We All Hail West Texas (We All Hail...)

John Darnielle has been recording music for over 20 years - and nobody ever told him.  Gloriously lo-fi, Darnielle's music has much in common with fellow long-term barbists Bob Pollard and Mark Davies in that it gloriously grates against much of today's over-produced hype-shite.

Merge Records have recently reissued The Mountain Goats magnificent 'All Hail West Texas,' surely 2002's 18th best LP.  Full of songs about love and death, hospitalisation and the fatalistic attractions of hot metal music, it's an album to hold to your heart and, secretly, to your pants.  

And, to not, to never, let go..

Touring - Glasgow at The Arches on the 10th of October.  You should go.

Marcia, my dear...

 

When I worked in music shops - many years ago - it was not uncommon practice to source some records and tapes from 'non-traditional suppliers:' in some cases, literally, off the back of a tatty, smelly van that had almost certainly, like much of the stock they carried, recently failed its MOT.  Many an hour was spent gently idling in these vehicles - pouring over some long deleted Magma LP, caressing the spines of remaindered Jetstar compilation albums and fingering the holes of some long forgotten cut-out.

Sex was always an option...

On one such occasion however, I found, to my surprise and no small astonishment, an album that has, even to this day, continued to beguile and bewitch.  Six copies of the album, to be exact.  I took them all - at a dealer price of less than £3 - and boxed them up, tenderly, lovingly, placing them next to an oddly juxtaposed admixture of Psychedelia, Easy-Listening and Jazz records (it was that kind of a shop.)

I never did sell any of the albums - well, reader, I sold one.  But I'll certainly never forget the feelings of exhilaration and transcendent joy when I took 'Sweet Bitter Love' home, placed the needle over track one, side one and listened to Marcia Griffiths sing.

Mondo Franco...

 

Despite what many might think, Jesus 'Jess' Franco was much more than just a trashy latter day purveyor of tits and ass (liberally covered in bright red stuff.)  Franco, who died earlier this month, was a ghoulish gourmand of gore who slathered his beautiful women and similarly adorned hunk-a-men with blood and guts and brains and more blood.  

Always, more blood.

Except that wasn't the whole picture.  Franco, in many ways, was the unlikely progenitor of much of the great Spanish horror that is current today.  Sure, his style may have been a bit workmanlike, lacking in the cinematographic niceties and technical brio of some of his more revered contemporaries, but central to all of his films, and this is why his movies will continue to captivate, thrill and be watched, is a consuming love and passionate intensity for the art of film-making - irrespective of the genre, the budget, the stars or, often, conspicuous lack of them.

Director, writer, musician, artist - Franco could do it all.  And, thankfully, for over 50 years, as the clip below of perhaps his most celebrated film, 1971's 'Vampyros Lesbos' shows, he never tired of making films the uniquely Franco way...

Hell, we can even forgive him 'Mondo Cannibale...'