So whilst browsing t’interweb I note that Stephen Malkmus is embarking on an UK tour. Might be interesting, so I check out the dates:

Sept 13 – CCA, Glasgow Sept 16 – YES (The Pink Room), Manchester Sept 17 – Hare and Hounds, Birmingham Sept 18 – Moth Club, London

If a couple of small pubs constitutes a tour then my and my mates are the Rolling Stones every weekend. I realise that finances are tight in the music biz these days, but I have far more respect for those that jet into London, do a gig, then jet out again than this nonsense. That’s the trouble with middle-aged people, they’re just not prepared to put the work in.

So, farewell then to Dick Dale. Never has a guitar sounded so menacing.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/mar/17/dick-dale-dies-aged-81-misirlou-pulp-fiction

Pleased to see that Now 90s has appeared on Freeview as I find familiar music at breakfast time to be far more palatable than John Humphrys or Larry Laverene.

This mornings appearance of ‘Dizzy’ by Vic Reeves and The Wonder Stuff led me to reminisce about my uni days and how The Stuffies (as no-one ever called them) were a popular and credible band. These days: nothing. They are never played on the radio, never cited as an influence by acts, and whenever they are brought up in conversation with my music loving friends they respond with a ‘meh’. Even their reunion was greeted with the same enthusiasm as when one of your kids asks to watch My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic again (yes you do that sweetie, I’ll be over here scrubbing these crayon marks off the wall). I’d go as far to say their only contribution to modern day life is that Miles Hunt is a frequently used rhyming slang.

This is just a roundabout way of asking the blog who was popular and credible back in the day, but mean absolutely nowt today?

So without any warning, Van the Man releases then deletes the “Catacombs Tapes”. This is a recording from August 1968 in Boston, when Van was working out the songs prior to the recording of Astral Weeks.

I wasn’t quick enough to acquire it from iTunes but have since obtained them by, errrr, unofficial means. It’s astonishing how much of the sound of Astral Weeks was worked out by the trio before the jazz sessioners went into the studio to record it with Van.

Presumably it was released to extend the copyright on the recording, so hopefully there will be a proper release in due course (maybe as part of that reissue campaign that was supposed to be happening).

Is there a more frustrating artist to follow than Van?

https://dangerousminds.net/comments/van_morrison_abruptly_releases_long_sought_after_catacombs_tapes_on_itunes