Mono - It's the New Black

"Ooh, but it's a lot of money..."

That's what I kept telling myself (and what everyone online keeps moaning about) when weighing up whether to get this. But finally, two
years down the line I've gone and treated myself to the Beatles In Mono box set.

And I have to say, it's a lovely item - If aural fidelity isn't your thing, and if you don't care much for the physical presentation (and presence) of music then you might as well stop reading now. (oh, and if you don't like the Beatles too).

So what do you get for your money? Well, all the Beatles' original mono recordings for starters - most of which do sound MUCH better (really!) than the stereo version that we've been force fed on vinyl, CD and on the radio for the last 40+ years. If their music blew you away in stereo, wait 'til you hear some of this. For example, She's Leaving Home and Don't Pass Me By played at the original speed (that's right - the versions we've known over the years were mixed in stereo at the wrong speed), the original/correct vocal takes on If I Fell and Help!, and even the version of Eleanor Rigby without the mistake in it!! ("it had a mistake in it?" I hear you say). Oh, and Tomorrow Never Knows now sounds like the scariest piece of music EVER! Just like it used to. God know why this stuff has been unavailable and unheard my so many of us for so long.

The packaging is lovely too - minaiture replicas of the original LP sleeves/inner sleeves/lyric sheets/postcards etc and a booklet with loads of geeky information about the mono versions. Badly taken photos never do these things justice do they?

I'm going to go and throw away one of my speakers now - looks like I won't be needing it again.

James Yorkston - Live at the Brudenell Social Club: 4 September 2011

"I have no plans for world domination...I have no plans for gig domination". And so begins a compelling solo set from James Yorkston at a sparsely attended Brudenell Social Club - more fool those who stayed away.

Spellbinding, shambolic (in a good way) and self depreciating - "I hope no one has come here to celebrate their 30th birthday" he said as he launched into another maudlin song - the set touched on various points of his career and included two "new" songs improvised on the spot: One was a tour diary summarising his day thus far, the other a dialogue between himself and his cat (his cat wants feeding, but James is too busy playing his new guitar and, "anyway" he says to the cat, "what about those cat biscuits strewn across the kitchen floor - you can't be THAT hungry"). It was a joy to be in the pleasure of such greatness.

I didn't take any footage of the gig so instead, here's my favourite James Yorkston album, produced by Kieran "Four Tet" Hebden:
Just Beyond The River

Support came from the Big Eyes Family Players - a bunch of multi instrumentalists previously seen collaborating with Mr Yorkston on the Folk Songs album of 2009 - played a set of folk covers and original compositions, their blend of traditional instruments reminding me of the mellower moments from Gorky Zygotic Mynci's Barafundle album.

Oh, and on an unrelated note, my friend Ron and I wore similar shoes that night - he suggested I took a photo so here it is...

Green Man Festival 2011

So, I've finally motivated myself enough to put a few badly written words together about this year's festival; the sunniest one in the five years I've been going.

Despite the main stage headliners being slightly underwhelming this year, there was still plenty of excellent stuff to see/hear/do and plenty of great stuff that I missed.

Here's some of my highlights that I did catch, based on the rough notes I'd scribbled on my phone whilst watching bands.

Holy Fuck (or Holy Cow as they are known in our child-friendly house), headlining the Far Out tent on Friday night, played their usual blistering set of noise funk, whist the front two members were constantly re-patching their instruments as if they'd forgot to bring enough audio cables with them.

Y Niwl, "the Welsh Shadows", at the Green Man pub, put together a 40 minute set of 60s garage rock and surf music, which everyone from Black Francis to Quentin Tarrantino knows is arguably the coolest sound known to rock. Giving each song a number rather than a title (their set taught me the numbers from 1 to 20 in Welsh) is a nice way of avoiding over-pretentious titles for instrumentals too.

And here they are playing Undegpedwar (that's Fourteen in English)..

Laura J Martin deserves a special mention, purely for bringing Chaka Demus and Pliers back to the masses with her kooky ambient folk cover of Tease Me.

Destroyer were a strange choice to headline the Far Out tent on the Saturday night, which showed in the rather thin crowd who watched them. Nonetheless, after a shaky start, where the band seemed strangely detached from the mid paced music they were playing, a stunning version of Suicide Demo for Kara Walker saw them shift into another gear as the second half of the set took on a...err..distinctly balearic feel.

After that I caught the first few songs of Fleet Foxes' headline set on the Main Stage - now I love their albums and, yes, their harmonies are beautiful, but live they left me a bit cold. Maybe it's just that Saturday night isn't the right time for their music (they're more a mid afternoon in the sun kind of band), so I left early; as did a few others who I bumped into during another jaw-dropping set from Squarepusher, who was kicking off 4 hours of "after dark" music courtesy of Warp records. One hour of Tom Jenkinson on bass and FX pedals with a live drummer, creating sounds you can barely imagine and a set of tunes that it was impossible to dance out of time to (trust me, I tried). Nice touch with the futuristic microphone headpiece too. There's no footage of him from the festival online yet, but here's an feature and interview with him from the Culture Show in 2006...possibly the greatest living bass guitarist?

Sunday daytime was all about James Blake's mid afternoon set, played to a packed crowd on the main stage, with the loudest valley-shaking bass I've heard in a long time. Anyone unconvinced by his debut album really needs to catch him live. Seems like a lovely guy too.

To finish the weekend off in style, Suuns seem to have found a winning formula of brooding electro and dirty rock, before "national treasure" Gruff Rhys' set sent us all packing with a smile on our faces. Because that's what he can't help but do...

Nick Cave on The Tube

I'm going through one of my "listen to everything by...." phases at the moment - I'm currently about halfway through Nick Cave's back catalogue.

It reminded me to track down this performance from The Tube in 1986 - it was the first time I saw Nick Cave "live" (he's actually miming) and probably the first time I heard his music. We'd taken the day of school to be part of the audience for the Tube, in particular to watch Heaven 17 - who were pushing their soon to be released Pleasure One album - play live for the first time. It's a shame they hadn't done this a few years earlier when they had something better to promote.

Anyway, I can't say that I enjoyed it at the time, but there was something about Nick Cave's performance that drew me in. Maybe it was the fact that he scared me a bit, and I was convinced that he was glaring at ME all the way through the performance - I didn't know whether to stare back at him or look away (I shuffled uncomfortably on the spot for three and a half minutes). On watching this now, I'm guessing that he probably didn't have a clue who or what, if anything, he was looking at.

Still, it's a great doomy cover version of this Johnny Cash song

The "Joe Strummer Memorial" Busking Tour

One chilly afternoon in October 2008, with a biting wind blowing, Julian Cope and Black Sheep turned up at the site of the Peterloo massacre to perform the Manchester leg of his Joe Strummer Memorial Busking Tour. Over 3 days they travelled the country, busking at "UK cultural centres" (11 of 'em according to the website) - it was advertised online a couple of days before they set of and no times were advertised, so it was very much a case of hanging around and waiting for them to show up. When they did arrive, he had a brief chat with us before starting the...err...gig. It was a pleasure to meet the great man.

I decided to capture some of it on my phone and, had my hand not turned blue with the cold wind, I'd have filmed more. Still, what you have here is fairly representative. Check out the other people's videos on Youtube for other footage of this and other venues.

Here's what the Head Heritage site had to say about the choice of venue:

"On August 16^th, 1819, the huge crowd of 80,000 people, which had gathered in Manchester’s St. Peter’s Field to protest about the price of bread due to the unfairness of the new Corn Laws, were brutally attacked by cavalry fresh from the Battle of Waterloo who’d been sent to police the situation. With over 700 injured and 15 dead, the incident became known as the Peterloo Massacre and led to the forming of the Manchester Guardian."

And here's the footage I took:

And the highlight - parts 3 and 4 are one track (I missed the first 5 or 10 minutes I'm afraid) split into two, incorporating a version of Pristeen and the legendary "face solo"...

Stills from the video are also on Flickr

Destroyer - Kaputt

Now, I know this is going to divide opinion - having saxophones, soft rock and 80s pop as reference points are likely to send many people running to the hills, or assuming that there must be an "ironic" angle to the music - but this is SUCH a good album, which adds up to so much more than it's obvious influences suggest.

Check out Bay Of Pigs' singer-songwriter take on ambient house (amongst other things), Savage Night At the Opera's 'Enola Gay' referencing guitar riff or - and you'll have to trust me on this one, as it's not on the Spotify version (it's on the vinyl or UK CD version of the album) - the stunning twenty minute The Laziest River, which threatens to turn into 'The Boys Of Summer'. about 12 minutes in.

Listen to the album on Spotify: Destroyer – Kaputt

...or have a look at the lovely video for the title track...

Song Title as Photo

...don't ask me what that means