Dave Amitri on The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars

Month three into 12 Bowie albums in 12 months as someone who had never heard a Bowie album before and I’ve arrived at “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars”. It will be plain old “Ziggy Stardust….“ from now on. I definitely approached this with trepidation as it’s clearly very important to an awful lot of people. I hope my attempts to view it from a different angle are appreciated. As usual I limited my reading to a scan of Wikipedia and it immediately strikes me how ground breaking the image must have been in 1972. The Top Of the Pops “Starman” performance was obviously a turning point in Bowie’s career. I remember how people reacted to Boy George 10 years later so in 1972 the concept of a bisexual alien on the telly on a Thursday night must have  caused quite a stir. Much Blue Nun spat out into the fondue across 70’s suburbia. My mission is to see if the music lived up to the image or was it all flares and no knickers?

On the first » Continue Reading.

Dave Amitri on Hunky Dory by David Bowie

My second dive into 12 Bowie albums in 2021 as someone who had never heard a Bowie album before now brings me to Hunky Dory

February introduced me to 1971’s Hunky Dory. It’s an album that I’ve seen referenced many times and recommended as one of the great Bowie albums so it was with real relish and anticipation that I dived in. Another brilliantly androgynous cover by the way. I’m looking at you Boy George… A quick look at the track listing and suddenly I had flashes of recognition. 3 tunes leapt out as “hits”. The ones that Radio listening Bowie  fans  would instantly recognise. I did a little bit of reading but I didn’t want to influence my view too much. A first listen and it is a hugely different album to The Man Who Sold The World with a huge reliance on piano and less of a rock album. It felt quite messy, eclectic with no definitive sound but in amongst the mess I was able to see that this was a seismic shift towards the Bowie sound. Whatever that is. And it has hits, massive, wonderful hits…

Changes is » Continue Reading.

Blue Boy on Two of the greatest artists to come out of Northern Ireland – different, but with much in common

I was born and brought up in Northern Ireland, growing up in idyllic suburbia in North Down. From our lounge window you could see across Belfast Lough to Carrickfergus Castle on the other side. We lived there until I was thirteen, returning briefly for a few months two years later, before we finally moved away and settled in England.

I was fifteen when we came to England. Happy enough, we settled in well. But I had been taken from where I grew up, and I found that my identification with Northern Ireland was all the stronger in exile than it had been when I lived there. I loved literature and I loved music, and if you were a writer or musician from Ireland – North and South – you had my attention before I had even read or heard any of your work. James Joyce, WB Yeats, Flann O’Brien, Joyce Cary. Horslips, Rory Gallagher, the Chieftains.

And above all – then, and now – Seamus Heaney and Van Morrison.

They were born either side of the Second World » Continue Reading.

Colin H on Rick Laird, Brian Auger, Glenn Hughes, John McLaughlin

The recent news that Rick Laird is seriously ill has prompted me to share some of the content from ‘Bathed in Lightning: John McLaughlin, the 60s and the Emerald Beyond’ (2014) – adapted with a little bit of new research, among which is this terrific photo / news item from ‘The Stage’ on 9 January 1964. Rick very kindly talked to me for the book about a time long before he and John McLaughlin renewed their acquaintance in the Mahavishnu Orchestra, when they were both in the Brian Auger Quintet for a residency at London’s Pigalle nightclub and also a short-lived trio.

Baritone saxophonist Glenn Hughes was common to both groups. Glenn and John had previously played together in Georgie Fame’s (pre-fame) Blues Flames in 1962–63 and in the Tony Meehan Combo (October 1963 – January 1964). John and Glenn would have a last musical hurrah together with a version of Brian’s quintet in August 1964, reassembled for a German residency. By that point, Rick had moved on to become house bassist at Ronnie Scott’s jazz club, backing a series of American headliners at the club and on TV. » Continue Reading.

Dave Amitri on The Man Who Sold The World

For those who aren’t aware I am a pop loving 55 year old music civilian who before this project had never listened to a David Bowie album despite knowing all the radio playlist Bowie tunes by heart. I’ve decided to listen to a Bowie album a month during 2021 from “The Man Who Sold The World” to “Scary Monsters “ after being told they are the best run of 12 albums ever. My angle is to try and find where I have heard his influence in the music of my heroes and report it as so many of them have cited Bowie as an inspiration. Maybe some will become favourites of mine…

 Starting my Bowie odyssey with “The Man Who Sold The World” an album made 50 years ago I wasn’t  sure what to expect. Bowie the great originator at the beginning of a run of 12 great albums. My expectations were high. So I pressed play. “The Width of a Circle” began and straight away I heard that guitar swoosh intro straight from “Foxy Lady”…. Now this is no bad thing I love The Jimi Hendrix Experience but it set » Continue Reading.

Dave Amitri on Thompson Twins

Most of us remember the Thompson Twins from their mid 80s pomp. Big hair, cartoon image, percussive excess, out of context whoops, wails and whizzes, drum machines, synths and generally everything you either love or hate about the music of that period. In the recent podcast I subconsciously picked Thompson Twins as the band I would choose as an example of just how far I would go to defend the honour of 80’s music. In that moment had I  suggested that they were indefensible such was their total eightiesness? I thought long and hard about that comment and decided to revisit, reassess and reappraise Thompson Twins (not THE Thompson Twins as I learned) this is that story….

I need to go back first, back to April 1983 when I was on a train from Staines to Ashford clutching my WH Smith’s bag and inside was the 12 inch version of “We Are Detective”. I’d chosen what I thought was an empty carriage but no, there behind a seat I heard voices of two post punk lads who I’d known but  avoided at school. They spotted me. “What’s in the bag?” they snarled. I shyly answered » Continue Reading.

Colin H on Last of the Brooklyn Cowboys (1973)

In 1999, I had the great pleasure of interviewing Arlo Guthrie (at a hotel bar in Belfast) for a ‘Mojo ‘Buried Treasure’ feature. Arlo gracefully retired last month, which prompted me to unearth it. Arlo’s ‘Last of the Brooklyn Cowboys’ album had long been a favourite – first heard on 8-track cartridge when I was 11 or 12, I think, circa 1980, and later bought on import vinyl from Caroline Music in Anne Street, Belfast, in the mid 80s. I loathed the 80s, and this record – from the music to the gatefold sleeve to the Reprise label’s sepia-tinted inner sleeve of photos from ‘old Burbank, California’ – seemed to be the gateway to a magical place in the recent, but irretrievable, past. It was fascinating to hear from Arlo, unprompted, that he too had been trying to capture, in 1973, a kind of magical, mythical place from the past at that time, when he recorded it. The album only came to CD in 1998, so that was the hook to hang this feature on. It remains a singularly brilliant album. Shortly after the interview, I sought out a (second-hand vinyl) » Continue Reading.

Tiggerlion on Aladdin Sane by David Bowie

On the 13th of April 1973, Ziggy Stardust, battered and bruised in the middle of a long tour, morphed into Aladdin Sane.

Watch That Man isn’t a portent of doom like Five Years. It’s a kind of hell in the present, a typical rock & roll party. Earth may no longer be dying but the drugs are bad, the tables are scattered with cocaine and champagne bottles, the men are creepy, a reverend is dancing on his knees, reminiscent of the cop kneeling to kiss the feet of a priest, and the music is so loud it’s difficult to hear any conversation. Mick Ronson’s guitars assail the ears from both sides, Woody Woodmansey’s drums clatter noisily and the new Spider, Mike Garson, on piano, is constantly trying to get a word in. The mix is dark and murky because everyone is smoking and the light bulbs are dim. At least the girls are beautiful. Linda Lewis and Juanita ‘Honey’ Franklin sound so fabulous they must be wearing short skirts and thigh length boots, still fashionable in 1973. It’s a strain to make out Bowie’s vocal because, for once, he isn’t the centre » Continue Reading.

Colin H on The Warehouse Remembered #2 charity gig at the Pavilion, Belfast

In these days of misery, doom and toilet-roll shortages, I thought I’d share some a positive tale. It happened last Friday…

America has its ‘Woodstock generation’, Belfast has its ‘Warehouse generation’. I found myself spontaneously arriving at that phrase during compering duties on Friday night, and it feels good. The Warehouse was a one of those magical venues that only lasts for a moment. In this case, 18 months spanning 1994–96. It felt a bit longer at the time, because I went there two or three times a week, to see touring troubadours and local (mostly original-music) bands of every kind – blues, rock, jazz, grunge, folk, Irish trad, soul, reggae… In hindsight, it was a golden age for local music: the possibilities offered by self-funded CDs had just arrived, which gave an impetus to everyone to work towards something. Local radio was still ‘local’, not playlisted by an algorithm in Milton Keynes – a local act could still get their music on air, and could still cause a sensation among listeners. Talent could ‘out’, as it were.

Chris Roddy and Ernie Magennis were the publicans at » Continue Reading.

Colin H on The Presleys

‘Embrace’ is the first album by the Presleys. It’s a 35-minute barnstorming, blistering urban garage blues-rock behemoth – and it benefits homeless people. It’s an album that requires no previous knowledge of those involved: Ned Alexander (drums, backing vocals) and Brian Houston (guitars, vocals, piano, banjo). The tracking engineer, Ben Loughran, adds bass and Moog on some tracks. It was recorded and mixed at Brian’s studio in Belfast.

It’s tempting to leave it there as an intro – because I’ve just said that one needs no other information to crank up this album and enjoy it. But… okay, let me tell you just a little about Brian Houston before we hear what he has to say…

Thirty years ago, around 1990, Brian’s band the Mighty Fall caused a sensation on the Belfast bar scene. Not least, they opened up a major covers-only venue to original music with a weekly residency at the Empire Bar. The Empire became one of Belfast’s key handful of original music venues in the mid-90s, along with the Warehouse (1994–96), the Front Page, the Duke of York and a couple of others. The Empire is still a key venue to » Continue Reading.

Colin H on Being a Bandleader

On 10 January, I invited three of my local music associates, all bandleaders and ‘music lifers’, round for a cup of tea and a three-way interview session. In order of seniority, Dave ‘The Hat’ McLarnon is a punk veteran, Adele Ingram is chief songwriter with quirky all-girl hillbillies Wookalily, and Scott Flanigan is a piano/organ jazz sensation with a splendid line in wit.

Northern Ireland is an isolated region in various senses, and all three have tried, and/or are still trying, to make an impact in their field beyond the locale, while trying to make a living within it. I’ve skirted around the music scene(s) in Belfast since the early 90s, never particularly at the core of anything but around the edges of several things – as, at various times, a local newspaper feature writer, events/recordings organiser, general cheerleader and occasional mentor/advisor – and I’m always intrigued when I find musicians I’ve known for years who have shared the same timeline and geographical space for decades and yet have never previously met.

Even within the ‘rock world’ I found this recently, when I had the great pleasure of pulling together a charity » Continue Reading.

Tiggerlion on the official studio recordings The Beatles made of other writers’ songs.

Apart from a forty second blast of Maggie Mae released in 1970, The Beatles recorded twenty-four covers of other people’s songs during their official studio career, mostly during the first couple of years when they made their first four albums. They were all derived from their live act, some dating back to their earliest gigs, and they give an insight to where The Beatles came from and why they became such a success. Ten were late fifties Rock and Roll classics written by Carl Perkins, Larry Williams, Chuck Berry and Little Richard, appealing to the leather clad rockers within. Ten were originally sung by girl groups or were ballads from musical theatre or by Soul artists, appealing to the teenage girls who were the hotbed of their early audience. Seven were captured in the first take.

Prior to winning a recording contract with EMI, The Beatles had some experience working in a studio. In Hamburg, they befriended Tony Sheridan and acted as his backing band both live and, on 22-24th June 1961, for studio recordings. On the final day they were given the opportunity to record two » Continue Reading.

fentonsteve on interviewing A Certain Ratio

I was offered the chance to interview A Certain Ratio when I go to see them play in Nottingham next weekend. Trouble is, I’m not going to get there early enough to conduct an afternoon interview, and I want to catch support band Sink Ya Teeth. So, after racking my brain for questions (which, it turns out, is really quite hard), and crowd-sourcing a few more from the likes of DocVolume, we did it by email.

I played the inquisitive nerdy uber-fan. Guitarist Martin Moscrop (in the hat) and drummer Donald Johnson (in the middle) provided the answers.

Going back right to the start, what was working with Martin Hannett like? Hooky’s and Stephen Morris book suggests he was hard work. Did he make Donald do each drum part separately? Did he try to freeze you out of the control room during mixing? Did someone at the studio really zero the desk and ruin his mix of To Each?

Martin: Everything that needs to has been said about Martin Hannett’s working practices. He liked to instil an element of confusion into the young musicians he was working with and create an atmosphere of tension » Continue Reading.

Colin H on Artistic afterlife

The afterlife of an artist or writer is an intriguing subject. In the wake of a disagreement I had with Bert Jansch’s estate, which I now view as closed, I’ve been pondering the subject in a general way. This isn’t any kind of open letter to the people who look after Bert’s estate – it’s simply a rumination on the changing nature of artistic work beyond the life of the artist, and the increasing ability in the social media/instant-opinion age of the fans of that artist to make their views on the way that artist’s estate is being run heard. It’s a conversation starter, really – feel free to add your thoughts.

One can go on to other forums, for instance, and find endless discussion and controversy about the activities and perceived motivations of the Jimi Hendrix estate, the Prince estate, the David Bowie estate… There’ll be a nod to Bert’s legacy later, but this is a general ramble through territory that was once shadowy but now, I believe, is so increasingly the subject of widespread opinion and discussion that an artist’s estate would perhaps – and I say only perhaps, because those with the » Continue Reading.

Colin H on Belfast music legends you’ve never heard of

I’m rather excited about this concert – this Friday. Let me explain… Two or three months back, I started digitising and uploading to YouTube a load of music by mid 90s acts from the Belfast music scene – cassette demos, CDRs of lost albums, the odd commercially released local CD, tracks from various artist live albums etc., moving on to unreleased live sets from DATs (with permission from those concerned). I was a part of that scene as a writer for a local newspaper and organiser of two multi-artist live albums from two venues, firstly The Warehouse (a now legendary venue run by a couple of bohemian characters, only open for 18 months) and then The Empire (part of a chain of pubs/hotels, and still going as a venue). This activity led to various coffee=shop catch-ups with musical pals and scenesters I hadn’t seen in 20 years… which led, with barely any effort whatsoever, like a giant open door, to this four-band reunion concert in five days time. 🙂

We hear a lot – as in, we simply never stop hearing about it locally and, I suspect, nationally (off the » Continue Reading.

Colin H on Belfast music legends you’ve never heard of

I’m rather excited about this concert – this Friday. Let me explain… Two or three months back, I started digitising and uploading to YouTube a load of music by mid 90s acts from the Belfast music scene – cassette demos, CDRs of lost albums, the odd commercially released local CD, tracks from various artist live albums etc., moving on to unreleased live sets from DATs (with permission from those concerned). I was a part of that scene as a writer for a local newspaper and organiser of two multi-artist live albums from two venues, firstly The Warehouse (a now legendary venue run by a couple of bohemian characters, only open for 18 months) and then The Empire (part of a chain of pubs/hotels, and still going as a venue). This activity led to various coffee=shop catch-ups with musical pals and scenesters I hadn’t seen in 20 years… which led, with barely any effort whatsoever, like a giant open door, to this four-band reunion concert in five days time. 🙂

We hear a lot – as in, we simply never stop hearing about it locally and, I suspect, nationally (off the » Continue Reading.

Tiggerlion on Hot Buttered Soul by Isaac Hayes

The fortunes of Isaac Hayes and Stax Records in Memphis are inextricably linked. He first auditioned for the newly-named label in 1961 and covered on keyboards for Booker T. Jones in The M.G.s when Jones was away completing his university studies. By the mid sixties, Stax’s imperial phase, he’d teamed up with David Porter to write and produce a host of hit records, most notably Soul Man and Hold On (I’m Coming) for Sam & Dave, an act loaned to the label by Atlantic.

In December 1967, Stax’s star man, Otis Redding, died in a plane clash, an accident that also claimed the lives of most of his backing band, The Bar-Kays, too. In early 1968, the agreement with Atlantic fell apart and Atlantic took Stax’s back catalogue with them, as well as acts like Sam & Dave. Memphis, the city, was also in crisis with a sanitation workers’ strike, a stand-off with the authorities led by a white, racist mayor, the murder of Martin Luther King in a Memphis motel and the rise of black power threatening the balance of mixed race there was in the company.

Stax’s future » Continue Reading.

moseleymoles on In which Mr Moles muses on his life through objects

Recent changes chez Moles have thrown more focus onto the shelves, racks and piles of stuff that we – chiefly I – have filled our des res with over the years. The re-organisation of the Front Room has led Ms Moles to make what she would like to think is a ‘full and final settlement’ of the space allocated for CDs/vinyl/books/comics/DVDs. That settlement in full:

The DVDs not to exceed their allocated shelving. Roughly 650 DVDs worth.

The fiction shelving not to exceed their allocated shelving. Approximately 800-900 including overflow onto the floor below and behind the sofa.

Non-fiction and vinyl not to exceed their allocated shelving. Vinyl is one area Ms Moles does chip in with approx. a third of the total. And no, we may have been together 30 odd years and produced two offspring but those collections remain unmerged.

New shelving to be provided in the front room as part of its redecoration for the CDs – I would reckon between 1500-2000 (maybe 300 Ms Moles). And for the comics – around 2500 (er…all mine, 90% 2000AD).

Though I instinctively bridle, I know that » Continue Reading.

Tiggerlion on In A Silent Way by Miles Davis

Fifty years ago today, Miles Davis unleashed a quiet storm. In A Silent Way is unique in the world of popular music and jazz. It calmly and clear-sightedly surrenders the old ways of acoustic instruments and small groups captured in whole takes and warmly embraces the new, the hum of electricity and the role of producer as contributory artist, cutting and splicing away. It consists of two vinyl-side long pieces that seem to float, beautiful and ethereal, only bursting with colour for a brief moment in the final third of side two. It challenges the very definition of Jazz, raising questions of authenticity and its relationship with technology and a wider Rock audience. The final product sounds as futuristic today as it did fifty years ago. It is Miles Davis reinventing modern music once again.

Legend has it that In A Silent Way, like Kind Of Blue ten years earlier, was recorded on a single day, that day being 18th February 1969. The story goes that Davis, the wizard alchemist, brought together a group of musicians and, with no clear instructions or guidance, coaxed a masterpiece out of them. The truth » Continue Reading.

Colin H on Michael Standing

I do like a good pun. And cultural history. And speculation. All three combine in this delightful aside from my book ‘The Wheels of the World: 300 Years of Irish Uilleann Pipers’ (2015).

The speculative aspect is this: could I have stumbled upon the ultimate source of the current TV news obsession of cutting to reporters standing outside somewhere where something happened hours ago but where absolutely nothing, bar darkness and bad weather, is happening now?

Legendary Irish piper Leo Rowsome corresponded vexatiously with various BBC producers between 1926-52, eventually securing several radio and TV broadcasts. It’s a fascinating tale in itself, possible to reconstruct from BBC Written Records and other sources (which I did, in a chapter of the book). One of the shows he was keen to appear on was ‘In Town Tonight’, a radio magazine/chat show that ran from 1933 to 1960, with a TV version simulcast from 1954 to 1956. Opening to the sound (and later vision) of Piccadilly Circus, the presenter would begin: “Once more we stop the mighty roar of London’s traffic and, from the great crowds, we bring you some of the interesting people who have come » Continue Reading.

Raymond on how a man of 77 gets to make his recording debut

In 2014, I started writing about the process of recording some songs with the intention of making an album. The project that I started documenting back then has grown arms and legs and morphed into a multi-headed beast (more about that some other time). I’ve taken several detours along the way, but the one that means the most is about to get a proper release on an actual record label, something I had barely even considered as a possibility when I started out.

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Colin H on Researching Music History

Not everything is on the internet, but likewise not everything you might be looking for in period sources might be where you would expect to find it. I thought Afterworders might be interested in this little glimpse of how a rich vein of research can be opened up by a single line of print in an obscure source.

The moral of this tale is twofold: (a) sourcing and perusing period print sources is crucial; (b) there are times when period print sources can trump the retrospective interview recollections of period participants. (The caveat being that, very occasionally, the opposite of point (b) is the case – where period print evidence is inaccurate.)

When I was researching Big Pete Deuchar for my first John McLaughlin book ‘Bathed in Lightning’ (Jawbone, 2014) – Pete’s trad jazz outfit the Professors of Ragtime having been John’s first band – I lacked the time to delve fully into the tale, and so it occupied only a few paragraphs in that book, essentially supplying a means for John to get from Tyneside to London. When I was subsequently working on the companion volume ‘Echoes from Then’ (self-published, 2017) I spent » Continue Reading.

Sewer Robot on Comedy Horror

Comedy Horror, eh? It’s bleedin’ everywhere nowadays. In movies, in those comics your kids buy, even on proper, non-satellite, tv channels. But has its ubiquity blinded us to fact that this marriage of genres is an ill bred abomination? I mean, I like sitting at home at my “table” and I also enjoy a vigorous game of “tennis”, but that doesn’t mean I can just bolt these two words together to produce a game involving tennis-style skills that can be played indoors on a waist-high wooden surface.

The poet Patrick Kavanagh has a line about the newness that was in every stale thing when we looked at it as children. True dat – but it’s also true that there were loads of things we encountered as kids which, though of fairly recent vintage, we, in our stupid innocence, assumed had been around forever.

Chuckle worthy beasties were ubiquitous in the culture when we were kids. “Over He-e-e-r-e” were Scooby and Shaggy hiding from ghosts in the pantry, over there was Creature Teacher and the other assorted ghouls of Monster Fun comic. We bought gum containing cards where the black and white monsters from old RKO » Continue Reading.