THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN

SATURDAY’S SCOTTISH SONG : #8 : ALOHA HAWAII

Here’s Aidan Moffat popping up again for the second time in three weeks.

Aloha Hawaii is a collaboration between Aidan and Stuart Braithwaite of Mogwai. Here’s a press release they once put out:-

This the result of at least a decade of (often drunken) planning that has finally come to some form of fruition: to record any kind of sounds that please our four ears whenever we have the time, inspiration and enthusiasm. There is no game-plan, no style, no genre; anything that makes us smile will make it onto our records, which will take the form of sporadic, vinyl-only singles to be released on any record label willing to accommodate us over the next year or two.

There will be no digital formats whatsoever.

This could be a statement about the cheapening of an art-form in a world of disposable download culture or it could simply mean that we’re interminably old-fashioned and hopelessly out of date. We also reserve the right to change our minds.

That was back in September 2008 and it was to help publicise that the debut single was coming out on 10″ vinyl on Chemikal Underground, consisting of three bits of instrumental music with the lead track quite frankly becoming a huge influence on the likes of Fuck Buttons who have been such trailblazers in the past few years.

mp3 : Aloha Hawaii – Towns On The Moon

This remains the only release that Aloha Hawaii have ever issued. I guess that Aidan and Stuart took up the option of changing their minds.

Enjoy

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

LARRY AND HARRY

Nick Cave was a truly creative force in the first decade of the 21st Century releasing an album every 18 months or so with the backing of The Bad Seeds or with the Grinderman offshoot. It is a body of work that, due to its volume, doesn’t always quite hit the mark in comparison to the material from the 80s and 90s but it is never less than fascinating to listen to, especially in the live setting where he and his band established themselves as one of the must see acts with every tour bringing something different thanks to the revolving door policy of band and tour members.

One of my favourite songs of his is the lead-off single from the 2008 LP:

mp3 : Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Dig Lazarus Dig!!!

It bounces along a right old pace, paying homage to the sort of more direct tunes that Grinderman had been performing in the previous couple of years – in particular the call and chant nature of the vocal – and has a chorus that was tailor-made for A-listing on daytime radio. Except, this is Nick Cave and unless he duets with Kylie or Polly then there’s no chance of ever hearing him outside of Radio 6….

Ever wondered what the hell this crazy cut-up vocal is all about? The great man explained all at the time of its release:-

Ever since I can remember hearing the Lazarus story, when I was a kid, you know, back in church, I was disturbed and worried by it. Traumatized, actually. We are all, of course, in awe of the greatest of Christ’s miracles – raising a man from the dead – but I couldn’t help but wonder how Lazarus felt about it. As a child it gave me the creeps, to be honest.

I’ve taken Lazarus and stuck him in New York City, in order to give the song, a hip, contemporary feel. I was also thinking about Harry Houdini who spent a lot of his life trying to debunk the spiritualists who were cashing in on the bereaved. He believed there was nothing going on beyond the grave. He was the second greatest escapologist, Harry was, Lazarus, of course, being the greatest.

I wanted to create a kind of vehicle, a medium, for Houdini to speak to us if he so desires, you know, from beyond the grave. Sometimes, late at night, if you listen to the song hard enough, you can hear his voice and the sad clanking of his chains. “I don’t know what it is but there is definitely something going on upstairs”, he seems to be saying. It is, most of all, an elegy to the New York City of the 70’s.

So there you have it…………..

Incidentally, the version of the song put on the blog is the limited edition 7″ single version which comes in at some 32 seconds shorter than the album version (that’s the anorak in me coming to the fore I’m sad to say).

Here’s yer b-side:-

mp3 : Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Accidents Will Happen

NOT a cover of the Elvis Costello classic, although that didn’t stop EC’s folk a few years back issuing me with a dmca notice demanding that the Nick song be taken down (I knew it was from EC’s folk as the other three songs the notice referred to were all from a posting to do with him!!)

Enjoy…as I will Nick Cave when I go see him in Edinburgh at the end of this month.

Rockingbirds, Teenage Fanclub

CAMPFIRE SONGS

This bit of music sounds as if the makers should come from deep in the heart of Texas, but in fact The Rockingbirds were a London-based outfit formed in 1990.

mp3 : The Rockingbirds – Gradually Learning

They were first signed to Heavenly Records but no mainstream success came from any of their four singles/EPs or their 1992 self-titled debut LP. Some of the band left after this initial burst of activity, but a new line-up inked a deal with Cooking Vinyl and an LP was recorded with Edwyn Collins at the producers desk. But still The Rockingbirds remained too square-dance to be hip and by 1995, they called it a day.

However, there was a very brief reformation in 2008 to play a show celebrating the 18th birthday of their first label and then some more gigs in 2009 to support the re-release of a remastered and extended version of the debut LP.

One of the band members was Andy Hackett who has long been a sidekick of the afore-mentioned Edwyn playing on his records and being part of the various tour bands.

Here’s the other tracks on the CD single:-

mp3 : The Rockingbirds – Where I Belong
mp3 : The Rockingbirds – Love Has Gone And Made A Mess Of Me
mp3 : The Rockingbirds – Gradually Learning (full version)

While here’s another of those early singles on Heavenly – a tribute to a very talented singer-songwriter from Boston who featured just yesterday on T(n)VV:-

mp3 : The Rockingbirds – Jonathan Jonathan
mp3 : The Rockingbirds – Time Drives The Truck
mp3 : The Rockingbirds – Older Guys

The last of these tracks is a cover version of a song by The Flying Burrito Brothers and was co-written by Gram Parsons. It was also covered, in 1993, by Teenage Fanclub and featured as one of the b-sides to Norman 3:-

mp3 : Teenage Fanclub – Older Guys

Enjoy.

Here’s an update on The Rockingbirds as provided by the man who is sitting on the horse on the sleeve of Gradually Learning:-

“Hi, Andy from The Rockingbirds here, just to add we’re still going strong and are currently finishing our 4th album provisionally titled ‘More Rockingbirds’ as we speak. We also released an album called ‘The Return of the Rockingbirds’ a couple of years ago, which like all of our albums is still available.”

I’m off to track down a copy….and hopefully the band will take to the road later on in the year to promote the upcoming 4th album.

Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers

ONE, TWO, THREE, (FOUR), (FIVE), (SIX)

This is the story of the song Roadrunner. It’s a bit confusing but stay with me.

Roadrunner was first recorded in April 1972. The producer was John Cale of The Velvet Underground fame. However the song did not see light of day until its release as a single in the USA in 1975. But before its release, it had been re-recorded with Matthew King Kaufman in the producer’s chair, and this new version, which was first made available on a budget compilation album, was released around the same time as the Cale-produced original first saw light of day.

Then in 1976, the Cale-produced version appeared on a much delayed debut LP while the Kaufman produced version was released as a single, first of all in the USA and then later on in the UK, where it’s b-side was……….the Cale version as recorded in 1972!! To confuse things further, the UK single saw the Kaufman version given the title Roadrunner (Once) and attributed to a solo Jonathan Richman while the Cale version was given the title Roadrunner (Twice) and attributed to The Modern Lovers despite the latter being the original by a few tears…..

You following all this??? Good….cos I’m about to confuse things further.

For in 1978, a completely different version saw light of day as a live b-side – and it was given the title Roadrunner (Thrice) …….and attributed to Jonathan Richman and The Modern Lovers!!

Now for years I had the Thrice version on a cassette tape – it came from me getting a copy of the song from a friend’s older brother who was the first serious muso I ever knew. My copy of ‘thrice’ snapped years ago and I thought my chances of hearing it ever again were minimal given the single was, to the best of my knowledge, only ever released in the USA and didn’t sell in any huge numbers, so I reckoned the chances of anyone owning a copy and then making it available on line were remote. But now thanks to folk putting things up on the likes of youtube and the existence of converter tools, things have changed:-

mp3 : Jonathan Richman – Roadrunner (Once)
mp3 : The Modern Lovers – Roadrunner (Twice)
mp3 : Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers – Roadrunner (Thrice) (Live)

Every one of these versions are quite wonderful dontcha think??

Oh and in a 2003 re-issue of the debut LP, yet another version of Roadrunner was made available. This had been recorded later in 1972 with Kim Fowley in the producer’s chair…..seemingly the band weren’t sure at the time whether to go with Cale or Fowley as the producer of the debut…….(I don’t have a copy of this version otherwise I would have included it in this posting).

Enjoy

Lloyd Cole & The Commotions

THE LARGELY UNAPPRECIATED FINAL LP

I was very pleasantly surprised with the level of feedback when I had a nostalgic look back at Easy Pieces, the sophomore LP from Lloyd Cole & The Commotions, released in November 1985. And in trying to keep with the mantra of the public getting what the public wants, I thought it would make sense to offer up some thoughts on Mainstream, the band’s third and final LP released back in October 1987.

This was an album I was really looking forward to hitting the shops, purely on the basis of the strength of the advance single which was so different from any other track the band had released up to that point:-

mp3 : Lloyd Cole & The Commotions – My Bag

An infectiously catchy number that was impossible not to want to groove to and up there with the best songs the band ever made. And yet it flopped, failing to crack the UK Top 40. Part of this would have been down to a failure to get much radio airplay – a song so blatantly about drug misuse would have scared away almost all DJs – but what was just as worrying was the thought that much of the fan base might have moved on in the two-year hiatus since the previous album caused by the band’s inability to find the right producer for the new material which Lloyd had been indicating would surprise many who were expecting more of the same.

Even before the music began this fan was really surprised thanks to an album cover with its stark monochrome image of just the lead singer with the rest of the band also having similarly styled individual photos on either the back or inner sleeves. The exception being keyboardist Blair Cowan who has a smaller photo on the lyrics sheet underneath which were the words ‘This album is dedicated to Blair’. At the time I thought he had taken seriously ill and was perhaps dying (partly related to reading too much into the closing track on the album!!) but it transpired that he had in fact left the band between the conclusion of its recording and it being mixed and pressed for release.

40 minutes or so after putting the needle into the groove I found myself totally bemused. I wasn’t the least bit prepared, for the most part, how downbeat a record it was. Lloyd’s lyrics came across as a being those of a man thoroughly fed up with his lot and who felt, having crammed so much into the first part of his life, wasn’t looking forward to what lay ahead. Over the next few weeks, I tried and tried again to fall for the album and although I did eventually warm to some of its charms, there just wasn’t enough to really win me over. So much so, that a couple of years later I gave the LP to someone without much of an afterthought and indeed during the 90s when, like many others I fell for the con of buying CDs of music I already owned, I only purchased the first two of the bands LPs.

About five years ago however, on the back of getting the blog up and running, I picked up a second-hand copy of Mainstream in a charity shop for £1.99 and consequently gave it a listen to again for the first time in around twenty years. I’m happy to admit that my musical tastes had grown somewhat in that intervening period. I’d become more of a fan of many of the influences that Lloyd Cole has had on his songwriting craft and so couls now an appreciate things a lot more.

I’m repared to admit that Mainstream has more than a few decent tunes. But…..and it is a huge but………..it also contains some of the worst things the Commotions ever put down on vinyl as well as suffering from a production that has dated very badly in places.

Side One opens with the previously mentioned and still loved My Bag which is rather strangely followed by three downbeat numbers before closing with one of the most infectiously catchy numbers in the band’s career, all of which makes for a very disjointed and difficult listen.

Until I reassessed the album I had always dismissed the three slow number as sub-standard. But I was wrong, certainly in the case of From The Hip a song that not only contains one of Lloyd’s most heartfelt lyrics responding to the criticisms levelled at him about his pretentiousness over a tune that REM would have been lauded for.

mp3 : Lloyd Cole & The Commotions – From The Hip

However, both of 29 and Mainstream, the tracks that immediately follow are dull and uninspiring. The side closes with Jennifer She Said, a song that I like and loath in equal measures. For the most part it is very listenable but there’s a section in the middle where a short guitar solo sounds like a tribute to Dire Straits that I just can’t abide. It’s only 10-15 seconds in length (if that) but I hate it so much that I can’t really listen to it nowadays without getting annoyed.

Flipping the record over and Side Two, despite also having a similar mix of upbeat and downbeat numbers is a far more enjoyable listen thanks in part to the sequencing but more importantly the better quality of songs.

Mister Malcontent is maybe a bit Commotions by numbers but it is one the most underrated songs they ever recorded – particularly the opening two thirds which is as good as anything on the debut record; Sean Penn Blues is a witty sideways swipe at the life of the man who, in those days was known only for being married to Madonna but who would go on to enjoy a critical renaissance in later years; Big Snake was, and remains, a genuinely disturbing and creepy song with a sublime backing vocal from Tracey Thorn; Hey Rusty is a magnificent anthem for the mid-late 20-somethings who had emerged blinking from the shelter of student days and into the big wide world of commerce – folk just like me when the album came out; These Days is a thing of beauty – at a time when AIDS was new and was thought to be a disease that was going to wipe out much of the human race, Lloyd composed a simple, lovely and hugely effective song that advised you to be careful….

mp3 : Lloyd Cole & The Commotions – Hey Rusty
mp3 : Lloyd Cole & The Commotions – These Days

Overall, Mainstream is a record that suffers from comparions to the flawless debut LP and is an album that the listener needs to devote some time and energy to in order to fully appreciate its nuances and its attractions. Two duff tracks and a duff 10-second guitar solo do not make it a duff record.

Now I think it’s time to try and put together one of the 10-track imaginary albums…….

Chesterfields

NEXT YEAR’S NOSTALGIA FEST (Part 12a of 48)

This is of course a blog that is heavily dependant on vinyl and I feel I have to use today’s posting to ease my slightly guilty conscience.

For all that I love Ask Johnny Dee/Pop Anarchy! released in in November 1989 on Subway Organisation, I don’t own a physical copy. The a-side was taken from a compilation CD while the b-side was purchased specially via i-tunes just so that it could feature.

What I do own however, is a 12″ single by The Chesterfields released in August 1988 on Household Records. It is not as immediate and catchy as yesterday’s song but it is still a cracking 45 with the addition of brass helping things move along at a brisk pace a la The June Brides:-

mp3 : The Chesterfields – Blame

Here’s yer two ok but not great b-sides:-

mp3 : The Chesterfields – Male Bimbo
mp3 : The Chesterfields – I’ve Got To Hand It To You

Enjoy

Chesterfields

NEXT YEAR’S NOSTALGIA FEST (Part 12 of 48)

I wrote about today’s song from CD86 some fourteen months ago. I wrote at the time that a lot of the stuff from the C86 movement hadn’t aged well with it being down , in many cases, to poor production which nowadays grates on the ear while all too often the off-key singing which in its day seemed to be part of the charm now sounds annoying. Last week’s songs by Razorcuts being a prime example.

But there are others that turned out to be absolute classics.

mp3 : The Chesterfields – Ask Johnny Dee

The Chesterfields formed in 1984 and folded in 1989 during which time there were two studio LPs and eight singles/EPs. They toured extensively (I saw them once as support act to Edwyn Collins on one of his earliest solo tours) and like so many bands picked up a decent sized hardcore following. many of whom (according to wiki) referred to them as “The Chesterf!elds”, with an exclamation mark replacing the “i”, following the example of the band’s logo.

Tragically, lead singer and main songwriter Dave Goldsworthy died in November 2003, at the age of 40, from head injuries sustained in a hit & run incident in Oxford.

The b-side to the single featured on CD86 is another belter of a tune. Totally different from the a-side, it is very reminiscent of The Monochrome Set which is never a bad thing in my book:-

mp3 : The Chesterfields – Pop Anarchy!

Enjoy

Alan Rankine

SATURDAY’S SCOTTISH SONG : #7 : ALAN RANKINE

Alan Rankine is best known as being the other founder member of Associates.

He quit the band in 1982 just after Sulk and its associated singles had finally brought fame and chart success quickly moving into the production side of things before, in 1986, releasing material under his own name.

None of his solo material – there were a couple of albums and a handful of singles – made any commercial impact and by 1990 he had quit the recording side of things to move into an entirely new direction, joining Stow College in Glasgow as a lecturer on a music business course, where he was instrumental in providing a very firm launchpad for the career of Belle & Sebastian.

His debut single in September 1986 was later re-recorded and released on Virgin in November 1987:-

mp3 : Alan Rankine – Sandman

It is a radio friendly bit of music in that MOR-80s-synth-pop sort of way. Which can also be translated as dull, boring and easily disposed of.

The b-side is a bit more interesting in a film-soundtrack sort of way that is a cross between Paul Haig and David Holmes:-

mp3 : Alan Rankine – Can You Believe Everything I See (Part 3)

It stretches out to six minutes and is the sort of thing that if you were sitting in a bar and it came on in the background you’d be very tempted to ask who and what it was.

Enjoy

Big Country, Skids

READ IT IN BOOKS : STUART ADAMSON

Tomorrow would have been Stuart Adamson‘s 57th birthday so I thought it appropriate to have a look back at his contribution to music via a review of a bio that was published back in 2010.

This is the first book I’ve featured in this series that I don’t actually own – I found it the other week while browsing around the local library. And to be brutally honest, borrowing it for a few weeks was a good decision as it proved to be a bit of a letdown.

The author, Allan Glen, has the advantage of coming from that part of Scotland in which the Manchester-born William Stuart Anderson was raised and the best bits of the book are those when he can bring that local flavour to the pages and particularly the description of physical, social and economic conditions in the villages and towns in Fife in the late 70s as The Skids came to the fore. The author paints a vivid picture which makes it very clear that Stuart Adamson was a true-to-life working class hero whose roots never left him.

However, the book for the most part is an extended consideration of the recording and touring careers of The Skids and Big Country rather than an in-depth look at Stuart Adamson. There’s lots about the music (up to 1996) but little about the man. The disease that eventually killed him – alcoholism – is sometimes hinted at but never referred to openly until the closing pages of the book and even then it is in almost throwaway fashion. There’s nothing about what led Stuart to divorcing his first wife and upping sticks to live in American in the mid-90s and I’m assuming this is because the author was unable to talk to anyone who was particularly close to Stuart in his final few years before his suicide in a hotel room in Hawaii in December 2001. So all in all, a disappointment.

What the book does remind you of however, is just how huge Big Country were for a spell in the early 80s. They went from near complete unknowns in early 1983 (which was when I first saw them as they played a gig in the students union at Strathclyde University) to flying on Concorde to perform at the Grammys in Los Angeles less than a year later. Their debut LP, The Crossing, had caught the imagination of the record buying public while their live shows had a real energy and vibe that made for a good night out. But almost as quickly, things began to fall apart.

There was a less than favourable reaction to the band’s second LP, Steeltown, while many fans attracted initially to the band because of The Skids connection were aghast and embarrassed at how often Big Country seemed to be on the support bill for stadium/arena performances of acts and bands we had thought the punk wars had seen off. To many, such as myself, the band never recovered. I certainly never had any great interest in the band after 1984 although I always wished them well as Stuart Adamson seemed to be one of the genuine folk in the music industry at a time of much artificiality and besides, who could ever fall completely out of love with the man whose guitar licks had meant so much to me as a teenager.

The main chunk of the book is a sad reminder of how hard Big Country tried to get back on track. I hadn’t quite appreciated that they continued to release albums in the late 80s and early 90s at regular intervals and completely missed that they actually enjoyed a couple of Top 30 hit singles in 1993.

It might be easy enough for me to say with the perspective of hindsight but it would probably have been better for the band to have broken up after the third or fourth album with Stuart finding some new musicians to back him and when he was out on the road have his new mates play old Skids and Big Country material alongside his new stuff. That way, the critics might have been a bit kinder to him rather than coming out with the ‘same old-same old’ barbs time and time again. Who knows?

It might even have got the old fans interested again….as happened when The Skids reformed briefly back in 2007 (with Bruce Watson from Big Country taking on the guitar parts) and then Big Country a few years later when just afterwards when Mike Peters from The Alarm took on the unenviable task of filling in for Stuart as evidenced by Brian from Linear Track Lives! when, back in 2012, he came all the way over to Glasgow from Seattle to catch a show.

So, overall, I wasn’t too enamoured by the book but appreciated the flashbacks it provided to the days when I loved seeing Stuart Adamson on stage alongside his nutcase of a frontman in The Skids or when he bravely took centre stage with his new band to show that he wasn’t, as many had thought, washed-up at the age of 24 and that he still had a sound worth listening to.

mp3 : The Skids – Scared To Dance
mp3 : The Skids – TV Stars (Peel Session)
mp3 : Big Country – Angle Park
mp3 : Big Country – 1000 Stars

Enjoy

Art of Noise, Breeders, Prodigy

HEY HEY HEY

This #1 hit from April 1996 is a genuine timeless classic

mp3 : The Prodigy – Firestarter (edit)

It also gave the former NME scribe turned novelist turned socio-pop commentator Paul Morley a #1 hit, a situation that nobody from the post-punk Manchester scene could ever have imagined when he was part of The Negatives, a group set up as an antagonistic joke and which also numbered famed photographer Kevin Cummins in its line-up. Morley’s writing credit came from one of the two cracking bits of sampled instrumentals:-

mp3 : The Art of Noise – Close (To The Edit)
mp3 : The Breeders – S.O.S.

The former had been a Top 10 hit back in 1984 while the latter was one of the many outstanding tracks on the 1993 LP Last Splash.

Firestarter took The Prodigy out of the dance/rave scene and right into heart of the cultural mainstream and along with the likes of Chemical Brothers, Leftfield, Orbital and others helped create the sort of critical mass that enabled dance music to become such a mainstay of the festival circuit across Europe and so drive bring a welcome end to line-ups that were becoming increasingly one-dimensional and dull thanks to the plethora of sub-standard indie-guitar Britpop line-ups.

Here’s the other tracks that you will find on the CD single:-

mp3 : The Prodigy – Firestarter (empirion mix)
mp3 : The Prodigy – Firestarter (instrumental)
mp3 : The Prodigy – Molotov Bitch

The Empirion Mix doesn’t feature any of the samples and stretches out to almost eight minutes and it demonstrates, from about the 1:40 mark onwards just how hardcore and good a tune Firestarter is on its own. Nice companion piece to Moaner by Underworld as featured on the blog a few weeks back…

Enjoy

James

THE JAMES SINGLES (25)

It’s now approaching nine months since the nonsense of the Sit Down remix and it is time for what would be the 25th single to be released by James.

Let’s give the band a bit of credit. They were wounded by the criticism offered by fans about the multi-formatting of recent 45s and that almost all of them had been padded out with remixes or live versions. and so it was made clear that the first post Best-Of single would come accompanied by high quality new songs unavailable elsewhere.

The single itself caught more than a few folk out:-

mp3 : James – I Know What I’m Here For

This was a different sounding James…well to an extent. It had a joyous sounding 45 with a catchy chorus but in a way that was unlike any of their other singles. I was caught out by it at the time and to all intent and purposes I should have fallen for its charms. But I couldn’t help but think that they were trying to take a leaf out of the book of U2 with a conscious and deliberate attempt to make something different just for the sake of it rather than head down any new and exciting musical direction. And sixteen years on, I remain strangely unmoved by the single. There’s evidence that I wasn’t alone as it stalled at #22 in the charts.

So what about these anticipated b-sides??

mp3 : James – All Good Boys
mp3 : James – Imagine Ourselves
mp3 : James – Downstairs
mp3 : James – Stolen Horse

CD1

All Good Boys is a slow song initially driven along by a strong vocal from Tim over an acoustic guitar before the chorus licks in where it sadly falls away into something a bit dull and leaden with the rest of the band joining in on backing vocals over a tune that could pass for a Robbie Williams b-side.

Imagine Ourselves is another slowie. This time it is initially driven along by a strong vocal from Tim over some electronic noodling. However, there is no upbeat shouty chorus to take the song to a different level so it sort of meanders along for the whole four and a half minutes but in a way that is quite lovely and moving. It’s a song that needs two or three listened to be fully appreciated but there’s no denying it is top quality for a b-side.

CD2

Downstairs is very much James in the 90s by numbers in that if you were fond of the singles you’d immediately fall for its charms. Regular readers will know that I found the James of the 90s a bit more miss than hit and so it is with this song. But I can see and appreciate why it is so well-regarded by fans

Stolen Horses is yet another ballad and again doesn’t do all that much for me but this is as much to do with the fact that James are no longer sounding anything like the band that I had fallen for almost 15 years previously than it being a crap song.

Listening to the songs some sixteen years later and I think I may have come up with the answer to as why I’m not a huge fan of them…….

These b-sides, and indeed the a-side could have been written today and no-one would be any the wiser. There’s lots of singers and bands out there who have great sounding voices and whose technical skills on their chosen instruments are there for all to hear and who have no trouble filling large venues and arenas to ever-increasing fanbases. These James songs from 1999 sound as if they would fit very comfortably into such sets and that’s what’s wrong with them. The music snob in me shies away from the mainstream for the most part and these highly proficient songs repel me in the same way.

But this journey of looking at James singles is almost at an end and so I’m not disembarking the vehicle until it reaches its final destination. I am however, bored with the repetitive scenery as I look out the window. I need that ‘wow’ factor………

Lucksmiths

AN IMAGINARY COMPILATION ALBUM #10 – THE LUCKSMITHS

One of the things I like most about doing all this is the feedback and contributions from others. There’s been hundreds of you left behind comments at some point in time while many of you have gone that bit further and offered to make one or more guest postings.

I’m thrilled that two readers got back to me the other week – both of them from America (and I can’t quite believe that I have so many folk visit T(n)VV from that great country on a regular basis) – in response to my asking if anyone wanted to put together an imaginary album by The Lucksmiths as I didn’t know enough about them or have enough of their songs to do it justice.

The first has come in courtesy of Eric who lives away over in Oakland on the west coast many many time zones removed from Glasgow. It’s pretty wonderful (albeit he has gone with a compilation CD approach rather than giving himself the torture of trying to do a 10-track vinyl album!!!). In his covering e-mail he said

Hi Jim,
I did it! I think you might regret that last statement. It’s so long. Once I started going I just couldn’t stop. So feel free to edit or send it back to me to edit. I won’t be hurt. The process itself was worth it. Thanks!
Eric

There is no way I’d ever dream of sending anything back or editing it down on my own accord. Besides, as Eric points out, this was band akin with the CD-only era and 15 songs were atypical of any release.

So here, without prejudice, are the words Eric has so kindly contributed today:-

I first became aware of the Lucksmiths in the 90s through a little file-sharing ring my sister set up. They quickly became a favorite and provided a private soundtrack to my 30s. I say private because I honestly can’t remember hearing them played on any radio or media in the SF Bay Area. Still, their shows here were always well attended, so I know people were buying their CDs (yeah, mostly CDs, their prime was right at that vinyl nadir when so many recordings came on CD only). I always thought they must be massive in their home country. Every time I’d meet an Australian I’d bring up the Lucksmiths. In all but one case I was met with a blank stare.

Whatever the success or failures of the band, they managed to produce quite a catalogue: 11 albums, 3 EPs and a handful of 45s and other singles. Thankfully the entire body of work is available on Spotify. I just spent two weeks annoying my co-workers with endless humming and singing in the hallways as I remembered song after song.

I never realized how hard these imaginary LPs were until I had to do it myself. I allowed myself 15 songs, which might seem excessive, but it’s on par with the albums of their heyday. I remember reading a review of their posthumous “greatest hits” compilation that called two hours of their word play and tweeness maddening. As much as I love them, I can see the point. An hour with the boys is a good stretch, and of course some of their finer moments come in tight 3 minutes pops.

1. The Golden Age of Aviation

I mean come on, it literally starts with the words “Hello everybody!” Unabashedly upbeat in the face of a disintegrating relationship, the song is a great Lucksmiths primer, full of overlaid metaphors and clever wordplay.

2. There Is a Boy That Never Goes Out

This one is just fun, and it brings to mind their name-checked heroes. I always thought it was funny that they so identified with the Smiths. They feel like totally different animals. Where the Smiths were constantly swinging for the fences, the Lucksmiths seemed perfectly content to play small ball; a double here a single there, sacrifice to bring a man home.

3. Southernmost
Quite simply my favorite opening lyric of any of their songs. The whole verse builds to such a satisfying couplet. I’m tempted to include it here, but I think it’s better heard than read.

4. The Cassingle Revival

The Lucksmiths released a number of one-off and tour singles, something I wish more bands would do. Of course they were totally prescient. My local record shop now sells scores of vintage cassettes. I guess Vinyl just isn’t hipster enough anymore…

5. The Great Dividing Range

Maybe my favorite song of all time. If you don’t feel like an hour of these boys, just start with this one. Great economy of language in a perfectly understated setting. Oh and somehow uplifting and melancholy at the same time. This one has it all!

6. Don’t Come With Me

The thing that drew me in to the Lucksmiths was their uncanny ability to articulate little moments of life. This has happened to me and I don’t think I’ve ever heard another person write a song about it, let alone a catchy clever one.

7. The Chapter in Your Life Entitled San Francisco

I was very fortunate to be in the SF Bay Area during the Lucksmiths run. They came here a lot, way more than my favorite UK and European bands of the time. In 2005 they released a love letter to San Francisco. All the songs had some sort of Bay Area connection. I read later that they felt like my home was their second home. Cheers to that.

8. I Prefer the Twentieth Century

I remember in 1999 a number of bands were trying to write the perfect millennial song. I can’t remember a single one of those, but 15 years later I find myself humming this one. According to Discogs “Produced for a New Years Eve gig in Melbourne featuring the bands. All songs recorded December 2000.“ There’s a comment on the Discogs page, purportedly from one of the other bands on the bill: Guy Blackman of Sleepy Township: “I think we sold 17 on the night. We should have just given them away.” I don’t know how but I somehow ended up with two of these. They must have done just that on their subsequent gigs.

9. T-Shirt Weather

This is easily the most popular and well-known Lucksmiths song (and the one that inspired this post). It’s perfectly timed for the coming of spring and can be heard emanating from me as I tool around town on my own bike.

10. Untidy Towns

“First things first I have a happy secret.” For the longest time that secret was this great band called the Lucksmiths. The boys always knew how to open an album.

11. Wyoming
The song that started it all for me. I had just driven cross-country a few years before hearing this song. I remember being shocked a how well a band from halfway around the world so perfectly captured my experience of Big Sky Country.

12. Jennifer Jason

There aren’t any songs here from their early albums. It’s not that there isn’t great stuff there, it’s just that the 1997-onward material is so great. I always feel like it’s nice to have a palate cleanser in an album so why not this one. Also Jennifer Jason Leigh, amiright?

13.The Invention of Ordinary Everyday Things

“She’s telling me she’s tired of relationships / And I’m bending bits of wire in to paperclips.” I think we’ve all been there.

14. Camera-Shy

I love a band that can seamlessly work in a word like heliolithic. As a camera-shy person myself I listen to this song and am immediately transported to umpteen memories.

15. The Year of Driving Languorously

So many of these songs deal with long distance relationships. It seems fitting to end with the Lucksmiths driving us to the airport to fly who-knows-where maybe never to come back. We want to believe this will go on forever, but we both know it won’t. So we find excuses to avoid talking because if we start talking we’ll have to acknowledge it. The song is all the more heartbreaking due to the relentlessly upbeat setting.

Ok that’s the album, but I want to include an imaginary 45 as well.

The Lucksmiths wrote one of my favorite Christmas songs, but I hate it when bands include holiday material on their regular releases. It just ruins the mood when I’m listening to the album in April. On the B-side, a song that just guts me every time I hear it. I just couldn’t get it in to the imaginary LP because everything about it just screams B-side. I can’t explain it, but here it is as the B-Side of my imaginary 45.

A. The Thought That Counts

B. Postcard

Woah! That got very long very fast. If you made it all the way here then cheers. If any Lucksmiths fans out there are wondering why there’s nothing here from their final album, First Frost, it’s kinda the same story as the early albums. It’s not a bad album, it’s just that the other stuff is so good. My last Lucksmiths show came during the First Frost promotional tour and you could just feel that the boys were tired. 16 years is a long time to do anything, so it wasn’t a total shock when they called it a day.

Thanks JC for prompting this little trip down memory lane. The last few weeks have been a total joy, and it’s great having all these songs in my head again. I also want to give props for the imaginary album idea. It’s so much more satisfying than a greatest hits or singles album. There are great album tracks that never make it on to those things, and they are often too long and disjointed.

Eric from Oakland

OK. One more PS, secret track, whatever… It’s Good Friday as I write so this song has been coursing through my head all day. I just missed the Imaginary LP cut for being a little to similar to The Great Dividing Range. That said it does contain one of my favorite Lucksmiths stanzas.

Hidden track : Guess How Much I Love You

Here’s me, here’s you.
Draw a line between the two.
This is cartography for beginners.
On the map the gap’s three fingers,
But it’s more than that, it’s more than that.

I know this isn’t how you usually do things, but I created a Spotify playlist incase you want to use it. I found tool invaluable in creating the imaginary LP.

https://open.spotify.com/user/122829849/playlist/2UZAxUd4vRdgPqBgn6Fn1b

Note from JC….

At a pinch, Eric has tripled the number of songs by The Lucksmiths that I have the good fortune to have in the collection. They really are/were a very fine band. And here’s my old-fashioned way of making the songs available:-

ALBUM

mp3 : The Lucksmiths – The Golden Age of Aviation
mp3 : The Lucksmiths – There Is A Boy That Never Goes Out
mp3 : The Lucksmiths – Southernmost
mp3 : The Lucksmiths – The Cassingle Revival
mp3 : The Lucksmiths – The Great Dividing Range
mp3 : The Lucksmiths – Don’t Come With Me
mp3 : The Lucksmiths – The Chapter In Your Life Entitled San Francisco
mp3 : The Lucksmiths – I Prefer The Twentieth Century
mp3 : The Lucksmiths – T-Shirt Weather
mp3 : The Lucksmiths – Untidy Towns
mp3 : The Lucksmiths – Wyoming
mp3 : The Lucksmiths – Jennifer Jason
mp3 : The Lucksmiths – The Invention Of Ordinary Everyday Things
mp3 : The Lucksmiths – Camera-Shy
mp3 : The Lucksmiths – The Year Of Living Langurously

BONUS SINGLE

mp3 : The Lucksmiths – The Thought That Counts
mp3 : The Lucksmiths – Postcard

HIDDEN TRACK

mp3 : The Lucksmiths – Guess How Much I Love You

Enjoy!!!!!!

Lloyd Cole & The Commotions

THE UNDERRATED SECOND LP

Everyone I knew in the mid 80s…..and I mean everyone……adored Rattlesnakes, the debut LP from Lloyd Cole & The Commotions. It’s a record packed with great tunes that you can latch on to immediately while lyrically its as fine an album as any. Poetry and prose set to music….

However, not so many folk seem so fond of the follow-up Easy Pieces, released in 1985 just 13 months after the debut. While Rattlesnakes was commemorated with a 20th Anniversary Tour in 2004 (where the band played a blistering set at Glasgow Barrowlands only spoiled by the fact that a then unknown but cringingly appalling James Blunt was the support act), Easy Pieces is passed off with the words ‘its ok….but nowhere near as good as the debut’ – even by the band themselves.

I’m not going to sit here and argue that Easy Pieces is a better record than Rattlesnakes…..but I am prepared to say that it as a far far far better record than many give it credit for.

Lead-off single Brand New Friend is a near perfect piece of pop, brilliantly polished by the production skills of Langer and Winstanley. Trust me on this one….

mp3 : Lloyd Cole & The Commotions – Brand New Friend

Lost Weekend, with its clear-rip of The Passenger (as mentioned previously here) was the next 45 while the third single lifted from the LP was Cut Me Down. I many ways this was a strange choice as it isn’t the most commercial of songs but I suppose when six months have passed since the LP was released and the promotional tour is over then the third and final single isn’t really all that important in the grand scheme of things. I still think they missed a trick not issuing this as a 45:-

mp3 : Lloyd Cole & The Commotions – Why I Love Country Music

Two other songs on the LP are also personal favourites – opening track Rich which is one that seems tailor-made for radio and is very reminiscent of REM and closer Perfect Blue with its wonderful harmonica and acoustic guitar opening that screams out Americana Road Movie……….

mp3 : Lloyd Cole & The Commotions – Rich
mp3 : Lloyd Cole & The Commotions – Perfect Blue

So there you have it. Four of the ten songs from the LP. Everyone a gem. And the other six aren’t too shabby either……

Razorcuts

NEXT YEAR’S NOSTALGIA FEST (Part 11 of 48)

There comes a tipping point when too much twee starts to annoy me. I’ll admit that, despite intending to feature all 48 songs and artistes who appear on CD86, some of the stuff gets the skip treatment on the i-pod. And today’s offering is one of them.

Razorcuts formed in 1985 with the mainstays being Gregory Webster (vocals/guitar) and Tim Vass (bass) augmented at times by various drummers and other musicians who came and went. After a couple of singles on the Subway Organisation label and a one-off on Flying Nun Records, they ended up signing to Creation by 1988 for who they would release two albums in 1988 and 1989 without setting the heather on fire.

The song on CD86 is a b-side to one of their June 86 debut on Subway and while it is far from a bad song – the tune is actually fine – the dreadful sub-standard vocal performance borders on the unlistenable. It is also a perfect example of the off-putting whining, struggling-to-hit-the-right notes delivery that quickly became synonymous with much of the C86 genre and which led to its rather prompt demise.

mp3 : Razorcuts – I’ll Still Be There

Here’s yer A-side:-

mp3 : Razorcuts – Big Pink Cake

The band split up in with Vass going on to form Red Chair Fade Away, and Webster joined The Carousel before the duo reunited under the name Forever People in 1992 for a one-off single called Invisible on Sarah Records.Between 1997 and 2002, Webster was part of Sportique, a sort of twee supergroup made up of ex-members of the likes of Heavenly, Television Personalities and Tallulah Gosh.

Aidan John Moffat

SATURDAY’S SCOTTISH SONG : #6 : AIDAN JOHN MOFFAT

Aidan John Moffat is the most diversely talented and intriguing Scottish musician of my generation.

He celebrates his 42nd birthday next week and he’s now been a staple part of the music scene in my part of the world for 20 years ever since Arab Strap came to prominence. He’s never been one to let any grass grow under his feet whether it has been recording albums – musical and spoken-word – under his own name), ambient dance music under the guise of L Pierre or Lucky Pierre, as part other of groups such as the low-fi The Angry Buddhists or the hard-to-pigeonhole Aloha Hawaii, as guest vocalist with countless others such as Mogwai and R M Hubbert and not forgetting his incredible collaboration with jazz musician Bill Wells that led to the Scottish Album of the Year award for 2011 for Everything’s Getting Older (the follow-up,The Most Important Place In The World, has just been released). Then of course 2014 saw him spend most of his time exploring the oral traditions of Scottish music with a tour of some very unusual venues and the making of a documentary film that was shown at the Barrowlands in Glasgow.

In short, he’s a one-off and he’s a national treasure.

I thought I’d treat you to one something from the 2009 release How To Get To Heaven From Scotland together with a rare live radio session.

mp3 : Aidan John Moffat & The Best Ofs – Big Blonde
mp3 : Aidan John Moffat & The Best Ofs – Big Blonde (session)

Given his propensity for being part of acts that begin with the letter ‘A’ you can bank on Aidan featuring in this slot a few more times in the coming weeks.

Dexy's Midnight Runners

ON A NIGHT WHEN FLOWERS DIDN’T SUIT MY SHOES…

A re-run of a guest posting from August 2011

They took their name from the recreational drug of choice for the Northern Soul fans at the time of their formation, Dexedrine, a brand of dextroamphetamine, the “midnight runners” refers to ability to dance all-night after taking said drug !!

Formed in Birmingham by Kevin Rowland and Kevin “Al” Archer, they arrived on the music scene with their own distinctive sound and dress style, they didn’t want to be a part of anyone else’s movement they wanted their own.

Their look was described as being “straight out of Robert DeNiro’s film Mean Streets” with their Donkey Jackets, Leather Coats and Woolly Hats…. ..at the same time in Kirkcaldy I was wearing a Donkey Jacket……this had absolutely nothing to do with any music scene, I just thought it may make me look more attractive to the young Irish student Midwives that were studying in my home town in the late seventies/early eighties!!!! For the record I had little success!!!

Rowland had a whole manifesto for the band – among other things they lived together in a squat and used public transport, which they never paid for. I remember seeing footage of them jumping over the barriers at an underground station in London and fleeing from the ticket collectors enroute to a gig.

After their first album, Searching for the Young Soul Rebels, Rowland fell out with most of the music press and many of his band members quit over Rowland’s antics including his “press embargo”.
The NME accused the band of “emotional fascism”.

This didn’t stop Rowland, he recruited new blood and changed their image again, this time his mantra was fitness and the band was seen out training together and running. With this change came a new look, which included hooded tops, boxing boots and ponytails. Alcohol was banned and exercise sessions would take place before gigs, he felt now the band had the right fighting spirit.

Co-founder Archer had left after the release of the first album, he formed a new band The Blue Ox Babes and was to later claim that Rowland stole his Celtic sound with the fiddles from Archer’s new group.
The one member of the band that stayed loyal to Kevin Rowland, was the leader of the brass section, Big Jim Patterson, the Scottish trombonist. He remained in Dexy’s until he felt their presence in the band had been diminished by the arrival of a new sound that used mainly fiddles. Big Jim and the rest of the brass players left to form the TKO Horns who played on Elvis Costello’s album Punch the Clock. They also went on to perform with numerous artists including Madness, Squeeze, Nick Lowe and Howard Jones.

In a BBC 2 Documentary for the Young Guns series, Archer played a demo he had made before the unveiling of Rowland latest re-incarnation of Dexy’s that sounded very much like their first single with the new direction, The Celtic Soul Brothers.

Rowland recruited Helen O’Hara from The Blue Ox Babes to join his “new” creation the Emerald Express, who joined the remainder of Dexy’s for the album Too-Rye-Ay, and with it came another new look best described as raggytail Gypsy, with dungarees, scarves and waistcoats.

Dexy’s Midnight Runners had worldwide success with the single Come on Eileen and I’m sure that it will be a floor filler at wedding evening discos for years to come. It was the biggest selling single in the UK and USA in 1982 and sold over 1.2 million copies in the UK alone.

I bought their first single Dance Stance after hearing it on Annie Nightingale’s Sunday Night Radio One Show, while working at St Andrews’ University.

On the February 1st 1980, the band played at the St Andrews’ Student’s Union, it was a blistering gig with Kevin Rowland turning in a very charismatic performance and, “Big” Jimmy Patterson a standout on trombone on his return to his homeland. A short while later, in May 1980, Geno No.1 in the UK charts.

mp3 : Dexy’s Midnight Runners – Geno (live)

Through all their time as a band Dexy’s produced some wonderful singles, the best for me being, produced during the brass/soul period and these are particular favourites of mine:-

mp3 : Dexy’s Midnight Runners – There There My Dear
mp3 : Dexy’s Midnight Runners – Plan B

They also turned in some very good cover versions of the Northern Soul Classics, Chuck Wood’s Seven Days Are Too Long and Johnny Johnson and the Bandwagon’s Breaking Down The Walls Of Heartache that showed where Kevin Rowland’s musical preferences lay.

mp3 : Dexy’s Midnight Runners – Seven Days Are Too Long

Over the years, Rowland proved himself to be a control freak and a bit of a prat, who liked to be a chameleon and change his appearance, at will, he took it too far in 1999, when after an absence of 11 years away from the music scene, he released his second solo album My Beauty complete with cover photo of himself in a dress and stockings!!!!

It has been said My Beauty was a good piece of work but many shied away from it because of the cover. He appeared at the Reading music festival to promote the album dressed as he was on the cover and was bombarded on stage with a hail of bottles.

FOOTNOTE : Best place seen wearing a donkey jacket:

Picture the scene it’s July 1982 in a nightclub in San Antonio, Ibiza. Everyone is dancing about wearing their finest shorts and t-shirts to show off their fast growing tans- when on the music system comes Rock the Casbah by The Clash and out of nowhere appears a guy wearing a DONKEY JACKET with NCB* emblazoned on the back!!!

* NCB means National Coal Board

John Greer, Monday 22 August 2011

Smiths Covers

COVERING ALL THE BASES

While I was digging out the original version for yesterday’s posting, I noticed that I had a fair few cover versions on the hard drive. Some are far better than others but I think there will be something for everyone:-

mp3 : Clayhill – Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want
mp3 : Deftones – Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want
mp3 : Johnny Marr – Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want (live)
mp3 : Josh Rouse – Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want
mp3 : Muse – Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want
mp3 : She & Him – Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want
mp3 : The Dream Academy – Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want
mp3 : Tinderbox – Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want
mp3 : Vitamin String Quartet – Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want

It was while putting this piece together that I learned of the sad and untimely death just a few weeks back of Gavin Clark, the lead singer with Clayhill and who also contibuted to the work of UNKLE. He was 46 years old.

R.I.P.

Monochrome Set, Smiths, Style Council, Tracey Thorn

FOOLS IN LOVE (APRIL AND OTHERWISE)

This is loosely adapted and then expanded from a post over at the old place back in February 2010.

One of the minor reasons I ever started a blog was to bring attention to otherwise unavailable or difficult to find very fine records that had only ever been placed on the b-sides of long-deleted singles and while there is a growing tendency for album re-issues to bring together such tracks and label them ‘bonus’, nothing beat finding bits of vinyl with the crackly old originals.

One of the songs I really loved from my old vinyl days but had missed for many a year was Goodbye Joe, originally recorded as a b-side to a 1979 single :-

mp3 : The Monochrome Set – Goodbye Joe

It begins as if it is a live track, and one that is of poor sound quality at that. You can hear some crowd sing-a-long at the outset in what is clearly a small venue, then some cheering as a guitar as struck. After just under 50 seconds, lead singer Bid utters the words ‘Let’s Have Some Decorum’ and suddenly we switch to a quite gorgeous and moving studio track.

It’s about watching a film performance of this bloke here in case you were wondering.

Oh and for the record, the song was later recorded by Tracey Thorn, and again was consigned to obscurity on a 1982 b-side :-

mp3 : Tracey Thorn – Goodbye Joe

The original posting also featured the A-sides of the singles which, in Tracey’s case was also a beautiful piece of music:-

mp3 : Tracey Thorn – Plain Sailing

In the Feb 2010 posting I mentioned in passing how both of Tracey’s songs had featured heavily on compilation tapes in the era of 82/83/84 as a way to demonstrate to would-be girlfriends that I really did have a sensitive side but it never ever worked all that well. Seems I wasn’t alone in that failing as my good mate Dirk from Sexy Loser left behind the comment:-

“Yeah, mate: those tapes, ey?! I only wish I still would own a few of the dozens of them I made up back then with all my passion, heart and soul … instead I gave them away to girls who didn’t give a fuck. Literally.”

I remember that as being a genuine ‘splutter the tea all over the monitor’ moment when I read it. Still makes me smile………

And while I’m here, I just can’t resist:-

mp3 : The Style Council – The Paris Match (LP version)

Days of skinny-ribbed hooped t-shirts, a headful of perfectly coiffured hair and a devil-may-care attitude to life that I thought would last forever. How the fuck has Johnny Marr changed so little since those days???????

mp3 : The Smiths – Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want

Sigh.

Teenage Fanclub

MY FIRST TASTE OF TEENAGE FANNIES

I’ve mentioned on more than one occasion that Teenage Fanclub are a bit hit and miss with me but this particular 45 is one I’ve adored for nigh on 25 years now and I still think it is one of their all time greats:-

mp3 : Teenage Fanclub – God Knows It’s True

I reckon this was the first time I ever heard the band and again it was thanks to it appearing on a compilation tape put together by Jacques the Kipper. It’s quite incredible to realise this single came out as far back as November 1990. It was the last thing they released on the Paperhouse label before the switch to Creation Records and the deserved commercial success from Bandwagonesque onwards.

I was delighted a few years ago to pick up a mint condition copy of the 12″ for just £3 and to discover that the other tracks consist of a cracking b-side that could easily have been released as a single and a couple of instrumentals which demonstrate the boys liked to listen to bit of Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr just as much as the west coast Americana that they claimed were the biggest influences:-

mp3 : Teenage Fanclub – So Far Gone
mp3 : Teenage Fanclub – Weedbreak
mp3 : Teenage Fanclub – Ghetto Blaster

Enjoy

James

THE JAMES SINGLES (24)

I hadn’t forgotten about this series….I was simply putting off having to write about this rip-off.

I mentioned last time out that the release of Runaground, while being a right pain in the proverbial with its 3xCd format, at least, and for the first time in ages, provided some value(ish) for money with decent b-sides, mixes and live session versions.

Six months later in November 1998, and with the Best Of still doing quite well in the album charts James were about to embark on a sold-out tour of large arenas in the UK complete with support from either Stereophonics or Gene. The record label decided something had to be done to tie-in with the tour and also to prompt the Christmas market record-buyers that a James greatest hits CD might be worth popping into someone’s stocking.

And so the idea of a remix of Sit Down was hatched……

There’s lots to despise about this release. It has an appalling sleeve and the remix isn’t very good…it sounds awfy like the Doctorin’ The Tardis by The Timelords which had got to #1 away back in 1988…and then there’s the heinous crime of the record label stating that the inclusion of Sit Down on the b-side was the ‘original version’ when in fact it was the hit single version already on ‘Best Of’ rather than going to the trouble and expense of getting permission to go with the version released back in the days on Rough Trade.

What almost saves it are the two acoustic tracks lifted from the April 1998 session recorded for GLR Radio and the rocking version of China Girl which the band had recorded as a one-off on 21 April 1997 as a contribution to a Radio 1 Show, hosted by Jo Whiley, to commemorate the 50th birthday of Iggy Pop. If you hadn’t taped it off the radio it was otherwise unavailable:-

mp3 : James – Sit Down (apollo four forty mix)
mp3 : James – China Girl
mp3 : James – What For (GLR session)
mp3 : James – Sit Down (GLR session)

Enjoy.