Leather In Rock

Well after Dave Graney's triumphant quintuple leather outfit in that previous post I was wondering if anyone else had been so audacious in their lifetimes to attempt such fashion highs?

Marlon Brando. Wild One leather.

Jimmy Dean's iconic leather, fag, hair, t-shirt, cheekbones......

Who are these guys? That's a lot of leather.

Jim Morrison owner of the world's most famous leather pants although apparently v stanky.

Jim in contemplating leather.

Lou Reed. 70s Heroin Chic leather.

Older clean Lou rides bike in leather. RIP in leather.

The Stooges. Not as leathery as one would have thought.

Elvis Presley. 68 Comeback leather. Was this leather's finest moment? He was hot ie. sweating it out for fashion. That's leather dedication!

Elvis in 70s King leather. 

Keef in leather/hair combo.

Suzi Quatro. The ultimate 70s woman in Glam leather.

Suzi lying down in leather jumpsuit. Nice.

The Ramones. 1976 New York Punk leather. Great leather/denim combo uniform. Very contrived, military-esque, I like.

Johnny Rotten. Can't really tell if this is leather. He was more fond of a sports coat albeit usually a mangled one, like his dog ate it.

Sid Vicious. Sex Pistol on his way to the grave in leather.

Michael Jackson. Billie Jean leather. Dancing in leather pants i would imagine is hard. Doing Michael Jackson dancing even harder. This could be quadruple leather? What if there's a glove on the hand in the pocket though?

Couple of faces later leather. You like my shoulder leather.

Melle Mel. Street corner hood leather. The last great icon of leather?

Blixa Bargeld. Strange German leather. Lederhosen-esque leather.

Dave Graney. Quintuple leather. Still the leatheriest I do believe. You are a champion of leather! I think MJ was Dave's only possible real competition and well he's dead now so game over.

*Later on twitter Dave replied:
honoured to be in the golden age of leather

2013???

While still kinda waiting for 2013 to happen I'm going back through some old and some not so old music. 2013 isn't even throwing up many good archival releases. The only ones I've come across are Atomic Forrest's Obsession on Now Again (but the date on that says 2011) and a couple from Strut Records (I'm still waiting for their arrival in the post). Apart from those Cairo Liberation Front mixes (I've got 3 check Soundcloud for them) good mixtapes are also few and far between. The first six months of 2013 have got to be the thinnest musical times since oh I don't know 2004, 1944 or take your pick of history's lame musical years. It can't be as bad as it seems can it?

On The Hi-Fi Part 62

sunshine Superman (1966)

Mellow Yellow (1967) 

Totally diggin these 2 LPs (and on the lookout for those that followed). Why was he so maligned I wonder? Sure he wrote some naff lyrics but it's not like The Beatles, Incredible String Band or Nick Drake were immune to to this. Donovan was still being derided in the late 80s, I recall, in the pages of Melody Maker. He was psych's whipping boy in much the same way The Clash were punk's (I guess someone has to take the heat). This is some of the best 60s production this side of The Doors catalogue. Sunshine Superman's got funky psych-pop, sumptuous medieval vibes and meandering folk jams swathed in sitar. While Mellow Yellow's more of a stripped back folk pop vibe tinged with jazz and blues.

Clube De Esquina (1972) - Milton Nascimento & Lo Borges

I'd seen this record cover a million times before in record shops but didn't realise until now that it was a hidden gem hiding in plain sight (thank you interweb). Clube De Esquina is without doubt some of the most beautiful music ever recorded. Bossa nova, samba & South American folk are mixed with rock, orchestral arrangements, heavenly harmonies and drenched in reverb. It's all created by a group of musicians who all lived together in a house for six months, Trout Mask Replica stylee, at the beach before recording this classic.

Hotel California

I just read Barney Hoskyns's Waiting For The Sun and it's pretty good up until the late 70s when he starts to rush through punk, paisley, metal through to Hip Hop. I'm a Beach Boys, Byrds, Burritos, Love, The Doors, Gene Clark kinda guy so when it got to The Eagles, Linda Rondstadt, Joni Mitchell, Jackson Brown and ugh James Taylor I thought I'd probably stop reading as my interest waned but man they were all so fucked and took so many drugs it was absurd. Anyway what I'm gettin at is the biggest impact* The Eagles had on me, apart from hearing their songs on the radio growing up ad nauseum, was the inner of the gatefold sleeve of Hotel California.  While in about year 8 in High School me and a bunch of friends watched this video about backmasking, satanism etc. in rock at one of my friends houses whose dad happened to be a teacher at our catholic School.  The video would have been produced by some kind of American fundamentalist christian group to scare the kids away from that evil Rock n Roll. I vaguely recall stuff on The Beatles, Led Zep and Queen and their use of satanic backmasking. The main thing I remember however was the dissection of the lyrics to Hotel California and the study of its cover. From then on that cover became a spooky artifact. It was in my home. I don't recall anyone ever playing it but the cover was often perused with spooky delight. At other peoples houses we'd go through the record collections to invariably find the album cover to check out the dude up there in the 2nd of the 3 windows upstairs. He was meant to be the devil or something. It was pretty creepy whatever he was. The Hotel according to the video was some kind of satanic church...'you can check in anytime you like but you can never leave'...... Anyway I should check and see if that video is on the youtubes.

*I loved Don Henley's Boys Of Summer (One of my all time fave 80s tunes!), I bought the 7", but I probably didn't even realise until much later that he was the dude in The Eagles.

eggheads

Barry enjoys Adolescent Sex

CJ used to be my favourite egghead. Man of many great shirts. He admitted though the other day that he doesn't listen to or buy music thus becoming the villain egghead. Some of the other dudes know their stuff though. Pat got a question about Black Flag the other night and Barry answered correctly a question on Japan and even named an LP Adolescent Sex as one his particular favourites. There was even a question about who was the lead singer/songwriter/guitarist behind The Mighty Wah! & Wah! Heat. The answer of Pete Wylie however was not forthcoming. Once a question was asked "What Beatles LP is actually called The Beatles?" The challengers were given 3 choices of which they replied Sgt. Pepper & not you know, the right answer. There's obviously a music freak in the question research department. It definitely keeps me watching to see what weird music question is next and leaves me slightly disappointed when the music category does not appear in an episode.

Pat gets the Hardcore questions.

This parallels Gilmore Girls which I used to watch. The writers must have been big music fans and in the end I think I was just watching to see what kind of music esoterica they could smuggle into such a mainstream show. Slint once got a mention and I thought wow how are they gonna top that? One of the main 2 characters was named Lorelei. This would always put me in mind of the great Cocteau Twins track from the classic Treasure LP.  Surely she was named after that.

Freaky Shit!!!

After writing that last post where I mentioned Lime Lizard Magazine which I'd totally forgotten otherwise it would have been mentioned in the post about The Wire, NME & MM I wrote a while back I went into my bedroom. On the floor lay one solitary cassette and (pictured above) it just happened to be a compilation tape given away free with a 1993 copy of Lime Lizard. Freaky man!!! I mean obviously a box of tapes had been knocked over under the bed but still that's some freaky shit right there! Truman's Water, Polvo, Shudder To Think - I loved those groups. I wonder what I'd make of them now? Maybe I should give it a listen.

Paul goes mental on the bass

* Music highlight of the week was listening to Abbey Road remastered in the Mrs car. Mind blowing shit man. Paul's crazy bass, Ringo's large drumming and some synthesizers I'd never really noticed before. We had to take the long way home so we could listen to the whole thing. Also I was listening to Blue Oyster Cult on the plane back from Sydney and laughed to myself  'Wouldn't this be funny if it was the last thing I ever listened to?' That particular thought tickled me for some reason. It still makes me smile.

Funny LP to die to.

London Retromania!

The Arctic Monkeys at the Olympics doin' one of their own songs which was about 10 years old. Then there was the singer's look kinda Teddyboy/Beatles in Hamburg and why didn't they get Paul McCartney to play bass on their version of The Beatles Come Together? The Beatles Hamburg look though was long gone by the time the Beatles recorded Come Together, so The Monkeys were fucking with the temporality of things. Weird. Most recent song was a Dizzee Rascal track from 2009 and it was actually him singing it. There was some horrible thing with strange choreography set to British music through the 60s to now well 2009. They did a weird mash up with like The Who, Stones, Sex Pistols?, The Kinks, Bowie, Fuckn Blur, The Jam, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Eurithmics?, Soul II Soul, Prodigy, Underworld, Sugababes, Adele, New Order all just records then Dizzee  actually came out and sang live with an old track Bonkers. Does London have anything new to offer? Is the future over? The present doesn't even exist!! Oh and there was Mr Bean.???? Is it still 2009 in London?