THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN

THE 7″ LUCKY DIP (12): The National – Terrible Love

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I wasn’t incredibly quick to latch on to The National, but I wasn’t painfully slow either. It was the third album, Alligator (2005) that got me to sit up and pay attention. The next few years, as far as I’m concerned, they were damn near untouchable and could merit a mention as being the best and most significant alt-rock act on the planet. Boxer (2007) and High Violet (2010) are exceptional listens.

I’ve not been fully on board with any of the five albums since then, but strangely enough, all of them have brought greater sales and much bigger audiences than from the days when I would go and seem them in mid-sized concert venues in Glasgow.

The 2010 tour for High Violet saw them at the Academy, a 2,500 capacity venue on the south side of the city, one that had previously served time as a cinema and bingo hall. The 2023 tour for The First Two Pages of Frankenstein was held at the 14,300 capacity and purpose-built Hydro in the heart of the city’s entertainment/exhibition area. Being a great live band, I can guess that the latter show was exceptional, but having caught them playing in Manchester the previous year when it turned into a mass sing-a-long for the most part, I preferred to sit at home with my memories of when the audience primarily went along to watch and listen….unless requested to join in by the band during the near a cappella encore.

This growth in popularity over the years means that I could get a reasonable amount of money if I was to look to sell a copy of a 7″single, on purple vinyl, from the High Violet era. Not a huge amount, but certainly, even allowing for inflation, an increase on what I paid for it over the counter at the time

mp3: The National – Terrible Love (alternative version)

Ah….a different recording from that which is on the album. Still don’t think it was an obvious choice for a single. It didn’t trouble the charts.

The b-side was an otherwise unavailable song

mp3: The National – You Were A Kindness

It’s the sort of slow, languid number the band had been increasingly edging towards at the time. If you like Matt Berninger‘s voice (and I do!!) then it will appeal. There’s not too much of a tune driving it on.

JC

PS : Come back later on today for a Bonus Post featuring a chance to win some vinyl.

A Night At The Opera

BONUS POST : SOME LIFE-AFFIRMING EXPERIENCES (4)

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Fraser said that he hoped I’d review the Rossini gig referred to in this post from last week. My mantra is to always give the readers/contributors what they want, so here goes.

The Vienna State Opera House is quite the venue. Our seats were among the cheapest in the house, but still came in at 65 euros a head and found us in the top tier at what I’d describe as approx somewhere between 4 and 5 o’clock from the centre of the stage….I think the best seats went for something like 300 euros. The capacity is a little over 1700, but I should mention that the venue has an historical practice of offering up tickets for as little as 10 euros, made available on the day – these are standing tickets for away, way way up in the gods and certainly aren’t for the faint-hearted!

I have, over the years, posed myself the question as to why operas/ballets etc, despite receiving very generous public subsidies not really offered to other performing arts, tend to be expensive to attend. Well, looking at the numbers involved last week at the performance of Guillaume Tell perhaps offers some clues.

Ten principal singers together with a chorus that was genuinely too large to keep an accurate count of – I’ll guess at 50. The orchestra had at least 90 players. A dozen stagehands constantly involved in moving an elaborate and stunning stage set. Add in those involved in the direction, the choreography, the lighting etc, and the numbers become mind-boggling. It was a tad more complicated and expensive to organise than a show at King Tut in Glasgow……

I enjoyed the performance immensely. I’m not qualified enough to offer a comprehensive critique, but I was particularly impressed by the soprano, Lisette Oropesa (who sang the role of Mathilde) and the tenor, John Osborne (who played Arnold). I did, however, think that Roberto Frontalli in the titular role was a bit underwhelming, but perhaps that’s down to the stronger arias belonging to other characters.

The chorus, whose participation involved multi-dimensional roles, was absolutely magnificent at all times, and I really can’t heap enough praise on the conductor, Bertrand de Billy, and the orchestra who got things under way in a most spectacular and unforgettable fashion.

mp3: Vienna State Opera Orchestra – Guillaume Tell: Overture

The overture is over 11 minutes in length, but if you fast-forward to the 8:20 mark (approx) you’ll get to the bit everyone recognises!!

All in all, a tremendous experience. But I’ll still probably restrict myself to the very occasional night at the opera in the years ahead.

JC

Lloyd Cole & The Commotions

ONE HUNDRED AND ELEVEN SINGLES : #051

aka The Vinyl Villain incorporating Sexy Loser

#051: Lloyd Cole & The Commotions – ‘Rattlesnakes’ (Polydor Records ’84)

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Hello friends,

thinking about it, there might be four, five, six albums which, after all those decades, I would still consider to be good throughout. And with ‘good throughout’, I mean all songs: ‘no fillers, just killers’ as we, rather pathetically, used to say when we were younger. Well, I did, at least. ‘Psychocandy’ comes to mind, Billy Bragg’s debut as well as the first one by The Undertones, ‘Crazy Rhythms’, ‘London Calling’ of course (sorry George), perhaps the first one by The Smiths – but also ‘Rattlesnakes’, the first album by one of the finest bands ever to emerge from Glasgow, Lloyd Cole & The Commotions.

I just had to look that up: it was released in October 1984, which means I will not have held it in my hands before the spring or summer of 1985 … it always took a while for good indie stuff to get known in the middle of nowhere in Germany, believe me. And even though there were far more record shops in Aachen, the nearest town, than nowadays, there was no way to get really ‘fresh’ releases basically, especially not when they came out on some obscure indie label. I’m willing to have a small bet that the owner of my favourite record shop (Plattenbörse), Reinhold, and his aide looked at each other and said: ‘oh no, not that twerp again!’ when they saw me on the street approaching the shop. Why? Well, it took me quite a time to understand that they neither were ever in the position to have new records available which I heard on John Peel’s Music a few weeks before nor could they always order those for me …. in hindsight, I must have been a ‘difficult’ customer, I suppose.

But I digress, so back to ‘Rattlesnakes’ – a record that Reinhold did store back then … I mean, it was on Polydor Records, so it probably was easier for him to get hold of this item than that long deleted Peruvian punk 7” on the Fistfuckers Unite label …. yes, I made that up, but you got the point, right?

I remember taking the record home, and it did not get off my turntable for weeks – every song a winner, as I said. I still cannot say what it was that attracted me so much back then. I mean: I can now, but in 1984/85 it was punk/New Wave only for me by and large, so how on earth a record as fragile and in parts even turgid as this managed to meet with my approval, I simply don’t know. Perhaps I just wanted to show off a bit, presenting my oh so clever Dylanesque side to those girls I couldn’t convince with my oh so dangerous Strummeresque side …. as you might already have gathered, none of it worked at the slightest, of course – but hey, I was 16 and desperate! But I loved these songs even when I listened to them on my own, so it wasn’t all about impressing the female population, I reckon.

There are so many perfect songs on ‘Rattlesnakes’, for all I know Lloyd Cole could have chosen each one to become a single. But he went for ‘Perfect Skin’, ‘Forest Fire’ (backed with ‘Andy’s Babies’, another particular favorite) and, after the album came out, this one, the title track:

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mp3: Lloyd Cole & The Commotions – Rattlesnakes

As much as I do hate snakes, this is a mighty fine tune and for me, it hasn’t aged a bit. Then again I’m still a bit of a hopeless romantic poseur, so …

Dirk

Wedding Present

THE WEDDING PRESENT SINGLES (Part Twenty-Seven)

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It’s not that 1993 was a quiet year for The Wedding Present. The gig history over at the official website shows:-

February: 2 UK shows in Carlisle and London, followed by 18 dates in France
March: 4 shows in Japan and one in Hong Kong
April: shows in Leeds and Sheffield
July: part of the bill at the Phoenix Festival in Stratford-Upon- Avon
September – 3 shows in France
October: 3 shows in the UK (Portsmouth, Windsor and Southampton) and 1 in France
November: 4 shows (Newcastle, Galashiels, Glasgow and Belfast)
December: 5 dates in Ireland, followed by a gig in Leeds.

I make that 45 gigs. It was a year in which Keith Gregory took his leave of the band. It wasn’t the first time he’d wanted to quit, but David Gedge‘s powers of persuasion finally failed to work. He was replaced by Darren Belk. The Wedding Present now had just one original member left as part of its ranks.

Oh, and they were let go by RCA, which was no real surprise given that they never did play the game the way a major label would have expected.

The only release came courtesy of another hook up with Strange Fruit. This time around the BBC vaults were raided for a CD/LP release called John Peel Sessions 1987-1990, issued in November 1993, just in time for the Christmas market.

1994 opened up with tours of France and the USA, but all the while new songs were being written and worked on for what would be the next album. Undaunted by the RCA experience, the group signed to Island Records having arranged a budget that would enable the new material to be recorded in Seattle, with Steve Fisk, who was best known for his work on records released on Sub Pop and K, two of the hippest indie labels at the time.

The producer was given a specific brief by the group – ‘make us do something different and sound like a Sixties band’. The first thing that anyone heard was a new single released at the beginning of September 1994, on 12″ vinyl, cassette and 2 x CDs.

mp3: The Wedding Present – Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah

It was different. And it was a bit of a jolt to the system. Fans really weren’t quite sure what to make of it. It was fast, and it had rhythm, as well as that unmistakable Gedge singing voice. But isn’t that an organ to the fore? What the heck……????

As it turned out, Yeah to the power of five set things up for the following week’s release of Watusi, the first fully-fledged studio album in more than three years. It’s one which divided fans on release and still does 30 years on. It has many lovers and many detractors. I’m one of those who sits on the fence.

The lead-off single is fine in its own way, but such was the shock of the new sound, that I’ve never fully taken to it. I wasn’t alone, as it only reached #51 in the charts, which must have been a bit of a sore one to take for a band who just a couple of years ago were regulars in the Top 20, albeit via a clever piece of marketing.

The 12″ and CD1 had three additional songs, two of which were originals, with the other being the now, much anticipated cover.

mp3: The Wedding Present – Le Bikini
mp3: The Wedding Present – Flame On
mp3: The Wedding Present – Him Or Me (What’s It Gonna Be)

Anyone scratching their head at the single probably had their jaws hit the floor when the 100 seconds of the instrumental Le Bikini came to an end. It was surf-rock. It was not anything TWP had attempted before.

Flame On was on ground that was a bit more secure, albeit the fast guitars were twisted around in a way that were a tad different.

One thing to note….after years when most songs were credited to ‘Gedge’, these three new tracks were attributed to ‘Belk/Dorrington/Gedge/Smith.’ The signs of a new democracy within the band? Or maybe it was really the case that everyone, working with a new producer in a new city, was contributing on an equal basis.

The cover? It was of a 1967 hit single by Paul Revere & The Raiders. I say hit single, but that would have been in their native America. They might have been part of the music scene on that side of the Atlantic for the best part of 20 years across the 50s, 60s and 70s, but they rarely had their records played on UK radio stations, far less have any chart success. The cover is OK as these things go, but again, it was hard to digest.

CD2 had three more songs. They were lifted from a John Peel session that had been recorded on 22 March and broadcast on 16 April 1994. None of these rang any alarm bells as they couldn’t be anything other than Wedding Present songs and there was no reason to think a drastic change of sound was on its way. All three tracks would later be included on Watusi, but in two of the cases, in drastically different form to the session versions:-

mp3: The Wedding Present – Gazebo (Peel Session)
mp3: The Wedding Present – So Long Baby (Peel Session)
mp3: The Wedding Present – Spangle (Peel Session)

There would be one further single lifted from Watusi, but given so much of the backstory has been told today, the posting on that should be a bit shorter. Indeed, I might do a cut’n’paste from a few years back.

JC

35mm Dreams

SATURDAY’S SCOTTISH SONG : #397 : 35mm DREAMS

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I’ve this one courtesy of it being included in the many-times mentioned Big Gold Dreams box set.

mp3: 35mm Dreams – More Than This

It was released as a single on More Than This Records in November 1980, and that’s the picture sleeve above. There was a small flyer with the 45:-

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The BGD booklet offers up the following:-

“Taking their name from a song by Lou Reed and John Cale favourite Garland Jeffreys, Edinburgh’s 35mm Dreams sounded on their debut single like a post-punk ‘Eleanor Rigby’. This followed a four-track cassette of demos, Suburbia Sheiks, which perhaps nodded to the band’s roots at Craigmount High School in west Edinburgh, also alma mater to assorted Fire Engines and Scars.

“A second single, ‘Fasten Your Safety Belts’, followed. Drummer Moray Crawford went on to play in Buba & Shop Assistants before decamping to Japan where he guested on Shonen Knife’s Heavy Songs album. A briefly reformed 35mm Dreams and Moray Crawford’s Japanese band My-T-Hi played an Edinburgh show alongside Shock and Awe thirty years to the day since the release of ‘More Than This.'”

I knew nothing of this song or the band prior to getting the box set back in 2019. It’s become one of my many favourites across the entire 115 tracks – there’s nothing particularly ground-breaking about the 2 minutes and 18 seconds that it takes from first note to last, but it’s interesting and catchy enough to warrant repeated listens.

JC

Jarv Is

THE 12″ LUCKY DIP (5)

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Here’s one that wasn’t bought in a record shop or online, and seemingly was only made ever made available via the merch stalls at gigs.

November 2021, I found myself, in the company of Aldo, down in Manchester for the purpose of visiting the Factory Records exhibition that was on at the city’s Science and Industry Museum. Looking around for something to do of an evening, we learn that Jarv Is..happens to be playing a gig at the city’s Albert Hall. We didn’t expect tickets to be available, but it turned out that there were, so along we popped to a venue we’d never been to before.

The venue is rather stunning, the restoration of a former Wesleyan chapel, itself a Grade II Listed Building, in the very heart of the city centre, and makes for a unique looking and atmospheric gig venue…there’s more than a few ‘wow’ factors when you look around.

The show certainly matched the surroundings. It was part of a belated tour for Beyond The Pale, an album that had been released in 2020. The 90-minute set had next to nothing from the Pulp days. There was a smattering of songs from the Jarvis Cocker solo album that came out back in 2006, but for the most part it was the newer songs. The main set ended with a blistering rendition of the song that had originally been issued back in May 2019 as a taster for the Jarv Is.. material:-

mp3: Jarv Is – Must I Evolve?

Where mankind’s development from the big bang to getting off one’s face at a rave in the 21st century is dissected.

The original version of the single was a low-key release, promoted in the main as a digital release, although a 12″ vinyl version did offer up a David Holmes remix on the b-side.

Two and a half years later, and Must I Evolve? was available to buy at the gigs. This time, it came in four sleeves of varying colours. I’ve long been a sucker for all things purple, so I went for that (combined with green as seen above), and forsaking the blue/orange, red/blue and the one which is pink and a sort of off-cream effort.

The b-side remix on this occasion is courtesy of Jason Buckle, an English-based producer who has been a long-time friend of Mr Cocker.

mp3: Jarv Is – Must I Revolve?

It’s quite a radical take on, but the constant use of the ‘Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes’ chant might get on a few nerves.

JC

Various

SHAKEDOWN, 1979 (March, part two)

Once again, this is the part of the series where I consult one of my reference books and find some new 45s which didn’t sell in enough numbers in March 1979 to bother the chart compilers.

I’m starting things off with The Distractions. The Great Indie Discography, written back in 1999 and updated in 2003 by Martin C. Strong (from now on in referred to as ‘The Big Red Indie-Bible’) tells us this:-

“Consisting of founder-members Mike Finney (vocals) and Steve Perrin- Brown (guitar), together with Adrian Wright (guitar), Pip Nicholls (bass) and Alec Sidebottom (drums), this Manchester-based outfit had a hectic touring schedule supporting the likes of Magazine, Buzzcocks and just about every Mancunian New Wave act around at the time.”

They signed to TJM Records, a label that had been launched by Tony Davidson, the owner of TJ Davidson Rehearsal Studios in Little Peter Street, Manchester, the location from whom which many a band launched a career, particularly Joy Division.

The debut release was the You’re Not Going Out Dressed Like That EP, from which this was the lead track:-

mp3: The Distractions – It Doesn’t Bother Me

The group would release another single before the year was out, this time on Factory Records. I’ll highlight that later in the year.

Staying with the letter ‘D’

mp3 : Doll by Doll – The Palace Of Love

Doll by Doll was formed by Kirkcaldy-born Jackie Leven, who, having started out as a folk musician, was another to be smitten by the advent of punk/new wave. The band, which also had Jo Shaw, Robin Spreafico and David McIntosh as members, signed to Automatic Records, an off-shoot of Warners. Whoever pulled together the wiki page got this right:-

“They came to prominence during the new wave period but were largely ignored by the music press of the time – their emotional, psychedelic-tinged music was judged out of step with other bands of the time”.

There were a few performers/bands who despised the new wave scene, particularly in New York. This led to what was termed ‘No Wave’, and I’ll again turn to wiki:-

No wave was an avant-garde music genre and visual art scene which emerged in the late 1970s in Downtown New York City. The term was a pun based on the rejection of commercial new wave music. Reacting against punk rock’s recycling of rock and roll clichés, no wave musicians instead experimented with noise, dissonance, and atonality, as well as non-rock genres like free jazz, funk, and disco. The scene often reflected an abrasive, confrontational, and nihilistic world view.

One of the leading proponents of the no wave scene was Lydia Lunch. Her band, Teenage Jesus & The Jerks, released a single in March 1979:-

mp3: Teenage Jesus & The Jerks – Baby Doll

I’ve a feeling most of you will be pleased it’s all over and done with in just over 90 seconds.

And now for something completely different:-

mp3: Tubeway Army – Down In The Park

They had started out as a guitar-based new wave band, Mean Street, but the dawn of 1978 saw a change of name to Tubeway Army, albeit the new wave element was still to the fore (they supported The Skids at gigs in the summer of ’78). By the end of the year, a debut album had been released, with the lead singer changing his name from Gary Webb to Gary Numan, and looking to incorporate synths into the group. The album sold modestly, but there was enough interest at Beggars Banquet to fund a follow-up for planned release in mid-1979, and Down In The Park was seen as being the advance single. It didn’t sell very well, but things were about to change….as will be seen later in the series.

mp3: The Pop Group – She Is Beyond Good and Evil

I’m not someone who has ever been fully enamoured by The Pop Group, which is why they haven’t previously featured on the blog, but there’s no denying that they are so often cited as being a huge influence on the way music would shape and form in subsequent decades. The debut single was released in March 1979.

It was also the month in which the final 45 from the original line-up of this lot was released before the frontman went solo:-

mp3: Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers – Lydia

Having started off things off in Manchester, I think it’s appropriate to finish with the lead track from another EP released on the TJM label in March 79.

mp3: Slaughter and The Dogs – It’s Alright

Hmmmm…….on this evidence, it’s easy to see why this lot never really got much attention beyond that provided by a local fan base.

JC

Moby

THE CD SINGLE LUCKY DIP (3)

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I mentioned last time out that singles released across multiple CDs usually meant one of, or a combination of, three things.

1. Loads of different songs as b-sides across the 2 x CDs
2. Loads of different remixes of the single across at least one of the CDs
3. Live tracks to pad things out across one or both CDs

Natural Blues, the fifth single to be lifted from Play, which itself was Moby‘s fifth studio album, combined options 1 and 2.

CD1

mp3: Moby – Natural Blues (single version)
mp3: Moby – Whispering Wind
mp3: Moby – Sick In The System

It feels quite surprising that Moby still had some unreleased material to issue this single given that it was the fifth to be lifted from the album and that all the previous singles had all featured at least two otherwise unavailable tracks, which only goes to show just how much material he had written towards the end of the 90s. Whispering Wind is a slow, almost-ambient number while Sick In The System is a bit more uptempo in nature, but not fast enough to be thought of as a club number.

Oh, and the single version of Natural Blues is just over a minute shorter than the album version, with various edits, all quite seamless in nature, making it really tailor-made for radio play.

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The second CD does exactly what it says on the cover

CD2

mp3: Moby – Natural Blues (Perfecto Remix)
mp3: Moby – Natural Blues (Mike D edit)
mp3: Moby – Natural Blues (Peace Division edit)

Perfecto was the name used by Paul Oakenfold and Steve Osbourne, a very highly successful team of British producers who had been doing such things for years, with one of their earliest efforts being their take on Wrote For Luck by Happy Mondays.

And yes, the middle remix is the work of Michael Louis Diamond, one-third of the Beastie Boys.

Peace Division is the name used by Clive Henry and Justin Drake, two UK-based house music remixers/producers.

In addition to the 2xCD releases, Natural Blues was issued in the UK on two separate 12″ singles, across which you would find the Mike D and Peace Divison remixes, as well as a Perfecto Dub version and a remix by Katcha, a trance/house DJ.

Natural Blues was released in March 2000, some ten months after Play had been released. The album hadn’t sold all that brilliantly during 1999, spending just one week in the Top 40. But it really took off in early 2000, re-entering at #72 on 9 January, and going on to spend the next sixteen months in the Top 75, including five weeks at #1 in April/May 2000. There is no doubt that the decision to license all 17 of its tracks to films, tv shows and adverts paid dividends in the long run.

JC

Pete Wylie, Wah!, Yard Act

SOME LIFE-AFFIRMING EXPERIENCES ? (3)

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Tonight will see me go way out of my comfort zone.

Looking for something special to do while on this week’s city-break, we managed to pick up tickets to attend a performance of Rossini‘s Guillaume Tell at the world-famous Vienna State Opera. It’s not that I’ve never attended an opera before, but the number can be counted on fewer than the fingers of my right hand….or my left hand for that matter…..and while I’ve enjoyed the experiences, I still prefer heading along to see pop/rock shows which tend to be over and done with in slightly less than the four hours (including intervals) that’s going to be involved tonight.

Which brings me to a couple more short reviews of gigs that took place just a week apart in Glasgow – one from a should-have-been superstar whose biggest hits are from the 80s and the other from a band whose best days may still be ahead of them.

Friday 8 June : Pete Wylie & The Mighty Wah! – King Tuts Wah Wah Hut

Pete Wylie backed by three younger and talented musicians, rolled back the years with his latest tour. He’s out there promoting Teach Yself Wah! a 20-track compilation comprising the hits, near misses, the flops and a number of songs that really ought to be much better known.

He was on stage for over two hours. He played just 13 songs, an indication of just now often, and for how long, he was talking. The thing is, there was every bit as much enjoyment to be had from the music as there was the talking, much of which was akin to stand-up comedy along with personal recollections of a lifetime in an industry that has never been sure of how to deal with him.

Wylie is a naturally gifted entertainer, but he’s also someone who has devoted an astonishing amount of time and energy into fighting all sorts of social injustices, to the extent that any prospect of him having an extended period in the limelight as a pop/rock star was certainly compromised. Not that he’s overly concerned about how it’s all turned out for him – he’d very much prefer to be remembered for his campaigning efforts as he is for tunes such as these.

mp3 :Wah! – Story Of The Blues
mp3 : Pete Wylie & The Oedipus Wrecks – Sinful

Friday 15 March : Yard Act – Glasgow Academy

The Yard Act gig at Glasgow Barrowlands back in April 2023 was a real highlight of the year. It was one of the final shows the band played in celebration of the success of debut album The Overload, and it was a night of manic energy and exhilaration up on the stage and amongst the audience.

Almost a full year later and they return to the city for one of the first shows to support and promote the newly released LP, Where’s My Utopia? The album was on solid rotation prior to the gig, and at this early juncture, it is a strong candidate to be at the top of my ‘year end list’ if I can be bothered to do such a thing come December.

And yet…..the gig turned out to be one that I could give no more than 3 stars. If I hadn’t been at the Barrowlands last year, I’d certainly have scored it higher, but it is really difficult, if not impossible, not to a gig and compare it with previous shows, especially when there’s not really been that much time between them.

The thing I most feel bad about being so frugal with the marking is that it wasn’t all down to the band. Yes, it’s a totally different kind of show than 2023, complete with backing singers/dancers whose contributions are spectacular, but whose involvement means the gig is more co-ordinated than it is spontaneous. The Barrowlands show had the band and audience feeding off one another’s energy in a way that wasn’t the case this time.

My main issue was with the venue. The Academy is a cavernous venue, a converted former picture house with a huge ceiling and balcony, which hosted its first gig in 2003. I’ve seen many acts of all genres over the decades, but very rarely have I come away fully happy as the sound usually ranges from passable to unlistenable. Maybe it’s the very height that makes it so difficult to get right, but it comes nowhere near that of the Barrowlands. It’s not as if converted cinemas elsewhere haven’t worked – the late and lamented ABC in the city centre, which burned down in 2018, was a great place to see and hear bands – but it’s always a feeling of dread when I find myself having to traipse to the Academy. This was my first time back since the pre-COVID days and I had hoped there may have been improvements in that period, but on the basis of last Friday, sadly no.

The Yard Act album is too new to be offering up any mp3s. Here’s a couple of videos instead.

The latter has a co-vocal from Katy J Pearson. It is insanely catchy. It also ends with a Shakespearian monologue courtesy of the always amazing David Thewlis which is insanely superb.

JC

Colorblind James Experience

THE COLORBLIND JAMES EXPERIENCE : A RE-POST

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I’m thinking there will more than a few ‘regulars’ who weren’t familiar with this blog back in the old days, which means I have nothing to lose from re-posting some old stuff, particularly if it’s to do with a singer or band who’ve rarely, if ever, featured since.

This one dates from January 2014, and was the only previous occasion when The Colorblind James Experience got a specific mention on TVV. It was the fifth part of a series in which I looked at bands from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean….which explains the seemingly strange title of the post.

BLUE JEANS AND CHINOS; COKE, PEPSI AND OREOS (Part 5)

The Colorblind James Experience were formed in 1980, but it took nearly a decade before they were ever heard of here in the UK.

The band centred, for the most part, around the talents of Chuck Cuminale whose stage name was Colorblind James, and the music they played was a mix of rock’n’ roll, country, polka, jazz, blues and rockabilly. They were renowned as an incredibly entertaining live act, first gaining success on the west coast of the States before Chuck moved back to his roots in Rochester, ~~New Jersey~~ New York in 1984. The stage successes, however, did not transfer into them getting any meaningful record deal – the music was just too weird for American radio stations as it didn’t comfortably fit into a single genre and there was no real market for maverick talents such as Cuminale.

In 1987, the band scraped together enough cash to record and press 1,000 copies of an LP, one of which was sent to the UK and into the hands of John Peel. Unsurprisingly, Peel fell for their talents and played the tracks again and again and again. They were picked up by Cooking Vinyl and for a few years were regulars on the UK and European touring circuits, but they never got beyond cult fame and placings on the Indie Charts. I don’t own anything on vinyl other than the self-titled debut LP from 1987*. It has ten tracks, some of which are sung, some are spoken and some are a mix of singing/speaking. There’s a lot of self-deprecating humour on the record and while there’s a couple of tracks that are a bit hit’n’miss there are some well worth a listen:-

mp3 : The Colorblind James Experience – Fledgling Circus
mp3 : The Colorblind James Experience – A Different Bob
mp3 : The Colorblind James Experience – Considering A Move To Memphis

The last of these tracks is a genuine classic, much loved by Mr Peel.

Despite the lack of success, the band continued to record and perform, mostly in the States, throughout the 90s (with ever-changing line-ups) but it all came to a sad and sudden end in July 2001 when Chuck Cuminale died of heart failure at the age of 49.

*I do also have a copy of a 19-track CD, released in 2000, on Stub Daddy Records, called ‘Greatest Hits’ which I picked up at least 15 years ago for next-to-nothing. There are currently two copies for sale on Discogs, both from American sellers, with asking prices of $60 and $100. I have no idea why such prices are the going rate.

JC

PS : Just to mention that I’ll be away from Villain Towers for a few days this week**, and won’t be able to monitor the comments section (and add the various names to the anon contributors thanks to whatever it is WordPress has done to make that happen so often!), nor will I see any e-mails. Thanks, in advance, for your patience!

**it’s a planned short break to Vienna (which is why that particular city featured on the blog earlier this year).

Wedding Present

THE WEDDING PRESENT SINGLES (Parts Twenty-Five and Twenty-Six)

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I’m sure I read somewhere once upon a time that while David Gedge had no regrets about doing 12 singles in a year, he admitted to being relieved after the final recording session as the task had been more demanding from a songwriting perspective than he had anticipated.

The single released in November 1992 kind of reflects that. It had only been a few months since Flying Saucer, a science-fiction inspired song, had been part of the series, but here was one on a similar theme.

mp3: The Wedding Present – The Queen Of Outer Space

I quite like this one. It’s very reminiscent of some of my favourite bits on Seamonsters with the quiet-loud-quiet changes and there’s something of a shouty chorus too, a necessity to be heard above the loud guitars. I’m not claiming it’s close to the top of any list of favourite 45s, but it’s one that I hear and think that it’s much better than I ever recall (if that makes any sense!!) Here’s the promo, directed by Marco Posia. By now, the limits of having small budgets are beginning to show, as it’s a variation on a theme of the band ‘performing’ in an unusual setting.

The previous sci-fi single had a sci-fi related cover. So did this one.

mp3: The Wedding Present -UFO

The theme tune from a UK science fiction series that was broadcast in 1970. I don’t have too many clear memories of the show, and I certainly couldn’t recall the theme tune. I’m guessing the show was aimed more at adults than kids, despite it coming from the same Gerry and Sylvia Anderson/ITC Entertainment stable as the puppet-led shows such as Joe 90, Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlett, all of whose theme tunes I can still hum.

The Queen of Outer Space peaked at #23. It was a time of year when the number of new singles released each week gradually increased with eyes on the festive market sales. Surely The Weddoes wouldn’t fall at the final hurdle?

mp3: The Wedding Present – No Christmas

Of course they didn’t, albeit this one, which was pressed on red vinyl, (all the others had been black vinyl), only hit #25 which was the second-lowest placing after Blue Eyes back in January. It just shows the vagaries of the charts. Every single sold 10,000 copies, but their entry points varied between #10 and #26.

No Christmas must be up there among the bleakest festive songs ever composed. It opens in a very lo-fi and distorted fashion, and then about 30 seconds in, there’s a lyric, but it’s really low down in the mix, so it’s almost impossible to realise that David is singing:-

I wonder if you’re going to ask me why I lied
I wonder if you’re going to show you’re angry with me
I wonder if I could explain this if I tried
I wonder if I’m going to know when you forgive me

He sounds absolutely petrified. Then there’s a single drum note and the song gets loud. That’s when the fear is replaced by desperation and an anguish which comes through in how the lines are sung.

When you forgive me, you forgive me, you forgive me
Will you stay with me, you stay with me, you stay with me?

And all those awful things you said at first
Don’t shout, I understand, you’re pretending to punish me
Well I’m listening, so do your worst
I don’t doubt that you’re mad but it can’t be ending

It can’t be ending, it can’t be ending, can’t be ending
You’re still pretending, still pretending, still pretending

Then it seems to come to be fading to an end about two and a half minutes in. Indeed, the song apparently stops altogether, and then, like the scariest bits in a horror film, something jumps out of the shadows wailing helplessly:-

Don’t say we’ve reached the end; you can’t be right
For goodness sake, you must know I care about you
Please stay my best friend one more night
I couldn’t face another day alone without you

Alone without you, alone without you, alone without you
I care about you, I care about you, I care about you

And then, after what seems like an eternity, it stops and the listener can draw breath. There’s very few Wedding Present songs quite like this….it was a helluva way to bring the epic series to an end. I really hope this was one of those where David used his imagination rather than leaning on real-life.

Here’s the very claustrophobic but effective promo, directed by Philip Harder and Simon Blake.

The cover version couldn’t have been more of a contrast.

mp3: The Wedding Present – Step Into Christmas

One of Elton John‘s jauntiest numbers. Specifically (and cynically?) written in 1973 with the intention of being a perennial. It might only have made #24 when released, but more than 50 years later, it has notched up well over a million sales and probably just as many again streams, with it hitting the Top 20 every year since 2017…..last year it reached #2!

The Weddoes attack it with great gusto…highlighting its pop credentials all the way through. One of the things I most enjoy about it is that the final minute or so is given over to an acoustic guitar, which is deployed in a very similar way to the Albini version of Brassneck.

1992 was a year in which The Wedding Present became better known than ever before, thanks in part to the four Top of The Pops appearances and their single getting played once a month on chart rundown shows, but it’s difficult to judge whether it increased the fanbase. The fact that they no new material would emerge until 1994 makes it even harder to judge.

JC

1990s

SATURDAY’S SCOTTISH SONG : #396 : 1990s

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1990s have featured previously a couple of times on the blog. The first was back in February 2015 when I made mention of them being by far and away the most local to Villain Towers. Their debut album Cookies (2007) featured a song about the area they are from and where I’ve lived since 1995:-

mp3 : 1990s – Pollokshields

I wrote about them again in June 2022, on the occasion of my 59th birthday, as their sophomore album Kicks (2009) paid tribute to our local bus service:-

mp3 : 1990s – 59

Both albums were on Rough Trade Records and were produced by Bernard Butler.

They never quite made it and eventually called it a day in 2012, not long after I caught them as an excellent opening act for Cornershop. However, the band did reform in 2022 and thirteen years after their last release, the third album, Nude Restuarant, was released by Last Night From Glasgow. Here’s one of its tracks:-

mp3: 1990s – Fassbinder Would Have Loved Techno

It turned out that most of the album had been completed as long ago as 2011 but had lain in the vaults waiting on the finishing touches.

JC

Godspeed You! Black Emperor

A GIG TO REMEMBER : GODSPEED YOU! BLACK EMPEROR

A guest posting by Fraser Pettigrew

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Righting the world’s wrongs with the help of a good tune is in many ways fundamental to the very idea of rock music. Whether expressing the iniquities of racism in America’s South in its blues roots, or recruiting youth to anti-war or anti-oppression campaigns in the 60s, 70s and 80s, politically motivated rock has always harnessed the appeal of good-time party music to further a social cause. Even in its more aggressive forms during the punk era, the principle was well observed that if I can’t dance, it’s not my revolution.

Not all political music has embraced the Maoist subterfuge of popular form to effect radical change however. The likes of Crass, for example, never troubled the charts in their unrelenting dedication to anarchism and hardcore punk. The last time I encountered an artist with serious social issues was back in 2016 and it certainly wasn’t an occasion of the singalongaJerryDammers Free Nelson Mandela variety.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor is a Canadian collective, one of the few acts in the broadly defined genre of rock music that live and work according to political principles. They have consistently expressed their anti-capitalist and anti-globalist message since first coming together in Montreal in 1994. Considering that their music is almost wholly instrumental, the messaging is most explicit in the titles of pieces or in the packaging in which it is made available.

I should point out early on that I’m not familiar with a great deal of their music. I only possess one LP, 2002’s Yanqui U.X.O. So you couldn’t describe me as a fan exactly. But still, who can fail to be intrigued by a band whose origins lie in a home-made 30-copy cassette album entitled “All Lights Fucked On The Hairy Amp Drooling”?

The music on Yanqui U.X.O. is fairly representative of their style, I believe, consisting of four 20-minute instrumentals that stretch minimal musical content from quiet beginnings to furious crescendos and back again, using multiple guitars, basses, drums and classical string, wind and brass instruments. The title of the album combines the Spanish rendering of ‘Yankee’ and the initialism for ‘unexploded ordnance’, some of which is seen falling out of a bomber on the front cover. A graphic on the sleeve depicts the complex interconnection of the music business with the military-industrial complex.

How can such simple, lyric-less music be political in the absence of commentary, packaging or programme notes? It wasn’t a question that occurred to me when I snapped up a couple of tickets to see them live at the 2016 Edinburgh Festival. All I knew was that it was a rare opportunity to see a cult band with a bit of a reputation and I liked Yanqui U.X.O. enough to think that the live show would be musically stimulating at the least. In that I was not wrong, though not in the sense that I probably expected.

The venue for the show was The Playhouse, a theatre I hadn’t been in for over three decades at least, but well remembered as the scene of milestone gigs in my youth by The Jam, Elvis Costello and Misty in Roots. A mixed bag of punters milled around in the foyer and bar, much as they had in the 70s and 80s. Unlike those days there was no support band to endure or ignore and we were ushered to our seats by a bell as you would be at the opera house.

Onto a barely illuminated stage ambled the musicians, three or four at first, and as expected the music began quietly, modulating in stately fashion between a couple of chords, gradually solidifying with the addition of more players as the piece progressed, three or four guitars, two bass players, a drummer, or was it two? A cellist… It was so dark it was hard to see.

By this gloom, our attention was diverted away from the band to the large screen above the stage, onto which was projected a sequence of mystifying and seemingly incoherent grainy black and white film clips, looping repeatedly, compelling you to study them for meaning. At first the camera seemed to pan across what looked like a studio model of a skyscraper city, looping back and panning again, and again. Shapes, possibly buildings, no people. Then later the scene changed to a telephoto shot of some figures in a bleak modernist plaza, bleached by sunlight, the repetitive loop isolating one man’s curious gestures into a zoochotic stereotype, like the despairing sway of a long-captive animal. Another figure stood with his back to the gesturing man. Were they arguing? Was this some sort of surveillance video? Was some violence about to ensue?

As we watched, the music had imperceptibly grown, bar by bar, swollen and intensified until at its height it was pummelling the audience with almost unbelievable sonic force. It was undoubtedly the loudest music I have ever heard, hardly varying from the same few chords, half-tones apart, aural assault in a minor key, sustained over a lengthy plateau rather than a peak until slowly it subsided and faded away back to silence. There was applause and some cheering, as much in relief as in appreciation.

What had just happened? I felt as if we’d been caught in the middle of a typhoon, unable to escape, able only to grit our teeth and wait for it to pass. And then it started again, different chords, different disquieting film, another crescendo, another battering of intense noise, so loud and unrelenting that it felt like a physical weight on my chest, stifling my breath, threatening to squeeze the very life out of my heart and lungs. Four or five separate pieces ebbed and flowed over the hour, repeating the punishment, until finally we were released, spilling out of the exits like hostages after a siege.

The combined effect of such noise and the disturbingly repetitious monochrome film loops was one of profound alienation, an indefinable sense of existential dread. We shuffled out into the summer evening, slowly readjusting to a world where human interaction and communication spoke of friendship and connection, and Edinburgh’s elegant cityscape brought pleasure and a vibrant sense of place, a host of feelings that had been forcibly denied and beaten out of us for the duration of the concert.

It was a truly staggering experience, unlike any other cultural event I have ever witnessed. Instead of enthusing and inspiring the audience with upbeat anthems of hope and defiance, GY!BE had brutalised us with a dystopian vision and weaponised music by extreme and sustained volume. If there was a political message to be gleaned from the performance it was that there is something very wrong with the world and THIS IS WHAT IT FEELS LIKE! It is not enough to know that there is fear and suffering, it is necessary through this stupendous confrontation to experience it and sense it within yourself.

I felt stunned, shattered, almost literally. The use of sound as a weapon may still be experimental in military circles, but on this evidence GY!BE have perfected it.

The strange thing is, however, that on record the music has a quite different effect. It would be difficult in any case to replicate the concert experience in your suburban home without bringing the police round and incurring a noise abatement charge. But even played loud in your living room it’s impossible to escape the fact that the music is often beautiful, expansive, epic, grandiose, sublime even, conveying an aching poignancy like a Mahler or Bruckner adagio. Perhaps that too is part of the concept. Be seduced by the uplifting beauty of this art, buy the record, follow the band, come to the concert. Then, when the lights go down and the doors are shut, all will be revealed. A chilling realisation will creep over you. You will discover that this is not just music, you can’t dance, and this IS the revolution.

Fraser

Little Fish

ONE HUNDRED AND ELEVEN SINGLES : #050

aka The Vinyl Villain incorporating Sexy Loser

#050: Little Fish – ‘Darling Dear’ (Custard/Universal Motown Records ’09)

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Hello friends,

yes, again I know what you are thinking about me right now: ‘all it needs for this old pervert to make a tune a good tune is a stunning chick not even half his age’.

Well, although you have a point there, you’re not entirely right. As cute as Mrs Heslop (or ‘Juju’, as we call her here in my house) might be, there is more to Oxford’s Little Fish – and especially to today’s single of choice – than this, way more in fact, one thing being that the song uses nothing but the same two chords throughout, but boy, still – or because of this, either way – what a rollercoaster of a song it is, to be sure … there is nothing I’d wish to be added to it – it’s just perfect the way it is, despite its simplicity!

Then again, speaking of simplicity, if you listen closely from the beginning on, doesn’t the start sound familiar to you? Right, Velvet Underground‘s ‘Heroin’, of course – and it even starts off with that same lethargic “I” that Lou Reed used to launch his propulsive ode to nodding off. I can’t make my mind up whether it was bravery or stupidity which lead Little Fish to do this: after all, there’s easier ways to get a hit than copping from a decidedly non-commercial 40+ year old song … or am I wrong?

Well, of course I am (‘cos I usually am, let’s be honest): first, today’s single is by now featured as downloadable content in ‘Rock Band, the game, which is not too shabby in the first place, but apart from that Little Fish went on to support Supergrass on their European tour, plus supports for Eagles of Death Metal, Juliette Lewis and Alice In Chains.

In 2010, they played a show with Hole at the O2 in London as well as their own headlining tour in March. This was followed by supporting Them Crooked Vultures at the Royal Albert Hall – and after this they rounded it off by first playing a fourteen date tour supporting Blondie and then with an appearance @ Knebworth.

You see, all the big names and the big venues … well-deserved for Juju and the boys, if you ask me. And also, it vindicates the age-old theory we have in our company: “he who shouts loudest gets served first”

(only it’s a ‘she’ this time, at around 3:30 minutes into the song, to be precise):

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mp3: Little Fish – Darling Dear

Enjoy, friends – and take care,

Dirk

Act

ABSOLUTELY IMMUNE

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I was somewhat bemused that, until a few years after I got involved in this blogging malarkey, I had never heard of the late-80s synthpop act, Act.

The duo, consisting of the Scots-born musician Thomas Leer and the West German-born singer Claudia Brücken, came together in 1987 just after the break-up of the initial line-up of Propaganda, with whom Claudia had enjoyed some success back in 1985. Act weren’t around all that long, something in the region of 18 months, but it was a period that coincided with when I wasn’t paying too much attention to music, which is why their four singles and sole album, all of which were issued by ZTT, completely passed me by.

Laughter, Tears and Rage was the name of the album, and in 2004, it was given an extended release in a limited edition box set across 3xCDs. It brought together the album, all the singles plus b-sides, a number of remixes, instrumental versions and some tracks that hadn’t previously seen the light of day. The box set goes for upwards of £55 on Discogs – I don’t own a copy, but I did use a bit of villainy a few years back when someone temporarily made all three discs available to download, which is how I came to actually hear their music.

It’s a bit hit-and-miss, although some things are very good indeed. I’ve kept an eye out for some second hand copies of their releases and was quite pleased that two of the 12″ singles popped up in a shop in Glasgow last year with very reasonable asking prices, and I thought it would be worth bringing one to your attention today.

mp3: Act – Absolutely Immune (extended version)

It was their second single, a follow-up to Snobbery and Decay which had actually managed to break into the charts in May 1987, reaching #60.

Absolutely Immune has a sound that’s not a million miles away from that of Propaganda, which is no surprise given the producer was Stephen Lipson who had been involved in their hit album A Secret Wish. There was, however, no appetite for the music and the single didn’t make it into the Top 75. Neither did I Can’t Escape From You, which was the duo’s third and final single (a copy of which I also picked up in the Glasgow shop), with a similar fate befalling the album. Act called it a day shortly afterwards, with ZTT having to absorb a big loss on its investment.

There are two tracks on the b-side of this 12″

mp3 : Act – White Rabbit
mp3 : Act – Bloodrush

The latter would be included on the CD version of Snobbery and Decay, but not the vinyl version. The former is a cover, of a 1967 hit in the USA for Jefferson Airplane, one that has been used on numerous occasions in film and television, including Full Metal Jacket, The Sopranos and Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas.

JC

Apollinaires, Il y a Volkswagens, Sincere Americans, Swinging Cats

2-TONES BIGGEST FLOP?

A guest posting by Leon MacDuff

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We all know what style of music 2 Tone Records specialised in. Heck, we can all say it together on the count of three… 1. 2. 3. SKA! And great stuff it was, too. But I’d like to shine a light on the side of 2 Tone that never gets mentioned. The attempts to broaden the label’s musical palate which were met with, let’s just say, rather less success.

Mostly this came after the Summer 1981 splintering of the Specials. The label’s aversion to long-term deals meant that by the time Ghost Town made number one for the week of the Royal Wedding, all the other bands who’d built the label’s reputation had already moved on – or in the case of the Bodysnatchers, split up. And after that, though 2 Tone carried on issuing records by the Special A.K.A. (and “solo” works by their trombone-playing associate Rico), none of their subsequent signings were really ska at all. There was the punk-funk of The Higsons, the Style Council-type pop-soul of The Friday Club, and even Specials stalwart John Bradbury turned to soul-funk with his own band J.B.’s Allstars.

I say this mostly came after the Specials splintered, but the first attempt at something different had actually come nearly a year earlier. In the summer of 1980, when 2 Tone was still seen as a guaranteed hit factory, there was the mod-lounge cabaret (with a hint of ska) of The Swinging Cats, whose one and only single had a medley of tunes made famous by easy listening maestro Mantovani on one side and an original song on the other. Neither side is a classic, but to me it’s clear that of the two, Mantovani is the throwaway and should never have been promoted as the lead. It was 2 Tone’s first significant failure:-

mp3: The Swinging Cats – Mantovani
mp3: The Swinging Cats – Away

But if there’s one band who really became the symbol of the label having lost its way, it was The Apollinaires (pictured above). The Leicester-based six-piece arrived on 2 Tone in 1982, around the same time as The Higsons, and peddling a superficially similar brand of frantic funk. But where The Higsons, to quote one title, “put the punk back into funk”, The Apollinaires seemed determined to excise it completely. Their two singles for 2 Tone are both energetic and quite likeable, and would probably fill the floor at the indie disco, but overall they are terribly polite. And now I listen to them back-to-back, actually quite similar:-

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mp3: The Apollinaires – The Feeling’s Gone

the apollinaires envy the love sleeve
mp3: The Apollinaires – Envy The Love

These singles were not hugely successful – never mind the top 40, they didn’t even make the top 200. And it’s not as though you had to sell many records to make the top 200; the Higsons managed it consistently, future 2 Tone signings The Friday Club and J.B.’s Allstars both managed it, and the Swinging Cats would almost certainly have managed it had there been a Top 200 in 1980 (Mantovani was apparently the 118th best selling single of September 1980, which suggests it probably scraped the weekly Top 100 – but only 75 were published at the time so we may never know for sure). The bottom line is that of the 28 singles that 2 Tone issued to retail in its original run, just two failed to show up on any kind of official sales report: The Feeling’s Gone and Envy The Love. The Apollinaires were a flop. Probably a worse flop than they deserved to be, really.

So where did they come from, and where did they go… where did they come from, Cotton Eye Joe? It turns out that lead singer Paul Tickle made his recorded debut with the group Sincere Americans, who contributed a song to the 1980 compilation East. So I went digging, and it’s not a bad compilation, though the only band I recognised is B-Movie who eventually morphed into a synthpop act but at this juncture were a guitar-bass-drums trio. It is the same B-Movie, though – trust me, I did check! Another band on the LP, The Fatal Charm also went on to release several albums, but I have to confess they passed me by. Anyway, though the profile on Discogs says “several members” of Sincere Americans joined The Apollinaires, going by the line-up on the inner sleeve, Tickle is the only future Apollinaire to appear on East:-

mp3: Sincere Americans – Contact

Several line-up and name changes later, the ensemble became Il y a Volkswagens (not I Y A Volkswagens, as many sites erroneously call them – come on everyone, remember your French from school…), who issued one single in the autumn of 1981. I have to admit that though I was aware of Il y a Volkswagens, I had always thought it was a personal project by indie producers Eric Radcliffe and Jon Fryer. And in my defence, Discogs has them down as (the only) members of the band. But actually they merely produced the single, doing what producers do. The actual band included Tickle and guitar-toting brothers Tom and Francis Brown who survived to The Apollinaires proper :-

mp3: Il y a Volkswagens – Kill Myself
mp3: Il y a Volkswagens – American Dream

After this, they apparently simplified their name to The Volkswagens, continued gigging, and eventually were approached by Jerry Dammers to record for 2 Tone. And changed their name again. And also their line-up, with the definitive sextet (or as close as this ever-shifting combo got to a definitive line-up) comprising Tickle, the Brown brothers, Kraig Thornber on drums, James Hunt on bass, and Simon Kirk on percussion. Loads and loads of percussion! Fellow Leicester band The Swinging Laurels (not the Swinging Cats) provided the horn section, until they became too busy and the Apollinaires finally got round to assembling their own, swelling the group’s membership to an ultimately unsustainable ten. Stephen Leonard-Williams played the flute that is perhaps the most distinctive element of the 2 Tone singles.

After 2 Tone, there was one more Apollinaires single. And it was a weird one, credited as a “B.F.W. / T.U.R.C. co-production” – BFW stands for Birmingham Film Workshop and TURC for Trade Union Resource Centre. The public service union NALGO made a film to support their anti-privatisation campaign “Put People First” (Channel 4 part-funded it, so it probably turned up on telly at some point) and The Apollinaires recorded the theme for it. Well, if you can’t get The Redskins… :-

mp3: The Apollinaires – Put People First

Neither The Apollinaires nor any of its individual members seem to have any recording credits after that, so that was it. Still, they’ll always be part of the 2 Tone story… even if they were perhaps the least successful band the label ever signed.

Leon

Uncategorized

ADDITIONAL POST : HELP REQUIRED

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Hi y’all

I’d like to think that we all want to look out for one another and provide help/assistance/guidance/advice whenever it is sought. Which is why I’m pulling this short piece together.

Rol, from the consistently innovative and brilliant My Top Ten blog, got in touch with me recently to ask if I knew anything of a Scottish band named Smile. Sadly, I didn’t off the top of my head, and I also drew a blank after delving into some of the books I have in the small library here at Villain Towers.

There’s also not a lot out there in terms of t’internet beyond info that there was a one-off single released in 1992. It was called Obvious and was issued on 7″ and CD by Different Class Records – and that’s the sleeve of the 7″ above.

There’s no copies of the single available via Discogs. Nor has anyone taken the trouble to put the audio up on YouTube or the likes.

The lead singer and songwriter in Smile was Dean Owens, someone who, since the turn of the century, has fashioned a reputation in the field of Americana, gaining many a plaudit for his albums and live shows. Rol is a fan and is really keen to hear what seems to have been Dean’s debut single, albeit it is from back in his days as a member of a band and not as a solo artist.

Is there anyone out there who could help?

Much appreciated.

JC

Various

AN IMAGINARY COMPILATION ALBUM : #359: THE COLOURFIELD

Here comes an ICA from a short-lived band, with just two albums and seven UK singles to select from. Despite this, it was still a bit of an ask to narrow it down to just ten songs.

First thing to sort out….the name of the band. The first album and early singles were credited to The Colour Field. Come 1987, with the release of the lead single from what proved to be the second and final album, they were known as The Colourfield. Later compilation albums, whether encompassing Terry Hall‘s wider career or being solely focussed on this particular band, refer to The Colourfield. As I’m now going to do from now on.

The demise of Fun Boy Three led to Terry Hall pulling together The Colourfield in 1984. The other two members were Toby Lyons on keyboards/guitar and Karl Shale on bass. Toby had been part of The Swinging Cats*, a ska-influenced group from Coventry who had released one single on 2 Tone Records back in 1980, while Karl, also from Coventry, had played with a couple of new wave influenced bands who never quite made it.

Chrysalis Records, having been happy enough with the commercial success of Fun Boy Three, put a deal on the table, and as such, every Colourfield release in the UK would be via the label.

SIDE A

1. The Colour Field (single, January 1984)

It makes sense to start proceedings with the debut single, released in January 1984. Terry Hall promised that his new band would be taking a totally different direction to what had come before. Some of those who had championed him since he had burst onto the scene weren’t impressed. One journalist in a UK music paper, on reviewing the debut single, went as far as this:-

‘This lot have absolutely nothing going for them. No sense of humour. No glamour. No good melodies. No danceable rhythms. No excitement. No controversy. No emotion. Nothing whatsoever. They are, in short, ruddy awful’

Utter bullshit. The problem was that such reviews and other less than fulsome praise, combined with the single not getting onto the A-list at Radio 1, meant it wasn’t all that widely heard and so ended up missing out on being a big hit, stalling at #43.

2. My Wild Flame (b-side, January 1985)

In terms of the chronology of the band, there would be an even bigger flop as the second single Take, released in July 1984, barely scraped into the Top 75. The record company executives may well have been examining the fine print of the contract as 1985 rolled around, with the debut album scheduled for release in the spring/early summer. In some ways, a reset button was pressed, and a big push was made on the third single, released in January 1985. Thinking Of You was a hit, getting to #12. I’ll get round to that later in this ICA….in the meantime, I’m offering up the poptastic and jaunty b-side for your enjoyment. And yes, it is more or less a re-write of the debut single!!!

3. Things Could Be Beautiful (single, January 1986)

The hit single had helped the debut album, Virgins and Philistines, reach #12. It only hung around the charts for seven weeks, primarily as neither of the next two singles lifted from it made any dents. The group went into the studio towards the end of 1985, with an additional member, Gary Dwyer (ex-Teardrop Explodes), behind the drum kit. A very jaunty and upbeat 45 was recorded and released, assisted in no small measure by the production skills of Ian Broudie. Sadly, it flopped, leading to Terry Hall spending a few months reassessing things. It also led to the record label deciding to have a bigger say on things.

4. Hammond Song (from Virgins and Philistines, May 1985)

A cover version. The original dates from 1979 and was the work of The Roches, a trio of sisters from New York whose folk-like tunes leaned heavily on their sibling harmonies. The Colourfield’s take on things sort of keeps these, although in a way akin to Kirsty MacColl‘s way of doing things, as it sees Terry harmonising with himself. A song in which acoustic guitars strum gently in the background and provides something that all hangs together in a rather lovely way.

5. Thinking Of You (single, January 1985)

The one big hit for The Colourfield. The third single, and one with a prominent co-vocal from Katrina Phillips. A bitter-sweet love song which, in many ways, provided the template for The Beautiful South. As I said in a previous post back in 2014 looking back at the debut album, I reckon its fair to assume the main reason no-one took the band seriously was that Terry Hall had forged a reputation as a representative of disaffected youth and having been pigeonholed in such a fashion, not too many were keen to allow him to carve a different and more lasting niche. Thinking Of You might have been more a Radio 2 than Radio 1 sort of song, but it was still well worth a listen.

SIDE B

1. Miss Texas 1967 (from Deception, April 1987)

The second album was recorded in New York, with an American veteran producer, Richard Gottehrer, behind the desk. The band was now reduced to just Terry Hall and Toby Shale, backed by session musicians. The overall result is a bit of a mess, with the sound being very different from the first album and the Ian Broudie single.

Despite the mostly awful production, there are a few worthwhile moments on Deception, not least this lovely number which has a really intriguing title. Intriguing? Well, the actual winner of Miss Texas 1967 was 20-year-old Molly Grubb from Fort Worth, but the TV soap-opera Dallas would reference the contest as part of its scripts, with the winner being Sue Ellen Shepherd, a beauty queen who later married J.R. Ewing, the main heir to the family’s oil business (and an all-round bad guy!!).

2. Monkey In Winter (b-side, May 1987)

The original version of this can be found on Deception, an album which sold very poorly, spending just one week in the Top 100, reaching #95 in April 1987. The following month, a single from the album was released. She had been written in the mid-60s by Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, one of many songs the duo had composed for The Monkees. The Colourfield version failed even more dismally than the album, but tucked away on the b-side is a remake of Monkey In Winter, with the remix duties being taken care of by Gil Norton, whose work led to a much more sympathetic rendition of the tune. But the key to everything was Terry deciding that the lead vocal would be better delivered by someone else, and he came up with the idea of having Sinead O’Connor come into the studio. It might not sound like anything else The Colourfield ever made, but it’s very much attributed to them.

3. Armchair Theatre (from Virgins and Philistines, May 1985)

Remember how the critics had laid into Terry Hall for failing to be controversial? He kind of thumbs his nose at them with this one.

I’m sitting on the fence again
Drawing straws and pulling strings
Demonstrations pass me by
This must be the age of something

And this was after he had written and recorded the next song on the ICA

4. Cruel Circus (from Virgins and Philistines, May 1985)

Khayem included this on his career-encompassing Terry Hall ICA (#277, February 2021), and in his words, “a biting commentary on animal cruelty, Terry’s lyrics and vocal delivery have lost none of their power and relevance in the subsequent three decades.” 1985 was the year of Meat Is Murder, and I often think that Terry’s contribution to the debate, which focussed on laboratory experiments and fox-hunting, sort of got lost a bit when it should have been the subject of many an article across the broadsheet media.

5. Sorry (b-side, January 1984)

And so we find ourselves going full circle, with the b-side to the debut single, and a track which was also used, more than 15 months later, to end the debut album. If, like me, you’re a bit of a sucker for the bitterly honest and straight-from-the-heart break-up songs (the sorts that Elvis Costello and David Gedge have often specialised in over the years) then I hope you’ll agree that this is up there with the best of them.

BONUS EP

Told you earlier that I couldn’t keep it down to 10 tracks. So, here’s the limited edition 4-track EP, available only with the initial copies of this ICA.

(a) mp3: The Colourfield – Castles In The Air
(b) mp3: The Colourfield – The Windmills Of Your Mind
(c) mp3: The Colourfield – Goodbye Sun Valley
(d) mp3: The Colourfield – Your Love Was Smashing

(a) Another flop single, the follow-up to Thinking Of You. Should’ve been a hit but stalled at #51.

(b) A b-side, to the second single, Take. A cover of the song best known as the theme tune to the 1968 film, The Thomas Crown Affair.

(c) The closing track on Deception. The session musicians earn their corn on this one with almost enough different instruments for its own ICA a la JTFL.

(d) Yet another b-side, this one being found on Castles In The Air. I do think Terry Hall took a great amount of perverse pleasure in having some of his best songs of this era being quite obscure in terms of where they were released.

JC

* I’ve had this piece prepared for some time, just waiting on a gap in the schedule to slot it in. Over the weekend, I received a guest posting which, by sheer coincidence, makes reference to The Swinging Cats. Please tune in tomorrow when all will be revealed.

Wedding Present

THE WEDDING PRESENT SINGLES (Parts Twenty-Three and Twenty-Four)

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We’ve reached September and October 1992.

By now, it is clear that The Wedding Present are indeed going to equal the record of Elvis Presley with the achievement of 12 Top 30 singles in a calendar year. David Gedge had said/sang as much with his ‘Nothing Can Stop Us Now’ line thrown in during the performance of Flying Saucer on Top of The Pops back in July. And unless they’ve already been lucky enough to have picked up a new 7″ every month, the fans could relax in the knowledge that a second compilation was inevitable and not lose any sleep about trying to get the songs…..I don’t have much to ever say that’s positive about the digital/streaming era, but at least things never really sell out completely. It was quite different in 1992.

Single #9 was another slow but noisy one. A few months previously, there had been a song about threesomes….this time round it was all about a willingness to be dominated.

mp3: The Wedding Present – Loveslave

This is another that I can take or leave, depending on the mood I’m in. There’s enough passion and noise to make it a good listen. My problem is that I can’t take the song too seriously after seeing the promo video, directed by Nick Small, a few months later when I bought a VHS copy of Dick York’s Wardrobe.

Paul Doddington, in an interview given to an author a few years back, said:-

‘The videos were very limited in budget, and a bit hit and miss really. There’s a fine line between lo-fi arty and just rubbish – there were a few that some of us felt were the wrong side of that line…..’

Indeed.

I remember telling Rachel that the next b-side was to be a David Bowie cover, which got her quite excited. Twenty guesses later, and she gave up trying to work out what it would be:-

mp3: The Wedding Present – Chant of the Ever Circling Skeletal Family

The original closes off the 1974 album, Diamond Dogs. It’s only a couple of minutes long, and it’s one of those bits of music that really needs to be listened to in context around the rest of the album to be best understood. The lyric is a six-times repeated chant:-

Brother
Ooh-ooh
Shake it up, shake it up
Move it up, move it up

and ends with the word ‘brother’ repeated in a “stuck-needle effect”. It really is one of the strangest choices for any band or singer to cover, whilst trying to keep a straight face. At least we were spared the ‘stuck needle’ effect.

Loveslave reached #17, which, coincidentally, was the same chart position achieved by the very next single.

October 1993. This was the third and last of the 45s I got at the time. It just happened to be in a shop on the Monday lunchtime…. I hadn’t gone looking for it, but the rush and chaos of the early months was no longer seemingly a thing.

mp3: The Wedding Present – Sticky

A loud and boisterous number akin to so many of the best tunes up till now. The fast guitars harked back to the earliest material, but the abrasive sound was more in keeping with the later songs. It’s hard not to dislike Sticky, but it’s one of the few from 1992 that, in my mind, hasn’t aged as well as some of the others. Mind you, it’s still a great track in the live setting. But the least said about the video the better…this one was directed by David Slade.

The b-side? Well, it is very different….and has long been one of my favourites.

mp3: The Wedding Present – Go Wild In The Country

The pop element of the original is replaced by a sound that wouldn’t have been out of place on a bIG*fLAME record. It is angular to the point of almost poking your eye out, and it races along at a million miles an hour, only avoiding breathlessness thanks to the brief pauses prior to each new verse or chorus. David Gedge sounds as if he’s having great fun yelping his way through the song….it’s impossible not to smile.

One more week to round off 1992. I hope you’ll tune in at the usual time on the usual day.

JC

18 Wheeler

SATURDAY’S SCOTTISH SONG : #395: 18 WHEELER

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Adapted from wiki:-

“18 Wheeler were a Scottish rock band active in the 1990s, consisting of Sean Jackson (vocals, guitar), David Keenan (guitar, vocals), Alan Hake (bass), and Neil Halliday (drums). Original bassist Chris Stewart left before any recordings were made, and was replaced by original drummer Hake.

Keenan left in 1994 to start his own group, the Telstar Ponies and was replaced by guitarist Steven Haddow.(Keenan would, in later life, become an acclaimed novelist and writer).

It was in 1994 that 18 Wheeler released their first album Twin Action on Creation Records, with its follow-up, Formanka, appearing the following year.

Their third album, Year Zero, which saw them take a more experimental sample-based approach, was released in March 1997. One of its tracks, Stay, was remixed and took them into the charts for the first and only time, reaching #59. Creation would drop the band before a fourth album was finalised.”

It should be noted that 18 Wheeler were the band the headline band at King Tut’s in Glasgow in May 1993 with Oasis being the little-known support act whom Creation boss Alan McGee got very excited by.

mp3: 18 Wheeler – Crabs

This is the only track I have of theirs, courtesy of it being on the compilation CD Indie Top 20: Volume 23, issued by Beechwood Music in 1996. It didn’t encourage me to explore further.