Our journey around the houses today begins with a song by The Doors. Released on their fifth album Morrison Hotel they returned to their roots and played a powerful blues-rock on this song. I didn't listen to this song for a long time and I'm amazed at how fresh it still sounds today.
I couldn't resist presenting you with Status Quo's version as well.
We don't need to say much about Madness, and their biggest hit speaks for itself.
Alan Price was a key member of The Animals and after he left the band he formed The Alan Price Set and had chart success with this number.
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.
