“My life has been what you might call an uneventful one, and it seems there is not much of interest to tell… I have thought about making a career out of Western music if I am good enough, but I will just have to wait and see how that turns out.”

-Buddy Holly, 1953

The most interesting aspect of this soundtrack, reissued by Cherry Red Records in May, is that each song was recorded in either 1951 or 1952. Part of the brilliance of the Last Picture Show is that it pays attention to these miniscule details in its portrait of teenage boredom. It would be like seeing an SS lightning bolt in a WWI movie, hearing a teenie bopper rock and roll number in this collection. The fact is, the teenage revolution hadn’t begun in 1951 and kids were facing an entirely different world upon leaving school in the early 1950s than they would be even a few years later. Sure, there were enough punks and drop-outs, as there will be in any society, but there was no The Wild One or Gene Vincent to validate their existence. Could they have listened to Frankie Laine singing “Rose, Rose, I love you” and felt there delinquent muscles bulking? I doubt it. Pee Wee King singing “why should I linger every time you snap your finger little slow poke” couldn’t have got them going either. So what did?

Between August and November 1951, a little known Texas town called Lubbock gained overnight fame for numerous sightings of a formation of lights travelling over the town, were they Alien invaders? WWII was wrapping up officially, with the US declaring the war with Germany and Japan finally DONE. Yet, the fight was still raging in Korea, with threatening overtures being made by the unknown quantity of Mao’s communist China. For the first time, the US army was exercising for Nuclear War and in Nevada the first tests were being conducted on thermo-nuclear weapons. The Man From Planet X was being shown in cinemas across the USA, as was The Thing From Another World. A giant, placid, but All Seeing Eye was beamed into every home with a TV as CBS introduced their new logo. It must have felt pretty cosy listening to Jo Stafford singing Shrimp Boats (those jazz tones work pretty nicely with that harpsichord) and imagining yourself the skipper of some Louisiana steamer, while your heads under your school desk and your teachers shouting some apocalyptic procedure at you. But what teenager wants to feel cosy?

There’s no escaping reality in the Hank Williams numbers. Listening to Hank alongside the likes of Phil Harris and Pee Wee King reawakens those electric feelings that got me hooked on the man in the first place. Hank returned country from the burlesque tampering of the pop impresarios and gave it back to the American Ghost. For one thing, he’s never sounded more drunk. Or dark. There’s nothing contemplated about his recordings, the instruments sound like they’re racing each other, with that wily violin coming on strong, until it’s usurped by a high lonesome warble or a wobble from the slide. When Hank sings “How can I free you doubtful mind and melt your cold, cold heart” his intentions are nuclear war. Hank conjures a split-atom, heart strewn landscape. This must have been what the teenagers were getting off on. The imagery is so powerful, the music is so raw, the voice is familiar in a far off way. Hank’s electric, entirely modern. He sounds dangerous. He makes Pee Wee King sound like a cardboard cut-out. He points to the future (which looked like a black hole full of exploding stars and poisoned cattle) while looking backwards.

Then Wish You Were Here comes on. A schmaltzy ballad with washy strings and a jerky, crocodile tear violin. It’s pops lowest common denominator. That’s what makes the soundtrack brilliant though. It’s honest; it puts the blazing brilliance of men like Hank Williams, Tony Bennett, Webb Pierce and Hank Thompson in their proper context. It’s easy to take them for granted, but these men weren’t the rule, they were the exception.

The Last Picture Show soundtrack is available now from Cherry Red Records.

Words: Joe Stevens

Oi! is very unpretentious, simple, and fun. As the world economy becomes increasingly shittier and wars drag on, Oi! is still a relevant music style that should not be forgotten in the UK. Because popular music still sucks and Margaret Thatcher is still a cunt!

Oi! A Cockney expression meaning Hey! Or hello. Used to name a unique sub genre of Punk Rock taken from the Cockney Rejects song Oi! Oi! Oi!

Oi! is the most distinctly English musical style to come out in the past 30 years.

Oi! first reared its ugly head in the late 1970s and peaked in the early to mid 1980s in the UK. Oi! music aimed at giving the working class its own voice, music and distinct subculture at a street level while moving away from the artsy high brow direction many post-punk and new wave bands were moving towards after the first wave of punk broke. At the same time it brought together two of the biggest subcultures in the UK, punks and skinheads.

ITS GONNA BE A BORSTAL BREAKOUT

Bands like Sham 69, Cockney Rejects, and Menace paved the path for Oi! bands to follow in the 1980s. Oi! drew an audience of all sorts of youth ; punks, herberts, and disaffected and poor youth. However the majority were predominantly skinheads.

Oi! marked a departure from West Indian and Black musical styles which had predominantly been associated with the skinhead subculture.

Despite the misinformed media image of all skinheads being racist, the truth is usually the opposite. In the 80s an influx of racism seeped into some splinter groups of skins that identified with the National Front and British Movement ideologies. However most skins remained anti-racist or neutral on the subject, they were simply working class youth. Because of outbreaks of violence and the use of skinhead aesthetic by small groups of white nationalist organizations, Oi! and skinhead culture would forever be tarnished by the media misrepresentation.

Major themes in Oi! music were fighting, fucking, drinking, unemployment, oppression, and working class rights. Musically it tended to have more harmonies than its dissonant UK82 counterpart. Football chants influenced Oi! and became gang vocals usually in the chorus. OI! was also fucking tough and just good all around.

There are still Oi! bands new and old all over the world. Piss on all that hipster bullshit and electro pop rave ass water and smash it up.

Thank you skinheads for de-fagging mod!

Oi!

Recommended play list:

INTRO TO OI!

Cock Sparrer – Take ‘Em All
Anti Social – Official Hooligan
The Business – Smash The Discos
Cockney Rejects – Fighting In The Street
Menace – GLC
Red Alert – In Britain
4 Skins – 1984
Infa Riot – We Out Number You
Combat 84 – Barry Prudom
Sham 69 – Borstal Breakout
The Oppressed – White Flag
Blitz – Never Surrender
Anti- Establishment – 1980’s

Recommended viewing:

UKDK
This is England
Southhall Riots

Words: Matt Von Sex

Grimes and Kreayshawn film themselves jacking around for an hour and its front page news. Facebook feeds blow up with updates that everyone is Spotifying the snoozewave album of the year by Beach House. The Rolling Stones might “break up”.

This… is what obscures an album like Dream Mine. Stock popularity.

Look, things, people become popular for a reason. But like the bumper sticker says- just because it’s popular, doesn’t mean it’s good, and just because it’s good, doesn’t mean it’s popular (similarly, it’s important to be reminded that one doesn’t have to hate on it because it’s popular nor does one have to love it because it’s not popular). This album will not compel every ear. But the ones that it does- they will be sucked into it, obliged to make bold, clichéd statements such as “album of the year thus far”, “the bar has just been raised”, and “no one is safe.”  

Dream Mine is nearly split down the middle with equal numbers of conventional amped up garage rock and those of unique, experimental/ambient bent instrumentals/samples.  The Album conjures an aural séance with Detroit 1972; a ghostly, impressionistic, fragmented channeling of that booze/broken glass/blood rock’n’roll scene.  Directly so, as in the 7 minute plus cover of “I Wanna Be Your Dog”; but also in the other tracks consisting of foundation shaking, dropkicking, wheelie popping rock’n’roll. It’s a decidedly crude sound; drums run amok, guitars trudging, raw vocals, free woots; invoking visions of bath-salt fueled motorcycle rampages across the American wasteland. The best descriptor maybe the title of Les Rallizes Denudes’ classic album- Heavier Than a Death in the Family.

But Lantern really flirts with the near-genius in their abstract handling of the subject matter in relation to the instrumental numbers. In the fuzz orgy of “You Can’t Deny Me Revisited” you can hear the jams forever being kicked out; somewhere between the snare pops of “Untitled”, the world’s forgotten boy is searching and destroying, and the reverberating gonging of “Fools Gold” will echo down the lines of your face and hands.

The concluding track of the album, “Train Song”, is pure inspiration. It begins with a looped sample of a train chugging down the track. And then Zachary Fairbrother’s vocals advance over the sample, sounding like some sort of post-modern blues.

I heard once that when asked about his concept album, God Loves Ugly, Slug (of Atmosphere) replied that all albums are concept albums- it’s just that some concepts are shitty. And this is why Dream Mine stands out so starkly. About a billion bands have ripped off The Stooges/MC5/Alice Cooper, producing what amounts to cover albums. Which can be fine and entertaining, but that is not breaking new ground. Lantern had their concept- and they could have realized it with 9 tracks of garage crap and called it a cassette. But they didn’t. They EXPLORED it. They EXECUTED it in an interesting and innovative manner. It draws one in with intrigue- why this sample, why that noisey beat, why does it play off the previous song so well even though they are wildly different? Good artists do 2 things- They make a great connection, and they make you see/understand that connection.  Lantern succeeds in this regard. It’s a success that unfortunately and unduly will probably be overshadowed. But it’s a success none the less.  A success that very well could be album of the year thus far. The bar has just been raised. No one is safe.

Words: Brad Krohe

Andrew Leigh- Magician

Obscurest hippie carousing at peak freak out levels. Sitar scatterings and flute divinations, Andrew Leigh’s joyful epode to The Magician is artifact and prophetic yearning. Released in 1970, it contains all the optimism of the 60’s coated in histrionic, new agey folk.
King Tuff- Sun Medallion

A sun medallion lying in a bird’s nest of chest hair is a statement; King Tuff breaks down the nuances of such a statement.
The Clash- Charlie Don’t Surf

One of the many rewards of working through the laborious, voluminous tour de force of Sandanista. Buried on side 5, Charlie Don’t Surf seems to expect the coming decade of 1980; the popping bass and the guitar work textured with a slight synth ( or overdubbed with a weird pedal) all carry a certain sound one may inarticulately call “eighties.” In case you need to be reminded what crack musicians/artists/people The Clash were; but really, who forgets that kind of thing? More aptly stated: it will cultivate a deeper appreciation for the rare genius of The Clash.
The Gaye Blades- His Girl

Fantasy Narrative: a group of musically sound crust-wavers are recruited by Zelma Sanders as the house band for J & S records. After writing, recording, performing, and producing several chart topping hits for The Hearts, Rita Zell, and The Endeavors, The Gaye Blades cut a special one-off solo record. It makes sense that Norton put this album out.
The Antartics – Runaway

Choice cut from the fantastic compilation Steam Kodok: 26 A Go-Go Ultrarities from the Sixties Singapore and South-East Asia Underground. Rivals anything made in the west at the time. Interesting movements, a super-hip guitar solo, and over all melancholic energy make this an instant outsider dig.

Words: Brad Krohe

Fuck, it’s Thursday again.

Abner Jay-St. James Infirmary

The Hobo King of Memphis, Abner Jay…. The best folk songs are wrapped in generations and generations worth of subconscious soot. Here Abner adds another thick layer.

Small Faces- Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake

Psychedelia is a joke. It was never meant to be taken seriously. Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake, with Stanley Unwin’s brilliantly nonsensical storytelling, is addictive listening, especially when you’re a child. This instrumental is succinct and honest experimentation. It doesn’t get much better than this.

King Tuff- Bad Thing

Bad Thing marks the King’s return to the scene. No pretender to the throne, King Tuff’s new album is one hell of a listen. It’s out on Sub-Pop this April.

Tishaki Miyaki- All I Have To Do Is Dream

A great cover of The Everly Brothers’ classic. They don’t write ‘em like this anymore.

Buddy Long- It’s Nothin’ To Me

A minor figure in country history, Buddy deserves a lot more recognition. Maybe part of the problem is that it’s impossible to find any of his recorded material online, except for this gem. By far the best version of this song anywhere. The best bar-room encounters always end in death. This is no exception.

Words: Joe Stevens

Every Thursday we bring you the songs you need to hear. 

The Desperate Bicycles- Advice on Arrest

In a year of occupations, uprisings, near meltdowns, and riots- with the west embroiled in mutli-fronted failures/obstructions- and the future, at least in the short term, assigned to more turbulence and clash, The Desperate Bicycles remain relevant as ever; not only in the political sentiment of this song, but also in their simple DIY message of “it was easy, it was cheap, go and do it.” Their example speaks as much to our current era of problems/possibilities/creativity/solutions as it did to the problems/possibilities/creativity/solutions of the late 70’s. This track is taken from the New Cross, New Cross 7”.

Steve Earle- Waitin’ on The Sky

Master songwriter Steve Earle’s assumingly semi-autobiographical ballad of metaphysical dialectic. The 1st cut off of his album I’ll Never Make It Outta This World Alive, it sets the tone of the album; firmly traditional country/folk with compelling, spiritual sprinklings over a unique take of Americana narratives. Touching off with the threat of mutual assured destruction hanging over his head, then searching for the holy grail (only to find that ship has sailed), then banging on a guitar singing a song about a redheaded girl/sittin’ on top of the world, the song is a journey of life, exploration, and ultimately peace. As he finishes with “eyes wide open ‘till the messenger comes”, it’s evident this is the voice of a man that has seen enough to know he hasn’t seen it all.

Lula Côrtes & Zé Ramalho- Raga Dos Rios

Exciting, Brazilian psychedelic fuzzout from the 1974 album, Paêbirú. Once a collectors item, the album was considered extremely rare. Accounts differ, but consensus is that a doomed warehouse (leveled by fire or flood) destroyed the majority of albums before they reached stores (and ears). Among the superior arrangements and master instrumentation, this track is a notch above. This is the kind of auditory experience reserved for astronauts as they fall back to earth or perhaps a simultaneous sunrise sunset over the holy mountain. Supremely divine.

Chuck Berry- Promised Land

The Chuck Berry catalogue is as exhaustive as the man himself. As Chuck Berry doth endure, so does this semi-popular staple. Definitive.

Meth Teeth- This is Not My Home

Gone but not forgotten- Portland’s Meth Teeth haven’t been a band in a few years now. Guess the name of their one LP, Everything Went Wrong (2009), wasn’t just an album title. A number of complaints were hurled their way, usually berating the seemingly low quality of the recordings. That is nonsense. This song in particular is proof that a capable musician is more than just a technician; that you are not only as good as your gear. A good musician succeeds in conveying, in channeling, in relaying emotion, thought, and perspective. This tune says it all, and if you can’t hear/understand that, it’s not because the vocals are indecipherable. Woodsy and addictive, it’s a guaranteed to be on repeat.

Words: Brad Krohe

Anyone who has read The England’s Dreaming Tapes will be glad to hear that Jon Savage is taking his punk knowledge for a walk again, this time in the form of a compilation CD entitled FAME: Jon Savage’s Secret History of Post-Punk 78-81. The name says it all really, doesn’t it. Savage put it together with the help of Caroline True Records and it’s available digitally and on double LP from March 26th.

Shelve the guitar. Sell your drums. Tell your friends the bands over.

Throw your albums away.

Stop buying vinyl, and limited edition cassettes, and t-shirts, and if you’re still there, cd’s too.

Punk, with all of its wonderful trappings and tunes, was just an echo.
The party’s been over and people keep showing up later and later to say they were there.
Doesn’t matter.
Sgt.PepperMC5SatoriSabbathYADDAYADDAYADDA…Irrelevant.
In the same way it was said “history ended with the atom bomb”, so it is that Music ENDED in 1965 with this song (everything arched in a little more than 2 & ½ minutes).

Sorry you’re just now hearing the news, but it’s been done for a while dude.

Someone should’ve told you, man.

Adolescence could have been more productive and quieter if you knew.

Relationships could have been a lot smoother if you had devoted more time to emotional development instead of spending hours putting together “the perfect mix.”

You wouldn’t have wasted your 20’s going to festivals and doing drugs.

Or your 30’s engaged in watercooler debates about what amounts to the style of doorknobs on the Hidenberg.

Your blog just became really uninteresting. Guess you’ll have to stick to instagrams of breakfast and funny videos.

Follow in your uncles footsteps and post mundane observations under the heading of “just some thoughts” even though it’s clear they are more than just thoughts and are probably more accurately described as struggles for affirmation and legitimacy.

There goes my career as a music writer.

Guess I can always become a milkman.

There are still milkmen, right?

Words: Brad Krohe