Been a long time.....

Returned to the blog today to find it encrusted with dust and cobwebs. Somewhere along the line I lost the impetus to write, started thinking that I had nothing to say, sank into a grey depression, not really a depression more a long wet afternoon of the soul (Alfred Prufrock springs to mind) and finally I span off the road. Then came Cameron and Clegg and gradually my anger rose until, finally, I would appear to have rediscovered my mojo.

Musically things are looking back to move forward. It was my birthday recently and my son and my partner both gave me albums that have long been out of my collection. What is it about rediscovering music that lights you up again? The saddest thing about it though was that both albums still tower over much of the contemporary musical landscape, and I don't say this as a "in my day we made proper music" sense but more out of sadness. There is a freedom and experimentation in these records that seems to be absent today. Considering that they were both released through major labels it is scary to think that they would probably stand no chance in today's world of focus groups and decision by committee. Record labels should look to those reasons, rather than blaming kids downloading music, for their sales decline. Anyway.....

The first album was The Man Machine by Kraftwerk. First released in 1978 this work of electronic genius has yet to be surpassed. Featuring tracks like The Robots, The Man Machine and Metropolis it posits a vision of the future that is here. Its cold electronically generated sounds have an unbearably beautiful quality to them. Maybe because they were originally recorded onto analogue tape prior to digitisation but the depth of the sound, its richness of timbre if you will, is absent in so much electronic music of today. The album also contains The Model; if ever a song has been written that sonically represents the cold and soulless world of the catwalk this is it.

The second gift was Television's Marquee Moon. Released in 1977 it represents perfectly the intelligence and imagination at work in the New York punk scene, though quite how they ended up being lumped into punk still amazes me. That said, at the time we needed a short-hand to describe groups that had broken away from the confines of rock as it was, and now how it has become. These days punk seems to mean anything that sounds shouty and a bit angry, but not really that angry. Compare today's take on punk with what was available then: Talking Heads, Television, Richard Hell, Blondie and over here The Clash playing with imagery, The Buzzcocks, The Pop Group, Magazine, Siouxsie. These weren't bands who saw salvation in traditional song structure. For me Marquee Moon represents one of the greatest guitar albums ever made. The songs, with the strangled yelps of Tom Verlaine, were different beasts from what we were safe with. They offered a vision of the future, as much as Kraftwerk did with their Teutonic ice sculptures, and a different path, away from the classis 12 bar verse chorus verse chorus that modern music still clings to. I can't really begin to describe the exhilaration that I still feel as the opening notes to the title song kick in.

However I am still listening to new stuff. The Ninja Tune XX two disc compilation is a great snapshot of cutting edge urban music from one of Britain's most delicious labels. All sorts of good things are available on this huge spread. From The Bug to Roots Manuva and Toddla T to Eskmo. The label's founders Coldcut even turn up. Coldcut were responsible for one of rap's greatest moments, the remix of Eric B & Rakim's Paid In Full that introduced Ofrah Haza to a thirsty public.

This compilation is the final word in where it's at right now.

I also got sent the new Keziah Jones track, Lagos vs London, remixed by the estimable Gilles Peterson. I'm not usually much of a fan of KJ as I have found his music falls between stools but this track, and in particular the remix, shows a way forward for Jones that offers him a chance to break out of the confines of his former approach. More of this please sir.

Anyway, back to where I started. The Coalition is upon us populated by people who think £50k a year is an average salary and that the employment wastelands, where the only work on offer is call centres or lap dancing clubs, will somehow burst into bloom and flourish as they force poor people into desperation. The difference between this lot and Thatcher was that Thatcher made sure the Police got paid so when it came to breaking strikers heads they did so with enthusiasm; the C&C Shit Factory are cutting police numbers and pay, making them pay for their training and generally fucking everybody around. So when the angry poor come crashing down Whitehall who they gonna call? Murdoch?

You can tuna fish.....

So I've had a strange musical juxtaposition this week; from bang up to now, right this minute kind of thing and then back into time like some episode of Star Trek where the writers obviously wrote the whole thing on drugs.

First off the new opus from Mr Scruff, Ninja Tuna, available on the ever wonderful Ninja Tune label. A label so irredeemably lovely that they would have to release racist skinhead bands for me to go off them, or Clive Dunne's back catalogue. Whether or not the album is named in tribute to the label I dunno, but hey; who cares?

One of the things I like most about Mr Scruff isn't the music but the cartoons. Cartoons are great and the world needs more of them. That said the new album is as esoteric a mash up as you could imagine, veering between the almost soul-jazz of Music Takes Me Up (I know, I know - soul jazz *shiver*) and the hip hop shapes of the opener, Test The Sound, that should have stuck around for longer in my opinion. The Roots Manuva featured track, Nice Up The Function, is another treat but large parts of the record seem to drift off into wibbly wobbly shapes that might sound lovely in the background of a wine bar or something.......that said this track is scrumptious.

The other album that's been playing wildly in Suburban Mansions was last heard in 1951. Unfortunately I was only sent the available-only-in-Walmart shorter edition of the 3 CD box set of Hank Williams - The Unreleased Recordings. This is a fucking goldmine. The tracks were all recorded for an old radio show that was sponsored by a flour company for a radio station in mid-Tennessee; it's a snapshot in time and believe me, you don't have to be a god botherer to hear the absolute joy in tracks like Dust On The Bible. This particular track is a blue grass traditional that Hank makes his own but weirdly the lyric could have been written today with it's references to books and magazines and such. There's a lot of similarities between this breed of country and present day RnB with the constant referencing to god and the battle in the personality between doing the right thing and wanting the wrong thing (see Jerry Lee Lewis); but Hank was the daddy of them all.

There are tracks here that have never been available before, like Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain and Cherokee Boogie, that make you wonder what the guy could have achieved if he'd lived longer than 29 years. Songs like The Prodigal Son and the lachrymous Searching For A Soldier's Grave might not be everyone's idea of cutting edge but you just have to hear the yearning in the strained voice, the bruises and callouses in every note and you start to realise why he died so young. Nobody can carry that much pain and emotion and be untouched. Hank Williams was the yardstick by which every modern country artist should be measured, and from where I stand most of them don't even figure.

In my humble opinion everyone who claims to love music should have at least on Hank Williams album in their collection. If you like RnB, if you like reggae, even if you like big rock then you will relate to Hank.

Hank is cool. Hats off to Hank. Watch this clip - it's awesome.