Purple Radio, friends and family are having a Summer shindig in a beautiful corner of South Warwickshire, 10 minutes from the Cotswolds and Stratford-upon-avon. 

Here’s what is happening.

Fri 25th June – pitch tents, a few beers, wander to a local boozer, hang about. No big party. No food so bring your own or eat out. LIMITED TO THE FIRST 40 PEOPLE TO PAY.

Sat 26th – arrive, pitch tents.

12 noon til 12 midnight -  music  in a great outdoor space. Two 10m Indian teepees mean it’s weather proof and top fun. DJs, live music and general lounging about. Home cooked dinner.

Midnight – 2am – late night music in the barn for the late night crew. It’s a cramped but ace space. Make for a great party.

Midnight onwards – bonfire for those what don’t dance

Sunday 27th – home cooked breakfast, from pigs and hens who sleep yards away. Tea, coffee and lazy morning music. More lounging.  Clear off about lunchtime (and in plenty of time to catch the England game in the local boozer if you so wish.)

This could be you.

Cost: £35 inc evening meal and breakfast. Kids 5 -14, £10.

Sleep: bring a tent.

Wash & wee: Lovely, newly built cedar loo and shower block. Hot water all day.

Want to come? Then get in touch – but make it quick, just nine places left.

There’s been loads of conjecture and nonsense in the press about Stone Roses reforming to tour again. I doubt and hope it won’t happen.

It’s nothing more than a PR spin to promote the reissue of ‘The Stone Roses’. Which is twenty years old. Twenty. Years. Old.

That means it was twenty years ago this May that I played cricket at some school in Yorkshire and then drove my granny’s Fiesta back to the International Two to see the Manchester show, six days after the album’s original release. That means that the grey T-shirt I still sometimes wear, and wore that night, is Twenty Years Old.

It also means that Second Coming is fifteen years old. And that it’s 15 years since I bought it on cassette in a record shop in Red Eye Records in Sydney.

It’s widely agreed that the Second Coming never really arrived. Even Ian Brown recently said as much, stating that whilst it had the “rock”, it had lost the “roll” of the first record. It was largely, apart from a few songs, John Squire’s work and the guitars are all over it. And it’s a shame, because when all the band got involved in the writing, then the groove came back.

Listen to this studio instrumental that went on to be “Daybreak”. If they ever do reform, then let’s hope it’s like this.

Stone Roses – JB Groove (aka Daybreak)

Stu from eleventhirtyeight writes:

“Get yourself some of this stunning techy mix from the UK’s heartland. Birmingham’s NONO.

NONO are Jason Moore and Aaron Howells, and for the past couple of years have been ripping club rooms and minds apart with their deep and solid sonic footprint.

They’re not as big as they should so get your head round this beauty of blending and spread the word. ”

1-Dapayk and Padberg-Khes_Mo’s Ferry
2-Sweet n Candy-Pancakes_Einmaleins Musik
3-Tadeo-Fractal (Fusiphorm Remix)_Cray1 Labworks
4-Dubfire-Emissions_Minus
5-Miss Kittin-Kitten Is High (JoJo De Freq’s Beauty Is Terror Remix)_Nobody’s Bizzness
6-Boys Noize-The Battery (Album Version)_BoysNoize Recordings
7-Falko Brocksieper-Off The Rack_Sub Static
8-Popof-My Toyz (Nono’s Double Drop Re-Edit)_Skryptom Records
9-Ruede Hagelstein_Der Kammblaser_Lebensfreude Records
10-The Cheapers-Fog_Upon.You Records
11-Format B-Mondo Time (Nono’s ‘Noise Nicker’ Re-Edit)_Stil Vor Talent
12-Afternoon Coffee Boys-My Drunk Foot_Clink
13-Heinrichs and Hirtenfellner-I Don’t Like a Fault_Highgrade Records
14-Oliver Huntemann-DRP_Confused Recordings
15-Zhao-Subtract_Anozer
16-Extrawelt-Titelheld_Cocoon Recordings
17-Swayzak-Smile and Receive (Apparat Remix)_!K7

http://nonodisco.com/seventyminutes.mp3

http://www.myspace.com/nonosounds
www.nonodisco.com

Me and my mate Joe have a long running argument. Jagger vs McCartney. There’s no allowing for past form. We have to judge them on their current standing. He’s of the opinion that Mick Jagger is still cool, that The Stones still have it and that McCartney is an aubergine-haired national embarrassment.

He’s wrong of course. Sir Mick is a drooling, loose-limbed goon, still trotting out increasingly parodic versions of his old hits, whereas Sir Paul still seems to get a buzz out of making new music and keeping his (recently chewed off) ear to the ground.

The proof is in recent their recent output. The godawful Shine A Light documentary, and the occasionally brilliant Fireman record.

And McCartney still surprises. I just discovered Twin Freaks, a collaboration with Freelance Hellraiser. Some marvellous mixes and mash-ups of his solo and Wings output – in particular a brilliant brilliant version of Maybe I’m Amazed. Read all about it.

Twin Freaks – Maybe I’m Amazed.

I missed the release of Jeb Loy Nichol’s latest long player, ‘Parish Bar’, but I’m making up for lost time. You should too.

He’s one of those artists who just keep cropping up. It started with Country Got Soul, put out by Jeb & Ross Allen on Casual Records, their label. And then, in a field in a summer, I went to watch the Country Got Soul Revue which was unfortunately cancelled so we got an hour of Jeb and his guitar. Then someone told me he was in Underwolves too. A covermount CD included his incredible bouncy folky rootsy dubby cover of Johnny Cash’s ‘Worried Man’.

And then he DJed at my friends Calum & Anna’s wedding, becuase he lives near them in mid-Wales. As you’d least expect from someone born in Wyoming, brought up on jazz, country and punk in Texas and there for the birth of hip-hop in New York.

If this leaves you scratching your head as to what the music sounds like, then have a listen to the free MP3 he has posted on his site. The title is a clue, “Countrymusicdisco”, but if you really wanted to define his unique sound, you’d a lot more letters than that.

Jeb Loy Nichols – Countrymusicdisco

Buy the new album – Parish Bar

You’ve got to love this cheeky cover of ‘Straight To Hell’ from Lily Allen.

The way I see it, she’s seen MIA smash it worldwide with a brilliant lift from The Clash and some very cool percussive sound design. And, provocatively, decided to point out that it’s not far short of a cover version.

Oh, and roped in her family friends. Which, when your old man was best pals with Joe Strummer can go a long way. Listen out for Mick Jones on backing vocals.

Lily Allen – Straight To Hell

Make sure you buy the Warchild record.

Heartbreaking news, but a lovely tribute from ElevenThirtyEight.

If you are like me, then you occasionally get obsessed with a song.

I’ve been playing Playing Dead for three months and I still can’t get enough. There’s something magical about it – the percussion is deep, the strings are mournful, the words are hard to work out but ultimately optimistic, he’s got a bit of Bill Callahan about him and she sounds like she’s fifty years too late. It’d be easy to lump this in with Bon Iver and the rest of them, but there’s something extra special about it.

Who knows who Breathe Owl Breathe are, but they look great and I hope they come over here soon.

Breathe Owl Breathe – Playing Dead

Buy Breathe Owl Breathe at eMusic

“I got you, didn’t I.” Yep, you did.

Thanks to eleventhirtyeight for this twisted birthday tribute to Ray Dolby who was born three calendar days ago, in 1933.

“Ray Dolby not dobly. Ray invented the Dolby noise reduction system and also co-invented video recording on tapes. It says this of the Dolby system on Rays wikipedia entry.

‘Dolby noise reduction works by increasing the volume of high-frequency sounds during recording and correspondingly reducing them during playback. This reduction in high-frequency volume reduces the audible level of tape hiss.’

This is probably true but to me Dolby was the switch on my dad’s old cassette deck. If turned to the on position it took away hiss, simulated high frequency hearing range deafness and added a smattering of ‘this sounds a little bit shitter than it did without it’ to anything played on it. Thanks Ray.

Ray also co-invented video tape recording and in doing so probably hoped to and actually did co-invent the home porn film collection. Ray is also said to be worth $2.9 billion. He married a lady who has now the misfortune to be called Dagmar Dolby. He also has two children, B Dolby and C Dolby. Ray was inducted into the consumer electronics hall of fame in 2004. What an event that must have been…one other inductee that night was Woo Paik. There’s no wiki on Woo Paik. I’d hazard a small wager that Woo was a stooge hired that night by Ray to dissuade anyone from thinking Dagmar Dolby had the funniest name at the buffet.

Ray and Dagmar have contributed 16 million dollars to a stem cell research centre in San Francisco. Happy Birthday Ray. ”

Cheers Stu.

A couple of months back, I was raving on the Purple Radio forum about the time that the Pet Shop Boys took over Radio 1, replacing Simon Bates for a week. And instead of Our Tune, they invited DJs to come and do a 20 minute mix. This was when house music was just crossing into the real mainstream. When there was no such thing as the superstar DJ. A time when big records caused real excitement. Because there was no internet. If you didn’t have the white label or a tape that you’d bought from Camden Market or Affleck’s or recorded from Stu Allen or Kiss (when it was a pirate.) then you couldn’t hear the tune. Until the next time it was played in a club.

On the Friday, they got Sasha in. I was working in a summer job at Baxter, Woodhouse & Taylor in Poynton. Proper factory. Rows of people making expensive, almost papier mache elements for aeroplane air-conditioning units. Unskilled, and boring as fuck. We used so much glue that ‘Health & Safety’ recommended that you drink a pint of full-fat milk to line your stomach before the day started. We always had Radio 1 on. Predictably, the old guard were up in arms this week. “PET Shop Boys? You do know why they are called the PET SHOP Boys, don’t you?”.

We taped it, of course. We played it to death. It soundtracked driving to work, to clubs, and camping in lay-bys in Edale.

I lost all my tapes.

And then, this week, this bloke got in touch. He’d been trawling the internet for a tracklisting. And found my post. And then got in touch with a copy.

Get on the download. Because when Sasha does that clever business with two copies of K-Klass, it might just give you a feeling you’ve not had for a bit.

Sasha Radio 1 Mix, 16th August 1991

1. Horse – Careful (original) 2. The Meaning feat DJ Mellow – Showing You The Feeling 3. Urban Soul – Alright 4. Angels & Images – Heaven on earth (inst piano) 5. Dupree – Brass Disk (Accapella) 6. Congress – 40 Miles better groove 7. Raze – Bass Power (Accapella) 8. Leftfield – Not Forgotten 9. Whitney Houston – I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Accapella) 10. Moby – Go 11. K Klass – Rhythm Is a Mystery (2 copies)