Sunday 31 August 2014

Totally Shuffled-Paul McCartney

Extracted from "Totally Shuffled-A Year of Listening to Music on a Broken iPod"

November 30th



Paul McCartney-No More Lonely Nights-All the Best!  

Now here shuffles up someone who has definitely got more than one good song in them. Actually, it’s hard to think of a bad song, a really truly naff and awful song that he’s written. I even include The Frog Chorus, Maxwell’s Silver Hammer and Mull of Kintyre within that. These, I guess are some songs of McCartney’s that are roundly and widely seen as beyond the pale; trite, slushy, sentimental and nonsense. I honestly believe that even these songs are ten times better than most other relevant songwriters could come up with. 

Granted, they aren’t the best songs he’s ever written, but there’s a certain amount of charm in there; it’s difficult not to finding yourself humming along to “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” or ending up with “Mull of Kintyre” going through your head all day, even if you simply have just heard a snippet. As for the “Frog Chorus”- isn’t it just possible that there might just be a bit of snobbery involved? 

In the hands of say, Brian Wilson or some other recognised eccentric, it would be considered as a bit of wackiness, and even as a clear sign of undoubted genius. However, because it’s a song that Paul McCartney wrote and just because it is Paul McCartney, universal scorn is heaped upon it, and perversely it’s seen as a yet another clear sign of his unredeemable naffness.

There’s another point that should be made along the way. 

Paul McCartney made much better music post-Beatles when he wasn’t hampered by the other three moptops. 

To me, it’s clear that Wings were a much better band than the Beatles. If you just look at the Beatles albums; “Rubber Soul” and “Revolver” are pretty good, there’s bits on “Sgt Peppers” and “The White Album” that are brilliant (but those really are only the tracks that McCartney had a strong hand in) and “Abbey Road” and “Let It Be” would have been much more coherent and made much more sense as solo McCartney albums. (The early Beatles albums can now easily be discounted as mere historical curios that won’t stand the test of time.)

Overall, whenever I find myself listening to any Beatles album, I end up fast forwarding or skipping quickly through tracks written by Lennon or Harrison to get to McCartney’s songs.There’s so much wrong with Lennon and Harrison’s songs that I could go on and on for ages, but here’s just two examples. 

Firstly, imagine what it would be like now if some rich pop star wrote and released a song whinging and moaning about how unfair it is that they have to pay so much tax? And on top of this they coated themselves in some mystic Eastern hippy shtick?  Secondly, and this is just stating the obvious, isn’t there just a tinge of irony about a multi-millionaire making even more money by releasing a song imagining there’s no possessions? 

Lennon was always held up as the true artist within the Beatles, but that’s only due to his association with Yoko Ono. He couldn’t write a tune to save his life, and when faced with a blank canvas in his solo career to come up with something fresh, he banged out a set of tired rock and roll tunes with Phil Spector.

It was McCartney who was not only the real tunesmith, but the sole member of the band who was, (and still is) prepared to try something wilfully uncommercial (see “Carnival of Light” which the release of was nixed by Harrison, and his solo work with Youth as The Fireman). On top of this, is the fact that Lennon, Harrison and Starr all professed themselves just to be lads from Liverpool and kept banging on about the city, years after they all pissed off somewhere else. McCartney is the only one who maintained his links with his birthplace and actually did something of real, lasting value for his hometown.

Listen to any Wings or Paul McCartney solo records in comparison to anything by the Beatles. If it was a choice of one or the other, what would it be? 

This is what "Totally Shuffled-A Year of Listening to Music on A Broken iPod" is all about:



One track per day for 366 days on a broken iPod. 366 tracks out of a possible 9553. 

From the obvious (The Rolling Stones), to the obscure (Karen Cooper Complex). 

From the sublime (The Flaming Lips) to the risible (Muse).  

From field recordings of Haitian Voodoo music to The Monkees. 

From Heavy Metal to Rap by way of 1930’s blues, jazz, classical, punk, and every possible genre of music in between. 

This is what I listened to and wrote about for a whole year, to the point of never wanting to hear any more music again. 

Some songs I listened to I loved, and some I hated. Some artists ended up getting praised to the skies and others received a bit of critical kicking. 

There’s memories of spending too many hours in record shops, prevaricating over the next big thing and surprising myself over tracks that I’d completely forgotten about. 

But with 40 years of listening to music, I realised that I’ll never get sick of it.  

I may have fallen out of love with some of the songs in this book, but I’ll never fall out of love with music.     


   
"Totally Shuffled"





Saturday 30 August 2014

John Peel remembered (Part 2)

As with the previous post, I just feel that this new blog would not be complete without reposting this from the old one; especially as today would have been John Peel's birthday.

I have all of this show on an old cassette somewhere, on a couple of CDs, iPods, the hard drives on two lap tops and backed up onto an external hard drive. You can't be too careful.

This piece is topped and tailed by the sound of John Peel chatting with Laura Cantrell.

Memories.

Happy Memories.  




January 28th

Laura Cantrell –Lee Harvey Was A Friend Of Mine-Live at Peel Acres (8 May 2003)

John Peel:  “...the thing is, I’ve been talking an awful lot and, er, putting in extra records and stuff, and er, so we’re slightly running out of time and I know you’ve got to get somewhere…and all  of the band and so on, erm, so perhaps if you’ll do your last number next, is that o.k.?”

Laura Cantrell: “Sure, we’d love to do that.”

John Peel: “O.k., o.k., so you can go and relax or whatever.”

Laura Cantrell: “That would be great. (Pauses).You know John, we were going to do a song for you that, erm, might connect with your past history a little bit...”

John Peel: “You’ll never walk alone?” 
(Sound of laughter)     

Laura Cantrell: “No, since you’re running out of time I won’t go into it too much, it’s called “Lee Harvey Was a Friend of Mine”.

John Peel: ”O.k. o.k…” (fades)

Song starts.

There’ll be plenty in here, both written and implied, about the massive influence that John Peel has had not only on my musical preferences, but also on football, politics, art-a whole myriad of things. For instance, I don’t really think that I would have ever have gone to Glastonbury if I didn’t know that John Peel loved the place. But a great man deserves a considered and carefully thought-out appreciation. At a suitable point I think I will dedicate a days’ worth of writing on Peel. I need to mull it over in advance though to do it justice.

Today, though I will write about Laura Cantrell and this song (and by default), something more about John Peel. It was recorded at Peel’s house (“Peel Acres”) in 2003, later on in his radio career when trips to London to record the show became problematic because of health reasons; he had been diagnosed later in life with diabetes. 

So this explains the chat before and after the song with Laura Cantrell. It also goes to show Peel’s influence upon me. Without John Peel I would never have heard of Laura Cantrell and certainly would never begun to appreciate country music or early jazz. I wouldn’t have heard Laura Cantrell’s excellent radio show on WFMU org, “Radio Thrift Shop”. She hasn’t hosted her weekly show for a few years, but it’s all archived on their website ready to listen to at will. She is not only a great singer-I love her voice- but an excellent broadcaster as well. Her style is so laid back that it’s worth listening to for that alone. Sometimes, after a song has finished, you  think that the station has gone off air before she starts chatting. 

Like all skilled broadcasters, (John Peel, Alastair Cooke), she has an ability to sound as if she is speaking directly to you and you alone- just chatting really. Her show usually starts with a sequence of about 20-30 minutes of music before she takes to the mic. Like Peel, she has a genuine love of music, and is so enthusiastic about sharing it ,whether it is old 78 country tunes or pre-war jazz. Interspersed with the music is Laura Cantrell chatting about local things as well (weather, traffic, events etc). Who’d have thought that you’d be able to listen to this music broadcast from New York to Liverpool 4 in the comfort of your front room without boxes and boxes of radio ham equipment?               
However, as I mentioned, Laura Cantrell is a great singer as well. Maybe she hasn’t got the most pitch-perfect voice, but her relaxed, conversational style as a D.J. comes across when she picks up a song. Any one of her albums are worth hearing; I couldn’t recommend one over another. 

This track though, is from an early mini album, “The Hello Recordings”, and in this instance she is playing it live. It is, as can be inferred from the title, about Lee Harvey Oswald, and is written from the point-of-view of a fictional 12 year-old from Dallas. This child is full of disbelief, “...he used to take me fishing…they say he shot the President...Lee Harvey was friend of mine.” It is a well -crafted song and like a good short story, is written from an unexpected viewpoint. With her matter-of-fact voice Laura Cantrell carries it off well.

(The link with John Peel is that in 1963 he was working as a D.J. for a local station in Dallas, WRR. On the day of Oswald’s arraignment,and subsequent shooting by Jack Ruby, John Peel worked his way into the hearing on the pretence that he was a reporter for the Liverpool Echo (being English).There is newsreel footage of a very young Peel watching as Oswald was led away, just before Ruby fired the fatal shot. Not only that, but Peel also met JFK on a couple of occasions, a brilliant tale in itself.)             

Song ends.

Applause.

John Peel: “Somewhere in this house is the video that has Harvey Oswald and me in the same frame and…who wrote that song?”

Laura Cantrell: “You know, I’m not actually sure who wrote that song, it was done by a guy called Homer Henderson who was a street musician, from, I think, Texas in the 80’s so..”

John Peel: “Well, o.k. Thanks very much for doing it and thanks very much for coming along and I hope that you do this again, it’s been a treat.”

Laura Cantrell: “John, we’ll be here any time you ask us.”

More applause.

John Peel: “Another great night at Peel Acres.”

Laura Cantrell recorded one more session for John Peel at his Christmas show at Peel Acres on 23rd December 2003.

John Peel died on 25 October 2004 whilst on a working trip in Peru. It's just not the same anymore, but we'll always have those boxes of tapes to listen to and remember and smile.  




Extracted from "Totally Shuffled-A Year of Listening to Music on a Broken iPod" available here as a Kindle book 
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Totally-Shuffled-Listening-Music-Broken-ebook/dp/B00CJYZ3CA
and here in paperback
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Totally-Shuffled-Listening-Broken-iPod-The/dp/149495687X 



"Do you ever have a night when you don't dream about the Fall?" - John Peel remembered

I posted this on my old blog, but as today is what would have been John Peel's 75th birthday, I thought it might be appropriate to put it here as well. I hope it rings some bells.

extracted from "Totally Shuffled-A Year of Listening to Music on a Broken iPod" 




August 13th

“Do you ever have a night when you don’t dream about The Fall?”

(This is clearly not a song or a tune on the iPod, but it is something that is on there and has just shuffled up. It’s shown as “unknown track-unknown artist” and lasts only a couple of seconds. It’s far from being an unknown artist to me-it’s a brief audio snippet of John Peel, and I guess it was him introducing a track from The Fall. I don’t know when it was broadcast or what track it referred to, but for those brief few seconds it’s like being transported back in time).

There are two ways I could use this track. I could either write about The Fall or John Peel. Or both, I suppose. Whilst I am surprised that I’ve got all the way through to mid-August without a Fall track shuffling up, I’m sure that there will be one along before the year is out. Like buses-there’ll be another one in a minute. 

This clip of Peel may be the only time that it shows up, so I think I’ll go with that. I haven’t done an analysis of what I’ve written so far (I’ve not even re-read any of it or done any editing), but I think that John Peel must have been mentioned at least once a week since I started this back in January, so it’s fairly obvious that John Peel was a very significant influence upon my musical tastes.

I can’t remember when exactly I started listening to Peel, although I’m fairly sure that I didn’t regularly tune into his show back in the seventies, when he’d play the whole of a Pink Floyd album in one go. I think that I must have started tuning in about 76/77 during the advent of punk. From then on in every Monday to Thursday, 10 until midnight, was reserved for hearing a whole panoply of music. 

I genuinely believe that without John Peel’s influence I wouldn’t have learned to love all the different sorts of music that I do now. Blues, doo-wop, reggae, soul-even Pink Floyd. I think that I may have still got into The Fall, but I can’t really be sure. 

Listening to John Peel and his clear love of music, beneath his sometimes grumpy exterior, was the best education I ever had. I know this sounds completely over-the-top and something I think he would have snorted derisorily at, but I think my attitudes to so many things, and not only music, would have turned out very differently if I’d never heard his broadcasts. I probably wouldn’t have been as into music as much as I am and wouldn’t have considered approaching it with the same regard that he did. I would have either been not bothered about music (like those people who when you ask them what sort of music do they like they respond with a “oh, all sorts really”- and you know they have a couple of Simply Red albums and a CD by Adele), or overly serious about it all. 

I cannot think of any other presenter apart from John Peel, who just loved music for what it made him feel rather than if it was fashionable or not, and didn’t see that playing records on the radio just as an interruption for “his public” from hearing his wonderful voice. If I hadn’t got into music through his broadcasts, then I wouldn’t have read the books that I have or watched the films I have seen. I wouldn’t have developed the attitude to popular culture that I’ve got. I certainly wouldn’t have ever have gone to Glastonbury in 2010 if I hadn’t  heard John Peel enthusing about it, and therefore by extension not written about it which, in turn, has led to writing this. If Glastonbury was good enough for him, then I knew it would be ok for me.

I wouldn’t have followed Liverpool Football Club in the manner I have. (I really wish he’d still been around for the Champions League Final in 2005). 

I don’t want to end this by sounding too maudlin, but every time I listen to an old recording of one of his shows, I still find it hard to believe that he’s gone. There’s a certain sadness that my children will never have the chance to hear him playing the wrong record at the wrong speed live- but I’ve still got this recording and many others to treasure- and they know that he was a great man. 




Totally Shuffled: