Includes my version of Blue Monday by New Order
September 4, 2010
August 27, 2010
May 12, 2010
May 7, 2010
Stream of my Latest Radio Interview!
Listen to this stream of a 30 minute interview I did last night, 6th May 2010, on the fantastic ‘Crusin Cripples’ Radio Show in the US.
The show I’m on is called Triple Threat and my part is the first 30 minutes.
The station has a short break right at the beginning of the interview directly after I say the word ‘Pyjamas’ but it soon comes back on air SO STICK WITH IT!
I talk at length about my new albums and loads of other stuff over half an hour…let me know what you think!
April 17, 2010
March 19, 2010
IPOD FIVE STAR Shuffle #3 Please Sunrise – Augustus Pablo
I have a five star playlist on my ipod of all my favourite tracks. Every now and then I put that playlist on shuffle and write about the first track that comes up…
This track ‘Please Sunrise is from one of my Top 50 albums of all time, “This is…Augustus Pablo”.
Released in 1973, Augustus Pablo, or Horace Swaby as he was christened, took the melodica, an instrument used in Jamaican schools to teach children music, and used it to teach the world about reggae and dub.
This track and the album that spawned it was produced by Pablo’s childhood friend and critically acclaimed reggae producer Clive Chin. The album boasts an impressive list of session musicians including Ansel Collins on keyboards and Lloyd Parks and Aston Barrett both on bass guitar. The album was one of the first to showcase Pablo’s unique use of the melodica.
From the first ring of the snare and the laidback and haunting unison of upright piano and melodica you are transported to some ancient empty dancehall once you have been there a short while you are lifted into four bars of an almost childlike major key bridge that touches on optimism before sweeping back into a sorrowful but beautiful place again.
It was always a favourite in the days when I used to return home in the early hours from a club. It’s only 2m 40secs long of instrumental dub but it’s a killer track…
April 2, 2009
David Ackles – Criminally underrated
Criminally underrated is probably an overused term but I’m going to use it anyway to describe one of the greatest singer songwriters I have ever heard, David Ackles.
Born in 1937 in Rock Island, Illinois, my first encounter with him was in Crouch End music library in North London, a place I once visited frequently to stock up my itunes. Every time I went there this interesting reddish-brown sleeve with an indistinct figure seen through a broken window, simply titled ‘David Ackles’, looked back at me. I used to leave with jazz and folk but never ‘David Ackles’.
One day I’d rented all the Fairport and Sun-Ra they had, so I finally took a chance on ‘David Ackles’. When I got home and listened to it, it was like I was playing the perfect music – the opening track ‘The Road to Cairo’ with it’s slow swinging rhythm and that late 60s deep clicking bass line sound was so evocative. By the time I got to ‘Blue Ribbons’ and then ‘Down River’ with it’s out-of-tune bar room piano part, I was having a musical epiphany! His voice was so rich and dramatic and at other times understated.
That experience immediately caused me to buy the other 3 albums of the 4 he recorded between 1968 -73, Subway to the Country (1970) American Gothic (1972) and Five and Dime (1973). Of these three American Gothic was probably his most acclaimed, recorded in England and produced by Elton John co-writer Bernie Taupin, it was described as ‘The Sgt. Peppers of Folk’ by The Sunday Times when it was released. It contains tender ballads and social comment delivered with Jacques Brel/Kurt Weill undertones that give a hint of his background in musical theatre.
In all his work he has a unique ability to perfectly represent the lost, the lonely, the disaffected, the disconnected and the broken-hearted, even though he was a happily married, family man for nearly 30 years. When I heard the lyrics ‘I’ve been loved, so I know I’m alive’ from ‘I’ve Been Loved’ the second track on ‘Five and Dime’, the hair stood up on my arms and the tears stung the corner of my eyes, especially as I was watching my own mother descend into Alzheimers seemingly living out her days with no purpose, having lost my Dad.
He is sometimes described as ‘an artist’s artist’ and he can count Elvis Costello and Elton John among his most vociferous supporters also Phil Collins included ‘Down River’ in his Desert Island Discs. I would also cite him as a major influence.
David Ackles succumbed to cancer in 1999 and while we are all just men and women in physical form he is someone I truly wish I had met.
Introduce yourself to his music…
