I sort of gave up on Elton John in second half of the eighties. His music had been around the house during childhood, I had a few of those early albums as well as, by the time I was record buying age, ‘Too Low For Zero’ and ‘Breaking Hearts’ around the time they were released. After that, things went very downhill it seemed, the second half of that decade especially was a lean time and my interest did not pick up at all throughout the nineties. By then I just associated him with middle-of-the-road soundtracks, behind-the-scenes documentaries which rather soured his image with hard-to-relate-to temper tantrums and of course, he represented irrefutable evidence that no amount of money in the world could fix hereditary hair loss.

Now this is not to say that I have suddenly reversed by opinion because I’m older and music that had once seemed bland nowadays resonates. No, far from it, I still cannot stand ‘Circle Of Life.’ The current re-runs of 1993 ‘Top Of The Pops’ have recently featured a syrupy Christmas song with Kiki Dee that I have no recollection of at all. However, in 2001 I did get back on board the Elton John train, the EJ express locomotive that seemingly ran full time was stopping at my station once more. That happened with the ‘Songs From The West Coast’ record, a set on which Elton definitively re-connected with the thing he does best; exemplary piano led singer-songwriter pop with a strong melodious grain. At the time I seem to recall he credited Ryan Adams as the catalyst for plugging himself back in, but wherever the impetus came from a re-engagement was beyond doubt. And the remarkable thing is that, as the 21^st century has unfolded, he has worked hard to retain this groove. For the past twenty years, admittedly at a slower pace than before, Elton John has been making great albums again.

Inevitably, there is truly little evidence of this in a 2022 live setlist. I watched the live broadcast of his final concert at the Los Angeles Dodger Stadium this month, a last play at a venue which helped elevate his stardom in the US when starring there in 1975. You can fully understand of course why artists like Elton and Paul McCartney give their audiences nothing but the classics. That is what they paid for I guess and certainly Elton can fill a two-hour set merely dipping a toe into the vast selection of hits he could pick from. I was impressed by this show in a way you would not expect from such a vintage ensemble. His band, featuring mainly members who have been by his side for decades, were utterly amazing and Elton played shit-hot piano throughout. That was notable, this guy works hard for your entertainment. In fact, the only flat moment, for me as a TV viewer, was the rendition he did with Dua Lipa of the recent PNAU song cut-up mix ‘Cold Heart.’ They sang it together at stage front to what I assume was a backing track emphatically highlighting the wallop the band bring to proceedings, simply by removing them for one song.

It has been his Achilles heel over the years, that never-ending fascination with pop music and the charts. Elton is probably one of the few people left who could actually tell you without looking what the current number one single is. That desire to stay relevant has, perhaps, resulted in some collaborations and associations which pull him away from the thing that makes him so great in the first place. You listen to him talk and it is obvious Elton John is a super-knowledgeable music aficionado with a record collectors drive that us similarly addicted vinyl junkies can easily relate to. John Peel once said on air in the early 2000’s that he felt Elton was someone he could have been great friends with, but his level of fame removed that potential. That Dodger Stadium show did spotlight his star quality with all it’s inherent sense of theatre and taste for the extreme. After the final ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ he was elevated by cherry picker, waving farewell to the crowd before disappearing into darkness as the video screens played film of him wandering off down the yellow brick road to the next, domesticated if his onstage announcements are anything to go by, phase of his life. Are we producing music stars like Elton nowadays? It is hard to think of one simultaneously so extravagant, grand, ridiculous and yet musically so enduringly brilliant and talented. If this is the end, he will leave a space that is ridiculously hard to fill.

I wrote for my October playlist about seeing the Wave Pictures and how they were one of my highlights of the End Of The Road festival. Well, it has been the same this month as they were my favourite gig of October too, catching them on their most recent tour in what seems to be a natural habitat for this three-piece, a pub with a gig room that holds no more than two hundred people. It is that time of year too when I start to compile a shortlist of my records of the year and it is clear their ‘When The Purple Emperor Spreads His Wings’ double album is going to feature in my top titles. They have put out many superb albums over a twenty-year career and this is one of their best yet, it shows no trace of tiredness or auto-pilot traits that befall other bands entering a third decade together.

It is easy to speculate that the reason for this is the Wave Pictures have never really broken through in any major way, beyond being able to sustain their level of playing pub-circuit size venues and counting on a small pocket of loyal followers to show up and buy the records (or unique pottery mugs too on this occasion). They exude a humble effervescence and total lack of bitterness despite the fact that they are one of the greatest examples of how the balance of power in the music, not to mention the divvying out of spoils to those most deserving based on talent, is totally messed up. Long gone are the days when putting out a great song would give you a decent shot at chart appreciation among a top forty selection that honestly reflects the variety in tastes of the nation. Now it seems the only thing that gets you that kind of recognition is marketing; if you choose, as the Wave Pictures do, to let your music do the talking for you, safe in the knowledge that you have both the songs and the performing capacity to back it up, then it would appear you are stuffed.

This is a travesty because essentially what the Wave Pictures do is write spiky, irreverent, dry and observational guitar-pop vignettes on modern life and relationships, very much in the same vein as The Kinks or the Housemartins. Many of the songs on their latest album have killer hooks and insistent riffs worthy of any mainstream with kudos. Just check out the opening track on this month’s playlist and that brilliant sing-along “I don’t trust you anymore” chorus for firm proof of this. There was a moment during the gig I saw this month when their singer Dave Tattersall let a chink of irony at the unjust state of things briefly flicker through the cracks. When announcing an early Wave Pictures number, he jokingly referred to it as narrowly missing becoming a “hit.” He continued, “oh well, at least Ed Sheeran made it through.” That moment alone offered a glimpse into the hidden frustration this band must surely feel occasionally, as well as the parallel universe where all is as it should be, and The Wave Pictures are the household names and Sheeran works the pub circuit. But I guess in this real world we music lovers are the winners, because we get to see one of the UK’s greatest bands in easily accessible venues with affordable ticket prices and brilliant vinyl merchandise to take home and enjoy, pandemics aside, once a year every year.

The Wave Pictures kick off the playlist, which this month takes an early detour into some Beatle Juice before sailing across the usual excursions across the sounds of Psych, Garage, Americana, Folk, Blues, Prog and Jazz… enjoy!

My big musical event in September was going to the End Of The Road festival, my first time there despite for years seeing the line-up and feeling that this was the festival most in alignment with my tastes. So, I went there with the intention of just bathing in four days of music and happily got exactly what I was looking for; I shall be returning. The musical highlights were indeed plentiful including one of my favourite bands, The Wave Pictures, playing an unscheduled, pile-driving Saturday afternoon slot as a late line-up replacement for Emma-Jean Thackray (who I was also looking forward to, hopefully catch her soon). Other high spots included Hurray For The Riff Raff, Kevin Morby, The Pixies and Ural Thomas & The Pain whilst among my most welcome musical discoveries were The Heavy Heavy and Bug Club. Still, as great as the whole experience was, there are one or two memories of a different type that will also endure in my memory and yes, there was the odd disappointment here and there.

Maybe I am naive, but I had not accounted for what a middle-class festival this is. Nothing wrong with that obviously, but I do wish that the music I regard as the better of today’s offerings was not merely the preserve of a certain type in society, it should be there for everyone. Kevin Morby and The Wave Pictures can rock the ordinary working classes just as well as this lot you know? What did I see that brought me to the conclusion of a middle-class clientele? Well, the sense that many in this crowd are holding down jobs in middle management was hard to shake, that they are dressed for a weekend of professional relaxation. Even those that looked a little rougher around the edges were not quite what they seemed; I brushed shoulders with a pair of combat booted, rakish libertine punks who in any other setting you’d cross the road to avoid for fear of them putting a knife to your throat and mugging you, only to catch the sound of their Prince Harry intoned voices discussing the merits of a stall selling artisan coffee.

During an afternoon slot by the singer-songwriter Anais Mitchell, she began to introduce a song from her brilliant folk-opera musical ‘Hadestown’ when a woman excitedly jumped from her seat and pulled the theatre programme out of her bag, waving it in the air and screeching “I know, I’ve seen it, I’ve seen it!” I mean, who brings a theatre programme to a festival anyway? Look this is not a complaint, just an observation, most of the crowd were very friendly and likeable. During the Thursday night headline slot from Khruangbin the mainly instrumental band did struggle to hold the attention of many in the area I stood in. One chilled observer summarized, “they’re playing the kind of music that would have been on in the background at one of those seventies dinner parties where everyone had sex with everyone else’s partner.” This was kind of well observed and accurate I thought

Among the other acts who did not quite meet my expectations was Kurt Vile, who I did think was going to be to my liking thanks to the past inclusion of one or two of his songs in my playlists. But I don’t know, the mid-paced slacker grunge groove he solely occupies just bored me really, it was like Neil Young & Crazy Horse without any great songs and lacking in energy. The Sunday night headliner was disappointing too but for a wholly different reason. Bright Eyes main man Conor Oberst was halfway through his first elongated between song announcement when a crowd member turned to their friend and asked, “is he drunk”? Well, he was not merely drunk, he was totally shit faced. I have not seen someone so inebriated on stage since I saw John Martyn in the 1990s. Conor rambled on like that drunk person in the corner of a pub that everyone warns you to avoid making eye contact with. He slurred words, struggled to pronounce things like “privilege,” fell over a cable, fluffed intros, was cut from his monologues by sound crew cutting in with intro tapes and essentially held all our attentions because there was a sense that he might not make it to the end. To be fair, the band did carry it well and Oberst himself did manage to sing well enough, but then later the thought occurred “is he actually alright or is this a sign of some deeper problem?” Some post festival searching has shown that this worrying behavior has actually been evident for a while now, the guy clearly needs an intervention. I hope it happens, there are far too many of the better talents in the music world taken from us too soon (see my September playlist entry for tragic evidence of that).

Anyway, End Of The Road, I look forward to returning in 2023.

Sadly, the music world seems to have people passing away all too frequently nowadays, something to do with the age range of that golden sixties generation I suppose, that generation whose music shaped everything that has evolved ever since and therefore, for the most part, has remained timeless. But then there are also, all too often, reports of someone from a younger generation falling too soon and that, for obvious reasons, feels like a whole other kind of tragedy. A life cut short, the thoughts of what might have been. And then there are deaths like that this week, of Jaimie Branch, who has left us at the horribly young age of thirty-nine to causes as yet unreported. A death like this is a strange one, I can only liken it to, as far as its similarity in shock and sense of immense loss, to the that of Elliott Smith. That feeling in the moment you learn of their passing of, oh shit, we’ve really lost someone quite special there, a genuine one-off. The music world is going to be a lesser place without this person in it from now on.

That is how I instantly felt when I learned of the death of Jaimie Branch this week. Even though I had not taken a deep dive into learning about her personal history, the music she had released had left a serious impression on me, especially the two ‘Fly Or Die’ albums released under her own name in 2017 and 2019. These were albums that had firmly grabbed my attention, Free Jazz albums that were not only innovative and explorative but accessible too, ram-packed with hooks that were exciting and stimulating to the ears and the head. And Jaimie’s personality seemed to smash through the complexities within the grooves, she seemed like an in-your-face left leaning activist who understood the shades and contradictions of the human condition and that sometimes, even those who thought of themselves as the good guys could be “assholes and clowns” who needed some love.

I’ve been listening to her a lot this week, trying to uncover the collaborations she worked on as well as the headline slots. Not entirely successfully either, apparently, she played on some Spoon tracks but, thus far, I have been unable to find out which ones. But my-oh-my, she was so good, she had such a good ear for melody and, maybe without my even being aware of it, had entered that space in my musical consciousness whereby if she’d been playing in my part of the country, I’d have gone to see her; if she’d been playing at a festival I was at, I’d have gone to see her; whenever a new release was announced, I’d have been on to it immediately. But I hadn’t even heard of her until 2019 and so, in my head at least, I was just on the first step of the ladder in terms of my musical relationship with Jaimie Branch. And now she has gone and the feeling of loss is tangible but, if I can find one thing to hold on to, it is by reading the numerous online tributes this week and realizing that there were many, many others who heard the magic in her music too but still, you know, whatever; gone way too soon.

There’s a trio of Jaimie Branch tracks kicking off the September playlist:

I’ve been away, exploring the Scottish Highlands for a couple of weeks. Presented with a chance to escape the relentless dry, England summer 2022 heat you would assume, surrounded by vast natural beauty, gently rolling waters drifting out ahead of me framed by dramatic, hillside scenery that the last thing on my mind is checking out any local towns I can come across and seeing if I can uncover some vinyl gems for the collection. Well obviously you would be wrong about that, the prospect of a town off the beaten track having a charity shop that has just taken stock of a rare Jazz collection from a recently cleared house or some cases of weird and wonderful 60s / 70s folk recently offloaded by some grandchildren with no interest in their recently deceased relative listened to. Sadly, it can still be the case that people assume the things us vinyl hunters are after are Queen albums and they wrongly assume records they do not recognize are of little or no interest to anyone.

If you do not look you will not find, but please be aware that the days where something exciting is discovered have to be offset against the many occasions when all you will flick through are Jim Reeves and Ken Dodd albums. Nowadays there are regrettably fewer charity shops that bother stocking records and it is those aforementioned musical criminals who are a big part of that decline, them and the likes of James Last, Engelbert Humperdinck, Andy Williams or the landfill fodder of Top Of The Pops LPs and horrible budget Readers Digest compilations. You see what happens is that these collections have been dumped on charity shops in massive quantities over the years, often by record dealers who know they cannot shift them even at giveaway prices, only for them to sit taking up space on the shop shelves. Nobody buys them and eventually the management decide that they will not stock vinyl anymore because nobody buys it.

So, what I am trying to write is that, despite my best efforts, I did not find any real vinyl treasure on this particular excursion. I did find records that I am pleased to welcome back into the collection though, ones that for various reasons have disappeared or were only ever purchased on CD the first-time round. Little audio delights at the affordable end of the second-hand marketplace by names like Paul Simon, Tanita Tikaram and Elvis Costello. The rarest thing I found was a great little late sixties album by Harry Nilsson, one which features his classic cover of Fred Neil’s ‘Everybody’s Talking’; it’s lyric about “going where the weather suits my clothes” encapsulating my trip away perfectly. I have always been more of a jumpers and beanie man rather than a summer clothes wearer; I am well and truly back in the shorts now though!

Even though there is not much indication of it in my July playlist, where the only McCartney track is ‘Soily’ from ‘One Hand Clapping’ found on the Archive Series edition of Wings ‘Venus And Mars,’ Paul McCartney has been in my head again this summer. Set aside the playlist selection, all that shows is that my listening explorations have finally arrived at his Wings period, after years of paying it little or no attention believing it to be his weakest period. Still, the past twelve months have definitively re-positioned Macca in my estimation, he really is the genius that his status implies so why all the previous media derision? Well, that is mostly due to the fact that he has survived, rather than offer the musical historians a neat ark of decline or fading from view, or even an ending, he has just continued for decades writing superior, melodic pop music. And he does it without trend chasing or grasping for coolness by dampening down is natural, never-ending exuberance; he just raises those thumbs, points into the camera lense with a look of mock surprise and then plays Paul McCartney songs that rock, roll, and seduce. What else would we want him to do?

It is kind of ridiculous that I am even writing this, after all The Beatles are my favorite band and Paul is, more or less, the only member of that band still active in 2022. He also happens to be one half of the legendary songwriting partnership at the center of their success, why would listening to him even be open to question? Maybe I should get back to when I first got into the Beatles myself in the late 1980s. It was John Lennon who drew me in and to a teenager, he did have the most obvious, cutting edge, rebellious appeal. McCartney at the time had acquired a bit of a reputation for putting out schmaltzy, very middle-of-the-road solo albums and with those terminally jolly public appearances, he still somehow came over as the strait-laced, do gooder for Lennon apologists to react against. No doubt I was conveniently ignoring the fact that I unconditionally loved everything the Beatles put out and Paul McCartney is a massive part of that. In fact, dig a little deeper and by the time of ‘Abbey Road,’ it is Paul who is leading the charge, Lennon had fallen behind relying on occasional flashes of brilliance to keep his contributions afloat. This was brilliantly illustrated in last years ‘Get Back’ movie in a scene where Paul gently leans on John for more new songs; all John can do is bat it away with a vague promise that when the pressure is on, he can produce the goods. In so many ways, that film re-positioned Paul McCartney’s mis-aligned place in the story back into proper, representative order.

Still though, through the 1990s my music collection consisted of everything the Beatles released, the entire John Lennon solo output, almost the entire George Harrison solo output (truly patchy after 1974) and maybe a couple of McCartney albums. I have spent the past two decades catching up however, maybe finally accepting that Wings were more than the still hard to love ‘Mull Of Kintyre’ and the punch in an Alan Partridge joke (“Wings were very much the band the Beatles could have been”) is my last step to enlightenment? I certainly enjoyed watching his headline Glastonbury set a whole lot more than I was expecting to. Again though, it was the residue of the McCartney machine that perhaps tarnished it for me last time around in 2004. At that time, I knew one of the media presenters working at Glastonbury and they confided in me their disgust that Paul’s team had spent two days in preparation on television camera angles and just 28 minutes on sound. My reaction to that broadcast in 2004 was lukewarm, I felt it was too much of a big production job rather than a live, televised concert performance direct from a field. I did not feel that this time, even though I suspect the logistics were probably similarly under tight control, I just enjoyed the privilege of getting to watch our greatest living songwriter (Bob Dylan aside arguably) playing material from his whole six-decade career. Then he brought Dave Grohl on for his first live appearance since the death of Taylor Hawkins, then Bruce Springsteen joined in, then later Paul, thanks to vocal isolation wizardry from Peter Jackson, got to sing ‘I’ve Got A Feeling’ with John Lennon once again; by that point, the emotion of it all tipped me over the edge.

This month’s playlist does feature a splattering of artists I enjoyed watching through the excellent television coverage of Glastonbury, in among the other selections. There is nothing wrong with a home festival weekend, something I have grown to quite enjoy over the years. Especially now that you have some control over the performances and stages you tune in to; gone are the days of cursing the BBC for repeatedly switching to Basement Jaxx whilst David Bowie is playing a spectacular headline set on the main stage. It is easy to forget there was once resistance to the presence of TV cameras pointing at a festival stage. I saw the Wonder Stuff headline at the Feile Festival in Ireland in 1992, during which Miles Hunt took exception to the cameras showing his band on the large video screens and got them turned off; one of numerous decisions that probably ensured his bands descent back into the indie rock margins. A decade later Mike Scott of the Waterboys sent the cameras packing from a headline set at the Cambridge Folk Festival, offering by way of explanation “I thought we were here for a gig, not a video shoot.” My first Glastonbury was actually the first year, 1994, when the festival was broadcast on TV. Saturday nights headliner, Elvis Costello & The Attractions, did not appear on Channel Four though, filming not allowed on the basis that Elvis would not “play for armchair hippies.” It should be noted that this was one of many opinions Elvis would later dial back on, his non-headline Glastonbury sets years later allowed full coverage on the BBC. Elvis Costello of course (great songwriter incidentally, also appears in the playlist) is the polar opposite to Paul McCartney in his media appearances, where he often offers forthright opinions seemingly intent on starting a fight. Could it be McCartney suffered for just being too damn agreeable? More like he was too damn good for the critics to manage, as Elvis Costello once observed, music critics are nothing more than failed musicians. Enjoy the playlist…