Jeff Simmons: Naked Angels OST

So I picked this LP up a couple of weeks ago from Borderline in Brighton. It's the score to some old Roger Corman biker flick from 1969. Jeff Simmons played bass with Zappa's Mothers Of Invention at some point. Whatever. The album, it probably won't surprise you to learn, largely consists of heavily fuzzed funk-rock, in the contemporary style. Sorta sits somewhere between Dennis Coffey and Dave Allen & The Arrows. It's pretty good. Actually its really good in places. It just isn't gonna change your life. I'm a sucker for this sorta thing and happy to get suckered outta some bucks for it, but I guess you might not be. 'Naked Angels Theme' is the standout track, a full-on buzz-saw attack with a killer break. If you wanna invest in a really great biker movie soundtrack album, I'd recommend you go with Les Baxter's 1970 'Hells Belles' OST, which I already wrote about here. So I guess if you already read the 'Hells Belles' post, you didn't really need to waste your time reading this review of a less impressive album. I mean, that's two minutes of your life you're never getting back. Look, I'm sorry. If I were you, I wouldn't buy either album. You've already spent a buncha time reading about them - now you're gonna spend money on 'em and sit listening to them as well? Fergeddaboudit. Treat yourself to a nice meal or something instead. Go for a walk. Anything. Just don't sit around reading about pretty good but totally inessential biker movie soundtracks. This whole thing is my fault, really.

El Michels Affair: 'Enter The 37th Chamber'

It goes without saying that hip-hop is fundamentally a postmodern experiment. It is engaged in a dialogue with all pop music which has preceded it. Hip-hop is not just pop music - it is a commentary on pop music. It exists within it, but also beyond it, outside of it. For hip-hop, the vinyl record represents not the end of the creative process, but the beginning. Hip-hop's relationship with musical history is hands-on. Hip-hop re-arranges and re-contextualizes the past. It manipulates, cuts and pastes. It deconstructs. Hip-hop is irreverent, does not recognise does accepted 'high' & 'low' categorisations of musical forms - any and every record, from every imaginable genre, is approached as a legitimate source of sampleable material. It is the end of history, and everything is up for grabs.

So dig this. New York funk outfit El Michels Affair have produced an LP which consists almost exclusively of instrumental cover versions of Wu Tang Clan tracks, tracks which themselves consist almost exclusively of samples lifted from old funk & soul LPs...and it is produced to sound largely like authentic 70s soul. Postmodern enough for ya? Theoretically this could mean that the Affair's version of 'C.R.E.A.M' (an album highlight) just sounds exactly like an instrumental version of The Charmel's majestic Stax/Volt single 'As Long As I've Got You', from which the main 'C.R.E.A.M' loop is lifted. Infact, the Affair have wisely chosen to use the specific samples lifted for the Wu Tang tracks covered here more as jumping-off points for their own experiments and jams...therefore the Affair's 'C.R.E.A.M' sounds neither exactly like the Wu's original version, or the song it samples, but references both.

More important than any of this high-brow nonsense is that 'Enter The 37th Chamber' is a super-funky LP in its own right (perfect late-night listening) and could be enjoyed by any funk fan, regardless of how much or how little interest they have in the Wu Tang - in some respects, maybe a lack of interest in the 'concept' would benefit the listener. The concept is so mind-bogglingly genius that it's quite hard for a nerd like me to judge the album objectively...the idea of a cookin' funk combo doing wild, live versions of old Wu Tang joints is so ace that the album itself inevitably struggles to live up to it's own hype. The Affair have produced what is undoubtedly a fine 'cinematic soul' (their phrase) LP, peppered with some excellent moments ('Shimmy Shimmy Ya', featuring a children's choir, is guaranteed floor-filling club madness)...but personally I've found myself too caught up in the IDEA to enjoy it on its own terms. This probably says more about me than it does about the album....which, like I say, it really pretty great...but maybe not as great as the IDEA promised it could be....you can see how I'm having trouble with this.

Look: this album's really cool, it's a cool idea, and if you're home with your feet up and a bottle of cheap red, you'll be well into it. Shoulda covered '4th Chamber' though.

Attic Records, York: A Righteous Venture In Straight Up Old Schoolness Powered By Mammoth Titanium Balls

I've been totally hyped about this place opening ever since the York grapvine started buzzing 'bout it a couple of months back. This is Attic Records, a brand new vinyl emporium operating out of a third floor bedroom above a Barbers in the Ancient Cathedral City Of York. And it's just as cool as it sounds. You gotta hand it to the cats (a couple of local faces called Gaz & Foxy) who run the place - opening up a record store in the Current Economic Climate takes mammoth titanium balls. But somehow you can actually see the store really working, surviving and thriving, 'cos Attic Records has got something about it which is undeniable and un-buyable - it's got a great vibe.

The Attic ain't just a place for record junkies to score a pile of the black stuff. Attic Records is simply an exceptionally hip place to hang out. A place to rap with good folks about good music, and generally make the scene. Y'know - like a Real Record Store. Attic Records is an exercise in straight-up record store old schoolness. The suits told ya this sorta place just couldn't make it no more, not with everybody hooked on free downloads and cheap-fix mp3s. But everybody knows that this analysis is baloney - there'll always be a market for funky downhome vinyl shacks, just as long as the stock is right, the price is right, and the vibe is right. People still like going to quirky, interesting little places where they can Buy Records. With LPs displayed on the mantle piece of a cast iron victorian fireplace and the walls plastered with posters, Attic Records is literally like somebody opened a record store in their bedroom. How great is that?

Most record stores have the stench of death about 'em these days. Attic Records feels fresh, psyched, and ready to Take Care of Business. But they can't make it on their own. A righteous venture like this like this needs support. Your support. Yeah: YOU! Luckily supporting a place like this don't take no effort at all - all you gotta do is go in, shoot the breeze with the guys behind the counter, pick a couple of records, and buy the damn things. Then you can feel good about yourself all day 'cos you've contributed to A Totally Positive Thing, and have landed some new tunes to boot. I'm tellin' you, dude, I laid down some greenbacks for a pile of rekkids in there at the weekend and I feel great. Dig what I dug outta the crates!

So I was pretty knocked-out to find a top-drawer copy of Alice Cooper's 'Billion Dollar Babies'. I'm on a massive Alice Cooper kick at the moment. 2009 has been the year of my personal Glam revival. Mr Cooper was pulling his freaky guy-liner shtick back in late 60s Detroit, and his early stuff is a whole lotta wacked-out oddball Zaapa-fied wonkiness. It's OK, but when he got pop, he got better. Billion Dollar Babies is Cooper's number one all-time pop-shlock horror-show multi-million sellin' stadium slaying gatefold-sleeve concept monster, the tunes are sweet and the riffs are rockin...it's The Best Non-Stop 70s Death-Jams And Doom Rock Album In The World...Ever! S'all pantomime, of course, buy whadda performance.

Maybe even better still is the mondo-bizzaro super-heavy Glam-Psycheness of Wizzard's 'Wizzard Brew'. The whole album is like this dark, acid-fried glitter nitemare, cosmic-weirdness of a genuinely unsettling and creepy kind. Anybody expecting 'I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday' is gonna be mighty freaked by the pure hallucinogenic dirge offered here. Roy Wood made some kick-ass records in his time, from his garage-fuzz experiments with The Move to the shiny orch-pop classicism of ELO. But 'Wizzard Brew' is some whole other thang. Check out LP centre-piece 'Meet Me At The Jailhouse.' 13 minutes of buzzing, squarking, megaton-funky prog rock heaviosity. With a ridiculous backwards sax interlude. Bonkers stuff. Attic Records has my eternal gratitude for stocking this cult masterpiece of distorted scuzzadelia.

And to round out my purchases, I picked up a copy of Kylie's first LP - a definitive SAW pop album no home should be without, a nice Nutbush City Limits-era Ike & Tina collection, the deathless 'Return Of The Mack' by Mark Morrison on 12", and some budget Miracles best of. (I didn't even get a chance to look at the 45s.) Like I say - I'm just doing my bit to support a righteous venture. I invite y'all to do the same.

Check the Attic Records facebook, here.

SLAM Magazine: The NBA's Greatest 50 Players

Ever since I was a kid I've had a distant, but on-going, sorta fascination with basketball. The only sports team I've ever followed in any regular way was the long-forgotten Doncaster Panthers, who played out of the Doncaster Dome in the mid '90s before disbanding in 1996 due to financial difficulties. I have hazy recollections of watching the Harlem Globetrotters on TV in my formative years, I guess on variety shows or Blue Peter or whatever, and being utterly entranced by them. These guys could fly. And they looked Bad. Ass. I even owned a 3/4 size Harlem Globetrotters basketball. And like many my age, me & my friends spent endless hours playing NBA Jam on the Megadrive - "He's on fire!" "The nail in the coffin!" "Puts up a brick!" - perfecting skills with our thumbs that in real-life looked positively super-human.

When the 1992 Barcelona Olympics came around, I had the opportunity to dig on The Dream Team...to watch the sport played at it's absolute best, by the best international team ever assembled. The Dream Team were simply off-the-hook. Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Charles Barkley, Patrick Ewing...Coach Chuck Daly described being with the Dream Team as like "travelling with a rock band, like Elvis & The Beatles put together." It's often said that watching great basketball is like watching a great jazz concert - the improvisation, the opportunity for individual flair and moments of off-the-wall genius, the back-and-forth dialogue between the players - and sure 'nuff, watching the Dream Team play was as mesmerising as a night at Newport with Miles Davis' first Quintet.

Anyway, in the spirit of educating myself further in the ways of shooting hoops, I bought my first ever copy of SLAM magazine yesterday, which features a perfect So You Want To Get Into Basketball-type feature listing the NBA's 'Top 50 Players'. The guy pictured above left here is Julius Erving, aka Dr J, who ranks 15th. He was a spectacular slam-dunk artist, maybe the finest ever seen. He was ruthless, used the ball like deadly weapon. He defined basketball in the '70s, and ushered in the modern 'above-the-rim' era of the game. He was a stone-killer on the court, and a gentleman off it. He had a cool afro. He's my new hero.

Taxi, Season 2: The Golden Age Of US TV Comedy

So I was watching the 1978 second season of Taxi this weekend with my folks. This is real Golden Age of US Comedy stuff. The quality of the cast is just mind-boggling. If this is your bag, watching Judd Hirsch, Andy Kaufman, Christopher Lloyd & Danny DeVito riff off one another in Taxi is no less than the equivalent of watching the Rat Pack swaggering on stage at the Sands or CSN&Y harmonising at Woodstock.* By all accounts relations amongst the Taxi cast were not always easy, which is hardly surprising given the highly volatile mixture of clashing creative egos on set. Kaufman alone was about as erratic and unmanageable as they come, and it's amazing he survived within the button-down constraints of Sit-Com land for as long as he did. The 'Taxi' of this era is simply magical, peerless popular art. Treat yourself to a copy of Season 2, here.

*I'm not kidding about this era being a spectacular time for US comedy. While the '78 season of Taxi aired, the Saturday Night Live cast counted Bill Murray, Dan Ackroyd and John Belushi amongst it's number, Steve Martin was at the very height of his success, and Richard Pryor recorded his magnificant 'Live In Concert' concert film. In-sane.

Club Preview: Fuzz @ Dusk 07/08/09

So how's this for some shameless self-promotion, huh? Yessir. I'll be DJ-ing at a bar in York this Friday, from around 9 'til 2am, and I'm gonna be joined on the Wheels Of Moulded Plastic by Jack Jewers, bass-player with exceptionally hip local garage-rock combo The Federals. I'll be spinning tons of old breakbeat-heavy psyche rock, funk & old-skool hip-hop. Jewers will almost certainly be playing tons of Dee-troit garage rock and dirty ol' RnB. It'll be a double-live gonzo, intensity-in-ten-cities, live at Budakon type of affair. Please join us to drink, dance, and make requests that Recent Studies have shown to have at best a 23% chance of being granted.

Re-issue this! Frank Sinatra: Watertown (1970)

One time when I was working at HMV Oxford Circus some dude from Ace Records came in and pop-quizzed the staff about what out-of-print albums we would like to see re-issued. For what it's worth, I said 'Two Headed Freap', an OK-ish 70s jazz-funk album by Ronnie Foster I musta dug at the time but now seems like an utterly senseless choice. If that dude from Ace Records pop-quizzed me now, there's only one album I could possibly choose: Frank Sinatra's 'Watertown'.

I've been re-visiting 'Watertown' recently. About a year ago I wrote a a very long piece about this album for Mof Gimmer's Electric Roulette, a site which at it's best has more interesting and original things to say about pop music than most. For those who haven't got half an hour to read that article, 'Watertown' was a 1970 soft-rock / easy listening concept album, produced in the contemporary Carpenters / Glen Campbell style. The story, performed with almost method-actorly empathy by Frank Sinatra, traces the heartbreaking story of a small-town father struggling to cope with the breakdown of his marriage. 'Watertown' is not just my favourite Sinatra LP - and that's a tough call, dude-, but one of my Top Ten All Time LPs, period.

Lyrically, 'Watertown' is delightfully detailed, painting a rich portrait of life in the town and the man's life there, out-stripping almost any 'rock musical'-type concept LP of the era in terms of narrative structure and sheer quality of writing. Musically, it is as 'rock' as Sinatra ever got, with a palette of sounds including fuzz bass, RnB-lite drums, flute, electric guitar, vibraphone, scene-setting sound effects and ghostly children's choirs. The late 60s / early 70s pop music scene is littered with attempts by record companies to psychedelicise an established artist's sound in order to cash-in on the hippie dollar, sometimes with valuable musical returns, more often without - but this is not 'Electric Frank'. 'Watertown' is a serious, considered, heartfelt work, by an artist fully enagaged with the project.

I'm given to whims and obsessions, and those cultural artefacts which become totemic for me have done something special to stick around. 'Watertown' hasn't unlodged itself from my mental firmament since it crash landed there a year ago, and I don't expect it to shift any time soon. I credit the album with curing me of vertigo, which I was inexplicably struck down with last September. This post is simply another excuse to heartily recommend an album which doesn't get 10% of the recognition it should. 'Watertown' sold poorly at the time (despite Sinatra himself being very proud of the album), and remains a real cult concern. Logic dictates that one day somebody is gonna do a huge 'Watertown: Special Edition' double-disc re-issue, a la Dennis Wilson's 'Pacific Ocean Blue', and despite myself I'm probably gonna feel a little conflicted about it reaching a wider audience. At the moment I sorta feel like it's mine, and that's cool, but ultimately I guess I would really like to see it get the props it deserves. Once you visit 'Watertown', you never really leave. If you get a chance to hear this remarkable album, I guarantee you'll never want to.

Moon - 'Clangers-esque'

Caught Moon at the cinema the other night. You can find a buncha reviews elsewhere if you really wanna read up on it. I just thought it was an exceptionally cool film, with a hugely impressive one-man-show performance by Sam Rockwell, and enjoyed the spectacular moon-buggy / lunar landscape 'exterior shots' 'cos they look sorta Clangers-esque, which comes as something of a relief after having billions of dollars worth of CGI rammed down your throat by the likes of Transformers et al. Moon is about ideas, not explosions, and there are moments that I can see becoming cultishly iconic - if 'Spaced' was still being made, you can bet your ass there woulda been a Moon pastiche in the next series.

I've seen a few reviews that have criticised how heavily Moon leans on that 70s cycle of working-stiff-in-space movies; Silent Runnings, Soylent Green, Dark Star etc. I guess this is a preference, but I'm not sure whether 'derivative' is a valid criticism in itself. 'Bad copy of' is a fair criticism, but 'copy of' maybe isn't. Moon wears its influences (most obviously 2001) on it's sleeve, deliberately references them in parts, and makes a convincing stab at placing itself as a worthy successor to those movies. So I don't really see what the problem is - it's not like multiplexes are over-flowing with quiet, thoughtful sci-fi, and I'm just glad somebody has had the good taste to rip off some cool old films rather than a current Cartoon Network franchise.

And that's the way it was: Walter Cronkite, 1916-2009

Few words have been as undermined and devalued by the relentless, hyperbolic, exaggerated mis-use of language which characterises so much rolling news as the word 'legend'. Walter Cronkite was a newsman known for his precise, honest and measured use of the English language. And few media figures deserve the correctly applied epitaph 'legend' as he.

Anchorman for the CBS Nightly News between 1962 and 1981, Cronkite's voice was the authoritative, humanitarian voice of every major news story in America during some of the nation's most troubled and uncertain times. He is admired not only for having been a reassuring voice, but for being an honest voice, a straight-shooter, from the Ed Murrow-era old school of TV news - he was known simply as 'the most honest man in America'. When he felt the American people deserved to know that he no longer considered Vietnam to be winnable war, he told them so, and President Johnson famously responded that 'if I've lost Cronkite, I've lost middle America'. Johnson did not seek re-election for a second term.

Having watched Network recently and noted how the movie must surely endure as a constant touchstone for Jon Stewart and the Daily Show team, obituary assessments of Cronkite's reputation confirm once again how powerful the image of 'the honest anchorman' remains in US mainstream media - largely because there appears to be so few of them left. American TV News now wallows in a weird dichotomy - shockingly blatant partisanship in endemic, while a lack of plainly spoken, honest journalism is cowardly explained away as the consequence of fearing repercussions from the regulators for exhibiting 'bias'...as if 'the truth' can be biased.

NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams confirmed during a (hugely entertaining) interview with Jon Stewart on The Daily Show this week that he knew Cronkite was unhappy with slipping journalistic standards on TV, and that he thought 24 hour news had created a situation where being first was more important than being right. The reality is that the 24 hour news cycle is here to stay, and consequently Cronkite's passing is particularly sad because in 2009 we need honest TV newsmen like Cronkite, newsmen who value basic integrity and independence of the press over 'access' at any cost, more than ever. One hopes that he was not the last of his kind.

The Empire Strikes Back: The Adventures Of Luke Skywalker (LP)

It's become such a cliche to say that 'Empire' is your favourite Star Wars movie that you almost feel obliged to express a preference for 'The Phantom Menace' just to break with orthodoxy...but goddammit, even I'm not that perverse. In all honesty it's a close call for me between 'Empire' and 'A New Hope', but that moment when the AT-ATs first lumber into view over the horizen of Hoth (seen initially through the grainy, shaky viewfinder of the rebel recon guy's electro-binoculars, just one robo-elephantine foot filling the whole screen, until the image zooms-out to take in the terrifying size of the thing...only to reveal there's actually three of the bastards!) and the subsequent arctic wasteland battle just about tips it in Empire's favour. And that's before we get to Boba Fett.

Anyways, I picked this LP up from a record stall on York market this weekend. I just liked the cover art, am a sucker for pretty much anything Star Wars related, and thought it'd be sweet to spin when I DJ. It's actually better than I hoped, 'cos in addition to John William's score it features full narration by some cat called Malachi Throne (including the introductory crawl - "It was a dark time for the rebellion...") and lots of dialogue from the movie. All-in-all, perfect DJ-nerd type stuff, I picked it up for a fiver and you can probably do the same if you hunt around. May the crate-digging force be with you.

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In Other Star Wars Record Collecting News, I've finally (after years of searching) landed myself a copy of 'Battle Of The Planets' by Fader Gladiator, which many folks will recognise as 'That Cool Hip-Hoppy Star Wars Instrumental From 'Spaced''. I found this video featuring the track on something called 'Youtube'.

The Plastiscines

Coming hot on the heels of Vivian Girls and Poppy & The Jezabels, The Plastiscines are the latest group to be inducted into my arbitrary and pointless cycle of Quite Liking And Supporting In Theory, But Not Investing Financially In, A Bunch Of Girls Who Make Potentially Very Commercial, But In All Likelihood Doomed To Second Division Status, Indie Pop Music. They're four boho-ish young women from France, and were part of that whole Parisian Libertines-scene from a couple of years back. Their first album was a raggle-taggle collection retro-ish guitar pop in the post-Libs syle, and had some nice moments. Their new song, Barcelona, is like three parts Girls Aloud to one part Go-Gos to two parts Blondie, and actually as good as that sounds. Apparently this is the lead single from a new LP which has been recorded in LA by some dude who has worked with Katy Perry, Pink & Avril Lavinge, which explains why it sounds so magnificantly POP. So thankyou for your all your embarrassingly desperate efforts Mr & Mrs Ting-Tings, but your time is up. The Plasticines will take it from here.

The Plastiscines myspace