THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN

IT’S ELECTION DAY IN THE UK

It’s not a General Election to bring in a Westminster government, but will see voters in Scotland and Wales electing politicians to the Scottish Parliament and Senedd Cymru respectively, while many voters in England will be electing local councillors and/or mayors.

The polls are predicting massive gains for the right-wing in the shape of Reform UK. We are living in distressing and dangerous times.

mp3: Chumbawamba – Bella Ciao
mp3: Heaven 17 – (We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang

I suspect I’m not the only one posting these tunes today. If you do have a vote today, please go out there and use it sensibly and effectively.

JC

Stereolab

FOUR TRACK MIND : A RANDOM SERIES OF EXTENDED PLAY SINGLES

A guest series by Fraser Pettigrew (aka our New Zealand correspondent)

#17: Stereolab – The Free Design (1999)

A beneficial by-product of writing this series on EPs has been the pleasant rediscovery of records that I hadn’t listened to in quite a while. And in the case of The Free Design by Stereolab, seemingly not ever listened to properly and realising how much better it was than I remembered.

The Free Design was the lead single from Stereolab’s sixth full-length studio album Cobra And Phases Group Play Voltage In The Milky Night. Not only did the band’s penchant for absurd album titles reach new heights, the music also further extended the rhythmic sophistication and multi-instrumental arrangements from preceding album Dots And Loops.

Like Dots And Loops and Emperor Tomato Ketchup before that, Cobra And Phases was produced by Tortoise drummer John McEntire, this time with the additional assistance of alternative-guitarist-at-large Jim O’Rourke. Emperor Tomato Ketchup was apparently also the first time Stereolab used loops rather than drones as compositional starters, although the overall effect on the music isn’t as marked as the shift that occurred on Dots And Loops, where more complex rhythms including some synthetic percussion (even flirting with drum’n’bass styles), brass arrangements, and a slicker studio sound stood out.

Cobra And Phases continued that movement with repeated use of somewhat staccato Latin-jazz rhythms and modal vocal melodies that led some critics to bemoan a lack of variety across the album. Without having read any such criticism I nevertheless leapt to a similar conclusion myself, feeling that the hitherto felicitous blend of 60s French pop and German avant-garde had skewed towards too much easy listening and not enough Krautrock for my liking.

Given that barely two or three weeks would have passed between my purchase of The Free Design and the arrival of the album, I suspect that the EP never got many spins before my disappointment with the LP tainted it by association. Imagine my surprise and delight, therefore, when I slapped it on again for the first time in many years, at rather higher than intended volume, and thought cor blimey, what a ripper, or whatever it is that young people say these days.

Granted, the title track is practically the archetype of the pseudo-samba style that was overused on the album and through subsequent years, but it is one of the catchiest iterations of the template, definite single material, embellished with almost Dexys-like brass parts. Straight after that, however, we plunge into a delightfully squelchy synth-heavy romp on Escape Pod (From The World of Medical Observations) which really popped at volume, reminding me that I tend to listen to music too much in the background instead of up at 11 on the amp so it flays the skin off your face. Plays havoc with my hearing aids but fuck it, yer a lang time deef, to coin a Scots phrase.

The B-side tracks are both well along the pop tune spectrum but in a more relaxed tempo than the lead track. With Friends Like These is a quaint little diatribe, showing extreme intolerance for the intolerant, hating on the haters, all beneath the jauntiest little tune and sweet arrangement. Les Aimies Des Mêmes is a bit more downbeat, built around a bass line that could have been lifted from a Blaxploitation soundtrack, and concluding with a distinctly jazzy muted trumpet solo.

The Free Design, in case you aren’t already aware of the title reference, was a family vocal group in the late 1960s and early 70s that had little commercial success but enjoyed a renaissance in recent years thanks to artists such as Stereolab, Beck and Sean O’Hagan namechecking them. They were probably too musically complex to have made the mainstream breakthrough at the time but their sophisticated arrangements and time signatures – think The Beach Boys and Swingle filtered through Benjamin Britten and modern jazz – made them ripe for retro rediscovery. Needless to say, the lyrics of the song have absolutely nothing to do with them.

As with Miss Modular, the lead single from Dots And Loops, The Free Design EP came in 12” format rather than the 10” EPs that preceded Emperor Tomato Ketchup (Cybele’s Reverie), Mars Audiac Quintet (Ping Pong) and Transient Random-Noise Bursts (Jenny Ondioline). Like those previous two lead singles you could get the 12” of The Free Design in any colour of vinyl so long as it was black. Cobra and Phases was also only issued in black vinyl, limited to 7000, unlike the spangly yellow Emperor Tomato Ketchup and the minty green and white Dots and Loops. In 1999, Vinyl was approaching its near-extinction and the modern fetish for colour was a long way off.

Having found the EP more to my liking than I had remembered, I went back and replayed the album, motivated also by the discovery in an interview that Tim Gane regarded it as the Stereolab work he was most proud of. With all this encouragement, I wasn’t surprised to find that the album held more pleasures than my memory had allowed, including the long avant-garde track Blue Milk, a succession of monorythmic variations throbbing on for over 11 minutes. Mrs P pleaded with me to make it stop after about 5, but she was out of luck. Our marriage endures in spite of it all.

The Free Design

Escape Pod (From The World of Medical Observations)

With Friends Like These

Les Aimies Des Mêmes

Fraser

Age Of Chance, Clouds, Happy Mondays, McCarthy, St Christopher

C86 : THE ULTIMATE SERIES (Parts 29, 30, 31, 32 and 33 of 114)

The backstory of McCarthy was told a short time ago in the post that covered Parts 15-17 of the series, thanks to Celestial City being part of the C86 cassette.

I mentioned how their earliest recordings were on The Pink Label.

mp3: Frans Hals – McCarthy

Track 21, Disc 2 of CD 86

This, in March 1987, was the band’s second and final single for The Pink Label, and it reached #4 on the Indie Singles Chart. It had the catalogue number of PINKY 17. There would only be two further releases on the label before owner Simon Down closed it down, with spend having far outweighed income.

Yup….Cherry Red Records managed to get a Happy Mondays track licensed for inclusion on the 2014 boxset.

mp3: Freaky Dancin’ – Happy Mondays

Track 11, Disc Three of C86 The Deluxe 3CD Edition.

The band, of course, shot to fame via what was known to all and sundry as Madchester, but just a few years previously, they had been regarded as a good fit for the C86 scene, particularly the shambolic element.

Signed to Factory Records in 1985, Freaky Dancin’/The Egg was their second single for the label, hitting the shops in June 1986. The catalogue number was FAC 142. It sold in such dismal numbers that it didn’t even make the Top 30 of the Indie Singles Chart. Even today, second-hand copies of both the 7″ and 12″ releases can be had for reasonable amounts.

The backstory of Age of Chance was told a short time ago in the post that covered Parts 7-10 of the series, thanks to Bible of The Beats being included on the CD86 release compiled and curated by Bob Stanley in 2006. I did, in that previous post, mention that the band were one of those who had contributed to the C86 cassette:-

mp3: From Now On, This Will Be Your God – Age of Chance

Track 11 on side 1 of the C86 cassette; Track 11, Disc One of C86 The Deluxe 3CD Edition.

As far as I’m aware, not released on any of the band’s subsequent singles or studio albums.

The Clouds, from Glasgow, were a short-lived band whose recording legacy was just one half of a flexidisc and three songs on a single issued by the Bristol-based The Subway Organisation in January 1988.

mp3: Get Out Of My Dream – The Clouds

Track 9, Disc 1 of CD 86

It’s actually one of the two songs on the b-side, with the a-side being Tranquil. Released in February 1984, it was also just the second single to be released by Subway, a label that would continue through to 1990. Four of the compilation albums/boxsets I have covering this period/or the indie genre contain Get Out Of My Dream.

St. Christopher are from York, an historical Cathedral City in the north of England. They formed in 1984, with their first three singles coming out on their own Bluegrass label:-

mp3 : Go Ahead Cry – St. Christopher

Track 16, Disc Three of C86 The Deluxe 3CD Edition.

This was their third single, and came out in 1986. The band would later sign with Sarah Records, releasing the 7″ singles You Deserve More Than A Maybe (SARAH 15) and All Of A Tremble (SARAH 20) in 1989, followed by the 7″ single Antoinette (SARAH 34) and the 10″ mini-EP, Bacharach (SARAH 403) in 1990, and finally the 7″ single Say Yes To Everything (SARAH 46) in 1991.

They would later record for a number of other famous indie-labels including Slumberland, Cloudberry, Vinyl Japan and Elefant.

The most recent album, Of Angels and Kings, was self-released in 2021. Like almost all bands who have been active for such a long time, the membership has changed a few times, but the one constant has been singer and main songwriter, Glenn Melia.

Various

WHAT I LISTENED TO WHEN I WAS 17….

A guest posting by Mopyfop

mp3: Various – What Mobyfof listened to when he was 17

Prince – 1999
The Psychedelic Furs – Love my way
The Human League – the things that dreams are made of
Simple Minds – I travel
Thomas Dolby – Flying North
Blancmange – Living on the ceiling
Adam Ant – Stand and deliver
The Undertones – You’ve got my number, why don’t you use it?
The Damned – Love song
Motorhead – Ace of spades
Echo & the Bunnymen – The Back of Love
Associates – Party fears two
Public Image Ltd. – Public image
The Clash – London calling
Elvis Costello & the Attractions – Pump it up
The Cure – A forest
David Bowie – Rock n’ roll Suicide

Mobyfop

#edwyncollins45s

THE TESTIMONIAL TOUR OF 45s (aka The Singular Adventures of Edwyn Collins)

#32: Losing Sleep : Edwyn Collins (Heavenly Records, HVN 205, 2010)

13 September 2010 would see the release of Losing Sleep, the seventh studio album by Edwyn Collins. It was the first completely new album after his illnesses, and such was the love, affection and esteem that he was held in that many musicians went out of their way to contribute to the record, either by helping to write the songs and/or turning up to West Heath Studio, the facility owned and run by Edwyn, to participate in the recording.

A few names…..ex-Sex Pistol Paul Cook on drums, and when he wasn’t banging away, you’d find Dave Ruffy (The Ruts and Aztec Camera among others.Alex Kapranos and Nick McCarthy (Franz Ferdinand), Johnny Marr, Ryan Jarman (The Cribs), Romeo Stoddart (The Magic Numbers), Barrie Cadogan (at the time part of Primal Scream) and Jacob Graham, Connor Hanwick and Jonathan Pierce, all members of The Drums. Then there was Carwyn Ellis, Sean Read and Andy Hackett, who to this day remain involved with Edwyn in the studio and on the road.

The title track from the album was released as the advance single in mid-August. An upbeat foot-stomper with a nod to Northern Soul complete with a great backbeat and brass courtesy of a trumpet and saxophone, with the lyric referring to the troubles of recent years, but without an iota of self-pity.

mp3: Edwyn Collins – Losing Sleep

Released only on 7″ vinyl and housed in a plain brown cardboard sleeve with a yellow label and a jukebox-style middle. The design would prove to be common to the next two singles, both of which were lifted from the album.

The b-side contained an instrumental version of the song

mp3: Edwyn Collins – Losing Sleep (instrumental)

CDs were still the way that most folk bought singles in 2010, and so his decision to go with a vinyl only release may well have cost Edwyn the chance to have a hit single as there really was a lot of interest in what he was doing and who he was working with at this point in time.

JC

Lichen Slow

SATURDAY’S SCOTTISH SONG : #503: LICHEN SLOW

Here’s a short bio lifted from All Music, that was written by Marcy Donelsen:-

Lichen Slow’s sombre atmospheres and ruminations are the creation of members of Arab Strap and Team Leader. The U.K. duo presented their self-produced full-length debut, Rest Lurks, in 2023.

With backgrounds in styles spanning sadcore, instrumental noise, and folktronica, Scotland’s Malcolm Middleton (Arab Strap) and England’s Joel Harries (Team Leader, 72%) formed Lichen Slow in the early 2020s and quickly went to work on their debut album. Shaping acoustic and electronic instrumentation into a reflective indie rock that complemented their calmly disconsolate lyrics, Rest Lurks arrived on the Rock Action label in March 2023. It was produced and mixed by Harries.

It’s an album on which both musicians often address their many bouts with mental health issues, which means it isn’t the cheeriest of albums that I’ve ever bought, but many of the songs are rather lovely in the way they have been produced and recorded.

mp3: Lichen Slow – Hobbies

JC

Fictive Fridays, Various

FICTIVE FRIDAYS : #15

a guest series, courtesy of a very friendly lawyer

Today’s set was all queued up to start off with ‘Do The Du” by A Certain Ratio. Then the New Zealand correspondent served up a solid post featuring that EP in his excellent Four Track Mind series. So just imagine you heard the ACR tune before all of the following ones.

WHAT TO DO

Do The Strand – Roxy Music.

Lead off track and only single from Roxy’s second album, For Your Pleasure. Everything about it is awesome, including the great bass line by John Porter. It’s a shame Porter didn’t become a permanent band member, but he went on to a lot of success as a producer for the Smiths, Billy Bragg, Killing Joke, and then a load of blues legends (BB King, John Lee Hooker, Taj Mahal, Buddy Guy & co.).

Do The Dog – Specials.

Second track on the eponymous debut album, produced by Elvis Costello. It’s credited to “Rufus Thomas, arrangement by Jerry Dammers.” Not sure why—the Coventry ska merchants’ song bears no resemblance to Thomas’s 1963 Stax single.

Do The European – JJ Burnel.

The Stranglers bassist was the first of the band to release a solo record, Euroman Cometh (1979). It was a concept album of sorts, about the possibilities of a united Europe. The not-the-subtlest-guy-ever wrote in the liner notes: “A Europe riddled with american values and soviet subversion is a diseased sycophantic old whore: a Europe strong, united and independent is a child of the future.” Okay, JJ.

Do The Evolution – Pearl Jam.

Some kinda half-baked screed about technology. Or something. Hard to ever really say what Eddie Vedder is going on about, but he’s all in on the vocals. A raucous number from 1998’s Yield.

Do The Panic – Phantom Planet.

This song has a tricky little history. It was written by PP frontman Alex Greenwald and drummer Jason Schwartzman (the actor) for a 2001 black and white indie film, Don’s Plum, starring Leonardo DiCaprio. Then the band included it on their fanclub-only release Negatives in 2004. Then they recorded new lyrics and put it on their 2008 album Raise The Dead, which is the version in this set.

Do The Q – Welcome Back.

Can’t tell you much about Welcome Back. They’re apparently a trio from Denver, Colorado. Tinder in the Ashtray (2024) is their only album to date. Despite their relative obscurity they’ve got a super laid back, pretty sound reminiscent of, say, Real Estate, and Los Angeles’s dearly missed Acetone.

Do The Reggay – The Maytals.

Let’s go WAY back to 1968 for this single, purportedly the first popular song to use a variation of the word “reggae.” Toots Hibbert wrote it and hinted that the word equates to “raggedy” and was Jamaican slang for a scruffy person.

Do The Trick – Dr. Dog.

This under-the-radar Philly band is hard to categorize. Or maybe easy to categorize since they’ve been called psychedelic, indie, bluegrass, lo-fi, alt-country, pop, and lots of other descriptors. Whatever—they’re a solid act that have been together for 25 years and have released a boatload of records. They must have a great agent because their songs constantly show up in movies and on TV shows. From their sixth studio LP, Be the Void (2012).

Do The Vampire – Superdrag.

Sort of what grunge sounds like if you come from Tennessee. For their second LP, Head Trips in Every Key (1998), Superdrag enlisted doomed pop-punk producer Jerry Finn, who’d go on to produce for Green Day, Blink-182 and their ilk. Not sure what the song is about, but vampires were popular in the 90’s.

Do The Whirlwind – Architecture in Helsinki.

From the band’s second album, In Case We Die (2005). At this point in their too-short career, AiH were an octet with a full horn section, in addition to other non-rock instruments like glockenspiel, flute, and clarinet. The Australian band arrived at their name by cutting up and rearranging newspaper headlines.

Bonus track: Do The Astral Plane – Flying Lotus.

Haven’t heard a lot from FlyLo for a minute. His last studio release was 2019’s Flamagra. But I have a soft spot in my heart for the guy for two reasons. First, he CRUSHED it at Coachella in 2012 and was a highlight of the festival. Then, six months later, he personally intervened to get underage and possibly high on ecstasy Sam into a show at the Congress Theater in Chicago, where Sam had just moved to go to art school. An album side from 2010’s critically acclaimed Cosmogramma.

Jonny

Jam

SONGS UNDER TWO MINUTES (23): BUT I’M DIFFERENT NOW

mp3: The Jam – But I’m Different Now

Side 1, Track 3 of Sound Affects, the fifth album from The Jam, released in November 1980. On an album where there was a degree of experimentation, a single that totally ripped off a tune by the Beatles, and an acoustic number which very soon became one of the band’s signature tunes, there was still time for Paul, Bruce and Rick to turn the clock back, in more ways than one.

109 seconds of fast and furious guitars that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on debut album In The City, as well as being a tip of the hat to the mod movement with which many had long associated the band.

A vastly underappreciated song is my take on things.

JC

Zeltinger Band

THE RESPLENDENT RETURN OF LITTLE LOSER’S LOTTERY : #7

aka The Vinyl Villain incorporating Sexy Loser

‘GIGS FROM YESTERYEAR, WHEN I WAS YOUNG + PRETTY AS A PICTURE’

# 07 Zeltinger Band, Rockfabrik Übach-Palenberg (1992)

Dear friends,

I’ll try to make this one sweet and simple, because trying to bring Zeltinger to your attention would be forlorn hope all over.

Why?

Well, a) he’s from Cologne and sings in this town’s own accent, so even those of you with O-levels in German will probably not understand one word. And b) he is – and always has been – somewhat special, an interesting figure for sure – but when you’re special you’re certainly not loved by everyone and/or are not easily accessible.

Let’s say this is for Walter and – alas unbeknownst – Anni from Düsseldorf, who recently commented JC’s Paul Haig-post. She’ll have loads of fun, because we all know that Düsseldorf and Cologne are best friends forever … (JC adds……just like Glasgow and Edinburgh)

So, as brief as possible: born in 1949, Jürgen Zeltinger formed his Zeltinger Band in the late 70s and came to wider attention with the release of the debut album, recorded live in two clubs in Cologne. To me, this album is a masterpiece, always has been. But, to be fair, the music is a mix between punk, rock and hard rock even, a difficult combination sometimes. Still it’s absolutely enjoyable, although perhaps not pretty much innovative. The album lives from Zeltinger’s lyrics, I think it’s fair to say, and this is true for many of the albums which came later. The lyrics and his connection with the audience, which has to be seen to be believed.

He is such a nice guy, always honest and his shows have always been spectacular: in the 80s/90s they were spectacular because of him performing just in a tiger slip most of the time, which, let’s face facts, was not a pretty sight: at the time Zeltinger had 150 kilograms and drank way too much (oh, I could tell you a pre-show-tale or two). In recent years they were spectacular because he lost much weight and moved towards a more acoustic approach, often just him and a guitarist – which meant he would tell even more interesting stories and talk with the audience.

Probably the most important thing about Jürgen Zeltinger („de Plaat“, as he’s known around Cologne, because of his bald head) is that from the beginning, he openly lived being gay. And for him being gay and showing this was such a very natural thing that he implemented this into his music. Now, we are talking 1979 here and quite frankly you needed some big balls back then to openly tell your hard rock-orientated audience (and, even more important, your hard rock record-buying public) that you are homosexual.

A dozen or so albums followed the debut, but it is unexcelled as far as I’m concerned. The first four albums were great, especially the fourth one, because it was a live album again. Within the years I lost interest a bit until two years ago, when Zeltinger announced to play in a small town very close to my village. I would have attended the gig of course – it would have been the fifth or sixth time to have seen him – but it got cancelled because Zeltinger was diagnosed with cancer!

I must say, being 75 then, I would not have bet all too much on him coming back on his feet again, but a few weeks ago I was waiting to be served in a kiosk and I was looking at the newspapers at the counter. Cologne’s ‘Express’ is an equivalent of ‘The Sun’, I would think, but no matter: on the front (!) page, bold and fat it read: „De Plaat: I’m back – and I’m playing Wacken Open Air: an unfulfilled dream comes true!“

Now, Wacken is the biggest heavy metal/hard rock festival since the dinosaurs, mind you – and although I certainly won’t be there, I am so very glad for Zeltinger that he finally was given the chance to play there: I am sure it will be absolutely ace!

So here’s some music, loads of covers in fact – who of you can name the originals?

Zeltinger Band – ‘Mein Vater War Ein Wandersmann’ / ‘Müngersdorfer Stadion’ (live im Bunker, Köln ’79)
Zeltinger Band – ‘Sozialamt’ (live Roxy, Köln, ’79)
Zeltinger Band – ‘Dauerwellen’ (live Roxy, Köln ’79)
Zeltinger Band – ‘Holder Friedbert’ (’17)
Zeltinger Band – ‘Wärst Du Doch In Düsseldorf Geblieben’ (’03)
Zeltinger Band – ‘Candy’ (’92)
Zeltinger Band – ‘Er War Gerade 18 Jahr’ (live Köln, Luxor 29.10.’86)

Enjoy,

Dirk

Cocteau Twins

THE 7″ LUCKY DIP (45) : Cocteau Twins – Iceblink Luck

On 17 September 1989, Lucy-Bell Guthrie was born, with the proud parents being Robin Guthrie and Elizabeth Fraser of Cocteau Twins.

On 17 September 1990, the group released their sixth studio album, Heaven or Las Vegas. It was preceded some three weeks earlier by the lead-off single, one whose subject matter seems to be a proud mother’s welcome to her new baby. Now I know that Elizabeth’s lyrics are notoriously difficult (bordering on the near-impossible) to decipher, and there are plenty of different suggestions from fans about Iceblink Luck, depending on which site Google or whatever search engine you use takes you.

But I think one particularly devoted fan, who spent about a year-and-a-half listening to it line-by-line and word-by word, trying to slow it down to almost syllable-by-syllable, has done as good a job as any, and even then they acknowledge there are no absolute guarantees, and that indeed the only person who knows for certain is Elizabeth Fraser, who has never shown any sign of wanting to publish her lyrics:-

I’m seeming to be lit alive.
I’m happy again.. calmer, calm in time.
Suppose the doubting of yourself will be your defence?
You’re a match.

You’re the match of cherry coal
That will burn this whole madhouse down.
You’ll not throw open like a worn-out safe —
More like a love that’s a bottle of exquisite stuff is.

You yourself and your father don’t know so, but in your own ways,
You’re really both bone-setters.
Thank you for mending me, babies.

You’re the match of cherry coal
That will burn this whole madhouse down.
You’ll not throw open like the worn-out safe —
You will seem more like being of that same bottle of exquisite stuff is.
You are the match of cherry coal that will burn this old madhouse down on the floor, open like a worn-out safe.

You yourself and your father don’t know so, but in your own ways,
You’re really both bone-setters.
Thank you for mending me, babies.

mp3: Cocteau Twins – Iceblink Luck

A #38 hit back in the day, and only the second Cocteau Twins single/EP, after Pearly-Dewdrops Drop back in 1984, to break into the UK Top 40, albeit three later singles would also enjoy similar success.

The b-side to the 7″ is a fabulous number which, for whatever reason, was left off the album:-

mp3: Cocteau Twins – Mizake The Mizan

You’re on your own if you want to decipher this one.

JC

Nirvana

SMALL SCREEN GEMS (4, 5 & 6): Nirvana – Channel 4 and BBC TV (1991)

Returning again to a clip from The Word, the late-night ‘magazine style’ show that was broadcast on Channel 4 between 1990 and 1995.

Friday 8 November 1991.

Seemingly the first ever time Nirvana appeared live on any TV programme anywhere in the world. Just prior to starting the song, Kurt Cobain boldly said ‘I’d like all you people in this room to know that Courtney Love, the lead singer in the sensational pop group Hole, is the best fuck in the world’

mp3: Nirvana – Smells Like Teen Spirit (single version)

Two weeks later, Smells Like Teen Spirit entered the singles chart at #9 which led to a slot on the edition of Top of the Pops being broadcast on Thursday 28 November, with the actual recording taking place the day before.

Like many before them, and indeed later, the band weren’t enamoured by the fact they had to mime rather than play live, albeit the rules of the show at the time did allow for a vocal to be delivered live over a pre-recorded backing track. Kurt, Kris and Dave decided to have a bit of fun:-

The single rose to #7 the following week.

Straight after the TOTP recording, the band headed to Birmingham for the second night of the second half of their UK tour – nine shows in all – which culminated on Thursday 5 December at the Kilburn National Ballroom in London. The following day, they were booked to appear live on an early evening chat show (6.30-7pm) on Channel 4. I recall tuning in, totally expecting the unexpected with my finger poised over the record button on the VHS machine. I wasn’t disappointed.

Brilliant bit of ad-libbing from Jonathan Ross at the end of the performance. The band was supposed to play Lithium, as they had done during an earlier rehearsal.

mp3: Nirvana – Territorial Pissings
mp3: Nirvana – Lithium

Quick reminder that if you want to enter the competition to win a copy of the new Broken Chanter album, the closing date is tomorrow.

JC

#edwyncollins45s

THE TESTIMONIAL TOUR OF 45s (aka The Singular Adventures of Edwyn Collins)

#31: Home Again : Edwyn Collins (Heavenly Records, HVN 180, 2008)

June 2008 saw the release of the title track from the sixth studio album.

mp3: Edwyn Collins – Home Again

As songs go, it’s nice and pleasant, but it really wasn’t one you would normally think of as being ‘single-material’. The real joy with this release comes in other ways.

Firstly, the artwork/packaging. What you can see above is a brown envelope to which a sticker has been attached, of a drawing of a grey heron. The drawing is dated 10 October 2007, and it’s the handiwork of Edywn Collins, thus offering further evidence of his recovery from the near-death illnesses back in 2005.

Inside the envelope, those who bought the single would find the 7″ single inside a PVC sleeve – I know, not exactly environmentally sustainable, but there was a reason, as the sleeve contained the actual record inside a black and white fold-over paper sleeve. However, 25 copies would contain a one-off hand-drawn sleeve courtesy of some very well known people – musicians, artists, authors and the likes. Not only would these be one-offs, but potentially quite valuable given that the original works by some of those participating sold for large sums of money. Oh, and it was also a nod back to the work that was done to the sleeves of Blue Boy back in 1980, albeit these were done by folk who were not famous at the time!!!

The Guardian newspaper ran a feature on the idea and showed 21 of the finished sleeves, which begs the question whether four people who were asked to artwork were unable to do so. Here’s an alphabetical run through of who was involved:-

Norman Blake (musician)
Tim Burgess (musician)
Billy Childish (musician)
Jarvis Cocker (musician)
Paul Cook (musician)
Graham Coxon (musician)
The Cribs (musicians)
Jeremy Deller (Turner Prize winning artist)
Pete Fowler (illustrator – arguably best known for his work with Super Furry Animals)
Harry Hill (comedian)
Pam Hogg (fashion designer)
Alex Kapranos (musician)
Sebastian Lewsley (musician)
Bob London (artist)
Samantha Morton (actor)
David Shrigley (Turner Prize nominated artist)
John Squire (musician and painter)
Tracey Thorn (musician)
Andrew Weatherall (DJ and musician)
Irvine Welsh (author)
Nicky Wire (musician)

Of even more significance was the b-side:-

mp3: Edwyn Collins – Searching For The Truth

Less than two minutes long, but it was the first new song Edwyn had written and recorded since his illnesses. And with Edwyn now no longer able to play guitar, it was very poignant that one of his oldest friends, Roddy Frame, did the honours. Indeed, Roddy was to be at Edwyn’s side for much of 2008, being part of the band that went out on tour.

JC

Leopards

SATURDAY’S SCOTTISH SONG : #502: THE LEOPARDS

An arguably long overdue debut for The Leopards on this blog. I’ll get round to explaining why.

mp3: The Leopards – Surf On

They initially consisted of Mick Slaven (guitar/lead vocals), Campbell Owens (bass/vocals) and Skip Reid (drums/vocals) and formed in the mid-90s. Their music is best described as a mix of surf-punk and indie rock and their pedigree is quite the thing. Mick Slaven is, without question, one of the most underrated guitarists ever to come out of Scotland having been with Jazzateers and Bourgie Bourgie, while Campbell Owens was with Aztec Camera during the Postcard era and the first two studio albums in the early-mid 80s. They signed to Creeping Bent Records, with debut album They Tried To Stay Calm, being released in 1997. John Peel was a fan, and is said to have compared Slaven’s guitar playing to that of Link Wray and Robert Quine, leading to two sessions in 1997 and 1998.

In later years, The Leopards, with other members coming and going (although Slaven and Owens were always involved) would play with the likes of James Kirk, Paul Haig, Paul Quinn, Malcolm Ross, Vic Godard, & Lloyd Cole, and in the case of the last of those just mentioned, there would be tours in 2014 and 2016, and an album, Lloyd Cole & The Leopards – Live At The Brooklyn Bowl receiving a release towards the end of 2016.

It has only been relatively recently that I’ve picked up digital copies of their music, thanks to my Patreon membership of Creeping Bent over the final few years of that label’s existence, which is why I’ve never, until now, posted anything.

JC

A Certain Ratio

FOUR TRACK MIND : A RANDOM SERIES OF EXTENDED PLAY SINGLES

A guest series by Fraser Pettigrew (aka our New Zealand correspondent)

#16: A Certain Ratio – Do the Do (Casse) (FACUS 4 – 1981)

With all due respect to Crispy Ambulance, A Certain Ratio were definitely the second-biggest thing on Factory Records after Joy Division/New Order at the beginning of the 1980s. At least in my world they were, mediated as it was through friends and the NME. Despite their embrace of funk music and penchant for wearing shorts on stage, ACR were inextricably linked to the grey Manchester aesthetic that drove us all to raid second-hand shops for dead men’s suits and gaberdine raincoats.

Admittedly, ACR’s funk was not exactly of the joyous get-up-offa-that-sex-machine variety. It wasn’t as terrifying as The Pop Group’s torture chamber shriek, but their stripped back minimalism along with Simon Topping and Jez Kerr’s flat monotone vocals ably conveyed the same sense of grim-up-north dreary post-industrial desolation and angst that we were getting from Joy Division, the Bunnymen, and the likes of Cabaret Voltaire and Comsat Angels across the Pennines.

I’m pretty sure I owned this EP by the time I saw ACR supported by Josef K at Valentino’s night club in Edinburgh in February 1981, which means I must have been pretty quick off the mark since it was only released in January. I also had a copy of their earlier 12” single Flight/Blown Away/And Then Again, which is amongst the best things they ever did.

This four-track American release is up there too. Its key attraction was the inclusion of Shack Up which had been released as a stand-alone 7” single on Factory Benelux earlier in 1980 but had disappeared from shelves by the time I heard about it. Shack Up was, of course, a cover of a genuine funk tune, albeit a stupendously obscure one. Originally the song, split in two, made up both sides of the only single by an ephemeral group called Banbarra that coalesced briefly in Washington DC in 1975 around the composers Moe Daniels and Joe “Bunny” Carter and a bunch of session players. (One of those players, guitarist Lance Quinn, also played on Gloria Gaynor’s Never Can Say Goodbye but may be better known as co-producer along with Tony Bongiovi of two classic new wave albums, Talking Heads ’77 and Can’t Stand The Rezillos.)

I always thought that ACR must have been fabulous connoisseurs of rare funk to have known about such a relatively minor one-off underground disco club hit, but in fact it’s even more improbable than that. ACR apparently discovered the song not from the original but from a cover version on the self-titled 1978 LP by a group called Rokotto, all gull-wing collars and massive flares, afros and spaniel’s ears haircuts. Shack Up sat alongside songs called Moonlight Dancin’, Boogie On Up and Get On Down. Rokotto hailed from that legendary epicentre of urban black American dance music, Dundee. I swear I’m not making this up.

Compared to either Banbarra or Rokotto, ACR’s version of Shack Up sounds like virtually all the funk has been drained out of it by some mystical process of musical decaffeination. As a paean to extra-marital cohabitation it conveys all the sex appeal of moving in with a bus-spotting Mogadon addict. For sure, you can dance to it, and we did, like scarecrows in a gale, but you have to remember that for all our desire for a good time, an excess of enthusiasm was frowned upon amongst we of the monochrome set (the cultural moment, not the band). ACR’s bloodless funk was therefore the perfect soundtrack to our repressed passions, allowing us to party on without losing our cool.

Shack Up opens the ‘Hipside’ of the EP, technically side two (side one is the ‘Flipside’) and is followed by Son and Heir, unarguably the most dismal song ever committed to record – twice. It’s a new version of the track Crippled Child on The Graveyard And The Ballroom cassette released in February 1980. The original title gives more of a clue to the content, relating the hopes and desires of a new father turning to anguish and agonised rejection when his son is born disabled. The music pre-dates ACR’s drift into dance rhythms and grinds to an abrasive conclusion over the screams of “now I want him to die”. An unwelcome glimpse into someone’s personal hell. Surely once was enough.

The ’Flipside’ tracks are both classic ACR funk, but the mood is scarcely any lighter on opener Do The Du(Casse), another re-recording of a Graveyard And Ballroom track. Altogether now, sing along: “My heart was just an open sore / Which you picked at ’til it was raw / It bled away my existence / Shrivelled under your insistence.” The song then ends on the frankly disturbing couplet, “I flayed your flesh with insistence / I drew your blood with consistence.” Raises the ante on Venus In Furs for sure.

Lastly The Fox, another lyric from a lonely place wedded to a rugged simulacrum of Sly and the Family Stone, it would reappear at the beginning of side two of ACR’s first proper studio album To Each a few months after this EP. The album take isn’t much different from the one here.

I remember the gig in February 1981 as a suitably intense affair, the band typically unshowy on stage, focused intently on their instruments, the crowd focused intently on the (non)performance and not dancing much despite the obvious invitation of the music.

When To Each came out in April it passed me by, possibly because of poor reports or maybe just other priorities. When I did catch up with it much later I would agree that it was a little underwhelming given the expectations created by their 1980 singles and live sound, but is hardly a dud. With second album Sextet in January 1982 however, there was a definite sense of arrival. In spite of the addition of Martha Tillson’s ethereal vocals and the echoey trumpet blasts straight out of Bitches Brew, there’s a palpable warmth to the funk largely felt through Jez Kerr’s much improved bass playing. As the band themselves put it later, they were catching up with the ability of their one ‘proper’ musician, drummer Donald Johnson, and Sextet has a cohesion that To Each perhaps lacked.

Later in 1982, I picked up Guess Who, a plodding synth-based track stretched out with unvarying tediousness over both sides of a Factory Benelux 12” single. It didn’t exactly whet the appetite for third album I’d Like To See You Again. I borrowed a copy of the LP and found most of it disappointing. It felt as though ACR were moving towards more of an imitation of dance club music rather than a reinvention, but despite their evidently improved musical competence, they weren’t giving me anything I wasn’t getting much better from Sly or Stevie Wonder or Off The Wall.

Many felt differently and ACR have sustained a long career in the club scene without ever losing the alternative tag. For sure, they were never going to be rivals to Prince or Rick James however much I felt they were simply aping mainstream styles. But for me, ACR were at their best doing what the best of post-punk did, fusing confrontational punk or avant-garde art with popular forms and creating something unique that would pioneer new varieties of pop, house, techno, and industrial music. This FACUS4 EP sits in that sweet spot, occupying the always interesting space that lies in the crossing between one world and another.

Fraser

Avons, Close Lobsters, Revolving Paint Dream, Wolfhounds

C86 : THE ULTIMATE SERIES (Parts 25, 26, 27 and 28 of 114)

This is one of those occasions where info is hard to come by.

The Avons were from Norwich, a city which thanks to the presence of the University of East Anglia, has quite a decent musical heritage.

mp3: Everything’s Going Right – The Avons

Track 8, Disc Three of C86 The Deluxe 3CD Edition.

This dates from 1986 and is a track on their debut and sole album Music From Three Rivers Reach which was issued by Letharge Records. The label actually only ever released two other records, both also in 1986, and one being the debut single by The Avons and the other being the second EP from Surreal Estate whose debut had been the previous year on the Liverpool-based Probe Plus. The only other thing I can tell you is that two of the four members of The Avons were formerly part of The Farmers Boys, a Norwich-based band who had enjoyed brief success in the indie charts in 1983/84.

This is the second appearance from The Wolfhounds in this series. As mentioned before, they are from Romford, on the outskirts of London, and were originally around between 1985 and 1980, before reforming in 2005.

Last time round featured the excellent Anti-Midas Touch, their second single for The Pink Label, which was released in September 1986 and got to #6 in the Indie Charts. Their debut single, also on The Pink Label, had been Cut The Cake, released in March 1986. The song, all 1:42 of it, which found its way onto the original C86 cassette was an unreleased track

mp3: Feeling So Strange Again – The Wolfhounds

Track 4 on side 1 of the C86 cassette; Track 4, Disc One of C86 The Deluxe 3CD Edition.

Close Lobsters are from Paisley, whose north-eastern boundary is adjacent to the south-western boundary of Glasgow. It takes about ten minutes to travel from city centre to city centre when you take the fast train.

The band’s first vinyl offering was just 1 minute and 46 seconds in length.

mp3: Firestation Towers – Close Lobsters

Track 2 on side 2 of the C86 cassette; Track 13, Disc One of C86 The Deluxe 3CD Edition.

By October 1986, they had signed to Fire Records and released a debut single. There would be six singles, the second of which was Never Seen Before, with the 12″ featuring a re-recording of Firestation Towers. There would also be two albums before the band took a break in 1989. Nobody really anticipated the break would last until 2012 when they again played live, accepting invitations to be on the bills of Popfests in Madrid, Berlin and New York, as well as a triumphant homecoming gig in Glasgow.

In 2020, their third studio album, Post Neo Anti: Arte Povera in the Forest of Symbols, was released by Last Night From Glasgow. It was the first new material in more than 30 years.

Formed in London in 1983, The Revolving Paint Dream would go on to have four releases on Creation Records between 1984 and 1989. No real surprise given that label owner Alan McGee was one of the four musicians in the band:-

mp3: Flowers In The Sky – Revolving Paint Dream

Track 19, Disc 2 of CD 86

This is their debut single, released in February 1984, which limped to #27 on the Indie Chart. It was the second single in the label’s history. The next thing to emerge from the band was in 1987, when an eight-song mini LP was released. In 1989, a second single and full length album were put out. And that proved to be all there was, although to be fair, one of the other members, Andrew Innes, became rather busy with Primal Scream at that point in time.

JC

Television Personalities

THE CULT CLASSICS :THE RE-RUNS (3)

5 January 2014. This came from Jamie H.

– – – – –

I’ve recently finished reading Alan McGee’s autobiography Creation Stories, a book that recounts the story of his involvement with bands like the Jesus and Mary Chain, Primal Scream, Teenage Fanclub and inevitably Oasis but which also manages to devote some time to less widely known acts such as The Television Personalities, who McGee first saw live in 1982 in London, a show where Joe Foster ‘sawed Dan Treacy’s Rickenbacker in half! It was maybe a grand’s worth of guitar. They were only getting paid about £50 for the gig!’

From that moment on, McGee was hooked, and he soon started heaping praise on them in his Communication Blur fanzine as well as booking them to perform at his Communication Club on a bill that also included the Nightingales and Vinyl Villain favourites the Go-Betweens.

Significantly, the TVP’s pop art label Whaam! in part inspired McGee to set up Creation Records and one of the first ever releases to carry the name Creation (as Creation Artifact) was a flexidisc distributed with the second issue of his fanzine that featured two tracks by the TVPs.

Alan McGee wouldn’t be the last high profile fan the band would attract. At Kurt Cobain’s insistence they were invited in 1991 to support Nirvana and more recently Pete Doherty and MGMT have declared themselves admirers, the latter titling one track Song for Dan Treacy on their critically acclaimed Congratulations album.

Despite the high profile recommendations though, mainstream success has never materialised for the TVPs and this is likely down to the fact that Dan Treacy, the sole consistent member of the band since its inception, is one of those mercurial talents who are completely ill-suited to fame – even many of his devoted coterie of fans might find it difficult to disagree with the theory that he has repeatedly and deliberately sabotaged his own career over the years.

Despite this, Treacy has continued to make fascinating and innovative music over a period of decades that have also seen him suffer periodic breakdowns and homelessness. He’s also been imprisoned four times; battled long term drug and alcohol problems and, in 2011, he ended up in a critical condition in hospital that required an operation to remove a blood clot from his brain, the singer having to be induced into a coma for some time afterwards.

His band, who can claim to be massively influential on what has become known as ‘indie’, first surfaced in 1978 with a ramshackle DIY debut single 14th Floor, which they put out themselves on GLC Records.

John Peel was highly encouraging, he played the track and read out a letter that Treacy had sent him that listed the band members as Hughie Green, Bob Monkhouse and Bruce Forsyth; Peel also mentioned them in his weekly column in Sounds, where he connected them to another pivotal independent act, the Swell Maps whose Read About Seymour was another big Peel favourite of the time.

The next TVPs release, the Where’s Bill Grundy Now? E.P would again be on their own label, this time named King’s Rd Records – Treacy being largely brought up on the 7th (rather than the 14th floor) of a King’s Road high-rise. The only other release on this label would be another E.P, We Love Malcolm by ‘O’ Level.

Here’s Part Time Punks from the E.P, a satirical dig at the tabloid inspired new wave masses who would descend on Chelsea at weekends to pose, and if you had never understood the following references in the song’s lyrics before, you do now: ‘They’d like to buy the ‘O’ Level single, or Read about Seymour, but they’re not pressed in red, so they buy The Lurkers instead.’

mp3 : Television Personalities: Part Time Punks

And here’s Shadow, a 1977 single by the Lurkers, that was the first ever track released on the independent imprint Beggars Banquet and which was pressed in black, white, blue and, of course, red vinyl.

mp3 : The Lurkers: Shadow

Jamie H

Blur

IT REALLY WAS A CRACKING DEBUT SINGLE? (83)

Am I alone on often forgeting that Blur‘s first single came before There’s No Other Way took them into the Top 1o in May 1991?

The debut dates from October 1990, and while many have suggested it is a great example of shoegaze, I’ve often felt that much of its sound, particularly the way Graham Coxon plays the guitar, tips a hat to The Charlatans whose debut album Some Friendly had hit the shops just seven days earlier.

mp3: Blur – She’s So High

The song, even all these years later, long remained part of the band’s setlists, which is perhaps their way of saying that they consider it to have very much stood the test of time. They certainly seem more fond of it than There’s No Other Way, whose baggy sound hasn’t aged quite so well.

It is often forgotten that She’s So High was just one half of a double-A single on 7″ vinyl, along with this:-

mp3: Blur – I Know

Possibly the most Madchester sounding song ever to have come out of London.

Interestingly, a slightly extended version of She’s So High would be the opening track on debut album Leisure, which was released the best part of a year later in August 1991, but I Know was left off altogether.

Nowadays on the second-hand market, you can expect to pay upwards of £25 for the 7″, depending on the state the vinyl is in.

JC

Broken Chanter

THIS COULD BE US, YOU, OR ANYBODY ELSE

A few weeks ago, Jon King of Gang of Four told me during our Zoom call that there has always been a need to agitate through contemporary music. He kind of despaired that so few people were now prepared to do so, albeit he acknowledged the difficulties and challenges given the way the industry has moved in recent times, with the increasing influences of what Jon called ‘the vampire digital platforms who just steal creative peoples’ money’.

We were in agreement about how unfair it all was, with the greatest rewards all too often going the way of musicians whose records are bland, risk-averse and unadventurous.

A state of affairs which leads me to the arrival of the latest Broken Chanter album.

This Could Be Us, You, Or Anybody Else was released just over a week ago. By rights, David MacGregor and his fabulous bandmates should currently be all over your TV screens, smiling away and giving witty responses to the questions being posed by adoring chat-show hosts, all the while expressing their collective delight that their fourth LP had raced to the top of the charts. And in time-honoured tradition, said TV shows would close with an airing of the latest single, which everyone and their grandparents know thanks to its ubiquitous presence on the radio.

I long ago run out of superlatives to describe just how much joy and happiness comes my way with every new Broken Chanter album. Like all music fans, I have a fear, rational or otherwise, when it comes to long-time personal favourites, that a day will arrive when I’ll give the new release a spin and afterwards think to myself that it didn’t quite match the majesty of the last one. I’m delighted to say that it doesn’t apply on this occasion.

Once again, this is a record in which pop and politics are mixed, but not through any sort of megaphone while standing on a soapbox, albeit David doesn’t shy away from making subtle digs at those who he, rightfully, disdains.

“Eyeing the flags at the end of your road, as the media excites itself daily”

“That sickening worm, given a platform to gurn, disbelieving his luck in the spotlight”

Two lines from the most obviously angry of the ten songs, Piazzale Loreto, whose title is taken from the square in Milan where, in August 1944, the Gestapo murdered 15 local citizens and left their bodies on display as a reprisal for a partisan attack on a military convoy, but just eight months later was where the corpse of the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini was put on display after he had been executed in nearby Giulino, near Lake Como.

The thing is, the tune accompanying Piazzale Loreto is every bit as powerful, having the beat, tempo and energy of an indie-disco/student union floor-filler.

And this is something which is applicable to all tunes on the album. It’s the music that will immediately draw you in as it’s a record packed with earworms of differing tempos, all of which offer a modern twist on post-punk, while a subsequent familiarity with the lyrics (all of which are printed on the inner sleeve) become something to increasingly savour with every subsequent listen.

mp3: Broken Chanter – Shake It To Bits

The lead-off single, as featured a short while ago on the blog. A tune that will get your feet tapping and other parts of your body gyrating, but it comes with a lyric in which David takes aim at the deluded occupants of, and the toxicity of, what can best be described as the manosphere.

I can safely say that this album will be on heavy rotation here in Villain Towers throughout the rest of this year, and that I’m also looking forward to seeing David, alongside Charlotte Printer (bass), Bart Owl (guitar) and Martin Johnson (drums) when they head out on tour as collectively, they are, without question, one of the best, tightest and most enjoyable live acts on the go right now.

Once again, I’ve decided to put my money where my mouth is and purchased extra copies of the album to offer up as prizes to TVV readers. All you need to do is leave the answer to this simple question in the comments section (‘simple’ in that the answer can be found in the above tour poster!)

“Which well-known and much loved Scottish record label has issued This Could be Us, You or Anybody Else?”

There’s three copies up for grabs, on vinyl or CD depending on your preference. The closing date is Tuesday 28 April.

Good luck.

JC

#edwyncollins45s

THE TESTIMONIAL TOUR OF 45s (aka The Singular Adventures of Edwyn Collins)

#30: You’ll Never Know (My Love) : Edwyn Collins (Heavenly Records, HVN 158, 2007)

20 February 2005 was the date of the first of Edwyn Collins‘ brain haemorrhages. The second came five days later while he was in a bed in an intensive care ward of a London hospital. Shortly afterwards, he developed a severe case of MRSA, all of which left him with significant brain damage, aphasia, and paralysis on his right side and led to a six-month stay in hospital followed by intensive therapy at home.

10 September 2007 was the date when Edwyn Collins’ new single was released.

The road to recovery had proven to be long and difficult as we would later learn thanks to the publication, in 2009, of Falling and Laughing, the book written by his wife, Grace Maxwell. From near death to a comeback was nothing short of miraculous.

One of the things we learned with the release of the new single was that, by the end of 2004, Edwyn had made a great deal of progress on a new album, but that the final mixing and tweaking had only been completed when he had been deemed well enough to return to the studio in late 2006. Unsurprisingly, the process of completing the album was time-consuming, and with him now also being signed to a new label at Heavenly Records, it was an absolute joy to hear first this in the later summer of 2007:-

mp3: Edwyn Collins – You’ll Never Know (My Love)

It was a totally different sound to that of the songs on the previous album, Doctor Syntax. It was once again produced by Edwyn with help from Sebastian Lewsley, but despite the lack of info on either the 7″ or CD, it was clear that Edwyn hadn’t played all the instruments this time around.

The single was joyous sounding and tailor-made for radio. But for whatever reason, it never got much traction, which surprised me given the feel-good story surrounding its release. The b-side on the 7″ and one of the tracks on the CD single was a ballad of the type Edwyn had been making for decades. Ordinarily, I might have thought it nothing special, but given the events of the previous few years, then I was more than happy just to hear new songs of any type:-

mp3 : Edwyn Collins – Forsaken

The extra track on the CD I knew to be a cover version as it was written by Thom Bell and Linda Creed, and thanks to t’internet, I soon learned it had been a Top 10 hit in the UK for US soul group The Stylistics back in 1973.

mp3: Edwyn Collins – Rockin’ Roll Baby

Edwyn’s take has a real roots flavour to it, and listening to all three songs created a great deal of excitement here for the release of the sixth studio album, Home Again, on 17 September 2007. This was followed shortly afterwards by Edwyn’s return to live performances, at Dingwall’s in London before what was reported to be a packed and very appreciative and emotional audience.

There’s a wee PS to be added to this one.

In April 2008, a 12″ version of You’ll Never Know (My Love) was issued. It came in a cut-out plain black sleeve with very little info. I have no idea what the idea or thinking was, and indeed I didn’t know such a thing existed for quite a few years when I came across a copy being sold via Discogs.

mp3: Edwyn Collins – You’ll Never Know (My Love) (Ashley Beedle’s We Love You Edwyn Edit)
mp3: Edwyn Collins – You’ll Never Know (My Love) (Dennis Lovell Dub)

The former stretches out to seven minutes, and if you’re a fan of the song, then you’re bound to fall for its charms. It’s the perfect soundtrack to a hot and sunny day.

The latter sees Edwyn reunite with his old pal, and the end product would not have been out of place on the final few Orange Juice releases back in the late 80s. Marvellous stuff if you really want my take on things.

Oh……and there’s even more. Here’s our good friend Khayem, from the always entertaining Dubhed blog.

Thank you for continuing to delight with TVV, not least the long running Edwyn Collins series.

As You’ll Never Know (My Love) is looming, I have provided a link for the versions on the promo CD single that I bought on eBay back in the day, in case you don’t have them.

There’s an instrumental version and (a big motivation for me to track it down) an exclusive dub mix by Dennis Bovell.

At the time, I also discovered the Audacity music editing freeware online. The bedrock of Dubhed Selections ever since, but YNKML was one of my first experiments in editing a 12”/extended version.

It may be for your interest only (!) but I thought you might like to hear it.

mp3: Edwyn Collins – You’ll Never Know (My Love) (instrumental)
mp3: Edwyn Collins – You’ll Never Know (My Love) (Dub My Love Re-Edit by Khayem)

JC

Lemon Drink

SATURDAY’S SCOTTISH SONG : #501: LEMON DRINK

Once again, thanks have to be given to Last Night From Glasgow for this one:-

mp3: Lemon Drink – Demon Child

This is a 7″ single-sided 45, dating from 2022. I had thought the band were perhaps no more, but having looked around for some info, I learned, via Facebook, that a new single was released, digitally, earlier this year that was described by one reviewer as “spinning with all the fizzy sparkle of a well‑mixed indie pop rock cocktail: light on its feet, but strong enough to knock some sense into you if you’re listening closely.”

The new single was produced by Andy Monaghan, probably best known from his time with Frightened Rabbit.