From Bill Berry to James Baldwin, via Bridlington and Memphis.
A Weekend Roundup of music, games, podcasts, Substacks, and more.
I’ve flipped the script somewhat this week, offering up a couple of different midweek posts and in the process, revived the notion of the former Midweek Update for a Weekend Roundup instead, because sometimes there’s just too much of cultural interest out there not to share…
SONG TITLE
“Bill Berry” by Cathedral Ceilings. Well, the title got my attention. So did the song, fortunately, which sounds nothing like R.E.M. but which references “fables” and a certain drummer’s “unibrow” and sounds a note of hard-rocking nostalgia for a time when alt-rock did not exist but college radio most certainly did.
COVERS COLLABORATION
On From Memphis to Muscle Shoals, which combines the best of songs associated with those city’s respective studio-labels Stax and Fame, T. Graham Brown delivers the very personification of country soul, assisted by an astonishingly A-list cast of co-vocalists, including (but hardly limited to) Bettye Lavette (“Do Right Woman, Do Right Man,” YT clip below), Sammy Hagar (“Soul Man”), Tanya Tucker (“The Dark End of the Street”) and Little Anthony (“You Better Move On). The mighty fine set concludes with 87-year-old Eddie Floyd joining Brown for “Knock on Wood,” picking up from the second verse of his signature song with unfamiliar restraint, as reflects his - and indeed many of these guest singers’ - advanced age. (Brown, a veteran of the country charts who cut his first album at Muscle Shoals and clearly has great reverence for this material, is a spritely 70 by comparison.) Any of us who can still be requested to sing professionally so late in life should feel blessed. And judging by their performances, each of which wrings the last piece of emotion left in their ageing voices, every one of these singers feels exactly that way.
LIVE ALBUM
Live at Bridlington Dec 6, 1982 by Apocalypse.
Excuse the shameless self-promotion. Live at Bridlington Dec 6, 1982, released this week on all streaming platforms - the first link on my linktree will take you to them all - was recorded during my teenage band’s support slots on The Jam’s final tour. It stems from me digging through some old live band cassettes a few years back and realizing that amidst all the audience recordings of mostly naff early teen pub and club gigs, I was sitting on a soundboard recording of decent quality – and that the rigors of recording and touring that year had turned our young five-piece into a decent band as well. (At the time of the show, we were fresh off five dates on The Jam tour already, including two at Wembley Arena, and after further dates at Manchester Apollo and Birmingham Bingley Hall over the next two nights, would play The Jam’s final ever support slot later that week, at Brighton Conference Center. We also had an indie hit at the time, “Teddy.”)
You can hear our confidence in the between-song banter, and if we forget the odd lyric or occasionally bash the wrong chord, at least by this point we were no longer having to dodge pints of beer or sharpened pennies from The Jam’s famously hostile - towards support bands, that is - crowd, as per when the original Apocalypse trio opened for the classic Brit trio at the Rainbow each of the previous two years. Though this live album has been released without any promo and my expectations are zero, I am super proud of it as something more than just a personal souvenir – and additionally that my own music-making son Noel Fletcher did such a tremendous job remixing from the cassette (seemingly you can do so such a thing with Logic’s new AI tools) to deliver a top-notch mastering job.
It had been my intent to release the set without type on “the cover,” but selected screenshots from a video shot that night and in Manchester 24 hours later, failed to pass the AI muster of our distro, Soundrop, for reasons of digital murkiness. I hit up my older, designer son after our second rejection, and he quickly found an “Elvis Calling” font on the web per my request to imitate a certain Clash cover. We live in an increasingly digital world with its pros and its cons, but the actual recording of this album was 100% analogue live and I’m happy to have it in my repertoire.
PS: If Jeff Carrigan and I look young in this picture, we were indeed just 18 at the time. Our same-school-year drummer Chris Boyle had just turned 19, and trumpeter Kevin Bagnall, and vocalist/guitarist Tony Page (my partner these days in The Dear Boys) were but 21.
BAND
Robber Robber. My thanks to reader Thomas Morra who, in his Substack column Is This Thing On?, raved about Robber Robber and gave me renewed faith that the music scene up in Burlington, VT can yet deliver the music world something more deserving of permanent land-lubbing status than Phish. I know something of which I speak here, having spent considerable time in Burlington over the last decade, and while occasionally I get to see a good band in a small club – especially at Foam Brewers by the waterfront, where Robber Robber held their debut album release gig that Morra reviews here – I have yet to see a truly great band.
And so I am encouraged by what I hear - and see - in the Robber Robber album Wild Guess, and though their post-punk pop-emo frenzy does not rewire the mousetrap, good old-fashioned angry/energized/enthused young people making angular new music to jump around and occasionally dance to never goes out of style, as is evident in the video clip that Morra shot at said show below. Here’s to me seeing Robber Robber in the flesh some time – preferably with a half-pint of foam disguising a full pint of Foam beer in hand.
GAME
CRITTERARIUM. Talking of Burlington, VT, I visit in part because my older son Campbell lives there. He chose to stay on in town after college, where he studied Game Art & Animation at Champlain and where his friends formed a game company in their final year, Sundae Month (later Weathered Sweater). It was reasonably successful and allowed Campbell to maintain his admirably simple, succinct and generally sunny lifestyle. Now, ten full years after moving there for college, Campbell is finally branching out on his own, working up a creature creation game entitled Critterarium that is intended to pick up where the mighty Spore left off years ago.
I invite you to check it out and, should you feel so inspired, support Campbell’s creative endeavors via his Patreon page for as little as $3 a month. All us parents are entitled (or at least want) to be proud of our grown kids and the paths they take in life, but believe me anyway when I say he’s incredibly good at what he does, and also a really good lad with a heart of gold. And when it comes to Spore, he knows of what he is attempting to improve. He made this video below after attending his third Burning Man with his dad, back in 2009, when he was just 14. Somehow we got away with setting it to Underworld’s “Rez,” hands down one of the greatest instrumentals of all time, one that I recently suggested has a lot more in common with Pete Townshend’s original extended demo of “Baba O’Riley” than most of us ever realized.
PODCAST
The Rest Is Politics US.
UK readers will almost certainly be aware of the show The Rest Is Politics, given that it claims to be “Britain’s biggest podcast.” Almost inevitably, a Stateside edition launched earlier this year, though it was perhaps less inevitable that the American pundit partner for Brit journalist Katty Kay, who herself seems to have direct text access to half of Congress, would be Anthony Scaramucci. Yes, that Antony Scaramucci, the one who worked for all of ten days as President Trump’s Communications Director before being summarily fired. The good news is, that like many who were dumb enough to take a job under Trump thinking they could somehow be independently effective, Scaramucci hates his former boss with a vengeance, calling him a “son of a bitch” at pretty much every opportunity on air, which suggests he is still capable of far worse when he believes himself to be off the record.
Scaramucci’s experiences with Trump ran longer than the mere ten days in the White House, however; he knows the man, and not only does his billionaire status as a financial entrepreneur continues to keep him at the center of the current political action, but he’s entertaining and properly informed and additionally data-driven when it comes to sharing that inside track. The Rest Is Politics US became my new must-listen after Scaramucci predicted in early July that Biden would be out of the Presidential race by the end of the month, a seemingly foolishly brave bet at the time that he nonetheless won with several days to spare. As such, the episode from Aug 2, “Could Donald Trump Drop Out?” is of particular interest – along with hope that this question could turn into a resounding “Yes” by election day.
SUBSTACK
If you did not previously know that basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is also a political and cultural commentator posting twice-weekly on Substack, then join the club, as I only came across his column myself over the last couple of weeks. Of course, any sports personality can have a political opinion – just ask Gary Lineker. Having an informed one that can be backed up not only with facts, but with wit, compassion and excellent writing, is a whole different ball game, and in this arena Kareen-Jabbar hits constant three-pointers. Sample recent column, “Biden Steps Aside so Harris Can Run & Trump Sells Sneakers Imprinted with his Bloody Face,” would have been pure clickbait – akin to calling a song “Bill Berry” – if not for the fact that it too, delivered on content. Sample paragraph:
“If you support Trump… you don’t care about logic or morality or democracy. That’s not me being snarky, it’s a reasonable conclusion based on everything Trump has done and said. I’ve never agreed with everything any president has done, even those I’ve supported. Agreeing with everything a politician says or does means you’re not a supporter, you’re a cult member.”
Of course, that was all so July, and his August columns have not only dived into issues surrounding the Olympics and the inherent culture wars it inspires, but from the perspective of someone who knows how to win on the court; he opens his latest column Musk Tells Companies to F Off Then Sues Them When They Do with a quite exquisite view of humanity from the heightened perspective of increased age.
My only criticism is not of the writing itself, but that many of the posts are for paid subscribers only, and while even millionaire basketball legends have to earn a living in retirement, one might have hoped that someone as clearly well-intentioned as Abdul-Jabbar would prove willing to approach his new chosen career from more of an altruistic perspective.
Hey, if Kareem Abdul Jabbar can pitch for your Substack subscription currency, this is a good time for me to remind you that paid subscribers to this here Wordsmith not only receive access to all past posts and to exclusive posts (such as my interview archives), but also to the Crossed Channels podcast I host with . (Next week should see the publication of Episode 9, dedicated to the Lionheart that is Kate Bush.) Perhaps more to the point, paid subscriptions enable, or at least encourage, me to keep putting in these long hours and earn something close a living from my scribbling, and they help support the platform for those who can’t contribute. Wordsmith continues to grow every week - but it is entirely reader-supported. With thanks.
ALBUM CONCEPT
No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin by Meshell Ndegeocello.
Setting the words of the great Black American writer/poet/activist James Baldwin to music seems an easy enough call in the current political zeitgeist, where Baldwin’s relatively open homosexuality resonates with an additional prescience. The fact that Ndegeocello’s album No More Water has been eight years in the making indicates that its content runs much deeper than that surface idea, and indeed, it draws on a wide array of collaborators, some of whom – as per Stephanie Chin on “Raise The Roof” - supply their own additional texts to complement those of Baldwin himself. Musically, too, the project is all over the place, not so much jumping from jazz to hip-hop to folk as defying the listen to define its singular or multiple style(s). Qobuz made the resurgent Ndegeocello’s third long set released in barely a year their Album of the Week, and from the sheer perspective of Ambition Realized, it’s hard to propose a more powerful one.
BOOKS
You can never have too many books. But you can have too many on your reading list. My post from earlier this week:
POEM
I refer you to my other post from earlier this week:
CHILL OUT CHOICE
The Chill Out Tent Vol. 2 by Various Artists.
And in conclusion… Sometimes we all need a break from music, politics, sport, the politics of sport, the prospect of “entertainment” and even from poetry. That’s where the Chill Out Tent comes into play. Yet another project emanating from the ever-busy Chris Coco and his DSPR label, it’s a place both metaphorical and occasionally physical, “our festival sanctuary, our country retreat, our dream of a better way to live with more sunshine, more sheep, more music, more love.” It is also very Balearic, especially on the new compilation The Chill Out Tent Vol. 2, where flamenco guitars dance delicately over dub beats, and the producer-artists have monikers like Florecet Coyote and Warriors of the Dystotheque. Collectively they set up a gorgeous package, one that makes me want to return to the beautiful island of Ibiza where I spent a wonderful 10 days in the year 2000 successfully escaping the worst of British party animals in San Antonio and the best of international dance culture. (Now that I remember, it was Chris who found us the perfect location in the centre of the island.) There was also a gorgeous sunset or two which could only have been lovelier if Chris himself had been providing the soundtrack, as he often does in Ibiza.
Given that I seem to have eschewed the beach entirely this summer, I’ll do my best to chill to The Chill Out Tent instead while watching the remnants of Hurricane Debby reign o’er me new back garden. Cheers to a chill time and to taking our world forward.
I'm sorry. I must have misread that. You said you opened for The Jam on their final tour?