- I really have moved

Thank you to those of you who keep commenting on posts here, but I'm not reading them because I've moved the blog here. Please drop by and say hello.

- I've moved!

Hi everyone. Thanks for dropping by in your many numbers over the past couple of years. FiS has now moved to a real proper site: fadesinslowly.com and all future activity will take place over there. Come and join me.

- 2nd September, 1986

Here be the link. Only 30 minutes of the show and and seven and a bit tracks.

Were you watching this in September, 1986?

- The Vivian Girls

Imagine, if you will, that it is March, 2007 in Brooklyn, New York, and the trio of Cassie Ramone, Kickball Katy and Frankie Rose have become The Vivian Girls. Ramone and bassist Kickball Katy form after first coming together in high school, meeting at a Weezer concert. After only having been a band for a matter of weeks, they have recorded their first a demo which includes five original songs and a one cover (the band cites the Wipers as their one big influence, other than Burt Bacharach), and have begun to play the local Brooklyn scene as well as around the state of New Jersey.

Within weeks they have developed a strong following, supporting acts as renowned as Sonic Youth, as well as finding camaraderie among other local bands like Cause Co-Motion!, Crystal Stilts, and Woods, with whom they share many bills, thus helping to build up a local music scene to which the band is still very much connected.

Fast forward to March of 2008, they have released ‘Wild Eyes’ as a single on the ‘Plays With Dolls’ label. Despite low key promotion and little in the way of distribution, the single has become an indie hit, appearing on many college radio play lists and acquiring many a positive internet review.

Their eponymously-titled debut album is recorded during the same session and released on the ‘Mauled by Tigers’ label. The initial pressing of the album sells out in a mere ten days, during which time the group sign with ‘In The Red’ Records. The album is subsequently re-released in October of that year, although the band had undergone a minor lineup change, with new drummer Ali Koehler replacing Frankie Rose in July.

Move on to October, 2009 and their second album, ‘Everything Goes Wrong’ has just been released. Song titles include the likes of the majestically titled ‘I Have No Fun’ and ‘I'm Not Asleep’, and the ladies have doubled their studio recording time for this album; they have spent a long, grueling six days recording this time round, instead of the three that it took to deliver their debut.

So, would you call them cute? Do so at your own peril, although possibly their utmost claim to fame is that they were part of a recent Jeopardy question about really cute Brooklyn bands. The band's name actually comes from an epic work by outsider artist Henry Darger, called ‘The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion’ (a 15,000-page epic the band admit to not having read). Darger, whose work ranks among the most celebrated examples of outsider art, created in his Vivian girls some of the most slick and yet disquieting figures in contemporary culture, making the band's appropriation of the monicker all the more apposite.

Listen to the Vivian Girls here.

- New Wedlock album

 Artwork For The Album Continuity

October is now upon us, meaning that memories of summer are drifting away and the leaves, even here in Istanbul, are turning. One thing that's keeping me going is the knowledge that North Carolina’s Wedlock have a new, 10-track, full length release coming out this month, entitled, Continuity, as with their pervious release, on Kounterfeit Records.

Those of you with better memories than I may remember that I while back I blogged about the Chapel Hill based electronic pop band and their 2008 album Exogamy. Well, the band are back with a new release, and for those of you who wish to look and listen, here’s a You Tube video clip promoting the album's release.

 Wedlock Promo Clip For Continuity

This could prove to be the moment that the band makes it big and seems to be an opportune time for a new album release, as their previous album, the aforementioned Exogamy, is currently riding high at number 20 on the GBLT chart at outvoice.net. For me there is definite progression from their last album and in particular from their 2006 debut EP, The Matrimony Ep. I sense development in the cultured nature of their songs and the lyrical content which is now growing into a more comfortable partnership with their electronic sound. Having said that, Continuity is still a fitting title as you’ll be able to recognize the band’s style as a continuation of earlier releases.

As is custom in these modern times, the band have given you the chance to listen to the new material before you decide to buy it. Listen to Continuity here and please leave a comment below to tell me what you think about the band. Continuity will be widely available online at all the regular joints such as iTunes, Amazon, and many other other online retailers, also directly from the band's online shop.

Those among you of a voting disposition, and I know there are one or two, will be pleased to know that the band currently has the most votes in MusicEmissions.com's ‘Indie Band of The Year’ award for 2009 for the upcoming Continuity, currently rated a whopping 4 out of 5 by Music Emissions. If you’ve been convinced by me, you’ve got until October 31st to help determine the winner.

- 70 songs (Vol. 6)

Getting fed up of waiting? Well, I've been having a load of problems with my audio editing software of recent and it's taken me longer than normal to cobble this one together. I am getting dreadfully close to the magic 70 now, one more collection of songs should do it.

Here's a track list for all the faithful who've stuck with me while I've been putting these together, indeed for all those who've visited the blog over the past two and a half years.

Part One

01 Lonnie Donegan - Lost John
02 Toots and the Maytals - Louie Louie
03 The Cure - A forest
04 Camper van Beethoven - Take the skinheads bowling
05 Stiff Little Fingers - Suspect device
06 The Fall - Lay Of The Land
07 Public enemy - Rebel without a pause
08 My bloody valentine - Soon
09 Disposable heroes of hiphoprisy - Language of violence
10 Pocket Fishrmen - The leader is burning

Part Two

11 The smiths - There is a light that never goes out
12 The Fall - Mr. pharmacist
13 Symarrip - Skinhead Moonstomp
14 Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band - Big eyed beans from venus
15 The Damned - New rose
16 Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five - The message
17 The Sugarcubes - Birthday
18 The Sundays - Can't Be Sure
19 Happy Mondays - Step on
20 Lo-Cut A Sleifar - Sefyll Fel Un

Part Three

21 Andy Capp - Popatop
22 Free - All right now
23 Inspiral Carpets - she comes in the fall
24 Inspiral Carpets - Directing traffic
25 Buzzcocks - What do i get?
26 David Bowie - Heroes
27 New Order - Temptation
28 PJ Harvey - 50ft queenie
29 Mazzy star - Fade into you
30 Daft Punk - Rollin' & Scratchin'

Part Four

31 Von Südenfed - Fledermaus can't get it
32 The Dead Kennedys - California Über Alles
33 Joy Division - Transmission
34 The stooges - I wanna be your dog
35 The Beatles - strawberry fields forever
36 The Smiths - How Soon Is Now?
37 Eric B. and Rakim - I know you got soul
38 M/a/r/r/s - Pump up the volume
39 Pixies - Debaser
40 The Orb - Little Fluffy Clouds

Part Five

41 Scotty Moore Trio - Have guitar will travel
42 Future Sound of London - Papua New Guinea
43 The Sex Pistols - Holidays in the Sun
44 James - Hymn from a village
45 Hüsker Dü - Makes no sense at all
46 The Fall - Hit the north (part 1)
47 sugar - A good idea

(The all-new) Part Six

48 David Bowie - Queen bitch
49 The House of Love - Christine
50 PJ Harvey - Angelene
51 James Taylor & Joni Mitchell - That song about the midway
52 Nirvana - About a girl
53 Pavement - The classical
54 The Cure - One hundred years
55 The smiths - What difference does it make?

Part Seven to come any year soon.

- Lightning Bolt in session

Rhode Island’s Lightning Bolt are known for their ‘guerrilla gigs’, preferring to play on the floor of the venue rather than the stage, creating a tight circle of spectators around the band. They have also been known to start playing only a few seconds after the opening band finishes, often taking the audience by surprise. In 2004, Lightning Bolt played on the doorstep of John Peel's lodgings at noon during the ‘All Tomorrow's Parties’ festival, about which neighbor Steve Albini commented, ‘Best alarm clock I've ever had.’ They have also staged concerts in kitchens, on sidewalks (pavements to the British among you), and in parking lots (car parks to the British among you). 2009 perhaps has brought about the first time that Lightning Bolt have ever been seen onstage, having performed at Primavera Sound Festival on stage, hooked up to a professional sound system. Here they are in session. I've had to return my copy of Ken Garner's Peel Sessions to the uni library and owe them a lot of money in fines, so please fill in the details that are lacking until I pay my penalty and can get the book back again.

- New York Musical Theatre Festival 2009

Along with my love of (nearly) all things music, I’m secretly also a bit of a theatre and musical buff, which is why I thought I’d make a quick post about the New York Musical Theatre Festival. Every year, during a three-week autumnal festival, the theatre festival does for theatre what JP did for music, showcasing in excess of 30 new musicals at locations in New York City's theatre district. In fact, over half of these productions will have been chosen by leading theatre artists and producers via an open-submission procedure, while the other shows are requested to take part by the Festival's artistic team.

Vacation Rental Deals make it easy

During its first three years, the festival saw seven of its shows 'promoted' to off-Broadway commercial runs, with four more being picked up by regional theatres, while many others secured financing as a result of being in the festival. The New York Musical Theatre Festival has evolved into the largest annual musical theatre event in the United States. This year’s festival will run from September 28th to October 18th. One of the main benefits of the festival is that it gives upcoming artists the chance to perform in front of a live audience that includes directors, well-known actors and other recognised components of the theatre profession. During the course of its life, the New York Musical Theatre Festival has been a great success, with over 40 shows making the leap to become successful productions on Broadway, off-Broadway and elsewhere around the world.

- 70 songs (Vol. 5)

Will this ever end? Well, yes, actually, a couple more and I should be done. As ever, it is available to download or you can listen now...

- Sean Dickson and JP take a walk around Bellshill, Lanarkshire

One of the great things about being a teenager is that at some point you'll inevitably try and dress like a pop star. So it was with me and this band. The Soup Dragons formed in Bellshill, near Glasgow, in 1985. Sean Dickson (vocals, lead guitar), Jim McCulloch (guitar, second voice) and Sushil K. Dade (bass) were joined by drummer, Ross A. Sinclair, who left the group after their first album, This Is Our Art, and was replaced by Paul Quinn. Most of their songs were written by Dickson, while some were co-written with McCulloch.

The band signed to Subway Records in early 1986 and their first single, The Sun in the Sky EP, although the band's big breakthrough came with their second single for Subway, Whole Wide World, which reached #2 on the UK Independent Chart in 1986. The band were signed by former Wham! co-manager Jaz Summers' label Raw TV and scored indie hits during 1987 and 1988. Over the course of these singles, they gradually developed a more complex rock guitar sound, culminating in This Is Our Art, and the group were now signed to major label Sire Records. However, after the one single taken from the album Kingdom Chairs had failed to chart, the band were unceremoniously dropped and returned to Raw TV.

In the year following This Is Our Art, their sound underwent a change from an indie rock sound, to the prevailing zeitgeist, i.e. the rock-dance crossover baggy sound, with the release of the album Lovegod. This change echoed that of fellow Scottish band Primal Scream, clearly influenced by the rise of the acid house rave scene in the UK. By 1990, they had not only recruited a 17-year-old me as a fan but also released their most successful hit single in the UK, I'm Free, (see above) an up-tempo cover of a Rolling Stones song with an added overdub by reggae star Junior Reid.

Subsequent albums continued the rock-dance crossover sound. In 1992 they enjoyed their biggest U.S. hit with Divine Thing. The band split in 1995 with Quinn joining fellow Bellshill band, Teenage Fanclub. Sushil K. Dade formed the experimental post rock band Future Pilot A.K.A., and singer Sean Dickson formed The High Fidelity. Jim McCulloch joined fellow Glaswegians Superstar, and has since formed musical collective Green Peppers,  writing and recording with Isobel Campbell.

Sean Dickson is now based in London, DJing under the name of HI-FI Sean and writing and producing songs for Glasgow based electro group The Record Playerz. Indeed, he is presumably the HI-FI Sean who has added this clip to YouTube. In this video, he accompanies JP around his childhood haunts in Bellshill (pronounced Bells-hill), two miles north of Motherwell.

Download this clip, if you wish.

- John Peel in Dallas

Thanks to Dave (Fillerzine) for this little gem. another very lazy post, I'm afraid, this info taken straight from YouTube. Some great footage, especially good to finally see exactly where JP was standing when Lee Harvey Oswald was shot:

John Peel, recorded June 23,1996:

'I went over there the beginning-to-middle of 1960. The first radio programs I did were on a station called WRR in Dallas and they had a rhythm & blues program called Kats Karavan, spelled inevitably with two K's. I'd gotten some British LPs of blues and rhythm & blues stuff that were only available in Britain, or in Europe anyway, so I went along and played them some of those records and they put me on the radio to talk about them. I thought they'd probably put me on there because of my extraordinary knowledge of the music, but I think in fact they probably put me on there because they found my accent very entertaining because in those days I used to talk a bit like Prince Charles.

This was not the day that Lee Harvey Oswald was shot by Jack Ruby; it was a few days before that. It was when he was kind-of presented to the press as the man who'd been arrested and charged. And, I mean, it was just one of those things that -- Earlier on when the assassination first happened, and I'd been - I used to work here for an insurance company on Central Expressway, so I was able to get into town pretty quickly. I was an office boy, so I could come and go as I pleased, and so when I heard about the assassination, it was announced on the P.A. in the office, and I just drove into town and went to the police cordon and told the policeman, I said, "I'm from The Liverpool Echo" and instead of telling me to piss-off, he let me through. It's one of those things which sounds so bizarre. And I walked down - I didn't go to the grassy knoll - I just stood on the other side of the road and kind of watched what was going on until frankly it became boring. It's hard to imagine that it did, but after I stood there about 40 minutes and watching people scurrying about, so I then went and made what I'd said kind-of retrospectively true and phoned The Liverpool Echo, and funnily they weren't terribly interested. I thought, Cripes, here's my chance because I've always wanted to be in journalism, so I thought, hey, this is my chance to get into journalism. I could be The Liverpool Echo's "Man in Dallas", but they really didn't care. So I was a bit wounded by that, but then that night a mate of mine and I had been driving around and were trying to figure out what to do, and at the end of the evening I said, why don't we go down to the police headquarters and see what's going on. And we got down there, and I said to this policeman, I said "what's happening?" And he said, "Well, actually there's a press conference down here," pointing to a flight of steps into the basement of the building - "there's a press conference in here in a few minutes." And I said, "Well, actually I'm from The Liverpool Echo and this is my photographer," and we went down there. I mean, we didn't have a pen or paper or camera between us, but we went in there anyway. It's a story that I've told so often that you get to the point where you don't really believe it yourself, it just seems so unlikely. But then in one of the bits of film of that press conference, we were all standing in this room and they had the identification parade in the basement of this building and they said - Henry Wade said - that this is the man that's been charged in the assassination of President Kennedy, and they brought in Lee Harvey Oswald. And he stood there looking slightly puzzled and alarmed for a while, and then was taken away again. In one of the films of this, which they showed on British television, they showed that Jack Ruby was in the room as well - which I didn't know he was until I saw this film they sort-of panned across the room and in the last few frames you can see me and my friend Bob standing there looking like tourists.

None at all, no. I wish, I don't know, y'know, I think, I mean, everybody else does, but I think we'll probably never know the truth.'


John Peel, interview recorded June 23, 1996. Published Sept. 1996 (Filler #5). Soundtrack music "Comment Naissent des Meduses" from "Science is Fiction," written & performed by Georgia Hubley, Ira Kaplan, James McNew (Yo La Tengo).

- 70 songs (Vol. 4)

Part four ready and waiting for your ear-based consumption. Download or listen now...

- 70 songs (Vol. 3)

Amazingly, I seem to be reasonably on schedule with this series of podcasts celebrating JP's upcoming 70th birthday. Work to be done still, so keep calling by for more.

Here's part three, download or listen now...

- 70 songs (Vol. 2)

Here's part two of the 7oth birthday tribute collection...

Download the bugger or listen now...

- 70 songs (Vol. 1)

Part one ready for your pleasure, more to come over the next week or so. Download or listen now...

- Mark's record collection Q Magazine article: October, 1990

Smith and friends, circa 1990

After the unbelievable lack of interest in my post on the Peel sessions Q Magazine article, I've decided to go ahead and offer you another from my collection. October, 1990 finds a sprightly, fresh-faced Mark E. in a rare forthcoming moment, sharing one or two secrets about those musicians that have influenced him, including a nod to JP for playing Can.

Download the article here (1.8mb)

- Podcast 21 in all its glory

01 Althea & Donna - Uptown top ranking
02 Frankie Miller - Good to yourself
03 Jayes & Ranking Trevor - Truly
04 Confuse the Cat - Get the bullets
05 Whitey - Leave them all behind
06 The high Fives - The line
07 Pulp - Live at John Peel night (October, 2005) Peter Gunn theme / Sorted for Es and whizz / Help the aged / This is hardcore / Sunrise
08 Favours for Sailors - I dreamt that you loved me in your dreams
09 Joy Division - Transmission
10 Dandy - A message to you rudie
11 Birdland - Peel session (June, 1989) White / Sugar blood / See no evil / Paradise
12 Dan le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip - The beat that my heart skipped
13 Don Rimini - Rave on
14 Ty Segall - The drag
15 The Fall - Ed’s babe (Festive 50 version)
16 The Virgins - One week of danger
17 Lady Dottie & the Diamonds - I ain't mad at ya


Download link here.

- Back with a whimper: Podcast 21

I know, you'd gotten used to lovely downloads completely free of any of my wittering. Well, I'm back with a podcast proper after a beer / holiday / procrastination fuelled absence. Those of you in the teaching profession will know only too well how much effort it is to do anything during the summer hols, that's all the explanation I have, I'm afraid.

Full track list to follow...

Download: A lean, mean 1 hour and 40 minutes for only 93mb

Alternatively, listen now...