Lou Reed 1942-2013

New York is the only Lou Reed solo album that I know well in its entirety. And I mean lyrics off by heart singalong well.

It's an amazing sounding album, the guitars in particular benefit from the meaty production. It's also an album with great lyrics providing plenty of anger, some weary sadness, but also a lot of humour - which people don't always associate with Lou Reed.

Just To Read My Diaries

You had to sneak into my room just to read my diaries. It was just to see, just to see all the things you knew I'd written about you. Oh so many illustrations oh but I'm so very sickened, oh I am so sickened now.

Bright Phoebus Covers

Bright Phoebus is a "lost" (ie unavailable) 1972 album from Lal and Mike Waterson, also featuring such folk luminaries as Martin Carthy, Richard Thompson, Maddy Prior, and Norma Waterson.

Long out of print due to legal wranglings, there's a Bright Phoebus Revisited mini-tour this month, featuring assorted extended Waterson, Carthy and Thompson family members, plus admirers like Jarvis Cocker and Richard Hawley.

I won't say much more about the original album here, which is available on the internet in the usual brown-bag under-the-counter type places, but there's an excellent half-hour Radio 4 documentary by Pete Paphides (part of a series about lost albums) available here on soundcloud. There's also a tracklisting and musicians credits here on the Mainly Norfolk site, including links to all the lyrics. Finally, there's a detailed and interesting story of the album at The Sound Project, which links to the originals as a YouTube series of songs.

I'm going to the Barbican gig so I wanted to listen to some of the songs in advance. What I have done is rounded up the covers available on Spotify and made a Bright Phoebus Covered playlist.

Unfortunately there are no cover versions of Magical Man or Shady Lady. There are the most cover versions by far of Fine Horseman, perhaps because it's one of the most striking vocals and immediate melodies.

Finding the cover versions involved listening to all songs on Spotify with the same name, and there's a lot of songs called The Scarecrow or Scarecrow, quite a lot of them are folk tunes which makes sense given the pastoral theme, but a surprising amount of heavy metal/hard rock as well.

Equally there's plenty of songs called Shady Lady, from big bands to Gene Pitney, from Status Quo to Uriah Heep (which isn't that far), mainly featuring fairly alluring shady ladies but none of these are versions of the Bright Phoebus song.

Some of the tracks on the playlist are newer versions featuring Lal Waterson and/or Mike Waterson, so maybe not strictly covers, but I've included these too, especially in the absence of the original album.

See below the fold for the full tracklisting.

Alpha Song For Going To Orange Ball Of Pure

The Mountain Goats revisit several themes lyrically, other songs are loosely connected, and some songtitle words are just re-used with no other immediate connection.

Amongst the most frequent of these are Alpha, Song For, Going To, Orange Ball Of, Pure.

Admirably, someone has listed the series and reasons as part of a subsite that contains a full index of everything mountaingoat-related.

The Mountain Goats Set 2013

I'm off to see the Mountain Goats again next Tuesday at the Union Chapel so I've done a playlist based on the songs that have been played in the last seven concerts (according to setlist.fm).

Similar to Yo La Tengo earlier this year I know a few albums but there's so many others around that I'd like a quick listen to some of the songs he/they might play.

The tracks are in most frequently played sequence. The first twelve tracks (down to Up The Wolves) seem to have been played at most of the recent gigs.

Alpha Chum Gatherer was also played at nearly every gig. It's an unreleased track from the Tallahassee sessions though, so I can't ruin that particular surprise for you here.

The last concerts were back in June and in the US so of course we might get a totally different set. . . which wouldn't matter, it's interesting to hear some of the stuff that's been played and across a wide selection of albums on this playlist.