Chad Taylor

Now playing (Hi rotate)

I was thinking about songs I can never play just once, especially when I'm walking round thinking. In no particular order:
  • Imagination - 'Just an Illusion' 12" The gift that goes on giving. First heard it in A Certain Bar age 17 and then went out and bought it. Locating the track you liked in those days was rarely that simple.
  • Nona Hendryx - 'Transformation' The rest of the album (Nona) is good too, but you have to play this track dozens of times before you can get past it. Bill Laswell produced.
  • The Beat - 'Save It Till Later' 12" Ultimate pick me up.
  • Cabaret Voltaire - 'Sensoria' 12" Hypnotic even before the backing vocals kick in.
  • Roisin Murphy - 'Parallel Lives' Really just Roisin's remake of 'Sensoria'.
  • Porno for Pyros - 'Pets' They only had one song.
  • Phoebe Snow - 'Every Night' Paul McCartney song, I think. Never heard his version. Never want to.
  • Serge Gainsbourg - 'Je t'aime moi non plus' Does anyone not like it?
  • Air - 'Ce Matin La' Modern Serge really.
  • PJ Harvey - 'We Float' Walked around LA listening to this over and over. Playing it now always takes me back.
  • Sukhwinder Singh - 'Chaiyya Chaiyya' Bollywood hit lifted by Spike Lee for the Inside Man soundtrack.
  • Zero 7 - 'Distractions' Sia's best lyrics.
  • Dima - 'Baby Mammoth' From the old Chillout Fourever compilation.
  • Fila Brazillia - 'July 23' From Black Market Gardening. Pound for pound this band gets played the most when I'm writing.
  • The Dandy Warhols - 'There is only this time' If you want to teach kids that drugs are bad, make them sit through The Dandy Warhols live - a mumbling, aimless shambles. The recorded experience of the band - a mumbling, aimless shambles - somehow forms the basis for arguments to the contrary.

Now playing (I Still Have A Thing For Julie)

I went through a period at art school when I discovered lounge music. I thought I was being arch when really I was just feeling very tired. A year later I sold all the records but I still have a thing for Julie London. Her arrangements are good and she stays within her range. Although she always sang about the blues she never appeared to suffer. If gazing idly into the middle distance has a sound, Julie is it.

This was in the 80s when vinyl records were officially on the way out and could be purchased for a couple of bucks - a good thing considering that different Julie London albums shared many of the same tracks, or tracks that were so similar that they might as well have been the same. Their value was in the craft of their artlessness, the conjuring of melancholia as reliably as a soap opera: up come the strings, big pause and (rolls eyes, stubs out cigarette, casts sidelong glance at ribbon microphone) ... Julie! But without the exclamation mark.

Because Julie London's songs all sounded the same and because they were nearly all about the blues there's one track of hers I can never, ever locate even in this age of the interwebs. It's called 'The Blues' or 'You've got the Blues' or 'Get ready for the Blues' or something. There's a line about 'the clouds look like they'll overspill... in fact, you know they will... get ready, get set for the blues.' If you recognise this, please tell me - it will make me unhappy. Not a staring into the abyss unhappiness: just gazing idly into the middle distance between drinks kind of unhappy, which is a necessary tool for writing.

I'm listening to Julie on my iPod. I am being driven slightly crazy by the lack of a stereo system and often find myself staring at speaker docks. Portable MP3 systems look like crap to me: I can't see how something so similar to a cheap transistor radio could produce hundreds of dollars' worth of sound. My suspicions have been confirmed by Eric Taub in the NYT, who writes about docking devices manufacturer SDI Technologies:
'We recreated the $19.99 drugstore alarm clock radio and turned it into a $100 product,' Mr Ashkenazi said.
Those blues, those everybody hates you blues: they're gonna get you if you don't watch out.

The photo booth on Schönhauser Allee, Berlin, 10.03.10

Whatever you is, be that*


After messing around for God knows how many years, making redundant political statements and another false start on what might have been a decent Roxy Music reunion, not to mention some truly shite collaborations and DJ remixes (we'll draw the curtain of charity across that last Groove Armada thing) I was happy to bury my BF fixation. But lo, bad video aside, this kicks it. Bryan Ferry's 'You Can Dance' samples 'True To Life' from Avalon (because great musicians always sample themselves) and shuffles along with a drunken gait that doesn't stretch the old fella. The video's lame - too many girls and the dancefloor is half-empty, but maybe that was the idea. Anyway. Did Not Make Me Sad. After the decade of fucking around since the under-appreciated Mamouna, that's saying something.

* Lightnin' Hopkins

Je me souviens

If you don't mind, I'm gonna pass out

Pictured: Natascha McElhone takes time out from the (La) Tribune crossword in Ronin. The (IH) Tribune crossword has been about all that has been distracting me as of late. I'm working on the new thing and it's screaming along in the way that some drafts do. The trick is not to question it, so I'm not. Hence the lack of posting. Apologies again to the two - no, three people who read this.

I'm using notebooks less. After filling several Moleskins with invaluable material - I keep going back to them - I've defaulted to a very cheap Muji notebook (90p in London) - A5 30 leaf (60pp). I've done so much research for this new thing that I have what I need in my head: I'm making almost no notes at all. The manuscript is the notebook now.

Can't watch movies, either. Can barely read. Work in progress. Ronin was on the other night though - I still love that.

Don Draper as Superman

At least according to the rumours. Do we want that? I'm thinking no. Jon Hamm as Draper is the anti-hero, the cheat in a suit, the urbane failure. We want him on that wall, we need him on that wall, like a lazy detective who can't be bothered with the case. I haven't even quite come to terms with Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner's decision to fast-forward the season's period settings, prematurely ageing and styling the cast. I want the characters to be stuck in same moment making the same mistakes over and over like a whiskey sour version of Last Year at Marienbad. The male cast are halfway there in their uniform suits and haircuts that make them look like astronauts. Bad choices, lies, more bad choices, Betty Draper as a bloodless icepick. What's not to like?

I've got more to write about this. But I just hit a good mark with the new ms and that's all that matters.