Manic Street Preachers

45 45s @ 45 : SWC STYLE (Part 22)

A GUEST SERIES


24 – Love’s Sweet Exile / Repeat UK – Manic Street Preachers (1991 Columbia Records)

Released as a single in October 1991 (Reached Number 26)

So it was at around number 24 that I realised that there was quite few records that I had omitted from this list that probably should have been on it. So what I’m going to try and do is package them all together and try and crowbar them into the posts somehow, these records are definitely as good and probably as influential as ‘Love’s Sweet Exile’. I hope that makes sense.*

Anyway…Let’s talk about The Marquee. The Marquee was a legendary venue on Charing Cross Road, London (well eventually, it had other locations as well). It had a capacity of about 500 I‘d say and facts fans will know that it was the location of the one of the first ever Rolling Stones gigs and for over 30 years The Marquee wrote itself into rock heritage by hosting amazing gigs. It shut in 1995 and by 1996 a Wetherspoons pub had moved in (The Montagu Pyke) and firmly shat on that hard earned 30 years musical heritage by immediately banning juke boxes inside it and selling burgers that taste like they’ve been licked first by tramps.

As a young lad I saw loads of really good bands at the Marquee. I saw Pop Will Eat Itself there two nights in a row, where they played exactly the same set both nights, ending with a pumped up version of this

Wise Up Sucker (1989 RCA Records, Number 41)

The Marquee was also famous for secret gigs. In 1990 Metallica played at The Marquee as a support band under the name ‘Vertigo’, and were introduced as a new band playing only their second ever show.

Famously, Motley Crue played the venue under the moniker ‘the Four Skins’ (oh my sides…) without knowing that this was also the name of a popular London skinhead band, whose fans all turned up at the gig, and looked rather bemused when some hairy arsed cock rockers wobbled onto stage.

In 1991 I saw a band called R.S.P.C.E. play there. They walked on stage and immediately burst into this

Sheriff Fatman (1989, Big Cat Records, did not chart, reissued in 1991, Number 23)

And finally, in 1993, my friend Martin bought me an 18th birthday present, it was a ticket for a gig on July 4th 1993 at the Marquee Club, London, the act were a band called ‘Generation Terrorists’. The price £7. I had ticket number 0004. It was a week before the Manics released the second album ‘Gold Against the Soul’.

And it was amazing. The band ended with a stunning version of ‘Love’s Sweet Exile’.

SWC

*JC adds………….

This means you’re about to be treated to at least 145 45s @ 45 over the coming weeks….I’ve been lucky enough to have received everything up to, and including #10….the chapters of the life of our south-west correspondent will gradually be revealed….lots of laughs are on their way (exactly what we need at this point in time).

Generation X

NO IDOL OF MINE

I wrote yesterday about my lack of love or respect for The Dickies and their take on the theme from the Banana Splits. They weren’t the only new wave/punk lot riding high in the charts who I despised (and at 15 years old, if you didn’t like a band or musician, they had to be despised….merely not liking wasn’t good enough).

Billy Idol and his band Generation X really got on my tits (hey, I know that’s not a PC description, but I’m thinking back to the sort of things I would say when talking to mates in my teenage years) for the simple reason that I thought he came aross as a complete wanker when he appeared on Top of The Pops and in print through the interviews he gave to the music press. They had already enjoyed a slightly more than minor hit a couple of years previously when this monstrosity just about went Top 10 in January 1979:-

mp3 : Generation X – King Rocker

Tedious, tiresome and cliched. And the song isn’t much better. The fact that Billy Idol would, just a couple of years later, relocate to New York and use his cartoon punk persona to find mainstream success, was no real surprise. His hit singles of the 80s are unlistenable.

What I didn’t know until looking into the release of King Rocker is that a fair bit of its success was down to it being released in five different formats, with the standard black vinyl being accompanied by red, pink, orange and yellow vinyl, all with different sleeves. It also had a cover version on the b-side:-

mp3 : Generation X – Gimme Some Truth

Yup, the John Lennon protest song. As recorded for a John Peel session in July 1977. It’s every bit as cartoon sounding as the single featured yesterday…..truth, truth, truth, truth, truth!!!!!!

I promise not to be as grumpy next time I’m on…..it’s SWC time again tomorrow

JC

Dickies

TRA-LA-LA

I’m not sure if my American regulars are aware of the fact that Californian pop/punk combo The Dickies had a huge hit over here in 1979 with a frantic cover of the theme song from a kids TV show that had aired at the end of the 60s:-

mp3 : The Dickies – Banana Splits (Tra La La Song)

The near 16-year old me hated it, thinking that it was an aptly named bunch who were trying to make a quick buck by making fun of punk/new wave. Thinking back, I had a number of friends at school who were increasingly buying punk/new wave records but none of us had this in our collections. It reached #7 which in 1979, meant it must have sold a couple of hundred thousand copies, but to who?

Years later, I finally found someone who had a copy, and it was one of my student flatmates who was two years younger than me. Now, to be fair to him, he had an incredible record collection for someone so young,and he seemed to have just about every hit single with a punk/new wave edge that had been released since 1977 along with quite a few that were cult classics. He said he had bought the single back in the day simply for the fact that it was fast and furious and sounded as much of a punk record as anything by The Clash or The Sex Pistols or The Damned or anyone else who was being written about in 1979. He also loved the fact its two b-sides were each barely over a minute in length, which meant they could be added to the list of those that could be used at the end of a mixtape rather than have any dead time or silence.

mp3 : The Dickies – Hideous
mp3 : The Dickies – Got It At The Store

I conceded that in terms of the b-sides he had a point in that they could have been by any number of UK bands and were full of energy. But despite his best efforts to convince me of the merits of the a-side, bringing into the I remained a hater. And still am.

JC

Orb

45 45s @ 45 : SWC STYLE (Part 21)

A GUEST SERIES


25 – Little Fluffy Clouds – The Orb (1990 Big Life Records )

Released as a single in November 1990 (Reached Number 87)
Re-Released in November 1993 (Reached Number 10)

Some of you will remember that this was the song that Badger played when he was given the all clear by the doctors after finding a rather worrying lump in his ballsack four or five years ago. Badger loved The Orb, they were his go to ‘2am music’ but he didn’t always see them that way.

Just over ten years ago, Tim Badger described The Orb as ‘pretentious beardy weirdy, plinky plonky, new age, tied dyed t-shirt wearing wankpuffins’. This was after a night out in Torquay when I’d stuck one of their albums on in the car on the way home. To be fair to Tim he’d been drinking Long Island Teas for the past hour and was in his words “so drunk that he was pissing tequila”. He then went on to wax lyrical about how making tracks that were 40 minutes long was just silly and that playing chess on Top of the Pops was neither big nor clever.

So I was surprised when about roughly six weeks after that momentous statement. I received a phone call from Tim asking me if I was doing anything next Wednesday night. He wanted to know whether or not I wanted to go and see The Orb in Ashburton. I raised an eyebrow. Twice.

The first eyebrow rise was to question why The Orb were playing in Ashburton on a Wednesday in November. I mean this is 2008 or 2009 and I know that The Orb’s stock has fallen but this is still quite a thing.

Ashburton for those in the dark is a small market town in South Devon, that’s sole purpose in life is to provide walkers with somewhere to park before rambling across Dartmoor; back then it had literally no good pubs at all. Nowadays, it is a little better, it does at least have an artisan bakery that does very good olive bread.

The answer it turns out was because a friend of the band had just purchased a bar in the town and the band had offered to play an opening night gig at the venue. Tim had through his contacts managed to grab a couple of tickets for opening night.

The second eyebrow rise was to remind Tim that roughly six weeks ago he called them ‘beardy weirdy plinky plonky wankpuffins’. This was met with “Is that a no?”

No, it’s a yes. I have to admit I was quite excited by the thought of seeing a secret Orb gig even if it was in Ashburton. Largely because they might play this

Toxygene (Kris Needs Up For A Fortnight Mix)

Because it’s an absolute banger.

Six days later we travelled down to Ashburton to the gig, our tickets clearly marked ‘Special Guests £12’ tucked inside our pockets safe and snug.

We arrive to find it full of tie dyed t-shirt wearing wankpuffins. As we walked through to the bar, Tim nudged me, pointed to a bloke with a beard that looked like a rose bush and said “told you, I bet the beer is organic and massively overpriced”.

The bar had two beers on tap, both of them organic, and cheap at £5 a pint. Oh, and the only snacks sold behind the bar was pretzels. Pretzels. In Ashburton. I’m going to briefly mention the toilets. Sorry. It’s not relevant to the story either, I just remember them vividly.

This is because there was a fish tank in the gents. I have no idea why. I’m told the ladies had pink plastic flamingos stuck to the wall.

Anyway, back to the gig. We stood and waited for about an hour, slowly sipping our organic beer (which tasted like pond water by the way) and munching on a solitary pretzel. It was ten pm when a bloke in a Levellers T-shirt jumped on stage and approached the mike.

I’ve never been a fan of compares at gig, you know what I mean, over enthusiastic chaps who jump on stage and encourage people to whoop and ‘give it up for…’ Well that happened.

Well sort of, Levellers man actually gave a speech. It turned this was the bar owner and he welcomed everyone to his pub. He said that this was his dream and that he wanted to put Ashburton on the musical map, this is met with cheers from the crowd, not all of them were sarcastic.

Five minutes later he finally introduced ‘tonights entertainment, the first of hopefully many lives acts to grace this stage’. Now, the word ‘hopefully’ stood out from this statement.

Then he paused…and said “We are so lucky to have got them before they go off on tour with The Orb, please clap wildly for…” Another pause…

And then he shouted “Dreadzone!!!!” so loudly that the floor shook. I turn and look at Badger who realising his mistake quickly looks at the floor, before telling me he was ‘going to the bar’.

It doesn’t matter as it happens because Dreadzone were excellent. They shuffled on to the stage, there was a couple of embraces with Levellers Man and then they burst into this

Fight The Power (1995, Virgin Records, Number 86)

And it was kind of brilliant. If brilliant is described as sixty or seventy predominantly white middle aged middle class blokes bopping up and down out of time to a throbbing bass and beats so deep and dubby that it makes you feel dirty.

The bar stayed open about a year. It’s a Chinese restaurant now. I’m told that System 7 played the opening night a few years back.

SWC

MetroGnomes

SATURDAY’S SCOTTISH SONG : #206 : THE METROGNOMES

Back in 2006, the Aufgeladen und Bereit label, based in Hamburg, Germany, released Get While The Getting’s Good, a 19-track compilation of material by bands from Scotland. I’ll direct you to this post on the Penny Black Music website for more info.

One of the tracks on the compilation is by a band called The MetroGnomes about which I can find very little other than a brief bio found on a website belonging to Frooki Records in repect of the release, in 2015, of an album called Des’O:-

A band from Fife (except Dave) Scotland.

The MetroGnomes are Pedro, Biscuits, Dave from Edinburgh, The Elusive MR IJ and Frook, with guest appearances from most of the folk they know.

Pedro (Peter Burns) – singer, the driving force behind the band, contributed the majority of the songs to the album with other songs coming from band members and friends.

Alternative / funk jazz / fusion hip hop rock mixed in with some folky bluesy country. A range of flavours to suit all tastes.

A gem of an album to the last.

The track made available on the 2006 compilation is not on that album, which itself can be found over at Spotify.

mp3 : The MetroGnomes – I Should’ve Known

Indeed, this track features a lead vocal from a female singer who must no longer be with the band.And it’s very much in the folky bluesy country areas of activitity.

Any more info from any of you?

JC

Black Keys

AN IMAGINARY COMPILATION ALBUM : #246 : THE BLACK KEYS

A Guest Posting by Hybrid Soc Prof

Our Social Distancing Correspondent, now teaching on-line in Michigan

The Black Keys are a blues rock band that’s gradually moved, in fits and starts over the last 20 years, towards a kind of pop sensibility… or not.

The narrative I read, heard, and embraced as I bought each their long-playing efforts was that the band was two white guys from Akron, Ohio, who headed down to Southern juke joints and spent a months, years(?), at the feet of the Black masters of crossroads blues. And they jumped out of the blocks, hitting the track running, with the release of The Big Come Up (2002)… the most authentically raw, nasty blues-rock set “alt” types had connected with since, what?, Top Jimmy and the Rhythm Pigs? Flat Duo Jets? The Gun Club’s Lucky Jim disc?

They seemed to have perfected that middle class white guy fantasy of achieving authenticity despite coming from blandness… and isn’t that why so many of us, especially in our 20s, got into punk, post-punk, reggae, blues, northern soul, folk, jazz, afro-beats or even minimalist neo-classicists like Steve Reich and Philip Glass? Seeking something more real than buying stuff by pursuing sublime niche cultural experiences?

As with all myths, the one around The Black Keys doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. I’m quite sure the trip South and the education was real but I think the rest of it has been projected onto the band by reviewers and fans, against the evidence… and in a way that denies the band it’s many and various influences. In the name of authenticity, I’ve watched all manner of reviewers and fans police the boundaries of genre and influences only serving to reinforce their own egos and global corporate marketing strategies.

I came to this general realization a long time ago – most notably when I interviewed Mojo Nixon circa 1990 and learned that he had little interest in talking about his stylistic influences but really wanted to talk about all the different music he was hearing, folks he was doing gigs with, and different traditions he liked. I was reminded of it around The Black Keys when I left their albums and started exploring their EPs and guest spots on topical collections.

To start, the first cut here, A Blueprint of Something Never Finished comes from their second release, an EP, The Six Parts Seven. It could almost be Mogwai… or some post-rock band like Kinski, Calla, Giardini di Mirò or, if you slowed it down a little bit more, something from Godspeed You! Black Emperor (wherever they are putting the exclamation point these days.) There was more going on there than met my eye!

Fever then leans technopop which is so much more tolerable when he’s singing it… likely for no reason other than I, too, connect that voice to something I still find authentic. What ties all the band’s songs together is Dan Auerbach’s oh-so distinctive voice and that continuity leaves people “hearing” The Big Come Up or Thickfreakness in stuff that’s simply not bluesy.

But, of course, The Keys also recorded an album with a raft of hip hop, soul, and R&B artists (Mos Def, Nicole Wray, Ludacris, Q-Tip from A Tribe Called Quest, Raekwon, RZA and Ol’ Dirty Bastard of Wu-Tang Clan, among them – thanks Wikipedia!), making BlakRoc, and my favorite tune from that is What You Do to Me, likely the closest thing to a hit in the set.

And if this is a blues rock band, then how come I have this pretty awesome cover of The Stooges’ No Fun, recorded as part of their first single? (If you haven’t played The Stooges or Fun House at a near-deafening volume, by my lights you might not have lived…)

Now, did I say they might be misunderstood as a blues-rock band? I might have been pushing it. Try out the bluesy glory of Can’t Find My Mind. They took a 50s monster record tribute song from The Cramps, added some 13th Floor Elevators, and baked up some fuzzy joy

That’s it for Side 1 – the “oh-no-they-aren’t” side.

Side 2 is the “well-actually-they-kinda-are-a-lot-of-the-time” side of the ICA.

The version of Thick Freakness, the retitled title tune to the band’s second long-player, but done much better for the BBC, rips and snorts, rises and falls just like you’d want a Black Keys tune to do.

If you know Junior Kimbrough’s music – perhaps from the Deep Blues documentary or soundtrack? – then you’ll recognize My Mind is Rambling as a Kimbrough song from the first note. There’s a dirtiness to the sustain, a signature grittiness that the Keys get just right… it’s almost like they stole his amp (pretty sure Kimbrough didn’t use pedals.)

I might have put Just a Little Heat on Side 1 but, after it’s Zeppelin-esque beginning it goes full blues-rock… staying in the juke joint vein laid out by My Mind is Rambling. (Of course, with apologies to Dave Davies, it’s the sort of song that reminds you that power chords, metal and significant portions of flatulent 70s art rock grew in the fertile soul the blues.)

She’s Long Gone, from Brothers, perhaps the quintessent distillation of all the band is… who else do you know who can make a lead guitar sound that much like harmonica? There ARE pedals here, used to great effect. (Quintessent isn’t a word, but, yeah, I’m using it!)

It might have been better to put Lies as the first cut on Side 2, since it was recorded in collaboration with Danger Mouse and intended for Ike Turner to sing and the Black Keys to back, but I like it where it is. Wait? Danger Mouse? Anyway, because a number of the songs here are pretty short, I made the executive decision that 11 would fit on the vinyl… which allowed me to end the collection with Do the Rump, the guitar from which set this whole thing in motion way back in 2002. I’m 99% sure it was the first song of theirs I heard, on a music blog or magazine collection, I can’t recall. But The Big Up was mine that afternoon, as fast as I could get across the street to Flat, Black and Circular – still the best music shop in town.

Side 1 (20:40)
A Blueprint of Something Never Finished from The Six Parts Seven EP (2003)
Fever from Turn Blue (2014)
What You Do to Me from BlakRoc (2009)
No Fun from The Moan CDS (2004/2002)
Can’t Find My Mind from Never Give Up On Your Hallucinations (2009)

Side 2 (23:37)
Thick Freakness from The BBC Sessions (2012)
My Mind is Rambling from Chulahouma: The Songs of Junior Kimbrough (2006)
Just a Little Heat from Magic Potion (2006)
She’s Long Gone from Brothers (2010)
Lies from Attack & Release (2008)
Do the Rump from The Big Up (2002)

HSP

(NB : Links can be found in the body of the main text)

James

45 45s @ 45 : SWC STYLE (Part 20)

A GUEST SERIES


26 – Come Home – James (Flood Mix) (1990 Fontana Records)

Released as a single in June 1990 (Reached Number 32)

More mixtapes of the heart today.

I was in a tent when I first heard ‘Come Home’ by James. Actually I’ll go further than that in an attempt to make myself cooler, I was in a tent that I wasn’t supposed to be in when I first heard ‘Come Home’ by James.

I wasn’t supposed to be there because it was the girl’s tent and I am a boy. It was the summer of 1990 and I had gone to Guernsey with the Scouts, yes the Scouts, shut up, when the zombie apocalypse arrives, you’ll be glad that I can tie a granny knot properly and know how to distinguish between a church with a spire and a church with a tower.

Anyway, we’d met some girl guides, whilst doing something scouty, like help old ladies across the road, or build a waterproof shelter out of matchsticks and old copies of Razzle. We got chatting to them when queuing for water. They were all from the Doncaster and Barnsley area of South Yorkshire and after about an hour showing off and general chit chat, the guides invited all of us to a disco that they were having at their campsite in a couple of days.

Which was nice of them.

The disco was awful. It consisted of bored looking adults chucking on a Now That’s What I Called Music CD (probably) and plying about 50 youths with Pepsi and jelly laces – the DJ was a guy called Barry, who rigged up some speakers through his car stereo so we could all hear Haddaway a bit better.

Which is sort of why I ended up in a tent with a girl guide.

Now.

There was no funny business, I want to make that clear. We were listening to music. I promise. We had two cans of Pepsi, a Walkman, two tapes and a pair of tinny little speakers. It turns out that Jackie, that was her name, was something of a kindred spirit, she loved indie guitars all most as much as I did. We sat there talking mainly, whilst her tapes played in the background.

I can remember that tape really well, the way that ‘There She Goes’ by the La’s ended and the opening whirls of ‘Come Home’ filled a little bit of the tent. I loved ‘Come Home’ and made a mental note to try and get a copy of it when I got home. Jackie promised to send me a copy of ‘Gold Mother’ if I gave her my address.

There She Goes – The La’s (1988, Go! Discs, Did Not Chart, Reissued 1990, Number 13)

‘Come Home’ was followed by this

I’m Free – Soup Dragons (1990 Big Life Records, Number 5)

And we were half way through that when the zip to the tent opened and a face peered through at us. It was Albert. Albert was one of the Scout Leaders and he went bat shit crazy at me, literally eyes popping out of his head style rage. I was dragged out of the tent by what our parents would call the scruff of my neck and in full view of about twenty five people he bollocked me. Which considering he was a Scout Leader was probably a lucky escape on my behalf.

He ended with him telling me that he was going to phone my father in the morning.

To which I shrugged my shoulders, my father wouldn’t really care, I could hear his voice now, “Being, caught in a girls tent, at night, well done son, have some extra pocket money”.

I never did get that copy of ‘Gold Mother’ either.

SWC

R.E.M.

IT REALLY WAS A CRACKING DEBUT SINGLE (44)

There were less than 1,000 copies of the first pressing of this single, from July 1981.  Second-hand copies rarely come up for sale and can fetch up to £200.

The re-press, which differs in that the Athens, Georgia address of Hib-Tone Records has been printed on the label, is marginally easier to get a hold of in that around 6,000 were pressed up.  There’s a few for sale on Discogs, from the USA and Japan, with the asking price either side of £100.

Hib-Tone Records was a short-lived affair, founded by Johnny Hibbert, who actually seems to have had a bigger role to play in the R.E.M. story than I previously believed.

The version of Radio Free Europe which I’m linking to today is courtesy of the compilation album, Eponymous, released in 1988, that I’ve always thought was the original single as that is what it says on the album sleeve.

But, while researching for this post, I found that the Epnoymous version is, in fact, the demo which the band recorded with Mitch Easter in April 1981, while the version that came out on 7″ vinyl on Hib-Tone was one which had been re-mixed by Johnny Hibbert.  It turned out that the band, and in particular Peter Buck, wanted the original Easter version to be the single but the label-owner, who pointed out he was financing the manufacturing and distribution, wasn’t having it.

So….what follows isn’t what you’d hear if you pulled out the 7″ from the Hib-Tone sleeve, but is the version the band wanted and is the one most readily available (and the one I actually have!!)

mp3 : R.E.M. – Radio Free Europe

Here’s its b-side.  It was also later re-recorded for Murmur.

mp3 : R.E.M. – Sitting Still

There’s a very strong possibility that the Sunday singles slot, when it returns later in the year, will feature R.E.M.

JC

Various

FROM OUR HUNGARIAN CORRESPONDENT….SIX YEARS AGO TODAY

Greetings to everyone, my name is Laslo Friop and I live in Budapest in the suburb of Erzsebetarvos and I would like to thank Mr JC for allowing me to compile todays piece for the Vinyl Villain.

I met JC on a trip to Glasgow a few years ago and he taught me all about its quality food and music. I have tried with limited success to get fish battered and chocolate that has been fried in Hungary it does not happen. Also the radio stations refuse to play Arab Strap or Mogwai, I did manage to get some Orange Juice though but it did not go down that well, it was too commercial and there was no gypsy punks. After just one hour with the JC I can now say that Glasgow is my sixth favourite city in Scotland after Edinburgh, Kirkcaldy, Cardiff, Dumbarton, and Stranraer. Since that afternoon at the train station I have followed this blog space with passion. I love to read about early 80s bands that for years were banned from Hungary for not being communist enough. Particularly Billy Bragg and The Redskins. They would have been very happy behind the Iron Curtain.

Anyway today I would like to talk you about revolution and the inspiration of a generation through music, in fact the inspiring of a generation by one band. For years in Hungary, music was terrible, under the Russians it was largely frowned upon to listen to anything Western, I think that the Beatles were not encouraged, and anyone caught listening to progressive rock from the 1970s usually disappeared to the Saltmines of Debrecen. They did this so that you could not grow your hair and say ‘Woah Man’ a lot.

Then as the West became more acceptable the Iron Grip loosened and the free republic commenced. It wasn’t all good but in one strange day back 1999 one band changed our lives for ever. It is a well known fact that David Hasslehoff singlehandedly brought the Berlin Wall to it knees.

Yet in Hungary on that day in 1999, a lesser known musical phenomenon occurred.

In September in what is now known as ‘Victory Square’ in Budapest the crowds had started to form to chant anti-government slogans and chants, the police had been heavy handed and we screamed at them ‘Ez mind össze képtelenség’ which roughly translated into Hungarian means ‘We will be free, we will win’. At that point the skies opened and the clouds burst and it rained. Those of you who have been to Budapest will know that this happens a lot, but at that moment we felt defeated, ruined by unemployment and now the weather. All we wanted was to have the same choices as our neighbours in Austria had, and not go the same way as other neighbours Romania had gone.

Now Western Radio and music has started to become relatively popular in Hungary around this time. We were massive fans of the reggae star Pato Banton and for many the arrival of Eminem was a crucial point in our history. Or ‘Nem ez nem volt’ as we like say when we discuss Eminem. So it was not unusual to hear Western songs on the radio or being churned out from the many cafes and shops. Now as the rain pelted down on our tear stained cheeks, one song, ‘Why Does It Always Rain on Me’ by the Scottish Band Travis came on. On hearing this Hungarians found solidarity and together we rose and defied the weather, we defied the police and we defied the government. After that day, Travis became the Number One band in all of Hungary, they were so popular they even had a brand of goulash named after them, people would go into restaurants and say ‘ez a teljes lószart’ and the workers would know that you were one of them. Their songs became synonymous with the protest movement in Hungary, ‘All I want to do is rock’ became the theme to our campaign to become more western, ‘Tied to the 90s’ became an ironic song about not returning to the days of communism with its cheeky ‘Remember the 80s…’ lyric and ‘Turn’ and ‘Sing’ remain anthems for the working parties in Hungary even today.

Travis are heroes in Hungary, their concerts here are sold out mega gigs and their singer Fran Healy has recently been awarded the highest ever accolade possible for a Non Hungarian the prestigious ‘Hatalmas Hazugság’. Very few people have been awarded this in Hungary.

I hope you enjoyed reading this piece, I hope my English has not been too crazy, I used Google Translate and hope that if you translate the Hungarian bits back to English you will get some idea what this band means to us. I would post their tracks but I think you will already own most of them. So instead I post tracks by two of my favourite bands, the Jesus and Mary Chain and The Stone Roses. Bands that I was lucky enough to see live in Austria at festivals. They have never played Hungary to the best of my knowledge.

mp3 : April Skies
mp3 : Fools Gold

I bid you farewell I will leave you with a good luck phrase in Hungarian

‘Mindez igaz, hogy minden szemetet. Kérlek, bocsáss meg, a normál szolgáltatás folytatódik a jövő héten’

Laslo

Jay Z/Alicia Keys

45 45s @ 45 : SWC STYLE (Part 19)

A GUEST SERIES


27 – Empire State of Mind – Jay Z/Alicia Keys (2009 Roc Nation Records)

Released as a single in October 2009 (Reached Number 2)

Every now and again, I do some teaching. I stand up in front of a bunch of students or professionals and deliver lectures on certain topics. I do these mainly in the UK. For instance, a few months back I was in the beautiful garden city of Leeds doing just that.

But occasionally I get lucky and I get asked to do this internationally. A few years ago, I got asked to deliver a lecture to a some students at the John Jay College in New York, I immediately said yes, because I love New York and started to plan what would have to be a minimum of five days in the Big Apple (during which I would be doing roughly three hours hard work), I looked at getting some Yankees tickets (some are available against the Twins), I checked out what gigs were on (Real Estate at Terminal 5, well ok…) I look to see if I can squeeze in a trip to the Tenement Museum or not and whether or not I can get a boat out to see the Statue of Liberty.

I even book the time off work and tell Mrs SWC that it would be lovely if her and the daughter came over as well. I convince her with memories of our last trip to New York, where we ambled through Central Park arm in arm, casually munching on pistachio ice cream and buying tremendous pizza from a small Italian bloke pushing a cart. She then books time off work and tells the nursery that our daughter will be absent for a few days.

A few weeks later an email comes through, confirming that I am going to be lecturing in two weeks time at 2pm local time. Perfect, then I look at flights. As I’m doing that another email pops up on the screen from the college.

“Please let me know whether you will be using Jabbr Suite or Skype when you deliver your lecture so that we can select the correct software”.

Hang on, what…? You want me to deliver this lecture, over the web…I look at the emails again, yup, there it is….’webinar….’

Bugger.

I phone Mrs SWC and break the news to her. When she has stopped swearing at me, and then laughing at me and swearing at me again, we agree to visit New York in the next year regardless (we haven’t done that yet).

So the day arrives, it feels odd. I am wearing a smart suit and I am standing in my spare room, I have moved the framed photo of Mick Jagger from the wall so that it can’t be seen on camera and I have pushed the basket of toys out of view. Of course, in the UK it’s like five hours ahead of the States. So its seven pm or so when I start, I ask the students if they can hear me, there are a few mumbled ‘yeahs’ so I crack on.

About fifteen minutes in the connection drops out. I’m pretty sure it’s their end, because I can still hear every word that is being said in the now very noisy lecture theatre. When I am eventually reconnected, I am stopped after two more minutes because apparently I sound like ‘an alien’, “well”, the professor tells me, “an English voiced alien”. There is some laughter in the audience. I’ll do the jokes mate I think to myself, although they would sound like an alien doing jokes – like ALF, I suppose (that’s a niche joke that no one under the age of 35 will understand).

Eventually the technicals are sorted out and I fly through the next hour, I start to relax, trying to ignore the fact that I am in my spare room surrounded by toys, an old part of a pram, some books, and some undrunk tea. I start to move about a bit just a few steps here and there and then it happens.

Remember I said above that I’d pushed the basket of toys to one side of view. Well unbeknownst to me, one had fallen out of the basket when I did that. A teddy. Not just any teddy, but one that when you tread on it makes a sound, which I just have. The sound this teddy made at this time was “I feel it in my hooves…” because I’d trodden on disco unicorn.

And, now that sentence had sailed away over the Atlantic to the ears of around 100 now a bit less bored students. Some of whom are laughing at me, or it, to be more specific.

I do the only thing I can, I bend down and pick up disco unicorn and pretend to make it wave at the students. Some of them humour me, most look deeply ashamed to even be there.

At the end, the professor thanks me for my time, apologises for the technical problems and I say to him, with a smile, “I tell you what, I’ll come over and do it in person next time”. I’ve not heard a single word since.

Which provides me with a nice link to post a couple of tracks that very nearly made this list

Talk To Me – Run The Jewels (2015 Run the Jewels Inc, Did Not Chart)

Through The Wire – Kanye West (2003 Roc-A-Fella Records, Number 9)

SWC

 

 

Click Click, For Against

TIMES LIKE THESE

Many thanks for all your kind words on the news of my (semi) retirement from the world of work.  Hugely appreciated.  A couple of the comments, from regular contributors, ended up in the spam section which was very strange, but I’ve fished them out and put them in their proper place.   I’m thinking that, with a reported rise in online scamming in recent days, WordPress is acting on the cautious side – I’ll do my best to stay on top of things by checking on the spam stuff at least on a daily basis – so if your comment doesn’t appear immediately, then please bear with me.  But I can’t work out just why The Great Gog is having all his comments left behind as ‘anonymous’ just now.  Might be worth everyone adding a wee signature at the end of any contributions for now.

A few folk have been in touch offering additional guest contributions on the basis that they have a bit more time on their hands and want to try and do something useful.  You all know my take on this – every single guest contribution, unless it is offensive, racist, sexist etc. will find its way onto the blog as I regard it as a place where everyone is welcome to say their bit and share their thoughts, views and opinions with our little community.  So, feel free to send stuff over.

Having said that, please be prepared, again, to be patient.  I really don’t want to expand beyond one post per day and I have a policy of one ICA per week as these lengthy submissions should be allowed a bit of breathing space over an extended period of time. I’ve also got a couple of ongoing series, not least SWC’s 45s at 45 rundown, all of which have been allocated dates to take us through to his #1 appearing on his birthday in mid-June.  The Saturday series is also staying put – I’m loath to give it up or put it to one side after so many weeks getting to the letter ‘M’ and while I know it’s the one day when perhaps it features a singer or band that few or you know or, even worse, many of you don’t have any time for, it’s something I’m determined to get through to the end.

Today was meant to feature another ICA from HSP, but I’ve shifted that to later in the week. I’m instead handing over to ‘Middle Aged Man’ whose previous toe-dip as a guest contributor was a well received Bauhaus ICA.

Here he is….with some thought ss on two bands he completely missed out on (which, incidentally, happens to be a subject matter that will be the focus of one of SWC’s upcoming contributions).

———————-

While as a person I’m not cool and never have been, I’ve always sought refuge in that I had cool taste in music, although in truth my taste in music was probably closer to what the music press said was good. Like many of the readers of this blog I was lucky enough to become interested in music during the heyday of the music press and in particular the NME, I would slavishly read every page every week – I was even known to cut out ‘witty’ quotes and put them on the pin board.

And then some years later came the internet or rather and then came music blogging and I discovered that there were bands who made great music and not just a single track but album after album who the NME never even mentioned. How did this happen? How did bands make great music never have a hit, never even get in the Indie top 30 or a review in the music press?

One band that I completely missed were ‘Click Click’ who must have been a great band name at the time.

Having listened to a couple of tracks I then spend a few years trying to find everything and anything else they released – via various blogs and then bandcamp and finally their own label – Rotorbabe Recordings – and even better laerning that they were releasing new music and performing live.

Now comes the tricky bit- how to describe their music – it is definitely electronic in that there a very few if any guitars but have a real drummer using a real drum set so they avoid the feel of the mid 80’s electronic duos such as Yazoo-Soft Cell- Blancmange etc. There’s a lovely indie disco dancability to their music but definitely not disco and on top of this is a real sense of tension verging on spookiness a few of tracks to illustrate this – the song titles give an idea of the tone and feel – paranoid 80’s at its best.

Awake and Watching from their album ‘Rorschach Testing’
Yakutska a stand only single
Man in a Suit – from their most recent album ‘Those Nervous Surgeons’

My second ‘how did I miss’ are ‘For Against’ – 8 albums released – who knew? Sadly not me. A ‘proper’ band with drums, bass, guitar and probably keyboards although they seem to have been a trio most of the time and a much more ‘post punk’ feel- by the way, when did post punk become a thing? Initially very early 80’s with the bass to the fore as you would expect and no hint of the dreaded love song. As with most bands they become ‘tuneful’ with proper songs and proper singing over the years.

Amnesia from an ep ‘In the Marshes’
Loud and Clear from their debut album ‘Aperture’
Glamour from the album ‘Shade Side Sunny Side’

MIDDLE AGED MAN

Super Furry Animals

45 45s @ 45 : SWC STYLE (Part 18)

A GUEST SERIES


28. Slow Life – Super Furry Animals (2004, Placid Casual Records)

Released as a Free Download EP in April 2004 (Did not chart)

For such a small place, the Devon market town of Bovey Tracey holds a great deal of history. Firstly it is half named after the chap who is linked to the murder of Thomas Beckett. Secondly, it is where Cromwell ransacked a few armies and stole quite a lot of horses and changed British society for ever. It is also the gateway to the Moor, Dartmoor that is, the only place in Britain where you can genuinely get all four seasons in one day, whatever time of the year you go there.

But, all that is knocked into a cocked hat because when history is evaluated and assessed Bovey Tracey will only ever be remembered for one thing.

Badger falling off a bar stool in the Cromwell Arms, after a goat bit him on the arm.

The goat bit him on the arm because Badger had refused to allow the goat to have a bit of his prawn and lettuce sandwich.

The thing was the goat was a more of a regular in the Cromwell that Badger was. The goat belonged to a chap who I only know as ‘Puffin’, I have no idea why they call him Puffin. The goat would pop in after a hard day’s erm, goating, in the town, he would then be presented with a bowl full of Guinness and a packet of steak flavoured crisps. Puffin would follow him in and the two would sit (or stand, in, the goats case), have their drinks, chat to their mates, have a game of darts and then leave around dinner time.

Badger was in there having some late tea with Mrs Badger, when the goat was denied his pre-dinner snack. The goat having finished his crisps decided that the prawn sandwich looked rather tasty. According to Mrs Badger, it ambled over to Tim, nudged him a bit and tried to nibble the end of the sandwich. Tim fearing for his tea lifted the plate above his head with his left arm, and tried to shoo the goat away with his right arm. This annoyed the goat, who promptly bit him on the shooing arm.

This caused him to drop the plate and allowed the goat to nimbly take the lettuce out of the sandwich are return to his place by the fire. Badger declined the offer of a fresh sandwich but did take up the local doctor’s advice of having a free dose of tetanus. Puffin apologised to Badger for the bite, and told him that the goat only did it because the barman poured him Beamish instead of Guinness and Beamish apparently made the goat ‘rowdy’.

Bringing this back to the reason why I am here. A few years ago, as some of you will remember, a blog I wrote ran down a list of 200 songs that according to Badger and I were the ‘Greatest Songs in the World’ – we called that list rather arrogantly The WYCRA 200. That list was largely conceived (if that’s the right word) in the Cromwell Arms. Additionally, the follow up blog to WYCRA, The Sound of Being Ok had its inaugural blog summit, in the same place and in Badger’s coat pocket that lunchtime was a copy of ‘Phantom Power’ which contains of course ‘Slow Life’

I found the original list for the WYCRA 200, a few weeks back and on reviewing that list, I found it was staggering how much of that list I would change if I ever did that list again (and I won’t be). I mean this would be in the Top 50 for a start

So Few Words – Archive (1996, London Records, Unknown Chart Position)

It didn’t even make the Top 200 at all last time around.

In fact quite a lot of the entire list would have moved around considerably. That, I guess is joy and frustration of music. I think that most of the bands would have been the same, but the songs would I think be different and in a different order, if that makes sense.

For instance – on that list somewhere (its number isn’t really important) was ‘Ice Hockey Hair’ by Super Furry Animals. A track which I still love for lots of reasons but if I were to redo that list Ice Hockey Hair would be booted out for ‘Slow Life’.

Ice Hockey Hair (1998, Creation Records, Number 12)

SWC

 

 

Memphis

SATURDAY’S SCOTTISH SONG : #205 : MEMPHIS

I can do no better than offer a repeat post from February 2014:-

James Kirk wrote the finest single ever recorded by Orange Juice. In fact, as regular readers will know, it is my strongly-held view that Felicity is the finest single ever recorded by any Scottish band or singer.

In 1985, James Kirk rather surprisingly came out of his self-imposed retirement and, adopting the name Memphis, wrote and recorded what rather sadly turned out to be a one-off 45 for the Swamplands label that was being run by Alan Horne (ex Postcard).

mp3 : Memphis – You Supply The Roses
mp3 : Memphis – Apres Ski

Here’s the instrumental version of the a-side that was made available on the 12″ release.  It was sent to me back in 2014 by Hugh, a then regular reader from France, and it was in response to my general plea for a digital copy as I only had the 7″ version in the collection.

mp3 : Memphis – I’ll Supply The Wine

Cheers.

JC

Various

THE END OF AN ERA?? WELL, IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN!

This one is a tad self-indulgent.

I graduated from university on Friday 5 July 1985.   I started work on Monday 8 July 1985 – it was a time in history when, without the help of the old-school tie, it was difficult to land a job that was compatible with your degree and so when I was asked, following what I recall being my fourth job interview, to join a local council in Edinburgh at the earliest opportunity, any plans for a few weeks of down time were put to the side.  It’s a decision I’ve never regretted.

Today, Friday 27 March 2020, I will enjoy my last day of paid employment, after my application for early retirement through voluntary redundancy was accepted.

It’s been an incredibly strange and frustrating end to my career as I’ve mostly been working from home these past two weeks, taking part in regular conference calls with my fellow managers, doing our best to keep things ticking over and trying to keep staff morale as high as is possible in such challenging and uncertain times.

From a selfish point of view, the planned night out has, of course, been cancelled but I’ve undertaken to go back in for one last time when this all eventually calms down and to do my very best to have a leaving do that will be legendary.

I have no intention to work for a living in the future, and the plan, eventually,  is to devote as much time as possible to travel, music, Raith Rovers and golf. Oh, and I have good intentions about trying to pass my driving test!

EXCEPT………..in such challenging times everyone had to be less selfish and so I’ve offered to stay on, free of charge on a voluntary basis, to continue to help and support my colleagues as we implement business contingency plans, including, eventually, preparing for how best to get going when there is some sort of return to normality.

I did think about changing the intended piece of music that has long been scheduled for today, but will stick with the latest one-hour mix tape, with most of the song titles having some sort of link to the past 35 years.  The opener is one that myself and Jacques once danced to at the Xmas Party that we organised jointly on behalf of our colleagues – the one piece of music we decided should clear the floor for a couple of minutes.

I’m happy to say that I have had many more good than bad days during my career and have made a number of lifelong friends along the way.  I’ve been lucky that way.

mp3 : Various – The End of an Era

Tracklist

Pixies – Debaser
The Wedding Present – What Did Your Last Servant Die Of?
The Rakes – Work Work Work (Pub Club Sleep)
The Clash – Career Opportunities
Idlewild – You Held The World In Your Arms
Fun Boy Three – It Ain’t What You Do
R.E.M. – Finest Worksong
Buzzcocks – Everybody’s Happy Nowadays
The Jam – Just Who Is The 5 O’Clock Hero?
Le Tigre – Deceptacon
Magazine – Model Worker
Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci – Patio Song
Electronic – Getting Away With It
The Fall – Fantastic Life
International Teachers of Pop – The Age of The Train
Stereolab – Ping Pong
Lloyd Cole – Don’t Look Back (original mix)
Otoboke Beaver – 6 Days Working Week Is a Pain
PJ Harvey – Big Exit (edit)
Young Marble Giants – Final Day

A new life beckons.  Eventually.

JC

Breeders

45 45s @ 45 : SWC STYLE (Part 17)

A GUEST SERIES


29 : Cannonball – The Breeders (1993 4AD Records)

Released as a single in August 1993 (Reached Number 40)

Another record I can’t play on guitar and for the second post in a row I get to say that something rocks like a bastard, which is exactly what ‘Cannonball’ does. It is also bloody brilliant, but I’m kind of figuring that you all know that by now. You mustn’t whatever you do confuse this track with the David Gray track which has the same name. They are very different. Gray’s ‘Cannonball’ doesn’t rock like a bastard, it more sways like an abandoned windbreak at a lonely Welsh beach. It’s shit as well.

In my second year as a student I was asked by the Students Union to be a judge at a ‘Battle of the Bands’ kind of contest (I suppose that my editing of the music pages gave me some form of experience). Something which I reluctantly agreed to do. I mean, secretly I was honoured and amazed that they even asked, but I nonchalantly said that I would check my schedule and get back to them. Which I did twenty minutes later, saying yes.

The event itself was pretty awful. There were ten or so entrants, mostly pub rocking student bands who could neither play, sing nor write their own material. I’ll bypass most of them if you don’t mind, but I will touch briefly on ‘Anita’. Anita was a dance student, who played an acoustic guitar, well, she knew two chords, and thought she could sing. Worse than that she thought she could sing Joni Mitchell songs. She couldn’t. She was embarrassing the entire human race by just being there. The fact that she lived next door to the future Mrs SWC, was something I ignored when I was asked to comment on her performance by the compare (a fat oaf who genuinely changed his middle name to ‘Disco’ when standing for the Entertainments Chair Position). I told her that she should stick to dancing. She didn’t speak to me or Mrs SWC again from that afternoon.

Anyway, the two best student bands around were (and I’ve changed their names because one of them got signed and did quite well) my mates band ‘Tea Towel’ – who didn’t get signed – and ‘Knobheads’, who did. I think you can work out which band I thought I was better. Knobheads sounded like Pearl Jam and in comparison Tea Towel sounded like Radiohead. I couldn’t understand the appeal of Knobheads, also they all had the looks of models, and were way more talented than I would ever be, but you know, Pearl Jam.

The problem was that Knobheads were playing their own material and Tea Towel were not, they were doing cover versions of songs like ’Breakfast at Tiffanys’ which didn’t help them. Still, apart from that they were better musicians, had a better singer and had bought me at least two bottles of Becks that day.

Anyway, it came to the final, a shoot off between these two bands. They had thirty minutes to wow the audience and the judges. I mean I’d already nailed my colours to the mast by telling Knobheads that I would ‘actually rather read The Sun on a bus to Woking’ than listen to them again. I mean, it’s hardly Simon Cowell is it?

Anyway Tea Towel come on and do very well, they ended with a new song, a cover of this as it happens,

Grassman – Dodgy

But without the gospel choir. A song which itself very nearly made this list. It was remarkable, but not remarkable enough.

Knobheads strode out full of confidence, wearing shades, and looking it has to be said, like an actual band. They were a five piece, only one of whom was actually a student, something, I tried in vain to point ou.  They had a singer, a lead guitarist, a rhythm guitarist, a bassist and a drummer. They played twenty five minutes of their Pearl Jam inspired angst rock and I tried to not yawn too obviously. Then they said for the last song they were going to end with a cover. Which is when they blew the roof off the place.

The singer grabbed another guitar and the rhythm swapped his guitar for a Gibson Flying V, and they launched into a full on enslaught of ‘Cannonball’ and I have to say it sounded bloody amazing. Three lead guitars, a crashing bass, stage divers, and trashed speaker at the end. If they did that all the time instead of having seven songs that sound exactly like ‘Even Flow’, then I might have upgraded The Sun to the Guardian.

It was, and believe me, if you knew the back story about me and that band (another time), you would understand how much it pains me to even type it, the best thing I’d seen live for some time. The bastards.

The B Side of ‘Cannonball’ contains an Aerosmith cover version – an ode to Chris Hoy, so I’m told.

Lord of the Thighs

SWC

 

 

McCarricks

AS MENTIONED YESTERDAY

The McCarricks are the husband and wife duo of Martin McCarrick on cello and Kimberlee McCarrick on violin. They have collaborated and performed with many well-known musicians including Kristin Hersh, Sinéad O’Connor, Gary Numan, Marianne Faithfull and Patti Smith.  Their own performances are usually in front of silent films produced specially for their performances.

It was back in 2007 that I saw them play live, possibly in the company of Mike from Manic Pop Thrills and possibly as support to Kristin Hersh. The music in the live setting was mesmorising and engrossing and led to my purchase, before leaving the venue, of a mini-album on CD, which turned out to be not quite so mesmorising and engrossing once I got home. But it did have a fabulous cover on it:-

mp3 : The McCarricks – Your Ghost

Here’s the original

mp3 : Kristin Hersh (feat Michael Stipe) – Your Ghost

JC

JiH

35 YEARS TOO LATE

Scotland is not a large country by any stretch of the imagination. As such, it should always be relatively easy for music fans (or indeed fans of any cultural activity) to keep tabs on what is happening outside of their own local community.

The release of the Big Gold Dreams boxset has highlighted just how much I managed to miss out on over the decades, even the periods when I was paying particular attention. It is only now that I have learned of the brief existence of an 80s band from Dundee:-

JiH revolved around the voice, attitude and style of Grant McNally, who was part of the same Dundee society frequented by mercurial Billy MacKenzie. Indeed, various live incarnations of JiH featured Billy’s brother Jimmy MacKenzie on bass. This debut single was a string-laden slice of epic 1980s pop produced by Dave Ball of Soft Cell, and which showed off McNally’s own vocal ambitions in impressive fashion. An album, The Shadow to Fall, followed, as well as two singles. The last of these, Take Me to the Girl, was a cover of an Associates song produced by MacKenzie, who also provided backing vocals. McNally continued to perform for a time as Jesus in Heavens, but sadly died in September 2018.

A band championed by Billy MacKenzie, based in a city just 70 miles to the north-east of Glasgow and I knew nothing……I am hanging my head in shame. My only defence is that they emerged just as I had left Glasgow to live and work in Edinburgh, and while I kept an eye on much that was happening in the capital, it was with less enthusiasm than before and indeed music would become, temporarily, less important to me for a while.

All of the JiH output came via the singer’s own label, Breadth of Vision Records (no other band would ever release anything on the label):-

1985 : Big Blue Ocean (7” and 12” single)
1986 : This Gift (12” single)
1986 : The Shadow to Fall (LP)
1988 : Take Me To The Girl (12” single)

The album had nine tracks, three of which (including the first two singles) were produced by Dave Ball, with the remaining tracks seeing Grant McNally at the helm. There is a very serious mistake in the text on the reverse of the sleeve in that the production credits are all wrong, leading at least one contemporary review to accuse Dave Ball of falling asleep on the job when in fact it was his songs that had found most favour!

Looking back, there was a decent degree of support and positive media locally for JiH but not a huge amount beyond its boundaries, which is perhaps the main reason it all passed me by. I’ve managed to find a few things to share with you today:-

mp3 : JiH – Big Blue Ocean
Mp3 : JiH – This Gift
Mp3 : JiH – Shadow to Fall
Mp3 : JiH – Take Me To The Girl

Listening now, I’ve a feeling I would have really appreciated them far more back in the day on account of the music now sounding a bit of its time from the production dating somewhat. I do, however, enjoy the fact that there is use made of strings, which came courtesy of violinist Virginia Hewes, the then wife of Dave Ball and cellist, Martin McCarrick, who had previously worked with Marc Almond.

Tune in tomorrow for some more songs featuring Mr McCarrick……………………….

JC

Woody Guthrie covers

AN IMAGINARY COMPILATION ALBUM : #245 : WOODY GUTHRIE REVISITATIONS

Woodie Guthrie Revisitations: A Semi-Synthetic ICA

Your “So Michigan Calls THIS Spring?” Correspondent
The Hybrid Soc Prof

I considered a long, rambling account of
• my frustrations around hearing great Billy Bragg singles in the 80s but not being able to find his LPs,
• seeing the Beatnigs/Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy when Camper van Beethoven had to cancel a show for which I had tickets,
• the connection between Bragg and the Disposable Heroes initiated at the celebration of the 80th anniversary of Woody Guthrie’s birth – realized in a performance of “Vigilante Man,”
• the way that performance led Nora Guthrie to open up Woody’s archives to Bragg as a means to set to music songs Woody had only written lyrics for,
• Bragg’s invitation to Wilco (and Natalie Merchant) to join the project, and
• the eventual generation of what is now the three CD/album set, Mermaid Avenue.

This was going to be followed by a look at the more recent New Multitudes double album by Will Johnson, Jim James, Jay Farrar and Anders Parker (set in motion and organized by Farrar) where I would
• look askance at Farrar’s claims that he was contacted by Bragg before Wilco while claiming to be uncomfortable with the idea of a collaboration,
• call bullshit on his assertion that he never listed to the Mermaid Avenue albums – or, at least, that he didn’t listen to them to keep form being influenced, and
• acknowledge that, despite all this, I like New Multitudes a little better than Mermaid Avenue.

All that would have taken too long, classic Hybrid Soc Prof tl;dr…

There have been two other recordings of songs from Guthrie’s archives… one by the folk/jazz artist Jonatha Brook (yes, Jonatha) and another by a Native American “alternative” band, Blackfire. Neither are my cup of tea. By contrast, the New Multitudes and Mermaid Avenue collaborations make me really happy.

As many people – from performers to reviewers to me – have noted, what people who think they know Woody Guthrie songs aren’t always expecting is the sheer amount of love, sex and drugs… it’s almost like people did those things before the 60s (the sociologist writes shaking his head…)!

I tried somewhere between five and nine – depending on how you count such things – different approaches to selecting and ordering songs from these collections and I always ended up losing songs I wasn’t willing to cut. In the end, I opted for alternating selections from each set. It’s imperfect (I left out Natalie Merchant for goodness sake!), but in the end I’m quite happy with it. Enjoy.

1. California Stars (Wilco, Mermaid Avenue, v.1, 1998)
2. Jake Walk Blues (Jay Farrar, vocals, New Multitudes, 2012)
3. Another Man’s Done Gone (Wilco Mermaid Avenue, v.1, 1998)
4. I Was A Goner (Anders Parker, vocals, New Multitudes, 2012)
5. Go Down to the Water (Billy Bragg, Mermaid Avenue: The Complete Sessions/v.3, 2012)
6. Angel’s Blues (Anders Parker, vocals, New Multitudes, 2012)
7. Black and Blowing (Billy Bragg, Mermaid Avenue, v.2, 2000)
8. Fly High (Jim James, vocals, New Multitudes, 2012)
9. Remember the Mountain Bed (Wilco, Mermaid Avenue, v.1, 1998)
10. Chorine, My Sheba Queen (Will Johnson and Jim James, duet, New Multitudes, 2012)

HSP

 

Teenage Fanclub

45 45s @ 45 : SWC STYLE (Part 16)

A GUEST SERIES


30. God Knows It’s True – Teenage Fanclub (1990 Paperhouse Records)

Released as a single in November 1990 (It did not chart)

Another day, another record that I was introduced to by OPG. I was a huge Teenage Fanclub fan, I guess I still am, although I admit, that as part of the same pointless space saving exercise that I referred to in Number 41, I sold three of their albums on vinyl for vast amounts of cash. Apparently original Creation Records vinyl releases are worth money, who knew…? As brilliant as ‘Grand Prix’ is, I wouldn’t pay £54 for a slightly battered vinyl copy (but still in good condition and playable) of it but some fool from Cheltenham did exactly that.

Anyway, ‘God Knows It’s True’ was one of the songs that convinced me that I should pick up a guitar and learn how to play it, rather than actually just pretend I could in front of the mirror and say I could to impressionable young ladies in pubs.

I can’t remember exactly where I was when I first heard it, but I know it was on a tape that OPG did for me, which was called ‘Shoplifters Paradise Vol.2’. It was compiled entirely from songs that she had nicked from the shelves of Our Price and then returned a few weeks later when no one was looking.

Anyway, I found myself an old acoustic guitar and found a bloke who could teach me the basics. My plan was to master the acoustic, upgrade to Fender or something cool, form a band and headline Reading (not Glastonbury) before 1995. Easy.

I walked into my first lesson, guitar slung over my shoulder, charity shop shirt unbuttoned down to the pubis bone, like the troubled troubadour I was, and my teacher, Mr Hawkins, looked at me over his half-moon glasses and sighed, loudly. The first words to me were, “You’re not Jim Bloody Morrison”. His second words to me were “If you tell me you want to learn how to play like Kurt Cobain, you can leave right now. I’ll give you your money back.”

Now. I sort of did want to learn how to play like Kurt Cobain, but I said, “No, not at all. I want to learn how to play like this” and thrust a tape with ‘God Knows It’s True’ at the start of it into his delighted hands. He put it on and sighed loudly again. He went to a cupboard and pulled out a piece of vinyl and put that on. It was “The Whiter Shade of Pale” by Procol Harum.

“It’s fundamentally the same record” he said (it’s not, clearly) “But, we can work with that”.

Six weeks later I’d mastered the basics, well I knew three chords. Eight weeks later I formed my first band.

I’ve realised that the version of ‘God knows Its True’ that I truly love is the Peel Session version because it in the words of Badger “Rocks, like a bastard” so in fact it’s that version I’ve picked. Both the single and the Peel Session are backed with versions of this

So Far Gone

Oh and I still can’t play ‘God Knows It’s True’ on the guitar.

SWC

JC adds

Here’s the studio versions of both songs:-

God Knows It’s True
So Far Gone

 

Meat Whiplash

SATURDAY’S SCOTTISH SONG : #204 : MEAT WHIPLASH

I previously wrote about today’s featured bandback in 2015.  There’s little I can add to what was said before. There’s a lot of name-dropping for such a short piece.

Meat Whiplash from East Kilbride were amongst the first to be signed to Creation Records.

The line-up was Paul McDermott (vocals), Stephen McLean (guitar), Edward Connelly (bass guitar) and Michael Kerr (drums). They took their name from a B-side track by The Fire Engines. They then became The Motorcycle Boy when Alex Taylor (of The Shop Assistants) joined the group in 1987.

Meat Whiplash only ever released one 7″ record. It was in September 1985 with a sleeve featuring actor Robert Vaughan that had been printed up by Bobby Gillespie and hand-folded by their record label’s owner, Alan McGee.

The band were the opening act at North London Polytechnic on 15 March 1985 on the occasion of the infamous “riot gig” by Jesus and Mary Chain.

That one 7″ single was included on CD 86 and here it is along with its b-side. It’s a bit high on the noisy and tuneless scale:-

mp3 : Meat Whiplash – Don’t Slip Up
mp3 : Meat Whiplash – Here It Comes

JC