It’s not just about re-posting old stuff on here at Christmas.
Gibson Bull and Carmen have recorded a version of ‘The Holly and the Ivy’ in an indie/Americana style. It’s part of For Folk’s Sake It’s Christmas 2012, which is the annual charity Christmas album that also features Admiral Fallow, The Willows, Ellen and the Escapades, Tom Willi
An almost anti-seasonal track, if such a thing is possible. I wasn’t that into her final album Generation Indigo, sadly, but she was a legend and is sadly missed.
And if you th
best online pharmacy with fast delive
best online pharmacy with fast delivery zepbound for sale with the lowest prices today in the USA
best online pharmacy with fast delivery diclofenac for sale with the lowest prices today in the USA
the lowest prices today in the USA
ink this track is bleak, bear in mind that, after all, some Christmas music is patently dark and antagonistic. That goes for the H
best online pharmacy with fast delivery oseltamivir for sale with the lowest prices today in the USA
ives and Cyndi Lauper’s ‘A Christmas Duel’. You also get the very sad carol ‘The Coventry Carol’ which remembers all the children slaughtered by King Herod. And if it’s all about good cheer, why do people love ghost stories around this time of y
David Cronenberg’s Wife -‘Don’t Wait To Be Hunted To Hide.’ (Blang)
This is David Cronenberg’s Wife’s third album, and sees the London band continue with an interesting and perhaps more than a little skewed (screwed!) take on life. If you could point to another act’s lyrics as to where DCW are coming from then Nick Cave’s ‘Up Jumped The Devil’ (‘I was born on the day that my poor mother died/I was cut from her belly with a stanley knife/my daddy did a jig with the drunk midwife). If it was a TV programme, it might be like The League Of Gentlemen, but set in the home counties.
Musically, it’s coming from a place where surf guitar and punk meet dirty, twisted blues and country, with the exception of the third track ”Such A Sweet Boy’ which on the surface at least, is more reminiscent of twee-pop and is in waltz-time. The characters are somewhat twisted – the man in ‘For Laura Kingsman’ tries to defend his affair with a teenage girl on the grounds that he ‘wasn’t her first’. On ‘Lonelyman’ the imagery is violence of a personal yet almost detached manner: ‘I woke up with a cigarette burnt out in my mouth -that’s the feeling that you get when your conscience headed south.’
In Pink Floyd’s ‘Arnold Layne’ single, you’re inclined to agree that whilst he might be a bit of a perv, he’s not a nasty sort of person; here the characters are much more lurid -yet horrifyingly fascinating. Some may not find this possible to stomach, but once you tune in (if!) there’s a very black humour and -whisper it -intelligence -on display.
***1/2
Don’t Wait To Be Hunted To Hide is out on Blang on December 3.
It was pretty damn great watching Withered Hand headlining the Queen’s Hall during the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Not least because I saw him play on a bill with Jesus H. Foxx and B
best online pharmacy with fast delivery valtrex for sale with the lowest prices today in the USA
roken Rec
online pharmacy tadapox for sale with best prices today in the USA
ords headlining at Edinburgh’s Cabaret Voltaire in late 2009.
‘s performance that night – and spent the next age trying to get hold of his album. Eventually Ed at SL Records obliged -and it’s always pained me that I heard it after I had done my best albums for the year list.
Troubled Teens.’ I picked it up out of curiosity in the record shop in Canterbury, Richard’s Records, where I spent much of my time (not to mention money) as a student when I was there. It w
ously declared it ‘the sound of a flight of stairs falling down a flight of stairs.’ Fast forward five years, the band were on their third album, signed to EMI (or a subsidiary thereof), having massive hits, making videos with Wim Wenders. And me? Well, I was working in a bookshop in Edinburgh, with none other than lead singer Roddy Woomble’s sister, as featured (uncredited)
This cover of Cliff Richard’s ‘Mistletoe and Wine’ is noisy by comparison to their later efforts and no doubt offensive to some. To me, it sounds bloody awesome!
Yup, it’s the return of the annual 17 Seconds Christmas posts!
First up, a song that Blur recorded for a free single 20 years ago. It’s a traditional English carol called the ‘Wassailing Song.’ I posted this last year -and it’s great to look back and see that Blur did come back this year with a new single ‘Under The Westway.’ If it is their last release, it is a mighty fine way to bow out, with dignity and a mighty fine tune. I only ever saw Blur once -around the time of Think Tank but it w
is is great to be able to report that following on from their 7″ single on Cloudberry last month, they are to release a five-track EP on Scotland’s Soft Power label next month. Soft Power have given us some awesome releases (including Aggi Doom, Hollows and The Tambourines, amongst others), so it is the combination of an excelle
The new EP is called I Don’t Know, You Don’t Know, We All Don’t Know The Spook School (I am assuming in reference to ‘I scream, you scream, we all scream for Ice cream’ -though I could be wrong). It is another wee gem in their release schedule so far, and you can stream it ahead of the December 17 release right now, just below. Oh, and it is coming out on cassette single (if you threw your tape player away, more fool you. Serves you right.) limited to 100 copies! It’s wonderfully twee and lo-fi, and my favourite track is the closing ‘Can You Ever Trust A Man Who Think’s Matt Damon’s Really Cool?’
Back in 1987, The Pogues with Kirsty MacColl on vocals released what many believe to be the greatest Christmas single of all time, ‘Fairytale Of New York.’ A bittersweet tale, it tells of an Irish couple in New York.
Mostly told from the husband’s point of view, Shane MacGowan’s Christmas Eve reverie thinks about holidays past while sleeping off a binge in a New York City drunk tank.
When an old man in the same cell sings a passage f
the Irish ballad “The Rare Old Mountain Dew”, the MacGowan begins to dream about the song’s female character. The remainder of the song takes the form of a call and response between the couple, their youthful hopes crushed by alcoholism and drug addiction, as they reminisce and bicker on Christmas Eve. MacColl’s putdown of ‘You scumbag, you maggot you cheap lousy faggot/happy Christmas? Your arse!/I pray God it’s our last’ amazingly got past the censors at the BBC (who had baulked at George Michael’s ‘I Want Your Sex’ a mere matter of months earlier. Then again, fifteen years previously Lou Reed’s pretty bleedin’ obvious ‘But she never lost her head/even when she was giving head’ showed that it wasn’t always black and white). It remains one of the most vitriolic put-downs on record.
According to Wikipedia ‘In his Christmas podcast, musical comedian Mitch Benn commented that “faggot” was Irish and Liverpudlian slang for a lazy person, and was unrelated to the derogatory term for homosexuals.’
Though it’s hard to imagine the song without Kirsty MacColl singing the female line, it wasn’t intended that way. Originally the part was to have been sung by the Pogues’ original bassist Cait O’Riordan, who had previously taken lead vocals on ‘A Man You Don’t Meet Everyday’ and ‘Haunted.’ O’Riordan left the band in 1986, having married the band’s producer Elvis Costello, who had worked with the band on their sophomore album Rum, Sodomy And The Lash.
Funnily enough, it was the band’s next producer Steve Lillywhite’s wife, Kirsty MacColl who sung the lead, but she had only been asked to provide the guide vocal. The band liked her contribution so much, they asked her to record it for the real thing…and the rest, as they say, is history.
in December 2000 , whilst Scuba Diving in Mexico with her two sons (see here for details about the Justice For Kirsty campaign, which has now been stood down). She is probably best known for her part in this song, but if you haven’t heard any
of her other albums, may I recommend that you check out the Electric Landlady and Tropical Brainstorm albums, just for starters.
The song has been a hit many times since, and has made the charts in 1991, 2005-2011, this year it has already re-charted. It’s been 25 years -wouldn’t it be great if it finally reached the position it deserved?
The 1987 Top Of The Pops performance, introduced by Mike Read
Just Shane and Kirsty for Top Of The Pops in 1992…
