mp3 : Billy Bragg – Waiting For The Great Leap Forwards
mp3 : Billy Bragg – Waiting For The Great Leap Forwards (live at the Barbican)
I know it’s a lazy posting, but I’m only contracted to provide a blog post 365 days per year. Consider yourselves fortunate.
And yes, this is the same posting as 29 February 2016. Except that I’m adding in the rarely seen promo video!
I never tire of this song. I really don’t.
Hello friends,
yes, it’s Ska-time again, I know you’ve all been waiting too long, right? And today’s pick is well worth listening to, believe me, even if Ska is not your preferred dish on the menu. Why is this, you ask? Well, because Laurel Aitken isn’t called “The Godfather Of Ska” for nothing, that’s why! In his lifetime (1927 – 2005) he has made numerous fantastic records, played together with numerous bands and, perhaps most importantly, has been an inspiration to numerous new bands interested in the genre. This chap was a pioneer, period!
He was born in Cuba, moved to Jamaica as a kid, and then to London in 1960. In fact, many of the original first wave Ska-artists moved from Jamaica to the UK in order to enjoy the benefits of their growing popularity. But contrary to many of those, Laurel Aitken did not only record in the UK, but also in Jamaica throughout the 1960s. This cemented his position as one of ska’s leading artists and gained a loyal following not only among the West Indian community, but also among mods, skinheads and other ska fans. He had hit records in the 1950s through to the 1970s on labels such as Blue Beat, Pama, Trojan, Rio, Dr. Bird, Nu-Beat, Ska-Beat, and Dice.
In the mid-1970’s Aitken thought about retiring from the business, and he moved to Leicester with this wife. But then the 2-Tone ska revival kicked in, thanks to bands like The Specials, The Selecter, The Beat etc. Aitken, then in his 50s, found himself hailed as the elder statesman of ska. During the 2-Tone era, Aitken’s career was rejuvenated and like other first wave artists (Prince Buster or Desmond Dekker) he aligned himself with 2-Tone, mod and punk bands to help increase his audience. He performed with quite a lot of bands, mainly pure Ska-bands, but also with Secret Affair, a mod-outfit, which released records on their own I-Spy label. And it was I-Spy who created one of the most interesting pairings of old and new blood: punk/reggae band The Ruts backing Aitken on a single “Rudi Got Married” b/w “Honey Come Back To Me”, which was released in May 1980 under the moniker “Laurel Aitken and The Unitone” (a play on 2-Tone).
The Ruts are a familiar name, of course – everyone should know at least a few of their singles, ‘In A Rut’, ‘Babylon’s Burning’ or ‘Staring At The Rude Boys’, for example. If the vocalist, Malcolm Owen, hadn’t died so young, they probably would have become big big big … who knows? But anyway, one month before the single for I-Spy, Aitken and The Ruts were offered a BBC Session from Peel (the first one for Laurel and the fourth for the Ruts), which ended up in being one of the very finest Peel Session ever, at least as far as I’m concerned. You see, the I-Spy single is mighty fine, but this version here is a real belter!!
‘Big Fat Man’ (which could well be my signature tune currently, I’m afraid) is pretty faithful to the terrific studio recording, but also the B-Side is packed with gems: ’Jesse James’ is an extraordinary dubby version of Aitken’s 1969 single whereas the wonderful mash-up of B.B. King’s ‘Rock Me Baby’ and Louis Jordan’s 1945 ‘Caledonia’ even comes with the horn riff of Henry Mancini’s ‘Peter Gunn’ as an opener.
But the highlight for me is this, another song that tells us a story, and what a story it is, friends:
mp3: Laurel Aitken and The Ruts – Rudi Got Married
Perfectly brilliant stuff – and if this didn’t get you dancing, nothing will. I have never been a fan of bootlegs, mainly because of the missing sound quality (nothing at all to complain about this here) – but I am so happy that some true fans made the effort to issue this 7”, it surely is a most treasured item! They even shamelessly stole the Strange Fruit Records design, as well for the sleeve as for the label. Do I care? No, not the slightest!
Also, I’ve told you before about this before, I think, but a mate of mine was into Ska-management in the 80’s and as I was always skint, I often worked for him. On one occasion in 1989 I was responsible for the backstage for a Ska-allnighter, and I’m a bit proud to tell you that one of the artists I had to take care of was the Godfather himself, Laurel Aitken: what a nice fellow, to be sure!
As usual, please let me know what you think, okay?
Enjoy,
JC adds…….
This one was completely new to me, and I loved hearing it. I was also inspired by Dirk’s obvious passion for the entire session that I went digging for the other three tunes so that I could, without our dear friend from Germany knowing, add them as a small bonus.
mp3: Laurel Aitken and The Ruts – Big Fat Man
mp3: Laurel Aitken and The Ruts – Jesse James
mp3: Laurel Aitken and The Ruts – Rock Me Baby/Caledonia
As the great man himself would say…..Enjoy!!!!!!
It was last November when Part 10 of this irregular series appeared. I hope some of you are happy to see it return as, along with its companion pieces – the 12″ Lucky Dip and the CD Single Lucky Dip – there’s going to be a lot of such postings going forward. If nothing else, it saves me trying to come up with some sort of smart-ass title most days.
Soft Cell came to prominence in August 1981, thanks to a cover of an obscure Northern Soul song. Their final single from that original era of recording appeared in February 1984, just two-and-half years later, and it too was a cover of an obscure Northern Soul single
mp3: Soft Cell – Down In The Subway
The time period between the two is important, as it highlights the brevity of the period of domination enjoyed by Marc Almond and Dave Ball. Nine hit singles and three hit albums was some achievement, particularly as they never really got a fair press for much of it….their rise to fame made them fair game for the UK tabloids, while the music papers were still very suspicious of synth-music, not deeming the groups to be authentic as they relied on machinery to make so many of their sounds, particularly in live settings.
The duo had already announced they were dissolving Soft Cell by the time the third album, This Last Night In Sodom, was released. There was no enthusiasm for any sort of promotional activities, and neither Marc nor David seemed too fussed that the reviews ranged from lukewarm to hostile. They probably anticipated as much. It’s far removed from the synth-pop with which they made their name, and leans in places towards the industrial grime of the sort of acts that the music papers fawned over and whom the tabloids had no inkling. It’s not an easy listen, but it proved to be a great two-fingers departure to the pop industry, with it being a full 18 years before the next studio album, and a further 20 years again to the one after that.
Down In The Subway was the cover version included on This Last Night…. It dated from 1968, and was written by Jack Hammer. Their take on it didn’t have too much in the way of synths on it, and I don’t think many folk imagined it would be a single. But to be fair, many of the subject matters of the songs on the album made them almost impossible to issue on 7″ vinyl.
Rather unusually, the single version is longer than the album version, thanks to a much longer outro. It reached #24 in the charts, which was actually one place higher than the double-A side effort Numbers/Barriers had achieved some 12 months earlier.
The b-side was an otherwise unavailable Almond/Ball composition
mp3: Soft Cell – Disease and Desire
It’s everything that the duo were looking to do at this point in their career. It’s not a sing-a-long effort, and it’s not one that would fill the dance floors. It was the exclamation point after the final word of the last sentence on their letter of resignation to the pop industry.
Enjoy??!!
The giveaway with MOJO Magazine in February 2012 was an interesting one.
The magazine’s cover stars were New Order. The free CD consisted of a bunch of New Order cover versions, consisting of all eight tracks on Power, Corruption and Lies (the band’s 1983 album), with a further five songs covering A and B-sides of singles from the same(ish) period.
As with all of this sort of thing, the compilation was a bit hit-and-miss, but in a way that fans of New Order would no doubt disagree on which versions were decent and which bordered on the unlistenable.
I’ll offer up all 13 and leave things in the capable hands of the TVV cognoscenti to have their say via the comments section, should you wish. Some info on each act is lifted from the Discogs summary on each of them.
mp3: Age Of Consent – The Golden Filter
The Golden Filter : American/Australian electronic music duo from New York City, formed in 2008, now based in London.
mp3: We All Stand – Tarwater
Tarwater : German electronic/rock duo founded 1995 in Berlin.
mp3: The Village – Errors
Errors : an electronic/indie/post-rock band from Glasgow, Scotland.
mp3: 5-8-6 – S.C.U.M.
S.C.U.M. : British post-punk/art rock band founded in 2008 in London.
mp3: Your Silent Face – Fujiya & Miyagi
Fujiya & Miyagi: Indie rock band from Brighton, England formed in 2000 with heavy Krautrock and Italo-Disco influences.
mp3: Ultraviolence – Seekae
Seekae: Australian electronic music group based in Sydney.
mp3: Ecstacy – Walls
Walls : from London, UK
mp3: Leave Me Alone – Destroyer
Destroyer : Canadian indie rock band from Vancouver formed in 1995 and fronted by singer-songwriter Dan Bejar.
mp3: Blue Monday – Biosphere
Biosphere: the main recording name of Geir Jenssen (born 1962), a Norwegian musician who has released a notable catalogue of ambient electronic music. He is well known for his “ambient techno” and “arctic ambient” styles, his use of music loops, and peculiar samples from sci-fi sources.
mp3: The Beach – Zombie Zombie
Zombie Zombie : French electro-pop trio.
mp3: Cries and Whispers – Lonelady
Lonelady: Singer, songwriter, and producer from Manchester, England, spanning influences such as post punk, electronic, and pop.
mp3: Lonesome Tonight – Another’s Blood
Anothers Blood : Richard Frenneaux
mp3: Murder – K-X-P
K-X-P : Experimental electronic/alternative/space rock group from Helsinki, Finland, founded in 2006.
Enjoy the treasure hunt!!!
The next two in the series are Ian Broudie productions and are well removed, sonically, from the Seamonsters era. It turned out that #5, released on Monday 4 May, was one that I did get my hands on as I wasn’t at work that day and found myself up bright and early and into one of the HMV stores in Glasgow to get my hands on one of the 10,000 copies in shops across the UK.
mp3: The Wedding Present – Come Play With Me
It’s something of a song of two halves. The first part, of about two-and-a-half minutes duration, is fairly acoustic in nature, with a few loud electric guitar flourishes, with a mid-paced tempo. The final two minutes are much faster and slightly louder as David Gedge pleads that his old relationship is over, and he’s now ready, nay make that desperate, for a roll in the hay. It’s all rather brilliant, if slightly unorthodox. When played live nowadays, there’s always a huge sense of anticipation as the song nears the tempo change.
This one reached #10 – an indication that not too many new singles were released in the first week of May 1992, but at long last The Weddoes could boast of having a big hit, if such things are defined by chart placings. It proved to be their only Top 10.
No Top of The Pops appearance this month. But here’s the promo. Directed by Jeremy Hibbard, it’s one of the best of the 12 from across the year:-
The cover?
mp3: The Wedding Present – Pleasant Valley Sunday
Written by Gerry Goffin and Carole King, this had been a Top 3 hit for The Monkees back in 1967, and was well known by everyone of a certain age in the UK thanks to endless, but welcome repeats, on BBC, of The Monkees TV series throughout the 70s and into the 80s. It’s another fairly faithful take on the original, right down to the extended outro with reverb and echo. I love it.
8 June 1992 was the date of the release of the sixth single. Of equal importance, it was the same date when Hit Parade 1 was issued. Looking back on it, the idea of just 10,000 vinyl singles per month, with all the expense involved, was never going to wash with RCA, so there must have been a plan from the outset to issue compilation CDs. Hit Parade 1 brought together all 12 tracks that had been issued between January and June 1982, including the newest of them:-
mp3: The Wedding Present – California
The fact that more than 30 years later, this is still often used to open live shows, demonstrates just how much David Gedge thinks of it and, of course, it is one much beloved by fans of all ages and from all eras of discovering the group. It is one of the most sing-along of all their tunes, and its acoustic(ish) nature again exposes the myth that all the songs sound the same.
It went in at #16. It led to another Top of The Pops appearance, one in which David poked some fun at a certain t-shirt that was all the rage among the indie crowd that summer.
This month’s promo was directed by Tim Riley.
For the sixth of the covers, The Weddoes turned to one of their peers from the C86 era.
Close Lobsters were quite often referred to as the Scottish equivalent of The Wedding Present. They had formed in 1985, been part of the NME C86 compilation, had signed to an indie label and enjoyed a degree of cult status. But where Gedge & co had made the shift to a major label, Close Lobsters called it a day in 1989 after two albums and seven singles of very decent quality. They have since reformed – it was in 2012 to perform at a couple of overseas pop festivals as well as a gig in Glasgow – since when there has been some new material in the shape of EPs and an album. They are on the bill to perform at the Edge of The Sea Festival this coming August.
mp3: The Wedding Present – Let’s Make Some Plans
The cover has helped make this the most popular and well-loved of all Close Lobsters songs. It was originally released as a single in 1987, and got to #17 in the Indie Charts. The TWP version is a bit harder-edged and louder than the original which, by any sort of measurement, is an indie-pop classic.
Worth mentioning that Hit Parade 1, which was also issued on vinyl, reached #22 in the album charts in June 1992.
A Glasgow-band without anyone being from Scotland, never mind its biggest and best city. Is such a thing possible?
Of course, it is!! Zoey Van Goey were very much part of the fabric of the musical smorgasbord in the city and country between 2007 and 2012, releasing two albums and a handful of 45s and EPs, as well as playing numerous gigs, all of which (certainly the ones I attended) were very enjoyable.
They were initially a trio consisting of Matt Brennan, Michael John McCarthy and Kim Moore, all Glasgow-based but originally from Canada, Ireland and England respectively. They got off to the most wonderful of starts in 2007 with their debut single, Foxtrot Vandals, released on the Glasgow-based Say Dirty Records, being produced by Stuart Murdoch. Further pop royalty got involved the following year, with Paul Savage producing the follow-up 45, Sweethearts In Disguise, again on Say Dirty.
In 2009, the debut album, The Cage Was Unlocked All Along, was released to a lot of critical acclaim in Scotland. It was a self-funded and self-released effort that wasn’t always easy to find in the shops, and before the year was out, they had signed with Chemikal Underground with the album given a re-release.
A fourth member, Adam Scott, joined the fray – yet another who was not from round these parts. They continued to work hard at their craft, recording and gigging when the opportunity enabled, and 2011 saw them release their second album, Propeller Versus Wings, again on Chemikal Underground.
And then…..silence. A band that had been very active on the live front seemed to suddenly stop playing. There was never any official announcement that they had called it a day, but it was soon clear that the lack of activity meant it was all over.
The individual members are still part of the Glasgow and wider music scene, but in different ways.
Matt Brennan is a Professor of Popular Music at the University of Glasgow, and a well-kent face at gigs of all shapes and sizes across the city.
Michael John McCarthy has become a celebrated composer for stage and screen, including commissions from the National Theatre of Scotland. In 2022, he returned to ‘popular’ music, thanks to being one of the main members of Album Club, a collective whose debut album was one of the best records to be released in 2022. Adam Scott was another part of that collective.
Kim Moore has also become a composer, best-known for the creation of dark ambient soundscapes that have been used in film, theatre and dance productions.
I think it is fair to say that Zoey Van Goey was just a stepping stone for what the band members would go onto achieve, and while what they do is all rather different from the indie-pop days, I hope they all retain a love and affection for their songs. This was the debut:-
mp3: Zoey Van Goey – Foxtrot Vandals
When I started out this Saturday series away back in February 2015, I always imagined Zoey Van Goey would be the last to feature. But nope, there’s a few singers and bands whose songs have only come my way in recent years. There’s at least one more ‘Z’ to feature and then, and I’ll be running back through the alphabet again to pick anyone I’ve not featured before….oh, and I also forgot about those whose names are associated with numbers. They’re on the list for the next few weeks.
This is the part of the series where I consult one of my reference books and find some 45s which didn’t sell in great numbers in February 1979. Only a small number this time around.
mp3: Magazine – Rhythm of Cruelty (single version)
Magazine‘s first new piece of music in 1979 was their fourth single on Virgin Records. It was released just a few weeks ahead of their sophomore album, Secondhand Daylight. The single didn’t dent the charts, and the album would only come in at a rather modest #38.
mp3: The Only Ones – You’ve Got To Pay
I wasn’t aware of this back in 1979. Indeed, if wasn’t for the sheer magnificence of Another Girl, Another Planet, then I probably wouldn’t have given a passing thought to The Only Ones all these years later. The band was on CBS Records, and while AGAP hadn’t charted in 1978, there was so much written about it and the band that hopes were probably high among the execs that the follow-up material would do the business. As with Magazine, this was the lead-off single from a second studio album. As with Magazine, the single flopped. As with Magazine, the subsequent album, Even Serpents Shine, experienced disappointing sales, reaching just #42, but at least this was a higher placing than the previous year’s debut.
mp3: Swell Maps – Dresden Style
Again, I have to own up that, at the age of 15, I wasn’t all that aware of Swell Maps. I possibly had at some point heard this, their second single (but their first on Rough Trade) when it was released in February 1979, but at the time I would very much have dismissed it as tuneless rubbish. Nowadays, without ever getting to ever fully fall for the ‘charms’ of the band, I’ll admit to quite enjoying this one, which I picked up via someone else’s blog quite a few years ago.
I’ll mention in passing that there were a couple of other flop singles released in February 1979 that would later in the year be re-released and enter the charts. I’ll come to them as and when later in the series.
I was lucky enough, last September, to get a shout from my friend Mike, the brains and energy behind the long-established Manic Pop Thrills blog, to join him at a gig in Glasgow.
The main attraction for both of us was the presence on stage of Mick Harvey, the highly-talented Australian musician probably best known from his many years working alongside Nick Cave or perhaps his work with PJ Harvey (no relation!!).
I did, in due course, make mention of how special the gig proved to be, but my words were tucked away as part of a piece looking at the album Invisible You by J.P. Shilo, and may therefore have been missed by some regulars. The gig was, ostensibly, to promote Mick’s latest album, Phantasmagoria in Blue, which he had recorded alongside Mexican singer Amanda Acevedo, but the publicity poster promised a show by an ensemble called The Invisible Blue Unicorns, so neither myself nor Mike quite knew what to expect.
It proved to be a memorable gig, with seven musicians coming and going throughout the night, and a set-list consisting of songs that had been released on records by Sometimes With Others (a Berlin-based band), J.P. Shilo as well as those from Mick Harvey and Amanda Acevedo’s new album. All three acts shared equal billing, and indeed, Mick Harvey seemed to be at his happiest when he wasn’t the centre of attention.
The opportunity at the end of the night to chat to all concerned, while spending money at the merch stall, was too good to pass up. I ended up with two albums and two singles, all on vinyl. One of the singles was a 12″ release, with just 500 copies having been pressed. It contained two tracks from Phantasmagoria in Blue (both of which happened to be covers) along with a solo track from Mick Harvey that had been released as a digital single in early 2023.
This digital single was also a cover, and Khayem wrote about it at length just last week over at Dubhead when he referred to it about to be included on Mick’s forthcoming album, Five Ways To Say Goodbye, which is scheduled for release this coming May. Rol, of My Top Ten fame, and Adam from Bagging Area, were among those who left comments, with both indicating that, on the basis of the digital single, the album was going to be ordered.
As Khayem outlined, the new album will follow the norm of most Mick Harvey releases, with one-third of its 12 tracks being original songs, and two-thirds cover versions.
The 500 copies of the 12″ single are long gone, and I’m very pleased with myself that I bought one. (It’s #193 of the 500). Here are the two tracks that can also be found on Phantasmagoria in Blue:-
mp3: Mick Harvey and Amanda Acevedo – Milk & Honey
mp3: Mick Harvey and Amanda Acevedo – Love Is A Battlefield
The former is a track by the late and tragic American folk singer, Jackson C Frank, whose recording career consisted of just one eponymous album, recorded and produced by Paul Simon in 1965. The latter is a cover of the song which gave Pat Benatar a global-hit in 1983.
The above image is of the reverse of the sleeve. As Khayem helpfully explained last week over at his place, this is a cover of Ich Hab’ Noch Einen Koffer In Berlin, originally recorded by Bully Buhlan in 1951 but more famous in its 1955 version by Marlene Dietrich. Mick translated the song into English:-
mp3: Mick Harvey – A Suitcase In Berlin
This one obviously comes highly recommended by a number of the blogging community. It’s a thing of great depth and beauty, and I trust that those of you not previously au fait with it, will be giving your approval.
Hello friends,
you can thank me later, but today I invite you all to a day in the Caribbean – to Antigua we go, and isn’t that nice? And if this weren’t enough, the music is completely different as well, compared to what you had to endure up until now. Yes, it has rhythm, friends, or, to quote John Peel, for a change not a record made by sulky Belgian art students dying of tuberculosis.
Yes, in fact, believe it or not, it’s Calypso time! And before you start shaking your head and skip this wonderful essay: just wait, will you? This tune is well worth listening to, I swear!
King Short Shirt’s real name is MacLean Emanuel, he’s 82 now and after converting to Christianity he changed from Calypso to Gospel by and large. But before this happened, this guy was the absolute king of Calypso in all of the Caribbean! He won numerous Calypso competitions (those are a big deal in all of the Caribbean apparently, not only locally in Antigua) from the 60’s onwards. The last one he attended was in 2013, when he was 71, where he withdrew before the quarter-finals to “give the other guys a chance”.
King Short Shirt had many hits in his long career, and many good albums. ‘Ghetto Vibes’ in particular is highly recommendable. It also includes today’s single, which, as far as I’m concerned, is one of the best examples of what made the King so special – and so important: clever lyrics combined with a great rhythm, a political credo as firm as Billy Bragg’s and – perhaps most importantly – a true love for his homeland:
mp3: King Short Shirt – Nobody Go Run Me
And also, like John Cooper Clarke, featured here a few weeks ago, the King was conferred with the degree of ‘Doctor of Letters Degree honoris causa’ from the University of the West Indies last year. Now, is this a new trend in this series …. ‘Sirs only’? Aah, you wait and see … perhaps it’s Paul McCartney next – who can possibly tell?
Either way – take care and enjoy,
I didn’t buy this one at the time of its release back in September 1992. The fact that I was living in a small flat at the time, combined with what was an increasing move towards CD purchases only, means it must have been some 15 years later, when I was starting off the blog and re-igniting a love for vinyl, that I’ve picked up a second-hand copy.
I know that I hoovered up plenty of old 7″ and 12″ singles for next to nothing around this time, being quite fortunate in my timing as it was slightly in advance of the boom that followed and the beginning of the increase in prices, particularly for releases that are long out-of-print and have become increasingly sought after.
The asking price on Discogs for any vinyl by The Sundays is eye-watering. Upwards of £50 for the debut album Reading, Writing and Arithmetic (of which I have a copy which was definitely bought back in 1990). The follow-up, Blind, fetches £200 or more, while the third and final album, Static and Silence is marginally more expensive. I’ve both on CD, and while I’d love to have the vinyl, I’m not prepared to pay those sorts of prices.
The band only ever released five singles in the UK, and not all of them came out on vinyl. The debut Can’t be Sure can be had for about £6, but Goodbye, which was the advance 45 issued a couple of weeks prior to Blind, has an asking price of £40, which is very considerably more than I paid for it!
There’s three tracks on this one. The version of Goodbye is identical to that on the album, along with a cover version and otherwise unavailable original on the b-side.
mp3: The Sundays – Goodbye
mp3: The Sundays – Wild Horses
mp3: The Sundays – Noise
The cover is of the Rolling Stones song, originally found on the 1971 album, Sticky Fingers.
Goodbye reached #27 in the UK singles chart.
I’ve never actually seen a copy of the debut single by Billy Bragg, but then again, it’s never been the easiest to come across.
Debut album Life’s A Riot With Spy vs Spy had been released on Utility (an imprint of Chrysalis Records) in May 1983. It contained seven songs, it rotated at 45rpm, and it had the words ‘Pay no more than £2.99 for this 7 track album’ printed on the front of the sleeve.
The follow-up, Brewing Up With Billy Bragg, came out on Go! Discs in November 1984, The sleeve stated that the album was ‘A Puckish Satire On Contemporary Mores’ and that the asking price was no more than £3.99.
Billy was quite adamant that no singles should be lifted from either album. Record companies being what they are, weren’t all that enamoured by such an attitude. They tried to be clever by pressing up a 45 in Germany, as a combined release by Chrysalis and Go!Discs, featuring one track from both albums, with the front and reverse of the sleeve looking like the album covers. The hope that fans would be determined enough to buy enough copies on import to enable a UK chart position.
mp3 : Billy Bragg – St Swithin’s Day
mp3 : Billy Bragg – A New England
The plan failed dismally. The single didn’t chart and with no great demand, meaning there was never any repress, with the outcome being in 2024 that anyone wanting a copy will have to pay a bit more than they would for other Billy Bragg singles or albums from the era – you’re looking at £35-£40.
Fair play to Billy for being so dogmatic about things, but what a great double-A side 45 it proved to be…..
I didn’t even try to pick up singles #3 and #4 on the first Mondays in March and April 1992. But as mentioned a couple of weeks back, I’ve got them here at Villain Towers, thanks to the eventual growth in buying second-hand vinyl online a few decades later. And neither were all that expensive.
I might have thought Go-Go Dancer was a rare misfire, but the run of 45s over the next few months turned out to be a glorious one.
mp3: The Wedding Present – Three
It was ingenious to have the song title match the third 45 in the series match, although I remember saying at the time that the next one better not be about a stray golf shot….
Three has long been one of the most popular songs among the fanbase. In anyone else’s hands, this could have come out just sleazy and sick-inducing as some sort of anthem for swingers. Instead, there’s a dark humour about the desperation of the protagonist wanting to get something just a bit kinky and different to spice up their sex life. And as he had done so on countless previous occasions, David Gedge needed to explain that not all of his songs were written out of personal experiences and circumstances, and indeed, most came from his vivid imagination.
The cover version this time was quite inspired
mp3: The Wedding Present – Think That It Might
It’s a great take on what is really quite an obscure album track by Altered Images that was on the 1982 album Pinky Blue. It wasn’t the first time they had covered one of their songs with Happy Birthday being part of a Peel Session back in 1988 but in this instance they have taken something and made it sound as if it was a TWP original.
Three went in at #14, and it secured another Top of The Pops appearance, one which many years later was part of a repeat show on BBC Four in high definition:-
And here’s the promo, directed by Andy Wilson.
The following month saw the release of this as the 45:-
mp3: The Wedding Present – Silver Shorts
With an intro that harked back to the beloved earlier material, Silver Shorts was a bit different from the sort of sounds of the past 18 months or so. More pop than rock, with David trying a bit of a falsetto vocal. There was a change of producer on this one, with it being handled by Ian Broudie, which is perhaps one of the main reasons why this one, and indeed the other two singles he would be involved in, were more radio-friendly than normal.
It really is rather wonderful and well-deserving of its #14 placing, which matched that of Three, but, sadly, didn’t see them invited onto Top of The Pops. Here’s the promo:-
This one was directed by Judith Carter.
The b-side this month was a brave choice. I’ll ‘fess up and say that it’s not one that I’ve much time for, but then again I was never a fan of the original, nor did I ever get into the TV programme for which it was the instrumental theme tune:-
mp3: The Wedding Present – Falling
Julee Cruise had enjoyed a #7 hit with the original in late 1990. A couple of later singles skirted the Top 60, but that was the extent of her success. The Weddoes version is nearly six minutes in length, and fair play for doing something unexpected, but it’s not for me.
Adapted from t’internet:-
Zoë Bestel is a Scottish singer-songwriter, who describes her music as Nu-Folk. Born in Liverpool in 1997, she was aged 8 when she moved with her family to Wigtown, Scotland. Prior to taking up music professionally, she won awards for the piano, recorder, oboe and singing at the Galloway Music Festival. In 2011, aged 13, she started teaching herself the Ukulele.
The following year, her first EP ’35 Missed Calls’ was released by Distilled Records. It was really well received, and soon the teenager was playing live at folk festivals across Scotland.
In 2014, she self-released the album ‘Sir Lucas & The Moon’, featuring entirely original songs, and again the reviews were positive. In September 2014, she took part in a short of Scottish venues alongside other up-and-coming musicians, one of whom was Lewis Capaldi.
Zoë continued to play and perform over the next few years without ever becoming a household name. In 2017, the label Last Night From Glasgow, which had not long been formed, announced that it would be releasing Transience, her sophomore album.
It came out in 2018 to a great deal of praise across the Scottish media. The Herald newspaper included three tracks from the album in their ‘Top 100 Tunes from Scotland in 2018’, with this being placed at #6:-
mp3: Zoë Bestel – Eye For An Eye
Plans are in place for a third album which hopefully will see the light of day in 2024.
The third-largest city in Germany, with a population of approximately 1.6 million, the wider metropolitan region is home to some 6 million people. It is located on the River Isa, north of the Alps and not that far from the border with Austria. It’s a young city as these things go, first mentioned as recently as 1158. Given its proximity to Austria, it’s hardly a surprise that it has long had connections with classical music, but it is also renowned as a city where Krautrock has long thrived and is home to studios where many of the established rock bands have recorded, such as the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and Queen. Oh, and never let it be forgotten that the city was where Giorgio Moroder, the godfather of disco and electronic dance music, did so much of his early work, especially with Donna Summer.
mp3: Editors – Munich
From 2005, the second single to be released by the band from Birmingham, England (just in case anyone maybe thought they were from Alabama). Still going strong today, with their seventh studio album being released in 2022, all of which have gone Top 10 in the UK, although they haven’t had a song reach the singles charts since 2009….not that they seem bothered about it. Munich hit the #10 spot, bettered only by Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors, which got to #7 in 2007.
Was lucky enough, in the company of Jacques the Kipper to see them back in the day when they played at King Tut’s in Glasgow in August 2005, just a few days after the release of the debut album. Would have been nice to have seen them in Munich itself….where they played at a venue called The Atomic Cafe on 11 November 2005.
Might Be Stars, released in November 1995 was the third single to be lifted from Be A Girl, itself the third album by The Wannadies, without question the greatest pop band ever to emergr out of Sweden. As you can see from the above image, the single was released across two different CDs – very much the standard practice of the day – which usually meant one of, or a combination of, three things.
1. Loads of different songs as b-sides across the 2 x CDs
2. Loads of different remixes of the single across at least one of the CDs
3. Live tracks to pad things out across one or both CDs
CD1 of Might Be Stars followed option 1.
mp3: The Wannadies – Might Be Stars (edited)
mp3: The Wannadies – Cherry Man
mp3: The Wannadies – Lee Remick
mp3: The Wannadies – Love Is Dead
The difference between the edited version of the song and the album version is barely noticeable, consisting of ten seconds of music at the start being seamlessly removed to enable the main vocal to lick in a bit earlier. The three other songs consist of two more than decent Wannadies songs and a cover of the debut single by The Go-Betweens.
CD2of Might Be Stars also followed option 1.
mp3: The Wannadies – Might Be Stars
mp3: The Wannadies – New Life
mp3: The Wannadies – So Happy Now
mp3: The Wannadies – Things That I Would Love To Have Undone
The album version is offered up on CD2. The three other songs consist of two more than decent Wannadies songs and a cover of the first hit single by Depeche Mode.
Might Be Stars enjoyed a two-week stay in the singles chart, entering at #51 on 18 November 1995, dropping to #71 the following week before falling out altogether.
I typed ‘Magazine 14 February, Manchester’ into Google the other day, and to my astonishment and delight in equal measures, I was guided to a post from the original blog, one that I had long presumed was lost forever. No apologies are offered for delving back into the vaults for the second post of the day………
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I’m not sure if I can exactly recall what I’ve done with Mrs Villain on previous Valentine’s Nights. I know we’ve gone out to restaurants, taken in a movie, stayed in with a takeaway (and watched a movie!) and I’m sure there was one year we were both recovering from stinking colds and just shut out the entire world. But I couldn’t ever pin down any precise event in any precise year.
But neither of us will ever forget Valentine’s Night 2009.
Regular readers will know I’ve long been hopelessly devoted to Howard and the boys in Magazine. Along with Johnny Cash, they were the act I most regretted never taking the opportunity to go see live. And after almost 30 years since their break-up, I had long given up hope…..
And just like buses when you’ve been hanging around waiting impatiently for an eternity, two of the damn things come along together – in other words, having made all the arrangements to go to the hometown show in Manchester on Saturday 14th, I got an 11th hour opportunity to also go along to the Glasgow show on Monday 16th.
Both turned out to be quite special, although what I saw in Glasgow was an identical set-list and an almost identical set of spoken intros by Howard Devoto. If it hadn’t been for Dave Formula being hatless in Glasgow, the whole thing could have easily been a facsimilie. Soundwise, the Manchester show triumphed, but I reckon this was as much to do with the poor acoustics in The Glasgow Academy (I know from reading some initial reviews of the home town gig that some fans were critical of the acoustics at their Academy – believe me they are infinitely better than the similarly named venue 220 miles north….for one thing, I heard some great backing vocals in Manchester, last night they were totally lost)
Don’t get me wrong….I’m not saying the Glasgow gig was anything less than stunning…..I was the one who was spoiled by seeing them in a superior location in front of an ecstatic and adoring home crowd.
As I mentioned, it was identical set-lists in the same running order. Much of the set was as anticipated in advance in terms of fan favourites and songs that have appeared on various ‘Best Of’ collections released by a desperate record company over the past 25 years. But equally, there were some real unexpected gems and oddities drawn from obscure b-sides and long-forgotten LP tracks to keep the hardcore fans happy and the casual fans bewildered.
It was of course, just 4/5 of the classic Magazine line-up with Howard Devoto on lyrics, Barry Adamson on bass, Dave Formula on keyboards and John Doyle on drums. Taking the place of the late and great John McGeogh on guitar was Norman Fisher-Jones (aka Noko), formerly Howard’s sidekick in Luxuria. Praise has to be heaped on Noko, for he did a fantastic job when he really was on a hiding to nothing…..
The band were on tremendous form, playing with a passion and an energy that belies their years (the average age must be nearer 60 than 50….). Howard’s vocals were much better than any of us I think could dare have ever imagined….maybe the fact he hasn’t sung on stage that often in recent years has protected his throat and thus allowed him to sound so good. Barry’s bass playing was a joy to behold, especially on some of the real up-tempo numbers where, working in tandem with John, he drove the songs on at a frantic pace yet remaining cool and controlled and making it look effortless. Dave’s keyboard playing??? I think he might have hit a bum note….or maybe two….over the course of each night….but that was probably deliberate (or is it just my ears at my age?) Anyway, every Magazine fan knows how important his contribution to the sound has been over the years, and live, his playing was every bit as soulful, poppy and progressive as you would expect depending on the song.
If I had a grumble, it would be that a few of my own personal favourites didn’t make the set-list, but what was played more than made up for it:-
Intro – The Thin Air (taped..not live)
The Light Pours Out of Me
Model Worker
The Great Beautician/The Honeymoon Killers
Because You’re Frightened
You Never Knew Me
Rhythm of Cruelty
I Want To Burn Again
This Poison
A Song from Under the Floorboards
Permafrost
The Book
Twenty Years Ago/Definitive Gaze
Parade
Shot By Both Sides
ENCORE:
Thank You (Falentinme Be Mice Elf Again)
Motorcade
ENCORE 2
I Love You You Big Dummy
Too many highlights to mention, and not a dull moment in a 90-minute set. But the sheer joy of the opening drum-beats on Saturday as I realised after all these years I was really seeing the band in the flesh will live with me until I no longer have the required grey matter in my brain….and even then I still reckon I’ll get unexpected flashbacks.
On this basis, I have to advise any reader who might not be sure if the fact that one of their all-time favourite bands of old have recently reformed and hit the road for a final payday before its time to pull on the slippers and puff on the pipe that it’s well worth taking a gamble on going along.
Magazine didn’t disappoint – they surpassed every one of my hopes and expectations.
I am one very very happy chappy right now. I think you get the message.
mp3 : Magazine – Permafrost (live)*
mp3 : Magazine – A Song From Under The Floorboards (live)*
*Recorded at Melbourne Festival Hall, 6th September 1980.
Happy Listening.
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It’s Valentine’s Day. And I thought I’d dedicate today’s first post* to my other half, Rachel. She, more than anyone else, is responsible for the original blog getting going back in 2006 when she bought me a USB Turntable and encourage me to start writing about some of the old music that was sitting here in Villain Towers.
And last year, for my 60th birthday, she paid for the mint-condition copy of the holy grail, the debut single by Orange Juice on Postcard Records. I owe so much to her.
I’ve mentioned before that Rachel is a handful of years older than me (not that she looks anything at all like her age – she is a sort of female version of Dorian Gray). As a teenager, she really had a crush on a few musicians, with the biggest of all being on Marc Bolan.
It was 53 years ago, almost to the day (12 February 1971) when Hot Love was released. Just over a month later, it reached #1 in the UK singles chart, the first time ever for T. Rex.
mp3: T.Rex – Hot Love
The group would enjoy three further #1 hits over the two years – Get It On, Telegram Sam and Metal Guru, while three others would hit the Top 3 – Jeepster, Children of The Revolution and Sold Gold Easy Action.
Every one of those singles, along with quite a few other T.Rex songs from that golden era have proven to be timeless classics. Glamorous rock at its very finest, although the first #1 was really quite pop-orientated.
*second post of the day scheduled for a bit later on.
Around this time last year, I offered up an ICA looking at what Giorgio Moroder had got up to in 1983. And I ended with a bit of a tease regarding what was to come in 1984, so it’s time to deliver, right? I wouldn’t say the quality or musical diversity of this ICA necessarily matches the 1983 selection, but I think there is still a lost gem or two, a story or several you may not have heard before, and maybe the odd song that may not be what you’d expect from the people involved. And the opening track is a solid gold classic…
Side One
(1) Giorgio Moroder & Philip Oakey: Together In Electric Dreams
Plot summary of the movie Electric Dreams: Young architect Miles buys a home computer to help him in designing an earthquake-resistant brick. You want to see this movie already, don’t you? But wait, there’s more! Hooking it up to his employers’ database and attempting to download “everything”, Miles causes the computer to overheat and in a panic tries to cool it down by pouring champagne on it. Good job this guy’s an architect and not an electrician. Or a sommelier. Naturally there’s sparks and smoke but the computer is not dead, quite the opposite in fact as it has somehow become sentient… and then the next hour follows a love triangle between Madeline the cellist who lives downstairs, Miles, and the computer, but to cut a long story short, after much hijinks and cyberjealousy, eventually the computer sacrifices itself to give Miles a chance of happiness with Madeline. Before it gets destroyed by a massively improbable plot device, the computer reveals its name as Edgar, and it having a name was obviously meant to be a tear-jerking revelation but the publicity people clearly didn’t understand narrative structure and put the big reveal on the poster, so everybody knew already. The main thing is, it does come up with a design for the earthquake-resistant brick, so it’s a happy ending really. Well, assuming you’re really into earthquake-resistant bricks, but then again, who isn’t? No, it is actually better than I’m making it sound. Weirdly, there’s been serious talk lately about a remake, though I can’t see it working now. In a world with AI everywhere, Edgar would have to be less intelligent than the average computer – though admittedly if you pour champagne over the motherboard, that is actually a more realistic outcome.
But back to 1984. And back to relevance. The whole concept of Electric Dreams was that it would be a musical, but – like Flashdance the previous year – rather than having the characters themselves burst into song, the action would be shot like music videos accompanying the songs on the soundtrack. Writer-producer Rusty Lemorande (great name) wanted no more than two songs from any given artist – though he did briefly consider taking Jeff Lynne up on his offer to do the whole thing. Arguably the headline act is Culture Club, who offer a pair of ballads (if you look up Love Is Love online you’ll find loads of people commenting on how beautiful it is, which is pretty hilarious considering that in the context of the film it’s explicitly a bunch of cliches put together by a computer struggling with the concept of human emotion… I mean, it’s essentially “ChatGPT, write me a love song”). P.P. Arnold gets the opening title song, although in the movie you only hear the chorus because the verses give away the plot (“He was a boy who bought a computer… taking over was its only crime!” Yeah, quite a biggie though, wasn’t it?). Jeff Lynne gets two songs, of which Video is especially of-its-time. Heaven 17 supply a driving synth instrumental, Chase Runner – and while Moroder wasn’t involved there, it’s pretty much a straight homage to him, even to the point of having a title that combines two of his!
And as for Giorgio himself, despite the supposed two-track maximum, he actually manages to have a hand in no fewer than four: two instrumentals credited to him alone (an underscore piece called Madeline’s Theme, and The Duel, which we’ll get to later), an upbeat number called Now You’re Mine, sung by “fifth Culture Clubber” Helen Terry, and of course this classic from the movie’s finale, when Edgar – who has somehow transferred his consciousness to what we’d now call “the cloud” – bids farewell to Miles and Madeline by making this song play on every radio in California. (Moroder himself has a fleeting and funny cameo as a radio producer wondering what the hell is going on.)
And the single… you know the single. A compendium of fantastic moments: that shimmering intro, the “however far it SEEMS!” in the chorus, Elizabeth Daily‘s “Love ne-ver ends!” and Richie Zito’s crunchy guitar solo… it doesn’t try to be clever-clever, it’s just brilliantly put together. Maybe it’s become over-familiar – it’s certainly one of the media’s go-to tracks for evoking the era – but genuinely, it’s just great, isn’t it?
(2) Berlin: Dancing In Berlin
The name alone was a clue that Los Angeles new wavers Berlin looked to Europe for their inspiration, and when you actually heard them, it wasn’t hard to spot the influence of electronic pioneers like Kraftwerk and Giorgio Moroder. So a collaboration was an obvious move, and for the group’s third album Love Life, they managed to book some time out of Moroder’s busy schedule to lay down a couple of tracks. (OMD producer Mike Howlett handled the remainder.) On this occasion Moroder was not called upon to write anything but just to produce. And the band – and Geffen Records – were obviously very pleased with the results, since those two songs also became the album’s singles. No More Words was probably the more popular, but I’m sharing Dancing In Berlin as it feels like more of a classic Moroder production.
Of course it also led to Berlin getting the call two years later to record Take My Breath Away for the Top Gun soundtrack, one of Moroder’s biggest hits but so far from Berlin’s previous sound that it ended up causing massive disagreements over their future direction, resulting in them splitting up and only talking to each other through lawyers for ages. They’re all friends again now, though.
(3) Janet Jackson with Cliff Richard: Two To The Power Of Love
Janet Jackson seemed to burst onto the scene with her style fully-formed on 1986’s “Control”, but before that, she recorded two albums that even her fans never really talk about. The second of these was 1984’s Dream Street, for which Moroder produced five tracks including this one. Now, I’m not going to pretend this is a lost classic. It’s better than you’d expect, but nevertheless, it’s as good an example as you could wish for to explain why nobody ever talks about the early Janet Jackson LPs.
I’m including it for two reasons: firstly, because the fact that Janet Jackson recorded a love duet with Cliff Richard, and Giorgio Moroder produced it, is so bizarre that unless presented with the evidence, nobody would ever believe it. And secondly… look, I know this is a wild idea, but you know how David Hasselhoff goes on about how his song Looking For Freedom helped to bring about the fall of the Berlin Wall – and how, much as everyone mocks him for it, the really weird thing is that he may actually have a point? Well, I’ve never noticed any of the people involved in this record claiming that it helped, even in the tiniest way, to bring about the end of apartheid, but the one place it actually became a top ten hit was South Africa, where the front cover looked like this:
Terrible design (it doesn’t even get the full title on!), but also a harbinger of change? I know it’s a hell of a stretch, but little things do feed into bigger things and, well, I’m just putting the hypothesis out there… I do so wish it had been a better song, though.
(4) Freddie Mercury: Love Kills
When Moroder was working with David Bowie on the title song for the 1982 remake of classic 40s horror Cat People, talk naturally turned to the pair’s common love of European expressionist cinema. Both men harboured an ambition to find a suitable old silent film and put a modern soundtrack to it, and at this stage Bowie had been trying to get the rights to one film for years. Moroder’s project was already more advanced: he had, he enthused, found and acquired the rights to a movie nobody had heard of but which was ideal for his purpose: a 1927 dystopian epic called Metropolis. Bowie was a bit taken aback, but didn’t let on that this was the very same film he’d had his eye on. Maybe if he had mentioned it, there could have been a collaboration: Moroder and Bowie doing a full film score together, now there’s a dream team.
Moroder ploughed money into having the film restored, tinted, and re-edited to make sense (necessary because at the time large parts of it were still missing). And he wrote a full score with songs performed by some big names: Bonnie Tyler and Adam Ant were pretty big catches, as was Jon Anderson (coming off the back of Yes‘s US number one Owner of A Lonely Heart) but the biggest coup of all was getting Freddie Mercury, who brought with him a song idea he’d been kicking around for a few years, initially as a ballad before Moroder reworked it into the pulsating electropop groove heard here.
While most of the backing is played by session keyboardist Fred Mandel, many years later it emerged that all of the other members of Queen made contributions as well. This wasn’t entirely surprising and many people had already surmised as much, considering that it was taped during sessions for Queen’s own 1984 album The Works, which was recorded – as the last couple of Queen albums had been – at Moroder’s Munich studio Musicland with in-house producer Reinhold Mack. (Mandel is on The Works too – most memorably providing the wah-wah laden not-a-guitar solo on I Want To Break Free.)
Love Kills was the lead single from the soundtrack, a pretty substantial hit, a barnstorming club monster, and it goes down in history as Freddie Mercury’s first ever solo single – as long as you ignore the Larry Lurex episode, which luckily everyone does.
(5) Giorgio Moroder: The Duel
This one’s just plain fun. We’re back to Electric Dreams and one of the movie’s highlights. The first demonstration of Edgar’s newfound sentience comes when Miles goes out, the cello player downstairs starts practising – and Edgar joins in. So this is their duet, or duel. A word of warning: this track has full stereo separation with the cello in the left channel and the computer on the right. So you really do need to be listening in stereo for this one. If you’re on a single speaker / earbud / whatever, you’ll be missing half the duet and all of the point.
Side Two
(1) Giorgio Moroder and Paul Engemann: Reach Out
On my first Giorgio Moroder ICA, side two opened with a cheesy but suprisingly popular song performed by Paul Engemann. So with that precedent in mind, it was obvious what had to fill the spot this time.
If you give the Olympic Games to Los Angeles, you can hardly be surprised if they make it a bit showbiz. The LA Games arguably invented the even-more-modern-than-the-Modern Olympic Games, for which part of the masterplan was bringing music into the presentation – and with the world’s top film composers right there on their doorstep, naturally the Games were going to be scored like an action blockbuster. The likes of John Williams, Christopher Cross, recent Oscar winner Bill Conti, Philip Glass and Herbie Hancock all supplied pieces to the soundtrack, as of course did Giorgio Moroder, whose “Reach Out” was designated the “Track Theme” although it wound up as arguably the most-recognised sonic signature of the games, alongside John Williams’ “Olympic Fanfare and Theme” (the latter remains well-known in the US as it’s been NBC’s theme for its Olympics coverage ever since).
Is Reach Out a great song outside of that context? I wouldn’t say so, no, mainly because Tom Whitlock‘s “inspirational” lyric just grates too much. But it’s absolutely spot-on for that moment, in the same way that Together In Electric Dreams is exactly right for the climax of its movie. So much so, that it wouldn’t be the last time Moroder and Whitlock were commissioned to write the theme for a sporting event: they would also go on to write songs for the 1988 Seoul Olympics (Hand in Hand) and the 1990 FIFA World Cup (To Be Number One). Those are pretty cheesy too – but they certainly did the job.
(2) Melissa Manchester: Thief of Hearts
From the list of people involved in the Thief of Hearts soundtrack, you could be forgiven for thinking it must be another Moroder score: among the contributors were his frequent backing singers Beth Andersen, Elizabeth Daily, Joe Esposito and Joe Pizzulo, guitarist Richie Zito, lyricist Keith Forsey and programmer Brian Reeves. It was basically Moroder’s entire regular crew, and even recorded at his Beverley Hills studio, Oasis, but actually the man in charge was another recurring Moroder collaborator, his sometime protégé Harold Faltermeyer, who considers it the start of his own career in soundtracks. Moroder’s one contribution was writing the title song, and though he got a production credit as well, it seems he wasn’t exactly hands-on.
From Faltermeyer’s autobiography Where’s the Orchestra?:-
“Although Giorgio declined to score it, because he was busy with various projects, he agreed to contribute at least one song to the project. He quickly came up with a song called Thief of Hearts, and we needed to find a singer. We were lucky to sign Melissa Manchester for this […] I got busy working on a demo, which we sent over to Melissa. She was quite happy with it, so we were rockin’ and rollin’. Under one condition: Giorgio had to be present for the vocal session, because who was Harold Faltermeyer? Giorgio’s appearance was limited to a “Good morning boys”, or in this case: “Here she is!” With this he disappeared, and we did the rest. Once I got famous, her management asked me to produce her, typical Hollywood but at that point I didn’t even consider it!”
This particular version is the remix by John “Jellybean” Benitez, who at this point seemed to be the “soundtrack doctor”, sprinkling his remixing magic on movies like Breakdance, Footloose and… The Muppets Take Manhattan?! Yes, really. Variety is the spice of life!
(3) Giorgio Moroder: Rotwang’s Party (Robot Dance)
As well as the ten tracks featured on the Metropolis soundtrack album, there were further instrumentals hidden away on the B sides of the three singles. Bonnie Tyler‘s “Here She Comes” shares its vinyl with a confused slow-fast-slow piece called Obsession that I don’t rate all that highly; Jon Anderson‘s Cage Of Freedom has Workers’ Dance which lacks a real hook but would have made a decent theme for a TV technology show (and might still do even now); but the pick of the bunch is this one from the Love Kills single. The influence on known fans Daft Punk is evident particularly toward the end, and paired with Love Kills it made for a good value package.
(4) Limahl: L’Histoire Sans Fin
Although Giorgio Moroder is fluent in five languages, he tends not to write lyrics in any of them, preferring to pen the melodies and leave the actual words to his collaborators – if he’s working with a big name artist then they’ll often provide their own lyrics, while the rest of the time it falls to one of his regulars such as Pete Bellotte, Keith Forsey or the now late Tom Whitlock. Sure, he cares about the quality of the lyrics, but basically, the words in a Moroder song are first and foremost a medium for melodies. And that, combined with the notion that maybe it would be nice to offer something a bit less familiar, is my excuse for including this oddity on the ICA.
Of course in its English version (words by Forsey), The NeverEnding Story is one of Moroder’s biggest and most familiar hits. Since The NeverEnding Story was a German film – still the highest-grossing German film of all time, as it happens – it would make sense for the title song to also have a version in German, but actually the German version of the film didn’t use the song at all. It didn’t even use Moroder’s music – Moroder and Klaus Doldinger each wrote scores and the international release has a pick’n’mix from both, but the German cut went with Doldinger alone.
The French and Canadian single releases did however feature – as a B side – this version en Français, with a loose translation by prolific Francophone songwriter Pierre-André Dousset, and original co-lead vocalist Beth Andersen replaced by Parisienne A-list session singer Ann Calvert. To be honest, I rather miss “Show no fear / Or she may fade away…” and I’m so used to Andersen’s wailing before the instrumental break that Calvert’s imitation just doesn’t sound right. But the tune’s still hard to resist. I just wonder what this would have sounded like in German?
(5) Pat Benatar: Here’s My Heart
A lighters-in-the-air moment to finish. To my mind, this should have been the big breakout hit from Metropolis. It pops up twice in the movie and a third time as a triumphant reprise over the credits, but the version released on the soundtrack album is a weirdly stodgy remake with different lyrics. Which then wasn’t even issued as a single, so it wound up as a bit of a lost song, never performed live and not featured on a Pat Benatar album until it popped up many years later as the conclusion of her otherwise chronologically-sequenced career retrospective Synchronistic Wanderings.
However the actual movie version is much stronger, and it’s easy enough to find the full film score online, so a bit of fiddling about in Audacity et voila! You can find videos on YouTube where people have just run the three original variations together, resulting in an awkwardly-structured song that runs nearly eight minutes, but I’ve gone for a tighter edit that is pretty much the same length as the album version, give or take a few seconds, and I think could have worked as a single too. This could so easily have been a karaoke standard – it’s got the kind of chorus people would find it hard to resist having a go at. I don’t think many people could do it quite this well, though: I have to admit, basically only knowing Benatar from her growly rock hits, I hadn’t realised quite what a strong melodic vocalist she actually is.
So that’s Moroder’s 1984. I don’t think there will be a 1985 ICA because he just didn’t do all that much in ’85: apart from a dashed-off Giorgio Moroder & Philip Oakey album (which neither man rates highly, though I think it’s actually pretty good), his only other significant release was the odds-and-ends collection Innovisions, which I remember being a staple of the reduced-price racks for a very long time afterwards. And after that, well, there are stories later on but I’m not sure the music itself is quite so interesting. But of course Moroder’s career goes back in time from here as well as forward, so… watch this space!
Welcome to the second post of today.
All you need to do is read over the January 1979 posts for this new series to get an idea of how excited I was to be looking back at the 45s from 45 years ago.
February 1979 kind of dampens things down. It was seeing the song Bat Out Of Hell by Meat Loaf enter the singles chart at #25 on 4 February which provided a reminder of what really dominated things. It’s not so much the single, which spent just eight weeks in the Top 75, peaking at #15. It’s the parent album. It had come into the charts on 11 March 1978. It spent much of the rest of the year hanging around, but never getting into the Top 10. By 6 January 1979, it was sitting at #73 and looking as it if would finally give us all much needed peace and quiet. That’s when it got its second wind and started climbing up the charts again. It would be in the Top 75 for 321 of the next 329 weeks. There couldn’t have been too many houses that didn’t have a copy…..but mine was one of them! It’s an album that has continued to enjoy the occasional revival, and according to wiki, it has spent 522 weeks on the UK album chart. Ten feckin’ years…..(cue joke about crimes and jail sentences).
But then again, there were these to enjoy for the first time the same month.
mp3: Elvis Costello & The Attractions – Oliver’s Army
It came in quietly at #45 on 4 February and stayed around the Top 75 for twelve weeks, finding itself stuck at #2 for three successive weeks, unable to dislodge The Bee Gees or Gloria Gaynor. There are some who say it was only such a big hit as the piano part subconsciously reminded record-buyers of Abba.
mp3: The Pretenders – Stop Your Sobbing
As I mentioned last time out, 1979 was a year in which many new bands emerged to enjoy success, much of which turned out to be fleeting. The Pretenders rather excellent debut single, offering a new take on a Kinks song from 1964, hit the charts at #60 on 4 February, and in due course would climb into the Top 40. There was much much more to come from Chrissie Hynde & co throughout the remainder of the year, and beyond.
mp3: The Skids -Into The Valley
11 February was the chart in which The Skids made their first appearance of the year, having enjoyed a couple of minor hits in 1978. Getting to perform on Top of The Pops was a turning point in their career, thanks to Richard Jobson‘s mesmerising dancing that made you wonder if he’d been auditioning for the can-can girls in Paris. Into The Valley, whose title reflects a rather rundown housing estate not far from the band’s home town of Dunfermline, would spend 11 weeks in the charts and peak at #10. It’s still, all these years later, the walk-out tune for Dunfermline Athletic FC.
mp3: The Cars – Just What I Needed
Another new entry on 11 February. And recently looked at in some depth on this blog, right here.
mp3: Lene Lovich – Lucky Number
Lene Lovich, an American-English songwriter and performer (she was born in Detroit but moved to Hull, aged 13) was on Stiff Records here in the UK. A flop single in 1978 had thrown up an interesting b-side, which Stiff felt had potential. Re-released in February 1979, Lucky Number proved to be all that the record label bosses had imagined. It entered the charts at #62, and following a Top of The Pops appearance after it had climbed into the Top 30, Lene’s unique look and sound temporarily found a bigger market with the single going Top 3.
Two weeks later, on 25 February, Sex Pistols enjoyed a chart entry with the double-A side of Something Else/Friggin’ In The Riggin’ that eventually also went Top 3. Cartoon punk was now a thing….see also the fact that Generation X, fronted by BIlly Idol, were also riding high in February 1979. But at least Joe, Mick, Paul and Topper could save us…..
mp3: The Clash – English Civil War
The second 45 to be lifted from Give ‘Em Enough Rope came in at #39 and would end end spending six weeks in and around the environs of the chart, selling in decent enough numbers each week to offer up a chart run that nowadays could pass as a lottery ticket selection – 39 28 34 25 27 30.
The final week of February also saw the return of some of the original glamsters.
mp3: Roxy Music – Trash
Roxy Music had been away for a few years – the last original hit single had been in 1975 – with Bryan Ferry carving out a successful solo career. This was the comeback 45. One that I like, but it’s not regarded as being close to the band’s finest moments, as evidenced that it got no higher than #40.
There will be more of the same next month…..
Three more gigs last week. I’m going to do my best to heap praise on each of them in approximately 120 words.
(1) HiFi Sean/David McAlmont : St Luke’s Glasgow, Thursday 8 February
A full year after the release of the album Happy Ending, the duo finally perform live in Glasgow to a packed audience that had very few people under the age of 40 in attendance. It made for a different sort of dynamic than usual, with appreciation rather than mania being the reaction to the show, which itself consisted half of songs from the album and half that have yet to be released.
Over now to our guest reviewer, Basil Pieroni of Butcher Boy:-
“McAlmont’s singing seemed effortless, which considering his range and soulfulness was incredible. And Sean Dickson is clearly a magician!”
My regular sidekick, Aldo, simply said:-
‘David McAlmost must be the best singer we’ve ever heard’
And he’s right.
mp3: HiFi Sean and David McAlmont – The Skin I’m In
(2) Adam Stafford : Tolbooth Cafe, Stirling, Saturday 10 February
Adam Stafford, like many other musicians and performers, found it a real struggle having to remain so quiet and unable to perform during the lockdown periods of recent years. His last album in 2021 was fully instrumental, but he’s again found his voice and a new album is in the pipeline with the hope of a release later this year.
This free early afternoon gig, held in the café area of a popular performance space in Stirling, enabled some of the new tunes to be aired, along with some songs that he hasn’t performed live in the best part of a decade. As a long-time fan, it was a privilege to be there. I’m as excited as ever by what lies in store.
mp3: Adam Stafford – Vanishing Tanks
(3) Hamish Hawk – Glasgow Barrowlands, Saturday 10 February
‘Where’s my big like?’ is the opening line of Hamish Hawk‘s song, Think Of Us Kissing.
A sold-out 2,000 strong audience provided him with the answer as we (and that includes myself and Mrs JC) cheered him and his talented band from the second they took to the stage all the way through to the final note of what was a jaw-dropping encore. This was easily the biggest headlining show of his/their career to date, and just like Hinds some seven days earlier, it was a gig in which those on stage and those who are there to watch seemed to become a single entity. Beaming smiles all round from start to end….and I’m still in disbelief at hearing how things were rounded off with a blistering cover of Debaser.
mp3: Hamish Hawk – Think Of Us Kissing
It really has been an astonishing start to 2024 on the live front. Lack of time and energy prevented me getting along to catch Sea Power in Glasgow last night, and I’m kicking myself that I’ll have missed out, given that Adam was raving about their show in Manchester a few nights earlier.
Apologies for the less than perfect photos….I don’t have anything like a top of the range phone when it comes to a camera. My device is really all about calls/texts/messages and having enough capacity to store almost 50,000 mp3s.
Oh, and this set of short reviews are a bonus to what was intended on the blog today. Come back at 12noon (UK time) for what was originally scheduled for 5am.
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 