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.