THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN

AN IMAGINARY COMPILATION ALBUM : #266 : JULIAN COPE (live)

A GUEST POSTING by KHAYEM

Julian Cope Live ICA: Born To Entertain

I won’t hesitate in saying that I have an unconditional love for Julian Cope and his music. I was too young to really be there at the beginning, but I have stuck by the Arch Drude through thick and thin, pop and political prog, and all the points in between. Hell, I still play the Queen Elizabeth CDs and enjoy them. When Strictly Rockers posted the first of his excellent ICAs way back in 2015, he touted further ICAs, Cope Remixed, Cope Covered and Cope Live. The first two made it to a follow-up post the same year and I looked forward to the latter. Five years later, I really had to scratch that itch so I’ve bravely or foolishly attempted one…

Like Strictly Rockers, I’ve seen more Julian Cope gigs and own more (physical) albums and singles than any other artist. One or two of these records were also bought in WH Smiths in Bristol, so I suspect SR and I may have been in the same crowd at the same gig on many occasions in Bristol and Bath over the years. Small world…

It all started for me with the My Nation Underground tour at the Bristol Colston Hall. My ticket is currently AWOL in the attic but, according to the internet, this was Saturday 22nd October 1988. The gig was particularly memorable for Cope’s leopard print blouse, his infamous climbing frame mike stand, and a rousing 12-minute version of Reynard The Fox, although on this occasion he thankfully chose not to slash open his stomach with a Stanley knife.

Instead, at one point, Julian Cope got down off the stage, made a beeline for me and pressed his sweat-beaded brow against my own as we both sang into the mike. He then departed and got straight back onto the stage and didn’t leave it again for the rest of the concert. I have no idea why he singled me out, and sadly I can’t even remember what the particular song was (!) but it left an impression that has never faded. I’ve since seen Cope in a variety of settings, with a full-band or acoustic solo, playing epic, nearly 3-hour concerts or reciting lyrics and poetry when laryngitis meant that he lost his singing voice partway through a gig. His memorable performance in a monkey half-mask and banana yellow kecks at the first Phoenix Festival in 1992 was the absolute highlight of that weekend. And, perhaps inevitably, Julian Cope at the Barbican, London in February 2020 turned out to be the last live show I saw before COVID-19 put us all into lockdown.

It’s an almost impossible task trying to compile a Julian Cope Live ICA, so I imposed some very strict rules to give myself a slight chance of success:

1) Stick to 10 songs only, no bonus EPs or alternative albums this time;
2) No cover versions, Teardrop Explodes, Brain Donor or other side projects;
3) No singles (although I had to make one exception);
4) No songs over 10 minutes (including between song banter/preamble/anecdotes);
5) Include at least one selection from gigs in the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s and 2020s

There are some glaring omissions: no Pristeen or Greatness And Perfection and nothing from Saint Julian, Droolian or Peggy Suicide, but I hope this selection gives a flavour of Julian Cope as a songwriter, raconteur and live performer. The title of this ICA is taken from a line in Las Vegas Basement (again, cruelly omitted from this selection). Julian Cope was undoubtedly “Born To Entertain”, so here I go…

SIDE ONE

1) Soul Desert (Live @ The Fleece Bristol, 09 Feb 2020) (bootleg recording)

The opening song on the epic Jehovahkill has also been a regular concert opener since and is perfectly suited to Cope’s latter day by-necessity solo acoustic gigs. This version is nearly twice the length of the original and stretches out the tension with a number of false build ups to the inevitable climax. For the real heads.

2) Bill Drummond Said (Live In Japan, 1991) (Live Japan ’91, 2004)

This jaunty ‘tribute’ to The Teardrops Explodes’ former manager appeared on a self-released live CD via Cope’s Head Heritage site. Given the quality of Cope’s performances, it’s a wonder that Island records didn’t release an official live album when Julian Cope was signed to the label. This is a fantastic album/concert and this full-band version is no exception, with a lovely ‘plink-plonk’ keyboard motif.

3) Don’t Take Roots (Live @ Barrowlands, Glasgow, 30 Sep 1995) (Barrowlands, 2019)

A throwaway, dispensable track from 20 Mothers or an irresistibly groovy song? Probably a bit of both, to be honest, but I love this song. I saw the Propheteering tour at Bristol’s Anson Rooms the week before this version in Glasgow was recorded and it was an amazing, epic show. Thighpaulsandra’s only tour with Cope apparently, but all of the band are on fire here. The self-released CD condenses a 3-hour show into 70 minutes, is still available to buy on the Head Heritage site and I’d highly recommend it.

4) Autogeddon Blues (Live @ Moseley Folk Festival, Birmingham, 01 Sep 2012) (bootleg recording)

I’ll admit, I found Autogeddon a disappointment following Peggy Suicide and Jehovahkill, but time and distance has given me a greater appreciation for the album as a whole. Autogeddon Blues, along with Paranormal In The West Country, was the stand-out and has remained a live staple. Dedicated here to “Spaghetti Junction”, this live version includes a brief example of Cope’s way with an introduction, which have sometimes been known to be longer than the songs themselves.

5) Sunspots (Live @ The Ritz, New York, 28 Jan 1987) (bootleg recording)

Sunspots may possibly be my favourite Julian Cope song of all, Top 5 at least if I were inclined to make a list, and maybe the greatest hit that never was. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Cope gig where Sunspots wasn’t performed, but I will admit that the 21st Century acoustic versions are inevitably lacking something (and I don’t just mean the oboe). This full-band version is closer to what I would have experienced in Bristol back in 1988 and adds a whole new lyrical section. The car that Julian Cope was driving around with his very best friend in? A Karmann Ghia, of course.

SIDE TWO

6) Reynard The Fox (Live @ Barrowlands, Glasgow, 30 Sep 1995) (Barrowlands, 2019)

A 12-minute “Live In Tokyo” version appeared as a B-side to 5 o’Clock World. This is more faithful to the original album version, though the constraints of stripped-down concerts mean that I haven’t heard the song performed for a long, long time. The core band – Mike “Moon-Eye” Mooney (guitar), Keith Richard Frost (bass) and Mark “Rooster” Cosby (drums) – had played with Cope for many years at this point and with Thighpaulsandra “at the controls” the song enters the rock cosmos at the end. Apologies that there is some distortion/crackle in this recording/my copy of the CD.

7) You Will Be Mist (Live @ BBC 6 Music Festival, Liverpool, 31 Mar 2019) (bootleg recording)

I didn’t see Julian Cope perform in 2019, so this may well have been the premiere and only live airing of the song that subsequently appeared on this year’s excellent Self Civil War. In this year’s tour, only 2 songs from Self Civil War were played in London, reduced to 1 song for the Bristol date, neither of which were this one. This is a shame as it’s a good song and perfectly suited to the minimal live set up. This was broadcast live on BBC6 with 2 other ‘classic’ songs and an interview with DJ/presenter Mark Radcliffe. Radcliffe briefly appears in the intro and presumably hits the wrong button about a minute in…

8) Robert Mitchum (Live @ The Globe Cardiff, 2011) (bootleg recording)

“Just a piece of fluff to a hero but the middle 8 is as anti-fucking-religion as you like”, as described in the intro. Robert Mitchum originally appeared on 1989’s Skellington, a ‘semi-official bootleg’ released in the wake of the overproduced My Nation Underground. It’s since become a Cope favourite and appears here in a delightful whistling-free, ‘ba-ba-ba’ singalong version. Whilst researching, I came across a contemporary review of the Cardiff gig in the South West Argus. The article has the unfortunate strapline “On the day Sir Jimmy Savile, God bless him, expired, the post-punk equivalent of the tracksuited treasure bedazzled Cardiff with his virtuoso eccentricity.” I suspect journalist Adrian Colley may now regret comparing Julian Cope with the UK’s most high-profile and prolific sex offender…

9) I’m Living In The Room They Found Saddam In (Live @ The Royal Festival Hall, London, 21 Jan 2005) (Concert Climax: Live In The Hearing Of The Motherfucker, 2005)

One of the highlights of the long-promised and delayed album Citizen Cain’d, this song also appeared the same year on Concert Climax. It was advertised at the time as “a high quality Italian live album which is likely to only be available on the tour as we only managed to get a limited number and can’t guarantee we’ll get any more”. In all likelihood another self-released album, its a mix of sessions and live tracks, this one from 2005’s Cornucopia tour. At the time, Kitty Empire of NME slated the London gigs as “the most wrongheaded of ego trips”. The Guardian newspaper was equally damning (a whopping 2/5), reviewer David Peschek dismissing the new songs as “simply witless”. This may be intentionally true of Cope’s side-project Brain Donor, but I think this song deserves better and in my opinion the live version here tops the original.

10) Out Of My Mind On Dope And Speed (Live @ The Fleece Bristol, 09 Feb 2020) (bootleg recording)

And back to this year’s Bristol gig for a regular set closer, including Cope’s crowd directions for his encore. The Fleece layout has no stage door, so Cope regularly has a faux exit-and-return in plain sight, to now-familiar crowd amusement. This is another Skellington favourite, a full-band competitive wig-out in its original version. This acoustic guitar and keyboard performance arguably lacks some of the impact of the album version but is a fitting end to the concert and this ICA.

In place of the bonus EP/album, I have stitched the songs together into a continuous audio experience on my Mixcloud page (click here for the link). Nothing like the real thing and waaaaay too short for a genuine Cope gig, but stick your headphones on and imagine you’ve paid a few quid for an amateur bootleg cassette and you’re halfway there. Enjoy!

KHAYEM

Momus

HAIRSTYLE OF THE DEVIL

It was back in May, as part of the Scottish Songs series, that I profiled Momus while admitting I had just the one album in the collection.

My recent forays into the world of Discogs enable me to pick up the 7″ release of The Hairstyle of The Devil a single from 1989 that was released on Creation Records. The 7″ came in a plain black sleeve, and retailed at the set price of 99p. The image at the top of this post is the sleeve of the 12″.

mp3: Momus – Hairstyle of The Devil

There’s a real sense of the Pet Shop Boys at play in the music but I thought that re-producing the lyrics would give the uninitiated an idea of what Momus is all about….

She was seeing two at exactly the same time
She never mentioned you when she was round at mine
But when you were round at hers you always made a scene
‘Cause you only had ears for descriptions of the stranger she was seeing

And what she saw in me was only what attracts
The many girls I see behind their lovers’ backs
But what she saw in you, I could never work it out
There was just one thing she found it turned you on to talk about

The inexplicable charisma of the rival
You said “Describe for me the hairstyle of the devil
Is he passionate? (Don’t answer!)
Is he detached? (Don’t answer that!)
Does he please you in the sack? (Shut up, don’t answer back!)
Just tell him I’m dying to meet him”

She called me up, she said she’d had enough
Of all the paranoia you mixed up with your love
We spent the night together, she woke me up at dawn
And called an all-night taxi
And when you came I was gone

You found my comb behind her chest of drawers
She said she’d slept alone but the bed was full of hairs
And when you matched them up, beyond a shadow of a doubt
The hairs belonged the Beelzebub
And you began to puzzle out

The inexplicable charisma of the rival
You said “Describe for me the hairstyle of the devil
Does he make you laugh? (Don’t answer!)
Does he earn a lot? (Don’t answer that!)
Does he dress you up in black? (Shut up, don’t answer back!)
Just tell him I’m dying to meet him”

The inexplicable charisma of the rival
With the luck and the hairstyle of the devil

And so you gaze at the people all about
In every stranger’s face you try to make me out
And when you meet me finally your horns will lock with mine
For the beast rules with rivalry
As the clock rules with time

For the beast rules with rivalry
As the clock rules with time

Pleased to meet you, hope you’ve guessed my name
Pleased to meet you, hope you’ve guessed my name
Pleased to meet you, hope you’ve guessed my name

Unlike Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine, who ran into all sorts of problems when After The Watershed mimicked a line from Ruby Tuesday, the lawyers for the Rolling Stones didn’t come near Momus in 1989. The fact that the single sold in minuscule numbers is just, I’m sure, one of those coincidences that happen……

Here’s yer b-side, which judging by the crackling and popping was played more than the a-side by its original owner:-

mp3: Momus – Amongst Women Only

JC

New Order

THE MONDAY MORNING HI-QUALITY VINYL RIP : Part Four : BLUE MONDAY

There are days when I have to accept that I really am something of an old saddo.

Like the day the other week when I realised I had three separate copies of Blue Monday on vinyl, all dating from 1983. But to be fair, they are three completely different pressings with different sleeves……

Copy #1: The original pressing that came in the die-cut sleeve with the vinyl being housed in a silver inner sleeve. The asking price on Discogs for a copy in the condition mine is in ranges from £40-70, although some sellers are looking for stupid money such as £185.

Copy #2: The second pressing that came in the die-cut sleeve but with the vinyl being housed in a glossy black inner sleeve. The asking price for this one, of which there actually seem to be fewer on Discogs, can be as low as £10 but up to £40. Mine actually has another quirk in that the labels have been placed on the wrong sides so that to listen to Blue Monday I have to play the side of vinyl which is listed as The Beach.

Copy #3: The third pressing that was plain black, but still with the code down the right-hand side of the sleeve, with the vinyl housed in a white paper sleeve. The Poundland/Dollar Store version of the single so to speak, but still capable of fetching as much as £20, although most retail on the second-hand market for under a tenner.

Copy#1 is the one that is alleged to have cost Factory Records money with each sale with the legend being that the die-cut sleeve and silver cardboard inner, along with the actual vinyl, cost more to manufacture than the selling price. It still proved to be a great return overall given that this was the single that brought New Order to the attention of the record-buying public and led to countless millions of sales of this 45, along with subsequent singles and albums, all over the planet.

mp3: New Order – Blue Monday
mp3: New Order – The Beach

Ripped from copy#1 of the original vinyl at 320kbps.

Remember folks, feel free to make suggestions as to what should appear here on Monday mornings. As long as I have a vinyl copy, I’ll make sure your requests are met.

JC

R.E.M.

THE SINGULAR ADVENTURES OF R.E.M. (Part 17)

This is the seventeenth week of the UK singles released by R.E.M. More often than not, either myself or The Robster has opened up proceedings by suggesting that the single you are about to hear is very unrepresentative or is untypical of the album from which it has been lifted. Deja-vu?

mp3: R.E.M. – Radio Song

The opening track on Out of Time was released as a 45 in both the UK and the USA in the first week of November 1991. It has a spoken intro and a guest vocal from rapper KRS-One. It then has a few notes that sound as if The Partridge Family are about to burst into song. Micheal Stipe’s opening contribution feels as if we about to be getting a follow-up to an earlier non-hit single:-

“The world is collapsing around our ears”

The thing is, this time he doesn’t feel fine.

There’s a few things that now annoy me about Radio Song, not least that the rap is lame and feels very dated. I know KRS-One was an established name in the hip-hop scene at the time through Boogie Down Productions and had obviously been brought on board with the best intentions but in this instance, he feels more frustrated than genuinely angry. An opportunity to drive home the message of playlists on radio stations being of little or no appeal to much of the demographic was missed.

And yet…..after some thirty seconds when the organ, bass, drums and guitars kick in, it becomes a more than passable tune that bounces along at a decent lick. But it still doesn’t ever feel as if it should be selected as a single, not least for the fact that it would be near impossible for a song that attacks playlists and the music preferences of DJs and their production team sidekicks to get much in the way of airplay.

And yet……Warner Bros. obviously had no worries as the record-buying public in the UK continued to spend substantial amounts of cash on all things R.E.M. and it made its way to #28 in our charts. It bombed in the States…..

Once again, it was made available on 7″, 12″, cassette and CD. The common track was another lifted from the 1 April session for ‘Rockline’.

mp3: R.E.M. – Love Is All Around

At the time, this was a relatively unknown song, with it being a cover of a 1967 single by The Troggs. It’s an acoustic effort in which Mike Mills takes the lead vocal and with the ba-ba-ba-ba stuff going on in the background, it’s a third cousin of sorts to Near Wild Heaven. It’s quite awful.

Three years later, the same song was recorded by Wet Wet Wet as their contribution to the soundtrack of the film Four Weddings and A Funeral. It spent 15 weeks at #1 and was never off daytime radio, to the extent that some DJs, having got tired of it, began to play either the original version by The Troggs or the R.E.M. cover – there’s a certain irony of it being taken from a b-side from a single that has lambasted radio stations and DJs of that ilk….

The 12″ also offered up a rare thing. An R.E.M. remix:-

mp3: R.E.M. – Shiny Happy People (Music Mix)

It comes in at just over a minute longer than the original version and Scott Litt deploys the sort of bog-standard production tricks and techniques so beloved in that era, especially multi-tracked vocals, keyboards to mimic orchestras and electronic drums. It’s listenable but it’s disposable.

The CD came with three live tracks, thus keeping with the formula of the previous three CD singles lifted from Out of Time. The blurb with it stated:-

“This is the fourth in a series of limited edition CDs released alongside singles from ‘Out Of Time’. Each includes 3 live songs, all complementary to those available on the other formats. Collectively they form a record of ‘R.E.M. In Concert’.

And to help you store your new CDs, which if memory serves me correctly all retailed at £3.99, there was a plastic box in which you could put them. The only thing was that Warner Bros. was kind of running out of decent sources to locate material – no way did they want listeners to get the chance of live material from the IRS days and so they turned again to Tourfilm and shows from that era:-

mp3: R.E.M. – You Are The Everything (live) – Miami 29 April 1989
mp3: R.E.M. – Orange Crush (live) – Atlanta 13 November 1989
mp3: R.E.M. – Belong (live) – Greensboro, 10 November 1989

And yes, you have heard that live version of Orange Crush before as we slotted it into the look at the single release of Orange Crush a few weeks back,

Onwards and upwards for R.E.M., arguably the biggest band on the planet at the end of 1991. It would be nine months before the next single and The Robster will be here next week to say a few words.

JC

Over The Wall

SATURDAY’S SCOTTISH SONG : #231: OVER THE WALL

Over The Wall was a duo consisting of Ben Hillman and Gavin Prentice, with their output (as far as I can make out from Discogs) consisting of one album and three 45s/EPs between 2008 and 2013.

I’ found them via a track taken from the Live at Limbo compilation that just a couple of months back provided the song for the entry provided by Night Noise Team in this long-running series.

Ben and Gavin are described accurately as multi-instrumentalists, with both of them contributing over many years to a number of albums recorded by Scottish musicians, and certainly in Gavin’s case as a member of touring bands deployed by solo musicians when they go out on the road. I know also that Gavin writes, records and performs as Ultras, and so it is fair to say they are mainstays of the music scene here in Scotland.

Here’s a little bit of info gleaned from a magazine article back in 2010 on the eve of the release of their debut album and accompanying tour:-

Over the Wall emerged in the mid-noughties from the Glasgow collective of the same name and whittled themselves down to two members – Bathgate’s Gav Prentice and Ben Hillman of Bridlington, Yorkshire – before proceeding to create the exuberant, Springsteen-inflected take on electropop we know them for today.

A long time coming (though it’s no Chinese Democracy), their impending debut album – Treacherous – wraps a cavalcade of cutesy beats, trumpet, organ and anthemic power chords into an impressively varied but compact whole. Lyrical themes are similarly diverse, ranging from romantic escapes of everyday drudgery to vampires, via snooker and Rafael Benitez.

The song on Live at Limbo was Track 4 on Treacherous. I thought the sound was a bit muddy and so I’ve gone out and bought a digital copy of the studio recording. It’s an ambitious effort that aims to make a few valid political points, as Gavin Prentice once explained in an online piece:-

1945 was the year that Attlee’s Labour party beat Churchill and began constructing the welfare state, and 1984 saw the miner’s strike and quite an explicit declaration of war against the British working class from the government. It’s probably a good point to mark the death of the post-war consensus on the importance of community and collective action, and its replacement by Thatcher’s “there’s no such thing as society” society. But it’s quite a personal song too, an old couple looking back at the changes for better or worse.

mp3: Over The Wall – A History of British Welfarism 1945-1984

Believe it or not, I’ve still not exhausted the letter ‘O’ in this series. Tune in next Saturday for one more…..

JC

Primal Scream

BURNING BADGERS VINYL (Part 3) : PRIMAL SCREAM

JC writes…….

It was on Monday 21 September that SWC sent over the e-mail with Part 3 of Burning Badgers Vinyl, with it dropping into the inbox less than 24 hours before the scheduled appearance of a posting of my own in which one of the songs featured. I reckon, if there is an afterlife, that Tim Badger is still chuckling away at all this…..

Over to SWC……

Here is a little known fact. Vanishing Point is Badger’s favourite Primal Scream album. He told me this whilst we were stuck in traffic on the M6 on the way back from a Stoke City football match, which for some reason he’d won tickets for (ghastly game Stoke City lost 1-0 l to his beloved Spurs and to all things a Danny Rose headed goal, it was worth it to watch Badger roaring with unbridled pleasure, surrounded by 2000 seething Stoke Fans, as Spurs scored).

About three years after that afternoon, and about three years ago from today, Tim Badger and his wife attended a function around my house. After everyone had left, Tim thought he would make himself useful and start to unload and reload the dishwasher, whilst the rest of us finished off the wine, rum punch and whatever else we could find.
It was about twenty minutes into that chore, when we heard a bump, a yelped ‘ow’, a muffled swear word, and an almighty crash and the unmistakable sound of breaking china. My daughter was first on the scene.

“Uh Oh” came her voice, slightly louder than it usually is. “That’s daddy mug, he’s going to be cross”. My ears prick up. I have three mugs that I consider to be mine. One is a German Amplemann Mug I picked up in Berlin the morning after a Mogwai concert, the second is my ‘British Tea Power’ mug bought by me from a British Sea Power gig about eight years ago (JC adds…..I’ve also got that particular mug!!!!) and the third, is a cup that I consider to be more important that nearly everything else I own, my Screamadelica mug bought from the 1992 Primal Scream Tour for £8. I cross my fingers and hope it’s the German Mug.

Of course, it’s the Primal Scream mug, anything else wouldn’t make sense given the topic of today’s piece.

When I get to the kitchen Badger is rubbing his leg…”I banged it on the dishwasher, it really hurt, the cup slipped…” his eyes drift to the floor, which is usually a kind of charcoal grey colour, now it’s a mixture of white, red, yellow and dusty china. “…Sorry, mate…” he says and gives me this goofy sort of grin, which makes me want to kick him in the leg even more than I do already, considering there is precisely no evidence of him actually hitting his leg at all.

I am devastated about the cup but my wife, after witnessing me moping about it for about an hour tells me to
“Cheer up you grumpy sod, its only a cup, if it helps the Badgers have invited us around next week and Lorna says you can break Tim’s Lego Deathstar which took him three months to make.”

I make a plan in my head to do exactly this. I never do it though, the Lego Deathstar is frankly a work of art and Tim, regardless of what he had done before, would have disembowelled me with a fork if I even moved once piece of it (it still has pride of place in the middle of the bookcase in the lounge).

All of which fun and games bring me to the point. The second record I pull out of the box was by Primal Scream. In fact the third and fourth records out of the box were also by Primal Scream and all three were immaculately kept 12 inch promo copies of three of the singles from the ‘Vanishing Point’ album. To be precise these three records in fact

Kowalski
Burning Wheel
If They Move Kill ‘Em

Which kind of backs up the opening paragraph of this piece. ‘Vanishing Point’ is according to Tim a record that is “way more ambitious than Screamadelica” and is a record “that he would definitely rescue from a burning building”. It is, he continues “massively underrated, and blends so many ideas together in this big smouldering pot of noise (dub, blues, Krautrock, indie rock n roll, Big Beat), and it is a record that only Primal Scream could have got anyway with”.

He is sort of right about ‘Vanishing Point’. It is underrated, certainly by me. It represents a time where the band were experimenting both musically and chemically with everything and everyone and the result of that is some incredible music, which, in a roundabout way, brings us to the remixes housed on these 12 inches.

mp3: Primal Scream – Kowalski (Automator Mix)
mp3: Primal Scream – Burning Wheel (Chemical Brothers Mix)
mp3: Primal Scream – If They Move, Kill ‘Em (Kevin Shields Mix)

Let’s be a bit like Nas and do this shit in reverse. If They Move, Kill ‘Em is a remix that is so good that the band put a version of it on their next album ‘XTRMNTR’, under a slightly different name ‘MBV Arkestra’. Basically, Kevin Shields takes the strutting wailing menace of the original and replaces it with pure violent noise and its insanely brilliant. It sounds perfect on ‘XTRMNTR’ as well.

The Chemical Brothers Remix of Burning Wheel is kind of what you would expect from late nineties Chemical Brothers. The Brothers replace the hypnotic and slightly psychedelic beats of the original version with massive filthy beats that bounce off the walls full of righteous fury and anger. Again, its insanely brilliant. Especially the bit about five and a half minutes in.

Finally, we come to the Automator Mix of Kowalski which sees this tiny, barely there, bassline simply blend the song together, with a few new samples and a dirty old beats pumping away (if that’s the right word to use!) behind Bobby’s whispery vocals. It’s the weakest of the three remixes but it’s still a marvellous five minutes.

SWC

Siddeleys

AN IMAGINARY COMPILATION ALBUM : #265 : THE SIDDELEYS

A GUEST POSTING by STRANGEWAYS

Never the Bride

It feels like The Siddeleys were indiepop’s perpetual bridesmaids. The band was a fixture on that rampant UK scene of the late 80s, but never quite ascended to wider prominence.

It’s an old story, of course, and one that’s in no way exclusive to this group. But it’s an odd thing when set against the quality of the lyrics and music, and the appetite of the scene. Even now, the band feels less celebrated, cited and fondly recalled than contemporaries like say Talulah Gosh, The Flatmates and The Primitives.

Myself, I became aware of The Siddeleys via just a couple of songs: Are you STILL Evil When You’re Sleeping? found me via a John Peel show of the era. I taped it. But didn’t buy it. Then, a bit later on, a jaunty cover of Edison Lighthouse’s Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes), popped up on the compilation LP Alvin Lives (in Leeds). This record’s sales benefitted the Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay Resource Unit, an entity opposing the Thatcher government’s hated Poll Tax (or Community Charge to give it its Sunday name). I loved the Siddeleys’ cover, one of twelve versions of 1970s number-ones by bands including The Wedding Present, The Popguns and Lush. But I didn’t explore further.

Although it’s not totally my fault, around this time, after just two proper singles, a flexi and a couple of Peel sessions, The Siddeleys called it a day. A band that championed the mundane and made it sparkle, was ultimately undone by the mundane: the expense and fatigue of midwinter touring; the small-label collapse; the reliable unicorn-promise of interest from larger outfits (‘As hard to hold’, writes singer Johnny Johnson, ‘as a fistful of mist’).

Soon, The Sundays would appear: a group upheld by what you might call a major indie (Rough Trade), courted by the powerful-at-the-time music press (the monthlies as well as the weeklies) and subsequently feted by the fans.

Why mention The Sundays in relation to The Siddeleys? After all, they don’t much sound like one another. But as a pair of literate, resolutely British (even, zooming in closer, resolutely English) guitar bands they do occupy broadly the same circle in the great indie-pop Venn diagram (a thing existing, thankfully, only in my head). Yet these bands enjoyed wildly different fortunes. The Sundays’ debut single, 1989’s Can’t Be Sure, came to me via a John Peel show of the era. I didn’t tape it. But I did buy it. Perhaps I’d learned my lesson.

Diving into the DeLorean and mucking around with timelines, I recalibrate things so that The Siddeleys and The Sundays are proper contemporaries (in the horrible real world, as the former was fading from view, the latter was being prodded towards the spotlight, and to the New Smiths poisoned chalice). But in this version of events, Rough Trade snaps up The Siddeleys. Both bands embark on a tongue-twisting tour. The melodic support, fronted by someone called Johnny who – surprise – is actually a woman, gathers fans and plaudits. They go on to make great records. In turn, they’re supported on their own tours by some terrific new bands. Everything works out. And, job done, we all go home for tea.

Instead, in reluctant reality, this ICA is predominantly drawn from just one release: Slum Clearance, a compilation that appeared in 2001 on Clarendon Records and Matinée Recordings. Across its sixteen tracks, Slum Clearance gathers pretty much everything The Siddeleys ever recorded –including those two Peel sessions – and released.

It’s a collection that’s accompanied by extensive, and typically prosaic and poetic, sleeve notes from Johnny Johnson. The text is engaging: an alphabet of London postcodes is populated by bedsits and squats, rubbish jobs and rehearsals. Conjured up by Johnson is an almost Dickensian existence: lyrics crafted by candlelight, beetle-strewn floorboards, and meals of porridge bought for 37p/lb. Even the street names she wound up in sound like firms of bailiffs. Crampton & Colville. Longfield & Charlwood. There’s celebration too, of course. The comfort derived from locating kindred spirits. The getting-down-on-tape songs previously located only in notebooks and heads. And the enjoyable, inevitable mayhem that being in a band attracts.

But amid the flexidiscs and fanzine interviews, the well-received gigs and record deals, sits, ultimately, the disappointment of never, albeit commercially, quite making it. Of acknowledging that, actually, you had something pretty good. But it was something that didn’t fly as high or as far as it deserved to. As Johnson sings in You Get What You Deserve

‘I came so close to happiness it makes me cry’.

As we’re all here, for deeper cuts, 2017’s Songs From The Sidings, on Firestation Records, collects twenty-two demos recorded between 1985 and 1987. Like Slum Clearance, generous notes have been provided by Johnny Johnson. These are presented chronologically, each shift headed by those numerous dowdy London addresses the singer occupied at the time the songs on the record were created. It’s a clever device, and one that recalls a restless time and nomadic existence for Johnson, but a time in which the band members, as is often the way of it, against the odds found one another and began making music.

You can read the Slum Clearance sleeve notes at https://www.siddeleys.com/history.html

Members, variously:

Andrew Brown, bass
David Clynch, drums 1987-1989
Phil Goodman, drums 1986-1987
Johnny Johnson, singing, guitar, piano
Allan Kingdom, guitar
Dean Leggett, drums 1987

Never the Bride : A Siddeleys ICA for The (new) Vinyl Villain

Whittling sixteen tracks down to ten was harder than that task might sound. Any, really, of the Slum Clearance songs could have featured on this ICA.

Honourable mentions go to: You Get What You Deserve Because of the lyric ‘Sometimes I think I’d rather be beneath the train’.

My Favourite Wet Wednesday Afternoon Because it’s the ultimate Siddeleys song and, for me, an authentic indie milestone full-stop. Beneath a kitchen-sinky title, it juxtaposes powerful, cosmos-shifting love with a down-at-heel seaside town and a smoke-pumping biscuit factory. It’s an anti-epic, and a chiming, elegant corker of a pop song. Remarkably, this was originally a b-side but, tellingly, a later version was chosen for Cherry Red’s sprawling Scared To Get Happy indiepop compilation. In 2018 the song popped up again, as one of two flips to 1987 debut single What Went Wrong THIS Time?, via Optic Nerve’s Optic Sevens reissue series.

Falling Off Of My Feet Again (demo): A pacier take than the version on Slum Clearance. And the faster and more brilliantly ragged of the two run-throughs on Songs From The Sidings. And, OK, maybe also because it does recall Talulah Gosh (see below).

Bedlam On The Mezzanine: Because its title sounds rather too much like the kind of event Paddington Bear might cause.

Wherever You Go Weirdly: It seems that back in the day The Siddeleys were dogged/blessed by comparisons with Talulah Gosh. Whilst, round these parts, this is pretty much the ultimate in accolades, it’s not really that accurate. This track could be the culprit. It does actually sound like Talulah. It’s a blast. But it’s not representative of the wider Siddeleys sound.

And I Wish I Was Good: Some songs have a finality about them: something in their construction that makes them the perfect LP or compilation-closer. I Wish I Was Good is such a song. Quite relentless, robust and knockabout, it shuts the door (as it does on Slum Clearance) on this ICA. Somewhat ironically though, it seems it kind of started the Siddeleys story: written by Johnson in the very early 1980s.

With thanks to JC for the opportunity and space to share this.

Side one

Sunshine Thuggery
You Get What You Deserve
My Favourite Wet Wednesday Afternoon
Every Day Of Every Week
Are You STILL Evil When You’re Sleeping?

Side two

What Went Wrong THIS Time?
Falling Off Of My Feet Again (demo)
Bedlam On The Mezzanine
Wherever You Go
I Wish I Was Good

Still with us? Wow. Your reward? A bonus 7″, consisting of the cover mentioned a few paras back, together with the original b-side version of the ultimate Siddeleys song

Bonus 7″

Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)
My Favourite Wet Wednesday Afternoon

strangeways

Uncategorized

THE GREAT VINYL GIVEAWAY

Ach, I know the title is completely OTT in terms of what is on offer today. I hope I haven’t disappointed too many of you.

The idea is to pull together all the bits of music on 7″ vinyl that I have sitting in the cupboard which originally came courtesy of being given away free with copies of music papers. Six EPs on offer with a fair bit of hissing, skipping and popping given the age of the plastic and the fact they were fairly lo-fi recordings to begin with, not to mention they have all been picked up second hand, often via charity shops) but there’s a few things worth a few minutes of your time. There’s also a few for which I unreservedly apologise (especially The Cult, and Simply Red):-

1. Drastic Plastic: NME GIV2 (1985)

A1: The Style Council – My Ever Changing Moods (live in Liverpool)
A2: Lloyd Cole & The Commotions – Forest Fire (live in London)
B1: The Robert Cray Band – Bad Influence (live in Chicago)
B2: Prefab Sprout – Real Life (Just Around The Corner)

2. Fourplay: NME GIV4 (1986)

A1: Elvis Costello & The Attractions – Uncomplicated (NME Version)
A2: Billy Bragg – Honey, I’m A Big Boy Now (NME Version)
B1: Mantronix – Hardcore Hip Hop (NME Version)
B2: Miles Davis – Splatch

3. Sounds Waves 3 (1988)

A1: The Sugarcubes – Motor Crash
A2: The Wedding Present – Go Out And Get ‘Em Boy (live at the Reading Majestic)
B1: The Pixies – Down To The Well
B2: The Pixies – Rock A My Soul
B3: The Pogues – Kitty (live at Glasgow Barrowlands)

(all tracks EXCLUSIVE to Sounds)

4. Sounds Showcase 1 (1987)

A1: The Cult – Outlaw
A2: The Fall – Hey! Luciani (original version)
B1: The Adult Net – Spin This Web
B2: The Go-Betweens – I Just Get Caught Out*

*different version than would appear later on Tallulah

5. The Hit Red Hot EP (1985)

A1: The Style Council – Walls Come Tumbling Down (live at Manchester Apollo)
A2: The Jesus and Mary Chain – Taste of Cindy
B1: Redskins – Kick Over The Statues (The Ramsey McKinnock Mix)
B2: Simply Red – Every Bit Of Me

(I have absolutely no recollection of The Hit as a publication and there’s no real info out there on t’internet. This EP seems to have been given away with Issue #1 in September 1985, the JAMC and Redskins tracks are labelled as ‘exclusive new studio recordings’ and the Simply Red song is a ‘limited edition studio recording’ – whatever that means!)

6. RM Four Track Solid EP (1986)

A1: New Order – Sub-Culture (exclusive remix)
A2: Raymonde – Jennifer Wants (exclusive track)
A3: Hipsway – Bad Thing Longing
A4: Adventures – Walk Away Renee (specially recorded for rm)

RM was a re-branded and re-launched of the long-running weekly paper, Record Mirror. This particular version of Sub-Culture, which was remixed by John Robie, to the best of my knowledge has only ever been made available on this particular piece of vinyl. It’s over seven minutes long and it’s a good one………

All this on the day the old blog first appeared 14 years ago.

JC

Auteurs

IT’S HERE, ALBEIT JUST ONE YEAR LATE….

Here we are on Tuesday 29 September 2020.

Exactly one year ago today, on Sunday 29 September 2019, I featured Part 4 of The Singular Adventures of Luke Haines in which I looked at How Could I Be Wrong, which was released on CD, 10″ and 12″ vinyl.

I mentioned that the 10″ version of the single was a limited edition effort with it offering up a live version of Staying Power (a b-side of debut single Showgirl) that had been recorded at a gig in Paris in February 1993. I also mentioned that, sadly, I didn’t have a copy and so couldn’t offer readers the chance to hear this particular version.

Well, a few months back, I did track down a second-hand copy of the 10″ piece of vinyl and have been saving this for today:-

mp3: The Auteurs – Staying Power (live in Paris)

Oh, and I’ve ripped it at 320kpbs too…..

Given that nobody left a comment last time around, I won’t be the slightest bit offended if this is met with a great wall of indifference.

JC

Associates

THE MONDAY MORNING HI-QUALITY VINYL RIP : Part Three : PARTY FEARS TWO

I don’t think I need to say too much about this particular song. My thanks to Martin Elliott (AKA Our Swedish Correspondent) for the suggestion. It’s actually worth sharing the contents of his e-mail:-

Hi Jim!

In my mind a very natural connection to the Paul Haig 12″ would be The Associates, considering the friendship between especially Billy and Paul. Now I have a hard time making a choice between Party Fears Two and Country Club, but tend to lean towards PF2 since the version of It’s Better This Way on the b-side is cracking – and slightly different from the album version. But then the Country Club 12″ version is just pure magic…

Then you could, if you want some kind of link to the next Monday move to Cocteau Twins, Peppermint Pig 12″ which is produced by Alan (even though I read that the band didn’t like it all and thought Alan didn’t comprehend the slightest what they wanted to do…).

Anyway – the risk is you’ll hear from me again on this topic, it ticks pretty much all my boxes. 🙂

Thus, I nominate The Associates – Party Fears Two as a Monday classic.

All the best!
Martin

More than happy to oblige.

mp3: Associates – Party Fears Two

Ripped from the original 12″ vinyl, dating back to 1982, at 320 kbps. As is this, albeit it is a bit more crackly than the b-side, especially during the quiet opening twenty seconds. But it does come at a groovy, groovy speed……

mp3: Associates – It’s Better This Way

Tune in next Monday for another hi-quality vinyl rip.

JC

R.E.M.

THE SINGULAR ADVENTURES OF R.E.M. (Part 16)

Warner Bros was now milking R.E.M. and the ever-increasing fanbase for all it was worth. No sooner had Shiny Happy People looked like finally slipping out of the Top 75 that plans were hatched for a third single from Out of Time at the beginning of August 1991.

And, as if to demonstrate to the wider world that the band was not just Michael Stipe and a bunch of backing musicians, the decision was taken to release one of the songs on which Mike Mills takes the lead:-

mp3: R.E.M. – Near Wild Heaven

Now, bear in mind that I wasn’t, at the time, aware of Superman having been a previous single. I thought it was quite a brave move by the record label as, and in agreement with a previous observation from JTFL although I will be a tad more diplomatic, I’m not a fan of the bassist taking the lead vocal. The thing is, they probably did the math and realised that anything with an R.E.M. label in the summer of 1991 was bound to sell well and the brand wouldn’t suffer too much damage.

Near Wild Heaven reached #27. The following month, the IRS cash-in of the re-release of The One I Love reached #16.

I really didn’t have any reason to buy this single. I should also mention that I’m not much of a Beach Boys fan and the song felt rather like a tribute to that sort of sound with the ba-ba-ba-ba-ba harmonies, albeit there’s some neat, if repetitive, guitar work going on in the background. But, and here’s where record label marketing folk earn their crust, I was sucked in by the extra tracks on the CD single.

It was released on 7″, 12″, CD and cassette but this time around, just the one CD which came badged as the Collectors Edition from the outset. The Robster, who if you recall worked in a record store at the time, has helpfully advised that th’e rules had changed in the months between the release of Shiny Happy People and Near Wild Heaven, with just four formats allowed if a single wanted to be eligible for the charts. The double CD was out, for now, as the cassette held its place in the line-up.

R.E.M., earlier in the year, had played two ‘secret’ shows at the Borderline in London. They were billed as Bingo Hand Job. The shows had been attended by many a music journo, all of who had written glowingly about the shows, highlighting the informal and fun-nature of the gigs, and the role played by all the various guests who joined them on stage, such as Peter Holsapple, Robyn Hitchcock, and Billy Bragg. It was actually the fact that I had missed out on Bragg rather than R.E.M. that I was most upset about at the time, and so when it was revealed that songs recorded at the Borderline shows would accompany the release of Near Wild Heaven, I was in!

mp3: R.E.M. – Tom’s Diner (live)
mp3: R.E.M. – Low (live)
mp3: R.E.M. – Endgame (live)

The fact that the audience was having a blast can be heard from the opening seconds of the Suzanne Vega cover as the reaction is loud laughter. Bragg becomes a human beatbox as Stipe butchers the lyrics; Bragg then joins in on unique backing vocals with lyrics from Madness and EMF songs before it collapses in a heap after two minutes. Maybe I was expecting a lot more, but my initial reaction was one of sad disbelief. It was no doubt funny to those who witnessed it in the flesh but it came across as very lame on the CD.

The other two songs, both tracks that could be found on Out of Time, work better. Indeed the initially haunting and then impassioned version of Low is quite outstanding. Endgame does sound as if it was one of those occasions where the band members swapped instruments to not quite show-off their skills but to break what could be the tedium of an all-acoustic show. If not, then Mike Mills and Peter Buck have never sounded so clumsy. (N.B. – The Robster doesn’t think it is a case of them swapping instruments, merely the fact that a new song is very unrehearsed!…..and I will always bow to his superior knowledge on all things R.E.M.)

The 7″ and 12″ each had a further track taken from the Borderline shows:-

mp3: R.E.M. – Pop Song ’89 (live)

Worth mentioning in passing that this was already the third time a version of Pop Song ’89 had been issued as a b-side or additional track. (Stand and Shiny Happy People had been the earlier occasions)

There was one other track on the 12″:-

mp3: R.E.M. – Half A World Away (acoustic live)

This was recorded on 1 April 1991 as part of a four-song set and interview that went out on ‘Rockline‘, a syndicated radio show that broadcast across the USA. I’m sure it was also that show which provided the acoustic version of Losing My Religion as featured last week.

A quick PS for JTFL….two days later there was another live radio broadcast, this time of a 25-song set which included a load of fun covers of themes from TV shows, that went out on KCRW Snap-FM Radio in your neighbourhood of Santa Monica.

It’s me again next week with the fourth and final single lifted from Out of Time.

JC

Ostle Bay

SATURDAY’S SCOTTISH SONG : #230 : OSTLE BAY

This week’s offering has involved a bit of detective work behind the scenes and hopefully, it all makes sense.

I’ve one song by Ostle Bay in the collection, and it came from its inclusion on one of three CDs sent to be a number of years ago by Phil Hogarth, a friend of the blog going back many years. Indeed, there’s every chance during the next down period when/if I manage to get away on holiday that three of the days will be devoted to Phil’s 3 x CDs as they came packed with great tunes, many from singers and bands that were totally new to me.

I had an idea that Ostle Bay might be Scottish as the name is taken from a picturesque but fairly remote part of the country called Ostel Bay on the west side where the mainland and the isles seem to almost merge as one. But trying to find out info on the band was a tough job until I eventually spotted there was a connection with The Trash Can Sinatras which led me to see if the excellent Five Hungry Joes website could help…and it did!!

Discogs was my initial port of call where I learned that Ostle Bay released one album, Love From Ostle Bay, on Play Records in 2002. The first four singles on Play were the work of Johnson, described on Discogs as a British indie rock band who recorded at Shabby Road Studios. This latter snippet was invaluable as that was where Trash Can Sinatras did all their early work in Kilmarnock, a town some 25 minutes drive nowadays south-west of Glasgow.

Five Hungry Joes threw up this info:-

Johnson…were a moody sounding Nick Cave/Scott Walker-esque 5-piece fronted by Peter Rose – co-engineer on ‘Cake’ and also the main man behind ‘Ostle Bay’, a collaboration with TCS.

The first of their singles, ‘Tripping With The Moonlight’ was a limited 7-inch release of around 500 copies and was recorded and produced by Frank Reader at Shabby Road Studios in Kilmarnock.

The second single, ‘Savoury Body Show’ featured Stephen Douglas on drums and backing vocals. Limited to 500 copies this 7-inch release again, was recorded and produced by Frank Reader at Shabby Road…

Third single ‘Skin & Gold’ was again limited to 500 copies and features Stephen Douglas on drums. ‘Skin & Gold’ was recorded and produced by Frank Reader, whilst the B-side ‘Paradise’ was recorded by John Douglas, both at Shabby Road.

Love From Ostle Bay is the work of Peter Rose.

Peter Rose was co-engineer on the ‘Cake’ album and also fronted the band ‘Johnson’.

John, Paul and Stephen play on this album, as does Grant Wilson and ‘In The Music’ collaborator and long time associate, Jody Stoddart.

So basically, Ostle Bay was a talented sound engineer on vocals, backed by three of the four musicians who made up Trash Can Sinatras; but from what I can gather, the album was recorded in Glasgow and not at Shabby Road.

I also found a singular on-line review of the album

“this is rather lovely – occasionally it wavers too close to “smooth AOR”/ bad kitchenware circa 1988 rip off territory, but then it suddenly sort of… clicks together and you realise that it’s actually far closer to something like edwyn collins/ animals that swim territory. some of the time. other bits still just pleasantly, boringly waft by in a sort of forgettable mug of scottish niceness but those *other* bits can be really strikingly lovely”

The song offered up by Phil was Track 2 on the album:-

mp3: Ostle Bay – Dusting The Sun

Over to anyone out there who can fill in the blanks.

JC

Simple Minds

EMPIRES AND DANCE

It was 40 years ago this very month that Simple Minds released Empires and Dance, possibly the most un-Scottish of albums ever to be released by any world-famous Scottish band.

It’s an LP that saw Arista Records make a complete balls-up, failing to realise what Simple Minds had been progressively gearing up to over the previous 18 months, effectively dismissing it from the outset by pressing up just an initial 15,000 copies of the album and, once these had been cleared from the shelves of the record stores that had managed to obtain copies, choosing to press just a further 15,000 copies, making it difficult for many fans to find (although, to be fair, it wasn’t a big problem in Glasgow with all the shops, large and small having it on sale).

It was the culmination of an unhappy time with the label. The previous two albums, while critically acclaimed, hadn’t provided any great commercial success, while none of the singles had charted. The band was deeply in debt to the label, chiefly from the costs involved with touring, and in later years, the band members revealed that there were serious discussions around splitting-up to get out of the mess.

Luckily, other A&R folk were paying attention to Empires and Dance and realised that it contained songs which could be part of the changing scene in clubs, where ‘pure’ disco was increasingly giving way to electronica, especially the ‘heavier’ European-vibe with its co-reliance on great bass notes. And, while Empires and Dance is very much the work of the five-man collective, it is the contributions from Mick MacNeil on keyboards and Derek Forbes on bass that make it stand out. So, when Arista let the band go just four months after the album came out, the folk at Virgin Records pounced and, having agreed to a sum to pay off part of the debt to the old label, took the band on and put them firmly on the road to superstardom.

It is quite bemusing to look back and wonder why Arista made such a mess of things. The album opens up with the genuinely jaw-dropping I Travel, a song that I’ve previously said is a cross between disco-stomping Giorgio Moroder and early experimental Roxy Music (but played at 100mph!!), coming with an almighty punch in which every member of the band played/sang as if their very future existence depended on it.

It surely had hit single written all over it….but not on Arista’s watch in 1980. Indeed, the label only realised what they had missed out on a couple of years later when the cashed-in on the new-found success the band were enjoying and pushed out Celebration, an admittedly excellent 10-song compilation of material from the first three albums, with its b-side containing three tracks lifted from Empires and Dance together with a b-side from the I Travel single.

I Travel might be the cornerstone of Empires and Dance but there is so much more to the album, and I’ll crib from a review that can be found over at Julian Cope‘s Head Heritage website to illustrate:-

“Empires and Dance is their most European album- Bowie/Eno, Can, Kraftwerk, Neu!, Nite Flights, Fear of Music all appear to be influences. Opening single “I Travel” is like Trans Europe Express on speed…..a pulsing pop song that delivers on the influences of Kraftwerk and Moroder.

“Today I Died Again” has more in common with Magazine than U2- the lyrics in the same avenue as Ian Curtis ruminating on fascism (“Walked in Line”, “Dead Souls”) “The clothes he wears date back to some war…She can’t remember before this heat/He can’t remember his wife’s Christian name…Back to a year, back to a youth/Of men in church and drug cabarets…”- can’t help but think of films like Cabaret, The Damned, The Night Porter & Salon Kitty. Maybe The Tin Drum also?

“Celebrate” sounds like Chic producing Gary Numan, robo-funk at its finest; while This Fear of Gods pre-empts 23 Skidoo’s “Coup”- (the influence/sample for Chemical Brothers’ “Block Rockin Beats”) & the keyboards are very Trans Europe Express also. Epic stuff, though like a lot of great records, I haven’t got a clue what is being sung about.

“Capital City” and “Constantinople Line” continue the Europa themes, alienation and paranoia rule then- & this leads into “Twist/Run/Repulsion” – a series of oblique mantras (“Contort!”) over a female voice sample creating a track not far from those found on Eno/Byrne’s sampledelic-classic My Life in the Bush of Ghosts.

Even better is “Thirty Frames a Second”, which recalls the time-reversal themes of books like Counter-Clock World (Philip K Dick) & Time’s Arrow (Martin Amis) and musically is their most Krautrock inflected moment. Brief instrumental interlude “Kant-Kino” is very side 2 of Low, and segues into final track “Room” – the most melody-driven track here. Shimmering guitars, pulsing percussion & almost funky bass- pity it’s so brief though! This is the kind of song that would make music critics wet themselves if Primal Scream or Radiohead produced it now…”

I probably listen to Empires and Dance a couple of times a year at most, thus ensuring it retains its fresh and vibrant feeling. My vinyl copy has long been trashed and I’ve made do with a CD version that was later issued by Virgin Records. But, having now got myself that decent turntable again, I sought out a copy of the original vinyl via Discogs, one that was actually delivered by the postie on Saturday 12 September, which was 40 years to the very day that it was released. These have been ripped from the album:-

mp3: Simple Minds – Today I Died Again
mp3: Simple Minds – This Fear Of Gods
mp3: Simple Minds – Thirty Frames A Second
mp3: Simple Minds – Room

Looking back, it’s head-scratching that none of these made it onto the ICA I pulled together back in May 2016…..

JC

Sound

AN IMAGINARY COMPILATION ALBUM : #264 : THE SOUND

A GUEST POSTING by MARTIN ELLIOT

(OUR SWEDISH CORRESPONDENT)

I was surprised when I realised no one had done an ICA for The Sound, so I thought I’d give it a shot. After a while I started to think I’d drop it since I found it almost impossible to narrow it down to 10 songs. I decided to do strictly The Sound – no Second Layer, no Adrian Borland & The Citizens or other solo stuff however they would make a good complement, maybe that will be yet another ICA at some point.

The Sound, just as another of my all time favourites – The Associates, were vastly underrated, had a singer who tried a later solo career without much success and then left this planet way too early by his own doing. Both from Billy MacKenzie and Adrian Borland there have been a couple of albums worth of demos and almost complete recordings issued posthumously, and both singers and their respective bands have a small but very faithful following.

It must have been early 1981 I was introduced to The Sound by the song Missiles, and fell in love with it immediately. Remember though being in general disappointed by the album which I at the time thought of as bad quality recordings, with bad sound quality (no pun intended), and then not so long after I came across From The Lion’s Mouth which was utterly fantastic and I more or less forgot about Jeopardy (this was a semi-small Swedish town in the early 80’s, a lot of music came to us rather through friends (read chance) than by releases or radio play).

I didn’t need Jeopardy any longer (young and foolish) since I now had From The Lion’s Mouth, and also the next couple of releases followed me home upon their releases. After they broke up I lost touch for a while as I was in a period when music couldn’t get the attention I wanted. After a few years of silence on my part I decided to look back and get the Jeopardy album if nothing else so for having a complete collection, and realized I had been exactly that – young and foolish. Even if I still hold From The Lion’s Mouth as much better – in fact the peak in their recording career – Jeopardy has a bunch of great tracks. Some of them I had learned to appreciate from the live album In The Hothouse, just not thinking enough about it to realize they were from the debut…

Initially signed to Korova I guess they suffered from Echo & The Bunnymen taking all the record company’s energy, attention and marketing budget. After making at least some stir with From The Lion’s Mouth they moved up to parent company WEA and released All Fall Down, a pretty bleak affair – in more than one sense. The record company pushed for a more commercial record than the previous two, the band pushed back by recording a completely non-commercial record. Of course it fared poorly, both commercially and by the reception from critics and fans – and I still have issues taking it fully to my heart even if it has grown on me. There are moments, but in general I rank it as their weakest moment and it failed to get anything represented here. In several of the tracks I feel the drum machine programming is poor and comes up front creating a lifeless soundscape. Monument and Where The Love Is were close though.

Sacked by WEA they were picked up by Statik Records and the smaller, independent environment seemed to work much better for the band who returned with the excellent mini-LP Shock Of Daylight and the likewise mostly almost as positive (well…) and accessible Heads And Hearts LP before the label went bankrupt. Their final album, Thunder Up, was released on another independent label, the Belgian Play It Again Sam. By many seen as their best effort, including the band themselves, it was again met with enthusiasm from fans and critics but sold poorly and they split up in 1988. As mentioned above, around the time they broke up my attention to new music was heavily disturbed by conflicts of interest, so at the time I missed out on the two albums Adrian put out as Adrian Borland & The Citizens. I later got my act together, left a restraining relationship and found my passion for music again – and also the “solo” recordings by Adrian. They will however have to wait for their own ICA, which they absolutely deserve.

So here we go, The Sound – What Are We Going To Do (An ICA)

Side A:

1. Missiles – I had to start here, didn’t I? This is where it all started. After the bass guitar intro it builds into a furious anti-war song. “Who the hell makes those missiles?”. Anger distilled into a great song. (Jeopardy 1980)

2. Winning – All I needed to hear was the intro to know I had found something special, something that would follow me for a long time. At first I heard it as a pretty joyous and optimistic song being Adrian, taking revenge on and for yourself. “When you’re on the bottom, crawl back to the top”, but when you focus on the first verse you realize it’s more a desperate call for hope of getting back to something that once was good. (From The Lion’s Mouth 1981)

3. Total Recall – Dealing with the same subject matter as Winning, this again finds Adrian wrestling with the frustration you feel when your love doesn’t remember the good things you share from days gone. Clinging to the hope of getting back to joy in a relationship when the other one has given up. (Heads And Hearts 1985)

4. Dreams Then Plans – Shock Of Daylight probably represented the album WEA had wanted instead of All Fall Down, more accessible, more of a pop feel than earlier and partly more romantic, positive lyrics. Dreams Then Plans is a great example and as the last track of the album it did provide a natural bridge to the next album to come. (Shock Of Daylight 1984)

5. I Give You Pain – A song Robert Smith would have been very proud over, builds over a slow beginning to the pain of love played through the guitar work of Colvin Mayers. (Thunder Up 1987)

Side B:

1. One Thousand Reasons (7″ version) – Simply a beautiful take on the “should I stay or should I go”-subject. One thousand reasons to stay, one thousand reasons to come away. No answers, just doubt. (Heads And Hearts)

2. Sense Of Purpose – Musically a pretty straightforward rock song, lyrically a bit more demanding urging us all to use our brains, to have a heart, to move out of a secluded security and find a sense of purpose again. (From The Lion’s Mouth)

3. You’ve Got A Way – When you realize the one you broke away from was the one who could save you. (Thunder Up)

4. Hour Of Need – Loneliness defined, these slower tracks from The Sound have a capacity of incorporating subdued desperation – and I love it. (Jeopardy)

5. New Dark Age – Sadly still very valid, we have not learned a thing over the almost 40 years since this was released. The world has leaders on all continents displaying terrifying neglect to science, facts and justice – at times letting personal gain steer their agendas. We see it in the US, in Brazil, in Hungary, in Poland, in Russia, in China, in North Korea and so on – UK (England) have their share and Sweden as well. Scary, very scary. (From The Lion’s Mouth)

It has taken me well more than two months to finish this piece, the “a while” in my second sentence above almost became forever. I’d better click the send button now, I’m already regretting not finding room for songs like Total Recall and Kinetic…

Enjoy The Sound of Music!

Martin

Teenage Fanclub

BURNING BADGER’S VINYL (Part 2) : TEENAGE FANCLUB

SWC has given me the green light to offer up some thoughts on two pieces of vinyl that the late and great Tim Badger had kept in two boxes, despite having been thought to have sold off his entire collection a few years earlier. These form the music that he couldn’t bear to part with.

1. The Concept – Teenage Fanclub (12″ single – Creation Records, Cre 111T, 1991)

Tim’s box contains the 12″ version, while a copy of the 7″ sits in a cupboard here in Villain Towers. The 12″ has four songs, two of which can be found on the 7″. There are 75 copies of the 12″ currently on offer via Discogs but just 9 copies of the 7″, so maybe the smaller vinyl is a bit harder to get a hold of. I know I picked mine up many years later as a second-hand purchase as 1991 was a time when money was a wee bit tight from the fact I was doing a daily commute from Glasgow to Edinburgh, the expense of which meant music purchases had to be scaled back, and I kept my money back to buy a copy of Bandwagonesque, on CD, which I know cost £13.49 from Tower Records as it still has the price sticker on it.

I’m thinking that when he bought the single, Tim could well have looked a bit like any of the band members in the picture above, what with their long hair and carefree attitude mirroring that of the majority of their young(ish) audience. I was, as the commute mention above might indicate, already, in my late 20s, at an advanced stage of being part of the suit and tie brigade.

I bought Bandwagonesque on the back of the great press Teenage Fanclub were getting, buoyed by the fact that Tower Records were offering the purchaser the opportunity to return the CD and receive a full refund if having listened to it, you weren’t that happy. All of which means The Concept, as the album’s opening song, would be my introduction to the band. I was hooked within the opening 20 seconds, with a tune that sounded like something a very stoned Neil Young would have churned out at his peak with Crazy Horse. It was a long way from what I was anticipating but in a very good way. I laughed out loud at the ironic use of Status Quo in the opening line and the fact the tune could have passed for one of their 45s being played at LP speed on the turntable. I was charmed….

Having said that, I never really totally fell in love with TFC. There were parts of Bandwagonesque that I felt were a bit too shambolic and amateurish, but there was more than enough to make me want to keep the CD. The back catalogue was also a bit too raw in places for my liking, although there was no doubting the quality of Everything Flows and God Knows It’s True, two singles from 1990 issued by Paperhouse Records, which had been the debut single more than a year previously (and whose release had completely passed me by!). In due course, seeing the band in the live setting a few years later increasingly won me over, and over the years I’ve been lucky enough to catch them in some very small and intimate venues across Glasgow and Edinburgh.

I’m thinking that the 12″ version contains the full 6-minute version of the song, but to be on the safe side, I’ll also offer up the 7″ version in its edited form:-

mp3: Teenage Fanclub – The Concept
mp3: Teenage Fanclub – The Concept (7″ single)

And here’s the three b-sides which make up the 12″,

mp3: Teenage Fanclub – What You Do To Me (demo)
mp3: Teenage Fanclub – Long Hair
mp3: Teenage Fanclub – Robot Love

The first of these is another Norman Blake composition, the middle is by Gerry Love and the latter is a rare all-band effort. It’s an example of why I struggled to really take to the band to begin with, being a tad on the noisy and tuneless side, like a bad Nirvana outtake.

There were a few other tracks recorded during the sessions for Bandwagonesque which found their way out via other methods, including this piece of vinyl that Tim couldn’t part with.

2. Free Again/Bad Seeds (7″ single – K Records, IPU26, 1992)

TFC have never hidden their influences, citing many of them from early days in interviews and churning out cover versions and/or collaborations in due course. The Bandwagonesque sessions also saw them have a stab at a song by Big Star (an early 70s band from Memphis, Tennessee) and another by Beat Happening (an early 80s band from Olympia, Washington). I think it’s fair to say that neither act had really gone beyond cult status in the UK by the time TFC had formed and were recording, but their continued support, and willingness to acknowledge how much of an influence they had been, led to a greater level of interest, particularly for Big Star who would reform again in 1993, who attracted ever-increasing attention and fan numbers, touring extensively until the death of frontman Alex Chilton, at the age of 59, from heart failure.

These tracks sneaked their way out with K Records, an independent record label based in Olympia, Washington whose founder, Calvin Johnson, was part of Beat Happening, one of whose songs was on the release.

Both tracks would also later find their way onto Deep Fried Fanclub, a rarities compilation album by TFC that was issued in 1995 when the band was arguably at the height of their commercial period, with the album Grand Prix going Top 10 in the UK. I’ve long been familiar with Free Again as Jacques the Kipper included it on a C90 tape he put together many many years ago, but Bad Seeds is a new one for me. And it’s a belter, sounding as if the boys are channeling their inner Cramps.

mp3: Teenage Fanclub – Free Again
mp3: Teenage Fanclub – Bad Seeds

TFC are still going strong, despite the departure of Gerry Love a while back, with him being replaced as a band member by Euros Childs, best known as the frontman of Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci. I’m far from alone in not being able to bring myself to go see this new inception of the band as Gerry was such an integral part of their sound, and to the credit of the remaining members, they have made it clear they wouldn’t be comfortable having any of his songs performed by a different singer, be that Norman, Raymond or Euros. It just wouldn’t be the same……

I’m just sorry that I can’t personalise the pieces in the same way and you’ll be pleased to learn that SWC will be up next with Parts 3 and 4 of the series, after which I will be boring you silly again. There’s a lot of quality music still to be pulled out of Badger’s Boxes.

JC

Primal Scream

ONE OF JUST THREE TOP 10 SINGLES

The others were Rocks (#7 in 1994) and Country Girl (#5 in 2003) with the latter being the most successful, charts-wise, of all the Primal Scream 45s.

Kowlaski was released in May 1995 and reached #8. It came out a couple of months before the band’s fifth studio album, Vanishing Point. It was an instant hit here in Villain Towers:-

mp3: Primal Scream – Kowalski

I’m happy to pass on the info that the song is named after the main character of Vanishing Point, a 1971 road movie which, although critically panned at the time of its release, has since obtained cult status.

The CD single came with two rockin’-out cover versions, one of which saw the old punks rise up in anger, but to be fair(ish), Bobby & Co. make it sound like one of their own rather than a Clash number (not that I’m defending it as it’s pretty sore on the ears, sounding as if an act like Lynard Skynard had got their hands on it):-

mp3: Primal Scream – 96 Tears
mp3: Primal Scream – Know Your Rights

Thankfully, the CD closes with an excellent remix of the single:-

mp3: Primal Scream – Kowalski (Automator Mix)

JC

Kirsty MacColl

THE MONDAY MORNING HI-QUALITY VINYL RIP : Part Two : A NEW ENGLAND

Many thanks for such great and supportive feedback to the first installment of this new feature. The suggestions that have been made will feature in coming weeks, but for today I want to focus on a song that is very dear to me.

I don’t think anyone will disagree with my proposal that A New England is a classic. Written in late 1982/early 1983, it has always been one of the most popular of Billy Bragg songs, one that gets as loud a cheer as any when he plays it live.

It’s a song that came to wider public attention back when Kirsty MacColl covered it and took it all the way to #7 in the UK charts in the early months of 1985.

Wiki tells the story quite accurately:-

The opening lines of the song (“I was 21 years when I wrote this song/I’m 22 now, but I won’t be for long”) are identical to the opening lines of Paul Simon’s song “Leaves that Are Green”, which appears on Simon and Garfunkel’s 1966 album Sounds of Silence. During a concert in Winnipeg, Canada on 27 September 2006, Bragg stated Simon and Garfunkel had a strong influence on him and that he took the line from their song intentionally.

Bragg has said the song had its origins in seeing two satellites flying alongside each other. Searching for romantic inspiration, he had to make do with “space hardware”. He told a BBC interviewer he “stole” the melody from Thin Lizzy’s “Cowboy Song”

Kirsty MacColl recorded the song the year after its release by Bragg. Her version was produced by her then-husband Steve Lillywhite. Entering the UK chart in 1985, it was her biggest solo hit, reaching number 7 in the UK Singles Chart and number 8 in the Irish Singles Chart.

Bragg’s original version of the song had only two verses. MacColl thought the song was too short, and so Bragg wrote a further two verses for her which she consolidated into one. Since MacColl’s death, Bragg has included the additional verse in performances of the song as a tribute.

The recording of “A New England” was the first collaboration between MacColl and her husband Steve Lillywhite on one of her own solo recordings.

MacColl first discovered Bragg in 1983 when she went to see one of his live performances. One of the songs Bragg played was “A New England”, which MacColl immediately identified as having hit potential. MacColl told Smash Hits in 1985: “I always thought ‘A New England’ would be great with loads of harmonies, it’s such a good melody. Billy does it in a very rough way, and it’s like a busker doing a really good Beatles song. She added to Gilbert Blecken in 1994: “I knew the song was fantastic, but [Bragg’s] version was just the skeleton of the song, so I wanted to dress it up.”

I bought the single on, or very shorty after, the day it was released, without ever hearing it, which is why my copy has the quite rare ‘bombsite’ cover on the front of the sleeve rather than on the reverse. The purchase was on the basis that I was a Billy Bragg fan who had enjoyed previous singles by Kirsty MacColl, so there was very little that really could go wrong. The piece on vinyl has remained a favourite ever since, with it now being quite poignant given the tragic and horrific death of Kirsty back in 2000. I’ve also managed to take good enough care of the vinyl that It remains free from cracks and hisses.

Credit does have to go to both Kirsty for the way she re-interpreted the song, turning it into a bonafide pop classic while keeping the innocence and charm that was such a hallmark of the original, and to Steve Lillywhite whose deft and crisp production has ensured the song hasn’t dated.

mp3: Kirsty MacColl – A New England (extended version)

The 12″ version is almost eight minutes long, with a very lengthy fade-out. I trust this 320kbps rip meets with your collective approval.

JC

R.E.M.

THE SINGULAR ADVENTURES OF R.E.M. (Part 15)

And so, The Robster having offered up his thoughts on the breakthrough hits, decides that this is the week he needs a rest and hands the baton to me for a song that every single member of R.E.M. detests with a passion. A song that would eventually reach #6 in the UK singles chart – a position higher than any of the next 14 singles would manage to achieve!!

That last sentence alone tells you all you really need to know about Shiny Happy People; in short, it proved to be an R.E.M. song for people who don’t like R.E.M.

mp3: R.E.M. – Shiny Happy People

It was released on 6 May 1991. Losing My Religion was still hovering on the fringes of the Top 75 and, if anything, was enjoying even more daytime radio play than before. Out of Time had already gone into the album charts at #1 on its first week of release. The decision not to tour and rely increasingly on television appearances/performances was also working a treat, as those who were now finally latching onto the band were mopping up everything on mainstream and specialist channels. MTV, in particular, were all over things.

It made perfect sense for Warner Bros to go with something that was tailor-made for radio, especially on warm and hot summer days when people would flock to beaches and parks, complete with their fast-melting ice-creams, looking for that bit of escapism and enjoyment. Shiny Happy People offered the perfect soundtrack, helped too by the goofy, colourful and incredibly cheery promo that was made for it. It’s no surprise that it entered the UK charts in May and stayed there till the end of July.

The video looks and feels like something from a children’s TV show, which is perfect as itthe song could easily pass as a nursery rhyme, with all concerned (except Peter Buck who clearly wishes he was somewhere else) eager enough to deploy over-exaggerated movements and facial expressions. The band may have since tried to disown the whole thing, but the dancing, handclapping and smiling during the promo make me think they doth protest too much.

One of the reasons put forward to back the idea that it was hated from the outset is that it was never played live in concert and it was left off most of the subsequent greatest-hits collections. But think about it – the strings are essential to the sound of the song and therefore it would be impossible to play as is in the live setting*. Nor was it one that could be easily adapted to fit in with the acoustic sets that were to the fore in the early 90s.

*The Robster kindly offered up a correction when I shared an advance draft of this post. R.E.M. did perform Shiny Happy People live – just the once – on Saturday Night Live in the States. And as he also said, nobody should ever forget the version they did for Sesame Street a few years later, Furry Happy Monsters, in which Peter Buck very nearly cracks a tiny smile, you’ll see a Kate Pierson muppet, and if you don’t smile at the clip, you have a heart of stone.

I think Shiny Happy People is a fabulous and memorable pop single. I also accept that in 1991, it was something which horrified many long-time fans who couldn’t quite believe what they were hearing and seeing. And I’d been there folks….listening to and watching Johnny Marr play with Bryan Ferry on The Right Stuff had been excruciating.

But, on the other hand, I’d long been a fan of the B52s and the guest vocal from Kate Pierson is an absolute joy.

The Robster made mention last week of the multi-formatting that existed around Losing My Religion, and it was much the same for the follow-up which came out on 7″, 12″, CD and cassette.

mp3: R.E.M. – Forty Second Song

This was common to all the releases. It’s another real oddity – it’s 82 seconds long and it sounds like an unfinished demo that the band couldn’t work up into anything more substantial. The folk who loved the a-side probably played it once and ignored it thereafter. Any long-time fans who were hoping for something more substantial to justify shelling out on the new single to keep the collection going wouldn’t have been surprised by it.

mp3: R.E.M. – Losing My Religion (live acoustic version)

As found on the 12″ and CD single. I reckon making this available also had a lot to do with the high sales for Shiny Happy People as the world had gone insane for any take on Losing My Religion.

Again, as with the previous single, a ‘Collector’s Edition’ Cd was released about a week after the initial product had hit the shops and it again came with three live songs, recorded during the Green tour.

mp3: R.E.M. – I Remember California (live)
mp3: R.E.M. – Get Up (live)
mp3: R.E.M. – Pop Song ’89 (live)

There would be two more singles from Out of Time…..both will be looked at by myself with the next being a 45 that wasn’t issued in the USA; as Jonny said the other week, Americans have never really paid much attention to singles while it’s a whole different story over here as my bulging shelves of old vinyl and CDs can testify.

JC

The Robster adds a bonus for the completists. The only live performance of the song:-

mp3: R.E.M. – Shiny Happy People (live, SNL)

Oscar In Venice

SATURDAY’S SCOTTISH SONG : #229 : OSCAR IN VENICE

This week’s offering is one of the most unusual and unique bits of music that I’ve ever featured on the blog.

The man pictured above is David Scott, who is best known from his involvement with the Glasgow-based band The Pearlfishers, which is a story I’ll return in due course when this alphabetical run-through of Scottish singers/bands whose work features in the vinyl/CD collection at Villain Towers reaches that particular act.

For now, let me quote the man himself from an interview he gave to a London-based blogger from Turkey back in 2007:-

“I’ve been a professional musician since 1984. In that time I’ve worked with major record labels and major publishers. I produced records for major labels as well and also for indie labels, my band is called The Pearlfishers. We’ve made 8 albums and currently making a 9th and a 10th at the same time. We released those records on an independent label based in Hamburg but I’ve also released records in Japan, in America and over Europe. I’m a broadcaster I make programs about music for BBC. I’m a community music practitioner at the same time. For the last 10 years I’ve been an academic, I’m teaching songwriting and composition in university.

The Hamburg-based independent label he refers to is Marina Records, a number of whose releases I’ve picked up over the years. In 2018, the label released Goosebumps, an anthology to celebrate 25 years in the business, with a fair number of the tracks being previously unreleased cuts, with one example being a David Scott composed instrumental, which is just a shade over two minutes in length:-

mp3: Oscar In Venice – Go For A Walk In The Woods

There’s no info within the Goosebumps booklet other than it is a previously unreleased piece of music written and produced by David Scott. My efforts to find out anything else across t’internet have drawn a blank as it appears to be the only available piece of music ever made available under this particular moniker, so I can’t even tell you from when it dates from or the name of the youngster who adds the spoken contribution.

JC

Various

THE BIG HITS…..30 YEARS ON (9)

Sunday 2 September 1990. It’s a day when the music sitting atof the top of the charts, along with the various new entries into the Top 75, exemplifies the weirdness of that particular year. It’s worth listing the Top 20 in full, especially as none of the songs were new entries

1. ITSY BITSY TEENY WEENY YELLOW POLKA DOT BIKINI – BOMBALURINA
2. FOUR BACHARACH AND DAVID SONGS (EP) – DEACON BLUE
3. WHERE ARE YOU BABY? – BETTY BOO
4. GROOVE IS IN THE HEART – DEEE-LITE
5. TONIGHT – NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK
6. THE JOKER – THE STEVE MILLER BAND
7. WHAT TIME IS LOVE? – KLF
8. NAKED IN THE RAIN – BLUE PEARL
9. RHYTHM OF THE RAIN – JASON DONOVAN
10. PRAYING FOR TIME – GEORGE MICHAEL
11. CAN CAN YOU PARTY – JIVE BUNNY AND THE MASTERMIXERS
12. SILHOUETTES – CLIFF RICHARD
13. LISTEN TO YOUR HEART – ROXETTE
14. VISION OF LOVE – MARIAH CAREY
15. TOM’S DINER – DNA FEATURING SUZANNE VEGA
16. TURTLE POWER – PARTNERS IN KRYME
17. I’M FREE – SOUP DRAGONS FEATURING JUNIOR REID
18. U CAN’T TOUCH THIS – MC HAMMER
19. END OF THE WORLD – SONIA
20. KING OF WISHFUL THINKING – GO WEST

It would have made for fairly depressing listening as the DJ in question revealed the latest rundown on BBC Radio 1 from 5pm onwards, with the Top 20 played in its entirety, prior to which any new entries into the Top 40 and significant movers would also be aired, all of which would have meant a very rare peak time radio play for one of the UK’s biggest cult acts, for coming in at #34 was this:-

Get Me Out – New Model Army

NMA had been around for ten years, and with them constantly switching the type of music they were recording and performing, they had been impossible for the critics to pin down into a particular genre. They are still on the go some thirty years on and causing the same grief! From the outset, they had attracted a highly dedicated fan following which having eventually morphed into ‘The Family’ whose numbers ensured the band would be guaranteed the live shows would always be successful, albeit this didn’t always transfer into huge sales on vinyl/CD. Get Me Out was their tenth successive single to make the Top 75, and like the others, it would come into the charts somewhere in the region of 31-50 before immediately dropping out, all down to ‘The Family’ making the initial purposes.

And that, unless there is a guest posting, will likely be the only mention of New Model Army on the blog (albeit they will get a further mention in this series in a couple of months time).

There were some other interesting entries in the chart this week, from acts that are no strangers to the pages of TVV.

Iceblink Luck – Cocteau Twins (#39)
Rollercoaster – The Jesus and Mary Chain (#46)
White Lightning – The Fall (#56)

Cocteau Twins would hang around that position in the charts for another couple of weeks but the other two dropped out almost immediately. I don’t think either song would have given mainstream exposure. Worth mentioning in passing the next again JAMC single, released in February 1992, would be Reverance. And in reaching #10 would give the band its biggest ever success in terms of a single. Oh, and yet again it’s a cover that brings a bit of chart success the way of The Fall.

The other new entries came courtesy of Adamski (The Space Jungle – #23), Caron Wheeler (Livin’ In The Light – #29), Janet Jackson (Black Cat – #32), Faith No More (Epic (1990 re-release) – #35), Quireboys (There She Goes Again – #51), Dan Reed Network (Lover – #52), Grand Plaz (Wow Wow, Na Na – #58) and Red Hot Chilli Peppers (Higher Ground (1990 re-release) – #59).

Down at the lower end of the new entries were a couple of bangers, included here as I know at least a couple of regular readers will remember them

Hard Up – Awesome 3 (#64)
Dance Dance – Deskee (#74)

In acknowledgment of the fact you’ve been asked to spend a lot of time getting this far, I’m going to have a race through each of the remaining four charts in September 1990. There’s also the fact that the latter part of the month has a lot of singles of great interest…….

September 9: New Entries

Suicide Blonde – Inxs (#16)
Show Me Heaven – Maria McKee (#26)
Nothing To Lose – S’Express (#40)
Empty World- Dogs D’Amour (#63)
Way Down Now – World Party (#66)
Summer In Siam – The Pogues (#67)
You Don’t Love Me – Jagged Edge (#71)
Greenbank Drive – The Christians (#72)
Pain Killer – Judas Priest (#74)

I’ll mention in passing that those of us who had seen or listened to Lone Justice in previous years quite stunned but secretly pleased that Maria McKee was finally coming to the attention of a wider public. Just a pity it proved to be a one-off with a song whose video was packed with scenes from the latest Tom Cruise blockbuster.

Many of the other new entries this week reflect what I had been mentioning a few months back in that the music of the clubs and fields was moving into the mainstream

Tunes Splits The Atom – MC Tunes vs 808 State (#44)
Burundi Blues – Beats International (#56)
Sunrise – Movement 98 (#62)

The first of these would eventually go Top 20.

The Stone Roses also made a re-appearance in the charts at #32 with Fool’s Gold, just seven months after it had previously dropped out of the charts, albeit the radio stations were now spinning the other side of the single, What The World Is Waiting For.

The final mention for 9 September goes to this:-

Timeless Melody – The La’s

It had been two years since There She Goes had been released, and it was a period when The La’s were being talked up as the next great British indie-guitar bands. It would transpire that the intervening period had seen singer/songwriter Lee Mavers recording and re-recording their intended debut album, with a constantly changing band line-up and all sorts of would-be producers coming and going. Timeless Melody was the first of the new material and rather worryingly for all concerned, #57 was as high as it got. Things would, however, improve, before the year was out.

September 16: New Entries

Holy Smoke – Iron Maiden (#3)
Thunderstruck – AC/DC (#16)

Yup, the heavy metal brigade were out in force this week with the two highest new entries. Further down the charts, there was a smattering of pop hits from Monie Love (It’s A Shame – #35), River City People (What’s Wrong With Dreaming – #40), Bell Biv Devoe (Do Me! – #56) and Sinitta (Love and Affection – #62)

For the most part, however, a mix of indie and dance was showing the way:-

Then – The Charlatans (#19)
Cult of Snap! – Snap! (#21)
I Can’t Stand It – Twenty4Seven feat. Captain Hollywood (#28)
Make It Mine – The Shamen (#42)
Rock and Roll Nigger – Birdland (#47)
Omen – Orbital (#52)
You’re Walking – Electribe 101 (#54)

I’m guessing the Birdland cover would get into a spot of bother these days……but then again, Patti Smith does seem to get a free pass over such things.

September 23: New Entries

This was the week that Maria McKee began a four-week stay at the top of the charts, by which time Lone Justice fans were hiding away copies of the old albums….

The power of the gogglebox can be demonstrated by the fact that a new entry this week, at #16 (but it would eventually reach #2!!!) was Blue Velvet by Bobby Vinton. I had assumed it had something to do with it soundtracking the David Lynch film of the same name, but that was a 1986 release. Instead, it had been used as the music for an advert for face cream and there had been enough public demand for it to be re-released and become a hit, a full 37 years on. Its things like this that make me wish we had the American approach to singles in that they really don’t matter (but then again, my cupboard full of vinyl would be quite sparse).

The metal boys were still having a field day with Megadeath (Holy Wars….The Punishment Due – #24), Thunder – She’s So Fine (#38) and Slaughter (Coming Back For More #62). There were also a fair number of new pop hits, far too many to mention even in passing, so it’s straight to the indie/dance/established alternative efforts

Never Enough – The Cure (#15)
World In My Eyes – Depeche Mode (#28)
Make Me Smile (Come Up And See Me) – The Wedding Present (#29)
Dreams Burn Down – Ride (#34)
Heaven (1990 version) – The Chimes (#36)
I’ve Got You Under My Skin – Neneh Cherry (#45)

The Wedding Present and Ride tracks were songs from the Three EP and the Fall EP respectively. It also led to a rare appearance on Top of The Pops for Gedge & co. Neneh Cherry‘s excellent single was the taster for the album Red Hot + Blue, a compilation album on which a wide range of contemporary singers and bands offered up their take on songs written by Cole Porter. The album would go on to sell more than a million copies worldwide and raise substantial sums for the Red Hot Organisation, a charity that had been established to fight AIDS.

September 30: New Entries

Yup…. a five week month (but look on the bright side, each of October and November will have just four weeks). It was also a quieter week for new entries, helped by the fact that none of the metal bands chose to release any singles!

The highest new entry belonged to a duo whose impending new album was their first new material in two years, having dominated the UK charts in the second half of the 80s

So Hard – Pet Shop Boys (#4)

Elsewhere, chart regulars such as Technotronic (Megamix – #12), MC Hammer (Have You Seen Her – #15), Mica Paris (Contribution – #43), Phil Collins (Hang In Long Enough – #47), Paul Simon (The Obvious Child – #61) and Paul Young (Heaven Can Wait – #72) were polluting the atmosphere.

A few others to mention.

A Little Time – The Beautiful South (#30)

Paul Heaton and Dave Hemingway had caught a few folk by surprise with the change of direction after the break-up of The Housemartins, enjoying three hit singles and a #1 debut album in 1989. The first of the new material quietly entered the charts at #30 and two weeks later it was at #1.

Right Here, Right Now – Jesus Jones (#37)
Good Morning Britain – Aztec Camera feat Mick Jones (#52)

Two songs that would become staples of the ‘indie’ compilations that would flood the shops as the decade wore on.

And that concludes a bumper edition of this series, with 27 songs on offer, most of which had to be sought from outside the collection. It took a fair bit of time and I’m glad this particular project is nearing an end.

A GUEST POSTING by KHAYEM

KHAYEM

JC

JC

JC

JC

SWC

A GUEST POSTING by STRANGEWAYS

strangeways

JC

JC

JC

JC

JC

JC

A GUEST POSTING by MARTIN ELLIOT

(OUR SWEDISH CORRESPONDENT)

Martin

1. The Concept – Teenage Fanclub (12″ single – Creation Records, Cre 111T, 1991)

2. Free Again/Bad Seeds (7″ single – K Records, IPU26, 1992)

JC

JC

JC

JC

JC

JC (aged 57 years and 3 months)

JC
(aged 57 years and 3 months)