Bo Diddley RIP

Reflecting on Bo Diddley after reading various obits and appreciations today, it’s clear that his contributions to rock’n’roll were mighty and many.

He pioneered the use of electric guitar effects: “reverb! Tremelo! Distortion!” marvels the Washintgon Post today.

He presaged gansta rap with his boastful and often lewd lyrics – his very first record was called “Bo Diddley” and his own name was a recurring theme. His only US top 40 hit, “Say Man”, was one of many duets with his female vocal foil, Norma-Jean Wofford aka The Duchess – unusually, he had women in his band. Other tracks saw him trading good-humoured insults with his sideman Jerome Green.

Plus: he looked great! That square guitar. And in his heyday, he out-wiggled Elvis, apparently. The cover of Bo Diddley Is A Gunslinger (1964) is one of the all-time great LP sleeves (I recall gazing awestruck at it when Ray's Jazz had it on the wall in their old Shaftesbury Avenue home).

As if that wasn’t enough, in 1957 he played guitar on Wyatt Earp by the Marquees, a Washington vocal group featuring a young Marvin Gaye. He also played tour support for the Rolling Stones in 1964 and the Clash in 1979 – groups who covered his songs included the Yardbirds, the Who and the Pretty Things (who based their whole approach on Bo).

But above all – or more accurately beneath all, there’s the Bo Diddley beat: bomp-pa bomp-pa bomp, bomp-bomp. There can’t be many artists who’ve invented their own rhythm. And what a primal, propulsively sexy beast the Bo Diddley rhythm is. Here are some records (not necessarily endorsed by 50p Bloke) that owe their existence to Bo’s beat:
• Buddy Holly's Not Fade Away
• (Maries the Name) His Latest Flame by Elvis Presley
• Johnny Otis's Willie and the Hand Jive
• I Want Candy by The Strangeloves
• Magic Bus by The Who
• 1969 by the Stooges
• How Soon Is Now by the Smiths
• Faith by George Michael
• U2's Desire
• Bruce Springsteen's She's the One

If anyone can think of any more, please post a comment below.

Tyrone Davis - Can I Change My Mind

Can I Change My Mind was Tyrone Davis’s finest moment, a life-affirming record. Davis’s heartbreaking vocal reaches the emotional extremes but avoids histrionics – a masterclass in true soul singing. The golden rule: don’t over-emote.

Carl Davis’s warm production was responsible for some terrific Chicago soul in the late 60s, including gems by Young Holt Unlimited, Barbara Acklin but with a loping, jittering guitar line and buoyant brass courtesy of Carl Davis’s house band, Pieces of Peace.

Davis was never cool enough to hit pop paydirt; he was 30 when Can I Change My Mind was released. But he is, to my mind, the finest soul singer bar none.

I first heard Tyrone Davis via an esteemed former colleague at PA, Andy Lemon, who kindly made me a series of treasured compilation tapes (this was the era of cassettes) containing some highlights of his impeccable record collection.

Kraftwerk 1973

Me and the lovely Mrs 50p Bloke saw Kraftwerk in 2004 at the Brixton Academy. Florian Schneider and Ralf Hütter were the only two from the classic 'Werk line-up. But reading I Was A Robot by Wolfgang Flür, it's clear that it was always Ralf and Florian's band. And Kraftwerk live are still simply phenomenal, and in fact seem to have spent the last 20 years simply honing and fine-tuning their gizmos to deliver the hits as technologically perfectly as possible. In that respect, it's probably a better show now that it was in their 70s-80s pomp.

But even if Kraftwerk are a two-man operation, it's Interesting to see this clip from 1973, which shows them minus Karl Bartos, who was yet to join, and also without the mid-20th century animations and graphics. The newly-joined Flür is there, though, nervously tapping his homemade electronic drum pads. He describes the excitement he felt at this performance in his book - required reading for any Kraftwerk enthusiast, despite the comments posted by YouTube viewers.

Blab Happy blogs

Box Set Go enjoys "Prospect Hill" . Is it baggy? Possibly.

Because Midway Still Aren't Coming Back salutes our 1991 Mad Surge EP (and a commenter is amazed at "Tender Hooks").

Supernature - Cerrone

There's something chilling and other-worldly about Supernature. It made a big impression on my young ears when I first started listening to pop music, on Capital Radio in August 1977 following the death of Elvis (remind me to tell you more about that some time).

Cerrone, as with Georgio Moroder, Jean-Michel Jarre and Deodato, produced European disco at its coldest and most futuristic. Like much of the rock music of the time, this was music with grandiose pretensions, but was also democratic in its popular appeal. How exhilarating when it delivered.

I never heard Supernature for years after its release, picking up a secondhand copy in the early 90s. It enjoyed a revival in the mid-90s when its genius was recognised by the likes of Daft Punk.

I think the Parisian Jean-Marc Cerrone himself put it best: "I don't produce records to press up my musical ideas to any minorities. Musical desires of that kind should be better practiced at home in the own cellar. For me it is more important to make music that appeals to broad audiences - I intentional want to work commercial. Why this is tabooed by so many people doesn't go into my head." Quite.

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.

Staple Singers - Slippery People

What makes a good cover? I’m not sure if there’s a golden rule, but the answer here lies an irresistible combination of factors:

• The original version of Slippery People was an excellent song, yet not widely known. This allowed the Staple Singers to make it their own

• The original version was by Talking Heads, at the time, considered one of the best groups on the planet. The Staple Singers gained credibility by referencing a very hip band. A potentially risky strategy but the end result sounded like the record the Talking Heads wanted to make if they’d been as cool as the Staple Singers

• A successful attempt by the Staple Singers to adapt their gospel-soul sound to a contemporary electro-disco. Again, this could have gone badly wrong. It didn’t

• The art of surprise: were the Staple Singers still going? And who would have thought that Staple Singers would even be aware of Talking Heads? Part of the pleasure of this record lies in the unlikelihood of its very existence. But then in their cover of Al Green’s Take Me To The River, Talking Heads had tapped into that same reserve

• Oh, and it’s a brilliant vocal performance by Mavis Staples, the production packs an infectious punch and you can dance to it.

Panda Bear – Person Pitch

Swathed in reverb, Panda Bear’s music sounds distant, like it’s coming from some fabulous party down the hall or from a transistor radio tuned to an obscure yet magical frequency.

Panda Bear is the alias of Lisbon-based Noah Lennox, part of the Animal Collective, a loose group of musicians who’ve recorded with Vashti Bunyan and Devendra Banhart among others.

Person Pitch is sunshine pop recalling the life-affirming joy and innocence of the Beach Boys, but also their miraculous spirit of adventure. It’s one of those wonderful records that doesn’t sound like anything else.

Here’s Bros from Person Pitch, Pitchfork’s album of 2007.