Adrian Flanagan, who you might know from Eccentronic Research Council, International Teachers of Pop or his solo project Acid Klaus, just released No Rocket Required, the new album from his other group The Moonlandingz (which also features Lias Saoudi of Fat What Family and Dean Honer of Add N to X). While the group are known for their debauched electro-disco jams, there is also some tender humanity here on “It’s Where I’m From” which was written by Flanagan and sung by Iggy Pop. Watch the video for that below and read our review of the album here.
While you can play “spot the influence” on No Rocket Required, Adrian made us a more personal list he’s titled “The Songs My Mum Taught Me.” He writes:
On New Year’s Day, after a couple of years in the grip of the hideous disease Alzheimer’s – my beautiful mother, Maria, passed away.
In her final months of her life she struggled walking, talking and remembering immediate things so I found that reminiscing about the distant past with her and showing her old photos of her and family when she was very young would encourage more lucid memories – and also as music is my thing I knew that by just simply playing the songs she loved on her big TV via YouTube from when she was a kid (or from when I was a kid) would also have a really positive effect on her mood, with her singing along with the songs, mouthing all the lyrics whilst waving her finger from her bed like a mad conductor of an orchestra.
These visits filled me with both incredible pride and crushing sadness, but they also allowed my mother and I (her first born) some real quality time together that I’ll always treasure. These are just a small selection of tracks my mum loved or and – brought in to my life – and me in to hers!!
Those songs include classics from The Beatles, Roxy Music, David Bowie, The Smiths, Love, Scott Walker and more. It’s a touching tribute to Maria and you can read his list and commentary below.
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‘The Songs My Mum Taught Me’ – Adrian Flanagan /The Moonlandingz
“Strawberry Fields Forever” – The Beatles
In the ’60s when my mum was a kid, her favourite band was The Beatles and her favourite Beatle (everyone had one) was John Lennon. She absolutely loved him. So when I ended up working on the debut Moonlandingz album over a decade ago with John & Yoko’s kid Sean Ono Lennon, my mum was immensely proud. Even during her final months she would always hilariously ask me, “ How’s your friend….Julian?” I’d go ‘Julian who?’ and she’d go ‘Lennon!!’ and I’d correct her and say ‘Oh You mean Sean mum? he’s ok I think Mum!’
This song she’d love me playing to her and we’d both sing along too it like a pair of space cadets!
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“Jackie” – Scott Walker
My mum introduced me to the songs of Scott Walker bless her! When she was in her late teens in the late 60’s she’d been to see Scott live in a venue in Manchester. After the show she and a young friend followed a large group of girls to outside a hotel where they’d hope to get Scott’s autograph. They stood around for a short while and as Scott never turned up her and a friend walked off towards their bus stop home. Just as they did, a car with blacked out windows pulled up and a lairy suited tour manager rolled down the window of the driver seat and shouted across at my Mum and friend — “Hey girls do you want to go to a party at a club with Scott Walker, he’s here in the back of the car?” My mum replied “No he’s not, your lying!” as the tour manager rolled down the back window revealing a slightly embarrassed Scott Walker sat in the back of the car! My mum and friend let out a little yelp and then Mum said “Sorry we can’t’- if I’m not home for ten o’clock my mum will be very angry!” So they said their goodbyes and jumped on a bus home. I never forgave my mum for not making Scott Walker my Dad!!
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“Andmoreagain” – Love
When I was a teen discovering ’60s garage bands via my love for bands like The Fall (who lived in the next street from me in Prestwich) and The Cramps (who didn’t), I came across a band called Love who my mum also adored as a teen – especially this song “AndMoreAgain.” The Forever Changes album is head and tail more sophisticated than most of those psychedelic-cum-garage groups of ’67-’68 with its lush strings and brass arrangements and beautifully melodic gentle sounds. It was probably the first record my mum would ask me to “turn up” not “turn down” – as I blasted my new teenage discoveries in my bedroom!
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“Do the Strand” – Roxy Music
Another band my mum really loved was Roxy Music and she also had a bit of a crush on Bryan Ferry. When I was three years old my mum and I escaped the hideous biological spunker who impregnated her with me and we moved in temporarily to my Ukrainian grandad’s house over in Stockport, South Manchester. He was a very tight fisted man. old Ivan, and Mum and I would use the music of Roxy Music to drown out the sound of my grandad dragging his iron wallet across the upstairs landing!!
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“Come to the Sabbat” – Black Widow
My mum was in to a lot of old hippy rock n flute stuff in the ’70s like Jethro Tull, but she used to play this to me when I was a child lots, and we’d excitedly stomp and sing around the living room laughing and chanting the chorus with passion and glee: “Come, Come, Come to the Sabbat, come to the Sabbath – Satan’s there!!” At that very moment Satanism felt so fun so I immediately donned a black hooded robe and denounced the Catholic Church — aged 4 !! 🙂
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“Absolute Beginners” – David Bowie
My mum absolutely worshipped David Bowie; she loved pretty much everything he did from beginning to end (maybe not his drum & bass period). She loved him so much that I saw a photo of me when I was around 3 year old, holding a guitar with super long golden hair with a Bowie lighting bolt painted across my face. I could have chose anything from Bowie’s back catalogue but I choose this. Why? Because I absolutely loved my mum!
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“Get it On” – T Rex
As you might be able to tell my mother loved all the Glam Rock stuff, though wisely drew a very knowing and sharp line at the works of Gary Glitter. She loved this T-Rex song lots. I remember her telling me about Marc Bolan dying in a car crash and obviously this fascinated me and tickled my morbid obsession in rockstars and their deaths. I was practically erect with joy when I found out Johnny Kid from Johnny Kid and the Pirates died in a car crash around the corner from our house in Salford! Immediately taking flowers and grieving at the road side for poor Johnny – decades after his death and long after his blood had ran down our drains!
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“Watching the Wheels” – John Lennon
After John Lennon was brutally taken from us in 1980, my mum bought me my first cassette single — “Watching the Wheels” which was released posthumously after John’s death. I think as a child it was the first song, lyrically, that resonated with me in a way that I couldn’t articulate, but my old man’s brain in child’s head just instinctively got it and understood. Means a lot to me this song even now.
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“This Charming Man” – The Smiths!
A few years after my mum bought me the Lennon cassette single, we were both sat on the couch at home watching the Old Grey Whistle Test (old U.K. live music TV show on the BBC) when a video was shown of some new handsome young chaps with Rickenbacker guitars and a singer in a ladies blouse and ill fitting jeans throwing gladioli around being introduced for the first time to the British Public. That band were The Smiths and that song was “This Charming Man.” I immediately felt like I’d found my tribe. Both me and my mum loved it and loved Morrissey. So a few months later with my school dinner money I bought “This Charming Man” on 7” and gave it to my mum on Christmas Day. A Christmas for both of us, though possibly more for me as I took it with me when I first left home!
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“Promised Land” – Joe Smooth
At my mum’s funeral on the 31st of January this year, I helped write the eulogies and asked for some reason unbeknownst to even myself for this House Classic by Joe Smooth to be the song played at the end of the service – as everyone stood up to leave the church. My mum wasn’t a raver or in to house music but when I was looking for a song this just seemed to say a lot simply and with very little pretension, it just felt so uplifting to me at the time of falling across it in my memory banks. Like an ecstasy high but where the drug is that of grief!! As the funeral day arrived I thought I might have made a massive mistake but after the tears, laughter and pain of the service it really was like the clouds blowing away and the heavens opening up to accept my mums spirit in to the arms of her own mother waiting at the pearly gates for her! Thankfully young people in the pews danced, old people looked a bit confused but smiled at the young dancing and I breathed a sigh of relief knowing my mum would have loved this almost Very Me Moment — going with the gut, going with the heart, leaving my brain at the door. Always & forever!