Latest Blogposts
Is This Some Kind of Record? - ‘The Mystery of the Green Street Underground’ is an enigmatic product. Is it an album or an EP? Is the artist ‘The Green Street Underground’, ‘The Investigators’, or ‘Shannon Siblock’? Was there really a Hardy Boys book by that name, as the cover photo suggests? This recording is reminiscent of a few equally unique cult-status items that were put out in the late nineteen-seventies and early nineteen-eighties. ‘Hex’ by Poisongirls and ‘Life’s a Riot with Spy vs Spy’ by Billy Bragg are thought of as albums, but were actually 45rpm 12”s. ‘Girl at Her Volcano’ by Rickie Lee Jones was… Read More
A Rich Sample of Nottingham - Great Guitar It’s rare to hear folk guitar played so that every string rings out clearly when a chord is played, while at any moment the musician may switch modes and start playing lead or flatpick; where the strumming is not out of time but neither is it metronomic, in the sense that Charlie Parker stated harmony which wasn’t strictly within the bounds of the written changes but it still sounded right; where the player changes styles on a whim, just like Davey Graham. Earlier this year, guitarist and now singer-songwriter Richard Sample, based in Nottingham UK, released Don’t Stop… Read More
The Benefits of Incapacity - Some recollections have popped up relating to Kill or Cure, a CD I put together in 2007-8, which I thought I would share. In the summer of 2006 many people I knew were either turning forty or getting married. I had been a grateful recipient of Gordon Brown’s government’s Incapacity Benefit for two years. I was getting migraines for as many as five days a week. Sometimes these came with a rash. I rang NHS Direct (the helpline of the UK’s National Health Service) once and they thought I had leukaemia. On another occasion I had to get off the… Read More
Background to an EP - A few notes on the EP ‘If You Want Love (Have Mine)’, now available on Bandcamp: I tried to get a few record companies to release the Bahaudin album (made between 1999 and 2001) on the basis that it was produced by Nigel Stonier, featured Rod Clements and to a lesser extent Thea Gilmore, all of whom had solo albums out on independent labels. There were other recording projects which followed, but the main lesson I took from the experience of self-funding an album, and then trying to tout it around, was that it would have been better to do… Read MoreGoin’ Viral - A new song built on the foundations of an old one. The current world health crisis can’t be described as inspiring but for those of us fortunate to be safe and healthy it has afforded the opportunity to sort through the cupboards and rearrange the furniture…… Read More
Let’s Fall in Love - We expected to be playing at Grossman’s, Toronto, on April 10th but it’s been cancelled due to coronavirus. So here’s us playing a cover of an Ugly Bug Band song. Michael Kaler (of the Ugly Bug Band) wrote it and plays bass. Tim Shia plays drums in the alcove. Many thanks to them!… Read More
The Great Neil Innes - It’s tempting, when explaining to people who Neil Innes was, to immediately associate him with the world-famous English exports he had connections with. But I think the first I heard of him was not as a hanger-on of The B**tles or M*nty Pyth*n but as a solo act singing How Sweet to be an Idiot on television in the nineteen-seventies. That song, from his first solo album in 1973, seems to be pure Neil. What he appeared to do most in his songwriting, however, was inhabit other characters. These could be specific people, like J*hn L*nn*n, Elton John, Elvis Presley,… Read More