This months playlist is headed up by The Zutons, a band that I am more than a little excited to find are returning after being mostly inactive for the past fifteen years. It just so happened that my record shop took in a rare original vinyl copy of their 2004 debut album these past couple of weeks, ‘Who Killed The Zutons’, which was online for less than a day before someone had snapped it up. Luckily, before the sale and largely because there were a few surface scuff marks on the record, I had to play test it before listing it for sale. It played great and just reminded me what a stonking debut album that was twenty years ago. Hence the inclusion of a classic from that album to get this playlist started.
The new material the band are returning with sounds pretty special too if what I have heard already is anything to go by. I do recall how exciting it was when they first appeared, seemingly another classic band from Liverpool (and this was only a short while after The Coral first surfaced) already developed and producing brilliant music. I knew John Peel at the time and can remember him holding their debut album in his hands saying how fantastic the band were and complaining that record companies such as theirs no longer sent him releases like that for free so he had to go out and buy his own copy. To be fair, he probably wasn’t being sent them because they knew he would be unlikely to play it. The Zutons were a Radio One daytime playlist band from the word go and Peel was always reluctant to play much music that was already getting exposure elsewhere. Still, it is worth noting that he rated The Zutons, especially given his high opinion of other Liverpool greats and of course, he was right.
Within a couple of years The Zutons world changed indelibly when Amy Winehouse covered their ‘Valerie’ making it, almost instantly, one of the most popular and familiar songs of the decade. It is hard to not believe that this must have had a demotivating effect on the band, especially with all the financial security that singer Dave McCabe, by his own recent admission, still enjoys to this day. It could indeed be the reason that, as of today, there are only a frustratingly paltry three Zutons albums to look out for. But, that is about to change, maybe this time they can stick around for the long run…
I seem to have spent the month of January in the most stimulating song exchange with a close friend which has had the knock on effect of keeping me away from listening to anything new. Instead I have been delving back into my extensive lists of archived playlists and music libraries trying to pick out whatever appropriate response song I can lay my hands on. Putting together the monthly playlist today the temptation was to just compile a 75 track summary of the back and forth of tunes we have been sparring with but the majority of them have appeared in previous monthly playlists and so, as my rule is a song only gets included once, I have had to do a speedy late sweep of new music missed in 2024 so far alongside other older tunes that were languishing in the in-tray.
Considering this state of affairs, it is actually quite pleasing to end up with another five hour list that is as fresh sounding and far reaching as this. It helps that some of my enduring, ever dependable favourites are dropping new music in plentiful amounts; names like Sleater-Kinney, The Black Keys, Hurray For The Riff Raff and Nadine Shah are back with superb renewed perspectives and there is even a brand new song by Billy Joel. In tandem with that, my recent obsessions with Cleo Sol and Blossom Dearie show no sign of abating whilst alongside all this I am about to reignite an old alliance with a close vinyl dealing friend and potentially get involved with clearing a house of some three thousand records. Keep an eye on the Fruit Tree Records store on Discogs to see if that all comes to pass. For now, watch out for the return of my Fresh Juice posts for the one thing my end of the month hoovering up of missed tunes has proved is this, there is a lot of exciting new music to be getting excited about as 2024 revs up…
As readers of my accompanying piece for the December playlist are aware, I have no shortage of available archive / vintage music to explore in my daily life and often a new obsession can lead to months of ongoing discovery and musical joy. Many people my age seem to have suspended their listening habits around their teenage years and much beyond their twenties they do not keep up with (not a statement that applies to my close music listening friends I should add). I even know a few serious record collectors who are perfectly happy just sticking to a past genre like Northern Soul or Acid Jazz or Seventies Prog and letting that journey uncover their thrills. I occasionally ponder whether I would be capable of going through a new release dry spell, all too aware that there is now more than enough already recorded music that I am going to love waiting for me to hear.
The problem with that would be that I do not appreciate just one or two styles of music. I would still be riding the genre waves, not anchored to one specific stream. And that being the case, I would invariably come across new present-day music. And as this latest playlist reveals in clarity, I am going to hear music that I will love and need to find out more about. I cannot imagine hearing any of the tracks on this playlist and turning a deaf ear to them because I am not interested in contemporary music. It is unthinkable. That means I would not be alert and alive to the sensational Cleo Sol, that alone is a circumstance that I cannot give any consideration to. Not only that but to deny myself recent music would be to also miss out on the live experience. As much as that remains an outlet rife with its own annoyances (over loud gig chatter, people not in the moment as they pointlessly capture mobile phone footage) in the average year there will be more than enough soul stirring performances to easily outweigh the negatives. Every once in a while, you catch something life changing.
So, I do not see a time when I will ever be indifferent to new music. Every January for a while now I have used the first monthly playlist of the year to round up my top tracks from the previous twelve months that escaped inclusion. And every year I end up pleasantly surprised at how easy the selection process is, I am simply overwhelmed by the sheer volume of contenders to pick from. If there ever comes a year when there are a lack of choices or getting up to seventy-five tracks is like arduous work, then maybe that will be the right moment to step back from the fresh juice. But I do not see that happening. I do not regard my tastes as representing anything remotely mainstream however, if my favourites were so ridiculously niche then there would not be so much of this stuff around. It is good to cast your net wide and it can be rewarding when you uncover something that is outside the popular consciousness. Just as much though, it is vital to have no rules and be ready to be excited by the unexpected. That is why you see an Olivia Rodrigo song in this list, that red alert explosion when you hear something for the first time and shout “bloody hell that’s brilliant” is so important.
Without that penetrative moment, I doubt any of us music obsessives would exist, we would all be satisfied with sticking on a supermarket CD at Christmas and partying annually like it’s 1994 (or whatever your peak younger year might be). For me I could never lock music away in a cupboard like that. It is not a background to other activities; it is not something I only need at parties and neither is it my nostalgia shelf. It is my primary artform, a vessel that lights up my life every single day. It is more important than movies, more accessible than books, more of a life crutch than my favourite football and cricket teams. Simply, it is the only thing that makes me feel happy, sad, blue, ecstatic, nostalgic, thrilled, amused and delighted; that moves me both emotively and physically; that can simultaneously induce tears of sadness and delight; the art form than can bring the past vividly back into the present moment or paint a clearer vision of the future. It is everything and the way it works its powers on the human emotions are mystical, it has a power that is almost magical. It is hard to imagine this ride ever losing momentum while I breathe. Let 2024 commence…
I first came across Blossom Dearie around fifteen years ago thanks to my dealings in the world of second hand vinyl. I had purchased a collection that heavily featured top drawer female vocalists, primarily from the sixties and seventies era. It is possible that I had noticed the name Blossom Dearie before that time, just as it is equally probable that I dismissed her as someone of no particular interest to me, especially if a routine glance at her place within the twentieth century canon identified a middle-of-the-road jazzer in the easy listening realm. My relationship with all forms of jazz has evolved over the past fifteen years to the extent that today I would not turn away without investigation any style the music offers as I am a far more enlightened jazz fan, fully aware of the music’s potential to elevate, surprise and delight. But I digress, back then a name like Blossom Dearie would have sparked my interest no more than a name like Roger Whittaker.
But there was an album by Blossom in that collection from 1970 on the Fontana label called ‘That’s Just The Way I Want To Be’ that I learned, as I priced the collection ready for sale, was worth in the £100+ region. This obviously did catch my attention because, knowing what I do about the reason certain albums from this golden era in recorded music rise to three figures in value, the chances are the music in those grooves was going to be worth a listen. That absolutely proved to be the case, it was immediately clear from the opening title track (which also opens this months playlist) that here was music displaying a folksy, psych-tinged majesty several planes removed from any predictable trad-jazz leanings I may have expected. Yes there are tracks that lean more towards the balladeer grain Dearie was known for, but the whole album flowed with a diversity and inventiveness, not to mention a singular style, all its own. It even ended with a funky little number called ‘I Like London In The Rain’ I later found is hotly sought after as a break beat sample source. As is always the case with rare records whose status is built around the genuine quality of the music, my original copy sold within hours of my listing it online although it did get added to my list of records I needed in my own collection at some future point.
That day has finally arrived this past month when I acquired the newly released Blossom Dearie box set ‘Discover Who I Am – The Fontana Years 1966-1970’ which includes as part of its six discs that same, complete 1970 album. But I have to say, my appreciation of Blossom has, thanks to this incredible set, now hit full bloom and landed as an out-and-out obsession. I love it when this happens, as I listened all the way through the hours of music feeling like it is not my usual kind of thing but becoming acutely aware that something in those recordings was absolutely hitting the spot. Blossom was going through an evolution herself during this period, launching upwards from a polished interpreter of song and a stunning pianist into an expressive artist nurturing a subtle songwriting talent of her own. That voice of hers was an often light, pure and childlike instrument in which she began to untap a unique understated power within her own compositions. However, her gifts for interpretation shine bright here too. For example her version of ‘Trains And Boats And Planes’ is, for my money, the definitive recording. Where the familiar Dionne Warwick hit version has an almost jaunty bounce to the production, Blossom devastatingly unlocks the pain in the song, the longing and the heartache at the departure of a loved one. You can feel the hurt, but gorgeously so, it is nothing short of a master class of performance, nuance and class; qualities that Blossom Dearie had in abundance. I do not believe these will be the last words I write about her.
My relationship with Phil Collins and his music is a contradictory one. His voice and his sound are part of the pop fabric of my earliest music memories, I would have been nine years old when my memory of him gurning in the video of ‘You Can’t Hurry Love’ was sewn and as a fan of The Police at the time, one of my first album purchases was a ‘Secret Policeman’s Other Ball’ record because it featured Sting; Phil was there as well doing a live version of ‘In The Air Tonight’, which I also remember liking. But as the eighties unfolded and Phil became ubiquitous, I did not become a Collins fan as I did other artists and bands I got into in my early teens. By the later end of that decade, I had crossed the barricades to the growing masses of Collins detractors. Something in the way he was impossible to escape, in tandem with my parents rating him highly and the nagging sense around the time of ‘Groovy Kind Of Love’ that he was churning music out on auto-pilot and getting a disproportionate amount of praise for it in the mainstream media (not the music press) established him as scorn worthy by a then music obsessed seventeen year old. That he received press attention in the nineties with accusations of being a tory loving tax exile and sending his ex-wife a fax to notify her of their divorce only served to reinforce my anti-Phil feelings.
Maybe I would never have moved on from this position if not for the fact that in the summer of 1987 I attended, with school friends, my first concert, Peter Gabriel at Earls Court in London. Gabriel is a performer who grabs an audience’s attention with visuals, dynamic energy, and wonderful, often challenging music. Here was an artist I was sure to be a fan of and the subsequent months saw a process of back catalogue digging which returned me to the early seventies and those superb, flowery, and crazy prog rock albums when he was the singer in Genesis. Those albums remain among my favorites to this day and of course who was the Genesis drummer for most of them? None other than old Buster Collins. And rather brilliant behind the drum kit he was too. Not only that but Phil was also an audible presence with his voice long before he took over as lead singer, he is the main backing vocalists and even then, got a couple of leads. So despite my negative position towards the man in general, my whole hearted agreement with Billy Bragg when he said in the music press that if Phil Collins is singing about the homeless (on ‘Another Day In Paradise’) but not engaging with the problem he is to some degree using the situation to his own benefit, I still had to give him the kudos for being an important member of one of my favorite bands. “I love Genesis” I used to say, “but only when Peter Gabriel was the singer, they lost their magic when Phil Collins took over.”
That position has slowly changed over the last couple of decades. For starters I came to appreciate just how important the Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford writing was to the band and how that flare remained after Gabriel’s departure. In fact, for the next ten years Genesis continued to make music with much to dig in and enjoy, it just so happened that by then it sat alongside hit singles. Tracks like ‘Turn It On Again,’ ‘Mama’ and ‘That’s All’ are rock/pop classics of the era for sure, favorites of mine in fact, something which I have taken it all too far in my denial of. My suspicion about Phil was, I believe, not entirely inaccurate. Having recently listened to the audiobook of his ‘Not Dead Yet’ autobiography, it is obvious his problem by the mid-eighties was that he put himself about too much, said ‘yes’ too often and the quality of both his solo and Genesis output did suffer. But the book also suggests this was less his naked capitalist ambition and more a modest humility at his core, a sense that he could not possibly decline the opportunities flying his way because they might never happen again. Producing heroes like Eric Clapton, working with Motown legends on the ‘Buster’ soundtrack, accepting Robert Plant’s offer to “do something together” at Live Aid. Phil got caught in a never-ending cycle of “what an opportunity, how can I not do that?”
It is plausible that if Phil Collins had just gone underground in the mid-eighties, disappeared out of view for a decade or so, by the end of the nineties he would have been hailed as a musical genius. I am inclined to believe him when he says he did not want to be such an ever-present irritant, looking so smug riding the scree on all that success. He made himself an easy target which served to diminish the relevance of all the superb music created up to that point. If only he had held firm against the pressure to be the voice of the ‘Buster’ soundtrack, just nurtured his creative instincts in the background. If only he had refused to do the Atlantic crossing at Live Aid when it became apparent it was just him travelling, not Duran Duran and others as he had been led to believe. Alone it just looked like a massive, literal ego trip. If only he had stepped back from the Led Zeppelin reunion that same day when it was obvious they could not rehearse with him. Instead, they just let Phil take the flack for this massive shit show blot on their reputation. Look at the footage, Jimmy Page was a dribbling, stumbling wreck that day and Phil did his best under impossible circumstances. The way they acted with the MTV interviewer afterwards was embarrassing, no wonder Phil stepped in with a few helpful answers. You see his eternal problem in those moments, say nothing and you are just being a dick like the rest of the band, speak up and people will say you are muscling in on something that has nothing to do with you.
Having finished the book, I felt the urge to try out some solo Phil so went to a first stop essentials collection on Apple Music. I have to say there are some gems in there although equally there is bland stuff that I will probably never get past. But how many artists can I honestly say I unconditionally like all their output? Not many for sure. If you get a chance to read ‘Not Dead Yet’ I would strongly recommend it to music fans, regardless of their overall position on Phil and his music. It is awash with fantastic anecdotes featuring the biggest names of the era; the George Harrison story around the recording of ‘All Things Must Pass’ is a fascinating time capsule to those 1970 sessions with a hilarious punchline years later to boot. The stories about his relationships and marriages are as gloriously honest as they are messy and complicated, whilst the Collins years of atypical rock star excess and flirting with death come in the period you would least expect. Overall, it is hard not to come away from this life story with a warm feeling towards the man, even if I never wholly lose touch with the things that once pushed me away. Nevertheless, against all odds, I am a bit of a Phil Collins fan these days (there I’ve said it!)
I went to a Record Fair this past month with a couple of friends both of whom are approximately twenty years younger than me. Other than the obvious cultural difference of trying to convince them that they are not called “vinyl’s,” it did occur to me that the major change in their visiting a fair as a punter to my record hunting two decades ago is that they are searching for things they have already heard. My mission was almost always based on the desire to find things unavailable for me to listen to, the discovery of exciting fresh sounds both newly released and from previous decades. Tracks that do not get played on the radio, or those that were given a spin once by the more eclectic late-night DJs only to vanish from your life, destined to be added to an expanding list of holy grail finds you are on the look out for. All of that has gone now in an age where pretty much everything is available to listen to, even tracks unavailable on download facilities or streaming services can at least be found and listened to if you plough the internet deep enough. Personally, I do not even have a list anymore, Record Fairs are a place I search for things that I am already familiar with but would like to own a decent quality vinyl pressing of.
Obviously, there are still things I never found back in the twentieth century and now appear so obscure even the internet has not logged thus far, but as time passes and people increasingly upload old video tapes and cassettes to YouTube the more these dark corners of music’s back pages are uncovered. I had this proved to me a few moments ago, as I started this paragraph, I recalled a song Mark Radcliffe played on his late-night Radio One show around 1995-96 called ‘Expecting Joe’ by The McTells. I wrote it down at the time and have kept half an eye out for it for nearly thirty years. Even when Discogs and eBay appeared I would occasionally type it into a search and come up blank. But I have just heard it for the first time since that radio play, it is sitting there on YouTube with a grainy old video clip to add to the time capsule. Turns out it was released on a cassette in 1987 which might explain why my looking for it on vinyl came up short. It does prove that my taste for lo-fi pop and scuzzy garage-rock sounds has been present for a good three decades, it would appear that the McTells were loosely associated with the C86 movement but were a little too rough around the edges to be fully embraced even by that scene.
The sad thing is I do not really feel like I am looking for it anymore, I sort of feel like I found it, but the payoff is not so sweet when there is no physical artefact to show for the conclusion of the hunt. So maybe I am still looking? I dare say if I find a copy of that particular cassette I would buy it, if it was cheap enough as I do not really collect tapes, but the heart and soul of the mission was to hear that music again, which is a desire that has now been satisfied. I do not mean to appear lukewarm about record collecting, those moments when you find a clean original pressing of music that you love, take it home and play it being sure to really listen to those sonic details can be magical. This month’s cover star is Sandy Denny in the late sixties fronting Fairport Convention and I recently enjoyed such an experience listening to their ‘Unhalfbricking’ on an original 1969 Island Records pressing. They really were one of the all-time great Rock-era bands around 1968-1969, a period in which they released a mind blowing three classic albums whilst struggling to overcome the turmoil of a motorway van crash with fatalities. No wonder this combination of their line-up splintered before the seventies for, on top of the tragedy and in addition to the wandering sprit of Richard Thompson’s genius, they also had a singer in Sandy Denny who threw all her raw emotions into her art and music. That is what I love about the above photo, she looks wound up and annoyed which, if true, was sure to have fed into the music Fairport Convention were playing that night. One of their most rousing pot-boilers from 1969 opens this month’s playlist, a selection which represents the range of music, both new and old, I would love to source on vinyl pressings when looking around a Record Fair…
I have been watching the superb football based TV comedy ‘Ted Lasso’ this past week and have been loving it so much that I am already more than half way through all three seasons. As with all the best series, there are certain characters who are so well acted, written and realized that they become larger than life favourites unintentionally evolving to be central to the show. In this case it has been the character of Roy Kent, depicted on this months cover image in football sticker form, a man so obviously based on real life former football now TV pundit Roy Keane. The parallels between the two are hardly subtle, from references to Roy being a former champions league winner, a ruthless competitor and on-field tough guy, right up to his transition into media work and the reputation he forged there as a straight talker with an aggressive dislike of weak excuses and flannel. They even give a nod to the real life Roy’s recent preference for extreme changes in beard length.
The reason so many people love the real Roy Keane, even those who never supported his teams or in rarer instances those with no interest in football, is because someone so straight forward in their assessments and opinions as well as a TV voice with such reliable unflowery honesty is a rare thing. Roy’s head seems completely unturned by so many modern day evolutions, not just in sport but in society too, and his criticism of large chunks of the middle class football crowd, even at his beloved Manchester United, as well as the unwelcome commercial distractions inflicted upon the modern footballer have always made him a loan voice of common sense amid a sea of “best league in the world” hype and propaganda. Despite this, there has always remained the suspicion that underneath that sharp exterior lies a man with a heart of gold who only wants to inspire the best out of the people around him and have those he comments on to aspire to be all they can be. It is that side of the man that the Roy Kent character has cleverly tapped in to. In fact the quote on the badge (above) comes directly from a scene in ‘Ted Lasso’ where Roy kindness bombs a recently divorced character re-entering the dating scene for saying the guy she had begun seeing, who Roy felt an instant distaste for, was “fine”.
Of course in real life social interaction we rarely speak with such candor to anyone other than those we are closest to. I found myself in a social situation this past month, sat in a village hall alongside people I had only recently met and may never, or rarely, see again. We were taking part in a quiz, sat politely at a trestle table drinking the beer and wine everyone had to bring along themselves because the venue did not have a bar. A question about music came into play accompanied by an audio clip of The Beatles ‘Yellow Submarine’. Of course everyone at our table knew who it was and in that lull between questions a lady, who I had probably spoken no more than twelve words to at that stage and carried herself with an air of authority, leant over to her father and said “I always thought the Beatles were very overrated”.
Apparently that is the thing that triggers me nowadays because without missing a beat, ignoring the fact that she was not even speaking directly to me, I gatecrashed the conversation with a firm “that’s bollocks!” Now, I have said in the past that anyone who tries to argue that the Beatles were not any good gets a line put through their name in my head as I subconsciously file them away in a compartment labelled ‘not worth talking to about music’. The ladies response to my little explosion was to solicit her father for support but to his credit he simply said “no The Beatles were great songwriters”. So she turned back to me, asking that I name my five favourite Beatles songs. However, by then the next question of the quiz was being read out and I waved the enquiry away, implying I would come back to it later. On a second attempt to re-engage me I pushed the offer away again, saying we did not need to discuss things further; turns out my in-brain filing system had already been doing its work.
There is probably an inner Roy Keane in all of us, coaxed out of hiding by whatever the individual holds close to their heart. I used to argue with people about music a lot thirty years ago but age mellows you and eventually you accept that no one else sharing your exact same taste is a positive thing, not to mention very normal. But people publicly announcing that the Beatles are overrated? You cannot let that shit go unchallenged. I hope you enjoy this months playlist but clearly, I could not care less if you hate it…
This months front cover image appeared on the front page of The Guardian a couple of days ago. It features a group of Kate Bush fans in Folkestone dancing to ‘Wuthering Heights’, dressed in homage to the artist as she appeared in the 1978 video for the hit single, on the occasion of Kate’s 65th birthday. I love the joy on their faces and the fact that this was such an open, public celebration. The idea that a few passers by might have had an interest in Kate Bush sparked up (“you know her, she did the ‘Stranger Things’ music”) can only be a good thing. Any time I hear music I love forcing its way into a public space or into the mainstream consciousness I feel the universe is moving in the right direction. Equally, I feel we are on a terminable slide into mediocrity when I hear EDM blasting out of a passing car or I am assaulted with auto-tune-hell muzak in a high street shop.
There is something so personal about music that ensures it is a very unusual occurrence for someone to play me something and I instantly offer approval or ‘feel it’ like they do. Friends over the years have noticed me playlisting or listening to an artist only to comment “you said you didn’t like them when I played them to you”. It seems for music to truly speak to me (I accept I am far from being alone in this) I have to find my own way to it, that way it somehow feels like my own. I found this over the past month when staying with a family of folk music aficionados who spent the whole time bombarding me with relentless Paul Brady and Jackson Browne. I have been aware of both over the years without ever getting into them but the unchosen, daily exposure did not work. Far too much brow-furrowed reverence to guitar technique and craft and way too little feeling for me, in fact it made we want to reach for the nearest, trashiest, fuzziest Rock album I could lay my hands on to relieve the tedium… and I am a massive fan of Folk and singer-songwriters!
Maybe the day will come when I find my way to both these hugely respected artists and they will suddenly click with me. I wondered if the problem is me and I am missing something so did some internet research (it obviously is me, both artists seem to command massive critical acclaim and respect) which uncovered the little nugget of information that Paul Brady appeared in the film ‘Charlie Is My Darling’ stood outside a theatre in Ireland in 1965, waiting for a Rolling Stones performance. I had recorded the film off the TV recently but not got around to watching it so gave it a viewing. What a film! The best I have ever seen about the Stones. Originally intended for release in 1966, it actually only surfaced in a restored format just over ten years ago but it is already up there with classic music documentary films like ‘Don’t Look Back’ or ‘Jazz On A Summer’s Day’. The thrill of seeing the Stones in such up-close, unfiltered clarity in their early years; the deranged energy their live performance provokes in the crowd (who kill one performance with a stage invasion); watching an iconic looking Brian Jones plugging in and unleashing such atom-splitting riffs on his electric guitar; Mick and Keith lovingly jamming on some of The Beatles most recent material in an Irish dressing room, it all makes for the most riveting time capsule that I thoroughly recommend checking out.
Anyway back to the top, this months playlist kicks off with some classic Kate Bush and then unfolds with a fair representation of the music that’s excited me over the past four weeks; no Paul Brady, Jackson Browne or even any Rolling Stones for that matter. In fact, if you’re anything like me, if you listen to it at all you probably won’t even like that much of it but rather use something found within as a prompt to head off in your own direction and uncover the music that speaks to you. That is, after all, how all record collecting and music discovery should work. Finding your own taste, not adopting someone else’s, that’s the way forward…
In 1987 I went with three friends to my first gig at Earls Court in London to see Peter Gabriel. I was certainly not dragged along but of the four of us school buddies, I think I was the only one who had not bought Gabriel’s then massive hit album ‘So’ and definitely did not know much about him. His performance that night was a game changer for me though; so impressed was I with the theatrical energy of the performance, the daring trust he showed in his audience falling backwards from the stage into their waiting hands, not to mention the futuristic and yet somehow soulful timbre of his sound and the tantalizing mix of the weird and familiar that waited for me to explore in his back catalogue, that within a year I was very much a Gabriel fan. By then I had his whole solo output in my collection and moved quickly on to all the early seventies albums when he was the lead singer in Genesis. Eventually that exploration opened doors to other Prog Rock bands from the period and pushed me onto a progression into other eras and styles resulting in a lifetime of record collecting and musical discovery.
So, Peter Gabriel holds an important personal place in my musical mind, even though from that moment in 1987 onwards he has hardly been a Neil Young-like artist of prolific output. In fact for the next fifteen years there would be (setting aside the odd soundtrack and collaboration projects) a grand total of two new albums of solo new material followed by another twenty years of nothing much beyond the occasional new track appearing online, an album of old material arranged for a string orchestra and a covers album which, even though it had a unique collaborative subtext, cannot help but suggest that an artist is low on ideas and inspiration. To be honest, I had all but retired Peter Gabriel off as a creative artist in my head after so long in the wilderness so when he began releasing new music this year from a long talked about new album, ‘i/o’, not in the traditional manner, but with a song appearing with every full moon, it seemed like a gimmick too far for me. Drip feeding the songs over the past six months had not really held my interest and part of me suspected that it may be a tactic to fend off mediocre reviews the album might be in danger of receiving.
But then there is the other side of me that has always trusted the artistic judgements of Peter Gabriel and has certainly never felt let down by them. Then there was the news that an arena tour was heading our way this summer coupled with the thought that this may be the last time he undertakes such a large-scale excursion. My curiosity spiked even further when early reports from the tour showed images of grand stage designs and the man himself in a flat cap dressed like a janitor. “Maybe he is returning to costumes as he did in the early Genesis years?” I wondered to myself. Having been put off by the ticket prices I privately began to feel a tinge of regret that I might not see this new show. However, I was unexpectedly the happy recipient of a ticket to the Birmingham show this past month as a generous fathers-day present from my daughter Gabrielle (who I think believes that she is named after Peter Gabriel although that may not be entirely accurate, I guess the name is always in my head somewhere?)
I travelled to Birmingham in expectation of an emotional night. I had deliberately avoided reading online spoilers from earlier attendees of the tour and was prepared for a show revisiting deep corners of the back catalogue, maybe reaching back even further into the cuckoo-cocooned pre-solo years to material every bit as important to me as the post 1977 output that I have never heard the man himself sing live. It turns out this was not a wholly ridiculous notion, since the gig night I have seen a reliable online source claim that band members were asked to learn the Genesis classic ‘Carpet Crawlers’ at the start of rehearsals but it failed to make the cut.
The reason I expected this nostalgia fest, which I could not have been more wrong about incidentally, was down to the fact that ‘i/o’ is still unreleased as a full album, all we have so far are those new moon songs, so surely he would not be playing an arena show and overloading it with material no one knows? Well, that was exactly what we got, in fact in a show lasting approximately two and a half hours just over fifty percent of the time was given to new songs. And I am so glad it was because it magically re-connected me with everything that first plugged me into the ideas and music of Peter Gabriel thirty-six years ago. Admittedly the band were probably the strongest combination of musicians I have ever seen him work with, not only did they crack open the emotional core in the new numbers but tracks like ‘Digging In The Dirt’ rocked harder than ever before. Still, for me it comes back to simply respecting a genuine music originator who forever does things his own way and executes with style and class. He releases finely crafted albums only when ready and he puts on a show with ideas, thought and exacting attention to audio and visual experience. Peter Gabriel is not a heritage artist; he remains a doggedly individualist creative in a league of his own. The new music and shows he is presenting in 2023 will surely sit justifiably alongside the best of the work in his canon. One of those new songs kicks off this month’s playlist too so get digging…
I went to see BC Camplight a couple of nights ago, the artist who kicks off this months playlist is touring his wonderful and rather well received new album ‘The Last Rotation Of Earth’ as a solo performer, the BC Camplight live experience reduced to a charismatic if rather troubled singer, a piano and a box of breakfast cereal on a table. I do not know if this is motivated by stringent financing limitations or a more artistic concern? The latter is surely a significant factor as earlier this year the man known to his fans as Brian attributed the lack of conventional videos accompanying this new material to a desire for listeners to focus solely on the music. That seems a wise move to me for these songs are built with real depth, they are many layered beasts pumping with the raw emotion of a recent relationship break up, the existential anxiety thrown up by the modern world and parceled up into a kneading mass of prowling melodies and cascading chord progressions. These are fantastic songs rising from a dark place that the singer still appears to be on first name terms with and they positively sparkle in this stripped back setting.
If that all sounds a bit bleak and heavy going, then think again for Brian is so comfortable on stage slicing open the veins of his music that he can happily make self-lacerating jokes and even cut in mid song to reprimand himself for slipping into a Jools Holland boogie-woogie-like lick on the keys. He shows expert comic timing too when introducing a song by questioning how some people have suggested it is based on an older song before launching into the opening of Elton John’s ‘Your Song.’ He does play the piano really well actually, using it correctly as a proper lead instrument rather than merely holding down basic chords. It turns out that he has not even brought an instrument out on the road, the pianos are either belonging to the particular venue or leant out from a friend. I even spotted him when I arrived at the pub venue, crossing the road in the same direction as me casually looking like a man heading for a night out downing ales and throwing a few darts. It turns out he has booked himself into a room at another pub over the road and the thought occurs, surely a few more musicians could follow this low-cost touring model? Just busk it a bit, take the pressure off and even put the sense of adventure back into the touring experience? There was talk in the crowd tonight of this latest BC Camplight album being his swansong, I sincerely hope that does not come to pass. This is an artist capable of summoning all of music’s honest, brutal magic with his archly detailed, fleetingly funny, sometimes dreamy and always magnetic songs of rage and hurt.
Fruit Tree Records 