The Secret Broadcasts

Rob Shaw was asking me about the Secret Broadcasts the other week and after finding where they all are I forgot to get back to him with the info. So the main purpose of this little missive is to tell him where they are, they’re here Rob. John Mark helpfully put them all on Mixcloud and I’ve been listening to them. I love the Secret Broadcasts and if you haven’t heard of them yet I think you should give them a chance, I actually think you’re going to love them too.

They’re mixes full of songs that nurtured and inspired a teenage JM in an Abilene bedroom, further embellished by songs that comforted a young adult JM in a foreign country whilst bonding him to a younger but nevertheless still toothless Giles. They’re painstaking works of endlessly thoughtful curation from the era when algorithm wasn’t a word that music fans ever used. They’re considered pieces of sequencing and mood creation interspersed with artful sonic collage making them truly unique and transcendent of the wonderful musical pieces they contain. When I consider the legacy of the Earlies the Secret Broadcasts are every bit as important as the studio recordings we made together, they contain the soul of the band that we wanted to be.

I’m frankly staggered to see that there are 22 shows in this online archive, they each took such a lot of effort to create and I think I only understood at an academic level how much time JM was actually putting into the endeavour. There’s mixes for XFM, the Greenman Festival, the Hoodlum Tribe website, the Secretly Canadian label, Piccadilly Records and Radio 6Music. If I were to tell you to listen to one today though, which let’s face it is exactly what I’m doing, it’d be this one. It’s the first one that was broadcast on BBC London as part of Sean Rowley’s radio show. A simple link will have to do as the embed function doesn’t seem to work for mixcloud, and Madden in no tech genius.

This was the first time I saw into the wonderful musical universe my friends lived in, an alternative landscape of their own that they’d created over long lonely years. Now was the time that it’d be put out there, a flare shot up into the darkness so that they could reveal themselves to their scattered people who would come flocking. I loved it but was pretty much out of my depth, Sean Rowley knew what they were talking about but I could only chime in when the conversation landed on the Beach Boys or Stevie Wonder. I’ve dug deeper since though and am richer for it. Without ruining the whole mix for you here’s a few choice moments from it.

Broadcast- Colour Me In

This must’ve been the first time I’d heard Broadcast, at the same time learning that I’d joined a band with two people who were obsessed with them. They’ve never tired for me since either, one of those rare bands that are constantly delivering surprises in chords changes, textures, samples and lyrics. They led me to The United States of America too, but that’s another story.

The Beach Boys- Feel Flows

You’ll meet people in your life who’ll try telling you the Beach Boys are shit. Whilst it’s best to avoid them, if you’re forced to remain in their company and justify this wonderful band and their body of work, you could do worse than play Feel Flows to them. This is the Beach Boys at the start of the 70s, when the world had stopped caring about them and the music press saw them as washed up failures. This is them experimenting and exploring, making true independent music and it could have been made any time between then and now and been fresh and relevant. The backwards reverb on those vocals is a stunning piece of studio trickery that made it’s way into 25 Easy Pieces.

John Barry- Midnight Cowboy Theme

One of the most eerily beautiful melodies ever heard, I hadn’t thought about this theme tune since watching the film as a thirteen year old. It’s played by Toots Thielmans, one of the legends of the instrument that most people treat as novelty, he’s up there with Larry Adler and yes, Stevie Wonder. I first became aware of Toots when I started listening to Jaco Pastorius in my late teens, he’s all over the Word of Mouth album, particularly the wonderful Three Views Of A Secret. He also played on the Sesame Street theme tune which is why the sound of his playing instantly warms you to the core of your soul.

This Mortal Coil- You and Your Sister

This was the first time I’d heard This Mortal Coil too, a collective with two permanent members and a large rotating cast of collaborators. It’s fairly obvious that’s what JM originally envisaged the Earlies would be, maybe he got closer to his vision with the Old Fire albums. This one is a beautiful cover of a Chris Bell song featuring Kim Deal and Tanya Donnelly.

Micah P Hinson- The Possibilities

I’ve always loved our version of the Possibilities but listen to the Secret Broadcast mix and in the middle you’ll hear the original demo that JM did with Micah over in Abilene. It’s simpler but it’s raw magic and it would make anybody with a brain sit up and listen. Which is weird because I never thought of Joff from Sketchbook as having a brain yet it was he that sat up when he heard it in the middle of this mix and signed Micah immediately. Not immediately obviously, but it was this Secret Broadcast being aired that led to the release of Micah P Hinson and the Gospel of Progress.

Really, you’ve got to listen to the whole thing to get it. You should listen to some of the others too.

Bada Bada Bastu

I told you to listen to JM’s original Secret Broadcast and instead you carried on with this Substack and now you’ve listened to Sweden’s Eurovision entry for this year, Bada Bada Bastu by Kaj. It’s shit but I found it quite compelling viewing the other night when I caught it on telly. The fellow on the accordion is like a cross between the keyboard player from Sparks and the bellend out of Aqua who says “Come on Barbie let’s go party…” Every now and then the song pauses and he says “Sauna” in a deep voice. Except he pronounces it Sowna because he’s foreign, I laughed every time it happened. It’s the bookies favourite to win, I hope it does. I’d hate for the UK effort to win, no offence to those three lasses dressed up like they’re off to Aintree for the day, it’s just that I’m sick of watching us play the game.

I think the Eurovision Song Contest bears some responsibility for Brexit. If it doesn’t foster bitterness in the UK nothing can. Every year we watch ourselves humiliated in an arena where we know we effortlessly outperform every country on earth bar the USA. Really, we should be able to just turn in tunes by McCartney or Ray Davis every year and romp home. But we don’t, we make shitter tunes year on year to try and second guess the European voters, presumably every other country is doing something similar. Everybody is rejecting perfectly good songs as as not being quite Eurovision enough thus compounding the problem and racing to the bottom. Since the expansion to include all the former Eastern Bloc nations it seems like the competition has been overrun by people who think the greatest thing to happen in the history of music is Evanescence.

Was it ever good? Cliff was alright, Mary Hopkin was good and Macca produced her. I was fond of Bucks Fizz. Italy put some good efforts in, this one by prog legend Franco Battiato is graceful:

My esteemed Mother-in-law directed me towards this beauty from 1964, Non ho l'età by Gigliola Cinquetti. It’s actually a stunning piece of music.

Maybe the Eurovision song contest is alright. Maybe I should get off my high horse and watch it this year. Let’s see what happens.

Pints owed

Thanks to everyone who’s bought my handsome fucking album, I think it’s going well. I’ll buy all of you a pint when I see you, which is somewhere between four and six quid back from your initial outlay, depending on exactly where in the UK you live. Do you like pints? Don’t be left out, there’s still time to own this decorative yet functional item, click on the link and be the envy of your friends!