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.

Do The Du(Casse)

The Fox

Shack Up

Son and Heir

 

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.

JC

 

Fictive Fridays, Various

FICTIVE FRIDAYS : #14

a guest series, courtesy of a very friendly lawyer

SPEAKING IN TONGUES

One of the great things about this here blog is how international it is. Folks from all over the world turn up in the comments or as guest contributors, always with an angle from their unique perspectives. In honor of the widespread community here’s a collection of top songs in multiple languages.

Dime Que Me Quieres – Tequila.

In 2010 we house-traded with a family in Madrid. In the car they lent us was a box set of Spanish rock songs. It was a truly awful collection, except for this absolute banger. So, we listened to it on repeat maybe 100 times. From their third album, Viva! Tequila! released back in 1980.

Undantag – Dina Ögon.

This pretty song translates to ‘Exception’ and the band name translates to ‘Your Eyes.’ I don’t know anything more about this newish Stockholm outfit, so maybe our Swedish friends can enlighten us.

L’excessive – Carla Bruni.

By contrast, there’s a lot to know about Italian-French singer, model, and former First Lady of France Mme. Bruni-Sarkozy. But her travails with the dubious politician are boring so let’s just listen to this beautiful number from her debut album, Quelqu’un m’a dit.

Zol! – BLK JKS.

There’s a great concert series in Los Angeles called First Fridays, held in the Natural History Museum downtown. Bands set up right in the middle of the North American Mammal Hall, amidst dioramas of bison and caribou and the like. I used to go with my kids, and we saw great acts like Warpaint, Tune-Yards, The Bird and the Bee, and Atlas Sound. Sam and I also saw BLK JKS, who performed this number which means “spliff” in South African slang.

Norwegian Wood – Cornershop.

Among the Beatles’ many innovations was the introduction of Indian instrumentation into pop music. George encountered a sitar on the set of Help! and played it on this track from Rubber Soul. This version by the Leicester outfit is pretty true to the original, with the lyrics sung in Punjabi by band leader Tjinder Singh.

Regina – Sugarcubes.

For my money this is The Best Song Ever To Come Out of Iceland. Some folks will probably disagree, but they’d be wrong.

Ysbeidiau Heulog – Super Furry Animals.

From the Furries’ 2000 all-Welsh album, Mwng, which means ‘Mane.’ The title translates to ‘Sunny Intervals’ and for some reason sounds like a Welsh out take from The Who Sell Out.

Banho de Mar – João Selva.

‘A Dip in the Sea’ from 2024’s Onda (Wave). Young Sam, who can speak French, Spanish, Japanese, some German and Portuguese and a little Turkish, once told me that Portuguese is the perfect language, economical and beautiful. I agree—it sounds like each word is kissed as it’s enunciated.

Das Model – Kraftwerk.

All of the songs on the Krautrock legends’ The Man-Machine were recorded in both English and German. The English version was a number one single in the UK back in 1978.

美しい鰭 – Spitz.

A recommendation by Sam’s bandmate and multi-instrumentalist Ken Arimura. This quartet formed in Tokyo in the late 80’s and have had the same line-up ever since. The title translates to ‘Beautiful Fin.’ It’s from their most recent release, ひみつスタジオ (‘Secret Studio’). No idea why the group picked a name which means ‘pointed’ or ‘sharp’ in German.

Bonus Track: I Zimbra – Talking Heads.

Today’s set is named after Speaking in Tongues, the Heads’ best-selling album and their only one to produce a top ten hit (‘Burning Down the House’). Legend has it that the phrase came about from David Byrne’s habit of singing nonsense words as placeholders while working on lyrics and arrangements. That gibberish was never released, but the band did put this tune out as a single from their third album, Fear of Music. The lyrics are taken from a poem called Gadji beri bimba, written by German Dadaist Hugo Ball over 100 years ago. The words are totally fictional and don’t mean anything—Ball was just experimenting with the sounds of the syllables. At least he got a writing credit on the LP.

 

Jonny

 

Echo & The Bunnymen, Various

THE FREE MARKET VERSUS ART via ECHO AND THE BUNNYMEN

A guest posting by Steve McLean

Hello folks. I’ve been a bit quiet of late because I’m busy writing my second book (if you thought the last one was niche… wait until you don’t buy this one). I’m also writing a new Fringe show and working on quite a large essay about Echo and The Bunnymen (not the Bunnymen you like though, but the period between 1988 and 1993 without Mac).

The Mac-less Bunnymen research led me to this little rant that I put on my Facebook page a while ago. Frankly, I don’t think I got enough attention for it, so I’m rejigging it and posting it here.

Here’s my take on The Free Market Versus Art.

In 1987 the film The Lost Boys was released. It was a vampire flick mainly aimed at teenage girls (it starred two of the Coreys, a Kiefer plus a smouldering Michael Patrick).

(Lost Boys film advert from The Miami Herald Aug 5, 1987)

It also had an iconic 80s soundtrack which included the lead single by INXS and Jimmy Barnes covering the old Easybeats‘ tune ‘Good Times’.

Good Times is the ideal INXS song for people who never loved INXS and the ideal Jimmy Barnes song because he only sings on half of it. Watch the promo video to see Jimmy with his arm around Michael Hutchence‘s neck like a pissed up uncle singing Bad Moon Rising at a wedding karaoke.

The next single to be release from the soundtrack was Echo and the Bunnymen’s take on the classic Doors tune, People Are Strange. At the time The Bunnymen were just about to fall apart, the song was pretty much the last thing they recorded before Ian McCulloch left. Strangely, it had already been released as a double-A side single on the 12″ version of Lips Like Sugar.

The song was produced by original Doors member, Ray Manzarek. He had also contributed to a re-worked version of Bedbugs and Ballyhoo, a song first recorded in 1985. The new version was released as a single that preceded People Are Strange.

mp3: Echo and the Bunnymen – Bedbugs and Ballyhoo

Still, People Are Strange made the top 30 when released to support the movie, even though it was panned in the press and given a massive shoulder shrug by the fans. The press reaction was basically ‘Why release this Since it adds nothing to the Doors original’.  Melody Maker notoriously called it a ‘rancid effort’. The fan reaction was one of confusion with most agreeing that an original Echo song, like Killing Moon, would have suited the film just as well and might have been a good bit of extra exposure for the group. Even the B-sides of the record had previously been released on another single.

mp3: Echo and The Bunnymen – People Are Strange

In the interest of balance, I should point out that not everyone agreed that the song was pointless. West End Records in Clydebank called it Single Of The Week.

(Clydebank Post 19th Feb 1988)

I once went to a house party in an area of Clydebank called Faifley. At the party a guy told me the story of how he lost his ‘best’ finger to drugs. Good times.

(JC interjects with a pointless piece of trivia.  Deacon Blue once recorded a song called Faifley as a b-side to one of their singles)

The choice of INXS and the Bunnymen made perfect sense though. The movie was about well-fit vampires and both Ian McCulloch and Michael Hutchence looked like well-fit vampires. Jimmy Barnes not so much, but when they remake Frankenstein for the 1980s teen market, he’s gonna clean up. (On a side note, why was there never an 80s film called Frankens’teen? John Hughes and Judd Nelson missed a fucking trick there. The thing writes itself).

The rest of the film soundtrack is a bit of an 80s classic… and by that, I mean it’s not as good as you remember. There’s a song called Lost in the Shadows, by Lou Gramm (he’s from either Foreigner or Survivor, I can’t remember which and I’m not looking that up. What if I get picked up by the police and they check my search history? How would I tell my mum?)

Roger Daltery covers Elton John‘s ‘Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me’ and it’s crap like all versions of that song are crap. It’s a crap song and Daltery makes Jimmy Barnes sound like Sinatra. Speaking of whom, there’s a second Barnes and INXS effort that’s completely forgettable.

There are only really two other stand out songs, one is Cry Little Sister by Gerard McMann which could easily be a Sisters of Mercy song if Gerard was a shitter singer.

mp3: Gerard McMann – Cry Little Sister

The other decent song is Tim Capello‘s cover of The Calls‘ I Still Believe. I get that there’s an irony movement attached to it these days thanks to the internet and the saxophone guy meme, but fuck that. It’s an absolute banger and should have been the lead single instead of Hutchence and that Daffy Duck sounding plank.

mp3: Tim Capello – I Still Believe

The Lost Boys was a hit but not quite the runaway success the studio had hoped. There’s a bit of a Mandela Effect with how big of a smash the movie was. In fact, the real fandom for the film grew a few years later (It did $30m at the box office which isn’t bad returns from an $8m budget but for context; The Karate Kid Part II did $125m from $12m). Also, reviews were mixed but it should be noted that the press of the time had trouble taking films aimed at teens seriously as an art form.

It would be a couple of years before The Lost Boys started to become something of a cult classic. You see, the film was given an R rating in the US and 15 in the UK that meant people under 17 (US) or 15 (UK) couldn’t watch it at the cinema. The rating alienated most of the 13 – 18 target audience.

The reviews were reasonable but without the teenage fanbase it wasn’t long before The Lost Boys was consigned to the Midnight Movie and Drive-in Circuit.

Midnight showings was a proven way that a film could build a cult fan base. Films like The Rocky Horror Picture Show, The Harder They Come and Eraserhead had all found their audience in the graveyard slot. However, by the late 1980s the phenomenon was dying out, or at least it was making way for another route to cultdom.

By 1988 at least 60% of homes in both the US and UK owned a VCR. In spite of an underwhelming return from the cinema, The Lost Boys was a rental smash, becoming the quote-along movie of sleep overs and teenage parties.

In the late 1980s, a new movie had a slower release schedule than today. It would play for a few months at the cinema, then it would come back to the theatres a few months later. Around six-to-eight months after it had been released.

After the cinema it would be released as a rental video, a year after that would see it available to buy and then between three or four years later it would appear on network TV.

Once video rentals and direct sales started to kick in, the soundtrack also started selling well, becoming one of the iconic 1980s film soundtrack albums (like Pretty Woman, Pretty In Pink, Flashdance etc… you know the ones that were constantly on promotional points in Virgin Records for about 15 years….)

Fast forward to 1991. the Lost Boys made its UK TV debut on January 1st (around six months after the US). A whole new generation of 13, 14 and 15 year olds discover the film and the original audience gave it a nostalgia watch. A passing of a torch perhaps (the video was so popular that it was released in 1988 and then re-released in 1989, 1992 and 1994.)

(See what I mean about the press and 80s teen films. Fuck off South Wales Evening Post)

In the early 1990s, I very briefly worked in Woolies and my pal worked in a video rental shop. We both noticed that when a certain kind of film was on TV there would be a spike in VHS rentals and purchases, as people would want to watch the film again. This was especially true in the UK since most households only had four channels, there was no chance it would be back on the box within a year.

When the marketing department at Atlantic Records saw that the film was having a revival in rental and sales, they rushed to put out the two main singles and had a big push on the soundtrack again.

INXS and Old-man Barnes hit the top 20 this time around (it didn’t make during the first release) and then the Echo release went back into the top 30, doing pretty much the same business as the last time.

The really strange thing is that the single was an almost exact clone of the previous issue, same B-sides with only slightly different packaging.

Once again, the song finds itself getting a mixed reception in reviews. Not so much because the hardcore Echo fans gave a shit anymore, since they had all left Uni by now and were working as management interns, but because The Doors were on a new wave of cool, with the upcoming Doors / Morrison film starring Val Kilmer (who looked like a well-fit vampire).

The few Echo fans that were left were scratching their heads and wondering why they were expected to buy this song for a third time.

Which brings us to the point of the blog. The song was released as a single three times in four years. Once on a 12″ that Echo fans wanted, then as a single from a soundtrack that Echo fans didn’t want but bought out of loyalty. Finally, it was released a third time because a load of kids watched a film on the telly and kids and their pocket money are easily parted.

There’s all that guff about the ‘marketplace of ideas’ that can only exist through competition, supply and demand. Disaster capitalists will tell you that the free market will regulate itself and if there’s a need for something then the market will provide it.

But in actuality, when it comes to art, the free market can provide a bag of dicks. In fact, the free market fails miserably. What the free market provides is,

Not a new Echo and the Bunnymen single.

Not the greatest Echo and the Bunnymen single.

But the worst Echo and the Bunnymen single…. Three times.

Thanks capitalism, you shitwank.

Ian McCulloch left the Bunnymen around the 1988 release of this song. Their drummer Pete tragically died in a motorbike accident. After limping on with a different singer (and releasing a fucking great album that you probably don’t like… more on that soon), they ended in 1993. Within a couple of years, they were working together again as Electrafixtion who then rebranded as Echo and The Bunnymen in 1997.

I was going to end on their big reunion song ‘Nothing Ever Lasts Forever’ but that’s really part of a different story. So, we’ll have Stina Nordenstam‘s haunting cover of People Are Strange which is a great lesson on how to reinvent a tune and has never been panned in the press…

mp3: Stina Nordenstam – People Are Strange

 

STEVE McLEAN

Various

IT’S GOTHIC!

A guest posting by Mopyfop

mp3: Various – It’s Gothic

I did this mixtape because one of my 15-year-old twins liked things goth.  Respect!

Bauhaus – Bela Lugosi’s Dead
Siouxsie & the Banshees – Spellbound 12″ single
The Cure – Primary 7″ version
Soft Cell – Martin
Ozzy Osbourne – Bark at the moon (live)
Led Zeppelin – Ramble on
John Carpenter – Halloween (Main theme)
Dance With The Dead – Andromeda
DJ Moule – Superstitious Bond (mash up)(Propellerheads – On Her Majesty’s Secret Service theme vs Stevie Wonder – Superstition)
Tangerine Dream – Love on a real train
Joy Division – Disorder
John Murphy – In the house, in a heartbeat (from 28 Days Later soundtrack)
Ennio Morricone – Humanity (pt.2) (from The Thing soundtrack)

 

Mobyfop

 

Laika

THE RESPLENDENT RETURN OF LITTLE LOSER’S LOTTERY : #6

aka The Vinyl Villain incorporating Sexy Loser

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

# 06: Laika, Eupen, Belgium, 2000

Laika

Capitol, Eupen

Andy Tex Jones

Hello friends,

Little Loser is really showing me my boundaries with his picks, I must say! Just another gig which I only vaguely remember, although it took place not in the early 80s, but in 2000 – quite recent, you could argue.

Eupen is rather a nice little town located near the border in Belgium, quite why Tam Tam decided to celebrate their anniversary there and not somewhere in Aachen remains a mystery. Perhaps because of the venue – the Capitol was an old cinema, built in 1933 with a great interior and a stunning facade: just awesome, but these days flats have been built in, what a shame!

Let me explain: Tam Tam was – and still is in fact –the record shop of choice in Aachen when it comes to, let’s say, ‘off-mainstream’ vinyl. They always had cool employees, and one of them was Lota. I suppose only few people know Lota’s real name, I certainly don’t, although the two of us became DJ colleagues in a bar/club in Aachen in the late 90s. Lota was, unlike me, already rather a high class top-notch DJ at the time (easy when you get all the records from the shop and not having to rely on your small battered private collection), so whenever he had a more profitable engagement he would phone me up to ask me whether I was interested in his shift at the club – which, being always skint, I most often were, of course! Probably much to the dismay of the clients, who were looking for his hot house and trance newbies, but then had to indulge with me and the more listenable records I had heard on Peel instead.

Lota managed to strum up Andy Tex Jones to do a set at this party, and Jones was a real high calibre at the time. Even if you don’t know anything else by him, the one he did as half of Pussy 2000 should be familiar:

Pussy 2000 – ‘It’s Gonna Be Alright’ (’01)

Alright, let’s deal with the main act now: Laika. They took their name from the dog the Soviets shot into space and you could say that Laika’s distinct and wildly experimental fusion of different styles was somewhat without earthly precedent. Then again their style was not that new, because Laika were co-founded by Margaret Fiedler, but most probably the name won’t ring a bell with you. It should so though, because she sang in Moonshake.

They indeed loved their samplers, Moonshake, just listen to their wonderful ‘Eva Luna’ album: a very fine collision of breakbeats and guitar noise, dub to Krautrock to hip-hop – and you could well argue that Laika are in some way a derivative of Moonshake:

Moonshake – ‘Tar Baby’ (’92)

I forgot how great this is, so I’ll give you their first single as well, just as a reminder:

Moonshake – ‘Gravity’ (’91)

Now, I said Mrs. Fiedler-co-founded Moonshake, the other founder was in fact David Callahan, who, in order to close the circle, before creating Moonshake sang for The Wolfhounds – teammates on the famous NME C86-compilation:

The Wolfhounds – ‘Rule Of Thumb’ (’87)

But I digress, back to Laika now: In 1993 Margaret Fiedler stole Moonshake’s bassist, quit and founded Laika. True story: for quite some time I thought that Laika were the same combo as Laika & The Cosmonauts, the brilliant Finnish instrumental/surf rock band from the late 80s, and that they just got rid of The Cosmonauts in one way or another plus changed their style completely. I was wrong, of course:

Laika & The Cosmonauts – ‘Look! No Head! (’97)

Oh, come on then – since you’re asking:

Laika & The Cosmonauts – ‘Surfs You Right!’ (’90)

But now, without further ado, here’s some Laika for you:

Laika – ‘Shut Off/Curl Up’ (’97)
Laika – ‘Badtimes’ (’00)
Laika – ‘Breather’ (’97)
Laika – ’44 Robbers’ (’94)

All in all some fine music above, don’t you think?

Well, I do, so take care and enjoy,

Enjoy,

 

Dirk

 

 

HighSchool, Pet Shop Boys

THE JOYS OF LIVE MUSIC (PART 4287)

Before anyone asks (not that I imagine anyone would), the number in the title of today’s post was plucked out at random and has no significance.

I went to two live shows last week, involving bands/acts at the extremes of careers in pop music, and both turned out to be just as exciting as the other.

The Thursday might saw myself and Rachel hit old London Town to catch the fourth night of the Pet Shop Boys residency at the Electric Ballroom in Camden. When the shows were announced, I really didn’t think I’d land lucky getting tickets – something in the region of 7,500 in total across the five nights were put on sale and the demand was going to be ridiculous, but somehow I made it into the online queue and was I greedily snatched the two tickets on offer.  Flights and an overnight in a hotel were then sorted – we normally do London by train but didn’t want to risk anything going wrong with the journey down if the service was running late and we ended up missing the show – and plans were also made to do a couple of cultural things on the Friday before coming back up the road.

The long-running series a while back on the PSB singles will give you an idea as to why I was particularly excited by the idea of the residency. Neil and Chris, while thoroughly enjoying playing the arenas and festivals with the Dreamworld show the past couple of years, in which the set consists of hit after hit after hit, wanted to strip things right back and play a small venue with the set consisting only of non-single album tracks and b-sides. It was also going to involve crossing another item off the bucket list as it would be my first time attending as show at the Electric Ballroom, a venue I had passed on so many occasions while visiting the nearby Camden Market.

I did have a look at the set lists from the first three nights of the residency, and it was clear the duo were sticking to their word.  They had seemingly rehearsed 35 songs for inclusion in the show, from which 22-24 would be played on a particular night with each night also including a guest musician or singer for part of the set.  Obscure turned out to be a great name for the residency as I don’t think any PSB fan would have nailed down the contents of the final list. With so many to choose from, it’s inevitable that some personal favourites hadn’t made the cut, but there were also tunes that I’d long wanted to hear played live….plus the excitement of whatever was to be aired exclusively on the Thursday night.

I had one slight twinge of regret when I read that Johnny Marr had been the special guest on the Wednesday night, and that a couple of the songs I had hoped to hear had been played that night with him on guitar.  The consolation for us was our special guest being Mark Refoy, who had worked with PSB as a touring guitarist in the mid-00s, but is maybe better known to some TVV regulars as a member of Spacemen 3, Spiritualized and Slipstream.

mp3: Pet Shop Boys – A Certain “Je Ne Sais Quoi” (b-side of Winner digital single, 2012)

A song that was only played on the Thursday night, and all the evidence you need that Neil and Chris had dug really deep to come up with the set lists, but it was also the case that real fan favourites from over the years were aired every night:-

mp3: Pet Shop Boys – King’s Cross (from the album Actually, 1987)
mp3: Pet Shop Boys – Your Funny Uncle (b-side of It’s Alright single, 1989)

A truly magical night that will live long in the memory.

Last Saturday, I was in the company of Aldo as we made our way to McChuills, a pub/venue in Glasgow (capacity 150) to see HighSchool play a show in support of their eponymous debut album, which was released last October.

They are another band to whom I was introduced by SWC as back in December 2022, he listed their debut EP, Forever and Last, as #10 in his end of year rundown over at No Badger Required.  He would then three years later list their debut album at #20 in his most recent annual rundown describing its opening track, Dipped, with these words:-

….a tremendous, a four minute blast of guitar riffs and moody vocals, that take all the best bits of The Strokes and The House of Love and moulds them together into something that fizzes with energy. It builds rather wonderfully, treading that line between shoegaze and early nineties dream pop marvellously, before it kind of explodes into a surging chorus that sees the bass speed up as the band channel their inner Joy Division.

mp3: HighSchool – Dipped

HighSchool are from Melbourne, so they were a long way from home, but they got the sort of enthusiastic reception throughout that Glasgow audiences most often reserve for local favourites.  I was, probably by twenty years or so, the oldest member of the audience, and while I couldn’t match the energy that the five musicians and indeed the audience brought to the occasion, I certainly made the most of the night.  A short set of around 50 minutes, with no doubt the band spending just as long at the merch stand afterwards making a truly special night for their small legion of fans, not that I would know as two gigs in three nights is proving to be a bit much these days in my advancing years, and so I was out sharp to catch a train back to Villain Towers, all the while humming this to myself:-

mp3: HighSchool – Colt

This was a digital single released in 2023 but re-recorded as the closing track on the debut album.

HighSchool’s tour continues this week with shows in Bristol, Leeds, Manchester and London.  Get along if you can.

Just to mention that the rest of the week on TVV is going to consist of guest postings, and so you’re in for some treats.

 

 

JC

#edwyncollins45s

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

#29: Johnny Teardrop : Edwyn Collins (Setanta Records, SETCD 112, 2002)

Edwyn Collins‘ fifth studio album, Doctor Syntax, hit the shops at the end of April 2002.  It was a very low-key release, coming out on CD only, and with no advance single to help with the marketing and promotion, albeit The Beatle$, which had come out in the autumn of 2001, was one of its eleven tracks.

It’s an album that I have always found quite difficult to appreciate.  It’s self-produced, with some assistance from Sebastian Lewsley, and other than some drums from Paul Cook (on two of the tracks), all the instruments are played by Edwyn.  It therefore suffers a bit from nobody really being around to offer second opinions or guidance, and with all the songs being over four minutes in length, it does tend to drift and meander a bit too much.  None of the songs have made it onto the two ICAs that have previously been compiled….but the one that came closest to making its way into the second of the ICAs was this:-

mp3: Edwyn Collins – Johnny Teardrop (single mix)

I’m not sure when this remixed and edited version of Johnny Teardrop was issued as a single (it’s about 20 seconds shorter than the album version).  I’ve seen a photo of a promo which gives a date of 30 September 2002, and if this is accurate, then it was fully five months after the album had been released.  There was certainly a bit of an effort made to promote the single in that a fabulous video was made, one which is full of the sort of pithy humour with which many associate Edwyn with him cast as a pop show presenter while others get to perform the song:-

I’m really not sure if the video was ever aired anywhere….I certainly only saw it decades later via YouTube.  The single didn’t come anywhere near the charts. There were two other tracks on the CD:-

mp3: Edwyn Collins – Never Felt Like This
mp3: Edwyn Collins – The Popstar

The first of these was the opening track on Doctor Syntax.  The second was a previously unreleased song.  It has a sound quite similar to those on Doctor Syntax, albeit the temp was a bit faster than most.  And you can probably tell by the title alone, it’s another of Edwyn’s lyrics that question why anyone would want to consider making a living as a musician.

It would take another five years before Edwyn was able to release his next single.

 

 

JC

Kundalini Genie

SATURDAY’S SCOTTISH SONG : #500: THE KUNDALINI GENIE

It’s no exaggeration to say that this ongoing series in which any Scottish singer or band who has at least one song sitting on the hard drive of my laptop would not have reached #500 (with quite a few more still to come), without me being a supporter of the label, Last Night From Glasgow, and therefore eligible to be given copies of albums that I otherwise would unlikely be aware of.

It was back in November 2023 that False Highs, True Lows by The Kundalini Genie was included among the latest batch of records that were covered by my membership.  The name of the band meant nothing to me, so I was surprised to learn that:-

(a) they were from Glasgow; and

(b) this was in fact their sixth LP, albeit their first for LNFG, with the others being self-released or having been issued with the support of labels in Vienna and Portland, Oregon.

The fact that the band’s music has been described as ‘neo-psychedelia band with Beach Boys-esque harmonic vocal symphonies on layers of dreamy fuzz guitar and synths’ is maybe an indication why they never appeared on my radar.

The membership of the band appears to have changed a few times over the years, but those involved with the 2023 album were Liam Cole (drums), Samuel Floyd (bass/vocals), Isaac Barnes (bass/guitars), Sarah Embleton (vocals/keys) and Robbie Wilson (vocals/guitars/bass/keys/percussion), with the songs being written by Wilson & Embleton.

mp3: The Kundalini Genie – All The Clouds and Silver Linings

The album has a number of decent moments on it, but just not enough to make me want to delve into the back catalogue.

JC

 

Stereolab

FOUR TRACK MIND : A RANDOM SERIES OF EXTENDED PLAY SINGLES

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

#15: Sterelab – Jenny Ondioline (1993)

I’ve never been a ‘completist’ nor a prolific buyer of singles, especially those that were otherwise available on albums. I also gave up reading the music press in the mid-1980s, somewhat limiting my knowledge of new releases. So even though I really liked Stereolab I didn’t religiously buy all of their releases unless I happened to see them during a foray into a record shop. Luck is therefore the main reason I ended up with copies of the Low Fi EP and the stand alone single of John Cage Bubblegum.

And although I wouldn’t normally buy advance singles taken from a forthcoming album, I nevertheless find that I have four such records by Stereolab. Each of their full-length studio albums from 1993’s Transient Random Noise Bursts With Announcements up to Sound Dust (2001) was preceded by a four-track EP, featuring one or two tracks from the album and two or three non-album tracks. The four that I possess were bought largely because they appeared under my nose and because I reasoned that I was getting at least two songs I wouldn’t otherwise get on the new album. Plus in two cases they were cute little 10” discs – hard to resist.

Miss Modular, the advance single from Dots and Loops (1998), won’t feature in this series because it appeared under my nose on CD and spuriously I’m sticking to vinyl here. The first of the other three is the 10” Jenny Ondioline EP that announced the arrival of Transient Random Noise Bursts.

The title track is of course only the first 3m52s of the track that on the album would stretch to over 18 minutes with the addition of a long Neu-like one-chord groove extending from the instrumental backing to the first part. A different six-minute take was also issued on a 7” single with an alternate version of French Disco (spelled Disko) sold on their tour supporting Pavement in early 1994. The latter track is available on Refried Ectoplasm (Switched On Volume 2) and the alternate Jenny Ondioline was reissued on the expanded 2019 reissue of Transient Random Noise Bursts.

As is common with Stereolab, the song’s title has nothing whatsoever to do with the lyrical content, which is all about political struggle. And if you are visualising a woman called Jenny you are also wrong. The Ondioline was in fact an early analog musical synthesizer developed in the years after 1939 by a French inventor called Georges Jenny. I know what you’re going to ask next and the answer is also no, the Ondioline is not part of the instrumentation on the track, despite The Groop’s well-known fondness for a bit of vintage analog synth.

Golden Ball is the other album track on the EP and in a shocking deviation from common practice the lyrics actually feature the words “golden ball” at one point, according to one of those online lyrics sites, but given how inaccurate they can be I wouldn’t guarantee it. I can’t hear it myself, but with my cloth ears that doesn’t mean much either. The music builds slowly from a monotonous twanging guitar into another long one-chord thrash. It’s a different mix from the album, running about 20 seconds shorter, featuring a bit of Velvets-style lead guitar early on as the vocals begin, and ending with a short return to the solo twanging instead of swerving into a brick wall with a moogy squawk and blood-curdling needle scratch as on the album.

French Disco is reassuringly not sung in French (apart from the words “la résistance”), nor does it sound like disco music. It’s a great riff and hook that wouldn’t sound out of place on Switched On Volume 1. The lyrics to remaining non-album track Fruition are printed on the sleeve, I was about to say helpfully, but that’s questionable. Allusion, tribulation, transmutation… (but no fruition). Well, whatever. It’s a gentler, downbeat number showcasing nice vocal harmonies from Hansen and Sadier.

Overall the music reflects the steady progression of Stereolab’s early heavier style as they gradually blended in more delicate pop touches but it’s all still very much more Krautrock than Sacha Distel, making it a very satisfying little disc from my perspective. It’s on plain black vinyl.

As well as a CD version there is also an extremely rare clear vinyl version (a rather cleaner version of clear than Low Fi), of which only 36 copies escaped into the wild, 25 of which are autographed by the band members. The remainder of the pressing (of unknown size) came out blemished by some contamination of the vinyl and were destroyed.

Presumably Stereolab switched pressing plant after this, as the album encountered problems too, with off-centre pressings and numerous returns of the gold vinyl version. My gold vinyl copy plays fine, but the label on side one is doubled up, with one of the prints spreading noisily over the run-off groove. If I was desperate for cash I could flog it for up to NZ$600 apparently, but it would break my heart to do so. Similarly, this EP is going nowhere.

Jenny Ondioline

Fruition

Golden Ball

French Disco

 

Fraser

Gang Of Four, Jon King

I HAD A MODEST AMBITION. I JUST WANTED TO CHANGE THE WORLD

The most recent ‘Book of the Month’ on TVV was To Hell With Poverty, the memoir of Jon King, singer and main songwriter with the Gang of Four. I mentioned that the paperback edition of the book is to be published by Constable on 16 April 2026, and with the date fast approaching, it seems to be the perfect time to share the chat over a  Zoom call that I had with Jon a few weeks back, one which focussed on the book but made sure to touch on the music.

I began by asking Jon what drove him to write the book in the first place.

“I hadn’t really thought about doing it at all, and it came about through a chance meeting with Steve Diggle of the Buzzcocks.

“We happened both to be at Abbey Road Studios in London, being filmed for a documentary being put together for a Canadian production company, and I hadn’t seen him for about 40 years.  It was great to catch up with him, especially given that Buzzcocks were our great friends and sponsors in the early days.  I asked him what he was getting up to when he wasn’t being a Buzzcock, and he replied that he was writing his memoir.

“I said ‘Really?’ as I had never thought of Steve being a pen-man.  He told me he was having it ghost-written and finding the whole experience very rewarding, and then caught me a bit by surprise by adding ‘Why don’t you have a go?’  I said that nobody would be interested, to which he said ‘no no no’ and he gave me the name and contact details of his literary agent, Kevin Pocklington.

“I met Kevin who was really encouraging.  It involved, to start with, 10,000 words, as sample chapters which would be used to try and obtain a publishing deal. It was quite an effort as I wanted to do it all myself – I wasn’t going to have anyone else writing with me and I don’t use and thoroughly disapprove of people using AI to write things. So I did, and Kevin got me a deal with Little Brown in the English-speaking world outside the US and then a deal with Akashic Books for the United States.”

Jon then told me that he was very pleased and pleasantly surprised at the overwhelmingly positive reaction to the book, especially as the process over the weeks and months had proven to be a bit of a challenge.

“I’m of the gloomy school of rock and roll – I never expect anyone to turn up to our concerts, and I wasn’t sure that anyone would be interested in my story.  It was very difficult at the beginning not being an experienced author, and although I was an old-hand at writing lyrics, there was an initial struggle to find my right tone of voice and the best way of writing.

“I didn’t want to churn out long and meandering chapters. I also took time to read, as research, a few memoirs, some ghost-written, others not and quickly came to the conclusion that stories about drugs and drink are boring, and once you’ve read Motley Crue’s story, well you can’t out-Motley Crue, Motley Crue!

“I was able to work out in my head that the book would work best if I wrote about how I was at particular points in time, and to also to reflect on what influenced and inspired me throughout my life.  I also had really liked the way Viv Albertine had written her memoirs –  quite sort of gossipy and chatty  – and that was uppermost in my thoughts as I went about the task.”

As I mentioned in my own review of the book, it doesn’t go straight into the Gang of Four, with the first half looking back at Jon’s upbringing, family life, school, university and his ambition of being a visual artist.

“I did come from what is best described as an economically-disadvantaged background.  Growing up, I was never aware of being poor as that was my surroundings living in a boring commuter village made up mostly of council house stock and low-income families.  I ended up being very lucky to get a free place at one of England’s most elite public schools (Sevenoaks) where I very quickly encountered privilege, and realised that those who have everything get everything give to them.

“It’s something that has stayed with me my entire life, and as an old person I feel even more furious about the inequalities in this country. 

“I’ve always had a modest ambition of just wanting to change the world!  I remember being inspired at the age of 11 by hearing Highway 61 Revisited and how Bob Dylan was really able to excite people in a progressive way, and I wanted to try and do the same.

“But it turned out that I had a talent for drawing, which led me to study Fine Art at Leeds University.  I continued to do well and achieve some success by winning a few prizes, which led to one of my paintings being displayed in the Mappin Gallery in Sheffield.  That particular painting was political but I felt that the people looking at it during the exhibition and passing comment and judgement seemed to be well-heeled and well-off and I wasn’t comfortable.  I don’t think my father in his entire life ever set foot in an art gallery, and so I thought to myself that what I really wanted to do was something creative that had the power to start a conversation, and I began to increasingly concentrate on music.”

mp3: Gang Of Four – Damaged Goods (EP version)

Gang of Four first entered a recording studio in 1978 and the second half of the memoir covers the period through to 1984 during which time the band were signed to a major label and recorded four albums as well as undertaking a punishing schedule of live tours in the UK, Europe and increasingly the USA. I asked Jon why the book had stopped at that point, and whether, given its success, he was going to deliver a second volume.

“When I wrote the book two years ago, I wanted to have a natural arc of rags to riches and back to rags again.  It felt like a natural place to stop.  Things were changing for me as a musician, with Andy and I having a lot of difficulties because of his alcoholism.  Things became a lot more complicated, and if the period covered by the book had extended, a lot of it would have been about the disintegration of our relationship. But I didn’t want to write bad things about Andy. We loved each other until a point. I’m never quite sure when it all went south, 82 or 83 maybe, and I really wish we hadn’t made that fourth album. I should have put my foot down and just stopped it.

“The paperback edition does include a coda just to bring a few things up to date. Over the past year, we did a huge farewell tour, including selling out a coast-to-coast tour of America.  It was a remarkable experience, and I was astounded by it, both from the way the audience reacted and the fact that around one-third of them were under the age of 30.  For whatever reason the Gen Z’s have adopted or seem very keen on what we do, while in the hip-hop community, Run The Jewels and Frank Ocean have sampled songs, and I’m name-dropping like mad now, but even Pharrell was saying that the inspiration for the album he made two years ago was Entertainment!  You can’t help but be flattered by it.

“The immediate future is a short promotional tour around the paperback, and then in June we are heading back to the States for a handful of shows, with the band being myself, Hugo, Ted Leo and Gail Greenwood.  We’ve been in the studio with the great producer Nick Launey, and we recorded for the first time a song we played all the time called Elevator which never made it onto Entertainment! because Andy and I thought it was too much like pop music, but it’s actually a really catchy punk rock song, and we are going to put that out once Nick has mixed it.

“We’ve also re-recorded one of our mid-90s songs, I Parade Myself, along with four entirely new songs. It’s really exciting as I never thought I’d ever record any new stuff. They will all come out at least on all the digital platforms in the fullness of time. And who knows, maybe I’ll win a Grammy for best new act!”

I ended our chat by asking Jon for his thoughts on the current music scene and whether he could readily identify a 21st Century Gang of Four.

“There is a need – there’s always a need –  to agitate through contemporary music. Even back in the 60s, Elvis Presley made a song like In The Ghetto and the Supremes made Love Child about being a single-parent mother while Kenny Rogers wrote a song about a disabled Vietnam War veteran who couldn’t get it up. A song like that would never be made now.

“I don’t think there’s an identifiable Gang of Four these days. I am a bit puzzled by this given how dark and complicated things are at the moment.

“The problem is so much of music has been distorted and destroyed by the vampire digital platforms who just steal creative peoples’ money.

“Things are becoming even worse with AI coming along allowing people to copy and clone music without paying anybody. And of course in pop music, you’ve got that overwhelming dominance of say Max Martin who is now the most successful songwriter of all time after Lennon and McCartney, and so the similarity of big-selling pop music, with the exception of wonderful people like Beyonce, means you don’t have any pop band as distinctive as Abba or a new guitar band as distinctive as Nirvana or indeed anyone similar to Gang of Four. 

“There are a lot of great bands and great music out there, but whether there’s anything like us, I don’t think so.”

We spoke about a few other things during a call lasting over 30 minutes, but I’ve edited things down to ensure this piece isn’t too long.   My big takeaway from the chat is that Jon King is incredibly creative across all the arts.  He has a quiet personality that is very unassuming and down to earth while still having that fire in his belly and a desire to change the world. Above all else, he is someone well worth listening to, and who will undoubtedly be great value at the upcoming events in support of the launch of the paperback edition of To Hell With Poverty.

Thursday 16 April : The Red Lion, 640 High Road, Leytonstone, London : In conversation with Miki Berenyi :   Tickets here

Thursday 23 April : 1 in 100, Old Castle Road, Glasgow : In conversation with Douglas MacIntyre :  SOLD OUT

Friday 24 April : The Voodoo Rooms, 19a West Register Street, Edinburgh : In conversation with Phill Jupitus : Tickets here.

The book can be pre-ordered from here.

Oh, and one of the new Gang of Four songs has just been given a digital release.  Click here

A special thanks to Kevin Pocklington for arranging the Zoom call.

 

JC

Mountain Goats

AN IMAGINARY COMPILATION ALBUM : #410: THE MOUNTAIN GOATS

A guest posting by Rol (My Top Ten Blog)

I’ve been wanting to write this ICA for ages now… but, y’know… I waste enough time on the internet trying to get people to like the songs I like as it is. It can be quite exhausting, can’t it? Swimming upstream, while the curmudgeonly throw rocks at you from the safety of the riverbank. Why do we do it? Because, as Pete Postlethwaite once said, “Music matters”. And in this crazy, mixed-up world that gets crazier and more mixed-up every day, it’s one of only two things I can rely on to keep me afloat. The other thing? Books. Reading and listening to music are my lifejacket… which brings us to John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats. Because as well as being a superb songwriter (hipsters at the New Yorker called him “America’s best non-hip-hop lyricist”), Darnielle is also an acclaimed novelist. I read his most recent novel, and it blew me away. Here’s my review from Goodreads…

“A true crime writer moves into a house where an infamous murder took place… and it begins to affect his work.”

The title and cover suggest a generic horror tale, but this is much, much more – an investigation into the very nature of storytelling (but not in a wanky, “in’t stories brilliant?” Neil Gaiman way), questioning whether a narrative can ever be truly subjective, unbiased or reliable. There is horror here – most notably two gruesome murder scenes – but there’s far more psychological darkness, with superior use of perspective shifts and alternating voices, and a climax that manages to surprise without going for the obvious shock.

I’ve become increasingly enamoured with Darnielle’s work as a songwriter with his band The Mountain Goats, so it’s hard to believe he could be an even better novelist. Frighteningly good.”

Darnielle has only written three novels to date – most of his time is still devoted to the day job and since 1991, that means 23 studio albums from The Mountain Goats. I don’t claim to have heard them all – I’m still at the early stages of discovering the delights they have to offer. But I’ve already come across more than enough songs to make a decent ICA and hopefully try to get to get a few more people to like the songs I like.

1. This Year

You need a proper life-affirming anthem to kick off a mixtape, right?

My broken house behind me and good things ahead
A girl named Cathy wants a little of my time
Six cylinders underneath the hood crashing and kicking
Aha! Listen to the engine whine

Shades of Springsteen’s Born To Run right there, but also the work of previous ICA honorary Craig Finn. Premier storytellers all. And if you’re looking for a chorus to thump the steering wheel to as you tear down life’s metaphorical highway…

I am gonna make it through this year if it kills me!

That’s become my mantra lately.

Here’s a great live performance of the song featuring US TV host Stephen Colbert on guest vocals.

2. No Children

OK, let’s take the mood down now. Waaaaay down, with a blacker-than-bleak doomed relationship song that a lot of old country music stars would have given their right arm for. I can hear George Jones singing a slowed down version of this, or Loretta and Conway turning it into a duet.

I hope I cut myself shaving tomorrow
I hope it bleeds all day long
Our friends say it’s darkest before the sun rises
We’re pretty sure they’re all wrong

I hope it stays dark forever
I hope the worst isn’t over
And I hope you blink before I do
I hope I never get sober

And I hope when you think of me years down the line
You can’t find one good thing to say
And I’d hope that if I found the strength to walk out
You’d stay the hell out of my way

3. Love Love Love

Now for something a bit more cheerful… how about a love song? Featuring King Saul, Sonny Liston, Raskolnikov and Kurt Cobain. Some things you do for money and some you do for love, love, love.

4. Andrew Eldritch Is Moving Back To Leeds

A lot of Mountain Goats records are thematically linked and tell a larger story between the songs. I won’t use the word “concept album”, because I know it’ll make some of you come out in hives. Anyway, this one is from the 2017 album Goths, which might be when I first started to pay attention to John Darnielle’s songwriting. I’m always attracted to songs about other singers, and as I go to work in Leeds, I was doubly intrigued.

Although he was born in Ely, Cambridgeshire, Andrew Eldritch went to university in Leeds, and that’s where he formed The Sisters of Mercy. The song isn’t strictly a biography, it’s more a metaphor about returning to your roots to get back what you’ve lost. In many ways, it seems like a direct reply to our opening tune, This Year.

There’s indifference on the wind
But a faint gust of hope
At a club nobody goes to
With a musty velvet rope
Guys in Motörhead jackets
Who knew him way back when
Haven’t raised a drink in years
But now meet up again
To remember how it was
When they all thought they’d move away
And ride in Lotus 7s
Through the London streets one day

5. Cold At Night

Bang up to date now with a song from last year’s album, Through This Fire Across from Peter Balkan, a “full-on musical” (track 1 is an overture) about three stranded shipwreck survivors, an idea that apparently came to Darnielle in a dream.

For those of you who don’t want your albums to tell complete novelistic stories, with each song a chapter, I’ll say this… much as I like the idea from a writing perspective, I don’t ever listen to these records with the larger narrative in mind. I take them song by song, as I do any other record. I have this dream that when I retire and have more time to find a comfy chair to sit back in, with the lyrics sheets on my knee, appreciating my favourite albums as a whole, like proper musos must do. I’m sure I’ll get even more out of the Mountain Goats back catalogue if I ever get the chance to do that. I guess what I’m saying is, the songs work on their own too. You don’t need to worry about the forest, just enjoy the trees.

The first thing you learn is there’s always a clock ticking somewhere
And the next thing you learn is how cold it can get at night
The first thing you learn is how strong you can be if you have to
And the next thing you learn is how cold it can get at night

6. Training Montage

Speaking of which, here’s a song that… well, I have no idea what it’s about. But I think I read somewhere that the Goats wanted it to be the kind of tune you’d see Sylvester Stallone working out to in Rocky. It’s got a slow start, but around the thirty second mark it all kicks off and… well, if you’re not singing along by the end, check your pulse for signs of life.

7. The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton

Now forget all that larger narrative bunkum I was talking about earlier – how about a tune that tells a complete story in two and a half minutes? A story some writers would need a whole book to tell. Darnielle understands that a writer’s greatest skill is not what he puts on the page, but what he leaves off… making the reader fill in the blanks.

JD apparently wrote this song after working for a couple of years in a California Mental Health facility. He wrote a longer version as part of Bloomsbury publishing’s 33 1/3 series, ostensibly a tribute to Black Sabbath’s Master of Reality LP, but really just expanding on this song’s central premise: the awful impact of crushed dreams. So many great lines here, it’s both funny and very, very sad.

When you punish a person for dreaming his dream
Don’t expect him to thank or forgive you
The best ever death metal band out of Denton
Will in time both outpace and outlive you

Hail Satan!

8. Woke Up New

But if you’re looking for a more traditional pop song, try this. A classic “day after I was dumped” tune from 2006.

The first time I made coffee for just myself, I made too much of it
But I drank it all just ’cause you hate it, when I let things go to waste
And I wandered through the house like a little boy, lost at the mall
And an astronaut could’ve seen the hunger in my eyes from space

And I sang, “Oh, what do I do?”
“What do I do?”
“What do I do?”
“What do I do without you?”

9. Damn These Vampires

John Darnielle always seems to be writing in character, so it’s hard to tell how much of his own life creeps into these stories, and how much of it is just his imagination. However, Damn These Vampires is apparently semi-autobiographical – the vampires in question being the heavy drugs he took back in the 80s, before he managed to turn his life around.

Crawl ’til dawn
On my hands and knees
Goddamn these vampires
For what they’ve done to me

10. Anti-Music Song

I wanted to close with this because it takes me back to my introduction, specifically the question of why I waste so much time on the internet trying to get people to like the songs I like. You see, it seems there are some people out there who get far more pleasure from rubbishing the songs they don’t like rather than celebrating the ones they do. There might even be one or two of them reading this post… except I doubt they’ll have made it this far. Have I mentioned that the first band I truly loved was Queen? Big ELO fan too. And as for Billy Joel…

Anti-Music Song is written from the perspective of a musical snob and/or internet troll. Over on Genius, the site that allows people with far too much time on their hands (Ha! Irony!) to pull apart song lyrics and offer “definitive” interpretations, there’s a suggestion that when Darnielle wrote this, he really did dislike all the people he mentions here – even Brian Wilson. (And if you don’t like the Beach Boys, you don’t like joy.) Although he apparently changed his mind about many of them with the wisdom of age.

Apparently he even changed his mind about the Stretford Segregationist after this song was recorded… although I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d changed it back again given recent infamy. Either way, I’m sure many of you will get a chuckle out of the way Darnielle repeatedly mispronounces That Guy’s name here. It would wind him up no end, if he ever heard it.

 

 

Rol

 

Paul Haig

16 YEARS AND ONE DAY AGO….

Those of us who devote time and energy to blogging about music are all very aware that the popularity of the genre peaked a long time ago.  It’s always been the same with how we listen to and consume music.

I hate the word consume, but it’s appropriate in this instance.  Growing up, it would have been nigh on impossible, in the UK, to imagine a world without Top of The Pops, and in later years, I would never have believed MTV and similar channels becoming irrelevant.  Even when the streaming services in the shape of Napster etc began to have an impact, I think we would all have under-estimated the way most people, and particularly those who are young, would actually listen to music at the quarter-point of the 21st Century.

Today’s post, from a personal perspective, looks back to 6 April 2010, and what I consider to be the apex of the collective impact of music blogs. Paul Haig Day II.

It all goes back to events in March 2009, when the original Vinyl Villain blog was the subject of a DMCA takedown notice for an article about Paul Haig on the basis that the copyright holder of the song offered up as an mp3 download had demanded its removal as well as the words accompanying the article.  But the article had been put together with the help and support of Paul Haig and his manager, meaning that the actual holder of the copyright article, far from raising a complaint, was actually in support of it being used.

Further chats with Paul’s management led to the idea of designating 6 April 2009 as Paul Haig Day, when as many blogs as possible would write about him – either as a solo artist, his time with Josef K or of one of his collaborations – and that the songs used in any articles would come with his blessing.

Twelve months later, the idea was to do likewise, but hopefully bigger and better.  It was best summarised by one of the other bloggers who took part, “Home taping didn’t kill music and the world wide web isn’t going to either.”

The response to Paul Haig Day II was truly incredible, with everyone’s efforts boosted by the man himself, with what was an exclusive (at the time) brand-new remix of one of the songs from his most recent album for use on the Vinyl Villain blog:-

mp3: Paul Haig – Trip Out The Rider (remix)

Here’s a list of the 38 bloggers and supporters who got involved in one way or another on the day:-

adam from ‘Pretending Life Is Like A Song’
ally from ‘Dusty Sevens’
Blogmeister from ‘Everything Starts With An A…
Brian from ‘Consolation Prizes’
Chris & The Team at ‘Exit 97.7 WEXT’
ctel from ‘Acid Ted’
Davanelli from ‘The World According to Davanelli’
Davis McArdle (guest posting on The Vinyl Villain)
Dirk from ‘Sexy Loser’
Drew from ‘Across The Kitchen Table’
Duncan from ‘Flippin Kids’
Ed from ’17 Seconds’
Erika from ‘1001 Fun Things To Do In Aberystwth’
Fernando from ‘Por si llueve’
FiL at ‘Pogo-A-Gogo’
Friend of Rachel Worth from ‘Cathedrals Of Sound’
G from ‘How Does That One Go Again’
Greer from ‘A Sweet Unrest’
HD from ‘Helpless Dancer’
Herbal T from ‘The Mixed Up World Of Herbal T’
James from ‘Appetite For Distruction’
Jim from ‘Aye Tunes’
JJ from ‘Spiralphoria’
Mel from ‘London Cafe : The Best Of UK Indie’
Mona from ‘Exile On Moan Street’
Nat from ‘Another Aging Hipster’
Paul from ‘You Would Say That Wouldn’t You?’
Phil Spector from ‘Plain or Pan?’
Postpunk from ‘Postpunk’
Rol from ‘Sunset Over Slawit’
Sean from ‘Battery In Your Leg’
Simon from ‘The Songs That People Sing’
Swiss Adam from ‘Bagging Area’
tart from ‘Love Shack, Baby’
The Cat from ‘Jock’n’Roll’
Webbie from ‘Football & Music’
Will from ‘Between Thought & Expression’
Will from ‘We All Want Someone To Shout For’

It was also mentioned across a range of music aggretator sites etc.:-

The Hype Machine
elbo
Broken Controllers
Pop Librarian
Cowbell FM
Lintom
Indieblips
gigulate
Blip FM
wikio
Friendfeed

And not one of us was the subject of a DMCA notice!

Sixteen years on, and most of the above blogs are no more.  I know of at least one author who has passed away, and given the fact that many of us who were so heavily involved in blogging were of, shall we say, advanced years, there are likely to be others.

I can’t remember exactly why I didn’t push things for Paul Haig Day III, and sadly April 2013 is one of those period where all the posts on the old blog have been lost forever, not captured by The Wayback Machine, but I’ve a feeling that what I did was look around the blogging landscape and notice that fewer people were involved in posting regularly, and rather than have any event diminish in numbers, I decided not to pursue it.

Nor did I know that just a few months later, in July 2013, I’d have been on the receiving end of one too many DMCA warnings (I think it was my fourth) and Blogger.com decided to wipe the original blog off the face of the earth without any warning.

Scary to realise that the (new) Vinyl Villain has lasted twice as long as the original blog….but then again WordPress has shown itself to be much more sensible whenever it gets a DMCA complaint in that the opportunity is offered to remove the ‘offending’ piece of music.

mp3: Paul Haig – Justice (unreleased 7″ version)

As included on the compilation album, European Sun, released via the Belgian-based Les Disques Du Crépuscule in 1987.

JC

Grinderman

THE CD SINGLE LUCKY DIP (32) : Grinderman – Palaces of Montezuma

Back in 2019, I had a short series looking at each of the Grinderman singles.

The group came into being in 2006, consisting of Nick Cave and three of his Bad Seeds – Warren Ellis, Jim Sclavunos and Martyn P. Casey. Having undergone an extensive and musically ambitious tour promoting Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus in which the Bad Seeds had been expanded to include a number of backing singers, Cave wanted to get back to basics and set about writing material akin to the days of The Birthday Party back in the 80s.

The debut single was released in January 2007.  The eighth and last single appeared in July 2011. There were also two studio albums.

The Palaces of Montezuma was the sixth single. It was part of the album Grinderman2, and a few months later it was announced it would be issued with new mixes, initially as a digital download and then as a ‘limited to 1000 copies 12″ release’ as part of Record Store Day on 16 April 2011. My unwillingness to get involved in the shenanigans around Record Store Day means that, back in 2019, this was the only physical copy of a Grinderman single not in sitting somewhere in Villain Towers.

That changed in May 2021 when I saw someone on Discogs putting a copy of a CD single that had been issued as a promo, presumably to radio stations and such like to air one of the songs.  It cost me £4.95.

mp3 : Grinderman – Palaces of Montezuma (Cenzo mix)
mp3 : Grinderman – Palaces of Montezuma (Barry Adamson remix)
mp3 : Grinderman – Palaces of Montezuma (album mix)
mp3 : Grinderman – When My Baby Comes (Cat’s Eyes remix)

As I said back in 2019,

The Barry Adamson remix is the one that does it for me on this occasion. I also mentioned that the remix of When My Baby Comes, another of the tracks on Grinderman 2, was of some interest.

Cat’s Eyes, formed in 2011, are a duo comprising Faris Badwan, lead vocalist with The Horrors, and Rachel Zeffira, a Canadian-born Canadian soprano, composer and multi-instrumentalist.  The duo are quite unconventional but gained ever-increasing critical acclaim from the outset, in recent years, culminating in awards for their film score for the 2014 art-house release The Duke of Burgundy. Having said that, the duo haven’t released anything since the 2016 album, Treasure House.

 

 

JC

#edwyncollins45s

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

#28: The Beatle$ : Edwyn Collins (Setanta Records, SET 093, 2001)

The collaboration with Bernard Butler which featured last week had been the first single in four years on which Edwyn had been credited as a performer. It’s not that he had been quiet, but it was a period in which he concentrated largely on his production work, although there were also two other projects to which he had contributed cover songs.

The first of these had been in 1997, when he was one of a number of contemporary Scottish artists to feature on the soundtrack of the 1997 film The Slab Boys, itself an adaptation of a John Byrne play that had been written in 1978, with its narrative set in a carpet factory in Paisley in 1957.  The play has long been very popular in Scptland, having been revived on a number of occasions over the past almost 50 years.  The film, however, wasn’t all that well received and its soundtrack, unsurprisingly, features songs from the era in which it is set, with Edwyn’s two offerings being his take on some of the best-loved and best-known songs by Bobby Darin and Fats Domino:-

mp3: Edwyn Collins – Dream Lover
mp3: Edwyn Collins – Ain’t That A Shame

The following year, he was to be found contributing to A Song For Eurotrash, an album issued by EMI Records to cash-in on what was a cult TV programme on Channel 4 and the staging of the 1998 Eurovision Song Contest which was taking place in the UK for the first time in 16 years.  It’s a peculiar release with the likes of Bananarama, Dubstar, 808 State, Kenickie, Terry Hall & Sinead O’Connor (performing a duet), and Saint Étienne covering songs that had previously won an edition of Eurovision.

mp3: Edwyn Collins – Ding A Dong

The original had won in 1975, performed by the Dutch pop group Teach-In (it reached #13 in the UK charts).

It was the autumn of 2001 when Edwyn finally released a single that he had written himself. It was another that took him in a new direction:-

mp3: Edwyn Collins – The Beatle$

Five minutes in which there is more than a hint of him being influenced by trip-hop, with a lyric which I have long felt was aiming a punch in the direction of the fag-end of Britpop just as much as it poses questions about the music press’s obsession with the Fab Four.

It was released only on 7″, which went totally against the grain of most singles with the preferred format normally always being CD.  There was next to no info on the sleeve or the label other than both sides of the single were written and performed by Edwyn Collins. Oh, and the b-side wasn’t a new song, as Welwyn Garden City had originally been released on the b-side of the 12″ of The Magic Piper of Love back in 1997.

Which is partly why this post has been padded out with the three cover versions….none of which could ever be described as highlights in EC’s career.

 

 

JC