Sleepy Eyes Nelson – A Bottle of wine at the Bellgrove Hotel
The production retains a scratchy retro feel, but is more punchy this time round. He has an eye for detail and on a few tracks, notably ‘I’m gonna get my Knife’ it really adds to the brooding atmosphere. His playing is top notch too, the aforementioned track giving a nice example of picking a heavy bass and filling in the detail at the same time. I love it when one guy sounds like two! ‘Cheap Wine Blues’ plays this out to great effect, with Sleepy pining ‘I gave the devil all my money, devil all my blues, and my good girl she took my heart’ over the strutting bass notes. It really is quite something to hear this quality of picking and sliding from a hometown boy. There ain’t many guys doing authentic acoustic blues about these parts and it may seem a strange choice but i read an interview in which he commented ‘… most of my numbers are about gambling, death and drinking so i reckon Scotland is the perfect country for the blues. There’s so much sadness here….how many happy people do you see walking round? Scotland knows all about it…’ And to that end he’s right, I suppose what is surprising is the amount of mousy, lightweight twee garbage Scotland has shat out over the years. Certainly, Sleepy’s credo is evident on the final closing tracks, Pinebox Blues and Bellgrove Hotel. The latter in particular is an excellent tune, and does the job of hammering the blues firmly to Glasgow’s creaking door.
I loved that teenage witch….and so did some cool bands
My teenage years were filled with bitterness toward Scotland. Bitter on account of the motherland not providing the kind of opportunities I was certain American teens were enjoying on a daily basis. specifically, the points I felt my life was missing were:
- driving a really cool convertible car
- actually, just driving
- sex
- making my own dream woman from scud books, a sindy doll and a car battery
- being pressured into organising a party when i’m sure no one will turn up.
- reiterating that fear to my friends as i open the front, and being astonished as about 1500 people all say ‘HI!’ at the same time.
- the fact they are all much older than me is neither here nor there
- sex
- having a locker at school
- for hiding stuff in i mean
- staying in a huge detached house in which my bedroom is the converted loft
- or basement
- having some incredibly hot girl, 2-3 years older than me, living across the street
- finding out that girl is in fact a shallow and completely bogus bitch, and that i’d be better off with my geeky female friend
- realising this only when the geek makes herself look like the shallow bitch
- sex
None of this was forthcoming in a country renowned for bad weather, entrenched alcoholism and deep fried foods. And in the days before yer bebo or yer facebook i had to rely on good ole television to brighten my corner. ITV was as shit then as it is now, but they did endear themselves to me by picking up on Sabrina the Teenage Witch featuring Melissa Joan Hart.
Melissa had several qualities which made a puberty struck Ah Fong take notice
- blonde
- supernatural
- liked wearing leather trousers
- and leather skirts
I’ll not go into details on a family site like this, let’s just say the fevered conjouring of MJH’s image kept this scottish boy warm on the freezing summer nights. As did the image of one of her aunts (you know the one) The programme itself was the breezy, preppy feel good kinda show the yanks excel at. But what marked it out for me was that rather than just namedrop a lame reference to popular culture (like Blossom and Pearl Jam. Eeeeew) STTW, as us fans call it, actually had personal appearances. Alright, some of them were shit. But some were amazing. I thought REM had made an appearance but cant find a reference to it, but Violent Femmes were on and even po faced, soap boxing, alt.popsters 10,000 maniacs got in on the act.
So take your pointy judgemental hat off, Mabel and enjoy Sabrina’s arse the bands
p.s what’s MJH up to these days? running a sweet shop. Melissa, we could have done that together. In glasgow. With fried food instead of sweets….
Hooverville’s rockin’ Halloween mix
squareamerica.com
Click on the pic, cats and kittens!
bob regan – tarantula
bobby bare – vampire
bracey everett – the lovers curse
the champs – experiment in terror
colin cook – heeby jeebies
jackie cannon – chill bumps
jerry dallman – the bug
ralph nielson & the chancellors – scream
the reekers – dont call me bug face
ronnie dawson – rockin bones
tommy bell – midnite dreams
trini lopez – fever
wild tones – martian band
jackie morningstar – rockin in the graveyard
rod willis – the cat
joe wallace – leopard man
tommy roe – caveman
phantom five – graveyard
round robin – i’m the wolfman
randy luck – i was a teenage caveman
bobby please – the monster
terry teen – the hearse
If you can’t smoke it, drink it, spend it or love it… forget it
I’ll always remember the day Bette Midler recommended the film ‘Payday’ to me. When I say ‘to me’ I mean I heard her on the radio. ‘It’s a film about how life used to be for country singers, how hard it was‘ she told me Radio 2
Payday stars Rip Torn as Maury Dan, a journeyman type C&W singer. I first remember Torn from playing Artie on The Larry Sanders Show, and I’d seen him in a few less than great recent films. But it seems ole Rip is a man of hidden depths. For starters he really is (nick)named Rip Torn, how fucking cool is that? And he almost landed the lawyers role in Easy Rider till him and Dennis Hopper got in an argument and Dennis pulled a knife (or was it the other way? I kinda hope it was…) Jack Nicholson, you are a salamander of fate.
Payday is a great film with some great scenes. Maury’s tripped out mother, the duck hunt, and the awkward menage a trois in the back of a filthy tour car. As Bette cracked open another Carlsberg Special Brew she confided to me ‘This film should have made Rip a star’
He listens to The Blasters, The Flesheaters and X…
About 4 years ago a friend handed me ‘Post to Wire’ and told me to have a listen. The cover looked promising; a beat up caravan, sorry trailer, with the legend THIS IS THE LAND OF BROKEN DREAMS writ large on the siding and providing a major hint to the content. I don’t need to tell you this is a great album, and the one which broke Richmond Fontaine to the UK. Songs of heartbreak and loneliness interspersed with the inventive ‘Postcard From…’ vignettes set to a modern western sound; I played it nonstop and was hooked.
Post to Wire was the 5th release by the Fontaine, so I dug back a bit to hear the older stuff and was surprised to find a different sound. In amongst the rootsy tunes on Lost Son, Miles From and Safety there is a beating guitar heart borne from the likes of Hüsker Dü and Green on Red. Some real gems amongst these first outings too, check out Pinkerton, Cascade, Blinding Sight and Safety. The 4th album, Winnemucca, is a stone fucking classic. Northline, 5 Degrees below Zero and Western Skyline are 3 of the finest contemporary Americana songs you’ll ever hear. Whatever happened between Lost Son and Winnemucca changed the sound of the band for good. Winnemuca is an album forged from desert desperation. With the (relative) success of Post to Wire you may think RF would have continued to mine the same seam on their next release The Fitzgerald but in a courageous move they went for a stripped down Nebraska style sound. I’ll admit this was a slow burner for me, but perseverance brings reward, Mabel. The craft behind the songs on The Fitzgerald is incredible. If you can listen to The Janitor without feeling a lump in the throat then you truly are a cold, heartless bastard. One of the things I love about the Fontaine is the ever changing sound and Thirteen Cities (plus the subsequent $87… EP) stayed true to form. Guests such as Howe Gelb and Calexico’s Jacob Valenzuela fleshed out a mariachi vibe to the record. There was something of a more accessible sound in a few of the tracks like Capsized and the astonishing Four Walls, they would sit well in any radio playlist… but needless to say don’t. If Chris Martin wrote Four Walls Radio 1 would fucking wet themselves.
We Used to Think the Freeway Sounded like a River is the current release and doing pretty well by all accounts. It builds on the Thirteen Cities vibe, written and played in an accessible way but still retaining the dark undercurrent of Willy Vlautin’s lyrics. When Willy Vlautin writes he writes of the people around him; blue collar guys, waitresses, gamblers and drifters. The Boyfriends is Vlautin’s part nostalgic, part pained look back at the men in his (recently departed) mother’s life.
If my mother was alive I would never have written that song…even though I’m not attacking her in it. All I can say is I can’t remember any of my teachers or half the kids I went to school with, but I remember all of my mom’s boyfriends. And they’re stuck in my head like a fucking hammer. So I had to write this song.
He’s always written that way. On Safety the track White Line Fever has a trucker take centre stage in, for me, one of RF’s greatest moments. Drama, tragedy and human weakness are all played out with a rolling, tumultuous soundtrack. This song resurfaced on ‘obliteration by time’ sounding even better than before. If you check out one song from this post let it be ‘White Line Fever’ Vlautin is also enjoying success as a novelist, his first two novels getting great reviews and his third, Lean on Pete is due out next year. But don’t go away thinking Richmond Fontaine is all Willy Vlautin; it’s a bunch of friends playing together and enjoying what they do. Hopefully the new album will be a success for them, and they can continue making My Favourite Music.
And as wee treat, here’s an exclusive Hooverville rendering of ‘$87 and a conscience….’