March 2024 – THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN

THE WEDDING PRESENT SINGLES (Part Twenty-Eight)

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Before we get to the 28th single, please have a listen to this:-

mp3: The Wedding Present – It’s A Gas

That’s the album version that you’ll find on Watusi. And given what I said last week about how Steve Fisk had been asked by the band to come up with a new, 60s influenced sound, it’s fair to say he got there with this one.

The thing is, there had been a critical and commercial backlash to Watusi and fans weren’t happy either. The album had entered the charts the week after its release at #47 and then sunk without a trace. For the very first time, since bursting onto the scene back in 1985, it seemed as if The Wedding Present had misfired.

In an attempt to rectify things, they went into a studio and asked Ian Broudie if he could work his magic on a track from the album, for potential release as a follow-up single.

mp3: The Wedding Present – It’s A Gas (single version)

It probably placated a few folk, but the damage was done. Released on 12″ purple coloured vinyl, 7″ black vinyl, cassette and CD, It’s A Gas limped in at #71, and worse than that, failed completely to give the parent album any sort of boost. The Island Records era was, in effect, over before it had really begun.

The 7″ had one other previously unreleased TWP song on it:-

mp3: The Wedding Present – Bubbles

Recorded in Seattle but left off the album. It’s a gentle number, totally stripped back in a near unplugged way. There have been worse songs shoved on b-sides, but plenty that have been better. There’s a backing vocal credited to Claire Elise Fisk, who I presume is the daughter of the producer.

The 12″ and CD single had two more tracks, both recorded in Seattle.

mp3: The Wedding Present – It’s A Gas (acoustic version)
mp3: The Wedding Present – Jumper Clown

The former does exactly as it says on the tin. It’s evidence that It’s A Gas is actually a damn fine pop tune….the difficulty that everyone had was finding the best way to record it.

The latter is a cover of a song that had been released by The Creepers in 1983. It was one that had begun life as an unreleased instrumental by The Fall in the late 70s, and then resurrected by Marc Riley when he quit the band, with the lyrics very much geared towards taking the piss out of Mark E Smith‘s often dishevelled appearance (it was all in the days before Brix Smith appeared on the scene and smartened him up). I think it was recorded with the intention of being a future b-side, with the sound being a hybrid of traditional TWP and the surf sound that was beginning to take hold in the Seattle studio. It’s good fun, and the group certainly sound as if they enjoyed making it.

JC

39 Lyon Street

SATURDAY’S SCOTTISH SONG : #398 : 39 LYON STREET

This one is a straight re-lift from February 2015, the final part of the predecessor series to this, in which I looked at Scottish singles.

39 Lyon Street was a one-off single project created by Associates. The group used an alternative name to exercise a clause in their contract with WEA that stated they could record for any label they desired, so long as the A-side was not credited to Associates.

I’ve pinched this from a now defunct blog called Retro Dundee:-

This is how Lyon Street looked back in the 1980’s. A typical Dundee street that you would pass going into the city centre. In the early 80’s, however, something was brewing at number 39. A wee social gathering of creative musicians were busy producing acts who would go on to record some classy alternative pop music.

This is where Billy Mackenzie & Alan Rankine of The Associates were living, along with others. In amongst the others were Christine Beveridge & Steve Reid who went on to record as Orbidoig, releasing a couple of singles. A cross-pollination of The Associates & Orbidoig created a 3rd act called…39 Lyon Street. They also released a single, called “Kites”, which was a cover of the Simon Dupree hit from the psychedelic 60’s.

And here we are:-

mp3 : 39 Lyon Street – Kites (12″ version)

The wonderful Sid Law, an individual who is the font of all knowledge on all things related to Associates/Billy Mackenzie, had this to say back in August at his now defunct Whippet At The Wheel blog:-

Released in 1981, it features Christine Beveridge on a whispery lead vocal with Billy taking the back seat until the choruses. The Associates were allowed to release singles on other labels as long as Billy didn’t sing lead vocals on the A-side. Recorded in the midst of the Situation 2 stream of singles, Kites is an atmospheric musical delight. The twelve-inch version has a rolling piano intro which slides effortlessly into an utterly groovy version of Simon Dupree And The Big Sound’s biggest hit.

It was released on RSO Records in a one-single deal. The B-side A Girl Named Property is credited to The Associates and is the same version released on Fourth Drawer Down.

JC (and Sid Law)

PS : By sheer coincidence, this is appearing on the blog on a day when I’ll be in Billy’s home city for a football match…..and when the walk from the city centre will see me pass Lyon Street as I head up Dens Road in the direction of Tannadice Park, home of Dundee United FC.

Walkmen

AN IMAGINARY COMPILATION ALBUM : #360: THE WALKMEN

A Guest Posting by SWC

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JC writes………………………………

Today’s guest contributor doesn’t know I’m doing this. You can call it a bit of intellectual theft.

SWC has, this very day, completed an excellent series this past month over at No Badger Required in which he called on the services of a musical jury, drawn from visitors to his consistently excellent blog, to nominate Rocks Greatest W – and by that he was seeking out the best singer/band whose name begins with ‘W’ and not somebody who likes to stimulate their own genitals.

Coming in (ahem!!) at #13 was The Walkmen. As it turned out, SWC went on to list ten great songs by the band, which I immediately wanted to turn into an ICA. Which I’m now doing.

First up, an intro…from wiki.

“The Walkmen is an American indie rock band formed in New York City, in 2000. The band consists of Hamilton Leithauser (vocals), Paul Maroon (guitar, keyboards), Walter Martin (bass, organ), Peter Matthew Bauer (organ, bass) and Matt Barrick (drums) – all former members of Jonathan Fire*Eater and the Recoys.

Initially active from 2000 to 2013, they are known as part of the 2000s-era post-punk revival in New York City. The band released seven studio albums during their initial run: Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me Is Gone (2002), Bows + Arrows (2004), A Hundred Miles Off (2006), “Pussy Cats” Starring the Walkmen (2006), You & Me (2008), Lisbon (2010) and Heaven (2012).

The band went on hiatus in 2013, with Leithauser, Bauer and Martin all pursuing solo careers, and Barrick joining Fleet Foxes in a session capacity. In 2023, the band reunited for an extensive tour named The Revenge Tour.”

And now, here’s what appeared on No Badger Required last month. Over to SWC….

I’m going to start by quoting, not one, not two but three members of the Musical Jury, who all rather interestingly said the same thing about The Walkmen.

“Despite the fact that they’ve only got one good song….”

Yet they still voted for them, heavily in some cases.

Now, I don’t want to turn this entire blog into a Walkmen tribute site in order to prove my point but I definitely will if that kind of Bolshevikian insubordination continues in the ranks. The Walkmen have about 75 good songs (admittedly the blog wouldn’t last that long and its almost worth daring me). I will now list them all (well ten of them) in no real order of their brilliance. If I voted in this countdown, The Walkmen would have had twenty more points. Just saying.

The “one good song” that I suspect that they are talking will be this one,

The Rat (2004, Record Collection Records, Taken from ‘Bows + Arrows’)

Largely because it is quite a song and to be honest if this was the only Walkmen song that ever saw the light of day then it would still be heads and shoulders above nearly every other song that was ever written or released. It was also Badger’s favourite song and for that alone, it stands unchallenged as a moment of beauty and angsty post punk excellence. It is the sort of song that makes you throw yourself around the lounge like a petulant teenager.

Luckily for us, The Walkmen didn’t just split up after recording ‘The Rat’ (I mean they’d already released an album before they recorded ‘The Rat’ anyway, but surely you get my point). They released seven albums in total, all of them extraordinarily good. I’ve written before in the Nearly Perfect Series about ‘Lisbon’, which is the Walkmen album that I think is their greatest but if you twisted my arm hard enough I’d also grab albums six and five (in that order) and waggle those in your face as examples of nearly perfect records.

Here are two tracks from ‘Heaven’, the title track and ‘Heartbreaker’, both were released as singles from it.

Heaven (2012, Bella Union Records)

Heartbreaker (2012, Bella Union Records)

The fifth album was the more intimate and stripped back, ‘You & Me’ is also a wonderful listen, full of textured songs that when explored properly were full of lyrics that were about loss, yearning and rejection, the vocals of Leithauser are outstanding throughout it. Here are two songs from it, my favourite track from it (which featured in the second season of Breaking Bad, in case you recognise it) and the best single from it.

Red Moon (2008, Fierce Panda Records)

In the New Year (2008, Fierce Panda Records)

Let’s go back to ‘Lisbon’ and explore that a bit more shall we – and we should because its one of the greatest indie guitar records made in the last fifteen years and you should ignore a statement like that at your peril my friends. Here are two tracks from it, the first one is a bit gentle and see Leithauser almost crooning over a tinkly piano backdrop. The second one is almost alt country, but it kind of forgets that when the first chorus kicks in and the guitars soar.

While I Shovel The Snow (2010, Bella Union Records)

Juveniles (2010, Bella Union Records)

The Walkmen should have been massive after, ‘The Rat’ launched their careers, and the album that followed it, ‘Bows + Arrows’ should have cemented them somewhere near the top of indie’s ladder for a few years to come. It didn’t and for some reason it remains slightly unloved, which is a shame because it houses brilliant tracks like this.

138th Street (2004, Record Collection Records)

Also criminally ignored is the very early work of The Walkmen, the stuff that they released a few months after the break up of Jonathan Fire*eater. The self titled debut EP for instance was long thought to be lost forever until it was reissued in 2009 on the Startime International Label. It was originally recorded three years before the released of the bands debut single ‘The Rat’ but already those flirtations with synths that appear ten years later are there. It also reminds me of the work of Pavement around the time of ‘Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain’, no bad thing at all.

Summer Stage (2001, Startime International Records)

I’m going to end with my second favourite Walkmen track, purely because if you badged all these up into an Imaginary Compilation Album (and there’s an idea for a series) it would make a great album closer.

Angela Surf City (2010, Bella Union Records, Taken from ‘Lisbon’)

———–

JC adds…..

I really hope SWC is OK with what I’ve done here. I’m sure, if I’d asked him, that he’d have sat down and crafted a ‘proper’ ICA, possibly re-ordering the tracks and providing a bit more in the way of commentary….but I’m very happy with it as it reads right now.

Keep your eyes peeled next week for another guest ICA – one that I’m particularly pleased about as it come from one of my favourite writers out there and covers a type of music that doesn’t appear often enough on this particular blog.

Bon Iver

AROUND THE WORLD : PERTH

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The fourth-most populous city in Australia, with a population of approximately 2.2 million. Perth dates from 1829, and was named after the Scottish town (and itself a city since 2012), but there is archaeological evidence demonstrating that the Noongar people have inhabited the area for at least 45,000 years. It is one of the most isolated major cities in the world, with Adelaide, the nearest place with a population of more than 100,000 being over 2,100km away. Such isolation had long been considered problematic for many rising artists, as it increases costs associated with touring and promotion. Nevertheless, music is very much part of the city’s fabric, with all the modern genres well represented. It does seem, however, that in recent years, a number of music venues have closed and redeveloped as restaurants, public bars or apartments.

mp3: Bon Iver – Perth

This song by the American indie/folk band, led by singer/songwriter Justin Vernon, opens up their second album, Bon Iver, released in 2011. It is not directly to do with the city, but was inspired by the passing, at a young age, of one of the most famous people to have been born there. Here’s an extract from an interview given by Vernon a few years later.

“The first thing I worked on, the riff and the beginning melodies, was the first song on the record, ‘Perth’. That was back in early 2008. The reason I called it that right away, is because I was with a guy, Matt Amato, that I didn’t know very well, but basically, it’s a long story, but in the three days we were supposed to spend together — he’s a music video maker — in those three days, his best friend (Heath Ledger) died, and he was from Perth.

“It was January, fucking 25 below. We’re out shooting, and we come back in (to my parent’s house where we were staying), and his phone had been going off. Ledger, it turned out, was dead. So I’ve got this guy in my house whose best friend just passed away. He’s sobbing in my arms. He can’t go back to L.A. because the house is under siege.”

He then recounted that for the next two days, Amato drank brandy, cried and reminisced about Ledger riding horses back home in Perth. The morning he left, Vernon wrote the song’s first draft.

JC

Mighty Wah, Pete Wylie

BONUS POST : ADDITIONAL WYLIE

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Not too long ago, I posted a review of the Pete Wylie and The Mighty Wah! gig at King Tut’s in Glasgow. In truth, it was a hurried review, piggybacked onto a review of a gig by Yard Act a few days later, and I didn’t really do it justice.

I’ve finally been catching up with lots of things that have been written at some of my favourite blogs these past weeks – the trip to Vienna and a few other things to deal with on my return resulted in me missing out a fair bit at the time – and I was delighted that Adam over at Bagging Area posted a much more detailed review of Pete’s show in Manchester. Please click here to have a read.

Adam arrived slightly late and missed a couple of songs, including Come Back, one of the few hits in Pete’s back catalogue, and which he seems to be airing as the second tune in the current tour. I thought, as a way of thanking Adam for his review, that I’d return to part of a TVV posting from back in October 2015, when I wrote about the three chart hits under the heading of ‘BIG, BOOMING AND MEMORABLE’

1983 : Come Back

“Pete was infamous for being a bit of a gobshite who loved to spout opinions about everyone and everything, and an unwillingness to play by the record industry rules and regulations. Nevertheless, he was regarded as such a talent that WEA, the biggest label in the world at the time, signed him up after The Story of The Blues. He delivered an album that horrified them, and they refused to release it, and in doing so nullified the recording contract.

In due course the album was partially re-recorded and eventually released on Beggars Banquet as A Word To The Wise Guy. There was a Top 20 hit single from it, released in a number of formats including this 12″ version:-

mp3 : The Mighty Wah! – Come Back (The Story Of The Reds)/The Devil In Miss Jones (combined and extended)
mp3 : The Mighty Wah! – Come Back! (The Return of the Randy Scouse Git)
mp3 : The Mighty Wah! – From Disco Dicko to A Kid in Care

This was an almighty two fingers gesture to WEA. It was the big sound they had demanded of the album but only provided after Wylie had gone to pastures new…and in the b-side version the lyrics were altered to enable a sideways swipe at WEA singers and bands who were enjoying regular chart success.”

I’ll throw in the 7″ edit of the song for good measure, along with the b-side as a stand-alone track in additional to how it was offered up on the 12″:-

mp3 : The Mighty Wah! – Come Back (7″ edit)
mp3 : The Mighty Wah! – The Devil In Miss Jones

The Randy Scouse Git has a biting lyric, one that Pete must have had great fun composing. I can’t find them anywhere on t’internet, but I’ve done my best to work them out, albeit there are a couple of gaps.

Well did you ever hear of hope?
A small belief can mean relief when troubles start
Well did you ever hear of faith?
Encouragement, development,
and it’s all up to you, yes it’s all up to you

Come Back! It’s been over a year
Come Back! When you’re gone I’ll be here
Come Back! Well, it is your career
Come Back
Come Back! Howard Jones can have hits
Come Back! The Pretenders have hits
Come Back! even The Truth can have hits
Come Back!

We’ll get to shoot some videos
We’ll bribe the shops ? change
Cos money talks
We’ll get you on the Sooty show
Exposure is ???
And Annabel Lamb..it’s a battering ram

There’s then an outro in which the wall of sound production makes it difficult to work out all the names being shouted, but there’s certainly mention of Aztec Camera and Yes among others.

Feel free to offer up suggestions as to who is missing (or if I’ve got things badly wrong!!!).

JC

Maggie8

ONE SONG ON THE HARD DRIVE (8)

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Maggie8. The one song I have is a pleasant and slightly unusual number thanks to it being part of the Indietracks 2016 compilation.

mp3: Maggie8 – Mitzi

Some info taken from elsewhere on t’internet.

Maggie8 are an indie folk band from Leeds, UK whose sound juxtaposes Eastern harmonies with Western sensibilities. By adding banjo, melodica, violin and trumpet – as well as Hindi influences – to an ‘indie pop’ sound they have prompted listeners to describe them as a ‘Hindi Housemartins’ or a “Bhangra Belle and Sebastian”.

The band’s singer, Niv, says Maggie8 are ‘a little bit pop, a little bit folk, Hindustani classical with some old Bollywood tinges’. Their influences include John Coltrane, Led Zeppelin, Aphex Twin, The Housemartins and a mix of bollywood and classical Indian ragas.

Maggie8 are: Nivedita Pisharoty (vocals and bass), Mark Wright (vocals, guitar and banjo), Peter Mottram (keyboards), Dominic Hand (trumpet and melodica), James Mann (guitar), Matt Figgis (drums).

Discogs lists two albums from 2015 and 2016, along with a couple of singles. I can only presume that the band is no longer active.

JC

Alison Eales

BONUS POST : ANOTHER COMPETITION!

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Mox Nox, the debut album from Alison Eales, was one of my favourite releases of 2023.

I am delighted that this ridiculously talented musician has followed it up with a 4-track EP, Four For A Boy, now available digitally and on 7″ vinyl courtesy of Fika Recordings.

The songs have been co-written by Alison and a very good friend of hers going back decades, Garry Hoggan, and as with last year’s album, it has been produced by Paul Savage of The Delgados. The lead song is Minuet, described by its authors as ‘a minimalist love song that pits its protagonists against zombies and nanobots’.

The other three songs are every bit as wonderful, and it all adds up to a charming, delightful and essential release.

I’ve purchased three additional EPs for the purpose of offering them as prizes in the latest TVV competition…..so, to possibly get your hands on a free copy of Four For A Boy, please come up with the correct answer to the following question:-

For which Glasgow-based indie-band does Alison Eales play keyboards?

Send your answer to the blog e-mail address – the vinylvillain@hotmail.co.uk – but please include your full name and address so that I can work out postage costs should you be lucky. (I promise that all the emails will be deleted afterwards so that I don’t keep any of your personal info).

The closing date is Saturday 31 March. Good luck etc.

JC

National

THE 7″ LUCKY DIP (12): The National – Terrible Love

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I wasn’t incredibly quick to latch on to The National, but I wasn’t painfully slow either. It was the third album, Alligator (2005) that got me to sit up and pay attention. The next few years, as far as I’m concerned, they were damn near untouchable and could merit a mention as being the best and most significant alt-rock act on the planet. Boxer (2007) and High Violet (2010) are exceptional listens.

I’ve not been fully on board with any of the five albums since then, but strangely enough, all of them have brought greater sales and much bigger audiences than from the days when I would go and seem them in mid-sized concert venues in Glasgow.

The 2010 tour for High Violet saw them at the Academy, a 2,500 capacity venue on the south side of the city, one that had previously served time as a cinema and bingo hall. The 2023 tour for The First Two Pages of Frankenstein was held at the 14,300 capacity and purpose-built Hydro in the heart of the city’s entertainment/exhibition area. Being a great live band, I can guess that the latter show was exceptional, but having caught them playing in Manchester the previous year when it turned into a mass sing-a-long for the most part, I preferred to sit at home with my memories of when the audience primarily went along to watch and listen….unless requested to join in by the band during the near a cappella encore.

This growth in popularity over the years means that I could get a reasonable amount of money if I was to look to sell a copy of a 7″single, on purple vinyl, from the High Violet era. Not a huge amount, but certainly, even allowing for inflation, an increase on what I paid for it over the counter at the time

mp3: The National – Terrible Love (alternative version)

Ah….a different recording from that which is on the album. Still don’t think it was an obvious choice for a single. It didn’t trouble the charts.

The b-side was an otherwise unavailable song

mp3: The National – You Were A Kindness

It’s the sort of slow, languid number the band had been increasingly edging towards at the time. If you like Matt Berninger‘s voice (and I do!!) then it will appeal. There’s not too much of a tune driving it on.

JC

PS : Come back later on today for a Bonus Post featuring a chance to win some vinyl.

A Night At The Opera

BONUS POST : SOME LIFE-AFFIRMING EXPERIENCES (4)

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Fraser said that he hoped I’d review the Rossini gig referred to in this post from last week. My mantra is to always give the readers/contributors what they want, so here goes.

The Vienna State Opera House is quite the venue. Our seats were among the cheapest in the house, but still came in at 65 euros a head and found us in the top tier at what I’d describe as approx somewhere between 4 and 5 o’clock from the centre of the stage….I think the best seats went for something like 300 euros. The capacity is a little over 1700, but I should mention that the venue has an historical practice of offering up tickets for as little as 10 euros, made available on the day – these are standing tickets for away, way way up in the gods and certainly aren’t for the faint-hearted!

I have, over the years, posed myself the question as to why operas/ballets etc, despite receiving very generous public subsidies not really offered to other performing arts, tend to be expensive to attend. Well, looking at the numbers involved last week at the performance of Guillaume Tell perhaps offers some clues.

Ten principal singers together with a chorus that was genuinely too large to keep an accurate count of – I’ll guess at 50. The orchestra had at least 90 players. A dozen stagehands constantly involved in moving an elaborate and stunning stage set. Add in those involved in the direction, the choreography, the lighting etc, and the numbers become mind-boggling. It was a tad more complicated and expensive to organise than a show at King Tut in Glasgow……

I enjoyed the performance immensely. I’m not qualified enough to offer a comprehensive critique, but I was particularly impressed by the soprano, Lisette Oropesa (who sang the role of Mathilde) and the tenor, John Osborne (who played Arnold). I did, however, think that Roberto Frontalli in the titular role was a bit underwhelming, but perhaps that’s down to the stronger arias belonging to other characters.

The chorus, whose participation involved multi-dimensional roles, was absolutely magnificent at all times, and I really can’t heap enough praise on the conductor, Bertrand de Billy, and the orchestra who got things under way in a most spectacular and unforgettable fashion.

mp3: Vienna State Opera Orchestra – Guillaume Tell: Overture

The overture is over 11 minutes in length, but if you fast-forward to the 8:20 mark (approx) you’ll get to the bit everyone recognises!!

All in all, a tremendous experience. But I’ll still probably restrict myself to the very occasional night at the opera in the years ahead.

JC

Lloyd Cole & The Commotions

ONE HUNDRED AND ELEVEN SINGLES : #051

aka The Vinyl Villain incorporating Sexy Loser

#051: Lloyd Cole & The Commotions – ‘Rattlesnakes’ (Polydor Records ’84)

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Hello friends,

thinking about it, there might be four, five, six albums which, after all those decades, I would still consider to be good throughout. And with ‘good throughout’, I mean all songs: ‘no fillers, just killers’ as we, rather pathetically, used to say when we were younger. Well, I did, at least. ‘Psychocandy’ comes to mind, Billy Bragg’s debut as well as the first one by The Undertones, ‘Crazy Rhythms’, ‘London Calling’ of course (sorry George), perhaps the first one by The Smiths – but also ‘Rattlesnakes’, the first album by one of the finest bands ever to emerge from Glasgow, Lloyd Cole & The Commotions.

I just had to look that up: it was released in October 1984, which means I will not have held it in my hands before the spring or summer of 1985 … it always took a while for good indie stuff to get known in the middle of nowhere in Germany, believe me. And even though there were far more record shops in Aachen, the nearest town, than nowadays, there was no way to get really ‘fresh’ releases basically, especially not when they came out on some obscure indie label. I’m willing to have a small bet that the owner of my favourite record shop (Plattenbörse), Reinhold, and his aide looked at each other and said: ‘oh no, not that twerp again!’ when they saw me on the street approaching the shop. Why? Well, it took me quite a time to understand that they neither were ever in the position to have new records available which I heard on John Peel’s Music a few weeks before nor could they always order those for me …. in hindsight, I must have been a ‘difficult’ customer, I suppose.

But I digress, so back to ‘Rattlesnakes’ – a record that Reinhold did store back then … I mean, it was on Polydor Records, so it probably was easier for him to get hold of this item than that long deleted Peruvian punk 7” on the Fistfuckers Unite label …. yes, I made that up, but you got the point, right?

I remember taking the record home, and it did not get off my turntable for weeks – every song a winner, as I said. I still cannot say what it was that attracted me so much back then. I mean: I can now, but in 1984/85 it was punk/New Wave only for me by and large, so how on earth a record as fragile and in parts even turgid as this managed to meet with my approval, I simply don’t know. Perhaps I just wanted to show off a bit, presenting my oh so clever Dylanesque side to those girls I couldn’t convince with my oh so dangerous Strummeresque side …. as you might already have gathered, none of it worked at the slightest, of course – but hey, I was 16 and desperate! But I loved these songs even when I listened to them on my own, so it wasn’t all about impressing the female population, I reckon.

There are so many perfect songs on ‘Rattlesnakes’, for all I know Lloyd Cole could have chosen each one to become a single. But he went for ‘Perfect Skin’, ‘Forest Fire’ (backed with ‘Andy’s Babies’, another particular favorite) and, after the album came out, this one, the title track:

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mp3: Lloyd Cole & The Commotions – Rattlesnakes

As much as I do hate snakes, this is a mighty fine tune and for me, it hasn’t aged a bit. Then again I’m still a bit of a hopeless romantic poseur, so …

Dirk

Wedding Present

THE WEDDING PRESENT SINGLES (Part Twenty-Seven)

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It’s not that 1993 was a quiet year for The Wedding Present. The gig history over at the official website shows:-

February: 2 UK shows in Carlisle and London, followed by 18 dates in France
March: 4 shows in Japan and one in Hong Kong
April: shows in Leeds and Sheffield
July: part of the bill at the Phoenix Festival in Stratford-Upon- Avon
September – 3 shows in France
October: 3 shows in the UK (Portsmouth, Windsor and Southampton) and 1 in France
November: 4 shows (Newcastle, Galashiels, Glasgow and Belfast)
December: 5 dates in Ireland, followed by a gig in Leeds.

I make that 45 gigs. It was a year in which Keith Gregory took his leave of the band. It wasn’t the first time he’d wanted to quit, but David Gedge‘s powers of persuasion finally failed to work. He was replaced by Darren Belk. The Wedding Present now had just one original member left as part of its ranks.

Oh, and they were let go by RCA, which was no real surprise given that they never did play the game the way a major label would have expected.

The only release came courtesy of another hook up with Strange Fruit. This time around the BBC vaults were raided for a CD/LP release called John Peel Sessions 1987-1990, issued in November 1993, just in time for the Christmas market.

1994 opened up with tours of France and the USA, but all the while new songs were being written and worked on for what would be the next album. Undaunted by the RCA experience, the group signed to Island Records having arranged a budget that would enable the new material to be recorded in Seattle, with Steve Fisk, who was best known for his work on records released on Sub Pop and K, two of the hippest indie labels at the time.

The producer was given a specific brief by the group – ‘make us do something different and sound like a Sixties band’. The first thing that anyone heard was a new single released at the beginning of September 1994, on 12″ vinyl, cassette and 2 x CDs.

mp3: The Wedding Present – Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah

It was different. And it was a bit of a jolt to the system. Fans really weren’t quite sure what to make of it. It was fast, and it had rhythm, as well as that unmistakable Gedge singing voice. But isn’t that an organ to the fore? What the heck……????

As it turned out, Yeah to the power of five set things up for the following week’s release of Watusi, the first fully-fledged studio album in more than three years. It’s one which divided fans on release and still does 30 years on. It has many lovers and many detractors. I’m one of those who sits on the fence.

The lead-off single is fine in its own way, but such was the shock of the new sound, that I’ve never fully taken to it. I wasn’t alone, as it only reached #51 in the charts, which must have been a bit of a sore one to take for a band who just a couple of years ago were regulars in the Top 20, albeit via a clever piece of marketing.

The 12″ and CD1 had three additional songs, two of which were originals, with the other being the now, much anticipated cover.

mp3: The Wedding Present – Le Bikini
mp3: The Wedding Present – Flame On
mp3: The Wedding Present – Him Or Me (What’s It Gonna Be)

Anyone scratching their head at the single probably had their jaws hit the floor when the 100 seconds of the instrumental Le Bikini came to an end. It was surf-rock. It was not anything TWP had attempted before.

Flame On was on ground that was a bit more secure, albeit the fast guitars were twisted around in a way that were a tad different.

One thing to note….after years when most songs were credited to ‘Gedge’, these three new tracks were attributed to ‘Belk/Dorrington/Gedge/Smith.’ The signs of a new democracy within the band? Or maybe it was really the case that everyone, working with a new producer in a new city, was contributing on an equal basis.

The cover? It was of a 1967 hit single by Paul Revere & The Raiders. I say hit single, but that would have been in their native America. They might have been part of the music scene on that side of the Atlantic for the best part of 20 years across the 50s, 60s and 70s, but they rarely had their records played on UK radio stations, far less have any chart success. The cover is OK as these things go, but again, it was hard to digest.

CD2 had three more songs. They were lifted from a John Peel session that had been recorded on 22 March and broadcast on 16 April 1994. None of these rang any alarm bells as they couldn’t be anything other than Wedding Present songs and there was no reason to think a drastic change of sound was on its way. All three tracks would later be included on Watusi, but in two of the cases, in drastically different form to the session versions:-

mp3: The Wedding Present – Gazebo (Peel Session)
mp3: The Wedding Present – So Long Baby (Peel Session)
mp3: The Wedding Present – Spangle (Peel Session)

There would be one further single lifted from Watusi, but given so much of the backstory has been told today, the posting on that should be a bit shorter. Indeed, I might do a cut’n’paste from a few years back.

JC

35mm Dreams

SATURDAY’S SCOTTISH SONG : #397 : 35mm DREAMS

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I’ve this one courtesy of it being included in the many-times mentioned Big Gold Dreams box set.

mp3: 35mm Dreams – More Than This

It was released as a single on More Than This Records in November 1980, and that’s the picture sleeve above. There was a small flyer with the 45:-

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The BGD booklet offers up the following:-

“Taking their name from a song by Lou Reed and John Cale favourite Garland Jeffreys, Edinburgh’s 35mm Dreams sounded on their debut single like a post-punk ‘Eleanor Rigby’. This followed a four-track cassette of demos, Suburbia Sheiks, which perhaps nodded to the band’s roots at Craigmount High School in west Edinburgh, also alma mater to assorted Fire Engines and Scars.

“A second single, ‘Fasten Your Safety Belts’, followed. Drummer Moray Crawford went on to play in Buba & Shop Assistants before decamping to Japan where he guested on Shonen Knife’s Heavy Songs album. A briefly reformed 35mm Dreams and Moray Crawford’s Japanese band My-T-Hi played an Edinburgh show alongside Shock and Awe thirty years to the day since the release of ‘More Than This.'”

I knew nothing of this song or the band prior to getting the box set back in 2019. It’s become one of my many favourites across the entire 115 tracks – there’s nothing particularly ground-breaking about the 2 minutes and 18 seconds that it takes from first note to last, but it’s interesting and catchy enough to warrant repeated listens.

JC

Jarv Is

THE 12″ LUCKY DIP (5)

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Here’s one that wasn’t bought in a record shop or online, and seemingly was only made ever made available via the merch stalls at gigs.

November 2021, I found myself, in the company of Aldo, down in Manchester for the purpose of visiting the Factory Records exhibition that was on at the city’s Science and Industry Museum. Looking around for something to do of an evening, we learn that Jarv Is..happens to be playing a gig at the city’s Albert Hall. We didn’t expect tickets to be available, but it turned out that there were, so along we popped to a venue we’d never been to before.

The venue is rather stunning, the restoration of a former Wesleyan chapel, itself a Grade II Listed Building, in the very heart of the city centre, and makes for a unique looking and atmospheric gig venue…there’s more than a few ‘wow’ factors when you look around.

The show certainly matched the surroundings. It was part of a belated tour for Beyond The Pale, an album that had been released in 2020. The 90-minute set had next to nothing from the Pulp days. There was a smattering of songs from the Jarvis Cocker solo album that came out back in 2006, but for the most part it was the newer songs. The main set ended with a blistering rendition of the song that had originally been issued back in May 2019 as a taster for the Jarv Is.. material:-

mp3: Jarv Is – Must I Evolve?

Where mankind’s development from the big bang to getting off one’s face at a rave in the 21st century is dissected.

The original version of the single was a low-key release, promoted in the main as a digital release, although a 12″ vinyl version did offer up a David Holmes remix on the b-side.

Two and a half years later, and Must I Evolve? was available to buy at the gigs. This time, it came in four sleeves of varying colours. I’ve long been a sucker for all things purple, so I went for that (combined with green as seen above), and forsaking the blue/orange, red/blue and the one which is pink and a sort of off-cream effort.

The b-side remix on this occasion is courtesy of Jason Buckle, an English-based producer who has been a long-time friend of Mr Cocker.

mp3: Jarv Is – Must I Revolve?

It’s quite a radical take on, but the constant use of the ‘Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes’ chant might get on a few nerves.

JC

Various

SHAKEDOWN, 1979 (March, part two)

Once again, this is the part of the series where I consult one of my reference books and find some new 45s which didn’t sell in enough numbers in March 1979 to bother the chart compilers.

I’m starting things off with The Distractions. The Great Indie Discography, written back in 1999 and updated in 2003 by Martin C. Strong (from now on in referred to as ‘The Big Red Indie-Bible’) tells us this:-

“Consisting of founder-members Mike Finney (vocals) and Steve Perrin- Brown (guitar), together with Adrian Wright (guitar), Pip Nicholls (bass) and Alec Sidebottom (drums), this Manchester-based outfit had a hectic touring schedule supporting the likes of Magazine, Buzzcocks and just about every Mancunian New Wave act around at the time.”

They signed to TJM Records, a label that had been launched by Tony Davidson, the owner of TJ Davidson Rehearsal Studios in Little Peter Street, Manchester, the location from whom which many a band launched a career, particularly Joy Division.

The debut release was the You’re Not Going Out Dressed Like That EP, from which this was the lead track:-

mp3: The Distractions – It Doesn’t Bother Me

The group would release another single before the year was out, this time on Factory Records. I’ll highlight that later in the year.

Staying with the letter ‘D’

mp3 : Doll by Doll – The Palace Of Love

Doll by Doll was formed by Kirkcaldy-born Jackie Leven, who, having started out as a folk musician, was another to be smitten by the advent of punk/new wave. The band, which also had Jo Shaw, Robin Spreafico and David McIntosh as members, signed to Automatic Records, an off-shoot of Warners. Whoever pulled together the wiki page got this right:-

“They came to prominence during the new wave period but were largely ignored by the music press of the time – their emotional, psychedelic-tinged music was judged out of step with other bands of the time”.

There were a few performers/bands who despised the new wave scene, particularly in New York. This led to what was termed ‘No Wave’, and I’ll again turn to wiki:-

No wave was an avant-garde music genre and visual art scene which emerged in the late 1970s in Downtown New York City. The term was a pun based on the rejection of commercial new wave music. Reacting against punk rock’s recycling of rock and roll clichés, no wave musicians instead experimented with noise, dissonance, and atonality, as well as non-rock genres like free jazz, funk, and disco. The scene often reflected an abrasive, confrontational, and nihilistic world view.

One of the leading proponents of the no wave scene was Lydia Lunch. Her band, Teenage Jesus & The Jerks, released a single in March 1979:-

mp3: Teenage Jesus & The Jerks – Baby Doll

I’ve a feeling most of you will be pleased it’s all over and done with in just over 90 seconds.

And now for something completely different:-

mp3: Tubeway Army – Down In The Park

They had started out as a guitar-based new wave band, Mean Street, but the dawn of 1978 saw a change of name to Tubeway Army, albeit the new wave element was still to the fore (they supported The Skids at gigs in the summer of ’78). By the end of the year, a debut album had been released, with the lead singer changing his name from Gary Webb to Gary Numan, and looking to incorporate synths into the group. The album sold modestly, but there was enough interest at Beggars Banquet to fund a follow-up for planned release in mid-1979, and Down In The Park was seen as being the advance single. It didn’t sell very well, but things were about to change….as will be seen later in the series.

mp3: The Pop Group – She Is Beyond Good and Evil

I’m not someone who has ever been fully enamoured by The Pop Group, which is why they haven’t previously featured on the blog, but there’s no denying that they are so often cited as being a huge influence on the way music would shape and form in subsequent decades. The debut single was released in March 1979.

It was also the month in which the final 45 from the original line-up of this lot was released before the frontman went solo:-

mp3: Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers – Lydia

Having started off things off in Manchester, I think it’s appropriate to finish with the lead track from another EP released on the TJM label in March 79.

mp3: Slaughter and The Dogs – It’s Alright

Hmmmm…….on this evidence, it’s easy to see why this lot never really got much attention beyond that provided by a local fan base.

JC

Moby

THE CD SINGLE LUCKY DIP (3)

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I mentioned last time out that singles released across multiple CDs 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

Natural Blues, the fifth single to be lifted from Play, which itself was Moby‘s fifth studio album, combined options 1 and 2.

CD1

mp3: Moby – Natural Blues (single version)
mp3: Moby – Whispering Wind
mp3: Moby – Sick In The System

It feels quite surprising that Moby still had some unreleased material to issue this single given that it was the fifth to be lifted from the album and that all the previous singles had all featured at least two otherwise unavailable tracks, which only goes to show just how much material he had written towards the end of the 90s. Whispering Wind is a slow, almost-ambient number while Sick In The System is a bit more uptempo in nature, but not fast enough to be thought of as a club number.

Oh, and the single version of Natural Blues is just over a minute shorter than the album version, with various edits, all quite seamless in nature, making it really tailor-made for radio play.

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The second CD does exactly what it says on the cover

CD2

mp3: Moby – Natural Blues (Perfecto Remix)
mp3: Moby – Natural Blues (Mike D edit)
mp3: Moby – Natural Blues (Peace Division edit)

Perfecto was the name used by Paul Oakenfold and Steve Osbourne, a very highly successful team of British producers who had been doing such things for years, with one of their earliest efforts being their take on Wrote For Luck by Happy Mondays.

And yes, the middle remix is the work of Michael Louis Diamond, one-third of the Beastie Boys.

Peace Division is the name used by Clive Henry and Justin Drake, two UK-based house music remixers/producers.

In addition to the 2xCD releases, Natural Blues was issued in the UK on two separate 12″ singles, across which you would find the Mike D and Peace Divison remixes, as well as a Perfecto Dub version and a remix by Katcha, a trance/house DJ.

Natural Blues was released in March 2000, some ten months after Play had been released. The album hadn’t sold all that brilliantly during 1999, spending just one week in the Top 40. But it really took off in early 2000, re-entering at #72 on 9 January, and going on to spend the next sixteen months in the Top 75, including five weeks at #1 in April/May 2000. There is no doubt that the decision to license all 17 of its tracks to films, tv shows and adverts paid dividends in the long run.

JC

Pete Wylie, Wah!, Yard Act

SOME LIFE-AFFIRMING EXPERIENCES ? (3)

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Tonight will see me go way out of my comfort zone.

Looking for something special to do while on this week’s city-break, we managed to pick up tickets to attend a performance of Rossini‘s Guillaume Tell at the world-famous Vienna State Opera. It’s not that I’ve never attended an opera before, but the number can be counted on fewer than the fingers of my right hand….or my left hand for that matter…..and while I’ve enjoyed the experiences, I still prefer heading along to see pop/rock shows which tend to be over and done with in slightly less than the four hours (including intervals) that’s going to be involved tonight.

Which brings me to a couple more short reviews of gigs that took place just a week apart in Glasgow – one from a should-have-been superstar whose biggest hits are from the 80s and the other from a band whose best days may still be ahead of them.

Friday 8 June : Pete Wylie & The Mighty Wah! – King Tuts Wah Wah Hut

Pete Wylie backed by three younger and talented musicians, rolled back the years with his latest tour. He’s out there promoting Teach Yself Wah! a 20-track compilation comprising the hits, near misses, the flops and a number of songs that really ought to be much better known.

He was on stage for over two hours. He played just 13 songs, an indication of just now often, and for how long, he was talking. The thing is, there was every bit as much enjoyment to be had from the music as there was the talking, much of which was akin to stand-up comedy along with personal recollections of a lifetime in an industry that has never been sure of how to deal with him.

Wylie is a naturally gifted entertainer, but he’s also someone who has devoted an astonishing amount of time and energy into fighting all sorts of social injustices, to the extent that any prospect of him having an extended period in the limelight as a pop/rock star was certainly compromised. Not that he’s overly concerned about how it’s all turned out for him – he’d very much prefer to be remembered for his campaigning efforts as he is for tunes such as these.

mp3 :Wah! – Story Of The Blues
mp3 : Pete Wylie & The Oedipus Wrecks – Sinful

Friday 15 March : Yard Act – Glasgow Academy

The Yard Act gig at Glasgow Barrowlands back in April 2023 was a real highlight of the year. It was one of the final shows the band played in celebration of the success of debut album The Overload, and it was a night of manic energy and exhilaration up on the stage and amongst the audience.

Almost a full year later and they return to the city for one of the first shows to support and promote the newly released LP, Where’s My Utopia? The album was on solid rotation prior to the gig, and at this early juncture, it is a strong candidate to be at the top of my ‘year end list’ if I can be bothered to do such a thing come December.

And yet…..the gig turned out to be one that I could give no more than 3 stars. If I hadn’t been at the Barrowlands last year, I’d certainly have scored it higher, but it is really difficult, if not impossible, not to a gig and compare it with previous shows, especially when there’s not really been that much time between them.

The thing I most feel bad about being so frugal with the marking is that it wasn’t all down to the band. Yes, it’s a totally different kind of show than 2023, complete with backing singers/dancers whose contributions are spectacular, but whose involvement means the gig is more co-ordinated than it is spontaneous. The Barrowlands show had the band and audience feeding off one another’s energy in a way that wasn’t the case this time.

My main issue was with the venue. The Academy is a cavernous venue, a converted former picture house with a huge ceiling and balcony, which hosted its first gig in 2003. I’ve seen many acts of all genres over the decades, but very rarely have I come away fully happy as the sound usually ranges from passable to unlistenable. Maybe it’s the very height that makes it so difficult to get right, but it comes nowhere near that of the Barrowlands. It’s not as if converted cinemas elsewhere haven’t worked – the late and lamented ABC in the city centre, which burned down in 2018, was a great place to see and hear bands – but it’s always a feeling of dread when I find myself having to traipse to the Academy. This was my first time back since the pre-COVID days and I had hoped there may have been improvements in that period, but on the basis of last Friday, sadly no.

The Yard Act album is too new to be offering up any mp3s. Here’s a couple of videos instead.

The latter has a co-vocal from Katy J Pearson. It is insanely catchy. It also ends with a Shakespearian monologue courtesy of the always amazing David Thewlis which is insanely superb.

JC

Colorblind James Experience

THE COLORBLIND JAMES EXPERIENCE : A RE-POST

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I’m thinking there will more than a few ‘regulars’ who weren’t familiar with this blog back in the old days, which means I have nothing to lose from re-posting some old stuff, particularly if it’s to do with a singer or band who’ve rarely, if ever, featured since.

This one dates from January 2014, and was the only previous occasion when The Colorblind James Experience got a specific mention on TVV. It was the fifth part of a series in which I looked at bands from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean….which explains the seemingly strange title of the post.

BLUE JEANS AND CHINOS; COKE, PEPSI AND OREOS (Part 5)

The Colorblind James Experience were formed in 1980, but it took nearly a decade before they were ever heard of here in the UK.

The band centred, for the most part, around the talents of Chuck Cuminale whose stage name was Colorblind James, and the music they played was a mix of rock’n’ roll, country, polka, jazz, blues and rockabilly. They were renowned as an incredibly entertaining live act, first gaining success on the west coast of the States before Chuck moved back to his roots in Rochester, ~~New Jersey~~ New York in 1984. The stage successes, however, did not transfer into them getting any meaningful record deal – the music was just too weird for American radio stations as it didn’t comfortably fit into a single genre and there was no real market for maverick talents such as Cuminale.

In 1987, the band scraped together enough cash to record and press 1,000 copies of an LP, one of which was sent to the UK and into the hands of John Peel. Unsurprisingly, Peel fell for their talents and played the tracks again and again and again. They were picked up by Cooking Vinyl and for a few years were regulars on the UK and European touring circuits, but they never got beyond cult fame and placings on the Indie Charts. I don’t own anything on vinyl other than the self-titled debut LP from 1987*. It has ten tracks, some of which are sung, some are spoken and some are a mix of singing/speaking. There’s a lot of self-deprecating humour on the record and while there’s a couple of tracks that are a bit hit’n’miss there are some well worth a listen:-

mp3 : The Colorblind James Experience – Fledgling Circus
mp3 : The Colorblind James Experience – A Different Bob
mp3 : The Colorblind James Experience – Considering A Move To Memphis

The last of these tracks is a genuine classic, much loved by Mr Peel.

Despite the lack of success, the band continued to record and perform, mostly in the States, throughout the 90s (with ever-changing line-ups) but it all came to a sad and sudden end in July 2001 when Chuck Cuminale died of heart failure at the age of 49.

*I do also have a copy of a 19-track CD, released in 2000, on Stub Daddy Records, called ‘Greatest Hits’ which I picked up at least 15 years ago for next-to-nothing. There are currently two copies for sale on Discogs, both from American sellers, with asking prices of $60 and $100. I have no idea why such prices are the going rate.

JC

PS : Just to mention that I’ll be away from Villain Towers for a few days this week**, and won’t be able to monitor the comments section (and add the various names to the anon contributors thanks to whatever it is WordPress has done to make that happen so often!), nor will I see any e-mails. Thanks, in advance, for your patience!

**it’s a planned short break to Vienna (which is why that particular city featured on the blog earlier this year).

Wedding Present

THE WEDDING PRESENT SINGLES (Parts Twenty-Five and Twenty-Six)

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I’m sure I read somewhere once upon a time that while David Gedge had no regrets about doing 12 singles in a year, he admitted to being relieved after the final recording session as the task had been more demanding from a songwriting perspective than he had anticipated.

The single released in November 1992 kind of reflects that. It had only been a few months since Flying Saucer, a science-fiction inspired song, had been part of the series, but here was one on a similar theme.

mp3: The Wedding Present – The Queen Of Outer Space

I quite like this one. It’s very reminiscent of some of my favourite bits on Seamonsters with the quiet-loud-quiet changes and there’s something of a shouty chorus too, a necessity to be heard above the loud guitars. I’m not claiming it’s close to the top of any list of favourite 45s, but it’s one that I hear and think that it’s much better than I ever recall (if that makes any sense!!) Here’s the promo, directed by Marco Posia. By now, the limits of having small budgets are beginning to show, as it’s a variation on a theme of the band ‘performing’ in an unusual setting.

The previous sci-fi single had a sci-fi related cover. So did this one.

mp3: The Wedding Present -UFO

The theme tune from a UK science fiction series that was broadcast in 1970. I don’t have too many clear memories of the show, and I certainly couldn’t recall the theme tune. I’m guessing the show was aimed more at adults than kids, despite it coming from the same Gerry and Sylvia Anderson/ITC Entertainment stable as the puppet-led shows such as Joe 90, Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlett, all of whose theme tunes I can still hum.

The Queen of Outer Space peaked at #23. It was a time of year when the number of new singles released each week gradually increased with eyes on the festive market sales. Surely The Weddoes wouldn’t fall at the final hurdle?

mp3: The Wedding Present – No Christmas

Of course they didn’t, albeit this one, which was pressed on red vinyl, (all the others had been black vinyl), only hit #25 which was the second-lowest placing after Blue Eyes back in January. It just shows the vagaries of the charts. Every single sold 10,000 copies, but their entry points varied between #10 and #26.

No Christmas must be up there among the bleakest festive songs ever composed. It opens in a very lo-fi and distorted fashion, and then about 30 seconds in, there’s a lyric, but it’s really low down in the mix, so it’s almost impossible to realise that David is singing:-

I wonder if you’re going to ask me why I lied
I wonder if you’re going to show you’re angry with me
I wonder if I could explain this if I tried
I wonder if I’m going to know when you forgive me

He sounds absolutely petrified. Then there’s a single drum note and the song gets loud. That’s when the fear is replaced by desperation and an anguish which comes through in how the lines are sung.

When you forgive me, you forgive me, you forgive me
Will you stay with me, you stay with me, you stay with me?

And all those awful things you said at first
Don’t shout, I understand, you’re pretending to punish me
Well I’m listening, so do your worst
I don’t doubt that you’re mad but it can’t be ending

It can’t be ending, it can’t be ending, can’t be ending
You’re still pretending, still pretending, still pretending

Then it seems to come to be fading to an end about two and a half minutes in. Indeed, the song apparently stops altogether, and then, like the scariest bits in a horror film, something jumps out of the shadows wailing helplessly:-

Don’t say we’ve reached the end; you can’t be right
For goodness sake, you must know I care about you
Please stay my best friend one more night
I couldn’t face another day alone without you

Alone without you, alone without you, alone without you
I care about you, I care about you, I care about you

And then, after what seems like an eternity, it stops and the listener can draw breath. There’s very few Wedding Present songs quite like this….it was a helluva way to bring the epic series to an end. I really hope this was one of those where David used his imagination rather than leaning on real-life.

Here’s the very claustrophobic but effective promo, directed by Philip Harder and Simon Blake.

The cover version couldn’t have been more of a contrast.

mp3: The Wedding Present – Step Into Christmas

One of Elton John‘s jauntiest numbers. Specifically (and cynically?) written in 1973 with the intention of being a perennial. It might only have made #24 when released, but more than 50 years later, it has notched up well over a million sales and probably just as many again streams, with it hitting the Top 20 every year since 2017…..last year it reached #2!

The Weddoes attack it with great gusto…highlighting its pop credentials all the way through. One of the things I most enjoy about it is that the final minute or so is given over to an acoustic guitar, which is deployed in a very similar way to the Albini version of Brassneck.

1992 was a year in which The Wedding Present became better known than ever before, thanks in part to the four Top of The Pops appearances and their single getting played once a month on chart rundown shows, but it’s difficult to judge whether it increased the fanbase. The fact that they no new material would emerge until 1994 makes it even harder to judge.

JC

1990s

SATURDAY’S SCOTTISH SONG : #396 : 1990s

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1990s have featured previously a couple of times on the blog. The first was back in February 2015 when I made mention of them being by far and away the most local to Villain Towers. Their debut album Cookies (2007) featured a song about the area they are from and where I’ve lived since 1995:-

mp3 : 1990s – Pollokshields

I wrote about them again in June 2022, on the occasion of my 59th birthday, as their sophomore album Kicks (2009) paid tribute to our local bus service:-

mp3 : 1990s – 59

Both albums were on Rough Trade Records and were produced by Bernard Butler.

They never quite made it and eventually called it a day in 2012, not long after I caught them as an excellent opening act for Cornershop. However, the band did reform in 2022 and thirteen years after their last release, the third album, Nude Restuarant, was released by Last Night From Glasgow. Here’s one of its tracks:-

mp3: 1990s – Fassbinder Would Have Loved Techno

It turned out that most of the album had been completed as long ago as 2011 but had lain in the vaults waiting on the finishing touches.

JC

Godspeed You! Black Emperor

A GIG TO REMEMBER : GODSPEED YOU! BLACK EMPEROR

A guest posting by Fraser Pettigrew

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Righting the world’s wrongs with the help of a good tune is in many ways fundamental to the very idea of rock music. Whether expressing the iniquities of racism in America’s South in its blues roots, or recruiting youth to anti-war or anti-oppression campaigns in the 60s, 70s and 80s, politically motivated rock has always harnessed the appeal of good-time party music to further a social cause. Even in its more aggressive forms during the punk era, the principle was well observed that if I can’t dance, it’s not my revolution.

Not all political music has embraced the Maoist subterfuge of popular form to effect radical change however. The likes of Crass, for example, never troubled the charts in their unrelenting dedication to anarchism and hardcore punk. The last time I encountered an artist with serious social issues was back in 2016 and it certainly wasn’t an occasion of the singalongaJerryDammers Free Nelson Mandela variety.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor is a Canadian collective, one of the few acts in the broadly defined genre of rock music that live and work according to political principles. They have consistently expressed their anti-capitalist and anti-globalist message since first coming together in Montreal in 1994. Considering that their music is almost wholly instrumental, the messaging is most explicit in the titles of pieces or in the packaging in which it is made available.

I should point out early on that I’m not familiar with a great deal of their music. I only possess one LP, 2002’s Yanqui U.X.O. So you couldn’t describe me as a fan exactly. But still, who can fail to be intrigued by a band whose origins lie in a home-made 30-copy cassette album entitled “All Lights Fucked On The Hairy Amp Drooling”?

The music on Yanqui U.X.O. is fairly representative of their style, I believe, consisting of four 20-minute instrumentals that stretch minimal musical content from quiet beginnings to furious crescendos and back again, using multiple guitars, basses, drums and classical string, wind and brass instruments. The title of the album combines the Spanish rendering of ‘Yankee’ and the initialism for ‘unexploded ordnance’, some of which is seen falling out of a bomber on the front cover. A graphic on the sleeve depicts the complex interconnection of the music business with the military-industrial complex.

How can such simple, lyric-less music be political in the absence of commentary, packaging or programme notes? It wasn’t a question that occurred to me when I snapped up a couple of tickets to see them live at the 2016 Edinburgh Festival. All I knew was that it was a rare opportunity to see a cult band with a bit of a reputation and I liked Yanqui U.X.O. enough to think that the live show would be musically stimulating at the least. In that I was not wrong, though not in the sense that I probably expected.

The venue for the show was The Playhouse, a theatre I hadn’t been in for over three decades at least, but well remembered as the scene of milestone gigs in my youth by The Jam, Elvis Costello and Misty in Roots. A mixed bag of punters milled around in the foyer and bar, much as they had in the 70s and 80s. Unlike those days there was no support band to endure or ignore and we were ushered to our seats by a bell as you would be at the opera house.

Onto a barely illuminated stage ambled the musicians, three or four at first, and as expected the music began quietly, modulating in stately fashion between a couple of chords, gradually solidifying with the addition of more players as the piece progressed, three or four guitars, two bass players, a drummer, or was it two? A cellist… It was so dark it was hard to see.

By this gloom, our attention was diverted away from the band to the large screen above the stage, onto which was projected a sequence of mystifying and seemingly incoherent grainy black and white film clips, looping repeatedly, compelling you to study them for meaning. At first the camera seemed to pan across what looked like a studio model of a skyscraper city, looping back and panning again, and again. Shapes, possibly buildings, no people. Then later the scene changed to a telephoto shot of some figures in a bleak modernist plaza, bleached by sunlight, the repetitive loop isolating one man’s curious gestures into a zoochotic stereotype, like the despairing sway of a long-captive animal. Another figure stood with his back to the gesturing man. Were they arguing? Was this some sort of surveillance video? Was some violence about to ensue?

As we watched, the music had imperceptibly grown, bar by bar, swollen and intensified until at its height it was pummelling the audience with almost unbelievable sonic force. It was undoubtedly the loudest music I have ever heard, hardly varying from the same few chords, half-tones apart, aural assault in a minor key, sustained over a lengthy plateau rather than a peak until slowly it subsided and faded away back to silence. There was applause and some cheering, as much in relief as in appreciation.

What had just happened? I felt as if we’d been caught in the middle of a typhoon, unable to escape, able only to grit our teeth and wait for it to pass. And then it started again, different chords, different disquieting film, another crescendo, another battering of intense noise, so loud and unrelenting that it felt like a physical weight on my chest, stifling my breath, threatening to squeeze the very life out of my heart and lungs. Four or five separate pieces ebbed and flowed over the hour, repeating the punishment, until finally we were released, spilling out of the exits like hostages after a siege.

The combined effect of such noise and the disturbingly repetitious monochrome film loops was one of profound alienation, an indefinable sense of existential dread. We shuffled out into the summer evening, slowly readjusting to a world where human interaction and communication spoke of friendship and connection, and Edinburgh’s elegant cityscape brought pleasure and a vibrant sense of place, a host of feelings that had been forcibly denied and beaten out of us for the duration of the concert.

It was a truly staggering experience, unlike any other cultural event I have ever witnessed. Instead of enthusing and inspiring the audience with upbeat anthems of hope and defiance, GY!BE had brutalised us with a dystopian vision and weaponised music by extreme and sustained volume. If there was a political message to be gleaned from the performance it was that there is something very wrong with the world and THIS IS WHAT IT FEELS LIKE! It is not enough to know that there is fear and suffering, it is necessary through this stupendous confrontation to experience it and sense it within yourself.

I felt stunned, shattered, almost literally. The use of sound as a weapon may still be experimental in military circles, but on this evidence GY!BE have perfected it.

The strange thing is, however, that on record the music has a quite different effect. It would be difficult in any case to replicate the concert experience in your suburban home without bringing the police round and incurring a noise abatement charge. But even played loud in your living room it’s impossible to escape the fact that the music is often beautiful, expansive, epic, grandiose, sublime even, conveying an aching poignancy like a Mahler or Bruckner adagio. Perhaps that too is part of the concept. Be seduced by the uplifting beauty of this art, buy the record, follow the band, come to the concert. Then, when the lights go down and the doors are shut, all will be revealed. A chilling realisation will creep over you. You will discover that this is not just music, you can’t dance, and this IS the revolution.