Lookalikes #43: Undercurrent by Bill Evans and Beneath This Burning Shoreline by Cherry Ghost

Lookalikes #42: Hats by The Blue Nile (1989) and Cocoa Sugar by Young Fathers (2018)

I’m confused here

I’m New Here is the final studio album by the late, great Gil Scott-Heron, released in 2010. We’re New Here is a remix of the album by the xx’s Jamie xx, released in 2011. Nothing New is a posthumous album of songs recorded during the I’m New Here sessions, released in 2014 on Record Store Day on vinyl only. We’re New Again is a ‘Reimagaining’ of I’m New Here by Makaya McCraven, released in February 2020.

Gil Scott-Heron died in 2011, so what’s going on?  It seems to me to be a case of the Johnny Cash Cow, as I’ve mentioned previously. Seven Johnny Cash albums plus a box set have so far been released from the Rick Rubin-produced 'American sessions' with, according to Cash's son in 2014, 'four or five albums in the works'. Seems a bit excessive to me.

With I'm New Here there seems to be four separate albums associated with it (hold on, actually five altogether with the I'm New Here (10th Anniversary Expanded Edition) just released). I loved the original album, though it felt quite thin on the ground, only 28 minutes long including half a dozen spoken interludes, produced by XL Recordings owner Richard Russell. Like Rubin's Cash sessions, there are cover versions and a sparse sound. Sometimes just a beat over Gil's haggard spoken voice. In fact, as Uncut magazine's review (awarded two stars, whereas in most other publications it got four or five) at the time suggested, the "finished article assembled, Bowfinger-style, without [Scott-Heron's] knowledge". Indeed, I don't think Scott-Heron was entirely happy with the result, calling it "Richard's [Russell] CD". Russell added all the music to the vocal tracks, including Gil's chattering that went on between takes.

We're New Here has Jamie xx use his skills as a dj to recontextualise the album in the style of his debut album with the band The xx, using snatches of Gil's voice with dubstep and garage styles. Nothing New contains more songs recorded at the original sessions, this time extremely sparse versions of his own songs, with just voice and piano. Now we have We're New Again, the album reimagined again a decade later, this time by Chicago producer and drummer Makaya McCraven who takes it back to Gil-Scott's mileu of free jazz and blues. The just-released 10th year anniversary version of I'm Not Here contains the original album as well as a bonus disc of even more songs recorded at the original sessions – with even more extended spoken interludes (this bonus disc actually came out first in 2010 as a limited edition with the original album).

You have to hand it to Richard Russell and Jamie xx, though, middle class white boys from south London, obviously huge fans of Gil Scott-Heron, who helped bring him to a new generation of listeners; it had been sixteen years since he had released an album before I'm New Here. It's just they had in mind a sound they wanted to hear and that was their sound, not Gil's.

I remember listening to Panthalassa: The Music Of Miles Davis, 1969-1974 when it first came out in 1998. Bill Laswell remixes In A Silent Way and On the Corner, Miles' electric jazz and funk period to create a surprisingly cohesive, unified, ambient soundscape (though when the remix got remixed a few years later, the results were awful). This was nothing new in Miles' music – producer Teo Macero edited and spliced together elements from hours of Davis' improvised sessions in the studio to create the masterpieces In a Silent Way, Jack Johnson and Bitches Brew.

Gil's original version of New York is Killing Me, from I'm New Here, contains a hypnotic handclapping riff, which reminds me of a song on Leonard Cohen's posthumous studio album released last year, Thanks for the Dance (an album two minutes longer than I'm New Here), called Night in Santiago. The album was taken from vocal tracks recorded at the sessions for Cohen's previous album, 2016's You Want it Darker. The producer, Cohen's son Adam, added music to the bare vocals, employing various singers and musicians, including Beck on Jew's harp and Daniel Lanois on piano. I would love to hear Makaya McCraven's take on the album, New Thanks for the Dance?

Previously on Barnflakes
Top 30 of the year
The top 100 albums
where new here
Rubinise me
Top 10 record producers 
More Ex-Ex Elliott
Elliott School of Rock

Dabbling

It’s fairly well known that photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson all but abandoned photography some twenty years before his death – at aged 95, mind; so you could say he retired at a normal age, then did some drawing classes – which is what, say, my dad has done but without the poncy bit saying he insists on drawing as his true calling, which is what Cartier-Bresson said, though apparently it was his first love. But like Bob Dylan’s recent artwork, Cartier-Bresson’s are pretty mediocre. Worse, as also with Dylan’s, they take away all the mystery and beauty so evident in their ‘day jobs’ (photography/music).

Quite a few musicians and actors also paint (and many more are also photographers, such as Lou Reed, David Byrne, Julian Lennon, Andy Summers, Bryan Adams and Jeff Bridges – though everyone's a photographer now, of course, and a web designer, and a writer, and a film-maker, etc). Most are mediocre, but obviously their works sell for thousands of pounds, like Ronnie Wood's. Actor Anthony Quinn's paintings are actually pretty good.

Less well-known and perhaps more interesting is photographers and film-makers who make music. After all, both professions are about filling space. Photographers William Eggleston and Wolfgang Tillmans and filmmakers David Lynch and Alejandro Jodorowsky (in my mind, two of our most prominent living polymaths, encompassing between them film, painting, music, writing, acting, transcendental meditation, psychogenealogy and just about everything in between).

After having his photos adorn numerous album covers (from Big Star and Joanna Newsom to Primal Scream and Silver Jews), it took until he was 78 for William Eggleston to make his own album (though he could apparently play the piano aged 4), Muzik, released in 2017. His synthesizer soundscapes are cathedral-like with deep organs, improvised tinkering pianos and the odd fire alarm – I rather like it. The cover photo, above, is by Alec Soth, who seems to be everywhere nowadays.

A few years ago Wolfgang Tillmans was riding the crest of Frank Ocean's, erm, wave when Tillmans' song Device Control was used on Ocean's 'visual' album, Endless, and his frank photo of Frank used for the cover of his Blond(e) album (just about everyone's favourite album of the decade). Tillmans had always photographed music – gigs and bands, and occasionally Djayed – and tinkered with making music before he even owned a camera, but it's only recently he's released various EPs. His music is described as a mixture of synth, trance and house, with Tillmans also providing vocals.

David Lynch could have been talking about Eggleston's photography when he refers to his friend's album, Muzik, as 'music of wild joy with freedom and bright, vivid colours'. Lynch has often dabbled in music, from the Eraserhead soundtrack with Alan Splet, influencing a generation of industrial music; to writing the lyrics to Julee Cruise's dreamy first album, Floating into the Night; and finally releasing his collaboration with Angelo Badalamenti, Thought Gang, in 2018, originally recorded in the early 1990s. He has also released three albums under his own name; they're kinda like Lynch and his films – weird, compelling, a bit retro. His cover of Bob Dylan's The Ballad of Hollis Brown is, well, it's why Mel Brooks called Lynch 'Jimmy Stewart from Mars'.

It's hard to know where to start with Alejandro Jodorowsky. On the Finders Keepers website, who reissued some of the soundtracks to his films on vinyl, they describe them as a mix of 'free jazz, Mexican acid folk, symphonic psych rock, Swedish prog, spiritual jazz, lush Morriconesque scores, analogue electronics and West African percussion'. So there you go. No need for anyone to give up their day or night job.

Previously on Barnflakes
Notes on being me
Top ten photographers
Death of the Polymath
Absolutely famous
Don't give up the day job
Sherman and Sherman

Pirate ballad barngains

I'd briefly heard the first volume of these when it came out way back in 2006, and loved it (but never owned it), and have wanted it on CD ever since – from a charity shop, of course. I found out recently that there was a Son of Rogues Gallery (released seven  years after the first instalment). This month I got them both within a week of each other: Rogue's Gallery from Oxfam in Exeter, and Son of Rogues Gallery from the British Heart Foundation in Truro, Cornwall. Both for less than a doubloon.

Devised by Johnny Depp and Gore Verbinski, director of Pirates of the Caribbean, Rogue's Gallery was inspired by the film and released without fanfare after the second Pirates of the Caribbean film, Dead Man's Chest. If the films have all the gritty realism you'd expect from something based on a Disney theme park ride, the 43 songs on the (2 CD) album feel authentic and ballsy in comparison. Indeed, they are all traditional – and often ribald – 'pirate ballads, sea songs and chanties' sung by a motley assortment of characters: from ancient rock stadium fillers like Sting and Bono to folk royalty from Loudon Wainwright III to Richard Thompson. But it's the unexpected singers (in this context) that really stand out: Bryan Ferry, Lou Reed, David Thomas from Pere Ubu, Jarvis Cocker, Anthony (from ...and the Johnsons fame). Nick Cave, it almost goes without saying, features several times.

Despite being made seven years after the original, Son of Rogues Gallery continues where the first left off, with perhaps an even more motley crew of characters, including a duet by Michael Stripe and Courtney Love plus a song featuring Tom Waits and Keith Richards, two of the most pirate-like legends in rock music. Other highlights are numerous, but include Beth Orton, Iggy Pop, Shane MacGowan, Patti Smith (with Johnny Depp) and Frank Zappa. But the great thing about both volumes is famous names sit comfortably alongside the unfamiliar (to me anyway).

Maybe it's because I've been living in Cornwall a while now, and even been to the Falmouth Sea Shanty festival, but I love both CDs –  a treasure trove of ribald, rousing, sing-along tunes to shiver your timbers.

Top ten vinyl wants

There's really no logical explanation why I want certain albums on vinyl (though desire doesn't need an explanation) but it's partly to do with that warm, analogue sound, the album sleeve... and being pretentious.

In truth, sound quality has little to do with it – my most passionate and profound musical experiences were probably in the 1980s on my hissy Sony Walkman listening to albums taped from scratched records borrowed from my local library.

I've wanted all of the following for years, and could go and buy them all on eBay or Discogs today, but that would be cheating. Obviously I want to come across them randomly in charity shops for £1.

1. Popol Vuh – Aquirre (film soundtrack)
2. Moondog – Moondog
3. Meredith Monk – Key
4. Sleep – Dopesmoker
5. Moe Tucker – I Feel So Far Away: Anthology 1974-1998
6. Sons of Kemet – Your Queen Is A Reptile
7. La Planete Sauvage (film soundtrack)
8. Incredible String band – U
9. Dawn of the Dead (film soundtrack) 
10. Lô Borges/Milton Nascimento – Clube da Esquina

Previously on Barnflakes
Top ten missed vinyl barngains
The month's musical barngains

Recent barngains

Western Stars, Bruce Springsteen's best album – and album cover – for years (his last four studio albums have been terrible).

As mentioned previously, barngains have been thin on the ground in these parts – with the recent exception of the new Bruce Springsteen album, Western Stars, an impulse buy in Tesco's. I was at the till with the CD, along with some other items, and when the guy serving me came to scan it, it came up as 1p. He tried it again, and again. Still 1p. He buzzed to call someone over. No one came. He let me have it for 1p.

But it was a recent trip to London where the barngains really started flowing. In my first charity shop visit, on the way out of the shop, after clumsily looking at some records in the window, my eye caught a drawing on the cover of a large book. I picked it up and it was the rather plush catalogue to the latest Bob Dylan exhibition, Mondo Scripto, which ran late in 2018 at the Halcyon Gallery in London.

I had not seen the exhibition, but agreed with most critics about it at the time, that while his songs are full of surrealism, mystery and beauty, this new series of drawings illustrating his songs were rather too prosaic and literal: a farm for Maggie's Farm, a bed for Lay Lady Lay, a hand knocking on a door for Knockin' on Heaven's Door – you get the idea.

However, the book – £45 from the gallery shop, £3 in the charity shop – is gorgeous. The drawings are amateurish but charming. Each one has a page of hand-written lyrics next to it (often re-imagined and different from the original songs, something Dylan has done all his career). The book is large and luxurious (with apparently many different drawings to the ones in the show). I was pretty happy.

I might also have got some CDs over the next few days. In fact, there was one charity shop where I bought a lot. They must have all come from the same donator as they jumped out at me amongst the usual Robbie Williams and Adelle albums:

Flower Dance: Japanese Folk Melodies (Nonesuch Recording)
Lyle Lovett and His Large Band
Elton John – Honky Chateau (I loved the film Rocketman)
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Push the Sky Away
The Bonzo Dog Band – Cornology Vol.2 – The Outro
Bill Frisell - Have a Little Faith
Eminem – Kamikaze (for the cover)
The Cinematic Orchestra – Ma Fleur Live at the Barbican
Tom Waits – Alice
Classic Bluegrass (from Smithsonian Folkways) 
Jack DeJohnette – Made in Chicago (ECM Recording)
The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society (Deluxe Edition)
The Zombies – The Singles As & Bs
Mike Oldfield – Hergest Ridge (Deluxe Edition)
Roscoe Holcomb – The High Lonesome Sound 
Crosby, Stills & Nash – Crosby, Stills & Nash

All 50p-£1 each. There were lots of other good ones: Dylan, early Ry Cooder, Neil Young, Frank Zappa and King Crimson among them, but I either had them or didn’t want them. I got a bunch of other things too, in other charity shops, including a set of three Portmeirion storage jars for H in the relatively new Shooting Star Children's Hospices Charity Shop in Northcote Road, where the woman serving me, from Malibu, L.A., wrapped them up nicer and with more care than I wrap up birthday and Christmas presents.

Previously on Barnflakes:
Barngains
Two leaks (in a week)
London through its charity shops #8: 'round Clapham Junction

Elsewhere on Barnflakes:
BARNGAINS is a select list of rated barngains from 2007 to the present day.  

Lookalikes #41: Kamikaze and Licensed to Ill album covers

Another poor album from the once-great Eminem, Kamikaze's cover is a 'homage' to the classic 1986 Beastie Boys album Licensed to Ill, which I bought at the time on vinyl. I'm tempted to buy the Eminem on vinyl too, just to put them side by side.

Previously on Barnflakes:
Lookalikes
Album Cover Mash-up

The weekend in barngains

Pictured:
The Cramps, Smell of Female LP (£2, Putney charity shop)
Yes I have it on CD, but great band, best album title ever, cool cover.

Fairport Convention, Liege & Lief LP  
(£2, Putney charity shop)
Didn't have this one at all. I only have Unhalfbricking by Fairport, which I've mentioned previously.

Rodreiguez, Cold Fact CD (£1, Putney charity shop)
Another recent coincidence this – I was chatting to a friend about Searching for Sugar Man over dinner the other evening, then this turns up. I've mentioned Light in the Attic, who have re-released the 1970 album, before. There's another 'alluring narrative' that goes with Rodreiguez: he was (re)discovered a decade ago working as a labourer in Detroit, not knowing his debut album had become a cult classic, and he had become a national hero and beacon of hope in South Africa.

Paul Nash in Pictures: Landscape and Dream 
(£3.50, Putney charity shop) 
Beautiful book.

Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon  
(£3, Hammersmith charity shop)
Even though this will turn out to be another Gravity's Rainbow, I've been desperate for this ever since going to Kosovo. H said it would turn up eventually, and it did. There was no way I was ever going to pay £21 for a paperback.

Krazy Kat: The Comic Art of George Herriman 
(£2, Crystal Palace charity shop)
The best comic strip ever.

Not pictured:
Two-for-one tickets for Kew Gardens
To see the newly restored Temperate House, even if it did rain.

Free screen print from Mai 68: Posters from the Revolution exhibition, Lazinc gallery, London
To the same friend I was chatting to about Rodreiguez, I muttered something about The Clash line "turning rebellion into money" with regards to the exhibition, but fascinating nonetheless.

Previously on Barnflakes:
Barngains
London Through its Charity Shops

Elsewhere on Barnflakes:
BARNGAINS is a select list of rated barngains from 2007 to the present day.

Letraset after sex

Potential lame cover for a East London hipster band/design collective (naturally released on limited edition red vinyl; comes with a set of white Helvetica Letraset), inspired after seeing a Joy Division-esque poster for the band Cigarettes After Sex (they're actually quite good, despite the name) then talking Letraset.

Concept: James W
Design: Me

Leonard Cohen's Photoshop Problems

I'm excited about Leonard Cohen's new album, Popular Problems, which comes out 23 September (but stream it here now) to celebrate Cohen's 80th birthday (which is on the 21 September). I'm not excited about the album cover, once again (like 2012's Old Ideas) presumably designed by Cohen himself, and once again showcasing his rudimentary use of Photoshop and sense of design (though Dear Heather from 2004 was very nice). With an ugly font. Someone please tell him! It manages to be worse than Old Ideas, which at least had a decent photo of the man on the cover. Anyway, I try not to judge albums by their covers but just can't help it.

View some of Leonard Cohen's prints here. I quite like some of them.

Lookalikes #35: Bowie / Stezaker

David Bowie's 2013 album The Next Day, with cover designed by Jonathan Barnbrook ("...often in design it can be a long journey to get at something quite simple"), and collage by John Stezaker, who uses found material in his work.

RIP Martin Sharp, 1942-2013

Martin Sharp, Australian artist most famous for his album covers for Cream and art director for Oz magazine in the 1960s, died yesterday aged 71. Note the cover words of Oz magazine (top), which should read 'Mr Tambourine Man' actually looks more like 'Mist Urine'. My favourite poster of his, which I've been meaning to buy for ages, is SEX!

Inside album cover of the day: Naked City

I have no idea why whenever I have a post with the words sex or babes or even skinny dipping in the title, it gets hundreds more hits than any other posts. My post for Roxy Music's Country Life, featuring scantily clad women, has been viewed over 35,000 times (and comes up near the top of Google images when searching for it). John Zorn's Naked City was released in 1989 and features a black and white photo of a dead man on the cover. The inside contains illustrations by Japanese manga artist Maruo Suehiro, who seems to specialise in images of graphic sex and violence. I love the Japanese: so repressed on the one hand, so perverse on the other.

This autumn the British museum is to host an exhibition of 16th-19th century Japanese erotic art. Seems they've always been perverse, the Japanese.

Previously on Barnflakes:
Goodness Gracious Inner Gatefold

Lookalikes #34: Meet the Beatles/Meet the Residents

The Beatles' first U.S. album cover has been parodied numerous times but I like the Residents cover best. Probably worth noting that The Residents are better than The Beatles. The website Deface Value features 'authentically found and intentionally altered album cover art'.

Recent Barngain LPs

Often I'll buy a record in a charity shop if it has a nice – or bizarre – cover. Though you shouldn't judge a book by its (usually bad) cover, perhaps one should judge a record by its cover if it's a good'un. All the above, none of which I'd heard of, turned out to be great.

Clockwise from top left: Fargo, I See it Now (1969): religious pop psych from Salt Lake City, Utah; The Butterfield Blues Band, The Resurrection of Pigboy Crabshaw (1967); Sharks, Jab It in Yore Eye (1974) and the self-titled debut by Upp (1975), a British rock/jazz fusion band, featuring guitar by Jeff Beck, who also produced the record.

Lookalikes #29: wonky album covers

The Enemy's Music for the People (2009) and Orbital's Wonky (2012).

Mike Mills album covers

Clockwise from top left: Beastie Boys' Hot Sauce Committee Part Two (2011); Wild Flag (2011); Sonic Youth's Washing Machine (1995) and Moon Safari by Air (1998)

I'm glad I finally bought the Beastie Boys' latest (last?) album, Hot Sauce Committee Part Two, on vinyl. It arrived yesterday and I was delighted to discover it containing two white vinyl records, a bonus 7", an iron-on T-shirt transfer and digital download. As well as a nice cover designed by Mike Mills, who, like with many designers, I find myself liking their work before knowing who they are.

Mike Mills (b. 1966) is a film & music video director and graphic designer. He directed indie flicks Thumbsucker (2005) and Beginners (2010), which was based on Mills' father who came out as gay aged 75 after his wife (i.e. Mike's mother) died of brain cancer.

Mike Mills' website and book.

Lookalikes #27: Black Sabbath Vol.4/Sleep Vol.2

Black Sabbath's fourth album, Vol 4 (1972) and Sleep's 1992 EP, Vol 2, which contains a live version of Black Sabbath's Lord of This World.

Sleep's classic Dopesmoker, containing the hour-long song Dopesmoker, has recently been reissued.

Previously on Barnflakes:
Lookalikes #24: Third Albums

Goodness Gracious Inner Gatefold

Great inner gatefolds are often overlooked, overshadowed as they are by their outer counterparts. The cover of the first album (designed by Barney Bubbles) by prog rock band Gracious! features nothing but an exclamation mark on a white background, which does nothing to prepare you for its glorious pop art inner gatefold (slightly below centre, above). Many inner gatefolds feature saucy designs, perhaps being able to get away with more than their more conventional outer relatives. Some of the best inner (and outer) gatefolds were designed in the 1970s, when prog rock was in full swing and rock was at its most decadent and outrageous, with bands like Yes and Led Zeppelin and artists like Santana (Lotus) and Miles Davis (Bitches Brew) producing beautiful and outrageous music to match their beautiful and outrageous gatefolds.