For some reason over the last week, I've been playing a lot of Jazz records. Thing is, even writing 'Jazz' down let alone saying it, makes me feel a little embarrassed. Too many memories of pretentious students with Charlie Parker posters on their walls, or having to listen to musicians noodle out and bore the tits off me.

Anyways, this is great and as good as anything Can were doing around the same time, which is high praise indeed.


Discovered this one via Jim O'Rourke's seminal 'Eureka' LP. Menacing, sexy and unsettling. So pretty ace really

This one is almost too beautiful

The Frog Chorus

We all know by now that this ridiculous notion of McCartney being the solid melodicist and Lennon the wide-eyed innovator is a load of guff. But not many people know that Macca basically invented rave back in 1980 (ok, he didn't but i'm debunking myths here). Check this video for a blast of PM electro and if you so wish go to the download link to grab a Macca Balearic 12"



http://www.mediafire.com/?gh7iz2hszuoshvz

The new me

I'm going to post more regularly and less verbosely. This is amazing.

Boredom

I'm sorry, i got a bit bored of writing right now.

Please come and LISTEN instead

Magic Alex Dj's on Soundcloud

Promise, i'll write again soon.

It Was A Very Good Year

So, firstly apologies for a meagre return of blogs this year. The simple fact is, i've been too bloody busy getting on with 'real life' to be bothering you all with heavy tuneage. However, I'm now going to make up for it with a bumper xmas blog (a bit like the NME Xmas special double bumper issue... i used to look forward to so much in the 80's/90's)

I figured it might be a nice idea to poll the members of tired old rock neverhasbeen's Magic Alex to see what records they enjoyed this year. It'd be too much to ask, i think, for them all to produce a coherent, stick to records that were released in 2010 only, list, but instead i widened the remit out slightly to allow for 'Tracks or Albums that were enjoyed this year'. The results went a little something like this.

Greg 

I so seldom seem to listen to albums at the moment that I'll go for 10 of the key tunes I've been listening to over the last year.....

Cudderisback - kid cudi / vampire weekend [ottoman remix]
Excuses - Morning Benders
Moves - New Pornographers
let my shoes lead me forward - Jenny Wilson
Tightrope - Jannelle Monae

The house she lived in - The Veils
True no 9 blues - Golden Silvers
I want the world to stop - Belle and Sebastian
Shameless - Groove Armada
la vie moderne - Logo

*Greg wanted to include 5 Nik Kershaw tracks but when told he wasn't allowed, sulked for a bit and then decided to include none as a matter of principle.

Simon

Tame Impala album "InnerSpeaker"

Grace Jones track "Williams Blood"
Robert Forster "Let your light in, babe"
The Monkees "Circle sky"
David Hasslehoff "Jump in my car"


*Simon used to hate The Smiths and Morrissey perhaps more than any other artist ever, however, now after marrying the no1 Smiths fan in the world, names Morrissey's 'Ringleader of the Tormentors' in his top 15 albums of all time. Love eh?

John Mac 

The soft pack eponymous
Farmer Dave Scher - Flash Forward To The Good Times,
The Feelies - Crazy Rhythms*
Rose Elinor Dougall - Without Why
Gregory Issacs - extra classic.

*note to readers - The Feelies, 'Crazy Rhythms' has been in John Mac's top records of the year for the last twenty years...he's nothing if not consistent.


John Simm

Midlake, "The courage of others"

Steve Mason, "Boys outside"



The Rolling Stones, "Exile on main St" (remastered)


Deerhunter, "Halycon Digest"
Gorrilaz, "Plastic beach"

Robert Plant, "Band of joy"

The Acorn, "No Ghost"






Gil Scott Heron, "I'm new here"

Grinderman , "Grinderman 2"





Teenage fanclub, "Shadows"

Philip Glass, "Glass box"

"Not much to say about most of them really, just that they're all (in my opinion) excellent in a myriad of wonderful and mysterious ways. For what it's worth I listened, i think, to "The courage of Other's" more than anything, closely followed by Steve Mason's "Boys outside".

The best of all though is, of course "Exile..." remastered. Given the same magical clean-up as the Beatles had last year, somehow they have improved on perfection...  it feels like a film has been lifted off a lens and it's akin to hearing it for the first time. You can hear EVERTHING in all it's considerable glory.Also the bonus disc is full of tremendous outtakes and songs from the same session that didn't make the album. Every one really is a winner.It's the Rolling Stones' finest hour and as such it's easily the best thing i've heard this year.

athanky'verymuch."

* When i first played Surfa Rosa by The Pixies to John, he remarked to me that it 'sounded like a Burnley pub band' - I have now been taking the piss out of him about this for 22 years. NB John is a big Pixies fan.

Dean

(In no particular order..)

Twin Shadow - Forget

Janelle Monae - The ArchAndroid (Suites II and III)

Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - Before Today



Deerhunter - Halcyon Digest

Tame Impala - Innerspeaker

Sleigh Bells -  Treats


I Am Kloot - Sky At Night



Rose Elinor Dougall - Without Why

Caribou - Swim




Working For A Nuclear Free City - Jojo Burger Tempest


So that's it, looking at it objectively I'd have to say that Simon has the best list of tunes to check out, just nicking it due to his inclusion of the 'Hoff'. Feel free to leave comments slagging us all of for our choices and please leave your lists too if you like.

See you all next year

Magic Alex
x

rockin pneumonia and the boogie woogie flu

As i trudged down Bourbon Street in the stifling 95 degree heat, past the shop windows with the miniature Louis Armstrong figurines and the bars blasting out some kind of modernised Dixieland, my heart began to sink.

If anything New Orleans was starting to resemble nothing more than the town i grew up in back in the UK, Blackpool. The same tacky insistence on reminding us of 'What a party town we were in!" the same tired shop facades that had clearly seen better days and the same misguided attempt to make a cash cow out of a name.

When in 1995 me and my then girlfriend had booked a trip round the USA and were deciding where to go, New Orleans was at the top of the list of potential destinations, but ultimately it was the most disappointing. We were there for just over a week, but my abiding memories is fat tourists with 'I love New Orleans' T-shirts a huge swamp rat who lived in the fire place of our guest room (he used to come out at night when the light was off and make loud digesting noises) and a couple of Pool hustlers who i (stupidly) beat at pool and who according to a local we made friends with had spent the rest of the night looking for me with a gun. I started to kind of hate Jazz music.

But over the last few years I've been thinking more and more about New Orleans and how, unfortunately, I'd been completely unaware of an awe-inspiring strain of soul and funk that these days continuously blasts out of my speakers come most weekends. A bunch of musicians, singers and arrangers (including Allen Toussaint. The Meters, Eddie Bo, Betty Harris, Lee Dorsey and Irma Thomas) whose names are unfamiliar to most, but who, to soul and funk aficionados, represent some of the most enduring names in the genre.

Now I could fill another 20 paragraphs writing about how James Black’s drumming fills my soul like few other musicians, or how nobody makes me dance AND smile like Lee Dorsey does. I could also write about how this music actually does have connections with the old Dixie Land scene (A main feature of Jazz in New Orleans were the Jazz Funeral Marching bands. Solemn Brass bands accompanying a coffin would, on burial, be joined by a second line of drummers and dancers, which would turn the event into a celebration of the spirit cutting free from earth. This is where New Orleans Soul & Funk takes it origins). But I wont. Music this beautiful and true should be listened to, danced to, drank to.

I will mention that if you want to dip your toe into this fertile scene, the Soul Jazz compilations are an excellent place to start, also there’s a fantastic blog called Funky16Corners which has led me to some amazing discoveries from this (and many other) soul & funk scene(s).

Now for some tunes:

Lee Dorsey - Give It Up


Eddie Bo - Hook N Sling (Part 1)



The Meters - Just Kissed My Baby 

Roger and the Gypsies - Pass the Hatchet (pts 1&2)

Betty Harris - Break In The Road



Aaron Neville - Hercules

  
Inell Young - The Next Ball Game


see ya!

Owed t'Alex

"I like the blues..... but I like aqua marine just as much."


I got myself an addiction.

For the last month, i've played pretty much nothing but Captain Beefheart.

A cursory look at my last.fm page will confirm this. 359 plays in the last three months - and they're just the ones that have been 'scrobbled' (further investigation will uncover that I've played Del Shannon even more, but the truth of it is that i accidentally left Spotify playing his tracks over night after a little too much whiskey).

Now dont get me wrong, i bought Trout Mask Replica in my late teens and played it through maybe 3 times before deciding that it was a little too obtuse even for me. But what's happened i guess over the years is that listening to artists influenced by Beefheart has softened me up to him. The snake-y, yet jagged non-sequitur guitar motifs of  the likes of Fire Engines, Pere Ubu and That Petrol Emotion that entranced me with their originalities were actually direct copies of the great man. See below:



However it wasn't 'Trout Mask Replica' that opened the door for me, but rather a relatively obscure album he made with the Magic Band (mk 1) in the mid 70's called Clear Spot.



Sorry to be all musicianly and everything but the production and the playing on this record are simply in another world, everything is dry and in your face, there's no escape from any of it and that's before the Captain smears his personality over the whole thing. The bit of information that blew my mind (especially as somebody who was only a poxy vocalist who wrote just words and melodies) was that Captain Beefheart composed every single note of these architectures of sound (" I play the drums - I play the guitar - I play the piano. I want it exactly the way I want it - exactly. Any composer, I would think, would want it that way and I don’t deviate at all. Don’t you think that somebody like Stravinsky, for instance, don’t you think that it would annoy him if somebody bent a note the wrong way? Or used a purple bow on a violin, when you want a red bow, or a green bow").



This sort of control over songcraft (apparently he taught the band via piano, sometimes it took him days to convey a guitar line for a section of one song) whilst not only being rare led to some highly combustible scenes between him and the Magic Band. Leading to them leaving in the mid 70's and eventually being replaced by another shit hot ensemble.

The song that is on constant repeat at the moment for me is Tropical Hot Dog Night, where Beefheart (seemingly) has a bit of fun with his encroaching middle-age whilst simultaneously reacting to accusations of him dumbing down his avant-garde leanings for a more accessible sound. Some lines sound so much better when sang by the great man, but ("Tropical Hot Dog Night / I'm playing this song for all the girls to come and meet the monster tonight/ How would you like to be the lucky one to be the monster tonight? / Everything that is wrong at the same time is right / You get to be with me")



Right, I'm off to listen to more Beefheart. I might be some time...



For those with Spotify check this playlist out:
beefheart