Shocking Blue

A few years ago, while generally idling and listening to the radio, I discovered what is now one of my favourite tracks, 'Send Me A Postcard'. It's two and a half minutes of blistering Acid Rock, with a full voiced female singer. Being convinced I was listening to Jefferson Airplane, I was a little surprised when I found out who it was; Shocking Blue.

Here's the track with someone's home made attempt at a video (Not Mine).



Formed in 1967, they were from Holland and had a few hits in their homeland before their worldwide breakthrough, 'Venus'. The band was fronted by the powerful Mariska Veres, who many at the time compared to Grace Slick.

I had to hear more so I got hold of one of their compilations and was even more surprised when I found Nirvana's 'Love Buzz' from the album 'Bleach' was originally Shocking Blue's too. Too many tracks on their compilations are a little weak for me to recommend them, unless you're a real fan, but no worries. 'Send Me A Postcard' appears on Ladytron's Softcore Jukebox compilation, a real eclectic mix of some of Ladytron's personal favourite tracks plus a couple of their own. The bold ones are must haves.

1. "Soon" - My Bloody Valentine
2. "Hit the North, Part 1" - The Fall
3. "What's a Girl to Do" - Cristina
4. "Peng" - Dondolo
5. "The 15th" - Wire
6. "Blue Jeans 2.0" - Ladytron
7. "Saviour Piece" - Snap Ant
8. "Big" - New Fast Automatic Daffodils
9. "Feel Good Hit of the Fall" - !!!
10. "Teenage Daughter" - Fat Truckers
11. "Hey Mami (Sharaz Mix)" - Fannypack
12. "Manila (Headman Remix)" - Seelenluft
13. "You Got the Love" - The Source/Candi Staton
14. "Crazy Girls" - Codec and Flexor
15. "Oops Oh My" - Ladytron
16. "Send Me a Postcard" - Shocking Blue
17. "Twins" - Pop Levi
18. "Some Velvet Morning" - Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra

This Week I Will Mostly Be Listening To... Foals

My favourite ever band this week has to be Foals. After seeing their video for 'Balloons' twenty odd times, I saw them perform live on the BBC's 'Later With Jools Holland' and am now hooked.

I realise there's a bit of a buzz surrounding the band at the moment with many pronouncing them the new saviours of Indie rock. That's obviously taking it a bit too far, but they're certainly a refreshing change from the current crop of whining generic Indie Pop soundalikes. The first thing I notice is that this is Dance music. Think of thumping The Rapture beats meeting the complicated Math Rock of TV On The Radio and you'll get some idea.

I'm not sure if it's just me but I hear echoes of Two Tone era ska with their off kilter beats and saxophones on their studio recordings. After seeing a few live clips it's clear that they can play, although how well they'll manage with larger venues remains to be seen.

According to their interviews they're promising a more experimental approach for their new album, which was actually produced by TVotR's Dave Sitek. Certainly one to watch even if they don't save Indie.

Muppets v Sesame Street

I always divide the world up in to two distinct groups. Those who prefer The Muppet Show and those who favour Sesame Street. Anyone who has no opinion I generally ignore. I myself would always go for muppets. I always found Sesame Street too full of learnin' and stuff, while the muppets was all for laughs. Plus I always found Big Bird a little sinister.

It was only fairly recently, during a regular drunken Muppets v Sesame Street debate with a friend of mine that I discovered how much I'd missed out on. I was blown away when he sent me this YouTube Vid of Stevie Wonder playing 'Superstition' live on Sesame Street. This is funky in the extreme and not a furry critter in sight.

Here Come The Girls

Sometimes I despair at advertising. Ad execs are always ready to pick the bones of real artists' work and regurgitate it for mass consumption. How many pieces of classical music does Joe Public know that weren't discovered through some media campaign? Not many I'll bet. Mind you if that's the only way we're gonna find out about it, perhaps that's not so bad. Anyway how else would we get to hear about fantastic new products like Cillit Bang. Three cheers for TV ads.

Watching the new Boots commercial (below) got me racking my brains trying to remember where I'd heard the music from. I'm sure I must have heard it in Bar Rumba or somewhere, but never new the name. One google later and there it was. 'Here Come The Girls' by Ernie K-Doe is the funky track in question, reasonably familiar to the old Northern Soul crowd but most famous for his 1961 R&B hit, 'Mother-In-Law'.



Anyway I tracked it down on New Orleans Funk Vol.1: the Original Sound of Funk 1960-1975, and was pretty easy to find on Soulseek. It's a good collection (not exceptional) of solid funky grooves, with many recognisable as Hip Hop breaks. Highlights for me were Chuck Carbo's 'Can I Be Your Squeeze', and Aaron Neville's 'Hercules'. If you collect funk compilations then you'll already have most of these tracks but if you're looking for an introduction to the New Orleans funk sound you can't go wrong with this.

Purely Perfect Punk Power Pop

While accidently watching MTV today, I noticed a not so recent interview clip featuring Pete 'Shit Arm, Bad Tattoo' Doherty. When asked if there was any song that he wished he'd written, everyone's favourite heroin addict just about managed to reply "'Another Girl, Another Planet' by The Only Ones". Well he may be a skanky twat but he certainly couldn't have picked a more worthy tune.

Released in 1978, it was highly regarded by critics at the time but wasn't a hit. You can now find it on soooo many compilations from that era, but it wouldn't be a bad idea to pick up their debut album, The Only Ones. The group is often referred to as a Punk band but I think their sound has just as much in common with Badfinger and Big Star. The track is 3 minutes of pure pop genius and should be mandatory at every indie disco. In fact it's such a strong track that even Blink 182 didn't manage to ruin it.

Oh, and it's about heroin. Enjoy!

Psychedelic Dream

My first exposure to Edgar Froese's Tangerine Dream was in 1985 when a friend of mine forced me to listen to the 'Risky Business' soundtrack. I was not exactly thrilled, but quite enjoyed the track 'Love on a Real Train' (cleverly used in Noah Baumbach's 'The Sqid And The Whale' recently). I ended up taking the CD home with me, and promptly forgot of it's existence. If you're reading this Tony, I've still got it mate.

It wasn't until 5 years later, when hearing their superb 1974 album 'Phaedra', that I began to be drawn in. This trancey, electronic trip full of revolutionary sequencer effects with plenty of moogs and mellotrons was right up my alley at the time and I had to find more. I found something quite different.

Playing their 1970 debut 'Electronic Meditation' for the first time was the closest thing to a religious experience I'd ever had. It was instantly clear to me that this was a rock band, but a rock band doing something entirely other-worldly. Tribal tom-toms, groaning cellos, dancing flutes, crashing guitar chords and church organs, all competing but somehow complementing each other. Check out the standout track, 'Journey Through A Burning Brain', a twelve and a half minute free-form rock jam subdued at first but ultimately building into a blazing psychedelic freakout.

I didn't realise at the time that of course this album didn't come out of nowhere and there is even a genre(s) that it fits into. The overall sound and the experimentation can be likened to early Pink Floyd (particularly 'A Saucerful of Secrets), and many other German bands at the time were doing similar things. This was my introduction to Kraut-Rock or Space-Rock or Avant-Garde Rock or whatever the hell you call it and I couldn't get enough.

The first four Tangerine Dream albums show a marked difference to anything that was released later, on Richard Branson's Virgin label, and are hugely underated in my opinion. All four are present on the compilation Nebulous Dawn: the Early Years as well as rare extra tracks 'Ultima Thule parts 1 & 2', and both sides from The Ones' (Froese's previous band) 'Lady Greengrass' single. It won't be everyone's cup of tea but I couldn't be without it in my collection.

Imitation is the Sincerest Form of.... Theft?

The story of the Sony Bravia Bunnies has done the rounds recently. In a nutshell, Sony launched the advert which shows a New York street becoming overun by hordes of play-doh bunnies to a Rolling Stones soundtrack. Kozyndan, an illustration company, claims that this concept is a complete rip-off of one of their panoramic paintings. You can read one version of the story here.

Detail of the Kozyndan painting

You'll have to make up your own mind on this one but personally I'm just happy to hear one of my favourite Stones tracks, 'She's A Rainbow'. However it should come as no surprise that this song was hardly original, itself being heavily influenced according to Keith Richards, by the magnificent 'She Comes In Colors' by Arthur Lee's Love (from the classic 1966 album 'Da Capo').

Have a listen to it here with accompanying animation from iwait4u, and see if you can also detect a similarity to Madonna's 'Beautiful Stranger'. Come to think of it The Walkmen's 'We've Been Had' reminds me of 'She's A Rainbow'. Seems there's nothing new under the sun.

Tell 'em about the Honey Johnny

Seeing John Cooper Clarke again got me reminiscing. He was always cropping up on 80's music or arty programmes and became rather famous considering he was a poet. The 'Bard of Salford', often labelled as a Punk Poet, regularly opened lived sets for the likes of Joy Division, Buzzcocks, The Sex Pistols and The Fall.

Arctic Monkey's hero Johnny Clarke has dated Nico, battled heroin addiction, apparently played himself in the film 'Control' and was probably partly responsible for inspiring Rik Mayall's 'People's Poet' character, but his crowning achievement was no doubt his 1988 appearances in the Sugar Puffs commercials.

Anyway, it was a pleasant surprise to see his 'Evidently Chickentown' being used in the closing scene of a recent Sopranos episode. Taken from his 1980 album Snap Crackle and Bop. I found this clip (not from Sopranos) on YouTube but I have no idea where it was originally from. Hope you like it.

Where It All Started

It was 1980 or '81 and punk had totally passed me by (I was only 7 or 8). My taste in music could best be described as Godawful, but I was starting to realise there was more on offer than Top of the Pops was letting on.

Every Saturday the family would head round to my grandparents' house where my uncle would usually be watching some video or other that he'd taped off the telly. This was when I got my first tasters of Killing Joke, Public Image Ltd, HMHB, The Cure, Siouxsie & the Banshees etc. It was all a bit weird for me at the time, so I gravitated to the "Pop"ier acts like Madness and UB40, but the memory of one particular show left a very deep impression.

It wasn't until a random YouTube search that I was able to recapture a little of the original bemusement, awe, exhilaration, blah blah.... of this landmark moment. The image of Joy Division playing 'Transmission' had always haunted me and here it was again, exactly as I remembered.

Check out the Drummer, Stephen Morris (Blinding!) and Hookies' usual pounding, driving bass. Also note Bernard Sumner's attempt to look like Alex Kapranos, and what can I say about Ian Curtis dance, dance, dancing to the radio that hasn't already been said. See for yourself.

Seeing it again leaves me thinking only one thing.
Man! Trousers really came up high back then.

Here's the clip, bookended by punk poet & Sugar Puff eater John Cooper Clarke (Maybe more on him soon). You can also find this track on Joy Division's The Complete BBC Recordings. Enjoy.

Get your Joy Division oven gloves

It's a few years old now but I will NEVER get bored with this song.

Half Man Half Biscuit - Joy Division Oven Gloves

It's a hilarious little number with a quite a few semi-obscure references (see here for decoding), a great sing-a-long chorus, A possible masturbation reference ("polishing the knave" ???), and is probably a comment on band merchandising or somethin'.
What more could you ask for?

A Cabaret Voltaire tea cosy perhaps.

Here's the lyrics, and I promise you'll be singing it too. All together now.....

(from the album Achtung Bono.)

Well the dish is too hot
You'll never guess what
I've got Joy Division oven gloves
If it's her desire
I'll put my fingers in the fire
Cause I've got Joy Division oven gloves
I've got Joy Division oven gloves

Ooh ooh tropical diseases
Ooh ooh chemical alarm
Ooh ooh I'm a little blasé
In my Joy Division oven gloves
In my Joy Division oven gloves

I've been here and I've been there
In my Joy Division oven gloves
I've been to a post-punk postcard fair
In my Joy Division oven gloves
Ooh ooh Nagasaki towpath
Ooh ooh tickling the laird
Ooh ooh checking out the Quantocks
In my Joy Division oven gloves
In my Joy Division oven gloves

On a sinking ship a sailor yearns
For his Joy Division oven gloves
Nero fiddles while Gordon Burns
In his Joy Division oven gloves
Talk to the hands, talk to the hands
In my Joy Division oven gloves
Dance dance dance dance
In your Joy Division oven gloves

Ooh ooh piccalilli shin pads
Ooh ooh polishing the knave
I keep wicket for the Quakers
In me Joy Division oven gloves

My grandfather's clock was too tall for the shelf
So I sold it and opened up a stall
Selling Joy Division oven gloves
We got Joy Division oven gloves
Get your Joy Division oven gloves
Hallelujah

Genre Dilemma

I'm not exactly a fan of pigeonholing music into genres, but it has to be done. My biggest gripe is with NME writers and their constant need to shoehorn totally disparate groups into neat little labelled containers, with the seemingly sole purpose of polarising opinion. Pick up any copy from the past 12 months or so and you're guaranteed 'Indie Rave' vs 'Indie Rock'; 'Emo' vs 'The Rest Of Music' etc. What a f****** bore!

Well it's been going on for years. I was 13 years old in 1986 and the same battle was being fought between Indie Rock and Rap music (when the term Indie actually meant something). Rap was a totally new phenomenon as far as most British kids were concerned and it was just starting to push rock music aside. The opposing camps within the NME (Melody Maker, Record Mirror & Sounds too) dug in, and war was waged.

At the time I lost interest in all things Rock, bought a black Public Enemy style bomber jacket, white Kangol hat, and would only ever buy the latest New York 12"s.
It was only 3 or 4 years on that I went back to my roots as it were (when I heard the Pixies and Ride for the first time), but I'd already missed so much. At least now I can blame the NME for making me take sides.

These days I'm trying to rediscover any gems from this lost era, and I'm doing ok.
While listening to Half Man Half Biscuit's 'Back in the DHSS' I noticed that someone had tagged the genre as 'C86' on Last FM. I had heard of C86 before, but didn't know where, so after a quick google I suddenly remembered a tape that had been given away with the NME. It was an Indie Pop, Rock, Post-Punky kind of affair that seemed to have been lumped together because of what it wasn't. It wasn't Rap music.

Some people have since, lazily, decided to label all these various styles 'C86' but I suppose it doesn't really matter. If it wasn't for this little NME time capsule I might never have heard the beautifully haunting Jangle Pop (is that a genre, a style or what?) of McCarthy's 'Celestial City'. (one minute clip Here.)
Thanks NME, you're nearly forgiven.

Bear-Proof's first Post

Hey. Welcome to my Blog.
I'd basically like to share what I know about music, what I THINK I know about music, and whatever I pick up along the way.
Just to give you an idea of what might come up, here's a map of my areas of interest.

Bigger text = more interest

Hope you find something good.