Digger’s Diary – Manchester 24/03/2012

Having been blessed with a giant ball of yellow fire shining directly on Manchester’s fat, smoky, head, I decided to get myself to Gigg Lane in Bury to take in the atmosphere of a game of association football. Specifically FC United of Manchester (Google it!) versus Matlock.  The result was the right one and the game itself electrifying, but I’ll spare you the details, seeing as you don’t come here to read about that kind of thing.

I found myself in town beforehand with an hour to spare took the rare opportunity to rifle through the bargain bins outside the legendary Empire Exchange on Newton St.

This has been around for…ever? and sells records, thousands of old copies of magazines, football programmes, curios, memorabilia, VHSs, DVDs, CDs, MDs and YMCAs. And a massive load of porn in the back room.

I scurried through the little crate outside, the sun beating a tan into my pale, Saxon hide, only stopping to brush off the advances of two men trying to sell me a stolen phone. What I came out with, for my £1 spend was nothing short of a treasure trove.

#1 Tina Charles – Rendezvous b/w When You Got Love

Kind of generic poppy soul pre-disco from 1976. It’s not blowing me away. This one scores 4 sunny smiles out of 10.

#2 Lol Creme and Kevin Godley – 5 O’clock in the Morning b/w The Flood

A side is a real 10CC-esque piece about working life. If you don’t already know, Godley and Creme were the creative force behind 10CC. Lots of harmonic vocal blasts, haunting solo bits and key changes. Sometimes you get the feeling that they pull their production tricks out of the bag because they can, rather than because they should. The B is a weird instrumental featuring what sounds like a dripping tap but which I suspect is them playing with a synth and a sequencer. It goes round the houses before kicking into a rocking rhythm about 30 seconds before the run-out groove. There’s sample fodder in this for sure.

the version on the 7″ isn’t exactly like that; it’s a bit shorter.

#3 Pussycat – Mississippi b/w Do It

I was expecting (optimistically) some kind of chilled lounge, exotica, funk or something based on those names but I got pop country weirdness. Did not like.

#4 Steve Miller Band – Rock ‘n’ Me b/w The Window

I found it! I’ve been after this The Window forever but it doesn’t come up on eBay so often. The A side isn’t that great but the flip is *insane*. Ridiculously sample-able bassline intro, Zappa-esque bridgey thing (sounds just like part of Florentine Pogen) and a redonculous vocal performance by Steven himself.

All-in-all a very well-spent quid, I feel. Keep an eye-out for one, all or none of these in my upcoming “forty five 45s” mix (release scheduled January 2018).

Sample fodder?

Whenever I hear a track with a nice break or section in, I always make a note. This isn’t because I’m some superproducer who is making the next Endtroducing. I just imagine myself like that to justify buying ridiculously over-featured production gear if I had the money.

The latest example of this comes from the unlikeliest of places: Jerry Reed’s 1973 cover of Folsom Prison Blues

Just at 4 seconds as the cowbell kicks in for one (or maybe two?) bars…amiright?

Guilty m’lud…

I’m not a big fan of the expression “guilty pleasure” because it cunjours up images of either genuinely good music which just happens to not have been released in the last 5 years or an excuse for people who enjoy listening to boring rock and pop to give their tastes a more interesting name. I do have one song, which, through association I shouldn’t be allowed to like.

It’s the kind of song an ignorant Tea Partier would relate to and it’s got the most sickly, overproduced 90s Nashville sound but it’s a hell of a drinking song.

I first heard it at the tender age of 22. I was in Kansas City watching my beloved St. Louis Cardinals play the Royals in the magnificent Kaufmann Stadium, sat roughly where this picture was taken from so I could see a horiffic lightning storm rolling hunderds of miles over the midwest plains towards us. By the 7th innings the storm was almost upon us when the unmistakeable picked into comes in and the whole ground chimes in in unison:

“Blame it all on my roots/I showed up in boots/And ruined your black tie affair…”

I couldn’t help but be impressed. It was certainly better than the lawnmower race they had had during the previous break.

As the chorus kicked in the heavens opened with a downpour I’ve never seen before or since but that song stayed in my head long after it had stopped raining and the majority of the fairweather fans had come out of the stands. I don’t care if it makes me a small-government-loving, gun-control-hating, family-values redneck – I love this song.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1063893612084739337