Back To The Days Of Glam

Making a small series about glam rock would not be complete if David Bowie is missing. He started his career with as another band covering blues rock songs and playing on youth gatherings and weddings. But he always wrote songs for himself and tried to play it with his first band. The record company early saw the possibilities of his songwriting talent but his first albums under his name failed. He got his first success when he performed his songs with striking costumes, weird hair-styles and a life performance many people didn't saw before. He created Ziggy Stardust perfectly in the high-times of glam. These were the days he turned into an influencer like the hipsters say today. I don't have to tell you about the great things he gave us the last 40 years but these songs from the glam era are still over the top.

David Bowie - Panic In Detroit
David Bowie - Moonage Daydream

Low Forties

There is a trip-hop record by Boreal Massif that is running a few times at my place during the last weekend. I ask myself if it is time for a revival of this genre or if it never was out of fashion somewhere in England. I don't know anything about Boreal Massif but this sound is still attractive to me. They transformed the sound into now and it is good to hear that some kids new the classics of this music.

Monday's Long Song

A few days ago a new album by an artist I never heard before came to my ears and it's name Sex Monk Blues made me investigate for more. The artist Tom of England is the newest project by Tom Bullock former based in Cambridge and a member of Tonka Sound System and he had to flee because of several reasons to bring rave to San Francisco in early 90's. After moving to NYC he worked with a free-jazz punk band, had a collaboration with a DJ and releasing some balearic tunes as Laughing Lights of Plenty.

He worked on the project Tom of England during the last years and it seems all of his weird influences were packed into this record. It is also another collaboration with Rene Love after a longer time when they released a few EP's. She once told in an interview how they met: “He was playing rock/dub/disco that night. A week later, I came around his house, had a meal, smoked a spliff, etc. He asked me where I was living, I told him I was kinda homeless, so he asked me to move in and the rest is history. We’ve been friends for about 15 years.”

It is a record filled with influences from Suicide in their NYC years, a Jah Wobble bass and the result of some psychedelic trips. After all one of the best, inspiring and courageous albums of this year.

 
And as a bonus his balearic escape:

The Laughing Lights of Plenty - The Rose

Rotation Wells

Jane Weaver is active like never before. After Silver Globe last November and Loops In The Secret Society only a few months ago she released a new album with her new project Fenella. Intended as an alternative soundtrack for Fehérlófia (Son of the White Mare), a fantastically trippy 1981 Hungarian cult animation. Recorded with her band mates Peter Philipson and Raz Ullah this record is another left-field turn from her Krautrock-inspired last albums. The songs are drifting between ambient pop, her fine vocals, wilder electronic flares and sweeps and meditative guitar sounds.

Refuge Cove

A few weeks ago when I was searching the internet I found another cover version of Bob Dylan's It's all over now, Baby Blue a song that was covered many times but the stripped down version by Melbourne based singer/songwriter Grace Cummings impressed me much.


The recent days Cummings released her first full album Refuge Cove. And her music has something of an asylum. Far away from main trends she made an album that could have been released 50 years ago. Mostly classic British folk with just an acoustic guitar and her throaty dominating voice that sometimes reminds me on Joni Mitchell make this record a little gem in a genre that really isn't my usual cup of tea.

vv

Cannonball Waltz

Manchester quartet 808 State were one of those electronic bands that had a massive influence to the uprising acid house movement in the late 80's/early 90's. After almost 30 years they returned as a duo with their latest album Transmission Suite. It can't explain what I expected (another work from old age men or a development of their sound) but it is very good. They had the focus on their originally acid house roots with unequal synth lines, disjointed rhythms and urban beats. A record young electronic artist could learn from what it means to be creative.
 

Arthur

The Kinks released a few days ago a box set of their 1968 concept album Arthur and the Decline of the British Empire with a lot of mono-versions and outtakes that made me wanting to listen to this record once again after a very long time. Wiki tells us about the story of this album:

The story is partially inspired by the Davies brothers' older sister Rose, who emigrated to Australia in 1964 with her husband Arthur Anning.^[ Her departure devastated Ray Davies, and it inspired him to write the song "Rosy Won't You Please Come Home", included on the 1966 album Face to Face.The lead character in the album, the fictional Arthur Morgan—modelled after Anning—is a carpet layer whose family's plight in the opportunity-poor setting of post-war England is depicted.^] Writer Julian Mitchell detailed the story line and characters in depth, explaining in the liner notes for the album's LP release:

Arthur Morgan ... lives in a London suburb in a house called Shangri-La, with a garden and a car and a wife called Rose and a son called Derek who's married to Liz, and they have these two very nice kids, Terry and Marilyn. Derek and Liz and Terry and Marilyn are emigrating to Australia. Arthur did have another son, called Eddie. He was named after Arthur's brother, who was killed in the battle of the Somme. Arthur's Eddie was killed, too—in Korea.

Davies later commented in his autobiography, X-Ray, that Anning later "told me that he ... knew it [Arthur] had been partly inspired by him ... [it] reminded him of home ... I told Arthur that I felt guilty for using him as a subject for a song, but he shrugged off my apology, saying that he was flattered." With an underlying theme of nostalgia,^] the songs describe the England Arthur once knew^[("Victoria", "Young and Innocent Days"), the promise of life in Australia for one of his sons ("Australia"), the emptiness of his superficially comfortable life in his home ("Shangri-La"), the resolve of the British people during the Second World War ("Mr. Churchill Says"), the privations that marked the austerity period after the war ("She's Bought a Hat Like Princess Marina"), and the death of his brother in World War I ("Yes Sir, No Sir", "Some Mother's Son").

This record wasn't very successful 50 years ago but filled with one of the best songs Ray Davis ever wrote and it was a pleasure to listen to them once again.

The Kinks - Victoria

The Kinks - Shangri-La

The Kinks - Australia