BEATS OF LOVE 

111. Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is A Season) by The Byrds

THE FIRST few times I attended The Hangout as Isadoras, pissed out of my tree, I danced wildly. Meeting a lovely, bright-eyed girl in a suede dress on the dancefloor whose Hulme sofa I later collapsed on. 

I awoke having my hair playfully stroked with Bob Marley playing on her cassette player and thought I'd gone to heaven. Fast forward to the following Friday evening and I'm half cut but paralyzed by nerves, unable to call the number she'd given me. Then my good mate Stu, in exasperation, took the phone and, impersonating me, arranged my date.

Unfathomably, on the train down to meet her, he handed me a microdot, which I duly swallowed. My first time trip excitedly coincided with my first date. Then I stopped the uncontrolled laughter. Before you think my good mate Stu wasn't such a good mate, I must confess to living a charmed life and revelling in being a bastard. 

Locking a guy out of his own car as he got battered in my place was bad, but actually trumped by a case of mistaken identity. I emptied the dregs of my Holsten Pils into a driver's open window as we exchanged expletives. Further up the road, the irate driver, now armed with some lead piping, shoved straight past me and instead hospitalised my mate. So I deserved this.   

This being the crippling fear I was now experiencing in the club. The bemused girl attempting to hold my hand was scaring me. In fact, everything I set eyes on was. Even Stu, who seemed to have a whale of a time. I was better at closing my eyes and listening to Dave Booth's brilliant tunes. Then, as I nervously sidled away from my date, I experienced my Damascus moment. Exploring the swirling lights when this mighty tune came on and a small group of folk who looked like Candy Flip encouraged me to hold hands. We all danced together, only we didn't just dance, we flew up into the air and became a tangible mass of love. Feeling truly incredible and something akin to what I hoped clubbing could feel like.  

I had a dilemma: did I phone the girl to apologise or did I chase that incredible high? In fact, no dilemma at all.  

    

SONGS THEY NEVER PLAY ON THE RADIO

21. THE KLF :  Less is More

 PART ONE

I WAS literally bouncing off the Midland hotel walls in a wretched stupor on a Tuesday morning. I'd been out since Monday teatime where I'd been to an In the City Basics night. That preceded being in a posh flat ingesting acid with a guy I didn't know from Adam, which preceded sipping beer in the lively hotel until breakfast which preceded bouncing off the walls in search of a toilet. 

Alone then and bouncing off the walls, I startled a guy who was about to close his door but who was unfortunate in that he couldn't divert himself away from my attention. I cajoled him into making me a coffee as I fell into his room. He'd signed These Animal Men, but I didn't hold that against him. My ears well and truly pricked up when he said he was meeting up with the K Foundation later that afternoon. I wanted in but had six long hours to kill before their panel discussion and was already half-dead. Going back to my gaff in Withington for some shut eye was a no no as I wouldn't have reawakened. Instead, I hoped to score a cheap wrap of whizz back in the Midland. There I learned that middle-aged music industry types don't do cheap wraps of whizz.

By the time the K Foundation entered the building, I slumped across the bar and couldn't focus properly. Shielded from folk like me, but recognising that one shielder was John Robb, I found my feet and lurched towards Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond anyway to make my introduction. Only I didn't. I simply shook everyone's hand and slurred 'fucking ace' as I gestured towards my lighter. Had John Higgs's mind stretching book been out there, I might've had more to say but luckily it wasn't. I didn't stay for the discussion and didn't wash my right hand for days after. 

I wish I'd been more reverent coz these two visionaries are true beacons of light. Never had I heard crickets chirping on an album until I put their groundbreaking Chill Out on the turntable. 

PART TWO

THE KLF created in 2 days, armed with field recordings, samples, and punk in joking, a record that has intrigued us for over 3 decades. I picked up my copy in Probe and so built up a lot of anticipation on the journey home as I stared at its à la Floyd's sleeve wondrously. It's one of those albums that always puts a great big smile on my face as I reflect on the positivity associated with raving in 1989. Chill out music has since become synonymous with more linear beats and relaxing rhythms, for winding down to after a day in work, but the KLF made theirs for still being on, or coming down off drugs. Well, considering most folk the day after the rave. 

However, never was I raving in a field. Once invited to one, but needed over thirty quid when I had just enough cash to buy a burger and board the last bus home. We scored off a white rasta at the Whitts on Drake Street in Rochdale.

He'd wear a garish shell-suit and walk around chewing his face intensely, saying in hush tones either 'Sensi, sunshines, strawberries' and we'd be all smiles, or 'Squidgy black, ohms' and we'd look properly worried. We always buggered off on the train to Mancunia, nibbling on our wares, but on this one occasion, encouraged to stay, we went further down the road, then to The Pub. Foolishly; we necked our wares. All these mad-heads who sung along to American Pie pissed out of their trees were now full on raving. 

The strobes were on, but all I could look at were the rottweilers pacing about, or folk whose smiles were twisting off their weathered middle-aged faces. I was confused and scared as there was no leaving there until the notorious owner wanted us out. Thankfully, after a terrible time, it finally ended and any notion I had of ever raving in a field also ended. 

Occasionally, the inside of my head would glaze over with musical snippets of the night before creeping out with the freshness of a warm sun while the small birds in the garden would be singing warmly, making life sound sweet. On this occasion, though, still disturbed by this lock-in rave I'd attended, I had to put on some ready-made music to drift off to. Thank God then for the KLF's debut album. Interwoven with samples, found material, and deep space programming, it's perfect for those fragmentary moments that really help blink out a bit of bliss before stepping back onto the carousel of life.  

The trip I'm still on listening to this evokes a vast ancestor trod desert earth that slowly comes to life in a less distant past with Graham Lee's pedal steel guitar and the fractured samples that seem to flap about on an untuned nighttime radio. Sounding brilliantly sun-kissed but not site-specific. Their short film Waiting brings to life a soundtrack on the Isle of Jura which, with Ladyland era Hendrix, samples and harsh coastline noises, plays like a visual prequel to a rave that captures feelings of anticipation perfectly. The idiosyncratic £1000 a head, island rave, at what Orwell described as 'an extremely un-getatable place,' arrived a year later when they returned. I've envied attendee, Sarah Champion, ever since.

Cauty was the musician, and a bloody minded one at that. It was he who called time on the KLF at the peak of their power and he who wrote off ambient house despite coining the phrase himself. He had a point coz I actually bought a spare of his masterpiece Space in Our Price's sale bins. Arguably the best 3 quid I've ever spent. As conceptual as Chill Out, it works well as a companion piece that demands more of the imagination. The sleeve nods to the artwork of French Romanticism, the liberating force in classical music, to make a humorous point about his own planetary exploration. What he calls 'Music for 14-year-old space cadets.' The press release unsurprisingly ends with the word plop.  

Despite erasing all Alex Paterson's parts after splitting with the Orb, he made what was due to be their debut album his own. And all in the space of a working week. Jamming it out on analogue synths, sampling and looping classical elements, the album becomes a much sparser affair. Darker, deeper, and slowly becoming housier, the journey has aged spectacularly well and is probably the only record to encapsulate the term ambient house. It remains a groundbreaking record. Proving once again that less is more.  

As much as I loved their art foundation, the unique ambient music they created with a candour and humility in Trancentral is what possessed me to want in. Unsurprisingly, ending with the word plop. 

 

BEATS OF LOVE  

110. Cascade by Niecy Blues

NOT THAT I made a resolution, but after watching her fawning interview with Mone and Barrowman, which barely scratched the surface of their scandals, I resolved not to watch Laura Kuenssberg again. 

That went well as I sat agog while she cosily chatted with the PM less than a fortnight later. This left me convinced I knew more about the junior doctor's dispute and the post office scandal than the pair of them. Obviously, I didn't, but their dumbing down of politics in the media has now meant dramatists have more credibility.

Whilst my mother's partner celebrated his daughter-in-law's  50th at the Ivy, all attention was on their table until Kuenssberg and Dominic Raab turned up and sat nearby. Suddenly, all attention diverted away from my mother's partner's table and towards theirs, giving him the chance to see just how much booze they consumed. Then, unsurprisingly, Raab, when interviewed the following day, became utterly confused by the meaning of misogyny and sounded truly horrible.

 

The political landscape is now characterised by a revolving door of public school ninnies like him being cosseted by the media when they behave appallingly. Many see that appalling behaviour as authenticity, which epitomises society's shortsightedness. The media never cossets ordinary folk. 

With this track evoking the headphone heaven of the finest trip-hop, but with a fresh and twisted soul sensibility, putting me in my happy place, I resolve never to mention the flaccid state of British politics ever again. 

BEATS OF LOVE

109. Abigail's Party  DVD

PUNK-ROCK started our generation gap, but before that explosion, the teenager was born and grew up. Teenagers who defined themselves by buying and not making stuff. Who mimicked what they watched on the telly to style themselves, serviced their own ego and distanced themselves from their parents. Teenagers, a lot like me then. 

In this fresh, new state of alienated consumerism, these teenagers would continue as adults, defining themselves as middle-class despite being born into houses with tin-baths, buying stuff, including 'brand new' homes and often parented punk-rockers who rightfully rebelled against them.  

No art captures this unconscious state of blind aspiration that is still prevalent in society better than Mike Leigh's brilliant play. I've only seen it on DVD about fifty times. It survives because all the social antagonisms that the tragi-comedy teases out persist today. Their complete lack of any emotional transparency makes his class-obsessed characters, who instead only express themselves by what they consume, appear truly preposterous. Until we recognise little bits of ourselves in them. 

His only proper middle-class character, Sue, looks as uncomfortable as we do watching it. However, whilst she's recognising something shockingly novel, we're instead recognising our own family's social shortcomings and the binge-drinking culture that was spawned in society at large. 

Tragically, the punk-rockers in their more pronounced state of alienation failed to grasp that making stuff was essential in resisting Thatcherism. Sadly, they're now conjoined with their parents in that same middle-class bunker mentality. 

Distanced from both the white-working-class community they should've belonged to and migrants who they should be sympathetic to.

BEATS OF LOVE 

108. Father Stephen Doyle

MY LOCAL parish priest deserves my warmest well wishes and thanks as he sadly retires his post from ill-health. Despite the bad apples and the church's systemic failure to toss them out, the vast majority of priests still do a great service for their community. 

I first fell under Father Stephen's spell when he regaled his congregation with a warm sermon about his calling. He was young, like myself when his father died, and the dark episode convinced him to walk into the light towards the priesthood. I had some instant respect for him because of this strength of faith. All I could do was fumble around in the darkness. 

His candour and wit always temper a stiff-necked conservatism. I was privy to a lighter side of this character whilst being instructed for our wedding, when he regularly had me and the missus in teary fits of laughter. And a deep pragmaticism discussing our tribulations with the home office when I found strength through his guidance. When the health service was reluctant to assist. Later, whilst the missus was converting to the faith and in regular consultation with him, she always came home smiling despite being given a massiv, great big book to read. And that is the important thing. Despite his staunch conservatism, he still spreads joy. 

He even injected his dry wit into my mother's funeral prep when I was skirting around the houses, refusing to tell him that in all truth she was probably agnostic. His eyebrows raised playfully when he thought the word liberal was a bit of an understatement for her. Then the look of sheer relief when I told him she'd had the last rites. He loves music and sat disapprovingly as I was culling hymns from the folk mass for our wedding that I used to enjoy back in the early eighties. Unsurprisingly, during the pandemic and without his musicians, the church was full of Gregorian chanting. It was brill and so utterly Father Stephen. 

I will miss his high mass, even with the incense peppering my eyes, because it always felt like entering a sacred, timeless space. His theological sermons, which skilfully balanced cautionary warnings with brilliant stand-up comedy, did more than just entertain me; they challenged my thinking and re-shaped how I view faith. Even his long, unfashionable Eucharistic prayers became anchors of deep reflection in my week. I will miss them deeply because, in a changing world, they probably won't come back, but the impact of those moments will stay with me forever.

BEATS OF LOVE 

107. Thousands Are Sailing by The Pogues

CANCER AND my OU studies hit simultaneously, splitting my life into a clear before and after.

Before that, my identity was clear-cut: a far-left Roman Catholic, but thoroughly English. Case in point: choosing to watch Frank Sidebottom instead of The Pogues at Reading in 1989. While I knew I had Irish and Welsh roots, they felt entirely foreign. That changed with my studies, which have completely resurrected my distant past and rewritten my present.

My grandmother and her Irish mother and my aunt (taken into the home after her mother died) all lived with my grandfather. A Heyside native, surrounded by family. During the Depression, they all had to make the walk from Shaw to Chadderton for their state handouts. Two of her brothers died. Two of the seventy-six million who perished in those two wars. She, like me, was a cancer survivor. Yet, retaining dignity and containing sorrow, she remained a pivotal part of the church community.

Despite being highly intelligent, my grandmother was thrown into the mill at fifteen. It partly explains why her children were so keen to iron out their Irish and Welsh ancestry and progress up the social ladder. Selflessly, she propelled them forward. Remaining the beating heart of my mother's life, she missed her son dearly when he relocated. When she had a big jackpot win, she gave half back to the church and split the remaining half amongst her two children. Keeping nothing for herself. I can only imagine what a great example had been set for her. Even in death, kicking against the hospital bed posts with the pain of kidney failure, she was defying the odds.

This mighty song understands transformation through hardship. Sung with warm grit and deep kinship to Philip Chevron’s poetic lyrics, it speaks to me through this remarkable woman, the daughter of those we casually call refugees.

 BEATS OF LOVE 

106. Danger Dub by Panda Bear / Sonic Boom

I DEEPLY regret letting my dark moods and false ideas about authenticity drive me to be numb during my free time. It took my focus away from my true passion: my love for music.

Many albums I listen to feel incomplete or overworked. I see the problem, but I cannot fix it. Luckily, Adrian Sherwood is producing this record, and he fixes it. Giving it space to breathe. 

I have struggled to connect with Animal Collective records ever since the masterpiece that was Sung Tongs. That album balanced troubled Brian Wilson-style harmonies with genuinely thrilling experimentation. By the time they toured Feels, however, those same vocal arrangements just started grating on me.

I felt the same resistance toward the Panda Bear and Sonic Boom collaboration, Reset. On paper, their equal partnership promised so much, but the final product felt too constrained by its own pursuit of perfection. It is a frustrating listen: tracks like Danger are packed with brilliant hooks and clever 1950s vocal samples, yet the overall result ends up sounding a bit too artificial and saccharine.

Thankfully, Sherwood reinterprets the project and, whilst retaining the vocals, he isn't afraid to chop them up and create something looser, less constrained by concept and, on this track, especially upbeat. I'm in skank heaven coz those brilliant hooky moments are captured, but thankfully, with less coherence and fresher sounding instrumentation. It repudiates the notion that a new psychedelia has to sound futuristic. It simply doesn't, it just needs to be creatively exciting. 

I also regret that such an optimistic vibrancy wasn't around decades ago. Perhaps my moods wouldn't have been so dark.