Holiday listening pt 2. Timbuktu and Damn! And The Kingsmen

Do you like Louie Louie?

Well who doesn’t? No, seriously. It’s not a rhetorical question. Hands up and leave the room ‘cos Louie Louie is one of those records we should all agree on. I say records as opposed to songs as despite there being well over 1000 versions of Richard Berry’s 1957 original, we are, are we not, in complete agreement that The Kingsmen recorded the only version we need.

How can you not like a song that was the subject of a two and a half year FBI investigation over allegations of obscenity? Only for all charges to be dropped when the good people at Quantico realised they couldn’t understand a word of Jack Ely’s hysterical delivery of the patois lyrics. They even managed to overlook the far more anglo-saxon contribution of drummer Lynn Easton who yells “fuck!” at approximately 55 seconds when he drops a stick. They presumably chose to forgive the absent dexterity on the grounds that the band warmed up for the session by playing a 90 minute gig the night before. A performance which consisted of a single 90 minute version of Louie Louie. Stitch that, John Cage.

Louie Louie is the rock’n’roll equivalent of a flint arrow head. You and me, brothers and sisters, just see a sharp pebble. Yer anthropologist on the other hand can see the entire timeline of civilization, beginning when the apes discovered the obelisk in 2001: A Space Odyssey up to the zenith of human achievement; the invention of velcro by George de Mestral in 1941. Even if you want to push mankind a little further down the line by inventing the longbow, you still need to understand flint arrow heads.

One man who not only invented the longbow but went on to defeat the french at the battle of Agincourt, is Timbuktu.

You need to know about Timbuktu. Unreasonably short as he is handsome, owner of the perviest moustache since Little Richard and tormentor of the swedish far-right, Timbuktu (or Jason as his Mum and Dad call him) is as equally likely to perform solo with just an iphone for accompaniment as he is to turn up with an ass-kicking ten piece band. In the case of the hard-partying Stanna Kvar it’s the latter who make up the brigade of archers. Taking the not unreasonable view that you can’t rock any harder than Louie Louie, Jase simply appropiates the classic riff, adds essential cowbells and gang handclaps and garnishes the whole with the funkiest 70’s afro flute since Brian Jackson teamed up with Gil Scott-Heron.

Best enjoyed from the hotel balcony at sunset with a gin & tonic. Stanna Kvar is the soundtrack to the long hot summer of 2018 chez Slender. Slice of lemon optional.

Holiday listening pt 1. Pixies.

I’m in the car. I travel to Mallorca in two days. What do I listen to in order to enhance my holiday mood? As luck would have it, Bacharos, the God of perfect soundtracking, is watching over me and places a copy of Pixies Surfer Rosa/Come On Pilgrim in the glove compartment. Ay caramba, I’m living la vida loca. Innit!

If I’m being brutally honest about my cred crredentials I was never a massive fan of Pixies, suspicious as I am of bands that deliberately neglect the definite article (embarrassingly I’ve just spent 10 minutes checking this online. You’d think I could have just looked at the album covers but it’s Sunday morning and I don’t want to go clanking around shelves whilst the rest of the house is asleep, OK?). More that I liked people who liked The (it just looks better that way, doesn’t it?) Pixies. Indeed, I even went so far as to marry one of them; she who worships at the feet of Bacharos and slumbers in the arms of Morpheus as we speak. And in my defence it doesn’t look good on paper: four east coast intellectuals playing cod-spanish californian surf-punk and singing about space travel… oh OK, it sounds great on paper, I’m just slow.

30 years too slow.

But it’s never too late to get a grip. Or even too early. As Kim Deal endearingly slurs the final syllables of Isla de Encanta, a voice makes itself heard from the back seat.

“Daddy, was that rock’n’roll?”

“Yes Greta. Did you like it?”

“It’s even better than the girl with white hair”

For those of you who aren’t parents of Greta, aged 5 years and 8 months, the girl with white hair is Patti Smith, creator of Horses, Greta’s favourite album.

Pixies. Bald, intellectual and better than Patti Smith. Pass me the sun cream – I’m diving in.