Dear Mr Fantasy, play us a tune, something to make us all happy

Fuzzface

Sorry it’s been a couple of weeks since I last posted, life has been intruding on what I’d rather be doing. I have kept digging around though, and found some good stuff that was certainly new to me, and I reckon I should be able to do quite a few posts over the Easter holidays.

The first band I’ve got here is Fuzzface from Colchester. Great name and a really great noise!

There is apparently a “bit of a scene” (as they say) in Colchester at the moment, and this lot are at the front of the line. As soon as you hear this, you’ll instantly think of a few bands Fuzzface are drawing on pretty heavily (I won’t spoil the fun), but that’s fine as far as I’m concerned. If you go to their website, there’s quite a noble list trotted out, all of whom should be mainstays of any healthy CD (or, perhaps, Vinyl) collection.

And it must be a pretty decent record collection they have there, as Fuzzface make a genuinely BIG r’n’b sound, a bit like Ocean Colour Scene used to do, (though they may well be pretty fed up of smart ass critics adding another band to the list…). Terrific “sloppy” guitar word, great vocal performances and that distinctive Hammond Organ sound make you wonder why there aren’t more bands doing this. If it sounds great, who cares whether it’s original? (That’s not meant as a dig, boys, I love the sound…)

I’ve linked to the two tracks that are available at their website, but to be honest I actually prefer the ones on their Myspace page. Bearing in mind a couple of comments about the unreliability of the place that I’ve had recently, though, I’ve gone for the website ones. Download these tracks, and then go on to Myspace which has four other downloads well worth getting.

Mr Fantasy (Live)

Like John Patton Said

Mine’s a large one!

Off Days

[Have spent the whole weekend working, not great is it?]

So, anyway, it means there’s no new stuff to post, but I did think about something that needs sorting out. Someone commented on another message board that the links are not always working. As far as I know, none of them have been pulled, it’s really just that a lot of them are from Myspace, and anyone who’s spent any time around there will know that it’s a pretty temperamental beast. If you’ve tried to download one of the files here and nothing seems to have happened, or you’ve been left hanging, it’ll be because Myspace is having one of its “off days”…

It would be a shame to stop using Myspace because I like being able to run through it seeing what I can uncover, so what I thought I’d do is, every now and again, I’d bundle all the tracks together and post them on Rapidhsare. OK?

Here’s the first bundle

Feb/March

Matty Dredd vs The Originator

Feeling good this evening – the Lord knows why, have I misunderstood the situation? – So I’m posting two bands tonight, both of them great and both them covering that Upsetter-style sixties reggae thing which I really like.

In fact, what we have here is the first (and yeah, maybe the last) Partly Porpoise Skinhead Reggae Soundclash!

Matty Dredd

OK first up we have a track by Matty Dredd from Leeds, who has (rather sadly) become my first friend on Myspace, though I’m not yet sure what this means. (At this point I feel I should say that I do in fact have hosts of friends and spend inordinate amounts of my time getting into hilarious scrapes with the aforementioned friends – oh the stories I could tell…)

Right, back to the music. Matty Dredd has a Myspace page which currently has four tracks available for download, which he updates pretty regularly (I’ve just visited it and he has a new track available now, so it’s clearly worth re-visiting his page from time to time…) The track I’ve chosen is “Ride this Dub” which is a version of a track no longer available on his page called “Ride the Riddim”. It’s a really cracking dub of what was a pretty good song in the first place. I particularly love the haunting organ sound on it.

Ride This Dub

The Originator

The second track I have is by a feller who goes by the name of The Originator, which I think is one of the best spaghetti western-style names for a dub producer I have ever heard – Lee Perry must be gnawing his own arm off with frustration! I would love to be able to shout “I am The Originator!!!” at the top of my voice over a reggae soundtrack! Maybe one day…

The Originator has a Myspace page and comes from Brixton, and erm… that’s it. That’s about all I know about him, apart from the fact that he comes across as a thoroughly decent bloke in his email to me. He also mentions a music forum called Versionist, where people of a similar bent post latest tracks etc. I’ve had a look and it’s worth a visit, we may well hear more about them later.

The track I’ve chosen from The Originator is “Infamous Dub” which I think continues the outlaw theme rather nicely, and even features a horse whinnying over it inna “Scratch” stylee.

(Damn! I promised myself I wasn’t going to use the “inna something stylee” joke…)

Infamous Dub

You wanna fight? Fuckin’ kick your ass… and then I’ll fuckin’ kick your ass with my music… then I’m gonna play some bass licks on your grave!

JSTAR

This track really makes me laugh. It’s the nightmare response to that “Bass Player Wanted” advert you might place in the NME. The tryout bass player from Hell!

The guy in question is JSTAR, who assures us he did not appear in the 118 ads, though… As far as I can tell he’s actually a DJ, who comes from London, and appears to play a number of the sort of … er … “Soundclashes” that people far younger than myself go to. I think he’s also played with David Rodigan.

JSTAR has a Myspace page with three other tracks available, all of them quite different to each other, one a dancehall style reggae track, another softer RnB type thing (which I wasn’t so keen on) and a cracking fourth track called Step 1 Stoop, which features, I think, a melodica, in the best Augustus Pablo traditions. All of them are worth a listen…

Chose this one, though, as it raised a smile, in a packed stressed weekend…

I’m So Heavy

Put your braces together and your boots on your feet…

One of the things I’m enjoying about doing this Blog – far more than the actual writing of it, which is a bit of a pain to be honest, a bit too much like doing something constructive for my liking (I’m telling you, one day you’ll select Partly Porpoise from your Favourites menu – I should be so lucky, I know I know… – and it just won’t be there any more, and then you’ll wish you appreciated it more fully…

Sorry… one of the things I really enjoy about the Blog is the random trawling through Inter-space not having much idea of what you’ll find. And wow, there is some really startlingly good music out there, which takes you off on a completely different track musically.

Prince Fatty

Well, for all the banjo-toting ninnies that inhabit Myspace and so fascinate me most of the time, it’s really satisfying to know that there are also one or two Prince Fatties. Prince Fatty produces superb organ-based skinhead reggae that sounds just like late sixties Kingston and could easily be mistaken for Jackie Mittoo or the Harry J Allstars. Listening to “Ninas Dance” sounds like the soundtrack for a movie (probably starring Ray Winston), about young lads living on an East London council estate in 1971, spending the week looking forward to the weekend. You’d have to say it’s a helluva joyful sound. You can hear it plus three other similarly jolly tunes at Prince Fatty’s Myspace page.

I don’t know if The Prince (better than “Fatty”, I think) deliberately went out to make a record like Liquidator, but that’s what it sounds like to me, and that’s great! For my money you can never have too much Harry J. In fact, Prince Fatty is two people, Nasser on drums and Hammond Organ; and Trevor on bass and guitar, this according to their Myspace page, which, rather wonderfully, has as its strap line “Battling the forces of Evil with hippy reggae” Amen!

They also have a really clever website that allows you to play around at being King Tubby, twiddling with various knobs and dials that control loops from Ninas Dance. It’s certainly a lot of fun but doesn’t tell you an awful lot about Prince Fatty. Perhaps they’ll get in touch?

The track I’ve included here is Ninas Dub, which … sorry, I don’t need to spell this out for you do I? You’re intelligent people…

Ninas Dub

Now give me some of that old moonstomping!

Goodbye cold winters, the spring’s my surprise

Loudmouth Soup

Not loads of time, I’m afraid; OK, off we go, more banjo-inspired music to plug

Today’s band is Loudmouth Soup from Leeds, who bring us a rather fine cross between the Decembrists and Exile On Main Street Stones (in fact, as I listen further, I can hear some Little Feat in their too). All terrific influences, if you ask me.

I came across this lot when skimming through Myspace, and liked the four tracks that I downloaded immediately, thinking “ah here’s something new”. Turns out that I’m not quite the first onto “The Soup” (as I’m sure they like to be known).

Granted, there are a number of mentions on other Blogs, before this one. Also, at least three on-line magazines, got there before me. Oh. and Channel Four have been using “Skydiver” in “A Bear’s Tail”…

And, yes, the band have actually appeared in the show themselves.

Bloody Hell, even Chris Moyles has picked up on it, apparently.

So, anyway, just remember kids, you heard it hear … fifth.

The End

Cutting Edge, that’s me…