Entertainment For Lively Minds
The Band Only I like
Posted by Leedsboy on 8 June 2009 - 10:16pm.
Picking up Mark Ellen's challenge in the new edition as to which bands do only you like, I'll start with The Long Winters. A quick review of my itunes shows I play them as often as Teenage Fanclub, Sigur Ros and Elbow. And yet they are not on Spotify nor can you get them on 7Digital (or Fraser would have had a review by now).
I suggest starting with The Commander Thinks Aloud and and then having a go at Putting The Days To Bed. Think upbeat REM jamming with The Flaming Lips. Only better. And they are on eMusic.
There must be others worthy of our interest?
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Merz
I've never yet met anyone who's so much as *heard* of him, let alone grown to love his music like I do.
I remember years ago hearing a lot of chatter about this fella named David Gray, who'd apparently made a great album on his home studio (a thrilling proposition back then), which was supposed to be a heartfelt, emotional blend of folksiness and bleeps. I imagined wonders in this music, something deeply moving, warm and lyrical, yet modern and exciting. It wasn't, it was shite. Happily Merz turned out to be exactly what I was looking for.
Here's a brief introduction for those so inclined:
http://open.spotify.com/user/cadabra/playlist/7yBYgWNlJNgojybAWqeTod
I saw Merz about ten years
I saw Merz about ten years ago in a club in Bristol, around the time of his first album, when there was actually quite a bit of chat about him being TNBT (The Next Big Thing). Didn't happen, of course, but he was great that night, and continues to be so.
His last album was reviewed in The Word, by the way. It's the one with the tramp from Bath on backing vocals...
The tramp from Bath?
Are you talking about the guy who sits in Bath city centre with a guitar doing Bob Marley covers often wearing a jester's hat?
Urban legend has it, he's actually related to one of the Wailers and has appeared with them at Glastonbury.
Alas,
I don't know him personally.
But I think this guy is more of a venerable 'gentleman of the road' type. I don't think he was chosen for his ability to crack out Bob Marley covers, put it that way, but for the, um, unique character of his voice... like Tom Waits with a strep throat.
.
Merz, you are not alone
I love that first album too, in fact I listened to it just a few weeks ago. I'm pretty sure he was on Later too. What's the recent album like?
To be honest
I don't like it as much as the other two. It's more "live", with drums and electric guitars (albeit fairly quiet, he hasn't Gone Rock), but it just doesn't have the magical atmosphere of "Merz" and "Loveheart".
Warm Cigarette Room
I like him, I saw him play at the Green Man Festival a few years ago and he was great. Warm Cigarette Room is a favourite.
Merz - -yeh, know all about 'im
Lovely Daughter nly scrapes the top - -not a duff track, anywhere, anytime - - not too shabby live either!!
The Raw Herbs?
Jook? The Bay City Rollers? The last one's not as facetious as it sounds...cod glam and early eighties schmidie are great as far as I'm concerned but I don't know that many other people why like them.
I do
It's nothing to be ashamed off. I love the Glitter Band too.
Brian Charles
Absolutely joyous powerpop, a great album called Sadderdaydreaming, but nobody else seems to have heard of him.
I commend him to the house.
http://www.myspace.com/briancharlesmusic for a sample.
The Dancing Did
Had a stonking unique sound for the early 80s, sort of punk-folk but much much better than such as the Levellers, and their words dug deep into a very English folk tradition, as in The Wolves of Worcestershire. Yet they're so bloody obscure, all but vaporized by history, that I sometimes wonder if I've hallucinated them. (Lost my copy of their album many years ago.)
Ian you were not
hallucinating. I can remember them and had a wonderful single called, 'Lost Platoon' by them
Suzanne Rhatigan
Girl gets job as SAW backing singer, makes album with Fred Maher, Robert Quine and Bernie Worrell, record company goes bust, singer disappears. Great album, mind.
Ask her what she thinks of that album!
I did, and it turns out she hated it! This was after a gig at the 12 Bar Club, after which she was circulating with great bonhomie among the audience. She told me that album had cost £400,000 to make - and wasn't it on Imago, the label whose collapse also torpedoed Aimee Mann's nascent solo career? - and they brought in loads of musos she didn't want. She only liked two or three of the songs on it and didn't play any of them live. Anyway, To Hell With Love, Indian Summer and The Spinner Of Years (all written with Craig Charles, trivia fans) are great songs.
Her subsequent albums are very different - very rough and ready - and worth investigating.
Lullaby for the working classes
Lovely multi-instrumental folk-indie (findie?) from Omaha, Nebraska. 'Spreading the evening sky with crows' is really lovely. Discovered them on that Rough Trade alt country compilation (the one with The Gourds doing Snoop Doggy Dogg's Gin and Juice- worth seeking out for a laugh).
Since seeing this guy live I keep..
...returning to his albums - Michael Weston King and he's currently on tour.
Jason Downs
But whatever happened to him?
Trouble is...
The band you think you're the only person still listening to turns out to be big in Slovenia or South America or somewhere.
Fisher Z? Fondly remembered in Germany apparently. Gin Blossoms? Still gigging in Arizona, it seems.
I remember Annie Nightingale loved the Worker
by Fischer Z. Was pleased to find a "best of" in Paris a few years ago, maybe they were big in France as well ?
Meanwhile my own "is it just me" is Kit Hain
http://www.stereosociety.com/body_kithain.html
though clearly not entirely alone:
http://divasneedlove2.blogspot.com/2009/03/kit-hain-looking-for-you-1982...
Still hope this album will get a CD release one day-highly unlikely I guess.
Buffalo Daughter
I have yet to encounter another person who's heard of them, yet alone likes them.
Some people just don't seem to get experimental Japanese electronic music as much as they used to...
"I" is an amazing album.
Heard of them?
I DJed at a Buffalo Daughter gig back in the 90s...
They were great live...
I saw them supporting Money Mark then went and stocked up, but the albums were a massive disappointment compared to the live show.
60ft Dolls
Much sharper and vital than their dumbed-down, urine-dappled interviews would suggest. Their punkish abandon and sly wit shredded the rest of the lackadaisical mod noodling at a sun-drenched Paul Weller fest in Finsbury Park, incuding the uber-geezer himself.
I liked them!
Talk To Me and Stay were pretty good but ultimately ignored slices of standard indie guitar stuff in the mid Britpop stylee.
Stay
was kindov rare in indie guitar circles at the time for being a bit Motown/Stax influenced which I thought set the Dolls apart from the morass. Using the legend that is Jon Langford and Sugar engineer Lou Giordano as producers were other genius moves, in my humble. I always thought lumping them in with Britpop was a tad unfair
Talk to me
I got that on orange 7", cos it was 50p in Oxfam. Good buy. Was ok to listen to. Thought it was quite "Nuggets"-esque.
China Crisis
Before they went all Steely Dan-bollox, they made two fantastic 80s-indie albums (their 1st two). No-one ever mentions them in 80s discussions and they are bottom of the bill on 80s chicken-in-the-basket tours, secondary even to Toyah bloody Wilcox and Curiosity Killed The Cat. Outrageous!
String Cheese Incident
An acquaintance who happened to be a music critic for the Boston Globe gave me a load of freebie cd's most of which were instantly disposable. However he asked me to take particular note of a cd by String Cheese Incident - I did and they are awesome. Particularly live, they elicit the kind of fan worship previously reserved for The Grateful Dead with whom they share some similarities. They record and sell all of their live shows as triple cd's - doesn't sound exciting until you hear the level of musicianship and the exhilerating jams they play and indeed the wonderful cover versions of artists ranging from Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix, Weather report and many more.
There is oodles (or should that be noodles?)
of String Cheese Incident material to be downloaded freely and legally from www.archive.org.
Click on the Live Music Archive link, then on the Browse Bands link.
Most of the material is offered in a variety of formats, from lossless to MP3, and at the time of posting, there are 1,109 shows available...
The Beatles
No only kidding - I can't stand them.
Cressida
I've said it before, they are one of the crowning achievements of British Progressive rock from 1970/71.
Cressida
Any other bands have cars named after them?
Toyota Cressida
The Bevis Frond
Take away the Fisher-Price Hendrix fret-bothering workouts and you'll find some remarkably good tunes.
He was pretty good on Countdown too.
Nice bloke too,
it seemed to me. He used to advertise regularly in the small ads of Record Collector, also appearing there under his real name. I spoke to him several times while hunting down elusive Vertigo or Transatlantic titles back when I used to bankrupt myself on a monthly basis in support of my vinyl habit, and he was always very helpful. Not what I'd expected from a modern progmeister, for some reason. At the time I had no idea he was the same person as The Frond!
No Its Not Racist...
One of my favourite bands is The Negro Problem. Psyche-pop-soul-cabaret ole! Best bloody band name too,considering who fronts them, the majestic genius,Stew.
Friends Again
... who made what is, to my ears, the greatest debut single ever, and then the Bathers, who made one of my favourite albums, Sweet Deceit, though I never much cared for Love and Money. While I'm here, among people who might know, is there any Bathers news, as it has been very quiet of late, as far as I know?
why are there two threads for this ?
Fraser ? David ? Can you not consolidate them ?
As I said over there ->
not much Bathers news : http://www.thebathers.co.uk/
I saw Chris Thompson having a pint in Brel a year or so ago - he was looking well.
Eighties Obscura
Anyone care to remember The Truth Club?
I went out with their lead singer.That's how good they were!
Chris T-T
This is a nice one: