These Neon Signs Have Guided Many Through Better Times

Billie Ray Martin was born in Hamburg and grew up in the red light district, which she has acknowledged shaped her as a person and influenced her as an artist. 

 

The Glittering Gutter is a great example of this, a reflection on what it was and what it has become, energy become entropy, decadence become decay, glitter and glamour become grit and grime.

 

I've recently been listening to Alice, the 2002 album by Tom Waits, who similarly dedicates a song to Hamburg's Reeperbahn with this evocative closing verse

 

Now if you've lost your inheritance
And all you've left is common sense
And you're not too picky about the crowd you keep
Or the mattress where you sleep
Behind every window, behind every door
The apple has gone but there's always the core
And the seeds will sprout up right through the floor
Down there in the Reeperbahn

Billie's lyrics are no less vivid in their description 

Luck is a lady with a mean green smile
But the lady’s a bitch when you’ve known her a while
And so through her veins they’re stumbling
The guts have died
The skin is crumbling
Still she’s smiling her cancerous smile
Her teath falling out
A carcass alive
Yet someone might recognise
It’s reflecting the faces of the people inside
Through the empty eyes of the glittering gutter 

 

Coupled with Billie's unmistakable vocals, The Glittering Gutter is a standout as the opening song of Side 2 on her 2016 - and to date most recent - album, The Soul Tapes.

 

 

The album was something of a departure for Billie: no trace of her trademark electronic sounds, the songs were written with John Tiven (who also produced) and Sally Tiven; musicians include Mark Berman on piano, Steve Honest on pedal steel guitar, Mason Casey on harmonica and Simon Kirke (Free, Bad Company) on drums. 

 

The songwriting process started when Billie met the Tivens in the mid 1990s and over subsequent sessions, enough material was available to record for an album. However, it was nearly two decades after that first meeting that the process of recording and re-recording vocals, adding instrumentation, tweaking and mixing the songs was complete and The Soul Tapes released into the world. 

 

The Glittering Gutter was released as a single, with a slew of "U.S. Club Mixes" aimed squarely at the dancefloor. Dave Aude, Tweaka Turner (brilliant name), Offer Nissim and Dirty Pop deliver exactly what you'd expect: high energy dancey, trancey bangers. 

 

Mooli's mix doesn't stray too far from the original, upping the martial drums but I'm also quite taken by the Soho Nocturnal Remix by Dale Cornish, which swaps Hamburg for London and brings Billie's vocals right to the front and returns to her musical roots. Electronic soul, indeed.

 

 

Ever they come by the hundreds
Out of their safety they crawl
To stumble the streets of a hungry
Beast that it is never full
And no one can ever claim
That it ain’t no fun stepping into this dame
And smelling the lights of the glittering gutter

They don’t know that these neon signs
Have guided many through better times
Always a fortune for the ones without hope
They used to fly high but now they lie on the floor
Still they call it the sinful mile
She’s a whore, and a lady, with a big heart inside
But for the small town voyeur she’s just the glittering gutter

Luck is a lady with a mean green smile
But the lady’s a bitch when you’ve known her a while
And so through her veins they’re stumbling
The guts have died
The skin is crumbling
Still she’s smiling her cancerous smile
Her teath falling out
A carcass alive
Yet someone might recognise
It’s reflecting the faces of the people inside
Through the empty eyes of the glittering gutter

Come on
Come on
Come on
Come on