Senseless Things

REMEMBERING OUR GREAT FRIEND TIM (Part 4)

A few year back, Tim Badger was recuperating from an operation and in that time SWC visited the Oxfam Charity Shop in Totnes to buy him some vinyl on the premise that Tim would write about them for TVV……here’s what was unveiled on 2 December 2016

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“The fifth, sixth and seventh records are a lot better than the third and fourth ones; two were by bands that I know and like and one was a band that I had never heard of, but one which led SWC into another one of misty eyed tales from the past. He’ll take over in a bit after we talk about Record Five.

SWC’s daughter unwraps the fifth record and it is a mash up of different colours and swirling images it also has some writing on it, in red pen. I look at and then I tilt the record sideways to try and read what it says.

“Is this signed?” I ask SWC.

He nods enthusiastically, “That record has been touched by four bonafide rockstars” he tells me. Bonafide rockstars is pushing it a bit, but all the same, this is exciting news. I own three signed records, (well four now), one is my pride and joy a vinyl picture disc of ‘The Holy Bible’ signed by Richey Edwards, the second is a Carter USM 12” signed by Jon Fat Beast (RIP) and the third is splodgenessabounds 7” signed apparently by band member ‘Baby Greensleeves’. The authenticity of that is dubious at best.

The record is ‘Is It Too Late?’ by Senseless Things. It cost £1.99 and that includes the signatures of all four members of the Senseless Things which as SWC adds “Probably increases the value by at least 50p”.

20161123_094902

mp3 : Senseless Things – Is It Too Late

Senseless Things are a band dear to my heart. They feature on the WYCRA 200 both in this guise and in one of their off shoot bands Delakota.

‘Is It Too Late?’ was one of the band’s early singles, their second or third I think. It has a sleeve designed by Jamie Hewlett the guy behind Tank Girl and Gorillaz and it is a brilliant couple of minutes of punky pop.

The interesting thing is that a few years back Senseless Things released a singles compilation and this record wasn’t included on it, I imagine this is because of record company rules and the like but it almost feels forgotten about, which is a massive shame.

I’ve also attached two of the three B Sides which are pretty much the same thing, two minutes shouty indie punk pop with thrashy guitars and sneery vocals. All excellent and a welcome addition to any record collection I would say.

mp3 : Senseless Things – Andi In a Karmann
mp3 : Senseless Things – Ponyboy
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Arctic Monkeys

REMEMBERING OUR GREAT FRIEND TIM (Part 3)

Tim Badger came up with an Arctic Monkeys ICA on 18 October 2018. His words about two of their earliest songs really hit the nail on the head:-

I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor (From Whatever People Say I Am…)

When the Sun Goes Down (From Whatever People Say I Am…)

These two tracks sum up everything about the band when they first burst onto the scene. They are both essential listening and frankly without them this ICA would be useless. I’ve written about the first song before in some depth but I don’t think I have ever waxed lyrical about ‘When the Sun Goes Down’.

It is quite astonishing, both lyrically and musically. A bleak ode to prostitutes in Turner’s native Sheffield and their scummy pimps or customers. It’s astonishing in a number of ways – firstly the way that the tone changes after the line “He’s a scumbag don’t you know’ is breathtakingly mature for a band who are releasing just their second single. Then we are astonished again near the end when the scummy man arrives the prostitute becomes happy because as Turner tells us, sagely, “she must be fucking freezing, scantily clad beneath the clear night sky”. I mean that is some tragically beautiful poetry there.

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Courtney Barnett

REMEMBERING OUR GREAT FRIEND TIM (Part 2)

The second day of some old postings written by Tim Badger. This one was part of a double-header, part one of which had been written by SWC and which appeared on 17 December 2015. It was all to do with the two of the them ending up in the pub after the office Christmas lunch/party during which they try to agree on the best 20 albums of the year. It is probably best to use the final para of SWC’s piece to set the scene:-

“The taxi dropped Badger off at home around 11pm – it was not even a late night. I look behind me as the taxi drives away to see Badger fall into a hedge. I smile, it’s been the best Christmas party for a while. Even if I appear to have inherited a horse shaped balloon (no idea at all where that came from).

I phone Badger – his wife answers, he’s not up yet, she says.

It’s 3pm

Excellent”

Here’s Tim……………..

My wife has been doing wonderfully well since her accident she is recovering brilliantly and is now able to hop around the house on crutches with the dexterity of a gazelle on amphetamines. It is I think slightly embarrassing that here I am on the afternoon after the afternoon before at 4.10pm just about to get out of bed because I have had a ‘slight headache’.

She has won an award, the clever thing. It is some women in business thing, and as I slowly drag myself down the stairs, clutching onto the bannister for near life, like a newly walking child, she is sitting in the study (I say study, I mean small tiny spare box room), typing her speech up. She has been reading a book by a chap called Max Atkinson, who writes about the use of three-part lists in speeches. Why am I telling you this, well all will be revealed.

The night before ended with S-WC and I listing our Top 15 albums, the last 40 minutes or so of this were a ferocious argument about whether or not we were going to allow EP’s into the list. In the end I relented, we had yet to reach a decision on the Top 5 – I mean we know what they are – but not in what order. Side One of this compilation will be the tracks from 10 to 6 and where I can remember I’ll add what parts of the conversation that decided that. obviously I’ll embellish it make me sound cool and to make S-WC sound like Brian Blessed on Botox – which by the way is exactly what he looks like.

I head into the study I intend to give my wife a kiss and tell her that I am sorry for being such a lightweight. I am 48 years of age and I really should know by now that drinking the best part of a bottle of rum, six pints and three glasses of wine (I think) is not the greatest idea in the world. I remember telling my taxi driver telling me that “I was absolutely fucking shedded’ I have never used the word ‘shedded’ in my life before. I hang my head with shame.

My wife is typing away, she has her back to me, suddenly she stops and holds up one hand. Then she starts speaking “Before you step one foot inside this room, darling, you must a) Shave, b) Shower and c) Clean your teeth. Not necessarily in that order”. This reader is the three-part list I referred to above. Delivered with style and authority, the word ‘darling’ has never been said with such menacing threat. I turn around and creep back along the corridor to the bathroom.

Half an hour later I am sitting on the couch in the study cradling a cup of tea like it was my last possession. At least I am washed, shaved and my mouth no longer feels like it has a couple of angry wasps having post break up sex in it. Actually you remember that bit from Itchy and Scratchy (the cartoon within a cartoon on the Simpsons) where Scratchy (he is the cat, right?) gets his tongue pulled out by Itchy so it goes right to floor and the some dynamite gets put in it and then lit – rolled back up and his head explodes, that’s how I felt earlier on.

My phone rings it is S-WC, of course it is, he chuckles down the phone at me as I groan about my head and the last hours events. At least it sounds like his hangover was just as bad as mine. I end up inviting him round for lunch tomorrow so we can finish off the list.

It is tomorrow and S-WC are I are laughing about the Christmas Do, neither of us have been into work since then – both having sensibly taken the rest of the week off, but we understand that there is some scandal involving at least one high-ranking manager, a park bench and a ‘lady of the night’. This cheers us massively.

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JC adds

I can still laugh out loud at all of that…. and here now is the song the song that Tim and SWC chose as their #1 of 2015:-

mp3 : Courtney Barnett – Depreston

which they introduced with the following words:-

The most lovely song on this album (Sometimes I Sit and Think and Sometimes I just Sit) is one about house hunting. “Depreston”, it’s called—a quiet little ballad that just kind of submits itself to the noise around it. It’s the details that make this album so compelling, even down to the safety rail in the shower. Then she tells us how much it would cost to rip the whole house down again and again.

Pulp

REMEMBERING OUR GREAT FRIEND TIM (Part 1)

I was at a theatre show in London recently and one of the best delivered comic lines of the night, in response to a character making a sideways reference to a dangerous animal was, “What??? A Badger?????”

I laughed out louder than I should have, and later explained to Rachel that it had felt like the sort of exchange I’d have had with Tim had I ever managed to find my way to the deepest south-west before the tragedy struck earlier this year. I do miss him, and if that’s how I feel about things, then it must still be incredibly tough for his family and the closest of his friends, so once again the sympathies of this blog, and everyone associated with it through guest postings and comments, are extended to them.

I want to use this week to revisit some songs that Tim had made mention of during his many guest postings on TVV, with the accompanying words providing a reminder of his wit, warmth and talent.

Here’s part one, and it originally appeared on 17 August 2015 as part of the Pulp ICA:-

Quite simply one of the best British singles, ever, by anyone. Absolutely their defining song, and the classic song of the Britpop era. I toyed with the idea of leaving it off just to be controversial but then I realised that I can’t write about Pulp without mentioning it. It’s too good a record. As a song it is scathing yet hilarious, deeply personal yet turns an eye to larger questions, intelligent yet simple enough to fit within a massively infectious pop melody. And to top it all, triumphant enough to close a live show.

mp3 : Pulp – Common People

There will longer, wonderfully written and occasionally surreal pieces these next few days. I really hope you enjoy reading them (and thanks to SWC for the green light to go with this mini-series).

JC

Auteurs, Luke Haines

THE SINGULAR ADVENTURES OF LUKE HAINES (10)

A GUEST POSTING by CHAVAL

Cast your minds back a couple of weeks to JC’s celebration of Chinese Bakery, a single which featured a throwaway line about “Bob Dylan on a motorbike”. For Dylan’s 1966 Woodstock crash that released him from the album/tour/voice of his generation treadmill, Haines’s equivalent was that reckless drop off a wall in San Sebastian.

As well as instilling respect for the difference between sand and concrete, Haines’s leg fractures allowed him an interval of reflection. Like some post-Britpop James Stewart in Rear Window, Haines brooded and read, and like Dylan in 1967, unleashed his creativity in several directions, only tangentially connected with the pop marketplace.

By the end of 1995 and drift into 1996, Haines’s career was all over the place. The Auteurs’ best album After Murder Park was in the can but still awaiting release. Baader Meinhof, Haines’s unhinged, brilliant homage to 70s terrorism, was about to baffle critics with its mash-up of crunching retro-funk, dub and lyrics about hijacks. Always ready to muddy the waters, The Auteurs released the Back With The Killer EP, fresh material that took Haines’s lyrical provocations further than ever, albeit expressed very succinctly (the four tracks clock in at a total of just over nine minutes).

mp3: The Auteurs – Unsolved Child Murder is as uncompromising as its title, a dark depiction of an event dragged from the news headlines and given unsettling intimacy, exploring its devastating effect on a suburban family. Haines says it was based on a childhood memory of a local doctor’s family whose child went missing, presumed dead. Haines’s 70s childhood would prove a rich and often disturbing seam of material from this point on.

Haines had covered vaguely similar territory on Daughter Of A Child on Now I’m A Cowboy, but otherwise the only indie-rock point of comparison with regard to subject matter would be The Smiths’ mawkish Suffer Little Children from their first album. Where Morrissey’s lyric is mostly adolescent melodrama, Unsolved Child Murder is a richly detailed and empathetic depiction of tragedy, irrational desperation and a viciously judgmental world, wrapped up in a gorgeously melancholic tune (the EP version is enhanced with a French horn omitted from the album track that appeared later).

Along with the title track of After Murder Park, it showed how far Haines had shifted from the usual lyrical terrain of mid 90s popular music. The band had just finished recording these tracks in Abbey Road when Paul McCartney looked in and amiably asked if he could hear what Luke had been working on. “I politely decline the ex-Beatle’s request,” Haines recalled. “I don’t want him to be the first person to hear these songs; they’re too good for him.”

This startling work merited that kind of pride, but this EP contains another masterpiece:

mp3: The Auteurs – Back With The Killer Again takes the direct route of Lenny Valentino musically, although the atmosphere is distinctly psychotic. In Tim Mitchell’s deranged non-biography of Haines the author suggests the song is about “a man who takes drugs to turn himself into a murderer”, an explanation that may have come directly from Haines. Certainly the lyric offers a disturbing cluster of allusions to nerve gas, bad dope, primed bombs . . .

Those better versed in 70s counter-culture might be able to identify all the references in the line “John got Barrett for the lot, it must have been the Microdot”. All I can offer is that the Microdot happened to be the name of the early 70s gang of underground LSD chemists eventually busted by Operation Julie (as immortalised in the Clash song), who were rumoured to have links with the German terrorists Red Army Faction aka Baader-Meinhof, bringing it all back home to Haines’s reading lists. “A damning, self-mythologising riposte to the current crock that is the UK scene,” is how Haines described the song.

If the other tracks on the EP can’t match the impact of the first two, that’s not to say they are filler.

mp3: The Auteurs – Former Fan continues the murder theme, seemingly from the viewpoint of a Mark Chapman type obsessive whose disenchantment with a former idol turns homicidal. Or it might be a twisted love song, you tell me.

mp3: The Auteurs – Kenneth Anger’s Bad Dream name-checks the underground film-maker (or “pornographer” as Haines somewhat harshly calls him when introducing the song at live shows) and keen disciple of the Satanist Aleister Crowley. Haines’s insatiable cultural curiosity is on display once again, and given a pretty, folk-rock-ish tune.

The EP reached number 45 (says Wikipedia, Haines’s memory says 48), a commercial disappointment in the hit-crazed climate of Britpop, but undeniably a remarkable achievement considering the artistic reach and lyrical ambition.

chaval

Le Thug

SATURDAY’S SCOTTISH SONG : #183: LE THUG

Fancy a little bit of shoegazing type music from Scotland?

Le Thug, from Glasgow, formed some six years ago but thus far have released just a six-track EP, Place Is, on Song, By Toad Records.

The label was recently would up by owner Matthew Young after ten fairly succesful years which means that Le Thug, are currently without a deal. Indeed, I’m not sure if the band are still in existence, as the last I thing I can find is them playing a gig at King Tut’s in Glasgow in January 2018.

A very positive review, from a Scottish broadsheet, when Place Is was released, back in 2015, will give you a flavour of the band:-

Layers of distorted guitar, a dreamy vocal pushed back in the mix, a minimal drum beat. There’s a fashion for this stuff at the moment, even an attempt to label it nu-gaze, but in most cases it only makes you want to go back and listen to original albums by My Bloody Valentine or The Jesus And Mary Chain instead. Not so with Glasgow-based trio Le Thug. Clio Alexandra MacLellan is one of those rare singers whose hauntingly addictive vocals would have seen her bracketed alongside Elizabeth Fraser back in the day; Michael Gilfedder’s guitars, especially on the monumental Basketball Land, are thick and all-enveloping; and Dann McColgan’s laptop beats and synthesiser pulses, while more mechanically insistent, introduce a musical factor from a different era that may well be the key to why Le Thug rise above the retro fad. The melody lines on this six-track EP have a deceptive simplicity but it’s the slow harmonic changes of direction that will make you swoon – those and the sheer sonic completeness of the studio production.

I was telling a white lie when I said Le Thug had released just a six-track EP; in fact, they contributed to one of what were a handful of spilt 12″ releases issued over the years by Song, By Toad, often to act as an introduction to singers and bands on the label. The song featuring today has been taken from such a spilt 12″.

mp3 : Le Thug – New Balance

And here’s a promo film that was made to accompany what many regarded as the best track on their own subsequent EP:-

JC

Saints

THE POWER OF THE PRESS – 1976 STYLE

Relying on the info on wiki to introduce this particular story.

The Saints are an Australian rock band formed in Brisbane in 1973. The band was founded by Chris Bailey (singer-songwriter, later guitarist), Ivor Hay (drummer), and Ed Kuepper (guitarist-songwriter) and began life as Kid Galahad and before taking the name The Saints in 1974. Jeffrey Wegener joined on drums and Hay switched to bass guitar. Wegener had left by 1975, Hay moved to drums and Kym Bradshaw joined on bass guitar.

Contemporaneous with Ramones, the group were employing the fast tempos, raucous vocals and “buzz saw” guitar that characterised early punk rock. Kuepper explained that they played faster and faster as they were nervous in front of audiences. The police would often break up their gigs, and arrests were frequent. Unable to obtain bookings, Bailey and Hay converted the Petrie Terrace house they shared into the 76 Club so they had a venue to play in.

In June 1976, the Saints recorded two tracks, “(I’m) Stranded” and “No Time” with Mark Moffatt producing. Unable to find any interested label, they formed Fatal Records and independently released their debut single in September.Their self-owned Eternal Promotions sent discs to radio stations and magazines both in Australia – with little local interest – and United Kingdom.

In the UK, a small label, Power Exchange, issued the single. Sounds magazine’s reviewer, Jonh Ingham, declared it, “Single of this and every week”.

mp3 : The Saints – (I’m Stranded)
mp3 : The Saints – No Time

It was this review that led to EMI in London contacting EMi in Sydney with instructions that The Saints be signed to a three-album contract. In December 1976, the group recorded their first LP, (I’m) Stranded which was released in February 1977 by which time they had also been give a support slot on an Australian tour undertaken by AC/DC.

Despite this, The Saints continued to be ignored at home. The band moved to the UK in mid-1977 but soon ran into problems with EMI who wanted to promote them as a punk band – complete with ripped clothes and spiky hair – while the group just wanted to be themselves.

In due course, they would enjoy minor chart success with the This Perfect Day hitting the Top 40 in July 1977 but the relationship with EMI soured beyond repair when the second album was full of tunes leaning heavily towards RnB and the third under the contract was more or less a jazz/blue effort. In due course, the band would disintegrate and by 1979, just Chris Bailey remained from the original members.

mp3 : The Saints – This Perfect Day

I don’t think anyone would have imagined, 40 years on, that The Saints would still be rockin’n’rollin; but sure enough they continue to tour and record, having ammassed thirteen studio albums, seventeen singles, six EPs, two live albums and ten compilation albums.  And just about every Australian musician of note has lsted them as being a key influence for one reason or another

JC

Garbage

CHANGED PARTICLES (V3) : Issue #1

GREETINGS TO THE NEW REDHEAD

While jetsetting around Spain with the Villains I asked JC about getting the Charged Particles series going again. I proposed to get the ball rolling with a bit about Shirley Manson, whose name I’d casually dropped in a recent TVV post. It’s not much of a story, but it fits in nicely with another Charged Particles entry about my gym buddy Chris, who turned out to be a Foo Fighter. So, here you go:

THE SHIRLEY MANSON STORY

My wife, the beautiful Goldie the Friendly Therapist (GTFP), has a childhood friend named Lisa, whose boyfriend was a nice guy named Dan. “You’ll like Dan,” Goldie told me, “he’s a bassist in some band.” The band turned out to be Garbage. Dan wasn’t one of the four principal band members but he had recorded and toured with them. When Lisa and Dan got married I was hoping the band would be there because I was really interested in talking to Butch Vig. I didn’t listen to Garbage; nothing against them but just not my thing. But Butch Vig! With the possible exception of OK Computer I don’t think there was a more important rock record in the 90’s than Nevermind, and Vig was the guy that produced it for Nirvana!

The wedding took place on a classic Hollywood summer night at a 1920’s hilltop mansion. Probably because of Goldie’s long friendship with the bride, we were put at the band table. The Garbage table, as it were. Before I could position myself next to Butch Vig, Shirley Manson sat herself down at the corner on my left, gave me a big smile, reached out her hand and said, “Hi! I’m Shirley.” “I know who you are,” I smiled back. Then we chatted for the next 3 hours. I can say from personal experience that she is an absolute sweetheart. She has what can be called a charming laugh, and she laughed a lot that night. No airs or pretensions whatsoever; no need to call any attention to herself. Never having heard her interviewed, I was surprised at her thick Scottish accent. For some reason we got to talking about David Beckham, who I think had just been sold to Real Madrid. “Ach, e’s pew say wept!” said Shirley. It took me a moment to understand she was saying that Beckham was pussy-whipped by Posh. Then she did a pretty funny imitation of their appearance on Da Ali G. Show.

I don’t really remember what else we talked about. I just recall that she was super friendly, asked loads of questions, laughed quite a bit, didn’t talk about herself, and was a lot of fun. Later in the evening a few of the band left the table and went off to smoke cigars on a veranda looking down the hillside. I like a cigar and was regretting I hadn’t thought to bring one of my own. Shirley must have noticed my envious look because she turned to me and said, “Oh! Would you like a cigar?” and popped off somewhere before I could answer. She returned and presented one for me. So I nicked off to the smokers and had a cigar. With Butch Vig.

Goldie has a theory that I’m constantly running into famous folks because I am the least starstruck person there is. There are thousands of celebrities in Los Angeles, but very few are celebrated for doing something intelligent, or for being kind souls, so I’m just not interested. I used to work at a firm that did a lot of industry work which involved meeting loads of famous people, and there are very few I’d like to meet again. And I figure that people just want to be left alone anyway.

At the end of the night Shirley gave me a hug and kiss on the cheek and said, “Lovely talking with you, sweetie!” I’d love to tell you that rock stars and international sex symbols naturally gravitate to me, but it was just happenstance. She might remember the night, because it was a very beautiful wedding of one of her close friends, but I sincerely doubt that Shirley Manson would have the faintest idea of who I am or was. It was a good cigar, though.

Garbage – Medication

JTFL

JC adds – in case anyone wasn’t aware, all charged particle songs must end with the letters -ion.

 

 

Lyres

AN IMAGINARY COMPILATION ALBUM : #230 : THE LYRES

A GUEST POSTING by HYBRID SOC PROF,
our Michigan Correspondent

So, if I have a clear memory from 1992 (and I guess I still have a few…), it is the first time I pulled the Mexican R’n’B record from its sleeve, put in on the turntable and dropped a needle on it… pure, unadulterated sonic joy. I was bouncing all around Studio B at KZSC. I’d really liked the Bevis Frond’s psychedelic noodling and pretty much everything from the gloriously low-fi world of Billy Childish, but, jeez, The Stairs, they satisfied my 1967 jones, they hit the sweet spot of my retro-60s fanboy affections… and not taking themselves at all seriously made it SO much better.

I’d been well-primed for The Stairs by a raft of bands – mostly from New England and many with some kind of tie to the Boston scene in the early 80s. The Chesterfield Kings, The Fleshtones, The Fuzztones and The Real Kids come to mind… but, for me, the cream of the crop was The Lyres. The Fleshtones played at my college and blew the roof off the old library we used as an indie venue, but I had to go into Philadelphia to see The Lyres.

I have no idea where I saw them, just that it was arctic outside and hellish inside that night. The opening bands were local and terrible – much like the “metal” bands my now-wife and I saw open for Pere Ubu in San Francisco a decade later – but the Lyres started off on fyre and never let up. Dancing wasn’t like a mosh pit but it had that energy and sweat, a lot of sweat. The songs came fast and furious until we were just about broken… and they’d save us with a ballad, maybe two, before testing our stamina with another blitz of ever-accelerating songs. My clothes almost froze on the way back to school – leaning back into the rear seat was like propping myself up on ice – but, before my knees went bad and my wife had two kids and I put on weight, I’d have done it again in a heartbeat.

Their albums have a ton of energy but their shows were radiated garage band boy-dom. We knew it was stripped down, we knew it was kinda dumb, but my friends and I were 19 or 20 and it was about girls – those we desired, those who’d dumped us, those we desired because they’d dumped us, the ones we’d dumped but desired to have desire us and every other permutation and combination of those things imaginable. It was rock… and there were young women about.

The Lyres definitely had a peak period there in the early 80s, though they held on for quite a while and reformed once or twice but, lord, what a peak. There’s something about the world of the Nuggets, Pebbles, Boulders and other collections of independent “garage” music from the 60s – whether distilled into Los Angeles power pop variants, exploding into a Detroit-driven fury, or looking back romantically to a small set, a bass, and guitar and a singer out front – optimally one who can play organ/keyboards – that never dies, periodically flourishes and is a boatload of fun.

If you still need a frame of reference, think of The Sonics, whether their original 1960s or more recent 21st century work. Here’s to the Lyres and the world of post-punk that sought pre-punk garage punk joy.

Because they were primarily about live gigs, their records couldn’t contain everything they played, whether originals or covers and so this selection is from a smaller number of albums than usual. It happens…

The Lyres – You’ll Never Do It Baby – from Lyres Lyres (1986)
The Lyres – I Love Her Still – from Lyres Lyres (1986)
The Lyres – You Won’t be Sad Anymore – from Lyres Lyres (1986)
The Lyres – Not Like the Other One – from On Fyre (1984)
The Lyres – Love Me Till the Sun Shines – from On Fyre (1984)
The Lyres – Getting’ Plenty Lovin’ – from Shitkickers (1995)
The Lyres – Soapy – from On Fyre (1984)
The Lyres – Help You Ann – from On Fyre (1984)
The Lyres – She Pays the Rent – from the collection, Lyres (1981)
The Lyres – Knock My Socks Off – from A Promise is a Promise (1988)

HSP

Magazine

THE BARELY REMEMBERED SOPHOMORE SINGLE

A previous instalment of the cracking debut singles series enabled the spotlight to be put on Magazine and the quite majestic Shot By Both Sides, released in January 1978.

It would be a further five months before the debut album, Real Life, hit the shops, comprising just nine tracks, one of which was a re-recording of Shot…., but noticeably absent was the single the band had released in the intervening period.

mp3 : Magazine – Touch and Go

It’s very much a song of its era, relying heavily throughout on the new wave guitar work of John McGeogh while Barry Adamson on bass and Martin Jackson on drums provide ample support as the rhythm section. And of course, there’s the unmistakable whining vocal delivery of Howard Devoto, seemingly almost breathless at trying to keep up with the relentless pace of the playing. It’s almost as if Dave Formula’s dainty keyboard solo, which comes in at exactly halfway through the song, is there to enable the vocalist to get a second wind.

Touch and Go isn’t a bad song. It’s big problem is that it is a very long way removed from the brilliance of the debut 45 and it didn’t have enough going for it to make it stand out among the other post-punk singles that were being released in 1978. It’s also quite unlike the other songs that Magazine were beginning to write and record – compare for instance with the opening track on said debut album:-

mp3 : Magazine – Definitive Gaze

I recently came across a review of Definitive Gaze that described it perfectly – ‘it switches between a sci-fi love theme and the score for a chase scene’ (Andy Kellman, allmusic). Touch and Go feels lumpen and unimaginative in comparison, and while there was ample space for it to be included on the debut album, it was a wise decision to cast it aside.

The b-side to the 7” was a real hoot:-

mp3 : Magazine – Goldfinger

Yup…..a cover of the theme tune to the James Bond movie as penned by John Barry and sung by Shirley Bassey. It’s almost as if Howie & co are auditioning for the right to compose and perform the next again Bond movie. The thing is, they would have certainly done a better job than what was used in the 1979 movie in the series – can anyone, without looking it up, recall what Moonraker sounded like?

Fun fact pop-pickers.

Despite being one of the most instantly recognisable of the Bond theme songs, Goldfinger only got as high as #21 in the UK singles charts in 1964, albeit it performed better in the USA by hitting the Top 10.

In fact, only one James Bond theme song has ever reached #1 in the UK. And very surprisingly, that accolade belongs to Sam Smith and his rendition of Writing’s On The Wall, which was written for Spectre in 2015.

Every day is a school day round here…………

JC

Other Two

A HANDFUL OF SELFISH MOMENTS

It was more than five years ago, in April 2014 that I featured The Other Two on the blog as part of a piece looking at the spin-off bands from New Order.

I made the observation that, of all the records the band members released in other guises, there was one almost flawless piece of electronic pop that should have been snapped up by all New Order fans:-

mp3 : The Other Two – Tasty Fish (12”)

Much to my delight, there was a very positive response to the posting with a number of my long-standing and most trusted contributors, including postpunkmonk, the robster and Echorich all adding their own appreciative comments on Stephen Morris and Gillian Gilbert’s debut single.

I was thinking just the other day as to why nothing more seemed to happen in the wake of the release of Tasty Fish, which in reaching #41 had come within a whisker of possibly providing the duo with a Top of the Pops appearance – something that would have been interesting as I can’t imagine Gillian would have wanted to sing live while Stephen would likely have been desperate to avoid miming.

Tasty Fish was released in October 1991 as FAC 329. The Factory catalogue has the self-titled debut album as FAC 330. Crucially, it indicates it is a test pressing with perhaps 5-10 copies in existence. In short, the album got held up as the label began to implode, with the last throw of the dice being to try and get Happy Mondays product completed and into the shops. In the end, an album that had been finished in the studio in mid-1991 did not see light of day until November 1993 when London Records provided a belated release, having preferred, understandably, to concentrate on promoting Republic, the latest album by New Order.

Gillian and Stephen must have been disappointed with the way things turned out as The Other Two and You , despite being a fine and enjoyable piece of work, wasn’t getting much love from the company bosses. It would have been quite different if Tony Wilson et al had still been in charge.

A single was lifted to help the promotional efforts:-

mp3 : The Other Two – Selfish

As was the case with so many of the New Order singles of the time, there were no new songs made available on the b-sides of the 7”, 12” and CD versions, but there were a number of remixes:-

mp3 : The Other Two – Selfish (That Pop Mix)
mp3 : The Other Two – Selfish (Junior Style Dub)
mp3 : The Other Two – Selfish (The East Village Vocal)
mp3 : The Other Two – Selfish (The East Village Dub)

The opening of That Pop Mix is reminiscent (to my ears) of Vanishing Point, one of the outstanding tracks on the 1989 album Technique.

The Junior Dub is more than nine minutes in length and was surely played in the clubs of Ibiza and the likes back in the day.

Selfish did very well, in the circumstances, to reach #46 in the singles chart.

The album failed to chart.

JC

Baader Meinhof, Luke Haines

THE SINGULAR ADVENTURES OF LUKE HAINES (9)

This is where things start to get just a bit messy when it comes to getting these releases in the right order in terms of chronology…I’m going by the info contained in one of my go-to-books, namely ‘The Great Indie Discography’, written by Martin Strong, published in 2003, and consisting of more than 1,000 pages. It’s slightly at variance with how Luke Haines lays things out in Bad Vibes, but that may well be down to him keeping the narrative flowing in terms of music rather than jumping back and forth.

So….Chinese Bakery had stalled at #42 in April 1994 while the album Now I’m A Cowboy released the following month, reached #27, which was higher than had been achieved by New Wave but was a sore one for Luke Haines given the success being enjoyed by many other acts whom he regarded as second-rate.

Last week focussed on one of his responses, in the shape of the The Auteurs vs. μ-Ziq EP. The release of that EP coincided with a period in which he was incapacitated – both ankles badly broken and the right heel smashed to smithereens, sustained after he jumped down off a 15-foot wall onto concrete after a gig in San Sebastian in northern Spain. His defence was that he had gone slighly crazy mid-tour and had decided to make the jump on the basis that if he landed unscathed, the tour, which was still to go Italy, France and Japan, would continue…and that he thought he would landing on soft sand.

It was April 1995 before he was in any sort of shape to return to the studio, where he took the songs he had been writing while recuperating and teamed up with Steve Albini, the producer best known from his work with Nirvana, It took just 13 days to finish work on the new album, which was given the title After Murder Park, and it was presented to the record label in May 1995. For one reason after another, its release is consistently delayed and it doesn’t see light of day until 1 March 1996. But that’s a story for another day.

Not long after finishing work with Albini, The Auteurs return to the studio and begin work on some new songs that would, as it turns out, see the light of day as an EP before the next album is released. But that too is another story for another day….(and I’m delighted to say that chaval will be the one to tell that story)

The next physical release to feature Luke Haines proves to be a 7″ single in which neither his nor his band’s name actually features. It came about because Luke Haines and his great mate Phil Vinall, who had produced the first two albums by The Auteurs, were bored and restless, and over a weekend they went into a studio to have a bit of fun, trying to match music to a lyric or two that Haines had pulled together about his latest fascination, a left-wing terrorist gang that had become famous/infamous in the 1970s.

The results were presented to his manager, who dismissed it as being uncommercial. They went next to David Boyd, the boss of Hut Records who had long regarded Haines as a maverick genius. His response on hearing it was to give the green light for a 7″ single release, just a few weeks in advance of the new EP by The Auteurs, and at the same time signal his support for the concept to be worked up into a full album.

Luke Haines is ecstatic:-

mp3 : Baader Meinhoff – Baader Meinhoff
mp3 : Baader Meinhoff – Meet Me At The Airport

To nobody’s surprise, the single doesn’t do anything much in the way of sales, but the unusual marketing campaign, which consisted of sending journalists a copy of the single along with a photocopy of a page from a booklet that described in detail how best to construct a nail bomb, did get column inches….the music press knew exactly who was behind the stunt…

JC

Laughing Apple

SATURDAY’S SCOTTISH SONG : #182 : THE LAUGHING APPLE

From all music:-

The Laughing Apple was centered around a couple of youthful Scots who relocated to London in June of 1980 prior to forming a new band. Bassist Alan McGee and guitarist Andrew Innes had played in a couple of outfits while still in Scotland, including H20 and Newspeak. In their new confines as Laughing Apple, they self-released the three-song Ha Ha Hee Hee single in March of 1981 on Autonomy. Their second single, Participate, was issued a couple months later. They broke up in short time, with most of the members going on to bigger and better things. McGee eventually joined Biff Bang Pow! and began the fledgling Creation label until it struck paydirt in the ’90s. Drummer Ken Popple and second guitarist Dick Green also joined McGee in the band, with the latter of the two also becoming McGee’s right hand man with Creation. Innes went on to record for Creation with Revolving Paint Dream and Primal Scream.

A glance at Discogs will reveal that The Laughing Apple released three singles during their short existence, along with flexi-disc on which they shared time and space with The Pastels. This is the second of the singles. It’s better than you would imagine……

mp3 : The Laughing Apple – Participate!

The sleeve for this single was designed by none other than Bobby Gillespie.

JC

Divine, Vaselines

DIVINE THING

The dig into the memory bank for yesterday’s posting also got me thinking about some of the gigs that I saw at Level 8 of the Strathclyde Students Union in the early 80s. Just about all of the Scottish jangly pop bands would have graced the stage at some point or other, while it was also a stopping point for many new or emerging acts, often on the cusp of mainstream success. The venue was only ever used for live gigs on Friday and Saturday nights, putting it at a disadvantage to the Queen Margaret Union which was attached to Glasgow University, which meant that very few genuinely jaw-dropping names came through the doors, unlike the period just before I went to uni when the likes of The Jam, The Ramones, Talking Heads and The Cramps all graced the stage.

One gig that came back to me, for the first time in many many years, was from when the stage was occupied by the American singer, Harris Glenn Milstead…..or as he was better known, Divine.

Yup, the actor and drag queen once performed a show to an audience of students in Glasgow in 1984.

Divine had made a name for himself as an actor in the late 60s and throughout the 70s, primarily through notorious appearances, usually always as a female impersonator, in films directed by John Waters. The problem was that these films tended to be of the cult variety and Divine was never able to make much of a living from them. By the time the 80s came around, Divine was 35 years old and at something of a crossroads. He began to eke out something of a living from a stage show of his own devising in which he would perform as a drag queen and incorporating covers of well-known disco songs. It was in 1982 that he hooked up with a songwriter named Bobby Orlando was who beginning to make a name as a composer of hi-NRG music, a newish development in disco. A number of singles in 82/83 were hits in Germany and Holland where the more liberal attitudes to gay life and culture meant it wasn’t seen as being extreme or at the edges, with the music crossing over into some of the clubs here in the UK.

Divine and Orlando had a huge falling out over money, with the singer feeling he wasn’t getting his fair share of the proceeds from the sales. It all ended up in court and the contract with O-Records, the company established by the composer, was declared null and void. Waiting in the wings was a newly emerging British production team of Stock Aitken and Waterman (SAW) who got talking to Divine and persuade him to record a version of a song by Geoff Deane, a UK songwriter who had previously been part of The Leyton Buzzards, a punk parody band in the 70s, and later as frontman of Modern Romance, a cabaret/dance act who were mainstays of the UK singles charts in the early 80s.

mp3 : Divine – You Think You’re A Man

This was the first ever record in which SAW had worked and it proved to be a smash, eventually going top 20 in the UK and in turn exposing Divine to a wider audience thanks to what proved to a hugely complained about performance on Top of The Pops.

The promotional efforts around the single also saw Divine tour clubs and venues across the UK which is why he came to find himself on the Level 8 stage. As he was a chart act, the ticket prices were marginally higher than usual, maybe £1 or £2 higher, but given that the usual gigs cost £2-£3, it was regarded as a big mark-up.

The gig was something of a catastrophe. It was a packed venue and it became clear beforehand that a fair number were there to heckle and goad Divine. There was a highly toxic homophobic atmosphere and I do clearly recall a number of blokes justifying their behaviour by saying that it wasn’t real or live music given that it would just be singing over backing tapes. It didn’t make sense then and it just seems bonkers now all these years later. Divine took to the stage to mixture of cheers and boos, with the latter, shamefully, being louder. It all came to what seemed to be an abrupt end after no more than four songs which only led to the crowd getting angrier and edgier. The lights went up and the DJ went straight into disco mode from his booth at the back of Level 8 and within a few minutes, the venue was largely cleared.

It turned out that this was a typical Divine show/appearance with the gigs, if they could be described as such, lasting no more than 20-25 minutes, consisting of a small number of songs and provocative/confrontational dialogue from the stage. But nobody was seemingly aware of this in advance.

It was certainly one of the strangest things I’d ever been at. It was certainly the first time that I’d seen a drag act in the flesh, but, as a veteran of New Order gigs it was far from the first time I’d seen a huge use of backing tapes.

Divine’s emergence as a hi-NRG performer led to a greater interest in his previous career and he returned to acting, eventually reuniting with Waters in 1987 for the film Hairspray, which would go onto be a mainstream success, popular with critics and audiences alike. Sadly, this all came too late for Divine as he died in his sleep, from heart problems, on 7 March 1998, a mere three weeks after Hairspray had been released.

By this time, I was aware of a cover version of the big hit from a couple of years earlier, one that had been recorded by a Glasgow duo. I’m thinking they may well have been in the audience at Strathclyde University the same night as I was…..and no doubt, equally appalled by all that happened.

mp3 : The Vaselines – You Think You’re A Man

JC

Iggy Pop, Siouxsie & The Banshees

THE DISCO THAT WAS DIFFERENT

A killer riff, the perfect punk rock ‘n’ roll riff, written by Ricky Gardiner. Iggy, narrator and punk outsider, riding around Mitteleuropa in David Bowie’s car, seeing the city’s ripped backside, the hollow sky and everything else, through the window of the car. Little touches can make such a difference in recordings- note the bell ringing at the start. I read somewhere that The Passenger is Johnny Marr’s favourite song. A song that is both impossibly exciting and as numb as it can be.

I really can’t better Swiss Adam’s description from the Iggy Pop ICA.

mp3 : Iggy Pop – The Passenger

I will always associate The Passenger with Friday and Saturday nights in the Student Union of Strathclyde University, 1982-1985. Please indulge me… and some of the details may be slightly wrong as it is now almost 35 years since I last set foot in the building (except on one occasion in 1995 when I had reason to visit with a politician whom I was working for at the time).

The building is eight levels in height. The first level had a games room, the second level had a bar and shop, immediately below a large canteen known officially as the dining room. Floors 4-7 were a mixture of bars, meeting rooms, a debating chamber, staff offices and places from where the likes of the student newspaper was produced. Level 8 was the home of a purpose built venue where bands played and discos took place….it was imaginatively called ‘Level 8’.

In my first year at uni, I never ventured much beyond the dining hall/canteen, shop and bars. I was still living at home and a lot of my social life was based around where I stayed. I began to venture out a bit more in second year and then I was never away from the place in third and fourth years, thanks to my moving out of the parental home and into a flat less than 800 yards away from the front door of the union.

Level 8 was a great venue for bands and almost as good for the disco nights, where the music was a mix of the current chart stuff, disco classics, bands who were on the student union circuits and the occasional bit of what we were increasingly referring to as indie. The gender mix was 50/50 and it was the type of place where blokes plucked up the courage to ask an already gyrating female if they could temporarily invade their space – no words needed to be exchanged, and if the female wasn’t up for it, she would simply turn her back on the bloke who would then shuffle awkwardly off to the side of the space and return to his drink. It was through such a method that I found myself of an evening when my ‘asking’ was accepted for a boogie by none other than Clare Grogan, only for me to blow it big time by talking to her during which I drunkenly asked for her hand in marriage, with my proposal turned down with the words ‘Fuck off creep’.

But Level 8 wasn’t the only place where you could enjoy a dance. As soon as the last student vacated the canteen on a Friday evening at 6pm, the tables and chairs were folded away and space was cleared for a decent sized dance floor with a raised platform brought in to host temporary DJ decks, all of which would remain in situ on the Saturday night, being put back into place by staff on a Sunday afternoon in time for Monday morning breakfasts.

Unlike up the stair on Level 8, there was no great lighting available and so the Dining Hall disco took on a cave-like appearance and feel, with the DJ making the conscious decision to play music that matched the ambience and atmosphere. It was also a venue where anything went as far as dancing, with no awkward shuffling up towards someone of the opposite sex and hoping they will take notice and/or pity on you. It wasn’t too long before I found myself being wholly attracted by its charms.

The thing is with the DJ, he knew what his audience liked and wanted. It was as if he was a finely-honed band out on a world tour with what felt like the same set-list being churned out night after night after night after night. – A Forest, Love Will Tear Us Apart, I Travel, Heroes, Enola Gay, Hanging on The Telephone, The Cutter, London Calling, Ever Fallen In Love and The Passenger were guaranteed among many others….and quite often he would play the songs more than once on the same evening with folk coming in, maybe after having watched a band upstairs, and complaining that they had missed out on a particular favourite. It was within these confines where I learned that dancing alone is no crime and carries no shame…..a trait I’ve continued to adopt ever since, often to the horror of work colleagues at Christmas nights out who just think it is weird behaviour, especially by a 50+ fat, balding bloke…..

I love dancing to The Passenger. It’s perfect for throwing all sorts of strange and awkward shapes, depending on whether you’re keeping time with the riff or reacting to Iggy’s vocal. It’s just magical.

Not too many folk will be aware of the fact that it wasn’t ever released as a stand-alone single in the UK until 1998, when it reached #22. It was only a b-side back in 1977 on the reverse side of this:-

mp3 : Iggy Pop – Success

Here’s a cover version, from 1987, by another of the bands who were given a regular spin in the Dining Hall Disco:-

mp3 : Siouxsie & the Banshees – The Passenger

Iggy is known to like this version, having said during an interview with MTV in 1990 : “She sings it well and she threw a little note in when she sings it, that I wish I had thought of, it’s kind of improved it…the horn thing is good.”

Sorry Mr Osterberg, we will need to differ on this occasion.

JC

Fun 4

IMPORTANT, YET INSIGNIFICANT

Fun 4 are an important and yet insignificant footnote in the development of indie-pop round these parts. The importance comes via who was involved in the band, the insignificance comes from the fact that their sole release wasn’t very good.

Rev Thomas was the vocalist, James King played guitar, Colin McNeill was on bass and Steven Daly was the drummer. Their sole single was released on NMC Records in 1980:-

mp3 : Fun 4 – Singing In The Showers

I’ve only recently picked up a copy of the track, courtesy of its inclusion in the Big Gold Dreams boxset, with the accompanying booklet offering up some priceless info:-

Originally known as Rev Volting and the Backstabbers, The Fun 4’s only gift to the world featured James King and Steven Daly, plus Colin McNeill and vocalist Rev Thomas. While King and McNeill went on to form James King and The Lone Wolves, Daly joined The Machetes. Along with that band’s guitarist James Kirk, he wound up drumming in The Nu-Sonics, who eventually morphed into Orange Juice, who subsequently invented indie-pop as we know it. Daly and Kirk went on to form Memphis, before a move into journalism saw Daly write for Rolling Stone and becoming music editor of Spin magazine. Daly became a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, and has also written two books, Alt.Culture and The Rock Snob’s Dictionary.

Simon Goddard’s book on the birth and development of Postcard Records makes passing reference to the single, observing that Steven Daly had gone down with Alan Horne to London to catch Subway Sect play live after which the plan had been to take Grant McLennan and Robert Foster of The Go-Betweens back to Glasgow to get them involved with the label. In doing so, Steven also took down some boxes of the Fun 4 single in the hope that the Rough Trade record shop would agree to stock and sell it. The shop did take a small number of copies but the record was doomed after very lukewarm reviews in the music press in which the band were written off as very poor Ramones imitators, which is fair enough; it was probably also tedious to listen to such an obvious effort to offer up a shock factor that these weren’t the type of showers in which people would want to sing.

Like many other bands of the era, there’s a lot more myth than truth surrounding them, albeit the story provided in the press release that accompanied the single makes for entertaining reading:-

The original Fun 4 were formed two years ago. The history of the band reads like a trash short story. On their debut, supporting the Rezillos, Bob Last was so moved he tried to strangle the drummer and Faye Fife thought it was the most unpleasant night she’d experienced.

Then Sham 69 had the misfortune to play top over the Fun 4 on Jimmy Pursey’s birthday. The Fun 4 must be one of the few bands to terrorise a Sham audience. Reacting to a stage invasion with cans and guitars reducing poor little Jimmy’s celebration to chaos with the bizarre twist of audience as the victim.

Inevitably John Cale was drawn to these scenes of weirdness and demo tapes were submitted. However, since these tapes were bedroom cassette studio quality, it was just a little too off the wall for Mr. Cale.

In the best trash tradition, the Fun 4 burnt themselves out. After an April Fool’s gig in 1978 in Edinburgh, certain members were ejected from the van and the band at 3am, 50 miles from Glasgow.

And so to 1979.

The Fun 4 reunited and determined to wipe out the 70’s ties, locked themselves in the cheapest studio available and emerged with three trash classics. The recording quality might leave little to be desired but the band commandeered the mix and accept the blame. The results are available on their own label NMC Records, named after a famous book about Glasgow (No Mean City).

To sum up The Fun 4 sound, it is straight from the streets of Glasgow with all that entails.

I’ve dug very deep to find copies of the two tracks that made up the b-side, but alas, could only come up with one of them:-

mp3 : Fun 4 – Elevator Crash

At the risk of boring you with repeated sayings, important yet insignificant.

JC

Sam Cooke

THE GREATEST B-SIDE OF ALL TIME?

It was hearing this song coming out of a radio as I passed a local shop the other day that inspired the posting. I have always associated A Change Is Gonna Come with my days in student activism, thinking it was the perfect soundtrack to my miniscule role in ridding the world of atomic weapons and bringing about the end of the despicable system of apartheid in South Africa. It was a song that, when I was particularly drunk, could bring tears to my eyes, given the seemingly simple nature of its message against the seemingly impossible task of achieving significant change.

mp3 : Sam Cooke – A Change Is Gonna Come

My intention was to have this posting headed up ‘NEVER SETTLE FOR STATUS QUO’ which I thought worked on a couple of levels. It was only when I looked into the history of the song did I learn that it was only issued as a b-side in the USA in 1964 and similarly in the UK in 1965. As such, there is surely some justification for calling it the greatest of all time in respect of that genre.

The other thing I hadn’t realised was that Sam Cooke only ever performed the song once in his lifetime. It had been recorded on 30 January 1964 and just a week later was aired on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. The singer hadn’t been keen to do so, but was persuaded by his manager after the promise that it would involve a full string section performing in the TV studio. Sadly, NBC did not keep a tape of this truly historic performance.

The album for which the track had been recorded, Ain’t That The Good News, was released on 1 March 1994. The fact that Sam Cooke wasn’t keen to perform the song, in part because of the complexity of its arrangement, most likely had a lot to do with the fact that it remained an album track only throughout the year, albeit it received a great number of radio plays and had been picked up as an anthem by the civil rights movement.

RCA decided that it should be be the b-side to a new song that Sam Cooke had just recorded with it to be released just before Christmas 1964.

mp3 : Sam Cooke – Shake

We will never know if the singer had changed his mind about performing A Change…in the live setting or within the confines of a TV studio as he was shot dead in tragic and bewildering circumstances in a Los Angeles motel on 11 December 1964.

The release of the single went ahead and it became a posthumous Top Ten hit in the USA in February 1965.

JC

Super Furry Animals

YOU’VE GOT TO TOLERATE ALL THOSE PEOPLE THAT YOU HATE

From wiki:-

Juxtapozed with U” is the thirteenth single by Super Furry Animals. It was the first single to be taken from the Rings Around the World album and reached number 14 on the UK Singles Chart on its release in July 2001.

It was inspired by the Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder track “Ebony and Ivory” as well as the work of Marvin Gaye and Caetano Veloso. The track was originally conceived as a duet, with the band approaching both Brian Harvey from East 17, and Bobby Brown to sing alongside Gruff Rhys. Both turned the band down so Rhys sang the verses through a vocoder to imitate another person, something which he has described as a “very schizophrenic thing to do”.

Rhys has claimed his lyrics address social injustice and are about “house prices going up, and people being left behind by the super rich”. The song has echoes of the Philadelphia soul music of the 1970s as well as David Bowie’s “plastic” approximation of the sound on his 1975 album Young Americans. The group tried to make the song as “plastic” as possible: “if we’d tried to make it sound authentic, it would have been awful.”

According to Rhys the band were keen to challenge people’s opinions of them with the track which is a “shocking song, because you can’t shock with loud guitars any more” and, as a polished uplifting pop song, is “fairly subversive” when contrasted with the macho guitar music which the band felt was prevalent in 2001.

It’s a song that got a lot of critical acclaim and in reaching #14, it provided the band with their second biggest hit to that point in time (Northern Lites had got to #11 two years previously while Golden Retriever would later become the second-best performing single, hitting #13 in 2003).

mp3 : Super Furry Animals – Juxtaposed With U

Having said that, it wasn’t one which found much favour with our old friend and native of Wales, the Robster, who made the observation that both of its b-sides were better:-

mp3 : Super Furry Animals – Tradewinds
mp3 : Super Furry Animals – Happiness Is A Worn Pun

Indeed, Robster included both songs in his Super Furry Animals ICA, which appeared as far back as June 2015. It was an ICA with a difference as it consisted solely of b-sides, all of which were top quality. Here’s what he said about the above two songs:-

Tradewinds : A cool funky reggae sound with a hazy psychedeleic bent. It was the b-side of what was at the time my least favourite Furries single. While the a-side has grown on me over time, I was always a fan of Tradewinds

Happiness Is A Warm Pun : Bowie circa Aladdin Sane could have written this. He’d have probably left out the Sasquatch though. Bit too strange for Dave, I reckon. Both b-sides of Juxtaposed With U are still better than the lead track.

I miss the Robster. He’s a great writer with a real love for his music, never afraid to offer an opinion that goes against the grain.

I’ve sent him a link to this posting in the hope that he reads it and perhaps gets him in the mood for another guest posting or two

JC

Auteurs, Luke Haines

BONUS POSTING : ESPECIALLY FOR ECHORICH : A FURTHER SINGULAR ADVENTURE OF LUKE HAINES

Echorich is an incredibly valued member of the TVV community, and when I picked up this comment just a few minutes ago, I really had to respond in the only way possible:-

All the songs that surround the release of Now I’m A Cowboy are what I go back to when listening to The Auteurs. There is so many songs that remind me of the sounds I heard growing up on music from the Downtown NYC music scene. Bits of Johnny Thunders, lots of Television, but filtered through what was then current music tropes. I think back and wonder how legendary The Auteurs might have been if they were around playing CBGB’s in ’76 or ’77.

Not sure if you will include this, but my favorite track from Now I’m A Cowboy, Underground Movies, was only released as a single in either France or Germany. I can’t believe it wasn’t release EVERYWHERE as an album single. Listening to it again today reminds me of how engaging and timeless it is. It also contains one of the best lyrics I have ever heard –

Four weeks later in April
I took her to the doctors
Said, “I’ve no prescription
For compromised solution” – MAGIC!

I hadn’t intended to feature it in the series as, to the best of my knowledge, it was only a CD promo single in France, a country where The Auteurs were highly popular, even more so than they were in the UK. But for Echorich, and also reflecting that two different mixes (more rock orientated and radio-friendly!!) had been made available:-

mp3 : The Auteurs – Underground Movies (alternative version)
mp3 : The Auteurs – Brainchild (alternative version)

JC

Auteurs, Luke Haines

THE SINGULAR ADVENTURES OF LUKE HAINES (8)

October 1994.

Oasis go top 10 with their new single Cigarettes & Alcohol.  But the chart isn’t quite Britpop crazy just yet.  The Top 5 slots are held by Take That, Pato Banton, Whigfield, Bon Jovi and Cyndi Lauper.  Elsewhere, singles by Madonna, Elton John, Wet Wet Wet, Boyz II Men, Gloria Estefan, Luther Vandross & Mariah Carey, R Kelly and East 17 are riding high.  It’s not a vintage week and Luke Haines is probably very glad not being asked by his label to compete.

But in the absence of a third single from Now I’m A Cowboy, he comes up with an idea to get The Auteurs noticed in a completely different market place.  And Hut Records go for it.

Here’s wiki:-

The Auteurs vs. μ-Ziq is a remix EP from British intelligent dance music producer μ-Ziq (a.k.a. Mike Paradinas). It was released October 1994, on Hut Records in the UK then released as μ-Ziq vs. the Auteurs on Astralwerks in the US during February 1995. μ-Ziq remixes tracks from the “Now I’m a Cowboy” album by The Auteurs, about which in his memoir Bad Vibes, singer Luke Haines claimed this album to be his version of Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music —that it was deliberately unlistenable and mocking the critics who gave it great reviews.

μ-Ziq at this point was still very much an underground name, whose work was incredibly experimental (in later years he would come to the fore as one of the pioneers of mixing electronic music with drum’n’bass and creating a different sort of sound for clubbers). His work with The Auteurs was the first time he has been commissioned by a mainstream label, and I’ve no doubt that he was selected specifically by Luke Haines for his uncompromising approach to the project. Judge for yourself:-

mp3 : The Auteurs vs. μ-Ziq – Lenny Valentino 3 (8:09)
mp3 : The Auteurs vs. μ-Ziq – Daughter of A Child (6:10)
mp3 : The Auteurs vs. μ-Ziq – Chinese Bakery (4:51)
mp3 : The Auteurs vs. μ-Ziq – Underground Movies (4:40)
mp3 : The Auteurs vs. μ-Ziq – Lenny Valentino 1 (12:27)
mp3 : The Auteurs vs. μ-Ziq – Lenny Valentino 2 (8:50)

I’ve put the times in of each track….you’ll see that the two-minute masterpiece that was Lenny Valentino got stretched out a fair bit.  I can’t imagine the EP got any plays on BBC Radio 1………

JC