Fortuitously #9

 

Richie Havens’ recording of ‘I Can’t Make It Anymore’ is, I believe, one of the wonders of this mad old world. It is possible some know the song as a rare single or some from Richie’s 1966 LP Mixed Bag. Some may have heard it on Paul Weller’s recent Ace compilation That Sweet Sweet Music which, to me, makes perfect sense as the song has got a similar feel to ‘My Ever Changing Moods’. I have to confess that while I admire Richie’s frantic strumming and the rhythmic intensity of some of his most famous recordings, it’s the ballads I really rate, like 'I Can't Make It', like ‘San Francisco Bay Blues’ on that debut LP and ‘Sandy’ too which perfectly complements the later Wolfhounds song of the same name.

Fortuitously #8

 

Some days I consider ‘Shake Some Action’ by the Flamin’ Groovies to be one of the great works of art in pop culture. The trouble I would have in proving this to anyone is that whenever I play the song it never matches the one I hear in my head. I am not sure that makes sense. Nevertheless, personal quirks aside, it is an exceptional creation. And I kind of agree with Bill Drummond that Sire’s Seymour Stein should never have allowed them back in a studio. It would have been one hell of a way to go and would have preserved some sanctity. But life is rarely that simple.

Fortuitously #7

 

Even now, when things on my latest list of the good things in life suddenly seem to connect together naturally, it is such a glorious feeling. Plus, there’s the added bonus of a sense of having joined the dots without any help. Perhaps, to counter this, one should sometimes question why it took so long to do so, but then life’s not perfect. Far from it sometimes. With this particular adventure the link turned out to be the Efficient Space label of Melbourne whose activities tied together a series of inspirational sounds.

Fortuitously #6

 

I like old-school flyers. I especially like the ones you hold onto for whatever reason. I have one here. It’s for a film, a work in progress, called Soul Searchin’, a documentary by Jesus Cruz and Alex Vigano. The flyer shows someone holding a copy of an old 45 on Emulate Records of Oakland, California. The single is ‘These Are The Things’ by The Emulations. I had to look it up. I had to listen to it carefully. It’s not that old Pale Fountains song, no, but rather it is a sublime slice of sweet soul from the very early 1970s which I like to think Michael Head might have been tempted to cover if he’d heard it back in the day. Anyway, I am glad this flyer turned up again out of nowhere as it is a lovely reminder of a very special day.

Fortuitously #5

 

On any list of the good things in life, those things we hold dear and which help ward off the darkness and evil that threatens to take over the world, I would have to include torch songs and film noirs, which if you think about it too closely seems a little illogical given the subject matter of these, but, oh, you know. And somehow one mentally brackets torch songs and film noirs, but should that really be the case? Well, while you are considering that, I will tell you about Film Noir, a 1989 record by the great jazz ballad singer Audrey Morris which, for me, is just about perfect.

Fortuitously #4

 

John Sebastian has been very much on my mind. And the way things work the more I have found myself thinking about and listening to John Sebastian the more I have come across his presence. So, for example, I recently stumbled upon footage from the Summer of 1984 of John onstage in New Jersey with REM performing ‘Do You Believe In Magic?’, complete with autoharp. The smiles on Michael Stipe and Mike Mills’ faces you just would not be able to wipe off, no matter how hard you tried. This was so astonishingly wonderful that I got into quite a frenzy, which was a bit daft as I was meant to be sitting quietly before heading round to the local GP surgery to have a blood pressure check-up. Needless to say, the reading was not good, and the nurse suggested I was feeling anxious. Ha! I was tempted to explain, but how the hell do you tell a stranger about …?

Fortuitously #3

 

I am no expert on the work of Lucy Sante, but one of my favourite pieces of music-related writing comes in her Maybe The People Would Be The Times essay collection, which I chanced upon. The piece I love is the first in a short story sequence which has at its heart musical fact and appreciation, with special loving focus on The Paragons’ ‘Florence’. I would never claim to be a die-hard doo wop aficionado, but I suspect there are few among us who have not succumbed to something in that musical sphere, and ‘Florence’ is for me as good as it gets. And the writing by Lucy on this occasion is exquisite.

Fortuitously #2

 

I still bumble blindly around on YouTube sporadically, and occasionally take an unexpected turning and strike gold, such as when I discovered a collections of clips of The Feelies performing live at the Peanut Gallery, a bar in their home town of Haledon, New Jersey, on May Day 1983, which sort of blew my mind as it was everything that I had dared hope The Feelies live might be. I wasn’t even aware The Feelies were active in 1983. And yet there they are, immortalised on film, in grainy black and white, performing a special commemorative Crazy Rhythms set which is amazing in so many ways.

Fortuitously #1

 

There’s a lovely line in Chronicles where Bob talks about a three-minute ballad that “made you stand straight up and stay right where you were. It’s like someone had pulled the cord to stop the train.” He wasn’t talking about ‘From the Cradle to the Blues’ by Margaret Lewis, but he could have been. Simultaneously sophisticated and raw, with Margaret’s phrasing a complete joy, if you can say that about a song that has such a bruised, brooding air about it: “It's a long, lonely road to travel and lose.”

‘From the Cradle to the Blues’ first appeared as the flipside of ‘Goin’ to St. Louie’ (“to get lost in a crowd, can't stand this silence, it's too doggone loud”), a 1959 single on the RAM label of Shreveport, Louisiana, run by Mira Smith who appears backing Margaret as Grace Tennessee, playing her electric blues guitar accompaniment for this rockabilly torch song. It is among many numbers composed by Mira with Margaret, something I first heard on a 1995 Ace CD Lonesome Bluebird, and with my limited knowledge of Margaret’s career I assumed it couldn’t be beaten. I was wrong.