Super Furry Animals

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

A guest series by The Robster

#19: It’s Not The End Of The World? (2002, Epic, 672175 6)

These days, when a band releases a new album, you get four or five “singles” released from it before it’s even out! It leaves very little left to discover when you do eventually get to hear the full record, and chances are all the best tracks have been out for weeks. Way back yonder, it was very different – one single, then the album, then two or three more singles to keep the album in consumers’ minds for a while longer.

Six months after ‘Rings Around The World’ hit the shelves, January 2002 in fact, a third and final single was issued from it. Now, as I said last week, ‘Rings…’ is not meant to be taken as a collection of individual songs, it is a proper old-fashioned album – it’s meant to be listened to as a whole. This might explain why the choice of singles from it were not exactly the best. If it were me, I’d have put out Sidewalk Serfer Girl, maybe an edit of Run! Christian, Run! if I could make it work, or even the brilliantly bonkers Receptacle For The Respectable. Instead, the band (or label, not sure who made those decisions) opted for this one:

mp3: It’s Not The End Of The World? [edit]

(The full album version was released across all formats, but I thought I’d post this ever-so-slightly shorter version which featured on a radio promo CD, never commercially issued anywhere! You’re welcome.)

For perhaps the first time, it’s a single that divided the critics, with the words “bland” and “a bit rubbish” being used in reviews, certainly not things the band had previously experienced. And I kind of get it. It was never a big fave of mine, though in the context of the album it’s OK, but I never would have had it down as a single.

As for what it’s about – Gruff described it as “a romantic song about getting old”, with lyrics touching on the very real possibility of human extinction. “When people talk about saving the world they’re really talking about saving humans. The reality is that humans are the problem […] maybe we’ll all die but the world’ll still be here, even if it’s a dark, singed piece of rock flying around the sun”.

A bit like the first of the singles from ‘Rings Around The World’, the b-sides to this one were better than the a-side. Again, there was no 7”, but the CD, cassette and DVD (yes, a DVD single!) all contained these two:

mp3: The Roman Road

mp3: Gýpsy Space Muffin

I have to say, while this period didn’t produce the best singles, some of the band’s very best b-sides exist here. The Roman Road is right up there with Patience, Edam Anchorman and Tradewinds as the best SFA songs you never heard. It’s a fabulous bit of country-rock with a very hummable chorus, glorious harmonies and some pedal steel – an instrument they’d work with more in the near future. The other b-side is perhaps a more conventional throwaway little thing, but it does have enough psychedelic glam-rock charm to lift it above the a-side in terms of interest.

Now, for your bonus tracks this week, a little bit of a special treat. I have a bootleg of Super Furry Animals playing in Chicago during their 2002 US tour. It’s an audience recording, but it sounds decent. Firstly, you’re getting a live version of today’s featured track which featured in the set:

mp3: It’s Not The End Of The World? [live at the Metro, Chicago]

As an added bonus, I’m giving you the track they closed that set with. Since the ‘Guerrilla’ sessions, Cian, Bunf, Guto and Daf had formed their own side project. They called themselves Das Koolies, and while their name was floated around in fans forums here and there, no one really knew if they actually existed. Over the years, Das Koolies made a number of electronic-heavy recordings, but never released anything. Until… in 2021, some years after SFA broke up, Das Koolies started releasing stuff, reworked and remixed from their horde. In 2023, they put out their debut album, which opened with a big-beat stomper called Best Mindfuck Yet. Where am I going with this? Well, more than two decades earlier, during that live show in Chicago, some of Super Furry Animals performed this as an encore:

mp3: Best Mindfuck Yet [live at the Metro, Chicago]

It’s an early version of the song that would otherwise remain locked in the Super Furry vaults for 20 years! Both these tracks have never been officially released, so enjoy. Again, you’re welcome.

 

The Robster

The Exile

SATURDAY’S SCOTTISH SONG : #459: THE EXILE

Here’s another lot of whom I knew nothing until their inclusion on the Big Gold Dreams box set.

Coming straight out of Bishopbriggs, The Exile were the sound of the (Glasgow) suburbs. 

Formed by Graham Scott, who cut his musical teethin pre-punk rockers Free Flight before The Exile’s school tie and leather jacketed quartet released the four-track ‘Don’t Tax Me EP’ on their own Boring Records.

As well as ‘Hooked On You”s slice of scratchy would-be power pop, the record featured ‘Fascist DJ’ about Radio Clyde’s Tom Ferrie who had helped spearhead Glasgow’s ‘ban’ on punk gigs.  The Exile had fallen foul of the ban by way of a cancelled show with The Jolt, Johnny & The Self Abusers and The Cuban Heels.  There followed a one-off single on Charly Records and an appearance of their track ‘Disaster Movie’ on Beggar Banquet’s compilation, ‘Streets’, before The Exile morphed into the Television-inspired Friction, fizzling out after another single on Boring.

mp3: The Exile – Hooked On You

If I had been serving on a Jukebox Jury back in 1977, I’m afraid I’d have called this out as a miss.

 

JC

 

Father Sculptor

THE 12″ LUCKY DIP (25): Father Sculptor – Faith & Violence EP

R-4521281-1367243191-4073

Stop me if you think you’ve heard this one before.

I’ve written about Father Sculptor a couple of times on this version of the blog, but they were all over the old, original version of TVV that was blown out of the water by Blogger back in July 2013.  If you don’t mind me recapping……

It began in February 2011 when I went along to a gig at King Tut’s at the suggestion of Drew (Across The Kitchen Table); there was a huge buzz about a band called Spector and we both wanted to see what the fuss was about. To be honest, they were dull and not worth bothering about.

But we were both taken by the appearance of one of the support bands – Father Sculptor – and in the subsequent review of the gig on the old blog I raved about them. To my total surprise, an e-mail appeared in the Inbox a few days later from the band, not only thanking me for the kind words but telling me they were avid readers of The Vinyl Villain, and it had meant a lot to them to get a mention.

Thus began regular exchanges of correspondence – I was usually among the first to get a listen to their new material which they would in due course post online at their website, always without fail giving it very positive mentions on the blog. The bands consisted of five young men, all studying in Glasgow, although none were actually from the city. In time, they began to get a wider press with positive write-ups in the NME and The Guardian newspaper, as well as a range of web-based music outlets.

The band scrimped and saved towards their ambition of actually making a physical record instead of merely making things available as downloads, and I was thrilled, delighted and honoured when they asked if I could promote a show for them in Glasgow for the launch of what would be a self-financed debut EP on 12″ vinyl.

The gig took place in Stereo on Saturday 13 April 2013. There was a more than decent turnout and the boys played a terrific set. I spent some time with them the following morning, during which it hit me that while they were possibly on the verge of greatness, there were some things that could easily tear them apart.   It felt that they weren’t a completely cohesive unit in the social sense, and so there were bound to be fall-outs, especially given how young and relatively inexperienced they were; furthermore,  they would soon be reaching a stage when they were no longer students and facing the situation of needing to find employment of some sort or other, which was more than likely to impact on their continued abilities to rehearse, write and possibly record.

I’ve no idea what happened next.  It turned out that the EP was their only physical release and Thomas David (vocals), Joseph (guitars), Felix (drums), Matthew (keyboards, vocals) and Phil (bass) must have, as I feared, gone their separate ways.

Just about everything can be listened to over at this YouTube page.   But I thought it would be worth offering up the songs from the EP:-

mp3 : Father Sculptor – Basilica
mp3 : Father Sculptor – Sault
mp3 : Father Sculptor – The Swim
mp3 : Father Sculptor – Lowlands
mp3 : Father Sculptor – Swallowed In Dreams

So much potential that was never realised……but then again, the music industry is littered with such stories.

JC

Book Reviews

BOOK OF THE MONTH : JULY 2025 : THEMES FOR GREAT CITIES by GRAEME THOMSON

JC writes……

I know, I know.  You wait ages for a post about Simple Minds, and two come along in very quick succession.  These things happen…..

I thought I’d try and be smart with this one.  Knowing that Jonny the Friendly Lawyer was a huge fan of Derek Forbes, the original bass player with Simple Minds, I thought he’d like to read the band biography, written by Scottish author Graeme Thomson, and so I took a copy over as one of a number of gifts that myself and Rachel wanted to pass onto him and Goldie as our way of saying thanks for inviting us to their home in Santa Monica for an extended stay. I did suggest that, if he wanted, he could submit a review for inclusion as part of this monthly series, and he has very kindly done so.

Here’s Jonny………

“JC asked me to write a review of ‘Themes for Great Cities, A New History of Simple Minds‘ by Graeme Thomson. My one word review is: unreadable. I like Simple Minds okay, or did for the first few albums. I was definitely an admirer of bassist Derek Forbes. But I do NOT recommend this book because of the hopelessly overwrought writing. It contains passages like the following:

Page 1: “I hear the otherworldly pulse of ‘In Trance as Mission’, with its ‘holy backbeat’ and the hopscotch skip of the bassline, like a loved-up heart murmur, or a dog running on three legs, forever slipping off the pavement edge.” (Italics in original.)

Page 120: “In this band, everybody is playing a different part. They’re like a succubus for the music, it is just flowing through them. They are doing what the unit they have formed demands of them. When you’re a band you become some weird symbiotic organism. You recognize body language, you start looking at each other’s books and magazines, you start noticing what part of the papers you all read. You find each other. When a band clicks you just know it, and it’s beautiful.”

Page 193: “Large parts of the two albums are simply beautiful, opening out slowly like long sunsets, dark orange and charcoal.”

Page 256: “The core bass line is, in some respects, the logical destination of Forbes as a bass player – from maximalist ‘X’ and ‘Y’ shapes to one minimalist ‘D’ note repeating ad infinitum. Rhythm pared back to its essence, the eternal cosmic throb.”

Dancing about architecture, to say the least. I don’t know if Thomson is a frustrated poet, or a starstruck fanboy, or is simply given to flights of extravagant, unnecessary prose, or what.

I guess the book includes subjects like how the band got together and recorded and performed, but it’s buried underneath endless steaming piles of superfluous verbiage. Simple Minds are a pretty popular band–there’s got to be a better written biography out there than this one.

Jonny

Oh dear……the song selected doesn’t quite fit.

mp3: Simple Minds – Book of Brilliant Things

From Sparkle In The Rain, released in February 1984, and the last studio album from the early era to which Derek Forbes contributed.

Finally, for today.  You’ll recall that I ran a competition for two folk to win a copy of the June Book of the Month, the rather fabulous You’re Doing It All Wrong : My Life As A Failed Rock Star (In The Best Band You’ve Never Heard) by Michael M. 

Thanks to everyone who entered. The two names drawn out of the hat were mnfennell and papa stew.  My huge thanks to everyone who entered.  I’ll likely run another competition of some sorts towards the end of the year.

JC

Various

HEY CHAT GPT…..(no please, don’t run away!!!)

It was last Friday night.

I couldn’t be bothered watching the BBC coverage of Glastonbury.  Down at the bottom of the road, in a nearby park, Simple Minds were trying their best to play the loudest ever outdoor gig in Glasgow.  I sat down at the laptop, fired up the appropriate programme and got on with the task of coming up with the latest hour-long mix for the blog.

Job done.  I gave it a listen.  Was happy with the outcome.

But, try as I might, I couldn’t come up with a killer title after what had been a long day  – it was now just after 11pm and the folk at the gig were now getting into their cars, slamming the doors shut and starting their engines.  Sleep would still be a while away.

I went to Chat GPT (I know….I know!!!).

I typed in ‘What name should I give to a music mix with the following songs?’ and listed all 18 tunes.

This is what came back:-

Awesome mix! It’s got a great range of styles—funky, indie, alternative, and some classic bangers. Here are a few name ideas that might capture the vibe:

1. “Eclectic Frenzy” – Reflects the mix of genres and the energetic feel of the playlist.
2. “Tales From The Underground” – For a collection that has both depth and some edge.
3. “Sonic Mischief” – A nod to the “fun lovin'” vibe with a bit of rebellious energy.
4. “Waves & Whispers” – Mixing the laid-back sounds of some tracks with the intensity of others.
5. “Criminally Good” – A playful take on the Fun Lovin’ Criminals, with a nod to the rock and indie influences.
6. “Twisted Melodies” – For the mix of unexpected twists in sound and style.
7. “Offbeat Anthems” – Reflecting both the alt and indie influence, with some quirky throwbacks.
8. “Shadows & Lights” – Inspired by the contrast of dark and light themes in the mix, from moody to uplifting.
9. “Fuzzy Frequencies” – Captures the overall raw, fuzzy vibe some tracks bring.
10. “Rolling Through the Spectrum” – A playful nod to the wide range of styles and moods in the tracklist.

Pretty pish, eh?

I slept on it.  And had a lightbulb moment, of sorts, in the morning. Thank you MES.

mp3: Various – Desperate For Entertainment

Beastie Boys – The Blue Nun
Fun Lovin’ Criminals – The Fun Lovin’ Criminal
Super Furry Animals – Golden Retriever
Robert Forster – I Don’t Do Drugs I Do Time
The Fall – A Lot Of Wind (Peel Session)
Radiohead – Paranoid Android
All Saints – Pure Shores
Hifi Sean ft. Crystal Waters – Testify
Working Men’s Club – Widow
Buzzcocks – Ever Fallen In Love?
The Popguns – Waiting For The Winter
R.E.M. – Star 69
Maximo Park – Apply Some Pressure
Fontaines D.C. – Big
The Flatmates – I Could Be In Heaven
Close Lobsters – Skyscrapers of St Mirin
Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Heads Will Roll
The Duckworth Lewis Method – Rain Stops Play

Enjoy!!!!!!!

JC

Simple Minds

SHOULD’VE BEEN A SINGLE ?(6)

A couple of years back, I came up with the idea of a series in which I’d feature songs that would have been massive hits if the band and/or record label had released them as singles. I was full of great intentions, but the series got lost as I got distracted by other things and disappeared off the TVV radar after just these five suggestions:-

The Clash – Clampdown
The Chameleons – Looking Inwardly*
New Order – Age Of Consent
Echo & The Bunnymen – Heaven Up Here
Teenage Fanclub – Don’t Look Back

* a guest posting by Adrian Mahon

I’m going to try again, without promising that it will be a very regular thing.

The story of early Simple Minds is one of frustration and, with the benefit of hindsight, loads of missed opportunities from Arista Records.

Debut single Life In A Day did sneak into the charts at #62 in May 1979, but follow-up Chelsea Girl sunk without trace, although the debut album (also called Life In Day) did hit the Top 30.    There was a degree of dissatisfaction among the group as to how the songs on the first album had been produced, and they decided to quickly return to a studio, with a new producer in the shape of John Leckie, and work on a new album with a bit more spontaneity.

It all meant Real To Real Cacophony was ready for release in November 1979.  The only problem?  Arista Records hated the results, and the marketing/promotion efforts were almost non-existent.  The album failed to make it into the Top 100, and it took until January 1980 before a single was lifted from the album and giving a grudging release.

The song chosen was Changeling.  It’s a more than decent number and perhaps, if it had been given any decent support by the label, it might have been a hit.

The b-side was another track lifted from the album, and given what would eventually happen with Simple Minds, then someone at Arista should still be hanging their heads in shame for relegating it to a b-side and not recognising that it had ‘hit’ written all over it.

mp3: Simple Minds – Premonition

I do get that with a running time of more than five minutes, Premonition wasn’t tailor-made for radio, but a bit of judicial editing, perhaps bringing in the vocals a bit earlier than the one-minute mark and an earlier fade-out, perhaps just after Jim Kerr has sung his last note, and you’d have had something quite special.

As it was, Arista would make a further mess of the band’s third album, Empires and Dance, as well as its two singles I Travel and Celebrate, and their full potential was only realised when they moved over to Virgin Records.

 

JC

Super Furry Animals

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

A guest series by The Robster

#18: (Drawing) Rings Around The World (2001, Epic, 671908 6)

The fifth Super Furry Animals album, ‘Rings Around The World’, was, and remains, my favourite SFA record. This, despite me really disliking its first single. The band really took advantage of the bigger budget they were afforded by their new label and the result was an album full of lush strings and orchestrations, coupled with an ambitious cinematic production. And, of course, some wonderful songs.

The original idea was to go all-in and make a double album called ‘Text Messaging Is Destroying The Pub Quiz As We Know It’, which, lets face it, is a brilliant title for a record. While that idea was scaled back somewhat, Gruff admitted he still wanted to go to excess. “We were trying to make a blockbuster album that was going to be like The Eagles. We were trying to make utopian pop music that had pretensions of being progressive and exciting.”

However you’d describe it, it cannot be denied that it still, to this day, sounds like a real triumph. It’s the band’s high-point, in my opinion. While we’re talking about my opinion, I think ‘Rings’ works as a whole, a wonderful album that should always be played from start to finish. It’s the sort of record that only really makes sense that way. This may be the reason then that I’ve always been disappointed by the choice of singles released from it. They don’t really cut it on their own. Of the three songs lifted, only one really ticks my boxes, and that’s today’s – the title track.

mp3: (Drawing) Rings Around The World

I love this one. On the surface, it sounds like a lot of fun, but actually has a rather concerning message. Following a discussion with his girlfriend’s father, Gruff wrote (D)RATW about an idea that came up regarding “all the rings of communication around the world. All the rings of pollution, and all the radioactivity that goes around. If you could visualize all the things we don’t see, Earth could look like some kind of fucked-up Saturn. And that’s the idea I have in my head – surrounded by communication lines and traffic and debris thrown out of spaceships.”

The song came together following a number of demos involving different members of the band (more on that later), and a collection of excerpts of phone calls the band made randomly to people around the world. See what they did there?

The critics gushed, as usual, though the one thing I’ve noticed in the course of writing this series is how music journalists love to compare whatever they’re reviewing to other things. Maybe it’s laziness, maybe it’s just to make it easier for readers, but quite often it can be very confusing if you read multiple reviews. That’s certainly true of (Drawing) Rings Around The World – no one could agree what it sounded like. Status Quo, ELO (again!), Beach Boys (again!), The Beatles, Wizzard, Cheap Trick… all were cited in the music press. Yet, to me, it’s the Super Furry Animals, no one else. OK, maybe a bit ELO, who have proven to be one of the band’s biggest influences…

Released in October 2001, it reached a disappointing #28 in the UK singles charts, but this should come as no surprise to anyone who has been following this series. Maybe it would have got higher if people had heard the b-side.

mp3: Edam Anchorman

Without a doubt, one of the band’s best b-sides, a big bold, anthemic tune which really deserved more than being tucked away on the flip of a single. It’s one for any mixtape/playlist if you’re looking for something that’s not obvious. Its lyrics also contain the title of the other b-side.

mp3: All The Shit U Do

This is basically a section of Edam Anchorman with the words “With all the shit you do” looped over and over, and some added bleeps and bloops from Cian. A bit of an odd one, all told.

A radio edit of the title track was issued on some promos, which simply shortens the intro and fades out early. You might as well have it for completion’s sake:

mp3: (Drawing) Rings Around The World [radio edit]

Which brings me to this week’s bonus track. I mentioned that several demos were made of (D)RATW during its composition. Each one is rather different, so rather than choose one, or post all three, I thought I’d pull together some bits and pieces of them and edit them together so you can hear the constituent parts of the song and how it all came together. It starts off with Cian’s electronic riff, followed by Gruff’s early solo take, then another run through with the full band. I’ve finished off by adding some of the phone call bits as well. It’s another Super Furry Sunday Exclusive!

mp3: (Drawing) Rings Around The World [demo amalgam]

Next week, the final single from ‘Rings Around The World’, and I’ve got another exclusive lined up for you…

 

The Robster

Everest The Hard Way

SATURDAY’S SCOTTISH SONG : #458: EVEREST THE HARD WAY; PLUS….FOUR TRACK MIND : A RANDOM SERIES OF EXTENDED PLAY SINGLES

There’s so little info out there – not even any sort of band photo can be found – that I originally felt I had no option but to do an edited cut’n’paste from the last time they were featured on the blog. But then, Fraser emailed me from New Zealand, with details of a proposed new series which actually got underway earlier this week with Frank Sintara.  He also had all of this to say……..

“It was while googling for information about Everest the Hard Way that I first discovered The New Vinyl Villain, thanks to JC’s previous posting of this EP. Hopefully my recollections and researches add something to that piece.

When I applied for a university place in the summer of 1980 my choices were driven not by academic considerations but by where I would be able to see the best selection of bands on a regular basis. Consequently, I slapped down three London colleges and Edinburgh on the form. You had to enter five choices, but I knew I would get into Edinburgh at the very least, so the fifth line was a pointless toss-up between Glasgow and Aberdeen. Aberdeen won, but I never had any intention of going there in a million years. Fortunately, the two London colleges that interviewed me turned me down – I was young for my cohort, only just 17, hopelessly immature in many ways, and it would have been a disaster. So, Edinburgh it was, my hometown uni.

Home, however, was seven miles out of town in Dalkeith, and restrictive bus timetables and parental oversight were going to be incompatible with night club gig timings, not to mention my cold, premeditated intention to drink as much alcohol as I could afford. So I engineered a room in digs for myself while my parents were away on holiday and unable to object, and thereby spent a productive freshers’ week bonding with my new roommate, a fellow English Lit student. He was the son of a Church of Scotland minister from Ayrshire, and like all good sons of the manse liked nothing better than getting utterly pished, and so we spent that first week of our academic lives drinking ourselves under the tables of each student union bar in turn.

Gary’s taste in music was unfortunately dreadful (he wore cowboy boots) so he didn’t accompany me on my frequent outings to see local new wave bands in the same union bars and at the Nite Club above the Playhouse Theatre. It was in the latter club that I first saw Everest the Hard Way. Someone had told me they were good and I went to see them one night on a double bill with another Edinburgh band called New Apartment. I bumped into a girl from my year at school, whom I never took for much of a new wave fan. It turned out that she was a big fan of New Apartment’s bass player and singer, and he was a big fan of hers, if you get my drift. Looking at them both I could see why, and also why I had no fan club of my own, unfortunately.

New Apartment were a three-piece and I liked their fashionably funky post-punk music. The guitarist was a big guy called Mani Shoniwa, and in his massive hands his Rickenbacker guitar looked like a ukulele. Readers may recognise the name from his reappearance in the almost successful band Win, several years after New Apartment vanished with nothing but a solitary Demon single to their name, Them and Us/Catch 22.

Everest the Hard Way’s music I liked very much too. Less funk, more Berlin-Bowie disco or somewhere along the Bunnymen/Wake/Sound/Comsat Angels axis. They were a quartet who took their name from mountaineer Chris Bonnington’s book on the first successful ascent of the world’s highest peak by its stupidly difficult south-west face. Being also a fan of mountains, I’d actually read the book a few years earlier, so that probably helped to cement them in my affections, but their tight, intense performance that night was mainly what did it. I saw them another twice and they were always tight and intense, so it was no fluke.

The intensity came mainly from guitarist and singer David Service whose grizzled appearance and eyes screwed, tightly wound delivery was like David Byrne circa Fear of Music. He chopped out chords on his guitar as though he was desperately suppressing the urge to slash it to pieces like some demented hybrid of Pete Townshend and Wilko Johnson.

The tightness came from the rhythm section of Ian Stoddart on drums and Mike Peden on bass. Stoddart is another name that Win fans will recognise. Later, he also played for Scottish band Aberfeldy through their first few years including on their first album, Young Forever. And he is co-credited with the composition of both sides of that New Apartment single above. Somewhat improbably, Stoddy also found himself in 2000, somewhere in France, playing alongside Josef K’s Malcolm Ross as part of a ‘gypsy’ band led by Hollywood A-lister and celebrity perfume salesman Johnny Depp in the unaccountably Oscar-nominated rom-com Chocolat. For some reason I have a VHS copy of the movie and was going to toss it because it’s crap, until I discovered that a former member of Everest the Hard Way was in it. Now I’m stuck with it. You can watch the main scene with Stoddy, Ross and Depp on YouTube.

(Skip forward to 1.15 if you can’t stand the whole thing…).

Sadly, Stoddart died of cancer in 2020.

It was Mike Peden who caught my eye, or ear, for the most part when watching ETHW. It’s not difficult to see why he drew comparisons with Derek Forbes of Simple Minds. He was always playing rapid, intricate lines, melodic runs rather than anchoring notes, but I would say his technical ability surpassed Forbes and he has made a long career for himself as a session player and producer. His name crops up in production credits for a wide range of pop acts through the 1990s and 2000s, including Paul Haig, Shara Nelson (the voice on Massive Attack’s Unfinished Sympathy), YoYoHoney (that Mani Shoniwa again), Mica Paris, Darryl Hall and even Gareth Gates. He also had another more successful crack at performing as a member of short-lived early 90s soul-dance trio The Chimes.

The quartet was completed by keyboardist Jim Telford who added accents and body to the sound with a string synth, but his parts were not elaborate and didn’t dominate. All I can find about him outside ETHW is as contributor to a 1980 single by The Liberators (along with Robin Guthrie and Will Heggie before they formed the Cocteau Twins), and that he worked closely with Richard Strange through the 1980s after guesting on his 1981 LP The Phenomenal Rise of... becoming part of his backing band The Engine Room under the modified pseudonym of James T. Ford. Strange’s website also mentions that while working with Telford he signed a management deal with Max Tregoning who had previously managed Adam and the Ants and… Everest the Hard Way.

Tightrope came out in 1982 on Do It Records, run by Tregoning and his brother, and publishers of Adam and the Ants’ first album Dirk Wears White Sox and a few singles by Yello. The label folded later in ‘82, so ETHW were never going to get much of a boost from this release and they disappeared at much the same time. The production is rather average – credited partly to the band themselves – and doesn’t do justice to their live energy. Mike Peden obviously learned a lot about production in subsequent years, but I guess you have to start somewhere.

The title track is undoubtedly the stand-out of the four on the 12” EP (it was the A-side of the 7” single version), and comes closest to capturing the band as I remember them. You can hear the Simple Minds parallels as Peden and Stoddart drive the rolling Euro-dance rhythm, like a rough-cut of Love Song. When You’re Young is a bit more Bunnymen, and Take the Strain finds Service channelling Talking Heads’ Drugs or Electric Guitar into a more sparse arrangement, showcasing Mike Peden’s nimble fingers once again. Quarter to Six is the weakest piece, running over the rather well-worn theme of current-affairs media (cf Gang of Four‘s 5:45 – quarter to six used to be the time of the BBC’s main evening news bulletin). Through all the songs the subject matter is social rather than romantic, and you can hear the tension in the titles and lyrics as much as the delivery, and certainly more than in the production.

So Tightrope is not a great lost classic of the era, but to me it’s a fondly held memento of a time and place and a band that didn’t want for talent but lacked a crucial creative edge and that lucky break. It brings back memories of the Nite Club’s sticky floor, the pokey downstairs bar in Chambers Street student union, and a boozy night at Teviot Row also featuring the ramshackle talents of Boots For Dancing. When you’re young…

Tightrope

When You’re Young

Take the Strain

Quarter to Six

 

Fraser

 

Sundays

ONE HUNDRED AND ELEVEN SINGLES : #099

aka The Vinyl Villain incorporating Sexy Loser

# 099: The Sundays – ‘Can’t Be Sure’ (Rough Trade Records ’89)

Dear friends,

The Sugarcubes last earlier this week, The Sundays today: weren’t the late 80’s just awesome for those of us who got easily aroused? I mean, come on: Harriet Wheeler … she was just perfect, wasn’t she?

It’s just coincidental that (alphabetically) The Sundays follow The Sugarcubes in my singles box, but in hindsight it’s hard to say which band – or better singer – I adored more back then. Obviously, at the end of the day, such a comparison is rather fruitless, the same is true for the comparisons which were made at the time when ‘Can’t Be Sure’ was released. The music papers got mad about the band instantly, rightly so, of course, but all the time there were comparisons between The Sundays and a) The Smiths or b) The Cocteau Twins. I never thought this was accurate, I mean what did Harriet Wheeler have in common with Morrissey‘s huge ego, manifested in his singing style? Nothing. The same is true of Elizabeth Fraser: as great as The Cocteau Twins once were, they had painted themselves into a kind of drama corner by then – and it seemed to me as if there was no clever way for them to get out of it again. Quite unlike The Sundays …

It is fair to say though that The Sundays’ guitar playing might show some Smiths-/Marr influence, but that’s true for many late 80s artists, so why bother? As usual, it’s the song itself which counts – not how and why it was made.

‘Can’t Be Sure’ was released a full year before the debut album, and boy, it was a very long year of waiting after this masterpiece of a single, I can tell you! Its music may be as simple as it can get, but what it makes so special to me is the absolutely untraditional way of its structure, verses merge into another, they have different lengths – plus there is Harriet’s wonderful voice. Mind you, her going “Nnn—aah!” after the instrumental break alone is all I needed in life back then! Still makes me shiver, a hundred years later!

Then, when you’ve calmed down a bit on this, at 2:30, one minute before the song is over, the drums kick in – and passion gets a new definition: one fact why this tune is simply wonderful:

 

mp3: The Sundays – Can’t Be Sure

Two albums followed the debut, and then in ’97, literally overnight, The Sundays were no more. Harriet Wheeler, in a true Syd Barrett-style, disappeared from the face of the earth and was never seen again. Family matters, that’s what was assumed at the time.

The great Blogmeister from the ever-wonderful ‘Needle Time’ recently featured The Sundays’ debut album, the post was titled ‘The Harriet Wheeler Appreciation Society’. I’m all for this, if Blogmeister is the chairman, please, at least, let me be the CEO!

Hariet Wheeler, where are you?

Enjoy and take good care,

Dirk

 

 

Dirk

PS : JC adds……

Final chance to redirect you to this recent post, featuring the June book of the month, and the opportunity to win a copy as I’m running a competition. Closing date is 30 June.  Good luck!!!!

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

WHEN THE CLOCKS STRUCK THIRTEEN (June Pt 2)

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

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

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

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

mp3: East Bay Ray – Trouble In Town

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

mp3: The Fall – Oh! Brother

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

mp3: The Brilliant Corners – Big Hip

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

mp3: Microdisney – Dolly

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

mp3: The Hit Parade – Forever

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

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

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

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

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

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

mp3: Red Guitars – Steeltown

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

mp3: Violent Femmes – Gone Daddy Gone

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

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

 

JC

Los Angeles, Wedding Present

HOLIDAY POSTCARD #3

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

JC

 

 

 

Frank Sinatra

FOUR TRACK MIND : A RANDOM SERIES OF EXTENDED PLAY SINGLES

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You Make Me Feel So Young

It Happened in Monterey

Anything Goes

How About You?

 

Fraser

Sugarcubes

ONE HUNDRED AND ELEVEN SINGLES : #098

aka The Vinyl Villain incorporating Sexy Loser

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

Dear friends,

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

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

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

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

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

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

mp3: The Sugarcubes – Birthday

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

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

Enjoy,

 

Dirk

PS : JC adds……

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

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

Super Furry Animals

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

A guest series by The Robster

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

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

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

mp3: Juxtaposed With U

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

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

mp3: Tradewinds
mp3: Happiness Is A Worn Pun

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

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

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

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

mp3: Juxtaposed With U [Walt Liquor Mystic remix]

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

 

The Robster

Eugene Kelly

SATURDAY’S SCOTTISH SONG : #457: EUGENE KELLY

Eugene Kelly.

Legend.

Here’s the bio as found on allmusic.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

mp3: Eugene Kelly – Ride The Dream Comet

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

 

JC

 

Ramones

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

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

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

mp3: Ramones – Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue

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

 

JC

Los Angeles

HOLIDAY POSTCARD #2

Dear Reader,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yours sincerely

JC

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

 

 

Cake, Dial-Ups

HOLIDAY POSTCARD #1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Leis gach deagh dhùrachd,

The Dial-Ups

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

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

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

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

mp3: Cake – Short Skirt/Long Jacket

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

JC

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

Enjoy!!!!!!!

 

 

BMX Bandits, Teenage Fanclub

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

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

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

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

Sigh.

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

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

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

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

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

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

JC

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