Gooba gooba gooba gooba

Since my dear brother finally came round last weekend to show me how to turn vinyl into mp3’s I have been carefully considering doing this post. I’ve been adding to this blogg thing (on and off) for a while now, so I feel I can trust you, whoever you are. The time has come to share with you one of my deepest joys. This is not just a record ‘I quite like’; these are quite simply some of the most treasured sounds I have at my disposal. For example...

Don’t You Just Know It - Huey ‘Piano’ Smith and The Clowns



Well ok, actually I am in a particularly weird mood due to this crappy virus I can’t shake off but this is a record that has seen me through some tough times, including this one. It’s called ‘A History of New Orleans Rhythm and Blues (Volume1 1950-1958)’, put out by Rhino Records in 1987. I guess some of, if not all of the songs on it can now be obtained on compilation cd’s if you look hard enough. Folks used to love this stuff, and man, I can understand why.

Huey ‘Piano’ Smith and his Clowns certainly do the job for me on that last track, but if I’m in a particularly bad way I may need to turn to this little blast of joy...

Feels So Good - Shirley and Lee



So, can anyone actually tell me what is going on with Shirley’s voice there? It sounds simultaneously sharp AND flat to me. I used to have a theory that Shirley must have been going out with someone really important to get this gig; and suppose you could feel a little sorry for Lee. However it turns out that Shirley’s career endured right up to the disco age, so there you go.

Clarence ‘Frogman’ Henry was a bona fide one hit wonder with this next one. He is still playing live regularly in New Orleans where he lives to this day. His home was damaged by Katrina but he was not injured.

On occasions when I really am not worth talking to and I’m neck deep in self pity and introspection, all two minutes and fourteen seconds of this track, more often than not, provide a chink of light to run towards. It stupid, but it’s brilliant...

Ain’t Got No Home - Clarence ‘Frogman’ Henry



Really hope you like this stuff!

Buy the best of Clarence “Frogman’ Henry

Read about people who have real problems, not just some bloke who is feeling a bit under the weather

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comments:

stevedominio - "welcome back, brother!

glorious selection - these are all fantastic. wasn't the clarence 'frogman' henry used in 'the lost boys'? that makes it great on two levels! beautiful.

these have an uncanny knack to fill you with good vibes. if you don't like these, you truly are a joyless f**ker."

london lee - "Shirley recorded the disco-funk classic "Shame Shame Shame" under the name Shirley & Company."

marc-o - "I will join in with the mutual back slapping, great stuff. Even Amazulu couldn't make a mess of 'Don't you just know it'."

the final countdown

On the day before the most depressing day of the year, I would like to share with you a beautiful little ditty about the end of the world. Contrast between lyrical and musical content is what is giving me much enjoyment here.

Brainz - Plans And Apologies

It is taken from ‘The Free Dee Pee’ which is freely available for download on the band site. You would be foolish not to go straight there. The lead track is so good it makes me flail wildly about the room like a drunken sixteen year old. (God knows what effect it actually has on your ACTUAL drunken sixteen year old).

Plans and Apologies are a great band that we have done a couple of gigs within the past (I believe we also have another one one coming up soon - check here!). They seem like nice fellows but I wouldn’t really know as I have never actually spoken to them, only having admired their youthful vigour and professionalism from a reserved distance. Perhaps you could ask my more gregarious brother for the lowdown on their personal qualities.

a year at the rally...

So there we were in the pub, having the annual Johnny Domino Christmas drink, when we decided that we should each try to come up with some sort of end-of-year list for The Rally. Being drunken miserable old gits, we then spent a good while complaining about the state of modern music and bemoaning the fact that we'd never be able to come up with a list of great albums/tracks that came out this year. However, before the night had ended we agreed to try to list the 5 best things we'd heard in 2005. These could have been released in any year; they just had to have been things that we'd heard for the first time in 2005.

Most of my "contemporary" favourites have either been featured on here (see The Bad Plus, Langhorne Slim, Silver Jews) or everywhere else in BlogLand (Sufjan Stevens, LCD Soundsystem and Arcade Fire - "Funeral" is pretty much the only album that came out in the UK this year that you can say is a stone-cold classic).

The Bad Plus - Rhinoceros Is My Profession
Langhorne Slim - And If It's True
Silver Jews - Animal Shapes

SteveDomino's hits from the vaults, 2005, would have to include:

Miles Davis - A Tribute To Jack Johnson - mind-blowing jazz-rock-funk-fusion work-out from 1971. Over an hours worth of great music over 2 tracks - not very bloggable!
Harmonia - Musik Von Harmonia - 1974 motorik repeato-rock featuring members of Neu! and Cluster. Great stuff but I think Jim is planning a Harmonia post so I shan't tread on his toes.

Outside of those, the album I've played the most is without a doubt Martha Wainwright's debut album, but she went and ruined it by releasing an expanded edition. Is it me or is this fashion for repackaging current albums with a couple of bonus tracks one of the true curses of modern music?

Next in rotation is probably The Coral's "The Invisible Invasion". I don't understand why they seem to have fallen so out of favour, especially when they've released what I think is their best album yet. A couple of years back the press in the UK was all over them but this came out in the summer to barely a whimper. They're still doing the Pink-Floyd-meets-Freddie-&-The-Dreamers thing but they've obviously been listening to A LOT of Can. Give 'em a listen, 'cos it's a great album.

The Coral - She Sings The Mourning



The Coral - So Long Ago


However a late contender swept it's way to my album of the year spot, They Might Be Giants' "Venue Songs" set. When They Might Be Giants toured last year they set out to write a track for every town and venue that they went to. (Maybe Sufjan Stevens should've done that, 'cos I can't see him getting through all of the US states at his current rate of work...). A lot of the songs sound like other artists - notably The Who (Leeds), Frank Zappa (Dallas) and The Cars (Vancouver).

They Might Be Giants - Vancouver
They Might Be Giants - New Orleans
They Might Be Giants - Minneapolis

"Venue Songs" comes as a 2-disc CD and DVD set if you buy it from They Might Be Giants directly. They're the ultimate love-em-or-hate-em band; I just think they're really clever and fun. There are also some great non-Venue Songs on the CD, most of which have been available for free download from TMBG.com.

They Might Be Giants - Renew My Subscription

Visit - tmbg.com and buy "Venue Songs"
Visit - The Coral
Buy - "The Invisible Invasion" by The Coral

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Here is Marc-o's list, as he sent it to me:

- "Oceans Apart" by The Go- Betweens
- "Love Kraft" by Super Furry Animals
- Best Re-issue - "The Glasgow School" by Orange Juice
- Re-discovered Gem - "Swoon" by Prefab Sprout
- Best Download surprise - "A Salty Dog" by Procol Harum*
(* which he got from Spoilt Victorian Child)

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Oxbow's personal musical highlights of 2005:

1. Michael Hurley - 'I Paint a Design' (posted on Last night an MP3 Saved My Wife in October- no longer up there I'm afraid, but I am now discovering this artist's albums, so thanks!)
2. Jean Sibelius - 'The Swan of Tuonela' (this has truly been the year of Radio Three for me! Not sure how I feel about what this says about me but it's the truth... )
3. Charles Mingus - 'Better Git It In Your Soul' (magnificent jazz off an old mix tape made by Steve)
4. The Kaiser Chiefs - 'I Predict a Riot'
5. The Soundtrack of our Lives - 'Origin Vol 1' (rock album, will do a post about it soon.)

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Last but by no means least, this is Jim's list:

Coil - The Ape of Naples - the last ever studio album - very nice, very accessible, the quintessential Coil album
Kate Bush - Aerial - never mind all the crap about, "oooh, didn't it take ages?", this is just a really good album that should be on every discerning coffee table
The Yello remasters esp. "Stella" and "Solid Pleasure" - bonkers Euro geniuses
Super Furry Animals - Love Kraft - a double Domino vote!
This year I've been listening to a lot of Frank Zappa - same as last year, really...

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Thanks again for listening this year - see you in 2006!

cigarettes and alcohol

You get some music straight away and some music you don’t...and you can’t force it.

The Fiery Furnaces first album ‘Gallowbirds Bark’ pushed all the right buttons with me. I had no background info about them, they could have been an arts collective from Loughborough for all I knew.

I just loved the ferocious guitar playing, plunky keyboard, lolloping beats, and distracted female vocals. I guess looking back now it was nothing particularly big or clever, just twisted lumps of rough-edged folksy noise:

Asthma Attack - The Fiery Furnaces





 Two Fat Feet - The Fiery Furnaces




So I found out a bit about them - Brother/ Sister duo, Matt and Eleanor Friedberger, based in NYC. Seemed to have a pretty cool attitude to what they were doing. “Great” I thought in a slightly ironic but hopeful thirty-something way, “I’m on the edge! I have a NEW FAVOURITE SUPER-WEIRDO ALTERNATIVE BAND” I listened to the album a lot and looked forward to future releases.

Well I have to confess that I have since found it unfashionably hard to love the two albums which followed. My inner teenager won’t give up trying though.

You know how it works: some music you don’t ‘get’ straight away and you have to WORK on it. It’s like when you were 14 and you forced yourself to like the taste of beer and cigarettes. The good things in life don’t always come easy. So I sat down and listened to ‘Blueberry Boat’ many, many times.

Chris Michaels - The Fiery Furnaces


It’s got good bits don’t get me wrong... but as a whole the album grated. I should have been thrilled by the myriad shifts and turns within each ‘song’. I should have appreciated the sonic textures and unpredictable lyrics. I just found it (mostly) irritating and worrying, like being in a music room full of ADHD kids. It made me long for something more boring.

The following album ‘Rehearsing My Choir’ looked good on paper, one critic wrote that it was ‘almost zappa-esq’ in its storytelling ambitions (how could I not love it?) Working with their Gran to create a ‘rock opera’ about her life!? Radical! Crazy! I bought it, listened really hard and it really got on my nerves.

Still my new favourite band? No, but they are interesting.

Will I buy the next record? Probably.

(I have now mostly given up smoking but can still fully recommend the taste of beer.)

Buy albums...

Visit website...

thrash folk

'The Return Of The Magic Horses' (Intoarcerea cailor magica) - Taraf de Haidouks


This still sounds as insane and brilliant to me now as it did when I sat in my at my kitchen table one fateful Saturday tea time and listened to it for the first time. Staring off into the middle distance, mouth slightly open as the woman I share the kitchen with became increasingly annoyed and worried.

“What is THIS?!?”, she casually demanded over the manic swirling jig.

“Gypsies... from Romania...” I eventually replied, wiping the drool from the cd cover, my accordian-induced reverie temporarily interupted, “I... think... I like it.”

Well I guess its never going to rock everyone's boat, but the music of ‘Taraf de Haidouks’ (still Romania’s premiere Gypsy ensemble as far as I know) pushes my boat across the the lake to a strange and wonderful land. A land of of cubist melodies and frantic sonic detail and space. At times the whole band are playing so fast they actually seem to levitate, while the slow songs make me feel pissed and bohemian.

'Absinth I Drink You, Absinth I Eat You' (Pelin bau, pelin maninc) - Taraf de Haidouks


In world music circles they are a well established act. They once played at the Viper Room in LA for Johnny Depp, (what a gig! Can you imagine?) Their story is long and interesting, but I’m not going into that here - do a search, there’ s lots of stuff about them.

This album was recorded live in Bucharest and is an absolute gem. Buy it!

Pub Rock Master Works (Pt 1. Vol 1)

Mean Girl by Status Quo

0:08 A-Chinga Chinga Chinga Chinga...

0:18 Rossi starts to sing. His slightly tentative approach is echoed in the band’s overall sound. It’s as if they can’t quite believe that it can be this simple. This is the sound of a band realising that they no longer need to put on all of that psychedelic puffery that didn’t really suit them: twelve (golden) bars is all they need...

0:52 The line ‘She was a big one, I met at a gig one’, is sung for the first time.

1:13 First guitar solo starts; unflashy and taut, as the tune really starts to chug along. If your head (at least!) is not moving rhythmically back and forth at this point then you are either dead or Brian Sewell

1:54 ...after which Rossi comes in with noticeably more conviction as they all dig into the boogie riff. They have it! The career defining riff that will keep them in beer money and send their children to university (where, coincidentally, one of their children will one day meet the woman who will later become my wife).

2:37 Second solo starts. Dirty and to the point.

3:26 No...no...They can’t be ending it like tha....oh...oh. Yes they can.

Visit the official Status Quo web site

Buy the original album with this track on ( I got it on a cheapo compilation from Asda actually).

who told you life is fair?

I have been flicking though my much neglected copy of tvbo Dean Friedman (a gift from co- workers when I left a job at a not very cool record shop), Some of it strikes me as really AWFUL, but there are songs on it that I suddenly just can’t stop listening to.

Sometimes, ‘route one’ is the best way to get the emotional message across. Dumb can be good. Picture the scene - our hero is alone in his flat in the middle of the afternoon, he lies there in four day old underwear with the curtains drawn. Numerous empty takeaway food and drink containers and snapshot photos litter the floor. She has gone and you could say he is taking it a little hard...

Dean Friedman - Woman of Mine


It’s amazing how the human spirit will eventually recover from what seem to be of the lowest of lows. Anything could trigger the upturn of mood; a phone call from a friend, a walk in the park, a cheese sandwich, the sound of an electric piano, a talking piece of furniture, anything!...

Dean Friedman - Rocking Chair

Friedman’s unmistakable voice gets to me in a good way. His song ideas are quirky (sometimes just weird an crap) so he was never really that successful in the great scheme of things. He was kind of weird looking too.

However a look at his web site reveals a guy who is still doing still doing interesting stuff - check out the flash animation “Four More Years’ and the comic story ‘Earl the Squirrel’. I might go ands see him when he tours later this year. He’s doing his own thing creatively, and he’s got an audience. Respect to the Friedman! He is a spiritual brother of the Domino.

The ‘very best of’ album I have is not currently available, but this cd has it all on

comments from the original post

madness in his method

Double Seven by The Upsetters

This is a totally bonkers album. It is 1974 and Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry is experimenting with synthesisers (an ARP 2600 and a Mini Moog)and eating far too much K F C for his own good - as immortalised in the opening song. Check out frying sizzle at the start, along with some other seriously bizarre sounds he has thrown into this great track.

Kentucky Skank - The Upsetters
Another highlight for me is the following pop gem, ( originally done by the Chi-Lites, fact fans!) with a tight, soulful sound.

We Are Neighbours - David Isaacs

This morning on of our neighbours woke us up with Madonna’s ‘Papa Don’t Preach’ at 5 am. Maybe I should point my speakers out of my window and enter into the ‘sound clash’ spirit. I would probably choose this album to pump out in his direction across the neighbourhood. The bass would carry brilliantly and the freakish nature of the songs and production would be sufficiently irritating to drive my foe to distraction.

Alternatively, I could go round and beat him senseless with his shit record collection.

Stay tuned to see which option I plump for.

Buy Double Seven

hoopla! oink! oink!

So, it seems every time I turn on my TV it’s The Doves or Kaiser Chiefs or Coldplay or some bloke with an accoustic guitar singing “you’re so beautiful...”, doing their thing in front of an appreciative audience of Leisure and Tourism Students. Everything is wonderful with the world and it seems ‘real music ‘ is here to stay. There are a plethora of ’ nice guys with hearts as big as the sky, playing ‘real’ tunes with oh so real musical instruments. How wonderful for everyone. This surely is a era of massive cultural significance.

But why god why do they have to be all so damn repetitive with their repertoire? It seems like these guys have about half an album worth of songs between them. How can they bear to limit themselves to that rhythm and those chords and that pleading/ arch/ enigmatic (delete where applicable) sentiment, over and over again? The answer is of course that they are giving people what they want, deviation from the recognised brand sound is wrong and will alienate the mass entertainment audience.

Good luck to them I say, stick with it fellas! If you have one ounce of artistic spirit you should just smash the instruments into tiny pieces and move away from the mic.

Here’s some Frank Zappa and the Mothers live in concert in 1971...

Little House I Used To Live In - Frank Zappa & The Mothers Of Invention


Mud Shark - Frank Zappa & The Mothers Of Invention


I am currently stumbling blindly through the enchanted forest of Zappa’s recorded work. Don’t look to me for any guides as where to start. This album is by no means one of his best (too much talking) - but is still great.

Here the Mothers swerve from a lush and restless musical composition into an unnerving monologue over Funkadelic showband.

It seems to me that there are limitless possibilities to what your average line-up of a rock and roll band could sound like. Why do so many groups feel the need to define their sound so narrowly?

Buy The Mothers Live at Filmore East 1971

s**tscraper

"I used to have a drug problem, but now I make enough money so that it's not a problem anymore." - David Lee Roth

There are those that would call for the album 'Skycraper' by David Lee Roth to be re-titled as above, but I am not of that view. 

David Lee Roth - Just Like Paradise


On this track Dave is right there, hanging off the side of a mountain. “Life is good,” he is saying, “live the consumerist dream!”. “Join me”, he urges, “Spend, shag and snort in the fast lane with the top down. Trust me! I have done this before!”

David Lee Roth - Damn Good


Next - imagine this! David Lee Roth is your best mate. You are sitting around the campfire with him and Steve Vai, who plays some kind ‘Stairway to Heaven’ rip off. It sounds good! You are in a reflective mood and realise ‘THESE TIMES ARE DAMN GOOD’. Steve Vai plays an avant guard solo that we need to steal for another song.

I dedicate this one with no irony at all to my fellow Dominoids.

Buy 'Skyscraper'

Join the 'Roth Army'

trance nation

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan - Rahway Wasadi Jhok Faridan Di



Apologies... if a ten minute song consisting of someone singing in a language you don’t understand to minimal musical backing does not automatically rock your boat. (World Music is a dirty word, cultural tourism etc... I've heard it all before and I don’t care. It’s MUSIC! If you are tragically blinkered in your outlook then it’s your loss.) Normal service will resume presently...

Why is this worth listening to?

This is soul music, the sound of a man doing ecstatic vocal gymnastics in heaven. This is a trance-beat slip road to a higher state of consciousness. It leaves my head spinning and my adrenaline pumping. It makes me wonder at the capabilities of the human voice. It convinces me that ‘call and response’ vocal lines are a good thing -we need more of them!

In the end, I literally don’t understand a word of it, but I think I kind of get it.

This track is taken from a great compilation of Sufi music in the Rough Guide series - buy it here.

Also, you can find out more about the great man himself here.

i'm so green

Al Green - L-O-V-E (love)

The first line gets me every time:

“I started to write this song about you, and then I decided, that I would write it all about love... “
In 1975 Al Green was a troubled man. Not yet 'the reverend’ and with a head full of spiritual turmoil he recorded ‘Is Love’, a flawed and difficult album that did nothing to bring his career out of decline.

But since buying it on a whim years ago, this album has seen me through. From directionless late twenties to respectable(?) family man, it still holds a mysterious appeal to me.

How could it not?

It’s ‘make out music’ with a side order if existential angst. It’s the sound of an internal wrestling match between with the sacred and the secular sides of love. It’s life affirming stuff...
...and when Al sings you can actually hear his SOUL.

Buy Al Green Is Love