Music Arcades: 15-60-75: Jimmy Bell's Still in Town

Here's another album I bought because of David Thomas, like Sunflower/Surf's Up. I've never thought of him as a big influence on my taste, but stealthily he's nudged and pointed me towards things that sounded interesting.

Not that there was much stealth in his email of 16th September 2000 (I've been on the email list since 1996):

"This is the only perfect album I have ever heard," says David Thomas. "We all are unworthy in its presence. If you don't agree after listening just once I am clearly delusional, a danger to society, undeserving of your Entertainment Spend, and fit to be punished."

Here's the deal. Buy it direct from David Thomas, PO Box blah blah [the address is just a short walk from where I'm writing this, but he's not there any more] with a cheque payable to "David Thomas" to the sum of £10 plus £1 post & packing. Return if unwanted within 7 days in good condition and get a refund less the post & packing.

"15-60-75 are one of the few outfits to have stamped generic R&B with an original seal," reads a review in Mojo. "[Band leader Robert] Kidney is a Van Vliet on the distaff side, or a less hung up David Byrne. You will not be disappointed."

"Don't know about the NME but by God, they frightened me," says Chris Cutler. "You have to go to a small city in America to see a band with this much intensity and this much professionalism: 20 years in the same bar needing to keep a regular public's attention — intimacy with the material; an unfakeable elision of reality and entertainment."

That's quite a build-up, and, to be honest, I was disappointed. So did I return the CD to ask for a refund? That David Thomas is a delusional danger to society; best not to risk his wrath, or indeed mildly peeving him.

My CD is the 2000 re-issue of the album on Hearpen, which I believe is at least co-owned by Thomas, and this release also has sleeve notes by him: "The Numbers [as 15-60-75 are known in the vernacular] have kept the blues alive… They play blues reimbued with meaning, purged and purified by flame, shorn of every superfluous moment." They're all fine words, and if you want more in a similar vein, go here.

I don't know. I listened to the album twice this afternoon with the Boy, who's been more ill than he's ever been before in the last 24 hours. It had a strangely calming effect on him (when he sits with me in the Music Chair, I think he expects to hear something, and if he doesn't he looks either to the speakers or to the turntable — he loves the sight of records going round — to see what's awry), and he was asleep by track 4 of the first listen. In his sickly state, he only sleeps when he's being held, so I was held captive by his body. When the CD came to an end and only one remote was in reach, the only option was to play it again, by the time the final track came round a second time, I, who had only 3.5 hours sleep last night, had nodded off too.

I'm tempted to speculate that perhaps this is just one of those bands whose music doesn't cross the Atlantic well — like John Mayer or the Dave Matthews Band, of whom I've never heard a European say a kind word. But, then again, it could just be that the fault lies with me.

One last thing: the album was recorded live when the Numbers supported Bob Marley in Cleveland in 1975 "in front of an utterly indifferent audience."

Download direct from Hearpen