A Musical Interlude

The marking mountain isn't getting much lower, so obviously I'm looking for distraction and procrastination activities. One of those is looking up the hidden pasts of my musician friends The Nightingales (you've just missed their UK and Ireland tour, but there's a European one planned for later in the year).

Browsing for dodgy BBC live session bootlegs, I came across Robert Lloyd and the Four Seasons: the 'Gales lead singer's attempt at pop stardom in the halcyon pre-Britpop days of indie. One of the guitarists on the album is Craig Gannon, the 'Fifth Smith'. The purists reckon RL+TNFS were a bit poppy and the album was over-produced, but I like it. The lyrics still have the bike-chain viciousness of the Nightingales, but coated in sugary hooks.







By way of comparison, here's the Nightingales' Dumb and Drummer - after thirty years, they've made a video!



Last night rather than carry on marking, I went to the local arts centre for an Non-English open music night. Everyone got 10 minutes on the decks (some losers had MP3s, ugh) to play whatever we wanted. This suited me perfectly: I have over 20,000 LPs, 10"s and 7" in my flat, two minutes walk from the venue. My friends brought along some Dutch riot girl, German pop and various other delights, but I went for an all-Welsh lineup:

First: some Y Cyrff, a couple of whom became Catatonia later on.



Then some electro by a recent discovery, Dau Cefn:



(better recording here). After that, some krautrock-psychedelia by my old friends Ectogram. The track I played isn't available online, but here's a representative sample:



and finally some symphonic pop by Rheinallt H Rowlands, whom I never saw live sadly:



I shall definitely be going back. Obviously such a night is designed for obscurantist one-upmanship. I'll be bringing along Ectogram's 'Spitsbergen' single, which was indeed No. 1 in Spitzbergen, some Georgian folk music and some Chechen rebel songs. That'll show them. It's just a shame that the Angry Samoans aren't actually, well, Samoans.

Finally, for giggles, here's Rocking With Rita, the Fuzzbox/Robert Lloyd/Ted Chippington non-hit single.

Before I go, a commercial message from Ectogram

I meant to do this ages ago, but kept getting distracted.

As you may know because I go on about it endlessly, I was in the prime of youth during the days of Cool (or Cwl) Cymru. I go on about it here because I don't have children to bore. If I did, they're the ones who'd be shouting 'it's just noise' at me, because one wing of the Welsh music scene specialised in weirdo-psych-krautrock incantation. I loved the cheery tuneful bands, but I had and still have a place in my heart for the bloody-minded experimentalists and their gamelans.

In particular, I loved Ectogram, with their wacky titles (Concentric Neckwear? Fluff on a Faraway Hill? We're a long way from Menswear) and 10" singles which topped the charts in Spitzbergen (I'm not joking, by the way). They were a hard band to love, but only because Alan, their multi-talented instrumentalist was the record shop 'assistant' who spent years of my life openly mocking my purchases and loading my bag instead with his own stuff. The archetypal Record Shop Guy. I only realised later that all the Can records were just his way of getting me into the right frame of mind to voluntarily buy Ectogram's releases.

Which brings me round to the music. Here's them playing with Damo Suzuki, of beard-furrowing Can fame:



And here's the rather characteristic Cymrock groove of 'Tu Fewn Ceg Gerallt'.



And the rather sweet country-Welsh-krautrock of Cyfan Gwbl:



And now Alan tells me there's a new album out, Exo-Celestial, which he describes as the band's

pop album, although a pop album more in the tradition of The Art Bears,Roxy Music and Stereolab rather than One Direction, Olly Murs or JLS.

Recorded under a set of vague rules for no apparent reason, it's available here, though only (obviously) on 100 LPs in the UKK and (obviously again) Germany, so it won't be troubling the charts. I've ordered one, and I know it's going to be good because a) everything they do is good and b) when they say they'll do a pop album, they really mean it. I'll review it properly when it arrives, but in the meantime, if you go here you can order it, or download pretty much every underground experimental North Welsh album made legally and for free. I particularly recommend Fflaps: melodic motorik beauty.

Is that the acetate test pressing?

Last Saturday was Independent Record Shop day, on which we were meant to give our money to small capitalists rather than big ones.

Actually, the independent record shop is my natural habitat. Weeks of my life have been spent leafing through racks of dusty records by bands who reached No. 78 on the Indie charts with a split single on Fierce Panda or some such label. It's difficult to point to the indiest record in my collection, though Spare Snare's acoustic, Scottish cover of 'Say My Name', Teen Anthems' 'Welsh Bands Suck' and The Period Pains' 'We Hate The Spice Girls' all spring to mind.









Going to an indie store is a special experience though - far better than the fake mateyness of HMV and the like. The checkout monkey recently addressed me thus 'Find everything you needed, buddy?' and added 'buddy' to every subsequent sentence. I didn't 'need' anything I'd bought, I couldn't find what I actually wanted, and we'd never met previously. Buddy, indeed.

No, go to a proper record shop and there's no false bonhomie. It's like an assault course - difficult, often humiliating, but ultimately good for you. I spent a good chunk of my life at Cob Records in Bangor: seeing one of their yellow plastic bags is my madeleine.

Cob was especially difficult for non-locals because as well as convincing the staff you were worthy to buy one of their records, you had to either speak Welsh or look apologetic for not being able to do so - learning a few phrases was essential (and a pleasure, I should add). Similarly, occasionally purchasing 7" singles by the staff's bands helped (this was the high point of Welsh indie - most of them produced, played on or supported Gorky's/Super Furries/David Wrench/Ectogram (with whom I'm still friends)/Melys/Serpents etc) and learning their children's names made it more likely that you'd leave the shop with only a few mocking comments about your taste in music. Buying music on the 'wrong' label was enough to attract opprobrium. OK, they would imply, you're feeding our kids, but don't expect gratitude if you think that Creation is socially acceptable. I got away with it, I think: my first two purchases (made blindly) were Gorky's Zygotic Mynci's Patio on 10" and Tindersticks' Kathleen, also on 10" - credible enough to serve as an entrée.









I ran this gauntlet several times a week. I'd go in on Friday and go through the list of next week's releases, having perused NME on Wednesday. Then I'd return on Monday to pick up the loot. Usually, this would be a couple of plastic bags full of vinyl (I didn't have a CD player until 1998), sometimes more. Added to my order, the men (yes, all men) would have added 'stuff we thought you'd like/should listen to', which usually consisted of their own releases, or any old crap ordered in error and lingering in dark corners. I would, intimidated and pleased by their kindness, gratefully take whatever they recommended. The bags would be hauled over the counter (which was festooned by stickers and posters for bands which lasted, on average, for one gig or a single mention by sainted John Peel) and the pattern would repeat itself every week. I'd also call in at random times just in case interesting second-hand stuff had come in - leading to my large collection of Ankst's back catalogue and a big pile of Datblygu records.

Leaving North Wales was a huge wrench for many reasons, but Cob was a part of this. My current location had an OK shop which closed within weeks of my arrival. Birmingham had a couple of good shops, but they're closing. Trips to Manchester are always fruitful, but I'm no longer so tribal. After having to sell 400 7" singles one summer to stay in my house and eat, something was lost. Internet shopping isn't the same. The very best indie outlets on the web are Action Records and Norman's Records (huge range, friendly people, authentic indie snobbiness) but the social aspects are lost: the smells, the cameraderie of slipping a record out of its sleeve to spin it under the light or work out which pressing it was before loudly declaring it inauthentic, the quiet nods of recognition when fellow victims are spotted, the shameful pleasure of purchasing a records despite the shop owner loudly announcing that 'this is shit, mate' and pressing a load of other things on you  - you can't get this on the web.

Go to your local shop. If you don't, their employees will roam the streets. Record shops are Care in the Community for nerds. Download anything on a major label - buy the rest in your local shop.

A miseryguts writes…

Happy Monday you lot! There used to be a tradition called St. Monday in Northern cities, including Stoke. A heavy weekend required a day off - a religious festival. In industries with highly specialised skills such as pottery, enough individuals absent meant that a whole crew couldn't do any work - so men took turns a few times a year. This is how I feel today, except that I'm at work and absolutely nobody else is other than the cleaners, who are always very cheery.

It's hot, sticky and horrible, yet I've already seen one student (advice: don't nick your resit from the internet and characters with speaking parts usually aren't dead in Renaissance literature). I've got to write a conference paper for Wednesday ('O. M. Edwards, Travel Writing and Definitions of Welshness' or something similar and the beer festival is still weighing heavily on my guts.

We all had a good time, without getting hammered. Except for Mr. Radford Sallow, who arrived many hours late and proceeded to catch up in spectacular fashion. Poor old man isn't used to drinking. He took the pledge in 1934…

Many of you seem horrified that I'm indifferent to Michael Jackson's oeuvre. Sorry, I just didn't listen to much pop at that formative age. My parents didn't believe in radios in every room, and they listened to mainstream classical, bits of folk, and a lot of religious music. Dad's concession to Irish culture was a U2 cassette and one by the Dubliners, and Mum played a lot more music than she listens to.

If it's any consolation, I watched Blur's performance at Glastonbury last night. All the presenters were talking about it being a seminal, wondrous, amazing set. I didn't. I thought they were quite good. Maybe I'm just getting grumpy. Wonder how the Nightingales went down? The BBC didn't see fit to broadcast any of their set.

On arrival at university I owned a cassette of Automatic for the People given to me by a schoolmate. A few days later I walked into the fabulous Recordiau Cob Records in Bangor and opened up a financial vein which flowed freely for many years to com. I bought two interesting looking records: Gorky's Zygotic Mynci's Patio and Tindersticks Kathleen/ E-Type Joe, both on 10" vinyl - not bad for a random pick. Henceforth, I'd go in on Thursday and pore over the list of next week's releases, making a list. On Monday, I'd collect several groaning plastic bags, to which the helpful gimps behind the counter would add 'some things we thought you'd like'. Years later, I realised that this meant 'our own records because nobody else will buy them [hello, Ectogram] and anything we've ordered in and realised won't sell'. Add to this the stuff I bought because I trusted the record label and all the secondhand bits, and you get the beginnings of my 30,000 collection, surprisingly little of which I now regret. Except for Cast's album: played once, put away for ever. I had to sell some once - 250 7" singles to Norman's Records simply to survive one summer. very depressingly. The collection is now like a smile with several teeth missing.