ROCKET/SPACE: SUNFLIGHT/SILICON TEENS

Too tenuous? Well, how else can you fly to the sun other than by rocket? Plus, I've been dying to post this song for aeons.

I first came across the Silicon Teens back in the very early 80s. Working in the outskirts of London, well, into Kent, actually, Sidcup, that there London was a brief train journey up the tracks. Given the future first Mrs Og was still working in London, I spent a fair length of time on that journey. A favourite meander was around Soho, on the cusp of the clean-up between seedy and boho. (Now, inevitably, it is all smart and squeaky clean, smartened up beyond belief.) A common feature of the street markets, omnipresent then on most streets, or so my rose-tinted suggest, would always be the record stall, usually selling promo only discs surplus to the requirements of the music biz centred thereabouts. A good stash of singles could could be bought for next to nothing, and one such was the 3rd single by the Silicon Teens, Just Like Eddie. This was a fabulously bonkers synth led version of the old r'n'r staple, as originally by ex-Tornado, Heinz. With a ludicrous middle eight of random noises, reprised at the end, I so loved the version, and still do.

However, the b-side contained the song I feature, and it swiftly took pride of place as the go-to side. A swirling concoction of early Pink Floyd, a dab of Hawkwind, and the same flat adenoidal vocal that   so beguiles the flip. Wonderful stuff. But who were they? I soon discovered they were really he, he, the voice and the instrumentation, the arrangements, the production, all being Daniel Miller. Miller was the main man and founder of Mute records. He still is. I guess their best known signing would be Depeche Mode, spotty oiks from Basildon, in Essex, a tad round the ring road from Sidcup, a quasi boy band with rudimentary synthesiser backing, who extraordinarily morphed into US stadium fillers, as they matured into songs about doom, death, drugs and, obliquely, religion. Although Miller no longer produces their records, they remain on, in the UK, his label. Other notable signings would include Nick Cave and Goldfrapp.
Anyway, Miller decided to invent a band to allow him the vanity of interpreting some old standards from his youth; he was born in 1951. Sole album, Music For Parties, was exactly as it said on the label, catchy and disposable covers of, amongst others, Memphis, Tennessee and Sweet Little Sixteen. Infectiously raw, they maintain a naive charm that never fails to make me smile. I didn't care that Darryl, Jacki, Paul and Diane didn't really exist, actors portraying them for any interview or video, for me they were real, and I was disappointed no new material was ever forthcoming, beyond the sole appearance of a re-recorded Red River Rock in the soundtrack of Planes, Trains and Automobiles.

Brief though their tenure on the charts prove to be, and that was scant, they only bothering the UK indie equivalent, relatively sparse ground at the time, and in no little part because they mainly recreate oldies, Silicon Teens are amongst the cream of my 80s synth bands. Or 80s bands altogether.

Little known fact, but the Silicon Teens actually had a song named after them, and about them. It's by the Pulsars.

Just Sunflight? Or more....

Trees/Grass: Green, Green Grass of Home

(Merle Haggard version above)

purchase [Tom Jones ]

<Green, Green Grass of Home> may well be the first Trees/Grass song that comes to mind for people my age. Possibly followed by <Tie a Yellow Ribbon>. I cannot say that either of them does much for me besides bring back memories - we were severely exposed to both as they sat atop the charts for longer than I would have placed them there.

For me, Green, Green Grass was a Tom Jones hit. I've brought this next point up before, but since we are talking memories... My pop music exposure during Tom Jones' Green Green Grass period was via a short-wave transistor radio connection to pirate radio Radio Luxembourg, more than 1,500 miles away. This meant that the signal came and went such that you mostly caught snippets of the song.

In perusing the Wikipedia article for the song, I was struck by the number of known covers of the song beyond Tom Jones: Johnny Darrell and Porter Wagoner, credited with the first public exposures, and then Jerry Lee Lewis, Joan Baez, Elvis, Nick Cave, Kenny Rogers - and believe it or not, the Grateful Dead.

I also had not fully focused on the lyrics - certainly registering the general melancholy, but ascribing that to an aspect of what I assumed Country music was like. And perhaps not totally wrongly - there are no few songs that lament the state of some po' boy on Death Row, for that's the story the song tells. If you hadn't noticed:

There's a guard, and there's a sad old padre,
Arm in arm, we'll walk at daybreak
Yes, they'll all come to see me in the shade of that old oak tree,
So they lay me 'neath the green, green grass of home

The Voice, Myanmar above

and the Dead, - well ... Bob Weir with ... above

Right: Red Right Hand

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds: Red Right Hand
[purchase the album]
[purchase Seasons 1-3 of Peaky Blinders]

Sometimes, a song seems to have been written for a specific event, but it turns out to be a coincidence. I remember just after 9/11, at least three songs were being played on the radio that appeared to relate to the attack—Wilco’s “Jesus, Etc.,” with its references to tall buildings shaking, skyscrapers scraping together and smoke, Afro-Celt Sound System and Peter Gabriel’s “When You’re Falling,” with its references to falling off of buildings through smoke and clouds, and Ryan Adams’ “New York, New York,” which sounds like a love song to the devastated city. But each of these songs was written before the attack and have nothing to do with it (the Ryan Adams song is actually a love song to a city resident, and the video was shot 4 days before, and includes shots of the World Trade Center).

Which is a long way around saying that Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds’ song, “Red Right Hand,” sounds like it was written specifically to be the theme song for the BBC TV show, Peaky Blinders, but, in fact, was written two decades earlier.

For those of you who are living under a rock, or under an outdated belief that television sucks, it is currently the age of “Peak TV,” where there is just so much great stuff available to watch, on streaming platforms, cable, and even on broadcast TV, that it is literally impossible to see everything good. A few years ago, my friend Tom suggested that I watch Peaky Blinders, a show about a Romani/Irish gang run by the Shelby family in Birmingham, England, after World War I, and I decided to give it a try. The Peaky Blinders gang, which actually existed, supposedly derived their name from the practice of stitching razor blades into the peak of their flat caps to use as weapons, but that story may be apocryphal.

I was hooked, immediately. The central character, Tommy Shelby, a damaged, decorated veteran, is ambitious, ruthless and apparently fearless. His goal appears to be to consolidate the family power, then to expand their influence to London, and maybe further. As is common in such stories, such as The Godfather, or Boardwalk Empire (to which it is often compared), there is a plan to begin to move toward engaging in legitimate business, which turns out to never be as easy as it seems. They are opposed not only by other criminal gangs, but also by the authorities, who want to both use the Blinders for their own agenda, while ultimately bringing them down. This ambiguity includes an uneasy relationship with Winston Churchill.

The show is, often, over the top, with choreographed and hyper-dramatic scenes of violence and mayhem, but it is also a family drama, as Tommy needs to deal with his brothers and other gang members, a headstrong sister who ran off with a Marxist, and his aunt, who ran the gang while the men were off at war, and still wields substantial power. There are, of course, love interests and interactions with Downton Abbey-esque nobility, Italian and Jewish gangsters, and IRA fighters.

In any event, Tommy Shelby, as played by Irish actor Cillian Murphy, is one scary motherfucker. And “Red Right Hand,” describes

A tall handsome man 
In a dusty black coat with 
A red right hand 

The rest of the lyrics describe this man as terrifying, mysterious and dangerous:

You'll see him in your nightmares 
You'll see him in your dreams 
He'll appear out of nowhere but 
He ain't what he seems 

Not to mention the fact that the music, as is typical for Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, is eerie and filled with foreboding. It sets a perfect tone for the show, and the song, and other Cave songs, are used throughout the series to great effect. There have been three seasons, so far, with two more promised.

But, as I said, the song was released in 1994, when Cillian Murphy was playing in rock bands, two years before he got his first acting gig. Prior to Peaky Blinders, the song was used in a number of films, including Dumb and Dumber, and the Scream franchise, and in an episode of The X-Files. It has even been used by the South Australian Tourist Board for a commercial campaign.

I have to admit that before watching the show, I was no fan of Cave. And I still don’t love all of his music—some of it is just too dark and strange for me. But Peaky Blinders turned me on to “Red Right Hand,” and other songs of his that I’ve grown to love.

Bible Stories: Jesus Met The Woman At The Well

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds: Jesus Met The Woman At The Well

[purchase]

For some of the best music referring to the Christian faith (not always uncritically), Nick Cave is the man. Here he covered a popular gospel traditional, which appeared on his 1986 album of covers, Kicking Against The Pricks (the LP’s title itself is a Bible reference, from Acts 26:14).

“Jesus Met The Woman At The Well” abbreviates the high noon encounter in Samaria from John’s gospel. The song takes the bit where Jesus reads her mind regarding her five ex-husbands and the current live-in lover, and she’s so impressed by this that she identifies Jesus as “the prophet”.

Here’s how St John describes the conversation: “Jesus said to her, ‘Go, call your husband, and come back.’ The woman answered him, ‘I have no husband.’ Jesus said to her, ‘You are right in saying, “I have no husband”; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!’ Touché, Jesus.

The idea of the story is that Jesus not only approaches a social outcast, which was rather frowned upon (but, being in Samaria, which was hostile to Jews, he was an outcast as well), but that she in turn could be “healed” from what she evidently acknowledges as her sins. That was a new way of doing things at a time when women such as the one at the well were more likely to be stoned to death than to be counseled.

Nick Cave would like that, I suspect. He rejects organised religion, and doesn’t call himself religious, but he says that “I do reserve the right to believe in the possibility of a god”.

Duets: Henry Lee

Nick Cave & PJ Harvey: Henry Lee

[Purchase]

When two artists you love do a duet together you feel like the universe is lining up. Of course, in the case of the duet between Nick Cave and PJ Harvey, the pairing was even obvious to them. The two dated briefly around the time of Cave's most well-known album "Murder Ballads", just long enough for them to record this traditional ballad together in his trademark spooky style and for the relationship to (supposedly) inspire much of his next album "The Boatman's Call".

Both Harvey and Cave are artists with a penchant for dark and sinister storytelling, both seem to have a way of thoroughly creeping out the average listener. Their styles seem to mesh perfectly, apparently they agreed since they shared a rather passionate, if somewhat brief, relationship together. The video for the track is spooky yet very sexy as well, it sort of personifies their relationship as well as their public persona. Strangely, I find they even look a bit similar, making the whole thing even creepier if you ask me. It's almost as if Cave had found his female counterpart, or perhaps, they're long lost cousins.

Winter Wonderland: Fifteen Feet Of Pure White Snow

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds: Fifteen Feet of Pure White Snow

[Purchase]

Nick Cave is an amazing songwriter and storyteller, always creating haunting tales of death, addiction and general human malice. He's been making records for twenty years or more, and was named one of Paste Magazine's 100 Greatest Living Songwriters a few years back, something I strongly agree with, though I'd like to have seen him higher than #90.

This song is generally believed to be yet another song using snow as metaphor for cocaine. This is probably quite likely considering this album (which is also probably the one I genuinely enjoy the most of his) was the first Cave made after getting off drugs himself. The names he mentions in the song, Mona, Mary, John, Mark, Matthew, are supposed to signify people he lost due to drugs. The metaphor is brought to life, imagining friends slowly being lost to this tremendous blizzard, and slowly losing yourself under that same weight of heavy snow.

1984: In The Ghetto

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds: In The Ghetto

[purchase]

In 1984 Nick Cave started his post-Birthday Party career. Surrounding himself with some Bad Seeds, he released the From Her To Eternity album, followed soon by the In The Ghetto single. I liked both a lot when they came out, but when I played the album recently after a years long hiatus I found it hadn´t aged really well. Blixa Bargeld´s original guitarwork still rings a bell, but Cave´s lyrical and vocal mannerisms simply don´t do it for me anymore. In The Ghetto remains one of my fave Cave performances however. Saint Nick is in great voice and - surprisingly - doesn´t stray that far from the Elvis original.