Wall of Death

The second CD single I bought in the Aberfeldy Thrift Shop was E-Bow the Letter by R.E.M.
It was the first in a series of CD singles released from their last great album New Adventures in Hi-Fi.
Each single contained three extra tracks compiled exclusively for the single releases and to be honest they interested me more than E-Bow
The first is Tricycle taken from a St Louis soundcheck with another soundcheck this time from Rome of the song  Departure.
Finally is a version of Wall of Death recorded at an Athens Studio.
I immediately recognised  it as a Richard Thompson song and went to the shelves to track it down.
It is from Shoot Out the Lights  his final album with his then wife Linda.
I was surprised to find out that I don't have it .... yet.



R.E.M. - Tricycle (St Louis Soundtrack)

R.E.M. - Departure (Rome Soundcheck)

R.E.M. - Wall of Death

Richard & Linda Thompson - Wall of Death

Heidi In Love & Light

We've been fortunate enough to have seen Irish folk singer Heidi Talbot twice at Paisley Arts Centre and at Glasgow's Mitchell Theatre as part of Celtic Connections.
She is married to fiddle John McCusker and now resides in Scotland.

From 2008 In Love & Light is either her 2nd or 3rd solo album dependant on which source you read.
It is the only CD I picked up on the first week of our holidays in Fort William en route to Kinlochmoidart in the Ardamurchan peninsula. We were staying in a cottage in the grounds of Kinlochmoidart House with no phone signal or internet access. Bliss.
The only other place within miles where CDs were available was the Fisherman's Mission in Mallaig but none there took my fancy.

A combination of traditional folk songs plus some singer/songwriter tunes delivered in a Celtic stylee and all delivered wonderfully by Heidi and her stellar backing crew (Boo Hewerdine, McCusker,Eddi Reader, Kris Drever and many others).
Oh, and Heidi unleashes her inner Don Estelle with a version of Whispering Grass.Unbelievably the song by two characters from the racist and xenophobic alleged comedy TV show  It Ain't Half Hot Mum reached number 1 in the UK singles charts in 1975. Some of the stuff on TV in the 70's and which is portayed as comedy is quite toe curling.
Heidi does her best to repair the damage.

Heidi Talbot - If You Stay

Heidi Talbot - Whispering Grass

Trojan Lovers

I very nealy missed the Trojan Lovers Box Set in a charity shop in St Andrews a month or so ago.
The reason?Given it was a boxset it was not filed with the other CDs. I had bought a CD and then decided to have another look.
Just as well really as otherwise you wouln't be getting this for the next three Sundays.
From 1999 it is one of the many,many Trojan boxsets on the go. 50 tracks over 3 CDs. I paid 3 quid. The going rate seems to be just north of 8 quid although some chancer is looking for 35 quid on e-bay.

Realistically I could have chosen any of the 17 songs of disc 1 as they all are of a very high standard.
I've gone for three songs that you will recognise although perhaps not by the artists listed below.

Derrick Harriott - Have You Seen Her

B.B.Seaton - Thin Line Between Love and Hate

The Fab Five Inc. - Love Me For a Reason

Aberfeldy Woo Hoo

If you are ever in the area the small Perthshire town of Aberfeldy is well worth a visit.
The birthplace of  the actor Alan Cummings it has a small community run cinema called The Birks.
There is also an excellent bookshop and cafe the Watemill

There is,as far as I am aware, only one charity shop namely the Thrift Shop which is in an old church building.
The volunteers are very frienly with one offering to sell me a kilo of CDs. The problem is they were all rubbish!
I felt obliged to buy something (Mrs CC bought a framed picture of Loch Tay for a pound) and  I came away with two CD singles
One was Woo Hoo by the 5.6.7.8's. I've featured this before from my burn of the album Bomb the Rocks.. The "b" side Guitar Date is also  on the album and didn't feature last time round.


Shades of Ernie's excellent Sazanami Saturday series and JC's recent Say Sue Me ICA


The 5.6.7.8's - Woo Hoo

The 5.6.7.8s - Guitar Date

Django Django

I picked up Django Django the 2012 debut album by the band of the same name in a St Andrews charity shot.
I had it in my head that they were from Edinburgh and that they played jingly jangly pop music.I got it about a third right.
They did indeed meet at Edinburgh College of Art but only formed the band after moving to that London.
I got the jingly jangly bit totally wrong.
Apparantly they are an Art rock band. No, me neither. I am told that Art rock is
is a sub genre of rock music that generally reflects a challenging or avant-garde approach to rock, or which makes use of modernist,experimental, or unconventional elements. Art rock aspires to elevate rock from entertainment to an artistic statement, opting for a more experimental and conceptual outlook on music. Influences may be drawn from genres such as experimental rock,avant-garde music, classical music and jazz

Avant-garde? Check  me!
Sounds more electronica to me with synths and drum machines to the fore.
Not normally the kind of stuff I go for and after a first listen I was ready to offload it. I've mellowed slightly after a second listen

Django Django - Hail Bop

Django Django - Skies Over Cairo

Letting Off The Happiness

I was pleasantly surprised to find Letting Off the Happiness the second album by Bright Eyes from 1998 on the Saddle Creek label in a St Andrews charity shop and eagerly snapped it up

The NME described it thus:
As album titles go, ‘Letting Off The Happiness’, is as blackly ironic as they get. By track two, old Bright Eyes himself, Conor Oberst, has got drunk, buried his brother, considered suicide and ruminated on a dreamless coma.

So clearly not a laugh a minute then.
I'm an admirer of Mr Oberst. Indeed his latest album with Phoebe Bridgers as Better Oblivion Community Center is a strong contender for my album of the year.
However I feel that on occasions he doesn't always get it right. Sometimes his voice verges from the quirky to the irritating and some of his songs are all over the place or just plain weird. There are a good few on this album.
When he gets it right though with his ballads there are few better.

Bright Eyes - The Difference in the Shades

Bright Eyes - June in the Shade

State of the Union - Nebraska

George writes

The previous week’s state was not inspiring, so I checked my list to see if this week’s state could somehow inspire me, get the creative juices flowing with it’s many interesting cities, landscapes and references. And I recall that Penny from  the Big Bang Theory is from Nebraska. It’s a start. There is also an album called Nebraska, surely that can yield a suitable and good song???

A powder called Kool-Aid was invented in Hastings, Nebraska. You add water to it and get a fruit-flavoured drink. I’ve never seen it in the UK, not that I’ve ever looked for it. It sounds something like Creamola Foam (middle-aged Scottish people will be familiar with that disgusting stuff). I think some Weegies liked to mix vodka with their Creamola Foam. Made a change from Buckie and Eldorado, I suppose.

Also from Nebraska, and more famous in the UK certainly than Kool-Aid (or Creamola Foam) are Henry Fonda and Nick Nolte. And Marg Helgenberger (original CSI). And Fred Astaire. The website furnishing the above four did not think Marlon Brando (born in Omaha) was sufficiently famous to be included on their precious list. It also excluded de facto president of the USA from 2001-09 Dick Cheney. Also excluded were ex-President Gerald Ford, and Malcolm Little (Malcolm X), Montgomery Clift and James Coburn. And, again one for the middle-aged, Bosley of Charley’s Angels was born in Omaha. He appeared in every episode, all 110 of them. He was born David Doyle. That Ranker website, it’s not the greatest at this “famous people” thing, is it? 

And after all those blethers about Omaha-ans, here’s a track called……….Omaha………

Counting Crows - Omoha

And Omaha is going to supply the second song as well, by Sonny “Young Love” James, with a great banjo interlude half way through.

Sonny James - Three days out of Omaha

Arbor Day in the USA began in Nebraska in 1872, when one million trees were planted.

That’s Nebraska, where in Blue Hill, a woman wearing a hat that might scare a timid person can not be seen eating onions in public.

That’s Nebraska, where Prague allegedly holds the world’s largest kolache festival. Kolache, that’s a Czech fruit flan.

Over to CC for his tune. And another one next week.

CC writes:

In his first paragraph George alludes to one of the the greatest albums ever made.Here Andrew and Peter collectively known as The Cash Brothers pay hommage:

The Cash Brothers - Nebraska