THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN

MAJESTIC. UNWORDLY. EPIC. HAUNTING. GOTHIC. FLAWLESS. LOVELY. AND VERY OCCASIONALLY DANCEABLE…

I’m currently ploughing my way through a really enjoyable book entitled Facing the Other Way, written by Martin Aston. It’s a really well-written account of the birth and growth of the highly respected and critically acclaimed indie label 4AD and already, about halfway through, I’ve learned a great deal about the music and the people involved in all aspects of the organisation.

I’ll get round to penning a full review in due course but for now would like to offer a few words on what I consider to be my favourite ever album to come out on 4AD.

The thing is, I’ve never really gotten into Cocteau Twins to any great depth and consider myself to be more of an admirer than a fan – and even then, if I listen to anything beyond about an hour’s worth of their music I get bored. Aside that is from Head Over Heels which I can listen to back-to-back quite happily.

This record forms a large part of the soundtrack to my carefree student days, particularly my first year living away from home. There were three of us who shared a flat and all of us, if truth be told, were music snobs. One of my flatmates was a huge fan of Cocteau Twins from the outset and tried hard to convince everyone of their merits. It wasn’t that I didn’t like them, but I didn’t quite get it. By late 1983 there had been one album and 2 EPs, all having the occasional track worth listening to but only in small doses. It certainly wasn’t music for going out to or for putting on if you wanted to continue the party. It was all a bit gloomy which was reinforced by my seeing them at Night Moves in Glasgow at a gig early on their career as support to The Fall.

At first listen, Head Over Heels didn’t seem too radical a departure. But on second and third listens, I began to hear things a wee bit differently – in particular the astonishing effects that Robin Guthrie had added to his guitar work. It was an album where a drum machine rather than a real sticksman seemed like a stroke of genius.

Before too long, this became my ‘go-to’ record when I just wanted to wind down after a hard night’s dancing and drinking. Maybe subconsciously I wanted its dream-like nature to settle me down quickly and peacefully within the land of nod…..that and the fact that a girl I was nuts about loved the record and it was a way of getting to talk to her without feeling too much of a dick.

Nothing came of my efforts to get to know said girl any better but I’m happy to say that didn’t lessen my fondness for this record. But having been drawn-in by the guitars, I was soon a convert to the vocals of Elizabeth Fraser. This is singing like nothing else on planet indie-pop. It’s just, for the most part, a series of noises and sounds and not actual words but they are the perfect match for the instrumentation. And in LP closer Musette and Drums you will find something that I consider truly special and up there among my favourite pieces of music of all time.

The thing is, Mrs Villain has never taken to Cocteau Twins – indeed it would be accurate to state that she hasn’t ever liked anything which features Ms Fraser on vocals – and so it’s a record that I had rarely played since 1990 when we first moved in together. But a few years back, just as I was approaching the age of 50, I began to compile a list of my favourite 50 LPs of all time and having included Head Over Heels on the long list I took it out of its sleeve for a spin and re-discovered it again, delighted that it remained every bit as special as I had remembered. I’ve never owned the LP on CD so the songs to accompany today’s words are from the 32-year old vinyl, scratches, jumps, bumps, hisses and all.

mp3 : Cocteau Twins – When Mama Was Moth
mp3 : Cocteau Twins – Five Ten Fiftyfold
mp3 : Cocteau Twins – Sugar Hiccup
mp3 : Cocteau Twins – The Tinderbox (of a Heart)
mp3 : Cocteau Twins – Musette and Drums

Enjoy

Futureheads

OH MY, HOW TIME FLIES

And I’m not saying that just because today is when I’m due to fly back home from Barbados….it’s actually more to do with the scary fact that I had a long overdue re-listen to the debut album by The Futureheads and couldn’t compute in my head that it was released as far back as 2004.

The sound this lot made I’ve always felt was a notch above your average indie-guitar band. They reminded me a lot of early XTC thanks to the catchiness of the songs, complete with sing-a-long choruses, particularly the debut single First Day. And there is something quite beguiling about the fact that the vocals are delivered in their local accent – that of the Mackems from Sunderland (which is totally different and distinct from that of the Geordies in Newcastle). Oh and all the songs are superbly short and sharp as well……..

The fact that they came to most people’s attention courtesy of a rather superb cover version of a Kate Bush number was a bit of a double-edged sword. It was seen by some as a bit of a novelty and it totally distracted from the fact that their own compositions were every bit as good as the cover. But it was Hounds of Love that helped take the debut album to #11 in the UK charts in March 2005, a full eight months after if first hit the shops. Here’s the four singles that were lifted from the LP:-

mp3 : The Futureheads – First Day
mp3 : The Futureheads – Decent Days And Nights (radio mix)
mp3 : The Futureheads – Meantime
mp3 : The Futureheads – Hounds Of Love (radio mix)

First Day really deserved to do a lot better than #52. I think it is a cracking bit of indie-pop. As I said above, it’s very reminiscent of early XTC.

Decent Days And Nights was actually a hit twice over, initially in 2004 and again in 2005 when it was re-released as the follow-up to the hit cover. On both occasions it reached #26. Catchy as fuck is about as succinct a way as I can put it.

Meantime sounds like Wire on speed. I can pay it no higher compliment.

As for the cover…..well I’ve always thought the best of them are when a band takes something quite unique when originally released and yet twists it into something that sounds as if they themselves have written and recorded it…..and The Futureheads more than achieve this with Hounds Of Love. I think Ms Bush would have approved.

Here’s a live acoustic version of the cover:-

mp3 : The Futureheads – Hounds Of Love (Live Radio Session)

While here’s a decent enough remix effort:-

mp3 : The Futureheads – Hounds of Love (Mystery Jet’s Pirate Invasion)

Enjoy

Justified Ancients of Mu Mu

YOU CAN DANCE, YOU CAN JIVE

I’m a few thousand miles away at the moment and so am happy to drop a wee hand grenade into the blogosphere and not worry about the consequences.

Y’see, I think a lot of you will hate today’s song one which initially came out in 1987, but for ages wasn’t widely available due to a copyright ban being slapped on it.

mp3 : The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu – The Queen and I

It samples large portions of Dancing Queen and did so without credit as indeed did just about any example of the genre in those pioneering days. The recording inevitably came to the attention of Abba‘s management and, after a legal showdown, the JAMs‘ album, which was entitled 1987, What The Fuck’s Going On? was forcibly withdrawn from sale.

Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty travelled to Sweden in what was always of course a vain hope of meeting Abba and coming to some sort of agreement to enable a release. They of course took along an NME journalist and staff photographer with them to capture everything for posterity as well as all remaining copies of the LP. They failed in their quest and so ended up disposing of the copies by burning most of them in a field and then throwing the rest overboard on the North Sea ferry trip home. Allegedly.

I managed to find the track, and the others from 1987 WTF, thanks to the purchase of a CD released in 1992 which, according to Discogs is:-

A three-track bootleg with unconvincingly redrawn JAMs logo on front. Tracks 1 & 2 constitute the original 7 songs of the vinyl-only ‘1987’ album. Track 3 is labelled as bonus tracks (by The JAMs) but this is actually a live recording of a band called Big Black performing totally different songs!

I’d like to believe that Bill and Jimmy knew exactly what was going on with that CD, although of course being fine up-standing citizens who have full respect for the law and for the ruling that there should be no copies of the album ever made available then I have to accept it was a completely unauthorised release…..which just happened to have a catalogue number of KLFCD 007.

As I said, The Queen and I is a really early example of sampling and I’m of the view that it’s as much a unique and groundbreaking work of modern art as anything that you’ll find hanging overpriced in a gallery by the likes of Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, Douglas Gordon or any other eminent contemporary artist.

But then again Bill Drummond himself isn’t all that enamoured by it.

In 1987 he had said “We made [the album] not giving a shit for soul boy snob values or any other values, we just went in and made the noise we wanted to hear and the stuff that came out of our mouths…. Not a pleasant sound but it’s the noise we had. We pressed it up and stuck it out. A celebration of sorts.”

By 1991, he was saying “We didn’t listen to 1987 What The Fuck’s Going On for a long time, and when we did we were embarrassed by it because it was so badly recorded. But I still felt we were able to get a lot out of ourselves through it.”

Enjoy!!

Style Council

THE STYLE COUNCIL SINGLES (2)

My introduction to the eagerly anticipated second single by The Style Council came via a performance on Switch, a short-lived music show on Channel 4 which was seen as the summer replacement for The Tube. This was broadcast in May 1983:-

So the rumours were true…. D.C. Lee had been recruited into the band. This was mind-blowing stuff as up to this point she had simply been a backing singer for chart pop band Wham! whom no serious muso took seriously. But as the clip demonstrated, she was going to be integral to how TSC were going to develop…and my gawd….check out the clobber being worn by Weller and Talbot.

I recorded this clip onto VHS tape and played it constantly for ages as I thought it was one of the most brilliantly conceived telly performances I’d ever seen. There was no holding me back and I rushed out and bought the 12″ version of the single on its day of release and helped it reach #11 in the charts:-

mp3 : The Style Council – Money Go Round
mp3 : The Style Council – Headstart For Happiness
mp3 : The Style Council – Mick’s Up

The 7″ single cut the main song into two parts and in doing so lost something in the process for, as the notes on the sleeve indicate, this was written as a six verse epic in which all sorts of questions are posed about society in the early 80s with Weller firmly nailing his colours to socialist principles. Oh and Zeke Manyika is again pounding the drums while the bass is courtesy of Jo Dwornial, something of a legend on that instrument in the UK jazz/soul scene of the early 80s.

The b-sides are well worth a listen.

The first track is an acoustic guitar/organ-driven jazzy love song which would later be revisited and given a full band treatment on the debut LP a year later but this original version is awfully nice.

The second track is a foot-tappin’, hand-clappin’ Mick Talbot composition that moves along at a decent enough pace. However, as time went on and more and more of these sorts of compositions began to appear on b-sides and as album tracks – but particularly when they were played live when they felt like the TSC equivalent of a five-minute drum solo – the novelty wore off. But this being the first of them made it interesting enough.

Enjoy.

Edwyn Collins

GOING UNDERGROUND

A re-post from 4 September 2008

Poems on the Underground was launched in 1986 to bring the art to a wider audience by displaying various poems or stanzas on advertising boards across the London Underground network. Read more about it here.

In early 1995, those in control decided to feature some of the lyrics of an Edwyn Collins song. The genesis of the lines that became so well-known to millions of commuters can be traced back to 1991 when not only did Edwyn’s LP Hellbent On Compromise sell in miserable numbers, but his record label wouldn’t release any singles from it on the basis that they were unlikely to get radio play.

Edwyn’s sound was about as far out of fashion as ever could be imagined. The public had seemingly turned its back on him. He was, in the words of another EC, (Elvis Costello), a man out of time.

He turned primarily to production duties, and most of us who had followed his career from way back now thought his recording days were over. Then, out of the blue, he released what subsequently became his biggest selling LP ever.

Gorgeous George crept out quietly in back in August 1994, on a small Irish label to very little fanfare, and, though many will deny it now, to near silence from the music critics employed by the papers and magazines. A couple of singles were met with just as much indifference.

But there were people out there who got it. One such individual, and I have no idea who, was the person who managed to persuade his or her colleagues to turn some of Edwyn’s lyrics into a poem. Whether they were a fan of Edwyn or not, again I have no idea. Here’s the lyric in its entirety, with the section chosen to go underground highlighted in bold:-

Don’t try so hard to be different,
The cracks are beginning to show
You drift like a cloud through the festival crowd
In a frock coat from Saville Row

You’ve just been to a all-night party
Where I have to admit it takes pluck
To go out on the floor and proclaim ‘What a bore’
In a T-shirt that reads ‘Disco Sucks’

Yes, here he comes, the not-so-young
Pretender to the throne
He’s singing ‘Rag, Momma, Rag,’
Won’t you give that poor dog a bone?

And he’s wondering why we can’t connect
When he’s sworn to us that he’s totally wrecked
On the rustic charm that he affects
On a public schoolboy whim

With a raggle taggle plastic gypsy
Robert Zimmerframe
With a synthesized accordian
A-scramblin‘ up my brain

With a fiddle-dee–dee, a fiddle on high
Excuse me folks while I kiss the sky
Or at any rate give it one more try
Before I die. Before I die

The overrated hit the stage
Overpaid and over here
And their idea of counter-culture’s
Momma’s charge account at Sears

And they’re wondering why we can’t connect
With the ritual of the trashed guitar
One more paltry empty gesture
The ashes of a burned out star

Yes here they come, both old and young
A contact low or high
The gathering of the tribes descending
Vultures from a caustic sky

The rotting carcass of July
An ugly sun hung out to dry
Your gorgeous hippy dreams are dying
Your frazzled brains are putrifying

Repackaged, sold and sanitized
The devil’s music exorcised
You live, you die, you lie, you lie, you die
Perpetuate the lie
Just to perpetuate the lie

Yes yes yes it’s the Summer Festival
The truly detestable Summer Festival

Too often this lyric has been taken as an outright attack on American musicians – and in particular grunge music, which for the previous three or four years had been so dominant.

But read it closely…..the sarcasm about grunge comes AFTER an earlier dose of the famous Collins wit had been deployed on the new age travellers who were roaming the country and causing all sorts of chaos. I’m sure it wasn’t that Edwyn hated the concept of the traditional travellers – it was more the case that he, like many others, despised the posh kids who thought it would be such wonderful fun to be a rebel for a short while…..before going off to their guaranteed job in the city with a friend of daddy….

And then at the end, with typical Collins mischief just after he’s delivered a guitar solo that raawwwwwkkkkksssss, it’s all brought together at one big open-air gathering where our Edwyn’s least favourite musicians will find their perfect audience…..

A true genius at work if you want my opinion.

mp3 : Edwyn Collins – The Campaign For Real Rock

Oh….and the picture that illustrates this posting??? That’s one of my proudest possessions.

In mid 1995, the re-released single A Girl Like You went massive the world over, and Edwyn went on tour. He played a great homecoming gig at the Pavilion Theatre in Glasgow. Among the merchandise on sale were a handful of the London Underground billboards that were printed but not used on the trains – signed by the great man himself. And given the tragic circumstances which have since then left Edwyn incapable of reproducing his pre-illnesses signature, you’ll understand why this particular artefact will always have a special place in Villain Towers.

Happy Listening.

Groove Farm

NEXT YEAR’S NOSTALGIA FEST (Part 46 of 48)

I’d never heard of The Groove Farm until I picked up CD86 and it’s actually not been all that easy tracking down the background info. My indie-bible doesn’t have a feature on them, instead referring readers to look up Beatnik Filmstar, a band which formed in 1991 featuring the singer/guitarist and lead guitarist from The Groove Farm and whose bio dismisses his former band a single sentence stating ‘they delivered a plethora of garage-type surf-pop singles from 1996 to late 1990.’

On the evidence of the track on CD86, I thought that was a tad harsh:-

mp3 : The Groove Farm – It Always Rains On Sunday

The track was one of four to be found on debut 7″ EP Sore Heads And Happy Hearts which was a cheaply recorded self-release on Raving Pop Blast. It led to their name being dropped by an increasing number of fanzine writers and in turn lumped in with the C86 movement.

A fan of the band has said elsewhere on t’internet that shambling, anorak and twee are the words most associated with 86 but that The Groove Farm live were never ‘twee’ and they never wore anoraks. They could at times shamble with the best of them but equally they could deliver fantastic and powerful pop with the honest and true spirit of punk.

They got signed by Subway Records on which there were four singles and an LP in the twelve months up to November 1988 after which things turned sour. The band hadn’t ever really been happy at the label feeling the cleaner slick production wasn’t representative of their sound and by 1989 they were back at Raving Pop Blast but after one more single and an album they called it a day.

Not only was it tough getting decent info on the band but the other tracks on the debut single proved elusive for the most part. Here’s one of them:-

mp3 : The Groove Farm – God’s Tears

While here’s an alternative take on another as featured on a flexidisc given away with issue#6 of Whoosh fanzine:-

mp3 : The Groove Farm – Heaven Is Blue

Sorry that I’ve slipped up so late on the b-side front so late on in the series…..

Blur

A LAZY STROLL DOWN MEMORY LANE : 45 45s AT 45 (35)

ORIGINALLY POSTED ON MONDAY 7 APRIL 2008

The first time I can ever recall Blur was seeing their video for early single There’s No Other Way on TV and more than anything else it was made memorable by the lead singer’s truly awful bowl-style haircut. The song was no more than a standard bit of indie-pop of its time that sounded pleasant enough on the radio and gave the kids something to shuffle around to on the dance-floor. That was early 1991.

The band then disappeared off my radar and I thought nothing more of them. Then about a year later, I picked up a 12” single of theirs in a bargain-bin for 99p. It was called Popscene and it was a radical departure away from the previous single that I had known about – it was fast and dynamic with a horn section blaring away in the background and quite unlike anything else being released at that time.

Again its hard for younger readers to imagine that music fans were once completely dependant on the likes of the NME every week or Q magazine every month to keep abreast of what was happening. All I could gleam was that Blur were trying to crack America without any degree of success, and Food Records were threatening to drop them. Then I read that their second LP had been delayed, partly because sessions with Andy Partridge hadn’t worked out.

In May 1993, they released the song that I’ve selected at #35:-

mp3 : Blur – For Tomorrow

I didn’t actually buy this single – it was a time when I had stopped buying vinyl, and wasn’t prepared to be ripped off at £3/£4 for a CD single when the album would soon be available at £10-£12. So I wasn’t someone who contributed to it reaching the giddy heights of #15.

I listened a lot to the LP Modern Life Is Rubbish, and felt sorry for Blur that the success they craved and deserved continually seemed out of reach. It was a fantastically inventive LP, not unlike so many others by XTC which was hugely ironic given the sessions with Andy Partridge had been ditched in favour of working with Stephen Street of The Smiths/Morrissey fame.

But then out of seemingly nowhere monthly glossies in particular began to take an interest in the band. The fact they were articulating an argument against grunge, which was just about everywhere at the time, struck a chord with a number of emerging young journalists looking to hitch their star to a different wagon. Thus the seeds of Britpop were sewn…

The attention given to the band became justified with the release in 1994 of the single Girls And Boys, a celebration/parody of the particularly British style of hedonism known as an Club 18-30 Holiday which gave the band a Top 5 success and further platforms to slag off the influence of America on British music. Other singers and bands started doing the same – and if you want a perfect example, just check out the song The Campaign For Real Rock by Edwyn Collins – one of his finest ever recordings, and one whose lyrics became part of a series called Poems On The Underground (one of my most treasured possessions is one of the posters from the underground signed by Edwyn…tune in next Monday for more on this!!).

Blur released the LP Parklife in 1994 and went mega. Then they went head-to-head with Oasis for supremacy, and while the single Country House won the initial battle, The LP The Great Escape lost them the war.

The band went off and re-invented themselves yet again. Comeback single Beetlebum struck a chord with many, although I always found it a bit too-Beatlesque to be wholly enjoyable. Then came ‘Whoo-Hooooo. When I Feel Heavy Metal…’

Song 2 is something I will never tire of, and would probably have been the single of choice from Blur, except for one small fact.

Back in May 1994, just before Girls and Boys/Parklife took the band to new heights, myself and Mrs Villain went to see Blur at a now demolished venue called the Plaza in Glasgow. It was an old-fashioned dance hall, and not widely used by touring acts. It was one of those magical gigs where the band hit a high on the first song of the night and never let the momentum drop. The highlight however was For Tomorrow which everyone was now beginning to realise should have been a classic that hung around the charts for months, only we were all too busy either shoe-gazing or listening to Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden.

It was a genuine hairs on the back of the neck moment….and that’s why For Tomorrow got the nod over Song 2.

The irony of Somg 2 is that it became huge in the States thanks in part to its adoption by so many sports franchises as music to accompany clips played on large screens in baseball, basketball, ice hockey and American football stadia. It was maybe as well that no-one dug too deep to find the anti-American sentiments that were being expressed just a few years earlier…

Blur haven’t officially broken up. Damon has enjoyed great success with his spin-off bands, Graham has become a bit of a cult act with his solo LPs, Alex has written a book, and Dave…..well he seems to be enjoying himself in his own techie-driven world.

We might yet see another album from them in due course. Or maybe not.*

* that was a real sitting-on the fence prediction back in 2008 wasn’t it?????

Primal Scream

MY FAVOURITE PRIMAL SCREAM MOMENT

While I do enjoy some of the upbeat stuff if I told I was only allowed to keep one piece of music by Primal Scream then it would be this-

mp3 : Primal Scream – Star

And I haven’t chosen it simply for its political message, powerful though it is. Oh and I should mention that this lyric and the sentiments would have received a big thumbs-up from Bobby Gillespie‘s father – who was a hugely respected trade union official here in Glasgow back in the days when that was a position that really meant something.

Actually, the lyric does have one huge glaring error that was remarked upon widely at the time. Tributes are paid to the ‘late’ Rosa Parks, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King…..but Rosa Parks was very much alive when the single was released in June 1997.

Nope, my sole reason for loving this above any other Primal Scream song single is down to its laidback and gorgeous tune. Surely no-one can fail to be moved by the wonderful playing of the mellotron by the late Augustus Pablo and the subtle and understated use of the horn section. Bloody marvellous.

It the second single to be lifted from the LP Vanishing Point and it climbed to a very respectable #16 in the UK charts. And here’s the other tracks that appeared on the CD single.

mp3 : Primal Scream – Jesus
mp3 : Primal Scream – Rebel Dub
mp3 : Primal Scream – How Does It Feel To Belong

As you can imagine, I’m quite fond of the Rebel Dub version of the single……

Incidentally, the cover is a photo taken of Bobby Hutton outside Oakland Police Department on 23 May 1967. Within 12 months he would be dead, before his 18th birthday, after an ‘altercation’ with said police department.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Hutton

Julian Cope

AN IMAGINARY COMPILATION ALBUM : #53 : JULIAN COPE

Another guest posting from Strictly Rockers…..

You’ll recall that a few weeks back, Strictly Rockers threw in his ICA for Julian Cope and in doing so said:-

I gave myself constraints naively thinking that restrictions might make the task easier! I first tried ‘Cope Remixed’, ‘Cope Live’, ‘Cope Covers’ and ‘Covered’ before settling on the collection you see below. Ok, I know it’s not perfect, but it’ll do for now. If anyone is interested in hearing any of these alternate comps, let me or JC know!

A number of you said you fancied that, so I’m again handing the blog over to the capable fingers of SR.

Cope Covers : An Imaginary Album

Cope’s evangelical enthusiasm for spreading musical knowledge is well known. His ‘Fire Escape In The Sky’ compilation championed the then largely-forgotten Scott Walker back in 1981 and his writing in the Krautrock and Japrock samplers, Unsung online column and Copendium have brought hundreds of bands to the attention of a new audience. These covers give a good indication just where his musical head was throughout his career.

1) 5 O’Clock World / I Know A Place (Single, 1988)

Kicking off with a two-fer. Not content to merely do a tight cover of The Vogue’s ‘5 O’Clock World’, Cope and his ‘two-car garage band’ add a burst of Petula Clark‘s ‘I Know A Place’ for the middle eight. One of the few bright spots from the much-maligned ‘My Nation Underground’ LP.

2) I Have Always Been Here Before (Fear Loves This Place 12” B-Side, 1992)

3) I’ve Got Levitation (WSYM 12” B-Side, 1986)

Two products of Cope’s 13th Floor Elevators fixation. Making them his own by a judicious adaptation of the original lyrics.

4) Mother, Where Is My Father? (Preaching Revolution 7” EP, 2008)

Cover of a 1968 David Peel & The Lower East Side single by Cope with Black Sheep, a loose collective formed for the ‘Joe Strummer Memorial Busking Tour’. A 3-day busking tour of UK cultural centres.

5) Don’t Jump Me, Mother (Try Try Try B-Side, 1995)

Cover of an obscure 1978 single by DMZ.

6) Non-Alignment Pact (WSYM 12” B-Side, 1986)

Triumphant cover of the Pere Ubu classic. A live favourite from the ‘Saint Julian’ years

7) A Question Of Temperature (Charlotte Anne 12” B-Side, 1988)

Brilliant cover of a 1968 Balloon Farm 7”.

8) Soul Medley: 1991 BBC Session (Floored Genius 2, 1993)

– Free Your Mind And Your Ass Will Follow (Funkadelic)
– Everything Playing At Once (Cope)
– Are You Hung Up? (Mothers Of Invention)
– Hung Up And Hanging Out To Dry (Cope)

Recorded for a John Peel session in 1991 around the time of ‘Peggy Suicide’.

Both Cope’s mind & ass very much free and erm… hanging out.

9) Satisfaction 1978 demo (Floored Genius 3, 2000)

Early demo from a pre-Teardrop Cope along with future Bunnyman Will Sergeant & Wild Swan Paul Simpson channelling Devo rather than the Stones original.

10) Rock Section (12″ Single, 2014)

This cover of a Skin Patrol song was an elaborate Cope construct (as Dayglo Maradona) to promote the alternative reality of his ‘131’ novel.

mp3 : Julian Cope – 5 O’Clock World/I Know A Place
mp3 : Julian Cope – I Have Always Been Here Before
mp3 : Julian Cope – I’ve Got Levitation
mp3 : Julian Cope – Mother, Where Is My Father?
mp3 : Julian Cope – Don’t Jump Me Mother
mp3 : Julian Cope – Non-Alignment Pact
mp3 : Julian Cope – A Question of Temperature
mp3 : Julian Cope – Soul Medley
mp3 : Julian Cope – Satisfaction
mp3 : Dayglo Maradona – Rock Section

Cope Remixed : An Imaginary Album

‘Remix engineers? I shit ’em’. Cope has a uneasy relationship with the remix. Distancing himself from extended or alternate versions as an necessary evil of the major-label life throughout the 80’s, he found the results variously disappointing or unnecessary, however, with planets aligned and minds met, the results are genius.

1) Pussyface (Remix), 1984

A song originally included on the third Teardrop Explodes album as ‘Sex’, Cope was unhappy with the result and re-recorded it for his debut solo album.

This version was the B-Side of the ‘Greatness & Perfection’ single ‘Re-mixed for Muffing The Mule’ by producer Steven Lovell.

2 Julian Cope vs Trouble Funk World Shut Your Mouth (Trouble Funk Mix), 1986

Cope’s “loser’s anthem”. After a pedestrian start it takes an unexpected turn in the second half.

3) Trampolene Warne Out! (Long Version), 1987

Long-form single remixed from the Saint Julian album by Warne Livesey who also worked with The The on Infected

4) Eve’s Volcano – !Vulcano Lungo! (Covered In Sin), 1987

Remixed by Tom ‘Lord’ Alge fresh from his work with OMD(!), Peter Gabriel(!!) &… Billy Idol(!!!)

5) Love (L.U.V.) (Beautiful Love Remix)

6) Easty Risin’ (East Easy Rider Remix)

7) Heed: Of Penetration & The City Dweller (Head Remix) (all 1991)

A trio of Peggy Suicide singles remixed by former Bocca Junior Hugo ‘Hugoth’ Nicholson originally on pastel-coloured vinyl (pink, yellow & blue) in sealed boxes that fell apart on removing the vinyl – later compiled on the Dancing Heads CD and the deluxe version of Peggy Suicide.

8) Soldier Blue Hiphoprisy Mix#1 (Unreleased)

An inspired, unreleased Michael Franti mix of proposed fourth Peggy Suicide single. Born of a shared record label (Island) and a love of Lenny Bruce.

9) Paranormal In The Westcountry (Krankenhausmusik Mix), 1994

One of four remixes on a special fan club only 4-track EP.

10) Planetary Sit‐In (Being a Radio Sit‐In Remix), 1996

Fully embracing the multi-format culture Cope released two singles, ‘I Come From Another Planet, Baby’ & ‘Planetary Sit-In’ from the LP Interpreter. Both on 2xCD – the first being (fairly) conventional 4 track Eps, but the second featuring hyper-extended version of the singles. ‘…Another Planet’ is stretched to an incredible 38 minute ‘Ambulance’ version with the song washing in and out of consciousness. ‘Planetary Sit-In’ here, is a mere 20 minutes and takes the form of a bizarre radio show featuring Cope’s wife Dorian, Mark Radcliffe, Bill Bailey and Cope cohorts Thighpaulsandra and Mike Joyce offering ‘banter’, invocations, ‘ethical consumer news’ and a phone in. You will only want to listen to this once. Enjoy!

Cope Remixed: Bonus EP (on hand-numbered coloured vinyl!)

A-Side) Rock Section (Andrew Weatherall Mix) Dayglo Maradona, 2014

A cover of a Skin Patrol song. Mixed by Cope (as Dayglo Maradona). Remixed by Weatherall. Limited remix on white vinyl 12″ released by Faber & Faber as the soundtrack to Cope’s 131 novel. Blinding.

B-Side) (I Am The) Trampolene (To The Other Side) GHP, 2011

The Verve, The Drude & The Doors Meet The Walrus Uptown. Courtesy of the always excellent Go Home Productions (Visit: gohomeproductions.co.uk for more goodies).

mp3 : Julian Cope – Pussyface (remix)
mp3 : Julian Cope vs Trouble Funk – World Shut Your Mouth (Trouble Funk Mix)
mp3 : Julian Cope – Trampolene (Warne Out Mix)
mp3 : Julian Cope – Eve’s Volcano – !Vulcano Lungo! (Covered In Sin)
mp3 : Julian Cope – Love (L.U.V.) (Beautiful Love Remix)
mp3 : Julian Cope – Easty Risin’ (East Easy Rider Remix)
mp3 : Julian Cope – Heed: Of Penetration & The City Dweller (Head Remix)
mp3 : Julian Cope – Soldier Blue Hiphoprisy Mix#1
mp3 : Julian Cope – Paranormal In The Westcountry (Krankenhausmusik Mix)
mp3 : Julian Cope – Planetary Sit‐In (Being a Radio Sit‐In Remix)

mp3 : Dayglo Maradona – Rock Section (Weatherall Mix)
mp3 : Go Home Productions – (I Am The) Trampolene (To The Other Side)

…strictly rockers….

Style Council

THE STYLE COUNCIL SINGLES (1)

I did think long and hard about how best to follow-up The Jam singles series and indeed had a couple of conversations with Jacques the Kipper and Aldo in which I floated a few potential ideas at them. I won’t say anything more as it is likely I will return to those ideas sometime in the medium or long-term.

But in the end it seemed right to go straight into the singular adventures of The Style Council especially, as I mentioned in a previous post, there were just 105 days separating the release of Beat Surrender and the debut single from the new group formed by Paul Weller.

As I have previpusly confessed, I quickly got over the break up of The Jam. My mindset was to accept that TSC were not in way, shape or form a re-incarnation of the old band and to give the music a chance. The debut still remains a wonderfully, joyous and memorable piece of pop music:-

mp3 : The Style Council – Speak Like A Child

This was a commonly held view and it went to #4 in the UK charts upon its release in March 1983, fully vindicating the Modfather’s decision to move on. Interesting to note that the drummer on the debut single was none other than Zeke Manyika who was of course at the time part of Orange Juice…another reason to enjoy the new song.

The b-side wasn’t as instantly likeable as the a-side but what it did show was that this new combo was as much about featuring the keyboard skills of Mick Talbot as it was a vehicle for Weller’s developing skills as a songwriter as he moved away altogether from angry anthems of disaffected youth.

mp3 : The Style Council – Party Chambers

Worth mentioning also that the single was only released on 7″ vinyl.

Enjoy

Jam

AN IMAGINARY COMPILATION ALBUM : #52 : THE JAM

So having got all the singles out-of-the-way, I thought I’d be completely self-indulgent and try to pull together a decent ICA without any of the songs that ever appeared on the 45s – and that includes those which were featured live versions on bonus discs. Despite the fact that well over 40 songs were ruled out from the outset, it still proved a challenge to settle on these particular two sides of vinyl.

Side A

1. Art School (from In The City)

Time hasn’t been all that kind to the first two LPs which is why the opening track of their debut is the only one to make the cut. This was seen as a potential single by Polydor Records with a promo video (of sorts) being filmed on the same day as In The City. Most bands would have gone for a second single to boost the sales of the debut album but given that Paul Weller was writing songs at a prestigious rate at the time, and that he was desperate to get the new material out as quickly as possible, then any thoughts of Art School being a 45 were shelved. It’s a more than decently energetic tune, with a lyric that basically said punk/new wave was the modern-day equivalent of art schools where you could dare to be different and challenge the traditional ways of thinking. These were also of course the type of establishments where so many well-respected British musicians of the 60s and early 70s had started out….

2. Thick As Thieves (from Setting Sons)

It is astonishing to look back and realise that Weller was barely 21 years of age when he wrote the songs that made up Setting Sons, the band’s fourth and most ambitious album. There’s no doubt that in his head he wanted to pull together a concept album telling the story of three childhood friends whose lives don’t go the way of their youngdreams with everything changing after them fighting but surviving a war. The concept wasn’t fully realised, possibly being down to him deciding it was an ‘unpunk’ thing to do or perhaps it became just too big a challenge in too short a timescale. It’s a real pity and begs the thought ‘if only….’ for the foundations that were laid down, as exemplified by Thick As Thieves, make you think that the result could well have been a record forever feted to be near the top of the all-time classic lists.

3. Billy Hunt (from All Mod Cons)

Another great anthemic Jam song that many had marked out as a potential 45.

Billy Hunt is actually a pitiful figure of disaffected youth when you analyse it. He hates the idea that he is always getting picked on by everyone, unafirly in his mind, and he dreams of somehow inheriting the powers of fictional film and TV characters and taking his revenge after which he’ll happily head down to a pub that has strip shows for entertainment. He’s not exactly answering the call to arms that so many punk bands were making at the time.

Incidentally, I always thought that the character Ziggy Sobotka from Series 2 of The Wire is a 21st Century Billy Hunt….

4. Little Boy Soldiers (from Setting Sons)

A song like no other in the history of the band and perhaps the new wave era’s equivalent of Bohemian Rhapsody – or at least that’s how I initially felt when listening to this as a 16-year old back in 1979. It was earnest and it was thought-provoking stuff but above else it was unsettling, thanks in part to its constant changes in pace and rhythm but also as a result of the doom and gloom nature of the lyric.

OK, I was sure that I was going to leave school, head off to university and find myself some sort of job linked to whatever qualifications I manged to get but I knew quite a few folk who were hell-bent on joining the armed forces and seeing what happened from there….none of them of course even remotely considered that in doing so they were putting their young lives at risk. I wanted so much to give every one of them a cassette with this song on and ask them to have a serious think about things….

5. Boy About Town (from Sound Affects)

It doesn’t do well to dwell for too long on the implications of Little Boy Soldiers otherwise you’ll end up depressed, miserable and worried about where the world is heading, so it’s important to bounce back with a great bit of pop music that puts a a smile on your face and makes you leap off the settee/chair/bean bag and flip your 12” piece of vinyl with its classic red Polydor label over to the other side for another fifteen or so minutes of class.

Side B

1. Happy Together (from The Gift)

Let’s get this party pumping. This is one where Bruce Foxton and Rick Buckler really come into their own, driving the song along at a tremendous pace and in the bass players’s instance adding an essential backing vocal. The ending where Paul Weller chants out NOW!!!!!!! Is one of my favourite moments on any Jam song – single, b-side or album track.

2. Saturday’s Kids (from Setting Sons)

And let’s keep things moving along apace with this paean to growing up in a working-class household.

At 16, I had no idea what the line ‘stains on the seats – in the back of course’ was all about. Nor did I know who smoked Capstan Non-Filters (Embassy Regal? yup….that was my dad’s choice of habit) and for Selsey Bill and Bracklesam Bay you would have had to substitute places a little nearer home or insert Blackpool which around half of Glasgow seemed to migrate to in the last two weeks in July back in the mid-70s. Otherwise it was a song that resonated with me and even now I can recite every single word of the lyric. But I do accept that, with its descriptions of things that aren’t part of modern society then it’s a lyric very much of its time and so probably won’t resonate much with today’s kids….except perhaps the bit about hating the system. Some things just never change.

3. To Be Someone (Didn’t We Have a Nice Time) (from All Mod Cons)

It will seem strange hearing this out of context with it not being preceded by the title track of All Mod Cons.

As a teenager, there’s just no possibility in your own mind of there being any downside to being famous and rich from getting paid wads of money for doing something you loved like football or music. And yet, here’s someone who I’m looking on as a bit of a role model (despite the fact he’s only 5 years older than me – although at 14/15 that is such a huge age difference) warning me off. All these years later, and the growth of celebrity and its associated frenzied media feeding makes me glad that I’ve got myself through life without ever reaching the giddy heights of being a someone – I’d never ever want to get as angry or as pissed off with my lot as Mr Weller was in 1978.

4. Man In The Corner Shop (from Sound Affects)

There’s something intrinsically sad about this mid-paced number which I’ve always thought is a hidden gem of a song.

I’ve never thought its central message was that everyone is born equal; nor do I think Paul Weller thinks that to be the case and so his tongue is very much in his cheek when he sings those particular lines. The sadness come from the fact that neither of the factory worker or shop owner are happy with their lot and both believe the grass on the other side is a much more favourable shade of green. Even sadder isturning your thoughts to what was likely to have happened to the protagonists in real life over the subsequent 2-3 years….a factory closure and redundancy for the blue-collar worker and the end of the family business for the shop owner as the supermarkets take over? Most likely…..and and as for the factory owner….well, he was never really ever any better off than the other two….maybe just a little bit richer in financial terms. In other words, the central message of Man In The Corner Shop is really quite simple……………………….

Life Sucks.

5. The Gift (from The Gift)

Just as Art School as the opening song on Side A of the first album served the purpose of announcing the arrival of a new and exciting band, so the final song on Side B of the final album serves the purpose of providing us with a very fine sign-off.

Go and shout it from your roof mountain top – The Jam were a fucking ace combo and one of the greatest things to happen to music in my generation.

mp3 : The Jam – Art School
mp3 : The Jam – Thick As Thieves
mp3 : The Jam – Billy Hunt
mp3 : The Jam – Little Boy Soldiers
mp3 : The Jam – Boy About Town
mp3 : The Jam – Happy Together
mp3 : The Jam – Saturday’s Kids
mp3 : The Jam – To Be Somone (Didn’t We Have A Nice Time)
mp3 : The Jam – Man In The Corner Shop
mp3 : The Jam – The Gift

That’s the last of The Jam for the time being……

We've Got A Fuzzbox...And We're Gonna Use It

ANOTHER C86 MOB WHO MOVED AWAY AND GOT HITS

The most recent two bands featured in the ongoing CD86 series – Pop Will Eat Itself and The Soup Dragons – enjoyed real chart success after moving away from the raw guitar sounds that had initially got them attention. As too did We’ve Got A Fuzzbox…And We’re Gonna Use It!!, a band I am very surprised were not included on said CD.

They were a four-piece all-female outfit from Birmingham and it was a label from their home city – Vindaloo Records – which signed them up at a time when two of the band were 17, one was 16 and the other was the ripe old age of 20.

Debut EP Fuzzbox almost provided them with instant chart success hitting the #41 spot shortly after its release in March 1986. The mix of distorted guitars, frantic loud drumming and tribal-style chanting got them a fair bit of attention as did their manifesto of ‘girl power’ a full decade before such a phrase became synonymous with The Spice Girls.

Six months later, follow-up single Love Is The Slug went ten places higher than the debut and the girls were snapped up by WEA. They spent a bit of time out of the limelight polishing up their act and removing the rough edges – the sort of things that had in fact made them so appealing in the first place. Come 1989, they were known simply as Fuzzbox, had a whole new sexed-up look and a sound that was pure pop based on female harmonies. They were, looking back on it, a prototype for the likes of Girls Aloud and other fully manufactured girl groups of the past 20 years or so.

This move into pure pop stunned a lot of folk who had championed the band in the initial indie days – they had for instance recorded two Peel Sessions and their earliest best known song, Rules and Regulations, was voted in at #31 in the Festive Fifty of 1986.

The changes worked and there were three Top 20 singles and a Top 5 album but then there was a bit of a bombshell dropped when lead singer Vicky Perks decided she wanted to go solo. The remaining three members – Jo Dunne, Mags Dunne and Tina O’Neill – quit the music industry altogether. Vicky’s solo career never took off and soon they were all mere footnotes in pop history…until many years later when, like so many others, the idea of reforming and cashing in on the ever increasing nostalgia circuit of retro-festivals, proved too much to resist.

So, in early 2010 the band, with the exception of Tina, got back together and with the addition of Sarah Firebrand on bass and Karen Milne on drums, became a five-piece for touring duties before again calling it a day in the summer of 2011.

Just over a year later, Jo Dunne died from cancer a month short of her 43rd birthday.

Earlier this year, Vicky Perks and Mags Dunne announced the second reformation of Fuzzbox with three new members in the shape of Megan Burke, Sarit Black and Hannah Layhe on guitar, bass and drums respectively. There will be some who welcome it but I fear most will be indifferent.

The only thing I have in the collection is the debut EP which was released in a variety of sleeves – mine looks like the photo at the top of this posting. There’s four crackingly energetic songs all in, only one of which is longer than two minutes:-

mp3 : We’ve Got A Fuzzbox…And We’re Gonna Use It – X X Sex
mp3 : We’ve Got A Fuzzbox…And We’re Gonna Use It – Do I Want To?
mp3 : We’ve Got A Fuzzbox…And We’re Gonna Use It – Rules and Regulations
mp3 : We’ve Got A Fuzzbox…And We’re Gonna Use It – She

It’s a real shame they never ever came close to matching it.

Enjoy

PS : thanks to Jacques for correcting the dreadful error in the original post. See what happens when you don’t proof read……

Soup Dragons

NEXT YEAR’S NOSTALGIA FEST (Part 45 of 48)

Just as last week’s lot (Pop Will Eat Itself) did a great job in reinventing themselves, so too did The Soup Dragons.

Named after a character from a weird and wacky children’s animation show that was hugely popular in the UK in the 1970s, the band formed in Bellshill which is a former mining town some 15 miles south-east of Glasgow. The fact that such a small place – its population is a smite over 20,000 – also gave birth to Teenage Fanclub and BMX Bandits gives credence to those who claim that it is the epicentre of Scottish indie pop.

The original four members were Sean Dickson (vocals, lead guitar), Jim McCulloch (guitar, second voice), Sushil Dade (bass) and Ross Sinclair (drums) and after no more than a handful of gigs and a demo tape their blend of loud guitars and pop riffs landed them a deal with The Subway Organisation in 1986. Their debut EP, The Sun Is In The Sky, was the second ever release on the label and is quite hard to track down nowadays unlike the follow-up Whole Wide World which sold in really decent enough numbers for an independent label and was re-pressed on a number of occasions. It is that single which appears on CD 86:-

mp3 : The Soup Dragons – Whole Wide World

They were enticed over to the RAW TV label on which there were four more terrifically catchy indie-pop singles…I’m a particular fan of 1987 release Hang-Ten….with which they caught the attention of Seymour Stein and his crew at Sire Records for who they recorded debut album This Is Our Art in 1987.

However, after just one more single they found themselves back at Raw TV which by now was aligned with Big Life, a label which had aims and aspirations towards the big-time. By now, Ross Sinclair had left the band and there was a significant shift into the indie-dance sound that was becoming all the rage – the Soup Dragons new sound fitted right into Madchester and it was no surprise that come 1990, their take on I’m Free, a relatively unknown album track by the Rolling Stones, hit the Top 5 thanks in part to a guest vocal from label mate Junior Reid who had previously come to prominence as lead singer with the reggae band Black Uhuru.

They maintained that sort of sound for the remainder of their career before disbanding in 1995. They also enjoyed a major hit with Divine Thing in the US in 1992 although it was a relative flop here at home.

I always felt The Soup Dragons had it in them to be pop stars and in all truth they should have enjoyed better commercial success with the earlier singles before they made they hitched themselves to the baggy bandwagon. They were good fun when they started out and they still seemed to be enjoying themselves when they broke up ten years on.

Here’s the b-sides to the 12″ version of the single on CD86:-

mp3 : The Soup Dragons – Pleasantly Surprised
mp3 : The Soup Dragons – I Know Everything

Just three more bands to feature before I unveil the fresh idea for a new regular series for 2016!!

Enjoy

Maximo Park

A LAZY STROLL DOWN MEMORY LANE : 45 45s AT 45 (36)

ORIGINALLY POSTED ON FRIDAY 4 APRIL 2008

I place a huge value on the ability of a singer/band to cut the mustard in a live context. It’s often the thought of going to see a forthcoming live performance that makes me go out and buy a new CD so that I’m familiar with the stuff. And almost just as often, if I catch a band live who I think have that something different or special, or indeed just seem to be working hard at their craft, I’ll buy a CD. What I’ve often found is that the CD doesn’t match the intensity of the live performance and it will soon be given a place on the shelf to gather dust….but that’s the risk of buying on one listen….

One of the best live acts I’ve seen in recent times is Maximo Park.

I first came across them courtesy of MTV2, and in particular on the shows hosted by Zane Lowe. I loved the early singles and indeed all of their debut LP, A Certain Trigger. And I made a point of buying a ticket for the next show in Glasgow which was due to take place at the QM Union, a student-venue. Such was the demand for tickets that the gig was switched to Barrowlands, which must have a bit daunting for the band. If they were nervous or had any trepidation, it didn’t show for it was a blinding gig.

And if I wanted proof that it wasn’t a one-off, then it came a few months later when they were part of an NME tour. As the biggest band of the four in terms of chart success, it was obvious they should be the headlining act – problem was that #2 on the bill were Arctic Monkeys, the most-talked about and anticipated act to come out of the UK since the days of Oasis. Most ticket-holders were there for the support, not the headliners. It would have been easy for Maximo Park to take the money and go through the motions – but they really upped the ante and showed that while Arctic Monkeys were exceptionally good on stage, they still had a lot to learn in terms of putting on a show.

Since then, I’ve fallen out of and back in love with Maximo Park. A third gig was a let-down as I felt the band, and in particular lead singer Paul Smith was now on the wrong-side of showing-off rather than entertaining. Nevertheless, the second LP, Our Earthly Pleasures, was purchased and I soon discovered it was an just as good a collection of songs as the debut. I was then really lucky to catch the band at a tiny venue in Toronto last summer (2007) and it was just like seeing them first time around again. It was a truly stunning, adrenalin-driven and energetic performance to a half-hearted audience largely unfamiliar with the band’s songs.

Outwith their own self-financed single, Maximo Park have released a total of eight 45rpm efforts, four from each of the two albums. All of them have been toe-tappingly catchy. In many ways, the first one I ever heard, Apply Some Pressure, could at times be the favourite. But in the end, in much the same way as Bedsitter by Soft Cell is my favourite of that particular beat combo, it all comes down to an equally strong second hit single that proves that they’re not a flash in the pan:-

mp3 : Maximo Park – Graffiti
mp3 : Maximo Park – Trial And Error
mp3 : Maximo Park – Stray Talk
mp3 : Maximo Park – Hammer Horror

You’re getting all these tracks because sometimes I fall for the marketing ploys and buy CD1, CD2 and the 7” vinyl….

It was a #15 hit in May 2005.

Miscellaneous

AN IMAGINARY COMPILATION (of sorts)….FOR THE WIFE

A guest contribution from Tim Badger

An Imaginary Compilation (Of Sorts) for the wife

This was supposed to be the B side to S-WC’s recent Imaginary Compilation on Carter USM. The journey home from Rochdale by the way was uneventful – nothing happened, there was no traffic jams, no arguments, no awful drinks stops at criminally unhygienic service stations. Nothing. It is kind of hard to write about how strangely normal it was.

The iPod on the way home gave us some fine tunes. The 11th track was ‘Kilamangiro’ by Babyshambles. This was an excellent choice, I am a massive Libertines/Doherty/Babyshambles fan – although to be honest I can take or leave his solo album. It was a close run thing as well as the 10th track was Elvis Costello.

mp3 : Babyshambles – Kilamangiro

So the next day when I got home I started to compile the Babyshambles album, I got to the end of the first side and then left it for a couple of days for the S-WC to add the tunes he wanted to it. He had until the weekend to decide whether he want ‘French Dog Blues’ or ‘Unbilotitled’ at the end. He will choose the latter and we both knew it but I humoured him.

It is now Saturday November 14th – the morning after Paris had woken up to the night before. Saturdays are usually a bit hectic in the Badger household. This morning is a but subdued as the shock settles in – normally I would go and do a run (Hi ‘Park Run Exeter’ if you are reading) and the wife does her thing. My wife is really into cycling – she runs an online cycle shop, maintains a cycle website and organises rides for keen enthusiasts. Today as it happens is the day of the Annual Dartmoor Bike Challenge. A bunch of them up on Dartmoor cycling between the western point to the easterly point, or something. It’s a long way.

mp3 : Mansun – Wide Open Space

I decide to meet S-WC in our favourite watering hole for a lunch time pint which would turn into three, after that my plan would be to fall asleep whilst watching repeats of The Big Bang Theory.

I’ll let you into a secret, S-WC and I are thinking of relaunching our blog, and we spend some time discussing this over a pint in the pub. We’ve had an idea called ‘One Song A Day’ – we are thinking of posting one song a day for a year (starting January 1st). There would be very few words on the blog, just a song chosen at random. Its work in progress I suppose and by progress I mean I’ve written down the words ‘One Song A Day’.

We are halfway into our second pint of Otter and are putting the finishing touches to the Babyshambles compilation at the end of side two – and I Told You!!!!!

mp3 : Babyshambles – Unbilotitled

We look at the compilation and then look at the television as news reports continue to show the disruption and chaos over in France and what we’ve done seems a little mundane and a little average and however hard we try it seems impossible to write about music right now.

Then my phone rings. It is George. George is a lady who helps my wife with the cycling stuff. She is crying. Shit. In fact double shit.

Man I hate hospitals. On reflection, that’s a silly thing to say. No one likes hospitals; they are full of sick people and illness. I’ve narrowly avoided three trolleys, two blokes walking round dragging a drip to their arms and a child carrying a huge ‘Get Well Soon’ balloon as I rushed from the car park to the ward (thanks S-WC for the high speed dash across town…).

mp3 : The Prodigy – Take Me to the Hospital

I see George and she rushes up to me and immediately starts crying and hugging me at the same time. On the phone earlier, George told me the story of what had happened. I’ll quote her directly here.

“It was the pony, I mean she saw the pony. She didn’t see the Landrover who was also avoiding the stupid fucking pony. It hit her full on and sent her and her bike flying over the hedge. Then the fucker drove off”. I kind of fell in love with George a bit at that point, she is 50 something church going spinster who I have never heard swear before. It dulled the shock. Guys, we got the blokes number plate, its alright. I’ll have him killed by the end of the month (for the benefit of the tapes and the Government – I won’t really).

mp3 : Swearin’ – Parts of Speech

Now, this being Dartmoor, the hedge was part wild thorny bush and part stone cob wall. She landed the other side of it, on her right leg and the bike came crashing down on top of her.

I braced myself as the doctor came over. He shakes my hand, never a good sign I find. He says some words which kind of go over my head. I hear ‘Unconscious’, I hear ‘Blood’ and I hear the word ‘Pelvis’. The rest sound like white noise. Ultimately she had a broken right leg and a fractured pelvis. Folks, I don’t know if any of you cycle, and I also don’t if any of you are stupid enough not to use one, but her cycle helmet almost certainly saved her from more serious injuries. I walked in the room.

The first thing that struck me was the blood.

mp3 : The Dears – Blood

I’m not squeamish at all but when it’s your nearest and dearest it’s horrific. I probably don’t need to tell you that. She is awake and obviously in a lot of pain. She has a bruise the size of Brighton on her right hand side and she can’t really move at the moment. But she is smiling. I realise that she is going to be ok when she asks me if “I’d taken the wood to the recycling centre”. No is the answer, but folks, I said yes.

mp3 : Passion Pit – I’ll Be Alright

The doctors, nurses, specialists, X Ray teams, the whole lot of them were fantastic, every single one of them is a credit to the our wonderful NHS, and whilst I shouldn’t get political on your asses, that is why, in England at least, you should all support the Junior Doctor Strikes. It’s also why we should lobby the government to remove that cretin Hunt from his position. Sorry. I’ve put the soap box away now.

The last week and a half have been pretty hard work, the wife needs constant looking after and help to get around, she didn’t want to sit in hospital – she wanted to come home. It was I think the Wednesday when I was sitting in the bedroom as she slept trying to write something about Babyshambles that I stumbled across this idea. I obviously need to make it ten songs, so the next three are for the wife. She does read this blog and I imagine that I should probably just tell her to her face, but she is everything to me, I adore her and am just so happy that she is ok.

The first two are songs that I know she loves by bands that she loves, the last one is from me to her. Thanks for reading this – if you have got this far – I apologise if I have gushed, or been soppy.

mp3 : The Horrors – Sea within A Sea
mp3 : Perfume Genius – Queen
mp3 : Caribou – Can’t Do Without You

Oh and this one is from S-WC……

mp3 : Hop Along – Waitress

Thanks for reading

TIM BADGER

JC adds…….

I’ve been in touch with Tim and I’m pleased to pass on the news that Mrs B is doing well and getting over what must have been an horrific experience. Some of the songs within his own selection are personal faves of Mrs B and she seemingly does read this blog on occasion.

So here’ s to your continued speedy recovery….with some music to hopefully make you smile.

mp3 : Elvis Costello & The Attractions – Battered Old Bird

PS : I’m off on a 12-day holiday from tomorrow morning with Mrs Villain (Barbados since you ask…) but have cobbled together a few what I hope are reasonably entertaining postings in advance to keep things ticking over till I get back (including the ICA originally scheduled for today but shunted back to the middle of next week). However, I’ll be unable to respond to any e-mails probably won’t drop in to respond to any comments you might leave in the interim.

Prefab Sprout

AN IMAGINARY COMPILATION ALBUM : #51 : PREFAB SPROUT

I’ve given this a fair bit of thought, but in the end come to the conclusion that Side A of my Prefab Sprout Imaginary Compilation album has to be identical to Side A of the band’s sophomore album released in June 1985. In the UK and most other places the album was called Steve McQueen but in the USA it went by the name of Two Wheels Good thanks to a dispute with the estate of the late American Actor.

If pushed, I’d probably say that Side A of that album is my favourite half-record of all time. That may sound like a strange thing to say – and it’s not that the songs on the b-side don’t do anything for me – but I just feel that we were provided with six timeless works of art, sequenced in the perfect running order, and which are among the best bits of music that the band, and/or Paddy McAloon in his solo guise, ever released.

What this does of course is turn this particular Imaginary LP into a 12-track effort as its B-side has to offer a proper balance. But what to go for? After all there are other songs on the flip side of Steve McQueen that are more than worthy; likewise just about everything on debut album Swoon 1983 and there’s quite a few tremendous songs on each of the four albums released between 1988 and 1997 – I haven’t bought any of the releases since then so can’t offer any observations about them, although just about everyone else I know who are fans of the band have raved about 2013 LP Crimson/Red, But for what it’s worth:

SIDE A

Faron Young, Bonny, Appetite, When Love Beaks Down, Goodbye Lucille #1, Hallelujah

The early 80s was a great time to be a follower of new music in the north-east of England. Indeed with bands such as Hurrah, The Kane Gang, Prefab Sprout and Martin Stephenson & The Daintees all on the Newcastle-based Kitchenware Records, there was a scene that wasn’t that far removed from Glasgow and Postcard Records of just a few years previous.

It was Prefab Sprout who turned out to the most commercially successful of the acts, thanks in the main to the songwriting and tunesmith talents of Paddy McAloon, but also to the marketing men who pushed hard until the elusive breakthrough hit emerged.

The band came to prominence in 1982 with a couple of singles that were hits on the indie-chart, as well as a 1984 LP Swoon (short for ‘Songs Written Out Of Necessity’) that was well received by the critics.

By now, although the records were still coming out on the Kitchenware label, Prefab Sprout had the might of CBS Records behind them, and the band was pushed into the studio with a big-name producer for an album that was intended to be released in 1985.

There were many who predicted a disaster. McAloon was a fairly shy laid-back individual who was seemingly being put under immense pressure to deliver something that justified the large contract signed with the major label. There was also the fact that despite Prefab Sprout being a band known for melodic, acoustic-based songs, the producer was the electronic pioneer and chart-act Thomas Dolby, and no-one could imagine any chemistry between the two.

Against all the odds, a masterpiece emerged.

The first hint we all got was the release of a single – When Love Breaks Down – which kept all the majesty and magnificence of a McAloon tune but had some beautiful bits added courtesy of keyboards that were clearly the work of Dolby. Despite this, the radio stations didn’t really pick up on it, and the single failed to trouble the charts.

The album came out soon after. It had the strange title of Steve McQueen.

I thought at the time it was bloody marvelous. And I still do and I will argue long into the night and right through the next day after the sun has come up that Side 1 is perfect; the CBS record bosses obviously thought so too, choosing to release four of the six songs as singles.

With the exception of the opening track, which is a tribute to a long-forgotten country & western singer and chugs along like an express train being driven by Casey Jones, it is not an album to get up and dance to. Instead, it is one to wake up with on a Saturday or Sunday morning if you’ve had a memorable time the night before and take great joy in life itself.

mp3 : Prefab Sprout – Faron Young
mp3 : Prefab Sprout – Bonny
mp3 : Prefab Sprout – Appetite
mp3 : Prefab Sprout – When Love Breaks Down
mp3 : Prefab Sprout – Goodbye Lucille #1
mp3 : Prefab Sprout – Hallelujah

SIDE B

Don’t Sing (from Swoon, 1984)

I have no idea why this very jaunty opening track on the debut album has the title of Don’t Sing as those two words don’t appear anywhere in the lyrics. Instead it seems to follow some sort of bizarre and crazy Spaghetti Western script with outlaws and whisky priests getting into all sorts of trouble….but whatever is taking place on no account have they to put any blame on Mexico. Wonderfully catchy and surreal with a fabulous harmonica solo thrown in for good measure

Cars and Girls (from From Langley Park to Memphis, 1988)

The second half of the 80s were strange times for Prefab Sprout. There was near universal praise for Steve McQueen in 1985 but the intended follow-up for the next year was shelved, only appearing in 1989….by which time they had unexpectedly enjoyed a Top 10 hit thanks to a very catchy but ultimately annoying chorus about hot dogs, jumping frogs and Albuquerque – anyone who bought parent LP From Langley Park to Memphis in the hope of finding a few more like The King of Rock’n’Roll in there would have been in for a shock. The nearest would have been the earlier lead-off single which had reached #44 – I love Cars and Girls as much for the fact that having been subjected to intense record label pressure to come up with a catchy hit, McAloon delivered a blasting critique of the label’s biggest selling star without the bosses seemingly catching on……

Lions In My Own Garden (Exit Someone) (single, 1983)

This had first come to prominence as a self-financed release on Candle Records in 1983. In an era of a number of very clever wordsmiths fronting gentle-sounding guitar bands, McAloon clinched the crown as the cleverest of them all thanks to a catchy sing-along number that seems to make no sense whatsoever until someone whispers in your ear that the first letter of each of the words in the title spell Limoges, the city in France where the writer’s girlfriend had moved to live, breaking his heart in the process. All over a tune that was as Postcard-era Aztec Camera as any fan could have wished. The Peel Session is included here for novelty value as much as anything (and because it lets me use more brackets – and I like brackets!!)

We Let The Stars Go Free (from Jordan : The Comeback, 1990)

Prefab Sprout hadn’t toured in five years but took the decision to go out on the road in support of their 1990 opus which had more than enough songs to have been a double album. It was a brave move that backfired somewhat as the songs on Jordan : The Comeback being rich in arrangement across a range of genres and relying heavily on the tricks of the studio didn’t fare all that well in the live setting, even at a venue as sympathetic as Glasgow Barrowlands. The experience put me off the album somewhat and I didn’t listen to for a long time after, but there’s no denying that this, which was also released as a single, is as dreamy and ethereal as pop music gets (apart from perhaps Desire As from Steve McQueen which almost made it on at this point)

Life Of Surprises (from Protest Songs, 1989)

This was the album originally recorded and intended for release in 1986. It’s still not clear whether the band themselves abandoned the project – some of the songs have more of a demo than fully produced feel about them – or whether the label just felt it had no commercial viability and was likely to lose many fans along the way. The fact that it took another two years for the next album to appear – which as mentioned had a ridiculously catchy and unrepresentative pop single on it – makes me lean towards the latter. As it turns out, Protest Songs does have a number of well-merited moments, not least this song which would eventually be issued as a single in 1993 to promote the label issuing an inevitable ‘best of’ LP when it became clear that a new full studio album was a long way off.

Real Life (Just Around The Corner) (from NME EP Drastic Plastic, 1985)

Part of a four-track EP given away with the NME in September 1985. This was the only studio recording on the EP as the others were live tracks from The Style Council, Lloyd Cole & The Commotions and The Robert Cray Band. For a very long time, I was under the impression that the NME EP had been the place where the song had first aired but the rise of Discogs, with its encyclopaedic approach to the various releases reveals that it was in fact on one of the 12″ versions of one of the three separate releases handed to When Love Breaks Down. The fact that I have two versions of the single but not the one containing Real Life will hopefully be an acceptable explanation for my mistake.

Anyways, Real Life (with its introductory nod to The Battle Hymn of The Republic) might not be all that much of a stand-out song in the Prefab Sprout canon, but it was one with which I had a habit for a long time of finishing off compilation tapes for all sorts of friends on the basis that I was signing off with what I thought was an impossibly difficult to find track. I just feel that now I’m dreaming up an imaginary compilation album there can only be one candidate to close off Side B…..but it is one that I think is more than good enough to have you want to immediately go back and listen to Side A which, after all, has the pick of the tracks from that very golden era in the band’s history.

mp3 : Prefab Sprout – Don’t Sing
mp3 : Prefab Sprout – Cars and Girls
mp3 : Prefab Sprout – Lions In My Own Garden (Exit Someone) (Peel Session)
mp3 : Prefab Sprout – We Let The Stars Go Free
mp3 : Prefab Sprout – Life Of Surprises
mp3 : Prefab Sprout – Real Life (Just Around The Corner)

Enjoy

Decemberists, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Gruff Rhys, Kristin Hersh, Leonard Cohen, Manic Street Preachers, Viv Albertine, Wedding Present

AN IMAGINARY EVENING WITH MUSICIANS

A guest contribution from xxxjim

DinnerParty-MAIN

Hey JC

This is a change from an imaginary compilation, but I’m pretty sure I could do one for almost every singer/band mentioned – now there’s a challenge!

Anyway, a comment made a while ago got me thinking. It was on a Wedding Present / Cinerama related posting and it was along the lines of David Gedge being someone that the commenter, paulb3015 would most like as a friend.

I know it’s never a good idea to meet your heroes but I still think it would be great to spend an evening in the company of these musicians. I guess they all seem quite approachable to me and the sort of people that have a lot of stories and would be fun to be around.

So I give you the eight musicians I’d love to spend an evening with, be it for a beer or two or a meal all round a table, shooting the breeze. Eight seems about the right number – enough that you’d get to talk to everyone but not too many that no one can hear what anyone else is saying. And it would have to be the right mix of musicians – not too many egos.

They are not necessarily my all time favourite musicians or my favourite bands – in some cases they are – I just think they are all interesting people. One thing a lot of them have in common is that they like to tell a story when you see them live – I know that it can be the same story every night but as long as it seems like it’s off the cuff, I’m happy with that.

I haven’t worked out a seating plan but obviously there’s be two seats reserved for Mr and Mrs Vinyl Villain.

Kristin Hersh

Her music has been a constant in my life since I was about 18 – I’ve kind of grown up with her. I’m not an obsessive fan but I do try and see her whenever she performs. One of only two famous people to reply to me on Twitter (not that I use it very often), which makes her an all round nice person. (The other one was David Gedge)

mp3: Kristin Hersh – Sundrops (from ‘Hips and Makers’ LP)

Colin Meloy

Because he seems like a good bloke – a lot of The Decemberists’ songs are stories and he spins a good yarn on stage so I’m sure there would be plenty to talk about.

mp3 : The Decemberists – The Rake’s Song (from ‘The Hazards of Love’ LP)

David Gedge

I don’t need to explain this one – I’m pretty sure that every reader of TVV would want to have a beer with David Gedge.

mp3 : The Wedding Present – Give My Love To Kevin (acoustic) (from ‘George Best (plus)’ LP)

Leonard Cohen

I thought maybe Prince would be entertaining but I imagine everyone would just sit there dumbstruck thinking ‘Bloody hell – it’s Prince’ and no-one saying a word. Either that or he’d play ping pong with everyone and thrash them. But I thought it would be good to have an absolute megastar at the table, and someone much older – and someone who has been a hero of mine since my art student days. He’d bring a touch of wisdom to proceedings and his fantastic gravelly voice. And you never know he might feed us tea and oranges that come all the way from China.

mp3 : Leonard Cohen – Slow (from ‘Popular Problems’ LP)

Viv Albertine

A year ago she wouldn’t have been a dinner guest but her memoir ‘Clothes, Music, Boys’ is great – the best music book I’ve read this year – better than Kim Gordon and better than Eddie Argos (seriously). And she seems like a nice person – and normal. And because I love this song which is one of my favourite songs of the year (even though it came out a while ago, it’s new to me).

mp3 : Viv Albertine – Confessions of a MILF (from ‘The Vermillion Borders’ LP)

Gruff Rhys

Because he took a puppet around America to try and find a Welsh-speaking tribe of native Americans. And he made a powerpoint presentation about it. And an album. And he weaves it all into a great story. And obviously because he is a Super Furry Animal.

mp3 : Gruff Rhys – Iolo (from ‘American Interior’ LP)

Holly Johnson

The first pop star that I really idolized – about 10 years ago I saw him in a shop and I was too star struck to go and say hello. His memoir is also worth a read.

mp3 : Frankie Goes to Hollywod – Relax (7” single)

Nicky Wire

The second Welshman – he’d make sure that it wasn’t all back slappery and coziness. Plus, if all else fails we can talk about sport – and he can give my daughter tips on applying eyeliner.

mp3 : Manic Street Preachers – Europa Geht Durch Mich (from ‘Futurology’ LP)

Anyway, I hope you like it – and it’s the sort of thing that fits in well on TVV.

cheers

xxxjim

Massive Attack

SEE ME RUN NOW YOU’RE GONE….DREAM ON

I was someone who didn’t pay much attention to Massive Attack in terms of their singles. In an era when CD albums were in the region of £12-£15 and singles were usually £4, it didn’t make much sense unless you were something of an uber-fan to buy the singles.

I picked up a copy of the album Mezzanine not longer after its release in April 1998, partly on the back of having really enjoyed the previous album Protection, but partly as I adored what I thought had been its lead-off single Teardrop featuring a stunning vocal from Elizabeth Fraser. The fact that there had been an earlier advance single as far back as August 1997 had totally passed me by and indeed until I saw a copy in a second-hand store a few months back I had always thought the record label had missed out on the chance of releasing what I felt was one of many stand out tracks from the album:-

mp3 : Massive Attack – Risingson

In fact, the single had reached #11 in the charts which really shows how little attention I had been paying. The CD single came with two more than decent remixes along with a different track which was like finding treasure at the end of the rainbow:-

mp3 : Massive Attack – Risingson (The Underdog remix)
mp3 : Massive Attack – Risingson (Otherside)
mp3 : Massive Attack – Superpredators (The Mad Professor Remix)

My favourite Siousxie & The Banshees song is Metal Postcard…..and that’s the very song which is heavily sampled to make Superpredators.

Enjoy.

Jam

THE JAM SINGLES (18)

On 30 October 1982 it was officially confirmed that The Jam would be splitting up at the end of the year. Prior to that there would be one last single and dates on the winter tour of the UK would be fulfilled. The news was greeted with some dismay but no real shock as the songs were now a long way removed from how they had started out and it was clear that Paul Weller wanted to go in a totally different direction from Bruce Foxton and Rick Buckler.

On Thursday 26 November the band began the farewell tour at the Glasgow Apollo. Having camped out for tickets some months previously, long before the band break-up had been announced, I had a very hot and in demand piece of paper but there was no way I was giving it up no matter how much I was offered.

The following day, the band’s last single was released in standard 7″ a double-pack of 7″ singles and in a 12″ format. It went straight to #1 where it stayed for two weeks:-

mp3 : The Jam – Beat Surrender
mp3 : The Jam – Shopping
mp3 : The Jam – Move On Up
mp3 : The Jam – Stoned Out Of My Mind
mp3 : The Jam – War

It was a gloriously upbeat end to the band’s career. Not their best single by a long way but still a decent ending. They had scored eighteen successive Top 40 hit 45s with two of these being via the very unlikely and unusual import-only route. The standard 7″ came with Shopping on the b-side while the double pack and 12″ offered the three soul covers that had been made famous originally by Curtis Mayfield, The Chi-Lites and Edwin Starr.

No other versions on offer today. And that would be that except that I want to offer a little bonus.

At the very height of their popularity, the band made a one-off recording available for publication called Flexipop which had the gimmick of offering an otherwise unreleased recording by some of the best selling artists of the day. The Jam offered something very unusual indeed along with a different recording of a track from Sound Affects:-

mp3 : The Jam – Pop Art Poem
mp3 : The Jam – Boy About Town (flexipop version)

And that seems as good a way as any to bring the series to a close.

Next up for the singles treatment……The Style Council.

(Well it had to be didn’t it????)

Enjoy

Pop Will Eat Itself

NEXT YEAR’S NOSTALGIA FEST (Part 44 of 48)

The next two weeks in this series will feature bands who reinvented themselves during their career and in doing so caught a lot of people, fans and critics alike, by surprise.

Pop Will Eat Itself had been kicking around for some five years prior to the release of their first material in 1986. They had, like many other new and emerging combos, gone through various line-ups in an effort to find the right formula, eventually settling on Clint Mansell (vocals/guitar), Adam Mole (keyboards), Graham Crabb (drums) and Richard Marsh (bass). Their first release was a self-produced EP called The Poppies Say Grrr…. which would be the one and only release on the magnificently named Desperate Records.

They then signed to Chapter 22 Records and went into the studio to record a second EP, Poppiecock, which was released in October 1986. The lead track was the song chosen for inclusion on the CD86 compilation which has formed the basis for this particular series:-

mp3 : Pop Will Eat Itself – The Black Country Chainsaw Massacreee

The Black Country incidentally, for those who might not be aware, is the name given to the part of England the band came from….just in case anyone thought the band were being racist.

Oh and the above is the correct title of the song. It is incorrectly listed on CD86 as The Black Country Chainsaw Massacre. Those two extra ‘e’s at the end are important!!

All five tracks were short and sharp – none of them reached the two-minute mark – and were derivative of an indie-guitar post-punk pop sound. They were OK at what they did but they didn’t really stand out from the crowd. Their next release was a covers EP after which, in early 1987 there began a revolutionary evolution in their sound which coincided with Graham Crabb ditching the drums to become a co-vocalist and being replaced by a machine with an increasing reliance on sampling and the incorporation of hip-hop which was just beginning to increase in popularity here in the UK.

By 1988, the band’s sound had changed completely as evidenced by their first single of that year, Def Con One, which fused a range of genres while sampling a range of tunes by acts as diverse as 70s teenyboppers The Osmonds, punk gods The Stooges, novelty disco act Lipps Inc and not forgetting the theme tune from cult TV show The Twilight Zone. Follow up single Can U Dig It? followed a similar groove and took the band into the charts for the first time, beginning a run of twelve Top 40 hits over the next five years and a move to major label in the shape of RCA in 1989.

Their departure from RCA in 1993 was a strange affair in that singles lifted from their final album for that label went on to be hits which enabled the band to sign with Infectious Records (set up by a former RCA executive) for their final hurrah in 1994/5.

Their initial ten years in the music business had yielded a fair bit of success and they were always a crackingly energetic live act, hugely popular on the festival circuit thanks to their no-nonsense, high-octane and fast-paced performances. But based on the early material,including the track used on CD86, nobody could ever have imagine that’s how it would turn out. Here’s the other tracks from Poppiecock:-

mp3 : Pop Will Eat Itself – Monogamy
mp3 : Pop Will Eat Itself – Oh Grebo, I Think I Love You
mp3 : Pop Will Eat Itself – Titanic Clown
mp3 : Pop Will Eat Itself – B-B-B-Breakdown

Incidentally, every PWEI song was credited to Vestan Pance which was a pseudonym for the band as a whole although most of the tracks were written by either Graham Crabb or Clint Mansell.

The band reformed in 2005 and have continued to perform and record on an on-and-off basis ever since, albeit only Graham Crabb from the orignal line-up is part of the current set-up.

Enjoy