And I don’t care about morals / ‘cos the world’s insane and we’re all to blame anyway

On Saturday night last I spent about four hours standing side of stage in a park in central Denpasar, here in Bali. The event in question was a fundraiser for the quickly forgotten (by the world at large, unlike say, Katrina, which still seems to get a mention most nights on the telly in one place or another) Jogja quake of a month or so ago.

There were, I’m told, between four and seven thousand kids there, and, although to be honest, I didn’t venture much from the backstage area, to the best of my knowledge there were only three non-Indonesians in the place. Maybe that’s why, in the southern triangle of this island of this isle, I enjoy Denpasar far more than the tourist haunts centred on the often less than pleasant strip from Kuta through to Kerebokan. If you are going to be here, at least be here. I like being out of my comfort zone and if I want to be in Ponsonby or Darlinghurst I’ll get on an aeroplane. Although nothing beats Double Six Beach on a Sunday….

But, that’s all beside the point, init.

I stood on Saturday night and watched four bands. There was a reggae act, and yeah, they were ok, not my personal thing but ok. But these guys have a residency at a local Legian reggae club so thus deserve massive respect for putting up with the ugliest crowd on the planet…drunken Australians. There was band whose lead singer stood like a late seventies Joe Strummer and sang a post punky set in Balinese which I thought was well cool. I had no idea what he was saying, but I did…if you get the gist. The language of rock’n’roll rebellion is universal and no great mystery.

They were followed by (and I wish I had names for these bands) a crew from Jakarta who were both slick and entertaining in an almost nu-metal meets hardcore style. Seriously slick actually, with a massive presence and they worked the crowd like the local stars they clearly were and deserved to be. I enjoyed them, even though, musically they’re not my thing. And as I watched I found myself wondering, yet again why most New Zealand bands simply can’t do this, playing to the crowd that is, putting on a show…it’s such a rare national art and still, maybe as part of the legacy of Flying Nun, is frowned on by the uber-cool. What a shame that is….

The last band were the one I’d come to see. I’d seen Superman is Dead (S.I.D. to their fans…the name is, I believe a reference to the demise of Suharto…young Indonesians are keenly aware of the rather unfortunate legacy of the man and proud of their baru democracy… this is a nation on the rise, you can feel it and its power is in its vast youth) on TV a couple of times. Just acoustic takes on the local Bali TV channel and I’d had a quick listen to their new album, which I’d been given. But, and I’ve always flattered myself I have something of an ear (god that sounds too egotistical), something intrigued me, something made perfect sense. Even with the sound off on the TV, the second time the performance came on, I couldn’t take my eyes off them and found the songs going around in my head later

Live I wasn’t disappointed. I stood transfixed throughout the set. I was absolutely blown away by the drummer’s solo spot out front. And by the other’s cheeky knowing grins and by the way they bounced musically off each other in a way I’ve always assumed Lennon and McCartney did at the Star Club. Made, who was giving me a lift on his motorbike back to my car, came up to me half way through and asked if I wanted to leave. No, no I explained, I want to watch this through to the very end. I love watching a band, a musician, or a DJ with such an obvious empathy with their audience, feeding off each other, as SID and these thousands, who knew every word of their anthemic songs and travelled through the set as participants rather than simply an audience, did.

It was a mind fuck, it really was, and it’s the sort of thing which can only come from those making the music, from the creators. Not from any A&R guy, from any MD in a gilded office, from any marketing plan. And that is why, music is more than just a business, why the machinations of the corporates matter to the shareholders but really don’t matter at all.

And I thought about the tyranny of location, something I’d mentioned in some long forgotten review of a forgotten album (an album by Spizz for A&M if you must know) twenty five years ago when I was a regular reviewer in Murray Cammick’s Rip It Up. About how location is everything, how any average band in the UK or the US has the odds stacked so strongly in its favour; that the recording industry has ensured that it has a vastly greater chance of playing to a global audience that the best band or artist from a less favoured nation, say, Indonesia or New Zealand; nations that are deemed by the system to simply not matter as sources of marketable music.

And yet Superman Is Dead leave many of the acts with large contracts, and the big chance, in the proverbial gravel. Anyway you look at it they’re better than the swathe of mediocre middle American rock acts foisted upon the kids by a the entrenched system, the MTV shite that you find prioritised by global multi-nationals.

And I thought about the revolution at hand. Popular music is driven by revolutions, and always has been. From Bill Haley to Hip hop to The Beatles to House, we’ve had half a century of youth driven revolutions, all of which have crept up those in a position of power in the entertainment industry and slammed them without warning as they struggle to make some sense of it all. The last decade or so has been a little staid, although considering what we’ve had released, performed and recorded in the last few years that term is a little unfair. However that music has worked within the parameters established over the past decade or two, and to my mind can’t be considered revolutionary as such, fine as much of it is.

There has of course been the digital revolution but that has a been a revolution in delivery mechanisms, a revolution that, whilst it has confused and bemused the major record companies (to the extent that they have made such major missteps as the glaring stupidity of DRM, the Sony BMG spyware mess, and the RIAA’s insane lawsuits against downloaders…rule number one has to be, and always has been, that you don’t assault and attack your customers, especially when they already think you are vaguely, no make that totally, evil) they have, as they did with the LP and the CD, after much flustering, tried to run with.

No, the delivery mechanism is not the revolution but it certainly made possible the revolution. The revolution which has crept up on the Industry as such is the new democracy, the growing realisation that the untamed aspects of the internet are slowly pulling the power, the control, away from the established power structure and handing it over the end user or those close to the end user. It’s a passing of the baton from the record companies to the people. Its best seen in New Zealand with the Fat Freddie’s phenomena, who one year on are still dominating an industry that really had nothing to do with their rise. And I’m not talking Rupert Murdoch’s MySpace which, despite the fact I have a presence on (who doesn’t, but it’s more of a giggle than much else), still feels like walking into the foyer of Sky TV to me; but I am talking, amongst other things, about the countless MP3 blogs which disseminate tracks virally around the planet (and yes, I'm well aware of the way these are used as marketing tools too but their power goes far beyond that), and from which I’ve personally discovered (and subsequently purchased) many digital audio files, some long forgotten (how many killer Billy Preston tracks were doing the rounds after he snuffed it…I’d forgotten how great the title track from his Encouraging Words album on Apple was…I have the vinyl but splashed out for the CD last week) and so many new acts that would never have gotten any exposure under the “system” as it was, even with iTunes or its equivalent. The power instead is beginning to sit with some blogger somewhere in nowhere land who has taken it upon themselves to espouse the greatness of some marginal act that would otherwise have slipped through the system. In its own way, the piracy of the music via the p2ps adds to the tentacles of this revolution in a way the major companies, obsessed with maximising the sales of their priority acts, to the despair of the overwhelming majority of their (non-priority) acts who wonder why their songs simply don’t get any real exposure, still don’t seem to grasp.

The MP3 blogging world has recently been abuzz with the likes of the wonderful Simian Mobile Disco, and Toronto’s noisy technoids, MSTRKRFT, neither of which would get a look in via the old system but are worth tracking down. Right now, whether EMI buys Warners or Warners buys EMI seems to be increasingly irrelevant to this business that has always refused to conform to accepted norms, a business that the kids have only just, in ways we can’t imagine yet, begun to claw back.

Oh and check out SID…they really are fantastic….

As they pulled you out of the oxygen tent / you asked for the latest party

For some reason the above lyric is floating around in my head repeatedly as I write this, and I can’t for the life of me work out why…what Bowie’s nihilistic masterpiece has to do with this post, beyond lost dreams, I don’t really know…

Edwardian boy’s books are full of it. They struggle through the jungle to discover the great lost city, complete with great monsters or beasts. It’s nothing new and King Kong essentially plays on the same theme, over and over again (although I’m not big on the monkey story). I always loved this sort of lost civilization stuff as a wee boy, maybe because I was born on the cusp of the end of Empire, a year before Anthony Eden, his mind and reason addled by a speed addiction, threw what was left of British power and prestige away with the gross imperial folly of Suez and Baden Powell’s world was no more.

So, it’s a fantasy that many of my age probably have somewhere in the fog of their ever so slightly slowing memories. I mean look at Peter Jackson, I know he has all that money and is surely surrounded by sycophants now, but didn’t somebody have the balls, the honesty, to say to him…Peter, King Kong, are you sure? I know I can’t take him too seriously any more. Then again it always bemuses me that some things that are so screamingly obvious seem to slip by. I mean, really, did anyone in the real world think that a) Saddam was a threat to the USA or anyone else, or b) he had WMDs…truly? But many, seemingly responsible intelligent people, those we entrust with our planet, guilessly and gutlessly rolled with it…

But there I was, I found it. Or should I say, we found it, a bunch of us…but it was my idea to go looking so I’ll raise my hand for the credit. Over the past couple of weeks we’d heard, actually whilst out on a boat doing a spot of snorkelling off Nusa Lembogan, as you do, a story of the lost theme park of Bali, complete with a beast or two. And the given address was less than five kilometres from my front door, down a road, seemingly to nowhere that we drive past all the time, we decided to take a look.

And, yes there it was, the lost city of Bali. Built, so we were told by an Italian guy with Suharto money (he had a bit, still has and it always interests me that, like Pinochet (a thug who pales into insignificance next to our guy, although both were on the same payroll out of Langley, Virginia) he always seems to get unwell when the courts come calling), who ran out of money when the Indonesian economy collapsed in 1999. It seems he simply shut the doors and walked away when the banks put their hands up in early 2000. He shut the gates and left. And now, for a small fee, the local banjar will let you wander through at, although we didn’t know it when we entered, your own risk.

And so there it sits. I had some vision of a small park, a ride or two maybe. Just a few forlorn skeletal buildings, but this thing, we realised as we walked and clicked, was and is, huge…acre after acre (23 I believe) of rundown restaurants and food concessions; roundabouts; a brewery; a water slide; a walk though aviary; teacups, like the ones at Disneyland; a massive rollercoaster that rises into the sky and then has collapsed with twisted yellow metal writhing through the forest which has started to reclaim the whole mess; dancing fountains; a fake volcano which apparently exploded several times during a day and included water race; and a hotel. We walked through this in wonder over rivers and around winding paths, avoiding bridges and paths which no longer looked safe. And them we found them…the beasts. Actually they were crocodiles, big ones in one lake, and small ones in another (oh, and giant turtles in another but that’s neither here nor there). Saltwater crocs, and we roughly counted them…fifty at one count, seventy at another. These animals, how they survive I’ll never work out, sat bathing in the sun, many of them massive and sitting on top of one another, some with their mouths wide open, some swimming around the water looking menacingly at those of us brave enough to venture onto the wooden over bridge for photos. I made the decision, having understood the local Balinese woman to be saying, correctly, that it was not safe, to keep my big bulé bulk off it. I found out later that they had no idea as to the whereabouts of the snakes and the Komodo dragon that were previously resident…it makes a person secure to know that a Komodo Dragon, those things with saliva so festering with bacteria that a lick can kill, was perhaps wandering my neighbourhood somewhere. Still, I’ve shared a room with drummers before on tour so I’m able to deal with most bacterial issues.

What I can’t figure out is why. I mean I know why it probably collapsed, but the why is why it is still sitting there, so almost complete, but so entangled in vines. Why hundreds of thousands (probably, realistically, millions) of dollars of AC units, refrigeration units; kitchen equipment, metal, dodgem cars, rollercoaster, and so much more is just left to sit there for years. And who feeds those bloody crocodiles?

But I feel more complete now. All those Boys Own books that we used to get from the Ohakea Air base library (imperial themed books were big with the military, probably still are) have a ring of truth about them now.

I know, I’ve seen it.

I love the sound of breaking glass / especially when I'm lonely

The mail bought a bunch of things this last week (but not the AK79 t shirt that Warners had promised me sadly…). There were the normal bills and bank statements of course, a coupe or three magazines, the latest kiwi hit discs, and a bunch of CDs.

Amongst the latter were two I was really were hanging out to hear (in Bali, unless you are wanting six month old mainstream releases from the majors, or poor pirated copies of pomp rock or R&B pop, you have to rely on Indonesia Post, who are quite efficient and certainly far more honest than their Australian equivalent from experience), the Toussaint / Costello collaboration; and the album from Matt Edward’s alter ego Rekid on Soul Jazz. Both I assume could correctly be described as current releases but both could also just as accurately be described as light years apart.

Whilst the Costello album (and despite the cover credit it is more or less just that, but I’ll get to that later) and the Rekid album are both new releases by current recording acts, one to me sadly reflects an artist perceived to be, rightly or wrongly, in something of a decline…and god, its hard to say that when I’ve been such an unquestioning fan and I don’t necessarily agree with the sentiment…whilst the other is indicative of someone with something fresh and vaguely revolutionary to say. The irony in this of course is that Matt Edwards is Elvis Costello twenty five years ago. My father once said to me that you don’t really understand time until you get older, and, as with so much my father said to me when I was a disbelieving bullet-proof teen, so it is. Thus, for me its something of a thing to witness the young angry man as the elder statesman of trad….just as it is to see Paul McCartney, the same young eager face I thought was so cool peering out from the cover of his first solo album when I bought it from the PDC in Palmerston North on release (I still have the same much loved copy), turning 64, an age I’m closer to now than I want to think about (although not that close yet).

I really like the Costello record a lot with some major reservations. I like, no, that’s not fair, love about five songs, am ambivalent about five and seriously dislike three. The ones I dislike, I do so for one simple reason, I really hate songs that try too hard to “rock out” and sadly Elvis’ attempts to “rock” in recent years have sounded increasingly post Americana try-hard, something I put down to too many Little Feat and Robbie Robertson records in his youth, although he didn’t really suffer from the blight until the nineties. That’s the first problem. The second one I have is with the production. Where is the economy? There are things that someone needed to have the balls to say to Elvis…no, that doesn’t work, your voice doesn’t suit this one…but I get the feeling he is something of an autocrat in the behind the desk and perhaps Joe Henry is not the man to stand up to him. To me it sounds woolly and in-concise; there is at times a lack of definition. Costello records used to be the sharpest on the block…where is Nick Lowe when you need him.

The third problem is the overshadowing of Toussaint. Now, I know this started life as Costello’s album of AT songs and grew from there, but it is co-credited now as being by both artists and clearly a song like International Echo could’ve been saved from its current nothingness by the rich rolling, more gentle, tones of Mr Toussaint. The same could be said for Six Fingered Man, which is so obviously crying out for his voice. I mean it’s not a bad song, just a little workman and plodding and it didn’t have to be. Instead, Elvis dominates with Toussaint only getting a vocal look-in on one track, instead being relegated to almost a sideman status, and the front sleeve almost has a look of “look which legend I managed get to pose with for the cover” feel about it.

So, moans aside, there are enough truly lovely tracks herein to make it worth the journey. The title track is classic Costello, and is lifted by the wondrously woeful horns on the pre and post chorus. The Sharpest Thorn likewise is a barroom ballad that suits Elvis’ rather unique voice so well, and I love the way it drunkenly rolls into a New Orleans street feel for the last half. But the best are the beautifully plaintiff and delicate take of Nearer to You and the magnificent cover of one of my favourite Toussaint songs, All These Things done so definitively in the past by not one, but two Nevilles, Art and Aaron, which in itself is pretty daunting for anyone. Tackling a song like this must either speak of Elvis’ courage or his ego, I don’t know which. But he pulls it off and makes it his own, or at least the equal of those mighty versions. Very very cool and worth the price of admission.

So on to the current generation. As I said earlier, Matt Edwards is Elvis, or Howard Devoto, or Jah Wobble or whoever, two generations on. He’s the guy (or one of them) making the records that others are going la la over. He’s the guy pushing the proverbial boundaries and boy, is he doing it so well. I love Made In Menorca a lot. Its one of those records that makes you stop and take a breath, go “what the fuck is this”. But it exists in its time too, pulling together so many strands, so many historical themes; to me it sounds like Can meets The Congos meets early Marshall Jefferson with a splash of contemporary technology thrown into the mix, and it’s a nice irony that he’s managed by Dave Dorrell, ex of MARRS and all those wonderful mixes with CJ Macintosh back in the day. Listen to the synthesised churn of Arp; the shimmering sex of Nite; the glorious stuttering washes of Lost Star 6; and the grinding dubbed out funk of the huge 85 Space, which feels like you are listening to it spinning around and around in some massive room in, I guess, Menorca.

It’s a record that makes you want to scream out...HOW FUCKING GOOD IS THIS? And I guess that’s what I’m doing here in my own small way.

Maybe he could produce the next Costello album……

Pride and prejudice

I’m not sure what to say about this rather unpleasant little story in the once mighty but now, only-just-crawling-above-tabloid-level NZ Herald. As one who is privy to large parts of this story, and, indeed is, without permission, quoted from my website (although to be fair, I do give a permission of sort in the copyright note for quotation with credit although I didn’t imagine it would be used for something like this) in relation to the matter, I could write screeds about it and fill this page with all sorts of things. But I’m not going to for obvious reasons, and I think it’s unfortunate that others, especially those who place themselves in a position of moral authority as the self righteous Herald has in past years, see fit to.

I should also clarify that the comments quoted on my site do not apply to the current management at Universal NZ, a couple of which worked long and hard on the OMC project, and one in particular played a big part in its success.

But what saddens me is the way New Zealand so happily crucifies those who it previously celebrated. He has made some financial mistakes, mainly through inexperience, bad advice (and I note that some of those to whom he owed large sums were those to whom entrusted himself for advice, and others who rushed at him as way to make a quick buck but turned) Pauly has done little wrong beyond naivety. In fact he has done a lot right. He waved the flag for his nation all over the world. He was a proud ambassador of his nation and his people. I sat with him in radio stations on the other side of the world when he extolled the virtues of New Zealand as a place to live to millions, and, with immense pride explained to newspaper reporters, smitten by his handsome charm, as to the significance of the tattoos on his arms. Indeed, when How Bizarre took off there was massive pressure to re-locate to the UK, and I put it to Pauly but he told me he wanted to raise his family in New Zealand, he loved it and it was home. I understood.

New Zealand also took pride in him. He has been quoted several times by the Prime Minister, was on the cover of countless NZ on Air publications and collections, and New Zealanders the world over still claim to feel a buzz when they hear the song on a radio station in Cancun or Prague, as you are just as likely to (actually more so) as in Auckland.

Pauly’s first recordings are on the Proud collection, and it makes perfect sense. He taught me more about national pride than years standing in classrooms singing the national anthem or watching sheep wave red socks did...

He also made New Zealand an awfully large amount of money (the Herald story was a mile off in this) and my belief is (and once again, I’m not privy to the details, I haven’t spoken to Paul this year but based on comments he was making) that the IRD may have played a large part in the decision last week. If so, I’m rather ashamed to be a New Zealander as his income stream was still strong enough to make a hole in most debt and it was cruelly unnecessary. He had also given to the nation in so many other innumerable ways. Maybe I’m jumping the gun here a little…I certainly hope so.

Factually the Herald story, which has an almost gloating feel to it, had more than a few holes, but I guess that’s because most of us wouldn’t speak to them…I declined, although I regret I wasn’t firm enough about my reasons for it.

And as person, Pauly has, as many artists do, a fragility that this story won’t help at all.

But I guess in the drive to sell newspapers and advertising that doesn’t matter.

There is an irony in all this: The Herald was instrumental in Pauly's rise via a story from one of it's finest writers, Graham Reid. However, when Pauly hit the top of the US charts an approach by myself for a piece was declined by the Chief Reporter with a response of "we've already covered him". I guess they found another reason...

And so it goes / and so it goes / and so it goes

I guess this is part three of the vinyl listings I did here and here. Having collated a bunch of 7” singles and 12” singles, albums are the obvious next listing, although I find the concept way more daunting than a singles list. The playing field is already well signposted, there are accepted parameters.

And, if I’m realistic with myself, the world, and myself, really doesn’t need another greatest albums of all time thing. Do you really want me to tell you that Pet Sounds is a work of genius (I guess it is) or The Bends is a monumental achievement (c’mon be honest, Radiohead are really just a good rock band who mutated into a pretentious poor mans post Barrett, Pink Floyd, Meddle era…oh and having heard two tracks from the Tom Yorke album, shall I risk life and limb by saying that what I’ve heard is formless drivel).

I’m not the person to write such a list.

What I’m happy to waste my time doing is writing a few words about a bunch of albums that, for one reason or another escape all those lists, albums that maybe should be listed somewhere but seem to get forgotten. I think you could make an extended list of some 200 records and cover any possible album that could possibly be considered for a Q, Mojo, NME, or RS list, it’s that predictably narrow and dull. All they do is shuffle. There are rules and there are records that are pre-ordained classics, ones you are supposed to assume hit the listings. The ones below are not on that top 200 boys club listing.

I perused the recent Mojo (another bloody Mojo list…they love em lots, eh?...must really push sales along big time…like yet another Beatles cover) of the best albums released in their fifteen year tenure and it really was a mostly shitty bunch of mediocre sub Americana and drab singer-songwriters. It was the Zimmer frame of lists, but I guess that’s Mojo, they kind of get the distant past but the more recent stuff eludes them somewhat. But, generally speaking they sem to be running out of subjects to reminisce about, which is a shame. New York Dolls story was good though….

But that’s beside the point. These are the records that I recommend without any reservation. Am I wrong about these? And who really cares anyway. I guess I have too much time on my hands..

The rules are the same as before..2000 is the cut off, I have to have a physical copy and only one album per act or artist is permitted.

And, rather than burden this blog down with forty odd albums (which is about the number I narrowed it down to) I’m gonna do this in slabs. That makes it user friendly and stretches the thing out somewhat, so in lots of half a dozen or so:

1. Alexander O’Neal (Tabu 1985)….before this album there were lush soul records but this was the eve of machine driven lush soul. Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis took the mountainous Alexander (he was / is six foot six) and made what may still be their finest soul record. Thrown out of The Time because he was, they said, too black (!), any doubt that there was so much more to the sound that made Prince what he became, is put to rest by this album, especially the grinding purple funk of Innocent (best in its 12” B side mix). Prince, genius that he is simply took the sound and ran with it. But Innocent is an aberration on this album which is dominated by gorgeous, plaintiff, ballads and mid tempo grooves, none of which qualify as anything close to a filler (and that’s a virtual unknown on soul albums of the era…Alexander’s future albums are full of them), and all dominated by the deep purity of Alexander’s voice which was never swamped by the, at the time, fresh technology that the production duo was using. He came close again with Hearsay and released some killer singles over the next few years, but this album is the one.
2. Carlton-The Call is Strong (FFRR 1990)..the usual call made is that Massive Attack’s debut was the defining moment in the post Wild Bunch Bristol scene. Not true. I’m not going to say anything disparaging about Blue Lines, it was, and remains, one of the pivotal moments of its decade, pushing open doors for British, and indeed (and I’m trying to think of a word but I can’t) Jamaican infused soul music, and it was, ahhh, understatingly, a good record. That said, the debut, in fact only, album from Carlton (who was the vocalist on the first single to bear the name Massive Attack, the original, and superior, 1988 take of Any Love) was every bit its equal and in many ways is a better record, with more dimensions. Produced by Smith & Mighty (who have never had the kudos or rewards their immensely influential work rightly deserves), and largely forgotten now, this dark, haunting and fragile record has never sounded better than it does now. K7! did a very patchy Smith & Mighty collection a couple of years back, but the re-issue and elevation of this absolute classic is long overdue
3. Fingers Inc- Another Side (Jacktrax 1988)…for a genre that can claim classic singles by the hundred, great, or classic house music albums are very thin on the ground. In real terms I can think of less than twenty, and a bunch of them turned up in the first five years of its existence. I still don’t know the legality of this record. It came out on an indie UK label in a time when the niceties of who owned what in Chicago was vague at best, and was essentially a collection of earlier singles, with some newer material. It has, as far as I know has only briefly appeared on CD. However, Larry Heard mentions it favourably on his site, so who knows. The day I first managed to get hold of this in 1988 (I swapped it for something forgotten with a friend as you simply couldn’t buy this stuff in New Zealand then) I was mesmerised. I sat up all night and played it repeatedly until the sun rose. This was the rawest, most sensual, most elegantly beautiful music I’d ever had wash over me. It was the moment when it all changed. So simple, so powerful…..
4. Various – The Philadelphia International Story 1971-86 (Philadelphia International / Street Sounds 1986)…various web sites claim this was a bootleg. Maybe it was but Morgan Khan was furiously releasing a mind boggling selection of bits and pieces from all over the soul, funk and jazz stratosphere, so I doubt it. I guess, over a wine or five he somehow managed to persuade someone at CBS to license the tracks which make up the bulk (there are later, non-CBS, tracks too) of this unbelievable anthology of what many claim is the greatest independent record label of the past thirty years. Certainly PIR was the equal of Motown, Stax and Chess in changing the face of black contemporary music. Simply put, there are black American records pre-PIR and black American records post-PIR and the difference is both obvious and substantial. Fourteen big fat slabs of thick, beautiful black vinyl with god knows how many tracks which include every major track on the label (think O’Jays, MFSB, Billy Paul, Harold Melvin & The Bluenotes, The Jacksons, Teddy Pendergrast, Dee Dee Gamble, Dexter Wansel and countless more). That plus albums of obscurities, Philly flavoured jazz, 12” mixes, and so very much more. Rare as hell, I got it (he says gloatingly) for virtually nothing at a sale in Auckland after having coveted it for close to a year. The holy grail of seventies soul…
5. The Ronettes-The Fabulous Ronettes Featuring Veronica (Philles 1965)…an album to make your heart pause. Every damned song just goes bam and shatters me. It’s not just the power of Spector’s production, although there is that of course ((he may be a lunatic but that’s the industry…there are no shortage of nutters, its just that he takes it to new levels), but it’s also that unassailable voice. Every time Ronnie Spector opens her mouth it just makes me want to shiver, to collapse and crawl away. No woman has ever had a voice like hers, before or after, and Phil was able to recognise that power. The way he placed it in the mix, allowed it to soar and explode with such carnage, was what made this work. Ronnie tried both before and after Phil but, sadly, the voice was there but the other essential element that makes this one of the greatest American pop albums ever, wasn’t.
6. Allen Toussaint -Southern Nights (Reprise 1975)…there are songs on this album that others have taken and placed in the charts (and, I imagine made Mr Toussaint, one of the most influential American writers and producers ever, a bucket of money) but you’ve not heard them properly until you’ve heard the originals herein. Glen Campbell’s slight, throwaway, take of the title track sits in the shadow of the beautifully dreamy recording on this album which evokes an aura of the place that Toussaint so clearly loves and breathes, and Boz Scaggs’ pleasant cover of What Do you Want the Girl To Do is dwarfed by Allen’s smooth southern funk (with The Meters of course). Alternately tough, although rarely raucous, and warm & soft, Southern Nights is an unhailed masterpiece, and deserved its due many years ago…