Team photo, now updated with player names:

Top (left to right) – Jack Blackburn, Chris Pearson, Jack Stapleton, Darnelle Hues, Me, Carlo Marron, Jack Field, Luke Hampton , Ant White

Bottom (left to right) Chris Zimmerling, Tom Carr, Liam Stevenson, Terry Jones, Harry Strike, Ryan Kenyon, Mikey Norman.

6th November 2008
Hemel Aces 3 – 1 Sun Postal

Aces bounced back brilliantly from a hefty defeat last weekend to grab 3 valuable league points from a well deserved 3-1 victory over Sun Postal who sat second in the table before todays game. Jack Stapleton grabbed two superbly taken goals and Mikey Norman bagged his first for the club as Aces came from 1-0 down in poor conditions at Cupid Green to earn a battling win that was notable for great performances all over the pitch.

With only centre back Joel Saunders out injured the manager, for once, had an almost full squad to choose from and started with Chris Pearson in goal, Jack Field at right back, Carlo Marron and Tom Carr in the middle of defence with Liam Stevenson at left back; a midfield of captain Jack Blackburn as the holding player, Ant White on the right, Darnelle Hues and Terry Jones in the centre and Chris Zimmerling on the left with Jack Stapleton on his own up front. The line up was bolstered by a strong bench of Luke Hampton, Mikey Norman, Ryan Kenyon and Harry Strike.

Conditions were muddy and heavy underfoot and the pitch started to cut up almost from the start. Sun Postal started the stronger of the two teams , pushing forward from the kick off and forcing Aces onto the back foot. The Aces defence were forced to work hard to clear their lines which they did effectively until an unfortunate error in their own penalty area presented an easy chance to the Sun Postal striker and he tapped into an empty net from close range to open the scoring.

This seemed to galvanise Aces however and they got themselves back into the game with the midfield starting to battle harder and winning more possession. A tactical change after 20 minutes saw Mikey Norman come on at left midfield and Chris Zimmerling drop back to the left side of defence and this immediatley gave Aces more attacking threat. Ant White on the right of midfield was also starting to cause the Sun Postal defence problems with his penetrating runs down the flank and Jack Stapleton playing on the shoulder of the last defender came close to levelling the scores on a couple of occasions. The Aces defence was looking solid with Jack Field particularly putting in an outstanding display of skill and stamina at right back against dangerous opposition. Chris Pearson was also having another of his now customary excellent games showing safe hands and excellent decision making in goal.

With a minute to go until the break Carlo Marron at centre back won a tackle for Aces and threaded a perfect ball through the Sun Postal defence for Jack Stapleton to run on to and the big striker applied a clinical finish to equalize right on the half time whistle.

Aces were playing down the slope in the second half and came out with a great attitude. They took the game to Sun Postal from the kick off and started playing some excellent football. It wasn’t long before Jack Stapleton grabbed his second of the game , a ferocious shot over the goalkeeper from the right hand side of the penalty area and Aces had the advantage. An excellent display of rock solid defending from the Aces back four supported admirably by the midfield meant Aces were controlling the game and after more excellent work from Jack Stapleton who held off three Sun Postal defenders before crossing the ball into the 6 yard box, Mikey Norman slotted in Aces third and his first goal for the club.

Aces had to withstand a bit of pressure as Sun Postal pushed hard to get back in the game and Chris Pearson had to make several important saves but in reality Aces had control of the game and at the final whistle celebrated an excellent victory. All the Aces subs made valuable contributions to the game and the efforts of Harry Strike, Luke Hampton and Ryan Kenyon were appreciated as an important part of this win. Onwards and upwards!

It was only a matter of time before something like this happened…

We’re over the moon to announce our official sponsorship of Hemel Aces U15 All Stars. Andy Saunders, their manager, will be providing weekly updates of how the team are doing.

Here’s how we did this week:

9th November 2008
Hemel Aces 1 – 6 Broxbourne Borough (County Cup)
A boggy pitch , losing one of our centrebacks to injury after 10 minutes and the fact that this was the team’s first match for 3 weeks didn’t help matters as Aces crashed out of the County Cup after a 6-1 defeat against a decent Broxbourne Borough team who play in the top division of their league. The scoreline doesn’t really reflect the fact that there were positives to take out of this game particularly the fact that the boys heads didn’t go down and they tried to play football right up to the end of the end of the game. A special mention goes to goalkeeper Chris Pearson who was outstanding today. Never mind, lets concentrate on the league from here on in…

SEMTEX TV: DELA SOUL, MOS DEF, NAS, WILL I AM, KANYE WEST, DAMON ALBARN ROC THE MIC @ THE G.O.O.D. MUSIC AFTER PARTY, LONDON, UK from DJ SEMTEX on Vimeo.

Best bit?
Nas’s jumper.

Two of London’s most exciting art collective come together this week.

I’m going to down, I highly suggest you do similar:

I’ve got no explanation for the following, except they’re all brilliant and might well act as some sort of relief:

Ken Laszlo – Hey Hey Guy

(Above image provided by Edward Quarmby)

This blog has been left in a state of complete disregard. Sorry. The task of having to run a record label and the importance of the last few weeks in the World’s history extinguished my ability and desire to litter the internet with my musings on music and pop culture.

Last night, however, completely changed that.

Under a day on from the election and 1 000 000 articles already exist on the subject. I’ve not the faintest idea of the real meaning of it all, so I’ll try not to pretend I do.

What the election and all the emotion that charged round with it did teach me was how amazing the idea of now is. If you can detach yourself from the past and imagine that being in the now means all you look forward to is an undecided future, then you can live in infinite hope.

So…

I’m going to disregard any worries that Obama won’t live up to my expectations and that the world’s environment, economy and chances for peace won’t implode over the next 4 years and just enjoy the knowledge that now, in this exact moment, anything could happen.

(I’m not sure how the following came together in my brain but here’s my post-election-elation selection, a.k.a. Obama’s Message of Unity Mix)

The Beatles – Come Together

Spiritualized – Come Together

Primal Scream – Come Together

MC5 – Come Together

Times New Viking – Come Together

Go to my favourite Hip Hop blog Spine Magazine and check out the new Ghostface tune.

It’s not the first time Pretty Toney has jumped on someone else’s track:

Now there’s different ways to look at this:

a) Mans is straight up stealing some other mans’ ting
b) Mans is showing his love for that joint and lacing it with his own vibe
c) Mans is ignant and just jumping on the nearest beat

Now I’ve got a lot of love for Ironman, ever since I bought All That I Got is You when I was 13… (cheesy but Daytona 500 was on the b-side). He’s one of the only MCs of his generation to not get too distracted by the BLING, releasing at least a-record-a-year since 2004. He’s a passionate brother, ready to spit on all topics, including porridge, sneakers, and female hygiene. And whilst Kanye still wrestles with Q-Tip for the title of “Hip Hop Renaissance man” and Jay-Z beats off Nas for the crown of “Ghetto Poet Laureate”, P Tone is content to do this own thing.
To quote Tony Starks:

“…you do you, I do me…”

…which reminds me…
R.I.P. Dilla

So I chose b). People always gonna have beef.

(thanks to (girl) Harley)

I’m so excited!!!

amazing:

Vampire Weekend’s Ezra performing with Fucked Up
(i don’t think i’ve seen a photo this good in years)

Moby performing with Fucked Up

Holy Fuck are back in London on Saturday night. They’re playing their biggest show to date, King’s College. There are a couple of tickets left, so go buy them now. The band won’t be back in the UK till midway through next year, so this is your last chance in a while.

If the thought of seeing them wasn’t exciting enough, they’ve got support from Kelpe of legendary label DC Recordings fame.

Kelpe – Live

Holy Fuck – Milkshake LIVE

Holy Fuck are currently on a stupidly long tour around the UK with Foals. To celebrate this meeting of minds, each band did a cover of one of the others songs. We pressed up 500 of these for the road and some for our shop.

You can buy the below item by clicking here or on the photo above.

We’ve also uploaded both (HUGE FILE SIZE) for you to have for free:

Foal – Super Inuit

Holy Fuck – Balloons

Enjoy.

In other news:

Our best friend Ferry Gouw has designed a T-Shirt based around the Holy Fuck song Safari. You can buy it here.

Jiro Bevis, who we also love, drew this for us:

Funnily enough, we’ve also made that into a tshirt, which you can find here.

And whilst I’m at it, we have just reprinted the following tshirts:

YTEE 015W

YTEE 015B

You can get them both here.

They’ll be no hiding from this come 2009. Let’s hope Puffy doesn’t release another posthumous colab album though.

Notorious 2009

If you don’t know Andy Cole then you probably won’t find this funny, if you do, and like me have little love for United, then prepare to laugh:

Andy Cole – Outstanding

I am a sucker for, but no expert on, Malian music. Tinariwen, Ali Farka Touré (RIP) and Amadou and Mariam (the equivalent of naming The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd as your favourite English Bands,) are three Malian bands that have dominated my stereo over the past few years. Although their styles vary, a theme can be found in the way their looping of vocal harmonies/melodies, Saharan electric guitars and traditional Malian percussion manage to hypnotize me so.

Tinariwen – Cler Achel

Ali Farka Touré & Boubacar “Kar Kar” Traoré – Diarabi

Amadou and Mariam are a blind couple from Bamako, the capital of Mali. Their last album, Dimanche a Bamako, was produced by Manu Chao. As much as that sounds like it would fit better at a Bristol University Chill Out Society than a sane persons’ record collection, its in fact an infectious record full to the brim, front to back, with pop gems.

Amadou and Mariam – Senegal Fast Food

Their latest effort, Welcome To Mali, is produced by (one of my favourites) super productive Damon Albarn. I’ve only heard one track, but it’s FANTASTIC. Enjoy:

Amadou and Mariam – Sabali

Amadour and Mariam – Sabali (Produced by Damon Albarn).mp3

(I found this MP3 on another blog. I’m assuming that its freely circulating around the internet, if not, let me know and i’ll take it down PRONTO. Thanks)

Thanks to Puma for this update of this :

I’d love to promise that this was that last I write about Kanye West, as I’ve been writing about him way too much, but he’s too good/interesting to ignore.

Seems he passed up on Swagger Like Us for a good reason: Love Lockdown.

Love Lockdown is the first single from his upcoming album, 808 Heartbreak. It is everything that is brilliant, awful, ground breaking and shamefully unoriginal about Mr. West.

The awful? Auto tune doesn’t really cover up the fact that Kanye can’t sing. If you struggled with the producer to rapper transition then you might just throw up your lunch with his rapper to singer move. Kanye’s tendency to borrow heavily from others’ ideas/gimmicks is also in full effect, with T-Pain’s trademark auto tune featuring heavily.

The brilliant? Do I really have to say? Kanye’s come back single = all singing, 12 bar blues done on the Roland 808! The sheer audacity of it bamboozles me: no one in the world could do this, and it seems that loads of people wish he hadn’t. Despite his lack of natural talent as a singer or lyricist, Kanye is still a master song writer. As much as I want to knock the simplistic melody and lyrics, I can’t deny the sheer infectiousness of it and although the auto tuner is a played out trick, the song sounds totally fresh/surprising in this day and age.

Kanye West – Love Lockdown.mp3

I promised myself I wouldn’t mention it but I couldn’t help myself:

Kanye paying out some tough justice to TMZ

This day just gets weirder. First this then the below update on this.

Correct me if I’m mistaken but isn’t the below Puffy miming to his own remix of Swagger Like Us complemented by him eating fruity loops with Tropicana instead of milk with an Adele video in the background.

Puffy miming to his cover of Swagger Like Us

errrrr. WOW.

This is possibly one of the greatest things ever. I’ve never heard of this magazine before but they’ve done a great job.

Ben Kingsley Fronting Minor Threat

If you’re unaware of Lehman Brothers, AIG, HBOS/Halifax, Merrill Lynch, the global economy going tits up and your pensions/savings/insurance disappearing overnight then I’d get an Addison Lee to your bank branch ASAP and proceed to transfer whats left of your overdraft into plastic bags. I’d go into more detail about subprime mortgages turning rotten with the bottoming out of property prices but neither I nor the people running the economy actually have the foggiest about what’s going on.

The second bit involves the only industry that’s bigger than the financial one: Hip Hop.

A few posts ago I wrote about Kanye sampling M.I.A. for T.I.‘s new single Swagger Like Us. To be honest, I wasn’t blown away by the track and even now, although I like it more, I fail to see what all the fuss is about. What has seriously changed with the track, and caught my imagination, is it’s ever-morphing identity and what that says about it.

From what I’ve been told/can deduct, the track started off as a Kanye beat and single. Because he can, he got the 3 remaining biggest MCs to feature: Jay-Z, Lil Wayne and T.I. Without a Kanye album till December and with T.I.‘s looming, the song became T.I.‘s 5th single for the forthcoming Paper Trail. This seemed weird enough as not only is this T.I.‘s 6th (there’s ‘Ready For Whatever’ still to come) single before his album even comes out but also his verse only appears at the 4:00 mark of Swagger Like Us, (hardly the timing for a song’s main feature.)

After Atlantic had promo’d the track to the media, and it had picked up several mentions/plays, it then appeared on iTunes as a Jay-Z song. Despite the campaign having been launched in TI’s name, and a release date being set, it would now seem that it is to be the first single from Jay-Z’s much anticipated Blueprint 3.

I’m normally a sucker for an all star line-up) but as I’ve stated, Swagger Like Us leaves me cold. Having switched hands 3 times, twice in the public eye, I’m pretty sure the track’s lack of identity is an important factor in my meandering reaction to it. On a more depressing level, it surely doesn’t say much for the creative intentions of any of these artists, Hip Hop or big time music in general, if tracks like this are so readily treated as swapped and sold commodities, used simply as promotional tools for their next product (album).

I better stop there before things get too much altogether.. First up it’s obvious I’m being pretty naive. Big music has always been big business; I just always hoped they’d have the decency to cover up these bits whilst splitting up the goods. Secondly, it’s these completely bombastic and ridiculously over the top money obsessed personas that keep Hip Hop exciting. To go someway towards keeping a flame of hope alive I’ve picked out four brilliant things these 4 have done, enjoy:

Jay-Z – In My Lifetime

T.I. – Dope Boyz

Lil Wayne – Get off the Corner

Kanye production for Ludacris – Stand Up

It’s a theme I always return to: I have a real wariness about all things English. England being a place where self deprecation is almost an official part of the school curriculum, mixed with the fact that, by nature, foreign things seem more exotic/exciting, I regularly find myself being incredibly suspicious of anything ‘good’ to come from these shores.

This month, however, after a series of great – patriotic – events and a muddy but glorious Bestival, I’m throwing caution to the wind and celebrating a few things British.

The following is a mixture of British bands who are only linked by their quality. A few of these bands are high achievers, a few are unknowns and the rest occupy the middle ground.

Big Pink

I’ve been living with the Big Pink demos for some time now. I’ve always been affectionate with them but it wasn’t till I saw the band live at Bestival that it dawned upon me just how great the band are.

Big Pink live at Bestival

Big Pink’s music is pop songs, good enough to earn the name, dressed in swathes of swirling synths/guitars that remind me of classic early 90’s dream pop, with ambitions for King’s of Leon’s stadium sized atmosphere.

Hot Chip

Another band who restored my faith at Bestival, Hot Chip, in my estimation, don’t make great albums but they certainly write great songs:

Hot Chip – Ready for the Floor

(If you’ve heard that one too many times, then you can always have this other beautiful cut off the album, One Pure Thought.)

Hot Chip are at their best when writing emotive dance music. There were moments in their set at bestival when I found myself two stepping with a tear in my eye.

XX Teens

XX Teens, another band to come from Mute’s rich lineage, are a London based Art(school)rock band. There connection to the noted genre is apparent in all they do, it almost seeps from their pores. Starting with their smart and offish onstage attitude, through their pseudo abstract lyrics and on to their labour intensive videos. If that sounds negative, it’s not meant to be. The energy in the following song is irrepressible and the creativity (considering the likely tiny budget) in the video is quite astonishing:

XX Teens – Darlin’

If you don’t want to sit through 9 minutes of YouTube quality video, then here’s the shorter version.

Pete and the Pirates

The first time I saw Pete and the Pirates was on the cover of a magazine that I normally steer well clear of. Stupidly, I dismissed them then and there. Bestival saw my redemption. Standing in the mud I heard them from across a field and was instantly drawn to the tent.

There is very little new in what Pete and the Pirates do, and I’m sure a lot of people will, maybe fairly, dismiss them for this. Their songs, however, are full of youthful enthusiasm and warm layering’s of guitar and vocal melodies, which is more than enough to please me.

Pete and the Pirates – Mr Understanding

Claire Maguire

If you’d rather burn your Black Flag posters and get skin grafts stitched over your Misfit’s tattoo than listen to Usher then you’d better skip to the next artist now. If you’ve kept on reading and end up venturing over to Claire Maguire’s myspace you’ll find Strangest Thing, a classic bit of pop music. The beauty in the song is not only in Claire’s extraordinary voice but the minimalism of the music. The synth organ may sound like its straight out of Bleeding Love and the horns from a Mark Ronson production but with the simplistic dubstep styled beat the combination is pretty spell binding. From what I can tell, the song and music was written by Primary 1, which makes it just about the first bit of British home made pop to blow me away in a LONG time.

Claire Maguire – Strangest Thing

These New Puritans

(The following was written by Frederick Blood Royle)

A lot has been said of These New Puritans, but luckily, all of their qualities can be found in their music rather than their back story or music press platitudes. Read an interview with Jack Barnett, and you may never want to listen to a copy of ‘Beat Pyramid’ in your life, but pick up the album, and you’ll realise that the music’s importance speaks for itself, regardless of whether their lead singer likens his lyrics to Roots Manuva ‘spitting the code’ or tells an interviewer that “In a thousand years there are codes that won’t be deciphered in our music.”

Simply put, I haven’t heard a British debut album that’s excited me so much since I walked out of Virgin Megastore with a copy of ‘Up The Bracket’ or The Coral’s ‘The Coral’. And although musically millenia apart, like said albums, ‘Beat Pyramid’ has it’s wonders and it’s flaws: sometimes it sounds like it’s trying too hard, and at other times not hard enough, and I doubt a single piece has ever been written on it without mentioning the line “Michael Barrymore masturbating alone…”

But what it does have is songs. Real songs. The music sounds alternative but you almost get the idea that the album doesn’t get how melodic and instantaneous it really is. And track after track, the off-kilter lyrical thread almost belies the fact that at their core, These New Puritans are making truely modern (or should that be post-modern?) pop music. Pop music bolstered by rhythm and groove, with pioneering drum beats that really need to be winning some sort of award for finding the exact spot where the difficult meets the dancefloor.

These New Puritans – Elivs

Thus, regardless of where they end up, (for it often feels that the greater the debut the greater the chance of diminishing returns with each further offering) TNPS have left us with something truly wonderful and truly 21st century. So here, and so now, that I can almost imagine looking back on them in 20 years and seeing them as I do Sparks or Adam Ant. Ridiculous, pretentious, indulgent, but above all: Necessary.

Portishead

It’s quite disconcerting that one of the most progressive albums of 2008 was made by a band returning from an 11 year hiatus. Portishead’s Third is a monster of a record. Gone are the trip hop beats, so loved by the dinner party listeners and in are the a bunch of distorted and abrasive drum sounds, never epitomized better than on Machine Gun.

Two especially interesting mutations of Machine Gun are:

Chuck D MCing live over Machine Gun

Mickey Factz’s Machine Gun.mp3

Last but not least, this deserves a mention, if only because I can’t stop listening to it:

The Verve – Love Is Noise

I don’t go to matches as often as I should. I can accept the tag of “armchair supporter”. But today’s match at St James’ Park is the precise reason why I don’t leave home for footie!

Newcastle are in dire straits… AGAIN! The prophetic return of Kevin Keegan has been marred by boardroom tinkering and they’re running out of legends to enlist. Keegan and Robson got the run-around from the board and Glen Roeder and Sam Alladyce were ineffective and I can’t remember the last manager who actually achieved anything!! Dalglish??

_{Dark Skies over Tyneside}

If Shearer should even think about throwing himself to this quagmire, he’s an idiot! The last thing Newcastle United needs is another Tyneside hero being dragged into this shit-show.

The fans spoke out today, in numbers, against the meddling of Owner Mike Ashley and his appointed Director of Football, Dennis Wise. Supporters want both the damn southerners out!

_{Wise words of warning}

A pitiful United side lost 2-1 to Hull City today, with a performance resembling a Wales friendly. Butt, Owen and Geremi lead a team of players clearly past their best days. Only 2 of the 11 have come up through the ranks (Taylor & Ameobi) and the average age of the side must be 30!

The painful irony of the game is that Newcastle’s one consolatory goal was scored by Xisco, whose signing, along with a few others conducted without Keegan’s consent, caused this whole fallout in the first place. Sadly, I’d left by the time he’d scored; on my way to Glasgow to see Lukid do his thing.

——————————————-

On the bright side of things, Newcastle is coming up with a number of interesting bands. I’m still to discover a Geordie underground scene, but until then I’m enjoying several indie gems. Beth Jeans Haughton supported Bon Iver in London this week. Until recent haircuts, the non-musical resemblance to Laura Marling was quite unbelievable, regardless of the fact that she also writes delicate folk ditties. Aged 17 or 18, blonde, skinny and petite…

Spot the difference

—————————————

Next up is a rollicking band called Little Comets. They’re an active bunch, doing uni shows, house parties and impromptu guerilla gigs in schools, lecture theatres and shopping malls all over the North. For my money, they’re the XTC of their generation , bubbling with classic narratives and crazy pop production touches. I think they might be huge…

—————————————

Finally, the most intriguing band in the North-East, has got to be The Eye Jab. Though I’m somewhat impartial, I can’t help but gush about their utterly wonderful mix of nu-gaze-indie.

My favourite lyric is the opening to “Cambrioleur”:

“I bored the pants off you but at least, now, your pants are off”

I absolutely love it when captivating whimsical top lines turn out to be lyrically base! I recently discovered that the soulful, angelic tones of Bon Iver were carrying messages like:

“Come on skinny love what happened here
Suckle on the hope in lite brassiere”
Skinny Love

and

“Teased by your blouse
Spit out by your mouth”
Creature Fear

Btw, big up yourself Bon Iver for reppin’ the “Best of British” at the show last week. The sequence of two covers in the set was made up exclusively of homegrown sounds, penned by two of Young Turks’ favourite ever artists!! They did Simple Man by Graham Nash and then I Believe In You by Talk Talk !!! Showin’ love… My sense of patriotism is at an all time high!

Big up Justin Lockey, Theo Walcott, Wayne Rooney … and Jermaine Jenas.

Friday night = Ipso Facto, The xx and us at Vibe Bar for what should be (in the bits I’m not djing) a night of good music.

Do pop down. Please refrain from giving me slack about my djing/blogging skills, or lack of.

… but this might cause me to change my mind about going to Bestival.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/5day.shtml?world=0339

Strong winds on the Isle of Wight!!!
Poor Visibility on Friday!!!

Make up your own mind.

—————————————————————-

I’ll be getting thru this list of things to do:

SATURDAY

10am
Go for a run

12am
Clean up the bachelor pad :

2pm
Do that mash up of One Thing and The Wizard I’ve been thinking about doing for a two years.

4pm
Go see The Wackness

12am
Theo Parrish at Plastic People

4am
Disco Bloodbath at Passions

8am
Sleep

SUNDAY

2pm
Sunday Roast @ The Anchor & Hope on The Cut

3pm
Do what I did last Sunday: Go see the gyal with whom I was last in love and have her shake up my world again!! Some gyal just gotta have it.

5pm til forever
Try to get over her

The xx have started their own club night, Night Tropics. If this line up and their music is anything to go by, this should be one of London’s premier nights.

There’s not much to say, yet, about the xx. They’ve released no music, made no videos and very few photographs exist of them. If you’ve been lucky enough to visit their myspace, or see them play live around London then you’ll know they play stripped down minimalist pop music. I’ll stop the awful genrefying and leave you to hear it on your own. Here is their brilliant song Stars

Also on the bill are Micachu and the BRILLIANT BRILLIANT BRIALLIANT Eine Kleine Nachtmusik who will be djing a Kraut Rock set as well as screening his new movie..

All the details are on the flyer.

It’s pretty late and I should be in bed, but all I’ve got is this running through my head:

Q Lazzarus – Goodbye Horses

I’ve already mentioned it somewhere before but it really is good enough to get mentioned everyday.

Today some musical justice has finally been served. 23 years after Peter Gabriel quit Genesis, the five classic albums that he left in their arsenal are getting the full re-mastering and re-release treatment.

For anyone who thinks Genesis were just a fun 80’s pop band, this box set will rip you a new music taste. A progressive rock act in every sense of the word, early 70s Genesis shows saw costume changes, copious solos, songs over ten minutes, lazers, and narratives so fantastical they would make J.R.R. Tolkein blush.

Genesis and Peter Gabriel Documentary

Remember, Peter Gabriel is a man that not only consistently dressed up as a flower and got on the front cover of Melody Maker by wearing a dress and a Fox’s head, but also wrote lyrics for a rock opera (The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway – Gabriel’s final Genesis album, and a double vinyl’s worth) so ludicrous that he eventually had to admit to hs bandmates that even he didn’t know what any of them really meant.

It’s not that I have a problem with bands changing line-ups, or even transparently changing direction to remain popular (I’m looking at you Mystery Jets!) but I don’t understand why these five albums have been swept under the carpet to such a great extent. Go to any HMV or Zavvi in Britain and I 100% guarantee you won’t’ find a copy of ‘Foxtrot’ or ‘Selling England By The Pound’. And don’t think Rough Trade will help you out either – They seem to think that music history jumped from fashionable 60s psyche to late 70s punk…pretty much completely neglecting anything in between.

What makes it all the more shocking that it’s taken so long for these cd pressings to come out, is that the parting of ways with Gabriel was the moment that caused Phil Collins to think it acceptable to get up from behind his drum kit for the first time. Although whether that detail is something to celebrate or commiserate I am not sure.

Regardless, roots and beginnings ARE important, and should never be forgotten or buried somewhere at a record fair or carboot sale. If the kids of the future only know Mystery Jets for Young Love and Two Doors Down, I hope it doesn’t take until the mid 2030’s for them to be able to hear Zootime, Horse Drawn Cart or On My Feet…

And the simple reason why, is that when you open your shiny new ‘Genesis: The Beginning 1970-1975’ box set on the morning of November 10th, and you’re reading the sleeve notes by Tony Robinson and Jeremy Clarkson, and you hear Supper’s Ready or The Battle of Epping Forest for the first time, I’m pretty sure your head will explode.

Genesis (with Peter Gabriel) – The Battle of Epping Forest

Prancehall tipped me off on this one. A bit of an update to this.

I hope to see you all doing this when Blaise next plays Usain Bolt Nuh Linga.