Why Didn't You Tell Me? (Part Nine)

 

There are some things about 2025 I would be quite happy to forget, events that leave me feeling cold inside, and there are some things from this year that I hope will be with me forever. I am pretty sure that seeing Bonnie Dobson perform on a baking hot summer’s evening on an old boat moored near Canary Wharf is something I will never forget, and I know that this is a memory I shall cherish. She was backed by The Hanging Stars (minus a couple, plus a few, apparently) who made a glorious chiming folk rock racket over which Bonnie ably projected with the grace and grit of someone far younger than her 84-years. It was an incredibly moving occasion.

Why Didn't You Tell Me? (Part Eight)

 

Some things are meant to be, it seems. Why else would there appear on the local high-street, in the depths of winter, a stall selling secondhand CDs at £2 a time? You’re hardly going to get rich that way, not round our way. And there were not too many records to set the pulses racing. A Soul Jazz CD, not the label but an excellent Verve Jazz Club compilation from 2006, and War’s The World is a Ghetto seemed to be about it, until in the last box there appeared a sealed copy of Always Sunshine, Always Rain by Spike and Debbie, from 2018, which piqued my curiosity and prompted me to take a chance.

To be fair, it wasn’t really a wild shot in the dark, as a quick shufti at the sleeve revealed it was credited to Spike Reptile & Debbie Debris, which suggested I would be on familiar ground, as it got me thinking of Spike Williams who had been in Reptile Ranch, part of the same scene in Cardiff the Young Marble Giants came through, and who was later in Weekend with Alison Statton. And it turned out I was right. Though I would be deducted points for not guessing that Debbie Debris was the Debbie Pritchard who sang ‘Simian’ on The Gist’s Embrace The Herd LP. Anyway, the Spike and Debbie CD turned out to be a rather wonderful thing, even if I was half-a-dozen years late in finding that out. I had absolutely no idea it existed.

Why Didn't You Tell Me? (Part Seven)

 

Dub is in the air, it sometimes seems. And on NTS, my radio station of choice, you never seem to be too far away from some variation on the dub template, which is a cause for celebration in these desperate times. Among the station’s residents is Jack Sapsed whose monthly All Fruits Ripe programme is usually a great listen and generally features dub in all sorts of mad varieties.

Back in February of this year his show ended with the More Rockers mix of Virginia’s ‘Rainbows’, one of my very favourite things in this whole wide world and one of the greatest examples of prime Bristol blues & roots from back in the day. On the same show Jack also played the Smith & Mighty mix of ‘Love to the Power of Each’ by Dub Ghecko, which completely threw me as it also featured the unmistakable vocals of Virginia. And it sounded amazingly wonderful, yet it was completely new to me. As someone who privately prides himself on knowing a thing or two about dubby downtempo music of the 1990s, that hurt!

Why Didn't You Tell Me? (Part Six)

 

I guess many among us can think of occasions when we have heard or read about a live performance and then let our imagination float free in a way that allows us to picture ourselves in that particular venue on a specific night. Naturally we will let the romantic in us take over, even if deep down inside our submerged realistic self will tell us we’ve got it all wrong. For me, The Way Out of Easy, that magnificent live recording of the Jeff Parker ETA IVtet, immaculately packaged by International Anthem, is the perfect example. In my wildest fancy I was there, standing at the front, nodding along ecstatically, grinning madly.

Why Didn't You Tell Me? (Part Five)

 

Over the past few years, I have read an absurd amount of John D. MacDonald books and have grown to envy the way his stories flow so beautifully. He makes writing seem easy. It’s not. But then MacDonald worked diligently at being an author, in a disciplined, professional sense, which is partly why he was almost ridiculously prolific and why there are still plenty of his books left for me to read. He certainly could spin a cracking yarn, and some of his novels I would rate up there with the very best.

A particular favourite is A Flash of Green, a book dedicated to “Sam Prentiss, Jim Neville, Tom Dickinson, and all others opposed to the uglification of America.” It is essentially an environmental protest tale, with a strong theme of populist political corruption, and even some easily manipulated violent far-right Christian fundamentalists, so when reading it you can easily lose track of the fact it was published in 1962 rather than in the present-day. And it’s not without precedent in the author’s extensive canon, as 1959’s misleadingly titled The Beach Girls touches on the relentless tide of redevelopment threatening to tear the heart and soul out of a Florida marina community.

Why Didn't You Tell Me? (Part Four)

 

I’ve got to be honest: I do like a bit of incidental whistling in a song. In fact, I used to have this line about the holy trinity of incidental whistling being the Lovin’ Spoonful’s ‘Daydream’, Subway Sect’s ‘A Different Story’, and Otis’ ‘Dock of the Bay’, and how, in some way, symbolically these tied into Alan Horne’s Postcard Records Brochure, from way back in 1981, and how this really mattered. I would argue that it still does. Anyway, nowadays, I have a new whistling favourite, this being The Cheques’ ‘Deeper’, a song I heard first by way of Northern Soul Fever: Volume Two, a vintage 2CD set from the Goldmine/Soul Supply set-up which I found nice and cheap not too long ago.

Why Didn't You Tell Me? (Part Three)

 

“Betrayal takes two, who did it to who?” That line of Richard Hell’s has been buzzing round my brain since reading the books in Len Deighton’s superb spy trilogy, Berlin Game, Mexico Set and London Match, in rapid succession at the very start of this year. The series was written and based in the early-to-mid-1980s Cold War-era, featuring intelligence officer Bernard Samson. This is the first in a trio of trilogies featuring Bernard: is there a word for that? Not that I know of. Ennealogy doesn’t quite cover it. Words are funny things, aren’t they? You can feel lost without a book, and you can lose yourself in a book. This particular trilogy is perfect for getting lost in.