Last weekend, while searching for something else, I stumbled upon a classic by Wes Montgomery, one of the most influential jazz guitarists, performed by Brian Auger. This prompted me to delve deeper into his music again after many years.
Brian Auger, for those who don't know him, he is a British keyboardist who played with pretty much all the greats of rock, soul, blues, and R&B in the 1960s, leaving his mark on them with his Hammond B3. With his Hammond organ, he had a greater influence on the sound of one of the Yardbirds' first singles than the guitar did.
Later in the 60's he formed Trinity together with Julie Driscoll and recorded some classic records. With their cover versions With their cover versions of David Ackles and Bob Dylan, they even made it into the charts.
Later on he formed Oblivion Express where he played more Jazz and fusion but still with his Hammond which still dominates his sound.
I never thought that Anna von Hausswolf, a Swedish singer and composer, would appear on these pages one day. Her songs, which mainly dealt with death, were too dark in the past. No one can doubt that she has always had a good voice, but her mixture of art pop, drone, and gothic, with an organ pipe at its center, takes some getting used to.
Now she announced a new album that will be released at Halloween and I have to admit that the leading single shows new road she will walk. Based on a 80's electronic post-punk sound she includes some folk-pop into her sound, the organ pipe isn't is no longer so dominant and makes way for a hypnotic beat.
A few days ago Austrian all female trio DIVES released their latest single Keep Talking and announced that they will disband at the end of the year. I followed them during the last ten years and it always was fun to listen to their sound that was something between indie-rock and garage-/lo-fi-pop. Their style is characterized by catchy melodies, driving rhythms, and polyphonic vocals. Finally, they give us one last glimpse of what we will miss.
Another example of their music is a song they released earlier this year.
Since the end of World War II, more and more US soldiers have been stationed around Stuttgart. In recent years, their numbers have decreased significantly, but to this day, Kelly Barracks in a suburb is home to AFRICOM, the headquarters of the US military for operations in Africa. In the early 1980's, we often visited the barracks for the annual German-American Friendship Day. To be honest, it was mainly to buy cheap cigarettes. When we talked to the soldiers, they often complained that there was no country club like the ones they knew from home.
The Longhorn Country & Western Saloon opened in March 1984, catering to the need of US military personnel stationed in Stuttgart for an American-style bar. We became aware of this club at the end of 1984 because it was the venue for the nationwide public male striptease. At that time, the strippers were US soldiers; men were not allowed in. Other events such as mud wrestling and wet T-shirt contests are also unthinkable today. When we visited the club for the first time, we were presented with a strange competition.
From 1987 onward, local concert promoters became aware of the club because they had the opportunity to organize concerts for up to 1,000 spectators. Since then I became a regular visitor of the club and was lucky enough to The Pixies, The Levellers, The Fall, Steele Pulse, The Woodentops and George Clinton among many others.
I particularly remember The Gun Club concert in 1987. At that time, there was still a public bar and a pool table on the first floor in front of the artists' dressing rooms. We arrived quite early and passed the time playing a few games until the opening act, Dinosaur Jr., came on stage. After that, we sat down at the bar and ordered a beer. Then a young Japanese woman sat down next to me and we had a nice chat until a long-haired punk with red eyes and an open mouth came up to me, grabbed me by the collar, and told me to leave his girlfriend alone. Several security guards immediately separated us and asked me to leave the floor. How could I have known that I was talking to Romi Mori, the bassist and then-girlfriend of Jeffrey Lee Pierce? Happy that nothing more happened, I was able to enjoy the concert.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
We begin today's tour of the houses with a band that has unfortunately been unjustly forgotten and wasan s not appreciated enough in their heyday. In 1965 Roy Loney and Cyril Jordan formed Flamin' Groovies in San Francisco with their own interpretation of Rock 'n' Roll. Unfortunately, their first two albums at the end of the sixties did not capture the spirit of the times, when sprawling guitar jams were all the rage. For me they were more punk than many others at this time and idols of power-pop. This guitar gem is from their second album Flamingo.
In 1992, three rappers set out to turn hip hop upside down. Two of them were of Irish descent and decided to incorporate this identity into their sound. It was also remarkable that all the members of House Of Pain were white, showing their colleagues that they too could make formidable music.
Finally, some country rock from Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, an almost forgotten band who covered Kenny Loggins' song on their third album.
It has become somewhat fashionable lately to release albums when an anniversary of their original release is approaching. These are often anniversary editions featuring demos and/or live tracks. Much of it is arbitrary, but sometimes gems are reissued that are worth buying because astronomical prices are now being asked for the originals.
It is thanks to Warp Records that they re-released Boards Of Canada's third album last week. Two brothers from Glasgow, Michael and Marcus Sandison, joined forces at the end of the last century to make their mark on electronic music. With this album, BOC take their sound collages one step further by incorporating folk, obscure samples, strings, and other quirky sounds into their repertoire. With their acoustic guitars, organ and synth, analog drums, and test-tube beats, they manage to transport the listener into a dreamlike state. And not many can do that.
Brant Bjork is one of those musicians who enjoys a good reputation in the scene but is largely unknown. Growing up in Palm Desert, California, he devoted himself to surfing and played in a band from a young age, which Josh Homme later joined.
In the beginning, he hid behind the drums and founded the doom rock band Kyuss to play psychedelic-inspired Black Sabbath heavy rock. After a couple of albums he left the band and formed Fu Manchu, where he developed stoner rock for himself.
In 1999 he released his debut Jalamanta where he played all instruments and became his masterpiece for me. An album filled with psychedelic blues songs and it became the blueprint of stoner rock. This album is probably the link between heavy rock of the late 60's and as he called it low-desert punk.
Today's song isn't really new, but was released last year. English Teacher released their first album, and it's still well above average compared to other releases from 2024. It contains great songs that fall somewhere between post-rock, shoegaze, and noisy riffs.
At the end of the week, the album was re-released, this time featuring various remixes of all the songs. Particularly outstanding is Daniel Avery's rework, which transforms The World's Biggest Paving Slab into a hypnotic, powerful structure.
Another remarkable remix comes from West Yorkshire's Working Men's Club that gives this song a bit of a post-punk touch.
Jo Bartlett released a couple of days ago a song in which she recites the history of a club she often visited and also performed at. That inspired me to write about clubs that became regular venues when I was much younger.
Many of them no longer exist or have reopened elsewhere with a new concept. In the early 1980s, Stuttgart was a city that offered many unknown bands from Great Britain and the United States the opportunity to perform in small clubs. This was partly because there were promoters at the time who offered these musicians this opportunity and did not focus too much on profit. One of these promoters was Stefan Siller, a radio presenter who brought the right bands to Stuttgart at the right time with Paul's Music.
One of the first clubs in Stuttgart to embrace punk and new wave was the Mausefalle in the city center. In earlier times, it was a cabaret opened by Werner Finck, one of the most famous cabaret artists of the post-war period, who ran it until his death in 1978. The Mausefalle was located on the first floor on Tübinger Straße, right next to a strip club with the lovely name Natalie-Bar. It was quite funny to watch the club guests line up on the left side of the stairs while the nightclub guests on the right watched them sneak past bashfully.
I was lucky enough to see Dexy's Midnight Runners there at the time, when they were still performing in their sailor outfits, The Fall in 1981, Ruts DC, who combined punk and reggae with their powerful sound, and Trio, who were one of the first to make new wave with German lyrics before they became commercially successful in the NDW. ZK, who actually called themselves Zentralkommitee, were a bunch of brats from Düsseldorf who could barely play their instruments and were guests long before they filled stadiums as Die Toten Hosen.
I took some time off over the last few days and went to a skat tournament in Ingolstadt with a friend. My father taught me this card game decades ago, and I played it often in my younger years. But it's a huge difference when I, as an amateur, want to compete with professionals. Fortunately, I hadn't forgotten everything, and the lessons I had to learn the hard way were kept to a minimum.
Back to blogging reality and a short series about songs that have houses in their titles. Let's start with X, a band from Los Angeles. They were filed under punk-rock but they included more stiles like rockabilly in their sound. In This House That I Call Home is from their second album and one of my favorites from 1981.
The House Of The Rising Sun is a classic recorded by innumerable artists. I prefer the version by Sinead O'Conner from 1995.
Let's finish today with a classic by Blur without any further words.
It's always the same with bands that release an album again after several decades: I wonder whether there's still a need for it or whether they still have the magic they had back then.
Manchester's Chameleons (they left out the “The” and Mark Burgess now calls himself Vox) were iconic in the early 80's and their debut is still on rotation at my place. For me, the impression is ambivalent. It's a contemporary development of their guitar sound, although some songs have clear weaknesses, are too sprawling, and on some songs the drummer can neither keep nor find the beat.
Take this two songs and probably one more and you will be pleased. There will be no memory of the rest at the end of the year.
In 2003 German musician and composer Ulrich Schnauss released his second album A Strangely Isolated Place. He was a long time member of Tangerine Dream, a late krautrock band making experimental electronic sound for which the time was not yet ripe.
At the beginning of the new century he moved to London and was inspired by the first shoegaze movement and has incorporated them into this album. The result was an overlooked album with a lot of ambient combined with some guitars ans sometimes influences of trip-hop and worth to give them a listen.
Various music magazines are currently hyping Geese, a band from Brooklyn, New York as the latest discovery. I couldn't help but listen to their latest album, Getting Killed.
From the very first song, it becomes clear who is supposed to be the focus here. Namely, the voice of singer Cameron Winter, which ranges from nasal pleading to clownish bellowing and thunderous force. It's so disturbing that you have to pull yourself together to get into the music. It's so diverse that it can't really be classified into any genre. Sometimes it's a simple blues riff, sometimes 60's soul, 80's guitars, or a sampled choir.
Once you get used to the voice, you realize that this record has a lot to offer.
Since a couple of months Sean Johnson released as Hardway Bros a series of EP's called Outre-Mer. The last one came out a couple of days ago and it is great as ever. Once again sunny ambient disco with a little touch of voodoo. It is a kind of music I seldom get tired of.
A few days ago I got aware of a The New Eves, an all girl quartet from Brighton and their first album. I have to admit, that I was surprised of their sound, a mixture of early British folk music, Velvet Underground (especially when they play the cello that reminds me on John Cale's viola), Patti Smith and The Fall. Alright it is namedroping but this album is so complex with all its influences, yet still something entirely unique.
Lyrically, they evoke old myths and stories from the past century, albeit somewhat cryptically, as we have come to expect from Patti Smith. But still with plenty of punk energy an lots of rough edges.
The New Eve is of earth
Granite, ochre, magma, dirt
All the bones in her body are holy
All the stones in her pockets are homely
She is an animal among animals
A human among humans
Wild and full or purpose
Tender and ferocious
Limbs and loins burning of lust
And the New Eve fucks
The New Eve fucks if she wants to
The New Eve says "no" if she doesn't want to
And there is no God to save you if you fail to listen
The New Eve has autonomy over her soul and her body
It was 1998 and Belle and Sebastian worked on their third album. I got aware of them by her second album If You're Feeling Sinister, an album that shows their ability to write songs far away from mainstream.
Stuart Murdoch wrote the most of their songs and he said once that he needed their lyrics to communicate with the world, because he can't do it with spoken words. Consequently, Belle and Sebastian's first four albums are not only magnificent records featuring tender, melancholic pop songs in the spirit of songwriting genius Nick Drake.
During this time B&S released three EP's and today's track is one of them and a good example for Glaswegian songwriting at the end of the century.
This is the first time I feature the same artist twice in this series. The reason is simple: I've just loved RAYE's voice ever since I saw her live this summer. A friend of mine kept pestering me until I finally agreed to get tickets for a double concert with Jacob Collier. Although it's not really my kind of music, the concert was a highlight.
Today, Shel Silverstein would have turned 95 years old had he not passed away in 1999. I think it's the right time to remember an ever-active contemporary. Many will know his songs, which became famous through other performers. Few are likely to know that, in addition to being a songwriter and composer, he was also a cartoonist and children's book author.
During the Korea war in the early 50's he worked there as correspondent and cartoonist for an American magazine until Hugh Hefner hired him for Playboy. In addition to his work as a cartoonist, Playboy sent him on trips around the world, which he commented on in his own style. Alongside Hunter S. Thompson, he wrote some of the most exciting stories, some of which were published in the German magazine Sounds in the early 1970's.
From 1964/65 onward, he wrote A Boy Named Sue, a song that became a huge hit for Johnny Cash. Silverstein's sarcasm is rarely better expressed than in 25 Minutes To Go, which deals with the last 25 minutes in the life of a delinquent before his execution.
In 1971 he co-wrote The Taker together with Kris Kristofferson, one of the many highlights from his second album and forced his collaboration with Bobby Bare
In his next step he found Dr. Hook and his Medicine Show, a freaky country band who were able to translate his lyrics into music in a congenial way. I could take any song by them but I decided to feature this because it was filmed on Shel's houseboat and Mr. Silverstein appears on harp.
And at least one of his early songs interpreted by one of the best voices in country.
In September 1985 Tom Waits released Rain Dogs, an album that marked a turning point in his music. He started his career as another folk singer who was inspired by the beat generation. It was a mixture mixture of Delta Blues, jazz and funk dominated by a voice seemed like be ruined by too many bars and cigarettes. The next years he turned more and more to rock music and great songs that were covered by many artists.
His musical style turned in 1984 when he released Swordfishtrombones, when he left classical instruments behind and replaced them with marimbas for example. It was a great album and got many critical acclaim but with Rain Dogs he made his masterpiece.
'Rain Dogs is a term I coined for those poor devils who sleep in doorways without a home. Dogs in the rain lose their sense of direction because the water mercilessly washes away all their markings and scent trails. After heavy rain, you see these stranded creatures everywhere on the streets, turning their heads towards you, their pleading eyes begging you to show them the way home. It's hopeless. Just like them, all the people sung about on this album are connected to each other. Sewn together by a thread of pain and hardship.' Waits once said this lovingly and warmly about his milestone. These words run through all the songs on this album.
Anyone who listens to this record will find a colorful bundle of addictive melodies and lyrics that stand completely naked before the listener, without a safety net or double soundboard. Lyrically, he is as adventurous as Kerouac and as hopeless as Steinbeck. Musically, it sounds like a session between Howlin' Wolf and Kurt Weill. With so many good songs, the quality wasn't compromised by Keith Richards being allowed to play along and Marc Ribot having some of his finest moments.
In the early 1970's, Swedish photographer Anders Petterson hung out on Hamburg's Reeperbahn and photographed the guests of the legendary Cafe Lehmitz. This photograph perfectly captures the mood of the entire album.
In 1991 Slint, a post-rock band from Louiseville, Kentucky released their second and last album Spiderland. At the time, the album was largely ignored and threatened to gather dust in record shops. It was only through word of mouth that this little masterpiece became accessible to a wider audience.
I came across this album on the day of my divorce, when I asked for something new and emotionally moving at my favorite record shop. Mike, the owner, who I had also played football with for a long time, recommended the Slint record to me. And I still thank him for that today. The songs are like something out of a fever dream – simultaneously brutal and fragile, explosive and hypnotic.
Above all, Slint created a post-rock template on Spiderland with their unique, tight style that many bands should take to heart. Mogwai must have listened to the infernal finale of Washer, which unleashes a firestorm on the prevailing melancholy, because they developed the interplay of loud and soft in this form on their early albums.
Today's track comes from Gardens, a new band from Vienna who released their debut album Flaws already a few months ago, but I have only just discovered it for myself. The members of the quartet come from Vorarlberg, a mountainous region in western Austria, and knew each other more or less from their youth, but only found each other in Vienna. Their music is astonishingly fresh and catchy. Luca Celine Müller's voice is vaguely reminiscent of Margo Timmins, and the songs, with their playful, psychedelic-tinged guitar playing, are reminiscent of Galaxie 500. Enough name-dropping, Gardens simply have a knack for writing good, catchy songs.
Kieran Hebden is back with a new record. He is perhaps better known as the head of Four Tet, his electronic playground, and for his many remixes in recent years. Now he has teamed up with William Tyler to break new ground. At the beginning of this century, Tyler was a member of Lambchop and the Silver Jews, who reinterpreted country music at the time.
In recent years, several bands such as the Nashville Ambient Ensemble have demonstrated that country and electronic music are entirely compatible. Here, Hebden and Tyler take an old song by Lyle Lovett, break it down into its individual parts and then reassemble it as if it were a single piece.
I don't want to deprive you of the wonderful original.
This week's compilation consists mainly of releases from 1982. I can't say why, but perhaps it's simply because only good songs were released that week.
The news just arrived that actor, producer and director Robert Redford passed away last night at the age of 89. Throughout my life, he has always been present in films for me. Some of them were great, others just good. He worked with Sidney Pollak throughout his life, and Dave Grusin wrote the soundtrack for many of his films.
If I had to pick one, it would be the soundtrack to Three Days of the Condor (alongside The Fabulous Baker Boys). His compositions are modelled on the soundtracks of many blaxploitation films. A dominant yet restrained funky bass and subtly interspersed brass instruments create a sound that is impossible to resist.
Last weekend, while searching for something on my hard drive, I came across a disc that I had completely forgotten about. In spring this year, The Ex, an underground/punk band from the Netherlands, released their latest album, If Your Mirror Breaks.
The Ex started in 1979 as part of the punk movement and were inspired by The Fall and The Mekons. What set them apart from the crowd was their anger and determination not to rest on their laurels with just three chords. The Ex were also politically active and campaigned for social justice and squatting.
Their latest album is bursting with musical ideas, taking a more relaxed approach alongside aggressive punk and noise. In this respect, it is a good introduction to their world for those who are not yet familiar with this band.
In 1975 Patti Smith released her debut Horses, an album that changed a lot. Mainstream music was mostly on his deathbed and punk wasn't there yet. At that point, she appeared with her band and made an impact with her expansive lyrics and exuberant garage sound, which at its best was reminiscent of Velvet Underground. This may also have been due to John Cale, who produced her debut album.
Horses shows all the power with which she impressed me back then and still does today. Angry guitars push Patti Smith forward, her voice occasionally breaks and reflects the musical departure into new realms that was to come in the following years. It is still an album that captivates and is almost perfect. What else can one say about an album that has accompanied me throughout my life?
Last week saw the release of Gruff Rhys' latest album Dim Probs. The album shows once again that Rhys is consistently pursuing his own unique path. The man sings entirely in Welsh, which means that those who do not speak the language can concentrate fully on the music and immerse themselves in it.
Most of the songs exude a relaxed atmosphere, as if they had been recorded in a living room with a few friends. But on closer listening, you notice so many facets, such as piano, a few synths and even the occasional trumpet. An album that grows on me with every listen.
