lefreeakblog

David Crosby or Croz to his fans, one of the key faces of 60s counterculture and ex member of The Byrds and Crosby Stills Nash & Young, died last month after a long illness. Crosby's career was a tale of two halves - firstly with the two aforementioned groups and a brief solo career before sex, drugs and rock & roll caught up with him landing him with a year of jail time in 1985. Initial come backs were often short lived, firstly with two solo albums in 1989 and 1993 and then teaming up with his son in the jazzy folk rock band CPR in the late nineties. However it was complete sobriety in the last decade of his life that led to a burst of creativity and five albums over his last ten years. His songs, opinions and moustache were part of the zeitgeist of the late sixties' counterculture and influence spread far and wide long after this period passed. Personally, I was particularly drawn to his sea songs because of my Devonshire roots and childhood days by the coast. This r...

Around this time last year I started a small piece to mark the 25th anniversary of Billy Mackenzie's death, the former lead singer of the Scottish post-punk band The Associates who died on 22nd January 1997, leaving us with short but stunning legacy, all wrapped around an incredible four-and-a-half octave voice. I regrettably never published it at the time and with the sad news a few weeks ago of the passing of Alan Rankine, Mackenzie's co-founding Associate colleague I thought I best to revisit it and finish it off (so here we are :D). My reaction to the news reminded me of the kind of group The Associates were in their first incarnation - uncompromisingly single minded, esoteric and alas quite brief; a brilliant 3 albums - if you include their singles compilation Fourth Drawer Down - in a little over 22 months. And all the music written and recorded by Alan Rankine, every last instrument, solo, electronic synth and guitar riff.  A quick glance online backs up their cult stat...

For the first time in a long time, I was back at the cinema last month, there to catch the new Bond movie No Time To Die , a solid and enjoyable final romp for Daniel Craig. My favourite moment wasn't primarily film related however, it was when the strings from the impossibly majestic We Have All The Time In The World started and I was struck by how beautiful this piece of music is. Much like in the film from which it first appeared, 1969's On Her Majesty's Secret Service , it turned out to be a reoccurring theme, with its moments of reflection and looking back. Written by regular Bond composer John Barry and Hal David - Burt Bacharach's most reliable lyricist - it has the same assured quality that many other David penned songs have such as Magic Moments, Walk On By and Say A Little Prayer. In it's original appearance, it was written as a secondary theme for certain moments throughout ONHSS rather than opening the film; Barry felt that given it's long title, it ...

Coupling a jittery piano line with an insistent chorus, Get Get Down is the dance anthem the sadly departed Paul Johnson will be best remembered for and a track that encapsulated the spirit of the man himself.       Released in 1999, at a time where disparate forms of dance music - four to the floor, speed garage, big beat - were slowly merging into one, Get Get Down is one of those timeless dance tracks that defies categorisation.        Born Paul Leighton Johnson in 1971, a career in a music production beckoned after being inspired by the illustrious line of DJs that came from Chicago to international prominence that included Frankie Knuckles and Farley "Jackmaster" Funk. Born with an innate desire to get on with th ings, he was self-taught, arranging and playing at his first gig aged just 13. As he told 5Mag in 2006: “I was breakdancing at the time, that was my thing, then I went to my first party and saw the DJ mixing and wanted to do that. I was ...

With no hesitation Adam Yaunch, better known by his stage name of MCA and who died nine years ago last Tuesday, launches into his band's Bodhisattva Vow, one of the most unique songs in hip hop: " I develop the awakening mind I praise the Buddhas as they shine I bow before you as I travel my path To join your ranks, I make my full time task " The Beastie Boys' Bodhisattva Vow is MCA's masterpiece about being a practising Buddhist and the veneration of fellow Buddhists. What makes it particularly astonishing is how eloquent and palatable it is within the confines of the 3 minute pop/hip hop song, as he himself explained: "The general concept behind the song," Yauch said, "was to take the meaning of Shantideva's text, at least on the level that I understood it, and compress it into a modernised, three-verse rhyming song." The track's genesis started when Yauch attended a lecture by the Dalai Lama in the Spring of '93 whilst recording ...

We clapped for our NHS again recently and it got me thinking about the notion of heroes and conversely... of villains. People don't like villains, they never have. Well not really. Yes of course they're always exciting in sci-fi or fantasy film setting but in reality it's not something to preach about or sell. 'Bad boys' in the modern sense yes to a degree but never villains, the traditional term never gets a mention. When The Beach Boys released "Heroes and Villains" in 1967, it largely sunk without trace and never got stuck in the public consciousness like Bowie's "Heroes" did, who's anthemic call - "just for one day" - had become part of last summer's BBC Radio wide singalong and entered the British psyche, just like Captain Sir Tom Moore did, a gentleman, decorated war hero and astonishing philanthropist who single handedly raised a staggering £29m for the NHS. "Heroes" incidentally wasn't even a huge hit ...

Tis the season to be jolly and there's no doubt that this year's festive joy has come as somewhat of a tonic for this most difficult of years. Amidst the festive songs are the songs about Christmas that are the best at making me dance, chuckle or just sing and so here are my favourite ten songs about Christmas in chronological order. Merry Christmas!! 1. Hark! The Herald Angels Sing - Frank Sinatra (1957) For some reason the winter season always makes me want to listen to jazz and along with Ella Fitzgerald and Miles Davis, it's Frank who I go back to again and again and this hymn on his 1957 Christmas album hits the spot perfectly. 2. Sleigh Ride - The Ronettes (1963) It wouldn't be Christmas without some Ronettes and their festive take on Phil Spector's wall of sound. Genius. 3. Little Saint Nick - The Beach Boys (1963) Arguably one of the best originally penned Christmas songs, this minor Brian Wilson classic is for rock aficionados who don't want to listen t...

It was Roni Size's birthday last month. And Dynamite MC's birthday too, friend and member of Roni Size's Bristol drum and bass group Reprazent. A chance to wish them both happy belated birthdays and also an opportunity for me to mention their stellar and Mercury Music Prize winning New Forms and in particular drool over Railing, it's opening track: Evolving from the posse of friends that formed around the birth of the Full Cycle label in 1993 by Roni Size and fellow Bristolian DJ Krust, Reprazent was the full embodiment of Roni Size's vision, melding tight chopped up propulsive jungle beats with live drums and double bass in give it a jazzy vibe. Railing is his mission statement, like a Nineties Electronic version of the Sex Pistols' Holidays In The Sun, served by his spokesman Dynamite MC as he delivers the message: "Yes, something of a different pace Fresh, It's a 97' made taste Now, I believe the time is right How, stepping from the left to the ...

It's 25 years since Blur's Country House and Oasis' Roll With It went head to head in the UK Singles Chart on 14th August 1995, a battle fuelled by differences in taste, personal opinions, geography even class. It was engineered by Blur's label Food Records who intentionally moved the release date for Country House - the lead single from Blur's fourth LP The Great Escape - to the same date as the new Oasis single Roll With It, itself the second lead single from the new yet unreleased album (What's The Story?) Morning Glory . Of course the ploy worked wonders as the story captured the zeitgeist of the mid-nineties, as Britpop peaked in popularity with the story making the front pages of magazines, newspapers the world over. It even made the 10 o'clock news - see above - which is extraordinary because no one had died (why the arts can't have more of a place and replace the sensational oddities lower down the news stories I'll never know). Of course th...

Resembling the distant howl of a coyote, the humble recorder sounds one of the most recognisable melodies in the history of music. Appearing repeatedly in film, music and television, its the start of the theme to The Good, The Bad And The Ugly written by  Ennio Morricone who has died aged 91. No other composer, bar perhaps John Williams, has had the same cultural impact as Morricone.       Ennio Morricone was born in Rome to a musical father who helped him learn to play several instruments. After an initial stint playing trumpet in jazz bands in the Forties, he became an arranger and was then asked by fellow Roman Sergio Leone to compose a theme for the first of his 'Spaghetti Westerns' 1964's A Fistful of Dollars.  Credited as Dan Savio, Morricone was asked by Leone to base the theme on Dimitri Tionkin's  El Degȕello and using this objective as well as his own lullaby he'd written earlier, he created the theme song.  For A Few Dollars More quick...

Whenever it's very hot like it is today, when its so hot it's all you can think about, I'm always reminded of my Dad's quip about the ethereal and soothing "Cool Cool Water", a cool (pun intended) little ditty by his favourite band The Beach Boys. From their 'lost' Smile! album, it was part of the 'Elements' suite originally conceived by Brian Wilson, their songwriter in chief, along with pieces on fire, wind, vegetables etc etc. After shelving that album - for a multitude of reasons, too many to list here (perhaps a future post..) - it was rewritten for their 1970 classic  Sunflower album, and in the process lost some of its original charm. Anyway belated happy fathers day Dad;

There have been huge protests around the world recently in reaction to the killing of George Floyd in the U.S. Throughout history, music and songs have marked such events and been the vessel for artists to make their own voice heard. They have been used as a barometer of the mood, the feeling and the sense of injustice felt by the public and by the country as a whole. Below are 17 examples of protest songs written in times of civil unrest, particularly in but not exclusively to, the U.S.: Strange Fruit Billie Holiday, 1939 Is there a more chilling song in popular music? A poem by Abel Meeropol - written under the name Lewis Allan - felt that Lady Day had to sing it. Covered by  Diana Ross, Nina Simone, Tony Bennett, Sting and many others, it s lyric about lynching and Southern trees with "blood on the leaves and blood at the root", are unforgettable. The Times They Are A-Changin' Bob Dylan, 1964 from The Times They Are A-Changin' Known in his early career a...

With soft brushes of the cymbal, Jimmy Cobb, who passed away ten days ago and who was the last surviving member of Miles Davis sextet behind Kind of Blue , starts the gentle groove that underpins "So What", one of the greatest and most famous pieces in all of Jazz. Recorded for Miles Davis' 1959 masterpiece Kind of Blue , it opens what many say is the greatest jazz album of all time, having sold millions of copies worldwide and been streamed millions of times ("So What" alone has been streamed 49million times on Spotify at the time of writing, not bad for a 60 year old piece of music). Kind of Blue  would mark the moment where Miles Davis vision of modal jazz really came to fruition, after initially exploring it in the preceding two albums. Modal jazz sets the music around a mode rather than specific tone and by treating all chords equally, it gives musicians more freedom to play. "So What" is one of the best examples of modal jazz as it particu...

Zombie was perhaps the finest single moment of Tony Allen, who passed away last Thursday. I'll never forget the first time I heard "Zombie" in 2004. I was about to see Femi Kuti play at London's Barbican as part of the festival Black President: the Art and the Legacy of Fela Kuti , curated to celebrate his father's legacy. My date had stood me up at the 11th hour and I found myself on my own in the venue, having never heard of Fela Kuti; it was my date's idea but I was keen to go having visited South Africa the year before and fallen in love with African music. There was no support act (you don't support a Kuti!) but a short documentary instead played. The music that accompanied the opening was "Zombie" and I'll never forget it when the lights went down and those opening notes, the sax and first kick beat filled the auditorium: Described by Brian Eno as "perhaps the greatest drummer who has ever lived", Tony Allen spent a li...

Ain't No Sunshine launched the career of Bill Withers, who passed away recently aged 81. Overhearing a frustrated promoter in a club saying how much a late arrival was getting paid, a toilet making Bill Withers put together a demo which included this song, one which very quickly became a modern standard, covered by an amazing number of wide ranging recording artists including Paul McCartney, José Feliciano, Isaac Hayes, Sivuca, Kenny Rogers, Tom Jones, Ladysmith Black Mamboza, and perhaps most famously Michael Jackson, who released it as his first track on his first solo album  Got To Be There,  a mere 6 months after Bill Withers initial release, such was its hit potential. The song was written and first released on Bill Wither's debut  Just As I Am  in July 1971 and originally a B-side to "Harlem" before DJs disagreed and flipped it over, promoting it to the A-side. It very quickly went Gold hitting Number 3 in the US Billboard Top and winning a Grammy for Best...