THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN

I HOPE YOU LIKE THIS SONG COS HERE’S FOUR VERSIONS OF IT

This single from 1979 sneaked into the lower echelons of my 45 45s at 45 series back in 2008:-

mp3 : Joe Jackson – Is She Really Going Out With Him?

My love for the song is as much to do with the memories it brings back and that was the end of 4th Year at Secondary School, turning sixteen years of age and feeling you know everything there is to know about life. It’s a time when you feel of an age that you don’t want to go on holiday with your family and wee brothers and instead you want to stay at home and throw a party for all your mates. I wasn’t alone in trying to do this as it seemed there were parties every weekend in July and August 1979 at someone or others house.

The thing is….every single one of those weeks, I’d end up walking home alone frustrated at my inabilities to not get tongue-tied when trying to converse with an attractive member of the opposite sex. It didn’t help that at the age of 16 , I looked at least two years younger….while most of the guys in school looked two years older and boasted of being able to get into pubs. And they had no problems in getting girlfriends….

Aside from this being a song that perfectly captures my life at a particular point in time, I really was a fan of Joe Jackson when he burst onto the scene. His early records were infectiously catchy in many places, and his lyrics were angst-ridden enough to strike a chord. The fact he was classically-trained made a big difference in what was very much a DIY-dominated industry at the point in history. Joe looked and sounded different.

His was one of the first concerts I ever went to at an over-18s venue – it was at Glasgow Tiffany’s (long gone, but a favourite stop-off point before Barrowlands became popular round about 1984/5). Anyway, the Joe Jackson gig was in 1980 when he was touring his third LP, Beat Crazy. I went along on my own with a false ID of a friend’s big brother just in case I got stopped on the door. I needn’t have worried – the stewards (they weren’t bouncers in those days) were completely relaxed and probably had a good laugh as they watched me pace up and down outside the venue plucking up the courage to try my luck…

It was a great gig – on the same tour BBC Radio 1 recorded the London gig and broadcast it one Saturday evening – somewhere in a box I still have the C120 cassette tape I made that night – and there’s a 1980 gig by The Jam on the other side.

That tour was the end of a chapter for Joe as come the end of it he had disbanded the band that had recorded the first three of his albums. Their last gig was in Utrecht in the Netherlands on 15 December 1980, and so this was would have been the final time they played the signature tune:-

mp3 : Joe Jackson – Is She Really Going Out With Him? (live, 1980)

The song however, remained a constant throughout the many tours that Joe Jackson would undertake during the 80s although to avoid getting bored with it he would arrange completely different versions making the best use of the talents of the singers and musicians in his backing band. For instance, the Night & Day Tour of 1983 saw an a capella version as recorded in Sydney on 7th May:-

mp3 : Joe Jackson – Is She Really Going Out With Him? (a capella, 1983)

The following year, it was given an acoustic unplugged sort of treatment, with this version taken from a show in Melbourne on 24th July 1984:-

mp3 : Joe Jackson – Is She Really Going Out With Him? (acoustic, 1984)

The three live versions are all lifted from a double live LP that was released back in 1988 and which devoted one side of vinyl to each of four tours between 1980 and 1986. It is worth noting that bass player Graham Maby sings and plays on all four of these versions.

Enjoy

Compilation (NME Tapes)

THIS WAS STUCK TO THE FRONT PAGE OF A MAGAZINE (5)

Echorich is a big supporter of this blog, and when I put the first of this series up back in January he left the following comment:-

“My favorite freebies will hopefully find their way to this series – NME’s Rough Trade C81, Dancin’ Master and Jive Wire cassettes. These three set the standard for me. This Mojo release is a good one for sure and I have to agree that when the brief is to cover a single artist/band or album, these freebies are the most successful.”

Happy to oblige amigo.

Side One

mp3 : Thompson Twins – In The Name Of Love
mp3 : David Gamson – No Turn On Red
mp3 : Leisure Process – Love Cascade
mp3 : Buzzz – Tonight’s Alright
mp3 : Pigbag – A Live Orangutango
mp3 : Aswad – Ghetto In The Sky
mp3 : Scritti Politti – Asylums In Jerusalem
mp3 : The Beat – Get A Job / Stand Down Margaret
mp3 : Gil Scott-Heron – B-Movie

Side Two

mp3 : Suicide – Dream Baby Dream
mp3 : Kraftwerk – Das Model
mp3 : Altered Images – Happy Birthday
mp3 : Theatre of Hate – Dreams Of Poppies
mp3 : The Gun Club – Ghost On The Highway
mp3 : Tav Falco’s Panther Burns – Ms. Froggy
mp3 : Black Uhuru – Happiness
mp3 : Defunkt – Illusions
mp3 : Rip Rig & Panic – Billy Eckstein’s Shirt Collar
mp3 : Carmel – Storm
mp3 : Vic Godard & Subway Sect – Just In Time
mp3 : Pablo – Madaleina

mp3 : Hidden track (rap/hip hop ad for NME)

It’s a real ragtag of a compilation and I’d be surprised if anyone who sent away for it (this was another of the NME mail-order offers) would have liked all 21 tracks.

There were bona-fide chart smashes with Altered Images and Kraftwerk (albeit the tape has the original German lyric for The Model). Politics was represented on both sides of the Atlantic with the still wonderful sounding Gil Scott Heron‘s attack on Reaganomics and The Beat‘s live medley that reflected life under Thatcher. There was music to swung your hips to and in particular David Gamson giving an early indication of the pop-style he would bring to later material from the then uber-indie Scritti Politti, and not forgetting a little bit of easy listening jazz that the style mags of the time were telling us would be dominating our listening habits for the rest of the decade – step forward Ms Carmel McCourt.

There’s also a couple of things that are soooooooo 80s and of their time – Leisure Process and The Thompson Twins stand accused and found guilty (although in the case of the former they get let off as they feature the bloke who was the lead singer in Glasgow new wavers Positive Noise).

Reggae, rockabilly and easy listening are also represented while there’s a couple of songs that were and remain, to my ears, just unlistenable – I’m talking in particular about Rip Rig and Panic and Defunkt. Oh and the hidden gem on the tape is the song by The Gun Club.

I kind of get the feeling that this was a tape in which every NME staffer got to choose one song or act that they were listening to at the time and as a result it is more disjointed than most. But it does have about half a dozen that have stood up to the test of passing time….

Enjoy.

Criminal Hygiene, Hot Chip, Parquet Courts

DRENCHED…..A GUEST POSTING FROM S-WC

Whilst I am was in the States last week I was taken out around Chicago by a new colleague (Hi Chip, if you are reading, yup an American called Chip, I also have a German friend called Fritz, and a French colleague called Pascal). We were sitting in a bar playing ‘Cards Against Humanity’, which if you have never played I totally recommend, that is, if you like your humour to be puerile, immature and slightly dodgy – which sadly I do. Anyway, Chip turns to me and says ‘Do you Like Live music?’ – and I’m like, ‘Yeah, a bit’ – I was playing it cool, I wanted to jump up and down and shout ‘YEAH!’

Around the corner was a club called Metro, and that very night playing at the venue was a band called Criminal Hygiene, and according to Chip they have a bit of a buzz about them. I finished my pint of warm beer and say ‘What do they sound like?’, ‘Shall we go and find out’ Chip says. Definitely.

$6 is what it costs to get in, and, within about half an hour I have had another pint of warm beer plus an additional one thrown in my face, bearing in mind I am standing near the back this is quite an achievement. I don’t see that many bands live anymore, not in tiny venues that smell like sweat and stale beer, anyway, I’m too old, and I have a two year old daughter to look after. However in venues like this, in a town you don’t know, surrounded by strangers, watching a band, that forty minutes previous, you have never heard of, bands seem incredible.

Criminal Hygiene are very good live, they play a garage rock racket, kind of punky but in a good way. They kind of sound like The Replacements, although a more recent comparison would be Parquet Courts or perhaps The Orwells (see last weeks missive). Their show is pretty rock and roll, smashed instruments, clearly drunk band members inviting the audience on to the stage for an impromptu jam, that sort of thing. Its bloody brilliant. Especially at the start when the singer jumps on the stage and shouts ‘Let’s fucking Do this’. I read later back in the comfort of my hotel that the singer of Criminal Hygiene has false front teeth due to the fact that he smacked his fact on a skateboard when much younger. Respect.

At the end I retreat to the bar and about two minutes later Chip comes over drenched in sweat, his Tshirt is ripped but he has a heck of a smile on his face. ‘That was pretty badass’ he says. I agree, hoping that badass means good. Its about one in morning when we leave the club, I sigh knowing that in about six hours’ time I have to go to the airport and suffer more jet lag. Yet I will go with a smile, a tired, slightly badass smile perhaps.

mp3 : Criminal Hygiene – Turpentine
mp3 : Parquet Courts – Stoned and Starving

And just because of how my friend looked at the end of the gig

mp3 : Hot Chip – Dark and Stormy

S-WC

Teardrop Explodes

A THING OF UNCLUTTERED BEAUTY (BEAUTIFULLY REMIXED)

It was just last September that I took a look back at the single Tiny Children, the third to be lifted the 1981 LP Wilder from The Teardrop Explodes.

I offered the opinion that it deserved a much better fate than merely hitting #44 in the charts given that it was a gorgeous lullaby, delivered with a real degree of fragility by Julian Cope whose vocal is quite lovely, even if he does at times appear to be at the edge of his range.

Ctel, the brains and talents behind the ridiculously good Acid Ted blog, is one of my dearest and oldest cybernet friends and he obviously took note of that posting as he dropped me an email the other week with a link to a remix of the song. A remix that I’m sure you’ll agree is every bit as wonderful as the original:-

mp3 : The Teardrop Explodes – Tiny Children (parjo01 re-edit)

Enjoy.

Close Lobsters

NEXT YEAR’S NOSTALGIA FEST (Part 7 of 48)

For a whole bunch of complicated and related reasons, I sort of lost touch with new music from late 1986 through to early 1990. Thankfully, I’ve been able to plug many of the gaps in my musical knowledge thanks in the main to my dear friend Jacques The Kipper who supplied me with all sorts of C90 cassettes over many years chock-full of great tunes that had passed me by.

By the time I had even heard of Close Lobsters, they had come and gone, breaking up in 1989 and leaving behind a body of work that consisted of 2 LPs and 6 singles. Indeed, the first time I ever got to listen to any of their songs was when The Wedding Present did a cover version on a b-side.

The band formed back in 1985 in Johnstone, which is a small town a few miles to the south-west of Glasgow with a line-up of Andrew Burnett, Bob Burnett, Tom Donnelly, Stuart McFadyen and Graham Wilmington. One of their songs – Firestation Towers – was included on the original C86 tape and this lead to a deal with Fire Records as well as a major support slot to Jesus & Mary Chain. Bob Burnett left after only a couple of singles and was replaced on bass guitar by Paul Bennett.

It was talking to folk in a pub one night in the early 90s about my recently discovered love of TWP (it took me until the single Kennedy in 1989) that mention was made of Close Lobsters and a couple of folk said they were best described as the Caledonian Weddoes. Intrigued, I tried to track down some of their songs, but wasn’t successful as they had been released on a record label which weren’t the best for re-stocking when a shop had sold out.

So for a number of years it was only through their songs appearing on compilation CDs that I picked up their song….until the advent of ebay which saw some folk sell vinyl copies of the albums and singles.

It is true that their sound was unmistakably of its era….and yes, there’s an awful lot of musical similarity between Close Lobsters and The Wedding Present. Neither of these are things that count against the band.

The song on CD86 is what sounds like an earlier mix and version of the opening track on their debut LP:-

mp3 : Close Lobsters – Just Too Bloody Stupid (CD86 version)

I actually think the LP version is superior:-

mp3 : Close Lobsters – Just Too Bloody Stupid (album version)

In the absence of a b-side to a single I thought I’d offer the bonus of the tremendous track after which the debut LP was named:-

mp3 : Close Lobsters – Foxheads

In March 2012 they came back together to play indie festivals in Madrid and Berlin as well as what can only be described as a triumphant gig in Glasgow where the clock was well and truly turned back. Last year, the band played the Copenhagen Popfest and released rather splendid new material via an E.P. called Kunstwerk in Spacetime which picked up just about exactly where the boys had left off 25 years earlier….

Aberfeldy

SATURDAY’S SCOTTISH SONG : #2 : ABERFELDY

There were many who had high hopes for Aberfeldy.

Theis Edinburgh-based band (and named after a rather picturesque small town in Scotland) first came to prominence back in 2004 when two very well received and singles and a subsequent debut LP entitled Young Forever were released on Rough Trade. They were a charming sounding band with the three blokes on vocals/guitar, bass and drums (Riley Briggs, Ken McIntosh and Ian Stoddard) augmented by a high reliance on the keyboard, violin and harmonising skills of its two female members (Ruth Barrie and Sarah McFadyen).

They made some early inroads into the indie charts and then a third single – Love Is An Arrow – was released in early 2005 and thanks in part to a cutesy animated video that enjoyed heavy rotation on MTV here in the UK, the single reached #60 on the mainstream charts. In fact, there was every chance it could have gone Top 40 except Rough Trade underestimated the demand and hadn’t pressed enough copies.

There was an audience for the sort of music Aberfeldy were making as evidenced by the chart success of The Magic Numbers with who they shared a lot of traits. In late 2005, another lovely little single in the shape of Summer’s Gone was released but it didn’t have the impact hoped for.

The following year the band took their sounds out on the road to mainstream audiences thanks to a series of high-profile support slots across the UK and Europe and there was a very favourable critical reception to the July 2006 release of their second LP Do Whatever Turns You On. But to the surprise of many, the band were dropped by Rough Trade before the year was out.

Much of 2007 was spent on the road in difficult and strange circumstances – no record deal but with the old single Summer’s Gone having been licensed for use in a number of TV commercials throughout the world, they had as high a profile as they ever had. And then, towards the end of the year the band suffered a dreadful blow with the departure of the two female members in somewhat acrimonious circumstances.

They were replaced with new recruits and this fleshed out six-piece band ended 2007 with two sell-out gigs in their home city and high expectations for a new deal to be inked early into the new year. Instead, it took until October 2008 for any new material to appear and it was in the shape of a 45 entitled Come On Claire on 17 Seconds Records, a new and ultimately short-lived venture from Ed Jupp who had initially dipped his toes into the music business via the excellent 17 Seconds blog (which is still going strong today).

Aberfeldy stayed busy on the road and in the studio but those of us who had high hopes a few years back knew deep down that their chance had come and gone. The release in late 2010 of a third LP – Somewhere To Jump From – this time on Tenement Records, was met with almost complete indifference.

I don’t listen all that much to the band nowadays but I’ve enough of their songs on the i-phone for them to pop up randomly every few months and I do like hearing them. Here’s the closest they got to the big time:-

mp3 : Aberfeldy – Love Is An Arrow

Enjoy

Paul Quinn & Edwyn Collins

A BRAND NEW PAUL QUINN AND EDWYN COLLINS SONG!!

It was almost 30 years ago that BBC Radio 1 recorded and then broadcast a session from Paul Quinn & Edwyn Collins on the Richard Skinner Show. The session was recorded on 5th August 1984 and broadcast on 20th August 1984.

Up until the other day, the only copies of the session kicking around were descended from homemade cassettes where those smart enough had listened with their fingers poised over the pause button. As you can imagine the quality of the recordings weren’t great not helped by the deterioration of the actual tape over the years.

As I said….up until the other day…..for hasn’t the wonderful and amazing and worth every penny of the license fee BBC not just gone and re-broadcast the session in magical digital quality on 6 Music.

Not only that, but the search of the archives and tapes uncovered a song that hadn’t gone out as part of the 20th August broadcast. Talk about finding lost treasure……….

I’ve learned all this thanks to an e-mail from the Proprietor of The Punk Rock Hotel, a man who more than any keeps the flame burning on behalf of who I consider to be the greatest Scottish vocal talent of my generation.

The musicians involved in the session were:-

Paul Quinn – vocals/keyboards
Edwyn Collins – guitar/backing vocals
Chris Bell – drums
Craig Gannon – guitar
Paul Heard – bass

The four songs that were originally broadcast consisted of two Quinn/Collins compositions (including a song that was subsequently released under Paul’s name only as Edwyn had contractual issues preventing him being formally recognised) and two cover versions (one of this Mike Nesmith song while the other had previously been recorded by Orange Juice).

The fifth and previously never heard song was another cover – of this Bee Gees song dating back to 1968.

So without any further delay:-

mp3 : Paul Quinn/Edwyn Collins – Different Drum
mp3 : Paul Quinn/Edwyn Collins – Ain’t That Always The Way
mp3 : Paul Quinn/Edwyn Collins – It Had To Happen
mp3 : Paul Quinn/Edwyn Collins – Louise, Louise
mp3 : Paul Quinn/Edwyn Collins – I Started A Joke

Ah…….but here’s a really peculiar and mysterious thing that is bemusing both myself and The Proprietor……

The versions of Different Drum and Ain’t That Always The Way that went out on 6 Music the other night do not appear to be those originally broadcast back in 1984.

The cassette copy from back in the day quite clearly has someone playing harmonica on these two tracks and this is an instrument absent from the cleaned up and digitized versions. It is also worth noting that on the hissy cassette version of Different Drum you hear Richard Skinner introducing the song and the band….so that was clearly the version broadcast in 1984….and as I say it is completely different from that broadcast in 2015. Have a listen to realise I’m not just gibbering:-

mp3 : Paul Quinn/Edwyn Collins – Different Drum (cassette recording)
mp3 : Paul Quinn/Edwyn Collins – Ain’t That Always The Way (cassette recording)

Peculiar??? Most certainly……………

But notwithstanding this mystery, what an absolute pleasure it is to hear the clarity of these updated recordings and of course the fact that 31 years on, there is a new Paul Quinn/Edwyn Collins song to enjoy.

I’m not sure if anything else released in the rest of 2015 will excite me this much.

Billy MacKenzie

BILLY MACKENZIE RARITIES….COURTESY OF SID LAW (6)

In 1996 Billy was in London trying to get a record deal. Epic and Nude were both interested and while the fine detail and deal was sorted out, Billy had been recording a vocal for yet another collaboration. This time it was with those epic progsters Apollo Four Forty.

Already well-known for their remix and production work on everyone from U2 to The Moody Boys, they had ditched the extended exploration of cryogenic preservation evidenced on their “Millenium Fever” debut LP in 1994 (do check it out – I love it!) to create a sample-icious follow up album “Electra Glide In Blue”, but they needed someone to do a kind of “Billy MacKenzie” style performance on a tune called “Pain In Any Language”. There was only one person to get in for the job.

Top @440 dudester Noko described how “up” Billy was “about the whole thing”. It was the last song Billy wrote, recorded and completed in his life. It is a career highpoint and in a bitter twist turned out to be Billy’s swansong.

mp3 : Billy Mackenzie /Apollo 440 – Pain In Any Language

There is a tiny wee clip of Billy in “The Glamour Chase” documentary showing Billy laughing and having a cup of tea during the recording session with Apollo Four Forty. He looks full of beans. When Nude signed a deal with Billy in late 1996, Apollo Four Forty were given the nod to produce four tracks for Billy’s album for Nude. Listen to this track and imagine what an album that could have been. It was never made.

Sid Law

And that, dear readers, brings an end to what has been a truly wonderful series and one that was I honoured and humbled to have hosted on T(n)VV. Thank you so much Sid. Please feel free to share more treasures with us.

Nirvana

SOME SONGS JUST NEVER DATE

The opening few notes of this must be among the most recognisable of all time:-

mp3 : Nirvana – Smells Like Teen Spirit

I can still recall the very first time I ever heard this. It was the opening song on a cassette made up by Jacques the Kipper. It was a time when every six weeks or so, we would thrust a tape into each others hands along with set of cryptic clues for each song, and challenge the other, not just to identify the track, but also offer a few observations.

His clue for the opening song was ‘Vodka’. Sheer genius if you ask me…..the boy should have become a copywriter with an advertising agency.

I loved the song then and I love it still. I put it at #11 in my all time 45s rundown back in 2008 and it would still feature just as highly if I was to re-run that exercise today. ( much of the rest of this posting is adapted from that particular piece over at the old blog with a few additions)

This song is about as far removed as you could ever imagine from the jingly-jangly stuff that I listened to so much over the previous decade, and it could almost be classified as the dreaded stadium rock. And yet….

There’s just something very special and outstanding about Smells Like Teen Spirit that is difficult to pinpoint. I can’t argue that it’s anything unlike you’d ever heard before, given that it has a riff that is very similar (some say identical) to More Than A Feeling by 70s soft-rockers Boston. Nor is there a case to be made that the vocals are completely different from other folk given that Kurt Cobain’s style of quiet/shout/quiet/shout was something you heard from Black Francis on many Pixies songs. And yet…

The song did seem to arrive like a bolt out of the blue. Yes, there had been some coverage in the UK music papers about some sort of scene based around the city of Seattle, but how many times before had we read about a scene in Chicago, New York, LA, San Francisco or any other American city that had petered out before it crossed the Atlantic. But then Nirvana came across to the UK to promote Nevermind. There was a live appearance on an early evening chat-show on Channel 4 hosted by Jonathan Ross. He introduced the band who went straight into a heavy-metal riff, and then Kurt took over on a completely indecipherable lyric that was a low-moan or a scream…

In the middle of the tune, he sang the words, ‘Just Because You’re Paranoid Don’t Mean That They’re After You’. Then he started screaming again. The song finished in a flurry of feedback not seen in any TV studio since the heyday of Jesus And Mary Chain, before the drums were kicked over and the band stormed off to muted applause and a bemused chat show host who had his finger in his ear. Jonathan Ross than, in a brilliant piece of improvisation said ‘That was Nirvana – doing a song that none of us were expecting. They’ve asked me to mention that they are available for children’s parties and bar mitzvahs…’

It was a truly astonishing piece of TV, and the most ‘punk’ thing I had seen in years, and I knew right then that Nirvana were the genuine article. (The song they played was Territorial Pissings). It was the sort of thing that won’t happen nowadays as prime-time TV live shows are no longer really live and bands won’t behave in that way for fear of upsetting the label bosses.

Of course it all went badly wrong almost immediately, and the band nowadays seem to be loved and admired more for the dead rock star syndrome rather than anything else. The fact that it all ended before there could be any critical backlash or before they fell out of fashion, means that there are very few reasons why music historians and commentators can ever make critical comments about Nirvana, other than be horrified at some of the copy-cat acts that came in their wake. But that’s just nonsensical – you never read anyone blaming The Beatles for every single four-piece band that’s walked the planet since 1963 do you?

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

mp3 : Nirvana – Drain You
mp3 : Nirvana – Even In His Youth
mp3 : Nirvana – Aneurysm

The back of the single provides details of a promotional tour in 1991:-

November 26 : Bradford University
November 27 : Birmingham Hummingbird
November 28 : Sheffield University
November 29 : Edinburgh Calton Studios
November 30 : Glasgow QMU
December 2 : Newcastle Mayfair
December 3 : Nottingham Rock City
December 4 : Manchester Academy
December 5 : London Kilburn National Ballroom
December 9 : Belfast Conor Hall
December 10 : Dublin McGonagle’s

A few thousand people struck gold with tickets on that tour.

I never did get to see the band live on stage. Mrs Villain and myself had tickets for a Glasgow gig that never happened.

It was initially cancelled as Kurt Cobain had been unwell and was re-scheduled for later in the year but as we all know, the singer committed suicide on 6 April 1994. The £12 was obviously needed for something else as I immediately went back in for my refund, but Mrs V kept her ticket as a memento. Seems she was the clever one as she would get far more than its face value if she was to put it on e-bay.

(Incidentally, that’s not an image of Mrs V’s ticket…just one I lifted from the internet)

Dracula Legs, Orwells, Simon & Garfunkel

YAAAAWWWWN. A GUEST POSTING FROM S-WC

Nope….I’m not being rude.

S-WC used the word ‘Yawn’ in the title of his e-mail. Here’s the rest of his whimsical words:-

Jet lag. Wonderful thing. Its about three am, I am in a place called Dayton in the United States of America, which for those of you who don’t know, is in Ohio. I have been here for five hours, and have had about twenty minutes sleep. The whole place is unsurprisingly quiet. I’m really hungry as well which is not helping my mood. There is an all night shop down the road, but it looks quite ‘edgy’ so I’ve raided the mini bar. I say mini bar, it had some peanuts, a small warm bottle of water, some ‘chips’ and a shoe horn in it. The shoe horn was a bit rubbery but strangely tasty. For some reason still unknown to me, the Americans don’t do kettles or tea bags. Christ there is not even a gym. There is a bar, but its shut.

So then I looked at the info they leave in the room so you can get your bearings, saying that I appear to be on the 11th floor in the biggest hotel in the area, I might just be able to find my way around. However, Dayton appears to have lots of museums, a University Campus and that’s about it. Down the road, is a suburb called Kettering. My fingers are crossed that it is more lively as the UK equivalent. Apparently the Steve Miller Band played there once, so there is hope. Once when on an overnight stop in the UK version of Kettering I went to the town centre to find something to do in the evening, I managed to pick up a ‘What’s On in Kettering’ leaflet and it just said ‘Fuck All’.

So as I sit there wide awake in the sixth biggest city in Ohio, ‘the Gem City’ (named after a racehorse and not, you know, jewels) I reached for my ipod. I was trying not to as I listened to it much of the way over on the flight, but if needs must.

The weird thing about music is that is somehow, in the strangest or simplest of situations, it can lift a mood. By the end of the first track I was feeling slightly better, and I was smiling by the end of track two and track three made me do a little jig around the small box room I was in.

I now think that, you know, this place ain’t so bad, I arrived safely, the family are well back home, my luggage wasn’t lost. As I type now, I feel calm – the sun is being to rise across the skyline and this being America I can look forward to a heck of a breakfast, consisting of waffles, blueberries and maple syrup. I’ve also spied a Krusty Kreme Doughnut shop from the window, about a five minute walk in the other direction from the dodgy all night shop. Bonus. Also I get to go to Chicago on Sunday, so I should probably cut my whinging.

So here are the first three songs on the iPod this morning. I thank them for lifting me out of a rubbish mood. Its also a little odd how iPods have this habit of picking songs that suit the situation.

mp3 : Simon & Garfunkel – The Sound of Silence
mp3 : Dracula Legs – Heartburn Destination
mp3 : The Orwells – Blood Bubbles

S-WC

Birthday Party, Blondie, Clash, Harry Papadopoulos

READ IT IN BOOKS : HARRY PAPADOPOULOS

I rarely get any satisfaction from books that are simply filled with illustrations or photographs. It usually needs a decent narrative to keep me happy or satisfied. But not What Presence! : The Rock Photography of Harry Papadopoulos.

The re-kindling of the interest in Harry’s work was initially sparked off by an exhibition that was held in a Glasgow gallery between December 2011 and February 2012. It was an exhibition that I was drawn to time and time again….and every time I paid a visit I found myself changing my mind about what was my favourite photo. Here’s what was written to publicise that particular exhibition:-

Harry began his photographic career in his Glasgow home town, standing outside the Apollo, flogging gig-goers newly-developed shots from bands’ Edinburgh shows the night before. Harry’s impulse to guerilla lensmanship swiftly drew him to London: from 1979 to 1984 he was a staff photographer for the music weekly Sounds, providing countless front covers. During those five years, Harry’s photographs covered the post-punk waterfront, from Blondie to David Bowie; the Associates to Devo by way of Joy Division, Bryan Ferry, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Birthday Party, The Cramps, The Clash, Altered Images, Penetration, The Specials and Suicide (not to mention Wham!, ABC and Spandau Ballet).

At that time, Harry’s London flat also became home to fellow Scots migrants like Orange Juice, Aztec Camera, Josef K and the Bluebells. Harry thus became one of the first few photographers to capture the fey arrogance of Edwyn Collins and his Postcard cohorts and subsequently appeared in the Derek Jarman video for ‘What Presence’. Several of these photos comprise Harry’s first career retrospective at Street Level Photoworks.

In addition to the expected band portraits and live-action front-row shots, there are a host of unique photos: salute the militant gay triumvirate of Jimmy Somerville, Tom Robinson and Andy Bell as they march for homosexual equality. Savour Peter Capaldi – years before he learnt to swear and mutated into Malcolm Tucker – looking cute and wholesome as bow-tied front man of Glasgow band The Dreamboys (with favourite US late-night chat show host, Craig Ferguson on drums). Taste the flying mud, baying skinheads and noxious aroma at T In The Park’s ill-fated grandsire, the 1980 Loch Lomond Festival. The exhibition will be accompanied by guest writers and events documenting the Post Punk explosion in Glasgow in an era when the city’s musicians were a focus of the global music industry.

The exhibition is co-curated by Ken McCluskey.

That’s the basics. The full story behind the exhibition hid a sad story that Harry had suffered a brain aneurysm in 2002 and had come home to Glasgow in 2006. One of the city’s pop stars – Ken McCluskey of The Bluebells learned this a couple of years later from a chance encounter with Harry’s brother who just happened to be doing some electrical work in Ken’s house.

Ken paid a visit to Harry and found that his house had thousands of negatives and images just lying about in cardboard boxes and bags, some of which were the worse for wear. Harry’s poor health was such that he was about to move into a care home and so Ken took on a mission to salvage and digitize the negatives, a process that took the best part of a year. He then took the results to a curator whose expert eye very quickly concluded that the work was very worthy of an exhibition.

As I said earlier, I went along a few times to the exhibition. It wasn’t just great photos that made it such a joy but the reproductions of magazine and fanzine covers that stirred so many memories. I bought a few momentos from that particular exhibition, including packs of postcard sized photos containing some of my favourite shots. There was an opportunity to purchase larger sized limited edition prints but I wanted them all and couldn’t justify the expense. If only someone would curate a book.

In April 2013 my prayers were answered and my wee brother arranged to give me a copy for my 50th birthday.

The book is a real joy. It has a cover whose colours pay homage to the Sex Pistols debut LP and it has contents that take me back to that time when music was the most important thing in my life and when I couldn’t imagine it being any different. It is also a reminder that I fell in love with so many musicians not simply as a result of the sounds they made but for the way they looked, how they dressed and the attitude they had on stage and in real life.

It’s 120 pages long and regrettably it only captures a fraction of the images that were on display at the 2011/12 exhibition but I’m guessing the cost of a larger book would have been prohibitive – there’s a certain quality production level essential for books of this nature to make them worthwhile in the first instance. The foreword from Peter Capaldi captures perfectly what makes the book so worthwhile:-

“Nowadays celebrity photography is ubiquitous and strangely anonymous, but here we have a collection of photographs that succeed time and time again in getting to the heart of the subjects and giving us a glimpse of the youthful dreamers behind all the noise.”

The book also enables Ken McCluskey to flesh out Harry’s life story a little bit more with the reminder that his home in London, shared with fellow photographer Robert Sharp along with Edwyn Collins and Grace Maxwell, was nicknamed The House of Camp and was where so many musicians from Scotland bedded down for the night when they ventured down to the capital for a gig. I’m sure a separate book could be written about the nonsense that happened within its four walls and back garden such as the time when it became the location for a fantastic pop video directed by Derek Jarman:-

Harry has a cameo in the video – he’s the fully clothed hipster in the bath!!

My decision to review the book today was partly inspired by a comment from Charity Chic in the Billy Mackenzie posting last week as he mentioned Harry’s work was on display eight miles down the road from Glasgow in Paisley. (It was also partly inspired by a wee tale I’ve told in the footnote…)

The Paisley exhibition closed yesterday. I didn’t manage to get myself along and I’m annoyed with myself for that. But I’ve a feeling it won’t be too long before it pops up again, whether here in Glasgow or nearby.

Here’s three of excellent examples of Harry’s work with songs to accompany them:-

mp3 : The Birthday Party – Release The Bats

mp3 : The Clash – Janie Jones

mp3 : Blondie – Rip Her To Shreds

A wee footnote to all this.

Last week, Mrs V asked me if, during my blogging activities, I’d come across the name of Harry Papadopoulos. When I asked back what prompted the question she told me his name had come up in conversation with two sisters (Rena and Maria) who she bumps into and chats to every Sunday when she goes for a post-walk/jog beverage in a posh tea room in a nearby park. Turns out the sisters are second cousins of Harry and they are proud of his legacy of work….sometimes Glasgow feels like a village.

A second wee footnote…..

Great minds think alike!!

Mighty Mighty

NEXT YEAR’S NOSTALGIA FEST (Part 6 of 48)

Mighty Mighty were one of the bands who featured on C86. Their contribution to the cassette was a song called Law which eventually saw an official release as a b-side in 1987.

After releasing two singles in 1986 on their own Girlie Records, the band moved to a slightly bigger indie label in Chapter 22 for whom they would release four singles and one album before calling it a day in early 1988.

They certainly didn’t lack a sense of humour with lead vocalist Hugh Harkin once saying during an interview that the difference between Mighty Mighty and The Smiths was that “they write two-minute pop songs and we write three-minute pop songs”.

The song that appears on CD 86 was their debut for Girlie Records and it reached the giddy heights of #34 in the Indie Chart:-

mp3 : Mighty Mighty – Everybody Knows The Monkey

And here’s yer b-side:-

mp3 : Mighty Mighty – You’re On My Mind

While the a-side is very reminiscent of the sort of sound that would propel Inspiral Carpets to fame just a few years later the b-side is just about the nearest thing you can get to an Edwyn Collins/Orange Juice soundalike winner. And I gave it an immediate thumbs-up on my first listen as I put this post together.

Mighty Mighty reformed briefly in 2009/10 to play at Indietracks in the UK and at Popfest in Berlin. In 2012, Cherry Red Records issued a compilation double CD that captured everything they had recorded, including material that had been intended for the sophomore album.

Enjoy.

a.c. acoustics

SATURDAY’S SCOTTISH SONG : #1 : A.C. ACOUSTICS

AC Acoustics formed in Glasgow in the early 90s. Wiki mentions that they were heavily inspired by The Jesus and Mary Chain – blending white noise with early Pavement-style experimentation and, on occasion, augmenting their two guitar, bass and drums instrumentation with saxophones and violins.

They released a total of eight singles and four albums between 1992 and 2002, with the most critically acclaimed – Understanding Music – released originally in 2000 enjoying a re-release a full decade later.

Despite never obtaining much commercial success, they were well liked by many of their better known peers in the industry and toured as the opening act for the likes of PJ Harvey, Spacemen 3, Embrace, Stereophonics and Placebo.

I’ve only one of their tracks. It appeared on 22-track compilation CD entitled Park Lane Archives released in 2009 that brought together songs (mostly in demo version but some otherwise never previously released) that had been recorded in a Glasgow studio, located as you might have guessed, in Park Lane which is not all that far from Villain Towers.

mp3 : a.c.acoustics – Bluff Drive By

This was one of the previously unreleased tracks. It reminds me very much of Pavement. It also comes to a very abrupt and unexpected ending.

Enjoy

Associates

BILLY MACKENZIE RARITIES…COURTESY OF SID LAW (5)

After being dropped by Warners in 1988, Billy quickly put some demos together with Blair Booth and Philip Erb (who he had recorded “Cinemas Of the World” with) and secured a deal with Virgin subsidiary Circa. The result was 1990’s “Wild And Lonely” a record much maligned by many Associates and MacKenzie fans. There are a number of reasons for this but the main one is that while the rest of the UK had romped through the 2nd Summer of Love in 1988 and two years later Acid House, House, Hip-Hop and sample-tastic dance music was filling the charts, “Wild And Lonely” had been produced by Julian Mendelsohn and it sounded slick and well – a bit like 1986. “Wild” and “Lonely” were two of Billy’s Whippets by the way…

My favourite track from this era is a B-side track from the single “Fire To Ice” called “The Glamour Chase” – an Abba-like paean to lost hope, shattered dreams and dented pride. The song refers to the ditched Warners album, Billy’s stalled career and the cost of the quest for fame (“Quality knows what is insincere/ All is not what it seems to appear/ Searching for what in this emptiness/ Why all this sudden need to impress/ Why must we always think we know best/ Knowing you’re wanting a part of me/ Only protects that same part of me”).

mp3 : Associates – The Glamour Chase

Billy insisted the track was included on the UK version of the “Wild And Lonely” CD and it was the only track on the album which Julian Mendelsohn didn’t produce. Billy produced it.

Sid Law

JC adds (in August 2015)….

The marvellous illustration above is the work of Stuart Murray, but I only discovered this many months later via the comments section.

It was done by Stuart me for a book called The Great Scots Musicography in 2003 (a tome from which I draw much of the info that subsequently appears in postings), and Stuart says it was one of his favourites for the book. You can check out more recent work of his at http://www.thefolkyebumpintae.wordpress.com

Alabama 3, Johnny Cash, Sons & Daughters

A FEW OF MY FAVOURITE THINGS

From April 2007:-

There’s loads been written about The Man In Black, including a waft of biographies, some better than others. There’s even been an Oscar-winning movie about part of his life. So I don’t really need to go into too much detail.

Johnny Cash lived from 1932 until 2003. His recording career had many ups and downs over the best part of half-a-century, and it’s estimated he sold in excess of 50 million albums. He was something of a pioneer – being one of the first artists to break down barriers between country music and pop music, dressing like a goth (sans white-face make-up tho’) decades before the genre was invented and patenting the fast-living, carefree drink and drugs lifestyle that other such as Keith Richards have since blazed. He was as well known and as popular by the time of his death as he was at the peak of his career some 30 years previously.

He made films and had his own networked TV show. He recorded songs with hundreds of other artists and was part of a touring ‘supergroup’.

In short, he did everything you could imagine in the life and times of a successful and charismatic musician.

I grew up with the sounds of Johnny Cash in the 60s and early 70s, sometimes in my own house, but most often when I visited and stayed over with an aunt and uncle who seemed to have all his records. In saying that, there was no way in my sultry teenage era, nor during my time at university when I thought I was cool and trendy, could I admit to having a love of any sort of country music far less having an idol in Johnny Cash. But as more and more hip bands began to include acoustic songs on their albums, it began to be easier to suggest country/blues influences without getting laughed at.

And then in the 1990s, thanks in the main to Rick Rubin and Def Jam Recordings, (but also to U2 who had performed a duet with him) Johnny Cash became fashionable again. His series of American Recording LPs, which featured a mix of Cash originals and cover versions, brought him to a whole new audience, with appearances at Glastonbury on MTV much in evidence.

I recently picked up my first ever Johnny Cash vinyl record of my own via an e-bay bargain……the 1967 CBS issue of Johnny Cash’s Greatest Hits Volume 1. And from that, here’s a couple of tracks……..

mp3 : Johnny Cash – Orange Blossom Special
mp3 : Johnny Cash – Don’t Take Your Guns To Town

And from the tail-end of his career, here’s a couple of duets

mp3 : Johnny Cash & Joe Strummer – Redemption Song
mp3 : Johnny Cash & Nick Cave – I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry

And a couple of songs that namecheck the great man:-

mp3 : Sons & Daughters – Johnny Cash (live)
mp3 : Alabama 3 – Hello, I’m Johnny Cash

Finally, if you want to hear how good a job was done by the main players in the movie Walk The Line, have a listen to these two tracks:-

mp3 : Johnny Cash & June Carter – Jackson
mp3 : Joaquin Phoenix & Reese Witherspoon – Jackson

Enjoy

Public Image Limited

VERY MUCH A LOVED SONG

From December 2007:-

Yet another of the vinyl treasures that I found during my extended stay in Toronto.

A mint-condition copy of the 12″ of This Is Not A Love Song by P.I.L. For a bargain $10.

But I refuse to believe that the song dates back to 1983. That’s nearly 25 years ago for fuck sake. (WITH THIS UPDATE IT IS NOW 32 YEARS FUXXXACHE!!!). I’m not ready to accept that I’m getting that old that quickly. Time for the botox and liposuction.

I’ve long owned a copy of this record, but (a) I wore it out through constant playing, and (b) the whiter-than white sleeve was grubby and torn. I’m delighted to have at long last replaced it.

There are four songs on this magnificent piece of plastic – including an original and remix version of the single.

The remix is quite different from the original. Wobble’s bass lines and Lydon’s vocals are identical but the keyboards are far more prominent while the guitar is further back in the mix.

It’s probably a bit more poppy than the actual single, and while it’s pretty impressive in its own right, it just doesn’t have the same impact as what remains one of my all time favourite records.

A few years later, P.I.L. released a greatest hits compilation, which included yet a further remix of TINALS – and one that was completely different. A re-recorded vocal and a horn section that I just wan’t prepared for at the time. For years it was a version that I hated, but I have grown more fond of it in recent times. You can make your own minds up:-

mp3 : P.I.L. – This Is Not A Love Song (original 12″ version)
mp3 : P.I.L. – This Is Not A Love Song (re-mixed version)
mp3 : P.I.L. – This Is Not A Love Song (re-recorded version)

Enjoy.

Underworld

LET’S PUT ON OUR CLASSICS AND HAVE A LITTLE DANCE, SHALL WE?

From February 2009.

In which your humble scribe tries to show that there’s more to him than jangly-guitars, indie-pop and great haircuts from days of old.

Back in the late 1990s, I was in a job that involved the occasional bit of overseas travel. To those of you who don’t ever have to do that for a living it might sound like a great way of life, but believe me, aside from the excitement of arriving somewhere for the first time and enjoying, if you’re lucky, a bit of sightseeing, the joys of being far away from home for a few days isn’t any fun.

It was in 1997 that I went on what proved to be my furthest ever jaunt, to Kuala Lumper in Malaysia to accompany my boss who was giving the keynote speech to a conference of civic leaders – I was there partly as the bag-carrier and organiser, but I was also around to make any last-minute changes to the speech and presentation. I have three abiding memories of the trip.

Firstly, it was very very hot and humid with the most amazing bursts of thunder and lightning I ever imagine I will see.

Secondly, as someone who is not a fan of any sort of exotic food, my participation in a 16-course banquet held in honour of the boss was torture of the worst kind – I was pretty ill for 48 hours afterwards but still had to be seen in and around the conference venue and elsewhere at all times. I made sure I knew where the nearest toilet was.

Thirdly, I heard Moaner by Underworld for the first ever time.

I was having real problems sleeping during the trip, and in the middle of one night I found myself tuned into MTV Asia. It was a station dominated by all sorts of American rock’n’roll stadium acts, particularly Guns’n’Roses who seemed to be on every other song. Then out of the blue came a video that seemed to be a soundtrack to the latest Batman movie – a throbbing, thumping, grinding, intense and manic bit of music that got louder and louder and hugely intense….and just when it seemed to be hitting some sort of ecstatic peak it disappeared without warning, leaving no trace at all of its presence. I was hooked and promised myself that if I ever got back in one piece, I’d immediately track down the song so I’d have one happy abiding memory from it.

This proved to be far more difficult than I imagined as the only way to get hold of it was to buy a single on expensive import or shell out for the soundtrack LP to Batman & Robin. In the end I did the latter. And while it is a soundtrack that I have never played in its entirety (too many things on it that were a total turn-off), the Underworld track became a huge favourite.

Coming in at more than 10 minutes in length, it was of course much longer than the version that I had heard back in Malaysia, but that didn’t bother me in the slightest. However, if the truth be told, for a long while I could really only listen to the opening six and a bit minutes up to the part that I so remembered from that first time….the ecstatic point where the vocal screams ‘down to the waterfront.’ I used to put the track on every C90 compilation of that era but I always hit the stop button right at that moment….but as time has marched on and the full song has found its way on to the i-pod I’ve learned to love every single note.

And despite the title of this posting, I can also say that I’ve never had the opportunity to properly dance to the track (i.e, in a club). Yes, i’ve jumped around an empty flat with nobody watching, and I’ve also lain on a beach throwing my arms above my head while singing along, much to the distress of other holidaymakers who are concerned why a lunatic has been allowed onto an otherwise tranquil Caribbean island.

And given I’m now nearer 50 than 40, I guess I never will get that dance. One of life’s few regrets y’know….

mp3 : Underworld – Moaner (album version)

Looking up info on the song it turnd out that it was released as a single in Germany and the USA with four different versions – ‘short’, ‘album’, ‘relentless legs’ and ‘long’ – with the version on the soundtrack being ‘album.’ Just over a year later later, it was included on the LP Beaucoup Fish as the closing track – the version being ‘long’ (confusingly, the ‘long’ version is in fact shorter than either the ‘album’ or ‘relentless legs versions.’).

This post is dedicated to my dear friends Ctelblog from Acid Ted and Drew from Across The Kitchen Table. If only I had got to know them a few years ago….they would have known where to take me to make my Underworld ambition come true.

Enjoy

Spandau Ballet

STEALING CAKE TO EAT THE MOON

Another week of delving into the archives of the lost blog and reposting some things I think read okay. This was back in July 2009:-

History hasn’t really been all that kind to Spandau Ballet, and that really all stems from 1983 onwards when the single and LP True gave them enormous crossover appeal, success, fame and fortune. And I’m not going to sir here typing away any real defence of the band, for it was a very clear and distinct career move to shift away from the sort of music that had dominated the first two LPs into the bland, radio-friendly wine-bar shite that was incredibly popular in UK plc when Thatcher was at her most frightening.

But I’ll take issue with anyone who simply dismisses the early work just because it was a Spandau Ballet song.

Their debut single is one of the great synth-pop singles in an era where acts like Soft Cell, Human League, OMD and Depeche Mode were churning them out.

mp3 : Spandau Ballet – To Cut A Long Story Short

This was a huge hit, reaching #5 in the UK singles chart, and I don’t mind admitting that I did lots of dancing to this, as well as their great follow-up The Freeze, in Glasgow discos in the early 80s. In fact, their debut LP Journeys To Glory, released in October 1981, along with Non Stop Erotic Cabaret and Dare by the afore-mantioned Soft Cell and The Human League, are about the only synth-dominated LPs from that era that I’m still happy to listen to all the way through almost 30 years later.

Not long after the LP appeared, we had the single that many of us will say was the high point of the band’s output, the Top 3 smash Chant No.1 (I Don’t Need This Pressure On) . The band followed this up with Paint Me Down, another classy bit of pop-funk, but rather worryingly, the other tracks on the parent LP, Diamond, released in May 1982, were quite disappointing.

Looking back, it’s worth remembering that the two albums were released only 8 months apart, so there’s a case to be made that some of the material on Diamond was a bit rushed in an effort to stay in the public eye, and maybe if the band had been given another six or nine months, the LP would have been a lot stronger.

Paint Me Down only reached #30, which must have been a shock to the band and everyone associated with them given all previous four singles had been big hits, but that was nothing compared to the follow-up She Loved Like Diamond which only just made the Top 50. Something needed fixing…..

And so the record label sent for uber-producer Trevor Horn and he sprinkled his magic dust over the underwhelming album track Instinction and produced a brashy and bold bit of pop that soon had the boys back in the Top 10, on Top Of The Pops and in the pages of Smash Hits:-

mp3 : Spandau Ballet – Instinction (single version)

I finally picked up a copy of this bit of vinyl on e-bay the other day (along with a few other classics of the era), and I’m delighted to share it with y’all. Normally, I would also put the b-side up as well, but it really is a dreadful bit of pap called Gently, a self-produced number that really does put the band firmly on the road to the sort of stuff that was shoved on in the background so as not to interfere with the important chit-chat and gossip at the dinner parties…you know the sort of thing…..’Tristan just picked up his half-a-million bonus from the bank the other day after he persuaded the plebs to buy shares in the the Telecoms/Electricity/Gas companies they already owned. Tee-hee. Crack open another case of bolly…..”

Oh and I havent a fucking clue what Gary Kemp meant with the words Stealing Cake To Eat The Moon.

Enjoy

This Poison!

NEXT YEAR’S NOSTALGIA FEST (Part 5 of 48)

After featuring On Tape last week, there could really only be one song selected this week:-

mp3 : This Poison! – Poised Over The Pause Button

I had no idea that this lot, who I presume were named after the Magazine song, were Scottish. They hailed from Perth and between 1986 and 1988 released two singles for Reception Records (the record label founded and run by The Wedding Present) and recorded one John Peel session.

The band members were Scott Taylor (vocals and guitar), Derek Moir (guitar and backing vocals), Alistair Donald (bass) and Steve Gray (drums).

In 2005, what looks like just about everything they ever recorded was compiled on a CD entitled Magazine (which convinces me the band were named after said song from Magic, Murder and The Weather) released on Egg Records.

The single which features on CD86 is quite tasty, if vert much of its time, and certainly demonstrates TWP influences. The b-side is less exciting but far from the worst song you’ll ever here via this blog:-

mp3 : This Poison! – I’m Not Asking

Enjoy!

39 Lyon Street, Associates

SATURDAY’S SCOTTISH SINGLE (Part 131)

Notwithstanding that the ‘A’ side of this single featured very recently in Sid Law’s wonderful mini-series, as I have a copy of the 12″ single it merits a slot within the Saturday Single.

39 Lyon Street was a one-off single project created by Associates. The group used an alternative name to exercise a clause in their contract with WEA that stated they could record for any label they desired, so long as the A-side was not credited to Associates.

I’ve pinched this from a now defunct blog called Retro Dundee:-

This is how Lyon Street looked back in the 1980’s. A typical Dundee street that you would pass going into the city centre. In the early 80’s, however, something was brewing at number 39. A wee social gathering of creative musicians were busy producing acts who would go on to record some classy alternative pop music.

This is where Billy Mackenzie & Alan Rankine of The Associates were living, along with others. In amongst the others were Christine Beveridge & Steve Reid who went on to record as Orbidoig, releasing a couple of singles. A cross-pollination of The Associates & Orbidoig created a 3rd act called…39 Lyon Street. They also released a single, called “Kites”, which was a cover of the Simon Dupree hit from the psychedelic 60’s.

And here we are:-

mp3 : 39 Lyon Street – Kites
mp3 : Associates – A Girl Named Property

And that dear readers, brings to an end this alphabetical and numerical run through some of the 45s that I have in the cupboard of vinyl or shelves of CD from Scottish acts.

Next week, I’m going to start all over again but this time looking at albums as well as singles or indeed featuring songs that I only have via compilations.