Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts video

It was almost thirty years ago that I linked up two VHS recorders and created Blood and Rain, a montage of film clips and footage I'd shot of rain, to the soundtrack of Bob Dylan's A Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall*. For better or worse, that video (along with the now-classic Red Lipstick) got me into film school.

Well, all these years later, I'm still editing film clips to the tune of Bob Dylan, now with help from YouTube and an Apple Mac. Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts is a song from Dylan's classic Blood on the Tracks album. The song has spurned two screenplays, neither of which got made into films. It seems now that Luca Guadagnino, director of Call Me By Your Name, intends to make a film out of the entire album.

Dylan has apparently only sang the song once live and I don't recall hearing any cover versions, so it's great to hear folk singer Naomi Bedford's wonderful version, for which I have created the video for. The song contains vocals from Naomi as well as twenty other singers and musicians, including her partner and Dylan fan Paul Simmonds (of The Men They Couldn't Hang fame) on guitar, and her son Noah in charge of mixing. The poster image is by Chris Riddell, illustrator and political cartoonist for the Observer.

All proceeds from the recording will go to community causes chosen by We Shall Overcome. 

Bob Dylan's new album, Rough and Rowdy Ways, his first LP of original songs since 2012's Tempest, has also just been released. It's been getting rave reviews, with The Guardian calling it "a testament to his eternal greatness". Three of the songs, including the 17-minute epic Murder Most Foul, were released during lockdown to critical acclaim.

Previously on Barnflakes
The Rebel Soldier
Seven Days of Nothing
Without Joy

Elsewhere on Barnflakes
YouTube Channel

*Unfortunately, the YouTube version prohibits using the actual song A Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall so I uploaded a silent version. You'll need my DVD Homeless Movies to get the full version.

Alternative Call Me By Your Name poster

I love the film Call Me By Your Name; I love the soundtrack album, and I love the book. The only thing I hate is the poster design, which is the same for the film, soundtrack and book. Eugh. it’s so bland and generic. And I hate that hand-written font in yellow. And the weird embrace of the characters. Now listen – I don't say mine, above, is any better – but at least it combines the main elements of the film: music, the infamous peach and the rescued antique arm from the sea, which Elio shakes hands with whilst Oliver holds it.

Look at other alternative posters – usually called 'fan art', which makes it sound so teenager – here. (Whilst browsing, I hadn't realised its acroymn, CMBYN, was a thing, and half-read it at first as a cross between CORBYN, former Labour leader, and CMYK, the four colours – Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black – used in printing. Go figure.)

The soundtrack proved immensely popular, which is odd considering how eclectic it sounds – it ranges from modern classical to awful 80s Europop, and helped hugely by a few Sufjan Stevens classics – yet perhaps that's part of its attraction. The vinyl releases in particular, including, naturally, a limited edition peach-scented version, sold out immediately. Then there's a limited edition blue vinyl, a transparent red and even a regular boring black vinyl.

Previously on Barnflakes
I'mpeach
Poster for The Last Movie
The Morris Dance Murders Movie 
See You Next Tuesday & Wednesday

Top ten songs about films

1. Song: The Seventh Seal by Scott Walker
Film: The Seventh Seal (Bergman, 1957)
"Anybody seen a knight pass this way?
I saw him playing chess with Death, yesterday"

2. Song: Debaser by The Pixies
Film: Un Chien Andalou (Bunuel/Dali, 1929)
"Got me a movie
I want you to know
Slicing up eyeballs
I want you to know" 

3. Song: Nebraska by Bruce Springsteen*
Film: Badlands (Malick, 1973)
"I saw her standin' on her front lawn just twirlin' her baton
Me and her went for a ride sir and ten innocent people died"

4. Song: 2HB by Roxy Music
Film: Casablanca (Curtiz, 1943)
"Oh I was moved by your screen dream
Celluloid pictures of living
Your death could not kill our love for you
Take two people, romantic
Smoky nightclub situation
Your cigarette traces a ladder
Here's looking at you kid"

5. Song: Brownsville Girl by Bob Dylan** 
Film: The Gunfighter (King, 1950)
"Well, there was this movie I seen one time
About a man riding 'cross the desert and it starred Gregory Peck
He was shot down by a hungry kid trying to make a name for himself

The townspeople wanted to crush that kid down and string him up by the neck" 

6. Song: E=MC2 by Big Audio Dynamite 

Films: Performance, Walkabout, Don’t Look Now, the Man Who Fell to Earth and Insignificance, all directed by Nic Roeg.

"Man dies first reel, people ask, "What's the deal?

This ain't how it's supposed to be; Don't like no Aborigine" [Walkabout]

"Took a trip in Powis Square, pop star dyed his hair" [Performance]
"Met a dwarf that was no good, dressed like little Red Riding Hood
Bad habit taking life, her calling card a six-inch knife" [Don't Look Now]
"Space guy fell from the sky, scratched my head and wondered why" [The Man Who Fell to Earth]
"The King of brains, Queen of the sack; executives have heart attack
It's assault course celluloid the money makers would avoid
Sometimes notions get reversed – centre of the universe" [Insignificance]

7. Song: Like Dylan in the Movies by Belle and Sebastian 
Film: Dont Look Back (Pennebaker, 1967)
"Don't look back
Like Dylan in the Movies"

8. Song: Lyla by Coco Rosie 
Film: Lilya 4-ever (Moodysson, 2002)
"It reminded me
Of a movie I just saw

About a little girl
From Yugoslavia
She got sent away
They made her prostitute
She ate McDonald's all day
And never had a chance to play
Lyla" 

9. Song: The Union Forever by The White Stripes 

Film: Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)
"Sure I'm C.F.K.

But you gotta love me
The cost no man can say
But you gotta love me" 

10. Song: Breakfast At Tiffany’s by Deep Blue Something

Films: Roman Holiday (Wyler, 1953); Breakfast at Tiffany's (Edwards, 1961)
And I said "What about Breakfast at Tiffany's?"
She said, "I think I remember that film
And as I recall, I think we both kinda liked it."

*Springsteen also wrote a song called Badlands which has nothing to do with the classic Malick flick of the same name.
**Film references and dialogue litter the songs of Bob Dylan, most frequently on his 1985 effort, Empire Burlesque. One keen Bobcat has found references to 61 films in Dylan songs..

Lifetime subscription

Time to read: depends how fast you are at reading.
Main thrust of argument: I hate Netflix and Spotify because they both completely devalue films, TV and music, making it all a never-ending stream of shit. After not very long it all becomes an absolutely meaningless waste of time.

Forgive me for sounding like a broken record but, to recap: first we bought records, then 8-track, then cassettes, then CDs, then MiniDisc, then remastered box sets with bonus and live tracks, then mp3s. Now some of us buy records (actually, the facts are slightly misleading, even though vinyl seems to be everywhere, in the UK, 23m people still buy CDs compared to 4.3m purchasing their tautological vinyl records – streaming accounts for about 114m albums) which will probably be a completely pointless limited edition on red, blue or green coloured vinyl. But most of us now stream the music from Spotify or Apple. So it’s possible to have bought the same album on up to about a dozen different formats, only to end up not owning it but only subscribing or renting it.

We do this with films and TV too, And computer software. Nothing is ours anymore. If it was once ours –  on LP, Betamax, VHS, cassette, CD or DVD – we probably gave it to a charity shop years ago or, if young enough, have never, ever bought any removeable media. With other streaming services, such as Disney+, Apple TV, HBO Max and BritBox (literally can’t think of anything worse in the whole world), entering the arena, Netflix will lose some of its most popular programmes and films (as the likes of Disney and HBO take back their content from the steaming giant), and we may find ourselves having to join half a dozen streaming services to watch what we used to watch just on Netflix. It may be that soon we will all be trudging round the charity shops buying back our DVDs and CDs.

Naturally, I don’t pay for any streaming services. I disagree with everything about them. However, I have just finished my free three month Spotify trial (three months is ages! Yes, long enough for them to figure you won’t be able to live without it. Ha, I dropped them like hot potatoes). Saying that, it was a good experience.

How else could I go from King Krule to Prefab Sprout to Grouper to Roxy Music to John Zorn to Mazzy Star to Circa Waves to The Avalanches to Michael O'Shea to CAN to Julia Holter to Bardo Pond to Against All Logic to SQURL to Michelle Gurevich to Janet Jackson to Destroyer to David Thomas Broughton to XTC to Tame Impala to Meredith Monk to Billie Eilish to Gang of Four to Nico to The Fall. And that’s just in a day. There is no way I would have the physical space, let alone be able to afford, the amount of music I listened to if I were buying it on CD or LP. Basically I listened to hundreds of albums I couldn’t have done otherwise.

The main difference between Spotify and Netflix, of course, is Spotify has just about every song and album you can think of, and Netflix has about eight films you want to watch (Amazon Prime has even less – any film you actually want to watch will never be on Prime; you'll have to pay an extra £4.99 to rent it for the evening; possibly £10 to 'own' it on Amazon's cloud), and even that's going to decrease, and a trillion shitty series which all start with the kiss of death: A Netflix Original.

A million times better than Netflix or Amazon Prime was LoveFilm (RIP), also a subscription service, but one where DVDs were sent in the post. I know, what an antiquated thought in these streaming days, but, and to me it’s a huge but, they had just about every film available on DVD (yes, that means foreign films too). As the Guardian said at the time, when Amazon bought the company, then closed it in 2017 (I know, right, not as long ago as you thought), LoveFilm – the hint is in its name, really; Netflix may as well be called NetWatchAnyOldShitFlix – they catered "for people with specific tastes, who are into Korean horror or screwball comedies from the 1930s and 40s, for people who will carefully write down the names of films when they read a good review, or whose first response to a film they loved is to watch everything else that director ever did". I still, after all these years, think streaming is for morons (the highest-rated movies on Amazon Prime are mostly two-star reviews in The Guardian). It’s the difference between having a nice meal in a restaurant or stuffing your face with junk food. It's the difference between quality and quantity.

(The use of the humble letterbox hasn't entirely vanished. If sending letters and cards – or DVDs (though not video games, apparently – a colleague tells me video game rental services are popular) –  by post is pretty obsolete, the internet has a thousand other subscription services to shove through your door, from vegetable and beauty boxes to toilet paper and coffee.)

I still don't trust algorithms – or rather, I wish they were better. I've mentioned before how you buy a one-off holiday, then all you get for the next month is online ads for holidays to the place you've just been. The whole if you liked that, you'll love this thing, is a dreadful bore, leading to us all watching or listening to very similar TV and music (the internet in general is said to narrow tastes, from politics to porn). Netflix and Spotify end up serving a non-stop stream of similar material. Music becomes part of the background. When you get to the end of an album, it doesn’t stop, it just continues playing similar music it thinks you’ll like (to be fair, you can probably turn this off in preferences). With Netflix, the programmes which are popular have more seasons made which are identical to the first one (locations and a few characters may change).

I like my films and music to consist of making some effort. Going to the cinema (Parasite was great!). Reading about an album, ordering the record and waiting for it to arrive in the post, or going to a record shop. Unwrapping it, holding it, reading the sleeve notes. Maybe even listening to it (I'm not even joking when I say that – like a sucker, pun intended, I ordered the limited edition, transparent vinyl – red had sold out – version of the soundtrack to the classic lesbian vampire film, Daughters of Darkness. It is gorgeous, and I have no chance of playing it in the near future – my record player is in storage).

Previously on Barnflakes
Top ten Studio Ghibli films
Incidental sounds from Netflix's Power
Random Netflix review: Stranger Things 3
Revenge of the VHS tape 
Amazon Prime / Netflix mash-ups
Random Netflix TV reviews

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

Tables have turned

Last Monday, I went into work and pitched a feature idea to the commercial director on the vinyl revival, I know not exactly new, but quite apt for Christmas I thought, plus I know most of the record shops from Warminster to Penzance, and thought it was a good idea. The commercial director thought so too, and told me to go for it.

So I researched the record shops, designed a fact sheet for the advertising guys to send out to record shops, designed the ads they sold (six in all), interviewed Matt the hat, who owns a record shop in Barnstable, and then wrote the actual feature. The three-page article appeared in The Independent (the regional paper for the south west, not the national) last Sunday, 1 December.

The so-called vinyl revival has been well underway for over a decade now, and showing no signs of abating, with last year’s sales topping four million in the UK and almost ten million in the US. But 2019 is the first year records are set to overtake CD sales, ironic to consider that by the late 1980s, the CD was said to be the death of the record.

Events such as Record Store Day, held every April since 2008, have helped ignite the vinyl revolution, with Universal Music’s sales manager calling it “the single best thing that has ever happened” to independent record shops. And although records can now be bought everywhere from your local supermarket to coffee shops, as well as HMV (which was saved from administration in February this year and now believes vinyl could be its saviour), it is local record shops which offer the most passion, variety and loyalty among collectors.

The south west offers numerous, excellent record shops in its big cities, such as Rooster Records in Exeter, Really Good Records in Plymouth and Wanted Records in Bristol, but the smaller market towns also contain treasure troves of vinyl. Raves from the Grave has branches in Warminster and Frome. The award-winning Drift Records in Totnes is family-owned and serves cocktails on Friday and Saturday nights. It has also become focal point for local musicians. Clocktower Music in Bridport have around 8,000 items in stock and West Quay Records in Bridgwater is locally well-loved.

Further down in Cornwall is Room 33 Records in Bodmin, Museumvinyl in St Austell, Lost in Music in Camborne and Music Nostalgia in Truro’s Pannier Market. Falmouth contains Sounds OK and Jam, a cafe and record shop selling new vinyl upstairs and secondhand records in its basement.

What becomes the common thread in all these shops is the owners’ love of the music. Matt Poulton – otherwise known as Matt the Hat, due to the top hat he doffs – has been running Discovery Music, his record shop in Barnstaple, for over thirty years, and he’s always done it for the music, having loved music and records since a teenager, and never for the money (though he did recently sell an LP by little-known UK prog-rock band Steel Mill for £1,800).

Matt attributes today’s interest in records to various things, including nostalgia and a backlash against technology – and though he is famously a technophobe, he believes the internet, with young people listening to playlists and flicking seamlessly between musical genres, has increased the variety of music they listen to. The main difference in record buying Matt has noticed in recent years (he’s against calling it a vinyl revival as for him, and many others, it never went away) is the variety of people buying records now – all ages and backgrounds.

Like all grand pronouncements at the start of the new century – from the end of the world to the end of print – the death of vinyl didn’t happen. The opposite did. Whilst arguably the CD has crystal clear sound, there’s nothing quite like the warm, dusty, analogue sound of needle on vinyl.

Previously on Barnflakes
Top ten vinyl wants
Notes on being me
Top ten records I would have bought in Totnes if I had any money
South London record shops
Top ten missed vinyl barngains

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

Notes on Hedluv + Passman

It seems everyone in Cornwall – even if they haven’t heard of Aphex Twin – has heard of the Redruth “Casio rap” duo Hedluv and Passman, though most are unsure if they are a proper band or a comedy act. Most agree they are crap. Me, I love them, and though an Aphex Twin tune or Fisherman’s Friend song would probably be a more appropriate national anthem for the county, I agree with Cornwall Live that M.I.C. (Made in Cornwall) is the only real contender. All together now:

From the engine houses
To the lighthouses
We've got it made in Cornwall
Like the lighthouses
Forged in serpentine
Where they work the mines
And the dress code is informal
We've got it made in Cornwall.

Like with Ant and Dec, I am unsure who is who, but one of them came into Oxfam the other week; I lugged downstairs a load of classical music LPs for him to browse through – he bought two. The manager was quite excited; it was like having someone famous come into the shop.

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.  

Two leaks (in a week)

 

Leaks are all the rage – in politics, technology, business, sport, film, music – if anyone is anyone, they're leaking (or being leaked) something, somewhere. The internet, like a church roof, is full of leaks. Being cloaked in secrecy, is it quite exciting when the something in question actually leaks. I've bought – legally – two musical leaks this week. It's hard to know anymore if leaks are genuine or simply PR ('Google leaks its own phone').

The first 'album' I bought was Radiohead's MiniDiscs (Hacked), over 16 hours worth of unheard Radiohead music recorded during the OK Computer sessions between 1995 and 1998. What happened was a hacker nicked Thom Yorke's MiniDisc archive and threatened to leak it online unless he was paid $150,000. Yorke thought fuck it, the material 'isn't v interesting' (his words), so released it all himself on Bandcamp for fans to buy for £18 (you know, to be exact, if it sounds like £18 for 18 hours, it's actually a bit less than 18 hours – 16 according to some articles online; and if it sounds like £18, it's actually £21.60 after VAT).

If you know me, you'll know I've probably never played a Radiohead album all the way through, so the only concept more depressing than having to download 1.8Gb of Radiohead material that didn't even make it onto a record was having to listen to it. So I didn't bother. But I did buy it. All proceeds are to go to Extinction Rebellion, so a pretty good cause (Thom Yorke feeling guilty for taking so many flights – he apparently had a build-up of liquid in his ears from doing so – quip a thousand cynical Guardian readers in the comments section of the article about the decision to release the material). We're still not quite getting this whole climate change thing when some depressing leaked music gets more press than the future of the planet. (Today, there are actually online reviews of the 16+ hours – yes, that would mean the poor sods had to listen to it all night.)

The second album I bought was Leak 04-13 (Bait Ones) by British producer Jai Paul. It got 8.9 on Pitchfork recently so I thought I'd give it a try. The story is, the collection of demos was leaked in 2013 and sold illegally through Bandcamp. Jai Paul was so upset about this that for the next six years he underwent therapy and couldn't produce or even finish his unfinished demos. Only now is he able to officially release his unfinished demos. The Fader say: 'one of the great records of the decade'. Pitchfork say: 'the sound of borders breaking'. Anyway, I bought it through Paul's website, where you can pay what you want for the album. So I paid 1p. Well, I felt burnt after Radiohead.

What can I say? I've been watching the barnstorming and incendiary performances of Bob Dylan in the new Netflix documentary Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese, as well as listening to the 14-CD set The 1975 Recordings. They make Jai Paul and Radiohead sound like dull, miserable kids playing on their laptops in their bedrooms.

Top ten Canadian musicians

1. Leonard Cohen
2. Glenn Gould
3. Joni Mitchell
4. Neil Young
5. The Band
6. Godspeed You! Black Emperor
7. Jane Siberry
8. Arcade Fire 
9. Peaches
10. k.d. lang

Do say: Where's The Weeknd, Feist, Owen Pallett, Daniel Lanois, Ron Sexsmith and Barenaked Ladies?
Don't say: Where's Rush, Justin Bieber, Bryan Adams, Celine Dion, Avril Lavigne, Drake, Michael Buble and Alanis Morissette?

Previously on Barnflakes:
Top 10 Australian bands

The Rebel Soldier

Based on an American Civil War ballad, The Rebel Soldier is on folk singer Naomi Bedford’s forthcoming LP, Singing It All Back Home. I created the video for it, above.

naomibedford.com

Previously on Barnflakes:
Seven days of nothing
Without Joy

Notes on being me

Several years ago I went to an interview of photographer William Eggleston. After the interview I thought he would sign books. I’d bought along his classic 1976 William Eggleston’s Guide and made my way down to the stage, along with several others. At the last second he wasn’t feeling well and didn’t sign any. However, he had done a signing a day or two before, and my friend R had got four of his books signed. I was mildly frustrated and, naturally, it stayed with me.

R contacted me early last week to let me know Eggleston was doing another book signing at the end of the week in London. Here I was, in Cornwall, with all my books in London at my parents, including two by William Eggleston. There was only one option – ask the parents. My dad kindly agreed to go and get a book signed for me. Except he didn't know where my Eggleston books were – and neither did I. He looked and found The Democratic Forest. Great, but not the one I wanted signed. I wanted William Eggleston's Guide signed. Dad couldn't find it. Mum couldn't find it. They sent me photos of my piles of books. I couldn't see it either. I let it go. Dad got The Democratic Forest signed. I was happy.

That was William Eggleston. Next was Bob Dylan.

Saturday was Record Store Day. Getting mugs to queue up all night outside record shops to buy already-released records you'd normally only spend a pound or two on in a charity shop – A-ha, Queen, Elton John, Abba etc – but producing them in limited numbers on – say – pink or yellow or red vinyl and then charging £30 for said records, well, it's genius from a marketing perspective and record companies surely can't believe they're raking in money from what was a dead market – not just vinyl but all removable media (just wait for CD Store Day and VHS Store Day – there's already a Cassette Store Day) – until a few years ago. (I'm being slightly ungracious – RSD often features exclusive live albums or alternate versions of classic albums and has helped spearhead the vinyl revival, but a lot of RSD is re-releasing crappy old albums with the dubious distinction of being "the first vinyl release since the last one". And picture discs.)

Well, guess what? I'm one of the mugs. Not content with owning Bob Dylan's classic Blood on the Tracks album on vinyl and CD, as well as the recent More Blood, More Tracks, the 6 CD Deluxe Edition of the Bootleg Series, Record Store Day was releasing the Original Test Pressing for the very first time (naturally I already own it on a bootleg mp3 – oh, and on cassette) which I was rather keen on (Variety called it the 'holy grail' of RSD releases). To be fair, I've never bought a single record from Record Store Day before (unless it's almost a year after the previous RSD and a record shop is selling their unsold stock half price – which happened with Heart of the Congos, the Lee 'Scratch' Perry mix from the 2017 RSD, which I got for £10 some time in 2018, despite it going for circa. £150 on eBay).

I thought I had it sorted. I'd asked my ex to get it from her local, excellent (despite, in the past, staff not being exactly knowledgeable about music) record shop in a small town in Wiltshire – all she'd have to do was walk down the road to buy the record for me. Turned out she was off to Paris that weekend. I asked her to change her flight (no lie); she wouldn't budge.

Why couldn't I go and buy a copy myself, I hear you cry. Well, I could but it would take me an hour to get to any record shop in Cornwall. I went to Falmouth on Friday to a participating cafe/record shop, Jam, and asked if I could buy a copy a day before as I wouldn't be able to make it there in time on the Saturday. The owner looked at me as if I'd blasphemed in church. It goes against everything RSD stands for, she told me, in no uncertain terms. I asked her how many copies of the record she had. Four, and they'd go immediately, she said. Cost? £25.

She did mention that Drift in Totnes would probably have a lot more copies. Then a lightbulb went off in my dim brain: my brother lives there. Which I told the woman. Ah well then, sorted, she said, you don't even have to get out of bed early, but your brother does. Getting him to do that might be difficult, I quipped: he has a new girlfriend. Ah, said the woman.

Anyway, it was a possibility. I texted him. He was on holiday too, but on his way back Saturday afternoon. I told him I was off to the Truro record shop first thing in the morning to get it, and I'd let him know. By 9am Saturday morning I am standing at the end of a queue thirty deep in Truro's Pannier Market, which is where Music Nostalgia is. The man in front of me is after the alternate mix of A-ha's debut album, Hunting High and Low. Which he gets. I do not get the Dylan. Sold out instantly, the owner tells me.

I tell my brother. He's almost in Exeter. He asks me if there's a record shop there. Of course! Rooster Records, been there a few times. He 'rushes' (after having a coffee first) to Rooster Records – they've sold out too. He phones Drift – they have copies left – and asks if he can reserve one. He's told no. I phone Drift and ask if I can reserve a copy for my brother to pick up. I'm told no, in no uncertain terms: you have to be there in person to buy the record. They have a 'pinch' of the records left. I tell brother to leg it there. After Exeter charity shops, lunch and more coffee and a late train he is in Totnes by late afternoon.

Whilst brother was running around South West England record shops, what was I doing? Having a leisurely stroll around Tregothnan House, which has the largest historic garden in Cornwall, and now contains Britain's first tea plantation, producing tea to buy in the shop which reportedly contains only 15% Cornish tea and works out costing about 50p a tea bag. Tregothnan House and gardens has been owned by the Boscawen family since the 1300s. They also own – and holiday-let to rich Londoners – property all over Cornwall. Aside from a brief ransack during the English Civil War (1642–1651), the estate has remained untouched. It beggars belief why this country hasn't had a proper revolution. Anyway, lovely garden and it was only £10 on the charity open weekend (otherwise it's £65 for a private garden visit). Then we went to Merther to see its abandoned church. It has no roof and a forest growing inside it. The squirrels and ravens were surprised to see me.

Meanwhile brother is speeding up his pace in Totnes. Then, with the shop in sight, he thinks about running and imagines having to wrestle the last copy from the hands of the punk who'd just bought it, drag him outside and 'do a De Niro on him' (his words).

Luckily time was on his side and after all the pseudo rush the shop still had half a dozen copies left after my bro bought one for me. I don't know when I'm going to see it or play it, but I've got it. The Eggleston and the Dylan – couldn't have done them without a lot of family help. Much love and appreciation.

• William Eggleston, 2¼ exhibition at David Zwirner
• Bob Dylan's Blood On The Tracks Test Pressing, Record Store Day Edition, Reviewed

Previously on Barnflakes:
Top ten records I would have bought in Totnes if I had any money
South London record shops
Weekend Barngains 
Top ten photographers

Protest music is dead! Long live protest music!

“Fossil fueling, masturbation, immigration, liberal kitsch, kneeling on a pitch”
– All the big ones addressed in The 1975’s Love It If We Made It

In this age of Brexit, climate change, huge disparities between rich and poor, diminishing wildlife populations and a thousand other near-apocalyptic predictions for the future happening in front of our eyes, we were wondering where the fuck was all the modern protest music in the U.K.

Well, for starters it’s not played on Pirate FM (the default Cornish radio station). Besides, apparently people over the age of 35 don’t listen to new music. But it’s out there, it’s angry, it’s loud, and most importantly, it’s good to dance to.

Pastoral by Gazelle Twin and Merrieland by Damon Albarn's supergroup The Good, The Bad and The Queen both tackle Brexit head on. Albarn has been examining what it means to be British since the days of Park Life. There's an argument that's been circulating the internet for some time that Britpop helped fuel nationalism, so perhaps this is Albarn trying to make amends, exploring Britain's loss of identity in a variety of musical styles.

Pastoral is scary stuff, featuring an Adidas-clad, demonic pied piper (see the Banksy-esque cover, above, mocking classical music publisher Deutsche Grammophon) touring modern England, from the phone-hacking scandal to false nostalgia. From the outset, the music is a frightening mash-up of ancient, traditional, folk sounds and chants combined with frenzied, electronic beats to create an England divided and adrift. Gazelle Twin is the moniker of Elizabeth Bernholz, a Brighton musician. It comes as no surprise that she conceived of the project whilst watching Fever Ray live.

There's also some chanting on Suede's latest album, The Blue Hour, which gives us a slice of British Gothic horror, reflecting Brett Anderson's recent move to Somerset. Whilst not overtly political, the album's dark themes of a missing child, dead animals and rubbish dumps conjure up an anti-pastoral, modern bucolic realism not often glimpsed in contemporary rock.

It's pretty much a political act in itself to have an album recorded entirely in the Cornish language; more confusing if the singer is actually Welsh. Anyway, this is what Gwenno has done on her album, Le Kov, sounding like a Welsh-Cornish lass singing Gainsbourg-era Jane Birkin via Air and St Etienne.

Whilst the Idles’ shout-singing-post-punk-anthems on their album Joy as an Act of Resistance, “don’t care about the next James Bond", they are "...wondering where the high street’s gone” in an impassioned and timely album.

Though modern dating isn’t my biggest worry for the planet, MGMT also tackle the current political climate and technology addiction on their fourth album, Little Dark Age.

Nenah Cherry, whose last two albums are as good as anything she's ever done (2012's The Cherry Thing and The Blank Project from 2014), released Broken Politics in October, her second album produced by Elliott School alumni Kieran Hebden a.k.a. Four Tet. Immigration and gun control are two issues she sings about as well as more personal issues.

If protest music used to mean folk music, à la Woody Guthrie or Bob Dylan or, in the UK, Billy Bragg, with acoustic guitar wailings about times a changing, nowadays a rap, dance or indy song will reach more people and hopefully have more impact. Here's to Anarchy in the U.K.

Top ten records I would have bought in Totnes if I had any money

I probably looked through more vinyl in Totnes, Devon, than I have in any market town, ever (it was like the Hay-on-Wye for records). For a start there was a record fair on, so I perused through that. Then charity shops, of course, with prices more ridiculous than the record fair (£20 for the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever, anyone?). Then various vintage shops with some racks of records, and finally a lovely cafe and overpriced record shop called Drift, which sold mainly new records and CDs. Nothing was cheap and I didn't buy a thing.

1. Holger Czukay Movies

2. Crazy Horse Crazy Horse

3. Kurt Vile Bottle It In

4. Jóhann Jóhannsson Mandy (Film Soundtrack)

5. Propaganda A Secret Wish

6. John Coltrane Both Directions At Once

7. Thom Yorke Suspiria (Film Soundtrack)

8. Ty Segall Freedom's Goblin

9. Bob Dylan More Blood, More Tracks: The Bootleg Series Vol. 14

10. Furniture The Wrong People

In the evening we went to an art gallery hosting four DJ sets, a mix of psychedelic, post punk and dub. It was good music and fun. The films Pink Flamingos and The Warriors were projected on the wall. I was afraid of being the oldest person there, but was in fact one of the youngest. The evening started a little tense, like being at an AA party (and I've been to one), but people got limbered up as the night went on, even if it did feel a bit like an ironic comedy sketch of a Fun Night Out In Totnes. A man in dreadlocks wearing a Sun of Albion leather vest asked me if I wanted to buy a magic poem from his red top hat. There was a man wearing a rainbow-coloured beanie hat holding a wooden staff. There was a man wearing black gloves, Michael Jackson style. In other words, people had character and danced like it was 1991. Which is no bad thing.

Previously on Barnflakes:
One Totnes Pound

The top 100 albums

I actually compiled this at work a few years ago when I should have been, er, working. Lists are so much more fun than work. Five of us geeky types (yes, the same ones mentioned here and here) emailed our own lists to each other (aside from these five events, it was the most fun I had in over four years in the same office). I’ve limited myself to one album per artist, otherwise they’d be 30 Dylan albums, 10 Cohen, 5 Velvet Underground, 5 Springsteen and all Belle and Sebastian's LPs. No, there’s no REM, Oasis, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin or Radiohead. You’re lucky there’s a Beatles album in there. Also, it’s in no particular order:

Leonard Cohen Songs of Leonard Cohen
Bob Dylan Blood on the Tracks
Velvet Underground Loaded
Bruce Springsteen Born to Run
Miles Davis In a Silent Way
Gil Scott-Heron Pieces of a Man
Belle and Sebastian Tigermilk
Pulp His 'n' Hers
Blur Parklife
DJ Shadow Entroducing
Beastie Boys Paul's Boutique
Beck Odelay
Michael Jackson Thriller
Nick Drake Five Leaves Left
Moondog Moondog
Terry Riley A Rainbow in Curved Air
Glenn Gould Bach: The Goldberg Variations
Neutral Milk Hotel In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
My Bloody Valentine Loveless
The Doors L.A. Woman
Rolling Stones Exile on Main Street
Incredible String Band U
Sonic Youth Daydream Nation
Pixies Doolittle
Sex Pistols Never Mind the Bollocks
The Beatles Revolver
The Smiths Hatful of Hollow
Arcade Fire Funeral
Terry Reid River
Massive Attack Blue Lines
Joy Division Unknown Pleasures
Various The Harder They Come (OST)
U2 The Joshua Tree
Joanna Newsom Have One On Me
Low The Great Destroyer
Grace Jones Nightclubbing
Naked City Naked City
The Congos Heart of the Congos
Big Brother and the Holding Company Cheap Thrills
Ride Nowhere
Madonna Like a Virgin
Brian Eno/David Byrne My Life in the Bush of Ghosts
Public Enemy Yo! Bum Rush the Show
Guided by Voices Bee Thousand 
White Stripes White Blood Cells
Sun Kil Moon April
Animal Collective Merriweather Post Pavilion
The Strokes Is This It?
Blondie Parallel Lines
Talking Heads Remain in Light
David Bowie Hunky Dorey
JJ Cale Naturally
Warren Zevon Excitable Boy
Sigur Ros Ágætis Byrjun
Can Future Days
Amon Duul II Phallus Dei
Stevie Wonder Innervisions
Boogie Down Productions By All Means Necessary
Al Green I'm Still in Love With You
The Clash London Calling
Serge Gainsbourg Histoire de Melody Nelson
The Pop Group Y
Kris Kristofferson Me and Bobby McGee
Portishead Dummy
Steve Reich Music for 18 Musicians
Otis Redding Live in Europe
Billy Joel The Stranger
The Fall Live at the Witch Trials
Run DMC Raising Hell
Bonnie Prince Billy I See a Darkness
The Modern Lovers The Modern Lovers
The Flaming Lips The Soft Bulletin
Tom Waits Swordfish Trombones
The Cure Disintegration
Fleetwood Mac Rumours
Roberta Flack First Take
Pavement Slanted and Enchanted
Godspeed You! Black Emperor Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
Boards of Canada Music has the Right to Children
Nirvana MTV Unplugged in New York
Hole Live Through This
Kate Bush The Kick Inside
Joni Mitchell Blue
Patti Smith Horses
Simon and Garfunkel Bridge over Troubled Water
Paul Simon Graceland
Blind Faith Blind Faith
Van Morrison Astral Weeks
A Love Supreme John Coltrane
Charles Mingus Blues and Roots
Ennio Morricone The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (OST)
Nick Cave The Boatman's Call
The Stone Roses The Stone Roses
The xx xx
Beach Boys Pet Sounds
Deerhunter Microcastle/Weird Era Cont.
Scott Walker 4
Rod Stewart Every Picture Tells a Story
Roxy Music For Your Pleasure
Wings Band on the Run

Previously on Barnflakes:
The top 100 films

Music in my mind

I stumbled out of bed
I got ready for the struggle
I smoked a cigarette
And I tightened up my gut
I said this can’t be me
Must be my double
– Leonard Cohen, I Can't Forget

Annoyingly, every morning I wake up there's a song in my head that won't go away until I play it. Then it goes away, eventually. It's different every day; the last week was like this:

Monday: Grace Jones – La Vie en rose
No, not Lady Gaga’s recent version in A Star is Born; no, not Edith Piaf’s version of it, though she wrote it; Grace Jones' 1977 version is the definitive version for me. And the one I heard in the shower and had to sing.
Tuesday: Bob Dylan – True Love Tends to Forget
Wednesday: Simon and Garfunkel – I am a Rock
Thursday: Gloria Gaynor – I Will Survive
Friday: Dire Straits – Romeo and Juliet
Saturday: Bob Dylan – Black Jack Davey
Sunday: Leonard Cohen – I Can't Forget