The Story Of The Undertones is the film made by John Peel on his first visit to Derry in 2001 and (here’s the clever bit) tells the story of the Undertones through band interviews, shots of their old haunts and live clips. So far so Rockumentary. What makes this film more enjoyable than that general joyless genre though is the amiability and good humour of the band and their guest. They’re genuinely enjoying the whole thing, feel comfortable about their place in history and are enjoying the chance to play again after a 20 year lay off. The reformed band though has a new singer in Paul Mcloone rather than Feargal Sharkey. Sharkey does appear in the film in an interview filmed at Peel Acres.
The film is good at capturing the claustrophobic feel of mid 70’s Derry, with the pressures of The Troubles, unemployment and the hostility of the local community towards any one who “got above themselves.” Journalist Eamonn McCann appears in the film and describes Derry as “oppressed and oppressive” and makes the point that the natural sound for a group of Derry teenagers to have produced would be angry and hostile, and that it was actually braver for the band to make the “Sweet and beautiful” sound of "Teenage Kicks".
Even in their early days there were plenty of people who wanted a pre- emptive pop at the band, just in case they ever amounted to anything. The original sleeve of the record has a photo of the graffitied shed door with the legend “The Undertones are shite” and The Wall that features on the first album where the band sat with their legs hanging over (John Peel takes obvious pleasure in being able to recreate that photo with the band) was soon daubed with “Hang the Undertones.” After Sharkey left, one of the band gave the reason that Feargal was sick of people coming up to him and saying “Sharkey, You’re a bollux and your band are shite.” It beats musical differences.
It was only Feargal Sharkey who really wanted to get out of Derry though partly because he attracted more flak than the rest of the band. Their early parka and Docs anti fashion dress code was an attempt not to alienate their old friends, and there were frequent and expensive trips back to Derry during tours. They declined the chance to extend their first American tour with the Clash because half the band was home and girlfriend sick.
There’s a great moment where John O’Neil muses that he’d only ever had one girlfriend and wonders what his songs would have been like if he’d known more women. His wife then tells a story about one of his songs that was written about her…He’d gone to return some clothes to a shop for her but the youthful songwriter was a useless consumer, so his opening line to the shop keeper was “I know a girl.”
But that’s the thing about Derry, as the band and Peel look round from a hill, all the bands landmarks and reference points are easily visible and walkable. For a Birmingham band it would be like Moseley with murals.
After 2 albums of songs about chocolate and girls, the band were struggling with the dilemma that their hearts and experiences were still in Derry and they wanted to their songs to reflect the Political situation there. John O’Neil describes Crisis Of Mine from Positive Touch as a song about him trying to change his songwriting after meeting a recently released IRA prisoner. Damien O’Neil talks about It’s Going To Happen being about the IRA hunger strikers and wearing a black armband on Top Of The Pops the day Bobby Sands died.
There are some great music clips, including an Old Grey Whistle Test appearance where one of the band shouts “This is the last good song you’ll hear tonight” before launching into a dynamite version of True Confessions. Sharkey’s hands are in his Parka pocket, as it opens and closes like an enthusiastic and fearless flasher. What the audience should be afraid of though is John O’Neil’s guitar sound. The explosive, low flying opening chords of the song are rocket propelled. They could take a camera man’s head off.
After the Undertones split in 83 Mickey Bradley and Damien O’Neil were in a band called Eleven who were very poppy. I saw them play twice at the Marquee in 84 and the singer was like a black Annie Lennox in cycling tights. Although they did do a John Peel session (the band rather than the tights), nothing really happened and they split. (The tights already had).
The next effort was more successful as the O’Neil brothers formed That Petrol Emotion, where they were fused politics, Indie dance and Pere Ubu. I saw their first show at The Mean Fiddler when the band shared vocal duties between themselves in 1985 and a gig at Thames Poly (The Nightingales were also on the bill) which was the first show that American singer Steve Mack did. I never really took to him as a singer but I did go to lots of their gigs, which I enjoyed more than their records. They always played like demons. After That Petrol Emotion split John O’Neil dabbled with a dubby electronic project called Rare and Damien issued an album through Poptones
In the film The Undertones are quite open about what a bad idea it is for a band to reform twenty years after they split, without their original singer and especially when their singer was as distinctive as Feargal Sharkey. The new singer Paul Mcloone does have more than a hint of Feargal’s vocal style though and the band are obviously just really enjoying playing again, without the responsibility and as fun rather than a career. They’ve said they don’t want to haul themselves round the Punk nostalgia circuit and tarnish their good name.
I saw them at the Birmingham Academy in 2004 which was great fun and I posted a full review at
http://stealthbuffet.blogspot.com/2004_12_01_stealthbuffet_archive.html
The album Get What You Need came out on Sanctuary in 2003 and it’s a lively Ramones pop punk blast and definitely a better listen than the original band's final album, 1983’s The Sin Of Pride.
The film brings out the fact that The Undertones were always split between Sharkey and the rest of the band and those differences go back right to the beginnings of the band where Sharkey was the last to join, the only one who worked, the only one who had a car and the only non songwriter. So from the remaining Undertones point of view they’ve now got the chance to play to an appreciative audience with a new mate and none of the previous tension.
In one of the extra scenes though there is a careful consideration given to replacing newbie Paul with Brittney Spears. Several of the band can barely speak at this point as they are giving it so much thought.
It’s a good-humoured uplifting piece of filmmaking. Bassist Mickey Bradley is currently recovering from treatment for bowel cancer. Obviously I wish him a speedy and full recovery and I’d love to see them play again. And I think you should too.
Saturday, November 11, 2006
Saturday, November 04, 2006
Nowhere To Run - Gerri Hirshey
The mark of a good music book is that it makes you want to listen to the music it’s about (obviously Motley Crue’s biog is the exception…embrace the book, avoid the music). Nowhere To Run is Gerri Hirshey’s account of the development of Soul up to the mid seventies.
It’s a terrific book that traces the story through interviews with most of the major players against a backdrop of racial politics and a changing music industry. It was first published in 1984 so she managed to get to artists like Michael Jackson and James Brown before they started to unravel.
This book (along with a steady stream of records and tips from passengers already aboard) was partly responsible for getting me aboard the soul train. As I was listening and learning about the music, this book gave me a peg to hang it on and brought the characters involved to life. The clattering, rolling writing style has a musical rhythm of it’s own and there are some fantastic quotes.
Wilson Pickett was a man who believed his own press, but I think this quote shows some of the truths and myths behind Soul music. “Me and a million other dudes said “later” to picking cotton. Moved north, learned to live in the city. Detroit, My Lord what a place…..Lean the lady up on one of them big Pontiacs – we in the 50’s now – be sweet and she slide right down the tailfin and into your arms. Lord bless and keep them automotive engineers. Give a country boy a reason to sing in that dirty old city,”
It was a business, (many of the artists and songwriters only want to talk about the hits in the interviews and Martha Reeves left Motown after asking awkward questions about her royalties) but it was also music built on a shared history of Black migration from the south to the industrial cities of the north, and then with labels like Stax, the music went South again.
Hirshey’s story moves between the City Soul sounds of Motown which was aspirational, sophisticated and shamelessly populist (black musicians selling to white teenagers) to the southern studios like Fame and Muscle Shoals where black and white musicians fused country and soul. Aretha Franklin was actually born in Memphis, moved to Detroit and then ironically, had to go back to Memphis to capture the sound that made her.
The time that the interviews took place meant that most of the artists had already had to adjust to harder times. Many had found themselves displaced by the Disco boom and the early 80’s didn’t look like it was going to be any easier.
The interviews with Martha Reeves and Isaac Hayes show bruised, reflective individuals just trying to get on with the business of getting by. Martha Reeves muses that she often found herself appearing on the bill with bands like The Cramps or Bad Brains. Now I think that sounds like a great show. As Clarence Carter prepares for a show on the nostalgia circuit he wonders aloud what songs to play, or whether just to laugh. The Clarence Carter trademark chuckle was a feature of many of his songs…ripe, fruity and lewd. It’s a laugh that may include scenes of a sexual nature.
The archetypal soul hustler though was Solomon Burke. His first session for Atlantic was recorded in the middle of a blizzard. Burke left early without hearing the results because, “I’ve got to go back to Philadelphia. I’m running a dump truck to pick up the snow. Pays 4 $ an hour.” When he played the Harlem Apollo he sold “Solomon Burke’s Magic Popcorn” in the aisles between his own shows. The owner was furious because there was already a popcorn concession. Burke decided that didn’t include Pork Chop Sandwiches, so he promptly set up a grill outside the venue and cooked and sold his own sandwiches between shows instead. The Bishop of Soul, cooking up fast food outside his own gig. The Solomon Burke chapter is fantastic. His quotes are as funny and outsized as the man himself. I’ve got a live album where he tells the audience “There’s 295 pounds of me…you can have any 5 pounds you like” and “All we need now is waterbed.” And he can sing.
The experience and effects of racism and segregation crop up frequently as many artists describe the tours of the south in the early 60’s. Solomon Burke tells a story of how Sam Cooke and himself were bundled out a restaurant by Police in Shreveport Louisiana and taken to the Fire Station, stripped, and forced at gunpoint to sing their hits, naked, to an audience of Police and Firemen.
To become fully soul qualified you also need to read Peter Guralnick’s book Sweet Soul Music. It’s a fine book, which really gets under the skin of Southern Soul and ties it all in to American music, racial, social and political history. Hirshey’s book is less academic but really does bring the whole era alive. It’s obviously written by someone who loves the music and that joy just leaps off the page. It’s a celebration of Soul Music and it’s artists and her enthusiasm is infectious. Go on, read the book, buy some records.
It’s a terrific book that traces the story through interviews with most of the major players against a backdrop of racial politics and a changing music industry. It was first published in 1984 so she managed to get to artists like Michael Jackson and James Brown before they started to unravel.
This book (along with a steady stream of records and tips from passengers already aboard) was partly responsible for getting me aboard the soul train. As I was listening and learning about the music, this book gave me a peg to hang it on and brought the characters involved to life. The clattering, rolling writing style has a musical rhythm of it’s own and there are some fantastic quotes.
Wilson Pickett was a man who believed his own press, but I think this quote shows some of the truths and myths behind Soul music. “Me and a million other dudes said “later” to picking cotton. Moved north, learned to live in the city. Detroit, My Lord what a place…..Lean the lady up on one of them big Pontiacs – we in the 50’s now – be sweet and she slide right down the tailfin and into your arms. Lord bless and keep them automotive engineers. Give a country boy a reason to sing in that dirty old city,”
It was a business, (many of the artists and songwriters only want to talk about the hits in the interviews and Martha Reeves left Motown after asking awkward questions about her royalties) but it was also music built on a shared history of Black migration from the south to the industrial cities of the north, and then with labels like Stax, the music went South again.
Hirshey’s story moves between the City Soul sounds of Motown which was aspirational, sophisticated and shamelessly populist (black musicians selling to white teenagers) to the southern studios like Fame and Muscle Shoals where black and white musicians fused country and soul. Aretha Franklin was actually born in Memphis, moved to Detroit and then ironically, had to go back to Memphis to capture the sound that made her.
The time that the interviews took place meant that most of the artists had already had to adjust to harder times. Many had found themselves displaced by the Disco boom and the early 80’s didn’t look like it was going to be any easier.
The interviews with Martha Reeves and Isaac Hayes show bruised, reflective individuals just trying to get on with the business of getting by. Martha Reeves muses that she often found herself appearing on the bill with bands like The Cramps or Bad Brains. Now I think that sounds like a great show. As Clarence Carter prepares for a show on the nostalgia circuit he wonders aloud what songs to play, or whether just to laugh. The Clarence Carter trademark chuckle was a feature of many of his songs…ripe, fruity and lewd. It’s a laugh that may include scenes of a sexual nature.
The archetypal soul hustler though was Solomon Burke. His first session for Atlantic was recorded in the middle of a blizzard. Burke left early without hearing the results because, “I’ve got to go back to Philadelphia. I’m running a dump truck to pick up the snow. Pays 4 $ an hour.” When he played the Harlem Apollo he sold “Solomon Burke’s Magic Popcorn” in the aisles between his own shows. The owner was furious because there was already a popcorn concession. Burke decided that didn’t include Pork Chop Sandwiches, so he promptly set up a grill outside the venue and cooked and sold his own sandwiches between shows instead. The Bishop of Soul, cooking up fast food outside his own gig. The Solomon Burke chapter is fantastic. His quotes are as funny and outsized as the man himself. I’ve got a live album where he tells the audience “There’s 295 pounds of me…you can have any 5 pounds you like” and “All we need now is waterbed.” And he can sing.
The experience and effects of racism and segregation crop up frequently as many artists describe the tours of the south in the early 60’s. Solomon Burke tells a story of how Sam Cooke and himself were bundled out a restaurant by Police in Shreveport Louisiana and taken to the Fire Station, stripped, and forced at gunpoint to sing their hits, naked, to an audience of Police and Firemen.
To become fully soul qualified you also need to read Peter Guralnick’s book Sweet Soul Music. It’s a fine book, which really gets under the skin of Southern Soul and ties it all in to American music, racial, social and political history. Hirshey’s book is less academic but really does bring the whole era alive. It’s obviously written by someone who loves the music and that joy just leaps off the page. It’s a celebration of Soul Music and it’s artists and her enthusiasm is infectious. Go on, read the book, buy some records.
Sunday, October 29, 2006
Dave Godins Deep Soul Treaures
It’s not often you get a consistently good album….and to have a series of 4 sounds just too good to be true, but Dave Godin’s Deep Soul Treasures is the real thing - a quartet of albums lovingly compiled by the late Dave Godin and released on the wonderful Kent label between 1997 and 2004.
Godin wrote for Blues and Soul magazine through the 60’s and was enormously influential in the developing UK soul scene, both as a journalist but also as joint owner of the labels Deep Soul and Soul City. He coined the phrases Northern Soul and Deep Soul. His Blues and Soul column always closed with the words “Keep the faith”…Northern Soul summed up in 3 words.
The Deep Soul Treasures series contains 100 tracks mainly recorded between1967 and 73 and while many of the artists may be little known outside Soul circles, there are tracks by Otis Redding, Gladys Knight, Smokey Robinson and Ben E King. There’s Irma Thomas’s "Time is on My Side" and Bessie Banks’s "Go Now" as covered by the Stones and Moody Blues respectively. Godin was looking mainly at the actual vocal performance and searching for an intensity. It may have been found in hit records, but more often than not it was to be found in the lesser known songs or artists.
In his sleeve notes he describes Deep Soul as “Music for grown ups…It puts into music, the deep and powerful emotional reservoirs that we are too bashful to voice in real life. We think along those lines but find it hard to speak along those lines. That’s what Deep Soul is for”
Godin was also important for trying to describe how these records could have a social context, like George Perkins civil rights anthem "Cryin’ In The Streets". It sounds like a New Orleans funeral march but is powerful and uplifting. As a white English writer in the 60’s he was also grappling with the fact that so many of these singers had come from church and Gospel backgrounds where they’d not only learnt to how to sing, but also learnt that sometimes you’ve got to put on a show, whether it’s for God or an audience.
The preaching, testifying Holy Roller style, where damnation or salvation were just an eyeball roll away, was a long way from 1960’s England and Sunday School religion. Everything in 1960’s UK was black, white and mono. Fact! And didn’t it just show in the lightweight music we produced?
It didn’t start to get interesting until British bands started to borrow, steal and cover Black American songs. Both The Beatles and Stones were frequent visitors to the Arthur Alexander and Smokey Robinson songbook. Then UK acts started to write their own songs, the boundaries became looser and English Pop music became as good as American.
Godin’s view is that Black American music (even when it’s Pop music aimed at teenagers...I think he means Motown, pre "What’s Going On") has always been grittier and had more adult themes. He argues that Deep Soul is less about sex but more about desire. It’s the desire that torments the singer (and of course for it to work , the audience has to believe that the singer is always singing about themselves…which goes back to the Gospel and acting argument.) and it’s that torment that comes out in the singers voice, that takes us out of ourselves. The Deep Soul moment that we can’t express for ourselves.
"Temptation’bout to Get Me" by The Knight Brothers from Volume 4 is a case in point. The singer has clear, high vocals, a bit like a rougher Smokey Robinson, and the backing is sparse and restrained. The man is in pain but it’s a beautiful sound
Because Godin’s series is based on a feeling, the actual Soul style, tempo and recording techniques used stretch from Rhythm and Blues to gospel, to country soul to lush 70’s productions. His focus on the performance means that great efforts were made to locate and include the original mono version of "Wish Somebody Would Care" by Irma Thomas rather than the re recorded stereo version. This actually matters. Fortunately the sound quality of Kent albums is always top notch, no matter where they get the original source material, unlike lots of other reissue labels that re-release recordings with the hi fi quality of a beer mat.
My favourite tracks are those that Swamp Dogg had a hand in such as Doris Allen’s "How Was I To Know You Cared" and "These Four Walls" by Irma Thomas. He was a really imaginative producer and songwriter whose lyrics often had a Country twist to them, which usually involved brackets.
They’re not on the Deep Soul series but I feel compelled to mention "Did I Come Back Too Soon (Or Did I Stay Away Too Long)" and "To The Other Woman (I’m The Other Woman)." They also involved great singers, really clever bass playing (Pops Popswell is a name to reckon with), funky Country Soul style guitar, sweeping strings and the kitchen sink.
If you’re only going to buy one of the series, I’d go for volume 3. You can buy the others next week.
Godin wrote for Blues and Soul magazine through the 60’s and was enormously influential in the developing UK soul scene, both as a journalist but also as joint owner of the labels Deep Soul and Soul City. He coined the phrases Northern Soul and Deep Soul. His Blues and Soul column always closed with the words “Keep the faith”…Northern Soul summed up in 3 words.
The Deep Soul Treasures series contains 100 tracks mainly recorded between1967 and 73 and while many of the artists may be little known outside Soul circles, there are tracks by Otis Redding, Gladys Knight, Smokey Robinson and Ben E King. There’s Irma Thomas’s "Time is on My Side" and Bessie Banks’s "Go Now" as covered by the Stones and Moody Blues respectively. Godin was looking mainly at the actual vocal performance and searching for an intensity. It may have been found in hit records, but more often than not it was to be found in the lesser known songs or artists.
In his sleeve notes he describes Deep Soul as “Music for grown ups…It puts into music, the deep and powerful emotional reservoirs that we are too bashful to voice in real life. We think along those lines but find it hard to speak along those lines. That’s what Deep Soul is for”
Godin was also important for trying to describe how these records could have a social context, like George Perkins civil rights anthem "Cryin’ In The Streets". It sounds like a New Orleans funeral march but is powerful and uplifting. As a white English writer in the 60’s he was also grappling with the fact that so many of these singers had come from church and Gospel backgrounds where they’d not only learnt to how to sing, but also learnt that sometimes you’ve got to put on a show, whether it’s for God or an audience.
The preaching, testifying Holy Roller style, where damnation or salvation were just an eyeball roll away, was a long way from 1960’s England and Sunday School religion. Everything in 1960’s UK was black, white and mono. Fact! And didn’t it just show in the lightweight music we produced?
It didn’t start to get interesting until British bands started to borrow, steal and cover Black American songs. Both The Beatles and Stones were frequent visitors to the Arthur Alexander and Smokey Robinson songbook. Then UK acts started to write their own songs, the boundaries became looser and English Pop music became as good as American.
Godin’s view is that Black American music (even when it’s Pop music aimed at teenagers...I think he means Motown, pre "What’s Going On") has always been grittier and had more adult themes. He argues that Deep Soul is less about sex but more about desire. It’s the desire that torments the singer (and of course for it to work , the audience has to believe that the singer is always singing about themselves…which goes back to the Gospel and acting argument.) and it’s that torment that comes out in the singers voice, that takes us out of ourselves. The Deep Soul moment that we can’t express for ourselves.
"Temptation’bout to Get Me" by The Knight Brothers from Volume 4 is a case in point. The singer has clear, high vocals, a bit like a rougher Smokey Robinson, and the backing is sparse and restrained. The man is in pain but it’s a beautiful sound
Because Godin’s series is based on a feeling, the actual Soul style, tempo and recording techniques used stretch from Rhythm and Blues to gospel, to country soul to lush 70’s productions. His focus on the performance means that great efforts were made to locate and include the original mono version of "Wish Somebody Would Care" by Irma Thomas rather than the re recorded stereo version. This actually matters. Fortunately the sound quality of Kent albums is always top notch, no matter where they get the original source material, unlike lots of other reissue labels that re-release recordings with the hi fi quality of a beer mat.
My favourite tracks are those that Swamp Dogg had a hand in such as Doris Allen’s "How Was I To Know You Cared" and "These Four Walls" by Irma Thomas. He was a really imaginative producer and songwriter whose lyrics often had a Country twist to them, which usually involved brackets.
They’re not on the Deep Soul series but I feel compelled to mention "Did I Come Back Too Soon (Or Did I Stay Away Too Long)" and "To The Other Woman (I’m The Other Woman)." They also involved great singers, really clever bass playing (Pops Popswell is a name to reckon with), funky Country Soul style guitar, sweeping strings and the kitchen sink.
If you’re only going to buy one of the series, I’d go for volume 3. You can buy the others next week.
Saturday, October 21, 2006
Sex Pistols/The Clash
So you’ve got to choose between debut albums by The Sex Pistols and The Clash. What’s it gonna be boy?
Sex Pistols gigs had been the early focus for Punk. Howard Devoto and Pete Shelley travelled to High Wycombe in 1976 to see an early gig, formed Buzzcocks, and then booked the Pistols for a gig at Manchester’s Free Trade Hall so they could support them as their first gig. Pretty much everyone in the audience would form a band that night…except for my friend Steve who became a building Surveyor.
Post primetime pottymouth Pistol swearing on the Bill Grundy show, the actions of venues, local councils and just general public hostility had made it impossible for the Sex Pistols to play in Britain. So they had become more of a media event with stunts like the Silver jubilee boat trip and the definitive Top Of The Pops appearance for Pretty Vacant in the summer of 77 where the band just looked brilliant, Rotten wearing a long sleeved Destroy shirt with ripped long sleeves, Steve Jones with a knotted handkerchief on his head.
The thing is you could actually see the Clash live, I never saw them in their prime but I would have loved to. The 3 figures of Strummer, Mick Jones and Paul Simonon ranged across the stage, were each absolutely identifiable, absolutely charismatic and for Pop History purposes, the only band that comes close in terms of their iconic appearance on stage is The Beatles mop tops and suits era footage. Strummer had become the ultimate frontman, his vocals were a righteous wind tunnel roar, he’d taken Elvis “shaky leg” twitch and turned it into a stage threatening stamp, all the while hammering a Telecaster that had obviously been very bad in a former life and was certainly going to get punished now. Wise choice. The Tele would be my top choice as a righteous instrument of rock, because it’s just stripped down to the barest necessities…it’s got the philosophy of the Dodge Charger, (American Muscle Car from the film Vanishing Point) which didn’t have hinges on the bonnet because they weren’t necessary and so were just added weight.
Glen Matlock had been involved in all the important Pistols songs. In fact the only ones written after he left were Bodies and Belsen Was A Gas. When Sid Vicious replaced Glen Matlock, both Clash and The Pistols had gone all Form over Function. Both struggled with the actual business of playing bass, but they both looked the part and wore their basses swinging low, on extra long straps, like The Ramones. Good move for non-musicians…put a bit of distance between yourself and the instrument. Henceforth known as Flashers Theory…if you can’t play it then wave it about.
Of course at the time, all the talk was about destroying rock n’ roll, (cue Clash 1977 and it’s “No Elvis, Beatles or The Rolling Stones”.) The difference between Rotten and Strummer was that Strummer was a fuel injected Elvis, Beatles and Rolling Stones…he couldn’t have existed without what had gone before, he was just better. Rotten on the other hand really wasn’t like any other singer. He radiated a glowering malevolence, Peter Cook snideyness but also pantomime villainy. John Walters explanation for why the Pistols were never offered a Peel session was that he used to be a teacher and when he saw the look in Rotten’s eyes he recognised the look of a boy who he would not trust with a pair of scissors in the art class… and Walters wasn’t going to trust him in the BBC studios either.
In terms of the Punk timeline the Pistols had formed first, but the Clash’s album came out in April 1977, six months ahead of Never Mind The Bollocks. The Clash sounds buzzy and tinny whereas the Pistols album has thickly layered guitars. In fact Problems sounds like a song that AC/DC could have written (one of their good ones obviously). The thing is despite Malcolm McLarens protestations, The Sex Pistols really could play. Steve Jones rhythm playing is not just Man-sized, it’s Yorkie Bar chunky. No Feelings has one of my favourite intros ever, it’s just Steve Jones battering a 5-chord progression. Paul Cooks drumming was always underrated , but it’s powerful and I’ve seen him described as one of “The Great British Bashers”…witness the flailing false ending in Bodies.
One of my (admittedly untested) theories is that the mastering of the original vinyl copies of Bollocks made it the loudest record I’d heard…certainly at 13 and certainly against the weedier recorded sounds of the first Clash album. For a long (and misguided ) period I also thought that Bollocks would date quicker as “just a great big Rock record” whereas The Clash would fare better over time because the sound wasn’t as obvious.
Of course the whole thing about Punk was the changes it unleashed in it’s audience and in the industry as a whole. One of the challenges for Punk acts was what to sing about. TV Smith of the Adverts saw love songs and cover versions as selling out, but as the Clash and Pistols albums were the 2 biggest and most important albums of the time, then what do the lyrics mean now?
Matlock summed up Rotten as “No feelings, No Fun, No Future, No Lip.” All songs or phrases associated with The Pistols…and all just a slightly bit negative. The Clash is a more of a soundtrack about a time and a location. In some ways it’s like early Who…these are songs about work (Career Opportunities, Janie Jones….contrast with the Pistols character in 17 “I don’t work I just Speed”), the weekend (48 Hours, Protex Blue), cars (Janie Jones “He's’ got a Ford Cortina that just won’t run without fuel….fill her up Jacko”) and about themselves (Garageland).
Mick Jones loved Mott The Hoople and The Clash is a rock n roll album, without the love songs, made by a Punk Rock group. Police and Thieves was seen as ground breaking because it was a white Punk band playing reggae, but would any of it have worked without the incendiary live performances and the overall feeling (engineered by The Clash’s management and gratefully accepted by everyone else) that this band were changing everything? The thing is though now it doesn’t matter…The Clash did change plenty of people who saw those early performances. They were the great Punk band that you could see live and then they did become a brilliant Rock ‘n’ roll act. With the addition of the master class drummer Topper Headon, they were big enough and capable enough to do anything they wanted to musically. And that would be London Calling
The Pistols imploded in January ’78 and Rotten’s final words at the last gig were “Ever had the feeling you’ve been cheated.” Rotten of course doesn’t see himself as the whiney negative voice of the undeserving pissed off…. of course not. But he doesn’t give any answers either. He described Bodies as being neither pro nor anti abortion…he was just asking the audience to think about it. Hmm. (Quentin Tarantino quotes from it in Reservoir Dogs as Tim Roth is dying in the post heist bloodbath. “Look at him he’s screaming…it’s a bloody fucking mess”)
Of course I love both albums, but if I had to have one it would be The Sex Pistols, for it’s sound and for the fact that there had never been any one like Rotten…of course he didn’t have any answers, but then why should he? He started it.
Sex Pistols gigs had been the early focus for Punk. Howard Devoto and Pete Shelley travelled to High Wycombe in 1976 to see an early gig, formed Buzzcocks, and then booked the Pistols for a gig at Manchester’s Free Trade Hall so they could support them as their first gig. Pretty much everyone in the audience would form a band that night…except for my friend Steve who became a building Surveyor.
Post primetime pottymouth Pistol swearing on the Bill Grundy show, the actions of venues, local councils and just general public hostility had made it impossible for the Sex Pistols to play in Britain. So they had become more of a media event with stunts like the Silver jubilee boat trip and the definitive Top Of The Pops appearance for Pretty Vacant in the summer of 77 where the band just looked brilliant, Rotten wearing a long sleeved Destroy shirt with ripped long sleeves, Steve Jones with a knotted handkerchief on his head.
The thing is you could actually see the Clash live, I never saw them in their prime but I would have loved to. The 3 figures of Strummer, Mick Jones and Paul Simonon ranged across the stage, were each absolutely identifiable, absolutely charismatic and for Pop History purposes, the only band that comes close in terms of their iconic appearance on stage is The Beatles mop tops and suits era footage. Strummer had become the ultimate frontman, his vocals were a righteous wind tunnel roar, he’d taken Elvis “shaky leg” twitch and turned it into a stage threatening stamp, all the while hammering a Telecaster that had obviously been very bad in a former life and was certainly going to get punished now. Wise choice. The Tele would be my top choice as a righteous instrument of rock, because it’s just stripped down to the barest necessities…it’s got the philosophy of the Dodge Charger, (American Muscle Car from the film Vanishing Point) which didn’t have hinges on the bonnet because they weren’t necessary and so were just added weight.
Glen Matlock had been involved in all the important Pistols songs. In fact the only ones written after he left were Bodies and Belsen Was A Gas. When Sid Vicious replaced Glen Matlock, both Clash and The Pistols had gone all Form over Function. Both struggled with the actual business of playing bass, but they both looked the part and wore their basses swinging low, on extra long straps, like The Ramones. Good move for non-musicians…put a bit of distance between yourself and the instrument. Henceforth known as Flashers Theory…if you can’t play it then wave it about.
Of course at the time, all the talk was about destroying rock n’ roll, (cue Clash 1977 and it’s “No Elvis, Beatles or The Rolling Stones”.) The difference between Rotten and Strummer was that Strummer was a fuel injected Elvis, Beatles and Rolling Stones…he couldn’t have existed without what had gone before, he was just better. Rotten on the other hand really wasn’t like any other singer. He radiated a glowering malevolence, Peter Cook snideyness but also pantomime villainy. John Walters explanation for why the Pistols were never offered a Peel session was that he used to be a teacher and when he saw the look in Rotten’s eyes he recognised the look of a boy who he would not trust with a pair of scissors in the art class… and Walters wasn’t going to trust him in the BBC studios either.
In terms of the Punk timeline the Pistols had formed first, but the Clash’s album came out in April 1977, six months ahead of Never Mind The Bollocks. The Clash sounds buzzy and tinny whereas the Pistols album has thickly layered guitars. In fact Problems sounds like a song that AC/DC could have written (one of their good ones obviously). The thing is despite Malcolm McLarens protestations, The Sex Pistols really could play. Steve Jones rhythm playing is not just Man-sized, it’s Yorkie Bar chunky. No Feelings has one of my favourite intros ever, it’s just Steve Jones battering a 5-chord progression. Paul Cooks drumming was always underrated , but it’s powerful and I’ve seen him described as one of “The Great British Bashers”…witness the flailing false ending in Bodies.
One of my (admittedly untested) theories is that the mastering of the original vinyl copies of Bollocks made it the loudest record I’d heard…certainly at 13 and certainly against the weedier recorded sounds of the first Clash album. For a long (and misguided ) period I also thought that Bollocks would date quicker as “just a great big Rock record” whereas The Clash would fare better over time because the sound wasn’t as obvious.
Of course the whole thing about Punk was the changes it unleashed in it’s audience and in the industry as a whole. One of the challenges for Punk acts was what to sing about. TV Smith of the Adverts saw love songs and cover versions as selling out, but as the Clash and Pistols albums were the 2 biggest and most important albums of the time, then what do the lyrics mean now?
Matlock summed up Rotten as “No feelings, No Fun, No Future, No Lip.” All songs or phrases associated with The Pistols…and all just a slightly bit negative. The Clash is a more of a soundtrack about a time and a location. In some ways it’s like early Who…these are songs about work (Career Opportunities, Janie Jones….contrast with the Pistols character in 17 “I don’t work I just Speed”), the weekend (48 Hours, Protex Blue), cars (Janie Jones “He's’ got a Ford Cortina that just won’t run without fuel….fill her up Jacko”) and about themselves (Garageland).
Mick Jones loved Mott The Hoople and The Clash is a rock n roll album, without the love songs, made by a Punk Rock group. Police and Thieves was seen as ground breaking because it was a white Punk band playing reggae, but would any of it have worked without the incendiary live performances and the overall feeling (engineered by The Clash’s management and gratefully accepted by everyone else) that this band were changing everything? The thing is though now it doesn’t matter…The Clash did change plenty of people who saw those early performances. They were the great Punk band that you could see live and then they did become a brilliant Rock ‘n’ roll act. With the addition of the master class drummer Topper Headon, they were big enough and capable enough to do anything they wanted to musically. And that would be London Calling
The Pistols imploded in January ’78 and Rotten’s final words at the last gig were “Ever had the feeling you’ve been cheated.” Rotten of course doesn’t see himself as the whiney negative voice of the undeserving pissed off…. of course not. But he doesn’t give any answers either. He described Bodies as being neither pro nor anti abortion…he was just asking the audience to think about it. Hmm. (Quentin Tarantino quotes from it in Reservoir Dogs as Tim Roth is dying in the post heist bloodbath. “Look at him he’s screaming…it’s a bloody fucking mess”)
Of course I love both albums, but if I had to have one it would be The Sex Pistols, for it’s sound and for the fact that there had never been any one like Rotten…of course he didn’t have any answers, but then why should he? He started it.
Sunday, October 15, 2006
John Peel
Some of this piece is taken from a posting from 2 years ago just after he died...but it still needs saying.
Most of the music that I like today can be traced back to teenage evenings spent listening to John Peel’s radio show and to the attitude that he brought to music. He didn’t over analyse it in musical terms, but looked for and played the music that interested and excited him and was preferably new…and preferably the B-side. And when there were records from his past or those that gave him an emotional response, then he’d tell the listener. Music is massively important and needs sharing, and people use it to reflect and make sense of their lives.
My musical education really started with his show. I was 13 in 1977 and I used to tape it on an old reel-to-reel tape, with a mic against the radio. I can remember hearing The Ramones Sheena is a Punk Rocker and the Clash Capitol Radio for the first time and also a Stranglers session that included Hanging Around. We’d talk about the records he’d played the night before on the bus going to school. My friends and I used to laugh when he played records at the wrong speed/wrong side or twice in a row. I stopped laughing eventually but he still did it.
When my rocking band, Onionhead, released Electric Ladland in 1990, I sent a copy to him with a chatty letter about the Gang of Four, Blue Orchids and The Fall. (In fact most of the letters I still write are about those 3 bands….much to the consternation of the BT and British Gas, who would rather I sent cash or cheques) Some time later I was summoned to the phone with the words “Sammy …it’s John Peel for you”. He’d phoned to say that he’d already got a copy of Ladland, didn’t think he liked it but he would listen to it again. Class. But the main reason for the call was to relay the information that the (superior) session versions of Fall songs that later turned up on Grotesque were not being released on Strange Fruit because Mark E Smith wasn’t happy with the recordings. Obviously it would have been better if Peel had said he loved our songs and wanted us to do a session, but I still thought the phone call was a measure of his all round greatness and proof that he was ultimately a music fan. He was a fan who knew some information that he thought another fan needed to know. It’s a beautiful thing played out on a daily basis in record shops, pubs, gigs and chatrooms.
A few days later he sent me a Peter Powell postcard (autographed by the Powellster) with the topical news that Sid James daughter had been one of the women on the cover of Hendrix’s original Electric Ladyland.
He also phoned my friend Nick before he was Onionhead manager, and was in fact a celeb-pestering schoolboy on a day trip to London. Nick and his mates found Peelie sheltering from the rain in Covent Garden and told him they were in a band and on the up. A year later Peel phoned Nick to check their progress. As there had been neither band nor progress they talked about football instead.
You had to love him for making the effort really. Apparently he kept all the numbers he was given. And he actually tried to listen to the tens of thousands of demos that he was sent, partly out of a sense of guilt, partly because this was what set him apart from other Radio 1 DJ’s (he particularly loathed Dave Lee Travis) but also in case he missed something.
There is a (no doubt apocryphal) story about him going to Dave Lee Travis’s house and after noting that there weren’t any records in the house DLT responded “But they attract dust”. Peel on the other hand had an extension built to for his records.
So many of the thing’s that he played ended up as being amongst my favourites, The Undertones, The Fall, and even though I thought I’d found Country Soul for myself, he played it too.
I liked his phrasing and descriptions too. “The John Peel Wing Ding” (not as rude as it sounds), “The Mighty Fall.” His love of Liverpool FC was so intense that he’d “Take in washing for the club.” He described taking Acid with Marc Bolan on a boat on the Serpentine as being something that he was glad he’d done but didn’t necessarily want to do again, “A bit like going to Stratford on Avon.” When Ride a White Swan reached number 1 Bolan phoned him to say “John…I’m Britain’s best selling poet”
Peel’s contribution had been to play awkward music and to challenge the listener. The Peel sessions especially in the years before cheap recording technology were often the only way many bands would get in the studio. Many of the session versions were actually better than the album versions as the limited studio time available meant that there was less time for indulgence. Sometimes it was just that the engineers knew the studios and equipment so well that they could get the basic sound right more quickly and then concentrate on getting the essence of the band. And then sometimes they just sounded better… like The Peel session versions of material that would later crop up on Siouxsie and The Banshees debut or The Smiths This Charming Man.
I grew up with his show and musically he shaped not only me, but 2 generations and he gave a natural home to music that was new, difficult, perverse and sometimes just excellent. For much of the time the BBC didn’t know what to do with him and although the 90’s saw some shuffling time slots, he was essentially left to get on with it. Thankfully.
The changing nature of the media, cheaper technology, the internet, more broadcasting time and more channels means that there is (on the face of it) more room for music and more room for unorthodox presenters. But it also means that there isn’t that central focus that The John Peel Show provided. A new band you saw could have had a string of Peel sessions but have had no records released. Yet you could still see them, read about them in the weekly music press and hear them on Peel. Music is now on the one hand more controlled and managed by the industry but also, outside of that world, it’s more fragmented. It’s simultaneously easier to get your stuff out….but harder to get enough people to hear it within a short time span. For music to capture the moment it needs that momentum.
We can all be bloggers and podcasters now. After all if you’ve got a PC, you can do it. It is the modern equivalent of the Punk commandment. “Here are 3 chords, now form a band.” Record your song, post it on the net. Like that one, well listen to this, like her My Space page well look at his. “Eeh, It used to be all Arctic Monkeys and Lilly Allen when I were a lad”
But even if the ways of getting to music are changing, there would still have been a place for Peel because he was proof that you could grow up and grow old with new music and still keep your own world view. We’ve all got our own personal Dave Lee Travis’s that we don’t want to turn into. Peel was one of the good guys and I miss the John Peel Show and I miss John Peel.
Most of the music that I like today can be traced back to teenage evenings spent listening to John Peel’s radio show and to the attitude that he brought to music. He didn’t over analyse it in musical terms, but looked for and played the music that interested and excited him and was preferably new…and preferably the B-side. And when there were records from his past or those that gave him an emotional response, then he’d tell the listener. Music is massively important and needs sharing, and people use it to reflect and make sense of their lives.
My musical education really started with his show. I was 13 in 1977 and I used to tape it on an old reel-to-reel tape, with a mic against the radio. I can remember hearing The Ramones Sheena is a Punk Rocker and the Clash Capitol Radio for the first time and also a Stranglers session that included Hanging Around. We’d talk about the records he’d played the night before on the bus going to school. My friends and I used to laugh when he played records at the wrong speed/wrong side or twice in a row. I stopped laughing eventually but he still did it.
When my rocking band, Onionhead, released Electric Ladland in 1990, I sent a copy to him with a chatty letter about the Gang of Four, Blue Orchids and The Fall. (In fact most of the letters I still write are about those 3 bands….much to the consternation of the BT and British Gas, who would rather I sent cash or cheques) Some time later I was summoned to the phone with the words “Sammy …it’s John Peel for you”. He’d phoned to say that he’d already got a copy of Ladland, didn’t think he liked it but he would listen to it again. Class. But the main reason for the call was to relay the information that the (superior) session versions of Fall songs that later turned up on Grotesque were not being released on Strange Fruit because Mark E Smith wasn’t happy with the recordings. Obviously it would have been better if Peel had said he loved our songs and wanted us to do a session, but I still thought the phone call was a measure of his all round greatness and proof that he was ultimately a music fan. He was a fan who knew some information that he thought another fan needed to know. It’s a beautiful thing played out on a daily basis in record shops, pubs, gigs and chatrooms.
A few days later he sent me a Peter Powell postcard (autographed by the Powellster) with the topical news that Sid James daughter had been one of the women on the cover of Hendrix’s original Electric Ladyland.
He also phoned my friend Nick before he was Onionhead manager, and was in fact a celeb-pestering schoolboy on a day trip to London. Nick and his mates found Peelie sheltering from the rain in Covent Garden and told him they were in a band and on the up. A year later Peel phoned Nick to check their progress. As there had been neither band nor progress they talked about football instead.
You had to love him for making the effort really. Apparently he kept all the numbers he was given. And he actually tried to listen to the tens of thousands of demos that he was sent, partly out of a sense of guilt, partly because this was what set him apart from other Radio 1 DJ’s (he particularly loathed Dave Lee Travis) but also in case he missed something.
There is a (no doubt apocryphal) story about him going to Dave Lee Travis’s house and after noting that there weren’t any records in the house DLT responded “But they attract dust”. Peel on the other hand had an extension built to for his records.
So many of the thing’s that he played ended up as being amongst my favourites, The Undertones, The Fall, and even though I thought I’d found Country Soul for myself, he played it too.
I liked his phrasing and descriptions too. “The John Peel Wing Ding” (not as rude as it sounds), “The Mighty Fall.” His love of Liverpool FC was so intense that he’d “Take in washing for the club.” He described taking Acid with Marc Bolan on a boat on the Serpentine as being something that he was glad he’d done but didn’t necessarily want to do again, “A bit like going to Stratford on Avon.” When Ride a White Swan reached number 1 Bolan phoned him to say “John…I’m Britain’s best selling poet”
Peel’s contribution had been to play awkward music and to challenge the listener. The Peel sessions especially in the years before cheap recording technology were often the only way many bands would get in the studio. Many of the session versions were actually better than the album versions as the limited studio time available meant that there was less time for indulgence. Sometimes it was just that the engineers knew the studios and equipment so well that they could get the basic sound right more quickly and then concentrate on getting the essence of the band. And then sometimes they just sounded better… like The Peel session versions of material that would later crop up on Siouxsie and The Banshees debut or The Smiths This Charming Man.
I grew up with his show and musically he shaped not only me, but 2 generations and he gave a natural home to music that was new, difficult, perverse and sometimes just excellent. For much of the time the BBC didn’t know what to do with him and although the 90’s saw some shuffling time slots, he was essentially left to get on with it. Thankfully.
The changing nature of the media, cheaper technology, the internet, more broadcasting time and more channels means that there is (on the face of it) more room for music and more room for unorthodox presenters. But it also means that there isn’t that central focus that The John Peel Show provided. A new band you saw could have had a string of Peel sessions but have had no records released. Yet you could still see them, read about them in the weekly music press and hear them on Peel. Music is now on the one hand more controlled and managed by the industry but also, outside of that world, it’s more fragmented. It’s simultaneously easier to get your stuff out….but harder to get enough people to hear it within a short time span. For music to capture the moment it needs that momentum.
We can all be bloggers and podcasters now. After all if you’ve got a PC, you can do it. It is the modern equivalent of the Punk commandment. “Here are 3 chords, now form a band.” Record your song, post it on the net. Like that one, well listen to this, like her My Space page well look at his. “Eeh, It used to be all Arctic Monkeys and Lilly Allen when I were a lad”
But even if the ways of getting to music are changing, there would still have been a place for Peel because he was proof that you could grow up and grow old with new music and still keep your own world view. We’ve all got our own personal Dave Lee Travis’s that we don’t want to turn into. Peel was one of the good guys and I miss the John Peel Show and I miss John Peel.
Saturday, October 07, 2006
Radiodread
It’s just a brilliant idea…and even better if it works. Take OK Computer, an album that’s consistently voted one of the best albums ever, much loved by Q readers and Radio 6 and then do a track by track reggae recreation of it….oh yes and call it…Radiodread. Absolute genius.
It’s the follow up to Dub Side Of The Moon where they gave the same treatment to Pink Floyd’s all conquering, impossibly grown up ground breaking, sound breaking (and I’m still never quite sure if I if I like it or not) album that defined the 70’s. It’s also quite fitting that they chose OK Computer because Radiohead are so often compared to Pink Floyd
Easy Star All Stars is an excellent name, and reminds me of the Ben Stiller film Dodgeball where the “sport’s” governing body was called the ADDA. American Dodgeball Association of America.
The big question is does it work? After all we’ve been here before with Dread Zeppelin (early 90’s American band who played reggae versions of Led Zep songs, fronted by bloaty 70’s Vegas era Elvis look-alike). Admit it, you wish you’d thought of that one, but how often do you play their records?
Radiodread does work really well though, they’ve used a range of guest vocalists including Horace Andy (who’s worked with Massive Attack) Frankie Paul and Toots and the Maytals. The original OK Computer is a dark, complex record with layers of guitar and swirling treated sounds. The lyrical themes are disconnection, bewilderment and aliens (obviously) so the immediate challenge is how to make that work, using a reggae template. Dub trickery can get the some of the elements of confusion and horns are used to replace guitar lines, but the band deliberately don’t over use the guitar and bass styles normally associated with 70’s reggae. There is less guitar chopping on the offbeat and the bass is often more of a rumble. This moves the sound closer to the creeping, crawling sound of Massive Attack.
The best track is Lucky. The vocals are by 80’s reggae legend Frankie Paul and the intro manages to capture both the sound of the original recording in full flight but also manages to sound like classic 70’s reggae. In some ways it reminds me of Dr Alimantado’s Born For A Purpose. Which is a good thing.
At the end of Lucky the bass goes into the flabby metallic sound that Scientist used on all those Greensleeves albums of the 70’s 80’s…Scientist meets the Space Invaders/Encounters Pac Man/Rids the world of the curse of the evil vampires/Wins the world cup…hmm I sense a theme here. Most of them sound the same. Fortunately the same is actually good.
There a fantastic sound on An Airbag Saved My Dub which just made me sit up until I’d worked out how they’d done it…a backwards cymbal. Honestly it’s better than it sounds! Backwards guitar sounds crop up regularly from the Beatles onwards where basically the guitar has been taped and then the tape reversed, so that it goes loud to quiet with a kind of sucking sound. So, that’s been possible for 40 year. But it takes modern technology to isolate a cymbal from the drum track and then apply the same trick to just the cymbal. Obviously it couldn’t be done on the 70’s dub tracks that Easy Star All Stars had learnt their trade from. It’s an example of where the dub version of OK Computer is as innovative as the original.
In Paranoid Android the joyously, mentalised guitar is replaced by brass and it ends up sounding like The Specials, which is another time when contemporary white rock (obviously in the late 70’s that would have been Punk) met Reggae/Ska.
I think The Radiodread album works really and keeps the spirit of both the reggae tradition and the Radiohead album itself. Even if it didn’t though, Reggae Music has never had a problem with novelty and .often the quality control has been appalling too. There have been too many nasty lightweight lovers rock covers of soul and country songs. Maybe the root of this is in the fact that certainly before the era of cheap technology the industry was controlled by a handful of studio owners who also released the records. There were no exclusive long-term contracts or career development. The singer would be paid for each recording session (if at all), they would use the in house band and move on to the next studio. To keep up the interest and the willingness of the studios to pay, then you’d need hits or gimmicks…and either would do. When you think of the small size of Jamaica and the small number of people involved it is amazing to think just how much was achieved, using very basic equipment. Here’s a thought. What would it taken for Reggae to have become the dominant global musical force that Rap is today?
Jamaican music evolved through Ska, Rock Steady, the vocal trios (where reggae met soul/doo wop which was the beginnings of Bob Marley) through to dub and the digital sounds of the 80’s and Dancehall. Everyone needed a new sound and so the music continually developed. I didn’t like the sound of the 80’s reggae and lost interest really. Some music is written to sound right in a specific environment or location and if you’re not there then it just doesn’t work. I wasn’t actually spending my nights in a Kingston.Dancehall. I never got House Music for the same reason. Music is like footwear, sometimes you’re in boots when you’d rather be in slippers and sometimes you just don’t see the need to go through the musical pain barrier to see why people like something. Which is just one of the reasons why I don’t wear stilettos.
It’s the follow up to Dub Side Of The Moon where they gave the same treatment to Pink Floyd’s all conquering, impossibly grown up ground breaking, sound breaking (and I’m still never quite sure if I if I like it or not) album that defined the 70’s. It’s also quite fitting that they chose OK Computer because Radiohead are so often compared to Pink Floyd
Easy Star All Stars is an excellent name, and reminds me of the Ben Stiller film Dodgeball where the “sport’s” governing body was called the ADDA. American Dodgeball Association of America.
The big question is does it work? After all we’ve been here before with Dread Zeppelin (early 90’s American band who played reggae versions of Led Zep songs, fronted by bloaty 70’s Vegas era Elvis look-alike). Admit it, you wish you’d thought of that one, but how often do you play their records?
Radiodread does work really well though, they’ve used a range of guest vocalists including Horace Andy (who’s worked with Massive Attack) Frankie Paul and Toots and the Maytals. The original OK Computer is a dark, complex record with layers of guitar and swirling treated sounds. The lyrical themes are disconnection, bewilderment and aliens (obviously) so the immediate challenge is how to make that work, using a reggae template. Dub trickery can get the some of the elements of confusion and horns are used to replace guitar lines, but the band deliberately don’t over use the guitar and bass styles normally associated with 70’s reggae. There is less guitar chopping on the offbeat and the bass is often more of a rumble. This moves the sound closer to the creeping, crawling sound of Massive Attack.
The best track is Lucky. The vocals are by 80’s reggae legend Frankie Paul and the intro manages to capture both the sound of the original recording in full flight but also manages to sound like classic 70’s reggae. In some ways it reminds me of Dr Alimantado’s Born For A Purpose. Which is a good thing.
At the end of Lucky the bass goes into the flabby metallic sound that Scientist used on all those Greensleeves albums of the 70’s 80’s…Scientist meets the Space Invaders/Encounters Pac Man/Rids the world of the curse of the evil vampires/Wins the world cup…hmm I sense a theme here. Most of them sound the same. Fortunately the same is actually good.
There a fantastic sound on An Airbag Saved My Dub which just made me sit up until I’d worked out how they’d done it…a backwards cymbal. Honestly it’s better than it sounds! Backwards guitar sounds crop up regularly from the Beatles onwards where basically the guitar has been taped and then the tape reversed, so that it goes loud to quiet with a kind of sucking sound. So, that’s been possible for 40 year. But it takes modern technology to isolate a cymbal from the drum track and then apply the same trick to just the cymbal. Obviously it couldn’t be done on the 70’s dub tracks that Easy Star All Stars had learnt their trade from. It’s an example of where the dub version of OK Computer is as innovative as the original.
In Paranoid Android the joyously, mentalised guitar is replaced by brass and it ends up sounding like The Specials, which is another time when contemporary white rock (obviously in the late 70’s that would have been Punk) met Reggae/Ska.
I think The Radiodread album works really and keeps the spirit of both the reggae tradition and the Radiohead album itself. Even if it didn’t though, Reggae Music has never had a problem with novelty and .often the quality control has been appalling too. There have been too many nasty lightweight lovers rock covers of soul and country songs. Maybe the root of this is in the fact that certainly before the era of cheap technology the industry was controlled by a handful of studio owners who also released the records. There were no exclusive long-term contracts or career development. The singer would be paid for each recording session (if at all), they would use the in house band and move on to the next studio. To keep up the interest and the willingness of the studios to pay, then you’d need hits or gimmicks…and either would do. When you think of the small size of Jamaica and the small number of people involved it is amazing to think just how much was achieved, using very basic equipment. Here’s a thought. What would it taken for Reggae to have become the dominant global musical force that Rap is today?
Jamaican music evolved through Ska, Rock Steady, the vocal trios (where reggae met soul/doo wop which was the beginnings of Bob Marley) through to dub and the digital sounds of the 80’s and Dancehall. Everyone needed a new sound and so the music continually developed. I didn’t like the sound of the 80’s reggae and lost interest really. Some music is written to sound right in a specific environment or location and if you’re not there then it just doesn’t work. I wasn’t actually spending my nights in a Kingston.Dancehall. I never got House Music for the same reason. Music is like footwear, sometimes you’re in boots when you’d rather be in slippers and sometimes you just don’t see the need to go through the musical pain barrier to see why people like something. Which is just one of the reasons why I don’t wear stilettos.
The Zutons/Wreckless Eric
The Zutons name conjures up an image of 50's sci fi, but the band are actually closer to Scooby Doo as they play scampering eager to please pop featuring songs about Thelma and Daphne…er actually Stacy and Valerie, but you get the idea. The band look suitably cartoony. They've got a big haired bassist, some good comedy beard work from the drummer and their very own Daphne. Sax kitten Abi. Short on skirt long on saxophone.
Their first album Who killed the Zutons, sounds like a collection of Pop songs set to an imaginary B movie soundtrack where the song titles like Havana Gang Brawl, Dirty Dance Hall and Moons And Horror Shows illustrate what the band were going for.
It's got odd chants and gear changes and was more in keeping with the Scallydelic sound of the likes of The Coral. Sea shanties ahoy! (There was a time when Liverpool bands seemed to be more influenced by the likes of Beefheart and Zappa rather than their traditional first stop influences of Beatles and Love. The band name that best sums up that era is….The Wizards of Twiddly. I've never heard them, but I think I know what they sound like. You probably do too.)
The Zutons second album, Tired Of Hanging Around is a more straightforward poppy affair though. The sax lines in particular sound more imaginative and less like an enthusiastic parping Scrappy Doo. There's also been much more attention paid to the backing vocals, but it's subtly done. It's not Queen.
Singer Dave McCabe's voice has the right amount of innocence and yearning, which you need in big eyed pop music. The musicianship is really good too, with lots of space between guitar bass and drums. The drums have a good natural sound. It actually does sound like a decent drummer is in a room playing drums really well. Hmm revolutionary concept. Just drums. No added tweakery. Sound Engineers have had decades to build up the expertise and techniques to do it….So why would a band want to have a drums sounding like anything else? They are righteous instruments of rock. They just need hitting. That's it. Nothing else.
Valerie is a terrific pop song. I'm fairly sure that the line about "I miss your ginger hair and the way you used to dress" isn't addressed to Mick Hucknall.
Oh Stacey (Look what you've done) is tale of a girl drinking her inheritance. "She should have kept her head and got of bed more in the mornings…Now she drinks away the will and she's not proud of it"
The girls names the band sing about do come from a different generation, and it's this and the sax that keep reminding me of Wreckless Eric. From the Zutons Scooby Doo gang to the Pub/Punk eccentric who got away.
There was always something of the pub about Stiff…all day drinking and crumpled clothes with mystery stains. Of the original Stiff signings Wreckless Eric had the unenviable distinction of being less successful than Elvis Costello and Ian Dury but he might have nosed ahead of Jona Lewie had it not been for the small matter of Jona Lewie having the Christmas single in Stop The Cavalry.
Wreckless Eric's first and most famous single was Whole Wide World and it's been covered by Black and The Monkees amongst many others. (The ultimate Wreckless Eric cover version though has to be Sir Cliff of Richard who did Broken Doll)
Whole Wide World has got all Wreckless Eric's trademarks…cracked vocals, scratchy rhythm guitar honking sax and it's got geography. "When I was a young boy my mother said to me there's only one girl in the world for you and she probably lives in Tahiti"
My well loved copy of his debut album is in the 10 inch compressed buffalo dung coloured vinyl format. (As all records should be) It's actually easier on the eye than the cover itself…. Wreckless E in matching leopard skin suit joyfully walloping a Rickenbacker. Short pissed Pubrocker in animal print…Form a queue, girls!
Reconnez Cherie has got a terrific opening line and then moves from lust to the imagined life of the artist selling his paintings in Paris.
"On a convenient seat by the lavatories beneath the sodium glare,
We used to wait for our bus in a passionate clutch and go as far as we dared."
He also manages to rhyme "Night in my Zodiac" with "Pac a mac."
His songs are often about the outsider in a shabby small town…maybe there was still rationing in his 1970's seaside town. There is something comical about him but his songs were really good, great tunes and clever, funny lyrics. In the 80's he signed to Go Discs, (home of Billy Bragg and The Housemartins, which proves my point really) as The Captains of Industry
If the Temptations I Wish It Would Rain has the claustrophobic, humidity of New York in the summer (think of the scenes in Spike Lees Do The Right Thing) then Wreckless Eric's song of the same name, keeps the title but makes his song feel English. The claustrophobia is from The Small Town and The Girl. The weather's still hot though. It's also got a great twangy guitar.
His alcoholic 1980's are behind him, he's still playing and he's published an autobiography, A Dysfunctional Success. As befits a great English eccentric and misplaced national treasure, he's spent most of the last 20 years in France.
Their first album Who killed the Zutons, sounds like a collection of Pop songs set to an imaginary B movie soundtrack where the song titles like Havana Gang Brawl, Dirty Dance Hall and Moons And Horror Shows illustrate what the band were going for.
It's got odd chants and gear changes and was more in keeping with the Scallydelic sound of the likes of The Coral. Sea shanties ahoy! (There was a time when Liverpool bands seemed to be more influenced by the likes of Beefheart and Zappa rather than their traditional first stop influences of Beatles and Love. The band name that best sums up that era is….The Wizards of Twiddly. I've never heard them, but I think I know what they sound like. You probably do too.)
The Zutons second album, Tired Of Hanging Around is a more straightforward poppy affair though. The sax lines in particular sound more imaginative and less like an enthusiastic parping Scrappy Doo. There's also been much more attention paid to the backing vocals, but it's subtly done. It's not Queen.
Singer Dave McCabe's voice has the right amount of innocence and yearning, which you need in big eyed pop music. The musicianship is really good too, with lots of space between guitar bass and drums. The drums have a good natural sound. It actually does sound like a decent drummer is in a room playing drums really well. Hmm revolutionary concept. Just drums. No added tweakery. Sound Engineers have had decades to build up the expertise and techniques to do it….So why would a band want to have a drums sounding like anything else? They are righteous instruments of rock. They just need hitting. That's it. Nothing else.
Valerie is a terrific pop song. I'm fairly sure that the line about "I miss your ginger hair and the way you used to dress" isn't addressed to Mick Hucknall.
Oh Stacey (Look what you've done) is tale of a girl drinking her inheritance. "She should have kept her head and got of bed more in the mornings…Now she drinks away the will and she's not proud of it"
The girls names the band sing about do come from a different generation, and it's this and the sax that keep reminding me of Wreckless Eric. From the Zutons Scooby Doo gang to the Pub/Punk eccentric who got away.
There was always something of the pub about Stiff…all day drinking and crumpled clothes with mystery stains. Of the original Stiff signings Wreckless Eric had the unenviable distinction of being less successful than Elvis Costello and Ian Dury but he might have nosed ahead of Jona Lewie had it not been for the small matter of Jona Lewie having the Christmas single in Stop The Cavalry.
Wreckless Eric's first and most famous single was Whole Wide World and it's been covered by Black and The Monkees amongst many others. (The ultimate Wreckless Eric cover version though has to be Sir Cliff of Richard who did Broken Doll)
Whole Wide World has got all Wreckless Eric's trademarks…cracked vocals, scratchy rhythm guitar honking sax and it's got geography. "When I was a young boy my mother said to me there's only one girl in the world for you and she probably lives in Tahiti"
My well loved copy of his debut album is in the 10 inch compressed buffalo dung coloured vinyl format. (As all records should be) It's actually easier on the eye than the cover itself…. Wreckless E in matching leopard skin suit joyfully walloping a Rickenbacker. Short pissed Pubrocker in animal print…Form a queue, girls!
Reconnez Cherie has got a terrific opening line and then moves from lust to the imagined life of the artist selling his paintings in Paris.
"On a convenient seat by the lavatories beneath the sodium glare,
We used to wait for our bus in a passionate clutch and go as far as we dared."
He also manages to rhyme "Night in my Zodiac" with "Pac a mac."
His songs are often about the outsider in a shabby small town…maybe there was still rationing in his 1970's seaside town. There is something comical about him but his songs were really good, great tunes and clever, funny lyrics. In the 80's he signed to Go Discs, (home of Billy Bragg and The Housemartins, which proves my point really) as The Captains of Industry
If the Temptations I Wish It Would Rain has the claustrophobic, humidity of New York in the summer (think of the scenes in Spike Lees Do The Right Thing) then Wreckless Eric's song of the same name, keeps the title but makes his song feel English. The claustrophobia is from The Small Town and The Girl. The weather's still hot though. It's also got a great twangy guitar.
His alcoholic 1980's are behind him, he's still playing and he's published an autobiography, A Dysfunctional Success. As befits a great English eccentric and misplaced national treasure, he's spent most of the last 20 years in France.
Monday, September 25, 2006
Brian Eno
The sum of all human knowledge can be reduced to 2 unshakeable facts. Rod Stewart likes blondes and the first 2 Roxy Music albums are miles better than anything else they've done since. Scientists and divorce lawyers may have been researching the Rod question for years but I think the Roxy conundrum is simply due to the presence (and then absence) of Brian Eno.
The first Roxy Music lp is a very strange affair, with a song about Casablanca (2HB as in To Humperty Bograt) and Chance Meeting, which has the guitar sound from hell, which was always used on sitcom Butterflies to announce the fact that a teenage bedroom door had opened. Here was a band that thought (quite correctly, but also uniquely) that the oboe was an instrument of RAWK. The band looked the part too, part Glam Rock, part crooner, part futuristic Teddy Boy, not to mention Phil Manzanera's star shaped spangle specs and then this straggly haired, egg headed man-lizard Brain Eno making wibbly noises with keyboards and oscillators the size of a telephone exchange.
The second lp For Your Pleasure doesn't cross as many musical styles as the first one, but it does have Do The Strand (and you cannot beat songs about dance crazes…especially if they're imaginary dance crazes) and In Every Dream Home A Heartache. You also can't beat a song about isolation, luxury ("Bungalow Ranch Style") and a blow up doll. "I blew up your body, but you blew my mind."
After leaving Roxy Music, Eno made 4 bonkers pop albums. Here Come The Warm Jets, Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy, Another Green World and Before And After Science.
Here Come The Warm Jets has got song titles like The Paw Paw Negro Blowtorch and Needle In The Camels Eye to confuse and confound the pop pickers. It's also got Baby's On Fire, which Eno sings in an exaggerated, vowel torturing style, supposedly in bitter tribute to Bryan Ferry's vocal attributes. When Mark Riley acrimoniously left The Fall he used to cover Baby's On Fire with possibly similar snidey motives. Mark E Smith used to repay the favour though with a Bo Diddley style song called Hey Mark Riley (which went something along the lines of "Saw Mark Riley by the window sill, listen to your words it's A New Face In Hell"). I once saw Mark Riley and The Creepers try to play this as their own impromptu encore. I still treasure the look of horror on the bass player's face as he tried to play a Bo Diddley beat, obviously for the first time and obviously without having even heard it before in his life.
My favourite Eno album is Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy. It's the impeccably played but ramshackle quality of the arrangements that I really like. The song titles are fantastic cut-up nonsense. My evidence for the prosecution includes Burning Airlines Give You So Much More, Mother Whale Eyeless and Put a Straw Under Baby. The vocal style is sly camp. The songs break all the rules. of Pop, but still sound warm and involving and indeed you do want to get involved. You want to hear the stories from this other world, even though you're only catching snippets that maybe you'll never understand. Back In Judy's Jungle has treated guitars, rattley drums and a one-note bass with lots of space. It sounds like an Oompah band about to fall over.
The guitar playing throughout is fantastic with scratchy, rattley rhythm playing. I've a horrible feeling the excellent drumming (It's not just loose, it's positively floppy) may be down to Phil Collins. If it is YOU'RE STILL NOT FORGIVEN.
I love the bass playing on Third Uncle. It starts with 1 bass note that gradually gets echoed as the manic scratch rhythm and clattering percussion take over. There's an 8 note bass run that seems to come out of nowhere and goes straight back there. He only does it twice but to my (bass player's) ears it just seems to crank up the song far more than seems possible. And then there's the one note again …but dropped down lower and flatter. And the only vocal line that stands out is "I thought it was you."….And then Bauhaus went and covered it.
Put A Straw Under Baby has an impossibly woozy feel, with scraped, discordant string arrangements (Vic Chestnutt or even Junco Pardner from Sandinista). In many ways it's like a nursery rhyme or one very scary lullaby.
The Before And After Science album has Kings Lead Hat (yes it's an anagram of Talking Heads and yes he produced More Songs About Buildings And Food, Fear Of Music and Remain In Light). He was involved with Bowies three Berlin era albums Low Heroes and Lodger. The instrumentals on the second side of Low in particular show Eno's stamp.
He created space around U2 after Steve Lillywhite's big messy rock sounding second lp (and I do like to leave a lot of space around U2.) and he rescued James who were floundering after the power and seat of the pants feel of their live shows failed to make it onto vinyl. They turned into something different though….but that different thing was still interesting because of Eno. The ambient albums like Music for Airports and Music For Films shone a light on the work of people like Harold Budd and the collaboration with David Byrne on 1981's My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts is arguably the first album where the vocals are completely based on samples.
Much is made of Eno's legendary non-musician status and call me sceptical but I bet he's picked up a few tricks over the years. Fortunately he just keeps cropping up, a kind of Zelig figure who makes the people around him more interesting
The first Roxy Music lp is a very strange affair, with a song about Casablanca (2HB as in To Humperty Bograt) and Chance Meeting, which has the guitar sound from hell, which was always used on sitcom Butterflies to announce the fact that a teenage bedroom door had opened. Here was a band that thought (quite correctly, but also uniquely) that the oboe was an instrument of RAWK. The band looked the part too, part Glam Rock, part crooner, part futuristic Teddy Boy, not to mention Phil Manzanera's star shaped spangle specs and then this straggly haired, egg headed man-lizard Brain Eno making wibbly noises with keyboards and oscillators the size of a telephone exchange.
The second lp For Your Pleasure doesn't cross as many musical styles as the first one, but it does have Do The Strand (and you cannot beat songs about dance crazes…especially if they're imaginary dance crazes) and In Every Dream Home A Heartache. You also can't beat a song about isolation, luxury ("Bungalow Ranch Style") and a blow up doll. "I blew up your body, but you blew my mind."
After leaving Roxy Music, Eno made 4 bonkers pop albums. Here Come The Warm Jets, Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy, Another Green World and Before And After Science.
Here Come The Warm Jets has got song titles like The Paw Paw Negro Blowtorch and Needle In The Camels Eye to confuse and confound the pop pickers. It's also got Baby's On Fire, which Eno sings in an exaggerated, vowel torturing style, supposedly in bitter tribute to Bryan Ferry's vocal attributes. When Mark Riley acrimoniously left The Fall he used to cover Baby's On Fire with possibly similar snidey motives. Mark E Smith used to repay the favour though with a Bo Diddley style song called Hey Mark Riley (which went something along the lines of "Saw Mark Riley by the window sill, listen to your words it's A New Face In Hell"). I once saw Mark Riley and The Creepers try to play this as their own impromptu encore. I still treasure the look of horror on the bass player's face as he tried to play a Bo Diddley beat, obviously for the first time and obviously without having even heard it before in his life.
My favourite Eno album is Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy. It's the impeccably played but ramshackle quality of the arrangements that I really like. The song titles are fantastic cut-up nonsense. My evidence for the prosecution includes Burning Airlines Give You So Much More, Mother Whale Eyeless and Put a Straw Under Baby. The vocal style is sly camp. The songs break all the rules. of Pop, but still sound warm and involving and indeed you do want to get involved. You want to hear the stories from this other world, even though you're only catching snippets that maybe you'll never understand. Back In Judy's Jungle has treated guitars, rattley drums and a one-note bass with lots of space. It sounds like an Oompah band about to fall over.
The guitar playing throughout is fantastic with scratchy, rattley rhythm playing. I've a horrible feeling the excellent drumming (It's not just loose, it's positively floppy) may be down to Phil Collins. If it is YOU'RE STILL NOT FORGIVEN.
I love the bass playing on Third Uncle. It starts with 1 bass note that gradually gets echoed as the manic scratch rhythm and clattering percussion take over. There's an 8 note bass run that seems to come out of nowhere and goes straight back there. He only does it twice but to my (bass player's) ears it just seems to crank up the song far more than seems possible. And then there's the one note again …but dropped down lower and flatter. And the only vocal line that stands out is "I thought it was you."….And then Bauhaus went and covered it.
Put A Straw Under Baby has an impossibly woozy feel, with scraped, discordant string arrangements (Vic Chestnutt or even Junco Pardner from Sandinista). In many ways it's like a nursery rhyme or one very scary lullaby.
The Before And After Science album has Kings Lead Hat (yes it's an anagram of Talking Heads and yes he produced More Songs About Buildings And Food, Fear Of Music and Remain In Light). He was involved with Bowies three Berlin era albums Low Heroes and Lodger. The instrumentals on the second side of Low in particular show Eno's stamp.
He created space around U2 after Steve Lillywhite's big messy rock sounding second lp (and I do like to leave a lot of space around U2.) and he rescued James who were floundering after the power and seat of the pants feel of their live shows failed to make it onto vinyl. They turned into something different though….but that different thing was still interesting because of Eno. The ambient albums like Music for Airports and Music For Films shone a light on the work of people like Harold Budd and the collaboration with David Byrne on 1981's My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts is arguably the first album where the vocals are completely based on samples.
Much is made of Eno's legendary non-musician status and call me sceptical but I bet he's picked up a few tricks over the years. Fortunately he just keeps cropping up, a kind of Zelig figure who makes the people around him more interesting
Friday, September 15, 2006
Songs about shoplifting
Despite shopliftings popularity (but it's not legal yet Kids) I can only think of 3 songs about it…..and one of them is not The Smiths Shoplifters Of The World Unite. The Slits, Jane's Addiction and Madness definitely deliver the stolen goods though.
Shoplifting by The Slits has the great opening line.
"Put the cheddar in the pocket
Put the rest under the jacket
Talk to the cashier, he won't suspect
And if he does...
Do a runner!"
Punk Rock and cheese theft. The Slits were a fantastic group, who just sound even better when you write it all down. Ari Up is the patois speaking German stepdaughter of John Lydon and started The Slits aged fourteen with Viv Alberteen and Spanish drummer Palmolive. They were one of the first all girl bands who played their own instruments and wrote their own songs without a behind the scenes Svengali. They toured with The Clash, recorded 2 classic John Peel sessions despite the fact that they couldn't tune their own guitars and learnt to play well enough to make the staggeringly good album Cut in 1979 (and you do know the sleeve. They're topless, loin clothed and covered in mud). Budgie, later to be in Siouxsie and the Banshees became the new drummer and they recorded I Heard It Through The Grapevine. Their version of is arguably (but not by me, I'm definite about it) the best cover version ever. And that was released as a B side. That's the way to do it. The second lp The Return of The Giant Slits was a bewildering and difficult mix of styles and was a precursor to more widespread interest in World Music. They also covered John Holt's Man Next Door which Massive Attack would do 20 years later.
Cut still sounds great today. By the time they recorded it they'd kept the whooping, screeching call and response vocals but thanks to Punk's adoption of Reggae they'd learnt new tricks and approaches to the sound. The drums are mixed high and sound skippy and rattley with a lovely light touch to his playing. I think he made up for that though in the Banshees though with Timpani drums and Gongs. They're still obviously the same songs from those early Peel sessions but now the guitars scratch rather than buzz, leaving great big spaces. It's a clever, original sound. On Shoplifting there is contradiction of Ari moving from English sweary phrasing to adopted Rastafarian.
"Ten quid for the lot
We pay fuck all
Babylonian won't lose much
And we'll have dinner tonight"
Then it's into the utter girly joyousness of them all belting out the chorus. And what a chorus. In a song about shoplifting, you can't beat "Do a Runner Do a runner". As the song careers out of control you can hear a stoned, giggled "I've pissed in my knickers"
I do have a couple of pop theories. One of which has Madness as the musical version of Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads. Underneath the jolly videos there is a real sense of melancholy, nostalgia and loss. Suggs vocals are clipped but precise, emotional but economical and his speaking voice is a source of wonder to me (although with all his commercials it's more of a source of wonga)
Deceives The Eye is a really good song about moderately successful shoplifting that was hidden on the Work, Rest and Play ep in 1980.
"In the earliest days of my shoplifting career
You could safely say I was filled with fear
It was nail biting work from the very start
But several quick successes soon gave me heart
After a while I could pick or nick or steal
Some shirts some trousers and a few lps"
There's nothing subtle about Jane's Addiction approach in Been Caught Stealing. It's a bullet hard rock record where the power comes from the bass and drums rather than the guitar. Their approach to shoplifting isn't subtle either.
"When I want something
I don't want to pay for it
I walk right through the door
Walk right through the door"
It's also got barking dogs revving motorcycles and vocals that sing along to the guitar solo. Nothing over the top then. You can almost hear the pride in Perry Farrell's high, slightly whiney voice as he sings.
"My girl, she's one too
She'll go and get her a shirt
Stick it under her skirt
She grabbed a razor for me
And she did it just like that"
It's love then. I think I first heard it at a wedding, sadly not as the bride and grooms first dance.
Shoplifting by The Slits has the great opening line.
"Put the cheddar in the pocket
Put the rest under the jacket
Talk to the cashier, he won't suspect
And if he does...
Do a runner!"
Punk Rock and cheese theft. The Slits were a fantastic group, who just sound even better when you write it all down. Ari Up is the patois speaking German stepdaughter of John Lydon and started The Slits aged fourteen with Viv Alberteen and Spanish drummer Palmolive. They were one of the first all girl bands who played their own instruments and wrote their own songs without a behind the scenes Svengali. They toured with The Clash, recorded 2 classic John Peel sessions despite the fact that they couldn't tune their own guitars and learnt to play well enough to make the staggeringly good album Cut in 1979 (and you do know the sleeve. They're topless, loin clothed and covered in mud). Budgie, later to be in Siouxsie and the Banshees became the new drummer and they recorded I Heard It Through The Grapevine. Their version of is arguably (but not by me, I'm definite about it) the best cover version ever. And that was released as a B side. That's the way to do it. The second lp The Return of The Giant Slits was a bewildering and difficult mix of styles and was a precursor to more widespread interest in World Music. They also covered John Holt's Man Next Door which Massive Attack would do 20 years later.
Cut still sounds great today. By the time they recorded it they'd kept the whooping, screeching call and response vocals but thanks to Punk's adoption of Reggae they'd learnt new tricks and approaches to the sound. The drums are mixed high and sound skippy and rattley with a lovely light touch to his playing. I think he made up for that though in the Banshees though with Timpani drums and Gongs. They're still obviously the same songs from those early Peel sessions but now the guitars scratch rather than buzz, leaving great big spaces. It's a clever, original sound. On Shoplifting there is contradiction of Ari moving from English sweary phrasing to adopted Rastafarian.
"Ten quid for the lot
We pay fuck all
Babylonian won't lose much
And we'll have dinner tonight"
Then it's into the utter girly joyousness of them all belting out the chorus. And what a chorus. In a song about shoplifting, you can't beat "Do a Runner Do a runner". As the song careers out of control you can hear a stoned, giggled "I've pissed in my knickers"
I do have a couple of pop theories. One of which has Madness as the musical version of Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads. Underneath the jolly videos there is a real sense of melancholy, nostalgia and loss. Suggs vocals are clipped but precise, emotional but economical and his speaking voice is a source of wonder to me (although with all his commercials it's more of a source of wonga)
Deceives The Eye is a really good song about moderately successful shoplifting that was hidden on the Work, Rest and Play ep in 1980.
"In the earliest days of my shoplifting career
You could safely say I was filled with fear
It was nail biting work from the very start
But several quick successes soon gave me heart
After a while I could pick or nick or steal
Some shirts some trousers and a few lps"
There's nothing subtle about Jane's Addiction approach in Been Caught Stealing. It's a bullet hard rock record where the power comes from the bass and drums rather than the guitar. Their approach to shoplifting isn't subtle either.
"When I want something
I don't want to pay for it
I walk right through the door
Walk right through the door"
It's also got barking dogs revving motorcycles and vocals that sing along to the guitar solo. Nothing over the top then. You can almost hear the pride in Perry Farrell's high, slightly whiney voice as he sings.
"My girl, she's one too
She'll go and get her a shirt
Stick it under her skirt
She grabbed a razor for me
And she did it just like that"
It's love then. I think I first heard it at a wedding, sadly not as the bride and grooms first dance.
Thursday, September 07, 2006
The Young Knives - XTC meet the Gang of Four
You can’t go wrong with a band that dress like Vic Reeves and sound like both Gang of Four and XTC. Doubly good. The Young Knives are the undisputed champions in this (admittedly not hotly contested) field. Another good reason to love them is that their bassist calls himself The House of Lords.
Voices of Animals and Men (and I think that’s an Adam and the Ants song but we’ll gloss over that) is the follow up to 2002’s The Young Knives Are Dead.
The band look like they wear a lot of moleskin and corduroy. They probably relax at home in smoking jackets and cravats whilst cradling a vintage tawny port and a fine cigar. On stage though, it’s all New Wave gurning, twin vocals and cleverly meshing bass guitar and drums. They’ve got a really good stripped down sound but it still feels like they’re hitting their instruments really hard. And that’s good.
Andy Gill from Gang of Four produced the lp and one of the things that the two bands share is one speaking voice behind another vocal. Gang of Four did it on Anthrax while The Young Knives Half Timer follows the Trainspotting’s anti consumer rant of “choose leisure wear, matching luggage…” theme with the deadly, bitter humour of
”A Salary…smash the system from within
Get yourself a promotion and then take your children to the zoo
For the weekend, with the extra cash”
The lyrics are really good and just need to be sung in slightly mannered and pompous (but still punk rock) style. The Decision has
“I wore the blue and the green
I mixed the matt and the sheen
That’s not the way to be seen…..
I am the Prince of Wales. I am the Prince of Wales”.
This is clever, literate stuff and like British Sea Power they seem to be a band with some ambition. The Manic Street Preachers had a similar approach to the first line of their songs. Manics lyrics such as “Libraries gave us power” (from A Design For Life) and “I am an Architect” (from Faster) simultaneously amuse and enrage but also demand that you listen. Public Enemy did it by having jaw droppingly great song titles like Night Of The Living Baseheads.
She’s Attracted To has a Park Life feel to it with it’s “I’ve met some bone idols in my time” lyrics and sung/spoken lines. The meet the parents and walk dogshit into their house scenario spills out into the street as singer Henry Dartnell bellows “You were screaming at your mum while I was punching your dad.” Exactly how a single should sound.
Loughborough Suicide’s “I want to do it on the Tennis Court
I want to do it where they’re playing sport” is a fine companion lyric (maybe a young friend?) for Belle and Sebastienne’s “Now he’s throwing discus for Liverpool and Widnes” (from The Stars of Track and Field, a paean to athletics and rumpy pumpy, from their second album, If You’re Feeling Sinister.
Gang of Four were musically adventurous and ahead of their time. 27 years later it seems strange to remember that there were bands that were determined to make difficult and absolutely political music and could have a backstage argument about the class struggle and flavours of crisp. Now we’re all too busy watching big tellys and hoovering up consumer goods. The Gang of Four mixed disgust, rage and bewilderment at what was going on around them with Art School theory and Marxism but they also sung about the process. So if you’re going to sing a love song then there’ll be another voice putting another view, or stripping away the meaning. Actually if you were going to sing a love song then you wouldn’t do what the Gang of Four did and call it Love like Anthrax
At Home He’s A Tourist is capitalism and nightclubs, and condom commodification.
“Out on the disco floor
That’s where they make their profit
With the things they sell
To help you cop off.”
It’s odd to remember the Packetgate argument with the BBC when they were due to appear on TOTP. The BBC objected to the line “the rubbers you hide in your top left pocket”. The John Peel session version has “Durex “ rather than “Rubbers” so there had already been some self censorship. The band offered to replace the line with “Packet” but the BBC insisted that the only word acceptable to a family audience, pre watershed and pre safe sex would be “Rubbish”. The band didn’t agree and were dropped from the show.
The first 4 XTC albums are consistently high in quality and imagination, mannered vocals and top notch playing….a bit like the Young Knives then. If there was to be an XTC song that linked the two groups it would have to be Respectable Street with it’s great lyric
“Avon lady fills the creases
When she manages to squeeze
In past the caravans
That never move from their front gardens”
Obviously and irrefutably, Buzzcocks were the ultimate Punk singles artists, but I don’t think XTC were far behind. I don’t need to argue the point really. Just look at their first five singles: Science Friction, This Is Pop, Are You Receiving Me? Life Begins At The Hop, Making Plans For Nigel.
I was right wasn’t I?
Voices of Animals and Men (and I think that’s an Adam and the Ants song but we’ll gloss over that) is the follow up to 2002’s The Young Knives Are Dead.
The band look like they wear a lot of moleskin and corduroy. They probably relax at home in smoking jackets and cravats whilst cradling a vintage tawny port and a fine cigar. On stage though, it’s all New Wave gurning, twin vocals and cleverly meshing bass guitar and drums. They’ve got a really good stripped down sound but it still feels like they’re hitting their instruments really hard. And that’s good.
Andy Gill from Gang of Four produced the lp and one of the things that the two bands share is one speaking voice behind another vocal. Gang of Four did it on Anthrax while The Young Knives Half Timer follows the Trainspotting’s anti consumer rant of “choose leisure wear, matching luggage…” theme with the deadly, bitter humour of
”A Salary…smash the system from within
Get yourself a promotion and then take your children to the zoo
For the weekend, with the extra cash”
The lyrics are really good and just need to be sung in slightly mannered and pompous (but still punk rock) style. The Decision has
“I wore the blue and the green
I mixed the matt and the sheen
That’s not the way to be seen…..
I am the Prince of Wales. I am the Prince of Wales”.
This is clever, literate stuff and like British Sea Power they seem to be a band with some ambition. The Manic Street Preachers had a similar approach to the first line of their songs. Manics lyrics such as “Libraries gave us power” (from A Design For Life) and “I am an Architect” (from Faster) simultaneously amuse and enrage but also demand that you listen. Public Enemy did it by having jaw droppingly great song titles like Night Of The Living Baseheads.
She’s Attracted To has a Park Life feel to it with it’s “I’ve met some bone idols in my time” lyrics and sung/spoken lines. The meet the parents and walk dogshit into their house scenario spills out into the street as singer Henry Dartnell bellows “You were screaming at your mum while I was punching your dad.” Exactly how a single should sound.
Loughborough Suicide’s “I want to do it on the Tennis Court
I want to do it where they’re playing sport” is a fine companion lyric (maybe a young friend?) for Belle and Sebastienne’s “Now he’s throwing discus for Liverpool and Widnes” (from The Stars of Track and Field, a paean to athletics and rumpy pumpy, from their second album, If You’re Feeling Sinister.
Gang of Four were musically adventurous and ahead of their time. 27 years later it seems strange to remember that there were bands that were determined to make difficult and absolutely political music and could have a backstage argument about the class struggle and flavours of crisp. Now we’re all too busy watching big tellys and hoovering up consumer goods. The Gang of Four mixed disgust, rage and bewilderment at what was going on around them with Art School theory and Marxism but they also sung about the process. So if you’re going to sing a love song then there’ll be another voice putting another view, or stripping away the meaning. Actually if you were going to sing a love song then you wouldn’t do what the Gang of Four did and call it Love like Anthrax
At Home He’s A Tourist is capitalism and nightclubs, and condom commodification.
“Out on the disco floor
That’s where they make their profit
With the things they sell
To help you cop off.”
It’s odd to remember the Packetgate argument with the BBC when they were due to appear on TOTP. The BBC objected to the line “the rubbers you hide in your top left pocket”. The John Peel session version has “Durex “ rather than “Rubbers” so there had already been some self censorship. The band offered to replace the line with “Packet” but the BBC insisted that the only word acceptable to a family audience, pre watershed and pre safe sex would be “Rubbish”. The band didn’t agree and were dropped from the show.
The first 4 XTC albums are consistently high in quality and imagination, mannered vocals and top notch playing….a bit like the Young Knives then. If there was to be an XTC song that linked the two groups it would have to be Respectable Street with it’s great lyric
“Avon lady fills the creases
When she manages to squeeze
In past the caravans
That never move from their front gardens”
Obviously and irrefutably, Buzzcocks were the ultimate Punk singles artists, but I don’t think XTC were far behind. I don’t need to argue the point really. Just look at their first five singles: Science Friction, This Is Pop, Are You Receiving Me? Life Begins At The Hop, Making Plans For Nigel.
I was right wasn’t I?
Thursday, August 31, 2006
Lord Large: Northern Soul and Punk Rock
Left Right And Centre by Lord Large (Featuring Dean Parrish) was written by a 15 year old Paul Weller but has just been released by Acid Jazz. The records an absolute gem, but the story behind it's pretty good too. Weller had recorded it as demo with the Jam and had written it in the style of the Northern soul records he was listening to at the time. The long forgotten demo turns up on a bootleg unearthed by Weller and Steve Craddock in a New York record shop. Lord Large was the keyboard player in Electric Soft Parade, while Russ Winstanley is the Wigan Casino dj who persuaded Northern Soul Trooper Dean Parrish to sing a 30 year old song written by a 15 year old in Woking.
Re recorded it sounds absolutely authentic and absolutely right. Getting Dean Parrish to do the vocals was a masterstroke. If a voice can sound muscular, then he's been working out. He always had a gritty macho style (Edwin Starr as opposed to the masculine, yearning style of say Tyrone Davis. It's "Huh!" and "Ugh" rather than "Oooh") and Dean Parrish's voice still sounds fantastic. As a performance it stands comfortably alongside his other Northern Soul favourites Determination, Tell Him, Bricks, Broken Bottles and Sticks and most famously I'm On My Way. Some of the phrasing even sounds like Paul Weller, so the tribute act has come full circle really.
Paul Weller was never shy about his debt to Soul though. Last year he recorded a version of Nolan Porter's If I Could Only Be Sure. The original is built round a sly little guitar riff (a bit like The Letter by The Box Tops) and a subtle vocal performance. Before he auditioned for producer Gabriel Mekler in 1967 Porter had been in a college group singing madrigals. Ironically the future soul singer sang Donovan's Sunshine Superman and was promptly sent home to listen to Otis Redding for 2 years.
His best remembered song though is Keep On Keeping On. Northern Soul fans adopted some odd records (Al Wilson The Snake, and those instrumentals that veered between floor filling genius and Testcard music), but Keep On Keeping On really is an odd one. It's a terrific record and doesn't sound like anything else. But it's still amazing that dancers adopted it as the vocals are mixed really low, it sounds spooky and it's got this clumpy rhythm. So clumpy in fact that Joy Division used the riff for Interzone, but even more strangely (after all there's nothing strange about musical theft) an early Joy Division demo was actually produced by Northern Soul dj Richard Searling and I think a version of Keep On Keeping On was recorded for a session for Piccadilly Radio. (I have this last point as supposed cast iron fact in my head but haven't been able to find further proof…. If anyone has got any actual proof I'd love to know for sure.)
The Northern Soul/Punk connection is interesting though. At the time Northern was the music of choice for your mate's psychotic older brother. Maybe that's how Joy Division knew about Nolan Porter, (The mind boggles at the thought of what a psychotic older version of Peter Hook would have been like though.) I don't remember anyone at school liking the music but I do remember leaving a mates house with a stack of records (he saw it as a band toolkit…everything you needed to know about music could be found in the debut albums by Television, Ramones, Patti Smith and The Doors) but being steered away from his older brothers box of Northern Soul. (That small box in those days would have been worth a large car but thankfully they're all now on reissued cds for the price of a curry)
A grizzled punk veteran once told me of the night he'd gone to a Pistols gig at Wigan. The gig had been cancelled so they'd all gone to Wigan Casino. The Punks tried to look surly and bored, as the regulars eyed them with bemusement and then increasing hostility… They did indeed get their kicks out on the floor.
Re recorded it sounds absolutely authentic and absolutely right. Getting Dean Parrish to do the vocals was a masterstroke. If a voice can sound muscular, then he's been working out. He always had a gritty macho style (Edwin Starr as opposed to the masculine, yearning style of say Tyrone Davis. It's "Huh!" and "Ugh" rather than "Oooh") and Dean Parrish's voice still sounds fantastic. As a performance it stands comfortably alongside his other Northern Soul favourites Determination, Tell Him, Bricks, Broken Bottles and Sticks and most famously I'm On My Way. Some of the phrasing even sounds like Paul Weller, so the tribute act has come full circle really.
Paul Weller was never shy about his debt to Soul though. Last year he recorded a version of Nolan Porter's If I Could Only Be Sure. The original is built round a sly little guitar riff (a bit like The Letter by The Box Tops) and a subtle vocal performance. Before he auditioned for producer Gabriel Mekler in 1967 Porter had been in a college group singing madrigals. Ironically the future soul singer sang Donovan's Sunshine Superman and was promptly sent home to listen to Otis Redding for 2 years.
His best remembered song though is Keep On Keeping On. Northern Soul fans adopted some odd records (Al Wilson The Snake, and those instrumentals that veered between floor filling genius and Testcard music), but Keep On Keeping On really is an odd one. It's a terrific record and doesn't sound like anything else. But it's still amazing that dancers adopted it as the vocals are mixed really low, it sounds spooky and it's got this clumpy rhythm. So clumpy in fact that Joy Division used the riff for Interzone, but even more strangely (after all there's nothing strange about musical theft) an early Joy Division demo was actually produced by Northern Soul dj Richard Searling and I think a version of Keep On Keeping On was recorded for a session for Piccadilly Radio. (I have this last point as supposed cast iron fact in my head but haven't been able to find further proof…. If anyone has got any actual proof I'd love to know for sure.)
The Northern Soul/Punk connection is interesting though. At the time Northern was the music of choice for your mate's psychotic older brother. Maybe that's how Joy Division knew about Nolan Porter, (The mind boggles at the thought of what a psychotic older version of Peter Hook would have been like though.) I don't remember anyone at school liking the music but I do remember leaving a mates house with a stack of records (he saw it as a band toolkit…everything you needed to know about music could be found in the debut albums by Television, Ramones, Patti Smith and The Doors) but being steered away from his older brothers box of Northern Soul. (That small box in those days would have been worth a large car but thankfully they're all now on reissued cds for the price of a curry)
A grizzled punk veteran once told me of the night he'd gone to a Pistols gig at Wigan. The gig had been cancelled so they'd all gone to Wigan Casino. The Punks tried to look surly and bored, as the regulars eyed them with bemusement and then increasing hostility… They did indeed get their kicks out on the floor.
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
New York Songs
Although it seems to have been around forever, after first being played on the radio as the best track on the latest album and then as the forthcoming single, The Strokes You Only Live once still sounds great. It's clipped guitar and drum intro sounds like Blondie's Heart of Glass and the main riff reminds me of Altered Images I Could be Happy. The brilliant thing about the record though is the way that it floats. U2's Pride has the same feeling in the bits where Bono isn't yelping. (We shall not talk of U2 again)
You only live once also has strangled cat guitar playing, which I've been partial to since deciding that I Don't Mind by Buzzcocks has everything I need in a pop song, (including strangled cat guitar behind the "I used to think you'd hate me when you called me on the phone, Sometimes when we go out, well I wish I'd stayed at home" middle 8)
The Strokes used a mix and match Mr Potato Head approach to turn themselves into a modern retro New York group with Television, Blondie influences, skinny ties and great hair. The template for previous generations though was Ronnie Spector. The Ramones chose their name because it sounded like a New York 60's girl group and Blondie's original approach was equal parts Girl group to New York Underground.
Ronnie Spector released Last Of The Rock 'n' Roll stars last year and her career was both started and smothered by Phil Spector. He projected all his production skills and pop visions onto her voice and then married her. Success, royalties and Phil Spector's paranoia kept her in a mansion but she had to drive with life size replica of him in her car. Then there was alcoholism and marriage to Steve Van Zandt (Bruce Springsteens' guitarist turned Sopranos actor who swapped a bandana for outrageously coiled hair that looked like it had been styled by Mr Whippy.)
The songs have been chosen to reflect her life, struggles and place in pop history. She does a really good version of Johnny Thunder's You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory. The best track though and also the single is All I Want.
It sounds like a mid pace girl group song and the lyrics work really well because they not only sound like mid paced girl group lyrics should (The formula = regret, life's been unfair, boy done me wrong, don't need jewellery just the love of my man) but they also work for anyone who's feeling domestically miserable, even if they weren't married to a paranoid pop producer with a big bang hairstyle currently on trial for murder. Her voice still sounds fantastic.
"I don't need flowers or fancy things
I gave up on diamond rings
Just want a little pat on the back from you
Not just another little subtle attack from you
Just a little something to show me that you care"
Lou Reed is the ultimate New York artist and chronicler of the city. A musical Samuels Pepys.
Romeo Had Juliet is the opening track from 89's excllent New York album and it's one of his observational songs where he's identifying a list of characters and describing their stories, ethnic backgrounds and hairstyles. After 25 years of song writing he was still (luckily) describing what New York looks like. You've got a job for life son.
"Manhattans sinking like a rock
Into the filthy Hudson, what a shock
They wrote a book about it
They said it was like ancient Rome"
The sound of the record is fantastic. It's got one of my favourite intros as the tape rewinds the previous take, before the version proper starts…then (like it says on the sleeve notes) bass, guitar and drums…it's all you need. Two guitars, one on each side of the mix, you can hear what they're doing and the playing is stripped down to the necessary. And it's got a strangled cat guitar.
"Something flickered for a minute
Then it's gone"
You only live once also has strangled cat guitar playing, which I've been partial to since deciding that I Don't Mind by Buzzcocks has everything I need in a pop song, (including strangled cat guitar behind the "I used to think you'd hate me when you called me on the phone, Sometimes when we go out, well I wish I'd stayed at home" middle 8)
The Strokes used a mix and match Mr Potato Head approach to turn themselves into a modern retro New York group with Television, Blondie influences, skinny ties and great hair. The template for previous generations though was Ronnie Spector. The Ramones chose their name because it sounded like a New York 60's girl group and Blondie's original approach was equal parts Girl group to New York Underground.
Ronnie Spector released Last Of The Rock 'n' Roll stars last year and her career was both started and smothered by Phil Spector. He projected all his production skills and pop visions onto her voice and then married her. Success, royalties and Phil Spector's paranoia kept her in a mansion but she had to drive with life size replica of him in her car. Then there was alcoholism and marriage to Steve Van Zandt (Bruce Springsteens' guitarist turned Sopranos actor who swapped a bandana for outrageously coiled hair that looked like it had been styled by Mr Whippy.)
The songs have been chosen to reflect her life, struggles and place in pop history. She does a really good version of Johnny Thunder's You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory. The best track though and also the single is All I Want.
It sounds like a mid pace girl group song and the lyrics work really well because they not only sound like mid paced girl group lyrics should (The formula = regret, life's been unfair, boy done me wrong, don't need jewellery just the love of my man) but they also work for anyone who's feeling domestically miserable, even if they weren't married to a paranoid pop producer with a big bang hairstyle currently on trial for murder. Her voice still sounds fantastic.
"I don't need flowers or fancy things
I gave up on diamond rings
Just want a little pat on the back from you
Not just another little subtle attack from you
Just a little something to show me that you care"
Lou Reed is the ultimate New York artist and chronicler of the city. A musical Samuels Pepys.
Romeo Had Juliet is the opening track from 89's excllent New York album and it's one of his observational songs where he's identifying a list of characters and describing their stories, ethnic backgrounds and hairstyles. After 25 years of song writing he was still (luckily) describing what New York looks like. You've got a job for life son.
"Manhattans sinking like a rock
Into the filthy Hudson, what a shock
They wrote a book about it
They said it was like ancient Rome"
The sound of the record is fantastic. It's got one of my favourite intros as the tape rewinds the previous take, before the version proper starts…then (like it says on the sleeve notes) bass, guitar and drums…it's all you need. Two guitars, one on each side of the mix, you can hear what they're doing and the playing is stripped down to the necessary. And it's got a strangled cat guitar.
"Something flickered for a minute
Then it's gone"
Sunday, August 27, 2006
Cars and girls/Bikes and Blue Orchids
It's an undisputed fact that the best music has always been about cars and girls (although The Ramones did rule themselves out by having neither when they started) but could there be a place for the bicycle in pop? After all chemist Albert Hoffman first identified the wibbly effects of LSD after a wobbly bike ride. The grateful 60's psychedelic acts responded with Pink Floyd's Bike and Tomorrow's My White Bicycle. I'm not exactly sure what threw up the Mixtures Push Bike Song though. For the second week running I'm going to have to mention Alessi's Oh Lori. Sorry. "I want to ride my bicycle with you on the handlebars".
Queen's Bicycle Races obviously defies all description and understanding…apparently though "Fat bottomed girls will be riding this way so watch out for those beauties oh yeah". The guitar solo is completely bonkers and sounds like a chase scene from a silent movie.
Kraftwerk not only recorded Tour de France but are all keen cyclists, with a habit of breaking off interviews to go training. Age of Chance though just dressed up in the gear. Their version of Kiss is not a great record…unlike their preceding single Motorcity, which is!
More bike and Pop links? When The Redskins split up their bassist Martin Hewes became a cycle courier. Mary Hansen from Stereolab died after being knocked off her bike and Nico died of a brain haemorrhage after falling off her bike in Ibiza. She was initially misdiagnosed as having sunstroke because she seemed to be bizarrely overdressed both for the climate and for bike riding.
I saw a Nico gig in 1982/83 in Manchester which was excruciating. On another occasion I saw the Blue Orchids play Waiting For The Man as an encore with Nico on vocals. That was really good though, partly because they could really do the Velvets rattley sound but also I felt they must just have enjoyed the fact that they were actually doing THAT song with THAT singer.
I always thought the Blue Orchids were a great band but not a great advert for heroin. Martin Bramagh was an early member of the Fall and their sound is like a woozier more melodic version of The Fall's early sound. The early Rough Trade singles Work and The Flood still sound fantastic, squawking guitars and murky keyboards. The Flood fades out on a single repeated chord. I remember once playing it to a friend who knew more music theory than me….it utterly pained him that the chord never resolved itself.
I loved it even more after that.
Queen's Bicycle Races obviously defies all description and understanding…apparently though "Fat bottomed girls will be riding this way so watch out for those beauties oh yeah". The guitar solo is completely bonkers and sounds like a chase scene from a silent movie.
Kraftwerk not only recorded Tour de France but are all keen cyclists, with a habit of breaking off interviews to go training. Age of Chance though just dressed up in the gear. Their version of Kiss is not a great record…unlike their preceding single Motorcity, which is!
More bike and Pop links? When The Redskins split up their bassist Martin Hewes became a cycle courier. Mary Hansen from Stereolab died after being knocked off her bike and Nico died of a brain haemorrhage after falling off her bike in Ibiza. She was initially misdiagnosed as having sunstroke because she seemed to be bizarrely overdressed both for the climate and for bike riding.
I saw a Nico gig in 1982/83 in Manchester which was excruciating. On another occasion I saw the Blue Orchids play Waiting For The Man as an encore with Nico on vocals. That was really good though, partly because they could really do the Velvets rattley sound but also I felt they must just have enjoyed the fact that they were actually doing THAT song with THAT singer.
I always thought the Blue Orchids were a great band but not a great advert for heroin. Martin Bramagh was an early member of the Fall and their sound is like a woozier more melodic version of The Fall's early sound. The early Rough Trade singles Work and The Flood still sound fantastic, squawking guitars and murky keyboards. The Flood fades out on a single repeated chord. I remember once playing it to a friend who knew more music theory than me….it utterly pained him that the chord never resolved itself.
I loved it even more after that.
Saturday, August 19, 2006
Trainspotting soundtrack
There is a handful of films where the soundtracks are made up of clever use of already released or maybe rediscovered songs, where the songs just work really well with the visuals but they also are great listening as albums in their own right.
George Lucas started it with American Graffitti and Scorcese always had great soundtracks. I even found myself completely out of character out of enjoying Layla at the end of Goodfellas…. (That's the magic of cinema, folks. I normally only enjoy the very end of Layla, when I know it's finished and isn't coming back).
The soundtracks for Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown are my favourite in this respect. They're put together with a real and obvious love and the songs are a great mixture of the popular, the forgotten and the obscure…As the joke goes…A man is tied to a chair in a disused warehouse, he's been tortured, doused in petrol and had his ear cut off. …And that is the only way that the A & R man would listen to Louise's version of Stuck In The Middle With You.
The makers of Trainspotting had definitely been paying attention and the soundtrack is a stormer, matching the film scenes cleverly but standing up as a great listen in it's own right. The opening track Iggy Pop's Lust for life has since become film makers first choice to accompany any form of running…and it's an absolute lesson in how to keep things simple musically. Hunt and Tony Sales on bass and drums play with the absolute confidence that lets you know they could do absolutely anything they wanted with the riff…but aren't going to because it doesn't need it and they have nothing to prove.
A useful game to try at home or work, to pass the time or to make life-changing decisions is when confronted with a choice just think "What would Iggy Pop do?" And then you can put you trousers back on and turn off the drug hoover.
Iggy Pop is a bit of a recurring theme throughout Trainspotting the novel. Quite right too. My favourite Iggy Pop line in a song is "Jesus, this is Iggy". My favourite Iggy Pop line in an interview though is his response to the question of how he relaxed. "I like to garden"
I saw him in Birmingham at the Hummingbird in about 1990. He ran on stage just wearing jeans and a leopard skin waistcoat. The waistcoat stayed on for one song. That's meticulous stagecraft and the kind of costume changes Madonna is still working towards.
By the end of the gig there may have been technical problems with his microphone…. at least I assumed that was why he took out the spare microphone he'd kept in his jeans…at least I think it was a microphone.
Connoisseurs of Channel 4's post pub kebab of a show The Word may also remember the collective look of alarm as the front row of the audience realised that Iggy Pop was careering towards them wearing a pair of transparent plastic trousers…spare microphone and all.
The other Iggy Pop song on the album is Nightclubbing. Obviously it sounds fantastic but what jumped out at me this time round is that it is a blue print for the early Human League sound, a fact not missed by the Human League who covered it
The revelation for me on the album though is Blur's Sing. It's a perfectly judged song for the film, woozy, disorientating and down right scary. The guitars are reverbed beyond recognition and the bass and drums are hammering on the walls. Amazingly it's from their first album when they were supposed to be little baggy popsters.
Damon Albarn has a solo track included, Closet Romantic. It's veers between a novelty hat seaside romp and deranged fairground organ and brass band. You just know he was trying to get some feeling of menace and thinking about Brighton Rock.
I can't remember if there is a scene in the film with New Orders Temptation…but no excuses are needed to include it. I always take New Order for granted a bit but Temptation is immediately and unmistakably them. It's got the little sequencer riffs, mechanised drumming and you can almost hear Hooky's motorcycle boots. The song's begins like an ending, as it fades in with Barneys' jiggly guitar and Wo hoo vocals. When it first came out there was an unfeasibly long 12inch version that is still playing on a forgotten turntable somewhere.
Indie Pop Pinups (and I would) Elastica and Sleeper both have tracks on the album. Elastica's 2:1 sounds great but sadly Sleeper's song is a very close but very dire version of Atomic…Hamster cheeked Louise Wener vocal style was always based on using breathiness to cover for up for lack of range…. but the ways she sings the actual line "Atomic" is somewhere between hammy Hammer Horror and the little girl who has raided the dressing up box trying to be scary. Not only is it very bad, it's also very long. A nightmare combination.
Underworld's Born Slippy sounds huge. It's lager lager chorus may have got sung too raucously and too often at too many clubs that are best avoided, but as a listener you still get sucked into the song. Is there something going on there or is he just shouting at traffic?
Always good to hear Lou Reed's Perfect Day but the way it's used in the overdose scene just makes it even more bizarre that anyone connected with the Children in need celebrity cover version thought it would be a good thing to do. Wasn't it always obviously one of Lou Reeds drug songs? Why not just do a medley of Heroin and Waiting For The Man possibly with Julian Cope's Out Of My Mind On Dope And Speed thrown in.
Will Elton John be covering the complete works of Spiritualized?
Mile End by Pulp another song about slumming, a Lo-Fi alternative Common People. This time without the choice. Musically jaunty but lyrically it's all piss and car theft. Perfect
I've been playing the soundtrack quite a lot, especially on a recent holiday in Wales where my packing had been touched by the spirit of Iggy. I'd managed to pack music, but no trousers. I remembered my bucket and spade though.
George Lucas started it with American Graffitti and Scorcese always had great soundtracks. I even found myself completely out of character out of enjoying Layla at the end of Goodfellas…. (That's the magic of cinema, folks. I normally only enjoy the very end of Layla, when I know it's finished and isn't coming back).
The soundtracks for Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown are my favourite in this respect. They're put together with a real and obvious love and the songs are a great mixture of the popular, the forgotten and the obscure…As the joke goes…A man is tied to a chair in a disused warehouse, he's been tortured, doused in petrol and had his ear cut off. …And that is the only way that the A & R man would listen to Louise's version of Stuck In The Middle With You.
The makers of Trainspotting had definitely been paying attention and the soundtrack is a stormer, matching the film scenes cleverly but standing up as a great listen in it's own right. The opening track Iggy Pop's Lust for life has since become film makers first choice to accompany any form of running…and it's an absolute lesson in how to keep things simple musically. Hunt and Tony Sales on bass and drums play with the absolute confidence that lets you know they could do absolutely anything they wanted with the riff…but aren't going to because it doesn't need it and they have nothing to prove.
A useful game to try at home or work, to pass the time or to make life-changing decisions is when confronted with a choice just think "What would Iggy Pop do?" And then you can put you trousers back on and turn off the drug hoover.
Iggy Pop is a bit of a recurring theme throughout Trainspotting the novel. Quite right too. My favourite Iggy Pop line in a song is "Jesus, this is Iggy". My favourite Iggy Pop line in an interview though is his response to the question of how he relaxed. "I like to garden"
I saw him in Birmingham at the Hummingbird in about 1990. He ran on stage just wearing jeans and a leopard skin waistcoat. The waistcoat stayed on for one song. That's meticulous stagecraft and the kind of costume changes Madonna is still working towards.
By the end of the gig there may have been technical problems with his microphone…. at least I assumed that was why he took out the spare microphone he'd kept in his jeans…at least I think it was a microphone.
Connoisseurs of Channel 4's post pub kebab of a show The Word may also remember the collective look of alarm as the front row of the audience realised that Iggy Pop was careering towards them wearing a pair of transparent plastic trousers…spare microphone and all.
The other Iggy Pop song on the album is Nightclubbing. Obviously it sounds fantastic but what jumped out at me this time round is that it is a blue print for the early Human League sound, a fact not missed by the Human League who covered it
The revelation for me on the album though is Blur's Sing. It's a perfectly judged song for the film, woozy, disorientating and down right scary. The guitars are reverbed beyond recognition and the bass and drums are hammering on the walls. Amazingly it's from their first album when they were supposed to be little baggy popsters.
Damon Albarn has a solo track included, Closet Romantic. It's veers between a novelty hat seaside romp and deranged fairground organ and brass band. You just know he was trying to get some feeling of menace and thinking about Brighton Rock.
I can't remember if there is a scene in the film with New Orders Temptation…but no excuses are needed to include it. I always take New Order for granted a bit but Temptation is immediately and unmistakably them. It's got the little sequencer riffs, mechanised drumming and you can almost hear Hooky's motorcycle boots. The song's begins like an ending, as it fades in with Barneys' jiggly guitar and Wo hoo vocals. When it first came out there was an unfeasibly long 12inch version that is still playing on a forgotten turntable somewhere.
Indie Pop Pinups (and I would) Elastica and Sleeper both have tracks on the album. Elastica's 2:1 sounds great but sadly Sleeper's song is a very close but very dire version of Atomic…Hamster cheeked Louise Wener vocal style was always based on using breathiness to cover for up for lack of range…. but the ways she sings the actual line "Atomic" is somewhere between hammy Hammer Horror and the little girl who has raided the dressing up box trying to be scary. Not only is it very bad, it's also very long. A nightmare combination.
Underworld's Born Slippy sounds huge. It's lager lager chorus may have got sung too raucously and too often at too many clubs that are best avoided, but as a listener you still get sucked into the song. Is there something going on there or is he just shouting at traffic?
Always good to hear Lou Reed's Perfect Day but the way it's used in the overdose scene just makes it even more bizarre that anyone connected with the Children in need celebrity cover version thought it would be a good thing to do. Wasn't it always obviously one of Lou Reeds drug songs? Why not just do a medley of Heroin and Waiting For The Man possibly with Julian Cope's Out Of My Mind On Dope And Speed thrown in.
Will Elton John be covering the complete works of Spiritualized?
Mile End by Pulp another song about slumming, a Lo-Fi alternative Common People. This time without the choice. Musically jaunty but lyrically it's all piss and car theft. Perfect
I've been playing the soundtrack quite a lot, especially on a recent holiday in Wales where my packing had been touched by the spirit of Iggy. I'd managed to pack music, but no trousers. I remembered my bucket and spade though.
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
Motley Crue - The Dirt
Sometimes you really never can go back….
When a friend told me he was just starting to read the Motley Crue biography The Dirt I was down right envious, because I knew that I would never be able to read it for the first time again.
There are better books about music but The Dirt is the best music book. It's a rock book that rocks and it's a monstrous read.
It's an accurate Motley Crue biography because it is utterly, utterly stupid. It's also really funny and like all the best books it provokes deep searching questions….Like "Why?" and "Is that really a good idea?"
A good music book makes you curious about the music and usually ends up in a shopping trip. Yet I've read it twice and still don't feel the urge to listen Motley Crue's music, but I do now know far too much about the dimmest band in rock.
There's plenty of gross-out shared hovel stories and uncontrollable rumpy pumpy.
In the Motley Crue world safe sex means meeting up in Tommy's van after a night of sneaky shagging and clubbing together to buy an egg burrito so that the band members could wipe their band members on the burrito meat in the belief that this would throw their girlfriends off the scent.
Over and over again the bands complete inability to stay …out of trouble, off smack, in the studio, off each others toes, in touch with some form of reality, on stage and stay in the same room as each others' horrible personalities makes it even more incredible that they achieved what they did.
Of course that's partly because we all like car crash bands and car crash celebrities.
Singer Vince O'Neil's car crash killed Razzle from Hanoi Rocks and although there's plenty of regret, Vince's most touching tribute to his friend is the loving description of what Razzle was wearing " High tops, leather pants and a frilly shirt – a twenty four seven rock 'n' roll god, he wouldn't ever be caught in the jeans and Hawaiian shirt that I was wearing."………..A real rock n roller.
The layout of the book is great, from its Jack Daniels cover, silent movie style chapter introductions and the way that each character tells the story from their own view….A Robert Altman version of a chronic metal band’s story.
Refreshingly (and by the end of the book they had had lots of refreshment) even though deep down they all know they blew it (lots of that too) all of the band would do exactly they same again…because they're too stupid not too.
Vince O'Neil had a swimming pool heated to a bankrupting 90 degrees all year round. Ahem...it was also "Pussy Shaped"
The later chapters highlights include Mick Mars's (probably not his real name….that would be Methuselah) Aliens theory.
Tommy Lee's prison poetry, written to woo Pamela Anderson back, is staggering
I remember we used to meet
By a swing seat over the piano
And you chirped each pretty word
With the air of a bird
For real life poetry though it's hard to beat the conversation between Honey (possibly her real name) and Tommy.
"Guess what? She asked
"What?"
"I found a minister, I bought some rings, I got everything set"
"For what?"
"I wanna get married"
"To me? But you just sold our pictures to a porn mag and didn't even tell me"
"It was going to be a birthday present for you. And I needed the rings for our wedding. So I couldn't tell you"
Since the book came out the Motley Crue story has got even stranger with Red Hot and Crue, a greatest hits tour from a band that still can't stand each other, a hip replacement for Mick Mars and a reality TV show based on Vince Neil having cosmetic surgery.
There are some constants though. Tommy Lee still has MAYHEM" tattooed on his stomach and I've got "Lets all tidy up" biroed on mine.
When a friend told me he was just starting to read the Motley Crue biography The Dirt I was down right envious, because I knew that I would never be able to read it for the first time again.
There are better books about music but The Dirt is the best music book. It's a rock book that rocks and it's a monstrous read.
It's an accurate Motley Crue biography because it is utterly, utterly stupid. It's also really funny and like all the best books it provokes deep searching questions….Like "Why?" and "Is that really a good idea?"
A good music book makes you curious about the music and usually ends up in a shopping trip. Yet I've read it twice and still don't feel the urge to listen Motley Crue's music, but I do now know far too much about the dimmest band in rock.
There's plenty of gross-out shared hovel stories and uncontrollable rumpy pumpy.
In the Motley Crue world safe sex means meeting up in Tommy's van after a night of sneaky shagging and clubbing together to buy an egg burrito so that the band members could wipe their band members on the burrito meat in the belief that this would throw their girlfriends off the scent.
Over and over again the bands complete inability to stay …out of trouble, off smack, in the studio, off each others toes, in touch with some form of reality, on stage and stay in the same room as each others' horrible personalities makes it even more incredible that they achieved what they did.
Of course that's partly because we all like car crash bands and car crash celebrities.
Singer Vince O'Neil's car crash killed Razzle from Hanoi Rocks and although there's plenty of regret, Vince's most touching tribute to his friend is the loving description of what Razzle was wearing " High tops, leather pants and a frilly shirt – a twenty four seven rock 'n' roll god, he wouldn't ever be caught in the jeans and Hawaiian shirt that I was wearing."………..A real rock n roller.
The layout of the book is great, from its Jack Daniels cover, silent movie style chapter introductions and the way that each character tells the story from their own view….A Robert Altman version of a chronic metal band’s story.
Refreshingly (and by the end of the book they had had lots of refreshment) even though deep down they all know they blew it (lots of that too) all of the band would do exactly they same again…because they're too stupid not too.
Vince O'Neil had a swimming pool heated to a bankrupting 90 degrees all year round. Ahem...it was also "Pussy Shaped"
The later chapters highlights include Mick Mars's (probably not his real name….that would be Methuselah) Aliens theory.
Tommy Lee's prison poetry, written to woo Pamela Anderson back, is staggering
I remember we used to meet
By a swing seat over the piano
And you chirped each pretty word
With the air of a bird
For real life poetry though it's hard to beat the conversation between Honey (possibly her real name) and Tommy.
"Guess what? She asked
"What?"
"I found a minister, I bought some rings, I got everything set"
"For what?"
"I wanna get married"
"To me? But you just sold our pictures to a porn mag and didn't even tell me"
"It was going to be a birthday present for you. And I needed the rings for our wedding. So I couldn't tell you"
Since the book came out the Motley Crue story has got even stranger with Red Hot and Crue, a greatest hits tour from a band that still can't stand each other, a hip replacement for Mick Mars and a reality TV show based on Vince Neil having cosmetic surgery.
There are some constants though. Tommy Lee still has MAYHEM" tattooed on his stomach and I've got "Lets all tidy up" biroed on mine.
Thursday, August 10, 2006
Generation X
For years I was secure in the knowledge that Generation X were a silly group. Times change though and occasionally so do my opinions. I've been playing the first album a lot recently and I think it's time to welcome it back as a Pop Punk classic. Time has definitely been kinder to it than I have been in the past.
Even though as individuals the band had been prime punky movers from the outset (Tony James had been in the London SS with Mick Jones and Billy Idol had been a regular gig goer with Siouxsie Sioux and the Bromley Contingent) to my ears, at the time, they just sounded so desperate to catch up. With their lyrics and song titles they pursued the idea of youth and the possibilities of being young like a Punk rock version of the Tweenies. How about these two for starters. Youth Youth Youth and Wild Youth (and it’s gobsmackingly duff dub version Wild Dub…Billy even has to shout an explanation of what they were trying to do at the end of it “Heavy heavy dub, Punk ”… apparently.
Of course years later the ludicrous lyrics just add to my pleasure. “The Greyhounds rockin’ out tonight, to maximum rockabilly……The snooker hall is empty, cos they’re all out playing pool” (Kiss Me Deadly….a tale of scrapping and teenage sex).
The original album cover had the band in a stripy top huddle, (remember Kids…all the best bands have to feel like a gang even if they’re not really) and the songs just sound really exuberant with the drums scampering away like an over excited puppy and the guitars alternating between chunky DER DER DER DER and wailing Mick Jones style breaks. Ready Steady Go sounds fantastic and honestly Mr Idol I never doubted for a minute that you really were in love with Rock ‘n’ roll.
They played My Generation on Marc Bolan’s TV show (cue catch phrase “Keep Marc in your heart”) and the Bopping Elf introduced them with the words “The next band have a singer who some people are saying is even prettier than me…see what you think.” Of course my 14 year old self thought that if girls were going to like the band and they also fancied the singer then that lessened the band in some way. Hmm…That’s not a theory that I stood by for too long. I also remember my friend Flannel (not the name that appears on his birth certificate) using courtroom skills in a passionate defence of Billy Idols sartorial genius stroke of wearing a t-shirt with the sides cut off. I now realise that Billy Idol invented the tabard and Flannel went on to sell double-glazing
Promises Promises is a 5 minute monster (that’s failed the punk rock time timekeeping test) about where Punk was heading. It’s got the great Billy line “Soon we’ll get our gear from Marks and Sparks, Punks will take over Top Of The Pops” It fits in between The Clashes songs about the Punk movement like Garageland and All The Young Punks and The Adverts Safety In Numbers.
The decidedly lumpy second album Valley Of The Dolls has the singles King Rocker (“Crazy man Crazy”) and Valley Of The Dolls with it’s rebel rebel guitar and “song after song I can’t stop rocking… My ears are bleeding and all around young girls are fainting”. No I never them saw live but I think they thought they put on quite a show.
The other great lost single they made was Dancing With Myself. Careful research shows that it is not actually about dancing in much the same way that Turning Japanese by The Vapors is not about changing nationality and The Winkers Song by Ivor Biggun and the Red Nosed Burglars is not about winking.
I won’t be reassessing Billy’s cyber punk years and the solo hits as it’s just too horrible to think about but I did enjoy his acting in Oliver Stones film The Doors. He plays one of Jim Morrison’ entourage. At one point he jumps on the stage and gurns (fortunately without doing White Wedding…but you know he’s doing his Woargh and twisty lip thing) but his sole speaking part is the line “Yeah …fuck off Ray.” Excellent
Billy Idol played at Guilfest the other week and a beer tent correspondent reports that he did an acapella version of Crazy by Gnarls Barkley. Be afraid
Even though as individuals the band had been prime punky movers from the outset (Tony James had been in the London SS with Mick Jones and Billy Idol had been a regular gig goer with Siouxsie Sioux and the Bromley Contingent) to my ears, at the time, they just sounded so desperate to catch up. With their lyrics and song titles they pursued the idea of youth and the possibilities of being young like a Punk rock version of the Tweenies. How about these two for starters. Youth Youth Youth and Wild Youth (and it’s gobsmackingly duff dub version Wild Dub…Billy even has to shout an explanation of what they were trying to do at the end of it “Heavy heavy dub, Punk ”… apparently.
Of course years later the ludicrous lyrics just add to my pleasure. “The Greyhounds rockin’ out tonight, to maximum rockabilly……The snooker hall is empty, cos they’re all out playing pool” (Kiss Me Deadly….a tale of scrapping and teenage sex).
The original album cover had the band in a stripy top huddle, (remember Kids…all the best bands have to feel like a gang even if they’re not really) and the songs just sound really exuberant with the drums scampering away like an over excited puppy and the guitars alternating between chunky DER DER DER DER and wailing Mick Jones style breaks. Ready Steady Go sounds fantastic and honestly Mr Idol I never doubted for a minute that you really were in love with Rock ‘n’ roll.
They played My Generation on Marc Bolan’s TV show (cue catch phrase “Keep Marc in your heart”) and the Bopping Elf introduced them with the words “The next band have a singer who some people are saying is even prettier than me…see what you think.” Of course my 14 year old self thought that if girls were going to like the band and they also fancied the singer then that lessened the band in some way. Hmm…That’s not a theory that I stood by for too long. I also remember my friend Flannel (not the name that appears on his birth certificate) using courtroom skills in a passionate defence of Billy Idols sartorial genius stroke of wearing a t-shirt with the sides cut off. I now realise that Billy Idol invented the tabard and Flannel went on to sell double-glazing
Promises Promises is a 5 minute monster (that’s failed the punk rock time timekeeping test) about where Punk was heading. It’s got the great Billy line “Soon we’ll get our gear from Marks and Sparks, Punks will take over Top Of The Pops” It fits in between The Clashes songs about the Punk movement like Garageland and All The Young Punks and The Adverts Safety In Numbers.
The decidedly lumpy second album Valley Of The Dolls has the singles King Rocker (“Crazy man Crazy”) and Valley Of The Dolls with it’s rebel rebel guitar and “song after song I can’t stop rocking… My ears are bleeding and all around young girls are fainting”. No I never them saw live but I think they thought they put on quite a show.
The other great lost single they made was Dancing With Myself. Careful research shows that it is not actually about dancing in much the same way that Turning Japanese by The Vapors is not about changing nationality and The Winkers Song by Ivor Biggun and the Red Nosed Burglars is not about winking.
I won’t be reassessing Billy’s cyber punk years and the solo hits as it’s just too horrible to think about but I did enjoy his acting in Oliver Stones film The Doors. He plays one of Jim Morrison’ entourage. At one point he jumps on the stage and gurns (fortunately without doing White Wedding…but you know he’s doing his Woargh and twisty lip thing) but his sole speaking part is the line “Yeah …fuck off Ray.” Excellent
Billy Idol played at Guilfest the other week and a beer tent correspondent reports that he did an acapella version of Crazy by Gnarls Barkley. Be afraid
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
The Show
She Moves In Her Own Way by The Kooks could well be one of just a handful of great songs that mention the whole business of song writing or The Show. "Saw her at my show on Monday…She came to my show just to hear about my day…At my show on Tuesday…." (That King Kook is a virtual Craig David when it comes down to days of the week)
It 's a terrific record though, with a great natural sounding beginning, as first the acoustic, electric and then bass and drums just slide into the song. The vocals are a bit mannered (I'm a bit sceptical about whether he really is a "better mon, moving on to better things") but the whole thing just sounds so joyful that I'm happy to spend the rest of the summer with it. Also for some reason it also reminds me of those bouffanted berks the Alessi Brothers and their Oh Lori.
Alas, thinking about songs that include references to The Show or Songwriting can take the discerning listener to some nasty places. When Spandau Ballet sang "Why do I find it so hard to write the next line" in True, my skin crawls (in a bad way) and by the time they get to the line "With a thrill in my heart and a pill on my tongue", well it's a Rennie that's on my tongue. Nauseous and noxious. Talking of which…Rainbow's All night Long has the stinker
"I know you've not come just to see the show…..I see you standing by the stage your black stockings and your see through dress"…. Fortunately Rodger Glover's sole concession to dressing up is wearing a hat.
It's not all bad though. Red Hot Chilli Peppers By The Way has "Standing in line to see the show tonight" as a line but also has an unfeasibly good chorus.
Both Robbie Williams and Queen have released songs called Let Me Entertain You. They're both Show related, but even without that clue, you just know that what mattered the most to both Rob and Fred, was that the world knew them as ultimate entertainers and performers. I was always baffled though as to how Robbie's Strong could have a verse that started so well and yet ended so badly
"Early morning when I wake upI look like Kiss but without the make up
And that's a good line to take it to The bridge"
Is it just down to the genre though? Apart from the Adverts One Chord Wonders, Punk bands never sung about The Show, whereas for the times when metal bands aren't singing about trolls then they're singing about Rockin'…. probably at The Show.
I can only think of one 60's soul record that does it, Warren Lee's Star Revue, however Rap acts do seem happier singing about The Show. From Schoolly D Getting Paid ("Don't give me that shit about after the show") to Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince's Boom! Shake The Room (I think he may also have wanted to " Ooh-ahh-ahh-ahh-ahh--ooooh!)
Public Enemy had Yo! Bum Rush The Show, but the final word has to go to Doug E Fresh's The Show. Simply for the reason that it's called The Show…sadly I can't remember anything else about it.
It 's a terrific record though, with a great natural sounding beginning, as first the acoustic, electric and then bass and drums just slide into the song. The vocals are a bit mannered (I'm a bit sceptical about whether he really is a "better mon, moving on to better things") but the whole thing just sounds so joyful that I'm happy to spend the rest of the summer with it. Also for some reason it also reminds me of those bouffanted berks the Alessi Brothers and their Oh Lori.
Alas, thinking about songs that include references to The Show or Songwriting can take the discerning listener to some nasty places. When Spandau Ballet sang "Why do I find it so hard to write the next line" in True, my skin crawls (in a bad way) and by the time they get to the line "With a thrill in my heart and a pill on my tongue", well it's a Rennie that's on my tongue. Nauseous and noxious. Talking of which…Rainbow's All night Long has the stinker
"I know you've not come just to see the show…..I see you standing by the stage your black stockings and your see through dress"…. Fortunately Rodger Glover's sole concession to dressing up is wearing a hat.
It's not all bad though. Red Hot Chilli Peppers By The Way has "Standing in line to see the show tonight" as a line but also has an unfeasibly good chorus.
Both Robbie Williams and Queen have released songs called Let Me Entertain You. They're both Show related, but even without that clue, you just know that what mattered the most to both Rob and Fred, was that the world knew them as ultimate entertainers and performers. I was always baffled though as to how Robbie's Strong could have a verse that started so well and yet ended so badly
"Early morning when I wake upI look like Kiss but without the make up
And that's a good line to take it to The bridge"
Is it just down to the genre though? Apart from the Adverts One Chord Wonders, Punk bands never sung about The Show, whereas for the times when metal bands aren't singing about trolls then they're singing about Rockin'…. probably at The Show.
I can only think of one 60's soul record that does it, Warren Lee's Star Revue, however Rap acts do seem happier singing about The Show. From Schoolly D Getting Paid ("Don't give me that shit about after the show") to Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince's Boom! Shake The Room (I think he may also have wanted to " Ooh-ahh-ahh-ahh-ahh--ooooh!)
Public Enemy had Yo! Bum Rush The Show, but the final word has to go to Doug E Fresh's The Show. Simply for the reason that it's called The Show…sadly I can't remember anything else about it.
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
Stranglers
Good point about their cover of Walk on by. It would be in my list of all time great cover versions even allowing for bolting Light My Fire by theDoors into the twiddly mid section meanderings. Loved Hugh Cornwall's vocals on the original line up's version
They really were a band who really were both loved and loathed. I was a big fan at 13 and so didn't actually notice the sexism. I did like horrible sounding aggressive music though. As a band they always just seemed unbelievably popular in small towns. It's that suburban shock value with great tunes. Girls liked them too. I know plenty of people who started playing bass (me included) because of JJ Burnell's bass sound.
I still play the first Lp and I'm still impressed by just how nasty the band sounded. A horrible scratchy guitar sound and ferocious bass. Sarky, unpleasant and with the smell of a possible beating. They sounded like a night in a hostel. In hindsight they sounded as unlovable as their personalities probably were.
I remember taping a John Peel session with tracks that would turn up on Rattus Norvegicus and having Hanging Around swirling round my head next day at school dinners. Also how about this for a 1977 combination? An In Concert feature on Radio 1 featuring half an hour of The Stranglers coupled with a half hour set by Dave Edmunds Rockpile.
The quality nose-dived after their third album Black and White, but you have got to salute them though for making the very silly (it's also very dire) Meninblack album before alien conspiracy theories really took off. Bet they didn't play anything off it though? Bet the audience were gladthey didn't too. Interesting thing about their vocalist turnover. Their last singer PaulRoberts was with them for longer than Hugh Cornwall. I once heard an interview when JJ Burnell complained that when Hugh left the band he did it over the phone rather than telling him face to face. I think it was for the same reason that no one ever told JJ to turn his bass down. JJ... HE WAS SCARED OF YOU
They really were a band who really were both loved and loathed. I was a big fan at 13 and so didn't actually notice the sexism. I did like horrible sounding aggressive music though. As a band they always just seemed unbelievably popular in small towns. It's that suburban shock value with great tunes. Girls liked them too. I know plenty of people who started playing bass (me included) because of JJ Burnell's bass sound.
I still play the first Lp and I'm still impressed by just how nasty the band sounded. A horrible scratchy guitar sound and ferocious bass. Sarky, unpleasant and with the smell of a possible beating. They sounded like a night in a hostel. In hindsight they sounded as unlovable as their personalities probably were.
I remember taping a John Peel session with tracks that would turn up on Rattus Norvegicus and having Hanging Around swirling round my head next day at school dinners. Also how about this for a 1977 combination? An In Concert feature on Radio 1 featuring half an hour of The Stranglers coupled with a half hour set by Dave Edmunds Rockpile.
The quality nose-dived after their third album Black and White, but you have got to salute them though for making the very silly (it's also very dire) Meninblack album before alien conspiracy theories really took off. Bet they didn't play anything off it though? Bet the audience were gladthey didn't too. Interesting thing about their vocalist turnover. Their last singer PaulRoberts was with them for longer than Hugh Cornwall. I once heard an interview when JJ Burnell complained that when Hugh left the band he did it over the phone rather than telling him face to face. I think it was for the same reason that no one ever told JJ to turn his bass down. JJ... HE WAS SCARED OF YOU
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
Dinosaur Jr Academy Birmingham 22 May 2006
I saw Dinosaur Jr at Birmingham Carling Academy last night. That's the original line up with, hatchets buried and the band coming back to collect long overdue dues, library fines and critical acclaim.
I'd seen them in 1992 at the same venue. Smaller room this time round, although same great big sound. It's J Mascis guitar playing that really does it for me. It's got a sound of wah wah fruitiness that just splurges over the songs. His guitar sounds like it's having immense fun...Of course you can't tell whether he is having fun as he's hiding behind luxurient hair curtains and his only movements are like a walrus langidly rolling off the sofa towards the last tortilla chip and trying not to squash the TV remote control.
The band sounded great: loud, and a bit rough. A tricky thing to get right and to make it sound soooo right. I spent much of the night grinning at the audacity of the guitar sound and the tunes within tunes that the band were able to produce thanks to the miracle of volume, clever chords and plentyof notes. You can't argue with a classic Power trio. Hendrix, Sugar, Dinosaur Jr. It forces people to play differently as they need to cope with the moment when the guitar switches from rhythm to lead and the whole sound can collapse.
Mascis and Lou Barlow took turns at vocals, maybe that was to do with band politics and whose songs got played. They had pretty much defined this kind of sound and yet I spent much of the set thinking "It sounds great....but I don't remember this one." Most of the songs were from the first 2 albums I think...and my Dinosaur Jr knowledge is sadly Bug onwards. If I'd have been in their shoes I would have wanted to bash out indie hit after indie hit just to prove to the audience how much they should have missed me. They probably did, but I just didn't know it.
Freak Scene and Just like Heaven were saved for the encore and there was no Start Chopping. Barlows amp had to be swapped over half way through and the band seemed to lose a bit of momentum. There's a great moment in Just Like Heaven where the song seems to stop, just as it gets to the chorus, almost as if a tape is running and the power is cut, so it takes a micro second to stop rather than a clean sliced stop. It's a great trick and they use it to end the song on as well.
Birmingham was probably a bit of an off night for them really, but on a good night on this tour they'll be unstoppable.
I'd seen them in 1992 at the same venue. Smaller room this time round, although same great big sound. It's J Mascis guitar playing that really does it for me. It's got a sound of wah wah fruitiness that just splurges over the songs. His guitar sounds like it's having immense fun...Of course you can't tell whether he is having fun as he's hiding behind luxurient hair curtains and his only movements are like a walrus langidly rolling off the sofa towards the last tortilla chip and trying not to squash the TV remote control.
The band sounded great: loud, and a bit rough. A tricky thing to get right and to make it sound soooo right. I spent much of the night grinning at the audacity of the guitar sound and the tunes within tunes that the band were able to produce thanks to the miracle of volume, clever chords and plentyof notes. You can't argue with a classic Power trio. Hendrix, Sugar, Dinosaur Jr. It forces people to play differently as they need to cope with the moment when the guitar switches from rhythm to lead and the whole sound can collapse.
Mascis and Lou Barlow took turns at vocals, maybe that was to do with band politics and whose songs got played. They had pretty much defined this kind of sound and yet I spent much of the set thinking "It sounds great....but I don't remember this one." Most of the songs were from the first 2 albums I think...and my Dinosaur Jr knowledge is sadly Bug onwards. If I'd have been in their shoes I would have wanted to bash out indie hit after indie hit just to prove to the audience how much they should have missed me. They probably did, but I just didn't know it.
Freak Scene and Just like Heaven were saved for the encore and there was no Start Chopping. Barlows amp had to be swapped over half way through and the band seemed to lose a bit of momentum. There's a great moment in Just Like Heaven where the song seems to stop, just as it gets to the chorus, almost as if a tape is running and the power is cut, so it takes a micro second to stop rather than a clean sliced stop. It's a great trick and they use it to end the song on as well.
Birmingham was probably a bit of an off night for them really, but on a good night on this tour they'll be unstoppable.
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Swervedriver to The Clash
Son Of Mustang Ford - Swervedriver
You Got It (Keep It Outta My Face) - Mudhoney
Search And Destroy - Iggy And The Stooges
Radio - Teenage Fanclub
The Wagon - Dinosaur Jr
Cherub Rock - Smashing Pumpkins
Prove It - Television
At Home He's A Tourist - Gang Of Four
Armalite Rifle - Gang Of Four
Where Were You - Mekons
Walk All Over You - AC/DC
In A Rut - Ruts
Holiday In Cambodia - Dead Kennedys
Seether - Veruca Salt
Suck - Wedding Present
Blue Eyes - Wedding Present
This Charming Man - Smiths
Reel Around The Fountain - Smiths
Cracked Actor - David Bowie
Safe European Home - Clash
Loose - Stooges
Rave Down - Swervedriver
Helter Skelter - Beatles
Summertime Blues - Who
I'm Not Down - Clash
There is an opinion that Walk All Over you is typical metal sexist shite, performed by trolls and bought by acrid armpitted adolescents who are “resting between girlfriends”. My opinion would be that it is a work of genius. It’s got a runaway train of a bass line and a slashing guitar sequence of 6 chords…..but relax, it’s only 2 chords in total. The best bit is the way Bon Scott’s voice goes up half through the “Wo….oagh “ bit of the “Wo….oagh baby I aint got much, resistance to your touch” (In itself a great metal lyric)
When Bon sings “Take off your high heels, Let down your hair, Paradise ain’t far from there” I’m a bit worried about his sense of direction. Is he heading north from the shoes or south from the hair? There’s a good Dave Lee Roth quote about his advice to contestants in a beauty contest, “lose the dress keep the shoes”. (I never really got the shoe thing. High heels don’t do much for me, they’re murder on my feet and anyway, I always preferred a woman to wear running shoes… to make certain that she’d catch me).
The guitar riff of In A Rut and Loose are both closely related (in an Deliverance/Appalachian way) but they’re both beautiful babies anyway. Lots of space between the guitar and rhythm. I love the sound of Cherub Rock as the guitar sound feels at once both monumentally loud, and unstoppable but also compressed. It’s one of those songs where I have never wondered what it means as any meaning cannot be greater than the power of the riff. Having said that though, for me personally, the song is most associated with ironing clothes on a night shift in a care home, which is when I first heard it. All songs cannot after all be linked with wide open spaces, primeval rage or skilful percy filth.
Indisputable fact number 1. The John Peel session version of This Charming Man (best found on either A Hatful Of Hollow or a muffled cassette) is better than the single version. It’s better because it’s bouncier. Reel Around The Fountain (again the session version is better, stripped down and rougher). At the time I loved it for it’s Taste Of Honey quotes and that great line “People said you were so easily lead, and they wee half right”. Soon after hearing it on Peel in the summer of 83 (with that session still in my head,) I went to see them at Blackburn, at a tiny upstairs club. Manchester to Blackburn on a Honda 70, in a yellow (maybe more of a honey colour) jumper and donkey jacket. They did play both This Charming Man and Reel Around The Fountain. The alternative people of Blackburn had turned out in with quiffs and loud shirts, but it was a restrained start to a career before the hysteria and devotion that later attached itself to the band and Morrissey. I saw them a few months later at the Hacienda at the height of the gladioli swinging season. They’d been on Top Of The Pops earlier, the gig was sold out, the audience keen. It felt like the confirmation of just how special this band were … and the rest of the world were just about to catch up. It was an accepted fact . Anyone you liked, liked the Smiths….and they’d only put out 2 singles. For a big swathe of NME reading, gig going Peel listeners they’d become instantly ubiquitous. I went to see loads of bands at the time and seemingly everyone I’d ever seen at any gig anywhere, was there. I remember the gig falling victim to the shocking acoustics of the majority of gigs at the Hacienda, Morrissey’s only words were “Hello you handsome devils”. The gig in the following year at the Free Trade Hall felt like a football match with the crowd chanting “Manchester”. Ironic really, because part of what Morrissey had sulked in his room about had now turned out to see him. What I remember most about that gig was the perversity because I’m sure they played Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now as the second song. At the time it was a new song…and it’s certainly no rabble rouser. I saw them twice in 85 at Stoke (How soon Is Now sounded particularly good) where Morrissey left the stage after someone threw a sausage at him and Birmingham Hippodrome at the end of last song Barbarism Begins At Home Marr threw his guitar across the stage and stormed off.
Summertime Blues is utterly preposterous. And utterly brilliant just for the way that the bass and guitars overhang each other on the Der Der Der der der der Der. By that I mean they’re overhanging each other like a particularly treacherous piece of rock. Just don’t stand under it and don’t try and climb it. Just give it a suitable name and walk on to the next ridge. And it’s a brontosaurus of a bass line.
You Got It (Keep It Outta My Face) - Mudhoney
Search And Destroy - Iggy And The Stooges
Radio - Teenage Fanclub
The Wagon - Dinosaur Jr
Cherub Rock - Smashing Pumpkins
Prove It - Television
At Home He's A Tourist - Gang Of Four
Armalite Rifle - Gang Of Four
Where Were You - Mekons
Walk All Over You - AC/DC
In A Rut - Ruts
Holiday In Cambodia - Dead Kennedys
Seether - Veruca Salt
Suck - Wedding Present
Blue Eyes - Wedding Present
This Charming Man - Smiths
Reel Around The Fountain - Smiths
Cracked Actor - David Bowie
Safe European Home - Clash
Loose - Stooges
Rave Down - Swervedriver
Helter Skelter - Beatles
Summertime Blues - Who
I'm Not Down - Clash
There is an opinion that Walk All Over you is typical metal sexist shite, performed by trolls and bought by acrid armpitted adolescents who are “resting between girlfriends”. My opinion would be that it is a work of genius. It’s got a runaway train of a bass line and a slashing guitar sequence of 6 chords…..but relax, it’s only 2 chords in total. The best bit is the way Bon Scott’s voice goes up half through the “Wo….oagh “ bit of the “Wo….oagh baby I aint got much, resistance to your touch” (In itself a great metal lyric)
When Bon sings “Take off your high heels, Let down your hair, Paradise ain’t far from there” I’m a bit worried about his sense of direction. Is he heading north from the shoes or south from the hair? There’s a good Dave Lee Roth quote about his advice to contestants in a beauty contest, “lose the dress keep the shoes”. (I never really got the shoe thing. High heels don’t do much for me, they’re murder on my feet and anyway, I always preferred a woman to wear running shoes… to make certain that she’d catch me).
The guitar riff of In A Rut and Loose are both closely related (in an Deliverance/Appalachian way) but they’re both beautiful babies anyway. Lots of space between the guitar and rhythm. I love the sound of Cherub Rock as the guitar sound feels at once both monumentally loud, and unstoppable but also compressed. It’s one of those songs where I have never wondered what it means as any meaning cannot be greater than the power of the riff. Having said that though, for me personally, the song is most associated with ironing clothes on a night shift in a care home, which is when I first heard it. All songs cannot after all be linked with wide open spaces, primeval rage or skilful percy filth.
Indisputable fact number 1. The John Peel session version of This Charming Man (best found on either A Hatful Of Hollow or a muffled cassette) is better than the single version. It’s better because it’s bouncier. Reel Around The Fountain (again the session version is better, stripped down and rougher). At the time I loved it for it’s Taste Of Honey quotes and that great line “People said you were so easily lead, and they wee half right”. Soon after hearing it on Peel in the summer of 83 (with that session still in my head,) I went to see them at Blackburn, at a tiny upstairs club. Manchester to Blackburn on a Honda 70, in a yellow (maybe more of a honey colour) jumper and donkey jacket. They did play both This Charming Man and Reel Around The Fountain. The alternative people of Blackburn had turned out in with quiffs and loud shirts, but it was a restrained start to a career before the hysteria and devotion that later attached itself to the band and Morrissey. I saw them a few months later at the Hacienda at the height of the gladioli swinging season. They’d been on Top Of The Pops earlier, the gig was sold out, the audience keen. It felt like the confirmation of just how special this band were … and the rest of the world were just about to catch up. It was an accepted fact . Anyone you liked, liked the Smiths….and they’d only put out 2 singles. For a big swathe of NME reading, gig going Peel listeners they’d become instantly ubiquitous. I went to see loads of bands at the time and seemingly everyone I’d ever seen at any gig anywhere, was there. I remember the gig falling victim to the shocking acoustics of the majority of gigs at the Hacienda, Morrissey’s only words were “Hello you handsome devils”. The gig in the following year at the Free Trade Hall felt like a football match with the crowd chanting “Manchester”. Ironic really, because part of what Morrissey had sulked in his room about had now turned out to see him. What I remember most about that gig was the perversity because I’m sure they played Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now as the second song. At the time it was a new song…and it’s certainly no rabble rouser. I saw them twice in 85 at Stoke (How soon Is Now sounded particularly good) where Morrissey left the stage after someone threw a sausage at him and Birmingham Hippodrome at the end of last song Barbarism Begins At Home Marr threw his guitar across the stage and stormed off.
Summertime Blues is utterly preposterous. And utterly brilliant just for the way that the bass and guitars overhang each other on the Der Der Der der der der Der. By that I mean they’re overhanging each other like a particularly treacherous piece of rock. Just don’t stand under it and don’t try and climb it. Just give it a suitable name and walk on to the next ridge. And it’s a brontosaurus of a bass line.
Friday, November 18, 2005
Southern Soul
I Feel Like Breaking Up Somebody's Home - Ann Peebles
99 Lbs - Ann Peebles
Talk To Me - Al Green
He Made A Woman Out Of Me - Betty Lavette
It Hurts To Want It So Bad - Arthur Alexander
Anna (Go To Him) - Arthur Alexander
Piece Of My Heart - Betty Lavette
Mr. And Mrs. Untrue - Candi Staton
Evidence - Candi Staton
Divorce Decree - Doris Duke
Love Man - Otis Redding
Do Your Duty - Betty Lavette
Stealing Love - Eddie Floyd
She Don't Have To See You - Tommie Young
Pouring Water On A Drowning Man - James Carr
She'll Never Be Your Wife - Irma Thomas
To Love Somebody - James Carr
Sure As Sin - Laura Lee
Making The Best Of A Bad Situation - Millie Jackson
You Don't Miss Your Water - Otis Redding
It Tears Me Up - Percy Sledge
Look At The Girl - Otis Redding
Behind Closed Doors - Percy Sledge
You Brought It All On Yourself - Tommie Young
Down The Back Roads - Arthur Alexander
I always liked the cheatin’ lyin’ and slippin’ around style of Southern soul. You’ve got the great mixture of quality singers, natural sounding arrangements with those warm brass and keyboard sounds and then that country tradition wherethe song title is either a literary gem or a rancid pun. Either way it almost tells the story of the song all by itself. Look no further than Pouring Water On A Drowning Man, or She Don't Have To See You (to see through you).
The Ann Peebles songs not only show what she’s got planned in the home wrecking department but also how she’s going to do it. Would that be “99 pounds of “Pure Cane Sugar” then Madam? And does that work with 168 pounds of Guinness and crisps? In terms of the number of songs about it, Otis Redding was probably the undisputed King Of Love By Weight. He had not only Lovin’ By The Pound, A Ton Of Joy but also on Love Man he sang “Six foot 1, weigh 210, fine hair, pretty fair skin, long legged and outta sight, hey girl I’m gonna take you out”.
Solomon Burke’s quote takes the (packet of) biscuits. “There’s 375 pounds of me. You can have any 5 pounds you need, baby”
I saw Ann Peebles in about 1990 at Manchester International and Birmingham Hummingbird, the band were really good and kept an authentic soul sound. Her voice still sounded great and it was just impressive to hear someone who could really sing, without seeming to find it too hard. How can something that sounds so good look so easy?
The Candi Staton tracks have, Mr and Mrs Untrue booking into a motel and Evidence has her going through his pockets to find “There’s some other woman taking my place”
The Bee Gees still fill me with alarm, but they did write but To Love Somebody, which is just a supremely well-written song that hits that “nobody understands” spot perfectly. “There’s a light, a certain kind of light, that never shines on me”. It’s virtually a Morrissey lyric. My 2 favourite versions are the James Carr and The Flying Burrito Brothers. James Carr edges it though. His voice is just so full of resignation and utter misery and after the final line of each chorus “You don’t know what it’s like, You just don’t know what it’s like to love somebody, to love somebody, the way I love you”, there’s a 2 note keyboard whistle and the drums lead back in. And you know his pain is going to go on.
Look At That Girl is a bit of a throwaway Hang On Sloopy type song which sounds like nobody spent too long working on it, but there’s a great joyous feel to Otis’s vocal. And it’s good to look.
After all the heartache, adultery and lechery it’s a bit of a relief to get to Arthur Alexander’ s Down The Back Roads. It’s a beautiful Steve Cropper song, with a great guitar motif and warm electric piano. The song is a wistful getting away from it song, heading down the back roads, “Where the simple life is found, where I’ll lay my troubles down.” His vocals can sometimes sound a bit mannered and the arrangements and sound of his R and B hits (as covered by The Beatles and Stones) aren’t really to my taste, but he’s got one of my favourite male voices. His voice often carries the sound of real heartbreak. He had been early acid adopter, had mental health problems, and after being thoroughly skewered by the Music Industry he left it in disgust, only to die in 1993s (heart failure…how else should a Soul Man go?) on the brink of a comeback after the well received album Lonely Just Like Me.
99 Lbs - Ann Peebles
Talk To Me - Al Green
He Made A Woman Out Of Me - Betty Lavette
It Hurts To Want It So Bad - Arthur Alexander
Anna (Go To Him) - Arthur Alexander
Piece Of My Heart - Betty Lavette
Mr. And Mrs. Untrue - Candi Staton
Evidence - Candi Staton
Divorce Decree - Doris Duke
Love Man - Otis Redding
Do Your Duty - Betty Lavette
Stealing Love - Eddie Floyd
She Don't Have To See You - Tommie Young
Pouring Water On A Drowning Man - James Carr
She'll Never Be Your Wife - Irma Thomas
To Love Somebody - James Carr
Sure As Sin - Laura Lee
Making The Best Of A Bad Situation - Millie Jackson
You Don't Miss Your Water - Otis Redding
It Tears Me Up - Percy Sledge
Look At The Girl - Otis Redding
Behind Closed Doors - Percy Sledge
You Brought It All On Yourself - Tommie Young
Down The Back Roads - Arthur Alexander
I always liked the cheatin’ lyin’ and slippin’ around style of Southern soul. You’ve got the great mixture of quality singers, natural sounding arrangements with those warm brass and keyboard sounds and then that country tradition wherethe song title is either a literary gem or a rancid pun. Either way it almost tells the story of the song all by itself. Look no further than Pouring Water On A Drowning Man, or She Don't Have To See You (to see through you).
The Ann Peebles songs not only show what she’s got planned in the home wrecking department but also how she’s going to do it. Would that be “99 pounds of “Pure Cane Sugar” then Madam? And does that work with 168 pounds of Guinness and crisps? In terms of the number of songs about it, Otis Redding was probably the undisputed King Of Love By Weight. He had not only Lovin’ By The Pound, A Ton Of Joy but also on Love Man he sang “Six foot 1, weigh 210, fine hair, pretty fair skin, long legged and outta sight, hey girl I’m gonna take you out”.
Solomon Burke’s quote takes the (packet of) biscuits. “There’s 375 pounds of me. You can have any 5 pounds you need, baby”
I saw Ann Peebles in about 1990 at Manchester International and Birmingham Hummingbird, the band were really good and kept an authentic soul sound. Her voice still sounded great and it was just impressive to hear someone who could really sing, without seeming to find it too hard. How can something that sounds so good look so easy?
The Candi Staton tracks have, Mr and Mrs Untrue booking into a motel and Evidence has her going through his pockets to find “There’s some other woman taking my place”
The Bee Gees still fill me with alarm, but they did write but To Love Somebody, which is just a supremely well-written song that hits that “nobody understands” spot perfectly. “There’s a light, a certain kind of light, that never shines on me”. It’s virtually a Morrissey lyric. My 2 favourite versions are the James Carr and The Flying Burrito Brothers. James Carr edges it though. His voice is just so full of resignation and utter misery and after the final line of each chorus “You don’t know what it’s like, You just don’t know what it’s like to love somebody, to love somebody, the way I love you”, there’s a 2 note keyboard whistle and the drums lead back in. And you know his pain is going to go on.
Look At That Girl is a bit of a throwaway Hang On Sloopy type song which sounds like nobody spent too long working on it, but there’s a great joyous feel to Otis’s vocal. And it’s good to look.
After all the heartache, adultery and lechery it’s a bit of a relief to get to Arthur Alexander’ s Down The Back Roads. It’s a beautiful Steve Cropper song, with a great guitar motif and warm electric piano. The song is a wistful getting away from it song, heading down the back roads, “Where the simple life is found, where I’ll lay my troubles down.” His vocals can sometimes sound a bit mannered and the arrangements and sound of his R and B hits (as covered by The Beatles and Stones) aren’t really to my taste, but he’s got one of my favourite male voices. His voice often carries the sound of real heartbreak. He had been early acid adopter, had mental health problems, and after being thoroughly skewered by the Music Industry he left it in disgust, only to die in 1993s (heart failure…how else should a Soul Man go?) on the brink of a comeback after the well received album Lonely Just Like Me.
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
Lou Reed to Mink Deville - Handcrafted 'Podlist
Romeo Had Juliet - Lou Reed
Bodies - Pistols
Personality Crisis - New York Dolls
Koka Kola - Clash
Commandment Of Drugs - Prince Far I
To Be A Lover - George Faith
From A Whisper To A Scream - Esther Phillips
I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself - Tommy Hunt
One Woman - Al Green
Shout Bamalama - Detroit Cobras
Fire - Jimi Hendrix
Manic Depression - Jimi Hendrix
Finders Keepers - Chairman Of The Board
Pay To The Piper - Chairman Of The Board
Ball Of Confusion - Temptations
You Keep Tightening Up On Me - Box Tops
If I Could Only Be Sure - Nolan Porter
London - Smiths
You Can’t Have Me - Big Star
Jigsaw Puzzle - Rolling Stones
Pat Trip Dispenser - Fall
It's All Over Now Baby Blue - Thirteenth Floor Elevators
Fire Engine - Television
American Girl - Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers
Bodies - Pistols
Personality Crisis - New York Dolls
Koka Kola - Clash
Commandment Of Drugs - Prince Far I
To Be A Lover - George Faith
From A Whisper To A Scream - Esther Phillips
I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself - Tommy Hunt
One Woman - Al Green
Shout Bamalama - Detroit Cobras
Fire - Jimi Hendrix
Manic Depression - Jimi Hendrix
Finders Keepers - Chairman Of The Board
Pay To The Piper - Chairman Of The Board
Ball Of Confusion - Temptations
You Keep Tightening Up On Me - Box Tops
If I Could Only Be Sure - Nolan Porter
London - Smiths
You Can’t Have Me - Big Star
Jigsaw Puzzle - Rolling Stones
Pat Trip Dispenser - Fall
It's All Over Now Baby Blue - Thirteenth Floor Elevators
Fire Engine - Television
American Girl - Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers
Thursday, September 22, 2005
Hand Crafted 'Podlist
Raw Power - Iggy & The Stooges
New Rose - The Damned
Son Of Mustang Ford - Swervedriver
Bad Boy Boogie - AC/DC
She Bangs The Drum - The Stone Roses
Man On The Moon - Sugar
Goodbye Toulouse - Stranglers
Been Caught Stealing - Janes’s Addiction
Seven Days Too Long - Dexy’s Midnight Runners
It Looks Like You - Evan Dando
Older Guys - The Flying Burrito Brothers
No Feelings - Sex Pistols
In Between Tears - Irma Thomas
He made A Woman Out Of Me - Betty Lavette
If You Can Beat Me Rockin’ (you Can Have My Chair) - Laura Lee
Love Man - Otis Redding
Remedy - The Black Crowes
Every Picture Tells a Story - Rod Stewart
Suffragette City - David Bowie
Drive-In Saturday - David Bowie
Seen The Light - Supergrass
Golden Skin - Silversun
Big Boy - Minuteman
Winter - Teenage Fanclub
I've Got Dreams To Remember - Otis Redding
It’s an Iggy to Otis ‘Pod list. It was carefully hand crafted using my own skill and judgement rather than the Shuffle and the songs were chosen on the basis of their intros as well as their tip top quality. The Pistols and Irma Thomas intros both use a similar ascending chord sequence and that’s a good enough reason for me to squeeze them both into the same playlist. If I was ever kidnapped by fundamentalist list compilers, and forced to compile my top 10 favourite intros, then they would both be top 5.
Other things to love from the list….the one note piano on Raw Power (it worked on I Wanna Be Your Dog, so we’ll use it again ), the guitar break on She Bangs The Drum, where it just moves completely away from what went before it. Man In The Moon just sounds immense. Did the band leave the studio looking like cartoon characters flattened by steamrollers? Were they pinned to the studio wall by a rolling wall of sound? It’s a miracle they survived.
Goodbye Toulouse just sounds nasty. The bass is filthy, aggressive and then the guitar is scratchy and unpleasant. It’s a night in a hostel. It’s also one of my favourite tracks from one of my favourite lps by one the world’s least lovable bands. The SilverSun and Minuteman tracks use similar “great riff and Beach Boy vocal” tactics…as do TFC. There is something about the chords of Winter and the strained “Der der der der” backing vocals that just make’s me weep. The song aches of wistful nostalgia. A walking hand in hand lyric alone is not enough though (probably why my playlist is a bit light on the works of Manillow and Sedaka) but the song really does get to me and I’m not really sure why. I’d have it as a funeral song. Though there is a part of me that’s tempted by Banging The Door by Public Image…and that would be the part of me that can’t resist the bad gag.
New Rose - The Damned
Son Of Mustang Ford - Swervedriver
Bad Boy Boogie - AC/DC
She Bangs The Drum - The Stone Roses
Man On The Moon - Sugar
Goodbye Toulouse - Stranglers
Been Caught Stealing - Janes’s Addiction
Seven Days Too Long - Dexy’s Midnight Runners
It Looks Like You - Evan Dando
Older Guys - The Flying Burrito Brothers
No Feelings - Sex Pistols
In Between Tears - Irma Thomas
He made A Woman Out Of Me - Betty Lavette
If You Can Beat Me Rockin’ (you Can Have My Chair) - Laura Lee
Love Man - Otis Redding
Remedy - The Black Crowes
Every Picture Tells a Story - Rod Stewart
Suffragette City - David Bowie
Drive-In Saturday - David Bowie
Seen The Light - Supergrass
Golden Skin - Silversun
Big Boy - Minuteman
Winter - Teenage Fanclub
I've Got Dreams To Remember - Otis Redding
It’s an Iggy to Otis ‘Pod list. It was carefully hand crafted using my own skill and judgement rather than the Shuffle and the songs were chosen on the basis of their intros as well as their tip top quality. The Pistols and Irma Thomas intros both use a similar ascending chord sequence and that’s a good enough reason for me to squeeze them both into the same playlist. If I was ever kidnapped by fundamentalist list compilers, and forced to compile my top 10 favourite intros, then they would both be top 5.
Other things to love from the list….the one note piano on Raw Power (it worked on I Wanna Be Your Dog, so we’ll use it again ), the guitar break on She Bangs The Drum, where it just moves completely away from what went before it. Man In The Moon just sounds immense. Did the band leave the studio looking like cartoon characters flattened by steamrollers? Were they pinned to the studio wall by a rolling wall of sound? It’s a miracle they survived.
Goodbye Toulouse just sounds nasty. The bass is filthy, aggressive and then the guitar is scratchy and unpleasant. It’s a night in a hostel. It’s also one of my favourite tracks from one of my favourite lps by one the world’s least lovable bands. The SilverSun and Minuteman tracks use similar “great riff and Beach Boy vocal” tactics…as do TFC. There is something about the chords of Winter and the strained “Der der der der” backing vocals that just make’s me weep. The song aches of wistful nostalgia. A walking hand in hand lyric alone is not enough though (probably why my playlist is a bit light on the works of Manillow and Sedaka) but the song really does get to me and I’m not really sure why. I’d have it as a funeral song. Though there is a part of me that’s tempted by Banging The Door by Public Image…and that would be the part of me that can’t resist the bad gag.
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