I confess. I’m including this song primarily because of one line in this song.

Beefheart is an unusual character, and that’s putting it very mildly. His Trout Mask Replica album (sure, you’d know from the title) is one of the strangest I’ve ever heard, and puts Tom Waits to shame for sheer guttural weirdness.

Big cymbal crash, and then the kind of music you’d hear Jabba the Hutt’s house band play on Return of the Jedi. One of the guitars plays the same dumb riff pretty much through the whole song, while the other one appears to undergo electroshock therapy. I don’t hear much of a bass. As an instrumental, it sounds like a band on either speed, or LSD, or (most likely) way too much of both.

Over that, and keeping absolutely no time whatsoever with the music, Beefheart roars, snipes, and coughs lyrics about some girl who has gone crazy from dancing. He throws out some great lines, the second best of which is

“I knew you were under duress, I knew you were under your dress”

Very cute. The rest of Trout Mask Replica is very similar to this, and is very much an acquired taste. But Tom Waits has cited this as a major influence on his classic Swordfishtrombones album - he had to, it was so obvious.

And the best line? It’s the one where he growls:

“You were afraid you’d be the Devil’s red wife”

Listen to the video on YouTube and you’ll understand. Always brings a chuckle.

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After seeing the film about Bob Dylan at the weekend called I’m Not There, I decided to post about this song today. The film itself was pretty good but only in terms of the direction the Director chose to take in making and protraying Dylan in the film. Six different actors were used to protray Dylan at various stages of his career, including Cate Blanchett who gave a great performance.

Personally I would prefer No Direction Home but mainly because it gives some great archive footage of the great man himself. What this film did do however, was introduce a few new Dylan songs that I have never heard of before including Tombstone Blues and today’s song Pressing On which appears on the album Saved which was the second album by Dylan that dealt with Gospel music after he became a Born Again Christian. If this song is anything to go by then I will definitely be checking out both Gospel albums that he released in the late 70’s / early 80’s. Here is a link to a video of the song.

By the way, the soundtrack to the film I’m Not There is absolutely fanastic! It consists of a large number of today’s best musician’s doing covers of Dylan songs and they generally don’t consist of his famous songs. It is really interesting to see other interpretations of the great man’s work and is definitely well worth checking out.

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Having seen Control there for a second time, I’ve come to the conclusion that Joy Division are possibly the best English band of them all. Certainly, they’re a huge influence on all those bands like Franz Ferdinand, The Editors, and…spleh, I can’t remember any others, but there’s loads. Any band that uses metronomic drumming, angular guitar riffs and a singer who peddles in a vague sense of impending doom – they’ve followed the Joy Division path.

Anyway…Joy Division only had two albums and a few singles before Ian Curtis departed this life of his own hand. ‘Transmission’ is one of those singles, and it’s always been one of my favourite JD tunes. It’s not on either album (not sure why that is, but The Jam and The Beatles had non-album singles too), so you’ve got to hunt it down on a best of. It’s well worth it.

A ghostly burr opens up proceedings, before the bass gets stuck into the riff. When the drums come in, spacey and echo-y yet precise, there’s an almost military march feel. The guitar riff is one of the first bits of guitar-jiggery that I learned, way back in the mid-‘90’s. Curtis’ voice is, as ever, perfect. “Dance, dance, dance, dance to the radio”. Indeed. Here’s a great video (with a quick John Cooper Clarke poem beforehand) one of the few I’ve seen of Joy Division, performing ‘Transmission’ on a TV show. If you like it, check out their two albums, Unknown Pleasures and Closer. Word of warning: don’t listen to the last few songs of Closer if you’ve been drinking gin. Apart from that, knock yourself out.

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Very busy today, so I’ve got to keep this one short. Bowie’s Low album is one of my favourites, as much for the atmospheric instrumentals as for the off-kilter pop songs like ‘Sound & Vision’ and ‘Be My Wife’.

Closing side one (if you had an LP or, in my case, as cassette of this), ‘A New Career In A New Town’ is a world-class slice of thumping drums, keyboard noodles and plaintive harmonica from Bowie. The song is heavily treated by producer Brian Eno’s tomfoolery - his fingerprints are all over the Low album, but especially on the instrumentals.

At this point in time, Bowie was trying to overcome a cocaine addiction, and decided that leaving Los Angeles and moving to Berlin (described in the ‘Station to Station’ [see previous post on this song] symbolism of the previous album) would be a good idea. While the song title seems hopeful, and the music optimistic and propelling, there’s something slightly numb and distant about it, like it’s being discussed while drunk. While you couldn’t call an instrumental piece autobiographical, the title pretty much gives it away.

If you like ‘A New Career…’, you should also like ‘Speed of Sound’, the instrumental that kicks off Low. These are two of my favourite musical pieces, and the experimental avant-garde pop explored on the Low album would come to be very influential on groups such as Joy Division, The Cure, and a host of other post-punk, new wave bands, all the way up to Nine Inch Nails.

Here’s a nice video with the song ‘A New Career…’ - the guy who made the video has moved to Milton Keynes. Now there’s a town I’d never have connected with Bowie. Nice video though.

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For a long time I used to think that this song was written by Jagger and the Rolling Stones because if you listen much to the early music by the band then you couldn’t help but hear this song as it’s probably one of their most successful hits during their years with Decca Records, all before that the infamous cocksucker blues song. It wasn’t until a couple of years ago that a friend enlightened me as to who done the original.

To me, the song represents what early rock and roll was all about with the rhythm dominating the song from start to finish with little emphasis on chord changes or chord progressions. The song stands the test of time and is as good today as it ever was back in the day. If you ever get the chance please, please check out Buddy Holly you won’t regret it - the man’s a complete legend.

Here’s a link to the song to get you started. This song is probably the most covered song by any rock artist in the 60’s and 70’s .

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Now that I’ve finally got mobile broadband in my apartment in Dublin, I can write some posts in the evening, as opposed to just lunchtime. ‘Computer World’ seems an apt choice. Taken from the Computer World album (or, as we Kraftwerk fanatics like to call it, Computerwelt, before slugging down a stein of Paulaner), this song is eerily prophetic and great music to robot-dance to (I’m just assuming).

In any case, need I say it one more time? Okay. Kraftwerk at Electric Picnic 2005 was my. Favourite. Gig. Ever.

The song kicks in with a driving, insistent drumpad percussion, as synthetic as you like. All sounds are made by plugged-in things, and the melody instantly makes an entrance. Kraftwerk songs are built like lab creations, a product of the very best German engineering, an ironic take on the creative songwriting process. While all of this is true, they also make, in their own scientific way, timeless melodies.

After the music has set the scene, the lead singer drily intones, in an extremely efficient voice:

“Interpol and Deutsche Bank, FBI and Scotland Yard”
“Business, numbers, money, people”

For anything even pretending to be a pop song, these lyrics break all convention, reading like a cross between Forbes and a business motivational speech. But the lyrics are, retrospectively, disingenuous. Kraftwerk are presaging the Internet, and the “computer world” is a logged-in network to which all of the above agencies subscribed back in 1981.

“Time, travel, communication, entertainment”

The internet has freed up time for many people (it’s also a bit of a time-waster sometimes, let’s face it); booking online is now an integral part of travel; e-mail has revolutionised communication; and anyone can find entertainment in any form on the Web.

Here’s a great user-generated (cheers ‘Dosswerks’!) video of the song here. If you like it, check out probably their best albums, The Man Machine and Trans Europe Express. There’s another thishereboogie post by another classic Kraftwerk song here.

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Another anti-war song today. I do like songs that have a protest theme especially if it relates closely to how I feel about the particular topic as anyone will know if they read or have been following this blog for any length of time. Be it war , social injustice or any other relevant topic then I’m all over it like a bee to honey. Although a lot of these songs are relatively old, they nearly always seem to appear on the setlists for live music shows by various artists, when the topics are current as the Iraqi war is in this case.

There is nothing else I really know about Edwin Starr apart form the fact that he sang this song and was signed to the famous Motown Records. If your curious about the guy then you can always head over to the the ubiquitous wikipedia and look him up for yourself. Keeping with Motown tradition, Starr gives a powerful, soulful rendition with a healthy dose of horns, guitar and backing singers to assist him. The lyrics themselves are pretty straightforward but it’s how they are delievered that really sets this song apart from other anti-war songs for me. I especially love the line

“It ain’t nothing but a heartbreaker, a friend only to the undertaker”

Also for those of you into the whole Civilisation genre of games, in particular, will recognise the following quote when a society has been in a war for a long time: ‘War..Uuh..What is it good for? Absolutely nothing!‘ which is the main line of the chorus in the song. Check out a live version of the song as played on Jools Holland a number of years ago.

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Go on, admit it. Pete Townshend’s a legend. I mean, you only need look at the photo below to know that.

Sure, Roger Daltrey may be lead singer of The Who, but Townshend’s the main man. He wrote all the songs, handled all the interviews, and took centre stage (with Keith Moon) in his instrument destruction while Daltrey and the imperceptible Entwistle (Des has a post of one of his songs here) looked on, almost aghast.

‘Keep On Working’ is one of the songs taken from Pete’s 1979 album Empty Glass. Apparently he was going through a rough time (as the video will show), questioning his relevance in the current generation of punksters, grieving over the recently-deceased Moon, and with a heroin and alcohol problem going on too.

In the current climate (current favourite phrase on thishereboogie and the rest of Ireland) ‘Keep On Working’ is a humourous take on the British stiff upper lip and work ethic. The video shows Townshend looking terribly dishevelled in some decrepid old house, writing on a chalkboard, singing songs, trying to be productive.

The rest of this album is nothing to write home about - ‘Rough Boys’ should be heard if only out of morbid curiousity, and the rest of it can be left to gather dust. But ‘Keep On Working’ is a great tune, showing that Townshend could write winsome little-Englandness as well as any young upstart named Paul Weller. Here’s the video.

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I’m not sure why I haven’t yet blogged about ‘New Grass’, currently my favourite song of all time. I’ve got a draft written somewhere about ‘I Believe in You’, another Talk Talk classic. This band really were something else - from humble synth-based Duran Duran beginnings, they evolved into a group whose later output accumulates more praise and accolades by the year.

Starting with the beautiful Spirit of Eden album, completely out of time and step in 1988, Talk Talk basically redefined progressive rock and actually made it likeable. Marrying a pastoral, country feel to Satie- and Debussy-influenced minimalism, crossed with a bit of Velvet Underground noise, Talk Talk created an album that is a strong contender for best British album of the last 20 years. It got them dropped by their label, who wanted a new Colour of Spring, with its ‘Life’s What You Make It’ standard of poppiness. Instead, they were treated to an LP that didn’t kick off until well into the second minute, and then had as its first side over 20 minutes of music…

But I digress. Talk Talk made two of my favourite albums, and I knew I would write too much about them. To the ear that really listens, ‘New Grass’ can be appreciated as one of the nicest pieces of music ever committed to tape, and to me ranks up there with Beethoven, Lennon/McCartney, you name it. It’s that good.

The fact that it seems to be about God, “Christendom”, ascension to heaven, and other weighty concepts does not bother this here agnostic. Whether or not Hollis found God is immaterial - that he left us with this piece of music is. Hollis is retired now, but there is a growing legion of fans of Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock that wish he would come back and reprise, and maybe conclude these classics. He went some with with this solo Mark Hollis album, but that was back in 1998. Plus, he’s a fellow Tottenham supporter. Really, what more could you ask? Here’s the link to the song on YouTube. No need to look at anything - just sit back and listen.

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With Des off ogling the young ladies in college today, the onus is on me to provide a song for the day. And what better song, in “the current climate”, than this melancholy little chestnut from Shakey himself? The opener from the startlingly good (given his later output) album Rust Never Sleeps, ‘My My Hey Hey (Out Of The Blue And Into The Black)’ is as good an opener as you’d find in the ’70’s.

Opening with a neat little Am-G-F figure on the acoustic, and obviously live with most of the audience noise removed, Neil Young manages to sum up the by now obvious decline in quality of the aging ’60s generation, and their replacement by the younger, more energetic punks. The almost simplistic first verse hits the nail on the head, while one single line cut right to the core: “It’s better to burn out, than it is to rust”. Kurt Cobain quoted from this song in his suicide note, possibly without realising the ironic gesture Young intended to pass on to the young punks.

The line “The King is gone but he’s not forgotten, This is the story of Johnny Rotten” is a playful comment on the changing-of-the-guard-nature of rock ‘n’ roll, as Elvis passes the mantle onto ‘this year’s model’. The punks and new-wavers who all in turn professed their love of Young hardly realised that they in turn would have to pass it on some day.

A very simple song to sing and play, with a harmonica break in the middle so plaintive that it underlines the riddles being spun by Young. The whole Rust Never Sleeps album is a classic, probably the last really good thing Neil Young did, and it closes with a grungy, feedback-drenched version of the appositely titled ‘Hey Hey, My My’. You’d be hard pushed to find a song that describes the meaningful yet transient nature of rock ‘n’ roll. One day you’re young, the next you’re wondering what the hell the kids are wearing. Here’s a good live version. Gotta love the way he says “Thank you, friends” at the start.

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