BEATS OF LOVE 

144. I'm Gonna Change by The Velours

AN OCCUPATIONAL hazard of supermarket work is old work colleagues regaling tales at inopportune times or informing me of folk dying. 

One such guy informed me a former colleague was in a coma and asked whether I knew him. Course I did. He was the only guy who ever got barred from the work's drinking hole. 

He threw the contents of his colostomy bag over his girlfriend's head after a heated argument. I then added how unfortunate he was to miss out on redundancy. Leaving months before the announcement. I was abruptly told he did alright, pilfering items from the firm for nearly two decades. Understandably, nobody in security wanted to search his colostomy bag despite strongly suspecting it contained company property. Even a CCTV camera installed over his workstation didn't deter him. Explains why somewhat ironically he had the sweaty, nervous energy of someone in constant need of the John. 

It then hit me that life gets reduced to a couple of these anecdotes by people who are little more than caricatures in our lives. Clothing myself in Christ and not gratifying the desires of my sinful nature will not change anecdotes after I'm dead. It might make me less damaged and better equipped to die. When I was expecting death in my 30s, a death I was spiritually unprepared for, I promised God that if I survived, I would change. What life has taught me since is there's a plethora of deaths, many of which no amount of spiritual change prepares you for. 

My biggest problem with old work colleagues' tales at inopportune times is responding by wrapping myself in flippancy rather than clothing myself in Christ.  

BEATS OF LOVE 

143. Tu Amor by Mamacita

I RECALL my old pal Aidan saying to me in the mid-nineties 'we're on our own in this world.' I felt sorry for him as I lived with my kid sister and felt close to a clubbing community. 

I would never have dreamt of saying such a thing. Unsurprisingly, when my sister moved on and I ditched the old lifestyle, facing massive personal hurdles; loneliness, temptations, and the feeling it was all in vain, his words resonated. Though I prayed deeply, instinct told me to go back to church.

It's easy to register faults with organised religion, and it still tests my faith for sure, but by going back to church, I've become much more like the person I want to be. Now, every day when I wake and every night before I sleep, I talk to God in prayer. I'm far from on my own in this world.

I marvelled at my aunt’s courage as she faced major surgery. She was a true practicing Catholic, far better than me, making an ultimate sacrifice: undergoing an operation not to survive, but to get my sister onto the property ladder. After weeks of failing health in the hospital, she could have chosen palliative care. Instead, she strove to act. She was driven by the divine company she kept in her spirit, guided by a quiet understanding of what it means to be at peace with the world.

With or without God, it appears we've replaced that giving generation with a taking one. One with inherent greed and a sense of entitlement at its core. Unforgiving natures have replaced mercy, selfishness has replaced selflessness, fear has replaced courage, a confusion has replaced assurance, hallucination has replaced faith, and saddest of all, a sense of being on our own in this world has replaced what it means to be at one with each other. 

It needs restating 'we are not on our own in this world.' And restating again, I fear. 

BEATS OF LOVE 

142. Miles Further by Wrekin Havoc

WE UNPACK how artists reverse-engineer music to invent new sounds, making the complex simple, so we can all feel a little more enlightened. 

Well, this week was a real toughie. It was the anniversary of the death of my brother-in-law and to compound things, my nephew, who has been home with my kid sister, has just started a new job, so she was all alone near the Devon coast miles away from us. 

My mother's surviving partner is awaiting the memory clinic's assessment and is losing sight of us more each week and needing more of our attention. And sadly, work was especially weird. I say work because the manager that annoyed me is just programmed to operate in a hostile manner. Luckily for me, I had a couple of freshly bought records to play on repeat. 

The trancey warmth of Hey Mister Mister by Kriss, a massive want after Rob J posted it, has sent me to sound heaven. Weightless arms aloft. I'd settled for a CD version but the brilliant Sound Metaphors stable have thankfully put it out on their Thank You imprint. In the same packet was this absolute gem of a tune. Rob again with his fellow West Midland cohorts, Stuart Robinson and Richard Hall. Who've produced this epic dose of musical madness which eclipses everything I've bought this year. 

Fuck the process, and fuck enlightenment. It is simply emotional pop at its very best. Its memorable vocal refrain teases in, carried mesmerisingly on a floaty bed of synths, then a dramatic guitar lifts it up even higher, and then we have take-off. It all feels way shorter than its nine minutes. My outstretched arms, in a musical hypnosis, are attempting to glide on the magnificence of it all. 

I really pray these special people in my life have things that can make them feel momentarily blissful that puts aside all their heavy burdens, like I have with healing and emotive music.

BEATS OF LOVE 

141. Blue – 80s Extended Unreleased Vocal Mix by Wham!

ORIGINALLY, A b-side track, the result of the eleven spare studio hours left after recording the mighty debut album Fantastic, and an obsession of mine in 2018. 

Its echoey, underground synthesisers, capture a raw indie energy rather than a calculated, chart-topping pop formula. Video of George wearing his Fila Borg Elite trainers on The Russell Harty Show captures him in a sharper, more captivating light.

  

You easily forget the track’s skeletal resemblance to Nothing Looks the Same in the Light. Instead, its melodic charm and hushed, tentative vocals seduce you. It captures a fragile performance by a frontman who had already silenced his partner’s creative input in a ruthless bid for stadium-sized stardom. These were their last songs that felt only mine; I surrendered subsequent releases to my sister's cassette collection for family car rides.

Its release coincided with the last time I felt naturally happy, so when I play their earliest records, it touches me personally. I can taste the fresh orange I drank before leaving the kitchen and picture my father's outstretched arms as I ruffled his neatly combed hair on my way to school. Life felt warm and playful, and I loved going to school and church. When their sophomore Make it Big album came out, I didn't. 

This edit works wonders with the vocals and turns this notion I have of it being a DIY tune on its head. It sounds crisp and not unlike a smash. I love the tactile cover and the Lovevinyl bullshit that accompanies the release on their website. Especially the lie about it being a hundred only pressing. After two failed attempts, I've finally got a copy. 

There's nothing bullshit about ECLA, their mighty edit rocks, and like a nice pair of heavy duty velvet curtains, it shuts out the world today brilliantly.

BEATS OF LOVE 

140. Looking Glass by The La's

USED TO go to the Liverpool Poly to catch bands occasionally. Getting there early to watch the soundcheck but when The La's played there in 1990 was a different vibe. It was already busy.

Ordinary, expectant people were milling around the bar with thick scouse accents. This was their band and with my deep monotone North Manchester accent, I was wary of speaking. After all, I'd been obsessed with most of their songs for just over a month whilst many of the crowd had lived with them for years. They were an incredible live force with a fiery spark, and the tunes were just dripping out naturally. 

Hearing from folk who'd heard Maver's demos for a follow-up album was a regular part of post-clubbing in the 90s. The stuff of legend, yet when they surfaced online decades later, they actually surpassed the crazy high expectations. Tears in the Rain slowed down, sounds sublime. The band hated their recorded output. However, despite their harsh criticism, it's still much loved. Their only album's closer. This effortlessly poetic epic helps give the band authenticity. Making it more resonant with age. It's the music that The Verve strove to eclipse. 

Shifting toward the experimental space of the twelve-inch releases, the track confidently declares a permanent change in direction. This new approach favours a direct, soulful expression, ironic then that Mavers' obsessive demo-tweaking confined him to the same songbook since 1986. The current dilemma is deciding which version to share; since Mavers detested the final release, many alternate sessions and takes have surfaced.

 

For today, at least, I'm going with the one that has served me longest. The one Mavers hates the most. It's still one of the best songs ever recorded.

 BEATS OF LOVE 

139. Afro Disco by Vincent Arthur & Dagomba

BIGGED UP Sam Don before, but he's since started a label. Sweet Free Association. 

I secured one of the last two copies on his Bandcamp page, as the original pressing has become expensive. Sam caught onto this record well before the price skyrocketed and has generously licensed three standout cuts. I also lucked out by grabbing one of the final two copies of his debut release: the incredibly rare Carter Lake by Carl Moore.

 

That track is a slow burner that peaked perfectly for heavy rotation over Christmas. Missing out on fresh music is the sole disadvantage of leaving social media, leaving me reliant on blogs and forums. But truly, it is the only downside. As a failed DJ, I appreciate the idiosyncratic self-imposed rules the successful DJs define their sonic territory into a particular style. A style they can then harness. Comparatively speaking, I'm like the massively overgrown hedge-way found outside derelict buildings.

Case in point, before deciding this record creates a brilliant atmosphere for dancing, I was pitching the idea, largely to myself, that Tony Ogden and John West's Man, Myth and Music demos, need recording. They're so good. Not by AI, but by the compilation artists' Imaginary records were so good at finding. I've also been entering the hallucinatory world of my mother's surviving partner with his rapidly declining dementia diagnosis. A fatiguing world. It reminds me that life can change in an instant. 

This year, I must stop filling notepads that overgrow with ideas that never get realised and act on one instead. Cheers Sam and Ted for today's lesson.

SONGS THEY NEVER PLAY ON THE RADIO

23. Nick Sanderson : Shrunken Head, Massive Head

PART 1

I DISLIKE drummers; they came back to mine and talked up Queen. They snidely slagged off my big hooter and formed the Foo Fighters.

I like Nick though, unless his cheeriness stood in my way of talking to World Of Twist frontman extraordinaire Tony. He has been the much loved antihero of at least four books I've read, so has become an obsession of sorts. Hence, this retro-glance back at his career highlights. In descending order; train driver, boarder, Earl Brutus co frontman, WOT, Mary Chain, Freeheat, Gun Club and Clock DVA drummer.

Would love to drive the Brighton to London train. All those tired empty faces of a Monday morning heading away from a weekend's pleasure. Not so good on a Friday teatime mind. I had fantasies about boarding school and a different life. Genesis fan Nick breaking into Peter Gabriel's house suggests it would've been a waste on me. That he had the audacity to go back there trying to find the touches to make an album that was both brilliant and commercial, and beat his host at table tennis is an anecdote for most of us but a mere footnote for Nick.

Surprised he wasn't driving the underground tube trains though, as he was a bit of a hex on the overground majors. The Mary Chain got dropped by WEA after his sole contribution to their arsenal. Circa dropped WOT after they handed in insanely rushed demos for a follow-up album. Polydor dropped Clock DVA after his sole contribution to their arsenal and Island dropped Earl Brutus after their sophomore album tanked. Not that anybody ever held it against him.

Wish he'd fronted WOT with Tony slinking into the background, but after commercial failure, the band got dropped and simply fizzled away. His time in the Gun Club, which bookmarked his time with WOT, coincides with the music of theirs I found more accessible. Lupita Screams is fantastic in anybody's book. It must've taken an enormous amount of patience and fortitude to help Jeffrey Lee Pierce realise his musical vision. Almost as much as helping Tony realise his. Little wonder he needed to exhale.

I've been blasting out Earl Brutus all Christmas. Their resonant slogans and glam leanings are as festive as I've felt, and I have been getting some funny looks in the supermarket where I work chanting their catchiest tunes. I needed a survival strategy. Where most acts drip their inner selves into songs, they resist that as if they were creating an art installation and not a song. It possibly explains why I only started getting into them once I understood the Chapman Brothers.

PART 2

MASSIVE KUDOS to Icerink for releasing Earl Brutus's skull-fuck of a glittery stomper, Life's Too Long, on the label. Not least because it is. They saw the remnants of World of Twist and If? and had their own minds blown. And kindly blew ours. Twinned on a good sound-system with The Fall at their deranged best, people would go insane. And I mean insane. That they surpassed all expectations was down to Nick's energy and soul. Few people can shout 'shrunken head, massive head' and make it sound earnest.

Following on from WOT, whose live shows were events Earl Brutus has attracted the anti-terrorist squad and, following Nick actually pissing on the stage, got signed. (Only in the nineties.) Predictably, I never saw them live. Possibly because I felt they'd wronged Tony, but more than likely because Gordon never once let on despite being in the same pubs and clubs. We hide the truth. Pretty sure my pal Jeff was into them back then.

Again, following on from WOT who conceived of the idea that writing the worst lyrics in pop's history would be their golden ticket, Earl Brutus conceived of the idea that infusing the energy and inane banter emanating from telly pages and gritty northern taprooms would be theirs. Alas, only art students think subverting the mainstream with highly convincing parody is a good idea. Their second album was no better than the first, despite major backing on account of their debut being so strong. Quality is quality, I guess. That said, Universal Mind should've been a smash hit.

And again following on from WOT, whose in joking held them back, Earl Brutus set themselves apart from their contemporaries. Seeing most of them as shoddy revivalists. Nick famously called his most famous fan Noel Gallagher, John Noakes, and withdrew consent for their inclusion on the Trainspotting soundtrack on account of Ewan McGregor sounding too posh. It was these acts of self-sabotage that made both acts great but came at a great cost. 

Freeheat; what happened before the Mary Chain reformed and while Earl Brutus waited for another label to sign them, was more an exercise in fun. That said, the Chemical Brothers sampled the riff from The Two of Us. Sadly, the last time Nick's wife and bandmate Romi duetted with Jim was in tribute to him following his untimely death. Tragic a life lived so richly needed a fundraiser. 

As I was ending this piece, Man United's beleaguered ten men had forced a penalty shootout. I thought of Nick, a massive fan and, for the first time in my life, actually wanted them to win. Unthinkable an hour ago.