13. JJ CaleTroubadour
I didn’t come across it until way after its release. I had come back from Detroit, was living in Cambridge, studying design and then film at the poly. It was weird being a student, it’s always weird being a decade older than everyone else! I kept quiet about being a musician, but slowly people found out. I had been to a summer garden party at my then-girlfriend’s grandparent’s house in Kent, it was all [affects posh accent] very nice. There’d been a daytime garden party with a string quartet, and by the evening all the youngsters had carried on, it was just a brilliant thing – a warm night in the bucolic Kent countryside (well, Sevenoaks) and that came on. It was this weird, bluesy funk and raspy voice, and it was an instant thing – I play this once or twice a week. Maybe it’s because it’s the first setting I heard it in, but there’s something extremely white and middle class about it, and just slightly naughty. Obviously it’s the original ‘Cocaine’ that was covered by the other twat… Clapton! There’s just something quite satisfyingly sleazy about the whole thing.
