THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN

1990s

SATURDAY’S SCOTTISH SINGLE (Part 130)

Of all the bands to feature in this series 1990s are by far and away the most local to Villain Towers. Their debut LP featured a song about the area they are from and where I live:-

mp3 : 1990s – Pollockshields

While the sophomore album paid tribute to our local bus service:-

mp3 : 1990s – 59

1990s emerged at a time when Rough Trade Records were enjoying something of a renaissance with indie-guitar bands being briefly back in fashion and acts such as The Strokes and The Libertines generating good sales and enabling punts to be taken on up and coming acts.

Two of the band – lead singer Jackie (aka John) McKeown and bassist, Jamie McMorrow, had a bit of a pedigree as founding members of the cult act The Yummy Fur a band which was also responsible for the early careers of Alex Kapranos and Paul Thomson from Franz Ferdinand who really were the media darlings of the day.

The band worked tirelessly to make it big in the industry. If they weren’t gigging as headliners in in small venues across the country then you’d find then as opening acts for all sorts of similar acts such as Babyshambles and the afore-mentioned Franz Ferdinand.

Despite being a cut above most bands of their ilk, 1990s never quite made it. Their legacy is just four singles and two LPs under their own moniker although they were also one side of a very rare and hard to find 45 in which they and The Royal We recorded cover versions of Postcard singles.

I last saw them just over three years ago opening for Cornershop in Glasgow and given that there were a few unreleased songs aired that night I had hoped there might be further releases in the offing but sadly, no. I can only assume the band are no more.

This was their second single for Rough Trade back in October 2006. It reached #86 in the singles charts which was about as close as they ever got to mainstream success:-

mp3 : 1990s – You’re Supposed To Be My Friend
mp3 : 1990s – Jingle Bells

Don’t worry…..the b-side is an original composition and not a take on the traditional Christmas number.

Enjoy

Joy Division, New Order, Sneaker Pimps, Tony Wilson

READ IT IN BOOKS : TONY WILSON

(A RE-POST FROM OCTOBER 2009)

For more years than I care to remember, I always said that my ideal night out would be to sit down in a pub alongside Bill Drummond and Tony Wilson and just enjoy the conversation that would inevitably flow. Yes, it was all a pipe dream, and indeed it was something that, if it had been allowed to happen, would in all likelihood have been a bit of a disaster given the psychological make-up of my two heroes. I’m not sure if they would in fact have got on or whether the first barbed comment from one of them would have had the other storm off in a huff (possibly after a punch or two had been thrown).

But I just have a feeling that these two geniuses, who I think were among the most urbane, witty, talented, opinionated and intelligent people on the planet, would have just kept up a non-stop discussion in an entertaining and enlightening way on just about any subject under the sun or moon. And to have been in their collective company would have been a privilege as well as enormous fun.

But of course the premature death of Tony Wilson back in 2007 put paid to that ever happening, but even now, two years on from that very sad day, I’m still fascinated by the life and times of both men. And while Bill can continue to amuse and delight me with books like 17, it’s now down to others to keep Tony’s flame burning brightly.

The latest bit of work to do just that is You’re Entitled To An Opinion, which has been penned by David Nolan, a music journalist whose past works include Confused, a terrifically enlightening and enjoyable bio of Bernard Sumner which revealed in a far from sordid way, lots of things about the singer that helped fans get a better insight on what it was that drove him on. That particular book was an excellent example of a rock biography, clearly written by someone who was an admirer but who wasn’t afraid of offering a critical comment when the music or other aspects of the subject’s life deserved it.

I’m delighted to say that David Nolan has done an equally superb job with his look at Tony Wilson, and You’re Entitled To An Opinion is a tremendous read with all sorts of facts and information that were new to me, particularly the early chapters on his upbringing, and the later chapters that deal with the last few months of Tony’s life as he battled a particularly violent form of cancer.

What we get isn’t just a re-hash of Tony Wilson, the music mogul who arguably did as much as anyone else to raise the profile of Manchester over the last quarter of the 20th Century and help with its regeneration as a modern, vibrant city far removed from the greyness and grime that was the legacy of its industrial past. There’s loads in this book about Anthony Wilson (or sometimes Anthony H Wilson) the journalist/reporter who many of his contemporaries reckon could have been a giant in that field if he hadn’t been so distracted by his love of music and the lifestyle of musicians. There’s also substantial details about his family/private life which prove to essential in helping readers understand some of Tony’s behaviour over the years, and in particular his ‘devil may care’ approach to business.

But of course the centrepiece of the book is The Factory Years, from the founding of a club, to the forming of a label, to the forming of THE club, to it all crashing down around their ears and the subsequent small re-launches in the 21st century.

The author has spoken to dozens of people who knew or worked with Tony Wilson, and not all them are always complimentary. But this doesn’t mean David Nolan has given us a book with all sorts of spite directed at the man who himself accepted most seemed to know him as ‘Wanker Wilson’. I lost count of the times where a narrative would end with something along the lines of ‘But that was just typical of Tony’ which should give you all an idea that this was a man it was near impossible to hate. But there are one or two life-long enemies out there who do get their say….as with all good bios, the reader is then free to make up their own mind.

Some of the anecdotes are less than serious – such as the time Tony was dispatched to Liverpool to cover a story and how his worst fears of his car getting stolen were eventually realised in a way that was both funny and imaginative on the part of the thieves. Others are moving, including Tony’s battle for the right sort of medical treatment for his illness. Others debunk some of the myths and/or legends that have grown up around Tony Wilson, without belittling his many achievements for instance – the facts surrounding the Sir Keith Joseph/Mad Monk interview are laid out and while not as outrageous as the scenario painted in the film/book 24 Hour Party People, it still shows Tony at his mischievous but self-destructing best.

You’re Entitled To An Opinion is a book that will be appreciated and enjoyed by anyone who has ever had any interest in any facet of Factory Records, Granada TV or indeed the city of Manchester itself.

And here’s the last song ever played at the Hacienda (not that anyone knew it at the time):-

mp3 : Sneaker Pimps – Post Modern Sleaze

And this post wouldn’t be complete without these bands….

mp3 : Joy Division – Love Will Tear Us Apart (Pennine Version)
mp3 : New Order – Confusion (Rough Mix)

Both taken from 12″ singles that have followed me wherever I’ve lived over the past near 30 years…..

Associates, Billy MacKenzie, Paul Haig

BILLY MACKENZIE RARITIES…COURTESY OF SID LAW (3)

Okay it is 1988. It has been nearly three years since The Associates last LP “Perhaps”. The slightly techno friendly cover of Blondie’s “Heart Of Glass” has not set the charts alight despite a slew of formats (three 12″ versions, CD single, 7″ single, a 3D printed sleeve with some special glasses inside the sleeve etc). Billy has an album sitting in the can, Shirley Bassey has just covered one of his songs with Yello. In a quick series of moves Warners dropped Billy from their label and stopped the release of the already completed album “The Glamour Chase” dead in its tracks.

Three years of work on “The Glamour Chase” album and a decade of writing, recording and gigging. Now labell-less, deal-less and all his material in the can in a Warners basement and staying there. It is hard to comprehend that kind of blow. But a mighty blow it certainly was. After being dropped from the label over lunch in a Mayfair restaurant, Billy asked the record company executive given the task of dining and dropping him for a cab home on the record company account. The exec readily agreed and in a legendary move Billy took a cab home – all the way from London to Dundee.

“The Glamour Chase” did not surface in a proper release until 2002 when it was thrown in as a non-ironic freebie with the first CD release of 1985’s “Perhaps”. Some of it is fairly pedestrian lightweight, late 80’s funky standard pop stuff but there are some tremendous songs on it (particularly the Boris Blank produced Because You Love, Snowball, The Rhythm Divine and In Windows All) but perhaps the real standout track was a song Billy had been playing live for a few years called “Empires Of Your Heart” and everyone should hear it. Listen to this… can you believe a record company dropped this guy and left this kind of material in the can?

mp3 : Associates – Empires Of Your Heart

I also attach a track from a bootleg called “The Audience That Fell To Earth”. Billy MacKenzie with Paul Haig and some others performing “Empires Of Your Heart” at Wilkie House on 14 September 1986.

mp3 : Billy Mackenzie/Paul Haig – Empires Of Your Heart (live)

Cheers

Sid Law

Wedding Present

AN IMAGINARY COMPILATION ALBUM #7 – THE WEDDING PRESENT

The discography of The Wedding Present consists of 34 singles, 2 extended plays, 8 studio albums, 5 live albums and 13 compilation albums many of which have songs otherwise unavailable or have different arrangements or alternative versions from the original recording. Trying to narrow all that down to an imaginary 33 and 1/3 LP, five tracks on either side, with the perfect running order, was a total nightmare. But here’s my stab:-

Side A

1. Dalliance (1991 single and track from the LP Seamonsters)

This song featured on the blog just over six weeks ago. A stunning and unexpected wall of sound that took the band to a whole new level in terms of fanbase and out of the realms of mere indie-pop. David Gedge doesn’t write 3 minute pop or rock songs; instead we often get mini soap-operas set to magical tunes. This is a real tear-jerker. Listen to it drunk and think about someone who once broke your heart. I dare you not to think of them and then say you weren’t fighting back the tears, whether of anger or sadness.

2. Brassneck (single version, 1990)

The production of Steve Albini on Seamonsters really helped the band break out of the indie-shell and a hint of what he would do can be found on the remix of the opening track from the Bizarro LP. Thirty seconds are trimmed from the original while the arrangement is tightened and beefed up. I love how the electric guitar gives way to the acoustic strumming about two-thirds of the way through before the ‘beached whale wailing’ beckons David back to microphone.

3. My Favourite Dress (live) (recorded at Sound City Leeds in 1996)

First recorded back in 1987, this evergreen single is probably the band’s most played live song. It never fails to get a huge roar when the opening notes are struck and it takes all the males in the audience back to a time when they were slimmer, fitter, healthier and had much more hair on the top of their heads and none up their noses or in their ears. At which point we all kid on we are 30 years younger than we really are and four minutes later collapse in a heap wondering why we can’t dance as energetically as we once did.

“A stranger’s hand on my favorite dress” – one of thousands of killer lines he’s written over the decades.

4. Always The Quiet One (from the 2005 LP Take Fountain)

Between 1998 and 2004, all of the material written and recorded by David Gedge came out under the moniker of Cinerama – and extremely high quality songs they were too. The first time anyone ever heard this track was as part of the last ever Cinerama Peel Session. Within a year, the Weddoes were back with their first LP in nine years with this being one of many highlights. A lighter, poppier side to the band with a tale that is Morrissey/Smiths-esque in genre and quality.

5. Nobody’s Twisting Your Arm (1988 single)

There’s some wording on the back of the sleeve of this single.

‘Additional vocals by Amelia’

This little touch gave the band a different dynamic as they brought in the indie goddess who was Amelia Fletcher from Tallulah Gosh to add backing vocals to some new songs after the release of the debut LP. It was a short-lived partnership of no more than a few months and it didn’t make it beyond minor contributions to the sophomore classic that was Bizarro. But it planted a seed for male/female vocals that came to the fore in the Cinerama era and thereafter in the 21st Century Weddoes. This is a cracking 45 which took the band into the Top 50 of the singles chart for the first time

Side B

1. Kennedy (1989 single and track on the LP Bizzaro)

This is an immense piece of music that still sounds incredibly fresh more than a quarter of a century on. There is nothing more that needs to be said.

2. Perfect Blue (from the 2005 LP Take Fountain)

Ever since the band reformed, just about every time they perform Kennedy in a live setting it is followed up with one of the slower songs from the repertoire to enable the audience to recapture its collective breath after the bouncing around. And so with this imaginary LP.

A song of two halfs. The first two and three-quarter minutes is a straight-forward but beautiful love song with a dreamy backing vocal from Terry de Castro that is a throwback to the Amelia Fletcher material. The final two and a bit minutes is pure Cinerama…..strings, horns and guitars collide magnificently in a coda that Tindersticks would have been proud of. A hidden gem of a track.

3. Lovenest (1991 single)

A shortened version of another of the outstanding songs on Seamonsters. This aural assault on the ears ends in a blast of controlled feedback for about 40 seconds…..live it always sounds magnificent.

4. Flying Saucer (Peel Session)

An often overlooked classic from the singles period. Cracking tune and for once it’s not a mini soap opera – instead it celebrates the joy of falling head over heels. The tune, with its extended guitar riff to the end of the song, in many ways is reminiscent of Kennedy which is no bad thing in my book.

Some thought it a folly for the band to put out a limited edition vinyl 45 once a month throughout 1992 with the single being officially deleted the day after its release. The plan however, worked a treat with every one of them going into the charts for one week only with the highest placed being #10 and the lowest #26 – the singles actually sold in the exact same quantities, the placing they got depended on how the sales of other singles that particular week had gone.

The singles and the cover versions that made up the b-sides were later compiled onto two separate CD albums entitled Hit Parade 1 and Hit Parade 2. The initial copies of the second of these came with a bonus disc containing exclusive BBC Radio versions of the twelve singles – some had gone out on BBC Radio Leeds, some on the Mark Goodier Show on Radio 1, some on the World Service (I’m not kidding!!!) and some made up one of the many sessions the band recorded for the John Peel show.

5. It’s What You Want That Matters (from the 1987 LP George Best)

A song that had first been aired two years previously on the Peel show when it was known as What Becomes Of The Broken Hearted?

I’ve admitted before that I was late to The Wedding Present. I hadn’t given them much attention in the early days simply as the music papers were saying this was the band to fill the Smith-sized void in your life and I just didn’t think at the time that anyone could do such a thing. George Best had been out for the best part of three years when I first got a hold of a copy. This was the initial stand out track for me. And I still love it all this time later.

So there you have my take on ten tracks for a compilation LP. It’s taken me nearly four weeks to deliberate over and determine. I’m sure some of you will take me to task…..and quite rightly!!!!

mp3 : The Wedding Present – Dalliance
mp3 : The Wedding Present – Brassneck (single version)
mp3 : The Wedding Present – My Favourite Dress (live)
mp3 : The Wedding Present – Always The Quiet One
mp3 : The Wedding Present – Nobody’s Twisting Your Arm
mp3 : The Wedding Present – Kennedy
mp3 : The Wedding Present – Perfect Blue
mp3 : The Wedding Present – Lovenest (edit)
mp3 : The Wedding Present – Flying Saucer (Peel Session)
mp3 : The Wedding Present – It’s What You Want That Matters

BONUS DISC!!!!!!

The Wedding Present are famous for putting out cover versions as b-sides or for recording them during radio sessions. Here’s a bonus disc to go with the imaginary album

Side A

1. The Wedding Present – Happy Birthday
2. The Wedding Present – Make Me Smile (Come Up And See Me)
3. The Wedding Present – Back For Good
4. The Wedding Present – Let’s Make Some Plans
5. The Wedding Present – Pleasant Valley Sunday

Side B

1. The Wedding Present – Theme from Shaft
2. The Wedding Present – Our Lips Are Sealed
3. The Wedding Present – Cattle and Cane
4. The Wedding Present – Felicity
5. The Wedding Present – Box Elder

The originals came from Altered Images, Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel, Take That, The Close Lobsters, The Monkees, Isaac Hayes, The Go-Gos, The Go-Betweens, Orange Juice and Pavement.

Oh and the comment about Felicity being a William Shatner number is not a reference to a track on George Best……it’s a play on words as the song, despite originally being an Edwyn Collins vocal, was in fact composed by James Kirk……….

Click on the song title above for the mp3s

ENJOY!!!!!!

Camper Van Beethoven

QUID PRO QUO

I mentioned last Saturday how the b-side of the single by Zones reminded me so much of the late 70s era three-bar blues style of Status Quo who remained one of the most popular and biggest selling bands in the UK even as punk, new wave and electronica gained footings in the music world. I was of an age that only knew that particular version of the Quo and wasn’t aware till many years later, when I saw footage from a 1968 Top of the Pops show that was part of a music series the BBC were broadcasting that I learned the band had started out making what is has been described as psychedelic pop.

Pictures of Matchstick Men was their first Top 10 hit single and was a song heavily influenced by the popular sounds of its time such as later-era Beatles and Beach Boys and contemporary bands such as Pink Floyd. I’m not a huge lover of the psychedelic pop genre – this might come down to a lack of exposure to it from my mum and dad (see last Monday’s posting!!) although there one or two songs I can listen to now and again such as Itchykoo Park by Small Faces and Happy Together by The Turtles.

The Quo 45 was the subject of a cover version in 1989 by Camper Van Beethoven who, just four years earlier, had been responsible for one of the finest, most enduring and most fun singles of the mid 80s:-

mp3 : Camper Van Beethoven – Take The Skinheads Bowling

I’d never heard the cover version before I picked up a second-hand copy the other week and I was hoping for a quirky take on it given that this was the period when the band had a violinist in their line-up.

mp3 : Camper Van Beethoven – Pictures of Matchstick Men

I think it’s fair to say it was a major disappointment. This bore no resemblance to the sorts of music the band had been making just four years previously. It is depressingly bland and lacking any sort of rhythm or soul but when I looked up details on wiki I learned that it was their biggest selling single which I found rather depressing reading.

The b-side isn’t any better as they put to music the tale of the man who shot the man who assassinated the President:-

mp3 : Camper Van Beethoven – Jack Ruby

It’s always disappointing when a band, in an effort to record and release music with a broader appeal than their earlier material, lose the very bit of magic that made them stand out in the first place.

File under…played once and put away in the back of the cupboard.

Primitives

NEXT YEAR’S NOSTALGIA FEST (Part 3 of 48)

The Primitives formed in the mid 80s, and while the music was pretty decent, it was the presence of an attractive singer called Tracy Tracy that gained them loads of column inches and photographs in the male-dominated world of the UK weekly music papers. Morrissey was a fan…..

They started out on their own label which was called Lazy Records on which they released five singles between May 86 and August 87 before signing to RCA Records with who they enjoyed almost instant success with a Top 10 single in Crash and a Top 10 LP in Lovely in February 1988.

They had broken up by 1992 mostly as a result of musical differences which had seen band members come and go. The fact that Tracy had got rid of distinctive blonde hair probably didn’t help too much either in terms of the press.

The Primitives reformed in 2009 and undertook a UK tour in 2010 as well as a relatively high-profile gif as support to a London gig by The Wedding Present as part of the Bizarro album 21st anniversary tour. Tracy was blonde again……

Unlike many others who do some nostalgia shows and that’s all folks, the band have re-activated themselves in the studio with new albums released in 2012 and 2014, the first of which was totally of covers versions (all of which were relatively obscure and had been songs with a female lead vocal) but the latter was all new band-written material.

The song on CD86 was from the indie-era. It was their second single on Lazy Records. And it’s great fun made all the better by a fabulous and dreamy b-side:-

mp3 : The Primitives – Really Stupid
mp3 : The Primitives – We Found A Way To The Sun

Enjoy

Zones

SATURDAY’S SCOTTISH SINGLE (Part 129)

From wiki:-

Zones were a British punk and power pop band founded in 1977, following the demise of PVC2 (formerly the bubbleglam and soft rock band Slik).

PVC2 comprised Midge Ure (future Ultravox frontman) on guitar, Russell Webb on bass, Billy McIsaac on keyboards and Kenny Hyslop on drums. In late 1977, Ure left PVC2 to join Rich Kids with Glen Matlock. Webb, Hyslop and McIsaac then called in Alex Harvey’s cousin Willie Gardner to replace Ure on guitar and vocals, and Zones were formed.

In February 1978, Zones released a single “Stuck with You”, which attracted the attention of BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel, leading to the band recording a session for his show, and Arista Records, who signed them and released the rest of their discography. Their next single was “Sign of the Times” released in 1978. Zones also toured with Magazine and recorded a further session for John Peel.

In 1979, Zones released Under Influence, an album of post punk power pop. However, shortly afterwards, the band split up – Gardner joined Endgames, with Simple Minds’ original drummer Brian McGee, McIsaac moved to a piano college in Glasgow, and Webb and Hyslop joined Skids. Webb collaborated with Skids’ singer Richard Jobson (Skids singer) until 1988 and Hyslop, after collaborating with Skids album, Joy, moved to Simple Minds (1981–1982) and Set the Tone (1982–1983).

The bio hints at the diversity of talents involved in the band, but the sum never quite matched the parts as demonstrated by the lack of commercial success. This 45 is an example of what I mean…the tune is derivative of its time but there’s nothing about it which make it stand out while the b-side is more Status Quo than post-punk:-

mp3 : Zones – Stuck With You
mp3 : Zones – No Angels

Only the bands with numbers at the beginning of the title and this epic series will draw to an end…

Scritti Politti

RT 111T

(My posts tend to be written in batches as and when I have time to sit down and work on the blog. Brian was first to comment on yesterday’s posting and displayed incredible psychic powers……)

Ok…the title of the posting looks like some kind of binary code gone wrong. But it is in fact the catalogue number given to the 12″ release of this single on Rough Trade Records back in September 1982:-

mp3 : Scritti Politti – Asylums In Jerusalem
mp3 : Scritti Politti – Jacques Derrida
mp3 : Scritti Politti – A Slow Soul

The single was released a month after the LP Songs To Remember – which I will argue long into the night is one of THE greatest albums of all time – and it reached #43 in the UK singles charts which was a fair achievement for any band on Rough Trade far less one who got no daytime radio exposure whatsoever.

I should have given this a mention yesterday when I did the St Etienne A-AA sided single as being another great example of the genre. The 12″ release offers up a couple of different things in that Jacques Derrida is a fair bit longer than the album version while A Slow Soul is a completely different mix from that which was on Songs To Remember.

Little known fact. Until The Smiths came along, Songs To Remember was the biggest selling record that Rough Trade had ever released, reaching #12 in the album charts here in the UK.

Green Gartside was soon wooed by many a record label and he signed for Virgin Records. The band’s next album (featuring a completely different line-up from that when he was ‘indie’) went Top 5 while the singles got him his lifetime’s ambition of appearing on Top of The Pops.

Enjoy

Saint Etienne

THE LOST ART OF THE A & AA SIDED-SINGLE

From wiki:-

A “double A-side” is a single where both sides are designated the A-side; there is no B-side on such a single.

The double A-sided single was invented in December 1965 by the Beatles for their single of “Day Tripper” and “We Can Work It Out”, where both were designated A-sides. Other groups followed suit thereafter, notably the Rolling Stones in early 1967 with “Let’s Spend the Night Together” and “Ruby Tuesday” as a double-A single.

In the UK, before the advent of digital downloads, both A-sides were accredited with the same chart position, as the singles chart was compiled entirely from physical sales. In the UK, the biggest-selling non-charity single of all time was a double A-side, Wings’ 1977 release “Mull of Kintyre”/”Girls’ School”, which sold over two million copies.

Occasionally double-A-sided singles were released with each side targeting a different market. During the late 1970s, for example, Dolly Parton released a number of double-A-sided singles, in which one side was released to pop radio, and the other side to country, including “Two Doors Down”/”It’s All Wrong, But It’s All Right” and “Baby I’m Burning”/”I Really Got the Feeling”. In 1978, the Bee Gees also used this method when they released “Too Much Heaven” for the pop market and the flip side, “Rest Your Love on Me”, which was aimed toward country stations.

Many artists continue to release double A-side singles outside of the US where it is seen as more popular. Examples of this include Oasis’s “Little by Little”/”She Is Love” (2002), Bloc Party’s “So Here We Are”/”Positive Tension” (2005) and Gorillaz’s “El Mañana”/”Kids with Guns” (2006).

Probably the best example of a double-A-side single that I can think of is Going Underground/Dreams of Children by The Jam back in 1980, although I can’t ever recall hearing any DJ playing the lesser known of the songs.

And here’s another very example of the genre I have in my collection from 1992:-

mp3 : St Etienne – Join Our Club
mp3 : St Etienne – People Get Real

The story goes that St Etienne wrote Join Our Club after Heavenly Records refused to release People Get Real as a single and so this was the compromise. The band seemingly went down the road of making as poppy and commercial a song as they thought they could get away with, without alienating their hip and trendy dance music fans. The unexpected and welcome outcome however, was that the song brought them a whole new audience in love with disposable pop that merged seamlessly with a catchy dance beat and rhythm. This was a bigger audience than hardcore dance fans and St Etienne now had a fantastic new template which would dominate future releases and in doing so they would become a very welcome mainstay of the singles charts in the early-mid 90s.

Enjoy

Billy MacKenzie, Loom Feat. Billy Mackenzie

BILLY MACKENZIE RARITIES…COURTESY OF SID LAW (2)

In 1992 Billy’s “Outernational” solo outing hit the shelves. marred by delays and record company troubles it slid out almost un-noticed, received little attention and neither of its singles troubled the charts. Circa Records folded shortly after its release and Billy’s career seemed stalled again.

So it was that in late 1992, ten years after they had last worked together, Billy’s old Associate Alan Rankine phoned Billy up and the pair began recording again in Auchterhouse. Half a dozen songs from those reunion demos eventually surfaced on the “Double Hipness” CD in 2000. One of those songs was called “Edge Of The World” (it is well worth buying the CD for that and the other 29 tracks!). However in 1992/93 Billy wasn’t keen to tour or perform live – so that Billy/ Alan reunion simply never got off the ground. Those recordings were shelved until after Billy’s death..

However, Billy knew a good song when he wrote one. In 1996 the song was still unreleased in any official form. That summer Billy was back down living in London and heard an instrumental track by Loom. Loom’s members Bent Recknagel and Ralph P. Ruppert (AKA Headman) were London-based and ran the Millenium label. Billy, having heard their instrumental track on a cassette, had sang “Edge Of The World” over it, his melody and lyrics locked in perfectly. MacKenzie contacted them, visited their studio on the Portobello Road in London and the track was finished in half an hour. The result was quickly released as “Anacostia Bay (At The Edge Of The World)”.

It is a blistering raw vocal performance, emotive and right up there with any of Billy’s best vocals, with burbling synths, sequencers and percussion propelling it along. In its original form it is a 12 minute 42 second version and was released on 12″ and CDEP back in August 1996.

This was the last record with Billy’s name on it which was actually released in his lifetime (as far as I am aware).

Over the years between 1992 and 1996 Billy had also worked on the song with Steve Aungle which later led to some confusion over authorship. The title of the song for the Loom release had become Anacostia Bay “At The Edge Of The World” or “Anacostia Bay” (At The Edge Of The World) probably to differentiate authorship from the different versions of the song for publishing reasons.

To add to the confusion a mis-spelled “Steve Neugal” is credited with Additional Keyboards and Programming on the Berlioz Mix of the Loom track!

An edited version of this Loom version of the song was later released on the posthumous “Auchtermatic” CD. But this is the entire, full-length, spectacular original – unavailable for nearly 19 years….

mp3 : Loom feat. Billy Mackenzie – Anacostia Bay

Compilation (NME Tapes)

THIS WAS STUCK TO THE FRONT PAGE OF A MAGAZINE (2)

When folk got the chance to enjoy the first entry in this new series, Echorich left behind this supportive 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.”

I kind of feel like the Fat Genie in the fairy tale who has the power to grant three wishes….

Dancin’ Master was a mail-order cassette made available from 18 October 1981 via the NME. It contained 24 songs from a singers and bands across a number of genres including funk, soul, disco, new wave, jazz, pop, reggae, dub, rap and rockabilly, all of which had an uncanny ability to get your feet tapping while most would have you thinking about getting off your seat and throwing your shapes under the glitter ball at you local discotheque.

Full track listing, with descriptions lifted from the cassette insert:-

1. Tom Browne – Funkin For Jamaica

Tom Browne blows his horn on this unreleased version of one of last year’s funkiest floor-fillers

2. Linx – I Wanna Be With You

Go ahead with ‘Go Ahead’s’ I Wanna Be With You

3. Grace Jones – Feel Up

Hear it and you will feel up. A special US club mix of the ‘Nightclubbing’ track

4. Talking Heads – Cities

Talking Heads in concert in Berkeley, California (August 24 1979) and their first-ever appearance on a compilation

5. Elvis Costello & The Attractions – Big Sister

Taped at the ‘Trust’ sessions, the lyrics to ‘Big Sister’s Clothes’ set to the beat of a different drum

6. Beggar & Co – Laughing On

Short-listed as Beggar & Co’s last single but lost out at the last moment to Spandau Ballet collaboration ‘Mule (Chant No.2)’

7. The Funky 4 + 1 – That’s The Joint

The sound of Sugarhill at its most savage – rip, rap and party funk-punk

8. Ian Dury & The Blockheads – Inbetweenies

Lord Upminster Y Los Blockheads on stage at the Hammersmith Odeon 11.8.79

9. Kid Creole & The Coconuts – There But For The Grace Of God Go I.

The Kid vigorously shakes his Coconuts in public! Originally recorded by Machine, this ‘live’ track was only ever available as a ludicrously limited bonus single with the initial copies of the Kid’s ‘Fresh Fruit In Foreign Places’ LP

10. The Lounge Lizards – Stomping At The Corona

These five New Yorkers who put the zoot into their suits offer a hitherto unrecorded original from a 1981 club date in Paris. The Lounge Lizards are John Lurie (alto sax), Evan Lurie (keyboards), Dane Vicek (guitar), Steve Piccolo (bass) and Anton Fier (drums)

11. The Polecats – Rockabilly Guy (Dub Mix)

The Polecats played it. Dave Edmunds produced it. Dennis Bovell dubbed it-it-it-it-it

12. Lloyd Coxone – Zion Bound

Legendary dub master’s exclusive contribution. Definetly hotter, heavier and harder than the rest as Coxone’s soon-come album of radical rhythms will testify

13. Madness – Shadow On The House

The ‘Carry On….’ team go country

14. The Beat – Hit It!

The electric toaster Rankin’ Roger serves it up exclusively for dancin’ masters everywhere

15. Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five – The Birthday Party

Rapid rap-artee from Grandmaster Flash….fast and furious and one of the year’s most sought after imports

16. Junior Giscombe – Mama Used To Say

From the same stable as Linx and a different mix of the most spectacular Brit-Funk debut of ’81

17. The B-52’s – Give Me Back My Man (Instrumental)

It’s A Go-Go Time with the Georgia Peaches and a track from an unreleased instrumental album, ‘The B-52s play The B-52’s Greatest Hits!’

18. Susan – 24,000 Kiss

A Yellow Magic Orchestra protege, Susan is currently touted as the main contender for the title ‘Japan’s first lady of techno-pop’

19. The Jam – When You’re Young

Paul, Bruce, Rick and their audience very much alive in Newcastle, October 28, 1980

20. Dennis Bovell – Better

The ubiquitous Bovell with one of his ‘Brain Damage’ tracks

21. The Plastics – Last Train To Clarksville

Micro-chip Monkee business, hitherto only available as a limited edition flexi picture disc

22. James White & The Blacks – Contort Yourself

Re-produced by August Darnell. James Chance (alto sax, vocal), Jody Harris (guitar), Adele Bertei (keyboards), George Scott (bass) and Dan Christensen (drums)

23. The Teardrop Explodes – Traison (C’est Juste Une Histoire)

Pretentious? Moi?

24. U2 – An Cat Dubh

Bono Vox’s Celtic Crusaders bedazzle Bean Town, USA. In other words U2 live in Boston

As I mentioned last time out, a compilation such as this will be very much hit’n’miss depending on your own musical preferences as I can’t see anyone arguing that we have 24 carat-gold here…but there’s no doubt the good more than outweighs the bad.

Interesting if you listen closely to the live renditions offered up by Talking Heads and The Blockheads. The vocal delivery may be incredibly different but both bands churn out a funky, infectious beat that is almost interchangeable. I’d never quite realised that before when listening to the studio material of both bands.

Interesting too, that the majority of the acts on the tape enjoyed at least a smattering of commercial success during what were often fleeting careers as the fashions moved on while there are a few giants in there who are still going strong more than thirty-three and a third revolutions of the yearly calendar later.

As before, simply click on the song for the mp3. Apologies that the quality isn’t all that great. I do have most of the NME tapes on my hard drive – a number of years ago a very generous reader of the old blog made copies available to be ripped direct from the hissy cassettes and sometimes the editing isn’t 100% perfect at the beginning or end of the track, but I’m sure none of that will spoil your enjoyment.

And here’s a wee bonus to enjoy. Most of us will know (and secretly love) Chant No.1 by Spandau Ballet. The reference in the notes to this song made me go find it and include it today:-

mp3 : Beggar & Co – Mule (Chant No.2) (12″ version)

It’s nowhere near the class of Chant No.1 but hey, there may well be some of you out there who like it.

Enjoy!!!!

Johnny Cash, Kris Krisofferson, Martin Stephenson & The Daintees, Neil Diamond

THE ROOTS OF MY LOVE OF MUSIC (HAPPY BIRTHDAY MUM)

One of my favourite folk out there in cyberspace is The Robster.

This time last year he decided to start-up a blog called Is This The Life? which aimed to tell how music has had an influence on his entire life, warts and all. He wasn’t going to kid anyone on that he’s always had a really cool taste in music which he demonstrated with one of his very first postings as he professed an undying love for The Bay City Rollers, The Rubettes and The Wombles – click here to see for yourself.

The Robster made a great observation about how everyone’s story begins with their mum and dad as that’s where a love for music is nurtured. My mum celebrates her 76th birthday today and come September my dad will hit the grand old age of 80. They have always loved music and to this day they head out to Glasgow city centre every weekend to pubs where live singing from the drinkers is encouraged and welcomed, accompanied by someone on either keyboards or an acoustic guitar. That’s my mum pictured above back in June 2013 belting out something on the floor of one of those city centre pubs….it was the day that The Stone Roses played a huge outdoor gig in the city and the pub had a fair few of their following drinking the place dry….to be fair to them, they joined in the fun with the old folk who were the regulars and applauded their efforts on the mic (and I still think my mum is a better singer than Ian Brown).

I appreciate just how lucky I was to have parents who liked and appreciated music but thinking about it they were equally as lucky to have been raised in homes and in environments where music and singing were a huge part of their upbringing. I can vouch for this as probably my very earliest memory of music goes back to when I was certainly no more than 5 or 6 years of age and it concerns a huge cupboard that had pride of place in my gran’s house – the sort of thing that sits at the top of this blog.

While there was a record player behind one of its doors, the thing that fascinated me most was what lay behind the other door, the main attraction of which was this huge round dial that could turn so far in one direction before you twisted it back in the opposite direction until it could go no further. All the while a thin red line would go across a screen in the direction that you were turning the dial and it passed all sorts of words that made little or no sense And all this effort produced eerie and strange noises that sounded as if they belonged on the set of Dr Who.

Being a curious sort of kid, I asked what all the words meant and what some of them said to be told that they were cities from all over the world and the when the red line hit that word, what I was hearing was songs and talking from a radio station in that city.

Turns out that I wasn’t the only kid fascinated by such a thing :-

mp3 : Martin Stephenson & The Daintees – Sunday Halo

Incidentally, the vocalist announcing all the places on the dial with the ‘Berlin, Munich, Brussels, Bonn etc’ refrain is Cathal Coughlan whose band The Fatima Mansions are responsible for Blues For Ceaucescu which is one of my favourite songs of all time. But I digress…………

To this day, I’m not sure if it was the sounds that came out of the cabinet or the fact that I was allowed to play with the dial as I would with a toy that led to me establishing a love for music. But I think it speaks volumes that while I can barely recall all that many details about things in my life from the best part of 50 years ago – for instance I have no recollection at all about my first day at school or certain Xmas Days when I was lucky enough to get the present I had always wanted – I can still picture the radiogramme and smile at the memory of the strange sounds I could get it to make as I played with the dial.

My parents never owned anything quite as grand as a radiogramme, but we always seemed to have the very latest and best radio to go alongside what was a modest sized record player. Thinking back,the first houses I lived in were probably too small to have anything else.

At the age of 9, my family moved to a new house which was slightly bigger than where we had been before in as much that it had a decent sized living room. I think it was about a year later when my parents had saved up enough to buy a new record player with wall mounted speakers and it was genuinely fascinating for all us to listen to the stereo effect as the music glided across the wall above the fireplace as if by magic.

The other great thing about this was that they passed down their old Dansette record player which meant I could play my music in my room (shared with two younger brothers) as and when I wanted. By now I had been getting Record Tokens for birthdays and for Xmas and I was buying singles by the likes of Gary Glitter, The Sweet, David Essex, Alvin Stardust and The Average White Band – yup, Pick Up The Pieces was one of the first records I ever bought!!

But of course I was still exposed to the music my folks were listening to at the time, particularly my dad. His was, of course. music for grown-ups that was never played by Tony Blackburn on the Radio 1 Breakfast Show nor would you ever hear any of his favourite music by the likes of Neil Diamond, Johnny Cash, Paul McCartney & Wings or Supertramp on Top of The Pops. Mind you, he also loved Status Quo, and they seemed to be on every week.

Such was my continued exposure to these acts that I knew all the words to my mum and dad’s favourite songs. And its a frightening fact that I still do so many years later – but I’m not complaining as it has given me a wonderful grounding to be able to turn to any Neil Diamond song of old when it’s my turn at the karaoke….

Like all teenagers, I ended up rebelling against my parents tastes. From about the age of 14 till I was 30 years of age I had a knee jerk reaction that said ‘anything my folks had liked was simply awful and unlistenable. And then, out of the blue, I decided to start listening to Johnny Cash, mainly as Billy Bragg had been name-checking him as a huge influence. It wasn’t too long before I acknowledged my attitude to my parents music was, for a substantial part completely wrong, and that I in fact had a huge hole in my own now bulging record collection.

So I want to use today to say a big thank you to my mum and dad for encouraging me to enjoy music as I was growing up. Here’s a couple of songs that I know they are fond of that I am now the proud owner of:-

mp3 : Johnny Cash – One Piece At A Time
mp3 : Neil Diamond – I Am I Said

And here’s one of my mum’s all time favourite singers:-

mp3 : Kris Kristofferson – Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down (live)

Enjoy.

And as I said…..happy birthday mum (not that she reads this nonsense!!!!!)

Jasmine Minks

NEXT YEAR’S NOSTALGIA FEST (Part 2 of 48)

A couple of weeks back, a reader from France left behind a very complimentary comment about the blog and in doing so said:-

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems my friends The Jasmine Minks haven’t been awarded yet the prestigious Saturday’s Scottish Single slot. I’m sure their time will come…!”

I did get back with the explanation that as I didn’t own any 45s by the band that they hadn’t been featured in that particular series but that I had a plan for an upcoming posting…and this is it.

One of the best tracks on CD86 is Cut Me Deep by The Jasmine Minks. However, it is a bit of a cheat that it is included as the song wasn’t released until 1988 as a track on Another Age, an LP that came out on Creation Records which was of course a central part of the C86 movement.

mp3 : The Jasmine Minks – Cut Me Deep

By this point in time, the band – originally from Aberdeen – had been with the label for four years and in an effort to become pop stars had relocated to London. Sadly, they were just one of many talented bands from the era who never made the breakthrough and they disbanded before the decade was over, suffering in part from Alan McGhee‘s preoccupation with the Jesus and Mary Chain which meant all the other bands on his roster took a seat away at the very back of the room.

The lead vocal on Cut Me Deep is courtesy of Jim Shepherd who had only taken on that role on the departure in 1986 of one of the other founder-members of the band Adam Sanderson. It was Sanderson who sang on what turned out to be the band’s best-selling single released in April 1986 and also available on their self-titled debut LP released a couple of months later:-

mp3 : The Jasmine Minks – Cold Heart

The Jasmine Minks reunited in 2000, releasing the album Veritas, before the band signed to McGee’s Poptones label for the release of Popartglory (2001) and then after another lengthy hiatus, 4 track EP, Poppy White, was released on the Oatcake Records label in 2012 the same year they appeared at the 2012 Indietracks festival in the original 1984 lineup.

This time last year, the band celebrated their 30th anniversary with the release of Cut Me Deep – The Anthology 1984 – 2014 with 48 tracks spread over 2 x CDs.

Enjoy

Y'All Is Fantasy Island

SATURDAY’S SCOTTISH SINGLE (Part 128)

This is a cheat week….I’ve never owned a physical copy of this EP from 2008. It’s one of the regrets in my life that while I got to see Y’All Is Fantasy Island a fair number of times back in the late-noughties that I never splashed out on any physical product at the time.

The generosity of their front man Adam Stafford however, in that he put up all of the band’s back catalogue on-line for free a while back, means I can bring you the four tremendous bits of music that made up With Handclaps.

A bit of background from wiki:-

Y’All Is Fantsy Island were formed in 2001 by singer/songwriter Adam Stafford. After a couple of low-key releases, including 2002’s cassette only Wisconsin Death Trip mini album and 2005’s Skeletal Demos EP, Stafford recruited guitarist/sound engineer Tommy Blair and drummer/clarinettist Jon McCall. The band recruited bassist/keyboardist Robert Lesiuk in 2006 to help fill out their live sound. McCall and Lesiuk left the band in the summer of 2007 with McCall being replaced by Steven Tosh on drums and Jamie Macleod taking over bass duties.

2008 saw the band release their second album, Rescue Weekend, again to critical acclaim. The album was originally written and conceived as a separate project from the band, but when multi-instrumentalist Tosh joined in 2007, the band decided to issue it under the Y’all is banner on their own DIY Label, Wise Blood Industries.

The band subsequently released “With Handclaps EP” on Glasgow punk label Winning Sperm Party in August 2008, “No Ceremony” in November 2008 and “Infanticidal Genuflector: Selected Film Soundtrack Work 06/07” in December, respectively (again on Winning Sperm Party). This notched the amount of releases in 2008 to four: one EP and three LPs. The band continued to play live extensively through the year before the unexpected departure of Blair in October 2009 after which they played just a a handful of shows in 2010 including supporting Warpaint before announcing they were to split.

Their final show was played at Sneaky Pete’s on 11 March 2011 with original member Robbie Lesiuk returning in place of Tommy Blair on guitar.

Adam Stafford continues to work as a solo artist and film maker.

And IMHO, Adam Stafford’s solo output has demonstrated that he is one of the greatest contemporary musical talents here in Scotland. I’m at a loss as to why he is not better-known nor that he’s not enjoyed the wider critical acclaim beyond his homeland that his releases, and in particular his live shows, deserve. But that’s for another time.

In the meantime please enjoy Y’All Is Fantasy Island. As you might be able to work out, this A-Z series is drawing to a close….

mp3 : Y’All Is Fantasy Island – Consider Yourself Swallowed
mp3 : Y’All Is Fantasy Island – Punk Rock Disco
mp3 : Y’All Is Fantasy Island – With Handclaps
mp3 : Y’All Is Fantasy Island – A General Gust

Pixies

AN IMAGINARY COMPILATION ALBUM #6 – PIXIES

An enlightening e-mail popped into the inbox recently from an reader who has been known to leave behind some nice comments:-

Hey JC

Somewhat surprisingly (to me!), you’ve never featured Pixies on your blog and to me they are the greatest band there’s ever been, one I’ve seen more than most others and have listened to for over a quarter of a century. So if you don’t mind, here’s an “Imaginary Compilation Album” for your series thats if you actually like them! I’m sure you and your readers are familiar with them or at least their more famous songs, so this is just a collection of my favourites that’s representative of their whole career but misses out the ones that everyone might know. I’ve also tried to include alternate versions ‘rarities’ where possible. Apologies if I ramble in places – it makes me appreciate what you do all the more, it’s not easy writing coherently about your favourite music! And I own everything on vinyl – no cheating!

xxxjim
(JIMDOES)

It was also somewhat surprising to me that, after more than 500 postings on this particular blog that I hadn’t once featured any songs by Pixies when they had been a bit of a staple over at the old place. It’s also great that someone goes to the trouble of putting the imaginary compilation LP together as they are time-consuming pieces, not just in terms of the words for the piece but listening to the back catalogue in some depth to get down to the final selection. Anyway, here’s Jimdoes’ very fine take on the finest band to ever emerge from Boston U.S.A.:-

1. BONE MACHINE

Let’s start at the beginning. The beginning for me, anyway – the first Pixies song I ever heard – the opening track on Surfer Rosa recorded onto a C90 tape with AR Kane’s 69 on the other side. Believe it or not, back in 1988 this really did sound like nothing else – to me anyway – nothing like the indie music that I’d grown to love and nothing that you could hear on the radio. And what a great introduction to a band – each instrument comes in at different times to create a glorious noise with Black Francis barking and howling over the top of it – to this day I’m not really sure what he says or what it all means, but to me that’s part of the joy of this band. And I think it was the song to which I bust my nose stage diving to at The Town and Country Club – but that’s another story.

2. BLUE EYED HEXE

And just to show they’ve still got it – from their recent, underrated LP. It rocks in a way that only the Pixies can. I know it’s ‘Pixies’, not ‘The Pixies’ but sometimes it just sounds funny without the ‘The’. Anyway this is one of my most listened to songs from 2014 – I wasn’t expecting much from the album (and with an embarrassing title like ‘Indie Cindy’, who can blame me) but it goes to show that Deal or No Deal, they can still produce a quite wonderful noise.

3. DOWN TO THE WELL

I got hold of this song as a track on a free EP with Sounds, released just after Surfer Rosa, although this version is from a session they did at Maida Vale. Originally recorded as a demo before Surfer Rosa, I fully expected this to appear on the follow-up, Doolittle but I’m guessing that they had so many great songs recorded that they just held it back till Bossanova. My favourite line is “What matter does it make if there are favourite songs playing in my head” which could well be a mantra for my life! Anyway, it’s about sex and alien abduction – what could be more Pixies than that?

4. HEY

Pixies were always a great band to jump around, scream and go nuts to – but I love their slow songs as much as their fast noisy ones – loudQUIETloud and all that. This is a live version from the tour they did where they played Doolittle in order plus assorted B-sides. Just listening to the audience in this version really brings home what a loved band they are. I was lucky enough to see them a fair few times before they originally split up and was young then so spent most of the gigs going bananas, as you do. I always looked back fondly on those days and as Pixies influence grew was happy I’d seen them. So when they reformed it was incredible going back and seeing songs live that I’d cherished over the years – there was a feeling of trepidation that they might just ruin things but they were as good as they ever were – and I found there was still a bit of the mosh pit left me.

5. INTO THE WHITE

Recorded at the time when Pixies really could do no wrong – every song was so amazing that they’d put tracks like this as B-sides. And one of only a couple of songs that features Kim Deal on lead vocals. I can remember buying the 12” of Here Comes Your Man just to get this song which they’d been playing live for a while. Best sleeve for a Pixies record too – I used to have a massive poster of it on my student bedroom wall.

6. VAMOS

Always my favourite song live – for Joey Santiago’s amazing guitar work – the way it just goes nuts in the middle loads of feedback and echo – he plays that bit with a drumstick or whatever else is at hand. But also for the way that Black Francis’ rhythm guitar holds everything together and stops the song descending into chaos. I’ve included an epic version which was their closing song when they played at Brixton Academy on their original comeback tour on June 5 2004 – a gig I was lucky enough to attend. And for some strange reason it features on both Come on Pilgrim and Surfer Rosa although I’ve never been able to notice much difference between the two of them. Vamos a jugar por la playa, indeed.

7. MOTORWAY TO ROSWELL

People often say that the last two Pixies albums aren’t as good as the first two. I think they are just different but equally good. They couldn’t really have made another Doolittle without sounding a little tired. And it’s great when bands evolve – it’s not a complete reinvention. Anyway I think of this album as the shiny album – everything seems to have a sheen to it if that doesn’t sound too weird. Especially the sounds at the beginning of this song – probably the most ‘space’ and ‘sci-fi’ song they recorded.

8. NIMROD’S SON

I can’t think about most Pixies songs without thinking about them being performed live – and that means thousands of people shouting “You are the son of a mother fucker”. An absolute joy.

9. CACTUS

My favourite song off my favourite album – it just about beats Gigantic. Impossible to articulate what it means to me, I’ve loved it for so long.

10. HEAD ON

Pixies made some great cover versions – and this rendition of The Jesus and Mary Chain classic is my favourite. I’m biased but much as I like the original, I think this version is better!

So there’s ten songs – it’s been incredibly hard to choose just ten. I could easily have picked another ten. And I’ve resisted the urge to put them in alphabetical order like they did with their set lists back in the day!

Side A

mp3 : Pixies – Bone Machine
mp3 : Pixies – Blue Eyed Hexe
mp3 : Pixies – Down To The Well (session)
mp3 : Pixies – Hey (live)
mp3 : Pixies – Into The White

Side B

mp3 : Pixies – Vamos (live)
mp3 : Pixies – Motorway To Rosewell
mp3 : Pixies – Nimrod’s Son
mp3 : Pixies – Cactus
mp3 : Pixies – Head On

Hidden Bonus Track

mp3 : Pixies – There Goes My Gun (live)

I’ve put the live version of there goes my gun on this mail as that is the track before HEY and the first ‘hey’ is actually at the end of this track annoyingly… and you can also hear me shouting ‘hey’ just before the song starts…!

anyway, i could talk all day about the pixies…!!!

cheers!

xxxjim

Johnny Clash (Billy Bragg)

DON’T LOOK BACK IN ANGER

Back on Sunday September 30th 2002, the old blog celebrated its 6th anniversary with, by almost complete coincidence, the 2000th posting.

Little did I know that TVV wouldn’t see its 7th anniversary and it still hurts that Google removed all the writing on the blog when they unceremoniously ripped it down – not so much for the pish that I wrote but because there were a lot of great things put together by various guest contributors.

The 2000th posting was one which featured a bit of rare(ish) music, that was made available on vinyl, and which managed to link three of my favourite singers/bands/performers. It was a great for the TVV template….

When the single came out, the PR blurb informed the world:-

British rocker Billy Bragg has renamed himself Johnny Clash for the release of a new charity single inspired by late country icon Johnny Cash and legendary punk band The Clash.

All proceeds from Old Clash Fight Song, released on 20 August 2007, will benefit Bragg’s Jail Doors organisation, which takes its name from a 1978 The Clash B-side. The charity aims to reduce re-offending among British prisoners by offering an outlet through taking up music lessons. Bragg has promised to donate £1 from each copy of the seven-inch single, which will be available on his official website.

Speaking about his admiration for The Clash’s late frontman, and renowned activist, Joe Strummer, Bragg says, “Time and time again you find that it’s old Clash fans who are leading the charge. “Although we may have hung up our leather jackets, those of us who were touched by the fire of punk have held onto our anti-fascist ideals. “The death of Joe Strummer in 2002 brought a lot of us together again to celebrate Joe’s life and we were amazed to find that many of us were involved in activism in one way of another – union organisers, environmental campaigners, documentary filmmakers.

Let’s be totally honest here……it’s not the greatest bit of music ever made. But it’s one that takes me back to the early 80s when the Bard of Barking started enteratining us, and given that I first began a blog mainly to trigger off memories of times past, it seemed appropriate to put these songs up with the landmark post:-

mp3 : Johnny Clash – Old Clash Fan Fight Song
mp3 : Johnny Clash – The Big Lie

Enjoy.

Billy MacKenzie

BILLY MACKENZIE RARITIES…COURTESY OF SID LAW (1)

It was back at the turn of the year when Sid initially got in touch. The e-mail was entitled ‘Cheers, Happy New Year’ and it said:-

Still enjoying your blog Mr Villain! Thought I’d be a little presumptuous and send you some Billy in the form of a little-heard version of It’s Over just featuring the orchestra. BEF dragged it out of their vaults a few years back.

Hard to believe that it will be 18 years ago this month since Billy died.

Happy to dredge my vault for anything you might want on the Billy front if you are thinking of a wee post later in the month. I do have an awfie lot.

Orrabest

Sid Law

From there we hatched a plan with the intention of having a whole week’s worth of posts in the run-up to the anniversary but stormy weather and power-cuts in Sid’s neighbourhood led to delays and this change of tack.

After I’d thanked him for sending me the orchestral mix of It’s Over, Sid quickly sent over another e-mail with an example of the sort of rarities he has.

Another from Billy. His take on Randy Newman’s “Baltimore”.

A version of the track (there are a couple) appeared on the ridiculously limited edition posthumous “Wild Is The Wind EP” on Paul Haig’s ROL label (Paul Haig had nothing to do with the actual recording – it ain’t a MacKenzie/Haig number).

The song never re-appeared on any of the posthumous CD album issues of unreleased material and hasn’t been seen or heard since.

Enjoy.

Sid Law

mp3 : Billy Mackenzie – Baltimore

As our benefactor says, enjoy.

I should mention that Sid very generously supplied high-quality rips of all the songs. It’s my decision to pare these back to mere CD quality for the blog. At the end of it all, I’m intending to put the hi-quality versions up for a short period of time.

Delphic, Future Islands, Ladyhawke, White Lies

AM I ALONE IN BEING OUT OF STEP?

I like my 80s synth-pop and I like bands who pay tribute to it in exciting and innovative ways. I was therefore keen to give Singles by Future Islands a try given most reviews upon its release as well as reviews of music in 2014 raved about it.

The first time I ever heard of Future Islands, despite this release being their fourth studio album, was when they featured in a guest posting from S-WC back in April 2014. He was looking at bands whose name began with the letter F and he wrote this:-

Talking of great records, a few weeks ago Future Islands released Seasons (Waiting on You), which is right now holding firm as the best record I have heard this year. Yup better than Happy by Pharrell Williams.

Just after the release of their fourth album Singles the band were invited on to the Letterman Show and there they played ‘Seasons’ and delivered a performance so staggering, so jaw droppingly fucking magnificent that all of a sudden a big secret had been let out of the bag. Put ‘Future Islands Letterman’ into a search engine and you will understand.

I took SW-Cs advice. There is no argument from me that it is one of the most spellbinding things, from a musical context, that I’ve ever seen as part of a TV programme.

Later on in the year, Aldo caught Future Islands playing live in Glasgow and included Seasons (Waiting On You) as one of the tracks to go with his review-of-the-year piece. And so, I was very happy when in a mainstream record store last week (tracking down a DVD boxset on sale) to spot that Singles could be bought for just £5.

The record open with Seasons. It is a beguiling and interesting opening. As the live clip demonstrates, Samuel T Herring croons, swoops and growls his way above a tune that is very atypical of some of the very best synth-pop bands of the 80s. I really do like Seasons…..it’s a cracking bit of music while the vocal has you dredging your memory banks to come up with a comparator but in the end you conclude that he is unique, although the one name I couldn’t shift out of my head was Cee Lo Green.

The next song to come out of the speakers is Spirit which musically struck me as a cross between Vince Clarke era Depeche Mode and OMD but which vocally annoyed the hell out of me without me really being able to explain why. Come track 4 on the CD and I’d got it…Herring reminded far too often of the vocal gymnastics performed by Mick Hucknall’s MOR pap when the record buying public went crazy for them.

In short…other than the opening track, this record is a real letdown bar one or two snippets of music that were interesting – Light House (track 7) has some nifty guitar work reminiscent of New Order on their early 80s albums. I accept that it would be near impossible to maintain the high expectations from the opener but the sad thing is none of the other nine songs really come remotely close. I just found it really boring and unmemorable. I thought back to A Flock of Seagulls who had one great single and very little to back it up – but we found ourselves more than three decades ago noticing them and talking cos the frontman had a great and strange haircut while today we have noticed and are talking about Future Islands cos the frontman does crazy wee dances and is passionate about his vocal delivery in a live setting.

Maybe my expectations going in were too high but I found the record to be no more exciting than any new record by Coldplay and I am at a loss to understand why so many folk are creaming their underwear over something so lifeless, dull and dreary. When the record ended I just felt it had consisted of one of two constant and repetitive drum and synth beats – either uptempo groove or even worse lumpen slow stuff which would be a great cute for insomnia.

Singles has had folk raving about in throughout 2014 but I reckon come 2016 most folk will look back on their fawning reviews and be embarrassed.

I very rarely use this blog to pen negative stuff – if I’m not a fan I prefer to say nothing at all. There’s plenty of vinyl and CD in the collection that I haven’t ever mentioned this past eight and a bit years for that very reason. But given this is a time when I seem to be so out of sync – you’ll struggle to find anywhere a bad word said about this record – I’m going to make an exception.

As I said at the outset, I really do like my 80s synth-pop and I like bands who pay tribute to it in exciting and innovative ways. Future Islands, on this showing, do no such thing.

Try these instead:-

mp3 : White Lies – To Lose My Life
mp3 : Ladyhawke – Magic
mp3 : Delphic – Doubt

Elvis Costello

READ IT IN BOOKS : ELVIS COSTELLO

My love for music extends to the written word. I haven’t counted them up but I do have a substantial number of biographies about musicians and bands….its certainly into the many hundreds and it grows by the year as I have a rule of thumb never to toss away any book, even if I don’t like it.

I got a pleasant surprise from Santa this year, courtesy of Cullen Skink, a friend who was an occasional contributor to the old blog. He gave me a copy of Complicated Shadows : The Life and Times of Elvis Costello, originally published in 2004. The book is the work of Graeme Thomson, one of the most prolific contributors about music and culture to newspapers and magazines here in the UK as well as the author of a number of bios with Johnny Cash, Kate Bush and George Harrison among those he has covered in addition to the man originally named Declan McManus.

It is a cracking read – for once the promo blurb on the cover got it spot on with its description being ‘meticulously researched and fluently told’. It is the work of someone who clearly very much admires and respects the singer but at the same time who pulls no punches in terms of offering a critique of some of the music that EC has released, nor does it shy away from behaviours or incidents showing the singer in a less than flattering light. One review at the time of its issues said “As believable and fair a picture of the man himself as I suspect is actually possible. He’ll not like it though.”

It again brought home just how diverse a career Elvis Costello has enjoyed over such an extended period of time. The reader is left with a clear impression of a man who is determined not to be pigeon-holed in any shape or form and who has such incredible self-confidence that he feels no form of music is beyond him. And for the most part, he’s been proven to be right and time and time again he’s defied those who have written him off with some sort of masterpiece coming on the back of some lesser well-received recordings.

If you’re a fan of Elvis Costello but haven’t got round to reading it then I recommend it highly. Equally, if you’re someone who likes biographies of famous folk, musicians or otherwise, then I can also recommend this as an entertaining and enlightening read.

Four songs today, lifted from a 1989 EP centred around a song lifted from his then new LP Spike and co-written with his then partner Cait O’Riordan, former bassist with The Pogues, but containing three other ballads from various points in his back catalogue:

mp3 : Elvis Costello – Baby Plays Around
mp3 : Elvis Costello – Poisoned Rose
mp3 : Elvis Costello – Almost Blue
mp3 : Elvis Costello – My Funny Valentine

Enjoy

C86, Primal Scream

NEXT YEAR’S NOSTALGIA FEST (Part 1 of 48)

1986 was an important year in the history of the genre that has become known as indie-pop, characterised by the release of C86, a 22-song cassette compilation from the NME consisting of what were largely up and coming UK bands who were making guitar-based pop music that was a throwback to the Postcard and early Rough Trade era at the start of the decade.

It was a time when music was being made on the cheap and in a rough and ready fashion which harked back to the punk/new wave era, and it was no real surprise that the biggest music paper in the country focussed on what it hoped would the next new wave of music on the tenth anniversary of the birth of punk.

C86 did not generate any huge amount of commercial success with the vast majority of the bands involved never really getting beyond cult status. But there was something of a timeless quality tabout a number of the songs, and indeed of other contemporary songs which weren’t included on the cassette.

In 2006, CD86 was released to mark the 20th anniversary of C86. It consisted of 48 tracks, compiled by Bob Stanley of Saint Etienne, complete with a short essay in which he extolled the virtues of the movement with the statement:-

“It was the beginning of indie music. It’s hard to remember how underground guitar music and fanzines were in the mid-’80s. DIY ethics and any residual punk attitudes were in isolated pockets around the country, and the C86 comp and gigs brought them together”.

While I beg to differ about it being the birth of indie music (what had I spent my late teen and early 20s dancing to if it wasn’t indie?), I won’t disagree that the songs of the era have a certain charm and so, for the new Sunday series now that the Moz singles feature has again come to an end, I’m going to look at all 48 songs on the CD 86 compilation and where possible also feature the b-side if the song had been a 45.

Interestingly enough, the CD86 compilation only featured 3 of the original 22 songs which had been on C86, while seven of the 22 acts were omitted altogether – Stump, Bogshed, A Witness, Miaow. The McKenzies, Fuzzbox and The Shrubs – in his essay Bob Stanley offers the opinion that some groups on the NME compilation were genuinely dire and he specifically mentions The McKenzies, A Witness and Stump.

It is the case that each of C86 and CD86 opened with the same song by the one band that emerged from the movement to really experience worldwide fame and fortune over an extended period….just a pity for the genre that they made their fame and fortune from a totally different style of music!!

mp3 : Primal Scream – Velocity Girl

Clocking in at some 80 seconds in length, this just about perfectly encapsulates what the C86 movement was all about. The production was a long way removed from the slick and glossy material that was then dominating the charts, the band sounded as if they had only just got together for a bet or a laugh (or both) and the singer wasn’t blessed with the most natural of voices – but somehow it all came together in a way that was enchanting and entrancing.

Strangely enough, Velocity Girl was the b-side of the second ever Primal Scream single released on Creation Records back in 1986, but thanks to its inclusion on various compilation LPs over the year has become far better known than its a-side:-

mp3 : Primal Scream – Crystal Crescent

Tune in on the next 47 Sundays for the rest of the series…..