One thing I've noticed over the years I've been writing these blog posts is that I should really know more about the English city of Birmingham and its music. While it might not have the name recognition of Manchester, Liverpool, and London to those of us outside of the UK, Birmingham has produced a disproportionate number of excellent and important artists, a handful of whom we've covered here. From The Moody Blues and Traffic, through Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, and Dexy's Midnight Runners, to Editors (and probably many more fine current bands), Birmingham has proved itself to be fertile musical ground indeed.
Today, we add to the mix Jacobites, aka Nikki Sudden and Dave Kusworth, formerly of Swell Maps and the Subterranean Hawks respectively. This single (or EP?) seems to have made quite an impression at KCMU - at least to those who cared to comment on the album and not ironically bicker about "relevance." I wouldn't be surprised if we saw more posts about Sudden, Kusworth, and Swell Maps down the line.
"This record's many things: Beautiful + transcendent; tortured + black; achingly mournful; blatantly hopeful. At any rate, it's honest, poignant and pretty darn relevant. AND completely unaffected and unpretentious." "A side 45 rpm. B side 33-1/3 rpm. Now, that's relevant." "I like this." "Nikki used to be in Swell Maps." "Great! And on Glass Records as well." "So when do we get the album. I saw it at Tower." "If either of these gents walked into the station and asked if anybody'd go on a date w/'em would they get any yea-sayers?" "Is that relevant?" "In short: no." "Relevant?! Whoa! I should hope that everything written on these stickers is relevant. At least as relevant as the minds their spawned from." "Jon I believe you meant 'they're' and not 'their' in your 8th line down below." [Yet more relevance!] |
Can you believe it's been over a year since our last David Sylvian post? My, how time flies. Back in 2012, we looked at his 1986 album, Gone to Earth, so it seems only fitting to move forward in time by another year and see how KCMU reacted to its followup, 1987's Secrets of the Beehive, his last s…
The epic debate that unfolds on the cover of this unassuming collection of Jamaican music from the '70s and '80s pretty much speaks for itself. Apparently the only thing that stirs the college radio station pot more than the sweet sounds of ABC is the idea of a reggae compilation in heavy rotation.…
