September 2014 – Page 2 – THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN

I DEFY ANYONE TO DISLIKE THIS SONG

Released here in the UK on Rough Trade Records in 1986, I was very surprised to learn that it was only ever an album track in their native USofA:-

mp3 : Camper Van Beethoven – Take The Skinheads Bowling

This is an utterly joyous two and a bit minutes, and it’s opening few bars are guaranteed to cheer me up and make me smile no matter how foul a mood I’m in. One of the greatest and catchiest sing-a-long songs of all time, and yet its success caught the composer, David Lowery, by surprise:-

“I never thought that Take the Skinheads Bowling would become a Hit. If someone had traveled from the future and told me we would have a hit on our first album I would not have picked this song as being the hit. Not in a million years. I would have more likely picked Where the Hell is Bill.

Why? We regarded Take The Skinheads Bowling as just a weird non-sensical song. The lyrics were purposely structured so that it would be devoid of meaning. Each subsequent line would undermine any sort of meaning established by the last line. It was the early 80′s and all our peers were writing songs that were full of meaning. It was our way of rebelling. BTW this is the most important fact about this song. We wanted the words to lack any coherent meaning. There is no story or deeper insight that I can give you about this song.”

Here’s the other bits of music made available on the 12″ single:-

mp3 : Camper Van Beethoven – Cowboys From Hollywood
mp3 : Camper Van Beethoven – Aktuda
mp3 : Camper Van Beethoven – Colonel Enrique Adolfo Bermudez

In case you are wondering who the subject matter of the last song is, (he is described on the back on the sleeve as ‘a real bastard’)…..he was one of the founders of the armed contra army which was formed to oppose the Sandinista government of Nicaragua and which had very controversial links with American military intelligence throuighout the 80s.

Click here for a brief bio.

Black Box Recorder

THE ART OF GREAT VALUE ON A CD SINGLE

Black Box Recorder consisted of Sarah Nixey, Luke Haines (of The Auteurs), and John Moore (formerly of The Jesus and Mary Chain).

Debut LP, England Made Me, got a fair bit of critical acclaim upon its release in 1998 but didn’t sell all that well, perhaps because it was a very downbeat take on the struggles of everyday life where the gap between the haves and have-nots was ever-increasing and life for many seemed to be mundane and not worth bothering about.

By 2000, the band had come to the conclusion that sex sells, and so while the music itself on the follow-up LP The Facts of Life was little different from the debut, many of the lyrics were a bitter commentary on the peculiar attitude us Brits – or more precisely the demograph referred to as Middle England – have to sex and pornography.

The band enjoyed a Top 20 hit single with the lead track off the LP and as follow-up they selected LP opener The Art of Driving, a song which is not really so much about moving a motor vehicle from point A to point B as ironic advice on how best to ensure a developing relationship goes along at the right pace.

There was little radio play for the single and it stalled at #53. Black Box Recorder never threatened the charts again.

I thought I’d feature the single as the 2 x CDs made up a great little package. You got a radio edit of the track, the album version and you could also access the promo video. There were also two cover versions of hit singles from the 70s, both of them delivered in ways that would make you believe they were Black Box Recorder originals.

And then there was a very interesting, funny and occasionally perverted remix of the band’s hit single – a remix by the Chocolate Layers, aka Jarvis Cocker and Steve Mackey of Pulp.

mp3 : Black Box Recorder – The Art of Driving (radio edit)
mp3 : Black Box Recorder – The Facts of Life (remixed by the Chocolate Layers)
mp3 : Black Box Recorder – Rock’n’Roll Suicide
mp3 : Black Box Recorder – The Art of Driving (album version)
mp3 : Black Box Recorder – Uptown Top Ranking

Not long after this, Nixey and Moore got married and had a child, much to the chagrin of Haines. His bitter take on how it affected him and the band can be enjoyed within the pages of his second volume of memoirs, Post Everything.

Lloyd Cole & The Commotions

A SHAMELESS RIP-OFF OF IGGY POP

Lloyd Cole & the Commotions released just nine singles and three albums during a four-year period between April 1984 and April 1988. Their biggest hit single was Lost Weekend which climbed as high as #17 – a bit of surprise to me as I was sure they had enjoyed at least one Top 10 single and I’d have thought it would have been debut Perfect Skin, but it only reached #26.

Lost Weekend was also the only single on which bass player Lawrence Donegan got a writing credit. After the band broke up, Lawrence became a very successful journalist and author and it was in the pages of one of his excellent and hugely enjoyable books – No News At Throat Lake – that he briefly mentions his part in the writing of Lost Weekend and fully acknowledges the tune is a shameless rip-off of The Passenger by Iggy Pop.

If you can’t quite hear that for yourself, then take a listen to the extended version of the song as it appears on the 12″ single, and in particular the extended instrumental break in the middle:-

mp3 : Lloyd Cole & the Commotions – Lost Weekend (extended version)

It’s actually a reasonably decent extended version, only about a minute longer than the 7″ radio friendly version which can be found on the flip side along with a couple of half decent otherwise unavailable tracks:-

mp3 : Lloyd Cole & the Commotions – Big World
mp3 : Lloyd Cole & the Commotions – Nevers End
mp3 : Lloyd Cole & the Commotions – Lost Weekend (7″ version)

Enjoy

ADDENDUM

It was only after writing this and going to load up the tracks that I discovered all of these songs were featured as recently as last December as part of the Saurday’s singles series. Sorry for the repetition.

Twilight Sad

AN IMAGINARY COMPILATION ALBUM #3 : THE TWILIGHT SAD

Just a reminder…the idea of this series is to take one of my favourite bands or singers and list what I think would make the idea ‘Best of’ album with a few words on why. The only proviso is that I’m going to do it as a proper old-fashioned LP…10 tracks in total with an A-side and a B-side and it’s got to hang together like a proper LP and not just a collection of greatest hits. Neither will it necessarily be the 10 best songs (which in any event change on a regular basis)

I started things off with The Smiths and then looked at the solo career of Edwyn Collins. Today it’s The Twilight Sad.

Once again, the inspiration was seeing from a live performance, in this instance in Richmond Park in Glasgow as part of the Last Big Weekend which saw them take to the stage at 5pm under the canvas of a tent. It was an electric performance, but then again every time I’ve seen the band perform over the past seven years has left me awestruck, whether it is the full-blown band, an acoustic stripped down version or, as on one occasion, accompanied in a fabulous gothic abbey by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra.

It was the opening three songs of the 45-minute long Richmond Park set that got me thinking they would be the perfect opening to any compilation LP and therefore I only had to narrow things down by another seven songs. It was also the fact they aired a brand new song as the fourth offering in the set that got me determined to do this now as to wait for the release of what will be their fourth full-length LP this October would make it an impossible task.

Side A

1. Cold Days From The Birdhouse
2. I Became A Prostitute
3. Reflection of The Television
4. Sick
5. That Summer, At Home I Had Become The Invisible Boy

Side B

1. And She Would Darken The Memory
2. The Room
3. I’m Taking The Train Home
4. Seven Years Of Letters
5. Kill It In The Morning

Despite getting the head start from the first three songs, it’s still take ages to come up with the final seclection….but the bonus has been getting to play all the songs all over again before working things out.

1. The first track of Fourteen Autumns & Fifteen Winters, the 2007 debut LP. It contains a couple of particularly incredible moments in what is an incredibly good song….the first of them at the two and a half minute mark when Andy McFarlane’s wall of noise from the guitar kicks in….played live it really does get the hairs on the back of the neck standing to attention. The second bit of true magic comes just under a minute from the end when James Graham‘s vocal fades out to be replaced by an unexpected bit of acoustic guitar accompanied by a repeated single piano note.

2. The second track of Forget The Night Ahead, the sophomore LP from 2009 and it’s straight back into the wall of noise, this time with pounding drums courtesy of Mark Devine and a great bass back-up by then member Craig Orzel. This is alternative indie-rock at its very best and goes a long way to explaining why the band have a decent following over in the States

3. More loud and wailing guitars, pounding drums and a killer hypnotic bass line. The opening track of the second LP. The song was later given a complete remix by Errors for inclusion on the Wrong Car EP – by complete I mean the drums, bass and guitar are almost completely replaced by electronica and a dance beat. And such is the greatness of the song and the music that the remix more than holds its own.

4. The band surprised many fans with the contents of the 2012 LP No One Can Ever Know. The previously dominant guitars were replaced by keyboards and drum patterns from machines. Imagine the music of Joy Division benefitting from technological improvements over the past 30 years and you’ll get an idea of what many of the songs sounded like. I felt the imaginary compilation LP needed a little bit less intensity at this point of listening, so in comes a slightly slower and softer number.

5. A track which in some ways is eerily reminiscent of Maps by Yeah Yeah Yeahs, this is a strange and disturbing song told from the point of view of a very unhappy and disturbed teenager. It was my introduction to the band back in 2007 when I heard it played over the speakers in a Glasgow record store. And yes, there is the occasional use of the dreaded c-word which is normally a bit of a taboo, but it is spat out by James in such a way that you can have no doubt that the person being sung about is truly loathed. They say you never forget your first time and in the case of The Twilight Sad I never will.

Take a deep breath and turn the record over……

6. Just as you might be thinking from the opening minute or so that this track from the debut LP (an edited version of which was released as a 7″ single) might be a more easy-going indie-pop listen, then the brutality and violence of the lyric and takes centre stage with boots being put in and rabbits being threatened with death. And then the final two and a half minutes deliver the sort of shoegazing noise most usually experienced via a My Bloody Valentine track. Aurally stunning…..

7. This was the most difficult part of the imaginary album to compile. I just find it near impossible to have anything follow-on to Track 6 and not sound inadequate. But I think this song from the second LP. which was also released as a 45 (and later remixed in spectacular fashion by Mogwai) does the trick. It is driven along by a constant drum and keyboard but in a minimalist way this enabling James to display that he is a very fine singer.

8. Back to the first LP again. A softer song than the others selected from that LP, this has a lyric which refers to green and blue eyes and as such recalls Temptation by New Order...not that it sounds anything like that song…just the bit about the green and blue eyes. Again, it’s a song like so many of their earlier efforts, one which builds up a great bit of momentum before slowing to a lovely climax.

9. A similarly paced song to that which precedes it on this imaginary album. Released as a 7″ single with a very surprising and very understated cover of Suck by The Wedding Present on the b-side, this is one of the few tracks that James has been happy to explain – ‘the lyrics revolve around running away from people and things’

10. I’ve ended with a song that splits a lot of fans. It’s the closing track from the third LP and it’s rather unlike anything else I’ve included on this imaginary compilation. It was originally made available free via the band’s website some five months before the release of the LP and it’s fair to say the electronica caught out a lot of folk who were desperate for more of the same after the first two LPs. I fell in love with it right away and I have never got bored with it. It belts along at a great pace and then just as you think it is going to fade away quietly, a change of rhythm takes it off on a different course altogether before it does conclude with a shouted single line. A perfect ending and again has the intention of making you want to get up out of your chair to turn the LP over and listen again.

mp3 : The Twilight Sad – Cold Days From The Birdhouse
mp3 : The Twilight Sad – I Became A Prostitute
mp3 : The Twilight Sad – Reflection of The Television
mp3 : The Twilight Sad – Sick
mp3 : The Twilight Sad – That Summer, At Home I Had Become The Invisible Boy
mp3 : The Twilight Sad – And She Would Darken The Memory
mp3 : The Twilight Sad – The Room
mp3 : The Twilight Sad – I’m Taking The Train Home
mp3 : The Twilight Sad – Seven Years Of Letters
mp3 : The Twilight Sad – Kill It In The Morning

Enjoy

James

THE JAMES SINGLES (16)

The fact that Ring The Bells had been a flop didn’t strop the record label wanting to extract every last possible drop out of James as they continued their merry way across the festivals of Europe playing the songs off Seven alongside the better received older material. Whatever else could be said about the band, they were still continuing to improve as a live act and take things to some quite substantial heights backed by huge crowds willing to sing and dance along.

Their biggest ever show was scheduled for July 1992 at the Alton Towers theme park in England with 30,000 fans making the pilgrimage…a hugely impressive achievement given the band were also high up on the bill of Glastonbury just a few weeks prior.

The Alton Towers show was also scheduled to broadcast live by BBC Radio 1 and the record label was keen to exploit the exposure offered by the broadcast with a fourth single from the LP. The band weren’t happy, especially on the back of the backlash about the poor value offered to fans by the previous single (see Part 15 of this series), but realising they weren’t in much of a bargaining position decided that they would re-record the title track of the LP along with three brand new songs.

mp3 : James – Seven (remix)
mp3 : James – Goalies Ball
mp3 : James – William Burroughs
mp3 : James – Still Alive

The remix is so blatantly stadium rock….it’s almost like a U2 cast-off…Tim Booth sounding uncannily like Bono at times. I just can’t bring myself to listen to this track….

However……….it’s a release very much saved by the b-sides.

Goalies Ball, despite the title, is not a song about football, but a commentary on human evolution set against the backdrop of a strangely melodic and haunting tune.

William Burroughs is a manic few minutes which provided a great reminder of the band at their critical peak a few years earlier when they were lucky to sell out venues with a capacity of 30 never mind 30,000. The record company must have hated it…

Still Alive is a real oddity given the rest of the material the band had been recording at the time. It’s a vocal-led track with the minimal of accompaniment in the background. It certainly sounded like nothing James had recorded before and it is one of the few tracks from the era which has dated well.

This release was made available on 7″, 12″ and CD single but for once, all four tracks were available on each format. This meant completists only had to shell out once and this was probably a contributory factor in it stalling at #46. As I said above, it’s a dreadful single and so deserved such a lousy chart performance, but long-term fans could be pleased and intrigued by what they heard on the b-sides. Were the band already preparing a move away from the stadium rock nonsense??

Morrissey

THE MOZ SINGLES (Part 26)

Released in April 1990, November Spawned A Monster shocked an awful lot of people with its candid lyrics about disability. Some weren’t sure if Morrissey was mocking the wheelchair-bound or whether he was championing their cause.

Sleep on and dream of love
Because it’s the closest you will get to love
Poor twisted child, so ugly, so ugly
Poor twisted child. oh hug me, oh hug me

One November spawned a monster in the shape of this child who later cried
“But Jesus made me, so Jesus save me
From pity, sympathy and people discussing me”
A frame of useless limbs what can make good all the bad that’s been done?

And if the lights were out could you even bear
To kiss her full on the mouth (or anywhere?)

Poor twisted child so ugly, so ugly
Poor twisted child oh hug me, oh hug me

One November spawned a monster in the shape of this child
Who must remain a hostage to kindness and the wheels underneath her
A hostage to kindness and the wheels underneath her
A symbol of where mad, mad lovers must pause and draw the line

So sleep and dream of love
Because it’s the closest you will get to love

That November is a time which I must put out of my mind

Oh one fine day let it be soon
She won’t be rich or beautiful
But she’ll be walking your streets
In the clothes that she went out and chose for herself

It was a song I found really disturbing on its release, and even all these years later, it still makes me uncomfortable. But then again, I’ve no doubt that was the whole point and intention behind its writing and recording.

It’s a tune which is one of the most unusual across the solo material…it’s almost driven along by a dance-beat akin to Barbarism Begins At Home….and again given the subject matter, that can interpreted as a bit of a sick joke. But just as the tune is bouncing along, and the dancers are in the midst of throwing the Morrissey shapes, it slows right down and Mary Margaret O’Hara comes in and starts screaming….

I read many years ago at the time of its release that she was asked to go to the studio and make noises as if she was having a painful and difficult birth. Given this, the lyric does begin to make some literal sense….the child in question was not planned, and to complicate matters for the mad mad lovers who failed to pause and draw the line, nine months later they have a daughter whose physical appearance and dependencies make it so difficult for them to love her….but who think everything will be fine if there is some sort of miraculous recovery…..

So….maybe the song isn’t really about disability and it’s actually a cautionary tale to those who were prepared to sleep around without thinking of the consequences….

Other people have got their own theories. I read once on a forum one fan’s view that the song is a parallel to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein – a monster created in November but who was unloved by its ‘parent’. The monster then had to endure a life of misery and loneliness (a regular theme in many Morrissey songs), and this is going to be the fate of the girl in the song. The fan goes as far to comment that Morrissey is making a really strong statement here that society judges people on their looks alone….

Someone else makes reference to the accompanying video which they feel mocks so many others of its time, with Morrissey wriggling around in the desert making himself look ludicrous to emphasise the point that image and beauty isn’t everything…

Your own thoughts dear readers????

mp3 : Morrissey – November Spawned A Monster

Oh and the two extra songs on the 12″ and CD single are well worth a listen as well:-

mp3 : Morrissey – He Knows I’d Love To See Him
mp3 : Morrissey – Girl Least Likely To

The latter is probably the nearest thing we’ve ever had to a song that could have come straight from the days of The Smiths since the break-up – it was co-written by Andy Rourke.

Facts and figures time. It reached #12 in the UK singles charts. The image on the sleeve is by celebrated rock photographer Anton Corbjin…

Oh and just in case there’s any doubt….November remains one of my favourite ever Morrissey releases.

Enjoy.

Supernaturals

SATURDAY’S SCOTTISH SINGLE (Part 107)

Adapted from wiki:-

The Supernaturals were a five-piece guitar-based pop band from Glasgow, Scotland. Fronted by singer-songwriter James McColl, they signed to Parlophone in 1996, and had a string of singles which were taken from their three albums and four EPs. Other members included Mark Guthrie, Derek McManus, Gavin Crawford and Ken McAlpine.

Debut album It Doesn’t Matter Anymore received good reviews (8/10 NME and 4/5 Q) as did the follow-up A Tune a Day (7/10 NME and 4/5 Q). The band’s third album saw a change of musical direction into Europop and electronica and wasn’t as well received.

They were a band which enjoyed playing live, appearing at all sorts of music festivals in the UK and Europe (including four successive year at T in the Park between 95 and 98) and were happy enough to appear on the supoort bill for a number of better known acts and bands including Robbie Williams, Paul Weller, The Boo Radleys, Gene, Blondie, Dodgy, The Bluetones, Ocean Colour Scene, Texas, Sleeper and Tina Turner.

The band’s best known songs (Smile” and I Wasn’t Built To Get Up) were featured prominently in a series of television advertisements while The Day Before Yesterday’s Man was used on three occasions in film and TV in the UK.

Eight singles were released from the first 2 LPs, all of which went Top 50 in the UK, but only three made the Top 30 with none getting any higher than #23.

Here’s their first Top 30 hit from 1997:-

mp3 : The Supernaturals – The Day Before Yesterday’s Man

Listening now, it’s catchy enough and radio friendly (albeit I’m sure the word shit was edited out of the radio mix) but I was sad to discover that it hasn’t dated all that well…..

And here’s the two additional tracks made available on CD1 of the release:-

mp3 : The Supernaturals – Ken’s Song
mp3 : The Supernaturals – Honk Williams

The first few bars of the latter had me panicking as it felt as if Mull Of Kintyre was about to be played. But stick with it as it is a fun little number about a spaceman who looks and sounds like a dead country and western singer…..with a great wee singlaong chorus towards the end.

Enjoy

Jam, Style Council

SEPARATED BY 105 DAYS

I initially didn’t like Beat Surrender. I couldn’t really bring myself to accept that The Jam were breaking up and the one band that I’d ever slept overnight outside the box office would never be becoming back again to the Glasgow Apollo. It was a real sore one to take.

I also didn’t like Beat Surrender as it was absolutely nothing like all my favourite Jam singles like Tube Station, Strange Town, When You’re Young etc. OK, it was a tad like Precious as it had trumpets on it and that was a song I’d grown more fond of the more I got used to it, but I just so had wanted the last single to be a throwback to the angry young man who wanted to tear down the oppressive systems.

That was November 1982….fast forward 15 weeks and the release the debut single by The Style Council, the new group formed by Paul Weller. He has been telling everyone via the music papers (which in those days was the only way you could get news and information out to fans) that the new band was not really like The Jam although you would spot a link from the later material from his former new wave/post-punk/mod combo if you listened close enough.

By this time, I had gotten over the break up of The Jam. There was enough happening out there in the early 80s to make any 19 year old think it was the most exciting time imaginable, both in terms of getting out to gigs and increasingly getting to hear things in a number of what were being described as ‘alternative’ discos (dance clubs had still to be invented!!) or on the sticky floors of various student unions.

So when I finally heard Speak Like A Child, I did so with a different mindset and an acceptance that whatever they were, TSC were not The Jam. It made it very easy to realise I was hearing a great pit of pop music….and to realise that I should go back and re-assess Beat Surrender as a pop record and not as a new wave release.

It’s coming up to the 32nd anniversary of the news that The Jam were breaking up (time flies) and both singles remain, all these years later, very very listenable and very very danceable:-

mp3 : The Jam – Beat Surrender
mp3 : The Style Council – Speak Like A Child

Enjoy

Rosa Mota

GONE AND TOTALLY FORGOTTEN?? (2)

Type in ‘Rosa Mota’ to a typical search engine and you’ll get loads of info about a very talented athlete who dominated the Womens’ Marathon in the 80s. You need to add the words ‘the band’ to learn a little bit more about today’s largely forgotten musical ensemble.

Formed in 1992 (just as the athlete’s career came to a close), Rosa Mota consisted of Ian Bishop (vocals, guitar, clarinet), Julie D Ramsey (vocals, guitar), Sacha Glavagna (guitar, bouzouki, keyboards), Michelle Marti (bass guitar, harmonica) and Justin Chapman (drums and percussion).

As one historical tome records it, they drew sonic inspiration from Bauhaus and Echo & The Bunnymen, (although I also detect a bit of that Pixies/Breeders/Belly thing going on). Two EPs and two singles in 1994-95 sold in very little quantities but such was the record industry in those days that enough faith was shown in them to enable a debut LP, Wishing Sinking to emerge in January 1995, although it too sold in small numbers. Fast forward two years and new material was released in the form of a CD single and a month later the sophomore LP Bionic was released.

It was the Jan 97 single which brought the band to my attention thanks to the promo video being aired on a BBC music show. Seeing said single on sale for a very low price the following week, I bought it:-

mp3 : Rosa Mota – Space Junk

All these years on and I’ve still got a soft spot for it while its b-sides are a mix of the good, bad and indifferent:-

mp3 : Rosa Mota – Thenezine
mp3 : Rosa Mota – Starstruck
mp3 : Rosa Mota – Angel (French)

I recalled reading at the time of the release of this single that the wonderfully sassy and sexy Clare Grogan had been tempted out of semi-retirement to contribute a vocal to one of the tracks on the second album and so when I saw a second-hand CD copy going for £3 a few months later I took a gamble. Nowadays you can pick it up for 60p plus postage which means it is like probably 90% of my music collection in that its value is less than the sum originally paid. It’s also reflective of the album being no more than average for the most part, which is also the word I’d use to describe the track featuring Ms Grogan:-

mp3 : Rosa Mota – The Grudge

Enjoy

Salad

CAN’T BELIEVE I MISSED THESE BACK IN JUNE

One of the things I do to support the daily outpourings on the blog is scour the racks of a few second-hand record stores in the hope of turning up something different or unusual. I’ll often buy up to 20 cheap bits of vinyl, usually made up of 7″ and 12″ singles and look to see if any b-sides prove to be something worth hearing. I’ve a very bad habit of picking out two or three from a day’s particular purchases and discarding the rest until another day which could be as far as a year or more down the line.

This is why, in a posting about Salad back in June (click here for link), I had no recollection that I had some time previously bought their 12″ debut single for £1 on the basis that I quite knew and liked the a-side from its inclusion on a compilation CD.

This is a vinyl based blog, so I’ve now deleted the track ripped from CD back in June and instead offer the three songs from the vinyl:-

mp3 : Salad – Diminished Clothes
mp3 : Salad – Clear My Name
mp3 : Salad – Come Back Tomorrow

The b-sides? One is passable and the other is distinctly ordinary.

Enjoy

Some Bizzare compilation

SOME BIZZARE ALBUM

Back in 1981, an emerging record label decided to draw attention to itself by releasing a budget-priced compilation LP as its first ever release. This was a bold statement as most labels went for a more low-key approach with a handful of 45rpm singles or, if they wanted to feature more singers/bands/acts then it tended to be a cassette-only release.

The other thing which made Some Bizzare Album such an unusual work was the fact that, at the time, none of the acts had officially signed to the label. So while in some ways it was a showcase for Some Bizzare it was more of an opportunity for various synthpop musicians to show how talented they were.

It is testament to the talent spotting powers of Stevo Pearce that four of the acts chosen went on to enjoy major success in the charts. Some of the other acts achieved cult status or subsequently released other bits of music while there are two acts who seemingly did nothing beyond recording a song for this album.

Here’s those who found success:-

mp3 : Blancmange – Sad Day
mp3 : Depeche Mode – Photographic
mp3 : Soft Cell – The Girl With The Patent Leather Face
mp3 : The The – Untitled

The tracks from Blancmange and Depeche Mode would later be re-recorded and included on their debut LPs (neither of which were recorded for Some Bizzare) with many of their fans insisting that these earlier demo-type versions are the superior and more enjoyable recordings.

The tracks from Soft Cell and The The are a long way removed from the sort of material which would bring them fame and fortune sounding but both give an indication of the sort of talents that their various component parts possessed. I’m a fan of the Soft Cell track as it is a dark and desolate sound that they would return to on some of their later LP cuts.

Here’s the cult bands:-

mp3 : B Movie – Moles
mp3 : Blah Blah Blah – Central Park
mp3 : Naked Lunch – La Femme

B Movie released an LP and handful of singles in the first half of the 80s, the best known of which was Nowhere Girl, a top 10 hit in many European countries although it stalled at #68 in the UK. I must get round to posting one of their singles at some point.

Blah Blah Blah completely passed me by but there’s folk out there who are fans judging by the fact that their sole LP from 1981 will set you back over £25 over at Discogs….proof, based on the track made available for this compilation, that folk will pay good money for any old rubbish.

Naked Lunch released three singles in the 80s to no great acclaim, all on low-key and indie labels.

And finally, those who were never more or less heard of again:-

mp3 : Illustration – Tidal Flow
mp3 : Jell – I Dare Say It Will Hurt A Little
mp3 : Neu Electrikk – Berlin Girls
mp3 : The Fast Set – King Of The Rumbling Spires
mp3 : The Loved One – Observations

Illustration and Jell are the two acts who did nothing beyond appearing on this LP which is a bit surprising as they are among the best of its tracks. Illustration are a bit New Order-y while Jell are very reminiscent of Cocteau Twins…….and 30 plus years on theirs is the track which I think has dated best of all.

Berlin Girls had been the 1979 debut 7″ by Neu Electrikk (although I can’t verify if the version on this compilation is a re-recording). There had also been a second 7″ single in 1980 called Cover Girl, but there was never any follow-up material after Some Bizzare Album was released.

The Fast Set recorded the only cover version on this album. It’s a Marc Bolan number which had been a flop single back in 1969 for the then Tyrannosaurus Rex. The only other Fast Set release had been an earlier 7″ single, one side of which was an original and the other was, yup, a cover of a Marc Bolan song (the slightly better known Children of The Revolution)

Somebody in the music industry saw some potential in The Loved One as their next release was a 7″ single on Polydor which was in those days, a major player. The said single was an electronic version of Telstar….which I’ve managed to track down:-

mp3 : The Loved One – Telstar

It was such a flop that the option on the band after the initial single wasn’t taken up…..

Most label-promoting compilation LPs tend to be a mixed bag and the Some Bizzare Album is no exception. It is however, well worth giving some time to, if for nothing else to experience the humble beginnings of some famous names in the electro-pop world and perhaps to wonder what did become of all those musicians whose recording careers never got much further than his.

Enjoy

James

THE JAMES SINGLES (15)

This is where the band just about hit rock bottom.

The LP Seven been released and had sold well enough to reach #2 in the charts despite the lashing it took at the hands of the music critics and many long-term fans. Tim Booth however, was nonplussed suggesting that no matter what the band had did post-Goldmother and Sit Down there was bound to be a backlash.

There was a feeling that time away from the UK might help and so the first ever tour of North America was organised (11 major cities) followed by three weeks in Europe. The record label however wanted to keep up a profile at home and so decided that a third single from the LP would be released.

Ring The Bells was no different at all from the LP version. It entered the charts at #38 and then sunk without trace. It wasn’t helped by the band not being around to promote it and that the accompanying video was deadly dull being a live performance from a fan only gig a few months earlier.

It was released on 7″, 12″ cassette and CD. An anti-war song, Fight, was given the dance treatment and put on all formats. The CD single had another two (!!!) remixes of Come Home. Which was bad enough except that one of them – the Skunk Weed Skank Mix – had already been released as the Weatherall Mix on one of the 12″ re-releases of Come Home a couple of year earlier!

Oh and to rub salt into the wound for the completists, they had to shell out for the 12″ to get one previously unavailable song in Once A Friend which turned out to be a dud as it was a rejected track from the LP and was over and done with in a little over two minutes. All in all, it was a very unsatisfactory state of affairs:-

mp3 : James – Ring The Bells
mp3 : James – Fight
mp3 : James – Come Home (Skunk Weed Skank Mix)
mp3 : James – Come Home (Hugo Live Dub Challenge)
mp3 : James – Once A Friend

There was a prophetic review in Melody Maker:-

I don’t begrudge James their success. There have probably been two occasions (If Things Were Perfect and Come Home) in their career (and doesn’t that seem like the right word?) when I found them more than mildly loveable. I don’t particularly mind that their last two singles really did sound like Simple Minds as everyone kept saying. What does bother me is that musically Ring The Bells sounds so small, so village fete. The only function the instruments have at all seems analogous to a dinner-suited announcer at a high-class ball – “Ladies and Gentlemen, presenting Mr Timothy Booth! (cue fanfare)” – before the entrance of the man with an ego the size of East Anglia. They can do better. And maybe, when they’ve sold enough shirts and filled enough stadia, they will.

But there was one more low point to come before that prophesy came true.