Super selections and wonderful words by Balearic Mike.

Will Powers is best known for a very cool slice of electronic dance music… this isn’t that one… 

Will Powers – Kissing With Confidence – Island Records 1983  

Will Powers is not a real person. Will Powers is actually a fictitious ‘self-help guru’, the creation of celebrated film maker and photographer, Lynn Goldsmith. Lynn once sued Andy Warhol, when the pop art icon used her portrait of Prince for a series of screen prints, without her permission. In 1983, shocked by the plethora of dodgy self-help material flooding the American market place, Lynn decided to spoof the industry, with the help of some of her musical friends, made a comedy LP sending up the genre. As a photographer to the stars, these talented friends weren’t some bozos who did the odd bar gig at the weekend, but instead the likes of Nile Rodgers, Sting, Steve Winwood, Todd Rundgren, Tom “Thompson Twins” Bailey, and Carly Simon. Quite a line up then.

Although the comedy record genre isn’t one I’d recommend you spend a great deal of time mining for gold (Baron Knights B-sides anyone?), the album, Dancing For Mental Health, does have its moments, particularly if you focus on the 3 singles.The brilliantly, joyous, slice of pop-dance Kissing With Confidence, was the biggest hit, reaching the giddy heights of #17 in the UK charts in October / November 1983. Although the dub mix of Adventures In Success is the one all us ‘cool DJ types’ still play – and rightly so, since it’s an electronic, dub, disco masterpiece – I’ve loved KWC since I first owned it on a Now That’s What I Call Music! cassette.

It’s Carly Simon who provides the single’s fantastic and hilarious lead vocal, while Lynn slows her own voice down to become the male guru. Carly’s protagonist is overcome with anxiety about kissing her date, although why Carly Simon – talented, gorgeous, rich – would be worried about kissing anyone is beyond me:

“I’d giggle like I had no brains
Or else I’d start to cough
I thought my perspiration stains
Would turn a fellow off”

But Mr. Powers saves the day with this sensible advice:

“Do you want to kiss this person?
Then be honest – what is keeping you from kissing with confidence?
Worries. Some of them can be put to rest if you ask yourself a few simple questions before kissing. 

Is your breath fresh?
Do you have spinach on your teeth?
Is your deodorant strong enough?” 

The song is accompanied by a bouncy electronic pop-dance backing, with a subtle cod-ska skank to it. Courtesy of Nile Rodgers and Co. it’s a bit similar to Carly and Niles’ Why?, but a lot more up-tempo. It has that Island Records / Compass Point / Grace Jones vibe to it, particularly on the also excellent dub mix. However, it’s the vocal that I love most. This record will always make me smile, regardless of whatever funk I might find myself in, so maybe all this self-help guru stuff wasn’t such a grift after all? Will certainly manages to cheer me up.

“Just remember – you can not get pregnant from kissing.” 

A record so wonderful that I can’t believe it was ‘lost’ for so many years… 

Judee Sill – Judee Sill – Asylum Records 1971 / 4 Men With Beards 2004 

I was prompted to dig out my two Judee Sill albums a few weeks ago. Balearic Wife and I were lucky enough to see a screening of a new documentary about Judee’s life and music, as part of the Doc’n Roll Film Festival at Komedia. The film is called Lost Angel: The Genius Of Judee Sill, and, as with Judee’s music, I suggest you make yourself familiar with it, pronto.

Don’t worry, I’d never heard of Judee Sill either. This is despite her being signed to David Geffen’s Asylum Records in the early 1970s, hanging out with all those Laurel Canyon singer-songwriter types, and even having an affair with J.D. Souther. While pretty much every other artist on that label had both commercial and critical success, Judee’s albums didn’t sell that well, and she had drifted into obscurity.

However, one Saturday, while working in Vinyl Exchange, my colleague Danny came bounding down the stairs to work, with a bag from Piccadilly Records under his arm, enthusing about Judee’s two incredible albums, which had just been reissued. I confessed my complete ignorance of both her music, and equally astounding life story. I think we got to the final track of the first side of the first album before I was on the blower to Piccadilly to ask them to bag me copies of them both. Now, I don’t say this lightly, but the albums that she released, and which tragically flopped, are up there with Joni Mitchell’s records from the same period. Honestly, this isn’t hyperbole, trying to hype up something just because it’s obscure, and you might not have heard of it. Like those incredible Rodriguez records, and that Lou Bond LP that Light In The Attic reissued, you simply cannot believe that these releases were not hugely successful. They are utterly wonderful, in every aspect, and I, while the film tries, cannot explain why they weren’t massive hits.

Judee’s life story is almost as dramatic and astonishing as her music, and is ultimately one of repeated tragedy. Her mother died when she as still very young, and she fled a troubled home life in Los Angeles while in her teens. Falling into heroin addiction, Judee turned to prostitution to pay for her habit. She was was also arrested for armed robbery, which landed her in reform school. After her release, further arrests for solicitation, forgery, and minor drug offences, sent Judee to prison, and it wasn’t until her release from jail that she began dedicating herself to music.

Judee’s time in reform school was crucial to her musical development. Already a skilled musician, she served as church organist, and “learned a lot of good music”, including gospel. Good fortune and a shit-load of talent brought her to the attention of a lot of key movers and shakers in the L.A. music scene. The Turtles recorded one of her songs, Lady O, and she opened for Crosby, Stills & Nash, before signing to Asylum. Graham Nash produced her first single, the wonderful Jesus Was A Cross Maker, which was written about her affair with J.D. Souther (who was also “dating” Linda Ronstadt at the time, hence the line “He’s a bandit and a heart breaker”).

Her eponymous debut album, was released in September 1971, to some critical acclaim. Judee manages to combine country, gospel, folk, and jazz, with elements of classical music. She was a huge fan of Bach, and this comes across, not only in her interesting use of time signatures, but also the fantastically intricate and beautiful orchestration that infuses her work, most notably on her second album, the equally mesmerising, Heart Food. The songs on Judee Sill are mind blowing! Just astonishing, in both their depth and sensitivity, but also their complexity and sophistication. Plus, Judee’s voice is really that of an angel – it really is up there with Joni Mitchell. Yet neither this, or the follow up, were hits, and Asylum dropped Judee. She did begin work on a third record, but botched back surgery, after a series of car accidents, left her in crippling pain, and she began self-medicating. Judee died of an overdose of painkillers and cocaine in 1979, aged just 35.

I worked in a record shop for nearly twenty years and had never heard of Judee until that Saturday in 2004. Thankfully since those reissues, there’s been a resurgence in interest in Judee’s work, resulting in that final album seeing the light of day. After watching the documentary, I played one of Judee’s songs on my radio show, and was moved, close to tears, after receiving a message from an old friend who I haven’t seen in over a decade, who’d listened to the show on MixCloud. “Not sure if this is still your number. Just wanted to thank you for the Judee Sill introduction. My mind is completely blown!”

I’ve been really enjoying this new album recently… 

a.s.o. – a.s.o. – Low Lying Records 2023 

I have Trevor Jackson to thank for this recommendation. I caught a post of his on Twitter, over the summer, and I thought I’d give it a listen. I’m very glad I did. Trip-hop revival anyone? Although that’s a maligned genre to throw around these days, I was a big fan of all things trip-hop in the mid-90s. I think Trevor used the less loaded term ‘downtempo’ in his post. Still, trip-hop is a pretty accurate place to start if you want to describe this record to someone.

a.s.o. are a chap called Lewie Day, who you probably know better as Tornado Wallace, and a singer/songwriter named Alia Seror-O’Neill. Alia is also an actress. She was in a Marvel superhero film. A good one. The pair seem to be based in Berlin. The tempos are slow, there’s the odd breakbeat here and there, some groovy, jazzy, instrumentation, and Alia has a superb, smoky, sultry, sexy voice. Add in a subtle dash of 90s electronica, atmospheric synths, and some really great songs, and you have an astounding debut album.

Some highlights are the dark, bassline driven, My Baby’s Got It Out, which feels like it could have originated on the first Tricky LP. Rain Down has a slightly Middle-Eastern sound to it, and is very Balearic indeed. Then there’s something almost Fleetwood Mac / Stevie Nicks-like about Love In The Darkness. My current favourite, though, is the stunningly gorgeous Falling Under, which is an absolutely fabulous slice of gurgling, slo-mo-techno-pop, with a superb vocal. All the songs are presented in a pop-song length of 3-4 minutes, with only Rain Down being longer… and that’s essentially what this is, a really great, atmospheric pop album. There’s a nice, slightly D.I.Y. feel to the sleeve too.

Another record of the year contender…

Prins Emanuel – Diagonal Musik II – Music For Dreams 2023 

I’ve been lucky enough to have had Prins Emanuel’s Diagonal Musik II for a few months now, as regular listeners to my radio show will be able to attest. I’ve already played the tracks Year-End, Naiades Pt.1 & Pt.2, and Ostan Vind, but the album is all highlights. Parnassos is another favourite.

The record has finally been released on Kenneth Bager’s excellent Music For Dreams. An absolutely beautiful LP, this is music based firmly on the original playlists of Jose Padilla’s sunset sessions at Ibiza’s Café del Mar. That incredibly eclectic mix of obscure ethno-jazz, European film soundtracks, German electronics, ambient, and a Nordic ECM Records-style, all seamlessly fused together. Diagonal Musik II sounds just like a record from that time. A time before people made “Balearic”, or indeed ‘chillout’ music. The album also reminds me of the instrumental pieces on the later Japan albums, and early David Sylvian solo records, like Gone To Earth.

Although the album will be categorised as “electronic music” – and there are certainly lots of synths used – it’s the vast array of unusual acoustic instruments that make this such a strange, exceptional, and haunting record. I mean what the fuck is a Xaphoon?* You also have an octagonal skin drum, bamboo flute, glockenspiel, xylophone, harmonica, tin whistle, alto sax… Certainly not exclusively electronic, but most definitely wonderful. 

*I looked it up. It’s a chromatic keyless single-reed woodwind instrument.

For more from Balearic Mike you can find him on both Facebook and Instagram – @balearicmike. 

Mike has a Mixcloud page packed with magnificent, magical, music, and you can catch him live on 1BTN, from 12 noon until 2 (UK time) every 1st and 3rd Friday.

You can also check out the super silk screen prints of “Balearic Wife” over at @jo_lambert_print