THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN

AN IMAGINARY COMPILATION ALBUM : #260 : KYLIE MINOGUE

A GUEST POSTING by SWISS ADAM

(JC says….be still, my beating heart)

I’ve submitted several ICAs to The Vinyl Villain before: a 20 track double album attempting to summarise the career and spirit of Andrew Weatherall; the adventures of Mick Jones post- Clash in Big Audio Dynamite; the SST years of US punks Husker Du; a short in length but long in love appreciation of San Pedro’s Minutemen; a follow up to Echorich’s A Certain Ratio ICA, ten more songs from Manchester’s most underrated post- punk/ punk- funk pioneers; a 10 song compilation fleshing out Iggy Pop’s solo career.

Since the Iggy one I’ve started but not finished several ICAs including a sketchy outline of a Spacemen 3 ICA, a Primal Scream one (which essentially turned into another Weatherall one), thought about writing a Durutti Column one to follow the first one from years ago, sketched out an ICA for Factory Records (one without New Order or Joy Division) and had some vague ideas about a Creation Records one. I part wrote an Aphex Twin one but struggled to commit. I haven’t managed to get any of these finished for one reason or another. Flicking through the TV channels the other night and I happened upon a Top Of The Pops special and suddenly it became clear who my next ICA should be about…

The Locomotion

In 1987 Kylie and the cast of Neighbours performed the Little Eva song at half time at an Aussie rules football game. This led the young Kylie to a recording contract with Mushroom Records and a cover of the song being released the same year in Australia. In the UK, PWL picked it up, re-recorded it and sent it to the top of the charts. Well, very near the top, it stalled at number 2 where it sat for four weeks.

I’m sure you, like me, were not a fan of PWL in 1987- 88. PWL were the antithesis of what we listened to, conveyor belt pop designed to part teenagers and their pocket money. Even more annoyingly they were an independent label so their singles would top the indie charts with ease, beating our indie heroes in the only chart they could be winning in. We, of course, were listening to The Wedding Present, The Primitives, The Smiths final lp, The Mary Chain’s Darklands, Public Enemy’s debut, Sonic Youth, Pet Shop Boys maybe if you nodded towards chart music, S’Express maybe or Bomb The Bass if you were into the new sounds, The Housemartins, R.E.M.’s Document, That Petrol Emotion, Billy Bragg’s great leap forward, anything but not PWL.

But to deny the brilliance of Kylie’s version of The Locomotion is to deny Kylie. Totally disposable, utterly efficient, cheap pop music. Which is exactly what pop music should be, you might argue. Kylie’s Top of The Pops performance to promote the single is peak early Kylie, her in a red body con dress skipping about the stage like it’s the only thing in the world, and four male backing dancers with the biggest grins and none-more-1988 stage clothes, 501s, Doc shoes and white t-shirts.

Better The Devil You Know

Some of Kylie’s PWL singles were throwaway, functional, and forgettable. Many in fact. The ones they gave to their lesser artists were even worse. But occasionally, with Kylie, they could hit the mark. Better The Devil You Know is a 70s disco throwback and catchy AF. Her cover of Chairman of the Board’s Give Me Just A Little More Time is similarly good.

JC adds (with apologies for interrupting the flow of the ICA)

Nick Cave is a huge fan of Better The Devil You Know. In 1998, he delivered a lecture entitled ‘The Secret Life of The Love Song’ at the Vienna Poetry Festival in which he waxed very eloquently about the lyrics

Say you won’t leave me no more
I’ll take you back again
No more excuses, no, no
‘Cause I’ve heard them all before
A hundred times or more
I’ll forgive and forget
If you say you’ll never go
‘Cause it’s true what they say
Better the devil you know

Our love wasn’t perfect
I know, I think I know the score
You say you love me, O boy
I can’t ask for more
I’ll come if you should call
I’ll be here every day
Waiting for your love to show
‘Cause it’s true what they say
It’s better the devil you know
I’ll take you back
I’ll take you back again

“When Kylie sings these words, there is an innocence to her voice that makes the horror of the chilling lyric all the more compelling. The idea presented within this song, dark and sinister and sad, that love relationships are by nature abusive, and that this abuse, be it physical or psychological, is welcomed and encouraged, shows how even the most seemingly harmless of love songs has the potential to hide terrible human truths.

Like Prometheus chained to his rock, the eagle eating his liver night after night, Kylie becomes Love’s sacrificial lamb, bleating an earnest invitation to the drooling, ravenous wolf to devour her time and time again, all to a groovy techno beat. “I’ll take you back, I’ll take you back again.” Indeed, here the love song becomes a vehicle for a harrowing portrait of humanity, not dissimilar to the Old Testament psalms. Both are messages to God that cry out into the yawning void, in anguish and self-loathing, for deliverance.”

Quite……I’ll hand back now to Adam. JC

Confide In Me

In 1994 Kylie signed to DeConstruction, Mike Pickering’s label that had massive hits with K-Klass and Bassheads but wanted someone who was a name signing. Kylie wanted some credibility and to work with different songwriters. The result was this, a superb adult pop song, Kylie with Brothers In Rhythm on production, some trip-hop drums, Middle Eastern melodies, a didgeridoo and a string section. The strings are seriously giving the song gravitas and sexiness, there’s a moody undertow and she sings of being hurt, of bearing crosses and sharing secrets. The breakdown part where she whispers ‘stick or twist/ the choice is yours’ is Kylie grown up, the PWL years consigned to the past.

The video, dayglo and comic strip-like, gives us 6 Kylies, one in camouflage, one in black PVC, one in a babydoll dress and so on. Pills flash on the screen and messages to ‘call now for salvation’. It’s knowing and clever and very mid- 90s and gave her the new nickname SexKylie. Confide In Me is her best song, a genuine mid- 90s peak.

Breathe

Kylie’s 1997 album, titled Impossible Princess then untitled in the wake of the death of Diana and renamed ‘97, was another wide-ranging, more adult album, taking in trip-hop, indie and house. The Manic Street Preachers were on co-writing duties on two songs and Dave Ball from Soft Cell and the Grid on Breathe. Electronic pop, floating on a groove, experimental and open and Kylie singing about meditation, stopping and letting go. The album sank a little bit and she moved on but this song is, like Confide In Me, a genuine highlight of the time.

All The Lovers

All The Lovers was a comeback in 2010, produced by Stuart Price who was the in-vogue producer a decade ago. Euphoric mid-tempo pop with synthesisers buzzing and wobbling and Kylie declaring and swooning in a killer chorus ‘all the lovers/ that have gone before/ they don’t compare to you’.

By this point Kylie was achieving that elder stateswoman status the media confer on someone who has been around for a few decades. She was older, wiser, several public breakups down the line (not least her very public time with Michael Hutchence). She was also post-treatment for cancer which inevitably put her career on the ropes for a while. Thankfully she recovered fully and her postponed Glastonbury performance in 2019 showed the warmth of feeling people have for her.

Incidentally, not so long ago I watched a documentary about Michael Hutchence, which is well worth catching even if you think you’ve got little interest in INXS, Hutchence, or Kylie. In the middle, it dealt with his relationship with Kylie and had some amazing home video footage of the pair of them on holiday and on a sleeper train, clearly a period of their lives that affected both of them deeply.

Slow

Slow is hot, full-on Mediterranean, being in the sun all day hot, the sort of heat where you have a shower at teatime, get dressed, step outside and start sweating again. Hot hot heat.

Co-written by Emeliana Torrini, it is three and a half minutes of that kind of hot, synth bass, pattering drums and Kylie’s voice, decorated with a minimalist synth topline, pure electro- pop. ‘Slow down and dance with me’ she purrs. A perfect slice of how pop music sounded in 2003.

The Chemical Brothers remix is a blast, an intense bleep- ridden ride which takes off in the second half, all breakdowns and lift offs and eyes closed tight under the strobe light.

In Your Eyes

Dance-pop from 2002, slightly moody, more jerky robotic dancing and a dash of Europop with a heart-stopping sweep into the chorus and the song’s title.

Love At First Sight

All build up and release, dance-pop that shows the influence of French house and disco. Daft Punk without the helmets. Another eye- catching video, supposedly shot in one take and with a slightly disorientating effect and geometric shapes spinning around.

Where The Wild Roses Grow

In 1995 Kylie duetted with Nick Cave on this murder ballad, a grim tale sweetly sung by Kylie and with Nick well out of tune at least twice, where Nick smashes Elisa Day’s head in with a rock in the third verse and then puts a rose between her teeth. Kylie makes the step up to serious rock singing with ease. Nick wrote it with her in mind and sent it to her parent’s house, a cassette with Blixa Bargeld singing her lines (that version was eventually released on a Bad Seeds B- sides compilation). In a year of Britpop, parochial flag-waving and media storms about the race for the number 1 slot between two distinctly average guitar pop singles, Where The Wild Roses Grow stands out as both pop and art. It remains The Bad Seeds most successful single worldwide.

Can’t Get You Out Of My Head

The perfect start of the 21st-century pop song – a sleek, modern, hook laden monster, peak synthesis of music and video. Kylie in a science fiction sports car zooming around the city of the future. Kylie in a hooded robe, almost revealing everything, striking poses and doing the dance. Red shirt and black tie clad male dancers in red visors, so 2020, marching in a Kraftwerkian homage. Slow-motion Kylie on the roof of a skyscraper in a post-modern city, hips swinging from high to low in a panelled metallic mini- dress, surrounded by light bulbs flashing and dancers now dressed in black. And beneath the sheer surface and the obsession of the chorus there’s something darker, ‘a dark secret within me’, which gives the song an edge. You know this song inside out and it’s one of those rare occasions where familiarity doesn’t breed contempt.

At the Brit Awards she mashed it up with Blue Monday, New Order’s stuttering drum machine announcing Kylie’s entry on to the stage, a nod and a wink to one of the previous century’s sleekest, most hook-laden monsters.

In his book Words And Music Paul Morley sees all of pop music’s forward progression since 1955 leading towards this song and Kylie in her yellow sports car to ‘the city of sound and ideas’ and while I usually find Paul Morley pretty irritating, he’s got a point. Can’t Get You Out Of My Head is the sound of pop music in the 21st century, a lighter than air bouncing robot bassline, some la la las, Kraftwerk and New Order’s synths and an Australian pop star merged together playing on a screen somewhere near you right now.

Bonus Tracks

4 songs to make up an indie-friendly bonus disc, just in case the above (Nick Cave excepted) is too pop for the purists.

Slow (Chemical Brothers remix)
Go Home Productions: Begging Kylie (Kylie v The Stone Roses)
Nothing Can Stop Us Now (St Etienne cover)
Can’t Get Blue Monday Out Of My Head (Kylie v New Order)

ADAM

JC adds an additional bonus

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Where The Wild Roses Grow (Blixa co-vocal)

Art Objects

SCARED TO GET HAPPY – ART OBJECTS

I recently treated myself to a copy of Scared to Get Happy: A Story of Indie-Pop 1980–1989. It was released back in June 2013 by Cherry Red Records and consists of five CDs with more than songs from indie bands and singers from the decade. It doesn’t claim to be the full story as there are a number of key elements missing due to licensing issues – nothing for instance from Orange Juice, Felt, The Smiths, The Vaselines, The Pastels or My Bloody Valentine – but it’s a damn fine effort.

I already had the majority of the songs in one shape or other – either the original vinyl or via other CD compilations issued by Cherry Red or Rough Trade – but there’s a good number that were new to me and therefore will be new to the blog. Such as today’s effort:-

mp3: Art Objects – Showing Off To Impress The Girls

The bio from all music advises:-

The Art Objects were an offbeat British group whose embrace of noisy, non-melodic guitar figures and strong psychedelic influences paved the way for post-punk acts such as Echo & the Bunnymen and the Teardrop Explodes. Formed in Bristol in the southwest of Great Britain, the Art Objects began in mid-1978 as an eccentric three-piece featuring spoken vocals from poet Gerard Langley, fractured guitar accompaniment from Jonathan J. Key (aka Jonjo), and dancing by Wojtek Dmochowski. They adopted a more conventional lineup in the summer of 1979 when drummer John Langley joined the band, soon followed by bassist Bill Stair and second guitarist Robin Key (Jonathan’s brother).

In 1980, the Art Objects released a three-song single for the Fried Egg label, featuring the tracks “Hard Objects,” “Biblioteque,” and “Fit of Pique”; the record was a modest success on the independent charts, and a second single soon followed, “Showing Off (To Impress the Girls)” and “Our Silver Sister.” Heartbeat Records, which released the group’s second single, wanted an album from the Art Objects, and Bagpipe Music was recorded during five days of sessions in the summer of 1980. It was nearly a year before Bagpipe Music was finally released, and shortly after it reached stores, the group split up, with Gerard Langley, Wojtek Dmochowski, and John Langley soon forming a new group, the Blue Aeroplanes; most of the songs of the Blue Aeroplanes’ debut album, Bop Art, began as Art Objects tunes, and Bill Stair, Jonathan J. Key, and Robin Key helped out during the recording. In 2007, an expanded reissue of Bagpipe Music was released by British indie label Cherry Red.

I know there’s a few fans of The Blue Aeroplanes out there who probably knew all this already but, as I mentioned earlier, it was all new to me.

Showing Off To Impress The Girls is a very fine sounding sub-three-minute single, with a lead vocal that is almost spoken rather than sung….and reminds me of the way that Robert Forster delivered his vocals in the early days of The Go-Betweens. The tune has a lot going on in the background too, changing pace and tempo a couple of times, with the hint of a Tom Verlaine-style guitar break towards the end being a particular highlight.

I couldn’t find a copy of the b-side anywhere, short of looking to grab a hold of the original vinyl on the second-hand market, so here instead is the lead track from the debut EP:-

mp3: Art Objects – Hard Objects

Keep tuning in this week some more instalments from Scared To Get Happy.

JC

R.E.M.

THE SINGULAR ADVENTURES OF R.E.M. (Part 9)

That’s great, it starts with an earthquake
Birds and snakes, and aeroplanes
And Lenny Bruce is not afraid

Eye of a hurricane, listen to yourself churn
World serves its own needs
Don’t mis-serve your own needs
Speed it up a notch, speed, grunt, no, strength,
The ladder starts to clatter
With a fear of height, down, height
Wire in a fire, represent the seven games
And a government for hire and a combat site
Left her, wasn’t coming in a hurry
With the Furies breathing down your neck

Team by team, reporters baffled, trumped, tethered, cropped
Look at that low plane, fine, then
Uh oh, overflow, population, common group
But it’ll do, save yourself, serve yourself
World serves its own needs, listen to your heart bleed
Tell me with the Rapture and the reverent in the right, right
You vitriolic, patriotic, slam fight, bright light
Feeling pretty psyched

It’s the end of the world as we know it
It’s the end of the world as we know it
It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine

Six o’clock, T.V. hour, don’t get caught in foreign tower
Slash and burn, return, listen to yourself churn
Lock him in uniform, book burning, bloodletting
Every motive escalate, automotive incinerate
Light a candle, light a motive, step down, step down
Watch your heel crush, crush, uh oh
This means no fear, cavalier, renegade and steering clear
A tournament, a tournament, a tournament of lies
Offer me solutions, offer me alternatives and I decline

It’s the end of the world as we know it (I had some time alone)
It’s the end of the world as we know it (I had some time alone)
It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine (time I had some time alone)
I feel fine (I feel fine)
It’s the end of the world as we know it (time I had some time alone)
It’s the end of the world as we know it (time I had some time alone)
It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine (time I had some time alone)

The other night I drifted nice continental drift divide
Mountains sit in a line, Leonard Bernstein
Leonid Brezhnev, Lenny Bruce and Lester Bangs
Birthday party, cheesecake, jellybean, boom
You symbiotic, patriotic, slam but neck, right, right

It’s the end of the world as we know it (time I had some time alone)
It’s the end of the world as we know it (time I had some time alone)
It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine (time I had some time alone)
It’s the end of the world as we know it
It’s the end of the world as we know it
It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine (time I had some time alone)
It’s the end of the world as we know it (time I had some time alone)
It’s the end of the world as we know it (time I had some time alone)
It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine (time I had some time alone)
It’s the end of the world as we know it (time I had some time alone)
It’s the end of the world as we know it (time I had some time alone)
It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine (time I had some time alone)

And when played live, the audience to a man, woman and child take great delight in chanting, on cue and in time, ‘Leonard Bernstein’.

A song that has always been one of the most-loved and most popular in the entire back catalogue. It appealed immediately to the fans of old (or so I understand from reading contemporary reviews) and it has always found favour with those who would discover R.E.M. in later years. And it’s the song that got me interested in the band.

I wasn’t doing much in terms of music in 1987. My personal life had been falling to bits in some ways and my drastic solution was to look to settle down and get married. Looking back with the benefit of hindsight it was doomed from the outset as we had, outside of a similar sense of humour, not a great deal in common – and most obviously when it came to music. So, I was going through a period of trying to fit in with the mainstream and not paying attention to what was happening out there – the subsequent gaps in my education would later be filled by the efforts of a few people, but mainly Jacques the Kipper, a work colleague at the time and now a lifelong and valued friend.

The radio was playing in the kitchen of Sunday evening when I was sitting in the house where my fiance lived with her parents – everyone else was watching a TV drama and I was catching up on some reading of papers for a meeting at work the following day. All of a sudden, I’m distracted by an upbeat tune accompanied by the delivery of a nonsensical lyric at breakneck speed. The DJ, Annie Nightingale, then said she had just played the new single by R.E.M. that had been requested by someone from somewhere I’ve forgotten. I hadn’t quite caught the name of the song but assumed it was called And I Feel Fine.

A couple of months later and I hear another song by R.E.M. on the radio. It’s a love song, of that I’m sure, but it’s played again at a breakneck speed with a memorable guitar riff and solo. I’m not buying much in the way of new music but I decide I’m going to get my hands on the new album, which I’ve seen in the shops, but as it’s now not that long till Christmas, I decide to wait and add it to the list of presents from Santa.

25 December 1987. The first time I ever owned anything by R.E.M. You never forget your first time which is why Document will always be my favourite album of theirs, without question.

Years later, I’m long divorced, re-married (happily!!) and I’ve got this new music blog going that has rekindled a love for vinyl. I’m constantly in and out of second-hand shops seeking out, in the main, the sort of stuff I missed out on in the late 80s. Any R.E.M. singles, especially on 12″ are grabbed without hesitation – and that’s why I have a number of them now sitting proudly in the cupboard (all the while kicking myself that I went down the CD singles route in the early 90s for the later releases).

It was still a huge thrill to get my hands on the vinyl and I couldn’t wait to get home and give it a spin. It was originally released in the UK in August 1987 but once again proved to be a failure in terms of sales. I don’t think anyone at IRS was too worried as the different single that had been released over in the USA in August 1987 was proving to be a monster hit and was making stars out of the band members – and that’s me setting up the scenario for the next installment of this series!! But let’s return to today, as there’s still quite a back story to be told.

It’s The End Of The World.……was issued in 7″ and 12″ format. It wasn’t changed or edited from the album version.

mp3: R.E.M. – It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)

The b-side of the 7″ had one live song and the 12″ had two-live songs, both taken from an acoustic set played at Mccabe’s Guitar Shop in Santa Monica on 24 May 1987. This particular show happened while the new album was being mixed in Los Angeles (it has been recorded in Nashville); it was seen, at the time, as a one-off, organised to raise funds for a friend who was fighting a costly legal battle. R.E.M were billed at the top but it was very much a collective effort involving a number of kindred spirits and friends – Steve Wynn and Kendra Smith (The Dream Syndicate), Natalie Merchant (10,000 Maniacs), Jenny Homer (Downey Mildew), Peter Case (ex-The Nerves) and David Roback (The Rain Parade, and later, Mazzy Star). Indeed, it was Steve Wynn who opened the show, playing his own material and covers, followed by Natalie Merchant and eventually one or more of Stipe, Mills or Buck would join the revolving cast- being an acoustic show in a tiny venue, Bill Berry’s talents weren’t able to be utilised.

The show was bootlegged and cassette copies were soon readily available. The band liked what they heard and decided that part of it should be given an official release via b-sides, which happened on both sides of the Atlantic, thereby creating an unusual situation that the b-sides were the same but the a-sides were different!

mp3: R.E.M. – This One Goes Out (live – McCabe’s Record Shop)
mp3: R.E.M. – Maps and Legends (live – McCabe’s Record Shop)

Yup, the first of the songs was carrying that title in May 1987 – it would become The One I Love later on in the process as the band completed the mixing and began to pull the artwork together. It was the seventh song to be aired at McCabes and the first in which Michael Stipe took lead vocal. Oh, and the guitar part is not the work of Peter Buck, but is played by Geoff Gans who was the art department boss at I.R.S. Records who, prior to establishing himself in graphics, had played guitar with local bands in LA.

It was the only song on which Gans played at the show, with Buck coming on board right after.

Here’s the other thing worth mentioning – McCabes was actually two sets in the one show. The first set closed with the ensemble getting together for a bunch of covers played back-to-back, and following an interval, a second set followed a similar format with Steve Wynn opening proceedings in advance of the members of R.E.M. taking to the stage. I only mention this as this new song. This One Goes Out, was aired again during the second set but this time with Peter Buck on guitar – and yet, the decision was taken to go with the version from the first set.

Maps and Legends was aired during the first set with just Stipe and Buck on stage at the time.

Apologies for the length of today’s post, but there was just so much to write about in connection with this particular single, both from a personal standpoint and from the fact that this, at the time, unheralded live show in a guitar shop, would point the way for R.E.M. in later years.

It’s me again next week with some thoughts on The One I Love.

JC

Norman Blake

SATURDAY’S SCOTTISH SONG : #223 : NORMAN BLAKE

Two for the price of one this week.

The hard drive contains a couple of songs attributed solely (as such!) to Norman Blake, both courtesy of compilations:-

mp3: Norman Blake – Only With You
mp3: Norman Blake & John Burnside – Girl

The former is from this CD marking 25 years of the wonderful and excellent Marina Records, based in Hamburg but with a lot of connections to the Scottish music scene, often via Douglas Macintyre and Creeping Bent Records.

The latter is from this CD in which various Scottish singers/bands hooked up with poets to create new songs.

Today’s post is dedicated to my dear friend Andrea Peviani (Conventional Records) who, from living close to Milan, has had to deal longer with the dreadful impact and consequences of COVID-19 than most of the rest of us.

JC

Altered Images, Blondie

CLEARING UP SOME CONFUSION – FIVE YEARS AFTER THE FACT

It was June 2015 when Don’t Talk To Me About Love featured as part of the short series looking back at the singles released by Altered Images. There was initially a fair bit of confusion on that I had been really lazy in posting up what I described as the ‘Extended Version’ as being from the 12″ single when it had in fact been taken from the version made available on the reissued edition of the album, Bite.

The fact that the CD version came in at 7 mins in length, as opposed to the 3:49 version on the 7″ (not forgetting the just under 5 mins version on the album) was the reason I made the initial mistake, which was pointed out quite quickly in one of the first comments offered up that day. I did try and rectify things quickly but amid all the panic and confusion, I’m not really sure if I did.

So…. five years on, and while I still don’t have the world at my feet, I do have the opportunity to pull out the 12″ from the cupboard and do a fresh digital recording via the new turntable. The fact that the 12″ came in a completely differently designed sleeve from the 7″, albeit both were the work of the late and deservedly acclaimed David Band, should have clicked with my brain all those years ago.

mp3: Altered Images – Don’t Talk To Me About Love (12″ version)

That’s all 8 and a half minutes of it, complete with the little bits of wizardry deployed in the studio,

I air the 7″ version, without fail, at every Simply Thrilled night and it inevitably fills the floor, no matter how early it is. There was a tremendously succinct but memorable description of the song offered up by For Malcontents Only back in June 2015:-

“The Scottish Heart of Glass!”

Which provides the perfect excuse, and again re-recorded using the new turntable:-

mp3: Blondie – Heart of Glass (12″ version)

Now, if listening to these two songs doesn’t put a smile on your face and simultaneously gets your hips swaying, then you are an unwell person. My advice to you is…. seek professional help!!

JC

Fall

JUST A LITTLE SOMETHING I LIKE TO DO NOW AND AGAIN

And that’s to have a 12-inch effort by The Fall pop up out of nowhere so that some of you will be smiling while others will shake their heads with some dismay.

I’ve written previously about Free Range and the fact it is up there among my favourite 45s by the band. Free Range actually reached #40 in the singles chart which was the best ever-showing for a track that wasn’t a cover version. Its follow-up appeared in the shops in June 1992 and despite being another catchy number that had something of a singalong or at least hummable refrain, it didn’t come close to cracking the Top 75:-

mp3: The Fall – Ed’s Babe

The line-up at the time, in addition to Mark E Smith, consisted of Craig Scanlon (guitar), Steve Hanley (bass), Dave Bush (keyboards) and Simon Wolstencroft (drums) and the track is credited to Scanlon/Smith. It’s one that wouldn’t have sounded out of place during the Brix-era, being almost pop-orientated with the keyboards at the heart of the things. It’s certainly one of the most danceable of the band’s numbers.

It was released only on 12″ and CD with the former offering up a misprint on the label which perhaps indicates a late change of mind to ensure there was just the requisite number of songs (four) to have it qualify as a single and not the five that appear on the label, albeit just four songs are listed on the reverse of the sleeve. This was the track on the same side as the single:-

mp3: The Fall – Pumpkin Head Xscapes

Another danceable number, quite baggy in sound that certainly wouldn’t have sounded out of place as a tune on an Inspiral Carpets single or album. But it also comes with much use of the vocal being sung through a megaphone and then ends with a spoken outro by someone who isn’t MES which places it firmly in the camp of The Fall and nobody else. This one was written by Scanlon/Smith/Hanley.

Flipping the record over and there’s these two tracks:-

mp3: The Fall – The Knight The Devil and Death
mp3: The Fall – Free Ranger

If I was to play the former to you without any hints or clues, I reckon you’d need probably a thousand tries before coming up with it being a song by The Fall, mainly as there’s no vocal contribution from MES and indeed given that he wasn’t credited with any instruments, other than tapes, for any of the sessions of the songs that made up the sessions for the album Code: Selfish and the various b-sides to the singles, then he may not have contributed to this track, albeit he does get a writing credit (Wolsencraft/Smith/Scanlon).

It’s also a very different sort of tune than normal, with the initial reliance on an acoustic guitar giving it something of a folky sort of feel at times. Although not credited on the sleeve of the 12″, the spoken/sung vocal is the work of Cassell Webb, an American-born singer whose career dates back to the late 60s and has encompassed a wide range of genres. Her husband is a name that should be familiar to Jonny and Echorich (among others) as Craig Leon was a major part of the NYC scene, on the production side, in the late 70s/early 80s, working with the likes of The Ramones, Talking Heads, Blondie, Richard Hell and Suicide. He was the producer of Code: Selfish and his other half was drafted in to provide some backing vocals as well as take the lead on this, rather intriguing track. It’s also down on the label as being track three of the a-side.

The latter is, as the title indicates, a remix of the previous single. It’s not as immediate or powerful as the original but it remains on the few Fall songs ever given the remix treatment and is well worth a listen for that alone.

I’ve mentioned that a fifth track appears on the label of the 12″, slated as the second track on Side-B to follow on from Free Ranger. It eventually saw the light of day via an edition of Volume which was 1990s publication consisting of a CD (usually containing around 20-24 tracks) and a near-200 page booklet with information on the singers and bands on the CD. Volume One appeared in September 1991 and stopped at Volume Seventeen in January 1997. I’m sure it retailed for around £10 – I only ever bought three of them, including Volume Four which has this on it:-

mp3: The Fall – Arid Al’s Dream

This one also has a contribution from Kenny Brady on violin and all-told it makes for the sort of weird and wonderful world that many associate with The Fall, fans and detractors alike.

JC

Squeeze

SOME SONGS ARE GREAT SHORT STORIES (Chapter 37)

This one is a sad short story. The country-style tune propelled the single all the way to #4 in 1981. It was the third, and thus far last, time the last time Squeeze would enjoy a Top 10 hit in the UK. The parent album, East Side Story, is one of my all-time favourites from any era. I’ll get round to praising its merits sometime in the future.

She unscrews the top of her new whisky bottle
And shuffles around in her candle-lit hovel
Like some kind of witch with blue fingers in mittens
She smells like the cat and the neighbours she sickens
The black and white T.V. has long seen a picture
The cross on the wall is a permanent fixture
The postman delivers the final reminders
She sells off her silver and poodles in China

Drinks to remember I, me and myself
And winds up the clock and knocks dust from the shelf
Home is a love that I miss very much
So the past has been bottled and labelled with love

During the wartime, an American pilot
Made every air raid a time of excitement
She moved to his prairie and married the Texan
She learnt from a distance how love was a lesson
He became drinker and she became mother
She knew that one day she’d be one or the other
He ate himself older, drunk himself dizzy
Proud of her features, she kept herself pretty

Drinks to remember I, me and myself
And winds up the clock and knocks dust from the shelf
Home is a love that I miss very much
So the past has been bottled and labelled with love

He, like a cowboy, died drunk in a slumber
Out on the porch in the middle of summer
She crossed the ocean back home to her family
But they had retired to roads that were sandy
She moved home alone without friends or relations
Lived in a world full of age reservations
On moth-eaten armchairs, she’d say that she’d sod all
The friends who had left her to drink from the bottle

Drinks to remember I, me and myself
And winds up the clock and knocks dust from the shelf
Home is a love that I miss very much
So the past has been bottled and labelled with love

Drinks to remember I, me and myself
Winds up the clock and knocks dust from the shelf
Home is a love that I miss very much
So the past has been bottled and labelled with love
The past has been bottled and labelled with love
The past has been bottled and labelled with love

mp3: Squeeze – Labelled With Love

The b-side saw the band offer their own take on the then-popular Stars on 45 things that had been flooding the charts that year.

mp3: Squeeze – Squabs on 45

And yes, I know I featured both these songs back in 2017, but in my defence, I wasn’t offering up the lyric as an example of a short story.

JC

C86, Various

FROM THE BIG BOX OF CASSETTE TAPES…..VIA VINYL (Side 2)

From an article in The Quietus, back in 2011, penned by Jim Keoghan:-

“As soon as a jingly-jangly indie band appears today, the C86 tag isn’t far behind. And yet, this wasn’t always the case. Over time we seem to have diminished a scene that was far more musically and culturally complex that is often assumed. For all its janglyness, C86 was about much more than just that.

Looking back 25 years to the original C86 era, the Britain of then might be unrecognisable to us today. Unemployment into the millions, rising inflation, an unrepentant Tory Government; it’s difficult to comprehend, but that’s what life really was like. Musically, Live Aid (which had taken place a year earlier) perfectly exemplified the landscape of the time with a rosta of bands so irredeemably anodyne they managed to make Queen look interesting.

Against this background, a musical rebellion was fermenting. At first it began in isolated pockets around the country, in places like Bristol and Glasgow but would soon coalesce to produce one of the most eclectic scenes in the short history of independent music.

One of the earliest people to really pick up on this change was Roy Carr, then a journalist with the NME.

“During the mid 80s, a few of us at the paper were starting to hear and see a load of bands coming through with a different sound to that which had dominated the independent scene for much of the earlier part of the decade. You got the feeling that something was happening, like the ground was shifting slightly.”

At the time, the NME was fond of putting together and releasing mix-tapes covering any number of different genres. It might sound quaint today in an age of unfettered access to anything ever recorded, but in those far off days a simple mix-tape could be one of the best chances for its readers to get hold of something new.

“We thought we’d do one of these for what was happening in indie music at the time. I’d done it for the paper before in 1981 – the imaginatively titled C81 – and that had been quite popular. So a few of us got together and started picking the bands we wanted to go on the tape.”

The tape did well, selling thousands of copies via mail order and eventually being released as an LP a year later by Rough Trade. According to Sean Dickson, former lead singer with The Soup Dragons, this success acted as something of a catalyst – not just on the 22 bands featured, but on the scene as a whole.

“The tape was the key to the whole C86 thing taking off,” he says. “Aside from its impact on our profile, which was big, its release threw a spotlight on everything. I think what you can say is that it made what was underground suddenly over-ground. It took all these little scenes from around the country and pushed them together into the limelight – scenes like mine in Glasgow, where bands like us and Primal Scream had been knocking around for a few years; going to the same gigs, enjoying the same taste in music and sharing a similar attitude in the way that we made music.”

What’s striking about the bands both on the tape and those associated with the scene is the lack of a defining sound. If you listen to it today, the NME tape alone sounds like a load of bands with very little in common.

“We sounded nothing like a lot of the groups,” says Kev Hopper, bassist at the time with Stump. “Our song, ‘Buffalo’, is totally different to something like ‘Breaking Lines’ by The Pastels. When people today think of C86 it’s the bands with the fey melodies and jangly guitars that come to mind. But there were many other groups that were loud and energetic, such as Big Flame and The Wedding Present, and then people like us and Bogshed who were quite experimental. Listen to the tape today and it’s clear that the scene was about much more than just indie-pop.”

It is possible to pick your way through C86 and find several bands whose music did share bits in common. Many of those from Glasgow, such as The Pastels and Primal Scream, indulged in the more classically fey sound normally associated with C86, whereas on the Ron Johnson label, acts like The Shrubs, Big Flame and A Witness released songs that were fast and furious. But these connections were limited, and overall there is little to unite all the groups together, beyond a certain under-produced quality that characterised much of what was released during this period.

“The thing about music round then is that the people making it were drawing their influences from so many different places,” says John Robb, whose book Death to Trad Rock catalogues many of the bands around at the time. “Yes, there were bands that were heavily into the Velvet Underground and producing jangly pop, but there were others who were taking ideas from punk, blues, jazz, funk, rock & roll, ska, dub and anything else they could get their hands on and then twisting it all into something new.”

And yet to say that these groups had nothing at all to unite them would be wrong. One of the strongest shared characteristics evident in the scene was the rediscovery of punk’s DIY ethic. “This was all about bands doing it for themselves,” says John Robb. “This aspect of the scene isn’t always appreciated. There was no grovelling to major labels. Bands pressed their own records, put on their own gigs, designed their own record sleeves and published their own fanzines. It could often come across as quite amateurish but most of the time that was because those involved didn’t care about being slick. This wasn’t corporate rock; these bands didn’t have to sell millions. They were making music their own way. This was independent music in the truest sense of the word. Anti-establishment and everything that trad-rock wasn’t.”

Yet despite its obvious musical and cultural complexity, over time C86 has been reduced to just one thing: journalistic short-hand for indie-pop. Its role in the creation of this genre is certainly an important one; the jingly-jangly sound we all know so well was formed during the mid-to-late 80s. C86 bands played a huge part in this, building on the foundations laid by Postcard Records at the beginning of the decade. Indie pop, in all its various forms since, owes a debt to bands such as The Pastels, The Shop Assistants and The Bodines.

But this shouldn’t be the only recognised legacy of C86. Some of its more abrasive groups have been quoted as influences by bands as diverse as the Manic Street Preachers, Lambchop and Franz Ferdinand. What’s more, its success stories included groups like The Wedding Present, who reflected the energetic side of the scene. And a few years after C86 had fizzled out, its cultural dimension was also a clear spiritual influence on Riot Grrrl – something acknowledged by bands who possessed the same DIY ethic, such as Bikini Kill and Bratmobile.

C86 as a scene and a tag is a more complex beast than we give it credit for. In the spirit of the DIY ethic this is my attempt to get off my arse and do something to right the wrong that has been done to C86 over the last thirty years. Spread the word dear reader; C86 was jangly, C86 was fey but C86 was also about much more than that too.”

——————–

Here, as promised yesterday, is Side 2.

The Shop Assistants – It’s Up to You
The Close Lobsters – Firestation Towers
Miaow – Sport Most Royal
Half Man Half Biscuit – I Hate Nerys Hughes (From The Heart)
The Servants – Transparent
Mackenzies – Big Jim (There’s No Pubs In Heaven)
Big Flame – New Way (Quick Wash And Brush Up With Liberation Theology)
We’ve Got A Fuzzbox and We’re Gonna Use It – Console Me
McCarthy – Celestial City
The Shrubs – Bullfighter’s Bones
The Wedding Present – This Boy Can Wait (A Bit Longer!)

Once again, individual tracks are available from clicking each of the above links. Here’s everything as one continuous listen if that’s your preference:-

mp3: Various – C86 NME/Rough Trade 100 (Side Two – vinyl version)

JC

C86, Various

FROM THE BIG BOX OF CASSETTE TAPES…..VIA VINYL (Side 1)

From wiki:-

C86 is a cassette compilation released by the British music magazine NME in 1986, featuring new bands licensed from British independent record labels of the time.As a term, C86 quickly evolved into shorthand for a guitar-based musical genre characterized by jangling guitars and melodic power pop song structures, although other musical styles were represented on the tape. In its time, it became a pejorative term for its associations with so-called “shambling” (a John Peel-coined description celebrating the self-conscious primitive approach of some of the music and underachievement. The C86 scene is now recognized as a pivotal moment for independent music in the UK.

The C86 name was a play on the labelling and length of blank compact cassette, commonly C60, C90 and C120, combined with 1986. The tape was a belated follow-up to C81, a more eclectic collection of new bands, released by the NME in 1981 in conjunction with Rough Trade. C86 was similarly designed to reflect the new music scene of the time. It was the twenty-third NME tape, although its catalogue number was NME022 (C81 had been dubbed COPY001).

It was about a year later that Rough Trade issued a vinyl copy of C86, with the catalogue number of Rough 100 and on sale at a pre-determined price of £4.49.

My copy is at least second-hand, possibly more. I found it in a charity shop in Glasgow some five years ago, and paid £2 for it. It has the £4.49 sticker but also a second sticker for the same price from the independent chain in which it was first purchased – Andy’s Records – this wiki page explains the story behind its rise and fall.

I’ve now made copies of all the tracks from the original vinyl, which is in surprisingly good condition given its age and that the sleeve is rather tattered and tired-looking. Side 1 today. Side 2 tomorrow. Along with a lengthy critique that I’ve ripped from elsewhere.

Primal Scream – Velocity Girl
The Mighty Lemon Drops – Happy Head
The Soup Dragons – Pleasantly Surprised
The Wolfhounds – Feeling So Strange Again
The Bodines – Therese
Mighty Mighty – Law
Stump – Buffalo
Bogshed – Run To The Temple
A Witness – Sharpened Sticks
The Pastels – Breaking Lines
The Age of Chance – From Now On, This Will Be Your God

Individual songs are available from clicking each of the above links. Here’s everything as one continuous listen if that’s your preference:-

mp3: Various – C86 NME/Rough Trade 100 (Side One – vinyl version)

JC

R.E.M.

THE SINGULAR ADVENTURES OF R.E.M. (Part 8)

First of all….a really big thanks to everyone who has come in on the back of each of the previous postings with thoughts, observations and comments. It’s always appreciated and I do hope of all, or at least most of you, will stick with us on this epic journey which is likely to last the best part of a year all told.

The Robster was right with his assessment that July 1986 saw the release of one of R.E.M.’s best-ever singles.

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

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

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

The same single would then receive a UK release in March 1987.

On the face of it, releasing a second single from an album isn’t really a crime. IRS, however, was quite perverse in going with Superman as it was the cover version that had been tagged onto the end of the album to prevent any fans feeling they were being short-changed. It was also a track on which Mike Mills and not Michael Stipe sang lead vocals……..

Superman dates from 1969, released as a b-side by The Clique, a pop band hailing from Houston, Texas. Its introduction to the R.E.M. canon can be traced back to early 1986 when, having come off a gruelling tour the previous year, the band took some time away to do their own projects. In the case of the rhythm section, Mike Mills and Bill Berry hooked up with three friends to form The Corn Cob Webs, a covers band whose aim was to play in small venues around their home town of Athens. In the end, there was just the one show, but among the tunes they rolled out was Superman, with Mike taking lead vocal duties as he was the only one who knew the words.

Fast forward a few months and everyone is in the studio recording songs for the new album and possible b-sides. A run-through of Superman confirms that it would make for a decent enough b-side in the near or far future. They get to the mixing stage and there’s a late change of plan to now add it to the album, but as something of a hidden track that wouldn’t be listed on the sleeve. It was also decided to give it a quirky introduction by recording a Japanese toy Godzilla….

I think all of the above indicates that having the song issued as a bonafide single was the last thing on the band’s collective minds.

mp3: R.E.M. – Superman

The single flopped on release in the USA. Unsurprisingly, it did the same in the UK come March 1987.

Here’s the b-sides

mp3: R.E.M. – White Tornado
mp3: R.E.M. – Femme Fatale

The latter was only available on the 12″ release. It sees the band, for the third time, offer a take on a Velvet Underground song. The recording dated back to 1984 from the same semi-drunken sessions as Pale Blue Eyes which had, if you recall, been used a b-side to So. Central Rain.

But it was the song on the reverse of the 7″ as well as the 12″ that was the sound of the bottom of the barrel being scraped.

White Tornado is a throwaway surf-style instrumental that dated back to the very beginning of the band, written at the same time as songs such as Radio Free Europe. The version offered up on Superman was from a session recorded in April 1981.

The relationship with IRS was souring and work was about to get underway on the songs for the fifth studio album, after which the band would be free to go elsewhere. R.E.M. could now put themselves into a shop window if they so chose.

JC

Night Noise Team

SATURDAY’S SCOTTISH SONG : #222 : NIGHT NOISE TEAM

This one involved a fair bit of digging.

There’s one track on the hard drive by Night Noise Team, courtesy of its inclusion on a compilation CD Limbo Live Volume One.

Limbo was a live music club based out of The Voodoo Rooms in Edinburgh that ran from 2007-2016. It pulled together some amazing line-ups during that time, giving a much need boost to the live scene in the city, which, certainly in comparison to Glasgow, is far less obvious mainly as a result of a lack of decent venues, for all sorts of reasons.

It was back in 2009 that a live CD was compiled and released, consisting of songs recorded at one or other of the Limbo nights. 14 songs in all, mostly from acts based in Scotland, with the common issue being they were on small labels or indeed were unsigned. I hadn’t heard of Night Noise Team (NNT) whatsoever until going through the hard drive to see who came alphabetically after The Needles, but here’s what I’ve been able to find out.

NNT consisted of Sean Ormsby (voice, guitar), Fabien Pinardon (bass, guitar, keys), Marco Morelli (lead guitar) and Mike Walker (drums). The debut single was Menolick, a digital release via their own Permwhale Recordings in 2009.

In subsequent years, they would release further singles, and EP and three albums, all of which are still obtainable at this page over at Bandcamp. The links to the band and label websites are no longer active and there has been no new material since 2015.

Here’s the track from the Limbo compilation, a live version of the debut single:-

mp3: Night Noise Team – Menolick

It’s a reasonably decent song, with one reviewer back in 2010 taken enough to offer this view of the studio version:-

“This hotly-tipped Edinburgh crew are, it must be said, very 80s, like Talk Talk with a sinister edge, and with robotic vocals that explode like Joy Division plays pop or one of Interpol’s darker moments. The synths that run through sit uneasily with the rest of the song, but they do keep what could be a doomy rocker bright and in fact show off what is a rather ace tune.”

It would be great if anyone reading this could offer more info.

JC

Sparks

OOOH MATRON, A NIPPLE.

I remember there was quite the outcry over the sleeve for Beat The Clock, the single released by Sparks in July 1979 as the follow-up to Number One Song In Heaven which, earlier the same year, had taken the brotherly duo back into the charts after a four-year absence.

The problem for the big retail stores which sold records, such as Woolworth and WH Smiths, was that the picture sleeve featured a model, dressed in a lab coat, which was open to the waist and thus you could see her underwear which consisted of a see-through bra and thus a nipple was on display. The image on the back sleeve was even more problematic for public display as it consisted of a full-length shot of the model in which she was ripping off her lab coat….the solution for such stores was to stock the single but only have it available from under the counter!

Things like this in 1979 caused outrage in the tabloid press, notwithstanding the fact that many of them also featured topless women on Page 3 of their publications as a matter of routine. There is no doubt that Russell and Ron Mael knew what they were doing when they agreed to the sleeve, no doubt egged on by those in charge at Virgin Records who quite liked the idea of the music industry still being able to shock society – it was no real surprise that the label was home to more post-punk/new wave acts than any other.

The annoying thing was that with Giorgio Moroder on board for the new material, there was no need to resort to such cheap and nasty gimmicks as the music was more than capable of delivering on its own merits. Still, there’s no doubt the sleeve helped shift a few more units as the single went all the way to #10, their biggest success since the initial one-two of This Town Ain’t Big Enough For Both Of Us and Amateur Hour back in 1974.

The parent album only had six tracks and so there was a real lack of material for the b-side. An alternative mix was therefore offered up:-

mp3: Sparks – Beat The Clock (single version)
mp3: Sparks – Beat The Clock (alternative mix)

The 12″ came in a quasi-picture disc format in that it was pressed in a way that it had a standard 12″ black or coloured vinyl on the outside edge with the music merging into a picture disc towards the central area. It offered up an extended version along with a gimmick:-

mp3: Sparks – Beat The Clock (long version)
mp3: Sparks – Untitled

The latter was a two-and-a-half minutes-long piece in which the comedian Peter Cook, acting as a lawyer who represents God, calls up Virgin Records to make a formal complaint that Sparks had no right to call their new album Number One in Heaven. The piece is put together in a way that snippets of tracks on the album are aired.

JC

Donna Summer

ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL, AND BEST, RECORDS OF ALL TIME

Having a bit more time on my hands, I’m now reading a fair bit about my twin loves of football and music, either in book form or digital format. Through a series of strange but slightly inter-connected things, I found myself landing on a piece in The Guardian newspaper back in May 2012, written by Jon Savage, whose recent book on Joy Division was reviewed on the blog a few months back.

I was fascinated that a writer whose best work is associated with punk/new wave/post-punk (or whatever phrase you want to come up for music in that vein) had penned a piece about one of the most exciting records I can ever recall hearing in my lifetime. He doesn’t waste a single word in the introduction…..

A cinematic drone comes in fast from silence, quickly overtaken by two synthesised rhythm tracks that will go in and out of phase for the next lifetime. On top, Donna Summer soars and swoops as she tackles the minimal lyric: “It’s so good [x five], “Heaven knows” [x five], “I feel love” [x five]. The words are so functional that her voice becomes another instrument, almost another machine, but then there is the real heart of the song: “Fallin’ free, fallin’ free, fallin’ free …”

I Feel Love was and remains an astonishing achievement: a futuristic record that still sounds fantastic 35 years on. Within its modulations and pulses, it achieves the perfect state of grace that is the ambition of every dance record: it obliterates the tyranny of the clock – the everyday world of work, responsibility, money – and creates its own time, a moment of pleasure, ecstasy and motion that seems infinitely expandable, if not eternal.

Savage’s article goes on to explain how the song came about, with producer Giorgio Moroder looking to create an album called I Remember Yesterday that would focus on the history of dance/R&B music but felt that he needed something not of the past or even of the now to complete the project, and how he contacted the owner of one of the largest Moog synths on the market to talk about programming it in a way to create a new vibrant sound.

The result was I Feel Love. It wasn’t the first-ever synth song aimed at the dance or disco market, but it was the one, to my ears, that didn’t feel like a bit of a gimmick or synthetic. It was as much in your face as any tune that was being made by the trad line-up of vocal, guitar, bass and drums.

The album that Moroder, along with his production partner Pete Bellotte, was trying to create was a vehicle for Donna Summer, an American singer who had relocated to Munich in the late 60s and with whom they had been working with since 1974. There had been an initial worldwide success with the single Love To Love You Baby but things had been a bit quieter with subsequent singles and albums.

One interesting thing to note is that nobody was really quite sure if the world was ready for the sort of music that could be heard on I Feel Love. It was relegated to the b-side of Can’t We Just Sit Down (And Talk It Over), the first single released in May 1977 primarily to the American market to promote the forthcoming album. The a-side was about as far removed as can be imagined from what was on the reverse, a slow-paced ballad that veers between R&B and easy listening.

The single was also given a low-key release in some parts of mainland Europe where the singer had a fanbase. Word began to seep out that the almost six-minute long b-side was something a bit different and before long, some radio DJs began to play it while it was picked up by a number of those working in discos and nightclub:-

mp3: Donna Summer – I Feel Love (b-side version)

The decision was then taken to re-issue the single in May 1977, with a fresh pressing that would now put I Feel Love on the a-side but also trim a couple of minutes from it to make it more likely to be aired on daytime radio:-

mp3: Donna Summer – I Feel Love (7″ version)

This is the version that took the world by storm. As Savage recalled in the article:-

I Feel Love went to No 1 in the UK during the high summer of 1977, and stayed there for four weeks – filling dance floors everywhere, because it’s so good so good to dance to. Like David Bowie’s Low and Heroes, and Kraftwerk’s Trans-Europe Express, it was also the secret vice of those punks who were already tiring of sped-up pub rock, and it sowed the seeds for the next generation of UK electronica.

As was the practice back in the days of the disco singles, a 12″ piece of vinyl with an extended version was soon available in the shops…..this one took the song all the way beyond 8 minutes and was the version most played in the clubs:-

mp3: Donna Summer – I Feel Love (12″ version)

I’ll leave the last word to Savage. As ever, he nails it.

I’m guessing many of you will have heard I Feel Love pumped out loud, will have felt moved to dance, and will have felt time stop, the instant prolonged. Something of that feeling attaches itself to the record wherever it’s heard, and it never gets dulled by repetition – or endless imitation. I must have heard I Feel Love a thousand times and it still takes my breath away: it’s one of the great records of the 20th century, and the name on the label is Donna Summer.

JC

Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers

A RATHER ASTONISHING FACT

Back in 1977, Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers enjoyed a very substantial hit here in the UK with Egyptian Reggae.

By substantial, I mean it reached #5 and spent an astonishing 14 weeks on the chart, entering on 29 October 1977 and leaving on 28 January 1978. Ten of those weeks were spent in the Top 30, and the other four in positions 31-50; if the chart had been a Top 75 as it would expand to a few years later, then there’s every chance it could have spent the best part of six months hanging around.

I’ve no doubt that the UK public saw it as a novelty song above all else. It was an instrumental that sounded vaguely amusing, taking a piece of reggae and giving it something of an Arabic twist. The mid-late 70s were horrendously racist in many parts of the UK and I fear that many folk bought it for the sake of poking fun at one or more cultures rather than appreciating the work of The Modern Lovers.

It came on the back of Roadrunner being a hit in July 1977, but there hasn’t been a sniff of chart success ever since. The parent album from which Egyptian Reggae was lifted, Rock’n’Roll With The Modern Lovers spent three weeks in the charts but none of the subsequent releases have sold enough copies in the UK to crack the Top 100. I would hazard a guess and say that the vast majority of those who bought Egyptian Reggae wouldn’t have given Jonathan a further thought until they came across him in the 1998 film Something About Mary.

Here’s the two sides of the single:-

mp3: Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers – Egyptian Reggae
mp3: Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers – Rollercoaster By The Sea

The b-side is a fun listen. Almost makes for a decent short story!

The a-side came from this:-

mp3: Earl Zero – None Shall Escape The Judgment

Earl Zero (born Earl Anthony Johnson) is a Jamaican reggae singer and while he wrote this track, it remained unknown until another singer from Kingston recorded his version:-

mp3: Johnny Clarke – None Shall Escape The Judgment

Rather cheekily (and that’s me being polite……), the writing credit for Egyptian Reggae was given solely to Jonathan Richman.

JC

NYC, Various

EVERYONE’S YOUR FRIEND IN NEW YORK CITY (4b)

Looking back at the Bacchanalian nights of my early 20’s living in NYC, most of the fun I had was in The Limelight Night Club on 20th Street and 6th Avenue in Chelsea. Less than a year after opening, my friends and I had found our way to become regulars in the club’s third floor VIP room know as The Library.

The Library had a front entrance at the top of a staircase with de rigueur velvet rope and a VERY sarcastic, almost urchin-like attendant named Leo. The thing was, if you could match his wit you could easily gain entrance, permanent entrance in our case…It didn’t hurt that my friends Christine, Mimi and Sandi – The Girls, as I had dubbed them, were all great looking and very outgoing. They were like three-dimensional calling cards…

The Library was managed by one of downtown NYC’s denizens, Fred Rothbell-Mista. He knew everybody and how to show them a great time. There was a cash bar in The Library, something that would be a feature of all of club impresario Peter Gatien’s clubs, but you couldn’t buy a drink from the bartender, you had to go though a short, amphetamine driven, “Mockney” by the name of Neville Wells. Neville was a miniature Bob Hoskins mixed with a bit of Michael Caine in Alfie, but man he was a lot of fun. Thing was, for every drink patrons in The Library attempted to purchase, they would likely be fed 3 or 4 more for free, once things in the room got going. Neville worked for the tips and the club just wanted happy beautiful people.

On any given night of the week, you could find Johnny Ramone or Billy Idol mingling with Herbie Hancock, or Tom Hanks, or some popular soap opera diva. Grace Jones, a long time friend of Peter Gatien held court there whenever in town and even snagged her longtime partner, Dolph Lundgren from among the club’s bouncers in those early years of the club. But most importantly to the club, and especially it’s Head Publicist, Claire O’Connor, was that it was a safe place for visiting Rock, Pop or Hip Hop artists to go out in NYC. Many bands playing in NYC would skip the after-show party and show up at Limelight to just relax and have a good and relatively quiet after-show night in NYC.

So that’s your setup….

One night in the late Fall of 1984, The Girls and I met up to go to Limelight. We were on a mission. The previous night, we were having a ball in The Library with Perri Lister, Billy Idol’s long time partner and a few of the guys from The Uptown Horns.

In came Simon Le Bon, John Taylor and Nick Rhodes. Much as we tried that night, we couldn’t really get the Brummies to join in our frivolity. It’s not that they weren’t friendly, they just seemed to not be used to the democracy of The Library. Any engagement was short and didn’t seem to hold their interest for long. So we left them to their own devices and didn’t really notice when they left.

mp3: Duran Duran – Notorious

Later in the night I was talking to the room manager Fred and related how they seemed a bit like fish out of water, but Fred told me they had a great time and planned on being back the next night after doing some publicity events. I related this to The Girls who agreed we had to be back the next night and get them to let down their hair a bit. I’m sure I made a smart comment about hairspray and how difficult that might literally be to pull off…

So back to the next night’s mission. I got a call from Sandi to tell me that she and Mimi had been out after work and stopped by a 99¢ Store and purchased a bunch of plastic water pistols that we would be bringing with us to the club. They were dead set on getting the Brummie Boys to get into the spirit whether they liked it or not. I thought, oh yeah this should be fun!

Later that night we arrived at Limelight, sometime close to Midnight. The Library was buzzy, but not crowded, as it was a Thursday night. We spotted Perri Lister and Billy Idol and sat with them, letting only Perri in on our plan. She was certainly game and excited to see how things unfolded.

Not much more than a half-hour after we had arrived, Simon and John arrived and Nick came with his wife Julianne. Nick and Julianne sat a bit separate from Simon and John, but still within chatting distance and they were all on sofas on the opposite side of the room from us.

Perri Lister started to pester us about when the fun was going to begin. I wanted to it to go off right and not seem like an unwelcome ambush. To this end I asked Christine and Perri to go fill the bag of water pistols in the ladies room and the rest of us would take the opportunity to chat with Simon and John. You could tell Nick and Julianne were a bit more preoccupied so it made sense to leave them be. After a few pleasantries, I could tell the guys were in a much looser and friendly mood and this would play right into our hand. Mimi met up with Christine and Perri coming back from filling the pistols with “ammo” and as they came back over to where Sandi and I were with Simon and John, Perri shout “alright, this is a stick up!” and threw a water pistol each to Sandi and I and we all just stood there pointing our pistols at Simon and John.

Simon began cracking up and John actually raised his hands up in the air. Mimi then pulled out another two water pistols and threw them at the boys. Well that was all that they needed to break out of their shells! Before any of us to squeeze our triggers, Simon started shooting a steady stream of water at Sandi and I.

Next thing you know we all scattered around The Library using the sofas as barricades and taking shots at each other. After a couple of minutes I realized that Nick and Julianne were hysterically laughing and so I offered my pistol to Nick so he could join in. He was all about it! Rather than go after one of The Girls, he went straight for John! I found refuge with Billy Idol who at this point was laughing hysterically and slapped me so hard on my back that I flew off the sofa on to the floor.

mp3: Duran Duran – Wild Boys

Thing really got going once Neville persuaded Mimi to give him a pistol and he started running around quoting lines from spaghetti westerns (he was of course a would-be actor). Neville would gather up any empty pistols and recharge them with water from behind the bar and the next thing you knew everyone in The Library was calling for a pistol to have a go. Having recovered from my moment on the floor and a few Jack and Cokes in me, I grabbed two of the pistols and challenged Billy Idol to a duel.

Fred heard my challenge and at the top of his lungs yelled out “Hold Your Fire! We have a duel!” Fred proceeded to choose each of us seconds and cleared the center of the floor. He put Billy and myself back to back and had us walk 5 paces (they were water guns after all) and turn before firing. Well I did have revenge on my mind and as soon as I turned I began firing right at Billy’s face. He just broke up in laughter and never got a shot off! In fact, it seemed like everyone in the room with a water pistol began firing in his direction!

mp3: Billy Idol – Don’t Need A Gun

This water pistol melee continued for about an hour and at some point many of the pistols seemed to have either Vodka or Whiskey in them. So by the end, most people were just shooting those pistols directly in their own mouths. Simon, John and Nick were all as drenched as any of us and had great fun. I remember that Julianne had managed to stay relatively unscathed in all the fracas.

Around 2:30am, Claire O’Connor arrived in The Library and Fred Rothbell-Mista told him of the goings-on she had missed. She ran over to me and I thought, right I’m done for. First words out of her mouth was “DID ANYONE TAKE PICTURES?” to which I replied in the negative. She just slumped on the sofa next to me. Then she sprang back to life and asked me if I thought Page Six would run the item even without a picture? Now I was a regular source of nightlife gossip to Page Six of The New York Post (sorry did I forget to mention that in the setup?), so I told her I could only offer the story and see if they ran with it.

I went with her to her office and called the night editor at The Post and found that I had missed the deadline for the second edition of the next day’s paper, but he liked the story and would see if he could get it in the following Monday’s edition. Claire was disappointed, but I told her that they ran a lot of my blind items.

Come the Monday, I bought a copy of The Post on the way into the subway heading to a morning of classes on Music Theory and Political Science and opened to Page Six as I sat down on the #7 Train. There it was, second item down titled “Water Pistols At Dawn!” As much as I would love to embellish and say I was listening to Duran Duran on my Walkman on the trip into Manhattan from Queens, I can guarantee it was more likely The Bunnymen, Simple Minds or Talking Heads.

On the way up from classes, and before heading to work in midtown that afternoon, I stopped by The Limelight and headed up to Claire O’Connor’s office to be greeted by a big hug and kiss and her famous loud laughter. I looked over, after being released from her bear hug, to see Peter Gatien sitting on the couch in her office and he looked up at me and said thanks for the story in the Post.

mp3: Duran Duran – Is There Something I Should Know

In the new year, I would find myself with the role of junior publicist at The Limelight, thanks to that night of wet and wild with Duran Duran. I worked with The Limelight on the club’s Rock and Roll Church nights where we booked acts like Johnny Thunders and a secret gig by Guns And Roses, a 4th of July show with Batcave veterans Specimen and later Communion at Limelight where Goth and Industrial bands would play to a packed house.

But my favorite job was joining in and instigating the fun in The Library at Limelight.

Echorich

NYC, Various

EVERYONE’S YOUR FRIEND IN NEW YORK CITY (4a)

JC writes……..

A few years back, my friends Echorich and Jonny the Friendly Lawyer collaborated on a short series of posts celebrating life and growing up in New York City. I’ve kept the link to all three parts over on the right-hand side of the blog (if on a laptop) or underneath (if you’re scrolling down on some other device) under the heading of Everyone’s Your Friend In New York.

Almost four years after the third installment, the dynamic duo have returned with part 4, which I’ve split into two sections over today and tomorrow. Jonny sets the scene rather well today while Echorich’s tale, if my reaction to reading it is anything to go by, should generate a great deal of amusement and awe in equal measures.

My thanks, again to the two of them for sharing such amazing and precious memories. It’s another reminder that the guest contributions, whether through postings or comments, are really what makes this little corner of t’internet seem that bit more special.

Over now to Jonny………………….

The Limelight was a huge, 19th century Gothic deconsecrated church on the corner of 20th Street and 6th Avenue. It opened as a nightclub around 1982. A fair number of famous bands played there but the place was really more known as a dance club. Actually, in its day it was THE dance club in NYC—ground zero for 80’s scenesters and a farm league for star DJ’s. This 2-part episode of Everyone’s Your Friend in New York City focuses on your humble authors’ personal experiences with this hallowed venue which, by the way, is still standing on the same Chelsea corner in all its grim-faced stone glory. You can read all about the venerable edifice (and the crimes and films and legends that grew out of it) here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limelight#New_York_City_location

I passed by the Limelight all the time because I lived nearby on 23rd St. It was a massive, byzantine structure that was always jam-packed, with a line around the block to get in. I went there a few times, as did everyone in the city in the 80’s, but not too often. I wasn’t what you’d call a club boy or much of a dancer back in the day. But when the chance arose for my band, Chronic Citizens, to play there you can bet we jumped at it.

It was impossible to get gigs in the city (it still is). There are only so many venues and there are 10,000 bands trying to get a look in. There was no way to get your name out apart from wheat-pasting flyers to walls and phone poles in the dead of night. No local radio station would play your music, even if you could afford to record and press any. You could hang around CB’s and bug Hilly until he put you on the bill, but only because he had a kind heart. The major indie venues—The Ritz, Peppermint Lounge, Knitting Factory, Danceteria—were booked solid with famous international acts. So, it was a very big deal to get the nod to play the Limelight, even if it wasn’t the main stage.

Unlike other dives the Citizens played, the Limelight was a proper venue with a major-league green room. The five of us and assorted girlfriends and comrades piled in, where we met our opening act, a group of scrawny kids from New Jersey called, if I remember correctly, the Orphans. They were a four-piece but their bassist hadn’t arrived yet. We were all shocked when the door opened and bus trays were delivered filled with beer on ice! Unknown bands were treated like shit as a matter of policy in the city, and here we were having beer delivered to our dressing room! Not only that but a quart of milk and a pot of coffee for the road crew we didn’t have. We descended on the beer like locusts and, in short order, an impromptu jam began. I can’t recall what else we did but I distinctly remember one song in particular: We plugged in our amps and played a 20-minute version of Sweet Jane, with about 12-15 of us slamming in on the chorus.

mp3: The Velvet Underground – Sweet Jane

We sort of got carried away with our rock star fantasy because someone from the venue politely entered and advised that we were supposed to be performing in the club, not getting plastered in the green room. This proved to be a bit of a problem for the Orphans, whose bass player was still on the wrong side of the Hudson. So we decided to open for ourselves. We broke down the drum kit and amps and set them back up in one of the antechambers or side chapels or whatever you call the ancillary rooms in churches adjacent to the main cathedral. There was always a good crowd in the Limelight and it was just fun playing a set with the knowledge that, when it was over, we could say we’d done it.

I don’t remember too many of the details of the show as we were decently uninhibited by the largesse of the management. I was also distracted by the presence in the audience of the sister of an old school friend. We’d recently met up at a party and she’d hinted it might be fun to get together without her brother around, an idea I was very much in favor of. The performance was a bit of a blur, if I’m honest, me pretending to be a rock star who played famous venues where the management showered us with booze and young ladies turned up so we could leave together. That wasn’t true, but it was true for a night anyway. I know we would have played our theme song.

mp3: Chronic Citizens – Chronic Citizens

We finished up and piled back into the green room to see if the Orphans had left any of the complimentary libations. They were looking pretty forlorn as their bassist still hadn’t shown up. The singer approached me and asked if I’d sit in for their missing mate. I declined—I didn’t know their songs and had a rendezvous I was eager to keep. The rest of them pleaded with me; they were going to miss their chance to play the Limelight!

So I agreed to play the only song from their set I knew: ‘You Can’t Put Your Arms Around A Memory’ by Johnny Thunders. As they were setting up the singer sheepishly admitted that he didn’t actually know the words. Right. I found a pen and looked for something to write on, the minutes passing uncomfortably. The only thing I could find was the carton of milk sent by the Limelight angels, so that’s what I used. And so it came to pass that I played the Thunders classic at the Limelight, trying not to laugh and screw up the bass part while the singer squinted at my scrawled lyrics on the side of a milk carton he was holding aloft in the dim light of the stage.

mp3: Johnny Thunders – You Can’t Put Your Arms Around A Memory

That was more than enough for me. I packed up my gear and headed toward home three blocks west, still jazzed by the whole experience. I only played a few more shows with the Citizens before the band split and I put my fledgling music career on hold for thirty years. But I could always say I played the Limelight! The image of the hapless Orphans’ frontman holding a mic in one hand and the milk carton in the other still makes me smile. And it was unforgettable being treated like rock royalty.

It would be decades, and only through the good offices of our host JC, before I learned that the beer trays had been sent to the Limelight green room by…Echorich.

Jonny the Friendly Lawyer

R.E.M.

THE SINGULAR ADVENTURES OF R.E.M. (Part 7)

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

In terms of what Fall On Me is about, you just need to read the Wikipedia article as it sums it all up nicely. I want to talk about my personal thoughts of the song and where it stands among R.E.M.’s canon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_on_Me_(R.E.M._song)

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

(The other side was ‘Strangeways Here We Come’ by The Smiths, in case you were wondering. I had a Walkman practically surgically implanted onto my hip and for quite a while I only listened to those two albums on repeat.)

After the loud rush of the opening two numbers, Fall On Me came into play. I was yet to discover the wonders of the first three R.E.M. albums so I wasn’t to know that this song was probably the most similar to those earlier recordings. The one thing that struck me immediately though was the vocal, or rather the vocals, plural. Fall On Me has what could be the best interaction between Stipe and Mills of all. The harmonies and counter melodies were divine and I’d argue probably never bettered by the band over their next 25 years.

I might contradict that last sentence a few times in future articles.

It remains one of my favourite R.E.M. songs. Whenever I attempt to sing along, I find myself alternating between the lead and backing vocals, especially during the closing refrain. I even sing Bill Berry’s parts. Hopefully you never have to hear that.

In the UK, where the band was building an ever-growing following but had still to crack any mainstream outlet, Fall On Me didn’t chart. Which is quite incredible, when you think about it. In the US however, it made the lower reaches of the Billboard Hot 100, while also rising to the dizzy heights of #5 in the Mainstream Rock charts, meaning it was the fifth most-played song on US rock radio stations during that week.

mp3: R.E.M – Fall On Me

R.E.M. were not the greatest b-side band, often presenting unused demos, live tracks, covers and nonsense songs on their flips. Fall On Me was no exception. The 7” in all territories included the jazz-tinged instrumental Rotary Ten, a short, inessential throwaway item. Of more interest was the bonus track on the 12”, a cover of Aerosmith’s Toys In The Attic. This was R.E.M. properly rocking out, Stipe sneering Stephen Tyler’s lyrics with real attitude and Buck doing a bonafide rock guitar solo. It’s good fun and was played live quite a bit during the Reconstruction and Pageantry tours.

mp3: R.E.M – Rotary Ten
mp3: R.E.M. – Toys In The Attic

The Robster

Needles

SATURDAY’S SCOTTISH SONG : #221 : THE NEEDLES

I’ve one song by The Needles on the hard drive, courtesy of its inclusion on a CD given away free with a newspaper back in July 2007 featuring bands who were part of a Scottish Arts Council effort to promote music at the 2007 South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas.

I had to look up wiki and was surprised to find out more and was surprised to find there was quite a lot in there:-

The Needles were a four-piece band who formed in their mid-teens in late 1990s Aberdeen, relocating to Glasgow in 2001. Influenced heavily by 1960s garage punk and late 70s new wave/powerpop, their first limited-edition single on newly formed indie label Lithium Records sold out within weeks of its release, and the follow-up “We Got the Soul” continued the momentum, garnering positive notices in the Melody Maker and NME, as well as airplay on Radio 1’s Evening Session.

Various delays and false dawns followed, and although they continued to release records for a good few years afterwards, switching to the better-funded Dangerous Records in 2002, this early momentum was never truly regained, although their last three singles, “Dianne, Summer Girls, and, Girl I Used To Know”, received a degree of exposure on MTV2, Radio 1, and XFM.

The Needles recorded several sessions for the BBC, most notably for the Mark Lamarr show on Radio 2 in 2006, and played their last gig with the original line-up at the South by Southwest music festival in Texas in 2007, before finally calling it a day later that year.

One of the singles made it onto the Sunday Herald CD:-

mp3: The Needles – Dianne

I probably listened to the track once and then forgot all about it till now. I gave it another listen recently and was, again, completely underwhelmed. Rob Webb, in reviewing the album In Search of The Needles, for Drowned in Sound, was quite scathing but on the basis of the above three minutes, it’s hard to disagree:-

This is a “much-anticipated debut” according to the blurb, and with their first EP released over two years ago it’s clearly been a long time in the making. Don’t expect any tortuous, finger bending solos or complex bass lines, though, because these are some of the most straightforward guitar ditties you’ll hear all year, the kind you’d take home and ravage before booking them a taxi without offering breakfast.

You see, The Needles’ sound is a bit like a gang of page-three models: perky, pretty but ultimately lacking in substance. Bits of punk, bits of rock but always with an indie-pop core, In Search Of The Needles is chock-full of tunes you can hum. It’s a pity, then, that the relentless pace of the record means it’s hard to get truly engrossed in the music.

Feel free to express alternative opinions, or otherwise, via the comments section.

JC

Yello

LOST AGAIN

The story of how Yello came to be is brilliantly bonkers.

Formed, in Switzerland in 1976 by Boris Blank (keyboards, sampling, percussion, backing vocals) and Carlos Perón (tapes). They needed money and a vocalist, and they conveniently found both in the shape of Dieter Meier, a millionaire industrialist and professional gambler who was some ten years older than the duo.

Before too long, they were down to a duo of Blank and Meier, and throughout the 80s released a number of albums and singles packed with electronic pop music, although it could be argued their greater fame came, initially, via their pioneering work in videos to promote their music.

They came to the attention of a wider public in 1986 when their song Oh Yeah was included on the soundtrack of the hugely successful comedy film, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. The following year, their invitation to have Shirley Bassey contribute a guest vocal to a song called The Rhythm Divine – a song that would also be recorded later on with a guest vocal by Billy Mackenzie, brought them column inches in the UK newspapers, with Ms. Bassey saying it was the most Bond-eqsue vocal she had delivered in decades. In 1988, Yello would enjoy a Top 10 hit in the UK with The Race, the only meaningful commercial success they ever had here.

Today’s piece of vinyl was pulled out of the cupboard after the lead song, Lost Again, came up on random play on the i-pod and it’s one that pre-dates all of the success, released in late 1983 on Stiff Records. One of the formats was a 2×7″ release containing four songs:-

mp3: Yello – Lost Again
mp3: Yello – Base For Alec
mp3: Yello – Let Me Cry
mp3: Yello – She’s Got A Gun

More experimental than mainstream, but in saying that I have long been convinced that Billy Mackenzie contributed an uncredited backing vocal to the track Let Me Cry…but then again, it could just be an elongated synth note that has been bent well out of shape.

JC

Alex Harvey, Jacques Brel

SOME SONGS ARE GREAT SHORT STORIES (Chapter 36)

A GUEST POSTING by flimflamfan

Next / Au Suivant
Written by: Jacques Brel, Mort Shuman, Eric Blau

N.E.X.T. Next!

Naked a sin
An army towel, wrapped around my belly
Some of us weep, some of us howl
Knees turn to jelly, but Next! Next!

I was just a child
A hundred like me
I followed a naked body
A naked body followed me, Next! Next!

I was just a child when my innocence was lost
In a mobile army whorehouse
A gift of the army, free of cost. Next! Next! Next!

Me, I really would have liked a little bit of tenderness
Maybe a word, maybe a smile, maybe some happiness, but Next! Next!

It was not so tragic
and heaven did not fall
And how much at that time
I hated being there at all, Next! Next!

I still recall the brothel trucks, the flying flags
The queer lieutenant slapped our arses
Thinking we were fags. Next! Next! Next!

I swear on the wet head of my first case of gonorrhea
It is his ugly voice that I forever fear, Next! Next!

A voice that stinks of whisky, corpses and of mud
You took the voice of nations
The thick voice of blood, Next! Next!

Since then each woman I have taken into bed
They seem to lie in my arms
And they whisper in my head, Next! Next! Next!

Oh, the naked and the dead
Could hold each other’s hands
As they watch me dream at night
In a dream that nobody understands
And though I am not dreaming in a voice grown dry ‘n’ hollow
I stand on endless naked lines of the following and the followed
Next! Next!
One day I’ll cut my legs off
I’ll burn myself alive
I’ll do anything to get out of life, to survive
Not ever to be next, Next! Next!
Not ever to be next, not ever

These lyrics reflect the live version below. If ever a lyric outlined the inhumanity of war and the desperation of those ‘lucky’ to still be alive it is this.

Yesterday I received an email from a friend noting that he had downloaded some Alex Harvey and was quite enjoying it. My friends and I’s musical enjoyment rarely converges as he sits very much at the experimental rock side of the musical spectrum. I once recall asking him to turn off a Frank Zappa song as it was making me feel nauseous.

Anyway, it surprised me that he wasn’t well versed in Mr Harvey? I like The Sensational Alex Harvey Band but not enough that I could be described as a fan. I was introduced to the band when I was about 10 or 11 via the LP Next. It was actually the song Next that had me hooked with the line “The queer lieutenant slapped our arses. He’s thinking we were fags. Next! Next! Next!” It made an impression for 2 reasons:

1. That absolute Glaswegian drawl. I’d never heard anything like it.
2. He said “queer” “arses” and “fags”. Although I’m not sure at that age I’d have understood ‘fag’. A cigarette, perhaps? Yes, definitely a cigarette.

I don’t often listen to the one Sensational Alex Harvey Band LP I own – a compilation – but I do listen to Next on a semi-regular basis and not just Harvey’s version. The version I listen to more regularly is the original by Jacques Brel. I can say with some conviction that I am a Brel fan and have been since my early teens – probably not long after I heard Harvey’s version – my friend’s dad, French himself, constantly played French language music – Brel, of course, being Belgian. I was smitten by this ‘different’ music and have no real idea as to why? I really enjoyed it but understood none of it. I couldn’t even say – even now – if the English version of Next captures the literal sense of the original?

Harvey provided what I believe to be a mesmerising version on The Old Grey Whistle Test. Watching the video this morning I was still moved by it. It’s an exceptional performance and one that may very well capture the first, raw, Glaswegian singing voice on television. To all those that came later in the 90s espousing a ‘Scottish vocal sound’ a debt is owed.

Brel’s live performances of the song are equally as engaging. I have chosen a performance credited (Madagascar) but can’t verify that. The recorded version of this song is a favourite but live, well, it comes alive. This is my favourite live version. He takes on the characters within the songs gesticulating wildly as he does so. It’s far from someone singing a song it’s an artistic performance and utterly captivating. Brel according to Wikipedia “…is considered a master of the modern chanson”. I don’t disagree.

mp3: The Sensational Alex Harvey Band – Next
mp3: Jacques Brel -Au Suivant

A GUEST POSTING by SWISS ADAM

(JC says….be still, my beating heart)

Bonus Tracks

ADAM

JC

JC

JC

JC

JC

JC

JC

JC

JC

JC

JC

JC

JC

Echorich

Over now to Jonny………………….

Jonny the Friendly Lawyer

The Robster

JC

JC

A GUEST POSTING by flimflamfan

Next / Au Suivant Written by: Jacques Brel, Mort Shuman, Eric Blau

flimflamfan

Next / Au Suivant
Written by: Jacques Brel, Mort Shuman, Eric Blau