Month: November 2025

#edwyncollins45s

THE TESTIMONIAL TOUR OF 45s (aka The Singular Adventures of Edwyn Collins)

#10: Flesh Of My Flesh : Orange Juice (Polydor, OJ4, 1983)

Let me begin this week by trying to explain why the first single under which Orange Juice has its own specific catalogue number, offered up by Polydor, carries OJ4.

OJ1 had been a 12″ promo featuring two non-singles, A Million Pleading Faces and Breakfast Time, given to DJs as a way of further plugging the Rip It Up LP.  OJ2 had been the number attached to the bonus disc included as part of the 2 x 7″ release of Rip It Up, while OJ3 had been a flexidisc of a previously unreleased song, The Day I Went Down To Texas, that was given away with copies of Melody Maker, one of the four weekly UK music papers, in March 1983.

OJ4 was released in June 1983.  A full eight months after Flesh of My Flesh had first been heard as an album track, the decision was taken to issue it as a single.  In order to tempt fans to buy it, a completely new mix was issued on 7″ (and also available as a picture disc), with production duties handled by legendary reggae and dub musician/producer, Dennis Bovell.

mp3: Orange Juice – Flesh of My Flesh (7″ version)

A decent enough pop effort, but it wasn’t one to get the sort of attention of the big hit a few months earlier, and despite a six-week stay in the singles chart, it peaked at #41 which, going by history, seemed to be the natural position for Orange Juice singles.

The fact that the band was struggling a bit for material can be seen from the b-side offering:-

mp3: Orange Juice – Lord John White and The Bottleneck Train

The writing credits are attributed to Manyika/McClymont/Ross.  It is a rollicking but strange almost surreal sort of tune in which Zeke tells the story of a train journey in Zimbabwe, but if you pay close attention, you can also make out a sort of wailing sound courtesy of Edwyn which turns out to be the vocal to Flesh of My Flesh played backwards.  Quite clearly, the band and Dennis Bovell were intent on having a bit of fun in the studio.

The 12″ version of the single added various studio effects to Flesh of My Flesh.  It is, in my view, a bit on the self-indulgent side, and does the song no favours at all.

mp3: Orange Juice – Flesh of My Flesh (12″ version)

One other thing to add…the picture disc version of the single for some reason had an edited version, by about 90 seconds, of Lord John White. So, for completeness:-

mp3: Orange Juice – Lord John White and The Bottleneck Train (edit)

What we didn’t know was that the band were already back in the studio, working on new material for a third album, and that the next single was at an advanced stage of planning.  But those of you who have been following the story of Orange Juice via this series will be well aware that things rarely go smoothly or as planned.

 

JC

Hamish Hawk

SATURDAY’S SCOTTISH SONG : #481: HAMISH HAWK

Hamish Hawk has featured on the blog a couple of times previously, but never as part of this ridiculously long-running series, the first of which was A.C. Acoustics back in February 2015.

Culled from an extensive blurb over at all music:-

This Edinburgh-born singer/songwriter’s intense, lyrical compositions blend aspects of indie rock and chamber pop laced with a bone-dry sense of humour and often crammed with seemingly disparate historical and cultural references.

It took me a while to appreciate Hamish Hawk, having first seen and heard him play an acoustic solo set in support of an acoustic show by Arab Strap in October 2021 and been less than impressed.    Seeing him again, on this occasion with a full band, in Berlin in mid-2023, by which time I was very familiar with the albums Heavy Elevator and Angel Numbers, was a bit of a revelation.   His sell-out show at Glasgow Barrowlands in February 2024 was a real triumph, and with him not afraid to head out on tour as support to the likes of Simple Minds and Elbow, he has been able to grow his audience substantially over the past couple of years.

I thought his latest album, A Firmer Hand, released in August 2024 had some of his best songs but didn’t, overall, maintain the quality of the previous two records.  It’ll be interesting to see what comes next.

mp3: Hamish Hawk – The Mauritian Badminton Doubles Champion, 1973

From Heavy Elevator.   A magnificent song title with a magnificent lyric and tune to match.

 

JC

 

Chumbawamba

A FEW OF MY FAVOURITE THINGS (3)

The latest instalment of this occasional and lazy series where I dive deep into the TVV vaults and pick out what I think could be an interesting posting from yesteryear. It’ll always be from quite a while back and will usuually feature a singer or band whose appearances aren’t one of the regulars. The main idea being that those readers who are relatively new to the blog get to, hopefully, enjoy something they would otherwise have probably missed, while those of you who have been coming here a long time can just sigh as you see how the quality of writing has diminished with each passing year. This is from 18 November 2015.

ON THEIR VERY BEST BEHAVIOUR

It was in August 1992 that Chumbawamba released a single on 12” vinyl and CD entitled (Someone’s Always Telling You How To) Behave. The sleeve contained a superbly worded essay drawn from a piece by Steven Wells (R.I.P.) in which he highlighted how ludicrous it was for anyone involved in the arts, particularly pop and rock music, to be in any way homophobic. The single was released on the back of two now infamous events, one being where a famous pop star of the day – Jason Donovan – launched and won a libel action against a magazine that had alleged he was homosexual and the other being where Shawn Ryder was riding the waves of fame on the back of stating openly and unapologetically that he hated ‘queers’ and releasing a press statement ‘confirming his heterosexuality.’

The single, however, was the third such version of the song in a little over six months wherein lies a fine tale.

Chumbawamba began the year with plans to release a new album that would rely very heavily on sampled music and dialogue. Said album, which was entitled Jesus H Christ, was recorded but never given an official release as it was going to prove far too costly and time-consuming to gain clearance for all the samples involved – there were more than 40 – and there was a real concern that someone would simply refuse permission and so lead to the song or indeed whole album being shelved. One of the songs was this:-

mp3 : Chumbawamba – Silly Love Songs

The samples on the track consisted of Silly Love Songs by Paul McCartney & Wings, Tell Me Lies by Fleetwood Mac and Gimme Some Truth by John Lennon. It also contained a snatch of dialogue involving the single word ‘Behave’ as regularly uttered by music producer Pete Waterman during his stint as presenter on the late night TV show The Hit Man and Her.

The band knew that they had written a decent batch of lyrics for the new songs and so rather than letting them go to waste they went into the studio and recorded the album Shhh  during which Silly Love Songs had evolved into this very fine number:-

mp3 : Chumbawamba – Behave!

Then the band came up with the idea of re-recording Behave! with a completely new lyric as part of their response to the homophobia scandals, particularly the Jason Donovan court case. There’s no little irony that his rise to music stardom was masterminded by none other than Pete Waterman whose contribution to the original version of the song was such that it had led to it being adopted as its new title when the album was released.

mp3 : Chumbawamaba – (Someone’s Always Telling You How To) Behave

The 45 version is quite a bit different from the album version, losing the trumpets and the constant refrain of behave!, as well as having a completely different lyric. The band had high hopes for the record which was being released, as usual on their own Agit-Pop label, but there were huge disputes with the distributor whose efforts were somewhat half-hearted to say the least and indeed pissed about a fair bit while Chumbawamba were touring in the USA and unable to give it the support they wanted to here in the UK. The issues were so intense that the band would wind their label up almost immediately and sign to One Little Indian.

The 12” and CD had three other songs listed on the sleeve, although there was an additional hidden track, which was yet another alternative version of Behave!

mp3 : Chumbawamaba – (Someone’s Always Telling You How To) Behave (brittle mix)
mp3 : Chumbawamaba – Misbehave (brittle mix)
mp3 : Chumbawamaba – Misbehave
mp3 : Chumbawamaba – (Someone’s Always Telling You How To) Behave (version)

Misbehave isn’t a remix of behave!. Instead, it is a brand new and ridiculously catchy song – particularly in its brittle mix form – in which the names of real people and fictional characters whose claim to fame was that they weren’t always good boys or girls are chanted over a punchy techno-lite track that once heard won’t be easily forgotten. Billy Joel and We Didn’t Start The Fire it certainly isn’t………………..

Enjoy

PS : Copies of Jesus H Christ did quietly make their way into some shops after Shhh was released; some of the owners have since put the songs out there on t’internet which is how I’ve been able to get a copy of Silly Love Songs for inclusion today…..

PPS : Talking of ‘favourite things’, I’m off on holiday again today – Barbados bound for 12 days – but rest assured plenty of blog posts have been readied for your daily consumption.  All your usual favourites should pop up as and when you expect them!

JC

 

10000 Maniacs

SOME SONGS MAKE GREAT SHORT STORIES (Chapter 64)

It’s been more than two years since Chapter 63 of this series.  I could blame writer’s block, but it’s really down to me forgetting about it!

Today’s story of an unwanted pregnancy is a really sad one, and yet it is set to an upbeat tune that could be danced to at an indie disco.

Oh, baby blankets and baby shoesBaby slippers, baby spoons, walls of baby blueDream child in my head is a nightmare born in a borrowed bedNow I know lightning strikes againIt struck me once, then struck me deadMy folly grows inside of me
I eat for two, walk for two, breathe for two nowWalk for two, eat for two, breathe for two now
Well, the egg man fell down off his shelfAll the good King’s men with all their helpStruggled ’til the end for a shell they couldn’t mendYou know where this will leadTo hush and rock in the nurseryFor the kicking one inside of me
I eat for two, walk for two, breathe for two nowEat for two, walk for two, breathe for two now
When the boy was a boy, the girl was a girlThey found each other in a wicked worldStrong in some respectsBut she couldn’t stand for the way he begged and gave inPride is for men, young girls should run and hide insteadRisk the game by taking dares with “yes”
Eat for two, walk for two, breathe for two nowEat for two, walk for two, breathe for two now
Walk for two? I’m stumblingWalk for two? I’m stumblingBreathe for two, how? I can’t breatheI can’t breatheFive months, how it growsFive months now, I begin to show

mp3: 10,000 Maniacs – Eat For Two

It dates from 1989 when Natalie Merchant was the lead singer with the band.  It can be found on Blind Man’s Zoo and was the second single to be lifted from that particular album.

The other three tracks on what was a 4-song EP were all very obscure cover versions.

mp3: 10,000 Maniacs – Wildwood Flower
mp3: 10,000 Maniacs – Don’t Call Us
mp3: 10,000 Maniacs – From The Time You Say Goodbye

The first of these was written and recorded in 1928 by The Carter Family, an American folk group who came out of Virginia in the 1920s and are widely regarded as the first vocal group to become country music stars.

The second song is ridiculously obscure.  It dates from 1981, and the composers are Arwin Thomas and Graham Blanch. It was a ska single credited to a band called Digital Dinosaurs and recorded at Cargo Studios in Rochdale, before being released by Yucca Records, based in Wrexham in north Wales.  But the main participants were youngsters from a school in Wales for disadvantaged and handicapped children.  I was only able to gleam all this from the fact that John Peel aired the single on his show in October 1981.  I have no idea how 10,000 Maniacs came to be aware of its existence.

The third and final track dates from 1952 and was written by Leslie Sturdy, and the online info indicates it was first recorded by Vera Lynn, the English singer whose recordings became particularly popular with British servicemen during World War II, and was the b-side of a 78rpm single called Auf Wiederseh’n Sweetheart.

You can learn something almost every day here at TVV.

JC

A Certain Ratio, Aztec Camera, Goodbye Mr Mackenzie, Jesus & Mary Chain, Marc Almond, Pete Shelley, Ramones, Shop Assistants, XTC

WHEN THE CLOCKS STRUCK THIRTEEN (November Pt 2)

November 1984.  As we have previously seen, a decent enough month for the ‘proper’ singles chart, albeit there was still all sorts of rubbish polluting the air waves of radio stations. But what were the new 45s that might have been getting aired later at night on Radio 1 or perhaps were from folk whose start was no longer in the ascendancy and who were prone to getting completely ignored.  Like this fella:-

mp3: Shelley – Never Again

Yup, he decided to drop his forename in 1984 for what was the first single to be released by Immaculate Records, a London-based indie-label whose perhaps best known act in later years would be One Thousand Violins, who would enjoy some indie chart success in the late 80s.  For this one, Pete had Barry Adamson on board playing bass, but even that great man’s involvement can’t stop this being all just a bit ‘meh’.

mp3: The Ramones – Howling At The Moon (Sha La La)

It had been at lest four years since The Ramones had last enjoyed any sort of commercial success, and the band was losing a lot of love among fans and critics by making records that were a long way removed from their punk origins.  For 1984’s Too Tough To Die, former member Tommy Ramone, under his real name of Thomas Erdelyi, was in the producer’s chair, and for the most part the critics proclaimed it as a return to form, albeit it would end up selling as poorly as Pleasant Dreams (1981) and Subterranean Jungle (1983).  The one exception to the production duties was Howling At The Moon (Sha La La), which has Dave Stewart of Eurythmics at the controls. And yes, it ends up being as strange and confused in real life as it does on paper.

mp3: XTC – This World Over

A few years back, all the XTC singles were looked at in some detail on the blog.  This World Over was Part 20 of the series.  Here’s what was said at the time by myself and others via the comments section (as it illustrates just how wonderful such contributions/observations have long been:-

JC :  In an era when the protest song was again becoming hugely fashionable, XTC did things in a really understated way in which there was no rabble-rousing or sing-a-long chorus; instead it’s a melancholy and resigned number that sadly looks back at the aftermath of the bomb dropping on London as a parent tried to explain the madness of it all. It’s very listenable and has dated ok, but I should add it reminds me a bit of later-era The Police.

JTFL : In a continuing attempt to say something nice about XTC’s ’83”84 period, here goes: (a) another great sleeve by Partridge and (b) Moulding started using a Wal bass around this period and it sounds really good on this track. Otherwise, not too crazy for this song, with its minimal emphasis on guitar. Peter Phipps is solid as a timekeeper, but the drums are so up front in the mix that it seems like the band is playing around him.

Echorich : This is just a magical, melancholy tour de force. This World Over is tender and emotionally charged with a crescendo that builds leading ultimately to a sad resignation as the song ends. It is a song that ranks very high in the band’s canon for me and one that once heard, stays with me all day.

postpunkmonk: Hmm. Yeah, I guess there is a Police/Synchronicity sound to it all; albeit with better lyrics/performance. It’s on a whole different level of maturity and sophistication as compared to the Police, though I’ll concede the vibe.

Reached #99 in the ‘proper’ chart.  Don’t recall ever hearing it on the radio.

mp3: A Certain Ratio – Life’s A Scream

Still ploughing a lonely furrow on Factory Records, with Anthony H Wilson never losing faith.  This one has the catalogue number FAC 112 and was a 12″ release only, albeit there are 7″ white label and promo copies kicking around.  It’s one of those rare beasts – a mid 80s number with mid 80s production/gimmickry that somehow has managed to date well.

mp3: Marc Almond – Tenderness Is A Weakness

Where Marc Almond’s first two solo singles had made small dents in the charts earlier in the year, the third and last selection lifted from the album Vermine In Ermine went nowhere.  I think a lot of this is to do with timing.  Joe and Josephine Public wanted the poppier side of Marc and weren’t geared up at all for the torch-like and dramatic sounding tunes that he would later find some success with, albeit often through cover versions such as Jacky (1991) and The Days of Pearly Spencer (1992). Tenderness Is A Weakness is one of the best of his early solo songs, and it’s a pity it’s not better known

mp3: Aztec Camera – Still On Fire

The second 45 taken from Knife.   I’ll damn it with faint praise by saying it’s marginally better than All I Need Is Everything, the #34 hit from a few months earlier.

mp3: Goodbye Mr Mackenzie – Death Of A Salesman

I only learned of this one from its inclusion in The Great Indie Discography, the book by Martin C Strong that has provided almost all the info for the Part 2 sections of this series.  It was recorded and released a full two years before GMM were signed to any sort of mainstream label, and it came about courtesy of a further education college in West Lothian which was running a pilot music industry course for students.  It was a split 7″, on a label called Scruples, with the other track being Locked Inside Your Prison by Lindy Bergmann, of which and of whom I can tell you nothing despite me searching.  Just 1,000 copies of the single were pressed, and while the music sounds quite unlike anything GMM would later release, there’s more than enough interest in it nowadays that it can fetch a more than decent sum on the few occasions a copy makes its way onto any second-hand market (and no, I don’t own a copy!)

mp3: The Jesus and Mary Chain – Upside Down

The debut single, and their only recording for Creation Records, before they signed to Blanco y Negro after being wooed by Geoff Travis of Rough Trade.  The sleeves for the first 1,000 copies were in black with red words and listed an address to write to the band. Subsequent copies, without the band address, were produced in several colour variations including red, yellow, blue and pink. In 1985, the single was re-released by Creation with a totally different sleeve.  It was again later reissued in November 2024, by Warner Brothers, in a red sleeve with white writing to mark its 40th anniversary and is reckoned, in total, to have sold over 50,000 copies without ever charting.

mp3: Buba and The Shop Assistants – Something To Do

The debut single from the band that would later become Shop Assistants was produced by Stephen Pastel and came out on Edinburgh-based Villa 21 Records. By the time the next single came out a year later, Buba had dropped from the name, singer Aggi had been replaced by Alex Taylor and they had a deal with The Subway Organisation in Bristol, albeit it didn’t last long.

 

JC

Public Image Limited

THE 12″ LUCKY DIP (30): Public Image Limited – The Flowers of Romance

Let’s begin with a contemporary review:-

SINGLE OF THE WEEK

Sheer deloight! – As the fellow himself might say. This is the first PiL single in well over a year, and however dubious their excuses might sound, ‘Flowers’ is at least fair compensation for all the waiting around.

As title-track, it augurs well for the LP to follow. One of the starkest, most single-minded pieces they’ve ever done – on first hearing it seems all thudding drum and piercing Lydon whine – ‘Flowers’ stands supreme this week; one of that tiny handful of records cable of provoking some emotional response in the listener.

Take the time to get to know it, the hypnotic beat, those uniquely chilling vocals – a relentless montone – and the eerie, vaguely Eastern drone at the music’s core. On the face of it, ‘Flowers of Romance’ is hardly a song at all, but on the inside it’s really much, much more. Let’s have more!

That’s from the NME of 28 March 1981.

I’ll agree with one part of the review, namely that it was one of the starkest, most single-minded pieces they’ve ever done.  It’s as strange and disturbing as earlier single Death Disco, and let’s not forget that it had been written by John Lydon for his dead mother in response to her wish that he come up with a disco song for her funeral.

Public Image Limited had more or less disintegrated during 1980, being basically a duo of Lydon and Keith Levene, and the latter was no longer interested in playing guitar.  No attempt was made to bring in a replacement bassist for Jah Wobble, while the drums were entrusted to Martin Atkins, and it’s his playing which sort of dominates the single.

mp3: Public Image Limited – Flowers Of Romance (extended version)

‘Sort of’ in that you can’t ignore Lydon’s relentless painful sounding vocal, nor Levene’s contribution via a Stroh Violin.

One thing to mention is that the extended version on the 12″ is a bit of a con as it is actually just the 7″ version with the instrumental version added on with just the tiniest of gaps at 2:47.

The b-side is an old track, in that the songwriting credits list the four band members who played on the 1978 album, Public Image : First Issue.  Possibly an outake?

mp3: Public Image Limited – Home Is Where The Heart Is

All in all, it really did make it a very unlikely chart hit, which it was, as it peaked at #24.  I can’t recall ever hearing it on the radio at the time – I certainly didn’t buy it in 1981, and this was another picked up second-hand many decades later.

JC

Trashcan Sinatras

THE CD SINGLE LUCKY DIP (28) : The Trash Can Sinatras – To Sir With Love

A Happy Pocket was the third studio album to be recorded and released in September 1996 by The Trash Can Sinatras.  It would be their last for eight years, and when they returned, they were now calling themselves Trashcan Sinatras, and that’s what has been used ever since.

The first two albums Cake (1990) and I’ve Seen Everything (1993) had been minor successes in that they reached #55 and #50 respectively.  A Full Pocket peaked at #77 and not too long afterwards, with their label Go! Discs having been acquired by the behemoth that is Universal Music, the band was dropped. In due coursed this led to the band being declared bankrupt, and the subsequent financial and legal complexities had a bearing on why it took so long for a fourth album to appear.

There had already been three singles taken from the album , none of which reached the Top 100, when it was decided to issue the cover of To Sir, With Love, a 1967 #11 hit in the UK for Lulu, but which was actually the best-selling single of that year in the USA, thanks in large part to it being the theme song of a highly successful film of the same name.

The idea in the first place for TCS to do the cover came from singer Frank Reader, primarily as it reminded him of being young and hearing it sung by female relatives ‘doing their turn’ at household parties.  It was also a time when many of the popular bands of the time were going down the road of recording what could best be described as ‘soundtrack-influenced, synth-strings driven torch songs’, so this recording wasn’t as left field as might perhaps be imagined:-

mp3: The Trash Can Sinatras – To Sir, With Love

The song received a lot more airplay than other TCS singles, thanks to it being named single of the week by Radio 1 DJ Simon Mayo who at the time was the presenter of the late afternoon/early evening slot known as Drivetime.  It would eventually reach the giddy heights of #80.

There were three other songs on the CD single:-

mp3: The Trash Can Sinatras – Claw
mp3: The Trash Can Sinatras – A Boy And A Girl
mp3: The Trash Can Sinatras – You Only Live Twice

The band have since said they regret not including Claw on A Happy Pocket given it is the sort of slow, atmospheric and shimmering sort of song they were increasingly moving towards, and would do so to great effect on later records.

A Boy And A Girl was one that was left over from the album sessions and features a co-vocal from guitarist John Douglas.

The last of the songs is, of course, a cover of a Bond theme. It’s quite a faithful take on things musically, albeit Frank’s falsetto vocal is different.  It would later be used as part of a soundtrack to a theatrical production of Irvine Welsh‘s novel Maribou Stork Nightmares, which I recall seeing but not particularly enjoying at the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow in early 1996.

A HUGE THANKS TO CRAIG McALLISTER AS MUCH OF THE ABOVE IS SOURCED FROM ‘A FULL POCKET’, HIS DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO ‘A HAPPY POCKET’ WHICH WAS PUBLISHED TO COMMEMORATE THE RE-PRESS OF THE ALBUM BY LAST NIGHT FROM GLASGOW IN 2023

 

 

JC

#edwyncollins45s

THE TESTIMONIAL TOUR OF 45s (aka The Singular Adventures of Edwyn Collins)

#9: Rip It Up : Orange Juice (Polydor, POSP 547, 1983)

There’s still a part of me in disbelief that Orange Juice actually enjoyed a Top 10 single back in the early months of 1983.

The second album, Rip It Up, had been released in November 1982, a mere eight months after the debut.  The weekly music papers more or less gave it an absolute pasting, with many writers expressing sorrow that the once darlings, and indeed possible founders, of post-punk indie-pop had released such a hotchpotch of tunes, all of which had been subject to the production styles and values of the day.  There was one exception….Neil Tennant, a writer with Smash Hits (whose aim was very much at the pop side of music and a younger audience) awarded the 8 out of 10 and said “no one can accuse them of being twee anymore … a big step forward which they can be proud of and you can enjoy.”

While I wasn’t overly impressed with it on first hearings, there were a few moments worth listening to, including the opening track, after which the album had taken its name.  Rip It Up, certainly in the eyes of a major label, been a commercial failure, spending just two weeks in the chart and doing no better than its first week showing of #39.  Probably more in hope than expectation, the lead track was chosen to be the band’s new single, and given a release in the first week of February 1983.

mp3: Orange Juice – Rip It Up

There was probably some minor celebration in Polydor HQ when the single was listed for daytime play by Radio 1 which helped it enter the chart at #50.  When it climbed the following week to #42, the same position as that when I Can’t Help Myself hit its peak, everyone probably expected it to then fall away.  But the listening public had taken to the song, and by now it was being heard not just on Radio 1 but on the local BBC stations as well as the many commercial stations across the UK. It made its way up to #31.  And still it continued to sell….#22 the following week, which led to a Top of The Pops appearance in which Edwyn, David, Malcolm and Zeke did their best to enjoy their miming experience.

There were many viewers who, having just had their introduction to Orange Juice, went out and the 45 as it climbed to #10 the following week, and then up to #9.  This led to a second invite to Top of The Pops, one in which they would be introduced by none other than John Peel who had championed them in the Postcard days but had no love for the current music.  This appearance would subsequently go down in legend. Partly because Edwyn managed to get his good friend Jim Thirwell, who recorded under the name of Foetus, and was never a candidate to have a chart single, on to the show to mime the sax solo, but mainly for David’s antics.   The bass player had got shit-faced in the Green Room beforehand, upset and angered by the fact the producers were going to have dancers alongside the band tearing up bits of paper as they mimed away.

It might have been a performance that had the middle-classes tut-tutting in their living rooms, but it did lead to the single going up the charts yet again, just the one place to #8 which is where it peaked.  The story goes that the TOTP producers were so annoyed by the antics of the band that Polydor Records were called up and told Orange Juice were never be invited back onto the show.  Without giving away any spoilers, the chart performances of all their future singles never threatened to call anyone’s bluff.

Rip It Up was released in the usual 7″ and 12″ formats.  The 7″ version (which is near the top of this post) was an edited version of that which opened the album, about 1:40 shorter all told.  The annoying thing is that the single fades out much quicker than the album version, meaning the Paul Quinn backing vocal is very truncated.

The 12″ didn’t simply offer up the album version, however, being a different mix altogether:-

mp3: Orange Juice – Rip It Up (Punk Club Version)

The b-side to the 7″ was written by Malcolm Ross who also took the lead vocal:-

mp3: Orange Juice – Snake Charmer

The b-side to the 12″ was an Edwyn Collins song:-

mp3: Orange Juice – A Sad Lament

Neither track has the pop majesty of the A-side, and were so different from the polished sounds of the songs on the album that their inevitable fates were as b-sides, although A Sad Lament would later be one of the nine tracks to appear on the mini-album Texas Fever (which I’ll come back to in due course).

As part of the marketing efforts by Polydor as the single made its way up the charts, a ‘limited edition’ 2 x 7″ version was pressed up, complete with a glossy poster.  The bonus disc offered a shorter version of A Sad Lament, along with what was described as a live version of earlier Postcard era single Lovesick:-

mp3: Orange Juice – A Sad Lament (edited version)
mp3: Orange Juice – Lovesick (live version)

There was nothing live about Lovesick – it was simply a newly recorded and far more polished version featuring the current Orange Juice line-up. But it’s a decent enough listen and on its own made the purchase of the 2 x 7″ offering worthwhile.

The dilemma for the record label was how best to follow up the hit single and seek to maintain the momentum.

 

JC

Hairband

SATURDAY’S SCOTTISH SONG : #480: HAIRBAND

I actually saw Hairband in the short time they performed together, and enjoyed them so much that I bought their debut EP in October 2018, not knowing at the time it would prove to be their only release on vinyl*.

From Bandcamp:-

Hairband are a new five piece group from Glasgow who, on their debut recordings, have distilled the joy and bittersweet trials of youth into 5 songs that bend to no rules but the ones they make up as they go along. Deeply immersed in their local DIY scene and featuring members of groups Spinning Coin, Breakfast Muff, Lush Purr and Kaputt, Hairband’s take on pop music is their own, so natural yet odd-shaped, carefree but meticulously constructed that it feels like no one has quite made music quite like this before, celebratory and joyful.

mp3: Hairband – Sassy Moon

The press release accompanying the EP offered these words:-

“The music here presents as streamlined pop but bubbling beneath the hooks is audacious instrumental work. Indeed, the tension at the heart of Hairband’s music is a group who can play without it sounding like a big deal. Is this a Glasgow thing, because Orange Juice were a bit like that, Sacred Paws too. Hairband even try on a little Marquee Moon-era Television on Sassy Moon and make it fit like the best charity shop find ever.”

A touch hyperbole, perhaps, but there is no denying that Sassy Moon is a decent listen – as indeed are all five songs on the EP.

The reason for the * earlier on?

An email from Monorail Records the store partly owned by Stephen Pastel, arrived at the beginning of last month advising that Under The Plow, the debut recording from Hairband, only previously available on cassette and download, was getting a limited edition pressing on vinyl. It has duly been ordered.

 

JC

 

Fictive Fridays, Various

FICTIVE FRIDAYS : #4

a guest series, courtesy of a very friendly lawyer

Trivial Pursuit

1. King’s Lead Hat. Brian Eno

The song title is an anagram of Talking Heads.

2. Shot by Both Sides. Magazine

Howard Devoto and Pete Shelley wrote this song when the former was still a member of Buzzcocks. When it appeared on Magazine‘s 1978 debut, Real Life, Shelley got a co-writing credit. But Devoto got nuthin when Shelley recycled the riff later that year for Lipstick, a b-side to the Promises single.

3. Los Angeles. X

Exene, John Doe, and Billy Zoom are all pseudonyms. Only drummer D.J. Bonebrake uses his real name.

4. TV Party. Black Flag

Singer Henry Rollins and Minor Threat frontman/Discord Records founder Ian MacKaye worked together in a Haagen Dazs ice cream shop as teenagers in Washington DC.

5. Let’s Get Back. No Doubt

Eric Stefani, founding keyboardist and older brother of Gwen, left the band to become an animator on The Simpsons.

6. The New Timmy. Lotion

The liner notes for Nobody’s Cool, the unheralded NYC band’s 1996 second LP, were written by Thomas Pynchon.

7. Destination Unknown. Missing Persons

Singer and drummer Dale and Terry Bozzio, guitarist Warren Cuccorullo, and bassist Patrick O’Hearn were all veterans of Frank Zappa‘s band.

8. Cretin Hop. Ramones

Johnny only ever played downstrokes so the trickier guitar parts on the first 4 Ramones albums were played by Tommy Ramone or producers Ed Stasium and Craig Leon. On later albums guest guitarists included Graham Goulding, Walter Lure, Dave Stewart, Jean Beauvoir, Daniel Rey, and Vernon Reid.

9. Isolation. Joy Division

Peter Hook and Stephen Morris were questioned as suspects in the Yorkshire Ripper case.

10. The Blues Are Still Blue. Belle & Sebastian

On a 2017 tour, the band accidentally left drummer Richard Colburn behind in a North Dakota Walmart. They appealed to twitter to find a fan that drove Colburn to the airport for a gig in Minnesota.

 

Jonny

 

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

SLIGHTLY BORED BY IT NOW? (3)

mp3: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Red Right Hand

Let Love In, the 1996 album by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds will always be one of my all-time favourites.  I placed it at #16 in the 60 albums@60 rundown a couple of years back, which was probably lower than I would have anticipated, but then again, many of the reasons as to why I have grown a bit less enamoured with Red Right Hand can be applied to why the album’s appeal has slightly diminished.

It dates from an era when Bad Seeds albums were greeted, in the main, by shrugs of indifference and accompanying tours were played in regular sized venues with tickets very much at the affordable end of the scale.  I’ll repeat what I said two years ago – it’s not for me to say that the old days were the best, or that I begrudge the success that has come Nick Cave’s way in more recent times.  But it all feels as if there’s a huge cash-in taking place, albeit there’s plenty out there willing to pay the big prices for tickets and to purchase all sorts of things direct from the man himself, such as a Red Hand charm (pictured above) with necklace for just £75.

The album is a masterpiece.  Songs of menace, songs of mystery and songs of love over which Nick Cave delivers imaginative gothic poetry.  An album of great beauty but also dotted with self-deprecating humour in many places.  Red Right Hand has, from the outset, been its cornerstone.  Played on most tours since the mid 90s, it was always met with rapturous applause.

And then came Peaky Blinders, the first-rate BBC TV show that ran from 2013-2022, and which had Red Right Hand (or extracts of it at least), as its theme tune.   The use of the song, and other Bad Seeds material, made the public way more aware of the band than anyone could ever have contemplated.

The clock cannot be turned back.  It is painful to accept that the nights at the Barrowlands and other similar types of venues will never be repeated, and as the blame for this, to some degree lies with Red Right Hand, then I have no issue by declaring that the songs means a lot less to me nowadays than it did almost thirty years ago.

I know it’s a twisted sort of logic.  But that’s just the way I feel.

 

 

 

JC

 

Sub Sub

THE 7″ LUCKY DIP (39) : Sub Sub (feat. Melanie Williams) – Ain’t No Love (Ain’t No Use)

There’s a certain timeless element to great pop songs, especially the type that make you want to get up off your chair and dance.

This banger was a hit in 1993.  More than 30 years ago, FFS!

Sub Sub were an English dance act trio consisting of Jimi Goodwin and twin brothers Andy and Jez Williams. The 1991 release of their debut 12″ single Space Face had caught the attention of Rob Gretton, manager of New Order and one-quarter owner of The Hacienda nightclub, and he signed them to his own label, to Rob’s Records, issuing the instrumental Coast EP to little fanfare outside of the clubs in 1992.

Out of the blue, the trio came up with the tune that became Ain’t No Love (Ain’t No Use).  Jimi Goodwin knew Melanie Williams, the singer with the little-known English soul/dance duo Temper Temper and thought her vocal style would be perfect for the song.  Melanie gave the demo a listen and agreed to come on board, while offering up a few suggestions for additional lyrics within a verse, which ultimately led to her getting a well-merited writing credit on the single.

The reviews were almost universally positive, but more importantly, it was picked up early by the dance shows on BBC Radio 1, especially by DJ Pete Tong, who played a white label copy weeks in advance of its actual release on 29 March 1993.  It very quickly made the crossover onto the more mainstream shows, and entered the singles chart at #10, a superb achievement for an unknown dance act on a tiny independent label/

It would eventually peak at #3, spending eight weeks in the Top 20.

mp3 : Sub Sub (feat. Melanie Williams) – Ain’t No Love (Ain’t No Use) (original edit)
mp3 : Sub Sub (feat. Melanie Williams) – Ain’t No Love (Ain’t No Use) (Parkside Mix)

Sub Sub wouldn’t experience any further commercial success, thus earning them a place in the category of ‘one-hit-wonders’.   Goodwin and the Williams brothers would, however, change direction and focus a few years later and as Doves would enjoy two #1 albums in the 00’s and another which reached #2.

Rob’s Records never again had as big a hit single, albeit the music on the label always had credibility with dance enthusiasts.  The label ceased operations shorty after Gretton’s death, of a heart attack at the age of 46, in May 1999.

JC

 

R.E.M.

SHOULD’VE BEEN A SINGLE ?(12)

Today’s offering contains some words of wisdom from the R.E.M. singles series which ran on the blog back in 2020/21.  Here’s The Robster writing back in July 2020:-

“After a few questionable choices of singles, 1986 saw the release of what was arguably one of R.E.M.’s best-ever singles. Fall On Me was a prelude to the band’s fourth album ‘Lifes Rich Pageant’ (no apostrophe again), though in many ways it didn’t tell the whole story of what that record would sound like.

‘Lifes Rich Pageant’ was the second R.E.M. album I ever heard, shortly after ‘Document’. I was struck by the quality of the songs which I found to be more accessible and melodic than much of what I’d heard previously. It was an album I listened to for months and months on end, even though it was getting on for two years old at the time. I had copied my friend’s cassette of it, and had it on one side of a C90.

After the loud rush of the opening two numbers, Fall On Me came into play. I was yet to discover the wonders of the first three R.E.M. albums so I wasn’t to know that this song was probably the most similar to those earlier recordings. The one thing that struck me immediately though was the vocal, or rather the vocals, plural. Fall On Me has what could be the best interaction between Stipe and Mills of all. The harmonies and counter melodies were divine and I’d argue probably never bettered by the band over their next 25 years. It remains one of my favourite R.E.M. songs. Whenever I attempt to sing along, I find myself alternating between the lead and backing vocals, especially during the closing refrain. I even sing Bill Berry’s parts. Hopefully you never have to hear that.”

And now me, in August 2020:-

Fall On Me was everything you would expect from a band who were being increasingly put forward, in the USA at least, as the saviours of guitar-pop with an independent bent. The subsequent album hit the stores two weeks later, and ‘Lifes Rich Pageant’ continued the happy trend of each new album initially selling more copies than its predecessor.

September – November 1986 saw the band out on the road in North America playing 64 shows in 82 days, in ever-increasing sized venues, leaving no real opportunity for any promotional activities around any follow-up single, of which there were three or four candidates, especially from the first side of the latest album which was as strong and consistent as anything they had ever released to this point.

The second side of LRP, however, was a pointer to the fact that the band had almost exhausted itself of material with two tracks from 1980 being resurrected in the studio along with the decision to add an obscure cover to take the number of songs on the album up to twelve with a running time short of 40 minutes. IRS was, nevertheless, determined to make sure there was some new product to coincide with the tour and on 4 November, in the same week as the band was set to play two sell-out shows in New York, they released a second single from LRP in the shape of Superman.

On the face of it, releasing a second single from an album isn’t really a crime. IRS (the band’s label), however, was quite perverse in going with Superman as it was the cover version that had been tagged onto the end of the album to prevent any fans feeling they were being short-changed.”

There’s no other way to say it, but IRS fucked it up big style.  This should have been a single:-

mp3: R.E.M. – Begin The Begin

The opening song on the album which, with the benefit of hindsight, can be seen as R.E.M. taking their first serious steps away from being a cult indie/college band towards world domination within five years. The album tackled a range of political and ecological issues and its release seemed to coincide with Michael Stipe finally getting comfortable with the idea of the frontman being seen by so many, fans and media alike, as the spokesperson – albeit he was often singing lyrics penned by one of the other members, such was the joy of having all compositions attributed to Berry-Buck-Mills-Stipe.

Begin The Begin has always been a band favourite, being played extensively at gigs and long after most of the other songs from the IRS years had been dropped to accommodate the ones the arena and stadium audiences had paid good money to hear – y’know, the 19 singles lifted from the first four albums from the 90s which have come to define the band in the eyes and to the ears of so many.  It really should be as well-known and well-loved as ‘the classics’.

 

 

JC

Pete Shelley

THE 12″ LUCKY DIP (29): Pete Shelley – Homosapien

I’ve written about Homosapien before, but it was away back in October 2018, so I’m happy enough to revisit it, especially as this time round it’s the 12″ release rather than the two songs on the 7″.

As I said back in 2018, the former frontman of Buzzcocks stunned many, fans and critics alike, when he released Homosapien a his debut solo single in September 1981.

I’m certain that I would have first heard this played at a night in the Strathclyde University Student Union on the basis that it had been banned by the BBC. I do recall, vaguely it has to be admitted, one of the weekly music papers having a real go at the record and its singer, accusing him of betraying his punk roots by sliding over onto the dance floor and jumping on the bandwagon of what the writer thought would be a short-lived craze for electronic music. Long live rock’n’roll and all that….

Did I take an instant liking to the track? Truth be told, not really as I wanted Pete Shelley to somehow create MkII of his former band. But, as I grew increasingly familiar with the song, I came to the realisation that it was an absolute belter of a new-era dance track, with as catchy a hook via the synths as had been managed previously with the guitars. Indeed, it is a close cousin to the new pop-savvy sounds that were being released by The Human League, which is no coincidence when you consider that Martin Rushent was could be found in the producer’s chair in both instances.

Few people knew that Pete Shelley was in fact revisiting his first love, having dabbled unsuccessfully in electronic music before meeting Howard Devoto at college and forming one of the most important punk/new wave bands to emerge out of the UK. It was something he had kept quiet about all the time his band becoming a success; in much the same way, he’d previously stayed schtum about his bisexuality, but the release of Homosapien, with its far from subtle references (e.g. ‘Homo Superior, in my interior’) provided him with a perfect opportunity to be open about things.

It was a far less tolerant world back then, and there was a sense of a substantial number of fans moving towards disowning Pete Shelley. The excuse given was the shift in music, but there were other unsaid things at play…..

There were a lot of really nice things said in the comments section back in 2018, along with a few snippets of info that added to things.

Jonny the Friendly Lawyer and Echorich recalled it being massive in NYC clubs.  Postpunkmonk described it as ‘a major event when it dropped in ’81’ adding that while he was not a huge Buzzcocks fan, with his tastes much more in the synthetic direction at the time, this single this pushed all of  his 1981 buttons” , adding “the juxtaposition of Rushent’s Roland Microcomposer and the chugging acoustic rhythm guitars was singular to me at the time. No one else was making a sound like this.”

It was described by ratherarthur and Mopyfop as a great dance record, while Swiss Adam called it ‘ A great song. Lyrically, sonically, philosophically.’

Brian over in Seattle added, “Nothing wrong with this version, but I also like the 12″ even more.”, which is why I’m delighted that at some point over the past eight years, I’ve picked up a second hand copy of a 12″ version.  But it’s not from 1981 and instead is a reissue from 1982,

mp3 : Pete Shelley – Homosapien (Dance Version)
mp3 : Pete Shelley – Homosapien (Elongated Dancepartydubmix)
mp3 : Pete Shelley – Love In Vain

Worth mentioning that the Elongated Dancepartydubmix extends to over 9 mins in length during which Martin Rushent brings out his entire box of tricks.

Once again, it failed to chart, having been disgracefully ignored by the radio stations too concerned that listeners would complain.  I’ve a feeling the video was aired on The Tube which went out on Channel 4, but don’t quote me on that as being fact….my memory may well be playing tricks on me!

JC

#edwyncollins45s

THE TESTIMONIAL TOUR OF 45s (aka The Singular Adventures of Edwyn Collins)

#8:I Can’t Help Myself  : Orange Juice (Polydor, POSP 522, 1982)

The next single was another that had been debuted on the David Jensen Radio 1 show back in April 1982:-

mp3: Orange Juice – I Can’t Help Myself (Radio 1 session)

I had access to the four songs played at this session, courtesy of a hissy C90 cassette with a far from ideal sound quality, and I have to admit to being surprised when I read that I Can’t Help Myself had been slated as the next single as it had come across as a bit uneven and disjointed.

Thankfully, the time in the studio, along with the band becoming more familiar with the song, meant that the recorded version (jointly written by Edwyn Collins and David McClymont) proved to be something quite joyous, one which appealed immensely to the dance-side of this particular indie kid:

mp3: Orange Juice – I Can’t Help Myself

The funky/soulful nature of the song, combined with what is a very happy sounding and joyously delivered vocal makes for damn fine, near perfect for daytime radio pop single.  It surely had chart hit written all over it, but to everyone’s immense disappointment, it stalled at #42 in October ’82, meaning that the often-dreamt of appearance on Top of The Pops would have to be delayed till another time.

The writing credits on the b-side introduced a new name.  Collins/McClymont/Manyika/Quinn.    At this point in time, I knew of Paul Quinn having seen him perform with the French Impressionists and Jazzateers, and would fall deeply for his charms and talents in later years when Bourgie Bourgie formed.  This was, thinking back, the first of his vocal performances that I ever bought:-

mp3: Orange Juice – Tongues Begin To Wag

Four minutes and fifteen seconds of sonic magnificence, which is very much down to the singing as it has to be admitted that the 80s production style and value, particularly around the jarring synth, has dated things quite a bit.

The 12″ release of the single had an extended version of I Can’t Help Myself, with the extra two minutes being taken up by a sax solo to fade-out, all of which just adds an extra layer of funk to the song.

mp3: Orange Juice – I Can’t Help Myself (12″ version)

There was also an additional song on the b-side:

mp3: Orange Juice – Barbeque

A strange but not entirely unpleasant near five minutes of music, attributed to Collins/McClymont/Manyika/Ross.  It sounds like a jam in the studio, to which Edwyn has added a few lyrics recalling events at an actual barbeque in someone’s garden.   OK, it wasn’t Falling and Laughing or Blue Boy, but there was the consolation that it wasn’t Two Hearts Together.  Maybe there was some hope after all for the new album.

JC

Green Telescope

SATURDAY’S SCOTTISH SONG : #479: THE GREEN TELESCOPE

Another courtesy of the Big Gold Dreams boxset:-

mp3: The Green Telescope – Face In A Crowd

“The Green Telescope offered a raw mix of fuzz guitar, reedy organ and deranged vocals that sounded so authentic on their  two singles that they sounded like off-cuts from seminal ’60s psych-garage compilation, Nuggets.

The first, Two by Two was on Imaginary Records, while the follow-up Face In A Crowd was the sole release (in July 1986) on the Wump label, and featured a cover of Thoughts Of A Madman by The Nomads (originally released in 1967) on the flip.  Soon after they morphed into the Shakespearian-sounding Thanes of Cawder before simply becoming The Thanes.  Subsequently, the band’s founder, Lenny Heisling, has also been a music journalist of note.”

 

JC

 

James

SONGS UNDER TWO MINUTES (21): WHAT’S THE WORLD

If SWC was to call upon the members of his musical jury over at No Badger Required to cast their votes for the greatest songs that are under two minutes in length, then I would certainly be making something of a case for this:-

mp3: James – What’s The World

The lead track on JIMONE, the band’s debut single on Factory Records back in 1983.  It had the distinction of being voted single of the week in all three major weekly music papers – NME, Melody Maker and Sounds.

The Smiths would later cover What’s The World during some of their live sets, and in due course a recording from a Glasgow Barrowlands show in September 1985 would find its way onto the cassette release of I Started Something I Couldn’t Finish.

JC

Manic Street Preachers

THE CD SINGLE LUCKY DIP (27) : Manic Street Preachers – You Stole The Sun From My Heart

Edited from Wikipedia today:-

You Stole the Sun from My Heart was released on 8 March 1999 as the third single from Manic Street Preachers‘ fifth studio album, This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours. The song reached #5 on the UK Singles Chart.

Nicky Wire has described the music as a mix of New Order and Nirvana and explained that the drum loop was sampled by Sean Moore from the sound of a pinball machine.  The lyric concerns Nicky Wire’s dislike of touring. He has said that, much as he enjoys being on stage, he hates the routine of travelling: soundchecks, hotels, and the homesickness it causes. The lyric “but there’s no, no real truce with my fury” is a reference to a poetry book by R. S. Thomas entitled No Truce with the Furies. The song title is name checked in a later Manic Street Preachers single, Your Love Alone Is Not Enough.

mp3: Manic Street Preachers – You Stole The Sun From My Heart

As was the common practice in those days, the single was released on 2 x CDs.  The second of them has remixes from David Holmes and Mogwai, but the copy you’ll find in Villain Towers is CD1, purchased as I was keen to hear the cover version, which was recorded at the Newcastle Arena on 14 December 1998.   Turns out it was merely OK.

mp3: Manic Street Preachers – Train In Vain

Of more interest was the other, previously unreleased track:-

mp3: Manic Street Preachers – Socialist Serenade

Written as a response to some of the policies being adopted by the recently elected Labour government (known to all and sundry as New Labour) that had been elected in 1997 under the leadership of Tony Blair, and in particular the decision to introduce university tuition fees.  The last two lines of the song –  Change your name to New, Forget the fucking Labour – leaves nobody in any doubt about the message the song is conveying.

 

JC

Frankie Goes To Hollywood

MORE ‘STEALING’: THE GUEST SERIES IN BOOK FORM : #8 : FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD

A guest posting by Steve McLean

This is a strange one. Usually when a band finds themselves ‘cloned’ there’s a link to the original group. It could be a manager or former member or even a record company who have ended up owning the name. The New Frankie Goes To Hollywood was seemingly just a group of geezers from Alabama who thought ‘fuck it, no one will ever find out, it’s Alabama’

According to an article archived on the Zttaat.com website the group were formed by Davey Johnson who wasn’t in anyway related to Holly Johnson. In fact, he was so unrelated that his name wasn’t even Johnson, he was a bloke called RD Turner. This didn’t stop initial reports claiming he was Holly Johnson’s brother.

Very few publications did enough fact checking into Turner’s background but after the legend of brotherly love was proven to be false, the story was changed to Turner being a member of the band, at least in the studio. The press releases made the bold claim that he was one of the musicians who played on Welcome To The Pleasuredome.

“[Davey] never toured with the group but was a studio musician with the original group,” Chuck Harris of Visual Arts Group speaking to Pollstar. May, 2000.

A bold claim that Trevor Horn, Welcome to the Pleasuredome album producer refutes;

“It was a very small nucleus of people that worked on Pleasuredome and I go out of my way to credit.”  Trevor Horn, Spin Magazine 2000

As usual with these things, the local newspapers where happy to re-print the press copy with little or no pushback. Slowly over time the national magazines took an interest and Davey Johnson’s story then evolved.

According to an issue of Spin Magazine in 2000, Davey Johnson and bandmate Will Martin claimed to be ‘great friends’ with the Frankie lads even though the band deny ever meeting them..

The same magazine goes on to claim that the band’s manager Chuck Harris also represented an act called “The Great Regurgitator” and a guy who can fart to the tune of “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?”

Frank(ie)ly I can’t believe Chuck has had to go to such duplicitous lengths with Davey Johnson when his other acts sound fucking awesome.

“(The Great Regurgitator) He makes $250,000 per year doing that.” Chuck Harris, The New Frankie Goes To Hollywood Manager, Spin Magazine.

Turner’s claims that he was related to Holly and that he had appeared on the debut album ‘Welcome To The Pleasure Dome’ fell apart like the Monty Python sketch where the guy reckons he wrote all of Shakespeare’s plays, the claim breaks down under them most basic scrutiny. Such scrutiny like “Are you really related to Holly Johnson? Because he said you’re not” and “What were you, a man from Alabama, doing in a Liverpool recording studio in the early 80s with a then relatively unknown band?”

The usual ‘legal right’ claims were blabbered by those close to the group. It’s often code for ‘morally wrong’.

Harris also told Pollster that he couldn’t remember which album Davey Johnson played on but insisted he had the legal right to tour under the name.

“Davey legitimately went down and hired an attorney and paid the price to register that name legally” Chuck Harris, Fort Worth Star Telegram May 2000

This is probably because the proper Frankie Goes To Hollywood never got a US Federal Trademark for their name, so Davey Johnson was able to register a local one in Alabama. “Hey folks, we’re legal in ‘Bama.” yeah well, so is fucking a pick-up truck if you plan to marry it.

Starting out they just pretended to be Frankie Goes To Hollywood, they copped a bit of heat from Holly Johnson and his legal team, so they soon changed their name to The New Frankie Goes to Hollywood featuring Davey Johnson. When a case like this happens, the response often seems to be about buying time until the operation is shut down completely.

For live gigs the band were represented by Richard Lustig of Lustig Talent. Formed in the 1980s, the agency still runs today and proudly states on their website the “Lustig Talent Enterprises has since been providing entertainment for casinos, city sponsored events, corporate events, fairs, festivals, night clubs and theaters”. Their page also claims to have represent quite a number of bands who have had dubious line-ups. I don’t know which versions Lustig represented but the likes of Ratt, Bill Haley’s Comets, The Boxtops, The Drifters, The Coasters and Badfinger are mentioned on the site and all have had multiple versions at some point or other.

Often there’s an unbelievable naivety in statements from promoters or managers of these bands. Now I’m not someone who calls out the promoters of reconstituted acts as slimy, lying, duplicitous bastards, but if I was then I’d follow it up with a comment like ‘yeah, but do they have any faults’. However usually the press blurbs reek of disingenuousness.

“When we originally started out, that’s what we were calling it (of the name Frankie Goes to Hollywood). Months ago, we started changing all the promo material and everything over because we were running into the problem that people weren’t understanding and were misconstruing what the group exactly was. So we said, ‘Let’s change it to The New Frankie Goes To Hollywood so people will know that this is different.” Richard Lustiq, Lustiq Talent, Pollster May 2000

Now you might find it hard to believe that Richard, a booking agent of twenty years standing would be surprised that an act he booked and advertised as Frankie Goes to Hollywood would be interpreted by the public to actually be Frankie Goes to Hollywood but here we are. But look how he took steps to counter the issue he created. In many ways he’s the hero.

Except according to Pollstar the name Frankie Goes To Hollywood without the ‘New’ prefix was still being used on his agency’s own website much to Lustig’s ‘surprise’.

“We’ve been changing it everywhere we can,”  Richard Lustig, Pollster, May 2000

(An advert for The New Frankie at ‘Shooters’, sharing a venue with the post-Natalie-Merchant 10,000 Maniacs.

Why use one of the fonts when you can use ALL OF THE FONTS)

Even with the New Frankie moniker, it didn’t stop newspapers from implying they were connected to the original band.

(The New Frankie : just a regrouped version of the old Frankie with a different singer as long as you didn’t know what anyone looked like)

Frankie Goes To Hollywood Featuring Davey Johnson was another title the band were billed as. On the surface this seems more honest but realistically, if a punter didn’t know the names of the band members to begin with, then this just sounds like it’s a group fronted by an original member.

(Featuring THE Davey Johnson)

Later, Fakey Goes To Hollywood found themselves on the “Club 80’s The Flashback Tour” with Flock of Seagulls. While the band’s management and bookers were falling over each other to tell everyone what a great show their Frankie mob put on, Flock of Seagulls front person Mike Score was less than complimentary;

“The new Frankie are laughable. They’re not even a passable cover band. They might as well call themselves Cleatus Goes To Alabama” Mike Score, Flock of Seagulls speaking to Spin magazine in 2000.

Score’s shit banter aside, this is a telling remark, especially when you consider both bands shared a booking agent. To pull off this kind of caper the band would need to be beyond reproach in their performance and the way they carried themselves. When a tenuously connected band gets rumbled, the stock answer is usually ‘But we put on a great show. Ask the audience if they didn’t enjoy it’ It’s a strawman argument against one of legitimacy but it does often work in the eyes of the punter.

I usually sit on the fence of these stories trying not to take sides. In a world where we’ve allowed the industry part of the Music Industry to dominate, I’m not sure how there can be any real response other than ‘oh, you’re doing that kind of shit thing as well? Typical.’ Also there’s the argument that these bands do provide musicians with solid, if unspectacular work.

This story is different, I’m not really a Frankie fan but it does kind of boil my piss. The proper Frankie were queer icons of 1980s pop, at a time of heightened rank homophobia and repression (like that’s changed, I know)… while the Faux Frankie’s manager, Chuck was almost in a hurry to point out the band were “all straight guys; they’re not gay,”  A bunch of straight hicks from Alabama going out as Frankie seems as appropriate as a bunch of Surrey trustafarians going out as Public Enemy.  Although I should make it clear that Chuck Harris didn’t clarify if they were straight in the traditional sense of the word or because they only fucked female cattle.

Seeing them on a Pride line up just makes me wonder if they had a commitment to their heritage or a commitment to paying bookings.

(Pride Fest listings in St Louis, Missouri)

Interestingly the Pride show also lists Chic on Sunday at 11.45am. It’s quite possible that this Chic are a fake version of the 70s Disco greats. The official band were back together at that time but it’s unlikely they’re playing a regional pride festival before midday. Still on paper; Frankie, Chic and Jimmy Somerville (assuming it actually was him!). That’s some line up.

A quick search of the Fake Frankie’s name throws up about 60 shows between the arse end of 1999 and early 2000s including a New Years Eve 1999 event in Singapore. They played such esteemed venues as The Fat City Deli in Charlotte, North Carolina and Dewey’s Deck Bar in Minnesota. The last show logged with Setlist.com was in October 2003 in St Petersburg, Florida.

Unlike other fake bands, the whole Frankie affair took place in the tail end of the 1990s. which was probably the last time a stunt like this could be pulled before the internet gave the fans a proper voice.

It seems the money involved wasn’t enough for a proper court case. Holly Johnson and his lawyer attempted to put a stop to it but phoning bookers and promoters to let them know what exactly they were getting.

When Johnson made it known that they were not authorised, Chuck Harris then claimed to have severed all ties with them but considering they were still taking bookings three years later that seems unlikely.

By 2003 the New Frankie had expose stories printed about them in Spin Magazine, Polster, Q magazine and finally the regional press were taking note. That’s when the game is up for this sort of thing in the US. There are whole cities of people who only read state press and when they were finally pointing out the fraud then the local venues lost interest.

Usually telling these stories, I enjoy the audacity of the venture, because often there is normally another side that, if not entirely defendable then understandable. But the Frankie story is grim and just seems like a blatant theft

(Regional Newspapers wising up to Frankie… Davey is now ‘no relation)

The final word should go to Holly Johnson who managed to destroy the whole caper in a wonderfully cutting manner,

“I’m very sorry that people who are getting duped. But God, what Frankie fan who knew anything about the group could possibly ever believe in a million years that we would play steak houses and county fairs?….It’s so small fry and unstylish” Holly Johnson, Spin Magazine September 2000.

The Frankie song I’ve chosen is the 12″ remix of Two Tribes. It’s the real deal. The video had Reagan fighting Konstantin Chernenko (he was head of the USSR for about six minutes in 1984. Seriously the 12” mix lasts longer than his leadership term) It’s the record all the cool kids talked about at school.

mp3: Frankie Goes To Hollywood – Two Tribes (12″ mix)

 

STEVE McLEAN

Stereolab

FOUR TRACK MIND : A RANDOM SERIES OF EXTENDED PLAY SINGLES

A guest series by Fraser Pettigrew (aka our New Zealand correspondent)

#9: Low Fi – Stereolab (1992)

I wrote previously about how I discovered Stereolab in May 1992 with the release of their first album Peng! In some ways Peng! is untypical of their early period, or at least it presents a different version of their early sound, more fuzzy and shoegazey. Shortly after buying Peng! I found a copy of the Slumberland pressing of Switched On, which compiles their first two EPs and a single released during 1991. The sound of these early recordings is much louder and harder, as though several layers of gauze between you and the band on Peng! had been removed.

Switched On came out in October 1992 and it must have been around the same time that I picked up the 10” EP Low Fi which had been released in September. Despite post-dating Peng! Low Fi sounds a lot more like the older tracks collected on Switched On. I wasn’t initially aware of the release chronology, and kind of assumed that Low Fi sat alongside the other Switched On tracks, encouraged in that view by the repetition of the sleeve design across all these discs.

At any rate, it showed that it was more than mere surface texture that appealed to me in Stereolab’s music because I liked the louder stuff as much as the fuzz, the weird mash-up of Velvet Underground, krautrock and French pop.

One reason I might have a strong affinity for Stereolab is the close parallel between my formative musical experience and that of Tim Gane. Almost exactly one year younger than me, Gane reveals in an interview with Synth History website that the first LP he ever bought was Elvis Costello’s This Year’s Model. Apart from a couple of Beatles LPs, it was my second or third purchase, after This Is The Modern World and at the same time as Another Music In A Different Kitchen.

“In 18 months I’d gone from Elvis Costello and Buzzcocks to Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire,” says Gane, which is pretty much true for me too. He then goes on to list a dozen ‘mainstay’ LPs he listened to in those days, off the top of his head, including Chairs Missing, This Heat, Metal Box, Marquee Moon, The Voice Of America, and The Scream, all of which blared frequently from my stereo or cassette player at the end of the 70s.

Turning to the subject of films, Gane adds, “When I first saw The Good, The Bad and the Ugly it really blew my mind,” with which I must agree, for its striking style and ground-breaking Ennio Morricone soundtrack. He also had a five-pin DIN plug lead with which to record from his TV, and I used one to tape John Peel off my parents’ old stereogram. So much in common – the music, the movies, the analogue tech!

The significant difference between me and Tim Gane, of course, is that I didn’t grow up to lead one of the most original and exciting alternative rock bands of the late 20th/early 21st century. My cultural output, despite these same cultural inputs, is precisely fuck all, while Tim Gane continues to produce wonderful music, with the first new Stereolab album in 15 years, and also through his Cavern of Anti-Matter project.

Enough of my creative inadequacy – back to 1992… Low Fi was the first Stereolab recording with Mary Hansen and Andy Ramsay on board. And it was the last on which New Zealander Martin Kean played bass, having been a constant on the early singles and first album. Ramsay drums throughout, while Hansen only contributes vocals to the title track and Laisser-Faire, no guitar or keyboards as she would over the coming years. As well as drumming, Ramsay is credited with a bouzouki part on (Varoom!). If it wasn’t written on the sleeve, you’d never know. Similarly, producer/engineer Robbs contributes piano to Low Fi and Elektro but he obviously didn’t big himself up when he got back behind the mixing desk.

All four tracks are drawn from the same well of inspiration that produced Super Electric and other mini-Sister Rays in Stereolab’s first phase, two-chord guitar riffs and dirty over-amped organ noise, mollified on Low Fi and Laisser Faire by Laetitia Sadier and Mary Hansen’s hymnal voices. The closing section of instrumental (Varoom!) jumps from one of these Velvety thrashers into a looping squall of electronic noise that refuses to end, the needle trapped in a run-off lockgroove. Contrastingly, Elektro switches mood to conclude with a gentle acoustic guitar and vocal passage.

For some reason the tracks on Low Fi evaded compilation on Refried Ectoplasm (Switched On Volume 2) which otherwise hoovered up all the other stray B-sides, split singles and concert giveaways from 1992-93. It wasn’t until 2022’s Pulse of the Early Brain (Switched On vol.5) that you could hear this music if you didn’t already own the vinyl, or the CD version released in 1993. The track timings on different versions (original vinyl, CD, compilation) seem to vary, sometimes by a couple of minutes on (Varoom!) and Elektro, with no clear explanation why.

Quite by chance, my copy of Low Fi is one of the 500 so-called ‘clear vinyl’ copies, although whoever described it as clear obviously comes from somewhere without an adequate purified water supply. I am fucking not drinking that! To be strictly accurate, I’d have to describe it as semen-coloured vinyl. On a swatch in your local paint store, it would be called Jizz Grey or Hand Shandy. Whatever, it seems to add about 20% to the resale value according to Discogs depending on how rabidly desperate your buyer is. Not that I’m selling, so put your wallets away. This one is a keeper.

Low Fi

(Varoom!)

Laisser Faire

Elektro (He Held The World In His Iron Grip)

 

Fraser