Pre-Beatles UK rock'n'roll

Just wrote this blog for the Guardian ...

The Rubber Room - Porter Wagoner

To paraphrase a joke from The Blues Brothers, I have trouble with both kinds of music: country and western.

I heard this fantastic track, The Rubber Room, on Stuart Maconie's BBC 6Music show The Freak Zone a couple of weeks ago. It had a brilliant dub-like delay effect on the desperate vocal to emphasise the lyric, concerning fear of insanity. Not something I'd ever heard on a country record. It was dark and gothic, like a proto-Nick Cave, or a more psychotic - and psychedelic - Johnny Cash.

I thought: this is fantastic! I must hear more! As I recall, Maconie had tantalisingly said the track was a typically strange offering from Wagoner. So a few clicks of the mouse and I'd bought a compilation of the same name, which promised a whole CD of Wagoner's "haunting and poetic songs".

I feel cheated - The Rubber Room still sounds great, but the rest of the CD is maudlin tosh. Or am I missing something?

(To make matters worse, I discovered that I already owned the track. It's on Jarvis Cocker and Steve Mackey's excellent mix album The Trip.)

The Clash - Bankrobber

Just learned that the Clash's video to Bankrobber features clips from their gig at Lewisham Odeon, plus some fooling around in Lewisham High Street.

Bah - how did I miss that gig?

The Clash did reggae better than any other punk band, with Bankrobber Dub a particular favourite.