It’s been (at least) twenty years since Neil Young released a wholly satisfactory album. I like Neil a lot, not in the same way I once loved Dylan but , you know, he’s like a friend, a really good friend, who messes around with you but he’s still a really good friend. And now we have “Hitchhiker”. One night in 1976 armed only with “booze, weed and cocaine” Young, producer David Briggs and friend Dean Stockwell sat down in a Malibu studio. The next morning they had an album brimming over with absolute gems, nary a false step except maybe a stoned stumble, a missed chord here and there, a few misshapen, forgotten lyrics. Most of the songs (only two “new” on here) appear on later albums (like Powderfinger without the raging guitar but amazingly all the better for it) but here we have testament to what one guy and one guitar can do: stripped-down songs, fragile yet powerful singing and most startling of all – in one take, in one night a perfect album. One day soon when my initial euphoria has calmed down somewhat I will try and post a proper review. In the meantime my question is » Continue Reading.
Grant Hart RIP
I know I’m not the only Hüsker Dü fan on this board.
I was sad to read to day that drummer/songwriter/vocalist Grant Hart has died of cancer aged only 56. Grim news indeed.
http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/7964914/husker-du-drummer-grant-hart-obit
THE HOLY TRINITY?!?!
The Beach Boys, The Beatles & Bob Dylan were referred to as the AW`s `The Holy Trinity` by Tahir recently.
This causes me to ask some questions, just two really.
1) Has anyone, prior to Tahir ever referred to The Beach Boys, The Beatles & Bob Dylan as the `Holy Trinity`?
2) Why do people resent acts who are obviously talented and have achieved their deserved fame and fortune? There are also many acts who once again are obviously talented but have not received their deserved fame and fortune. I can name many and so can you fellow AWers but this is not the fault of the so-called `Holy Trinity`. So why the resentment?
It Was 43 Years Ago Today….
…that CSNY came to play.
14th September 1974,CSNY played Wembley Stadium to bring their world tour to a close.
Supporting acts included Joni Mitchell and The Band.
Their full set was pro-shot and is available on dvd of you know where to look.
Did any Afterworders attend this event?
Audi Being Served?
Not a particular fan of the four circles myself, though I would quite like to be in the position of choosing between it and its Teutonic rivals, but found this ad very appealing. Surely one of the best theme tunes of the ‘golden age of telly’ (quotation marks very much intended) Are you free?
RIP Frank Vincent
Farewell then, Billy Batts. Now go home and get your shine box
REM AFTP 25th Anniversary due in November
Unsurprised that the 40 Watt Club makes up part of the set, nice if it is unedited and complete. No idea what a Dolby Atmos system is or whatever but that demos set is intriguing. As I championed it as their best on a podcast way back when this is a no brainer for Xmas
CD1 1 Drive 2 Try Not To Breathe 3 The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite 4 Everybody Hurts 5 New Orleans Instrumental No. 1 6 Sweetness Follows 7 Monty Got A Raw Deal 8 Ignoreland 9 Star Me Kitten 10 Man On The Moon 11 Nightswimming 12 Find The River
CD2 1 Drive (Live At The 40 Watt Club / 11/19/92) 2 Monty Got A Raw Deal (Live At The 40 Watt Club / 11/19/92) 3 Everybody Hurts (Live At The 40 Watt Club / 11/19/92) 4 Man On The Moon (Live At The 40 Watt Club / 11/19/92) 5 Losing My Religion (Live At The 40 Watt Club / 11/19/92) 6 Country Feedback (Live At The 40 Watt Club / 11/19/92) 7 Begin The Begin (Live At The 40 Watt Club / 11/19/92) 8 Fall On Me (Live At The 40 Watt Club / 11/19/92) » Continue Reading.
Satanic playback
21/09/2017
Next Thursday (21 September) from 7pm, UMC and RicherSounds will be hosting an album playback of the 50th anniversary remastered version of the Rolling Stones ‘Their Satanic Majesties Request’.
It is taking place at Melomania, Gallery Court, Hankey Place, London, SE1 4BB.
There’s also a talk about the album.
Anyone interested in attending, let me know asap – first come as usual…..
What is hip?
The name of a song by Tower of Power, as I seem to recall. But more to the point, and more urgent, seems to be the question what is a hipster? There seem to be so many conceptions:
Someone who wears sunglasses at night. Someone who wears very skinny pants with an unusually styled beard. Someone who manages to like Captain Beefheart, The Velvet Underground and Igor Stravinsky, but not the Beach Boys. Someone who was born too late to have heard of any of the above but who says the word ‘dope’ a lot (as noun and adjective). Anyone you don’t like. Anyone who likes stuff that you don’t understand. Someone who’s into Foucault, postmodernism and being non-binary. Someone who knows what it means to ‘take an insurance piss’. Someone who pretends to like progressive jazz, but can tell you that prog rock is crap. Someone who despises anyone that likes anything s/he used to like just last year. Someone who says ‘cool’ a lot, but who will stop doing so as soon as it starts to seem uncool. Anyone who’s mentioned by Doug Henwood in connection with gay porn. Doug Henwood. Someone who only ever wears black and » Continue Reading.
A new chap in Wishbone Ash, and a UK tour ahoy…
Mark Abrahams from somewhere up north (but but not Scandinavia, whence came his two predecessors) is the new guitar player in WA, Muddy Manninen stepping back at the end of the last round of touring earlier this year.
WA started a US tour two days ago, and here’s a clip from that very show. UK tour starts in October. I’ll be at Glasgow Nov 12.
Let’s rock!
Got it
After looking through the Do you really like that? Honestly? thread I finally understood that this blog is all about what you don’t like. Why didn’t I realize that before?
So now I think that my dislike of the stupid cult of the holy trinity (B-Boys, Beatles & Bob) needs to be stated here. It belongs here. Especially here. It’s a veritable manifesto, not just a cranky opinion.
So I say it again. Ha!
Hans Alfredson – 1931-2017: Locust bids farewell to a local hero
I was a bit taken aback when I looked at the morning paper on Monday morning. The entire front page was taken up by a photo of Hans Alfredson who had died the previous day. I knew that he was an important figure but hadn’t expected this kind of reaction. All the TV schedules were changed too, to broadcast tributes. And yet outside of Sweden, I suspect there was scarcely a single obituary. Working in Swedish, he was primarily an enormous local hero but not for export.
Of course I knew of him. His partnership with Tage Danielsson dominated Swedish comedy for many years. A real Swedish renaissance man: actor, director, novelist and even at the end zoo director!
And many of those who worked with Hasse & Tage achieved international success. The magnificent jazz singer and actress, Monica Zetterlund, who sung with many of the jazz elite of her day, most memorably on Waltz for Debby that she recorded with Bill Evans. Lena Nyman, the star of the notoriously explicit I am curious (Yellow), who went on to act in Bergman’s Autumn Sonata and become a stalwart of the Swedish stage. And several more besides. Locust was a big » Continue Reading.
London sorta mingle at a Disappointment Choir show?
19/11/2017
Folks, we’re supporting Will Samson at The Islington on Tolpuddle St in, er, Islington on 19th November.
The venue have very kindly allowed us to ahem HELP YOU OUT with a heavily discounted ticket and a free drink (I make no representations about what the drink might contain, I’m just saying here and now).
Gigs in London being, frankly, difficult to organise and promote, we don’t do them often, so I was wondering if any of you lovely folk might like to make a mini-mingle of it? Is that awfully self serving? It’d be AWESOME to see you, and any money we make we’ll just end up spending on buying you a pint (NB: we’re highly unlikely to see any money!).
It just struck me as a sort of nice double bubble type deal: we get to see old friends and new, and you get to
Either DM me or confirm attendance on the FB link above and I’ll put your name on the list. The venue has asked me not to » Continue Reading.
Earthbound
Crimson’s live album gets a deluxe reissue in November. Details are on the SDE site – I won’t copy the link as it always seems to cause problems – but looks like Colin H has already been there 😉
Is there a film clip that will make me laugh?
I confessed on the ‘Do you really like that? Honestly?’ thread, (which sits comfortably at the top of the charts), that I didn’t understand why people liked ‘Laurel and Hardy’. Tediously unfunny, imho.
OOAA, as was very evident – masters of their art, precursors of much of successive comedy, a gift that their performances are captured for posterity. Such were the responses of the cognescenti.
Each to their own. But then I was challenged by the good @Douglas to come up with my top 5 films. Not having one to hand, I hastily scanned various online polls to see if there were any I had seen or enjoyed actually remember laughing at. There were very few, but I just about scraped together a list that passed his muster.
I was troubled. Did this mean I have no sense of humour? Or just don’t like slapstick? Maybe the answer is to put it to the Massive:
Here I sit, arms folded. ‘ Entertain me!’ I bellow. If the prospect doesn’t discourage you, please would you post some clips from movies you can’t help laughing at, and I’ll let you know if I can uncover a funny bone » Continue Reading.
Moments of intense personal pride.
Bought myself a black filter at the leisure centre while taking the boblets to their swimming lesson.
Boblet 2 returns from her lesson.
Her: “I can smell your coffee.”
Me: “I see. I myself cannot. You use Evyan skin cream, and sometimes you wear L’Air du Temps. But not today.”
Nearly did a victory lap of the place.
Any good moments from the lives of Afterworders lately?
Mm mm Frys Peppermint Cream
As my mum lives reasonably close to my office I usually pop in for a bacon sandwich once a week. Following the bacon sandwich and to accompany my cup of tea she usually asks me if I would like a bar of chocolate. They are stored in a Tupperware container and last week her selection included Fry’s Peppermint Cream bars. It is so long since I saw these that I had assumed there had stop making them. I have to say it was a delight. But the question is whatever happened to the Fry’s Five Centre bar?
Mike Westbrook feature ahoy…
A heads-up to anyone interested in the Mike-meister – I have a detail-drenched feature on the great man in the new issue of Record Collector (L Zep on the cover, out in a few days).
Ending The War On Error
On a recent thread, Bob made the point that there seems to be a contemporary trend for being very very sensitive about criticism of one’s opinions.
In an era where differing points of view have never been available in greater quantity, variety or vapidity, it seems curious that their perceived currency should have multiplied, rather than reduced, but that does rather seem to be where we are just now. Attack the opinion and you attack the author, the two are simply indivisible.
Perhaps it’s a function of the tendency for the ad hom in Internet debating – the impersonal is never more than inches from getting personal. Perhaps being given a platform for our thoughts has give us delusions of grandeur. Perhaps we’re all just narcissistic tossbags who’ve spent too much time navel gazing and expect the world to roll out the red carpet for us and our pathetic musings.
It seems a great shame to me. Very few of my own views are worth getting seriously aggravated over, other than for the sport of heated discussion. They’re just opinions, everyone has them, they don’t mean much to anyone else. Plus, if you’ve an audience of a hundred people, it’s » Continue Reading.
Is it just me or……..
I know this is an old track, but for some reason it’s been on the local radio a lot these past few weeks. Everytime it comes on though, I automatically think it’s a World Party track (even though I do actually know it’s by the New Radicals)
Is it just me or were they really separated at birth ?
And feel free to use this thread as an excuse to post your most favouritist World Party track (or other tracks that sound like them)
I’ve got a killer idea for a thread but I’m not sure if I can dig deep enough at the age of forty two to pull it off.
Can I save this and come back to it?
I’ve got a killer idea for a band but I’m not sure if I can dig deep enough at the age of Fifty to pull it off.
Can I save this and come back to it?
Let’s Cheer Ourselves Up With A Joke Thread.
The nights are drawing in, the rain is relentless, the kids are back at school, the germs are rampant, the roads are clogged and everyone is a bit miserable. Methinks it’s time for another joke thread.
I went to a cake shop the other day. All the cakes were beautifully lined up, cup cake, cheese cake, chocolate fudge cake, angel cake and all just 50p. Except one.
“Why is this cake £2:50, when all the others are just 50p?”
“Oh. That’s Madeira cake.”
Your turn.
etcetera
In my Turtles listening marathon (don’t ask) I was reminded of this wonderful song, and it of course includes the fabulous immortal line “You’re my pride and joy, etc.”
Now, are there any other songs with such office routine poetry? Love songs that sound like they were written by an accountant? The only one I can remember is a sentimental German schlager which includes the German equivalent of “as I’ve mentioned above”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBBCarZWL1M
You can tell the summer holidays are over..
.. traffic on t’Afterword seems to have increased quite a bit in the last week.


