The Counterforce No. 69

The strangest thing happened on Saturday. During the morning’s hour spent on the new book - the oral history of the band Clown Damage - I wrote something about Laverne & Shirley, the 70s/80s TV show. Hopping in my car afterwards, instead of going for something on my phone, I spied the 1-6 buttons on my dashboard and wondered what was occupying those slots. It’d been months since I’d given them a spin. So I switched it from Aux to CD and bizarrely this song started right in the middle, mentioning of course Shirley Lee’s Laverne & Shirley band

Far too weird a coincidence, especially considering that I’ve just released my own new single this week and Sweeping The Nation being about, among other things, bands people ‘never got to hear’. See the b-side to my single, A Lighthouse I Ain’t Ever Been To, with its lyric of ‘I’ve got posters of shows of bands nobody knows, and man I’ve been in a few’

Sweeping The Nation wasn’t consciously on my mind when I wrote that, but it’s a song I’ve always loved, and one that resonates for many reasons. It’s got one of THE BEST middle 8s, musically, but also the lyric about realizing how much of your life you’ve been wasting always hits me hard and motivates me to get right back to creating if I’m doing anything other than. There’s also that great line in the breakdown - “I remember standing under Byker bridge in Newcastle with Michael Bradshaw and Mickey turned to me and saying ‘Shirley - don't worry, as long as you stick to what you believe in, everything you want will come to you’”. And I’m a firm believer that sticking to your guns will result in great outcomes and great art.

Which takes me back to London, late summer 2006. On top of pushing ahead with my band H Bird who seem like we’re on the verge of something, handling all the managerial duties, booking and playing shows, releasing our debut single and planning quite the event for the release party, trying to get press - of which, we got some lovely reviews - writing new songs, and embarking on a new romantic relationship, I decide to spend some time each day trying to get my first novel, Off-License To Kill, published.

I remember so fondly walking down to that Thai restaurant underneath The Luminaire on Kilburn High Road for their lunch special with the printed out manuscript under my arm for revisions. I spoke to quite a few literary agents and one quite big one thought the idea of ‘James Vagabond of the British Drunken Secret Service going back in time to stop American Prohibition from ever happening’ was ‘brilliant’. She passed me off to one of her readers who I soon ran into some trouble with. While he liked parts of the idea, he considered the Prohibition bit ‘a farce too far’ and wanted me to change the story to have a ‘firm grounding in reality’. Going from the head of that lit agency being so encouraging to this was quite the detour and I was pretty bummed at the opportunity passing me by. My correspondence with the dude continued after I had to return to the States and I remember being at dinner with my family and my father saying ‘you may have to change it’ and me immediately responding ‘well I’m not going to’. I have no problem changing things if someone can demonstrate to me why it would work better that way, but altering a story’s raison d'être holds no appeal to me whatsoever. I remember an old girlfriend who wanted to be an editor telling me ‘you’ll have to change things, you know’ and my reply completely throwing her, ‘only if I want it published’. Lest you think I’m all that stubborn, I did of course listen to people who got the story and made changes accordingly, self-publishing Off-License in 2014. It may still only be in the double digits in terms of sales but I have never once regretted not listening to that literary agent.

Back to Spearmint. At their best, they are phenomenal. The Friday night Boston Britpop club The Pill used to play their We’re Going Out, one of the few tunes they’d spin that I didn’t already know and love, so I asked the DJ then went down to Newbury Comics and bought A Week Away for $35 from the Import section. It came with a bonus 3” cd and was totally worth one of the highest prices I’d ever paid for an album. We’re Going Out is an anthem of the most positive of vibes. Recognizing all of Life’s troubles but still resolute that we can rise above them if only for the evening, this is one of the most uplifting songs I know, having the power to obliterate the darkest of moods. And the video is great! The flip phones, Pot Noodles, and I had forgotten dandy extraordinaire Dickon Edwards was in it and the band at the time

Also on that mix cd, occupying slot 4 of my car’s changer, is Andrea Davis’ You Gave Me Soul, one of my favourite soul songs. Glorious vocals from Ms. Davis who is of course Minnie Riperton in disguise. Her ‘baby don’t stop, baby don’t stop’ in the fade-out, especially the breathiness of the first ‘stop’, is one of my all-time favourite fade-out moments. One day I should post a list of those…

Not back to back obviously, but putting in appearances on the mix are both versions of Love Kitten. Noreen Corcoran’s swinging, upbeat one

And April Steven’s sultry, laidback original. Those purrs!

And Little Eva’s Sugar Plum, which I hadn’t heard in ages. Little Eva of The Locomotion fame. I love this song, and relished collecting all those Ace Records Where The Girls Are comps back in 2005. Story goes that this was probably recorded in 1968 but didn’t get a release until Where The Girl Are (Volume 6) in 2004.

Irma Thomas’ Wish Someone Would Care isn’t on the mix cuz I just discovered it on Monday but would fit in perfectly. Gorgeous stuff. And like so many of the best soul songs, it seems a light emanating out of the darkest night to sit with all your heartbreak

Gosh, I loved cds. Still have 500 of them that I just can’t part with. Loved tapes, vinyl, and dvds too. Still do. Earlier this year I was planning out a mix cd of excellent songs that aren’t available to stream. Getting back on that. And with recent snafus watching movies, I’ve resolved to start collecting dvds again. It really would be remiss of me not to own copies of Kieslowski’s Red, Irma Vep, or Adventures In Babysitting, that I could just throw in the dvd player at any given time and not have to deal with the faff of streaming

And so yeah, have you listened to Rachel On The Rooftops yet? I’ve enjoyed releasing it so much I wish I was putting out another single this week. There’s plenty of music coming though. In the meantime I’ve been pleasantly baffled by what people are saying Rachel sounds like. I’ve gotten Frank Black, Bruce Dickinson’s first solo album, Heart’s Alone, The Violent Femmes, and Steve Horry says ‘Blue Öyster Cult covering The Indelicates’. I don’t really know what it sounds like myself, other than me, but would love to hear your thoughts. As always, sharing the video would be very much appreciated. It’s so hard to get the word out there these days