The Flaming Stars - 'Named and Shamed'

What’s not to like about the Flaming Stars? They’re a proper garage band that play late night rock and roll music. This is music about having to much to drink, getting into a fight, crashing out and coming round somewhere unknown, about feeling you’re heroic or poetic when you’re just boozed up. This is a band that seems to be believe it’s better to have loved and lost than… pretty much anything really. It’s dark street corner music, unexpectedly hitting the pavement music, genuine down-in-the-tube-station-at-midnight music. It’s about dusting yourself down, lighting your last fag and going back out into the night. Truly, this is the music you’re supposed to use the description ‘urban’ for. That there’s a song on here called Spilled Your Pint says it all.

I saw them once, lured partly by a flyer that read: ‘Arrive drunk. Get drunker.’ This seemed sound advice, so I did, and they were wonderful. Over the years they’ve put out a fair few records, all with pulp fiction style covers and usually showing signs of weak resistance to a punning title (I always liked Bring Me The Rest Of Alfredo Garcia). The new one’s a classic example of what they do: instantly recognisable, filled with their usual dark poetry and low, rumbling music that’s somehow taut and loose at the same time. I suspect that if they were American and hung around with the White Stripes, or if they were a bit younger and were mates of the Libertines, you’d have this record by now.

The record is out on Vinyl Japan UK, a label I always liked the name of, and the band's website is here - www.oslater.demon.co.uk.

Sons and Daughters - 'Love the Cup'

Not for the first time, I was a bit slow in finding out about this. I should have just trusted the label. Domino is the nearest thing we have right now to a record label that can automatically be trusted. Like Chemikal Underground in its glory days, if you see the Domino logo while browsing the racks, you can assume your pennies are going to be spent wisely.

Sons and Daughters once again prove this rule of thumb to be a wise one with their mini LP/CD Love the Cup. This band is an intriguing mix of choice ingredients. They’re big city hicks, country cow-punks. In here is folk and jangle, rhythm, the occasional need to howl, and a bit of Americana. All the songs come tinged with melancholy. Oh, and they understand a chorus alright. It’s a compelling blend – and all this in seven songs! Like so many of the great groups, they have two singers, one female, one male, who share duties and sometimes coincide, and as it happens I’m going to eschew the predictable Delgados comparison. But bands like this only ever come from Scotland, don’t they? The single Johnny Cash was my way in to the band, and it’s still my favourite of theirs. It lives up to its title, and that’s praise. Broken Bones is my next most-loved tune. Ah, now I want to listen to it again. I think they might just be my newest favourite band.

As this is on Domino, you can find it in shops. The band’s website is www.sonsanddaughtersloveyou.co.uk, and the feeling’s mutual.

Half Man Half Biscuit - Peel Session

Here's a new favourite thing from an old and much loved favourite thing. I'm always a bit suspicious of people who say they like music but don't love Half Man Half Biscuit. I realise that in these fickle times the only bands less fashionable than HMHB are Baccara and Sailor, and to buy one of their records in a central London shop is a sure way of inviting the smirks of those who work behind the counter and somehow think they're cool, but really, so what? HMHB occupy a unique position in British music as observers of the minutiae of life and deflators of celebrity egos. They're probably still best known for their early records, those raucous assaults on the not so great and good, but over the years they've become subtle and wry. They are the greatest English folk band.

Ah, I could write reams about HMHB, and perhaps one day I will, but to the matter in hand. Their latest Peel session - recorded before the great man's death, but alas something he never had the pleasure of hearing - is well up to the mark. I'm not quite sure what my favourite song is, but I think I've got it down to a shortlist of three of the four. I know it isn't the standard chug-a-long of Joy Division Oven Gloves, although even that's filled with lines to make you smile. At first I thought my favourite was Asparagus Next Left, a dark fantasy about what those roadside signs to pick your own vegetables lead to. Then I more or less decided on For What Is Chatteris?, possibly the closest HMHB have got to a love song ('for what is Chatteris without you there?'). But at the moment, I think it's Epiphany, a creepy tale that leads to a lunatic's song delivered with gusto.

Truly, they are a band without compare. They have a trainspotterish website - www.hmhb.co.uk - which unpicks the many references in their songs, and handily archives recent sessions for the Peel and Kershaw programmes. The recent Kershaw one's pretty good, too. In fact they're all great. Go there, download them, and if you don't have an MP3 player, you should buy one just so you can listen to these.

The Barbs - 'Massive Crush'

"She killed her parents. I left mine a note."

Looking at the website of their record label, Mother Tongue records of Tuvalu – http://www.mothertongue.tv/ – this has been out before. Seems it was first released in August 2003. Well, I missed it then (it must have been one of those spells last year when work forced me to labour hellishly hard in hot, exciting places). I’d remember this, because it's is the sort of tune I’ll always fall for: loud, quick and built around an irresistible shout-a-long chorus. A boy and girl swap lines about the usual teen rebellion fantasy of getting into a car, leaving all behind and setting off who knows there, and a dirty guitar does the rest. I bracket this with other dark gems like the Hells' He's The Devil But I Love Him So and Ciccone's Leggit, It's The Rozzers, which is intended as high praise. Only young people can make this music. I don't even know if, as a fat mid 30s bloke, I'm allowed to like it, but I know that while there's breath in my body, records like this are going to get me every time.

You can download more from their website at www.thebarbs.co.uk, but I confess I've not listened to the other stuff yet. I kind of don't want to spoil this one right now. The only things to object to are the horrific cover art and the fact that this is apparently only available as a CD. It would be a perfect 7" single. But in whatever format, you can't live without this. I fully intend to love it for a fortnight and then grow tired of it, leave it on the shelves for a few years and then dig it up at some point in the future and love it all over again.

Sarandon - 'The Miniest Album'

In the mid 80s there flourished briefly a self-styled ‘cubist pop’ movement. It was headed by Big Flame, and there were also the Mackenzies and forgotten others recalled only on inlay cards of dusty, buried Peel tapes. I was a fan of this unmusical kind of music, all sharp and pointy with notes in unexpected places. I recall this now on listening to a new record by a band called Sarandon, about whom I know nothing. It seems to follow in this tradition. Are we ready for a cubist pop revival? Well, why not? We’ve had far less deserving ones. We live, after all, in a world where kids consider Franz Ferdinand truly astonishing because they’ve never heard Josef K.

There’s something about this 7” single which appeals. Brief, angular songs jerk into life and then quickly expire. I have a special fondness for short songs. The singer reminds me of the bloke out of another treasured mid 80s band, the Wolfhounds, with that slightly sour edge to his voice. I probably make this sound more retro than it is, for good songs are good songs in any day, and I’m glad someone is out there doing this. It’s aptly named as the Miniest Album. You get seven songs, one per inch, which appeals to my northern parsimony. Value for money, and a pile of songs that are no longer than they need to be. Who could resist?

You can do what I did and buy the record directly from their website - www.kabukikore.net/sarandon - via PayPal for three quid – just think, in Big Flame’s day you used to have to send off cheques and SAEs to get things. While there, you can also download a couple of MP3s, if that’s what grabs you, although that isn’t nearly as exciting as getting a good 7” single through the post.

The Schneider TM Experience - 'Psychedelic Queen'

I picked this up in Jumbo Records, Leeds, strolling about killing time before the train home after Leeds 1 Burnley 2. It turned out to be fortuitous diversion, and a fitting coda to a fine evening. As well as this, I dug up a great raw garage 7” where the Little Killers get heartily stuck into some Rolling Stones tune – I may come back to this – and the essential latest (and, sadly, final?) instalment in Dave Godin’s Deep Soul Treasures series, Volume Four.

But just how good is this record? I played the b side, Uh Yeah, Baby, by mistake first. It’s basically noise. Okay, I think I’ve come to like it, but first instinct was something had gone wrong with the pressing. Turn it over and a gem of gems is revealed in the form of Psychedelic Queen, a ludicrous and exuberant cover version of, erm, Don’t Stop Me Now by Queen. Actually, it’s probably one of Queen’s best songs (hey, when the competition is Radio Ga-Ga and Fat Bottomed Girls, there’s praise). Schneider TM’s version is noisy, scuzzy and, I suspect, utterly sincere. This right now is the record that can’t fail to pick me up. One blast of its mad energy, and the broadest smile breaks the sourest day. And christ knows there are enough of those at the moment.

Apparently there are 300 of these on Earsugar Jukebox - www.earsugar.com. Schneider TM's website is here - www.schneidertm.com. Download their great version of There Is A Light That Never Goes Out while you're around.

John Peel

I feel like a musical orphan. My musical godfather has died. John Peel was my teacher and my guide. He made me understand music. He gave this callow indie kid an understanding and love, for example, of reggae and soul. More than this, he taught me that it isn’t genres that matter; it’s whatever makes a good noise, whatever gets you going, and it doesn’t matter what it is or where it comes from. He took me on an adventure, opening my ears to things that were amazing. He made me feel that an obsession with music wasn’t a waste of time, but rather a positive, affirming and even central and indispensable part of life. He showed us by example that a love of music isn’t something that has to stop once you leave your teens. I owe a huge chunk of my record collection to John Peel. All my favourite bands come from John Peel.

I feel now, with his shocking, sudden death, abandoned on this journey without my guide. I feel for his family and those who knew him, of course. His death has come far, far too early. This crazy ride was not supposed to end so soon. He should have still been playing records for years to come. I took for granted that there would be many more times when I’d be able to turn on the radio and be confronted by something surprising, something brilliant, sometimes something unbelievably irritating. Then part of me thinks that at least he went out while his talents and influence were undiminished. He was loved by many, achieved an impression that will not fade, and went quickly. It’s not a bad life, all told. Ideally, he should have died one night after playing one final record, naturally a track from the latest Fall LP, at one in the morning. But at least we won’t have the years of struggle to avoid marginalisation by a radio station that increasingly seems to have lost its enthusiasm for music before the inevitable semi-retirement to Radio 2 or some digital ghetto.

I’m surprised at how I reacted to this news. Stranded on a work trip to Singapore, from out of the blue came a text message from a music-loving friend. I’ve spent days since crying, struggling on and them washed by waves of sadness, listening to records I owe to Peel, reading the coverage, restless, unable to concentrate, lacking in appetite for anything much. I have all the symptoms of bereavement, as though John Peel was a member of my family. No death of any public figure has ever affected me this way. I’ve always been suspicious of shows of public mourning for famous figures. But dammit, I do feel like I knew Peel. For 20 years he’s been coming into my room, wherever those rooms have been – my bedroom in my parent’s house, various student rooms and latterly the living room of my 30-something mortgaged, married existence. John Peel’s been an enduring presence. I’ve followed him around the schedules, as different regimes have seen his presence ebb and flow, occasionally drifting off during one of those weird times when I fall out of love with music, always coming back when the latest thing ensnares me. So this sense of loss is a powerful one. I simply can’t believe that I’m going to turn the radio on at 11 o’clock on a Tuesday night and John Peel isn’t going to be there to send me in another unexpected direction. I have tapes – and can you imagine there will ever be another music show that you feel you will have to tape and listen to again? – but it’s hard to think there’s going to be no more.

My reaction is, partly, selfish. What on earth are we going to do without him? Who, now, will dedicate themselves to the task of unearthing those things we really ought to hear but which no one else is playing? How are we going to discover the new and unexpected now? There are other radio shows, but who else has the utter disregard for fashion and the breadth and range of John Peel? And who else can make the trick of talking between the records all part of the pleasure and not a maddening interruption?

Many of the tributes were nostalgic. Many were the mentions of listening to transistor radios under the bed clothes and discovering punk rock. I found myself feeling sceptical about whether many of the celebrities who chipped in have listened to the show since making it big. For me, John Peel wasn’t some teen memory. He was the person I was expecting to listen to next week. And many of the tributes focussed on the bands, often giving examples of really quite uninteresting ones, who made it big after being picked up by Peel. This missed the point. It was never about trying to discover bands who would become superstars and elevate them to fame. It was just about trying to find and play good records that deserved to be heard. The measure of Peel’s success isn’t in the fact that the Smiths or the Strokes ending up selling loads of records, but in all the obscure tunes by bands you never heard of again that found a place in someone’s heart.

I am very nervous about the future of music now. I can’t help but think that all my favourite bands of the moment I heard of through Peel. I wonder now how bands like the Broken Family Band and Herman Dune, Ballboy and Bearsuit, are going to get their records heard. Are bands like these, are even bands like the Fall, going to disappear from our radios? At least for these bands, I know of them, so if I see their records in a shop I’ll buy them, and if I see they’re playing live, I can go. But what about the next generation of bands? How are we going to find out about them? Who’s going to play that demo tape, or pick up that first single? If you’re starting a band now, things have just got that much harder. This is much, much worse than the death of a musician. If the singer in your favourite band dies, there are lots of other bands to follow, and doubtless a steady, posthumous flow from the archives to keep you going. John Peel cannot be replaced, and I doubt anyone will even attempt to fill the hole he has left.

I do think it’s daft to talk about statues, or releasing old records in tribute. Sure, Radio 1 should commit to playing a wide range of new music in that gap left in the schedules. And of course Peel’s extraordinary record collection should be kept intact and in this country – surely that’s why you have a National Lottery. But John Peel’s legacy should be that we continue to take a passionate interest in music, that we commit to seek out new sounds, and that we promise to keep listening to music in a spirit of eclecticism and curiosity. That would be a true tribute to a great man.