(BREAK)FAST

Our head honcho here at SMM sends out our homework on just about every second Saturday, with a handy explanation of how it may be tackled: what the words mean, how it may be interpreted and, often, links and examples to songs, bands and whatnot, that could bear association, however arbitrary. Anything, really, to stoke the fires of inspiration. My brief is to steer as far astray.....

So "Fast", as well as vroom vroom, is a verb to abstain from food, whether for health or for religious goal. The latter is a common concept, the Bible honing in on forty days (and nights) as the ideal length to achieve peak asceticism. Bonus points if spent in the wilderness. Plus, of course, in Islam there is the yearly rite of Ramadan, conveniently ongoing now, whereby followers forgo food during daylight hours. An old workplace had an extensive moslem workforce, Monday night monthly meetings torture for them, as the rest of us tucked in to the bribery of sandwiches. Then, at a decreed moment, suddenly, the day ended, and they dived in to whatever was left, breaking their fast. Hence also breakfast, the end of the fast we all undertake overnight, give or take midnight munchies. And the catalogue of songs about breakfast is as enriching as a full english of sausage, bacon, eggs, mushrooms, beans and black pudding. Oh, and tomatoes, lest anyone think it unhealthy.

Given the Yusuf/Cat Stevens song linked above, it is quite by chance that this song carries a distinct middle eastern flavour to its opening. The impeccably no notes knowingly underused vocal of the brilliant late Billy McKenzie are plastered all over the melody, and it is one of the highlights of the Associates 1995 third album, Perhaps. So ahead of the time was McKenzie, ahead of any time, arguably, it was widely slated at the time, with the passage of time being far kinder than the critics of the day. I love it and his bonkers vocal cascades. The lyrics, as was entirely normal for the band, seem to bear little application to the meal in question, other than a passing mention. But I'm not going to let that deny me featuring th song.

No such frippery with good old Bill Callahan, breakfast: its preparation and its delivery is all the song is about. OK, so a subtext about anorexia might also be in there, but Bill has such a deep inviting bathtub of a voice, it's more about the sound. I would have liked to know what the menu featured. I'm guessing eggs are featured, no doubt 'over easy' or some such americanism. A newer song than often featured here, from his 2020 recording, Gold Record, but I just so love this guy's voice as to feel it churlish not to include it. Funnily enough, although I never bother with it, when I do indulge, it could also be my favourite meal of the day.

Is bed and breakfast a thing outside the British Isles? The idea of a room for hire, with purpose self-explanatory. Not a hotel, a private house, often with a formidable harridan at the helm, letting out her rooms, providing a cooked meal in the morning, ahead of booting you out on your arse until the evening, whereupon you could return, alone, no guests, to your room. Seaside towns have street after street of them. OK, the picture I paint is as dated as the world within all the songs by Madness, the endearingly chirpy ska band with a way both for the gaucheness of English life and the rose tint they apply to it. Hugely successful over four decades, they translate especially badly to countries where the language is supposedly the same. The bed and breakfast man of the song is, I suspect, rather than a frequenter of such establishments, more the sort of chap capable of treating the bed of his paramour as if it were such.

An instrumental interlude courtesy the genius of Norman Blake, a consummate artist on any stringed instrument you might ever mention, guitar through mandolin, banjo and dobro. Here, effortless finger picking evokes the joys of an eye-opener, that pre-solids shot of the hard stuff that rightly gives drunks such a bad name, the first tune displaying that he'd had the (absent) fiddlers ration too. A US national treasure, he is not to be mistaken with the same named weegie guitarist with Teenage Fanclub, himself not averse to a song about the demon drink. Time of drink taken not alluded to.

One of the disappointments that comes with continental travel is the continental breakfast, paltry fare where the only hot thing provided is, if you are lucky, a hardboiled egg, plonked alongside a cold croissant and the end of last nights baguette. Sue Foley, a Canadian blues singer and guitarist, perpetually number three in the rankings, behind Bonnie Raitt and Susan Tedeschi, has clearly toured Europe and tries to excite the table with some local colour. I think I'd sooner have breakfast in Texas.....

Breakfast is served......

 Billy, Bill, Blake, Madness, Foley,

VALENTINES: CUPID COME/MY BLOODY VALENTINE

So, looking ahead to next year, how can I and how will I serenade my significant? Of course, I wouldn't dream of singing myself, my Funny Valentine would be decidedly more funny peculiar than ha-ha, but all this kerfuffle has had me thinking time for a mixtape. (Don't panic, not here.) Browsing my cache I can find nine different songs entitled Valentine, in all styles and genres. Expanding that search  into wiki and there are hundreds. Too much choice. Way too much choice. But, brainwave, how about bands? Ditching the Valentines, the band, as too obvious (and too kitsch, Bon Scott or not), I suddenly realised what could be more romantic than Kevin Shields and My Bloody Valentine?! But, sez you, MBV never sang a song about Valentines, read the brief. When do I ever, sez I, but, clever dick, what about this? Well, sort of.

Cupid Come (Isn't Everything) 1988

Cupid Come, from their first album, 1988's Isn't Everything, epitomises the paradox of the band, the meld of coruscating guitars, all a sonic maelstrom of dissonance, with angelic vocals and ethereal melody floating over and through the storm. Is that shoegaze, then? I quite never got that term, it seeming always to suggest more a winsome introspection and shyness. Only now, the shame, do I understand it was less the avoidance of audience eye contact it referred to, more the necessary concentration of the array of footpedals, the integral tools of distort. Me, I aways just saw this style as a natural transition from Phil Spector and the Beach Boys, a bit of Byrds even, through to the Ramones and, later, the Jesus & Mary Chain and Teenage Fanclub, the tunes never more pop as the backing goes progressively post nuclear. That works for me.

You Made Me Realise (lead single from Isn't Everything) 1988

It could never be said the band were prolific. With, so far, but three long players to their name, their legacy, influence and allegiances cast a longer shadow. Coming together in Dublin during the early 80s, primarily lumped around Shields and karate buddy Colm O Cíosóig. A fairly fluid line up and a string of releases on minor labels gradually built up their name, ahead of catching the ear of Creation records boss, Alan McGee, he and his label then the pinnacle of the indie scene. A clutch of EPs followed, the sound and the membership still evolving, ahead of that 1988 release. The critical response completely overshot the anticipation: the relatively limited initial pressings soon swamped by demand, cementing their move from obscure favourites to cult treasures. (In truth, overall sales were low, outside the aspirational concept of the indie chart. I don't think many copies made their way across the pond at all.)
The main change was the vocals, now almost exclusively female led, this role provided by Bilinda Butcher, also second guitar, with Deb Googe, another woman on bass, alongside O Cíosóig's drums. Shields, writing a majority of the material was second vocals and lead pyrotechnics, on guitar. The dreamy vocal style was, arguably, a by-product of the recording process, working all hours with little sleep, all thus in a state between tired and comatose.

The band followed this with a repackaged reprise of their earlier fare, with some taster EPs then gradually dropping, to fill the unfeasibly lengthy, and expensive, time being spent in a follow-up. Creation bosses were becoming increasingly concerned, not least by the fact that Shields, increasingly troubled by tinnitus, seemed to be the only one much evident in the process, playing all the guitar and bass parts, with pre-recorded drums acting as the click-track. Butcher still added vocals and the band was still nominally a unit, but this was now increasingly Shield's baby. Fearing a dud, it was with no small relief when it came out in 1991. Loveless was  acclaimed with even greater praise than its predecessor, if still only denting the UK and Irish markets. And strangely those of Korea and Japan.

Taken on tour, it was a sign of the acumulated tensions that led to both the band promptly imploding and being dropped by the label. It was all too destructive.

Only Shallow (Loveless) 1991

Shields carried on relentless. Rapidly gaining a reputation as a tortured genius, think Brian Wilson or Syd Barrett, most of this come to nought. Constantly working on and revisioning earlier tapes, adding, subtracting, morphing and melding, it was a full 22 years before it arrived at fruition. Entitled m b v, all four band members are credited, but the participation was often either historical, dating back to the early 90s, or later short term drop-ins to lay down some drum parts or add some vocals. The momentum and demand, the reputation of the band having peaked exponentially during the silence, was sufficient to crash the band website, revived especially for the occasion of downloading the new material. The US press were now on board, avidly avowing, if belatedly, the importance of the band in influencing any number of far more successful and far more famous bands, Smashing Pumpkins and Hole, for two, and made it a feature of many best of lists of 2013. They even toured the States that year, following UK and European dates, if their record-buying heartland of SE Asia had the earliest shows. And, yes, it was the trusty four of Shields, O Cíosóig, Butcher and Googe who regrouped in the live delivery.

In Another Way (m b v) 2013

Since then it has, again, been all promises and hope, several releases projected, including a Shields solo, but never quite making it. But spirits remain undashed, after all, 7 years isn't that long by MBV standards.....

In the meantime, here's an interesting 'explanation' from Shields as to the how and why.

Cupid?

REVOLUTION : REVOLUTION IN THE SUMMERTIME

Play it here!
Buy it here! (Of course it's on vinyl!!)

We don't need a revolution in the summertime
We don't need a revolution anytime

what we need is someone to believe
in like a god to fall out of the sky
what we don't need is a revolution
that could blow our minds away,
yeah away,
tomorrow or today

You can sell me Darwin's theory
evolution got me here to where I am
i'd believe in anyone who'd promise me
the sun would shine today
yeah today
or any other day

we can pray for the sun and let it shine on everyone
sunshine brings love
we can pray for the sun and let it shine on everyone
sunshine brings love

Uncertain of the irony of this appearing directly above the Airplane theory below, given I am referring, perhaps again, to the "revolution" via summer music festivals, albeit with particular reference to the UK. In a strange way, the lyrics above completely underline the point that, needed or not, it has taken/did take place. And now, is it a revolution or a ritual? Or relic?

I love festivals. As a younger man I attended as many as I could, from the Rock of Reading 1975 to the more ambitious Glastonbury 1994, the latter with  my then wife and pre-teen kids, my tastes gradually turning then more to the more intimate (nominally) folk festivals. I think I finally stopped going in about 2003, my swansong being my much visited Cropredy in 2002, the annual Fairport Convention run and curated shindig, still going after many a long year. But, in a whimsy of  disappearing youth, I have this year bought tickets and a tent for The 50th Cambridge Folk Festival. It is true my choice is as much based on my musical preferences as the seemliness of my age: both the stage and the audience will make me feel young, as the "revolutionaries" of the 60s and 70s have become respected elders, letting down (whats left of) their hair in like-minded company. It will feel both a reminiscence and an evolution. With Glastonbury being now on the summer privileged corporate circuit of Wimbledon and Henley Royal Regatta, mass-produced and must-do, both anaethema to me, I am hoping this will feel a nostalgic wallow in ageing counter-culture.

But what of the song? Have you listened to it? Sorry about the biker bit that precedes, it was the only link I could find to this wonderful slice of completelyoutofitstime hippy wisdom, if that is no oxymoron. It is the Cosmic Rough Riders, even the name reeking of a patchouli scented lysergia. Sounding as if from the heart of a stoned california of a quarter century ago, it actually stems from the urban mayhem of Glasgow in 2000. For some strange reason, Scotland's concrete city landscapes have always been a dab hand at producing USA-philic jangle-pop a la Byrds and similar. (Another and possibly better known example would be the wonderful Teenage Fanclub .) By the time the LP upon which Revolution in the Summertime appeared, actually a compilation of 2 earlier self-produced albums, the band had begun to implode, their singer leaving as a run of singles therefrom had begun to garnish them both notice and praise. The band actually lurched on for a number of years and several more recordings, never quite, at least for me, catching these glory days. Enjoy the Melodic Sunshine is the name of the parent record and I unashamedly promote it it a tonic to turn to, on those occasional days we get a blast of sun and summer. I'm praying that it won't rain at Cambridge.