A rant-free, politics-free blog entry. No, really!

Afternoon, gentle readers. I've had a ridiculously busy day. I've seen students who failed their essays to advise them on resits. I've seen students collecting their work (hint: the ones who do well are the ones who collect their essays whatever grade they achieved) and I've been to a long long meeting to discuss how the union can help a hard-working, undervalued group of colleagues. So I'm tired, but I'm feeling like I've been helpful.

Once back from the meeting, I bumped into a colleague who observed that there are 'no female guitarists' or lead singers.

Oh dear. Ohdearohdearohdear. Where to start? So instead of my usually sterile dry political moaning, I thought I'd collect some of my favourite female musicians from across the musical genres. The only ones I'm excluding are the ones you should all know about and adore already: Baez, Mitchell, Kate Bush, Blondie, PJ and so on. It's quite interesting going to Youtube for these: I've never had music TV and not seen all these bands live, so it's fascinating seeing what they actually look like. Also in honour of Kim Deal, now ex-of Pixies but still presiding genius of The Breeders.

In no particular order:

The world's greatest bass hook ever: The Breeders' 'Cannonball'. The soundtrack to every indie night I went to for about 15 years.



Shoutiest feminist riot grrl thrill: Bikini Kill's 'Rebel Girl'. And yes the drum intro does sound a bit like the Stone Roses.



Heart-breaking cover of New Order's 'Bizarre Love Triangle' by Australians Frente:



Some late, jazzy, Madder Rose:



Here's an ethereal snatch of Beth Gibbons and Rustin Man. She's in Portishead. He isn't. They made what I reckon is one of the Great Lost Albums.



I don't know much about Rose Elinor Dougall or Nancy Elizabeth except that I like them:





Back to ethereal 90s indie? Some Mazzy Star then (sorry about the ad):



More upbeat? Anjali's your woman:



Astonishing wordy surrealism? I prescribe some Kimya Dawson, 'The Beer':



Country heartbreak? Laura Cantrell's 'Bees' and (tongue in cheek), Amy LaVere's 'Killing Him Didn't Make The Love Go Away':





If you ever wished Pale Fountains had a female singer, then Camera Obscura are the band for you. Here's a cut from their latest album:



Though of course the queens of female-fronted indie were Lush:



Better than Salad, anyway. But not as good as the Delgados and Catchers.





Bubbling under? St. Vincent are new to me. Like David Lynch got hold of some perfectly good pop music:



She's a bit like an American Melys:



Breathy French catchy pop? Camille's 'Ta Douleur': unlike what I know of most French pop culture, she puts on her clothes as the video progresses.



Then – because I like it – a Julianna Barwick track. Depending on your tastes, this is either the most shoegazey Sonic Cathedral there is, or the wettest track ever:



I was going to give you Heavenly's 'Sperm Meets Egg, So What?', but I love their cover of 'Nous ne sommes pas des anges', so here's that instead:



Sleazy lounge music? 'Come On Over (Turn Me On)' by Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan:



Widescreen rock: The Joy Formidable.



Part of my ongoing mission to collect every New Order-related track ever, here's 'Selfish' by The Other Two, aka Stephen Morris and Gillian Gilbert of New Order.



And there I think I'll leave it, point massively proven. Whatever it was. Though there's plenty more where that came from…

Are You Happy Now?

I took the plunge yesterday back into the early 1990s by buying a ticket for a gig featuring Ned's Atomic Dustbin, Cud, The Frank and Walters, DJ'd by Steve Lamacq, the presiding genius of 90s Indie: he had enthusiasm, DMs with 501s and his own record label, Deceptive. It's like a time capsule of Indie before Britpop killed off everything that was loveable about the music scene.





I should confess that I had that very haircut for most of the 90s - when it wasn't a lot longer. Straight and jet-black. I was thin too, and squeezed myself into narrow black jeans, stripy hippy shirts and an old biker's jacket with Senseless Things painted on the back… Oh dear, this could turn into a very self-pitying blog post. Now I'm porky, receding and bitter. Such is life.

That was Ned's. Here's a great Cud track: 'Rich and Strange':



and some The Frank and Walters. I do love also-rans, especially ones who didn't get the breaks their music deserved. Can you imagine music TV letting these chaps within a million miles of a camera these days?





I remember distinctly when Britpop hit. It was summer 1993 and I was a waiter in a horrible family pub. The establishment possessed one cassette tape of muzak. One it were two decent songs, and if you timed it right, you could be clearing tables or wiping up vomit in the area with speakers every 80 minutes or so. It was like finding an oasis in a desert of bland, repetitive, dumb musical sand. Ironically, one of those songs was by Oasis, 'Cigarettes and Alcohol'; the other was Blur's 'Popscene'. I was smitten, at least for a while. However disappointing both bands quickly became, I'll be forever grateful for those moments of respite they gave me in the Wacky Warehouse. They were so direct, alive, snarling and vital compared to the rest of the stuff in the air. I bought 'Cigarettes and Alcohol' on cassette tape. It came in a mock fag packet. Class.

I should probably explain that I was from a pop-deprived family. My mum owns the sheet music for some Beatles songs. My dad had a U2 tape because he was at school with their manager, and a Dubliners tape. The rest of the time, we listened to appalling Irish radio, religious music and mainstream classical stuff. School was little better. One friend had REM's Automatic For The People, to which I was addicted. Another did me a tape of some minimalist classical stuff, a genre to which I still cleave, and one guy liked See See Rider. I also knew some Metallica from friends back at home. And that was it. My ears were opened by installing a massive 1950s cabinet stereo and secretly listening to John Peel at night, but I didn't actually possess any music because I couldn't record any and didn't get pocket money to purchase any.

So actually my musical education started with Britpop and NME, which became my bible at university, until the not-very-gentle scorn of the record shop staff turned me on to the Welsh-language stuff then appearing (SFA, Gorky's - lovely, lovely songs linked to there - and so on) and to the delights of indie label obsession and the proto-history of Britpop. One day I was buying Menswear 7" singles, the next I was raving about 4AD, Sarah Records, Fierce Panda, Ankst and Tystion. Eventually I realised that Britpop was a nasty capitalist tool which was all about replacing a genuine subculture with marketing, and became an Indie Archaeologist.

So I wasn't a Ned's Atomic Dustbin fan 'back in the day', nor a Cud fan, nor a Frank and Walters fan. I found my way there by swimming upstream, just as everybody else was raving about Parklife or 'What's the Story, Morning Glory?'. The gig will be odd: I won't be nostalgic but I will be appreciative of a musical movement which preferred integrity (and terrible band names) to ambition.

An indie-kid's madeleine

Not a promising starting image is it, but my Curve shirt got me thinking. 'Ou sont les t-shirts d'antan?', as Proust would have said if he'd had a decent record shop and a student loan in the heady days of the early-to-mid-1990s rather than some mouldy old biscuits and some unresolved 'issues'.

Band t-shirts were the staple of my wardrobe then: apart from some regrettable stripy hippy shirts, I expressed what passed for my identity through the medium of cheap XL tops stamped with the usually not very imaginative names of a string of mostly second-rate bands, in accordance with the rituals of my tribe. In some cases, the shirts have outlived the bands by over a decade: I have and still wear a particularly good Gorky's Zygotic Mynci shirt depicting various beard styles (I shall take a picture for you tonight).





The collection is a reminder of youthful enthusiasms, of a social context, of various design cultures, but also - sadly - of the inexorable growth of my guts. At first I was thin (my diet was largely carrots), and wore tiny skinny-fit shirts. Then I got fat, and voluminous drapery was the order of the day… And yet I have so few of these shirts left, and so little enthusiasm for buying more. At the time, buying the t-shirt (official from within the gig venue if I had money, cheap rip-off from the pavement outside if I didn't) was compulsory, along with the 2 picture discs with postcards which was obviously superior to buying one 7" single or - spit - a CD. Ugh. For some reason, all my anti-consumerist, anti-capitalist instincts were suspended whenever some cheap cotton promotional material hove into view.

They've virtually all gone now… my Ash shirt (try this blast of pop fun), the Gene ('Haunted By You') one, the skinny blue Bluetones one with silver foil lettering (listen to this), the font-tastic Elastica top ('2:1', oh yes), the pale-blue Belle and Sebastian 'Study at Stow' and Tigermilk tops (try 'Electronic Renaissance'), the glaring Stereolab T (check out 'K-Stars'), the Super Furry Animals 'Fuzzy Logic' top and a very poor white one with the SFA logo on each nipple (you'll like this one), the Catatonia one ('Sweet Catatonia'), and all the others I can't even remember now (help me out, eye-witnesses). I have a horrible suspicion about a Levellers ('Battle of the Beanfield') shirt and a Manics fleece (long story involving Mogwai - who 'Fear Satan' - and rain: listen to 'La Tristessa Durera' instead). All I'm left with is a Melt Banana (here 'celebrating' 'White Christmas') one which I've never worn because alcohol misleadingly persuaded me at the stall that I wasn't a porky git, the Gorky's top and my gifted Curve one. And a big pile of nerd shirts: science puns, one with Shakespeare reading 'prose before hos', a few book-related ones including a beautiful raven made up of Poe's poem, and some fencing-related stuff. And one with the Back to the Future DeLorean crashing into the Tardis, of which I'm particularly proud.

Are these things culturally significant? The internet says mostly no: I wish I'd taken pictures of these lost artefacts, because nobody else has. They were part of a culture, in which belonging was important, and it's a forgotten phase. It was fascinating to see high street clothing stores selling shirts for bands which buyers didn't listen to - Iron Maiden shirts suddenly became mainstream, for instance, as the band t-shirt became a signifier divorced from what it previously signified: belonging to an exclusive tribe, maintaining and developing individuality by being the same, and a host of other subtle meanings. Buying the shirt was a way to announce your sophistication, or your rejection of mainstream values. It was also a kind of education: the aesthetics of the shirt were often a way in to the art-school tastes many of the bands I liked had picked up.

Further reading: Wendy Fonarow's Empire of Dirt: The Aesthetics and Rituals of British Indie Music and the fine My Band T-Shirt Tumblr.

PS. Why was this mainly a male thing?

Cybele's Reverie

I was lying in bed last night listening to Stereolab's Emperor Tomato Ketchup album (mmm… French Marxists playing a mix of 60s pop and German motorik) and it triggered a real madeleine moment.



I was transported back to my favourite student room in Bangor. It was accessed by some precipitous stairs, through a trapdoor and into the roofspace. I'm quite short, but even I could only stand in the middle of the room thanks to the steeply sloping roof. A skylight afforded a great view of the yachts' masts in the harbour, and the mountains. On windy nights, the yachts' bells and ringing created a beautifully, unearthly sound.

All I had in there was a bed and a chest of drawers containing two pairs of black jeans, two black shirts and a black leather bikers' jacket. Books and records were piled up against the limited wall space. By the bed was my 1970s record player and unutterably crap speakers, reachable without having to crawl out from under the duvet. Black and red Doctor Martens boots were tucked into the corner. Black clothes, DMs, very long hair and extreme slimness - what a stereotypical student.

The records which were on constant rotation were classics of the 90s: The Boo Radleys' Giant Steps, Emperor Tomato Ketchup, Gorky's Zygotic Mynci's wonderful 10" Patio (pop-psychedelic Welsh-language teenage genius) and Elastica by Elastica. I have two copies of that - I fell out of bed and the crash scratched the first track. I'm still sad about that, but it meant that I could legitimately order the US release which has an extra track on it. Elastica did good specials: 'Stutter' is on a 10" transparent gold platter with glitter scattered inside. My tastes widened, but I still think these albums have stood the test of time.













On a quiet morning, I could lift the needle on something cool, grab a book - often some critical theory or a fat 18th-century novel like Pamela, feed biscuits to the mice which played at the foot of the bed and settle in for a day's indulgence.

That was my second year at university. Later on, when I came back for an MA, I moved back into the same dark, musty, cosy house. My room had been declared unsafe for accommodation (trapdoors and drunkenness don't mix) so I paid an extra £5 a week rent (making the total £38 per week) to use it as a library, books ranged in endless rows. Unfortunately, one of my dubious Irish housemates left the skylight open in a rainstorm and damaged huge numbers of them - totally unapologetically.

I loved living in that house. Surrounded by freaks, hamsters, guinea pigs, a tarantula, hugely stoned juggling goths, a Swedish psychopath and assorted weirdos all finding each other highly amusing. The next year was another story entirely…

Why I miss the early 90s, part 349

I'll display my unashamedly nostalgic side now. I was caught up in the Britpop craze, having started to buy music while at university from 93-96. Some of those bands were rubbish (Powder, anyone?) and some great (Elastica, Blur's Modern Life is Rubbish distils an era, though it heralded Britpop rather than fully partook in it).

But. Britpop killed off the jungle of non-corporate music - such as shoegaze -  or at least drove it to the margins, where it became fragmented and overly precious. Chasing hit singles, appearing in style mags and being spotted at celeb events became signs of success, rather than producing great work or remaining artistically honest. It was also a deeply laddish culture - females (Lush, Pale Saints, Juliana Hatfield, Liz Phair, Riot Grrl) were marginalised, however good their music, with odd exceptions such as the wonderful P J Harvey.

So today I've been listening to Belly, fronted by Tanya Donelly, formerly of the even more wonderful Breeders and Throwing Muses (I'll come to them in due course). Belly melded jangly guitars, an ethereal voice and a muscular rock rhythm section to produce something captivating. Indie night classics!

Foreign music review

Funny how, from several countries away, I'm giving you something utterly, utterly English: Ant's Cures for Broken Hearts. It's a mini-album by a man who used to be in the shambolically lovely Hefner. Predictably, but no less charmingly, it's shambolic heartbroken wet indie music by a man who knows his way around Wurlitzers and violas.

Ben will no doubt hate it: it's completely white and self-pitying, but then, so am I.

There's no video because Ant and friends believe in recording an album every other day and appearing on each others' 7" split singles to making marketing tools, so here's a fairly typical sample, the title track.

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Plus de liaisons

Hello again? Did you all cope with the searing heat this weekend? I found it quite difficult. Anything above 23% makes me feel like a polar bear in a microwave.

So. On Friday, after a few ales in the Great Western, a select band of us ended up at the Little Civic, Wolverhampton's premier indie dive to mark its last night.

Few people attended Mozart's funeral, so fallen was his reputation. This was the mood in the Little Civic. The five of us danced to the finest cuts of indie beef, as the DJ indulged our whims for the very last time. Scattered around the edges were a very few onlookers, and once in a while, drunk wandered in looking for Yates's, scorned us and left. I've been attending these Friday nights for almost ten years now, have seen the Nightingales and many other bands play the upstairs room in search of that elusive break: then, indie kids danced, rejecting the mockery of those with shaven heads and checked shirts. Now, it's a sad outpost of a lost culture. The boards are going up, the turntable is long defunct, the Field Mice will echo mournfully round an abandoned building long after the DJ departs. A moment of silence please, for another distinctive, shabby, wonderful place.

Of Cheese and Indie

I won't go on about politics today - it's too hot, which is something I don't deal with very well. I will just mention that the Daily Mail, of all rightwing racist papers, is going after David Cameron for his mortgage dealings - and a good thing too. I presume that they've decided that they need to keep their bitter, jealous Poujadist readers even if that means turning against their natural leaders.

I've had an action-packed weekend. Well, not exactly active, but varied. For Dan's birthday, we planned a walk along the Severn around Bridgnorth, and then to Birmingham for some fine lo-fi. So we all met at 11.45 to get the bus, except for Phil, who turned up an hour early, then wandered the streets of Wolverhampton in his disreputable shorts and beer-logo t-shirt. We sort of missed that bus - Dan's train was delayed, but it was filled to capacity anyway. So we wandered, and some of us decided to buy tickets for Mark Steel tonight. (Dan seemed to like his presents: I gave him a bottle of excellent Islay single malt and 7 CDs themed around birds and walking, Neal made him a bee nesting box which impressed us all mightily, and we presented him with a vintage mixing desk acquired perfectly legally).

Off to lovely Bridgnorth, where I had hopes of storming Bill Cash's mansion in Upton Cressett, but instead, Christine and her bloke bravely invited us for 'bread and cheese', even though Christine only knew Mark and I, and her husband had never heard of us. 'Bread and cheese' turned out to be Stinking Bishop, brilliant stilton, salads and jugs of Pimms, served in their beautiful English cottage garden overlooking the Severn valley. Needless to say, we couldn't tear ourselves away from fine company and gourmet food: the walk was cancelled. I'll stick some photographs up when I get into the office on Tuesday (no, I'm not having Monday off - I'm going to a conference on how to turn my job into a career. It's the New Deal for academics).

Later on, we took advantage of subsidised fares to get 4 train tickets to Brum for £4 and hit the coolest bars - we may not have enhanced this coolness. The Sunflower Lounge loses points for having one screen showing Celebrity Mr and Mrs Starring Morten Harket (is that right?), and wins some back for presenting Repo Man - in French. From there, off to the Victoria, where some of our party unsubtly admired the human form, chatted to Mark's ex's brother, drank fine ales, met another Bangor graduate, Mary, who has the required robust humour to cope with us, and then headed off to The Island, which was most stylish. I temporarily switched to margaritas because I don't think that it demeans my undoubted masculinity at all. No doubt the student I met there and in the next place we went will post the photo in Facebook to my enduring shame… Should have worn my Melt Banana shirt.

From there, we went to Snobs, the legendary Birmingham indie club. I went about 9 years ago and had a wonderful time. This time, it's fair to say, we didn't. Despite dosing ourselves regularly with gin and tonic, we couldn't help noticing that the music was rubbish - an incredibly uninventive dependence on mainstream sixties soul worn out by over-repetition. It was, frankly, reminiscent of 'Sound of Summer' CDs given out by middle market tabloids, leavened only by the most obvious Smiths or Stone Roses track: no inventiveness, no innovation, just deeply conservative choices.

I love a lot of 60s music - Velvet Underground, Ligeti, Reich, Northern Soul - but dancing for hours to music by dead people is a form of cultural suicide. It betrays a total lack of confidence in one's own generation, whether it's the musicians or the revellers you insult with assumptions about their unadventurousness. Dropping the occasional Curtis Mayfield track into a finely crafted set is one thing: serving up constant Stones songs with sporadic chunks of Paul Weller and (ugh) Ocean Colour Scene is the equivalent of going to a UKIP rally, the pop version of Classic FM (exclusively playing Classical Music From The Adverts).

What would I play? Northern Soul, Mogwai, Belle and Sebastian, Sons and Daughters, Magnetic Fields, G0-Betweens, Hydroplane, The Paradise Motel, Stereolab, Super Furries, Kraftwerk, Beulah, Tindersticks, Gil Scott Heron - lots of upbeat, interesting, danceable stuff which surprises and delights. Music for the brain and music for the groin. Music for the indie kids who carry library cards and make their own style.

So that was Saturday night. We returned by taxi, taking in every godforsaken urban sprawl between the Bullring and Beatties, arguing about whether dawn was breaking or just light pollution - both, I suspect. I got to sleep on my floor, thanks to my kind nature, and woke too early, feeling less than human. Lunch at the Newhampton Inn, reading newspapers under the fruit trees, then an ice cream in West Park restored my balance and here I am. Marking done, comedy to attend later, ironing not calling me for a change. I like ironing. There's a Zen-like calm which comes with achieving the perfect crease.

(Looking at the Bridgnorth tourism pages, reminds me to plug the Much Wenlock Olympian Games (10th-13th July) - I help run the fencing event, and compete too, and the Shropshire Biggest Liar Competition. Neal suggests that Bill Cash be given a clear run at this year's event).

So - you may not hear from me tomorrow - I'll be 'networking' (even typing the word makes me nauseous). Have a good day or so.

Mmmm vinyl

I've just received the Holy Grail of Scottish nerd sex pop: a triple vinyl remastered copy of everything The Vaselines ever did, with a posh booklet, MP3 version included, and all on the delightful Sub Pop records. Shame the lead singer looks exactly like my unlamented ex-boss.

And now I've stupidly downloaded several Pastels albums even though I have them on vinyl.

Namecheck songs

A selective list based on a quick trawl through my hard drive: titles only. Think of some more over the weekend while I go south to see Felix and maybe even go to the FA semi-final between Everton and Manchester United, depending on whether the tickets exist.

I didn't start it. The Guardian did. You all know an awful lot of awful music. I can extend it:

Jacob Marley's Chain - Aimee Mann

Glitter Years - The Bangles

Like Dylan in the Movies - Belle and Sebastian

Seymour Stein - Belle and Sebastian

Gene Autry - Beulah

Ingrid Bergman - Billy Bragg

Walt Whitman's Niece - Billy Bragg

Benny Hill's Wardrobe - The Bitter Springs

Mike Coe Reads the Credits - The Bitter Springs

Andrew Ridgley - Black Box Recorder

Josephine Baker - Blaggers ITA

Warhol's Fifteen - The Blue Aeroplanes

Blues for George Michael - Boo Radleys

Arthur Walker - Cable

Lloyd, I'm Ready to Be Heartbroken - Camera Obscura

Presley on Oldham Street - Clint Boon Experience

Tiger Woods: Astronaut - Clint Boon

Andy Gill: Astronaut - Clint Boon

Eulogy to Lenny Bruce - Damon and Naomi

Elizabeth Duke - Darren Hayman

Geno - Dexy's Midnight Runners

The Beatles - Edwyn Collins

Fitzcarraldo - The Frames

Black Elvis - Gold Blade

Sally Webster - Gorky's Zygotic Mynci

Gubba Lookalikes - Half Man Half Biscuit

Fucking Hell It's Fred Titmuss - Half Man Half Biscuit

David Attenborough - Huon

Annie Oakley - Jad Fair and Kramer

Alice Cooper's Roadie's Love Child - Kim Fowley and BMX Bandits

Sharing a Gibson With Martin Luther King Jr. - Lambchop

Popeye - Lambchop

Howard Hughes Blues - Laura Cantrell

Ballad of Bilbo Baggins - Leonard Nimoy

Bonnie and Clyde - Luna

This Nelson Rockerfeller - McCarthy

I'm Jim Morrison, I'm Dead - Mogwai

Zidane - Mogwai

Kerouac - Morphine

Eulogy to Lenny Bruce - Nico

Elvis the last ten days - The Nightingales

The Ballad of Bjorn Borg - Pernice Brothers

I Know Someone Who Knows Someone Who Knows Alan McGee Quite Well - The Pooh Sticks

What's the Frequency Kenneth? - REM

John Cage Bubblegum - Stereolab

The Very Best of Neil Diamond - Super Furry Animals

I Was a Rolling Stone - Tiger Phil (Ochs) - Tom Paxton

Tribute to Woody Guthrie - Tom Paxton

Tinky Winky - Tom Paxton

There's a Guy Works Down the Chip Shop Swears He's Elvis - Kirsty MacColl

Cassius Clay - The Wave Pictures

Shatner - The Wedding Present

Dan Dare - The Wedding Present

Kevin Ayers - Gorky's Zygotic Mynci

Bukowski - Rheinallt H Rowlands

Paul McCartney - Laugh Mulder and Scully - Catatonia

The Ballad of Tom Jones - Cerys Matthews and Space

Where's Captain Kirk? - Spizzenergi

John Wayne was a Nazi - MDC

Myrna Loy - The Minus 5

Where on Earth is Kevin Shields - PS I Love You

Talulah Gosh - Talulah Gosh

Norman Bates - Landscape

Robinson Crusoe - Tindersticks

Alan Parsons In a Winter Wonderland - Grandaddy

Wig out

I don't sing the praises of non-Britpop indie bands nearly enough - I love Field Mice, Galaxie 500, Low, Ride, Stereolab, Velocette, The Go-Betweens and loads of others and have well over 20,000 records in my room to prove it (and no money). Turn up your speakers and rock (metronomically and exponentially) to Super-Electric by Stereolab.

Save our Nerds

All subcultures are appropriated, hollowed out and reoriented for the purposes of capitalism. This is just true - and Dick Hebdige wrote about it a long time ago. But I guess we don't care about it much when it's somebody else's subculture. I got it around 1992-1993, when Indie became Britpop and a world was lost. Other may feel that Topshop selling metal band t-shirts to townies was pretty insulting. Now this guy feels it's been done to nerds. True - but so late: I'd guess Weird Science started the rot in 1985. The Big Bang Theory is simply the coup de grace.

Music needed

If anyone has a copy of Still Life by The Paradise Motel to share or sell, I'd be very grateful - I'm a completist and this one passed me by, what with only being released in Australia and all. All Talulah Gosh gratefully received too. And Field Mice 10" albums. Anything with jangly guitars basically.