2004 was a bad year for music.
Of course, every year has great music in it – don’t believe anyone who’ll tell you otherwise, they’re just not looking, or listening, hard enough – and 2004 was hardly an exception. Bearsuit released ‘Chargr’, for instance. 65daysofstatic released ‘retreat! retreat!’.
Art Brut released (the superior Rough Trade version of) ‘Formed A Band’. Fiery Furnaces released (the superior EP verion of) ‘Tropical Iceland’. The Concretes released ‘You Can’t Hurry Love’. Wiley - who is currently gracing front pages of The Wire, Plan B and One Week To Live, all worth checking out even if you have given up on the printed music press – finished what Dizzee’s Mercury win starting by dragging grime kicking and screaming overground with ‘Wot Do U Call It?’. Cornershop introduced Bubbley Kaur and released ‘Topknot’. Help! She Can’t Swim released ‘Bunty vs. Beano’. Ikara Colt released ‘Wanna Be That Way’. Biffy Clyro released ‘Glitter & Trauma’. The Broken Family Band released Jesus Songs. The Unicorns released ‘I Was Born (A Unicorn)’. Mclusky released ‘She Will Only Bring You Happiness’. The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster released ‘Mister Mental’. &c. &c.
But 2004 was the year that John Peel died. And, as you can probably tell, i’ve never really gotten over it.
There is an immense number of Peel-related weblogs about that either started before he went (Radio Plus being a personal favourite), or, more frequently, cropped up in tribute after his death (John Peel Everyday, Teenage Kicks, Right Time, Right Place, Wrong Speed, Kat’s Karavan, The Perfumed Garden, Fades In Slowly, Furtive Fifty, John Peel’s Record Box, Peel Acres, John Peel Pages and so on). But, although i can’t really speak for Bianca, my entire outlook on music, let alone my record collection, owes pretty much everything to him, so you can add my share of this blog to that list too. It’s quite frightening really, thinking of the bands that i really truly love, and realising how they were, with very little exception, either bands i first heard on his show (and, in many cases, nowhere else), or only gained access to wider exposure because of his patronage. He was the only person in Radio 1 – and, really, national broadcasting in general – with the courage, audacity even, to play whatever the hell he wanted knowing that the right people will eventually catch on, and genuinely caring about his listeners to boot, which was understandable given his immense belief in what he broadcast. But it is still very, very scary that alternative music culture (not alternative in the sense of ‘alternative’ music now, packaged and sold back to you, but alternative in the sense that it disregarded trends and market research for sheer throw-it-to-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks embracing of anything good, regardless of background) relied on one person so heavily. And now that one person’s gone i still feel lost.
Anyway. Rather than babble on about how much i like Peelie – which, i must admit, i’m considerably prone to doing – here’s a couple of absolute corkers that i first heard on John’s show in 2004. They’re both pretty epically lavish slabs of neo-psych-rock, in case you’re into that sort of thing. And both bands have particularly ace monikers too.
First is by Earth The Californian Love Dream with a song that i remember hearing John play a couple of times but somehow on both occasions – possibly because i was drifting in and out of slumber, although considering my sleeping pattern since then that’s unlikely – i managed to miss the name of both the band and the song, possibly even on nights when the highly useful tracklistings weren’t being written. Then, a few weeks later caked in mud on a farm near Pilton i heard the song again, only this time on a massive soundsystem in a tent as music to watch bands set up by. i rushed over to the sound desk and enquired, with some urgency, “do you know what this song is?”
“Earth The Californian Love Dream”, he said, for some reason not looking best pleased that someone was taking an interest in what he was ‘playing out’.
“…what?!”, i replied.
It turned out that this particular song featured on the staple of the festival, the annual Truck compilation, and hence was played regularly all weekend – also acting neatly as a reminder to catch their set. In a way, i’m kind of disappointed i did, as it turned out to be their only song of any considerable merit – the other songs just weren’t really that memorable, or were memorable for all the wrong reasons, like, for having lyrics such as “women fighting is what i like to see” and “fuck Ozzy, fuck The Queen” or having titles like ‘Porn Star’. But at least there was one very shiny gem in the middle of it all.
Earth The Californian Love Dream – In The Garden
The other is by equally well-named psych-punk overlords Marble Sheep. i remember Peel both starting and finishing a show with this track, which, somehow, kicks in with a tremendous amount of gusto, and yet seems to remain as energetic and charged all the way through, if not more – to the extent that you don’t realise it’s been going for eight minutes. i managed to pick up the Marble Sheep album (‘For Demolition Of A Spiritual Framework, released the year before in their native Japan) a matter of days later in a London record shop – for some reason, i remember it being the same day i bought Who Will Cut Our Hair When We’re Gone? and Huge Chrome Cylinder Box Unfolding, although that’s probably not very interesting – and believe me when i say that eight minutes is bestowed with a virtue of brevity compared to some of the other tracks. Apparently they’re ‘veterans’ of the Eighties new-psych improv scene, although seeing as they’re churning out tunes like this in the twenty-first century i’d say they’ve still got it.
Marble Sheep – Fla Fla Heaven
i would also like to draw your attention to another song that i first heard John Peel play in 2004, and another track that opened one of his shows. For that, though, i feel i should alert your attention to (for the second time this week) Teenage Kicks, and in particular this post because it holds within itself probably my favourite track of 2004. As you can see from my comment at the end of it, i really really was rather excited to be able to download this version of ‘O Superman (For Massanet)’ by the divine Laurie Anderson (remind me to do a blog entry on her at some point, she’s a fascinating artist and it’s a shame that her one big hit is remembered as a ‘novelty’ rather than the beautiful piece of music it is. It’s also a shame that a lot of her other work is so often overlooked, but it gives bloggers an excuse to complain about it, which is always useful.) Although John credits the track to ‘The X-Booty Crew’, i have a sneaking suspicion that X Booty is actually the label and that the remix is by Dan The Drummer, who i can’t seem to find the website for. Darn! Anyway, i was so excited about hearing it at the time that i remember writing a gushing blog entry elsewhere, claiming that it was a piece of such perfect simplicity, sticking Anderson’s sublime vocals over the thunderous ‘Funky’ by Henry Cullen and Julian Liberator, that it rivalled Duchamp going and painting a moustache on the Mona Lisa (although, in hindsight, it feels a bit more like the Mona Lisa is painted underneath the moustache, if Anderson represents the painting and Cullen/Liberator represent the rebellious act of ridiculous, almost eccentric aggression). Of course that’s debatable, but i think in terms of the bastard pop/bootlegging craze that had pretty much died out in terms of fashion/invention by that point, it was one of the finest meeting of minds. Anyway, get over there and listen to it already.
(And also, if you head over to the ill-ec-tro-nic blog right now you can download the new remix by M.A.N.D.Y. and Booka Shade...sweet.)
i’ve decided to do this Annals Retentive in two parts, as 2004 was a year that i also spent a great deal of time ligging around my hometown of Southampton, growing for itself as it was a rather envious local scene that seems to have withered considerably over the pas few years (with the exception of the forever ace-core Ejector Seat promoters), so i’ll save some of the better lesser-known tracks for then. But i will leave you with a track from another more celebrated geography-based scene of the time, the New Cross, which despite also fading away still sees its band offspring running amok in the playgrounds of pop. Nice to know that some of the bands (or ‘friends’) mentioned have gone on to greater things – i’m looking in particular at The Long Blondes but i also think that The Boyfriends, Ciccone and Luxembourg have made particularly brilliant records since, not to mention The Violets, Rhesus, Japanese Intellgence Mind Control and Since Last Summer. Oh and Art Brut have a new album out of course. It’s rather a shame, though, that since this recording the programme that they love has died.
Art Brut & Friends – Top Of The Pops
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