On Three Other Songs

Eddie Holman, "Time Will Tell" (album mix) - It's weird how you never see a holy grail coming - and for once, I don't mean that in the hey-check-out-this-album-I-just-found sense. I've known about Eddie Holman's 1977 Salsoul debut A Night To Remember for, well, pretty much as long as I've been aware of Salsoul; being that the title track was both one of the first songs I ever associated with the label/style and, on a good day, one of the single greatest disco/soul songs I've ever heard (and on a bad day, still no worse than top twenty), you better believe that I couldn't buy that shit quick enough. Except, of course, for the fact that, like most Salsoul LPs, it was out of print on CD, meaning I was relegated to beating up a most uncooperative internet in search of it for like three years; needless to say, I had a bit of the ol' wry chuckle at all those RIAA PR releases loudly bemoaning the way the internet made it so easy to find any album ever. "Ha fucking ha", I said.

And then, a few weeks ago a CD copy of it fell right out of the clear blue sky and into my lap. I mean, the odds of me checking eBay for anything are pretty slim (James Cobo wasn't raised to send his money off willy-nilly to any single venue offering both CDs and used schoolgirl panties for sale), much less those of finding a CD that's been eluding me for years for like twelve bucks; hell, it even showed up in my mailbox about three weeks before I expected it. Needless to say, even unwrapping it was a bit of a rush; after all, it ain't every day you find yourself face to face with a pleasure ritually denied to you by the limitations of the internet (next stop: girlfriend). And the excitement just kept mounting and mounting, right up until the moment I heard it when...

...it revealed itself to kinda be just another album. Just another very good album, mind you, and one born of a genre (disco-soul) that's proven its durability time and time again, but in the end, an album plagued by unavoidable warts nonetheless; for one, there's only eight songs, and for another, only maybe three of those really soar the way I'd been hoping. Not that the others are tedious or nondynamic, of course - it's just that put next to songs like the title track or "It's Over" (which trainspotters will know from that indispensible Shaolin Soul compilation) or "Time Will Tell", they sound like the orchestra warming up. I mean, when all that music kicks in on the chorus of "Time Will Tell", it's clearly functioning better as a machine than, well, damn near anything else in the catalogue; "I've Been Singing Love Songs (By Myself)" may have a better vocal performance, and "You Make My Life Complete" may have its arrangements held in check a little better, but neither one has a scratch on "Time Will Tell" when it comes to putting it all together - it's the synchronicity between Eddie's voice and all that sumptuous Baker-Harris-Young production that make something out of the song, as is generally the case with most good songs (this, incidentally, is part of why I avoid Hendrix like the plague BUT I DIGRESS). And, just to make sure the point's been made, I really didn't see it coming - "Time Will Tell" was one of the five songs on A Night To Remember that I hadn't heard, and while as a song it doesn't validate either the purchase or the quest leading up to it quite so adroitly as the two songs I'd heard off the album previously, it's good enough that it felt like a legitimate discovery instead of a consolation prize. I'm starting to think the moral of holy grail records is that that's about the best you can hope for. (A Night To Remember is out of print, but "Time Will Tell" is also available on the vinyl [though infuriatingly not the CD] release of Salsoul's recent Crossover Flavas compilation; click here to order that set from Amazon.co.uk, or click here to buy a used copy of A Night To Remember from an Amazon merchant [the UK ones were far more reasonable, so I linked there instead of to the 'mer'can incarnation])

Bricolage, "Footsteps" - This time last year, I was in the post-coital stage of the flipout we all went through with the release of Orange Juice's odds-n-sods compilation The Glasgow School, so you'll have to excuse me if I can't quite decide whether or not my fascination with fey Scottish jangle-pop might just be a seasonal thing - after all, I wasn't exactly listening to "Wan Light" all through the winter. Of course, there's also a chance that Bricolage simply had the misfortune of playing right into my consumption patterns, since I'd like to think that I'd be capable of enjoying a song so spectacularly executed at any point in the year; the actual conception of the song isn't exactly a ten out of ten, but listen to all the little shit they get right - all those drum fills, that rhythm guitar, those moments when both the vocal lines square off against each other - and it becomes pretty damned difficult to ignore the fact that you're in the presence of a band that knows what it's doing. I get the feeling that these guys have a single in them somewhere which'll plant a flag in the dome of my skull outright (and judging by the fact that they've apparently been tapped by Franz Ferdinand as a supporting act, they may actually get the chance), and the fact that this isn't that song doesn't diminish my admiration for it one iota. (Click here to buy the "Footsteps"/"Flowers of Deceit" double a-side from Rough Trade; also don't forget to check out their MySpace to stream more songs)

Jelly Roll Morton, "King Porter Stomp" - Inevitably, we all go through our jazz phase; the more unfortunate among us just try to force ourselves into it. Lord knows that was me for about six months back in college - if you've ever known that guy who trips over Kind of Blue and instantly becomes insufferable about the act of posessing knowledge about music, you've known me better than my parents ever have* - but for all the brow-furrowing I did over Sketches of Spain and Giant Steps and all those other albums your uncles told you about, none of it ever took hold nearly as quickly or forcefully as Jelly Roll Morton's artfully lightweight piano compositions. And, really, "composition" is the right word for Morton's songs; in the context of the time of their release, they're every bit as freewheeling in terms of the way they were put together as Louis Armstrong's music was when it came to the actual, y'know, playing of the music (or at least that's what the smarter folx tell me, although put next to a lot of the Dust Bowl-type stuff I've heard I'm inclined to agree), but since it's such a comparatively subdued form of showing off, it's easier for me to digest all the virtuosity by measures of leaps and bounds. And needless to say, there's a deceptively substantial amount of stuff to digest; it's kind of preposterous how quickly Morton's become a fixture of my morning routine (seriously, he's cutting into my ambient Eno time here). Or, depending on how well you know my prejudices, as predictable as Tuesday coming after Monday. Either way. (Click here to buy Jelly Roll Morton: 1926-1930 from Amazon.com)

*unless, of course, this description makes you think of Chris Coooooooey, in which case you've never known me for shit