The last month or so has seen the doubling of the number of Belle and Sebastian records on the shelves.
Firstly The Life Pursuit was purchased in St Andrews. It was fairly swiftly followed by the purchase of Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance in Blairgowrie.
From 2015 on Matador records it is their ninth studio album and the first in five years.
It has more of a dance feel than its predecessors wth the introduction of synthesisers and dance grooves.
I've chosen the two singles from the album.
The frst one The Party Line reached number 56 in Japan but did not chart elsewhere.
The second Noboday's Empire was somewhat more successful in that it reached number 36 - in Mexico.
As I said when posting The Life Pursuit it is somewhat better that I thought it might be given that the bands profile had slipped somewhat albeit both albums made the top 10 of the UK album charts - TlP reaching number 8 with GIPWTD peaking aaone place below at 9.
I picked up Starving Weather Report the 2nd album by Detroit band Deadstring Brothers (2005: Bloodshot -US, Evangeline - UK) second hand in Missing.
It joins their epoymous 2013 debut album on the shelves. One I got (and got signed) when they put on a stonking show in the old Stereo bar in Glasgow's Kelvinhaugh Street.
It seems that they recorded a further three albums before calling it a day in 2013 with Bloodshot releasing a digital Best of in 2018
Here is some blurb from the Bloodshot website to save me wittering on.
The comparisons with the Stones from the Exile in Main Street era are there for all to see.
An American Primal Scream if you will.
No bad thing as I'm sure you'll agree.
Levi Stubbs, Abdul "Duke" Fakir , Renaldo "Obie" Benson and Lawrence Payton collectively known as the Four Tops were one of the great Motown Soul bands of the 60's
I was nearly ostracised by the blogging community for not owning anything by them for the longest while.
That was rectified with me purchasing a Best of on vinyl in Stanraer in the summer of 17.
In early October this year it was joined by a CD version picked up in Granton-on-Spey.
Ok so all 12 tracks on the CD are on the vinyl album but you can never have too much of a good thing.
You could well say It's the Same Old Song but I Can't Help Myself.
Look out for the obligatory comment by Lynchie making us all jealous by regaling the time he was dancing in the aisles to the band.
Our dear friend Walter has been featuring an excellent Back to the Days of Glam series recently.
Artist featured include Roxy Music, Suzi Quatro and Sweet.
Sweet also featured here back in the summer in a Saturday series along with Rachel Sweet and Matthew Sweet.
Well they are featuring again today following the acquisition of a Best of (my first ever Sweet album) as part of a three for a pound deal in Missing Records.
It is pretty much a 50/50 split between their glam hits and their soft heavy rock numbers (if that description makes sense. It does to me)
I've gone for a glam number and one which can be described as a little bit of both and one which I had completely forgotten about.
Sorry George, I couldn't resist it. Plus Brian made me do it, or at the very least actively encourged me because let's face it after posting all the other songs on the Calendar Girl album on the first (or second) of the month over the last year the completist in me couldn't miss out this song penned by Arthur Hamilton the man who gave us Cry Me a River.
Plus it also allows me to feature Julie's many topical but risque costumes in their entirity.
And also when reading a post over at Rigid Digit's place I discovered that a band called The Kick once released a song called Julie London.
Following my recent Beastie Boys post regular Friday night commentator Spence advised that they were one of the bands he has missed out on. He suggested that it would be a good idea for bloggers to feature such artists who passed them by. On my part there are many that come into that category. Some have been re-discovered or more realistically discovered thanks to my blogging colleagues. Acts I missed when I was immersed in Americana, was put off for some reason or just totally missed them altogher. One such band which comes into the latter categories is lovable Welshmen The Super Furry Animals. I am however making up for lost time with Radiator, purchased recently on my first ever visit to Banchory where I also had a bacon roll in Morrisons and paid 7 quid to get my beard trimmed, being the third of their albums to grace the shelves along with a CD single of Hermann ♥'s Pauline which also features on the album. Another benefit to coming across these acts at the cow's tail is that you can pick up stuff by them very cheaply in charity shops.. Super Furry Animals - Demons Super Furry Animals - Chupacabras
George writes: This week no music from the band named after this state will appear. But if Kansas’ first album, called Kansas, had a track on it called Kansas, well, I might have changed my mind. But Wichita is in Kansas, so here is this near-perfect pop song
It could have been a Glen Campbell double, but Galveston, the follow up single, and just as good, is in Texas. Kool and The Gang covered Wichita Lineman, and it is not nearly as good as this!!!!!!:
There are over 100 covers of the song, and I have listened to a plethora, but none try any re-interpretation but are simply bands’ and singers’ copies, it’s like listening to some sort of Witchita Lineman tribute act. The Simone Kopmajer version is, though, pathetically tedious, yet somehow the Inger Marie Gundersen cover manages to be worse. I did get excited when I discovered a version by the Electric Light Orchestra. On re-reading it was by the Electronic Concept Orchestra, and they should not have bothered. King Harvest seem to be “a lineman for the counteeeeeeeeee-uh”. And Dennis “money in my pocket” Brown tries, but by the sounds of it, not too hard.
The Meters’ version is rises above the others (German version above notwithstanding)
The state of Kansas produces a whole load of wheat, corn, soybeans (I assume that is the same as soya beans) and something called sorghum, a plant I had never heard of - it’s a type of grass, and I think it is grown in Kansas as fodder.
(Above is a picture of some sorghum)
Next song is by Josh Ritter who seems to be having an existential crisis in Lawrence, Kansas:
Last song (from me) is by Big Country, from Dunfermline not Kansas. I’m not sure there are too many similarities between industrial (or post-industrial) Fife and Kansas, but I am open to persuasion:
That place in a million westerns, Dodge City, actually exists, and it is in Kansas.
That’s Kansas, home to the two blokes who murdered the Clutter family (In Cold Blood).
That’s Kansas, where according to one website, the inert gas helium was discovered in 1905. This would be news to the Scottish chemist and the two Swedish chemists who formally discovered it ten years earlier, as well as the astronomers who detected its existence 30 years before that. That Scottish chemist is Sir William Ramsay, who was awarded the nobel prize for his discovery of inert gases in air. A full year before those Americans “discovered” helium. Thus Sir William Ramsay in effect added the last column to the periodic table. To the non-chemists out there, helium is the “squeaky voice” gas. Thanks to that lazy website I am unsure if Kansas really does have the world’s largest ball of string, the largest easel or if former president Dwight D. Eisenhower was actually born in Kansas.
Above: Nobel chemist Sir WIlliam Ramsay.
Another one next week, CC writes I'll spare you the Glen Gregory version of Wichita Lineman. I also had Josh Ritter lined up. So instead from the mighty Hollywood Town Hall here is yet another contribution to this series from The Jayhawks The Jayhawks - Wichita
