January 2008 Pottcast

January (apart from, of course, my daughters birthday) was memorable for being a 'piss-awful' month for Liverpool. We lost our game in hand against West Ham and didn't win a match apart from the one in the FA Cup against Havant and Waterloovile (and then it was a close run thing for 45 minutes) which really is nothing to crow about. Most irksome though were the off the pitch wranglings. Not a day passed without some ridiculous headlines about sacking a manger who has got us to two champions league finals (and most importantly) dragged the club out of the dark ages and overhauled it's structure.

Looking at the titles from Side A of the January Pottacast, for example, Hot Tears, Don't take it too hard and Bright Tomorrow, they seem to form a neat sequence of my thoughts about Liverpool. There is upset, dark moods then blind romanticism about the future. Maybe there was some correlation between my listening and feelings about the club?

Then again, maybe not - otherwise "End of an American Dream" by Lee Scratch Perry and Clap You Hands say Yeah's "Yankee Go Home" might have featured a little more heavily.



Looking at the other tracks, The Fuck Buttons (presumably not a stage instruction from this film) are forming a very short list (two, along with Holy Fuck) of "Great bands with Fuck in their name to appear in 2007".

Hot Tears - Sarabeth Tucek - 5:06

Sunrise – Yeasayer - 4:09

Run - Gnarls Barkley - 2:45

Don´t Take It Too Hard – Tuomo - 3:14

Bright Tomorrow - Fuck Buttons - 4:15

Komaron Runner - Pharaoh Overlord - 6:04

Decibels And The Little Pills - American Music Club - 5:41

New Hampshire - Scary Mansion - 3:16

My Spine Is The Bassline - Shriekback - 4:02

The Queen Of All Returns - Dead Meadow - 5:33 - presumably nothing to do with Christine Gonzalez

Walcott - Vampire Weekend - 3:42 - presumably nothing do with Theo.

Songza

I've been using this thing a lot of late and it hasn't really let me down. It's a music search engine launched last autumn that searches the net fairly extensively.

Amongst other things - I found a recording of Ramleh live in New York from last October.

Belated December Pottacast

Belated ‘cast from December 2007.

Thinking back – I’m not sure what I was listening to in December – Looking at my iTunes, I downloaded 312 tracks. A lot of it was “backlist” – including Blue Aeroplanes a plenty, some Wackdaddies reggae and a couple of Victims Family tunes.

I remember being blown away by the new Black Mountain record, which has sent me on a trip through the psychedelic vaults and got me back into Circle (hence the track here) and Pharaoh Overlord. The Circle song is “an adrenalin packed comet of fiery-PCP intensity”. The best Finnish export since Jari Litmanen (not the cryogenic version now keeping the medics at Craven Cottage busy).

I liked the Japancakes cover of the whole of My Bloody Valentines ‘Loveless’ LP. There was some impressive ‘nu-gaze’ from Young Galaxy and reliable tunes from Sonar Kollektive.

I also remember reading an article by Lawrence Donegan in the Guardian that reminded me of the time I got a flyer through the post for Lonnie Donegans prophetically named “This could be the last time” tour. Nothing exceptional about this – except that it arrived three months after Lonnie Donegans death. I blamed it on the post.

Some months later though I found out from a girl I was seeing that it was she who had sent out the flyers whilst temping at the venue. Her boss had asked her to “send out all that shite in the corner of the room”. She duly obliged, unaware that the sultan of skiffle had left the crease for the last time. I found a link to some reduced price t-shirts from that tour – but didn’t bookmark it. Heh ho… There was an ironic element to this as the venue concerned was the Barbican Centre in York. With most of the acts they put on there, you look at a flyer and think “They are still alive?”…

Here is Side A: (click to listen/download)

Make the Road by Walking - Menahan Street Band - 3:09

Aly, Walk With Me - The Raveonettes - 5:02

Pump up the volume - Cool Kids - 2:37

Outside the City - Young Galaxy - 3:23

Circle – Circle - 6:39

World's Greatest - Bonnie Prince Billy - 2:26

Battles - Atlas/ MIA - Boyz mix – Diplo - 3:49

When You Sleep – Japancakes - 4:12

Western Lullaby - Tentacle Boy - 4:48

Sea Of Tranquillity – Colleen - 5:46

Ruf – Laub - 3:28

Some long songs on Side B: (click to listen/download)

Bright Lights - Black Mountain - 16:41

Like A Child (Carl Craig Remix) - Junior

Boys - 10:40

Slip Beneath – The Warlocks - 8:07

Crewell - Starving Weirdos - 8:50

Happy New Year – even if I didn’t even manage to get this out in time for the Chinese one. January to follow...