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
New Order
Temptation
(Factory 12”, 1982)
The sound of a teenage summer, 1982.
I still remember that night-time summer walk down the tree-lined boulevard of Plymyard Avenue - a monied arterial of big windowed Victorian houses that took the teenage me home from Bromborough railway station to the family home at Athol Drive - past the duckponds, gravel drives and drunken couples lurching home from the Merebrook pub. I'd spent all day revising for "O"-levels at Liverpool Central Library and my end-of-the-day treat was to pop a newly-compiled New Order C90 tape (Side A: Movement; Side B: 12" singles) into my Mk 1 Walkman and fast-forward (that thing ate batteries) to the recently acquired 12" version of Temptation. Listened to now, with journo head on, Temptation is the sound of a band declaring a moratorium on their own past, leaving behind the Joy Division sci-fi landscape of dead ends and degeneration, combining cold machine efficiency with human accident, to create a music of joyous uplift and optimism. Back then, however, it seemed truly inspirational: euphoric, panel-beating New York rhythms and post-punk guitar sharpness piped directly into my ears, allied to Barney's naïvely romantic lyrics that seemed to be specifically about walking down Plymyard Avenue at night and thinking that everything after "O"-Levels was going to be brilliant ("Up, down, turn around / Please don't let me hit the ground / Tonight I think I'll walk alone / and find my soul as I go home!"). It wasn't, of course. Both New Order and I would find themselves corrupted by outside influence once we left our creative bunkers and mixed with the real world, but aside from perhaps hearing my brother play Scott McKenzie's San Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Flowers In Your Hair) at 7am, on the morning after he got back from the Hollywood Music Festival in 1970 - and first experiencing the exhilaration and emotional uplift of the pop key change (at 1.53) and music playing loudly from another room - that night, thanks to a unique combination of age, place, acoustics and song, may be the happiest that music has ever made me feel: on my own, on a big road, walking past Victorian mansions that aren't there any more and thinking of a girl out there with green eyes, blue eyes, grey eyes... It's funny the moments that stay, isn't it.
Andrew Male
Posted by Ross_Bennett at 6:00 AM GMT 18/08/2009
Further Listening
New Order – Movement (London, 2008)
Scott McKenzie – The Voice Of… (Ode, 1967)
The Smiths – This Charming Man (Rough Trade, 1983)
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An overlooked small wonder from an unpredictable career.
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Landscape - From The Tea-rooms Of Mars… To The Hell-holes Of Uranus
Dry computer club Futurists, upon hitting implausible chart paydirt.
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Causa Sui - Summer Sessions Vol 1-3
Epic Danish jams, for when the neighbours get you down.
6:00 AM GMT 12/05/2011
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