mp3 : Tindersticks – Drunk Tank
Don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m well fed-up with hearing the same old festive-related songs in every single shop I go into as I search for the perfect last-minute gift for Mrs Villain. Consider this my equivalent of the dirty protest.
But tune in tomorrow for what has become the traditional 25th December posting on TVV (and no looking back to previous years to spoil it….)
Hope Santa is good to you all.
(Lifted from the posting of 24 December 2009)
The first James single that I didn’t set out to buy at the time.
Waltzing Along was one the tracks from Whiplash that I liked most, helped by the fact that it is driven along by some lovely work on the slide guitar which gives the song a country feel akin to some work a decade or so earlier by R.E.M.
mp3 : James – Waltzing Along (LP Version)
A lovely bit of slide guitar that was replaced by a horrible bit of standard guitar work. Indeed, all the lovely subtle sounds which made this such an enjoyable LP track were butchered away and in their place came a more commercial and jarring sound.
The single was released in June 1997. Again, it involved 3 x CDs.
The first of them had three live renditions of songs lifted from a London gig a few months earlier, and for the second single release in a row Greenpeace featured as did Homeboy (another track on Whiplash) together with an old favourite:-
CD1
Waltzing Along (single version)
Homeboy (live)
How Was It For You (live)
Greenpeace (live)
The Second CD was where you’d find the three new songs:-
CD2
Your Story
Where You Gonna Run?
Long To Be Right
And finally, yup, you guessed it, CD3 for the diehards who wanted all the remixes:-
CD3
Waltzing Along (Disco Socks Mix)
Waltzing Along (Flytronox Mix)
Once again it was all three for £5 if you wanted or £1.99 each. Fans bought enough copies to have it enter the charts at #23 before it plummeted like a stone.
There was a rather savage review of the single in NME but it was hard to argue with it:-
Time was when these merry Mancunian misfits could lay claim to being one of the most forward-looking groups in this country, with their weird take on rock music and an ascetic outlook that stuck out a while in times of much frippery. These days, James are more like Simple Minds than the Scottish stadium rockers themselves, if the hackneyed and plodding backing track here is to be taken seriously. Which is a pity as Tim Booth still sings like he’s got something of importance to impart – in the case a prayer for the dying. Oh well, there’s always the solo career.
The really annoying thing is that having subjected myself to so many sub-standard b-sides with the Whiplash singles I missed out for 17 years on one of the more interesting efforts from the band. CD2 was well worth £1.99….
Your Story is a song about being obsessed with sex and rather unusually has the odd expletive thrown in during its five-minute duration. The tune is a bit more rock orientated than most James songs but it is different enough to merit attention.
It’s a total contrast to the instrumental track which follows – you could have given me 100 guesses and I don’t think I’d have stumped up James as the band who composed and recorded what is the rather haunting and occasionally beautiful Where You Gonna Run? It sound like the sort of music that comes over the credits of a movie that just had the saddest and most moving of endings.
Just a pity that the final new song, Long To Be Right, is a self-indulgent, noodling waste of three and a bit minutes of your life.
mp3 : James – Waltzing Along (single version)
mp3 : James – Your Story
mp3 : James – Where You Gonna Run?
mp3 : James – Long To Be Right
Tune in next time to see how James got the critics and record buying public to like them again!
It’s down to the fact that this is more of a Vince Clarke record than a Paul Quinn record which kept it out of the ongoing Saturday series.
Vince had enjoyed chart success with Depeche Mode, Yazoo and The Assembly between 1981 and 1983. Indeed, there hardly seemed to be a singles or album chart in the UK over that period where one of his songs didn’t feature.
In 1985, much to many people’s surprise, it was revealed that he had hooked up with Paul Quinn. Some of the fruits of their labour were released on a 7″ and 12″ single on Mute Records. This is the 12″ version:-
mp3 : Vince Clarke & Paul Quinn – One Day (extension)000000000000
mp3 : Vince Clarke & Paul Quinn – Song For (extension)
The two talents never quite gelled. Vince would team up with Andy Bell to form the incredibly succesful and occasionally brilliant Erasure while Paul would team up with some of the best musicians ever to come out of Scotland to form the incredibly unsuccessful but always brilliant Independent Group.
Here’s the rarely seen promo for One Day which was a #99 hit in the UK charts.
And now for a little footnote….
The b-side (and superior song in my view) was composed solely by Vince Clarke.
The a-side is attributed to Clarke/Morgan/McVey….and here’s who the other two were:-
Morgan McVey were a mid-1980s pop duo with a background in fashion photography, video direction and modeling, composed of Jamie Morgan and Cameron McVey. Jamie Morgan has been highly influential as part of Buffalo, a styling team whose streetwise look was typical in the style mags of the time.
The group released a single, “Looking Good Diving”, through Sony Records in 1986, produced by Stock Aitken Waterman and mixed by Phil Harding. The B side, called “Looking Good Diving with the Wild Bunch” featuring Neneh Cherry, was a tribute to the buffalo stance. The B side was re-recorded 2 years later by Neneh Cherry as “Buffalo Stance” and it went to #3 in the UK Charts and the Top 10 around the world in 1988.
You learn something new all the time round here.
Another single that I didn’t bother to rush out and buy.
The next attempt to milk the cash-cow was in April 2013 with the limited edition reissue of one of the earliest and most enduring singles. This edition of The Last Of The Famous International Playboys came in three versions – 7 inch picture disc, CD and digital download – all featuring one previously unreleased song that had been recorded and broadcast by BBC Radio 2 back in June 2011.
mp3 : Morrissey – People Are The Same Everywhere
mp3 : Morrissey – Action Is My Middle Name
mp3 : Morrissey – The Kid’s A Looker
Not the worst ever b-sides but a tad worrying that none of the three songs, (two of which had featured very heavily in live sets over the previous two years), were considered worthy of a studio recording or for release as a new 45. It didn’t help mind you that the great man was without a record label and so the single went out on EMI Records via the Parlophone imprint.
Enjoy
From wiki:-
The Wake were founded in Glasgow in 1981 by Gerard “Caesar” McInulty (formerly of Altered Images), Steven Allen (drums) and Joe Donnelly (bass), the latter soon replaced by Bobby Gillespie. Steven’s sister Carolyn Allen also joined on keyboards, and remained in the band thereafter.
The Wake released their first single on their own Scan 45 label, coupling together “On Our Honeymoon” and “Give Up”. This single eventually caught the attention of New Order manager Rob Gretton, who helped the band sign to Factory Records in 1982 and record an LP (Harmony) at Strawberry Studios in Stockport.
This was followed by a number of singles on Factory and its Belgian sister label Factory Benelux. In 1983, The Wake toured with New Order, and thus received critical attention but were often unfavourably compared to their more celebrated labelmates. Gillespie was asked to leave in 1983, subsequently playing drums with The Jesus and Mary Chain and achieving fame with his own band Primal Scream.
After an amicable but short-lived stint with Caesar’s ex-classmate Martin Cunning on bass , Alexander ‘Mac’ Macpherson permanently replaced Gillespie. That same year the band recorded a session on John Peel’s BBC Radio 1 programme. The band toured extensively and scored an indie hit with their 1984 single “Talk About The Past” which featured Vini Reilly of Durutti Column on piano.
The recording and release of their seminal 1985 album Here Comes Everybody marked the apex of their career. Further releases were few and far between: one more single “Of The Matter” emerged in 1985 before their last release for Factory, a 4-track EP entitled “Something That No One Else Could Bring” finally appeared in 1987.
In 1988, disillusioned with the lack of proper promotion and indeed apathy from Factory Records, The Wake left the label and signed to Bristol’s legendary Sarah Records, releasing two singles and two LPs, the last being 1994’s Tidal Wave of Hype. By this point, once again down to a three piece featuring McInulty, Allen and Steven, they also shared personnel with another Glasgow-based band on Sarah, The Orchids, with whom they had also played a few live gigs. When Sarah shut down in 1995, The Wake effectively dissolved.
In autumn 2009, The Wake (McInulty and Allen) came together once again to record a new album, “A Light Far Out”, but it wasn’t released till April 2012 on LTM Records In July 2013 The Wake performed at the Indietracks Festival.
I saw The Wake on a number of occasions back in the days including at least three support slots for New Order. They weren’t the easiest band to take to – they always looked and sounded so dour and miserable and at a time when The Smiths were taking the world by storm The Wake seemed very much out of touch.
I’ve picked up a second-hand 7″ copy of FAC 88, the aforementioned indie hit which featured Vini Reilly on piano:-
mp3 : The Wake – Talk About The Past
mp3 : The Wake – Everybody Works So Hard
Enjoy
A hit single in 1998 took Catatonia out of cult status and into the rooms and CD collections of the general public thanks to having the great idea of writing a song which directly referenced two of the then most popular characters in TV fiction.
It’s true that Mulder and Scully will always be the song most associated with the band and there’s no denying that it is a catchy and clever pop song with absolutely nothing to do with the sci-fi or paranormal subject matter of the TV show, but I think their previous single, released at the back-end of 1997 remains their finest non-Welsh lyric moment:-
mp3 : Catatonia – I Am The Mob
A surprise Top 40 hit in as far as radio play was near non-existent thanks to lyrics about kneecapping, oral sex, murder, extortion, all on the back of a stupendous opening line which pays the ultimate tribute to The Godfather.
The CD single has three other tracks on it:-
mp3 : Catatonia – Jump Or Be Sane
mp3 : Catatonia – My Selfish Gene
mp3 : Catatonia – I Am The Mob (Luca Brasi Mix)
While Jump or Sane is more or less a bog-standard filler for a single, the band obviously realised that the piano ballad My Selfish Gene was too mainstream sounding to be thrown away as a b-side and it became the final track on the triple-platinum selling LP International Velvet. It’s a song which shows off the vocal talents of Cerys Matthews.
The remix of the single is also reasonably entertaining.
Enjoy
The Wedding Present recorded an awful lot of sessions for the John Peel Show, and indeed for many other BBC radio programmes.
It was often the case that they took the opportunity to unveil new songs which wouldn’t be released for weeks or even months. On the 28th October 1990 they played four songs which would be part of the Seamonsters LP that came out in May 1991, more than six months later.
I remember hearing something that night and just thinking how loud it was – loud as in just a total wall of noise. It was not the sort of sound I normally associated with the band.
It took until the release of the Peel Session box set in 2007 before I could relive those moments from all those years ago. Of the near 100 bits of music spread across the six discs, this was the first I played..I felt like a kid on Xmas Day getting the present they’ve been dreaming about for what seems like forever:-
mp3 : The Wedding Present – Dalliance (Peel Session)
Give it a listen. The noise that so startled me back in 1990 comes in at the 2 minute 21 seconds mark. It is just after the Boy David has poured his heart out – again – and said “after all you’ve done, that I’m so…I still want to kiss you.”
Wow.
Dalliance is one of the greatest ever songs about the feeling of total and utter despair from being strung along and let down at the very last moment. It’s a song I always imagined could be turned into a real tear-jerker by the original Tindersticks line-up if they had taken hold of the song and given it an arrangement with strings and keyboards.
The Peel version is shorter than that which was released on the LP – partly because it was played faster. I’m not sure if the band, having listened to the results of the Peel Session decided a change of pace was required. It makes the Seamonsters version even more intense….the wall of noise maybe doesn’t quite have the same impact, but it then seems to build and build and build in a way that doesn’t happen on the Peel version.
mp3 : The Wedding Present – Dalliance
Oh and let’s not forget the live version in concert for French radio. It lets you hear just good this band were and continue to be on stage:-
mp3 : The Wedding Present – Dalliance (Black Sessions)
Simply thrilling honeys.
I’ve long been embarrassed at how slow I was to catch-on to R.E.M. and always had pangs of jealousy towards those who cottoned on from the start and got to see them before they became staples of the arena/stadium tours.
My excuse?
I was way too engrossed in UK jingly-jangly indie pop and the fact that in the early 80s my home city seemed to be the centre of the musical universe to pay any attention to what was coming out of the USA .
Besides….one look at the cover of this 1984 single and noticing that one of them had long hair was more than enough to put me off taking the band seriously at the time no matter what some folk were saying in the music papers.
But I should have trusted my ears and not my eyes. For quite simply, this single, which is rather astonishingly more than 30 years old, is quite wonderful:-
mp3 : R.E.M. – (Don’t Go Back To) Rockville
A sad tale of long-distance love told over a quite exquisite tune that can’t quite make its mind up if it is indie, pop, honky-tonk or country.
Such is my belated love for this track that on the only occasion business has ever taken me to the Washington DC (it was back in 2002 and I was delighted to learn that the conference venue, which was where I was also staying for three nights, was the Watergate Hotel), I used a spare afternoon to hop on a commuter train out to Rockville, where I had a walk around for about an hour and took some photos. It was, and I guess still is, a lovely little town.
Here’s yer b-sides of the 12″ single that I picked up second-hand a couple of years ago:-
mp3 : R.E.M. – Wolves
mp3 : R.E.M. – 9-9*
mp3 : R.E.M. – Gardening At Night*
*Recorded Live at ‘The Eldorado’, in Paris on Good Friday 20 April 1984 in mono
That equated to around £6 or $9 (US) for the ticket.
Enjoy.
With thanks to everyone, whether you’ve submitted a guest post, left a comment, sent me an e-mail or simply dropped in for a look.
It’s sometimes been a bit of a struggle keeping the new blog going – I’m not sure it will ever give me the same sense of excitement and satisfaction as the old blog – but every now and again there’s something drops into the inbox or comments section that makes me realise that it is still all worthwhile.
I thought I’d celebrate by featuring some songs ripped from the vinyl collection that I don’t think have ever appeared previously on this or the old blog.
mp3 : The Jam – Happy Together
(From the LP The Gift (which I still I have in its pink and white gift wrapping))
mp3 : Meursault – Settling
(from the LP Something for The Weakened (in recognition of one of the best bands to have come and gone in the few short years I’ve been doing this nonsense – good luck with the new venture Neil)
mp3 : The Cramps – Jailhouse Rock
(from the NME compilation LP The Last Temptation of Elvis (in acknowledgement of my first ever gig more than 35 years ago))
mp3 : Bob Dylan – Like A Rolling Stone
(from the LP Highway 61 Revisited (the original 1965 mono version – gifted to me by someone a few weeks ago when they learned I had a passion for vinyl))
mp3 : Randolph’s Leap – I Can’t Dance To This Music Anymore
(from the LP Clumsy Knot (just a way of sneaking in a track from my favourite album of 2014))
Here’s a live ‘unplugged’ version of the Randolph’s Leap song which was filmed in a pub very very close to my place of work in the east end of Glasgow and which was the venue for some of my most magical musical memories this past 12 months.
Enjoy.
And here’s to the next 500 bits of nonsense.
mp3 : Iggy Pop – Lust For Life
For years, it was always the downstairs alternative disco within Strathclyde University’s Student Union. Level 8 was the main place for live acts and a half decent indie and pop disco but two floors down, in what usually functioned as the main dining hall, you’d find a DJ playing more obscure and cult material. Iggy Pop featured every week, alternating between The Passenger and Lust For Life (it was vinyl in those days and I’m guessing that was the only LP that the student union had!)
Moving forward more than a decade and the song became synonymous with the opening few minutes of the film Trainspotting as Renton (Ewan McGregor) and Spud (Ewan Bremner) sprint down Princes Street in Edinburgh pursued by security guards after a shoplifting incident gone wrong. The joy and surprise of seeing so many familiar locations come to life on the big screen was part of what made that film so special, and every time I walk up Leith Walk and pass its junction with Calton Road I instantly recall the moment where Renton sprints down the sorts set of stairs and seconds later narrowly avoids getting killed by a car emerging from a side street as Iggy’s song pounds away in the background.
Almost 20 years later and I’ve a third abiding memory and that’s of Johnny Marr and his cohorts blasting out a tremendous live version from the stage of the O2 Academy in Glasgow. In a gig packed with many highlights, including some astonishingly good versions of Smiths songs, the unexpected blast of Lust for Life was just as much a stand-out.
It wasn’t originally released as a single in the UK but was readily available on import from the Netherlands where it went Top 3, with this same track on the b-side as had been put on the UK release of The Passenger:-
mp3 : Iggy Pop – Success
1977? Still sounds incredible and fresh today.
I don’t like the annual nonsense of Record Store Day. The concept itself is sound but all too often real fans are left out in the cold as things are snapped up and shoved on e-bay for astronomical amounts within a matter of hours, so I tend to give the event a miss and drop into a couple of my favourite stores a few days after and see what is still generally available.
Which is why I’ve never shown any interest at all in trying to get my hands on a 10″ single release for Record Store Day 2012, limited to 1000 copies:-
mp3 : Morrissey – Suedehead (Mael Mix)
mp3 : Morrissey – Now My Heart Is Full (live)
mp3 : Morrissey – We’ll Let You Know (live)
The main track was given the remix treatment by Ron and Russell Mael of Sparks, with Ron adding some keyboards. It’s dreadful.
The live tracks were from a 1995 concert at the historic Theatre Royal in London which had been broadcast on BBC Radio 1. They’re almost as awful as the remix….
Total waste of time and money. Glad mine were, ahem, sourced.
The View initially formed around a cover band from a school in the very working-class district of Dryburgh in the east-coast city of Dundee, initially signing to local independent label Two Thumbs on which they released the self-titled The View EP in early 2006. They quickly came to the attention of a number of radio presenters and before long were wooed onto 1965 Records, a London-based subsidiary record label of Sony, founded and run by James Endeacott (formerly of Rough Trade Records).
By late 2006 they had released two Top 20 singles – Wasted Little DJs and Superstar Tradesman – and at the same time began to tour extensively across the UK, including a prestigious slot on a heavily advertised package tour put together by MTV2. The View were incredibly hot property at this time thanks in part to what were exciting and chaotic live sets and the support of what seemed to be every DJ who played indie music on their shows across the UK. Their third single, Same Jeans, went Top 3 in early 2007 while debut LP Hats Off To The Buskers went straight in at #1. Subsequent singles didn’t fare anywhere near as well although the LP would subsequently be nominated for the Mercury Music Prize. The band were either still in their teens or barely out of them while this was taking place………
But just as quickly as the band rose to prominence, so did they disappear as the music press moved on to whoever was the next big thing. The band seemed to struggle with this and there was a two-year gap between the debut LP and the follow-up, Witch Bitch. Evidence of fans having moved on so quickly can be seen by the dramatic fall in sales of the second LP – less than half of what had been afforded the debut.
The band have now released a total of four studio LPs as well as a 20-track compilation album in 2013 featuring the tracks they had most played live over the previous seven years along with three new songs.
They are still an exciting live act, hugely loved in their home city and other parts of Scotland. A short tour in 2014 with shows Edinburgh, Aberdeen and three dates at Oran Mor in Glasgow, all selling out within hours of going on general sale. Despite a career which is now stretching into a ninth year, the band members are all still only in their late 20s.
Here is that #3 hit and b-sides from the CD single:-
mp3 : The View – Same Jeans
mp3 : The View – Cherry Girl
mp3 : The View – Superstar Tradesman (live at Glasgow Barfly, 2006)
and here’s the b-side from the 7″ vinyl version:-
mp3 : The View – Screamin’ n Shoutin’
The CD single also had a clip from that Barfly gig, one which myself and Mrs Villain had a thoroughly enjoyable time (and which was reviewed over on the old blog back in the day)
I picked up a second-hand copy of this 12″ single purely on the basis of once enjoying the promo video many moons ago on one or other of the satellite music channels.
I had to look up Handsome Boy Modeling School to find out more. They were a collaboration between two hip hop producers Dan the Automator and Prince Paul (both of whom I’d heard of thanks to owning material by Gorillaz and De La Soul). Over a seven-year period between 1999 and 2006 there were two albums and a handful of singles, containing songs that parodied and acted as a commentary on vain, consumerist, materialistic, and self-absorbed members of upper class society. The duo also roped in a wide range of guest performers from all sorts of musical genres including for this 2004 single (and track on the LP White People), Jamaican reggae superstar Barrington Levy, American rapper Del the Funky Homosapien and the then king of UK indie-pop, Alex Kopranos.
The result is very catchy:-
mp3 : Handsome Boy Modeling School – The World’s Gone Mad (album version)
mp3 : Handsome Boy Modeling School – The World’s Gone Mad (Part 2)
mp3 : Handsome Boy Modeling School – The World’s Gone Mad (Part 3)
Part 2 also features Alex’s bandmates Nick McCarthy and Paul Thomson from Franz Ferdinand.
Enjoy
It was just over a year after the relase of Phobia by Flowered Up that this track became known:-
mp3 : Electronic – Feel Every Beat
The combined talents of Bernard Sumner and Johnny Marr, made Electronic a highly listenable band, coming to prominence with the hit single Getting Away With It (featuring a co-vocal from Neil Tennant) in late 1989. However, the next hit, Get The Message didn’t appear for some 15 months.
The self-titled debut LP hit the shops in April 1991 to near universal critical acclaim along with enough sales to propel it to #2 in the album charts. Factory Records must have been confident of getting the band a third successive Top 20 single when they released a remixed version of Feel Every Beat in September 1991. Regarded by many as the strongest track on the album with its mix of dance/house/indie rock appealing to a very wide audience, it was put out on vinyl in 7″ and 12″ form as well as on CD single with two top-notch previously unreleased tracks to supplement the remixes, all of which have something to offer:-
mp3 : Electronic – Feel Every Beat (7″ remix)
mp3 : Electronic – Feel Every Beat (12″ Remix)
mp3 : Electronic – Feel Every Beat (Dub Mix)
mp3 : Electronic – Feel Every Beat (DNA Mix)
mp3 : Electronic – Second To None
mp3 : Electronic – Lean To The Inside
One of the few lyrics ever to be explained by Bernard, Feel Every Beat registers his disgust at the criminalisation of rave culture in the UK over some of Johnny’s finest guitar work. But to the bemusement of all involved, it got no higher than #39. It deserved much better.
Enjoy
I only own a few singles or tracks on compilation LPs but it strikes me that Flowered Up made the sort of music that perfectly captures the feel, mood and ambience of the baggy movement. The shuffling drums, rinky-dinky keyboards to the fore and occasional 60s style guitar solos and a vocalist who would nowadays be laughed off the stage on the telly talent shows searching for the next big star when all the while he has more charisma and style in his little toe than they have in their entire genetic structure.
The backbone of Flowered Up were brothers Liam Mahey (vocals) and Joe Mahey (guitar) augmented by Tom Dorney (keys), Andy Jackson (bass) and John Tuvey (drums). This most Madchester sounding of bands were from London and are probably best known for the song Weekender, a 13-minute long epic which preached the virtues of a full-on hedonistic lifestyle in which the band were keen to drive home the message the drugs do work. Despite a near universal lack of radio play, Weekender went Top 20 in the UK in 1992.
I much prefer however, one of the band’s flop singles from a couple of years earlier.
mp3 : Flowered Up – Phobia (extended play)
mp3 : Flowered Up – Flapping
mp3 : Flowered Up – Phobia (paranoid mix)
The real tragedy of the band is not that they weren’t nearly as successful as they deserved but that the Mahey brothers couldn’t shake the lifestyle long after the band broke up in the mid 90s with Liam dying of a heroin overdose in October 2009 while Joe passed away in November 2012, both in their early 40s.
Aside from Simple Minds, which was largely on the basis of them being local, Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark were the first electronic band that I really became a fan of, thanks to the early singles Electricity and Messages. They were certainly the first electronic band I ever saw play live at the Glasgow Apollo in November 1980, a gig which left me rather disappointed and underwhelmed, but then again I didn’t have a great seat stuck at the back of the circle (but not quite the upper circle which really was a dreadful spot in the building being so high up and far from the stage).
However, it was only some 20 years after its release that I really became a fan of the band’s debut LP. This was a record which had versions of the two hit singles I loved along with eight other bits of music, many of which were far darker, moodier and difficult for a 17-year-old weaned on guitar music to really get his head around. It wasn’t too long in the collection as I soon swapped it with a friend for a copy of Diamond Dogs (which I’m sure he had pinched from his big brother’s collection) as I was just really getting into Bowie on the back of Scary Monsters.
It was many years later that I picked up a copy of the OMD debut on CD for £5. I was of course approaching it with a whole new outlook on music with my tastes have broadened substantially from those long-ago teenage years. And I very much liked what I was hearing – and in particular what I had previously thought difficult and almost unlistenable bits of music.
A few weeks ago I picked up a second-hand vinyl copy of the album. It’s not the now rare first edition that I had bought away back in 1980 but one of what was a number of re-issues by Dindisc Records. It’s a near mint copy vinyl wise, but the sleeve is a bit tattered and torn which makes me think the original owner, a bit like myself, didn’t take a shine to the music and the sleeve ended up not being looked after as it was boxed up and moved house on a few occasions.
The closing tracks on the second side of the record in particular are quite stunning – the very experimental and inappropriately named Dancing and then the beauty and majesty of Pretending To See The Future which can now be seen as a huge influence on so many bands who were to follow:-
mp3 : Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark – Dancing
mp3 : Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark – Pretending To See The Future
It’s also worth having a listen to the original version and the single version of what would become their first Top 40 hits:-
mp3 : Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark – Messages (LP version)
mp3 : Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark – Messages (10″ single version)
It’s a very fine example of tweaking a song to make it far more daytime radio-friendly without losing the sense of magic that made it sound so special in the first place.
Enjoy.
I am of the opinion that When I Was Born For The 7th Time, released by Cornershop back in 1997 is a tremendous record. It is the best known of all the band’s LPs thanks to it having the original version of Brimful of Asha which, thanks to a remix from Norman Cook, stormed to the top of the singles chart.
It was an album which received great acclaim on its initial release but for a time, not long after the remix was such a hit it did seem that many critics, having watched on as the band moved from cult status into commercial success, felt they could have a bit of a go at Cornershop’s particular mix of pop, dance, funk and politics, underpinned by a sub-continental groove. It certainly caught the band on the hop and caused a bit of a rethink on whether the fame and fortune was really worth the hassle and it would be five years before the next record was released.
Despite having all the hallmarks of a great single, Brimful of Asha wasn’t selected as the first single from the LP. That honour went to the ridiculously catchy Good Shit. Except that it didn’t quite….everyone involved knew that releasing a song with that title and a chorus of ‘Good Shit’s all around good people’ was doomed to an instant ban. So with the change of one little letter and taking it to the plural:-
mp3 : Cornershop – Good Ships
It still of course for the most part sounds as if nothing has been altered which is probably why it hardly got any radio play and was the latest in a run of flop 45s.
The first of the b-side reveals the full extent of the intro on the album version and then proceeds with a great instrumental version of the track:-
mp3 : Cornershop – Intro/Good Ships (instrumental)
The next track on the CD single turned out to be a straight lift of something which would appear unaltered on the LP when it was released some three months later. But at the time it just felt like a tremendous b-side:-
mp3 : Cornershop – Funky Days Are Back Again
And finally, with two minutes extra instrumental funkiness and an infectiously catchy drumming outro:-
mp3 : Cornershop – Funky Days Are Back Again (extended beats mix)
Enjoy
Glamorous Glue was the next song to be issued as a single having been given the digital remaster treatment. Once again, I shied away from buying this on issue back in February 2011 but went back a few weeks ago and tracked down the 2 x 7″ singles – one of which is a picture disc – so that I can feature them in this new version of the Morrissey singles series.
The reason I was prepared to do this but not for Everyday Is Like Sunday (see Part 39) is that Glamorous Glue hadn’t previously been issued as a single plus the fact that two otherwise unavailable tracks, recorded in demo form, were being issued:-
mp3 : Morrissey – Glamorous Glue
mp3 : Morrissey – Safe, Warm Lancashire Home
mp3 : Morrissey – Treat Me Like A Human Being
Neither b-side, both of which give a co-writing credit to Stephen Street, is all that special (although after a couple of listens I am warming a bit to ‘Lancashire’ which could, if developed further, have become more than decent) but I have always been and still am very fond of the pounding glam-rock tribute of the a-side.
Oh and it should be noted that this single peaked at #69 in the UK charts, thus taking away the fact that Hold on to Your Friends when it had stalled at #47 back in 1994 had previously been the great man’s lowest charting single. But Glamorous Glue wouldn’t hold that ‘title’ for long.
Cheating a bit this week. I don’t actually own a copy of this single, but I used to. I loaned it to someone many many years ago and through one thing and another we lost touch and I never got it back.
What I do have in the collection is a vinyl LP which brings together all the early release by The Vaselines, who, just in case you are wondering:-
The Vaselines are an alternative rock band from Glasgow, Scotland. Formed in Glasgow in 1986, the band was originally a duo between its songwriters Eugene Kelly and Frances McKee, but later added James Seenan and Eugene’s brother Charlie Kelly on bass and drums respectively from the band Secession. McKee had formerly been a member of a band named The Pretty Flowers with Duglas T. Stewart, Norman Blake, Janice McBride and Sean Dickson. Eugene Kelly had formerly played in The Famous Monsters.
The band formed in 1986, and released two short EPs, Son of a Gun, which featured a cover of Divine’s “You Think You’re a Man” on its B-side, and Dying for It, which featured the songs “Molly’s Lips” and “Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam,” both of which Nirvana would later cover. In 1989 they released their first album, Dum-Dum, on 53rd and 3rd Records. The band broke up shortly after its release. They briefly reformed in 1990 to open for Nirvana when they played in Edinburgh.
Kelly went on to found the band Captain America (later renamed Eugenius after legal threats from Marvel Comics), supporting Nirvana on their UK tour. Following solo performances Kelly released the album Man Alive in 2004. McKee founded the band Suckle and released her first solo album, Sunny Moon, in 2006.
In the summer of 2006, McKee and Kelly took to the stage together for the first time since 1990 to perform a set of Vaselines songs, as part of a joint tour to promote their individual solo albums.
The Vaselines reformed (minus the old rhythm section) on 24 April 2008 for a charity show for the Malawi Orphan Support group at Glasgow’s MONO venue. Invitation was by word-of-mouth with no press announcements and the band played to a packed, enthusiastic audience. Over the next few months they played a number of other gigs in Scotland and the USA and in March 2009 they played their first London date in 20 years.
The Vaselines second studio album, Sex With an X, was released in September 2010 and earlier this year, their third studio album, V for Vaselines, was released.
But this was the second of the initial EPs from 1988:-
mp3 : The Vaselines – Dying For It
mp3 : The Vaselines – Molly’s Lips
mp3 : The Vaselines – Teenage Superstars
mp3 : The Vaselines – Jesus Wants Me For A Sunbeam
Those are the song titles as they appeared on the back of the 12″ single (see photo above). The compilation LP I own (on a sort of red/pink coloured vinyl no less!!) renames the last two as Teenage Jesus Superstars and Jesus Doesn’t Want Me For A Sunbeam which, once you listen to the songs, would appear to be the correct titles… it’s certainly the latter which is used on the Unplugged LP by Nirvana.
I still look back and marvel at the lyrics of ‘Sunbeam’. I was someone who rejected religion in my teenage years (something which got me into a wee bit of bother at my Roman Catholic school) and I was full of the utmost admiration at the way Eugene had managed to write such a beautiful sounding yet bitter and angry song. This was punk rock at its finest.
Enjoy
A soap opera story in just over three minutes.
The boy about town gets caught out with his trousers down. He can’t cope with the fact that he has to grow up and take responsibility. The woman of his dreams soon moves on and all he has left are bittersweet memories.
mp3 : Squeeze – Up The Junction
1979. A massive hit and one of my favourite songs of all time, albeit as a 16-year old I didn’t quite understand the full nuances. But now I’m 51 and I’ve seen it this story play out in real life far too often over the years.
Tears and saying sorry are just not enough.
But the male side of the species just never learn.
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 