As Piley and I head out on the highway, having a run out on the theme of Types of Transport. Edwyn Collins, Jack Hammer, Bo Diddley and an exclusive preview of a new tune from Dennis Hopper Choppers are onboard for the ride. Along with possible topics for some radio pitch and put including:
How many driving tests!
Strange vehicles you've ridden in.
Who to cast in a live action Wacky Races.
Favourite TV only transport: The Banana Splits buggies, the Pink Panther car, Thunderbirds hover jet-skis.
And some new additions to the Morrisey conga. Park yourself here from 9 for a ninety minute radio ride.
It's a re-up, but from four years back - I think we can swing that..
He was the UK's last proper pop star. I've got the albums, the singles, the box sets and even worn the t-shirt (Frontier Tour 1980). But in just over 30 years I've only hit two Adam Ant gigs. The first at Chelmsford Odeon - when Adam was simmering up to Ant Music's boiling point and the audience still a molten mix of snarling skins and spitting punks, who would break into random bouts of head-cracking and high flying fist-fights at the spill of a pint or any period of extended 'bogging'.
The second was last Wednesday. In a loaded, low-key Southend sweat-box venue where Adam reanimated a patchwork of his former personalities: King of the Wild Frontier, the Dandy Highwayman, Prince Charming - rendering them into a multi-sided composite of the characters that's almost Johnny Depp meets Axl Rose with a Bolan-ish tone. Read what you will into that..
Dig through the Ant Music back catalogue and all the hits are 'bankers' - perfect pop constructions. But for me, the magic always lay buried (pirate style) in the muscular punk of the early works, the B-sides and the bootlegs. If you'd asked me to rattle off a fantasy set-list..Fat Fun, Fall Out, Beat My Guest, Lady, Vive Le Rock would have been a few of the tunes. And as if by magic - Adam beat me to it, drafting up the dream set-list of hits, oddities and obscurities.
You can't help feeling slightly sorry for the those only there to hear the hits. This being a playlist pooled from the fanzine-era and Dirk days of darker matters: Cleopatra, Plastic Surgery, Physical, Deutscher Girls
Adam now moves at a more stately pace and doesn't present with the same breathless energy, or the full frontal attack of the young up 'n' comer he once was, but the presence is just as punchy, the voice is still intact - switching from crowd-rousing growler to crooner boom. The jawline and cheekbones are still sword sharp, while the band (with double drummers) blitz it like a Spitfire.
Unbelievably Adam Ant is nudgingly close to his sixtieth birthday.
Allsorts: The Adverts, Adam Ant and Amos Milburn - just a few of the A themed tracks and acts playlisted in the first installment of our Podrophonic Alphabet, getting a run out on S6 Radio tonight..(9 - 10:30)
As well a handful of songs to bring you, there's guest appearances, as Gaye Advert and TV Smith stop by to say hello - and former Ant man, now Wolfman - Chris Constantinou gives us an exclusive interview on why Adam Ant is Live Aid's forgotten rocker..
You can spot Chris on Bass below
And cherry-popping here..
And - we want your DIY idents. But more on that tonight
Rock Chic is the vibe at Fee Doran's newly re-housed glam-grotto. Originally occupying a fifth floor space Clerkenwell way - Mrs Jones new lodgings, currently parked up along Hackney Road, are Mr Benn goes Bowie at Kensington Market. Housed in a glittering club-house where handmade one-offs are racked and stacked alongside a set-dressing of black sprayed mirror balls, the coolest cult collectables and an assortment of sparkles, spangles and funkily feather-cut numbers. All of which make a visiting the emporium feel like a rummage around Eno's Warm Jets era wardrobe..
Stylistically Fee Doran's designs trace a line from the Wonder Workshop and Biba's widescreen scene via Mr Freedom and Alkasura to Roxy Music meets Worlds End. Dig about the Mrs J website and you'll find a client list that reads like a Burke's Peerage of the glossily trendy gentry - Kylie, Goldfrapp, Scissor Sisters, Madonna. Dig about the multi-coloured pop shop's stock, and bespoke bits or unique 'pop star droppings' are yours for the bagging.
Mrs Jones Emporium can be found 49 Hackney Road, E2....Mrs Jones can be found on the web and Twitter..
A tune that seems to match the mood of Mrs J's is this Roxy rarity.
Rarity rating being: a Peel session (4th Jan 1972) from before the band signed to Island and featuring Davy O’List on guitar and Graham Simpson doing bass duties
Back awhiles (two years) when we did our first couple of poddies round at his Piley's place, the techno setup was spectacularly ad-hoc.. with just one mic on the dangle. So in at the deep end then to be working a desk that looks staggeringly like Scotty's enegergizing gizmo re-patched with Colonel White style electrickery. This basement level boiler-house of a studio is where we fiddle with faders, jingles and PFL(?) buttons while pitching in a few tunes of a Tuesday evening, joined by our scrolling roll call of chums, companions, contributors and regular suggesterers.
Numbers was the theme of the week that was. Tonight, it's colours. Drakey Girl, Dave P, Gary, Johnny Medd and many more have all chipped in with some fine and funky colour coded specials including...
Gary's shout
One of Drakey's
You can grab last week's run-out here if you fancy (we're on at 3 mins in) - or retune your ears and internet connections and come on over to S6 Radio tonight
Achingly 80s - apparently this comp contains a super rare remix of Do or Die. Anyone have a copy..
Revisiting Martin Rushent's back catalogue following the sad news of his death, was something of a shock. Aside from the League, I'd had no idea his fairy-dust was sprinkled so broadly over such a formative chunk of my building-block buys: The Rezillos, Buzzcocks, The Stranglers, Generation X, XTC. Somehow I'd missed Martin's fingerprints across my collection, probably as these record were bought for the giddy rush of the song-and-the-sound rendered so perfectly together - not for studying the sleeve notes. Which, in it’s own way is a tribute to his skill as a producer - where the song, not the studio, is the star.
I'll leave the final words to Tronik who says everything so much better than I could ever hope to..
As a tribute, let's fire up a couple crafted from the Rushent back catalogue, where he applies gloss to new wave grit and acts as a home-grown Moroder to Sheffield electricians. Two tracks that are flip sides of similar styles: thudding back-beats, thunderous bass rumbles and heavy-level bleeps and squeaks
As Piley and I kick off with chapter two of Radio Podrophenia - covers being the banner above last week's playlist (details here), but what's tonight's motif ? Come on over and find out - perhaps pitch in with a comm' or suggestion for any we may have missed and to vote for the Pick of the Pods closing track. Or let us know your favourite celebrity look-a-likes and slebs spotted in the unlikeliest of places...all this and a Paul Weller/S Club 7 duet (yes, really)..
A couple of tracks that may get a run-out from my grab-bag are...
If you orbit about in the Twitterverse - you may have spotted a few fevered tweets back awhiles when I first fell under the spell of Cornershop's new LP Cornershop & The Double O Groove Of. What a joy and a gem of a collection it is. So a super-scoopy do then to get happy shopper himself Tjinder parking up on my corner of cyberspace...revisiting Cornershop's earliest recording, in his own words..
David C became our drummer over time. He had his own French Film Blurred fanzine, and output for us was very prolific in those days - an album a week. Not only did he like it, he encouraged it, & over the passing of many bells ringing in last orders, he finally joined us. In fact, he decided to learn drums - furthering our confidence.
At the same time my brother had joined too, playing guitar, but I talk of David more here because like most drummers do, he introduced us to an ex-boyfriend of his sisters, Andy Green, now located in Hove. We liked what music Andy had done & after playing Brighton he hassled us to do a mix of 'England’s Dreaming', which we liked so we took him up on the offer to work with him.
Me, my brother Avtar, David & his girlfriend Emma went to Hove near Brighton on a daytripper, well in my brother’s car actually. After a quick breakfast we got going. David & Emma went shopping & my brother took a deserved rest.
Well versed as I was in cassette tape technology, this was the first occasion I had used a sampler with a sequencer. At that time it was wonderment to see a track come together so quickly. The Akai sampler, an S950 has a certain crispness to its sound quality, not forgetting that vinyl has already gone through its many stages of recording & mastering - you are halfway there. Andy Green(away) put the selected audio into the sampler & quickly arranged it in the sequencer, & before we knew it a track was developing, & before I knew it I wanted to make music this way. The only live track inputs were feedback from an overloaded microphone, and my vocals. As the bass & drums had been put on, I started writing lyrics - it had got this far & I didn't want to leave without a finished track.
Andy was very good at explaining the processes, pulling in audio, trimming the start & end points, & triggering via sequencer, repeat half a dozen times, add feedback, add vocals, & then we mixed it on a TASCAM 424, all done at gas mark 7, heading back home by teatime with a very different 3rd single on an Agfa D30 cassette - I was the happiest Wog in the world. Oh I forgot the sitar was then put on after.
Written by Tjinder Singh p&c ampleplay'11
Getting back to the future - you can taste test, a track from The Double O Groove right below - or nip along to catch Cornershop LIVE tonight at the 02 Academy Islington.
A huge thank you is due to all at Cornershop HQ for their help in putting this together..
