Month: October 2020

R.E.M.

THE SINGULAR ADVENTURES OF R.E.M. (Part 18)

R.E.M. had finally hit the so-called big time with Out Of Time, a largely acoustic album of love-inspired songs that showcased the band’s penchant for melody, harmony and intelligence. So how to follow it up? Why, release one of the most downbeat songs of the band’s career as the lead single to an album about death, of course!

mp3: R.E.M. – Drive

JC and I (and numerous commenters) have mentioned the bizarre habit of releasing the most unlikely or unrepresentative songs as singles that plagued R.E.M. throughout their career. I mean, even their debut single wasn’t the mix they wanted! When I heard Drive, the first taste of the band’s eighth studio album, I was horrified, yet at the same time, not entirely surprised. This was as dark and maudlin as the band had ever sounded. Yet, after a couple listens, it had grown on me hugely.

In spite of its rather gloomy nature, there’s something about Drive that is undeniably catchy. It may be no coincidence that it has been compared to David Essex’s Rock On – the line “Hey kids, rock ‘n’ roll” seems pretty blatant. The truth, however, is that the line was written as a homage to the song Stop It! by Pylon (them again); its entire lyric consists of repetitions of the lines “Don’t rock ‘n’ roll, no” and “Hey kids!”

What might also come as a shock is producer Scott Litt’s revelation that Drive’s arrangement was heavily inspired by a band that both Mike Mills and Peter Buck were big fans of – Queen. Yep, THAT Queen. “Queen records, for all their bombast, sounded like each player had a personality,” Litt explained. So, Pylon, David Essex and Queen, then. All of a sudden, Drive becomes one of the most intriguing songs in the R.E.M. canon.

As for those lyrics, well according to Mills: “[it’s] just telling kids to take charge of their own lives. Among other things,” while Buck claimed: “It’s a subtle, political thing. Michael specifically mentions the term ‘bush-whacked’.” He also uses the word “baby” which I’ve always thought is a term you have to be careful of using if you want to be considered a serious songwriter. Maybe Stipe is using it in its more hipster way, where “baby” is everyone rather than the object of one’s affections. That would fit with the song, but I can’t be sure. That aside though, it’s Stipe’s delivery and the rhythm of his vocals that actually make Drive a bonafide pop song, even if it really doesn’t sound like it at first.

With hindsight, it’s easy to understand why Drive was the first choice of single. It certainly introduced the mood of Automatic For The People to audiences, though it remains a mystery why an album whose primary theme is death became one of the decade’s biggest-selling records and the one most people still associate R.E.M. with.

Drive was released in the UK on the 1st October 1992. It entered the charts at #11 in its first week, making it the band’s second-highest position. It dropped the following week and disappeared from the Top 40 altogether before the month was out. In truth most of the sales in that first week was probably due to the plethora of formats and fans like me wanting to own them all.

The 7” and cassette had World Leader Pretend from Green on the flip. Clearly the label was still trying to flog that album to new fans! The standard CD format added the Leonard Cohen cover First We Take Manhattan. This first appeared the previous year on the superb Cohen tribute album ‘I’m Your Fan’. It’s one of the best covers R.E.M. ever did, and arguably one of the best covers of a Leonard Cohen song by anybody (JC adds…..I’ll second that!!!)

For fans, however, the CD single was a tad disappointing as it didn’t contain anything we didn’t already have.

mp3: R.E.M. – World Leader Pretend
mp3: R.E.M. – First We Take Manhattan

The second (so-called “Collector’s Edition”) CD was heaps more interesting. As well as the title track and the Cohen cover were two unreleased songs. It’s A Free World Baby was a song recorded for ‘Out Of Time’, but cast aside. Peter Buck subsequently stated that he cannot understand why they decided not to include it (and Fretless, another song that will be discussed in due course) on ‘Out Of Time’. One theory is that its lyrics never really fit with the album’s overriding theme of love. It’s also a bit quirky in its structure, Mills’ bassline being the dominant instrument. It’s not unlike Belong in my opinion, especially when you get to the uplifting chorus. Maybe that’s why it didn’t get included – two similar songs and Belong was the better fit. Nonetheless, many fans feel this song shouldn’t have been relegated to b-side status, and its subsequent appearances on the soundtracks for Friends and Coneheads further added to our exasperation. And then there’s the use of “baby” again…

mp3: R.E.M. – It’s A Free World, Baby

To round it all off, the second CD also contained Winged Mammal Theme. Now this is one of those R.E.M. b-side instrumentals they often did, only unlike many of the others, this one does deserve at least one listen. It’s like the band is attempting to write their own theme for Batman – it even contains one member (not sure who) singing “Batman” in the background! It’s led by Mills on piano, and while it can’t be said to be any serious attempt at creating an album-worthy song, it’s passable and mildly amusing.

mp3: R.E.M – Winged Mammal Theme

Nerd corner: Finally, my research has revealed that Discogs lists a UK 12” of Drive. There are three reasons why I’m certain no such item exists:

1) I’d have it if it did, and I don’t!
2) I was working in Our Price at the time and made sure a copy of every format was reserved for me!
3) UK singles chart rules permitted a maximum of four formats per single release to be eligible for a placing. With the 7”, cassette and two CDs, a fifth format would have impacted on the chart position as one format would not have been counted.

I therefore conclude that the listed 12” – which purports to contain the same tracks as the standard CD single – was never released in the UK. However, a European release was made on 12”, and I reckon that’s where the confusion lies.

Robster

Owl John

SATURDAY’S SCOTTISH SONG : #232: OWL JOHN

From Wiki:-

Owl John is the only album by Owl John, the solo musical project by Frightened Rabbit vocalist and guitarist Scott Hutchison. It was released on Atlantic Records on 4 August 2014 (perhaps coincidentally, the date also being International Owl Awareness Day since 2011).

The music for the album was written and recorded on the Isle of Mull, Scotland, in early 2014, with Hutchison working with Frightened Rabbit’s Andy Monaghan and Simon Liddell. He then moved to Los Angeles, where the lyrics were written and recorded. Scottish musician Peter Kelly plays drums on the album, which was mastered by Mazen Murad.

A further two tracks were recorded for the project but not included on the album: the Christmas song “It Gets Cold”, released on Soundcloud under the artist name Christmas John, and “All I Want for Me Is You”, which features Ed Harcourt on piano.

Three music videos were released for songs from the album: “Los Angeles, Be Kind”, “Hate Music” and “Red Hand”. All were directed by Storme Whitby-Grubb and Charles Gibson.

In 2019, Coldplay sampled “Los Angeles, Be Kind” in its song “Champion of the World”.

mp3: Owl John – Los Angeles, Be Kind

RIP Scott. You’re much missed.

JC

Pete Wylie

THE LARGELY FORGOTTEN FOLLOW-UP TO THE BIG HIT

It’s a last-minute change of plan as Khayem‘s suggestion of having each of The Crucial Three feature on consecutive days is a sound one.

Pete Wylie has had fitful success in terms of his music selling to the masses with just fours singles cracking the Top 40.  Most folk, of an age, will recall Story Of The Blues (#3 in January 1983), Come Back (#20 in July 1984) and Sinful (#13 in June 1986.)   Only the die-hard followers would be aware of this:-

mp3: Wah! – Hope (I Wish You’d Believe Me)

It was the follow-up to Story of The Blues and reached #37 in April 1983.  It’s anthemic, albeit at a much slower pace than the big hit, not really ideal for radio play and this lack of exposure probably goes a long way to explaining why it has become so easily forgotten;  Pete would, however, later incorporate the ‘I Wish You’d Believe Me’ refrain into the lyric of Come Back.

Here’s the b-side of the 7″.  It’s another more than decent offering:-

mp3: Wah! – Sleep

I thought it would be worth concluding today’s offering with a couple of unusual tracks that our main man has been involved in:-

mp3: Big Hard Excellent Fish – Imperfect List (original uncensored version)

This had been written as a piece of spoken word/music as part of a 1989 show by the modern ballet dancer Michael Clark, later released as a single on One Little Indian Records in 1990. It sees Josie Jones, who had been part of Wah! in the 80s, divulge a list of 64 of things which anger, offend or just annoy her – the list was put together in collaboration with Pete Wylie and the track was produced by Robin Guthrie of Cocteau Twins. It was later remixed by Andrew Weatherall but arguably its biggest exposure came in 2004 when the Manchester racist used it as the opening gambit to his live shows, nicely working up his audience into a fit of frenzy before he and his band took to the stage.

As for the other track, it also dates from 1990. The KLF (Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty) were intending to pull together two pieces of work called The Black Room and The White Room – in the end, only the latter would be fully realised. The first part of the Black Room did, however, see light of day via a very limited release with a track credited to The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu:-

mp3: The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu – It’s Grim Up North (Club Mix)

It’s a very strange, but typical, offering from the JAMs. The lyric is simply a list of cities and towns located in the north of England read out over over a hard, pounding and noisy techno tune. The narrator is Pete Wylie.

After the KLF had enjoyed huge commercial success with The White Room, It’s Grim….would be re-recorded and re-released with a Bill Drummond vocal, reaching the Top 10 in November 1991.

Watch out for a posting on the KLF on these pages over the next few weeks.

JC

Echo & The Bunnymen

THAT’S THE DANCING HORSES ARRIVED…..

There’s something Pavlovian about Julian Cope posts that makes me immediately want to feature Echo & The Bunnymen.

I recently dug out my copy of Songs To Sing and Learn, the compilation album that was released in the UK in November 1985. It must be one of the finest two sides of vinyl ever pressed. The running order of side one is Rescue, The Puppet, Do It Clean, A Promise, The Back of Love, and The Cutter. Side Two has Never Stop, The Killing Moon, Silver, Seven Seas, and Bring on The Dancing Horses. There was also a bonus 7″ single included with Pictures On My Wall on the a-side, and Read It In Books on the b-side.

In other words, the album was all eleven singles in the order in which they had been released on Korona, with the 7″ being a replica of the debut single on Zoo Records.

I’ve always felt that Bring On The Dancing Horses has been the poor relation on the album given that it was recorded with the intention of being the new track to make it a more attractive purchase to fans. The strange thing is that the album was in the shops some three days before the 45 appeared in the shops, the result of which had something on an adverse impact on its sales. It was also the first new Bunnymen song in some 18 months, with the previous release being the imperious Ocean Rain LP, three of whose songs immediately preceded Dancing Horses on the compilation.

It also suffers from the fact that while it is a very good single, it doesn’t deliver anything like the punch or have the impact of the Ocean Rain material. It’s quite different from previous material in that the vocals are very much to the fore, to the extent that the overdubbing means Mac is doing backing vocals for Mac the lead vocalist, while the melody is centred around synths and strings rather than the guitar, bass and drums of Messrs Sargeant, Pattinson and de Freitas.

It did make it to #21 in the UK singles chart, which was probably a disappointment to all concerned. What I hadn’t realised until doing a bit of research for this post is that it was the band’s breakthrough, of sorts, in America, appearing on the soundtrack album to Pretty In Pink.

I’ve pulled out the 12″ version for your enjoyment today, one which extends out to almost six minutes and is some 100 seconds or so longer than the 7″ and album version:-

mp3: Echo & The Bunnymen – Bring On The Dancing Horses (extended mix)

The self-produced b-side on the 7″ was an absolute belter of a song, one which harked back to the earlier, rawer sound of the band:-

mp3: Echo & The Bunnymen – Over Your Shoulder

The bonus track on the 12″ was even more of a great discovery:-

mp3: Echo & The Bunnymen – Bedbugs and Ballyhoo

One that wouldn’t have been out of place on Ocean Rain and more than worthy of being a single in its own right, as turned out to be the case two years later when a re-recorded (but inferior version), was included on their eponymous fifth studio album, with this being the third single lifted from it

mp3: Echo & The Bunnymen – Bedbugs and Ballyhoo (1987 version)

Nobody knew it at the time, but this would be the last original 45 released by the band’s classic line-up, with Pete de Freitas dying in a motorcycle accident two years later – Bedbugs was followed up later in the year with People Are Strange from the soundtrack to the movie, The Lost Boys.

JC

 

Julian Cope

AN IMAGINARY COMPILATION ALBUM : #266 : JULIAN COPE (live)

A GUEST POSTING by KHAYEM

Julian Cope Live ICA: Born To Entertain

I won’t hesitate in saying that I have an unconditional love for Julian Cope and his music. I was too young to really be there at the beginning, but I have stuck by the Arch Drude through thick and thin, pop and political prog, and all the points in between. Hell, I still play the Queen Elizabeth CDs and enjoy them. When Strictly Rockers posted the first of his excellent ICAs way back in 2015, he touted further ICAs, Cope Remixed, Cope Covered and Cope Live. The first two made it to a follow-up post the same year and I looked forward to the latter. Five years later, I really had to scratch that itch so I’ve bravely or foolishly attempted one…

Like Strictly Rockers, I’ve seen more Julian Cope gigs and own more (physical) albums and singles than any other artist. One or two of these records were also bought in WH Smiths in Bristol, so I suspect SR and I may have been in the same crowd at the same gig on many occasions in Bristol and Bath over the years. Small world…

It all started for me with the My Nation Underground tour at the Bristol Colston Hall. My ticket is currently AWOL in the attic but, according to the internet, this was Saturday 22nd October 1988. The gig was particularly memorable for Cope’s leopard print blouse, his infamous climbing frame mike stand, and a rousing 12-minute version of Reynard The Fox, although on this occasion he thankfully chose not to slash open his stomach with a Stanley knife.

Instead, at one point, Julian Cope got down off the stage, made a beeline for me and pressed his sweat-beaded brow against my own as we both sang into the mike. He then departed and got straight back onto the stage and didn’t leave it again for the rest of the concert. I have no idea why he singled me out, and sadly I can’t even remember what the particular song was (!) but it left an impression that has never faded. I’ve since seen Cope in a variety of settings, with a full-band or acoustic solo, playing epic, nearly 3-hour concerts or reciting lyrics and poetry when laryngitis meant that he lost his singing voice partway through a gig. His memorable performance in a monkey half-mask and banana yellow kecks at the first Phoenix Festival in 1992 was the absolute highlight of that weekend. And, perhaps inevitably, Julian Cope at the Barbican, London in February 2020 turned out to be the last live show I saw before COVID-19 put us all into lockdown.

It’s an almost impossible task trying to compile a Julian Cope Live ICA, so I imposed some very strict rules to give myself a slight chance of success:

1) Stick to 10 songs only, no bonus EPs or alternative albums this time;
2) No cover versions, Teardrop Explodes, Brain Donor or other side projects;
3) No singles (although I had to make one exception);
4) No songs over 10 minutes (including between song banter/preamble/anecdotes);
5) Include at least one selection from gigs in the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s and 2020s

There are some glaring omissions: no Pristeen or Greatness And Perfection and nothing from Saint Julian, Droolian or Peggy Suicide, but I hope this selection gives a flavour of Julian Cope as a songwriter, raconteur and live performer. The title of this ICA is taken from a line in Las Vegas Basement (again, cruelly omitted from this selection). Julian Cope was undoubtedly “Born To Entertain”, so here I go…

SIDE ONE

1) Soul Desert (Live @ The Fleece Bristol, 09 Feb 2020) (bootleg recording)

The opening song on the epic Jehovahkill has also been a regular concert opener since and is perfectly suited to Cope’s latter day by-necessity solo acoustic gigs. This version is nearly twice the length of the original and stretches out the tension with a number of false build ups to the inevitable climax. For the real heads.

2) Bill Drummond Said (Live In Japan, 1991) (Live Japan ’91, 2004)

This jaunty ‘tribute’ to The Teardrops Explodes’ former manager appeared on a self-released live CD via Cope’s Head Heritage site. Given the quality of Cope’s performances, it’s a wonder that Island records didn’t release an official live album when Julian Cope was signed to the label. This is a fantastic album/concert and this full-band version is no exception, with a lovely ‘plink-plonk’ keyboard motif.

3) Don’t Take Roots (Live @ Barrowlands, Glasgow, 30 Sep 1995) (Barrowlands, 2019)

A throwaway, dispensable track from 20 Mothers or an irresistibly groovy song? Probably a bit of both, to be honest, but I love this song. I saw the Propheteering tour at Bristol’s Anson Rooms the week before this version in Glasgow was recorded and it was an amazing, epic show. Thighpaulsandra’s only tour with Cope apparently, but all of the band are on fire here. The self-released CD condenses a 3-hour show into 70 minutes, is still available to buy on the Head Heritage site and I’d highly recommend it.

4) Autogeddon Blues (Live @ Moseley Folk Festival, Birmingham, 01 Sep 2012) (bootleg recording)

I’ll admit, I found Autogeddon a disappointment following Peggy Suicide and Jehovahkill, but time and distance has given me a greater appreciation for the album as a whole. Autogeddon Blues, along with Paranormal In The West Country, was the stand-out and has remained a live staple. Dedicated here to “Spaghetti Junction”, this live version includes a brief example of Cope’s way with an introduction, which have sometimes been known to be longer than the songs themselves.

5) Sunspots (Live @ The Ritz, New York, 28 Jan 1987) (bootleg recording)

Sunspots may possibly be my favourite Julian Cope song of all, Top 5 at least if I were inclined to make a list, and maybe the greatest hit that never was. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Cope gig where Sunspots wasn’t performed, but I will admit that the 21st Century acoustic versions are inevitably lacking something (and I don’t just mean the oboe). This full-band version is closer to what I would have experienced in Bristol back in 1988 and adds a whole new lyrical section. The car that Julian Cope was driving around with his very best friend in? A Karmann Ghia, of course.

SIDE TWO

6) Reynard The Fox (Live @ Barrowlands, Glasgow, 30 Sep 1995) (Barrowlands, 2019)

A 12-minute “Live In Tokyo” version appeared as a B-side to 5 o’Clock World. This is more faithful to the original album version, though the constraints of stripped-down concerts mean that I haven’t heard the song performed for a long, long time. The core band – Mike “Moon-Eye” Mooney (guitar), Keith Richard Frost (bass) and Mark “Rooster” Cosby (drums) – had played with Cope for many years at this point and with Thighpaulsandra “at the controls” the song enters the rock cosmos at the end. Apologies that there is some distortion/crackle in this recording/my copy of the CD.

7) You Will Be Mist (Live @ BBC 6 Music Festival, Liverpool, 31 Mar 2019) (bootleg recording)

I didn’t see Julian Cope perform in 2019, so this may well have been the premiere and only live airing of the song that subsequently appeared on this year’s excellent Self Civil War. In this year’s tour, only 2 songs from Self Civil War were played in London, reduced to 1 song for the Bristol date, neither of which were this one. This is a shame as it’s a good song and perfectly suited to the minimal live set up. This was broadcast live on BBC6 with 2 other ‘classic’ songs and an interview with DJ/presenter Mark Radcliffe. Radcliffe briefly appears in the intro and presumably hits the wrong button about a minute in…

8) Robert Mitchum (Live @ The Globe Cardiff, 2011) (bootleg recording)

“Just a piece of fluff to a hero but the middle 8 is as anti-fucking-religion as you like”, as described in the intro. Robert Mitchum originally appeared on 1989’s Skellington, a ‘semi-official bootleg’ released in the wake of the overproduced My Nation Underground. It’s since become a Cope favourite and appears here in a delightful whistling-free, ‘ba-ba-ba’ singalong version. Whilst researching, I came across a contemporary review of the Cardiff gig in the South West Argus. The article has the unfortunate strapline “On the day Sir Jimmy Savile, God bless him, expired, the post-punk equivalent of the tracksuited treasure bedazzled Cardiff with his virtuoso eccentricity.” I suspect journalist Adrian Colley may now regret comparing Julian Cope with the UK’s most high-profile and prolific sex offender…

9) I’m Living In The Room They Found Saddam In (Live @ The Royal Festival Hall, London, 21 Jan 2005) (Concert Climax: Live In The Hearing Of The Motherfucker, 2005)

One of the highlights of the long-promised and delayed album Citizen Cain’d, this song also appeared the same year on Concert Climax. It was advertised at the time as “a high quality Italian live album which is likely to only be available on the tour as we only managed to get a limited number and can’t guarantee we’ll get any more”. In all likelihood another self-released album, its a mix of sessions and live tracks, this one from 2005’s Cornucopia tour. At the time, Kitty Empire of NME slated the London gigs as “the most wrongheaded of ego trips”. The Guardian newspaper was equally damning (a whopping 2/5), reviewer David Peschek dismissing the new songs as “simply witless”. This may be intentionally true of Cope’s side-project Brain Donor, but I think this song deserves better and in my opinion the live version here tops the original.

10) Out Of My Mind On Dope And Speed (Live @ The Fleece Bristol, 09 Feb 2020) (bootleg recording)

And back to this year’s Bristol gig for a regular set closer, including Cope’s crowd directions for his encore. The Fleece layout has no stage door, so Cope regularly has a faux exit-and-return in plain sight, to now-familiar crowd amusement. This is another Skellington favourite, a full-band competitive wig-out in its original version. This acoustic guitar and keyboard performance arguably lacks some of the impact of the album version but is a fitting end to the concert and this ICA.

In place of the bonus EP/album, I have stitched the songs together into a continuous audio experience on my Mixcloud page (click here for the link). Nothing like the real thing and waaaaay too short for a genuine Cope gig, but stick your headphones on and imagine you’ve paid a few quid for an amateur bootleg cassette and you’re halfway there. Enjoy!

KHAYEM

Momus

HAIRSTYLE OF THE DEVIL

It was back in May, as part of the Scottish Songs series, that I profiled Momus while admitting I had just the one album in the collection.

My recent forays into the world of Discogs enable me to pick up the 7″ release of The Hairstyle of The Devil a single from 1989 that was released on Creation Records. The 7″ came in a plain black sleeve, and retailed at the set price of 99p. The image at the top of this post is the sleeve of the 12″.

mp3: Momus – Hairstyle of The Devil

There’s a real sense of the Pet Shop Boys at play in the music but I thought that re-producing the lyrics would give the uninitiated an idea of what Momus is all about….

She was seeing two at exactly the same time
She never mentioned you when she was round at mine
But when you were round at hers you always made a scene
‘Cause you only had ears for descriptions of the stranger she was seeing

And what she saw in me was only what attracts
The many girls I see behind their lovers’ backs
But what she saw in you, I could never work it out
There was just one thing she found it turned you on to talk about

The inexplicable charisma of the rival
You said “Describe for me the hairstyle of the devil
Is he passionate? (Don’t answer!)
Is he detached? (Don’t answer that!)
Does he please you in the sack? (Shut up, don’t answer back!)
Just tell him I’m dying to meet him”

She called me up, she said she’d had enough
Of all the paranoia you mixed up with your love
We spent the night together, she woke me up at dawn
And called an all-night taxi
And when you came I was gone

You found my comb behind her chest of drawers
She said she’d slept alone but the bed was full of hairs
And when you matched them up, beyond a shadow of a doubt
The hairs belonged the Beelzebub
And you began to puzzle out

The inexplicable charisma of the rival
You said “Describe for me the hairstyle of the devil
Does he make you laugh? (Don’t answer!)
Does he earn a lot? (Don’t answer that!)
Does he dress you up in black? (Shut up, don’t answer back!)
Just tell him I’m dying to meet him”

The inexplicable charisma of the rival
With the luck and the hairstyle of the devil

And so you gaze at the people all about
In every stranger’s face you try to make me out
And when you meet me finally your horns will lock with mine
For the beast rules with rivalry
As the clock rules with time

For the beast rules with rivalry
As the clock rules with time

For the beast rules with rivalry
As the clock rules with time

Pleased to meet you, hope you’ve guessed my name
Pleased to meet you, hope you’ve guessed my name
Pleased to meet you, hope you’ve guessed my name

Unlike Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine, who ran into all sorts of problems when After The Watershed mimicked a line from Ruby Tuesday, the lawyers for the Rolling Stones didn’t come near Momus in 1989.  The fact that the single sold in minuscule numbers is just, I’m sure, one of those coincidences that happen……

Here’s yer b-side, which judging by the crackling and popping was played more than the a-side by its original owner:-

mp3: Momus – Amongst Women Only

JC

 

New Order

THE MONDAY MORNING HI-QUALITY VINYL RIP : Part Four : BLUE MONDAY

There are days when I have to accept that I really am something of an old saddo.

Like the day the other week when I realised I had three separate copies of Blue Monday on vinyl, all dating from 1983. But to be fair, they are three completely different pressings with different sleeves……

Copy #1: The original pressing that came in the die-cut sleeve with the vinyl being housed in a silver inner sleeve. The asking price on Discogs for a copy in the condition mine is in ranges from £40-70, although some sellers are looking for stupid money such as £185.

Copy #2: The second pressing that came in the die-cut sleeve but with the vinyl being housed in a glossy black inner sleeve. The asking price for this one, of which there actually seem to be fewer on Discogs, can be as low as £10 but up to £40. Mine actually has another quirk in that the labels have been placed on the wrong sides so that to listen to Blue Monday I have to play the side of vinyl which is listed as The Beach.

Copy #3: The third pressing that was plain black, but still with the code down the right-hand side of the sleeve, with the vinyl housed in a white paper sleeve. The Poundland/Dollar Store version of the single so to speak, but still capable of fetching as much as £20, although most retail on the second-hand market for under a tenner.

Copy#1 is the one that is alleged to have cost Factory Records money with each sale with the legend being that the die-cut sleeve and silver cardboard inner, along with the actual vinyl, cost more to manufacture than the selling price. It still proved to be a great return overall given that this was the single that brought New Order to the attention of the record-buying public and led to countless millions of sales of this 45, along with subsequent singles and albums, all over the planet.

mp3: New Order – Blue Monday
mp3: New Order – The Beach

Ripped from copy#1 of the original vinyl at 320kbps.

Remember folks, feel free to make suggestions as to what should appear here on Monday mornings. As long as I have a vinyl copy, I’ll make sure your requests are met.

JC

R.E.M.

THE SINGULAR ADVENTURES OF R.E.M. (Part 17)

This is the seventeenth week of the UK singles released by R.E.M. More often than not, either myself or The Robster has opened up proceedings by suggesting that the single you are about to hear is very unrepresentative or is untypical of the album from which it has been lifted. Deja-vu?

mp3: R.E.M. – Radio Song

The opening track on Out of Time was released as a 45 in both the UK and the USA in the first week of November 1991. It has a spoken intro and a guest vocal from rapper KRS-One. It then has a few notes that sound as if The Partridge Family are about to burst into song. Micheal Stipe’s opening contribution feels as if we about to be getting a follow-up to an earlier non-hit single:-

“The world is collapsing around our ears”

The thing is, this time he doesn’t feel fine.

There’s a few things that now annoy me about Radio Song, not least that the rap is lame and feels very dated. I know KRS-One was an established name in the hip-hop scene at the time through Boogie Down Productions and had obviously been brought on board with the best intentions but in this instance, he feels more frustrated than genuinely angry. An opportunity to drive home the message of playlists on radio stations being of little or no appeal to much of the demographic was missed.

And yet…..after some thirty seconds when the organ, bass, drums and guitars kick in, it becomes a more than passable tune that bounces along at a decent lick. But it still doesn’t ever feel as if it should be selected as a single, not least for the fact that it would be near impossible for a song that attacks playlists and the music preferences of DJs and their production team sidekicks to get much in the way of airplay.

And yet……Warner Bros. obviously had no worries as the record-buying public in the UK continued to spend substantial amounts of cash on all things R.E.M. and it made its way to #28 in our charts. It bombed in the States…..

Once again, it was made available on 7″, 12″, cassette and CD. The common track was another lifted from the 1 April session for ‘Rockline’.

mp3: R.E.M. – Love Is All Around

At the time, this was a relatively unknown song, with it being a cover of a 1967 single by The Troggs. It’s an acoustic effort in which Mike Mills takes the lead vocal and with the ba-ba-ba-ba stuff going on in the background, it’s a third cousin of sorts to Near Wild Heaven. It’s quite awful.

Three years later, the same song was recorded by Wet Wet Wet as their contribution to the soundtrack of the film Four Weddings and A Funeral. It spent 15 weeks at #1 and was never off daytime radio, to the extent that some DJs, having got tired of it, began to play either the original version by The Troggs or the R.E.M. cover – there’s a certain irony of it being taken from a b-side from a single that has lambasted radio stations and DJs of that ilk….

The 12″ also offered up a rare thing. An R.E.M. remix:-

mp3: R.E.M. – Shiny Happy People (Music Mix)

It comes in at just over a minute longer than the original version and Scott Litt deploys the sort of bog-standard production tricks and techniques so beloved in that era, especially multi-tracked vocals, keyboards to mimic orchestras and electronic drums. It’s listenable but it’s disposable.

The CD came with three live tracks, thus keeping with the formula of the previous three CD singles lifted from Out of Time. The blurb with it stated:-

“This is the fourth in a series of limited edition CDs released alongside singles from ‘Out Of Time’. Each includes 3 live songs, all complementary to those available on the other formats. Collectively they form a record of ‘R.E.M. In Concert’.

And to help you store your new CDs, which if memory serves me correctly all retailed at £3.99, there was a plastic box in which you could put them. The only thing was that Warner Bros. was kind of running out of decent sources to locate material – no way did they want listeners to get the chance of live material from the IRS days and so they turned again to Tourfilm and shows from that era:-

mp3: R.E.M. – You Are The Everything (live) – Miami 29 April 1989
mp3: R.E.M. – Orange Crush (live) – Atlanta 13 November 1989
mp3: R.E.M. – Belong (live) – Greensboro, 10 November 1989

And yes, you have heard that live version of Orange Crush before as we slotted it into the look at the single release of Orange Crush a few weeks back,

Onwards and upwards for R.E.M., arguably the biggest band on the planet at the end of 1991. It would be nine months before the next single and The Robster will be here next week to say a few words.

JC

Over The Wall

SATURDAY’S SCOTTISH SONG : #231: OVER THE WALL

Over The Wall was a duo consisting of Ben Hillman and Gavin Prentice, with their output (as far as I can make out from Discogs) consisting of one album and three 45s/EPs between 2008 and 2013.

I’ found them via a track taken from the Live at Limbo compilation that just a couple of months back provided the song for the entry provided by Night Noise Team in this long-running series.

Ben and Gavin are described accurately as multi-instrumentalists, with both of them contributing over many years to a number of albums recorded by Scottish musicians, and certainly in Gavin’s case as a member of touring bands deployed by solo musicians when they go out on the road. I know also that Gavin writes, records and performs as Ultras, and so it is fair to say they are mainstays of the music scene here in Scotland.

Here’s a little bit of info gleaned from a magazine article back in 2010 on the eve of the release of their debut album and accompanying tour:-

Over the Wall emerged in the mid-noughties from the Glasgow collective of the same name and whittled themselves down to two members – Bathgate’s Gav Prentice and Ben Hillman of Bridlington, Yorkshire – before proceeding to create the exuberant, Springsteen-inflected take on electropop we know them for today.

A long time coming (though it’s no Chinese Democracy), their impending debut album – Treacherous – wraps a cavalcade of cutesy beats, trumpet, organ and anthemic power chords into an impressively varied but compact whole. Lyrical themes are similarly diverse, ranging from romantic escapes of everyday drudgery to vampires, via snooker and Rafael Benitez.

The song on Live at Limbo was Track 4 on Treacherous. I thought the sound was a bit muddy and so I’ve gone out and bought a digital copy of the studio recording.  It’s an ambitious effort that aims to make a few valid political points, as Gavin Prentice once explained in an online piece:-

1945 was the year that Attlee’s Labour party beat Churchill and began constructing the welfare state, and 1984 saw the miner’s strike and quite an explicit declaration of war against the British working class from the government. It’s probably a good point to mark the death of the post-war consensus on the importance of community and collective action, and its replacement by Thatcher’s “there’s no such thing as society” society. But it’s quite a personal song too, an old couple looking back at the changes for better or worse.

mp3: Over The Wall – A History of British Welfarism 1945-1984

Believe it or not, I’ve still not exhausted the letter ‘O’ in this series. Tune in next Saturday for one more…..

JC

Primal Scream

BURNING BADGERS VINYL (Part 3) : PRIMAL SCREAM

JC writes…….

It was on Monday 21 September that SWC sent over the e-mail with Part 3 of Burning Badgers Vinyl, with it dropping into the inbox less than 24 hours before the scheduled appearance of a posting of my own in which one of the songs featured.  I reckon, if there is an afterlife, that Tim Badger is still chuckling away at all this…..

Over to SWC……

Here is a little known fact. Vanishing Point is Badger’s favourite Primal Scream album. He told me this whilst we were stuck in traffic on the M6 on the way back from a Stoke City football match, which for some reason he’d won tickets for (ghastly game Stoke City lost 1-0 l to his beloved Spurs and to all things a Danny Rose headed goal, it was worth it to watch Badger roaring with unbridled pleasure, surrounded by 2000 seething Stoke Fans, as Spurs scored).

About three years after that afternoon, and about three years ago from today, Tim Badger and his wife attended a function around my house. After everyone had left, Tim thought he would make himself useful and start to unload and reload the dishwasher, whilst the rest of us finished off the wine, rum punch and whatever else we could find.
It was about twenty minutes into that chore, when we heard a bump, a yelped ‘ow’, a muffled swear word, and an almighty crash and the unmistakable sound of breaking china. My daughter was first on the scene.

“Uh Oh” came her voice, slightly louder than it usually is. “That’s daddy mug, he’s going to be cross”. My ears prick up. I have three mugs that I consider to be mine. One is a German Amplemann Mug I picked up in Berlin the morning after a Mogwai concert, the second is my ‘British Tea Power’ mug bought by me from a British Sea Power gig about eight years ago (JC adds…..I’ve also got that particular mug!!!!) and the third, is a cup that I consider to be more important that nearly everything else I own, my Screamadelica mug bought from the 1992 Primal Scream Tour for £8. I cross my fingers and hope it’s the German Mug.

Of course, it’s the Primal Scream mug, anything else wouldn’t make sense given the topic of today’s piece.

When I get to the kitchen Badger is rubbing his leg…”I banged it on the dishwasher, it really hurt, the cup slipped…” his eyes drift to the floor, which is usually a kind of charcoal grey colour, now it’s a mixture of white, red, yellow and dusty china. “…Sorry, mate…” he says and gives me this goofy sort of grin, which makes me want to kick him in the leg even more than I do already, considering there is precisely no evidence of him actually hitting his leg at all.

I am devastated about the cup but my wife, after witnessing me moping about it for about an hour tells me to
“Cheer up you grumpy sod, its only a cup, if it helps the Badgers have invited us around next week and Lorna says you can break Tim’s Lego Deathstar which took him three months to make.”

I make a plan in my head to do exactly this. I never do it though, the Lego Deathstar is frankly a work of art and Tim, regardless of what he had done before, would have disembowelled me with a fork if I even moved once piece of it (it still has pride of place in the middle of the bookcase in the lounge).

All of which fun and games bring me to the point. The second record I pull out of the box was by Primal Scream. In fact the third and fourth records out of the box were also by Primal Scream and all three were immaculately kept 12 inch promo copies of three of the singles from the ‘Vanishing Point’ album. To be precise these three records in fact

Kowalski
Burning Wheel
If They Move Kill ‘Em

Which kind of backs up the opening paragraph of this piece. ‘Vanishing Point’ is according to Tim a record that is “way more ambitious than Screamadelica” and is a record “that he would definitely rescue from a burning building”. It is, he continues “massively underrated, and blends so many ideas together in this big smouldering pot of noise (dub, blues, Krautrock, indie rock n roll, Big Beat), and it is a record that only Primal Scream could have got anyway with”.

He is sort of right about ‘Vanishing Point’. It is underrated, certainly by me. It represents a time where the band were experimenting both musically and chemically with everything and everyone and the result of that is some incredible music, which, in a roundabout way, brings us to the remixes housed on these 12 inches.

mp3: Primal Scream – Kowalski (Automator Mix)
mp3: Primal Scream – Burning Wheel (Chemical Brothers Mix)
mp3: Primal Scream – If They Move, Kill ‘Em (Kevin Shields Mix)

Let’s be a bit like Nas and do this shit in reverse. If They Move, Kill ‘Em is a remix that is so good that the band put a version of it on their next album ‘XTRMNTR’, under a slightly different name ‘MBV Arkestra’. Basically, Kevin Shields takes the strutting wailing menace of the original and replaces it with pure violent noise and its insanely brilliant. It sounds perfect on ‘XTRMNTR’ as well.

The Chemical Brothers Remix of Burning Wheel is kind of what you would expect from late nineties Chemical Brothers. The Brothers replace the hypnotic and slightly psychedelic beats of the original version with massive filthy beats that bounce off the walls full of righteous fury and anger. Again, its insanely brilliant. Especially the bit about five and a half minutes in.

Finally, we come to the Automator Mix of Kowalski which sees this tiny, barely there, bassline simply blend the song together, with a few new samples and a dirty old beats pumping away (if that’s the right word to use!) behind Bobby’s whispery vocals. It’s the weakest of the three remixes but it’s still a marvellous five minutes.

SWC

 

Siddeleys

AN IMAGINARY COMPILATION ALBUM : #265 : THE SIDDELEYS

A GUEST POSTING by STRANGEWAYS

Never the Bride

It feels like The Siddeleys were indiepop’s perpetual bridesmaids. The band was a fixture on that rampant UK scene of the late 80s, but never quite ascended to wider prominence.

It’s an old story, of course, and one that’s in no way exclusive to this group. But it’s an odd thing when set against the quality of the lyrics and music, and the appetite of the scene. Even now, the band feels less celebrated, cited and fondly recalled than contemporaries like say Talulah Gosh, The Flatmates and The Primitives.

Myself, I became aware of The Siddeleys via just a couple of songs: Are you STILL Evil When You’re Sleeping? found me via a John Peel show of the era. I taped it. But didn’t buy it. Then, a bit later on, a jaunty cover of Edison Lighthouse’s Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes), popped up on the compilation LP Alvin Lives (in Leeds). This record’s sales benefitted the Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay Resource Unit, an entity opposing the Thatcher government’s hated Poll Tax (or Community Charge to give it its Sunday name). I loved the Siddeleys’ cover, one of twelve versions of 1970s number-ones by bands including The Wedding Present, The Popguns and Lush. But I didn’t explore further.

Although it’s not totally my fault, around this time, after just two proper singles, a flexi and a couple of Peel sessions, The Siddeleys called it a day. A band that championed the mundane and made it sparkle, was ultimately undone by the mundane: the expense and fatigue of midwinter touring; the small-label collapse; the reliable unicorn-promise of interest from larger outfits (‘As hard to hold’, writes singer Johnny Johnson, ‘as a fistful of mist’).

Soon, The Sundays would appear: a group upheld by what you might call a major indie (Rough Trade), courted by the powerful-at-the-time music press (the monthlies as well as the weeklies) and subsequently feted by the fans.

Why mention The Sundays in relation to The Siddeleys? After all, they don’t much sound like one another. But as a pair of literate, resolutely British (even, zooming in closer, resolutely English) guitar bands they do occupy broadly the same circle in the great indie-pop Venn diagram (a thing existing, thankfully, only in my head). Yet these bands enjoyed wildly different fortunes. The Sundays’ debut single, 1989’s Can’t Be Sure, came to me via a John Peel show of the era. I didn’t tape it. But I did buy it. Perhaps I’d learned my lesson.

Diving into the DeLorean and mucking around with timelines, I recalibrate things so that The Siddeleys and The Sundays are proper contemporaries (in the horrible real world, as the former was fading from view, the latter was being prodded towards the spotlight, and to the New Smiths poisoned chalice). But in this version of events, Rough Trade snaps up The Siddeleys. Both bands embark on a tongue-twisting tour. The melodic support, fronted by someone called Johnny who – surprise – is actually a woman, gathers fans and plaudits. They go on to make great records. In turn, they’re supported on their own tours by some terrific new bands. Everything works out. And, job done, we all go home for tea.

Instead, in reluctant reality, this ICA is predominantly drawn from just one release: Slum Clearance, a compilation that appeared in 2001 on Clarendon Records and Matinée Recordings. Across its sixteen tracks, Slum Clearance gathers pretty much everything The Siddeleys ever recorded –including those two Peel sessions – and released.

It’s a collection that’s accompanied by extensive, and typically prosaic and poetic, sleeve notes from Johnny Johnson. The text is engaging: an alphabet of London postcodes is populated by bedsits and squats, rubbish jobs and rehearsals. Conjured up by Johnson is an almost Dickensian existence: lyrics crafted by candlelight, beetle-strewn floorboards, and meals of porridge bought for 37p/lb. Even the street names she wound up in sound like firms of bailiffs. Crampton & Colville. Longfield & Charlwood. There’s celebration too, of course. The comfort derived from locating kindred spirits. The getting-down-on-tape songs previously located only in notebooks and heads. And the enjoyable, inevitable mayhem that being in a band attracts.

But amid the flexidiscs and fanzine interviews, the well-received gigs and record deals, sits, ultimately, the disappointment of never, albeit commercially, quite making it. Of acknowledging that, actually, you had something pretty good. But it was something that didn’t fly as high or as far as it deserved to. As Johnson sings in You Get What You Deserve

‘I came so close to happiness it makes me cry’.

As we’re all here, for deeper cuts, 2017’s Songs From The Sidings, on Firestation Records, collects twenty-two demos recorded between 1985 and 1987. Like Slum Clearance, generous notes have been provided by Johnny Johnson. These are presented chronologically, each shift headed by those numerous dowdy London addresses the singer occupied at the time the songs on the record were created. It’s a clever device, and one that recalls a restless time and nomadic existence for Johnson, but a time in which the band members, as is often the way of it, against the odds found one another and began making music.

You can read the Slum Clearance sleeve notes at https://www.siddeleys.com/history.html

Members, variously:

Andrew Brown, bass
David Clynch, drums 1987-1989
Phil Goodman, drums 1986-1987
Johnny Johnson, singing, guitar, piano
Allan Kingdom, guitar
Dean Leggett, drums 1987

Never the Bride : A Siddeleys ICA for The (new) Vinyl Villain

Whittling sixteen tracks down to ten was harder than that task might sound. Any, really, of the Slum Clearance songs could have featured on this ICA.

Honourable mentions go to: You Get What You Deserve Because of the lyric ‘Sometimes I think I’d rather be beneath the train’.

My Favourite Wet Wednesday Afternoon Because it’s the ultimate Siddeleys song and, for me, an authentic indie milestone full-stop. Beneath a kitchen-sinky title, it juxtaposes powerful, cosmos-shifting love with a down-at-heel seaside town and a smoke-pumping biscuit factory. It’s an anti-epic, and a chiming, elegant corker of a pop song. Remarkably, this was originally a b-side but, tellingly, a later version was chosen for Cherry Red’s sprawling Scared To Get Happy indiepop compilation. In 2018 the song popped up again, as one of two flips to 1987 debut single What Went Wrong THIS Time?, via Optic Nerve’s Optic Sevens reissue series.

Falling Off Of My Feet Again (demo): A pacier take than the version on Slum Clearance. And the faster and more brilliantly ragged of the two run-throughs on Songs From The Sidings. And, OK, maybe also because it does recall Talulah Gosh (see below).

Bedlam On The Mezzanine: Because its title sounds rather too much like the kind of event Paddington Bear might cause.

Wherever You Go Weirdly: It seems that back in the day The Siddeleys were dogged/blessed by comparisons with Talulah Gosh. Whilst, round these parts, this is pretty much the ultimate in accolades, it’s not really that accurate. This track could be the culprit. It does actually sound like Talulah. It’s a blast. But it’s not representative of the wider Siddeleys sound.

And I Wish I Was Good:  Some songs have a finality about them: something in their construction that makes them the perfect LP or compilation-closer. I Wish I Was Good is such a song. Quite relentless, robust and knockabout, it shuts the door (as it does on Slum Clearance) on this ICA. Somewhat ironically though, it seems it kind of started the Siddeleys story: written by Johnson in the very early 1980s.

With thanks to JC for the opportunity and space to share this.

Side one

Sunshine Thuggery
You Get What You Deserve
My Favourite Wet Wednesday Afternoon
Every Day Of Every Week
Are You STILL Evil When You’re Sleeping?

Side two

What Went Wrong THIS Time?
Falling Off Of My Feet Again (demo)
Bedlam On The Mezzanine
Wherever You Go
I Wish I Was Good

Still with us? Wow. Your reward? A bonus 7″, consisting of the cover mentioned a few paras back, together with the original b-side version of the ultimate Siddeleys song

Bonus 7″

Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)
My Favourite Wet Wednesday Afternoon

strangeways