Shuffled iPod tunes today included quite a few summery songs, which is odd as it's cold today...
"On And On" from the first Tom Tom Club album.
Frankly you don't get more sunshine-y than TTC. It reminded me of sitting in
the sun while I was revising at University. It also made me want a cold beer
too…
"Waiting On A Friend" - the Stones
get all mellow... man. Isn't this one of the best slowies that Mick 'n' Keef ever
did? This started life back in 1972 at the Goats Head Soup sessions, but Mick
couldn't think of a lyric. So it was shelved until 1980 when it was dusted down
and finished off for Tattoo You. And that was when legendary jazz man Sonny Rollins added the lazy, winding
saxophone parts which really give the song it's magic. A really laid back vibe,
probably pharmaceutically induced, but who cares…
"I Talk To The Wind" from the first King Crimson album.
All that flute-ing and gentle guitar work. The Crims never really hit that
pastoral button again with such fervour. It's a very English song, and a very old fashioned
feeling to it, like it's some sort of ancient folk song.
"Telling Lies" - Bowie live in 1996. So it's not
an especially summery song but this was at least recorded at a summer Festival.
The crowd responds well to what is the first ever performance of "Telling Lies", I believe, at the
Loreley Festival in Germany. Good version too, with Reeves Gabrels really going
for it.
"Does Caroline Know?" - Talk Talk live at Montreux
1986. Arguably the best ever version of this song, stretched to a languid 9
minutes, with loads of percussion and weird keyboard sounds, this is miles
ahead of the rigid and constrained sounding studio track. Mark Hollis' vocals
are, as ever, perfect. I could listen to this all day.
"Daft Punk Is Playing At My House" - brilliant
stuff from LCD Soundsystem. A great party track.
"Dead Souls" - OK so Joy Division are perhaps a band for a cold, dark, miserable night. But this is a
corker of a song. It rocks. JD were a surprisingly effective rock band when
they wanted to be. Much harder than people generally give them credit for.
"Never Let It Slip" - I confess I didn't recognise
this song at all until about two thirds of the way through when I realised it
was Jerry Harrison. This is from his third solo album Walk On Water which
actually isn't a very good record and has probably only been played about
twice. This isn't a bad song though, sort of sixties sounding, with a nicely
catchy chorus and Jerry sounding, oddly, a little like Springsteen, gruff voice
and everything.
"Rio" - Duran Duran. Back to summery sounds, if
only because the video featured that yacht!
"Fire!" - yup, the Crazy World Of Arthur Brown.
Utterly bonkers. And also brilliant, because in August 1968 it reached number 1
in the funny ol' Hit Parade. Incidentally, Ronnie Wood claims that
he played bass on "Fire!" How's that for some random trivia!
"Charm (over Burundi Cloud)" from Eno and Jon
Hassell's Fourth World Volume 1 - Possible Musics. It's a wonderfully tropical sounding piece, with all
those breathy trumpets and muted tribal beats and Eno's heat haze synths. I
love this album, it's one that's really grown on me in the last few years. I
always quite liked it, but never
really loved it (certainly not like I loved On Land, or Plateaux Of Mirror or
other Eno stuff from around 1980) but the last few years has seen me return to
this album quite often and it's a big favourite now. Never really got into
Fourth World Vol 2 - Dream Theory In Malaya quite as much, but I think I need
to give that on another go now. It would be fascinating to learn how these albums came about. I wonder if tracks like "Charm
(over Burundi Cloud)" and "Griot (over Contagious Music)" are
basically earlier pieces that either Hassell or Eno has changed so much that a
new title has been required? Maybe they started off with a piece called "Burundi
Cloud" and then laid so much new stuff over the top (but still kept the
original somewhere in the mix) that they renamed it "Charm"? Or
perhaps this is simply a mash up of two distinct pieces called
"Charm" and "Burundi Cloud" that the Domed One has then
mixed together? Whatever, it sounds terrific, and this album is a firm
favourite of mine.
No comments:
Post a Comment