Monthly Archives: October 2009

The Ballad of Yoko Ono

Yoko-Ono-trees

This week’s episode of Later…with Jools Holland features Smokey Robinson, The Dead Weather, Bassekou Kouyate, Miike Snow and Basement Jaxx. Basement Jaxx are joined by Yoko Ono, who will also perform without the band. This week I will just focus on one of those guests. Yoko Ono is an artist and musician, who got her start in music when she hooked up with a singer named John Lennon. Lennon was a member of a band from the sixties called The Beatles and Ono’s relationship with Lennon was seen by many as a major reason for that group’s untimely demise. Lennon was quite fond of Ono and wrote a number of songs that expressed his fondness for her. They were man and wife for the whole of the seventies, but the arrangement ended at the end of 1980 when Mark Chapman took Lennon’s life. Here are a number of songs sung by Yoko Ono plus a couple written by John Lennon about her. I’ve also included a few more songs about Ono, the breakup of the Beatles, and Sissy Spacek’s displeasure at the cover of the Two Virgins LP

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A Legend in His Time

John Peel

On this day five years ago, John Peel was getting ready to present another episode of his radio show. Unfortunately, it would be his last as a heart attack would take his life a few weeks later while on a working holiday in Peru. He had been best known as a disc jockey and champion of the musical underdog on BBC radio. His Peel Sessions gave many bands their first chance of airplay and a load of them went on to have successful careers in the music business. Sadly, I never got to hear his shows as it was not possible for me to listen to BBC radio when he was around. Nevertheless, I’m grateful to him for giving a first chance to many bands that I count among my favourites. For example, he once announced on air that he was feeling a little peckish. A cheeky chappy from Essex heard this and he delivered a Biryani to the studio along with a copy of his demo! He was offered a session straight away and Billy Bragg has become a very respected songwriter with loads of albums under his belt

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Shot By Both Sides

Magazine_2009_MONO_300dpi

The fifth episode of Season 35 of Later…with Jools Holland promises to be a little more interesting than the two previous shows. This season, a couple of post-punk bands from the north of England have already appeared in the form of Leed’s Gang of Four and Liverpool’s Echo & the Bunnymen. This week it’s the turn of Magazine (pictured) from Manchester, formed in 1977 by Howard Devoto after he quit fellow Mancunian band, the Buzzcocks. They have re-united and have been touring this year. A Song From Under the Floorboards is the closing track of their third album, The Correct Use of Soap (1980). The song has an amazing lyric and was influenced by Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Jimmy Ruffin was also coming across all existential on What Becomes of the Brokenhearted, a 1966 hit on Motown records for the soul singer. Ruffin was born a couple of years before Steven Gene Wold, better known as blues singer, Seasick Steve. He’s led quite an interesting life and he uses many of these experiences in his songs. Steve has a kindred spirit in Devendra Banhart who, like Steve, has led a nomadic existence that has taken him around the US and Europe. I really like his radical take on Don’t Look Back in Anger, a version that nearly creates a new song out of the Gallagher brothers original. The Australian band Wolfmother has a new album due soon as well as a new lineup, following the departure of a couple of the original members. Vagabond is the closing track of their self-titled debut album from 2005 and is yet another bluesy number. The final guest on this week’s show is a British singer named Paloma Faith. She is a trained dancer, a former magician’s assistant and has a Masters in theatre direction, so presumably her performance will be more visual than the others. Her vocal style and musical influences would not appear to be a million miles away from those of Amy Winehouse

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100 Not Out

100euro

I began this blog seven months ago and I must admit that I had no idea back then what shape it would take. I’m quite surprised that I’ve reached my hundredth post so soon. This means that I’ve posted an average of three times per week, even though I have sometime gone weeks where I haven’t posted at all. Most of my posts have been about music or gigs that I’ve attended or musicians I like. I’ve also posted a few times about current affairs, my travels, football and film. My two most popular posts have been Happy Birthday, Bruce! and It’s a Long Way to Tipperary. The reason for their popularity was that Expecting Rain (a Bob Dylan site) linked to these posts and brought in hundreds of extra visitors. Elbo.ws, the music blog aggregator, also brings in a few hundred hits every week. And I’m aware that I have a number of regular readers as well, so thank you all for your comments and for popping over here every week. Here are a few tunes to celebrate this century of posts

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Best Albums of the 00s: Solitary Man

American III - Solitary Man - Johnny Cash (2000)

Each week from now until the end of the year I’m going to take a chronological look at my twelve favourite albums of the noughties. These are the albums I liked most from that decade and the ones I played most often throughout the last ten years. First up is Johnny Cash’s American III: Solitary Man from 2000. Cash was primarily known as a country singer and I heard a lot of country music on the radio when I was growing up. Unfortunately, it was an Irish version called country and western that featured Irish lads and lasses wearing cowboy outfits and attempting to mimic American accents and themes as they sang either their own songs or their inferior versions of classic American country music. I could have been put off music for life if it hadn’t been for the occasional Johnny Cash tune that appeared now and then on that radio station named Tipperary Mid West Radio. It wasn’t too hard for the Man in Black to stand out because his songs were superior in quality and seemed more authentic than those of a chancer who claimed that it was he who shot JR Ewing

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Music to Watch Girls By

Echo & the Bunnymen

This week’s episode of the current series of Later…with Jools Holland features a more interesting and diverse roster of artists than last week’s one. Echo & the Bunnymen‘s distinctive guitar and vocal sound brought them lots of critical and some commercial success in the eighties. They’ll be playing songs from their latest album, The Fountain. Calvin Harris will be appearing and he’s best known for his hit, Acceptable in the 80s. I’ve included a version from last week’s guests, Editors. The Spaghetti Western Orchestra will be playing their versions of one of cinema’s most successful and distinctive composers, Ennio Morricone. The Pogues also do a fine job of one of Morricone’s most famous themes. Better Times Will Come is the title track of American country singer Diana Jones‘s current album. Biffy Clyro are from Scotland, but they sound like an American rock band to me. Finally, the easy-listening crooner Andy Williams will be playing music to watch the girls go by

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Best Albums of the 00s

Bubbling Under 00s

Not only has another year caught up on us, but so has another decade. It feels like only yesterday that I was partying like it was 1999 and getting ready to ring in the new millennium. 2009′s not even over yet, but already a number of magazines and web sites have published their Best Album of the Decade lists. The 150th edition of Uncut magazine has 150 albums from the 00s while Pitchfork has gone for 200. My own list is less comprehensive as it contains just a dozen of my favourite albums for the last ten years. I’m going to look at each of these albums over the next three months, but first I’m going to have a brief look at a few that didn’t make it

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