October 2014 – Page 2 – THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN

SATURDAY’S SCOTTISH SINGLE (Part 112)

The Trash Can Sinatras were formed in the late 80s, in a town called Irvine, which is around 25 miles or so south-west of Glasgow.

Much of the initial attention was focussed on singer Frank Reader, simply for the fact that his elder sister, Eddi Reader had enjoyed a fair bit of attention and fame, firstly as a backing vocalist with Gang Of Four, and later as the singer with Fairground Attraction who enjoyed a #1 hit with Perfect in 1988.

I suppose I first noticed the band for the simple reason that they were signed to Go! Disc Records which was the home of Billy Bragg and The Beautiful South, leading me to think the Trashies would be have some sort of political bent. I saw their debut 12” EP on sale in a record shop in Edinburgh and bought it on spec for £2. It was only then that I discovered the band were in fact more aligned with the other reasons that label boss Andy MacDonald signed acts – they wrote and sang gloriously catchy pop songs that were full of clever lyrics that demanded close listening.

In due course, I bought two follow-up EPs as well as the debut LP, all of which appeared in 1990. They were a band on heavy rotation, but it was a period when I wasn’t really giving music too much close attention, as it was a time when I had not long met the now Mrs Villain and there were far more important and pressing things on my mind …….such as sorting out the divorce from the first wife…..

The band remained very active up until 1996, releasing three LPs and ten singles without ever making any great commercial breakthrough although they had good size fanbases in the likes of Japan and the USA where there was a market for the idea of catchy pop songs with clever lyrics.

This wasn’t enough for Universal Music who, having bought over Go Discs! in 1996, took the decision to drop the Trashies. It would be another nine years before the next LP but Weightlifting proved to be an absolute masterpiece of beautifully bitter-sweet pop melodies which reflected the difficulties the band had endured in the preceeding years.

In The Music was the next LP, released in 2009 and yet another excellent LP for those of us who nowadays are just as happy to sit and listen to our bands rather than work up a sweat down the moshpit all of the time.

I’ve most of the singles and EPs that the band have released over the years and although it was a tough choice I’m going with the debut EP…and thought I’d re-produce the lyric…it’s one that takes me back to a very awkward and uncertain period in my life when I could quite easily have been destined for eternal life in bedsit hell:-

Always at the foot of the photograph – that’s me there
Snug as a thug in a mugshot pose
Owner of this corner and not much more

Still these days I’m better placed to get my just rewards
I’ll pound out a tune and very soon
I’ll have too much to say and a dead stupid name

Though I ought to be learning I feel like a veteran
Of “Oh I like your poetry but I hate your poems”
Calendars crumble I’m knee deep in numbers
Turned 21, I’ve twist, I’m bust and wrong again

Rubbing shoulders with the sheets till two
Looking at my watch and I’m half-past caring
In the lap of luxury it comes to mind
Is this headboard hard? Am I a lap behind?

But to face doom in a sock-stenched room all by myself
Is the kind of fate I never contemplate
Lots of people would cry though none spring to mind

Know what it’s like
To sigh at the sight of the first quarter of life?
Ever stopped to think and found out nothing was there?

They laugh to see such fun
Playing Blind Man’s Bluff all by myself
And they’re chanting a line from a nursery rhyme
“Ba Ba Bleary Eyes – Have you any idea?”

The calendar’s cluttered with days that are numbered..

Now have a listen:-

mp3 : The Trash Can Sinatras – Obscurity Knocks

Here’s the other tracks:-

mp3 : The Trash Can Sinatras – The Best Man’s Fall
mp3 : The Trash Can Sinatras – Drunken Chorus
mp3 : The Trash Can Sinatras – Who’s He?

Enjoy

Everything But The Girl

MY LOVE IS LIKE CATHEDRAL BELLS

One of the things I’m enjoying about adding the ‘Categories’ section to the blog is that I can see where I’ve failed to post anything on T(n)VV about a particular song.

Back in 1985, Everything But The Girl released a real killer of a 45. It was backed by two tremendous b-sides, one of which was a cover that was every bit as memorable as the original. It was a single that deserved to be a huge hit but which stalled at #77.

mp3 : Everything But The Girl – When All’s Well **
mp3 : Everything But The Girl – Heaven Help Me
mp3 : Everything But The Girl – Kid

I did write about this single over on the old blog and made the observation that I was amazed at the time that fans of The Smiths fans failed to be turned on to its charms in great numbers given that all the songs weren’t a million miles removed from the sort of tunes Johnny Marr was writing and recording at the time.

A real old friend of the blog, Echorich, made a very astute comment at the time:-

“AHH…and I am greatly satisfied that we concur! EBTG’s Kid ranks among my favorite covers of any song. Tracey and Ben put their sonic stamp on it without losing the depth in the lyrics…that ambiguity is still there!

And your Morrissey/Marr connection is a valid one, especially as Johnny has the odd Harmonica contribution to some early EBTG songs and the band played Smith’s songs in concert on at least 3 tours that I can remember.”

Of course, later on Moz would take the title of this great single and release a track entitled In The Future When All’s Well.….

What has always been particularly interesting about EBTG is that they were so keen to quickly move on to different genres of music rather than run the risk of remaining pigeon-holed and becoming stale. A read through Tracey Thorn’s hugely entertaining autobiography sheds some great light on this. It also illustrates just how crazy things can get when one of your songs really takes off across Europe and further afield as it did for Tracey and Ben some nine years later.

But that’s a story for another day.

** at third time of asking I now have the link to the song sorted out. Sorry for the fuck up.

Morrissey, Smiths, Strangeways Glasgow

STRANGEWAYS, HERE I COME

Have I ever mentioned that I’m a big fan of The Smiths and Morrissey?

It should therefore come as no surprise that I am recommending the above as an event not to be missed

Strangeways Glasgow is a club night dedicated to the music of Moz and The Smiths with the occasional associated track thrown in for good measure and variety. It’s an event that has been going for a number of years thanks to the hard work and dedication of a small group of Glasgow-based uber-fans with maybe three or four shows in a calendar year, albeit the guys have become so well-known and appreciated that they are often asked to appear in other towns and cities across the UK at various points in time.

All the profits from the Strangeways Glasgow nights are always donated to a charitable cause and in this particular instance it will be to the Manchester and Cheshire Dogs Home which suffered a genuine tragedy a few weeks back. The music and the cause alone should be enough to make you fancy parting with the £5 for a ticket. But there’s something more this time…………….whisper it.

I’m doing a stint on whatever the modern-day equivalent is of the wheels of steel.

Yup. Fatboy Jim will be doing his thing for the first time since 2010 when Drew from Across the Kitchen Table talked me into being part of a triumvirate of Scottish bloggers to do some stuff at the Flying Duck in Glasgow.

Actually, I was thinking that since this will be my first bit of DJing since I turned 50 that I should update my name to something like Grandfather Flash but the connotations of that name right now are just too much to bear given the number of awful sex scandals in the UK featuring DJs dead and alive. So I’ll simply be at the Strangeways night as JC (aka The Vinyl Villain).

The invite has come courtesy of a very wonderful and lovely gentlemen called Robert who, along with Carlo and their respective partners Jen and Angela, have been the driving force behind Strangeways Glasgow over the years. I got to know them initially through going along to another wonderful club night – Little League – and was thrilled by the fact that they knew about my blog and were fans of what I was writing about and featuring.

They kept telling me that I should get myself along to Strangeways but I had shied away as I wasn’t sure if I could go an entire night dedicated to Moz, especially as I had this pre-conceived idea that while Robert and Carlo were very decent down to earth folk the rest of the clientele would surely consist of hardcore fans made up of look-alikes standing around demanding to be noticed. It took me until March earlier this year to go along and realise how wrong I had been. I wrote about the experience at the time. Click here if you’re interested.

I made it along to the next night back in August which is where the idea of me taking a turn playing some tunes was talked about and agreed. It seemed like a good idea at the time and it still does.

But I’m happy to admit that I’m nervous. But very very very excited and honoured.

mp3 : The Smiths – Panic
mp3 : Morrissey – Dear God Please Help Me

Tickets are still available but the night inevitably sells out. Click here if you’re tempted

Ride

AN IMAGINARY COMPILATION ALBUM #4 – RIDE

These words have come all the way from the deepest Guyanese jungle. Yup, I’m delighted to pass in the news that S-WC has settled into is his new job and lifestyle very quickly and via his good mate Tim (who along with S-WC got working on the blog that is When You Can’t Remember Anything) has been in touch to offer this:-

How are you all? It’s been a while. You are all looking good, I like what you’ve done with your hair.

Me? I’m fine, thanks for asking. I have a view across the water that is amazing, I have a working air con machine and they have given me a brand new 4×4 to mess around with. Life could be worse. Ok I got woken up at 3am by a flying cockroach and again at 5am by what I think was gunfire, but you know, beer is 75c a litre in the bar ‘down the road’ and the watermelons here are to die for. Literally in some cases.

I have some time on my hands so I am doing a lot of writing. I enjoyed recently a piece written by JC about ‘Imaginary Compilation Albums’ and always promised to write one for him on Spiritualized. I’m finding that quite tough to narrow down, so here is one featuring Ride.

For those who don’t know Ride are probably one of the most unsung bands of the last couple of generations, they were pioneers of the much missed Shoegaze scene and with their debut album ‘Nowhere’ they created one of the best records of the nineties (those who remember my 40 albums to hear before I am 40, would have read all about this if I had time to finish it – that album folks is the 6th best ever. If you want to argue, my neighbour has a gun he has offered to lend me to shoot ‘alligators’ should I ever need it. Just saying.). Also as a sub note – it was really hard to not simply just pick the tracks from ‘Nowhere’ here.

Side One

Leave Them All Behind – Because of the two-minute intro, because of the drum bit that sounds incredible, because the keyboard at the start sounds like The Who, and mostly, because chaps, the song was once voted the ultimate shagging song, although I very honestly doubt any of us would not be smoking a cigarette before it ends.

Sennen – Because it a truly beautiful song, it reminds me of home and I love it. I have said it before, that Sennen Cove in Cornwall is the most beautiful place on Earth, go there, now. Also the moment when the vocals enter, is a shivers up the spine moment.

Vapour Trail – Despite the ropey lyrics ‘You are a Vapour Trail, in the deep blue sky’ – the guitars mixed in with a cello (A Cello!!) create something truly lovely which batters the murkiness of the overall sound. I used to think this sounded tuneless when I was younger but I now realise that it shimmers beautifully.

Dreams Burn Down – Because it sounds dark, moody and rather magnificent, especially if you listen to it whilst walking home in the pitch black. Try it.

Close My Eyes – A personal choice to be honest, it reminds me of an ex girlfriend. That is all I’m going to say on that.

Side Two

Chelsea Girl – Perhaps the ultimate Ride song, short, sweet, poppy and probably the first single that really turned the public heads. It is all about that rush of drums and guitars at the start I think.

Chrome Waves – One the best tracks off of ‘Going Blank Again’ – and I think one of the best songs that Mark Gardener ever wrote. I find it strangely haunting.

In A Different Place – “Even if the rain falls down and all the skies turn cold” is the best lyric Ride ever wrote and for that we have to include it. It is a beautiful song and I think underlines why Ride were one of those bands.

Like A Daydream – A song that wants to sound like the Byrds so much, but ends up sounding far better than the Byrds ever did. It has this middle section that has this pause in it, a moment of silence before the guitars just go, well all over the place. I love this song to pieces and you all should too.

OX4 – It was a punch up between this and ‘Nowhere’ and the choice took me an hour and three decisions*. ‘OX4’ wins because it just hypnotises you over seven minutes.

You’ll note there is nothing off of ‘Carnival of Light’ or ‘Tarantula’ here – not because they are terrible but because the aren’t as good as everything else Ride did. If I had two secret tracks at the end I would put ‘How Does It Feel to Feel?’ as one of them, because I am in the video for it (two minutes 16 seconds in), the other secret track would be ‘Unfamiliar’. Oh and ‘Taste’ and ‘Seagull’ and…Oh I’ll shut up now.

Laters Alligators….

S-WC

* JC adds……been there every single time I’ve tried to put one of these particular pieces together! Here’s the tracks chosen by S-WC:-

mp3 : Ride – Leave Them All Behind
mp3 : Ride – Sennen
mp3 : Ride – Vapour Trail
mp3 : Ride – Dreams Burn Down
mp3 : Ride – Close My Eyes
mp3 : Ride – Chelsea Girl
mp3 : Ride – Chrome Waves
mp3 : Ride – In A Different Place
mp3 : Ride – Like A Daydream
mp3 : Ride – OX4

Clean, Snapper

G’DAY FROM OUR ANZAC CORRESPONDENT : DOOZIES FROM DOWN UNDER (2)

First up, thanks for the positive response to my previous post (cheers to JC for encouraging you all to do so).

The idea for this series came about when JC asked people to send in contributions for his ‘cult classics’. Many of the tracks I thought of were from this part of the world, I came up with a title I liked… and now here we are.

Around that sort of time JC was having doubts as to whether he would/could continue this blog, so I was hoping to be able to help keep it going if possible (the SWC was going strong at that point, but I thought if JC had 2 (or more) regular guest contributors that might be a good thing… luckily as things transpired it wasn’t required, and T(new)VV is still going strong!)

As my family & friends would attest to, I’ve never been too good at putting pen-to-paper (or in this case, fingers (just the 2!)-to-keyboard), and many things crossed my mind when deciding to go ahead with ‘Doozies’, in fact sometimes that can be the problem – so many possible avenues, can’t decide which to go down, next thing months have passed and nothing has been written!

One thing that did cross my mind is that I don’t actually know how well-known these songs are outside of Australia/NZ, and am going to be ‘preaching to the converted’ so to speak …which brings me (finally!) to the topic for this week.

Given the title of this series it would be remiss of me not to (somewhat belatedly by the time this goes-to-blog) mention the sad news that Peter Gutteridge died recently. Peter was involved with many great NZ bands such as The Clean (who I could dedicate a years-worth of ‘doozies’ to), The Chills, Snapper, and more. He was a real pioneer of that Dunedin Sound (cited by the likes of Pavement, R.E.M. and Mudhoney as an influence – click here for more) – and he should be a household name in NZ… but when reading about him, I found it suggested that people from Europe & the States are probably more likely to know of him.

I know when I was growing up in NZ it seemed that material from overseas was always deemed to be superior, and kiwi bands would often have to prove themselves elsewhere before being acknowledged locally (if at all). Things have changed somewhat since then I think, and sometimes it’s hard to guess where a band is from. all sorts of music comes out of the ‘shaky isles’ these days, a lot still with a certain ‘kiwi’ sound to them, but here’s to a man who was so instrumental (literally!) in helping define ‘that’ sound, which I for one love so much.

These 2 tracks both appeared on the soundtrack to a NZ film ‘Topless Women Talk About Their Lives‘, a great compilation of kiwi bands.

enjoy
cheers, Craig

mp3 : The Clean – Point That Thing Somewhere Else
mp3 : Snapper – Buddy

Note from JC

As I’ve said on countless occasions, I’m always very happy to feature guest postings as I want everyone who reads the blog to be as big a part of it as they like. So thanks again Craig….I certainly have no knowledge at all of the Dunedin sound and hugely appreciate the info.

And talking of guest contributions, there’s one with a difference coming tomorrow.

Monochrome Set, Talulah Gosh, Wedding Present

THE TEN-MINUTE INDIE DISCO

Three songs came up in a row on random shuffle the other week. I closed my eyes and imagined that instead of sitting on a train heading to work I was at my favourite indie disco where 50-somethings can still go along and not be frowned upon as making fools of themselves as they try to relive their halcyon days.

A bit like the photo above.

mp3 : The Wedding Present – Brassneck
mp3 : Talulah Gosh – Talulah Gosh
mp3 : The Monochrome Set – Jet Set Junta

Every one a classic.

Morrissey

THE MOZ SINGLES (30)

Ok folks…..you’re going to get short-changed this week.

I’ve endeavoured to bring you all the singles plus all the b-sides that Morrissey has released as a solo artist over the years. But, there’s a couple missing from a single released in February 2008.

It really comes down to the fact that I couldn’t be bothered shelling out three times for the same release, when all I would get in return were a couple of live songs from shows that were part of American tours in May and October 2007. It was bad enough that the single was being used to promote the eighth compilation/greatest hits album – the exact same number as actual studio albums that had been released at this point in time.

So, I only bought one of the two versions of the 7″ single, and here are both sides of the fantastic plastic in all their glory:-

mp3 : Morrissey – That’s How People Grow Up
mp3 : Morrissey – The Boy With The Thorn In His Side (live)

The single itself is one of the better offerings in the singles canon, in as much that a bit of a plodding tune is rescued by a fine vocal by Morrissey and a wonderfully strange and glass-shattering intro from backing vocalist Kirsteen Young. (Ms Young had previously supported Morrissey on some of his American dates, and has fronted her own two-piece band featuring pianos and percussion since the late 90s – she kind of sounds like Kate Bush at times and Tori Amos at other times. )

The b-side is a Smiths cover….regular readers will know my views on these. This offering from Omaha in May 2007 is fairly typical and unessential fayre.

The single reached a surprisingly low #14 in the UK charts, which is probably down to the fact that it had received a lot of airplay for about two months before release and most fans had downloaded a copy from somewhere or other. Maybe if a bit more effort had gone into the b-sides it might have charted higher…..but then again, given that the follow-up single performed even more poorly despite having new songs on the reverse blows that theory of mine out the water.

Oh and it is versions of Why Dont You Find Out For Yourself from Salt Lake City and Last Of The Famous International Playboys from New York, both in October 2007 that are missing. I’m sure you’ll forgive me.

Timelords

SATURDAY’S SCOTTISH SINGLE (Part 111)

I’ve already made it clear that anything to do with Bill Drummond is game for this series as long as I own a copy of the single. Today is no exception.

From wiki:-

“Doctorin’ the Tardis” is a 1988 electronic novelty pop single by The Timelords (“Time Boy” and “Lord Rock”, aliases of Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty, better known as The KLF). The song is predominantly a mash-up of the Doctor Who theme music, Gary Glitter’s “Rock and Roll (Part Two)” with sections from “Blockbuster!” by Sweet and “Let’s Get Together Tonite” by Steve Walsh. The single was not well received by critics but was a commercial success, reaching number 1 in the UK Singles Chart in June 1988,and in New Zealand, and charting in the Top 10 in Australia, Ireland and Norway.

The Timelords followed up their chart-topping record with a “how to have a number one” guide, The Manual (How to Have a Number One the Easy Way).

The release of “Doctorin’ the Tardis” followed a self-imposed break from recording of Drummond and Cauty’s sampling outfit, The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu (The JAMs). The single continued The JAMs’ strategy of plagiarising and juxtaposing popular musical works. However, unlike the cultish limited releases of The JAMs, in which Drummond’s Clydeside rapping and social commentary were regular ingredients, “Doctorin’ The Tardis” was an excursion into the musical mainstream, with the change of name to “The Timelords” and an overt reliance on several iconic symbols of 1970s and 1980s British popular culture, including Glitter, the Doctor Who theme song, Doctor Who’s Daleks and the TARDIS, Sweet’s “Blockbuster!” and Harry Enfield’s character ‘Loadsamoney’. The song features riffs from the 1973 hit “Block Buster!” by Sweet and from Gary Glitter’s 1972 debut hit “Rock and Roll Parts 1 and 2”. Its name is a reference to “Doctorin’ the House” by Coldcut.

Drummond and Cauty often claimed that the song was the result of a deliberate effort to write a number one hit single. However, in interviews with Snub TV and BBC Radio 1, Drummond offered a more plausible explanation. “We went into the studio on a Monday, thinking we were going to make a house track, a regular underground dance house track using the Doctor Who theme tune… [but] we [then] realised it was in triplet time and you can’t have house tracks in triplet time. The only beat that would work with it was the Glitter beat. By Tuesday evening we realised we had a number one and we just went totally for the lowest common denominator”. Radio 1 interviewer Richard Skinner called the record an “aberration”, to which Drummond pleaded “guilty”, adding that “we justified it all by saying to ourselves ‘We’re celebrating a very British thing here… you know, something that Timmy Mallett understands'”.

In a KLF Communications information sheet, Drummond called “Doctorin’ the Tardis” “probably the most nauseating record in the world” (a claim also made on the label of the record itself) but added that “we also enjoyed celebrating the trashier side of pop”.

While the music-buying public of the UK embraced the single, taking it to the number-one spot within three weeks of its release, the music press was strongly negative. Melody Maker described it as “pure, unadulterated agony … excruciating”;Sounds reasoned that it was “a record so noxious that a top ten place can be its only destiny”, calling it a “rancid reworking of ancient discs”.Select magazine later reported that “Doctorin’ the Tardis” sold over a million copies

In a retrospective look at novelty records and a defence of the genre, Peter Paphides wrote in The Observer’s music monthly that “the one novelty record most people admit to liking is ‘Doctorin’ The Tardis’ by The Timelords… The reason for this, presumably, is that it’s nice to be in on the same joke as arch pop ironist Bill Drummond. Fine, but let’s not forget that if The KLF weren’t passionate about how brilliantly dumb pop can be they wouldn’t have got to Number One.” The “reason we purport to hate novelty records”, he argued, “is because we continue to romanticise the creative process. We feel that our intelligence is insulted by novelty.”

A 1994 piece in The Guardian called “Doctorin'” a “piss-take”. “It was a triumph for Trash Art and it spent exactly one week at the top of the chart. Perfect.”

The Timelords released one other product on the strength of “Doctorin’ the Tardis”, a 1989 book called The Manual (How to Have a Number One the Easy Way), in which they candidly described the logistical processes and efforts that sealed the record’s commercial success.

After The Timelords, Drummond and Cauty became The KLF. An American reissue of the single in the mid-1990s lists the artist as The Timelords/The KLF, and features both a KLF track (the original uncut version of “What Time Is Love?”) and “Gary Joins The JAMS”, a version of “Doctorin’ the Tardis” with new vocals by Gary Glitter referencing his own songs.

Later attempts of Drummond and Cauty to top the charts were less successful: The KLF’s “Kylie Said to Jason” failed to achieve the chart success for which it was designed, peaking outside the Top 100, and Cauty’s novelty project Solid Gold Chartbusters with Guy Pratt, which was designed to be a Christmas number one single, did not reach the UK Top 10.

However, The KLF’s string of “Stadium House” singles, beginning with “What Time Is Love?”, found popular appeal and worldwide chart success while dispensing with the opportunistic sheen of “Doctorin’ the Tardis”.

mp3 : The Timelords – Doctorin’ The Tardis (7″ version)
mp3 : The Timelords – 125BPM

Enjoy (just don’t take it too seriously!!)

Beastie Boys, Chic, Franz Ferdinand

BB.C.FF.

I know….today’s heading is on the cryptic side. But it’s all to do with these three great tunes:-

mp3 : Beastie Boys – Triple Trouble
mp3 : Chic – Good Times (12″)
mp3 : Franz Ferdinand – Take Me Out

A few years back, someone out there had the idea of mashing these three up. It’s a style and format that has a lot of critics which is understandable as many of its proponents took liberty with one or more of the tracks, speeding it or them up or down a shade to make things fit. But today’s example does work out well with the minimum of jiggery-pokerey.

mp3 : BB.C.FF – Check Me Out 4 Good Times

Freaky Friday indeed.

James

THE JAMES SINGLES (18)

The change of tone and emphasis begun by Sometimes was maintained with the release of the LP Laid in September 1993. This was a James that we hadn’t heard or enjoyed for a long time…songs that were largely stripped right back and which were a long way removed production wise from the over-wrought and painful stuff which had afflicted much of Seven.

It was difficult however, to imagine where the next single was going to come from as there were no real obvious candidates from the LP other than perhaps the title track. But it suffered from having the line ‘she only comes when she’s on top’ which ruled it out of play as far as getting it past the censors….

The solution was to re-record the offending line and change one word. ‘Comes’ was replaced by ‘Sings’. Problem solved despite the fact that anyone listening to the opening few lines was still able to smile about hearing daytime radio blast out a song that was quite clearly about orgasmic sex….

The thing is….when you went out and bought the single, you found yourself owning the uncensored LP version!!

mp3 : James – Laid

It came (ahem) in 2 x CDS as well as 7″ vinyl. Here’s the b-sides to CD1 and the vinyl, all of which would have seemed impossible to imagine if you had only picked up on the band during Seven and owned no other songs from any other era. Indeed there are some fans who think that The Lake was criminally thrown away as a b-side and would have made a lovely ballad-type single for James.

mp3 : James – Wah Wah Kits
mp3 : James – Seconds Away
mp3 : James – The Lake

This single wasn’t universally praised. Too many journalists were still happy enough to mock the band as a pretentious stadium-rock act with a front man who was game for abuse just because he was charismatic and offered opinions. Here’s the review from Melody Maker:-

Not much proof here of the much-heralded creatively-revamped James.

“Laid” is smalltown folk music. Driven by a wheezy old Hammond organ, a drumbeat that sounds like the bloke upstairs nailing down his floorboards and a guitar that might as well be a banjo for all the expression it brings. “Laid” is 1990 naff. It’s not even spuriously uplifting. Tim Booth’s cryptic Indian type whoops aren’t a call to arms or joyous chant but more a sort of cryptic holler, as if he’s Geronimo trying to invoke Chief Sitting Bull in a seance.

There are tracks here, however, such as “Wah Wah Kits” that do indicate a newer, freshly adorned James, perhaps abetted by Brian Eno.

So maybe pigs are flying and they have turned half-decent.

Nor did daytime radio give it too much play. A two and half minute single without an obvious sing-a-long chorus is still a refined taste and in the end it only limped to #25 in the charts.

A criminal state of affairs if you want my opinion.

CD2 was made up of four tracks recorded for a BBC Radio 1 session. I never bought it at the time and still don’t own a copy….so I’m unable to offer you the chance to listen to those versions of Laid, Say Something, Five-O and Sometimes.

Enjoy.

Billy Bragg, Smiths

THERE’S ICE ON THE SINK WHERE WE BATHE

As I mentioned yesterday, I do quite like it when bands take one of their own songs and give them substantial makeovers for the subsequent single release. But what I also like is when someone decides that their cover version of a song will involve a complete reinterpretation so that you hear it in a completely new light. Billy Bragg did such a thing to a Morrissey/Marr song a fair bit back:-

mp3 : The Smiths – Jeane

This was one of band’s first ever releases, turning up on the b-side of the second single This Charming Man in 1983. We now know all these years later that it is the only track the band ever got round to releasing from the aborted LP sessions recorded with Troy Tate but at the time it was just regarded as a great b-side which you could put on and have a great little dance to. It was the music that stood out more than the lyric.

A year later, the band re-recorded the song alongside Sandie Shaw. The slowed-down version did draw a bit more attention to the lyric but to this fan, it was still very much about the tune and how Johnny had got something different out of the song this time round.

Fast forward two more years and Billy Bragg, having already played the song a few times in his live sets as well as recording a frantic almost speed-fuelled version for a Peel Session in August 1985

mp3 : Billy Bragg – Jeane (Peel Session)

then puts down another version as the b-side to Greetings To The New Brunette in 1986:-

mp3 : Billy Bragg – Jeane

This is heart-wrenchingly beautiful. This is when you get to fully appreciate the story of a love affair doomed to failure as a result of, above else, grinding poverty. The fact that the protagonists had to work so hard at merely surviving every day of their sad and miserable lives, wondering where the next meal will come from and how they can afford to heat the house they live in, left no time for the nicer things in life. They did try….but they ultimately failed.

All of this was lost with the original version as we flailed around the living room or dance halls throwing our best Morrissey shapes. With a tune this good, who needs to think about the message? And then along came Billy to reduce us all to tears…..

Jeane could very easily pass itself off as a Leonard Cohen lyric. Discuss.