Mark Eitzel - Songs of Love Live

WHAT Mark Eitzel “Songs of Love Live”
WHEN The Borderline, London - 17 January 1991

This was the first time I'd see Mark Eitzel live and I had no idea about the legend that would grow around this gig. It's one of the very few times I can say ‘I was there’ and even rarer to say that the experience was as good as its mythic status. 

The Borderline is the essence of a music venue - 200 people in a dark room with a small stage, a working bar and no frills. You can find an endless supply of them around the world. This one’s timely policy of programming alt-country/Americana in the early 1990s and the Central London location got it into the habit of hosting legends like R.E.M. (as Bingo Hand Job) and Crowded House. Right place, right time. 

It was a strange day. That afternoon I'd seen Carter USM start a minor riot in the HMV on Oxford Street and now was about to see a guy who was already had a cult-like aura growing around him. A lot has been written about the gig by better writers than me and there’s no point in repeating it here (the liner notes by Andrew Smith nail it and there’s an interesting description of how the recording came to pass in Sean Body’s book “Wish the World Away”). It was a raw, harrowing confessional that became part therapy session, part high wire act. He just let it all hang out. There was tears, there was laughter, but mainly there were just desperate, desperate tears. If you start songs with lines like “The hospital wouldn’t admit you” or “When no one cares for you, you’re made of straw”, you kinda know there’s little chance of an emotional U turn. 

So, 20 years on, why is this a great recording that’s worth listening to and not just voyeuristic rubbernecking of one man’s public breakdown? It’s difficult to quantify but I think you can still feel/hear something very powerful between the artist and the audience. There’s no background chatter, no mobiles, no heckling. There is reverence. There is trust. There is compassion.

Mark Eitzel and American Music Club definitely did not become pop legends, regardless of how many of their gigs I travelled to see them play. You’d think that the big label money and blanket critical praise of The Greatest Living Songwriter should have turned them into mega stars but sometimes that peg isn’t going to fit that hole (NB my spell check is hellbent on turning ‘Eitzel’ into ‘Outsell’… oh, the irony). Then - as now - they seem to be a cult interest. I last saw Mark Eitzel live in October 2013 in another blacked-out room with about 200 people. I keep seeing him because it's based on habit, community, history, faith, heart. I go there because that’s where I go.

My Bloody Valentine - Glider EP

WHAT My Bloody Valentine - Glider EP
WHEN TJs, Newport - August 1989

It’s difficult to describe what hearing “Glider” was like the first time. Woozy, brutal, intimate, dislocated, catatonic - it just didn’t sound like anything else, then or now. 

I was at their Reading Festival warm-up show at TJs in Newport in August 1989. It was a small, sweaty black box of a venue (sadly now lost to the sanitised world of property development) and my memory of it was like being inside a forge. They used a genuinely frightening amount of volume backed by an metronomic percussive brutality which probably did permanent damage to my hearing. It was like standing behind a jumbo jet that was taking off in your front room. It was also totally euphoric. They seemed to be grappling with the far edges of what you can achieve with volume and structure and "Loveless" was what emerged after the comically long recording process (2 years! 19 studios! It’s worth reading the Wikipedia description of the sessions to get a sense of how far off the reservation they wandered). 

“Loveless” somehow manages to be completely tight but simultaneously totally out of focus. It often sounds like they’ve either played the master tape at the wrong speed or they’ve dubbed a couple of other songs on top of a finished track.  It’s disorientating, experimental and unapologetically ambitious.

1991 did produce some albums which have stood the test of time - "Blue Lines", "Out of Time", "Spiderland", "Laughing Stock", "Still Feel Gone", "No Pocky for Kitty" - but "Loveless" still feels exceptional and futuristic. 

(A note about the photo for those interested: it was made by using a self-timer, a long exposure, setting steel wool on fire and then spinning it around. Looks fantastic, isn't 100% safe. Probably should involve a friend and a fire extinguisher next time...)

Galaxie 500 - Blue Thunder EP

WHAT Galaxie 500 - Blue Thunder EP
WHEN Leicester - 6 February 1990
Plaintive, minimal and always a little bit blue, this is Bad Weather City Music. Snow, fog, rain - Galaxie 500 is the music you turn to as the light gets thin, the nights drag out and the city gets colder and lonelier. I can’t play "Blue Thunder" or their album "On Fire" during the Spring or Summer. It just doesn’t sound right.

The gem on this EP is their version of New Order’s "Ceremony". Most cover versions are about zipping up the tempo but with this they asked the question ‘how slow can we go?’. This is slow. R-e-a-l-l-y slow. Glacially slow. By turning the usual formula inside out, it makes its world-weary desperation seem statuesque and noble. 

I remember Galaxie 500 as one of the most difficult bands I ever interviewed. Guarded, listless, monosyllabic. I think Kramer - their producer/sound engineer - teased me about the quality of my questions. Grim stuff. In retrospect, I can’t blame them. Would you want to talk to a student journalist on a cold February night when you’re thousands of miles from home and about to face a room full of people who want to hear the jangly indie pop of headliners The Sundays? 

And here comes the rub… As I was looking out the sleeve to make the photo I found that I’d had a Fan Boy moment and asked the band to sign it. Not only did they agree but their comments are funny, gracious and apologetic. How is my memory of that experience so different from the physical evidence? How vulnerable is my recall of events and emotions that I think are clear and specific?

Half Film - East of Monument

WHAT Half Film - East of Monument
WHEN King Tut's, Glasgow - 14 October 1998

Twilight music. Shadowy and monochrome, Half Film move around on the edge of your senses. Sometimes it feels like it isn’t even there at all. I saw them supporting Swell at King Tut’s during 1998 and finally got the album from One Up in Aberdeen. These were the days before digital ubiquity so tracking music down was much more of a challenge. It’s an undiscovered minimal gem that probably has a more sinister heart than I think. It pulses and sighs and I’m pretty sure I couldn’t sing a single lyric of it back to you.

For an album that I’ve listened to constantly for 18 years it’s unusual and fitting that I don't really place it to a single location or event. Seeing them live obviously had some kind of impact on me as I sought out their album but, like the group, it’s an elusive and enigmatic memory. It's just, well, there. 

There was one more album from Half Film - “Road to the Craters” - in 2000 and then silence … until this year. They’ve come together again under the name AWMA and their debut EP is cast from exactly the same slow burning nocturnes as Half Film. Recommended.

David Sylvian - Secrets of the Beehive

WHAT David Sylvian - Secrets of the Beehive
WHEN Oriel College, Oxford - 4 June 1988

The sound of teenage love evaporating.

Boy sees Girl. 
Boy and Girl go to colleges at different ends of the country.
She’s at Oxford University. He’s at Middlesbrough Polytechnic.
Very different colleges, very different ends of the country.
Girl dumps Boy. 
Boy decides to still travel to Girl’s city to see rare David Sylvian live show. 
David Sylvian cancels the show.
Boy has to spend the night on ex-girlfiend’s floor. 
Awkward. 

The album ’Secrets of the Beehive’ tracked my first serious breakup with what seemed to my teenage mind a clairvoyant-like insight: “Did he really sing about our love being strong enough… that’s MY LIFE!”. Oh, the innocence of youth...

David Sylvian and, more specifically, his solo career has now been part of my musical world for 30 years. I still find his voice unusually comforting even when he’s channeling lyrics like:
"I’m waiting for the agony to stop
and let the happiness in" (Let the Happiness In)

I think there’s hope, optimism and redemption at the end of this track. I want to believe that’s true. Then the album finishes with the lines:

"And though I'd like to laugh
At all the things that led me on
Somehow the stigma still remains
Is our love strong enough?" (Waterfront)

It wasn't. 

Bob Mould - Workbook

WHAT Bob Mould - Work Book
WHEN Kensington Park, London - 1989
I remember sitting in the dappled sunshine under a tree in Kensington Park, London, and hearing ‘Workbook’ for the first time. As his first post-Hüsker Dü work, there was a lot riding on it.
The opening lines:
“Wishing well runs wet and dry
I wish for things i never had
Surrounds and wells up in my eyes
The screaming voice, it lies” (Wishing Well)
After that, it only gets more traumatic. “Workbook” is an austere and frequently desperate record fuelled by deceit, bitterness and life changing events. It’s an emotional dry heave that wrestles for catharsis but more often comes off as a pitch-black exorcism. Acoustic guitars just shouldn’t sound this… caustic.  

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“Feeling so abused, well, sometimes
Life can be so cruel” (Lonely Afternoon)
After the images of ‘Big Bob’ that existed during Hüsker Dü’s lifetime, it was a real shock seeing the portrait on the back of the album (which is why I’ve included in this post). In retrospect, it’s a pretty clear warning shot of the singular, near-monastic journey he’d engaged in. Physically and materially stripped back, he sits alone in a bare room. He looks like he’s joined a cult or had a breakdown. Maybe both. The portrait is an unflinching, honest and uncomfortable as the album. He's stripped everything back to the bone and offers up what's left.

And in 2014, pretty much 25 years to the day I first heard it, I sat under the same tree in Kensington Park and listened to the anniversary edition. Time hasn’t reduced its pain or power.

“Oh well, I get disillusioned with it all
Just throw my hands up to the sky and say
Oh Lord, what happened? What happened
To make things run this way?” (Brasilia Crossed With Trenton) 

Jane Siberry - Summer in the Yukon

WHAT Jane Siberry - Summer in the Yukon
WHEN France - June 1992
My first solo trip abroad to see my girlfriend who was studying abroad for a year. A time before Easyjet, email and Skype that involved a 24 hour train ride from Leicester to Pisa. The sun was blazing down on the golden fields of the south of England and Northern France and this album was on repeat.

A bit like Van Morrison, I can’t remember how Jane Siberry came into my life. I was working in record stores at the time and I think this compilation was the start of a major record label push to try to turn her into a global superstar… yup, that happened then… strange times. It started a love affair for me with her work that’s still going on today. This album brings back the hope and optimism of young love, unknown countries, new experiences (well, perhaps not “The Taxi Ride” which is the perfect ‘you have been dumped’ soundtrack. I’ll save that up for another day).

Van Morrison - Astral Weeks

WHAT Van Morrison - Astral Weeks
WHEN Morlais Quarries - Summer 1988
Due to a fortunate hiccup in college timetables, the summer vacation of 1988 started in May and went through to October. It was a long, hot one where I spent most days solo climbing in the Morlais Quarries near Merthyr Tydfil after a 25 mile hitchhike. I’m not sure how ‘Astral Weeks’ came into my life… maybe Q magazine mentioned it? I remember getting a cassette of it from a 2nd hand stall in Newport Indoor Market. I think it might have been a bootleg. Anyways, it was stuck in my clunky Sony Walkman for most of those journeys to the Quarry as I stood on the side of the road trying to get a lift.

I really don't remember having anything to compare it to - then or now. It has a unique sense of space and spiritual searching which is even more remarkable when you consider that he was 23 years old when he recorded it and the whole thing was done in 3 days. Timeless.