Free

Another selection ripped from music magazine cover mount CDs, this time featuring Paul Weller.

There seems to be such reverence for Weller in the likes of Mojo, Q or Uncut magazine that it's always a little surprising when, as with this year, one of his songs doesn't appear on the end of year 'best of' CD.

Personally, my relationship with Paul Weller's solo career has been in and out, mostly out, though I have enjoyed the handful of 21st century albums that I've heard.

This 13-song selection leans heavily on that period, with only a trio of songs from the 1990s, one original, one cover and one live version combining both. 

 

Paul Weller does like a cover version and whilst he's thrown in the occasional unexpected choice, no such surprises here with Neil Young, John Lennon, Nick Drake, Bob Dylan and (a bit of) Edwin Starr. But, what Weller does, he does well(er).

Given the disparate sources and time span, I think I've managed to sequence a coherent selection. If I were being a C90 cassette compilation purist, I would have dropped a track to keep it to 45 minutes or so. What the heck, it's Friday, have a free one on me!

1) Brother To Brother: Terry Callier ft. Paul Weller (2002)

2) Birds (Cover of Neil Young) (2004)

3) In Another Room (2020)

4) The Changingman (Live @ Glastonbury Festival) (2007)

5) Instant Karma! (Cover of John Lennon & Plastic Ono Band) (2002)

6) River Man (Cover of Nick Drake) (2010)

7) Has My Fire Really Gone Out? (ft. Max Beesley & Robert Howard) (1993)

8) I Shall Be Released (Cover of Bob Dylan) (1996)

9) Black River (2007)

10) Brushed (The Black Barn Sessions) (2020)

11) Satellite Kid (Album Version) (2017)

12) What Would He Say? (Demo Version) (2018)

13) (Can You Hear Us) Holy Man / War (Cover of Edwin Starr) (Live @ Civic Hall, Wolverhampton) (1994)

 

1993: Wild Wood: 7

1994: Live Wood: 13

1996: Out Of The Sinking EP: 8

2002: Instant Karma 2002: A Tribute To John Lennon (Uncut magazine promo CD): 5

2002: Speak Your Peace: 1 

2004: Studio 150: 2

2007: This Old Town EP: 9

2008: 22 Dreams: 9

2008: Live From Glastonbury (Q magazine promo CD) : 4

2010: No Tears To Cry EP: 6

2017: A Kind Revolution: 11

2018: The Mojo Anthology: 15 Rare & Unreleased Tracks From Our Legendary Friends (Mojo magazine promo CD): 12

2020: In Another Room EP: 3

2020: The Mojo Festival 2020 (Mojo magazine promo CD): 10

Free (48:45) (KF) (Mega)

The Days Of Rage, Yeah, Nothing's Changed

I stumbled across the video for Live With Me by Massive Attack featuring Terry Callier for the first time in years. It was released as a single in 2006 with another new song, False Flags, to promote Massive Attack's 'best of' compilation Collected. Whilst Collected is not sequenced chronologically, Live With Me is tucked away as the final track and, generally speaking, it's ended up being a song that I've unfairly neglected over the years.

The video is directed by Jonathan Glazer, who previously directed their Karmacoma video in 1995 and was responsible for similarly striking visuals for The Universal by Blur and Street Spirit (Fade Out) by Radiohead around the same time. His debut feature film was the brilliant Sexy Beast in 2000. starring Ray Winstone and with a star turn from Ben Kingsley.

 

Live With Me is a snapshot of a lonely life, centred on a woman (Kirsty Shepherd), who stops at her local off licence to stack up on alcohol, downing a bottle of vodka at home, ending up back walking the streets before collapsing on a bench. The closing sequence cuts back and forth with scenes of the woman falling down a seemingly endless spiraling staircase. 

 

It's a heartbreaking, compelling narrative, though one which slightly puts the music - Terry Callier's vocals, especially - somewhat at the back. If nothing else, the video convinced me to put Live With Me back on my playlist and retrospectively give it some of the attention that it deserves.

In the interests of balance, I also watched the video for False Flags. Ironically, although I bought the limited edition of Collection which included a second 'DualDisc' hybrid CD/DVD, I didn't have a DVD player at the time. I was also unable to play the DVD on my home PC, which a work colleague had built for me at a fraction of the cost in the early 2000s. So, I have no recollection of watching this video before, although I'm sure I have. 

 

False Flags is directed by Paul Gore, whose work I'm far less familiar with but has included videos for Snow Patrol (Run), Amy Winehouse (In My Bed), New Order (Here To Stay) and Paloma Faith (Trouble With My Baby). The song itself was inspired by the civil unrest and rioting in Paris in late 2005 and comments on the state of the European Union. The video itself is, to quote 3D, "a still life portrait of someone were they’re forced to be in a riot situation – throwing a petrol bomb. And it’s done in ultra slow motion." The target of the Molotov cocktail is initially seen to be a car, but the latter moments of the video cut to a burning EU flag. Those final moments also include what initially sounds like some form of prayer, but is slowly revealed to be the phrase, "Where do we go from here?". It's actually a sample of Thom Yorke from the title track of Radiohead's 1995 album, The Bends.

False Flags featured as the opening track of Collected's bonus 'DualDisc' and was released as a standalone digital EP, with the similarly politically charged song, United Snakes. Both are incredible songs that, without having to look too far, sadly remain relevant a decade and a half later.