All God's Children Gotta Have Their Freedom

I went to sixteen gigs in 2025, a pretty good number, and several of them were very memorable- Sabres Of Paradise (twice!), Iggy Pop, and Mercury Rev all stand out in my mind and The Beta Band were really good too though spoilt slightly by the crowd. In early May I saw Shack at The Ritz which as far as good gigs go was right up there, the Head brothers in sparkling form. This song wasn't on the setlist that night but I've been playing it loads recently, a 1990 standalone single. 

I Know You Well (12"Extended Mix)

Mick Head's songwriting chops are very evident, the sound is pure 1990 guitar band (Mick has said he was massively inspired by The Stone Roses debut album) and it marries 1966 Beatles (the bass from Taxman, the Revolver style acid guitar lines) with spacious, indie dance beats. The section from two minutes fourteen seconds is psychedelic Scouse and then the breakdown at two minutes thirty is indie dance heaven. 

The video is pure low budget 1990 too...

Mick also nods his head to his biggest musical hero, Arthur Lee of Love, with the line, 'All God's children gotta have their freedom', a line from Love's The Red Telephone. When I saw Shack at The Ritz in May they encored with one song, a cover of Love's A House Is Not A Motel. I haven't posted nearly enough Love at Bagging Area. This pair of songs are from Forever Changes, an album that shows Arthur Lee's disillusion with the hippy dream, an album released at the height of flower power, but where Lee could see it was built on sand. Forever Changes is a lament in some ways, for a new age that wasn't going to arrive.

Alone Again Or

Alone Again Or is utter beauty, complete 1967 brilliance. It was written by Bryan MacLean. Arthur Lee wasn't in the studio when it was recorded and reportedly grew jealous of people's praise for it. Lee then added the word 'or' to the song's title and re- recorded it with his voice to the fore on co- lead vox. These things contribute to bands splitting up- it led to Bryan quitting the group after the reelase of Forever Changes- but listen to the acoustic guitars, those horns, the orchestral flourishes and the bittersweet lyrics, and bask in it. What a song. 

Andmoreagain

Andmoreagain is an Arthur Lee song, sumptuous psychedelic folk with sweeping Burt Bacharach style strings and LA's Wrecking Crew playing (Carole Kaye on bass, Hal Blaine on drums, Billy Strange on guitar and Don Randi on keys). Bewilderingly good. Lee's lyrics are a stream of consciousness about addiction, temptations and defence mechanisms. 

I'd Love To Do It And You Know You've Always Had It Coming

Mani's funeral took place just before Christmas, an outpouring of love and respect for The Stone Roses bassist, a man that no one seems to have had a bad word to say about. This song appeared on Soundcloud at the same time, a wonderful cover of Shoot You Down by Alfie and kids from Crowcroft Park Primary School in Longsight that dates from a north west BBC TV show at some point in the early 00s. Listen here. 

There's something about the massed choral voices of primary school children singing the words to Shoot You Down that is a bit counter- intuitive and also very affecting. 'I'd love to do it and you know you've always had it coming... I never wanted/ The love that you showed me/ It started to choke me/ And how I wish I said 'no'/ Too slow/ I want you to know/ I couldn't take that too fast/ I want you to know'.

The recording is from a cassette tape, taped off the radio (BBC Manchester) so sonically it's not the best but it doesn't really spoil it too much. The hunt for the masters is on apparently. Also, at the end it cuts into the show and Terry Christian's voice appears, something you don't necessarily want to hear every time you listen to the song. 

Here's the original from 1989, nestled away towards the end of side 2 of The Stone Roses, between Made Of Stone and This Is The One, a song where the rhythm section of Reni and Mani show their strengths, subtle and blues/ jazz influenced, and John finds a smoky, low key Hendrix vibe, all three building while Ian croons sweet kiss offs and rejections.   

Shoot You Down

Alfie were a Manchester band, formed in 1998, who made four albums before calling it a day in 2005. They were part of a late 90s/ early 00s scene that included Doves, I Am Klute and Elbow. Doves and Elbow especially both went onto big things. It never really happened for Alfie. 

These pair of songs are from their 2005 album Crying At Teatime. The first, Your Own Religion, is the albums opening song, punchy and melodic, guitars and pianos powering out of the speakers, cymbals splashing and singer Lee Gorton drawling and cool. 

Your Own Religion

On Wizzo they sound superb, confident and full of life. They split up not long after the release, Lee saying 'it's hard to keep the faith when it feels like no- one's listening'. The major they'd signed to, EMI,  wanted a Coldplay style song from them and they didn't feel like they could do it. 

Wizzo

Boxing Day Double

The period between Christmas Day and New Year's Eve (increasingly known as Twixtmas) is the best bit of the festive period for me- the big day has gone and you're into a vague hinterland, not quite sure what day it is. Normal rules regarding eating, drinking and socialising don't apply. Time expands and contracts. It could be Thursday afternoon, it could be Tuesday morning, it doesn't really matter. Things kick in again on 30th December as people begin to ask what you're doing on New Year's Eve but for a couple of days, it's very much a slowed down life. 

A Boxing Day double for you. In 2015 Courtney Barnett had the Boxing Day Blues. She had them pretty bad...

Boxing Day Blues

Two years before that Dark Horses and Justin Robertson's Deadstock 33s found an altogether livelier and more acidic way to spend the first day of Twixmas- drones, motorik drums, lysergic synthlines, a bassline to shake you out of your torpor and a numbed out vocal. One to put on when the relatives you haven't seen yet pop round later and you want to raise the Boxing Day intensity levels a little. 

Boxing Day (Justin Robertson's Deadstock 33s Vocal Mix)

One Christmas For Your Thoughts

In December 1981 Belgian label Les Disques Du Crepuscule out out a compilaiton album called Chantons Noel, aimed at the niche post- punk/ ambient/ experimental/ neo- classical Christmas market of record buyers. Among the thirteen artists were some very obscure names- Swinging Buildings and Soft Verdict were both Belgian bands and groups like The Names and Thick Pigeon only ever really bothered Factory completists. Paul Haig and Cabaret Voltaire, Michael Nyman and ex- ACR singer Simon Topping all featured as did Aztec Camera. 

At the end of side 1 is this song by The Durutti Column (Durutti Column have been present quite a lot at Bagging Area recently). Vini's guitars sound as good as they ever did, minor sevenths, little runs up and down the neck and the chorus and delay FX pedals working their magic as the drum machine pads away somewhere in the background. 

Happy Christmas everyone. 

One Christmas For Your Thoughts

Christmas Eve Trio

I was going to start off this post by saying I've been trying to feel a bit more positive towards Christmas this year, having not found much to enjoy in it for the last three, but the songs I'm about to post would suggest otherwise. It's good to be on holiday though and to have some time to socialise and spend time with people and it's good to be feeling a little bit more positive about it as an event. 

Over at My Top Ten Rol's been wondering whether some Christmas songs should be cancelled. Rol and fellow bloggers dissected A Fairytale Of New York here and then Do They Know It's Christmas? here. 

In place of the awful annual succession of Christmas songs you can currently hear being piped out in shops and on TV here are a trio that give a different slant on the festive season.  

In 1978 Tom Waits released Blue Valentine, an album which included the song Christmas Card From A Hooker In Minneapolis, a first person sketch which revels in the low life street level characters Waits loved and wrote about and which comes with a lyrical twist at the end. 

Christmas Card From A Hooker In Minneapolis

In 1988 Julian Cope added a fourth song to his Charlotte Anne 12" single, the sparkling pagan psyche- pop of Christmas Mourning. 

Christmas Mourning

In 2000, as they prepared for the release of their third album This Is Happening, LCD Soundsystem contributed some songs to a Ben Stiller film, Greenburg. Oh You (Christmas Blues) is a raw and distorted blues song, sounding like the result of a collision between 70s Pink Floyd and James Murphy coming down hard at the end of a very long session. 

Oh You (Christmas Blues)

Resistance In The Dark

This is Resistance In the Dark by The Five Techniques....

The Five Techniques is a David Holmes project which sees music and art as an act of resistance. Holmes played at a gig for Gaza, put together by Paul Weller. Holmes and Weller decided to make a song, available as a digital and 7" single, with vocals by Roisin el Charif, singing in Arabic, 'If my voice will falter/Yours should remain'. Douglas Hart's video is a powerful and discomforting watch. The bass drives the song on, there is a chaos among the noise, Weller's voice echoes Roisin's but in English, an acid rock guitar solo cuts through, the voices return, 'In no light/This resistance grows strong', the music swirls and urges before fading out leaving just Roisin and the voices of some Palestinians. It's strong stuff. You can get it at Bandcamp. All profits will go to Medical Aid for Palestine. 

David Holmes grew up in Belfast during The Troubles. The name of the project, The Five Techniques, refers to interrogation practices used by the British in Northern Ireland: prolonged wall standing to induce stress; hooding detainees; subjection to long periods of intense noise; sleep deprivation; and food and drink deprivation. In 1978 the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the UK government was in breach of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights and a 2021 Supreme Court judgement ruled that if they were used today they would be classified as torture. There are some mainstream politicians in UK politics currently who want to take the UK out of the European Convention on Human Rights. Make of that what you will. 

Resistance In The Dark is a song that it is easy to imagine Sinead O'Connor singing on, if she'd lived. Sinead was recording a solo album with David after the pair met at a concert for Shane MacGowan's 60th birthday. They'd never met previously and Sinead knew nothing about David but he introduced himself and proposed making an album together, him producing and her singing, about healing- and she agreed. The album was to some extent contemporaneous with David's solo record Blind On A Galloping Horse so it's fair to assume similarities would exist between the two sonically and musically. The only released fruit of their work together is a one- off single with David's band Unloved, a cover of Mahalia Jackson's Trouble Of The World. Sinead putting the vocal down in one take, at 5 am at his house in Belfast. Given what happened to Sinead subsequently- the death of her son Shane in 2022 aged 17 and the circumstances of it, Sinead's anger and grief, and her own death in July 2023- the song sounds like a premonition, 'Soon I will be done/ With all the trouble of the world'. 

Between 2018 and 2023 Holmes and Sinead recorded eight more songs at David's house and in 2021 Sinead announced that the album would be called No Veteran Dies Alone. The album was a major work for both of them, Sinead moving into David's house for periods. David has said that he wants to see the album released, describing it as 'extraordinary, a very special album... up there with her very best work'. 

David wanted the album to be specifically about healing and it seems Sinead delivered- songs about being reunited with her mother, about God and Mary Magdalene, about her children, about dreams of being in heaven and the value of a soul, about pain, loss and grief, injustice and suffering, addiction and mental health, redemption, survival and about no veteran dying alone. It could be seen as Sinead's final statement, her last will and testament, her reckoning with the world. Unfortunately it has become mired in wranglings and music business murkiness. Its release is outside David Holmes' control and in the hands of Sinead's estate and record company. Maybe it'll come out, maybe it won't. 

In 2023 David's Necessary Genius single listed the misfits and dreamers, outsiders and radicals that have inspired him ending with the line 'I believe in Sinead O'Connor/ I believe in refugees'. Which takes us back to The Five Techniques and Resistance In The Dark. 

Joe Ely

Joe Ely died last week aged 78. He'd been unwell for a while, diagnosed with Parkinson's and Lewy body dementia and it s pneumonia did for him in the end. Joe was a key figure in the Austin, Texas scene in the mid- to- late 70s. He started out in Lubbock, birthplace of Buddy Holly, and as one of The Flatlanders played a country and rock 'n' roll hybrid. Joe released his first solo album in 1977. In 1978 Joe and his band played in London and hit it off with Joe Strummer and Mick Jones, playing with each other when The Clash toured the USA in 1978 and 1979. The two Joes especially became good friends, finding plenty of common ground in their respective record collections.  

The photos on the back of London Calling are from a Clash gig at The Armadillo World Headquarters in Austin, a nod of the black fedora to Joe Ely from The Clash and a raucous gig they played just before the release of London Calling, Ely supporting The Clash and then appearing with them. Joe appears on Should I Stay Or Should I Go (on backing vox) and when The Clash played The Tribal Stomp at Monterrey in 1979 they played Fingernails, a Joe Ely song, with Joe guesting on vocals.

Fingernails (Live at Tribal Stomp 1979)

On Sandinista!, The Clash's 1980 triple album (which I wrote about only last week on the occaison of it's 45th birthday) Joe Strummer included a line about Joe Ely in the song If Music Could Talk- 'Well there ain't no better blend/ Than Joe Ely and his Texas Men. If Music Could Talk is Sandinista! at it's most experimental, the music from Shepherd's Delight, a Clash/ Mikey Dread track from the session at Pluto in Manchester (that resulted in Bankrobber) with a stream of consciousness Strummer lyric split between the left and right channels. Joe Ely is in good company- the song also name checks Bo Diddley, Errol Flynn, Isaac Newton, Buddy Holly, Elvis, Jim Morrison and Samson. Gary Barnacle's jazz saxophone drifts in and out. Is talking blues crossed with experimental dub jazz what people wanted  or expected from The Clash in 1980? 

If Music Could Talk

Joe Ely's career resulted in a steady stream of albums, twenty studio albums and a handful of live ones. In 1992 he released Love And Danger which included this song (written by Robert Earl Keen), The Road Goes On Forever, country and rock 'n' roll

The Road Goes On Forever

Joe Ely RIP