An Alternative History of "Pop" Music: Part 2, 1982 -

[Brundle-Fly]

Common- Aquarius
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prlWoicCJsE

On his fifth LP, Chicago-born rapper Common took a detour into psychedelia-influenced hip-hop, with this track having a little of the hazy funk of Sly and the Family's Stone's There's A Riot Going On, but also a lot of 90s/2000s retro-future sounds. The album is one of a string of records by a loose association of acts and artists called the Soulquarians, (including J.Dilla, the Roots, Erykah Badu and Bilal, who sings the hook here) who all appeared on each others records around this time.

Top! Fanx!

[jamiefairlie]

Trembling Blue Stars - Slow Soft Sighs

https://youtu.be/daIQdyDc2ek



Released as a standalone single and their only release in 2002.

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

Soft Cell - Monoculture



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zI6fv3WCuD8

"All my exotic gestures, no longer in demand... everything the same, again and again and again..."

They're back! And they're not impressed with modern life at all!

To the delight of everyone with ears, Soft Cell - who split in 1984 - reunited for some live dates in 2001 and released their fourth album, Cruelty Without Beauty, the following year. Their fifth album, Happiness Not Included, will be released in 2022.

[daf]

They're back! And they're not impressed with modern life at all!

I bet they're not, the old dirty bollocks!

[famethrowa]

YOUR BLOCKED!

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

I toyed with describing Cruelty Without Beauty as their fourth full-length release, but thought better of it.

[Brundle-Fly]

Oranges And Lemons Again - Jools Holland And His Rhythm & Blues Orchestra feat. Suggs.    Released on Warner in 2002.





A pucker tribute to Ian Dury from the former Squeeze keyboardist and Madness frontman.

Jools Holland's Rhythm and Blues Orchestra is 'Quelle surprise', a rhythm and blues orchestra led by boogie-woogie pianist Jools Holland. Julian formed the band in 1994 and the current 20-piece band consists of piano, organ, drums, female vocals, electric guitar, bass guitar, alto saxophones, tenor saxophones, baritone saxophones, trumpets, and trombones.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1BvpfI9YZI

[jamiefairlie]

"Oh! The Living Daylights!"

[jamiefairlie]

The Clientele - The Night That Changed Our Minds

https://youtu.be/casGjNz3xaw



Unreleased demo that finally saw the light of day in the "It's Art Dad" compilation of rarities.

[famethrowa]

Oranges And Lemons Again - Jools Holland And His Rhythm & Blues Orchestra feat. Suggs.    Released on Warner in 2002.

Good fun there, Jools usually annoys me but he's used his powers for good, well done all. I see Rico on the 'bone there, are there any other faces from the good ole days in that band?

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

Belle & Sebastian - Fuck This Shit



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTbseAyK2pg

Language, Timothy! Don't be fooled by the title, this isn't Belle & Sebastian attempting to hop aboard the nu-metal bandwagon; it's a lilting John Barry-esque instrumental from their (barely used) soundtrack for the Todd Solondz film Storytelling. The album was their final release to feature original member Isobel Campbell.

Belle and Sebastian experienced many problems in communication with Solondz while scoring the film, and as such only about six minutes of their music was actually used in the movie. The album contains five tracks that are recorded dialogues. The instrumental track Fuck This Shit uses the prosody of the title phrase in a number of different keys but never the words themselves. The album was the band's final release on Jeepster, as they went on to sign a deal with Rough Trade the following year.

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

Thanks all. I was wrong about giving up on this thread post 20th Century. Great stuff being nommed. Silly stick in the mud, me!

Likewise! What on earth were we grouching about? The thread is still thrivin' *and* jivin'.

[Brundle-Fly]

Pass The Ammunition - Jack Planck.  Released on Rodeo Meat in 2002.





Oddball electronica version of the 1940s U.S. air corps classic.

We've covered JP before in the 1999 section when he was known as Jackknife Lee

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6MG-9PaFJQ

[Brundle-Fly]

Good fun there, Jools usually annoys me but he's used his powers for good, well done all. I see Rico on the 'bone there, are there any other faces from the good ole days in that band?

Gilson, the old drummer from Squeeze.

[Brundle-Fly]

Don't Mug Yourself - The Streets  Released on 679 in 2002.





I love this geeza. Lock me up and throw away the key, you miserable cunts.

The Streets AKA Mike Skinner born 27 November 1978 was brought up in Birmingham and now lives in Highgate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHs2sQOHX-0

[jamiefairlie]

Idlewild - In Remote Part / Scottish Fiction

https://youtu.be/9HzPPrg0OE4



I think we've been introduced to Idlewild already in our list so suffice to say this is taken from their fourth album, "The Remote Part". it features the lovely tones of Scottish poet Edwin Morgan.

[Gregory Torso]

Maher Shalal Hash Baz - Stone In The River



Tori and Reiko Kudo assembled the Japanese ensemble Maher Shalal Hash Baz in the mid 80s with a focus on 'avant pop music' and the natural mistakes and accidents that occur around amateur musicians. Their sound is something like listening to a slightly nervous school orchestra - an intentional artistic choice facilitated by Tori Kudo's habit of asking amateur musicians to play on his albums without any rehearsals at all, in one take, leading to some delightfully orginal music. Cold-hearted cynical fucks might dismiss this as twee, but they can go chug red bull and bench-press their own testosterone-guffing arseholes with Henry Rollins in hell.

I love the "trumpet being blown into a bucket of water" solo.

[daf]

Bell & Spurling – Sven Sven Sven 2002



B-side of the single "Goldenballs (Mr Beckham To You)" - reached #25 in the UK chart in June 2002.

[jobotic]

I love you Gregory

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

Tom Waits - I'm Still Here



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLB0VEUerBY

Just under two minutes of exquisite, heart-trembling beauty from a bona fide genius.

Alice is the fourteenth studio album by Tom Waits, and features most of the songs written for the play of the same name. The adaptation was directed by Robert Wilson, with whom Waits had previously worked with on the play The Black Rider, and originally set up at the Thalia Theatre in Hamburg in 1992. The play has since been performed in various theatres around the world.

The songs from Alice had been released as a bootleg in several different versions called The Alice Demos many years before its official release. The source is believed to be studio recordings taken when Waits' car was broken into in late 1992.

The album was co-released with Blood Money, an album containing songs from Wilson and Waits' 2000 musical Woyzeck.

[Brundle-Fly]

Torture - Hairy Diamond.  Released on PPQ in 2002.



Nice slice of moody soul for a moody Sunday evening.

Hairy Diamond AKA Dave Rabjohns, DJ producer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pq6sCq4UPb4

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

Neil Halstead - Martha's Mantra (For the Pain)



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4TBAczXpkk

Slowdive and Mojave 3 man goes solo. Simon & Garfunkel nod approvingly.

[Smeraldina Rima]

British Sea Power - The Lonely



"The Lonely" was British Sea Power's third single, and the first track on it was actually "The Spirit of St. Louis". Like "Fear of Drowning", "Remember Me" and "Carrion" - but not "Childhood Memories" - it was included on The Decline of British Sea Power in 2003. The song is about Geoff Goddard, who worked with Joe Meek in the 1960s, modelled his "Anton Hollwood" persona on Liberace, and wrote John Leyton's 1961 number 1, "Johnny Remember Me", a 'death disc' which was banned by the BBC. In later life, Goddard worked in the Reading University kitchen, where he became friends with the young Scott Hamilton (Yan) and perhaps also Martin Noble (Noble) who were studying Typography and Zoology-and-Psychology respectively. Goddard died in 2000 having made a very big impression on Yan. Yan has occasionally spoken about Goddard in interviews which illuminate this song:

Geoff Goddard, who wrote ["Johnny Remember Me"], is someone else I look up to a lot. He worked with Joe Meek, and we [Scott and Martin] both knew him a bit when we worked in kitchens in Reading. His first impressions were as a person, one to one, rather than as a songwriter. And he was a lot of fun just on that level. And then you realise he's really talented, and I think he's underrated in terms of the influence he had. People have a lot of respect for Joe Meek, but I think without Geoff it wouldn't have got nearly as far. He played a big part in the weird, spiritualism, talking-to-the-dead angle. He was a firm believer in the alternative spiritualist world of séances, talking to cats in graveyards – which I don't want to rule out as a realistic option. And then there's the weird story of this séance. They did a Buddy Holly song, warned him about his death, and everyone laughed at them. And then Buddy died a year later. They took it so seriously they actually got a message to him.

Geoff's from Berkshire. He's got a real Berkshire voice and he's singing songs like Sky Men and doing the robot voice in the middle of it. It's fantastic, weird pop music. He wrote Johnny Remember Me in less time than it takes to play the record, I think. And he claimed most things came to him from beyond the grave. And then I wrote [BSP's] Remember Me – they're both songs about death in one way or another.

I have his picture on the wall now. He did a song called Girl Bride – you can get the sheet music and I've put it in a frame. He's got this weird smile. He looks sort of in between cool, goofy and weird. So he's pride of place in my little mini studio.

I'd love to perform with...

Geoff Goddard. He was the main songwriter with Joe Meek. He was going to be a singer but he couldn't stop grunting in between singing lines because he got so excited. If I'd collaborated with him he could grunt as much as he liked. I'd put it up loud in the mix.

I heard him play piano once, and it was the best music I ever heard. He did a Christmas thing for the old ladies. He did Christmas carols and singalongs.

I was in the canteen working, washing pots. He used to get the pots out and start drumming on them. Then we got talking, and he started chatting about Casio keyboards.

An earlier version of this song called "Black Ops with Liberace" had a different chorus, with a more direct lyric - "I believe I used to be Liberace" - and with one of the lyrics - 'I feel the lapping of an ebbing tide' - that ended up on "Carrion".

The cover design and pretend promotional quotation appears to come from a book of the same name by Paul Gallico:

[jamiefairlie]

Neil Halstead - Martha's Mantra (For the Pain)



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4TBAczXpkk

Slowdive and Mojave 3 man goes solo. Simon & Garfunkel nod approvingly.

Great album, I'll add this too:

Neil Halstead - Driving with Bert

https://youtu.be/Uja4REmQblc

[DrGreggles]

Badly Drawn Boy - Delta (Little Boy Blues)
[Gough] {Twisted Nerve/XL}
(taken from the About a Boy album)



Following the success of his debut LP, The Hour Of Bewilderbeast, Badly Drawn Boy (Damon Gough) released the soundtrack to the About A Boy film as his 2nd album.
Two singles, Silent Sigh (reached #16) and Something To Talk About (#28) were taken from it, but I was always a fan of Delta (Little Boy Blues) - a groovy little instrumental that evolved from a studio jam with some of the session musicians.
Never seen the film, but it appears to star Hugh Grant and a small child.

[Pauline Walnuts]

The Streets AKA Mike Skinner born 27 November 1978 was brought up in Birmingham and now lives in Highgate.

You would have though he would have further gone down the Alchester Road to Mosley, what with being a successful pop star and all.

[Astronaut Omens]

Boards of Canada- 1969
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFVqFw1DgaQ

Boards of Canada's 2002 dark-sounding album Geogaddi, (running time 66 mins and 6 seconds) with it's cryptic titles and oblique references and muffled, backmasked speech samples has spawned a subculture of fans trying to figure out what they were on about, with more than a few religious fans disturbed by the reversed references to "a god with horns" on "You Could Feel the Sky", and other fans delighted to find some charming melodies revealed when reversing the record e.g. this lovely synth figure, when reversing the Leslie Nielsen sampling Dandelion
On "1969", as throughout the album, what the lyrics, titles and samples suggest to me is a failed attempt at religious or cultural transcendence that ends in horror, 1969 being the year that the hippy dream seriously soured, and the distorted lyric "Although not a follower of (reversed) David Koresh, she's a devoted Branch Davidian" being another reference to Amo Bishop Roden, a member of the same cult group as Koresh who struggled against him for the sect's leadership. The paranoid thinking that BoC tend to induce in their listeners has also led me to wonder if,  since 1969 is 33 years before Geogaddi's release in 2002, and that Jesus Christ died at that age, the dark visions of Geogaddi document the crucifixion and apocalyptic death of some peculiar Aquarian demon born in 1969, perhaps at Woodstock, or Altamont. The two brothers who make up BoC were born in 1970, and in 1972. At the time of this LP's release, they were still pretending not to be related.

[Astronaut Omens]

Darko Rundek- Makedo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7I3ucCchkLs
Following the above, it should be noted that while some, like BoC were looking from a somewhat ironised and mediated distance at cult-like behaviour, other musicians, like Croatian singer Darko Rundek were messing around with that kind of imagery a little more directly. In thie video for this one he gets his feet washed in wine by some devotees, somewhere out in the countryside.

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

Erlend Øye - No Train to Stockholm



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVJxI0RL9sQ

A bewitching cover of a song by the great Lee Hazlewood. Erlend Øye is 50% of Norwegian folk-pop duo Kings of Convenience. The Hazlewood tribute album this is taken from is very good too.

[holyzombiejesus]

My ex got off with Erland before she started seeing me and said that when she kissed him, she could feel his hard on through his jeans. Every time I see mention of him or his tedious fucking band, I think of that. Thanks.