Picture This

Dunno about you but, I’m a bit of an information junkie… For instance, I devour sleeve notes; call me a train-spotter but I really do like to know the inner bits and bobs behind the recording of the record I’m listening to… and, I don’t believe I’m alone in that enjoyment.

Same goes for art galleries… as much as I like to go and gaze at painting X or Y by great-master A or B, the same goes for the captioning thereof. To me, its all part of the learning; the acquisition of knowledge if you like – the tale behind the painting adds immeasurably to the pleasure in looking at what the exhibit’s curator has hung on the wall.

The upper space in this particular gallery is all whitewashed walls and rectangular shapes. The floors are anonymous pine planks; Norwegian blonde – each footfall echo bounces back in an area otherwise bereft of meaningful life. It reeks of uninviting post-industrial chic.

And, this scrupulously scrubbed room into which I have wandered through a wide white opening is perhaps forty feet wide by maybe thirty deep and about fifteen or so in height.

And there, hanging artistically off-centre and suspended from the ceiling, occupying some (but not all) of the white space in this white box-lozenge that has no door, is a huge jumble of autumnal-hued… string.

The string – so I’m reliably informed by the caption that’s been stuck at eye-level on the white wall – entitled ‘Untitled Number One’.

The first line of this ‘caption’ reads as follows: You may imagine that this is unfinished.

Taking my cue from the caption – bible-black, 14 point, Times Roman on the scrubbed-white wall – I extend my imagination.

However, much like an engine running low on diesel, it only travels so far: it splutters to a halt at the point when I’ve decided the dangling mess of twine resembles nothing other than a poorly assembled squirrel’s dray that has recently been savaged by a hungry feline on its quest for hatchling breakfast.

Looking for clues, I re-examine the caption again, the one that solemnly informs me: You may imagine this is unfinished. Sorry pal, I don’t imagine anything of the kind actually… What I clearly see – and right before my eyes – is a heap of total bollox… full-throttle pretentious, art-installation, crap. The person who ‘assembled it’, the people who commissioned this thing… AND the person who wrote this ‘caption’ – all of ‘em should be ashamed of themselves.

But… why are you here Neil… especially when you know this sort of thing irritates the be-jaysus out of you? Ahh… I’m here because… but, you know what, I really wish I hadn’t bothered. Where, why, what, how, when… then?

Just the other day actually – when it seemed like a beezer idea to avoid Christmas shopping by nipping in to have a squint around an Exhibition that advertised itself as displaying loads of Edward Hopper pictures.

And, since I’ve been a bit of a sucker for Hopper’s art since my mid-teens… off I toddled. The only problem was that the advertising exaggerated somewhat… there were only a very few of Hopper’s work on display and very few had any meaningful captioning either. Plus, since the gallery's coffee-emporium was closed and they'd indulged in daylight robbery to actually get in to said gallery, exploration of the other floors seemed in order. Hence the reasons for the irritating ball of string encounter.

Anyway, Hopper’s art and I first became acquainted by way of another artist – Edward Kasper who I imagine, (tho’ honestly don’t know for sure), probably drank deep from the well of Hopper’s realism-inspired-inspiration. Edward Kasper… who’s he?


He’s the bloke responsible for this - the wrap-around poster-like sleeve to the original inner for The Band’s Moondog Matinee.

Not, frankly, the greatest album they ever delivered but it’s contained within one of my favourite covers. And, it’s not too far a throw of the imagination to see Kasper’s sleeve-art with its own antecedence in Hopper’s own Nighthawk’s masterpiece of 1942.

Which, led me to thinking… album art is not what once it was… is it?

Growing up musically (before) and during time spent at the coal-face of Island Records, one of CB’s (Chris Blackwell – founder of) firm beliefs that was imbued within us was… and I’m quoting him here; “If you felt that the artwork was intriguing then there must be something going on inside; there’s some thought, there’s some creativity. Artwork was very important to Island’s life”.

And it was… oh but it really was. Yet, as we moved from the 12 square inches – a format that gave designers space within and on which to create – through cassettes and in to CDs, the size came to matter. Why? ‘cos the combination of the art and the information became almost a by-product of the whole. It was as if… look, you’ve got the music, what more do you want?

And now, the art that comes with our music has been reduced to the size of a postage-stamp since that is what iTunes downloads dictate.

Time was when new-release record X or Y would appear in one’s local Diskery; the hard-earned would be handed over and one’d hop back on the bus and then it was either back home or to a mate’s house full of eager anticipation not just for the needle to make its first drop onto pristine vinyl but… to examine – in detail – the sleeve in which said new release resided. Why?

Because these sleeves were not only (in general terms) works of art in their own right but one also elicited a heap of information: who played what and with whom… who produced this or that… which studios were used… who engineered this or that… who was this or that person thanked and what role did they play in the overall proceedings? One stored this information up in one’s head and applied it to other albums, thereby drawing up a form of knowledge database.

Download your ‘product’ off of iTunes and none of this is contained within your download… you get the music (of course) plus the pea-sized replica of the sleeve. And that’s it.

The other day, I finally – and I’ll be beating myself for being late to the ball here – for some time to come… but, anyway, I managed to cotton on to what is rapidly becoming my album of the year. Seasons Of My Soul by the chanteuse otherwise known as Rumer.

And yes, the album art – a nice black and white image of the young lady – nestles quite comfortably in my iTunes folder. And (or should that be but) as much as I really like the music, there is nothing much – other than that nice black and white image – to look at. No real ‘information’ to acquire.

Big pity really… that the digital generation are cheated of this pleasure. I understand its not for everyone… but, I tend to think its for more than maybe people realise.

Perhaps that’s why there is a very real rise in vinyl sale… not just because of the (well-known) warmth of the musical-listening experience but equally because the sleeve designers can create better than is possible with a palette the size of a stamp.

Cry Me A River

It is a conventional cardboard (as opposed to the more normal jewel-case) cover to a CD and is, I suspect, designed to sit within one’s own CD storage device (no, not a personal hand held device, I wittered on about them last time out).

The front displays a CD-sized image of a lot of vinyl albums racked tightly together with just their multi-coloured spines on view.

It reminds me of various book-shelves that I’ve adapted (OK, that should read fiddled-about with) over the years as well as the ones that I’ve either constructed myself – with varying levels of success – and those I’ve had purpose-built. Each variant on the theme has been crammed with many hundreds of vinyl recordings.

Oh, alright then, I'll own up – the hundreds bred a bit over the years to become thousands and despite the oh-so-fashionable change to all things digital (either compact disc or download) have travelled with me to wherever I’ve lived. And, as has been referred to more than once since I first stood up on the grassy knoll out there in the prairie, their present home is where I’m not – down in the dungeon at Merle HQ.

And much missed they all are as well.

Not least since a very fair proportion of those I have squirreled away over the years on vinyl have never been digitised.

Digitised or not, there is something quite magical about a vinyl album and its cover; yet that something isn’t quite so easy to define. People talk of the warmth of sound that is elicited from a vinyl album – perhaps its that which makes it so special. Perhaps its that tangible thing whereby one can actually hold it, something of proper size in one’s hands. Perhaps its because that was when the true art of sleeve design came into its own – designers actually having a bit of space within which to weave their own breed of creativity that, no matter how hard they’ve tried, simply doesn’t cut it when it comes to the jewel-case format.

A time when size came to matter.

Cue double albums, gatefold sleeves and special inner bags, luxurious boxed sets and one really had something of substance to gaze at, to mull over while the vinyl that its exterior contained revolved at thirty-three and a third revolutions each minute before one’s very eyes. Perhaps its because it was always a dead handy surface for constructing herbal cigarettes back in the day. Yes – there’s another pair of personal hand held devices to add to the growing list.

Over time, some (not many thank goodness) sleeves have become slightly watermarked or damaged; some from many, many years gone past show their owner’s name – when I’d write my name (albeit in small letters) on the back cover top right or left – this to identify them as mine as opposed to any of my friends when we went to early-teenage parties, clutching the newest release with which to appear ever so cool in front of girls who were growing tops to go topless in (so we hoped).

Across this phalanx of closely stacked 12-inch vinyl spines someone has Photoshop’d the image whereby the 5 and the 0 are picked out as if the sleeves, themselves have been lit up by a strong light.

A magnifying glass (actually this effect is achieved by the judicious use of two pairs of my glases) – because I’m needing to be in mega-magnification-mode – shows me the Island albums they’ve found to group together and make up this display.

A Uriah Heep album is right next to Nick Drake’s magnum opus, Bryter Layter; John Martyn’s first mono recording of London Conversation (ILP 952) rests against Tom Waits’ masterpiece, RainDogs; the double-album soundtrack to Countryman (starring… you guessed it… Countryman) with its bank of Wally Badarou propelled synth-driven mellow-moods is alongside Richard Thompson’s Henry The Human Fly – his first solo album, the sleeve photograph being shot in some baronial hall… somewhere; the first Renaissance album (ILPS 9114) bookends Third World’s, Tony Wright deigned sleeve to Journey To Addis; The In Crowd’s Man From New Guinea which probably sold in the tens as opposed to tens of thousands is in there alongside Lee Perry’s Super Ape; Mott The Hoople’s Rock & Roll Queen is nestled up close to Head Hands And Feet’s Tracks; Alan Bown’s Stretching Out with its bizarre (probably Hipgnosis-designed) black and white front cover of a man pulling his chest skin (or was it a nipple) hard is there as are records by Marianne Faithfull and Vinegar Joe.

Luther Grosvenor’s Under Open Skies – again, hardly a best seller, is there alongside the Jess Roden fronted, Doors minus Morrison, The Butts Band’s Blue Thumb release, that particular cover depicting one of those Fender amplifier / four-speaker combinations so beloved of road-crews from the late sixties / early seventies. Eddie and the Hot Rods Teenage Depression featuring a sleeve with someone putting a gun to his head snuggles up to an Emerson Lake & Palmer album; and there’s Jimmy Cliff’s Goodbye Yesterday – but, I wonder, is that the original sleeve, the cover that was almost cloth like in texture?

There’s another Marianne and Nick Drake record further along the line, Inner Circle’s Everything Is Great is in there, Mountain’s Nantucket Sleighride and Roxy Music’s Stranded compete for space with Paul Weller’s Modern Classics, Sheep On Drugs and Keane albums – the new(er) Island as opposed to when CB was at the helm.

Robert Palmer’s Sneakin’ Sally – with the sleeve shot at the entrance to the tunnel that leads to Heathrow Airport, backlit by the twin-headlights of a Rolls (I think) – I really should know that as I wrote about some of these covers for a book that was published in the late Nineties that contained a few choice pieces of Island poster art. Looking back, that really was a great sleeve – one for the connoisseur.

The second Traffic album is represented too – this must be an original as the catalogue number which carries a capital T after the index number is plain to see; the original sleeve had a four-page, stapled in insert filled with grainy black and white images shot up on the Berkshire Downs (the White Horse at Uffington for completists) fronted by Gered Mankowitz’s studio portrait that would have been taken in his Mason’s Yard studio; the very same studio in which his legendary portraits that became defining images of Hendrix were taken.

Oh and look… there is the Kid Creole, Fresh Fruit album – licensed in from ZE Records this was the zoot-suited one’s calling card; floating back through the night from New York, I played its final cut – Dear Addy – over and over again as the dawn rose. From that day to this, cemented into a top twenty position on the all-time Storey juke-box. Back then, not just the only person on the ‘plane with a copy but about to land at Heathrow and be (for a short while) the only person in Britain with a pre-release cassette tape of it.

Fairport Convention’s Angel Delight is there – I wonder if this, too, is an original since the very first copies had a stuck-on image of the band as it was at that time; Jim Capaldi’s Oh How We Danced is there as well – though that was never a record to much trouble the compiler’s of the charts – those were the days when solo albums by band members were almost de rigeur… and, in amongst all of the others there looks to be a little gem that I’ve not come across before entitled The Island Scene… I wonder what that was or is? Perhaps a compilation from… hmmm… methinks that might be some Euro compilation because it certainly isn’t in any of my (as near as dammit definitive) lists that I’ve compiled over the last few months.

Below, it says, off-grey-back on white, A celebration to mark the 50th anniversary of Island Records. Inside, there is (predictably) no CD at all but another wedge of cardboard on one side bearing the message: Island Records and Chris Blackwell would like to invite you (in this instance, that means me) to the launch of Island Life. A celebration to mark etc etc on Wednesday 20th May at 10.30pm.

Entry to the holy of holies is, so it says, strictly via this invitation which, in turn, is absolutely non-transferable. Nor can I bring a plus-one, the music industry’s obligatory arm-on-one’s-arm manner of referring to one’s guest be they partner, wife, husband, live-in lover, concubine, rent-boy rented especially for the evening, gigolo, high-profile colleague (male or female), associate, co-worker or even ex-lover.

I wonder who’ll be there?

Prior to which, I’ve got a day of advancing AlphaBetaMusica to be getting on with interspersed with pulling together further meetings on behalf of my newest recruit… whose music – if yesterday was anything to go by – is falling on the exact opposite of deaf ears.

What with one thing and another, all really rather encouraging.

Bumpers West

Phew... two days of being more or less cough-drop-free; perhaps those doses in moderation of the gargle-ghastly orange liqueur have had something to do with that?

In any event, it’s a blessed relief not walking around, bent double as yet another hacking-fit dive-bombs my chest like a WW2 Stukka; howling and whining from afar before clattering my sides until all the energy has been soundly thrashed from my very being.

Then again, I did learn that there are other things that could well have contributed to that recent bout of not being terribly well – for instance and here’s a little known fact; bread and mushrooms could well have conspired as a possible root cause.

Really… since, apparently, both contain some kind of fungoid that, unless eaten in moderation, can lead to… the shite build up internally and… you know the rest.

So… that’s one lesson learned; cut down on the mushroom omelettes.

Better that though, than lending one’s chest out to become a practice (g)round for apprentice panel-beaters – but… better still than being an apprentice Celebrity I suppose; or did I read that wrong and should it have been Celebrity apprentice?

In any event, a bit more than one could learn from celebrity apprenticeship (or whichever way round its meant to be)… I mean, what on earth is that all about or… is it simply symptomatic of the very depths that television makers are nowadays prepared to plumb? I guess it has to be; after all – sooner or later ratings will show that viewers have voted with their remote controls; if I could find it, I’d rather watch professional bull riding. At least you learn a couple of things from that.

One is, you’d have to be clinically insane to even attempt it and the second is, chances are you’re unlikely to father many children after a few encounters with a two-ton bull that’s going to demonstrate just how much it’d prefer you not to be straddling its back.

But perhaps, just perhaps there would be a way to do it… for instance – by getting as trolleyed as one can via visiting one of Amsterdam’s notorious coffee shops. You know the places, where not a lot of coffee is drunk but a great deal of high quality ganja is ingested.

Of course, I’ve only ever walked past such places… oh – ok, maybe I peeked inside a couple of times… yeah, ok… but I only did it like Monica Lewinsky was told to say… honest injun.

Anyhow… it seems that the city fathers of Holland’s second city have rather screwed up of late; they’ve declared Amsterdam a no-smoking zone… in much the same way that most of the world has become… so no real surprises there but… that edict has been fxxxxd up, big-time, by the coffee-shops.

There has been, so I’ve discovered, a bit of a revolt and the city elders have relented a bit whereby the coffee shops – alledgedly – are now subdivided or partitioned by large sheets of glass. (I wouldn’t really know, would I, ‘cos that's not the sort of place I’d ever go in… is it?)

So… on the one side you have the smokers and tokers… on the other, the coffee drinkers are to be found. Why they can’t do that in pubs in Britain and Ireland and elsewhere is beyond me but, I guess it’d do the healthy-living gestapo out of a job.

Anyway, from what I gather, while the dividing glass partitions are all in place, only one half of these emporiums is much used… and its not the caffeine intake side. Well, now… what a big surprise that is.

Almost as big a surprise to discover who was actually short-listed as being the most influential recording executive of the last fifty years and as presented at last week’s Music Week awards.

The winner – by a country mile was, of course, Chris Blackwell – according to my mole inside the judging operation, pretty much a one-vote race. However… shortlisted against the legend that is CB were the likes of Sir George Martin and others of that major-league ilk (and quite rightly) but… in amongst those true achievers was… Simon Cowell.

Can you understand that..? No, nor can I. I mean – sure, he doubtless has been frightfully (frighteningly) successful with the Factor X show and Celebrity Squares – that was him wasn’t it… I get frightfully muddled with all these Celebrity this and that things… But, anyhow, here’s the rub…

While the high-wa(i)sted one may have signed up various non-entity warbling Poodles with a career lifespan of five minutes… I don’t believe he signed and nurtured the late, great John Martyn… or Steve Winwood… nor Bob Marley… and Jess Roden… or Nick Drake… and Robert Palmer… along with the myriad of other greats that came under his extraordinary wing over the years.

Then again, I could be much mistaken.

Is it just me or are we still all living in the Theatre of the Absurd?

'cos I've also noticed... on the one hand... there are the likes of the those who’re claiming that the recession is gradually becoming a thing of the past… oh yea, really…?

And, on the other – and to compound that obscene felony – there are the people at Goldmine Sacks who’re about to snaffle colossal pay hikes?

When will someone somewhere say enough is enough for these Merchant (B)ankers and actually stand up, be properly counted and say NO… you bloody well cannot.

Its enough to make the blood boil.

However, a perfect remedy to all of that has reared its little head in the last forty-eight hours or so; one that absolutely guaranteed to reduce the Storey blood pressure – oh, hell… why oh why do I get so worked up about all of this?

Via winged e-note oodles of music has found its way through the ether; music that I’ve been without in my digital life for frankly far too long.

Lately, I’ve stumbled across a couple of what I believe to be ‘blogs’ that have been loosely centered around the musical disappearance of the Kidderminster Kid – Jess Roden; possessor of one of the finest sets of lungs this side of Orleans, new or otherwise.

And, its on one of these 'blogs' that I've encountered my newest best-friend.

I won’t claim to be a big fan of the Alan Bown! (yes the exclamation mark is deliberate as that’s how the band’s name was way back when). That was the group that Jess joined after he quit his own, first group, The Shakedown Sound.

It was only after he left – replaced by none other than former Mister Mandrake himself, Robert Palmer, did Jess cross the Storey radar. The group – Bronco.

Not by any stretch of imagination, the greatest band name – although, just maybe its reference to a well known brand of lavatory paper was neatly tongue-in-cheek. Be that as it may, they and I came into contact via the first Island double album sampler; the truly magnificent Bumpers – of which a fair bit was written about last November on this little Voltaire out on its grassy knoll in the windswept prairie.

Their four minutes, forty-odd seconds was called Love and it was bookended by a track from Traffic (Every Mother’s Son) that was, in fact, going to be one of the cuts off of the long awaited Winwood solo album before it became part of the masterpiece that was John Barley Corn Must Die and Spooky Tooth’s epic reading of I Am The Walrus; top-end grunge before Kurt Cobain had even been born. The fourth track off that side of the double set was by Quintessence and, if I’m honest, that never got played a great deal.

The first three tracks wore out more needles (than Cobain ever did) on more than enough gramophones though – sublime music; yes just a bit. Mind you, I’d no idea who this Bronco were, but… whoever they were, the sounded bloody fantastic. And, as often is the case, the job of the compilation as a marketing device worked – the very day that Country Home, Bronco’s first album hit the stores, I was there with my 32 hard earned shillings and six pence to nail it and bring it on home.

That too got more than a bashing on the embryonic stereo of the time. I would sit listening away, trying to work out just who might be who on the grainy inner sleeve – a bunch of people hanging out by a hippy camp fire. Dreams were dreamed ‘cos, to my little underdeveloped teenage mind this was what it was all about… make great music, hang out in the woods with girls in long dresses. The days when summer never became autumn.

How the next bit came about I really can’t remember – there were a bunch of us at school, a bloke called Roger Williams, myself and a chap called Mike Brown (nowadays a lay preacher in Australia) and… somehow or other, we either persuaded – it must’ve been like that – or cajoled in some way or other those in charge of us (the masters) at school to book Bronco to perform. Not a clue what the fee would have been; maybe a hundred quid or so..?

Bradfield – which I was at, boasted a proper Greek Theatre in the depths of Berkshire and so, one summer’s evening – I would have been seventeen at the time – the band and their support act, Gracious! (and yes, again, the exclamation mark is intended), bowled up in a couple of white transit vans. A proper band in amongst us acne'd teenagers... the excitement was pure and unbridled.

I don’t believe the entire school turned out but there must have been a good three to four hundred in the audience down in the Greek Theatre and we – the quasi-organisers – were roped in to help unload the gear and generally get in the way of the ‘roadies’s. God, but it was exciting… they had a road crew, they all had really long hair and it was loud, very loud – this was real (to us) rock ‘n roll right in our midsts.

And, for me, only the second band I’d ever seen play live – the first being the Fairports debut their classic Liege and Lief line-up at the South Bank; a night when Nick Drake played support but, being of the uber-cool persuasion, I never bothered to show for his set, deeming it un-cool to see the support act – oh, how very very wrong one can be.

Gracious! featured a huge mellotron and were pretty impressive – indeed, one of their members was Alan Cowderoy who later went on to work at Stiff – but that’s another story. But… Bronco were it… for me, anyway. They played most if not all of their debut album and, I think a fair smattering of what would become their next.

As over-enthusiastic teenagers, we all hung around afterwards – doubtless asking a shed load of stupid, asenine questions and generally getting in the way as gear and equipment was loaded away; one of those most magical evenings when you know, you just know that your life is changing before your very eyes.

But, this week in particular, being seventeen has all been brought back into sharp focus as someone of truly kind disposition has taken pity on my not having any of his music on my i-Pod and has been firing across email attachments containing five or six cuts at a time.

Illegal file sharing – yeah, maybe but… you know what, this exchange of music (and I’ve been firing back like for like) has been nothing other than music fans sharing great music.

As a consequence, I’ve now got both Bronco albums to play to my heart’s content together with much but not all (yet) of the solo years and, of course, there’s the Jess Roden Band material to conjure with too – first time I’ve ever had this as digital and, having not listened to it in absolutely aeons, much of it… not all by any stretch of the imagination… but a big proportion sounds just as good as it did the very first day the needle dropped down onto the Dansette.

Living In The Material World

And so… we sat down, switched on and watched; the all-knowing, ever-wise voters waited ever-so patiently before eventually getting to mark their telephone ballot cards… with the inevitable result being that the elaborately coiffed poodle beat the boy band’s predictable crew-cuts.

But… was she really the best of the three remaining contenders on last night’s trial by the Factor of X?

The public seemed to think so… but, I beg to differ.

In fact, I’d go so far as to say that none of the last three standing were much cop at all – and, I’d not be in the least bit surprised if all of their names were no longer lit by the headlights of the parade in a year or less.

It’s just an opinion of course (my Voltaire) but, I’d like to offer this morsel up for contemplation.

Could it be argued that any one of the three acts on trial-by-tv last night – a gruesome Saturday night viewing segment that was about as entertaining as a public hanging – actually sang from the standpoint of soul?

I’m not coming at this by way of Detroit – the (possibly) more conventional overview of a so-entitled soul singer… Black / white / green / orange / in fact, any colour you like as well as from any genre of music you can think of... my definition is more along the lines of a soul singer being one who reveals their inner-being when they sing.

Someone who’s in possession of something truly special. One whose vocal delivery really touches the heart; who reaches deep into their soul to project the lyrics being sung.

It’s not just about the voice – its timbre, passion or depth… though, of necessity that adds momentum. It’s that something else; something almost indefinable that you know… just know… when you hear it.

Because it catches you totally unawares. That, I’d say, is the real X Factor – and isn’t anything that can be manufactured.

A little like when Chris Blackwell walked into a Birmingham night-club way back in the mid-Sixties. By his own acknowledgement, being taken some place he didn’t much want to go to see a band he’d not much interest in. Until… the singer opened his mouth and sang. That night, CB signed Steve Winwood – aged just 16 – on the spot. Winwood had and – forty-something years later – still has… that X Factor.

And that’s a far away cry from listening to the limited ability of a young girl who’d been persuaded to model her hairstyle on one of Louis XIV’s wigs warble her way through a song that everyone knows yet which her inadequate talent did absolutely nothing to garland.

Not so long ago, I hooked up with a former work-colleague whilst sojourning far from home; this goatee-beard on legs was, in a former life, one of the shakers and movers behind what became something of an Eighties legend, they sold a hat full of records all around the world, were a magnet for global audiences and, for my money, one of the finest live acts I’ve ever seen. In their heyday, a band of misfits who were about as hot as it gets. Ladies and Gentlemen – Kid Creole & The Coconuts.

Rynski – the man who precision-shaves each morning – and I got to talking one late afternoon in a mid-town bar; we were casting our minds back to an off-shoot of August Darnell’s much travelled musical-mind, a spin-off outfit that made just the one record entitled New York At Dawn. The group were called Elbow Bones & The Racketeers.

Their album ranges from being so-so in places to absolutely outstanding in others. It also possesses a lead off cut that doesn’t just stand the test of time but – again just my viewpoint – pretty much benchmark’s early Eighties NYC late-night life.

The album cut is magnificent in its own right but the 12” mix is something else again – from the moment the stereophonic needle drops, it’s a headlong rush into an astonishing melodious blend that effortlessly manages a seamless mix of big band and disco via a sublime horn arrangement underpinned by drum patterns to die for.

I’ve ever only owned all of the above on vinyl; and in this digital age that’s not the easiest of transfers across to an i-Pod. I tried doing that down in the dungeon at Merle HQ quite some time back via a combination of record decks and erratically-functioning software with wires and cables randomly connecting my computer to a pre-amp.

It worked but it didn’t – the levels were haphazard and, all in all, a bit too Heath Robinson to add in to a large (for the time) i-Pod selection I was assembling then as accompaniment for someone about to back-pack their fresh fruit in foreign places.

Rynski, however, comes up trumps. A few evenings later and we’re in a late night Brooklyn dive to see Charlie Lagond’s new outfit – The Element – trot out their formidable jazz-rap infusion. Charlie and his saxophone prowess is a link between all three; one of the long-term inmates of the Creole live show, part of the vast horn section that informed Elbow Bones and band-master of The Element. Whenever or wherever he leans back into that Tenor or Alto Sax, you just know it is going to be good; very good indeed.

Later that night, Rynski drops a couple of home-fashioned CDs into my pocket. The pocket that would later (or earlier, I know not) disgorge itself of my cell-phone. The CDs contain the entire Elbow Bones record as well as a live recording from the Ritz in New York of the Creoles when they were in full flight, when Darnell was nearing his zenith and just before they took Europe by storm.

As luck had it way back then, I was at that late-May 1981 Ritz show which closed with a truly awe-inspiring and utterly heart-wrenching version of Dear Addy – Darnell’s paean of love to his about to be ex-wife, Mama Coconut herself. Darnell’s vocal exit stage right has been treasured for nearly thirty years in my mind as a sublime musical moment. And, now Rynski’s digitally popped it in my pocket.

The next again morning and both are stored on the oversized Mac that I’ve been fashioning Project X upon and already i-Pod friendly. At which point I look to see what might be on the world-wide-wait for Elbow Bones. Virtually nothing – other than a You-Tube link. Click and…

Up pops the full-length Take Me For (A Night In New York) 12" mix video clip… all 7 minutes of it and yes, there’s a young Charlie brandishing his saxophone in the middle rank. Fabulous... I didn’t even know it existed… and, in this age of hugely tedious videos peopled by grunting rappers with their trousers only part-covering their arses ogling under-dressed bimbos shaking their booty, this has something going for it – it is beautifully shot and actually tells a bit of a story.

In full on You-Tube mode, I start to click on other links… stumbling across random pianists playing hit and miss selections before coming across a hirsute acoustic guitar player who’s fret-board wizardry put the fizz into whizz-bang, being possessed of a style and technique that would lead more jaws to hit pavements than there are sidewalks. Quite why hairy-guitar-bloke isn’t a global mega-star mystifies me.

However, watching him astonish the live audience to whom he was playing, led to another link-click on the basis that the bloke who’d posted the hairy-guitarist video might just have someone else interesting to put up. He had.

Nicholas Barron.

Nicholas...who?

Never heard of him either – but… it’s a name well worth searching for. Why? Because he possesses that indefinable special something.

Don’t believe me..? Then, call up Saviour which is taken from his Live In Transient Sound record and… marvel.

Its like watching a man sing while undergoing some kind of out-of-body experience; it appears so effortless, like he’s not trying, as if he doesn’t even need to try… he opens his mouth and… there is this utterly remarkable sound – the sound of a man singing from deep within the well of his soul. Absolutely astonishing.

Would that man from the backstreets of Michigan have made the final last night – I doubt it. It’s not what that bit of prime-time tv is all about and besides, not as viewing-public friendly as the embarrassing poodle, the crew-cut four-piece and the awkwardly-blow-dried Irish lad clearly were.

The poodle will get her few minutes of fame as they all do – its what they crave, what they dream of; it’s why she cried on tv last night – her bedroom wet-dream of being a star had materialised.

I’d imagine that Nicholas Barron wells up for other, more meaningful reasons – like when his children do something out of the ordinary or, perhaps when his partner walks past and unexpectedly tousles his hair, whispering a soft I Love You in his ear.

And – while he really should be the one caught in the spotlight – he probably never will be and… I’d imagine he isn’t much bothered by that either.

Saviour and others of Barron’s songs are embedded under lock and key on my i-Pod alongside Winwood and many others who nature has blessed with that special something which comes from deeper within.

They’re the ones who really do have… the X Factor.