Mark F. Griffin

I’ve attended—and subsequently forgotten the details of—a lot of concerts, but the one I might forever cherish most took place on this day, Sept. 19, in 2015. Martin Newell, who’s normally loath to travel far from his Essex home to play pop star, was persuaded to stage a London edition of his annual September showcase The Golden Afternoon (the 2021 iteration of which occurs today in Colchester) and I was fortunate to be visiting the right place at the right time. The venue was St. Giles in the Fields, half a block up from 22 Denmark St. where The Cleaners from Venus recorded the Going to England LP in winter 1986. (If you’ve got the album, you’ll recognize the western, Flitcroft St-facing side of the church as the the spot where Martin and Giles Smith are posed on the back cover.)

For a few years I've been toying with the notion of creating a streaming music show, something to force me to pay more attention to new music that might be sailing under the radar, as well as to my own music library (which can be akin to the warehouse at the end of Raiders: something goes in, is listened to once, then is quickly forgotten amid the sheer volume).

I envisioned it as a refuge from / balm for the general background tension in the world… music that's low on aggression and can simply be chilled out to, without being mere wallpaper. But it should also be as sad as it is lovely, because I enjoy wallowing in melancholy and apparently I think you should too.

So I've finally done it. It's called Gray Days and Gold, and the first episode is available now on Mixcloud.

The sonic palette of the series will be ever-changing to match the weather outside my window, but January means music that sounds like the last fading echoes of the holidays and the good cheer that came with them, days that feel like more darkness than light, and the hush of snowfall.

Jan. 2, 2020: While this post expresses less hope for the new year than I aspire to carry in my heart, I’m afraid this song feels like the best summation of western civilization’s relentless removal of its nose to spite its face in the Trump/Brexit era.

You know this end of days / Will be a lot of days / Slow motion unfolding…

The expression on your face says that you’ve been cheated / Well, you’ve been cheated but not in the way that you think

When the high and the mighty spread their wings / Only shadowed things can grow in the shadows beneath

Very cool: Pete Paphides wanted vinyl versions of albums released in the ‘90s and decided to undertake the reissues himself. First up are Stephen Duffy’s wonderful I LOVE MY FRIENDS (slightly revised to honor the artist’s originally-intended track listing, with the Andy Partridge-produced tracks shunted onto an included 7″ single) and Lightning Seeds’ founder Ian Broudie’s 1994 album TALES TOLD.

Also, Pete’s got a wonderful new podcast on Mixcloud called Needle Mythology, in which he interviews songwriters. When the first two episodes feature Prefab Sprout’s Paddy McAloon and Travis’s Fran Healy, you know great things are to come.