Wah! – THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN

Altered Images, Bananarama, Big Country, Blancmange, David Bowie, Dexy's Midnight Runners, Duran Duran, Jo Boxers, New Order, Orange Juice, Style Council, Wah!

DON’T LOOK BACK IN ANGER (3)

Y’all ready for this?

From the UK singles Top 10 of the last week of March 1993.

mp3: The Style Council – Speak Like A Child (#4)
mp3: Altered Images – Don’t Talk To Me About Love (#7)
mp3: Orange Juice – Rip It Up (#8)

Oh, and Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) by the Eurythmics was at #5, well on its way to what would be six weeks in the Top 10.

There were also some other great pop tunes at the higher end of the charts….not all of which will be to everyone’s taste, but can offer an illustration that we were truly enjoying a golden age of memorable 45s:-

mp3: Duran Duran – Is There Something I Should Know (#1)
mp3: David Bowie – Let’s Dance (#2)
mp3: Jo Boxers – Boxerbeat (#6)
mp3: Bananarama – Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye (#9)

The other two places in the Top 10 were taken up by Bonnie Tyler and Forrest (no, me neither!!!)

Do you fancy looking a bit further down the Top 40?

mp3: Big Country – Fields Of Fire (400 Miles) (#13)
mp3: New Order – Blue Monday (#17)
mp3: Blancmange – Waves (#25)
mp3: Dexy’s Midnight Runners – The Celtic Soul Brothers (#36)
mp3: Wah! – Hope (I Wish You’d Believe Me) (#37)

Some facts and stats.

The debut single by The Style Council was the first of what would be four chart hits in 1983.

Altered Images and Orange Juice had both appeared on Top of The Pops the previous week on a show presented by John Peel and David ‘Kid’ Jensen, with both singles going up in the charts immediately after.

Is There Something I Should Know? was the first ever #1 for Duran Duran. It had entered the charts at that position the previous week.

David Bowie would, the following week, supplant Duran Duran from the #1 spot, and Let’s Dance would spend three weeks at the top.

The debut single by Jo Boxers would eventually climb to #3. It was the first of three chart singles for the group in 1983. They never troubled the charts in any other year.

Bananarama‘s single would reach #5 the following week. The group would, all told, enjoy 25 hit singles in their career.

Fields of Fire had been at #31 when Big Country had appeared on the same TOTP show presented by Peel and Jensen. A rise of 18 places in one week after appearing on the television was impressive.

Blue Monday was in the third week of what proved to be an incredible 38-week unbroken stay in the Top 100. It initially peaked at #12 in mid-April and eventually fell to #82 in mid-July, at which point it was discovered for the first time by large numbers of holidaymakers descending on the clubs in sunnier climes. By mid-October, it had climbed all the way back up to #9.

Blancmange were enjoying a second successive hit after Living On The Ceiling had gone top 10 in late 1982. Waves would spend a couple of weeks in the Top 20, peaking at #19.

The success of The Celtic Soul Brothers was a cash-in from the record company. It had touched the outer fringes of the charts in March 1982, but its follow-up, Come On Eileen, had captured the hearts of the UK record-buying public. It was re-released in March 1983, going on to spend five weeks in the charts and reaching #20.

Hope (I Wish You’d Believe Me) was the follow-up to Story Of The Blues. It wasn’t anything like as successful and spent just one week inside the Top 40.

JC

Echo & The Bunnymen, Wah!

DON’T LOOK BACK IN ANGER

I got thinking a while back that, once the calendar turned over into 2023, I could have some fun out of creating a new series for the blog, turning the clock back 40 years to look at some of the great music that was released in 1983, perhaps throwing in a few stories/recollections/memories of the era. In doing so, I have created a bit of a dilemma for myself, but I’ll come back to that tomorrow.

In the meantime, to give you an idea of how good a start it was to 1983, here’s a single that had been released just prior to Christmas where it bubbled away outside the Top 40 for a few weeks, unable to compete with the might of Renee and Ronato, Phil Collins, David Essex or Shakin’ Stevens, not forgetting the unlikely duet from Bing Crosby and David Bowie.

The first week in January saw it reach #34 and an invitation from the Top of The Pop producers for the 24-year-old lead singer to realise his pop star ambitions.

The following week, Story of The Blues climbed all the way to #6 and then the following week to its peak position of #3. All told, it stayed in the Top 20 for six weeks and didn’t drop out of the Top 75 until late March. I wrote about this song back in 2015. I’ll stand by what I said then

To my young(ish) ears it sounded like no other record that had ever been released at that point in history. To my old(er) ears it still sounds like no other record that has ever been released in history.

mp3: Wah! – The Story of The Blues

And, because you’re worth it, here’s the full version, ripped at a high quality direct from the Canadian import 12″ single :-

mp3: Wah! – The Story of The Blues (Parts One and Two)

The same week that Pete’s epic peaked at #3, saw a bunch of his mates achieve the highest new entry in the singles charts:-

mp3: Echo and The Bunnymen – The Cutter

Oh, how the 19-year-old me loved throwing shapes to this one on the floor of the student union disco as I lay down my raincoat and grooved.

I did a lot of grooving in 1983 as it turned out to be a more than decent year for alternative pop music, albeit there was still a great deal of dross dominating the higher end of the charts most weeks.

JC

Pete Wylie, The Mighty Wah, Wah!

BIG, BOOMING AND MEMORABLE

Pete Wylie didn’t do things by half. The three occasions that he managed to enter the higher echelons of the UK pop charts left us with magical and timeless bits of music.

I did consider having a go at pulling together an imaginary compilation album featuring his best moments but in all honesty while I have some albums and this fairly comprehensive compilation CD that brings together most of his best recordings I didn’t think my words could do him justice. My cop-out is therefore just to dig deep into the cupboard and pull out the three hit singles in 12″ form as well as a double-pack of 7″ pieces of plastic from his last Top 20 effort:-

1982 : The Story Of The Blues

This climbed all the way to #3 in the charts and is probably the best known of the hits. To my young(ish) ears it sounded like no other record that had ever been released at that point in history. To my old(er) ears it still sounds like no other record that has ever been released in history. Oh and the b-side on the 12″ is a new version of an earlier and much-loved flop single.

mp3 : Wah! – The Story of The Blues (Parts I and II)
mp3 : Wah! – 7 Minutes Live(ish)

1983 : Come Back

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

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

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

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

1986 : Sinful!

Almost thirty years on and this still sounds amazing when it blasts out of the radio. It reached #13 but was worthy at least of Top 3 to match his biggest ever hit. The 12″ Tribal Mix goes on for more than eight minutes and while it does occasionally betray its age thanks to the rather dated production techniques and tricks of the day, it is still hugely enjoyable and a fine commentary on the social injustices imposed on society by the Tories and Republicans in the first half of the ‘greed is good’ decade.

mp3 : Pete Wylie & The Oedipus Wrecks – Sinful! (Tribal Mix)
mp3 : Pete Wylie & The Oedipus Wrecks – Sinful!
mp3 : Pete Wylie & The Oedipus Wrecks – I Want The Moon, Mother

This was another single released in a multitude of formats and quite recently I had the good fortune to get my hands on the 2 x 7″ release of the single and here’s the two tracks that weren’t otherwise on the 12″ ( a word of warning…..they’re really only for completists):-

mp3 : Pete Wylie & The Oedipus Wrecks – Sophie’s Sinful! (for Maurice or Isabelle)
mp3 : Pete Wylie & The Oedipus Wrecks – The Joy Of Being Booed

Enjoy

Big Hard Excellent Fish, Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, Mighty Wah, Wah!

AFTER COPE THEN McCULLOCH….IT HAD TO BE WYLIE ON FRIDAY

The best summary of Pete Wylie that I’ve ever read appeared in a piece in The Guardian just over 12 months ago:-

Pete Wylie was one of John Peel’s pet projects. He’d been one of the legendary (and barely existent) Liverpool group the Crucial Three with Julian Cope and Ian McCulloch before those two formed the Teardrop Explodes and Echo and the Bunnymen respectively. Wylie formed Wah! Or rather, with a grasp of how to succeed in the music business that fell far short of his grandiose ambition, he formed Wah!, Wah! Heat, Shambeko Say! Wah!, Wah! The Mongrel, JF Wah! He got a major label, he released an album with the please-don’t-buy-this title Nah = Poo! – The Art of Bluff, he had a hit single with The Story of the Blues, he lost the major label deal. Through it all was a sense of a character who felt destined to be a star, and who had imagined the whole process from start to finish, with the possible exception of the bits in which he knuckled down and did what aspirant stars have to do: kissing label arses; doing the meet-and-greets; being a good boy.

The bio on the official website describes him as ‘part time rock star – full-time legend’ and reminds us that he has been behind some epic chart hits in our lifetime with the likes of Story of The Blues, Sinful and Come Back, the 12″ versions of which all have a place in the cupboard full of vinyl.

What I also think is well worth a read are the words of Wylie on how Story of The Blues became a hit:-

I started re-checking the Chilites doing this beautiful, very direct, emotional thing & around the same time saw Alan Bleasdale’s ‘BOYS FROM THE BLACKSTUFF’; it made powerful political points by connecting emotionally, by dealing with the human costs of the day + MOTOWN WALKER BROTHERS etc all kicked in like long-lost family – we brought in mike HEDGES as producer (I love and love his work with the Associates, who during the recording brought in the most ale I’d seen at that point, and we ‘watched’ Scotland v Brazil, 82 world cup – love ya Billy). I programmed drumbox, arranged, played guitar, piano even – WEA thought BIGTIME; PEELE & JENSEN hammered it on Radip 1, the world breathed a sigh of indifference. Then, months after release, dead on its feet, we got a call; Granada TV were doing a Christmas show, Duran or such has been collared doing something shady, they needed a replacement quick and we were the nearest group; we did the show (first WAH! TV goes pop); in the make-up (MAKE-UP!) room Bet Lynch took a look at my quiff and said ‘OOH I haven’t seen one that big for years” I worw a tux (Like when ELVIS sang with SINATRA). The show aired Christmas day, the shops opened soon after and we humbly took our place in the nation’s charts – 6 MONTHS OF DOOM THEN BOOM! And it all got very different

mp3 : Wah! – The Story of The Blues (Part 1)

A rather less polished version was later recorded on 22 August 1984 for the John Peel Show:-

mp3 : The Mighty Wah – Basement Blues/Story Of The Blues

One of my other favourite Pete Wylie things was written in 1989:-

mp3 : Big Hard Excellent Fish – Imperfect List

It’s a spoken-word track is a list of his most hated people and things read by Josie Jones. Fast forward to 2004 and that very track was used as the opening salvo in Morrissey’s gig at the Manchester Arena (which myself and Mrs Villain managed to pick up tickets for!) and subsequently can be found on the DVD Who Put the M in Manchester?

And finally, here’s a rare chance to listen to Pete’s vocal contribution in 1990 to the original hardcore near nine minute version of a track that would be re-recorded and become a hit single a year later :-

mp3 : The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu (feat Pete Wylie) – It’s Grim Up North

Enjoy.