the sound of music

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death sells, but who's buying? we all are.


there's nothing that keeps a legend more alive than death, in life we are susceptible to all manner of pitfalls and unforeseen developments. in music in can be irreparable irritations like crap album sales or periods of creative jelly, where despite your previously unblemished track record in lightweight pop your fans and admirersare left bewildered and cold by your four disc drum and bass odyssey. it happens all the time, they never learn, and this is where death comes in very handy. along with sales flying through the roof your drum and bass odyssey is reappraised and becomes the misunderstood masterpiece you always knew it should be.


it's terribly sad that death is used in such a cynical and unfeeling fashion, it's bad enough that a person has died, the grief, the sense of loss and all that goes with that, but to have that death ruthlessly exploited for money and very little else, is shocking. the death of john lennon in december 1980 for me, salvaged the beatles legend and legacy from the almost certain passage of time. the death of lennon turned the beatles from the biggest pop group ever into the mythgical status they possess today. the whole reusrgence of liverpool as a city is based on the beatles industry; the capital of culture, urban regeneration, liverpool one, all a by-product of the beatles industry. if mark chapman had never murdered john lennon we would not have any beatles industry, therefore, do we not owe chapman a small debt of gratitiude? it may be inadvertent and unsayable but it's nontheless the truth.


even closer to my heart, music i truly love like joy division has been subject to this same cynical treatment. no matter how much i love joy division i'm intelligent enough to understand that had they made a third album that may have not been that good, got bad reviews and didn't sell very well they would probably been consigned to the same early eighties-indie rock box as such heavyweights as the au pairs or spizz. and i'm glad that joy division is an ever changing, continually moving rock juggernaut, i'm glad their music hasn't been forgotten. but my, what a price to pay for that immortality.

as we hover ever closer towards the xmas xtampede we should keep that nice bloke, michael jacson close to our hearts. the cinema release of a rehearsal video for his one million london shows is a prime example of how low the industry will stoop to keep our heroes name alive, the television campaign itself is an homage to a dead michael as we've never seen him before. or something. with the beatles remaster and rockband programme set to hit its stride over the coming weeks, expect some of our deadest pop stars ever to be among the highest earners in entertainment for next year. along with the ghost of kurt cobain who regularly features in the top five highest rock earners, it really is gonna be a bumper year for stiffs of every genre, a dead pop star for all the family.


it really should be worth noting that sales do increase incrementally following your fave pop stars untimely demise, a statistic that hopefully will not have gone un-noticed by some of our more eagle-eued agents and managers. it can scoop a dwindling career out of the gutter and into the upper reaches of the top forty. one recent case that sprung to mind was that of robbie williams. four years out of the limelight, unfathomable last album, tales of ordinary madness, the robster ticked all the boxes. so rather than hold him up for the ritual humiliation and embarassment of his x-factor 'comeback', his managers could have done worse than drive him to the chateau marmont, given him an armful of various narcotics. funeral in hello, greatest hits/remixes package, tv special, newly discovered material, bob's yer uncle. sit back and watch the cash roll in.


it happens all the time.


this week: we know where we are, we just can't find ourselves. in a way.


WE WILL NOT SHY AWAY FROM POP MUSIC.

ace of spades.....link wray.
hilly fields.....nick nicely.
sweet sweet lovin'.....the platters.
the ides.....fryars.
the devil made me do it......paris.
45:33 (prins thomas diskomiks)......lcd soundsystem.
dazed and confused.....jake holmes.
conform to the rhythm.....material.
nsokoto.....the very best.
i've been lonely for so long.....frederick knight.
it's boring/you can live anywhere you want.....yacht.
sleepymouth.....volcano choir.
dancing in outer space.....atmosfear.
super good parts 1 & 2.....myra barnes.

the sound of music xmas thang, friday december 18 at the baltic fleet in liverpool's colourful docklands. tickets are free but limited, so get yer wants in now. leave a message here, on my facebook page or at bernieville@hotmail.co.uk. first come, first served. ta.

made once again in the usual way by the magnificent mr. bernard and his trusty cohort, fabulous lord sike. the bespokest of audio people. x

Download this episode (84 min)   

over the past seven days during my casual stroll through what's become known as blitzgate -well it is round here- i have been asked the same question on a number of occassions, it goes a little something like this:


rather than just blab on about the things you don't like, what about the things you do like?

i thought about this for minutes and the conclusion i came to was completely predictable. i'm not exactly sure what i do like, but i'm 110 % certain what i don't like. it's always been that way, the good things are so few and far between that it shoiuld be relatively easy to place them in a list in order of preference, with star grading and spread sheet potential. of course it isn't that simple, in order to list the things that i like i have to stick my own head above the parapet and leave myself open to the criticism and ridicule that other mere mortals have to live with every day. the crippling embarassment that can reduce the hardest soul to a great wobbly jelly by sheer virtue of wearing the wrong shoes or liking the wrong record, just doesn't happen to me.


none of this afflicts me anymore, as i write -and think at the same time- i can't imagine a single thing that i don't like. the issue we had last week over spandau ballet was not whether i liked them or not, it's just that they are so utterly rubbish i can't see what there is to like, they just typify more than two thirds of the history of music, a scintilla of style and not an iota of substance. possibly like this text you are reading now. the preposterous notion of the style police is a great tool to establish yourself and your boundaries during your teenage years, it should be noted that they should be retired from your life a soon as you are capable of making informed, taseful decisions in your early twenties.


other than my obvious bent for music and its myriad forms, i find as i get older the things i really like become harder to find. that dosn't stop me looking though. having established sometime in the early sixties that i have one foot nailed to everton football club and the fanatical devotion that goes with it, i set about on an endless search for similar things that would shake my tree in every bit the same way. there's not much point in sort of half-liking something, cherry picking the best features to call your own and leaving the unwanted remains for the dog. throw yourself into anything you like, headlong, mercilessly. absorb every last minute detail into your life, no matter whether it's subutteo or subpop, it's there for you and i to immerse ourselves in, wade in the water, get our feet wet. take in the highs and the lows and don't spare the horses.


i believe in the power of love and very little else. my definition shifts from day to day and is never the same twice, but it's mine and only i know how to work it, if it breaks down only i can sort it out, my spiritual screwdriver at the ready. it pretty much covers any positive thought i want to say and any situation i may find myself in. i can see the good in everybody except bono, sting, lou reed and phil collins because deep down i really think that they are intrinsically evil.


see what i mean? after several hundred meaningless words the nearest i can come to commiting myself to positivity is to highlight the extreme negativity i feel for some people i don't know and have never met.

in a panic to find a fitting description of the way i feel, i once described myself to one of the most beautiful people i've ever met as a 'text-book no-conformist.'

once again, i rest my case your worships....


this week: we re-shook the etch-a-sketch of life and came up with a masterpiece.


WE WILL NOT SHY AWAY FROM POP MUSIC.

25 or 6 to 4.....chicago.
weak for me.....nite jewel.
ain't gonna bump no more (with no big fat woman).....joe tex.
c'mon.....freddy fresh.
i'm that alley.....sweat.x.
don d lion.....don drummond.
stranger to stability (len faki x break mix)......dustin zahn.
everybody......american spring.
final solution.....pere ubu.
dnt fk sgr.....daedalus.
rock a doodle doo......linda lewis.
dusseldorf.....la dusseldorf.
born out of time.....the new christs.
wild thing.....senator bobby.

thanks to sir brian barnard for the gift from australia. i welled-up in the post office. i thank you from the bottom of my heart.x x

twisted and deluded by bernie connor, straightened out and nailed down by magic sike, the bespoke audio people. x

Download this episode (82 min)   

where were we?

i was up to me ears in modern concepts when i got an email that both shocked and repulsed me at the same time. in last sunday's observer monthly, one david johnson pitched an idea that left me speechless and quivering with fear. this is the idea: new romantics/blitz kids and the novelty pop act, spandau ballet were the cornerstone of everything that subsequently followed in both pop and fashion.

simples.


here was i blissfully operating under the complete misapprehension that the 'stars' of 1979 were her pigness, margaret thatcher and that celebrated northern comic, mr ian curtis. imagine my surprise, nae my shock when i discovered on;ly yesterday that the true stars of 1979 were rusty egan and gary kemp. gary fuckin kemp. the jist of the article was so alien to anybody with the most basic grasp of pop culture, all the monumental musical and social events pale into insignificance when compared to the events that went on at blitz.

we've been down this road before, people putting themselves at the epicentre of some mythical occassion that may or may not have existed, thrusting themselves and their close group of friends into the roles of kings, queens, governors and subjects in their camelot of the modern age. it's very prevalent these days, we see it all the time. maybe it was always thus, it seems like history is more of a business in the here and now and the communication age gives us a platform in which to recount works of fiction as though it were truth. maybe it's alwayd happened, maybe the big thing is that we've never considered ourselves to be part of history.

there's nothing wrong per se with being a star in your own mind, on the contrary, it is a noble and laudable position for a young person to adopt. try to project that stardom onto the real world and yer gonna come a cropper. there are very few exceptions, but the fertile mind of robert elms and the ugly world of gary fuckin kemp are not them, you have to see it for what it really, really is. the new romantic thingy was an amusing footnote to the post-punk flare-up. a retirement home for those who thought punk was having twenty four hour access to the dressing-up box and a new pair of crimping irons. to inflate it to a state of national importance is laughable, the thought of the sterile, vaccuous spandau ballet being the vanguard of anything other than hair-gel and kilt-wearing is a truly terrifying thing. with claws, sharp teeth and wearing a tablecloth. it's hysterical in a way only delusion can be; you poor fucker, quit preening and open your eyes.

the early years of the thatcher regime were some of the most fertile and productive in musical history, the changes that were forced upon the youth of great britain were so swingeing and detrimental that for a huge of the idle unskilled labour market, creating a racket in your own image was the only escape from ther tyranny of mass uneployment and social stagnation. the blitz kids contributed zero to any of this, the scene was facile and meaningless and involved a bunch of about 50 yout' dolled-up like pantomime dames in a wine-bar in covent garden. meanwhile, in the real world, music was changing a more rapid pace than at any time since the mid-sixties, and that seemed like centuries to go. i turned 18 into a universe inhabited by the future of music, death disco, she's lost control, typical girls, all night party, music that would define and shape the next thirty years. blitz provided fade to grey, chant no.1 and do you reall want to hurt me? it was that friggin' good.

i rest my case your worships.


but i was a teenager in a lonely outpost called liverpool at the time. what the fuck would i know?

thanks to jo for the inspiration...........to be continued. x


this week: in the otherwhere, our window of sunshine is jammed wide open.



WE WILL NOT SHY AWAY FROM POP MUSIC.

disguises.....the who.
wet look.....joy orbison.
carry me back to old morocco. was (not was).
pull the wires from the wall.....the delgados.
two wires.....vowels.
the selecter.....the selecter.
i'll say forever my love.....jimmy ruffin.
delta sun bottleneck stomp (chemical brothers mix).....mercury rev.
don't turn it off (brennan green mix)......40 thieves feat. qzen.
the dog, the dog, he's at it again.....caravan.
wake.....the antlers.
time has come today.....the chambers brothers.


producated and audiolised by mr. bernard & his esteemed cohort, the admirable lord sike, the bespoke audio people. x

Download this episode (80 min)   

start. nothing to be going on with. then. once again. as if by magic. a host. of golden stars. many known. unknown. some just shapeless forms. out of the dark. a man named harry. not a fruit. in sight. only the promised. land. otherwhere. small hoods. guzzlin. laughin. i saw. dancin. girls. tone sounded. too confused. he said. better times. just beyond. that door. that wall. that thing. you do. i laughed. laughed. laughed. stopped. looked. bad case. of the slow. death. in perilous straits. the slow. burn. corn. for all. today. keeep everything. open. and. post me another. this is. hardcore. if yer wanna. include the puddings. mudd people. stay off. tomorrow. but someone. has to. run. out of power. vet everything. you find. with kindness. in me phone. is a shout. and. me phone. is about. to sum up. the feelings. just thought. you blew out. you blown out. you. blue. of course. still. has to run. rainiest. part of all. has to see. you. find. the right. word. ever. horse water. pencil. led. glory or. something. like love. stop.


this week: everything changed colour and the birds came back to feed.


WE WILL NOT SHY AWAY FROM POP MUSIC.


it's a happening thing.....peanut butter conspiracy.
54b (rune lindbaek remix).....mudd.
smokin' pot makes me not want to kill myself.....stardeath & white dwarfs.
listen to the band.....the monkees.
disco stomp.....hamilton bohannon.
song song.....kutmah.
rock and roll doctor.....little feat.
pop muzik.....m.
walking alone at night.....vivian girls.
just be good to me.....sos band.
bangarang.....stranger cole & lester sterling.
fog machine.....the fresh & onlys.
come go with me....del-vikings.
it's different for girls.....joe jackson.
i'm ready for love.....martha & the vandellas.
lucifer went to church.....afrobutt.
dream baby dream.....suicide.

made in the traditional way with the finest organic ingredients by bernie & sike. the bespoke audio people.