Our Other World

Former guitarist with both The Gun Club and The Cramps (amongst others), Kid Congo Powers, is touring the UK this week with his group The Pink Monkey Birds.  Unfortunately, however, he's not playing in Scotland.  That's a real shame as I'd love to hear these words sung live; they're like little time-faded vignettes from an undiscovered John Waters movie:

I was a teenage punk working at a Hollywood Boulevard record store
Rick James came in
He was irritated at Glory Halle-stupid
He broke the records
In the jazz section, some shoplifting drag queen was ODing in a pair of rollerskates
5 albums under her T-shirt

(ooh ooh ooh aah)

It was our other world

When I was a teenage punk me and some freaks took an a LA Greyhound bus to New York City
There was Darvocets
A mono cassette player
Crazy color
Dancing in our seats
People were pissed
We couldn’t help it

It was our other world
It was our other world

From the "Gorilla Rose" lp on In The Red

There's an excerpt from "Our Other World" here

Girl One and The Grease Guns

The sound of Mute Records circa 1980 comes to Squirrel Records in 2013.  It's not often that I get it together to pre-order records but I was determined to make the effort for the confident debut 7" from Girl One and The Grease Guns.  "Driving Without Headlights (Once Again)" is a total thrill ride which is especially noteworthy for the tremendous vocal from the chucklesomely named Sissy Space Echo (aka Caroline McChrystal of The Blanche Hudson Weekend and formerly of The Manhattan Love Suicides etc.) and that tidy little keyboard melody which could've been rescued from Vince Clarke's cutting room floor.  Let's hope indie discos around the world eat it up and turn it up - it's about time their walls shook to something new!

Moody kids in black eyeliner and warm leatherette can pre-order here

Thee Bettye Swann

Over time, Betty Jean Champion, better known to her fans as Bettye Swann, has become my favourite female soul singer.  My love for her music started when I first heard Honest Jon's flawless compilation and increased to wild levels when my dad unexpectedly bought me a copy of Kent's compilation of the majestic sides she cut for Money Recordings.  Then came the 7"s.  I've bought a bunch of them.  The one I play most?  Probably this outstanding girl group soul clapper (track 17 on the aforementioned Money Recordings cd):

I never, even in my most wishful daydeams, expected to be able to see her sing live.  Amazingly, thanks to the saints at Kent Records, it could actually happen as she's scheduled to appear at Ady Croasdell's Cleethorpes 6Ts Weekender:

It will be her first performance in Europe.  It's almost too dizzy-making to contemplate that in the space of a week I could see the most significant group in my life, The Pastels (they play Glasgow's CCA with The Wake on June 1st), and the soul singer whose voice I cherish the most.  Goosebumps!  Adrenalin!  That her best known work was released four decades ago doesn't dissuade me from wanting to see her sing in 2013.  After all, I saw Roger McGuinn 30 years after The Byrds cut "Mr. Tambourine Man" and that was unforgettable.  Also, Bettye's vocal performances were never about chandelier shattering or insecurely running up and down the scales to prove her chops like a lot of those less interesting performers who came after her.  They were so much more nuanced and expressive than that so if age has slightly altered her voice, it won't diminish her ability to deliver the songs; it may, if anything, give them even more poignancy.

Virals "Summer Girls"

With snow currently sprinkled over the streets of Glasgow, summer seems a long way away.  When Virals' "Summer Girls" plays, however, it feels that bit closer.  Just why it was tucked away on the flip of the group's recent Zoo Music 7" is a mystery. It's by far the strongest song of the four and should have taken centre stage on the A-side.  An airy melody married to a post-Shop Assistants style thumper with some real heads down surges will always catch my ear and a cute polar bear (he'd be at home in Glasgow tonight!) will always catch my eye.  The volume dial goes up for a reason.  To enhance the power of songs like "Summer Girls" is that reason.

Brits: Pebble Records has it!

Young Pretender

(picture from last.fm)

The ole canny shopper instincts kicked-in the other day as I was buying Sauna Youth's latest 7" from Static Shock.  I figured that if I was buying one 7", I might as well buy 2 to save a few bob on postage (that kinda logic'll see me to the poorhouse!) so I went digging around in their mailorder catalogue, a trusty browser to hand for the purpose of music sampling.  "Young Pretender" by Toronto's Dangerloves was the record that set my pulse racing the fastest and which was added to my cart with relish.  As power pop singles go, it's up there with the best I've heard in recent years (it was released in  May, 2008).  It starts off at quite a lick in full Peechees mode but when Zoe Dodd bursts into "Young pretender you don't know who you are!" things go up a gear or two.  Sparky!

A thing of beauty.

Gorgeous.

painting by Annabel Wright

typography by Edward Pickstone

according to The Pastels' Twitter

Tracey, Vic & Vini

This week Tracey Thorn is reading from her excellent sounding biography on BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week.  According to today's excerpt, when she first went to Ben Watt's shared student flat in Hull and ran the rule over his record collection, she was pleased to find that he had both of her then favourites: recent releases by Vic Godard and Vini Reilly's group The Durutti Column.  What fine taste they had in 1981 - no wonder they bonded!  Roll on 30+ years and it's hard not to contrast Vic's situation with Vini's.  Vic seems to be having a rare old time, playing celebratory gigs all over the country to adoring audiences and working with a succession of friends and admirers.  Vini, on the other hand, has gone through a series of sobering, difficult times although, thankfully, the most recent update on his situation was more upbeat.  Hopefully, somebody will do for Vini what Paul Kelly did for Lawrence Hayward and provide a focus to bring his music back to some kind of prominence so that he, too, can feel that he has a future and an immediate connection with his audience.  I wonder if in 1981 they both imagined that they'd still be part of the music industry three decades on.  I'd be surprised if they did; pop seems like such a young person's game when you're young.  I bought Vic's new single in Monorail at the weekend.  At a tenner it wasn't cheap (it's an import on Spain's famèlic) but a) IT'S VIC and b) it's great and a lot of fun, especially "(Oh Alright) Go On Then".  I wonder, too, if Tracey's still listening to Vic and Vini's records.  I hope so as, for my money at least, the music they're releasing and re-releasing now deserves it.  I'll be reading Tracey's book, for sure and it was a lovely surprise to hear even the briefest snatch of Marine Girls' sublime music on the radio during my commute to work - it felt like spring had truly arrived.

Update

Tracey Thorn appears in Glasgow at Aye Write! on the 12th of April.  Full details here.  If I can arrange it, I'll be there.