Thanks to old buddy and Anglophile Mark for mentioning this song by the Rumble Strips, a UK band. Currently, they’re in L.A. making a debut album with Tony Hoffer, known for his work with Beck, The Kooks, and Air.

The Rumble Strips: Motorcycle

Listen:
[audio:motorcycle.mp3]

Check out their releases so far (a couple singles and an EP).

Their Official Site | MySpace – check out “Alarm Clock” on their MySpace page too. Good stuff!

My seven month old daughter has mastered the art of the “walker”, as we call it. You know, the little wheeled seats you can plop your infant in so they can scramble around the house with wild abandon. My daughter’s getting pretty good: 360’s, circling the kitchen island at lightning speeds, and now selecting music for you, the Ickmusic reader.

Her latest thing is to stop by my CD racks in the morning, select one CD, and place it on her little table on the walker. Obviously, I see it as a sign that she is itching to contribute to her pop’s music blog. So tonight, her first two selections…

The first CD she picked was Cloudcuckooland, by the Lightning Seeds. This 1990 album’s biggest hit was “Pure”. If you don’t think you know it, I bet it’ll sound familiar to a lot of you. Great song, nice catchy electronic pop. The Lightning Seeds were originally a one man outfit. It was the brainchild of Ian Broudie (born in Liverpool, England).

The Lightning Seeds: Pure (mp3) – from Cloudcuckooland

I once read that the name ‘Lightning Seeds’ comes from Prince’s “Raspberry Beret”: “the thunder drowns out what the lightning sees”. Ian liked the sounds of that, morphed it into ‘Lightning Seeds’, and the rest is history.

My daughter’s second pick was a Stone Roses CD single for “Fool’s Gold”. They broke big out of Manchester, England in the late 80’s. The founding members were vocalist Ian Brown and guitarist John Squire.

So it’s clear to me that my 7 month old daughter was focusing on late 80’s / early 90’s British music, containing founding members with the name Ian. Brilliant!

Speaking of brilliant, I have always believed this song to be just that: a brilliant 10 minutes of trippy Manchester funkitude.

The Stone Roses: Fool”s Gold (mp3) – buy The Very Best of the Stone Roses.

Ok, one little picture of my little one. Can’t resist…

Stuart over at A Cultured Left Foot has been kind enough to bestow upon the blogosphere an additional live Jam show, from the Warfield in San Francisco, March 15th, 1980.

The Jam: Live at the Warfield (from A Cultured Left Foot). Stuart knows his football too (soccer to us Yanks), as you’ll see on his blog. A very good read, and another fine WordPress blog.

Over the last few months, I’ve posted live performances by the likes of the Clash, the Sex Pistols, and the Style Council. Therefore, I’d be foolish not to explore the live experience of the Jam. Made up of guitarist Paul Weller (who later went on to form the Style Council, and is still a huge solo act in the UK), bassist Bruce Foxton, and drummer Rick Buckler, the Jam rose out of Woking, Surrey, England in the mid-70’s.

They were influenced by the mod culture of the 60’s (the Who, the Small Faces), the punk ‘revolution’ of the mid-70’s (the Clash in particular), and, increasingly, the Motown / soul sound (which would become increasingly apparent on their later albums, and the work of the Style Council). While they are often lumped in with coming out of the same ’76-’77 UK punk revolution as the Pistols, Clash, Buzzcocks, and the Damned, they definitely insisted on maintaining their own style and identity, always sharply dressed in mod-style suits and ties.

This show took place on November 30, 1980 in Dortmund, Germany. They had just released their fifth album, ‘Sound Affects’, which Weller likened to a cross between ‘Revolver’-era Beatles and Michael Jackson’s ‘Off the Wall.’ The Beatles influence is apparent in the opening bassline of “Start!”, which is the same bass riff that opens “Taxman.”

The Jam disbanded in 1982, when Weller decided to call it quits to form the Style Council. The other two members apparently still hold some bitterness toward Weller about the break-up. They wrote a Jam biography in the early 90’s which contains some vicious attacks on Weller (has anyone out there read it?).

So here is a 75 minute set from The Jam, at the height of their popularity. Enjoy…

The Jam
“Set The Skies Ablaze”
1980-11-30
Westfalenhalle, Dortmund, Germany

01 – Dreamtime
02 – Thick As Thieves
03 – Boy About Town
04 – Going Underground
05 – Pretty Green
06 – The Man In The Corner Shop
07 – Set The House Ablaze
08 – Private Hell
09 – Liza Radley
10 – Dreams Of Children
11 – The Modern World
12 – Little Boy Soldiers
13 – But I’m Different Now
14 – Start!
15 – Scrape Away
16 – Strange Town
17 – When You’re Young
18 – In The City
19 – To Be Someone
20 – David Watts
21 – The Eton Rifles
22 – Down In The Tube Station At Midnight

• The Jam’s All Music bio.
• The Jam on Amazon.
• Paul Weller’s web site.

You’ve hit on the premier Ickmusic contest!! You’ll find it at the bottom of this post….. Continuing down the path of recent British-themed posts (The Style Council, The Clash, Robert Plant), today we take a look and listen to Brit band Hard-Fi. Their debut album, ‘Stars of CCTV‘, has been very well recieved in the UK (it hit #1 on the UK album charts in January). Their biggest gigs to date have been opening for Green Day at Milton Keynes Bowl northwest of London, and they just wrapped up a five night stand (May 14-18) at the Brixton Academy in London (one of a short list of bands to do five straight nights there: The Clash, Bob Dylan, The Prodigy, and Massive Attack being the others). Did anyone out there catch any of these shows?

The band rose out of Staines, a town just outside of London (the town that the great Ali G proclaims to be from). Every good band has that charismatic front man, and Richard Archer plays that role in Hard-Fi (as well as the songwriter).

So hear and see for yourself. Here’s some Hard-Fi goodness coming your way….

Hard-Fi: Hard to Beat (Video in Quicktime) | Also Windows Media Player: Hi, Lo

Hard-Fi: Middle Eastern Holiday (Real)

Live From The Manchester Apollo, 7 May 2006

1. Middle Eastern Holiday
2. Gotta Reason
3. Tied Up Too Tight
4. Feltham is Singing Out
5. Unnecessary Trouble
6. Better Do Better
7. Cash Machine
8. Hard To Beat
9. Move On Now
10. Stars Of CCTV
11. Living For The Weekend

Now, the premier Ickmusic contest: For a brand spanking new ‘Stars of CCTV’ CD… What is the only nightclub in Hard-Fi’s hometown of Staines, Middlesex, England? Email the answer to me. I’ll select a random winner from the first ten correct answers. We’ll ship to the U.S. or U.K. (sorry to all you others!) Good luck!

UPDATE: We gotta winner! Kevin from Cary, North Carolina correctly answered with Cheekee’s. Well done Kevin. Your Google skills are impeccable. A few of you answered Simply Neon, which isn’t a nightclub, but a neon light manufacturer. Ah well. Stay tuned for more exciting contests like this!

Quote of the Day: “There’s a lot of people out there who don’t like the fact that we’ve connected with them and jumped all that kind of scenester shit, all those bands walking around dressed like they’re from a fucking charity shop when you know they’ve got money. It gets on my tits.” – Richard Archer

My new favorite saying is officially “It gets on my tits.”