Knaresborough Castle is not on the route for the Way of The Roses. However, the ride from Grassington to Ripon was not challenging enough for me so I undertook to ride to Knaresborough and back, partly to bulk up the mileage and partly to revisit the town where I spent many of my formative years. Also in honesty I did want a photograph of my beautiful cycle with the viaduct in the background, which I got.
Knaresborough castle was first built around 1100 by a Norman Baron and later worked on by King Henry I, or more likely one of his subordinates. As an interesting historical tidbit, Hugh de Moreville and his followers took refuge there after assassinating Thomas Becket in the 1170s. The castle was taken by Parliamentarian forces during the English Civil War in 1644 and largely destroyed in 1648, on Parliament orders to destroy all Royalist castles. We can see Knaresborough castle stone in buildings throughout the town itself. See if you can spot some on your next visit.
The view from Knaresborough castle was one of my favourite views in the town. Indeed it was likely one of my favourite places in the whole world. I think it remains so, along with Montrésor, France, Clent Hills in Birmingham and Belvedere del Gianicolo in Rome, to name a few. The view of the viaduct, conceived by Thomas Grainer in 1851 and now owned by Northern Rail, is quite sensational. Taking a train either towards York or Leeds, going through Knaresborough, one can actually cross the viaduct. The view is difficult to capture on account of Northern Rail’s characteristically grubby windows, but can be seen very well with the naked eye.
While on your way out, I cannot recommend enough sampling one of Mrs Hirst’s apple squares from Hirsts Bakery, next to the bus station. This was one of my favourite treats in my years in K Town Massif, as the youth used to call it. Further, when I told Mrs Hirst that I had cycled from Morecambe to sample it, I was informed that had to be a new record!
Four tracks, 45 minutes 30 seconds. This is as close to prog soul as can be. Elongated jam sessions by the Bar-Kays (The Bar-Kays are an American soul, R&B, and funk group formed in 1966) contribute to making this one of the most astonishing soul / funk albums ever. Recorded at the end of the 60s, the album provided something to music which was totally new. It is up there with Parliament, James Brown and Sly and the Family Stone. The album was recorded in Ardent Studios in Memphis.
Though not quite as definitive as Black Moses or as well-known as Shaft, Hot Buttered Soul remains an undeniably seminal record; it stretched its songs far beyond the traditional three-to-four-minute industry norm, featured long instrumental stretches where the Bar-Kays stole the spotlight, and it introduced a new, iconic persona for soul with Hayes’ tough yet sensual image. Allmusic
Walk On By
The album opens with a 12 minute version of Walk on By (original by Dionne Warwick, composed by Burt Bacharach, with lyrics by Hal David). The definitive version of this is the one by the Stranglers for me. However, this is a really excellent and strong track. At points it is ethereal almost, and makes the listener feel as though they are floating on music. The track is so ambitious and excessive, throwing you into the deep end right from the start and not letting up until the end.
It stood as a newer, funkier phase of Southern soul, but it hinged on a sound more opulent than the most sharp-suited Motown crossover bid. It’s an exercise in melodrama and indulgence that lays it on so heavy it’s impossible not to hear it as anything but the stone truth. Pitchfork
Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic
A sensational Memphis soul / funk hybrid, this is for me the greatest on the album. The opening piano does not prepare you for the magnificence that is to follow. His butter smooth lyrics are so cool. Pitchfork described Hayes’ voice as ‘like a velvet sledgehammer, and rightly too. The progressive encroaching beat gradually takes over the whole track to finish in a crescendo like all encompassing musical medley. This touches my soul in a way which I can hardly put into words.
One Woman
This is the only track on the album which resembles a nominal pop track. To be honest by comparison to the other three this one fades into obscurity but I suppose that was part of the point.
By the Time I Get to Phoenix
With the statement, “I’m talking about the power of love now, I’m telling you what love can do” at the start of Jimmy Webb’s By the Time I Get to Phoenix, Hayes single-handedly launched the ‘love man’ genre that was soon to prevail; the roots of Barry White’s sensual symphonies and Marvin Gaye’s Let’s Get It On can be traced right back to here. BBC Music
This is for me a type of genius in song. Hayes raps extensively and slowly for 8 and a half minutes with no melody, spelling out the story which supports the song, before bursting into melody for the final ten explosive minutes.
And when it finally does transition from Hayes’ conversational murmur to the first actual sung line from the Jimmy Webb composition he’s covering, it’s the beginning of a metamorphosis that gradually transforms the dynamic of the song from sweet-stringed orchestration into full-fledged, brass-packed, explosively-cresting soul. Pitchfork
Over 50 years on, Hot Buttered Soul remains a leading Soul album which has far reaching influence, being sampled extensively in various Hip Hop songs. This is a four track soul masterpiece which holds a high place in my pantheon of great albums. It is no wonder this is number 829 in the 1001 Albums You Should Hear Before You Die.
Those in close contact with me will be aware that I am squarely in Africa musically. I have been there for some weeks and am having trouble leaving the Lagos rabbit hole but I shall endeavour to provide a wider ambit of beautiful covers. Some of these will of course reflect where I am musically at the moment but I will make a special effort to cover a range of covers.
Fela Kuti – J.J.D – Johnny Just Drop – 1977
In his lyric for ‘J.J.D. (Johnny Just Drop)’, Kuti lampooned Nigeria’s “been-tos,” people who had been to Europe or America to work or study and then returned (“dropped”) home with European pretensions and an inferiority complex about African culture. Lemi’s front cover portrays a suited-up been-to, dressed like a cartoon British toff, as he parachutes into a Lagos street to the bemusement of the locals. Vinyl Factory
This is both an amazing record and amazing covers. On the back cover, the plane company of the plane from which Johnny drops is called ‘Ofersee Hairways’, a stab by Fela of the change in hairstyles which ‘been-tos’ espoused on their return to Africa. Just excellent this cover. The ‘been to’ sweating in his nice suit is a reference made in an earlier album, Gentleman, where Fela derides westernised locals for, as he saw it, having delusions of grandeur which cost them dearly in perspiration.
Transmission – The Music of Beverley Glenn Copeland 2020
Before my Afrobeats phase, I was squarely in the camp of the wonderful Beverley Glenn Copeland. Copeland’s ability to weave together beautiful harmonies with minimalist elements kind of melts my brain. I sent the live version of Erzilli, the final track of Copeland’s self titled debut album, Nick commented that the album art work of this album is very nice. and he is quite right of course. The stained glass window effect of this bird flying towards the light is gorgeous. This is a very pretty album cover indeed and an extraordinary album overall.
Bjork – Vespertine 2001
Bjork is bizarre in the most wonderful way. Her 2001 album Vespertine is no exception. The dress on the cover will be recognised from her unforgettable 2001 Oscar ceremony red carpet look, which remains one of the most famous Oscars looks of all time. The album also features an overlaid swan which has been deemed so excellent that it has been tattooed on numerous of her fans. Also seeing her in a state somewhat similar to that experienced by St Theresa in the famed Bernini sculpture is a lot of fun.
Bjork’s famous Oscar dress
Rush – Hemispheres – 1978
The album’s cover depicts the conflict between the two gods, represented as men atop opposite halves (hemispheres) of a large human brain. Apollo is on the left side, wearing a black business suit and bowler hat and holding a cane, while the naked Dionysus beckons to him from the right side. Rush Fandom
What more is there to say? This 1978 Rush offering is among my top three Rush albums. I love Rush and will always have a place for them in my musical pantheon. The fact they have used Greek mythology and created a frightening brain straddling story from this is very impressive to me. The album is also an astonishing feat and I recommend you listen at once!
Fame – Grace Jones – 1978
This was the third album in the Grace Jones / Tom Moulton disco trilogy, released when she was starting out in music. The cover art features a drawing of Grace along the lines of some of Issey Miyake’s sketches, Issey being a close friend of Grace at the time. I think it’s quite beautiful and of course, Grace can do no wrong in my eyes.
The back cover is excellent also and inspired me to get a tattoo in the style of this signature, eventually. See this below:
I shall see you again for Five Favourites August edition.
Where to even begin with this magnificent album? 1971, collaboration with Cream drummer Ginger Baker, which Fela pronounces most wonderfully. Fela Kuti has a rule that he would never play songs in his albums during live shows, which frustrated fans to no end but is a remarkable badge of consistency and integrity for the artist. Consequently we have an album of the month comprised of four original songs which were never to be performed again.
Let’s Start
The first tune is called O l’oun t’awa se n’yara Je k’abere which means ‘let’s start what we have come into the room to do’
From the first this is a piece of astonishing energy. It bursts out of the gate like a prize horse. The James Brown esque bass underpins the majority of the opening floury. The sensational synth work in the bridge is reminiscent of the work of Francis Bebey in African Electronic Music – perhaps Kuti inspired him.
Who knew cow bells could add so much to a tune? The driving consistent energy of this track is very exciting to me. This is Afrobeats at its best, driven, harmonious, spontaneous and intrinsically rhythmical. the way it picks up at the back end of the song, pauses and launches back into the opening refrain is astonishing. A sense of completion washes over the listener.
Black Man’s Cry
Fela sang most of his songs in Nigerian Pigdin English but some are in the Yorumba language. I believe Black MAn’s Cry is one such song.
Again, the opening moments are so effortlessly excellent. I can’t imagine this in Western pop. The combination of that magnificent bass guitar, the relentless drums of Ginger Baker and the trumpets is so exciting. I am finding it hard not to tear myself away from the keyboard and dance along.
The production of the album and the quality of the recording really shine through here. Despite being 1971 the recording is crystal clear. And it’s live!
I think the Black Man’s Cry refers to one of joy. I certainly feel boundless happiness listening to Fela. The saxophone at 3 minutes in!
The Manzerek-esque keyboard is superlative also and goes with the central recurring motif established in the opening moments of this track. The way he screams the cry at the end of the long and ad libs the rest of the track is just fabulous. He is lost in the abandon of making music. What a crescendo in the last minute!
Ye Ye Di Smell
Ginger doesn’t smell, really he takes his bath
Another 10 minute + track of unsurpassed brilliance. Ye Ye Di Smell talks about “it is a friendly thing, when your friend does not do the things they are supposed to do, then they smell”.
The understated guitar of the opening of track is swiftly brought to standard by the incredible drumming and keyboard going on. The Doors would be proud. I bet Jim Morrison was in the audience. The call and response between Fela and the band is incredible. His mumblings form the basis of his orchestrating the band to follow. It is surreal, natural, intrinsic. Fela is the music here. He and the music are in symbiosis.
The crescendo bridge in the fourth minute is the stuff of goosebumps. The false end at 4.35 followed by a redoubled keyboard section is awesome. One gets so carried away with the rhythm, it feels like it will never end, and thankfully there are 7 minutes left of the track.
Fela is known for staggering introductions followed by crushing lyrics. Listen to the below for an example. This is the first track he released after a trip to the West where he was able to access incredible resources and literature. He read up on colonialism, the Empire and the past of Nigeria and Africa and came back a changed man. The lyrics are incredible.
Following his 1969 tour of the United States, where he was influenced by the politics of Malcolm X, the Black Panthers, and other militants, Kuti’s music became increasingly politicized. He exhorted social change in such songs as “Zombie,” “Monkey Banana,” “Beasts of No Nation,” and “Upside Down.” Britannica
Man alive the drum solo at 8 minutes is bonkers. Rejoined by the keyboard handing the track throughout. The keyboard which has been almost stalking the other instruments and chasing them along. Superb.
And the final minute floury of action is hard to believe. It just keeps going up and up and up, drums more frantic. Big trumpet finish. Breathtaking.
Egbe Mi O (Carry Me)
It means carry me, I want to die
I believe this is the last track on the official track listing before a spontaneous drum sesh.
Listen to those drums and trumpets at the beginning! Notice how Fela envelops you with the main theme at the start of each track? Oh and the James Brown bass is great. The first half of the long goes by too quickly. It washes past you. The second half picks up with more lyrics.
“Egbe Me” in Yoruba language means: Carry me. In this song, Fela is singing about the different kinds of things that happen to you while you dance. How could you go into trance while dancing? How in a state of musical trance, the traditional beads women wear under their skirts break without the woman noticing. How a man’s hat would fall off his head while dancing without him noticing. All kinds of things happen to you doing the dance — but you are not alone! ‘…be ke iwo nikan ko’. Fela ends this track with a general chorus calling everybody together with the band: Egbe Mi O! AfrobeatMusic
Three minutes at the end are a superb demonstration of call and response with the audience and parallels that Fela did with the instruments in a previous track. The violence of the drums is very well placed. What an exciting ending!
Drum instrumental with Ginger Baker and Tony Allen
This is a bonus track from the live show in 1978 and includes Tony Allen and Ginger Baker having a sort of drum off against each other. It is 16 minutes so optional to listen to. Nothing like the magnificence before.
Overall I think my key reflection is that I would have loved to have been there. How excellent must it have been to be in the audience for this magnificent triumph of a live show. This is an album which will stay with me for the rest of my life. I cannot encourage you enough to listen to it.
Have you noticed that I go through phases of music? My most recent phase has been Afro beats and Afro funk but I am rather passionately in support of Kate Bush and feel that I must include this as June’s album in the month. Never For Ever was Kate’s 1980 superb offering to the altar of pop and includes some of her best work.
The album opens with one of her great hits, Babooshka. This track is well known but much like the Police’s Every Breath You Take, the subject matter is oft ignored. This track tells the tale of a wife who is saddened by her husband’s lessening attentions toward her. Taking matter into her own hands, she disguises herself as another woman, seduces her husband and makes him fall in love with her again. It propagates the idea that outer beauty is finite but inner beauty, the original foundation of her husband’s love for his wife, is eternal. Equally, the track itself is a real whopping great pop track. Try and get it out of your heads!
She signed her letters All Yours! Babooshka Babooshka Babooshka yeah yeah
Delius is an interesting one, I have read that it is a tribute to the god Apollo, and I have read that it is an ode to the English composer Frederik Delius. The latter is likely to be more accurate on account of the lyrics describing a grumpy old man and the shifting from the I and IV chords mimic those for which Delius was famed. Paddy Bush and Ian Bairnson are singing back up here which is just superb. This is an excellent track and a testament to her excellent pipes.
Built on a verse that primarily shifts between the I and IV chords of B (B major 7th and E), “Delius” is melodically simple, working in rigid parameters to homage its subject. Providing an understated biographical statement of the composer without describing any of his life’s events, it conveys the cadences of Delius’ legacy with parsimony and depth. Kate Bush Songs
Blown Away was the first song chronologically, written for this album. The song was inspired by the death of Bill Duffield, a sound engineer for Kate’s band killed tragically on the first night of Kate Bush’s then only tour. It is beautifully produced and simply orchestrated. It speaks of death and consciousness. I find it deeply evocative.
All We Ever Look For is a meditation on the limits to and primacy of the role of the family. Kate Bush sings about searching for meaning in a world rife with possibilities. The piano refrain after the bridge in the latter section of the song is just beautiful.
Still from the Egypt video
Egypt is a lovely track. In terms of context, at the time of writing this track, the PM of Egypt Menachem Begin signed the Israel Egypt Peace Treaty which ended the Israeli occupation of Sinai. Israel agreed to withdraw from the entirety of the Sinai Peninsula. Israel subsequently withdrew in several stages, ending on 26 April 1982. Egypt was also selling vast amounts of oil to Israel. This track is quite extraordinary in the way that Kate acknowledges a violent conflict in a land far away. She embodies this in several chilling screams throughout the track.
The Wedding List has the be the catchiest murder-suicide track ever written. It tells the story of an aggrieved bride whose husband was murdered on their wedding day. In this sense we could call her a widow but I believe matrimony is a precondition to this term hence she may just be called a rather peeved party. This has to be one of my favourite Kate Bush tracks. It embodies everything which is awesome about her, she represents a vexed lady, a quartile not necessarily well presented in 1980, getting her revenge on the men who have wronged her. The production is as aggressive as the substance matter of the track, which is another terrific facet of this track. For me this is the best track on the album.
Violin takes a theme consistent in Bush’s works – the idea that there is inherent magic in the universe and that we can use this as a source of catharsis. Kate was forced to take violin lessons at St Joseph Convent Grammar as a kid, this is the source of this track. The track makes use of the multi faceted possibilities of the instrument and indeed almost abuses the violin while screaming in deranged anger, mimicking how she must have felt at school. The frustration in this track is palpable but ends up being quite magical.
The Infant Kiss is perhaps an echo of This Woman’s Work. I find it a tad sentimental but the message is powerful – talking about the fear of losing a child, putting motherhood, rightly, on a pedestal. The orchestration matches the mood of the piece and this is put across impeccably, again.
Night Scented Stock is an a capella track showing off Kate’s extraordinary pipes. The harmonisation is beautiful.
Army Dreamers was at a point my least favourite track on this album but I have come to enjoy it very much. It was banned in the UK along with a number of other tracks during the Gulf War for its sentiments questioning the necessity of war and highlighting the bereavement of families who lose loved ones to conflicts. The music itself goes back to Kate’s Irish jig proclivity which we see fully developed in Jig of Life on Hounds of Love. SeetheUK7″cover below, which I think is wonderful.
The album ends on Breathing, following in the theme of motherhood. This track, amazingly, is about a foetus in the womb of a woman living through a nuclear holocaust, aware of the happenings of the world outside. The tone was inspired by Pink Floyd’s The Wall, and Kate was of course discovered by David Gilmore of Floyd. The spoken word, the simulation of breathing through lyricism, the production and sheer subject matter all make this for a fascinating end to a stunning album.
Breathing her nicotine, breathing the fallout in out in
My favourite post of the month is back. Thanks again to Nick for suggesting this, though he did not realise at the time that this would be a recurring post. Please see below the five favourite album covers for June. These may be covers which I have loved for some time or new albums which I have come to love over the last month.
Weasels Ripped My Flesh – The Mothers of Invention
Now, I know what you are thinking – ‘Zappa, here?!’. Yes I too had doubts. On the whole I find Mr Zappa innovative, charismatic and polarising. His music straddles the thin line between genius and horror music. Which side of the line you fall on is entirely dependent on your personal taste. I shall reserve comment on where I fall on the matter. This cover is fantastic, however. It reminds me of the comic book chic of Thomas Dolby’s Aliens Ate my Buick. I love the colour choice, the classic well to do gentlemen and the absolutely bizarre weasel inflicting gore on him.
Curtis by Curtis Mayfield
What a year 1970 was. We do not deserve 1970. 1970 gave us, among other things, Brian Davison, Neil Young, Black Sabbath’s Paranoid, Bitches Brew by Miles Davis, Bridge Over Troubled Water, Funhouse by the Stooges, Morrison Hotel, Abraxas, Loaded by the Velvet Underground… I could go on. But this sensational year for music also gave us Curtis Mayfield’s debut album. The smooth soul chic in the music is matched only by the extraordinary cover. A low angle shot of Curtis wearing a matching yellow suit and flamboyant shirt with beaded necklace, looking forlornly into the sunset (or sunrise). This is just so very cool and stylish. An effortless cover.
Psychedelic Sanza 1982 – 1984 – Francis Bebey
If you have yet to hear the excellent Cameroonian stylings of Francis Bebey, please listen to this album. It follows the extraordinary African Electronic Music 1975-1982, which some consider his best.
That clash and exchange of ideas is exemplified in the chiming, twilit dialogue of opening cut, ‘Sanza Nocturne’, and the strange fusion of Baroque pipes and kicking groove to ‘Africa Sanza’, or to strangest degrees in the freakishly noisy, yet utterly compelling ‘Tumu Pakara’, while we find the more mellifluous Bebey crooning away in the Pygmy Polyphonics of ‘Bissau’ or the deeply spiritual ‘Forest Nativity’. To be fair, it’s unnecessary to draw any lines betweent he material – it’s all the work of a singular genius – but for those more familiar with the last compilation, this set really steps it up and out a notch or three to spellbinding new zones. Boomkat
The cover is also spectacular, three presumably Pygmy people carrying a globe through the jungle with Africa front and centre in the frame. The sky is covered in what looks like zebra print. Aside from anything else it is a beautiful piece of art.
Bebey became the first African musician to place synthesisers, electric keyboards and programmable drum machines at the centre of his music. Vinyl Factory
Runt. The Ballad of Todd Rundgren
If any of the readers have spent more than five minutes in my presence they will be aware that Todd is a firm favourite of mine, in fact he is likely the only man in my pantheon of favourite artists (Grace, Joni, Todd being the top 3 I think). Feta Kuli is making his way up there. Anyway this album is quite different from Todd’s Runt (another 1970 diamond album). This album was released in 1971 and contains songs of a quite different nature to its nomenclature predecessor. Now, the cover. The ides of someone playing piano with a noose is wild to me. Is this his final wish? Todd’s last meal as it were? To play the piano as a final act before being hung is quite a powerful image. And of course it is reminiscent to me of Mel Brooks’ excellent Robin Hood Men in Tights, particularly the scene where the noose breaks as Robin is about to be hung.. “well you know what they say…”
Living My Life – Grace Jones
Finally I should like to close on one of Grace Jones’ Jean Paul Goude covers again. We will eventually get through all 14 of her albums. This is one of my favourites. Following Goude’s image of Grace, he created this precise aggressive cover. This simple, angular cover seeks to maximise Grace’s androgynous beauty. He wrote in Jungle Fever “the ambiguity of her act was that she herself looked like a man. A man singing I Need A Man, to a bunch of men”. This was shocking in 1977, when the single I Need A Man was released and followed by Grace’s debut disco (!) album Portfolio. The beads of sweat only add to what is a striking remarkable cover.
Join me next month for the following instalment of 5 Favourites.
