TRUE STORIES/IT'S ALL TRUE - TRACEY THORN

So here is a quandary for you, both the above are Tracey Thorn and both the above are the song entitled 'It's All True', so it must be. But which one is true for you?
OK, so this is a deceit, but one worth sharing, the two songs being so clearly one and the same and so clearly different. The first is, had you not gauged, the remix, by one Martin Buttrich, (no, me neither) actually came in the year ahead of the second, in 2006, the 2nd, Tracey's "own" version appearing on her 2007 solo record, 'Out of the Woods'. As a boomer from the last century I confess to not always getting the cult of re-mixes. Sure, yes I can enjoy them, as with this, but, as someone who likes to own my music, as shiny black plastic, or smaller silver discs, I can't keep up. With myriad versions and reinterpretations being pumped out willy-nilly, do I want to have them all? This particular song, according to the excellent trainspotter site Discogs, had 16 versions alone of the single, each or most with numerous and differing remixes.
I suspect I miss the point; music for me is a an immersive experience. For the dance floor it is probably a means to the end, for the dancing, for the experience, being even entirely ephemeral to and for the moment. So it is for streaming, for hearing and for disposing, not for listening. (The fact I listen to dance music in the car proves beyond doubt I am not the intended audience.)

Tracey Thorn was the singer, with her husband, Ben Watt, in the hugely accomplished 'Everything But The Girl', who emerged as bedsit jazz in 1984 to drum'n'bass melodicists 12 years later. The connection was always Tracey's honeyed vocal, making her latterly girl to go for any number of electronica projects, most notably Bristol's Massive Attack. She has retired from live music, by and large, to be, initially, carer to her ailing husband, then as mother to their children. (Incidentally, he is now much better, having recovered from Churg-Strauss syndrome, a very nasty auto-immune disease that nearly killed him, and now has a solo career as well, albeit with occasional live appearances.) As well as music, she has also written a couple of well-commended books, one her autobiography of performing, the second around the art of singing. (Should any of this sound familiar, yes, I have written about her before.)

Let's finish with some more truths, sung by Tracey, but written by Stephen Merritt, of  the Magnetic Fields, this time about love, possibly the most powerful truth we ever, any of us, if we are lucky, experience.

Music and Books, go get

SMALL TOWNS: BOY (Bronski Beat) & GIRL (Tracey Thorn)

Sorry, a title like that and you're thinking a Small Town Romance, aren't you? Ain't going to happen, given the demographic, which is a shame, as it removes the opportunity to link to a favourite song. (The hell it does, Richard Thompson's sentiments perfectly and expertly underlining any love in any small town.) But these 2 songs, coming from differing perspectives, ultimately each define the risks of a near horizon, encapsulating and encompassing the threat of seeming/feeling different.

Bronski Beat exploded from nowhere in the early 80s, 2 Glaswegians and a Southend-er, all explicitly gay, united by their shared espousal of the then gay music scene, such as it was, often all camp stereotypes and suggestiveness. Irrespective of their home towns being very large and large respectively, the song nonetheless tapped into the sense of isolation in being the only gay in the village. With the video showing the very evident risks of being 'out' in the sticks. (Or anywhere, especially then?) Jimmy Somerville's voice an almost pure falsetto, unmistakeable, soars above the keyboards, the song remaining both iconic and anthemic to this day. (And here's a delightful clip to confirm that truth!)

"You leave in the morning with everything you own in a little black case
Alone on a platform, the wind and the rain on a sad and lonely face."

Sadly it proved too much for the band, an album and 2 singles later finding Somerville leaving after barely a year, to start the equally pioneering and actively gay rights  band, the Communards, alongside the now Reverend Richard Cole, Church of England pastor and radio personality here in the U.K. Bronski Beat lurched on, one hit with replacement singer, Jon Jon Foster, ahead of various less successful ventures.

Tracey Thorn is better known, arguably, for her partnership, with Ben Watt, now her husband, as Everything But The Girl. Or possibly for her honeyed deadpan vocals with Massive Attack. But, ahead of EBTG, after an earlier incarnation as a Marine Girl(s), she put out a beautifully spare, sparse and simple record, A Distant Shore, just barely amplified electric guitar and vocal. From this comes the featured song. Again the loneliness of perceiving oneself different from your peers, themselves fewer in a small town. But the metaphor holds to the extent that, actually, do we not all have small town hearts in our teenage development? If you feel lonely or different even London is a small town.
But rather than a song about the leaving of the small town, Thorn's song betrays a wistfulness for the simplicity thereof, on having left. Green grass etc.

"This is all too much for such a small town girl
Though I see more than you think
This world, very little did I like
And when I did it was not mine."

I came from a small town. I learnt my trade in the big city and have worked all my career in another. I now look whimsically back at those early formative years. I couldn't wait to leave. I would love to go back. I probably won't.

Boy or girl? Which will you choose?

(R.I.P. Larry Steinbachek of Bronski Beat, d. December 2016.)