“Behold, my friends, the spring is come; the Earth has gladly received the embraces of the sun, and we shall soon see the results of their love!” – Sitting Bull.
A selection of tunes to see in the warmer times, featuring Jodie Langford, Joe Chambers, Young Fathers, Sleaford Mods, Ill Considered, GROVE, James Brandon Lewis, Emerson Kitamura and more.
From my ears to yours – 20 tunes and the added bonus of some Boris Johnson fantasy privileges committee findings. Includes tracks by DJ Koze, Sabo, Martin HERRS, Speaking In Tongues, Lucky Daye, Yasmin Lacey, Ezra Williams, Jen Cloher, Kate NV, Steve Mason, Yves Tumor and the lovely Gabriel Moreno. Consumers of TV will also recognise a couple of nods to HBO’s The Last of Us.
Track List
Max Richter Orchestra – Richter: On the Nature of Daylight (Orchestral Version)
DJ Koze – Blissda
Sabo – Bomeno
Martin HERRS – Night Call
Yves Tumor – Echolalia
Steve Mason – Upon My Soul
Chiiild – (Running Out Of) Hallelujahs
Lucky Daye – Feels Like
Yazmin Lacey – Legacy
Ezra Williams – Deep Routed
The Lazy Eyes – Fuzz Jam
Kate NV – d d don’t
Jen Cloher – My Witch
Cmat – I Don’t Really Care for You
Faux Real – Kindred Spirit
Speaking In Tongues – Ultralights
The Rutles – Eine Kleine Middle Klasse Musik
The Heavy – How You Like Me Now
Linda Ronstadt – Long Long Time
Gabriel Moreno – We Can Write England All Over Again
A lack of fruit and veg based mix, featuring tracks from Nick Drake, Eska, Steve Cobby, Gorillaz, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Nina Simone, Gil Scott-Heron, Kae Tempest and more.
Track List
Louis Prima & His Orchestra – Yes, We Have No Bananas
Nick Drake – Fruit Tree
Camper Van Beethoven – All Her Favourite Fruit
Steve Cobby – From Roots To Fruits (Original Mix)
XTC – Love On A Farmboy’s Wages
The Housemartins – Me & The Farmer
Eska – This Is How A Garden Grows
Gorillaz – Possession Island (feat. Beck)
Nina Simone – Strange Fruit (Live In New York 1965)
Ryuichi Sakamoto – the end of europe (2019 Remastering)
20 tunes to put a spring in your step, including Orbital, Req, The WAEVE, Two Lone Horsemen, Bibio, Anna B Savage, Born Ruffians, Miya Folick, Seefeel, Indigo De Souza and more.
Track List
Orbital – Dirty Rat
Harmonic 313 – Flashback
Bibio – Jealous of Roses
Req – Blimpot
Lack of Afro – The Outsider
The New Birth – Con-Funk-Shun
Joey Negro – Here Comes The Sunburst Band
The Doobie Brothers – Long Train Runnin’
Synapson – All in You (feat. Anna Kova)
Jamie Lidell – A Little Bit More (Herbert – A Little Bit Less Remix)
Seefeel – Rough For Radio (Peel Session)
The WAEVE – Someone Up There
Born Ruffians – Plinky Plonky
Rilo Kiley – Always
Miya Folick – Get Out of My House
Ye Woodbeast – Pearls
Two Lone Swordsmen – Driving With My Gears In Reverse (Only Makes You Move Further Away)
The dream that I had the day before the commissioning meeting in 2005 that led to Sully being written suggested that the biographical play about the rugby league legend Clive Sullivan was going to be performed at the then still to be built new Hull Truck on Ferensway.
In the dream, Clive had a nice chat with me and then a huge poster with the play’s title atop the man in a hideous half-and-half FC/Rovers kit unfurled, dangling off the roof of the unbuilt theatre. As it was, it made its premiere at Spring Street. Anyway, dreams do come true, even if you have to wait 18 years.
Here’s Mosaic Productions’ press release:
𝑴𝒐𝒔𝒂𝒊𝒄 𝑷𝒓𝒐𝒅𝒖𝒄𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏𝒔, a new Hull based Community Theatre Company are delighted to announce that the play “𝗦𝘂𝗹𝗹𝘆” will be coming to the Hull Truck Theatre in 2023!
Written by Dave Windass, and directed by Scott Solway, “Sully” tells the story of a proud Welshman, yet also one of Hull’s most famous sons, the late great Clive Sullivan MBE. In a celebration of what would have been Clive’s 80th birthday in 2023, and to celebrate his recent induction into the “Rugby League Hall Of Fame” “𝗦𝘂𝗹𝗹𝘆” and his story is told through a portrayal of Clive himself, and taxi driver Max, and his mouthy passenger Chelle, stranded on the Clive Sullivan Way due to an ongoing situation.
Sully’s life, his story, is told through warmth, humour, passion and heartfelt feeling.
It’s 50 years in 2022 since Sully, the first black captain of Great Britain in any sport, lifted the Rugby League World Cup in 1972… and that try!
Although he always remained a proud Welshman, Sully is one of Hull’s most famous sons, representing everything good about Rugby League in the city of Kingston Upon Hull, both black and white and red and white. Scoring over 100 tries, in each set of colours, and winning a Challenge Cup Winners medal with both clubs.
All these wonderful achievements from a man who as a young boy was told “you’ll never walk again”
So, put on your black and white, red and white, and any other teams colours, and come and see for yourselves, the remarkable story, of a man who achieved so much through adversity, and was taken from us far too soon.
With huge heartfelt thanks to Dave Windass, and Rosalyn, Anthony, Lisa and all the Sullivan family……..
“𝗦𝘂𝗹𝗹𝘆”
𝗛𝘂𝗹𝗹 𝗧𝗿𝘂𝗰𝗸 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗿𝗲
Tuesday 6th June – Saturday 10th June @ 7.30pm
Matinees, Thursday 8th & Saturday 10th June @ 2.30pm
Please be aware, the last time “Sully” was performed 17 years ago, it sold out very quickly. There are only 7 performances to secure your seats for this wonderful story of a Rugby League Legend of Hull.
Why, what’s the matter, that you have such a February face? Including tracks by Burt Bacharach, Television, Automatic, Dry Cleaning, The Murder Capital, RAYE, SZA, St Vincent, Ladytron and more.
Track List
BJ Thomas – Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head
Television – Marquee Moon
Automatic – On the Edge
Coach Party – Micro Agression
Dry Cleaning – Strong Feelings
The Murder Capital – Return To My Head
The Tallest Man On Earth – Every Little Heart
Daydream Review – Have You Found What You’re Looking For?
The Sunday Contortion: A mixed bag of tunes that includes The Snuts, The Reytons, Royal Blood, Bush Tetras, Belleruche, Mr Scruff, Patti Smith and The Cinematic Orchestra.
Track List
Bob Dylan – Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream
The Reytons – It’s A Fuck About
The Snuts – Zuckerpunch
The Charlatans – You’re So Pretty, We’re So Pretty
A journey into the 21st century. You’ll be amazed at what you hear, accompanied by William Shatner. With tracks by Rozi Plain, Circa Waves, Derrick Gardner & the Big Dig! Band, The Dickies, Billy Nomates, Funkadelic, Parliament, Simian Mobile Disco, Coldcut, Soulwax and more.
Track List
Alexander Courage – Theme from Star Trek
Rozi Plain – Here
Circa Waves – Northern Town
Billy Nomates – same gun
Gaz Coombes – Feel Loop (Lizard Dream)
Derrick Gardner & the Big Dig! Band – The Sixth Village
The Only Ones – Another Girl, Another Planet
The Vibrators – Baby Baby
The Dickies – Banana Splits
Thee Headcoats – Davey Crockett
MC5 – Kick Out The Jams
Funkadelic – Whole Lot of BS
Parliament – Night of the Thumpasorus People
Funkadelic – Let’s Take It To the Stage (Amp Fiddler Laughin @Ya Mix)
Purple Disco Machine/Kool Keith – Memphis Jam (feat. Kool Keith)
Soulwax – Is It Always Binary
Steinski – Everything’s Disappeared
Simian Mobile Disco – Space is Filled With Ringing
Disney+ appears to have become the home of Beatles-related televisual events. 2021’s McCartney 3, 2, 1 saw Rick Rubin dissecting master tapes with bass man Paul and whet the appetite for Peter Jackson’s 468 minute, three-part Get Back, enhancing and finishing the job that Michael Lindsay-Hogg started with Let It Be. Now photographer Mary McCartney, Paul and Linda’s daughter, gets her turn with If These Walls Could Sing, a documentary charting 90-years of the much-loved Abbey Road studios.
This first-time director has been hanging around the place for years. In a rather alarming and panic-inducing start to proceedings, Mary’s narration of a rostrum shot of a photo of her as a baby in Abbey Road announces that said image was “taken by my mum, who was a photographer, and in a band with my dad.” Thankfully, this sick-rising-up-the-throat approach is quickly abandoned as archive footage, an impressive array of rock legends, George Martin’s son Giles (the contemporary remixer of his father’s original production work) and techy Lester Smith – gluing and screwing stuff back together in the back of the studios – are allowed to tell the story. This is a very watchable and entertaining, if short at under 90 minutes, music history documentary and it is refreshing to see the often laddish world of the recording studio shot through the prism of a female filmmaker.
While the mop tops from Liverpool understandably feature heavily (their EMI contract allowed them to practically eat as much time as they wanted in what was originally called EMI Studios prior to being renamed after The Beatles’ Abbey Road album six years after its release), If These Walls Could Sing falls somewhere between the needy gap between what Fab Four fans crave and what recording studio geeks drool over.
While it’s clearly a loving piece of work from a filmmaker with lots of connections to the subject, there are some seismic leaps in the story, notably from first tenant Edward Elgar conducting the LSO in 1931 in the studio purpose-built to house a symphony orchestra to the incoming jingle jangle of electric guitars of three decades later, with not much in-between. George Martin did some incredibly groundbreaking work recording comedy before The Beatles turned up in his life, which was also recorded at EMI Studios, but there’s no sniff of it. Although, apparently, M. McCartney’s take is not meant to be comprehensive. Rather, the director looked to find the moments in the story of Abbey Road where artists felt comfortable to dare to push themselves and create something new.
Ringo Starr, John Williams, Jimmy Page, Elton (“The smell of Abbey Road. The smell of fear.”) John, Baba Ani, David Gilmour, Roger Waters, Nick Mason, Noel Gallagher, Liam (“It’s a national treasure, know what I mean?”) Gallagher, George Lucas, Kate (“audio recording only”) Bush, Cliff Richard, Nile Rodgers, Ye, and Celeste all get to share their anecdotes and misty-eyed memories of this magical address. The most moving inclusion isn’t George Martin going on about Burt Bacharach putting Cilla Black through endless takes to capture the magic they’d already got on take 4 but archive material of Jacqueline du Pré. The cellist looks so happy bowing her strings, the secrets of the universe clearly in her grasp. Then she discovers she has multiple sclerosis and, as we hear, wraps up one Abbey Road session never to record again.
Paul McCartney, growing more Marmite with each new documentary that emerges due to his revisionism, wins some Brownie points for sharing the story that he salvaged a lot of equipment that EMI would otherwise have discarded, much of it part of rock history.
There’s a rather shocking bit of paperwork that appears on screen revealing that EMI also considered turning a huge chunk of this corner of north west London into a car park. For a while, when smaller studios offered a host of better and cheaper options for bands, Studio One – where Elgar did his thing in 1931 – was used as a badminton court by EMI staff clicking their heels but with an abundance of tape to mark out a court.
Very little is said about why or how Abbey Road is a special place to record in, although clearly everyone thinks it is. Composer John Williams talks of its size, dryness, reverberance and bloom but that’s about it. With the weight of 90 years behind it, the echoes of some British music royalty rattling around in the ether no doubt adds to whatever mystical quality the place has.
What Mary McCartney omits, in fairness to her because it’s not her subject matter, is that, at the time The Beatles swung, London’s Olympic Studios was home to pretty much everyone else, including The Rolling Stones, The Who and Jimi Hendrix (and, um, on occasion, The Beatles). Olympic was also the place where innovative FX such as the phaser and flanger were invented, its technology was, in 1967, more advanced than Abbey Road and the place had its own share of magic. None of which is anything to do with Mary McCartney – just a reminder that history gets kinda blurry.
If These Walls Could Sing isn’t a bad way to spend the length of a football match staring at a screen. It does capture the place in its heyday and there’s some really good content, although you probably won’t learn much that is new. Although for Mary Macca, that was the point, as she’s said: “I want to make it an emotional experience as a documentary, rather than doing all the historical points. I didn’t want it to feel like a lesson. I really, really hope the viewer falls in love with it.”
You can buy three books celebrating what is arguably the most famous recording studio in the world at the links below, which will take you to my virtual bookshop on bookshop.org.
