February 2015 – Page 2 – THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN

NEXT YEAR’S NOSTALGIA FEST (Part 3 of 48)

The Primitives formed in the mid 80s, and while the music was pretty decent, it was the presence of an attractive singer called Tracy Tracy that gained them loads of column inches and photographs in the male-dominated world of the UK weekly music papers. Morrissey was a fan…..

They started out on their own label which was called Lazy Records on which they released five singles between May 86 and August 87 before signing to RCA Records with who they enjoyed almost instant success with a Top 10 single in Crash and a Top 10 LP in Lovely in February 1988.

They had broken up by 1992 mostly as a result of musical differences which had seen band members come and go. The fact that Tracy had got rid of distinctive blonde hair probably didn’t help too much either in terms of the press.

The Primitives reformed in 2009 and undertook a UK tour in 2010 as well as a relatively high-profile gif as support to a London gig by The Wedding Present as part of the Bizarro album 21st anniversary tour. Tracy was blonde again……

Unlike many others who do some nostalgia shows and that’s all folks, the band have re-activated themselves in the studio with new albums released in 2012 and 2014, the first of which was totally of covers versions (all of which were relatively obscure and had been songs with a female lead vocal) but the latter was all new band-written material.

The song on CD86 was from the indie-era. It was their second single on Lazy Records. And it’s great fun made all the better by a fabulous and dreamy b-side:-

mp3 : The Primitives – Really Stupid
mp3 : The Primitives – We Found A Way To The Sun

Enjoy

Zones

SATURDAY’S SCOTTISH SINGLE (Part 129)

From wiki:-

Zones were a British punk and power pop band founded in 1977, following the demise of PVC2 (formerly the bubbleglam and soft rock band Slik).

PVC2 comprised Midge Ure (future Ultravox frontman) on guitar, Russell Webb on bass, Billy McIsaac on keyboards and Kenny Hyslop on drums. In late 1977, Ure left PVC2 to join Rich Kids with Glen Matlock. Webb, Hyslop and McIsaac then called in Alex Harvey’s cousin Willie Gardner to replace Ure on guitar and vocals, and Zones were formed.

In February 1978, Zones released a single “Stuck with You”, which attracted the attention of BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel, leading to the band recording a session for his show, and Arista Records, who signed them and released the rest of their discography. Their next single was “Sign of the Times” released in 1978. Zones also toured with Magazine and recorded a further session for John Peel.

In 1979, Zones released Under Influence, an album of post punk power pop. However, shortly afterwards, the band split up – Gardner joined Endgames, with Simple Minds’ original drummer Brian McGee, McIsaac moved to a piano college in Glasgow, and Webb and Hyslop joined Skids. Webb collaborated with Skids’ singer Richard Jobson (Skids singer) until 1988 and Hyslop, after collaborating with Skids album, Joy, moved to Simple Minds (1981–1982) and Set the Tone (1982–1983).

The bio hints at the diversity of talents involved in the band, but the sum never quite matched the parts as demonstrated by the lack of commercial success. This 45 is an example of what I mean…the tune is derivative of its time but there’s nothing about it which make it stand out while the b-side is more Status Quo than post-punk:-

mp3 : Zones – Stuck With You
mp3 : Zones – No Angels

Only the bands with numbers at the beginning of the title and this epic series will draw to an end…

Scritti Politti

RT 111T

(My posts tend to be written in batches as and when I have time to sit down and work on the blog. Brian was first to comment on yesterday’s posting and displayed incredible psychic powers……)

Ok…the title of the posting looks like some kind of binary code gone wrong. But it is in fact the catalogue number given to the 12″ release of this single on Rough Trade Records back in September 1982:-

mp3 : Scritti Politti – Asylums In Jerusalem
mp3 : Scritti Politti – Jacques Derrida
mp3 : Scritti Politti – A Slow Soul

The single was released a month after the LP Songs To Remember – which I will argue long into the night is one of THE greatest albums of all time – and it reached #43 in the UK singles charts which was a fair achievement for any band on Rough Trade far less one who got no daytime radio exposure whatsoever.

I should have given this a mention yesterday when I did the St Etienne A-AA sided single as being another great example of the genre. The 12″ release offers up a couple of different things in that Jacques Derrida is a fair bit longer than the album version while A Slow Soul is a completely different mix from that which was on Songs To Remember.

Little known fact. Until The Smiths came along, Songs To Remember was the biggest selling record that Rough Trade had ever released, reaching #12 in the album charts here in the UK.

Green Gartside was soon wooed by many a record label and he signed for Virgin Records. The band’s next album (featuring a completely different line-up from that when he was ‘indie’) went Top 5 while the singles got him his lifetime’s ambition of appearing on Top of The Pops.

Enjoy

Saint Etienne

THE LOST ART OF THE A & AA SIDED-SINGLE

From wiki:-

A “double A-side” is a single where both sides are designated the A-side; there is no B-side on such a single.

The double A-sided single was invented in December 1965 by the Beatles for their single of “Day Tripper” and “We Can Work It Out”, where both were designated A-sides. Other groups followed suit thereafter, notably the Rolling Stones in early 1967 with “Let’s Spend the Night Together” and “Ruby Tuesday” as a double-A single.

In the UK, before the advent of digital downloads, both A-sides were accredited with the same chart position, as the singles chart was compiled entirely from physical sales. In the UK, the biggest-selling non-charity single of all time was a double A-side, Wings’ 1977 release “Mull of Kintyre”/”Girls’ School”, which sold over two million copies.

Occasionally double-A-sided singles were released with each side targeting a different market. During the late 1970s, for example, Dolly Parton released a number of double-A-sided singles, in which one side was released to pop radio, and the other side to country, including “Two Doors Down”/”It’s All Wrong, But It’s All Right” and “Baby I’m Burning”/”I Really Got the Feeling”. In 1978, the Bee Gees also used this method when they released “Too Much Heaven” for the pop market and the flip side, “Rest Your Love on Me”, which was aimed toward country stations.

Many artists continue to release double A-side singles outside of the US where it is seen as more popular. Examples of this include Oasis’s “Little by Little”/”She Is Love” (2002), Bloc Party’s “So Here We Are”/”Positive Tension” (2005) and Gorillaz’s “El Mañana”/”Kids with Guns” (2006).

Probably the best example of a double-A-side single that I can think of is Going Underground/Dreams of Children by The Jam back in 1980, although I can’t ever recall hearing any DJ playing the lesser known of the songs.

And here’s another very example of the genre I have in my collection from 1992:-

mp3 : St Etienne – Join Our Club
mp3 : St Etienne – People Get Real

The story goes that St Etienne wrote Join Our Club after Heavenly Records refused to release People Get Real as a single and so this was the compromise. The band seemingly went down the road of making as poppy and commercial a song as they thought they could get away with, without alienating their hip and trendy dance music fans. The unexpected and welcome outcome however, was that the song brought them a whole new audience in love with disposable pop that merged seamlessly with a catchy dance beat and rhythm. This was a bigger audience than hardcore dance fans and St Etienne now had a fantastic new template which would dominate future releases and in doing so they would become a very welcome mainstay of the singles charts in the early-mid 90s.

Enjoy

Billy MacKenzie, Loom Feat. Billy Mackenzie

BILLY MACKENZIE RARITIES…COURTESY OF SID LAW (2)

In 1992 Billy’s “Outernational” solo outing hit the shelves. marred by delays and record company troubles it slid out almost un-noticed, received little attention and neither of its singles troubled the charts. Circa Records folded shortly after its release and Billy’s career seemed stalled again.

So it was that in late 1992, ten years after they had last worked together, Billy’s old Associate Alan Rankine phoned Billy up and the pair began recording again in Auchterhouse. Half a dozen songs from those reunion demos eventually surfaced on the “Double Hipness” CD in 2000. One of those songs was called “Edge Of The World” (it is well worth buying the CD for that and the other 29 tracks!). However in 1992/93 Billy wasn’t keen to tour or perform live – so that Billy/ Alan reunion simply never got off the ground. Those recordings were shelved until after Billy’s death..

However, Billy knew a good song when he wrote one. In 1996 the song was still unreleased in any official form. That summer Billy was back down living in London and heard an instrumental track by Loom. Loom’s members Bent Recknagel and Ralph P. Ruppert (AKA Headman) were London-based and ran the Millenium label. Billy, having heard their instrumental track on a cassette, had sang “Edge Of The World” over it, his melody and lyrics locked in perfectly. MacKenzie contacted them, visited their studio on the Portobello Road in London and the track was finished in half an hour. The result was quickly released as “Anacostia Bay (At The Edge Of The World)”.

It is a blistering raw vocal performance, emotive and right up there with any of Billy’s best vocals, with burbling synths, sequencers and percussion propelling it along. In its original form it is a 12 minute 42 second version and was released on 12″ and CDEP back in August 1996.

This was the last record with Billy’s name on it which was actually released in his lifetime (as far as I am aware).

Over the years between 1992 and 1996 Billy had also worked on the song with Steve Aungle which later led to some confusion over authorship. The title of the song for the Loom release had become Anacostia Bay “At The Edge Of The World” or “Anacostia Bay” (At The Edge Of The World) probably to differentiate authorship from the different versions of the song for publishing reasons.

To add to the confusion a mis-spelled “Steve Neugal” is credited with Additional Keyboards and Programming on the Berlioz Mix of the Loom track!

An edited version of this Loom version of the song was later released on the posthumous “Auchtermatic” CD. But this is the entire, full-length, spectacular original – unavailable for nearly 19 years….

mp3 : Loom feat. Billy Mackenzie – Anacostia Bay

Compilation (NME Tapes)

THIS WAS STUCK TO THE FRONT PAGE OF A MAGAZINE (2)

When folk got the chance to enjoy the first entry in this new series, Echorich left behind this supportive comment:-

“My favorite freebies will hopefully find their way to this series – NME’s Rough Trade C81, Dancin’ Master and Jive Wire cassettes. These three set the standard for me.”

I kind of feel like the Fat Genie in the fairy tale who has the power to grant three wishes….

Dancin’ Master was a mail-order cassette made available from 18 October 1981 via the NME. It contained 24 songs from a singers and bands across a number of genres including funk, soul, disco, new wave, jazz, pop, reggae, dub, rap and rockabilly, all of which had an uncanny ability to get your feet tapping while most would have you thinking about getting off your seat and throwing your shapes under the glitter ball at you local discotheque.

Full track listing, with descriptions lifted from the cassette insert:-

1. Tom Browne – Funkin For Jamaica

Tom Browne blows his horn on this unreleased version of one of last year’s funkiest floor-fillers

2. Linx – I Wanna Be With You

Go ahead with ‘Go Ahead’s’ I Wanna Be With You

3. Grace Jones – Feel Up

Hear it and you will feel up. A special US club mix of the ‘Nightclubbing’ track

4. Talking Heads – Cities

Talking Heads in concert in Berkeley, California (August 24 1979) and their first-ever appearance on a compilation

5. Elvis Costello & The Attractions – Big Sister

Taped at the ‘Trust’ sessions, the lyrics to ‘Big Sister’s Clothes’ set to the beat of a different drum

6. Beggar & Co – Laughing On

Short-listed as Beggar & Co’s last single but lost out at the last moment to Spandau Ballet collaboration ‘Mule (Chant No.2)’

7. The Funky 4 + 1 – That’s The Joint

The sound of Sugarhill at its most savage – rip, rap and party funk-punk

8. Ian Dury & The Blockheads – Inbetweenies

Lord Upminster Y Los Blockheads on stage at the Hammersmith Odeon 11.8.79

9. Kid Creole & The Coconuts – There But For The Grace Of God Go I.

The Kid vigorously shakes his Coconuts in public! Originally recorded by Machine, this ‘live’ track was only ever available as a ludicrously limited bonus single with the initial copies of the Kid’s ‘Fresh Fruit In Foreign Places’ LP

10. The Lounge Lizards – Stomping At The Corona

These five New Yorkers who put the zoot into their suits offer a hitherto unrecorded original from a 1981 club date in Paris. The Lounge Lizards are John Lurie (alto sax), Evan Lurie (keyboards), Dane Vicek (guitar), Steve Piccolo (bass) and Anton Fier (drums)

11. The Polecats – Rockabilly Guy (Dub Mix)

The Polecats played it. Dave Edmunds produced it. Dennis Bovell dubbed it-it-it-it-it

12. Lloyd Coxone – Zion Bound

Legendary dub master’s exclusive contribution. Definetly hotter, heavier and harder than the rest as Coxone’s soon-come album of radical rhythms will testify

13. Madness – Shadow On The House

The ‘Carry On….’ team go country

14. The Beat – Hit It!

The electric toaster Rankin’ Roger serves it up exclusively for dancin’ masters everywhere

15. Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five – The Birthday Party

Rapid rap-artee from Grandmaster Flash….fast and furious and one of the year’s most sought after imports

16. Junior Giscombe – Mama Used To Say

From the same stable as Linx and a different mix of the most spectacular Brit-Funk debut of ’81

17. The B-52’s – Give Me Back My Man (Instrumental)

It’s A Go-Go Time with the Georgia Peaches and a track from an unreleased instrumental album, ‘The B-52s play The B-52’s Greatest Hits!’

18. Susan – 24,000 Kiss

A Yellow Magic Orchestra protege, Susan is currently touted as the main contender for the title ‘Japan’s first lady of techno-pop’

19. The Jam – When You’re Young

Paul, Bruce, Rick and their audience very much alive in Newcastle, October 28, 1980

20. Dennis Bovell – Better

The ubiquitous Bovell with one of his ‘Brain Damage’ tracks

21. The Plastics – Last Train To Clarksville

Micro-chip Monkee business, hitherto only available as a limited edition flexi picture disc

22. James White & The Blacks – Contort Yourself

Re-produced by August Darnell. James Chance (alto sax, vocal), Jody Harris (guitar), Adele Bertei (keyboards), George Scott (bass) and Dan Christensen (drums)

23. The Teardrop Explodes – Traison (C’est Juste Une Histoire)

Pretentious? Moi?

24. U2 – An Cat Dubh

Bono Vox’s Celtic Crusaders bedazzle Bean Town, USA. In other words U2 live in Boston

As I mentioned last time out, a compilation such as this will be very much hit’n’miss depending on your own musical preferences as I can’t see anyone arguing that we have 24 carat-gold here…but there’s no doubt the good more than outweighs the bad.

Interesting if you listen closely to the live renditions offered up by Talking Heads and The Blockheads. The vocal delivery may be incredibly different but both bands churn out a funky, infectious beat that is almost interchangeable. I’d never quite realised that before when listening to the studio material of both bands.

Interesting too, that the majority of the acts on the tape enjoyed at least a smattering of commercial success during what were often fleeting careers as the fashions moved on while there are a few giants in there who are still going strong more than thirty-three and a third revolutions of the yearly calendar later.

As before, simply click on the song for the mp3. Apologies that the quality isn’t all that great. I do have most of the NME tapes on my hard drive – a number of years ago a very generous reader of the old blog made copies available to be ripped direct from the hissy cassettes and sometimes the editing isn’t 100% perfect at the beginning or end of the track, but I’m sure none of that will spoil your enjoyment.

And here’s a wee bonus to enjoy. Most of us will know (and secretly love) Chant No.1 by Spandau Ballet. The reference in the notes to this song made me go find it and include it today:-

mp3 : Beggar & Co – Mule (Chant No.2) (12″ version)

It’s nowhere near the class of Chant No.1 but hey, there may well be some of you out there who like it.

Enjoy!!!!

Johnny Cash, Kris Krisofferson, Martin Stephenson & The Daintees, Neil Diamond

THE ROOTS OF MY LOVE OF MUSIC (HAPPY BIRTHDAY MUM)

One of my favourite folk out there in cyberspace is The Robster.

This time last year he decided to start-up a blog called Is This The Life? which aimed to tell how music has had an influence on his entire life, warts and all. He wasn’t going to kid anyone on that he’s always had a really cool taste in music which he demonstrated with one of his very first postings as he professed an undying love for The Bay City Rollers, The Rubettes and The Wombles – click here to see for yourself.

The Robster made a great observation about how everyone’s story begins with their mum and dad as that’s where a love for music is nurtured. My mum celebrates her 76th birthday today and come September my dad will hit the grand old age of 80. They have always loved music and to this day they head out to Glasgow city centre every weekend to pubs where live singing from the drinkers is encouraged and welcomed, accompanied by someone on either keyboards or an acoustic guitar. That’s my mum pictured above back in June 2013 belting out something on the floor of one of those city centre pubs….it was the day that The Stone Roses played a huge outdoor gig in the city and the pub had a fair few of their following drinking the place dry….to be fair to them, they joined in the fun with the old folk who were the regulars and applauded their efforts on the mic (and I still think my mum is a better singer than Ian Brown).

I appreciate just how lucky I was to have parents who liked and appreciated music but thinking about it they were equally as lucky to have been raised in homes and in environments where music and singing were a huge part of their upbringing. I can vouch for this as probably my very earliest memory of music goes back to when I was certainly no more than 5 or 6 years of age and it concerns a huge cupboard that had pride of place in my gran’s house – the sort of thing that sits at the top of this blog.

While there was a record player behind one of its doors, the thing that fascinated me most was what lay behind the other door, the main attraction of which was this huge round dial that could turn so far in one direction before you twisted it back in the opposite direction until it could go no further. All the while a thin red line would go across a screen in the direction that you were turning the dial and it passed all sorts of words that made little or no sense And all this effort produced eerie and strange noises that sounded as if they belonged on the set of Dr Who.

Being a curious sort of kid, I asked what all the words meant and what some of them said to be told that they were cities from all over the world and the when the red line hit that word, what I was hearing was songs and talking from a radio station in that city.

Turns out that I wasn’t the only kid fascinated by such a thing :-

mp3 : Martin Stephenson & The Daintees – Sunday Halo

Incidentally, the vocalist announcing all the places on the dial with the ‘Berlin, Munich, Brussels, Bonn etc’ refrain is Cathal Coughlan whose band The Fatima Mansions are responsible for Blues For Ceaucescu which is one of my favourite songs of all time. But I digress…………

To this day, I’m not sure if it was the sounds that came out of the cabinet or the fact that I was allowed to play with the dial as I would with a toy that led to me establishing a love for music. But I think it speaks volumes that while I can barely recall all that many details about things in my life from the best part of 50 years ago – for instance I have no recollection at all about my first day at school or certain Xmas Days when I was lucky enough to get the present I had always wanted – I can still picture the radiogramme and smile at the memory of the strange sounds I could get it to make as I played with the dial.

My parents never owned anything quite as grand as a radiogramme, but we always seemed to have the very latest and best radio to go alongside what was a modest sized record player. Thinking back,the first houses I lived in were probably too small to have anything else.

At the age of 9, my family moved to a new house which was slightly bigger than where we had been before in as much that it had a decent sized living room. I think it was about a year later when my parents had saved up enough to buy a new record player with wall mounted speakers and it was genuinely fascinating for all us to listen to the stereo effect as the music glided across the wall above the fireplace as if by magic.

The other great thing about this was that they passed down their old Dansette record player which meant I could play my music in my room (shared with two younger brothers) as and when I wanted. By now I had been getting Record Tokens for birthdays and for Xmas and I was buying singles by the likes of Gary Glitter, The Sweet, David Essex, Alvin Stardust and The Average White Band – yup, Pick Up The Pieces was one of the first records I ever bought!!

But of course I was still exposed to the music my folks were listening to at the time, particularly my dad. His was, of course. music for grown-ups that was never played by Tony Blackburn on the Radio 1 Breakfast Show nor would you ever hear any of his favourite music by the likes of Neil Diamond, Johnny Cash, Paul McCartney & Wings or Supertramp on Top of The Pops. Mind you, he also loved Status Quo, and they seemed to be on every week.

Such was my continued exposure to these acts that I knew all the words to my mum and dad’s favourite songs. And its a frightening fact that I still do so many years later – but I’m not complaining as it has given me a wonderful grounding to be able to turn to any Neil Diamond song of old when it’s my turn at the karaoke….

Like all teenagers, I ended up rebelling against my parents tastes. From about the age of 14 till I was 30 years of age I had a knee jerk reaction that said ‘anything my folks had liked was simply awful and unlistenable. And then, out of the blue, I decided to start listening to Johnny Cash, mainly as Billy Bragg had been name-checking him as a huge influence. It wasn’t too long before I acknowledged my attitude to my parents music was, for a substantial part completely wrong, and that I in fact had a huge hole in my own now bulging record collection.

So I want to use today to say a big thank you to my mum and dad for encouraging me to enjoy music as I was growing up. Here’s a couple of songs that I know they are fond of that I am now the proud owner of:-

mp3 : Johnny Cash – One Piece At A Time
mp3 : Neil Diamond – I Am I Said

And here’s one of my mum’s all time favourite singers:-

mp3 : Kris Kristofferson – Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down (live)

Enjoy.

And as I said…..happy birthday mum (not that she reads this nonsense!!!!!)

Jasmine Minks

NEXT YEAR’S NOSTALGIA FEST (Part 2 of 48)

A couple of weeks back, a reader from France left behind a very complimentary comment about the blog and in doing so said:-

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems my friends The Jasmine Minks haven’t been awarded yet the prestigious Saturday’s Scottish Single slot. I’m sure their time will come…!”

I did get back with the explanation that as I didn’t own any 45s by the band that they hadn’t been featured in that particular series but that I had a plan for an upcoming posting…and this is it.

One of the best tracks on CD86 is Cut Me Deep by The Jasmine Minks. However, it is a bit of a cheat that it is included as the song wasn’t released until 1988 as a track on Another Age, an LP that came out on Creation Records which was of course a central part of the C86 movement.

mp3 : The Jasmine Minks – Cut Me Deep

By this point in time, the band – originally from Aberdeen – had been with the label for four years and in an effort to become pop stars had relocated to London. Sadly, they were just one of many talented bands from the era who never made the breakthrough and they disbanded before the decade was over, suffering in part from Alan McGhee‘s preoccupation with the Jesus and Mary Chain which meant all the other bands on his roster took a seat away at the very back of the room.

The lead vocal on Cut Me Deep is courtesy of Jim Shepherd who had only taken on that role on the departure in 1986 of one of the other founder-members of the band Adam Sanderson. It was Sanderson who sang on what turned out to be the band’s best-selling single released in April 1986 and also available on their self-titled debut LP released a couple of months later:-

mp3 : The Jasmine Minks – Cold Heart

The Jasmine Minks reunited in 2000, releasing the album Veritas, before the band signed to McGee’s Poptones label for the release of Popartglory (2001) and then after another lengthy hiatus, 4 track EP, Poppy White, was released on the Oatcake Records label in 2012 the same year they appeared at the 2012 Indietracks festival in the original 1984 lineup.

This time last year, the band celebrated their 30th anniversary with the release of Cut Me Deep – The Anthology 1984 – 2014 with 48 tracks spread over 2 x CDs.

Enjoy