Biff Bang Pow!, Brilliant Corners, East Bay Ray, Fall, Hit Parade, June Brides, Microdisney, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, R.E.M., Red Guitars, Section 25, Stockholm Monsters, Violent Femmes

WHEN THE CLOCKS STRUCK THIRTEEN (June Pt 2)

The post featuring the new chart hits from June 1984 was a bit of a mixed bag.  Thankfully, top of the flops proved to be a bit better.

mp3 : Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – In The Ghetto

Yup….it’s now 41 years since the debut single of the band that had emerged from the implosion of The Birthday Party.  This 45 had in fact been preceded by an album, From Her To Eternity, that can best be described as post-punk goth. It was less abrasive than the Birthday Party material, but it was still a long way from being what could be called commercially accessible. None of the seven songs on the album were thought of as being suitable for a single release, and so the band’s take on the Elvis Presley #1 hit from 1969 was put on sale in the shops, with a video made to help boost sales:-

It’s a mighty long way from the Nick Cave of 2025 who is such a darling of the chattering classes.

mp3: East Bay Ray – Trouble In Town

This is one I heard for the first time maybe seven or eight years ago, and it was via a blog or music aggregator site.  East Bay Ray‘s guitar work was very much at the heart of what, musically, defined Dead Kennedys.  This solo single from 1984, is a long way removed from that sound, It’s akin to the soundtrack of a cowboy movie and great fun to listen to.  The lead vocal is courtesy of the frontman of Steve One & The Shades, a San Francisco-based power pop band back in the 80s.

mp3: The Fall – Oh! Brother

The band’s 13th single, but the first for new label Beggars Banquet and the first of what we can now define as the Brix-era.  As I wrote when looking at this single in detail back in September 2021, it was The Fall, but not as we, or indeed anyone, knew them.  It was a pop song, one which would have sat easily alongside those that were being released on a regular basis by Rough Trade. I’m sure that Geoff Travis would have been scratching his head and wondering just what he had ever done to upset MES to the extent that the thrawn bastard continuously refused to contemplate anything akin to radio friendly songs, while he was on his label, only for him to come up with this absolute monster once he’d moved to a major label.

mp3: The Brilliant Corners – Big Hip

The second 45 from Davey Woodward & co.  Still leaning a bit on the rockabilly sound that had been at the heart of January 1984 debut She’s Got Fever rather than the indie-pop C86 sounds that they would swerve into a few years later, but more than listenable across its two minutes duration.

mp3: Microdisney – Dolly

The band’s move from Cork to London eventually led to a deal with Rough Trade, with the album Everybody Is Fantastic being released in May 1984 to not a lot of fanfare beyond those who had long been championing the band in Ireland.  The following month saw the release of Dolly, a lovely acoustic-led track from the album, became their debut 45 on the label.

mp3: The Hit Parade – Forever

This features on the 5xCD box set, Scared To Get Happy: A Story of Indie-Pop 1980-1989.  Here’s the blurb from the booklet:-

In 2011, The Guardian’s Alex Petridis interviewed Julian Henry about his dual life as a successful PR executive by day and his twilight world as guitarist and singer in an indie band.  Back in the 80s, Henry had created The Hit Parade with Matthew Moffat and Raymond Watts, issuing beautifully crafted and overtly 60s-styled singles on their own JSH Records.  It began with ‘Forever’, a Bacharach & David homage sans guitars in 1984…..

mp3: The June Brides – In The Rain
mp3: The June Brides – Sunday To Saturday

Another debut single, this time on the newly established Pink Records, from a band who would eventually be lumped in with the C86 movement but whose best songs long pre-dated that genre.  Indeed, by 1986, The June Brides had more or less imploded.  They are a band I knew nothing of back in 1984, but when, a few years later, I finally came across them, it was instant love, primarily as they had an unusual and distinctive sound, making use of viola and trumpet as well as the standard guitars, bass and drums, and in Phil Wilson they had a very talented songwriter albeit his vocal delivery was a bit of an acquired taste.  It was a real thrill to finally see them play live at the Glas-Goes-Pop festival of 2022.

mp3: Biff Bang Pow! – There Must Be A Better Life

Back in February, I mentioned this lot’s debut single, 50 Years Of Fun, the third 45 to be issued by Creation Records, which was part-owned and run by the group’s vocalist and guitarist, Alan McGee.  This was their second offering, and there’s more than a nod to the 60s mod-era.

mp3: Red Guitars – Steeltown

So much was expected of Red Guitars in 1984.  Debut single, Good Technology (one of Dirk’s 111 selections) was, and remains, a bona-fide classic.  A tour a support to The Smiths had raised their profile, and the press coverage in the UK music papers was almost universally positive. But they never clicked with the record-buying public, and this, their second single, was a flop.

mp3: R.E.M – (Don’t Go Back To) Rockville

The fourth single from the beat-combo out of Athens, Georgia. They didn’t, over their extensive career, really make too many songs that sounded as ‘countrified’ as this.  It’s not to everyone’s taste, but it’s long been one of my favourites of theirs, and it inspired a train ride out to the town when I was over in Washington D.C. attending a conference back in the early 00s.

mp3: Section 25 – Looking From A Hilltop (restructure)

One of the lesser acclaimed acts on Factory Records, the band had been formed by brothers Vincent and Larry Cassidy. Their debut single for the label had been back in July 1980, and while there was a degree of critical acclaim for their post-punk sound, there was rarely much in the way of sales.  By 1984, they had been through a few changes in personnel, and by now the brothers had been joined by two female vocalists and keyboardists, Jenny Ross and Angela Flowers, (Jenny was Larry’s wife, while Angela was their sister).  The band’s third album, From The Hip, saw a shift in direction, being very much aimed at the dance floor. Produced by Bernard Sumner of New Order, it was released in March 1984, and the best received of its tracks, was remixed and issued as a 12″ single (FAC 108) a few months later.

mp3: The Stockholm Monsters – All At Once
mp3: The Stockholm Monsters – National Pastime  (link fixed)

My big book of indie music tells a different story from wikipedia.  The latter states that Stockholm Monsters formed in 1981 in Burnage, a suburb of Manchester. My big book suggests (and I have no every reason to doubt it thanks to a clarification from Swiss Adam) that the four-piece of Tony France, Karl France, John Rhodes and Shan Hira were from New York and only moved to Manchester after being ‘discovered’ by Factory Records supremo, Tony Wilson.  A debut single for the label emerged in 1981 and there were further singles in each of 1982 and 1983, prior to debut album Alma Mater, produced by Peter Hook of New Order, was released in March 1984.  The album, like all the three previous singles, was ignored by the record-buying public. Undeterred, and still championed by Wilson, two more tracks were issued as a single in Jun 1984 (FAC 107) and which was the subject of this post on the blog back in March 2023.

mp3: Violent Femmes – Gone Daddy Gone

A re-release of the band’s debut single came out on 12″ in June 1984, accompanied by Add It Up, another of the tracks to be found on the rather wonderful eponymous debut album, along with Jesus Walking On The Water, a track that would be found on the forthcoming second album, Hallowed Ground.  It kind of says a lot that instead of issuing the new song as the lead track on a single, it was relegated to a b-side, with the record labels in the USA and UK trying hard to get the world to take notice of the brilliance of Gone Daddy Gone.

So there you have it.  June 1984’s flop singles, many of which were far better than the ones which charted.

 

JC

Los Angeles, Wedding Present

HOLIDAY POSTCARD #3

The picture above is the interior of the Lodge Room, which can be found at 104 N Avenue 56, in the Highland Park district of Los Angeles.  To quote from the website:-

“..rich in vintage details from ceiling to floor was built in 1923 to serve as an actual Masonic Lodge. The 500-capacity room is located in the old Highland Park Masonic Lodge. The building has hidden trap doors, original cherry wood panelling, embossed cotton anaglypta and hand-painted murals. The venue features a lobby bar, a bar in the main room, staging, an in-house sound and lighting system, as well as access to three green rooms.”

It is quite possibly the finest venue in which I’ve ever seen any live rock show, thanks to The Wedding Present‘s gig on Saturday 7 June 2025, the last in what had been a 17-date tour across North America:-

The announcement of the tour, and in particular the date in L.A. had been the spark for nailing down our trip across the Atlantic for what proved to be an unforgettable stay with Jonny and Goldie in Santa Monica.  Words alone can’t express how grateful myself and Rachel were for their incredible generosity and hospitality, and for the way they immediately made us feel like family rather than as friends who hadn’t previously spent too much time together.

I’ve previously mentioned how they took us on a trip to downtown L.A., but there were also other excursions to fantastic art galleries, amazing restaurants, farmers’ markets, dance classes (the girls only), pub quizzes (the boys only) and a long drive along the Pacific Coast Highway to the other side of Malibu where huge properties above beaches and on mountain sides were juxtaposed with scenes of sadness, thanks to the devastation caused by the January wildfires, particularly in the Pacific Palisades area through which we had to travel to reach Malibu.

The final drive was from Santa Monica, along the freeway and across the downtown area to Highland Park and again I’ll quote from an Internet site:-

“Highland Park is a historic Los Angeles area known for its diverse culture, arts scene, and wide range of attractions from nightlife to museums, parkland, and more. It was originally an artsy, bohemian community in the early 20th century. It became run-down in the late 20th century, but it was revitalised and today is once again a cultural gem of northeast Los Angeles.

Here you can find a bouncing nightlife, great restaurants, trendy gastropubs, independent art galleries, old-school taquerias, and chic bistros. You can go shopping or bowling, or visit museums that tell the storey of the area, all on the same street.”

We were only in the area for a few hours, and most of it was spent at the gig.  But it certainly felt like the sort of place we would love to spend a day should we be fortunate enough to ever return to the city.

The gig?  Well, Rachel and myself have seen The Wedding Present on countless occasions, but this was Jonny’s first time since 1990 and his friend Ed’s first ever time.  All four of us had an absolute blast, but how could you not when the band were playing such a magnificent venue to ‘sold-out’ signs, with all 500 people in attendance very much appreciating the event given how infrequently they perform in the USA.  It was a very respectful but enthusiastic audience, and while the majority were of an age that seemingly had been following the band from the beginning, there was a healthy contingent of younger fans to bring that little bit of additional energy.

The set-list was identical to every other show across the tour – the band did occasionally deviate with the order of the closing numbers – but what we were treated to was this:-

Two For The Road
A Million Miles
Science Fiction
It’s a Gas
Rachel
Deer Caught in the Headlights
Come Play With Me
Brassneck
Crushed
No
Thanks
Kennedy
What Have I Said Now?
Granadaland
Bewitched
Take Me!
Be Honest
Crawl
Dalliance
My Favourite Dress

In other words….a new song to open with, six songs from the back catalogue, all ten from Bizarro and then three absolute bangers to round it all off.

There were honestly far too many highlights to single out – the show was consistently superb from the opening note to the last (OK….it dipped just a bit during Be Honest which David Gedge himself admitted hasn’t aged well and is kind of out of sync with the rest of the album), and in Rachel Wood (guitar), Stuart Hastings (bass) and Chris Hardwick (drums), this touring line-up was perfectly suited to the harder-edged sound of this particular set.

40 years in the business……and still as essential and magnificent as when they were releasing singles on their own record label and playing gigs in dingy basements.  David mentioned that they might return to L.A. in the not too distant future and perform Seamonsters.  If so, there’s every chance that we will be on the phone to Jonny and Goldie asking if they’d care to put up with us again………….

mp3: The Wedding Present – Thanks
mp3: The Wedding Present – You Should Always Keep In Touch With Your Friends

 

JC

 

 

 

Frank Sinatra

FOUR TRACK MIND : A RANDOM SERIES OF EXTENDED PLAY SINGLES

A new guest series by Fraser Pettigrew (aka our New Zealand correspondent)

#1: Songs For Swinging Lovers – Frank Sinatra (1956)

Is there a definition for an EP? Extended play is what the letters stand for and were originally used to denote 7” 45rpm vinyl records that had more than one track on each side, a feature made possible by the advent of microgroove pressings in the early 1950s. Wikipedia offers a rather broad definition, including anything that’s ‘more than a single but less than an album’, without defining either of those parameters. Where in that scheme does ‘mini album’ fit, I demand to know.

I only ask by way of setting a limit on this series of articles on EPs from my own vinyl collection, which otherwise could become rather lengthy and include some pretty unremarkable records. Of course, I can write about whatever the hell I like, but it’s nice to have some spurious hook to hang it on. Otherwise, it just looks self-indulgent…

So I say, for the purposes of this series, an EP has got at least four tracks, because there are quite a few singles that have two tracks on the B-side, such as The Jam’s News of the World and Down in the Tube Station at Midnight. That means I have to exclude XTC’s so-called ‘3D EP’ and Gang of Four’s Damaged Goods, which is sometimes referred to as an EP. In one case there are five tracks, but the majority have just four.

I’m not precious about 7” or 12” even though the larger disc enables longer running times than the classic single-sized EP, and I include a few 10” as well. Nor am I picky about playing speed – one of the 7-inchers runs at 33, but the rest are 45s. I have, however, drawn the line at multi-track singles or EPs of the house and techno era onwards, either because their running time can be almost traditional album length, or because they consist largely of multiple remixes of the same track. Things could get very silly, like some of the remixes.

Unsurprisingly to those of you familiar with my previous gibberings, this means that the majority of the discs I’m going to write about come from the late 70s and early 80s – so much for my claims of seeking out the new and not dwelling in the past, eh? I seem to be constantly ploughing a deep furrow of nostalgia, but hey ho… write about what you know, don’t they say?

Having said that, I’m going to kick off the series with something a little leftfield even for me and this blog: Frank Sinatra’s Songs For Swingin’ Lovers Part 1. Aha, you think, this must have been bought during the early 80s fad for old pop-jazz crooning, exemplified by Vic Godard’s Songs For Sale and Alison Moyet’s That Ole’ Devil Called Love amongst others. But no, in fact I never cared too much for that moment, even though I acquired an early liking for Nat King Cole and Duke Ellington.

In fact, this EP only came into my possession a couple of years ago after my mum died, and I found it in the old stereogram at her home near Edinburgh where it had undoubtedly lain for the duration of my whole life. I say that with confidence because the stereogram is now here with me in NZ and an old geezer who did a repair on it recognised the serial number on the speaker cones as 1963 manufacture, the year of my birth.

The EP however was first released in 1956, one instalment of the LP of the same name. It’s part two of four because in those days record companies had discovered the EP as a way of selling LPs in multiple parts to the significant number of people who didn’t own record players that could play 12” LPs. As I mentioned in my earlier piece about the evolution of vinyl, 33s and 45s were initially developed as competing formats, and many people only had players dedicated to one or other speed.

The presence of this EP in my parents’ collection is a bit of a mystery, since they didn’t really like Frank Sinatra. My dad was more into classical music and older trad jazz and my mum liked pure, clean, archetypal 60s voices like Judy Collins and Judith Durham of The Seekers. I think they found Sinatra’s persona unappealing as well, too much the louche American fly-guy, and his swinging musical style altogether too loose for them.

That, of course, is one of the things that made him great, that ability to sing so effortlessly outside the rhythm with absolute confidence, commanding even the most mediocre musical material. Van Morrison was moved to pay tribute, penning the lines: “Ain’t that some inspiration, When Sinatra sings against Nelson Riddle strings,” in his song Hard Nose the Highway.

Nelson Riddle was the bandleader and arranger behind what many regard as Sinatra’s finest recordings. But it wasn’t all Nelson Riddle – Sinatra had plenty of input as you can see in various films of the pair rehearsing (and also with other arrangers such as Quincy Jones). Sinatra is fully involved and shows absolute understanding of how the arrangement is working, how his phrasing fits, where the emotion comes from. He’s a man in virtuoso control of his instrument and how it blends into the ensemble.

Songs For Swingin’ Lovers was conceived as a change in mood from Sinatra’s previous album In The Wee Small Hours, a carefully constructed exercise in romantic melancholy. Swingin’ lovers, in contrast, wanted upbeat tunes to celebrate their wonderful lives, so Sinatra and Riddle delivered fifteen classic cuts with suitable modern verve, even if some of the songs, like Anything Goes, were already 20 years old and built in an entirely different era of foxtrots and quicksteps. But here it is, transported into fabulous 50s swing-time without wrecking the masterful interplay of Cole Porter’s brilliantly interlocking words and music.

You Make Me Feel So Young is probably the outstanding track here, approaching the heights of Sinatra’s best work where he inhabits a simple pop song with complete conviction. If you have ever had the misfortune to see one of those goddawful Simon Cowell talent shows, you will have immediately understood that many people have great voices, but most of them never become great singers. This is the sound of a great singer.

Sinatra didn’t feature heavily in my musical youth, despite my sometimes perverse eclecticism. Knocking around one student flat there was a copy of Strangers in the Night, the greatest celebration of casual sex in the history of popular music, and boy are there a few contenders for that title. It found its way onto several party tapes, more tongue in cheek (nudge wink) than genuine admiration, but my feelings have swung around in later years. I’m not a big Sinatra fan all the same, but unlike my parents I have come to appreciate what it was that made him a great pop singer. Everyone should have a little bit of Ole Blue Eyes in their collection, and this family heirloom EP is mine.

You Make Me Feel So Young

It Happened in Monterey

Anything Goes

How About You?

 

Fraser

Sugarcubes

ONE HUNDRED AND ELEVEN SINGLES : #098

aka The Vinyl Villain incorporating Sexy Loser

# 098: Sugarcubes – ‘Birthday’ (One Little Indian Records ’87)

Dear friends,

there are bands which by no means would have been even halfway as sucessful as they finally became if it hadn’t been for their singer, especially if said singer was female. The Sugarcubes, fronted by Björk of course, are one example, another one will follow next week.

I guess there is no need to get into full detail re The Sugarcubes, you all are old enough. It’s pretty easy to briefly sum up their career: they started out as KUKL (and had their stuff released on the label run by Crass, which I always found rather amusing), became The Sugarcubes, released ‘Birthday’ – and this record, which was pure unadulterated emotion, changed the world basically.

If you think I’m exaggerating, as ususal – well, sort of. But come on, such a singing style was, by and large, unheard of at the time. And from Iceland they came of all places – we hardly knew where this was, didn’t we? Those who listened to Peel at the time – before there was any mention of The Sugarcubes in the music papers – might, like me, have sat in front of the radio and imagined some Eskimo with quite an angelic voice (yes, I know: a) you are not allowed to call them like this these days and b) they don’t live in Iceland anyway).

But of course Björk had her haters, Mrs. Robster and Mrs. Loser being leaders of this club, I’m afraid. I never understood this disaffirmation, to me they were absolutely wonderful, the same is true of their debut album from 1988. So when the media caught up on the band, rather quickly two camps were built, and to my best knowledge there was not much of an inbetween – you either loved them or you hated them, as easy as this.

And then, soon, it was all over. Yes, I admit, three other albums followed, but to be frank: you’ll just remember ‘Regina’ from the second one, do you? The rest was, let’s face it, not good. So what happened? Well, if you listened closely to the debut album, there was this bloke in the background occasionally, disturbing Björk’s singing, so you could argue, with some strange shouting – and this chap was Einar Örk, the trumpet player.

Now, ‘Birthday’ topped Peel’s Festive 50, became a massive indie hit in the UK, a college radio hit in the USA and naturally all the media attention centred on Björk – and, obviously, quite rightly so! This very much disgusted poor Einar, the shouter, because he thought he’d deserve attention as well for The Sugarcubes being the new star in heaven. Still no one with a single brain cell left really saw it this way though and finally Björk had enough of the tensions with Einar and went solo. To even greater success, of course, so if you carried on with what she did on her own (I did not, too much other things to listen to), light a candle for Einar next time you’re in church, because at the end of the day he sort of paved her way to absolute stardom with his stupid attitude!

mp3: The Sugarcubes – Birthday

When filling the singles box I always tried to get hold of original releases of course, that’s when they were halfway affordable. But here I deliberately went for the re-release from ’88, because the ‘Christmas’-tune on the flipside is actually ‘Birthday’, but with the Jesus & Mary Chain‘s Reid brothers on guitars – and this version is absolutely stunning! So is the one sung in Icelandic, titled ‘Ammæli ‘, first issued on a 7“ in ’86 with ‘The Sugarcubes’ translated to ‘Sykurmolarnir’.

But still: the version above is the definitive one, of course. Some wise soul once wrote: „songs are rarely “out of this world” even if it is a descriptive term used quite regularly, but “Birthday” is undoubtedly otherworldly“.

Enjoy,

 

Dirk

PS : JC adds……

The e-mail from Dirk for this one arrived in the TVV inbox last Wednesday, 18 June 2025, which just happened to be my 62nd birthday….a complete coincidence according to my dear friend from Germany!!

Anyway, it gives me an excuse to redirect you to this recent post, featuring the June book of the month, and the opportunity to win a copy as I’m running a competition to celebrate said birthday.

Super Furry Animals

SUPER FURRY SUNDAYS (aka The Singular Adventures of Super Furry Animals)

A guest series by The Robster

#17: Juxtaposed With U (2001, Epic, 671224 6)

All was not lost for Creation’s artists after the label’s demise. Sony Music held a large stake in Creation and subsequently offered deals to many of its former artists. Super Furry Animals signed to one of Sony’s subsidiaries Epic, with a deal that would allow them to release anything the label didn’t want elsewhere. Of course, the danger of being on a big label is the expected return of investment, and the Furries had been typically uncompromising, which is what made them unique.

When I first heard their debut single for Epic, I was crestfallen. I really didn’t like it. It sounded like the type of commercial ballad you’d hear on Radio 2, like the fucking Lighthouse Family or some similar trite pop-soul group who appealed to middle-class 30-something housewives who gave up listening to new music the day they turned 21. Yes, I was not impressed.

mp3: Juxtaposed With U

Maybe I was a bit harsh at the time, but it’s still my least favourite SFA single. The song was initially conceived as a duet. Bizarrely, first Brian Harvey of East 17, and then Bobby Brown, were approached to perform on it, but (thankfully) both turned the offer down, and Gruff sang both vocal parts using a vocoder on the verses. It was inspired (in part, at least) by the Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder track Ebony and Ivory. I don’t know anyone who admits to liking that song either.

Juxtaposed With U was released on 9th July 2001 and reached number 14 in the charts, the band’s third-highest chart placing. It came in just three formats: CD, cassette and 12” – the first SFA single to not be released on 7”. All three formats contained two b-sides that were (and still are) far, far superior to the a-side.

mp3: Tradewinds
mp3: Happiness Is A Worn Pun

If you cast your mind back to…. ooooh… June 2015 (yikes! Where did that time go???), you may remember I submitted a SFA Imaginary Compilation to this lovely place, consisting entirely of b-sides. I opened it with Tradewinds, which I remain very fond of. I described it as “a song that could (should) soundtrack your summer. A cool funky reggae sound with a hazy psychedelic bent.” I’ll leave it at that as that is exactly what it is.

I also included the brilliantly titled Happiness Is A Worn Pun on that same compilation, in which I wrote: “Bowie circa ‘Aladdin Sane’ could have written this. He’d have probably left out the Sasquatch though. Bit too strange even for Dave, I reckon. Both b-sides of Juxtaposed With U are still better than the lead track.” Again, nothing to add, your honour.

The band’s first major label album was just around the corner. I prayed that Juxtaposed With U wasn’t illustrative of the record. I needn’t have worried. Turns out it was their greatest work, an album I adore and still listen to with much fondness. It’s just a shame I had such a negative introduction to it.

This week’s bonus track is a remix of Juxtaposed by San Fransiscan producer/DJ Walt Liquor. It strips the whole thing back, concentrating on Gruff’s vocal, and giving it something of a laid-back R&B vibe. While it’s not very Furry-like, it is something of an improvement on the original.

mp3: Juxtaposed With U [Walt Liquor Mystic remix]

Don’t worry – next week’s single is brilliant!

 

The Robster

Eugene Kelly

SATURDAY’S SCOTTISH SONG : #457: EUGENE KELLY

Eugene Kelly.

Legend.

Here’s the bio as found on allmusic.

“With his cult-favorite bands the Vaselines and Eugenius, Eugene Kelly joined compatriots like the Pastels, Teenage Fanclub, and BMX Bandits at the forefront of Scotland’s indie pop renaissance.

Born in Glasgow in 1965, Kelly formed the Vaselines in 1987 with fellow singer/guitarist Frances McKee, later adding Kelly’s brother Charles on drums and James Seenan on bass. Soon signing to Pastels frontman Stephan Pastel’s newly formed 53rd and 3rd label, the Vaselines’ first-ever studio session yielded their debut single, 1987’s fantastic “Son of a Gun.”

Lewd but naïve and abrasive yet tender, the band’s shambling, primitivist squall remains a perfect distillation of pop at its most guileless and euphoric, earning a devoted fan base that included Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain, who regularly cited the Vaselines’ influence in interviews with the music press during the years to follow. Their existence proved brief, however. The demise of 53rd and 3rd proved fatal to the Vaselines as well, however, and the group dissolved the same week their lone studio LP, 1989’s Dum Dum, was released via Rough Trade, although the following year the original lineup briefly reunited to open for Nirvana in Edinburgh.

Renewed interest in the band also resulted in the 1992 Sub Pop release of The Way of the Vaselines, an assemblage of all 19 of their official recordings. Kelly resurfaced in 1990 with a new band dubbed Captain America, releasing a pair of outstanding EPs, Wow! and Flame On, before the threat of a copyright lawsuit filed by Marvel Comics forced the group to rechristen itself Eugenius.

Their 1992 debut LP, Oomalama, raised Kelly’s profile as a pop tunesmith par excellence, updating the Vaselines formula via more robust arrangements and production. After Eugenius split following its tepid second album, 1994’s Mary Queen of Scots, Kelly spent the latter half of the decade under the radar, joining the supergroup-of-sorts Astro Chimp alongside Teenage Fanclub’s Norman Blake and Gerard Love in addition to writing in collaboration with the Lemonheads’ Evan Dando.

Kelly finally resurfaced in 2000 with his first-ever solo recording, a cover of Dennis Wilson’s “Lady” contributed to the Beach Boys tribute collection Caroline Now! His first proper solo EP, Older Faster, did not appear until three years later. The full-length Man Alive appeared in Japan in 2004, with an American release following some months later.”

The bio stops at that point, which is handy as today’s offering comes from the Man Alive album:-

mp3: Eugene Kelly – Ride The Dream Comet

The Vaselines reformed to great acclaim in 2008, with two new albums of material appearing in 2010 and 2014.

 

JC

 

Ramones

A CALMING SECOND POST OF THE DAY: SONGS UNDER TWO MINUTES (17): NOW I WANNA SNIFF SOME GLUE

I suppose it was inevitable that the Ramones would make an appearance in this series.

And this song just feels a fun way to calm down after posting the latest holiday postcard from a few hours ago.

mp3: Ramones – Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue

From their eponymous debut album, released in 1976.   A song title that got the writers and readers of the UK tabloid press into a real tizzy and was the inspiration for at least one highly influential music fanzine.

 

JC

Los Angeles

HOLIDAY POSTCARD #2

Dear Reader,

A great time was had exploring the beaches of Santa Monica and Venice, and equally there was much to enjoy wandering around the canals area of the latter.  Having, over the years, seen plenty of pictures of the golden sands and palm trees of California, along with the many bodies beautiful of the keep-fit fanatics who hang around such parts, I was kind of expecting to feel let down by the reality.  But no…it did prove to be something out of a movie set, or at least a promotional advert for the state.

A couple of days after we arrived, Jonny and Goldie suggested that we take a trip to downtown Los Angeles as it was an area where tourists were rarely found, despite it having a number of interesting buildings and attractions.   They drove us in and parked in an area called Little Tokyo, where international baseball superstar Shohei Ohtani, and current member of the Los Angeles Dodgers, is celebrated via a mural on the side of a 15-storey building. It is also a short walk from City Hall, a magnificent building that has featured in loads of films, TV shows and music videos and in which we could take a lift to the 27th Floor to an observation tower for some stunning views to all corners of the city.

Nearby is Union Station, a very impressive art deco building that must have the most luxurious waiting area for train passengers anywhere in the world, with plush, comfortable leather seats in a cathedral-like space, and as someone who enjoys train journeys and is a fan of art deco style buildings, I could have happily spent a lot longer wandering its nooks and crannies.

Lunch was eaten at Phillipe’s, a legendary downtown restaurant/diner that’s been in existence since 1908 and in its present location since 1951 – the charming interior looks as it hasn’t changed since the 50s and the camera on the i-phone went into overdrive.  It’s a place where people from all walks of life come together, often at long wooden tables, to enjoy the food they have ordered and collected on paper plates from the counter.  There was a real sense of friendliness and relaxation within its four walls, with a fascinating and eclectic mix of customers – police officers, business people in suits, casually attired workers dressed for the seemingly always warm weather, railway staff and a smattering of tourists – of all ages, colours and ethnicities.

The walk from Phillipe’s back to City Hall took us through the oldest part of the city, where a plaque commemorates Los Pobladores, the founders of the City of Los Angeles in 1871 and who consisted of eleven families, including twenty-two adults and twenty-two children, who has come from the provinces of Sinaloa and Sonora in New Spain, now called Mexico.

I’m emphasising all of this as, just 48 hours after our walkabout, this one square mile area around City Hall and Little Tokyo was all over the news as the scene of protests that had begun after agents of the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had arrested alleged illegal immigrants at several locations across the city.  Despite the protests being something that the local police force were more than capable of handling, the (insert your own description here) President of the USA chose to deploy both the National Guard and the Marines to Los Angeles, an act which further increased the tensions and led to further and a different type of protests.  TV and digital platform reporters/journalists from all around the world captured all that was unfolding.

We watched from a living room in Santa Monica, some 16 miles away from downtown, horrified and angry at what was unfolding.  It was hard to believe that an area of tranquillity that we had experienced and enjoyed so much just a couple of days earlier was now very much a strictly no-go deadly zone and not our scene at all (thank you Mr Weller).

I try not to get too political on the blog. I’ve always wanted it to be a place where everyone can come in and be part of a broad-based community where views and opinions can be openly expressed and debated/argued if need be, and I think that over what is now coming up for nineteen years, it has worked well in a self-policing way.

But I do want and feel I need to say this.

If you are someone who thinks the actions of ICE and Donald Trump are merited, then you really aren’t welcome.  I know I can’t stop you visiting TVV on an occasional or regular basis, but I would really rather you didn’t.

Yours sincerely

JC

PS : Those of you who are always welcome should come back later today for something more akin to normal service.

 

 

Cake, Dial-Ups

HOLIDAY POSTCARD #1

I did promise that I’d regale you with tales from the recent trip to Los Angeles…..and for those of you who keep in touch via my occasional nonsense on Facebook, I apologise that these postcards will mirror what was posted there as ‘live’.

This was the third attempt at getting across to stay with Jonny and Goldie in their Santa Monica home.  #1 was postponed in 2020 as a result of travel restrictions around COVID and #2 was called-off at the 11th and a half-hour when I ended up unexpectedly in hospital in June 2024.  This time around, it was timed to coincide with The Wedding Present gig taking place in L.A. on Saturday 7 June 2025….but there’s a lot to get through before that particular postcard.

Jonny is an accomplished bass player and a member of two bands.  One of these is The Dial-Ups, a much in-demand five-piece new wave/power-pop covers band whose members are Bess (vocals), Lucas (guitar/vocals) Dave (guitar), Randy (drums) as well as Jonny.  Despite Bess being on holiday in Ireland while myself and Rachel were in Santa Monica, the band wanted to play a gig in our honour, and arrangements were made to do so on Saturday 31 May, just 24 hours after we had landed. This was how they announced the event:-

“This Saturday’s show at the Trip Santa Monica is a rally in recognition of the arrival of one Vinyl Villain, a historically significant blog-hoster whose participating writers include one Jonny Balfus (aka Jonny the Friendly Lawyer aka JTFL). This weekend marks the landing of said Villain on the shores of Santa Monica, hence a grand welcome show in honor.

While Bess travels to explore the hubbub of Dublin for a bit (just a British Isles coincidence), this outcome creates a Dial-Ups boys night out, where we revisit the old line up, one before Lucas struggled to ride a bike correctly and Bess saved our asses.

For this special one-night only event, you will experience your favorite Santa Monica-based “Hey I love that song” band playing things that Jonny expects will appeal to the musically well-versed Scots, featuring special guests trying to distract us all from Bess’ absence. We will be pounding our chests and thumping our instruments and likely joining y’all in a beer or two, while we enjoy the miraculously entertaining book end sets from our friends Scorpion Wolf Shark (7:00), and Vibrafonics (9:30). The Dial-Ups set will start around 8:00 and go until we say so.

Please feel free to join us on Saturday May 31 @ Tr!p Santa Monica, 2101 Lincoln Blvd. No cover because we love you and need you.

Leis gach deagh dhùrachd,

The Dial-Ups

The Tr!p is one of Santa Monica’s most popular locations for live music, specialising in putting on free shows with the take for the bands and the venue coming from the bar takings, and given there are sixteen beers on tap, as well as another sixty available in cans or bottles, it proves to be a great arrangement.  It might not be the most luxurious of venues, but the atmosphere, certainly when it is close to capacity as it was at the Dial-Ups gig, is electric, and the band certainly did not disappoint.

I’m not always a fan of cover bands, but when the set list is as varied as this, and the musicians are full of talent and energy, and know exactly how to get a crowd going, then I’d be happy to go along seven nights a week, albeit my body couldn’t take it!!

Psycho Killer (Talking Heads)
Rock This Town (The Stray Cats)
Driven To Tears (The Police)
Uncontrollable Urge (Devo)
867-5309 (Tommy Tutone)
Radio Free Europe (R.E.M.)
Blister In The Sun (The Violent Femmes)
Vasoline (Stone Temple Pilots)
The Pretender (Foo Fighters)
Rock The Casbah (The Clash)
American Girl (Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers)
Hot For Teacher (Van Halen)
Pump It Up (Elvis Costello & The Attractions)
Look Sharp (Joe Jackson)

And then it was time for the encore.  The four members of the band, during the set, been supplemented by different backing vocalists. Two of those backing vocalists were joined by the three members of the opening band Scorpion Wolf Shark, two of whom were going to take shared lead vocals on the encore song, while the other joined in on banjo.  It was already a very crowded stage, but there was still room for your humble scribe, proudly wearing a Raith Rovers replica jersey, to make my L.A. stage debut, on cowbell, and occasional yelp through an absolutely manic performance of a minor hit from 2001:-

mp3: Cake – Short Skirt/Long Jacket

What a fun and utterly memorable way to get the holiday going…and I cannot give enough thanks to everyone for asking me to be part of this newly formed L.A. supergroup….oh, and at the point in time when the photo was taken, two of our members were down among what was very much a dancing and entertained audience, while Randy, our drummer, as so sadly is often the case when cameras are pointed in the direction of a stage, finds himself hidden behind the backing singers!

JC

PS : Just so that you can get an idea of just how tight and solid they are as a band, I got Jonny to send me over a video clip of The Dial Ups in full flow with Bess taking lead vocal on their take of Next To You by The Police.

Enjoy!!!!!!!

 

 

BMX Bandits, Teenage Fanclub

KYLIE’S GOT A CRUSH ON JC….I SHOULD BE SO LUCKY

Many many many years ago, far more than I care to remember, my mate Jacques the Kipper took the above photo and put it onto a t-shirt, but he superimposed my face, with my tongue hanging out, where Bobby Gillespie‘s had been in the original. There was a caption added to the t-shirt above the doctored image which said ‘Kylie’s Got A Crush On Us’.  There was another caption added below the image which said ‘I Should Be So Lucky’.  In the days when doing photoshop stuff was very much in its infancy, it was a genuine work of art.

I wore the t-shirt until it had been put in the wash so often that it all began to fade….especially the image.  I think I still have it somewhere, but if is so, it’ll be in a box that’s difficult to access without turning the storage area in Villain Towers totally upside down.

I’m recalling all this in the day I turn 62 years old.  I really shouldn’t still have crushes.  But I do.

Sigh.

One of the captions on the t-shirt is courtesy of a song written in the early 90s by Gerry Love, who at the time was still part of Teenage Fanclub.

mp3: BMX Bandits – Kylie’s Got A Crush On Us

It was released as a single on Creation Records in 1993.   I’m not sure if the Fannies, other than this take on things, ever recorded the song:-

mp3: Teenage Fanclub – Kylie’s Got A Crush On Us

As played during the soundcheck at Coventry Polytechnic on 25 January 1992. It became of the ‘Rare Creation Tape’, which was given away with the April 1992 edition of Select magazine.

It all, of course, easily predates the world’s complete infatuation with the Aussie with the sexy bum…..

JC

PS : A reminder that I’m running a wee competition to commemorate this particular birthday.  Just scroll back to the posting of 17 June for more details.

Book Reviews

BOOK OF THE MONTH : JUNE 2025 : ‘YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG’ by MICHAEL M

The sub-title of this book is ‘My Life As A Failed Rock Star (In The Best Band You’ve Never Heard) which I’m pretty sure is the case for maybe 99.99% of TVV regulars as  We Are The Physics, haven’t, until now, featured on the blog.

The thing is, if this book wasn’t any good, I wouldn’t be using today to offer up my thoughts and opinions, as I wouldn’t want to waste anyone’s time.  The thing is, this book isn’t just good, but is, at least in my very humble opinion, one of the best and most honest autobiographies I’ve had the pleasure of reading. It has a huge amount of laugh out loud moments, mixed in with tales of happenings and events that would make the casual reader question the sanity of anyone who wishes to embark on a career in the music industry, be that as a performer, manager, promoter, roadie, stage/lighting technician or whatever, as every single role seems to be a thankless task with next to no financial reward or job security on offer.

The book emerged late last year from the stable of Last Night From Glasgow, the not-for-profit label that has done so much to energise the music scene here in my home city.  The on-line description prior to publication gives you some idea of the thinking:-

“Occasionally we embark upon projects with absolutely no idea of the pitfalls and processes. We did so a couple of years ago when we decided to publish Craig McAllister’s biography of Trashcan Sinatras. The funny thing is that publishing books is considerably easier than pressing records, but unlike pressing records, publishing books throws up many possibilities that are best left open – in the short term at least.

Later this year, we will bring you a very limited run of Michael M’s auto biographical tour de force – You’re Doing It Wrong. The purpose of this limited run is to show the bigger publishers that there truly is a demand and market for this work, and thus provide a platform for Michael’s justified world domination.”

Michael then added a few paragraphs to set the scene:-

‘From 2005–2015, I was Michael M, the singer, bass player, and songwriter of an indie rock band from Glasgow, Scotland called We Are The Physics. Never heard of them? I wouldn’t have either, if I hadn’t been in them.

We were a band who launched ourselves on MySpace in the burgeoning days of social media and were hurtled into the musical mainstream limelight for fourteen brief minutes of fame, then disappeared. Not in any cliched rock ’n’ roll implosion, but because most people just stopped looking for us.

I’m not welcoming you to a chronological memoir of my existence as if any of it mattered, but a series of vignettes and anecdotal tales of failure, chronic mundanity, and ridiculous dismay that document the architecture of my band’s demise, unravelling me and my catalogue of personal defeats. A Twilight Zone for the last gasps of the music industry before streaming took over, amplifying just how wrong we did it, and why you’ve never heard of us.

Unlike most music autobiographies, this isn’t an ode to sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll. It’s an ode to budget hotels, grim backstage boredom, the claw grabbing machines at service stations, and the unhinged and unspoken workers who made the machinations of touring without fame function.

This is a celebration of the middling, the mediocre, the jobbing bands who never got on Top of the Pops, the almost almost famous. Set against a background of the dour, perpetual rain of Glasgow and beyond, this poignant story moves from childhood dreams, to adolescent shame, through triumph and grief to tragic pathos, all with an acerbic (and Scottish) sense of self-deprecating humour.’

Twenty-three chapters….which aren’t in any sort of chronological order, plus an intro and an outro over 375 pages, all of which contain sentences and paragraphs that will make you go Hmmmm…..but in a really good way.

Michael M is a gifted storyteller and raconteur, be it him recalling his tough upbringing in the east end of Glasgow and later on in one of Scotland’s new towns (but not the one from which Roddy Frame and the Jesus and Mary Chain had emerged), or the many genuinely bonkers things that happened to him and his bandmates over their ten years together.

For all that We Are The Physics never enjoyed any commercial success, this tale recounts the triumphs of shows in Europe and Japan, of being the support to Hollywood superstar Jared Leto‘s band, Thirty Seconds To Mars and their role as jobbing musicians in a film directed by Stuart Murdoch of Belle and Sebastian.  Shows at T In The Park and Glasgow Barrowlands are fondly recalled, but again in ways that are incredibly self-deprecating, while the chapter on the recording of the debut album in a slum studio in the arse-end of Glasgow, all for the sake of trying to save some money that would sustain them while they are out on the road, is eye-opening, jaw-dropping and rib-tickling in equal measures.

It’s a book that, for the most part and like the band itself, doesn’t take things too seriously, as evidenced by the way they went about recording a unique and impromptu take on a cover of Fireworks, the Katy Perry song which went out live on a BBC radio show on Bonfire Night.

But amid the laughs, there are a couple of moving vignettes which only illustrate the brilliance of Michael M’s writing, one being about his father and the other, towards the end of the book, when his own life unravels in a sudden and unexpected way.

I’d like to think that many of the folk who are regular visitors to the blog are the type to care a great deal about music and musicians, and tend to be on the lookout for something beyond the superficial and mundane.  You’re Doing It All Wrong certainly ticks all the boxes in that regard. At the risk of repeating myself, it’s a music memoir unlike any other I’ve ever read, and that’s me taking into account many hundreds going back five decades.

Do yourselves a big favour and buy yourself a copy from here. It’s also available as a digital download.

mp3: We Are The Physics – This Is Vanity

 

JC

To celebrate my impending 62nd birthday, I’ve bought an additional two copies of the book to give away free in a competition.

All you have to do is tell me which famous Croatian tennis star, and the winner of Wimbledon in 2001, did We Are The Physics later immortalise in song.  (further hint – the video for the single can be viewed on YouTube).

Leave your answers in the comments section…..and that way, everyone can copy whoever gets in first correctly!!  Come 30 June, I’ll randomly draw out two winners and post the book out to the lucky recipients.

Sorry to say that, to avoid any excess P&P and/or customs charges, the competition is only open to UK readers.  Again sorry!

Fall

ON THIS DAY : THE FALL’S PEEL SESSIONS #1

A series for 2025 in which this blog will dedicate a day to each of the twenty-four of the sessions The Fall recorded for the John Peel Show between 1978 and 2004.

Session #1 was broadcast on 15 June 1978 (and is here a day late so as not to interfere with The Robster’s Excellent SFA series on Sundays).  The session was recorded on 30 May 1978.

1978.

47 years ago.   Take away 47 years from 1978 and you find yourself in 1931.   The musicians of 1931 could never have imagined anyone like Mark E Smith coing to the fore.  The musicians of 2025 owe him a great debt.

Here’s Daryl Easlea’s words, written in 2025, to accompany the booklet:-

Almost exactly a year after their first gigs as a band, the group repaired to Maida Vale studios in leafy Delaware Road, London W9, with their roadie, Marc Riley in tow to embark on their maiden sesion, 23 days after John Walters first saw them in Croydon.  It contained four songs that were to be the cornerstones of the following year’s ‘Live At The Witch Trials’. If reasons are ever requested for The Falls’ longevity, please refer people to ‘Rebellious Jukebox’ and ‘Industrial Estate’ included here.  Bramah played both bass and guitar, as then-bassist, Eric Ferret, took one look at Steve Davis’ congas in the back of the van and refused to play with the group if such percussion was to be used.  The session led to the group signing with Mark Perry and Miles Copeland’s Step Forward label, and more importantly, to them occupying a very special place in John Peel’s heart.

mp3: The Fall – Futures and Pasts (Peel Session)
mp3: The Fall – Mother-Sister (Peel Session)
mp3: The Fall – Rebellious Jukebox (Peel Session)
mp3: The Fall – Industrial Estate (Peel Session)

Produced by Tony Wilson, Engineered by Mike Robinson

Mark E Smith – vocals; Martin Bramah – guitar, bass, backing vocals; Yvonne Pawlett – keyboards; Karl Burns – drums; Steve Davis – congas

JC

Super Furry Animals

SUPER FURRY SUNDAYS (aka The Singular Adventures of Super Furry Animals)

A guest series by The Robster

#16: Ysbeidiau Huelog (2000, Placid Casual, PLC002)

Despite all the label’s successes, Creation Records went under in 2000, just as Super Furry Animals had another album ready to go, less than a year after the previous one. While it was originally planned that Creation would release it, it turns out that, according to the band, the label didn’t really want it, and coupled with the decision to end Creation, the band was allowed to buy the rights for £6,000.

And so it was, that in May 2000, Super Furry Animals released ‘Mwng’, their first album performed entirely in the Welsh language. But that wasn’t the reason why it was so different to what came before it. Despite being rather experimental in places, ‘Guerrilla’ was thought of by the band as their pop record, and so were hugely disappointed at the lack of hits it produced. So for ‘Mwng’, they went on “pop strike” as they called it, making a record they wanted to make with no pretensions of it actually doing anything sales-wise.

It’s quite a contradictory record. It was recorded live with few embellishments and was all wrapped up in a fortnight. But while the songs were typically melodic and upbeat, the lyrics were often dark and brooding, owing to Gruff having experienced a difficult period in his life. And despite the Welsh language medium, Gruff also admits that “musically there’s nothing Welsh about it at all”, with the album owing more to US West Coast pop and psychedelic bands of the 1960 than the Furries’ homeland.

A fortnight before ‘Mwng’ was on the shelves, a single was released. But, in keeping with not playing the industry’s games, and being free to release whatever they wanted, however they wanted, only a limited 7” white vinyl format was put out.

mp3: Ysbeidiau Huelog

Ysbeidiau Huelog (pronounced uh-spadey-eye hay-loag; trans: Sunny Intervals) is a song about “looking back at a bad time which had the odd good moment”, and features a saxophone, something the band had previously considered “the Devil’s instrument”! It’s an interesting one, as so much of it has Super Furry Animals written all over it, yet at the same time, shares very little with anything the band had done before. In fact, it stuck out on ‘Mwng’ like a sore thumb. “If there’s any song that doesn’t sum up the album, it’s that one,” according to Gruff. It has been compared to ELO and Roxy Music, though I’m not sure I’m hearing that myself.

The sole b-side was recorded for a John Peel session just 2 months before the single’s release. As far as I know, it remains the only recorded version of the song, and it was only available on this single until the ‘Live At The BBC’ box set was put out in 2018. A curious choice for a b-side really, but a lot of fun – a riot, actually – and sounds nothing like the single or its parent album. It reminds me a bit of Man…Or Astroman?.

mp3: Charge

Owing to its very limited (and by now almost obsolete) format, Ysbeidiau Huelog only peaked at number 89 in the UK singles charts, but critically it was praised to the rafters. To be fair, that was par for the course – everyone loved Super Furry Animals, it’s just that not enough people bought their records. ‘Mwng’ faired better chart-wise. It entered the chart at #11, becoming the first Welsh language album to make the UK top 20, and going on to become the biggest selling Welsh language album of all time.

No further singles were released from ‘Mwng’, making it one of the band’s lowest-key records, and as a result, their most sadly overlooked. So I’m going to give you two bonus tracks this week. Think of it as the second part of a 7” double-pack, if you like. Firstly, a live version of Ysbeidiau Huelog recorded at All Tomorrow’s Parties in 2000. Someone once ripped me a copy of a bootleg they had called ‘One Night Stand’. I know nothing about the performance, location or date, other than it was probably around 2002 owing to the track listing. Anyway, it contains a version of Nythod Cacwn (trans. Wasps Nests) that has never been officially released, so there’s your exclusive for this week.

mp3: Ysbeidiau Huelog [live]
mp3: Nythod Cacwn [live]

In spite of their resistance to ‘The Man’, the band’s next move was to actually sign to a major label. Luckily for us, it would result in arguably the best Super Furry Animals record ever…

 

The Robster

 

Emme Woods

SATURDAY’S SCOTTISH SONG : #456: EMME WOODS

The not-for-profit label Last Night From Glasgow has been on the go since 2016.   The second-ever release, with the catalogue number LNFG2, was a 7″ single by Emme Woods, a then 21-year-old locally-based singer-songwriter:-

mp3: Emme Woods – I Don’t Drink To Forget

I’m not sure what happened afterwards in terms of her relationship with the label, as there was no follow-up single, far less an album.  I came across an on-line article, which details that she chose to go down the crowdfunding/pledging route for her debut album, but the company involved went into administration, leaving Emme, and many other creatives, high, dry and well out of pocket..

In due course, and with the support in particular of friends and family, a five-track mini-album, It’s Ma Party, was self-released in 2019.

Emme is currently a member of The Joy Hotel, a seven-piece band who formed a few years ago in Glasgow, and whose debut album, Ceremony, was released to a fair amount of critical acclaim in the Scottish press last summer. The PR blurb for the album suggests it is a mix of pop and country with arrangements reminiscent of the psychedelic scene of the 60s, complete with six-part vocal harmonies.

 

JC

 

Stranglers

ONE HUNDRED AND ELEVEN SINGLES : #097

aka The Vinyl Villain incorporating Sexy Loser

# 097: The Stranglers – ‘Something Better Change’ (A&M Records ’77)

Hello friends,

The Stranglers, my goodness me, they always stuck out from the rest somehow, didn’t they? But why? Well, for a start they were older than everyone else. Stranglers singer/guitarist Hugh Cornwell turned 28 in 1977 whereas Johnny Rotten and Dave Vanian out of The Damned both turned 21. Stranglers drummer Jet Black (real name Brian Duffy) was even touching 40 at the time, which, altogether, probably was one reason why The Stranglers were seen pretty much differently.

But their age was one thing, their attitude was another. Rotten may have invented the spiky punk hairdo, the bondage trousers and the safety pins in his ears, but that frightened only housewives, let’s be honest.

Cornwell and karate black-belt bassist/singer Jean-Jacques ‘JJ’ Burnel on the other hand, they looked, dressed and very often behaved like thugs, they frightened everybody. Mind you, we are talking 1977 here, today’s kids would just burst out with laughter, of course, but back then they were really hardcore!

The Stranglers later openly admitted that they just used punk as a platform for success, they never cared how they were called, it simply was their chance to maybe get a foot into the door. And, in hindsight, it was a clever move, because with the aforementioned age difference plus their background, they were considered everything – but certainly not cool: they begun in 1974 as a prog-jazz-rock fusion band, Burnel was a classically trained guitarist who’d read history at university, before becoming the band’s bassist, Black owned a fleet of ice-cream vans – one of which became the band’s tour bus – and was an accomplished jazz musician. Keyboard player Dave Greenfield was a moustachioed piano tuner with hair down his back who dreamed of playing in Yes and Cornwell was a university graduate in biochemistry. See their press photo above and you’ll understand …

Then, in April 1977, the Stranglers released their first album, ‘Rattus Norvegicus’ from which ‘Peaches’, with its sexist lyrics was chosen to be the single. Still, ‘Peaches’ hit the UK No. 10 and the album easily outsold The Damned’s debut (released 8 weeks before) as well as the one by The Clash (released one week before).

But instead of that success garnishing the band’s reputation, The Stranglers became the black sheep of the original Brit-punk era. Increasingly despised by the then influential music press and at war with their peers (Burnel sneeringly dismissed the Sex Pistols as “a comedy act”), they seemingly went out of their way to provoke anyone who crossed their path: most notoriously, The Stranglers had their own gang, the Finchley Boys, so whenever there was ‘a situation’ at a Stranglers gig, which was worryingly often, the Finchley Boys – including a chap called Dagenham Dave, who not very much later drowned himself in The Thames, – would ‘sort it out’.

They certainly had discovered they had an ability to wind people up … and basically this is what they did whenever possible, probably this also related to their background, something they desperately needed to get rid of: only two years before ‘Rattus Novegicus’, The Stranglers’ best-paying gigs were weddings and bar mitzvahs, knocking out covers of ‘Tie A Yellow Ribbon’ and Dionne Warwick’s ‘Walk On By’. Then, suddenly, they were called ‘punks’, although they never thought of themselves as being punk (which makes me wonder how the other ‘punks’ thought about their new fame then, like Elvis Costello or Blondie?).

Anyway, The Stranglers began work on their second album while their first was still bunging up the charts, and released the first single from it, ‘Something Better Change’, another Top 10 hit, while ‘Peaches’ was still in the Top 40:

mp3: The Stranglers – Something Better Change

‘Something Better Change’ was in fact left over from the first album, but so were some other tunes on ‘No More Heroes‘, the second longplayer. What makes it a bit special is that it was sung by JJ Burnel, the bassist, who would exaggerate his voice a little, because he wasn’t fully confident of his singing abilities. Basically I could have gone for most of the songs from the first two albums (make that the first three albums), they are all great – they may not have aged very well, but, hell, they were great!

And speaking of ‘No More Heroes’: it was at No. 2 in the charts three weeks after its release, while at the same time at No. 3 was a guy named David Bowie with an album called ‘Heroes’ … which I think is a coincidence that’s hard to beat!

Enjoy,

 

Dirk

Brian Wilson, Sly Stone

WITH THANKS TO THE TVV COMMUNITY….

Well…..that’s me back from what proved to be a wonderful and memorable 11 days in the Los Angeles area.  Loads of things to write about, including two live gigs (one of which saw me invited to the stage to become part of the band’s encore!!), a trip to downtown L.A. just a few days prior to the outbreak of riots in the vicinity of where we were enjoying a stroll, and all-in-all, having a thoroughly great time thanks to the wonderful and generous hospitality of long-time blog friends, Jonny and Goldie.

But all that will be in the near future.  Today sees a combination of a post that dropped into the inbox while I was away, along with something my dear friend Aldo posted on Facebook.  Dirk’s latest offering is now scheduled for Friday, after which there will be the usual and long-running series on Saturday and Sunday.

It’s now time to hand over to Fraser, our New Zealand correspondent:-

Thank you for the party : Sly Stone, 1943-2025

When you read the story of his life it seems quite remarkable that Sly Stone ever reached the age of 82 before he died on 9 June just past. The history of rock and pop music is overpunctuated with untimely or premature deaths, the casualties of devotedly unhealthy lifestyles, the overdoses, the car crashes, the suicides, the booze and drug-induced misadventures, the heart attacks, the murders. Sly Stone indulged heavily in several of these potentially fatal activities over many years and yet lived five years longer than the average American man, ten years longer than the average African-American.

Sadly for him, a large part of that long life was lived in a fog of drug abuse that in time reduced him to near-destitution and homelessness. Sadly for the rest of the world, he consequently spent most of it in a state of creative inactivity. His artistic legacy, while immense in influence, is all too small.

Like many British new wave kids, forging their musical tastes in the late 70s and early 80s, I was introduced to Sly and the Family Stone by Magazine’s cover of Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) in 1980. Despite the warmer atmosphere of The Correct Use of Soap compared to their first two albums, Magazine’s invigoratingly frosty art rock strips almost all of the funk out of it. Almost, but not quite all. Barry Adamson’s immaculate slap-pluck bass pays due homage to Larry Graham’s innovation that dominates the original single and introduced the sound to the lexicon of funk ten years earlier in December 1969.

At any rate, the cover did what any good cover does and encouraged us all to seek out the original. It so happened that around that time a school friend was introducing me to the Stevie Wonderful world of soul and funk, Aretha, Smokey, James Brown, Marvin Gaye. A cassette was procured with Sly and The Family Stone’s Greatest Hits on one side and their 1973 album Fresh on the other.

Most of the Greatest Hits sound very much of their late 60s time, upbeat singalong songs and dance floor freak-outs, some era-defining classics, but overall, until you get to Thank You, it’s more crossover pop than soulful r’n’b or even the proto-funk that James Brown was already cranking out by the mile. The standard cliché about funk is that James Brown invented it, but Sly Stone perfected it. Like all such aphorisms it’s an over-simplification, but listening to Fresh after the Greatest Hits you can immediately sense that Sly Stone had travelled a long way in a short time.

It was Fresh that hooked me straight away, being at that time the funkiest thing I’d ever heard – and it still is. It’s not Sex Machine or Mothership Connection funky however. Hardly any of it is really dance floor material, but it has the most effortless, natural, laid-back groove, an irresistible warmth and charm, an ultra-cool vibe that feels like the result of long years spent refining and distilling the essence of funk down to this fine, instinctive elixir of sound.

But the refinement had happened pretty quickly. In 1971, on the preceding album There’s a Riot Goin’ On, the sound was already there. Tracks like Brave and Strong have the same almost free-form jamming structure that accounts for much of Fresh. Sly still had the knack for a great simple pop tune however, such as (You Caught Me) Smilin’, Running Away (covered by Paul Haig in 1982) and the chart topping single Family Affair. But the dominating mood of the album is quite different to the radically multiracial Family Stone’s big pop hits of the late 60s. It’s ruminative, introspective, reticent with its messages where they can be discerned at all, completely lacking in the ‘you can make it if you try’ positivism that radiates from the earlier work.

Pop critics mostly hated it, but it sold hugely, and proved massively influential, allegedly even on such musical luminaries as Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock, and certainly on funk stars like George Clinton and Bootsy Collins. It broke decisively with Sly and the Family Stone’s own past and sounded completely unlike anything else at the time. Aside from the loose and free musical stylings, it was notable for being largely performed by multi-instrumentalist Sly alone, patching together overdubs rather than mixing an ensemble group performance, being one of the earliest uses of a drum machine (Family Affair), and featuring probably the first (and only?) example of yodelling in r’n’b music (Spaced Cowboy).

Despite these ground-breaking shifts, further developed on Fresh and 1974’s Small Talk, Sly and the Family Stone’s star was waning. Drug use by Sly and other band members led to personal divisions, personnel changes and chronic unreliability. Gigs were frequently cancelled or took place without certain members, including Sly, on account of their sudden incapacity. Eventually promoters just wouldn’t touch them, so the band never capitalised on whatever profile their releases might have gained them. In 1975, they booked themselves a gig at New York’s famous Radio City Music Hall and hardly anyone turned up. That was effectively the end of Sly and the Family Stone.

Sly tried to carry on, releasing a solo album and three more under the band’s name, but it wasn’t a band, just him and a succession of guests and session players. By all accounts there are flashes of the old funk in there, but the comeback hype got more and more desperate with each release. Heard Ya Missed Me, Well I’m Back (1976), Back on the Right Track (1979), Ain’t But the One Way (1982). A sad and weary Sly smiles up hopefully from the cover of Back on the Right Track. You could tell from the look that he was on the wrong track. Ain’t but the one way – a branch line to oblivion.

Over the subsequent decades there were various guest appearances, collaborations that came to nothing much, and many more disappearances – times when Sly would show up to perform but would end up just walking off stage, walking away, leaving without saying goodbye, riding off on a motorbike…

Magazine’s version of Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) is really only half a version – Devoto only sings the first two verses, but it means it ends on a quatrain that not only sounds like the most Devoto-like lyric he never wrote, but seems to sum up perfectly the sad fade-out of Sly Stone’s career:

Thank you for the party
But I could never stay
Many things on my mind
Words in the way.

Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)

And, as promised, here’s Aldo:-

I remember being about 10 or 11 and having a tape with some Beach Boys on it, in amongst the brilliant surf pop tunes, there was Good Vibrations which I’d end up rewinding again and again, and ok, once more… I’d never heard anything like it, what were these sounds?!

Good Vibrations

Also on the same tape, without the same studio trickery, but equally entrancing was God Only Knows. ‘Can music really be as beautiful as this?’ I no doubt asked myself.

A decade or so on from then, and having fallen in love with Pet Sounds, Brian Wilson is back touring, playing that particular album.

Chuffed to bag a couple of tickets for the show at the Playhouse in Edinburgh, the second ticket being a birthday present for my Dad, who was a big fan. Sadly my Dad passed suddenly just prior to his birthday, and I never got to hand over that ticket.

I’m glad to say I still attended the gig a few months later with a colleague, and it lived up to everything I’d expected of it. It’s one of only two gigs I’ve ever kept press cuttings from. And strangely, it was 23 years ago today.

A year or two later I caught Brian backed by the same band in a tent at T in the Park, tearing through all the classics. It was absolutely joyous, and he seemed to be having a lot of fun.

Thanks for the music, Mr Wilson.

JC/Fraser/Aldo

Wilco

THE CD SINGLE LUCKY DIP (23) : Wilco – Can’t Stand It

I’ve previously mentioned how many of the CD singles sitting here in Villain Towers were picked up long after the time of their release via bargain bins or as cheap second-hand offerings.   Today’s offering is another example.

My first exposure to Wilco was through the album Being There, released in 1996.   The CD was given to me as a Christmas Present from Jacques the Kipper, presumably on the basis that it was an album he had enjoyed, and that he thought I’d like it too.  Then again, it might have been something he picked up on a whim or had received as a gift from someone else that had proved not to be his liking and he fobbed it off on me (only kidding…..he’s never do anything like that – he’s about the most honest and straight-up bloke I know!!!).  Looking back on the timeline, it might have been to give me an early heads-up on Mermaid Avenue, the upcoming project between Billy Bragg and Wilco in which previously unreleased songs by Woody Guthrie would be taken into the studio and recorded.

Either way, Being There didn’t really hold my attention for long, while the Wilco-led songs on Mermaid Avenue didn’t appeal as much as the ones on which Billy was at the forefront.  It happens, doesn’t it?   A critically acclaimed singer or band whom the optics suggest you will like just never measures up.

I did hand over 99p sometime in 1999 to buy Can’t Stand It, a single from Wilco that had been issued to support the release of the album Summerteeth.  It didn’ttty change my opinion of them, but on the basis that there may be a few regular readers who are fond of the band (as evidenced by the enthusiastic response to this ICA written by Jonny the Friendly Lawyer back in February 2020)  I thought I’d remind you of the single, which reached #67 in March 1999, along with the two songs that can be found on CD1 of what was a multi-formatted release.

mp3 : Wilco – Can’t Stand It
mp3 : Wilco – Student Loan Stereo
mp3 : Wilco – Tried And True

 

JC

Alison Moyet, Associates, Bluebells, Damned, Elvis Costello & The Attractions, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Human League, Mighty Wah, Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark, Prince & The Revolution, Scritti Politti, Working Week

WHEN THE CLOCKS STRUCK THIRTEEN (June)

June 1984.  The month I turned 21 years of age.  I wish I had a photo or two to show you, but it was an era when nobody bothered too much with cameras. There was no huge celebration to mark the occasion, mainly as my birthday fell on a Monday, but much drink was consumed and I ended up playing Girl Afraid by The Smiths on constant rotation back in the flat, grateful to be indulged by my flatmates in such a manner.

Having been out all day, we missed seeing the TV news, which would have been full of one-sided reporting of a shameful day for Britain.

The soundtrack to this state-sanctioned police brutality?

3 – 9 June

One new entry in the Top 40, courtesy of Spandau Ballet, in at #5, with the utterly forgettable Only When You Leave.  I mean that, I cannot recall this one at all, despite it seemingly spending nine weeks in the charts and peaking at #3.

The next highest new entry was at #43, and is one featured previously on TVV:-

mp3: Scritti Politti – Absolute

The follow-up to Top 10 hit Wood Beez (Pray Like Aretha Franklin) was released a couple of weeks before the band’s debut album for Virgin Records.  Any initial disappointment at not cracking the Top 40 right away would have been dissipated quickly as Absolute spent ten weeks in the charts, peaking at #17 and getting Green & co another appearance on Top of The Pops where anyone who hadn’t been keeping up with things since the release of the scratchy Skank Bloc Bologna back in 1978 might have rubbed their eyes in astonishment:-

It is so 80s isn’t it?  (and I don’t mean that as a bad thing!!!!)

The Damned were still doing there thing a full eight years after New Rose had lit us all up:-

mp3: The Damned – Thanks For The Night

They were never really a band for hit single.  This was their 19th (by my reckoning) assault on the UK charts and only twice had they gone Top 40 (Love Song and Smash It Up, both in 1979). Thanks For The Night didn’t change things. In at #52 and peaking a week later at #43.

This week’s chart was responsible for the only time a single by Working Week ever made the Top 75:-

mp3: Working Week – Venceremos (We Will Win)

A jazz-dance band with something of a fluid membership, the single was a benefit record made to raise funds for the UK Chile Solidarity campaign, and had been inspired by the Pinochet junta’s brutal murder of political activisit Victor Jara (who had been namechecked by The Clash in Washington Bullets from the Sandinista! album). The vocalist are Claudia Figuerora, Robert Wyatt and Tracey Thorn.  This came in at #66 with the 12″ version, which comes in at just over ten minutes in length, being the easier to find in the shops than the 7″:-

mp3: Working Week – Venceremos (We Will Win) (Jazz Dance Special 12″ version)

10-16 June

A new #1 to bring an end to Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go‘s two-week stay at the top.  And a brand-new entry at that:-

mp3: Frankie Goes To Hollywood – Two Tribes

It’s worth recalling that there were some genuine fears that a nuclear war could erupt as the Cold War between the USA and the Soviet Union intensified, and FGTH’s take on things, including the controversial and violent video featuring a wrestling match between President Ronald Reagan (USA) and General Secretary Konstantin Chernenko, captured the zeitgeist.

Two Tribes would spent nine weeks at #1 and wouldn’t drop out of the singles chart until late October.

At the other end of the Top 40, a couple of TVV regulars show their faces:-

mp3: Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark – Talking Loud & Clear (#39)
mp3: Elvis Costello & The Attractions – I Wanna Be Loved/ Turning The Town Red (#40)

Worth mentioning that Locomotion by OMD was at #41 this week…..

Talking Loud & Clear is one that has grown on me a little bit over the years, albeit I wasn’t all that keen on it back in the day as mid-temp electro-pop wasn’t really my thing. It eventually reached #11, which illustrates I was out of touch with the record-buying public that summer.

Elvis’s record company went with a double-A sided single.  I Wanna Be Loved was a cover version of an obscure 1973 b-side by Teacher’s Edition, a little-known US soul group, and seemed a strange choice at the time.  A week or so later, the album Goodbye Cruel World hit the shops when it became clear that almost all of the Costello originals penned for the album were not exactly tailor-made singles.  The flip side was a stand-alone song that had been written as the theme tune for Scully, a seven-part drama/comedy series broadcast on Channel 4 in May/June 1984, set in Liverpool and in which Elvis Costello had a minor but re-occurring part as the brother of the main character. It probably helped sales to some extent as the single, which is far from one of Costello’s best, peaked at #25.

mp3: Associates – Those First Impressions (#52)

Two long and difficult years had passed since the Associates had seemingly come to an end when Alan Rankine quit.  Billy Mackenzie soldiered on under the band name, but to all intent and purposes, he was riding solo with a few session musician friends to help him out.  The record label weren’t happy with what was being written and recorded, and Billy was utterly miserable.  Those First Impressions got to #43. None of the subsequent singles ever got that close to the Top 40. The Top of the Pop era was well and truly over.

17-23 June

The height of summer. The single chart was a tad moribund. The highest new entry came from Pointer Sisters, in at #24 with Jump (For My Love).  Urgh.

It’s a chart that saw the return of Gary Glitter after a number of years away as he and his band hit the university circuit , cashing-in on the fact that much of his original pre-pubescent audience were now propping up student unions up and down the country.  I know this becuse he played Strathclyde a few times..  Urgh.

A couple of half-decent pop songs arrived further down the chart:-

mp3: The Bluebells – Young At Heart  (#54)
mp3: Alison Moyet – Love Resurrection (#55)

Young At Heart was the second hit of the year for The Bluebells.  It was radically different cover of a song that had originally been written and recorded by Bananarama for their 1983 debut album Deep Sea Skiving – Robert Hodgens of the Bluebells had helped with the writing having, at the time, been the boyfriend of Siobhan Fahey. The Bluebell take on things, which was credited soley to Hodgens and Fahey – went onto reach #8 in late July, at which point I don’t think anyone would have imagined that nine years later, having been used to soundtrack a car commercial, it would be re-released and reach #1.

Alison Moyet was embarking on a solo career after Vince Clarke had called it a day on Yazoo.  It wasn’t anticipated that she would continue down the electro route, and it was no surprise that she was teamed up with songwriters whose main focus was the pop market, with a nod to AOR.  I’m not actually that fond of much that she did, and indeed continues to do, in her solo career, but I’ve always had a chuckle that her debut single, which went Top 10, deals with erectile dysfunction.

24- 30 June

I mentioned last month how there had been a negative recation to the Human League‘s comeback single The Lebanon.  The record label obviously felt that a rush-release of the follow-up might act as a bit of a distraction:-

mp3: The Human League – Life On Your Own (#29)

A bit more akin to the sound with which they had shot to fame and made much fortune, but there was still something of a muted response among the critics and the fans.  In time, this would reach #16, but this was a long way short of what everyone was expecting, given the enormous bills run uop in various studios over the years.  To illustrate how big the dip was in popularity, Dare back in 1981/82 sold not far short of 1 million copies.  Hysteria, which had now been in the shops for a month by the time Life On Your Own was released, would ship around just over 10% of that number.

mp3: Prince & The Revolution – When Doves Cry (#44)

After many years of critical acclaim but next to no commercial success in the UK, Prince had made a breakthrough with the album 1999, which spawned two huge hit singles via the title track and Little Red Corvette.  Two years down the line, and the industry was buzzing with what was coming next in the shape of an album/soundtrack to a much-anticiapted film, Purple Rain, based on the life and times of the musician and in which he would star.  When Doves Cry was the first single to be lifted from the new album, and by late July, it was sitting at #4 while the album was Top 20.  The film was released at the end of July – it had cost $7.2 million to make and it grossed $70.3 world-wide at the box office.  The album would go onto spend 63 weeks in the UK charts, sellling 600,000 copies.  Across the world, the album would sell 25 million copies, over half being in the USA.

It’s fair to say that Prince was a big a global superstar as anyone in the mid-80s, but he never was as big a favourite in Villain Towers as the frontman of our next song:-

mp3: The Mighty Wah! – Come Back (#53)

As mentioned earlier, Billy Mackenzie had gone through a misearble time with WEA Records in the mid 80s.  So too, had Pete Wylie.  He escaped to Beggars Banquet and wrote the sort of song those at WEA had been pleading for in vain.  It was the proverbial two-fingered salute. This is another that Dirk has included in his 111 singles series, doing so last July.  Click here for a reminder of what he had to say.

There was a ying to the yang that Wylie brought to this week’s chart.

Aga-fucking-doo came in this week at #66.  It would hang around the Top 75 for 30 weeks, right through over Christmas and into early 1985,  Maybe when people suggest that the 80s were among the worst decades for pop music, they are thinking of Black Lace.  I know I have something of a mantra that there is no such thing as shit music, just a difference in tastes….but for Agadoo and ‘party/novelty’ songs of its ilk, I have to make an exception.  It is music with any merits whatsoever.

My take on June 1984 is that I had a great time of it socially, and indeed I was gearing up to hit the railways of Europe over the summer months.  Musically, the charts were a bit shit with the odd exception while politically, it was a shambles; astonishingly, on both fronts, we hadn’t reached rock-bottom.

JC

Luxembourg Signal

THE LP LUCKY DIP (2) : THE LUXEMBOURG SIGNAL : THE LONG NOW (2020)

Prior to the two-day of the Glas-Goes Pop festival in July 2023 I hadn’t heard anything by The Luxembourg Signal.  I was aware of their existence, and their pedigree in the world of indie-pop, thanks to many of their seven members having previously been involved with bands that had been part of the Sarah Records rota and/or had played with Trembling Blue Stars, a band very much brought to my attention by Comrade Colin.

The live set at the Debating Chamber of Glasgow University proved to be a hugely enjoyable one, and led to a visit to the merch stall afterwards where I was able to pick up a vinyl copy of The Long Now, the band’s third album, released in late 2020, a purchase which has turned out to be one of the best I’ve made over the past couple of years.

It’s a superb listen from start to finish.  I’d go as far as to call it an indie-pop classic, with ten quality tunes packed into 35 minutes which fly by all too quickly.  It’s one of those records that having got to the end of Side 2, it is irresistible not to flip it over and enjoy things all over again.

mp3: The Luxembourg Signal – 2:22
mp3: The Luxembourg Signal – Cut The Bridle

These are among the most instant of the songs, both of which are worthy of filling the floor at any indie disco.  But The Luxembourg Signal, certainly judging by this album, are far from one-dimensional. Indeed, album opener I Never Want To Leave is a bit of a curveball as the guitars are quite minimal and the keyboards at the heart of the song are very light, almost ethereal.  The guitars, for the most part, dominate the songs thereafter with the exception of Elevator Silence which can best be described as a synth ballad.  There’s also tunes that recall the cinematic style which characterised the afore-mentioned Trembling Blue Stars:-

mp3: The Luxembourg Signal – When All That We Hold Decays

That’s the album’s closing song – and as I mentioned inevitably leads to it being flipped over and listened to again.  At which point, I find myself changing my mind about which of the ten tracks I’d pick out as being the real standouts. OK…let’s have another that will at some point find its way onto one of the TVV monthly mixes at some point:-

mp3: The Luxembourg Signal – Take It Back

I’m willing to bet that, if there’s any of you out there who are already familiar with the album, you’ll be willing to make the case that the songs I haven’t featured or mentioned above are actually the pick of the bunch.

Very very very highly recommended.

 

JC

 

Super Furry Animals

SUPER FURRY SUNDAYS (aka The Singular Adventures of Super Furry Animals)

A guest series by The Robster

#15: Do Or Die (2000, Creation Records, CRE329)

Goodness me, we’re halfway through the series already. Not sure if we have any readers left, but we’re going to get through it regardless.

Some 7 months after the release of ‘Guerrilla’, and into the next year, a third single was finally lifted from the album. What took them so long? Well, the delay could be explained by problems at Creation. Following their US tour in 1999, Super Furry Animals returned home expecting preparations to have been made for their next choice of single – Wherever I Lay My Phone (That’s My Home). However, no such work had been done, and the band went out on tour again. On returning from Europe, they found Creation was being dissolved, and had completely changed tack with the proposed single. Firstly, Night Vision was lined up, but then it was decided it would be this:

mp3: Do Or Die

It was a bit of a strange choice. Firstly, it clocks in at just short of 2 minutes. Secondly, it’s not the most obvious of cuts for single release. Indeed, the band themselves were bemused by the decision. Nevertheless, it would be one of the final releases on the Creation label, coming out in January 2000. The traditional post-Christmas lull would propel Do Or Die to number 20 in the UK singles chart. The band performed it on Top Of The Pops, making it the shortest song to ever appear on the show, which is quite a surprising fact. It was also reviewed by the Wannadies in Melody Maker, who awarded it “all the points we can afford” and made it their Single Of The Week.

The 7”, cassette and promo 12” all came backed by this:

mp3: Missunderstanding (sic)

Another OK tune with echoes of the band’s past. I like it, but it wasn’t really in keeping with the other stuff on ‘Guerrilla’, so little surprise it was a b-side. The same can be said of the CD bonus track:

mp3: Colorblind

This one bugs me just because of the American spelling…

And so to this week’s bonus track. No surprises here – it’s the demo of Do Or Die.

mp3: Do Or Die [demo]

Next week, if you’re still hanging around, we begin the second half of the series much as we started the first – with a SFA 7” in the Welsh language!

 

The Robster

*JC adds…….couldn’t agree more