing others of piracy, given the notoriously tiny percentage of each sale that goes to the artist and that's when the CD is full price, one wonders if artists make any money at all from cut-price CDs.

Which brings me to this morning's song that I found on a double CD of bootleg recordings, apparently officially released, on sale at less than half price. Given the sound quality of the music, and at times the quality of the music itself, the price does seem rather appropriate, artist payments aside. The songs all come from the period when The Stooges where disintegrating between music contracts, although the energy in the music shows that they were still on top of their game. Cock In My Pocket is one of the most coherent songs on the collection. Focused and taken at a blistering pace, it gives the listener to wondering what would have happened to the Stooges if drugs had not taken their toll. As ever, and in particular due to the lyrics that would almost certainly never have seen a commercial release at the time, this is not music for the faint-hearted. From James Williamson's guitar to Iggy Pop's snarl, that is as raw and uncompromising as anything in The Stooges official catalogue. It also stands apart from that official sound with the addition of a piano, here not only used for colour as happened on occasion previously, but as a full part of the song. Indeed both the pianist Bob Sheff and Williamson are invited (or possibly directed) by Pop to takes solos during the song. Memorably Pop calls out Williamson by shouting "Any time James" during Sheff's solo. For an supposedly unfinished piece, it is quite a song.

The Politicians - Psycha-Soula-Funkadelic

ORIGINATION Come Together - Invictus Club Classics II (v/a)
RECORDED IN 1972
LAST LISTENED TO yesterday
RATING ★★★★★

A fairly deep cut of funk rock took me from sleep this morning. It has, um, guitars, brass, a damned good intro, as well as some men shouting the title over and over. Although the latter does seem rather odd, given that they're not Funkadelic. All in all, pretty groovy.

Joy Division - Transmission

ORIGINATION Heart And Soul
RECORDED IN 1979
LAST LISTENED TO two days ago
RATING ★★★★★

Is it about the power of music? An illustration of how it can give us the energy to transcend our difficulties? Or is it simply about dancing to forget them? It is tempting to let the history of Joy Division dictate the answer to this. Perhaps that is unfair. Better instead to just dance.

Tom Waits - Rain Dogs

ORIGINATION Rain Dogs
RECORDED IN 1985
LAST LISTENED TO yesterday
RATING ★★★★★

Few things in life as quite as fine as Tom Waits during his rebirth years of the mid-eighties. Rain Dogs was Waits' ninth album and the second in his move away from the lounge-style sound he was originally known for. The album is said to be about the urban dispossessed, which is seen by some as Waits straying into territory marked out in literature by Charles Bukowski. Whatever the truth of that assertion, the title track here does have something of that flavour to it, both in its impenetrably picturesque, booze-soaked lyrics and the strange thrift-store orchestra. It is a combination that Waits has been working in ever since, in his own unique way, and it is the reason why he has become such a worshipped cult figure.

John Barry - We Have All The Time In The World (Sung By Louis Armstrong) [again]

ORIGINATION On Her Majesty's Secret Service LP
RECORDED IN 1969
LAST LISTENED TO last night
RATING ★★★★★

I had this one a few weeks ago.

Joyce Dunn - A New Change Of Address

ORIGINATION Sister Funk
RECORDED IN 1970
LAST LISTENED TO last night
RATING ★★★★★

This morning's ingredients: great brass, fine drums, slightly opaque lyrics that could be euphemistic but on closer inspection are all about being done wrong, burning sax and just a hint of organ. Of such fine things is good funk made. The world seems to know little about Joyce Dunn, other than she released this single on Mercury in 1970 and that's a damned shame. If she recorded other tunes as good as this, the world really needs to hear.

Tito Puente - On The Street Where You Live

ORIGINATION Beats & Pieces Volume Two: Music Constructed For A More Discerning Dancefloor (v/a)
RECORDED IN 1964
LAST LISTENED TO last night
RATING ★★★★★

Timbale player Tito Puente was known as the King of Latin Music and with good reason. He plied his grooves for over fifty years and helped popularise a whole genre of music for several generations. Today's tune comes from his latinisation of the score to My Fair Lady, where he turned this overdone Broadway chestnut into a swinging big band number. Puente's percussion is the heart of the song, ticking and swinging and driving. The blood that pumps through it is the two-note bass that runs up and down the scale, almost willy nilly. The body is the wind instruments, the big band that is so very well scored: a full blast of the band here, counter melodies between the brass and wood there and those fantastic, gradually built-up crescendos. The arrangement is just spot on, not only giving the band time to establish the melody and really swing with it, but also leaving plenty of space for Puente's rhythms. This is a song to stick on repeat, to smile and to feel those hips start to wander.

[radio silence]

This morning was one of those rare silent mornings. It was odd. I lay in bed, with no song in my head and I listened to the world. Traffic moved on the next street down and out on the main road, an argument of herring guls held a discussion on the rooftops all around, my combi-boiler topped up its pressure, a neighbour took a shower and my radio alarm fizzed awake into detuned national morning radio. After a while, I got up.

Brenda Holloway - Every Little Bit Hurts

ORIGINATION Tamla Motown: Big Hits & Hard To Find Classics, Vol. 2
RECORDED IN 1964
LAST LISTENED TO Sunday
RATING ★★★★★

It's strange that for a song as well-known as this, I only heard this version of it recently. For many years, I've known both the Small Faces and the Spencer Davis Group recordings of it but as is often the case, there is something in the original version that others just can't quite reach. Maybe it is in Ms. Holloway's smooth voice, the sweet strings or the earthy piano. Whatever it is, that near-inderfinable magic, it is enough to stand this version above all others. Tender and beautiful.

The Smiths - Girlfriend In A Coma

ORIGINATION Best of the Smiths
RECORDED IN 1987
LAST LISTENED TO last week
RATING ★★★★★

I was quite a latecomer to The Smiths, after manfully resisting their unique charms throughout all of my youthfully foolish music clique years. It was more than a few years after that silly behaviour was done with that I finally purchased one of their albums, even then only opting for a collection. It has been over thirteen years since I bought that CD and somehow I am yet to buy another of theirs, which is rather foolish considering that I've enjoyed every song on that first-bought collection. I'm in no hurry.

Girlfriend In A Coma to me is the quintessential Smiths song: a clean, well-played pop tune with a dark heart.

Sunday morning mix up

In the vague hour of my awakening this morning, no one song took charge of my brain. Rather, today saw a short playlist on rotation, including various Beatles songs, Damaged by Primal Scream and You Can Have Watergate Just Gimme Some Bucks And I'll Be Straight by Fred Wesley and The JBs. I lay in bed for a little while and each time I focussed on one song, it would slip away like a bar of soap in a hot bath, to be replaced by another.

Primal Scream - Movin' On Up

ORIGINATION Screamadelica
RECORDED IN 1991
LAST LISTENED TO last night
RATING ★★★★★

It is one of my favourite starts to an album, a guitar riff that I will never confuse for anything else, signalling so much goodness to come. I would have first came across it in the year of its release. I'd have heard it in an indie disco and, knowing who I was back then, may well have sneered at it somewhat. In all likelihood, it was Loaded from the same album that I first came to know. However, two events changed my relationship to Movin' On Up.

To begin with, in the summer of '92 I saw Primal Sceam play a headline set at the Glastonbury festival, at the end of a brilliant sunny day. It was a magical night and even though I may have been perhaps a little tiddly, I remember that I really enjoyed their set, which shook my then particular, silly music clique snobbishness. Once I was home, I am sure I would have sought out the album. The second event happened two summers later, when I was in hospital. I was really quite ill, had dropped in weight to near eight stone and had been on a drip for days, only vaguely conscious. About four or five days into my stay, I was getting better and was at last properly with it, when I realised that I had not listened to any music in almost a week. I recall quite clearly lying in a bed, the only occupant in a strangely circular ward, when I slipped my headphones on and pressed play on my personal stereo. I did not bother to check what was in it, I needed music that badly. Screamadelica was the tape in the machine. As Movin' On Up began to play, I felt relief and joy flood through me and I wept. It moved me in a way almost no song had until that point and for that it will forever remain precious to me.

On Friday I went to see Primal Scream perform Screamadelica in Glasgow. They opened, naturally, with Movin' On Up. As Bobby Gillespie started singing, the audience, breaking from an immense cheer, as one sang along loud enough to near drown him out. It was the beginning to a brilliant gig.

Waking with this in my head the next morning was very much a foregone conclusion. It is a song that I can find not one flaw in, from the perfectly-paced beginning, though Bobby G's slightly off singing and the slide guitar licks, to the gospel choir and the guitar solo. It was a great start to the day.

Speedometer - Am I Your Woman? (Featuring Ria Currie)

ORIGINATION Modern Funk: Stay On The Groove, Volume 3
RECORDED IN 2007
LAST LISTENED TO yesterday
RATING ★★★★★

Waking up to funk is always good. This fine selection is from one of the lights in the new funk movement in the UK. Performing now for more than a decade, Speedometer here cover a hit from 1970 by the Chi-lites. This version follows in the fine funk footsteps of an answer record: where once the Chi-lites sang Are You My Woman?, here the question is turned back on the men. Incidentally, that lovely brass riff that peppers both versions of the song, was sampled from the Chi-Lites on Beyoncé's Crazy In Love, which apparently was a big hit.

The Merits - Arabian Jerk

ORIGINATION Jungle Exotica Volume 2
RECORDED IN 1964
LAST LISTENED TO January
RATING ★★★★★

Sneaky. From somewhere in the dark, it's coming to get you. Well, maybe until the organ starts. After that it all turns into one of those mid '60s Arabian things. That sound was all the range, in a certain set. A sort of groovy, post-exotica thing. It didn't last long but it did throw out some weird and lovely things.

Prince La La - She Put The Hurt On Me

ORIGINATION From Route 66 To The Flamingo (v/a)
RECORDED IN 1961
LAST LISTENED TO November
RATING ★★★★★

Some lovely soul this morning. Up tempo and bright. Really, I've got nothing more to add today. Just listen to that popping brass. Lovely.

Gogol Bordello - Alcohol

ORIGINATION Super Taranta! CD
RECORDED IN 2007
LAST LISTENED TO last night
RATING ★★★★★

As the closing song of a very frantic gig, this really was perfect. Sang almost entirely solo, it was a calming, a breath, one small step before turning out into the night. On album, it is a reflection on a sorry drug that seems the cure to many and yet is more often than not the cause.

Barry McGuire - Eve Of Destruction

ORIGINATION 45
RECORDED IN 1965
LAST LISTENED TO March 2010
RATING ★★★★★

I guess all the recent signs and portents in the world have infected my brain. I can't think of any other reason why this classic protest song would appear in my head this morning. It'll be that sinking feeling I get wherever I see a picture of our 'elected' leaders and read about how they're trying to destroy all that we hold dear in society. Happy joy!

The 5th Dimension - Puppet Man

ORIGINATION 45
RECORDED IN 1970
LAST LISTENED TO yesterday, briefly
RATING ★★★★★

Funk! Yes! Well, almost. This starts out with a certain kind of late '60s variant of funk, at least until the singing begins. Once that happens, it rapidly becomes funk filtered through an easy listening pop choir, which, not to put too fine a point on it, is exactly what this is. The 5th Dimension were (and appear in some guise still to be) a pop group of five vocailists. Their best-known singles back in the day were Up, Up And Away and Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In. Following only a few years after those, Puppet Man does have something of the flavour of those two tunes to it, with more than enough 'bah-bah-bah-bah's for any fan or their work to enjoy. However for those non-easy lovers, the music is where it's at. From the drum roll intro on into the strong lead guitar fills, this is some fairly heavy funk rock. It is taken at a moderate pace and it has plenty bite to it. On paper, the two elements seem rather disparate, yet here they mesh really rather well.

John Barry - We Have All The Time In The World (Sung By Louis Armstrong)

ORIGINATION On Her Majesty's Secret Service LP
RECORDED IN 1969
LAST LISTENED TO last night
RATING ★★★★★

This is a smooth, gentle and lovely, lovely song. The contrast of the sweet strings and the warmth of Louis' rough old voice is so prefectly balanced that. rounded out by the gentle trumpet tones he produces, makes it feel like slipping into a warm bath. For three minutes and eleven seconds all your worries will just slip away.

Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs - Cabin On The Hill

ORIGINATION Essential Country & Western (v/a)
RECORDED IN 1959
LAST LISTENED TO yesterday
RATING ★★★★★

Whilst today's song is again from That Danged Country album, the one that has been haunting me for the past few weeks, it is one of the least country songs on it. With the only instrumentation being a lone guitar, the song features call and response singing between a male lead and a mixed choir. Although choir singing does have a history in country music, on record dating back to the Carter family's recordings in the late '20s, the singing here sits more firmly in gospel music. It is not exactly the kind of song that one would normally associate with Flatt and Scruggs, especially considering Scruggs' banjo is nowhere to be heard.

Johnny Cash - I Got Stripes

ORIGINATION Essential Country & Western (v/a)
RECORDED IN 1959
LAST LISTENED TO a few days ago
RATING ★★★★★

Another morning and another country song (there do seem to have been a lot of them recently). Again it is the story of an outlaw, one who is caught on a Monday, at the very start of the song, and is sent to prison. Like many country songs, his outlaw status is more inferred than stated but what is inescapable is that he is suffering. This, of course, is a theme that seems pretty widespread in country music, taking many forms whether it be suffering in death, suffering in work, suffering in love. Johnny Cash helped set the standard for post-war country music, particularly with songs and themes such as this.

Spandau Ballet - Gold

ORIGINATION the decade that taste forgot
RECORDED IN see above
LAST LISTENED TO in a restaurant last week
RATING ★★★★★

Imagine my disgust at finding this in my head this morning. My brain is wrong. I have nothing more to add.

Marty Robbins - El Paso

ORIGINATION Essential Country & Western (v/a) CD
RECORDED IN 1959
LAST LISTENED TO yesterday
RATING ★★★★★

I was rather unsurprised to find more country in my brain this morning. Quite why it was this song, I do not know. I've heard better and catchier in recent days. Not that it's all that bad. Of course it is yet another tale of a drying gunslinger (there do seem to be a lot of them), although this time with a Mexican twist. It might in fact be the pretty Mexican guitar styling that made this one stand out.

Einstürzende Neubauten - Pelikanol

ORIGINATION Silence Is Sexy CD
RECORDED IN 2000
LAST LISTENED TO last night
RATING ★★★★★

Long-time German oddities Einstürzende Neubauten released Silence Is Sexy, one of their most successful albums, in 2000. A two-disc set, the second disc contained one single near-twenty minute long piece. Motorised metal strips throb deeply, mechanically and a child-like rhyme is repeated over and over. The world closes down, reality retreats. Humming, broken glass. Throbbing. As the piece progresses, the voices become stranger, flipping left and right, while white noise stabs irregularly, broken-speaker like. Over headphones, it is an intense experience.

Nur zur Erinnerung  Just as a reminder
Bittermandel  Bitter almonds
Marzipan  Marzipan
Pelikanol  Pelikanol (school glue)

Lefty Frizzell - The Long Black Veil

ORIGINATION Essential Country & Western (v/a)
RECORDED IN 1959
LAST LISTENED TO a few days ago
RATING ★★★★★

Today finds me waking to another country song that, being Sunday, seems somehow appropriate. This one is another dark tale of a doomed man, sang by another country legend, Lefty Frizell. His clear voice with just the slightest hint of a lisp, wanders over a cleanly-strummed guitar that is framed by a minimal bass and some light drumming which echo with a sound Sun studio-like slap. Through all of this, a haunting pedal steel guitar slides, ghost-like, the spectre of the doomed figure of the tale, as he watches his best friend's wide mourning at his grave. It is a simple, elegant song that, although written in the '50s, seems of an earlier age.

[repetition]

As I fell asleep last night, yesterday's morning song was rattling around in my head. It wasn't much of a surprise, therefore, that it was still in there when I woke.

Laura Lee - Crumbs Off My Table

ORIGINATION I'm A Good Woman - Funk Classics From Sassy Soul Sisters (v/a) LP
RECORDED IN 1972
LAST LISTENED TO yesterday
RATING ★★★★★

Mm-mm. Here's some deep funk. That Laura Lee, her man's spending too long out of the house working. When he comes home, she ain't getting none and, man, she is not happy. Funk is the going to be the answer, so expect some fat bass, plenty of slick wah-wah guitar licks and a few truck-loads of brass. Oh yes. After a few verses, the track drops down for some bass and drum action and just a few groans. That low-down bump and grind is just what the song needs. Ms Lee is hungry and there is no doubting it here. A few years ago, I thought this section killed the song. These days, that drop down and build following it is hitting the spot hard. The arrangement here is particularly strong, with the whole band slotting tightly in together; bass, brass and guitar all winding in and out of each other as, we might surmise, Ms Lee finally gets it. Go get some!

Plan B - Writing's On The Wall

ORIGINATION The Defamation Of Strickland Banks CD
RECORDED IN 2010
LAST LISTENED TO yesterday
RATING ★★★★★

Sometime in the middle of last year, a song on God's Jukebox had me scrambling about in the dark for my notebook, two write down its name. It turned out to be a single from London soul boy and rapper Plan B. I left that name sitting on my list of things to buy one day for quite some time. In January, I finally bought the album and, expecting to like the single and little else, gve it a cursory listen. I was pretty bowled over. Whilst still sounding modern, the album nonetheless manages to straddle a whole range of soul sounds and it does this whilst also telling a story. It is an impresive feat.

Writing's On The Wall is the latest single, quite astoundingly the sixth, to be culled from the album. It's a bittersweet piece of uptempo northern soul, powered by a strong bassline and some squeaky-clean guitar licks. Sadly, being the second song on a concept album, the song does feel somewhat unresolved at its close.

[repetition]

It has only been a few days since Marty Robbins' Big Iron last stole into my head as I woke. It's always a little disappointing when the song is not a new one, although it does save some time.