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Yoko-Ono-trees

This week’s episode of Later…with Jools Holland features Smokey Robinson, The Dead Weather, Bassekou Kouyate, Miike Snow and Basement Jaxx. Basement Jaxx are joined by Yoko Ono, who will also perform without the band. This week I will just focus on one of those guests. Yoko Ono is an artist and musician, who got her start in music when she hooked up with a singer named John Lennon. Lennon was a member of a band from the sixties called The Beatles and Ono’s relationship with Lennon was seen by many as a major reason for that group’s untimely demise. Lennon was quite fond of Ono and wrote a number of songs that expressed his fondness for her. They were man and wife for the whole of the seventies, but the arrangement ended at the end of 1980 when Mark Chapman took Lennon’s life. Here are a number of songs sung by Yoko Ono plus a couple written by John Lennon about her. I’ve also included a few more songs about Ono, the breakup of the Beatles, and Sissy Spacek’s displeasure at the cover of the Two Virgins LP


Dear Yoko – John Lennon

Every Man Has A Woman Who Loves Him – Yoko Ono

Give Peace a Chance (CSS remix) – Yoko Ono

Day of The Sunflowers – We March On (feat. Yoko Ono) – Basement Jaxx

Be My Yoko Ono – Barenaked Ladies

I Won’t Be Your Yoko Ono – Dar Williams

Yoko Ono – Ben Lee

I Never Quite Got Over The Fact That The Beatles Broke Up – Per Gessle

John, you went too far this time – Rainbo (Sissy Spacek)

Not John – Loudon Wainwright III

The Ballad Of John And Yoko (Beatles cover) – Teenage Fanclub

Oh Yoko! – John Lennon

A Legend in His Time

John Peel

On this day five years ago, John Peel was getting ready to present another episode of his radio show. Unfortunately, it would be his last as a heart attack would take his life a few weeks later while on a working holiday in Peru. He had been best known as a disc jockey and champion of the musical underdog on BBC radio. His Peel Sessions gave many bands their first chance of airplay and a load of them went on to have successful careers in the music business. Sadly, I never got to hear his shows as it was not possible for me to listen to BBC radio when he was around. Nevertheless, I’m grateful to him for giving a first chance to many bands that I count among my favourites. For example, he once announced on air that he was feeling a little peckish. A cheeky chappy from Essex heard this and he delivered a Biryani to the studio along with a copy of his demo! He was offered a session straight away and Billy Bragg has become a very respected songwriter with loads of albums under his belt

He gave The Undertones’ Teenage Kicks its first airing and then returned the needle to the start of the groove and played it a second time! The song became his favourite and would be played at his funeral. He was also a big football fan and had been present at Heysel Stadium in 1985 when dozens of football fans lost their lives. He stopped attending matches for a few years after that and was also upset by the Hillsborough tragedy in 1989. In 1991, he appeared as himself on the long-running BBC radio soap The Archers and was awarded the OBE in 1998. To tie in with Football & Music’s tribute to the great man, I’ve put together a mix of some of my favourite Peel sessions and songs by bands that Peelie championed


A Legend in His Time


Transmission – Joy Division

Joy Division Oven Gloves (Peel session) – Half Man Half Biscuit

You Just Haven’t Earned It Yet, Baby – The Smiths

C.R.E.E.P. – The Fall

Girls Don’t Like It – The Undertones

Just Like Honey – The Jesus & Mary Chain

This Is Love – PJ Harvey

Typical Girls – The Slits

Cattle and Cane – The Go-Betweens

Town to Town (Peel session) – Microdisney

Dancing in the Moonlight – Thin Lizzy

(My Girl’s Got) Miraculous Technique (Peel session) – Belle & Sebastian

Lions in My Own Garden (Exit Someone) (Peel session) – Prefab Sprout

Babies – Pulp

Death-Cab For Cutie – The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band

Like A Virgin (Madonna cover) (Peel session) – Teenage Fanclub

Ace Of Spades (Motorhead cover) (Peel session) – The Shop Assistants

Felicity (Orange Juice cover) (Peel session) – Wedding Present

Boredom (Buzzcocks cover) (Peel Session) – Magazine

Fear Is a Man’s Best Friend (John Cale cover) (Peel session) – Billy Bragg

Shipbuilding (Elvis Costello cover) (Peel session) – Graham Coxon

Wonderwall (Oasis cover) (Peel session) – Cat Power

I Only Have Eyes For You (Peel session) – Mercury Rev

Legend In My Time (Peel session) – Laura Cantrell

Bread And Butter – Ivor Cutler

Shot By Both Sides

Magazine_2009_MONO_300dpi

The fifth episode of Season 35 of Later…with Jools Holland promises to be a little more interesting than the two previous shows. This season, a couple of post-punk bands from the north of England have already appeared in the form of Leed’s Gang of Four and Liverpool’s Echo & the Bunnymen. This week it’s the turn of Magazine (pictured) from Manchester, formed in 1977 by Howard Devoto after he quit fellow Mancunian band, the Buzzcocks. They have re-united and have been touring this year. A Song From Under the Floorboards is the closing track of their third album, The Correct Use of Soap (1980). The song has an amazing lyric and was influenced by Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Jimmy Ruffin was also coming across all existential on What Becomes of the Brokenhearted, a 1966 hit on Motown records for the soul singer. Ruffin was born a couple of years before Steven Gene Wold, better known as blues singer, Seasick Steve. He’s led quite an interesting life and he uses many of these experiences in his songs. Steve has a kindred spirit in Devendra Banhart who, like Steve, has led a nomadic existence that has taken him around the US and Europe. I really like his radical take on Don’t Look Back in Anger, a version that nearly creates a new song out of the Gallagher brothers original. The Australian band Wolfmother has a new album due soon as well as a new lineup, following the departure of a couple of the original members. Vagabond is the closing track of their self-titled debut album from 2005 and is yet another bluesy number. The final guest on this week’s show is a British singer named Paloma Faith. She is a trained dancer, a former magician’s assistant and has a Masters in theatre direction, so presumably her performance will be more visual than the others. Her vocal style and musical influences would not appear to be a million miles away from those of Amy Winehouse


A Song From Under The Floorboards – Magazine

What Becomes of the Brokenhearted – Jimmy Ruffin

Dog House Boogie – Seasick Steve

Don’t Look Back In Anger (Oasis cover) – Devendra Banhart

Vagabond – Wolfmother

Stone Cold Sober – Paloma Faith

100 Not Out

100euro

I began this blog seven months ago and I must admit that I had no idea back then what shape it would take. I’m quite surprised that I’ve reached my hundredth post so soon. This means that I’ve posted an average of three times per week, even though I have sometime gone weeks where I haven’t posted at all. Most of my posts have been about music or gigs that I’ve attended or musicians I like. I’ve also posted a few times about current affairs, my travels, football and film. My two most popular posts have been Happy Birthday, Bruce! and It’s a Long Way to Tipperary. The reason for their popularity was that Expecting Rain (a Bob Dylan site) linked to these posts and brought in hundreds of extra visitors. Elbo.ws, the music blog aggregator, also brings in a few hundred hits every week. And I’m aware that I have a number of regular readers as well, so thank you all for your comments and for popping over here every week. Here are a few tunes to celebrate this century of posts


100 Not Out


A Century of Fakers – Belle & Sebastian

100% (Sonic Youth cover) – The Raveonettes

One Hundred Years From Now – The Byrds

One In a Hundred – Gene Clark

One Hundred Days – Mark Lanegan Band

$100 Groom – Paul Westerberg

100 Seconds – Power of Dreams

100 Boys – The Golden Horde

Fantastic Day – Haircut 100

100 Weight Of Collie Weed – Carlton Livingston

One Hundred Miles – Ted Hawkins

New Century Hornpipe – Norman Blake

The Song of a Hundred Toads – The Handsome Family

I Prefer The Twentieth Century – The Lucksmiths

Century After Century – Idlewild

Century Eyes – Shearwater

100 Yard Dash – Raphael Saaqid

Song Of The Century – Green Day

I Got You (At the End of the Century) – Wilco

End of a Century (Blur cover) – Squeeze

A Century Ends – David Gray

American III - Solitary Man - Johnny Cash (2000)

Each week from now until the end of the year I’m going to take a chronological look at my twelve favourite albums of the noughties. These are the albums I liked most from that decade and the ones I played most often throughout the last ten years. First up is Johnny Cash’s American III: Solitary Man from 2000. Cash was primarily known as a country singer and I heard a lot of country music on the radio when I was growing up. Unfortunately, it was an Irish version called country and western that featured Irish lads and lasses wearing cowboy outfits and attempting to mimic American accents and themes as they sang either their own songs or their inferior versions of classic American country music. I could have been put off music for life if it hadn’t been for the occasional Johnny Cash tune that appeared now and then on that radio station named Tipperary Mid West Radio. It wasn’t too hard for the Man in Black to stand out because his songs were superior in quality and seemed more authentic than those of a chancer who claimed that it was he who shot JR Ewing

One of the first tapes I remember buying was a compliation of Johnny’s most popular songs with the rather catchy title of Itchy Feet: 20 Foot-Tappin’ Greats. I also got into the two prison albums, At Folsom Prison and At San Quentin. He seemed to have had a quiet time of it musically after the mid-70s and I doubt if I heard much of the stuff he released after that time. I came across the first two albums he recorded with Rick Rubin while browsing in the music section of the local library when I studied in the US. American Recordings (1994) and Unchained (1996) had been critical successes and had re-established his reputation following a less productive period in the preceding decade. For each album, Rubin suggested songs by contemporary performers that suited Cash’s voice and persona. Some of the most effective interpretations on the first two albums included his versions of Nick Lowe’s The Beast in Me, Tom Petty’s Southern Accents and Soundgarden’s Rusty Cage. Additionally, Cash also included his own songs as well as some of his own favourites. Cash summed up the process of how songs were picked in an interview with Anthony DeCurtis that appeared in Rolling Stone magazine. Cash told Rubin: “I’m gonna sing you a song and if you don’t like it, you tell me. And if you got a song that you like and I don’t, you’ve got to listen to me”. This bargain paid dividends as the choices of both Rubin and Cash worked well within the context of the overall records

For their third album together, Cash and Rubin had deliberately chosen songs that featured lyrics dealing with Cash’s own mortality (he would die in September, 2003). Between the release of Unchained and the recording of its follow-up Cash suffered a number of setbacks that affected his health. First, he was diagnosed with a neurological disorder called autonomic neuropathy. Then, he was hospitalised on a number of occasions for pneumonia. This damaged his lungs and affected his voice. His illness mean he couldn’t put in a lot of time in the studio and he and Rubin only recorded when Cash felt comfortable. They put down the vocals and basic tracks in a studio that Cash had built in a log cabin at his home in Tennessee and completed the album in California. When the album was released that October, it got a lukewarm reception from Ben Ratliff in Rolling Stone magazine. His review begins: “Even the best good ideas can get pushed too far, and for Johnny Cash, American III: Solitary Man is one Rick Rubin-built cover album over the line”. He goes on to criticize the record for being under-produced, apart from the version of Nick Cave’s Mercy Seat. Certainly, Cash’s voice is weaker and the instrumentation is sparse, but it is these qualities that I like most about the album

The frailty of his voice is apparent in the album’s opening track, his version of Tom Petty’s I Won’t Back Down. Both the lyrics and his delivery of them are defiant, but there is also a vulnerability to his voice that is just as powerful. Cash’s version of the song is far more convincing than Petty’s Jeff Lynne-produced original because his aging voice is more convincing than Petty’s disaffected drawl. Petty joins Cash on vocals on his own song as well as Neil Diamond’s Solitary Man, a song for which Cash won a Grammy award for Best Male Vocal Performance. I first heard Johnny’s take on this song when a friend of mine (who’s also a huge music fan) handed me his discman in the college canteen and urged me to listen to it. Dan was quite enthusiastic about the song and I must admit that I shared his enthusiasm then and I still do now. Cheers, Dan. I’ve included the original versions of eight of the songs from the album plus earlier versions of Nobody and Wayfaring Stranger. Have a listen to these and then the versions on Solitary Man and I think you’ll find that Johhny was right not to back down too soon from the music business


I Won’t Back Down – Tom Petty

Solitary Man – Neil Diamond

That Lucky Old Sun – Frankie Laine

One – U2

Nobody – Nina Simone

I See A Darkness – Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy

The Mercy Seat – Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds

Would You Lay With Me (In A Field Of Stone)? – David Allan Coe

Mary Of The Wild Moor – The Louvin Brothers

Wayfaring Stranger – Emmylou Harris

Echo & the Bunnymen

This week’s episode of the current series of Later…with Jools Holland features a more interesting and diverse roster of artists than last week’s one. Echo & the Bunnymen’s distinctive guitar and vocal sound brought them lots of critical and some commercial success in the eighties. They’ll be playing songs from their latest album, The Fountain. Calvin Harris will be appearing and he’s best known for his hit, Acceptable in the 80s. I’ve included a version from last week’s guests, Editors. The Spaghetti Western Orchestra will be playing their versions of one of cinema’s most successful and distinctive composers, Ennio Morricone. The Pogues also do a fine job of one of Morricone’s most famous themes. Better Times Will Come is the title track of American country singer Diana Jones’s current album. Biffy Clyro are from Scotland, but they sound like an American rock band to me. Finally, the easy-listening crooner Andy Williams will be playing music to watch the girls go by


Seven Seas – Echo & the Bunnymen

Acceptable In The 80s (Calvin Harris cover) – Editors

The Good, the Bad & the Ugly (Ennio Morricone) – The Pogues

Better Times Will Come – Diana Jones

Living Is a Problem Because Everything Dies – Biffy Clyro

Don’t You Believe It – Andy Williams

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