Match Of The Day

I'm going to start with a confessional: I watched soccer on the telly this morning. I was guilty of seeing the morning of this particular Sunday, and as I ate my toast (marmalade) and drank my tea (Earl Grey) I had the telly on, and strangely it was Match Of The Day. Without a remote, it was simply easier to leave it on than surf, and as a result I managed to see Leeds United come back from a two goal deficit and defeat Liverpool by four goals to three. I'm not going to say it was terribly exciting, but I will say that it brought back memories. Memories of being under ten and thinking that Leeds United were the greatest team in the world. It was the days of Peter Lorimer and Billy Bremner so my convictions may have been true, but whatever, I had a white Leeds United soccer shirt that I wore in the back garden as I kicked a ball against the wall of the house, knocking pebbles from the surface in the process, much to the annoyance of my parents, and in my head of course I was Peter Lorimer and the crowd cheered for me. I don't know if Paul Morley's parents were driven mad by his similar solo soccer antics, but I do know that it's one more thing which I read in his book Nothing that makes me identify with Morley, and to be more convinced than ever about his genuine greatness as a writer and as a Pop Theoretician. And practitioner of course. He was, and no doubt still is, a great Pop Practitioner.

So I started my Sunday thinking about that past, as you do. And I was thinking also about how CDs are spoiling my listening experiences, indeed possibly my listening pleasures. I'll tell you why: It makes it all too easy. It makes it all too easy to over indulge artists, to allow them the pleasure of meandering at their leisure, to permit them more avenues of blind direction, to tolerate things that are just too dull and Don't Work and should have been left on the cutting room floor. Albums are too longÉ Albums are too boringÉ Albums are too Rock, and I've been missing the Pop thrill of slipping a 7" single from it's sleeve, hearing a few minutes of one great song (maybe flipping it over and hearing another great song, but that's an added bonus and a thoroughly inessential one at that) and then either lifting the needle back to the start and doing it all again, or going through the process with more of the bits of vinyl, until sated. There might even be the added delight of having a tape running whilst doing this, and then another amusing aside might be putting that tape in an envelope and sending it to an unsuspecting friend far away. Messages in song, and wasn't it Josef K who sang 'If records were letters'?

My letter would start with an MP3 I managed to rustle up by the Free Design. I know that the Free Design were a bunch of brothers and sisters from upstate New York. I know that they made some fantastic records in the late '60s and early '70s. I know that Tim Gane loves them because Stereolab had a song called The Free Design and I know that probably as a result, they have become one of those bands whose names are essential to drop in order to prove your hipness. So here I am dropping it: The Free Design. 'Love You'. Marvellous.

Didn't Primal Scream have a song called 'Love You' back in the days when Bobby wore polka dot shirts a lot, Jim Beattie (Or Jim Navajo if you'd rather) sported a rather fine hat and the whole band generally tried their damndest to look and sound like The Byrds circa Younger Than Yesterday? And didn't the song appear on Sonic Flower Groove and wasn't there a story about Gillespie recording his vocal line a million times because he couldn't get the words 'love you' to sound just right? I expect they sounded too darn Scottish, and everyone knows that the harshness of the Scottish accent (the Glaswegian at the very least) just doesn't sit right with words like 'love'. Hmmm. And wasn't there a gorgeous version of 'Love You' recorded for a Peel Session? The answer of course is 'yes' and I really ought to stop all this posing facts as questions malarkey.

There used to be a train of thought that tied Primal Scream to bands like Talulah Gosh, Soup Dragons and Flatmates, but I forget what it was. Something to do with perceived innocence and naivetŽ, which in some respects is fair enough but in others seems ridiculous in hindsight. I haven't listened to the Flatmates or Soup Dragons in years, and feel no desire to do so now. I was, however, amused, and actually a little tempted to invest, when I noticed that there's re-issues of the Subway label compilations doing the rounds at the moment. I am tempted to buy these for only a handful of songs: Razorcuts' 'Snowbirds Don't Fly'and Cowboy and Spin Girl 'White Lies' because they are/were fabulous songs that I don't have anywhere at present, and Rodney Allen's 'Cupids Bow' and 'Glastonbury'. Some day I ought to sit down and wrote an article all about Rodney Allen for the few people that might care, but all I'll say here is that I always thought the snide comments about him being a shoddy West Country Billy Bragg were wide of the mark and that few people ever wrote songs as perfectly about teenage years than he. 'Glastonbury' is one of those songs, and as far as I'm aware was never released before these new Subway compilations. I am sorely tempted to investÉ unless of course Mr Whitehead wants to send me review copes. Martin, if you are reading this, you are more than welcome to do soÉ I'll even promise to be nice about the Flatmates. But not Bubblegum SplashÉ oh no, never Bubblegum Splash.

I have listened to Talulah Gosh in recent year however, and they always sound great. They split and metamorphosed into Heavenly, although I never picked up much Heavenly, and these days I wonder why. I know I just had no cash at the time, and that we move with our times, but nevertheless, I wish I had more. Seeing the video for 'Our Love Is Heavenly' really made me desperate for that song, and so when I stumbled upon an MP3 of it, I snapped it up of course. It's the second song in my tape letter, in case you were still following that episodic tale. It sounds like the greatest Pop Song Ever at the moment, and for the moments it takes to spiral into the outer atmosphere of my heart. Such is the way of such songs.

Next up is the Association's 'Windy' simply because it is. Windy I mean. Not as windy as last Sunday, but somewhat breezy nonetheless. I was looking for the Groovy Little Numbers version of this song, which I think is just divine and I regret on many days selling those 53rd and 3rd label singlesÉ there was a great little batch where we had Boy Hairdressers, Groovy Little Numbers and Beat Poets, and all the records were fantastic. God knows why I got rid of them. Oh wait, I remember, it was to do with the snobbery of Glasgow Cliques and poverty. Thankfully all these records are now available again on a couple of 53rd and 3rd retrospectives, although why they couldn't just have put it all on one CD I'll never know.

Enough Old Things From My Past for the moment. Do you like Hefner? I happen to think Hefner are terrific, although on first listen I found their new album We Love The City to be a horrid metallic mess. Looking back now I have no idea why, but it was probably to do with crappy car stereos and the paranoia of playing such noise to people whose musical tastes I have no conception of. Having lived with the record for five days in the wastes of Scotland, however, I have completely changed my mind, to the extent that I think it's perhaps one of my favourite records of the year. I still think they sound amazingly like James in places, but since it's the James of 'What's the World', 'Hymn From A Village' or Stutter that's okay. There's not really any weak links here at all; it's an album where the tactical listening kind of goes out the window but if I'm pushed to choose just a handful of highlights for my letter, well I'm going to have to be dumb to pass on the beautiful 'Good Fruit' with it's fantastic lines of 'love seems strongest when it's new, but that's something I can't prove, I can't prove that I love you' and the glorious crescendo of knotted passion that is the delivery of the lines 'I'm not supposed to feel this way, not when you're leaving.' I'd also have to include 'Painting and Kissing' if only for it's title, and if only for the line about Chardonnay and the pointed observation about loving being in love, but never really being in love at all. It's a barb of thoroughly (post) modern perception that cuts to the heart of our mediated understanding of love and attraction. I also have to point out that 'Hold Me Closer' is another gem that shows acute awareness of the dilemmas inherent in the lives of twentythritysomethings in these times, with it's opener of 'I want a single bed, I want a simpler life, but I want you by my side'. It's a marvellous stomper of a song, riddled with pounding piano, terrific harmonica in the background and Amelia Fletcher in supporting vocal role, Fletcher being, in case you need telling, the voice of Tallulah Gosh and Heavenly and these days Marine Research. And as a child of the '80s of course I can't pass on the hugely enjoyable 'The Day That Thatcher Dies', especially with its dig at teachers being unable to teach the Kids what's right from wrong and its fantastic kids chorus of 'ding dong the witch is dead, the wicked witch is dead' that brings the song to a close. Naturally the Kids of today won't have much of a clue as to What It's All About, but maybe you just need to look at the state of this country's crumbling infrastructure and realise that it's as a direct result of Tory mismanagement and in fact Government short-sightedness, greed and self-aggrandisement in general, regardless of party politics.

Getting back to my tape letter, I think I'm going to drop in an old Richard Buckner tune next, and it's going to be 'Rainsquall' because, well, there's one battering my window as I type. It's from his first LP Bloomed, and it's of course terrific. Eagle eyed scourers of media might have noticed his new album The Hill getting good reviews (well it had a good write up in the Sunday Telegraph a few weeks ago, and I need to point out right away that I don't normally see the Telegraph but that weekend I happened to be in a town called Troon on the dour west coast of Scotland, and that the paper belonged to my parents. I don't think they read the Buckner review though and there's nothing wrong with that of courseÉ) but I'm not dropping a track from that for the very sound reason that it is a record where all the songs connect, creating one complete piece. I suppose you could call it a concept album, and obviously that's going against my grain about CDs that started this piece, but hey, changing direction and opinion as I go along is my prerogative. The Hill is around forty minutes long in total and it sets poetry from Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River anthology to Buckners' unique country folk music. I think it's a brave album, and I think it sounds terrific, but of course I happen to think that Buckner is one of the most intriguing artists in the world today so maybe I was always going to say that. Buckner is good at making interesting connections, and it's great for me to explore the Spoon River Anthology, as hopefully it's also going to be great for other Buckner fans to explore the records of Felt after hearing the line in one of his earlier songs ('Ariel Ramirez' from the wonderful Since album) that goes 'as Felt beats out a warning of some 'spanish house' I've known.' Partners in crime in the recording of The Hill include Joey Burns and John Convertino, who are long time Buckner collaborators of course and who might be recognised as being part of the always excellent Calexico and indeed scourers of sleeve notes will spot a thanks to Buckner on the inner tray of the first Calexico album The Black Light, alongside such other luminaries as Robert Scott, David Kilgour and Chris Knox; names that ought to make you think of great sounds, and if not then I suggest you either clean out your ears or set out on some exploration.

I want to add another old tune into my tape at this point, and I'm choosing a Stephen Duffy song because I picked up the They Called Him Tintin collection the other day for a couple of quid. I always had a soft spot for Duffy, and happen to think that the records he made in the mid '80s were his best. Certainly judging by the sleeve notes he supplies here, Duffy thinks otherwise, preferring the Lilac Time, but of course he's entitled to his opinions. They Called Him Tintin is a terrific collection that also includes a handful of tracks from Duffy's strange 1986 alter-ego Doctor Calculus. Although it's good to hear these again after such a long time, they have stood the test of time much less well than his other material such as the bona-fide classic moments of the downbeat and gorgeous 'Julie Christie' and 'Sunday Supplement', the sparkling Dixie pastiche of Wednesday Jones and the upbeat Pop majesty of Icing On The Cake. Naturally too there are two versions of the song whose royalty cheques made the Lilac Time possible, the inch-perfect 'Kiss Me'. Of course I have to plump for 'Sunday Supplement' for my tape but cannot resist adding 'Julie Christie' if only for it's wonderful opening line, and for it's almost funereal piano pace. It's a gloriously isolated song to sink into.

Similarly suited is the marvellous 'Circa' by New York's Flare. There is a divine darkness at work in Flare that puts me in mind of a peculiar gang of folkies spending their time playing at wakes. Armed with ukes, pianos and cellos, they travel the lands seeking out the saddest stories ever told, in the process turning them into plaintive songs that reverberate like whispers in cathedrals. The Circa EP has six tracks of the kind of beautiful melancholic world weariness that can only serve to ultimately uplift and is heartily recommended.

The Flare EP closes with the masterful line of 'save me from my history', which I think is the best line I've heard in a long time, possibly because I think it was written for me. It particularly puts me in mind again of being back in the town called Troon and the thought that we're all only ever the ghosts of who we were yesterday; altered with every breath we take and every blink of our eyes: We're all just assemblages of memories and moments and although the patterns of those moments change every day, creating new people, we can't delete any part of our structures. We cannot lose ourselves, or even parts of ourselves, until we die by whatever hand, and even then, who knows what becomes of those elements? I'm not sure I care much to be honest. I'm not sure I care about very much to be honest except escaping the present. Always the striving to escape from the present into the possibility of a better tomorrow. It's the modern curse.

Speaking of our histories, I'm sure that just as all ten year old lads must have similar stories of kicking footballs at walls in their back yards, then so all fourteen year olds have the same stories of dreamt up teenage operas. You know the score: you score all the Pop Hits of the day into a Musical of Epic Proportions. It's always about Love. It's always about you chasing the girl with the strawberry hair, the boy with the perfect smile. Or maybe it was just me. I had a great imaginary Troon of the futurepresent, and I ran the town of course and of course at the centre of it all was a Perfect Record and Clothes Store where all things mediated were just as I wanted them. They were great dreams and it was a lot easier living through those in my bedroom than dealing with realities, of course.

I had a Teenage Opera Movie Script all planned out at one point. It featured Tracie's 'The House That Jack Built' a lot as I recall, which actually makes me 16 when I dreamt that one up and makes me remember just how long it seemed to take for reality to catch up with escapism and I'm going to add that track to my tape right nowÉ It sounds odd; all synthetic strings and tinny handclaps and machine gunning drum machines: that peculiar early '80s attempt at Electronic Soul Music. Fantastic, of course. This Tracie single came in one of those pink Respond Records sleeves, with the slogan 'What goes roundÉ must get down'! It seems so quaint. I notice also that this record has the name 'Fiona McLelland' written on it in blue biro, and that's a name from a past I won't recall too well, and makes me realise I must have swiped this from a party at some point in 1983. I didn't swipe many records from parties, incidentally, and certainly lost more than I gained, but one I do regret not sneaking into my collection was a Human League remixes LP that we played at 45rpm and that sounded amazing. It was probably shit of course, but I'd like to have it to test my theory nonetheless. It belonged to Victoria, and that's another name I keep hidden these days, although as is the case with names, it reminds me of a song, and that song happens not to be The Kinks 'Victoria' but rather 'Victoria Green' by the Faith Brothers who made a strange folk rock record in the mid '80s, were widely feted and then disappeared. Gene made some singles that sounded astonishingly like the Faith Brothers, and I often wondered if there was a connection there.

I was talking about Teenage Operas though, and bear with me because there is a point to all of this and the point is the new record by Spearmint. I have to admit that I am pretty bewildered by this record. I only saw it yesterday, at the start of November, but it seems it has been out for a month already. It causes bewilderment mainly because it seems to be, to all intents and purposes, a Christmas record. That's a Christmas Record in that the songs, which connect and tell intermingling stories, are all built around those festive holidays, commenting on and illuminating the scenes and events that will be recognisable to anyone who might be in the process of having to make journeys to places, people and memories of times past. It's a strange record, and it's hard to make much of a judgement. I have my suspicions that these songs are going to mean a lot to those people who will be making just such journeys this year, and if a lot of those people might be the students that inevitably make up a hefty proportion of Spearmint's audience, then you can take your choice about whether the band are either making sympathetic connections or cynical exploitations. I'm going with the former suggestion, partly because I'm feeling kind today, and partly because I happen to like the oddly out of sorts edge that Spearmint bring to what could be a mundane Indie sound. That, and because 'The Good Of The Family' has a melody that strangely reminds me of TV21's 'All Join Hands', and that's no bad thing.

By way of finishing I'm being drawn to something old and before my times again. To be precise I'm being drawn to some old Nuggets nuggets that I've been digging up recently, not least due to the ready availability on Napster of tracks which I once owned on record, but guess what, disappeared from my collection due to either extreme poverty or party guests with dubious morals. So I'm going to choose a triptych that starts with The Turtles' 'Outside Chance' for its obviously fabulous driving melodies and beats and the magic flippancy and disregard of its lyrical content. How can you resist a song that goes 'you don't stand an outside chance, but you can try'! Second in my Nuggets triple bill has to be the magnificently dumb 'Spazz' by the Elastik Band, which has a fine vocal delivering the catchy lines 'people gonna think you're spazz.' Thoroughly un-PC and magically Pop; anyone who doesn't love this song has no sense of humour and no sense of style. As for the absolute clincher, it was a close run thing that saw The Shadows Of Knight 'I'm Gonna Make You Mine' an inch away from being victorious, defeated in the end only by it's positive outlook, and being supplanted by the opposite point of view in The Seeds' classic 'Can't Seem To Make You Mine'. It seems the Clientele recorded a song with the same title for a split single with the Relict recently, and I have to say it was a disappointment that it wasn't a cover version of the Sky Saxon masterpiece. Of course Alex Chilton and Stars Of Heaven have both turned in storming versions in their time, but The Seeds original still sound fantastically beguiling, with those wild forlorn yowls of despair at the end of every line. And I still can't get over the strung out ache that fills the lines 'every breath and step that I take, I'm more in love with youÉ.' It's songs like this that, rightly or wrongly, make the whole world more bearable.

© Alistair Fitchett 2000