John Cooper Clarke Snap Crackle & Pop

I had this as a vinyl album in 1980 and wore out the grooves. When I came to live in the US I found it
at the Virgin Megastore that used to be in Times Square.That store was one of the 7 wonders of the world for a music junkie like me. And yes as you can see it was an import CD so I spent about $25 for it.Oh I am so glad those gouging bastard record pimp music management days are history and  I am so glad the business got its rear end rebored by the Limewires and other download pirates.The music is Johnny at his best. Not a dud on it at all.Evidently Chickentown may be familiar to fans of The Sopranos. It was featured in the 6th season when Tony Soprano becomes godfather to Chris' daughter Caitlin.My favorite track is Beasley Street which to me is the bard of Salford's opus and stands alongside Dylan's Desolation Row in my top poetry meets music compilations.With the legendary Joy Division producer Martin Hannett playing bass and Steve Hopkins on keyboards and 10cc alumni Paul Burgess on drums the music is very indicative of the album title. Johnny Clarke has his rock on as he spits and chews his way through some real masterpieces.Another masterpiece of rhythm and rhyme to me is the track 36 hours. It's brilliant.

36 hours in the mystery chair
36 hours in the quizzical glar
Of the naked lights and the visible hardware

Another bloke is leaving in a wheelchair
No joke, here comes the punchline
Lights out... sack time

Steel shoes on the stone cold floor
I hear the screws screaming in the corridor
The bad news and the slammin' of the door
The "what did i do's" and the "what am I here for's"
Shades of doubt fall deeper than the slag mine
Lights out... sack time

Hard cheese and a chest complaint
One man sneezes, another two faint
Sufferin' jesus, this ain't my venue
The man through the mesh says it's time to crash
The creeping flesh of a nervous rash
The last man to make a dash
Is on the menu

Here's the boss with a mouthful of emeralds
A maltese cross and a pocket full of chemicals
Jack frost snappin' at the genitals
Wash my cosh it's a visit from the general
Rule out sub section nine
Lights out... sack time

The killer gorilla with the perspex hat
Says I say so... and that's that
Take out the dog bring back the cat
Scrape out the cafeteria rats
Stab the rabbit feed the swine lights out... sack time

Time flies ... slides down the wall
Part of me dies under my overalls
I close my eyes and a woman calls
From a nightmare
The chronic breath of the dead collides
With a rattle of the waste disposal slides
No flowers for the man who dies
In the bombscare
He's in the frigidaire

Freezing in these paper jeans
Standing stiff in a dead man's dream
Tobacco barons and the closet queen
Walk on the walls... wank in the beans
Shave... shit... a shower and a shoe shine
That's it... sack time
Everybody looks like ernest borgnine
That's it

36 hours on the battery farm
A blindfold and a broken arm
I got the cold shoulder sleepin' in the barn
Whose barn... what barn... their barn
The old soldier and his old-world charm
Lift that weight, drag that woodbine
Lights out mate sackarooni time
Lights out... sack time.

I love it. This is what Donovan should have been when Dylan first toured the UK.

A back-combed heroine-skinny phlegm-spitting  poetry god.

The Langley Schools music Project

I can't make up my mind if it's so bad its good or if its just genius good. I heard that David Bowie loved it.I read that  in a music magazine, MOJO I think and the reviewer gave it it A+. I don't remember deliberately going looking for the CD but it just sort of presented itself to me during a weekend music trawl. I have heard my share and more of school orchestras and choirs.I have felt the pain as the soloist doesn't quite keep the beat or hit the note.So listening to this should be like agony, like deliberately poking knitting needles in your ears  but in a weird way the very amateurism of it makes the Langley School Project  fresh.It's flawed brilliance.Like outsider art its the imperfections and the sub-perfect skill in evidence that makes it both charming and very listenable. The Langley here is in Vancouver and the teacher was Hans Fenger and the year of the recording was 1977.But it wasn't until the year 2000 that a copy of the record showed up in a thrift store and Langley fever took off.Author Neil Gaiman was quoted as saying `I wish every school taught music like this.' David Bowie said that their version of Space Oddity was `a piece of art that I couldn't have conceived of' and said the backing vocals were
`astounding.' Richard Carpenter found the version of `Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Space' in his words `Charming' which was rich coming from a guy who ripped that song off from the band Klaatu who composed it and who when it was released were widely rumored to be The Beatles performing anonymously.Me? I love love love the Langley kids version of `Good Vibrations.' When I listen to it that's exactly what I get.

Jake Thackery

`A bloody funny nun you are'. So went a line in Jake's song `Sister Josephine about a bloke who dressed as a nun to escape the law. a bloody funny man he was who sang it .I remember the next to closing line for its perfect cadence.
`No longer will the cloister toilet seat stand upright.'
Jake popped up on various shows as I was growing up with very clever narrative songs sung to his own guitar. He had a distinctive baritone voice and broad Yorkshire accent which led critics to title him the British Jacques Brel or Georges Bressons and it was true that he had a lot in common with those chansonniers. To me he was a witty funny dry and personable northern version of Noel Coward.
Jake had the wordplay of Coward without Sir Noel's effeminate quality.When Noel sang `Matelot' it sounded slightly sleezy. I couldn't imagine Jake in a dressing gown being all louche. Not at all. And amid all his funny songs were some heartbreakingly lovely ones too. Jake died in 2002.A poet in song.And a bloody funny one at that.

The strange case of Terence Trent D'arby

In 1987 when this album came out I played it and played it so much because it really is a great record.
The man can sing.I had seen him on a British TV show called `The Tube' which was a music show -a cooler version of Top of the Pops because the artists were more edgy and it was hosted by Jools Holland and Bob Geldof's soon to be wife Paula Yates. Paula was a groupie.In fact she met her husband when he and his band The Boomtown Rats performed on the show and she reportedly climbed in the back of the band's truck and performed for him.But before that Terence Trent D'arby appeared on the show singing Sam Cooke's `What a wonderful world.' I was floored by his rendition of the song. It was absolutely brilliant and I immediately went on a manhunt for a record of that song sung by him.Of course this was in the pre-Google days.Pre-Itunes,Pre-anything except schlepping around record shops and asking pimply assistants who were more into Snotbag or The Groping Monkeys or whatever amateur slime and filth band they followed to the muddy fields of British noise festivals.
Apparently I wasn't the only one attracted to Mr D'arby as Paula Yates was obviously getting all squirmy at the sight of him and rumor has it that she gave him a going away present at the end of the show. He was a slight but muscular man,very Prince-like though I wouldn't have made the comparison as the only Prince record I had was Dirty Minds and my brother had declared that the picture on the cover looked like a `Paki in woman's underwear'. I tried overlooking the racist aspect of his comment but it still took the luster away from the treasure somewhat. I believe my brother's attitude was fueled by the fact that he had recently applied for membership of a drinking club in downtown Liverpool,which was the thing you did when you were drunk and wanted to carry on boozing.He's filled out the application form,paid his money and had his photograph taken. A week later his membership card arrived with his name and some Pakistani guys mug shot grinning back.Anyhow,This TTD album was the peak of TTD-ness for me. What happened with this man's career is a mystery.Because what happened was all that talent curdled into a pile of crap.Several piles of crap actually.And this is just one of them.

This was his third album.The second called `Neither Fish nor Flesh' was exactly as titled. It was
neither good nor musical.It was tripe. Symphony or Damn was his last chance with me. CD's at the time cost an outrageous amount.The public was being gouged by the greedy bastards of the music biz who in a few years would be out of a job thanks to digital downloading. I can't say I've shed tears for them.But anyway,I couldn't keep buying ridiculously priced CD's of music this excruciatingly
bad.Now its been some years since I tried listening to it again and I remember that time hadn't improved it in the slightest. And what of Jools Holland, once the piano player in the band Squeeze now hosting his own music show `Later...with Jools Holland'? He got fired from The Tube for saying `fuck' on air.
It was ok for Paula to do just not ok for Jools to say.

Pandora's Box

The year was 1989. The band included E-street legend Roy Bittan on his unmistakeable piano.
The vocalists were  Ellen Foley,Elaine Caswell,Gina Taylor and Deliria Wilde. Vocal arranger was Todd Rundgren. And the mad scientist at the center of this over blown over cranked and over the top crazy experiment was Dr Demento himself,Jim Steinman, the maestro who made MeatLoaf the dish of the decade.After the success of Bat out of Hell Mr Loaf suffered vocal problems and Steinman released an album of his own called Bad for Good which makes the excesses of the Bat record seem subtle.And though  Meat Loaf did go on to cover these songs on his Dead Ringer record it had none of the wagnerian pop that Jim's own version had.
Here with Pandora's box he had an army of Valkyries to take the pomp and circumstance of his
musical vision to ridiculous new heights. It is a brilliant album from the opening of track one,
Original Sin `I've been looking for an original sin,one with a twist and a bit of a spin,and since I've done all the old ones till they've all been done in...' right to the last bombastic piece of sheer aural orgasm in The Future Ain't What It Used To Be `say a prayer for the falling angels,stem the tide of the rising waters,toll a bell for the broken hearted,burn a torch for your sons and daughters...' the arrangements are so rich,the lyrics so unashamed and the music represents the evolution of Spector's wall of sound.The puns are as groan inducing as anything Jim ever wrote (pray lewd?)
This album was and is still one of my most guilty pleasures. It's music that doesn't just wash over you
in little soft waves.It pounds you like a high calorie sonic tsunami.We don't need no stinking Meat Loaf. Everything you need is right here.

In the house of stone and light

I heard the title song from the album on the radio back in 1994 which was many years pre-google so
I had little information to go on about who exactly Martin Page was.I checked out the CD in a record store (yes there used to be dedicated record stores)
To me he sounded a little Peter Gabriel-esque. And then I saw that Phil Collins played drums on some songs and Bernie Taupin co-wrote some of the other tracks. So What was not to like about it. I bought it. I had a music system then that took up some serious real estate with stacked units and a bad boy amplifier. However due to neigbourhood by-laws and my wife's insistence on wanting to hear herself think I could only turn the volume knob -and yes everything had knobs back then - a fraction of a mini-turn.It was more like a a little touch than a turn but even then it belted it out with a rich and deeply satisfying base. My favorite tracks were 1) In the house of stone and light 2)shape the invisible and 3) Put on your red dress. Three fave tracks was good going in the pre-itunes era. Listening to it now nineteen years later  those are still my favorite tracks.When I read the booklet I saw credits for WOMAD which was the Peter Gabriel world music foundation and which explained the Gabriel kind of sound. It was commercial  but had that hessian bag roughness about it that gave it the vibe of Johnny Clegg -the South African artist whose music sounded a little similar in some instances. I never heard Martin Page's follow up album. Either it was a long time coming or under promoted I don't know.
But this his first album still sounds quite good after all these years.