Month: February 2019

Time to bring some ins and outs back into the fold.  What else is there to do on a wet Monday night in February?

IN

Doing the agadoo whilst foo.

Asking folk if they want a beer or a thick ear?

Broony doing the Broony scoring in the last minute.

Kris Boyds wee face.

Double treble – treble treble.

The Specials new album.

Reading the Morning Star on the morning commuter train.

Steven Gerrard throwing his players under a bus.

Brendan’s big toothy smile.

Bacon fried in coconut oil.

Showaddy- without the –waddy.

Being cool.

Having older friends call Murial.

Ollie Burke.

Asking the Barman for a drink that all the young yin’s are having these days.

Tripping up lads with man-buns.

Tripping up fascists.

Doing the pogo to Yeke Yeke with yer buddies.

Speaking through yer nose on a conference call.

Getting a leg and a wing up the road after a day on the ale.

Ashcroft.

Terry Hall.

Saffiyah Khan.

Avocados.

The Classic Benetton Rugby Top.

Doing the Grand old Duke of York with Murial.

OUT

Drinking Apple Cider every morning through a straw.

Waxy Lemon – fascist roaster.

Last train whoppers.

Last bus whoppers.

Being wedged into a train surrounded by sevconians, rugger bugggers or squaddies.

Man Bun with long beard Hipster types.

Current Buns.

Walking into cob webs first thing in the morning.

People in the workplace asking ‘are you fuck-offee’ when asking if you want a coffee every ten minutes.

Beards, bellies, man buns, shit clobber.

Anything by Meat Loaf.

Black Mutt episodes.

Folk with a ‘price of a pint’ attitude to life.

The price of a chippie.

Gobshites.

Weatherspoons.

Charlie Nicholas.

Socks for fish.

Anyone on Love Island.

Property selling programmes. ‘We only have £350,000 to play around with’ type of folk.

Fish puss’ usually seen in the Kinning Park area.

Kinning Park Rowing Club.

 

 

Thanks for tuning in. Keep on Keeping on and things an that.

 

 

By Holywell Street and Ste 13th Feb 2019

A bit of a tribute to an iconic album and artist. Holywell Street is honoured that Ste  Carter another Evertonian has contributed to the blog. We welcome him on.

Ste

Obviously, the iconography of the cover to this record is almost without parallel in its influence on certain British ‘80s cultural and social movements.
I remember vividly turning up at Everton games circa ‘80 and seeing lids walking about with THAT fucking haircut and even the odd, cooler than cool cat, matching it with the duffle and going the whole Low hog, as it were.
I’m no chronicler of fashion though, and I don’t pretend it was ever my gig. I was always about the music, man, which is where I’m coming from here.
When Bowie died it was interesting to read amongst my Bowie loving friends which record of his they reached out for. Like my cousin (a much bigger ‘fan’ even than me) I initially reached out for Station to Station, and then Hunky Dory, but it is to this record I returned to time and again, because, for me, at least, it’s the one that seals Bowie’s right to be called a truly great artist.
The first part of Bowie’s Berlin ‘trilogy’ (the record was actually recorded in Paris and re-mixed in Berlin) is a completely remarkable record.
If Bowie killed off Ziggy Stardust on stage, with this record he slays The Thin White Duke persona of the coke-addled rock superstar, in the studio, both spiritually and musically.
This is Bowie’s, burnt out -rock star- kicks- everything- he’s- stood- for- firmly- into- touch, record and therefore sets the template for records like Radiohead’s Kid A.
As one critic correctly said ‘if it had been made 20 years later we could have called it ‘post-rock’.
Gone are the kooky Newley pastiches, the Ziggy glam, the plastic soul (Bowie’s words not mine) and the insane and brilliant ramblings of the Thin White Duke. In their place is a completely Eno driven, new sound and vision.
Low is a record ostensibly in two distinct halves. A brilliant, introspective drum-machined, krautrock influenced first side; lettered with pained and bitter lyrics that subject us to the broken persona he’d become, ‘Don’t look on the carpet; I drew something awful on it’.
It’s complimented by an eerie, yet melodically beautiful and haunting set of instrumentals on side two which show some of Bowie’s musical creativity at new heights, and the heavy pervading influence of his mentor on this record Brian Eno.
The two distinct sides should make the record a little disjointed but somehow they don’t’.
Many Bowie fans will tell you they loved this record on release, and it was a surprise hit, which showed, if nothing else, his legion of fans were prepared to see the script torn up and follow him down musical pastures Neu!
Yet it was released right at the end of the punk explosion and almost at the start of New Wave and was therefore overlooked by many fans and under-appreciated by critics at the time, despite the historical revisionism surrounding it.
If anyone ever tells you they picked up on the cover straight away and went around in ‘77 dressed like that, and with that haircut, if they weren’t scousers, who didn’t anyway, file them away under Billy bullshitters.
Anyway, Low, like nearly all great records, has not only stood the test of time but actually gotten better with age.
Retrospective can be 20/20, and in the light that that sheds this record must be up there as one of the very finest Bowie ever did.

Much obliged Ste Carter.

Review

By Holywell Street 4th February 2019

The Specials’ first official album since 1980 is a rich collection that covers funk, ska and reggae with good bit of energy.

Though just three of the original band are left, the fitting title ‘Encore’ certainly has hit the headlines with Terry Hall, Lynval Golding and Horace Panter—the album hits many of the group’s original vibe. I like how the piece is talking about mental health, race relations and political disharmony with intelligence and integrity.  The two-tone sound is still in there which is what I’d hoped for and kinda expected. There’s a few songs that are covers including an Eddy Grant number but this politically impeccable.

Elsewhere, 10 Commandments (a feminist riff on a sexist Prince Buster song) is delivered with biting anger, here voiced by guest vocalist Saffiyah Khan, who is widely known for facing down the EDL at a Birmingham protest in 2017.  Personally   I’m loving the fact the activist has been given this platform. The two iconic photos of her at this rally – facing down the EDL bloke and the other of her getting lead away with the Specials t-shirt showing are  deservedly seen as legendary.

The track is a sprawling spoken word reggae jam akin to their global hit Ghost Town and its follow up The Boiler, a harrowing rape narrative fronted by Rhoda Dakar. Though the track updates the sound with intellectual honesty, “Is that what it takes to impress a bloke whose brain is made up of curvy size zero”

One of the reasons that the Specials have been through so many levels most notably the Special AKA, is the format of the band. Conceptually, they are a musical collective, they have combinations sometimes the Special AKA didn’t come over as a band but more a mass group of likeminded people.

The band certainly wear their influences on their sleeves. The track The Life and Times of a Man (Called Depression) is very close to home for a lot of people these days and it certainly is for Terry Hall.

While the album is excellent, it really promotes them as a live act. I didn’t know what to think of the live tracks on there, maybe being unnecessary add-on’s but one imagines a Specials gig in 2019 is just as affecting as it was 40 years ago. Or as Hall puts it, just as “horribly relevant”.

It’s a 10/10 from us.