Butcher Boy, Camera Obscura, Jam, Pipettes, Pogues, Primitives, R.E.M., Ride, Ronettes, Smiths

AN IMAGINARY COMPILATION ALBUM : #386: TEN LOVELY TRACKS

A GUEST POSTING from STRANGEWAYS

Ten Lovely Tracks : An Imaginary Compilation Album

Welcome to a lovely Imaginary Compilation Album. That’s not me bigging-up this mix, but rather offering a literal description, for this is an ICA of songs deemed to be ‘lovely’ in nature. Immediately this business of a song being lovely is subjective of course. But the closest I got to a criterion was including tracks that, when you hear them, kind of wrap their arms around you.

It should be stated that this list is very, very far from exhaustive; the mountain of should-have-rans continues growing.

Side 1

1. The Ronettes: Walking in the Rain (single A-side, 1964, Philles)

I won’t attempt to add too much to the weight of words that must have been written about this song since The Ronettes released it in October 1964. I’m really not qualified, so to do so would be like writing about lofty cultural fixtures like the Mona Lisa or Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway.

That said, a thunderclap kicks the track off and immediately we’re in a dreamland co-created of course by an ace Phil Spector production. With its references to shyness, its grown-up assertion that ‘sometimes we’ll fight’, its fondness for wishing on stars and of course its championing of rain over sun you could say that thematically Walking in the Rain gifted a bit of a blueprint to the indiepop genre that would emerge fifteen or so years later.

The track is just super, and so far as its inclusion here is concerned, its sheer loveliness fought off the likes of Past, Present and Future by the Shangri-Las, Thinkin’ ‘Bout You Baby by Sharon Marie and A Lover’s Concerto by The Toys.

Loveliest line: ‘Walking in the rain and wishing on the stars up above, and being so in love… ’

2. The Jam: Wasteland (Setting Sons LP track, 1979, Polydor)

I am really no Jam expert whatsoever. It’s daft, of course, that I haven’t explored beyond the singles and a couple of LPs. Moron. But the album I know best is Setting Sons. And the track I love most is Wasteland.

That Paul Weller was only, what, 21 max when he wrote the elegant words of Wasteland is astonishing to me. Listing the wasteland’s decorations – including punctured footballs, ragged dolls and rusting bicycles – he conjures up the grimy props of a world in which ‘to be caught smiling’s to acknowledge life’ as two lovers? Ex-lovers? Never-were lovers? Just friends? sit amid the trash and stoke over the past. Certainly if the theory that Setting Sons was intended – but not realised – as a concept album concerned with the lives of three childhood friends, the relationship could well be platonic. The reference to hand-holding though perhaps hints at something else.

Adding to the overall loveliness of this track are notes from a recorder – an instrument, in the UK at least, recalling tuneless school music classes. Here though, sounding not unlike the calls from a bird on high, it puffs out an innocent intro and pops up again at a key line.

Finally, that Weller gets so much detail of his wasteland – ‘meet me on the wastelands, the ones behind the old houses, the ones left standing pre-war, the ones overshadowed by the monolith monstrosities councils call homes’ – to even scan properly is remarkable.

Loveliest line: ‘Meet me later – but we’ll have to hold hands… ’

3. R.E.M.: At My Most Beautiful (Up LP track, 1998, Warner Bros.)

Of all the bands selected to populate this ICA, R.E.M. gave me the most trouble. In surveying the songs I know of them – and to be fair that although it’s not 100% knowledge it’s not by any stretch horrendous either – it rapidly became apparent that you could, before breakfast, create an ICA of ‘Lovely Songs Just by R.E.M.’.

So what to do?

That’s easy – choose a total slushfest, and from an unfancied LP, that will annoy the readers of this blog. So apologies to the exalted likes of Perfect Circle, Wendell Gee and The Flowers of Guatemala, plus Half A World Away, Nightswimming and Electrolite. Here instead is At My Most Beautiful, from 1998 album Up.

I seem to remember that at the time a common brickbat chucked at this song was that it was ‘R.E.M. trying to sound like The Beach Boys’. It is. And I further remember thinking ‘great’.

Sure, it’s kind of saccharine and soppy, but the overall result is lovely – which is of course what we’re after here. Added to this, the words of this big value track also provide…

The Grand Indie Boy or Girl’s Guide to Snagging a Partner

Three sure-fire ways to reverse the joy of solitude:

1. Read bad poetry into their machine (or, for the less ancient, their mobile phone)

2. Save their messages just to hear their voice – (perhaps keep this one to yourself)

3. Count their eyelashes, secretly (and for bonus points, with every one whisper ‘I love you’)

Loveliest line: ‘You always listen carefully to awkward rhymes, you always say your name like I wouldn’t know it’s you, at your most beautiful.. ’

4. The Pogues: Lullaby of London (If I Should Fall From Grace With God LP track, 1987, WEA)

The Pogues are probably at their best when they’re rocking the furious likes of Boys From The County Hell and Sally MacLenanne, or Turkish Song of the Damned and Bottle of Smoke. But grand as these are, you could hardly call any of these breathless beauties lovely. That’s a job instead for Lullaby of London, from the revered 1987 album If I Should Fall From Grace With God.

Here, Shane MacGowan takes us on a kind of stroll located by a river and in the springtime. On this jaunt, in the main, his words are mystical and supernatural (ghosts and haunted graves and angels are present). But he ambles also in the urban: and despite noting the absence of a cry from a lonesome corncrake – any twitcher will tell you i) that’s a bird and ii) its binomial nomenclature is Crex crex – he seems satisfied enough with the sounds of cars and bars and laughter and fights.

This is a song that feels older than it is or, to put it more delicately, could be of another age. Were it not for that reference to motor cars, the whole expedition could be taking place a century-and-a-half ago. Remove the pubs and you spool back even further. Laughter and fights though have surely been with us since the first caveman cracked an off-colour joke and instigated a brawl.

Enough. All that’s left to say is that if the words to Lullaby of London are remarkable, the band is totally on point too, especially via the lilting mandolin that quietly matches the lyrics for sheer emotional punch.

It’s odd, but a speck of dust always lands in my eye whenever I hear this track.

Loveliest line: ‘May the wind that blows from haunted graves never bring you misery, may the angels bright watch you tonight and keep you while you sleep… ’

5. The Primitives: We Found a Way to the Sun (Really Stupid 7” single B-side, 1986, Lazy Recordings)

Somewhat inevitably the band with the LP titled Lovely was always going to make it onto this ICA. And, also somewhat inevitably, the song selected here does not in fact feature on that album. Instead, it’s We Found a Way to the Sun – curiously styled, on the subsequent Lazy 86-88 compilation, and other anthologies that followed, as (We’ve) Found a Way (to the Sun).

Bracketed or not, it is just one of several absolutely killer formative Primitives B-sides. Delivered inside yet another early Prims sleeve to die for,

this smasher popped up in 1986 on the Really Stupid 7” single and, on 12”, alongside Where the Wind Blows. That gem of a fellow B-side, set at the witching hour and chockful of associated imagery, is the one I’d actually started writing about for this post. But that was before the handbrake turn you’re now reading.

Why the switch?

The truth is that either track could have made it, but the distorted, beautiful intro and subsequent melody of We Found a Way to the Sun just pipped Where the Wind Blows to the post. Add to these Tracy Tracy’s wide-eyed and hurt-sounding vocal, and we really do achieve Primitives perfection. Also, there’s a curiosity to celebrate: no chorus is offered – just one bewitching verse followed by repetition of the song’s title.

Loveliest line: ‘But it’s all too good to be true, I don’t know just what I should do, I love everything about you… ’

Side 2

1. Camera Obscura: My Maudlin Career (My Maudlin Career LP track, 2009, 4AD)

This title track to Camera Obscura’s fourth LP is both eminently huggable and a real bruiser. Its opening twenty-five seconds could be mistaken for a Wall of Sound production as keys and strings and brass add layer after layer of sock-knocking assault. And as the late Carey Lander’s incessant, trebly keys heroically wrangle it all into a followable structure, Tracyanne Campbell’s words speak of a relationship – the maudlin career of the title – going wrong (perhaps best distilled in the lines ‘we were love at first sight, now this crush is crushing’).

Despite the tale of a partnership on the skids, this is yet another lovely song from a band that specialises in them.

Loveliest line: ‘I’ll brace myself for the loneliness, say hello to feelings that I despise… ’

2. The Pipettes: A Winter’s Sky (We Are the Pipettes LP track, 2006, Memphis Industries)

Oh crumbs, not again. Look, I know I included this track on the Pipettes ICA I scribbled several years ago, but it’s just too lovely a fit not to revisit it. And what I wrote then remains, so I won’t deviate from it. The harmonies. The shimmer. The warm pootle of brass before the little Smithsy sound effect that chills the closing line ‘the last we saw of her, it came too soon’.

This is only ever played in our – that’s me and the furniture – house during winter (official three/four-month winter, I mean, not the Scottish one).

Loveliest line: ‘Underneath a winter’s sky, her eyes were bright, tonight he finds her underneath a winter’s moon… ’

3. Butcher Boy: I Could Be in Love With Anyone (Profit in Your Poetry LP track, 2007, How Does It Feel To Be Loved?)

A bit like R.E.M., there are loads of Butcher Boy songs you could tag as lovely. ‘Poetic’ is kind of a lazy descriptor for John Blain Hunt’s lyrics, but that doesn’t stop it being any less accurate. He’s a master of fastidious and forensic observation, and an expert in uplifting and championing the ordinary: pebbledash and paper chains, chimes and chewing gum.

Despite, or perhaps because of, the sheer quality that threads through Butcher Boy’s three LPs so far, this is a band that adheres stoically to a less-is-more philosophy. Releases are sporadic – bookended by years that meanwhile continue their business of totting up births and marriages and deaths. Gigs, at best, the same. World Cups occur more regularly. Plus, in spite of heavyweight patronage from names including Stuart Murdoch and John Niven, Ian Rankin and Peter Paphides (whose Needle Mythology label released the 2021 BB compilation You Had a Kind Face), there remains a Sundays-like reticence to seek the limelight. As listeners, we’re the losers in these arrangements of course. But you kind of wouldn’t really have it any other way.

To the song though. Winning out for this compilation is I Could Be in Love With Anyone, the fourth track on the first Butcher Boy LP Profit in Your Poetry.

Lyrically there’s a little of the celestial in this tale of a character who visits in dreams and flies around the walls of a room. Amid some good intentions there seems to be selfishness too, characterised by a title that could be delivered with a shrug, and also by the delight taken in ‘breaking hearts for fun’. From hearing this treasure years ago I quickly, and surely wrongly, settled on the idea that the words are describing my own favourite antihero Peter Pan.

Loveliest line: I’m actually going to reproduce the song entire for this entry, and hope you agree that choosing just one lovely line would be something of a disservice.

Listen, please don’t close your eyes
I don’t know how I know what you’re thinking but I

I’ve never felt so far away
Blood is chiming bells through you

But listen, that’s OK ‘cos I’m frightened too

And tenderly I write today

That I could be in love with anyone

I’ve been breaking hearts for fun

Listen, tell me what’s gone wrong

And I will come in dreams and I’ll bleed into songs

So you can sing them back to me.
Sun suspends my days in dust

If my love made you lonely I’m sorry but

The feeling flowed so easily

But I could be in love with anyone

I’ve been breaking hearts for fun

Glass reflects my eyes and skin

But still my lips will crumble like ash when we kiss

So cynically I shift the blame
I could fall upon this house

Or fly across these walls with your heart in my mouth

But honey I would rather stay

Where I could be in love with anyone

I’ve been breaking hearts for fun

4. Ride: Vapour Trail (Nowhere LP track, 1990, Creation)

This is probably the song that inspired the whole ICA. I’ve always struggled to find a better word than ‘lovely’ to summarise the romantic Vapour Trail, the track that closes Ride’s debut LP Nowhere.

Vapour Trail is dreamy and delicate and from its wispy intro to its choppy string-laden exit lifts you into a whole other place. Best of all, the words – describing total adoration and beguilement – feel like they were scratched onto a jotter during double geography, a carefully crooked arm shielding them from the ridicule of the class bully.

Loveliest line: ‘You are a vapour trail in a deep blue sky… ‘

5. The Smiths: I Won’t Share You (Strangeways, Here We Come LP track, 1987, Rough Trade)

After – literally – decades of internal debate and agony I concluded some years ago that My Favourite Smiths Song is this: I Won’t Share You, the very last track on the very last LP.

I mention its placement on Strangeways, Here We Come deliberately as it is crucial to its victory. That’s thanks really to Simon Goddard’s 2002 book Songs That Saved Your Life (Reynolds & Hearn Ltd.) – a painstaking track-by-track analysis of the band’s discography (and so dippable it should be sold with a lollypop and inside a poke of sherbet). There, Goddard notes that I Won’t Share You melts out with the subtlest little breath of faded-out harmonica. It’s an addition so brief and gentle in fact that it’s essentially drowned at birth. But, and here’s the kicker, Goddard – who beautifully and correctly describes the song as ‘a deeply affecting lullaby’ – cleverly connects this sigh of a coda with the band’s first offering, the Hand in Glove single, which begins with, amazingly, a faded-in harmonica.

This, the writer states, returns The Smiths full circle, pinging them from 1987 back to 1983, and all without a DeLorean and flux capacitor in sight.

You can call this proposed loop a reach of course, and it’s an unashamedly romantic way to view the band’s birth and death (and perpetual rebirth-by-harmonica). Amid these gymnastics after all is the troubling and inconvenient fact that The Smiths’ actual last recordings occurred in May 1987, a month after Strangeways had wrapped. These were created at a B-side session whose content and atmosphere so browned-off the already irritated Johnny Marr that it’s not dramatic to state it contributed significantly to the band’s ending.

So for fans of Cluedo, you could say it was the Cilla Black cover, in the studio, with the microphone wot did it.

Even so, the harmonica yarn is a notion I utterly subscribe to and, throughout that years-long agitation across which any helpful criteria was welcome, it earned I Won’t Share You my top spot.

Prettifying the number even further there is of course the debate regarding its lyrics. Specifically, this is concerned with whether or not they constitute Morrissey’s farewell to Johnny Marr. The song would have been completed just a few months before the group dissolved, then released just weeks after the split. It’s widely thought the singer disliked the idea of the guitarist collaborating with others, or even getting close to essential associates like managers and producers. Against those assumptions it’s easy to make a case for the disputed possibility that I Won’t Share You is the sonic equivalent of a note left upon the kitchen table (or, for Smiths trainspotters, perhaps pinned beneath a windscreen wiper).

Whatever the truth, and whether or not you buy the Magic Harmonica Theory and/or the potential Dear Johnny nature of the lines, it’s a song that’s a worthy last word on both The Smiths – it was surely the only serious track ten candidate – and on this collection of lovely songs, which I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about and maybe visiting/revisiting.

Loveliest line: ‘I’ll see you somewhere, I’ll see you sometime, darling… ’

Thanks as ever to Jim for the space and opportunity, and to you for reading.

STRANGEWAYS

Motorcycle Boy, Motorcycle Ride, Ride

MOTORCYCLE RIDE

A GUEST POSTING by LEON MACDUFF

R-986715-1190915381

Had this collaboration never happened, I very much doubt it would be high on anyone’s list of “what ifs”. I mean, I like Oxford effect-pedal enthusiasts Ride, and I like short-lived Edinburgh indie power-poppers The Motorcycle Boy, but it would never occur to me to put them together. Nevertheless, on 1 December 1989 ex-Shop Assistants frontwoman Alex Taylor, at that point plying her trade with The Motorcycle Boy, joined Ride in the studio to lay down a pair of Blondie covers. I would like to tell you how this came about but sorry, your guess is as good as mine.

At this point you could say that the two parties were heading in opposite directions. The Motorcycle Boy were still a going concern, but they had just been dropped by Chrysalis after their singles sales failed to live up to expectations, their debut (and only) album Scarlet left in limbo. It eventually came out thirty years later, but Taylor didn’t live to see it. In contrast, Ride were very much on the up, having recently signed to Creation and about to release their debut EP, in the process giving Alan McGee’s previously cult-ish label its first proper chart action.

So Ride at least had something to celebrate when they played a hometown gig at Oxford Jericho Tavern on 22 December 1989. They then stayed on for a private party at which Taylor joined them for a covers set, and from which guests were sent home with a tape of their collaboration under the name of (what else?) Motorcycle Ride. In 1993, Fierce Recordings issued the songs on 7″ and as you can tell from the minor surface noise, it’s via that release that you get to hear them today.

And are they any good? Well… not especially, but who cares, it’s Alex Taylor and Ride doing a Blondie… um, tribute? I would never have put them together, I don’t know how it happened, and the result is a pair of covers that could obviously never live up to the originals… but I’m glad they did it.

mp3: Motorcycle Ride – Union City Blue
mp3: Motorcycle Ride – Atomic

LEON

Ride

AN IMAGINARY COMPILATION ALBUM : #356: RIDE (2)

A GUEST POSTING by ERIC from OAKLAND

RIDE “b-sides and album tracks” ICA

I’ve been digging through my RIDE collection lately and thought about doing an ICA, so I went back to read RIDE ICA 004 (004!) and realized that it’s already pretty damn great. When I think of RIDE there are some tracks that simply cannot be left out (Leave Them, Chrome Waves, Vapour Trail, Dreams Burn Down) and they are all there.

So in the spirit of my Weddoes ICA (ICA 339) I decided to do a kind of RIDE alt-ICA, if you will. None of these tracks were the A1 of a single, or radio play favorites (at least not on college and modern rock radio out in California). So that means none of the usual suspects, and no Chelsea Girl, Daydream, Unfamiliar… you get the idea. I also tried not to overlap the 1st ICA so they can complement each other (spoiler alert, I failed, twice). It’s a chance to showcase just how deep the bench was on all their records.

SIDE A

Drive Blind (Chelsea Girl EP)

Dance with the one that brought ya. It was this track off their debut single that hooked me. An obvious highlight of all live shows, I wonder if this couldn’t have been the lead track on the EP. It certainly feels more in keeping with what came after.

Sennen (Unfamiliar EP)

It’s tempting to include 3 Today Forever b-sides. The TF EP exposes the thinness of this concept. How can you consider the other 3 tracks on this EP “B-sides” when it’s as close to a perfect 4 song EP as you are gonna get.

Mouse Trap (Going Blank Again)

Ride dip their toe in math rock territory and blow the roof off. I often wonder what would have happened if they pursued this direction over the classic rock feel of their remaining 90s work.

Nowhere (Dreams Burn Down EP)

Big song with a big concept that pays off big time.

Polar Bear (Nowhere Album)

Epic. Great for singing along to in the car at ungodly levels.

SIDE B

Home is a Feeling (Weather Diaries)

Gorgeous track off Weather Diaries. Clearly the band had more to say. Almost 30yrs after their debut they released a fantastic album.

Stampede (Twisterella EP)

This one starts off pretty unassuming. I wonder if that’s why it didn’t make the album. However as it progresses it grows into something with a lot more complexity. The chorus is a great sing-along that sticks in my head.

Close My Eyes (Chelsea Girl EP)

We’ve all been there…

Cool Your Boots (Going Blank Again)

Even a stopped clock…There’s a wistfulness to this track that gets me every time. And then at the end when they start playing with dropping beats, it just kills me.

Today (Unfamiliar EP)

I was reminded of the genius of this tune at the reunion shows. There’s just something elegant about the construction: a simple concept that is worked to the point of perfection.

You will notice some records aren’t represented. There’s nothing from the 3rd or 4th records, or the most recent. The only reason for that is simply that I don’t have them on vinyl (yet). Also, nothing from the Like a Daydream EP. It’s not that they aren’t great, I just don’t get that ‘above the rest’ feels.

I thought about being cheeky and including Grasshopper. I remember back in the day fans would yell out “Freebird!” at shows to try to get them to play it (ask your dad). I only remember it happening once. At the time it seemed like such an over the top move of self indulgence, but as I get older, I find myself returning to it quite a bit. It’s the space and patience of the track that get me now.

Here’s a mix of the ICA: RIDE Imaginary Compilation Album

Eric from Oakland

Pooh Sticks, Ride

BURNING BADGER’S VINYL – THE (NEARLY) A-Z OF INDIEPOP (Part 6, P and R)

P is for Pooh Sticks

Young People (Taken from the ‘The Great White Wonder’)

I gave blood today. It was the first time I have given blood in about 25 years. In fact the last time I gave blood I was still dating OPG so it’s longer than 25 years ago, more like 27 years, 6 months and 22 days. On that occasion, OPG and her mum picked me up in their Austin Maestro from the small car park behind the church hall near Gillingham High Street, and OPG rewarded me with a Mars Bar for being such a brave boy. I was really pleased with myself not only because I’d done a good a thing, but I’d also managed to get a free cup of tea and a small packet of biscuits, and now I had a whole Mars Bar as well. Some days, you just felt like the King of the World.

I’m always reminded of the last great Tony Hancock in ‘The Blood Donor” when I give blood. I can’t help it. I love Tony Hancock and ‘The Blood Donor’ is one of my favourite pieces of television ever. Despite telling myself that I have absolutely no intention of watching ‘The Blood Donor’ before I go and donate, there I am at midday on the hottest day of the year in my lounge, chortling away to myself as Hancock delivers his immortal line to the harassed looking doctor.

“I mean, I came here in all good faith, to help my country. I don’t mind giving a reasonable amount, but a pint? Why, that’s very nearly an armful.”

I am tempted to quote Hancock to the nurse who deals with me today, but I decide not to, largely because the man in front of me does it first and the gag falls so flat on its arse that I tell myself that annoying the kind lady with the big needle is not a tremendous idea. She is also about 25 as well, and the reason why the joke is falling flat on its arse is because the nurse probably thinks that Tony Hancock is related to Matt Hancock, the totally fucking hopeless ex health secretary.

R is for Ride

Close My Eyes (Taken from ‘Ride EP’)

The nurse, who is called Vanessa, pricks my middle finger and then proceeds to squeeze some blood out of it, she is quite content with the quality of my blood and then tells me to go and sit on the reclining chairs. It is there in the reclining chairs that you give your armful of blood. It’s kind of relaxing, once you get past the needle in your arm bit that is. I lie there close my eyes and listen to the music that is playing in the room and once I realise what it is, I try and shut out the racket that is Heather Small singing ‘Proud’.

“You feeling nervous, love?” Vanessa says; it’s a bit weird being called ‘Love’ by a woman who is young enough to be my daughter, but I smile and say “Nope, I’m just trying to not listen to Heather Small’s voice”. Vanessa offers me a cushion to put behind my back, and I feel myself ageing a few more years.

After about ten minutes a machine beeps a noise similar to the noise you get when you finish a level of Super Mario Brothers, and I am told to sit up and then Vanessa asks me if I would like a drink. I ask for an Earl Grey, black and with a squeeze of lemon if they have it. She hands me a piece of card that tells me “NO HOT DRINKS FOR SIX HOURS”.

I’m also, for the next six hours, not allowed “Physical Exercise (including sex)” – it genuinely says that, “too much sun” (it’s the hottest day of the year) and “no alcohol”. I tell Vanessa that the last time I gave blood, I got a cup of tea. She looks at me strangely and asks me “When was that” as apparently, it’s a really bad idea to have hot drinks after giving blood.

I tell her it was in “1994”. She laughs and says “Christ love, I wasn’t even born then” and about 3000 of my hairs immediately turn grey, and I ask her for some water.

I am walked over to the relaxation area, where you must sit for fifteen minutes after donating. I am offered a box full of crisps and salty snacks to eat with my water (“helps your body retain water, love”) and I pick up two bags of salt and vinegar crisps and sit in one of the comfy chairs and pick up a copy of ‘Devon Life’ Magazine and read an article about the Westward Ho!

I open the crisps and munch away. I’m really hungry. I’d gone out without lunch, you see, choosing instead to watch Tony Hancock videos instead. About seven minutes after I finish the first bag of crisps, I realise that this was a mistake. My head starts to spin a bit, and then a lot, and the nurse to my right has started talking in a weird slow motion style. I pick up my glass of water, my hand is shaking, and suddenly I feel really hot, sweating buckets hot, like the moment about two minutes before you puke up last night’s alcohol.

A kind nurse called Toby wanders over and asks me if I am ok. I feel a bit faint, I tell him. Within minutes, I am lying on the floor, with a cool pillow behind my head and Vanessa is back and shoving my feet on a small box so they are higher than my head.

Vanessa looks at me and smiles, “Bless” she says.

The Pooh Sticks were outstanding, a jangly indie pop band from Wales and ‘The Great White Wonder’ was their second album and featured as a guest vocalist Amelia Fletcher from Talulah Gosh. I saw them live just once at the 1992 Reading Festival (I think) that ended with this.

I’m In You – a fifteen minute wig out of sheer brilliance.

I’m pretty sure I used to own ‘The Great White Wonder’ on tape.

The Ride EP was as we all know the first release from Ride. It remains to this day essential listening, and here for the unacquainted are the other three tracks from the EP. It is unlikely that you will hear many songs that are better today.

Chelsea Girl
Drive Blind
All I Can See

SWC

Ride

45 45s @ 45 : SWC STYLE (Part 23)

A GUEST SERIES

23 – Ride – Leave Them All Behind (1992, Creation Records)

Released as a single in February 1992 (Reached Number 9)

A long time ago in the early 1990’s, there was this little music scene called shoegaze. Ride were the kings of that scene, largely because, if you put the band that probably invented it, My Bloody Valentine, to one side for a minute, they were the only band that really crossed over into the mainstream long enough to be important. They also made ‘Nowhere’ which is still to this day one of the greatest guitar records ever made. Yes it is. Face facts Skunk Anansie fans.

Ride were for about half an hour or so, the biggest band in the UK. For reasons that were quite obvious, girls loved them and nearly every girl I knew between 1990 and 1992 wanted their boyfriends to look like Mark Gardner or Andy Bell, it was never the other two. We boys tried in vain to do that, we grow our fringes so that they flopped over our eyes. Then we bought stripy long sleeved T-shirts in their thousands and traded on blue denims for black ones. After that we threw our Adidas pumps into the back of our wardrobes and bought eight hole Doc Martens, and we learnt how to stand perfectly still at gigs and just gaze at our shoes, swaying gently to a blaze of feedback strewn guitars, and whispery vocals about the sky, the rain and dreams.

Roughly at the same time that we boys were doing this, Ride were recording their second album, ‘Going Blank Again’. The lead track from it was ‘Leave Them All Behind’ a swirling, kaleidoscopic feedback inspired inspired eight minute blast of brilliance. It has this long drawn out intro to which, I, at the time, proudly declared it to be ‘the greatest opening two minutes of music, ever’ to anyone that would listen to me. Saying that I do have form for this kind of thing, because roughly six months earlier, I said the same thing about this

Perfume (All on you) – Paris Angels (Sheer Joy Records 1990, Number 55)

to anyone that would listen, and this too I think, (but only for that rumbling bass)

A Good Idea – Sugar (Creation Records 1992, Number 65)

And I was probably right on all accounts.

Anyway, back to girls and them liking Ride. In 1992, OPG turned 18 and a few weeks before that special day I sent a letter (ask your dad, kids) to Ride, via the address on the back of their ‘Taste’ EP asking them for a signed photo. Some six months later one popped through my letterbox, of course, by that time, OPG and SWC, had consciously uncoupled for the time being. What actually popped through my letterbox was a signed print of the cover of ‘Leave Them All Behind’ and for about five years that took pride of place on my bedroom wall, that was there until 1998, when I was about to graduate, my dad phoned me and told me that as I was ‘moving to bloody Devon – he was redecorating my old room and had chucked all my old crap into a box’ which he had then put in the loft. I never saw that print again.

SWC

Mercury Rev, Ride

THE £20 CHALLENGE (Week Nine)

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S-WC writes…..

I’ve edited this at the start to issue an apology. I’ve been really busy in the last couple of weeks – so apologies if you have been (for some strange reason) eagerly awaiting (or even just mildly looking forward to it) this. It was beyond my control. Sometimes work gets in the way of fun. That obviously sucks, but, its pays my bills and keeps me in fluffy socks and allows me to fuel my Jaffa Cake addiction. Now on with the charity shop stuff.

“You know that I hate Mercury Rev why have you bought me a Mercury Rev CD?”

Badger smiles and says that it was time for me to put aside my hatred for Mercury Rev, because it wasn’t based on music but personality. He is right and this is why…Welcome to the (long drawn out) story of the night that the singer from Mercury Rev punched me in the face…Which to this day is the sole reason why I refuse to like Mercury Rev.

It is March 1992, I am sixteen an in the last year or so I have discovered music, live gigs, girls, Newcastle Brown Ale, Doc Martins Boots and cigarettes. I have abandoned a burgeoning career on the running track (at the time I am the two time Kent Under 16 Cross Country Champion), and thrown away my slippers with Scooby Doo on them. I think I am cool because I own ‘Come Home’ on 12” and a Carter T-shirt which has a swear word on the back.

By now I am a gig veteran (or I think I am), last summer I went to the Reading Festival and the much forgotten about Slough Festival and already this year I have seen about five bands live. Today I am in Folkestone to see Ride they are supported by Mercury Rev. Ride are touring in support of their second album ‘Going Blank Again’ and are at the height of their powers, the album has just gone Top 5 in the charts and ‘Leave Them All Behind’ has been pretty much glued to my stereo since its release – this is probably because its so long that it hasn’t quite finished yet.

mp3 : Ride – Leave Them All Behind

There are six of us, me, Graham (posh kid, doesn’t like Ride, but has come because he fancies one of the girls here), Martin (now in the band Thee Faction), Nick (thinks he is cooler than everyone because he has a girlfriend who is older than him), and two girls, Michelle (the one that Graham fancies I think) and Catherine (later starts going out with my best mate Richard). I at the time have been sniffing around Our Price Girl, I have yet to succeed (succeed? Probably not the right word) in that quest but I am at least on speaking terms with her. Oh, she is here at this gig, did I mention that? She is sitting in a café (looking divine in a Cure T Shirt and flowery skirt) drinking Pepsi, on the walkway up to the concert venue, which is why I am trying to convince everyone to go to that café instead of queuing up to get in like 700 other sadsacks.

Our Price Girl is with Jane one of her best friends, a chap called Dave who I sort of know and another guy, who is much older than them all (later revealed as Dave’s dad, Eric). In the end Michelle, me, and Graham (inevitably because where Michelle goes, he goes) go to the café and the others go and queue up. I pretend not to notice Our Price Girl and then act surprised when I see her at a table. It sort of works as her group and my group spend the rest of evening as one group.

We are wondering back to the queue, I think there are six of us (Dave’s Dad has gone somewhere else), when we spot Mark Gardener from Ride, just walking down the street. He is carrying a plate of sandwiches, which I have to say to this day remains the single most bizarre thing I have seen a rock star carrying (apart from the time I saw Billy Corgan carrying a goat into his hotel room and locking the door. That’s made up by the way, just in case he’s reading). That is important, remember the sandwiches. Seeing Mark pretty much sends the girls into some form of mental breakdown, they start fixing their hair, getting little mirrors out of their bags that sort of thing. We dash over and immediately Our Price Girl tells me to say hello to him. “Why me?” I say. She doesn’t answer but just stands that looking cross, so I shut up and wander over. Now for some reason, I have no idea why, I say to Mark Gardener, probably the coolest bloke on the planet at the time (well I thought so anyway), “Got any cheese and tomato in there?” He looks at me and smiles and says “I don’t know, they are for Mercury Rev”. Then I ask him if he would mind signing some stuff for me and my mates, which of course he agrees to. We then all chat some more and eventually we are outside the back of the venue – he then says he has to run off and do ‘shit interviews’ with the local papers but told us to enjoy the gig and he is gone. The girls sigh, and we all decide that he is a really nice guy. It is then that Graham realises that he is holding Mercury Rev’s sandwiches.

We knock on the back door until a security guy opens it and tells us politely to fuck off. I say that we have some sandwiches for Mercury Rev and he laughs and says ‘nice try’. We push Graham to the front and show him, he tells us to stay where we are. A strange thing happens then, the singer from Mercury Rev turns up and starts chatting to us, whilst opening the plate of sandwiches up and eating them. There are probably fifteen sandwiches on that plate. Now, I should say here, that this is the old singer from Mercury Rev, a large chap named, David Baker, not the current singer. I was pretty unaware of Mercury Rev and their music and when the singer asked us if we were fans instead of saying yes I said ‘I’ve never heard of you…’ and Graham and Dave both laughed. Our Price Girl shot me a look at this point.

He looked pretty pissed off with me at this point and he starts to wander off back into the venue, muttering something about having to get back. Now, at this point, the events are slightly blurred, but someone says something. I swear it wasn’t me, I think it was Graham, but I might be wrong. Anyway, the singer from Mercury Rev turns around and punched me in the face. It didn’t hurt to be honest, it was more of a slap than a punch it left a red mark rather than a bruise. With that he was gone and the security guard told us to do one again. By the way, David Baker had eaten nine sandwiches in around five minutes and not once did he offer us one or even say ‘Thank You’.

I turned to my friends and said “I bet Mercury Rev are shit”. I was right, that night they were awful, meandering, and pretentious. I vowed that from that day I would never like them, it was because the singer had slapped me, rather than their actual music, because there was one song about ‘Bees’ that was actually pretty good.

So that is why I have never really liked Mercury Rev. And by the way the only other musician to have punched me is the guitarist from long lost Pearl Jam wannabes (only from Guildford, not Seattle) Redwood, he punched me because I said their album was as interesting as reading the Chester City Bus Timetable. That one hurt though.

“The problem with this album”, Badger says as he hands me the copy of ‘All Is Dream’ “is that its not ‘Deserters Songs”. That album folk is in Badger’s Top Twenty Albums Ever. He loves it and every now and again forces me to listen to it on car journeys or something. I don’t mind it to be honest, but its not the masterpiece that everyone says it is.

However, I listen to ‘All is Dream’ the next day on the way to Torquay, and you know what, I enjoyed it. It’s a lovely album. Its intelligent, graceful and in parts emotional. The lead track from it ‘The Dark Is Rising’ is beautiful as is ‘Tides of the Moon’ and the ending of ‘Lincoln’s Eyes’ has one of best endings of a song I’ve heard in ages. It also has this piano led ballad on it called ‘Spider and Flies’ which is probably the finest song on the album, as the piano tinkles away, the singer (Jonathon Donahue) quietly goes mental, confessing all his fears about death and such like. You realise then that the whole album is a kind of ode to a love or lover I suppose. It’s a lovely thing.

Ok, Mercury Rev, I forgive you. Now let’s listen to ‘Deserter’s Songs’ again.

mp3 : Mercury Rev – The Dark Is Rising
mp3 : Mercury Rev – Tides of The Moon
mp3 : Mercury Rev – Lincoln’s Eyes
mp3 : Mercury Rev – Spiders and Flies

The Skinny

‘All is Dream’ bought from PDSA Exeter

Price £2.99

Left £3.50

Ride

AN IMAGINARY COMPILATION ALBUM #4 – RIDE

These words have come all the way from the deepest Guyanese jungle. Yup, I’m delighted to pass in the news that S-WC has settled into is his new job and lifestyle very quickly and via his good mate Tim (who along with S-WC got working on the blog that is When You Can’t Remember Anything) has been in touch to offer this:-

How are you all? It’s been a while. You are all looking good, I like what you’ve done with your hair.

Me? I’m fine, thanks for asking. I have a view across the water that is amazing, I have a working air con machine and they have given me a brand new 4×4 to mess around with. Life could be worse. Ok I got woken up at 3am by a flying cockroach and again at 5am by what I think was gunfire, but you know, beer is 75c a litre in the bar ‘down the road’ and the watermelons here are to die for. Literally in some cases.

I have some time on my hands so I am doing a lot of writing. I enjoyed recently a piece written by JC about ‘Imaginary Compilation Albums’ and always promised to write one for him on Spiritualized. I’m finding that quite tough to narrow down, so here is one featuring Ride.

For those who don’t know Ride are probably one of the most unsung bands of the last couple of generations, they were pioneers of the much missed Shoegaze scene and with their debut album ‘Nowhere’ they created one of the best records of the nineties (those who remember my 40 albums to hear before I am 40, would have read all about this if I had time to finish it – that album folks is the 6th best ever. If you want to argue, my neighbour has a gun he has offered to lend me to shoot ‘alligators’ should I ever need it. Just saying.). Also as a sub note – it was really hard to not simply just pick the tracks from ‘Nowhere’ here.

Side One

Leave Them All Behind – Because of the two-minute intro, because of the drum bit that sounds incredible, because the keyboard at the start sounds like The Who, and mostly, because chaps, the song was once voted the ultimate shagging song, although I very honestly doubt any of us would not be smoking a cigarette before it ends.

Sennen – Because it a truly beautiful song, it reminds me of home and I love it. I have said it before, that Sennen Cove in Cornwall is the most beautiful place on Earth, go there, now. Also the moment when the vocals enter, is a shivers up the spine moment.

Vapour Trail – Despite the ropey lyrics ‘You are a Vapour Trail, in the deep blue sky’ – the guitars mixed in with a cello (A Cello!!) create something truly lovely which batters the murkiness of the overall sound. I used to think this sounded tuneless when I was younger but I now realise that it shimmers beautifully.

Dreams Burn Down – Because it sounds dark, moody and rather magnificent, especially if you listen to it whilst walking home in the pitch black. Try it.

Close My Eyes – A personal choice to be honest, it reminds me of an ex girlfriend. That is all I’m going to say on that.

Side Two

Chelsea Girl – Perhaps the ultimate Ride song, short, sweet, poppy and probably the first single that really turned the public heads. It is all about that rush of drums and guitars at the start I think.

Chrome Waves – One the best tracks off of ‘Going Blank Again’ – and I think one of the best songs that Mark Gardener ever wrote. I find it strangely haunting.

In A Different Place – “Even if the rain falls down and all the skies turn cold” is the best lyric Ride ever wrote and for that we have to include it. It is a beautiful song and I think underlines why Ride were one of those bands.

Like A Daydream – A song that wants to sound like the Byrds so much, but ends up sounding far better than the Byrds ever did. It has this middle section that has this pause in it, a moment of silence before the guitars just go, well all over the place. I love this song to pieces and you all should too.

OX4 – It was a punch up between this and ‘Nowhere’ and the choice took me an hour and three decisions*. ‘OX4’ wins because it just hypnotises you over seven minutes.

You’ll note there is nothing off of ‘Carnival of Light’ or ‘Tarantula’ here – not because they are terrible but because the aren’t as good as everything else Ride did. If I had two secret tracks at the end I would put ‘How Does It Feel to Feel?’ as one of them, because I am in the video for it (two minutes 16 seconds in), the other secret track would be ‘Unfamiliar’. Oh and ‘Taste’ and ‘Seagull’ and…Oh I’ll shut up now.

Laters Alligators….

S-WC

* JC adds……been there every single time I’ve tried to put one of these particular pieces together! Here’s the tracks chosen by S-WC:-

mp3 : Ride – Leave Them All Behind
mp3 : Ride – Sennen
mp3 : Ride – Vapour Trail
mp3 : Ride – Dreams Burn Down
mp3 : Ride – Close My Eyes
mp3 : Ride – Chelsea Girl
mp3 : Ride – Chrome Waves
mp3 : Ride – In A Different Place
mp3 : Ride – Like A Daydream
mp3 : Ride – OX4

Bandit Queen, Breeders, Ride

FROM THE SOUTH-WEST CORRESPONDENT…WHAT’S IN YOUR BOX (16)

Weather and Feminism

But to start with a bit about the weather and something completely different. Recently the weather in the South West has been terrible, awful, most of it is underwater and I swear I saw a Merman the other day in the local branch of Waterstones.

So yesterday as I trudged back from the sandwich shop clutching my avocado and pine nut salad sandwich (I say sandwich shop, I mean, ridiculously expensive deli) a song came on my Ipod. It was ‘Sennen’ by Ride and as I walked through the lakes and wind lashed more rain into my face, I smiled, because this song made me feel warm, dry and a little bit cosy.

For those of you who don’t know, Sennen is a beautiful beach in Cornwall (check it on the Interent – I thoroughly recommend a visit), right at the end near Lands End. It is one of my favourite places on Earth and I firmly believe that it has never rained there.

The song itself by Ride is a sunny type of song, and in the perfect world, when the weather forecasters say ‘Rain, Wind, Hail, Plague of Frogs’ they should then be forced to say ‘Never mind all that though, here’s Ride with Sennen, now smile you miserable toads’. So if its wet, damp and your lounge is full of mud, here’s Ride with ‘Sennen’. Hope for the four minutes or so that you listen to it, it makes you smile as much as it did me. Play it in the rain and grin like a loon.

mp3 : Ride – Sennen

Anyway back to the box choice, Bandit Queen, for those who don’t know, where a Manchester three piece fronted by former Swirl (nope, me neither) singer Tracey Gooding, released one album ‘Hormone Hotel’ in the mid 90’s. (which is what has come out of the box). A second album was recorded and never released until the power of the Internet allowed it to be self released in 2010. They came across on the ‘feminist angle’ back then and they seem a fitting choice for today because as I type it is Simone de Beauvoirs 106th birthday and if the Google Doodle is correct, she’s looking good on it. There were also named after the Indian Freedom Fighter Phoolan Devi and were strongly influenced by Frida Kahlo (even putting her on the cover of Hormone Hotel) so you get the agenda that they were addressing.

I have chosen the lead single of the album ‘Miss Dandys’, a spiky little pop song all about crossing dressing gigolos.

mp3 : Bandit Queen – Miss Dandys

The bands bio states that they sit perfectly in between The Breeders and Throwing Muses and you will see why, they have that clever lyric writing going on that the Throwing Muses had and they have the angriness of The Breeders, although Miss Dandys is no ‘Cannonball’. Decide for yourself.

mp3 : The Breeders – Cannonball

I remember quite liking this when I was a student and I made it Single of the Week in my column in the Student Rag I know this as in pen next to the song I have written ‘SOTW’, today I checked the archives and it beat ‘Mansize Rooster’ by Supergrass to that accolade, so I think I must have been drunk when I listened to it. I mean its good, but its not that good. The album promised much, and kind of delivers, you get much more of the same, decent indie pop, well worth an investment if you can find a cheap copy, (or give me a shout and I’ll see what I can do).

S-WC