We've approached this subject from a few different angles in the past and as Townspeople continue to age and try to figure out what it's all about, Alfie, I'm sure this won't be the last time this comes up. Recently I was listening to my "best of" CD mix that I made of the last three Nick Lowe albums (no surprise that Lowe is already back in the conversation, is it?), and I was thinking to myself, Although Nick's music from the last 10 years is nowhere near as original and energetic as his early burst of activity, these favorte dozen songs of his from recent albums are beginning to make me think less of his first two albums. Jeez, I'm beginning to feel like much of his earlier works was "kids' stuff!"

My conversation with myself continued, as I tried to put these thoughts in proper perspective:

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Here's a story that's been told before, in one way or another, but it's worth telling again.

The whole Pub Rock/Pure Pop for Now People Dream was running its course. Nick Lowe put out an album called Nick Lowe & His Cowboy Outfit. Nick assembled what, on paper, looked to be a band worthy of the legacy of Brinsley Schwarz and Rockpile. His Cowboy Outfit included Rumour guitarist Martin Belmont and Ace lead singer-turned-session man and super-sub Paul Carrack. Rockpile guitarist Billy Bremner even played on a couple of tracks!

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I love pub rock. There’s no clear definition of the style, but it was a mid-70s British phenomenon, a back-to-basics trend that was never wildly popular, a precursor to punk, and many pub rock musicians carried on into the punk era. Brinsley Schwarz is probably the best-known exponent of the style, which I think of as a mixture of black and white musical genres – rock, R&B, country, folk, and pop. The conversation between black and white is what rock & roll is all about to me, and pub rock was a peculiarly British take on that conversation.

I’m going to write an irregular series about pub rock here, and I want to start with a man who could be called one of the progenitors of the style. He was also a player in what could be called the secret history of rock & roll.

Jim Ford is one of those legends that almost no one knows about. If he’s known at all it’s because he wrote the song "Niki Hoeky," which was recorded most famously by Aretha Franklin on the Lady Soul album. Here’s Bobbie Gentry doing "Niki Hoeky" on the Smothers Brothers TV show. Note the authentic Cajun mise en scene:

Ford’s other claim to fame is that Nick Lowe has cited him as his biggest influence. But let me back up a bit and give a little background on Ford himself.

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In their respective solo careers, Stiff Records original Wreckless Eric and singer-songwriter Amy Rigby have mined similar, down-to-earth, '60s-influenced pop material that's both open hearted and appropriately self deprecating. A few years ago they met, jammed together, and fell in love. Today they're married, living in France, on tour together (click here for tour dates), and set for the September 15 release of a joint album, Wreckless Eric & Amy Rigby.

A few of us had the fortune of meeting Amy in 2002, as she not only contributed an awesome cover of Jane Aire & the Belvederes' "Yankee Wheels" to a Stiff Records tribute album we curated (The Stiff Generation), but introduced us to some other contributors and flew to Hoboken, NJ to play a few Stiff-related songs at the record's release party. She was as cool and approachable as her music, and she had the foresight and good sense to wear a dress that matched the polyester shirt of our bassist, Townsman Chickenfrank. It's only fitting that we, once more, turn back to Amy for yet another Stiff-related introduction. The following chat with Amy and Eric was conducted separately, with one of them in an isolation booth, wearing huge headphones and seen only on a video monitor. This is the first time their responses will appear in one place. Enjoy!

NOT Two Virgins...

Wreckless Eric & Amy Rigby, "Here Comes My Ship"

RTH: This Wreckless Eric & Amy Rigby album and tour is some way to celebrate a marriage! You were married earlier this year, right? How long have you been together? Did the two of you actually meet, as I've read, during one of Amy's concerts, as she covered "Whole Wide World"?

ERIC: We met in Hull, in a pub I used to play in when I was an art student back in the early '70s. It was actually the first place that I ever played "Whole Wide World" in public. Amy sang it and the promoter shoved me on stage to help out. The song went round the world and did the work for me! I don’t think the album is a celebration of our marriage – it’s not Two Virgins or something…

AMY: I'd been playing "Whole Wide World" in my set when I felt I needed a little boost and a promoter in Hull that we'd both worked with had the idea to have Eric DJ for one of my shows. He came in covered in snow with a box of records under his arm and then he got up on stage with me during "Whole Wide World" and said I was playing it in the wrong key.

If you look at the photo collage inside my "anthology," 18 Again, there's a picture of it happening.

RTH: Your new album is on a revived Stiff Records! Are any of the founders of the label involved in its revival? Eric, did you have mixed feelings about going back to Stiff? Amy, you were a fan of the label and its artists in its heyday, right? Were you struck by any teenage fangirl feelings at this opportunity, any need to keep your emotions in check? (For instance, I'd have had to keep my self in check to make sure I didn't agree to sign with Stiff for free.)

ERIC: I had no qualms about going back to Stiff – on the contrary it was my idea. None of the founders or the subsequent employees are involved, which is just as well.

Amy Rigby, "Yankee Wheels"

AMY: To be on the same label that gave us "Yankee Wheels", Lene Lovich, Nick Lowe & Wreckless Eric? It beats being labelmates with Pokemon, which was the big priority album when I was on Koch.

RTH: On the new album, did you collaborate on the writing of the songs, or did you write separately? Were most of the songs written before or after you'd met?

AMY: All of the above.

ERIC: We wrote most of them separately I think. I started "Here Comes My Ship" and Amy finished it off. We wrote "Round" together – I came up with a guitar chord sequence and we got the lyrics together between us, so that was a true co-write. “Trotters” is a group composition that came out of a jam session – we were playing "God Only Knows" and we changed one of the chords. Apart from that I think we wrote separately, Amy upstairs, me downstairs. But we’d definitely met before we started.

RTH: Did you learn anything about each other during the writing process that you may not have learned had you not mixed business with pleasure? Were there ever times when you'd have to stop working on a lyric and ask your partner, "Why didn't you tell me you were feeling that way?"

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Fine Wine

Smelly Cheese

Recent plans and offlist discussions with fellow Townspeople have once again brought the issue of "aging well" to my mind. Being the Schau-obsessed person that I am, when I decided to dabble my 43-year-old toes in the world of live performance again, I officially hung up my rockin' shoes and joined a ska band instead, being quite certain that the sight of me rockin' out on stage would likely be a Very Embarassing Thing indeed.

Fine Wine

Smelly Cheese

Other Townsmen have told me that while they have no self-consciousness about doing the rock and roll thing at age (cough), they get irked when their musical efforts are automatically lumped into the category of the weekend rock and roll party warrior/Georgia Satellites and George Thorogood cover band member -- as in, "oh, you play in a band? So does my husband -- him and his friends played at our beach house a couple of summers ago; it was *great*!"

Fine Wine

Smelly Cheese

But some folks manage to pull the aging thing off with great aplomb, avoiding the need to slather on the Rock Of Olay, or chickening out to join a ska band, fer chrissakes. My question to our current musician townspeople is, how do you stay looking so young? What's your secret? To those who have no stake in that game: what do *you* think makes certain rockers age like a bottle of fine wine, while others merely putrefy?

I look forward to your responses.

HVB

All the fuzzy white and gray tones from the middle-to-right of this clip is purportedly Nick Lowe and Robyn Hitchcock. They're jamming with Elvis Costello. Pretty cool, despite the longtime Rock Town Hall in-joke of this post's title.

I have bemoaned for years, and Mr. Mod can attest (say Amen, brother), the loss of Nick Lowe's masterpieces, Labor of Lust and Pure Pop for Now People (originally Jesus of Cool in the UK) to the great digital abyss.

Last time I checked these discs were released in the '90s and then vanished, showing up in used shops for as much as $89! Puh-leeze.

But you can bemoan a lot less as Yep Rock Records has just released Jesus of Cool (with the original track line-up) and "10 extra non-LP singles, EP sides and compilation cuts that lead up to Jesus."

AND IT'S ON EMUSIC!!! Sweet. Here's a bonus cut, originally released as part of the excellent Bowi ep.

Nick Lowe, "Shake That Rat"

RELATED SIDE ISSUE: Pure Pop for Now People and Jesus of Cool are two of my favorite album titles and they're for the same album! Has any other album come even close to having two drastically different release titles that are both this bitchin' and spot-on?

No dogder, this Roger!

May I begin by sharing with our Townspeople what a thrill it was for me to chat with producer/engineer Roger Bechirian! As a teenager, while intently studying the liner notes of the records that first made me feel as if I'd finally hit on "my" music, music made for me and my bandmate friends, his name kept cropping up. My friends and I never saw a picture of him, and we still don't know exactly how his surname is pronounced, but this Roger Bechirian fellow was held in very high regard among our band of nobodies.

If I may, I'll continue in the first person plural, because that's how strong my love is over this guy's work - and beside, my old friends and fellow Townsmen, Andyr and Chickenfrank, contributed to this interview. Our introduction to Bechirian was as the engineer on all those great Nick Lowe productions for Elvis Costello and The Attractions. Shortly thereafter, we saw he had his own thing going as producer of The Undertones, the band in our wildest, humble dreams we thought we could emulate.

With Costello, Bechirian produced the one Squeeze album we all agreed sounded great and steered clear of the stiff, awkward moments on their earlier albums. Then we noted his name on the credits for what we thought was The dBs' last great single, "Judy". This guy not only engineered my all-time favorite album, Costello's Get Happy!!, but he produced one of my favorite overlooked gems for listening to in my bedroom with the shades drawn, The Undertones' Positive Touch. As Elvis would eventually have an album produced by George Martin engineer Geoff Emerick, we fantasized having an album produced by Nick's right-hand man. Considering the likely disappointment (for him!) resulting from this fantasized collaboration, his taking the time to answer the tough questions from Rock Town Hall is more than enough wish fulfillment for anyone to bear... But enough of this ass-kissing, no matter how sincere it is! Let's get on with the questions.

RTH: I've read that you were born in India and moved to England when you were a boy. When did you get into music and how did you get into recording?

RB: There was always music on in the house. My father was a big Jazz fan, and my sister would get all the latest hits from the UK and the States. I also played piano, and would spend hours making up my own tunes. We had a tape recorder at home, and I soon started making up my own sound montages by editing various recordings... I did the same thing as you, scouring album credits, looking for the engineering and studio credits. I got my first job training as a mastering engineer, cutting vinyl!

I was so opinionated, and couldn't stop myself from telling people what I thought they should be doing!

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Nick Lowe, "Hope for Us All"

I'm not thinking about this song from Nick Lowe's latest album, At My Age, necessarily, although it's a song I like hearing a second time whenever I spin it once. The reason it's being used as a part of this post is because of two Academy Award-nominated films I've seen over the last month, No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood. It's not even the movies themselves that I wish to discuss, but for fear of SPOILING any plot elements for Townspeople who have not yet seen these fine movies and would like to do so without knowing too much about them in advance, let's pick up this discussion after the jump.

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I've been everywhere, man.

At the risk of having this large chunk of rock stride the pond and pummel me with his Flying V, I can't help but think of Chris Spedding as "The Forest Gump of Rock."

It seems unflattering, but I really don't intend it that way. I'm not thinking of him as a borderline short-busser with high-water slacks. I'm thinking of him as a dude who has participated in an AMAZING amount of rock history and yet, other than weirdos like us, he's fairly unknown. (At least in the US of A.)

"It will be a cold day in hell before you get me to work with Zwol!"

Chris Spedding, "Motorbikin'"

I first read his name in college as I became enamored with Brian Eno's Here Come the Warm Jets and saw his name on the back as playing on "Needle in the Camel's Eye" and the "Paw Paw Negro Blow Torch". I had no idea then and not much more of one until recently that this guy has done a wee bit more than that.

Early on Spedding, with his band Battered Ornaments, played THE Hyde Park concert in 1969 that featured the debut of the Brian Jones-less Rolling Stones. Bridge that with being the producer on The Sex Pistols demos and you start to get an idea of the breadth of experience here.

He has worked with so many amazing people that I'll only list one for each letter of the alphabet (except x, y & z): Laurie Anderson, Ginger Baker, John Cale, Donovan, Drifters, David Essex, Bryan Ferry, Art Garfunkle, Nicky Hopkins, Kris Ife, Elton John, Dave Kubinec (featuring fifth Rutle Ollie Halsall), John Lodge, Paul McCartney, Harry Nilsson, Gilbert O'Sullivan, Pretenders, Dee Dee Ramone, Dusty Springfield, Johnny Thunders, Vibrators, Tom Waits.

His story is pretty damn cool and there's some great stuff on his website chrisspedding.com and a 2006 biography, aptly titled Reluctant Guitar Hero, so I won't belabor it. Rather I'll just let the man speak for himself as he responds to our questions.

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