Friday 26 January 2018

LIST 231 - 26/01/18 (a Mark E Smith tribute)

Hello again,

Somewhat inevitably, this week's List serves as my tribute to Mark E Smith, finally claimed two days ago by the poor health to have afflicted him for a number of years.  

Obtuse, catankerous, drunken, sometimes rather hard to love but frequently touched by genius, his was a single-minded, uncompromising approach to his craft, as the long procession of former members of The Fall (a list of personnel, admittedly, added to at a lesser rate in more recent years) would likely attest to.

Always different, always the same, as Peel himself once said.  Rest easy, Mark.

There have, of course, already been plenty of Fall/Smith tributes online and over the airwaves, but hopefully this one isn't too much like more of the same.  As well as a handful of personal Fall favourites, I've added a selection of Smith's collaborations with other artists (named or unnamed); a couple of tracks inspired by Smith (by Tocotronic and the very appropriately named Container Drivers); and a version of Hit the North by Frank Sidebottom - sometimes it takes a northern maverick to cover a northern maverick.

J xx

 




 



















Friday 19 January 2018

LIST 156 (repeat) - 19/01/18 (the many guises of... Tim Smith)

Hello everyone,

A first for That Music List this week, in the guise of the first List I've ever repeated.  The reason, however, could not be clearer and not hard to understand for anyone familiar with my deep love of the music of Tim Smith and Cardiacs.

I first posted this selection in May 2015 as part of an occasional series of "the many faces of... [insert musician here]", and alluded to the fact at the time that Tim Smith's near-fatal, and irrefutably life-changing, heart attack and stroke in 2008 appeared to have effectively terminated the playing and producing career of one of modern music's most fertile imaginations.  

A terrible, terrible shame as it already stood, the public declaration earlier this month of Smith's precarious position vis-a-vis continuing to receive the round-the-clock care and rehabilitation that would enable his condition to continue its necessarily grinding improvement has sparked Cardiacs fans from all corners of the earth to thrust their hands into their pockets to the tune of over £80,000 already at the time of writing this.  A stupendous effort, and no more than the big man deserves.

Needless to say, further contributions will not go amiss.  If you haven't already done so, and have ever loved a Tim Smith-penned, produced or played piece of work, please go to Tim's Justgiving page, where Smith's tower of strength, Mary Wren, explains the big man's situation and need for funding far more effectively than I ever could.

Many, many thanks to you in advance.

So, then, for the second time in That Music List's history, here's something celebratory by which to remember Surrey's finest at his best, then - 20 songs all either starring Tim (Cardiacs, Tim Smith, Sea Nymphs, Panixphere), originally by him (former Cardiac William D Drake's sublime cover), or else featuring him on production and/or instrumental duties (everything else).  I couldn't not finish with the short film "Jim's Shame", featuring an archetypal Tim tantrum and eventual storming off - to return to the recording studio who knows when, if ever.

J xx





CARDIACS – Jibber and Twitch (rehearsal) (2003)

TIM SMITH – Rat Mice Lice Time (1990/1995)

SIDI BOU SAID – Wormee (1995)

THE SHRUBBIES – Carefree Clothes (1997)

PANIXPHERE – To Go Off and Things (1992)

ADRIAN BORLAND – I’m Your Freedom (1997)

NORTH SEA RADIO ORCHESTRA – End of Chimes (2006)

THE MONSOON BASSOON – The King of Evil (1999)

PINHEAD NATION – Where’s Herne Bay? (1993)

SPRATLEYS JAPS – Secret (1999)

GERTRUDE – Comes Around (1997)

WILLIAM D DRAKE – Savour (2010)

EAT – Double Bubble (1993)

THE TRUDY – Lost Summer of Love (2007)

LEVITATION – Cloud Shine (1992)

THE SCARAMANGA SIX – The Poison Pen (2004)

FLINCH – Spoonz (1995)

STARS IN BATTLEDRESS – Secrets and Signals (2003)

THE SEA NYMPHS – Shaping the River (1992)

THE SOUND – Counting the Days (1986)

CARDIACS – Jim’s Shame (2003)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AC8Z9uGe0A

Friday 12 January 2018

LIST 230 - 12/01/18

Hello again,

More stories behind the older selections than the new this time, with the recent passing of France Gall and the announcement before Christmas of the temporary reactivation of magnificent 1980s polemicists Microdisney (any of you going to their Dublin or London gigs this June?) obvious reasons for their respective inclusion.

The reissues of early-1980s works by Solid Space (imagine Young Marble Giants on the moon) and Welwyn Garden City's angriest bards The Astronauts seemed like excuse enough to fashion a trio of space-themed performers in succession, brand new fare by impressively doomy electronics prodder Stupid Cosmonaut completing the dose. 

Not from another planet but from another land come the Moomins, and the compilation by Andy Votel's Finders Keepers label of the theme tunes and incidental music from the 1983 British import of the Polish fuzzy felt animated version of the Moomins story was, by a very long way, my favourite reissue of any description last year.  

By turns minimal, doleful, experimental, playful and sinister, the soundtrack was conceived and realised not in Lodz, but in Leeds, on a budget of buttons, by post-punk performers Graeme Miller and Steve Shill at the behest of Anne "Teletubbies" Wood.  One wasp synth, one flute, and most of the time not much else, other than a boundless sense of imagination - this week's contribution is unlikely to be the only one to feature on a List.

Finally, this week's Then and Now features tracks from Secret Shine 24 years apart, making them the second Sarah Records act still active enough to warrant this treatment in the past four Lists.  Their appearance at an all-Sarah line-up in Leeds this coming July, alongside Even As We Speak, Action Painting! and Boyracer, was additionally confirmed on social media only this week.

Who'd have thought they'd last that long, eh?  Well, not the late NME writer Steven Wells, who actually recommended the band finish themselves off with a warm bath and razorblades in his "review" of the 1993 single Loveblind included this week.  To this day that remains the singlemost vituperative, hateful and irresponsible piece of music journalism I've ever seen committed to print, something that transcended simply not liking a record, and it's to Secret Shine's credit they were not cowed out of continuing by it.  

Folks, dislike a piece of music by all means.  Dislike anything and everything on this List, even, if it doesn't agree with you.  But keep things in some sense of perspective when appraising that music, please.  It's not worth recommending killing people for.

J xx