Four things we know about Robert Johnson for sure:

His only recordings were made in hotel rooms in Texas over an eight month period beginning November 1936.

He died two months after the last session, aged 27.

Only a few of his songs were released before he died and none of them sold well. The biggest hit, ‘Terraplane Blues’ sold less than 5,000 copies.

However, one listen to the 29 songs from those sessions reveals that they are the most remarkable and remarkably consistent body of recorded work of any of the many remarkable pre-war Blues artists.

So remarkable, so ahead of their time, so genre-defining, so genre-defying in fact that Blues historians in the 40s and 50s and 60s seem to have needed to invent a creation myth to explain their appearance.

A myth that goes something like…Robert was just another averagely talented, busking and unrecorded Blues guitarist from the South when one evening on a dark high way he met the Devil and promptly sold his soul for the gift of being able, suddenly, to sing and play the guitar-based Blues better than practically anyone before or since.

The fact that Robert died a slow and painful death as a result of poisoning soon after he’d proved that he possessed his newly acquired talents and that, spread throughout his more melancholy and haunting output, there are multiple references to the Devil and his associates, seemed to support the idea that the story was more than just myth.

But it wasn’t. In the 70s and 80s when Blues historians started to examine Blues history a little more carefully they realised that the soul/Blues trade-off story had actually been around for some time before Robert appeared on the scene. It was previously the property of earlier Blues genius, Tommy Johnson, who had mastered the Blues almost as profoundly as Robert did later and had also succumbed to a painful and (in his case) even slower  death (see ABON 0187). And of course, by the time Robert’s music appeared, Tommy had disappeared from the Blues scene, leaving behind two things: a story begging for a new main character and, of course, a very convenient surname.

So in the more rational times we now live in, ‘Robert the Devil dealer’ has been relegated to the status of fanciful myth from a more gullible age.

To be replaced with the (much more palatable to 21^st century ears) fact that Robert was a brilliantly talented artist who sprung from nowhere to become the most influential artist in the entire history of the pre-war Blues. Robert the ‘King of the Delta Blues’ in fact.

Except. In reality, Robert and his music were more or less unheard of in the Delta before the war. Or for the next 25 years after his death.

It wasn’t until 1961 in fact that the bulk of his recordings were even released for the first time. By then of course the centre of gravity of the Blues and Rock world had shifted from the Mississippi Delta to the other side of the Atlantic where budding musicians Keith Richards, Brian Jones, Mick Jagger, Jimmy Page, Robert Plant and Eric Clapton became not only members one to six of the newly-discovered Robert Johnson’s fan club but also the six musicians that Robert Johnson and his music would actually influence most.

Just a pity that ’King of the Thames Valley Blues’ hasn’t quite got the same mythological ring to it.

‘Walking Blues’ is from Robert’s first, 1936 sessions. Recorded in a hotel room in San Antonio, Texas on November 27,1936. Almost exactly 75 years ago to the day.

Available on endless Robert Johnson compilations but the best in terms of sound quality is ‘The Centennial Collection’: Amazon

I don’t think we discuss particle physics on ABON quite as often as we should. The most mind-boggling consequence of the recent claims that neutrinos may be able to travel faster than the speed of light is that the concept of causality may not be as universally valid as we had imagined. Because – and you may not follow this completely – but, if things can travel faster than the speed of light, then results can occur before the actions that supposedly caused them have taken place in the first place. Hence the rib-tickler of a joke that’s been doing the rounds in all the funkiest labs over the last few weeks:  “Barman says ‘we don’t serve neutrinos’. A neutrino walks into a bar”.

Which sort of gives me a perfect excuse to introduce the 2011 album of the year in October before all the albums of 2011 have been released.

Not necessarily putting it down to my intake of neutrinos but I do already know for sure that ‘Looping State Of Mind’ by The Field is the album of 2011.

More consistently brilliant than his debut (see ABON 0019) and a massive return to form after his disappointing second album, ‘Looping State Of Mind’ takes what you can do with a sampler and looping machine to higher levels than us lesser mortals thought possible.

Here’s ‘Arpeggiated Love’ as a taster. Other – even more remarkable – tracks from the album will feature on ABON at a later date. Or maybe they already have. Who can tell these days?

Texan band, White Denim, are one of the most original around.

They cram more joy and sheer excitement at being let loose in a studio into their three or four minute explosions of noise that are probably most accurately described as exhuberant garage punk than practically anyone else currently recording.

That alone would be special enough. But it’s actually not White Denim’s real party trick.

What really sets White Denim apart is their uncanny ability to be able to do all the above whilst also uncannily being able to locate the thing that seems to make other, apparently unrelated, genres tick. Or shine like a beautiful star actually. Surgically extract it. While leaving the other 99%, that is irrelevant padding, behind. And then, miraculously, embed it into their garage punk songs as if it was the most natural thing ever.

Which not only makes White Denim’s garage punk sound even fresher and more urgent than you first thought. But can also provoke even the most devoted and knowledgeable fan of the incoming genre to go back to the original source material and listen again with fresh, and refreshed, ears.

So when you listen to the remarkable ‘Mess Your Hair Up’ you can not only begin to believe that the spiritual heirs to fellow Texans, the 13^th Floor Elevators (see ABON 0125), or even prime-time, garage-punk-era, MC5 (ABON 0185), have finally arrived. You can also, when the track transforms as if by magic into the repetitious drum-led, Motorik-beat, middle section, feel an uncontrollable urge to dust down and play, non-stop, in its entirety, the complete back catalogue of the inventors of the genre, the wonderful but not as famous as they should be, 70s Krautrockers, Neu!

The original version was recorded and released in 2007 and is almost impossible to source nowadays. This re-recorded version comes from the band’s first, ‘major label’, album, recorded and released in 2008.

Available on the absolutely essential album, ‘Workout Holiday’: Amazon

Little Willie’s original version of the Leiber and Stoller song that Wilbert Harrison heard, assimilated and played live for seven years before surgically inserted a new Rock solid, shuffle-based beat into. And in doing so transformed every other element of the song to boot.

Wilbert Harrison didn’t write ‘Kansas City’ - it was written by Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller, when they were still in their teens.

Wilbert wasn’t even the first artist to record it - that was Little Willie Littlefield, whose version was released in 1952 and was promptly ignored by the majority of the record buying public.

But not by Wilbert.

When Wilbert heard Little Willie’s original he must have heard something magical in the song that the majority of the record buying public had missed, because even though it wasn’t a major hit song, he immediately incorporated it into his live shows. And kept it there. For the next seven years.

Until finally, in 1959, he decided that he was ready to commit his version of the song to vinyl.

When he did, it became clear why that ‘something magical’ that Wilbert had heard all those years ago had eluded the majority of the record buying public back then – that ‘something magical’ wasn’t actually in the original at all. It was in Wilbert’s imagination.

Because when Wilbert listened to the perfectly competent but slightly flat-footed, even rooted to the floor, beat in Little Willie’s original, what he actually heard was a machine-gun-precise, but nevertheless continually shifting, urgent, shuffling, Rock solid beat.  

And it had taken maybe all of those seven years of live performance to coax that beat out of his imagination and onto vinyl. When he finally succeeded, it not only provided the song with a different beat, but that beat also completely redefined every single aspect of the song.

It compelled Wild Jimmy Spruill to turn his guitar from the typical 50s instrument that normally provided lyrical touches and flourishes above the beat into a way-ahead-of-its-time, metallic rhythm machine apparently so hypnotised by the beat that all it wanted to do was match its pulse.

It forced Wilbert to turn his normally wide-ranging voice into a clipped, clenched, almost monotone beat box.

It even convinced his normally expressive piano that it too would prefer to be another member of the percussion section.

And with every single element of the song now standing to attention and pointing at the ‘something magical’ that had finally emerged from its hiding place inside Wilbert’s head, after seven years of occasional nocturnal sightings, this time the majority of the record buying public couldn’t fail to hear it too.

Which is why the same song, with the same arrangement, the same tempo and more or less the same words became one of the biggest hits of 1959 after flopping first time around, in 1952.  

I’ll post Little Willie’s original for comparison purposes later today.

Recorded 1959.

Available on the Wilbert Harrison album, Kansas City – His Legendary Golden Classics’: Amazon

In hindsight it’s a little difficult to believe that Talking Heads started life as one of the bands at the core of the mid 1970s New York Punk scene, alongside other CBGB luminaries such as The Ramones, Richard Hell, Suicide and Television. Because, unlike most of their peers, Talking Heads broke free from their Punky roots and, through front man David Byrne’s uncanny ability to write incredibly catchy tunes, captured the imaginations of much larger, more mainstream audiences. Which meant that they survived for much longer and much more successfully than most of their peers - right until 1991 in fact. They even reached the Top Twenty. Regularly.

But no matter how incredibly catchy his tunes were, a David Byrne song also always operated on a higher intellectual plain than your average chart hit. David wanted you to think about his songs - both lyrics and music - as much as he wanted you to feel them. So, for example, ‘Once In A Lifetime’, one of Talking Heads’ biggest hits, might be an infectious pop song on one level, but on another, it was also a clever critique of materialism and the emotionally and spiritually starved times he saw us all living in. Maybe.

And despite the chart success and the beauty of many Talking Heads’ songs, a typical Heads’ song would usually sound a little detached, slightly noncommittal or even cynical. Because David was, above all else, an observer. An observer looking in from the outside, at other people and their habits, preoccupations, foibles and beliefs. So, for example, when he danced on stage in his trademark, outsize comedy suit you could be forgiven for thinking this was David letting-go and having a good time. But you’d be wrong. It was more likely to have been meticulously designed to allow David to simultaneously hide his real self away whilst still being the star of the show and subtly critiquing the values and behavior of people who really do enjoy letting go, having a good time or even just dancing.

Which must have meant that when he wanted to write a song about how it feels to fall head over heels in love with someone, he faced a real dilemma.

Partly because his natural songwriting stance was that of observer not participant.

But mainly because to bring alive that wonderful feeling of total immersion in someone else and, through that person, total exhilaration in the World around you, requires the complete abandonment of all the detachment, caution, self-control and reserve that was not only the hallmark 0f David’s observational writing style, but seemed to be part of his actual personality.

And when you listen to ‘Oh-Uh, Love Comes To Town’, Talking Heads’ second ever single, you can almost hear the dilemma the young, cautious by nature, standing-on-the-outside-looking-in by preference, David Byrne was facing up to.

Indeed for 90% of the songs’ existence the David Byrne we know best is in control - singing about what it might be like to fall head over heels, but still seemingly written from a distance, third party observer-like.  Almost as if he was trying to describe a condition he had read about in books.

Even if that was all there was to this song then, with its wonderful steel band-infused, almost funky rhythms, it would still be a song of exquisite beauty that sounded fresh and original even in that most creatively rich and diverse year of 1977.

But that isn’t all there is to this song. There’s also the other 10%. The 10% that starts at precisely 1 minute 42 seconds with the words ‘Jet fighter going out of control’. When, by letting his lyrical imagery loose and, just as importantly, by forgetting the song’s tight structure for a moment or two, by squeezing just a few more syllables into the next couple of lines than he had allowed up until that point and therefore by having to rush and almost stumble his words, he reveals that he’s not just a clever observer after all, he’s also an experiencer too.

One of those few, very lucky people who get to experience for themselves that remarkable feeling that can cause someone, even as usually self-controlling as David Byrne, to let go. And fall. Fall uncontrollably with no ability or even desire to stop.

But of course we’re dealing with David Byrne here. So almost as soon as he has - perhaps inadvertently – shown that there is a more first person, more emotional, more it-happened-to-me, David Byrne he gets cold feet and runs away.

In this exquisite and revealing song’s case by ending it a mere 68 seconds later. In his career’s case by practically never allowing himself ever again to reveal in a song anything as first person or personally revealing as those few seconds in ‘Uh-Oh’. Oh and by commissioning that oversized suit to hide behind on stage.

Released 1977.

Available on the first Talking Heads’ album, ‘Talking Heads: 77′; Amazon

Mogwai are one of several bands that emerged in the mid ’90s playing music that was eventually labelled Post-Rock. Whilst the music the various Post-Rockers created didn’t sound that similar, it did all share a common musical ‘philosophy’. Of sorts.

Mogwai and their associates set out to create their own distinct music by, very stubbornly, insisting on sticking with traditional Rock instruments – guitar, bass, drums - but, very deliberately, only using them in very non-traditional ways. Using traditional Rock instruments to create rhythms and textures that sounded anything but traditionally Rock.

So a typical Mogwai song might have no vocals. A typical Mogwai song might have the melody played on the bass and the rhythm - if there was one – played on what would in a traditional Rock song be the more melodic instruments. A typical Mogwai song might have no chord changes at all - with the variation in the song provided simply by abrupt or even incredibly slow changes in volume.  

The only rules seemed to be: 1. use traditional instruments (as opposed to, for example, banks of synths), 2. in any particular situation, think what Rock would do and do the opposite and 3. unless you feel absolutely compelled to, avoid lyrics and singing at all costs.

Which begs the question…why? Why restrict yourself to working within such an apparently narrow set of rules?

Well, ironically, the answer seems to have been…in order to be more creative and more original.

I don’t know whether Mogwai ever came across the quotation: “To jump really high you need a springboard that is screwed rigidly to the ground.” But if they did not then they instinctively seemed to have understood its meaning anyway.

Because, paradoxically, by defining tight, unbreakable ground rules that restricted the footprint of the space in which they chose to experiment, they channelled their creativity. Channelled it upwards. And in doing so they were able to jump higher, much higher, than most bands that have never even considered restricting their options ever do manage.

‘New Paths To Helicon Part 1′ is one of their early masterpieces, being released in 1997. In typical Mogwai fashion the melody is played on the bass, the guitars are there to provide rhythm, the song’s main ‘themes’ or variations are primarily created by extreme volume changes rather sequences of varying notes or chords and there are no lyrics or singing of any kind.

Yet somehow the whole thing still sounds as fresh and as original today as it did on its release in 1997. And, without the aid of 99% of the techniques and devices that traditional Rock songs use to convey meaning and emotion, ‘New Paths’ manages to evoke as much meaning, as much emotion, as much beauty and as much passion as practically any song that utilises lyrics, verses, choruses and tunes.

Which all goes to prove, maybe, that creativity is not always best generated by sitting down with a blank canvas and trying just to be ‘creative’ and that the power of the ‘creative brief’ in inspiring remarkable music might be underestimated.

On the other hand, if all that philosophising is a bit much for what, at the end of the day, are simply beautifully emotive pieces of music, then there is, of course, a different, less philosophical way of explaining the whole 16-year, 8-studio-album, almost completely lyric-free, Mogwai phenomenon.

Which goes something like…maybe someone with the lads’ best interests at heart, in the early days, took one look at the lyrics that led to such a snappy title as ‘New Paths To Helicon Part 1′ and politely suggested that they might have more successful careers ahead of them if concentrated more on the music and gave the lyrics a miss. 

Released 1997.

Originally available as a limited edition vinyl 7″ with ‘Helicon 2 on the B-Side. Now avaialble on the compilation CD, ‘Ten Rapid: Amazon

We left Jonathan Richman (see ABON 0188) having just been deserted by his first band - the, original, Modern Lovers - because of his decision to junk their Velvet Underground-inspired back catalogue and sound in favour of a new musical style that seemed to take Jonathan’s eternally optimistic world-view that had always fuelled the original Modern Lovers’ lyrics and apply it - in spades – to the music, the instrumentation, the production, even the album covers of everything he would do from then on.

His new incarnation, Jonathan Richman And The Modern Lovers, comprised a completely new line-up, and sounded a little like a crazily optimistic and almost childishly naive 50s doo-wop band. Only more optimistic and more childishly naive. Jonathan even tried to mimic an early 50s sound by minimising electric instruments - the Modern Lovers’ guitars would all be acoustic or semi-acoustic from now on. Even the bass had to be a stand-up double.

Launching his first new, jolly, lets-all-be-friends, sound and vision in 1976 at precisely the same moment as Punk was lumbering over the hill looking for a fight, it should all have ended in tears. But somehow it didn’t and Jonathan got away with it all.

Because, amazingly, alongside other such hard-core material as ‘Hey There Little Insect’, ‘Rockin’ Shopping Centre’ and ‘Abominable Snowman In The Market’, ‘Roller Coaster By The Sea’ became a firm favourite of those people who were hoovering up any Punk single they could get their hands on.

Which, ironically, just goes to show how much Punk - which had been partly inspired by the original, Velvet-esque, Modern Lovers that Jonathan had now consigned to history – had, in breaking down the walls of musicianship and what constituted ‘good’ music, opened the door, and people’s ears, to left-field and ‘abnormal’ music like that of the second-incarnation Modern Lovers.

You could almost - in hindsight – believe that Jonathan Richman was as evil a genius as his hero, Lou Reed, afterall and had had a cunning career plan mapped out from the beginning.

Released 1977.

Available on the album, ‘Rock’n'Roll With The Modern Lovers’: Amazon

The Modern Lovers were an early 70s band that shouldn’t really warrant more than the tiniest of mentions in the history of Rock.

Their recording career never managed to get beyond the demo stage. And no material of any kind - not even a single demo - was released during their 5-year long existence.

And if that wasn’t enough, they were a band that, by their own admission, were created with just one goal in mind - to replicate the sound of their heroes, the Velvet Underground. Their obsession even led them as far as hiring VU co-founder, original bassist and viola-wielding musical terrorist, John Cale, as producer of one of their demo-recording sessions (at which this version of ‘Pablo Picasso’ was created).

Five years spent trying to replicate another band’s sound without a single piece of vinyl to show for it isn’t perhaps the stuff of dreams. So it’s a little surprising then that the Modern Lovers actually ended up being an enormous influence on Punk. And even more of a surprise that they were perhaps more influential for many punk bands than - heresy upon heresy – the Velvets themselves.

For two reasons:

Number 1: Timing.

Lead singer/guitarist/song writer, Jonathan Richman, was as stubborn as he was talented. After four years of gigging and recording a stream of demos that most bands would have killed for, he took a trip to Barbados and came back having had his head completely turned by the music he heard there. So much so that he decided that he would change musical style, completely and immediately. From that moment on, he stubbornly refused to plug in his fuzzy, feedback-drenched, homage-to-the-Velvets guitar ever again, let alone play any of the songs the band had spent the last five years or so demoing and perfecting.

Unsurprisingly, the rest of the band weren’t at all pleased that their hard work and imminent success were to be binned and they deserted Jonathan in 1974 when they finally realised he was serious and that none of their fantastic material would ever be recorded for vinyl release.

Jonathan eventually made it onto vinyl proper as Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers performing, as promised, in a far more jovial and mellow style and sounding nothing like the original Modern Lovers. And true to his word he never played any of the songs committed to demo tape by the original Modern Lovers ever again.  

However, the original Modern Lover demos which were recorded in 1971 and 1972 were far too good to be suppressed forever. They finally saw the light of day (presumably against Jonathan’s wishes) in 1976 when they were released on vinyl for the first time as the ‘Modern Lovers’ album.

Of course, by then there was revolution in the air and nascent Punks around the globe were eager to discover an alternative Rock history to that being served up by the stars of the day and to get their hands on anything that sounded rough, simple, unpretentious and, just as importantly, nothing like Yes or The Eagles. The Modern Lovers’ demos - which I’m sure most Punks had no idea came from 1971 and 1972 - were all of that. And because they had just been released for the first time – even though they were in reality five or six years old – they sounded even more fresh and of the moment than the Velvets’ and other earlier groups pre-1976 calls to action. ‘Roadrunner’, the most famous demo of them all, recorded in 1972, proved so ‘of the moment’ in 1977 that it even charted. And, along with the rest of the demos, was essential listening - and learning - for any wannabe Punk.

Number 2: The Realisation That, Brilliant As They Were, Listening To The Velvets Everyday Is Actually Quite Hard Work.

In reality Jonathan Richman was the most unlikely of Velvets’ obsessives. Although he left his native Boston to be closer to his heroes in NYC, became friends with the band and even opened for them, he was chalk to Lou Reed’s cheese. Instead of Lou’s preoccupations with heroine, ambiguous sexuality, sado-masochism and death, Jonathan wanted to sing about innocent, adolescent love, nostalgia for the 50s and the joys of driving around Boston’s ring roads, late at night, with the car windows open, listening to the radio and gazing at the stars because, despite his Lou Reed hero-worship, he lived for these more joyful and uplifting moments in life far more than he ever wanted to be waiting for the ‘man’ in a stairwell in a dangerous Harlem tenement block.

And while his music borrowed tremendously from the Velvets’, his eternally positive attitude to life gave that too, just like his lyrics, a more optimistic tone.

So the Modern Lovers, despite their ambitions, never became Velvets copyists. Instead they became the Velvets’ happier, more upbeat, less sinister, less arty, easier to grasp, sometimes genuinely funny and, occasionally, equally brilliant sibling. The Velvet Overground perhaps.

But of course, even the early, groundbreaking, card-carrying, Punks found that snarling for the cameras, trying to look really really cool and pretending to be angst-ridden, angry and unhappy with the World, all the time, was actually quite hard work.

And when they came up for air, they also found that listening to, and taking lessons from, the recent Modern Lovers album of demos was as inspirational as, and more fun than, going back to the Velvets’ wonderful but fairly hard-core source material. Just ask Mr. Angry himself, Johnny Rotten, and the Pistols who managed to avoid snarling for a full five minutes when they recorded a version of the ever-so-happy ‘Roadrunner’, almost immediately after it emerged from the vaults in ’76.

Recorded 1972.

Available on the CD, ‘The Modern Lovers’: Amazon

Robert Johnson is generally regarded as the Blues man with the most mysterious and sinister history. He’s guy who claimed that he supposedly sold his soul to the Devil in return for the ability to play and sing the Blues like no one else. Partly as a result of this story and partly because his music was really quite remarkable he has evolved over the last 40 or so years into the epitome of the pre-War Blues man legend. In some senses he has become more myth than real artist and the modern  Blues World has encouraged this transformation. But…

…when you dig a little deeper and discover that it is true that until 1936 he was regarded as just another run of the mill, unrecorded Blues busker, and you then listen objectively to the 27 remarkable tracks he turned up with - apparently from nowhere - and recorded, almost all in one take, in just two sessions, between November 1936 and December 1937, and you then realise that he died in mysterious circumstances (probably by poisoning) soon after he had committed his repertoire to tape, it’s easy to start believing all the story might be true.

But in fact, it’s just as likely that Johnson R. had in fact come across the recordings and mythology of Mr Tommy Johnson who had committed his equally remarkable repertoire to tape, almost all in one take, in just two sessions, between mid 1928 and mid 1929. And claimed for good measure, well before Robert came on the scene, that he had been gifted his unique singing, guitaring and writing skills by the Devil in return for his soul.

Tommy’s deal with the Devil was clearly a little better negotiated than Robert’s because rather than die soon after his second session, he just became a hardened alcoholic who drank so much and such poisonous concoctions (stove fuel and gasoline being two of his particular favourites) that his voice and his remarkable falsetto faltered almost immediately after his second session. In fact Tommy lived until 1956 although he never recorded again during the last 27 years of his life.

In return for Tommy’s less onerous commitment maybe the Devil was slightly less generous in what he gifted him. Because instead of Robert’s 27 all time classics, Tommy only received a meagre 16. And whereas Robert has become a legend, Tommy remains relatively obscure.

‘Cool Drink Of Water Blues’ is a truly remarkable piece of music, typical of practically all of Tommy’s 16 recorded tracks.

First of all it features his unique, falsetto voice and his beautiful, more-restrained-than-Robert’s, guitaring. Secondly, like many of his songs, it tells you more about his drinking habits than perhaps you really wanted to hear. And thirdly, the fact that it is actually 83 years old but sounds like it might actually have been recorded last week is the most compelling reason of all to believe that the Devil really might well have been involved in its creation after all.  

Recorded 1928.

Available on many compilations but there is very good sound quality and a multitude of otehr early Blues gems on the 4 CD compilation, ‘Broke, Black & Blues’: Amazon