News, Views and Music Issue 137 (Intro)

March 10th:

Good morrow dear readers, has another week gone by so quickly?! Well, actually it hasn’t – you may have noticed these newsletters are becoming earlier and earlier the last few weeks. The reason for that is partly because I’m making the most of peace and quiet if I know I’ll have a few hours on my own to write to you all and partly because I can feel another CFS crash coming and want to give myself a bit of spare time. Of course we also had the sad passing of Davy Jones which I just had to mark – how strange that day was, I’d literally just logged off from starting work on a review of ‘The Monkees Present’ when the news broke and I had poor Davy’s face looking back at me from Yahoo News. Doubtless we’ll return to that review in the future but after a week of saluting Davy and playing Monkees albums all week I thought I’d write about something different entirely. So, what have I been up to since the last review? Youtubing mainly – I am now the proud owner of lots of 10cc B-sides I never thought I’d ever get to hear, a whole host of early Simon and Garfunkel tracks their makers have been trying to bury since the mid-60s (you really shouldn’t chaps, they’re ever so good considering the young age at which you made them) and most of three solo CSN albums that cost a packet to buy now they’re out of print (‘Oh Yes I Can!’ ‘Stills Alone’ and ‘Songs For Survivors’ respectively). In the meantime I see my twitter followers have grown to a tremendous height (236 now, welcome all!) and our website hits have gone up steadily and have now reached 14900! Excellent! Now is the time to take over the world I think hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah  ahahahahahahahahahaha! (well I can’t make more of a mess of it than David Cameron surely?)

Talking of which, there have been two Cameron speeches that have got me really mad this week (even more than usual!) First up, is it just me or can Cameron not take a question from a female MP without resorting to some sort of innuendo? His ‘I’d normally love to pleasure my honourable friend but I can’t at the moment’ wouldn’t have been out of place in a Carry On film. And what was all that horrendous speech about the state of our country all about? ‘We should be fairer and more democratic’ ran the headlines in the papers, alongside details about how the Coalition never actually won a majority of the public vote and shouldn’t be in power at all! (For those who read the Daily Mail and don’t know, their first act in office was to over-rule the law regarding coalition Governments formed when no party won a majority of the vote, which should till 2010 have only lasted six months before we all head to the polls again). David Cameron gone by Christmas, that’s what we say.

By the way, we don’t include them as fully formed AAA members but some of you may be interested to know that Jethro Tull are working on a sequel to my favourite of their LPs ‘Thick As A Brick’ (the one that’s all one long song and featured a replica of a newspaper as part of the artwork). We’ll keep you posted how things are going and wonder which AAA albums we can expect sequels of sometime too (Sgt Pepper’s OAP Band? The Hollies ‘Evolution vs Creationism’? The Moody Blues ‘Days Of Future Long Since Gone’?  Neil Young’s ‘After After The Goldrush’?) OK I’ve run out of bad puns now, it’s on with the news...

                                                    

♫ Beatles News: There’s a repeat of the little heard and fascinating ‘McCartney on McCartney’ interview series starting on Friday in the 4am documentary slot on BBC4. First on air in 1988, the year before Macca’s big ‘touring comeback’, its especially fascinating for Macca’s thoughts about the solo and Wings years and is the most comprehensive interview around for Macca’s thoughts about the early 1980s (Lennon’s death, the Tokyo prison incident, working with Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder, etc).

♫ Belle and Sebastian News: BBC6 are celebrating their 10^th anniversary with a series of programmes dedicated to each year from the past 10 years and the sessions recorded especially for the channel. That’s a very good idea and a good chance for collectors to get hold of some badly needed repeats, although sadly it means the station is concentrating on the ‘nightmare wilderness of music’ years 2002-2012. So not much AAA music going on there then. The one exception is a B+S broadcast in the ‘2006’ show which aired last Friday in the 3am ‘Live Music Hour’ slot (and should be available on BBC I-player for a while). Alas this show is centred around the less than wonderful ‘Life Pursuit’ album, although the songs sound rather better than they did on the record.

ANNIVERSARIES: Here we go again for another week of AAA birthdays, this time around for musicians born between March 6^th and 12^th: David Gilmour (guitarist with Pink Floyd 1968-94) who turns 65 on March 6^th and Micky Dolenz (drummer and actor with The Monkees 1966-70) who turns 67 on March 8^th. Anniversaries of events include: The Rolling Stones record their first live album – Got Live If You Want It – during a gig in Liverpool on March 6^th 1965; The Beatles release their last ever single in the UK with ‘Let It Be’ on March 6^th 1970, over a year after it’s recording; the first time British stars fill up the whole of the UK top 10 (including AAA members The Searchers at no 5 with ‘Needles and Pins’ and The Rolling Stones at no 6 with ‘Not Fade Away’) (March 7^th 1964); The Beatles appear on the radio for the first time singing ‘Dream Baby’ on ‘Teenagers Turn’ a full seven months before their first single release (March 8^th 1962); The legendary Fillmore East venue - or ‘Fillmore Esat’ as they famously mis-spelled it on their advertising banner – opens in San Francisco and will become home to the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane among others (March 8^th 1968); Pigpen aka Ron McKernan, organist and founder of The Grateful Dead, dies of liver failure on March 8^th 1973; The Beatles release their last ever EP after breaking every EP record in the book over the past four years (‘Yesterday’, which never was a single in the UK, is released on March 10^th 1966); The Blue Jays – Moody Blues members Justin Hayward and John Lodge – perform their first gig at the Albert Hall (March 10^th 1975); Paul Simon gets a gold record for his best-selling solo single ’50 Ways To Leave Your Lover’ (March 11^th 1976); Paul and Linda McCartney tie the knot at Marleybone Registry Office (March 12^th 1969) and finally, John Lennon gets evicted from Los Angeles’ Troubadour Club after heckling the Smothers Brothers, an act that makes him question the wisdom of continuing his ‘lost weekend’ (March 12^th 1974).