Tag Archive: Nick Lowe


Jonathan Wilson’s hippy dream

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April 22, 2018
RARE BIRDS album by Jonathan Wilson (Bella Union, 2018)
JONATHAN WILSON LIVE AT THE BRONSON CLUB, RAVENNA 20th April 2018

rare“There’s no fear, no hatred, no killers, no guns”. This is the hippy dream of Jonathan Wilson – songwriter, producer, musician and all round gentle spirit. It comes from a line in ‘Over The Midnight’, one of the many highlights from his latest feel good solo album ‘Rare Birds’.

Mellow LA vibes usually leave me cold but this record has really warmed my soul this year.

We are so resigned to expressions of cynicism and negativity that it takes music like this to remind us that it doesn’t necessarily have to be like this. Wilson admits that he wrote the ELO-esque ‘There’s A Light’ as a conscious antidote to the darkness that surrounds and inhibits us. Continue reading →

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BACKTRACKING #2 – THE DAMNED

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February 28, 2011

Second in a series of bite-sized posts about 7″ singles I own – shameless nostalgia from the days of vinyl.

The Damned – New Rose b/w Help (Stiff Records, 1976).

Not the first ever Punk Single, but the first British Punk 7″ and still a great record. I had a friend who worked in a record shop and got this on the day of release  together with a poster of the grainy black and white band photo on the back sleeve.  It was produced by Nick Lowe “at Pathway for Leather Nun Productions” with a breakneck version of Help on the B side that’s done and dusted in about a minute and a half.

The plundering of the line from The Shangri-La’s ‘Leader of the Pack’ (“Is she really going out with him?”) and the less than respectful cover of The Beatles give notice of a musical changing of the guard but also showed the importance of humour in these early punk records. The past was up for grabs and the future uncertain – to borrow Nick Lowe’s album title, this was “pure pop for now people”. Continue reading →

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