» Listings for 2024

1. 2023/4 Albums Thing 356 - Siouxsie & The Banshees “Once Upon A Time/The Singles”

   Posted on 9:25am Saturday 8th Jun 2024

   Susan Ballion, Steven Bailey, William Broad and a few others were early followers of the Sex Pistols. Melody Makers Caroline Coon noticed them at Pistols gigs and dubbed them the Bromley Contingent, as that’s where some of them came from. By this time Susan had become Siouxsie Sioux, Steven was known as Steve Severin and William dubbed himself Billy Idol (after one of his school teachers had described him as idle). They all formed bands that would become the flag bearers for the first wave of Punk Rock. Billy joined Chelsea and eventually morphed them into Generation X. Siouxsie and Severin hooked up, initially, with Marco Pirroni and Sid Vicious to form Siouxsie & The Banshees to play a 20 minute spot at the 100 Club Punk Special on 20th September 1976. They had 2 days “rehearsal”, didn’t know any songs and Siouxsie recited The Lords Prayer over the band “improvising” behind her.

   Thus began one of Punk’s greatest bands. By November 1977 they had replaced Marco and Sid with John McKay and Kenny Morris, appeared on Granada TV’s “So It Goes” and recorded their first John Peel session. But they were finding it hard to get a record deal. Graffiti proclaiming “SIGN THE BANSHEES” appeared across London and John Peel tried to strike a deal to sign them to BBC Records ! Finally in June 1978 they signed to Polydor Records who promised them the complete artistic control they wanted and in August “Hong Kong Garden” was released as their debut single.

   This rather wonderful singles comp includes most of their A-sides from 1978 to 1981. For some reason it includes album track “Mirage” and omits A-side “Mittageisen (Metal Postcard)” in favour of its B-side “Love In A Void”. But these are minor quibbles. In that period they released 4 albums (“The Scream”, “Join Hands”, “Kaleidoscope” and “Ju Ju”) and the leap in musical progression is quite astonishing to hear. “Hong Kong Garden” was followed by the atonal, spiky pairing of “The Staircase (Mystery)” and “Playground Twist”. Less than a year later (after the Germanic/Motorik and missing from this album “Mittageisen”) they gave us psychedelic pop gems “Happy House” and “Christine”. Then just a year after that “Spellbound” and “Arabian Nights” invented Goth (I’ll leave you to decide if that was a good thing).

   Siouxsie retained her ice-queen veil of mystery even though I’m certain she adorned just as many bedroom walls (girls and boys) as Debbie Harry and Gaye Advert. We all adored her but she was ever so slightly scary with it. I was lucky enough to tour the US alongside the Banshees for 6 weeks in the early ’90’s and it turns out she was OK, even though we were all on best behaviour when she was around. 

   Playground Twist - https://youtu.be/kyZ0-FtNvf4?si=HonU7EvRndvkR7XI

2. 2023/4 Albums Thing 355 - Van Morrison “Into The Music”

   Posted on 9:25am Friday 7th Jun 2024

   Shhhhh, whisper it quietly (cos I’m sure there will be many who disagree) but of all the Van Morrison albums I’ve heard, and that is not even close to all of them, “Into The Music” is my favourite. It’s largely an upbeat Celtic soul/pop record and Van sounds, well, happy during most of it which is not an emotion you often associate with Van Morrison. 

   There was a time when I owned quite a lot of Van Morrison albums (“Astral Weeks”, “Moondance”, “St Dominic’s Preview”, “Veedon Fleece”, “Tupelo Honey”, “Hard Nose The Highway” among them). He was signed to Polydor at the time and every time I visited their offices I would help myself to copies of whatever was around which is how I ended up with so many. The only ones I have left are “Moondance” (https://www.whiterabbitrecords.co.uk/blog/read_205111/2023-albums-thing-233-van-morrison-moondance.html) and I now have picked this one up again. 

   It begins on the upbeat “Bright Side Of The Road” and continues in much the same vein throughout. It’s a sunny Sunday morning just let it wash over you kinda record. “You Make Me Feel So Free”, “Angeliou”, “Stepping Out Queen”, “You Make Me Feel So Free”, “The Healing Has Begun”, they’re all beauties. In fact the only thing I’m not totally sold on here is the cover of the old 50’s hit “It's All In The Game”, I’m sure Van is referencing Tommy Edwards 1958 US hit but I can’t get it out of my head that Cliff Richard had a sizeable hit with it here in the UK, laying the groundwork for "Whenever God Shines His Light" I guess !

   You Make Me Feel So Free - https://youtu.be/chFE3kZTMec?si=wmxtxwczXgcaMOdv

3. 2023/4 Albums Thing 354 - Ian Prowse “Who Loves Ya Baby ?”

   Posted on 9:25am Thursday 6th Jun 2024

   Now that we’ve dealt with Springsteen’s catalogue it’s time to attend to a few new additions that have come along before returning to our alphabetised journey, and what better way to follow The Boss than with a “new” release by Merseyside’s chief exponent of the Springsteen-ian (see what I did there) arts ?  I said about Ian Prowse’s most recent album, “One Hand On The Starry Plough”, that I was done writing about him, until his next album…and then he goes and re-issues this…

   Originally released in 2014 on CD only, Ian Prowse’s first solo album has been re-issued in 2024 including 3 songs that didn’t make it onto the original release (“Maybe There Is A God After All”, “Rise Like A Lion” and “Here I Am”, all written for this record but hijacked by the record label for the 2012 ‘Best Of…’ album) and, most importantly for the purposes of this piece, this time on vinyl. This hasn’t been re-mastered, it has finally been mastered. Financial restrictions meant the original release never was mastered which may be one of the reasons it’s my least played of his solo albums, it didn’t sound very good on first release, muddy and limp.

   “God And Man” should have been a classic, thundering track 1 side 1, setting the tone for what was to come after it…but it found itself a victim of the overall sound in 2014…here, properly mastered it reveals itself as the huge opening statement it should always have been. Packed full of that self mythologising they’re so good at up in Liverpool (“Born in the city, One of our own, Baptised in the river, Tore down the town, Danced in the Cavern, Scaled the heights, Walked out in the morning, To the Mersey lights”). What was a timid thing hiding its beauty on CD is now a bold, bewitching thing made of shining acoustic guitars, rumbling bass and the sound of The Waterboys big music (I’m guessing Prowsey won’t mind me saying that).

   Other songs that I’d not initially been so keen on reveal themselves to have been hiding their lights. Live favourite “I Did It For Love” finally sounds as slinky on record as it promises on stage, a jazzy, soulful tale of fighting the good fight with a hint of Gil Scott-Heron about it (as a later remix confirmed) which I’ve played out in DJ sets more than once since I got my hands on this record. 

   There's more, so much more. “Lift Up Thine Eyes” is a hymn to England, Ireland, Wales and Scotland and the part all have paid in building Liverpool as the city it is. “Lest We Forget” tells the story of the pals who went off merrily to fight WW1 and were scarred by it for life, if they came back at all. It’s somewhere around “The Band Played Waltzing Mathilda” seen through the memoir of Harry Patch “The Last Fighting Tommy”. “Raising Up The Clans” sits inside a beauty of a picked guitar riff and is a call to arms for us all, with the obvious message that we’re stronger together, cos as Jason Isbell put it in “Hope The High Road”, “There can't be more of them than us, There can't be more”.

   On and on it goes “Anger Mountain”, “We Were Men”, “Bring On The Healing”, “Coming Up For Air”…the whole album is a lesson in melodic songwriting with a lot to say for itself. Prowsey has said “World War I, racism, the Cuban revolution, the NHS, it’s all there”. This is modern folk music, music of the folk, for and about the folk. 

   If you have been aboard the good ship Prowsey for some time and were, like me, a little underwhelmed by this album 10 years ago then I can absolutely recommend this fully mastered beast. If you still need to buy a ticket for that voyage then this is as good a place to start as I could point you to.

   God And Man - https://youtu.be/VuPYZH406aA?si=BqpSkMIosoAprorU