Music Maps

Music was my first love….

Actually I don’t think that’s true, I think my first love was books, or probably food, but just bear with me here while I take you on an odyssey of sound and sensations…. (you’ll have to provide your own sensations).

 

Ain’t no doubt it’s all so fucking depressing at the moment - incompetent, blundering and dangerous leadership, a terrifying global pandemic and dickheads panic buying toilet roll as soon as there’s a sniff of a second lockdown. Yep, it’s all very grim and added to that you’ve watched everything Netflix, iPlayer and all the others have to offer, twice! So let’s all join metaphorical, non germ carrying hands, sit around an imaginary fire and listen to some soothing tunes.

There used to be a T.V programme called ‘Comedy Connections’ which I loved, it would plot the genesis of a particular funny programme - what the writers and actors/performers had worked on before, what brought them together to produce this and where they progressed from there. If we’re going to pretend that music was my first love, let’s just continue the fantasy that comedy was my second. Music docs and ‘rock-umentaries’ might do the same thing in plotting the genesis of songs, bands and albums but sometimes in a leaden and heavy handed way. We could do with a similar thing, to the Comedy Connections programme, for songs.

Quincy Jones Wikimedia Commons

For instance, I only learned recently that two songs I really liked had sampled Summer in the City by Quincy Jones.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Q7IJOYxAMo

If you don’t know the song it has a wonderful catchy, gently thrilling sort of refrain at the beginning and throughout. The two songs that I’d been enjoying, without knowing that they were leaning on Quincy Jones, were:

Passin' Me By by The Pharcyde (1992)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-mAK3uB2_0

And

Les Nuits by Nightmares on Wax (1999)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Q7IJOYxAMo

By the way, if you want to pass some time in an entertaining manner, look up Quincy Jones’ comments and insights on other musicians, he's brutally honest and hilarious. Here is just one quote from an interview in Vulture, link below.

“It’s Trump and uneducated rednecks. Trump is just telling them what they want to hear. I used to hang out with him. He’s a crazy motherfucker. Limited mentally — a megalomaniac, narcissistic. I can’t stand him. I used to date Ivanka, you know.”

https://www.vulture.com/2018/02/quincy-jones-in-conversation.html

Massive Attack ft Tricky

Another connection. I’d heard Black Steel by Tricky for years without knowing who it was by or what it was called, only that I loved it. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZJTM03UByU

It was only when they had withdrawn some music cassettes from the public library I worked at and we were invited to help ourselves to the stash that I snagged Maxinquaye and loved it, especially Black Steel, that song gave me the feels. A few years later I learned that it was a cover of a song by Public Enemy, originally called Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZM5_6js19eM

I still prefer the Tricky version...

Green from Scritti Politi
Stock image

So many bands and artists have covered Beatles songs but some of the, arguably, more obscure ones can pass you by. It wasn’t that long ago that I found out that She’s a Woman had been done by the Fab Four years before Scritti Politi had covered it (or before Scritti Politi with Shabba Ranks had covered it!). I always liked Scritti Politi there was something unsettling sexual about the way the lead singer’s androgonous tones breathed out the lyrics, or perhaps that was just me….

Urgh, this is dreadful, I can’t find a Scritti version without Shabba Ranks - does it exist or did I imagine it?

Now this one isn’t a connection, just someone I’ve come across lately. Arlo Parks and her beautiful, mellifluous voice - perfect for these uncertain times and with a song called Black Dog, in which she says in the first line that she wants to lick the grief away from your lips, or somesuch! (I'm paraphrasing here) I started off alluding to the depressing state of the world but if you are in need of some comfort you could do a lot worse than listen to Arlo Parks. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZM5_6js19eM

I get a bit evangelical about music and want other people to listen to stuff I'm enjoying (until too many people do it and ruin it for me…) In all honesty I never click on music videos that people share on social media which is why I rarely post them myself, but in the spirit of our campfire sing along let's all have a collective listen and try and take a break from reality for a bit.

As Arlo Parks sings in Hurt: 

“Just know that it won’t hurt so, won’t hurt so much forever.

Won’t hurt so much forever.”