8 Tracks: Of We Need To Talk With Virginia Wing

‘I couldn’t find Love Letter Part 1 on its own, so here’s a little compilation of a few parts from one of his operas, Celestial Excursions. I have always valued poignancy in when it’s delivered in a simplistic, direct way and this definitely falls into that category. I think most people probably know Robert Ashley from Automatic Writing as it was very popular at the time, but Celestial Excursions is the first thing of his that I heard and it really stuck with me.’

‘Again, I couldn’t find the version of Smoke Rings from the live performance of Home of the Brave on its own, so you get the dance beforehand, which is amazing. This is the first song from the record. Laurie Anderson of course uses loads of spoken word in her music. I particularly like the part in this song that goes ‘I had a dream, and in it I went to a little town’.
I’m not sure if they ever worked together, but I think a very direct line can be drawn from Robert Ashley’s work to Laurie Anderson’s. Anyway, this is an amazing performance by an incredible artist.

‘Probably not the first tune you would go to when thinking either spoken word performances or indeed, notable Streets songs but this ties in very comfortably with the direct, simplistic poignancy I was talking about earlier, and which Mike Skinner does perhaps better than anybody. This is the last song from the last Streets album and basically relates ending the group to leaving an office job. The chorus is absolutely clanging, but I think it’s got some of his absolute best lines in it, all delivered wonderfully. I particularly like ‘No more alarm that barks in the dark, the beeping like darts to the heart’.

‘This is a song by Woody Guthrie’s daughter, as far as I’m aware, she didn’t record a whole lot of music. She made this song when she was 17. It’s pretty cheerful sounding for a song that seems to be about a child who’s dying from a mysterious illness. My favourite lyrics are in the spoken word section ‘The nights are unbearable. At least there’s music in the day – Music to rise from my blood, like vapour. Ill vapour, from bad blood.”

Savant is K. Leimer’s 80’s New-York-Art-Rock studio project. It fits it nicely with things of the time like Laurie Anderson, Talking Heads. Lyrics about drugs and prostitution are naturally par for the course. I love the repetition of certain phrases and distortion of sections of dialogue looping and building. There’s a real feeling of movement throughout the song, a song of frustrated movement.’

‘Requiem for an Almost Lady is a wonderful album, each song begins with a brief spoken introduction and then into some classic Lee Hazelwood crooning. It’s witty self-aware whilst simultaneously being heartbreakingly open. ‘Dreams have never been my friends, when I had you, I never dreamed of you and since you’re gone I’ve dreamed of nothing else”

Of course the position of everyone’s favourite Jazz harpist has been firmly filled by Alice Coltrane but I also love The Rubaiyat of Dorothy Ashby. The Moving Finger has, in my opinion, one of the best introductions to a song ever.

‘I remember listening to a lot of girl band stuff with my mom growing up, but it was probably just Spector produced stuff so I’m not sure when I first heard this. Anyway, there was loads of talking in this kind of thing, probably most notably in ‘I Can Never Go Home Anymore’ but I prefer this one just for the unrepentant melodrama of it’