The strange, unusual or odd people in the music world

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . JANDEK: Stranger in an even stranger land

5 Dec 2022 | 3 min read

In his very interesting 2001 book about cult figures and outsider musicians Songs in the Key of Z, Irwin Chusid had chapters on some figures (Wild Man Fischer, Syd Barrett, Florence Foster Jenkins, Daniel Johnston, Tiny Tim, Harry Partch etc) who have largely been accepted into the grand pantheon of the weird but rather wonderful. And then there were the others like the talentless Shaggs... > Read more

Cave In On You, from Ready for the House

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . HARRY KALAPANA: Aloha from Yugoslavia?

28 Nov 2022 | 4 min read

Of all the many hundreds of musical styles across the planet, only one has managed to embed itself in popular, post-Fifties music which exists along the Western axis of London-New York-America's West Coast: reggae. Yes, there are belated flickers and influences (if not downright copying) of Fela Anikulapo Kuti's Afrobeat and some aspects of Sahara blues and Indian music out there. But... > Read more

Hawaiian Lullaby

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . SPADE COOLEY: Shame on him

15 Oct 2022 | 4 min read

When country singer Spade Cooley went face down after a heart attack in November 1969 there were doubtless a few would have said he deserved to die, and that it should have happened sooner. The were ironies aplenty also: Cooley – born Donnell Clyde Cooley in Oklahoma in 1910 – was attending a benefit concert for sheriff's deputies where he played, having been released on... > Read more

You'll Rue The Day

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . WILD MAN FISCHER: Psycho street singer and shouter

10 Jul 2022 | 2 min read | 2

Given Frank Zappa's proclivity towards oddball performers and different musicians -- Captain Beefheart, the GTOs, the Shaggs -- it's hardly surprising he should be the one who brought Wild Man Fischer into the vocabulary of outsider musicians. And Fischer was very outside. In '68 Zappa recorded a double album of Fischer's singing and rants as An Evening with Wild Man Fischer, the title... > Read more

Monkeys Vs Donkeys

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . VOICE OF BACEPROT: Heavy from the hijab

25 Jun 2022 | 3 min read

Over a long lunch recently – where the best conversations happen – a friend and I were talking about how music informs our very being. In her case it was obvious: she's a musician a long time in the game and someone others look up to as a contemporary. For me it's been the odd bit of tinkling and strum'n' . . . damn! Got that chord wrong. Again! So in truth, I'm just... > Read more

School Revolution

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . MIDORI TAKADA: Through a glass, brightly

8 May 2022 | 2 min read

It's a given these days. The moment you write about a musician who exists in an obscure corner of the mainstream world – or has absolutely no presence there at all – then someone in the internet world will weigh in telling you about their longtime fandom, offer footnotes, advance the better album you should have referenced and so on . . . Well, let's open the discussion on... > Read more

Blue Fox: Midori Tanaka and JPC Percussion Ensemble

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . THE NAMELOSERS: Hair, boots, suits but no hits

2 May 2022 | 1 min read

Actually we probably don't need to talk about The Namelosers, a very short-lived Swedish band who meant nothing outside of Sweden and not even that much there. But their brief story is interesting because it was such a common one in the mid-Sixties. Johnny Andersson and Tommy Hansson met in 1962 in Malmo and talked about getting a band together. They became Tony Lee... > Read more

Land of 1000 Dances

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . DAVID MARKS: The boy who left the beach too soon

24 Jan 2022 | 6 min read | 1

He came out of Erie, Pennsylvania and was of Jewish-Italian heritage. At age five or thereabouts he was enthralled by the mandolin playing of his grandfather Carlo and the singing of those he called Uncle Benny and Uncle Johnny (also on guitar) from the old country. When Benny and Johnny appeared on the Amateur Hour television show in late 1953 the boy was even more impressed. Music... > Read more

Surfin' USA

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . SNOWY WHITE: Enter snowman, exit snowman

27 Dec 2021 | 5 min read | 1

At the fag-end of the Yardbirds' career – after losing guitarist Eric Clapton and founder-member/bassist Paul Samwell-Smith, and as Clapton's replacement Jeff Beck was on the way out the door – an in-demand session guitarist signed on. He'd played on tracks by the Kinks, Who, the Stones, Them, Marianne Faithfull, Petula Clark, Donovan, Shirley Bassey . . . He'd actually... > Read more

Kill (1981 demo), by Thin Lizzy ft Scott Gorham and Snowy White

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . MONICA ZETTERLUND: From smalltown Sweden to the world stage

13 Dec 2021 | 3 min read

From this physical and historical distance, it is easy to consider Monica Zetterlund, who died in 2005 aged 67, as simply “world famous in Sweden”. But there was time when she was infamous in her homeland. It came when she represented Sweden in the 1963 Eurovision Song Contest. Her song En Gang i Stockholm/Once Upon a Time in Stockholm (aka Winter City) scored... > Read more

En gang i Stockholm

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . CARLOS GARDEL: The voice of Argentina

6 Dec 2021 | 1 min read

Just as there is no English-language equivalent of Jacques Brel (suggestions anyone?) or Edith Piaf, so there is no equivalent to Carlos Gardel (1890-1935) who became the voice of Argentinean folk-tango. At a guess we might say Gardel was akin to an implosion Irving Berlin/Lennon-McCartney/Hank Williams with a touch of (unhelpfully) Brel and Piaf. Although the facts of his birth are... > Read more

Mano a mano

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . SANDRA DEE: Teen angel in an adult world

29 Nov 2021 | 3 min read

When bad girl Betty Rizzo, leader of the Pink Ladies in the film Grease, sang Look at Me I'm Sandra Dee she was referencing the famously all-American chaste teenager who'd starred in the surf-culture Gidget movie and a couple of Tammy films. In Come September with Bobby Darin in 1961 – they married almost immediately-- she played Sandy Stevens. In Grease, Olivia Newton-John was an... > Read more

Look At Me, I'm Sandra Dee, by Stockard Channing (Grease, 1978)

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . STRINGBEAN: The killing of a long, lean banjo picker

21 Nov 2021 | 3 min read | 1

If Truman Capote hadn't already written his brilliant “non-fiction novel” In Cold Blood (about the collision of two murderers and their victims in rural Kansas in '59), and he was still sober enough to focus, he might have found a great story in the 1973 murder of country music star Stringbean, David Akerman to his parents. Stringbean was one of those idiosyncratic stars... > Read more

Stringbean and His Banjo

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . MUTT CAREY: Go north, young man

11 Oct 2021 | 3 min read

If only he'd gone north instead of west, things might have been different. But, with his cornet, he left his home in New Orleans some time in 1919 and headed to California to join Kid Ory's band which had already had considerable success. Trombonist/band leader Ory's first choice had been the New Orleans player Louis Armstrong but when the 21-year old Armstrong decided not to go Mutt... > Read more

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . CHANCE: Searching for the chancer

22 Aug 2021 | 3 min read

Like the remarkable Vernon Dalhart who had numerous stage and recording names, the man born Chance Martin also used a lot of pseudonyms. Unfortunately unlike Dalhart (his extraordinary story is told here) who sold records by the shedload, Chance -- as he was known to friends -- barely shifted a copy of his sole album In Search, released in 1981. Chance -- who has been variously Mr Freedom... > Read more

Mr Freedom Man

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . “THE VELVET UNDERGROUND – ETC”: Candy says, yeah but nah . . .

18 Jul 2021 | 3 min read | 1

There are plenty of albums of very dodgy provenance (live and studio bootlegs, outtakes never intended to see the light and so on) but few misrepresent themselves quite as much as this one which, any passing civilian might rightly think was the Velvet Underground. It is. But only tangentially. Most rock people would say VU were Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison and... > Read more

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . LORRAINE CROSBY: To Hell, and back to the bingo halls

6 Jun 2021 | 3 min read

When Simon Cowell kicked Lorraine Crosby off the second round of the UK X Factor competition in 2005 saying she lacked “star quality”, he may well have been right. But she could certainly sing. Well, she could back in '93 when she'd been a key voice on the biggest selling single of that year, and was the voice – but not the face – in the bombastic,... > Read more

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . TWANG!!: The sudden end of an error

12 Mar 2021 | 3 min read

What could possibly go wrong? Here was a Sixties stage musical with music and lyrics by the proven hitmaker Lionel Bart and among the cast were the r'n'b/blues singer Long John Baldry (very popular at the time), Bernard Bresslaw and Barbara Windsor (famous from the Carry On films), and comedian Ronnie Corbett. And who could not love a heretical, knockabout musical comedy which poked... > Read more

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . THE DONAYS: A devil of a story

1 Mar 2021 | 4 min read | 2

On the cover of the 1986 Rhino compilation Beatle Originals; Original Versions of the Songs the Beatles Made Famous there are photos of the usual suspects: Little Richard (with Kansas City/Hey Hey Hey), the Shirelles (Boys), Buck Owens (Act Naturally), Larry Williams (Dizzy Miss Lizzy, Bad Boy, Slow Down), Arthur Alexander (Anna) and so on. Conspicuous by their absence in photographs (and... > Read more

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . JOHN JACOB NILES: Murder, mountain music and a voice from the spheres

22 Feb 2021 | 3 min read

There's a fascinating, if brief, scene in Martin Scorsese's documentary about Bob Dylan, No Direction Home. It is of American folksinger, archivist and writer John Jacob Niles. He looks to be in his 60s as he sings to a small group of people and plays a large Appalachian dulcimer. The filmed scene probably took place in the late Fifties and Bob Dylan certainly knew of Niles' music.... > Read more