Released as a single in October 1990 (Reached Number 86)
More OPG today and a slightly extended mix of an old story that some of you will know.
Cud were for a long time, until she fully embraced the long hair and muscle Tshirts of bands like Soul Asylum and Soundgarden, her favourite band of all time.
‘Leggy Mambo’ was a record that we sorted of bonded over and in a daft kind of way ‘Robinson Crusoe’ is a song that I will always associate with her. Largely because after watching her dance to it in a pub in Chatham I could think of little else for an entire summer. It that’s simple. It’s not even a great song, to be honest the best bit is near the end when it sounds like a digital watch alarm gets set off by mistake in the background. The B Side if I remember rightly had a Nightmares on Wax remix of ‘Robinson Crusoe’ but I don’t have it, which is a shame because I think it was quite good.
In 1992, I went to see Cud (supported by The Family Cat) with OPG at a legendary London venue called The Town and Country Club. It ended badly with us splitting up on the platform of Kentish Town Tube Station, after we’d had a row in the pub before the gig (it was over musical differences – seriously). It also saw OPG get arrested for assault (after the gig)
She barely spoke to me the entire gig – Cud finished the gig with a rousing version of ‘Purple Love Balloon’ and filled the room with purple balloons and told everyone to “Go Home and Make Babies”.
Purple Love Balloon
OPG grabbed a balloon and smiled at me, I thought at the time, that maybe the row had been forgotten. It was the kind of smile that made my knees buckle.
We strolled back to the tube station and went down the escalator to the platform, half way down a bloke in a suit came charging down the escalator and pushed us out the way. He obviously wanted to catch the train and was running late, but he was out of order.
In the process of this OPG’s Purple Balloon got burst and she went absolutely mental. She charged after the suit and grabbed him on the platform and punched him in the face. I arrived to see blood on the floor, a scared looking commuter, and two burly looking security guards jogging up the platform.
OPG looked at me as I stood in the corridor between the Northern Line Up and Down and she said “This is all your fault” just before the guards grabbed her. To bemused faces I turned and walked on to the other platform and jumped on the first tube to anywhere. I spent the night at my uncle’s flat in Waterloo (after a midnight call to him) and I didn’t speak to OPG for around a year.
and just to add…..for those of you who don’t know, most London Underground stations, including Kentish Town, broadcast a pre-recorded three-word message in terms of public safety, warning passengers to be careful when boarding or alighting a train. One of Cud’s better known songs is named after said safety warning
Reviews of the last UK tour undertaken by Elvis Costello back in 2018 were far from positive. The singer would later admit that he had returned to the stage far too soon after cancer treatment and that, from the very first performances he knew he was underperforming and the shows left a lot to be desired.
It was on the back of this that I had been reluctant to shell out what would have been considerable sums of money to get tickets for the 2020 tour, given the name of ‘Just Trust’, partly as a plea to forgive and forget and partly as the 1981 album Trust was going to feature prominently in the set.
The tour subsequently opened in Liverpool and there was an ecstatic 5-star review in The Guardian, with a number of other publications also heaping high praise on things. I sneaked a look at the set list, and noticing that it and the next few shows focussed highly on the older material, began to reconsider things but it was only at the 11th hour, when a work colleague passed on a voucher containing an offer for very cheap tickets, that I put the call into Rachel and we made arrangements to go.
I’ll cut to the chase. It was an amazing night. Maybe not quite up there fully with some of the shows in the early 80s in that the voice isn’t quite the powerful tool it once was, but in terms of a set list and the musical abilities on display, I’m struggling to think of the overall experience ever being bettered, which is no real surprise given that the keyboards of Steve Nieve and the drums of Pete Thomas were so often at the heart of everything. Huge praise also for the peerless Davey Faragher on bass, while it proved to be a genius idea to have the soulful and dynamic vocal talents of Kitten Kuroi and Briana Lee added to the band. Oh, and the frontman offered a reminder that he is a fabulous punk guitarist, whether playing as lead or offering the notes as part of the rhythm.
The opening songs really were a step back in time – Strict Time, Clubland, Green Shirt, Accidents Will Happen and Watch Your Step were hammered out in breathless style. My only concern was that EC seemed to be struggling to hit some notes when he was not singing at full pelt, but the band’s playing was more than compensating, particularly Nieve who seemed, from our seats at the back of the auditorium to be jumping between at least three and possibly more sets of keyboards.
And then they launched into Tokyo Storm Warning, a song that has long been one my all-time favourites. I was anticipating some sort of edited version, but nope, it was actually extended from the album version with EC thrashing magnificently and note-perfect at his guitar throughout while the backing singers demonstrated just how much they were ready to bring to the night.
If that had proved to be the highlight of the night, then I would have gone home happy. In the end, it probably just scraped into the Top 10.
Musically and visually (as there was a clever and inventive ever-changing background throughout), Watching The Detectives will be my biding memory of the main set. It was a genuinely breath taking piece of musical theatre in which EC was front lit and the reminder of the band were in near darkness as a series of film noir posters flashed up high over everyone’s heads, all of which were on display for maybe five seconds at the most. It was one of those things that if you were watching on TV, you would pause and rewind to try and made sure you captured everything that was going on.
Other memorable moments included (I Don’t Want To Go To) Chelsea, Pump It Up, Radio Radio, High Fidelity, Alison and Everyday I Write The Book, the latter extending to something like a seven-minute version with each musician/singer given their own opportunity to individually shine.
And then came the encore.
A haunting take on Shipbuilding in which EC sang part of it away from the microphone, and in doing so brought a few lumps to a few throats. And as the cheers got louder and louder, EC again strapped on his guitar and to huge acclaim, he played those distinctive and off-kilter notes which provide the musical introduction to I Want You.
As I mentioned earlier, I had sneaked a look at the setlists from the first four shows on this tour. Glasgow was the first time that I Want You had been aired. It was, as my North American friends often proclaim, awesome.
The show ended with the double-whammy of Oliver’s Army and (What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding, with an anti-war backdrop that seamlessly led into a lovely tribute to EC’s grandparents and their participation in the Great War of 1914-18.
2 hours and 10 minutes after he first set foot on stage, it was all over. If there was the occasional hint of a missed note through what could very well be a throat infection, then what was happening across the rest of the stage made up for it…..besides, when your front man is 65 years old and has not long kicked cancer’s butt, a few allowances have to be made.
The only thing…..this was such a fabulous show that I’d be nervous about going along next time round in case it didn’t quite live up to this one. But I suppose, when it comes down to it, I should always just trust EC and his Imposters.
mp3 : Elvis Costello & The Attractions – Watching The Detectives
mp3 : Elvis Costello & The Attractions – Tokyo Storm Warning
Just when you thought the solo output couldn’t get any more surreal or off-the-wall bonkers……
2015 saw the release of Adventures In Dementia. A 10” vinyl release with just six tracks packed into less than 15 minutes, it’s more akin to an EP than a fully-blown album. The concept this time, and I still shake my head in disbelief as I type these words, is that of a Mark E Smith impersonator towing a caravan, only for his vehicle(s) to collide with a car driven by Ian Stuart, the late singer of the neo-Nazi band called Skrewdiver (me neither!!).
I’m not entirely convinced that the concept really hangs together and perhaps it is something that would have made more sense (or at least a semblance of sense) if caught live at the outset when it was part of a performance within a wider arts-related event, curated by someone whose main gallery describes his output as being “infused with a cunning media savviness that deftly navigates between product, messaging, and desire.”
You’ll come across all sorts of musical styles on Adventures….., not least a kazoo-led instrumental version of the hymn Jerusalem, a tune that a number of folk have suggested by adopted as the national anthem should England ever find itself wholly independent and not part of the UK……,none of which hark back whatsoever to The Auteurs or Black Box Recorder. Lyrically, there’s more than a passing nod to the seemingly free-style stuff that Mark E Smith was famed for – i.e., it leaves listeners scratching their heads and wondering what the hell he’s on about – and, as ever with any Luke Haines release, there’s a few folk who are provoked, nor least the Skrewdriver vocalist (who in fact passed away in 1993) and the comedian David Baddiel, whose material, shows and writings over the years have divided opinion.
As you’ve probably worked out by now, it’s a release I’m not too sure about. I’ve often wondered whether it was put out to antagonise and test Haines’s fanbase, given that the vinyl went for the same price as a full-blown album and that a couple of tracks were no more than throwaway novelties. It’s certainly the one I go back to least of all, probably not having listened to it more than three or four times all told. This might give you an idea of what I’m trying to convey:-
mp3 : Luke Haines – Cats That Look Like MES
Oh and ignore the sticker thay adorns the sleeve in the image above. There were no singles lifted from Adventures in Dementia although Caravan Man was given a seperate digital release.
Later that same year, Luke Haines released another solo album. I’ll make things easy by lifting direct from the website of his record label:-
Beneath the surface of the UK lies a vast and secret network of abandoned nuclear bunkers. Sometime in the future the population of Great Britain has retreated into these bunkers. The reason for this exodus is not clear. Nuclear attack? Chemical attack? Germ warfare? Or perhaps even free will. What is known is that beneath the surface, in the bunkers, people live the utopian dream, communicating wordlessly via a highly developed new subconsciousness. There is no need for money and food is plentiful. The old gods have been forgotten. People now offer prayer to a piece of silverware, referred to as the ‘New Pagan Sun’, found in a bunker at Stoke on Trent, near to the location of the 1980 Darts World Championship final between Eric Bristow and Bobby George.
British Nuclear Bunkers is the new album by Luke Haines. It was recorded using entirely analogue synthesisers. Apart from an occasional vocal the only organic sound used is a recording of Camden Borough Control Bunker being attacked late at night by Luke Haines.
Maximum Electronic Rock and Roll.
British Nuclear Bunkers will be released by Cherry Red Records on October 16th 2015. It will be available on CD, Vinyl (with a free 7′ single) and the usual digital outlets.
Once again, it’s a fairly short piece of work, with its ten tracks taking up around 30 minutes of your life. It’s not hugely accessible but then again, it’s not totally unlistenable. It’s a work that hardcore fans of electronica would possibly lavish with praise, highlighting its merits with comparisons to others in the genre, but I’ll have to hold my hands up and say that I know as much about the folk-songs of Moldovia as I do about music which is released on a label such as Ghost Box.
I do, however, find myself switching in on and giving it a listen through the headphones when I’m looking for something to help me get over an unexpected bout of insomnia as it has an occasionally soothing ability.
Here’s the two tracks that came as the free 7″ single:-
mp3 : Luke Haines – Electronic Tone Poem
mp3 : Luke Haines – Hack Green
Tune in next week for the final part of this series. It’s actually one that borders on mainstream!
Malcolm Ross was the subject of ICA #143 back in October 2017. These words are cribbed from that piece:-
The only man who has recording credits on all three of the Scottish bands who signed to the original Postcard Records.
Malcolm Ross first came to prominence as guitarist-extraordinaire with Edinburgh band Josef K, whose spiky and angular material, combined with a rough and ready production, laid out the template for so many indie groups who would later come to some level of prominence in the middle part of the 80s.
Josef K messily broke up in 1982, but Malcolm was never short of work thanks to all sorts of offers from his contemporaries across the Scottish music scene. Edwyn Collins made him an integral part of Orange Juice after the initial line-up of that band had imploded, (by intergral, that includes songwriting and lead vocal contributions), while Roddy Frame, having recognised that, despite his own unique talents, a second guitarist was essential for the live setting drafted him into Aztec Camera initially for touring purposes and later into the studio.
Malcolm also continued to work with David Weddell and Ronnie Torrance, the rhythm section of his old band and contributed on the song-writing side to the short-lived The Happy Family whose vocalist Nick Currie would go on to later enjoy a lengthy solo career under the name of Momus.
He spent the latter half of the 80s and much of the 90s as a musician for hire, including stints with Barry Adamson, Edwyn Collins, Blancmange and Paul Haig, as well as contributing to a number of films either in an advisory or performance capacity. He also found time to record some solo material or as part of combos, releasing a handful of singles and albums on a number of different indie labels based in Germany and America. He’s been less busy in the 21st century but his name can be found on releases by Nectarine No.9 and The Low Miffs, always bringing a touch of class and quality to the recordings.
He was one of the key folk involved in telling the story of Big Gold Dream, the first of the documentaries about the Scottish indie scene made by Grant McPhee. This was a work that received its world premiere in Edinburgh in June 2015, after which there was a live performance by a specially convened ‘super-group’ consisting of past members of Subway Sect, Fire Engines and The Rezillos along with Malcolm Ross who raced through a hugely enjoyable 10-song set from the era, all of which only demonstrated just how great a guitarist he still is. He’s no longer a full-time musician, instead making his living as a taxi driver in the city that he has called home for so much of his life. Another example of how the music industry failing to recognise and reward its greatest talents.
Here’s a fantastic solo single from 1993:-
mp3 : Malcolm Ross – Low Shot
Worth mentioning that the great man is accompanied on this 45 by Steven Daly (ex-Orange Juice) on drums and Robert Vickers (ex Go-Betweens) on bass.
I have tried to keep this list to tracks that I haven’t ever written about before but sometimes, tracks are just too brilliant to talk about time after time.
The first time I ever heard ‘Nobody Cares’ I was sat in my lounge with Tim Badger. We had just got back from seeing The Vaccines in Plymouth and had on the way back been discussing the idea of starting our own blog. That blog eventually saw the light of day a few months later under the When You Can’t Remember Anything moniker.
It wasn’t always going to be called that though. In fact right up the day before we launched the blog the name was undecided. I wanted to call it ‘Right Through The Groove’ a weak tribute to a Propellerheads song, Tim wanted to call it ‘Balanced On A Knife Edge’ a weak tribute to something related to his beloved Tottenham Hotspur. We kept changing the Title Page when the other one wasn’t looking.
Eventually we choose the name, in true WYCRA style, from a random quote site and selected the last five words from the end of the first page. It seemed kind of apt so we stuck with it.
Just for information we also discounted the following names using the same random quote page
“Candy All Over the place”
“Can’t Walk Away from It”
“Where would you Put it?”
“Hearing joy from your Neighbours”
None of these seem as good as When You Can’t Remember Anything
Yung are a guitar band from Aarhus in Denmark, and ‘Nobody Cares is taken from their debut UK release ‘Alter’ an EP of six tracks that bristle with anger and shimmer with glorious brilliance all at the same time.
Shitty Mind
‘Nobody Cares’ has this astonishing flow about it. It starts all jingly jangly (and fact fans sounds really similar to the opening bars of ‘Eat My Goal’ by Collapsed Lung) before descending into an onslaught of guitars which are met by a vocal that sounds like it sung through a broken microphone. It is one of my favourite songs of the last decade. Badger loved it as well.
From the notes that come with the Big Gold Dreams boxset:-
The duo of vocalist Fiona Carlin and guitarist Kevin Low made two singles as The Wild Indians, on which Pop Wallpaper’s rhythm section of bassist Myles Raymond and drummer Les Cook played. The second, a 12” made up of three tracks of designer pop, was produced by John McVay of Visitors and engineered by Chic Medley of Perth-based electro-pop band Fiction Factory, with whom Carlin would sing with on their second album track, Victor Victorious. As a designer, Low’s work went on to grace many a record sleeve, including ones for The Delmontes and The Blue Nile. Low worked as a theatre photographer for many years, and is now a painter of note.
Beyond this, it is quite hard to track down any further info – they are one of the few Scottish bands from the era who don’t get listed in The Great Scots Musicography by Martin C Strong, published in 2002, and to which I havce turned on many an occasion to fact-check/confirm or indeed get the basics!
The lead track from the second single is included on BGD and has proven to be one of my favourites of those I didn’t previously know:-
mp3 : The Wild Indians – Penniless
Turns out that Kevin Low has also posted up, on you tube, a rarely-seen promo for the single:-
I turned to Discogs and found info on the band’s first single. There were different personnel involved judging by the credits list:-
Fiona – Vocals & sax Kevin – Guitar Kay – Bass Bo – Drums
As such, it would appear the rhythm section of Pop Wallpaper stepped in as replacements for Kay and Bo.
Sorry about the lack of info, but it’s the best I can do.
I do have some info on Pop Wallpaper, and indeed have a 12″ single of theirs in the collection, but that’s a story for a later installment in the long-running Saturday Songs from Scotland series
A GUEST POSTING by HYBRID SOC PROF Our Correspondent Under Michigan’s Lake-effect Clouds
AN IMAGINARY COMPILATION ALBUM: Rainer Ptacek
My mom died from her second bout with breast cancer in 1994, the night between Dec. 30 and 31. She apparently didn’t want to see another year… but also waited until Diane and I had gone back to Massachusetts for the New Year. Still haven’t resolved my feelings about not being there… and/or how to understand the prospect of “intent” in that situation.
Nine months later, in September ’95, when Son Volt released Trace, I almost collapsed when I heard “Windfall.” I’d pretty much kept it together in order to complete my PhD and begin to look for a university position and then this song, Jay’s lyrics, his voice, the elegiatic tone… unceasing tears, it was great medicine.
Around that time, in a different context, I’d been one of the relatively few people who’d gotten their hands on Giant Sand’s CD, Glum, when it came out for the first of about four different times, in 1994… only to have Imago fold and the record disappear for a few years. I’d learned that some of what was going on in the writing and recording of the great, but strange, set of songs was that the band – and Howe Gelb, especially – had been helping Rainer, his wife, and daughter deal with his brain cancer, which Rainer beat! That battle and experience were part of what generated the title song and the staggeringly magnificent “Happenstance.”
So, learning of Howe’s devotion to Rainer, I read up on him and searched for efforts in his back catalog – I already had a vague sense of the parts associated with early Giant Sand and The Band of Blacky Ranchette. I discovered there wasn’t much, mostly two records, seven years apart, with Das Combo. At the same time, it was clear that Rainer was criminally unknown.
I could recount Rainer’s history – immigrant kid from East Germany, mostly grew up in Chicago, moved to Tucson, was central in all kinds of ways to the indie music scene, was apparently friends with everyone, etc. – but it’s not really hard to find (he has an Official Site) if you’re more interested and, tbh, I don’t want to write it.
To help pay for his medical costs – how I loathe the fact that the US doesn’t have national health care (didn’t I say that in relation to the Vic Chesnutt ICA?) – a remarkable collection of musicians Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, Emmylou Harris and PJ Harvey, Jonathan Richman and Evan Dando, and Vic Chesnutt and Victoria Williams (the latter two of whom had benefitted from similar efforts tied to the Sweet Relief Foundation) got together and recorded a CD titled The Inner Flame. Rainer was able to play on two of the cuts – they are included here.
You see, after having relearned to use his body, and talk, Rainer had taught himself to play the guitar again, to write songs again, to perform again, to record again. And within a few months of the release of The Inner Flame, the cancer returned, and he died soon thereafter. Some. Things. Just. Aren’t. Right.
If we bracket the fact that the first nine songs on this ICA are REALLY good, mostly blues tinged, some louder, others softer, all intricate… and the man could play steel guitar and electric, what all this has to do with anything is that Rainer wrote the tenth song here. It’s to his wife and daughter. I don’t know when he wrote it, e.g., during the first or second bout with cancer, but it’s a goodbye. The most moving song I’ve ever heard. It makes me cry every time I hear it. So that’s why this ICA.
Rainer was a blues-rocker and the first song – from a live recording, in 1985, at the University of Arizona TV station – is a singular version of Robert Johnson’s “Me and the Devil.” When the band kicks in – oh, that bass – the song finds a deep groove and leaps ahead. “Round and Round” is also live, this time from a tour with Giant Sand in 1986 and part of a re-release/re-recording of The Valley of Rain called Beyond the Valley of Rain (my apologies for not snipping the crowd/interstitial conversation at the end.)
You can hear 1970s ZZ Top in “The Mush Mind Blues”… and, while “Life is Fine” is Rainer’s tune, it returns us to the world of Robert Johnson, only electric guitar instead of steel rules the day. “One Man Crusade” has only one flaw and that is the breathy 1980s organ underneath the cut… I’ve tossed in – as a bonus at the end – Kris McKay’s (see the Michael Hall ICA) version of this wonderful love song. It just might be better than the original.
“21 Years” is the collaboration with Robert Plant, from The Inner Flame… it slows the original down just a tad (as I recall) and deepens the emotions a bit. I’m kind of proud of the transition to “If I Had Possession Over Judgement Day” since – for all the seriousness of the lyrics – I can’t imagine anyone playing the song doing so without smiling. It’s got a locomotive beat and, while it probably doesn’t, feels to me like it accelerates all the way through the finish. It must have been a blast to play “(Making the) Trains (Run on Time),” as well, and that takes us into Rainer’s collaboration with Howe on “The Inner Flame” – their voices always strike me as perfect for one another.
saddest song I heard, was so beautiful, and in this light, you look just like her…
hold me, hold me babe, just hold me, keep me warm
now don’t get wet take a little step you ain’t there yet so take another step
everything should come from the deepest place
what do I what do I know about love?
this story’s out of place this story’s out of fear how’d you come in here how’d you get past the gates
all these coded messages and then you come and give me a hug
love is a crucible and it’s open to all you can bring your valuables jump in and let them fall
in this burning sun, we are all one
that’s all I that’s all I know about love that’s all I that’s all I know about love that’s all I that’s all I know about love
Those lyrics, the last two-thirds of “The Inner Flame” serve as the introduction to “The Farm.”
The majesty of music is the extent to which it can move us, draw us forward, hold us still, wake us up, help us sleep, leave us bereft with joy and joyously bereft, connect us, release us, and – through moments of sublime wonder – facilitate awe, revelry and flourishing. Rainer gave me, and I hope he gives you, that.
HSP
1. Rainer & Das Combo – Me and the Devil – Studio A, Nov. 12, 1985 (via Youtube)
2. Rainer Ptacek – Round and Round (Gronigen, 1986) – Beyond the Valley of Rain (Giant Sand, 2015)
3. Rainer & Das Combo – The Mush Mind Blues – The Texas Tapes (1993)
4. Rainer & Das Combo – Life is Fine – Barefoot Rock (1986)
5. Rainer – One Man Crusade – Nevermind: Glitterhouse is 20 (2004)
6. Rainer, Robert Plant – 21 Years – The Inner Flame: A Tribute to Rainer Ptacek (1997)
7. Rainer & Das Combo – If I Had Possession Over Judgement Day – Barefoot Rock (1986)
8. Rainer & Das Combo – (Making the) Trains (Run On Time) – The Texas Tapes (1993)
9. Giant Sand, Rainer – The Inner Flame – The Inner Flame: A Tribute to Rainer Ptacek (1997)
10. Rainer – The Farm (live, 1997) – The Best of Rainer: 17 Miracles (2006)
Bonus: Kris McKay – One Man Crusade – The Inner Flame: A Tribute to Rainer Ptacek (1997)
JC adds……
Actually, there is nothing that can or should be added to this ICA. Thanks for sharing such amazing memories, my friend.
Released August 2015 (Did not Chart, although I can’t confirm this)
Imagine this – you are in a band (called something cool like The Edith Piafs or something). You are from somewhere that is a bit edgy but a bit arty as well in South East London and you have just played a breathlessly brilliant gig at a local venue.
The next day a review appear of that gig written by some coked up music industry spaffer who refers to your band as ‘Indie’s Next Big Thing’. By the end of the day, your grainy self-recorded You Tube video of your band live at the Crappers Arms has had three million views and you are chased out of your local Wilkinsons Store by hordes of screaming fans, all wanting to just ‘stare at you’.
That, is pretty much, what happened to INHEAVEN, I mean I’ve embellished bits of it (ok, most of it, the South East London bit is right) but in 2014 this band were hyped beyond belief by certain elements of the music industry. By 2017 on the eve of the release of their debut album, a drooling NME journalist declared the album as “indie rocks, most dangerously exciting debut…”which doesn’t even make sense, how can a debut album be ‘dangerously exciting…’ It’s not a roller coaster with no seatbelts it’s a 36 minute long collection of musical tracks.
Usually the hyping of a band makes most sensible music fans run a mile.
However, INHEAVEN had something intriguing. Maybe it was the fact that they insisted on having their name spelt IN CAPITALS. Maybe it was the fact that Julian Casablancas the drainpipe jeans wearing frontman of still just about cool, The Strokes, declared them “the most exciting band in the UK” and immediately signed them for his own record company (that would be Cult Records). Maybe it is the fact that the noise that they make is utterly infectious.
Actually it is the last one. They make a bloody fantastic racket. Or rather they did. Their debut album failed to set the world alight despite its ‘critical acclaim’ and in 2018 they called it a day.
‘Regeneration’ was the bands debut single and it was released in the summer of 2015 and its excellent, a guitar shredding ear splitting onslaught of feedback and shouty vocals all about “just wanting to fuck around”.. It’s a glorious mess.
I’ve mentioned before how this blogging thing I’ve got going has led to so many amazing things or events in my life.
Everytime something incredible happens, I think it really can’t get any better….until something else comes along and tops it. This time round, I really do think it is the pinnacle.
Your humble scribe has now contributed to a commercially released piece of music……..
There have been many occasions, and I’m going back decades to well before all this started, that I wished I could somehow end up in a recording studio doing something like contributing handclaps in the background, just so that I could say I had been part of something truly creative. I’m now almost 57 years old and I really thought that dream would never come true.
Until…….a few months ago The Affectionate Punch got in touch and asked if I would consider doing a spoken vocal version of a new song that the collective had just written. It was an immediate ‘yes’ from me but on the proviso that if my effort wasn’t good enough to the ears of the professionals, then I wouldn’t be offended if it ended up not being used.
Scars is the latest EP from The Affectionate Punch. It was released yesterday, as usual, on bandcamp where you can have it for free or make a donation to support the efforts of those who make the music. Here is TAP to offer more in the way of backrground:-
The idea of a Scars e.p. came about following 2 individual comments that suggested the possibility of differing vocal interpretations of The Affectionate Punch songs. This was mulled over with interest resulting in a resounding yes.
The e.p. consists of 6 vocal interpretations of Scars in addition to 1 instrumental track. Each track has its own cover art.
Scars I has Holocaust Nancy on vocals Scars II features the talents of Paul McKeever and Amanda Sanderson Scars III is spoken by The Vinyl Villain with The Additions on vocals Scars IV has Amanda Sanderson on vocals Scars V is the instrumental version by The Affectionate Punch Scars VI is the spoken word version by The Vinyl Villain Scars VII is a remix by The Pocket Calculator Club
mp3 : The Affectionate Punch – Scars III (featuring The Vinyl Villain with The Additions)
It’s a huge understatement to say that I’m incredibly thrilled by all of this. It’s very much a one-off on my part and I’m grateful to have been given the opportunity.
And wouldn’t you know, there’s a promo been made for Scars III…….
Speechless.
Click here to visit, listen and hopefully purchase from bandcamp.
The overwhelmingly favourable reaction to Bad Vibes had re-awakened an interest in Luke Haines, a situation that was maintained the second art of his memoirs, when Post Everything : Outsider Rock and Roll, was published two and a half years later in July 2011.
It just so happened that the new book came out as Haines embarked on his next music venture, collaborating with Cathal Coughlan (of Microdisney and Fatima Mansions fame) and journalist/author Andrew Mueller to form the North Sea Scrolls, initially as a live performance show at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, before the trio hit the studios the following year to record an album. Rather than include that project within this series, I’ll have a look at it separately in a few weeks time as it does merit a posting on its own.
Haines had been without any record deal of any meaning for a number of years, but 2013 saw him sign up with long-running London based indie-label Cherry Red, with whom he remains to this day. It seems to work quite well for both parties, with the label content to have someone of the stature and legendary status on their books, well aware he will provide good copy and offer the opportunity for more than the music press to feature any releases – the London broadsheets have long had a thing for Luke Haines, offering reviews of his new albums and live shows, giving him the same sort of profile and treatment as they do to the many visual, performing and installation artists based across the capital.
As for Haines, he has a home that allows him to indulge himself with the sort of projects that he seems most happy with, writing and recording concept/narrative albums on all sorts of subject matters, some of which are so left-of-centre that they make his wrestling effort from 2011 appear positively mainstream.
There have been six such releases on Cherry Red, and I’m going to feature them in three parts, before bringing this mini-series to a close.
The Cherry Red era kicked off with Rock and Roll Animals, described as a concept album that follows a narrative story about musicians represented as animals, with the main characters being a cat called Gene Vincent, a badger called Nick Lowe and a fox called Jimmy Pursey.
As with 9 ½ Meditations, there is a combination of songs and spoken word on offer, with the narrative duties undertaken by the actress Julia Davis. As with all Luke Haines records, there are potshots at those who annoy him and some of his wrath in this instance it aimed at the sculptor Antony Gormley, whose Angel of the North has long been lauded as transforming the perception of the Tyneside area of England (a view with which Haines takes great umbrage). It’s another surreal piece of work, one which has some great moments among others which are best forgotten. It didn’t quite work as well as the wrestling album, but against that, there was a single lifted from the album along with two new songs offered up on the b-side:-
mp3 : Luke Haines – Rock n Roll Animals
mp3 : Luke Haines – Natural Mystic Furry Freaks
mp3 : Luke Haines – John Barleycorn Must Die
Two year later, and another concept album, New York City in the ‘70s, hit the streets.
Cherry Red describe it as ‘a mythic re-imagining of the New York Rock n Roll scene 1972 – 1979’.It certainly was easier a concept to grasp than songs about wrestlers or rock stars as animals. There are numerous name checks and shout-outs to the people, the and the landmarks of the era. I’ve written in the past on this blog about my late teens/early 20s desire to visit NYC on the basis of what I was reading in music papers and hearing on the radio – Haines brings those desires to life via this album and for that alone I can’t find much fault with it. It is great fun to listen to, and as ever when I feel my feeble words can do something no justice, I will rely on those of someone who earns a living from writing astutely and critically about culture.
There are nods to a number of artists and creative figures from the period throughout its 34-minute running time, with opener Alan Vega Says a delightful introduction to what Haines is attempting to achieve – naming the vocalist of American electronic duo Suicide.
“Alan Vega says it’s going to be a great big hit/ if Alan Vega says so, then it probably is,” Haines whispers with a sense of playfulness, over searching synths and an irresistible guitar melody. This playfulness is irrevocably tied to the album throughout, with title track NY In The ‘70s another example of his brilliantly tongue-in-cheek lyrics. “Everybody’s gay or bisexual/ a man called Jim getting experimental,” he sings, as fuzzy synths almost drown out a lackadaisical guitar hook.
As well as evoking the names of famous figures from New York during the ‘70s, another significant theme central to Haines’ latest LP is his use of repetition. It is something that crops up time and time again and while it is largely successful, there are occasions where it becomes a bit much. Jim Carroll and Tricks N Kicks N Drugs are two examples of where Haines gets the balance right, with punchy, repetitive guitar hooks providing the perfect backing.
The same cannot be said for the song titled after the legendary lead singer of The Velvet Underground, Lou Reed, which does not quite reach the same level. As genius as Lou Reed unquestionably was, hearing his name repeated again and again and again is not nearly as appealing as it sounds. UK Punk is also a miss, with Haines repeating the song’s title over excruciatingly grinding synths, while the psychedelic Bills Bunker does not quite capture the imagination like the rest of the album.
Yet when Haines does get it right, New York In The ‘70s is a brilliantly witty and intoxicating listen. Doll’s Forever is an almost euphoric tribute to New York Dolls frontman David Johansen, before the infectious New York City Breakdown delivers another example of Haines’ brilliant lyricism. Then there’s the epic album highlight Cerne Abbas Man – yes, named after the ancient naked figure sculpted into the chalk hillside in Dorset – which sees Haines repeatedly chant “Mythic motherfuckin’ rock and roll”.
It would have been a suitable closer on its own – especially as it essentially sums up the record – but that honour is instead given to the dreamy NY Stars, which brings everything full circle by revisiting Alan Vega Says. Ultimately, Haines has once again succeeded in producing a surreal, engaging and magnificently wry collection of songs that provide a satisfying conclusion to his concept trilogy. As endings to trilogies go, New York In The ‘70s is definitely more Toy Story 3 than The Godfather Part Three.
Andy Baber, MusicOMH, 19 May 2014
One of the tracks that didn’t find favour with Mr Baber was released as a single, with a b-side that wasn’t previously available:-
mp3 : Luke Haines – Lou Reed Lou Reed
mp3 : Luke Haines – Jeff Starship Superhero
It’s time for Falkirk’s finest to get his solo slot in this series. I’ve written loads about him in the past. He’s long been one of my favourites. Here’s the bio from his own website:-
Malcolm Middleton is a guitarist and songwriter best known for his work with the Scottish alternative rock band Arab Strap. Over the course of 10 years they released 6 studio albums before splitting in 2006. They reformed in 2016 for some 20th anniversary concerts and are currently working on a new album for release in 2020.
Malcolm has continued to write and perform as a solo artist and has released seven albums, most recently “Bananas” in 2018. As well as collaborating with artists such as David Shrigley and Mira Calix, he has composed soundtracks for the films Rogue Farm (2004), Munro (2009) and The Closer We Get (2015).
He also writes and performs under the name Human Don’t Be Angry and released the third album “Guitar Variations” in November 2019.
Here’s one side of a digital single from April 2019. It was recorded during the sessions for Bananas and the two songs feature a couple of talented guests on backing vocals.
mp3 : Malcolm Middleton – Scaffolding
If you like it, please feel free to click here and make a purchase, for only £2, of a hi-quality version along with its equally entertaining b-side. You’ll also be able to learn who provided the backing vocals.
Oh, and this post is doubling up as another entry for the stuff I bought in 2019.
Released as a single in December 1994 (Reached Number 3)
There used be this ‘indie club’ at University, (it wasn’t called Indie Club, it was called ‘No Wave’ which was sort of clever, but I called it Indie Club after the Fast Show sketch) basically a bunch of like-minded kids (usually boys to be fair) who thought they were cool because they liked guitar music and not Robbie Williams. We used to meet on a Thursday and plan discos and try to get live bands to come and play in our student union.
Mainly though, we were just trying to impress cute indie girls who wore skinny jeans and Converse trainers. Sadly for us, we all looked like the drummer from Shed Seven, even if we thought we looked like Jude Law.
I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned Frank or not before. Frank was strange. He was obsessed with being the most indie, or having the most records (to the point where he used to steal records and CDs off of DJs when they were not looking), or telling us that he heard a band first. Frank, is one of those people, will claim to have seen a band when they were just beginning.
He for instance, claims to have definitely have been in the audience at Oasis’ Water Rats show in London (27th January 1994), a legendary show that took place weeks before they became superstars. Roughly 73,000 people claim to have been at that show, when the capacity of the Water Rats was about 200.
Towards the end of the winter semester at University, indie club had its Christmas party. About halfway through one of the guys who was DJing decided to play the new Oasis single – which was the six minute string laden epic ‘Whatever’. Frank nodded along to it and then said “Oh they’ve finally released this, of course they debuted it at the Water Rats Show,”, then shifted in his seat and said “the applause at the end, is taken from that show…”
Ok Frank. Whatever.
For the record, and I’ve just looked this up, I didn’t know this at the time – Oasis played six songs that night staring with ‘Shakermaker’ and ending with ‘Supersonic’ – they definitely did not play ‘Whatever’ as far as I know, it didn’t even exist at the end of January 1994.
‘Whatever’ was released in December 1994 a week before Christmas and the band were convinced it was going to be the Christmas Number one. You can hear this at the end of the track as it descends into applause and members of the bands roaring “Number One!” and “OASIS!!” in the background, in the studio, not, you know live at a sweaty flea pit in London.
It’s a bit laddish to be fair, but before all that nonsense you get this string laden affair (the band hired a proper orchestra for those bits in a pique of musical maturity) which compliments Liam’s vocals and the band’s music. What’s great about ‘Whatever’ is the arrangement. The way that is starts with that string section and the band join in gradually is great.
Then as the songs goes on the exact reverse happens, first Liam songs singing, then the guitars stopped, then the drums stopped before all that is left is the same strings that you heard at the start. It’s a masterpiece.
There’s been many mentions on this blog about Kitchenware Records, including a guest ICA by David Ashley back in June 2018. I’ve reflected a fair bit on Prefab Sprout and Martin Stephenson & The Daintees, but there hasn’t, until now, been a posting solely on The Kane Gang.
David’s ICA opened with a track by The Kane Gang and he summarised things by saying they were a three piece and much more soul than jangly guitar based, while making the observation that some of their songs hadn’t dated well.
He’s bang on the money with the former in that the trio are one of the few white acts to ever enjoy success on the American Black R&B chart but maybe a tad harsh about the songs dating, notwithstanding there is very much an 80s production style to the fore, as some of their numbers still fit in perfectly nowadays with the music you hear on easy-listening stations such as Smooth Radio.
So….who were the Kane Gang?
They were a trio of lads from the north-east of England, consisting of vocalists Martin Brammer and Paul Woods, plus multi-instrumentalist Dave Brewis. The three had been together from school, originally as The Reptile House and then as The Kings Of Cotton, the latter playing live around the Sunderland area with the aid of backing tapes. They eventually attracted the attention of the 23-year old Keith Armstrong who had not longed founded Kitchenware Records and thought their take on soul and gospel music had commercial potential.
Their debut 7” single, in 1983, was fourth release on Kitchenware (it had the catalogue number SK5 but that was because SK1 had been a video of a live gig featuring none of the band of the label!).
mp3 : The Kane Gang – Brother Brother
Like all the early Kitchenware releases, it didn’t do very much in terms of sales outside of the north-east but the follow-up, in reaching #60 in May 1984, provided the label with its first taste of chart success, albeit minor:-
mp3 : The Kane Gang – Smalltown Creed (12″ version)
It was a song that, in part, celebrated their northern roots and the fact that singers and bands didn’t have to venture to London anymore in order to get music out to the masses. There was an eventual downside to this song in that a Radio 1 DJ, who attracted a large audience to his daily lunchtime shows, felt there was a great jingle to be made out of the chorus and, rather sadly, it is that snippet of music that most folk will recognise rather than any of their songs.
Just two months later, Kitchenware finally hit payola when The Kane Gang took a mournful and soulful ballad, complete with tear-jerking harmonica moments into the Top 20:-
mp3 : The Kane Gang – The Closest Thing To Heaven
The trio were already at an advanced stage with their debut album but instead of it being released in time for the Christmas market, a decision was taken to delay it until early 1985 and instead to go with a further single in November 1984 around which they undertook a live tour, including a gig at Strathclyde University Students Union that I managed to get along too. The new single, which would peak at #21, was a cover of a song by the Staple Sisters, an American gospel/soul band who had enjoyed commercial success in the last 60s and throughout the 70s:-
mp3 : The Kane Gang – Respect Yourself
I was really excited about the gig at the student union as it had been announced beforehand the trio would be accompanied by a full band, including Donald Johnson from A Certain Ratio on drums. It turned out to be a disappointment and my overwhelming feeling from the night was one of boredom and being underwhelmed. Maybe the expectations were too high and I was anticipating some sort of fast-paced and energetic show from start to end, but for a group who had been in the singles charts for the best part of the previous five months, there felt like there was a lack of conviction or belief in the performance.
Having said that, maybe I was in the minority as it turns out that a recording of the gig was made available many years later as a bonus disc in the 30th anniversary re-issue of their debut album.
The Bad and Lowdown World of The Kane Gang hit the shops in February 1985. It’s a decent enough record but the problem was that it contained only nine songs, of which its three strongest had all been released previously as singles. It did enter the charts at a respectable enough #21 but quickly dropped away, with the accompanying flop single not doing much to help matters:-
mp3 : The Kane Gang – Gun Law
The strange thing about The Kane Gang is that as they drifted further away from view in the UK, they began to make inroads in the USA.
The follow-up album, Miracle, didn’t appear until August 1987, on the back of what had been another single that stalled outside the Top 40:-
mp3 : The Kane Gang – Motortown
The single did go Top 40 on the other side of the ocean and its follow-up, a cover of a single by Dennis Edwards (ex Temptations), took The Kane Gang to the top of the R&B charts:-
mp3 : The Kane Gang – Don’t Look Any Further
Things somewhat stalled after that and the trio called it a day at the beginning of the 90s. Martin Brammer has now forged a career as a songwriter for hire, being responsible for chart hits by the likes of Lighthouse Family, Mark Owen, Rachel Stevens, Tina Turner, James Morrison, Beverley Knight, Ronan Keating and Olly Murs, all of which means he could have a Golden Hour on Smooth Radio devoted entirely to his work. Not that I’d be tuning in…….
It was back in July 2017 that I gave the most fleeting of mentions to Sacred Paws, congratulating the duo on their debut recording, Strike A Match, winning the Scottish Album of the Year award. I’m annoyed with myself that I failed to follow up with a feature on what is a really enjoyable and unusual listen, certainly in comparison to the sounds most closely associated with Glasgow. Hopefully this appreciation of the sophomore offering goes some way to rectifying things.
Sacred Paws is made up of Rachel Aggs (vocals, guitar) and Eilidh Rodgers (vocals, drums) who have known each other for years through various bands they have been part of. It was back in 2015 that they decided to work together, although things were complicated a bit by the fact that Rachel was living in London and Eilidh was in Glasgow. The development of technology and home recording has perhaps made such geographical issues less than a problem than they were a few decades ago but it still meant that things weren’t rushed.
The duo were signed to Rock Action, the label owned by Mogwai, and the first fruits of their labour was the Six Songs EP , released to a fair bit of buzz round these parts thanks to an energetic blend of spiky guitars, funky drumming/percussion lines and vocals that were chanted as often as they were sung which really made for a breath of fresh air. Throw in the fact that the girls were clearly enjoying themselves on stage and you had a decent recipe for success.
The debut album took over where the EP had ended, delivered with just a bit more polish and confidence. It gave a few nods to the 80s female-led bands such as The Slits and The Raincoats while the increased use of upbeat African-style drumming provided a real energy that bordered on the infectious. It made for a hugely entertaining listen and was a deserving winner of SAY 2017, albeit the vast majority of people in the country had never heard of them nor, with next to radio play, had heard any of the songs.
Sacred Paws had a rather quiet 18 months on the back of winning the award, with just a handful of live appearances and no new material. Rock Action didn’t try hard to cash in on the increased profile with an re-release of earlier material and instead encouraged the duo to go about things in the way they themselves most wanted. Rachel re-located to Glasgow which meant they could spend more time writing and arranging the new material but it did take until the end of May 2019 for the follow-up Run Around The Sun to hit the shops.
Having said that, it had been preceded by a couple of digital singles and a BBC Radio 6 session with Marc Riley, who in effect is becoming a part-replacement for John Peel in terms of providing a platform for bands to come into a studio to band out three or four songs in one go to be broadcast to the nation. I was delighted with the singles which indicated that the duo weren’t tampering with what had made them so interesting to begin with. The album proved to be a huge delight, again full of bright, sunny and infectiously happy songs that were very welcom in a year when so many events and happenings seemed to cast a long shadow.
mp3 : Scared Paws – The Conversation
mp3 : Sacred Paws – Brush Your Hair
It’s an album that I’ve found myself prone to putting on while I’m embarking on a road or rail journey, and outside the skies are dark and brooding while the rain batters off the windows – it is the perfect antidote to such situations and as I sit back and close my eyes, I’m transported thousands of miles south to where the sun is beating down and the mood and vibes are carefree. And when the last of its ten songs comes to an end after a little more than 32 minutes, I’ll hit the repeat button.
Queens of the Stone Age (w/ bonus Desert Sessions EP!)
A GUEST POSTING by HYBRID SOC PROF,
our Correspondent from the Wilds of mid-Michigan
There are folks who call Josh Homme “Ginger Elvis”… I didn’t know that when, about two years ago, I caught a re-run of Queens of the Stone Age’s 2013 performance at Austin City Limits and thought: “he’s simply got to be the sexiest man in rock ‘n’ roll!” Is it the more subtle version of Elvis’ hips? the underlying pain, restlessness and experience behind those blue eyes? the wry humor in the lines around his eyes or and deep joy in his smile? I have to believe there are folks who’ve written: “I’m not gay but…”
A lot like my relationship with Tool, I arrived late to the Queens of the Stone Age (QOTSA) party. In my 20s during the nightmare hell of 80s poseur/party hair-metal bands, the only response I had for MTV metal was no, just no. Granted, I made up ways to define bands other people said were metal so that they weren’t metal… because I liked that one or this one, but we all make excuses, yes?
Again, like Tool, Homme’s first band, Kyuss, was categorized as “experimental metal” in something I read in the 90s and, as a result, I dismissed them out of hand. Similar things were said about QOTSA – and the name sounded stupid – so there was no way they were getting a serious listen. I even tried an EP they shared with another band, Beaver, and I liked Beaver’s songs better (especially “Morocco,” you should check it out.) Anyway, if I was looking for power chords and gloriously volume, the first Killing Joke album, Big Black’s single, “Il Duce,” or Screaming Trees’ cover of Buffalo’s throbbing 1972 non-hit “Freedom,” all sufficed. What’d I need experimental metal for?
And then, as so often happens when I’ve made reactive choices, the universe knocks you upside your head. A decade after dismissing QOTSA, I found out that Mark Lanegan – and who doesn’t love Mark Lanegan?! – had sung with them. I mean , c’mon, I’d dismissed these guys and Mark was just making me look bad… Of course, I’d heard that Dave Grohl played with them, too, but Foo Fighters at the time were on the ascendant and I found them monotonic and formulaic “alternative” power pop. But, Lanegan. Crap. So, before checking out the back catalog, I tried 2013’s … Like Clockwork. Listening to it as I drove the used Volvo wagon north on the highway to the university where I teach it was nothing special, why were the reviews so great? What had Lanegan seen?
I don’t know why, but a week later, I listened with earbuds in. It wasn’t the same record, there were layers upon layers and rhythms upon rhythms and that odd stuff Homme does with his voice made sense and, wow, what a record! I didn’t love every song but each and every one made sense as part of a totality. So, maybe it was time to track down the back catalog.
The last Kyuss release was called Queens of the Stone Age(1997) so I’ve included it. It’s an OK EP, I’ve included the best cut, “If Only Everything.” In looking back, what started to irritate me was that I wasn’t at all sure this was metal, why was this called metal? It seemed way more about guitars – it even reminded me a little of Swervedriver. Did that mean I didn’t know what metal was? Had it splintered and fractured in bizarre ways? Had the genre never made any sense to start with? Or do reviewers in the 21st C simply not know what to do with loud guitars that aren’t “alternative”? Sigh. In any event, the first, self-titled record – once again Queens of the Stone Age (1998) – had quite “interesting” cover art. That photo and the fact that it’s my favorite in the set meant that I had to select “Regular John” for the ICA.
Rated R (2000) is the record I am pretty sure I read the full review of when it came out and it’s a consistent group of songs but has no real standout – at least not for me. I considered “Monsters in the Parasol” but “The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret” fit better in the emerging flow of the ICA as I put it together. Lanegan sang some on Rated R but he’s much more evident, to me, on Songs for the Deaf (2002). I don’t know if it was his involvement, but this is, overall, a very strong, if wildly uneven, set of songs. (Apparently, the band was a little bit out of control at the time.) I had to fight myself to include only two songs on the ICA but settled on “No One Knows” and “God is in the Radio” as most representative. I love the angular/martial rhythm that explodes right off the mark on “No One Knows” and the throbbing menace of “God is in the Radio” feeds a side of me usually repressed since I no longer play right back.
Just avoid Stone Age Complication (2004), it’s a collection of B-sides and the like and simply doesn’t work. Apparently, it was released without the band’s input. Songs for the Deaf and the extensive touring they did in support of it had made the band an international name and Lullabies to Paralyze (2005) solidified that position. As I was moving through the catalog, however, it became pretty clear to me that Homme, and others in his band, were center pivots in a world of spin-offs and related bands in LA – connected to everyone from Jack Black to Billy Gibbons, Dave Ween to Trent Reznor. Was all THIS why they were considered metal? Lullabies is another record that gets two songs. “Medication” and “Little Sister” are really strong – were great on that Austin City Limits show – and serve to hold the ICA together across two major transitions.
I liked Era Vulgaris (2007) but don’t find myself listening to it much, which might mean I don’t really like it that much. I think I like bits and pieces as songs, but it doesn’t really work as an album. I really like “Misfit Love,” though. I almost chose “I Sat by the Ocean” or “If I Had a Tail” – from … Like Clockwork (2013) to get at the different kinds of emotions and playfulness the band can provide but “I Appear Missing” immediately struck me as the song to start the ICA off with and there wasn’t room for the others. If you were a hip-hop DJ, the break is from 0:37 to 1:04. This was the record they were touring for when they played Austin and, by accident, I had fallen into the best record to introduce me to the band. Not only was it a return after the death of a band member, turnover in other areas, serious illness and a variety of side-projects, it’s a much more diverse group of songs than on previous albums. It sounds like stock music writing but there’s a maturity to the songwriting, the emotions, and how listenable it is.
Villains (2017) is the latest release. To be honest, I bought it, gave it a listen and life with teenagers intervened, and continues to intervene. I need to get back to it but, in a cursory re-review “Un-Reborn Again” stood out and perfectly anchors “Side A” of the ICA.
Did I mention that Homme convinced Iggy Pop to record his last record, backed him on it and was his touring band in support of it… and, when I saw them in Detroit, they couldn’t have been tighter?
There’s a bonus EP in this ICA… the format evolves? Homme, from the get-go, appears to have been an intense collaborator. And, more than that, his collaborations often turned into workshops. When I was looking around to discover more about Homme – particularly after he recorded the third episode of Guitar Moves, Matt Sweeney’s interview series for Noisey (Vice) (on youtube) – I found two volume sets of recordings called the Desert Sessions. I treat Desert Sessions and the band in my files, Even though it’s not really a band, the sets are really compilations, either… The 12 volumes have people from Danzig, The Dwarves, The Eagles of Death Metal, Hole, Lords of Altamont Marilyn Manson, The Miracle Workers, Nine Inch Nails, PJ Harvey, Primus, Scissor Sisters, Screaming Trees, Soundgarden, The Vandals, Ween, ZZ Top and more participating, so there’s a lot going on. As workshopping, however, the songs are often more “interesting” than “good” – to my way of thinking. An EP’s-worth of sampling lies after the ICA.
As always,
HSP
SIDE A
Queens of the Stone Age – I Appear Missing – from … Like Clockwork (2013)
Queens of the Stone Age – The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret – from Rated R (2000)
Queens of the Stone Age – Medication – from Lullabies to Paralyze (2005)
Kyuss – If Only Everything – from Queens of the Stone Age (1997)
Queens of the Stone Age – Un-Reborn Again – from Villains (2017)
SIDE B
Queens of the Stone Age – Regular John – from Queens of the Stone Age (1998)
Queens of the Stone Age – Little Sister – from Lullabies to Paralyze (2005)
Queens of the Stone Age – No One Knows – from Songs for the Deaf (2002)
Queens of the Stone Age – Misfit Love – from Era Vulgaris (2007)
Queens of the Stone Age – God is in the Radio – from Songs for the Dead (2002)
Bonus EP
Desert Sessions – I Wanna Make It Wit Chu – Volumes 9 & 10 (2003)
Desert Sessions – Like a Drug – Volumes 5 & 6 (1999)
Desert Sessions – Cowards Way Out – Volumes 1 & 2 (1998)
Desert Sessions – The Gosso King of Crater Lake – Volumes 3 & 4 (1998)
Desert Sessions – Powdered Wig Machine – Volumes 9 & 10 (2003)
JC adds..…..
I’d actually forgotten how many great songs QoSTA had released over the year. They are a particular favourite of Mrs Villain, so I know a fair bit of the material. Also worth mentioning that the Ginger Elvis did some great work on production duties with Arctic Monkeys.
40. Hotel Yorba – The White Stripes (2001 XL Recordings)
Released as a single in November 2001 (Reached Number 26)
In December 2001 I was asked (Ok I offered) to DJ for an hour or so at the staff Christmas party.
I turned up, had my dinner, (weirdly this was at an Italian restaurant and Christmas Dinner featuring pasta and not roast potatoes), and then took to the DJ Booth (I say booth it was a table with a machine on it). Back then it was all about CDs still, and I used a double CD player to throw down a few tunes as the boss plied me with free alcohol. The CDs were supplied by the restaurant and consisted mainly of that years ‘NOW’ releases, although I had bought a few of my own.
As the alcohol flowed I got a bit more daring, and started to stray of away from the stack of NOW CDs and that is when I dropped ‘Hotel Yorba’ by The White Stripes to bunch of bemused middle aged drunk people. Straight After ‘9 to 5’ by Dolly Parton and just before ‘Kung Fu’ by Ash.
‘Hotel Yorba’ was the first White Stripes single to really impact on the British Music scene. It was the lead single from their album ‘White Blood Cells’. It was certainly the first single of theirs to trouble the UK charts. At the time the NME were really hyping the band and this helped to increase their exposure.
Most of you probably know that the Hotel Yorba actually exists, it can according to Wikipedia, be found on the I75 in Detroit and is now a housing project. According to Jack White, the Beatles once stayed at the Hotel Yorba, a story that is sadly untrue.
The band also filmed most of the video outside of the building because again according to rumour, the band were banned for life from the building…..despite which the single version of ‘Hotel Yorba’ claims to have been recorded live in Room 206 of the Hotel Yorba!
The B Side was a track called ‘Rated X’ which I can’t find my version of – what I do have though is an acoustic version of ‘Hotel Yorba’ in which Meg White apparently plays ‘Cardboard Box’ again its recorded live at ‘The Hotel Yorba’
Hotel Yorba (live at the Hotel Yorba)
A few months later The White Stripes went global and went on to be on the biggest and best bands of the first decade of the century. I picked Hotel Yorba because it came at a time when music was a little stagnant. They, The Strokes and a couple of others all spearheaded a new wave of bands that dragged British music into that new century.
SWC
JC adds (from wiki):-
“Rated “X”” is a 1972 single written and recorded by Loretta Lynn. “Rated ‘X'” was Lynn’s sixth number one country single as a solo artist. The single spent one week at number one and a total of fourteen weeks on the chart. The song dealt with the stigma faced by divorced women during the early 1970s, and was regarded as somewhat controversial at the time, due to its frank language.
In 2001, a live version was used as the B-side of the “Hotel Yorba” single by The White Stripes.
mp3 : The White Stripes – Rated X (live at the Hotel Yorba)
Television in the 1970s was a completely different beast to what it is today, with just the three channels available in the UK to entertain the masses, none of which broadcast very early in the morning or very later at night. Saturday afternoons saw BBC1 and ITV offer up sports programmes, while BBC2 would carry an old movie, more often than not from the era when Hollywood churned out Westerns and John Wayne was a global star.
ITV’s offering was a show called World of Sport, hosted by Dickie Davies whose name would later feature in a song by Half Man Half Biscuit.
Worth mentioning, in passing, that Brian Moore, who was another stalwart of World of Sport as the main football presenter, gets namechecked in the lyric of the above song.
Anyways, I can hear you wondering what the hell all this has to do with Luke Haines, so let me explain….and I’ll get there in the end.
World of Sport followed a formula each week. It started at 12.15 and ended five hours later, opening with a segment on football and closing with the all the football results from across the country, along with some reports of the games where cameras had been present and would feature on highlights programmes the following day. Much of the afternoon was taken up by horse-racing, with seven races from two or more tracks shown back-to-back, always destined to finish by 3.45 when the half-time football scores were read out.
The key time for World of Sport was the 4-4.45pm slot, the period in which they wanted to retain their viewers who only tuned in for the football scores and news. They chose to do this by offering up 45 minutes of wrestling in which you tuned in to the antics of a group of middle-aged men where the theatrics and story-lines were more important than the sport itself. In many ways, it was like being allowed to watch a pantomime, once a week, from the confines of your living room, complete with a cast of regular good guys and villains, with the latter inevitably being on the receiving end for the most part, albeit sometimes they were allowed to win to enable a new storyline to emerge or develop.
Luke Haines spent much of his young childhood watching the wrestling, and to be fair he wasn’t alone. At its very peak, the wrestling attracted 12 million viewers, which was around 25% of the viewing public in the UK. I was something of a devotee, spending every other Saturday afternoon between the ages of 5 and 12, when I wasn’t at the football with my dad, in the company of my maternal grandparents, and my nan loved the wrestling like nothing else on the telly. The names and faces of the participants are still fresh in my memory and I can still hear the mid-Atlantic twang of the commentator, Kent Walton, who covered the sport for more than 30 years until a new controller of the channel decided it had run its course and pulled World of Sport from the schedules.
Luke Haines took his childhood memories and turned them into a concept album that he released in 2011. In a career packed with strange and bold statements, 9 ½ Psychedelic Meditations on British Wrestling of the 1970s & Early ’80s is among the most bizarre….(to this point in time at least – there’s a few things just around the corner as will be revealed)
I said earlier that this was a concept album, but that would tend to suggest it had some sort of story line with a beginning, a middle and an end. Instead, the album offers up songs/tunes/spoken word numbers, all of which are in some way related to the characters who appeared on the television screens on Saturday afternoons in the 70s and early 80s between 4pm and 4.45pm, but which have their own narrative rather than then being interlinked.
It’s an incredible piece of fictional work, albeit memories of Haines’s upbringing are woven into the imaginary and fantastical tales of real-life characters such as Rollerball Rocco, Gorgeous George, Catweazle, Mick McManus, Count Bartelli, Big Daddy, Giant Haystacks and Kendo Nagasaki. There’s one thing I can tell you and that it’s not an album that would translate to a show in the west end of London or on Broadway.
The release of 9 ½ Meditations stirred up a huge amount of debate. Was Haines being particularly thrawn (a Scottish word for crooked or perverse)? Had he gone too far with his efforts to demonstrate that he was not your archetypal bloke with a record contract, far removed from those who every breath and bit of energy was devoted to commercial and mainstream success? Or was he genuinely, having just passed his 40th birthday, doing what so many do at that age and reflect back on more innocent and perhaps happy times? After all, jumping on the nostalgia train has made many a pretty penny for its passengers…..
The debate may have been wide-ranging but the conclusion of almost all reviewers was that the album was very much worth a listen, with most folk giving it a solid, 7 or 8 out of 10. Maybe the best summary of it all came from J.R. Moore writing for Drowned in Sound:-
The first thing that makes an impression is the humour. This is not a comedy album, however. It is a very personal project, inspired by a childhood enthusiasm for the sport and by watching wrestling with his father. The first lines “I was trying my best to understand / How a beautiful bouncing baby becomes an ‘orrible man / As a child I thought I’d grow up to become a dancer / But I became a fighter”, could apply as much to Haines as to any wrestler, and also evoke universal feelings of lost youth and innocence. As well as Haines’ own past, it is also about history in a larger sense; he is analysing a version of Britain that no longer exists.
J.R Moore? Surely it wasn’t his old mate from Black Box Recorder providing a leg-up?????
It’s an album that wasn’t really ever going to win him any new fans, but it was one that appealed greatly to those of us who had followed him with interest through the years or those re-attracted to him as a result of reading the hilarious and enlightening (and occasionally score-settling) Bad Vibes. It also felt as if Luke Haines, for the first time in a while, was seemingly enjoying being a recording artist again, that is if it can ever be said that Luke Haines is capable of enjoying anything via the creative process.
No singles were taken from the album. Here’s a track in which one of the wrestlers from the era grapples with a new piece of musical gadgetry:-
The hard drive contains a substantial number of singers/bands of whom I have the foggiest. They are there because they have:-
(a) contributed to a compilation album/CD that I’ve got in the collection; or
(b) been downloaded from another blog or site and I’ve been too lazy or stupid to keep note of the original posting.
And once again, today’s one-off is in the former camp. I do actually have three of their songs on the hard drive, courtesy of two being included within a split 12” single and the other offered as part of a sampler given away by Matthew Young, the owner of Song, By Toad Records in 2013.
Magic Eye were from Edinburgh, and there was a really good write-up of them in a broadsheet paper published in that very city, on 6 July 2012:-
If you can say one thing about Edinburgh’s Magic Eye, it’s that they are aptly named.
They make music that seems vague and opaque on a first listen but rewards close attention with the emergence of points of reference, texture and new angles.
The band themselves describe their sound as ‘aquarium rock’ and it’s not a bad way of illustrating the heady mix of reverb, phaser, flanger and chorus that swamps their recordings. Don’t mistake their use of effects as reliance or a crutch though – there are real songs in there, with proper hooks to get under your skin.
Formed by three flatmates – Alex Johnston, Bek Oliva and Roma Galloway – the line-up was completed by Francis Dosoo on drums and they set about recording their first EP. Released just last month on New York label Animal Image Search, the band also went on a UK tour to support it, playing gigs in London and Brighton with Female Band and finishing up with some Scottish dates alongside Tangles and Mother Ganga.
In terms of influences, Alex says that they “really like The KLF, Keith Sweat, and Delia Derbyshire” but that “the Durrutti Column informed the sound at the start because that’s what we were listening to”. While traces of the Mancunian post-punks can certainly be detected in the guitar tones and overall aesthetic, you can also hear shades of the Cocteau Twins in the atmospheres and melodies.
Alex believes the future looks bright for the Scottish music scene, principally because it is becoming less parochial. “The Scottish music scene is good, but all the good stuff feels more worldwide than Scottish which is cool,” he says. “LuckyMe do super good club nights and releases in Scotland. Rustie and Hudson Mohawke blow our minds!”
It’s clear from the way the band talks about music that they are not only creators but voracious consumers too, leading you to conclude that there is nothing accidental about their sound, and that they know exactly how they want to be heard.
The future looks busy for the group too, with a split 12” coming out in November on the reliable barometer of taste that is Song, By Toad Records, and a full album which is going through the mixing process now.
Judging by what’s available on Discogs, the optimistic future envisaged didn’t quite pan out. The split 12” was followed not by any full album on vinyl but by a limited edition cassette in 2014, after which they appear to have called it a day.
Here’s the song that Matthew made available via the sampler.
The download is just one track, but it has a running time of 60 minutes and 30 seconds. If you give it a listen, you’ll find it is made up of 17 tunes as my stab at including the Beastie Boys in the series.
I’ve given it a particular title in homage to both the New Yorkers and to the district of Glasgow in which I have gone to work for the past 12 years.
It is also the 2,500th post on this reincarnated version of the blog.
The rest of today’s words have been sampled.
NO SLEEP TILL BRIDGETON
(a) Check It Out
Acting as the opener to their first album of the ’00s, ‘To The 5 Boroughs’, the band showed no signs of growing up on this bombastic hit. While the mainstream embraced a new generation of rap heroes like 50 Cent and Kanye West, this 2004 hit showed that The Beasties could still hang with the best and have way more fun while doing it.
(b) Shake Your Rump
This is music from another plane entirely, where ideas and sound-pictures collide, shatter and are reassembled into something new, all in an instant. It’s a sample collage, but it’s also a sculpture. There’s no way it should work with those three voices weaving in and around the different fragments of old records, lyrical visions jousting with musical innovations to the point where you feel like the whole thing could be about to collapse in on itself under the sheer weight of the different thoughts that it’s built out of. And yet it’s perfect. Try to work out why by unpicking it and the whole thing unravels.
(c) Make Some Noise
The Beastie Boys’ last truly great song, this was released in April 2011, a year before Adam ‘MCA’ Yauch’s death from cancer. It also acts as a fitting finale for a musical force that could still leave their younger contemporaries in the dust, despite being in their mid-40s. Built around a squelching beat, it’s a feral blast of swagger and cockiness – one they were so happy with that they felt it worthy to create a sequel to their iconic ‘Fight For Your Right To Party’ video for.
(d) Intergalactic
A transfixing space odyssey is crammed full of robotic vocoder and synth fragments that shatter in an astral euphoria. The Beasties fork together a beatific concoction here of lyricality that reroutes their hip-hop into a mesmerizing, head-banging dance groove. Don’t blame me if you’re suddenly in another dimension still humming the non-verbal instrumentals.
(e) Paul Revere
Paul Revere tells the story of the Beasties, complete with early collaborator Rick Rubin on production. Sure, it’s a cheesy story that involves a horse with a historically significant name and ends with robbery and murder that pales in comparison to older records when it comes to skill and creativity, but it also introduced the world to the goofy fun of the Beastie Boys — not to mention that Michael “Mike D” Diamond, Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz, and Adam “MCA” Yauch introduced a lot of people to rap in general.
(f) Sabotage
Sabotage, the seemingly anti-authority anthem was, in fact, inspired by their recording engineer, Mario Caldato Jr being a nag.
The band were totally indecisive about what, when, why and how to complete songs and Mario would blow a fuse and scream that they just needed to finish something, anything, a song, pushing them towards instrumental tracks just to have something moving toward completion. Sabotage was apparently the last song completed on the latest album and went through multiple iterations before it was decided to roast their engineer on track, of how he was trying to mess it all up, sabotaging great works of art.
(g) Get it Together
A Tribe Called Quest’s leader Q-Tip jumps on the mic for perhaps the a rare featured spot in the Beastie Boys catalogue. The Boys’ vocals are typically abrasive, but the mellow delivery of Q-Tip’s bars and subtle production means that both halves of the East Coast rap styles are well represented here.
(h) Hey Ladies
Admittedly, the only hit single from ”Paul’s Boutique” was a return to the frat-boy ethos of ”Licensed to Ill,” but it’s infectious and funny enough that we forgive such sexism as ”Sucking down pints till I didn’t know/Woke up in the morning with a one-ton ho.” It also features the greatest — and possibly only — cowbell break in hip-hop history.
(i) Rhymin’ & Stealin’
The Beastie Boys didn’t invent rap-rock, but on guitar-flooded tracks like ”Rhymin”’ they and producer Rick Rubin invested the hybrid with the energy and (obnoxious) attitude that helped suburban kids develop a taste for hip-hop. Incorporating samples from both Led Zeppelin (”When the Levee Breaks”) and Black Sabbath (”Sweet Leaf”), ”Stealin”’ offers hilariously unconvincing pirate/gangsta fantasies: ”Skirt chasing, free basing/Killing every village/We drink and rob and rhyme and pillage.”
(j) Jimmy James
Denied permission by Jimi Hendrix’s estate to use a variety of samples from the guitarist’s catalogue, including snippets of Foxy Lady, Still Raining, Still Dreaming and EXP, on this tribute track on Check Your Head, the Beasties’ improvised by crafting sound-a-like riffs in the studio. The song is prefaced with a sample from a live album by Cheap Trick.
(k) A Year and A Day
Paul’s Boutique was audacious, described before its release by one exec at the Beasties’ label Capitol as “the Sgt Pepper’s of its era.” The album’s final track was its most avant stroke, the Beasties’ answer to the medley that closed labelmates the Beatles’ Abbey Road. Across its kaleidoscopic 13 minutes, B-Boy Bouillabaise segued through nine vignettes, fragments and experiments, with their erstwhile home of New York as a loose theme. At its heart lay A Year And a Day, a thrilling showcase for MCA that saw Yauch rapping through a mic rigged to a pilot’s helmet, his verses bragging with a philosophical flair he’d hone on later tracks, over a furious beat chopping up Ernie Isley’s blistering guitar lick from Who’s That Lady?
(l) Too Many Rappers
On June 12 2009, Adam Yauch took the stage at the Bonnaroo Festival for what would prove the Beastie Boys’ final live performance. Their new album, Hot Sauce Committee Pt 1, was scheduled for September, but Yauch’s cancer diagnosis – made public a month after Bonnaroo – delayed its release by almost two years; it finally surfaced in April 2011 as Hot Sauce Committee, Part Two, a return to the more anarchic, gleeful style of yore following their stark post 9/11 album To the Five Boroughs. The Beasties debuted Hot Sauce Committee’s highlight onstage at Bonnaroo that night, alongside guest MC Nas. And while it’s perhaps not Nas’s finest moment, Too Many Rappers caught the Beasties sounding sharper than they had in years, while hearing Ad-Rock and Nas riff on Public Enemy’s Night of the Living Bassheads – for even a bar or three – is an undeniable treat.
(m) Pass the Mic
A tune like “Pass the Mic” does it all: It invokes one of the holiest hip-hop phrases (“yes, yes y’all”), name-drops Jimmie Walker, Clyde Frazier and Stevie Wonder and finds the Beasties both deconstructing, then rebuilding their own mythology. It includes one of the all-time great Beastie lines in which Mike D rhymes “commercial” with “commercial.”
(n) Sure Shot
As the Beastie Boys grew in power and experience, their goofy shtick became incredibly witty jokes and sublimely dada nonsense. The references became knotted and intricate, far more cerebral than details on how to party with some orange juice-based cocktails. From the barking dog at the track’s open through the last couplet, “Sure Shot” is jammed with essential lines, the kind of song that thousands and thousands of teenage boys memorized. It also features a real turning point in their active role as feminist allies: “I want to say a little something that’s long overdue/ The disrespect to women has got to be through,” MCA begins. “To all the mothers and the sisters and the wives and friends/ I want to offer my love and respect to the end.” But just when you’re afraid that they’ll get all sappy, MCA reminds you that he uses elastic to keep his underwear up — keeping it Beastie.
(o) Shardrach
The Beastie Boys were students — of the genre, of music history, of history in general, of society. On the excellent “Shadrach”, they do a little bit of it all. Musically, the track samples everyone from Sly Stone to James Brown to the Sugarhill Gang, paying homage to those that laid the groundwork. Lyrically, the three Boys dig in and compare themselves to Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, three Biblical characters thrown into a furnace for refusing to bow down to the king. Both are prominent trios of men with Jewish heritage, and the Beasties had to have seen something they like in the story of men surviving being thrown into a fire. The track also shows the group’s increasing comfort with more experimental beats. Co-written by the Dust Brothers, the track’s slinky guitar, funky horns, and out-of-this-world soul vocal sample are miles ahead of Licensed to Ill, running into far deeper veins of artistry. It also should be mentioned that it reveals just how seriously they took rap.
(p) Triple Trouble
No New Yorker was unaffected by the terrorist attacks of 2001, and the Beasties were no exception. Released in 2004, To the 5 Boroughs was reflective, in part, but just as much a part of their challenge to the darkening mood was to get back to what they do best – revelling in rhyme and having fun with music and words, celebrating New York as the place where all these things became possible, and defending it by carrying on as before. ‘Triple Trouble’ went back to hip-hop’s early days, sampling the opening of ‘Rapper’s Delight’ while the trio traded gallumphing brags and outrageous boasts back and forth over the infectiously bouncing beat.
(q) So What’cha Want
The only Beastie Boys song covered by The Muppets.
I’ve already mentioned that The Twilight Sad released my favourite album of 2019, but surprisingly they didn’t, for once, provide the best live experience of the year.
Step forward Otoboke Beaver. As I said, last May in a review of the gig:-
But nothing had prepared me, or indeed Aldo or Mike G, for Otoboke Beaver. I’ve been going to watch live music for more than 40 years now, and so I will have been to at least 1,000 shows in my time. But I have never experienced anything quite as dynamic, uplifting and plain bonkers as the hour of entertainment provided by these four ridiculously talented women, Accorinrin (Lead Vocal & Guitar), Yoyoyoshie (Guitar & Vocals), Hiro-chan (Bass & Vocals) and Kahokiss (Drums & Vocals). The studio recorded stuff is fine, but it doesn’t come anywhere close to capturing the magic of actually seeing them and picking up on the energy they generate with each performance.
It was a genuine jaw-dropper of an evening.
Here’s the thing…..I’ve listened more and more to the studio stuff and it is more than fine. The live experience was such a mind-fuck that it was impossible to be properly objective about the album Itekoma Hits that I purchased at the end of the gig.
14 songs in 27 minutes. If you’re not fond of something, then don’t worry as something else will be along before you know it.
Otoboke Beaver first released music as long ago as 2011 but it wasn’t until Damnably Records signed them in 2016 that their material became more widely available beyond Japan. All the band members held down full-time jobs which restricted their abilities to record and tour – indeed their visits to the UK have been for what they have called Golden Week tours, using up precious annual leave from their employers. Such tours were underatken in 2017 and 2019 while other holidays were used for shows in the USA at events such as SxSW in Austin, Texas.
They are coming back to Glasgow tonight and I’ll be there again. There’s a major difference in that the band have now all quit their jobs and are going to have a real go at making a success of their music. I’m fairly confident that they will, not just based on the live shows and the compilation album I picked up but that some newer material, in the form of a 5″ red vinyl single, released at the end of last year, was equally wonderful. And at 1 minute 40 seconds, it faithfully followed everything that had gone before.
I’ll just post one song from Itekoma Hits but offer up a few videos so that you get the idea:-
mp3 : Otoboke Beaver – Datsu. Hikage no onna
At 2 mins and 5 seconds, it’s one of their longer efforts!
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 