More Houses

 

The first song is well known, as Primal Scream released a cover version on Screamadelica. The original is by 13th Floor Elevators, who released it on their second album in 1967, and it contains everything they stood for: constantly repeating distorted guitar riffs and the electrifying vocals of Roky Erickson.

My New House by The Fall was released on their eighth album, This Nation's Saving Grace, perhaps their most accessible album,  without sacrificing dangerous riffs and Mark E. Smith's sarcasm.

Our House from 1970 was disturbing for many fans of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, as they preferred to see the band as protesters and couldn't relate to Graham Nash's declaration of love for Joni Mitchell. Nevertheless, it has become a classic that is played too rarely.

I See A Darkness

 

About every ten years, musicians get the idea to cover I See A Darkness. A few days ago, Anna Calvi also ventured to cover the dark ballad written by Will Oldham in 1999, which for me is one of the best songs he has ever written. Rarely has a song about friendship moved me as much as this one. While Calvi's urgent guitar playing and vocals create an ominous atmosphere, it is Perfume Genius who breaks through the dark sky with his falsetto.

A good song can't really be ruined. That's why we're featuring the original by Mr. Oldham and a version that Martin Gretschmann, aka Acid Pauli, brought to clubs quite some time ago.

Singles Released This Week Years Ago

 

1970: Neil Young

1978: Talking Heads

1961: Aretha Franklin

1972: Focus

1986: Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush

1989: 10.000 Maniacs

1968: The Zombies

1982: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

1978: Gloria Gaynor

1984: Frankie Goes To Hollywood

1994: Nirvana

1968: Cloud Nine

1965: Santana

1979: Madness

1979: Marianne Faithful

There's A Pub On The Corner

 

From time to time it is necessary for me to leave my musical road and have to go back to the roots where handmade songs were made. If I have this mood and go back to The Singing Loins, a low-fi folk band from Kent, formed by Chris Broderick in 1990. I love their simple yet melodious songs, which often tell of the everyday lives of ordinary people, and the fervor with which they are performed. Sometimes I think they wrote the best songs The Pogues never recorded. In better times, there may be nothing better than sitting in a pub with a glass of beer and listening to The Singing Loins.

The Singing Loins - There's a Pub on the Corner

The Singing Loins - Skinner's Rats

The Singing Loins - Monsters Ashore

Billy Childish & The Singing Loins - I Don't Like The Man That I Am

Monday's Long Songs

 

From the ashes of Bauhaus, Love and Rockets rose in 1985 with some members of this band. They shed their goth attitude and focused more on psychedelic-inspired longer pop songs. I liked their music back then, even though it was neither fish nor fowl. Maybe that's why I haven't listened to their songs in a long time. Looking back, they're not so bad that they should be forgotten. Their eclectic mix of post-punk, folk, psychedelic rock, and a little bit of glam are forgotten gems from a time when so much other great music was being released.

Love and Rockets - The Dog-end of a Day Gone By

Just under ten years later, they reinvented themselves once again on Hot Trips to Heaven, having obviously listened to a lot of The Orb and Orbital and developed musically in the direction of ambient with psychedelic influences. The result was definitely worth listening to, but it obviously scared their fans away too much, because after that, things went very quiet around this band.

Love and Rockets - This Heaven

New Song On Sunday

 

To be honest, I am not the expert on techno and it's musical history and seldom listen to it. But sometimes a new artist artist was featured in my in-box and I give him a chance. This happened this week when Phillip Sollmann aka Efedemin released his fifth album after a six year hiatus. Sollmann is a German DJ, producer and sound artist. On his new album Poly, he attempts to give his techno-based songs more depth, melody, and rhythm. He probably succeeds best in this on this track, presenting his version of dub techno. Certainly not to everyone's taste, but an album that has a cohesive and at times melancholic touch.

Saturday Clubs

 

In the early 1980s, clubs were still called discotheques. It was only later that the term “club” became established here too. One of these clubs was the Oz in the center of Stuttgart. The Oz was more of a meeting place than a dance temple for goths and wavers. It was a relatively small space for about 250 visitors, most of whom were dressed in black, wore Doc Martens, and had heavy kohl eyeliner. It was a meeting place for the subculture, and we often went there because there were few venues that played Siouxie and the Banshees, Bauhaus, or Joy Division.

I also witnessed King Kurt throwing eggs and flour sacks on and off the stage and Anne Clark performing her poetry to electro dark wave for the first time. I didn't get to hear a new, unknown electronic band because the hall was completely overcrowded. So I had to listen to Depeche Mode with many others on the stairs leading to the event room.

One highlight was definitely Big Country's performance when they were promoting their debut album, The Crossing. It was a wonderful concert where I met a colleague who took me backstage, and I had the opportunity to exchange a few words with Stuart Adamson and the band.

In the nineties, the club underwent a transformation and dark wave was replaced by techno. I went there a few more times and the music was okay, but I wasn't ready for that sound yet.