Arm of Roger - The Ham and its Lily

So the story goes, possibly inspired by their record label saying Summer Here Kids could've been a hit if it wasnt so lo fi and could've done with louder drums, Grandaddy decided to, whilst recording the seminal Sophtware Slump album, also recorded a fake album with the sole intention of sending it to their label making them think it was the real album. So, they went to great lengths to make it sound just about believable but bad and lo fi enough to send the record label executives into a cold sweat.

Jim Fairchild of the band had this to say...

"We did this. We went through the trouble of making a fake record. Or most of it. You Know You’re Fucked Up actually stems from a recording Jason and I made with Randy Keener in 1993. Down With The Animals was a tune we’d made up in the van years before. We would get wasted and write and record things like Robot Escort or the Pussy Song in a couple hours. The fake album was more or less done before we began work on The Signal to Snow Ratio EP, which preceded the Sophtware Slump as the test of our newly acquired gear and space."

"We sat on it for months. When Jason finished mixing The Sophtware Slump in November, 1999, he made cassettes of the fake album (yes cassettes) for I guess around 7 of the key people at V2 worldwide. We FedExed them so that they’d all arrive on a Thursday to offices in England, Benelux, France, US, and maybe Australia. Each had a personal note from Jason that said something about our excitement for what we’d made and our looking forward to working with everybody over the next couple years. The story we heard was that people were arranged around tables in different parts of the world, listening to the new Grandaddy album, conference call buttons engaged. Jason had made the sequence so that the first few songs could be sort believable as our new tunes. I mean, the songs are largely terrible, but there is a sense that whoever made them possesses some knowledge of song structure, melody and general composition."

"This is Thursday. I was “managing” the band at this point, so I thought for sure I’d hear a word of response by that evening, Friday at the latest. The weekend came and went. I called Jason Monday and was scared. Thinking the idea had crashed one of two ways; that V2 had found enough to like that the gears were in motion to release this piece of shit, or that we’d been dropped. I wanted to call and say, hey guys, we were joking! Jason’s perspective was just chill and let them reach out. Another day and a half went by and I was properly freaked out.
This was pre-caller-ID days, so every call that came to my house, I’d let it go to the message machine, begin listening and if it was someone from the label, pick up and be prepared to continue the ruse as long as I could. Finally at the end of Tuesday, the phone rings and our beloved A&R person, Kate Hyman, is leaving me a message about receiving the record. I pick up and Kate says “Hey Jim, I got the album….now will you send me the real one you fucking asshole?!” Exact wording, I can still hear it. I guess at the conference table there were a few people who thought it was pretty weird, but okay. Maybe order some new mixes and see what happens. Some people thought it was terrible, that we’d spent our advance on booze and drugs and this was the result. And then I would imagine most listeners were simply confused. People were either angry with us about wasting their time with this stunt, or had a decent sense of humor and were as pleased as we were about it."

The album saw a limited CD release a few years later, by which time it was credited to a fake band called Arm Of Roger. They even played a gig under this name.

But now it's out on vinyl... and worth the wait.

2012 Re-View

So here it is - the best music things of 2012.

Best song:
PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING - Spitfire

Of course.
I've already raved about this - it's one of those rare songs that I can listen to on repeat. Six months on, I still get a buzz whenever I hear the intro.

Best song title:
Scott Walker - SDSS141E+13B (Zercon, A Flagpole Sitter)
Clocking in at just shy of 22 minutes, the track almost outdoes the title when it comes to incomprehensibility. Sublime, ridiculous, pretentious, hilarious, impenetrable but totally compelling. Not quite "Make It Easy On Yourself" then.

Best album:

Field Music - Plumb

Or is it Dexys - One Day I'm Going To Soar?
Or maybe The 2 Bears' Be Strong?
Both strong contenders, but I'll go for Field Music - because of it's brevity, I can listen to it repeatedly SO many more times.

A great "alternative rock" album:
Dirty Projectors - Swing Lo Magellan
What I love about Dirty Projectors is how essential everything is. Every sound, note, hit of a snare drum, have a purpose, each adding something unique - there's nothing superfluous here and no generic guitars strumming with a bass playing the root note. Oh, and the songs are pretty good too, which helps.

A great "alternative electronic rock" album:
Fuxa - Electric Sound of Summer
A Christmas present, so there's still plenty to discover with this as I've only had it for just over a week. Post/space rock and electronica, featuring three brilliant cover versions - Our Lips are Sealed, Some Things Last a Long Time and Cheree (which they have stretched out to 10 minutes). In fact the Suicide references stretch further than covering Cheree, with another track being named "Marty Suicide" and the sound on many tracks coming across a bit like Suicide collaborating with Lali Puna - that is if Suicide were a bit happier and enjoyed spending summer afternoons lying in a field listening to the birds singing.

Five great gigs
So much great live music. Here's five examples.
Grandaddy (Ritz)
Public Service Broadcasting (Soup Kitchen)
Pulp (Motorpoint Arena)
Dexys (Green Man Festival)
tUnE-yArDs (Green Man Festival)

Some great album covers:

Three Ambient Records:

It was quite refreshing to find the man who is to blame/thank for the whole genre showing the kids how it should be done. Brian Eno's Lux is one of the most beautiful things he's released in a long time. It sounds even more special now I have it on "180g DMM mastered double vinyl". Honest.

Daniel Lopatin is steadily becoming one of my favourite 21st century artists, with three brilliant albums released over the last couple of years. After Ford and Lopatin's homage to the 80s (1980s and 2080s) that was Channel Pressure, and Oneohtrix Point Never's sublime Replica, we now get a collaboration with Tim Hecker on the Instrumental Tourist album, which might be called ambient, but a thoroughly modern and forward thinking ambient.

Oh and Julian Cope released Woden, which was originally recorded in 1998 but left in the vault. He describes it as "one 72-minute ambulent meditation upon Warden Hill & Avebury". After a difficult opening section, it transforms into a beautiful and absorbing three-note melody accompanied by the distant sound of church bells. Or is it the sound of distant church bells?

Drone Pop:
I'm talking about Circles by Moon Duo, a Wooden Shjips side project (for one member anyway) that takes the sound of Wooden Shjips / Spaceman 3 and blends it with tunes that border on pop. Fantastic stuff.

And talking of side projects...
Tame Impala or Pond? Well, they both released great albums, with TI getting (most of) the accolades. Lonerism was the more consistent, but Beard, Wives, Denim contained Moth Wings - a psych rock masterpiece. A tough one to call.

Hot Chip or The 2 Bears?
Both will put a massive grin on your face. In Our Heads sounds like Hot Chip (understandably), whilst Be Strong is the perfect soundtrack for anyone pining for some post-house, Ian Dury-esque pop...and anyone who is in need of a Bear Hug.

Reissue of the year:

In agreement with 99% of all music publications, it has to be Can's The Lost Tapes. Archive material from 1968-1977 and previously unreleased, this is probably the most remarkable thing I've heard in years. So good, in fact, that I bought it twice.

Oh, how they spoil us:
After a six year gap, Mouse on Mars return with not one, but two shiny new albums of their unique glitchy electronica in a collision with techno, krautrock and hip-hop. One for the head (Parastophics) that you can dance to, which took years to complete, and one for the feet (Wow) that you can admire for it's cleverness, which was thrown together over a few months. Both great.

Best Format:
Barry Adamson - Brighton Rockers. Released as a playable postcard. That's right, a postcard that you can play.

And here's some more albums I've loved this year:

Barry Adamson - I Will Set You Free
Spritualized - Sweet Heart, Sweet Light
Euros Childs - Summer Special
Neil Young - Psychedelic Pill
Pye Corner Audio - Sleep Games
Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Hallelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!
Four Tet - Pink
Daphni - Jiaolong
Toy - Toy
Squarepusher - Ufabulum
The Flaming Lips With Heady Fwends

Anyway, you get the point...

Aiming Toward The Sky - Grandaddy at The Ritz, Manchester

Although darlings of the music press, starting the gig with three songs from 'Sumday' - perceived by many critics as their weakest album - could be seen as a statement of intent: What do critics know eh? El Camino's In The West, Now It's On, and "Yeah" Is What We Had are up there with anything else in the Grandaddy Catalogue. Following these up with a b-side (Fare Thee Not Well Mutineer) showed this was going to be a masterclass in reforming for the right reasons.

Playing to a sell out crowd at the Ritz, what we got was something akin to a fan's dream set - album tracks, b-sides and a cover version (their blistering cover of Pavement's "Here", which originally appeared on the AM180 7" single). Naturally, they play a fair chunk of 'The Sophtware Slump' - an album that quite possibly outdoes OK Computer  with it's vision of machines living in a decaying future, but this is almost equalled by the number of 'Sumday' tracks. Of course, there's always going to be something else that they could/should have played, and an alternative setlist could be made by focussing on 'Under The Western Freeway' (2 songs played tonight) and their overlooked swansong 'Just Like the Fambly Cat' (clearly overlooked by the band too, as they didn't play any songs from this).

Although originally lumped in as being another Americana band, there's still something wonderfully unique about the Grandaddy sound - analogue keyboards sit (un)comfortably alongside the guitars, crunching chords are left floating mid air, motorik riffs underpin melodies to die for. Or, to reference one of their album sleeves, "sad strings, chunk chunk guitar, quiet vocal, end ahhhs, piano"; they do uplifting melancholy so much better than most bands.  And AM180 still has the most ridiculous hook in any song ever.

Ending the main set with where it all started for me, with the wonderful Laughing Stock (I can't remember what Piccadilly Records said about this single at the time, but it was enough for me to take a punt and buy it without hearing it), they return for two encores - The aforementioned Here and, finally, the nine-minute song that needs no chorus, He's Simple, He's Dumb, He's The Pilot.

Here's the setlist (should you need it)