Seeing as I’ve only got this on 12” (OK, I’ve got it on mp3 now, but for the purposes of the exercise let’s pretend it’s still this morning), we broke with tradition and watched it on YouTube. Consequently, Junior considers the song a mere soundtrack to Julian Cope’s hair and leather jacket. She liked both.

So that’s two Crucial Three-ers in a row, but we won’t complete the set because Echo and the Bunnymen didn’t release any singles in 1986. Jules was another eccentric with a bye into the charts in the 80s, and who can be surprised when he was chucking out taut, smart, pop triumphs like this?

Junior went off to school murmuring, “Shut your mouth, shut your mouth”. Great.

Flying in the face of fashion:

W prawej nawigacji tego bloga, niemal od samego początku jego bytności, znajduje się pozycja zatytułowana “Julian Cope“. Odnośnik kieruje gości na dość dziwne strony. Ciężko się w nich zorientować przy pierwszej wizycie, ale jeżeli poświęcicie troszkę swojego cennego czasu, na pewno znajdziecie tam coś dla siebie. Kto zacz? Domorosły archeolog, który wykłada w British Museum. Pisarz, który napisał dwie autobiografie. Wielbiciel kraut rocka, od momentu kiedy przyznawanie się do bycia fanem Faust groziło śmiercią towarzyską. Muzyk, który odniósł spore sukcesy, nagrywał dla wytwórni Ricka Rubina i wystąpił gościnnie w jednym z najlepszych utworów Sunn O))), ale od początku kariery ignorował słowo “kompromis”. Jeden z pierwszych bloggerów – jego Head Heritage działa nieprzerwanie od 1998 roku. Aż w końcu długowłosy świr w skórzanych spodniach i czapce Luftwaffe. Żona tak skomentowała jego garderobę: “drogie dzieci, gdyby Niemcy wygrali drugą wojnę światową, wszyscy chodziliby ubrani jak wasz tatuś”.

Jestem świeżo po lekturze wspomnianych autobiografii Cope’a, które w 2000 roku zostały wydane w jednym tomie. “Head-on/Repossessed” to książka/-i niezwykła/-e. Nie tylko dlatego, że Julian posługuje się słowem jak Paganini smyczkiem. To historia wzlotów i upadków muzyka rockowego, których nie widać w blasku reflektorów i na ekranach telewizorów. Są narkotyki, problemy rodzinne, paranoja i wreszcie muzyka. “To jedna z najlepszych książek o latach 80.” – głosi na okładce “Repossessed” recenzent “Guardiana”. Owszem, tyle że to lata 80., w których rewolucja punkowa jest czymś na kształt wspomnienia ery kamienia łupanego, a The Smiths oraz Echo & The Bunnymen nie cieszą się szacunkiem autora. Słowem – dekada, którą zwykliśmy pamiętać zgoła inaczej. Gdzieś spomiędzy kart wyziera nienawiść do polityków, zorganizowanej religii (choć Cope będąc już dojrzałym mężczyzną przyjął chrzest), ale znalazło się też miejsce na miłość i relacje międzyludzkie. Jeżeli istnieje ktoś, o kim można z czystym sumieniem powiedzieć, że jest człowiekiem o tysiącu twarzy, to jego nazwisko brzmi Cope. Julian Cope.

Julian ozdobił swoją personą okładkę listopadowego “Wire“. W środku całkiem niezły wywiad, ale głównie o jego najnowszych poczynaniach muzycznych.

W odtwarzaczu: African Elephants – “Dead To Me”, Genitorturers – “Black Heart Revolution”, This Immortal Coil – “The Dark Age Of Love”, Terror Dnajah – “Gremlinz”

Terry Hall, best known as the frontman of 80s groups like The Specials and The Fun Boy Three,  has recently turned up in my mind in the way that buried and unsettling memories, unexpectedly set loose from their time and place, often can. A few days ago I was reading W.G. Sebald’s The Emigrants and Sebald’s description of Manchester in the 60s was making me think of my earliest memories of visiting the city when– there he was: Terry Hall, with his exquisite sad face, driving through deserted city streets at night with his fellow Specials singing ‘This town is ‘comin’ like  a ghost town.’ Watching the video now I see the humour and the political anger in the song: this was 1981 and Hall’s lyrics are a direct reaction to the high unemployment and hopelessness experienced by a generation in Thatcher’s Britain. But at the time I first watched it, I was 8 years old and along with two other pop videos (Julian Cope and The Teardrop Explodes’ ‘Reward’ and Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’) this was the most frightening thing I had seen on TV. Of course, at 8, you don’t understand the politics of these songs, but you are able to understand desolation, and this was my experience. It was the music and images in these pop videos, especially ‘Ghost Town,’ that gave me my first taste of insomnia and the strange way the mind works when you don’t sleep. In the insomniac state, ordinary things– blackened brickwork, a man lifting a trumpet to his lips, a car swerving as it rattles over broken tarmac and cobbles–are tainted and become more tainted as the images and sounds that frightened you repeat and strengthen themselves. The dark becomes dirtier.

And somehow, Terry Hall’s physical beauty makes all that decay seem worse.  Hall, in 1981, looks like a male Garbo: huge eyes, an almost deathly pallor, a smile that passes, occasionally, like a cloud over his face. The face is sensitive and alert but also somehow mask-like; a living being in a dead world. Watching him, Julian Cope and the Floyd in the early 80s dropped me into another world. The comforting, sugary froth served up by bands like ABC and Duran Duran melted away when you watched and listened to music like this. Life wasn’t men in linen suits cavorting with models on yachts. It was something rainier and sharper and it could be lived more truthfully. Terry Hall both attracted and frightened me: he was political in ways I didn’t understand and was sad and honest in ways that I somehow did. His was the first voice I can remember that sang about life in a minor key. He said a lot in a few words, and quietly.

versus

Ayer por la tarde estaba en casa disfrutando de una recopilación de Nick Lowe, cuando sonó All Men Are Liars, una canción que me parece cojonuda (¡esa referencia a Rick Astley es genial!). Me pareció un título chulo para un disco y, además, tenía delante de mí una foto que había hecho en una tienda de Londres (en la Burlington Arcade) que era perfecta para la portada (las letras del título tienen los colores de las corbatas de la tienda).

Descarga la recopilación "All Men Are Liars"

Así que la cosa empezó con Nick Lowe y siguó con Orange Juice, Modern Skirt, The Electric Soft Parade, The Jeevas, Luthea Salom, Stoned Emotion, Death Cab For Cutie, The Frames, My Morning Jacket, Tapes ‘n Tapes, Trashmonkeys, Islands, Benjamin Biolay, The Rentals, Josh Ritter, The Changes, Paper Or Plastic, Steve Wynn & The Miracle 3, James Dean Bradfield, The Higsons, Metric, Nada Surf, The Like y Joan Jett & The Blackhearts.

Creo que sólo hay un tema nuevo (el de Benjamin Biolay) y he incluido versiones de Julian Cope, David Bowie, Elvis Costello y Creedence Clearwater Revival. Este mediodía he rehecho la recopilación: he eliminado algún tema e incluido otros, hasta que ha quedado la que os dejo aquí, que espero que la disfrutéis.

AQUÍ tenéis el listado de temas y, como siempre, pinchando en la portada os podéis descargar las canciones en mp3 y la carátula en pdf.

“Och jag satt i ett hörn och drack öl med en vän och jag såg bara smuts och jag kväljdes av rök”

01. The Mighty Wah! – The story of the blues, part 1
02. The Sound – The hand of love
03. Loop – Breathe into me
04. Robyn Hitchcock – The man who invented himself
05. Julian Cope – Trampolene
06. The The – Uncertain smile
07. Scarlet – Shine
08. Harvest ministers – Grey matters
09. The Jesus & Mary Chain – Head on
10. It’s immaterial – Hang on, sleepy town
11. New order – Sub-culture

ON ILKLA MOOR BAHT’AT

Back in 1997 I went to see a talk at Waterstones in Leeds by everyone’s favourite pillow case wearing, sock playing, juggling LSD troubador Julian Cope. He was promoting his new book The Modern Antiquarian; a guide to Britain’s stone circles and monolithic sites. Although Cope was hugely engaging in his leopard print coat, hat, giant platform boots and theatrical delivery I didn’t at the time realise how important this book would become.

Over the past 12 years or so I have made it a personal mission to try and visit the sites in his book. Each circle has its own energy, a vast new landscape to inhale, and finding the sites via crumpled up Ordnance Maps is part of the fun in itself. I’ve been to about 20 sites so far, the most notable being Avebury and Silbury, The Rollright Stones, Castlerigg, Long Meg and Her Daughters, and Dartmoor’s Scorhill.

Yesterday Yorkshire had clear blue skies so we decided to visit The Twelve Apostles of Ikley Moor. It’s only about half an hour’s drive from Calderdale so we followed directions from the Cow and Calf rocks up onto the moor. There are plenty of prehistoric stones up there, many with cupping marks which have been vandalised over the years. I was wondering how many hippies have made the trek up there for winter solstice. It’s the last place I’d want to be watching the sun come up in the middle of December.

There aren’t actually that many sites in Yorkshire aside from the monoliths around the Scarborough area so it was a real surprise to find such a blinding circle in the West Riding. Cumbria has plenty as does Derbyshire. I think The Twelve Apostles is up there with Castlerigg in terms of location. You can see the Lake District, Menwith Hill, Leeds, Drax, Lancashire and The Pennines from Ilkley Moor which makes it well worth the trip on a fresh clear day.

The best thing about The Modern Antiquarian is that it has taken me to places I would never have visited otherwise. It’s not a conventional guide book so you often end up wandering around bits of scrubland looking puzzled at lumps of old mud in the landscape. When you actually find the circle it’s a total buzz and well worth the epic journey.

I am still dreaming that one day I will make it to The Callanish Stones, but for the time being I’ll just have to stare longingly at Julian’s big fat blue book that has pride of place on my mantlepiece.