1979 and all that ........

Been thinking about my earliest record purchases and whether that has had a direct influence on my later buying. Looking through my earliest singles in my record collection i see 2 singles i recieved for my 8th birthday (March 1979), Elvis Costello - Oliver's Army and Blondie - Heart Of Glass - at the time these were no1 and no2 in the charts - (bloody good week, thank God!).
So I Looked back at the No.1's from 1979 - what a superb year!!!!

18 songs made the top spot that year they were:-

Y.M.C.A. - The Village People
Hit Me With Your Rythym Stick - Ian Dury And The Blockheads
Heart Of Glass - Blondie
Tragedy - Bee Gees
I Will Survive - Gloria Gaynor
Bright Eyes - Art Garfunkel
Sunday Girl - Blondie
Ring My Bell - Anita Ward
Are "Friends" Electric - Tubeway Army
I Don't Like Mondays - Boomtown Rats
We Don't Talk Anymore - Cliff Richard
Cars - Gary Numan
Message In A Bottle - Police
Video Killed The Radio Star - Buggles
One Day At A Time - Lena Martell
When You're In Love With A Beautiful Woman - Dr. Hook
Walking On The Moon - Police
Another Brick In The Wall (Part II) - Pink Floyd

So in my humble opinion the whole new-wave (hate that description) , post-punk time to be growing up was a fantastic one. Even now 27 years later (surely, surely not....) - a great amount of the music that was created in this period (1977-1981) is still my favourite stuff ever. Squeeze, Elvis Costello, Blondie, Ian Dury, The Jam,
The Clash etc etc .

Where as if you grew up in 1988 you had Belinda Carlise, Tiffany, Kylie Minogue, Aswad, Pet Shop Boys (okay, they're fine), S Express, Fairground Attraction, Wet Wet Wet, Timelords, Bros, Glenn Medeiros, Yazz and the Plastic Population, Phil Collins, Hollies, U2 (Desire - good song), Whitney Houston, Enya, Robin Beck and Cliff Richard (again.... bloody contantly consistently annoying!).

Not Quite the same for quality in my humble opinion.

Another recommended blog http://iguessimfloating.blogspot.com - Absolute quality.
Superb amount of downloadable tracks - highly recommended.

Anybody out there who wants me to review ANYTHING, please get in touch - whether it's your music tracks, novel, fanzine.... anything - please get in touch... leave a comment and i'll get back to you and post a review.

That's All Folks.

Review of BeginAgain

Whilst randomly searching through websites i came across a website http://www.beginagainmusic.com , which features 10 tracks from BeginAgain - so i downloaded the 4 tracks from the " love.life.etc E.P.".

BeginAgain is Vinny Coyne a Galway based musician who on the basis of these 4 tracks is a talented young musician worth keeping an eye on .

Standout track for me was Drown - a very atmospheric piece of music that reminded me of Disintegration era Cure (and that is no bad thing :) ) - when the reverb guitar kicks in at 2.12 its quite superb.

I Can't - for me is crying out for a string quartet for the crescendo - it builds up and needs "more" in my humble opinion - still a bloody good song though!

Adversery(edit) - has a drum pattern that could have come from Red House Painters album "Rollercoaster" - and was the weakest of the four tracks - the only track i wouldn't recommend for downloading.

Title track Love, Life, Etc- is another track that is crying out for a bigger production - it has the potential to be an anthematic track - the coda of "we’ll give our bodies over" endlessly repeated like a mantra is very poweful and uplifting.

So overall i'm very impressed and will be certainly downloading more songs from the website in the near future.

On a different tangent alltogether - highly recommended site http://xtc4u.org , featuring an excellent selection of Live XTC tracks (before Andy Partridge's stage fright) and live in radio station tracks from the American "Oranges and Lemons" tour. Especially recommended is a version of the out-take Blue Beret http://xtc4u.org/xtcweeds/xtcw03/xtc0307.mp3

Thats all folks!!!!

Recommendations Etc....

Few sites that have made my happy recently http://music.download.com - anybody who can offer anything by XTC/Andy Partridge that i haven't already got is good in my book!

Anyone who's being eroded by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah will appreciate www.flashypython.com where there are 8 unreleased demo's by Alec Ounsworth which are damn worth downloading, including a demo version of CYHSY Details Of The War.

http://100records.blogspot.com - whoever is behind this site i have to thank you from the bottom of my cynical old heart for the mp3 of The Dead Milkmen - Punk Rock Girl! I hadn't heard that track in must be 15 years - i still love it - and the guitar solo still makes me laugh out loud!!!!

Any bands/artists out there who want a review of their demo etc - i promise here and now i will give a completely imparcial review on my blog (bribes are accepted - sweets (or candy if your one of our american cousins:) ). Just point me in the direction of your web site.

Ta ra for now. More stuff and nonsence surely to follow ...................

Growing Up, Growing Down

Its my 35th birthday in March and unlike most of my peer group who look towards new birthdays as "one more nearer 40" i must admit i don't care at all. What i've found is at last i can listen to whatever i like with no fear of not being "cool" with my musical tastes. In retrospect i was fooling no-one but myself - wearing t-shirts with this weeks hip young gunslinger (whoever NME recommended that week) and then going home and listening to Rush, Kate Bush and Squeeze. But the epiphany of i-podding has thrown all of my musical tastes into one convenient virgin white box and i'm finding that the stuff i put on there because "i really used to love this" is the music which lifts my day. You can't beat Glen Campell and The Fall back to back :)

On another note i have to heartily recommend a fellow blogger's site http://gbvguide.blogspot.com , where The Rock Robot is working his way through all the brilliant Guided By Voices releases (any who knows anything about the band's output will understand why this guy deserves credit). Its an undertaking i considered but in retrospect it was too big a project for me :)

Got to go now to listen to Rhyl vs Swansea in a Welsh cup football match. We all have our cross to bear ;)

The Blue Aeroplanes sign to EMI

Review from The Guardian newpaper - New Cd in the spring - Happy, happy happy:)

The Blue Aeroplanes, Swagger Deluxe (EMI) David Peschek
Friday January 13, 2006The Guardian

Swagger Deluxe
Among the new year's most startling music news must be the signing of Blue Aeroplanes, who haven't made a new record for 10 years, to EMI. Stalwarts of the 1980s independent scene, they dipped a toe into the big leagues at the decade's end courtesy of the patronage of REM and a major label deal - the first fruit of which, 1990's Swagger, is now re-released with a CD of extras ahead of a new album in the spring.

As much a ramshackle art school happening as a band, the Blue Aeroplanes understandably didn't quite make it in the world of Madchester and post-acid house dance pop. In songs strongly redolent of REM and west-coast psychedelic revivalists Rain Parade, Gerard Langley speaks rather than sings, with an arch yet impassioned delivery somewhere between Jarvis Cocker and the Go-Betweens' Robert Forster. But Swagger is an elegant, evocative guitar record whose magnificence - that crashing late-1980s drum sound apart - remains intact.

I-Pod therefore I Am

Since buying my i-pod in Nov 04 its become an item i never leave the home without, and i love choosing "shuffle songs" mode and letting it choose a playlist from my 5000+ songs. Some days its good, mostly its great but now and again the random songs just sound perfect, yesterday was such a day - 20 songs in the 75 minutes it takes me to get home from work.

Tracklisting

1. What I'm Looking For - Brendan Benson
2. The 15th - Wire
3. Wordless Song- Gorky's Zygotic Mynci
4. Hang OnTo A Dream - Lightning Seeds
5. Party Hard - Pulp
6. Rosalita - Bruce Springsteen
7. We're All In This Together - Ben Lee
8. Going Back - The Byrds
9. The Bob (medley) - Roxy Music
10. Sunspot Stopwatch - Mary Lou Lord
11. Her - Tindersticks
12. My Perfect Cousin - Undertones
13. Straight to Hell - Josh Rouse
14. Clap Hands - Tom Waits
15. Lullaby of London - Pogues
16. Operators Manual - Buzzcocks
17. This Is Not America - David Bowie/Pat Methany Group
18. Star Cross'd - Blue Aeroplanes
19. Don't Come Close - Ramones
20. Head On - Jesus & Mary Chain

More music related stuff & nonsense to follow :)