Blog Songs, episode 1

Speaking of religious zealots...I want to try posting music on this blog, as often as possible, so I thought I'd inaugurate what I hope will become a regular thing with some Bill Fay. Here are two tracks from his second and final album, Time of the Last Persecution, originally released on Decca in 1971. A couple of years ago Eclectic Discs reissued both of Fay's albums under the title Bill Fay Plus (I think), so go find that and buy it if it's still in print. Otherwise, his stuff is easy to find on the net. You guys know how to google.

Anyway, I really like Bill Fay's first (self-titled) album too. It's definitely over-orchestrated, but I'm a sucker for that kind of over the top shit, especially when the orchestration is a little bizarre, as is the case here. In Time of the Last Persecution, however, the arrangements are utterly wacked out. The album was produced by Ray Russell, and the dude just wails over Fay's somber tunes with heavy fuzz guitar solos, epileptic shredding, and multilayered, noisy orchestration. I really like how the orchestration just drops in out of nowhere on a lot of the songs on this album, just barfing all over the tracks. As for Fay, he's been compared to Roy Harper, Alexander Spence, Scott Walker, Nick Drake...you get the idea. Deep, depressed, kind of nutty British guys. And if you haven't guessed already, Time of the Last Persecution is totally apocalyptic. Get into it!

This first track, "Release is in the Eye," is pretty characteristic of the rest of the album, although it lacks the unexpected arrangements I mentioned earlier. Nice melody, weird Christian lyrics, flat singing, awesome fuzz.


"I Hear You Calling" is a simpler cut, but really compelling (in my opinion)


I hope you like it! Leave a comment if you do, or if there's anything in particular you'd like me to post on here. If that something happens to be out of print, expensive, or absent from the net, I'll try to make it appear.

A Quip About Nips

I saw a lot of ugly, offensive shit this summer while I was apartment-sitting in a place with cable TV. Not the least of which was this ad for a stupid bra that conceals your nipples with two petal-shaped padded concaves on the inside of the bra cup--a stylish secret for extra modest ladies! Give me a fucking break. From a pragmatic standpoint, I get it--most women (myself included) hate to have their nips ogled on a cold day. But these "concealer" bras are just insulting--better cover up those nips, girls, or else you're just asking for it! If ever there were a time to bring back bra burning...but there isn't, really. I feel like nowadays it's just as futile to complain about nip concealers in a public forum as it is to prance around shamelessly in a thin shirt--being open about such things carries its own (backwards) sex appeal, and who am I to criticize a guy for checking out a nice set of boobs if they're in plain sight? But creating a bra that hides or constricts your rack even more than usual isn't going to stop men from being assholes--it's only going to make women even more ashamed of what they're carrying. Just from googling around for some info on that stupid bra, I found all kinds of disappointing "tips" from women on how to hide your nips so that you can work in an airconditioned office building, how to pull duct tape off your nips at the end of the day with the least amount of pain, etc--on sites like eHow and Yahoo! Whatever. I'm not bold enough to withstand the social side effects of going blatantly braless, so I usually make a halfhearted effort to keep my nips in check. But if they show, I deal with it. I'm certainly not going to spend money on a special bra just because pervs on the street can't keep their boners to themselves. Maybe men should try a little harder to conceal their thoughts and quit rubbernecking. It's not very attractive.