Episode 155 - Female Bass Players

There’s always a slight suspicion that the bass player in the band wants to be the guitarist. When Paul McCartney first saw The Quarrymen at the Woolton Church Fete and eventually joined his band, there was no way he was going to usurp John as the guitarist. And his young pal George Harrison was adept on lead guitar. So, reluctantly, Paul picked up the bass. And got very good at it.

One of the greatest ever bass players is a woman: Carol Kaye. You may never have heard of her. She became the most in-demand session bass player in the 60s and 70s and plays bass on Pet Sounds and Wichita Lineman. Here’s some other artists she played with: Ray Charles, Bobby Womack, Cher, Dusty Springfield, The Supremes, The Temptations, Buffalo Springfield, Frank Black, Love, The Mothers of Invention, Simon and Garfunkel, The O’Jays, Neil Young, Sam Cooke, Marvin Gaye, Frank Sinatra, The Crystals, The Righteous Brothers.

Do female bass players have a different approach? I’m not sure you can divide it by gender – this episode is more a celebration of great bass players who so happen to be female and shining a light on them. What one can say, however, is that in the past they may have felt a little like second class citizens within the band and that includes Talking Heads, Pixies and Sonic Youth, despite Tina Weymouth and the two Kims Deal and Gordon being a major element in defining those bands’ sounds.

I hope, when one considers more recent bands, that such power dynamics have dwindled in significance, but maybe it still lingers here and there.. Sneaks, the first artist, is entirely a bassist-singer project and elsewhere artists such as Emma Kupa in Standard Fare are effectively band leader. On funk bands such as Bush Tetras and ESG, it would be impossible to imagine the bands without the bass calling the shots - and they happen to be all-female projects anyway. In bands such as Superchunk the bass is more a valued team member, but pull their weight nonetheless.

Hope, as ever, you enjoy the selections.

Tracklist:

Tough luck, Sneaks

Snakey, Wombo

Philadelphia, Standard Fare

Too much money, Automatic

So sick, Unrest

Driveway to driveway, Superchunk

You can’t be funky, Bush Tetras

Moody, ESG

Had ten dollaz, Cherry Glazerr

Easier said, Sunflower Bean

Hold me up (thank you), Khruangbin

Tame, Pixies

The empty page, Sonic Youth

Listening wind, Talking Heads

Episode 154 - Fame, Fame, Fatal Fame

An episode about the darker side of fame, one way and another.

Let me introduce you to a few new friends on this edition of the podcast.

Scott Walker was an American-British singer-songwriter and record producer, known for his somewhat histrionic emotive voice An unorthodox stylistic path took him from being a teen pop icon in the 1960s to an avant-garde musician from the 1980s to his death. Championed by Julian Cope, he released an album called ‘The Godlike Genius of Scott Walker’. The Guardian once commented: “Imagine Andy Williams reinventing himself as Stockhausen.”

Folly Group are a “rising East London chaos collective”. I’ve noticed quite a few of the newer singers have this drunken slurring approach to their singing now. Model/Actriz and Isaac, the ex-lead singer of Black Country New Road, come to mind. Is Ian McCulloch to blame/thank?

Pat at Rocksteady Records had J Dilla’s Donuts on his wall when I was in there last week and it reminded me to tweezer ‘Workinonit’ into this episode. It is sampled from the fantastic ‘The worst band in the world’ by 10cc (not “60s soulsters, Them” as it says in the uncorrected Pitchfork review).

The Popguns formed in 1989 and have periodically returned over the years. According to themselves, they “ran out of steam in 1996, then in 2012, due to faintly audible popular demand regrouped … and show no sign of going away”. I like their style.

According to Wikipedia, Hop Along began as an acoustic freak folk solo project known as Hop Along, Queen Ansleis in 2004. While their original ID might have performed better in a search engine, I do feel that was a heavy price to pay for such a cumbersome name and fully endorse the switch.

The Reds, Pinks and Purples have my favourite title of the episode: ‘Too late for an early grave’. They are essentially Glenn Donaldson. He’s also collaborated with Loren Chasse, Steven R and others in such projects as Thuja, The Skygreen Leopards, The Blithe Sons, and Flying Canyon as well as his solo projects. In addition, he’s a prolific collage artist and photographer. A life well lived.

Then there’s Prince, making his debut, He must have wondered if his time would ever come.

We welcome some old friends of the podcast as well.

Setlist:

Jackie, Scott Walker

Fewer closer friends, Folly Group

Workinonit, J Dilla

Revolution blues, Neil Young

The best ever death metal band in Denton, The Mountain Goats

Caesar, The Popguns

Lord Lucan is missing, Black Box Recorder

Dead pop stars, Altered Images

Tibetan pop stars, Hop Along

Too late for an early grave, The Reds, Pinks and Purples

Fan club, The Damned

Diamonds, fur coat, champagne, Suicide

All the critics love u in New York, Prince

Antarctica starts here, John Cale

Dress up in you, Belle and Sebastian

Episode 153 - Tiring, Sleeping, Dreaming

I recently watched the USA for Africa documentary about the recording process on ‘We Are The World’. It’s called ‘The Greatest Night In Pop’ and well worth watching, if only to boggle at some of the decision making as to who made the cut. Where, for example, are Fleetwood Mac, Neil Young, The Byrds, the Beach Boys and The Eagles? Joni Mitchell and Linda Ronstadt? Who thought Cyndi Lauper was a better idea than Madonna? Why didn’t Prince show up (possibly because Bob Geldof, singer with the Boomtown Rats, had called him a ‘creep’. Bob was great at saving lives in Africa, which kinda trumps everything else, but always had a misplaced perception of his own place in the musical canon, I’ve always felt.) As for the people who are in the room, well, there must have been a moment in time when James Ingram and Jeffrey Osborne were first on the teamsheet, but I can’t remember it.

There is, by the way, a very poignant moment when we see Bob Dylan, the Bob Dylan, really struggling and wondering what he’s doing there. Essentially Bob can barely sing anyway, he was at something of a cultural low point in his career mid-80s, and he had a solo verse to deliver. He’s got imposter syndrome! It reminded me of the time in my gap year when I realised I’d been hired as essentially a social experiment by IBM to see if an arts student could code computers. (Answer: They can’t, or at least I couldn’t.) I was surrounded all day every day by smirking nerds joking about COBOL programming glitches. I felt like Bob must have felt that night. Anyway, Stevie Wonder comes over and shows him how to sing it by imitating Bob Dylan. It’s incredible and very moving to see Bob wreathed in smiles as the penny drops.

The reason I bring all this up is because they start work on the song at 11pm after taxiing from some awards ceremony most of them have attended. And they don’t finish till 8am. A lot of them are tired anyway after they’ve completed a big tour, while others are midway through one. Bruce Springsteen’s voice has all but gone. As the night goes on, even for these night-time titans, energy flags and, just like normal humans, we see them slumped in corners, suppressing huge yawns, longing for sleep. We see the adrenalin almost visibly leaving the body of the producer Quincy Jones at the end.

So, here’s an episode about tiring, sleeping and dreaming. It’s not quite true that none of the artists in the room that night has ever appeared on the podcast. Diana Ross was once chosen by our interviewee Tara Emeleye Needham for her excellent song, ‘Reflections’. But that’s it. No Kenny Loggins. No Huey Lewis.  No Al Jarreau. And what’s Al Jarreau doing there? (The short answer to that is - drinking too much.)

Setlist:

Dreamsickle, Wombo

Dreams tonite, Alvvays

Dreaming, Allo Darlin’

Nocturnal creatures, Moreish Idols

Fell asleep with a vision, Spirit of the Beehive

Daydreaming, Massive Attack

I’m a dream fighting out of a man, Luke de-Sciscio

Sleep, forever, Madder Rose

Dreams, Sebadoh

Tired, Beabadoobee

The dreaming moon, The Magnetic Fields

Singing in my sleep, The Chills

I’m so tired, Fugazi

Night of the worm moon, Shana Cleveland

Sleep, Hope Sandoval and the Warm Inventions

Episode 152 - The Enduring Legacy of The Kinks

For much of the sixties, The Kinks would perhaps have been ranked fourth after The Beatles, the Stones and The Who in channeling the spirit of the times. That’s because they didn’t channel the spirit of the times. Ray Davies stood defiantly outside trends. But instead he was assembling a body of work that ultimately has proved the most influential from England in the 60s.

What is that legacy exactly?

First, they were not afraid to dwell on the past, to talk about the old times, to be backward looking in that most progressive of decades. As the tower blocks went up and the old districts got gentrified, someone up in north London was pointing out that a way of life was disappearing:

We are the skyscraper condemnation affiliates

God save Tudor houses, antique tables, and billiards

Preserving the old ways from being abused

Protecting the new ways for me and for you

What more can we do?

Second, Ray Davies legitimised singing in an English accent. He sang about English life, almost exclusively and its class system as well. Sunny Afternoon, Waterloo Sunset, Autumn Almanac, The Village Green Preservation Society. Jarvis Cocker, Damon Albarn of Blur fairly obviously followed suit, but then there’s Mick Jones of The Clash, Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys and Pete Shelley of Buzzcocks. And that’s before we get to Mark E Smith and Luke Haines of The Auteurs, but also female vocalists such as Allison Statton of Young Marble Giants and Sarah Nixey of Black Box Recorder.

As we’ve observed on the Proto-Punk episode previously, The Kinks weren’t like everybody else. More chaotic than the Stones, closer to the heart of everyday life in England than the Beatles, more musically innovative than The Who. They were the original nonconformists, not afraid to sing of homosexuality or introduce Indian elements to their music. Bad boys too, for what that’s worth, as a trail of destruction to hotel rooms and relationships with wives and girlfriends can attest.

Finally, it’s often said that The Kinks invented heavy metal with You Really Got Me. Dave Davies, who wrote the riff, disputes this. But he does acknowledge the first use of “power chords”. The invention of power pop is hardly a shabby legacy, as the music of Buzzcocks on this episode amply demonstrates.

Tracklist:

Waterloo sunset, The Kinks

Quarry, Wednesday

Do you remember Walter?, The Kinks

Hackensack, The Fountains of Wayne

See my friends, The Kinks

The 15th, Wire

Days, The Kinks

Let’s save Tony Orlando’s House, Yo La Tengo

All day and all of the night, The Kinks

What do I get? Buzzcocks

Set me free, The Kinks

Certainty, Temples

Starstruck, The Kinks

Starstruck, The Auteurs

Autumn almanac, The Kinks

Sunday Sunday, Blur

Episode 151 - Money: Too much or not enough

I once read that what really separates humans from other species is not so much their enhanced communication skills, but rather the collective ability to believe in things which are fictional. That might sound like an odd claim, but there is some truth in it. And the biggest fiction of all is money. After all, there are some states that manage to get by without religion, but the only people left who don’t believe in money are some scattered tribespeople in the Amazon and sub-Saharan Africa.

Considering its importance to everyone, there aren’t that many songs about money, but there are a few. Perhaps the most ironic song ever was not Alanis Morrisette’s, but the 7/4 classic ‘Money’ by Pink Floyd. In a case of – what, nominative determinism, perhaps - the song’s commercial success produced an unseemly litigious battle over its revenue streams.

Obviously that doesn’t feature here. ‘Bankrobber’ by The Clash came closer, as did another song about a mercenary job, ‘Bounty Hunter’ by Barrington Levy. But we do have a dub track from King Tubby and reggae from Horace Andy. Quite a widespread of genres in fact, from early electronica (Cabaret Voltaire) via Argentine post-punk (Las Kellies) through to a countrified ballad (Gillian Welch).

‘Everything is free’ by the latter artist does seem remarkably prescient for 2001. It is increasingly difficult for any but the biggest artists to make the fiction that is money out of music. I hear that contracts now include a cut of the merchandising for the record company. Basically, you either have to be a legacy act, have a well-paid day job or be a trustafarian.

Still and all, great music continues to be made and half the list is from the last couple of years. The humans continue to find a way.

Setlist:

Cashout, Fugazi

Dream job, Yard Act

Private banking, Private Banking

Modern job, Sprints

Nationalsville, The Toads

Everything is free, Gillian Welch

Money dub, King Tubby

Spend, spend, spend, The Slits

Funny money, Las Kellies

Hard rock potato, The Cool Greenhouse

Burning sky, The Jam

Money worries, Blood

Kneel to the boss, Cabaret Voltaire

Money money, Horace Andy