Tuesday 31 January 2012

Even As We Speak...

Ah, Even As We Speak.  Just thinking about them brings a smile to my face and a soft pleased sigh.  My favourite of the Sarah Records bands.  That last e.p. of theirs is such blissful POP perfection.  And Drown, WOW Drown.  Hard to imagine a better song, it evokes everything Pop should be.  I'd never seen this excellent video before:



Getting Faster is my other favourite (from that last e.p., Sarah 79).  Filled with such a great playful spirit, wonderfully fun and coyly-smiling romantic:



(All You Find Is) Air:



Blue Suburban Skies:



Love Is The Answer, my favourite from their Feral Pop Frenzy full-length (Sarah 614).  I remember being SO EXCITED when I finally found this album in 1999 after years of looking.




Mary now does Her Name In Lights, which is a great band name.

Monday 30 January 2012

Ride - Vapour Trail...

Over the weekend I came across a Ride bootleg called Meltdown and spent a lot of time thinking about just what an incredibly good record Nowhere is, words can't even describe how magnificent it is.  By no means my favourite song on the album, Vapour Trail is still one helluva Pop song.




The great Divine Comedy cover version:




And looking this up, I just found out Paula Kelley (from the Drop Nineteens) did a really good version too:

Sunday 29 January 2012

Pet Shop Boys - Nightlife...

Hearing that the Pet Shop Boys are releasing a new b-sides compilation, Format, I'm reminded how much I love the song Nightlife.  Such a great upbeat disco number.  I know this song from the Release bonus disc, which also contains the excellent Slow Version of Closer To Heaven.




While looking for this, I came across Night Song.  Didn't know they had done the music for David Almond's My Dad's A Birdman children's play and Night Song was a fanclub download in December 2010.

Saturday 28 January 2012

Kiss - Tomorrow...

When I was 11 and 12, I was a HUGE Kiss fan, obsessed with them.  It was a transition from Van Halen to Punk Rock.  I sought out The Elder (which in 1988 was almost impossible to find), got the comic book, every album, etc.  Unmasked I've always felt was highly underrated, and it's been my favourite record of theirs for as long as I can remember. Some really good pop on there.  Tomorrow is my favourite song of theirs and has been for decades now.  I just think it's a great Pop song.


Friday 27 January 2012

Amelia Fletcher - Can You Keep A Secret?...

Last night I was shocked to find that Amelia Fletcher had released a solo single in 1991 on Fierce Recordings.  I had no idea this even existed!  I was also quite surprised by the electro-ness of it and re-recorded Wrap My Arms Around Him on the b-side.



Fondly reminiscing about falling in love with Heavenly after I first heard I Fell In Love Last Night on the Sarah Records Glass Arcade compilation.  I bought that right after I discovered Sarah via the Another Sunny Day What's Happened 7" (Sarah 16) on my last Connecticut record shopping trip in the summer of 1994, a few days before I moved to Boston, and found so many great bands on the comp., beginning many years of tracking everything down.




Another favourite of mine back then was Itchy Chin:




And of course Talulah Gosh:




When I was writing my Girl Talk EP (5 songs with girls' names in the titles), I pulled out The Hit Parade's More Pop Songs and saw the song title "Christmas Tears (Starring Amelia)" and thought that would make such a great song title itself.  Nothing to do with Ms. Fletcher but you can download my Starring Amelia for free here.



And a clip from the excellent I Am The Programmer podcast featuring Amelia Fletcher talking about C86:

Thursday 26 January 2012

Sexus - The Official End Of It All...

After hearing Nature's Hated again, I started investigating Romo more.  Again, it didn't make it to America  (though at the time Lifestyle were doing something very similar in spirit,  even called "neo-New Romantic" in the Trouser Press review for At The Risk Of Sounding Pretentious), but I'd known the term ever since I started going to Stay Beautiful in 2005.  Sexus particularly impressed me, enough to even buy their singles from iTunes and download what they've got on offer for free (Sexus aren't on it but you can download the Fiddling While Romo Burns Melody Maker tape here)

The Official End Of It All, their second single, is just great.  Evoking Grand Pop Dreams on your dreariest lonely afternoons:




You can see a short clip of the proper video for this song here, along with part of the video for their first single, Edenites.  Their third single, the lovely How Do You Kiss?, was actually never released but featured two remixes by Xenomania, as discussed on the Xenomania blog here:



Wednesday 25 January 2012

Orlando...

I missed out on Orlando when they were around.  Nothing of theirs ever made it to America, as far as I know.  Though I distinctly recall a short piece on them at the beginning of an issue of Select (circa 96/97), with them talking about cigarettes.  Of course, being an avid Sarah Records collector I did have the Shelley single.  And buying whatever came out on Matt's next label, Shinkansen, I was introduced to Dickon's Fosca in 2000.  Their debut album, On Earth To Make The Numbers Up, was in constant rotation in my car the following winter.  But it wasn't until 2005 that Kate (Dornan, member of Fosca and about-to-be singer in H Bird) sent me the Orlando singles and ep's when I was briefly back in the States.  Great, classic Pop, in the grand tradition of Pet Shop Boys.  My friend Alex posted their TV performance of Nature's Hated the other day and I've been listening a lot again since:



And then there's Just For A Second, which is just GLORIOUS.  It combines joy and despair in the way all the best Pop songs do -  "Deep down I fear I might actually be Unremarkable".  Even the title captures the transient beauty that Pop revels in, is indeed probably its lifesource.   Magnificent and Timeless:



An interview with them talking about what they want from Pop, and how bands need better lyrics (this, sadly, always seems to be true):



And one of my favourites was always Someday Soon.

Tuesday 24 January 2012

Mikael Tariverdiev (Микаэл Таривердиев) - Boys And Sea..

This piece of music is just so utterly lovely.  I've been listening to it quite a bit lately.  Had to upload it to YouTube to share it with people.  Have been so into the work of Mikael Tariverdiev since I first heard him in October.  And this was the first thing I heard by him, Stephen Coates played it on Marcella Puppini's radio show (last song, you can listen/download here).  A little description of the song by Mr. Coates here.

Boys And Sea (Мальчики и море), the first track on the Goodbye, Boys (До свидания, мальчики) soundtrack.  

Monday 23 January 2012

Moondog/Gorilla Biscuits - Distance...

Was thinking about what a big Gorilla Biscuits fan I was as a teenager and remembered this excellent song about growing apart and not wanting to.  I originally had Distance on a cassette copy of the Moondog demo and I had seen Gorilla Biscuits playing it on the Live In New York VHS.  Moondog were the link between Gorilla Biscuits and Quicksand, as Walter Schreifels explains here.

Gorilla Biscuits performing it live:




Walter playing it acoustic:

Sunday 22 January 2012

Subhumans - Waste Of Breath/Where's The Freedom?...

Was reminded of the Subhumans the other day and how much I loved them when I was 20. From The Cradle To The Grave is a great record and these two songs are anthems.  (I really like the other records as well but FTCTTG is my favourite. They could be very catchy and had good lyrics.)  On the album Waste Of Breath runs straight into Where's The Freedom, giving an even more insistent, exciting feeling:





They're playing in Brighton on February 24th and I think I might head down.

Saturday 21 January 2012

Birdie - Laugh...

Saw a rare Birdie performance today at The Union Chapel.  It was really, really lovely.  Their songs (and they seem to do so much with largely two chords) are huge, triumphal swells of pop, never too rushed, almost unexpectedly you find yourself floating amongst gorgeous clouds with an incredible view all around.  I've always thought Debsey's voice was wonderful.  And I've loved Laugh since it came out in 1999 on Some Dusty:

Friday 20 January 2012

Thursday 19 January 2012

Replacements Cover Gurls...

Still on a big Replacements kick.  Love their covers of September Gurls (Big Star) and Another Girl, Another Planet (The Only Ones), both of which seem perfectly suited for them.






Some others that may be of interest.  20th Century Boy outtake from Let It Be:



Rebel Rebel live at Maxwell's, Hoboken, NJ, May 24, 1989:



California Sun live at The Ritz, NYC 1987:



Round And Round live in Connecticut August 31, 1989:



Downtown live at The Beacon Theater 1987:



The Look Of Love (the Lesley Gore song)



Detroit Rock City live:

Wednesday 18 January 2012

Replacements - Tim...

Yesterday Eddie Argos linked to Red Red Wine On A Sunday's post about The Replacements' gloriously fun appearance on Saturday Night Live in 1986 and I've been listening to them non-stop since, reminded of what a genius songwriter Paul Westerberg is.  And what an incredible album Tim is.  One of my favourite all-time records, worth it just for side 2 alone.  Such great pop songs as shown with Bastards Of Young and Kiss Me On The Bus on SNL.  It also contains Left Of The Dial, which I've always felt is just such an Important Song, especially to anyone who's ever made music:



This is from the Shit Shower & Shave live compilation, as unfortunately YouTube doesn't have the album version.

Following that on the record is the just-as-great Little Mascara:



Closing with the heart-wrenching Here Comes A Regular:



Can't Hardly Wait was also recorded for Tim, with Bob Stinson on guitar (and some great guitarwork too!) and different lyrics.  Phenomenal song and performance, throughout you just feel that it really matters.  That little change-up of the riff at 1:30 & 2:20 always gets me.



A re-recorded, more radio-friendly version later showed up on Pleased To Meet Me Doesn't come close to matching the intensity of the Tim-recording, but still quite a great pop song:

Tuesday 17 January 2012

Françoise Hardy - Tous Les Garçons Et Les Filles...

Happy Birthday Françoise Hardy!  The first song of hers I ever heard and the first one I fell in love with:



The English version, Find Me A Boy:




Saint Etienne's cover of it:




And then of course there's this beauty, which I've already posted about:

Monday 16 January 2012

Footsteps...

A little piece I wrote on Hong Kong In The 60s.  Great band, check them out.  "A warm blanket of blips and sparkles to soundtrack your elegantly surreal evenings."

Their lovely pop song, Footsteps:



The other day Footsteps by Pet Shop Boys was stuck in my head:




A really nice live version from 1999:

Sunday 15 January 2012

2 'Weekend' Songs...

Wild Weekend by The Rockin' Rebels has been stuck in my head all day.  It was played at the Saint Etienne Xmas Party this year and reminded me that when I was first learning to play the saxophone at age 10, my dad would play the guitar and my sister Jaime the piano and we'd play this song:




Another great 'weekend' instrumental is Having An Average Weekend by Shadowy Men On A Shadowy Planet, perhaps better known as The Kids In The Hall theme:

Saturday 14 January 2012

Pavement - Unfair...

I've always said that Van Halen's Unchained is the best ROCK song ever written.  Followed closely by their Panama and Everybody Wants Some!  Coming in 4th though, is Pavement's Unfair.  It freaking ROCKS.




Live in Frankfurt, March 6, 1994:



Live in Cologne, June 26th, 1995:



Live at Planeta Terra Festival, Sao Paulo, Brazil, November 20th, 2010:



Live at Brixton Academy, London, May 12, 2010.  I was at this gig, it was Awesome, especially when they played this:

Friday 13 January 2012

Shampoo...

Andrew Ward is talking about Shampoo on Facebook, reminding me what an EXCELLENT ANTHEM Delicious is.  Every part of this song is great, filled with such fantastic youthful energy and fun, something that's greatly missing from pop music today.  Delicious indeed.



In 2000 I remember sending away for the internet-only release Absolute Shampoo.  At the time I knew nothing about them, hadn't heard any of their hits, I only knew that Bob Stanley & Pete Wiggs of Saint Etienne had written 8 of the songs and that it was produced by Ian Catt.  I've always loved Inspector Gadget, written by Carrie Askew & Ian Catt.  Such delightful pop:

Inspector Gadget by Shampoo on Grooveshark

Thursday 12 January 2012

Herbie Hancock - Bubbles...

A lovely piece of music from Herbie Hancock's Man-Child album.  Funkadelic's DeWayne "Blackbyrd" McKnight plays guitar on the record.  I've loved this since I first heard it when I was 15. (Am down with a very bad flu but still trying to post everyday).

Wednesday 11 January 2012

Gol Gappas - West 14...

I fell in love with this song the first time I heard it.  Such a lovely tune.  "I'm in love every day of the week with you".  In keeping with the mystique of él Records, almost nothing is known about Gol Gappas, though Mike Alway once told me that they were "friends of his from late seventies Richmond scene".  And they do seem to be a band rather than a project put together by Mr. Alway according to his fancy (which brought us so much of the wonderful él world).  Gol Gappas recorded one 7" and one 12" EP, six songs total. And that's it.



St. Lucy is also excellent:



I should get around to writing more posts on the magic of él, but for now here's a nice piece by John Carney from the old Tangents site.  

Tuesday 10 January 2012

Van Halen - Tattoo...

Van Halen released their new single, Tattoo, today.  I've been waiting 27 years for a new album with David Lee Roth, so excited about February 7th.  I'm very ill today but I have so much to say about all this.

The Rolling Stones - Connection...

I've always loved Connection and it's been stuck in my head all day.  "Said to be about the long hours the band spent in airports".

Monday 9 January 2012

The Kangaroo Hop...

I've been ill all weekend, ended up watching The Adventure Of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother and found this delightful tune, The Kangaroo Hop.  In the words of Miranda (which I've also been watching this weekend), "Such Fun!":

Sunday 8 January 2012

Shirley Bassey - Somehow...

Happy Birthday to Dame Shirley Bassey today too!!  My friend Douglas just posted this video of her performing Somehow at the Royal Albert Hall in 1973.  A great song and the vocal performance is simply stunning!  Also found on her 1973 Never Never Never album.



I've always loved her Bond themes, simply gorgeous.

Moonraker:



Moonraker disco version:



Diamonds Are Forever/Goldfinger at the 2002 BAFTA James Bond tribute show.  She's still got it:

Elvis - Burning Love...

As it's also Elvis' birthday today, I'd like to post Burning Love.  Truly one of the best songs ever.  It's got that magic that takes you to such a special, wonderful place.



The original by Dennis Linde (who wrote it) from his self-titled 1973 album:

Happy Birthday David Bowie!...

Happy 65th Birthday David Bowie!  One of the greatest ever artists and songwriters, your work is invaluable.  Tempted to post my favourite 65 Bowie songs but don't have the time so we'll go with my 6 favourites (off the top of my head) and then 5 more.

My absolute favourite, Time is astounding beautiful:

From his "1980 Floor Show" (filmed in 1973):



Live at Hammersmith Odeon, July 3, 1973:



Station To Station is also wonderful, its epic breadth and breath.  One of my favourite moments in all of music is the part that begins at 5:20, from "Once there were mountains..." to "...connect me with love".  I just love the way he delivers the last line of each phrase.



Live 1976:



Lady Stardust:



Alternate Lady Stardust:



Lady Stardust demo:




A New Career In A New Town:



Life On Mars?:



Magic Dance:




Now 5 more...

Something In The Air came on my ipod the other day and I thought it was beautiful.  I really like his later records.  Live on Jools Holland:



The lovely Strangers When We Meet:



Speed Of Life:



Speed Of Life live in Dallas, 1978:




Diamond Dogs.  This has been played at Glamracket! lately, reminding me what a great rock n' roll song it is.




The wonderful Always Crashing In The Same Car:




And two songs that have come to my attention while I was writing this:

Bowie covering Simon & Garfunkel's America at the Concert For New York City:




Bowie covering John Lennon's Imagine:

Saturday 7 January 2012

Captain Beefheart - One Red Rose That I Mean...

One of the most beautiful pieces of music that I know of.  One Red Rose That I Mean from Captain Beefheart's Lick My Decals Off, Baby, my favourite Beefheart record.  Zoot Horn Rollo (Bill Harkleroad)'s  playing is gorgeous and I've still never really heard anything like this - his phrasing and sense of melody (though I gather Beefheart wrote it on the piano and Harkleroad as his musical director made it into a piece).  But most of all the way he's attacking, yanking, the strings, I find such a beautiful sound.  There's a transcription here, along with other Beefheart songs, if anyone's interested.  It's been 20 years and I still haven't read Harkleroad's Lunar Notes, though I keep meaning to.




Live in 1972:




A cool, strange TV advert for the record that was banned from being played.  A nice article about that which shows the record company being supportive, which is nice and certainly a rarity.



A rather funny story about the first time I ever heard Beefheart, which was indeed Decals.  It was winter break 1991 and I was 15.  My first band, Funkalicious (yep), decided to go on a band outing.  We were rehearsing everyday at our bass player Ed's house as his parents were away.  Ed was the only one of us who could drive and I'm afraid we used to abuse this.  Though that day was really nice, we went up to the cool record stores in New Haven, CT (Cutler's, Rhyme's) and there were some bands I was anxious to check out, most notably Fugazi and Captain Beefheart.  Being very excited at finding Repeater and Decals, we then entertained ourselves by making up band names and their albums and asking the clerk to look for them.  Which they good-naturedly did.  The only one I remember is Buttery Cake Ass' Live In Hungaria.  Oh how I wish that record existed.

The tapes we picked up did not disappoint on our drive home (only 20 minutes, but oh how long it seemed then, with the first teenage rushes of freedom, being out on your own with your friends).  Our own songs were rather strange and humourous at the time and we found ourselves blown away by Captain Beefheart.  Ed had to be back by 8 as he was going on a date.  But Rick (vocals), Bri (drums) and I (guitar) did not want the day to end.  Somehow we convinced Ed to go along with a plan, that while it still meant we had to part ways, we would do so with maximum entertainment value.  When Ed went to pick up his date, he agreed to tell her that the reason the backseat was covered in blankets was that he had just had it reupholstered.  We kept a window cracked open to hear him give this excuse.  Whether or not she believed this is another story, as I'm sure she could clearly see the outline of three heads underneath the blankets, probably shaking fiercely in order to contain their enormous mirth.  As she got in the car, Bri pressed play on the boom box we had with us.  And the car was flooded with the sounds of Beefheart's The Clouds Are Full Of Wine (Not Whiskey Or Rye).  We EXPLODED with laughter.  Bless Ed for going along with that.  I'm still laughing now.

Friday 6 January 2012

Spearmint...

On New Year's Day at The Hangover Lounge, I was talking to John Jervis about Spearmint, what a great band they were and what a great songwriter Shirley Lee is.  I fondly remember back in the late 90s, The Pill club in Boston, MA used to play We're Going Out. Such a great anthem, it never fails to lift one's spirits.  So in love with that song was I, I ended up paying $37 for the A Week Away cd (with bonus A Trip Into Space ep), the most I think I've ever spent on a new cd.  Worth it though.  Had never seen the video for it before.  Great stuff.  Dickon Edwards (Orlando, Fosca) was in the band for a while, here seen playing a delivery man.




And then there's Sweeping The Nation, a beautiful pop song, complete with a sample of Dobie Grey's Out On The Floor, all about those bands that never made it but were no less great for it, and the importance of sticking to what you believe in.  Spotify link here.  That bit at 1:51 - "I, I've been wasting my life..." - with the descending chords is one of my favourite sections in all of pop music.  Lovely.  And here it is live at the Strange Fruit Festival 2003, which I'm glad to say I was at and it was excellent.

Thursday 5 January 2012

The Foundations - Take A Girl Like You...

Although more famous for Build Me Up Buttercup, The Foundations' Take A Girl Like You is another 60s Pop classic.  I came across it two years ago as the theme tune for the Jonathan Miller film of the same name, starring Hayley Mills and Oliver Reed, based on the Kingsley Amis novel.  I was on a big Kingsley Amis kick back in 2001, collecting and reading almost everything by him (even learning that one might get a deal on ebay if you searched for variations of his name misspelled, Kinglsey etc.).  I remember liking this boy-trying-to-get-girl story, not as great as such classics as Lucky Jim or The Old Devils (my personal favourite.  I've always said that the mark of a good book is that you really miss the characters after you're done reading it, and I still do, 9 years later) but still worth a read and the film worth a watch.



Title sequence from film, but not the greatest audio quality:

Wednesday 4 January 2012

Love & Rockets - Mirror People...

Love & Rockets' Earth Sun Moon is an excellent record.  One of those rarities you can enjoy all the way through.  It opens with (and on the cd re-issue closes with a slowed-down version of ) Mirror People.  Which, quite simply, KICKS ASS.

Album version:




1988 "souped-up" re-recording:



Live at The Town & Country Club, Kentish Town, London, October 1987:




I recently did an interview with David J, which I thought was very interesting.  He's been involved in theatre quite a bit lately.  You can read it here.

Tuesday 3 January 2012

Martin Newell - This Little Ziggy...

I finished Martin Newell's This Little Ziggy last night and I must say it is one of the best autobiographies I've ever read.  Full of unabashed love of the music he grew up with - the pop of the 60's with great new songs in the charts every week, the harder rock of the early 70's with Stray, The Pink Fairies, etc. - as well as a lovely account of what it's like to be young and in your first real band, The Plod.  Also refreshingly free from any bitterness about not having "made it" despite having worked very hard and tried your best. That the important thing was having fun and playing music.  His remarks on the music industry all ring true but he doesn't let them get in the way of recounting a great story of growing up, it's trials and tribulations, the downright unfairness of it all sometimes, but also the excitement and, quite often bawdy, fun to be had and knowing that if you stick to what you believe in, you just might enjoy yourself and do something of worth.  I really loved this book and recommend it to anyone.  As well as the man's music.  I've been listening to the early Cleaners From Venus records a lot again (the first three will be reissued by Captured Tracks in March) and I'm still very impressed not only by his prolific output, but the quality of the songs as well, some POP classics here.  Two that have been stuck in my head, from the third Cleaners tape, Midnight Cleaners:

Corridor Of Dreams:




Wivenhoe Bells II:



And Martin reading an excerpt from This Little Ziggy:




Buy the book from the Wivenhoe Book Shop who published it and support local and independent book shops!

Monday 2 January 2012

Darren Hayman - I Taught You How To Dance...

My third favourite song of 2011 (after Mikey Georgeson's Moth In The Flame Of Carnality and The Real Tuesday Weld's You're Gonna Live), I Taught You How To Dance is just lovely, a beautiful pop song.




I interviewed Darren Hayman recently and found he had a lot of interesting things to say about music.  You can read it here.  Here's his comments on this song:


I Taught You How To Dance is one of my favourite songs of the year, anything to say about that one?
DH:  Ok, thank you.  I like that it’s a bit like a standard.  Sometimes when you’re in a situation like…you’re at someone’s wedding, and this doesn’t happen really, but you sometimes feel like if somebody went ‘Oh, Darren’ll do a song, Darren knows a song’ and then you’re seeing like old people and young people and children and I’ve just often felt I’ve got nothing for that situation. Like just a stand-by, just like a love song which doesn’t talk about prostitutes or money or any horrible things.  So that was the idea behind it, to write like a cruise ship song, and it sounds like a cruise ship song to me, it sounds like you’d have the mirror ball going around whilst it was playing.  There’s nothing particularly special about it. I quite like the title, it started from the title and I quite liked a love song having an arrogant title.  I liked the idea of the song coming from a point of arrogance, cause it would be naturally more romantic to say ‘You Taught Me How To Dance’, would be the more emphatic way to structure the song, so I quite like that as a writing challenge.

And I just found this "Unplugged In Monti" version from indieforbunnies.com .  "a very special acoustic version of his song "I Taught You How To Dance" in a little courtyard of Via Del Boschetto, in the heart of Rione Monti "

Sunday 1 January 2012

David Devant & His Spirit Wife...

Happy New Year Everybody!  This year I'm going to endeavor to keep up this blog more, as I've been letting it slip lately.  And it occurs to me that I've never actually done a post about David Devant & His Spirit Wife!  I've always meant to, they're my favourite band, and I think Mikey Georgeson is one of our best, perhaps the best, songwriters.  I guess I've always thought it would take forever with all I've got to say about them.  Having flown back from the States yesterday in order to see them perform at The 100 Club, for my first New Year's Eve in London, today, despite being jetlagged and exhausted, I'm going to set that right and do the post now, start the New Year properly.

I've written quite a bit about them this year.  And about a month ago the idea came to me that I should write a book about Devant and The Elevator Drops.  Two bands, one from each side of the Atlantic, that I always felt should've been huge, and always saw similarities between, both being great theatrical pop.  If anyone has anything to say about either for the book, please get in touch.

Living in America, I missed out on Devant in the 90's.  Some great articles from that time here, here and here.  But I didn't hear them until 2006.  And was so excitedly blown away when I did! Having caught Mr Solo  at The Windmill, I immediately bought his All Will Be Revealed and started to investigate further.  Pimlico was the first thing I heard and fell in love with it by the end of the first verse.



With this on repeat, it was actually a few weeks before I got to anything else.  And then it was Radar.  That riff is just Awesome, insistent.  And, as with Pimlico, the lyrics were extraordinary, evoking wonderful playful universes, really something very special.  And the songs were so catchy!






The songs to me, like all the best songs, seemed instantly familiar but would slip through one's memory when you tried to place them, for they are in fact all their own.  Last night at the gig, I was thrilled that they played the old B-side One Hand, which I'd never heard live before.  Such a great song, it reminds me of the 60's 45s that my mom used to play when I was growing up, but for the life of me it doesn't exactly sound like any of them.



And the A-side of that single is Cookie.  What an excellent tune.



There's so many songs I could name.  The first two records, Work Lovelife Miscellaneous and Shiney On The Inside, I consider perfect albums (every song being great) and two of the best albums of all-time.  The first time I ever got to see them live was the best show I've ever seen.  And every one since then has been Amazingly Great.  Sticking to the tunes they played last night (for now), next up is the classic Ginger:




And then Miscellaneous, the ending to the live version never failing to make one feel good, that everything, as they say, "will be alright".  In 2009, I saw Devant play at a church in Brighton.  The setting being perfect with the lush red carpet.  During the chant of "Work Lovelife Miscellaneous" as the final song, Vessel led us all down the centre aisle and out of the building, across the road and into the pub.  Where they proceeded to play four more songs acoustic with Vessel standing on the bar.  It was AWESOME.  They even did Life On A Crescent, one of my absolute favourite songs of all-time.

Miscellaneous live at The 100 Club, 2010:



Live at The Buffalo Bar, 2009:





This last performance is from the cult classic sitcom Asylum, starring Simon Pegg, Julian Barrett, and Jessica Stevenson, co-written by Edgar Wright and David Walliams, and which featured Devant as the "house band".  Ginger was the show's title music.

And then there's I'm Not Even Going To Try, perhaps the most FUN song ever recorded.  A song that brings Joy to an audience only too happy to chant "AUNTIE MABEL" and answer the brilliant lyrics with "HE'S NOT EVEN GOING TO TRY".



Ah, I'm very jetlagged and need to get to bed but hopefully this will provide a good introduction to a truly fantastic band.  More to come...