Today’s episode delves largely into the world of hip hop and dancehall. We start with Missy Elliott, who was probably the first woman to take on a leading role in hip hop at the turn of the millennium. Rarely has a singer and producer pulled so many rhythmic masterpieces out of her sleeve as she has.
In 2003, the Jamaican dancehall singer Sean Paul scored a global hit with Get Busy, which could be heard on every radio station in Germany at the time.
The Cure, too, couldn’t resist using handclaps in their songs during their more upbeat phase.
After taking a short break last week, we’ll now continue with a round of clapping hands. First one today's selection features John Fogerty. Centerfield is the title track from his third album and contains everything that made CCR famous.
Beck released Where It's At in 1996 as the lead single of his best album Odelay. The Dust Brothers produced this album that is full of great samples. And they did the same high class production they did on Beastie Boys Paul's Boutique.
The Cure released this song 1985 and moved to a brighter sound.
The weekly journey into color and temperature takes us back to the eighties and the noughties. Let's start with a song from 1983 by Prince. With his album 1999 he became known to a wider public. Not so much because of his idiosyncratic interpretation of funk, but also because of his sexual innuendo in Little Red Corvette.
The Cure released in 1987 their first double album Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me a record whereupon The Cure impressed with an unprecedented wealth of facets. The addition of new instruments and the sometimes unconventional song structures annoyed one or two fans in black outfits. Many of the songs are sunnier than everything they recorded before and after. And on Hot, Hot, Hot they played a superb funk-pop.
Blue Orchid was the opening track from Get Behind Me Satan the fifth album by The White Stripes. The song shows exactly what you could expect from the whole album: minimal played, raw blues with great hooks.
Over the past few days, I have been cleaning out my inbox and getting rid of garbage and superfluous advertising. I couldn't resist to gave some advertising a listen and discovered Dame Bonnet, a Berlin-based new wave/post-punk collective.
Various searches don't reveal much more about this collective than that they largely follow in the footsteps of The Cure and try to reproduce their spirit in a cool electronic sound. Which they have succeeded in doing quite well with this song.
Another week has passed and we are ready for the weekend. So let's start with a couple of songs who have immortalized Saturday in the title.
First a song from the debut album by The Cure. An album that only featured a floor lamp, a fridge and a hoover on the cover and didn't reveal any other information. For those who listened to the album, it was a musical revelation.
A song from David Bowie's early days and played far too rarely.
The Drifters were an American rhythm and blues/soul vocal group best known for their song Under The Boardwalk. But this is also a nice one
This year also saw the return of old heroes after many years as well as new material from well-known and respected artists.
I was most surprised that The Cure were able to pull themselves together again and release a new album. To be honest, I didn't expect much from the album other than the old dish of flabby songs being reheated. However, it was not to be expected that they would present their best album since Disintegration and show that they are more than just a cover band of themselves. No one expresses world-weariness better than Robert Smith.
Matt Johnson has also taken almost a quarter of a century to release new material. His music still defies categorization. Somewhere between art rock and new wave, his perfectly produced songs are carried by his voice. The sound sounds like it did back then, but it is in tune with the times. An album not just for nostalgics.
Barry Adamson's new album has been playing on my record player since the summer because, after his time with the Bad Seeds, he has once again managed to capture his other musical influences from soul and blues in remarkable songs. Whether it's funk or a bluesy groove, everything is present on this album and where others lose themselves in the mainstream, he shows his true greatness.
Maybe it's my age that I've been listening to more (old) soul music this year, but it's music that felt good when I heard it. The only new soul music that sticks in my mind this year is Michael Kiwanuka. Sure, he likes to drift off into soul-pop realms, but he still shows great respect for his role model Marvin Gaye. A cleverly conceived album that once again lives from Kiwanuka's voice.
Songs:
Hermanos Gutiérrez are two brothers from Switzerland with Equatorian roots. They released an almost instrumental album that could be a soundtrack for a spaghetti western. Calm and beautiful.
Not only this song by Kurangbin is worth to listen.
Orville Peck and Beck made one of the coolest country-soul songs this year.
Another month has passed and the end of the year is fast approaching. The first Christmas decorations are already being put up in the cities and sweets are being draped in the supermarkets. For me, however, it means that my annual holiday is not too far away.
A song with the month of November in the title was not difficult, as Andres A song with the month of November in the title was not difficult, as Andres Trentemøller quickly came to mind. The Danish musician and producer released Fixion in 2016, his fifth album on which he indulges his passion for the post-punk and new wave of the 80's. Instead of intelligent bass lines, organic band sounds take centre stage here.
November sounds as if The Cure had rediscovered a piece from their early days. A song that could easily have been released on Disintegration and is more a further development of The Cure than a copy.
On Sinus, he changes the sound by starting with a powerful bass and then creating a dystopian sound that is strongly inspired by Vangelis and Blade Runner and conveys a retrofuturistic metropolitan atmosphere.
Phoenicia is a song that builds up a hypnotic tension with psychedelic organ loops, which are fulminantly released at the end. Spacemen 3 may have been the inspiration here.
Over the course of the week, The Cure released a new song after 16 years to much media hype. Even when I first heard this band, I was captivated by their music, it has accompanied me over the decades and I was able to see them live several times.
Musically, Alone relies on tried and tested fare and there seems to have been no further development of their music. Why should there be? Does it always have to be something new and better? I personally like the song, even after the second listen when I had put aside the expectation of a further development and could be pleased that Robert Smith has remained true to his roots and has transported his sound extremely well into the here and now.
The fact that the track then runs completely against the ‘mainstream’ with almost 7 minutes and an eternally long instrumental introduction rounds off these thoughts once again. Ultimately, The Cure may still offer enough points of reference in 2024 for younger goths who want to discover what ‘gothic’ originally sounds like. A little consistency is almost refreshing, especially given the diversity that gathers under the huge musical genre umbrella.
Once again, Bristol Archive Records have dug deep into musical history and created a monument to the local music scene with The Bristol Goth Explosion. Many of the bands played at The Bastille, a club in Bristol that was something of a scene meeting place.
Goth can be described as the darker side of punk, was very bass-heavy and peppered with sharp guitars. At the beginning of the 80's, both the musicians and the followers of Gothic adopted a dark and gloomy outfit and some, like a school friend of mine, still celebrate this today and meet every year at the biggest Gothic event in Europe in Leipzig.
This compilation clearly shows that there were other bands besides The Cure and Siouxsie and the Banshees who had the potential for more.
1981 was that year when a lot of new bands appeared on the scene. Most of them had their roots in post-punk and new wave and many of them didn't made a bigger career. Not because they weren't good enough but probably because they sounded similar to other bands that made it big or they didn't got the right promotion. One of those bands were Manchester's The Chameleons. Their music has the same gloomy mood like The Cure and Joy Division but they always tried to involve pop into their sound. I bought their debut Script Of The Bridge and was fascinated of their songs. All of them are timeless and I can hear their influence in today's bands like Slowdive or The National. This is a great legacy for an underrated band.
During the last days I made thoughts about a year end list and listened to various albums I owned during the last months and I asked myself why Slowdive didn't appeared on this pages during the last months. Everything Is Alive is another album by them that is far over the average of other released records. Slowdive are filled under shoegaze but this is not all. For me they are one of the best in slow-motion rock. A reduced speed and space for guitar excursions are their trademarks. I was lucky enough to see them several times live and at every venue they fascinated me with their sound. Their last album shows less more than I expected on a high level but there was one song that grabbed me. The instrumental Prayer Remembered is a song that could appear on a late record by The Cure in the days of Seventeen Seconds or Pornography. What in and of itself would be great praise. If someone shouldn't be familiar with their sound, this song will be a perfect entrance into.
In 1989 The Cure released their eighth and last great album Disintegration. They were a band that I loved from their beginnings and I am lucky to see them live a several times during the last decades. With this album they convinced me once again while they returned to a dark and gloomy aesthetic and good guitars. During the weekend I ordered a ticket for their show in October and thought it will be correct to feature them again at this place.
In the early 80's Oz, a new discotheque (later it was called as a club) opened the doors in Stuttgart. The specific at this place was the basement where the owners realized a small venue for live concerts. I remember one evening when me and a couple of friends owned tickets for a new band from West Sussex. The Cure came to promote their second album Seventeen Seconds and we expected nothing more than a good gig. What we became was one of the best concerts I ever had the luck to be part of it. The venue was very small and constructed for maybe 300 visitors but at this evening there were more than 500 persons in this venue. You could imagine how it was standing in a crowd close rank to your neighbor, the air was filled with a full load of cigarette smoke in the air for a couple of hours. I remember also that lots of people standing on the stairs and watching the show. The concert started with the supporting act, Abwärts a punk band from Hamburg and they were full of the energy punk gave them in these days. I really enjoyed their fast and amateurish songs. The perfect support for the main band. I saw The Cure several times during the last decades but they couldn't beat this gig. Robert Smith and Lol Tolhurst had so much fun playing their songs and made their gloomy songs brighter. After almost two hours playing most of the songs from their first two albums they finished their gig and giving the audience a session of four songs together with Abwärts playing a few standards by associated bands like Siouxsie and the Banshees. All in all a venue were we came back often in these days.
Anders Trentemøller is back with a few new songs after a couple of new songs as well as the Danish team in the European championship. With his new songs he move back to his early influences like Joy Division or Slowdive. Shaded Moon starts like an outtake of a session by Joy Division and The Cure with a deep tuned bass and moves towards pulsating synths. An unexpected and superb return by him and one of the best songs this year so far.
When I first saw the album in my record store I didn't know what I should think of this cover. A picture of a old floor lamp, a fridge and a hoover didn't make sense at all but made me listen to this album. Nothing more or less I was infected by the first album of The Cure from 1979 and I have to admit that I still love them. They made the sound of punk and new wave compatible for many others. Without them my musical education wouldn't be the same as it was. Three Imaginary Boys is a milestone in music history that still works after more than 30 years. Timeless songs for timeless listeners. And to have the courage to cover Jimi Hendrix in these days is more than respectable.
Another song that I heard for the first time a few days ago and I can't get rid of it was Where We're Going by Gerry Cinnamon a Scottish singer-songwriter and acoustic guitarist from Glasgow area. I never heard of him before and if my investigations are right he is a hidden star filling great venues without a big promotion. You can describe his music as acoustic folk and mostly the singer and his guitar. This song is different - not only that there is a band in the background - to his other songs because it has a mood like New Order playing a guitar pop tune or The Cure when they recorded In Between Days. Very nice.
As far as I know The Cure made a great performance at Glastonbury this year and now many people talk about them and their influence in music history and how they work well on stage after all these years. They were always a band I loved from deep in my heart and I played for a few month in a band playing their songs. After all I wasn't good enough to play bass and I quit - probably too soon. But it makes me smile when new bands follow their footsteps nowadays. One of those band sis Slowness a band from San Francisco/NYC. Their latest record has some songs on it that would fit easily on Cure's Disintegration added with some kind of Neil Young or guitars you could hear sometimes on records by The Fall or Spacemen 3. I know this sounds weired but give them a listen and you might agree with me. One of those new records that made fun to me and will be played in my house often this year.
