Dirt Off Your Shoulder

Dear Daniel,

I've finally got around to listening to something which - when I heard about it 2 or 3 months back - got me pretty excited. I'm sure you'll remember back in late '95 when I used to repeat-play Sparklehorse's wonderfully-titled debut Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot? You don't? Well, you were all "Life" and "Bridge Over Troubled Water" at the time.

I bought it because Jennifer Nine in the Melody Maker said "Rainmaker" sounded like an heir to Big Star's "Ballad of El Goodo", which you must remember me repeat playing. I remember getting the album home and being surprised at how remarkably dissimilar the tracks were...






Anyway, I saw Sparklehorse play in France a year later, Mark Linkous wheelchair-bound because, apparently, he fell asleep for 13 hours in the crouching position either after a particularly heavy night or because he was ill - depending on who you hear the story from.

Over the following years my relationship with the band dwindled, but then came Nina Persson - years after "Life" - to collaborate on a solo record of hers under the name A Camp with songs written by Mark Linkous. I can only imagine she worked with him to add a pleasingly circular quality to this tale.

And here she is with him again, this time adding vocals to a track on Linkous' album with Gnarls Barkley-bloke Danger Mouse, who created the super "Grey Album" by mixing Jay-Z's Black Album with The Beatles' White Album.

The new album also features Flaming Lips' Wayne Coyne, The Strokes' Julian Casablancas (whose forthcoming solo album sounds bizarrely like Vangelis...), Vic Chestnut, Iggy Pop, etc. etc. and is itself a multimedia collaboration with David Lynch.

But, months after it was "released" as a blank disc with the advice "For Legal Reasons, enclosed CD-R contains no music. Use it as you will", you still shouldn't really be allowed to ever hear it.



Dear James,

At the risk of sounding precious, I remember it was you who was all "Life" in 1995, I carried on the Cardigan Torch for the Atlanta Olympics in 96 and there on in. And Sparklehorse's hugely original sound (you're right, nothing like Ballad of El Goodo) probably flew right over my head because I mixed them up with Seahorses, that band by the chap who used to be in a better band, and by your insistence on wasting your fancy Jersey States student grant on 2,761 CDs in 95-96 by bands that sounded like The Charlatans doing Crashin' In.



You'd already conned me into buying the Whiteout album so the pretty girl at Virgin Megastore (Hagar?) would notice me, and that was shit, so I drew the line at further jangly guiter US pop bands after that and snuggled up with Paul and Artie and my yellow wig. I'm pleased to report that my cats ripped the spine of the Whiteout album to fuck in the days when I had my albums arranged in alphabetical order, with the S-Z section dangerously low (My Bridge Over Troubled Water! How will I replace you?) and in a cruel twist of fate, now that I've reordered my vinyl by year of release, it's the 1986-1998 section at the bottom which gets the scratching. Which may fuck up half my Queen collection, but if it brings Whiteout more pain, it's a risk I'm willing to take.

And you didn't even tell us anything about the Grey Album, surely the most exciting song on this post? I was going to post Whiteout's "Jackie's Racing", but there's no whiff of Whiteout on youtube and they told me to post Jackie Wilson's "Lonely Teardrops" instead. No one reads this far down anyway.