Radio With Pictures

Back in the days before MTV (and by MTV I mean the one that played music videos, not episodes of "Teen Mom"), I spent my formative teen years watching a show called Radio With Pictures. This show was no Top Of The Pops. RWP beamed into my living room every Sunday night and kept me glued to the tube with post punk, new wave, metal, avant garde,  homegrown Kiwi tunes and more. To see my heroes sing on screen and see their faces, fashion, their attitude all at once was inspiring.

I know this all sounds strange in our modern multi-channel youtube internet-enabled lives but back then if it wasn't Radio With Pictures it was just plain radio. Come to mention it, I can still recall when radio meant AM, no FM. Now those were dark days...

So, back to the present. We all now accept that the visual goes hand in hand with the audible. Some would argue that the visual contributes more. I watch quite a lot of of the music channel '63'. I love it. If it weren't for '63' for me and 'Living' channel for my wife we'd cancel our subscription. The point I'm trying to make is I see loads of music videos and as I age, I am attracted still, if not more, by the visual package that accompanies the music.

The best example I can think of recently is the song "A Long Time" by Mayer Hawthorne. It's a 70's funk filled dance track with the whole video simply filled with people dancing on "The New Dance Show", a low budget TV dance show based in Detroit in the late 80s. Check it out here, it makes me smile every time.

Summer Sounds

Can musical taste be a seasonal thing? For me it definitely is. As we ease into Summer (and by living in Dunedin I do mean ease...) I find myself reaching for the reggae...

Reggae surfaced on my musical radar relatively late compared to other sounds. My tender teenage years were more 'angry young men with guitars' or 'windswept and pensive looking moody types'. At that time reggae was what the Polynesian kids had blaring from their ghetto blasters up and down the main street of Otahuhu in South Auckland where my parents owned a bookshop.


I think it was Bob Marley's death and the endless repeats of his mass appeal reggae on the radio that started it all off. That, or the fact the record labels would release those tacky looking compilations as Xmas stocking stuffers every year. Either way, to a suede-headed boy in Otahuhu, it was a guilty pleasure to keep on the quiet.

Ska music helped ease reggae from the shadows. 2 Tone's stable of punk infused rocksteady ska reggae bands bridged that gap. They encouraged me to explore further... Third World, Desmond Dekker, Toots and The Maytels...

So, where does reggae sit with me and my Summer? In my humble opinion there is no finer reggae to spice up a hot day than homegrown Kiwi reggae. Katchafire and Trinity Roots play kiwi infused reggae without any hint of cringe factor. Excellent musicians playing great songs that I'm sure Bob would approve of. Try it, if you like reggae even a little bit, you'll love them both.

Has Obama got soul?

I have no idea if President Obama has listened to or even heard of Fat Freddy's Drop. Why would he? They are a 7 piece dub/reggae/soul group from Wellington, NZ.

Cooking dinner and sipping a Jim Beam it stuck me that should he decide to do so, listening to their song "Hope" as he sat in the Oval Office could quite possibly make the world a better place.

Time for a second drink and some more deep thinking...

A new generation 

And a brand new age 

I wanna fall like rain 

On burning pages 

Rise from the ashes 

Like a phoenix sun 

Learning to flow 

Searching for love 

You know that I can't get enough of 

Get enough of that hope

Siouxsie & The Banshees

Siouxsie Sioux, and her band The Banshees were on reasonably high rotate on my turntable back in the early 80s. As I've mentioned earlier my tastes have tended to be more male singer/guitar/bass/drums orientated.  Siouxsie spoke to my softer side. At least I still had the guitar/bass/drums part of the equation.

I found some of their studio albums  a tad patchy like they were straining to fill them up. Fortunately they had an awesome live album with "A Kiss In The Dreamhouse" recorded at the Royal Albert Hall. Big, bold and orchestral. Fab.

Like a lot of my music from the dark old days of the 80s I haven't revisited it too often. The main reason for this is that some of it hasn't lasted well, dating a bit over the years. I winced slightly listening to "Hong Kong Garden" and was a tad puzzled at what I really saw in "Peek-A-Boo". It was a bit arty for me. My ears relaxed and I smiled once "Melt" came on followed by "Happy House". Maybe it was the drummer Budgie's rolling drums I liked all along... give these two tracks a listen at least.

You are the melting men
You are the situation
There is no time to breathe
And yet one single breath
Leads to an insatiable desire
Of suicide...in sex

So many blazing orchids
Burning in your throat
Making you choke
Making you sigh
Sigh in tiny deaths

So Melt!
My lover, melt!
She said melt!
My lover, melt! 

The Jesus and Mary Chain

It's been a while since this crew slipped out of my speakers. More than a while actually, years, and I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because it's music for boys and I live in a house of ladies. To be honest though, in a house full of girls I am rediscovering this via headphones...

This blend of dark, fuzzbox filled feedback can be a bit challenging for most girls. But give it a listen. "Just Like Honey" is a beautiful track from their first album Psycho Candy and probably the song of theirs that drew me in initially. I'd never heard that much distortion mixed with such mellow voice before.

These guys can carry some of the blame for my hairstyle in the 80s, for sure.

I see that in the decades since I really took note of these lads they've slipped out a couple of albums I didn't know about. I'm going to have to look them up...

Billy Bragg, Woody Guthrie

OK, let's be honest here. If it weren't for Billy Bragg, I probably wouldn't have given Woody Guthrie the time of day. Depression era Dust Bowl American guitar folk music. Billy, with a bit of help from the Wilco lads took Woody's songs and breathed new life into them across 3 CDs with the Mermaid Avenue series.Thanks guys.

Billy Bragg's Dunedin show came and went. Pre show drinks at the Octagon with friends prior to trudging up the hill to the show saw us arrive at 8:08 for the 8pm show. Imagine our surprise to see the doors were closed and it had started! I seem to recall leaving the first show of his many years ago covered in sweat and beer. Man, how times have changed. We were allowed in between songs as the crowd applauded, phew!

I wasn't overly looking forward to the first half of the show made up of Woody Guthrie songs but Billy held all captive with song and story. The second half of the show was a whistle stop tour of his own songs and we loved them all. Lyrics were tweaked in some songs from Cold War themes to current struggles with a nod to Pussy Riot among others.

OK, that's enough Billy Bragg for a while for this blog, time to tack off in a new direction.. stand by folks.

One Direction

Try as hard as I might, my music is not the only sounds in the house. My youngest is a huge One Direction fan. The music, the clothes, the posters... they're everywhere.
The whole boy band phenomenon is not new of course, they've been making tweenies swoon for years. It started me thinking, could there possibly be anything in my music collection that could be considered a boy band?

I searched and searched and this was as close as I got... The Buzzcocks.

What do you reckon folks?

Close?