Auteurs, Luke Haines

THE SINGULAR ADVENTURES OF LUKE HAINES (15)

I’d like this to be considered as an early Christmas present to everyone.

Das Capital – The Songwriting Genius of Luke Haines and The Auteurs was released in 2003. Wiki states only that the album features orchestral re-recordings of some of his older songs from The Auteurs and Baader Meinhof periods, along with some new tracks.

It’s fair to say that the few who actually wrote up contemporary reviews came to differing opinions. Ben Hogwood at Music OMH said:-

“Haines comes across as the macabre balladeer, that sinister husky voice of his ever more to the fore. The expansive How Could I Go Wrong does well in this guise with the guitar line (shades of Santana?!) a majestic opener before the strings drape their treble line over the top. What’s evident here and elsewhere is that the music retains its urgency and edginess, nowhere more so than on Lenny Valentino, which still rocks, and on Showgirl, where the complete standstill half a minute in has the same powerful impact.

So what of the new material, 21st century Haines? Well Satan Wants Me is pretty self explanatory, a dirge with Haines spitting “Satan wants me, not you.” Then there’s Michael Powell, where Haines announces, “I’m just a horny devil baby, but I know how to treat a lady.” Dark alley, anyone? All of which leaves Bugger Bognor, a quietly venomous vocal highlighting similarities with Philip Larkin.

Production on Das Capital is heavy on the strings but not usually intrusive, with violins up in the heavens on Starstruck but subtly restrained on the sublime closer Future Generation. The male voice choir in the middle foreground of Baader Meinhof is a nice touch.”

On the other hand, Michael Idov at Pitchfork, in giving the album a rating of 5.1/10, states:-

“Das Capital: The Songwriting Genius of Luke Haines and the Auteurs is a primo Situationist stunt. From the title on down, it concerns itself purely with the sound of money. Fat with winds, strings, chimes, echo chambers the size of Wembley stadium and, per liner notes, “the greatest sax solo in the history of popular culture,” the album is meticulously designed to mimic fundraiser quickies like The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra Plays the Music of Oasis. The result, needless to say, is patently and intentionally ludicrous; it could be one of the greatest jokes ever played on a label by an artist.

I can’t help but applaud Das Capital’s meta-architecture, which incorporates everything from the cover art to the attendant interviews filled with bragging about the project’s cost – one small quibble, however, remains: The album is unlistenable………….I would never recommend a living soul to purchase Das Capital, and yet, full marks are due to Haines for making good on the hissed mission statement from his Oliver Twist Manifesto: “You better believe me when I say/ I never wanted to be liked.”

Me? I love it. The very fact that he was able to again persuade a record label to fork out money to capitalise on the recent success of Black Box Recorder with the promise of delivering a ‘best-of’ collection has to be appluaded. The further fact that he stood and delivered something so unexpected and near impossible to market and recoup its costs was the ultimate in highway robbery. Here’s Luke Haines own words from the CD booklet:-

“I cannot afford to buy an island, but I can afford to buy a theme park, or more accurately, Hut recordings in their speculative wisdom have provided me with the neccesary to create an aural them park, HainesWorld if you like. So, dear listener, take your token, climb aboard the waltzer, and as you spin into luxuriant orchestral delirium, hear me whisper in your ear, “I’m the man you camt to see fall into the machine.” I may be paraphrasing David Essex.

Alternately, the CD you have purchased is a brand new collection of old songs re-recorded, mainly of the 92-96 vintage. Why did these songs need to be recorded again? Because they were slipping out of view. Sometimes you have to point out to people what lies in front of their noses. Does this consolidate my place in musical history? You bet.”

There’s a couple more equally entertaining and slightly tongue-in-cheek paragraphs, before Haines’ own genuinely hilarious reviews of all the albums he had released with The Auteurs or under his own steam as a solo artists. Here’s some extracts:-

New Wave – My first masterpiece…best debut album of the nineties no contest, and as seminal as the first Modern Lovers; 5 stars

Now I’m A Cowboy – OK, sometimes the artist isn’t the best judge of his work. However this one requires serious reappraisal (from yours truly at least)…The Upper Classes was (yet another) precursor to the burgeoning Brit Pop thingy. My commercial peak to date; 4 stars

The Auteurs vs. μ-Ziq – Remixes by some kid from Wimbledon for £500. A lot of money for a teenager. Never listened to it myself. Went on to sell well in America. 100% of the publishing goes to me: 5 stars

After Murder Park – The most fun I had making a record, written in wheelchair confinement. Sonically great, Albini on top form and me too. An anti-zeigeist gem. Chris Cunningham has made a career out of recycling this sleeve art. Full marks to everyone involved; 5 stars

Baader Meinhof – My second masterpiece. Buy it so that I don’t have to. A testimonial to the joys of analogue recording; 5 stars

How I Learned to Love The Bootboys – Under-rated now and at the time. Unfortunately this record cannot be reappraised due to its anti-sentimental stance; 4 stars

Christie Malry’s Own Double Entry OST – My first foray into film soundtracks and my third masterpiece; 5 stars

The Oliver Twist Manifesto – You are not allowed to make record like this anymore….and as the credits roll, I would like to thank David, Paul and all at Hut Records….I say continue your worthless work and hang your heads in shame; 5 stars.

All that’s left now are these:-

mp3 : Luke Haines & The Auteurs – How Could I Be Wrong
mp3 : Luke Haines & The Auteurs – Showgirl
mp3 : Luke Haines & The Auteurs – Baader Meinhof
mp3 : Luke Haines & The Auteurs – Lenny Valentino
mp3 : Luke Haines & The Auteurs – Starstruck
mp3 : Luke Haines & The Auteurs – Satan Wants Me
mp3 : Luke Haines & The Auteurs – Unsolved Child Murder
mp3 : Luke Haines & The Auteurs – Junk Shop Clothes
mp3 : Luke Haines & The Auteurs – The Mitford Sisters
mp3 : Luke Haines & The Auteurs – Bugger Bognor
mp3 : Luke Haines & The Auteurs – Future Generation

You better be quick, as the links will be removed on Boxing Day (26 December)

Oh, and one more thing. There was a hidden track that could only be played by holding down the rewind button when you went play track 1:-

mp3 : Luke Haines & The Auteurs – Das Capital Overture

This track includes Back With The Killer Again, The Rubettes, Housebreaker, Tombstone, Buddah, Kids Issue, Light Aircraft on Fire, The Upper Classes and Discomania. I’ll leave it hanging around for a bit longer.

This series takes a short break as next weekend will see the introduction of a temporary feature with 22 daily posts covering the entire festive period. Luke will be back on Sunday 19 January.

Oh, and I’m going to see him play live in 2020…….click here for the info!

JC

Love & Money

SATURDAY’S SCOTTISH SONG : #193 : LOVE AND MONEY

This is cribbed from a previous posting on the band.

Love and Money rose from the ashes of Friends Again when three members of the latter decided to continue to work together while drafting in a new bass player. The fact that I had been such a huge fan of Friends Again should really have meant that I’d fall for the charms of this new combo but in all truth it never quite happened. It wasn’t for a lack of effort on my part as I went along to a lot of the early gigs in Glasgow and bought the singles and then the debut LP (All You Need Is….Love and Money) almost as soon as they were released. But the purchases were often out of a feeling of loyalty to James Grant (vocals/guitar), Paul McGeechan (keyboards), Stuart Kerr (drums) and Bobby Paterson (bass) as the music was just a bit too clean and antiseptic for me, certainly in the form it was released on vinyl, although they remained at all times a formidable and entertaining live band with a great mix of pop, soul and funk to get your feet moving.

Love and Money were signed to Mercury Records who first of all teamed the band up with Andy Taylor (Duran Duran and The Power Station) and then with Gary Katz, a producer who had done much to popularise Steely Dan.They even sent the band to Los Angeles to make what proved to be a very expensive second album, Strange Kind Of Love (1988), where all the rough edges were smoothed out. The singles should, by the formula they followed, have been huge hits on both sides of the Atlantic but it just never happened.

In 1990, a third LP was rejected by the label but they provided enough finance for another release the following year, Dogs In The Traffic, one of the most locally critically acclaimed albums of the era, and one which, with many of its tracks being acoustic-led, was a long way removed from the early material.

mp3 : Love and Money – River of People

The song featued above, however, is a track from the 1986 debut album.

JC

Vic Chesnutt

AN IMAGINARY COMPILATION ALBUM : #232 : VIC CHESNUTT

A GUEST POSTING by HYBRID SOC PROF,
our Michigan Correspondent


A TRAGICOMIC SOUTHERN GOTHIC ICA

To a certain extent, it’s hard to separate the apocrypha from reality when it comes to Vic Chesnutt’s history. Whether this is because he was a fabulist more interested in narrative and poetry than facts or because he was, by all accounts, more than open to a wide variety of mind-altering substances consumed with regularity, is unclear. Uncontested is that he grew up in a small Southern town 60 miles south of Atlanta, Georgia. Moreover, depressive, unathletic and an atheist from an evangelical family in the Bible Belt, he’d taken a stab at suicide even before he was largely paralyzed following a drunken auto accident in his late teens. He consistently reported that it was the gift of poetry – in the form of an album of poetry written and ready by the British poet Stevie Smith – that changed his life, lead him to read books and try to get away from his “Daddy’s friends, asshole chauvinist racist pigs.”

Effectively confined to a wheelchair and with limited use of his hands and arms, Chesnutt was able to play simple chords on his guitar and, while here again accounts vary, would read his poetry with the guitar or interspersed with it. Nevertheless, more suicide attempts followed. Exactly how many… who knows. Leaving Zebulon, Georgia, for Nashville, Tennessee, before moving to Athens, Georgia – 80 miles east northeast of Atlanta – is regularly described but opaque to me. Nevertheless, he joined a band in Athens and then left it to perform his own poetry/songs. (If you’re interested in reading more about his life via interviews and reviews, there’s a wordpress site titled revicchesnutt where many things are collected.) Famously, there in the late ‘80s, he was seen by Michael Stipe who then directed and produced Chesnutt’s first two records, Little (1990) and West of Rome (1991). They were on a tiny label, Texas Hotel, and if they were sent to KZSC, the university station in Santa Cruz, I completely missed them.

I’d had a subscription to Option magazine, a medium circulation music rag focused on independent, small label, and niche musical tastes, that I’d started in New York in ’87 and read religiously. There were what seemed to be hundreds of short reviews at the end of each issue and it was a great resource. I was flipping through an issue in 1993 and read these lines from Eddie Huffman: “Vic Chesnutt is a mama’s boy from Georgia. His mama’s a born-again Christian. When she heard him sing, ‘I am not a victim, I am an atheist,’ it made her cry.” Pretty great opening and it drew me in, as did the take-away point… that Huffman had interviewed Chesnutt and his wife, Tina, at least in part to tell him to please not commit suicide. His third record, self-produced, Drunk (1993) had just come out and I bought the CD – I might have had to drive to San Francisco to get it at Amoeba – and searched the radio station to see if we had it. We did, but not the previous two.

Chesnutt’s nasal, grating and yet sometimes beautiful Southern-tinged twang is jarringly perfect for his poetry/lyrics. And the lyrics are intensely evocative and emotionally devastating… while regularly flush with soaring, ironic – even hilarious – distance from the immediate experiences and feelings he recounts. He could also be pretty darned raunchy. Importantly, via the second version of “Sleeping Man” on Drunk, I was introduced to Syd Straw’s glorious voice. I was hooked. Then came Is the Actor Happy? (1995) and About to Choke (1996) and, by no means alone, I had found what I believed was among the most singular voices in rock.

Proving that I was far from alone, he had – the year before – collaborated with Widespread Panic on an album, Nine High a Pallet (1995), released as Brute. (They’d release a second, Co-Balt, in 2002.) Moreover, Sweet Relief II: Gravity of the Situation (1996) was released with a raft of brilliant covers of his songs. The Sweet Relief Foundation was set up to generate money to pay for health costs and coverage for US musicians given the anti-social and inhuman nature of our profit-driven private health insurance and delivery system. That same year, as well, he had a minor role in Billy Bob Thornton’s brilliant film, Sling Blade.

However, to my mind the collaborations got out of control. I didn’t like The Salesman and Bernadette (1998), recorded with Lambchop, nor did I appreciate his work with the Keneipp sisters on Merriment in 2000. And I thought he’d simply gone off the rails with 2001’s Left to His Own Devices, 2003’s Silver Lake, and 2005’s Ghetto Bells. Diane and I had seen him open for Wilco at a small college here in Michigan around 2000 and he was engaging, self-deprecating, and wonderful. More than anything, though, he was a bit painful to watch. Years of atrophy given his paralysis had left him physically twisted and clearly physically uncomfortable. This was a guy who’s work I’d always continue to buy, if for no reason other than giving tribute to his force of will.

As a result, when I bought North Star Deserter, in 2007, I was completely unprepared for its extraordinary lyrical power and explosive instrumentation. Recorded in Montreal with members of Thee Silver Mt Zion Memorial Orchestra and Godspeed! You Black Emperor, along with Guy Piccioto from Fugazi. It makes perfect sense, in a way, that he’d record with anarcho-communalist cooperatives and punks but, jeez, that he served to focus the two Canadian bands and that Picciotto seems to have found another natural métier continues to amaze me. I love this record. Both Mitte End August OST and At the Cut were released in 2009 and weld the very early solo/folkish work on West of Rome with the experimental creativity of North Star Deserter. Most notably, however, At the Cut has what Chesnutt claimed were his farewells to suicide in “Coward” and “Flirted with You All My Life”… even though – in the face of ever more insurmountable medical bills – he committed suicide as Skitter on Take Off – his third recoding of 2009 – was being released.

As with any ICA where the artist’s work spans decades, cutting down to 10 songs to produce a coherent album means a lot of great stuff is left behind. In putting this together, I went for a combination of feeling and flow as much as favorites. It turned out a little heavier than I anticipated on the last efforts… but I think it works.

In the Robert Palmer-curated BBC/PBS History of Rock ‘n’ Roll series (1995?), there’s an episode, Respect, about Motown, Stax and Fame studios. In it, Steve Cropper, of Booker T and the MGs, is talking about the death of Otis Reading says that every time he played with him, from the first time he was in the studio with Reading playing solo piano to the last, recording “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay”, that Reading “always moved me.” That’s how I feel about Vic Chesnutt (even if I wasn’t always moved to appreciation.)

1. Vic Chesnutt – Flirted with You All My Life – from At the Cut
2. Vic Chesnutt – Ladle – from About to Choke
3. Vic Chesnutt – Sleeping Man (Syd Straw version) – from Drunk
4. Brute – Protein Drink/Sewing Machine – from Nine High a Pallet
5. Vic Chesnutt – Sponge – from West of Rome
6. Vic Chesnutt – Gravity of the Situation – from Is the Actor Happy?
7. Vic Chesnutt – Marathon – from Mitt Ende August OST
8. Vic Chesnutt – Free of Hope – from Is the Actor Happy?
9. Vic Chesnutt – Everything I Say – from North Star Deserter
10. Vic Chesnutt – Coward – from At the Cut

HSP

Billy Bragg

SOME THINGS DON’T EVER REALLY CHANGE

It’s election day here in the UK.  I’m dreading the outcome with the expectation that the people will give the keys to 10 Downing Street to someone who has taken the art of lying to a completely new level. I have worked for, with and alongside politicians, of varying abilities and talents, for 35 years and at times I have been party to misrepresentations, spin and efforts to deflect and distract – to some extent it has always come with the territory.

But Johnson is the first of a kind – someone who can stand in a room full of people and say things that he and everyone present knows to be absolute nonsense. We are hours away from confirmation that you can win an election by lying and lying and lying and lying and lying without stopping.

And then I remember that Trump achieved likewise in the USA and that the PM of Australia seems to have a similar reputation. It’s despicable.

Just before flying off to the recent holiday, I bought a magaine that looked back at the life and work of R.E.M. through the various media interviews they gave over the years to the music press here in the UK. It’s a fascinating read as there’s no effort to edit anything that was said (or asked) at the time, and there’s a few moments where the views and opinions do leave the band members looking or sounding a little bit odd and quite removed from reality. One thing said by Michael Stipe in 1988, on the eve of the election of George Bush Snr, that hit home in response to a question about apathy when it comes to politics and politicians:-

“It’s a real problem because the country is so huge that things can’t really be focussed on except through the media, which completely abuses or overdramatises events according to their whim.”

30 years on, and while the media is now much more than newsprint and TV, it is even more of a problem about the abuse of its power and the way it overdramatises events. Just google the words ‘Jeremy Corbyn’ and ‘Election 2019’ to get the idea.

mp3 : Billy Bragg – Waiting For The Great Leap Forwards (2019 version – live)

Taken from footage of Billy lending his support to striking university lecturers on a picket line in Birmingham, England on 5 December.

Tomorrow could well be the blackest of all black Fridays.  This blog won’t be reflecting at all on the election outcome. It’ll be in the hands of a guest with a very good ICA.

JC

Shop Assistants

BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG : 4 IN 10 MINUTES

Shop Assistants are probably best known for Safety Net, the first single to be released, back in 1986, on the Bellshill-based 53rd & 3rd Records. This was actually the band’s third single, following on from the late-1984 debut, Something to Do (which was by Buba & The Shop Assistants and is extremely rare and hard to find) and a four-track EP, Shopping Parade, which was issued by The Subway Organisation.

Worth mentioning that the line-up for the debut single consisted of Aggi (vocals), David Keegan (guitar), John Peutherer (bass) and Moray Crawford (drums) with Stephen Pastel on backing vocals and production duties.

By the time they were in the studio for the follow-up, there had been huge changes with only David Keegan still around, joined now by Alex Taylor (vocals), Sarah Kneale (bass), Laura MacPhail (drums) and Ann Donald (drums). The EP was recorded for their Bristol-based label in Edinburgh in April 1985 with the results being energetic and tuneful lo-fi indie-pop, mostly fast-paced (apart from the one that sounds like a Velvet Underground outtake) that provided the introduction to the vocal talents of someone who was being increasingly talked of as the new face and voices of the independent Scottish music scene in the mid-80s.

mp3 : The Shop Assistants – All Day Long
mp3 : The Shop Assistants – Switzerland
mp3 : The Shop Assistants – All That Ever Mattered
mp3 : The Shop Assistants – It’s Up To You

For the avoidance of doubt, All That Ever Mattered is a totally different song to the one of the same name later recorded by Orange Juice.  Oh, and All Day Long is one of the best and most enduring songs to come out of Scotland the entire decade.

JC

Blow-Up

KNOWN ONLY FROM COMPILATION ALBUMS

I was cleaning up some music files on the laptop the other day, mostly involving the deletion of duplicate tracks. It’s quite astonishing just how often some songs have been licensed to appear on mumerous compilation CDs, especially those that celebrate UK indie-musicin the mid-late 80s.

In carrying out the clean-up, I noticed I had three songs by Blow-Up, courtesy of them being on both the multi-label C87 and C88 boxsets and also from being on Ambition (Volume 1), a 1991 compilation of 24 songs that had been released by Cherry Red. The band were a total mystery to me, being one that I couldn’t recall at all. Here’s wiki:-

Blow-Up was formed in Brighton, England in 1986 by former 14 Iced Bears member Nick Roughley (vocals), along with Alan Stirner (guitar), Whirl frontman Trevor Elliott on Bass, and The Milk Sisters Drummer Chris Window (drums).

Signing to Creation Records at their first gig by an awe-struck Alan McGee they gained exposure with two singles on the label, 1987’s 1966-Nuggets-style “Good For Me” and the epic “Pool Valley” (the latter taking its name from Brighton’s bus station and featuring new bassist Aziz Hashmi).

A BBC Janice Long live session at the legendary BBC Abbey Road studios in 1987 brought the outfit well needed publicity with the help of Dave Nimmo on percussion. A tour of the Netherlands and Belgium was followed by their early recordings being collected on the Rollercoaster compilation issued on Megadisc in 1988. After two further EP’s, the Pixies-influenced first album proper, In Watermelon Sugar, was issued in 1990. This line-up featured Justin Spear, son of Roger Ruskin Spear of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band and ‘Paul’ Reeves, who as Billy Reeves formed theaudience with Sophie Ellis-Bextor in 1997. An ambitious further album, Amazon Eyegasm (featuring the former 14 Iced Bear Will Taylor on guitar and ‘Red Ed’ on drums) followed in 1991.

Blow-Up were described as ‘the best band I ever signed, and the worst band I ever signed’ by Alan McGee.

So there you have it….and here’s the three songs that I have via CD compilations:-

mp3 : Blow-Up – Good For Me (Creation Records, 1987)
mp3 : Blow-Up – Forever Holiday (Ediesta Records, 1988)
mp3 : Blow-Up – World (Cherry Red Records, 1991)

All three were released as singles. All three are quite different in tone and feel. And maybe that’s the issue at hand…they sound like a band that was constantly searching for a sound they were comfortable with. None of the songs are dreadful, but none of them are particularly memorable or distinctive.

JC

Martha & The Muffins

I KNOW IT’S OUT OF FASHION AND A TRIFLE UNCOOL

Martha and The Muffins were the subject of this outstanding guest ICA by Alex G away back in July 2015.

As Alex G reminded us, Martha and the Muffins formed in Toronto in 1977 and within a year had settled down to a line-up of Martha Johnson (vocals, keyboards), Mark Gane (guitar), Carl Finkle (bass), Andy Haas (sax), Martha Ladly (backing vocals, keyboards) and Tim Gane (drums). A self-financed 7”, Insect Love, brought them to the attention of Virgin Records, who signed them up to their new DinDisc label and brought them to the UK to cut a debut album Metro Music (Canada 1979, UK release 1980) from which a first single was identified:-

mp3 : Martha and The Muffins – Echo Beach

It would prove to be their only hit in the UK, and indeed outside of Canada, the band has long struggled for any recognition beyond Echo Beach. It must be a a bit bewildering for the band, as they went on to release a number of critically well-received singles and albums in later years but the record buying public seemed determined to have them firmly in the category of one-hit wonders.

The single is a great example of new wave in its broadest definition. It’s not a rock song, it’s not a punk song and while it has a pop feel to it, it can’t be classified as pure pop. It also makes much use of keyboards but not in any sort of way that you would associate with prog or the emerging electronica. It’s also ridiculously catchy and tailor-made for radio, still often heard on the numerous stations devoted to nostalgia. Kind of hard to accept that it is coming up for its 40th birthday.

Here’s your b-side:-

mp3 : Martha and The Muffins – Teddy the Dink

Fun filled fact.

In June 2011, a 4,000 capacity outdoor concert venue opened in Toronto and it was decided to name after this hit single…and yes, it is on a waterfront loaction!

JC

Luke Haines

THE SINGULAR ADVENTURES OF LUKE HAINES (14)

Last week’s posting featured the final single to be released by The Auteurs, which was June 1999.

April 2000 saw Black Box Recorder hit the charts with The Facts of Life single.  The album went Top 40 in May 2000 but the follow-up single, The Art of Driving, ground to a halt at #53 in July 2000.

It was around this time that the budding secret romance between John Moore and Sarah Nixey became known to Luke Haines and he got mightily pissed-off….perhaps a bit hypocritically given that he and Alice Readman, the bassist in The Auteurs, had been an item throughout the period that the first three albums had been recorded.

He decided he needed to go off and do his own thing and there would be two releases in 2001, albeit one of them featured music that had been recorded more than a year earlier for a soundtrack to an as yet unreleased album and on which chaval will ruminate in due course.

The other album from 2001 proved to be the first time that David Boyd, supremo at Hut Records, had doubts about Luke Haines, with the tale of the album playback told in its full toe-curling detail within the pages of Post Everything.

The Oliver Twist Manifesto was, an still is, nothing like anything else Haines has ever recorded.  He was obsessed at the time with concept art and rap music, and in particular falling for the charms of Dr Dre/Eminem. He decided to make a high-art-hip-hop pastiche concept album on which he opens with the line ‘This is not entertainment, don’t expect me to entertain you’.

The album has a pop at many things, and the best thing I can do to sum it up is provide the NME’s review from the time….one which gave album fours stars out of five:-

The erstwhile Auteur loves saying the unsayable, and the bizarre Dickensian Slim Shady character that glowers through the music on ‘The Oliver Twist Manifesto’ – his first ‘proper’ solo LP – is his most hateful invention yet. This is Haines as cultural dilettante – a murderous misanthrope who brings fear and doom to all.

While he wastes valuable bile on worthless art bores (‘Death Of Sarah Lucas’), when he finds something to get genuinely upset about, Haines is a genuinely stunning writer. His unusually affecting treatise on mortality ‘What Happens When We Die’ is exceptional – the primitive synth-march of ‘England Vs America’ is possibly even better.

However, if you want evidence of what bitterness can do to a person, it may be worth tracing the manner that Haines’ voice has degenerated to a hoarse whisper as his albums have become more spiteful. He hisses like a pantomime villain throughout this bizarre, uneven assault on popular culture: [I]”You’ve gotta believe me when I say I never wanted to be liked”,[/I] he coughs on the title track. If that was his aim, then with the most unlikeable album of his entire career, he’s going the right way about it.

Here’s the opening and closing tracks of an album that clocks in at just 37 minutes. It’s still a fascinating if rather odd listen…..one that has come to make more sense in later years but was so out of leftfield in 2001 that it jarred somewhat.

mp3 : Luke Haines – Rock’n’Roll Communique No. 1
mp3 : Luke Haines – The Oliver Twist Manifesto

JC

Lord Cut-Glass

SATURDAY’S SCOTTISH SONG : #192 : LORD CUT-GLASS

From the Chemikal Underground website:-

In 2009 Lord Cut Glass, the alter-ego of our very own Alun Woodward (label boss and ex-Delgado), delivered us an album that had been four years in the making; written, arranged and largely performed by Woodward, the album was a beguilingly eclectic and hugely flamboyant affair.

Sometimes bashful, occasionally imbued with curmudgeonly bluster, and yet always lifted by humorous life learned truisms, Lord Cut-Glass struck a dashing figure of musically inventive bravado. Galloping percussion, waltzes and marches, promenades of male and female harmony: delicate and serene creations punctuated by casual profanity and shot through with brazenly hilarious words-to-the-wise. It was one of a kind and quite brilliant.

That last sentence nails it.  One of a kind and brilliant.  An album that never gets boring and throws up something new with every single listen.

Here’s the debut single that was lifted from it:-

mp3 : Lord Cut-Glass – Look After Your Wife

And the animated promo for its equally fabulous follow-up….although it was never given an actual physical release as a single:-

Note the use of the word ‘motherblaster’ in this version (just after the 1:30 mark); it wasn’t the word used on the album version……

JC

Siouxsie & The Banshees

IT REALLY WAS A CRACKING DEBUT SINGLE (43)

Today’s featured 7” piece of vinyl was seemingly named as ‘Single of the Week’ in August 1978 within the pages of all four of the main UK music papers – Melody Maker, NME, Record Mirror and Sounds, something I find hard to believe given that the papers projected themselves towards slightly different audiences and it was incredibly rare for all of them to simultaneously champion one band or singer.

But such was the fate of this:-

mp3 : Siouxsie and The Banshees – Hong Kong Garden

In an era when many a new band sounded fresh and exciting, particularly to my teenage ears, there was something about Hong Kong Garden that made it stand out even more so, that, of course being the Oriental sounding opening. The reviews in the music papers, to their credit, did nail things very well, offering the sort of soundbites that could be added to a poster if it was being used to attract further custom:-

“a bright, vivid narrative, power charged by the most original, intoxicating guitar playing heard in a long, long time”.

“strident and powerful with tantalising oriental guitar riffs”.

“ catchy, original….coupled with an irresistible sing-along chorus”.

“I love every second”.

The introductory notes come courtesy of a xylophone. The song had originally been aired on the John Peel Show on Radio 1 some six months earlier, with a quite different sound courtesy of a toy glockenspiel. The drums were also quite different….

mp3 : Siouxsie and The Banshees – Hong Kong Garden (Peel Session)

Ah, the drums. The instrument that played a huge part in making Hong Kong Garden one of the earliest smash hits of the new wave era – it’s #7 placing made it one of the few to go Top Ten in those days. Polydor Records had hooked the band up with an American producer named Bruce Albertine and had hired the expensive Olympic Studios in London for the sessions. The band didn’t like the results and the decision was taken to work with a little-known producer in a tiny basement studio in London. The producer got it done and dusted in two days, concentrating on the drum sound, insisting that Kenny Morris play the bass and snares first of all and then cymbals and tom-toms later on. These were matched up, with a bit of echo added, thus giving the song a bigger, fuller and more ambitious sound, arguably making the first new-wave single that didn’t sound just one step up from a great, live sounding demo.

The producer’s name was Steve Lillywhite and Hong Kong Garden was his first hit in that role….the first of many hundreds.

You can get a real sense of the difference that Lillywhite made by flipping it over to the b-side:-

mp3 : Siouxsie and The Banshees – Voices

This was salvaged from the Olympic Sessions with Bruce Albertine. It is distinctly average……(feel free to differ!!!)

The band would return to the studio with Steve Lillywhite to record debut album The Scream. As it was a separate session, and in a different studio to where they had first worked on the single, the decision was taken to leave Hong Kong Garden off said debut album. An act of artistic merit, but something of a commercial folly.

JC

Wire

IT REALLY WAS A CRACKING DEBUT SINGLE (42)

I had a quick look on Discogs to see if there were any second-hand copies of today’s debut single, by Wire, up for sale.

There’s loads of them, ranging in price from £50-£350, although the seller who is seeking the highest amount seems a bit ambitious, given that all he/she is offering is the 7” plastic in a generic record company sleeve while others, who are looking for a bit less, do have the single available in the picture sleeve from 1977.

I’m prepared to guess that maybe 15-20 years ago, you could have picked up Mannequin for £25 tops, but such has been the recent explosive growth in the demand for original vinyl from the good old days that sellers are asking a premium and there’s folk out there willing to pay. I sort of get it, but as I get older, it is decreasingly so.

I started this blog 13 years ago, ostensibly to try and post songs that were almost impossible to find, usually consisting of b-sides only issued on vinyl or different mixes of singles, again otherwise not available other than vinyl. Things have been overtaken with just about every singer/band from the punk, post-punk, new wave and 80s era being happy enough for old albums to be re-released, often with additional material, such as demos, b-sides and single mixes, to be tagged on. It’s a clever way to continue to extract money from fans and there’s a certain democratic element to it as it means that fans can complete their collections without having to fork out silly amounts of money.

My best personal take on it is that my hunt for a copy of the debut Orange Juice single slowed down once the tracks were made available via a CD reissue of all the Postcard Records material and it ground to a halt when the vinyl revival saw the price for the original artefact go through the roof. In some ways, getting your hands on original vinyl from the 70s/80s, especially those which weren’t pressed in any significant amounts, has become like collecting pieces of visual art such as paintings or sculptures, where all too often, it is only the moneyed and privileged who can participate.

I’ll now get off my soapbox and return to the business of the day.

Wire weren’t loved by many back in 1977. They were critically lauded in some places but there was little in the way of mass appeal. The debut album, Pink Flag, didn’t chart. It was, in many respects, ahead of its time as there can’t have been many prior LPs that contained 21 songs but with a running time of just over 35 minutes. It was music of a different quality and distinction and although it has retrospectively been lauded as one of the most original pieces of work to emerge out of the UK at any point in time, and has proven to be a huge influence on so many acts who would find fame and fortune in future times, hardly anybody knew it.

I’d be very surprised if the debut single was ever played on mainstream radio, other than by the usual suspect, John Peel:-

mp3 : Wire – Mannequin
mp3 : Wire – Feeling Called Love
mp3 : Wire – 1.2.X.U

More than 40 years on, these three songs still sound fresh, vibrant, edgy and exciting. They also sound familiar as so many bands would appropriate the Wire methodology in later years, often making a fair bit of money in the process.

All the tracks were available on Pink Flag, itself an album that has never been too difficult to find, having had its first re-release on CD in 1987, which also coincided with the label re-issuing it on vinyl. As such, none of the three songs were ever really obscure, and yet you have the situation of the 7” single fetching silly amounts. The original pressing of the album, which although not a great seller would still have found its way into more homes than the debut single, can be got for as ‘little’ as £60 or as much as £450, with the seller advising the vinyl and its sleeve are near-mint. Just as incredibly, a copy of the cassette version from 1977 is also up for grabs….£80 and its all yours with the seller saying “Tape looks in excellent condition, artwork is lovely, very slight corner wear. IS in original case, which is a bit worn, happy to replace with a new one, but it will be all clear, and this one has a black back”

Would it really be any better to hear the songs via these high-priced medium than any other?

JC

Wedding Present

IT REALLY WAS A CRACKING DEBUT SINGLE (41)

The Wedding Present released 29 singles and 3 EPs between 1985 and 1997. Today looks back at where it all started and my words below rely very heavily on an interview given by David Gedge to the folk involved with this wonderful piece of the internet

https://gedgesongs.wordpress.com/

It was 1985 and The Wedding Present were in a position to release a debut single. The choice came down to either Go Out and Get ‘Em Boy or Will You Up There. No worries if you don’t recognise the latter, it never got an official release!

The debut single turned out to be quite unlike almost all that would follow. One of the surprising things is that it was a deliberate effort by David Gedge to compose a political song, in this instance as his response to the Falklands conflict of the early 80s which had already inspired Elvis Costello to compose Shipbuilding. I genuinely had no idea about the intention behind the lyric, even though I had seen the words on paper before, assuming that it was another of the tangled lovelorn songs at which he frontman would become famed for over the ensuing decades. David Gedge does admit that the message is a little unfocussed and it’s an approach to song writing that he soon moved away from.

You were a survivor after all; you never even called!
I didn’t expect you to
Now, oh, there’s such a lot you’ve done and you’re only twenty-one
Yes, you’re only twenty-one

Oh, oh, there’s just something, something I noticed
That there’s a whole world out there but it’s shrinking fast
You want to take it all and make it last forever
Or maybe just a lifetime

Now, oh, you’ve gone to fly the flag from some pinprick on the map
Oh, won’t you ever bring it back?
Tonight, when you hold her in your arms and you prove that you’re a man
Oh, well, I hope she understands

Oh, oh, there’s just something, something I noticed
That there’s a whole world out there but it’s shrinking fast
You want to take it all and make it last forever
Or maybe just a lifetime, maybe just a lifetime

Oh, some things just don’t ever go away
Some things, you know, are just here to stay
And in a golden field there is a little girl left with a union jack
And there’s a price to pay, no matter what you say
There is no going back today

And if we’re worlds apart, then I’ve still got a heart
Can you imagine that?
“Another wasted day”, yes, I can hear you say
But I’m afraid it means much more to me than that

There’s also an admission that the music, with an unusual structure and multiple parts, was a tad on the ambitious side, but the defence being that nobody was sure if the first single would prove to be the last, so everyone involved wanted to pack it full of hooks while having a frantic pace that grabbed the listeners attention.

The single came out on Reception Records on 24 May 1985 (slap bang in the middle of my final exams at university, so I can be excused for not paying attention!). The label had been set-up by the band, solely with the intention of getting the single out there and into the shops. Just 500 copies were pressed, but such was the demand that they soon agreed a deal with City Slang, a new label that had been established by NME writer, Neil Taylor who was an early champion of The Weddoes. The second pressing of the single came with different artwork, the results of which had the band recoiling in horror, and determined not to cede control over such things ever again.

The second pressing also sold out quickly and by now the band were getting aired increasingly by John Peel. Rather than have fans shell out huge sums on the second-hand market or more likely relying on copies recorded to a hissy cassette tape, it was decided that all of the songs that comprised the first two singles should be put on a new EP, via Reception Records, which is why most folk (including myself) who have vinyl cuts of the song have achieved it through the Don’t Try and Stop Me, Mother EP.

mp3 : The Wedding Present – Go Out and Get ‘Em Boy!
mp3 : The Wedding Present – (The Moment Before) Everything’s Spoiled Again

I think it’s fair to say that The Weddoes would go on to make better and more polished singles, but as an opener, particularly as it was wholly self-financed, recorded and released, is worthy of being described as cracking.

JC

This Mortal Coil

IT REALLY WAS A CRACKING DEBUT SINGLE (40)

When I’m penning a bunch of similarly themed posts, such as this consecutive run of Cracking Debut Singles, the occasional lazy shortcut is needed to save time and energy. Here’s a re-post from September 2014, which was Part 110 in the very long-running series entitled ‘Saturday’s Scottish Single’

“Some of you might think I’m cheating this week, but with a bit of music that is this exceptional, I’m prepared to bend the rules a bit.

This Mortal Coil are NOT a Scottish band and so shouldn’t really be in this alphabetical series.

This Mortal Coil was a project led by Ivo Watts-Russell, co-founder of the 4AD record label. Although Watts-Russell and John Fryer were technically the only two official members, the band’s recorded output featured a large rotating cast of supporting artists, many of whom were signed to, or otherwise associated with 4AD.

One of the label’s earliest signings was Modern English. In 1983, Watts-Russell suggested that they re-record two of their earliest songs, Sixteen Days and Gathering Dust as a medley on the basis that the band was closing its sets with such a medley and the label owner thought it was strong enough to warrant a re-recording. When Modern English rebuffed the idea, Watts-Russell decided to assemble a group of musicians to undertake the task and a 12″ EP, Sixteen Days/Gathering Dust, resulted from the sessions.

Recorded as a B-side for the EP was a cover of Tim Buckley‘s Song to the Siren, performed solely by Elizabeth Fraser and Robin Guthrie of the Cocteau Twins. Pleased with the results, Watts-Russell decided to make this the A-side of the 7″ single version of the EP.

Cocteau Twins were a Scottish act, and I therefore claiming this version of Song To The Siren as eligible for this series.

mp3 : This Mortal Coil – Song To The Siren

A work of genius. Watts-Russell originally wanted it to be a cappella but ended up including what was a one-take of Guthrie, and I quote ‘leaning against the studio wall bored out of his mind playing these chords’.

Fraser’s vocal was also, quite astonishingly, recorded in one take.”

It is utterly sublime and totally overshadows its largely instrumental reverse side:-

mp3 : This Mortal Coil –Sixteen Days (reprise)

JC

Raveonettes

IT REALLY WAS A CRACKING DEBUT SINGLE (39)

The job I was holding down in the first few years of the 21st century involved long hours, a fair bit of travelling and a requirement to drop things/change plans at very short notice. I loved it, but the downside was that there wasn’t a great deal of leisure time and it was a period when, for instance, I was going to very few football games as my Saturdays and Sundays were precious.

One of the few ways I was able to keep up with new music was through flopping down on a couch and turning on the television to browse through the video music channels, more often than not settling on MTV2 which was best for the sort of indie/alternative nonsense that was my forte.

It was via this medium that I came across this piece of music:-

mp3 : The Raveonettes – Attack of The Ghost Riders

The video was something to be behold, being a horror/ghost/revenge story, shot entirely in black and white with the two singers/performers looking as if they had just stepped off the catwalk of some fashion show in a top class European city. I had no idea who The Raveonettes were – my hunch was that they were American, mistly likely from either NYC or LA – but I made a mental note to buy something the next time I was in a shop. Of course, nowadays I could just press a few keys into a search engine to find out more and then a few minutes later place an order which would come to my house or place of work within a couple of days, but this was the prehistoric era back in 2002……

It was a huge surprise to learn that The Raveonettes were from Denmark. It was less of a surprise to learn that this was their debut single that had been lifted from a mini-album that had crept out a few months previously. The biggest surprise, however, was seeing that the band were on Columbia Records, one of the largest multi-national labels on the planet, although I should have realised that no small and independent label would have been able to fund the promo video:-

The single was issued on 7” vinyl and on CD. Here’s the various, and all highly enjoyable, b-sides:-

mp3 : The Raveonettes – Rebel Invasion
mp3 : The Raveonettes – Go Girl Go
mp3 : The Raveonettes – Demon’s Fire

The Raveonettes blend of surf/garage/indie proved to be reasonably popular, slightly above mere cult status but never gaining full commercial acceptance. Columbia let them go in 2005 after two albums, but there have been six records since, initially released on the Canadian-based Vice Records and more recently on their own Beat Dies label. There’s been some more than decent stuff over the years, but nothing has ever quite grabbed me in the same way as the debut.

JC

Auteurs, Luke Haines

THE SINGULAR ADVENTURES OF LUKE HAINES (13)

The Auteurs broke up in the summer of 1996.

A few months later, the Baader Meinhof LP was released, a period of time wonderfully recalled in the pages of Bad Vibes, including the revelation that someone high up in Virgin Records, the parent label of Hut Records with whom Luke Haines had a contract, sent this in a fax to David Boyd, the head of Hut:-

“I would like to remind you that Virgin Records did not sign Luke Haines to make political statements. He is signed as an entertainer.”

In response, Boyd sanctioned a photo call at the Munich Olympic stadium where, in 1972 at the adjacent Games Village, 13 Israeli athletes had been killed after a terrorist attack. Haines really was testing everyone’s patience and understanding.

The Baader Meinhoff album gets mixed reviews in that it was loved and loathed in equal measures, best summed up by UK broadsheet newspaper The Guardian stating that Haines had wasted some of his best music on an impenetrable subject matter. No single is released to accompany it…. but there was a one-sided etched single given away free with vinyl copies of the album:-

mp3 : Baader Meinhof – I’ve Been A Fool For You

1997 proved to be a quiet year, but it was at this point in time that Haines formally hooked up with John Moore and Sarah Nixey to create Black Box Recorder.

Chrysalis Records signed the band, something which Hut Records seemed OK about, and in 1998 there were two flop singles – Child Psychology and England Made Me – before the release of a poorly selling album, also called England Made Me.

At the same time as this was happening, The Auteurs had come back together again….I’m guessing it was to fulfill a contractual obligation for a fourth album, as the reasons aren’t quite ever explained in Post Everything, the second volume of Haines’s memoirs, published in 2011 and covering the period 1997-2005. There are a number of aborted efforts at getting the recording process going, but eventually, from August – October 1998, things take shape.

The crazy thing is that the subsequent results yielded next to no reviews when the LP, How I Learned To Love The Boot Boys, was released in July 1999, but those who were paying attention, rightly recognised it as a masterpiece, such as this from Michael Hubbard in musicOMH, a London-based online magazine:-

If you’re going to be influenced by the music of decades other than the present one then you may as well allow that music to emphasise your own work rather than making your own music emphasise someone else’s.

Bjorn Again are great, no doubt about it – but they emphasise Abba. Who would they be otherwise? It has, in the recent past, been something of a conundrum; lots of ’70s disco music revivalist tripe has been scribed and has spawned comeback careers for everyone from Martha Wash to Burt Reynolds.

All great stuff – I’m sure the ’70s were fun at the time and Boogie Nights was a refreshing film – but really, mes fruits, this is the ’90s. Why live in the past? Why not just learn from it and improve upon it? The case for evolution has not been stronger since Charlie D popped his clogs and finally we have, in the shape of Luke Haines, a man prepared to lead the fightback.

Haines last graced the Albums shelves with his side project, Black Box Recorder’s England Made Me, which I loved immediately. The atmospherics of that record are transferred to How I Learned To Love The Bootboys and given some spices to further improve the flavour. Haines claims this record to be twelve singles; “maybe not twelve hits”, says the nihilist, but we see – and hear – what he means immediately.

At once a personal album (1967 was the year Haines first looked upon the world) and a fusion of myriad styles (Asti Spumante and Your Gang Our Gang, for instance), there are tracks that remind one of everything from The Sex Pistols to Ziggy Stardust, Gary Numan to Blur, yet I suspect that this eclectic record conjures different bands for each listener, depending on what they’ve heard before. Haines refines Numan’s atmospherics, he plays Johnny Rotten subtlely, he uses one or two Bluresque riffs rather than songloads and everything somehow works. In fact, in works bloody brilliantly.

Although every one of these songs shrieks CLASS!!! at the eardrums, stand-out tracks must surely be Asti Spumante, Your Gang Our Gang, Johnny and the Hurricanes, The Rubettes and title track How I Learned to Love the Bootboys. If you don’t yet own this album then you are missing out. Go buy.

In recent years, more writers haved belatedly heaped praise on the album, especially when it was reissued in 2014 as a 3xCD expanded edition in which the original 12 tracks were joined by an album of b-sides and rarities, along with a live album from November 1999, recorded at the London School of Economics, on the occasion of The Auteurs final UK gig.

There was one single taken from the album, complete with two new b-sides  All three tracks are very listenable:-

mp3 : The Auteurs – The Rubettes
mp3 : The Auteurs – Get Wrecked At Home
mp3 : The Auteurs – Breaking Up

The a-side featured backing vocals from John Moore and Sarah Nixey, thus providing a neat bridge between what had just come to pass and what would prove, the following year, to be the commercial high point of Luke Haines as an entertainer.

I’ve previously said that Black Box Recorder wouldn’t feature as part of this series, and I’m keeping it that way. The series will continue, running through early into the new year, with this idiosyncratic look at the solo career of Luke Haines, very little of which has seen the release of singles or EPs, but something in the region of 12 albums. You’ll be pleased to learn that chaval will be lending his talents to this venture…..

JC

PS : I might be away oh holiday just now, but I was reliably informed that an old friend was intending to come out of the woodwork today.  If my intel is good, then clicking here should do the trick.

 

 

Long Fin Killie

SATURDAY’S SCOTTISH SONG : #191 : LONG FIN KILLIE

From wiki:-

Long Fin Killie was a Scottish experimental rock/post-rock band, which released three albums and several EPs on the British avant-rock label Too Pure in the 1990s.

Long Fin Killie’s core line-up consisted of Luke Sutherland (vocals, violin, guitar, mandolin, bouzouki, saxophone, hammer dulcimer, thumb piano, etc.), Colin Greig (electric and upright bass), David Turner (drums/percussion), and Philip Cameron (electric guitar). Sutherland had previously been in a band called Fenn, based in Glasgow, who played many support gigs, including Ride and Catherine Wheel. Their name was taken from a family of ornamental freshwater fishes known as killifishes, noted for their interesting drought survival and reproductive habits.

The members were all highly trained, enabling them to create complex, atypical music which usually featured hypnotically-bowed violins/celli, jazz-influenced drumming, and meandering ambient passages. Allmusic cited them as having “staggering levels of musicianly talent”.Vocalist Luke Sutherland often delivered his cryptic, highly literate lyrics in an androgynous falsetto voice.

Their debut EP Buttergut was released in 1994, with debut album Houdini following the next year. The band’s sound, though diverse, was influenced by the likes of dream pop mainstays A R Kane, Cocteau Twins, and Slowdive, 1970s German krautrock groups like Can, and labelmates Moonshake, Pram and Laika. Mark E. Smith of The Fall contributed “guest rants” to the song “The Heads of Dead Surfers,” which appeared in 1995 on the EP of the same name, as well as on Houdini. (Listeners to British DJ John Peel’s radio show voted this the No. 10 best song of 1995 in the “Festive Fifty” list of that year.) LFK toured America in 1995 with the band Medicine; a split EP was released to promote it.

The band received widespread critical acclaim, but little to no radio play, though they did tour on the 1996 edition of Lollapalooza as part of its “second stage,” in support of their 1996 second LP Valentino. While driving from Sweden to Norway in late 1996, the band’s tour bus was involved in a major accident on a patch of ice, causing Sutherland to suffer a collapsed lung, broken ribs and collar bone, and other injuries. He began writing his first novel while recuperating from the crash. In 1997, Turner was replaced by Kenny McEwan on drums. Subsequent album Amelia (1998) featured songs of shorter lengths and more conventional structures, but it proved to be their last. The group disbanded shortly afterwards, to little mainstream notice, in 1998 or 1999.

All I have in the collection are the four tracks from the Hands and Lips EP, that was released in 1996.  Here’s the title track:-

mp3 : Long Fin Killie – Hand and Lips

I have picked up at some point, from another blog, the track that made it to the Peel Festive Fifty of 1995.  It’s rather  unusual:-

mp3 : Long Fin Killie and Mark E. Smith – The Heads of Dead Surfers

JC

Bjork

IT REALLY WAS A CRACKING DEBUT SINGLE (38)

“After The Sugarcubes, I guess I had a mixture of liberation and fear. It had been obvious for a while in the band that I had different tastes than the rest. That’s fair enough – there’s no such thing as correct taste. I wrote the melody for “Human Behaviour” as a kid. A lot of the melodies on Debut I wrote as a teenager and put aside because I was in punk bands and they weren’t punk. The lyric is almost like a child’s point of view….”

Nobody anticipated the sounds that Björk would bring to the party with her first solo material after The Sugarcubes had called it a day. There was a fair chance that it would be a touch different from the music she had made over the years with her band, but surely it was still going to be indie-schmindie with the emphasis still being on a traditional line-up of a guitar, bass and drum, with a flavouring of keyboards……so it was something of a shock to the system to hear this:-

mp3 : Björk – Human Behaviour

The single was released in June 1993. My first recollection of hearing it would have been at least a month later when I was browsing in a record shop I was known to frequent on a very regular basis (although to be more accurate, it should have been called a CD shop as about 90% of the stock was in that format), when my ears picked up that Björk was singing over what seemed to be an experimental trip-hop outfit. I hung around for a bit and found myself intrigued and enjoying the music, although I still wasn’t sure what was going on and whether it was a new record or was it something on which the chanteuse was guesting. A chat with the sales folk established that what was playing was an album, appropriately called Debut, which was the new material from Björk. I mentioned that I was a fan of her former band but was told that this was nothing like the old stuff, but in a good way. I was also, very kindly, offered the chance to take the CD home with me for free, on the proviso that I would return it after the weekend if I didn’t like it or pay for it the next time I dropped in. The cash was handed over a few days later………

I think I would have struggled if I had heard Human Behaviour in isolation – I certainly wouldn’t have forked out the money for what would have been an expensive single. It’s not the most commercial sounding piece of music and was from a genre of which I knew very little, albeit the stuff I had managed to pick up, such as Massive Attack, was finding favour…..but deep down, I was still an indie-boy at heart. It was only hearing it in the wider context of the album and taking the time to luxuriate in all that was coming out of the speakers that I was able to realise just how special the debut solo single had been.

Here’s the mixes that were made available on the 12″/CD singles:-

mp3 : Björk – Human Behaviour (Speedy J. Close To Human Mix)
mp3 : Björk – Human Behaviour (Underworld Mix)
mp3 : Björk – Human Behaviour (Dom T. Mix)
mp3 : Björk – Human Behaviour (Bassheads Edit)

All are at least six-and-a-bit minutes in length. The Underworld mix extends to over 12 minutes. They are all worthy of your considered attention.

JC

Normal

IT REALLY WAS A CRACKING DEBUT SINGLE (37)

Today’s cracking debut single is one with a difference in that it proved to be the only single recorded by the act in question. It’s also one where the b-side subsequently became much better known than the a-side.

mp3 : The Normal – T.V.O.D.
mp3 : The Normal – Warm Leatherette

I’m sure the vast majority will know the backstory, but please, indulge me anayway.

The Normal was the performing name adopted by Daniel Miller in 1978 and under which he wrote, recorded, produced and distributed a 7” single that were quite unlike anything else happening at that time across UK music. The two songs were hugely influenced by the novel Crash, written by J.G. Ballard in 1973, with Miller being inspired to compose minimalist electronica to be played on what is today described as a ‘limited and quirky little synth’.

Daniel Miller never thought of himself as a musician, so it can be no real surprise that other than a 1980 live LP that was recorded in conjunction with Robert Rental (a Scots-born pioneer of electronica), there was never any other product from The Normal. Miller’s energies went into Mute Records, the label he had established to release the single, using its proceeds to run it as a full-time professional operation, primarily as a home for other experimental electronica artists and bands. The fact that he would discover Depeche Mode in 1980 changed forever his life, and the route the label was pursuing.

Huge credit has to go to Daniel Miller for the fact he stayed true to his principles as the money began to flow into the label, still seeking out and giving a home to acts that others shied away from on the basis of them being far from commercial and/or confrontational. It’s worth pondering just how different the music landscape in the UK would have looked in the 80s and beyond if The Normal’s one-off single hadn’t been issued and been enough of a success to allow its composer to fulfill his ambitions of an involvement in the industry.

JC

PS…..the reason the b-side became better known?

 

Teardrop Explodes

IT REALLY WAS A CRACKING DEBUT SINGLE (36)

I’ve said it before, but I think it bears repeating.

One of my fondest live experiences was a gig played by Queen at Ingliston in Edinburgh in 1982.

Don’t rush to judge me on the basis of that sentence as I went along purely to see the support act which was The Teardrop Explodes. The booking agent either had a sick sense of humour or hated Queen fans, or both.

Julian Cope took to the stage to a barrage of abuse, the intensity of which I’ve rarely witnessed, but he was ready for it and up for the fight. He continually taunted the crowd and the band (which was more or less session musicians as The Teardrop Explodes had more or less imploded by this point in time) treated everyone to some real obscurities. My favourite moment was when St Julian said “Here’s the one of mine that I’m sure you all know and love’ and as fans roared in expectation of hearing Reward, he launched into an acoustic and quiet version of Use Me, the b-side to Treason, and sung it in French!

It had been just three years earlier that The Teardrop Explodes came onto the scene, one of a number of Liverpool-based acts who were on Zoo Records, a venture formed and fronted by Bill Drummond who also seemed to have a role in each of the acts on the label, either as a performer or manager.

The debut consisted of a three-track 7” single:-

mp3 : The Teardrop Explodes – Sleeping Gas
mp3 : The Teardrop Explodes – Camera Camera
mp3 : The Teardrop Explodes – Kirkby Workers Dream Fades

It was a fine way with which to announce yourself and it would receive the biggest compliment imaginable in that Tony Wilson, who generally took an immediate and pathological dislike to anything that emerged out of Liverpool, gave it high praise. There was also some favourable coverage in the music papers with a number of journalists predicting that the band, and label mates Echo & The Bunnymen, stood on the cusp of greatness with long and successful careers inevitable.

Like many other acts who were attached to small labels at that particular time, the production values are basic and far from polished, but there’s certainly a noticeable spark about the music while there’s enough intrigue in the lyrics, certainly on the a-side, to make the most causal listener sit up and take notice.

Zoo Records eventually wound up and The Teardrop Explodes landed a contract with Phonogram Records, resulting in two very fine albums in Kilimanjaro (October 1980) and Wilder (December 1981), with three singles also hitting the Top 30. Indeed, the debut is one that has aged magnificently and is up there with the finest of all albums from the decade in which it was released. A re-recorded and more polished version of that early Zoo single was included:-

mp3 : The Teardrop Explodes – Sleeping Gas (album version)

I’ll finish off with a lift from a piece that appeared in The Guardian back in 2010 when a 30th Anniversary edition of Kilimanjaro was reviewed:-

The 30th anniversary reissue recently spurred one heritage-rock magazine to ask the band’s former frontman Julian Cope if he would ever return to writing pop music. It seems a fair enough query given Kilimanjaro’s success: it spawned a top 10 hit in Reward, spent 35 weeks on the charts and displayed such commercial promise that both U2 and Duran Duran apparently considered the Teardrop Explodes their only real competition. You might also feel compelled to ask in light of Cope’s latter- day musical output. That variously includes an hour-long homage to the late Princess of Wales called She-Diana; a live recording of his “proto-metal” band Brain Donor; and Spades & Hoes & Plows, a self-styled “masterpiece of agrarian doom-clod-plod” that features Cope accompanying singer David Wrench on “Mellotron and 26-inch marching bass drum”, and culminates in an 18-minute instrumental inspired by a series of road-toll protests in 19th-century Wales. Alas, Helyntion Beca (The Rebecca Riots) seems to have been overlooked by the programmers of the Radio 1 playlist, a fate that also befell such other recent Cope numbers as All the Blowing-Themselves-Up Motherfuckers….(Will Realise the Minute They Die That They Were Suckers).

Actually, Cope told the magazine, he’d just written a pop song, inspired by the mid-60s baroque style of the Left Banke, a band not so wildly removed from the kind of influences that powered Kilimanjaro – the blasting brass arrangements of Forever Changes-era Love, the Seeds’ reedy garage rock, the sunshine pop of the Turtles. “It’s called,” he added, “The Cunts Can Fuck Off.”

He’d obviously been listening to early Jesus and Mary Chain

JC

Kate Bush

IT REALLY WAS A CRACKING DEBUT SINGLE (35)

Yesterday’s posting involved a lot of research and work. Today’s is a straight lift from wiki, albeit in edited form:-

Wuthering Heights is a song by Kate Bush released as her debut single in November 1977 and re-released in January 1978. It appears on her 1978 debut album The Kick Inside. It stayed at number one on the UK Singles Chart for four weeks, and remains Bush’s most successful single. The song received widespread critical acclaim, with Pitchfork naming it the fifth greatest song of the 1970s.

Bush wrote the song aged 18, within a few hours late at night on 5 March 1977. She was inspired after seeing the 1967 BBC adaptation of the 1847 novel Wuthering Heights. She then read the book and discovered that she shared her birthday with author Emily Brontë.

Wuthering Heights is sung from the perspective of the character Catherine Earnshaw, pleading at Heathcliff’s window to be allowed in. It quotes Catherine’s dialogue, including the chorus lyric “Let me in! I’m so cold!” and “bad dreams in the night”. Critic Simon Reynolds described it as “Gothic romance distilled into four-and-a-half minutes of gaseous rhapsody”. The vocal was recorded in a single take.

Bush’s record company, EMI, originally chose another track, James and the Cold Gun, as the lead single, but Bush was determined that it should be Wuthering Heights, which in due course was scheduled for release at the beginning of November 1977. However, the singer was unhappy with the images chosen for sleeve and demanded that it replaced. Although some copies of the single had already been sent out to radio stations, the label did relent and rescheduled the release for mid-January 1978, a move that actually was of immense and unforeseen benefit as a November release would have seen it clash with Mull of Kintyre, the new single by Wings that subsequently became the then biggest-selling single in UK history.

Wuthering Heights proved to be something of a slow burner, with most of its early plays being restricted to the London-based Capital Radio. It took a full month to reach the charts, but after a debut appearance on Top of The Pops, it went on an upwards spiral, hitting the top spot in mid-March, where it stayed for four weeks. It wouldn’t drop out of the Top 40 until May 1978, and come the end of the year was certified as the tenth highest-selling single of 1978, with sales of well over half a million.

mp3 : Kate Bush – Wuthering Heights
mp3 : Kate Bush – Kite

Little known fact….and one which is a damning indictment on the pop industry.

Wuthering Heights was the first UK # 1 to be written and performed by a female artist.

JC