Rod Stewart - Every Picture Tells A Story
Rod the Mod finds his solo footing, headed for stardom, with the Faces in his wake.
6:00 AM GMT 22/06/2011
Features Disc of the day
The Selecter
Celebrate The Bullet
(Selecter/Chrysalis, 1981)
2-Tone runners-up fail to regenerate, but do so heroically.
What happened just as Coventry’s Selecter put out Celebrate The Bullet? John Hinckley shot US President Ronald Reagan! Consequently, Radio 1’s Mike Read wasn’t impressed, the record stiffed and the band split soon after, unable to escape the rapid and grisly death of the ska craze. Listen to parts of their second LP - where straight-up tunes retain the spry but passé skank-pop sound that featured on their 1979 2-Tone debut Too Much Pressure - and you can sort of see why. But there is other, more sophisticated material here. Take the sombre title track, a lilting, melancholy lament with a sub-aqua, suffocating quality and a languid bassline, which is either about murder or suicide. Within, Neol Davies’ guitar playing combines blues and jazz textures and Pauline Black emotes a stern kind of anguish; the dub trombone solo is by one Barry Jones, who played on the very first Selecter recording. Hear Washed Up And Left For Dead next to its instrumental version Last Tango (In Dub) and the mood evoked is like that of their old labelmates The Specials’ Number 1 Ghost Town or, years before the fact, the bass-heavy, punky sounds that would come out of Bristol in the ’90s. But nothing could save them; Celebrate The Bullet’s lyrics of communication breakdown and betrayal suggest a group with too many internal tensions to survive.
Ian Harrison
Posted by Ross_Bennett at 6:00 AM GMT 16/01/2009
Further Listening
The Special AKA – In The Studio (2-Tone, 1984)
The Selecter - Too Much Pressure (2-Tone, 1980)
The Dead 60s – The Dead 60s (Deltasonic, 2005)
Previous Disc of the day
-
-
Earl Brutus - Larky
Last salvo of Ginsters Pasty-Warholism from Britpop ramraiders.
12:04 PM GMT 08/06/2011
-
Loudon Wainwright - T-Shirt
An overlooked small wonder from an unpredictable career.
6:00 AM GMT 03/06/2011
-
Landscape - From The Tea-rooms Of Mars… To The Hell-holes Of Uranus
Dry computer club Futurists, upon hitting implausible chart paydirt.
6:00 AM GMT 17/05/2011
-
-
Causa Sui - Summer Sessions Vol 1-3
Epic Danish jams, for when the neighbours get you down.
6:00 AM GMT 12/05/2011
end of body content back to top
Footer
Join us on:
© Copyright Bauer - all
rights reserved.
Reproduction of this
website, in whole or in
part, in any form or
medium without express
written permission from
Bauer is prohibited. All
use is subject to our
Terms of Use
|
|
Comments
Comment on this post
Comment on this post