Hot New Band

I read an interview with minor pop tart Peaches Geldof in one of London's free newspapers ("you get what you pay for" would be a suitable tagline for all of them) last week in which she enthused about a great new band she's just discovered called The Fire Engines.

Ever eager to learn more, I rushed to the internets to check out this exciting new beat combo. Their 1981 single Candyskin suggests they'll go far.

Montt Mardie

What kind of a name is that? Not a real one. Montt Mardie is the nom de pop of Swedish bloke David Pagmar.
What kind of music is that? The light bounce of the Pale Fountains, early 70s horn-filled soul, the classic pop of Burt Bacharach and a basic reading of Dexys in 82. He’s even got a song called Come On Eileen.
But not a cover of it? No. It’s a cover of Håkan Hellström's Kom igen Lena, which was itself inspired by Come On Eileen. Calling his cover Come On Eileen is not a bad joke by rock standards. Less amusingly, perhaps, he covers Rhianna’s Umbrella in Swedish, Paraply.
Genius or madman? Set Sail Tomorrow is quite clearly the work of pop genius. The b-side, a duet with Jens Lekman, quite clearly isn’t. Much of Montt Mardie’s work will appeal to fans of the el label, although he claims to be influenced by Duran Duran and Joy Division.
Yet more oddness! Quite. The Duran influence is evident in the 80s production of songs like Highschool Drama, but if Mr Pagmar has ever heard a Joy Division record, he certainly forgot about it when he entered the recording studio.
I don’t get it. Do you like him or not? I fuckin’ love Set Sail Tomorrow. I’ll reserve judgement on his other material.

Professional Competent Rockin' And Tight

Last night, music connoisseurs were given a new metonym to add to Rock’s Pantheon. Up there with John “Dr Winston O’Boogie” Lennon, James “The Hardest Working Man In Showbusiness” Brown, Elton “Cockfarmer” John and James “Cunt” Blunt, we now have MJ “Professional Competent Rockin’ And Tight” Hibbett.

During a dress rehearsal for his Edinburgh Festival Larf Riot, My Exciting Life In Rock, in the upstairs of a Bloomsbury pub, MJ took an adoring crowd through the tears, the laughter, the drugs (well, half an E in 1994), the noise made by pissing in a stainless steel sink while locked out of your hotel room buck naked (the music of the future, quite possibly) and having his International Hit sung by Norwegian school children.

Afterwards – there was an encore as, obv, the crowd called out for more – MJ gave everyone a badge, a CD and, if they didn’t escape quickly enough, a MANLY HUG. Phew! It was ACE.

If you’re in Edinburgh in early August, My Exciting Life In Rock will be at Medina, 45-47 Lothian Street, Edinburgh, EH1 1HB (phone 0131 225 6313)from Monday 4-Saturday 9, 6-7pm.

It will, natch, be Professional, Competent, Rockin’ And Tight.

Lost Soul: Peggy Gaines

The seventh in a series of soul classics that have fallen through the floorboards





Readers, were we assembled in a room with Peggy Gaines listening to Sweet Way Of Living for the first time, we would hoist her victoriously upon our shoulders, carry her around the room triumphantly and proclaim her a deity.

This stunning song greets you with the sort of celebratory fanfare of horns that opened soul music’s other great proclamation of undying love, The Majestics’ (I Love Her So Much) It Hurts Me and a vocal purr that suggests Miss Gaines is most satisfied.

You can imagine Peggy Gaines on a hot summer’s morning, leaving her beau’s house and declaring her blissful devotion (“Every day, I walk along/And I’m feeling mighty proud/Telling everyone I meet/I’m shouting out loud”).

There’s a beautiful insouciance to Gaines’ delivery that lets you picture her sashaying down the street with a dip in her hip and a glide in her stride, casually shrugging “it seems I have a magic touch” because everything is just right and the ecstasy of love has made her fit to burst.

Just one listen to the guitar, a close cousin to Ann Sexton’s You’ve Been Gone Too Long, will tell you that Sweet Way Of Living was made in the South. The b-side, Just To Satisfy My Baby, is a mini-masterpiece in Southern Soul pacing and passion. If you like Sweet Way Of Living – and you will – then you should check out a compilation of Nashville’s Ref-O-Ree label, which has another Peggy Gaines song, some essential late Roscoe Shelton sides and in Freddie Waters’ Singing A New Song, the label’s closest companion to Sweet Way Of Living.

But it doesn’t contain Sweet Way Of Living. 90 seconds of the greatest pop music you could wish for and it hasn’t been reissued anywhere. Unbelieveable.

The State Broadcasters

Lets Make T-Shirts – The State Broadcasters

Which state is that then? Glasgow, the state capital of indie.
What flavour of indie? Not a million miles from their label mates Wake The President, or even Electric Honey alumni Belle and Sebastian, only with orchestral augmentation that includes cello, glockenspiel, trombone and clarsach.
Clarsach? Nope, me neither.
Sounds a bit Fence collective: You could happily file this next to your Alasdair Roberts albums, although it would fit perfectly between Lambchop’s Nixon and Eels’ Daisies of the Galaxy.
Is it depressing? Not at all. This a sweetly drowsy song about first love, remembered with a lugubrious humour:

Let’s make sweet love
We are both 16 and it will be good
Let’s do it to Hatful of Hollow
A pregnancy scare will surely follow

Saucy! Try this for size, then:

You showed me your appendix scar
I could show you nothing
Except my red, red, red…face

Excellent! Electric Honey’s the best, isn’t it: Luckily, you have forgotten about Biffy Clyro. But we cannot forgive them.
Shouldn’t it be “let’s” not “lets”? Blame punk rock or falling educational standards, but for a song this good I think we can overlook their ignorance of the imperative mood.

Lost Soul: Lonette McKee

The sixth in a series of soul classics that have fallen through the floorboards




It’s 1974 and the sound of soul music is SEX. Anyone who thinks the distaff reaction to Marvin’s 1973 call to bed, Let’s Get It On, or Barry "The Mountain Of Mounting" White’s I've Got So Much Love To Give was to divest themselves of their cumbersome clothes and recline legs akimbo on a water bed, can't have heard Lonette McKee’s Do To Me.

A hymn to concupiscence and gratification, Do To Me sees Lonette McKee cajoling her man to forget his hang-ups and enjoy the pleasures of the flesh.

I don’t see what the hang up would be
I dig you and I think you dig me
Come on and give it a try
I like the things you
Do to me in the morning time
Do to me in the evening time
Do to me when the sun don’t shine
Do to me when I’m feeling fine

Yes, this feminist anthem of free love suggests that Lonette McKee would have burnt her bra if she'd ever worn one.

Do To Me's mid-tempo crossover soul would fit right in after the necktie-loosening floorfillers have got everybody’s blood pressure pumping and just before the slow-paced erection section at the end of the DJ’s set.

Oh, if the song –particularly the keyboard - sounds slightly slow, all copies of this record I’ve heard play like this.

Dead Dog

for your listening enjoyment: muffled singing! loud guitars! and 30%more feedbacK than the leading brand!

For anyone missing The Bridge Gang’s sonic chaos or the fury and, uh, dischord of 80s American hardcore, then Dead Dog's fiercely dissonant chiming - the product of punk rock played fast on Rickenbacker guitars - will press all the right buttons.

Their eponymous debut album is eight songs long, plays at 45rpm and is over in a quarter of an hour. Not a second is wasted in this rabid, vehement maelstrom.

A cover of Daniel Johnston’s Hate Song points to a deeper anguish underlying this maniacal riot, but songs like Dead Dogs Don’t Mind and Return Of The Living Dead show this trio are having a blast and their infectious brio is enchantingly – perversely – infectious.