THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN

THE BIG HITS…..30 YEARS ON (11)

Regular readers will know the script by now (and to be fair, the chances of an overly-wordy music blog attracting any new fans will be quite remote, which means everyone knows the script!)

All year long, I’ve had a look back to the UK singles charts of 1990 in which I have (hopefully) demonstrated that while there were a reasonable number of hits which have stood the test of time, they are far outnumbered by the dross that the great British public was shelling out for. We have reached the month of November, with four weeks of things to recall. It’s probably the worst of them all…..

4 November

The month opened with The Righteous Brothers still at #1, with Unchained Melody, still making folk cry their eyes out when it was used in the mega-hit movie, Ghost. It also saw something really dreadful enter the chart at #11, when Gazza (aka Paul Gascoigne), cashed in on his newfound fame post-World Cup 90, by joining up with fellow Geordies, Lindisfarne for an updated and horrific version of Fog On The Tyne. Look it up on YouTube if you must. (Oh, and in case anyone gets the wrong idea…..the video still of a man’s bare arse at the top of this post is NOT Gazza….it is, however, a still from a song referenced elsewhere in this posting)

Gazza was the highest of what was a quite astounding 19 new entries into the Top 75 in that particular week. Some of them are unforgettable pop-fodder, to say the least (Teena Marie, Maria Carey, Craig McLachlan, Ragga Twins, Caron Wheeler, Wilson Phillips); others are linked to the increasing popularity of dance/club music on which I am wholly unqualified to comment (Cybersonik, Kick Squad, Unique Three, Megabass) while the rock gawds smiled that the likes of Queensryche and Jon Bon Jovi were getting played on the radio.

Which leaves these:-

mp3: 808 State – Cubik/Olympic (#29)
mp3: Prince – New Power Generation (#33)
mp3: N.W.A. – 100 Miles and Runnin’ (#39)
mp3: The Beloved – It’s Alright Now (#57)
mp3: Pixies – Dig For Fire (#62)
mp3: Julee Cruise – Falling (#64)

808 State would go on to enjoy a high-profile 1991 with the ex:el album that would be released in March 1991. Cubik/Olympic, which in due course would reach #10 in the singles charts, would find its way onto the later album, whose hits would also include In Yer Face and Oops, with the latter featuring Bjork.

New Power Generation was the second and final hit single from the album Grafitti Park and would climb the following week to #26 before fading away quite quickly. Little did we know that the track was the scene-setter for what Prince would next do in his long, colourful and never predictable career.

N.W.A. never really enjoyed mainstream success in the UK and this, the lead track from a stand-alone EP, was just the second and final time they made the charts. The track is probably best remembered for the fact that the remaining four members used it to make an attack on Ice Cube, who had left a year earlier after a row over royalties.

The Beloved had enjoyed a 1990 breakthrough with the album Happiness. It was decided to issue Blissed Out, a remix version of Happiness, with It’s Alright Now selected as the single to promote it. It wouldn’t quite work as it stalled at #46 and sales of Blissed Out were relatively poor. It would be the last involvement of co-founder Steve Waddington as he would leave in early 1991, with the band more or less becoming a front for the solo work of Jon Marsh.

Dig For Fire was the second and final single to be taken from the album Bossanova. It was released some three months after the album – the fact it stalled at #62 is evidence that Pixies fans weren’t too bothered about buying singles to complete any collections.

Julee Cruise has proven to be a one-hit-wonder. Falling dated from the previous year and would have very likely remained completely unknown if an instrumental version hadn’t been used as the theme for Twin Peaks, one of the most unlikely TV hits of 1990. The single would go Top 10 in the UK and a number of other European charts, while also reaching #1 in Australia.

11 November

Gazza jumped to #2, held off by The Righteous Brothers. This was a week in which 15 songs debuted in the Top 75, with the vast majority of them being tracks I honestly don’t recognise. I’m going to lit them, as its a perfect demonstration of just how much money record labels were prepared to waste back in those days, and the reason why vinyl and CDs were stupidly over-priced in the shops as those which sold had to recoup the costs of the many more that didn’t:-

#73: In Zaire – African Business (its only week in the chart)
#71: Roses Are Red – Bobby Vinton (its only week in the chart)
#68: If I Have To Stand Alone – Lonnie Gordon (its only week in the chart)
#66: Smile – Aswad (would spend 2 weeks in the chart, reaching #53)
#60: Stranded – Heart (would spend 2 weeks in the chart, with this being its highest position)
#59: Cherry Pie – Warrant (would spend 2 weeks in the chart, with this being its highest position)
#55: Shelter Me – Cinderella (would spend 2 weeks in the chart, with this being its highest position)
#54: Love So Bright – Mark Shaw (its only week in the chart)
#53: Love’s Got Me – Loose Ends (would spend 4 weeks in the chart, reaching #40)
#51: Serious – Duran Duran (would spend 3 weeks in the chart, reaching #48)
#46: Flashback Jack – Adamski (would spend 2 weeks in the chart, with this being its highest position)
#41: Sucker DJ – Dimples D (would spend 10 weeks in the chart, reaching #17)
#28: Hands Across The Ocean – The Mission (would spend 2 weeks in the chart, with this being its highest position)
#25: Let’s Swing Again – Jive Bunny (would spend 5 weeks in the chart, reaching #19)

Which leaves, this, the lead track from an EP which, at #23 was the highest entry of the week:-

mp3: Inspiral Carpets – Biggest Mountain

The Island Head EP would spend just 4 weeks in the chart, reaching #21.

Surely things were a bit better the following week?

18 November

The answer, to an extent, is yes. For the first time in something like seven or eight weeks, a new entry came in very high up the charts, at #3, and for once it wasn’t relying on its inclusion on a soundtrack from a major film to earworm its way into the minds of the record-buying public.

The only thing letting it down is the fact that the song in question is Ice Ice Baby by Vanilla Ice.

The karaoke/old fogies brigade were also well represented this week as Rod Stewart and Tina Turner duetted their way to #12 with It Takes Two. It would eventually go all the way to #’5′ please remember this fact and shake your head in disbelief that Marvin Gaye‘s original version with Kim Weston only reached #16 back in 1965.

Another cover version was the next highest new entry:-

mp3: The Proclaimers – King of The Road

I was stunned to read that this entered the charts at #17 and actually went Top 10 the following week. I had long assumed it was one of those singles/EPs that had peaked around #40, like almost all releases by the duo.

There was the usual mix of pop/dance number making a fresh appearance in the lower ends of the charts, a number of which, like those listed from the chart of 11 November mean nothing or very little to me. But some tracks have since found their way into the collection:-

mp3: Pet Shop Boys – Being Boring (#36)
mp3: Chris Isaak – Wicked Game (#50)
mp3: Flowered Up – Phobia (#75)

Being Boring would reach #20, but proved to be just about the poorest performing PSB single that was released between 1985 and 2003 (only Was It Worth It?, which stalled at #24 fared worse). It has since, possibly because it was something of a relative flop, become one of the duo’s best loved, most iconic and most enduring tunes.

Wicked Game, like Falling (see above) benefited from the David Lynch effect. It had originally been released as a single some 18 months previously, but npw, its inclusion on the soundtrack to the film Wild At Heart had given it a whole new lease of life, spending ten weeks in the Top 75, either side of Xmas 1990, and peaking at #10, ending up, by far, as the biggest hit of Chris Isaak‘s career.

Flowered Up would later enjoy bigger hits in 1991 and 1992, but this piece of indie-pop, released on Heavenly Records, has long been my favourite of theirs. I’ll mention in passing that lead singer Liam Maher died in 2009, at the age of 41, from a heroin overdose, and that just three years later his brother Joe, who was a guitarist in the band, also lost his life. R.I.P.

25 November

Vanilla Ice took over at the #1 spot. Not much changed in the Top 20, but there was good news that Gazza’s bid for #1 was now going to come up short

The never-ending ability of the British public to make a hit out of a novelty song, even when it is least expected, reared its head with this being the highest new entry at #14-

I’ll let wiki explain:-

“Kinky Boots” is a 1960s song written by Herbert Kretzmer and David Lee, and recorded by Patrick Macnee and Honor Blackman, stars of the television series The Avengers.

The music was commissioned by Ned Sherrin for the satirical television series That Was the Week That Was and used in a sequence featuring the titular footwear (then fashionable). Lyrics were later added for a recording by Macnee and Blackman, released by Decca in February 1964.

The song was not initially a hit, but a re-release in 1990 reached the top ten of the British Singles Chart in December of that year, after the song was promoted by BBC Radio One DJ Simon Mayo. The single peaked at No.5 and remained on the chart for seven weeks.

The other new entries that week were every bit as dull and forgettable as those highlighted above at 11 November. I fear it will be even worse next month as we get close to the charts at Xmas.

JC
(aged 57 years and 5 months)

Pulp

BURNING BADGERS VINYL (Part 8): PULP

Brilliant Songs, Brilliantly Remixed #2 – 7 (SEVEN) Pulp Songs

# 2 Pulp – This Is Hardcore (Island Records, 1998, IS 695 DJ Pink)

In 2007, I went parascending with Badger and some other blokes he knew. We went to an old aerodrome in the middle of the Devon countryside and was met there by a guy called Guy, who thought he was Tom Cruise. He is wearing aviator shades, a green jumpsuit and has the whitest teeth of any person I have ever met. He calls everyone “guv” as well, which is irritating.

Parascending for those in the dark is where you are attached to a large balloon, parachute thing which is attached to a knackered old Land Rover, which drives off at speed and you fly up in the air behind it. It is what some might call an ‘extreme sport’ – it is what I call fucking terrifying. I only said yes because Badger said they were one short and they would have to cancel it otherwise.

We have this training lecture which lasts an hour or so. For the last twenty minutes or so, we are taught two things, one, we must roll on the ground when we land, in the opposite direction to the parachute is blowing, this stops the parachute refilling up with air and dragging you along the ground. The second thing we are taught is what happens if the line comes unattached. The answer is a ‘pararoll’ which will mean that we don’t get broken legs on landing. I shoot Badger a look because roughly two hours ago in the car on the way down he told me that this was “perfectly safe and not to worry”. He didn’t mention lines coming unattached, broken legs or something which Nick, one of our group, called ‘Sunken Bollock Syndrome’.

It’s my turn after about an hour of waiting. I’ll be honest. I’m petrified. I’m shaking as I step into the parachute thing. Badger slaps me on the shoulder and tells me over and over again, roll when you land. He’s been up a couple of times and has made this look easy. Then again he’s done this about 70 times.

Guy looks at me and says that because I am skinny I will probably go a bit higher a bit quicker than the others. He flashes me a pearly white grin. I smile and say “Oh, Good, lucky me”.

And then we are off. At first it’s horrible – the harness grabs you round the nether regions and it’s uncomfortable. The wind makes my eyes stream and for some reason I worry about landing on the road about a mile away. Then the cord goes tight and everything seems still. It’s just me several hundred feet up in the Devon countryside and it feels marvellous. I find myself grinning like a loon and I don’t really want to come back down. But I have to. The ground approaches very quickly, I checked my cord to make sure I’m still attached, it is, twenty foot, ten foot, the smile has gone now. Roll, I tell myself, roll. I land, on my feet which is a good start and I stand perfectly still. “Roll you twat” comes a shout just as I’m dragged along the ground for about thirty metres. Then I come to stop. I sit up, roll and unclip myself, remove the mud from my hair and face and all I can hear is laughing.

All of which rocking and rolling brings us to not one but two more excellent records from Badger’s Box. One pink and one gold.

The first one is a shocking pink twelve-inch single (the vinyl is not pink sadly, just the sleeve) of ‘This Is Hardcore’ by Pulp. It’s a DJ Promo copy though.

A quick look at the tracks reveals that they are exactly the same as you would find on CD Two of the ‘This Is Hardcore’ single, so these tracks are not massively rare (but I’ve never heard them before).

(JC interjects, with an ‘ahem’ and a reference to 25 April 2014………..https://thenewvinylvillain.com/2014/04/25/commercial-suicide/)

mp3: Pulp – This Is Hardcore (Original Version)
mp3: Pulp – This Is Hardcore (4 Hero Remix)
mp3: Pulp – This Is Hardcore (Swedish Erotica Mix)
mp3: Pulp – This Is Hardcore (Stock, Hausen and Walkmen Mix)

The pick of the mixes is I think the Swedish Erotica Mix which takes the original and strips the vocals out and then pops them back on it, only reversed. This is done to make them sound ‘Swedish’. I’m going to leave it to our Swedish Correspondent to confirm whether that is actually the case or not. Either way, this mix is superb.

The other two mixes are pretty cool as well, the 4 Hero Mix starts with a load of bleeps and noises and is for a bit almost unrecognisable, until the string bit from the original bursts in. The vocals are nicely distorted and about halfway through there is a really cool drum bit that forms the backdrop of the music for the rest of the mix. It’s excellent.

The Stock, Hausen and Walkmen mix is very strange, it starts off sounding very Turkish (involving those weird horn instruments that they have in Indiana Jones films set Turkish deserts) and then they do all sorts of mad stuff with Jarvis’ vocals, speeding up them behind a drum and bass beat, slowing them down, it removes nearly all other parts of the original apart from the vocals. I’m going to describe it as avant-garde brilliance and say no more about it.

Hidden behind the pink promo was another promo of the same single, this one is Gold in colour and that it turns out holds the same songs as CD One of the release. It has another mix on it The End of the Line Mix and two other tracks ‘Ladies Man’ and ‘The Professional’.

mp3: Pulp – Ladies’ Man
mp3: Pulp – The Professional
mp3: Pulp – This Is Hardcore (end of the line remix)

The End of the Line Mix is a version of the original that just focuses on the string section of the song, which some might say is the best bit. Interestingly the Gold Promo wasn’t played as much as the Pink Promo. Make your own mind up about that.

SWC

Various

GIVING THE PEOPLE EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANT: JC

One of the secrets to ensuring this little corner of t’internet maintains a sense of relevance is to go with public opinion. There was an incredible reaction to the pair of postings from jimdoes in respect of ICAs consisting purely of opening album tracks, the likes of which hasn’t been seen round these parts for many a long time.

Everyone was offering up thoughts, views and opinions, with all sorts of alternative suggestions put forward in the comments section. So, I’m taking advantage of the energy that was on show and have decided that, until such a time as the contributions dry up, Mondays will now be used for ICAs of opening tracks.

jimdoes was disciplined in coming up with two lists – one for tracks that were singles and one for tracks that were album cuts only. If anyone wants to follow those chains of thoughts they are very welcome, but I’m going to kick things off with a ten-track ICA that is a mixture. There’s just the three singles across the ten cuts, all of which can be found on one side.

What follows is not a list of the greatest opening tracks of all time. Indeed, they might not even the greatest opening track ever offered up by a particular singer or band. But, and crucially for me, I think the ten songs, when taken as a whole and in the running order I’ve come up with, would make for a fabulous album across two sides of vinyl.

LET THEM ALL TALK: AN ICA OF OPENING TRACKS by JC

Side One

1. Let Them All Talk – Elvis Costello & The Attractions (Punch The Clock, 1983)

All great albums open with great songs, that much is a given. But, to me, all the very greatest of albums don’t open with the greatest of songs that will be found on a particular cut as there has to be something later on to provide that particular ‘wow’ moment. Which is why I’ve decided to open up with something that is perhaps a little less than obvious – it’s not one of Elvis Costello‘s most memorable songs and it’s from an album which, although is a splendid effort, is rarely (if ever) ranked as his best. But, aside from giving me an appropriate title for this particular ICA, I reckon it works really well in terms of pricking up the ears of any listener.

2. Age Of Consent – New Order (Power, Corruption & Lies, 1981)

It was back in 2008, in the 45 45s at 45 rundown, when I revealed that Temptation was my all-time favourite single. The thing is, it’s not my all-time favourite New Order song, an accolade which I will always bestow on this, the first track from the album that truly brought them out of the shadows of Joy Division.

3. Protection – Massive Attack (Protection, 1994)

Every now and again, even on the loudest and fastest of records, there comes a moment when things just need to be slowed down a little. This is achingly beautiful and sublime and a highlight in the career of Tracey Thorn.

4. The Cutter – Echo and The Bunnymen (Porcupine, 1983)

No apologies for returning to the early 80s for a third time on this particular side of vinyl. I just felt the opening few notes of The Cutter were the perfect complement to the final notes of Protection.

5. Good Bad Times – Hinds (The Prettiest Curse, 2020)

Here’s a simple but brilliantly subversive pop song that perfectly captures the mood and feel of one of my favourite albums of this past twelve months, a slab of vinyl that has brought a lot of sunshine on what have often been dark, depressing and lonely days. Kind of inspired by jimdoes pulling out the brilliance of Heartbeats on his second offering.

Side Two

1. Will I Ever Be Inside Of You – Paul Quinn & The Independent Group (Will I Ever Be Inside Of You, 1994)

Back in the days when it was all vinyl, it was imperative when you had your first listen to a new album that the opening track on the flip side had to be something that really grabbed you in.

There were two reasons for this. First of all, if Side One had been memorable, then the momentum had to be maintained. The alternative reason was that, if you hadn’t really been grabbed by Side One, then this was the album’s chance to redeem itself – if track one, side two was also a disappointment, then there’s every chance the rest of the album won’t be given a fair chance.

It’s such a pity that Paul Quinn was able to provide lead vocals on only two albums and I make no apologies whatsoever for taking up more than nine minutes of your time with this epic. This provided the hardest moment in coming up with a running order for the ICA as I had to come up with something that wouldn’t immediately be a jolt to the system. One thing for sure, it isn’t quite the time for a new wave/post-punk classic……

2. When I’m Asleep – Butcher Boy (React or Die, 2009)

This is a very personal choice in that Butcher Boy often opened their shows with this, the first track from their sophomore album. I’ve mentioned before how blogging has opened up so many opportunities for me over the years, but probably none more so than being able to become good friends with the members of this band and there’s something very special and different when you’re in an audience and your mates are on stage. Every time I hear the notes on the accordion, followed by the strum of the mandolin, I get a real tingle down my spine. It’s magical.

3. The Modern Leper – Frightened Rabbit (The Midnight Organ Fight, 2008)

Another very personal choice. I was lucky enough to watch Frightened Rabbit grow and develop from the smallest of shows in and around Glasgow. The series of shows they played to launch The Midnight Organ Fight were amongst the best I’ve ever seen going all the way back to 1979 and my first ever gig. An album that I couldn’t bring myself to listen to for a long while after Scott Hutchison took his own life – it took until a gloriously sunny day and a need to get something from work out of my system that got me to sit on a park bench and press play. Once I got through the opening track without tears of sadness or anger, I was fine. Indie-folk at its very finest and most passionate.

4. Janie Jones – The Clash (The Clash, 1977)

Again, it’s about finding something that fits in perfectly to the running order. Something that gets across the idea that I’m in love with rock’n’roll (whoa). The opening track from the UK version of the debut album by The Clash does that nicely.

5. The Light at the End of the Tunnel (Is the Light of an Oncoming Train) – Half Man Half Biscuit (Cammell Laird Social Club, 2002)

Just a reminder that I should never take myself, or this blog, too seriously. Great tune and great lyrics. That’s all I ever ask for……that and something which makes me want to flip back over to side one.

You can judge for yourselves if things have worked out nicely……and as it’s Monday, these are hi-res rips.

Let Them All Talk: Side One (23:03)
Let Them All Talk: Side Two (20:18)

Huge thanks to jimdoes for the idea, and to everyone for the initial reactions. I’ve another four or five volumes that I could offer up, but I’d rather the TVV community got on board.

JC

R.E.M.

THE SINGULAR ADVENTURES OF R.E.M. (Part 21)

Something different this week. The main part of the post, in italics, will consist solely of phrases which I have cut’n’pasted from different articles or reviews associated with Everybody Hurts.

It was released as a single in the UK in April 1993, and in reaching #7, provided R.E.M. with their then biggest chart success outside of Shiny Happy People. It is a track that, in 2003, was ranked by Q magazine at #31 in its list of the 1001 Best Songs Ever.

It is worth mentioning that credit for the song, musically, lies with Bill Berry, which is ironic given the beat is largely kept by a drum machine. The strings, which are very much at the heart of the completed version were arranged by John Paul Jones, best known as the bass player with Led Zeppelin.

“Everybody Hurts has a comforting melancholy, benefitting from a smoothly caressing guitar. It has been lauded as the best song on Automatic for The People and, as the Q ranking suggests, one of the band’s best songs ever. It is emotionally moving and deeply affecting, but a ballad that would stray into the maudlin if it wasn’t sung with such conviction. The string arrangements complement the vocal delivery, with the song being held up as the Bridge Over Troubled Water for the ’90s with Michael Stipe as Simon & Garfunkel rolled into one. It is virtually beyond words. It will have non-REM maniacs in hysterics with its delicate Spector structure and childlike message (“everybody hurts, everybody cries…when you think you’ve had too much of this life, hang on…”). It will make everyone else cry. It really is that straightforward.”

I won’t swim against the tide. I’m not a huge fan of ballads, but the very best of them have always been at the heart of popular music going back centuries before rock’n’roll was invented. Sad songs are remembered and loved by billions of people for all sorts of different reasons. Perhaps it can be traced back to the very early days of the most basic and traditional of music, running ever since through history – for instance, the best bits of opera always seem to centre on tragedy, and it is those folk songs recalling sad or unhappy events that have more often been passed down through the generations.

Everybody Hurts is an absolute classic of its kind. It might not be what any early fan of R.E.M. would ever have anticipated, but songs of this nature and tempo were inevitable when the loud instruments had been put aside, temporarily, for a while.

As with Man on The Moon, it was a slightly edited version of the song that was issued on the 7″:-

mp3: R.E.M. – Everybody Hurts (single version)

As with the previous singles from Automatic, the b-side of the UK 7” and cassette was a track from ‘Green’. This time it was the most ridiculously upbeat number, one which had been a flop single in the US:-

mp3: R.E.M. – Pop Song ’89

Talk about ying and yang on two sides of a piece of plastic. It was also the fourth occasion that a version of Pop Song ’89 had been used as a b-side to a single…..

Again there were two versions put out on CD. You’ll have picked up that the barrel was already being scraped with what was being added to the earlier singles from the album. It got worse with this, the fourth 45 lifted from Automatic, with both CDs now being labelled as ‘Collector’s Editions’. No wonder many were despairing at how Warner Bros were trying to extract as much from fans as possible – these CD singles retailed at £3 or £4 a pop and the titles of the two tracks on CD1 say it all:-

mp3: R.E.M. – New Orleans Instrumental #1 (long version)
mp3: R.E.M. – Mandolin Strum

The marketing folk had the cheek and nerve to state that the latter was ‘previously unreleased’. One listen is all you need to understand why that should be.

CD2 was another con in that it included Dark Globe, the Syd Barrett cover that had previously been issued on the 12″ of Orange Crush back in 1989. The blurb from the marketing people for CD2 was that ‘it was currently not available on any other CD’ The other track is another oddity.

mp3: R.E.M. – Dark Globe
mp3: R.E.M. – Chance (dub)

An electronic number with a part-spoken, part-sung lyric. I kind of like it, but I hate it. I kind of like it because it is a bit different, but I hate it as it’s clearly a work in progress that shouldn’t have really seen the light of day, far less been the one bit of music which forced completists to fork out a fair amount of money for – it’s only right, however, to point out that I am far from a completist when it comes to R.E.M. – it’s not like they are The Twilight Sad or anything – and I’ve relied partly on The Robster for some of the tracks while others have been tracked down and sourced from other blogs.

Michael Stipe’s final words at the end of Chance are “Guys, this is very tedious. Stop”

Which seems a good place to sign off this week. But we’ll be back, as usual, next Sunday.

JC

Pastels

SATURDAY’S SCOTTISH SONG : #237: THE PASTELS

From The Guardian newspaper, on 1 March 2016:-

The Pastels long ago became a kind of shorthand for a wan, wonky and distinctly unambitious strain of guitar music that’s as niche as they come. That – the result of a reductive association with the NME’s C86 cassette – has rendered them one of the most misrepresented cult groups of their era. There’s a much more compelling story to be told about a band integral to the birth of the Glasgow independent music scene, who continue to make wonderful and surprising music (albeit very slowly: they average an album every seven years).

Without the instincts, inspiration and energies of the Pastels’ softly-spoken founding singer-guitarist Stephen McRobbie, AKA Stephen Pastel – who runs the Domino Records imprint Geographic and co-founded one of the UK’s best independent record stores, Monorail – the Glasgow scene would probably be bound together by significantly less camaraderie and common purpose than it does today.

The Pastels formed in 1981 – another indie group on the fringe of the Postcard Records scene – just as Orange Juice were setting about their post-punk mission to rip it up and start again. It was Brian “Superstar” Taylor, a slightly older friend of Postcard svengali Alan Horne, who first took seriously the cocksure aspirations of the duffle-coat sporting Bearsden boy with a DIY haircut. Taylor helped McRobbie advance his rudimentary guitar skills, and became the first recruit to his fledgling band, influenced by the untamed mayhem of the Velvet Underground and naive charm of the Television Personalities. They recruited bassist Martin Hayward and drummer Bernice Simpson, and were playing shows and recording music with indecent haste. McRobbie booked their first gig at Bearsden Burgh Hall because he’d seen Crass play the same venue.

Such was McRobbie’s certainty about his new group’s worth that he wasted no time in impressing on Rough Trade Records in London the necessity of snapping up the next big thing out of Scotland. Geoff Travis was sufficiently convinced to release the Pastels’ 1983 single I Wonder Why (their second single following chaotic debut Songs for Children, which had been released on Television Personalities singer Dan Treacy’s label Whaam!). Multi-tracked and divested of the raw, almost childlike energy of their live playing, it was a false dawn, and the band’s relationship with Rough Trade ended as the label became preoccupied with shinier new signings Scritti Politti and the Smiths. But, at their own, geological pace, the Pastels were on a path to releasing a minor masterpiece of a debut album.

Before that came several more singles, a John Peel session and lots of cassette sharing and fanzine scribbling. (The Pastels’ fanzines Juniper Beri-Beri and Pastelism long predated the self-publishing culture that grew up around the C86 bands.) All that and some principled staying put. Having watched Orange Juice, among others, move to London and become swallowed up by the industry machine, there was a determination to do what no significant Glasgow guitar group had done before. When their debut album Up for a Bit With the Pastels finally arrived in 1987 via Glass Records, it was staunchly promoted with one foot firmly planted at home, in part because McRobbie was studying for a master’s degree in librarianship at Glasgow University.

The Pastels’ ageless debut saw them cited as a favourite by everyone from the Jesus and Mary Chain and Primal Scream to Sonic Youth, Yo La Tengo and Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain. It never set the world alight, despite the gothic swirl of Ride, the motorik drone rock of Baby Honey and the anthemic Crawl Babies (the decaying spires of the Glasgow skyline are romantically invoked in the gorgeous lines, “I want to build her up / up as tall as a church / just to watch her / just to watch her falling down”). However, it did help to inspire confidence in the Glasgow scene and showed that bands didn’t have to move south but could let the record industry come to them. In its wake came such Scottish classics and quintessentially Glaswegian debuts as Belle and Sebastian’s Tigermilk and Mogwai’s Young Team through to Franz Ferdinand’s self-titled arrival and arguably even Chvrches world-beating synthpop.

The first lineup of the Pastels disintegrated with the departure of Taylor, Hayward and Simpson following their long-lost second album, 1989’s Sittin’ Pretty (which is well overdue a reissue). The band could have called it a day, but a new incarnation instead assembled around McRobbie, keys player and vocalist Annabel “Aggi” Wright (a long-standing member of the group recruited from the Shop Assistants, who was also responsible for a lot of the Pastels’ artwork) and drummer Katrina Mitchell. It didn’t seem to bother anyone that Mitchell, who would become McRobbie’s long-term girlfriend (the pair still live together), couldn’t play the drums when she joined and spent years learning to do so. Which says it all about the Pastels’ excruciatingly patient approach to music-making.

With Teenage Fanclub’s Norman Blake and Gerard Love among others fleshing out the lineup, the Pastels returned in 1995 with the release of Mobile Safari on Domino Records, at last a sympathetic and stable home for a band who had worked with no fewer than seven labels (including three spells on Alan McGee’s Creation Records). The uncharacteristically prompt follow-up Illumination arrived in 1997, as the Pastels’ sound mellowed and evolved into a form of gently psychedelic off-kilter pop, adorned with orchestral instrumentation.

Around this time, through their association with Japanese musician Cornelius, the band became incongruously wrapped up in the hype surrounding Britpop in Japan, jostling for position in magazines with the likes of Blur and Manic Street Preachers. On one trip to Tokyo they were mobbed by screaming fans outside hotels and venues. For a bunch of unassuming Scots who could barely get arrested back home, it must have felt like stepping into an alternative universe.

In 2000, McRobbie started up his Domino imprint Geographic, releasing gems from, among others, Maher Shalal Hash Baz, Bill Wells Trio, Future Pilot AKA, The Royal We and Lightships. In 2003, he became one of the founders of Monorail Music, a vinyl-centric record shop based in a railway arch next to music venue Mono. One of the hubs of the Glasgow scene, it’s a bright, open and inviting space where you can browse the latest releases by local labels as well as rare imports. Any of which might be sold to you by McRobbie himself, who is often to be found working behind the counter.

A collaboration with Japanese lo-fi duo Tenniscoats in 2009 gave rise to the soft-hued Two Sunsets, a playful, spontaneous and spellbinding must-hear. In 2013, the Pastels released their 16-years-in-the-making album Slow Summits. It is perhaps their most complete set since Up for a Bit, with its 10 summery, groovy flute and french-horn-licked songs, trippy in the sense of the kind of trip that lands in a pile of freshly mown grass.

Every so often the Pastels get their just deserts. In 2013, Slow Summits was shortlisted for the Scottish album of the year award; a year later, they opened for Mogwai at the Usher Hall, Edinburgh; and last year Copenhagen micro-brewery Mikkeller made a beer in the band’s honour, appropriately titled Pastelism.

Cheers to that, and to the enduring health of a band who have been integral to Glasgow’s music scene for about as long as anyone can remember there being such a thing.

—–

I know The Pastels aren’t to everybody’s taste. I like some of their music, but there’s loads more that I just can’t take to. There’s no question, however, that Steven has been an essential part of the local music scene in so many different ways and Glasgow would be a much poorer place, culturally, without him, his band, and his record store.

So many tunes to select from. Here’s one from 1989, the opening track from the album Sittin’ Pretty, which gets mentioned in the above article.

mp3: The Pastels – Nothing To Be Done

JC

Various

AN IMAGINARY COMPILATION ALBUM : #271 : BEGIN THE BEGIN (2)

A GUEST POSTING by jimdoes

There’s been so many great opening tracks that were singles – here’s my ten favourites, although it’s a list that changes daily! It’s really hard deciding on the order for these ICAs – what’s the first first track? What should be last?

BEGIN THE BEGIN – PART TWO

(An ICA of opening tracks that were singles)

LET’S GO CRAZY – PRINCE AND THE REVOLUTION

(Opening track on PURPLE RAIN)

The spoken word intro makes it perfect to be the opening track on my singles ICA. And I guess as with most of this ICA there’s not much that I can say that hasn’t been said. If I could go back in time and see one band live it wouldn’t be The Clash or The Beatles or Joy Division – it would be Prince and The Revolution on the Purple Rain tour – look it up on YouTube – it’s incredible.

TEENAGE RIOT – SONIC YOUTH

(Opening track on DAYDREAM NATION)

One of their most accessible songs and one of their pop hits – the opener to their masterpiece – the sprawling Daydream Nation. Not just one of my favourite opening tracks but one of my favourite songs full stop. You’re it. No you’re it.

SUMMER BABE (WINTER VERSION) – PAVEMENT

(Opening track on SLANTED AND ENCHANTED)

I’ve no idea what this song is about or why it’s the winter version (to my knowledge there isn’t a version for any other season) – and I don’t care. It’s just glorious. And it’s part one of one of the best opening one/twos ever recorded – Trigger Cut being the other song.

THE MERCY SEAT – NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEEDS

(Opening track on TENDER PREY)

Another song where I know the song because it was a great single but I’m not familiar with the album. It’s a song that still gets better with every listen and I’ve heard it thousands of times.

HEARTBEATS – THE KNIFE

(Opening track on DEEP CUTS)

Is it any surprise that the majority of the tracks on both my ICAs were released before I was 23? This being one of the few exceptions – and I guess a bit of a curveball. It’s another song where I don’t know any other song on the album, but there’s really no need when this song is so good.

LOSER – BECK

(Opening track on MELLOW GOLD)

From the opening line – “In the time of chimpanzees I was a monkey” – I was hooked, I still am.

LONDON CALLING – THE CLASH

(Opening track on LONDON CALLING)

Only the second title track in my opening track ICAs – I thought there may be more but it has given me another idea for an ICA! Anyway, has a band ever had better opening tracks to their albums than The Clash? Janie Jones/Safe European Home/London Calling/The Magnificent Seven/Know Your Rights takes some beating – I could have picked any of them for this ICA. London Calling might be the obvious choice but to me it’s the right choice.

(JC interjects as it avoids taking up space in the comments section……..I’d go with New Order’s initial albums: Dreams Never End/Age of Consent/Love Vigilantes/Paradise/Fine Time/Regret)

MOVIN’ ON UP – PRIMAL SCREAM

(Opening track on SCREAMADELICA)

There’s only so many ways I can say “I love this song” as it’s true of every track on these ICAs. I’ve always thought Movin’ On Up was a bit of an anomaly on Screamdelica – the least druggy track – the most traditional one but also the logical place for the album to start – it’s probably the closest to what came before and what came after. And it sounds like a long lost classic that Primal Scream had covered – I guess I’m saying it’s timeless.

INBETWEEN DAYS – THE CURE

(Opening track on THE HEAD ON THE DOOR)

The Cure at their poppy best. Here’s a bit of trivia about the song title thanks to Wikipedia – “The single used “In Between Days”, whereas the album The Head on the Door uses “In Between Days” on the back of the album cover and the record label, and “Inbetween Days” on the inner sleeve.” I always thought it was Inbetween Days so I’m sticking with that. Anyway, it reminds me of school and my best mate – not for the lyrics – we never went out with the same girls but more that when we were young the joy of discovering and going to see all these bands together.

I WANNA BE ADORED – THE STONE ROSES

(Opening track on THE STONE ROSES)

Timeless. They sound so young yet so full of confidence. Rock n Roll Star? The Stone Roses aimed much higher – and achieved it. On their reunion shows, before a note was sung, the whole audience would be singing the guitar line to this – sort of elevating it into a communal celebration. Iconic. And what better way to end an ICA as will leave you wanting more.

And for completists here’s another ten that just missed out – which would make a pretty good volume 3.

DRIVE – REM
SMELLS LIKE TEEN SPIRIT – NIRVANA
GIRLS AND BOYS – BLUR
RID OF ME – PJ HARVEY
PERFECT SKIN – LLOYD COLE AND THE COMMOTIONS
SURE SHOT – BEASTIE BOYS
RUNNING UP THAT HILL – KATE BUSH
PROTECTION – MASSIVE ATTACK
DARK AND LONG – UNDERWORLD
FREAKSCENE – DINOSAUR JR

jimdoes

Various

AN IMAGINARY COMPILATION ALBUM : #270 : BEGIN THE BEGIN (1)

A GUEST POSTING by jimdoes

What seems like a million years ago I did an ICA of final tracks on albums (ICA 176 – only 2 and a bit years ago)– and I said at the time I’d do an ICA of openers which I’ve eventually got round to. But it’s taken much longer than I thought and proven an impossible task getting it down to ten songs – so I’ve done two ICAs. When putting my list together I realised how many opening tracks were singles – I guess it helps listeners if they’ve got something familiar to start with. I’m not imagining that to be a problem with my ICAs – I’m sure most readers will know these songs and have their own favourite opening tracks but these are mine, starting with an ICA of opening tracks that weren’t singles.

____________

BEGIN THE BEGIN – PART ONE

(An ICA of opening tracks that were not singles)

RACE FOR THE PRIZE – THE FLAMING LIPS

(Opening track on THE SOFT BULLETIN)

It’s almost impossible to choose a first song of first songs – obviously any one of the following tracks could’ve been first but I’ve gone with a song that is a rush of pure joy and it’s a great pop record. It’s the sound of a band in transition and realising their potential. Letting loose. Going from weird druggy outsiders to weird druggy stadium fillers. Most importantly it still makes me smile and it’s the perfect intro to what some consider to be their masterpiece.

DEBASER – PIXIES

(Opening track on DOOLITTLE)

I was 19 when this record came out – they were already my favourite band, so imagine hearing this for the first time. Blew me away then – still blows me away today. It was eventually released as a single when their greatest hits album came out but at the time this was just the perfect intro to one of the greatest albums ever recorded.

LOVE VIGILANTES – NEW ORDER

(Opening track on LOW LIFE)

Confession – I’ve seen New Order live countless times but I wouldn’t call myself a massive fan. Generally I just know the singles. I’ve tried listening to their albums but maybe because as a teenager I didn’t get into them, they just don’t do anything for me. I couldn’t name any album tracks by New Order – except Love Vigilantes – I couldn’t even name another song off Low Life. But Love Vigilantes is a song I’ve always loved – I think it’s one of those songs that is familiar even if you’ve never heard it before – plus it tells a story with a twist (I won’t spoil the ending – just in case you’ve not heard it!!!).

EVERYONE THINKS HE LOOKS DAFT – THE WEDDING PRESENT

(Opening track on GEORGE BEST)

The first song I ever heard by The Wedding Present. I bought George Best after I read about it in the NME. It remains one of my favourite tracks – the laugh halfway through, those jangling guitars, the down to earth lyrics, the whistle near the end and the long instrumental outro. It’s also got one of the best starts to a first track – Gedge’s “Oh why do you…” before the guitars kick in is sheer perfection.

THE QUEEN IS DEAD – THE SMITHS

(Opening track on THE QUEEN IS DEAD)

Ok I know the general feeling about the racist lead singer who will not be named and I tried to avoid including this song. But The Queen Is Dead remains one of the greatest opening tracks ever. And it’s not just the voice and the lyrics – they are great – but this is all about Marr, Joyce and Rourke. Lawnmower my arse.

(JC adds.…..the track is unavailable for posting on TVV…..jimdoes was OK when I told him this would be the case)

ROCK N ROLL STAR – OASIS

(Opening track on DEFINITELY MAYBE)

As statements of intent go, this has to be the best – debut album, all attitude, supremely confident.

STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON – NWA

(Opening track on STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON)

“You’re about to witness the strength of street knowledge” – now, ain’t that the truth?

EVERYTHING IN IT’S RIGHT PLACE – RADIOHEAD

(Opening track on KID A)

What a song. Everything In It’s Right Place is the sound of a band confounding expectations and doing exactly what they want. Because they can. And it’s a band knowing exactly what they don’t want – they’d been listening to loads of WARP records and they wanted to leave their stadium indie behind. They most certainly didn’t want to be U2. On first listen this song shocks you – making you wonder what could come next – but it’s a real grower and has become one of my favourite Radiohead songs.

THE MAN COMES AROUND – JOHNNY CASH

(Opening track on THE MAN COMES AROUND)

According to Wikipedia – “The song was inspired by a dream Cash had about Queen Elizabeth II in which the queen compared Cash to “a thorn tree in a whirlwind.” Haunted by the dream, Cash became curious if the phrase was a biblical reference and eventually found a similar phrase in the Book of Job.”

From the spoken word intro to the jaunty acoustic guitar, I love this song. One of the last songs Johnny Cash wrote as he was dying of cancer – it’s about Christ and the Day of Judgement – on paper that sounds like it’s going to be a really sad maudlin song but it is just so upbeat and makes me smile!

DISORDER – JOY DIVISION

(Opening track on UNKNOWN PLEASURES)

This seemed the best opening track to be the closing track on the first of my first track ICAs. (Hope that makes sense!) I don’t imagine there’s a single VV reader that wouldn’t have this in their top ten opening tracks (non-singles version).

jimdoes

British Sea Power

SUCH AN UPBEAT TUNE, SUCH A SAD SENTIMENT

It is, of course, Remembrance Day. If previous years are anything to go by, then Drew will post something very moving and appropriate over at his place.

I don’t ever really do anything to mark what today is all about, but I thought I’d post the second single released by British Sea Power, but their first on vinyl and their first for Rough Trade Records:-

mp3: British Sea Power – Remember Me

This dates from 2001. It’s the version that many fans have said they prefer in comparison to that re-recorded for the debut album two years later and which itself was released as a single and went to #30 in the charts.

It’s a rip-roaring, energetic and lively old tune, but it masks a sad lyric in that it is all about dementia.

Do you worry about your health
Do you watch it slowly change
And when you listen to yourself, does it feel like somebody else
And did you notice when you began to disappear
Was it slowly at first
Until there was nobody really there
Increment by increment
Increment by increment
Increment by increment

Oh remember me
Yeah remember me
Oh remember me

Yeah remember me
Oh remember me
Will you remember me?

Did half of you pass away
What about the other half
Yeah what about the other half
Whatever!
We’re all part of the same old bloody regime
With someone taking it out whilst you were putting it in
Increment by increment
Increment by increment
Increment by increment

Oh remember me
Yeah remember me
Oh remember me

Yeah remember me
Oh remember me
Will you remember me?

Oh remember me
Yeah remember me
Oh remember me

From the here and now to eternity
Will you remember me?

There was a more gentle sounding tune waiting to be found on the b-side:-

mp3: British Sea Power – A Lovely Day Tomorrow

It too would be re-recorded in later years, this time with the assistance of The Ecstasy Of Saint Theresa, a shoegaze band from the Czech Republic, and released as a limited-edition single.

mp3: British Sea Power Allied With The Ecstasy Of Saint Theresa – A Lovely Day Tomorrow

If you’re hearing the above track for the first-ever time, I envy you. It’s a real treat for the ears.

But here’s the thing…..it’s the song that really has significance for today. The subject matter is the Czech resistance against the Nazis during WWII,and in particular, the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, a high-ranking German SS official and a main architect of the Holocaust, who was ambushed by a team of Czech and Slovak soldiers who had been sent by the Czechoslovak government-in-exile to kill the Reich-Protector; the team was trained by the British Special Operations Executive.

The twist in the tale was that the Nazis falsely linked the Czech and Slovak soldiers and resistance partisans to the villages of Lidice and Ležáky. Both villages were razed; all men and boys over the age of 16 were shot, and all but a handful of the women and children were deported and killed in Nazi concentration camps.

The BSP/Ecstasy of Saint Theresa single was a celebration of the entry of Czech Republic into the European Union, with a limited edition of 1,942 copies (the year the operation took place). Kateřina Winterová delivers an ever better rendition in her native tongue, on the b-side:-

mp3: British Sea Power Allied With The Ecstasy Of Saint Theresa – Zítra Bude Krásný Den

Thanks for reading.

JC

Basement Jaxx

ROMEO….MAGNIFICENT IN ALL ITS MANIFESTATIONS

Basement Jaxx had ended the 20th century as one of the hottest and most popular new pop/dance acts in the UK, thanks to debut album Remedy, a Top 5 hit that had also spawned four massive singles including the infectious Red Alert which was used on film soundtracks as well as the music in an advert for Coca-Cola.

It took a couple of years for the duo of Felix Buxton and Simon Ratcliffe to emerge with new material, and when they did, it was with this instant classic:-

mp3: Basement Jaxx – Romeo

Released on 6 June 2001, it was met with enormous enthusiasm, helped immensely by a terrific video that paid homage to the Indian Bollywood films of the 70s.

Here’s a taste of the reaction from some of the media:-

It is groovy and luscious enough to be the next single from Destiny’s Child and can be likened to old school disco music. A bittersweet pop classic and will break your heart or make you dance in one frantic twitch, complete with a sassy disco-diva vocal, cornball lyrics, and cheesy new wave synths and background vocals that quickly establish the duo’s obsession with retro kitsch.

It’s also a frisky slip of spicy feminine pop perfectly tailored for maximum radio rotation (the lead vocal is delivered by UK R’n’B artist, Kele Le Rock).

But the song itself went beyond that tailor-made for the charts, as can be heard in this stripped-backed version that highlights it also works as a defiant feminine anthem that wouldn’t sound out of place at a Las Vegas cabaret night or the sort of song that Marc Almond would make a great job of covering:-

mp3: Basement Jaxx – Romeo (acoustic)

And finally, it was put in the hands of the Dewaele brothers, part of the Belgian indie-band Soulwax but who had branched off as 2 Many DJs under which they would become one of the world’s most sought after remix production team. One of their specialties was the mash-up in which the vocals from one song were played over the tune of another. Somehow, they made this one work with The Clash:-

mp3: Basement Jaxx – Magnificent Romeo

Originally issued as a 2 Many DJs white-label single, it was later included on a bonus disc when Basement Jaxx released a ‘Greatest Hits’ compilation in 2005.

JC

Spiritualized

THE MONDAY MORNING HI-QUALITY VINYL RIP : Part Nine : ANYWAY THAT YOU WANT ME

A GUEST POSTING BY FLIMFLAMFAN

I’d like to suggest Spiritualized’s version of Anyway That You Want Me 12” extended mix.

mp3: Spiritualized – Anyway That You Want Me (12″ extended mix)

I don’t know why a decision was made, if one was made at all, to combine Any and Way as one word for this version? Prior to this version, my absolute version was by The Troggs. On hearing this version, however, The Troggs were knocked swiftly to the number 2 spot.

mp3: The Troggs – Any Way That You Want Me

One of my abiding, happy memories of the song, circa 1990, is going to work on the bus – I worked nights at the time and was (and remain) a stickler for arriving on time. There I was at the back of the downstairs, 41 bus, volume to max on my Walkman (or derivative thereof), and lost to the bustling Friday night world outside. So lost was I to Anyway That You Want Me that I missed my stop – Cathedral Street at John Street – and only realising my misjudgment when the bus pulled in at its terminus at the Odeon cinema some 4 stops ahead.

Despite being able to recollect running like hell through the throng of Friday night revellers, back towards John Street, I can’t recall if I was late or not?

It’s a moment I think of fondly; lost in a space where only I and the music seemed to exist – if even for a short time – a feeling that I doubt I could describe without seeming like an absolute arse.

I’m guessing that others may have had similar experiences with other songs on other modes of transport?

flimflamfan

Various

A LETTER FROM AMERICA

A GUEST ICA by JOHNNY THE FRIENDLY LAWYER

Jim facetimed today to offer congratulations. He knew I’ve been out of my mind about the election, as has everyone in the States. I tried–and failed–to explain my mixed responses to the long process culminating in Biden’s victory: befuddlement, outrage, hopefulness, worry, elation, relief, exhaustion. Jim says, “If you want to write it all down you know where to send it.” Here you go, brother. (JC adds…..this arrived with an hour of the phone call!!)

US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 2020 – an ICA

Goldie the Friendly Psychologist and I discuss the debates, the barnstorming, the reports and analysis leading up to Tuesday, November 3rd. She’s all in for the fight but I can’t bear Electioneering.

Goldie and I bet on whose ballot will be received first: She mails hers with extra postage and I drop mine off at a neighborhood ballot box. I lose: she gets an email saying hers has been received and will be counted. I have to wait another day before I’ve Got Mine.

I am swayed by Goldie’s unrelenting optimism. The polls are looking really good. Our friend Aliceann is wary on the Monday but I’m projecting confidence. “Don’t Worry About The Government” I jokingly text her.

And then it’s the 3rd. Goldie is upbeat as always but I’m getting the uneasy feeling that Something’s Gone Wrong Again.

As the day progresses it’s clear that the lopsided polls were All Wrong, and I’m sick, depressed, and stunned. Not Goldie. “It’ll be fine when they count the mail-in votes. Don’t worry.”

Meanwhile, The Waiting is killing me. I am plagued by the twin thoughts that Voldemort will win a second term and that all the wisdom I can muster in opposition is a Tom Petty lyric.

Goldie is unperturbed late into the evening. “We’re going to win,” she says with peremptory authority. I am wondering whether to crack another bottle but She Goes to Bed.

Thursday the 5th things are looking a little brighter. Will Anything Happen? Apparently not. Biden is stuck on 253 electoral votes all day long and the next day, too.

Friday night and still no announcements. The vote counts are turning the battleground States blue. Goldie takes it as a certain victory but I’m at my limit: “Just Tell Me When It’s Over.”

We wake up Saturday and Pennsylvania has declared for Biden, followed shortly by Nevada. JC rings and we muse about possible criminal convictions of the *President*. Whatever happens to him, at long last we can say Clowntime Is Over.

“I knew it all along,” says the beautiful Goldie, and goes off to walk the dog,

Songs linked to above:

Radiohead
UB40
Talking Heads
Buzzcocks
Morphine
Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers
Jason Falkner
Blondie
The Dream Syndicate
Elvis Costello (of course)

JTFL

JC adds……this has been an unexpected and essential late change to plans. The R.E.M. series will return next Sunday.

Park Attack

SATURDAY’S SCOTTISH SONG : #236: PARK ATTACK

One in Four is a compilation CD that was released by the Scottish Association for Mental Health in 2004. It contains 14 exclusive and previously unheard tracks recorded by artists who had previously been involved in events run by the charity.

Among the better-known names you will find Teenage Fanclub, Snow Patrol, The Delgados, Mogwai, Arab Strap and Belle & Sebastian. The CD also included the one track I have in the collection by Park Attack, a band that I had to turn to Amazon to find detail as you can still pick up a digital copy of Half-Past Human, their sole CD:-

Park Attack are the new noise. Driven and intense, the band’s music is an explosion of feedbacking power and wild-throated melody. Founded by the trio of guitarist Rob Churm, drummer Lorna Gilfedder and keyboardist Tom Straughan, Park Attack have been the best-kept secret of the Glasgow music scene for years.

After releasing their debut EP in 2005 (the stunning 16-minute Last Drop At Hideout, on French label Tigersushi and Club Optimo’s O.S.C.A.R.R. imprint in the UK) the group headed to France to record their first full-length. A wild mix of stomp rock, slop punk and no wave intensity, Half-Past Human recalls the tribal arrhythmic sounds of DNA, the blaring energy of Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, and the noise-guitar hell of early Sonic Youth. The synth-heavy sound does little to smooth the roughly sewn corners, which sets electronics against grumbling guitar and wailing vocals. The recent addition of a fourth member, Jamie Grier, on electronics, synth, and bass has further intensified the band’s sound. Live, they are a severe, stomping force of nature and with a host of US dates planned for 2006, the noise will finally be heard.

mp3: Park Attack – Boo Hoo!

This would have been an unreleased track back in 2004 when the SAMH CD was distributed, but it would later appear on the debut album, although I’m unable to say whether it was in the same form or was re-recorded. I wasn’t tempted by this taster to explore any further.

JC

Squeeze

EAST SIDE STORY

I made the promise a while back, when featuring Labelled With Love as an example of a song being a great short story, that I’d offer up some thoughts on its parent album, East Side Story.

As an adolescent teenage lad, I enjoyed listening to Squeeze as there really was something mischievous about them, with many of their lyrics dealing with various aspects of sex, especially on the sophomore album, Cool For Cats, released in 1979 which happened to be the first of theirs that I bought.

Slap and Tickle, Touching Me Touching You, It’s So Dirty, and Cool for Cats are packed with lyrics that are a mixture of being right there in your face, hidden with double-entendres or disguised with local slang. It’s an album that I never really could totally fathom as some of the music left me a tad cold – I knew the band had its roots in pub rock in the south-east of London and some of the songs certainly displayed that particular lineage which jarred with my love for faster, edgier new wave/post-punk songs.

Having said all that, the album also contained Up The Junction, the very reason I had gone out and made the purchase. It was, and remains, one of my favourite 45s of all-time, a tale of working-class bliss gone awry set to an ear-worm of a tune. This was the side of Squeeze that I was desperate for.

The band’s third album, Argybargy, released in 1980 delivered more of what I was after. There was still the occasional take on sex, with the imperious Pulling Mussels (From A Shell) being the best example, but with songs such as Another Nail In My Heart, I Think I’m Go Go, Here Comes That Feeling, and If I Didn’t Love You made this a more satisfying listen, albeit there were still a couple of pub-type tunes that had me reaching for the needle and moving it swiftly over.

I was quite pleased to learn that piano player Jools Holland had decided to leave the band after Argybargy as I had the view that it was his musical tastes, and style of playing that most jarred with me. I really did just want the pure pop of the singers/writers, Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook.

Having said that, I was a bit concerned that they had drafted in Paul Carrack as the replacement – someone I only knew as the singer with Ace who had enjoyed a massive hit with How Long, an MOR-ballad that I hated, back in 1975.

The first of the new songs came in the shape of a lead-off single, one that didn’t actually do all that well, stalling at #35 in early may 1981:-

mp3: Squeeze – Is That Love?

A fast-paced guitar-focused pop song that sounded like Squeeze but with some something added to the sound. A lot of critics at the time mentioned Beatles comparisons in terms of the tune and the use of the harmonies, but I thought there was more than a touch of Elvis Costello in the mix, which is no surprise given he was co-producer and occasional contributor of backing vocals.

It was two weeks later that the album arrived in the shops. I was working as the Saturday Boy in Woolworths at the time and I used my staff discount to pick up a copy of the album when I got to work a few days after it had come out. Robert, the store manager and an ancient bloke in his mid-20s from Belfast, told me that he had been listening to the album at least once a day and that in his view it was a really strange offering, packed with all sorts of different tunes, few of which sounded like the earlier hit singles. I asked him if he liked it and he said he wasn’t sure. Now, given that this bloke had fairly decent taste in music (he owned loads of punk and new wave records and was a huge fan of Joy Division), this was a bit of a concern.

I took the record home that night. I don’t think I would have played it that night as I would have been round at the house of the new-found girlfriend and then the next day would have been devoted to playing football. Sunday evenings was time set aside to listen to the new singles chart rundown, and so it would have been a couple more days before I’d have played the album in full – I wasn’t at school much at this point in time, only going in for exams but secure in the knowledge that I already had enough from the previous year’s diet to have secured a place at uni. Isn’t it funny how some long-forgotten memories from almost 40 years ago are dredged up when you look at the sleeve of an album and give it another listen?

I’ll be honest. The first listen to East Side Story confused me. I probably had given too much credence to Robert’s opinion and was failing to listen without prejudice. There was an absence of hit singles as far as I was concerned, and horror of horrors, there was a straight-up country and western song. There were songs that sounded like the sort of stuff some my mates’ big brothers listened to (psychedelia); there were a couple of songs that still sounded as if Jools Holland was involved in the studio; there was at least one when Chris Difford sounded as if he was deliberately singing out of key above a tune that bordered on the painful to listen to; and then there was this piece of white-soul, Doobie Brothers-style, on which Paul Carrack had taken lead vocal – it was too close a cousin to What A Fool Believes for my tastes.

And then, the summer arrived. School’s Out for ever….and loads of time on my hands as most of my mates have gone into a job or an apprenticeship, failing which some sort of slave-wage scheme that the Thatcher government had insisted young folk signed up to or there would be no welfare benefits. East Side Story found itself on heavy rotation – I had this feeling at the back of my mind that if I could begin to get my head around it then it would be a sign of my tastes maturing, which I probably had to do if I was going to meet and get friendly with all sorts of new and clever folk at uni….

Slowly but surely, the tunes on the album began to resonate with me. This was the sort of album that ‘grown-ups’ listened to. Fourteen songs that covered all sorts of musical genres, never settling into any obvious pattern.

The great trick was to open with In Quintessence, the one track that could easily have passed for a Squeeze 45 as it reminded me of Another Nail…but after that it veered all over the place packed with amazing tunes, packed with lyrics that were at times humorous, at times clever, at times poignant, at times moving and at times thought-provoking. It was an album that was proving to be increasingly rewarding with each listen…..and I even found myself almost warming to the Paul Carrack vocal (on a song written by Difford/Tilbrook) on the basis that there wasn’t a second helping on the LP.

It’s an album that I can still happily listen to these days, more so than any of the other Squeeze records that I had purchased prior to this. This was the album that Up The Junction had long-promised and was a million miles away from Touching Me, Touching You, which now sounded incredibly juvenile in my new found world where wandering through the students union into different bars and areas (including a Games Hall in which a group of hippies hogged the jukebox and provided, over a nine-month period, my long-overdue introduction to Neil Young).

East Side Story. It’s the album in which I did my most growing up.

mp3: Squeeze – In Quintessence
mp3: Squeeze – Someone Else’s Heart
mp3: Squeeze – Woman’s World
mp3: Squeeze – F-Hole

It should be noted that F-Hole goes straight into Labelled With Love, a sequencing of tracks which always makes me smile.

JC

Verve

BURNING BADGERS VINYL (Part 7) : THE VERVE

Brilliant Songs, Brilliantly Remixed #1

# 1 Bittersweet Symphony – The Verve (Hut Records, 1997, HUTTR82)

Welcome to the Saturday night before my 22nd birthday. I have been to Camden Town, which at the time (1997) is Britpop central. In one night I have met three different blokes who all claim to be in Menswear (usually said to young girls in an attempt to impress them), one who claims to be the singer in long-forgotten indie-poppers Rialto (and to be fair he could have been) and another one who said he was ‘in Supergrass’ (he definitely wasn’t). I’ve also genuinely just spilled half a pint of lager onto the shoes of a lad who is definitely in the band Symposium. I know this because I have been drinking with Symposium all afternoon. I wonder what happened to Symposium?

(Well, to answer my own question, one of them is ‘sort of’ in Hot Chip, two of them are/were in Hell for Heroes and I’m unsure about the other two)

I am it has to be said, struggling to walk in a straight line, and I might have just tried to steal one of those boxes that contain copies of the Evening Standard from outside the Tube Station. It’s only half-past ten but Mrs SWC, who is nearly sober, despite drinking twice as much as me, has reminded me that we need to get back to Waterloo for half eleven. Sadly for Mrs SWC, I am demanding food and I am demanding that we enter Mehmet’s Mamaris Grill, which I am declaring to be, “the greatest restaurant in London” to get said food. It also appears that I have forgotten that I am a vegetarian because I have just ordered the world’s largest portion of sausage and chips. Mrs SWC calmly orders the veggie option and we will swap later in the tube station.

With one minute to spare we make it to the train which will take us back to the suburbs, and we flop into some seats as the train trundles away in the south London darkness. Just outside Deptford train station, the train comes to a shuddering and somewhat dramatic stop. I’m still quite drunk, and for a second I think I have fallen off the seat, I’ve certainly been half asleep. A guard comes running through the train and a few people (mostly drunk people) start to look a bit concerned. Mrs SWC, kicks me and tells me to ‘go and take a look’. Me being still quite drunk, decide that this is a great idea.

It turns out the train is on fire.

Something, which, fuelled by alcohol, I find hilarious and can barely stop laughing as I deliver the news to about fifteen people in the carriage. I’m not sure people believe me, despite my convincing delivery. That is until we see five young kids running for dear life down the handily placed ramp that leads to Deptford Train Station, chased by a couple of older guys.

Then the guard appears and tells us to get off the train, as its ‘ablaze’ not on fire.

‘Ablaze’.

He tells us to move quickly to the end carriage and go onto the platform, I immediately go the wrong way – and the guard looks at me as if I am simple and says ‘no the other end, son’. Mrs SWC sighs and grabs my hand; we make it home eventually in a shared cab which is playing reggae music so loudly that it makes my teeth rattle. This I am told is because I kept telling the driver to ‘turn up the bass.

All of which riddim and ting brings us to Britpop’s finest moment and a wonderful piece of vinyl from Badger’s Box.

mp3: The Verve – Bittersweet Symphony (James Lavelle Remix)

The James Lavelle Mix of ‘Bittersweet Symphony’ is a bleeding masterpiece. It first circulated I think, on the original 12” of the single (which came out on my 22nd birthday, hence why I am talking about the events two days prior to my 22nd birthday), but I have never seen a copy of the 12″ so can’t confirm that.

mp3: The Verve – Bittersweet Symphony (Original)

It definitely featured on the CD single of the next single ‘The Drugs Don’t Work’, as I remember playing the mix before I’d played the lead track.

mp3: The Verve – The Drugs Don’t Work

Badger’s version, however, is another promo. Honestly, I don’t know where he got all these from. It is a beautiful thing. A plain white sleeve, with a lime green sticker, on the top of it, which tells us what it is. The mix is fairly laid back, stretching out the sampled string section and replacing most of the guitars with thick old beats. James Lavelle has unsurprisingly made this look, sound, and feel, like an UNKLE record, and I think I love this more than the original.

SWC

Magazine

SOME SONGS ARE GREAT SHORT STORIES (Chapter 40)

Written and scheduled for publication before the USA election results are known. Just seemed to be appropriate, no matter the outcome.

This man is at the door of Hell…somehow it seems to be his destination after a life of subtle stubbornness. He doesn’t expect to find himself waking up out of a dream…he doesn’t expect to pinch himself and wake up and that kind of thing…in fact, the thought of that happening makes him smile. He’s just mildly surprised to find himself there at the door of Hell.

To all accounts, the kindly old man who is the doorman (and who conceivably reminds him of his father) is sat reading a book…but he gets up smartly and without time for either of them to feel that they’re standing on ceremony says, “Hold my book for a minute, would you, while I get the door open!” (Presumably, you know, you need two hands to open the door.) For some reason, the old man doesn’t just put his book down on the chair.

It all happens quite quickly…he finds that he’s made a decision and is already holding the old man’s book…as just about anybody else would have, But it seems a bit curious because…in however small a way you like to consider it…it is as if he’s helping himself enter Hell…the path of least resistance. Of course, at the same time he suddenly thinks..Even as he finally grips the book…”This is my chance for a reprieve…the final test…the straw which will tip the good deeds over the bad.”

Next thing he knows, they have exchanged opinions on the book and he has handed it back to the old man and is being shown into Hell.

mp3: Magazine – The Book

A spoken number that was originally released in March 1980 as the b-side of Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin), which itself was Magazine’s excellent, new-wave take on a Sly & The Family Stone number, which itself has an opening line referencing the Devil.

Oh, why not???

mp3: Magazine – Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)

JC

Heaven 17

AMERICA……DO YOUR DUTY TODAY!!!

(Everybody move to prove the groove)
(Everybody move to prove the groove)
(Everybody move to prove the groove)
(Everybody move to prove the groove)
(Everybody move to prove the groove)
(Everybody move to prove the groove)
(Everybody move to prove the groove)

Have you heard it on the news
About this fascist groove thang?
Evil men with racist views
Spreadin’ all across the land
Don’t just sit there on your ass
Unlock that funky chaindance
Brothers, sisters, shoot your best
We don’t need this fascist groove thang

Brothers, sisters
We don’t need that fascist groove thang
Brothers, sisters
We don’t need the fascist groove thang

History will repeat itself
Crisis point, we’re near the hour
Counterforce will do no good
Hot U.S. I feel your power
Hitler proves that funky stuff
It’s not for you and me, girl (no, no no)
Europe’s an unhappy land
They’ve had their fascist groove thang

Brothers, sisters
We don’t need that fascist groove thang
Brothers, sisters
We don’t need the fascist groove thang

Democrats are out of power
Across that great wide ocean
Reagan’s president elect
Fascist God in motion
Generals tell him what to do
Stop your good time dancing
Train their guns on me and you
Fascist thing advancing
Sisters, brothers lend a hand
Increase our population
Grab that groove thang by the throat
And throw it in the ocean
You’re real tonight, you move my soul
Let’s cruise out on the dance floor
Come out your house and dance your dance
Shake that fascist groove thang (shake it)

Brothers, sisters
We don’t need that fascist groove thang
Brothers, sisters
We don’t need the fascist groove thang
Brothers, sisters
We don’t need that fascist groove thang
Brothers, sisters
We don’t need the fascist groove thang
Brothers, sisters
We don’t need that fascist groove thang
Brothers, sisters
We don’t need the fascist groove thang
Brothers, sisters
We don’t need that fascist groove thang
Brothers, sisters
We don’t need the fascist groove thang
Brothers, sisters
We don’t need that fascist groove thang
Brothers, sisters
We don’t need the fascist groove thang
Brothers, sisters
We don’t need that fascist groove thang
Brothers, sisters
We don’t need the fascist groove thang
Brothers, sisters
We don’t need that fascist groove thang
Brothers, sisters
We don’t need the fascist groove thang.

The song might be almost 40 years old now, but the general message is still relevant:-

mp3: Heaven 17 – (We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang (12″ version)

Here’s yer instrumental and atmospheric track on the b-side. But bear in mind, it has an explosive finish:-

mp3: Heaven 17 – The Decline of The West (12″ version)

Jonny, Goldie, SC, Echorich, Brian…..I know from talking extensively to each of you in the past that you’ll be on board with these sentiments. I have no doubt that just about every other reader or visitor to these parts from across the pond feels the same.

Good luck my friends.

JC

Wedding Present

THE MONDAY MORNING HI-QUALITY VINYL RIP : Part Eight : KENNEDY

Play loud and blow away those Monday morning cobwebs.

mp3: The Wedding Present – Kennedy

It entered the Top 40 at #34 on 7 October 1989. One week later it had rocketed up to #33. It was the first time The Wedding Present cracked the higher(ish) end of the charts as the previous two singles, Nobody’s Twisting Your Arm and Why Are You Being So Reasonable Now? had stalled in the 40s.

It was their first single on a major label and it probably did more than anything else up to this point in time to being the band to the attention of a wider audience. It was certainly the first record of theirs that I ever bought.

In 2015, David Gedge, having been told by an on-line interviewer that Kennedy had been one of the defining songs of the decade, was asked if was dearth/death of the American Dream? Here’s his full answer:-

I’m not really one for explaining my lyrics. That’s usually because they’re so obvious but ‘Kennedy’ is different from my usual style. It’s a lot more vague, for one thing. I wrote it after reading about the Kennedy assassination and the theories about mafia and CIA involvement… so draw your own conclusions!

Three tracks on the b-side of the 12″ – these have also been ripped at 320kpbs. The middle of them is particularly good, while the last of them is a cover, one of a substantial number that Gedge has recorded over the years, either with TWP or under the banner of Cinerama.

mp3: The Wedding Present – One Day This Will All Be Yours
mp3: The Wedding Present – Unfaithful
mp3: The Wedding Present – It’s Not Unusual

And remember, I’m more than happy to take requests and/or guest postings for this series.

JC

R.E.M.

THE SINGULAR ADVENTURES OF R.E.M. (Part 20)

The Robster writes…..

I’m going to come out right away and say it now. I cannot stand The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite. It is a bloody terrible song that should never have been allowed to see the light of day. There, I’ve said it.

‘Automatic For The People’ was undoubtedly a success beyond anyone’s wildest imagination. R.E.M. were now firmly entrenched in the mainstream. An obscure college indie band a decade before, they were now fast becoming an act that could (and would) sell out stadiums around the world. And what’s more, they were doing it on their own terms. But they still had the odd chink in their armour.

The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite was an oddity on AFTP, as Peter Buck explained: “We included this song on Automatic in order to break the prevailing mood of the album. Given that lyrically the record dealt with mortality, the passage of time, suicide and family, we felt that a light spot was needed. In retrospect, the consensus among the band is that this might be a little too lightweight.” He’s not kidding. Whereas there is an argument that the execrable Shiny Happy People had a valid place on ‘Out Of Time’ owing to its upbeat nature, the same cannot be said of Sidewinder. It’s one of those novelty songs that always seemed to be released as singles. Sadly, it’s also the one awful commercial radio stations insist on playing several times a day every day. I know. I’ve had to endure it whenever I’ve been in the office. Which is why I’m so enjoying working from home now!

mp3: R.E.M. – The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite

The song was based on The Lion Sleeps Tonight, which for some reason, the band paid for the rights to use. Mike Mills told Melody Maker in 1992 that the song was about: “somebody that doesn’t have a place to stay. Part of it is also about what man can do that machines can’t. The rest of it – I don’t have any idea what it’s about.” He later said: “Half of the song is about somebody trying to get in touch with someone who can sleep on his floor. The other half – you’re on your own.”

Stipe laughs while singing “or a reading from Dr. Seuss” as he always pronounced Seuss as “Zeus” despite several attempts.

Some other facts for you:

1) In 2010, a survey in the UK named Sidewinder the number one most misheard lyric. The line “Call me when you try to wake her up” is heard as “Calling Jamaica”.

2) The song reached number one in Iceland. NUMBER 1! In Iceland, where they usually have such impeccable music taste!

3) R.E.M. never played Sidewinder live. Thank goodness for small mercies…

I’m done with the facts. The song really isn’t worth this amount of space on such an esteemed blog. So let’s move onto the b-sides. As with the previous singles from Automatic, the b-side of the UK 7” and cassette was a track from ‘Green’. This time it was Get Up, an equally upbeat number but 100,000 times better than the a-side.

mp3: R.E.M. – Get Up

Again there were two CD singles. As part of the deal the band brokered to obtain the rights to The Lion Sleeps Tonight was a clause that they had to record a cover of the song. I suppose this was because Sidewinder was attributed to Berry/Buck/Mills/Stipe as writers, so the authors of Lion may have felt entitled to a cut. Which I suppose is fair enough and the band obliged and put it on CD1. It’s not the best cover you’ll ever hear, but then it was never the best song you’ll ever hear. But it’s OK for curiosity value.

mp3: R.E.M. – The Lion Sleeps Tonight

It’s the third track on CD1 that is the real gem though. I referred to Fretless in my piece on Drive a couple weeks ago. It’s one of the songs the band recorded for Out Of Time but jettisoned. You have to ask yourself ‘Why?’ I don’t know a single R.E.M. fan who would argue against it being on OoT in place of, say, Endgame or Shiny Happy People. Certainly the band has rued that decision over the years. It would also have been a good fit on Automatic, but it ended up on a soundtrack – Until The End Of The World – where it would have languished in obscurity were it not for this single. Hey, did I just say something positive about Sidewinder? Anyway, it’s a beautiful song, probably the saddest Kate Pierson ever sang on too. This song would always make it onto an R.E.M. mixtape. Sidewinder wouldn’t.

mp3: R.E.M. – Fretless

CD2 had the de rigeur disposable instrumental. Organ Song was one of many demos the band made but never pursued. It’s played on a church organ (or a keyboard with a convincing church organ sound) and goes absolutely nowhere throughout its overly long 3½ minutes. One of the most pointless b-sides in the band’s catalogue, and there have been a few! The final track was a demo of Star Me Kitten which, well, sounds like a demo. Not sure why this was included either, as it doesn’t have much to offer that the album track doesn’t do much better. The version with William S. Burroughs that appeared on an X-Files inspired compilation some years later beats this one hands- down. Not the best of “Collectors’ Edition” releases, it has to be said.

mp3: R.E.M. – Organ Song
mp3: R.E.M. – Star Me Kitten (demo)

Let’s take Fretless with us and forget the rest ever happened, OK?

JC writes….

I’m very conscious of the fact that my piece last week re Man on The Moon was overly long and so I’ll do my best to keep this brief.

I like The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite. Peter Buck gives the reasons as to why it was recorded and included before backtracking by saying it was a little too lightweight. I feel it comes in at just the right spot on the album. We’ve had the intensity of Drive and the sadness the deathbed song that was Try Not To Breathe. Coming up next is Everybody Hurts, an intensely sad song that will be looked at further next week as it is the next single. The album would have just been too much to take without breaking things up a bit, and given the various snippets we have offered up via the instrumental b-sides which in effect were demos that weren’t progressed, I think it’s fair to say that the tune for Sidewinder beats them all.

It’s been turned into a novelty song by the attitude of the band since the release of Automatic and the critical reaction. Let’s not kid ourselves, right up to the days before it went to press, R.E.M. could have vetoed the inclusion of Sidewinder but stayed quiet on it, obviously wanting something upbeat at that juncture of the album.

There’s also the fact that the promo video for Sidewinder was filmed on 21 September 1992 – a full two weeks before Automatic was released in the UK and USA, which is a clear indication of an agreement with Warner Bros that is was a likely single at some point in the future. The backtracking started when some reviewers not only wrote that it jarred but questioned why R.E.M. would lower themselves to cover something so lightweight and frivolous. It strikes me that the band members decided that rather than take on such viewpoints and defend what they did, the best course of action was to disown it.

Sidewinder is no better and no worse than songs like Stand or Pop Song 89 or Shiny Happy People or Underneath The Bunker (a disposable and fun number on Life’s Rich Pageant), and was a continuation of R.E.M.’s efforts on almost all albums to include a song that was out of the norm and not to be taken too seriously – which was obviously OK to do until the serious journos questioned the motives.

Anyway, since you made it this far, how about a bonus song? Here’s the William S. Boroughs collaboration for the X-Files soundtrack mentioned in passing by The Robster.

mp3: R.E.M – Star Me Kitten (feat. William S Burroughs)

PS: It’s me next week with a look at Everybody Hurts. It’ll be a short piece, you’ll be relieved to hear!

PPS: Robster is bang-on with his thoughts on Fretless. It’s a hidden gem.

The Robster and JC

Paolo Nutini

SATURDAY’S SCOTTISH SONG : #235: PAOLO NUTINI

You can blame Rachel for this one.

A few years ago, she was giving me a bit of stick for the amount of money I was spending on records, to which my retort was that it paled into insignificance in comparison to the numerous handbags and shoes that litter every nook and cranny of Villain Towers. And I’d never dream of spending the cost of a designer bag or pair of shoes on one piece of vinyl…..actually, that’s a lie as I dream of it often – I just don’t follow through on said dreams.

Rachel is also a fan of Paolo Nutini, the singer, songwriter and musician from Paisley whose debut album, These Streets, went to #3 in the UK charts. The fourth and final single lifted from the album was New Shoes, a song much-played by Rachel after she bought herself the CD album, becoming something of a running joke everytime she brought a further purchase into the house (to be fair, her shoe fetish wasn’t just about designer labels – she’d spend minuscule amounts round at Asda or Tesco on anything that was a size 4 and was sparkly).

I was in Fopp Records in Glasgow when I spotted a copy of New Shoes on 7″ vinyl retailing for £2.99. I couldn’t resist buying it, along with a few other bits’n’bobs, just to have a bit of a laugh with Rachel. I hid the single away until the next time she came back from a shopping expedition, and before she could reach the CD player, I had fired up the turntable and presented her with her first piece of new vinyl in decades.

mp3: Paolo Nutini – New Shoes
mp3: Paolo Nutini – New Shoes (Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly remix)

Yup, the b-side was the work of the equally popular young troubadour from Southend, England.

The thing is, and Rachel doesn’t know it as yet, but I’ve taken back ownership of the single.

The reason being that I’ve been logging all the vinyl and trying to get a value on it, and was astonished to learn that a copy of New Shoes last sold on Discogs for £21 earlier this year and the one copy on offer just now has an asking price of £55 (incl postage) from a seller in Denmark. I need to protect such valuable artifacts, or else it would end up being given away to a charity shop….just like so many of the shoes and handbags over the years, just to make room for others…..

JC

PS: For the record, Paolo Nutini is an all-round good-bloke who does a lot to quietly support grassroots music in the local area. His music might not be to my or your tastes, but he isn’t someone who lives the superstar lifestyle remotely away from the town he was born and raised.

These Animal Men

BURNING BADGERS VINYL (Part 6) : THESE ANIMAL MEN

Burning Badgers Vinyl 6: Too Sussed? – These Animal Men (1994) (Virgin/Hut Records)

by JC

There’s always a risk when a friend asks you to pick a number….especially when it involves a lucky dip for a piece of vinyl.

I chose #4. SWC came back and said it was a piece of vinyl called Too Sussed? by These Animal Men. He also said it was a 5-track EP and would therefore fit in nicely to a run of pieces on EPs that were kept by Tim Badger when it was thought he had sold all of his vinyl.

As it turns out, Discogs has Too Sussed? as an LP and not an EP, albeit it only has five-tracks. Wikipedia has it as an EP. I turned to the UK Offical Charts where the piece of vinyl is down in history as coming in at #39, on 2 July 1994, in the album charts, dropping down to #66 the following week before disappearing from view altogether. It had five tracks on it, and so while it might have been pitched and possibly priced as an EP, the rules of the day that restricted EPs to a maximum of four tracks, would be the reason it went into the albums chart and not the singles chart.

These Animal Men haven’t featured on the blog before for three reasons. One being that I don’t have any of their stuff and the second being that I think they’re shit. The third reason is that nobody has previously offered up a guest posting, and if they had done, then reasons one and two become redundant.

TAM, as they will now be referred to from here on in, were, (and the rest of this para is lifted from allmusic), quickly tossed into the “new wave of new wave” revolution, a music scene created mainly by the U.K. press to help publicize a number of young pop-punk revivalists in England circa 1994. Formed in 1993 in Brighton, England, TAM wasted no time in shocking the masses. The group’s first single, “Speeed King,” was a high-octane tribute to amphetamines; the cover even showed a bowl of suspicious white powder and a couple of straws. Comprised of Julian Hewings (vocals, guitar), Patrick Murray (bass), Alex Boag (guitar, vocals), and Stevie Hussey (drums), TAM capitalized on widespread tabloid rumors of the band consisting of drug-addicted bad boys. The banned “Speeed King” even landed them on the legendary Top of the Pops show (on 30 June 1995 as part of the promo efforts for the Too Sussed? EP/LP)

Back to all music….

However, when These Animal Men released their debut album, (Come on Join) The High Society, Oasis had just unleashed Definitely Maybe into a stagnant rock & roll market searching for the Next Big Thing after the death of Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain. Oasis brought guitar pop back onto the British charts and showed the world that England was worth listening to again. The “new wave of new wave” movement was left in the dust, taking These Animal Men and their sordid tales of drugs, booze, and masturbation with them. The group recorded another full-length, Accident & Emergency, and then split up quietly in 1997. Hewings and Boag reunited in Mo Solid Gold.

The TOTP clip is all you need to realise that TAM were all hype and no substance.

#4 was a bad call on my part. Tim Badger’s taste, it is comforting to learn, was far from impeccable.

mp3: These Animal Men – Too Sussed
mp3: These Animal Men – Speeed King
mp3: These Animal Men – Jobs For The Boys
mp3: These Animal Men – Who’s The Daddy Now?
mp3: These Animal Men – You’re Not My Babylon

Oh, and this should be a good test of the point made the other day by anonymous on how we, as a community, tend to react to a piece of music that splits opinion. There’s a PS today……..

JC

SWC adds…….

I have a theory about some of these records in Badgers Box. Some of them I think contain songs that the band Tim was in used to cover from time to time, which is why he might have owned this record. I know that they did a cover of ‘You’re Not My Babylon’ because he told me that once.

Then again, there is a pile of CDs as well and the eighth disc in that pile is the album ‘(Come on) Join The High Society’ by These Animal Men I listened to that this morning in the car and it’s worse than this EP.

So Badger might have been a closet fan. If he was, he kept it very quiet because TAM were one of those bands that we used to purposely slag off on our old blog. In fact they were on the ‘banned bands list’ alongside such luminaries as Jesus Jones, Molly Half Head, and Knobheads. Bands that we promised to never post any music by, as they were so dreadful.

The exception to the ‘shit ruling’ is track five above, “You’re Not My Babylon”. That is an indie-pop gem. It’s a blistering few minutes of garage racket pop dedicated to John Dillinger. If all their tracks sounded like that, they would have been household names and we’d been on to our third ICA celebrating their work by now. Sadly the rest of their music is about as pleasing as walking on Lego in bare feet and finding a dog turd in the fridge.

TAM split in 1998, they formed various other bands after that, none of which really achieved much. I have no idea what they are doing now. I read somewhere that that chap who called himself ‘Hooligan’ was working as a geography teacher. I think that might be bollocks though.

The only other thing about this band that I think is worthy of raising is that one of the band was a child actor who appeared in Time Bandits, which I happen to think is a great film.

JC (aged 57 years and 5 months)

Brilliant Songs, Brilliantly Remixed #2 – 7 (SEVEN) Pulp Songs

# 2 Pulp – This Is Hardcore (Island Records, 1998, IS 695 DJ Pink)

SWC

LET THEM ALL TALK: AN ICA OF OPENING TRACKS by JC

JC

JC

From The Guardian newspaper, on 1 March 2016:-

JC

A GUEST POSTING by jimdoes

BEGIN THE BEGIN – PART TWO

jimdoes

A GUEST POSTING by jimdoes

BEGIN THE BEGIN – PART ONE

jimdoes

JC

JC

A GUEST POSTING BY FLIMFLAMFAN

flimflamfan

A GUEST ICA by JOHNNY THE FRIENDLY LAWYER

US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 2020 – an ICA

JTFL

JC

JC

Brilliant Songs, Brilliantly Remixed #1

# 1 Bittersweet Symphony – The Verve (Hut Records, 1997, HUTTR82)

SWC

JC

JC

JC

The Robster and JC

JC

JC

JC
(aged 57 years and 5 months)