My all-time favourite fighter

If you do download the copy of the old fanzine The Same Sky in the library on your left you will see it ends with a photo of Phil Ochs and almost starts with a line from Sean Penn's sleevenotes to the then recently issued LP of Phil's lost recordings. It was a big thing discovering Phil's music and his story at that time. I remember fondly someone reading The Same Sky and sending me a copy of a Phil Ochs biography from the States. That sort of gesture meant a lot. Being young back then I don't think I realised the full sadness of Phil's later work. I do now. So perhaps that's why I find this clip so moving ...

Sweet Serendipity

One of the Your Heart Out research projects is Anywhere Else But Here Today ... and fittingly the phrase The Same Sky crops up in a song by one of the featured artists Vladimir Vysotsky, called He Did Not Return. I kept thinking I recognised the name Vysotsky from somewhere. Then the other day I found a secondhand copy of Nik Cohn's The Heart of the World and there it was. And here's the song ...


Everything is like it used to be:
the same sky, blue again.
The same forest, the same air, and the same water;
just that he didn't come back from the battle.

The Same Sky

Watching ancient videos of the Happy Mondays recently reminded me how jawdroppingly brilliant they could be. I'm talking here about 1986 into 1987. I was lucky enough to see them a handful of times then. Firstly at the Rock Garden, just after Freaky Dancin' came out, then Jeff Barrett put them on at Bay 63. On both occasions there were probably less than a dozen people in the audience but everyone knew there was something special. Then I think Jeff put them on Portlands, and I remember Bobby Gillespie being there. Then the Mondays played with the Jasmine Minks when Jeff set up home at the Black Horse in Camden. That was the night some kid got up and did a rap during Little Matchstick Owen, and then when 24 Hour Party People came out the Mondays got to headline at the Black Horse and Shaun was handing out cans of lager to the people at the front. I didn't even drink but took one all the same. It's called courtesy. At the time I wrote rather enthusiastically about the group in a fanzine I called The Same Sky. So in a spirit of sharing (with big thanks to Daniel) here is the whole thing, or you can find it in the library on your left. Very much of its time (early 1987), but at least it had Julie Christie on the cover ...

"Write your heart out ..."

A very personal tribute to J.D. Salinger can be read at the home of Caught By The River ...

Rewrite the script

As Beryl Marsden sang: "The language of music is known around the world ..." So here to celebrate that is a special edition of Your Heart Out, called Rewrite The Script, which can be downloaded for free in the library on your left. It is a story about discovering wonderful pop sounds from the Eastern Europe of the 1960s and ‘70s. In other places it might be billed as a journey of discovery where myths are shattered, lies exposed, ignorance laid bare, injustices set right. That sort of thing. It is written with great enthusiasm, if from a position of relative ignorance. It is openly acknowledged that there are plenty of people out there who will know much more about all this than me. But who cares?

If this piques your curiosity, you can see and hear more at Anywhere Else But Here Today, one of the ongoing Your Heart Out research projects.

The struggle continues ...

The struggle continues ... Your Heart Out activities are still very much alive and thriving. Two research projects are underway, and findings being shared on a daily basis.
The London Nobody Sings is a year-long project to collect together great songs about or related to London. You can read more about the thinking behind this here, and at the present time you can hear more here.
The other project is Anywhere Else But Here Today. This is an attempt to share some sounds from around the world which will hopefully challenge conceptions. At a time when popular culture is presented as a stark choice between X-Factor and Rage Against The Machine, and people retreat into their comfort zones in despair, it’s a joyous task to feature fantastic things which are out there and freely available thanks to the liberating effect of technology whereby we no longer need to rely on critics to inform us of options, and we can instead seek and chance upon things which will make us punch the air with joy.
The journey very deliberately starts in Eastern Europe. Messing around on YouTube one thing led to another, and more and more brilliant pop emerged which with the exceptions of outfits like Finders Keepers and VampiSoul was not being celebrated. The new site provided the perfect opportunity to collect together some of the wonderful clips/sounds. Here are two examples which are not featured in the project but which make you believe in the magic of pop in a way the official media chooses not to. It’s no wonder we’d rather be anywhere else but here today ....

A South London Story ... part three

And it’s almost a year since Your Heart Out began to take shape. Just trying to remember the reasons and aims at the time of starting out ....

Well, there was an enforced amount of leisure time, a lack of money, a growing frustration at not finding a music magazine worth reading or if there was one worth reading (Wax Poetics) it would be a little too specialist. I wanted the Mo-Dettes, Marcos Valle and the Soulful Strings together. There was also something about giving something back. Over the preceding months I’d been totally inspired by the time and trouble bloggers were taking to share their passions, to give new life to lost musics. They had opened up so many new vistas, and I owed them.

So it was the old punk impulse of get up and do it for yourself. On a practical note, historically I’d been hopeless at IT, but I’d taken some free courses and acquired the rudimentary skills to enable me to create a magazine of sorts. It had to be a magazine too, as I loved reading in odd places away from computers, and liked the idea of something that had structure as opposed to the randomness of blogs. I liked structure, and the discipline of doing something regularly. I had a bit of a track record with previous projects (as John Carney) kindly published by the Tangents site where I’d been providing weekly instalments as part of a year-long series or three.

So, the aim with Your Heart Out was to produce something monthly. And for ten issues this challenge was met. It even expanded into a blog, with regular posts that gave a little more detail and colour in a lopsided way. The feedback on YHO has been fantastic, which has meant a lot, but overall for something ‘freely’ available the download stats are not encouraging. It was easier to reach people with cumbersome fanzines. Work that one out! Anyway, circulation figures aside, and that doesn’t really matter because if you’ve got something to say you’ll say it anyway, the real point is all this YHO activity became ridiculously time consuming, and took over many aspects of daily life.

I think a point has been made with YHO. It’s been proven that pop writing can be fun, passionate, informative, that you don’t have to write about the usual suspects, and so on. It’s been shown it’s possible to do something a little different. Thus, for now, it’s time to take a breather, park YHO, and get some other things up and running. Perhaps not quite ‘stop the world I want to get back on’ but along those lines. In the meantime, the London songs project will continue relentlessly. So, please support that and spread the word. And participate!
The infamous YHO library on the left will remain open. And that just leaves me to thank all the people, new friends and old comrades, who have stood up and waved a clenched fist in support of YHO. Oh, and in case you wondered, the name came about because I had this song on my brain ...