Lowrell Simon was a Chicago-based soul singer. After being in a succession of hopeful groups, slogging around on the circuit and briefly grazing the lower reaches of the US R&B charts, he was, by the mid ’70s, a staff writer at Curtom (Curtis Mayfield’s label) writing and producing soundtrack material of little consequence. Nothing truly spectacular really materialised from his writer’s pen until the end of the decade. By then, Lowrell was back recording as a solo artist, his experiences with Curtom better equipping him for the making of glossy, groove-driven soul music.
He struck gold with the very Mayfield-titled and timeless Mellow Mellow Right On.
Lowrell Simon – Mellow Mellow Right On
Anyone who’s heard Massive Attack’s Blue Lines – and that’s everyone here, right? – will recognise instantly its marching heartbeat of a bassline, used to great effect on that album’s Lately; stately, steady and never wavering, driving that track to its soulful and melancholic conclusion.
On the original, things are a bit more upbeat. That flare of unresolved strings at the start, all tension and no release, coupled with the wet slap of funk guitar and precise drum beat promises much and delivers exactly what you hope for. A choir pops up, “Mellow, mellow, right on!” they chant…and then Lowrell himself slopes in, all spoken word and chocolate-wrapped vocals – “Ladies, I’d like to take this time out just to say…” his easy vocal easing up, out and into Marvin Gaye territory.
Behind him, his disciplined band never drops the beat. They groove and smoove their way through ten metronomic minutes and more of pure discofied funk, the sound of flapping trouser legs, jumbo-winged collars and powder blue suits, of oversized hair and oversized heels. In an era much maligned and swept aside by the snotty arrival of punk, Mellow Mellow Right On glistens like the studio lighting refracting from the mirrored lens of a pair of aviator shades and serves as a reminder that the best disco was just as valid as any other music. Fight me.
You’d get no argument on that front from Edwyn Collins. Scrolling through a Postcard Records group on Facebook recently, that old Mojo article (above) jumped right out at me, and not just because of EC’s unmatching shirt ‘n trousers combination.
Edwyn, forever on the money, whether it comes to guitars or clothes or hair, is once again correct in his assessment of Mellow Mellow Right On. Sung especially for the ladies and wrapped in a bad-ass but glossy production (the wee electronic shooms that fire off now and again, the oil slick thick guitar, the tease and timbre of the strings) – it’d be easy to imagine Dr Dre getting behind the desk to work his G-Funk magic with this as the bedrock.
I bet Edwyn’s still grooving to it now. I know I am.
I’ve been reading everyone’s end of year lists and the one thing that strikes me – as it has done for the past half dozen years or so – is my out-of-touchness with new artists and releases. While all and any release is but a couple of clicks away from the very space I’m sitting at, I’m staunchly anti-Spotify…and it’s clearly to my listening detriment. I much prefer physical over digital any day of the week, but inevitably finance – or the lack of – has dictated that my consumption of new music is on a clear downward trend and gathering momentum with each passing month. It’ll likely be sometime around September 2024 when I stumble across a record from 2023 that’s had everyone raving for months beforehand, but I’m not that bothered to be honest.
I’ve really enjoyed the tracks that The Smile have used to promote their upcoming second album. Bending Hectic, all woozy electric guitar and close-miked Thom Yorke, was supposed to be a stand-alone single but I notice it’s on the tracklisting for the record, so clearly someone talked sense into them. To have thrown away a stone cold 21st century classic to the digital ether would have been stupid of them.
More recently, the album’s title track Wall Of Eyes has found its way onto the radio playlists. It’s a beauty; a bossa nova-ish acoustic groove with far-off layered strings that sound like thunder peals and a melody that takes repeated plays to fully unwind, but when it does…wow! I know folk go on and on and on about Radiohead – and this ain’t Radiohead – but it’s really great. Their debut album was a beauty and its follow-up already sounds like it might be too.
My favourite track of the year, for what it’s worth, was a one-sided promo 12″ that came out via Last Night From Glasgow. The label continues to go from strength to strength, and whilst providing a home to disparate but talented, long in the tooth and (mainly) Scottish acts, they also offer a platform to the new and inexperienced. Quad 90 was one such act and their track Le Blank will no doubt ring with a lot of this readership.
Quad 90 – Le Blank
It’s nothing you’ve never heard before. Forward-thinking with a knowing nod to the past, it could be ESG or ACR or even a Franz Ferdinand remix, but all necessary ingredients are present; post-punk chicken-scratch guitar, a ghosting, earwormy, Tom Tom Club-ish keyboard motif in the chorus, thumping Bernard Edwards bass and a sashaying double female vocal that falls somewhere between sultry and sulky. It played long and often round here before finding favour amongst the more discerrning radio shows across 6 Music and Radio Scotland (as did its follow-up Unequal Division) and is a good signifier of what might come next.
Gig-wise, I’m heavily involved with Freckfest in promoting shows in Irvine’s Harbour Arts Centre, a proper hidden gem of a music venue with just 100 seats and immeasurable vibes. Some of my favourite shows this year have been in here.
The Bug Club turned up on the last Tuesday in January – surely the hardest night of the year in which to sell tickets – and supported themselves by sneaking on unannounced and playing a whole half-hour of new material before coming back out to slay a hardy 80-strong audience with their Velvets x Modern Lovers rattle meets Osees x Stooges roll. For three folk, they make a quite marvellous racket. If they’re playing in a town near you (and they most likely will be at some point), you know what to do. Review here.
My favourite gig of the year was quite possibly around the same time, when the Hungry Beat collective pulled out all the stops in a marathon show that fused together like a scratchy Pete Frame family tree of Scottish alt. pop reimagined as The Band’s Last Waltz. Review here.
Other notable shows were The Waterboys epic and sprawling but razor-sharp show at the Barrowlands. Yer actual Mike Scott sent his foot messengers my way to express his personal thanks for this review, which was unexpected, and The Bluebells roof-raising homecoming album launch show in St Lukes. Yer actual Bobby Bluebell immediately re-Tweeted this review, accompanied by 3 love hearts, apparently the highest Bluebell accolade in the land.
Books are the new rock ‘n roll, dontchaknow? There were some really great book events this year that were the equal and more of any live music show. Andrew O’Hagan‘s Mayflies – already a modern classic and no mistake – had a bit of a reprise in Irvine over the late summer when a Nicola Sturgeon-chaired event saw Andrew chat about growing up in Irvine and the cultural influences that seeped their way into his autobiographical tale of life-long friendship. The former First Minister, a confirmed bookworm, asked me to sign one of my Perfect Reminder books for her and then re-Tweeted my follow-up review of the evening. Unsurprisingly, my stats went a wee bit stratospheric on the back of it, so I’m delighted (and relieved) that my writing in that review is up there with some of the best stuff I’ve ever written.
Not to be outdone, John Niven popped up in the HAC as part of the promotional tour for his powerful/excellent O Brother novel, a real autobiographical darkness and light page-turner that deals with the despair of family suicide and (the despair of) growing up in Irvine. If you’re of a similar age to me, there’ll be enough memory joggers contained within its pages to have you reading frantically to the end. It’s easily the best, most emotionally-charged book of 2023 and you really must read it. I’ve now read it twice, its pages forever smudged with the dampness of sad and happy tears.
On a personal level, I got to do more writing of worth (sleevenotes for the Trashcan Sinatras) and actual, real book stuff. A second publication bearing my name – The Full Pocket – came out at the start of the year and sold out just a few weeks ago. Of course, no sooner had it sold out than the Americans were asking for boxes of it and that man Niven was pointing out a badly-phrased and grammatically-poor sentence that might benefit from a rewrite. Should a reprint be in order, it’ll need a swift edit first.
The Full Pocket took me to another music ‘n literature event, this time in May at Frets in Strathaven, alongside James Yorkston and Vic Galloway. While James did his set, Vic and I made full use of the green room’s facilities and availed many of its bottles of their contents. Imagine my surprise the next morning when I saw photos of Vic, his quiff immaculate, accompanying James for a couple of numbers at the end of his set. I wonder just who it was I was talking to back stage all that time? I could swear Vic never moved from that green room the entire length of James Yorkston’s set.
Must get a new jacket for 2024
Vic, by now a close pal, obviously, turned up trumps in November when he got me backstage to say hello again to Johnny Marr. Vic was hosting an event where Johnny was talking about his 10 years as a solo artist and, with his last words said to me in May – “Keep in touch!” – ringing in my ears, I did just that and suggested he might be able to help me get a book to Johnny. After the show, Johnny greeted me like a long-lost friend – “Hey! It’s Craig from the Ballroom Blitz!” (a reference to his gig in Kilmarnock’s Grand Hall that Freckfest put on) and both myself and that other music writer-about-town Billy Sloan gave Johnny our respective books, much to the bemusement of the random guy who’d breached security and followed us quickly in. “Are youse guys famous?” he asked me with a worried look as he watched first Billy and then me chat easily and familiarly with Johnny. “They’ll fling me oot when they suss ahm jist a bam.”
Finally, I don’t know exactly what 2024 will bring, but I do know I’m likely to have my name on the front of another book. More on that when there’s more to tell…
When does self defence become state-sanctioned, and Western world-approved, genocide?
(War Is Over, If You Want It.)
For the past few weeks I’ve been wanting to write something on Israel/Palestine. Truth is, I don’t have it in me to write something that’s smart, intelligent, on point and devoid of empty cliché. I’ve tried, but the words don’t come out in the way I really want them to. When it comes to the serious issues, I’m just not smart enough to express my thoughts eloquently and intelligently.
When you read about the Holocaust and the Nazis, you like to imagine you’d be the good guy. You’d fight the Nazis, you’d free the concentration camps.
This guy – Paul Biggar – says it brilliantly. Rather than link to his page, I’ve copied it, measured word for measured word, and pasted it below. I think it’s just about the most powerful article I’ve read in relation to Palestine and Gaza.
I can’t sleep
Fadel Senna/AFP/Getty ImagesI can’t sleep. I’m lying in bed every night, and images of Gaza are running through my head. Fathers holding their babies, dead, caked in dust. Bombs dropped on homes [1], on hospitals [2], on schools [3]. Tens of thousands of dead [4] in indiscriminate bombings [5]. Children crying, pulling through rubble to find their families [6].The inhumanity of the soldiers is unbearable. They shoot civilians in the street [7], imprison and torture children [8], and strip and humiliate innocent men [9]. But the soldiers are having fun [10]. They’re posting to TikTok [11], doing some war crimes [12], then celebrating on the beach [13]. I hate them. I hate them.I can’t work. I code for 5 minutes before their bodies come back. I must work, but who can do a startup through a genocide, when 20,000 are dead [14], when the Israeli-imposed starvation is setting in [15]. I try though; the distraction is good for me.I look at my colleagues – the founders, the investors, my network, my friends, my advisors. I’m afraid to open their twitters. Each time I do, it’s a roulette: is it business as usual – a new fundraise, the latest in AI, a new model released. The blasé posts are a relief. I can tell myself that they’re censored, afraid to speak up about the genocide. Unable or not knowing how to do it. That’s understandable.The propaganda kills me. People I thought were friends, were allies. So much humanity for those killed on October 7th, none for the people killed on the 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, or in November or December [16]. 20,000 people, killed by deliberate, indiscriminate bombing [17].None either for the people killed on Oct 6th, 5th, 4th [18]. For the people massacred in 1948 [19] and since. No protest of the illegal occupation [20], the illegal settlements [21]. The razing of the villages [22] and the olive groves [23]. They don’t exist to them; they didn’t happen.
Palestinian refugees leaving the Galilee in October-November 1948 from Wikipedia
Have they no questions about why 2 million people live in Gaza and how they came to be there [24]. How Israel carefully controls the calories allowed into Gaza [25], keeping everyone starving. That Israel can turn off the water [26], can turn off the electricity [27]. That this is something a country is able to do to a people. That this is something a country is willing to do to a people [28].
Is this what Israel is? The tech outpost, the US ally, the beacon of democracy in the Middle East? A country that kills journalists [30] and writers in surgical strikes [31]. That forces doctors away from ICU babies, leaving them to die and rot in their incubators [32]. Whose snipers shoot children and grannies in the head [33].
79 year old Hadiya Nassar was killed by an Israeli sniper in December. Poet, writer, and professor Refaat Alareer was killed by a missile which also killed his brother, his sister, and her 4 children.
When the cofounder of Hamas was 9 years old, his uncle was massacred by Israeli soldiers in the Khan Yunis massacre, along with 274 other unarmed Palestinians. He was shot in house-to-house searches. Others were lined up and executed. How many Hamas’ are being created today. [29]
When you read about the Holocaust and the Nazis, you like to imagine you’d be the good guy. You’d fight the Nazis, you’d free the concentration camps. But apparently I wouldn’t. Apparently I would have just sat there paralyzed, incapable of doing anything about the genocide I see every day. Unable to think of any way to help. All I can do is retweet and protest and write a stupid blog post. I feel so stupid.
I wasn’t ready to see that my friends are Brownshirts [34]. That they actively cheer on the genocide [35]. The anger, the desire – the need even – for retribution against innocent civilians. I wasn’t ready for my friends being camp guards, party officials, propagandists.
The propaganda is real, and organized [36], and obvious [37]. Posting about antisemitism in universities to cover indiscriminate bombing of civilians — have you no shame. Repeating Israeli claims which have no proof, and no credibility [38]. Keeping the discussion anywhere except on Palestinians being murdered in Gaza. Denying the number of dead because the numbers are reported by Hamas [39].
Of course, everyone is Hamas now. The child ripped in two by an MK-84 [40] is Hamas. The woman screaming for her sister, digging at the rubble – she’s Hamas. The orphaned nine year old, now the sole parent of her 4 year old brother. Both are Hamas.
Injured children arrive at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis on Tuesday. Credit: Loay Ayyoub via Getty Images
Sometimes I work out how many people my taxes have killed [41]. Intrusive thoughts. Maybe they’re used for roads or healthcare, but maybe I bought a bomb last year and it razed a city block in Khan Yunis. Maybe it killed 50 people. Maybe I killed 50 people.
My investors keep posting. How unsafe the kids feel at Harvard [42]. Railing against “From the river to the sea” as they conveniently omit “Palestine will be free” [43]. Cancelling Tiktok for teaching the kids history instead of US and Israeli propaganda [44].
“Members of the Haganah paramilitary group escort Palestinians expelled from Haifa after Jewish forces took control in April 1948 (AFP)”. Middle East Eye
Anything to keep your eyes off the rubble that Gaza has become [45]. The trail of tears to an empty desert, bombed and shot as they go [46]. Anything to avoid their own culpability in this genocide. They are Hess. They post Israeli flags on twitter as Israel drops bombs on Gaza. They protest a ceasefire. THEY PROTEST A FUCKING CEASEFIRE.
I don’t know what to do, but I know these are not my people. Who can work with people whitewashing genocide. Are we supposed to pretend it’s business as usual as we send our friends’ intros, frolic at conferences, discuss monetization strategy.
To Ed Sim, Erica Brescia, Michael Dearing, and especially Matt Ocko, we’re done [47]. I’ll never pitch you again, never ask for help, never send intros or recommend you. I’m done with Boldstart, and DCVC, and Harrison Metal, and Redpoint. (I’m also done with Bessemer [48] and Sequoia [49] and First Round [50].)
I’m ashamed that these are some of my biggest supporters over the years, the people who invested in me, twice, the people who helped, who advised. I cannot work with the people whitewashing a killing, the people who know it’s happening, and who cover for it, who support the IDF and the US administration which allows it, which funds it.
Oct 7th was an atrocity, and so was every day since then. 20,000 Palestinians have been killed by indiscriminate, deliberate Israeli bombs.
Atrocities happened long before Oct 7th as well. The occupation was no secret. Hundreds of Palestinians killed each year since the Nakba. The rest kept under the Israeli boot, stripped of their rights and homes and dignity.
Their politicians tweet about Palestinians like they aren’t human. They discuss them like their lives don’t matter. They call them “animals”. They have killed thousands of Palestinians, and give every indication that they will continue the genocide.
They are saying it out loud [51]. I can see it, and so could Ed and Michael and Matt and Erica. They simply choose not to.
Actions
Pro-Israeli investors have created a culture of fear in tech where supporters of Palestinian freedom feel unable to raise their voices. I have spoken to many people in tech who are afraid that if they speak up, they’ll be unable to raise their next round, and lose 5-10 years of work on their venture, for their families and for their employees.
We must break the silence around the genocide in Gaza. I know this is a big ask. I know there are significant risks involved, and that’s not your fault. But all the same, we cannot continue to be complicit in this genocide.
Above all, name it. Say publicly what you see happening, and say that what Israel and the US are doing is wrong.
Feel silenced? Say that!
Just like most in tech made Black Lives Matter statements in 2020, come out and say #FreePalestine. Put a banner on your website.
Secondly, don’t make money for investors who whitewash genocide, namely partners at Boldstart, DCVC, Harrison Metal, Redpoint, Bessemer, Sequoia, or First Round.
Tech workers: Don’t work for companies who take funding from these firms. If you already work there, contact management and the founders, ask difficult questions in all-hands, anonymously if you need to. Threaten to get a new job – actually do get a new job.
Founders: don’t take money from these firms. If you already have, contact your partner to register your discomfort, and ask them to divest. Prevent them from investing in later rounds.
[1] See for example here or here, but hundreds of apartment blocks were in Gaza before its destruction. +972 Magazine reports that Israel has “A concerted policy to bomb family homes”, and details many accounts from those whose homes were bombed and families killed.
[4] The official death count on Dec 13 is 18,600, including over 5000 children. however, officials have lost the ability to count.
The accuracy of the Gaza Ministry of Health’s reporting of death tolls has been shown to be accurate by recent studies when looking at the 2008, 2014, and 2015 wars. US medical journal Lancet reviewed and affirms the numbers provided in the current war.
“These figures are professionally done and have proven to be reliable,” said Omar Shakir, Human Rights Watch’s Israel and Palestine director.
[5] Even President Biden has called the attacks “indiscriminate”, though the death toll and pictures of a destroyed Gaza demonstrate that directly.
[7] Israeli soldiers have been recorded shooting civilians who pose no threat, including children and a mentally disabled man. They even shot an Israeli civilian in Jerusalem, who was unarmed and had surrendered, falsely believed to be Hamas:
“When the soldiers saw him I’m assuming they thought he was a terrorist. But then when Yuval realized that that’s what they’re thinking, he opened his jacket to show he had nothing underneath, and got down on his knees. He opened his hands, so they could see he had nothing in his hands,” said Itkovich.
“He was shouting in Hebrew. He was shouting ‘I’m an Israeli.’ He threw his wallet, his identification, on the way so they could see he’s an Israeli. And they just shot him. They gunned him down,” he said.
[8] This well-referenced Human Rights Watch article (see similar on CNN and NBC) contains so many harrowing descriptions of shocking treatment of prisoners that you should read the whole thing. These excerpts barely do it justice:
As of November 1, Israeli authorities held nearly 7,000 Palestinians from the occupied territory in detention for alleged security offenses.
Far more Palestinians have been arrested since the October 7 attacks in Israel than have been released in the last week. Among those being held are dozens of women and scores of children.
The majority have never been convicted of a crime, including more than 2,000 of them being held in administrative detention, in which the Israeli military detains a person without charge or trial. Such detention can be renewed indefinitely based on secret information, which the detainee is not allowed to see. Administrative detainees are held on the presumption that they might commit an offense at some point in the future.
More than 1,400 complaints of torture, including painful shackling, sleep deprivation and exposure to extreme temperatures […]
[…] in 22 cases of detention of Palestinian children they documented in 2023, 64 percent said they were physically abused and 73 percent were strip searched by Israeli forces while in detention.
Prisoners released by the IDF in November report being beaten:
Na’im told CBS News. “Any new prisoner was coming in, he looked beaten up. We requested medicine or other stuff and they refused to give it to us.”
“He kept beating me for eight minutes with a stick and without caring where it lands,” Mohammed Nazal told Al Jazeera of how an Israeli guard tortured him.
“I was covering my head. The stick was aimed here, at my head, but my hands would receive the blow.”
Ahmed Al-Salaima told PBS “After October 7th, they started hitting female prisoners. And they started to reduce the quantity of the food. There were 9 of us in the room and they gave us two meals in small quantities. Before entering the jail, I was 158 pounds, but now I’m 121 pounds”
PBS has more testimony by released prisoners on their treatment.
[9] The IDF captured a group of men, stripped them to their underwear, blindfolded them and put them in trucks. The IDF later admitted that 85-90% of these men had no connection to Hamas, and provided no proof about the remaining 10-15%.
[10] This compilation thread by Palestinian writer and Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor Comms Chief Muhammad Shehada shows social media of IDF soldiers torturing prisoners, followed by Israeli civilians mocking and memeing about it. This was confirmed by other media.
In one, soldiers ride bicycles through rubble. In another, a soldier has moved Muslim prayer rugs into a bathroom. In another, a soldier films boxes of lingerie found in a Gaza home. Yet another shows a soldier trying to set fire to food and water supplies that are scarce in Gaza.
[12] This isn’t the only video I’ve seen of Palestinians being used as human shields by the IDF in the occupied Palestinian territories, but I’m trying to restrict most of the references in this piece to legacy media sites.
[14] This CNN chart updates as the death toll increases
[15] Israel blockaded Gaza from receiving food after October 7th, though a small amount (about 20 trucks a day, for a region that needs 100 trucks a day for subsistence) was allowed through during the Humanitarian pause. Gazans on the ground report they are starving.
[16] By Oct 17th, over 3,000 Gazans had been killed by Israel. By Dec 12th, that number had risen to over 18,000.
[17] Even President Biden, a self described Zionist and friend of Israel, has referred to Israel’s actions as “indiscriminate bombing”
[19] The Deir Yassin massacre in 1948 was committed by the forces that would become the IDF, in which at least 107 people were massacred.
“Women and children were stripped, lined up, photographed, and then slaughtered by automatic firing and survivors have told of even more incredible bestialities,” the report said. “Those who were taken prisoners were treated with degrading brutality.”
This was part of the Nakba, in which 15,000 Palestinians were killed and 750,000 were forced to flee.
[20] Israel has been deemed to violate many of the UN Conventions that were specifically drawn up after World War II to prevent the Nazis’ actions from happening again. Occupying land annexed by force (including Gaza and the West Bank) is illegal.
[22] During the Nakba, pre-Israeli militias razedvillages to prevent the returns of Palestinians to their land.
From 1947 to 1949, some 750,000 Palestinian Arabs were made refugees, and more than 500 Palestinian towns and villages were depopulated, most through direct attacks by Zionist militias that later became the Israeli Army.
Remarkably, olive trees contribute to 14% of Palestine’s economy.
Beyond the monetary value, olive trees have become symbolic of Palestinians attachment to their land.
Since 1967, more than 800,000 Palestinian olive trees have been illegally uprooted by the Israeli authority.3 In August 2021 alone, more than 9,000 have been removed
[24] Gaza is a tiny strip of land that was occupied by Egypt in 1948, and so was one of the only safe places for refugees from the Nakba to go. After 750,000 fled from Israeli massacres throughout Palestine, over 200,000 settled in Gaza.
The Israeli military made precise calculations of Gaza’s daily calorie needs to avoid malnutrition during a blockade imposed on the Palestinian territory between 2007 and mid-2010, according to files the defense ministry released on Wednesday under a court order.
[26] Israel controls the water in Palestine. West Bank Palestinians get access to only a third of the water that Israelis can use, and only 82% of the WHO recommended minimum.
In Gaza, some 90-95 per cent of the water supply is contaminated and unfit for human consumption. Israel does not allow water to be transferred from the West Bank to Gaza, and Gaza’s only fresh water resource, the Coastal Aquifer, is insufficient for the needs of the population and is being increasingly depleted by over-extraction and contaminated by sewage and seawater infiltration.
After October 7, the Israeli government shut off the pipes that supply Gaza with water.
It has since only resumed piping water to some parts of southern Gaza while some water has entered via Egypt, but it’s not reaching everyone and is not nearly enough to meet the needs of Gaza’s population, requiring many to rely on the local water supply. According to the UN however, more than 96 percent of the water supply in Gaza is “unfit for human consumption.”
[27] Israel controls access to fuel in Gaza, as it has for 2 decades. From Al Jazeera:
Israel classed diesel as a “dual use” good that can be used for military as well as civilian purposes. Therefore, it is heavily controlled or restricted.
However, Israel wrote the rule book on “kosher fuel” for Gaza, a highly complex system of approvals and monitoring put in place to guarantee that “civilian use” fuel flows only to Gaza’s sole power plant.
“I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed,” [Defense Minister] Gallant says following an assessment at the IDF Southern Command in Beersheba. “We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly,” he adds.
[29] The Khan Yunis massacre was documented in Footnotes In Gaza by Joe Sacca, containing many first-person accounts, including a conversation in the foreword with Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, co-founder of Hamas (along with Sheikh Ahmed Yassin). He stated “I still remember the wailing and tears of my father over his brother. I couldn’t sleep for many months after that… It left a wound in my heart that can never heal. They planted hatred in our hearts.”
[30] At least 68 journalists have been killed in Gaza since the war began. Reporters Without Borders claims Israel is “eradicating” journalism in Gaza.
[31] The killing of Refaat al-Areer on December 7th, a well-known Palestinian poet and writer. It is alleged that he was targeted in a surgical strike which destroyed only the apartment at which he was staying. The Israeli missile strike also killed his brother, his sister, and her four children.
[32] Israeli soldiers forced doctors and staff to leave Al Nasr hospital on November 10th. Two weeks later, 5 babies were found decomposing in the ruins of the hospital.
[36] Lee Fang and Jack Poulson uncovered the pro-Israel information machine, a collaboration between pro-Israeli investors, tech executives, activists, and government officials. They collaborate to fire anyone arguing in favor of Palestinian freedom, including Courtney Carey from Wix, and Paddy Cosgrave from Websummit, and to put public pressure on any comments deemed anti-Israel.
[37] When folks suddenly start talking about anti-semitism at universities, or maligning slogans of Palestinian freedom, we know it’s to cover up the genocide that’s going on in Gaza.
[38] Joseph Massad, professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University, makes the case that Israeli propaganda has been repeatedly shown to be false, and that they have no credibility apart from what is parroted by Western news organizations.
[39] The accuracy of the Gaza Ministry of Health’s reporting of death tolls has been shown to be accurate by recent studies when looking at the 2008, 2014, and 2015 wars. US medical journal Lancet reviewed and affirms the numbers provided in the current war.
“These figures are professionally done and have proven to be reliable,” said Omar Shakir, Human Rights Watch’s Israel and Palestine director.
Israel’s liberal use of very large weapons in dense urban areas, including U.S.-made 2,000-pound bombs that can flatten an apartment tower, is surprising, some experts say.
“It’s beyond anything that I’ve seen in my career,” said Marc Garlasco, a military adviser for the Dutch organization PAX and a former senior intelligence analyst at the Pentagon. To find a historical comparison for so many large bombs in such a small area, he said, we may “have to go back to Vietnam, or the Second World War.”
In fighting during this century, by contrast, U.S. military officials often believed that the most common American aerial bomb — a 500-pound weapon — was far too large for most targets when battling the Islamic State in urban areas like Mosul, Iraq, and Raqqa, Syria.
[41] An MK-84 costs $16,000, so your taxes can kill more civilians than you think.
[42] I’ll note that the same conservatives screaming about freedom of speech for the last decade were the first to ask for freedom of speech to be shut down at universities.
[43] “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is deliberately misconstrued to imply the genocide of the the Israel people. When taken at face value, it can clearly be seen to aim for Palestinian freedom. Jewish Currents has a good article on this from 2021.
[44] Tech leaders such as the Information’s Sam Lessin called out Tiktok’s foreign ownership, complaining that it is a major national security threat. My understanding is that this referred to the significant difference between pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian hashtags, with #freepalestine winning by a margin of 4-1.
Tiktok responded essentially that the kids are alright, and that millennials are much more likely to sympathize with Palestinian oppression.
[51] A selection of quotes by senior Israeli officials:
Human animals must be treated as such. There will be no electricity and no water [in Gaza], there will only be destruction. You wanted hell, you will get hell.” – Major General Ghassan Alian, Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories
“I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly – Defense Minister Yoav Gallant
To be clear, when they say that Hamas needs to be eliminated, it also means those who sing, those who support and those who distribute candy, all of these are terrorists. […] They should all be eliminated –Itamar Ben-Gvir, Minister of National Security
Right now, one goal: Nakba! A Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of 48. Nakba in Gaza and Nakba to anyone who dares to join! –Ariel Kallner, Likud Party [Tweet preserved here]
Billy Paul is best known for the smoothest of soul, his voice as silky as the bedsheets he could serenade you into. Me & Mrs Jones, I Want Cha’ Baby, Thanks For Saving My Life, Let’s Make A Baby… they all glide across the ears, airbrushed in Fender Rhodes, glossy orchestration and tasteful brass, Paul’s easy, conversational phrasing sung in a Barry White before-his-balls-had-dropped chocolate-coated vocal. Mainly written by Gamble & Huff, his music epitomises the pre-disco big band soul style that would morph into The Sound Of Philadelphia, a distinct style of music desperate to keep up and remain crucial while the world turned to synchopated beats and four-to-the-floor rhythms. In order to make its statement, the classic Philly sound – and by association, much of Billy Paul’s – relies on rhythmic hi-hats, lush orchestration and slick arrangements featuring a cast of players and entire choirs of backing vocalists. Save a few records, TSOP is not really my kinda stuff; it’s too slick, there’s no grit, it’s schmaltzy, even. I like my soul music down ‘n dirty and TSOP along with Billy Paul just doesn’t deliver. Or so I thought.
On his 360 Degrees of Billy Paul album, you’ll find the infectious and completely magic Am I Black Enough For You?
Billy Paul – Am I Black Enough For You?
This – this! – is more like the Philly sound I’m into! Announcing itself on a clavinet run that I believe (although I’m no expert on this) spells out S.T.E.V.I.E.W.O.N.D.E.R. in morse code, it gives way to cop show brass; low and sliding in the verses, stiletto-sharp and stabbing in the chorus and answering the vocals between the singing. There’s the ubiquitous wah-wah, free-flowing polyrhythmic congas, a casually funky, octave-leaping bassline that even Bootsy Collins might have trouble playing and it all runs away on an elongated outro that features – yes! – a false ending, the fading brass ‘n bass cheekily picking things back up again for another minute of headnodding groove just when you’re sure the party is over. It’s one of those records you’ll want to play again and again as soon as it’s finished.
Unusually for Billy Paul, the song’s message is political. Sitting alongside other black pride records such as James Brown’s Say It Loud (I’m Black And Proud), its message was one of defiance in the face of white oppression.
We’re gonna move on up One by one We ain’t gonna stop Until the work is done
We’re gonna move on up Three by three We gotta get rid of poverty
We’re gonna move on up Six by six I gotta use my mind Instead of my fists
Coming hot on the Cuban stacked heels of Me & Mrs Jones, his Billboard Hot 100 Number 1 smash, the record was a flop. It failed to make the top 75, even although it sold extremely well amongst its target audience. But it was alienating. Too confrontational, not something the average American Joe would be comfortable buying. It was clear commercial suicide after the success of …Mrs Jones, and yet, it’s so obviously a brilliant record. Fifty years on, attitudes to such records may have improved. You’d certainly like to think so. Get down on it.
When Steve Clarke was manager at Kilmarnock I’d often see him as we both made the daily commute from north to east Ayrshire. His pristine, glossy black Porsche Cayenne would ghost up behind me in the fast lane and I’d pull back into the slow lane, deferring to the superiority of both his mode of transport and his effortless man-management skills, skills that would see my team finish 3rd in the league while regularly beating both big Glasgow teams in the process. I was always desperate to catch his eye, give him a wee thumbs up by way of thanks from all Killie supporters who’d had little to cheer about since winning the League Cup in 2012. The closest I got to this was at the end of the bypass one morning, at the Moorfield roundabout on the outskirts of Kilmarnock. I’d pulled into the left hand lane and he’d pulled into the right, the turn-off you take for Rugby Park, the home of the Killie. Glancing right to check for traffic, I realised we were side by side. The thing was, he was also looking right for oncoming traffic and all I could see of him was the back of his tactically astute head. With no chance of catching his eye, my chance was gone. I never did get to show my appreciation, until
…a week or so ago. I’m driving back home from Kilmarnock this time. I’m in the process of overtaking an artic lorry near the crematorium when a large car appears out of the flood of late summer sunshine behind me, clearly on a mission to break whatever speed limit is in place, clearly with no time for any car in front of it. I look more closely in my mirror, ready to stare out the arrogance of the big car driver behind me, when I spot the wrinkled, perma-angry scowl of Steve Clarke. Even behind his mirrored sunglasses, I knew it was him. The deep and cavernous brow lines that curved above the sunglasses like a topographic map and the salt ‘n pepper beard set in a face of stone cast no doubt on the matter. As soon as there was a safe distance between myself and the lorry, I pulled back in, heart a-pounding. You don’t get in the road of the Scotland manager. Especially the best Scotland manager we’re maybe ever likely to have. As he pulled past me, I glanced to my right. His stoic face was looking straight ahead. Damn! He’s got a new car, but the personal licence plate confirmed the identity. An opportunity lost again. And this time I’d planned to offer up a double, McCartney thumbs aloft too, one for Killie and one for Scotland. It was not to be though, until…
…I reached the Morrisons roundabout a couple of miles up the road. Unbelievably, he was just in front of me! And, oh man! He was pulling into the straight ahead lane, just as I was filtering into the right hand lane. This time, he’d be looking in my direction! And, as we waited for the cars to clear, he did! He looked right at me. My mind a-scatter, I forgot all about the pre-planned double thumbs acknowledgment and instead I did what any self-respecting Killie//Scotland fan would’ve done. I gave him a proper left hand fist-pump, acknowledging his greatness with each exaggerated, shaken pump. Clarke looked away, looked back, stared at me. I was still fist pumping like a maniac when it dawned on me that the scowling Sir Steve thought I was shaking an angry, road-rage fist at him. Or maybe even, (oh no!) a wanker sign. As his squealing tyres moved onto a space in the roundabout that wasn’t really there, he sped off aggressively towards Saltcoats, no doubt wondering who the angry driver in the Vauxhall was.
Gutted.
I was double gutted a few days later when I stupidly reversed into my neighbour’s car. Parked awkwardly at the end of my drive, I was sure I could turn without much bother.
Bang.
It turns out I couldn’t.
An expensive lesson, as it’s proving to be, in having good spacial awareness.
It gets better.
A few days after that, with the bump in the hands of the insurance companies, I was sitting in the car in the hospital car park, early for a routine appointment and in the process of actually replying to the guy whose car I had reversed into. Suddenly there’s a thud and my car lurches forward. I look in the mirror. It’s not Steve Clarke this time. It’s an old lady reversing into me…and right into the exact spot that’s already a mess of ragged plastic and foreign paint.
I get out and signal to her. She rolls down her window.
“You’ve just reversed into me.”
“Naw ah didnae son.”
“Eh…you did.”
She gets out and looks. “I didnae dae that!”
“You didn’t do all of it, but you’ve made it worse than it was.”
“But I didnae dae onyhin’ “
“You did! You reversed into me!”
We look at her car. Not a mark on it. Not one.
“See. I didnae hit you.”
“You did though.”
“You’ll need to speak to my husband.”
Forget it, I said. Don’t worry about it. You couldn’t make it up. You really couldn’t.
Adam & The Ants– Cartrouble
Here’s Adam & The AntsCartrouble. I’m not so certain it’s anything much to do with bumps and breakdowns and more a metaphorical musing on the lack of bedroom activity, but it’s a great single. Not yet blessed with the Burundi beat, the Ants jerk away like a knock-kneed XTC, all crisp guitar lines and fluid hooks, in itself a metaphor for the crisp and fluid passing game that Steve Clarke has instilled in the Scotland national team this last wee while.
Anyway, check your mirrors. You never know who’s behind you…
Them targetted ads, man. You don’t get nuthin’ for free. While you’re scrolling obliviously through social media, Zuckerberg’s and Musk’s analytics monkeys are harvesting your data; your likes and dislikes, the length of time you interact with something, the speed you scroll past, whether or not you click a follow-on link. It’s happening right now as you read – or don’t read – this. It’s all fed into the system and the next thing y’know, your timeline is full of desirables. You knew that already though. Mention car insurance to your significant other and sure as 4th gear follows 3rd, you’ll start to notice car insurance ads on your socials. I was tasked with booking Taylor Swift tickets a month or so ago and almost immediately I was being bombarded with ads for ‘the last remaining’ hotel rooms in Edinburgh. Turns out they were too.
I’m a sucker for well-placed social media marketing. In fact, the moment an eye-catching ad makes itself known, my PayPal account will be engaged before I’m fully aware of what I’m doing. The past couple of months has seen me buy a cord ‘shacket’, trainers, a sweat shirt, a 7″ EP with 4 reggaefied versions of James Brown’s Night Train and (imminently) this…
Sokabe Keiichi & Inokasira Rangers – Born Slippy
Yes! It’s a cover of Underworld’s relentless clattering techno thumper, used to great effect in Trainspotting and as such, the sound of 1996. You didn’t know you needed a cover of this, did you? Like all the best cover versions, it takes the original’s blueprint, throws it away and recasts the track in totally new light. This particular Born Slippy is slowed down, reworked and reborn as a laidback lilting rocksteady reggae cut from the sunbaked beaches of, eh, Tokyo-by-way-of-Kagawaken. It’s great, of course.
Off-beat organ, chicka-boom drums and scratch guitar, all reggae staples present and correct, but topped off with Keiichi Sokabe’s amazingly cod-Anglified vocals. “She was a lipstick boy, she was a beautiful boy…Let your feelings slip, boy, but never your mask, boy…Look at me, mum, squatting pissed in a tube hole on the Tottenham Court Road…Lager, lager, lager, shouting…” There’s a great wee slide guitar part that wheezes itself off and out in to the ether to introduce the “She smiled at you, booooy!” line, the Edge recast as a dreadlocked Japanese roots rocker. Listen out for it.
Turns out this was a track first released in 2017. The internet being the massive pool of never-ending music it is means that it may well have passed you by in the ensuing 6 years since. Luckily for all, Parktone Japan has just reissued it on 7″. It’s limited, so be quick.
In his day job, Keiichi Sokabe is vocalist in cult Japanese act Sunny Day Service, a band that’s never far from a 12 string jangle or well-worked harmony, and nothing like the track above. It turns out it’s the Inokasira Rangers who are the skank heads here. Back in 2016, the 4-piece ‘Rangers dispensed with a vocalist to play fantastic instrumental versions of the punk/new wave catalogue as authentic as The Upsetters at Black Ark with Lee Perry at the controls. The tracks coulda been straight out of 1972 or 2022, such is the Japanese approach to authenticity. A curio perhaps, but one worth further investigation. Want to hear Geno or Neat Neat Neat or What Do I Get? given similar treatment to Born Slippy above? Of course you do. The internet is your friend…
Some songs are just there, like staircases and steering wheels and stainless steel sinks, as much a part of the fabric of life as to be ubiquitous and ever-present, unnoticed or unthought of and maybe even taken for granted. Blue Monday might be one. Come On Eileen certainly is. To this list I’d add The Bluebells’ Young At Heart.
The Bluebells – Young At Heart
You’ve heard Young At Heart, what, a hundred and seventeen times? A thousand and twenty four times? Seventeen million times in your life already? It’s just always been there, playing on an endless 40 year loop across the airwaves, a ‘hits station’ producer’s golden gift from the musical gods. Show in a slump and needing a toe-tapping lift? Reach for Young At Heart and its melancholic countrified hoedown will retain the listenership and have them baking tin bashing or dashboard beating all the way to the news and travel.
Young At Heart might seem overplayed to you. Or even stale. And you, yeah you, ya cloth-eared weirdo, you might never have liked it in the first place. You might never want to hear it ever again. But trust me though. You do.
I’ve been floating since Sunday night when, at St Luke’s in Glasgow, The Bluebells encored their album launch show with it. Well, of course they did. We may all have been there to hear the bulk of The Bluebells In The 21st Century played out live, with an extended Bluebells featuring the cream of Scottish musicianship – Mick Slaven! Douglas McIntyre! Campbell Owens! John McCusker! – but there was no way Bobby or the McLuskey brothers were going to deny their audience an airing of Young At Heart. Or I’m Falling. Or Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool. Or a soul-stirring Cath. That ‘Cath/You led me up the garden path‘ line has thrilled me since it first leapt from the grooves of the well-thumbed copy of Sisters I borrowed from Irvine library sometime in the mid ’80s and I was waiting expectantly for it to be delivered on Sunday night. It didn’t disappoint.
Young At Heart though. Ken, David and Bobby acknowledge its place in their history. With the band’s name spoken on the airwaves with every passing play and still in the collective conscience of an increasingly attention-span ravaged nation, it’s perhaps the reason The Bluebells are even still making records.
Young At Heart is a song that’s been very kind to its writers. Maybe not ‘Sting owns a vineyard in Italy’-levels of kindness, but I’d wager that Bobby Bluebell and Bananarama’s Siobhan Fahey, London Records’ golden couple at the time of its writing (and latterly Bobby Valentino, the player who provides the song’s signature violin motif and whose session fee was substantially upgraded years later to a writing credit) have done fairly well from it’s continual presence.
Bananarama – Young At Heart
Bananarama’s version was the first to be released, a deep cut in the parlance of nowadays, and one that you’ll find on their debut album Deep Sea Skiving. It follows the blueprint of the original Bluebells’ demo; slightly reserved chorus, one dimensional verse, a bit flatly produced even, but whereas Bananarama half-heartedly do their best Supremes’ impression and don’t really know where to go with it, The Bluebells original version is a totally realised slice of pop/soul – and, as it turns out, a bit of an undiscovered beauty.
The Bluebells – Young At Heart (demo)
It’s got that talc-dusted northern backbeat. Soaking wet slapback funk guitars. There are squelches of Rip It Up electro-synth woven between the words. Live, it was sometimes performed (like many bands of the time) with a stabbing brassy rash of Jam Trans Global Express horns. The whole thing is speed-freak Dexys hacked into the Wigan Casino’s electrical circuit and spat out in Glasgow’s West End. Essential listening, it goes without saying, and almost as thrilling as the masterpiece they eventually released.
Imagine writing a song that still resonates with anyone who hears it over 40 years later. Imagine! There’s not a songwriter on the planet who wouldn’t kill for a song like Young At Heart. Cherish it.
Not the first question I was expecting last week. My 16 year-old and myself were in the car and, in a rare change from discussing the misfortunes of football (both our team – Kilmarnock – and the local U17 team he plays for), the chat turned to music. Future Sound Of London’s Papua New Guinea was playing, all rattling breakbeats, throbbing bass and ghostly samples, but despite my enthusing over it, he remained unconvinced. Nothing new there, to be honest. I can point out a dozen great songs during any car journey and he’ll shrug, unconvinced (unwilling more likely) to admit to liking his dad’s taste in music. The electronic sheen of FSOL’s track endured though, and it clearly set off a synaptic sequence in his brain. And then he came out with it. “Dad, d’you like Aphex Twin?”
He’d already blindsided me a few months ago by unselfconsciously humming I’ll Be Your Mirror as we passed on the stairs. When I stopped, turned and asked if that was The Velvet Underground he was singing, he shrugged nonplussed as though it was the most natural thing in the world. “D’you know it, like?” he threw back, not even stopping for confirmation. Of course I did, and of course he knew I did, and of course he knew that I had a copy (3 actually) of “the banana album that it’s on.”
“How d’you know about the Velvet Underground?” I asked.
“I dunno. I just heard them somewhere and liked them. I like Beginning To See The Light too. And Can’t Stand It. And Pale Blue Eyes…(thinks)…There She Goes Again…’Ah’m waitin’ fawr ma ma-yan’…”
Jeez. Turns out he knows them all and can do a passable Lou Reed into the bargain.
“D’you remember when we were in New York last year, and I stopped to take a picture of the street sign near our hotel and you all laughed at me? Maybe you’ll get the reference now...”
“Oh…yeah!…”
When I was his age, I spent the time properly denying my parents’ record collection. Apart from Dylan’s Bringing It All Back Home there was nothing much in there to shout about, although I did investigate it when no-one was looking, retaining some of the more interesting ones in the interests of cross-generational research purposes. He’s denying mine too, I think, but he knows far more of it than I’d ever have imagined. As teenagers, we had to dig deep, swap tales and stories and sometimes actual TDKs to gain access to the good stuff. Rake the record shops, sift through the shelves in the library, maybe occasionally get the loan of an album on promise of death if it was returned in less than the condition it was given to you in. Now, it seems, social media analytics throw all sorts of stuff in your direction. Act on any of its suggestions and a hundred more threads and recommendations will unravel, and all just for your ears only.
From the Velvets, he discovered The Strokes. Most teenagers love The Strokes, it turns out. Any aspiring local guitar stranglers look to them in the same way that we looked to the music of 20 years previously when we first started out. Watch out for the big Strokes renaissance when a wee local band breaks out and rides the crest of a scuzzy New York wave. It’s just around the corner.
Aphex Twin though. He’s so low profile, so uncompromising, so esoteric in a way that The Strokes and (nowadays) the Velvet Underground just aren’t. “How on earth did you find out about him?” I ask. “Tik Tok? Spotify? A video game? Somewhere else?”
“I dunno. He’s great music to study to. It’s longform and in the background and doesn’t distract you from what you’re trying to learn. It’s a bit like Minecraft music, just better. All the songs have strange titles…just numbers sometimes. I don’t know the names of the tracks I like. But I like what I’ve heard.”
Aphex Twin – Xtal
If it helps with the studying, no parent is going to complain about that, which is why, on Thursday night, our house was filled for an hour with the DIY ambience and womblike pulses of Selected Ambient Works Vol. 1, the pair of us headnodding around the living room, me the uncool dad playing him this new music that he thought was ‘his’, he the teenager, mortified at the thought of liking the same music as his dad.
Next week – “Dad, which Throbbing Gristle album should I buy first?”
(Answer: I dunno. He’ll probably be able to tell me.)
The unexpected news of the death of Andy Rourke from cancer flooded my social timelines this morning. From his old pal Johnny’s numb statement onwards, the outpouring was long and plenty. Lauren Laverne was playing William… as I pulled into the car park at work and despite having heard its 2 min 12 seconds of pathos and sparkle a million times, I stayed put until it had played out, paying particular attention to Andy’s trebly, melodic bass runs because, well, that’s what everyone tuned to 6 Music at that point was doing. After work, catching up with the minutiae of life on my phone, the roll call of people paying tribute – fellow musicians, pals, strangers – was never ending. No one had a bad word to say, not even Morrissey, whose well-worded tribute seemed genuine and sincere and a million miles from the sneering auld grump he’s become.
It’s quite amazing that someone who was only a quarter part of a group who burned brightly but briefly for roughly just 6 years should leave such an indelible mark, but that’s the power of the formative years for you.
The Smiths meant the world to many, me included, and were a lighthouse on the rocky shores of mid ‘80s music. I wasn’t disenfranchised or marginalised or trying to find myself or any of those clichés. I just needed a break from bad hair and bad productions and jaggy guitars and what was being sold to me and my peers as essential listening. The Smiths, with their pint-sized and elfin guitar wizard and singer with funny – that’s funny, not depressing – lyrics came along at the right time. They jangled, yeah, and they wailed, but there was far more to them than that, as you well know. There was a proper toughness to their sound, driving and thuggish and tough as nails – see Handsome Devil and Hand In Glove as evidence, but there was a proper tenderness too. A real musicality. Listen to This Night Has Opened My Eyes or later tracks such as I Won’t Share You for proof. Much of this is down to Johnny’s mercurial way with an augmented chord and a hellbent mission to overdub everything with tracks and tracks of smirry, smartarsed guitar, but the bedrock for Johnny’s free form colouring comes from Andy’s solid and steady playing, a duo playing in simpatico as only old pals can. A band ain’t nuthin’ without their rhythm section and The Smiths were blessed to have Andy pinning it all to the floor.
Many today have spotlit Andy’s magnificently trampolining workout on Barbarism Begins At Home, an early Smiths track so packed with Chicisms and the funk, so out of step with their material that it took until album two before they’d release a recording of it, as proof of Andy’s greatness. And they’d be correct. But look, there’s not a bassline on any Smiths track that isn’t considered, clever, unique and so obviously Andy. Whether he was dripping in elasticated funk or slapping out rockabilly or meandering like McCartney around the melody, he left a mark as distinguishable as the haircut he kept for all those years. Johnny today pointed to Andy’s contribution to The Queen Is Dead’s title track, saying that as Andy recorded it, he knew it was a moment he’d remember forever. Rock solid, reliable, dead centre, a bass player who could play in the background yet step out as lead instrument when required.
Check out the Motown-by-way-of-Moss Side twang of his isolated bass runs on This Charming Man. Rubber bandy Andy.
This Charming Man – Andy’s Isolated Bass
When the news of any pop star’s passing is announced, it’s perfectly natural to feel something, especially if you’re a fan of their work. When Andy’s news gatecrashed my newsfeed this morning, a little bit of me, a little bit of every fan of The Smiths, died too. Memories of times soundtracked by The Smiths came blazing straight into sharp focus, along with the sudden realisation that while the memories remain, the principal player in creating those memories is gone. 59. No age at all, as they say.
God only knows what it’ll feel like when Johnny himself or, brace yourself, McCartney goes.
Those first two Ride EPs are, I’d imagine, a well-played pair of favourites amongst much of this readership. The red rosed and yellow daffodiled covers conceal the thrilling sounds of a band at egg-hatching stage, fresh outta the rehearsal room, their fringes and long-sleeved t-shirts just as studied as the music they are aiming for – a sound forged, so the legend goes, when Andy Bell’s mum began hoovering the living room while he listened to The Beatles. It’s fantastically evocative of time and place; loud, uncontrollable, thrashed and bashed, but with the whiff of a melody bubbling under the Panzer attack of effect-heavy twin Rickenbackers and careering, pummelling backline.
The twin vocal duties are steeped in heady Byrdsian/Beach Boys ambitions and sometimes even, like on Like A Daydream, they almost get there. Mainly though, Mark and Andy are guitar players…and don’t they know it. Heavy on the fuzz, generous with the compression and wholly feral with their whiplashed approach to the wah-wah, their tunes are scorched and scarred, dragged backwards through the edge and laid to rest on vinyl forever.
Live, Ride was an even more thrilling prospect. The rhythm section was suddenly fantastic. I mean, who knew?! Laurence the drummer played a fairly standard kit, but his cymbal splashes, his star-of-the-show scattergunning Moonisms and Bonham-ish thumps and thuds fairly shook loose the fillings. Steve – one of two Our Price alumni to play bass in a successful indie rock act – (a prize will be in the post for the first person to suggest the other) – was locked into the groove, eyes focused on his pedal board, huge slabs of thunk emanating forth.
Somewhere at the back of the room in the Glasgow Mayfair was Alan McGee, giving off full-on McLaren/Warhol vibes, his arms folded, admiring his charges, appreciating the huge Glasgow audience that had shown up so early in his band’s career, his ginger Dylan whitefro and Raybans setting off the biker jacket ‘n stripy tee-shirt combo perfectly. My abiding memory of the gig was just how rammed it was and that I had to watch most of the show by standing on one of the in-built velvet wall seats, seeing the stage and band reflected back to front, like a trippy pop promo, in one of the Mayfair’s many mirrors. Mark Gardener was playing his Rickenbacker and coaxing all manner of wild distortion and chiming echoes through a bog standard Peavey practice amp. There was hope for us all.
Despite the froth and Proustian rushes triggered by those first two EPs, it’s the band’s fourth EP that I’ve returned to over the years. Today Forever bridged the gap between the band’s first two albums and distils perfectly all that was great about the band at this time. If you were being generous, you might even consider this less of a single (or an EP) and more of a mini album. Less noisy (in places), certainly more refined and considered, it flirts with proggy undertones (their next single, Leave Them All Behind, was an all-out prog assault, but that’s for another time) and benefits from the band’s unshakeable confidence that everything they approached would be spectacularly great. Each track is unique in its own way. Each track is as essential as the last.
Ride – Unfamiliar
The lead track Unfamiliar fades in on a wave of controlled guitar and is carried along by one of their best basslines, underpinning heavily-treated guitars and more of Laurence’s unpredictable drums. There’s a great bit, just before the vocals come in, when the beat drops to half tempo and the guitars, whacked out and dubby, suddenly conjure up images of Lee Perry and Black Ark. And, just as that notion hits you, here comes the vocal, submerged in sadness and melancholy, two voices singing about who knows what – that’s not important, it’s how it sounds that matters – and man, this sounds great! Smart arses point to Chelsea Girl and Leave Them All Behind as the high points in the group’s back catalogue. Smarter arses known it to be Unfamiliar. Every time.
Ride – Sennen
Just as you’re catching your breath from Unfamiliar‘s bruising and relentless yet ear-friendly assault, along comes Sennen. Named after Sennen Cove in Cornwall (and where the song’s video was filmed, I think) it’s built upon a lovely mesh of clean-chiming Cocteaus’ 12 strings and fuzzed-out riffage, topped off with more of those white boy indie rock vocals that make Home Counties girls called Emily and Rachel go weak at their stripy-tighted knees.
Sennen incorporates a lovely, subtle keyboard line that provides texture to the overload of overdubbed guitars. Since first hearing it, and on every play since, I’ve thought The Charlatans would do a great, Hammond-led version of this. There’s still time, Tim, there’s still time.
I heartily recommend pulling this record from your filing and giving it a fresh spin to what will be appreciative ears. It’s been playing an awful lot round here recently and so far no one has complained. In our house, that’s the mark of a good record, a very good record indeed.
Plain Or Pan 