Category Archives: music

tame impala – feels like we only go backwards

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An anthem to atavism, with a great video directed by Joe Pelling and Becky Sloan, made entirely from plasticine collage. Off the album Lonerism, which came out on Modular in November 2012.

It feels like I only go backwards, baby
Every part of me says go ahead
I got my hopes up again, oh no, not again
Feels like we only go backwards, darling.

I know that you think you sound silly when you call my name
But I hear it inside my head all day
When I realize I’m just holding on to the hope that maybe your feelings don’t show

It feels like I only go backwards, baby
Every part of me says go ahead
Then I got my hopes up again, oh no, not again
Feels like we only go backwards darling.

The seed of all this indecision isn’t me, oh no
‘Cause I decided long ago
But that’s the way it seems to go
I’ve tried so hard to get to something real, it feels…
It feels like I only go backwards, darling…

slowdive – just for a day (full album)

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First released in 1991 on Creation Records, this album has been a fount I have returned to so many, many times since I bought it at about 14 from Jan Welter’s second hand cd stall at the flea market in Pietermaritzburg’s Alexandra Park. I picked it based only on the luminous cover photo of a girl, spinning… Well, that and the fact that I trusted Jan’s taste implicitly. Just for a Day is a cool, sweet glass of water to me on a stuffy, fevered day (like today); a comfy, old sweater to nestle in on a dark, sad day… the breeze blowing through my heart when it feels most empty. It lifts my spirits above suffering, always. Here it is in its entirety.

ravi shankar, go in peace and thank you for the sound

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7 April 1920 – 11 December 2012

Pandit Ravi Shankar –  Raga Asa Bhairav (আশা ভৈরব রাগ) from the album Maestro’s Choice. পণ্ডিত রবি শংকরের সেতারে আশা ভৈরব রাগ…ravi shankar

Listen to the entire Transmigration Macabre (1973) HERE. Transmigration Macabre was composed by Ravi Shankar for the British art film Viola, which tells of the growth and eventual victory of a possessed man’s belief that his dead wife has returned to life in the form of a cat that pursues him. The music traces his emotional turmoil as the man, dominated by his wife during her lifetime, struggles against her baneful influence after her death. ~ Richie Unterberger

nina hagen – du hast den farbfilm vergessen

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Nina Hagen & Automobil (1974). One of her first performances on film. There’s a version with English subtitles HERE.

Raised by her mother, well-known film and TV actress Eva-Maria Hagen and her stepfather, dissident singer-songwriter Wolf Biermann (who was a big influence on her political views and a big nuisance to the GDR), Hagen began singing professionally at a young age. Backed by her group, Automobil, her 1974 single, “Du Hast den Farbfilm Vergessen” (“You forgot the color film”) became a huge hit in the GDR and made Hagen a big star. The seemingly innocent-sounding lyrics (a girlfriend berating her boyfriend for not bringing color film on their vacation) were a subtle dig mocking the sterile, gray, Communist state. The fluffy-sounding ditty became one the most popular songs of 1974 and the double meaning of the comical lyrics was apparently well-understood by both the general population and the Politbüro elites.

In 1976, Wolf Biermann was stripped of his citizenship and refused re-admittance into the GDR after he’d played a TV concert in Cologne. When her mother left to join her husband, Nina claimed to be Biermann’s biological daughter. However, the thing that probably got her visa stamped stat was her threat to the authorities that she would become “the next Wolf Biermann.”

Four days later she was living in the West. I wonder how many people were thrown OUT of East Germany? That’s punk! (from dangerousminds.net)

And here’s a version from 1985 (in full, garish colour):

bob dylan – blind willie mctell

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“Well, God is in His heaven
And we all want what’s His
But power and greed and corruptible seed
Seem to be all that there is
I’m gazing out the window
Of the St. James Hotel
And I know no one can sing the blues
Like Blind Willie McTell.”

Copyright © 1983 by Special Rider Music, from The Bootleg Series, Vol 1-3: Rare & Unreleased 1961-1991

and the wind cried mary

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Forty years after his passing Jimi Hendricks lives. Jimi was a dirty uncle, one who crooned “Foxy Lady” to a girl 6 years old in a house filled with adults slurring expletives of the extra terrestrial kind.

I had no idea what he meant or who he was talking to. As plain as the lyrics are, the censorious nature of the song, at least for a six year old, were lost to me. What made the song special, what earned Hendrix a place in my heart like no other musician was the way he whispers ‘foxy’ at the beginning of the song and expression itself.

What got me going was imagining that he couldn’t go to sleep without his piece close by, that he wanted it like he wanted that ‘foxy lady’. I was and am still convinced that when he sung that song it was dedicated to an elusive riff, that itched at the tip of his fingers refusing to connect heart string to guitar string.

With that conclusion I had cured a palate for a music crediting Fishbone, TV on the Radio and other punk/rockers of the charcoal kind. Jimi was a dirty uncle, who synthed me to sleep, set me jumping on furniture and earned me much punishment- you don’t just hop around on rent-to-own property.

RIP Jimi.

First posted at Pan African Space Station.

lisa hannigan – tiny desk concert

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At the NPR Music offices, October 2011. I fall in love with her a little bit more every time I watch her. Wow.

Set List:
“Knots”
“Little Bird”
“Passenger”

It was early in the morning,
we were sitting on the stoop,
there wheeled away a starling
and I thought that I would too.
Oh for all I knew,
I was lost through and through,
in my high heels and my old dress
with my new keys in the wrong city.
I tie the knots to remember in my heart,
so I choke and I sputter to a stop,
I am a borrower and lender of the lot.
I walk away asleep
and chalk an outline round the scene.
This shadow play of whiskey talk,
a heavy denier dream.
Oh let it be, I was lost in him and me.
In my high heels and my old dress
with my new keys in the wrong city.
I tie the knots to remember in my heart,
so I choke and I sputter to a stop,
I am a borrower and lender of the lot.