Who are the mysterious Jupiter Band?

So who exactly are the mysterious musicians who will be whipping up a storm at this year’s Winter Solstice Spectacular?  I can now reveal the line-up for the show.

Well,The Jupiter Band is the house band for East London’s Jupiter Club, a monthly affair whereby invited songwriters can showcase their songs backed by a joyous, swinging band made up of players from some of London’s top combos.  The all-star band is extremely versatile with some players swapping instruments in order to best serve the songs, be they folk-inflected piano ballads or righteous gospel-driven stompers.

Two of the club’s prime movers, J Maizlish Mole and yoB, (an alter-ego for Dan Gale Hayes), will be ripping through through their respective songbooks, taking it in turns to step up to the microphone.

 J Maizlish Mole is an accomplished visual artist as well as a musician who is best known for leading The Marseille Figs, one of my all-time favourite party bands who are currently recording their third album, provisionally titled Bee Sting.  The Figs have accompanied the Pogues round the US and UK and played every kind of venue imaginable ,including Hackney speakeasies, public swimming pools, Berlin dancehalls, Brixton Academy and our favourite other club, the Gypsy Hotel.

J Maizish Mole on stage at Brixton Academy 2009, picture by Ella Finer

yoB's songs have been described as gobby folk – acoustic, melodic, pointed, personal, intelligent and catchy as hell. He's released an EP of songs, Mess is Lore (2011) and is now completing his second. He's been playing small gigs and big gigs and festivals all over the country for the last couple of years, leading audiences in singalongs of his brilliant songs. yoB also plays with Man Like Me and trumpet with The JJ Horns- the Pogue’s horn section for the last ten years.

For this show The Jupiter Band will feature Chris Alcock on trombone, piano and electric guitar, sixteen year old sax wizard, Gustavo CM, on sax, clarinet and piano, Uncle Tom Ash on double and electric bass.  Completing the line-up is distinguished jazzer Felix Weldon on drums.

So expect a selection of songs sung with vim and vigour played in  a variety of styles from punky folk, through country tinged laments  to  rollicking horn-driven rock’n’rollers. Wonder whether they’ll deliver anything gangnam style?  Stranger things happen regularly at the WHC.

WHC Solstice Spectacular Friday 21st December, Lyde Court

The Season’s greetings to you all,

Another year has whizzed past and so it is that it’s time for the Wild Hare Club Winter Solstice Spectacular on Friday 21^st of December and featuring J. Maizlish Mole, yoB and The Jupiter Band.  The venue for this night of revelry is Lyde Court, a converted barn on Duchy of Cornwall land two miles outside Hereford and a perfect setting for the Wild Hare Club, I think you will agree.

The show promises to be fun and fierce with Mole and yoB taking it in turns to lead the rousing Jupiter Band through their respective songbooks.  All these musicians regularly are prime movers behind London’s Jupiter Club and should you wish to do further research, you can read about them here 

 Trust Mole, it will be a blast!

In between the live music, the enigmatic DJ Manatee will be spinning an eclectic selection of discs ancient and modern. Where does he find them you ask? Well I can tell you that I didn’t find any actual manatees when I went kayaking through the mangrove covered Senegal’s Sene/Sekoune delta a few weeks back, but am pleased to have coaxed such a rare musical creature from her home in the less travelled tributaries of north London.  Adding to the fun will be The Rock-a-Hula Babies who will help you get your hips moving.

Feel free to dress up or down in fabulous frocks, vintage threads, costume jewellery and spangly dancing shoes.  I, of course, will be bringing the mistletoe.

Early bird tickets at £10 available now from www.lydecourt.com

Doors open at 8.00pm

Tell all your friends and let’s make this one to remember,

Richard MC of the WHC

Dakar Meantime - extract from the Senegal travelogue

Joe Strummer was on a roll just before his untimely death in 2002.  He and his band, The Mescaleros, had really hit their stride, playing music that perhaps actually deserved to be branded ‘world  music’, a rough mix of influences and musical styles.  A new kind of folk music for the 21^st century perhaps.  In their last few live sets the band was playing a new song Dakar Meantime. Sadly, or so I’ve heard, the band laid down the music for the song in the studio, so it could be included on their next album but Strummer never got to record the vocal track.   Consequently the song, which was considered to be one of their best, did not appear on the posthumous ‘Streetcore’.  I have never heard Dakar Meantime, only read about it, but know in my bones that had I been at one of those final joyous gigs, I would have been grinning from ear to ear.  I don’t know whether Strummer ever visited Dakar or whether the song was a product of his imagination garnered from the Senegalese music he’d heard and what he’d read or been told.  Whatever, it’s not hard imagining the aging punk rocker enjoying the vibe of this city with all the different musics competing for your attention as you step from taxi to street.  A kora ringtone here, a transistor blasting out some reggae there.  Music is everywhere in Senegal.

Our introduction to live music in Senegal is at the terribly named, but prestigious Dakar restaurant/club, Just 4 U.  Luckily we have been adopted by Khally who has volunteered at Greenpeace’s Dakar office since its inception.  Our guide cum guardian angel is a Muslim rasta, his greying dreads usually tucked under a beret.  Not always understanding each other, perseverance and good humour means we now know the basics of each other’s lives.  Khally is one of seven siblings and born in Casamance in the south of Senegal.  At age three he came to Dakar where he was brought up by his grandmother.  His father died when he was 12.  He has a younger brother who is good at computers and lives in the US and although Khally has called him on occasion, the brother doesn’t call back.  From what we can gather Khally does various things to get by – he is somewhat vague here – but they include doing some painting and decorating and has produced batiks for the December festival.  His life, I suspect, has been a struggle and his clear devotion to Greenpeace is due in part because it gives him a real sense of belonging.

As is so often the way with such characters, Khally himself is clearly well known around town, as is evident from all the non-stop handshaking and stopping on every other street corner to exchange greetings.   On telling him about our conversation with Fally Sene Son, a 22 year old sous-verre (reverse glass painting) artist who has a small exhibition of his work at the Institut Francais, Khally immediately says he knows him.  He also adds that if we want to buy a piece of his work we will get a much better rate if we go through him.  Having witnessed his tenacious negotiating for a sept place taxi ride in the Garage Pompier (the central gathering place for fixing a ride out of town in a battered Peugot 504 that can take seven passengers) I have every reason to believe him.

So on Saturday night, we met with Khally at our hotel reception, (he lives only a few hundred meters away), and venture into the night.  Having negotiated a fare, a mere fraction of what we might have managed, we stare out at the busy streets that are the inspiration for Fally’s work.  Fally portrays his district in a particularly vivid fashion, having developed his own unique style of sous-verre.  His technique involves as much collage as painting, as the work incorporates all sorts of found materials.  Peopled by figures cut out from photographs or magazines, his images are more real than any photo, distilling the essence of the city in all its vibrancy and squalor.

On the way to the venue, Khally points out the state hospital, a big private school and the medina market.  Among other things, I am surprised to see that an enormous department stall is named Orca and sports a fine picture of a killer whale painted on one of its walls.

We are among the first to arrive at the club at around 9pm and so secure a table close to the stage. It is a bit too dark to read the menu properly, so Khally uses his mobile as a torch.  We notice thiof on the menu, a fish too expensive now for most Senegalese to buy, and end up opting for chicken and chips.  To begin with, there is quite a large proportion of fellow Europeans and Americans dotted at the tables eating but, as the evening progresses, the club fills up with more Senegalese. Raoul had pointed out to me a few days earlier that Senegalese people eat late, stay up late and rise early.  At Just 4 U, the headline band does not come on before midnight.

The Just 4 U stage is wedged into a corner of the dining area and on the night we visit is cramped with equipment.  However its small size has not stopped the big stars of the Senegal music scene from playing the club.  From Orchestra Baobab to Carlo D, Baaba Maal to Youssou N’Dour (now Senegal’s Minister for Tourism), all the greats have played ,and still play, the club.  The club is also important in helping build the reputations of new artists – a support slot for a big name  providing access to a wide and influential audience. When we arrived we had no idea who was on the bill, but there was never any doubt that we were in for anything other than a special night.

As it turned out for us, it was the first group on that provided the magic.  Kham Kham is a four piece group comprising of a vocalist, a kora player, a guitarist and a percussionist.  The kora is a magical instrument for me, for somehow once the notes are pouring out of a kora, I lose all sense of time.  The young instrumentalist in Kham Kham is as wonderful a player and to these non-expert ears the equal as such acknowledged masters as Toumani  Diabate and Jali Musa Jawara,  who I have been lucky enough to hear at concerts in the UK.  Wearing a baseball cap backwards, Kham Kham’s kora player pulled off the clever trick of sounding as though he were playing three separate stringed instruments simultaneously,   Many of Kham Kham’s songs are built on a simple repeating chord progression provided by the guitarist and over these the kora player adds endlessly beautiful melodic embellishments - cascading scales of notes that seem to go on for ever while he plucks simple bass figure with his other hand.  Add to this a singer with a beautiful yearning voice and a subtle patter of percussion and the ensemble is able to produce music as rich as any orchestra.  ‘They are born to it’, Khally said at one point, nodding sagely.   While much of their repertoire is comparatively gentle, there are occasional crescendos where the kora player is plucking the strings ferociously, hammering out a riff with all the intensity of a rock guitarist, his face scrunched up in concentration and then breaking into a smile when he trades glances with the percussionist.  Later as we are heading home Stas informs me that Kham Kham played for three hours or so and I don’t really believe her, it didn’t seem that long at all.

Once Kham Kham had finished, the musicians that make up Aziouza squeezed onto the stage.  Perched by the drummer is the bassist and in front of him are two keyboard players, one with a Yamaha DX7, the digital synthesizer that was so ubiquitous in the 1980s.  To their right are a percussionist and a wiry young guitarist.  Earlier in the evening the guitarist had joined Kham Kham for one song at the invitation of the group’s percussionist. He had added electric guitar lines that mimicked and complemented those of the kora player.  His tone and sensitivity were immediately evident, occasionally adding a bluesy shading but never riding roughshod over the acoustic instruments.  I’d been impressed and was looking forward to hearing more of the same from his black Stratocaster.  In front of this backline were four microphone stands.

One of the keyboard players struck some fat sounding chords and the band kicked in and played an instrumental to warm up.  It was then that the star of the evening appeared, together with two backing vocalists and a sabar player.   Dressed in a pink, mauve and gold dress and sporting a magnificent  Afro hair do, the singer channelled what can only be described by this fashionista as a ‘way-out Afro-Barbarella’ look, which was finished off with a pair of giant star earrings.

The show that followed, what we saw of it for we left at two a.m. long before the end, was a total contrast in style to the preceding set from Kham Kham.  Aziouza  perform popular songs from all around West Africa in a cabaret fashion with lots of spoken introductions and requests to the audience to join in and sing on the choruses and clap specific rhythms.  The spectacle was magnified when two women appeared in front of the stage dancing with an energy that can only be described as ferocious, somehow both exhilarating and somewhat intimidating.  Each dancer spurred the other on to greater heights and when their showcase spots finished they broke into huge gleaming smiles.

Several songs in and another snazzily dressed woman joins the performers on stage.  She is carrying a microphone, not to sing but to interview the star for a programme which I gather is called ‘Dakar never sleeps’ or words  to that meaning.  Like late night TV presenters worldwide, she spouted a smiling stream of hyperbole by way of introduction and then conducted a short interview with the singer and conducted a flirtatious exchange with the tall and handsome sabar player.  The next number involved inviting members of their audience to come up individually and dance to the rapid rhythms struck out by the sabar player.  Several gamely did, but we were flagging and so paid the bill and picked our way out through the crowded tables and into the warm night.  I hadn’t expected to see a supper-club band but perhaps I should have for Just 4 U is exactly that - a supper club complete with chicken and chips! 

Richard    Dakar, October 2012

45 Awesome 45s

In order to get this blog off to a suitable start I am salvaging an old entry off the now defunct WHC myspace site.  To celebrate my 45^th birthday some years ago, I thought I’d have a good rummage through the boxes of seven inch singles and pick out 45 favourites.  Not my 45 favourite singles of all time or a list that makes any claims beyond the fact that each of these records was special enough for me to shell out some hard earned cash - or in the case of some of them, precious pocket money.   The list is therefore decidedly retro.  All are tunes that may come out across the P.A. between bands at a WHC gig.

Obvious omissions in terms of favourite bands may be because I only have the songs on l.p.  - for example I never bought any Stones singles because I had the albums and a copy of ‘Rolled Gold’.  Similarly Blondie’s greatest hits is a party in and of itself.  Did I tell you about when I met Debbie Harry?  I did?  Oh well.

They are in no particular order of preference but each one of them still fires me up.

Feel free to comment and point us in the way of your favourites.

1/.  White Man in Hammersmith Palais – The Clash.  If push came to shove, I would probably say the Clash made my favourite run of singles ever, but it wasn’t until I heard this that I became a believer and realised that a lot of the progressive rock records I’d been listening to beforehand were, in fact, tosh.

2/.  I’m a Believer - Robert Wyatt.  The most human of singers and from all accounts a wondrous human being covers Neil Diamond.  The only occasion Nick Mason, Pink Floyd’s drummer, has ever really had to break out beyond a trot.

3/.  Because the Night – Patti Smith.  Her greatest hit.  Out-spronged Springsteen on this co-write.  I remember running out of my maths O level to buy this absolute classic.  Live, the band always gives it a thorough roughing up for some reason.  Lenny always mauls the guitar solo as if embarrassed at how polished the recorded version is.

4/.  Virtual Landslide – Pete Molinari.  Pete is making quite a name for himself these days, I am proud to say some of you may have heard him first courtesy of the Wild Hare Club.  Quite the finest voice ever heard around our kitchen table…so far that is.

5/.  Reward – Teardrop Explodes.  Peppered by punchy brass this was a great record and unlike anything else when it came out. I fear that my terrible dancing may owe a lot to Julian Cope.

6/.  Take the Skinheads Bowling – Camper Van Beethoven.  There was a long time when no mix-tape made by yours truly didn’t include this song.  I have subsequently heard that it was and still remains a favourite of various of my friends’ young offspring.

7/.  Fire – Crazy world of Arthur Brown.  Another record to make you smile.  I wish that I had witnessed him perform it live, complete with flaming helmet.

8/.  Soulful Dress – Sugar Pie DeSanto.  Bridget, who used to work at Greenpeace, gave me a tape that included this soulful stomper, a fabulous party song – No messin’.

9/.  A New England – Kirsty MacColl.  Billy Bragg’s early classic that rings out with Kirsty’s vocal multi-tracked to fabulously joyful effect.  The story of Kirsty’s tragic end is one that is one that haunts.  Remember her for her wit and extraordinary voice.

10/.  Mafia – Lloyd Parks.  I first heard this tune on a 1975 bootleg of Patti Smith and her band playing live at the Bottom Line which I bought from a Brixton junk shop.  Lenny Kaye, her guitarist and a real gentleman to boot, told me that they learned it from a mix tape and they just loved jamming round the chorus.  Was chuffed to bits when, not so long ago, I found this original in a box of reggae 7”s.

11/.  Once in a Lifetime – Talking Heads.  This was the record where they underwent some extraordinary metamorphosis and became something else.  For quite a few years Talking Heads were the soundtrack to every party I went to, the strangest being one on a French farm celebrating the end of the vendage.  We had drunk a ludicrous number of bottles of wine and retired to the farmer’s son’s house where we took a handful of mushrooms each.  I remember being the only one capable of using the record player and repeatedly playing one Talking Heads song, ‘This Must be the Place’ repeatedly all night.  Everybody else was too shot to care.  I can remember picking up the tone arm as it came to the end of the track and deliberately putting it back to the beginning time after time.  As it happens, I have a rather fine single of the man with the horn, Miles Davis, playing the Cyndi Lauper hit ‘Time after Time’ but that is a digression and I won’t include it in this list.

12/.  Marimba Jive – The Red Guitars.  There are no actual African records on the list because I don’t have any African singles, not even the wonderful tune that was used to advertise Pepsodent toothpaste when I was in Malawi.  I remember dancing to that tune when played by the local Police Band in a town on the shores of Lake Malawi a million or so years ago.  This record features some African style-guitar and a rambunctious bass-line in an approximation of township jive by a band that put out a series of rather fine singles some time in the 1980s.

13/.  My Soul – Clifton Chenier.  A recent acquisition by the great Cajun accordionist, bluesy and soulful and not an upbeat zydeco number of the kind he’s famous for.

14/.  Anarchy in the UK – Sex Pistols.  Still sounds ferocious and I would argue the only Pistols record you really need, though I do like ‘Pretty Vacant’ and come to think of it, ‘Submission’.  My copy is on EMI and it shames me that I can’t remember the name of the bloke who gave it to me ,but he may be still be working as an illustrator in the Natural History Museum. 

15/.Waterloo Sunset – The Kinks.  My favourite Kinks song.  Wonderful. I always thought of them as a singles band until I recently bought the ‘Village Green Preservation Society’ album and realised they were so much more.  Who hasn’t got wistful walking along the Thames humming this song.  I once heard Robyn Hitchcock  and Kimberley Rew perfom this perfectly straight up except for the  song’s protagonists got changed to Iggy and Vera which somehow changed  the movie playing inside my head to something vaguely sinister.  Talking of which…

16/.  I Wanna Destroy You – The Soft Boys.  The nearest this band ever got to cutting a straightforward pop/rock record with Robyn snarling the lyrics – ‘a pox upon the media and everything you read/ they tell you your opinions and they’re very good indeed…’ and many other fine rhyming couplets over a straight ahead bass-line.  The old pervert in me thought of listing ‘Listening to the Higsons’, a later solo single by R.H. - if only because it is the sole record in my collection which features the sound of a wok being whacked.

17/.  Rip it up – Orange Juice.  I love this song riding along on that spacehopper-round bass line and well it’s one I love singing along to, though apologies if you happen to be in the neighbourhood when I’m doing so.

18/.  Start Over Again – Indigo Moss.  Everything about this band and record is just right.  The harmonies, the plucky banjos.  Everything.  Having them play the WHC was a real highlight of 2007.  I look forward to the next record and would love to have them come play again. Trevor Moss, Sir, is this a possibility?

19/.  Running Water – Martin Stephenson and the Daintees.  A great song from a great album Boat to Bolivia that is full of heart.

20/.  Whole Wide World – Wreckless Eric.  Well I am glad to be able report that our hero has indeed finally found love somewhere in the vastness of the U.S.A. in the form of the songstress Amy Rigby.  I heard the two of them play a version of this at the Rhythm Festival in 2006 and they kept it chugging on forever not that anybody minded much.

21/.  Walk on Guilded Splinters – Marsha Hunt.  My sister, Gilly, never owned very many records but the ones she had were all great.  One l.p. she did have was Dr John’s ‘Gris Gris’ – the best of his night-tripper records and the album which features his version of this song.  I searched high and low for this version until one day I went into the Dinosaw market waved my hand over the vast trays of unsorted singles and told myself that if I dipped in I would pull this record out and of course I did.  Magic?  Synchronicity? Voodoo? Who knows, but all the sweeter because it only cost me 50p.

22/.  Making Plans for Nigel – X.T.C. X.T.C. have recorded many great tracks over the years but somehow remain under-appreciated, probably because there has never been anything remotely cool about them.  Their early records were jittery and somehow nagged their way into your consciousness, their later records were much more melodic and owed a lot to the Beatles.  This one catches them moving from the first phase towards the second phase.  The song needled boring Nigels the land over and had a very distinctive drum sound.  Hugh Padham, the engineer, went on to work with Phil Collins whose records were loved by boring Nigels the land over throughout the 1980s.

23/.  Maggie May – Rod Stewart.  Who doesn’t love this song and the clip of Rod and the Faces performing this on Top of the Pops with John Peel looking decidedly uncomfortable miming the mandolin? Go watch it on Youtube. The great late Ronnie Lane played bass with the Faces and is featured on this record.  He left to make folky/country records with his own band Slim Chance which for me have much the same feel and appeal as Fisherman’s Blues era Waterboys.  The albums are great and yielded a couple of great singles in ‘How Come’ and ‘The Poacher’.  I don’t possess either on 45 which is why they’re not on this list.

24/. 96 Tears - ? & the Mysterians. The garage classic.  As Lenny would say - “It’s a nugget if you dug it…”

25/.  Boys from the County Hell – The Pogues.  The Pogues are a firm family favourite and a band Stas and I saw many times, the best time ever being a Christmas gig at the Electric Ballroom with Joe Strummer and Kirsty MacColl guesting.  Stas danced so much she got Bhundu-leg and couldn’t walk properly for a couple of days afterwards.  The term Bhundu-leg by the way was coined after a celebratory night in Wormelow in the company of the much loved Bhundu Boys where Gilly danced so hard she was similarly incapacitated as a result.  I would like to see this term enter the national lexicon.  I’ve just mentioned this to Gilly and said that more recently she had got a severe case of Bikini Beach knees.  Some days round here it’s a bit like ‘Three Men in a Boat…’

26/.  Eton Rifles – The Jam.  So another from the punk era with a great rattling bass line played on a Rickenbacker.  Think the words on this are great, both sneering at the public schoolboys playing soldiers and righteously angry that these boys will inevitably have the upper hand – ‘What chance have you got against a tie and a crest?’  At the boarding school I went to, boys in the cadet force were known as ‘turdies’. 

27/.  Tainted Love – Gloria Jones.  The original version of the Soft Cell smash, which is of course also a marvellous record.  This version is by Gloria Jones whose other half was Marc Bolan.  This fact will now have you pondering why there are no T Rex records on this list.

28/.  Talk of the Town – Pretenders.  Chrissie Hynde has one of the best voices ever, tough and vulnerable at the same time.  That she chose to team up with a bunch of lads from Hereford and make two rocking albums, before two of the boys fucked up big time  is something we should be grateful for.  Though I have fond memories of working in the Hereford sorting office one Christmas talking to a sweet girl at the adjoining set of pigeon holes while ‘Brass in Pocket’ was playing on the radio, ‘Talk of the Town’ is my absolute favourite of their singles. It’s the chord change between verses, I think one of the chords is a suspended something -whatever it’s the way it rings out and stays with you.  Not long ago I had a funny encounter with Martin Chambers, the drummer, in the Cross Keys but that’s for another day.  Would like to see him at a Wild Hare Club gig one day.  Can’t say I’d mind if Chrissie Hynde wandered in nonchalantly either…

29/.  All the Way from Memphis – Mott the Hoople.  Another group most of the members of which originated from around these parts.  Heard this for the first time in ages on New Year’s Eve and loved it all over again.  It’s a mighty long way down rock’n’roll…a line quoted in Billy Bragg’s lyrics for ‘Waiting for the Great Leap Forward.’  He knows his onions that Billy Bragg.

30/.  Rhythm Stick – Ian Dury & the Blockheads.  Was this a Christmas number one?  I got this in my Christmas stocking together with ‘Making Plans for Nigel’.  Not long after Ian Dury died, Stas and I went to a memorial gig with the Blockheads joined by various people taking it in turns to sing or bark Dury’s words.  Nobody could ever fill the great man’s hobnailed boots of course, but nobody in the audience cared because somehow dredged from memory and unsung for 20 years or so, every member of the audience bellowed out the scurrilous words in an act of drunken communion.  I also want to pay tribute to Davey Payne, the sax player, whose free jazz squalling on two saxes is just another reason to love this record.

31/.  Keep on Keepin’ On – NF Porter.  As Pete Mustill said to me while I was DJ-ing at Gilly’s 50th and everybody was shaking their stuff to a succession of great old soul tracks, “great records but all the same chords….”  and then proceeded to explain.  It’s not always good to know too much.  That said, a lot of northern soul records are remarkably similar but this one with its insistent guitar riff is a cut above and well worth searching out.

32/.  The Werewolves of London – Warren Zevon.  Great song, funny words:

Saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand/Walking through the streets of Soho in the rain/He was looking for a place called Lee Ho Fook's/Going to get himself a big dish of beef chow mein/Werewolves of London

Some great whoohooing too although the greatest whoohooing of all time is of course to be heard on ‘Sympathy for the Devil’!

The Flamin’ Groovies always knew a good song when they heard one and covered this, but Zevon’s version is better.  However wanted to mention the Groovies so that I could ignore the self-imposed limit of choosing only 45 45s  to write about.  So hereby ‘Shake Some Action’ is formally mentioned in dispatches. 

33/.  Ghost Town – The Specials. A bona fide classic that encapsulated the zeitgeist - blimey have I been reading too much Wild Self?  No come to think of it it’s schadenfreude that seems to appear in everything he writes…so back to the record being a reflection the times when it was made. I clearly remember ringing my Mum from a phone box to tell her the good news that I had found a shared house in Clapham to move into and the bad news was that, as I was speaking to her, I was busy watching all the shop owners board up their shop windows because a riot was brewing.  Ah the Brixton riots…..

34/.  Hand in Glove – The Smiths.  The first Smiths single.  I heard this on John Peel and immediately thought  that here was a band making records just for me.  Extraordinary thing was that all around the country other gloomy young men were thinking the same thing, so they became immensely popular much to the chagrin of all their numerous devotees.  I bought all the Smiths singles as they came out but mainly on 12” because the B-sides were always so good.  One of the good things about The Smiths is that they didn’t go in for naff extended remixes except for a useless extended version of their greatest moment ‘This Chariming Man’.  And all their songs had proper endings -didn’t just fade out - I always appreciated that.

35/.  These Boots are Made for Walkin – Nancy Sinatra.  I think I can remember this song from the radio when I was pretty young and I associate it with my elder sister, Ruth.  There is a great photo of her in full ‘60s dolly bird garb including a pair of white boots.  The first lady of bass, Carol Kaye played on this record, and can be heard no doubt loads of others in mine and your collection including, apparently, Love’s ‘Andmoreagain’.  One photo of the studio bass player shows that she was also the proud owner of a pair of white boots just like sister Ruth’s.  Postscript: one of the more obscures singles in my collection is a cover of this song by Pure Hell, an all black punk band from Philly.

36/.  Ever Fallen in Love – The Buzzcocks.  Never would sit down and listen to an album’s worth of Buzzcocks songs, but listening to Peel’s radio show their songs always provided a much needed injection of fizz and showed up the bands featured before and after for the laggards that by comparison they obviously were.  This is their best moment and, for this listener forever associated with a particular time, place and person.  May I also recommend  Buzzcock, Pete Shelley’s solo single ‘Homosapien’ that drills itself into your brain and once there is hard to dislodge.

37/. Don’t Look Back - Peter Tosh feat. Mick Jagger.  Where the former Wailer swaggers with Jagger.

38/.  The Weight – Aretha Franklin.  The Queen of Soul covering one of The Band’s finest – impeccable.

39/.  Stand Down Margaret (dub) – The Beat.  One side of a double A side with ‘Best Friend’ this was the track that always got played.  A great groove, some anti-Thatcher toasting, some dubby, echoing sax, what’s not to like?

40/.Voodoo Rhythm – Key Largo.  Don’t know anything about this record or the band that cut it back in 1970.  I picked it out of a box of second hand singles in Camden Market on the basis of its title and the fact that the other singles in the box were all quality gear.  I am a firm believer that any record with voodoo in the title is likely to both sound good as the creator will have at least tried to give it some kind of tribal rhythm and  will have gone to the effort ad concocted some quasi mystic lyric.  This record is no exception and I have resisted frying to find anything more about it.  ‘Witch Queen of New Orleans’ by Redbone is another favourite from about the same time.  London’s Urban Voodoo Machine obviously concur with me and have built a following on this premise and very entertaining they are too.

41/.  Le Coeur Qui Jazze – France Gall.   As Nick Hornby has chronicled at great length (sour grapes here because I could have written High Fidelity – that’s not a novel that’s an episode out of my life - and he had already mopped up with the Arsenal book) the joys of meandering from record shop to record shop on a Saturday afternoon leafing through the discs with a sense of purpose, or none at all, is soon to be a half-remembered pleasure of men across the land who’s girth is ever expanding and their hairlines ever shrinking.  Still there are a couple of musty smelling record shops that haven’t changed much in close on 30 years in Hanway Street, a little alley that cuts the corner between Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road.  (Bradley’s Spanish Bar can be found in the same street.  Incidentally Bradley’s remains a favourite in part because it has a truly fantastic jukebox, but that’s for another time).  Anyhow a visit to these shops conducted not so long ago and driven in part by nostalgia, yielded this treasure .  BTW this shop is where I first encountered Shane MacGowan and Cait O’Riordan of the Pogues.  Shane was working there and Cait was chatting to him and they were playing ‘Chinese Rocks’ by Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers.  They were both pretty striking and they were obviously plotting. Me, I was taking notes.

To find out about the song go to http://waxidermy.com/2006/12/11/france-gall-le-coeur-qui-jazze/   It is a record I suspect Ken Easy may covert and one that I want committed Francophile, Joanna, to hear as I am sure it has the making of a witty blog on  http://www.badaude.typepad.com/

42/. Transmission – Joy Division.  If I’d included 12 inch singles on this list, I would have picked ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ or maybe even ‘Atmosphere’, but this is the one in the 7 inch box and their calling card.  I’d read about them in the NME and wanted to check them out.  I went to Buzz Music in Hereford where the hippy behind the counter said he thought they sounded like the Doors.  They didn’t much but I was grabbed by Peter Hook’s bass and Ian Curtis’ voice.  Some time later I wanted to see them at Malvern Winter Gardens but the girl I wanted to take wasn’t interested.  Next time I thought, but there wasn’t to be another chance.   I expect however that I’ll watch Control when it comes out on DVD.

43/.   This Wheel’s On Fire – Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger and the Trinity.  One of the songs originally recorded by Dylan and the Band while they were holed up in the Big Pink, I think musically this is one of the most distinctive songs in the buzzard-voiced folkies burgeoning song book.  This version was released in ’68 and still sounds fantastic and drop dead cool.  Have to admit to quite liking Siouxie’s version too.

44/. People Get Ready – The Impressions.  Curtis Mayfield and co on this soothing gospel-tinged song and given that trains are the most musical mode of modern transport, the only train song on this list.

45/.  Redemption Song – Bob Marley.  Is there anyone who doesn’t love Bob Marley?  Sam (younger son) has Marley as his second name, Willian has Dylan as his – the two Bobs see….Having a few cassettes featuring Bob and the Wailers was definitely an asset when travelling in Africa in the 1980s.  This just seemed a good song to end on, a campfire favourite of many a busker including uncle Joe Strummer, although I would take issue with Bob’s fatalism with regard to nuclear energy…..

That’s it 45 great 45s, go and listen to the ones you don’t know, every one a blinder.