Month: February 2023

Big Pink

STILL GOING STRONG (to my surprise)

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The above is the sleeve to a minor hit single in late 2009. A single that I quite enjoyed. It was catchy but somewhat disposable in that I wasn’t fussed about chasing anything else up.

mp3: The Big Pink – Dominos

I’m posting this as I was really surprised to see that The Big Pink are playing a gig in Glasgow in the middle of February. It’s part of a UK tour taking in London, Manchester, Glasgow and Leeds.  I had assumed it was a comeback tour, as I’d not heard anything of or by them since the hit single (#27). In some ways it is, but given they never really seemed to break-up, it’s maybe more accurate to say there has been a lengthy hiatus.

The Big Pink formed as a duo, consisting of Robbie Furze and Milo Cordell, in 2007.  After just one single on a small indie label in 2008, they were signed to 4AD Records.  The NME was soon championing them, declaring them as best new act at an award ceremony in early 2009, even before they had released anything on 4AD. Around the same time of the award, they recorded this track as a contribution to a NME giveaway called Pictures of You: A Tribute to Godlike Geniuses The Cure:-

mp3: The Big Pink – Love Song

Fair play for such a different and uncommercial take on what has long been regarded as one of the great indie, guitar-based singles of all time.

There were two flop singles before Dominos was a hit in October 2009.  It had next to no impact on the album sales as the debut, A Brief History of Love, had come in one week at #56 and then promptly disappeared from view.

4AD continued with their backing and a second album, Future This, was released in January 2012.  Two pre-album singles had sold poorly, so it was no surprise the parent album failed to make it into the Top 75.

A year later, it was revealed that Milo Cordell had departed from the band.  It seems that Robbie Furze was determined to continue and that production got underway, with a range of guest musicians, for a proposed third album.

Nothing emerged until 2016, and that proved to be a one-off EP for a small label.

Fast-forward to 2022 and The Big Pink are active again, this time as a trio with Akiko Matsuura and Charlie Barker joining Furze, all described as multi-instrumentalists.  A new album, The Love That’s Ours, was released last September, and is the record the trio will be touring later this month. Three singles have accompanied its release.  This is the latest:-

I think it’s fair to say they are a totally different sounding band these days…..however, I’m not all that enamoured by the new sound.  Maybe it’s just me.

JC

Smiths

THE INSANE COST OF SECOND HAND VINYL? (Issue #3)

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A few weeks back, I posed a question about whether The Smiths should make a reappearance on TVV after more than five years.  I was trying to read the room, as I felt I couldn’t really look at the musical happenings of 1983 without bringing the band into consideration.

A lively debate/discussion ensued via the comments section, with diverse opinions on offer. Many of those who contributed have been long time supporters of the blog, either through regular comments or guest postings, and it soon became apparent that whatever I decided upon, I was going to disappoint a few close friends.

Overall, it felt that most who engaged with the post did think it was possible to detach the art from the artist, with a number of folk making the point that The Smiths were much more than just one member. This, from my dear friend flimflanfan, really hit home:-

“The Smiths were a big part of 1983. I think you should consider their inclusion. That would be an accurate account of then – not now. The achievements of The Smiths other band members deserve to be spoken about without the shadow of the singer’s appalling beliefs. I still can’t listen to The Smiths, but hope in time that I might be able to. The singer’s songs? No. They won’t be listened to again.”

So, when the time comes, the 1983 series will feature The Smiths.

When I came up with the idea of the series looking at the changing cost of vinyl, I wondered whether the change of attitude from many towards The Smiths had resulted in any downward spiral in the prices being asked.

Given that I bought just about everything back in the 80s, I’ve never had to dip into the Discogs market other than for one 12″ single, which I failed to get at the time of release, but much later picked up a second hand copy (in near mint condition for the vinyl and the sleeve) for £6.99, plus P&P, in March 2008:-

mp3: The Smiths – Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me

The asking price for the version I have, and rated as near mint/near mint, is in the vicinity of £50.  Copies with sleeve wear and a vinyl assessment of Very Good+, are about half that price.

The increase in cost, in fifteen years, is over 600%, all of which can be attributed to the vinyl revival that was only just beginning to take shape back in 2008.

It’s frightening.

The two b-sides were taken from a session recorded for the John Peel Show in August 1984.

mp3 : The Smiths – Nowhere Fast (Peel Session)
mp3 : The Smiths – Rusholme Ruffians (Peel Session)

It was genuinely strange to listen to these three songs again after so long.  But it’ll still be the very occasional dip into the band’s back catalogue, rather than their singles or albums being on heavy rotation here in Villain Towers.

Oh, and the comeback just happens to be at the same time as I happen to be in Manchester for a few days…..

JC

Go-Betweens

THE INSANE COST OF SECOND HAND VINYL? (Issue #2)

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I want to say a huge thanks to everyone who pitched in with their thoughts, views, opinions and anecdotes last week when Issue #1 of this series was posted.

The extent of the replies, via the comments section, was unparalleled in the sixteen-plus years during which this and the old blog have been going.  It’s clearly a subject on which folk have a lot to say, so if anyone out there wants to offer up a guest posting, then please feel to do so via the e-mail address : thevinylvillain@hotmail.co.uk

If you do write and don’t receive an immediate reply, then there’s no cause for concern, as I don’t check the inbox every single day.

I had always planned Issue #2 for today, with a specific piece of vinyl obtained a number of years ago via Discogs, but it’s now going to appear tomorrow.  Instead, and inspired by some of the things said in the comments section, I’ve gone into my eBay history as it predates when I started using Discogs.

The unfortunate thing is that there is no precise dating available – it simply says ‘more than a year ago’ for purchases prior to 2022.  I do know, however, that I would have been using eBay to get vinyl and CDs from around mid-2006.  The prices of some of these early purchases seem like a real bargain, which chimes with a number of the experiences a number of you offered up in response to Issue #1.

An early eBay purchase was this:-

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For one reason or another, back in the early 80s, I had never got round to picking up a copy of Send Me A Lullaby, the debut album by The Go-Betweens.  I had all of the other 80s albums, but not the debut, which came out originally in November 1981 on Missing Link Records in Australia and was then issued in the UK by Rough Trade in February 1982.

The Australian release contained eight songs, but the UK release, with the catalogue number ROUGH 45, had twelve songs.  Grant McLellan and Robert Forster themselves later described it as ‘an inauspicious debut’ while Lindy Morrison felt her drumming on the record was lacking.  It was hardly any sort of ringing endorsement for the album, which is why I never had any great urge to buy it.

I spotted it on eBay, most likely in the summer of 2006 when the idea of starting The Vinyl Villain was fermenting.  I wish I could be more precise with the date, but at least the purchase history indicates what I paid for it.

£4.20.  Plus P&P.

I reckoned that was a decent enough price back then.  It felt about right for a second-hand piece of vinyl that was almost 25 years old, and was a record that nobody had any real love for. The pleasing thing was that I now had all the 80s releases on vinyl and the bonus was that, when it arrived, it was immediately noticeable that it had been very well looked after by the previous owner (or perhaps it had hardly been played as it’s not the most consistent listen, certainly in comparison to later albums).

There’s one copy of ROUGH 45 on vinyl currently on eBay.  The asking price is £79.99 with an additional £3.95 P&P.

Over on Discogs, there are thirteen copies up for sale, from people in Germany, Belgium, South Africa, United Kingdom, United States, Greece, Luxembourg, Portugal, Ireland and Japan.

The cheapest is 39 euro, (plus unspecified shipping) with the caveat that there is a scratch on one side of the vinyl, wear and tear to the cover and the original inner sleeve is missing.

The most expensive is $148.15 (US) plus £24.23 (US) shipping.

The one on sale in the UK, which would be the nearest equivalent to the eBay purchase all those years ago, has an asking price of £50 plus £4.95 shipping with the vinyl and sleeve described as VG+, but with a rider of ‘occasional very light background noise.’

A reminder that my purchase, for a copy that is at least VG+ and bordering on near mint, cost £4.20 in 2006.  As I said earlier, the current asking price on eBay is £79.99 which equates to a staggering 1,804% rise from 2006, and while I’m no economist or financial expert, I reckon that’s probably a fair bit above the inflationary level in most countries.

I’ll be surprised if anything I’ve bought on the second hand market via Discogs or eBay has had such an outrageous increase, but I’ll keep an eye out.  In the meantime, here’s a song from said album:-

mp3: The Go-Betweens – Careless

JC

PS : If you want an escape from the soapbox stuff from today, I’ve contributed a couple of contrasting guest pieces elsewhere in recent days.

This one over at Charity Chic Music is a short effort, drawing attention to three songs with the word ‘Revolution’ in the song title. It’s part of his new regular Friday series.

SWC over at No Badger Required has generously given me free rein to talk about Rochdale AFC is his current Sunday series about Third Division football.  I have prattled on at great length, way more than would normally be tolerated on his blog, and I owe him for that.  There’s also a handful of decent tunes referenced……click here if you fancy a read.

Pet Shop Boys

PET SHOP BOYS SINGLES (Part Three)

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And now we reach the first imperious phase of the Pet Shop Boys between June and October 1987. Three singles were lifted from their second album Actually, itself released in September 1987.

One of the singles went to #1, while the others reached #2 and #8.  Oh, and while they were at it, they attracted the attention of a brand-new audience for one of the greatest female singers to ever have emerged from the UK, but whose chart hits had long dried up. 

As it turned out, a fourth single would be released from Actually, but that tale is more suited to next week’s instalment.

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It’s A Sin was released on 15th June 1987

From the PSB website:-

It’s A Sin, a song that originally appeared on the demo Neil had in his pocket when he took Bobby O’ out to lunch, was released. “It’s about being brought up as a Catholic. When I went to school you were taught that everything was a sin”.

It reached #1 and caused several notable rumpuses. Jonathan King accused them of plagiarism (he later apologized and paid damages to a charity at their request). A teacher at Neil’s old school, St. Cuthbert’s Grammar School, Newcastle, got very steamed up about the picture Neil painted of his education and castigated Neil in the press.

The Salvation Army magazine, War Cry, put the Pet Shop Boys on the front page and noted, approvingly, “It’s interesting that someone’s raised the concept of sin in our modern life again”. Neil was also asked to appear with Cardinal Hume in a press advert for CAFOD; he politely declined the offer, explaining that he wasn’t a practising Catholic.

The song’s video, a sombre tale of guilt and punishment featuring the seven deadly sins, was the first time the Pet Shop Boys worked with Derek Jarman.

It entered the charts at #5 and then went to #1 where it spent three weeks.  It was also #1 in Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

7″

mp3: Pet Shop Boys – It’s A Sin
mp3: Pet Shop Boys – You Know Where You Went Wrong

A really long track for a b-side, coming in at not far short of six minutes.  It’s a hypnotically, catchy number with a touch of Latino to the tune.  It was an early indication of the road that the duo would travel on their next again album. It’s long been a favourite of mine.

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What Have I Done To Deserve This was released on 10th August 1987. It was a duet with Dusty Springfield, a much loved and appreciated UK singer but whose last hit single had been back in 1970. PSB had the song ready in time for the release of their debut album some eighteen months earlier, but an initial approach to Dusty’s management hadn’t worked out.  The success of West End Girls changed everything, and the singer flew from her California home to London to record her vocal.  It reached #2 and brought her to a new audience. In 1990, her new album Reputation went Top 20, giving her solo success again after two decades.

7″

mp3: Pet Shop Boys with Dusty Springfield – What Have I Done To Deserve This
mp3: Pet Shop Boys – A New Life

For once, the b-side was a tad anti-climatic, but then again, this release was all about the majesty of the a-side, a song that one critic, writing retrospectively in 2017 said it was “possibly the greatest pop song in history”.

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Rent was released on 12th August 1987. It was the third single to be lifted from the album Please, and perhaps this affected the sales of the 45 as it ‘only’ made #8.  It was, however, a slightly different mix from the album version and the 7″ version was some 90 seconds shorter.

7″

mp3: Pet Shop Boys – Rent
mp3: Pet Shop Boys – I Want A Dog

Back in 1987, Rent was really under-appreciated.  There was a sense that PSB were at their best with the bombastic, dancey type numbers, certainly when it comes to 45s.  A mid-tempo, bittersweet love song about a one-sided relationship caused a bit of head-scratching.  There was also a reluctance among some daytime radio DJs and producers to feature a song which was seemingly about male prostitutes  – as it turned out, in one of the few instances where Neil Tennant chose to give an explanation to a song; he (many years later) said he had always regarded it as being about a kept woman in America, possibly the secret lover of a high profile politician.

The b-side is another excellent piece of mid-tempo music. The song would become better known a while later when an Italian-style disco beat was added to it for inclusion on the 1988 album Introspective.

JC

 

Texas

SATURDAY’S SCOTTISH SONG : #341: TEXAS

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Yup.

Texas.

A band that dominated the charts in the late 90s with the #1 albums White On Blonde and The Hush, as well as a ridiculously high number of hit singles.

I don’t have any Texas songs from that era.  All I have, courtesy of its inclusion on the Park Lane Archives compilation that I’ve referred to a few times over the years, is this:-

mp3: Texas – I Don’t Want A Lover (demo)

What many folk don’t realise, or perhaps forget, is that Texas for a long long while were in danger of being cast as one-hit wonders.  I Don’t Want A Lover was the debut single.  It reached #8 at the beginning of 1989.  There would then be another twelve singles, only one of which made the Top 20 (and even that was a cover song!), before they struck gold with Say What You Want in 1997.

The demo of the debut single is all slide guitar and bombastic backing track. The drums, incidentally, are the work of Stuart Kerr who had previously been part of TVV favourites, Friends Again.

JC

Grant Lee Buffalo

AN IMAGINARY COMPILATION ALBUM : #329: GRANT LEE BUFFALO

A GUEST POSTING by HYBRID SOC. PROF

GLB

Something wrong in my stars
Could you look at my charts
Help me healing these scars
Could you learn to read minds
In the case of mine
Do you read in the dark

Second stanza from “Honey Don’t Think”

I’ve hesitated to put this ICA together. Grant Lee Buffalo only recorded 4 long-players and that meant the choices were going to be pretty constrained. On top of that, I was worried I’d want too many songs to come from Jubilee. And then there’s the issue that sometimes I find Grant Lee Phillips a bit twee, more sensitive than some versions of me can tolerate. But when I chanced on Truly, Truly this week and forced iTunes/Music to play “Superslomotion” and “Come to Momma, She Say” before I had to leave the laptop I figured I’d take a stab at it… good band.

I’m pretty sure Fuzzy, their first record, was released when I was still at KZSC and I remember liking the record as a whole more than the individual songs on it. Not much in the way of WOW! but, as a unity, there was a structured feeling. I’m probably wrong but, retrospectively, ’93 has long felt like the apogee of the arc from The Feelies through REM splitting into Nirvana and Uncle Tupelo before the two tendencies interwove as the dominance of guitars at the heart of indie/alt/whatever started its slide into the second and third tiers of music sales. I’m not making an argument the Grant Lee Buffalo tracked that arc – they arrive late in the trajectory and their four records are musically consistent. But they were one of the last bands I remember arriving on that scene and staying with that sound as the scaffolding splintered. Other earlier bands continued the tradition, some – miraculously – to this day (whether through stubbornness or reformation) but as I’ve constructed it for myself, these guys signal something, their appearance marked a transition point.

The reason they land where they do, why the signal something meaningful is because – at their best – they make me sway, shimmy, shimmer and shift… they leave my arms akimbo, head back, soaking in their handsome comfort. Notes are sustained, the sonic terrain is vast, the poetry lyrical but their pacing easily as important as the words themselves, and songs glide and swell generating a cocoon into which I settle and nestle. Grant Lee hits the sweet spot between talk

The reason they land where they do, why the signal something meaningful is because – at their best – they make me sway, shimmy, shimmer and shift… they leave my arms akimbo, head back, soaking in their handsome comfort. Notes are sustained, the sonic terrain is vast, the poetry lyrical but their pacing easily as important as the words themselves, and songs glide and swell generating a cocoon into which I settle and nestle. Grant Lee hits the sweet spot between talk singing and sing talking, there are anthemic guitars, strummed acoustics, organ glissades and drones, subtle feedback and falsettos, pedestrian/walking bass and steady drumming each and all staying out of the way but reinforcing the foundation for the pretty. And all with periodic little hints of deep soul and microscopic elements of almost funk. I find them excellent music to cook to.

Perhaps you have, but I haven’t followed Grant Lee Phillips closely since the band split around the turn of the century but he keeps pumping out music and actively touring the acoustic and singer-songwriter side of the band. I’ve liked, but not liked so much I went out in pursuit of more, a number of the songs I’ve found on best-of lists or in magazine compilations but I think the band had something holistic that grabbed me that ends up missing in the solo work.

In any event, my expectations about what would be on this were not realized. I’ve long found that the ICA format means that some songs that would be on a “best of” rather than a “representative sample that works as an album” collection just don’t make it. The fact that “Truly Truly” and “Everybody Needs a Little Sanctuary” aren’t here and that there’s more Mighty Joe Moon than Jubilee genuinely surprised me but, I tried moving things all around and this simply worked best. Forgive me.

It’s The Life, from Mighty Joe Moon (1994)
Testimony, from Jubilee (1999)
Wish You Well, from Fuzzy (1993)
Arousing Thunder, from Copperopolis (1996)
Honey Don’t Think, from Mighty Joe Moon (1994)
My, My, My, from Jubilee (1999)
Mighty Joe Moon, from Mighty Joe Moon (1994)
SuperSloMotion, from Jubilee (1999)
The Hook, from Fuzzy (1993)
Rock Of Ages, from Mighty Joe Moon (1994)

HSP

 

Big Drag

ONE HUNDRED AND ELEVEN SINGLES : #005

aka The Vinyl Villain incorporating Sexy Loser

005 – BIG DRAG – ‚I’m A Lonesome Fugitive’ (Unlean Records, ’79)

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Hello friends,

today I have both for you, in fact: a neat song, one I always adored (and will adore) plus this song is being performed by a band I always loved: the mighty Big Drag!

Their output isn’t big really, there are two singles and an album. But each of the three records is a killer, and that’s for sure. Finding something interesting about Big Drag on the internet gives you a hard time, so what I’ll do is I shamelessly copy and paste what their bassist said in an interview some 27 years ago, a time when the band were at their peak by and large. I say ‘peak’, you know what I mean: obviously they never had a platinum album, but 1994/1995 was when the three records came out, so ….

Anyway, here’s what Colin Jones had to say back then:

“They made the little girls dance.” This is what Big Drag bassist Colin Jones suggested be Big Drag’s epitaph, when asked. It fits like a steel condom, too. Ever since they first skulked in from San Antonio a couple of years back, the laconic trio has brought with them hordes of incredibly nubile women, doing up-and-down-and-round-and-round moves that would make Chubby Checker spit green to Big Drag’s garbage-can guitar-pop. “That’s always been my favorite part of Big Drag,” drawls Jones, who started the band in 1991 with singer/guitarist Milton Robichaux and drummer Dillon Phillips, following the demise of Robichaux’s similarly minded Happy Dogs. “Generally, every show we play, the first two or three rows of people in front of the stage are almost all girls. I dunno why, I guess it’s just that danceable beat, that surfy-kinda beat that you can twist to or whatever. (…)”

In my humble opinion, this pretty much sums up all you need to know about Big Drag: the music will do the rest, promised!

Now, the song I went for is, as I said, one I always loved: ‘I’m A Lonesome Fugitive’. Made famous by Merle Haggard back in 1966, but written (for Merle) by Liz and Casey Anderson (don’t tell me this series doesn’t have some educational aspects too!).

I have often wondered why it is that I love this tune so much. I mean, quite obviously I never ran away from the law or similar (which, in rainy Germany, wouldn’t be much romantic in the first place anyway), nor have I ever been much of a desperado. I once tried to be faster on my moped than the blokes from customs when smuggling a carton of cigarettes. Didn’t work out and I had to pay a fortune. Does this make me an outlaw? Probably not. Then again, one doesn’t need an explanation for everything in life, right?

Alright, San Antonio’s finest, friends, with the B-Side of their ‘Gotta Let Me Go’ – 7” from 1994:

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mp3: Big Drag – I’m A Lonesome Fugitive

Enjoy – and please let me know what you think of it!!

Dirk

 

 

 

 

 

Various

GET SETT GO!

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The thing is……

If you like this month’s hourly mix, then I’ll take credit for being such a great DJ.

If you don’t like it, then you can blame SWC as all the tracks were part of his Top 40 Best of 2022 over at No Badger Required.

mp3: Various – Get Sett Go!

Slowly Seperate – Crows (#18)
Angelica – Wet Leg (#31)
Trouble – The Big Moon (#22)
2-HEH-V – DAMEFRISØR (#1)
Ballerina (Norma) – VEPS (#16)
New York, Paris & London – HighSchool (#10)
Earth Worship – Rubblebucket (#25)
Molly’s Got A Brand New Haircut – Ghostbaby (#37)
Men On The Menu – Flossing (#3)
This New Will – Scattered Ashes (#29)
Second Thought – MEMES (#19)
New England – Kid Kapichi feat.Bob Vylan (#17)
Circumference – Working Men’s Club (#8)
A55  – English Teacher (#13)
The Hard Part – Album Club (#12)
Statuette On The Console – Bodega (#23)
Untethered – PVA (#5)
Qurantine The Sticks – Yard Act

A couple of tracks from the NBR rundown have been left off this mix as they have appeared on previous mixes. Quarantine The Sticks has been included instead of The Overload, which was #6 in the rundown.

The running time is just under 61 minutes.

JC