Don’t forget the second division

I am a massive football fan. That’s football aka soccer, not football played with an oval ball. That said I have been known to be a couch potato for any World Cup regardless of ball shape. Actually let’s face it, I’m a massive sports fan full stop. If I hit on sports when I’m channel surfing I’ll stop and look regardless of what it is. But football’s what I grew up with so it’s always going to be number one.

My approach to music is similar to my approach to sport. If it doesn’t give you a thrill and make you sweat it isn’t worth it. But the similarity doesn’t end there. In football you have absurdly overblown clubs with all the money in the world sucking up the resources of its supporters and giving them sometimes soulless teams that are only in it for the money in return. In music you have overblown record companies sucking up the resources of fans to provide a soulless mainstream product of no real value, for their ‘entertainment’. The difference is that music fans put up with it whereas football fans will boo a boring team off the field. That doesn’t change the fact that at the highest level in football you can get teams that are so full of talent that they cancel each other out. End result, technically proficient games with no real highlights. Go to a big money, energy drink sponsored gig and what do you get? Hmmm.

In football some of the best competition exists at the second tier. The fight for promotion to the top divisions produces some of the edgiest, most committed games you will ever see, with some of the wildest fans along for the ride. It comes down to commitment and a passion to prove yourself worthy of the big time. When it comes down to it, the only real difference between the first and second division is the money to put on the gloss and pull the big name sponsors.

The highest tier of music is generally defined by major record companies with the money to force their turgid mainstream product onto as many people as can stand it (or who simply don’t know about anything else because it isn’t pushed). Occasionally you get someone who gains promotion to the big time, but watch how quickly they change and start to sound like everyone else, or crash and burn from the pressure to sell out. The first division of music is a factory cataloguing a few acceptable designs using pre-determined and proven components following the time honoured “if it worked yesterday it will work tomorrow” method of production. Start beat A, add synth line B, get pretty performers (vocal talent optional), teach them dance move C for use in glossy soft porn video style D. If possible try and generate some kind of crappy controversy around them to get social media going and Bob’s your uncle. Job done. Let’s do it all again tomorrow with the next celebrity sucking sap waiting in line.

None of this is new of course. It’s how showbiz has always worked. Taking risks is bad practice. It could affect the bottom line. Risks are left to people with less to lose. But that’s where things start to get a bit more interesting. This post was inspired by me coming across a CD by Concrete Blonde for $2 in a charity shop. It came out in 1987, at a time when the music biz had a serious strangle hold on what people had access to, similar to the way the biz is now but without the streaming options. There was a massive gap between the first and second division in what could be achieved commercially in other words. At that time independent labels were struggling against MTV and the absurd money being thrown into pushing crap at the highest levels. Think hair metal. Think synthesizers with everything. Think primitive digital studios producing the same robotic drum sound on every hit record. Indies had to come up with the goods to survive, and they did. The second division was where the only real action could be found in that hideous cultural wasteland.

My Concrete Blonde CD is a time capsule. It’s an awesome slab of pure rock made at a time when pure rock was not included on any major label’s sales sheet. This was their first album and they made a few more great records without making it ‘big’. Johnette Napolitano had one of the best female rock voices in history and should have been massive but was just too real for the majors to accept. Which is a tragically familiar story no matter what the date is.

So who else was playing hard in the second division in our late 80’s time capsule?

Most of the action was in the USA. In fact most of the action was focussed on Minneapolis and LA. In Minneapolis, Husker Du made it to major label status (Warner Bros) and then promptly imploded after a couple of okay albums that filed off their hardcore edges and left the songs as the focus. Probably one of the least likely acts to ever perform such a trick, but the band were nice guys and that probably made it more likely than someone like The Replacements from across town. Led by an eminently nice guy in Paul Westerberg, booze and other substances were The Replacements undoing, and they got to the play offs for the first division before scoring an own goal by getting drunk on Saturday Night Live and saying a rude word to the audience. Neither act was likely to endear them to the chairman of the board, and they eventually faded away after some thrilling, emotionally rich and powerful albums. Pleased To Meet Me and Tim are the ones that brought them close to the big time, but Let It Be also includes bits of their earlier hardcore roots and is probably the pick of the bunch. Here Comes a Regular and Little Mascara off Tim pack a real emotional punch and I admit to getting a little choked up by them at times. Definitely not music for the good times but it will surely help you get through the bad. The Replacements are another one of my favourite bands.

Also from Minneapolis were Soul Asylum. They had more commercial appeal and released albums on A&M and Columbia, eventually selling enough to get a platinum album off the back of Nirvana’s success, but they only released a couple of worthy products and after grunge became passé to record companies they quickly faded back to their roots. Pre-Megaupload’s massive fail, I managed to find a set of demos for their A&M album Hang Time on a blog somewhere. They have a more rock n roll edge than the commercial product and are recommended if you can track them down.

From LA, well Hicksville California actually, The Dream Syndicate provided a Velvet Underground inspired wall of noise that had strangely appealing pop hooks. Leader Steve Wynn had a voice that wasn’t about to challenge Seal in the chanteuse stakes, but he and the band did a convincing job of merging artiness and rock n roll without sounding pretentious. Debut album, The Days of Wine and Roses was easily their best and they were more influential than commercial, dogged by line-up changes that killed any momentum. Kurt Cobain’s vocals owe a big debt to Steve. So do mine for that matter.

Definitely from LA, The Rain Parade were lumped in with the Dream Syndicate as part of the Paisley Underground – a marketing term from the early 80s for rock acts that had a 60’s psych influence. The Rain Parade produced a fairly gentle take on things in comparison to The Dream Syndicate but held their own along with bands like Green on Red and jangly girl group The Bangles. What I like most about The Rain Parade are their album titles and covers more than the sounds within. Emergency Third Rail Power Trip and Explosions in the Glass Palace are nice listens, but without a commercial point of reference they were ultimately destined for obscurity.

Completing the LA legacy are the hardest case band on the page. The Gun Club would have been huge on any planet that worships deep rooted, blues based, hell raising rock n roll, but sadly Planet Earth is not one of them. Leader Jeffrey Lee Pierce raged more than Nirvana against ugly bullshit, wrote better songs than any MTV hogging mega act and had the balls to call The Cramps tame. What prevented them from reaching promotion to the big time were two things: Jeffrey Lee had alcohol issues even AA would struggle with, and their live act was scarily aggressive at best and dangerously deranged at worst. That is not a winning combination for major label A&R men on the lookout for the next Huey Lewis. Somehow they kept going for a decade or more before Jeffrey Lee reached the end of the road and became another ghost on the highway. Any of their albums are worth checking out, if you can excuse some of their more excessive peaks.

I’ll leave the last word on this post to Jeffrey Lee as a challenge to all mainstream power brokers: “it is not an art statement to drown a few passionate men”.

For music without division check out:

The Hopkinsville Goblins Are Back!

Amerikaemia

and

Posts From Planet Earth

We know what you like

Owners of websites and bloggers alike know the power of site analytics. That’s the back end stats that tell you many people in Russia have checked out your latest creation, from what referring site, using what browser. Its fascinating stuff (no, really) and you can spend hours wading through it (assuming you receive enough traffic to create the stats).

For the modest but elegant numbers of non-Russian visitors to this here blog (and even for some of them) I’d like to clue you into some other stats that are pretty significant. It seems like there’s a pattern emerging in the streaming for certain tracks on the Hopkinsville Goblins releases available on your favourite streaming services. Whether it’s the way things are tagged bringing in specific music hunters, or whether people are just previewing and choosing what they like on the fly, it seems like people like streaming three tracks from Posts from Planet Earth together as a group and then going onto their next trip. I don’t have the power to link the streaming stats to country referring site or browser, but what I can tell you is that people dig the three spaciest tracks on that album. And why not. It’s the final frontier and we do aim to please.

So with that in mind, this page hooks you up to what the most discerning Hopkinsville Goblins fans are streaming. Check them out, and if you like them there are another 30 or so tracks you can peruse while you’re at it.

PS Russian visitors really go for Amerikaemia. Not sure if it’s because it’s a free download or because they actually like it. The stats don’t go into that kind of detail. Yet. But I’m sure the great Goog is working on it. And we’ll be watching. Because we all want to know what makes each other tick. There’s a song percolating on that for the next Hopkinsville Goblins product. More about that later.

Sources of Ankh

Ankh is the wellspring of life. To my little guys that means the frequencies generated by music and their effect on the hormonal system of living beings. In other words, the stuff that sends the shivers down your spine and makes you rage like a fool. Ankh is timeless. The taste and smell may change but the effect is the same.

Nothing exists in isolation and everything is related to something that has been done before. Anyone that tells you they have come up with something completely original is deluded. When you are talking ankh there is a big difference between inspiration and plagiarism. When you absorb your influences and spew them out as something that belongs to you, that’s inspiration. When you sound like a hack, that’s plagiarism. Ripping off a cool bassline to suit your financial bottom line is hack behaviour. Getting fuelled by a source of ankh is inspiration. This post is a not-very-comprehensive list of sources of ankh the Hopkinsville Goblins use to build their musical matrix. It’s inspired by the record sleeves of the Chocolate Watch Band. This is the only web page you will read that lists Cold Chisel and Japan in the same breath.

Simple Minds, Dub reggae, Gong, original blues, Virgin Prunes, Throbbing Gristle, Sleazoid 60’s rock, XTC, the best bits of 60’s acid rock are all covered already on this here blog. 

Add to that The Boys, Adam & the Ants, and The Rezillos for making punk you can laugh along to; Gang of Four, Japan and New Order for making post punk you can dance to; The Soft Boys, Swell Maps and ATV for warping traditions before they became traditional; and Humble Pie, Free and Cold Chisel for putting soul into hard rock and roll.

Plus Little Feat, Little Bushman and Little Richard for making little sound big, Big Star and Big Black for making big sound tight, The Black Crowes and Black Keys for making black come alive; and Black Sabbath and Black Uhuru for making black sound deep.

And in no particular order:

AC/DC and ZZ Top for the greatest guitar sounds, Graham Central Station for the heaviest bass playing and The Jam for the gnarliest drumming ever.

Antibalas for blurring the lines between tribute and inspiration, and I-Roy for his shameless appropriations from legends.

Linton Kwesi-Johnson, Gil Scott-Heron and John Cooper-Clarke for giving hyphenated surnames a sound of their own.

Magazine for giving attitude and paranoia an honours degree.

The Glove and Visage for significant one-offs.

Mandrill for bringing the tropics to New York.

P-Funk for reclaiming the pyramids, Billy Lee Riley for flying saucer rock and Hawkwind’s sonic assault across time and space.

DEVO’s alternative universe.

Brian Eno’s fluid future explorations and the darker time zone of Chrome.

The Ramones and Led Zeppelin for spawning the most imitators in history and The Buzzcocks for spawning a 100 UK indies.

Edgar Broughton's gentlemanly eccentricity and Captain Beefheart’s gentlemanly madness.

John Martyn’s cosmic celticness.

Cheap Trick’s goofy identity and The Comsat Angels honest anxiety.

The Fall, Tall Dwarfs and Hound Dog Taylor’s minimalist genius.

The Gun Club, The Replacements and The Faces for giving drunken sloppiness soul.

The Pink Fairies, New York Dolls and The Stooges for prototypes that work better then the final product.

The D4 for proving pure punk is timeless.

Supergrass’s single malt 60s drop.

Vernon Reid, Ice-T and Public Enemy’s killer collages.

Prince’s genius libido.

Wire for capturing the soul of the lost banker.

And Talking Heads for their slippery funk.

Now see what you can find in us:

Posts from Planet Earth on Amazon, I-Tunes, Spotify, Deezer and Google Play.

The Hopkinsville Goblins Are Back! on: Amazon, Deezer, iTunes, Spotify, Apple Music and Google Play. Or check them out on Youtube or from any of the purveyors of fine sounds listed on this site

Paypal users can check us out (literally) on Bandcamp.

Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide

So Google and Facebook have been playing fast and lose with your personal data huh? Surprise, surprise. They were given a free gift and no one told them they couldn’t play with it until it was too late. Every time you click “yeah whatever” on the terms and conditions page for your latest app you’re twitching yourself even further into the web. Most people live online now because it makes sense to, but have you ever considered what happens if you want to undo the digital footprints you are leaving behind? Data is a commodity and is going to be one of the most valuable commodities of the 21^st Century after all the ivory and tiger gall bladders have been collected.

People have gotta make a living and they need you. And now they know where you live. Online anyway. The world is a village and you are its idiot because you made friends with those acquaintances you bumped into via friends of your partner’s cousin’s friend and, because of some links to some historical Marilyn Manson gigs in your news feed, they now want to out you as an aethiest to their Mormon Facebook community that keeps spamming your inbox with invitations to join them. Or the time you got tagged in that photo in a restaurant with your girlfriend’s friend’s boyfriend, who your boss recognised as someone he sacked in a previous job - and now he’s looking at you funny, just when you need him as a referee for your dream job. The grapevine produces instant fruit. It’s complicated, is it not, trying to tell the people who are messing up your life to bog off without looking like as asshole (for eternity) in front of the people you do care about.

If honesty is a dangerous thing, how about hiding behind a fake persona? Worth a try if you can get away with it, but don’t let the guys from Catfish find you. Plenty of people stretch the truth online, to some pretty outrageous extents. Why, it won’t be long before some mad musician is claiming they're acting under the influence of aliens. First impressions are almost certainly not what they seem, so think carefully when you’re weighing up those friend requests. Those hot photos are probably just a front.

But it’s all so tempting and it’s available instantly. Or instantly after you give them your credit card details that is. Then after you've signed up you find the glossy hooks on the front page are pure eye candy. All sugar coat and no filling. Like a drunk tourist in Amsterdam, you’re being played every time you venture online. A decent set of digital blinkers are a must have. How many times have you gone looking for stuff online and by the end of the night, not only achieved nothing, but ended up with a whole lot more you never thought of to chase down tomorrow.

Then there’s the whole business about business. You’ve gotta be upfront with the government and the bank and all the other corporations that have you by the short and curlies. Mess up your official identity and you’re life will vanish before your very eyes. They don’t pay money in little brown envelopes anymore. No bank account, no life. Even homeless people are struggling in a cash-free society, but that’s where you’ll be if you screw up. Is that really the only way left to retain your privacy?

Big data = bigger control. And you thought aliens were scary.

Now I know what you’re thinking – what has this got to do with rock n roll? Not a whole lot – this is a shameless plug for some of the ideas my little guys have been throwing out on their albums. Try these tunes on for size:

The best thing about the 60's

You can say a lot of things about the 1960s and a lot of people have, but for me the best thing about the 1960s was still the music. Without the music you wouldn’t have the cultural revolution and all the icons that go with it. But having said that, a lot of the music produced in the 60s was pretty horrid and it hasn’t stood up too well over time. In fact, most of the key figures in 60s music actually annoy the hell out of me.

Bob Dylan – what the hell is he on about? His voice barely rises above the spoken word and his harmonica playing is like nails on a blackboard. There are a handful of his songs I can deal with but on the whole, too much to say and no blues to give it any feeling. Icon one down.

The Grateful Dead? OMFG no. Apparently you had to see them live to appreciate them. The tabs would have helped too so you could at least watch the light show, because musically they are so lame they are lifeless. Mock soul vocals, pomped out lyrical drivel and wimped out guitar solos that go on and on and on and on without achieving anything. All the Dead Heads that have followed them around for 50 years qualify for a big three-foot-high, gold-plated get-a-life trophy. Icon two down.

Jefferson Airplane. I own a copy of Surrealistic Pillow. It has a lot of good songs and a good atmosphere that was lost on everything else they did subsequently. Their biggest problem, apart from Marty Balin’s stoned out, mock soul vocals, is the fact that Jorma Kaukonen came up with THE worst guitar sound in recorded history. Whoever told him that putting an extra pick-up on a semi acoustic guitar then feeding it into a fuzz box was a good idea should have been shot. It produced the tinniest lead guitar sound imaginable and it has the same effect on the nervous system as Bob Dylan’s harmonica. Surrealistic Pillow is good because there are very few guitar solos on it and those they do are played clean. Everything they did subsequently is plagued by Jorma and Marty’s shortcomings. I don’t want to sink the boot in too much because their song writing is so good, but I honestly find most of their stuff unlistenable. Icon three down.

So who do you like Alvis? Come on. You spent most of the last post railing against the state of the Universe - tell us something good already.

Okay, okay. Sinking the boot into icons is actually a lot of fun, but I’ll get back on topic. And I didn’t even get around to the Beatles.

I’ll spend the rest of this post hooking you up with my favourite tracks from the 60’s. Yes tracks. Because in a lot of cases it’s just the odd track that people did that floats my boat, not their overall legend or output (with the exception of Jimi, but that’s a given – they could dig him up now and he’d still be cooler than anyone else treading the boards). So here goes. In no particular order, you need to hear these:

Section 43 – Country Joe and the Fish. Not the version on their first album, but the one on their first EP. If any 1966 track qualifies as ‘psychedelic’ this is it. The whole thing seems to come from a place further than far east, and it sounds like it is being played in a key of its own. It’s actually just an ordinary minor key, but the languid baseline uses a musical language outside anything ‘rock’ had produced up to that point, and ever since too for that matter. Truly music to trip to. Even the silly country twang in the middle makes sense in this world.

A Beacon from Mars – Kaleidoscope. Music to trip to is a theme across these tracks actually. This is the title track from Kaleidoscope’s second album, recorded in 1968. What is particularly mind-blowing about this track is that the band recorded it  live in the studio. Starting out barely audible with a slow take on Howling Wolf’s Smokestack Lightning it develops over 12 and half minutes into a nocturnal journey through forgotten parts of America and outer/inner space. It simmers and bubbles away with a hypnotic momentum, highlighted by an incredible feedback solo halfway through. This is one of my favourite pieces of music full stop.

Music – Kaleidoscope. Not the same Kaleidoscope as above, but I couldn’t resist putting them both in. This is the English band of the same name but of very different flavour. These guys were serious intellectuals, and this is what you get when you let four Cambridge types loose in a studio with a bunch of tabs, a phaser unit, and some musty opera samples. Not as pompous and dated as it sounds, it’s actually a genuine assault on the senses. Another pure one-off.

Wind Chimes – Mad River. Not the version on their first EP this time, but the one on their first album. The EP version has some inexplicable Hare-Krishna chants in the middle that just piss me off. The album version has none of that and features some incredibly deep ‘acid rock’ guitar soloing across it. ‘Acid rock’ actually just translates to the use of minor keys in a rock setting but what the hey. Everything needs a good marketing term doesn’t it. Their first album is the best thing that came out of San Francisco in the late 60’s and is recommended in its entirety. Laurence Hammond is one of hippiedom’s best vocalists and all of these guys were seriously talented on their instruments of choice. The only draw back is that the album was mastered at the wrong speed so it’s a bit chipmunked, but there is probably a speed corrected version available by now so get googlin’.

1983, A Merman I Should Turn to be – Jimi Hendrix. No sinking the boot in here. Jimi is, was and always will be, my main man. Ironically this track isn’t full of guitar playing – it’s Jimi stretching out in the studio in his favourite sci-fi/fututistic/fantasy mode, creating a movie for the mind. Almost every instrument is played by Jimi overlaid track by track, including wind noises made by his mouth. I have listened to this in a lot of different settings in a lot of different states. If I get the choice it will be what I listen to on my death bed. It’s THAT good.

Mommy, What’s a Funkadelic? – Funkadelic. Yes indeed – we need some funk in here. This just scrapes in on topic as it came out late 1969. The first track on Funkadelic’s beyond-mere-classic first album has weed smoke wafting off it as soon as you put it on. The album should have come with its own little bag. Slow paced and kinda sleazy, it hits the spot whenever you are in the mood for something a little warped. The only drawback is the thin guitar sound and slightly out of time drums in places – but who knows, that might have been intentional (or unavoidable).

The Fool – Quicksilver Messenger Service. One of the common features across these tracks is the lack of vocals or lyrical content (Funkadelic don’t really write lyrics!). This one is the only ‘song’ in the list, but it’s a long one, clocking in at around eleven minutes. The lyrics and vocals aren’t the most memorable feature it has to be said. The high notes are cause for any cats in ear shot to run out the door, but these guys were jammers so give them a break. It’s guitars to the fore this time. Brilliant solos all across it, with a nice little percussive wah-wah break taking it to places a little other-worldy. Spaced out tarot-rock anyone?

It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue – The 13^th Floor Elevators. What happens when you take a Dylan song, give it some decent vocals and overlay it with floating guitar lines of the sort the Grateful Dead can only dream of? You get this. I had to include an Elevators track because they are genuine 60’s icons for all the right reasons – chemical overindulgence, free thinking and musical talent taken to illogical extremes with an enduring cult following to match. Roky Erikson is a survivor of bizarre proportions given what he put himself through in the late 60s, and he was still able to put out stand up music into the 1980s when all of his contemporaries had either sold out or completely lost the (musical) plot. This track is from their second LP Easter Everywhere – a work of beauty that stirred the frantic garage rock of their classic debut into a smoother paste without wasting the crucial blues chunks. If they had kept it together they would have been huge, but they burnt out and joined the canon of 60s what-might-have-beens instead. Sad, but almost inevitable.

Trust Us – Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band. I need to double check when this came out but it was before Trout Mask Replica and that was 1969 so I think we’re good. The list ends with the most indescribable song. Everything that makes the good Captain great is included here. Lyrics that sound profound, but are really just nonsense. Bluesy guitar licks and wild production. It sounds mad and it probably is (although word has it the Captain was putting it on most of the time). It makes me laugh every time.

I’ve left out tracks by Frank Zappa, Fleetwood Mac and Santana because their best stuff starts around 1970, and none of it has the same vibe as the above, mainly because the atmosphere of lysergic experimentation that produced them was starting to fade away.

As usual I’ll try and link these back to our stuff. In reality its something of a stretch this time around, although we aren’t strangers to slow, spaced out instrumentals so I don’t feel too dishonest. Try Nullarbor and Void and Light Well on Posts from Planet Earth as a starting point. They probably come up to the belly button of the above tracks. And phasers and samples? – Well, that we can do!

Posts from Planet Earth on Amazon, I-Tunes, Spotify, Deezer and Google Play.

The Hopkinsville Goblins Are Back! on: Amazon, Deezer, iTunes, Spotify, Apple Music and Google Play. Or check them out on Youtube or from any of the purveyors of fine sounds listed on this site

Paypal users can check us out (literally) on Bandcamp.

Scorpios suck and other slices of cosmic wisdom

Hi folks 

It’s been a long time between posts. I’ve had to deal with massive amounts of shit in my day job which has taken me out of, er… life, for months. I’ll spare you the nasty details, but what it boils down to is that scorpios suck. I have known a few, and they all seem hell bent on ruining my life. I know that’s a sweeping generalisation based on a pseudo-science, but it’s true – you can tell one of these schmucks a mile away. People who know about astrology will tell you the essential features of each star sign. Librans are vague fence-sitters, cancerians are evasive egotists, taurians are blunt battlers, but let me tell you about scorpios. They are pedantic, unreasonable, hypocritical, dogmatic, righteous and underhanded, and in 99 cases out of 100, WRONG about whatever it is they feel so strongly about. They will tell you what they think about you to your face while pulling strings behind your back to pull away the carpet. They should all stick to working as parking wardens given their attitude, but unfortunately they always aim for the top.

You would think that some of the most driven and famous figures in history would be scorpios given their attitude, but guess what – there are none. That’s because people can see their shortcomings and refuse to give them what they want. Fun fact: Hilary Clinton is a scorpio. She thought she should be given the presidency not once but twice because it was her right and lost out both times. The second time she lost to the biggest idiot in world political history, which goes to show just how much people can’t stand a scorpio. That’s a source of endless gall for them, and it just fuels their vindictiveness even further. Now our Hils is reduced to writing bitter after-the-fact books and going on talk shows to try and deflect the blame away from herself onto everyone else.

I’ve been dealing with not one, but two of these creeps and it’s been a massive distraction from what is really important, like my little guys accumulated wisdom and taste in beats.

Even more than a thin slice of astrology, my little guys would like to offer you three pieces of wisdom from the depths of the universe that will help you get by. 

1.            Reject all forms of organised religion.

2.            Technology is not necessarily your friend.

3.            There is much, much more going on than meets the eye.

The Hopkinsville Goblins try to sneak this into their music one way or another without trying to ram it down your throats, but here is our chance to expand on it, so please indulge us for a minute if you will be so kind.

Religion is superstition and ignorance gussied up as the truth. It seeks to nullify the pain and fear in life with the promise of ludicrous rewards and over-the-top punishments when your life is over. When combined with politics its pure poison. It gives the ruthless and power hungry the ultimate weapon in control, and the greedy and pious the philosophies they need to crush their fellow man without conscience. My profit’s greater than your profit and my prophet’s greater than your prophet. It makes the righteous more righteous and the gullible more gullible. 

Richard Dawkins is my man when it comes to telling it like it is, but at the same time, backing science as an alternative isn’t 100% foolproof either.

I have been looking at developments in artificial intelligence lately. I know someone that was at a tech conference recently that featured music composed by a living person side by side with a composition put together using A.I. They reckoned they couldn’t tell the difference. Which is what makes A.I. simultaneously exciting and scary. Check out the recent Bladerunner reboot for a pretty believable vision of A.I. in the future. The fact that the hero is an artificial being with an avatar house companion seems pretty normal in this context and its something you might see in your own neighbourhood in the not too distant future. Like I say, fascinating and a little bit unnerving. Unless they insist on inscribing capital A’s on android’s foreheads a la Red Dwarf it could end up being quite a crowded, confusing little world. There was an episode of Dr Who back when John Pertwee was the Doctor in which an evil mind programmes an army of android shop dummies to act as his terrorist army. Scary as hell. Unrealistic? Ter-mi-nat-ors ne-ver stop. Just wait for the first A.I. soldiers to start rolling of the production line and then scoff at my cynicism. I give it two years before the first ones are delivered.

On the bright side, lonely men everywhere will no doubt benefit from some Cherry 2000 style action. I’m sure they are working on that right now.

The best use of tech would be to tap into the sources of energy we can’t sense. The more tech dependent we get, the less aware we get, so tech can at least do us a favour and redress the balance. People used to be aware of so much more because they were closer to the natural rhythms of the planet. The further we get from those rhythms the more vulnerable and self-destructive we get. Global warming is a fact folks. So is the plastic island in the Pacific. If you ever visit the pristine white sand beaches of Thailand and Indonesia try not to step on the crust of plastic debris on the high tide mark. When the world gets sick it redresses the balance by putting pressure on what’s causing the problem. In this case that’s us people. Your mother is coming to get you.

This has been another Hopkinsville Goblins public service announcement. Thank you for your kind indulgence. There is a fashion among musicians to thank God for their inspiration. I thank a bunch of little green men. I don’t see the difference.

Posts from Planet Earth on Amazon, I-Tunes, Spotify, Deezer and Google Play.

The Hopkinsville Goblins Are Back! on: Amazon, Deezer, iTunes, Spotify, Apple Music and Google Play. Or check them out on Youtube or from any of the purveyors of fine sounds listed on this site

Paypal users can check us out (literally) on Bandcamp.

Stuck outside Kaikoura with the space nomad blues again

For those unfamiliar, Kaikoura is a little tourist town on the east coast of New Zealand’s South Island, famous for whale watching and crayfish eating. More recently for a massive earthquake that luckily killed no one but demolished a significant amount of road and railway. The fact that hardly anyone lives there was a plus on this occasion. It’s also famous for a UFO encounter that nearly saw my little guys busted in 1978. A still from the film taken by the Aussie film crew commissioned to track ‘em down appears on the cover of Posts from Planet Earth. It’s the closest you’ll get to a band photo given how camera shy my little guys are.

You may wonder why we don’t play live, but really. Do we look like Alvin and the Chipmunks?

As it happens, contact with people diminishes their powers, so they don’t have much choice. But all this hiding and dodging from contact with people is a source of conflict for them, since they love people so much. That, and where to do your laundry between planets. It’s a source of the blues in other words, proving that the blues is indeed a universal thing.

“The blues is a low down shaking chill” – Preaching Blues, Robert Johnson 1936

Robert Johnson wasn’t the first to record the blues but he hit the nail on the head with that line. That feeling you get when you realise that what you need and what you are capable of given the reality of the world just don't add up. And then having to deal with that. It’s a feeling that’s been around as long as there have been people, there just wasn’t a recognisable way of communicating it through music until the culture created by ongoing deprivation, of people supposedly freed from slavery, found its voice in the southern states of the USA.

So what is it all about? Well the blues isn’t about being poor and depressed. It’s actually an expression of strength in the face of adversity, combined with deep sense of righteousness in the face of ingrained injustice. The expression is sometimes aimed at society as a whole, but most often it exists on a personal level when the deprivation in question forces people to prey on each other. The blues are a personal thing. Anyone can have them, and everyone experiences them differently, but the feeling is the same.

"You without me is like heavy metal without the blues notes: you'll never go platinum" - It's a Doggy Dogg World, Snoop Dogg 1993

The blues have developed from their acoustic origins via amplification and sophisticated arrangements into a whole range of forms. The delivery may be different but the basic sound and feeling doesn’t change. It’s spread throughout culture like the vines in a Mark Twain novel. Son House informed Howling Wolf who inspired Lynyrd Skynyrd who are echoed by the Kings of Leon. And so it goes on a hundred other branches. How do you know it’s the blues? You can feel it. And it generally feels good.

For the last year or two I’ve been going on a backwards journey through time. Since “modern music” (whatever that is) is stuck on a treadmill of corporatised, technology enhanced, sanitised tedium I figured I’d try and find the source of the Nile. It wasn’t hard. Since all the earliest blues recordings are now in the public domain you can find them everywhere at budget prices. But if you want to understand them, you can’t go past the Not Now and One Day reissue labels. These guys know their stuff, and while their sleeve notes are limited to about 400 words, you don’t need to read endlessly to get it. Too many words only guilds the lily. You just need to get the gist then listen. How many of you know the difference between East and West Coast blues? I didn’t realise there was one either till I got into their compilation series. Likewise Delta blues versus Texas blues and so on.

At this point I want to say that a sainthood should be on the way to Jack White. While I never could get into the White Stripes, the work he is doing now on preserving the earliest blues for posterity gives him maximum points in my book. It seems that it’s all down to individuals with a heart and money to achieve things that governments used to on the behalf of the society they are paid to maintain. It’s an interesting development, and it sort of restores a little faith in humanity in the face of billionaires crying poor and sucking up the wealth of the many. Urgh! Don’t get me started.

So where is this all leading? Uuh – same place it usually does – Hopkinsville Goblins tracks. In this case the link is back to the bluesier sounds: “Shiny Pebbles”, “Soaking up the Suds” and “Home Run” on Posts from Planet Earth and “Even the Rats have Pissed Off”, “Electric RV Blues” and “Easter” on The Hopkinsville Goblins Are Back! "Electric RV" may not sound like a blues song on casual inspection, using as it does the fretless bass voice on a Roland drum machine as the anchor, but the themes are the same – separation, struggle, frustration. And humour. Yes, the blues even has room for a laugh at times.

As a last word, for my money the ultimate blues track is “Dark was the Night, Cold was the Ground” by Blind Willie Johnson – it’s Robert Johnson’s lowdown shaking chill expressed in wordless sound. It was recorded in 1927 and blows everything recorded in 2017 out of the water, ourselves included. Don’t believe me? – oh yee of little faith. "Monolith Surfing" on Posts from Planet Earth also aims to use two chords to generate a feeling, but the purpose is different. That one explores deepest outer space, but "Dark was the Night" nails deepest inner.

Posts from Planet Earth on Amazon, I-Tunes, Spotify, Deezer and Google Play.

The Hopkinsville Goblins Are Back! on Amazon, Deezer, iTunes, Spotify, Apple Music and Google Play. Or check them out on Youtube or from any of the purveyors of fine sounds listed on this site

Paypal users can check us out (literally) on Bandcamp.