Episode 80 - 50 years of music 's most enduring riff

‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’ is a strange song lyrically. Someone who is so obsessed with their partner they’re willing to be utterly dominated by them. Each to his own, I guess.

Recently its lyrics caught the eye of emerging Canadian star Helena Deland. An interesting update in her song ‘Dog’. Who's the fairest one of all? / Who gets to be your mirror / If I'm the nail on the wall? / I hate to be your dog / But I could use the company / To go out with on walks.

And Sophia Regina Allison (aka Soccer Mommy) as well, who used it as a springboard to articulate her feelings about relationships. I don't wanna be your fucking dog / That you drag around / A collar on my neck tied to a pole / Leave me in the freezing cold.

Earlier, Jens Lekman had called his entire album “When I said I wanted to be your dog”, humorously indicating the absurdity of the proposition. It’s a lovely laid-back song as well, so far from the urgent propulsion of the original it’s hard to believe young Jens’ ears would have been able to cope.

It’s not the lyrics but that descending riff that’s truly endured. Sometimes it forms the basis of an entire song like Bela Lugosi’s Dead. Sometimes it just gets quoted obliquely, such as Mudhoney’s Halloween, two-thirds of the way through.

Brix of The Fall brought it over from the US with her and passed it off, rather incredibly. as her own. The group used it on Elves, perhaps forgetting that if there was one group her bandmates knew back-to-front already it was The Stooges. I haven’t included it on this episode as, even more incredibly, there may be SF listeners who are getting a little weary of the regularity of their appearances.

Peter Hook always wanted Joy Division to sound more like The Stooges. He was frustrated by Martin Hannett’s production which made the band sound anything but. They used the IWBYD riff not once, not twice, but three times, most obviously when they were still Warsaw - on the track Warsaw itself. Then on Insight, and finally on Twenty Four Hours. The last two tracks so distinctively their own, and so little to do with kinky masochism, that the connection only occurred to me years later.

Some great and varied covers here too – Emilie Simon, Uncle Tupelo, Matt Mays - to complement more straightahead versions such as Joan Jett (easily discovered elsewhere).

The most enduring riff of all? Well, Bo Diddley and others would have something to say about that. But, at the very least, it made for a surprisingly varied episode.

Tracklist:

I wanna be your dog, The Stooges

Two beads at the end, Minutemen

Dog, Helena Deland

Flying lesson (Hot Chicken #1), Yo La Tengo

I wanna be your dog, Emilie Simon

When I said I wanted to be your dog, Jans Lekman

Manipulator, Ty Segall

Your dog, Soccer Mommy

I wanna be your dog, Uncle Tupelo

Bela Lugosi is dead, Bauhaus

Twenty four hours, Joy Division

I wanna be your dog, Matt Mays

Episode 79 - Rajan Datar, guest host

Music is my first love, and it will be my last / Music of the future and music of the past

I’ve known Rajan since we were both teenagers. He was one of the first people to say hello to me when we arrived at university. Which was nice, and typical. We all need friends in a cold climate. For whatever reason we then didn’t actually become friends for most of our first year.

I’m not exactly sure why. I think maybe he thought I was a bit too straight. And I thought his mates were a bit too adventurous for me. But that was never the case, really. But stupidly, one thing I didn’t realise back then was the full and intense burden of being from an immigrant family back then.

As he says in our interview, his was one of only two Asian families growing up in – of all places – the leafy suburbia of Hampton, south west of London. He was subject to racial insults and taunts all through his young life. And that formed a huge part of his identity.

We did become friends, partly based on what Mark E Smith describes as “the outsiderness of it.” Growing up in a crumbling Coventry and coming from a poor single parent family in those days was quite tough. Both of us experienced violence, not at home, but on the streets. We certainly weren’t standard Oxford intake. I’d like to think England is a kinder place now, but I suspect it’s going backwards. I hope not.

Eventually I did what I did, and Rajan did what he was always going to do – became quite famous. If you live in the UK, you’ll probably know him from one of the many TV and radio shows he’s been on.

But our biggest bond was always music. What a time it was to be alive back then, et cetera. Our share house in James Street, was littered with records that hadn’t been put back in their sleeves by Joy Division, Gregory Isaacs, Wire, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Wah!, The Desperate Bicycles. I couldn’t make any money when I sold my vinyl a few years ago because my records were in such a terrible state. Some of them had small pieces of cardboard removed from their corners.

We formed a band together back then with two other mates. We weren’t very good. But from small acorns ... Rajan’s still in a band – they’re actually excellent. Maroon Town. I’m still, obviously, inspired by music.

It was terrific fun catching up and hearing Rajan’s Desert Island Discs. Hope it’s not too self indulgent and you enjoy it too.

Tracklist:

Do anything you want to do, Eddie and the Hot Rods

Ever so lonely, Monsoon

Gangsters, The Specials

Hi fashion dub, Dub Specialist

Paint it, black, The Rolling Stones

Visions of you, Jah Wobble and The Invaders of the Heart

Get down tonight, KC and the Sunshine Band

Rockabilly Bob, Columbo

Hello Josephine, Chubby Carrier & the Bayou Swamp Band

Black rabbit, Prince Fatty and Shneice McMenamin

Episode 78 - London

“Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls deified among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little 'prentice boy on deck. Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon and hanging in the misty clouds.

Gas looming through the fog in divers places in the streets, much as the sun may, from the spongey fields, be seen to loom by husbandman and ploughboy. Most of the shops lighted two hours before their time--as the gas seems to know, for it has a haggard and unwilling look.

The raw afternoon is rawest, and the dense fog is densest, and the muddy streets are muddiest near that leaden-headed old obstruction, appropriate ornament for the threshold of a leaden-headed old corporation, Temple Bar. And hard by Temple Bar, in Lincoln's Inn Hall, at the very heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery.

Never can there come fog too thick, never can there come mud and mire too deep, to assort with the groping and floundering condition which this High Court of Chancery, most pestilent of hoary sinners, holds this day in the sight of heaven and earth.”

(Bleak House, Charles Dickens)

Has there ever been a better description of the dirty old town? Here are some songs to go with it.

Tracklist:-

In the city, The Jam

I don’t want to go to Chelsea, Elvis Costello and the Attractions

Northern line, LV, Joshua Idehen

Galang, MIA

Near dark, Burial

Time for heroes, The Libertines

Soho, Bert Jansch and John Renbourn

Elm Grove window, The Clientele

North circular, Real Lies

Tied up too tight, Hard Fi

London’s burning, The Clash

Girl VII, Saint Etienne

Bar Italia, Pulp

Leave the capitol, The Fall

Episode 77 - Sombr-Euro Fallout

It’s the Sombr-Euros!

Here’s a selection of music from our friends across the European continent.

At the time of writing the Euros are taking place. The quadrennial get-together for Europe’s national football teams.

This is an occasion I’ve historically enjoyed – and still do. It was a chance to see players like Johann Cruyff, Gunter Netzer and Pavel Nedved for the first time. To compare different styles of play from the disciplined Danes to the polished Portuguese via the youth of Yugoslavia.

Now it’s all a bit different. The front four for Portugal have all played in the Premier League - most still do. Yugoslavia collapsed into competing nations. And this year the disciplined Danes lowered their emotional guard to pour out their heartfelt gratitude that Christian Eriksen, whose heart stopped beating on the pitch in the first game, is now recovering.

So it is with the music. Occasionally the NME ran a Neue Deutsche Harte special. John Peel would have a working holiday in Prague and come back with a fistful of new tapes and records. But European music didn’t sound like the bands we knew from Hemel Hempstead or East Kilbride.

Now it’s evened out. Listening to this collection of tracks it’s not hard to hear the post-punk inflections of Finland’s Here Todays or work out that Belgium’s Slow Crush own a copy of Loveless. Or possibly that’s me and my bias. Perhaps when I edited this list that’s what I gravitated towards – the more familiar, all of which is instantly available now via Spotify and elsewhere.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good collection of tracks. And it all sounds subtly different from the Anglophone world. It’s just that these days you wouldn’t be surprised if Triangulo de Amor Bizarro (taking their name from a 1980s New Order single) appeared in a bar near you after lockdown.

Tempora mutantur et nos in illis mutamur.

Tracklist:

Umbrellas, the Here Todays (Finalnd)

Cosmic bruise, Clara Luiza (Austria)

My faults, The Notwist (Germany)

Pensees massacre, Ulan Bator (France)

Amigos del Genero Humano, Triangulo de Amor Bizarro (Spain)

June evenings, Air France (Sweden)

Es tudo o que eu queria, Pega Monstro (Portugal)

Glow, Slow Crush (Belgium)

Union, The End of Electronics (Russia)

Over the fence, Smoking Alaska (Netherlands)

Chin, Sleep Party People (Denmark)

Fel i fod, Adwaith (Wales)

Sunny afternoon, The Kinks (England)

The first big weekend, Arab Strap (Scotland)

Episode 76 - Post-Brexit Post-Punk

Post-Punk.

A genre that defies definition. Some would say so vague it’s best avoided as a genre term.

And yet.

It still means something to me, at least. Some stabs at categorisation:

- not rock’n’roll or rockist

- openminded, odd or experimental

- intolerant of intolerance

- for outsiders

- encompassing themes outside mainstream music

- not about musical careerism

- a preference for introspection over expansiveness

It meant a lot to me in 1979. It so happened that I turned 17 that year, so whichever mother duck I laid eyes on might have become my musical mother, such is the power of that age when defining our tastes. But that’s not the whole story - they’re still making documentaries and building museums for the bands of 1979. Something happened.

The second Strokes-fuelled spike in the early 2000s meant rather less. Partly because it was more of an American thing, and you folk have a different way of looking at the world, (which is fine, of course). Some great and iconic songs and bands, nonetheless.

Now here we are in 2021 in the midst of a full-on Post-Brexit Post-Punk happening. This episode caters for all-new bands to SF, but please do have a look back over the last 18 months and you’ll find many other examples. Shame, Idles, Fontaines DC, Girl Band, Porridge Radio, etc. And always and forever, Dry Cleaning.

Sometimes you look back and marvel at “what a time it was to be alive” in the age new material from Joy Division, Wire, the Fall, The Gang of Four, The Specials every month. But hey, Black Midi just dropped their second album last week. As the quotation from Nathan Barley goes … “Is something amazing happening?”

I think it probably is.

I could have filled this episode with four white boys and their guitars doing (effectively) Wire and Fall covers, but post-punk was always as much Young Marble Giants as Gang of Four. I did Irish and Welsh episodes recently, so have focused on England this time round. So here’s an eclectic bunch of tracks under a loose umbrella called Post-Brexit Post-Punk. Hope you like it.

Tracklist:-

The future is not what it was, The Clockworks

Stars, Famous

Uber alles, Do Nothing

Anxiety feels, Goat Girl

Fixer upper, Yard Act

M5, Sports Team

Track X, Black Country New Road

Intercontinental Radio Waves, TRAAMS

I want my minutes back, Snapped Ankles

Sex Music, Beak>

Mork ‘n’ Mindy, Sleaford Monds, feat Billy Nomates

Reggae, Black Midi

Beyond eternal recurrence, Lice

Hollow scene, Deep Tan

Episode 75 - Montreal

Montreal is the second-largest primarily French-speaking city in the developed world, after Paris.

In 2017, Montreal was ranked the 12th most liveable city in the world by the Economist - and the best city in the world to be a university student (Melbourne usually comes top, FYI).

It is the only Canadian city to have held the Summer Olympics.

It was the official residence of the Luxembourg royal family in exile during World War II. Good choice, Luxembourgeois elite!

Every Sunday in Parc Mont-Royal near downtown Montreal, there is a huge impromptu drumming festival in which hundreds of drummers are invited to jam.

Most popular local bands sing in French.

American critic Edmund Wilson famously called the nineteenth-century poet Émile Nelligan "the only first-rate Canadian poet, French or English."

Montreal cuisine highlights include the famous Jewish smoked meat sandwiches and Montreal-style bagels, while the Lebanese have contributed their distinctive falafels and shish taouk sandwiches.

During Prohibition in the United States, Montreal became well known as one of North America's "sin cities" with unparalleled nightlife, a reputation it still holds today.

I’ve personally never been to Montreal but enjoyed getting to virtually know a little more about Canada’s second city, and concocted a musical episode I think listeners to the pod should find highly enjoyable.

Setlist:

Texas drums Pt 1, Pottery

Some are lakes, Land of Talk

The police and the private, Metric

Stay for real, Young Galaxy

Suburban war, Arcade Fire

Truth nugget, Helena Deland

The truth about cats and dogs (is that they die), Pony Up!

Your ex-lover is dead, Stars

You are a runner and I am my father’s son, Wolf Parade

Say, can you hear, Men I Trust

Maybe later, Miracle Fortress

Tuff ghost, The Unicorns

Bosses hang Pt 1, Godspeed You! Black Emperor

Mistral gagnant, Coeur de Pirate

Episode 74 - Dave O'Neil, guest host

A first for Sombrero Fallout – a guest host!

I invited Dave O’Neil to guest host an episode of SF recently. With all his years’ experience behind a mike, Dave was, as ever, the consummate professional. We covered Madness and Motors, Sunnyboys and Specials, comedy and Captain Cocoa, scouting and Spicks & Specks. And much else besides.

Dave needs no introduction – to Australian listeners. However our overseas audience might appreciate some Dave facts.

Dave grew up in Mitcham, east Melbourne, where he was a boyhood scout and his father Kevin still runs a group. After finishing high school, Dave completed a course in primary school teaching - however, he never taught. He became a field officer for the Red Cross giving talks and training sessions, where he first enjoyed public speaking and the opportunity to tell jokes.

In the late 1980s, he was a member of the band Captain Cocoa, in which he played bass. Identical twin brother Glenn was the lead vocalist. After he hung up his bass, he embarked upon a highly successful commercial radio career, appeared a record number of times on TV pop quiz show Spicks & Specks, appeared with Eric Bana in feature film The Nugget, and became one of Melbourne’s go-to stand-up comedians.

In 2017 Dave began a new podcast The Debrief. Each episode he drives a comedian home from a gig and discusses comedy and their career. Dave is currently working with Glenn Robbins (of Kath and Kim) on a podcast called Somehow Related.

We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and hope you do too. Here are the tracks chosen by Dave.

Tracklist:

So this is real, Sunnyboys

I hear motion, The Models

You’re wondering now, The Specials

Misery, Madness

Blue, Jayhawks

Is that you Cherry Trite?, Captain Cocoa

Into the white, Pixies

Anybody’s ghost, The National

Mr Motivator, Idles

Episode 73 - 4AD (historic roster)

Some record companies don’t conjure up very much in the mind’s eye. In marketing terms they have no ‘distinctive assets’. What do you think of if you hear the names Polygram or A&M or Universal Music Group? For me, not much. Others are more famous but not necessarily for their artists. Virgin say, who, beyond Tubular Bells, became associated with Richard Branson rather than their musical output.

But happily some labels do have an ethos. Island was founded by Chris Blackwell as long ago as 1959. Listening to Sparks albums were indelibly linked in my young, sprightly days with the Island logo on the turntable. Blackwell explained in 2009: "I loved music so much, I just wanted to get into it, or be as close to it as I could.".

The rise of the record label as branded identities really kicked in after punk. There were regional powerhouses – Manchester’s Factory, London’s Rough Trade, Glasgow’s Postcard, Coventry’s Two Tone. Then genre labels – Sarah’s twee, Warp’s electronica, Matador’s alternatives in the States. And so on.

In the 1980s 4AD started releasing a string of excellent albums from indie rock, post-punk, gothic rock and dream pop artists. Some of them are featured in this episode. But they had one ‘distinctive asset’ above all others, which Peter Saville had pioneered at Factory.

Ivo Watts-Russell, the label’s founder, invited the graphic designer Vaughan Oliver and the photographer Nigel Grierson to create sleeve art for the label, and as a result, 4AD acquired a highly distinctive visual identity. It’s hard to listen to early Red House Painters without the synaesthesia of that sepia tonality. Or listen to Come On Pilgrim without seeing that strangely hairy back.

4AD are still going strong and we’ll do a “Current Roster” episode before too long.

Tracklist:

Cherry-coloured funk, Cocteau Twins

Cybele’s reverie, Stereolab

De luxe, Lush

Grace cathedral park, Red House Painters

You’re beautiful, Mojave 3

Caribou, Pixies

Staring at the sun, TV on the Radio

Out of work actor, St Vincent

James, Camera Obscura

Kansas, Wolfgang Press

Release the bats, The Birthday Party

And may your last words be a chance to make things better, Magnetophone

Parks and recreation, Emma Pollock

The grave-digger’s song, Mark Lanegan

No children, The Mountain Goats

Episode 72 - 50 years of Brian Eno

In Losing My Edge by LCD Soundsystem, James Murphy’s ageing hipster asks …

‘But have you seen my records?

This Heat, Pere Ubu, Outsiders, Nation of Ulysses, Mars, the Trojans, The Black Dice, Todd Terry, the Germs, Section 25, Althea and Donna, Sexual Harassment, a-ha, Pere Ubu, Dorothy Ashby, PIL, the Fania All-Stars, the Bar-Kays, the Human League, the Normal, Lou Reed, Scott Walker, Monks, Niagra, Joy Division, Lower 48, the Association, Sun Ra, the Scientists, Royal Trux, 10cc, Eric B. and Rakim, Index, Basic Channel, Soulsonic Force, Juan Atkins, David Axelrod, Electric Prunes, Gil Scott Heron, the Slits, Faust, Mantronix, Pharaoh Sanders, the Fire Engines, the Swans, Soft Cell, the Sonics … ‘

Now, have you seen Brian Eno’s records?

John Cale, David Bowie, David Byrne, Talking Heads, Roxy Music, Laurie Anderson, Nico, Lou Reed, Penguin Café Orchestra, Slowdive, James Blake, Kevin Shields, Kevin Ayers, Robert Fripp, Robert Calvert, Genesis, Robert Wyatt, John Cage, Michael Nyman, Ultravox, Harold Budd, Devo, Lydia Lunch, The Contortions, James, Daniel Lanois, Zvuki Mu, The Neville Brothers, Peter Gabriel, Depeche Mode, Massive Attack, Jah Wobble, Arto Lindsay, David Lynch, Robert Wyatt, Can, Baaba Maal, Seun Kuti …

Over the last 50 years, Eno produced or collaborated with them all. Along the way he invented ambient music while recovering from an operation in hospital. He was the original synth player in Roxy Music when they were good. He was in Berlin with Bowie in ’77 and in New York with Byrne in ’78. And, on it goes …

Brian Eno has never had a hit in his own name. He wouldn’t get recognised on the street by many people. He may even get overlooked when the big shiny retrospectives of the last 50 years of music come to be written. But, as James Murphy says, he was there - with the cool kids. The very least he deserves is an episode of Sombrero Fallout celebrating his half century in music.

Tracklist: -

Do the Strand, Roxy Music

Fear is a man’s best friend, John Cale

Be my wife, David Bowie

Zopf: From the colonies, Penguin Café Orchestra

By this river, Brian Eno

Retrograde, James Blake

When the sun hits, Slowdive

In our sleep, Laurie Anderson

An ending (Ascent), Brian Eno

Warning sign, Talking Heads

The Jezebel spirit, David Byrne and Brian Eno

Source of infection, Zvuki Mu

Bismahillahi Rrahmani Rahim, Harold Budd

On some faraway beach, Brian Eno

Episode 71 - Deadpan

This episode started off as simply humorous, which I will certainly explore at some point in the future.

Then it became “Dark, deadpan and detached”. At which point it still had a number of humour-first tracks on it.

Then for a couple of hours I was convinced that “Deadpan women” was the way to go. But then I worried that this seemed arbitrarily limiting. And maybe sexist in its own hamfistedly well-intentioned way. (Lord be, but that whole area’s a minefield in which I live in constant fear of treading on a landmine and exploding.)

Then Steve Amphlett suggested the theme of ‘Sprechgesang’. Which, once I’d looked it up, turned out to be remarkably similar - “Speak-singing”, for those at the back - to how this episode has turned out.

It’s hard to do humour well in music. It’s more often the case when I hear a tone of voice, a stray lyric, even an unexpected chord change, I smile in appreciation. Mind you, Johnnie Walker used to have a weekday slot on Radio One called “Fun At One”. Anyone remember that? Fond childhood memories. Peter Cook and Nervous Norvus.

I generally find the best type of humour in music is the understated, wry, disaffected style exemplified by the artists on this list. Which, by the way, starts with a track, by the quintessential deadpan band who’ve just released their debut album, “Deep Long Leg”. I would urge you to become acquainted. My word, it’s outstanding.

Tracklist:

Unsmart lady, Dry Cleaning

Re: your brains, Jonathan Coulton

Macho, Jaako Eino Kalevi

Seen and not seen, Talking Heads

England made me, Black Box Recorder

The fear, Lily Allen

Suspended from class, Camera Obscura

Dress sexy at my funeral, Smog

Diet, The Au Pairs

Life in a Scotch sitting room 2, Episode 11, Ivor Cutler

Your back again, Linoleum

Shadow bloom, Florist

Beauty lies in the eye, Sonic Youth

Knobheads on quiz shows, Half Man Half Biscuit