WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . .
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WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . THE DISCO SUCKS MOVEMENT: Divide and . . . conk out
26 Jun 2017 | 6 min read
It’s both easy and hard to explain the rise of the Disco Sucks movement at the end of the Seventies. In some parts of the world the zenith of disco coincided with the emergence of punk, and two more diametrically opposed styles could hardly be imagined. For the most part disco was chic, sleek, well-dressed, celebratory and precision crafted music. Punk was . . . pretty much... > Read more
Love Epidemic, by the Trammps (DJ Reverend P edit)
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . WILLIS ALAN RAMSEY: The love song of two semi-aquatic rodents
14 Apr 2017 | 4 min read | 1
When Dave Marsh and James Bernard published their brick-sized New Book of Rock Lists in the mid Nineties they included categories such as Artists Critics Believe Can Do No Wrong (topped by Arrested Development, the Beatles, James Brown but oddly enough not including Lou Reed) and 25 People Who Quit or Were Fired Before Their Groups Became Famous (Signe Anderson of Jefferson Airplane).... > Read more
Sympathy for a Train, with Jamie Oldaker (2005)
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . GARY WILSON: The retro avant-garde artist at play
10 Apr 2017 | 1 min read
When Beck name-checked Gary Wilson in his '96 song Where It's At, the reference understandably went right past most people: Wilson hadn't recorded an album since '77 and that one, You Think You Really Know Me, had way fewer than 1000 copies pressed on release. Wilson was a cult figure like few others. Equally influenced by lounge music (his father was a jazz bassist and played in lounge... > Read more
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . CARL T SPRAGUE: At home on the range in the Eighteen Seventies
27 Jan 2017 | 5 min read
Some musicians are so close to the source they are almost part of it. The young Rolling Stones -- despite their cultural, emotional and physical distance from American blues – heard that music speak to them and, in their emulation of their heroes like Jimmy Reed, Middy Waters, Howling Wolf, Willie Dixon and others, located themselves as part of the lineage. When they first... > Read more
Utah Carrol
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . ROBERT GRAETTINGER: The ghoul of Third Stream
16 Jan 2017 | 5 min read
When big-band leader Stan Kenton took a left turn from the dancefloor into music for the concert halls in the late Forties he increasingly left much of his audience behind. By aiming more for the head than the feet he was embarking on a path that had already been laid out by George Russell and Dave Brubeck, and Gunther Schuller gave it the name Third Stream Music because it belonged... > Read more
City of Glass, Second Movement
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . THE FALL'S IN A HOLE ALBUM: Almost stopping the Nun taking flight
1 Dec 2016 | 5 min read
Not many records can claim to bring down a successful record company, but the Fall's live album In a Hole (released in December 1983) can claim to have almost done that. In his memoir In Love With These Times, Flying Nun founder Roger Shepherd tells of how a mix of passion, fandom, ignorance of legalities and thoughtless business practice made for hard times when the record came out in... > Read more
No Xmas for John Quays (live, from the original 45, extract only)
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . BYUNGKI HWANG: a Korean master musician at home
17 Oct 2016 | 5 min read | 3
In Seoul, the vibrant capital of South Korea the old and new, the raw and polished, frequently rub together in odd juxtapositions. So a butcher’s shop with pig trotters on the wet floor is perhaps to be expected in the suburban street where the country’s most famous musician lives. Byungki Hwang, at 72 when I visited him in 2008, was still Korea’s leading player of the... > Read more
Byungki Hwang: Sounds of the Night Part 4, from the album Kayagum Masterpieces, 2001
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . THE BEVIS FROND: Scuz me while we kiss this guy
6 Oct 2016 | 6 min read
For a man with his name on almost 30 albums in the past three decades, you'd think the name Nick Saloman would be pretty well known. Okay, the albums all come under his band's name, but even that is hardly familiar to most: the Bevis Frond. England's Saloman (confusingly sometimes spelled Salomon in some overseas media) and his fellow travellers – the Bevis Frond has had a few... > Read more
I Can't Cry from Superseeder
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . ROY BUCHANAN: The Messiah who isn't coming back
29 Aug 2016 | 3 min read | 2
There have been any number of Southern blues, soul and rock'n'roll musicians who have struggled with their pull of their secular and spiritual sides: Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Son House, Al Green . . . and the great guitarist Roy Buchanan. Arkansas-born Buchanan -- who died in an apparent jail-cell suicide in 1988 at age 48, although that has been seriously questioned -- was plagued... > Read more
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . GLOOMY SUNDAY: Death by Hungarian music
15 Aug 2016 | 3 min read
In small, conspiracy-theory pockets of popular culture there is the belief that some songs are poison, in the same way that theatrical types don’t refer openly to Shakespeare's Macbeth but rather say, “the Scottish play”. The fatalistic songs of Robert Johnson – who allegedly made a pact with the Devil down at the crossroads outisde Clarksdale, Mississippi... > Read more
Gloomy Sunday, by Billie Holiday
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . HANK GARLAND: The forgotten star of the six string
25 Jul 2016 | 4 min read
When guitarist Hank Garland's '59 Chev station wagon spun out on a road in Tennessee and hammered into a tree in September 1961 it left him unconscious in hospital for weeks. And although he recovered and lived another 43 years he never went back to work . . . but what a career he'd had since he'd arrived in Nashville as a precociously gifted teenager 13 years before the crash. At... > Read more
Sugar Foot Rag
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . BERT JANSCH: The most reluctant hero
23 May 2016 | 8 min read | 1
Few musicians have recoiled from the glare of fame as assiduously as British guitarist and singer Bert Jansch. This solo artist and founder member of the seminal UK folk group Pentangle – less a band perhaps than a grouping of unlike minds and revolving membership -- was often an indifferent solo performer despite his obvious genius, was frequently drunk on stage (and admitted... > Read more
Needle of Death
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . FLORENCE FOSTER JENKINS: The singer not the song, unfortunately
30 Apr 2016 | 2 min read | 1
If you type in "world's worst singer" into Google and hit enter, the usual spew of teenage drivel comes up: people having a go at Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus, Lady Gaga and so on. This kind of anti-fan rhetoric backed up by impeccable logic ("I hate her") is fun if you are 14 and doing it, but -- conceding there is no objective method of assessing "the worst" --... > Read more
Biassy
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . HAYSEED DIXIE: The wacky world of hillbilly humour
24 Aug 2015 | 6 min read
The remote community of Deer Lick Holler in the Appalachians isn't on the way to anywhere, so there aren't many outside influences. It's where musicologists go to study authentic hillbilly music -- and be fearful of the sound of Duelling Banjos. So it was a significant day when a stranger drove into the valley on a crisp autumn afternoon two or more decades ago -- and promptly crashed into... > Read more
Hayseed Dixie: Strawberry Fields Forever
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . JACO PASTORIUS: High times and low notes
3 Aug 2015 | 3 min read | 2
For a jazz musician, Jaco Pastorius died in pretty creditable rock n’ roll style: drugs, delusions, alcohol and itinerancy. And beaten to a pulp by a nightclub manager who didn’t recognise the persistent drunk battering on his door at 4am as a former genius on electric bass. Pastorius’ remarkable but brief life is inscribed in an almost too convenient arc. He was left for... > Read more
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . WENDY O. WILLIAMS: Baby you can trash my car
13 Jul 2015 | 5 min read
The spirit and essence of rock'n'roll is impossible to define. For some it was encapsulated by Little Richards' visceral scream and shout of “Awoobopaloobop Alopbamboom”. For others it might be more like, “Make a fucking racket, show us your tits and blow up a car”. If you are of the latter persuasion then New York's Plasmatics – fronted by Wendy... > Read more
Dream Lover
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . GEOFF LOVE: Man of international mysteries
8 Jun 2015 | 3 min read | 1
Britain's Geoff Love has no place in the catalogue of the mad, bad, dangerous and disturbed. He was just so utterly normal. And that's why he joins our collection of odd characters in music under this banner We Need to Talk About . . . He was almost abnormally normal, and enormously prolific. Composer, arranger, band leader and producer Love – that's his real name,... > Read more
Somewhere My Love/Lara's Theme from Dr Zhivago
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . TEX WITHERS: Country'n'Western from the East End
6 Apr 2015 | 4 min read | 1
The more you try to find out about Tex Withers, the more confusing it can become. One thing everyone agrees on however is that this country music singer in London – who insisted he had been born in the States – was a very recognisable character: He was a hunchback who stood no higher than 4'6” (137cm) and always wore classic Western attire. In later life he... > Read more
Crazy Arms
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . KORLA PANDIT: The Man from the Mystic East
2 Feb 2015 | 2 min read | 1
The exotic looking Korla Pandit – who died in 1998 aged about 77 – had a fascinating background: He was born in India to a traveling French opera singer and a Brahmin priest and eventually ended up in Los Angeles in the mid Forties after spending time in Europe and Britain. His music was just as interesting as his somewhat mysterious life. He played the organ but... > Read more
Procession of the Grand Moghul
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . DARONDO: The soul man who went AWOL
10 Nov 2014 | 4 min read
To hear William Daron Pullman tell how he got his non-de-disque at the dawn of the Seventies gives an insight into both his smarts, and how he could just as equally be seduced by the money-image thing. Although he'd been a San Franciscan musician since the mid Sixties (when as someone barely out of his teens he was known as Junior), he'd put aside the guitar and revealed himself an astute... > Read more