Shop Around … part 36
Surprise, as in joking recently about discovering my Prats 7”s again, and then finding that a Prats compilation is being put out by One Little Indian oddly enough. And it’s a wonderful surprise to find that the Edinburgh schoolkids still sound as wonderfully and as accidentally adventurous as they ever did. At the end of the ‘70s these kids just happened to break every rule going, recorded for two of the coolest labels ever (Fast Product and Rough Trade), and they were the one group of the punk age I could completely identify with. The ramshackle protest of 'Inverness' and the later fully formed 'General Davis' sound fantastic, and the live demos and live stuff is great too. One of the latter numbers features Paul Research of Scars on guitar too, which is another timely reminder that aside from the Glasgow School of Orange Juice and Alan Horne, during the golden age of Scots’ pop Edinburgh pretty much ruled the roost. Josef K, Fire Engines, Visitors, Scars, Prats, Article 58, Fast Product, and Rational Records, but that’s a different story.
Perhaps the best thing about pop and surprise is hearing a song on the radio that makes you drop your drink. It’s not been a bad year for that. Amerie, Faith Evans, Damien Marley, Rihanna, and Kanye West have all succeeded there. Where this gets really frustrating though is when you hear a song but don’t quite catch whom it’s by. I hate that. It happened a while back when one of the r’n’b/hip hop shows played a track by Lina, which stopped me in my tracks. Trouble is it never occurred to me that her name was spelt Lina. So I never tracked down a copy of the record. Until recently. Amazon very helpfully pointed me in Lina’s direction when I was buying something else, and so I belatedly caught up with her 2001 debut Stranger On Earth.
It remains one of the strangest r’n’b records ever, taking the swing thing totally literally so that you have a real sense of Billie Holiday/Ella, gardenia in the hair, huge mic, danceband thing meets lowdown Roots-y soulfulness. Now Hidden Beach (home of the great Jill Scott appropriately) have issued a long-delayed follow up in the excellent Inner Beauty Movement, which will restore your faith in soul music. Trust me.
If you can find them, there’s some very entertaining Jaguar Wright interviews out there, where she has some very specific comments about young ladies that participate in promotional videos clad in next to nothing just to shift a few units and get their product more widely known. She does have the advantage of being associated with the Roots stable, and we have to give those guys credit for plugging away with the soulful sounds. Another one of note is the new one from Vivien Green, and in an ideal world we would be hearing her all over the airwaves in the way say Anita Baker and Chaka Khan once were. It’s absolutely gorgeous pop, and if you shop around you’ll pick up these records at great cheap prices on import. Surprise yourself!
And there’s a new Syleena Johnson record due sometime soon, a third chapter in her astonishingly powerful series, which of course people hopefully rush out and buy after her contribution to Kanye’s College Dropout. But if you can’t wait for that, then treat yourself to the two earlier chapters in her story.
© 2005 John Carney