Wider Reading | Mixtape in the Hood

Though it is in a slightly different vein to the fine selection of mixtapes on offer at Silkworms, I feel that The Hood Internet certainly deserves an honourable mention for this superb 60 minute hip-hop mix:


The Hood Internet - The Mixtape Volume Five by hoodinternet

Songs Included:

1. Intro [R. Kelly x Drake x Ally Sheedy x Tim Blaney]
2. Bars In The AM [Ninjasonik x !!!]
3. L is For Love Junkie [Donwill x Harlems Cash x Peter Hadar x El Perro Del Mar x Caribou]
4. Hot Tub Freaks Like You [Slug x MURS x Tobacco]
5. Rude Baptism [Rihanna x Crystal Castles]
6. Ariel Pink's Haunted Grafitti - Round And Round (The Hood Internet remix)
7. Moar Doo Wop N Whatever [Lauryn Hill x Deadmau5]
8. Show Me Red Lights [Robin S. x Holy Fuck]
9. Psycho Break [Talking Heads x Ellen Allien & Apparat]
10. Show Me The O.N.E [Yeasayer x Jump Jump Dance Dance x Grum]
11. Back You [Cee-Lo Green x Sir Mix-a-Lot]
12. Freeze, Barbra! [Young Dro x Gucci Mane x Duck Sauce]
13. Blowin' Money At The Deli [Drake x Birdman x Delorean]
14. It's Front Row Love [Metric x Treasure Fingers]
15. Giving Up The Sunshowers [M.I.A. x Vampire Weekend]
16. Ignition (Keep It Remixing Louder) [R. Kelly x Major Lazer]
17. Chi Citizens [BBU x Broken Bells]
18. How Purple Can You Go [Ludacris x Joker & Ginz]
19. Swag Boost [Soulja Boy x Rusko]
20. Lorem Ipsum Dolor Sit Amet [Waka Flocka Flame x Flock Of Seagulls]
21. Cards And Quarters And Green Lights [Local Natives x John Legend x Andre 3000]
22. Oh My Kids [Usher x Sleigh Bells]
23. Virginia Is For Cameras [Clipse x Matt & Kim]
24. Dougie Vision [Cali Swag District x Toro Y Moi]
25. This Shit Was (All I Know) [Drake x Free Energy]
26. Brigade & Yellow [Wiz Khalifa x The Go! Team]
27. Shutterbugg In Miami [Big Boi x Foals]
28. Nuthin' But A Journal Thang [Dr. Dre x Snoop Dogg x Class Actress]
29. The XX Gon Give It To Ya [DMX x The XX]
30. Outro [John Barry x Faith No More x Larry David x Robin Bartlett


I also highly recommend this mashup of Arcade Fire and Blondie:

The Hood Internet - Sprawl Of Glass (Arcade Fire x Blondie) by hoodinternet

Snow | Mixtape | Mixtape XVIII, White Whindie Hymnals

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Music As Reading: Mixtape XVIII, White Whindie Hymnals

We went home to her place
and cooked up some chilli
Warmed us from the inside
'cause the outside was chilly

A simple proposition this week, as it’s Christmas Eve. The vast majority of guitar music can be split down the middle, based on whether it’s innately wintery or summery. This tape proves this fact via its simultaneous breadth and coherence – alongside some more subtle proofs that you’ll probably need the accompanying essay what I wrote to understand. They’re that subtle. This tape’s particular literary resonance? Well frankly, it’s not exactly glaring – mainly we just wanted to get these songs up on the site before Christmas Day. But there is something, which I’ll quote from the last paragraph of the aforementioned essay:

It makes me wonder whether it reflects badly on (guitar) music that it can be so tied to seasonal extremes, rather than the more sophisticated liminalities that so much literature and visual art seems to get its kicks out of.

Whatevs, they’re (almost) all wonderful songs for this time of year. Have a wonderful Christmas Eve everyone. Oh, and yes, the fact there are 24 tracks is deliberate, we’re going to rehash this list in December 2011 as a MUSICAL ADVENT CALENDAR. Won’t that be awesome?

1. For Emma – Bon Iver

2. White Winter Hymnal – Fleet Foxes

3. Sister Winter – Sufjan Stevens

4. The Cold Swedish Winter – Jens Lekman

5. Winter Dies – Midlake

6. Colorado – Grizzly Bear

7. White Tooth Man – Iron & Wine

8. She Came Home For Christmas – Mew

9. Hello To Nils – Peter Broderick

10. Mr Peterson – Perfume Genius

11. Silent City – Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Brian Harnetty

12. I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus – The Ronettes

13. While I Shovel The Snow – The Walkmen

14. The Christmas Song – The Raveonettes

15. Mid-winter Songs: No. 5. Intercession In Late October – Morten Lauridsen

16. Magnum Mysterium – Morten Lauridsen

17. Helplessly Hoping – Crosby, Stills & Nash

18. Soft As Snow (But Warm Inside) – My Bloody Valentine

19. Halfway Home – TV On The Radio

20. Cover Me (Slowly) – Deerhunter

21. We Three Kings Of Orient Are – The Beach Boys

22. Girls In Their Summer Clothes (Winter Mix) – Bruce Springsteen

23. Summer Babe (Winter Version) – Pavement

24. Wait For The Wintertime – Yeasayer

Bitch | Mixtape | Mixtape XVII, Lassie Jams, by BITCHES

Music As Reading: Mixtape XVII, Lassie Jams, by BITCHES

And to that day we expire and turn to vapours
Me and my capers – I’ll be somewhere stackin plenty papers
Keepin it real, packin steel, gettin high
Cause life’s a bitch and then you die

It being ‘bitch’ week at Silkworms, we decided to ask clattery drum, bass and screaming band BITCHES for a mixtape. Bassist slash screamer Blake’s response was to explore and interrogate his meandering literary relationship with curse words – a relationship responsible for his band’s rude name, amongst other things – via a combination of commercial hip-hop and turn of the millennium chart hits. Another YouTube mixtape this week – apparently you have to be 18 or over to watch the Christina video, hilariously. I hope that doesn’t rule too many of you out. Oh, and open your exercise books here for more BITCHES songs and words and pictures and songs and so on.

At my primary school, each of us kids would have to take some time out from our busy schedules and ‘read to teach’, an uncomfortably intimate moment with my gold chain wearing, over-perfumed educator, Mr Lewis. I was steaming through the books at the time, taking on some weighty tomes. One of these fierce works of art was The Firm, by John Grisham, a book sodden with swears and dirty-talk. Mr Lewis summoned me over, and I prayed for a couple of pages of lawyer intrigue, with no rude words. I scanned ahead. Midway down the first page the word ‘Bitch’ danced around, sending a sick feeling into my eleven year old stomach. I couldn’t read it out. This was a church school! A school of Jesus etc.! I got on with the task in hand. I’ll deal with the curse when I get there. I got to the curse. I looked at Mr Lewis. ‘I’d rather not read the rude words. I’m a Christian...’ He nodded, he looked a bit odd and then Mr Lewis applauded my maturity. I had triumphed over bad talk. Mr Lewis even gave a little talk to the class later on, saying that we didn’t need to repeat swear words if they were against our religion or whatever. It was a lie though. Back home, much to my mother’s displeasure (she hates swearing, especially ‘bitch’), I danced my way around the house singing all the swear words I could, especially ‘fuck’ and ‘bitch’ and ‘willy’. I loved them then and still do, and am not a Christian, which is why I called my band BITCHES, a hark back to the Grisham days – and also the result of an attempt to pick a band name that isn’t a cool, one-word name packed with posi vibes, but one that was gross and rude and would annoy my mum. One of the problems that comes with the swear word bandname is that the ‘bitch’ word often gets a lot of attention when interviewers ask us questions. They don’t look impressed when I grunt and say ‘I picked it because it was rude and cool,’ rather than give them some kind of irono-feminist-no penis-the girl in the band came up with it excuse, and so trying to come up with a bunch of songs about the word ‘bitch’ has taught me a lot about the different ways people use this swear. Here are these songs, along with seductive explanations for each, that are crammed with painstakingly researched info and light humour.

Kanye West: Runaway

I SENT PICTURES OF MY DICK TO A GIRL AND I WROTE A SONG CRYING ABOUT IT!!!!!!!!!! SO WHAT THAT MAKES ME A LITTLE BITCH!!!!!!!

Baha Men: Who Let The Dogs Out?

Don’t freak out! The Baha Men are smart guys. This song is about how MEN are dogs, slobbering all over the beautiful girls of Jamaica. They flipped the ‘bitch’ insult on its head for the pre-school market.

Dr Dre: Bitches Ain’t Shit

The Baha Men were forced into action because of records like this. A gang of loveless rap lads convened to fill the air with nothing but bad vibes towards girls. I think all the guys are married now, so they’re probably not allowed to casual rap this round the house/in the shower.

Foreigner: Cold as Ice

When Paul Daniels falls out with Debbie, he finds a record to blast out. He clutches The Chronic, but he knows he can’t get away with it, not in this house, so he plops this on the turntable. TAKE THAT MCGEE, you old bitch.

Notorious BIG: Me and My Bitch

Here, ‘bitch’ refers to ‘girl that I love loads and loads, so much that I would give her father a blow-job.’

Frankee: FU Right Back

Frankee here being a big old bitch about her ex-boyfriend. To be fair to her, the ex-boyfriend, Eamon, released a song where he calls her a ho and stuff, so he definitely deserved it.

BITCHES: Winner

This is the band I was talking about earlier, the band that I’m in. We have a swear word name. The song itself is about fertiliser and the act of going out to ‘pull birds.’ Some men that ‘pull birds’ call women ‘bitches’, because they hear it in rap songs and read Jackie Collins books. Horrible.

Pet Shop Boys: Suburbia

Of course, a bitch is also a lady dog, so I thought really hard about my favourite dog song. It’s not really about, you know, woof woof dogs living it up and how they face the day, but still my favourite song that sings about dogs, even in a ‘suburbs are horrible’ way, that isn’t the littlest hobo theme.

Die Antwoord: Rich Bitch

A celebration of being a wealthy lady, I think. Just a bloody mean rich person that loves Nutella sandwiches.

Christina Aguilera: Can’t Hold Us Down

This is girl power, like the Baha Men, saying all stuff like ‘call me a bitch cause I saw what’s on my mind.’ Really makes me want to turn woman and take it to the limit, explode all the men.

Nas: Life’s a Bitch

It’s not just rudeness though, and horrible men slinging out insults. Nas reminds us about the bigger picture. Thanks Nas.

FINKPOINT | MIXTAPE | Mixtape XVI, iLiKELiTERATURE (iNLEEDS), by I LIKE TRAINS

Music As Reading: Mixtape XVI, iLiKELiTERATURE (iNLEEDS), by I LIKE TRAINS (FINKPOINT)

A Mixcloud (back with Spotify next weekz, kidz) collaboration between Silkworms Ink and Drowned in Sound – as orchestrated by Finkpoint. For I come bearing internet contacts the popinjays who usually run this calls-itself-a-website could only dream of, y’all. 

This mixtape represents the coming together of Silkworms Ink’s Music As Reading project, The Best Music Website In The UK Drowned in Sound’s current Blackberry-plugging mixtape competition, and (Dave from) I LIKE TRAINS, a band what do much more interesting things with literary tropes than most – having previously turned songs into vessels for condensed accounts of depressingly English (Englishly depressing?) moments of historical failure, and having now decided to turn their musical attention to issues and depictions of climate change, both ancient and new. In the end, Dave decided to make his tape a Leeds affair, cos he’s all into Leeds an’ stuff, and here’s the result. (In case you’re wondering why the mixtape title’s like that, it’s cos that’s how I LIKE TRAINS used to write their bandname, silly boys. In case you’re wondering why the mixtape is, in essence, a week late, LET ME TELL YOU, GETTING SOMETHING THIS HIGH-PROFILE TOGETHER IN A WEEK IS PRETTY GODDAM IMPRESSIVE. YOU SHOULD HAVE SEEN WHAT SILKWORMS HAD PLANNED FOR THE WEEKEND I DECIDED TO SHOW UP. SIX WORDS: PAM AYRES. OCEAN COLOUR SCENE. COLLABORATION.)

Ilikeliterature (Inleeds) by Tupelo on Mixcloud

If that tracklisting’s turned your pretty, pretty head, you can read mine and Dave’s DiS INTRODUCTIONS TO THE MIXTAPE HERE, along with the highlights of the miniature literature-focussed interviews Dave conducted with each of the contributing bands, and a RECOMMENDED READING LIST I threw together out of their answers HERE. (In case you’re wondering why both pieces appear under the name Sam Kinchin-Smith, I nicked his DiS identity because he’s the handsomest of all the Silkworms editors. By a country mile.)


Here, though, for the dedicated followers of Silkworms Ink, are those interviews in full. Because you’re worth it. THIS HAS BEEN A FINKPOINT PRODUCTION, MTHRFCKRS.

Napoleon IIIrd (James Mabbett)


iLT: Have you read any good books lately?

I finally got round to finishing Hell’s Angeles by Hunter S. Thompson, I’ve been trying to read it for ages but just kept forgetting about it. I have always loved the way the he wrote.


iLT: I find that I’m mostly moved to write a song after reading a good book. Is that something you can relate to?  If not, can you put your finger on what it is that does inspire you to create?
I don’t really find that it is one particular thing that inspires me to write a song, it could be anything that sparks an idea off – be that a book, an overheard conversation or a wet journey home on a train.


iLT: If your band were a book, which would it be?
How To Lose Friends and Alienate People by Irving D. Tressler.


s k e t c h e s (Matt)


iLT: Have you read any good books lately?
I just (just!) finished George Orwell’s Books vs Cigarettes. It’s a collection of essays on the impact of literature with regards to art, politics and society. Well worth a read if analytical literature is your thing – as is his essay ‘Why I Write’ which is an insight into just that.


iLT: I find that I’m mostly moved to write a song after reading a good book. Is that something you can relate to? If not, can you put your finger on what it is that does inspire you to create?
I find that it’s usually the process of reading that inspires me to write, rather than the books themselves. I’m fascinated by the sound of certain words and that is usually a starting-point. I enjoy distorting regular syllabic inflections, putting emphasis on a syllable that wouldn’t normally be emphasised.


iLT: If your band were a book, which would it be?
I would like to say a hugely successful novel by a wonderful author, Jules Verne or somebody, but in reality we would probably be The Average American Male by Chad Kultgen. If you haven’t read that you should definitely give it a whirl.


iLT: Finally, to bring this full circle, literature inspired by music: can you recommend any good books inspired by music?
My initial thoughts are the poetry of Leonard Cohen and Murakami. Murakami’s writing is heavily influenced by The Beatles (and pop culture in general). Norwegian Wood (as the title shows) is a prime example of this. Very easy reading but still thought-provoking.


The Wedding Present (Dave Gedge)


iLT: Have you read any good books lately?
I’ve not read an actual book for years, I’m kind of ashamed to say! I never seem to find the time these days. Do graphic novels count? The best one of those that I’ve read recently is Marvels – written by Kurt Busiek and painted by Alex Ross, Marvel Comics published it in the 1990s. It’s a delightfully illustrated and innovative re-telling of the classic Marvel tales done in a contemporary way.


iLT: I find that I’m mostly moved to write a song after reading a good book. Is that something you can relate to?  If not, can you put your finger on what it is that does inspire you to create?
I do refer to popular culture quite frequently, but most of my references tend to be filmic or inspired by television. But the main source for my lyrical ideas tends to be hearing people speaking to each other. I’m kind of obsessed by what people say, why they say it, how they say it…


iLT: If your band were a book, which would it be?
Breakfast At Tiffany’s by Truman Capote, because it’s romantic, sexy and messy. And like Holly Golightly, I think you never know what you have until you’ve thrown it away.


iLT: Finally, to bring this full circle, literature inspired by music: can you recommend any good books inspired by music?
Being a long-time fan of the work of Mark E. Smith I enjoyed The Fall – the biography by Mick Middles. It’s probably a bit too fawning in parts, but I think the fact the author is obviously an old acquaintance of Mark’s does mean he manages to get close to his subject – which is probably not an easy task! I loved the story about how Mark got a round of drinks in for all his band members… except one. That was his unique way of telling that particular band member that he was sacked!


I Concur (Tim Hann)


iLT: Have you read any good books lately?
I’m currently reading Berlin by Antony Beevor which seemed logical as I recently finished reading Stalingrad by the same author.  I also read a novel by Willy Vlautin called Lean on Pete which I really enjoyed.


iLT: I find that I’m mostly moved to write a song after reading a good book. Is that something you can relate to?  If not, can you put your finger on what it is that does inspire you to create?
Radio 4 tends to be my main source of inspiration. Ideas usually come from programmes that report on stories you don’t usually read about in the press.  ‘From Our Own Correspondent’ is probably the best programme for this.


iLT: If your band were a book, which would it be?
We’re more likely to be a hurriedly put-together manual for a dishwasher or blender.


iLT: Finally, to bring this full circle, literature inspired by music: can you recommend any good books inspired by music?
Willy Vlautin’s novels are rather like extensions of the songs he writes for Richmond Fontaine. Obviously you can write much more to describe characters and situations in novels, so reading his books is like reading lyrics to a very long song of his! Books of his I’d recommend: Motel Life, Northline and Lean on Pete.


The Rosie Taylor Project (Jonny Davies)


iLT: Have you read any good books lately?
The Bathroom or Le Salles de Bains by Jean-Phillipe Toussaint. Man, in somewhat of a rut, takes solace in his bathtub and ponders whether it is worth the risk getting out. Short, too: all the best books are short, perfect for dipping into you might say.


iLT: I find that I’m mostly moved to write a song after reading a good book. Is that something you can relate to? If not, can you put your finger on what it is that does inspire you to create?
Most start with a book, principally novels – poems are already set up, but taking the essence of a sentence and succinctly working it into a melody is where a lot of songs begin. In a less direct way the song ‘London Pleasures’ is to me very visual, like a montage of literary Londons from Defoe’s (Moll Flanders) to Orwell’s (Keep the Aspidistra Flying).


iLT:  If your band were a book, which would it be?
Probably a city A to Z, in the sense that it is well worth investing time and exploring every corner to get the most out of it.


iLT: Finally, to bring this full circle, literature inspired by music: can you recommend any good books inspired by music?
Not really, not off the top of my head, though I’m told Iris Murdoch was very suspicious of music, and couldn’t understand others’ fascination with it.


Lone Wolf (Paul Marshall)


iLT: Have you read any good books lately?
The last book I read that genuinely blew my mind was Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban. It’s set in post-nuclear Britain (we’re not sure just how far post-) where the people have no knowledge of things like Jesus Christ, or any of the religions we follow. They have their own language (‘Riddley speak’) which is a kind of step backwards in English, and they are mapping out the world and giving everything new names. Any relic they find from a pre-nuclear existence is considered extremely sacred, and this is where their source of religion comes in. It’s an extremely wonderful, yet bleak insight into how things could actually end up. A masterpiece.


iLT: I find that I’m mostly moved to write a song after reading a good book.  Is that something you can relate to?  If not, can you put your finger on what it is that does inspire you to create?
I don’t read as often as I’d like to, and so I can’t say I can 100% relate to your method, however I used to be a movie director and I do know that much of my inspiration comes from reading between the lines whilst watching some of my favourite movies and analysing quotations.


iLT: If your band were a book, which would it be?
The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks.  I love the imagination that the kid has in that book despite how dark it is.  He lets his mind wander to places you can’t imagine.


iLT: Finally, to bring this full circle, literature inspired by music: can you recommend any good books inspired by music?
Another of my favourite books is Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami. A wonderfully written story about, well, everything!  Life, death, love, hate, friendship, sanity, insanity the list goes on, and it’s all spurred by a memory of hearing ‘Norwegian Wood’ by The Beatles.


Sam Airey


iLT: Have you read any good books lately?
I’m really getting into reading the classics at the moment. There’s so much amazing literature I feel I need to catch up on I sometimes think why bother with anything new. Though I guess you could also take that attitude with music if you wanted to. I’ve just finished Madame Bovary by Gustav Flaubert. I’ve not read much realist stuff before, but his perfectionism and constant search for the right word is an approach I should really try to adopt whilst writing lyrics.


iLT: I find that I’m mostly moved to write a song after reading a good book.  Is that something you can relate to?  If not, can you put your finger on what it is that does inspire you to create?
I’d say that on the whole I tend to find more inspiration in people and places, but occasionally this happens. Usually when it does it’ll just be a particular line or idea that grabs me – at other times it can be the book’s central theme, but it helps if it’s something I can relate to personally. I read a fair bit of Romantic poetry which has definitely had a big influence – though Wordsworth encapsulated the beauty of the natural world a lot more eloquently than I ever could.


iLT: If your band were a book, which would it be?
Either Herman Melville’s Moby Dick or Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. I grew up near the coast, and though I no longer live there, there’s still some sanctuary to be found in reading or writing about it. My fascination with the sea is almost on a par with Ishmael’s, and though I harbour no pressing desires to set sail, there’s something very romantic about the idea of it. Plus, there’s a running joke that all of my songs are about either death or the seaside. Let’s just say that it isn’t completely unfounded.


iLT: Finally, to bring this full circle, literature inspired by music: can you recommend any good books inspired by music?
Perhaps an obvious choice, but High Fidelity by Nick Hornby is certainly one I can relate to. I spent much of my childhood and teens trying to perfect the fine art of mixtapes, and I was almost as meticulous as Rob in my preparation of these. Also, Hornby’s depiction of the average independent record store and its staff is, though perhaps somewhat of a generalisation, actually pretty bang on.


Duels (Jon Foulger)


iLT: Have you read any good books lately?
I’m currently reading Albion by Peter Ackroyd, which is a history of the English imagination. And Ill Fares The Land by Tony Judt, a polemic about the current political and economic climate.


iLT: I find that I’m mostly moved to write a song after reading a good book. Is that something you can relate to? If not, can you put your finger on what it is that does inspire you to create?
Definitely, books have consistently been the most important source of inspiration for my songs. If I’m having trouble writing I make sure I read a few more books, it always works.


iLT: If your band were a book, what would it be?
Something with a slightly troubled and ropey few chapters that finds its feet later and becomes a lot more readable.


iLT: Finally, to bring this full circle, literature inspired by music: can you recommend any good books inspired by music?
You can’t really beat Patrick Bateman’s eulogies about Phil Collins and Huey Lewis in Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho. In terms of memoirs, I’m reading John Cale’s What’s Welsh For Zen? which is fascinating and inspirational.


¡Forward Russia! (Tom Woodhead)


iLT: Have you read any good books lately?
I read The Road by Cormac McCarthy in the summer, which was bleak but great. There’s a tremendous combination of extremely showy, literary prose and very stark, matter-of-fact writing that brings you back to earth at irregular intervals. I’m reading Lord of the Rings at the moment (I’m currently two thirds of the way through The Two Towers) which is good but not as good as I imagine it would have been had I not seen the films.


iLT: I find that I’m mostly moved to write a song after reading a good book. Is that something you can relate to? If not, can you put your finger on what it is that does inspire you to create?
I am certainly moved to be creative after reading a good book but I’m not sure I’m always inspired to write songs as such. Whenever I try to write something that is directly inspired by another work of art, it usually ends up being pretty insipid and gets scrapped. The stuff that inspires my lyrics tends to be more personal or based on things that I have seen or experienced, with ideas from other art sprinkled in for flavour.


iLT: If your band were a book, which would it be?
Maybe The Castle by Kafka: the protagonist is crippled by unflinching bureaucracy and infuriating secrecy and the book was published unfinished after Kafka’s death. Read into that what you will!


iLT: Finally, to bring this full circle, literature inspired by music: can you recommend any good books inspired by music?
The Mixerman Diaries is a great read – it’s the diary of a recording engineer who has just started the session from hell. Frequently laugh-out-loud funny but also at turns perceptive, cringe-inducing and depressing, it’s by far the most enjoyable book about music told as a story that I’ve ever read.


Vessels


iLT: Have you read any good books lately? 
Lee: Yes. Just finished the first book in the Earth Chronicles by Zecharia Sitchin. He’s the guy that translated a bunch of Sumerian cylinder seals and came to the conclusion that earth was visited by people from a planet called Nibiru thousands of years ago. This planet is on a 3600 year elliptical orbit around the sun travelling in the wrong direction. Apparently it’s due back around pretty soon and will cause havoc with our planet because of it’s gravitational influence. Next week I’m reading Advanced Potting Techniques by Charlie Dimmock.


iLT:  I find that I’m mostly moved to write a song after reading a good book. Is that something you can relate to?  If not, can you put your finger on what it is that does inspire you to create? 
Lee: I think what I read in books hopefully sinks in enough to influence what I write to some degree, but I wouldn’t say it was the bulk of the motivation. It just gets logged away somewhere and maybe shows its face again at a later date – and even then I probably wouldn’t recognise it to be specifically connected to a particular book or event or whatever. The way I write music is mostly influenced by the pure childish exploration of sound and energy. It feels more like a game or a puzzle. The process is generally fun, which I hope translates into the actual performance of it.


iLT: If your band were a book, which would it be?
Lee: My Shit Life So Far by Frankie Boyle.
Tim: Life and Fate by Vassily Grossman, because being in this band is a bit like the Battle of Stalingrad – the odds are stacked against us but we are hanging on out of sheer tenacity. Actually, that is an absurd analogy, I just wanted to plug one of my favourite novels which doesn’t seem to get the attention it deserves.  I think that Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole is more appropriate.


iLT: Finally, to bring this full circle, literature inspired by music: can you recommend any good books inspired by music?
Tim: Not Fade Away by Jim Dodge. This is an excellent book by a great author, a fictional account of an amphetamine-fuelled road trip – inspired by a search for the crash site of the Big Bopper and Buddy Holly, who were killed when their plane went down.


Glissando (Elanor Irving)


iLT: Have you read any good books lately? 
A few come to mind as having inspired me: The History of Love by Nicole Krauss, The Ground Beneath Her Feet by Salman Rushdie and The Rainbow by D.H Lawrence.


iLT: I find that I’m mostly moved to write a song after reading a good book. Is that something you can relate to?  If not, can you put your finger on what it is that does inspire you to create?
I can definitely relate to that, I often find myself marking pages and highlighting passages in books that inspire me to think about something more deeply – or that have explained or expressed something beautifully.


iLT: If your band were a book, which would it be?
That’s a difficult question... maybe The Rainbow I guess: it takes a long journey through the passage of time and is very swirling and almost too intense at times. I often feel that Glissando is like that, that we are on a constant journey moving and swirling.


iLT: Finally, to bring this full circle, literature inspired by music: can you recommend any good books inspired by music?
Everyone should read Things the Grandchildren Should Know by Mark Oliver Everett from Eels, it’s a journey through his life right through to recent times, and it’s very inspiring for musicians and, well, anyone. He’s had a lot of tough times but he talks about how it’s made him realise how important life is, as well as playing music you love and feel passionately about.

Swamp | Mixtape | Vol XV, Narrative for Orchestra

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN

Music As Reading: Mixtape XV, Narrative for Orchestra

For a background to this mixtape, a rather hysterical and dreadfully organised set of paragraphs are available here. To summarise, it is intended to be a reflection on the way that we can’t help but read certain songs forever tied up with the television show/ film/ whatever narratives that we’ve seen them accompany/ introduce/ symbolise/ whatever enough times that this connection has become the point of the song, whether we like it or not. Such tracks, indeed, represent an act of Music As Reading that we’ve all engaged in, subconsciously or not, at one point or another, and deserve to be recognised as such. Lyrics and even mood are discarded and the connotation is king! Half of the mixtape will illustrate the various points made in those aforementioned paragraphs, the other will introduce a few other particularly compelling examples – for the potential scale of this mixtape is enormous, but citing examples such as the Star Wars theme and Singing in the Rain would be a waste of everybody’s time.

We’ll begin then, to pay lip-service to this week’s theme, with Jace Everett’s ‘Bad Things’ along with another of his recent tracks, ‘More to Life (C’Mon C’Mon)’ to demonstrate that ‘Bad Things’ probably isn’t as good as we think it is. Then we’ll draw out the strand of teenage association via Remy Zero’s ‘Save Me’, Mates of State’s decent attempt to make ‘California’ listenable and Simple Mind’s ‘Don’t You (Forget About Me)’ to demonstrate that this has been going on for some time in a teen-sense – since 1985’s Breakfast Club, certainly. We’ll then explore four of the five versions of The Wire’s ‘Way Down in the Hole,’ two versions of Twin Peaks’ ‘Falling’ (the Wedding Present cover proving that even when a band with a significant, important, connotative identity take on one of these songs, the narrative prevails) and finish off with Nick Cave’s ‘Red Right Hand’ in order to state, in less explicit terms, I hope it was the fucking label what sold it to Hollyoaks. ‘Red Right Hand’ also offers a useful segue into Cave’s cinematic soundtrack work, an unsurprising example of music acting, beyond its original context, as a vessel for narrative – considering that Cave wrote a soundtrack for the audio version of his most recent novel and just generally has form here, as regular readers will have noticed. Then, by way of conclusion, three other examples of this phenomenon manifesting in film: Carly Simon’s ‘Nobody Does it Better’ from The Spy Who Loved Me, mainly because of Alan Partridge. Bernard Herrman’s Psycho work for straightforwardly evocative reasons as well as the fact that when he combined all the cinematic fragments into a single composition he called it ‘a Narrative for Orchestra’. And the Door’s ‘The End’ because, despite the fact it was the final song played at the band’s last ever gig i.e. represents a fabulously important musical-biographical punctuation mark (and a staggeringly appropriate one at that), one can’t hear that without first thinking of Kurtz/Brando. A fitting final testament to the power of the imposed filmic narrative. And one that comes full circle, in terms of its relation to this week’s theme. For Apocalypse Now = Martin Sheen, in blackface, in primeval swamp, as much as it = anything, right?

TRACKLIST, Y’SAY?

Bad Things – Jace Everett (True Blood)
More to Life (C’mon C’mon) – Jace Everett
Save Me – Remy Zero (Smallville)
California – Mates of State (The OC)
Don’t You (Forget About Me) – Simple Minds (The Breakfast Club)
Way Down in the Hole – The Blind Boys of Alabama (The Wire)
Way Down in the Hole – Tom Waits (The Wire)
Way Down in the Hole – The Neville Brothers (The Wire)
Way Down in the Hole – Domaje (The Wire)
Falling – Julee Cruise (Twin Peaks)
Falling – The Wedding Present
Red Right Hand – Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds (NOT Hollyoaks)
The Proposition #1 – Nick Cave & Warren Ellis (The Proposition)
Song for Jesse – Nick Cave & Warren Ellis (The Assassination of Jesse James...)
The Road – Nick Cave & Warren Ellis (The Road)
Nobody does it Better – Carly Simon (The Spy Who Loved Me)
Psycho: Narrative for Orchestra – Bernard Herrman (Psycho)
The End – The Doors (Apocalypse Now)

Comics | Mixtape | Mixtape XIV, Polymathematicism, starring Peter Blegvad

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Music As Reading: Mixtape XIV, Polymathematicism, starring Peter Blegvad

For an extremely substantial and, yes, sometimes rather off-topic background to this mixtape, open your exercise books here. Peter is also one of the minds behind the Radio Free Song Club, another excellent location for finding some of his most recent work. He’s generally pretty generous with it online: here and here are crucial inter-Blegvad starting-points that you’ve no business not exploring.

The Seventies: Slapp Happy and Henry Cow
We’ll start with ‘Casablanca Moon,’ a track that Blegvad described as ‘our biggest hit (not that it was a hit of course)’ at, of all places, the ‘Avantgarde Festival, Schiphorst 09’. So expect couplets along the lines of, ‘He used to wear fedoras, now he sports a fez / There’s cabalistic innuendoes in everything he says.’ Alongside this are a couple of tracks what appeared on the record of the same name… Actually, that’s not quite true: it was originally released as a self-titled record, and the versions you’re hearing are from a Virgin-demanded re-recording, including strings and session musicians and so on. The original recording featured FAUST AS A BACKING BAND, for goodness’ sake, and is available under the title, Acnalbasac Noom. For this anagramatical reason, the accompanying Levi strip to go with the section is this one. But anyway, a couple of tracks what are Blegvad-only compositions, on one of which you can hear his voice behind Dagmar Krause’s wonderful gargle.

Then we’ll go with three tracks celebrating the best of Slapp Happy’s surprisingly productive short marriage with Henry Cow, a band Jonathan Coe memorably described in The Rotters Club as ‘The Yardbirds getting into bed with Ligeti, then driving through the ruins of a divided Berlin.’ ‘Riding Tigers’ and ‘Strayed’ are, once again, Blegvad solo-comps – and ‘Some Questions About Hats’ is included because it’s utterly frightening, frankly. All three are from1975’s Desperate Straights.

The Eighties: John Zorn and solo records
I’m going to quote the following direct from Wikipedia, because it’s one of those occasions where its passionless prose describes something more effectively than I ever could:

Zorn’s early major compositions included several ‘game pieces’ or ‘game theories’, which he describes as ‘complex systems harnessing improvisers in flexible compositional formats,’ and which ‘involved strict rules, role playing, prompters with flashcards, all in the name of melding structure and improvisation in a seamless fashion. These works, in which groups of performers improvise whilst following structural rules, were often named after sports…These compositions use cues, rules and strategies to combine and contrast improvisations in various, sometimes extreme ways…In 1981, Zorn was ‘blowing duck calls in buckets of water at fringe venues,’ which included 8BC, Roulette, Chandelier, and Zorn’s own clubhouse, the Saint…Zorn’s early small group improvisations are documented on Locus Solus (1983), which featured Zorn with various combinations of other improvisers.

This strikes me as an appropriate Leviathan reflection for silly old John Zorn, who people really should listen to more.

Anyway, this stuff counts as eighties Blegvad because it was released then, even though he remembered it, over email, as being ‘1978 or ’79 I think.’ He added: ‘That’s my youthful self getting well avante-garde. Hilarious.’ We’ll go with three Locus Solus tracks feat. Blegvadian contributions.

Then, three tracks from The Naked Shakespeare, mostly produced by XTC’s Andy Partridge. And one very 80s number from Knights Like This, the prevailing opinion of which seems to be it might have been better if it had been produced by Andy Partridge too – rather than overproduced into next week by David Lord. ‘Irma’ is particularly worth drawing attention to by the by – very Laurie Anderson-esque, I reckon.

The Nineties and Noughties: Slapp Happy reunited, an Eartoon and some recent spoken word
Slapp Happy reunited in 1998 to record Ça Va, a lovely record bookended by Blegvad solo-compositions which are included here. And then some treats: first, a NEW VERSION of the first ever ‘eartoon’ he recorded for the BBC, along with a ‘montage of all the various takes I recorded’ for the same – as I say, UNIQUE. He describes the eartoons project thus (thanks, again, to the Believer):

For the past six years I’ve been writer/actor/producer of short radio routines I call “eartoons” for a weekly magazine program about language on BBC Radio 3 called The Verb. They’re three- to seven-minute-long dialogues between the two halves of my divided self—with occasional guests. I’ve done about sixty. The subjects have included “Words of Power” in early rock and roll (“Poppa ooma-mowmow,” “Wop bop a loobop,” “Diddy Wah Diddy”), initiation ceremonies, the Phraselator translation device used by the US Army in Iraq, universal languages, book burning, and screams. They aspire to strangeness and comedy, in the vein of Ken Nordine’s “Word Jazz,” but they’re quite didactic as well—there’s an aspect to them of the illustrated lecture. Teaching is a form of show business, as Steve Martin says in his memoir.

Actually, instead of linking to another Levi cartoon, here’s another eartoon THAT YOU CAN SEE…

Then a couple tracks from another collaboration between Blegvad and Partridge, Orpheus the Lowdown, which dropped all traces of the ol’ 80s neo-pop in favour of an insanely textured spoken word. And rounding everything off, a NEW TRACK, ‘We Fell Thru a Crack’ recorded in 2010 and with a title spelt in a manner that Prince would approve of. One thing I must draw attention to: using iTunes, when I attempted to ‘get info’ re. ‘We Fell Thru a Crack’, I found the following little textual fragment, a testament to Peter’s ability to find amusing space for writing in even the most unlikely liminalities and, therefore, a perfect note on which to conclude:

Featuring John Guerrasio (screams)

Wonderful.

TRACKLIST Y’SAY?
1. Casablanca Moon – Slapp Happy, 1973
2. Half Way There – Slapp Happy, 1973
3. A Little Something – Slapp Happy, 1973
4. Riding Tigers – Slapp Happy/Henry Cow, 1974
5. Strayed – Slapp Happy/Henry Cow, 1974
6. Some Questions About Hats – Slapp Happy/Henry Cow, 1974
7. Bass and the Treble – John Zorn, 1983
8. The Acquisition & Control of Fire – John Zorn, 1983
9. Juan Talks It Out Of His System – John Zorn, 1983
10. Naked Shakespeare – Peter Blegvad, 1983
11. Irma – Peter Blegvad, 1983
12. Vermont – Peter Blegvad, 1983
13. The Wooden Pyjamas – Peter Blegvad, 1985
14. Scarred for Life – Slapp Happy, 1998
15. Let’s Travel Light – Slapp Happy, 1998
16. Wop (eartoon) – Peter Blegvad, 2003 (updated)
17. Wop (montage) – Peter Blegvad, 2003
18. Savannah – Andy Partridge & Peter Blegvad, 2004
19. Beetle – Andy Partridge & Peter Blegvad, 2004
20. We Fell Thru A Crack – Peter Blegvad, 2010

Type | Mixtape | Mixtape XIII, Belly Kids by Mike Coley

Music As Eating: Mixtape XIII, Belly Kids, by Mike Coley


In order to fit in with this week’s theme, we decided to GO AGAINST TYPE (gerrit) and relaunch our infamous guest mixtape selection via a contribution from one Mike Coley, a chap who’s decided to write a book about his favourite bands’ favourite recipes. Here, then, for one week only, a MYSPACE MIXTAPE (just follow the band-links, basically) exploring the concept, Music As Eating. Do with it what you will, but I guess a good start would be to follow one of the recipes in time to the accompanying track, something like that. Anyway, over to Mike:


“There are so many reasons why I started writing this book, although it’s scary to think that when asked the simple question – why a cookery book where the recipes are given by artists? – I find it hard to settle on any one definite answer. It may be because I’m almost ashamed to admit that a major factor has to be my Heat-culture attitude to celebrity: I just have to know what these guys eat, how they dress, who they love and what they are thinking. It almost certainly isn’t, though, as many of the musicians featured are really relatively small and not found in the mainstream of popular music. Although yes, this does make me look treacherously cool and hip, it also genuinely reflects my taste. From a young age music and food have been something predominant in my life, and the same can be said about their status in the lives on most of modern society. We all go mad for them.


“I suppose it all might be seen as a reflection on the relationship between our two most consumed art-forms. But after completing the book, I’m still not really sure of the answer.”


(Find out more about Mike’s project here. We’ll be sure to inform you all both when his book comes out and how to get hold of it.)


Young Mustard – Gum Takes Tooth
‘The Excited Pig’


A whole salami, skinned, is served upright on a dish containing some very hot black coffee mixed with a good deal of Eau de Cologne.


Akira – Roseanne Barrr
‘Chocolate Chip Cookies’


3/4 cup vegetable oil
2 cups sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla essence
1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon flax seeds or linseed
1/2 cup soymilk
2 cups plain flour
3/4 cup cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup chocolate chips
Handfuls of your favourite nuts.


- Preheat oven to around 180 degrees centigrade.
- Grind the flax seeds on high in a blender until they become a powder. Add soymilk and blend for another 30 seconds or so. Set aside.
- In a large bowl sift together flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt.
- In a separate large bowl mix together oil and sugar. Add the flax seed/soy milk mixture and your vanilla and mix.
- Start to put in your dry ingredients and when it starts to get too stiff to mix with a spatula, use your hands until you have good dough. Add the chocolate chips and nuts and mix with your hands again.
- Roll dough into 1 inch balls and flatten into a disc but not too close together. Place on an ungreased cookie sheet and bake for 10 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool for about 5 minutes, then set them on a wire rack to cool completely.


In a Strangeland – Talk Normal
‘Creamy Buckwheat Cereal w/ Apples and Coconut Oil’


1/2 cup buckwheat groats
1 1/2 cups of water
Pinch of sea salt
1/2 an apple, cut into bite size pieces
Mochi*, 1" squares cut into bite size pieces (optional)
1 tablespoon of coconut oil
Garnish w/ either 1/8 cup of soaked almonds (skin comes off easy if soaked and cut into bite size pieces) or scallions for more zest.


Rinse buckwheat. Bring buckwheat, sea salt and water to a boil (uncovered), then cover and reduce heat to low. After about 20 minutes (or a good amount of the water is gone), add the mochi. A few minutes later add apples. Add coconut oil shortly before you take the pot off the stove or just put it in the bowl and pour buckwheat and company over the coconut oil. Mix with coconut oil. Garnish with almonds or scallions.


*Mochi is a pounded sweet rice served in small squares or cakes. It is much more glutinous and gooey than regular rice, and is excellent plain (and toasted), mixed with other grains or even in beverages.


I Know – BEAK>
‘Mackerel in Pitta’


1 x tin of mackerel (in Tomato Sauce – Seabed-friendly)
1 x half an onion1 x sherry vinegar (or cider vinegar)
1 x pitta-bread
1 x black pepper


Toast the pitta in a toaster. While that’s getting hot, open your tin of mackerel and mash it up with a fork in a ceramic bowl (very important). Leave that to stand. Chop up your onion and throw that in the bowl (not all of it, that would be stupid), mix it in with the fishy, tomato carcass. Splash some vinegar on it (how much is down to personal taste) & crack some black pepper in it.
- MIX IT ALL UP.
- PUT IT IN YOUR STEAMING HOT PITTA BREAD.
- EAT IT.


Sofia – A Grave With No Name
‘Sweet Potato and Spinach Coconut Curry’


1 big onion
1 big knob ginger
3 cloves garlic
Tbsp curry powder
1 tsp cumin seeds
Lemon juice
1 sweet potato
1 tin chopped tomatoes
1 coconut block
Lots of spinach
Handful fresh coriander
(Extra vegetables to taste - carrots, peas, peppers, mushrooms)
Salt and black pepper.


Chop the onions very finely (important) and fry over a low heat with some olive oil. When the onions are tender add the cumin seeds, diced ginger, chopped garlic, curry powder and a 5 second drizzle of lemon juice - they'll then spend the next 3/4 minutes soaking up all the flavours. If you're going overboard with the vegetables now's time to mash in your mushrooms, pop in the peas, combine the carrot and pepper it with... peppers. If not, proceed to pour the chopped tomatoes and coconut water (having first mixed it with 1-2 boiling water) and bring to the boil slowly. Now add the cubed sweet potato and leave it to simmer, stirring every few minutes, for 15 minutes. Give the spinach and coriander a good rinse (to prevent any beastly surprises when serving), shred them finely with the biggest knife in the house and stir in. Serve with brown rice and a sprinkle of coconut flakes.


Magnolia’s Tomb – Shearing Pinx
‘Shearing Pinx Bombastic Blueberry/Blackberry Apple Pie’


THE CRUST
Mix together:
5 tablespoons of vegetable shortening
4 tablespoons butter
1/4 teaspoon salt
Add:
2 cups of flour
Mix. Add:
8 tablespoons of cold water
Mix it all together, add more water if needed to reach the desired consistency, place in the fridge for minimum of 5 minutes.


THE FILLING
Use organic hand-picked fruits if available /// Luckily all these items grow in abundance in western Canada where we are from so yea!!!!! wild pie !!!! ///
Slice, cube, cut up 3 apples (McIntosh recommended)
Pick, wash:
One cup blueberries
One cup blackberries.


So /// Flour a countertop and roll out half of the prepared dough /// Save the other half for the top(s) /// Place the flattened dough into a pie plate (thickness is your call) /// Now here is a personal trick: add a fine layer of brown sugar and cinnamon onto the bottom layer of dough, then roll out a small circle of dough from the remainder to cover the bottom of the pie plate (not the sides) and place it one top of the bottom layer of dough so that you have a sandwich of brown sugar and cinnamon between two layers of dough /// This will caramelize when you bake your pie /// Mmmmmm gooood /// Now add the apples as the bottom layer and top them off w/ the berries all mixed together (more the berrier) /// Roll out the remainder of the pie dough and use it as a pie top /// Be creative here: braid, make faces, cut our shapes of fish, whatever floats your boat /// Place in an oven pre-heated to 350 degrees Fahrenheit /// Bake for a minimum of 45 minutes or until the crust is slightly browned and crisp, the fruits will be bubbling w/ juicy flavour /// Let cool for 20 minutes or more and viola.


Funny Names – Pheromoans
‘Sausage, Chips and Beans’


My favourite meal is sausage, chips and beans. I have this once a week; on a Monday or Tuesday, never at the weekend, when I usually have something more exotic or that which requires more forward planning. However I sometimes use french fries instead of ‘chip’ chips. I always have Coleman’s mustard: while I’m sure there are probably better mustards on the market, I tend not to experiment with new items. You can’t have a glass of wine with this meal, it has to be a more suitable drink like tea. Afterwards I can feel a bit guilty as it’s quite a high cholesterol dinner, but I find washing up or going for a walk works fine for redressing the balance. I think this meal always cheers me up after a bad or boring day. It is best eaten with the news or EastEnders on the TV, not music or the radio. I don’t know why. If I’m having one of the more exotic meals at the weekend, I would probably put on a record, and pour a glass of wine or open a beer but for some reason this meal requires the TV to be on.

Freaks | Mixtape | Mixtape XII, Offensive Narratives, by Spring Offensive

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Music As Reading: Mixtape XII, Offensive Narratives, by Spring Offensive

Yo man. – Yo.
Open up man. – Whayou want man?
My girl just caught me. – You let her catch you?
I don’t know how I let this happen. – With who?
The girl next door, y’know? – Mmmmmm.
I don’t know what to do. – Say it wasn’t you.

Talk to Spring Offensive for a minute or two and it quickly becomes apparent that their reference points – Nick Cave, iLiKETRAiNS, Antlers, Frank Turner and so on – point to a band-defining interest in the intersections between music and literature, music and reading, music and storytelling. But on their excellent Every Coin, included below alongside some of the aforementioned, that interest crystallises into something more specific: it becomes an issue of narrative, about exploring how a song can approach the framing of a story in a way that words on a page can’t. This is a focus at the heart of what the Music As Reading project is about – posing questions that we’ve seen before a couple of times… Is a utilising of narrative techniques in song merely a piggybacking upon literary tropes, a shortcut to ‘arty’ and ‘literate’ adjectives in reviews (like the ones wot that National get an’ stuff)? Or is it about taking those tropes somewhere different entirely, about creating new routes into (and out of) reading, beginnings, middles and ends? The other end of the following twelve tracks (plus the band’s enjoyably extensive justifications) you’ll hopefully have a better idea.

(*MySpace here. Download their new single, The First Of Many Dreams About Monsters, here. It’s, like, twenty eight minutes long or something. Twenty eight minutes great though. Twenty eight minutes great.*)

The Priest – Joni Mitchell
I’m going to be honest and say that I’m not entirely sure what the plot of this song really is. It’s definitely got a narrative of sorts: a first-person (probably) female protagonist meets a priest in the bar of an airport, and some kind of deeply spiritual link is found to exist between them. She accompanies him back to a house with no roof (thanks to hurricanes) and furniture-free rooms. The two of them share a bottle of wine, and then everything breaks down into a Plath-esque series of impenetrable images which, despite their incomprehensibility, foster a sense of unease over the proto-Jose Gonzalez acoustic guitar part. Is it lyrically cryptic and frankly pretty hard work? Yes. Does it draw you in with the force of the Death Star tractor beam? Absolutely. (Theo Whitworth: Guitarist)

Death of a Salesman – Low
Unusually for Low, this is a completely straightforward set of lyrics about a topic which troubles anyone with any degree of creative ambition. It’s about a guy who wants to write songs for a living but is dissuaded by his cynical friends, who laughingly tell him that ‘the future is prisons and math’. He lets himself be talked over by these people, and consequently relaxes into a life of middle-class suburban tedium, complete with regulation wife-and-kids-and-nine-to-five package. A brilliant slice of shattered dream pie delivered in two and a half minutes. (TW)

Margot Kidder – Million Dead
While thousands of kids dream about being Superman, not many want to wake up as Clark Kent, and although this song is pretty bloody dreary, even for Million Dead, these are some of my favourite lyrics ever, mostly because my childish passion for comic books gets me all excited when someone writes something original about super-heroes. The song basically offers us an image of a depressed, lonely hero, whose bored drawl at the song’s beginning tells us all we need to know: ‘I’ve got X-ray vision and everything’. Although he frequently saves humanity from destruction, this impressive track-record doesn’t change the fact that ‘the morning after each episode, I wake up at home alone,’ and even ‘the government won’t take my calls.’ A far more psychologically interesting portrait of what a super-hero does on his days off than Tobey Maguire getting frustrated at New York traffic preventing him from delivering pizza on time. (TW)

Spencer Perceval – iLiKETRAiNS
I am afraid, as you may have noticed, that I refuse to acknowledge the new and updated spelling offered by I Like Trains, a Leeds-based band that trudge through some of the less known stories in this country’s muddy and peasant-filled past. It is hardly a shamanistic insight to point out the importance of narrative in this track, and indeed most of the band’s older material (dealing with subjects such as chess player Bobby Fischer, Captain Scott, the Bubonic plague and the privatisation of the railways). ILT tell of the death Spencer Perceval, the only British Prime Minister to be assassinated, and the subsequent execution of the perpetrator John Bellingham. Beautiful and murky, with its swirling guitars and pounding rhythms, Guy Bannister reels of the lyrics almost as if they were spoken word.

In the same way in which cinemagoers accuse Hollywood of denying them the space to imagine, the narrative in this song is fairly prescribed; there is little opportunity to attempt alternative readings (most of the band’s song-meanings can be found here). However, what ILT do best is create such an evocative and stimulating world – where the characters come to life and the stories no longer seem like glum bookends in GCSE history or a Random Article result on Wikipedia – that you can do nothing else but imagine. However, a bit like eating too much meatloaf, you should probably balance this band with a healthy diet of others, or it can get a bit dry on the palate. (Matt Cooper: Guitarist)

The Curse of Millhaven – Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
I won’t drone on about who Nick Cave is. If you don’t know, you need to sort that out. Sorry to sound like a snob, but seriously. Prolific. Bold. Moustache. Australian. Author. Not an actor.

I have too many ‘favourite songs’ by Cave to mention, but this song for me encapsulates what I think he does so perfectly. It is the combination of his playful and intensely dark stories combined with some of the most brilliant wordplay (jamming long ol’ lyrics into phrases where they don’t fit, rhyming ‘terrier’ with ‘bury her’, and the lyric ‘I am a weak and young lady, but I’ve been trying hard lately / ah, fuck it, I’m a monster, I admit it’). This song doesn’t, in my humble opinion, have a complex narrative structure; lyrically it is fairly straightforward, it comes in at a comparatively short 7 minutes (unlike O’Malley’s Bar which clocks in at 16, when all three parts are played back to back) and follows a pretty simple exposition, twist and conclusion. But it is Cave’s delivery of this song that brings the narrative to life. It is his ability to spit and snarl, to shift from one character to another, to become the narrator, to become Loretta, to become himself that is so staggering. This is the world that I feel Cave writes best about: a murder-centric, dusty Middle America, where the women hide murderous desires behind pinafores and the men battle it out in the bars. I mean, that’s not all he writes about, however these are fairly consistent themes during this period of Cave’s writing. (MC)

Every Coin – Spring Offensive
Oh the arrogant bastards writing about themselves, I hear you shout. Well, we wanted this to be about narrative in music, so I suppose this is our attempt at writing a clearly driven narrative track. Like most of our songs, it starts with the idea; ‘this is what we should write about,’ for whatever reason. The music’s job is to therefore capture the mood that the lyrics and the idea sets. However, the two cannot be separated from each other. It is too simple to say that music enhances mood; I think the relationship is far more volatile and complicated than that.

The track is simply about a man being forced to eat the contents of his wallet. Why? Apart for suffering from a fetish for the extended metaphor, I also think that it is such a rich image, one which can have a million interpretations. It is not about greed. It is not about material vs. financial wealth. It is not about crime. It is not about capitalism. We don’t want to discourage reading, we just don’t want to influence or dictate it (specific to this song, mind). I hope that makes sense. So, to try and make myself a bit clearer, ILT’s work seems to lack a room to interpret (the tracks are what they are: history brought to life) whilst this is an image, or a moment in time captured, set up to be interpreted, not just accepted. What a load of guff. (MC)

Little Houdini – Sage Francis
This is pretty far from being his best song, but it is notable in that it is the first time Sage Francis, one of the greatest lyricists of our generation, commits to a single, clear narrative within his music. As such, some of the expression is slightly clumsy, but he never strays from the thread of this good story, and mines it for its full potential. The character, Christopher Daniel Gay, is introduced in the first line of the song. He then encourages the listener to re-examine our prejudices, as we hear the story of the fugitive who breaks out of prison twice with the sole purpose of visiting each of his dying parents, before turning himself in again. In the end he finally makes a full clean break. This all happened last year, and he is currently at large. (Lucas Whitworth: Vocals)

Eli, The Barrow Boy – The Decemberists
The album Picturesque contains one of the best-known examples of narrative in popular music, The Mariner's Revenge Song, but this, from the same record, is far superior. A reworking of the Irish folk song, Molly Malone, it is simple, touching and tragic. The melody has that mournful tone and the instrumentation has the simplicity to let it pass for a traditional piece. But the lyrics are very clever. Eli and his love are poor, she has died, and he, most likely, drowns himself out of sorrow. However, he is dressed in corduroy, possibly the best clothes he has, indicating that he has prepared himself for death. Moreover, his main aim in life is to make enough money to buy his lover exotic, almost impossible clothes (the mention of ‘Arabian’ shows the ideal nature of this fantasy). Clothes, and the status they embody are crucial. After death, he continues to push his barrow. Is this because he cannot join her? Or because he needs to work even in death? Just like it is for Molly, death is a continuation Eli’s struggle on earth, highlighted by the double-meaning of ‘barrow’. This tragedy is conveyed within about 20 lines. It is, quite simply, a stunning piece of work. (LW)

Seven Drunken Nights – The Dubliners
This is basically an Irish drinking song. The narrative is fairly straightforward and self-explanatory: a man is so drunk that he confuses various objects that his wife has been given by her mother for his own possessions. Championed by Radio Caroline, it managed to get into the UK top 10 in 1967, despite being blacklisted by the BBC, presumably for celebrating drinking culture. As Ronnie Drew says at the start of the recording though, they weren’t ‘allowed’ to sing the final two verses, because the content is too sexual and potentially offensive. You’d be hard pushed to find a definitive recording of the full track, and the various versions that abound tend to vary dramatically. Essentially, it's down to the teller to complete the story, ideally as offensively as possible. (LW)

What Sarah Said – Death Cab for Cutie
The strength of the narrative in this song belies the reality of its writing, and is perhaps an interesting rebuttal to the conventional wisdom of ‘write what you know.’ The protagonist laments the final days, hours and minutes of a loved one’s life as they expire in a hospital bed, and tells of the bleak, depressive atmosphere of the hospital waiting room. Exploration of this highly delicate subject with such uncompromising candour can’t just be conjecture can it? Some might even consider it insensitive to do so. Well not me, and not Ben Gibbard, lead singer and songwriter of Death Cab:

‘I feel that songwriters are held to a different standard than almost any other type of writer – some fans get genuinely upset if I admit that a song that they held close to their heart was not based on actual events in my life. Like What Sarah Said: I was never in a waiting room in a hospital waiting for news that somebody was going to die. I’ve been in hospital waiting rooms before, waiting for a doctor’s appointment, and I got a sense of the general vibe of the room – not a joyous place – and I decided to set a song there.’ (Pelham Groom: Drums)

Wasn't Me – Shaggy feat. Ricardo Ducent
Now I for one would never condone adultery, but you’ve gotta give Shaggy some style points for sticking so religiously to his guns. If caught red handed, both in person and on camera, on the sofa and indeed in the shower, the less confident among us might encourage our wayward friends to confess all and face the music, but not Shaggy. And whilst Ducent eventually does decide to come clean, much of Shaggy’s sage-like wisdom still rings true: ‘But if she pack a gun you know you better run fast.’ Quite. (PG)

Rusted Guns of Milan – Art Brut
IMHO, this song has the added beauty of not making its meaning explicit from the get go. Some people seem to get it immediately, but it took me several verses to figure out what on earth he was talking about (I’m sure I’d have gotten it sooner if I had ever suffered from this terrible affliction...ahem...right ladies...not me...never...). Anyway, the sparse exposition and heavy repetition heightens the tension, making the eventual reveal that much more entertaining. And whilst it is perhaps not a narrative in the traditional sense, it certainly takes you on a journey, and we’re not that interested in traditional definitions are we?  I won’t spoil it for you by giving the game away, just have a listen. If you get it right away, well... I’d get an appointment in the diary. (PG)

Live Performance | Mixtape | Mixtape XI, by Cypress Grove

Music As Reading: Mixtape XI, by Cypress Grove

Right now I can’t read too good
Don’t send me no more letters no
Not unless you mail them
From Desolation Row.

*Cypress Grove is the man responsible for this year’s most interesting collection of songs that aren’t his own – a king among mixtape-makers, then.

*That it also represented a heartfelt paean to a king among music-makers is not particularly surprising – the role of the mixtape-maker is to draw as much attention as possible to others’ talents, not one’s own.
Basically, you could say his imagination has made him on of the best-connected men in music.

*And he’s already started putting together a new Jeffrey Lee Pierce tribute record which, I gather, is going to feature contributions from an even more compelling array of musicians than appeared on the first. Can’t tell you who though. Sorry.

*So we very much wanted to get his take on the Music As Reading project before he got too knee-deep in superstars. Being the resolutely cool guy that he is, he even made sure his choices would fit on one side of a C60.

(Cypress’ tracklist is, due to the same Spotify shortcomings as were brought to our attention last week (no BPB – and no Dylan either, turns out) our second YouTube Mixtape. Click on the individual track-title for audio/video. So as to provide some Spotify content though, here’s a link to a playlist containing both We Are Only Riders, Cypress’ remarkable take on the compilation record (also purchasable, obvs – on Glitterhouse Records) and the man who inspired that record, Jeffrey Lee Pierce’s most important achievement, the Gun Club’s first album, Fire Of Love. For a brief introduction to what We Are Only Riders actually was/is, along with some of Cypress’ thoughts regarding compilations/mixtapes/etc. I’d recommend going here.)

The Ghost Of Tom Joad – Bruce Springsteen
From the album of the same name. We had to read The Grapes Of Wrath at school. It was the first piece of American literature I had read, which in turn made me seek out the music of Woody Guthrie, and traditional American music in general. I owe that book a great debt. Brilliantly evocative and “dustbowly”, it is similar in tone to Nebraska, an album that Springsteen had recorded a few years earlier, which is probably his masterwork.

Desolation Row – Bob Dylan
Name checks for Ezra Pound and T.S Elliot – and Ophelia also gets a look in. Probably a stream of consciousness affair, but the imagery is dazzling. An unparalleled moment of truth from Bobby.

Ulalume – Jeff Buckley
Hal Wilner (who produced this) is of course known for his unlikely collaborations, and they don’t come much more unlikely than Edgar Allan Poe and Jeff Buckley. With bereavement at its core, it was a central theme for them both.

Tied And Twist – Lydia Lunch
As well as being a musician, Lydia is, of course, a writer. We met up for a drink recently and she brought me a copy of her book Amnesia. As the evening wore on, I started ranting about something entirely inconsequential. She listened patiently, then picked up the book and wrote in it ‘learn to forget.’ Best advice I have ever been given. An excellent human being.

More News From Nowhere – Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
Another musician who is also a writer. He excels at both. He is the polymath’s polymath. The title is apparently a reference to the Utopian novel News From Nowhere by William Morris. Plus Will Self appears in the video, but more importantly Beth Orton appears as a waitress.

Killing An Arab – The Cure
Another song inspired by a novel – L’Etranger by Albert Camus. Robert Smith takes on the role of the title character (Meursault) during the book’s central episode – the apparently motiveless murder of an Arab man in Algiers.

Thousands Are Sailing – The Pogues
One of the few Pogues-composed songs that MacGowan had no hand in writing. This was written entirely by guitarist Phil Chevron. ‘In Brendan Behan’s footsteps, I danced up and down the street.’ The album artwork also features a picture of James Joyce.

The Man Comes Around – Johnny Cash
As opening gambits go, reciting from the book of Revelation is a surefire attention-grabber. One of many apocalyptic biblical references scattered throughout the song. An end-of-time ballad if ever there was one.

Brother and Sister – The Gun Club
Well, it does have D.H. Lawrence Jr. (AKA Debbie Harry) on backing vocals!

Bees | Mixtape | Mixtape X, Bonnie "Prince" Billy, by Jack Underwood

 

Music As Reading: Mixtape X, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, by Jack Underwood

We could drive down to another beach,
Even tan, your skin seems white;
All our friends have gone away from here,
So let’s disappear from sight.

We were going to save this one for a special occasion. But earlier this week, I saw Bonnie “Prince” Billy sing in a gorgeous late-medieval church in Coventry, and it was such a sublime experience that I figured we owed it to the Silkworms readership to offer them something of it.

Jack Underwood wrote a poem about Bonnie “Prince” Billy in his superb Faber New Poets pamphlet, the fourth of the first crop. We thought getting a chap who’d attempted to distil something of BPB into verse to then re-soundtrack his poem, as it were, via a sequence of songs, by BPB and others which constitute the musical basis of his relationship with the singer’s work, would represent a fascinating (if somewhat confusing) Music As Reading experience. The following represents a compelling insight into one of the most interesting Young British Poets Working Today’s ideas about music interacting with reading/writing and vice versa (and, indeed, a pretty good introduction to what makes BPB such an extraordinary artist).

(The poem, Bonnie “Prince” Billy can be located in Faber New Poets 4, published by Faber & Faber. Jack’s mixtape is, due to even more pronounced Spotify shortcomings than were apparent last week, our first YouTube Mixtape. Click on the track-title for audio/video.)

1. My Home is the Sea – BPB and Matt Sweeney (Superwolf)
2. You Will Miss Me When I Burn – BPB (Greatest Palace Music)
3. FYH – Mat Riviere (Follow Your Heart – Riviere’s brother, the poet Sam Riviere, first played me BPB. I was in his room, we were at art-school, the song was No More Workhorse Blues I think.)
4. No Bad News – BPB (The Letting Go – I don’t know this album that well, but I like the prickly folksong verses.)
5. Kiss – Scout Niblett feat. Will Oldham (This Fool Can Die Now – when I went to see BPB I bumped into Scout Niblett in the foyer and got my ticket signed! I’m a big fan. I think her shrill voice on this track is skin-crawly good, and the video’s good fun too. Just a beautiful, dangerous song really) 
6. I See A Darkness – BPB (I See A Darkness – lots of people think this is BPB’s best album. I’m not so sure. I think I like the spangley, slightly ‘too-much’ country and western stuff on Greatest Palace Music more. Palace Music, the earlier record, is also interesting because it’s earthier and more DIY. Anyway, the point is, this is a great, moving song, but I think it’s a bit self-consciously reaching for a dark place, or ‘minor place’ as he puts it, and I think he does that better when he’s not trying so hard.)
7. The Brute Choir – BPB (Greatest Palace Music – this is precisely that OTT, lush country and western thing I was talking about: those ladies singing ‘the choir, the choir’ at the end and the wonderful slidey lapsteel. I also love how this song develops without really repeating itself. And of course, that rolling piano.)
8. Joan of Arc – Leonard Cohen (Songs of Love and Hate – I think BPB lives in this song a bit. Perhaps it’s the voice of fire speaking, which has that kind of melodrama about it, but in any case there just has to be a common lineage here: see/hear next track!)
9. The Way – BPB (Master and Everyone – see/hear what I’m getting at?)
10. Sittin’ In An All Night Cafe – Warner Mack (No real link to BPB here, except that I think he generally makes country music accessible or more palatable to the more ignorant, pop-washed listener. So I thought I’d put one of my favourite country songs on here!)
11. The Static That Comes From My Broken Heart – Herman Dune (Mas Cambios – people who bought ‘Bonnie Prince Billy’ also bought ‘Herman Dune’.
12. Gulf Shores – BPB (Greatest Palace Music – this is my favourite BPB song: the candy-striped swimsuit, letting the family down and the suggestion that ‘we could drive down to another beach’ as if that might somehow help the situation. I just think this is so lyrically well-pitched, and although I never had one in mind, if one song were to prompt me to write my poem again, it would be this one. But of course, if the poem works, it’s really about all songs, or at least whichever one the reader brings to mind.)