Slide: Slide Away

purchase [ other stuff from Muzai Records ] (The label for Sunken Seas)

The <slide> theme was deliberately left nebulous enough to allow for slide guitar entries or some pedal steel, and if you happen to follow my personal tastes, you'll know that my favorite musicians include masters of that style: Ry Cooder, David Lindley, Bonnie Raitt, Lowell George.

As I often do, I scratched out a couple of starting lines heading down that path with the intention of letting the idea stew for a couple of days before settling on one of the slide masters. As we are now at the end of the <Slide> theme calendar, it looks like that one will have to wait for our traditional November <Leftovers> theme because (Baby, Baby, Baby ....) I'm out of time.

Yet, as that idea sat on the desktop, I also began work on a song or two with <Slide> in the title. This would have been last week, some time before the Video Music Awards earlier this week. Pure coincidence, since I had no way of knowing the song list for this week's Video Music Awards.


Bono, Oasis, The Verve, Noel Gallagher ... they've all got songs named <Slide Away>. Bono doing the vocals on a Michael Hutchence composition. And Oasis doing the Noel Gallagher song of the same name. And then Miley Cyrus this past week. And then, as a last minute bonus, yet another Slide Away from a group on Muzai Records called Sunken Seas. There's probably more out there.
Not knowing much of anything about any of these, I guessed that they were likely variations/covers of someone's original.

I can't think of too many other song titles of exactly the same name that are distinctly different songs. At the same time, you could surmise that the conceit behind the song name is obvious enough that any could hit on the title for an original: I guess it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise ... how often does love end in one party slip/sliding off down a different path? Slide Away is a quite natural occurrence - whether as an act IRL or as a title for a creative work. The song stories are all "love songs" in one form or another. The Gallagher/Oasis and the Verve's are more centered on sliding away together; Cyrus' and Hutchence's are more about being away.

The Verve:

 

Oasis:

Hutchence/Bono:

Cyrus:

Sunken Seas:

Slide: Mud Slide Slim

purchase [Mud Slide Slim]


What to make of James Taylor's musical career?
Myself - having spent a number of formative years in North Carolina ... I kind of embraced his early career. I loved his simple, but crisp, guitar picking: his plaintive vocals and somewhat mournful messages. Lots of loss and sadness.

And then, at what appeared to be a high point in a rising career, comes the Carly Simon story (that - while potentially a win-win affair - didn't seem to bring either career any benefits)

Now, I don't mean to say he has become irrelevant - his music from the 70s (Sweet Baby James, Mud Slide Slim) guarantee him a top spot in the history of rock/pop, but since then, he had slid (slided?) down the list of important musical influences - and you wouldn't have thought he would become so irrelevant if you were living back in 1972 or so. Mud Slide Slim makes for "pleasant listening",but  it nowhere near carries  the  value of Sweet Baby James.

Said Rolling Stone at this point in his career:
"Something has gone askew. James’ career is the lie to his art, for, if he is by nature an introspective reclusive, the effect of his career is the opposite. The discrepancy which makes James’ enormous success grotesque to the outsider is exactly what makes it personally threatening to him. So James himself perpetuates his problems, by releasing a best-selling record which aims at their solution."

The  Rolling Stone review of the album back in '71 pretty muchly panned Taylor's effort as no follow-up to the previous.

OK. Heard. How's about this?
Marianne Faithful:

Hmmm...

SLIDE: CHAIN UP THE SWINGS/MICHAEL MARRA

Another little known artist, I know, as I near singlehandedly drive down the ratings of this once mighty blog, but this is a fella you really should be aware of. Or have been aware of, as he is now deceased, having died actually a few years back, in 2012. But, even if he were only ever world famous in Dundee, his rich legacy is still available. Oh, and why this particular song? Look sideways to the picture, the slide. Well, I grew up thinking of the children's playground as the swings and slides, as, give or take a roundabout or a see-saw, that's what they were. This song celebrates, or not, the quaintly scottish presbyterian practice of chaining access to such fripperies on the Lord's day, when god fearing kids should be engaged in matters strictly avoidant of fun. Whilst I don't know whether the practice is still widespread, I would not be at all surprised if it is still mandatory in Stornoway, capital of the Western Isles, or Outer Hebrides. Until recently there were no access to Sunday newspapers on the day they were published, ferries and flights to the island being cried down by The Lord's Day Observance Society. Shops, bars and restaurants were also all closed, the loophole being "except for travellers", necessitating the great and good to have to make wee journeys of a sunday...... (For what it is worth and, apropos of nothing, this is the liberal community from whence the mother of the current  POTUS came. And mine.)

Dundee is on the other side of the country, and on the mainland, in the kingdom of Fife, wedged in between Edinburgh and Aberdeen. Famous as a shipping port, the centre of the once mighty Jute industry, and more recently of the D.C. Thomson newspaper publishing empire, still sending out copy to expats and their descendants worldwide. (What do you mean, you haven't heard of Oor Wullie or the Broons?) Marra started his career, like many scots, in London, his first gig being with fellow countryman, Dougie MacLean, ahead of some minor acclaim in the band, Skeets Boliver . However, the explosion of punk , the mid 70s, was no time for this amalgam of styles, let alone the chorus of the song below, euphemistically retitled for press releases as 'streethouse' door, so back to Dundee he went.

Back home, alongside his burgeoning solo career as an acerbic singer-songwriter, often at the piano, he worked extensively in theatre projects, both acting and as musical director. His records, and there were 7 between 1980 and 2002, were well-received by the critics, which somehow always seems to equivalently equate with poor sales and, at best, a cult status. His style of writing embraced any number of styles, usually that most applicable to the song, often a pithy observation around some tale culled from the news or his personal experience. He often wrote about about artists, both musical and otherwise. Here are 2 examples, the first relating to a scarcely believable true story, about when Frida Kahlo visited Dundee. A live performance, this demonstrates his strength in a live setting, but apologies if you need subbies.

This next was sparked into fruition by the doyen of english folk singing, Martin Carthy, on the occasion of his being awarded an MBE, Member of the most Excellent Order of the British Empire, you know, the one John Lennon sent back. The intro explains.

Luckily, there are a fair few live documents of his career, both on disc and DVD. It is probably to those I would direct the novice. However, like myself, if the bait takes, soon you will want the studio sets as well.

Although he has gone, as I said, his legacy lives on. Dundee indie band, the Hazey Janes, contain his daughter, Alice, and son, Matthew. Indeed, the band backed Marra live and on an EP, 'Houseroom', his last recording, in 2012. He was already ill with the throat cancer that killed him. And, since then, Alice has gone on to produce her own tribute to her father, both on record, and as a show. Here is her version of the featured song.

Michael.
Alice.

SLIDE: THE SLIDE SONG/SPIRITUALISED

The first, I think, post to fully reference this longstanding UK band. Always classified under 'space-rock', a confusing terminology that can embrace everything from Telstar to Pink Floyd, they have been in orbit for nigh on 30 years, arising out of the remnants of Spacemen 3. Jason Pierce, aka J. Spaceman, one of the 2 frontmen of the earlier group, left, taking most of the band with him, together with their signature sound, a heady mix of prolonged and treated chordal notes and drones, allied with a near gospel sensibility in the vocal timbres. Space-rock is also often a lazy shorthand for drug enhanced higher states, and there was always little doubt of this, evidenced freely within the bands output, certainly to begin with.

 1992 saw their first album, 'Lazer Guided Melodies', which, although more overtly 'rock' in it's approach, the only true 'band' album, with solid driving 'motorik' drums, already the seeds of the more majestic and symphonic sound were being sown, with strings and brass augmenting the band. It was 2nd album, 'Pure Phase', that gave greater structure, albeit with also a greater amorphous dreamscape stateliness, to what was becoming indelibly Pierce's trademark. Indeed, the concept of Spiritualised as a band was already beginning to wilt, fast becoming a studio vehicle for Pierce to utilise whomsoever to project his ideas. The Balanescu Quartet, classical mavericks, were drawn in for this record, much as he dismissed his earlier colleagues. I remember buying this at the time, quite struck by the difference from anything else going on. (Confession: I bought it on the strength of the artwork, it just looked enticing, a trick Pierce has always employed.) For the swiftly following 'Ladies and Gentlemen, We Are Floating in Space', this went a step further, with, as well as the Balanescu Quartet, in came the London Gospel Choir, suddenly an obvious step in this otherwise emphatically non-sectarian music. And Dr John, the  voodoo night-tripper himself. (All of these and pedal steel maestro, B.J. Cole, plus a cast of dozens, appear in the track below this paragraph.) This proved to be the breakthrough earlier threatened, being named 1997 album of the year by the influential New Musical Express (NME). The US was also listening, acclaim coming from Rolling Stone and Village Voice. If there any few lingering uncertainties as to the source of Pierce's inspiration, the special editions of this came in a box designed to appear as the packaging of a box of pills, with dosage advice and a foil-sealed lining over the disc itself. Latterly Pierce has tried to deflect the obvious, citing the message to be of music being his drug. OK, right.

A long gap followed before any further work, the intervening time period fraught with internal difficulties with whatsoever members of the rapidly changing band were still involved. Indeed, mirroring the initial formation of the band out of Spaceman 3, most of the band left en masse, forming another band, Lupine Howl, not without some initial acclaim. The 2 Spiritualised albums of the first half of the 90s took further the gospel sound and influence ahead of yet another hiatus. Perhaps bringing home all the rumours to roost, in 2005 Pierce collapsed, nearly dying on at least one occasion and spending much of the time in hospital, the experience perhaps the stimulus to another game changer, 2008's 'Songs in A/E', A/E (accident and emergency) being the UK parlance for E.R. Even if much of the material was written earlier, within the recording come distinct echoes of the morgue and, as a result the gospel (and blues) hues have a more positive and even a truly spiritual basis. Go figure the song below, old bluesman in space being the vibe offered to me. With space being perhaps that corridor between this world and the next.

Still far from well, with tales of experimental chemotherapy for a never quite specified liver disease, subsequent output has been slow and scant. 'Sweet Heart Sweet Light' in 2012 was deigned to show a poppier side, ahead of last years 'And Nothing Hurt', very much a return and reprise of earlier motifs, massed choirs and string quartets, very much a companion piece to 'Ladies and Gentlemen, We Are Floating in Space'. This is the lead track:

'The Slide Song', which references this piece, comes from 'Pure Phases'. I think it encapsulates the whole Spiritualised sound and ethos. If you don't like it, well, you won't like much else. So what does it all mean? And why Slide? The lyric seems to suggest a regret, an inability to change or make amends. A slide into where he was going, perhaps, but when all is said and done, does it really matter? I just slide into the music.

Slide in, yourself?