After The Noise
Everything Is Equal
Saturday 21 February 2026
The Redskins – Go Get Organised (1986)
Funny how some bands just pass you by at the time and then sneak back in decades later, sounding sharper than half the stuff clogging up the present day. I never really got into The Redskins first time round, which now feels like a minor cultural oversight on my part.
I remember they were left-wing fanatics and part of the Red Wedge project, and recall hearing their stuff on John Peel without it ever grabbing me by the horns. Which is something I regret.
Their only album, Neither Washington nor Moscow, is a proper blast. Political, punchy, soul-driven, and still bristling with energy. It hasn’t aged at all.
This listening log entry is coming in late in the day, about 6 pm, after a frankly heroic all-you-can-eat buffet. The musical equivalent of piling everything onto one plate and somehow making it work. The Redskins were like that. Northern soul rhythms, gait-prop lyrics, full-throttle intent. No half measures.
They were slightly under the radar in the grand scheme of 80s British music, but something is refreshing about how direct it all is. No irony. No detachment. Just conviction and volume.
It’s funny what resurfaces when you let the playlist wander. Some bands you ignore at the time. Some you rediscover when you’re older, fuller, and possibly digesting far too much buffet food.
Scott Walker – Duchess (1969)
Now this is something else entirely.
Scott Walker had that voice. Not just a good voice. Not just a distinctive voice. A voice that sounded like it had lived a few lives already. Silky smooth, dramatic without being theatrical, and wrapped in those lush, cinematic arrangements you just don’t hear much anymore.
Duchess sits in that early phase of his solo career where everything feels rich and orchestral. Big strings. Big emotion. That slightly European melancholy. It’s vibrant without shouting about it. Confident. Unmistakably him.
And then you think about where he ended up. The avant-garde wilderness of his later work. Metallic clangs, abstract structures, almost operatic dread. Same man. Same voice. Completely different universe. Not many artists manage that without collapsing under their own ambition.
There’s something beautiful about the way those early records were made. You genuinely feel the room. The orchestra. The space. It doesn’t sound synthetic or compressed into oblivion. It breathes.
You just don’t make records like that now.
So smooth. So unique. So utterly Scott Walker.
Showaddywaddy – Lucy Jane (Part Two) (1977)
My sister, three and a bit years older than me, had a copy of their Red Star album. I remember the cover well. The sleeve is still lodged in my head. Never listened to the record, but because of that etched childhood memory, it was well worth sticking in the playlist.
I’m glad I did. You don’t often hear Showaddywaddy album tracks. That’s a shame because this is a corking little number. More akin to the pub rock movement of the time than their usual revival rock n roll.
Showaddywaddy were always known as a singles band, but this proves they could cut the mustard with album tracks. Slightly eccentric, slightly theatrical, and with that peculiar Britishness that makes it sound both serious and faintly tongue-in-cheek at the same time.
“Lady Jane Part 2” has that slightly dramatic, almost storytelling quality to it. Not mainstream pop, not quite prog, not quite anything tidy. The sort of track you’d stumble across in a second-hand shop and think, “What on earth is this?” — and then play it out of pure curiosity.
That’s the joy of these wandering listening logs. You don’t just hear songs. You reconnect with ghosts of sleeves and childhood corners of rooms you haven’t thought about in years.
Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy – Famous and Dandy (Like Amos and Andy) (1992)
Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, which was basically Michael Franti and Rono Tse. Political, confrontational, way ahead of the curve in the early 90s. Not background music. Not polite. More like spoken-word protest strapped to hip-hop beats.
They did that album with William S. Burroughs, Spare Ass Annie and Other Tales. Proper avant-garde territory. Burroughs mumbling dystopian nightmares over fractured rhythms. The sort of thing you either completely love or switch off after thirty seconds. No middle ground.
And that was it, two albums, and they were gone. I owned both and have not let my ears go loose on either for a significant amount of time.
And “Television, the Drug of the Nation” was the big one. Still sounds frighteningly relevant. If anything, more relevant now. Swap television for a phone, and it practically writes itself.
Early 90s garage listening hits different. There was something raw about that period. You’d buy stuff on instinct. No streaming. No algorithm nudging you. Just sleeves, reviews, and mates saying, “Have you heard this?”
Disposable Heroes were never going to be mainstream pop stars. Too sharp. Too political. Too willing to poke at everything. But that’s why they mattered.
It’s funny how these old dabbles come back around. You think you only flirted with a band, then decades later you realise they were planting seeds you’re only just appreciating properly now.
Hugh Laurie – St James Infirmary (2011)
Yes, that Hugh Laurie. Of House fame. And Blackadder. And a hundred other things. The unfairly talented sort.
You put this on half-expecting novelty. A bit of actor-does-jazz-for-fun. And instead you get something that sounds like it’s drifted straight out of a smoky 1950s basement club.
Long piano intro. Proper patience. No rush. Then that voice comes in — warm, textured, completely unshowy. If you didn’t know it was him, you genuinely wouldn’t guess. No wink to the camera. No “look at me, I’m an actor singing.” Just commitment to the song.
When it opens up into that pure, old-school jazz groove, you can practically see the trilbies, the dim lights, the glasses clinking. It’s not pastiche. It feels studied. Respected. Loved.
He’s done a couple of albums in this vein, and they’re not dabbling. They’re proper deep dives into blues and jazz standards. The sort of thing you make because you genuinely care about the music, not because you fancy a chart hit.
Unexpectedly authentic. Unexpectedly good.
Sometimes the man who played a grumpy American doctor just wants to sit at a piano and be 1956 for a while. And fair play to him for that.
Julie Andrews – Stay Awake (1964)
From Mary Poppins, of course. Proper golden-age musical magic.
“Stay Awake” is one of those deceptively simple lullabies that just wraps itself around you. No drama, no showboating, just that impossibly clear, steady voice. Julie Andrews could probably sing the ingredients list off a cereal box, and it would sound reassuring.
And yes, every time Mary Poppins comes up, Dick Van Dyke’s heroic but misguided attempt at a Cockney accent gets dragged back into the dock. Still, we forgive him. Mostly. He puts it down to bad coaching. But you cannot help but love the Van Dyke.
There’s something about these old musicals that feels untouched by cynicism. Big orchestras, proper arrangements, songs written to last. No irony. No edge. Just craftsmanship. When Julie Andrews sings, it’s soothing without being syrupy. Controlled without being cold.
It’s the sort of track that makes you momentarily forget you’re standing in pitch black, talking into a phone like a man narrating his own documentary. It takes you somewhere warmer. Somewhere gentler.
Golden era stuff. And yes, she’s a national treasure. I’ll allow that one without argument.
Tommy Cooper – I Want To Stay Here (2024)
Now that’s therapy.
Tommy Cooper didn’t need irony, politics, or a carefully curated “brand”. He just needed a fez, a trick that would almost work, and that gloriously awkward timing. He’d pause at exactly the wrong moment, and somehow it was exactly right.
People forget he was a genuinely skilled magician. The incompetence was deliberate. That was the art. The trick would wobble, fail, half-succeed, and the punchline would land while you were still trying to work out what just happened.
It’s daft. Completely daft. And yet it works every single time.
Something is refreshing about comedy that isn’t trying to be culturally seismic. No manifesto. No TED Talk energy. Just absurdity delivered with absolute confidence. A bloke on stage who looked faintly confused about his own act and somehow completely in control of it.
It shouldn’t be funny. It is.
You listen to a monologue like that, and it’s impossible not to smile. He had that rare ability to make an entire room feel like it was in on the joke, even when the joke barely made sense.
Even the way he died was pure theatre. The audience genuinely thought it was part of the show.
There really was nobody like him. And there still isn’t.
END OF LISTENING LOG
The Listening Log 