Friday, May 31, 2013


amaaaaaaaazing song, love the guitar solo / moog (i think it's moog) solo outro

Gene Clark here, basically the male Stevie Nicks, am I right? (Check the last verse especially )


Flying 
High above the clouds
We lay in the grassy meadow
The earth was like a pillow

For our dreams
 

Trials 
Never entered into
Any conversation
That was the relation

Of our dreams

But as a change in the wind

Must come
Over

The mountain
And the seasons 

Roll under the sun
Passing 

The shadow 
Of our dreams

Ah, ah, fine lady of the north
Like silver

On the ocean shore
Flying breeze

Whispers through the trees

[that's enjambment, right? Got the lyrics from one of those sites but had to put the breaks in the right places]

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Jan Boerman - Alchemie 1961 

 (via continuo's documents)

 

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

London in 1927 from Tim Sparke on Vimeo.


"incredible colour footage of 1920s London shot by an early British pioneer of film named Claude Frisse-Greene, who made a series of travelogues using the colour process his father William - a noted cinematographer - was experimenting with" - via Tim Sparke

Tuesday, May 7, 2013


Re. A.C. Marias -  turns out it was me that made "One of Our Girls Has Gone Missing" Single of the Week in Melody Maker.  February 3rd 1990. And I did the feature too. (Couldn't find that clip). Wonder who did the album? Stubbs, probably, or Oldfield. We used to triple team often, in those days. Or quadruple team. Sometimes the Studs were involved in these multi-pronged campaigns. Divide it up between single, album, interview, lead live review.  Next album, if we were still pushing hard (as with e.g. Young Gods), the roles would switch.

Written and raved about a lot of stuff over the years, and some of it's aged better than others. Some doesn't seem as rave-worthy as it did at the time.  No indeed.

To an extent you worked with what you were supplied at any given time. The state of the scene fluctuates. (And  specifically with Singles columns, sometimes the week it was your turn there was a real scrabble to find anything for the top spot. Other times, I was spoiled for choice. Once I had seven singles of the week).

Doesn't bother me at all, to have been "wrong", to have over-estimated things. I think "hype" is part of the job of the music journalist. Much better to hail excessively and prematurely than to weigh in with judicious, measured, deflationary assessments. Leave that to the newspapers.

But it is interesting, to look back and see what's endured.  Not because I believe in the Test of Time. Assuredly, some music is only meant for its moment. Realistically, judged against the scale of Eternity, the most transient, trivial, local pleasure and the "truly lastingly universally important" are barely distinguishable.  If you'd really contemplate the vastness and indifference of the universe,you'd never be able to use the word "universal" to describe anything human-related. 

Besides, even if Time's test had validity, there's no way you can gauge what's going to make the grade long-term, when you're responding immediately as a real-time week by week journalist.

But it is interesting to look back and see what's faded away versus what proved to be imperishable, in terms of your own life.  Judged purely from the vantage point of your own eyes and ears.

A lot of the time, it is a case of  "what was I thinking?"

 But with  "One of Our Girls" , the song still astonishes and enchants. It does seem like a genuine Lost Classic, a should-have-been ....

Although  what it should have been, I'm not sure. More than what it was. But a hit? Hardly likely. Some kind of rallying point for those opposed to the positivity prattle of the day. Perhaps.


I guess 154-era Wire meets Harold-Budd-at-his-most-bleached, and sung by the ghost of Sinead's dead twin was about as far from what was chartpop in 1989-1990 as you could get... 

Then again Julee Cruise had a Top 20 hit around about this time... 

The lyrics to "One of Our Girls Has Gone Missing":


One of our girls has gone missing
We've heard she's left
So where do we go now?
It feels like theft
Feels like

One of our girls has gone over the wall
Under a wire
She's cut and run
But where is she now?
She's gone

She's lost her colour and faded away
Left an empty house
And moved into thin air

One of our girls has gone missing
Under a cloud
Will she come back
Or is she too proud?
She's gone

One of our girls has gone with the wind
And run away
For more than a minute
For more than a day
She's gone

So one of our birds has flown
Is that so distressing?
She can have her wings
Will she have our blessing?
She's gone

Thursday, May 2, 2013

GL and ACM


interviewed Graham Lewis about this record, in a little cafe in Chinatown as I recall...

considering Dome/Cupol etc and the way Wire is generally deemed to break down into avant and crossover camps, here it's Lewis that's almost out-popping Newman with this tune


another Wire-affiliated thing I done an interview for: A.C. Marias

aka Angela Conway, who might be considered the Stuart Sutcliffe of Wire, sort of, because she was in a prototype group called Overload with Bruce Gilbert and Colin Newman, and she was an art student at Watford



Can't seem to find a YouTube of  "One of Our Girls Has Gone Missing", which one of us had made single of the week in Melody Maker as i recall....



The missing link between 154,  John Le Carre, and... Sally Shapiro?

We had this whole vaguely Baudrillardian or something or other take to do with the idea of non-presence as more powerful and insidious than asserting oneself / standing up / identity- a politics of mystery and abscondment...     which seemed to tally with her own statements and framing of the project, description of the song as "music to disappear to", self-description as "ex-traitor" and utterances like this: "Disappearance can be quite a powerful thing. To not be present can be more powerful than actually being present and proclaiming your identity as 'woman'. That can be quite rigid, which is why people often say they don't want to be categorised, because it can be confining."

Shame the video is blocked (in my country at least) because it was quite beautiful and haunting as I recall (directed by AC herself)

 Here's the other single off that album


A cover of a Canned Heat song, would you believe?

They have another song from the "One of Our Girls" 12 inch EP up there.



This was all 1989, but there had been a much earlier A. C. Marias tune


And this - it's other side.  Released 1980.


And a track on a Touch cassette in 1983

And something in 1986




So a series of spasmodic...  apparitions, shall we say .... occurring at evenly spaced intervals - 80, 83, 86, 89 - through the Eighties.... before she fades away altogether.....

But back at the start, she also did vocals in some of the Dome stuff




Wednesday, May 1, 2013





Lindsay B remixed / reproduced by Cosmic Kids