Archives for August 2011

'Springboard' by The Arlenes is a cute song about this guy at the Gospel Oak Lido, trying to impress the girl, but not getting too far. She doesn't notice the action on the diving board, his London skin is getting fried but still he persists with the optimism and the bad acrobatics. The song is carried by Big Steve and supported by his wife Stephanie, and it's reason enough to look out their 2002 album, 'Stuck On Love'.

I first met Steve around 1990 when a bunch of chancers called Fabulous were trying to pull revolutionary stunts around the capital. They are worth a dozen blogs in their own right, mostly about their repeated slide from anarchy to slapstick. And I recall meeting Steve around this time, coolly driving the band to the next ridiculous moment. He was also party to those Camden nights that charted the rise of The Rockingbirds, a chance for English boys to play country soul with distinction. The Arlenes took that idea and are still active with it.

Now it seems Steve and Stephanie are based in Nashville, raising kids and planning a new record, which they aim to fund via the Kickstarter website. Check it out here

BBC Radio Ulster, 92-95 FM

Online: www.bbc.co.uk/radioulster

Blog: https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/stuartbailie/

Mondays, ten - midnight

Smashing Pumpkins - Tonight, Tonight (Hut)

Alexander - Let's Win (Rough Trade)

General Fiasco - The Age That You Start Losing Friends (Dirty Hit)

Glen Campbell - Ghost On The Canvas (Surfdog)

Mariachi El Bronx - Revolution Girls (Wichita)

Dawes - How Far We've Come (Loose)

Cashier No 9 - Lost At Sea (Bella Union)

JT Nero - Roll Tide (Dishrag)

Jayhawks - She Walks In So Many Ways (Decca)

John Cale - Whaddya Mean By That (Double Six)

Howler - 14 Days (Rough Trade)

Bessie Smith - Careless Love (Sanctuary)

Tom Waits - Bad As Me (Anti)

Tinariwen - Tenere Taqhim Tossam (V2)

Glen Campbell -In My Arms (Surfdog)

The Arlenes - Springboard (Vinyl Junkie)

James Burton - I Know You Don't Want Me No More (A&M)

JT Nero - Mountains / Forests (Dishrag)

Glen Campbell - Any Trouble (Surfdog)

The 19th Street Band - Holywood Sea Park (white)

Lil' Band O' Gold - Faster And Faster (Room 609)

Glen Campbell - There's No Me... Without You (Surfdog)

Tom McShane - A Personal Narrative (Third Bar)

Sarah MacDougal - It's a Storm (Rabbit Heart)

St Vincent - Cruel (4ad)

M83 - Midnight City (Naïve

Lit Up, Lit Up

It's generally a good thing when literature cops a bit of attitude from rock and roll. Events like Lis Ard and the Poetry Olympics have imported some of that energy onto the stage and my keenest hope is the we'll find a little of that with the Literary Belfast bash at the Ulster Hall, September 6.

Certainly, names like Martin Lynch, Colin Bateman and Glenn Patterson are familiar with rocking tunes. Paul Muldoon plays guitar with Rackett, Bernard MacLavery is an Ash fan while David Park was teacher to the young Tim Wheeler at Downpatrick High and primed his ears with The Undertones. Michael Longley is a jazzer with a penchant for Billie Holiday. Marie Jones has uncovered the drama in Ruby Murray and I'm sure Leontia Flynn must be intimate with Bjork. There's a language warning on the event invite, most likely due to the arrival of word-slinger Owen McCafferty. How could this not be an extraordinary night? And who will stage dive first?

All flippancy aside, these are amazing names, together for one night only, proof that we deliver great writers to the world. Check out additional info here and indulge your soul with a legendary gig.

Anthony and Ben are adjacent on the Sunday bill for the Hilden Festival, out Lisburn way. And while the music is played with proper intent, the between songs banter finds both artists poking fun at each other. Nobody minds, it raises the temperature around the teepee stage and like a pocket version of Blur versus Oasis, it may even sell a few extra records.

However, near the end of Ben's set, the Topper and Glove hostilities are put on hold. Anthony steps up beside him and they play a ripper version of 'Don't Think Twice, It's Alright'. Then to compound the joy, they finish with 'The Weight'. It's a test for any player and singer, but these two guys deliver with the musical sass, the big voices and a tremendous empathy that fits with The Band and their comradely best. Mighty.

But there's no more appetizing reference than 'Tupelo Honey', the title track from his 1971 album. Dusty Springfield recorded a very lovely version of the song, but the Van rendition is probably tops. I could try to explain the beautiful import of the song, but you might be better served by looking up the relevant section of the Greil Marcus book, 'Listening To Van Morrison'.

Anyway, I was in London recently and a business acquaintance took me to a restaurant on Parkway, London. It was a pleasant gaff, perhaps not the greatest ever, but it was called 'Tupelo Honey' and therefore I was perfectly satisfied.

Back in 1966, the wonderful Fred Neil was finishing off an album in the big city. The producer promised him that if he delivered just one more song, he could sign off. And so Fred came up with 'Everybody's Talkin'' a song about escaping to his native Florida, where the sun keeps shining and the weather suits your clothes. He recorded the track in one take and promptly flew south.

I was thinking about this when I played 'Ural Song' by Tom McShane on this week's show. It's exactly the opposite of Fred's logic. Tom is a deeply respected songwriter from these parts who puts out occasional but sublime records. Last year he decided to test his art by recording an album before a live audience. The kicker was that the punters would sit in the middle of the sessions, and on occasions, they would also sing vocals. They would essentially be inside the record. I was there, I sang a bit and it was extraordinary.

'The Ural Sessions' is getting ever closer to a public release, which excites me no end. On playback, you can revisit the rare sentiments, the heavy concentration, the crackle of music being snatched from the air. And on 'Ural Song' Tom is damaged by love, mourning in San Francisco, dressed for the cold but still hurting from that major chill.

BBC Radio Ulster, 92-95 FM

Online: www.bbc.co.uk/radioulster

Blog: https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/stuartbailie/

Mondays, ten - midnight

The Doors - Roadhouse Blues (Elektra)

Fruit Bats - Picture Of A Bird (Sub Pop)

Aaron Shanley - One More Cigarette (Love Gum)

Laura Nyro - Sweet Blindness (Columbia)

Stephen Malkmus - Tigers (Domino)

Fearing and White - Let Love Be Your Direction (Lowden Proud)

Water Tower Bucket Boys - East Way Out (white)

Paul McCartney - Nobody Knows (MPL)

Twin Sister - Gene Ciampi (Domino)

The Mighty Stef - Georgia Girl (The Firstborn Is Dead)

Manu Chao - Merry Blues (Virgin)

Elbow- Lippy Kids (Fiction)

John Mayall's Bluesbreakers - Some Day After A While (Decca)

Jim White - Keep It Meaningful You All (Loose)

Mint Julep - Aviary (Village Green)

Elvis Costello - Why Don't You Love Me (Demon)

Peter Conway - Satellite (white)

Tom Waits - Jitterbug Boy (Elektra)

Carrie Rodriguez, Ben Kyle - My Baby's Gone (North St Opus)

Jolie Holland - All Those Girls (Anti)

James Vincent McMorrow - Breaking Hearts (Believe)

John Fahey - Love On Waikki (Rounder)

Tom McShane - Ural Song (Third Bar)

Stephen Malkmus - Fall Away (Domino)

Waterboys - White Birds (Puck)

Fruit Bats - Wild Honey (Sub Pop)

Fearing and White - October Lies (Lowden Proud)

Jimmy Scott - All The Way (WSM)

Grainne Holland - The Blue Hills Of Antrim (white)

So Duke Special is down at Holywood Arches in east Belfast, walking his kids to Avoniel Leisure Centre. It's a bit hectic with the road works and the traffic is all entangled. But then the window rolls down on a huge black people carrier. Two voices shout out.

"Hey, Duke Special!"

The singer looks up, and he's staring straight into the giddy faces of John and Edward. Fame at last.

Duke is telling us this story from the stage at Sunflower Fest, a weather-kissed festival close to Hillsborough and Lisburn. Everything looks well at Tubby's Farm. There are many families and approving music fans. The food stalls are cool, the barn is rocking and a natural amphitheatre is playing host to acoustic acts.

Meantime on the main stage, Duke Special is reminding us of all his great moments. We've heard so many different projects from the guy in recent years, so the chance to just hear the hits, supported by champ percussionist Chip Bailey is exactly what you need on a sweet Sunday evening.

In the past few hours we have seen the Inishowen Gospel Choir and Cashier No 9. We've found delight with Rams Pocket Radio, A Northern Light and met with a succession of beaming campers. Everyone is saying complimentary things about organisers Mike and Vanessa, the excellent location and the considerate ethos. We'll return, for sure.

The curfew has sadly passed. Duke has already delivered a bold stage dive. But how to encore without amplifiers and testy neighbours? Easy. Duke is singing without a mic and Chip squeezes a harmonium and it carries over the field. It's the Joy Division heavyweight, 'Love Will Tear Us Apart'. We sing it like we mean it, long after Duke has left the stage. A moment, beautiful and true.

It's January 1992 and I'm at Heathrow with Primal Scream. Everyone is stylishly late, there is a rolling sense of pandemonium and airport security are in convulsions. Innes wears a huge furry coat and Jackie Onassis sunglasses and he might as well be wearing a sign around his neck that reads "Arrest Me". Duffy is still drunk from the night before, Throb is wearing the regulation cowhide while producer Andrew Weatherall is here with his girlfriend Nina, looking unsquare with his corkscrew hair. Wish me luck, kind friends, I am going to Amsterdam with the Scream Team.

The 'Screamadelica' album has been the most perfect soundtrack to 1991, but it sure sounds like the dance variations are giving way to American blues and soul. Hence the imminent 'Dixie Narco EP', doused in the spirits of Muscle Shoals, Alex Chilton, Dennis Wilson and Jim Dickinson. It sounds opiated, late night and just a bit wasted.

By this time, the band are getting paranoid and speaking in codes. A Q magazine feature has detailed the contents of their medicine cabinet and it's quite a story. At least one of the band members is in a sorry way and there are contrasting stories about Duffy's adventures in Memphis, when a friend noticed that he'd been bleeding copiously for many hours. One account claims that he had fallen backwards and been skewered by the stem of a glass. But another version says that the keyboard player had been shot at a party. Today, he still seems bemused by the havoc. He entertains himself by playing word games in his rich midlands accent. He shows me the shamrock tattoo on his leg. He repeats the word "skunk" over and over again.

In Amsterdam, we stall for an NME photo session by the canal. Bobby is wearing a Crombie coat, a silk scarf and some old chukka boots. He's quiet, reasonably friendly, and tends to get animated when discussing 'Aftermath' by The Stones, Gram Parsons and James Burton and Aretha's most beautiful 'Angel'. You would find it hard to dislike him.

The band go pinballing around town for a few hours but haul their talents together for a late night show at The Paradiso. They play it loose, but engagingly so. The audience are enthusiastically into the scene, Bobby is on his uppers and I am grinning, endlessly.

Elsewhere during the festival you can see James Vincent McMorrow, Billy Bragg, Tinariwen and excitingly, Elvis Costello. I last saw him at The Waterfront in 2002, sharing the stage with Emmylou Harris, John Prine, Nanci Griffith and Steve Earle. They were campaigning against landmines and making a glorious sound. Most of my Costello moments have been uplifting and October 28 is pretty much mandatory.

John Niven is the author of Kill Your Friends, a shocking bit of fiction about the UK music industry in 1997. Britpop is about to burst, cocaine usage is rampant and the music industry has yet to cop the severe hubris of file-sharing. The central character, a repellent, pathological A&M man, is properly lurid and the references to American Psycho are well earned.

'Cross The Tracks' by Maceo And The Macks was one of the songs that welcomed me to London. I remember hearing it at The Electric Ballroom in London, when Jay Strongman would drop it in between Etta James, Gil Scott Heron and Nina Simone. It was also a favourite at warehouse parties in Wapping and in booming old buildings around Clerkenwell. You would start your Saturday night outside the Spice of Life on Charing Cross Road, waiting for some ruffian to hand you a flyer, another illegal destination, and the night was on.

Those skanky old tunes were part of the city's atmosphere in the mid-Eighties. The Face magazine had declared that hard times chic was the acceptable way and therefore your vintage Levis had to be doused in the dirt of some derelict factory. No matter, the Red Stripe cans were served cold from plastic bins, the mood was cheerfully offbeat and every other tune had a connection to James Brown. There was Bobby Byrd and Fred Wesley and Lyn Collins, but it was Maceo Parker with his wild saxophone who literally blew us away.

BBC Radio Ulster, 92-95 FM

Online: www.bbc.co.uk/radioulster

Blog: https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/stuartbailie/

Mondays, ten - midnight

Sam Cooke - Somebody Have Mercy (RCA)

Cashier No 9 - Lost At Sea (Bella Union)

Dawes - How Far We've Come (Loose)

Nathaniel Rateliff - Lamb On A Stone (Rounder)

Little Feat - Walkin All Night (Warner)

Rams Pocket Radio - Dieter Rams Has The Pocket Radio (Reel To Reel)

Friendly Fires - Hurting (XL)

The Waterboys - Sweet Dancer (Puck)

Nathaniel Rateliff - Happy Just To Be (Rounder)

Hazmat Modine - Mocking Bird (Jaro)

Primal Scream - Screamadelica (Creation)

The Horrors - Changing The Rain (XL)

Maceo And The Macks - Cross The Tracks (Urban)

Big Audio Dynamite - The Bottom Line (Sony)

The Rifles - Tangled Up In Love (Nettwerk)

Donald Fagan - The New Frontier (Warner)

King Creosote, Jon Hopkins - Bats In The Attic (Unravelled) (Domino)

Lucy Wainwright Roche - America (Strike Back)

Peadar King - The Letting Go (PDK)

Warpaint - Billie Holiday (Rough Trade)

Booker T Jones - Progress (Anti)

Ben Howard - Keep your Head Up (Island)

Tom Russell - A Land Called Way Out There (Shout Factor)

Louise And the Pins - Melancholy (Chess Club)

The War On Drugs - Baby Missiles (Secretly Canadian)

Galliano - Skunk Funk (Weatherall mix) (Talking Loud)

We're getting excitations again as filming of The Good Vibrations Story will start properly next month. Last year we witnessed a trial scene at the Menagerie Bar in Belfast and it was a rare thrill. Now the production company is casting for particular roles and the local music scene is fizzing with little revelations. Indie kids are being cast as famous punks from 1978. Some of them are already getting serious and looking for motivation and method for those fierce events. Meantime, veterans are playing roles as paramilitary buffoons and even Harp Bar punters, waiting to see the Saturday afternoon strippers, rather than the evening's rock and roll action.

Anna Carr, daughter of Good Vibes creator Terri Hooley, is playing a nurse during the recreation of her own birth. Meantime, her father is spending quite a bit of time with actor Richard Dormer, who will assume the role of this outlandish man. I watched this weird communion a few nights ago in a bar and it was quite something. Dormer, who previously became Alex Higgins in the stage play, is now going through a Hooley transference. The Seventies beard is growing and the mannerisms are loading up.

Vocally, Richard is also learning. At any one time, Terri Hooley's speech patterns can reflect the Sixties promise of revolt and the Seventies experience of dread. Add to that a considerable deal of blarney, booze-fired indulgence plus a mocking, camp narrative and you have one of the most singular voices in town.

Terri's perennial chat-up line is to anoint each new female companion as "the future Mrs Hooley". But the production team of the Good Vibrations Story have given this routine an amusing spin, calling Dormer, "the future Terri Hooley".

At the end of the night Richard orders himself a taxi in the persona of his new character. The actual Godfather of punk watches as the actor borrows his style. At the end of the phone call, the taxi firm asks whom the car is coming to pick up. "Terri, says Dormer, without cracking a smile, "Terri Hooley".

The tenth anniversary of 'O Brother Where Are Thou' has been marked by a two CD collection. It reprises the great parts of the original soundtrack but adds some unheard stuff. Of these, more than half are variations of the songs we already know but there is bonus value also. Producer T Bone Burnette certainly deserved that Grammy, effectively schooling a generation in the great wealth of American blues, gospel, bluegrass and mountain music. But on a freshly released version of 'Big Rock Candy Mountain' the legendary Van Dyke Parks is having unique fun. It's a sweet adventure on a Mississippi steamboat, informed by the downhome sentiments of Stephen Foster and psychedelic in a way that is hard to explain. Beezer.

The Specials - Enjoy Yourself (Two Tone)

The Horrible Crowes - Behold The Hurricane (Side One Dummy)

Howler - This One's Different (Rough Trade)

The Vals - Look To The One (white)

The Who - Substitute (Polydor)

The Jayhawks - She Walks In So Many Ways (Decca)

Slow Club - Beginners (Moshi Moshi)

Alex Turner - Piledriver Waltz (Domino)

Matrimony - Obey Your Guns (white)

Edward Sharpe And The Magnetic Zeros - Home (Rough Trade)

Rufus - Tell Me Something Good (MCA)

Fruit Bats - You're Too Weird (Sub Pop)

Anna Calvi - Suzanne And I (Domino)

Maurice Williams And The Zodiacs - Stay (Future Noise)

Wilco - I Might (Nonesuch)

Emmy The Great - Paper Forest (Close Harbour)

Southern - People Said (white)

Paul Simon - Questions For The Angels (Decca)

Benjamin Francis Leftwich - Atlas Hands (Dirty Hit)

The Fairfield Four - The Lord Will Make A Way (Universal)

Ry Cooder - John Lee Hooker For President (Nonesuch)

Slow Club - Never Look Back (Moshi Moshi)

Steve Earle - I Am A Wanderer (New West)

Van Dyke Parks - Big Rock Candy Mountain (Universal)

The Middle East - Blood (Chess Club)

Ciaran Lavery - O Martha (white)

Cold Cave - Confetti (Matador)

Inside, there are button down shirts, chinos and the Bass Weejun loafers that will soon be adopted by many of the city's subcultures. Even to a parochial oik like myself, it is clear that John Simons, the proprietor, knows his threads and that there are subtle codes in this collection. The references are Blue Note jazz, Kennedy family composure and the classic US collegiate style. Pure Ivy League, then. The lineage of Simon's enterprise goes back to 1955, but he was anotable in 1965 with The Ivy Shop in Richmond, when the Rolling Stones and the Eel Pie hipsters started copping the look.

By the time I was getting interested, the notion had been adopted by Paul Weller in the Style Council and Dexys Midnight Runners. The latter had an amazing record called 'Don't Stand Me Down' and the cover was pure Ivy League. At the time, his critics though he was dressing like a yuppie, but Kevin Rowland was far more tuned in and fastidious than this. And of course, he was intimate with the J Simons aesthetic.

I went back to the shop two years ago and was saddened to learn that it had closed. But more recently, the internet has delivered the exciting news that J Simons is back in operation, this time in Chiltern Street. And so a recent visit to London took me to Baker Street tube and onwards to the new shop, where I marveled at the Baracuta G9 jackets, the Weejuns and Oxford shirts with the most elegant rolls in the collars. I left with a modest purchase, knowing that I would never attain that particular cool, but happy with my little stake in the tradition.

My radio show is currently featured in a TV trail for BBC Northern Ireland. The music you hear is a live recording of Southern, playing their most excellent 'People Said'. Thank you Tom and Lucy Southern, who also feature for a few seconds in the clip. For the remainder, you hear me blether about the Monday night Late Show, the welcoming sweep of the playlist and the inspiring value of music.

I'm unlikely to be hearing from modeling agencies off the back of this, but the programme was decently summarised, I didn't talk like a chump and happily, I didn't use the word "passion". Which isn't to say that there's no emotional investment in the night. I think that's at the core of it all. However, politicians, traveling salesmen and chancers of every persuasion use "passion" the way that restaurateurs put a slice of tomato and a lettuce leaf to the side of every dish. It's merely routine. They don't mean it, man. The rest of us can do better and indeed, that's how we set our compass and our intent.

This was apparent when Greg started performing with Shame Academy, a compendium of local musicians, playing the tunes of the time. And the circle advanced some more this year when he reformed The Outcasts with brother Martin and drummer Raymie. The old firm was supplemented by Brian Young (Rudi) and Petesy Burns (Stalag 17).

So I was naturally present when they played at The Empire last week. The music was loud and tenacious, and many of the tunes have not dimmed. Terri Hooley was the DJ and loads of veteran fans had paid to go hopping around beneath the stage. Many were bald but beaming, prone to shaking their thickening limbs in a approximation of those rowdy dance shapes. The band played 'Just Another Teenage Rebel' and the irony was dispersed by a more joyful accord.

I watched from the safety of the balcony, and when things had calmed down I decided to take a comfort break. The stairs led me close to the stage, so I moved forward to take some close-up photos for posterity's sake. However, the blamming rhythm and the fierce guitars excited me. I started to dance, and presently I was slam-dancing with the tribe.

It was plenty fun, but the dance floor was wet and my sense of balance may have deteriorated. I lost my footing and made an absurd, pantomime fall, amusingly slow. I was mildly alarmed that I might get trampled on, but my peers saw the possible danger and helped me up. I was scrambling for my spectacles, which had gone flying, Eric Morcambe style. No damage, thankfully.

Was I ashamed? Not terribly. I finished the dance, got my visit to the lavatory and then returned to the balcony. A top night's entertainment.

Falling over, y'see, is the new standing up.