~Winter Wassailing~#16: 'Happy New Year' by Shockabilly

A Selection Of Seasonal Songs In The ~Streetlamp~ Stylee!

And so we bid farewell to the year of 2010, and what a pivotal and important year it was for the three of us here at the ~Streetlamp~.

For not only was this the year I finally got married, but also Griff and Ray were my Best Men(probably the only time they'll ever be attired with THAT phrase!). And it was because of all this that the three of us went hillwalking on the Saturdays leading up to the wedding and thus came up with the concept of the ~Streetlamp~ Blog.
I can't speak for Griff and Ray but 2010 goes into my Top 3 Favourite years of my lifetime, along with 1983 and 1989.
1989 was an important year for me and Griff as it was the last year that we did all the really cool stuff you can get away with when you are young. It was also the year we consciously started doing things like taking cinema, art and culture more seriously. And of course the music was fantastic.
1983 was the year that Ray and I left school and is important because it's the year we put away childish things(yes, I know I used that phrase in the previous blog, but that was about 1983 as well) and started to experience all those things we had only dreamed about in the big, bad world of adulthood. And of course, once again, the music was fantastic.

It goes without saying that when we look back at 2010 we'll be able to say that the music was fantastic. We know it was because we devoted this Blog to it.

So I'll sign off my contributions to the Blog this year with the only wonderful song about New Year that I know of in my collection. The song is 'Happy New Year' by Shockabilly.
Now Shockabilly were a deranged trio of musical terrorists from the early to mid 1980s. They comprised of Eugene Chadbourne, Mark Kramer and David Licht and specialised in demented bluegrass-ish covers of famous rock songs, no cow too sacred. They also composed a lot of their own songs which, for me anyway, were always more satisfying than their covers. They toured with The Butthole Surfers(whom Kramer would later join when Shockabilly split) and The Fall, and were once sacked from Rough Trade Records because 'they weren't selling as many records as The Smiths'.
I bought all their albums when they were released and, just as with The Butthole Surfers, there was a time when I thought I was the only person in Central Scotland who knew or had heard of them! There was a time when, if asked, I would claim that their final album 'Heaven'(from which today's track is taken) was my favourite album of all time. I'm not sure if I was just being smart or obtuse, or if I really did love it as much as I claimed. Anyway, I still like the album a lot and, as I've said, I find the band's own songs actually quite moving in places.
And that's how it is with this track; it sounds like someone in a rather melancholy mood reflecting not just on the year passed, but on their life. It also throws in curveball lyrics like "To those who say have a Happy New Year// I have no fear// For in my dreams giant turtles roam the sky". Sounds like someone's spent Hogmanay binging on blue cheese and watching 'Gamera Vs Jiger'!!

As for Hogmany itself, I personally can't stand it myself, or the whole New Year thing in general. There's always that feeling that, in Scotland, you've GOT to celebrate it whether you want to or not. I'd happily just wake up on January the 2nd and get on with things.

And so we bid farewell to 2010, but we hope to see you all back here in 2011.
Thanks for all the support this year folks!

~Gordon~

Griff says; It's the bear who would share.

Now that Christmas is well and truly over, it's nice to get back down to the straightforward business of bringing you the best in the world of indie releases with one we almost overlooked. Just before Christmas, Bearsuit, quirky, Norwich-based exponents of electronic, indie-pop released their brilliant new single A Train Wreck. You can download it as a free MP3 either from the band website or from the Fortuna POP! website. If you visit the latter you might also want to have a look at the other free MP3s that they currently have available from the likes of Crystal Stilts and The Pipettes. Hell, you might even consider buying some muic when you're there too; after all Fortuna POP! is the label that brings us music from the sublime Allo Darlin' and The Pains of Being Pure At Heart.
Fortuna POP! also have Bearsuit's new album 'The Phantom Forest' scheduled for release in February 2011.
Anyway, here's the video for Bearsuit's A Train Wreck:



We enjoyed that so much that we also wanted to bring you a personal, long-time favourite Bearsuit track; Foxy Boxer, released in 2007. Unfortunately, no video existed for it. Well, until now anyway. So, enjoy below, courtesy of Ray, Bearsuit's brilliant Foxy Boxer.



This track is featured on Bearsuit's 2007 album oh:io, released by Fantastic Plastic records, if you're interested. And yes, it features more songs in the same energetic and insanely catchy vein, so you shouldn't be disappointed. If you just want to download it as a free MP3 then you should be able to find it here.

Griff
xx

~Winter Wassailing~#15: 'Boxing Day' by Elvis Costello & The Attractions

A Selection Of Seasonal Songs In The ~Streetlamp~ Stylee!

And so....

If Christmas Eve was 1981, then Boxing day finds us in the glorious year of 1983.
Now 1983 was an important year for us here at the ~Streetlamp~ as it was the year in which we put away childish things. Indeed, Christmas 1983 I recall as the last Christmas that I would view with anything like the eyes of a child, most certainly because it was the last one that I could ever say that passed completely alcohol-free. It was all downhill from then.

For Christmas 1983, my main Christmas gift was what we used to call a 'Ghetto Blaster', i.e. a large, portable stereo radio-cassette player. With the money I got for Christmas that year I went into Stirling and purchased two new music cassettes, specifically for my new 'Ghetto Blaster'. I bought 'Queen's Greatest Hits'(stop laughing Griff!!) and 'Punch The Clock' by Elvis Costello & The Attractions.
'Punch The Clock' is a strange album in Elvis's oeuvre as it has almost become completely forgotten, and yet it was the NME's album of the year that year. That was why I bought it. God knows why I bought the Queen cassette!!
By 1983 most music had succumbed to that big brass sound that Dexy's Midnight Runners, Madness and to a lesser extent, The Teardrop Explodes had brought to the charts. And 'Punch The Clock' saw Elvis backed not only by The Attractions, but also The TKO Horns led by Big Jimmy Paterson whose trombone had led Dexy's brass section on the 'Searching For The Young Soul Rebels' album. Paterson's brass section add a real staccato punch to Elvis's songs which are already fairly energetic and heavenly melodic.
'Punch The Clock' doesn't seem to carry the same clout and kudos as, say, 'Imperial Bedroom', 'Almost Blue', 'Blood And Chocolate' or even 'Armed Forces', yet as I've pointed out, it was the NME's top album in a year that practically groaned under the weight of quality albums. Remember this is the album that contains not only Elvis's own brilliant version of the remarkable 'Shipbuilding'(see Griff's Blog), but also fantastic singles like 'Everyday I Write The Book' and 'Pills And Soap'.
If you are unacquainted with 'Punch The Clock' I can only but urge you to check it out, not just for the three tracks mentioned above, not just for the magnificent playing of the TKO Horns, but also for containing the only decent song about Boxing Day in the history of music!
The version below is taken from a performance on The Tube....this track was not broadcast however due to running over time.


Talking of Boxing Day(as in the 26th of December), a few years ago Griff and I were discussing what WE would put into Room 101 if ever we were on that particular TV show(or even found ourselves with the Orwellian nightmare of it's literary origins) and I happened to say that I would put Boxing Day into it. Why? Well, because as a child I pretty much gave myself up totally to the magic of Christmas and found Christmas Eve and Christmas Day so overwhelming that Boxing Day just seemed to be such a complete anti-climax. All those gifts now looked rather ordinary in the cold light of day. Having eaten so much chocolate the day before, that mountain of selection boxes and chocolate oranges just turned your stomach. And all those Christmas songs that had sounded so amazing in the run up to Christmas Eve, on Boxing Day just sounded complete bollocks. Furthermore, with our family, we tried to re-create the whole Christmas Day experience again on Boxing Day but this time down at my Gran's. Having to eat all the same food again, coupled with the fact that all the adults usually tended to fall asleep directly after dinner, and a hollow sense of going through the motions made Boxing Day the idiot cousin of the whole Christmas experience.
The only good thing about Boxing day is that it gave us one of my favourite Elvis Costello songs!

I can't quite recall what items Griff said he would put into Room 101 were, but I'm sure 'silly twats who can't go 24 hours without mentioning Marcel Proust' was pretty high on his list.

Quite right too!

~Gordon~


No, Gordon, I think my Room 101 choice was Queen fans who refuse to come out of the closet about their secret shame. ;-)
Still laughing, here. You're going to wish you'd never told me this. This is a total 'Get Out of Jail Free' card for me the next time we have one of our famous extended musical arguments. Suddenly, my unaccountable purchase of Dire Strait's 'Romeo & Juliet' 7" is small beer (and it was already partly redeemed anyway by the Indigo Girl's cover version).

Griff

~Self Indulgent Addendum~: I hate to burst your bubble Griff, but I had Dire Straits 'Romeo & Juliet' AS WELL!!! How shameful for us! Maybe we should re-name the Blog ~The Streetlamp Doesn't Cast Mark Knopfler's Shadow Anymore~!!
And talking embarassing record purchases, did you know I have TWO singles by Modern Romance!! Now, one you can laugh off as a mistake or a prank, but TWO?!?! Do you think I should write a blog about them?
~Gordon~

~Winter Wassailing~#14: 'Merry Crassmas'

A Selection Of Seasonal Songs In The ~Streetlamp~ Stylee!

If, back on Christmas Eve last year, you had said to me that the one band I would re-connect with to the point of obsession in 2010 would be Crass, I would either have punched you or suggested that you immediately seek psychological assistance.
For, as I have already explained at great length in my original Crass Blog, this was a band that Griff and I not only hated but couldn't even explain why we ever liked them in the first place. Often we would lament the wasted hours we spent listening to Crass when we could have been listening to 'What's Going On', 'After The Goldrush' or 'Nebraska'. You really have to understand just how much we REALLY hated them between 1985 and the beginning of this year....but that hatred only existed because we had once been SO passionate about them....their music, their politics and their stance.
It was back in the early Summer of 2010 that, as Griff and I at the height of our obsession with 'The Flats' by Mariel McCormack and Marie O'Hara/Botched Fairytale, sat trawling their Myspace page for influences etc and were surprised to see that they listed Crass as one of their Top 10. This led to a discussion about how Crass could be a major influence on a lot of new artists who weren't around when Crass released their original records. Griff practically bullied me into considering writing a Blog on Crass but I remained sceptical.
Once I started researching and writing the piece, it all fell into place. It became my favourite piece of my own writing and the one Blog I am most proud of. Yep, even ahead of my Smiths piece.

One of the reasons that Crass has become so important to us again is not just the music, but because the political landscape has changed again. This is probably one of the reasons that Crass had become so archaic in the first place. Cosy, complacent, bland governments(Major, Blair, Brown) failed to spark the wrath that Thatcher's government had.
Suddenly in 2010 we were presented with a government that the British public had NOT voted for, and who proceeded to make a bit of a Gareth Hunt of everything; students rioting because of massively increased tuition fees(which the Lib Dems said wouldn't happen), massive cuts in public spending, family allowances slashed, 12 year old boys arrested for protesting via Facebook against the closure of their Youth Club(Cameron's pre-Election rhetoric claimed that society needed Youth Clubs, but once in power began shutting them down....Yeah, arrest those pesky 12 year olds Dave, they might grow up to be Socialists).
We also face the unacceptable censoring of the Internet(see Griff's Blogs on Wikileaks), as well as Murdoch's biased News corporation indoctrinating the British Public how to vote, plus huge wastes of public money like the London Olympics and TWO Royal weddings coming up.
It really is like 1980 all over again!
Is it any wonder we feel the fire in the belly that Crass gave us all those years ago?
It's not that we tired of them, we just saw them as redundant as the political system in Britain bored itself to death.

So, on this snow covered Christmas Eve, I've chosen Crass(my band of the year) to serenade us into the Festivities. I should point out to anyone unfamiliar with Crass that two tracks below(both sides of their 'Merry Crassmas' single) is totally unlike the rest of their output. It was a bit of a novelty single, released when those awful 'Stars On 45' records were all the rage. This was a medley of Crass's most infamous tracks played in jaunty fashion upon a cheap Casio keyboard. And Santa is on hand too, to bid you 'Seasons Greetings'.



There's very little left for me to say now, but rest assured that here at the ~Streetlamp~, tonight we're gonna party like it's 1981!!
Merry Crassmas Everybody!

~Gordon~

PS: If you haven't already done so, please check out our Festive Top Thirty!

It's interesting to read you write in the first paragraph about how our love for Crass turned to hate for a while.I think you've hit the nail squarely on the head when you say that it was precisely because we were so overwhelmingly passionate about them that this was the natural corollary; as best summed up by the famous Elie Wiesel quote "The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference".

Griff