When I was 14, I was skiving out of
doing my homework one night by watching Brookside with my mum. It was
a pretty average episode until Mike Dixon, leather jacketed heart
throb and rebel with a chin, came on the screen wearing a black
T-shirt with the legend Rain printed on it in white writing. At this
point I was steadily building my encyclopedic knowledge of indie
music, and remember feeling somewhat miffed that a band could slip
stealthily under my radar on to prime time television.
As well as building an internal
database of indie artists, I was steadily puting together the
foundations of my record collection. It was no small thrill when I
found in the local advertisement paper coupon entitling the holder to
purchase cheap records, namely 12” for £1 and 7”for 50p. I
didn't know it at the time, but the shop dropping the discounts,
Rainbow Records, was closing down. I had bought my cassettes from
there, and found myself daydreaming about the small rack of 45s. No
sleeves, just the paper die cut sleeve with the artist and title
written in biro. This I found unbearably exciting. No pictures, no
labels, no clues.
I was even more giddy when I rocked up
one Sunday morning brandishing my voucher,and was told to go
upstairs. When I reached the top I found a room containing the shops
whole vinyl stock laid out on the floor, either randomly put together
in plastic boxes or propped unsteadily on the floor. I've never found
a better place to burn my paper round money.
I bought as much as my money would
stretch to and my arms could carry (I could have bought the lot for a
few of hundred quid) but the pick was a 10” called Lemonstone
Desired and 7” on clear vinyl in a gatefold sleeve called Taste of
Rain. Both records where by an artist called Rain.
The music was good. Guitar lead, with
hints of blues and psychedelia. The music was driven, seemingly honed
by years of hard touring, tight but with dirt under the fingernails.
I flipped the 45 over to play the B-side. I've never stopped playing
it.
* * *
In his
lecture, Has
the iPod changed our relationship with music?, Bill
Drummond describes the downside of having a whole library of music
inside a tiny box. The problem, as he sees it, is one finds
themselves skipping tracks, whole albums worth, in a bid to find
something satisfying. I had the same problem, but came up with my own
solution. I split songs into two category's-Ipod friendly and not.
The former contain songs with a bit of oomph about them,unfussy and
uncomplicated. Good walking music. The latter contains more delicate
songs designed for listening to in ones bedroom. When I say that, I
don't mean songs to play in the car or do the washing up to. I mean
songs to listen to. It's dying art, just listening to a record. Just
watching the vinyl of round and inhaling nothing but oxygen and the
sounds coming out the speakers. Laughing Man, the B-side of Taste of
Rain, is the perfect song for this. It's beautiful, one of my top
five. An acoustic balled peppered with slightly Spanish flecks of
chiming guitar. Seemingly about someone trying to look after someone
else (I see you/You see me/Take my hand/and we'll be free/Just as
darkness turns to light/I will help you through the night) but
tentatively holding on themselves (The laughing man/Came beating down
my door/I'm laughing man/But I can't take no more). It's real
4am,whisky in hand stuff.
I
was obsessed by the song, playing it in the dark through headphones,
trying to make sense of it. The words, the emotion of the track.
Clues were thin on the ground. The band were signed to Sony,
something I figured was due to the track Lemonstone Desired,a
slightly 60's sounding record which echo's the Byrds.(you can hear the influence of Rain to a certain degree in The Coral but quite majorly in the Stands).
I could
picture some A&R man trying to coin in the Stone Roses buck, down
to it's Sally Cinnamon vibes . The sleeves bore witness to this,
painted nude women, a mouth exhaling smoke. Who was the Laughing Man?
For a while I though it may be based on the JD Salinger story of the
same name, then after reading a dedication on the sleeve (“To all
women everywhere, we would!”) and changed my mind. I sent an SAE to
a mysterious 'Diane' via a Liverpool PO Box written in small print on
the sleeve begging for information (and cheekily, some hand written
lyrics to the song which gives you some understanding of my
obsession) but received nothing back. The band had just vanished in
to thin air. The song is possibly the only one I've played regularly
since my teens. I love that song.
***
***
So
I contacted the band, and one of the songwriter for contribution to
this piece, and both , in a reaction eerily similar to Diane's, have
been ignored. I was initially a bit pissed off, but once I got over
taking it personally, I was actually pretty chuffed. Maybe it's
better that it's not possible to find out a song meaning with a quick
click on Google, maybe I will paint my own picture of what the writer
is trying to tell us. Mystique is wonderful thing. If you read this
far, you are probably itching to hear the record. Well, tough. There
are no MP3's on Google, no tracks on Youtube. If you want to hear it,
then just like me you will have to hunt down the record. With ipod , we are trying to find a track to rescue us, but the best songs are the ones trying to find us. As we get
older, I think, we find less and less music that defines us, but it
never stops being able to console and heal. A 7” record can change
your whole body chemistry in seconds. Long may it run.
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