Ondaymay Usicmay

Couple of interesting offerings from The Guardian. The first is a long essay by Paul Morley, a veteran musician/producer/publicist in the Manchester and Liverpool scenes in the late 1970s. The lists of bands he mentions is like finding a lost rolodex in my head:

Liverpool names were eccentric, told stories and showed off: Echo and the Bunnymen, Teardrop Explodes, Big In Japan, Wah! Heat, Lori and the Chameleons, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, Dalek I Love You, Frankie Goes To Hollywood. The Manchester names were more discreet and oblique: Magazine, the Fall, Joy Division, Ludus, Durutti Column, the Passage, New Order and, ultimately, the Smiths. The music, while it shared the same influences, and was inspired by the same English punk personalities, sheared off in different directions. Only the Bunnymen and Joy Division retained any kind of remote atmospheric contact, feeding right into U2 .

God, did I love Teardrop Explodes. And Echo. And OMD (sometimes). And Magazine and The Fall and Joy Division and New Order (and a bunch of other bands mentioned). I never got The Smiths, though I've always felt I should. I never got Frankie, and I never felt I should.

Luckily, Morley is:

...putting together a compilation of music from the cities of Manchester and Liverpool between 1976 and 1984, called North By North West. It follows the music that was being made in the two cities because a group of people - an adventurous underground collective looking to establish their own identity - were suddenly shown by the Pistols, and the Clash, that they weren't the only ones having these thoughts, listening to that music, fancying themselves as the boisterous bastard children of Warhol, or Nico, or the New York Dolls, or Eno, or Fassbinder, or Marcel Duchamp.

Hopefully it will be released in America, and if not it could certainly be shipped to America.

Also, a bit of an interview with Eno, mostly about his recent collaboration with Paul Simon on Simon's latest, *Surprise.* (I've listened and listened and listened again and, having no expectations whatsoever, let me say they were met and not a word more). But here're two sentences that made my heart pingpang:

The most anticipated of this wave of collaborations - if not, perhaps by Eno - has been his return to the Roxy Music fold. For the band's album, scheduled for release in the autumn, he provided two songs, at the band's request, and ended up making a keyboard contribution to other tracks.

Of course I'll buy it the day it's released. And it won't have a 2006 equivalent to "Virginia Plain." And I'll feel old and sluttily gullible and crumpled kleenexed, but....

Oh well. Have a couple of songs:

If I could find the whole song and post it you know I would, but I can only find a 30 second sample of The Greatest Song in the BDR Universe, Teardrop Explode's "When I Dream." You'll know how to make it play.

Byran Ferry (with Eno)

Eno