Tag: the lemonheads

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Iris to Ivy

HAVE been on a few lengthy  journeys in the last decade or so. That’s actual journeys, not the ones people go through during a few weeks on reality TV.

While chasing a lifelong dream to succeed in a show which did not exist for much of their lifetime.

In my reality, there has been London to New York without flying. Ten months from the north to south of Africa and back again. An uncompleted circle of South America. And being a Gloucester rugby fan.

But one journey has lasted longer than all of those combined (bar the Gloucester bit, that’s been going on for decades, currently on a largely upward curve) – the one through the I songs on my iPod.

A lot has changed since the start of that journey though songs beginning with I, towards the end of a (possibly ill-conceived) drive to write a blog post a day for a month with the only live blogging entry of listening to my iPod.

One is more likely to be repeated than the other (although, with the assistance of time, both have their merits).

Back then (May 2019), Gloucester had just lost in their first play-off semi-final for far too long and are still in with a chance of their first since, having changed coaching staff, lost a lot of big-name players, flirted with the wrong end of the table, blooded a lot of young players, returned to the play-off flight and still have Billy Twelvetrees in the midfield when necessary.

And, oh yeah, they scored more than 130 points in two home games against Bath. Just thought that needed mentioning.

More important stuff has happened in the wider world – the dog years of Trump and its ridiculous aftermath, the equally ridiculous ongoing Johnson Government, Covid, the fallout from Brexit, the war in U…. oh, just trust me on this, a lot has happened. it is all getting downbeat.

The UK even managed to go from zero points to second in the Eurovision Song Contest.

Seriously, it happened.

Personally, went from working out my notice at the start to journeying overland most of the way around South America, meeting someone along the way (she reckons she is the star of this blog so apparently has to be mentioned somewhere), being forced home from Colombia by Covid, working predominantly as a reporter for the first time in many, many years, keeping up a long-distance relationship, heading back to the newspaper production and getting engaged.

And listened to a lot of songs beginning with I (with several long breaks along the way).

The last blast took us through about 160 tracks from The Goo Goo Dolls (one of those songs which always seems to have been there and have no memory of downloading) to Taylor Swift.

There were plenty of frequent visitors, topped by four versions – two of them live – of It’s The End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) by REM, which is a lot back to back even for such a great song.

Is This It by The Strokes popped up twice while there multiple entries by Half Man Half Biscuit (Irk The Purists and It’s Easy To Be Cynical at Christmas), Belle and Sebastian (Is It Wicked Not To Care? and It Could Have Been A Brilliant Career) and early career Billy Bragg (It Says Here and Island of No Return).

And it would appear Evan Dando has a penchant for writing songs beginning with It’s as there were appearances for It’s A Shame About Ray (title track of one of those albums which revisiting always brings happy feelings), It’s All True and It’s About Time.

The latter has one my favourite moments in any song- when Juliana Hatfield echoes ‘Sunshine’ to herald the band kicking back in and manages to spread a little bit of exactly that – which is always worth anticipating as it approaches and then savour as if drifts off into a tune which deserves more than being remembered for a single moment.

Other old favourites popping up to wave farewell to I included Echo and The Bunnymen (It Was A Pleasure), The Undertones (It’s Going To Happen), Jason Isbell (It Gets Easier), The Pogues (in tandem with The Dubliners on The Irish Rover) and John Grant (It Doesn’t Matter To Him).

There were less frequent, but nonetheless welcome, visitors The Streets (It Was Supposed To Be So Easy) and Let’s Eat Grandma (It’s Not Just Me), who will pop up with their latest album on the catch-up before we start cracking on with K.

There was also It’s All You from Sebadoh, which takes me back to a summer when the album it came from seemed to live in my car stereo (1999 apparently).

And we had two first-time appearances – one welcome, one not so much amid a debate over my self-imposed rules.

The welcome one was the first track from the Hamilton soundtrack – It’s Quiet Uptown – after a very enjoyable night out on a post-engagement few days in  London.

Less so was a second song called Iris – this one, complete with the brackets (Hold Me Close) from Apple’s less than appreciated dumping of U2 tracks in my collection a few years back.

Have ignored them by not downloading them, but a change of iPod – not sure how many more times can do that – brought it in automatically and after much debate with myself, opted to follow the rules and listen to it on a walk along the canal to Sainsbury’s

Which is pretty much all that sticks in the mind.

So that, after all that time and the largest number of tracks for one letter, is that and on to J… well, almost.

Over the three years it has taken through I,  a lot of new stuff has dropped in that needs mopping up from A-I – a late burst of new releases in recent weeks taking that diversion up towards 600 tracks.

Better get started…

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In The Act to Irene

NOT a regular poster on Facebook – bar the links to these posts which may have brought you here – but do tend to have it running in the background when online.

Among the promoted posts, things its latest algorithm seems to think will interest me (based on what evidence, not sure anyone could explain), ads for items searched for once weeks ago and birthday reminders (happy birthday to one regular reader), there is the odd item of interest.

For the traveller, that includes keep tabs on friends around the world or their ongoing overland trips – thankfully, starting to happen again after an understandable hiatus.

And, courtesy of changing the cover picture on the first anniversary of each day from major travels, it provides a daily reminder of places and experiences from simpler times.

Two years ago today, that was swinging in a hammock on a boat down the Amazon for six days as reality was suspended between Manaus – the epicentre of Brazil’s Covid crisis which bit for the first time within days of our departure – and Colombia where the virus brought us crashing back to reality.

Seven years ago, we were being encouraged to make a ‘donation’ to the police in the Congo before being allowed to make our way to the coast, having spent the previous morning digging a lorry out of a huge pothole, while 12 years ago the clock was ticking on the final few days before my first lengthy overland adventure.

All of those are chronicled on this website, writing about the journeys providing the reason the blog exists in the first place.

And in among them winds the meandering, often faltering, journey through my iPod from A-Z, filling the gaps between travelling – at least that is the plan, the silence of much of the last couple of years suggests otherwise.

Facebook reminded me this week that it was eight years ago that the idea of blogging such a journey would plug those non-travelling times, the first post arriving a couple of weeks later ahead of a sprint through the early tracks which ended with the first of several breaks when combining it with writing about African travels became too distracting from more important things.

Enjoying Africa for one.

Another, planned, break followed while in South America and despite good intentions and a brief flurry of posts in the weeks after returning, it has been sporadic at best since. Non-existent might be more accurate.

But it is time to get writing again, time to get back in the habit.

So to kick off that resumption, time to recap what all this A-Z Challenge is all about for any more recent arrivals, as well as checking out where it has reached in the seemingly never-ending trip through I songs (close to three years and counting).

  • My iPod decides the order

Not as simple as it seems  – A Day In The Life is first in the list, as it was when things kicked off all that time ago. But punctuation, definite and indefinite articles can get a bit confusing.

A-Punk was once the opening track, as was (A Belated) Invite To Eternity by Stornoway which has now been listed under B.

The latest section from The Von Bondies to Beach House (in a move designed to ignore any sensible SEO advice, each post is titled by the two tracks which bookended the latest chunk) was fairly simple for all that.

Billy Bragg’s The Internationale slots in after International Velvet by Catatonia, which is probably a good thing or the  stretch of songs starting The would be as impassable as much of the Congo.

  • No skipping

Each song needs playing in full so that it registers as having been played in my iTunes library.

There is the odd exception – for some reason, a Soundtrack of Our Lives album among a few other songs have appeared on my iPod in poor quality – but have stuck rigidly to my rule.

Long silences stretch the patience – Holden’s Intentionally Left Blank was just annoying while the 14 minutes of silence in the middle of Into The Storm by Lift To Experience was mystifying.

Although it did add up to stretching it out to 28 minutes, 57 seconds and the longest track to date. Fourth longest overall.

  • It’s the tracks that count, not songs

Multiple versions of the same song have to be listened to – covers, live versions, alternative versions or songs appearing on multiple albums or sources.

The most so far is five – one cover and four of the original in various different guises.

This chunk saw three versions of Infected by The The and two apiece for Inside Me by Jesus and Mary Chain, plus the wonderful Into Your Arms by The Lemonheads.

  • No revisionism

There’s some rubbish on there, but nobody put it on there but me (even if the reason is lost in the mists of time), so there’s nobody else to blame.

Except for Bono and his band of merry men who conspired with Apple to deliver tracks into my iTunes – ignored and steadfastly not downloaded to my iPod, although a quick look at what is to come (best avoided, to be honest) suggests a change of iPod has done it automatically.

My mood at the time may depend on whether a new rule is added.

  • New additions count

When this journey started, the A-Z was 11, 235 tracks long. That has grown – despite periods of little or no additions – to 15,636 with more to come when pre-release downloads appear.

At the end of each letter, there is a quick catch-up for any additions since that track’s place in the journey was passed.

Previously, this has been  a pretty quick sprint through a hundred or so tracks, but the current playlist of tracks from A-I waiting to be rattled through runs to 564 songs and will take a day and a half to work through.

That is partly down to the length of the I section, partly down to the amount of music downloaded over the last couple of years and largely down to those lengthy breaks.

May well have to split that into a few posts, once the remaining 150 or so I tracks have  come and gone.

  • Breaks are allowed

This rule was  meant to allow for  a short break to listen to new albums as they arrive, but sheer practicality has seen it stretch much longer at times.

And with good reason, not just because other things were squeezing my time, but it means each fresh start brings a new drive to plough through the next chapter.

This latest chunk has taken its time, the undoubted highlight being Invalid Litter Dept by At The Drive-In, one from the Relationship of Command album which remains one of the prime choices when a bit of noise is needed.

It was, that and The Lemonheads apart, not the most inspiring chunk although there was a couple of tracks from The Joy Formidable who always leave me thinking they need more exploration.

And that is sort of what this whole A-Z journey is all about.

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The Great Big No to Gypsy Death & You

THERE is an odd phenomenon which happens some time before the clocks go forward each spring.

Quite when depends on how bleak the previous few months have been but around the point at which it becomes pretty easy to remember the rest of Gloucester’s fixture list, the end of the rugby season cannot come soon enough.

It has not always been like this, but when egg chasing on and off the pitch infiltrated the bulk of my working life, the end of the season increasingly became  a moment to savour.

It did not last long. Within weeks – often within days – we had replaced spending Saturday afternoons covering matches or producing pages based around that coverage with going to the pub to watch the summer Test matches over a few beers.

Home

And before you knew it, that gap on a Saturday afternoon needed filling (to say nothing of the sports page which don’t just vanish all summer) and the countdown was on until the first match.

Rugby – and sport in general – forms only part of the day job now. More of a watching brief than the heart of the role. Writing about it and designing pages about it has been replaced by watching it. As a fan.

The same still applies. By around March, the end of the season cannot come soon enough – not that you would have heard any complaints if Gloucester had managed to extend their season into the play-offs (two heavy defeats to end the league campaign made sure that didn’t happen, but we were seriously in the running until then which made a refreshing change).

It’s not the rugby. You wouldn’t find me anywhere else than in The Shed for any home game or in front of the TV for any televised away match. It’s just that you start to crave a weekend that doesn’t have to be planned around the game (and the getting there early to save a place in The Shed).

Was certainly desperate for the season to end as Gloucester, down to 14 men, were hanging on into the final couple of minutes of the European Challenge Cup final (our third in four years) against a Cardiff Blues team that really should have been buried before the break.

Season’s end came little more than 60 seconds too late, a last-ditch penalty bringing the kind of finale Gloucester fans have seen all too often in recent seasons. It’s got to the point where it is hard to accept we have hung on for the win until you’ve seen it on the TV highlights.

By the end of that night in Bilbao (the venue needs an explanation nearly as long as some of the journeys it took to get there), rugby could just go vanish.

For three days. Right up to the point when Gloucester signed Danny Cipriani.

Unlike the influx of South Africans (more may have arrived by the time you read this*) and Matt Banahan from Bath – akin to Liverpool signing Gary Neville in his playing days – this was not rumoured for weeks, debated and ranted about by the keyboard warriors who would find something to complain about if Gloucester went the whole season undefeated. There had been the odd whisper which over the course of a weekend became a roar.

Popular rantings on forums and social media over the past season included opposition to the renaming of The Shed (it is officially, shock horror, The Greene King Shed although you will not hear anyone call it that), one woman’s crusade against players not spending enough time thanking fans at away games, the selection of beers (much of it supplied by the same sponsors), unsuitable headwear and the club not announcing any new signings.

Whether there was any to announce or not and regardless of whether the player had signed or any agreement between his old and new club over a big reveal. Never mind any of that, somebody had mentioned it on the forum, why had the club not announced it?

Cipriani’s signing – by my reckoning, the biggest name since at least the capture of All Black lock Ian Jones the best part of 20 years ago – was met with almost universal support. Almost.

There were those fretting about his wages and those about what was going to happen to our existing outside-halves. Because clearly we are going to play the same 15 players in every game next season. And one of our No 10s didn’t really play inside centre for Wales in the autumn.

But the keyboard complainers did not have too long to wait. Little more than 24 hours later and they hit the mother load.

Word got out of an announcement – people were invited, people talk, however much the club try to keep it quiet – and the amount of times two plus two came to totals other than four was astonishing.

More signings (complete with mixed reviews, despite not knowing who they were) and a rebranding as Gloucester Lions were presented pretty much as fact. Opinion on Twitter, after all, is confirmation of the truth these days.

And that opinion, particularly about the rebrand, was not a welcoming one – no matter how many times the club denied it. Even after the event. You fear for the king of the jungle around these parts if we ever have a referendum to take back control from cats.

The truth barely caused the complainers to draw breath.

Yes there was a lion. In a new badge. On a new shirt. But no, we remain Gloucester Rugby. We Are Gloucester Rugby as the branding repeats.

Personally, like the shirt (first current one bought since about the time Ian Jones was playing for us) while really cannot get excited one way or another about the badge. Far more concerned about things that actually matter, like what’s happening on the pitch.

And the number of bobble hats in The Shed (probably the favourite issue all season which has become something of a running joke).

But the complaints rolled in. They hated the shirt, declaring it was destined to sit unloved in the club shop (early evidence suggests otherwise) if it was even in the shop before the season started (it was later that day), the lion on the logo had no connection with the club (bar the lions on the old crest and that of the city) and it looked just like Leicester Tigers.

Which, as more than one wag pointed out, suggests they would be easily confused at West Midlands Safari Park.

The shirt’s fine. Some are better than others, if you don’t like it wear an old one and we’ll have a new one soon enough. At least it’s not dayglo, highlighter pen yellow. Or blue, black and white.

The logo is OK, if you really care, and with my page designer head on is certainly more user-friendly than the old one. And no, however many forum gurus claim otherwise, we are not changing the name to Gloucester Lions. They are not going to spend all this money on a rebrand and then change the name.

All this means the need for a summer break is desperately needed. Not from the rugby (already looking forward to next season with more than the usual optimism), but from the serial complainers.

My favourite was the unknown guy who, walking home after a draw with Wasps, blamed the defeat on Ben Morgan – partly for missing tackle for one of their tries. After he had gone off.

He then criticised Ruan Ackermann for being granted a short mid-season rest.

How could a pro sportsman earning decent wages need a rest, he argued? Akin to the utterly ridiculous argument – seen countless times in the last few days – that Liverpool goalkeeper Loris Karius can take the mental anguish and quite shocking online abuse following his errors in the Champions League final, just because he earns a lot of money.

Having opted not to run into him repeatedly (there is, even mid weight loss, quite a lot of me) and arrange to do the same on a weekly basis to see at what point he needed a rest, pointed out the still young back-row forward had not missed a game up to that point and had not had a break after reaching the Super 14 final with the Lions in South Africa, my unhappy companion thought for a second and dismissed my observation.

“He didn’t play for the Lions,” he argued. “He couldn’t, he’s South African.”

As he stormed off ahead before my explanation there was more than one Lions, the woman with him turned to me, shrugged, considered an explanation but simply shrugged again, smiled and sloped off in his wake, resigned to a long night.

Gloucester’s season was not the only thing coming to an end. The G section of the A-Z of the iPod reached its conclusion, all 498 tracks from The Lemonheads to The Kills.

It was a relatively short sprint with some old favourites in The Lemonheads, The Clash (Guns of Brixton – twice – and Groovy Times),  REM (Green Grow The Rushes) and Half Man Half Biscuit (Gubba-Look-A-Likes) plus less frequent, but very welcome, visitors in I Am Kloot (Great Escape), Stornoway (The Great Procrastinator), Charlotte Hatherley (Grey Will Fade) and Drive-By Truckers (Guns of Umpqua).

And there was some classic country, two versions of Dwight Yoakam’s Guitars, Cadillacs… which always takes me back to a US road trip and a cover version in a bar during a memorable night in Austin, Texas.

You’ve got to do something when there’s no rugby.

* Two more have been announced between writing this and posting it.

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Bastard Son of Dean Friedman to The Bell

AS well as a meander through my musical tastes over the past three decades or so, this journey through my iPod is demonstrating how much the way we listen to and collect music has changed.

Now it is almost exclusively digital, although off to my left are two tall CD towers packed with what we were told at the time was the unbreakable future of listening to music.

The CDs now largely sit gathering dust, all but a discarded few sitting in the iPod we are wandering through that sits neatly in my pocket, while under the desk is a much smaller collection of vinyl.

Records are much more desirable than a digital file or a CD, complete with sleeve designs, liner notes and an inherent coolness. Shopping for vinyl was so much more fun, flicking through rack after rack and emerging with your chosen offering in a proper bag, as opposed to soulless CDs on glistening display stands – once you have found your way past the discounted DVD box sets.

But that was only a short stint in my music-buying past, having not had a record player until well into my teens – the only access being to my Dad’s (strictly off limits) and my sister’s (who was never keen on me using it).

Without any records to call my own, there was also very little to play as neither collection which went with them is likely to be replicated on my iPod.

So for most of my teenage years, the music came in the form of tapes, either on one of the “portable music systems” my Dad managed to win by selling enough of the maker’s power tools (we also had a huge collection of plastic sponsored pint glasses) or, latterly, a string of Walkman R.I.P.Walkmans.

Look at them now and they look antique and positively huge next to an iPod, but the arrival of my first Walkman was an amazing moment – although maybe not for my parents, who didn’t realise my insistence on cranking the volume up making sure the stereo is far from personal on cheaper headphones in the back of the car.

Still have no idea if it actually did anything, but my first Walkman came complete with graphic equaliser, while a later one had a radio. It fell apart and was huge, but it had a radio.

Totally Bitchin' Recording 1987The dawn of the Walkman also heralded the pre-holiday selection of what music to take, the chosen few – supplemented by a couple of compilation C90s – tucked into my hand luggage in an old washbag.

And the cassette collection also saw the dawn of my compulsion to store my music in alphabetical order (the DVDs to my left are exactly the same while the bookcase is broken down, in the main, into categories. Then A-Z).

But the need to alphabetise – in stark contrast to the way everything else is arranged, or not, in my life – at least stems from a practical reason.

The cassettes were stored in a growing number of briefcase-style boxes by the side of my bed, each with its own spot so they could be found while lying on the bed with my headphones on in the dark.

Back in the early days, there were not that many so remembering the order was easy, but it was well into the third box before the plan started to fall apart – even with new arrivals changing the positions – but by then there was a record player and a new source of music.

Which cassette was first is not quite so clear. The first two, bought with my own money, were The Hurting by Tears for Fears and The Jam’s Snap, just not sure in what order – back in the days when buying an album involved saving up pocket money.

Tears for Fears haven’t made it to the digital age, but The Jam are dotted through my collection with their parting shot Beat Surrender cropping up in this latest section, which takes us from (more) Half Man Half Biscuit to a new arrival from First Aid Kit.

We also had Begin The Begin by REM, from the first album of theirs to sit in those cassette boxes. Life’s Rich Pageant was bought, on special offer, one Saturday from the basement at Boots, back in the days when they sold music, and sparked a journey through their back catalogue which provided a huge part of the soundtrack to my life for the next decade and beyond.

R.E.M. MurmurIt was not a total leap of faith. Closing track Superman had filled the same role on a C90 provided by my brother-in-law – back in the days when he was just my sister’s boyfriend – which provided introductions or widened my knowledge of the likes of Sonic Youth, Husker Du, The Replacements and a whole generation of guitar bands which will pop up with varying regularity before we get to Z.

Not on that tape, but another key part of that teenage soundtrack (possibly the key part before slightly edged aside by REM) were Echo and the Bunnymen, who popped up with Bedbugs and Ballyhoo. Possibly their last great song, there were two versions by the whole band and one live rendition from Ian McCulloch.

There were other vintage classics with Behind The Wall of Sleep by The Smithereens and Being Around from The Lemonheads, some Bees and Beetles (one of each from Warpaint) and a couple of new discoveries.

Behind A Wall from Blood Red Shoes was a discovery worth revisiting (acquired amid a recent downloading binge) and took the 750th spot on the list, courtesy of being shunted back a few places by another bout of downloads which included the new album by First Aid Kit. The Bell suggests that too is worth a longer listen.

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Al Sharp to All Mixed Up

And after only five minutes, you’d be down to 10 men
As he’d sent off your right back for taking the base from under his left winger
All I Want Christmas Is A Dukla Prague Away Kit – Half Man Half Biscuit

BEFORE we go any further down this journey, which has edged past the 150 mark with Half Man Half Biscuit’s homage to childhood, Subbuteo, Scalextric and former eastern European football giants, you really need to be introduced to my brother-in-law.

He is likely to pop up more than once on this journey, courtesy of the impact he has had on a lot of the scenery along the way.

His input in terms of recommendations, passing on whatever musical obsessions he has picked lately and a couple of decades or more of Christmas presents has helped to shape the make-up of the iPod collection we are meandering through.

He’s also managed to cash in on my complete loss of faith and interest in the money-soaked, overhyped Premier League and dragged me along – albeit not for a while – to the Meadow End at the distinctly untouched by money Hereford Utd (which brought with it my debut on Sky Sports, eating a pie and drinking a pint in two fleeting appearances).

In return, my contribution has been to accompany him to a string of gigs, blag us a few free review tickets, raid his music collection, eat his food, wind up his Labrador and, after many years of trying, drag him from the round ball to the oval one and a regular spot in The Shed at Kingsholm.

For this entry, his main impact is that the two entries from four lads who shook The Wirral are not mere echoes from my teenage years, but very much current entities in my collection.

Trumpton RiotsHalf Man Half Biscuit released their first album, Back In The DHSS, in 1985 and, a year later, the classic Trumpton Riots EP, which included their first two songs in this countdown, Albert Hammond Bootleg and – at 150 – All I Want For Christmas Is a Dukla Prague Away Kit (both of which pop up in original and live versions).

They appeared just as my musical life was descending into the mid-1980s jingly-jangly indie ghetto and the C90 which contained that first album saw plenty of action.

But when the band reunited after splitting, briefly, at the end of the decade, it was without me, consigned to the drawer marked novelty, popping up increasingly sparingly amid my musical choices over the intervening years.

Then, a couple of years or so ago, the brother in law belatedly stumbled across them and immersed himself in the back catalogue of Nigel Blackwell’s tales of everyday life and its annoyances, obscure TV references, football and all-night garages – dragging me back in with him to the point they now populate my iPod as often as all bar a select few.

We have also become regulars at their occasional gigs, although far from the near obsessives who never miss a show and catalogue their nights out in great details, many of them clad in the Dukla Prague away kit (although, on my one trip to Prague, it was easier to find a set of Russian dolls in Hereford kit than one of the real thing). Think it might be time to give their gigs a rest for a while.

The latest section of this journey has taken us from track 103 – Al Sharp by The Beta Band – to number 159, All Mixed Up by Red House Painters.

Mark Kozelek’s former band entered my collection on the return home from my first major batch of travelling and a brief spell sharing a house with a friend which had no TV and no internet connection.

Days were spent in Cardiff central library, using their wi-fi to write, sort out photos from six months on the road and look for a job or more travelling opportunities, the evenings in the pub or working my way through my friend’s music collection and, having discovered Sun Kil Moon, that sent me into Kozelek’s back catalogue.

This section also saw us through a litany of names – Al, Albert, Alec and various versions of Alex – that took us to the wonderful Alison’s Starting to Happen by The Lemonheads, a song still guaranteed to put a smile on my face and spark some really poor air drumming.

And that carries us to the mass of All… songs, which will see keep things rolling for a while.

Kicking off with All About Eve by The Wedding Present at both track 127 and 128 and an acoustic All Apologies, we are 30-odd songs in and not halfway through them all.

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