To many
of us for whom there is no god, a love of music that feeds body and soul is
about as devotional as we are ever likely to get.
Music is a fundamental
expression of our humanity. Whether we create it or listen to it, music
communicates, consoles, entertains, inspires, liberates and sustains. It has
been possibly the single most constant component of my life, (with fatherhood, affairs of the heart and a passion for football all in close contention) and it continues to be
so - the appetite doesn't sicken. Just this month I’ve been enjoying new albums by Ash, Souad Massi, the Orange Peels, James Taylor and Wire; last night I went to an amazing gig in St Annes by very talented local musician Joni Fuller.
My tastes are catholic: jazz, blues, folk, rock, symphonic, reggae, indie, choral, punk, 'world' - it just has to touch that chord. I enjoy listening to it, playing it (bass guitar is the instrument of choice) and writing about it. Psychedelia is my
favourite musical flavour and for many years I co-edited the music fanzine
Holding Together, as well as writing for various other publications.
Today is unusually sunny, given the disappointing July we've been subjected to, so - with seagulls wheeling overhead in blue Blackpool skies - I'm going to do a Desert Island Discs on you. I can almost hear the theme tune playing...
These chosen castaway selections are among the many special records that have sustained me personally over nearly
five decades. My Top Fifty has about 300 entries! You'll understand then if my Desert Island Discs number ten rather than the traditional eight, for which excess I'm willing to forfeit the luxury item. These ten albums are not necessarily my absolute
favourites of all time, but each one, from The Beatles to The Coral, continues to resonate in that
special way that only music can. In chronological order then, as the solar-powered record player swings into action...
Revolver – The Beatles [1966]
The real
Summer of Love began for me on 5th August 1966, the day the Beatles
released ‘Revolver’ upon an expectant world. That LP perfectly captured the
zeitgeist that was stirring from London to San Francisco. To this thirteen-year
old it was both the fabbest and the coolest musical statement and I still
consider it probably the finest album ever made by anyone, anywhere, anyhow. Its
fourteen tracks are all wonderful compositions in themselves; as a collection,
I think they are unsurpassed. Combining an anti-establishment stance [“Taxman”]
with wry social observation [“And Your Bird Can Sing”, “Doctor Robert”] and
existential questing [“I’m Only Sleeping”, “She Said, She Said”, “Tomorrow
Never Knows”] plus some of the band’s most vibrant love songs [“Here, There And
Everywhere”, “Good Day Sunshine”, “Got To Get You Into My Life”,], the Beatles
really nailed the yin and the yang for us proto-hippies. They switched the
points and in doing so allowed us to forgo destination Squaresville in favour
of a magical mystery tour. ‘Revolver’ is the fanfare which heralded the dawn of
a golden age and I still get an echoing sense of that boundless optimism
whenever it is played.
Surrealistic Pillow – Jefferson
Airplane [1967]
‘Revolver’
may have tilted my world but ‘Surrealistic Pillow’ turned it upside down. The
Airplane were more exotic than the Beatles. They had the weird name, the
enigmatic look, a girl in the ranks and they came from America. More than that,
they were a San Francisco band – and by 1967 San Francisco was where it was all
happening, birthplace of the hippie nation and crucible for the youth
revolution that would surely inherit the earth, (or so we fondly imagined).
Even more
important than all of those factors was their music – and that has always been
the key. The Airplane demonstrated they were way cooler than the Beatles in 1967
with not one but two albums that outstripped ‘Sgt Pepper’ (itself in thrall to
the vibe that was emanating from the West Coast). With their repertoire of
classic rock songs [“She Has Funny Cars”, “Somebody To Love”, “White Rabbit”
and “Plastic Fantastic Lover”] allied to their folk-rooted love songs [“Today”,
“Comin’ Back To Me”, “How Do You Feel”] all combined with country, blues and
jazz flavourings, Jefferson Airplane gave us in ‘Surrealistic Pillow’ a record
of sophistication and depth that is still quintessentially the sound of the
Summer of Love.
Twelve Dreams Of Dr Sardonicus –
Spirit [1970]
Spirit’s
excellent ‘Twelve Dreams…’ was frequently blasting from the speakers during my
first year at university. Their fourth and (in my opinion) finest creation will
always be associated with those halcyon days of the early ’70s: living with my
girlfriend in a student house, reading great literature for pleasure, all of us thinking earnestly about how we
could make the world a better place. The sun shone practically every day and
the pharmaceutical sunsets were stunning. Could life be finer than this?
‘Twelve
Dreams…’ encapsulates all of that experience for me. It’s a mature song-cycle,
finishing back where it starts, that treats of the big themes we discussed
endlessly at the time – how to live to one’s potential as an open, loving human
being free of exploitation or oppression without fucking up others or the
planet we live on. It’s all there, almost a libertarian manifesto on two sides
of vinyl. Of course, as important as the ideas were, they would be nothing
without the tunes and the sheer mastery with which Spirit executed them. “Nature’s
Way” has to be one of the loveliest songs ever written, but it’s only a short
head above the other eleven magnificent dreams on offer: “Animal Zoo”, “Love
Has Found A Way”, “Mr Skin”, “Morning Will Come” – just a roll-call of musical
gems. The band performed aural alchemy when they created ‘Twelve Dreams Of Dr
Sardonicus’ and forged in the process one of rock music’s great and enduring
moments. The sun still shines from its grooves.
Crocodiles – Echo & The
Bunnymen [1980]
The late
’70s proved to be a bit of a desert in the psychedelic landscape. We had the
Clash, Sex Pistols, Gang Of Four, Wire, but with glue being preferred to
flowers in the sniffing department, once Reagan and Thatcher commenced leading
a dance of death across the western hemisphere, there really wasn’t a lot of
peace, love and understanding to go round.
At the
beginning of the ’80s I was living in a high-rise tower-block in Hackney. The
elevators stank of piss and the buildings were graffiti-sprayed. “Help the
police – beat yourself up” famously got amended to “Help the lice – eat
yourself up.” How we chortled as we climbed the garbage and glass-strewn
stairway to 17th floor heaven. In recompense, the view out across
the city of London at night was quite stunning.
Fortunately,
up on Merseyside, a new generation had been listening to the acid sounds of the
sixties. I remember going to see Echo & The Bunnymen in late 1980 or early
1981 with my pal Lorraine. One of us had bright pink hair (and it wasn’t me).
Ian McCulloch and friends emerged in full camouflage gear singing songs such as
“Crocodiles”, “Going Up”, “Stars Are Stars”, “Villiers Terrace” and “All That
Jazz”. They were like notes from underground to let us know that psychedelia
was alive and flickering in the interstices of the concrete wasteland. Our
motto in those dark days became: “Leave no turn unstoned.”
Translator – Translator [1985]
Translator
was a group of Angelinos who relocated four hundred miles up the coast to San
Francisco because the vibe was so much more positive. Their eponymous third
album became the soundtrack to an Indian summer and my wedding daze.
I like
to think that my eldest daughter was conceived on my wedding night, born as she
was nine months to the day later. She was certainly a love-child, as indeed was
her sister two years further on. Starting a family causes one to reflect on the
state of the world our children will inherit. Becoming a parent is a huge act
of faith and this record, brimming with thoughtful optimism and positive vibes
was a ringing endorsement of that act of faith. As Steve Barton sang: “It’s
alright to feel what you feel; we are friends of the future, we’re afraid for
each other, we go towards the same heartbeat…”
Not only
on “Friends Of The Future” but also on “Come With Me”, “Another American
Night”, “Inside My Mind”, “Breathless Agony” and others, Translator – dharma
bums to a man – delivered a set of classic American rock songs infused with an
almost Buddhistic essence and shot through with psychedelic touches, no more so
than on “New Song”, with its steal from the Beatles’ “Rain” and its raga-like
guitars. For its craft, its energy, its musicianship and its compassion, I
loved this record then and I love it now – and my daughters are happily into
their twenties.
The Stone Roses – The Stone Roses
[1989]
At the
end of the ’80s, four young Mancunians combined to re-establish my faith in the
possibility of a truly popular home-grown psychedelia. This Sceptic Isle hadn’t
thrown up many widely-regarded exponents of the genre after the high days of
the late sixties. Echo & The Bunnymen, Teardrop Explodes, the Boo Radleys
and Soft Boys had moments of promise – but Cope and Hitchcock had to go solo to
pursue their singular acid visions away from the mainstream. However, in 1989 the
Stone Roses served up the finest album of British psychedelia in a couple of
decades and it gradually stole out over the airwaves. This was rebel music. It
was overtly anti-government and anti-monarchist in content [“Bye Bye Badman”,
“Elizabeth My Dear”], but its form was a jangly blast, a blissful, rushing
groove. It was splendidly psychedelic and was widely embraced by a grateful
musical nation.
The
Roses (plus John Leckie who surely deserves a ‘fifth Rose’ status akin to
George Martin’s ‘fifth Beatle’ tag) conjured up one of the finest debuts on
record, a truly shining moment. It was an artful and mature work that owed its
defiant content as much to the spirit of the Situationists (and the uprisings
of 1968) as it did to a deep-rooted opposition to Thatcher. It owed its musical
form as much to the Byrds and the Monkees as it did to the ecstasy-fuelled rave
culture of the late ’80s.
My
daughters (then aged three and one) particularly enjoyed “She Bangs The Drum”.
Their mother and father loved “Waterfall”, “Don’t Stop” (a complete track built
on backwards guitars), “Made Of Stone”, “Sugar Spun Sister” and the epic “I Am
The Resurrection”, classic tunes every one. For many who were half a generation
younger than me, this was their ‘Revolver’. To these ears, it was an album of
citrus-sucking sunshine, full of a zest for life, in the face of the
establishment, capturing the spirit of an age which had had enough of Tory
misrule in the UK and tyrannical misrule across much of Eastern Europe. Mere
months later, the Berlin Wall came tumbling down.
Lulu – Trip Shakespeare [1991]
Trip
Shakespeare were three guys and a gal from Minneapolis, USA, who dared disturb
the fabric of the universe with their music. ‘Are You Shakespearienced?’ (their
sophomore album) was a teasingly clever allusion to the first long-player from
Jimi Hendrix – but that was the Trips all over, a smart and playful bunch who
had majored variously in anthropology, art, Chinese and English literature and
then chose music over academia. They lit up the early ’90s for me with their
inventiveness and verve. At that time they were just the best band rocking.
Pleasingly but not slavishly psychedelic in sound, theirs was a music of the
spheres, metaphysical and truly mind-expanding, as well as being good to dance
to.
‘Lulu’,
their fourth and final outing, was their most sparkling creation with its mix
of literate and arcane lyrics, its arresting musical compositions chock full of
inventive arrangements and its amazing three-part vocal harmonies all set
off to perfection by what I believe are
called tight production values. “Your Mouth”, “Down My Block”, “Jill Can
Drive”, “Look At The Moon” and “Patricia” are highlights of a very fine set.
For
several years the sounds of Trip Shakespeare virtually ruled in the Rowland
household and they are the only group other than Jefferson Airplane (and
latterly The Coral) to have had their posters grace my living-room walls.
Kontiki – Cotton Mather [1997]
On its
release in 1997 (an epic year for psychedelic music) I raved about ‘Kontiki’
being the best record of the last twenty years, fit to be spoken of in the same
breath as ‘Revolver’ and ‘Surrealistic Pillow’. The passage of time has not
altered that opinion. In fact, the deluxe
re-mastered release of Cotton Mather’s magnum opus in 2012 (replete with
recording notes, a bonus disc of demos, alternate takes and songs that didn’t
make the final cut) just reinforces what a stellar work Robert Harrison and his
band contrived to make. That they created it in a pokey home studio using a 4-track
cassette recorder and a 2-track DAT machine is quite extraordinary.
‘Kontiki’
is so inventive (teeming with ideas), so beautifully produced, so full of
variety, depth, fearless experimentation and joyfully executed classic pop
tunes that the hundredth listen is as exhilarating as the first. I still can’t
get over how Robert Harrison (of Austin, Texas) sounds so spookily like John
Lennon on these songs and I defy anyone hearing “Homefront Cameo”, “Spin My
Wheels”, “My Before And After”, “Lily Dreams On” or the utterly magnificent
“She’s Only Cool” to deny they are in the presence of greatness.
With
this album, Cotton Mather constructed an elemental, chiming, complex
masterpiece, as mesmerising as an aural sunburst – a record so good, in fact,
that I had to go out and buy copies for my friends.
Free All Angels – Ash [2001]
Ash
formed in 1989 when boyhood friends Tim Wheeler and Mark Hamilton each received
guitars for Christmas. Just over a decade later, along with Rick McMurray and
Charlotte Hatherley, they created this masterpiece.
At their
outset, Ash seemed unlikely candidates – an amphetamine-fuelled punk band from
Northern Ireland – but by this, their fourth album, Tim Wheeler’s innate
lyrical romanticism was shining through and that sensibility seemed to
transform the band’s brittle brilliance into something more expansive. They
still sounded incendiary, burning with a passion, but that passion now flamed
with the warmth, colour and breath-taking variety of a firework display rather
than an oxy-acetylene torch.
“Walking
Barefoot” and “Pacific Palisades” are paeans to the summer of love; “Shining
Light” and “There’s A Star” are hymns to the heavens; “Someday” and “Sometimes”
are stunning, soaring ballads of love, loss and redemption. Then there’s
“Cherry Bomb” (the second finest song to come out of Ulster after “Teenage
Kicks”) and a quartet of spiky, edgier numbers. ‘Free All Angels’ is
forty-eight minutes of near faultless rock’n’roll, an album burning with energy
but also possessed of soul in abundance and a grandeur that makes it a very special
record.
This Ash
opus doesn’t make many musical references back to the ’60s. It is neither
mellow, pastoral nor trippy. Rather, it’s fiercely contemporary – but to
everything there is a season and when the occasion merits it I can guarantee
that ‘Free All Angels’ will blow away any encroaching dark clouds and raise the
spirits.
 |
| a detail from the LP cover of Magic And Medicine |
Magic And Medicine – The Coral
[2003]
It is
entirely fitting that The Coral should round out this castaway parade of musical favourites.
They became my main love of the last decade, they’re from Merseyside (which is
where this long, strange trip had its inception) and ‘Magic And Medicine’ was
released in the year I turned fifty.
It’s
their most pastoral offering, with its tales of forests “so rare and divine”;
of secret kisses, “some kind of forgotten bliss on this summer’s eve”; of
femmes fatale who leave you “chasing shadows in the sun all along the dusty
road.” Much of the mood and lyrical content of the album is informed by James
Skelly’s reading of ‘The Golden Bough’ (Sir James George Frazer’s comparative
study of mythology and religion), of Aleister Crowley’s diaries (he of the
Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn) and of the works of Dylan Thomas.
The sheer quality and variety of sounds The Coral
conjure up on this album is hugely impressive. Originally rooted in the simple,
propulsive virtues of skiffle but taken to a completely different level with inventive
drumming, twin acoustic and electric rhythm guitars, melodic bass, keyboards
and exceptionally inventive lead-guitar playing, ‘Magic And Medicine’ rocks,
rolls, ripples, swings, twangs, mesmerises and wigs out with a truly
psychedelic sensibility, nodding to Beefheart, the Doors, Echo & The
Bunnymen, Love and the Yardbirds in the process. Magic medicine indeed – just
pass it on!
If you're not familiar with any of the albums, I hope I might have inspired you to take a listen.  |
| yesterday's sounds today - Battersea Rain Dance on the turntable |
This week's poem is a new creation sparked by a writing workshop at the Grundy Art Gallery a couple of months ago (not that you'd necessarily glean that from reading it). Apologies if it sounds somewhat scathing, but some music critics have been known to elevate the critique above the art, never quite apprehending the magic of the moment.
Lines To A Music Critic
At the conjunction of Indica and Vine,
within the Gate of Horn
reality speaks
from wire and barrel and cone
to highlife beauties
all misty in the glass.
Musical winos, we piss and tell
our truths in jazz-tinged blasts
while you,
grooving to the sound of time
trickling through your ears,
suck up your synthemesc milk
trying to get a hit.
Square beyond the circle,
you raddle and grasp,
but your scribbled ramblings
don't mean shit,
don't come near
the heart of the matter.
You miss both point
and counter-point and sadly
you'll never get either;no feeling for the mystery
in your self-serving flightsof purple prose.
Press deadline calls,
so stumble upnumb-faced into the waking worldand the full-stop of tomorrow -while we play on here below,
entrancing night lingering
on borrowed time,
orchestrating the frenzied flow,
ecstatic dancers in tow.
Thanks for reading. Have a groovy kind of week, S ;-)
