music from other sources

Things have obviously gotten a wee bit quiet over the festive period. Normal service will resume soon (i.e. - the one-man group blog of the past couple of months...!) so until then here are a few places to get you free music fix (other than the plentiful links in the sidebar which you should be checking out anyway).

A friend of mine recently sent me a link to the great Daytrotter site. This features writing, illustrations as well as exclusive sessions from bands, recorded live in their very own studio. They're not very keen on people deep-linking to files (who is?) or re-hosting the files themselves but you should be visiting the site yourself, really.

Here are links to a few of my favourite sessions and they're all belters:

Langhorne Slim...

Bonnie Prince Billy...

Hockey Night...

and Nina Nastasia.

Very nice I'm sure you'll all agree.

If you want something a bit more arsequaking, I was chuffed to find that the mighty Butthole Surfers have made all of their classic Double Live semi-official bootleg available to download here.

We borrowed this off of a mate years ago and it's particularly good to hear The One I Love and Psychedelic Jam again after all these years.

Happy huntin'!

rip joseph barbera

At the risk of turning Domino Rally into your one-stop shop for kid's TV theme tunes, here are a few more as a tribute to Joseph Barbera, one half of legendary toon-team Hanna-Barbera, who died on Monday.

I've always thought that every piece of music you've ever heard has an influence on you in some way, especially if you're a musician. So these are some very early influences on Johnny Domino!

Hanna-Barbera - Dastardly And Muttley [Main Title]

That's Paul Winchell on lead Dastardly.

Hanna-Barbera - The Flintstones [End Title]

The end title from The Flintstones features some great sound effects and is almost good enough to make you forget the AWFUL John Goodman film. Don't mention The BC-52's...

Hanna-Barbera - Perils Of Penelope Pitstop [Main Title]

Fantastic laugh here from Paul Lynde.

Hanna-Barbera - Hair Bear Bunch [Main Title]

Visit The Hair Bear Bunch

Hanna-Barbera - Secret Squirrel [Main Title]

I love this one because the vocals are so totally half-arsed. You can pracitically hear the cigarettes dangling off their lips and the studio clock ticking down. It's mixed strangely, too - it's like your mates are singing along with the TV... "with a rat-tat-tat-tat-tat!"

Hanna-Barbera - Hong Kong Phooey [Main Title]

I couldn't miss that one off, could I?

Hanna-Barbera - Josie & The Pussycats [Main Title]

Hanna-Barbera - Josie & The Pussycats [End Title]

...and Marc-o would have had a total mard if I'd not put these on. I can't remember this one at all (although I've seen the GREAT film from a couple of years back). Bloody excellent theme tune, however. The End title is included to give you the full-on nostalgic rush from the Hanna-Barbera ident at the end.

Hanna-Barbera - Touché Turtle [Main Title]

Brief and to the point, unlike...

Hanna-Barbera - Wacky Races [Main Title]

Does this say something about the HB quality controversy? There can't have been much time for the cartoon after that...

Hanna-Barbera - Tra La La Song [Banana Splits Theme]

...but you can't really argue with the good vibes you get from this one, can you? Enjoy.

Visit - Hanna-Barbera on Wikipedia
Visit - Hanna-Barbera.com
Buy - Tunes from the 'toons: The Best of Hanna-Barbera

an inappropriate christmas mix

Can anyone remember all of the hoo-ha that accompanied the BBC broadcasting Jerry Springer: The Opera? You'd probably be thinking that the Beeb would be being super-careful to avoid upsetting Christian groups at this time of year.

Here's the song they're using to trail their seasonal TV schedule:

Spinal Tap - Christmas With The Devil



Oopsie. Someone didn't think that through...

Visit - Spinal Tap
Buy - Break Like The Wind

One of the most rewarding results of the blog this year was when we prompted a comment from the great songwriter, Tim Hensley - we've been vocal on more than one occasion about our love for his work, almost becoming a nerve centre for Hensley Studies. Here's a seasonal gem from Tim in his Victor Banana guise from a few years back, the spookiest Santa you ever heard.

Victor Banana - Here Comes Santa

Visit - Tim Hensley's MySpace

Another great result of me whaffling on about music came from my Mary Margaret O'Hara post from way back. In it, I wondered if I would ever get my hands on a copy of her near-impossible to find Christmas EP - and lo and behold, a reader sent me a copy! (Apologies, I've lost your name but thanks again if you're still visiting)

Mary Margaret O'Hara - Christmas Evermore



There are some quite odd versions of traditional Christmas tunes but this track is easily the best, the strange lop-sided groove sounding like an offcut from Miss America, complete with beautiful swooning background harmonies - yummy.

If you don't own Miss America by now, you're no friend of mine.

Visit - Mary Margaret O'Hara

Another inappropriate Christmas song here from The Handsome Family, who I managed to see play live this year. I know that some of our friends are not fans but I thought they were great - weird and homely and funny. This is another great song about a Christmas gone horribly wrong.

The Handsome Family - So Much Wine



Visit - The Handsome Family
Buy - In The Air

Here's a truly weird song from Sheffield singer-songwriter John Shuttleworth. John continues to hone his craft in the garage, sitting on cans of Sprite, using the tub freezer as a keyboard stand and churning out classics like this utterly bizarre tune. If you want to ruin someone's Christmas, play them this.

John Shuttleworth - The Christmas Orphan

What's going on with the children's laughter at the end? Chilling.

Visit - John Shuttleworth
Buy - The Yamaha Years

While we're on a downer, here's a great kind-of-Christmas break-up song from Lisa Germano. I've mentioned Lisa briefly in the past but listening to "Excerpts from a Love Circus" again the other day, I realised that I should really do a much bigger post about this fantastic album. This comes quite near the end and my take on it is that the couple in it are meeting up for a friendly drink, shortly after breaking up. In my experience this sort of "being mature" never quite worked out and that's what happens here. Especially when booze and recrimination rear their heads. Oh lordy.

Lisa Germano - Messages from Sophia



This is a beautiful moving song with a great vocal (heart on your sleeve much?) and I love the instrumentation throughout. But why include it in a Christmas post?, I hear you cry. Well, Lisa quietly wishes us a Merry Christmas at 2.10. And the gentle appearance of Jingle Bells at the very end after the final line... well, if that doesn't get you then you're truly made of stone.

Visit - Lisa Germano
Buy - Excerpts from a Love Circus

I promise more good vibes next time....

the face of evil

Back to my Dad's old singles for some more great songs. First up a real oddity - on one level a sweet song about pretty laydees, on another a frankly chilling vision of an international sexual predator. Sure, he looks nice...

Ricky Nelson - Travelin' Man



This chap has been about a bit ("I've made a lot of stops all over the world"). But despite his free and easy way it doesn't work both ways - "And in every port I own the heart / Of at least one lovely girl" - he own's the heart?! What is he, some kind of international, seafaring pimp? Too harsh? Well, what about, "If you're ever in Alaska stop and see / My cute little Eskimo". He's like Harvey Keitel in Taxi Driver - outrageous.

His Geography ain't up to much, either. Fancy a trip into Berlin town, anyone?

Unlike the tracks in the earlier post this was a double A-side with "Hello Marylou, Goodbye Heart" - now that's what I call a quality piece of vinyl.

Bobby Darin - Not For Me



Amongst my Dad's singles there are lots of tracks by Bobby Darin. He had a really interesting life, too bizarre to go into here (try ubiquipediaTM). This song was the b-side of "18 Yellow Roses", a fairly naff song about a father and his hopes and dreams for his daughter. "Not For Me", however, is an insanely dramatic, nigh-on pyschopathic depiction of self-pity- fantastic over-the-top orchestration by Jack Nitzsche, too.

Bobby Darin - Oo-Ee-Train (b-side)




Bobby Darin - Lazy River (a-side)



This single is so great, I had to put both tracks on. "Oo-Ee-Train" is just cool; barely scraping over the 2-minute mark, wicked rumpty-tumpty beat and all. There's some more of those "phoned-in" backing vocals like on the Little Eva track I posted previously - strangely, that had a fairly lazy-sounding 12-bar structure as well.

"Lazy River" starts off deceptively low-key, before it ditches the ukelele and shifts up a gear at 32 seconds. All of the bloody "X Factor" wannabes (I include Robbie Williams in those) have learned the tropes of swing singing but just don't the balls - just listen to the way he says "from the halfway mark!" at 1.32. Too cool for school.

Buy - Ricky Nelson's Greatest Hits
Buy - The Very Best of Bobby Darin (only features "Lazy River")
Visit - RickyNelson.com
Visit - Bobby Darin.com

plastic slip covers on his vinyl couch

Some things beggar belief while others bugger it senseless. I saw an advert for this album on TV last night. I was thinking about it this morning and had to ask Mrs Domino if I'd imagined it. I HADN'T.

What sort of fever dream are we living in? I appreciate that this album is being done for a good cause, but couldn't the "artists" involved have... I dunno, given the hefty studio costs to charity instead of inflicting this mess on us? What sort of twisted individual would listen to (for example) "Modern Way" by Kaiser Chiefs (what sort of twisted individual listens to the Kaiser Chiefs, anyway...) and thinks: "I know what this needs! A snappy samba beat!! And while you're at it, let's give Bono a guiro!!!".

Seriously - if your stomach can take it, have a listen to some of the clips and boggle your mind but be warned, this album also features Dido and Maroon 5.

Meanwhile back on planet Earth, I *heart* the interweb. You know why?

Back in the days when home taping was killing music, me and my bro, like so many others, would hover over the pause button while listening to John Peel. One of the songs that we taped which always stayed in our heads was "Vinyl Grind" by More Fiends ( I particularly liked the stilted way that Peelie intoned the album title, "Yo Asphalt Head").

A few years later while I was at university in Sheffield, I used to have to walk past a second hand record shop every day and in their window was a copy of the album. For some reason, I never bought it. Over the last few years I've become occasionally obsessed with getting hold of it - every city I visit, I'll find a record shop and head straight for the "Indie-Alternative" section, hoping to find it. Before you ask, I don't like the idea of buying used vinyl off the internet, otherwise I could have had it years ago.

This week, I finally got it from download store Audio Lunchbox.

More Fiends - Vinyl Grind



And you know what? It still sounds pretty damn good to me. The album as a whole ain't bad either - scratchy, ugly, erratic, angular, punky, nasty, quick and dirty.

More Fiends - More Fiends Theme



I think we recorded "Vinyl Grind" in 1988 on a tape like the one above. Consider these songs a snapshot of a certain time - this was the music we listened to at school/college which marked us out from the trendies and sports-foundation students.

It's late-80's Alternative music trapped in amber. Enjoy! Consider it a palette cleanser after dipping into "Rhythms Del Mundo".

By the way I got that image from tapedeck.org, a great website to pass a few hours in misty-eyed reverie.

Buy - "Yo Asphalt Head" by More Fiends from Audio Lunchbox
Visit - tapedeck.org
Don't Buy - "Rhythms Del Mundo"

best gig i never saw - pt. 1

I'm sure we've all done it - a band goes on tour and one of the dates is just down the road from you. You plan to go for ages in advance. But for some reason when the night arrives you don't go - maybe something comes up, or more shamefully, you simply can't be arsed.

Jim and I still console ourselves for having missed Bitch Magnet on their last tour when they played in a tiny room above a pub in Nottingham. That same room was the scene of a date on the last tour from Thin White Rope.

Now, I won't pretend to have been their biggest fan at the time but they were, by all accounts, a ferocious live band - I remember reading a gig review in Melody Maker which talked about how the walls seemed to be melting through the heat (cathedrals of sound, anybody?). I guess they were a kind-of Post-punk-Americana take on Television, twin guitars conjuring up squalls of feedback and noise, which makes them sound like another West Coast art-rock noise experiment.

But TWR had songs with WORDS and STORIES and such like, all strange and dark lyrical narratives. At the time I was massively into the more extreme aspects of the Blast First roster - it wasn't until a few years later that I really started to appreciate bands who didn't put such massive stock in leaping on the LOUD pedal and who played with more dynamic control. This is a great relentless version of a Can song - bet it sounded awesome live...

Thin White Rope - Yoo Doo Right



Most of their songs have really knotty interlocking guitar parts (hence the Television comparisons, I guess). My absolute favourite track by them is "On The Floe", a really great song that starts off deceptively simple and quaint, before it hits a crushing riff throughout the chorus which gets repeated and developed over and over in the long instrumental play out - really clever without being "clever-clever".

Thin White Rope - On The Floe



Thin White Rope took their name from William S. Burroughs' description of semen. I remember another Melody Maker article where singer Guy Kyser was asked what his most embarrassing moment was. His answer was something along the lines of, "When a female flatmate pointed out that I had jism on my wrist". With all of that, it's hardly surprising that they didn't achieve much by the way of mainstream success. Especially when you consider songs like "Puppet Dog", which tells of a lonely man who can only find (ahem) release through the titular glove-toy - "Puppet dog, come bite your master".

Thin White Rope - Puppet Dog



The resulting song is as pathetic, funny and weirdly-moving as that bizarre story would suggest, with some beautiful lead guitar weeping over the end. Maybe I should end this post with something a bit more rousing (I hesitate to say "uplifting")... How about this great widescreen epic which mutates into a rockin' rendition of "Amazing Grace"?

Thin White Rope - Americana / The Ghost






Visit - Thin White Rope fan page
Visit - Thin White Rope on Wikipedia
Buy - "Sack Full of Silver"
Buy - "The Ruby Sea"

book 'em, steve-o

Following a particularly dreadful time at university (and dear reader, if we are ever to meet in person, I will surely tell you all about it but I fear that a website is not the place), I returned to my old home town, my mum and dad's house and a PARTICULARLY toxic and pointless relationship (alas, dear reader, should we meet, I will surely NOT tell you about that).

This was a weird time - I'd studied subjects I was interested in but with no thought to what I wanted to do with my life, a question that continues to plague me to this day. So I ended up signing on for a while and taking temporary part-time jobs where I could - and I can tell you that the only good thing about an extended period of claiming unemployment benefit is that, at parties, I can thrill audiences by reciting my National Insurance number.

But I managed to organise my time - on weekdays I would go to the local library, check the vacancies in all the papers, come home, tidy up and be done in time for lunch and the lunchtime edition of Neighbours, this being the golden era of Paul and Gail Robinson and the mythical, always-misplaced Udigowa Contract ("Gail... have you seen the...?"). Most days I would then retreat into the dining room for an afternoon of computerised card games whilst listening to "Hawaii" by The High Llamas.

The High Llamas - Sparkle Up



Despite the bleak picture I've painted above, I have nothing but happy thoughts associated with this album. It's still one of my "Top 10" albums after all these years, as I discovered when I dug it out again today. At the time I heard it, I didn't really have a clue about any of the influences that seem so obvious now - Steely Dan, post-'Pet Sounds' Beach Boys, John Barry, soft-rock. (In fact, this was the period in my life when I was still coming out in a cold sweat whenever I heard the Beach Boys.) None of that seemed to matter as I listened to the smooth vibes and weirdly-twisted, smart-arse lyrics.

The High Llamas - Literature is Fluff



Everything is recorded with such precision and the instruments are placed exactly just so, but at the time I was more of a lo-fi enthusiast. It's weird - I know why I like it now, I just don't really understand why I liked it then! Despite all of the smoothness, there's something a bit cracked about it all - I don't think it's entirely sincere and Sean O'Hagan is obviously an adept musical magpie. But the warmth and heart audible throughout stops the album from being a parlour-room songwriting-contest smirk-fest.

The High Llamas - Peppy



According to the ubiquitous Wikepedia, the album is "a musical spaghetti western on themes of tourism and colonialism", none of which mattered a jot to me at the time, as I switched between Tai Pai and Vegas-rules Solitaire. "Peppy" was always a favourite with gorgeous picked guitar and harmonies.

The High Llamas - Campers in Control



There really isn't anything that complicated about why I like this stuff; it's immensely enjoyable but dense enough to keep you coming back for more. The album has 29 tracks, ranging from the "proper" songs I've included here to bizarre musical collages and short snippets. To me, it's still a perfect album, one that I can listen to again and again.

As my brother will tell you, I am nothing if not a musical completist but I've never felt the need to buy another High Llamas album - I can't see what they could possibly add to this. However, despite the lack of updates on their own website, Wikipedia hints that there'll be a new album next year.

Visit - High Llamas website
Visit - High Llamas on Wikipedia
Buy - Hawaii