BEATS OF LOVE 

54. Disco Pogo magazine Issue 1 

I'VE NEVER felt the compulsion to have a tattoo, but when I left my flat in Didsbury for a Clarksfield back bedroom, I did have an inscription engraved on my bracelet - Disco Pogo.

Got some funny looks, but I figured that the fun nights I had in the Paradise Factory were the catalyst for an adventure that lasted just over four years. After my mum died, I changed the inscription. I guess I get the same psychological benefits from it as some folk do with tattoos but without enduring the physical pain. 

Paradoxically, I try to limit my online footprint but spill shit out blogging. When Jockey Slut requested crowdfunding for their latest venture, the lack of a Paypal option deterred me, but thankfully, enough folk were less paranoid and contributed. The result, Disco Pogo, an epic excursion into the glossy world of the high end magazine, finally arrived via Juno and a pricey parcel force delivery. After a night of page turning, my wrist is now back in a splint. 

I recall the Pavilion staff selling the first JS in the cloakroom during Space Funk and twisting my sister's arm into buying me a copy. We both thought it was a naff thing to do, but nobody else was commenting on underground clubs and I really wanted to see its content. So glad I did. Thankfully, only a small portion of DP surrenders to nostalgia with the bulk of its content focused on the now. Or, clever enough to place the music I love in a better historical context which helps me understand how it operates in moving people nowadays. Now I'm glad I got the Sherelle cover, despite not knowing who she was.  

Faith is still covering Luke in fanzine fashion, which is cool, but here we get a proper journalistic hindsight instead, which is very refreshing. Justin, too, turns in a highly analytical and considered piece, which sets a high benchmark. This high benchmark creates a healthy competition, so hopefully issue two will be even better. 

My bugbear with JS became its ever spiralling reviews that I often found disingenuous. Consequently, I wasted a lot of time in headphones, listening, whilst recognizing the same underwhelming five star promo records returned, piled high on Vinyl Exchanges counter. A scene not much bigger than a cottage industry is hard to fire home-truths at, I guess. Thankfully, the reviews are no more. The infamous editors seem to comprehend that everything has atomized but are shrewd enough to coalesce their central narrative on aspects of the past and present that unite us all still. 

It's weird, but seeing folk out and about is often deflating. Names are sketchy, backstories forgotten, online personas troubling, and my general, all round, disorientating sensory impressions, play havoc with my nerves. However, sat here with this big glossy magazine on my lap, I feel much more united with these folk. Folk I shared some mad, mad times with. 

Viva Acid House! Indeed.   

 

BEATS OF LOVE 

53. In The Trees by Held By Trees

GOT TO thank Jason Boardman for turning me onto this whilst he waits to kick start his fresh new label Before I Die, which is already off to a flyer when the pressing plant gets its arse in gear. That J-Walk cassette that he's turning into yummy vinyl is something else. 

These melodic instrumentals invoke the spirit of Mark Hollis with their improvised over plays, musicianship, and rich textures, but aren't over reverential. It has a breezy tone that makes it more in the manner of.

No less than seven session players, all audible components on Talk Talk's late masterpieces, or Hollis's exemplary solo work, are led by David Joseph, whose field recordings and lockdown meanderings lay the foundations for this project. Joseph also gives an honourable mention to Pink Floyd and Blur, presumably on account of the ensemble for this project contributing to their work. I can hear Floyd in some guitar lines and am still not sure whether this a good thing or not. Thankfully, this sounds nothing like Blur.     

If languid tremolo fretwork and music influenced by nature is your bag, then this track is the one for you. Fewer players give it more space to breathe than some of the other tracks. And no wailing guitars or saxes either. That clarinet really takes you to a special place that suspends both time and space. Jazz infused early morning dew, basically.     

It's a bit of a muso venture I guess, and, Jason, with several decades' experience inside the scene, states that this will appeal to "middle-aged men with beards & Balearic inclinations.." And my guess is he's right. The kind of people like me, resistant to this fresh idea that Talk Talks' earlier work was much more pioneering. 

I can already hear my mate saying 'noodly bastard' and I'm only on my third spin.   

SONGS THEY NEVER PLAY ON THE RADIO 

17. Sonic Youth & Mudhoney:  1989, I don't know just where I'm going But I'm gonna try for the kingdom, if I can

PART 1

GETTING LOST in a vortex of noise was the perfect prescription for me as I neared the end of my troubled teens. 

I was joining the dots between the 60s underground bands by borrowing their records from Oldham Library. It was where I was first introduced to the Velvets, whose debut LP mesmerized me. I finally paid a small fortune for a British original out of an ad in the NME. Long before Vinyl Exchange opened. Songs about drugs were always going to gravitate me towards drugs. Waiting For The Man went around my head for at least another decade as I sat on buses, in the back of cars, and waited around in dodgy boozers and flats in far-flung places like Fitton Hill. 

The Stooges were a different proposition to the Velvets hyper-self-consciousness and the perfect harder rock foil, sounding much more night-out and sexual. As I began to immerse myself in Iggy's world, I was going out less and less and was about as asexual as Morrissey. I was probably eating a lot more LSD than him, though. 

Sonic Youth and Mudhoney share the same, differing, yet harmonious, dynamics, as The Velvets and Stooges. The first LP I really got into was Sister, which felt truly special, sounding to my ears at least like a fully realized New Order. Its highlight Cotton Crown is a masterclass in detached harmony and evokes the ice maiden Nico duetting with someone even more wasted. It blows my mind still. Halloween, as covered by Mudhoney, loses Kim Gordon's enchanting sexuality but gains a wilder, more direct form of rock abandon, that shakes you to the core. In their honour I wore beads until one night in an LSD induced panic, I thought they were strangling me so snapped them off my neck. 

I also religiously wore my 501's, Vision Street Wear boots, and, Chevignon shirts to their faded and ripped dying embers and wished I was sat in the semi-circle in Dave Booth's Hangout with all the cool winkle-picker and Sterling Morrison hair gang but I had wavy brown hair and loved shaking it about in a frenzy better suited to the bedroom. Especially to Touch Me, I'm Sick. I later discovered that this infamous semi-circle hailed from Chadderton, which was very disappointing, as it was as every bit as dreary as my own hometown.  

After hearing the far more exotically located Kevin Shields and Bobby Gillespie both infer that factories were weirder than rock'n'roll, I misunderstood that they meant weird in a stifling shit way and decided to leave my college enrolment queue to stay put in my job. After all, didn't Warhol himself work in a factory? I soon became imprisoned in an LSD and music existence, which sort of necessitated a need for the effortless, repetitious work I was doing. That I could do in my sleep. When I finally got the meaning of what they both meant, I was well and truly trapped. I kept playing Piss-Factory repeatedly, hoping something would change, but it never did.  

PART 2

BACK IN 1989 Sonic Youth were a heads down sensory assault that absorbed nihilism, feedback, pop culture, sex, hip-hop culture, and a subtler confrontational form of punk rock, as seen through a goofball lens, before deconstructing it all. So much has been written about them since and even Dave Clarke, the dreariest man in music, is a fan, as is Roberto, but back then they felt proper underground whilst looking seriously cool. Everyone was talking about the over-rated Technique that only found a pulse on a few tracks and not the dynamic and utterly compelling Daydream Nation. 

With hindsight, I shouldn't have worn my enviable collection of band tees for work coz they'd be worth a fortune today. Especially my Daydream tee. I actually swapped my Fall tee for a Sub Pop logo tee straight off Steve Turner's back and onto my own. It stank. I had no idea Mark Arm was a junkie or Thurston Moore's father died when, like myself, he was 18. I also had no idea Paul Smith would get royally shafted either as he passed me the booze and ushered me around his backstage inner sanctum. This parallel world I was living in was brilliant. Swapping tees and talking about life and death with some of my favourite bands.

That Manchester show on a wet Monday in March was absolutely mind-blowing. So good that everyone rushed to call their bands Eric's Trip. Stunning support act Mudhoney hit the stage with them to play an improvised I Wanna Be Your Dog, then stage dived before it got really tedious. I woke up with post concert tinnitus still ringing around my ears and smiling really widely before heading off to Pizza Hut with my good mate Stu with the world of work a million miles away. I honestly assumed I was going to be a rock star. Don't laugh. 

However, by the time Sonic Youth played the Royal Court in Liverpool touring Goo, they'd sold out to some large extent coz they'd brutally jettisoned the lovely Paul Smith and coerced more impressionable young bands onto their major label to paper over the limitations of their own star potential. Going from purveyors of avant-gardist guitar noise par excellence to taste-makers and curators. A massive climb down. Or was I just mad, jealous of all the people backstage? Probably.  

Mudhoney, by comparison, sounded properly primitive with their straight up garage and R&B that amounted to a ball of sheer energy experienced live. Superfuzz Bigmuff is still one of my favourite spins with its redemption songs, dumbed-down, dirtiest grunge, skewed psyche, and soul overload, that really set the benchmark for anything they did after way too high. That said, When Tomorrow Hits is a mighty tune that shows they lived and breathed Ron Asheton and could do this rock'n'roll malarkey in their sleep. 

My love affair ended in the melee at Reading when, on a warm afternoon attempting to retrieve my shades that had been knocked off my head, I saw my life flash before me. I'd tripped over and was about to be trampled to death when luckily some really strong chap got me back on my feet. I've not worn converse boots since. 

 

Inner sanctums and exciting parallel worlds were often sought but seldom discovered, and never as much fun when they were. And working began to feel a lot fucking harder. Cheers Paul!  

BEATS OF LOVE

52. That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore by The Smiths

BEING NON-CONFRONTATIONAL, nervously outspoken, and often isolated, has, at varying times in my life, subjected me to bullying. 

What should've been a lifelong friend, whose online persona gradually consumed them, created instead a cold and hyper-critical monster. Becoming someone that I had to disengage with. That's the problem with bullying. It dehumanizes everyone involved. Watching others being bullied turns my stomach. Unfortunately, disengaging in a workplace isn't an option. 

My latest perpetrator dehumanized me to raise their own levels of disgust,  which I've discovered, then facilitates a space to inflict real harm. Inevitably, the subtle psychological torment began after my complaint about their aggressive behaviour was lodged, which, as someone cleverer than I noted, is bullying by stealth. It isn't as easy to pick up on CCTV, either.  I'm now facing weeks of damaging investigation after declining mediation. 

I fell out completely with God and my parents through their inaction at being told I was being bullied and am still scarred by the countless times I handed over my bus fare in fear and instead walked home. Or, had my expensive clobber nicked from the changing rooms only to see it in the schoolyard on my perpetrators person.   

My parental advice was to run for the bus and be more careful. No wonder my perpetrator got away scot free and no wonder I have ambivalent memories of my adolescence as a consequence. I recall the great pride I had in my sister when she stormed into her son's school when he was being bullied and the look of guilt written across my mother's face when it happened. I bunked off school in part to escape my perpetrator and in part to memorise Morrissey and Marr's melodies and lyrics. Especially this masterpiece, which still brilliantly evades any definitive meaning, despite me knowing every syllable and hook, and a bit about poetry. 

BEATS OF LOVE 

51. Crockett's Theme (Extended 12" Mix) by Jan Hammer

THE MISSUS after just over 6 months in a permanent job is facing redundancy for a second time in twelve months. 

She was also facing the results from an MRI scan. Thankfully, the results exceeded our hopes by allaying all our fears which have shone some much needed perspective on our work anxiety. As we all face a cost-of-living crisis, it's worth remembering that health is wealth. 

Playing music to accompany feeling especially good used to be the norm. Most of my disposable income was spent ensuring it. Nowadays, not so common, which is why these last few days have felt so great. 

I duly dug out as much light pouring in sunshine type music as I could grab and pigged out on their grooves until, predictably, this song completely knocked me sideways. I love James Goodwin's anecdote, recalling that at a rave club in Grimsby 'Whenever the drug squad raided the club (which was quite often in those days) The DJ would play this tune.'

It's our generation's Hamlet cigar ad tune. The jazz rendition of Bach's Air on the G String may still be the ultimate hammock tune but this masterwork composed by the mighty Jan Hammer and mixed with the even mightier Francois Kevorkian pours in much more light and sunshine. 

Life feels good. And even when it's doesn't, it is worth remembering that it will. And when it does, just make sure you have this tune at hand to make sure you max out on it.