Rambling Sid Presley

Listening to Nico's 1967 album ' Chelsea Girl' and the track 'These Days', I was struck by the lyric " I've been out walking..." and later " I've stopped my rambling.." -which seemed to suggest everybody's favourite Teutonic Misery guts and Heroin addict, had actually been a bit of a hiker on the quiet. I can see her now heading out with her 1 : 50 000 scale Ordnance Survey Landranger map, for a romp round Snowdonia with John Cale.
Do they do Kagouls in black?
She did die falling off her bicycle, so perhaps I should revise my opinion.


Rambling Ten(t)

1. The Manchester Rambler - Ewan MacColl
2. Walking to New Orleans - Fats Domino
3. Walk Don't Run - The Ventures
4. Rambling Robin - Mike Harding ( or Christy Moore )
5. They Walked in Line - Joy Division
6. Walk Away Renee - The Left Banke
7. Midnight Rambler - The Rolling Stones
8. Walk On By - The Stranglers
9. Fast Cars - Buzzcocks (" I HATE Fast Cars " )
10. Sleepwalk - John Cooper Clarke
    

"This Kendal Mint Cake tastes bloody peculiar..."

Perverted by Language

How about typing all your future correspondance in the near illegible scrawl of R.Totale XVII himself? You can now download a font called Mark E Smith from the excellent Fall Website.
For more Fall stuff there is a new webzine from the former writers of the old Fall fanzine the Pseud Mag - Reformation Post TPM

Stately Xanadu

The Mayflower Club Manchester, where I spent many a strange afternoon at the dawn of the eighties, watching punk bands, like Discharge, Vice Squad ( ah, Beki! ), Anti Pasti, and even The Damned. This is another photograph from the excellent Manchester District Music archive. The former Corona cinema, was opposite the entrance to Belle Vue, and apart from Punk bands also gave a venue for a lot of Reggae. Joy Division played here, too. The place was black as pitch inside with overflowing toilets and dodgy electricity. I loved it.

Happy Mondays

My photo of the Happy Mondays at the Manchester Show, an agricultural kind of affair, hence the bloke in tweeds, circa 1984/85. It rained most of the day. There were no more than 30 to 50 people in front of the stage.

There's much more of this kind of thing at the Manchester District Music Archive, an excellent collection of things.


photo: Alastair Price

Jeux sans Frontiers

Whilst in Manchester for a lightning visit I met up for food and drink in the Cornerhouse with some old friends. Bruno, once the bass player in my French band, Dynamos, now resident in Salford, and even older friend Otto Smart.

Otto had just returned from a ten date tour of Spain as part of Roger Quigley's other project At Swim Two Birds. Otto also plays with Roger and Mark Trainer in Montgolfier Brothers, Mark is otherwise known as Gnac. Not to be left out Otto is also part of Curvilinear. All fine and dandy, but what Otto really should be known for is his solo work under the nom de plume - The Otto Show.

His songs are beautifully intimate, intelligent, eccentric and English. Subjects range from the observationally humorous ' Frowning Baby' to ancient mythology- 'Furies,Come', there's even a rendition of RL Stevenson's ' Good and Bad Children'.

So far The Otto Show, sharing its name with an episode of the Simpsons, has produced two albums. The first, self titled, released on Spanish label Annika in 2004, was actually recorded several years earlier in Brittany. With the assistance of me and my band, and particularly les fréres Goujon, Nicolas and Francois, the whole thing was recorded in about three days. Most of Otto's contributions were memorably first takes.

Francois would later be part of duo Octet, signed to Diamond Traxx / Discograph. The people at his label were so taken with Otto's recordings that they invited Otto to play at an Octet gig in Paris. A scratch version of the band on the album was hastily rehearsed for the concert at La Maroquinerie.

The second album, 2005's 'The Very Spit of...', on Manchester's Vespertine and Son, was an even more remarkable affair. Otto had been making home recordings on to a Fostex X15 cassette four track recorder since the 1980's and Richard and Roger ( Vespertine ) decided to compile a collection of the best of these songs, unembellished and as I'd first heard them as far back as 1984.

Otto has a mass of excellent new songs, and despite a positive review of 'The very spit of...' in the Daily Telegraph of all places ( and a couple of return trips to Spain ) - he seems to have as much trouble as ever getting anyone to release them. He's contributed a vocal and lyric to Francois' latest project ( Pyjaman ) - ' Queen Mary ' ( is real fun ) ' and you can hear it on his Myspace. I play a few notes on the track myself , how incestuous can you get?

photos and cornerhouse drawing : Caroline Johnson

Hearing-ade

Currently grooving to :

Footsteps - Bricolage. So Orange juicy it must be ... Bricolage are from Glasgow, and signed Memphis Industries.

Grounds for Divorce - Elbow. Enormous tune from Guy Garvey and co.

Witchfinder General

Only half awake yesterday morning, I heard the newsreader announce : "Last night Lady Thatcher was driven from her home in Belgravia..." happy thoughts of the baying mob, torches blazing, played upon my mind for the rest of the day.

Five Odes to Joy.

1. Stand Down Margaret - The Beat
2. Tramp the Dirt Down - Elvis Costello
3. How Does it Feel ( to be the mother of a thousand dead? ) - Crass
4. Margaret on the Guillotine - Morrissey
5. Blue - Fine Young Cannibals

Honourable mention : the last 45 seconds of 'A Country Practice' - Half Man Half Biscuit