I Saw Her Standing There

I'm quite impressed by the number of Maltese bands with good connections in the UK and elsewhere. The Beangrowers are currently in the middle of a week-long UK tour, which includes a gig in Brighton featuring Ronnie & the Refugees. Particle Blue were here too last year. And yesterday UK Indie Ska and Punk label No Way Out Records released a new compilation CD called NDAB 3 featuring Dripht's Guy on TV, from their EP Global Warning.

Yes, I know I've already played Dripht on previous editions of Mużika Mod Ieħor. I've even featured music from bands that have musicians from Dripht in them. Since this is the 17th podcast in this series, it's quite natural that some acts have already appeared before. What I'm definitely trying to avoid is playing the same tracks over and over as they do on the radio. So far I've managed to stick to this unwritten rule.

There are some artists whose work I go out of my way to play again and again. One such musician is Tony Grimaud, who recently reappeared on the Maltese music scene. Grimaud was one of Malta's foremost alternative singer-songwriters in the mid-1980s. I'm really privileged to own a recording of his Easter Rock Mass, which provided the one track I've already played in this series. Earlier this week, Mike Bugeja sent me an MP3 of one of his most recent recordings. After all those years in the wilderness, Grimaud is finally recording his first studio album. The song you can hear in this week's podcast is called You've Been On My Mind.

The internet has radically changed how we listen to music and what music we listen to. This ranges from all the file sharing networks to individual email exchanges of MP3s and what not. A few days ago I received an email out of the blue from one Jerry McMillen asking me whether the title of my blog entry from last June You Can't Erase a Mirror bears any relationship to a 1968 rock recording by Children of the Mushroom. I replied explaining that most of my blog entries get their titles from songs I like; sometimes the selections are only related in my head. As it turns out Jerry is the singer and guitarist on that record from 1968, which I first discovered while listening to sixties' psychedelic web radio Technicolor Web of Sound. Long story short, thanks to Jerry I've included the original recording of You Can't Erase a Mirror on this week's podcast. You Can't Erase a Mirror is the B-side of their one and only groovy 45 rpm single; the song on side A is called August Mademoiselle. Interestingly, the band is about to play a reunion gig in Thousand Oaks, California, in the coming weeks.

Comebacks and reunions are nothing new, of course, but for some reason it feels like they're de rigueur this season. One Maltese band I'm expecting to reappear soon closes my podcast for this week. I refer to 1980s classic metalheads Acid who appeared on the original Mill-Garaxx TV series and later recorded a small number of almost unreleased tracks at Robert Longo's Padded Cell Studio in 1990. I have those unreleased tracks on a cassette tape, but they also released a couple of them on a compilation CD produced by Radio 101, back when radio stations in Malta were still interested in being more than political tools or mediocre money makers. The name of the Acid song you can hear on this week's podcast is Rock City Limits.

Back to the blog entry title selection, you may recognize today's selection as the same as an early Beatles song. To my rhizomic mind, it's the best title for this post about the 17th Mużika Mod Ieħor podcast, but feel free to recommend a different one if it does nothing for you and you have a better suggestion.

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