Funky Friday - Let's Spend Some Time Together

89 Oakley Street SW3- Bowie's house (73-74) where he and Jagger were ..
well, according to Angie Bowie anyway

So the last bank holiday of the summer season rolls around this weekend, and a three day stretch of local lolloping about is on the menu, with perhaps a trip to St Lawrence Bay, if only for another peep at this place of hi-amazingness...
The Salt House

On the tunes front, I've not been able to put down Muddy Waters retake of 'Let's Spend The Night Together' for several months now - seemingly sculpted from Cream's 'Sunshine of Your Love'. You'll find it on Muddy's walloping, psychedelic blues album Electric Mud

Muddy Waters - Let's Spend The Night Together



Or if you favour some disco swish - have a punt on the Joe Simon version

Joe Simon - Let's Spend The Night Together



The Stones Ed Sullivan appearance features the lyrics rejigged and edited to a more acceptable "Let's spend some time together" It's here if you fancy a nosy - points to peep for include..

The non-stop screamathon
Jagger camping like a champ
Keef's booming backing vox

Finders Groovers

Had a couple of new-to-me nuggets appear on the radar last week..

Blogger-my-neighbour Coop dropped The Dead Weather (Jack White and new playmates) rewiring of 'Are Friends Electric' into my inbox.

The Dead Weather - Are Friends Electric



And found on Drew's always excellent Across The Kitchen Table, The Third Degree's slick-hipped Mercy. Although don't ask which is the cover and which is the original - Third Degree or Duffy - I couldn't tell you.



In return for The Dead Weather tune, I gave Coop the Third Degree tip off, which, he's now ordered up on 7" - phew it's like a Möbius meltdown.

Funky Friday - 40 Years of Peace & Music

I know I'm a few days out of date with this, but had my own anniversary to do last week.

Two years ago, I had my brain fried, my mind altered and my doors of perception blown to smoke and splinters in one sitting How? By sitting through my first ever viewing of 'Woodstock'.

Partly - as I thought I'd brought home the DVD of that music fest' where Hendrix sets his Fender aflame. It took a few minutes viewing until realised that music fest was actually Monterey! Whoops.

But mainly - still ingrained with 'Never Trust a Hippy' hard-coded punk standards from my teenage days, viewed Woodstock with a sly eye and had it pegged as fuggy aired, fuzzy haired, hair-baring love-in. And a long weekend of Freak Brother freak-outs and whispy women twittering to polite applause from sky-eyed stoners and other-worldly arm wavers. Which in part it is.

However, what I hadn't expected, and left my head spinning like a shell-shocked owl were...

Sly Stone and his rip-roaring funk review
Santana's explosive Soul Sacrifice
Alvin Lee's giddy guitar work
Janis Joplin's ear-bleeding screeching
CSN's layered harmonies and shifting whisper melodies
The 'orrible Who booming in like boot boys (and Pete's white boiler suit and bovver boots look, surely inspired Kubricks Clockwork Orange droog designs)

Captured pitch perfectly with progressively edgy editing, split screen shots, triple screen shots, offstage observations from gig-goers, police, parents and much, much more, make 'Woodstock' the definitive time capsule of that heady weekend and it's place in social history.

If you haven't seen Woodstock yet, you really are doing yourself a disservice. The 'director's cut' DVD regularly sells for as little £3 in some entertainment retailers, so why not treat yourself on the 40th anniversary of the event - here's a couple of clips and cuts to tempt you..

The two tunes are studio takes not live - don't be alarmed by the names they really are lolloping chunks of funk.

Try (Just A Little Bit Harder) - Janis Joplin




Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - Woodstock



If you can't swing watching the whole clip, skip to the seven minute mark for the tempo change and the way it bursts back into life with the hookiest of hooky horn riffs.



The drummer looks like he's just finished a paper round, the keyboard player looks like Elvis. There's guitar hero gurning and curly cables too - perfect! Watch out for the naked stranger dancing with a sheep, and the ginger stoner at the close - you have been warned

Les Paul 1915-2009

One of my earliest entries on the PM blog was something about Les Paul. So a great shame then, to hear the sad news of his death last week, almost two years to the day since posting it.

How different would our record collections sound without Les Paul's contribution to guitar construction, technique and music methodology? A true pioneer and godfather of guitar, who, as Keef points out "taught himself to play guitar in order to demonstrate his electronic theories". Les literally created, shaped and sculpted the sound and tools for rock's tradesmen to take forward: solid body electric guitars, multi-track technology, overdubs, high speed soloing. Pretty much all the conventions of modern rock then.



There's an almost limitless pool of tribute tunes and riffs to choose from, either written or played on, by legends whose signature sound comes from a Gibson 'Les Paul' - try to imagine any of these without the weight and wallop of an 'LP' underpinning them..

Whole Lotta Love
Pretty Vacant
20th Century Boy
Ziggy Stardust

It wasn't always this way. Post rock 'n' roll boom, Jet-Age guitarists such as James Burton, Steve Cropper, Hank Marvin, Jeff Beck, Bob Bogle wanted shiny new Fenders in sci-fi colours. Gibsons were too expensive, too cumbersome and too reminiscent of big bands and the Palais age to be lusted after by young fret-fiddlers.

Ironically it was a player now forever twinned with Fender that brought Gibson and Les Paul out of the post R 'n' R wilderness and into the R.O.C.K arena. Eric Clapton was the first rocker to realise the physical weight of Gibson LP and it's 'mahogany tone', would add warmth and sustain to his soloing. Plugging in and over-driving his Les Paul through a Marshall amp, Clapton created thunderous tones of previously unheard heaviness, and the classic rock rig (Gibson 'Les Paul' and a Marshall amp) used by an endless list of fret-melters since. It's not much of a stretch to suggest that any 'Les Paul' player whether guitar legend or have-a-go hero whose strummed or soloed on any LP model since the sixties are indebted to this monumental moment.

EC and LP in his 'Beano' period

I'm no Clapton fan but his raw-ramped, riff-ripping work on The Bluesbreakers 'Beano' album is the shape of things to come. Add in it's moment of pivotal importance in rock and guitar history and you have possibly one of the finest tributes you'll find to the legacy of Les Paul.

John Mayall's Bluesbreakers featuring Eric Clapton - Steppin' Out



The Les Paul player that got me playing Steve Jones


My home-pimped Steve Jones look-a-like LP

Funky Friday - Happy Birthday Two This Ol' Blog

I'm dedicating this post to the memory of Guitar Hero Number One - Les Paul 1915-2009

104 weeks in the muddling making, 327 posts in the posting, more tracks and typos than I care to count and 2 DMCA takedowns all add up to one piece of Mondo-shaped bloggery and cyberspace scrapbooking that passes it's two year mark tomorrow.

For my first anniversary, I made this mix of goodies gathered from other blogger's blogs. But this year, and I guess you could call it an indulgence ("it's an indulgence" they chorused)I've harvested and hand picked a few scraps and selections (as well several nuggs I've been meaning to blog) from my own online allotment, sonic pantry and various guest mixes which you may have missed and blended them into a minty fresh mix 'Two's Next'

So a thank you goes out to all old pals, new chums, long-haulers, regular readers, chippers in, commenters, blog-rollers, Feedburner subscribers and those silent anonobods who peep but never speak - so let's raise a glass and here's to another year..

Two's Next Mix



Gimme Shelter - Merry Clayton
The Sunshine Of Your Love - Spanky Wilson
Maggie's Farm - Solomon Burke
He Don't Love You (And He'll Break Your Heart) - Levon & The Hawks
Cruisin' - Herbie Goins & The Nightimers
Lay This Burden Down - Mary Love
I Surrender - Bonny St. Claire
Love Is Like An Itching In My Heart - The Funk Brothers
Reach Out I'll Be There - Lee Moses
The Day Will Come Between Sunday & Monday - Kiki Dee
So Called Loving - David Essex
Stop Breaking My Heart - Tom Jones
Walk A Mile In My Shoes - Brenda Lee
Soul Thing - The Keith Mansfield Orchestra
Word to the Mic - DJ BC
Ticket To Ride - The Fifth Dimension
Soul City - Jean Jacques Perrey
Tu Veux Ou Tu Veux Pas - Brigitte Bardot
A Shot In The Dark - The Joe Loss Orchestra
I'm A Man - Wynder K. Frog
Mary Mary - The Strangers
Midnight To Six Man - The Pretty Things
Get Out Your Rock And Roll Shoes - Crocheted Doughnut Ring
Hey Hey Bunny - Los Gatos Negros
Like a Rolling Stone - The Soup Greens
Who Do You Think You Are Kidding Mr Hitler - Wild Billy Childish And The Blackhands
Soul Town - The Motherhood
Did you know? The 'Planet' in PM is taken from a New York Dolls song. I wanted to use Mondo as a blog title, but couldn't seem to team it with anything until Lonely Planet Boy by the Dolls popped into play. Bingo!

PS - Word Mag readers, see if you can spot me on this month's letters page

My First Vinyl Rip!

Phew what a slog lumbering back to business-as-usual after two weeks slumbering around in a laid back state of lazy days, lay-ins and beach-bumming. Southwold is an absolute gem, Walberswick is wonderful but windy and Aldeburgh is King's Road on sea (apparently it's become something of summer playground for the Rock, Cowes and Salcombe set)

But to put some gloss on the gloom, after a five year mission of trawling record shops, antique markets and online auction houses, to seek out the early seventies obscurity that is Head Hands and Feet - Warming Up The Band I finally managed to get my ol' mitts on a copy recently.

I've been trying to track down 'Warming', since discovering it through the excellent Old Grey Whistle Test DVDs. Thanks to a tip off from Ben Soundhog, I pipped a copy on ebay. And what a snip too, £4.99 instead of the Collectors Guidebook value - £25 (although I could've grabbed the demo disc version, with a deliciously diff' Island label for an extra 50p half an hour later).

So what better way to celebrate my first vinyl rip, than by uplumping this tricky-to-track nugget in the blog...

Head Hands and Feet - Warming Up The Band



It's A Pop Quiz - HHF's bass player is better known as one half of a seventies/eighties light entertainment duo - but who is he? You'll hear him at the tail end of the verses on the 'woah mama' section..

You can lend an ear to Don Everley's refit of Warming Up The Band here...

Funky Friday - The Adnams Family

Postcard by Juliet Blaxland

Following a week of local based bumbling: pubs, beaches and bikes - for the next week it's Southwold here we come (isn't that a Smiths album?)

If you've never visited, the highlights include: Suffolk's tea colured sea, the Adnams brewery, Aspall's Suffolk Cyder, the Southwold Picture Palace, the pier, crabbing in Walberswick, one of the UK's finest chippies rated Number One (here) just a nip away in Aldeburgh, - and Southwold's high street lighthouse. But like Mrs PM says - why the high street? Aren't lighthouses meant to be on a rocky outcrop, spit or somesuch - not plonked next to the pub and brewery surely?

If you've never visited why not take a taste test here - Southwold tour

PS We're not leaving until tomorrow - but I'm bored of usual holiday tunes (XTC, Beatles, Monty Python albums) having played them too many times - so any recommendations for must have holiday listens would be appreciated..

So, I'll leave you with Two summer soundalikes that were on my subs bench for the last Podrophenia..

Jack Costanzo - Peter Gunn Mambo




Dave 'Baby' Cortez - Watermelon Man



And a guest mix which should be appearing on The Right Side Of Funky sometime over the weekend

See you in week's time and I'll try to send a postcard..

Not sure about that manky mud-pier, nothing more scenic in the vaults then?

Funky Friday - Podrophenia 2 - Phew What A Scorcher

This chap has appeared in Podrophenia 1 and 2 - but who is he?

Summer's here and the time is right for podding in the streets..

I'm away for a couple of weeks, so I'll leave you with Podrophenia 2, a summertime special from Piley and myself (plus a few offstage heckles from his cat) which sees us navigating our musical charabanc through literal, lateral and loose interpretations of summer. By way of songs written around haystacks, hayfever, beach buggies, caravans and rain. Along with random gabble about buses, bacon, 'would patrons kindly refrain' pool signs and Piley's discovery of the Deliverance Olympics.

You can download below

Podrophenia 2

stream here (whoops the Divshare link is broken)



Or try via iTunes

One of these two lung-busters belts out a scorching version of 'Sunny' in the poddy.


Back soonish

And The Stars Look Very Different Today

What was I thinking? No space-posts! And me a hard-coded astro-nutter from the minute I knew what any of it meant..

A couple of questions though, and don't get me wrong these aren't in any way conspirasist cyber-babble. Just general confusion, a blind-spot on the mechanics of the act, and not having read anything more detailed than the usual timeline of events..

How did the Eagle blast of when it was so low on fuel? Were there landing and take off tanks?

How did Eagle dock with the control module?

Is Moon Dust worth a punt?

David Bowie - Space Oddity (very early demo version)offline

Paul Weller - Kosmos offline





23 comments:

Davy H said...

1. Yes
2. Skill and gravity
3. Very much so
July 21, 2009 10:37 AM
bleecher said...

some great high res pics here on google-moon
http://www.google.com/moon/#lat=0.655754&lon=23.471664&zoom=18&apollo=a11

its used to show cheese on full zoom in...but sadly the googleboffins have lost their GSOH
July 21, 2009 10:39 AM
bleecher said...

oh and secondly ... blasting off in a very low gravity environment wouldn't take much thrust/fuel

a fart in a space suit wud just about do it i rekon .....
July 21, 2009 10:43 AM
Planet Mondo said...

I'll be nipping to Camomile Library to grab MD today Davy - have a top space-walk on your day out today..

A - Google Moon!!! Where did that come from? Can you visit the dark side?

B - Must steam up your visor though?

PS have you checked the super-duper early Bowie tune - great pre-amble 'some of it is being considered as single material, but we'll leave that up to you'
July 21, 2009 11:31 AM
Davy H said...

I've already given my copy of Moondust away, otherwise could have sent you it.

Tip-top Davy Jones demo Houston.
July 21, 2009 12:05 PM
bleecher said...

google moons been about for .... ummmmm .... moons.... the appolo series landing and exdedition plotting is amazing tho....all high res photos and mostly in colour too ... you soo have so look

oh yeah the music.. wat can i say? mr bowie and mr weller in one post? i think i just came a little
July 21, 2009 12:17 PM
Planet Mondo said...

Speaking of Bowie I must check his young'uns new film Moon.

Have you been at the Space Dust today Bleech?
July 21, 2009 1:04 PM
Mrs Mondo said...

C'mon Mr M - even our kids know about Google Moon! (They were just talking about Google Mars over tea the other night - I think you must have been on another planet..?) ;-) xx
July 21, 2009 1:48 PM
Keith said...

I've always been intrigued by space. I was really interested to see all the stories yesterday about the 40th anniversary of man walking on the moon. Cool tunes by the way.
July 21, 2009 2:29 PM
Planet Mondo said...

Google Moon! Google Mars !?! what about Google Mondo? x

Thanks Keith today's post was a last minute switcharoo, If you were here earlier you'd have seen a diff' post for about 30 mins (my first vinyl rip)- I'm going have to do a more planned post, perhaps Funky Friday - 'Moony Tunes'..
July 21, 2009 4:07 PM
Furtheron said...

You know that second picture - the one of Neil Armstrong on the moon... just makes me think maybe the "it was all fake and shot on a set in the desert" may be right... :-)
July 21, 2009 4:09 PM
Planet Mondo said...

It was a fake F-RON check the 'conclusive proof' here.
July 21, 2009 4:18 PM
Simon said...

Oh dammit, who mentioned spacedust? I love that stuff. I had a crunchie ice cream the other day, and to get that thank crunchie it's friday fizz the chocolate on the outside has space dust in it!

As Mrs Simon says 'it's the little things...'
July 21, 2009 5:20 PM
Gabbi said...

Wonderful space post! Amazing photographs and music...

I know all the conspiracy theories are out there, but I still like thinking it's true. Such a great bit of history.
July 21, 2009 10:15 PM
Planet Mondo said...

Loved spacedust Simon - did you ever try holding as much as you could, at the back of your throat for as long poss? No! You should. Did you ever get a bit on your eye though..yikes!!

I've no doubt about the landings happening Gabbi, that link above is to a fab send up of the conspiracy theories - have a peep, fantastico..
July 21, 2009 10:35 PM
Mick said...

Loved that Bowie demo. Space Oddity was my favourite song 40 years ago and this version makes it sound fresh again.
July 22, 2009 6:13 PM
Planet Mondo said...

I've got the Demos of Ziggy Stardust and Lady Stardust with just Bowie on Guitar for ZS and piano for LS

Drop a line Mick if you want copies
July 22, 2009 7:31 PM
Mick said...

Thanks for the offer. If they are from the Ziggy Stardust CD with bonus tracks I've got them. In fact, your post made me consider posting them. The Ziggy demo is particularly nice. I think LS is one of the other tracks and I can't find the CD at the moment.
July 22, 2009 8:09 PM
Planet Mondo said...

Those Rykodisco reissues were fab - have you checked the Transformer remastered edition (I got it for 2.99) comes with the demo of Perfect Day - just Lou and an acoustic

Here check these out Mick - top quality unreleased Bowie demos from 1970..
July 22, 2009 9:20 PM
Mick said...

Thanks for the links, PM. One thing I forgot to ask - what year is that Space Oddity demo from? It sounds more like the finished product than the Love You Till Tuesday version so I'm guessing 1969.
July 22, 2009 10:34 PM
planet mondo said...

I think you're right Mick - hard to find definitive dates and info on it - but 69 seems to be the year

There's some details here , but the version I've posted is taken from the Sound and Vision box set - well worth a grab if you haven't yet..

I had a fab Bowie booty somewhere where he's demoing something and John Peel walks in
July 22, 2009 11:07 PM
Blank Stares and Cricketclaps said...

Is this post a tribute to that lovely film Capricorn One?
July 23, 2009 5:39 PM
Planet Mondo said...

I've no doubt it happened - my Q's are rooted in confusement not conspiracies
July 23, 2009 8:03 PM

Funky Friday - Globetrotting

An album that features Stevie Wonder, one of Toto and Pele - has there ever been a more random guest list!

So rolling along with the theme of summer sounds - how about a sequence of intercontinental hops to faraway funky hotspots

Antonio Adolfo - Transamazonica



Sergio Mendes & and the New Brasil '77 - Mozambique



Quantic Soul Orchestra - Panama City



Or if you missed my global a go-go funk mix from last year 'Mondo Internationale' - try a two minute taste test below...


And download here

Grabbed a 7" of this little gem for 50p at the recent Leigh Folk Festival.Bargain.