BEATS OF LOVE 

98. Headache by Grouper

RUNNING THROUGH the farmhouses on Red Hill with my mates older brother, giving chase was exhilarating and once off the path and running across open field, I could easily picture my dead body, left, concealed beneath the long, reedy blades of grass. 

By the time I was eventually caught, all he could muster were a few limp footed kicks at my scrunched up body. I thought there and then that living in my imagination was more fun than anything reality could offer.

Just as well because by the time the orthodontist, Mister Bogues, had finished accessing me, I was sitting patiently with my red greyhound style brace clamp wrapped around my face every evening waiting for my teeth to be straightened. Unable to enter my mid-adolescence, I was instead surrounded by records that I would play on my imaginary radio show every Sunday night. 

By the time he showed me his success with the before and after moulds, my hooter had sprouted both across and out of my face. A face now riddled with at least four red boils at anyone time. No wonder I continued with my imaginary radio show and, in essence, still do. 

'So', asks nobody at all, 'what is the best record you've bought this week?' This haunting beauty, I reply. A record I should've bought in 2016 but didn't. Thankfully repressed in time for the duvet months. Enjoy. 

     

BEATS OF LOVE 

97. Supa Kool by Mr Fingers

AGEING IS great. If you do it properly, by taking a leaf out of Saint Anthony of Padua's book. Who stated wisely:

 'Consider every-day that you are then for the first time beginning ; and always act with the same fervour as on the first day you began.' 

Folk often use their ageing process to ossify dogma into their brains, which sort of steals time away from the self so becomes depressing. Which is why so many older folks look really glum-faced in their unknowing sense of knowing, or vice versa. 

Propaganda is nothing but a calculated lie and, thanks to social media, it pretty much dictates what riles us. Whether we're buying fake news or opposing it. We've witnessed a complete clusterfuck of conservative policies and are still sloshing about in a state of false consciousness. Unable to recognize the face of our oppressor. Thankfully, I've now switched off and decided humans don't evolve. What I probably thought aged five.  

When I was living with my kid sister, our housemate was properly middle-class. She had a part-time job that paid more than my full-time job and an allowance on top. I never used the phone, but spoke to my mother when my sister was on the phone. Anyway, we get this bill and our housemate said she didn't recognize some pretty pricey numbers and wanted it split between us.

My sister, being softer natured than me, said she'd oblige, but I snuck into her room and rifled through her things until I found a pad with these numbers. When I confronted her, she soon-after packed off and left saying she didn't feel secure in my company. Her posh family looked at me like I was a thief. It then formed my belief that people with money and easy access to lawyers are not to be trusted. A belief that I still hold today. 

But I know I must truly let go of it if I want to live with the fervour of a fresh new beginning. In the meantime, I almost convince myself that I'm beginning already by surrendering to this beauty. 

BEATS OF LOVE

96. Scorpio Rising (The Scientist Mix) by Death in Vegas with Liam Gallagher

WOKE UP up feeling lost at sea. Then had to sweep a big fucking dead pigeon into a bin bag and felt even worse.

That sinking feeling when you know you've got two dozen working weeks ahead and you already feel totally knackered after just one. The regret you feel at frittering away all your holidays in a summer that's pouring with rain. Then you bang on this and everything brightens up.

Life in technicolour even. And the sun even comes out giving me a full whole day of clear blue sky. If ever Noel's trite Status Quo styling were borrowed to sound gratingly like The Beatles it was here. The original version sounds too self-consciously aware of this and creeps about like a non-poisonous snake. The genius that is The Scientist strips away a lot of those superfluous psychedelics and decides that adding keys and vibraphone with toasting over Liam's Lennonesque drawling works best. And it does. General Jah Mikey steals the show, demonstrating that sometimes seemingly suspect ideas work really, really well.

You can either roll a big fat one or do what I do and psyche yourself up for a day in the garden. Reaching up for the trowels whilst swaying your head along to its majesty. Music has nearly always saved me from total despair.

I've always found my freedom in listening to it and that probably gives me the strength to endure real life. To paraphrase the great Abba, 'thank you for the greatest music!'

BEATS OF LOVE

95. Something in the Air by Me

 The grazing sheep, the divisive red-stone brick

Of a mill-town anger! or is it just innovation stifling the air?

Why commonwealth cousins sailed across a body-filled ocean

owing to the starkest decisions, and ripping, and killing

Thus, as they arrived, the sixties swung so wildly they hurtled 

curlers clean into the air, and our rich little cotton spun town 

sprang into the sharpest decline

Two sets of once opposing footy firms stand together

united in their micro-aggression, then clean vanish

into a millennial springtime smog

All eyes now on folk they baited on national telly no less

responding with that same carmine fury 

 As the inflamed suffragette toughening up her fight, 

purely to defend a fundamental right

BEATS OF LOVE 

94. Honey Sanba by Katsuyuki ItakuraTrio

AS AN ex smoker I'm constantly plagued by smoking dreams where I'm puffing away in a state of contentment, only to wake up in a guilty cold sweat. Before thankfully realizing that was another life. 

A life of unfathomably long bus commutes to get me to work and back. It's little wonder I subconsciously recall the often torn brown and orange stitching on the upstairs seats where I puffed away far more than the nightlife that first drew me into the metropolis. 

For four years, my kid sister encouraged me to try a new life there, but the fear of being too skint to buy records stopped me. I finally went to live in my mate's back bedroom. My job was somehow intact and now much nearer to home. 

When I was being made redundant (22 years after I'd hoped), it seemed like all that record buying would permit me the chance to own a little vinyl cafe. When the redundancy finally happened covid was happening and then when it wasn't the cost-of-living crisis happened. I figured only a completely brave bastard would pursue such a risky endeavour. Not me then. 

A life of unfathomably tough 3am starts keeps me in my current job, but I still count all my many blessings. Like buying brilliant records like this. 

BEATS OF LOVE 

93. Hold Me Now (Extended) by Thompson Twins

AFTER MY father died, I was given his gold wedding ring, which I duly wore until 2010, when the finger it was on swelled up and it had to be cut off. The ring, not the finger. 

I then gave it to my ex to look after to buy time before refashioning it to my wedding ring. I would like to say I ended the relationship when I found out she pawned it, but the relationship only ended after a heart to heart with mum's partner. It's poignant that the two men in my life were instrumental in me reaching that decision, which helped me turn that difficult page. 

I'm not a multi-tasker, so had I been knee deep in that life SFH wouldn't exist. That it has survived ten years where the only low was being unremittingly abused online one Saturday morning is down to the missus. Pure and simple. She knows my limitations and lets me meander, but she also knows I've promised to start selling some records again. It all got a bit complicated after we left the EU and that gave me an excuse not to. We're even looking at a sporadic dancefloor based night once that's up and running.  

I sometimes look at my life as the third person, so have to really remind myself that I've done all these things before. Way back when my hair was darker and my mum and kid sister supported me through my anxieties. That support has never abated despite my hair turning white and my mother dying. Add to that the missus' unflinching faith in me still and I should be fucking invincible.  

Viva the women in my life for this fresh new chapter. And let loving start.

 

BEATS OF LOVE

92. Slam Dunk Funk by Future Perfect

 LAST NIGHT in the late summer evening sun, the magic happened. 

Without headphones and in the main just picking up records randomly, I got in the zone and built things up brilliantly. I should be coz I've been doing it for nearly 40 years. There were many satisfying moments, but picking this up and playing it after roughly two-thirds of Herbert's People That Make the Music was blissful and kept me dancing.  

Yes, dancing. I'm all for a mix that locks two tracks together and takes the dancefloor somewhere surprising but not that keen on the seamless join. At least not if the DJ has locked themselves in their headphones for about two whole minutes to perform it. They could be dancing and enjoying themselves and still keeping their dancefloor happy.   

This record dating back to 1995  has been totally forgotten, and I fully anticipated it spoiling the magical mood I had created, but for reasons outside my understanding, I played it anyway and was richly rewarded. I love its extra sensory layers. It's subtler and sparser than I imagined it was going to be, and, in that moment, without the aid of mixing it, or filtering it, it totally slayed me. 

I totally bought into the idea of the DJ as shaman and the all surrendering ritualistic reverie of their followers, but now, as I age and decay, I better understand the limitations of such an idea. 

And so fully understand why my next-door neighbour went outside to mow his lawn rather than appreciate my alchemy and hand-claps. The bastard!