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Cowboy Junkies – Witches «

the essence of the occult distilled into a few carefully chosen notes of acoustic guitar and the ice water of Margo Timmins’ voice

via backedwith.wordpress.com

jack'o'lantern

jack'o'lantern, originally uploaded by unpop.

Skeletons

We’ll be making our Jack’o’lanterns shortly (would’ve made them earlier, but we’ve been off relaxing in West Somerset the past few days). I’ve concocted a lovely Halloween mix to accompany the carving, which you can snag for yourselves here. Tracks below.

All The People I Like Are Those That Are Dead - Felt
There's No Blood In Bone - Spell
Halloween - Sonic Youth
For the Dead - Gene
The Sad Witch - Hefner
Witches & Lightning - Hands on Heads
Black Cat - Broadcast
Monsters - Boy Least Likely To
The World Is A Very Scary Place - The Gothic Archies
My Girlfriend Is A Witch - October Country
Skeleton And The Roundabout - The Idle Race
Halloween Candy - The Spinanes
Fat Angel Skinny Ghost - Windsor For The Derby
Ghost Dance 1492 - Beachwood Sparks
Skeleton Staircase - Loft
Everybody Is Dead - Microdisney
The Ghost And The Black Hat - The Go-Betweens
Halloween - The Dream Syndicate
Skeletons - Art Of Fighting
Death Is Not The End - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

Boredom or Fire Raisers - you couldn't have both

Daniel has posted the third of our four part reflection on Fire Raisers. It includes the story of the beach shelter, and a frankly quite scary photo of me beside my handiwork prior to the arson attack. I will be posting the concluding episode sometime during the week.

The second instalment of Big Flame is online now. I’m planning on updating the blog every Wednesday morning in an attempt to add some mid-week spice to your lives. Yes, both of you. Boom boom.

Part two is cheekily titled ‘Love Comes In Spurts’ and yes the text does indeed reference Richard Hell.

Include Me Out: The Holy Barbarians - Lawrence Lipton

via includemeout2.blogspot.com

Robin's been on the Beat trip over on 'Include Me Out', including some fabulous scans from 'The Holy Barbarians'. Dig it, man.

Gulity Pleasure

I’m listening to The Sisters Of Mercy. No, really. It’s true. It’s all the fault of Spaced, of which we watched almost all of season one last night. You know there’s that dodgy ‘freelance’ vivisectionist character called Eldritch who steals Colin? Dressed up like one of The Rose Of Avalanche? That was all I needed to make me start thinking about First And Last And Always... And with the wonders of technology of course I didn't even need to get off my arse to snag myself a digital copy. iPhone to the rescue!

Anyway, now the tracks are transferred to iTunes on my Mac, and I’ve been playing the album a couple of times, and... Yes, yes I admit it. I rather like it. Still. After all these years. Despite the fact that it reminds me indelibly of 1985. You see, even then I knew I shouldn’t really be listening to The Sisters, but I could not help myself. There was no record store in my home town in those days (the halcyon days of Speed were long gone. Not that I was allowed to go there, but that’s another story entirely...), and I felt so sorry for the sole copy of the gatefold sleeved album sitting week after week in the meagre record racks of John Menzies (effectively a Scottish WH Smiths if you didn’t know). So I took pity. I took it home. I played it in the dark and, whisper it, I really rather liked it. Well, 1985 was a desperately miserable time, after all, and it somehow suited the awful desolation of that autumn and winter.

And wasn’t that the year that The Sisters recorded their epic version of Hot Chocolate’s ‘Emma’ for Peel? I do remember playing a tape of that so many times. It still sounds wonderful, all hysterical melodrama and cartoon darkness.

Incidentally, please do not take this as the proof that The Duke of Harringay was at any time a Goth, as rumoured on the Sinister list many years ago. For although he did have a paisley shirt, a leather jacket, black dyed hair and the skinny torso of heroin chic, it was never all at the same time. Plus he never wore a crucifix or a skull ring. Ever.

my boss was in an indie band

my boss was in an indie band, originally uploaded by unpop.

So have you picked up the new single by MJ Hibbett & The Validators? It’s the very marvellous ‘My Boss Was In An Indie Band Once’, inspired, so the story goes, by a certain Phil Wilson of the legendary June Brides. It comes in a couple of flavours to suit your palette, including a limited edition CD (200 copies, so snap one up quick to avoid disappointment) which hosts a cover of Madness’ ‘House Of Fun’ (which I have to say, whilst being quite charmingly boisterous, isn’t a patch on the original. But then what is?). Also on the CD you’ll find a bunch of MP3’s of Mark’s one-man rock opera Dinosaur Planet. Cor, top value or what? Buy your copy from Mr Hibbett's online store here.

Big Flame

Written sporadically over the space of two years between 1988 and 1990, Big Flame was my first meagre attempt at writing an extended piece of fiction (I hesitate to use the word ‘novel’). Extracts from the venture appeared in issues two and three of the Fire Raisers magazine. Having sat untouched and unseen for the best part of two decades, I thought it might as well have a glimpse at the 21st Century and see if it likes what it finds. And vice versa.

Big Flame (named after the Pop group of the same name - my idea was to make prose that was as angular and dynamic as their recordings) will therefore unfold on this blog week by week until it is done. Perhaps someone will find something of interest or even, who knows, worth in it. Anything is possible.

Sunday Supplement pt 13: Sunday In The City - Mondial

Following on from Copenhagen’s Labrador, we nip over the Öresund bridge and find ourselves on Swedish soil this week with Mondial, and a cut from their lovely Always Dreaming Of Something Else set from 2001. Which, coincidentally came out on the Labrador label. Ah, don’t you just love these connections? Mondial made rather sparkly, classy Pop in the vein of Saint Etienne or indeed label-mates Club 8 and ‘Sunday In The City’ is as fine an example as you will find. I always want to play it alongside The Dreamers’ exquisite and aching ‘All Across This City’ as there is a similar sense of soft sadness and melancholy, and you know I’m just a sucker for that kind of feeling.

And how can you resist a song that includes the line “my only company is my bicycle”?

Sunday In The City - Mondial