I thought I had better get this one out quickly before that Orange Idiot changes the name of the river to River Trump or River Musk or some such nonsense.
This must be an old Google Images picture as the spineless gits have now bent the knee and renamed the Gulf of Mexica as the Gulf of America.
Here are three songs about the Rio Grande. Enjoy them while you can.
Some more Shuffle Sensations for you this Saturday.
We start this week with Scottish Girl Band Teen Canteen with Carla J Easton on vocals. Honey is taken from their 2016 album Say It All With A Kiss album which was the 3rd release and 1st album from Last Night From Glasgow.
Next up we have (Kevin Rowland and) Dexys Midnight Runners with Jackie Wilson Said (I'm in Heaven When You Smile ) from their 1982 classic album Too-Rye-Ay
We conclude this week with the late great Jimmy La Fave and the appropriate Only One Angel from the great compilation Viva Americana(here)
2025 Charity Shop Purchases #5 - Bob Dylan -The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3
Bought on the same charity shop expedition as Boz Scaggs and The Staple Singers this was easily the pick of the the bunch
A 3 CD set on Columbia from 1991 to give it its full name The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3 (Rare & Unreleased)1961 -1991. 58 tracks for £3.99 pretty good on the back of the success of the A Complete Unknown film and from Oxfam to boot!
I was so excited I had to go for a pint!
It joins Volumes 4,7 and 9 on the shelves. It includes a number of absolute bangers but I'm limiting myself, and you, to one from each disc.
The bar for Charity find of the year has been well and truly set
The sharp-eyed reader will realise that today’s photograph is of a souvenir booklet; I have no idea what match at Tynecastle I saw when I bought it. Unfortunately I have no nice memories of this game, it was one Dave and I were dragged along to when staying in Edinburgh at our Aunt and Uncle’s flat - our Dad lived about 50 feet from the ground as a child so unsurprisingly was a Hearts fan. The last time I was there, in 1990, a few friends met up (were you there, CC?) full of hope only to see Dundee United get thrashed 4 - 0 by Aberdeen. I have a feeling I left after the 3rd goal went in at 58 mins (second o.g. of the game) and went to The Diggers for a pint.
As a team the Hearts were bumbling and stumbling along in 1974, drifting to a first-ever relegation a couple of years later. A far cry from the team of the late 1950s much revered by our Dad (not surprising, they won the 1957-58 league scoring an astounding 132 goals in 34 games, and again 2 years later, scoring a measly 102 goals). The manager in 1974, Bobby Seith, after leaving Hearts a year later, ended up in that delightful east coast town Broughty Ferry, working there as a chiropodist.
Looking at the Hearts squad for 1973-74 here there are no players that achieved much general recognition. I wondered if my booklet was much sought-after……..alas it’s not (£4 on ebay).
Can the Top Ten best selling singles of 1974 offer more cheer? ABSOLUTELY! Here are three in that All Important Top Ten:
Although the Staple Singers can (and indeed should) be played every day of the week there is something extra special about giving them an airing of a Sunday.
As you can see from the picture above Uncloudy Day is part of the Gospel Greats Series released on the budget Charly label in 1995. It seems to me that it features 8 the original 12 tracks from the album of the same name released by Vee- Jay in 1959 featuring recordings from 1956 - 1959.
This CD features a further 12 tracks including Will The Circle Be Unbroken which should be obligatory on every Staple Singers albums and which should also be played in schools.
We start this week's shuffle with a song from the rather dapper group pictured above.
They are none other than Michigan band Tommy James and the Shondells who had a big hit in 1968 with Crimson and Clover.Yet another song from Jon Savage's 1968: The Year the World Burned. I'm guessing that is Tommy in the double breasted yellow jacket and with the impressive barnet.
We cross the pond to my home country for the next two acts.
The Muldoons are a band from Paisley who released the album Made for Each Other on Last Night From Glasgow in 2020. Here is the title track and a review from the GInger Quiff . They followed this one up recently with the rather excellent We Saw The View.
Can anyone out there remember who won the Scottish Album of the Year (SAY) Award in 2017. No? I'll put you out your misery then. It was none other than Sacred Paws with Strike a Light from which the song Nothing is taken.
I'm a big fan of John Niven the Irvine born, American based author.
I recently got out from the library a 2018 re-issue of his 2005 debut novella Music From the Big Pink timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the debut album of the same name by TheBand.
Described by Bloomsbury as a heady blend of drugs, music, sixties counter-culture and intoxicating youth it centres on a young drug dealer and wannabee musician Greg Keltner who hangs out with the band in Woodstock as The Band are recording their album and supplies drugs in particular to Richard Manuel and Rick Danko. Topically Bob Dylan makes a brief appearance.
It's only 187 pages and can easily be read in one or two sittings. and if hedonism is your thing I would recommend it.
I only have The Band and The Last Waltz so will keep an eye of for this one. I do, however have a couple of songs from it (one a Dylan cover you should all be familiar with) and a relevant song by the Drive-By Truckers
I know next to nothing about Boz Scaggs with the exception of the fact that he had a song called Lido Shuffle.
I picked up a vinyl copy of his 7th studio album Silk Degrees, from 1976 and on Columbia, in a charity shop after confirming that Lido Shuffle appeared on it.
I subsequently discovered that he was not actually christened Boz Scaggs and that his real name is actually William Royce Scaggs. I also discovered that he had been a member of the Steve Miller Band .Had I known that I may have approached the album with a degree of trepidation.
It is very much a middle of the road album and also quite possibly veers towards Yacht Rock. For example the final track, and the only other one that I recognised, is We're All Alone a ballad that became a top 10 hit for Rita Coolidge. It was also covered by Frankie Valli.
It was originally the b-side to Lido Shuffle but probably made him considerably more money than the for superior a-side.
Three artists this week who have all appeared before on this series suggesting that we will have to wait for at least another week for some of the recently added ones to feature.
We start with Glasgow band Savage Mansion with the song Night School taken for their most recent album The Shakes. They previously made an appearance on SS49.
It is no surprise that Bob Marley and the Wailers have graced this series before - SS25 since you ask. Today they give us the peerless Redemption Song from the equally peerless Uprising album.
We conclude with a collaboration between two legendary artists namely Dave Alvin and Jimmie Dale Gilmore from their debut duo album Downey to Lubbock (their respective home towns) The song selected from the album is Lawdy Miss Clawdy. They also graced SS57.
This programme holds a lot of memories, despite the game taking place almost 50 years ago (and despite being told by my partner on almost a daily basis that “you can’t remember what you did yesterday”). I am sure I wore the Manchester United scarf Mum had knitted for me to Old Trafford, and I can definitely remember the year, score, the crowd size (unlike my brother). And it’s the one and only time I heard a record played in a ground that I then went to purchase (the record, that is).
When I talked to Dave just over two weeks ago (assuming this goes out on Jan 31), I told him the crowd was 46 000 (actual 46 802), the score was 2-1, and the year 1975. ((Did I mention that Dave got every part of that wrong.) This I also remember - when Man United first scored, everyone in the stand stood up apart from my mum “I didn’t know you were meant to stand up”, but she certainly did when the second goal went in.
We had great seats, in the upper tier of a huge stand, and either I or my Dad took three photos on my Kodak Instamatic of the game. We had great seats thanks to the generosity of a friend of my grandfather who purchased match tickets for us- I can remember my father protesting that it was too kind a gift as Mr Morris would not accept any money: the two adult tickets for the upper stand were £1 each, mine and Dave’s tickets less, maybe not half price but perhaps 70p. Combined total £3.40, which is equivalent to £26 today (that’s for your eyes Mr “fan-since-childhood tax exile” Ratcliffe). Now, look at that team, it was Docherty’s great side of the mid-1970s (only Gordon Hill was still to sign), and who knows what could have been achieved if he hadn’t been sacked a couple of years later?
Apart from a programme (that cost the equivalent of 61p today) I also purchased a booklet about the history of the club for a very affordable 25p:
The AITT of that week has one of my all-time favourite songs, a single that I bought in 1975, subsequently lost and purchased again in a charity shop in Coventry ca. 1997 for I think 45p (Mr. CC was with me at the time, maybe he can remember?). (CC writes - I've never been to Coventry George!)
There’s a song by Fox of which I have no recollection, and four truly awful singles. I bought this group’s first single, but can’t remember if I bought this pop gem that was at no. 6.
And how toptastic are those breeks? I also purchased the single that was at no. 9, and still have.
Thanks for reading, and thanks to Mr CC for putting this piece up.
CC writes:
Many thanks for this George despite the historical geographical in accuracy I highlighted above.
Bernard Butler, Norman Blake and James Grant have played gigs together a few times over the years most notably at FRETS in Strathaven.
They now appear to have taken it one step further with a number of tour dates in the next few months and the release of an album to be released on 28th March .They have released a track, which is included below, as a taster and it is indeed very tasty.
It seems that they will take turns leading on the songs which is a bit like what Norman does with Raymond McGinley at Teenage Fanclub gigs.
I've seen Norman playing solo fairly recently as well as with the Fannies on a good few occasions and saw James play at a house concert many years ago, but I have never seen Bernard play. Finances will dictate whether I go and see them and whether I opt for the vinyl or CD version of the album.
Here they are with some songs from previous bands that they have graced:
Storm Eowyn hit Central Scotland on Friday with winds in excess of 100mph.
We got off relatively lightly save for a fence coming down in an area in our back garden which acts like a wind tunnel.Fortunately our nephew had cut down the Eucalyptus tree last summer as it would almost certainly come down and probably causing a bit of damage.
Our plastics bin did blow over and deposited plastic bottles and containers all over the front garden.I will be retrieving them for days. It was too light to stand up to the wind. The bottles bin had no such problem!
It got me thinking of the old Jazz standard Stormy Weather. There were three versions in the Music file on the PC although strangely none of them were by Billie Holiday. I thought three might suffice if only to save me the trouble of downloading another version.
Lest I be accused of hijacking the Single Song Sunday slot I have also included a different song with the same title by the Pixies.
I've put some more songs on the MP3 player recently so this series will go on an on I'm afraid for those of you who have nothing better to do on a Saturday.
This week we are kicking off with The Zombies and their third contribution to the Shuffle namely I Want Her She Wants Me.
The Motorcycle Boy make their second appearance with Big Rock Candy Mountain from their album Scarlet
Amazingly, and somewhat Criminally, today marks the first appearance of the great Lucinda Williams on the Shuffle. Let's Get the Band Back Together is taken from her most recent album 2023's Stories From a Rock'n'Roll Heart which is one of the recent additions.
More shuffling, recent or otherwise, next Saturday.
It would be highly dishonest of me to claim the credit for the idea of this series, that belongs to a man called Dave Roberts, who has written a highly entertaining and amusing book called 32 programmes. Those are the programmes he saved from a much much larger collection when he moved to a different country. I did a similar thing with my collection of programmes 12 years ago. In the book, Mr Roberts charts his life through his chosen programmes, chronologically. I, though, chose my programmes solely on what they meant to me regardless of the date; and unlike Mr Roberts I will ramble almost incoherently about anything that comes to mind whilst I contemplate the programme and of course shoehorn in some tunes.
Today, it’s Plough Lane, and Wimbledon FC. (That’s the club who were bought and relocated to Milton Keynes.) But On April 8, 1978, we went to see 4th Division Wimbledon play the once mighty and then fallen, or should that be plummeted, Huddersfield Town. The “we” is the four us, my Mum, Dad and wee brother. As for why, well given the time of year we must have been on our Easter holiday, staying with my grandparents (my Dad’s parents) who lived in the Borough of Merton and thus quite close to the ground - it was 4 miles from their house - and I suspect my brother and I had ants-in-our-pants, and Dad thought we should go to a game. But not to Chelsea, Arsenal, Spurs, or even Crystal Palace. But Wimbledon. Which sounds very churlish of me. I wonder if he was thinking there might be a hooligan problem at the larger grounds, but I also think the likely larger output of crude chants and foul language was not a consideration as a couple of years earlier me, Mum and Dad stood in the “Provie” Road end of Dens Park watching Dundee v.. Ayr United.
I have absolutely no memory of this game at all, unlike the games Mr Roberts talks about, he seems to have perfect recall. Looking at the team sheets I recognise no player despite Wimbledon having Dave Bassett on their books (and he played in 35 league games that season) and Dickie Guy (who I had heard of). The score, I have discovered, was 2-0 to Wimbledon. But I have kept the programme, because, well, if you buy one you just cannot throw it away…………..that is until you are told to by your partner, with the proviso that you can keep a few. Maybe it’s a simple reminder of a day out for the four of us. I have asked my brother about this game, but he was nae to use to man nor beast. Although he did tell me that we (the four of us) also went to the speedway in Wimbledon and also to the dogs there.
As for the day itself, the website “onthisday” has absolutely NOTHING for April 8 1978 (although why it has omitted “The Forsyths went to see Wimbledon v. Huddersfield Town” I haven’t a scooby).
As for the AITT, I instantly recognise all 10 songs, although I can quite gladly go through the rest of my days without hearing again five of them. Not this, though, it’s aged quite well - almost:
Someone who calls them self Missy Elliott has absolutely murdered that song, as has Alannah Myles. It’s criminal.
But here on 18 seconds you have one of the most sublime moments in music:
Here’s one of those 5 songs I referred to above, introduced by Kid Jensen, at no. 9 on April 8, and one place behind G****is:
We never did shake them up by winning the world cup, but it totally shook me up and I lost all interest in the national team after that.
The Top Ten Albums are barely worth a mention. Bar one,
Oh, and unlike Mr Roberts, I have fewer than 32 programmes. Hopefully I can be inspired by the next one.
Thanks for reading (and listening), and thanks to Mr CC for hosting.
CC writes:
Thanks George
Sadly the great Denis Law passed away shortly after being referenced in George's last post. I hope no-one referenced in this post suffers the same fate!
And on behalf of a Nation a very sarcastic thanks for bringing up Argentina 78!
All the people you would expect make an appearance and the music is pretty good. Dylan aficionados won't find too many surprises with the film staying pretty close to actual events.
I enjoyed it immensely. Mrs CC, who is not particularly a fan, enjoyed it as well. You should go and see it if you get the chance,
It is also a good excuse for me to feature some of his early stuff.
Is Palestine a country? It depends on who you ask I suppose. If you type that question into the Google search engine this is the top response:
Palestine, officially the State of Palestine, is a country in the southern Levant region of West Asia recognized by 146 out of 193 UN member states.
Together with the fact that it has appeared in my Blog stats of visiting Countries that is good enough for me.
I am reluctant to get too political as I'm sure most folk have there own views. I will only say that it is a bit disappointing that it has taken an American Presidential election to trigger strenuous negotiations for a ceasefire. While the discussions go on the body count keeps rising.
It should come as no surprise that the current situation has resulted in what we would describe as protest songs.
Humood Alkhuder is actually a Kuwaiti singer and songwriter who sings contemporary soul and Islamic music. However I feel that his song Falasteen Biladi - Palestine is my Land is an appropriate number to feature today.
Dana Sala is a Jordanian singer, songwriter and producer of Palestinian descent which reflects the voluntary and more often than not non voluntary dispersion of the Palestinian people. Here she sings a dance tune Ya Tal3een.
Kamilya Jubran is a Palestinian singer, songwriter and musician from a musical family who plays the oud and the qanum. From 1982-2002, she was the lead singer of Sabreen , an Arabic musical group based in occupied East Jerusalem. Since 2002, she has toured solo and collaborated with a range of European musicians. Her contribution is a song called Ghareebah
Finally we have Rim Banna who was (she died in 2018 from breast cancer aged 51) a Palestinian singer and composer who was most known for her modern interpretations of traditional Palestinian songs and poetry. Here she sings a song which translates as The Taste of Love
Next we are off to a relatively new Country , something hopefully that one day Palestine will become
Something for you today courtesy of an NME Band of the Week in May 2015 who described them as sounding like Lush on Diazepan.
Yet another band who were first brought to my attention by Drew.
I had it in my head that Kid Wave were a Danish band but it turns out that they are an Anglo Swedish Australian combo whose members were Mattias Bhatt, Harry Deacon, Lea Emery and Serra Patale.
It seems that they only had the one album Wonderlust (pictured above) in 2015 on the Heavenly label.There was an EP called Gloom in 2014 and a few singles and that's yer lot.
That's about all I've got on the band apart from it's terrific stuff. The album can by picked up for a song on Discogs. You could do much worse.
One of the good things about the Saturday Shuffle (alongside the fact that minimal effort is required) is that it throws up songs that you haven't listened to in an age and has you dusting down old records or CDs for a long overdue listen.
Such was the case when Rising Above Bedlam the title track of the 1991 album by Jah Wobble's Invaders of the Heart pooped up here
I duly dug the CD out for a listen and what a pleasure it was. Ten tracks and no duds among them. In addition to the title track which appeared on Saturday these are probably the most well known of the ten tracks.
I've seen him live twice with the first time at Glasgow's Garage among the best gigs I've ever seen. I wrote about it in the very early days of CCM. You will see that things here haven't improved much, if at all, since then.
Although we are now over half way through January I'm still thinking of it as New Year and some good news for the New Year has just filtered in.
Edwyn Collins has announced that he is to release a new album Nation Shall Speak Unto Nation on 14th March. Anyone who reads his social media posts will agree that he is a good man for the job.
It is his first album since 2019's Badbea and a video has been released of the song Knowledge (see below) where he looks back at being shy and awkward as a youngster. It is very good.
Needless to say this has had me scrabbling through the previous albums and songs that I have.
The MP3 player has this week thrown out three tracks in a not very random sort of a way - one from the 70's, one from the 80's and one from the 90's. None of that modern 21st Century stuff here.
The picture above is probably a clue to the first act.Yes it is Ron and Russell Mael of Sparks fame and quite possibly the strangest brothers in music. Amateur Hour is taken from possibly their most famous album 1974's Kimono My House.
For the 84th SS post we have a song from an album released in 1984 namely Seven Seas from Ocean Rain by Echo and the Bunnymen.
Finally we hit the dizzy heights of 1991 with the title track of Rising Above Bedlam by Jah Wobble's Invaders of the Heart.
Who knows - the Shuffle may feature something from this century next week or probably more realistically the 60's.
This (brief?) series has nothing to do with a certain 1960s TV programme but, as the picture suggests, football matches, ones that I have been to: that programme is a memento from the first time I saw Manchester United play, and the second match I ever saw. (This was the first.) August 18, 1971, it was a wednesday and I am assuming I was still on holiday from my primary school near Reading otherwise I don’t think my dad would have driven into central London on a weekday evening. He would have driven his 11 year old yellow Ford Consul into central London so I could see my team, me sitting beside him on the grey plastic-covered front bench seat. I can still remember that car’s number plate.
Here are the team sheets, with Dad’s corrections, and just how fabulous are those lists for nostalgia?
Apart from the programme you can see, I also bought what has long been one of my prized possessions, a Manchester United Supporters Club Handbook for season 1971/72. I also have a feeling I (or my Dad really) bought a rosette, but no metal badge from what I am sure was a dazzling array. Of the game itself I can actually remember two things, one was that Bobby Charlton scored a wonder goal and the other was George Best getting sent-off (although my memory of this is that it happened at the end of the game, and not after 40 minutes when it actually occurred). Oh, and that we won 3-2. Three things.
Dad and I were two of 54, 763 at Stamford Bridge that night, a massive crowd for a weekday game, and I think most were there not see Dennis Law (as I was) but to cheer on Chelsea in their first home league game since beating Real Madrid in the 1971 Cup Winners’ Cup. That team disintegrated in a couple more years, although not as badly as my team - they did go top in December of that year but then the slow descent to Division two started in January, taking 2 and a half seasons to do so
That was the first of the four times I saw Manchester United play (I started to very quickly lose interest after they sacked Tommy Docherty in 1977).
As a Dundonian, the date of the 18th August is quite significant - The Tay Road Bridge was opened on that day in 1966 (by which time we were living near Reading).
Anyway, back to August 18 1971, and I have looked at the All Important Top Ten. We have already featured the no. 2 tune in a highly thought of and much lamented series about that excellent pop band The New Seekers (Never ending song of love, since you ask). I instantly recognise 7 of the top ten. I actually have one the songs I did not instantly recognise, and of the other two I have absolutely no recollection of one of them at all (What Are You Doing Sunday, by Dawn). I do, somehow, know this execrable pile of bobbins:
There are some belting tunes in that AITT, one by Atomic Rooster, and this one by a prog. band from Leicester fronted by Roger Chapman, he of the quivering vocal style: