Monday, Monday, Things? Various shades of noise, nah, Monday’s been and gone already, Monday’s child was full of woe, woe and a whole lot more, Tuesday’s brat has been a little better, not so much spilled paint, no broken collars or… Okay, Wednesday then, we’re busy here, paintings to hang, paint to throw, pink this week, we ain’t got no time for this Organ nonsense..

Here’s some music…

CLEAN FREAKS, who are they? Don’t ask us, here’s the link to a Facebook page, they’re from London, when their not cleaning things, they’re kicking up a raw noise, they’re out their gigging around the city, I see they opened for Gum Takes Tooth last Friday. Here’s a rather raw taste of their first moves, keep it raw and wired we say,,,

And if I remember rightly this radio session took several days of telephone pink-pong to set up. One day we’ll write the book, oh the book we could write, the tales we could tell. This version of Dog Like Sparky was recorded live for BBC radio’s Mark Radcliffe up in Manchester a few years back…

SO JUST WHO ARE MIRACULOUS MULE?

“Here’s a new band for you, you might like them”, so said Miraculous Mule‘s pr person just now. I guess it is at least a band putting out their “debut” single,  ha, another perfect piece of trash. Whatever did happen to Saint Silas Intercession anyway? Never mind no Dream City Film Club, I ain’t never been satisfied!.  Miraculous Mule’s New video and debut single “Satisfied” from their forthcoming debut album. “Enjoy! For more info or to contact Miraculous Mule please visit our website at miraculousmule.com”

Still got a few hundred of these, debut single on ORG from some new band or other back in the day… The sound quality was a hell of a lot better than this YouTube though……

“Earlier Project from Miraculous Mule. Michael J Sheehy, Patrick McCarthy & Ian Burns” so say the Mule themselves, they fail to mention who released it (paid for it) or that it even came out or that you can still get copies if you really want one. It was all about the thankless task of loosing money, nah, it was all about the music (a thanks would have bee nice now and again though, we don’t need many fingers on many hands to count up the bands who said thanks)

Ah, pretty much everything that rather prolific Michael J Sheehy has been involved in is wonderful; MIRACULOUS MULE, their previous incarnation as SAINT SILAS INTERCESSION, the criminally under appreciated DREAM CITY FILM CLUB (another band we might just have put a debut single out for). and especially his consistently brilliant solo albums,.

“For his 6th album Michael J. Sheehy has written a song cycle which tells the story of Francis Delaney, a fictional prize fighter whose life unravels after he takes a dive in the most important fight of his career. The story is told through the eyes of Delaney himself and other characters such as the fight promoters, the punters and his opponent.”  The stills are from the classic boxing film noirs, “The Set-Up” (starring Robert Ryan) and “Body And Soul” (starring John Garfield).

Here’s the Miraculous Mule biog, taken from their website (I ain’t got time to write these things these days. I got exclaiming to do)

“Nothing comes from nowhere. The mule, the miracle plough-puller, the humble and mighty tiller of the earth, is blessed and cursed with a dubious origin. Likewise, though their nativity was in London in the latter half of the last century, these Anglo-Irish honkeys know that their souls were forged further back and farther west. Fallen into hell’s ditch, baptised in brimstone, reborn in the devotion of African-American Gospel, the pain of penitentiary work songs, the jittery stomp of hillbilly rock. Creeping with shovels to the lonesome resting places of traditional folk, delving deep into the treasures of song that lie beneath broken soil, loading a wagon under cover of night, they have electrified and reanimated those borrowed remains with a new found urgency, melancholy, rage and beauty.

As a lost soul in chains once observed, even the ugliest train looks pretty through the cold bars of a cell. Rattling its way to redemption, with evil on its mind, the one-eyed machine follows an impossible route on ghost rails through a landscape of folk and country: Jackson, Mississippi. Memphis, Tennessee. New Orleans, Louisiana. Big Rock, Arkansas. Old Funk, Georgia. A legendary south of country preachers, forgotten jailhouses, jaded dreams of salvation. But always the irresistible, insidious, inevitable pulse of the dangerous blues. Wheels pounding the track. The guitar pick, the drum, the clap, the holler, the cry, the need never satisfied. The runaway monster roars into a tunnel, a smoke-choked furnace of devil cries and sulphur, then back into the night, screaming off the rails, blazing down into a canyon, to a final, raucous reckoning of steel and flame.

Dark night, cold ground. Wreckage sizzles. Buzz of crickets like a legion of derelict amps plugged into hell’s socket, gathered to wail their lament. Sad moonlight on the cornfields. Then, after a long moment that lasts for seconds or for centuries, aching gears grind again. Scorched to its bones, trailing its metal guts, three dozen iron wheels clawing the canyon wall, the ancient beast resurrects. The Miraculous Mule Train drives on, railroad or no, ploughing the black earth of night to the dawn that does not come. Michael BrettBut this is mere prophecy. The train is only now leaving the station. Get on it”  .Michael Brett