The last album the Fab Four ever recorded, and one suffused with sunshine and big emotions as a result. Relieved to be coming to the end, they reportedly had a really good time, and it shows – the closing medley of She Came In Through the Bathroom Window, through to The End, is my favourite Beatles moment of their whole canon. Bouncy, lyrically sharp and sweet, it sounds even more wonderful in the remastered version. Big hits here, too – Something, Here Comes The Sun, Come Together. And the sublime You Never Give Me Your Money. Mind you, on other days, I reach for A Hard Day’s Night...
30 days, 30 albums... Ry Cooder - Bop Til You Drop
The album all Ry Cooder fans secretly wish he’d go and make all over again – funky, humorous and loaded with soul. It hits all the marks, from the gospel harmonies of ‘I Can’t Win’ to the brittle and comic street drama of ‘Down in Hollywood’. His slide playing throughout the whole thing is luscious and his phrasing is impeccable. I also adore Paradise and Lunch and Chicken Skin Music, but this is the one that turned him into my overnight hero. The slide solo on ‘I Think It’s Going to Work Out Fine’ is worth the admission price alone. Rock’n’roll trivia – the first ever digitally recorded album.
30 days, 30 albums... John Prine - The Missing Years
The late great Phil Sinclair used to play this album all the time in his record shop in Portrush, and it was the first time I’d ever heard John Prine. I had no idea at the time that he had a solid back catalogue studded with amazing songs. This one just leapt out at me, and every now and then I put it on and think of old Phil. There are some masterpieces on here – 'Everybody Wants to Feel Like You', 'You Got Gold' and my favourite, the weird and wonderful 'The Sins of Memphisto'. The Sins of Memphisto was the audio template I had in mind when I went into the studio with 'Sailortown'. It may not be everyone’s favourite John Prine album, but it’s the one I come back to most often. In fact, I’m going to go and put it on right now.
30 days, 30 albums... Neko Case - Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
I have no idea what is going on in this album - all I know is I catch glimpses of her world like looking through gaps in a fance, and I'm fascinated by the world she creates. It's a strange sounding album, soaked in reverb and 50s guitars rumbling and twanging, with a really noir feel to the whole thing - songs that seem to touch on loss and separation and death. Think Patsy Cline meets Nick Cave. Her voice is amazing, and the songs are full of hooks and strange, poetic and dreamlike images: 'the sidewalk skins my knees, there's glass in the thermos and blood on my jeans, nickels and dimes of the Fourth of July, roll off in a crooked line'. The whole thing is also pefectly packaged - the lyrics are not provided. Instead, you get images that look like polaroids of old farm equipment and abandoned warehouses, an explosion in the distance. And strange drawings. And I have no idea what the Fox Confessor is, and why he or she brings the flood. All I know is that this is the album that began my romance with Neko Case, and it will endure.
30 days, 30 albums... John Hiatt - Riding with the King
John Hiatt is one of my favourite songwriters, and he’s renowned for classic albums like Bring the Family, chock-full of well-crafted epics. This one, though, is my favourite – I used to go and see Freddie White sing these songs (Love Like Blood, She Loves the Jerk, etc) and when I found the original album it became one of my turntable favourites for many years. It has a touch of the Elvis Costellos about it – a little spiky and New Wave-y in places thanks to the Nick Lowe production. But the songs are superb, soul-influenced things. It’s hard to lay hands on these days, so my old vinyl copy remains precious to me.
30 days, 30 albums... Little Feat - Waiting for Columbus
Forgive the gap - I was away in Paris for a few days, of which more later. Anyway, back to the business in hand... I couldn’t believe what I was hearing the first time someone played me Little Feat. It was funky, rootsy, sharp, sizzling and very very catchy. Great vocals, great players - hooky songs with a sense of humour. I have all of their stuff on vinyl in a box somewhere – well, all of the stuff that featured the late and very great Lowell George. But this was always my favourite – it seemed to take all of the things about Little Feat that were wonderful, and turn them up to 11. And as if that wasn't enough, it also has the amazing Tower of Power horn section on it, too...
Reunited with old friends at the Montra
It was a super weekend for gigs - on Friday night I was reunited with my old buddy Noel McKeary for a charity show at the Montra Club in Coleraine. The gig was a fundraiser for St Vincent de Paul at St. John's in Killowen, the part of town where my father's family come from.
It was great to see some faces I haven't seen in a while, including some of my cousins and my old Chronicle friend Des Worboys, who took this picture. Most of all, though, it was good to play a few songs with Noel - I joined the country rock band New Moon just before Noel left it, so we played together for almost a year. Along with Adrian and Clive Culbertson, Noel penned some great songs on the band's album Emerald Country Shack.
I played a few of my songs and then Noel came on stage and I accompanied him on some of his songs and then we played a few crowd-pleasers and left the stage to Henry Gaile, as he and Bernie came on and finished the night off with some music for dancing. Thanks to all those who came along and supported the night.
The folowing evening was something completely different - playing the blues with the Ronnie Greer Blues Band down at the Ardhowen Theatre in Enniskillen. The audience were wonderful and I think it's about the best I've ever heard the band - bouncy, polished and slick. Hugely enjoyable. Apart from the long drive back to Belfast. My eyes were definitely at half-mast when I pulled up outside the house and turned off the engine. Off to Paris tonight to be reunited with Andrea and spend a few days chilling out.
30 days, 30 albums... Ella & Louis
Louis often sounded like he was trying to heard to be Mr. Entertainment, and Ella often sounded like she was just… trying too hard. On this collaboration, they’re in mellow and very fine form, with the fabulous Norman Granz making everything sound warm and welcoming, and Oscar Peterson on piano. What could be better? The combination of her grace and his growl sits surprisingly well, and his trumpet playing is restrained and elegant here. This is a Sunday morning favourite at our house, and a must for every collection.
30 days, 30 albums... Tom Waits - Swordfishtrombones
After all the years of singing like a drunk and ravaged Sinatra, Waits delivered this creaking, clanking bag of bones to Warners Brothers and as they sat in the room and listened to it he apparently ‘watched the blood drain from their faces’. Warners refused to put it out and Waits moved the album to Island Records, where he remained for many years. You can see why Warners were taken aback – it’s such a departure from his earlier work, laced with found sounds, clanking and groaning broken instruments and fractured images. It’s heavily influenced by the world of avant garde theatre and Bertolt Brecht in particular. I adore it – it sounds like something grand and stylish caught in the act of falling down the stairs. 'Shore Leave' is particularly atmospheric and there are some gorgeous old-style Tom songs on here, too, like 'Soldier’s Things'. Indispensible.
30 days, 30 albums... The Blue Nile - Hats
I had the joy and privilege of seeing The Blue Nile when they performed at the Ulster Hall on the Peace at Last tour, and they were magnificent. Soaring soulful vocals moving the soul against the backdrop of electronic drums and synthesisers and gentle electric guitar. Hats is the classic Blue Nile moment, though... The lyrics are deeply evocative – ‘In love we’re all the same / We’re walking down an empty street / And will nobody call your name?’ It never ceases to make the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. This is a gorgeous album – it sounds like music to listen to late at night, while walking through a deserted city in winter.
30 days, 30 albums... Jackson Browne - Running on Empty
Jackson Browne at his finest – with an AMAZING band, writing and recording these songs on the road, in rehearsal rooms, hotels, one of them even on the bus while it rolled through New Jersey. I always liked bits of his other albums, but this one I adore from start to finish, the light and shade of it, the performances and the drama of the arrangements and the lyrics. And it has perhaps the best song ever written about being in a band and being on the road – 'The Load Out', coupled with 'Stay'. Priceless and timeless.
30 days, 30 albums... Arvo Part - Te Deum
This is gorgeous. Estonian choir, chamber orchestra and piano, recorded in a church. I’d been told of its beauty, and had heard it mentioned so many times. It’s been around for years, but I got a copy last November and it became the soundtrack to our Christmas – ghostly, soaring, comforting and hair-raising. Magnificent and elegant and snowy.
30 days, 30 albums... Bob Dylan - Highway 61 Revisited
I was a late convert, and this was the first Dylan album I really got my teeth into. I was AWARE of him, and at school someone had loaned me one of the Christian albums, but I'd just never been exposed to the best of him, for some reason. I borrowed this on cassette from a library and it shot me right back to the power of lyrics - to move, inspire and speak the truth. And to be funny. Some of this is very funny. In truth I never really recovered from the whipcrack of the snare drum opening of ‘Like A Rolling Stone’. And the rolling piano of ‘It Takes A Lot to Laugh…’ Words tumble out, hotly pursued by a loose and loud band holding on for all they’re worth. It’s still the soundtrack for many a journey. And it sounds as fresh today as I'm sure it did then - even listening on a stretched old cassette tape with a cracked cover.
30 days, 30 albums... Steely Dan - Aja
The first Steely Dan album I ever owned – my cousin Ross gave it to me. He’d bought it cold, expecting to hear lots of stuff like ‘Reelin’ In the Years’. He dropped the needle on this and got the disappointment of his life. By this stage, Steely Dan had left that boogie far behind, opting instead for sculpted perfection, moulded by the finest session musicians money could buy. This is ultra-hip but unsettling lounge music – jazz-influenced songs of disappointed lovers and jaded losers, studded with some of the most amazing bouts of musicianship. And great tunes. For all those who slag off Steely Dan for being boring musos, who can deny that 'Peg' and 'Josie' are great tunes?
30 days, 30 albums: Kris Kristofferson - Me and Bobby McGee
The soundtrack to my childhood, growing up on the Harpur’s Hill housing estate in Coleraine in the 70s.. Every home seemed to have this album, with its tales of madness and lost love and its sly smile. I don’t know if he ever bettered this collection – ‘Sunday Morning Comin’ Down’, ‘Me and Bobby McGee’, ‘For The Good Times’ and ‘Help Me Make It Through the Night’ are all on here. And ‘To Beat The Devil’, with that mumbled spoken intro that seemed so strange to me as a child. He was writing lines that will stay with us forever: ‘I’d trade all my tomorrows for a single yesterday’.
30 days, 30 albums... Bruce Springsteen - Darkness on the Edge of Town
Bruce’s masterpiece? He’s had so many – this one stands up as well as any of them; An exploration of smalltown dreams and despair, busting loose and failing and longing for something better. And for big hearts and dreamers, an exploration of the toll that small town life can take. But man, does it sound big... It jumps right out of the car speakers and begs you to wind down the windows. What a band - the NOISE these guys make is just hair raising. I love the cover, too - the young Bruce glares insolently out at us, full of pent-up energy, cornered against the venetian blinds and the wallpaper. He looks like a burglar.
30 days, 30 albums: What's Going On
What more needs to be said about this beautiful, despair-soaked bag of grooves? It’s on countless best-ever lists, and it remains a very strange-sounding album, drenched in strings and reverb and mellotron, but it has a few dazzling moments when the sun shines through the clouds and his voice pierces the heart – ‘What’s Happening Brother’ – ‘how in the world have you been?’ I put it on sometimes just to hear 'Mercy Mercy Me'.
30 days, 30 albums - Van Morrison: Beautiful Vision
Still my favourite Van album – it just sounds so good, and it features one of Van's best recording and live bands. The horn solos are perfect and the arrangements are wonderful, from the opening groove of ‘Celtic Ray’ to the shady summer afternoon melancholy of ‘She Gives Me Religion’. I know there are a dozen other Van masterpieces out there – Saint Dominic and Astral Weeks and Veedon Fleece and all that. But I keep coming back to this one.
30 days, 30 albums - New Boots and Panties!!
Ian Dury - New Boots and Panties!! I never grow tired of this… The wordplay, the funkiness of the playing, the characters that inhabit this world. ‘Sweet Gene Vincent’ remains one of the masterpieces of English rock’n’roll and this album one of its landmarks. The whole thing moves me and grooves me to this day – ‘Clevor Trever’ cracks me up and ‘My Old Man’ chokes me up. I read the Ian Dury biography recently and there was a sense that this remained Dury’s finest sustained hour, despite the odd twinkle before and after. What a geezer. Just make sure your mum's out of the room when 'Plaistow Patricia' starts...
30 days of favourite albums - Mud Slide Slim
My first exposure to James Taylor – drinking wine with my Upstage Downstage youth drama buddies in a bedroom in Portrush. I was completely smitten with the images of departure and homecoming, sunshine and long dusty roads. ‘I’m the one-eyed seed of a tumbleweed, in the belly of a rolling stone’. I also loved the sound the record made – warm and woody, unshowy and real. It's still a Sunday morning favourite. James has put out some amazing songs since then, but this one still feels like the most consistent body of work. And I find myself back in that bedroom with the candles glimmering every now and then. Metaphorically speaking, of course...