The Afterword

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“You can’t buy time, but you can sell your soul…”

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Every generation throws a hero up the pop charts. Tell today’s groovy fuckers about The Tube on a Friday teatime, and they probably won’t quite get what you’re on about, but for those of us of a certain age, there was a certain frisson, a delight say, in tuning in to see what Jools Holland and Paula Yates were going to throw at you this week. The Jam, say – or The Icicle Works, Carmel, The Tygers of Pan Tang or, for one week only, a callow young fellow in a buckskin fringed jacket with a floppy fringe and one of those ubiquitous Ovation-type guitars that you couldn’t play sitting down because the rounded, bowl-shaped back would slide off your leg.

Since I was listening almost exclusively to Neil Young around this time I was instantly intrigued, not least when Roddy Frame – for it was he – started playing a lovely song about going down the dip or somesuch and then followed it with a super pop song called Oblivious which had one of those amazing one note guitar solos (there’s that Neil Young thing again) which veered off into an amazing jazz/folk arpeggio* before the last chorus. The » Continue Reading.

Daniel Kitson – Work in Progress

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Venue:

The Albany, Deptford.

Date: 03/08/2024

I had heard of the legendary creature Kitson, and most of these murmurings referred to his legendary comedic status, ultimate cleverness, indifference to the lure of television, and ability to deconstruct the genre* whilst remaining incredibly funny. People, they were right. The concept of the show (there are many interpretations, but this is the one I choose) revolves largely around an internal monologue, scripted, but delivered mostly by the audience (there were around two hundred and twenty speaking parts). We – the people – are given numbered scripts with our lines highlighted and when our turn comes we project as best we can whatever dialogue we are given (“I’m not making you say this, I’m enabling you to”). In turn, Kitson reacts (acts) as if responding in real time (“Some people only have one word to say” “Really?” “Yep”). I know, sounds awful doesn’t it? First hand, it was quite the cleverest (and don’t get me wrong – enormously funny) comedy experience I can remember. All of the tropes were explored, laughter effortlessly** generated, and – as a lunchtime show – we were all home in time for tea. Callbacks, jokes, puns and » Continue Reading.

Riley Catherall – The Light, The Beautiful Liar.

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What does it sound like?:

I loved Riley’s last elbun, and so when I was in his company first hand at the recent Maverick Festival in the heart of swinging downtown Easton I made sure that I picked up his recent release The Light, The Beautiful Liar on the vinyl that so many of the kids these days are professing is the future of sound reproduction. That and because I’d have to dig out a CD player from the cupboard under the stairs if I wanted to listen to it on polycarbonate plastic substrate.

Much as I anticipated, it’s another stellar collection of beautifully crafted songs performed by a wonderfully sympathetic supporting cast including delicately picked acoustic guitars, tastefully restrained drums, a bass player who turns up in all the right places, and perfectly pitched – in all senses – vocal harmonies (as one of my imaginary internet friends pointed out regarding a recent release by a major figure “An octave is not a harmony…”).

It suits a balmy Sunday afternoon as much as it does the wee small hours, in the same way that Jackson Browne’s Asylum years, Steve Forbert’s early work or even – yes – Gerry » Continue Reading.

Give it a rest Pete.

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I see that Pete Townsend out of The Who has been opining about his terrible life in having to tour with that band from the sixties again. According to Wikipedia The Who have put twelve albums in the last fifty years – approximately the output of The HJH over their first six years, The Kinks in nine, and Frank Zappa in five. Is it just me, or does anyone else think he might be a bit more “Christ, that’s a good return for my output” or should someone whose last decent song was in 1981 might want to pipe down a bit?

Lazy Sunday Afternoon/The Long, Dark Teatime of the Soul – a time wasting thread

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Why not idle away valuable AW-scrolling time by putting song lyrics into Chat GPT and asking it what it thinks*, then getting people to guess the song? Here’s an easy one to start,,,

“These lines appear to be lyrics from a song. They convey a sense of admiration and infatuation. The speaker has seen a picture of someone and is enamored by their appearance, especially when they smile for the camera. There’s a feeling of excitement and anticipation for a big debut or moment of recognition. The mention of a pin shot and a letter suggests a sense of nostalgia or sentimental attachment to this person.

The overall tone of these lyrics is one of admiration, suggesting that the speaker is captivated by the subject of the song, emphasizing their beauty and the joy of capturing moments through photographs.“

*depending on your definition.

DJ Support Sets

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I was reading earlier about the Siouxsie show which advertised “+ special guests”, of which there were none, in the interim, there was a DJ set, and then the show didn’t start until half nine. A couple of weeks ago I saw Southside Johnny at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire and similarly there was a man playing records and announcing that Johnny would be onstage in an hour’s time. On the BBC currently there is a man playing an hour’s worth of hits before The Pet Shop Boys (who presumably don’t need the most extensive of monitor checks before they go on, judging by the Glastonbury set where Chris Lowe didn’t even need to be on stage before they kicked off) I’m not one to downplay the skill of the DJ, or the need to put some money behind the bar, or to necessarily proselytize the Hepworthian, method, but really – couldn’t we just get on with it? I’d have missed the Iron Maiden traffic on the last train back to Ipswich if we had.

You can check out any time you like…

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So, farewell then the HCH, who will be touring into 2025. As noted in The Independent – “Now, after having performed over a thousand concerts across their more than five-decade career, the “Hotel California” rockers – Dan Henley, Joe Walsh and Timothy B Schmit, with Vince Gill and Deacon Frey – will embark on their “swan song”.” It’s enough to bring a tear to an old sub-editor’s eye. Apparently they’re going to be accompanied by “…long time friends and fellow rock group Steely Dan” Hoping for branded steely knives at the merch desk!

This Much Talent

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I’ve dropped something. You can listen to it if you like – bear in mind though that I see the stats that tell me when someone only listened to the first forty seconds before clicking away! You can buy it (CDs will be available next month, so be patient if that’s your thing) and you can share it as far and as wide as you care to. Obviously I’m going to Blog about it, but in the meanwhilst, here it is…. Thank you, and gå godt.

https://thismuchtalent.bandcamp.com/album/belgian-whistles

The Chemistry Set – Twenty Bars

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What does it sound like?:

I first came across my friend Pete Pawsey when the bass player in our band brought to me a track called ‘Postcard’, which involved some late night jazz noodling in the background, and Pete reading out loud from a bookmark he’d found in a charity shop paperback which involved a summary of the writer’s experience of a holiday in Budapest. It was hugely intriguing. “This is a guy…” said my brother in law “…who likes sound”.

Flash forward twenty years or so, and the man who played a (fully miked*) Fisher Price children’s play set at many of our gigs and recordings sessions has taken this approach to its logical extreme, and with his friends and collaborators, has produced an album of deep psychotic garage funk sleaze and minimalist dub, overlaid with the sort of samples that Public Service Broadcasting presumably passed over on the grounds that no-one would be interested in an album that contains what sounds like a Newsnight interview with Prince Andrew (it isn’t) over some atonal jazz, or Bob Mortimer reciting his autobiography over a bootleg of Paul McCartney trying out his solo for ‘Taxman’ while George works out the » Continue Reading.

Space Summit – Life This Way

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What does it sound like?:

Further to the release of the Space Summit single “I’m Electric” in the summer of 2021, notoriously work-shy* fop Marty Willson-Piper has put the finishing touches to his collaboration with Jed Bonniwell and a cast of his most talented friends and delivered the accompanying album, entitled ‘Life This Way’.

The lead-off track, “I’m Electric” was covered in my last review, and having checked back, nothing has changed my opinion in the interim. It’s a glorious sounding** track, stitched beautifully together so that the joins between recording locales Penzance, Minneapolis, Borneo, Bristol, Lisbon and Stockholm are so invisible that you’d never know unless I’d just pointed them out.

Title track “Life This Way” follows smartly up, and MWP’s fingerprints inevitably become more easily identified over a track which floats somewhere between the more composed moments of mid-period The Church, and the sort of choruses that nu-Marillion write when they’re trying to get radio play. From thence on, it’s a familiar furrow being ploughed – some beautifully phrased guitar parts warmly comforting a series of songs that no fan of the Under the Milky Way hitmakers is going to be taken aback by at any » Continue Reading.

Riley Catherall – When I Go.

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What does it sound like?:

There’s too much music, I know that. Only last night I was being played half a dozen artists I’d never even heard of, and I’m not a civilian when it comes to these matters – all of them beautifully composed, incredibly well performed and transcendentally produced. Matt Deighton and Jerry Jospeh – there’s a couple for you straight off the bat. This afternoon I came home to find a present in my inbox from one Riley Catherall, purveyor of Americana (or, since he’s working out of Melbourne, possibly Victoriana) – singer, writer, guitar player and one of a seemingly endless surfeit of pale young men in battered hats and stylish waistcoats who clog up the pages of RnR Magazine on a monthly basis. The last time I’d seen him was as part of Lachlan Bryan’s band The Wildes at the Maverick Festival during an impromptu set on a stage I was curating and where he stepped forward to deliver a couple of numbers of which I wrote at the time “…whose intimate songs were so precious and fragile under the late-night stars that I almost daren’t turn him up too far lest the magic » Continue Reading.

Thank You and Goodnight

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Author:Rob Ford

We’ve all got a mate who we have, upon finishing his anecdote about that time he got trapped in a Portaloo with Wendy James, suggested that he ‘…write a book’. I certainly have, and he has. In the interests of full disclosure, I should say that the subject of Wendy James and/or mobile lavatories have never come up in my conversations with Rob Ford who, nevertheless, has written a thinly-fictionalised account of his times in the pop wars, entitled ‘Thank You, and Goodnight’.

He plays ‘Eppie’, the manager of an aspiring band whose misadventures form the core of this entertaining series of episodes in the life and times of ‘Incursion’, a band perennially on the brink of success, but who somehow manage to avoid the final leap to stardom that will secure their place in the rock pantheon. So far, so “…you should write a book”. It’s a slow burner to start – there’s a lot of necessary exposition. For example no-one has a friend called Sid, and one of the band members is so named in the book presumably in order that no-one can be identified and held accountable for his actions in true life. Some of » Continue Reading.

If you enjoyed Moat…

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What does it sound like?:

Much like his namesake in Back to The Future, Marty’s made another timely appearance. Investing his lockdown-enforced free time wisely, former The Church and All About Eve fret-botherer Marty Willson-Piper has rounded up the (un)usual suspects from his last endeavour once again and launches this collaboration with very occasional troubler of the scorers Jed Bonniwell (nope, me neither) who writes, sings and co-creates this teaser from the forthcoming full length album by (checks clipboard) Space Summit.

It’s certainly not for the good folk who pine for the twelve string Marty Willson-Jangler of old, bearing a riff that’s not afraid to pump up its guns before Jed slides into the action, not with the wail one might expect given the intro, but more of a Screaming Trees thirty-a-day rasp that – say – Willie Nile might employ if he were fronting Soundgarden. It’s slightly airier and proggier-leaning than its clear grungy antecedents might suggest, but as expected that production (as Gerald the Gorilla might have enthused) is amazing – the behind the desk team of Marty and Dare Mason certainly know the dusty end of the faders from the other end, and the drumming (by » Continue Reading.

Helen and The Neighbourhood Dogs – New Material for 2021

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We are pleased and proud to announce that we have new product dropping this week*.

‘Hollow Man’ was recorded remotely in lockdown by the entire group, and is coupled with a new version of crowd-pleasing, set-closing favourite ‘Nelson’. Both songs will be available on our Bandcamp site https://helenandtheneighbourhooddogs.bandcamp.com from Sunday March 21st.

Two accompanying videos will be aired as part of ‘What the Helstock?’ virtual festival on the Blue House Agency Facebook page livestream on Saturday the 20th – scheduled showtime is around half past eight GMT depending on prevailing winds and weather conditions in the East Anglian region – https://www.facebook.com/bhagency/

This is a digital only release, but you can listen to it a couple of times for free online before you make your mind up as to whether you want to own it or not. We also do parties, festivals and house concerts, so once we’re up and running again, if you like what you hear, do get in touch. https://www.facebook.com/helenandthedogs

*Ed – please check with the young folk to see if this is still what they do.

Helstock 2021

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20/03/2021

There will be a virtual festival on the evening of March the 20th. It is a grab-bag mystery line up of international artists of the acoustic alt-country and singer-songerwriterly bent (probably). If you’re not going out, you might want to stay in. As angry from Manchester points out, it’s just likely to be repeats on TV. For the background, read on. Link in blog. https://skirky.blogspot.com/2021/02/what-helstock.html

MOAT – Poison Stream

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What does it sound like?:

It’s possibly the involvement of Marty Willson-Piper, twelve-string botherer of this parish, that will be of most interest to members of The Afterword, but MOAT is no jingle-jangle pony, being a collaboration between ex-The Church Shergoldster and member of – if for not necessarily their best but certainly most interesting album – All About Eve, and Weeping Willows instrumentalist Niko Röhlcke.

Don’t get me wrong, are acoustics aplenty all over this, but there are also horns, strings (principally tastefully deployed by one Olivia Willson-Piper) and the campaign for real drums will celebrate the investment of a portion of the crowdfunded budget in employing one Eddie John (once, briefly of AW-friendly popsters Stackridge) to thump the tubs in a most appropriate manner, all expertly shepherded by co-producer Dare Mason, veteran of knob twiddling for the likes of Soul II Soul, Prince, Elton John and, um, The Triffids.

But what does it sound like, I hear you mither? As I say, it’s not all about the post-Bells of Rhymney acoustic template. Acid Rain kicks off the album in a sprightly fashion before Gone by Noon brings probably the most Churchey course of the night to the » Continue Reading.

“Ere’s a song for ya!”

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I think we can all agree that the calling card of the Greater Crested Coverdale is a thing of beauty that has served him well over decades of cockrockerdom. See also Bruce Dickinson’s “Scream for me [insert name of mittel European enormodome here]!” is a calling card once heard, never forgotten. I myself used to perform alongside a singer whose “We’re going to take a five minute break for ten minutes or so – see you in quarter of an hour” was rivalled in my affections only by his “Listen, we do a lot of weddings…”. I once saw Neil Finn announce the meta “Here’s a song stolen by Paul Young – now we’re stealing it back”, and Simon Nicol’s “This song (Matty Groves) has about seventeen verses and two chords – which is broadly the opposite of a Steely Dan song” enjoins an internal chuckle to this day. What other onstage aphorisms do the collective still recall fondly, I wonder?

“Nope – put the single on side one, move that one to the middle of side two”

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Reading about the totally different tracklisting on the cassette version of City to City just now (look, it’s my day off, don’t judge me) I was reminded of my mate Giff’s recent purchase of the original UK vinyl version of Crowded House’s debut album, which someone at EMI (unbelievably) thought would sound better if it didn’t start with – side one, track one – Mean to Me. Then I remembered that Snowy White out of Thin Lizzy plays the solo on Pink Floyd’s Pigs on the Wing but – get this – only on the 8 Track version! I wonder if any of our correspondents can recall similar anomalous format-related A&R diversions which might delight the, ahem, Massive?

“Turn ‘em all on, then turn ‘em all down…”

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I first met Shane Kirk in 1997 when I auditioned for his Beatles specialist band The Star Club. I was feeling very pleased with myself until he dryly informed me that I was the only applicant.

In the intervening years we have shared many stages together. When I have a harebrained musical idea, he is most often the first person I call. “Do you want to help me start a songwriters’ night?” “Shall we start a band where we pretend to be an American family playing Country songs?” The answer is always yes.

There have been many books written about the goings on and antics of rock stars. This is not one of them. However, this is one in a series of books that you may enjoy if you want to know both the struggle of writing, recording and performing your own songs with very little prospect of retiring on the proceeds of these endeavours, as well as spending your weekends working in a covers band, playing songs you wished you’d written, in pubs you wished you weren’t in.

Someone had to write this book; I’m glad it’s Shane Kirk.

”You owe it to your mum and dad not to sing in a group called Sonic Death Monkey”.

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I’ve recently spent some time on the front line in the retail wars – I can’t tell you exactly where, as there’s a clause in the contract regarding social media, but suffice to say the company concerned will probably be closing a branch near you shortly – and so at this festive time of year, I thought I might share a few reflections.

Firstly, people are generally nice, kind and interested in being interested. Many queries regarding back catalogue or hard-to-find items would begin “I don’t suppose you’ll have heard of this…” and folk would be delighted that you could describe the cover of (say) 24 Carat Purple, Wonsaponatime or correctly attribute the director of Barry Lyndon, even of you couldn’t actually order any of these items in for them. The number of times someone would mention that they would rather enquire in person than online was heartening, at least for those still employed in the retail sector. Then again, we never saw the constituency who preferred to sit in for the Amazon man, did we?

Mind you – you don’t get to describe the plot of a film you once saw most of on a plane and are determined » Continue Reading.

The History of Heavy Metal

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Author:Andrew O’Neill

If you’re not sure about the subtle differences between death metal, black metal, grindcore and speed metal genres then fear not – comedian Andrew O’Neill is here to guide you through the life and times of his favourite musical rollercoaster. The book’s origins lie in a stand-up routine, but the book’s extra volume* allows for extended riffing** on subjects such a glam metal – which gets very short shrift from the author – and Whitesnake, who get even shorter. It’s a tale as old as time, and although there are a couple of errors for the contented old metal head to flag up on social media (Slade’s triumphant 1980 festival renaissance was at Reading, not Donington) it breezes along with appropriate reverence for the deserving, and brilliant footnotes for the less so. His explanation of Smoke on the Water as “The Saving Private Ryan of classic rock songs” is a pearler, and the note on Gary Glitter made me literally snort wine out of my nose.

*Do you see what I’ve done there? **And there.

Length of Read:Medium

Might appeal to people who enjoyed…

Hell Bent for Leather by Seb Hunter, Some Kind of Monster, that Anvil movie, » Continue Reading.

Robyn Hitchcock

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Venue:

The Smokehouse, Ipswich.

Date: 03/05/2019

Robyn Hitchcock at the intimate and bijou The Smokehouse in the heart of swinging downtown Ipswich. A career-spanning ad-hoc set which climaxed with a stunning encore version of Visions of Johanna. A word, if I may, for the exemplary engineering – the guitar sounded like a twelve string at times, and the ‘tween song instructions regarding the effects (“A bit of rock n’ roll echo on this one”, “Like George Harrison being double-tracked in 1967”, “Like someone playing along with a Richard Thompson album in the next room”) were all adhered to strictly to the letter. “I’m going to count down from five to one, and then pan the stereo while ladling on a lot of echo and reverbing that in turn” led to a positively Roundhousian 1967 vibe at one point. (Ed. – please insert ‘Sonic Cathedrals’ reference here).

Kudos too, to opener Polly Preacher, whose effects-laden guitar and harmony-enabling bass player led us to an interval conversation about who is our favourite ‘Polly’.

The audience:

A bit Life of Brian “Are there any women here..?

It made me think..

I must look up Robyn Hitchcock’s cat’s Instagram profile. His account of » Continue Reading.