Plain Or Pan: Recent Episodes
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The impressively-named Rutherford Chang died a couple of weeks ago.
Who? you say.
What!? I retort. D’you mean you never followed him on Instagram?
It’s a fascinating story…
The son of a Palo Alto tech bigwig, Rutherford’s comfortable lifestyle allowed him to forego a normal working routine, instead affording him the time and resources to indulge in high conceptual art; taking the front page of the New York Times and, with all the news that’s fit to print, rearranging every piece of text into alphabetical order; cutting and pasting all of Asian actor Andy Lau’s numerous and varied death scenes into one near-half hour video compilation of death after death after death; editing a George W. Bush State of the Nation speech by removing all of the President’s words and leaving only Bush’s pauses, coughs, breaths, rustles and the crowd reactions in place. Crazy and interesting stuff like this.
A chance teenage purchase of a second-hand Beatles’ White Album in the late ’90s would lead him to his defining concept, one which would bring his name to a wider audience and one which would allow him to fully indulge his need for order, ranking and system within his particularly niche world.
(When I get to the bottom I go back to the top of the slide.)
A while after buying that Beatles album, and noticing that a second copy of the same record in another shop had aged differently, Chang had the masterstroke of all conceptual ideas. He bought that second copy of the White Album and right there and then began to obsessively gather as many copies of the record as he could. He advertised locally. He trawled record shops. Or stores, as he’d no doubt call them. He pored over Craig’s List. He sought out garage sales. And gradually, he amassed an impressive array of White Albums and only White Albums.
(Where I stop and I turn and I go for a ride.)
Battered, bruised, bashed, beat up, the more so the better. Those copies had more life in them, more unknown stories to tell. Chang was interested in how something that began life so white and pure – and mass produced – could end up discoloured, written on, stained and unique. The journey each record and it’s sleeve had taken was just as important to Chang as the music that filled their grooves.
(Till I get to the bottom)
“There are three million of them out there,” he said cheerfully in 2013, by which time he owned nearly 700 copies of the album. He played them all too. He set up a gallery space in New York’s Soho, recreated the feel of a classic record shop, stuck a ‘We Buy White Albums’ neon sign in the window and, when he wasn’t bartering with potential sellers, allowed gallery visitors to browse his ‘racks’, select a copy and stick it on the in-house turntable.
It was clear that, as they spun, some of his acquired copies were beautifully pristine. Some sounded like bacon and eggs frying down a well. Some jumped. Some stuck. Some were stereo copies. Some were mono. But all were versions of the same record.
(and I see you again
and again
and again
and again
and again
and again)
By 2014 – a year later, Chang had collected over 1000 copies, buying on average one copy a day since 2013. And, like the most diligent of museum collection curators, he meticulously catalogued them all. Where he’d bought it, how much he’d paid for it, what the stamped number on the front was, was it a mono or a stereo, a first press from the UK or a third press from the US, a seventeenth press from the Phillipines? And once catalogued, the records were displayed in his gallery. Dividers were slotted into bins, arranging the records by serial number or origin or year. Just like a real record shop, only different; this collection was a record of White Albums and the stories they held. Wouldn’t you just love a browse through them all?
He had a rule – hard to believe in 2025 – that no copy should cost him more than $20, but I’m not sure how steadfastly he managed to stick to that rule. He had some pretty low-numbered and interesting copies in there and, regardless of the state of any of them, I’ve sure never been lucky enough to upturn a copy of the record – mono, please, a toploader…with all the inserts, thanks – at anything under three figures. The one I found by chance in a box of records in New York’s Chelsea Market flea sale was a snip at a cool $599 and it looked like it had been well-loved, to be kind to it.
Even my bog standard ’80s reissue (yeah, it has the poster and the four portraits, as well as two slabs of well-looked after stereo vinyl) would fetch £40 on the current second-hand market. Not that Chang would’ve been too keen on securing mine. I appreciate he was all for securing copies that had seen a bit of life but, as long-term readers here may know, I drunkenly relieved myself on my prized copy on the night of my 18th birthday. Some of Rutherford’s copies had coffee stains. Some had food stains. Light brown pish stains though, the colour of an earthy Farrow And Ball paint chart? And this is none of your Greenwich Village hippy stoner pish either, I’m talking primo McEwan’s Lager pish stains from the west of Scotland. I bet Chang never had a copy quite like that. Bog standard, by the way. Pun intended.
What Rutherford did have was plentiful and interesting enough that his collection would travel to Liverpool to be shown in the city’s FACT art gallery. There, visitors could browse what was undeniably the largest collection White Albums in the world. Sleeves with scribbled names. Sleeves with love letters falling out of them. Sleeves with break-up letters inside them. Soft drugs, soft porn, money… sleeves teeming with the minutae of life. Sleeves teeming with the minutae of life, safeguarding one of music’s most important artistic statements. High concept art.
To accompany his travelling exhibition, Chang took 100 copies from his racks and did two things.
Using trick photography, he superimposed all of the 100 sleeves on top of one another to create a master sleeve that was anything but pure white. In its own way it’s a unique work of art.
He then took those same 100 records and built a wall of sound of the 100 records playing simultaneously. Due to a number of contributory factors; where the needle dropped, the minute variations in belt drive speed of the turntables, the gaps between the tracks themselves (micro seconds of a difference, if at all, but multiply that by 100…), Chang unwittingly produced? built? a proper slice of arty, woozy psychedelia that the Beatles themselves, and indeed, Yoko Ono, would’ve been proud of.
The delay-lay-layed way in which Dear Dear Prudence fades in on Back In The USSR‘s roaring jetstream…Glass Onion‘s sandpaper rumble and oh yeah-yeah-yeah- oh yeah-yeah-yeahs…, Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da‘s jittery and jangly piano intro (la la la la life goes on…and on…and on…) …the compressed mayhem of While My Guitar Gently Weeps-eeps-eeps…that bleeds into Warm Gun…Warm Gun Warm Gun…Yeah…Yeah…Yeah…Yeah… It makes for an interesting, occasionally unsettling (and possibly just once in a lifetime) listen. I wonder what Charles Manson would’ve made of it all.
At the time of his death two weeks ago, Rutherford Chang had amassed almost three and a half thousand White Albums. He was only 45 and had many more years of collecting ahead of him. I wonder what happens to the records now? Does someone take the project on? Do the people who sold them to Chang in the first instance get offered a chance to buy their copy back for the $20 they were paid? Rutherford’s detailed records will, after all, have all the necessary contact info. Or, does someone sell them all and rake in a whole load of money? I’m keeping a keen eye on things from over here.
In the future, historians of popular culture and those who gatekeep the ancient art of music blogging will point to this date – the 9th of February, in the year of our Lord two thousand and twenty-five – as the day that Plain Or Pan, that once-great leading music blog, began its slow but steady and inevitable terminal decline. The reason? Dire Straits.
There was a great old Top Of The Pops episode on BBC4 the other night. Presented by a smug ‘n smooth Simon Bates, it featured the hits of this week from 1981; a jumpin’ and’ jivin Stray Cats, their outrageous quiffs riding the crest of the rockabilly revival wave; Blondie’s Rapture on video, a blue eye-shadowed Debbie in shorts and not much else, her mile-wide smile bordered in bright red lipstick and stirring something in me even then as an 11 year old; the much-lampooned (’round here at least) Spandau Ballet, dressed ridiculously – jackets worn over the shoulders, layers and layers and layers of fabric, billowing blouses and baggy breeks and what looks like Hunter wellies and woolly socks turned over the top of them – a proper fashion student’s juxtaposition of NOW!, transplanted straight from the Blitz club direct into your suburban and beige living room.
The highlight of the Ballet? The Spands? is, as always, The Hadley. He’s got a bit of a beard going on here, highlighting his (admittedly impressive) razor-sharp jawline. His hair though is a disaster; teased, lank and greasy it’s swept to one side like an unfortunate outgrown Adolf do, (Spandau, eh? Makes y’think), his skinny mic technique and gritty voice cementing his pure soul credentials to those lapping it up at crotch level in the studio’s front row. Behind him, the band – his band – pose and preen and pretend to play like it’s the last time they’ll ever be allowed on the telly…which really should’ve been the case. It’s quite an astonishing performance. Should you wish to see it, here y’are:
Daft one hit wonder Fred Wedlock comes and goes, thankfully, in the short time it takes to fix yourself a top up before the hard-rockin’ Rainbow show up on video; tight tops, tight red jeans, bright white guitars. A splash of satin. A dash of bubble perm. Proper music for proper people, y’know.
And then there’s Dire Straits.
They’re a good four years from ubiquity, Dire Straits, but look! The red sweatband that would be used to hold Knopfler’s mullet in place at some point down the line is right here, right now. There it is, strapped round his right wrist as he picks the opening to Romeo And Juliet on his Brothers In Arms National steel guitar. Just as that guitar was elevated from mere Top Of The Pops studio prop to cover star on their massive hit album four years into the future, that sweatband clearly grew in direct proportion to Dire Straits’ record sales too.
They’re not a Top Of The Pops act, Dire Straits, and don’t they know it.
Someone has had the gumption to get them to a tailors before recording. For a bunch of four un-popstarry guys, they look surprisingly great. Knopfler is wearing a dark blue pinstripe suit jacket atop a white tee – he hasn’t yet found his penchant for vests – and he looks like a groovy English teacher doing a wee slot at an end of year school assembly; self-conscious, smiling nervously but with the chops in his fingers to validate his being there.
The group behind him is supremely stylish. Like, if someone showed you a picture of them and told you this was The Strokes, you wouldn’t be a fool to believe them. John Illsley on bass is tall, angular and moody. Chiselled of cheekbone and dark of brow, he wraps his massively long fingers around the neck of his massively long Fender Precision bass and plays it effortlessly, precisely even, pouting on all the right notes, looking into the middle distance for added appeal. He has slightly more buttons undone on his shirt than is exactly necessary, but then, the bass players are always the ladies’ men, are they not?
The guitar player – is it Mark’s brother David? – plays a hot Strat that may well have been borrowed direct from that there Rainbow. His vivid blue suit jacket sleeves are rolled up, Crockett and Tubbs-style, his large triangular collar mirroring the sharp edges of his Illsley-rivalling cheekbones. He too seems to have forgotten that shirts button all the way to the Adam’s apple.
The drummer? He’s in a capped sleeve t-shirt. Clearly, the band budget stretched to the three Straits who’d be standing directly in front of the camera. There’s a piano player stuck somewhere in the shadows too, but who’s bothered about him? Not the Top Of The Pops cameraman, that’s for sure.
Romeo And Juliet, but.
There used to be that ‘guilty pleasures’ trend a few years ago, y’know, where uber-cool folk – or, rather, folk who thought they were uber-cool, admitted to liking Rock Me Amadeus and Eye Of The Tiger and stupid stuff like that. I blame Brett Easton Ellis for his irony-free fashioning of Huey Lewis And The News in American Psycho for giving sensible folk the idea of ‘the guilty pleasure’. What nonsense! Music is music. It’s either good or bad, right? Soft rock, never fashionable amongst any demographic, is well represented in guilty pleasures circles. Anything by Stevie Nicks (Rooms On Fire! Edge Of Seventeen!) Steely Dan’s Do It Again. Kim Carnes’ Bette Davis Eyes. They’ll never fail to hit the spot. Them….and Dire Straits’ Romeo And Juliet.
It’s a fantastic record; expectant, storytelling verses, tension building pre-choruses, heart-melting choruses. It’s also a fantastically well-produced record. Dire Straits may well be a guitar band, but listen especially to the drums! Four to the floor tambourines. Unexpected snapping snares. Rocksteady rimshots. Hi-hat ripples and end-of-line paradiddles. Those patterns are exquisite! In the verses. In the bridge. In the choruses. Subtle and inventive, they elevate Romeo And Juliet from mere singer/songwriter ballad into brave new territories. Pay attention to those drums the next time Romeo And Juliet enters your orbit.
Everyone knows that the Knopf is a fantastically idiosyncratic guitar player; strictly no plectrum, a thumb and fingers style of playing, slow and lazy chord changes, snapping and twanging solos, and it’s all over Romeo And Juliet. But it’s his vocal delivery that really does it here. In the verses, he half speaks in that languid Tyneside Dylan drawl of his, but occasionally he slips into a vocal cadence that’s pure Lou Reed. Play Street Hassle or New York Telephone Conversation then play Romeo And Juliet and tell me I’m wrong. You and me babe, how about it? Pure Lou. It’s 1981, right? Kinda makes sense, like it or not.
So, yeah. Romeo And Juliet by Dire Straits. On Plain Or Pan. You can unsubscribe on the right there, any time you like.
It’s 1981. By now, my record collection is taking shape. I’ve got a great wee collection of crucial 7″ singles, not yet donated in shame because of a haranguing Bob Geldof. I’ve begun to dip a toe into the adult world of albums. The first non-compilation album I’d buy would be Kings Of The Wild Frontier. Actually, the first album I bought full stop was Kings Of The Wild Frontier. Albums, being pricier, are more of a risk. They require investment, both financially and emotionally and this 11-year old didn’t have the capacity for that. Three singles, one track that could’ve been a single and a bunch of filler. Ouch, £3.99 is a big deal. You expect payback. So now, I’ve gone for playing it safe. I’ve bought the Best Of Blondie. And Queen’s Greatest Hits. And The Beatles A Collection Of Oldies. There’s an old Rock ‘N Roll hits compilation in there too – which, if my maths is correct is no different to an 11-year old today running out to buy a compilation of hits from the early 2000s. Who on earth would want to do that?
As it turned out, Kings Of The World Frontier is far greater than the sum of the singles released from it. I suspect you knew that already though. The same can also be said for Architecture And Morality, Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark‘s breakthrough album, although it took me right until today to work that one out too.
I loved those singles that came from it so much that I took the leap to ploughing my collection of coppers and silver into the album. There were two completely different songs that both referenced Joan Of Arc, which may have been some sort of band in-joke, but to Radio Clyde DJs and pre-teens like me was just plain confusing. And there was Souvenir.
Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark – Souvenir
https://plainorpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/orchestral-manoeuvres-in-the-dark-souvenir.mp3Souvenir is masterful. Hooky, poppy and bathed in sorrow and melancholy, it drapes its wistful and hangdog, almost feminine vocal across a signature keyboard motif. Synth drums beat softly, a choir of overdubbed voices add depth to the refrain – my feelings still re-main – and it plays out for three and a half dejected yet uplifting minutes. This is the sound of sadness, to misquote Paul Simon. “Is this the Cocteau Twins?” asked the boy tonight as it was playing. Dream pop before such a term was conceived, you can kinda hear what he means too.
Built on a bed of slowed down looped choral vocals, Souvenir is so evocative – a great example of a pioneering synth band breaking new ground. Hindsight shows OMD to be a great, great singles band but it’s possibly fair to say that OMD never got the kudos they deserved at the time. Too arty for pop yet too pop for the arty crowd, they straddled this weird limbo ground, and Souvenir‘s parent album is a great example of this.
Housed in a die-cut Peter Saville sleeve, all dull industrial tones and brutalist architecture, the record’s grooves fizz and hiss and clank and clunk with the sound of machines whirring into action, ambient found sound and musique concrète. Amongst all of this sat the pop singles. It’s a strange thing to remember, but straight after buying it, I ran not to my room to play it, but instead put it on my dad’s record player downstairs. As I sat back to get into it, my mum came in and sat down and listened with me. (Go away mum. This is a personal ritual that can’t be shared).
Hisssss. Sccccratcchhh. Sccccrraaaape. Thud thud thud. Rattle rattle rattle. Echoey voices. Biscuit tin snare drums. Wonky production. It’s a sound that I now recognise to be that of an experimental synth band embracing the anything-goes spirit of post-punk and running with it in their own idiosyncratic direction.
“Did you waste your money on this rubbish?” my mum tutted, getting up and leaving. Instant shame.
I struggled into the second song. £3.99 for this!? Where were the singles? Ah….here comes Souvenir. And here comes my mum. “Dah dah dah-dah-dah-dah dah dah!” she sings, mimicking (wrongly) the keyboard refrain. Man! She’s ruined the hard to like stuff AND NOW she’s ruining the single too.
I can’t say I played the record more than once ever again.
Fast forward a couple of years. Alex Aitken has a new turntable, hi-spec and booming, and he has designs on my long-forgotten OMD record. And I, with hormones pinging, have designs on the cover of a Sheena Easton album that he’s been playing. Not the music. That’s extremely pish. Just the cover. Sheena is covered in some sort of robe, sitting with one leg up, a bit too much caramelled thigh on display, her full-bodied lips smack in the centre of the image, her eyes boring into my teenage boy’s overloaded head. “I’ll swap you the Sheena cover,” Alex says conspiratorially, “Just the cover – not the record – I’m keeping that, for your copy of Architecture And Morality.”
Don’t speak to me about morality, Aitken, ya chancer.
Done deal, of course. OMD? OMG more like. What was I thinking?!
Architecture And Morality disappeared from my collection for the next 40 years, until a few months ago when a kindly neighbour had a loft clear out and turned up at my door with a handful of records; some old 12″ singles, an ace Ace Records soul compilation and OMD’s Architecture And Morality. It was like welcoming back a child I had abandoned at birth…before I filed it cruelly away to sit amongst my own stuff – Orange Juice – Orb – Orbital – Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark – The Other Two, a shelf padder; a good looking and possibly hip shelf padder, but a padder nonetheless.
Last week I was rearranging some records and pulled it out. I stuck it on, instantly transported to our living room in 1981. Couldn’t handle it. I lifted the needle from the first track and dropped it onto Souvenir. Ah. That’s better. I’d heard it fairly recently, in Irvine’s Harbour Arts Centre before a BMX Bandits show. Duglas had curated a pre-gig mix ‘tape’ and between the Dana Gillespies and Jigsaws and Peter Skellerns and what have you, Souvenir came rolling out. It sounded great in the HAC. It sounded great in 1981. And it still sounded pretty fantastic coming from my own decent set up in the here and now.
This morning I reached for the album again and this time I played it from start to finish. Dared myself not to get up and move it on. This time, it made sense. It was, yep, the sound of an experimental synth band embracing the anything-goes spirit of post-punk and running with it in their own idiosyncratic direction. But it’s not half as weird as I’d convinced myself it was. Arty, but supremely poppy too. A couple more listens this coming week and I reckon I’ll be fully converted. It’s never too late, as it turns out.
I wonder if Alex still has my copy…still plays my copy? His Sheena sleeve has long gone of course, but I still have the internet should I be inclined to look it up. Of course, if I’d had the internet back then, I’d never have needed to swap a cool and arty record for the over-styled sleeve – sleeve! – of an overproduced slice of 80s slop-pop. Unlike my faded attraction to oor Sheena, for Souvenir my feelings still remain.
When Elliott Smith was making records, his output shot off in a rapid and upward curve of brilliance. From lo-fi scratchy beginnings to Beatles-great, full bhoona productions, his six albums in five years dazzle with deft fingerpicking and unusual chords, unravelling melodies and unwavering lyricism, every one of his great, great songs double-tracked and knee deep in melancholy and, often, total and utter sadness. And sad music is, as you know already, the best kind of music.
The posthumous world of Elliott Smith though? Bar a couple of noise-for-noise’s-sake thrashers and half-arsed unfinished sketches, it’s a proper treasure chest of rarely-heard/never intended to be heard nuggets. Often these are the equal of, and sometimes even better than, the songs released during Elliott’s lifetime.
The couple of official post-death releases in his discography have uncovered some real gems; New Moon‘s Looking Over My Shoulder and Whatever (Folk Song In ‘C’) are the picks in a ragbag full of alt versions and unreleased session tracks from across his earlier years. From A Basement On A Hill collates material from his later era major label recordings; better recorded, better produced, often overdubbed with multiple guitars, a rhythm section and, as has been said already, Beatles-level vocal arrangements. Twilight. Let’s Get Lost. A Fond Farewell. Look them up…but wallow first in the depths of Pretty (Ugly Before). It’s a real beauty.
Elliott Smith – Pretty (Ugly Before)
https://plainorpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/elliott-smith-pretty-ugly-before.mp3It begins with a wobbly keyboard droning the song’s melody behind a chiming, inverted Gmaj7 chord, it’s openness hinting at widescreen Elliott rather than introverted Elliott…
Sunshine. Keeping me up for days, sings Elliott in that breathy, gossamer-light voice of his.
“Ah shite,” you realise. “Elliott is back on the heroin. This can’t end well.” Yep. References to getting high, destruction, no nighttime – only a passing phase, confirm what you think.
The song unfolds with a gentle drum roll into a piano-backed mid-paced ballad, all chugging electrics and deft bass runs, unexpected chord changes and piano trills. By the end of the second chorus, Elliott has found the key to unlocking the track’s true potential. There’s a minor chord, a tightly jangling and country twangin’ 12 string that mimics his vocal melody (how very George), some politely slashing chords, a splash of cymbals and, on the turn of a 7th chord, the resolve. In the angle of Elliott’s exquisite jangle we have lift-off. When his singing returns, he’s double-tracked (how very John) and harmonising with himself, stretching out some very John and Paul backing vocals – ‘Ug-lee-bee-fore‘ – until the song fades its way into the sunset on a squiggle of backwards tape and wonky noise. How very brilliant. And how very Beatles. Such a great tune for a ballad about being a helpless junkie.
There is, far deeper down the Elliott rabbit hole, a bootleg album called From A White Basement On The Hill (Beatleish nod ahoy!) A reimagined fan-compiled album, its setlist is culled from poring over interviews with Elliott, discussions on fan forums, interactions with Elliott’s closest musical collaborators… a real and honest labour of love by all concerned. Dancing On The Highway. Memory Lane. Strung Out Again. Look them up…but wallow first in the depths of Cecilia-Amanda. Like Pretty (Ugly Before) above, it too is a real beauty.
Elliott Smith – Cecilia-Amanda
https://plainorpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/elliott-smith-cecilia-amanda.mp3It’s another drug song, inevitably, with a heart-breaking pay-off in the final verse.
Elliott plays a great liquid mercury acoustic guitar riff at the start – grab a cheapish guitar, tune down half a step and replicate it if you can – the snare rat-a-tats the group into action and from outta nowhere comes the greatest lurching and woozy keyboard motif this side of the seventies. Unexpected and totally hooky, it sounds like drugs. The wrong kinda drugs though.
Black and blue from passing around…I don’t want to see you like you got before…dancing on a permanent scratch…. Elliott, man . Why d’you have to get involved with all of that? What a waste.
Elliott eases into the bridge, his voice reaches for the high notes, his snare drummer rattling him along. Big bassy piano notes anchor it all together before Elliott brings forth that great acoustic riff (and that woozy, lysergic keyboard) and he leads us into the final verse’s heartbreaking line;
“You got a little baby, I don’t want to see you round here no more.”
Elliott’s mastery of his voice and his instrument, his arrangement and his ear for a tune are never more apparent than on songs like the two featured above. If you’re new to Elliott, start somewhere in the middle – Either/Or was the album where he became less lo-fi and more produced, XO the album after was his major label debut and a spectacular one at that. There’s a lifetime of great songs just a-waitin’ to be discovered.
Dylan ’65.
Speed freak. Triumph motorcycle. And speed freak. In shades. Daytime, night time, anytime. Suede. Corduroy. Button down shirts. Striped pants. Boots of Spanish leather. That hair.
Triumph on record. A surrealist and a cynic with added sneer. Beat group intense. Irk the purists. Fender. Electricity. Volume. A cavalcade of words. A trip and a rush, cascading forth. Get set. Get well. Try hard. Get fired. Coded. Cryptic. Crucial. Maggie, fleet foot. Face full o’ black soot. Plants in the bed. Phone tapped. Look out kid! Candles, sandals, vandals, handles.
Ol’ Bob has many faces and many aces up his sleeve, but right now, this week, after seeing A Complete Unknown, it’s mid ’60s Bob that’s doin’ it…and doin’ it good. The garage band backing, all thunking bass and rattling snare and white hot, screaming blues licks on Telecaster that ride the coattails of Bob’s scuffed acoustic and sandpapery vocal is possibly the most thrilling sound in rock ‘n roll. Sixty years will pass this year since Bob thwacked us with the insane one-two of Bringing It All Back Home (April) and Highway 61 Revisited (August – 4 months later); a pair of records that most other acts would be happy to hang an entire career on. Don’t look back, instructed Bob around then, but, man, LOOK BACK! Stop and listen to what’s on these records.
Bringing It All Back Home is my favourite of the two. Gun to my head, it’s probably my favourite Bob album of the lot, tied up as it is in childhood memories and time and place. I now own my dad’s copy, given to him by my mum not long after they met, stolen by me about 20 years later, then handed over after my dad asked me straight out of the blue one day, sometime around 2006, where it was, before it made its way back to me after my dad died. If I count it up, I think I’ve probably had it in my possession more than my dad ever did.
Bob Dylan –Subterranean Homesick Blues Take 3
https://plainorpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/24-subterranean-homesick-blues-take-3-remake.mp3It’s a record of two distinct sides. Side one is the irk the purists side: Bob’s Chuck Berry by way of Dada schtick, nonsensical and bubble gum and extremely thrilling. Subterranean Homesick Blues’ machine gunned outpouring of alliteration, rhyme and imagery; Maggie’s Farm and its gutterpunk two-step blues; the sneering and caustic head bop that is Outlaw Blues; the unexpected thrill of Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream‘s false start, hearing Dylan’s maniacal laugh as the engineer counts in Take 2… absolutely knocked me sideways as a 15 year old, that did. The Smiths and Lloyd Cole didn’t goof around on their records. Theirs were serious mood pieces. This Dylan guy? He’s off his head. He was funny though…a proper comedian. It still thrills me no less as a 55 year old too. Even the slow songs on side 1 had a backing band. She Belongs To Me‘s delicate electric runs; Love Minus Zero‘s four to the floor tambourine and woody bass.
Side 1 is Dylan’s fuck you to the folk scene and all who gate kept it, but it was the (mainly) acoustic songs on side 2 that pulled supporters like Pete Seeger back from the brink. Mr Tambourine Man, a thread-pulling and unravelling 6 minute masterpiece. Gates Of Eden, Dylan sneering about war and peace, finger pointing long into the night air, his acoustic guitar bashed into submission, his harmonica wheezing to a conclusion. It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding), with its descending drop D blues riff and complex, fantastical imagery; Money doesn’t talk, it swears…He not busy being born is busy dying…Even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked. Until fairly recently, Bob was still playing this in his set and, surprise surprise, every one of his audience recognised it immediately. Don’t listen to those lazy reviewers who tell you they only found out what songs Bob played by checking online afterwards. He’s slowed down and kept things fairly standard in setlists in recent times, but it wasn’t that long ago that a night with Bob would include three or four Bringing It All Back Home gems in his set. And a couple of Highway 61 Revisited highlights. And a trio of Blonde On Blonde essentials. But stop. We’re ahead of ourselves.
Bringing It All Back Home ends, perfectly, on It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue. Just Bob, his harmonica and a gooseberrying bass guitar. It’s a song of sentiment, of a chapter closing, of the need to look to the future. The perfect metaphor, in other words, for Dylan’s continual forward propulsion, the lightning rod and conduit for songs – long, cerebral, tied in imagery and intelligence – that he couldn’t get out from inside his head quickly enough.
Two albums and one world tour in ’65. A world tour and a double album in ’66. He not busy being born is busy dying, after all.
I know nothing about Chappell Roan. I doubt I’m slap bang in the middle of her? their? demographic anyway…but I do know the one big song. It was ubiquitous for a bit there and there’s no way you haven’t heard it and fallen for its hooky charm either. Pure pop and catchier than that flu that’s been doing the rounds recently, it hangs its hookline on its spelt out titular refrain. ‘Aitch Oh Tee-Tee Oh Gee Oh-oh, You can take me Hot To Go-oh!’ It was the first great example of spelling in a pop song since Gwen Stefani Hollabacked to tell us that, indeed, that shit was bananas, Bee-Ee-En-Ae-En-Ae-Ess, back in 2025.
It’s nothing new, spelling in songs. Otis and Aretha, of course. And The Kinks. And plenty of others. From Van’s gruff Northern Irish burr wrapping its way around Gloria (“Gee-Ell-Oh-Are-Aye-Ae“) to Patti’s wired and speeding East Village take on it; From Weller’s angry young punk spitting of “Ae-Pee-Oh-Cee-Ae-El-Wy-Pee-Ess-Ee-APOCALYPSE!” at the end of ‘A’ Bomb On Wardour Street to Faith No More’s long-shorted and muscular ‘Be Aggressive! Bee-Ee! Aggressive! Bee-Eee-Ae-Gee-Gee, Are-Ee-Ess-Ess-Eye-Vee-Ee!‘; from Al (then Edwyn) serenading us with ‘Ell-Oh-Vee-Ee Love‘ via little Johnny Thunders’ drawling nod to The Shangri-Las, ‘When I say I’m in love you best believe I’m in love, Ell-Yoo-Vee!” to Hall ‘n Oates’ blue-eyed ‘M-E-T-H-O-D-O-F-L-O-V-E‘, a bit of spelling goes a long way to providing the hook. Hot Chip employed the technique on Over And Over. Len’s Steal My Sunshine includes the line, ‘L-A-T-E-R that week.’ None other than the cryptic and idiosyncratic Mark E Smith sang about a ‘C-R-E-E-P’ when the song demanded it. Even our greatest writers are under the, eh, spell.
Which brings us to Warpaint.
The oil-on-water, slow dissolve approach they take to their own Billie Holiday is supreme.
https://plainorpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/billie-holiday.mp3“Bee-Eye-Ell-Ell-Eye-Eeh-Aitch-Oh-Ell-Eye-Dee-Ae-Wah-ay.“
It’s a sparse track. Cleanly picked guitars, some ambient, soft-touch bass, understated keyboards, a gentle snowfall of toms and cymbals, the overlapping vocals stirring the dusky, twilight air around it. That’s the work of a moonlighting John Frusciante, manning the desk and capturing the band exactly as they’d hoped.
When the singing starts on the verses proper, you – as a pop scholar with an A+ in every one of your pop scholarly exams – will have immediately noticed they’re singing the verses to Mary Wells’ My Guy. But whereas Mary’s original is all frothing teenage effervescence, rattling along on excitable handclaps and giddy, upwardly climbing girl group vocals, Warpaint take the opposite approach. Theirs is languid and soporific, breathy and downbeat. Nothing you can say can tear me away from my guy, they exhale, with all the enthusiasm of the downtrodden and disenfranchised. If someone were to tell you this was a thinly disguised plea for help in a domestically abusive situation, you wouldn’t be that surprised. Nothin’ you could do cos I’m stuck like glue to my guy. Jeez.
Surely not.
“Bee-Eye-Ell-Ell-Eye-Eeh-Aitch-Oh-Ell-Eye-Dee-Ae-Wah-ay.“
In comes the refrain again, four voices melded as one, the group inching the song ever forward. Unspooling and unwinding in slo-mo, it stretches for over six sleepy and bleary-eyed minutes, voices drowning in reverb, guitars swimming in chorus and phase, the percussion being tackled with a little more muscle but no less finesse. Disciplined and majestic to the false ending and beyond.
Why Billie Holiday?
Apparently, the lyric was a place holder, the five syllable phrase borrowed from a poster in the band’s rehearsal space and utilised in song until a better set of words was arrived at. Couple that with the appropriation of My Guy and you have the notion of a fledgling band landing on their sound and trying quickly to find their feet. Great record, eh?
I’m sitting at my formica desk. I’m ‘studying’. My red, white and grey zig-zag wallpaper is hurting my eyes. The backwards clock above my portable telly shows no sign of moving forward. In fact, such is my enthusiasm for learning, it might actually really be moving backwards. The physics textbook in front of me remains uncracked. Physics! What the fuck was I thinking? Radio Clyde hisses and spits from my music centre, the wire that’s laughingly referred to as an aerial in the handbook stretched to a drawing pin that holds up the Marilyn skirt-blowing picture that I really should’ve removed by now. If I hold my hand up, the reception improves. I alternate hands as Tiger Tim spins this week’s hot hits.
My ears prick as something magic is squeezed through the static. It’s new but it’s instantly my kinda thing.
https://plainorpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/db-absolutebeginners.mp3
It begins with an engine rev of bass and baritone sax; a knee-buckling nod to the ’50s, of doo wop, of freedom and the cult of the teenager. Bomp-bomp-ba-ooh…Bomp-bomp-bah-ooh. The drop in chords. Bomp-bomp-ba-ooh…Bomp-bomp-bah-ooh.
The verse. Understated, but serious. I’ve nothing much to offer. I’ve nothing much to take. A casually frugging, popping bassline under a moody piano chord. Big, Spectorish drums. A scrape of the guitar strings. Funny chords that seem to rise yet fall simultaneously. Augmented? Diminished? I dunno, but who cares. An acoustic guitar doing that cliched hammer on with the pinky as you play a D chord. Absolute beginners, eh? The singer, his voice linear and stately, half-spoken and half to himself. There are voices either side of him. As long as we’re together. The rest can go to hell. One is deep, one is falsetto. As a trio, they’re sensational. I absolutely love you. The key line. Women, men, anyone with half an ounce of emotion in their wilting heart can’t fail to feel it. I’m only 16 and trying to make sense of my world, David, but in an absolute instant I absolutely love you too.
Now the chorus. Soaring into orbit, carried along on thermal winds of melody and hope, star crossed lovers against the world. Fly over mountains…laugh at the oceans…just like the films. It’s absolutely true.
Christ. I wish someone would make me feel like that. Bomp-bomp-ba-ooh.
The second verse has more of the same. The vocals are still measured and steadfast, the musicians still doing their best to keep up with their vocalist’s high standards. Nothing much can happen. Nothing we can’t shake. Steve Nieve’s spindly piano, the high notes jarring and trebly and rattlin’ your bones. Some synth washes from Rick Wakemen, not heard on a Bowie record for a good decade or more and very welcome back. Nieve, threatened perhaps, raises both his game and his talented fingers and dances across the ivories like a fleet footed musical sprite, the most delicate of touches with a classicism rarely heard in popular music. Nieve knows every key on that piano intimately and he coaxes pure melody from every one of them. In lieu of the doo-wop vocals, the sax blows a subtle bomp-bomp-bah-ooh melody as Wakemen’s synths swell towards another chorus. You can feel it, you know it’s coming. But if my love is your love, we’re certain to succeed.
And here it is.
Mountains and heartaches and films and reason and hard times and hard lines. Absolutely true. Aw jeez.
The singer bows out. The group plays on, holding the searing, white-hot chorus. Strings slide atop the melody. A tenor sax blows a jazzy yet sympathetic signature solo. Across his catalogue, Bowie would prove he loved a sax solo and Absolute Beginners is just one of a score or more that get you. Right. Where. It. Matters.
Tiger Tim shouts across the end of it. “David Bowie there!” (Up here in Scotland, Bowie rhymes with TOWIE) “Absolute Beginners! An absolute cracker!”
I absolutely agree. The physics text book remains unopened. I hot foot it to Walker’s and return with the 7″. I play it and play it and play it and play it. My first Bowie record and definitely not my last. It’s still playing the best part of 40 years later. That’s absolutely true.
Rhetorical question: How great was David Bowie?
Post script
17% for physics. Pffft.
Plain Or Pan turns 18 this weekend. An adult. Already a veteran of blind-eye pubs and blinding hangovers, it’s time for the blog to move on out, move on up and enrol in a college course that’ll stave off the threat of actual work for the next few years. The world’s your oyster at 18. Plain Or Pan is no different. It’s invincible. It can do whatever it likes. The 18 years’ worth of writing spread across these pages is diary-like, kinda autobiographical and extremely therapeutic in process. It is, as Van Morrison once remarked, too late to stop now. Not that I want to.
I’ve written before about my hometown of Irvine and its characters; the creatives and thinkers and drinkers who, through art and literature and music, put our wee speck of a town on the world map. I’d like to write now about the environment – or more specifically, the planned environment – in which these schemes and dreams were allowed to play out.
Irvine in the early 1970s was like any other wee town. It had shops and green spaces and transport links to bigger places. It was separated by the River Irvine, the areas of the town either side of the river linked by an old arched bridge. Toy shops and pubs and shoe shops and pubs and hardware shops and pubs and men’s and women’s outfitters and pubs dangled their tempting wares to those crossing the bridge from either side of the town. It was, in a world not yet bloated by megastores and Amazon, a busy, vibrant and thriving place to live.
The town had two football teams. West of the river, towards the harbour, was the industrial Fullarton area where Irvine Victoria huffed, puffed, scuffed and occasionally scored. Across the river and located in the residential area of what your true parochial local might call ‘real Irvine’ was the more well-known and successful Irvine Meadow. They had Scottish Cups and a grandstand to prove it. Where you lived and were brought up dictated which team you followed, and that was it set in stone for life. To this day, whenever the Vics and Meadow clash, a healthy partisan crowd of good natured locals is drawn together, the spoils of bragging rights in the pub afterwards the ultimate prize.
When, in 1966 Irvine was designated to be Scotland’s fifth and final New Town, grand plans were drawn up. Eventually published in 1971 as ‘Irvine New Town Plan’, the plans heralded in a brave new futuristic town of modernism, opportunity and progression. Irvine was an old industrial town. It was ripe for redevelopment and rehousing. It would be a family-focused satellite town for Glasgow, offering clean air and the seaside to any Glaswegians keen (or forced through regeneration schemes) to uproot and start anew. Brand new areas would be developed for housing, modern functional living set amidst landscaped estates. Castlepark. Bourteehill. Broomlands. Pennyburn. You’ve seen Gregory’s Girl? Filmed in the New Town of Cumbernauld, that’s a fair signifier of what these areas would come to look like once built and populated.
Within half a decade, the old bridge and its neighbouring commerce had been knocked down and swept aside, replaced by a state-of-the-art shopping centre spanning the River Irvine. The planners called it the Rivergate Centre, but to any Irvinite, it’ll be forever referred to as ‘The Mall’ (to rhyme with ‘pal’, rather than ‘ball’, Americanisms not yet being a thing.) The Mall was to be the focal point of the town, stretching from the old Irvine Cross all the way to the scrub of grassland near the beach that would soon be landscaped and adorned with a boating pond, a pitch and putt course and a ‘trim track’ and rebranded as The Beach Park. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves here.
At the top end of the Mall, at the old town centre end, was a sub level pub (The Argyle) and below that again, in the guts of the Mall, a disco. Amanda’s was like any other provincial discotheque of the time. It played chart music only, it tolerated underagers and the air was thick with Brut and Old Spice, Anais Anais and Charlie, sexual tension and the never far away threat of a punch on the nose. Until you found your own tribe and a place where your own sort of music was not only tolerated but blasted at ear-splitting volume (hello, The Attic), Amanda’s was a necessary rite of passage. Once, when our band Sunday Drivers was playing one of Amanda’s Sunday afternoon live band slots, I shamelessly pilfered a white label 12” of Electronic’s Getting Away With It from the space laughingly referred to as a dressing room. “They’re never gonnae play this anyway,” came my reasoned argument for its liberation. I still play it to this day. That wee 12” got lucky, I tell you.
Forty or fifty shop lengths away at the other end of the Mall was its centrepiece. (I know it was this many shops away because I worked for several years in Our Price and we were number 25 and midway down the Mall.) Down there, where out of town shoppers gained access to the multi-story car park, a huge pair of rotating water wheels were placed outside Boots the Chemist, the first occupants of the Mall. Boots got in there quick. Phase 1 of the Mall’s development saw to it that this would be the prime location. On the corner and across from the big water feature was to be the epicentre from where the Mall’s intended future expansions would converge and spread; Phase 2 promised more undercover shops all the way to the train station, where you might catch a handy monorail to the beach, with its theme park, ski slope and gigantic leisure centre.
At some point, the water wheels stopped turning. Then they were taken away altogether. A metaphor for a stalled idea, finances and politics and what not decreed that there’d be no Phase 2 of development. Or, at least, there was a very reduced version of Phase 2. The Beach Park became a thing, a place to go and run and golf and boat, maybe even fly a kite. The leisure centre, the famous and world-renowned Magnum arrived. You’d get wet though, walking there, or going for a train. There would be no covered walk to the station. Ski slope? Forget about it, Klaus. Boots is still there today, at the arse end of a Mall that promised so much to so many.
Click to view slideshow.I first saw the Irvine New Town Plan lying around at home at some point in the late ’70s. I remember it lying on the dining table beside a pile of buff coloured folders from my dad’s work. My dad was a surveyor, so it makes perfect sense that he’d be interested in this plan – an actual hard back book, with groovy blue and green lines on its cover (blue sky, blue water, ample green spaces – psychology, innit?) and terrific architectural plans inside. In the last few years, and increasingly so since my dad died, I’d become a wee bit obsessed with finding the book. It’s very likely still in my mum’s house somewhere, but no amount of raking at the back of cupboards has uncovered it. Finding teasing samples of it online only increased my obsession, to the point where I set up an eBay notification.
And guess what!
The images you see here are all taken from the book. A month or so ago, an architect was selling off a load of books and the Irvine book happened to be amongst his things for sale. Up it popped in my notifications and, with a hefty thud, in it dropped through my letter box.
It’s a portal to a time when anything seemed possible. In print, the future Irvine looks sensational, full of hope and promise and desirability. Gone is the black and white industry of old. In is a Mediterranean bright and white town of the future, right here, new and now. The town planners reckoned on the town’s population quadrupling in size to 120,000 by the mid ’80s. Alongside our showcase Mall and leisure centre – the biggest in Europe at the time of opening – there’d be a proper transport infrastructure, hotels to house the tourists, a boating marina, myriad leisure pursuits, even a University out in the green fields beyond Perceton. Who wouldn’t want to live in a groovy, fashionable place like this?
None of that arrived, of course. You can finger point in all the right directions, but it’s a sad fact of life, as this 18-year old is beginning to learn, that economics will always win out over ambition.
Despite this, Irvine was a fine place to grow up. Great, even, at times. Don’t let anyone persuade you differently. Maybe, with its massive Asda and massive Tesco and massive Sainsbury’s and empty town centre with charity shops and vacant units and never ending variety of fast food outlets, it still is for some. Not so long ago though, we had cinemas. We had world-famous touring bands rolling into town every other week. We had youth organisations and sports teams, decent shops, decent restaurants and decent pubs, places to cycle and fish and lark around in. But we also had unemployment and neglect, shutters pulled down and rusted tight forever, a metal and steel curtain drawn in on a town full of decent people and lofty ambition.
Here’s The Jam – just one of many world-famous bands who played Irvine – with, given the subject matter of this article, a proper, eh, Gift of a track; steel drums, aural sunshine and a strange, helium-strangulated Weller vocal. Town Called Malice this ain’t.
The Jam – The Planner’s Dream Goes Wrong
https://plainorpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/the_jam_-_the_planners_dream_goes_wrong.mp3Billy Connolly – one of those megastars who appeared in Irvine more than once – makes that joke about Partick – “‘or Partick nil,’ as they’re known in England.” Many people, thanks to The Proclaimers, know of Irvine as “Irvine no more.” When the Reid brothers sang in ‘Letter from America‘ of Scotland’s industrial decline and our population’s emigration to foreign lands of opportunity, they were putting Irvine on the map for all the wrong reasons.
Irvine no more, Craig ‘n Charlie? Irvine, what could’ve been, I’d counter.
Lists are everywhere at this time of year. I’m never that fussed by the music ones. They mainly serve to remind me just how out of touch I’ve become with the musical landscape of the day, or how underwhelming I find the best albums of the year to be. Beyoncé one of the best five albums of the year? Really, NME? Really, Guardian? Sabrina Carpenter? Gimme a break. Where’s Making Tapes for Girls by The Pearlfishers? Where’s A Dream Is All We Know by The Lemon Twigs? Where, even, is Paul Weller’s 66? This definitely says more about me than them. I’ll freely admit to never knowingly have heard so much as a note of Charli XCX’s Brat. It’s been universally lauded as the very best album of the year in almost every list going, so I can only be missing out. Watch me rave about it in 2027…
Very occasionally the lists confirm that, despite my advancing years and stubborn ears, I’ve still got a lukewarm finger on the pulse of whatever beats the nation’s collective heart.
Bill Ryder-Jones Iechyd Da was in amongst it in all the lists that matter. Released way back in January, it announced itself as an early contender for Album of the Year and hung on in there, month after month until the close of the year. With its sad melodies and wraparound blanket of melancholy, it was, despite the heaviness of its subject matter, a thrilling listen; well played, well produced, little pocket symphonies of sorrow and grief that hit you right where Ryder-Jones wanted them to land. It’s a terrific album.
It’s a terrific album, yes, but it’s second only to Cutouts by The Smile.
Scanning the lists, I was amazed to see little love for it. It’s a pretty fantastic record and, if this blog carried any clout at all, all forthcoming issues of the record would come with a hype sticker letting the world know that it’s Plain Or Pan’s album of 2024. “Album of 2024!” (Plain Or Pan) It’s pretty fantastic! Love it or your money back!
Cutouts was, after Wall Of Eyes (also notable by its absence from many lists), The Smile’s second album of the year. It is to that album what Radiohead’s Amnesiac is to Kid A – the leftovers, the cutouts if you will, from the sessions that spawned the earlier album, reorganised and whipped into a genre defying ten track cracker. It’s orchestral and rockin’, claustrophobic yet dizzy, propulsive and loud, slow and stately and quiet; super-textured, in other words, with each play revealing new layers of unspooling melodies and dazzling musicianship.
Jonny Greenwood dresses his guitars in sheets of Andy Summers chorus. Thom Yorke plays finger-bothering groovy bass. Tom Skinner rattles and rolls crazy time signatures from his polyrhythmic kit. Strings scratch and scrape and shimmer their sheen on nearly every track. Vintage synths parp and fizz their minor chords across the top, archaic and arcane, phantasmal and utterly fantastic.
The Smile – Zero Sum
https://plainorpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/the-smile-zero-sum.mp3
It’s those unspooling melodies that dazzle most, though. It’s only after the third? Twenty-third? play that you truly begin to hear them for what they are. Zero Sum, with its jerky “Windows 95” vocal and frantic, skittering morse code guitar lines. Instant Psalm‘s funereal, majestic splendour. No Word‘s bullet train propulsion. The creeping spy theme of Don’t Get Me Started… If this record had ‘Radiohead’ printed prominently on the cover rather than ‘The Smile’, the list makers and taste shapers would’ve been falling over themselves to make it album of the year.
Plain Or Pan knows though.
“Album of 2024!” (Plain Or Pan) It’s pretty fantastic! Love it or your money back!
I was out the back door a few nights ago. We’d given the shrubbery a festive, twinkly make-over and the remote control to turn the lights off had stopped working from the lazy comfort of inside the house, meaning I had to move closer to them and, y’know, actually go outside to turn them off…half cut…at 2am…wearing pink Crocs (not mine). As I moved closer to the lights, a sudden and loud flapping noise – total Attenborough nature documentary in sound – broke the still Ayrshire silence. I froze. Almost immediately, from the big tree behind my fence, an owl began hooting.
How great!
We’re not country dwellers by any means, the Glasgow train line runs behind us, down the hill behind that big tree, but we’re right on the fringes of the town where it meets its ever-shrinking green belt and we’re clearly close enough for unexpected wildlife. It’s not been back since, but I’ll be listening out for that owl any time I happen to be awake in the small hours. Or wee hours, given how regularly I make the broken sleep stagger to the bathroom these nights.
The one owl I can I hear any time I like is this – the most interesting, most unique and unarguably the greatest track that’s graced these ears this past year.
The Tenementals – The Owl of Minerva:
Early in the 19th century, the German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel wrote that “The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of dusk.” It’s a line that suggests that true historical understanding only comes with hindsight – a phrase that could very much apply to Glasgow’s foundations in slavery and clashing religious intolerance; a reawakened city, perhaps, but one that’s still in conflict with itself.
Both inspirational and educational, The Owl of Minerva is delivered in a rich, actorly, Glaswegian brogue atop a clatter of guitars, like an electric shocked Public Service Broadcasting riding on the sort of sludgy, serrated, repetitive riff that Iggy Pop might be inclined to drop his trousers for. A fly-past of Glasgow’s streets and their history, it’s terrific. And immediate. And supremely poetic.
Mungo’s children lie in slumber, in ballrooms of pleasure and Bars of L, silent forges of production… The cantilevered roost of the Finnieston Cran(e)… Red Road in ruin… Broken bricks of Utopia… Carnivals in Castlemilk conjuring a constellation… Hills of Hag… The rapids of revolution… The highway of historical time… Beyond the Black Hills… Proddy John… Commie John… Bible John… Poppers John… Bengal/Donegal… Gorbals teens/Glasgow Greens… New futures/New presents/New pasts… And still the river flows.
This is not the soft focused, rain-soaked Glasgow of the Blue Nile. Nor is it Simple Minds’ idea of the Clyde’s majestic past writ large in Waterfront‘s filling-loosening bassline. Nor is it Alex Harvey’s sense of menace and theatre. Or Hue and Cry’s shoulder padded and reverential Mother Glasgow. It’s all of this and more, a Glasgow song that’s scuffed at the knees yet literate and informative and vital for the 21st century. And it’s seemingly arrived straight outta the blue, an unexpected blazing comet for our times.
The Tenementals crept onto my social media feeds at some point late October/early November and the by the time I’d wandered off piste and hauf pissed to properly check them out, I had, typically, missed their Oran Mor album launch show by one night – a free entry gig too, where you had the chance to buy the album and it’s thrilling lead track.
If they don’t look like yr average group of skinny jeaned, facially haired, too cool for school gang of guitar stranglers, that’s because The Tenementals aren’t really any of this. Lead vocalist David Archibald is Professor of Political Cinema at Glasgow University. They’ve collaborated with Union man and political agitator Mick Lynch. Their record label is called Strength In Numbers. Socialists to the core, their self-given job is to enlighten their listeners to the plight of the suffragettes, the beauty of La Pasionaria and the warped, cruel and beautiful history that forged the place from where they sprung.
The rest of the album is equally as thrilling, by the way. See them become more prominent in 2025.
Around the turn of the year, I bought a pair of white Puma trainers. I’m not, nor ever have been, a white trainers kinda guy, but I spotted a pair online that were reduced to a price point commensurate with my budget and spontaneously bought them. Just the thing, I thought, to complete my (cough) look for Spring/Summer ’24.
When I put them on, my kids slagged me mercilessly. My wife looked affronted, mumbled something about golf shoes then pretended not to have noticed them. These things were white. White. Like, absolutely spotless and Persil white. Crease-free and box-fresh, they were almost mirror-like in their pure patina. Even Kanye might have thought twice about styling an outfit around them. There was no suede trim to soften the harshness, no flash of colour other than a tiny gold Puma logo on the side and a khaki green tab on the heel. The uppers were white. The laces were white. The Puma stripe was white. They were the whitest trainers of all time.
I wear them, of course. A guy like me can easily carry them off.
Much more appealing than white Pumas ’round here is Black Pumas. Or Black Pyoomaz, as we’d say in the west of Scotland. Or Black Poomas, as they themselves say.
2019’s self-titled debut should be your first port of call if you’re in any way unfamiliar or curious about them. Self-styled Texan psychedelic soul, Black Pumas crackles with all the ingredients needed in a recipe for soul; vibrato-heavy guitar, watertight pistol-crack drums, flab-free horns, free-form Hammond, oohing and cooing female backing singers and an easy-going vocalist who, you’ll understand from the first line sung, has a honey-coated voice the equal of any of the greats who nestle snugly in that decent record collection of yours.
Black Pumas – Colors
https://plainorpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/black-pumas-colors-official-audio.mp3Snaking in on a skeletal and ever-looping acoustic guitar riff, Colors is Black Pumas in microcosm. A ripple of barroom piano undercuts the earworm riff. Super-tight snare and air-spray hi-hat rimshot and hiss between the spaces. Electric guitar chords ripple outwards as we near the chorus. A suitably low-key yet funk-inflected bass line joins in. A sashay of females replicate the vocal lines and we’re properly off and running.
Oh yeah, the vocals. Head Puma Eric Burton honed his voice in the church, and you’ll hear that in his phrasing and adlibbing pleasantries – Yes, sir… yes, ma’am – as easy-going and soulful a delivery as you could possibly want to hear. He can do gritty and he can do tear-soaked, but what he really enjoys is letting loose and soaring off into a far-flung falsetto in the choruses. Colors is peppered with great, voice-cracking upper register spontaneity… yeah, he’s got it all.
He’s joined by slow-elbowed strings, a jazzy and unscripted electric piano solo that could’ve danced itself off of any of those old Billy Preston recordings of the ’70s and an arrangement that quietens and stirs, ebbs and flows like a golden hour Al Green. That wee ‘wooh-hoo, wooh-hoo, ooh-hoo, hoo‘ call and response section in the middle, where Burton’s vocals bounce off some plucked strings and the girls’ voices behind him is the sweetest of sweet spots.
I’ve listened to Colors many times in the last 5 years and always presumed it was a metaphorical reference to skin colour and racism. Last week I stumbled across a Song Exploder podcast episode where Black Pumas described the process behind the song and its meaning. It turns out it was written by Burton on his guitar as he sat on a rooftop watching the New Mexico sunrise alight on a brand new day. No metaphor, no hidden meaning, just a great, simplistic song about God’s creation of the natural world.
“It’s a good day to be,” suggests Burton, and with records like this on repeat, and trainers (trainurz) as funky as the ones on my not-in-the-least-affronted feet, it sure is. Black Pumas would refer to them as sneakers though. Not that I’m able to do much sneaking in a pair of shoes that look like a pair of Russian oligarch’s yachts moored proudly in an exclusive Mediterranean coastal resort.
Clever band, Blur. They hit the zeitgeist with Parklife, followed it up with The Great Escape (more of the same, but written to prescription) then, when the wheels started coming loose on the Britpop bus, aimed for the ditch last navigated by Neil Young and released an album that couldn’t be further in sound from the ones that put them in the charts, on the evening news and onto teenagers’ bedroom walls. This approach – wilful and stubborn and intent on freshening things up – means that they continue to release records well into this century, playing massive, celebratory shows while remaining arty and interesting at the same time. They have, as Depeche Mode once advised, got the balance right.
Gone are the fresh faces and considered haircuts. Gone are the forced grins. Gone is the joy of popstardom. Five albums in and Blur look slightly less box-fresh than The Beatles do on that great, bleary-eyed sleeve that houses Beatles For Sale. Blur, the group’s lazily/eponymously-titled offering to their fans made little sense to many of them at the time, but as history has proven, it’s just one in a long list of albums in a year which seemed to have a properly great, must have album released every other week.
Had those queuing at midnight for the latest, bloated Oasis release (Be Here Now) swatted the grease from their shitty mod cuts and looked elsewhere, they might’ve seen what they were missing out on; Mogwai Young Team, Elliott Smith’s Either Or, Homework by Daft Punk, In It For The Money by Supergrass, Portishead’s self-titled second, Homogenic by Bjork, Tellin’ Stories by The Charlatans, Super Furry Animals’ Radiator, Primal Scream’s Vanishing Point, Dylan’s Time Out Of Mind…OK Computer… Urban Hymns… Heavy Soul…Dig Your Own Hole…The Fat Of The Land…Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space…. Ladies and gentlemen, we were spoiled for choice.
Blur tips its cocked and wonky hat to America. Graham Coxon breathes a welcome sigh of relief and dusts down his pair of Rat distortion pedals, for the most part mothballed for the last couple of albums. They’re all over Song 2‘s hairdryer-in-a-cement-mixer ramalama, and sports stadiums Stateside subsequently went apeshit for it. Netted a 3-pointer? Woo-hoo! Smacked a home run? Woo-hoo! Steamrollered an opponent on the gridiron? Woo-hoo! Oh yeah. Gone are the rinky dink Kinksisms and cor blimey guvnor knees ups. Blur is scuffed and scarred, and listeners who’ve stuck by its insular ambience will know how terrific it sounds even to this day.
The lead single, Beetlebum, was – in a nod to the heroin of its subject matter, a heavy-eyed and down-tempo slow-burner. Hard drugs had entered the orbit of the band and their periphery – Elastica, mainly – and it seems that Blur’s lead singer wasn’t immune to their temptation. Beetlebum is intentionally woozy, the come up from heroin’s knock down and drifts in, enveloped in pathos, regret and cotton-woolled vocals.
Get nothing done, Beetlebum. Just get numb, Beetlebum
And when she lets me slip away, she turns me on then all my violence is gone,
I just slip away and I am gone
Blur – Beetlebum
https://plainorpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/01-beetlebum.mp3Some reviewer at the time said that Blur had taken all of what made the White Album so great and boiled it down (or cooked it up) into a four minute pop song, and, man, whoever said it was kinda right. The vocals in the chorus waft in on a breath of Beatlesish harmonies, overlapping and intermingled, Damon sounding like Graham and Graham sounding like Damon, the whole band sounding pleasantly horizontal. Happiness Is A Warm Gun sung to Revolution‘s fuzzed guitars and Birthday‘s compressed drums – that smart-arsed critic was astute.
The record’s real beauty lies in the chunky rhythm fired up by Coxon’s guitar playing in the verses. His opening riff sounds like a zip tearing through sandpaper – derr dur-dur-dur, derr dur-dur-dur – before opening up on a properly clanging, open-chorded chorus. The trick to Coxon’s playing here is in not just one, but both of his hands. His left plays an unexpected chord sequence while his right intentionally scuffs it up with discordant, ringing open strings and idiosyncratic flashy parts. If it’s unique and interesting guitar players yr after, look no further.
Blur could have easily fallen into the trap marked ‘formulaic’, but with Coxon continually doing his damndest to put a metaphorical hole in the knee of their collective strides, you have the perfect push and pull that makes all the great bands tick.
Poster for a show that I’m fairly certain never happened.
In a massively popular band. Breaks them up and forms misunderstood follow-up group. Subsequently begins third phase of career and releases everything under his own name. There are side projects, guest appearances, mentoring roles with younger musicians, low-key soundtrack work…all the while maintaining a very decent public image.
Are we talking about Paul McCartney here, or are we talking about Paul Weller?
The statement applies to both, of course, but there’s inarguably a considered difference that whereas McCartney’s solo work is – and will always be – massively overshadowed by his first band’s output, Weller’s solo output is nothing less than the equal of – and possibly even greater than – what’s gone before. Yeah! Fight me! I’m talkin’ to you, you with the tragic, balding feathercut and too-tight Gabicci top. Let’s clear the air ya silly auld mod.
Never was this clearer than mid-set in the Barrowland Ballroom last night, when in a quadruple wham-bam, thank you ma’am, Weller reeled off Hung Up into Shout To The Top into Start! into Broken Stones – two of his finest solo works bookending two of the finest releases in his first two groups’ recorded output, all played to within an inch of their note-perfect lives. You don’t need me to tell you how great Welller’s Small Faces infatuation makes itself known in Hung Up‘s soulful and gospely middle eight. You don’t need reminding of the joy of living breeziness that burls Shout To The Top to its stabbing and symphonic conclusion. You already know how tough-sounding and razor-sharp his SG sounds on Start!, its Beatlesy psychedelia never more obvious than when shoved in your face at maximum volume. Or how Broken Stones as it’s played tonight could have been arranged with a prime time Aretha in mind.
Weller is a magpie. He takes all the good stuff, boils it into a groovy stew and makes something new and equally vital from it. He started like that, way back when, when nicking Motown riffs for Jam songs. He continued this with the all-in policy of the Style Council; Blue Note to new note, whether you liked it or not. And he continues to this day, releasing with unbelievably metronomic regularity interesting and unique records; records stuffed to the gunnels with crackling electronica, frazzled guitars, deep house grooves, neo-classical ambience and whatever the fuck he likes. He surrounds himself with proper players who can help him achieve his sonic vision. He tours relentlessly. He’s one of our very best and we should never take him for granted.
I was going to review last night’s show but, to be honest, I’d already written the review three years ago, when Paul Weller was last at the Barrowlands. On early and off right at the stroke of curfew, back then he played the sort of back-cat trawling and sprawling set that might have Springsteen looking over his shoulder in apprehensive appreciation. Old favourites sat shoulder to shoulder with new stuff, guitar wigouts sat next to piano ballads, smash hit singles made way for indulgent jams. The set then was perfectly paced, as it was last night; Have You Ever Had It Blue? sounds terrific in the old ballroom. Headstart For Happiness, Changingman, Village, the old, the new, side by side and never sounding better. A gnarling, spitting Peacock Suit has, like the singer himself, proper bite. There’s political charge. A pro-Palestine speech garners a healthy swell of solidarity from the never less than right-minded Glaswegian audience.
But it’s the encore that floors me.
We’re expecting That’s Entertainment and Town Called Malice, his chosen double knock-out show-stoppers for the past couple of tours, but before he gets to these, Weller breaks into Rockets, the closing track from On Sunset, an album that’s already four years old and, as I’ve began to appreciate, matured nicely since being released. Rockets, it transpires later, isn’t on the set list. Weller, in a fit of spontaneity rarely present in live shows these days, pulls it out of the air for the first time on this tour. As it unspools, it dawns on both Mrs Pan and I that Rockets is Weller’s Bowie moment.
Paul Weller – Rockets
https://plainorpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/paul-weller-rockets.mp3It’s slow and acoustic, the singer accompanying himself in front of some tastefully understated percussion. He shifts from major to minor key and a churchy organ shimmers its way in, Weller’s voice woody and hollow and powerful. Man, it’s powerful! By the second verse, Steve Cradock has joined in, his clipped fuzz guitar accentuating the beat. The bass player is all eyes a-closed and playing by feel, lost in the music as the Barrowlands’ glitter ball shoots little diamonds of light across a gobsmacked audience. Jacko Peake eases in, his bah-bah-bah-baritone sax punctuating the pauses in the vocals. The strings – synthetic in the Barrowlands, full-on symphonic on record – glide in, carrying us home. Weller’s melody is slowly unravelling towards a coda where the Bowie feel is total and wonderful and complete. Singing over, the track swells to a long and stately close, little Stevie Cradock playing some cracking morse code notes and, between furtive gasps of his vape (!), some lovely elongated slide guitar parts. It was all fairly breathtaking, it has to be said, and that’s before Weller’s sock it to ’em one-two encore that followed immediately afterwards.
I seem to write this every time I review Paul Weller, but I’ll say it again; if he’s within 200 miles of where you live, find a ticket and go, go, go! Paul Weller is at the absolute peak of his game right now and you don’t want to miss him.
This is new. This is now. This is right up yr street.
Did your teacher ever stare blankly whenever you opened your mouth? This is The Wind-up Birds
Is it hard to get served at the bar? This is The Wind-up Birds
Do you get confused in heavy traffic? This is The Wind-up Birds
Do people invade your personal space every minute of the day? This is The Wind-up Birds
Any press release from a band called The Wind-up Birds that starts thus is going to grab your attention, right? The Wind-up Bird, as the cultured among us know, is a novel by Haruki Murakami; a time-shifting page turner that features lost cats, a man trapped down a well (that’s lost bloody cats for you), a flashback to the Japanese army and a man skinned alive. All the best bands have literate minds, of course, so The Wind-up Birds had me before I’d knowingly heard a single note.
Their penchant for well-written words is all over that press release, that’s for sure (although – sorry ’bout this – but these days I’m quite often the teacher who stares blankly at what comes out of some folks’ mouths. Not all the time, mind.) The band’s words continue in stellar, stall-setting fashion.
The Wind-up Birds are from Leeds.
The Wind-up Birds are not from Leeds (as in, United, Harvey Nics and Moyles).
The Wind-up Birds are from Leeds (as in, David Peace, Alan Bennett, Jake Thackray, The Wedding Present and Gang of Four).
They’re named after a book by Haruki Murakami. (Told you!) They write songs about car parks, and songs about pubs, and songs about work, and songs about escape.
In an era where you wonder if you’ll ever again find a band with something to say, the kind of insight, perception and wit that The Wind-up Birds toss our way is almost embarrassing. Their song titles say it all: Ignore the Summer, Long Term Sick, That’s Us Told, There Will Be No Departures From This Stand, Families of the Disappeared, Slow Reader – like all great bands, The Wind-up Birds reflect and transcend the mundanities of the times they exist in. Vocalist/lyricist Paul Ackroyd has the scathing satirical bite of Mark E Smith, the warmth and pathos of Alan Bennett, the forensic observations of Jarvis Cocker, the kitchen-sink emotional clout of Morrissey; it’s all there, set to a cathartic post-punk racket that’s as unflinchingly messy and beautifully ugly as life itself.
So. In gnarly guitar music and existential Japanese literature, The Wind-up Birds have all the right reference points covered. On record they sound extraordinary; scorching and caustic, Cribs-y guitars (what is it about Yorkshire?), a band banging on and hanging on for dear life – together (always together) – as their singer vocalises about moral panic and telling good guys from bad, shouting in all the right places but knowing when he needs to take it back.
The Wind-up Birds – Guards
https://plainorpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/the-wind-up-birds-guards.mp3 Guards, their new single/focus track (gads) sounds like the sort of thing I might’ve unwittingly taped off of the John Peel Show while letting the tape run on after capturing the latest Inspiral Carpets session, a track that I’d then spend the next 35 years trawling the corners of the internet in the vain hope of finding out more about. No need to spend half a lifetime wondering what that great new track was – these days it’s always Guards by The Wind-up Birds. Not out until mid-November, you can play it repeatedly here. Listen out for it on the more discerning radio shows of your choice. And watch them go. Fly, even.
I dunno if you’re aware of Pop Spots NYC, but you really should be. For anyone with even a passing interest in pop culture – or, if like me, an unhealthy obsession with New York and all it can throw at you – you can lose hours between its pages. They take a well-seen image of a group or an artist – Dylan in the Village, the Ramones scowling on some Bowery corner or other, the Beatles in Central Park, the building used for the cover of Physical Graffiti etc etc – and superimpose the original image with a shot from modern times. The effect is satisfyingly great; a black and white and youthful Mick Jagger ghosting through a colour image of yesterday’s trees, the tall points of the buildings in the backgrounds of both images layered, gossamer-like, on top of one another. It’s a very clever concept. I’d suggest that if you’re planning a trip to NYC and are keen to root out the iconic locations of your favourite photo shoots, album covers and artists’ haunts, it’s pretty much the only guide you’ll need.
I was sitting watching Norman Blake soundcheck in Irvine’s Harbour Arts Centre on Friday night. As part of the Freckfest team, I help to run the gigs and it’s always a privilege to sit in as artists tweak their sound, adding more reverb to the monitors, dialling back the treble in the acoustic guitars and sometimes launching sporadically into a snippet of a favourite song. A seated Norman started unselfconsciously playing and singing The Cabbage, a somewhat restrained and homely version compared to Thirteen‘s fizzing and thumping guitar overload, but nonetheless a song that enabled instant time travel. As he sang it, my mind was transported back to an early King Tuts gig, the four members of Teenage Fanclub thrashing their way merrily through the song, a riot of limbs and denim and hair as long and tangled as the guitar solos that unwound from their Jazzmasters. I began to ‘see’ them on the HAC’s tiny ‘stage’, superimposed, Pop Spots NYC-style, across the top of the seated, spectacled and short-haired Norman. I began to think, ‘wouldn’t it be great to see a full-flight Fanclub in a place as tiny as this again?’ and then I checked myself. This, THIS!, in the here and now, was pretty spectacular. Norman, I noticed for the first time, was playing some unusual chords. I made a mental note to remember them. His voice, one of our country’s finest and no mistake, was warm and honeyed, hitting the high notes like it was 1993 again. Loud, live and in your face, a youthful Teenage Fanclub was quite something, but so, as it’s immediately clear, is Norman on his own.
The gig itself unravels brilliantly. a 21-song set of Fanclub high points (I Don’t Want Control Of You, Planets, The Concept, What You Do To Me, It’s All In My Mind et al) interspersed with sharp left turns to the darkest corners of Norman’s output. There’s a thrillingly Kinksish piano-led take on recent TFC album track Self Sedation. There’s a folksy and uptempo cajole through Baby Lee. There’s a lovely understated take on Circling the Sun… a heart-tugging Did I Say, surely the greatest contract-filler ever… a sad and lilting I Left A Light On… a campfire version of Everything Flows. Best of all, perhaps, is the zipping and fly away He’d Be A Diamond, not on the setlist but delivered spontaneously with a gusto and oomph that delights all in the room and leaves distraught the long line of men of a certain age who’d gone to the toilet just prior. Miss our Norman at our peril!
All of these are delivered, as is usually the case in the HAC, to a hushed and pin-drop quiet audience. It’s a million miles from any number of your favourite Teenage Fanclub gigs of yore, but no less thrilling and no less life-affirming.
Sitting noticeably in the audience is Duglas Stewart, and for the encores it’s no surprise to anyone when the increasingly long-haired Bandit and his kazoo accompany Norman for some comedy chat, interspersed with a few choice numbers that’ll send us home happy.
Lynsey de Paul’s Storm In A Teacup breezes past in a light and airy display of finger points and hand gestures, Duglas yet again confirming his status as guardian and custodian of forgotten songs. Daniel Johnston’s Do You Really Love Me is given its usual full Bandits’ treatment, the chords ringing out on a Martin guitar signed by Daniel himself.
The big moment is kept for the finish, when Norman and Duglas turn the clock back with a terrifically raucous Serious Drugs. It might be minus those sliding George Harrisonisms and multi-stacked and overlapping vocals that make the recorded version so essential, but, as the night has proven so far, a great song is a great song is a great song. Dressed in bass and drums or stacked with overlapping harmonies or just plain laid bare, the song will always shine through. Luckily for us, Norman Blake (and his many pals) have them by the bucketload.
BMX Bandits – Serious Drugs
https://plainorpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/bmx-bandits-serious-drugs.mp3Sail on Norman and haste ye back.
I don’t quite know how I feel about this. It’d be interesting to hear your thoughts and opinions. The creative in me says it’s the worst thing ever; anodyne and beige, a wee bit dead behind the eyes. The luddite in me goes wow! How on earth is this even possible?!
My pal Supersonic Mark works in marketing – Supersonic Marketing – and is deeply involved in the world of podcasting. He chats all things food and drink to all sorts of interesting people – Roger Daltrey, Fatboy Slim and, this week, Michel Roux – and his podcasts regularly make the lists of the best things to listen to that week. He’s long said I should do a podcast version of Plain Or Pan, but, y’know… time, desirability, the fact that I definitely don’t sound like Richard Burton whenever I bark the nonsense that passes for pop trivia from my gub. I’ve been on the radio. I’ve guested on other people’s podcasts. I know exactly how unpodcast-like I sound. Clearly, these are all good enough reasons to maintain the typing over talking approach that has served this place well for 17 and a half years.
Recently, Mark was shown how a fairly basic version of AI can turn text into spoken word, and he trialled the approach on one of my blog posts. I woke up last week to a version of the Crowded House post I’d written, presented as a podcast between two chummy American chat show hosts. It was, frankly, mindblowing in the way it’d taken my original post, summed up the gist of it and spat it back at me as a two-way conversation in third person. By the time I’d arrived at work, I’d listened to it half a dozen times, my mind racing with the good, the bad and the ugly of it all. Would this replace the blog as I currently present it? Would it write long-winded pieces on old music for me? Could I monetise it?
Plain Or Pan – AI version of the Crowded House post.
https://plainorpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/plain-or-pan-ai-1.mp3
Hey, AI, make me a picture of Neil Finn from Crowded House checking out the Plain Or Pan review of his Glasgow show whilst he strums his guitar in his living room.Weird, eh?
Interesting? Annoying? The future of everthing or just plain wrong?
The things I like about it: it’s novel, it’s quirky and it’s a nice, concise, five minute snapshot of my 1000+ words.
The things I don’t like about it: The voices. I’m sure that can be changed. I’d rather have Scarlett Johansson read my words to you (and me), thanks very much. And it presents some of my opinion (the Paul Weller section, for example) as fact. For anyone listening who hasn’t read the article first, they’d leave being mis-informed.
Overall though, I kinda like it, I think, but in answer to those three questions from earlier:
No, it won’t replace Plain Or Pan in its current form. I might follow-up future blog posts with the odd ‘podcast’ though, if I can convince an AI Scarlett Johansson to take the mic.
I could never use it to do the writing for me. That’s the bit I enjoy. I like to think I have a style that no amount of fancy pants AI could recreate. I’m probably wrong about that though.
Can I monetise it? I’m an artist, baby. Money is so crass.
What d’you think of it all?
In the Venn Diagram of melodic rock, the circles formed by Fleetwood Mac, Teenage Fanclub and maybe even the Beautiful South (or Paul Heaton as they’re called these days) intersect at the point of Crowded House. Seemingly perennially unhip, Crowded House have the casual knack of crafting ear-friendly songs that spool out like unravelling McCartney melodies; wistful, super-melodic and always with an unexpected yet beautiful chord change to dazzle and tug at your heart. But you knew that already.
They played Glasgow’s Hydro last night, a metal and multicoloured goldfish bowl of an arena designed, seemingly, to suck both the money out of your pocket and the soul out of the music you’re there to hear. As a concert venue I hate it. I watched from the second tier as the audience on the floor had the time of their life dancing to Prince doing his freaky greatest hits-heavy thang. I watched from the very back row – nothing behind me but breezeblock and Govan sky – as the snow fell below us during Paul McCartney’s festive set addition. I watched, invited, from a VIP box – happy in the haze of a drunken hour or two – as Travis rattled out a decent set of their greatest hits, but as four static dots half a mile away. My best Hydro experience was for Paul Weller; standing, near the front and with a bristling Weller on fine, back cat-trawling form. Looking back in that dead space before the encores, you could see the dreaded curtained sections rising behind the first tier of seating. I’m sure PW noticed the blackout curtains too, for he’s never been back. One night in a vacuum-packed Hydro vs two nights in the Barrowlands? No competition really.
It would take someone really special to coax me back, and the price of those Crowded House tickets wasn’t doing much to sway me, but with the date looming I did what any self-respecting tight arse would do and headed for the resale sites. Refresh. Refresh. Refresh. At lunchtime yesterday, about 5 hours before doors opening time, Twickets turned up trumps. Section 2, y’say? Row U? That’s almost McCartney-levels of nose bleedingness. I’ll take ’em!
Taking away the horrible venue and last-minute seating, you can’t fail to be impressed by Crowded House. Despite also suffering from lower than expected sales – it’s packed, but two large blacked-out areas and a closed tier 3 would suggest that (kinda ironic for a band called Crowded House), they play the hits, they dive into their extensive back catalogue and they bring out buried beauties to give them their rightful place. They can rattle off a jingling, jangling and Byrdsyian Weather With You straight from the kick off, first number in, because the strength of what will follow is just as great. Even Don’t Dream It’s Over is played before the half hour mark. Two stone cold classics that would round off most bands’ sets gifted early, the inference being that there are even better things around the corner. And there are.
A wonderfully woozy Private Universe, all ambient guitar and dubby percussion proves to be the fulcrum upon which the set rocks and rolls. A delicately brushed Fall At Your Feet…a skiffly Four Seasons In One Day…a roof-raising It’s Only Natural which gives way to the rockin’ liquid gold of Distant Sun…Neil Finn has quite the gift. Sure, you can split hairs about what’s missing – there’s no Nails In My Feet, for example (boo!), no brooding Into Temptation or swooning Not The Girl You Think You Are, but when, in the encore, you’re gifted Some Greater Plan, a mini masterpiece that will eventually be considered the equal of any of Finn’s greatest work, no one will complain. Tell me I’m wrong.
Crowded House – Some Greater Plan (For Claire)
https://plainorpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/crowded-house-some-greater-plan-for-claire-official-music-video.mp3
What’s really great about the Crowded House live experience is that, even though it’s a heavily-produced arena show, there’s room in the setlist for spontaneity. Most bands of this stature nowadays play identical sets night after night, sets programmed to ebb and flow and match the light show that accompanies it. Crowded House change their sets up. You don’t really know what you’ll get from night to night. I’m not sure the band does either. The group like to take the piss out of one another at every opportunity. There’s humour aplenty. Neil Finn makes up songs on the spot. He busks an unplanned There Goes God purely for a fan in the front row who’d requested it. And he singles out all of us who are up there in the back rows, turning the lights on us and asking if we’re OK. As a thousand mobile phones light up, he rattles off another impromptu song about the place being filled with fireflies. We’re maybe in a different postcode to the drum riser, but the band make sure we know they know we’re there. They’re good eggs, are Crowded House.
The best bit?
That may well have been the intro. Bowie’s Five Years marches to a close, the lights go down and a brilliantly-atmospheric Ennio Morricone track fills the venue. It’s Romanza Quartiere, Morricone’s theme score for Quartiere, a late ’80s film that I must confess to never having seen, but if the film is anything like its soundtrack, I’ll be rectifying that soon.
Ennio Morricone – Romanza Quartiere
https://plainorpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/ennio-morricone-romanza-quartiere-quartiere-high-quality-audio.mp3
Morricone’s theme is classic Ennio. Big, elongated strings that weep and sweep, a recurring motif that is melancholic in extremis, tastefully and exquisitely played from shimmering start to stately finish. It’s a remarkable piece of music. Coupled with the instant pop rush of Weather With You, it makes for an electrifying one-two.
Frustratingly, the version played immediately before Crowded House entered also featured a clanging dulcimer – the ghost of John Barry running with a set of skeleton keys – and some tasteful Mediterranean bouzouki that replicated Morricone’s motif. I’ve searched the internet from corner to corner and can’t seem to turn this version up. There’s a chance, I’ve read, that Crowded House have taken the original and overdubbed it with these other percussive and melodic instruments of their own. If so, more power to their talented elbows. I’d LOVE to hear a studio version.
Automatic by the Pointer Sisters is primo ’80s skeletal synth-funk; as slinky as Prince at his grubbiest but as pop as it comes at the same time. Built around pitter-pattering drum machines and a gulping, rubberised bassline that bulges and bounces in all the right places, it hinges itself on its 5 note synth refrain, an instant earworm from the 5th bar and regularly ever after.
Pointer Sisters – Automatic
https://plainorpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/the-pointer-sisters-automatic-toppop1.mp3
That repetition of the hook-line in the intro is a much-borrowed idea, an old Motown trick that Berry Gordy would always insist on. By the first chorus, he noticed, listeners knew the tune and could sing it. And that, as his bank manager would point out, is yr instant hit single appeal right there.
The writers of Automatic weren’t shy in their appropriation of a great idea. They were by no means alone. Stock, Aitken and Waterman would come to rip the arse out of the idea in the short years afterwards. Whitney Houston’s writers would too. Even the Human League were partial to a bit of it. Listen out for the chorus-melody-as-intro the next time you find yourself landing on Heart 80s when you finally acknowledge 6 Music is losing its daily appeal. Automatic, like all great pop music, makes sure you know the chorus the minute it’s slapped you firmly between the ears. Take that, Mary Anne Hobbs.
Google tells me that lead Pointer Ruth’s coffee and caramel vocal is a contralto. The lowest of all female singing voices, it starts somewhere south of her ankles and snakes its way up her body as the verses make way for the familiar chorus. Sisters Anita and June add the high parts, harmonising like a puzzled Supremes relocated to some terrible mid ’80s chrome and neon video bar. You don’t need to see the video to know the trio sashay in tight dresses and back-lit hard-lacquered hair in time to the song’s sheath-like melody. Big ol’ vintage synths fizz and spark behind them, futuristic and space age even now. A rinky-dink guitar plays the melody high up the frets, like James Brown (but easier chords), Prince (again) with less flash ‘n sass, the briefest of six-string interludes in what is primarily machine-based funk music.
“Au!-Toe!-Mah!-Rhic!” go Anita and June, stretching out in simpatico, harmonies locked tighter than those dresses they’ll pour themselves into for the video.
“Automatic,” goes Ruth, sullenly dragging the words up from her solar plexus to put the full stop on things.
It’s a great record, Automatic. One that could easily have sloped off the first side of the new Janelle Monae record forty minutes ago, let alone the Pointer Sisters’ 10th album, all of forty years ago.
Now warp your ears around this 11 minute extended remix:
Pointer Sisters – Automatic (12″ remix, 3D remaster)
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I’ve got a strained relationship with The Cure. They are, unarguably, one of our greatest singles bands; poppy, hooky and melodic yet strange and idiosyncratic, a band out of step with everything around them, stubbornly unique and brilliant because of it. Just Like Heaven…Hot Hot Hot!!!…Caterpillar…Close To Me…Lovecats…In Between Days…Lullaby…Why Can’t I Be You?… Friday I’m In Love…The Walk…Pictures Of You…A Forest…there’s a perfect playlist right there.
It’s the albums I struggle with. If the singles are 10 second hundred metre sprints, the albums are triathlon levels of endurance by comparison. Meandering, dark, twisty, self-indulgent – all the things I like, as it goes – I find it’s too much of an effort to properly enjoy a Cure album. There’s nothing light and airy about them, and I say that as someone who’ll listen to Radiohead until the day I die. I just slowly detach and find myself drifting off. ‘Is this nearly finished?’ I’ll ask myself as Robert and co sleepwalk their way, treacle-like, into into only the third track. It makes the thought of a live show almost too much. Even Springsteen, I bet, would find himself yawning at the two hour mid-point. My loss, I dare say.
Primary though. There’s a great track. The sole single release from 1981’s Faith album, Primary starts with a rattling, ear-splitting snare drum, played with all the finesse of a ham-fisted one-armed man. Bash! Bash! Bash! Bash! Bash! Bash! Bash! Ker-bash! If you can separate the individual instruments and voices on the record, you’ll hear that from first bash to last, the drummer never wavers from his incessant 8-bar beat.
The Cure – Primary
https://plainorpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/the-cure-primary.mp3Backing firmly in place, Robert makes excellent use of his chorus and phase pedals, coating the track in a thick metallic swamp of rapid, scraping downstrokes and swirling chunky notes. It might sound just like his National guitar set to stun, but on this track Smith actually plays bass. As does Simon Gallup. Being unique and idiosyncratic sorts, two bass guitars on the one record is perfectly normal. While Smith maintains the song’s rhythm and muscle, Gallup wanders up and down the frets like Peter Hook in eyeliner. Perhaps surprisingly, there are no guitars on Primary at all.
It’s an intense sound, Primary. Shouty, swirly and relentlessly clattering, it finds The Cure out of step with their peers, and not for the last time. 1981 was the year when the synth became the de facto pop instrument of choice. End of year lists were populated by the Human League and Soft Cell. OMD were making inroads towards household name status. Ultravox’s Vienna was ubiquitous. Kim Wilde was doing her English version of Blondie while Clem Burke jumped drum stool to moonlight with Eurythmics. Esoteric and different, The Cure stick out as stubbornly as the Dennis the Menace haircuts they employed at the time.
The Cure – Primary (Peel Session)
https://plainorpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/the-cure-primary-peel-session.mp3Two bass guitars, one snare drum, a double-tracked voice and a whole load of imagination across three minutes – or six if you can track down the elusive 12″-only mix. Primary is a weird wee single, not afforded the status of anything in that stellar list in the opening paragraph above, but something that’s just as deserving of a place at The Cure’s top table.
This is late night music. Not upbeat, party starting music, but post-midnight meditation, meant for those wee hours that fall somewhere in the slither of space that exists just before the crack of dawn. Spun finely from ether-borne gold and slowly spooled into seamless being, the singer’s voice aches and breaks and cracks, his hot-shot band playing slow and steady, majestically understated so that the song is best served. It’s not, perhaps, the first track you’ll think of when Al Green is mentioned, but it may well come to be one of your favourites. A random shuffling of it on the iPod yesterday had me scrambling about for my battered old copy of I’m Still In Love With You, the Al album it appears on, and since then, he’s been soundtracking the weekend. Everything’s gone Green, you might say.
Al Green – Simply Beautiful
https://plainorpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/15-simply-beautiful.mp3It isn’t, by any standard of imagination, what you’d call an in-your-face soul track. There’s no stomping beat, no rasping brass section, no hysterical lead vocalist hollering tears of pain down the microphone. A lot of that has to do with Green’s controlled delivery – close-miked and delivered straight from the heart – but much of the track’s introspective feel is due to Al Green’s secret weapon; the Hodges brothers.
Stax had that crack in-house band with Steve Cropper, Duck Dunn and co driving the label’s sound. Motown grooved to the four to the floor beat of the Funk Brothers. Hi Records had the Hodges Brothers. Never doubt that they’re just as influential, just as essential to the development of soul music.
The record’s producer Willie Mitchell could’ve been forgiven for flying in a female gospel trio to flesh out the song’s hook lines. He may even have thought to employ a tenor sax and a couple of trumpets to replicate that descending four note signature riff that helps anchor the song, but with the Hodges brothers on board, none of that was necessary.
Teenie HodgesI’ve written about Teenie Hodges before. The guitarists’ guitarist and then some, Teenie is an integral part of the Al Green sound. Never brash or flashy, Teenie’s range of finely-picked arpeggios and jazz chords are the perfect foil for his vocalist’s voice. Hodges doesn’t ever get in the road of things. On Simply Beautiful, he plays very little, but what he plays – Robert Johnson-ish acoustic blues licks, cascading nylon-stringed ripples of melody and gently sliding chords – is supremely considered and tasteful and, as is the way of his playing across Al Green’s catalogue, damn-near perfect.
His brother Leroy on bass is equally economical here. Shaking himself into thudding a doe-eyed root note that lands on the same beat as the kick drum, his playing is languid to the point of being horizontally laid back. Brother Charlie on drums and/or keys (the album credits aren’t too clear) is no different. The drum pattern begins with some metronomic hi-hat and kick drum…and stays there for the duration of the track. There’s no doubt at all that Charlie (and Leroy, for that matter) could play the absolute shit out of their instruments should it be called for, but Simply Beautiful is all about The Song and they masterfully serve it.
Behind Green’s exquisitely lithe delivery you’ll hear some lovely warm Hammond, underscoring the sort of shimmering string section that made Portishead’s Dummy such a unique listen. On Simply Beautiful, the strings are equally as subtle, perfectly-placed in the background and a gazillion miles away from any of those string-driven soul stompers that you might routinely shake yr tailfeather to. This’ll allow you to listen closely between the song’s plentiful spaces where you’ll hear the overdubs of Al interjecting with himself; a spoken word here, a gravelly moan there, a high sliding falsetto to complement the main vocal. The whole thing is a masterclass in understatement, the trio of Hodges playing in simpatico to let the song breathe naturally. Simply Beautiful indeed.
Listen on repeat for maximum effect, of course.
We’re night four into a two week Vegas residency. An option for a third week has been pencilled in, but not yet committed to. The audio-visual wonderland that is The Sphere was mentioned from the outset, but by opening night we’re in the Colosseum inside Caesar’s Palace, its stage decked out in the most ostentatious floral display that can be mustered in a city not known for the understatement. 4000 hopped-up Anglophiles in cardigans and suit jackets stand on its velvet seats in a vulgar display of phoney rebellion, the turn-ups on their jeans almost as brazen as the bare-faced front of the singer they’re here to idolise.
Early reviews have been mixed, and that’s being kind. ‘Lumpen drums’, a bass player ‘devoid of the original’s flair and fluidity’ and, most damning of all, guitars that are ‘far more darkle than sparkle’. The singer too is getting it tight. His once collapsing quiff has collapsed to the point of thinning. He has a noticeable paunch, tucked into the high waistband of a shit pair of parallel jeans and his voice is gone gone gone. ‘Miserable Lie‘, a brave addition to nights’ one and two’s setlists has been swiftly dropped for the easier to reach ‘Jeane‘, but the guitar player – a hired LA rock guy and most definitely not Johnny Marr – can’t resist soloing between Morrissey’s lines. The knives are out and being sharpened by the encore. Johnny watches from across the Atlantic and shakes his head, his Ron Wood mod crop flopping in frustration. This is The ‘Smiths’ reunion and it stinks.
Back in his 2016 autobiography, Johnny Marr mentioned that he and Morrissey had met up and, over a pint or two, tip-toed delicately around the idea of a Smiths reunion. It was Johnny’s idea seemingly, and while Morrissey was initially on board, Morrissey being Morrissey then broke contact. Ghosted Johnny, as the young folk say these days.
If you’ve even half an eye on music, you’ll know that in the near-decade since, Johnny has built quite the profile. His live shows are sold out and celebratory, he pops up with a near Grohl-esque regularity – can we still mention him? – on the stages of his peers (James, Pearl Jam, The Pretenders, The Killers et al) and he’s collated a coffee table book featuring well-chosen words and arty shots of his arsenal of guitars. He’s often on hand to lend a quote on a matter of cultural or political importance. He even popped up on one particularly memorable edition of Would I Lie To You?
Johnny, should you need confirmation, is a Good Guy.
It seems that in far more recent times – in June just gone – Morrissey returned to his old sparring partner, suggesting that their previously-discussed Smiths reunion might in fact be (ker-ching!) not a bad idea after all. Corporate behemoth AEG, an umbrella company that owns multiple sports teams, the Coachella brand and many arenas across the globe had put an offer of a 2025 Smiths World Tour to Morrissey and Marr, and ol’ Moz, he of the ever-decreasing record sales and ever-increasing right wing tendencies, was quite keen on the idea.
It turns out that Johnny was somewhat less than enthused. It’s not for nothing that when asked by a fan on Twitter if he’d consider doing an Oasis and get The Smiths back together, Johnny simply Tweeted a shot of Nigel Farage. Matter closed.
Cue pissed off Morrissey and a statement.
And cue retaliatory statement from Johnny.
Until Johnny’s management released these words, the internet had been in a daft panic over the thought of a Johnny-fronted Smiths heading out on tour. Complete nonsense of course. That just wouldn’t ever happen. We both know that no Johnny or Morrissey = no Smiths. And there’s already no Andy. Mike? I’m not sure which horse he’d back in this one horse race. There’s no doubt at all that Johnny Marr had got wind of the possibility of Morrissey rounding up any old gang of bequiffed janglers and goose-stepping them across Europe and the States next year to celebrate the return of ‘The Smiths’. Johnny, wisely, has made moves to ensure this never happens.
The tour would have come on the back of a box set and Shirley Bassey-housed Hand In Glove reissue celebrating The Smiths debut album plus that crappily-titled ‘Smiths Rule OK‘ compilation, and Johnny, as the statement goes, has put his foot down at that idea too. How many Smiths compilations does one household need anyway? (Bizarre fact – there are more Greatest Hits compilations of boy band Blue than there are studio albums by them. Reissue, revalue, repackage ‘n all that jazz.)
Look at any Smiths record, be it 7″, 12″ or LP, and you’ll recognise it as a work of art in its own right. Old movie stars tinted in turquoise and gilded in greens, heroes and heroines presented in burnt umbers and off-yellows. The fonts stately and bold, the back sleeves always listing the principle Smiths and what they’ve played on it. Never mind what they sound like, that Smiths catalogue is one of the most iconic-looking collections in guitar-driven pop.
The Smiths – This Night Has Opened My Eyes (June ’84 demo, unreleased)
https://plainorpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/02-this-night-has-opened-my-eyes-ju.mp3In any case, the artwork for the intended new Best Of is, by any stretch of the imagination, a disaster. It just wouldn’t do. How Morrissey, with such an eye for detail and the importance of the seemingly small stuff that folk like us obsess over could give the green light to a proposed sleeve that looks like a ten minute rush job at the end of a long Friday is anyone’s guess. It’s just as well Johnny is switched on and still cares about his band’s legacy.
This might come at a cost though. With one key Smith keen to improve his already-handsome income and the other happy to ensure his group’s back catalogue isn’t tainted, that debut album box set looks set to be shelved. For obsessives that’s a bit of a disaster. The Troy Tate tapes in fabulous hi-fi. That Cookies’ cover. An early live show with the young feral Smiths stamping their mark on guitar-driven pop. Whatever was lined up for the box set may now be confined to the dusty library shelves of the archives.
That reunion idea though. Absolutely vile, as the song goes.
One last thing before I go. That third party in 2018. The one who tried to take control of The Smiths name. Who was it?
In what might be a discarded Only Connect question, as a starter for 10 can you tell me who links Paul Weller, Sylvester and Joe Satriani?
Anyone?
A clue: he’s the same guy who links Whitney Houston, Starship and the odd Disney soundtrack or two.
No?
Bongo Bob is your answer. Bongo Bob.
A Latin Jazz aficionada, Bob worked out of San Francisco’s Bay Area in the ’80s and beyond and was the percussionist of choice for anyone needing a polyrhythmic smattering of exotica across their music. But don’t let the nickname fool you, for Bob was also the go-to guy when it came to programming computers once studios began moving from analogue to digital. One Step Ahead Bob, that’s what they shoulda called him.
That’s Bob’s computerised percussion smoothly rattling away in a none-more-’80s fashion behind Whitney as she glides through the octaves getting “so emoshunal, baybee.” His programming is all over much of Joe Satriani’s output, the sympathetic and understated backing that allows Joe to flow to his ear-bleeding max. There he is too on Starship’s perennial ‘Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now‘, his fairground ride sequencing giving the track its signature feel. Forgotten what it sounds like? Stick on Heart ’80s or Greatest Hits Radio and it’ll be with you very shortly.
Check out Bob’s extensive CV and see for yourself. If all you ever listen to is oldies radio, retro FM-blasting non-stop hits and/or classic AOR rock, there’s a chance you’ve heard Bob’s work far more than you realise.
You though – yeah, you. You don’t listen to oldies radio. Not all the time anyway. And you wouldn’t be seen dead with a Satriani album. Sylvester? Yeah, you like his stuff. Well, the early stuff, obvs. You Make Me Feel Mighty Real, really. And (trainspotters ahoy!) his groovy cover of Southern Man, but not the subsequently under-appreciated records that Bob added requisite danceability to. Never even knew about them, mate. (Sniff).
Imagine, then, that Paul Weller gets together with the Stone Foundation and at one point asks Bongo Bob along for the ride. How these planets collided is anyone’s guess, but there they are. PW and the Stone Foundation are no strangers to one another. Weller has played guitar with them on stage, laid down guitar parts on their recordings and generally elevated the status of the soul collective whenever they need it. Bongo Bob though? Weller is no slacker when it comes to collaboration. (There’s another good Only Connect question: who connects Amy Winehouse, Graham Coxon and Suggs?) But Bongo Bob? He travels a lot, does Paul, musically as well as globally. I can only think his studious knowledge of music in all its various genres somehow led him to the Californian bongo maestro and they took it from there.
A strange pairing, perhaps, but one which produced a minor Weller instrumental stomper.
Paul Weller – Mother Ethiopia (Part 2)
https://plainorpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/mother-ethiopia-pt.-2-feat.-bongo-bob-ezmp3.cc-.mp3Perhaps in no small part to a lifelong love of the fluid riffing of Frame and Marr, I love my African music when the guitar splashes all over it like an uncontrollable fountain of joy. Mother Ethiopia is Weller’s contribution to Ethiopique Series, a long running (est ’97) thing which shines a spotlight on the music of Ethiopia. As the 30+ releases in the series will attest, lots of Ethiopian music is mainly all rhythm and horns. A very heavy thing at times. And very groovy too.
Weller’s track (particularly its part 2, above) conjures up the dusty spirit of an Addis Ababa taxi driver’s cab at peak rush hour, its tinny radio blasting warm sounds into your sweaty face. Bluesy desert guitar gives way to that great African rhythm, Bongo Bob palm slapping his instrument and fighting for ear space with an ancient wobbly synth line. There’s chanting of some sort, more sand-blown guitar, more synth, now twisting itself into weird African scales…and then the horns. They’re on the one, half James Brown, half Fela Kuti and lead a brief and funky charge. A sinewy slither of sax and trumpet weaves and winds its way between Weller’s loafered foot stomps and clipped, staccato guitar and, blown by the prevailing Westerly winds, vanishes in a dust cloud of Afrobeat. Or is it Afrojazz? The incessant rhythm only just about lets up. Magic stuff.
It’s not Changingman. It’s not Broken Stones. It’s niche Paul Weller. Worth a proper listen in your own time.
If y’know yr Bible, you’ll know that the ‘wheel inside a wheel’ idiom first appears in the book of Ezekiel. A phrase used to describe something that’s complex, maybe even over-complicated, it could well be applied to Slippery People, the Talking Heads track that hollers the words repeatedly in the song’s chorus. Not that Slippery People is over-complicated. It’s a straightforward groover of a pop song, but it’s certainly complex in arrangement, especially in its live incarnation.
The definitive version taken from Stop Making Sense was part of the holy trinity of 12″ records that soundtracked my mid-teens. Alongside Blue Monday and I Travel, it rattled on repeat from parents’ tinny living room stereos, its graphic equalisered grinding funk the foreground noise to teenage nonsense and Holsten-powered hijinks. My copy – an instant conduit to 40 years ago – has seen far better days. Low in gloss and sticky with fingerprints, it’s covered in Torvill and Dean-esque gouges of war, played to the point of death yet hanging on in there.
“…that gun, this part is simp…that gun, this part is simp…that gun, this part is simp…” (nudge) “try to recognise what is in your mind.”
“…What’s the matt…him…alright…..seven times five…come t..life…your eyes…” (and off it comes).
My Slippery People sticks and skips half a dozen times and has done for years, to the point that I should really take a Sharpie to its battered sleeve and rename it Skippery People. It’s unlistenable hell, truth be told. Any time it pops up anywhere other than on my own turntable, it really throws me when it plays through without interruption. Funny, that.
For clarity, let it to be said; that live version is a tremendous record.
Talking Heads – Slippery People (Stop Making Sense version)
https://plainorpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/05-slippery-people.mp3The four principle Talking Heads are augmented here by bongos, bare-boned funk and minimal, morse-coding keyboards. Jerry Harrison on synth falls into a groove with David Byrne’s dirty funk guitar while Chris ‘n Tina, the husband and wife rhythm machine, play out a steady tune within the tune (wheel inside a wheel?).
On drums, Chris swings like Holger Czukay in a straightjacket, metronome-perfect, the solid bedrock that allows Tina to freestyle her bubbling offbeat notes up and down the frets as she sees fit. Clearly, there are grrreat bass players and then there’s Tina Weymouth. But you knew that already.
There’s ting-a-ling high notes on the keys, breakdowns that sound like faraway Coney Island ice cream vans in a July heat haze and Afrobeat levels of percussive flow from start to finish. The two backing singers who mirror Byrne’s spasmic jerks and respond to his “Whatsamattawithhim?” calls with enthusiastic “He’s alright!” shouts elevate the flatlining and linear studio version up, out and into the stratosphere.
Though these days he might have an ego matched only by the massive suit he wore on stage at the time, David Byrne’s gulping and hiccupping refrain remains the song’s key identifier. Magic stuff.
Compare and contrast with the science lab sterile studio version. I’ve warmed to its coldness in recent years, but having been spoiled by the live version first, it’s a clear second best to Stop Making Sense‘s polyryhthmic jamboree.
Talking Heads – Slippery People (12″ version)
https://plainorpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/01-slippery-people-12-version.mp3The Staple Singers first had a go at Slippery People on a 1984 episode of Soul Train. Here, they emphasised the religious symbolism in the lyrics, pushed the girls’ gospel voices to the fore and turned it into a churchy song of high, high praise. Some switched on studio executive immediately had the quick thinking to frogmarch them straight into a studio where they then cut their own extended club version of the track.
Staple Singers – Slippery People (Club Version)
https://plainorpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/slippery-people-club-version-ezmp3.cc-.mp3It’s fairly phenomenal, relying on Talking Heads’ studio original (and Burning Down The House‘s electro drum rolls) as its jumping off point, its overlapping synths and crashing drum machines set to maximum volume for ultimate ‘in the club’ effect. The guitars are, unusually for a Staples’ record, bereft of Pop’s usual wobbling tremelo but are instead suitably gritty and grindy. The bass line bends and bubbles in sympathetic harmony with the original. And the call and response refrains between the girls and their dad are joyful – listen to Pops deliver his lines and tell me he’s not having fun.
Backslidin’, how did we do? Pretty good, Pops. Pretty good.
Those first few Oasis singles…that debut album…Some Might Say and Acquiesce and two sensational nights on Irvine Beach sandwiched in-between Definitely Maybe and Morning Glory… only a middle-aged internet bore with too much time on his hands (his hands) would deny the draw of the Gallaghers in 2024.
Lest we forget, but Cigarettes And Alcohol (first heard via a free NME tape), Live Forever, Rock ‘N Roll Star, Slide Away and half a dozen other gargantuan tunes came howling through 1994’s ether like the Fab Five Horsemen of the Apocalypse, booting down barriers, barging through doors and boorishly heralding a new movement in music. Loud, insistent and vital, Oasis were the Sex Beatles for a musical youth who had experienced neither first-hand. Within the year, an overspill of a million other identikit guitar bands followed in their bow-legged swagger, the Freddie and the Dreamers to Liam and Noel’s Lennon and McCartney. ‘Any fooker can do this,’ they gobbed off to an inspired youth, and roused by the Gallaghers’ taste in cagoules and cocky northern (southern to us) self-belief, some of them actually did.
If you are a parent, you’ll be well aware that thirty years later they continue to inspire. Oasis, it seems, give forever. The young team around here are mad fer it. There’s not a local band within earshot (both the young and the not-so-young ones who really should know better by now) who hasn’t affected their postured arrogant stance or shorn their hair (“but leave the sides, mate!“) or developed a shallow affection for the Beatles on the back of Liam and Noel’s actions. There are wee guys and girls right now, finding it surprisingly easy to crank out Cigarettes And Alcohol‘s T-Rex boogie on cheap Les Paul copies, or Epiphones if they asked Santa nicely enough. There are young guys this very moment in loose-fitting corduroy and comfy desert boots sidling up to too-high microphones in rehearsal rooms that once rang with a pre-Oasis hair metal racket, their over-elaborate voice and copied attitude a poor substitute for, y’know, actual singing ability.
Cos unlike the (not so) great pretenders, Liam could sing. He could sing like fuck, as it goes. I’m not so sure he still can. At some point around 2000, when Oasis became a brand and not a band, he became a cartoonish parody of himself, all eeee-lonnggg-gay-teed vowels and gargle, his beak-nosed brother having perfected that open chord with bendy third string solo schtick to the point where he could trade insults with his younger sibling between verses, or sing the next song after Liam had skulked off at something he’d said. It’ll be interesting to see if Liam loses that daft hat he’s been wearing recently. Get The Hair out, Liam, and The Voice will return. It’ll be interesting too to see if Noel’s guitars have any fretboard wear lower than the top three strings.
If it ain’t broke, though, don’t fix it. Apart from the rhythm section, of course. Oasis ’25, it seems, will be just Noel and Liam and some similarly-attired and hair-styled musicians with much better chops than Guigsy, Bonehead et al. I wonder what they were thinking as the news filtered through their Amazon delivery van’s radio at 8 o’clock this morning?
“This is for all the girls,” said Liam in Irvine all those years ago, announcing Slide Away. And, as Noel eked out the opening hammer-on (it’s Don Henley’s Boys Of Summer, by the way), he pointed somewhere towards the middle distance of the audience. “Especially her over there.” Those shows introduced Don’t Look Back In Anger to a live audience for the first time, Noel ringing out those open chords with one of yer actual George Harrison’s plectrums. And both nights kicked off with the roaring Acquiesce, the Gallaghers’ love song to one another and the song which they should see fit to open next summer’s shows with.
Oasis – Acquiesce
https://plainorpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/03-acquiesce.mp3“That’s another zero on the value of your record,” withered Alan McGee as he took a Sharpie to the cover of my 1st press (Damont) Definitely Maybe a few years ago.The reunion thing isn’t really for me. It’ll be dynamically priced to Swift-ish proportions. You’ll be shoulder to shoulder in a field of bucket hats, miles from the stage. There’ll be piss throwing and other antisocial rubbish. You’ll be stuck behind a video screen, halfway between a mega queue for the bar and the bogs. With Kasabian as a support act. But for the young folk who want to see what all the fuss was about first-time around, I’m all for it. Mad for it, even. Had it been the Clash or whoever, I’d have been just as excited. And don’t kid yourself, you would have too.
For those old bores online who are acting as if the world has ended, watch them change their tune when the inevitable Talking Heads reunion is announced. Just wait.
If it’s mind-expanding, widescreen electronica yr after, you need look no further than Underworld.
Not necessarily the dark and longform tracks that make up the album and associated singles around Dubnobasswithmyheadman, although everything surrounding that particular release is out of this world. Nor the airbrushed and spacious ambience that wraps itself tightly around that record’s follow-up, Second Toughest In The Infants, even if such a record would see you alright for a good few months of non-stop spinning and reappraising. And not even the fantastic, Donna Summer-filtering King Of Snake; a relentless headbanger in anyone’s urban dictionary, and then some.
In recent weeks I’ve found myself returning to and wearing down the groove on an already-worn b-side, golden plunder plucked from the racks of an Irvine charity shop, a rare feat these days when anything black, round, lacquer-cut and decent – that’s the key – has been snaffled by switched-on staff or overpriced to oblivion and left to grow tatty in the subsequent months.
For exactly £2, I picked up a well-spun copy of Bruce Lee, the fifth and final single released to promote third album (their fifth, really, if you’re being picky) Beaucoup Fish. Releasing a fifth single from an 11-track record seems a wee bit desperate, so it’s not surprising to note that the single – even in its remixed form – didn’t actually chart. How many copies were pressed is anyone’s guess. Not as many as Born Slippy or Rez, that’s for sure, but for anyone who invested at the time, they were rewarded not only with the glitchy, twitchy and in-your-face, filling-loosening Micronauts remix of Bruce Lee, but also, on the record’s b-side, the groovy and propulsive (and bit of a mouthful) Salt City Orchestra remix of album opener Cups.
Underworld – Cups (Salt City Orchestra’s Vertical Bacon Vocal)
https://plainorpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/cups-salt-city-orchestra-remix.mp3Oh man! This is where the record’s real action is. It’s light and airy, audible sunshine compared to the electrical storm brewing on the a-side, properly forward-pushing and jet-streamed pre/post-club music that would sound equally tremendous in an amber-lit West End bar as it would soundtracking an August sunrise in San Antonio.
It’s the bassline that hits first. A walking and pulsing half-cousin of Beat It with better manners. Then it’s the synth washes and faint hit of saxophone that grab you. Or is it a girl’s voice? It’s hard to say, it doesn’t really hang around. And it’s the hi-hat action, spraying away like a can of Ellnette in the seventies, never ending and hypnotic, your head bobbing and limbs loosening in subconscious time to its airy spritz. It’s also the pinging electro squiggles sprinkled on top, a marker of loads of late ’90s electronic music, but far more tastefully administered here. It’s also the way everything drops out towards the end and the potential of a whole other tune appears teasingly before the fade-out. Most of all though, it’s those trademark stream of conscious vocodered vocals, half-whispered lyrics, that, as it turns out, are wholly suggestible and full of eyebrow-raising double-entendres whenever you can make them out. Worth a Google in their own right, if that’s your sorta thing.
Underworld, as they continually prove to be, are somewhat timeless. Expand yr mind.
Lagging behind the curve again, I’ve only recently read Themes For Great Cities, Graeme Thomson’s exquisitely researched and expertly written account of Simple Minds‘ early years. The book stretches from the band’s formation on Glasgow’s southside through their infatuation with Eastern Europe and closes on Don’t You Forget About Me, the Once Upon A Time album and imminent ubiquity, and, like all the best music books, it has you scurrying back to the music with new perspectives.
It’s those early albums that are most interesting to me and, I’d assume, you too, and Thomson leaves nothing unturned in his quest to unravel the song writing secrets. How exactly does a post-punk act from Glasgow arrive at I Travel? Or the Teutonic goosestep of This Fear Of Gods? Or Sweat In Bullet‘s chrome-coated punk-funk? While their peers constructed traditional verse/chorus/solo songs, Simple Minds preferred instead to coax and tease free-flowing soundscapes from straight out of the ether, seemingly structure-free, but yet not.
Singer and de facto leader Jim Kerr freely admits he can’t play an instrument, so he’d sit in the corner as the band jammed on a riff for hours at a time, a turned-to-the-wall ghetto blaster recording it all. When the band downed tools, his work would truly begin. He’d pore over the tapes, listening out for an interesting section or bass run, guitar riff or drum beat, hone in on it and return the next day with instructions for the band on what to play. While they got on with re-learning the tune, Kerr would sketch out a lyric and the songs would slow-boil their way into being. Painstaking and longform, it’s about as far away as possible from, say, someone like Ian McCulloch turning up to the Bunnymen’s rehearsal rooms with his ego and a near-complete Killing Moon.
Kerr’s jigsawing of parts reaped rewards. Much of New Gold Dream – the thinking man’s favourite Simple Minds album and you know it – was pieced together from snippets of extended jams, not that you could necessarily tell from listening to its sinuous, gossamer textures. Charlie Burchill might be the band’s guitar player, but he barely plays two chords in a row the entire time. Instead, he conjures up a light coating of feedback here, a sequence of sustained notes there, a Chic-inspired half riff or, as on the pop-smart Glittering Prize, a wobbling Jazz Chorus-ed refrain. Like no other guitar player before or since, Charlie leaves whole blank spaces of nothing, the band’s melody carried instead by shimmering synth or inventive drumming, Kerr’s hooks or, especially, Derek Forbes’ formidable, fluid bass. With the focus always on Kerr and Burchill, Forbes was left to quietly get on with his job away from the spotlight and it is he, when placed front and central to the mix, who is Simple Minds’ secret ingredient.
Simple Minds – Promised You A Miracle
https://plainorpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/03-promised-you-a-miracle.mp3On Promised You A Miracle, the band’s specifically written for the Top 20 hit, Charlie dazzles with echoing snatches of guitar in the verse before a sparkling and fizzing (and rare for him) solo, but it’s Forbes’ quivering and magic mushroom-powered playing that provides the song’s bedrock. After every chorus he judders and jolts the verse back into being, the band holding on to his higher than high coattails for dear life, the song’s keyboard motif grounding the listener with its familiar motif. Just how familiar though would depend on how clued up you were on your House music at the time.
Bad Girls – Too Through
https://plainorpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/bad-girls-too-through.mp3In October ’81, Simple Minds found themselves in New York and listening to Kiss FM. Recently-recruited drummer Kenny Hyslop became obsessed with the slap-happy and frequently-aired Too Through, recording it on his Walkman and playing it non-stop on the tour bus. Seeking more jamming inspiration, the band played along to it at their next writing session and, latching on to its keyboard hook while ignoring Jocelyn Brown’s self-assured vocal, constructed Promised You A Miracle around its disciplined yet funky framework.
Although you’ll spot Miracle-ish parts to Too Through (or should that be Too Through-ish parts to Miracle?), the end result is nothing like the inspiration. Proof, should it be needed, that that the very best bands take disparate influences and turn them into something that is uniquely them.
If you too are slow to catch on to the best music books, you’ll probably now want to read Graeme Thomson’s Themes For Great Cities. You can find it in all the usual places, but especially from the link via here.
The drop. In dance music it’s the anticipation created by the build up. The speeding rattle of the snare. The increasing intensity of the beat. The frenzied hysteria of the vocal. And then…pause. And whack! If you’ve done yr job right, the track lifts off beyond the stratosphere and out into deep space. Euphoria is fever pitch. Synapses jangle and race like bumper cars around the body. Limbs reach outwards and upwards and we. Have. Lift off. Chemical Brothers. Fat Boy Slim. Faithless. Especially Faithless. All masters of the drop.
It’s a bit different in London’s Tate Modern. Its vast, echoing atmosphere might be exactly the sort of cavernous space where filling-loosening beats and skyscraping vocals wouldn’t be out of place at all, but someone decided three decades ago to fill it with art you look at rather than dance to…and unwittingly created a visual version of the dance drop.
Take the escalator to the second floor (the tension builds), enter Viewing Room 1 (anticipation strains on the invisible leash connected to your brain), browse the rows and rows of exquisite art (the synapses start to jangle) and then…Baaam! There’s the drop.
First, it’s Georges Braques‘ ‘Mandora‘. That’s yr actual cubism, mate, in muted browns and ochres. It’s over 100 years old but still looks like the future. The guitar in the painting rings and sings and vibrates out of its actual canvas, pulling you in for a closer look, holding you there as you inspect its watery brush strokes, the detail in shaping the musician playing it and the sheer volume of sound they’re emiting. How do you go about painting something like that? Where d’you even start? What a skill to have.
Follow your nose and instinct and you’ll soon find something else worthy of special attention. There’s a whole slew of Joel Meyerowitz prints of New York; some atmospheric post-911 shots, some random photographs of brownstones and stoops and interesting people, then…Thwack!! A photograph of a Cape Cod porch at sunset that has all the isolated soul and melancholic tone of a Hopper painting. Really sensational. You’ll need to see that for yourself though. I never photographed it. Live in the moment and all that.
Turn the corner into another open gallery space and there at the back wall is…KAPOW! a Jackson Pollock – Yellow Islands from 1952, as the information card next to it tells me.
We’ve all seen Pollocks, of course. I’ve grown up wiv ’em, mate (sniffs). You can thank the Stone Roses for that. It’s a large, wall-filling painting, Yellow Islands. Possibly not Pollock’s largest, and defintely not his best, but to truly appreciate it you first need to stand back and take it all in; muted browns and ochres (again, funnily enough), but with dark inky blues and deep sea black chucked aggressively across the top of it. Move closer in and you’ll begin to appreciate the dripping white spatters of paint that run in random rivers across it. Closer still and little streaks of red appear, afterthoughts perhaps, or mistakes left in. There are too occasional light-catching sparkles – sand, I really hope. I read years ago that Jackson was fond of topping off his artwork with a sprinking of sand or ground down glass, and sometimes even a light spraying of his own blood. Maybe that’s what the red was. That would be wishful thinking though.
There’s more.
There’s (bam) a Magritte and (baam!) a Matisse and (baaam!!) a Picasso and then, baaaam!!! this absolute cracker, by an artist the luddite in me must admit to never having heard of. It’s called ‘View From The Window, Vienna‘ and was painted 99 years ago by Marie-Louise Von Motesiczky, an Austrian-born British painter.
It’s a beauty, eh? Thick oil applied to canvas, buildings topped in a dusting of snow and ice, an everyday view from a window captured forever.
The drop isn’t ordinarily a thing that guitar bands get their knickers in a twist over, but The Bug Club seem to have it sussed. Great band, The Bug Club. Take the repetitive intensity of the Velvet Underground, add some of Jonathan Richman’s mid-tempo nerdy and spoken-word swagger, add a generous portion of self-deprecating humour and then…pause. And screeee! Stomp on the Big Muff – or, as Sam did when they played Irvine at the start of ’23 – swiftly nudge the overdrive dial on the amp as far as it will go and fry those six strings in needles-in-the-red fuzz. Exactly 1 min 7 seconds for the drop…
The Bug Club – It’s Art
https://plainorpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/the_bug_club_it_s_art.mp3It’s Art is one of many great tracks on Green Dream In F#, the second album proper from one of the most prolific bands around; one-off singles, 12″ ‘singles’ with an album’s worth of unlisted bonus tracks on the flip side, limited live releases, compilation albums of early singles – of which there are many. They’re only four years old, The Bug Club, but already they’re a completist’s nightmare.
Thrillingly, they’ve recently signed to Sub Pop. Their non-stop touring might now be more manageable on a bigger budget. They might find themselves on a decent support slot. They might even crack some sort of chart or other. What’s clear is that they’ll keep writing great wee songs. And great wee short songs. Upwards of two minutes veers into nosebleed territory for the band. No frills, no fat. Guitar, bass and drums played with sonic flair, the see-sawing, call-and-response vocals singling them out as uniquely different from the others.
It’s all art, innit.
A few years ago, pre-lockdown, I was involved in putting on a spoken word show with Alan McGee. At that moment in time McGee had decamped to Wales and had entered something of what you might call his Brian Wilson phase; tracksuits, unkempt beard, generous spare tyre around a once-svelte waist. It was quite an eye opener from the burned-in mental images of the skinny, ginger-headed, McLaren-esque string-puller of all that was great in British music and the suited ‘n trainered cultural envoy that shook hands with Tony Blair in Downing Street.
When lockdown arrived, McGee, by now relocated to the city, took to wandering the length and breadth of London, conducting business calls as he went. He’d saunter for anything up to 20 miles a day, walking and working, working and walking. Working and, as it happened, working out. The weight dropped off fairly dramatically. A picture of health, if you’ve seen any recent pictures of Alan McGee, you’ll know that he’s managed to sustain the weight loss. More power to him.
I can understand the appeal in this form of exercise. We’ve just returned from four days in London, the money hoovered clean from our pockets, our hair and clothes still dirty with all that the city has thrown at us, and we’ve also done more than our fair share of walking. Between checking in and checking out, we’ve walked combinations of Southbank to Borough Market to Elephant & Castle…Westminster to Trafalgar Square to Covent Garden to Soho…Embankment to Little Venice to St John’s Wood to Abbey Road to the Regent Canal to Camden…Greenwich to Waterloo to Brick Lane to Shoreditch to Pudding Mill Lane…the West End to St Paul’s to the Tower of London to Tower Bridge to the Tate…and back again. We’ve averaged 30,000 steps a day, which Google tells me is close to 14 miles each time. Not quite McGee levels of endurance, but it’s up there.
Walking upwards of 50 miles over a long weekend must do you good, you’d think. London has something interesting to see on every wall, on every street corner, standing at every bus stop or sitting at every pavement cafe, that many miles walking around its rich and multicultural environs provides more pleasure than pain. It’s certainly more pleasurable than running, I’ll tell you that. I’d a fancy notion that I’d maybe get some running in along the Southbank near our hotel. Each school summer break I run five days a week, aiming for that magical (and this year so far unattainable) 5K target. When I return for the new school year, my trousers fit better, my shirts don’t pull at the chest, I can button the collars…running works, it seems.
I set off on Saturday morning just as the city was waking up; early bird tourists with heavy agendas and places to be, the street vendors setting up stall for the day against a backdrop of haar evaporating from the brown murk of the Thames. Dirty old river indeed. Over the water, Big Ben was chiming eight times. It’s funny, but these days we’re that used to looking up – The Shard! Look up!, The Gherkin! Look up! – that Big Ben (or Elizabeth Tower, to give it its proper name) seems like a scale-model matchstick replica of the real thing. Have another look the next time you’re there – it’s really not that tall anymore.
So, yeah, the city, in all its manky old glory and juxtaposed modern construction thrills, but the runners here would burst you. Perma-tanned, perma-smiling. Not one bead of sweat on their baseball-capped heads. Arms pumping, sinews glistening as they and their expensive running shoes glide silently and effortlessly past immoveable objects such as yourself. More than one pack of runners emerge head on, wafting silently out of the morning’s heat like a well-drilled army pack; weighted vests, water packs on their backs, dark, sweaty University alma mater across the chest. These aren’t students that you’d expect to find face down in last night’s kebab. These are the elite of today, the Olympians of tomorrow, men and women who think nothing of calling on a few mates to get a quick 20km in before their guava smoothies and iced lattes. And they can do all of this while holding a conversation, nary dropping a single breath nor swallowing for much-needed air.
“Ten mins. Bosh. Job done, mate.”
“Ya. Pippa told me.”
“I’m thinking we do Clerkenwell then back.”
Now, I normally ‘run’ with music playing, but not today. That made it ideal for taking it all in, fellow runners ‘n all, but the panting! Jeez! I had no idea at all. Is that how loud I am?! The shame of it…and me in a public place, too. On my wheezy way towards the Oxo building and onto the Tate, I squeezed another slow coach gear from somewhere and, with jet stream pouring lazily from the heels of my Asics, actually overtook another jogger.
Only the briefest of stops outside the Tate’s Yoko Ono advertising flag allowed me to catch my breath before turning to head back the way I’d come to complete a lung-busting 3K round trip. I passed the same runner again, still on his gut lord marching, wobbly and knock-kneed way towards the Oxo building. I gave him a cheery wee nod. Which gave me a sense of enormous wellbeing.
Blur – Parklife (demo)
https://plainorpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/17-01-parklife-demo.mp3
I sold my car today. No big deal, really, as folk sell cars all the time. Except, this one is kind of a big deal. The car I drove before this one packed in and died exactly the day after my dad died so, with the family’s blessing, I took my dad’s. I’ve been driving it ever since and I’d come to think of it as an old warrior, a diesel-guzzling battleship of the road, with battle scars and miles on the clock and age-defining rust to go with it.
Mechanically it was mainly sound. In recent times, the boot has become sticky to the point of being stuck, despite me YouTubing it, replacing first a fuse and then buying a part before giving up at the baffling complexity of it all. I’d only have made the issue ten times worse, so I just got used to having a boot that couldn’t be used. You shoulda seen me that day in the car park at work, in front of all the parents, climbing through the folded down seats and underneath the still-attached parcel shelf to get to a box of books. A particular low, that was.
Adam & The Ants – Car Trouble
https://plainorpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/18-cartrouble-single-version.mp3My daughter is buying her first car, so I suggested to the garage that mine might make a reasonable down payment as part of a trade in. After the car salesman had stopped laughing at the age and mileage of my old car – the car that gets me here to there every day without so much as a hiccup (apart from the random squeal that comes from the back offside on occasion, or the time the heating failed to work and I had an actual hypothermic episode while driving in the snow one winter) – he offered me little more than the cost of my season ticket for the football. “It’s missing a bumper trim,” he happily pointed out, as if that was the reason the car was seemingly worth so little.
That bumper trim nearly cost me my life a couple of Novembers ago, when I zigzagged around a big plastic barrel that had fallen from a lorry, only to drive straight across the top of the second and third ones. Rrrrrrippp went the underside of my car as I ground to a halt at the Moorfield roundabout and held up all the traffic trying to get in and out of Kilmarnock during rush hour. It was a passing policeman who tore the half-on bumper trim off. “That’s useless, mate,” he said helpfully. Apparently it’s not that useless when you come to sell it though. Appalled at the cheek of the salesman’s offer, the minute he and my daughter had left the forecourt on a test drive of what will be her new car, I logged straight on to a well-known car dealer who pride themselves on buying any car and booked an appointment.
Their valuation was significantly higher. Then they saw the car, with its dings and pings and musty smell and moisture inside one of the headlamps. Their valuation dropped considerably, yet the maximum price was still better than what the garage had offered. It wasn’t enough though. I had a price in mind and my car – my dad – was worth more than either of these grinning bandits were willing to give me.
Paul McCartney – Check My Machine
https://plainorpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/12-check-my-machine.mp3Anyway, after some internet research and an online car auction. I had a buyer. He turned up and straight away began looking the car over. I stood there like a spare part as he ran his finger along the body, peered into the engine and looked it over the way an Amsterdam tourist might check out the wares in the windows before deciding to part with their cash. This old girl had a noticeable bumper scratch – a crack, if I’m being honest – the result of a bad reverse a year ago. The prospective buyer noticed it but didn’t address it. We went for a drive. Mercifully, neither the offside squeal or the soft tyre warning light came on – I’ve two slow punctures on perfectly roadworthy tread-heavy tyres and I was damned if I was replacing them – and the old battleship drove as smoothly as the day it first left the forecourt. There was a bit of haggling from him, of course, and eventually an acceptance from me; an acceptance not only of the sale price but of the fact that the last physical remains of my dad are going.
When tidying out the car at the weekend, I unexpectedly found a couple of my dad’s old capos. How I hadn’t found them in the 7 years I’ve driven the car is anyone’s guess, but there they were, two wee remnants of my dad’s life as a travelling folkie, lying in a wee cloth bag at the bottom of the boot (I discovered last week that you can open it manually with a screwdriver should you wish). One is a banjo capo, so that’s useless to me. The other, a guitar capo, has already been tested and is doing a fine job. It seems the auld fella is still here, reassuringly right at the end of my fingertips as I look out to an empty driveway.
This post comes half on the back of a Facebook share the other day, with a posting of a great clip featuring some of this country’s greatest Lanarkshire-based songwriters, musicians and hip young gunslingers playing together as a sort of supergroup for an early 90s BBC Scotland show. The group, led by an unusually instrument-free Norman Blake tear their way through a faithful and loud version of The Kinks Till The End Of The Day. It had me quite rightly scampering back to the original version and for today at least, it’s been blaring out the patio windows and entertaining any neighbours within earshot.
It’s a proper Kinks stomper.
In those early-ish days, you could roughly categorise yr Kinks recordings into two distinct camps. On the one side you had the slashing, F-shaped proto-punk riffing, made more menacing and crucial with Dave Davies’s unplanned razor blade attack on the speaker cone of his Elpico amp. In those feral, thrilling early Kinks stompers – You Really Got Me, All Day And All Of The Night, I Need You et al – you can hear in their livewire guitars and monophonic thunk the birth of the Stooges and all that followed. They are undeniably influential, but more important than that, they are extremely exciting records.
On the other side you had the more reflective songs. Waterloo Sunset, Well Respected Man, Dead End Street and Dedicated Follower Of Fashion ring with brightly scrubbed major-to-minor acoustic guitars behind whistleable electric riffs, shifting the mood with their descending woody basslines and carefully worked out whimsical backing vocals. It’s these songs – every one of them a solid gold standard – that set Ray Davies apart from the leaders of any other beat groups bar The Beatles.
Some of their songs straddle both sides. The choppy riffing and wistful reflection of Set Me Free and the meaty yet melancholic Where Have All The Good Times Gone? spring straight to mind. The Kinks had the golden touch of fusing muscle with melody. Till The End Of The Day, as you well know, falls firmly into the former camp.
The Kinks – Till The End Of The Day
https://plainorpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/1-29-till-the-end-of-the-day.mp3Three lightly vibratoed guitar chords, almost at the edge of Vox-ish breaking point, almost in tune, precede a Ray Davies line that’s totally at odds (as it turns out) with his actual frame of mind. “Baby I feel good!” he announces brightly, before the other Kinks fall in behind him like the beat group to end all beat groups. Guitars clang and buzz and see and saw, their choppy rhythm held in place by the tumbling of heavy furniture and silver cutlery that announces the drums’ arrival. The band gives it their all from start to finish, playing as if this might be the last time anyone allows them inside a recording studio, and it’s a riot.
The Kinks – and this being the murkier end of showbiz, so that might mean Clem Cantini or Jimmy Page or Nicky Hopkins as well as/instead of the actual Davies brothers and Quaife and Avory – do their fair share of the heavy lifting. It’s all in the incidentals. The drum fills are spectacular, ride and crash cymbals splashing golden metallic sunshine on the high end before taking the whole thing to heaven in double time for the closing seconds. The electric guitars are supremely disciplined, squeezing out chunky chords in the verses then galloping at a hundred miles an hour at the end of each fourth line. Dave Davies (?) rattles off a fat-free solo, the thin single coils of his Telecaster cutting through the stew for a dozen ear-splitting seconds.
If you can shake free of the heavy riot that’s unfolding around them, then it’s the backing vocals that are especially worthy of your undivided attention. Ray sings those opening lines – “Baby I feel good…right through from…” and then immediately, someone – Dave, I think, as he has that Davies family tone to his voice (and surely Ray won’t have double tracked himself on the 4 tracks, or however it was they recorded this holy riot) harmonises with a perfect “mo-or-ning“…and at the same time, the other two Kinks underpin the harmony with an almost buried descending “oooh-ooh-ooh” harmony. Four Kinks, doing their equal share of the heavy lifting. Here they come again in the bridge…and again at the end of the first verse…and anywhere else they can fit a harmony or a double-tracked key word to the proceedings. The Kinks: a beat group who can arrange the fuck out of a simple set of chords.
So, yeah, it’s essentially the band’s own All Day And All Of The Night recast as if the group had continued playing long after the needle had buried itself in that single’s dead wax, but man! It’s a ripper, a properly great modish stomper that’s as electric as The Who, as melodic as The Beatles but with a beating r’n’b heart the equal of anything the mid ’60s Stones put out. What’s maybe surprising is that it was written to order. The Kinks’ management had no sympathy for a writer suffering a rare bout of writer’s block and sent American songwriting heavyweight Doc Pomus to his door in an attempt to shake him out of it. It seems to have worked. A song that ended up with a lyric about someone feeling trapped and frustrated in a relationship was essentially Davie’s autobiographical dig at his management.
And that Bellshill Beatles Norman Blake-fronted cover that’s had me digging out my old Kinks Kompilation these past few days? I like to think that particular supergroup tackled The Kinks track purely because their hero Alex Chilton was such a fan. Chilton was certainly around that circle of musicians at the time and his influence can’t be underplayed. Should you wish, you can find Big Star’s version of Till The End Of The Day on the expanded CD of Third/Sister Lovers, but – heresy!- I much prefer the late 00’s version that Alex recorded with Ray Davies.
Alex Chilton & Ray Davies – Till The End Of The Day
https://plainorpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/ray-davies-and-alex-chilton-till-the-end-of-the-day.mp3Some shimmering Hammond, some great Alex ‘n Ray harmonies, a rockin’ Chilton solo that maybe even outdoes the original; it’s a great cover.
It’s 1990. Or maybe 1989. Maybe even 1991. That kinda timeframe though. It’s a Wednesday night. Not a night we’d normally be in the Crown, but there we were. I’m guessing it was during the holidays, when some of us were free of studies and had a decent stretch of summer ahead of us. Or maybe it was in the middle of winter but we had a gig looming and had squeezed in an extra rehearsal in addition to our usual Monday night slot. Either way, and for whatever reason, we were wedged in around one of the Crown’s circular tables, up there at the back, in our usual spot with all the other like-minded Irvine hipsters of the day, pints in hand and conversation flowing around the exclusive subjects of music, films and football.
Assorted Surf Nazis and Sunday Drivers in the back of the Crown, 1989.One of us comes back from the pub’s spartan toilets with the unlikely but true news that none other than Feargal Sharkey is presently at the bar. Nowadays Feargal is everyone’s favourite political activist, but back then he was Fucking! Feargal! Sharkey!, parka-clad vocalist in The Undertones, laterally the suave, Ferry-haired-and-suited crooner of A Good Heart and (even better) You Little Thief; a genuine pop star and hero to every single one of Irvine’s assembled guitar stranglers and tune botherers that frequented the Crown. Why would Feargal Sharkey be in the Crown? In Irvine? On a random Wednesday night? A rumour creeps up to our table and taps us on the shoulder.
“Apparently, he’s up to check out a band for Polygram. I’ve been told they want to sign the Surf Nazis.” The rumour looks at me with a smirk. “It won’t be the fucking Sunday Drivers, I can tell you that for nothing.” Everyone is watching Feargal, supping his pint at the bar with all the casual indifference of any of the hardened locals. “It might be the Thin Men he’s after. They say loads of labels are after them.” The Thin Men are from Stewarton, not Irvine, and that prickles. As it goes, a few years down the line, they’d change line-up and name and become Baby Chaos. Happy Mondays’ manager Nathan McGough would look after them, Warners would sign them and they’d have minor success. But anyway. Back to Feargal.
No sooner has the rumour sloped off to the next table, than the bold Paul Forde, always on the right side of being slightly pished, makes his way to Feargal. We watch as our self-appointed diplomat and representative strikes up a conversation that’s over and done with between two sips of Feargal’s pint.
“I told him that Wednesdays weren’t particularly good for him,” says smart-arsed Paul, referencing The Undertones’ Wednesday Week, “and then asked him what the fuck he was doing in Irvine.”
As he finishes telling us this, Feargal downs the last of his pint and vanishes, ghosting out just as invisibly as he ghosted in. We never did find out why the fuck he was in Irvine, in our pub, in the middle of the week, in a room full of eager musicians but with no live band playing. Sorry if you were expecting a punchline. Not much of a story really, but a big story for Irvine.
Fast forward to 2015. It’s a Thursday night this time. October 15th. But that’s not important. I’m in Kilmarnock’s Grand Hall. The sainted Johnny Marr has finished a storming gig and I’m given the job of taking pictures on all his fans’ cameras as they line up to meet him. His tour manager has set up a wee wireless Bose speaker and cued up a playlist, carefully curated by Johnny himself. Chic’s rinky dink disco rattles out of it. Some early Talking Heads. Wire. Johnny patiently pouts and preens for his people, occasionally nodding his head in time to the beat in the background. Clang! A Hard Day’s Night rushes past in a riot of melody and guitars and vocals and Fabness. Next, Buzzcocks cut loose. “I hate Fast Cars,” sneers Pete Shelley, the iPhone in my hand silently click-click-clicking as Johnny pulls plectrums from the wee right hand pocket in his jeans and gives them to the girls.
Then, a brief 5 note electric guitar riff, edged in feedback and promise eases in, and even before the drummer’s clatter has signified the true start of the song, both Johnny and myself have been stopped in our tracks.
The Undertones – You Got My Number (Why Don’t You Use It)
https://plainorpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/16-youve-got-my-number-why-dont-y.mp3Must dust this“Oh yeah!” says Johnny with a smile and, like any true fan of music, indulges in a little unexpected air guitar as the song’s punkish riff runs its way across the fretboard. Within seconds, his enthusiasm has caught on and I’m bobbing along to the bounce of the beat, Johnny grinning at me with his recently-whitened teeth. ‘Well, this is all quite surreal and magic,‘ I’m thinking.
It’s a great track, full of hooklines and riffs, dumb-but-essential ‘duh-dit‘ backing vocals and that terrific call and response ‘if you wanna wanna wanna wanna wanna have someone to talk to‘ line between the singing Feargal Sharkey and John O’Neill on guitar. It’s stoppy-starty, it has just the merest hint of Louie Louie-type stabbing keyboard towards the end and it’s all over in a metallic crash of symbols and Feargal’s definitive “WHY DON’T YOU USE IT!” shout at the climax.
Listen and repeat. Listen and repeat.
Listen and repeat.
Listen.
Repeat.
When you tire of The Undertones, you tire of life.
Human Behaviour by Bjork is, perhaps unbelievably, now 31 years old. A massive, booming and echoing timpali rhythm attached to a dry-as-a-bone rattlesnake shake percussion, it sounds like an amalgamation of smoky Parissienne jazz club and total jungle funk, topped off with a lyric inspired by watching a David Attenborough documentary and delivered as only Bjork can. Stop and listen and contemplate it for a moment. It’s a bit of a forgotten classic, I’d say.
Bjork – Human Behaviour
https://plainorpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/bjork-_-human-behaviour-hd.mp3Originally written while Bjork was still in the Sugarcubes, it was wisely held back until the singer inevitably broke free. Quite what Sugarcubes, with shouty Einar and his expressive yet rudimentary trumpet might have done to it is anyone’s guess, but by the time Bjork had a solo record ready for release, Human Behaviour had been lined up as the lead single with which to promote it.
Her voice, always the key magical ingredient in Sugarcubes is perhaps even more out there on here. She whispers some of the verses, her Icelandic voice edged in Londonisms, then rasps and glides her way into those signature high registers, free-flowing and joyous and unlike anyone else on the planet. There are plenty of unique female vocalists scattererd across the genres, but I bet most of them wish they had the tone and timbre of prime time Bjork. There are little sections in Human Behaviour where her voice causes my skin to goosebump in exhilaration. Adele ain’t never done that for me, no siree.
Does Human Behaviour pre-date trip hop and all of that genre’s signifiers? It certainly rides the zeitgeist of 1993’s underground to overground sub-culture, but whereas those contemporaries chose to blunt things up and slow things down, Human Behaviour is forever propulsive and travelling, a head-nodding linear groove with music for the feet and lyrics for the head. Much of the track is built around a few looped seconds of an obscure 1970s jazz sample – of course – twisted and tweaked and dubbed and dropped into position by go-to producer Nellee Hooper.
Ray Brown Orchestra – Go Down Dying
https://plainorpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/ray-brown-orchestra-go-down-dying.mp3I’d wager that few people if any were familiar with the Ray Brown Orchestra‘s Go Down Dying, but it popped up, recommended to me on a shuffling Spfy playlist recently and, appearing out of context, it blindsided me. The intro, filmic and groovy, with the suggestion of danger between the notes; where did I know it from? Bjork’s Human Behaviour, that’s where. A quick internet check confirmed it, but by then, Go Down Dying was taking on an unexpected life all of its own. Its fantastic shuffling groove, part Reni, part Roy Budd really carries it. The brass floods into it like a slow-spreading, discordant brassy rash, all honeyed hue and rasping anxiety. There’s even a riff-copying electric guitar that stings its way offa the grooves with all roads leading to Portishead. By the time the flutes have fluttered their way to the outro, Dead Man Dying sounds nothing like Human Behaviour* at all, save for that keen-eared loop of Nellee Hooper’s within the first few seconds. Clever folk, those in-demand producers, and for good reason.
Underworld, another of those zeitgeist surfing acts took Bjork’s original and lengthened it to an impressive and essential 12+ minutes.
Bjork – Human Behaviour (Underworld mix)
https://plainorpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/2-04-human-behaviour-underworld-mix.mp3The polyrhythms that kick start it, all falling over themselves processed beats and steady tambourine jangle give way to the exact sort of rhythm track that helped make Dubnobasswithmyheadman one of the best – the best? – albums of the decade. It’s relentless and percussive and simple enough to allow for Bjork’s extraordinary voice to soar above it. Bereft of the Ray Brown sample, the lyrics become easier to hear.
If you ever get close to a human
and human behaviour
be ready to get confused
There’s definitely definitely definitely no logic
to human behaviour
yet it’s so irresistible
They’re terribly moody…then all of a sudden turn happy
But to get involved in the exchange of human emotions
Is ever so satisfying
And still the beat goes on. Electronic whirrs. Random sampled, walkie-talkied voices fading in and out. The beats start becoming emphasised every few bars. Cymbals splash. Bleeps, bloops, synthy filters weave in and out. The rolling and tumbling electrobeats of Mmm Skyscraper I Love You revisited. And Bjork returns. And still the beat goes on.
Back in 1993, it was de rigeur that acts spread a variety of remixes across the single releases. What a scoop to get this one!
There’s an elephant in the room. Not in everyone’s room though. Your neighbour who’s out washing and polishing his car every weekend won’t have seen it. Your afternoon telly and Ben Shephard-loving mum won’t have seen it, and it’ll never step into the eyeline of your line manager with their WhatsApp groups and casual hot desk racism, but if you’re of a certain vintage, with a penchant for guitar bands in thrall to a certain vintage, now that I mention it, it’s likely blocking your view of the Euros this very minute. You can’t miss it, with its trunk and ears and denim jacket, goofy stoned smile painted on its face, the gift of melody enveloping its body like an invisible comfort blanket. Stare at it for long enough and it’ll confirm the truth that you’ve never wanted to hear spoken aloud. “Teenage Fanclub,” it trumpets ruefully (in three-part harmony), ‘have kinda lost it.’
It’s been diminishing returns since Gerry departed. I know that, you know that, heck, even they probably know that. There are good recent tunes to be found ‘n all, but not great tunes. Tunes that are on good albums…but not great albums. Albums that I might not have invested in had it not been for my only-recently wavering loyalty to one of the very best groups. Albums that just never grabbed me by the short ‘n curlies the way Bandwagonesque and Grand Prix and Songs From Northern Britain and even Thirteen and even, even Man Made grabbed me. All bands, especially ones with the longevity of Teenage Fanclub change and adapt and what not, and that’s absolutely hunky dory, but post-Love (and it’s been, what? six years now?) an essential ingredient has been found lacking. It’s unlikely, on recent evidence, to return. That’s the undeniable truth. Just ask the elephant.
For me, Teenage Fanclub came to prominence in the very early ’90s on the back of a support slot on a Soup Dragons tour. They were funny and sloppy and carried a definite identity; denim, long hair, great guitars, battered Converse and desert boots. Man, they were everything I wanted my own band to be. They looked and played with a raggedy-arsed approach. Songs would collapse in the intro and require restarting. Songs would spool out in the ending with no-one knowing quite how to stop them. In funtime Brendan, they had a lead drummer, but they didn’t have a lead singer. They had three alternating vocalists who’d take turns at singing lead while the other two (and occasionally the drummer as well) provided harmonies that got neater and sweeter with each release, coaxed out of them from under their Bandwagonesque fringes by a smart-thinking Don Fleming to enable Teenage Fanclub as we know and love them to begin their true ascent. They were, as you know already, a fantastic band.
Teenage Fanclub – Everything Flows
https://plainorpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/01-everything-flows.mp3O Brendan, Brendan! Wherefore art thou Brendan?Those essential ingredients aren’t quite all there yet on Everything Flows, but from its woozy lurch into the opening chords and onwards, the group’s debut release is a stall-setting melting pot of the band’s influences blended through the principle players’ collective filter and thrown back to an audience that yawned and woke slowly to its charms. The mid-paced chugging major to minor chords that evoke the spirit of Crazy Horse…the wailing signature riff that rips Dinosaur Jr-shaped holes in yr heart…the ‘I’ll never know which way to flow, set a course that I don’t know‘ chorus refrain that springs to mind the existential poetry of John Lennon…Everything Flows is a cracker.
Norman takes the lead vocal, low, possibly in the wrong key for him, a somewhat shy and self-conscious version of the voice that handled the tender Cells and towering Neil Jung – to name but two of a gazillion other gilt-edged Blake beauties – with far more self-assured aplomb a few years down the line. There is no obvious vocal backing from the band, but I dare say they’re in there somewhere, buried below the meshing interplay of Gibson (Norman) v Fender (Raymond and Gerry), nimble fingers fret-travelling groovily. Not fast, not flash, just right. There’s bit in the extended outro, after the last chorus, when Norman does this wee run that starts on the low bass strings before being strangled and mangled on the third string somewhere around the twelfth fret. Trainspotters will no doubt point out that, as free-from and spontaneous as that outro appears, Norman still plays that same razzle-dazzle note-by-note riff today. Don’t meddle with near-perfection. There’s a reason the band – yeah, even the Gerry-free version – finish every set* with it.
Apart from Motherwell in 2008 when it appeared 4th song in. Unbelievably, I had acquired a set list before the band took the stage and I was this close – this* close – to shouting out for the songs in advance of them playing them.
Where popular music leads, others quickly follow. After Oasis came galloping into existence like the twin-headed horse of the apocalypse, labels quickly snapped up any old ham-fisted cock-sure oiks with a couple of Adidas tracksuit tops and a recently-purchased copy of The Beatles’ Blue album between them, stuck them in a studio, created a scene and flung the tepid results out for the gullible to swallow. TFI Friday was awash with one word groups grabbing hold of the Gallagher’s corduroy coat tails and seizing the opportunity before the world woke up to the fact that, beyond one and a half albums, they weren’t any good. It’s always been this way; Elvis then Cliff. The Beatles then The Hollies. Zeppelin/Sabbath/Purple. Happy Mondays/Flowered Up. Imitation is the greatest form of flattery, etc, etc, etc. It still goes on today with Yard Act/Deadletter, Idles/Shame and a million others, all of whom stole something – an idea, a shouty vocal line, a guitar tone – from someone further back on the timeline and managed to find some sort of success of their own.
Baccara – Yes Sir, I Can Boogie
https://plainorpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/yes-sir-i-can-boogie-baccara-hq.mp3Yes Sir, I Can Boogie is nowadays a Tartan Army party tune, propelled into a collective Caledonian consciousness thanks to dressing room footage of the Scottish football team celebrating qualifying for the last Euros in 2020 (played in ’21, as it would turn out) by congaing their daft selves into a giddy and hysteric state as it rattled its tinny rapture through an iPhone. It’s belted out on trains, murdered in foreign fountains, sung in mass communion following Hampden wins. We’re now at the stage where the song is ubiquitous and synonymous with the Scottish football team. It wasn’t always thus.
The tune came out in 1977 when the Eurovision demographic was mad for Abba and you can hear, in its twin female vocal and string swept disco beat, that its writers took the Swedish blueprint and ran with it like a set of DIY flatpack instructions from Ikea all the way to Fuerteventura to kidnap a couple of local flamenco dancers before bundling them into the nearest recording studio, doors locked until they had a hit in the can.
That sultry, whispered and very European verse line, all hand on hip wiggle and sensuous promise of what might follow – “Mee-ster, your eyes are full of hezi-tay-zhun” – is pure Agnetha and Anni-Frid. That hi-hat, all discofied aerosol shine and four to the floor groove is George McCrae’s Rock Your Baby times ten, itself the key to the beating heart, admit Bjorn and Benny, of Abba’s mighty Dancing Queen. The chorus, when its double-tracked vocal soars out of the verse in direct proportion to the climbing string section is uplifting melancholy and deliriously magic and Abba to the max. It’s fairly easy to understand the correlation between the euphoria of a three goal victory and the song’s super soaraway chorus. That it’s also defiant in defeat is quite handy if you’re a Scottish football supporter these days.
Then there’s the breakdown where the girls ooh and coo and a clavinet line squiggles away like a mid 70s Stevie Wonder himself. And the guitar, especially at the start, which shoots wee lightning bolts of disco funk out into the ether. And a bassline that bubbles away like Bernard Edwards with a bottle of Matey in each hand. There’s a lot going on in Yes Sir..., and although in recent years it’s been kinda cool in an ironic way to like Baccara’s one big hit, I’m transported back to more innocent times whenever I hear it, when Abba, and by association Baccara, soundtracked my childhood with no pretence or embarrassment whatsoever.
Another track heavily influenced by Abba would be 1978’s Substitute by all-girl South Africans Clout.
All the ingredients are there; the understated verse with low-key vocals, the restrained hysterics that you, the listener, know are going to slide up and out into the stratosphere very shortly…
Clout – Substitute
https://plainorpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/substitute.mp3…and there they go. From pre-chorus into chorus, backed by brilliantly produced drums and piano trills, the vocals move through the gears with overlapping Beatles harmonies – “If she doesn’t come back…if she doesn’t come BACK!” – a wee falsetto woah-woah hook between chorus lines for good measure… Substitute is pure Abba and another unashamed favourite from my past.
It was only years later that I discovered, interestingly, that Substitute was a radically-altered cover of an old Righteous Brothers ballad, written by none other than Willie Nelson. What?! Yeah! What, right? Listen here:
https://plainorpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/righteous-brothers-substitute.mp3The Righteous Brothers sound like they’re wading through ten feet of treacle by comparison, a 45 at 33 rpm, but amongst the slo-mo despair you can hear Wille Nelson, there in spirit through the Brothers’ (but not brothers) countrified phrased twang in their arrangement. Not a patch on Clout’s full-on, late ’70s Abba approximation though. No Substitute, in fact.
There’s an adjective used to describe music of a certain ilk. If it’s lengthy, self-indulgent, meandering and sounds great in the middle of the night with a massive doobie wedged between your yellowing fingertips…if it’s carried along by slow-swelling synths and fringed by hints of electronica…if the guitars are massive and clean and reverberating one moment then fragile and tiny and weeping the next…if the vocals are half-sung, half-sighed and rounded in posh middle England burr…if side one of the record is 17 and a half minutes of the one track…or comprised of a suite of interlinked songs where there are no discernible beginnings and endings…if a female backing vocalist coos and aahs at significant moments…if the whole thing seems to lift itself straight offa the grooves and out into orbit…it’s Floydian, man.
There are two Pink Floyds. There’s The Pink Floyd, the definitive article spearheaded by Syd and his off-kilter melodies and subject matter. And there’s the Floyd, man. Long of hair and longer of solo, sonic architects and soundscapers more than straightforward songwriters, album chart squatters throughout the seventies and mainstays in seemingly every record collection from Accrington to Arkansas. Johnny Rotten may well have declared his distaste of the band through the medium of t-shirt, (and Mrs Pan, rather more vocally when I was playing Dark Side Of The Moon recently) but me? In a quiet sort of way, I kinda dig the Floyd, man.
These days, it’s Dark Side’s Us And Them that’s continually floatin’ my boat.
Pink Floyd – Us And Them
https://plainorpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/06-us-and-them.mp3Lengthy and self indulgent? Yep. Meandering? Aye. Slow-swelling synths? Well, it’s Hammond in this case. The bedrock of many a great record, the Hammond organ. Massive, clean, beautifully played guitars? You better believe it. That arpeggiated riff that plays throughout is a beauty. Half-sung vocals that teeter on the verge of somnambulism? ‘Us (us…us…us…us) and Them (them…them…them…them)…‘ There they are! Skyscraping female backing vocalists? Here they come! Meandering and epic, out there yet melodic, Us And Them is Floydian to the absolute max.
With a Roger Waters lyric that decries the senseless nature of war and an increasingly consumer-led, materialistic society – yeah, even back in ’73 we were discussing such things – Us And Them is the centrepiece of DSOTM’s second side, placed straight after Money (and that’s no coincidence, eh, Roger?) before segueing itself seamlessly into the rambling and hippy Any Colour You Like, Roger the Hat (Pink Floyd’s roadie) leading us there with some spoken word mumbo jumbo.
The sax solo that blows its way between the cracks of consumerism and commerciality is a lovely and understated thing, at odds with Floyd’s more overblown sections, yet totally in simpatico with the delicate nature of the track. With freedom to roam, its honeyed notes seep everywhere, always warm, always welcome, an essential ingredient to one of Pink Floyd’s best tracks.
Some typically slow-paced footage here:
It’s a sound that seems to have found its way to Air’s Playground Love, a track so long and meandering and delicate and intense and Floydian, yeah, Floydian, as anything that might appear on Dark Side Of The Moon itself. Recorded after their groundbreaking Moon Safari album, Playground Love was used as the theme music for Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides.
Air – Playground Love
https://plainorpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/01-track-1.mp3Sleepwalking Fender bass atop a beautiful chord progression…stoned and luscious groove…hypnotic slo-mo vibraphones…breathy, half-asleep vocals, lethargic saxophone given freedom to roam from the middle onwards…totally Floydian, man.
Howard Devoto was one forward-thinking guy. He gets the Sex Pistols up to Manchester for two shows. Is responsible for turning the whole of the city onto punk and, by default, is the catalyst for creating all the most important Mancunian acts in history – every one of ’em. As leader of Buzzcocks, he creates and releases possibly the first-ever DIY single (Spiral Scratch, of course) and then, at the sharp razor’s edge of punk, calls time on his position in Buzzcocks and leaves to form Magazine, his Wings to Buzzcocks Beatles, the first post-punk act on the planet. Nowadays ‘post-punk’ is a term thrown at any old band post ’79 with a tinny guitar and a clever lyric, but without Howard having the foresight to leave Buzzcocks at such an early stage – in 1978! – when he could already see where punk was heading (Buzzcocks notwithstanding) – we might never have had the term ‘post-punk’ in the first place.
Anyway, Magazine. In Magazine, Howard pulled aside the ramalama of punk’s guitar attack and gave us a peek at what was hiding behind the scars; music that was arty, cerebral, clever. They’re a good band, Magazine. Quite possibly a great band. Those records – the first three especially – hold up strongly against anything released then or since.
Is there a better track out there than first album Real Life‘s The Light Pours Out Of Me? I think not. As much as I’ve been long-familiar with its buzzsaw riff and keyboard sheen, I heard the track at the weekend there as part of the warm-up music for the little-known Caezar – an anthemic Scots act with a neat line in soundscaping guitars and electro-throb bass – and, played loud in an empty room, it knocked the socks clean off me.
The sound engineer was playing around with the band’s intro playlist before doors opened – some Bowie (A New Career In A New Town), some early Talking Heads – and he happened to prick my ears by alighting briefly on the Magazine track. When he’d finished balancing sound levels, the room now empty of both engineer and, as yet, ticket holders, I jumped back on to the mixing desk to cue up and play The Light Pours Out Of Me, in full, with no interruptions…at ear splitting volume. It sounded glorious.
Magazine – The Light Pours Out Of Me
https://plainorpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/magazine-the-light-pours-out-of-me.mp3It’s a masterclass in studied repetition. Opened by a simple military two-step drum beat that never wavers or strays until almost – count ’em – the third minute, it’s joined by a strutting bass line, all sleek black cat purr and prowling menace, John McGeoch’s signature six note creeping riff surfing atop. With the group locked tightly together and playing the same thing over and over, we’re only then introduced to singer Devoto. High of fringe and high of ideal, he half sneers, half camps his vocal line, enunciating each lyric straight down the barrel of the mic.
Time flies…time crawls
Like an insect…up and down the walls
The light…pours out…of me
A chink in the repeating blackness of the riff, McGeoch switches to sliding barre chords then back to The Riff. That’ll be yr tension and release (and tension again). The jackboot stomp of the bass continues to mangle all who gets in its way. The drummer drums that same pattern, solid and steady, eyes front and focused. He could choose to scattergun the odd Moonism or two, of course he could – they all did that in the punk days, after all…but this is post-punk. Repetition is discipline, to quote another Mancunian trailblazer. The group soldiers on relentless and regardless.
The conspiracy…of silence ought
To revolutionise…my thought patterns
The light…pours out…of me
There’s another verse. Another two line chorus and then RAT-A-TAT-A-TAT the drummer rattles into action, McGeoch glides up the frets for some alterantive riffage, Barry Adamson switches his bass from sleek black cat to concrete block and briefly, the track soars, powered by glistening keyboards and Devoto’s wide-open imagination.You’ll want to find yourself somewhere that you can blast this for all it’s worth. The Light Pours Out Of Me is a good track through a phone. A great track on record. An absolute killer through a proper P.A. With Magazine (McGeoch, Adamson et al), volume is king. Turn it up and play it loud.
It’s a fact that, at the age of 54 and a half and having lived half my life (or two thirds of it, most likely…) I find myself getting increasingly nostalgic, and especially for the ’70s. I have no particular affiliation with the ’70s other than I lived the most carefree years of my life in that period. I genuinely had no worries whatsoever other than would I ever have that elusive Teófilo Cubillas sticker that would complete my Argentina ’78 sticker book. (I did…and it eventually went in a skip when I moved house in 2006. Regrets, I’ve had a few, as someone once sang). It’s a decade I remember only with fondness; endless summers of tree-splitting sunshine, track-suited pals and balls and bikes and Jimmy Hoolis, the actual bona fide Johnny Ramone bowl-cut New Yorker cousin of a neighbour who showed up mid-decade in his tube socks ‘n satin shorts ‘n skateboard to loudly rename me Craigee Baybee for the duration of his vacation before tipping his oversized baseball cap in my direction one last time and disappearing out of my sheltered Irvine life forever. What a whirlwind! I wonder where Jimmy is now.
Nostalgia hits hard.
Whenever I hear Gerry Rafferty’s Baker Street, I’m back in the garden of the old house, my dad frying French toast in the kitchen as the Hit Parade forces its way through the sizzling cloud of airborne fat and into my ears by the carrot patch.
Whenever I hear Walk On The Wild Side, I’m straight back in my ‘aunt’ Susan’s battered 2CV, squashed in with apparently 17 other kids as we barrel our way downhill to a bout of hayfever in Eglinton Park.
Whenever I hear an Abba track or a quiet and sensitive singer songwriter – Melanie, maybe, or Joni Mitchell – I have a vision of my ‘aunt’ Eveline in a floaty orange and brown Biba dress and large tan-tinted sunglasses leading us out of Mr Hynd’s corner shop with a handful of chocolate tools for my brother and Graeme and I (my sister would’ve been too wee) and a couple of Fry’s Turkish Delights for her and my mum – the added extras to go with the picnic my mum was rustling up in the kitchen on a particularly spontaneous mid ’70s summer day.
Gimme Big Yellow Taxi and tell me to close my eyes and I’m right back there. Except that both my dad and Eveline are no longer with us. Nor, as it goes, is Gerry Rafferty or Melanie. Or Lou. Lou Reed? Deid, as they say in Ayrshire. Joni? She’s just about hanging in there by all accounts.
Slap bang in the middle of the decade, Lou released Coney Island Baby. Do yourself a favour (or favor, as Lou would have said) and look it up. If you’ve gone no further than the Velvet Underground and Transformer (and maybe Berlin if you’re feeling dangerously outré), treat yourself and be surprised.
Coney Island Baby is a really great record. In that most fertile of decades, when hair grew longer in direct proportion to the guitar solos and keyboard suites of the rock stars of the day, Lou surrounded himself with some of the era’s finest players and rattled off a straight-up soft rock album; no left turns, no arty edginess, no atonal cheesegrater guitars or disturbing lyrical content. Given that ol’ Lou was the godfather of punk and that the CBGB’s scene was already in full effect, it’s possibly the most punk thing he could’ve done.
From the album cover onwards – Lou in camply-tilted bowler hat and bow tie – you get the idea that Lou is more than comfortable in the skin he’s in. It’s an album of love songs birthed from his relationship with his transvestite romantic partner Rachel Humphreys. Nostalgia packed, in lyrical content as well as musical style, it’s Reed’s most straight-up record.
Hot on the heels of the baffling (make that unlistenable) Metal Machine Music, you can’t help thinking that Lou was having real fun at the expense of his exasperated audience. Anyone who’d stuck by Lou though was richly rewarded.
Wheezing, countryish slide guitars ease their way off the grooves like the Eagles themselves. Floaty Beach Boys arrangements pepper the most melodic sections. Brooklyn stoop doo-wop arrangements waft across the choicest parts. One chord grooves and chugging, meandering Velvets guitars pop up at the end of side 1. No candy floss indeed.
“I’m just a gift to the women of this world,” he croons modestly at the start of A Gift, the track that opens the second side.
Lou Reed – A Gift
https://plainorpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/a-gift.mp3It’s a doe-eyed, soporific beauty. With its ringing guitars and lazy, relaxed groove, it’s proto-Pavement or Mac DeMarco, out of step slacker rock in a world not yet fully conversant in speed freak punk. Reed half sings, half talks – Gift rapped? – slowly enunciating and phrasing the words as only he can, and the whole thing wanders to a lovely ending.
The faint noise you can hear behind its steady beat and sprinkling of ocarina (or is it flute?) is that of New York’s punk scene rushing up to boot its sepia-tinted nostalgia rudely into touch. Lucky for me, I can find myself back in the mid ’70s just by looking at this record. Seek it out.
I don’t know if Margo Guryan ever appeared as a branch on one of those intricately-detailed Rock Family Tree illustrations of Pete Frame, but if she did, you’d find her interconnected (if a wee bit tangled) between Laura Nyro, Bobbie Gentry and Glen Campbell, the Wrecking Crew, Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry and the hepcat jazz musicians of late ’50s New York and the symphonic soul of Brian Wilson’s restless mind.
A native New Yorker, she grew up in an open-minded household, surrounded by the music of the day and encouraged by her parents to play and create. She studied jazz at Boston University until her mind was blown wide open by God Only Knows. She soon found herself recording demos for Atlantic with Tom Dowd and Ahmet Ertegun and became a staff writer at the label. She had some success – her song Sunday Mornin’ was recorded by a handful of artists and charted several times, but success as a singer in her own right seemed to elude her. In a world of strong female vocalists, Margo Guryan simply failed to stand out.
And yet…
Her track California Shake is a mid-late ’60s beauty that – particularly in the Age of Aquarius – should’ve had its turn in the spotlight…especially when you realise that the track was only ever considered a work-in-progress demo! Woah! There’ll be people out there, proper scholars of pop who will know this song inside out – Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs, I’d imagine, Duglas T Stewart very probably, but if you’ve never had the pleasure, brace yourself for a real treat.
Margo Guryan – California Shake
https://plainorpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/margo-guryan-california-shake.mp3Coasting in on a frugging groove and a rich tapestry of interlocking, sunshine-blues acoustic guitars – listen to the interplay! – her voice breathes gentle melancholic air across a love letter to the American west coast.
The chords twist and turn, frazzled electric guitars creep between the cracks, Margo’s voice rises up as the tune resolves on the titular refrain and then we’re off again, clip-clopping rhythms, more fancy-pants guitar licks and everyone – yeah, even you – is doing the California Shake, California Shay-ee-ake! I could listen to this record all day and never get bored of it…
…and while the sun’s out on this particular west coast, I just might.
Margo Guryan – Sunday Mornin’
https://plainorpan.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/margo-guryan-sunday-morning.mp3Here’s Margo’s own version of Sunday Mornin’, recorded and charted by (amongst others) Julie London, Spanky And Our Gang and, as a duet between Bobbie Gentry and Glen Campbell. It’s very much of its time and place and would fit perfectly between, oh, I dunno, Porpoise Song and Stoned Soul Picnic, The End Of The World and Straight Shooter, Orange Skies and Darlin’ Be Home Soon… I can feel a playlist being built.
An electric guitar motif, lightly jazzy, hammered-on and partially chorded, plays over and over. A flute flutters in. There’s some ambient noise in the background, a sniff from an actor, as it turns out. A spoken word dialogue comes in; filmic and scene-setting, alliteratively criminal in nature – ‘pimps, pushahs, prostitoots‘. The jazz refrain continues, the flute freestyling above it.
Willie Hutch – Brothers Gonna Work It Out
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2024/05/09-brothers-gonna-work-it-out.mp3A girl sashays her way in. “Brothers gonna work it out,” she suggests, offering her observations to the dilemma of those two conversing actors. The flute replies sweetly to her melody. We’re two minutes in before the tempo kicks in. A descending harp glissando, a sharp sweep of strings, then a paradiddle of tribal drums. The “Brothers gonna work it out” refrain returns, call and response this time between male and female voices, as a ubiquitous wah-wah struts the rhythm underneath a splashing hi-hat. We have lift off.
Brothers Gonna Work It Out is widescreen sociofunk, cut from the same loose-fitting cloth as Curtis Mayfield, as hard-hitting as an Ali right hook but as danceable as disco. Cut for the soundtrack to mid-’70s blaxploitation film The Mack, it brought its creator out from behind the scenes (he’d been a Motown staffer, writing lyrics for the Jackson 5 amongst others) and slapped him bang in the middle of a musical movement that was smoothing at the edges as it transitioned from uptown to midtown, from Harlem’s Apollo to Manhattan’s Studio 54.
Brothers Gonna Work It Out straddles that dividing line effortlessly and coolly. It’s a groove, as they say.
The Chemical Brothers know a good line when they hear it. They took the ‘brothers gonna work it out‘ refrain and recast it as something of a manifesto – Dust Brothers to Chemical Brothers – for their first release to promote debut album Exit Planet Dust.
Chemical Brothers – Leave Home
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2024/05/leave-home.mp3Leave Home is a stall-setting cris de guerre. ‘The brothers gonna work it out‘ hookline is in your face straight away. So too is a snaking bassline and a window-rattling snare. It’s relentless and full on, full of squelchy 303s and rat-a-tat-tatting 808s. A four-to-the-floor big beat headthumper, it has, for good measure, divebombing electronic whooshes, random voices and breakdowns that lead inevitably to The Drop, when it all picks back up and comes in twice as furious as before.
Leave Home also has the dirtiest bassline this side of Bomb The Bass’s Bug Powder Dust, a real key ingredient which in parts sounds like a motorbike grinding through the gears as it overtakes you at 108mph, or 108 bpm if you’re being smart. Elsewhere it provides head-nodding grooveability, the concrete flooring upon which the ‘Brothers go about their business of working it out. Young folk these days might call this a banger. A Tom ‘n Ed Banger, even.
Beatles or Stones? Bowie or Bolan? Taylor or Lana?
Yeah – Taylor or Lana, man?
Street-smart Swift clearly takes all the press these days (and all of the world’s money, it would seem) but gimme Lana any day.
Elizabeth Woolridge Grant (her eloquent and grand name by birth) may well conjure up images of a windswept, colonial America and tightly-strained, Gone With The Wind bodices, but despite giving herself an extraneous stage name, Lana has managed to maintain an element of that same dramatic and vampish elegance of yesteryear.
Blue Jeans. High By The Beach. Video Games. Brooklyn Baby. Say Yes To Heaven. Every one of ’em a silver-screened slo-mo unravelling of pathos and regret, old school forties Hollywood set to a music steeped firmly in the girl groups of the sixties; three majors and a minor, overlapping, crashing, crushing melodies, with the merest hint of a twanging surf guitar and a trilling doo-wop piano, a broken heart and the odd f-bomb never far from the stew.
You don’t need to watch her videos to see the tumbling hair and scarlet lips, the tear-soaked pillows and empty rooms. If you watched them though, you’d also see the freeways and the free spirit, the goofing around with her girlfriends, the rolling around with her boyfriends. As urban American as James Ellroy’s stylised noir, she may be rooted, music-wise, in the past but that’s juxtaposed with all the signifiers of contemporary L.A.; the hip-hop and helicopters, the Converse and Corvettes. She’s so modern, as someone once sang.
At some point this year Lana will release her 10th album which, if my mental maths is up to scratch, is an album every 16 months since 2010’s self-titled debut. She’s certainly prolific – as prolific as Swift, as it goes, although she’s not needed to re-record any of her old records – and the quality control she has sees to it that there are no clunkers out there. Everything with her name on it is a grade A mini masterpiece that benefits from repeated plays, possibly in the small hours with minimal lighting and a glass of something decent to accompany it. The strings! The arrangements! The sultry undertones to her voice! She’s magic.
Lana Del Rey – The Greatest
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2024/05/the-greatest.mp3
‘The Greatest‘ from 2019’s Norman Fucking Rockwell! is quite possibly the finest melody to by-pass Paul McCartney and land fortuitously in someone else’s lap. It’s pure late-era Fabs, the melancholic brass ceding the air space to a gently caressed baby grand, all rising chords and spine tingling expectation. There are Beach Boys references, guitar swells, drop outs and build ups to a killer chorus – “I’m way-ay-ay-ay-ay-aysted!” – where Lana harmonises with herself as the melody unspools into a George Harrison-by-way-of-L.A. guitar refrain. At this point there are still three more minutes to go, three minutes of sparse and delicate music where you can smell the Pacific Ocean salt spray, three minutes of melodrama and horns as fuggy as the late summer Californian air, three minutes of music as bleached out and atmospheric as a roll of seventies Kodachrome film.
Three minutes where you’re already thinking, ‘I don’t want this to end’.
Introspective, reflective and melancholic to the max, it ain’t called The Greatest for nuthin’. Now, go and listen to it again without any distractions and tell me it ain’t the best ‘new’ thing you’ve heard this year.
Son of a gun is an ancient turn of phrase that can be applied in both the positive and negative. “Why, you old son of a gun, you!” they’ll say in Westerns and Hollywood golden-era classics, a phrase of surprise to indicate that one of the protagonists has gosh darned gone and done it, whatever that may be. “You son of a gun,” one character might snarl to another, an indication that they’ve really said, “son of a bitch,” but the writer or vocaliser (or studio) has thought this too crass to say aloud. Centuries ago, in nineteen hundred and eighty-six, I can remember using that self same phrase in my Higher English exam, stopping short of using the word ‘bitch’ but hopeful that whoever was marking it would read between the lines. I got an A, so I’m thinking they did.
It’s a phrase that dates back 300 years and more, to the time of sea-faring clippers and naval gunships, to an era when it was standard practice to allow married couples to be together at sea. When the women invariably fell pregnant, they’d be forced to give birth in the space between the cannons on the ship, the widest space available. Being in this space allowed the naval men to go about their business of firing at the enemy or hauling away or scrubbing the deck without the unnecessary distraction of falling in or sliding around afterbirth. Subsequently, boys born in this manner were known as sons of guns. I’m assuming they drowned the girls, or had them working in the galley by the time they could walk. Happy to be proven otherwise though.
Son Of A Gun opens The La’s only album. A record that isn’t anything as shite as Lee Mavers would have you believe, it nonetheless would’ve benefited from the inclusion of some of the multiples of session tracks that have subsequently crept out, rather than the odd flat take or two that made up the official tracklisting. To get The La’s, Jim, you’ve got to magnetise them in the first take or two. That’s where the magic happens, when the song is still cooking and the band is still feeling their way around the melody and vibe of it all.
The La’s – Son Of A Gun (Take 2)
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2024/04/2-15-son-of-a-gun-take-2-1.mp3Their second recorded take of Son Of A Gun is proof. Long before Steve Lillywhite was drafted in to jigsaw Mavers’ abandoned album together, Jeremy Allom was tasked with manning those ’60s dust-covered faders. The group responds, rattling out a skifflish and rootsy version, full of air and life and that mystical, non-descript ingredient that makes The La’s unique.
The downtuned guitar picks out a clip-clopping rhythm, all bite in the high notes and snapping twang in the low. Mavers’ sing-songy voice floats across the melody, his sidekick John Power harmonising those ‘run rabbit run‘ lines in the chorus. A lovely wee guitar run plays behind the chorus, up and down the scales and back out of consciousness by the time Mavers has begun harmonising with himself. That’ll be double-tracking, Lee. We’ll not be having much more of that nonsense.
Anyway.
The sun is currently out here in North Ayrshire and, as is tradition in this house when that happens, the Trojan reggae gets blasted. Presently Trojan’s Tighten Up Volume 2 is making the heavily scarred wooden flooring vibrate, causing ripple effects in my daughter’s mug of tea and thudding its easy skanking bass off and out through the patio doors and into the back garden, maybe even entertaining the neighbours as it floats its way across the railway tracks to be vapourised by the ball of fire in the sky.
Rudy Mills – John Jones
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2024/04/08-john-jones.mp3What I know about Rudy Mills would easily fit into the 1 cm run out groove of this late 60s beauty, and the internet can’t tell me much more. What I can tell you is that John Jones is a fine example of rocksteady.
A mid-paced groover, it has all necessary ingredients for a rockin’ good time; squeaky organ, repeating four chord riddim, slightly wobbly backing vocals and a soulful, honest delivery that leaves you in doubt of its authenticity as a bona fide roots reggae classic. Not as well known, perhaps, as other tunes and artists from the era, it’s one that belongs in your ears, for today at least. Oh yeah – and it features a ‘son of a gun‘ lyric too, as it should for a song about a low down, lying, woman-stealing ne’erdowell.
Get down on it.
At midnight on Thursday going into Friday there, Taylor Swift released – or dropped, as they say nowadays – a new album (or albums, plural, given the cash-grab of multiple formats that is becoming more the norm these days too) and the internet this side of the border went into a bit of a mild frenzy over the inclusion of – as you will be sick of hearing by now – a Blue Nile-referencing lyric.
‘Drowning in the Blue Nile, he sent me Downtown Lights, I hadn’t heard it in a while…‘ are lines that bookend the mid-paced and breathy Guilty As Sin?, a synthy, processed track with a building chorus that doesn’t instantly hit – and why would it, I’m a 54 year-old man – but one which I suspect I’ll hear multiple times around the house and in the car until I know every word and nuance back to front. Such is the appeal of Swift round these parts. And around the globe a trillion times over. What a talent, undoubtedly.
The Blue Nile, on the other hand, I get, I understand, I fit the demographic. I love everything about them; the tectonic pace at which they work(ed), the shroud of mystery and intrigue around them, Paul Buchanan’s languid and resigned voice, the songs.
The songs! I must confess, they took a while (like Taylor Swift might) to work their magic on me. When the Blue Nile first appeared from out of the Glasgow rain, all chinos and swept back curls and faint sophistication, their stylised and expertly-produced coffee table symphonies were not to my palate. I liked my singers to bark and shout. Off mic and even off key was fine to these ears. Close-miked, enunciated crooning was for old folk over 30. I liked my guitars scuzzy and fuzzed up or jangling away at a window-rattlin’ volume for two, three minutes at a push. Politely played guitars that crept slowly beyond the five, six minute mark belonged on Dire Straits records and not in my record collection. Keyboards and drum machines? That was strictly Level 42 territory, man.
But one day, I got it. A Walk Across The Rooftops reeled me in with its slow-burning, twisting, turning and unspooling melodies and I was hooked. Then the group found hats. And then, I found Hats.
The Downtown Lights, the track that gets Taylor all a-teary, appears second song in. Taking many of its cues from the signifiers on that first album, it glides on a bed of politely pattering electronic Linn drums and long-breathing keyboards, gently pulsing electro bass and stabbing strings. Cascading percussion permeates in all the right places as Buchanan’s voice lets loose a gorgeous tumbling melody that forms the centre piece of the track.
“Nobody loves you this way!” he emotes, artificial strings swelling in time to the break of hearts, even Taylor’s. Paul Buchanan’s voice, his phrasing, his controlled delivery… it wouldn’t sound out of place at all on Station To Station or any number of those Bowie studio records from the era.
The Blue Nile – The Downtown Lights
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2024/04/the-blue-nile-the-downtown-lights.mp3The Downtown Lights forms part of a record that is required to be listened to as a whole, something that in the scroll, like, delete, swipe world we now live in seems almost archaic. It’s pretty much the perfect record, a record that is initially so somnolent and atmospheric that it might make more sense listening to it in deep space, or, if it’s more practical, a flotation tank.
I can totally see why Taylor Swift might dig The Blue Nile. And I totally expect The Blue Nile to chart at some point in the next week. Taylor has enough followers that, if even half a percent took a curious interest in the track and played it on Spotify, The Downtown Lights could yet end up The Blue Nile’s best-known song. Move over Tinseltown, there’s a new kid in town. Who saw that coming?
It begins with a rat-a-tat of rattling, ricocheting far-off processed beats then melts itself into a woozy, hazy, two chord guitar riff. A nagging, incessant keyboard riff (or is it effect-heavy flute? Or another guitar track filtered through a dozen stomp boxes?) follows. A proper headnodder of a groove builds around the disparate tracks. A bassline, rubbery and dependable nails the whole thing to 4/4 time and then…lurch! A divebombing tremelo wobbles six strings wonkily downwards, seasick and stoned, and suddenly you’re disorientated. Only momentarily, mind, as here come the vocals. A girl? A boy? A duet? And what are they singing? They’re more vocalising than singing really, as any number of Netflix subtitles will tell you these days, the voice(s) trippy and overlaid and harmonising in an out-of-body way that’ll have you humming along from this point on. Here’s that flute again. And the rat-a-tat. And the shape-shifting lurch. And those inter-woven harmonies. And the flute again. And the monster bassline. And another lurch, just as you’re getting the hang of the discombobulation of it all. And so it goes, for nearly 7 minutes, My Bloody Valentine‘s greatest studio moment – Soon.
My Bloody Valentine – Soon
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2024/04/my-bloody-valentine-soon.mp3My 7″, signed by McGee no less.It has actual lyrics. You can look them up if you don’t believe me. They’re not what Kevin Shields wrote though. The stubborn artist – and with Soon and the rest of the Glider EP (and the Tremelo EP and Loveless), he is far more of an artist – studio auteur, even, than mere musician – wouldn’t give them to the label. He’d present Creation with the completed recordings and their titles and some poor office girl would have to sit and decipher everything through the fuggy haze on record and, very possibly, within the office itself. Naturally, many of the real lyrics are lost forever, the ‘official’ words actually the work of the Creation intern. That’s pop art for ye.
Soon isn’t necessarily a word you’d associate with My Bloody Valentine. A band so determined – so bloody-minded, even – it took them 21 years between records and then nothing since, it remains my favourite piece of music by them. It’s an astonishing piece of art still, even after 34 years. The product of hours and hours and breakdowns and missteps in the recording studio, it was painstakingly created by Kevin Shields, hunched over spooling tapes and faders and offset Fender Jazzmasters, tremelo arm nestled in his fingers and ready to glide. Just as Johnny has the jangle and Jimi has the fuzz, Shields has glide guitar as his signature. Detune your guitar to some far-out open tuning, hold a chord shape with the left hand and, as you strum, lean gently but firmly onto and into that tremelo arm. The floating bridge will reduce the tension on the strings, leaving you with that trademark sighing, tone bending, shape-shifting guitar sound. Just add a mission control-sized pedal board and a decent vintage amp or two to the chain for maximum push and pull effect.
I bet he went through a gazillion strings perfecting it.
Soon was released at an interesting intersection in indie music. My Bloody Valentine, a group synonymous with guitars and Docs and shapeless black jumpers found themselves influenced, knowingly or otherwise, by the rhythm-focused music comin’ atcha from Manchester.
That ‘Funky Drummer’ beat that propelled Fools Gold? The military two step that implored a million bucket-hatted eejits to twist their melons? Here it all was – the mellower cousin of Public Enemy’s fierce sampled beats – chopped, cut and pasted and stuck together again to provide the back beat for a track that no band, not even MBV themselves, could replicate live. Those repetitive Italo house hooklines that ear wormed their way from Happy Mondays’ back catalogue and caused van drivers to whistle while they worked? The same hooklines that had been born from Detroit techno and adopted as their own by the magpie-like Ryder clan? Here they were too, in flute form, but still there, popping up regularly enough to provide both hook and anchor for a track that might’ve been lost at sea without it.
It’s that little motif that plants Soon firmly into the future – even still in 2024 – and maintains the group’s legacy as forward-thinking studio pioneers. They’ve released other material since, of course. Not much though…and nothing with the heart and soul and (despite what I’ve just said above) originality of Soon. It’s a weird, warped beauty. Nocturnal. Otherworldly. Perfect. And peerless.
Great Weatherall remix too, of course.
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2024/04/1-06-soon-andrew-weatherall-mix.mp3
As a new artist, how hard is it to get your music heard? Rhetorical question perhaps, but “with great difficulty” would be the resounding answer. Current stats show that over 60,000 new tracks are uploaded to Spotify every day. That’s around half a million a week…two million a month….twenty four million a year. For a new artist, the impact they can expect to make is zilch. Comparable to a shed tear of realisation plopping into the Atlantic Ocean and hoping that enough ripples cause it to somehow stand out, only the foolhardy would believe that they could make it – whatever ‘make it’ is these days – and sustain a career in music.
The keen-for-success artist might also bombard the in boxes of the taste makers and influential movers and shakers on the internet in the vain/vague hope that someone will maybe feature them and their music. Even I, with my ‘outdated music for outdated people‘ tagline get dozens of weekly emails from hopefuls across the globe, all eager for me to feature them here. Sometimes I do, but as you know, mostly I don’t.
If you, the artist, wants to go the more traditional route of trying to woo a record company, the executives will no longer hot-foot it en masse to your headline show in a grimy London sweat-box. Instead, they’ll tap into your socials, check out how many followers you have, how many monthly listeners you can pull and what sort of merch you are selling via Bandcamp or wherever. Can I make money from them? is their first thought. Is the music any good? might be their second. And yet, and yet, great talent is out there…
I’m involved in putting on gigs and in recent weeks I’ve been lucky enough to witness some artists who, with a whole lot of luck, could and should be far more well-known than they currently are. A couple of weeks ago we had BMX Bandits play our wee venue (the Harbour Arts Centre) in Irvine. Duglas Bandit suggested Alice Faye as a support act. He’s such a fan of her that when it came to show time, he asked if he could introduce her to the audience…then walked across the stage to take a seat in one of the front rows to watch her. By this point in the evening, I knew why; during the soundcheck, it was just Alice, Danny the sound engineer and myself in the room, and when Alice started singing…oh man! I looked at the normally stoic and hard to impress Danny, who, lost in faders and reverb and noise gates, raised one eyebrow high and smiled knowingly to himself. He was experiencing exactly what I was; a phenomenon.
Alice’s voice was pure and clear with a tone and depth and unique personality that singled her out immediately as one of the greats. I really mean that. I was thinking Nina Simone, Joni Mitchell, Nico… unique and individual voices, and voices that Alice could sit alongside without being one iota out of place. As Alice sang her heart out shyly to an empty room, even the motes of swirling dust being picked up by the heat rays below the ancient HAC spotlights stopped what they were doing to listen. “This must’ve been what it was like when Amy Winehouse sang in front of someone for the first time,” I caught myself thinking at one point. Preposterous, yet not really. It was both jaw dropping and heart-warming in equal measure – here’s a new artist who can really, really sing. Lovely and astonishing. The song she was singing at the time was, I’m sure, Exact Same Thing, the fourth track on the playlist below.
She apparently has it all, Alice. In her vocal stylings there are clear nods not only to the past but the present. It’d be easy to imagine any of her songs sitting perfectly well amongst the ’60s shimmer and melodrama of Lana De Ray or the downbeat pop stylings of Billie Eilish. What it takes to get noticed then elevated to their sort of status is the golden prize. What’s that quote again about success being 10% talent and 90% luck? Alice Faye isn’t lacking anything on the talent front, that’s for sure. All she needs is the luck. And a lot of it.
Thrillingly, that luck might be happening. Alice has been picked up by the people behind Rufus Wainwright and she’ll support him on a couple of upcoming dates. Rufus’s audience, you would think, should appreciate a quirky voice and floating melody, so I’d hope Alice’s name is slightly better-known come the summer. Talent like Alice is so hard to find. Let’s treasure it when it lands in your lap.
In the summer of ’22, Ross Wilson assembled a 7-piece band to accompany him on Blue Rose Code‘s various festival stages. Ross, as you may well know, is more than comfortable performing as a solo performer, or as part of a stripped-back duo or trio, but the opportunity to flesh out his sound with guitar, keys, drums and a brass section proved too great to pass up…and his band and their input stretched him in great, fantastical directions as a result. Anyone who has caught him live with the full-fat Blue Rose Code will have witnessed shows akin to euphoria and religious experience. Going full-on Dexys, the band would go running – actual running – and then do press-ups backstage, right up until the point they were due on, so that by the time they’d begun their first number they were literally hitting the ground running. No easing into a set, no feeling their way with an unknown audience, it was bam! Bam! BAM! We are Blue Rose Code and this is what we do; off-mike hollers and whoops, loud boot stomps to emphasise big moments in the songs, a hand on heart as a key lyric is sung…you couldn’t help but get caught up in it all.
What Blue Rose Code did on those festival dates is very much apparent on the new album, Bright Circumstance. Building on that Dexys by way of Style Council approach honed through communal exercise and live shows, brass stabs as sharp as a stiletto puncture the Walls Come Tumbling Down stomp of opener Jericho. A fat and thumping four to the floor beat keeps it moving forward, shimmers of Hammond easing quietly into the gaps between brass and vocal and its call and response section. There’s a drop out in the middle, the spot where eager audiences were (and will be) invited to join in with enthusiastic hand claps, before the band revs up again and drives the song home in a brassy rush of Stax proportions. That’ll be yr album opener, and no mistake.
Blue Rose Code – Jericho
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2024/04/blue-rose-code-bright-circumstance-01-jericho.mp3If you’ve seen Blue Rose Code live, in whichever guise, you’ll know that Ross touches on the big subjects; life, love, social issues and our unfair society, and they’re all here on Bright Circumstances. Most of the recent live set is present, and if you only know it from a stripped back show, the breadth of musicianship and colour afforded by the assembled musicians might leave you momentarily breathless. Sadie is carried by quietly brushed acoustic guitars, swelling, weeping pedal steel and more of that glorious Hammond shimmer; exactly the sort of track the still-switched-on Rod Stewart of the ’70s might have done to great effect.
A scraping, violin – think Neil Young’s Running Dry – scratches its way across the socio-political bite of Thirteen Years and its ‘are they heating or are they eating?‘ refrain. The bold Ross found himself in trouble last year when he managed to sneak this into a live performance being broadcast to the nation on BBC Radio 4. Inspiration is infiltration. A loose and jazzy Amazing Grace rounds off side one, Wilson taking liberties with his phrasing to great effect, the band showcasing their talents as their leader directs them in the ebb and flow of the melody.
Side two is the softer of the two sides, and it’s bookended wonderfully by two great tracks. The opener, Peace In Your Heart, will be familiar to audiences on any of the more recent BRC dates. A slow acoustic builder, it unravels into the sort of gospel folk that John Martyn and Van Morrison once did with great effect and, on this evidence, should see Ross Wilson considered an equal. You can dress your songs up in brass and electricity if you want to, but what it really comes down to, Jim, is a universal message played simply and sung well. There are no frills on Peace In Your Heart, and it’s the perfect comedown from the kitchen sink approach on side one.
Blue Rose Code – Peace In Your Heart
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2024/04/blue-rose-code-bright-circumstance-06-peace-in-your-heart.mp3Midway through, you’ll find Don’t Be Afraid, its moody ambience and close-miked minor key atmospherics revealing fantastic harmonies and off-kilter counter melodies with each repeated listen. Funereal horns lead the song upwards to its heavenly conclusion, the vocal refrain namechecking God with all the gravitas and straightforwardness of Nick Cave.
The religious theme continues on Now The Big Man Has Gone, a lament for a pal no longer here. Lyle Watt, Ross’s long-standing foil on guitar and finder of the bluest of blue notes in any situation leads us in with a quietly strummed mandolin before the song opens up with more female harmonies, a mournful accordion and tinkling piano. And then it’s over.
It’s a great album, Bright Circumstance. It finds Ross in good spirits, in a good place in life and surrounded by sympathetic musicians and guests (Eddi Reader, Donald Shaw, Naomi Stirrat). He’s found peace and contentment, faith and spirituality and we are the benefactors of this. A decade into a music career that has seen him reach new heights and gather new fans with each subsequent release, it would be great if Bright Circumstance was the album that saw Ross finally lose the label of ‘best kept secret’ and brought him into the collective consciousness of music listeners with a fondness for great songs played and sung outrageously well. He deserves it. And so do we.
Bright Circumstance is released on the 10th May. You can get it everywhere, including Blue Rose Code‘s Bandcamp page (although the pre-order link isn’t quite live yet).
Before the bombast and bluster of Waterfront and its parent album Sparkle In The Rain, before Don’t You Forget About Me‘s omnipresence in top tens the world over, before they looked to the tiered arenas of the American midwest and long before they’d even thought about possibly considering property investments in Tuscany, Simple Minds made sonically-interesting and stubbornly European music; cold, glacial and filmic, music that suggested movement and travel by Eastern European train rather than by air conditioned limo the length of the Eastern Seaboard. Even their pseudo Cyrillic logo at the time, all thin and sparse and fat-fee, was a nudge-nudge wink-wink to the twin influences of the Iron Curtain and the Cold War. Those reversed Rs. The backwards Ns. Ask James Dean Bradfield about it the next time you see him.
As much as Simple Minds became a great Scottish export around the mid ’80s, it’s those earlier records where, for me, the magic really happens. Indeed, as the switched-on amongst us know, early Simple Minds was where it was truly at. That band, that line-up, that creative vision, not to mention the inspired choice of producers – John Leckie! Steve Hillage! – has a rare essence about it that makes those great, danceable post-punk records sound futuristic still, even 40 years on.
Simple Minds – Theme For Great Cities
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/01-theme-for-great-cities.mp3The eerie keyboard motif that signifies Theme For Great Cities’ start is all over those Minds’ records from the era. Part Eno and part Magazine’s Dave Formula, it’s the singular instrument that hints at melody and song form in the band. Married to a punchy rhythm section, it made for a spatial and atmospheric sound, a sound that was unmistakeably Simple Minds.
Theme For Great Cities is the perfect example of the group, the juddering bassline and whip-smart electro backing conjuring images of speeding landscapes as you rattle through foreign lands. The band is precision-perfect in timing, metronomic and pinpoint in accuracy. Even Charlie Burchill is in on the act. He plays almost not one chord, almost not one sustained note. The disciplined post-punker that he is plays the track’s scratchy rhythm almost the entire time without so much as a tendon-resting break. Nile Rodgers in eye liner, he breaks free at one point to simply crash a minor chord with all the charm of a glass bottle being smashed against a wall, then slips into a little effect-heavy sustained glissando before once again taking up the chicken scratch. Arty? Yep. European? Yep. Roxy Music if played by Glaswegian tenement kids? Yep. It’s a beauty. That well-worn cliche about an old record sounding like it could’ve been recorded yesterday rings true with Theme For Great Cities.
Likewise This Earth That You Walk Upon.
Simple Minds – This Earth That You Walk Upon
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/11-this-earth-that-you-walk-upon-in.mp3It’s so disciplined, so ethereal, it might’ve launched itself straight from The Orb’s mixing desk in 1993. Its pitter-pattering drum machine springs to mind Sly Stone, but where Sly would close-mike himself and drawl coolly about baybees makin’ baybees, Simple Minds smother the pitter-patter in a soundscape of treated electric guitar and thumping slapped bass, synth washes and echo-laden keyboards. Spacey and flotation tank-light, This Earth That You Walk Upon is a bit of a year zero for the electro acts that would follow.
In movie making terms, the trajectory of Simple Minds is a bit like your favourite art house director foregoing the grit and grain of monochrome and throwing their lot in with the surround sound and widescreen epicness of the Hollywood blockbuster studio set. There’ll still be good bits in the movies, but as a whole, they’re too crowd pleasing and calculated. In the old days, the creatives at the helm knew the cost of nothing and the value of everything. When they make that move into the big leagues, the bottom line becomes the single most important factor, and undoubtedly the music suffers as a consequence. Thankfully, we can go back any time we like. Outdated music for outdated people? You bet it is.
We’ve a book for gigs and in it bands sign
It’s falling apart and it’s split at the spine
Every show we do it’s filled with a scribble
And plectrums and set lists and other such drivel
It was BMX Bandits on Saturday there
With Duglas T Stewart and coordinated stage wear
Their set filled with favourites and new ones just out
And bananas and grapes and kazoo solos throughout.
At the end of the night we’re tittling and tattling
As the stage crew get on with the art of dismantling
“Will you sign the book?” I ask to Duglas reclining
And turn to a new page in prep for its signing.
My sharpie’s deployed and after Duglas I hand it
To guitar, drums and bass, the three other Bandits
They think and they scribble, add kisses at the bottom
Then pass the book back…but someone’s forgotten
To return back my pen, my only black sharpie
And I eyeball all four of the band hierarchy.
The pen’s gone for good, I’m pissed off but accept it
But it irks me, it bothers me and I can’t quite forget it
It’s only a sharpie but you’ve gotta hand it
To the nominative determinism of that BMX Bandit
Yes, it’s only a sharpie but you’ve gotta hand it
To the nominative determinism of that BMX Bandit
I said it’s only a sharpie and it’s not how I planned it
To forego a pen to the BMX Bandits
(As I wrote this I heard the voice of John Cooper Clarke. Maybe you won’t.)
Here’s Serious Drugs. Electric guitars weeping the tiny tears of George Harrison in ’68. Acoustic 12 strings jangling away like the rain-soaked ghost of Alex Chilton in ’72. Sighing backing vocals that do uplifting melancholy like no-one since Teenage Fanclub took that particular idea and ran with it in their desert boots all the way to the charts. Excellent Joe McAlinden sax solo too. Serious Drugs has got the lot. Quite possibly the group’s finest moment.
BMX Bandits – Serious Drugs
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2021/04/bmx-bandits-serious-drugs.mp3
Blur. Four musicians. Four mindsets. Four sets of influences pushing and pulling the band in four different directions. Part of the appeal, you might say, and part of the reason they sound as they do (sounded as they did?), but only one of the four is responsible for putting the undisputed art into their uncouth rock.
It’s not Damon Albarn, a mega-talented writer for sure who can turn his hand to Chinese opera as quickly as he can rattle off some pseudo G-funk with Snoop Dogg. It’s not Dave the drummer either. Low-key Dave is more than happy in his old Teenage Fanclub t-shirt and standing for the right sort of politics, ready to be called upon for the pension-topping reunion shows when the public demands. And it’s not you, cheesemaking Alex. Sorry, but your pout and your cheekbones and your studied posturing, not to mention your aching mid-90s desire to be John Taylor for teenage girls in Adidas shell toes makes you just about the most punchable man there’s ever been in music. When people say they don’t like Blur, you’re the reason.
Step forward Graham Coxon. The other half of the band’s unassuming, ego-free side, Coxon quietly gets on with his job of being an arty lead guitar player in one of the nation’s greatest singles bands; hunched and studied, inventive and unique, angry and noisy but restrained and bluesy when required. Always interesting though. Especially when doing backwards rolls, Tele in hand, riffage ringing out from a 4 x 12 cabinet at ear-splitting volume. Oh yeah.
The guitar-as-siren on Popscene. The off-beat grind of the guitar against the fluid groove of Girls And Boys. The Beatlesy clang of Beetlebum‘s chorus. Coxon made them all. Lifted them, elevated the songs from promising to pretty much indispensable.
He’s tight ‘n taught, all wandering XTC by way of Remain In Light Afro-menace across forgotten single Music Is My Radar, before cutting free with an almighty wasp stuck in a food blender guitar break. Remind yrself of its greatness below.
Blur – Music Is My Radar
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2018/09/01-music-is-my-radar.mp3
He’s all over Song 2‘s silly double drummer ‘n double Rat distortion blowout, its noisy jet engine take-off chorus following a clanging intro that he strived to play as horribly and sloppily as possibly. Why? He was fed up with the screaming teenage girls and pin-up appeal of his band. A bit of unexpected guitar Frippery and freakery kept him entertained and the audience on their toes. Woo-hoo.
The tension and release in M.O.R.’s gutbucket punk is magic. An arty use of fuck ’em up effect pedals welded to the band’s call and response vocals, some of them shouted through a far-away megaphone, and open chorded let-go in the chorus is the sound of the guitar player pulling against the grain of the rest of the band. Add in a clanging, out of tune piano right at the end and you have a pop single that made number 15 surely only on the back of the band’s name. Can’t imagine the shell toes and Fila tracksuits lapping this little Britpop ditty up very easily.
Blur – M.O.R.
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/04-m-o-r.mp3
Coxon is possibly most at home on Coffee And TV, its weird descending chords adding wooze to the vocal’s melody – his vocal, as it goes – before the all-out sonic freak attack of the ‘solo’, a worked-up in the studio affair where he stomped on and off his pedal board with all the enthusiasm of Gripper Stebson pogoing on poor Ro-land Browning’s head. You knew that already though.
Uniqueness. That’s the secret. What makes Blur so great? Graham Coxon, of course. In a lineage of great English singles bands, Blur may well be, for now, the last in that line. From The Beatles, The Kinks and The Who through to The Jam, Madness and The Smiths, an ability to amalgamate melody and electric guitars to an undeniable signature sound is a trick that all guitar bands strive for, yet few manage. Coxon at the controls of his array of effect pedals ensured Blur found their place in this exclusive club.
Some songs just fit on car journeys. Queens Of The Stone Age’s No One Knows and a midnight stretch of the relatively new ring road that by-passes the south side of Glasgow sounds awesome at 70 mph. Hall And Oates I Can’t Go For That goes nicely with cruise control on the Sunshine State’s Interstate 4. Radiohead’s There There at national speed limit-defying pace on the M4 north in an unseasonally quiet mid-July heatwave. Tindersticks’ Tiny Tears on a rain-soaked October Isle of Arran. Underworld’s Dark And Long… Stevie Wonder’s Boogie On Reggae Woman… freakin’ Band On The Run….Orbital’s Chime and the badly-needing-an-upgrade Barrhead – Irvine road fit together like hand in glove. Talking of which, the giddy acoustic rush of Bigmouth Strikes Again sounds just right driving up a deserted Dumbarton Road at two in the morning. Favourite car soundtracks. We’ve all got them.
Which takes me to the Highlands, 1993. We’re on some sort of road trip, the wee Ford Fiesta packed to the gunnels with waterproofs and Goretex and umbrellas and cagoules and all the usual things you’d take to the north of Scotland at the height of summer. We’ve a radio that simply refuses to tune to anything either side of Radio 1 and half a dozen tapes, carefully curated home-made jobs that the temperamental in-car tape player has already tried to devour before breaking north of Dunbartonshire.
At one point deep in the Highlands, heading somewhere towards the standing stones at Clava Cairns, Radio 1 drops out to intermittent static. We need to gamble on the willingness of the tape machine to play ball…and play tapes. Thankfully on this occasion it does…and it leaves me with a memory burned to the hard drive of the music section in my brain.
World Party‘s All I Gave is sandwiched mid-side, placed somewhere between Somewhere In My Heart and Groove Is In The Heart and it provides the ideal soundtrack for a jaw-dropping run through Scotland’s rich countryside. There are purple/grey peaks on the horizon, snow-flecked even in summer, with clear winding rivers far below that shimmer like chrome, old guys waist deep and fly-fishing them dry, surrounded by patchworks of untouched green fields bordered by stately pines and firs… an entire shortbread tin image of Scotland in real life, right in front of us in widescreen technicolour.
World Party – All I Gave
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/11-all-i-gave.mp3
We like World Party. Their Bang! album is a current constant in our lives and All I Gave is our favourite song on it. Karl Wallinger has clearly been kissed on both cheeks by the Beatles’ gene, his George Harrisonisms never more to the fore than on this track. His vocals, joyful and soaring and full of his toothy sunshine smile do the sha-la-la in all the right places and tug at the strings of the heart whenever the minor chords come round. Woozy mellotronish psychedelia shares a bed with wheezing, asthmatic slide guitar, playing on top of unexpected chord changes and a melodic bassline that you really hope is played on an attention-to-detail Hohner violin bass. We rewind the track plenty and often and we never tire of it.
“I will always love you,” we sing aloud, unselfconsciously and out of tune, and the wee car with its questionable suspension bounces us up and over the brow of another single track hill. A stag – “A stag!!” – watches nonplussed as we clatter past. An eagle – “An eagle!!” – spirals in the sky to our left. The fisherman casts his fly one more time. We don’t see if the river has given up any more of its load as we’re now heading through the pines and onto Clava Cairns and its Bronze Age standing stones where, spookily, Radio 1 crackles back into life and ruins everything.
That moment with All I Gave though. That’ll last forever.
Sail on, Karl Wallinger. You were great.
My old pal Derek was mad on coffee, in both senses of the phrase. He drank it the way a fish might presumably drink water, or the way Shane MacGowan evaporated his pints of gin, y’know; one regularly after the other, repeated non stop until bedtime. One too many and he’d be a gibbering, gum rattling freak, speeding away quite happily on a perfectly legal drug. In this state he could carpenter an intricate dado rail around your hall in the time it took the kettle to boil. A solid wood floor could routinely be laid in under an hour. The 60 Minute Make-Over? Our Derek was doing that while Claire Sweeney was still Lindsey Corkhill, mate.
Way back around 1997 Derek bought a satisfyingly chunky Italian percolator and would enjoy the ritual of preparing an espresso for you. Then another. And another. And one more before leaving. We’d be playing guitars and with each passing espresso the strumming got that little bit more ragged and loose-threaded at the ends until we were murdering the classics with Java and Illy and Lavazza running rampant through our systems. I remember rattling like a Scotrail diesel train on the walks back from his house, jerking from heel to toe at a hundred miles an hour, shaky and ill and continually needing to pee, then unable to sleep way past the midnight hour. Have you ever watched an Alex Higgins 100+ break? That. Can you miss the feeling of being totally wired? When your pals are no longer here to share it with you, of course you can.
We were at Songs Ya Bass in Glasgow’s Buff Club at the weekend. An idea that grew out of music nights in Rik and Nell’s house, for 11 strong years SYB has filled a quarterly slot in one of the city’s mankiest upstairs clubs. The premise is simple. Message Rik and Nell with 3 songs you’d want to dance/jump around to and they’ll create a playlist from everyone’s requests then play them at a decent volume until 11pm, when the Buff Club proper opens its doors and the oldies and goldies and grey hairs and nae hairs retreat down the sticky carpeted stairs and make their way to Glasgow Central for the last train home.
It was midway through Dog Eat Dog, or maybe Voodoo Ray on Saturday night, when I realised the Red Stripe was taking me well on my way to pished. The video screen slideshow that never repeats itself all night – a labour of love for Rik – had rotated from Joe Strummer to Run DMC to One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest‘s Nurse Ratched and the upstairs balcony and mobbed dancefloor were both a blurry haze of arms aloft folk not giving two hoots about what any onlooker might’ve thought of their dancing styles. Faces loomed in, grinning. The legs loosened to elastic. The sprung wooden floor (sacrilegiously laid on top of a Jim Lambie work of art, they say) became bouncy castle like. The slideshow faded from Lee Perry to Peter Cook and Dudley Moore to Muhammed Ali to The Cramps to Pele to Wilko Johnson to all the other greats. The music jarred unexpectedly from Gerald’s ‘hey oh, a-ha, a, uh-oh-ah‘ to Wham’s Young Guns to The Clash to New Order to…! Hey!…
thump-thump-thumpa-thump… ‘I’m Totally Wired! I’m Totally Wired!…I drank a jar of coffee and then I took some of these…. and I’m TOTALLY WIRED!‘ Magic!
The Fall – Totally Wired
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/1-06-totally-wired.m4a
The guitars, cheesegrater thin, cut through like tinfoil to a filling. Clang…scree…tcchhhskkkk…; relentless, repetitive and rickety, but really, really great! Steve Hanley, Mark E Smith’s long-time lieutenant plays looping, thumping bass. It worms its way into yr skull and stays there, uninvited but very welcome, the empathetic drums pounding away in the background and hammering you into submission. On top of it all, Mark Smith yelps and barks and screeches like the nails down the blackboard of popular music that he was, abrasive ADHD in the form of verse and chorus.
This – Totally Wired – is the exact jittery, nerve-shredding, anxiety-inducing sound of too much coffee (and other things, if that’s yr bag). It’s also, as it happens, the unofficial soundtrack to those frantic and fidgety walks home from Derek’s, senses jangling into the wee small hours. T-T-T-Totally Wired!!!
Jazz. Mention the word to a certain demographic and they”ll say one of two things; “Jazz? I don’t like it,” or “Jaaazz! Nnnice!” The more positive reaction is nearly always delivered mock-whispered and accompanied with a hand gesture, the index finger curling to pinch invisible air with the tip of the thumb, John Thompson Fast… Continue reading Good Golly Mr Molley
There’s the clip in Spinal Tap when Nigel Tufnel, all Jeff Beck hair and street punk gum snap, is showing off his collection of vintage guitars. He holds up a Les Paul (of course) – “s’a ’59” (of course) – and, as the interviewer asks him the value of the guitar (of course), Tufnel butts in and implores the interviewer to be quiet and listen to the sustain of his unplugged guitar.
“Just listen…the sustayn…just listen to it…it’s faymous for its sustayn…eeaaaaaaahh…”
It’s ridiculous and smart and very funny, with Christopher Guest playing it straight and just on the right side of dumb but rich Londoner, and with much of Spinal Tap being cribbed from stories involving real-life musicians, you wouldn’t bet against this being a true story too.
Is it a myth that old guitars sound better? Apparently not. Or maybe that should be apparently knot. Old guitars sing with the release of being played again. It’s a fact. Scientific too.
The science of it all (usually a subject that has me passed out and horizontal in under a minute) decrees that as wood ages, the sap in the wood dries out. So the more the guitar is played, the more the wood vibrates, y’see, and it’s those vibrations that help to speed up the drying out process. It stands to reason that an old guitar that’s been well played – a ’59 Les Paul, say, or my own ’78 Telecaster (most definitely well played rather than played well) – will indeed have a more cultured and refined tone than one that’s just straight from the luthier’s workshop.
Acoustic guitars tend to have a more noticeable improvement with age. There’s no pick-ups for starters, so the sound is made at the source rather than via amplification, and the instrument’s hollow body helps that sound to resonate. The wood the guitar is made from (and that could be alder, mahogany, ash, elder, a combination of some or all…) and the tension of strings used and how regularly it’s been played will all affect its overall tone.
When my dad passed away I inherited his Lag acoustic guitar. It wasn’t a particularly expensive guitar and it wasn’t that old when I fell heir to it, ten years maybe, but the old folkie (and that’s a story in itself) had treated it well and played it regularly enough (at gigs – I told you there was a story) that playing it is a proper joy. The action is low and smooth. There is no fret buzz. The bass notes are rich and reverberating. It handles the capo at the highest of frets, happily stays in tune and it responds really well to Keith Richards open G tuning. Best of all, what I’ve found if I tune it a whole step down, is that it sounds bassy and bluesy and bendy and exactly the sort of pitch and frequency that might have someone like Lee Mavers getting a whole set of songs from.
I’ve kept it in this tuning for over a year and there’s rarely a night when I don’t pick it up for a bit – anything from a few minutes to a few hours – and play it, the dusty ghosts of my dad’s fingers, just below my own, spidering up and down the fretboard and dancing across its six strings as I get to grips with a tricky Johnny Marr passage or a pastoral McCartney number or, this week, The La’s Son Of A Gun. Down-tuned and loose and funky, there’s enough give on the strings to give it soul, enough open strings in the picked verses to ring out naturally between the rhythmic off beats played by the right hand’s finger nails on the scratchplate and enough bass to make the strummed chorus full of fat and full of flavour. Unsurprisingly, The La’s version is also played in this tuning; the tuning of humming fridges and ’60s dust and the Merseyssippi and single bloody mindedness. Look long enough around this blog and you’ll probably find it.
Another guitarist more known for his skewed Telecaster playing than anything else is Blur’s Graham Coxon. He’s a great player too, happily chopping out punkish riffs and wiry leads and art-pop, rule-breaking bridges, employing two Rat distortion boxes simultaneously to devastating effect. What’s perhaps less-well known is that he’s also a fantastically accomplished acoustic player.
Graham Coxon – Sorrow’s Army
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2023/09/08-sorrows-army.mp3Sorrow’s Army from his 2009 Spinning Top solo album conjures up the spirit of Davy Graham and rattles its way out of the traps like Mrs Robinson on speed, strings snapping tautly – he favours skinny ones, a 9 gauge after some advice from Bert Jansch, every finger on his right hand employed in blurry syncopation, left hand shifting through 7ths and minors with dextrous ease, the squeaks and scrapes of flesh and nail against the strings adding fireside warmth. It’s not Girls & Boys or Popscene or Beetlebum, but when the song’s clattering Magic Bus rhythm announces itself around the minute mark, it all falls into place. The accompanying album is worth investigating too, should this be your kinda thing.
Old guitars, handed down, played forever. Now there’s your sustain-ability. Just listen.
I’ve been thinking a lot about Duran Duran. Don’t ask me why.
I’ve been thinking about the electrified telegraph wire that helicopters its way in at the start of Planet Earth, and its synth hook and its bubbling bass breakdown and its flat, robotic lead vocal and its air-punching bah bah-bah pop refrain and I’ve been thinking that it’s a truly great track that I could never admit to liking at school. Or anytime even really until now.
Duran Duran – Planet Earth
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2023/09/panet-earth.mp3I’ve been thinking about the band name. Duran Duran. It’s good. Runs off the tongue like a little slip of alliterative poetry in a ‘so good we named ourselves twice’ manner. It was cribbed, as you well know, from a character in a comic book series that became a cult movie, just like the literary/cinematic influences of (The) Heaven 17 and Fine Young Cannibals and The Tyrell Corporation, all bands who came after the pioneering Duran Duran.
I’ve been thinking how Duran Duran properly learned their chops and paid their playing dues in the swill circuit of toilet pubs around the Midlands, Bowie obsessives who admired a good cut of suit as much as a good riff, and as such should be correctly thought of in the same way as The Smiths or Dexys or The Specials. You might logically include early Spandau Ballet in the same way, of course, but personally, I…just…can’t…bring…myself…to…admit…this.
I’ve been thinking about how they made the most of their celebrity and their status, flicking casually yet eagerly through catalogues of supermodels in the upmarket agencies of early ’80s London, ordering girls like takeaway food to appear in their glossy, expensive videos and maybe even something more at the post-shoot pool party.
I’ve been thinking about effete Nick Rhodes, a very smart man in his lipstick and his blusher and his exaggerated cheek bones and his highlit Lady Diana blow-dry and his…woah!…totally gorgeous wife. Some guys have all the luck, as the song goes. Maybe he picked her out of one of those catalogues and the after-party went particularly swimmingly.
I’ve been thinking about that ridiculous BBC4 documentary from a couple of years ago where they drive around Birmingham in an old Citroen and discuss their career in those self-assured and rounded Mid Atlan’ic accents they’ve acquired through years of international jet set travel, le Bon’s aloofness and self-importance as inflated as his jowly, hungry-like-the-wolf face (no matter how hard he lemon sucks that affected pout), yet still is always overshadowed by effortless John Taylor and his cheekbones and his hair and his rockstar-on-a-day-off choice of wardrobe.
I’ve been thinking about those terrible, laughable, rich-guys-being-cool versions of 911 Is A Joke and White Lines that they released in the mid ’90s, the world turning to the bow-legged beat of Manchester while Duran Duran try to claim relevance with rap/rock abominations that even the Red Hot Chili Peppers would steer clear of. Don’t Do It, indeed.
I’ve been thinking also that I might need to reappraise that tatty copy of the Rio album that I found in a charity shop, £1, no bag, and me leaving with a face blushing the colour of the album cover itself. It’s filed there, spine-on and untouched since the day it was shamefully saved from the skip, just between Dr Feelgood’s Private Practice and Ian Dury’s New Boots And Panties!, an anomaly of airbrushed designer pop amongst the grit and grime of ‘real’ music.
Duran Duran on this blog? Makes you think, doesn’t it?
Them targetted ads, man. You don’t get nuthin’ for free. While you’re scrolling obliviously through social media, Zuckerberg’s and Musk’s analytics monkeys are harvesting your data; your likes and dislikes, the length of time you interact with something, the speed you scroll past, whether or not you click a follow-on link. It’s happening right now… Continue reading Born Skanky
You can hear sound in pictures, can’t you? The slick, spitting whoosh of a car’s tyres on a wet road, the rush of wind in the ears as a hawk circles the sky. I can hear sound and music when I look at art. A far-off accordion on a Parisian arrondissement when I look at… Continue reading pUNk’s DeAd
“I feel that having a No. 1 record derailed my career. It seems to me that being a pop star is almost like being in a type of prison. You have to be a good girl. The media was making me out to be crazy because I wasn’t acting like a pop star was supposed… Continue reading Everyone Wants A Pop Star But I Am A Protest Singer
The Hand The Rocks The Cradle was the first track Morrissey and Marr composed together, not long after Johnny “with my hair like a loaf of French bread” knocked on Morrissey’s door and suggested they try and write some songs. What the legend doesn’t say is that Johnny was accompanied by a pal to keep… Continue reading Moz ‘n Rockers
Interview with Martin McAloon, 14th July 2023 “The birds aren’t too loud for you, are they?” Martin McAloon, bass guitarist in Prefab Sprout and brother of Paddy, the band’s lauded writer and leader, is sitting in his garden pondering the notion of taking the Prefab Sprout catalogue the length and breadth of the UK in… Continue reading McAlooney Tunes
If I’d been born 20 years earlier, or maybe 30…or maybe even 40, if I’d allowed the curling blue smoke of a couple of dozen pre-breakfast Gauloises to lick the nostrils of my beaky turtle nose and embed the fuggy scent into a greasy hair-do that had never met the acquaintance of a comb (yet… Continue reading Sweet Jane
PJ Harvey has a new album just out. Other than one or two tracks from the radio, I’ve not yet heard it, but as I have done with all her records to date, I’ll get to it properly at some point and listen to it from start to finish, uninterrupted by onion chopping or the… Continue reading Dress Rehearsal
What follows is the result of a blatant and barefaced attempt at getting something cool for free…and succeeding. I’d noticed on Instagram that one or two musicians I follow seemed to endorse G7th Capos (the finest capos around, dontchaknow) so I speculatively suggested to the good folks who make them that if I were perhaps… Continue reading And Now, A Word From Our Sponsors
Wunchewfreefo’! I listened to my 38 year old copy of Ramones‘ It’s Alive today and it reminded me just how much of a force the live Ramones were. From the first wunchewfreefo’! onwards, they blast forth from the stage a tidal wave of lightning-quick chord changes and precision drum breaks and concrete slabs of bass,… Continue reading Gabba Gold
Imagine the music. Skittering, pistol shot Axelrod drum breaks. Staccato Fender bass. Thelonious Monk piano trills. Elegant woodwind and sweeping strings that swoop to an unresolved Bacharach chord and hang motionless in expectant dead air. Now picture a scene sound-tracked by the music above. A private jet at high altitude. Only two passengers and a… Continue reading Monkey Business
The watusi was a brief dance craze of the early ’60s, popularised through surfing music. To dance the watusi, you didn’t need a partner. You planted your feet firmly on the ground as if standing carefully yet confidently on your surfboard and then, with arms outstretched and palms facing down, flailed those upper limbs as… Continue reading Dancing With Myself
Vancouver, September 1997. We’re there on honeymoon, living in a downtown hotel with a revolving restaurant at the top, our midpoint between 5 days in Toronto and 3 nights at a log cabin/hotel combo in the up and coming resort of Whistler. Not quite yet the destination for rich spring breakers or the Winter Olympics… Continue reading Hi, My Name Is Stereo Mike
This photo of George Harrison appeared last week, initiating from Paul McCartney’s private collection and whizzed onto the internet, never to be private again. It comes from an unseen collection of Beatles photographs, lost and found and gathered together in a new book – and later in the year, to be an exhibition at the… Continue reading Fab Fortress
Some songs are just there, like staircases and steering wheels and stainless steel sinks, as much a part of the fabric of life as to be ubiquitous and ever-present, unnoticed or unthought of and maybe even taken for granted. Blue Monday might be one. Come On Eileen certainly is. To this list I’d add The… Continue reading How Come I Love Them More?
The Style Council’s Shout To The Top is the bright ‘n breezy signifier of a summer just around the corner. A groove of loose piano and stabbing guitar, it’s a string swept beauty that endures to this day. If you’ve caught Paul Weller on any recent tour, there’s a good chance he’ll have slotted it… Continue reading It’s A Funny Little Thing When It Dawns Upon Ya*
Not the first question I was expecting last week. My 16 year-old and myself were in the car and, in a rare change from discussing the misfortunes of football (both our team – Kilmarnock – and the local U17 team he plays for), the chat turned to music. Future Sound Of London’s Papua New Guinea was playing, all rattling breakbeats, throbbing bass and ghostly samples, but despite my enthusing over it, he remained unconvinced. Nothing new there, to be honest. I can point out a dozen great songs during any car journey and he’ll shrug, unconvinced (unwilling more likely) to admit to liking his dad’s taste in music. The electronic sheen of FSOL’s track endured though, and it clearly set off a synaptic sequence in his brain. And then he came out with it. “Dad, d’you like Aphex Twin?”
He’d already blindsided me a few months ago by unselfconsciously humming I’ll Be Your Mirror as we passed on the stairs. When I stopped, turned and asked if that was The Velvet Underground he was singing, he shrugged nonplussed as though it was the most natural thing in the world. “D’you know it, like?” he threw back, not even stopping for confirmation. Of course I did, and of course he knew I did, and of course he knew that I had a copy (3 actually) of “the banana album that it’s on.”
“How d’you know about the Velvet Underground?” I asked.
“I dunno. I just heard them somewhere and liked them. I like Beginning To See The Light too. And Can’t Stand It. And Pale Blue Eyes…(thinks)…There She Goes Again…’Ah’m waitin’ fawr ma ma-yan’…”
Jeez. Turns out he knows them all and can do a passable Lou Reed into the bargain.
“D’you remember when we were in New York last year, and I stopped to take a picture of the street sign near our hotel and you all laughed at me? Maybe you’ll get the reference now...”
“Oh…yeah!…”
When I was his age, I spent the time properly denying my parents’ record collection. Apart from Dylan’s Bringing It All Back Home there was nothing much in there to shout about, although I did investigate it when no-one was looking, retaining some of the more interesting ones in the interests of cross-generational research purposes. He’s denying mine too, I think, but he knows far more of it than I’d ever have imagined. As teenagers, we had to dig deep, swap tales and stories and sometimes actual TDKs to gain access to the good stuff. Rake the record shops, sift through the shelves in the library, maybe occasionally get the loan of an album on promise of death if it was returned in less than the condition it was given to you in. Now, it seems, social media analytics throw all sorts of stuff in your direction. Act on any of its suggestions and a hundred more threads and recommendations will unravel, and all just for your ears only.
From the Velvets, he discovered The Strokes. Most teenagers love The Strokes, it turns out. Any aspiring local guitar stranglers look to them in the same way that we looked to the music of 20 years previously when we first started out. Watch out for the big Strokes renaissance when a wee local band breaks out and rides the crest of a scuzzy New York wave. It’s just around the corner.
Aphex Twin though. He’s so low profile, so uncompromising, so esoteric in a way that The Strokes and (nowadays) the Velvet Underground just aren’t. “How on earth did you find out about him?” I ask. “Tik Tok? Spotify? A video game? Somewhere else?”
“I dunno. He’s great music to study to. It’s longform and in the background and doesn’t distract you from what you’re trying to learn. It’s a bit like Minecraft music, just better. All the songs have strange titles…just numbers sometimes. I don’t know the names of the tracks I like. But I like what I’ve heard.”
Aphex Twin – Xtal
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/01-xtal.mp3If it helps with the studying, no parent is going to complain about that, which is why, on Thursday night, our house was filled for an hour with the DIY ambience and womblike pulses of Selected Ambient Works Vol. 1, the pair of us headnodding around the living room, me the uncool dad playing him this new music that he thought was ‘his’, he the teenager, mortified at the thought of liking the same music as his dad.
Next week – “Dad, which Throbbing Gristle album should I buy first?”
(Answer: I dunno. He’ll probably be able to tell me.)
The unexpected news of the death of Andy Rourke from cancer flooded my social timelines this morning. From his old pal Johnny’s numb statement onwards, the outpouring was long and plenty. Lauren Laverne was playing William… as I pulled into the car park at work and despite having heard its 2 min 12 seconds of pathos and sparkle a million times, I stayed put until it had played out, paying particular attention to Andy’s trebly, melodic bass runs because, well, that’s what everyone tuned to 6 Music at that point was doing. After work, catching up with the minutiae of life on my phone, the roll call of people paying tribute – fellow musicians, pals, strangers – was never ending. No one had a bad word to say, not even Morrissey, whose well-worded tribute seemed genuine and sincere and a million miles from the sneering auld grump he’s become.
It’s quite amazing that someone who was only a quarter part of a group who burned brightly but briefly for roughly just 6 years should leave such an indelible mark, but that’s the power of the formative years for you.
The Smiths meant the world to many, me included, and were a lighthouse on the rocky shores of mid ‘80s music. I wasn’t disenfranchised or marginalised or trying to find myself or any of those clichés. I just needed a break from bad hair and bad productions and jaggy guitars and what was being sold to me and my peers as essential listening. The Smiths, with their pint-sized and elfin guitar wizard and singer with funny – that’s funny, not depressing – lyrics came along at the right time. They jangled, yeah, and they wailed, but there was far more to them than that, as you well know. There was a proper toughness to their sound, driving and thuggish and tough as nails – see Handsome Devil and Hand In Glove as evidence, but there was a proper tenderness too. A real musicality. Listen to This Night Has Opened My Eyes or later tracks such as I Won’t Share You for proof. Much of this is down to Johnny’s mercurial way with an augmented chord and a hellbent mission to overdub everything with tracks and tracks of smirry, smartarsed guitar, but the bedrock for Johnny’s free form colouring comes from Andy’s solid and steady playing, a duo playing in simpatico as only old pals can. A band ain’t nuthin’ without their rhythm section and The Smiths were blessed to have Andy pinning it all to the floor.
Many today have spotlit Andy’s magnificently trampolining workout on Barbarism Begins At Home, an early Smiths track so packed with Chicisms and the funk, so out of step with their material that it took until album two before they’d release a recording of it, as proof of Andy’s greatness. And they’d be correct. But look, there’s not a bassline on any Smiths track that isn’t considered, clever, unique and so obviously Andy. Whether he was dripping in elasticated funk or slapping out rockabilly or meandering like McCartney around the melody, he left a mark as distinguishable as the haircut he kept for all those years. Johnny today pointed to Andy’s contribution to The Queen Is Dead’s title track, saying that as Andy recorded it, he knew it was a moment he’d remember forever. Rock solid, reliable, dead centre, a bass player who could play in the background yet step out as lead instrument when required.
Check out the Motown-by-way-of-Moss Side twang of his isolated bass runs on This Charming Man. Rubber bandy Andy.
This Charming Man – Andy’s Isolated Bass
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/04-bass.mp3When the news of any pop star’s passing is announced, it’s perfectly natural to feel something, especially if you’re a fan of their work. When Andy’s news gatecrashed my newsfeed this morning, a little bit of me, a little bit of every fan of The Smiths, died too. Memories of times soundtracked by The Smiths came blazing straight into sharp focus, along with the sudden realisation that while the memories remain, the principal player in creating those memories is gone. 59. No age at all, as they say.
God only knows what it’ll feel like when Johnny himself or, brace yourself, McCartney goes.
Or, There’s Always Been A Jazz Influence To My Writing. Not in the true ‘Beat’ sense, you understand. Not like Kerouac or Ginsberg or Burroughs who lived in it, lived through it, wrote from the eye of the howling storm and emerged many hundreds of pages later, daddio, with hardened personality traits and track marks and publishable manuscripts to show for it. Nah, that’s not me. In the months and years since lockdown, I’ve taken to soundtracking any and all working from home sessions with jazz; piano-led and in the background or with ear-splitting horns in the foreground, vocal-free and meditative or with a heavy bossa nova boogaloo breakdown, it doesn’t matter. I’ll never know the thrill of being waited upon in the smoky and claustrophobic environs of a late ’50s/early ’60s Village Vanguard or Birdland but I just might get to imagine it through the music that sustains. I’ve plenty of jazz records and CDs to pick from, and pick from I do.
I’ve a soft spot for the accepted classics – A Love Supreme (uh-huh) and Getz/Gilberto (obvs) and Mingus Ah Um (of course) and Kind Of Blue (Come away in! – What took you so long?!) – but I’ve a growing appreciation of other artists and albums, many of which would very probably feature on a ‘Seriously?! 20 Obvious Jazz Albums‘ kinda list; Wayne Shorter’s meandering and highly sampleable Speak No Evil is a great ‘get your act’ together record. By the end of the first side, you should find yourself engrossed and focused on the task at hand. Cannonball Adderley’s Somethin’ Else is the ideal ‘take me to lunch’ but finish this bit off before we get there record. Sonny Clark’s Cool Struttin’ works best as a post-lunch kick-starter, all high brass and big band grooves – a proper afternoon slump destroyer. And if you find yourself against a tight deadline with tea time fast approaching and no-one to rustle it up but yourself, stick on Money Jungle, Duke Ellington’s bruising one take riffathon where tracks are played/improvised and recorded in the one go.
The story goes that the trio – Ellington, double bassist Charles Mingus and multi-limbed drummer Max Roach – were given freedom to play in whichever way they saw fit, so side one begins slowly as the trio eke out a style and pattern of play, then fall into a groove somewhere before the end of that side, continue in the same wildly original fashion on side two before eventually ending in an inevitable all out sonic assault – atonal notes, dissonant chords, drum fills that sound like the Eastenders’ theme being pushed off a cliff, basslines that sound like the annoying guy at the back of maths who’s twanging his ruler off the end of his desk while the teacher tries to explain a particularly challenging strain of calculus – because by this point in the session the three players had worked out that they didn’t particularly like one another and were communicating exactly that through their instruments. See yr Troggs tapes? Zilch in comparison.
If, like me you’re a sleevenotes ‘n credits reader, you’ll notice the same musicians cropping up on one another’s recordings all the time. John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley add their blues-flecked signatures to Miles’ Kind Of Blue. Across his ouvre, Miles himself gives piano roles to Wayne Shorter, Gil Evans and Herbie Hancock. Cannonball’s Somethin’ Else allows Miles and drummer Art Blakey to step out of the shadows and stamp their not insignificant presence across the grooves.
You play on my album and I’ll play on yours would appear to be the mandate of jazz. When it works, like on Kind Of Blue, great. When it don’t, (Money Jungle, maybe) eurgh. In rock music terms, it’s a bit like having Alex Turner guest on a Bobby Gillespie album where St Vincent and Johnny Marr swap guitar riffs while Zak Starkey and Viv Albertine pin down the groove, their respective management thrashing out the publishing rights with the various labels involved. Art v’s publishing? It’s exactly why, unless you’re the Style Council, this sort of stuff doesn’t really happen in ‘rock’ very often. Weller, man, he really was influenced by the jazzers in more ways than you realise.
Someone who wishes he was influenced in the same way is the aforementioned Bobby Gillespie. A walkin’, talkin’, stick-thin cliché, you’re never far away from an achingly hip point of reference when his mouth starts spouting the same StonesWhoPistolsClashDubFunkPunkSkunk jive that he’s whiffled on about since 1990. Just what is it that you want to do, Bob? Smash the system? Or sell-out to the M&S advert makers? It’s your call, clearly. The kids’ school fees must be due. Loaded, indeed.
At the Ayr Pavilion in 1994, Gillespie was mid duet with Denise (it may have been during Give Out But Don’t Give Up) and, as the band took it down – “Take it down, Throb, take it down!” – see?, the cliché kills – he starts to scat: ‘A love supreme, a love supreme, a love supreme…‘ over and over, leading the band higher and faster and louder to the song’s conclusion. The guy next to me turns to his pal and says earnestly, “Davie! He’s daein a Will Dowling cover!” (Google it if you need to). Very funny. An appalled Bobby would’ve split his skanky leather breeks if he’d heard them.
John Coltrane – A Love Supreme, Pt. 1 (Acknowledgment)
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2023/05/a-love-supreme-pt.-i-e28093-acknowledgement.mp3
John Coltrane‘s A Love Supreme record is, cliché klaxon alert, meditative (honk!) and spiritual (Honk!) and contemplative (HONK!) and religious (HONKETY-HONK!), and it’s wonderful for it. Built around a core of four notes – dum, dum, dah-dum, and four syllables – A-Love-Su-Preme – Coltrane and the rest of his quartet fly far and wide, to Marrakesh, to Tangiers at times, Elvin Jones thrashing the hell out of his kit, McCoy Tyner hammering the ivories one moment, feather dusting them the next, Jimmy Garrison’s double bass walking the long road home at every opportunity. Coltrane and his tenor sax plays it all; hard boppin’, slow burnin’, furious riffin’, ee-long-gay-ted mood swings.
The quartet always comes back to the core though. Whether it’s Tyner on the keys or Garrison’s bass, or even Jones’ cymbal splashes, they always come back to the four note core. It’s premier league jazz, A Love Supreme, Haaland and Rashford and Trent and Billy Gilmour in a special meeting of minds when their four distinct personalities create something even greater than the sum of their parts, a record as essential as any other record you might care to offer up.
There’s a great writer you may already be aware of and read and enjoy. If not, you must remedy that forthwith. Adam Turner blogs regularly at Bagging Area, a blog that’s been an internet sensation almost as long as Plain Or Pan. While the world twitches impatiently and slowly loses the ability to focus on something for longer than 3 seconds at a time, us elder statesmen and women of blogging (and there are a few of us scattered out there) fly the flag for words and a more genteel pace of online engagement. Adam’s blog contains the odd bit of crossover with the music that features here, but mainly Bagging Area is steeped in electronic music, new releases and remixes and things that bang and beat. There’s rarely a week goes by when I don’t find myself investigating further an artist that I’d previously been unaware of. Pay his blog a visit. Even if the music is not for you, I think you’d like it.
In the past 18 months, Adam has taken the brave – and clearly cathartic – decision to write about his son Isaac. In November 2021, Isaac lost his life due to complications brought on by Covid and Adam writes clearly and honestly about a life now steeped in grief; the anger, the rage, the black hole of helplessness, the sudden unexpected triggers of a Facebook memory or unanticipated postal delivery that brings it all to the fore again. Isaac’s death is an all-consuming thing, an ever-present in he and his family’s life – of course it is – and when Adam writes about his son, his words are nothing less than spectacular. Anyone who’s a parent will feel every nuance in the turns of phrase and dignity with which Adam writes, words that I’m not sure Adam would’ve thought himself capable of conjuring up a couple of years ago while writing enthusiastically about an Andrew Weatherall remix or another ACR Manchester show. I mean that as a compliment. Writing about frivolous stuff is one thing. Emoting plainly and matter-of-factly over the big stuff is quite another. Adam’s writing is unmissable.
I’ve written not long ago about musical triggers; songs or lyrics or riffs that set off immediate Proustian rushes and have me scampering back to a time, place and people that made me who I am today. True Faith and Mark, Baker Street and my dad, Age of Consent and Derek. Not long after I’d read Adam’s latest blog, I was foutering about the house, REM‘s Reckoning album playing just that bit too loudly as I busied myself with the bins and the washing and what have ye. Don’t Go Back To Rockville started playing and, man, stone me if another one of those memories didn’t gatecrash my evening. As Peter Buck leans into his Rickenbacker, it’s suddenly and quite unexpectedly 1991 and Derek Reid and myself are in Grant’s dad’s living room. We’re in the process of putting together what will be the definitive line-up of Sunday Drivers, the greatest band that never was, and Derek and myself are sussing one another out, aiming for common ground and a base upon which to build our (cough) twin axe attack. He’s showing me the chords to Rockville and as we fall into it together, Grant stands disgusted behind Derek’s Jazz Chorus amp and scowls at us. He says nothing though, not even when Derek pulls off the flashy riff after the chorus – and as it plays tonight, I’m seeing Derek – goofy grin, Marti Pellow hair, ‘what d’ye think a that?‘ look on his face as it flies from his lovely yellowing Telecaster. It’s one of the songs that was played as the room filled up for his funeral and I saw him then too.
REM – Don’t Go Back to Rockville
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2023/05/y2mate.is-dont-go-back-to-rockville-egmt56s0y3c-160k-1657677452048.mp3
“Right,” says Grant as we run out of steam. “Jist tae be clear – ah’m no’ singin’ in a fuckin’ country-rockin’ jingly jangly band, right? Yous can stop that pish right noo.”
We stopped that pish right there and then, found our fuzz pedals and the rest was(n’t) history.
I don’t go looking for musical triggers, but when they creep up on you and slap you clean on the face, it’s strangely comforting and somewhat brilliant.
Now, go and visit Adam at Bagging Area.
Those first two Ride EPs are, I’d imagine, a well-played pair of favourites amongst much of this readership. The red rosed and yellow daffodiled covers conceal the thrilling sounds of a band at egg-hatching stage, fresh outta the rehearsal room, their fringes and long-sleeved t-shirts just as studied as the music they are aiming for – a sound forged, so the legend goes, when Andy Bell’s mum began hoovering the living room while he listened to The Beatles. It’s fantastically evocative of time and place; loud, uncontrollable, thrashed and bashed, but with the whiff of a melody bubbling under the Panzer attack of effect-heavy twin Rickenbackers and careering, pummelling backline.
The twin vocal duties are steeped in heady Byrdsian/Beach Boys ambitions and sometimes even, like on Like A Daydream, they almost get there. Mainly though, Mark and Andy are guitar players…and don’t they know it. Heavy on the fuzz, generous with the compression and wholly feral with their whiplashed approach to the wah-wah, their tunes are scorched and scarred, dragged backwards through the edge and laid to rest on vinyl forever.
Live, Ride was an even more thrilling prospect. The rhythm section was suddenly fantastic. I mean, who knew?! Laurence the drummer played a fairly standard kit, but his cymbal splashes, his star-of-the-show scattergunning Moonisms and Bonham-ish thumps and thuds fairly shook loose the fillings. Steve – one of two Our Price alumni to play bass in a successful indie rock act – (a prize will be in the post for the first person to suggest the other) – was locked into the groove, eyes focused on his pedal board, huge slabs of thunk emanating forth.
Somewhere at the back of the room in the Glasgow Mayfair was Alan McGee, giving off full-on McLaren/Warhol vibes, his arms folded, admiring his charges, appreciating the huge Glasgow audience that had shown up so early in his band’s career, his ginger Dylan whitefro and Raybans setting off the biker jacket ‘n stripy tee-shirt combo perfectly. My abiding memory of the gig was just how rammed it was and that I had to watch most of the show by standing on one of the in-built velvet wall seats, seeing the stage and band reflected back to front, like a trippy pop promo, in one of the Mayfair’s many mirrors. Mark Gardener was playing his Rickenbacker and coaxing all manner of wild distortion and chiming echoes through a bog standard Peavey practice amp. There was hope for us all.
Despite the froth and Proustian rushes triggered by those first two EPs, it’s the band’s fourth EP that I’ve returned to over the years. Today Forever bridged the gap between the band’s first two albums and distils perfectly all that was great about the band at this time. If you were being generous, you might even consider this less of a single (or an EP) and more of a mini album. Less noisy (in places), certainly more refined and considered, it flirts with proggy undertones (their next single, Leave Them All Behind, was an all-out prog assault, but that’s for another time) and benefits from the band’s unshakeable confidence that everything they approached would be spectacularly great. Each track is unique in its own way. Each track is as essential as the last.
Ride – Unfamiliar
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2023/05/ride-unfamiliar.mp3The lead track Unfamiliar fades in on a wave of controlled guitar and is carried along by one of their best basslines, underpinning heavily-treated guitars and more of Laurence’s unpredictable drums. There’s a great bit, just before the vocals come in, when the beat drops to half tempo and the guitars, whacked out and dubby, suddenly conjure up images of Lee Perry and Black Ark. And, just as that notion hits you, here comes the vocal, submerged in sadness and melancholy, two voices singing about who knows what – that’s not important, it’s how it sounds that matters – and man, this sounds great! Smart arses point to Chelsea Girl and Leave Them All Behind as the high points in the group’s back catalogue. Smarter arses known it to be Unfamiliar. Every time.
Ride – Sennen
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2023/05/ride-sennen.mp3Just as you’re catching your breath from Unfamiliar‘s bruising and relentless yet ear-friendly assault, along comes Sennen. Named after Sennen Cove in Cornwall (and where the song’s video was filmed, I think) it’s built upon a lovely mesh of clean-chiming Cocteaus’ 12 strings and fuzzed-out riffage, topped off with more of those white boy indie rock vocals that make Home Counties girls called Emily and Rachel go weak at their stripy-tighted knees.
Sennen incorporates a lovely, subtle keyboard line that provides texture to the overload of overdubbed guitars. Since first hearing it, and on every play since, I’ve thought The Charlatans would do a great, Hammond-led version of this. There’s still time, Tim, there’s still time.
I heartily recommend pulling this record from your filing and giving it a fresh spin to what will be appreciative ears. It’s been playing an awful lot round here recently and so far no one has complained. In our house, that’s the mark of a good record, a very good record indeed.
As we hurtle downhill without the brakes on towards a weekend of jingoistic flag waving…and making Britain Great again…and wall-to-wall TV coverage…and stupid folk camping out, Blitz spirit style, to secure a spot on The Mall…and the same stupid folk participating in a mass swearing of allegiance to our newly minted monarch, my social media timelines have become increasingly filled with anti-Royal rhetoric. Much of it is eloquently put. Most of it is blunt in its dislike – hatred, even – of our Royal Family.
Privileged rich guy wearing a crown of stolen jewels parades through the austerity-hit streets in a golden carriage to wave at the less fortunate seems to be the cut of the anti-monarchists’ jib. And it’s a fair point.
Not many folk in my social circles, it seems, will be sitting down to view Saturday’s proceedings, and if they are, they’re keeping schtum about it.
There are over 6000 streets in Glasgow and not one has applied for a street party licence. Quite the turnaround from 1977 when the entire Scottish landscape was littered in wilting Union Jack bunting, brittle novelty crowns and broken pasting tables for months afterwards. It appears that the Royals, from the echo chamber of my Scottish social media feed at least, are antiquated and irrelevant, a relic from a bygone era that might only make some sort of sense on the pages of a history book.
I’m not a Royal hater as such – I’m a lover, not a fighter, as someone once said – but while I might sneak a peak at the plastic pomp and daft ceremony of it all (as I did when the Queen’s funeral was televised. History, innit?) I can’t really be doing with a figurehead who represents a family steeped in theft, crime, racism and bigotry, hush-ups, cover-ups, adultery and paedophilia, by both association and the inference suggested via multi-million pound pay-offs and the keeping of a low profile. That’s yr best of British, right there, ma’am. Imagine being born into all of that, and condoning it – benefitting from it, even – through a closing of Royal ranks and mouths.
I believe they do some good, somewhere (and so they should for the bulging purses and estates they receive for their pleasure) and by all accounts, Charles is a thoroughly decent bloke, ya, when it comes to small talk and pleasantries, but what use are they? Maybe Johnny Rotten was right when he pointed out that they need saving because, well, tourrrists are mu-neee. That would seem to be it.
Spare a thought for auld Charles though. That crown, rich in Empire-pilfered bijouterie is heavier than your last energy bill. Just as well he has the jug ears to keep it from slipping.
Here’s McCarthy with their shambling, jangling, rattling and rolling anti-Royal ranting Charles Windsor. I doubt Radio 2 have included this on their Coronation Celebration playlist. Or maybe they have, on account of its title alone. Some poor researcher might end up at the guillotine…
McCarthy – Charles Windsor
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2023/05/mccarthy-charles-windsor-1987-320-kbps.mp3And here’s Manic Street Preachers spitting punkish vitriol and bile in their (far superior) version. To tha guillo-tine! Chop chop chop off your head indeed.
Manic Street Preachers – Charles Windsor
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2023/05/manic-street-preachers-charles-windsor-320-kbps.mp3
In the UK, we meekly accept whatever our masters think is best for us. Rising cost of living? Fair enuff, guv. Can’t heat your house? I’ll just nip down to the local Warm Space, shall I? Dragged out of Europe? That’s democracy, mate. We’ll just need to get on wiv it. The French though – they know the score. Any time they feel hard done by, any time their world appears unjust, boom!, out come the Molotovs. Over a million French citizens took to les rues recently to protest the government’s planned raising of the pension age from 62 to 64. Pffft. Work-shy slacquers. It’s 66 in England, mate. 66! Bobby Moore, Nobby Stiles, Sir Geoffrey ‘Urst. Anyway, where woz I?
Decided without a vote and pushed through by the will of a persistent Macron, it was firmly decided. The workers were suitably enraged. In Paris, fireworks were thrown indiscriminately at hastily drawn police lines. In Bordeaux, the town hall was set ablaze. Tear gas was fired, hundreds were arrested, everyone lost their Gallic cool. The pension age would still be raised, but not without Macron and his ministers knowing exactly what their citizens thought of them. The one plus point to come from the dissenters’ actions was that the city of Paris would not now play host to the first state visit by the new King George, whose aides quickly kyboshed the idea. Parisienne republicans sniffed the air and shrugged with typical je ne sais quoi.
55 years ago, in May 1968, rioting in Paris became so severe there was a real threat of civil war. The city’s student population, liberal and left-leaning by definition, occupied the universities in protest at fellow students’ arrests following an anti Vietnam demonstration. The authorities were quick to react and a heavy-handed police operation resulted in skirmishes, baton-wielding beatings and more mass arrests. The conflict between the Parisienne students and police intensified. Barricades were put up and knocked down. Civil order descended into disorder. Police used batons. Students threw torn-up paving stones and Molotov cocktails. Two nights of stand-off on the Left Bank ended after police set fire to cars and they themselves used Molotovs to disperse crowds.
The trade unions, no fans of President de Gaulle or his policies, were moved to declare sympathy action. At the height of this action, most of France ground to a halt as 11 million French workers (almost a quarter of the working population) went on general strike. Despite talks between both sides, the strikes and the riots continued. The President ran off to Germany, worried that rioters would attack him in Elysee Palace. He would return at the end of the month, bolstered by a notion to dissolve his cabinet and reform his government in a way that would appease the strikers. But anyway…
In the early days of the Stone Roses, Ian Brown had hitch-hiked his way around Europe. On his travels, he’d met someone who’d been in Paris in 1968 and this man’s tale became the lyric to Bye Bye Badman. He told the story of how, during the riots, the activists learned to combat the effects of the tear gas being used to control their movements by sucking on lemons.
It’s no concidence at all that the artwork on Stone Roses’ debut album cover features an unobtrusive, brush-daubed tricolour and a couple of lemons (albeit added after John Squire had ‘completed’ his painting)… a piece of art he called Bye Bye Badman.
Smoke me, choke the air. In this citrus-sucking sunshine I don’t care.
Here he comes, got no question, got no love
I’m throwing stones at you, I want you black and blue
I’m gonna make you bleed, gonna bring you down to your knees…
It’s all in there.
Stone Roses – Bye Bye Badman
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2023/04/1-05-bye-bye-badman.m4aIt’s a tune that belies it’s appearance. Lightweight and breezy, with skiffly, shuffling drums and a rich tapestry of interwoven guitars, it could well have floated off the grooves of a Mamas and Papas or 5th Dimension record.
The guitar runs throughout though, they mark it as something a bit special, a bit unique; the phased and chugging electric backing that allows the sun-dappled acoustic splashes to shimmer, the cleanly picked counter-riffs, the fluid and chattering fret runs at the end that bring to mind Michael Jackson’s Human Nature, all of it underpinned by expansive and expressive bass playing. It’s no real surprise that Stone Roses became the touchstone for enthusiastic amateur guitarists and wannabe hit bands everywhere.
And the melody. It’s sing-song and nursery rhyme-like…until you begin to decode the lyric. The title itself is seemingly a veiled reference to President de Gaulle and, as the song unfurls line by line, it’s apparent that this seemingly insignificant track (song 4, side 1) is in fact a pop art statement of political intent, revolution disguised as art. That it’s done so with lovely doubletracked Ian Brown vocals makes it all the sweeter. In the live arena, Brown can’t sing for toffee. Thank goodness John Leckie had the golden touch when it came to coaxing a tune from his vocal chords.
Here’s the demo that Stone Roses presented to Leckie. As you’ll hear, never underestimate the role of the producer in helping a group to realise their ambitions.
Stone Roses – Bye Bye Badman demo
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2023/04/3-04-bye-bye-badman-demo-remastered.mp3I listened to Stone Roses’ debut album the other day and it still causes as many little rushes of uncontainable excitement as it did on first hearing it 34 years ago. Let it sink in that more time has passed since the day I bought it from Walker’s at Irvine Cross than the time between the riots in Paris ’68 and the Stone Roses writing a song about it.
Ian Brown famously pumped an arm aloft and bellowed, “This is ‘ist’ry!” from the Alexandra Palace stage in November 1989. No, Ian, your band, their album, THIS is history. D’you feel old yet?
Niche Ian Brown reference in this graffiti for all of you trainspotters out there,
I like the name cuz it’s ear-a-tating. It’s a stupid name.
That’s Kim Deal, interviewed on Snub TV back in 1989, discussing her group just as their second album proper, Doolittle, was on the cusp of release.
I like it cuz it’s Pixies. “Like, oh wow, really rock n roll.” It’s better than, like, Lords Of Destruction or something.
They were a weird wee band, Pixies. Four disparate characters that on appearance gave no indication at all about the sort of noise they’d create. Indiscriminately square. Dressed normally. Not a flamboyant haircut or intangible edge to any of them. Kim looked like an office secretary. David and Joey the groovy geography teachers who might play in a covers band at the weekend. Frank Black/Black Francis, out front in his lumberjack shirt and an equally-balanced love of The Beatles and Peter, Paul and Mary gave off no vibes at all about how his band might sound.
As an entity, Pixies were the very force of nature. Scrubbed to the knuckle, sandpapered acoustic guitars played in mind-melting triple chord sequences rubbed up against white-lightning guitar squalls, lung-shredding vocals and quiet/loud passages, often all within the first half minute of the song.
And the songs. You are the son of a muthur-fuckur. Losin’ my penis to a whore with disease. We’ll have our sons, they’ll be well hung. He bought me a soda and he tried to molest me in the parking lot. There was this boy who had two children with his sisters who were his daughters who were his favourite lovers. I mean, come on! Stop and listen. Really listen. It’s uncomfortable and uncompromising in equal measure. Thrilling too, though – as much as it seems wrong to say so.
So the songs are all sex and death and random swearing mainly, much of it a Hispanic mystery but, man, they totally, like, rock. They were exciting, Pixies. It didn’t matter that the song you were currently listening to wasn’t really your favourite because by the time you’d decided that, it was a short guitar twang and feedbacking space rocking blow-out away from the end.
It’s the early records that tend to be the first ones I’ll grab – Come On Pilgrim and, especially, Surfer Rosa and Doolittle – as good a one-two as any band before, then or since – but the next time you’re inclined to binge on Pixies, go straight to the albums that followed in their aftermath.
Bossanova‘s sci-fi surf still thrills. A well balanced mix of shouters and shufflers, its hard slamming riffs still rattle the brain, its weird lyrical content still surprises. With sudden endings and sudden beginnings, the tracks begin to blend as one, something Pixies did on the early records and continued to do. It can be disconcerting at times, wondering if you’re still listening to the same track you were a minute ago, but it makes for a thrilling listen. By the end of side 2 you’ll want to flip straight back over and jump in again…and it’s arguably Pixies’ weakest record in that initial run.
Pixies – Rock Music
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2023/04/02-rock-music.mp3Second track in is Rock Music, a self-explanatory stall-setter that rides in on a squiggle of wiggling feedback, air raid siren guitars and rat-a-tat drums, the tension before the release of Frank’s lung ripper of a nonsensical vocal, doing well to keep itself above the racket of gear-changing electric guitars and just about hanging in there. Suh-lag! is what he screeches for a full stop at the end, if y’didn’t know. Those folk who’ve complained today about not hearing that government-endorsed emergency warning test alert on their phones? They’ve been listening to this at 3pm, obviously.
The unassuming best track on the record may well go to the acrostic Ana. It’s a slow burning two minutes of reverb, shimmer and twang that brilliantly surfs the effect pedal-rich zeitgeist of the times, slo-mo and self-assured, the brushed drums softening Pixies normally bruising approach. The lyrics, when laid out, show that the initial letter of each line spells out the word ‘SURFER’. Simple but smart-arsed. Not enough bands do this.
Pixies – Ana
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2023/04/06-ana.mp3I’ll tell you what. Lana Del Rey, with her bleached-out ’50s heartbreak and sulky torch song vibe would totally kill this track. Think about it as it plays. Her A&R person should see to it that it happens.
If ever there was a short-lived group with an ego overload as wide as the Mersey, it’d be The Crucial Three. Birthed in Liverpool, the not ironically-named at all trio was the fertile product of Julian Cope, Ian McCulloch and Pete Wylie, students in the city and punk rock foot soldiers with the battle scars from Eric’s and Probe Records to prove it. Destined to meet and create and disband in a whirl of uncontainable ideas, The Crucial Three lasted no longer than six weeks, burnt out on a combined love of New York punk and the inevitability that each group member couldn’t be boxed and compromised within its confines.
In his book Head On – essential reading, if y’didn’t know – Cope is both catty and complimentary towards McCulloch. He’s already been nicknamed Duke after Bowie’s Thin White persona by the time they meet, and the nickname provides Cope with much bitchy ammunition, but St Julian has nothing but praise for McCulloch once he dares to peek beyond the fringe and start to sing. Cope bands about McCulloch’s name in the same breath as Lou ‘n Iggy and he genuinely means it.
Amongst the nonsensical jams and Velvets rip-offs that constituted The Crucial Three’s flimsy ouvre – one song about zits and one about drugs that was a great Cope-y title in need of an actual song (I’m Bloody Sure You’re On Dope), Cope and McCulloch (or ‘Duke McCool‘, as Julian has now christened him after mishearing the shortened McCull) dragged out an actual, bona fide post-punk classic.
Read It In Books surfs along on a cyclical riff very reminiscent of Patti Smith’s Dancing Barefoot, the product of one of the trio’s living room sessions where someone would stumble on a set of chords and the others would fall in and see if something stuck. If you’ve ever played in a shambling and under-rehearsed band, you’ll recognise this scenario immediately. In this instance something did indeed stick. Cope claims McCulloch was playing the chords to The Fall’s Stepping Out (it also has, in the main, two chords and is a bit shouty, but these ears can’t really find the similarity – which is good, I suppose), but by the time the band had reconvened for their next session, McCulloch had a set of lyrics to go with it – including a cheap steal from The Impressions – and before they knew it, The Crucial Three had a song of their own. People get ready, there’s a train a-comin’… and it’s a beauty.
Read It In Books was credited as a Cope/McCulloch co-write, and both artists would go on to record versions with the bands with whom they found success.
Echo & The Bunnymen‘s version appeared as the b-side to their debut single The Pictures On My Wall (credited to McCulloch, Cope, of course).
Echo & The Bunnymen – Read It In Books
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2023/04/yt2mp3.info-echo-and-the-bunnymen-read-it-in-books-320kbps.mp3Cope’s Teardrop Explodes would record it for the b-side of their third single Treason.
You don’t need to dig too deep below the surface of the internet to find multiple versions of the song but, for me, the best version of all of them is the Bunnymen’s imperial take that they recorded for the John Peel show in 1979, watery guitar solos, incessant drum machine rhythm, McCulloch’s restrained croon ‘n all. Within a few years their sound would evolve, with skyscraping, effect-rich guitars and a towering symphonic backing adding gravitas and state to the McCulloch vocal, but that early Bunnymen sound – man, I’ll never tire of this.
Echo & The Bunnymen – Read It In Books (Peel Session 15th August 1979)
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2019/11/02-read-it-in-books-22-08-79.mp3The Teardrops’ version is fairly similar, acknowledging that both writers created the structure and arrangement. Guitars clang, drums are pummelled, a stabbing organ shimmers in and out like the ghost of Ray Manzarek moonlighting in The Seeds and the whole thing rattles its way to garage band heaven. Add some sleigh bells to its nagging piano background and it could almost be The Stooges’ I Wanna Be Your Dog. Perhaps an obvious, leather-trousered step too far for the Iggy-headed Julian.
Teardrop Explodes – Read It In Books
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2023/04/y2mate.is-read-it-in-books-3sww0fb0g6m-160k-1657212531143.mp3This one is credited, naturally, to Cope, McCulloch.
The ego had well and truly landed.
There’s a constant digging around here, an archaeological scraping and raiding of tombs, done purely for the purpose of highlighting the marginalised and forgotten, the nearly weres and never would bes that the decades have been less than kind to. Not for nothing is the tagline above ‘Outdated Music For Outdated People‘. You’ll be well aware of that if you’re a regular.
Sometimes, an old track comes flying back into the conscience, usually, although, as in this case, not always, on the back of radio play or an old film and you think, why continue to unearth the underheard when bangers – yes, bangers! – such as this exist.
Such is the case with Yarbrough & Peoples’ Don’t Stop The Music.
Yarbrough & Peoples – Don’t Stop The Music (12″ mix)
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2023/04/dont-stop-the-music.mp3My ex-hospital radio station copyFrom straight outta nowhere this afternoon, the track’s programmed electro bassline body popped its way into my head, slinky and sinuous, the half cousin of – sorry for this – Level 42’s Lessons In Love, but ten times as funky and a hundred times more listenable, despite the lack of human touch. It’s 43 years old and lost none of its mid-paced, head-nodding grooveability. Keyboards sizzle and fizz, hi hats hiss and clavinets play a top line that Stevie Wonder himself might’ve considered being on the verge of dangerously funky. Has Fatboy Slim sampled it yet? I can only assume he has – those keyboards have a total S.O.S. Band feel to them, and he’s sampled them, as well you know, although a quick Google proves inconclusive.
I can sing the refrain if y’like; monotoned white man doo-wop, flat and out of tune but entirely soulful and heartfelt. Dawn’t yew stap it, dawn’t yew stap, stap tha moozic. Even to rhythmically-challenged Ayrshiremen of a certain age, the track has an unputdownable swagger.
Formed in Dallas from the same musical sphere that birthed the Gap Band – the Fatboy sampled them too, Calvin Yarbrough and Alisa Peoples found ubiquity with the track, its comically sped-up backing vocals and gospelish refrain sending it to number one on the Billboard R&B chart for over a month. Remember when there were multiple charts? Remember charts at all? The duo’s story is one of church choirs and pick-up bands until one night in 1977 when Peoples joined Yarbrough’s band on stage for a number and the stars aligned to cast their magic.
Yarbrough & Peoples would continue as a duo for far longer than they were welcome, with ever-decreasing returns and increasingly shallow chart positions, but that’s almost irrelevant considering how timeless, how great their big hit single was. If you’re not still playing the track a week after you’ve read this, questions will be asked.
It’s not the first time Chris Bell‘s I Am The Cosmos has been mentioned round here, but it’s the first time (surely not!) that I’ve shone the spotlight on the single’s flip side, You And Your Sister.
The only solo material released in his lifetime, the 7″ is the perfect distillation of Bell’s loose and melancholic approach to his music. On one side, the imperial I Am The Cosmos, a sky scraping anthem dressed to kill in revved up ringing guitars and double tracked harmonies. You don’t need me to point out that it would prove to be something of a lightning rod for many ambitious bands around the Glasgow area.
Chris Bell – I Am The Cosmos
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2023/04/01-i-am-the-cosmos.mp3On the other side, the naked and raw You And Your Sister, teenage angst set against highly strung and gently picked acoustics, sighing cellos and voice-cracked harmonies. Sadness in a bottle and sold back to the heartbroken with a keen ear to the musical underground.
Chris Bell – You And Your Sister
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2023/04/02-you-and-your-sister.mp3If this is your kinda thing – hi, Norman! Hi Gerry! Hi Raymond! – you could do worse than track down I Am The Cosmos, the album that was pieced together posthumously from Bell’s scattered demos and rough recordings. Most of I Am The Cosmos is frazzled and low-slung, packed full of beaten riffs played on beaten guitars and very much in the acoustic/electric vein of the single…or indeed Bell’s previous band, Big Star, a teasing glimpse into what coulda/shoulda been had the artist not crashed his car and died.
I’ve been playing the record a lot recently, coming to it on the back of This Mortal Coil‘s contentiously superior version, a track that jumped back into my conscience after a misheard acoustic guitar strum on an advert had me convinced the advertisers had borrowed it. They hadn’t, thankfully.
This Mortal Coil – You And Your Sister
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2023/04/07-you-your-sister.m4aWith knee-weakening vocals from Kim Deal and Tanya Donnelly, This Mortal Coil’s take is something of a breathy cry from the heart and fairly leaps out against the arty, Euro-goth torch songs that make up much of Blood, the album from which it is taken.
With intertwined voices and fingerpicked acoustics blending into one stop-for-a-moment recording, it’s plaintive and pastoral and pretty much the definitve version. Sung from the female perspective, the ‘your sister says that I’m no good‘ line takes on a whole new slightly sinsiter perspective when you hear it. I’m sure there are whole Guardian pieces on such things. For now though, enjoy a great version of a great song.
In the build-up to Scotland’s historic win over Spain the other night, I caught myself watching old YouTube clips of the same fixture from 1984. Grainy but preserved digitally forever, they opened a portal to a phase when, as history has proven, the Scottish team was in the middle of a golden phase in football. Leighton, Miller, McLeish, Davie Cooper, Souness and, of course, Kenny Dalglish were all in that match’s starting line-up. As too was the contentious Maurice Johnston. Watching the first of his two mullet-powered headers cross the line, a full-length diving effort from around the six yard box, I was immediately back at the game.
Fourteen years old, my feet never once touched Hampden’s West Stand asphalt and my dad kept a tight grip of my elbow right from kick-off as the packed crowd swelled and swirled up and down and across the terracing. Thrilling and terrifying all at once, when that first goal went in at our end, right in front of us, I was lifted into orbit, metaphorically and literally. The only thing stopping me taking off properly was my dad pulling on my jacket, anchoring me to him and he to me.
Near half time, Jim Bett broke free of the Spanish defence down the right hand side, and even before he had crossed the ball I felt my dad’s arm grab me tightly around the waist. He had just about pulled me in to him when Maurice Johnston leapt high above the static defence and connected his golden mullet to the ball once again, aiming the ball past the goalie and into the corner of the net. Two-nil. Scenes. The crowd pulled us apart. I was five, six, maybe seven rows below where I had stood seconds before. In the split instant before the swell of the crowd once again changed direction, whisky-breathed men kissed me on the head and lifted me further up. “Yaaas, wee man!” I’ve no idea where my dad was, yet somehow as the Spanish spotted the ball and kicked off again, the settle of the crowd brought us back together. We were a good few yards to the right of where we’d been and a stanchion kindly appeared for us to lean on and catch our breath and one another.
“‘scuse me,” says my dad to a group of men. “You’re standing on my boy’s flag.” I hadn’t brought a flag, but by half time I was the owner of a dirty yellow Lion Rampant covered in bootprints and beer. Too big to hold and minus the pole to wave it with, I put it on like a wrap-around skirt for the remainder of the game. I had it for years after. Not sure where it ended up.
The best was yet to come though. Spain pulled a goal back in the second half but riotous and free-flowing Scotland simply moved up a gear. Spain might’ve been thrown a cheap lifeline, but there was no way this Scottish team would let them back in. In the 71st minute, Glasgow’s wintery night sky was again punctuated by the Hampden roar as Kenny Dalglish put the game to bed with what will always be my favourite Scotland goal.
A throw in near the corner flag on the right-hand side finds Davie Cooper deep inside the box and, tightly marked, he lays it off to Dalglish who twists and turns his way past one, two, three defenders and takes one, two, three steps before letting fly with his left foot. Even as I type, I don’t need YouTube to see the delicious arc of the ball as it bends outwards and upwards and downwards into the top corner and, through a tangled forest of West Stand bottles and beards and limbs and Glengarries, Kenny Dalglish, arms aloft and turning towards Jock Stein on the touchline to celebrate. I’ve seen plenty of great goals, many of them scored by a Scotland player, but no goal was ever sweeter than that.
A funny thing happened as I watched those highlights. Despite the Spanish commentary and the near-40 intervening years, I found myself crying. Big, proper, from out of nowhere tears. My dad is no longer with us and somehow, suddenly, the emotion of seeing that Kenny goal again was a trigger for all sorts of happy memories. I couldn’t stop, but I’m not sure I really wanted to. There’s something comforting about a good cry now and again. I had just about pulled myself together by the time my wife and daughter returned home.
“What’s wrong with you?” asked my wife. “You look like you’re in a bad mood.”
“Not at all,” I said. And promptly burst into tears once more as I told her what had happened. Football, bloody hell, as the quote goes.
And then…
The next morning.
I was running myself and daughter to our respective places of work. Lauren Laverne’s BBC 6 music show, as always, was playing. Deee-Lite‘s Groove Is In The Heart comes on and immediately – immediately – my mind is flooded with a memory of dear Derek Reid, with his stupid grin and dimples and stubble, and he’s dancing his finger pointy dance to the song in the Attic. We’re on the cramped dancefloor and he’s in double denim, but that’s OK because we all were, and his hair, long by this point, is over the shoulder of his jacket, giving him the appearance of some hipster Francis Rossi and he’s doing the ‘ah-ah-ah-ah‘ bit – ‘Groove is in the hea-art, ah-ah-ah-ah!‘ and flicking his hair and we’re laughing and living and off our heads with the thrill of being carefree and young and alive. And once again it sets me off.
Deee-lite – Groove Is In The Heart
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2023/03/groove-is-in-the-heart.mp3“I’m in the Attic and it’s 1990,” I say to my daughter as my voice cracks. I can’t look at her. “Derek Reid’s dancing. I can see him right now.” And then I can say no more. I drive through thickly glazed eyes. The chills that you spill up my back, keep me filled. Sad. Happy. Emotional. Pondering on what the future holds.
Bloody music and its bloody triggers. It wasn’t the first time and it won’t be the last. Thank God Lauren didn’t follow it up by playing True Faith. I’ve told that story before though.
Just as there are two Pink Floyds – the Sid-era Pink Floyd and the Sid-less, stadium straddlin’ “Floyd, man”, there are two Fleetwood Macs.
Before their ‘70s metamorphosis into a coke-dusted, partner-swapping omnipresent global phenomenon with Rumours repeatedly rotating across much of the planet on an hourly basis, ‘The Mac’ was a blues-infused single-sex beat combo more used to the claustrophobic stage of the Marquee in London’s West End than the widescreen enormodomes of the American Midwest. Lead by the soulful playing of Peter Green, their inward-looking 12 bar jams are a gazillion miles and a gazillion sales away from what they would become…and in many ways, far more exciting for it.
I’ve always had a thing for the battered and feral Oh Well.
Fleetwood Mac – Oh Well
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2023/03/02-oh-well-part-1.mp3I know it’s an almost hackneyed and cliched tune nowadays, all blazing Les Pauls and up the frets fireworks, but I love it. Low-slung and slinky, it’s a proper groove of a tune, helped in no small way by the loose and funky acoustic riff, the cowbell punctuation marks and the Bo Diddley-isms of the off-beat maracas.
The electric guitar on top, playing the same riff as the acoustic, with occasional forays into harmonies – Thin Lizzy must’ve loved Oh Well – is, well, electrifying. With fingers as long as his corkscrew hair, Peter Green curls his digits into the six strings, teases lightning rods of hot-wired blooze from the fretboard and lets fly. He would later call the riff ‘throwaway‘. Pffft. Yeah.
This version from 1969’s Monster Music Mash on the BBC is where it’s at.
There’s no hierarchical posing here, no shunting of the drummer to obscurity behind the lead singer. Just four guys, equal status, equally responsible for the sound to be made. The toms are a riot of pre-Pollocked home design and are justly tubthumped into the ground. There are three guitarists, none of whom is playing bass, one of whom ignores the gorgeous tobacco-coloured Strat around his neck in favour of being Brian Jones on the maracas for a couple of minutes, and another who is clearly so into the intricacies of playing The Riff, a blur of fringe and guitar face, he’s lost in the heady racket that his band mates are cooking up.
I bet Lee Mavers used this clip when planning out The La’s particular mode of sonic attack. I bet they’d have done justice to a version of Oh Well too. I doubt we’ll ever find out. Mavers, as Peter Green was, is, as you well-know, one of music’s enigmas.
I was delivering a series of lessons recently on Rosa Parks, the black American who in 1955 refused to give up her seat to a white woman on the bus; an action that began the stirrings of the black community to seek, demand and fight for equal rights. I say ‘community’ as if there were ‘only’ a few thousand affected people here. By the mid 1950s, America had a population of around 150 million people, 15 million of which was black. So, 10% of the population was denied the right to sit where they wanted on the bus, go to their preferred church, drink in a bar, use a public toilet, sit in the doctor’s waiting room and naturally go about their daily lives as they would have liked to.
The learners in my class were switched on and interested in this. Despite being typical west of Scotland young people living in an area with little diversity, they knew the rights and wrongs of it. Someone pointed out the parallels between Rosa’s story and that of the refugees coming into Britain by boat only to be deported to Rwanda, how they were denied their basic rights and were treated differently. This led to a conversation about Ukrainian and Syrian refugees, some of whom are in the local school community. Regardless of the complexities of these issues, the kids recognised one thing – no one should be treated differently because of where they’re from or due to they way they look, act or talk. In my experience, young folk are quick to speak up on unfairness. They’ll quickly recognise when something is unjust and often be very vocal about it. Their stance on racism and tolerance of others was a small beacon of light in a United Kingdom that is becoming hideously right wing and intolerant, (mis)lead and governed by a party that is verging on the fascistic. These young learners might just offer us a way out.
I really wanted to point my learners towards Billie Holiday‘s Strange Fruit, but I had reservations about the song’s subject matter. Usually when your conscience speaks to you as a teacher, you listen to it. Experience has taught me that the last thing you want or need is an angry parent demanding to know why their 10 year old brought up the subject of mass race lynchings over the dinner table. So, as much as I wanted to, I didn’t.
Billie Holiday – Strange Fruit
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2023/03/billie-holiday-strange-fruit-hd_web007rzsoi.mp3Strange Fruit is a powerful song, grotesque even once you know the subject matter. The lyrics, drawn from a 1937 poem (Bitter Fruit by Abel Meeropol), are a juxtaposition of the natural heaven and the human horrors of the Deep South; the pastoral scenes and bodies swinging in the breeze, the intoxicating smell of magnolia and the bulging eyes and twisted mouths of the lynching victims.
Can you imagine hearing it for the first time, those lines about the bulging eyes and burning flesh jumping out of the grooves and smacking you square on the cheek? Fruit for the crows to pluck? For the sun to rot? Oh! So she’s not singing about normal fruit? Jeez. There’s no way I could’ve played this to primary school children, no matter how mature and switched on they may have been.
Holiday’s eerie and otherworldly voice squeezes its way through the smoky ether of muted trumpet and vampish piano, a night club voice bereft of its usual sass or swing. Her delivery, unsurprisingly, is stately and precise yet understated and ghostly, full of restrained rage at the world in which she lives. Nowadays, it sounds like an ancient artefact beamed in from history, from the time of monochrome and gramophone, of prohibition and inhibition. That hollow-bodied jazz guitar that makes itself known right at the end adds perfect period definition to create a powerful piece of American art.
Holiday was scared to sing it initially. Afraid of what might happen when it was performed, she drew power from the death of her own father (he died of mustard gas poisoning at the end of the first World War, refused treatment due to being black). ‘I have to keep singing it,’ she wrote in her autobiography. ‘Not only because people ask for it, but because twenty years after Pop died the things that killed him are still happening in the South.’
The power of the song was such that during live performances, waiter service was halted at the tables and the room was set in darkness, save one solitary spotlight on Holiday as she sang. It was always her last song of the night. Sometimes the end of the song was met with rapturous applause. At other times, Holiday would be verbally abused for daring to sing it. Some audience members would walk out in protest mid song. What did they have to protest about? Holiday holding a mirror up to society? Promoters asked her not to sing it. Billie’s contract stated that she had the final say on that. Her label, Columbia, wouldn’t handle it. They deemed the song too controversial to release. Unperturbed, Holiday’s manager took it to a small independent label, Commodore, who pressed it and released the song. It garnered little to no airplay, ending up on the blacklist. Blacklisted. There’s some sort of irony there, yet here we are, 94 years later, still discussing its power.
Strange Fruit has lost none of its weight or ability to shock. It’s arguably the first in a rich lineage of protest songs that runs from the pre-rock ‘n roll jazz era to the dust bowl socialism of Woody Guthrie, past Bob Dylan in the ’60s and Stevie Wonder’s socio-political discourse of the ’70s and through Public Enemy to contemporary groups like Sault who are equally as angry about the world in which they live. Always vocal, never silent, calling out unfairness when it arises. Just like those young kids at school.
Southern trees bear a strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black bodies swingin’ in the Southern breeze
Strange fruit hangin’ from the poplar trees
Pastoral scene of the gallant South
The bulgin’ eyes and the twisted mouth
Scent of magnolias sweet and fresh
Then the sudden smell of burnin’ flesh
Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck
For the rain to gather
For the wind to suck
For the sun to rot
For the tree to drop
Here is a strange and bitter crop
It’s required listening, at least once a year, to submerge yourself in all things Nuggets. The Lenny Kaye-curated double album that became a box set and a franchise (and ended up an ever-decreasing dilution of the original) should be mandatory in every record collection. Kaye’s crate digging (to coin a now-cliched phrase) ensured the low hits and no hits of the day were immortalised alongside their rattlin’, rollin’, fuzz-friendly peers forever.
Without Nuggets, most of us would never have heard the giddy rush of The Knickerbockers‘ totally Beatles Lies or Mouse & The Traps thin wild Dylanisms, or fallen off their chairs at the sheer cheek of David Bowie nicking the Shadows Of Knight‘s Oh Yeah for the glam slam of ‘his own’ Jean Genie. Nuggets is jam packed full of, eh, nuggets; enough riffs and beats and organ motifs to keep most garage-influenced bands in material for the entirety of their career.
The Premiers – Farmer John
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2023/03/1-26-farmer-john.m4aFarmer John by The Premiers is classic Nuggets. It’s built around a simple lyric and three stomping chords that fall somewhere between Louie Louie and Wayne Fontana’s Game Of Love; a ramalama of clanging guitars, tub thumping drums and double-time handclaps. The live-in-the-studio feel, with its ad-libbed count-in and hoots ‘n hollers ‘n screams ‘n shouts between the lines has the whole thing sounding like some sorority house frat boy party.
“Has anybody seen Kosher Pickle Harry?” asks the host. “Tell him that Herbert is looking for him.” And the band fall in and hit their stride. You can imagine them in matching cardigans and side sheds, Mighty White mile-wide smiles, instruments all held up at the same 30 degree angle, a crowd of bobbysoxers in front of them jerking and jiving to the head-bobbing teenbeat being played out.
‘Farmer John,’ they sing. ‘I’m in love with your daughter.’
‘Woah-woh,’ goes the backing, as innocent and wholesome and American as apple pie.
When Neil Young got a hold of the song, he ground its gears until it was slow and slothlike, a sludgefest played by old men with heavy guitars and heavier worldly problems. The antithesis of The Premiers’ version, Neil Young’s plays up somewhat to his alliteratively descriptive Godfather Of Grunge moniker and sucks all the joy from it in the process. In fact, Neil’s version is mildly threatening.
Neil Young & Crazy Horse – Farmer John
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2023/03/neil-young-farmer-john-video.mp3Chug-thump-chang-clump, wham-djam-flam-flump, jack-hammer-smack-bammer, thwack-crack-flack-nyack, whine-grind-whine-grind, woah-woh.
“I love the way she wiggles when she walks,” smirks old Shakey, done up in his best clean dungarees, his crosseyed gang of knuckle-trailing village idiots lurking goofily behind him. Uh-hur-hur-hur.
If I was Farmer John and Neil and his plaid-bedecked backing band showed up telling me that they were in love with my daughter, I’d be reaching for the ol’ double barrel and my best ‘You best git goin’ mister, we don’t want no trouble ’round here‘ line. At least The Premiers, for all their inferred frat boy up-to-no-goodness had the good grace to look Mr Farmer in the eye and give him the impression that she’d be in safe hands.
It’s no concidence that you could chop an axe in time to that slow ‘n steady Crazy Horse rhythm. You might be chopping logs. Or firewood. Or Farmer John’s daughter’s head, her champagne eyes finally giving up their sparkle just as the turned up to ten Les Pauls give up their howling feedback to the night.
If there was an exclusive school for the kids who were too cool for school, James Murphy would be too cool for even that. A drop-out and waster then doer and wooer on Brooklyn’s creative early 00s scene, he was a label boss, punk guitarist, engineer to David Holmes and DJ before striking gold with LCD Soundsystem. With his radar firmly fixed on the esoteric, Murphy’s band employed an amalgam of the scratchy funk of Talking Heads and the burnished chrome of New Order, close-up yet widescreen, with just enough cavity in the cadence to let his Mark E Smith-ish vocals through-uh.
LCD Soundsystem – Losing My Edge
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2023/03/2-01-losing-my-edge.mp3Their first single, 2002’s Losing My Edge, is a magically arch and knowing nodding wink to an underground DIY scene that Murphy himself helped create. The music is great; a huge, jolting, on-the-one bassline and twitchy rhythm that sounds simultaneously Casiotone retro and man-machine futuristic, a No Wave elbow jerker from 1981 perhaps, (or a facsimile of Killing Joke’s Change – check it out), or the latest drop by the hottest new group this side of the L Train platform in Williamsburg.
I was there in 1968, I was there at the first Can show in Cologne.
I was there in 1974, at the first Suicide practices in a loft in New York City. I was working on the organ sounds.
I was there when Captain Beefheart started up his first band. I told him, ‘Don’t do it that way, you’ll never make a dime.’
I was the first guy to play Daft Punk to the rock kidzzz. I played it at CBGBs. Everybody thought I was crazy.
We all know I was there.
Murphy’s attention-grabbing half-spoken vocal is both rapt and rapped, reeling off a list of achingly hip groups and musical reference points, an exhausting display of one-upmanship, delivered deadpan and with at least half a tongue in cheek, a ‘completed it, mate!’ brag for men of a certain age.
I’ve never been wrong. I used to work in a record store. I got everything before anyone.
I was there in the Paradise Garage DJ booth with Larry Levan.
I was there in Jamaica at the great sound clashes.
I woke up naked on the beach in Ibiza in 1988.
(Didn’t we all, James. Didn’t we all?)
Every line a small story in its own right.
Losing My Edge was written during a spell of unshakeable paranoia, when Murphy lived in constant fear of being ousted from his position as DJ and taste maker numero uno in New York’s most fashionable underground spots. He’d be playing Can and ESG and the B-52s and watch on as other DJs, seeing people’s reactions to these hot ‘new’ sounds began playing the same records in their own pop-up clubs. ‘His’ records were now ‘their’ records and Murphy was no longer the cool, edgy guy on the scene. At least, that’s what his paranoia told him.
I’m losing my edge to the kids from France and from London.
I’m losing my edge to the kids whose footsteps I hear when they get on the decks.
I’m losing my edge to the to the internet seekers who can tell me every member of every good group from 1962 to 1978.
I’m losing my edge to the art-school Brooklynites in little jackets and borrowed nostalgia for the unremembered eighties.
But I was there!
Perhaps you – yeah, even you! – record collectors, musical kleptomaniacs, scene hoppers, vinyl fetishists and snobs, are the butt of a twenty year old in-joke. Perhaps not. But, perhaps yes.
I heard you have a compilation of every good song ever done by anybody.
I heard you have a vinyl of every Niagara record on German import.
I heard that you have a white label of every seminal Detroit techno hit – 1985, ’86, ’87.
I hear that you and your band have sold your guitars and bought turntables.
I hear that you and your band have sold your turntables and bought guitars.
I hear everybody that you know is more relevant than everybody that I know.
But I was there!
I was there!
New! Now! is Fontaines DC‘s fantastically idiosyncratic take on Nick Drake’s wispy and ethereal ‘Cello Song. The Dubliners (DC = Dublin City, see?) grab Nick Drake’s original by its sullen, woollen coattails and pour a bucketful of distortion over a pounding, punishing backbeat and reimagine the song as a shit-kicking gutterpunk bruiser of a tune. It’s quite fantastic; unique, original and exactly how every band should approach attempting to cover the uncoverable.
Fontaines DC – ‘Cello Song
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2023/03/the-endless-coloured-ways-the-songs-of-nick-drake-cello-song-by-fontaines-dc.mp3A lone cello creeps in, sounding like a ghost ship’s foghorn out in some woebegone ocean or other, clattering percussion rustles and rattles its way into an unforgiving hucklebuck beat, a caterwauling string section drags its heels across the soundscape and haunting/haunted aah-ah-ah vocals entwine themselves around the call and response guitar riffs to magic up an unholy and thrilling racket. Nick Drake does this bit too, but whereas his is otherworldly and mysterious, Fontaines DC give off seriously heavy don’t-look-’em-in-the-eyes vibes. Truly terrifying.
The vocals proper arrive, Grian’s Irish brogue undiluted and unforgiving and all the more powerful for it. The guitars, sounding like up-the-dial radio static turned up to 10, whip up a frenzy of controlled feedback and electric twang, menacing and panther-like, somewhere between the electrified slink of Hendrix’s Third Stone From The Sun and gentle sleep of Kevin Shields at his woozy, somnambulistic best; head music and just as effective as a mood-altering stimulant. Throughout it all, the titular cello. Those jarring, jagged strings scratch and scrape at scabrous skin, John Cale in the Velvets, if the Velvets had been born in Dublin 30 years later to Nick Drake-loving parents.
Taken from The Endless Coloured Ways, a forthcoming reimagining of Nick Drake’s back catalogue by all manner of contemporary artists (Philip Selway, Craig Armstrong & Self Esteem, Karine Polwart & Kris Drever) Fontaines DC’s thrilling cover has set the mark by which all other cover versions – Drake’s or otherwise – will now be measured.
‘Ignore the original recording of Nick’s, and reinvent the song in your own unique style,’ the bands were briefed. Fontaines DC have passed the test with flying colours. Turn the volume up and stick it on repeat.
Here’s Nick Drake’s original. Kinda meh now, isn’t it?!
Nick Drake – ‘Cello Song
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2023/03/06-cello-song.m4a
Aurora Borealis, the icy sky at night…
Aw man. Neil Young sang that. It’s the sighing opening line to Pocahontas, one of his best, yet perhaps little-known songs. You though. You knew that already.
For as long as I can remember I’ve wanted to see the Aurora Borealis. You hear of folk booking Scandinavian get-aways at eye-watering prices, with the promise of seeing the Northern Lights up close and personal, only to return home with empty camera rolls and emptier wallets. There’s half a chance you’ll see them in Scotland, they say, especially the further north you go. It’s not unheard of though to see them on a clear late winter’s night as far south as Dumfries and Galloway.
Being on Ayrshire’s west coast, I’ve always lived in the faint hope that one night I’ll twitch the curtains and see the sky dancing above the neighbour’s house in a multicoloured hue of natural wonder. It’s a far-flung hope that, in the absence of Scandinavian Aurora Tours suddenly reducing their prices to recession-friendly 2023 numbers, I keenly hold onto. You can, then, imagine my flabbergasted seething jealousy and uncontrollable pissed-offness on waking yesterday morning to see my timeline flooded with wobbly amateur shots of yer actual Northern Lights dancing merrily in the skies above Irvine and Saltcoats and Millport and Arran and, y’know, half a dozen other places that are at most a ten minute drive from the room where I am writing this. No. Way. No fucking way. How did I miss it?!
There was Arran, silhouetted in black, the skies above ablaze in Coca-Cola reds and iridescent yellows and neon greens. Irvine Beach lit from above with raspberries and oranges and dancing limes. Ardrossan! Bloody Ardrossan, its skies painted in coppery crimsons and burnt umbers and glowing sage green, like a Farrow & Ball colour chart on heavy psychedelics, the colours of my dreams, red, gold and green, red, gold and green, to quote an old pal of this very blog. Every other photo on my timeline yesterday morning, from the expertly crafted time-lapsed professional shot to the shonkiest but smuggest of one-handed efforts showed a brilliant display of multicoloured, swirling, swaying dancing Aurora-lit Ayrshire skies. And I had slept through it all.
By the time I’d eaten my Cornflakes I’d downloaded an Aurora Watch app. There was a chance they’d return that evening, it said…a slim chance based on cloud cover, or the lack of, but a chance that had to be grasped.
We set out last night around 8 o’clock and headed for Ardrossan’s North Beach. It’s outside the town on the way to Seamill and West Kilbirde, and, now a sudden expert in light pollution, I was sure it would give us the best local chance of seeing them. As an added bonus, the Isle of Arran is just across the water. My mind was already replaying the sort of photos that this shonky amateur photographer would be smuggly sharing come the morning. Yes, the dark silhouette of Arran would provide the ideal contrast to the Holy light show that would part the clouds and have us all gasping, and I would have brilliant pictures to prove it.
Ardrossan North Beach was packed. Like, summer’s day back. Cars were parked randomly and, in the dark, dangerously on grass verges, left abandoned as their occupants scrambled onto the beach for the best possible vantage point. Truth is, anywhere in this part of the world is the ideal vantage point, but it didn’t stop this army of suddenly-expert skygazers to pitch up and stake their spot. There were campfires on the beach, a couple of tents, people out on the rocks, aiming for both solitude and spirituality, to be at one with God whenever he chose to start the show.
Nothing happened. The sky was thick with white cloud. The wind would occasionally blow the Cumulonimbus and Altostratus apart slightly and the crescent moon would poke its way through, teasing us with the promise of a none-more-black sky behind the cloud. No clear sky, no Aurora, they say. And we had no clear sky and definitely no Aurora. It didn’t stop some of our more challenged fellow watchers turning south to take pictures of the glowing sky above Saltcoats, the town’s light pollution (see, expert!) reflecting on the white cloud base to create a glow that, I’m certain, folk will be passing off as yer actual Aurora across social media today.
It’s the fear of being there and yet missing it, isn’t it? Have you ever seen that footage from one of those video bloopers shows, where the camera is trained on the space shuttle and, as the countdown gets to “lift off!” the camera operator swears loudly and quickly turns to their left, only to see a cloud of smoke and fire where the now-launched actual shuttle sat only seconds before? I was convinced that’d be us, looking where we thought was north, oblivious to the sky erupting behind us.
A quick scroll though Twitter confirmed that the light show had started its merry dance in other parts of the world. Gourock, 20 miles up the road had it good. Oban. Arisaig. Ullapool. The Hebrides. The more rural and further north, the better. But still the clouds above us kept their firmly knitted pattern tightly shut. My Aurora app fluctuated between a 6% and 7% chance of seeing any action, but still we, and about a hundred other hopefuls around us, persevered.
It was not to be.
We left around half past ten. Two and a half hours of willing clouds to part and laughing at strangers taking pictures of what was definitely not the Northern Lights and scrolling enviously through Twitter drew to a conclusion and we admitted defeat. We weren’t the first to leave, but we were definitely not the last. I drove home, one eye on the road, the other in my rear view mirror, lest the Lights sneaked out at our expense. I don’t think they ever did.
Super Furry Animals – Northern Lites
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2023/02/01-northern-lites.mp3Northern Lights, Kilwinning, 27th February 2023Super Furry Animals wrote Northern Lites after being convinced they’d witnessed the phenomena of the Aurora Borealis. One of our best-ever bands, the group’s eclectic, catch-all ethos is put to good use on a track that bursts with steel drums, frothy mariachi trumpet blasts and overlapping Beach Boys harmonies. A scraping guiro provides its Beck-like percussive rhythm, its fuzz guitar and Caribbean rhythmic groove swaying hips to the very end. If only I’d thought to play this last night in Ardrossan, it might’ve summoned up the Aurora to make a fleeting appearance.
I think I’ll try that tonight.
“So I was playing at a party in Rod Stewart’s house and Rod is up singing with us. The band is doing a rockin’ version of Ooh La La...Kenney Jones on drums…the whole shebang…the place is going crazy. We’re in this massive living area…it’s more like a ballroom, really…all these folk are there…Gordon Strachan is playing tambourine…and suddenly these doors at the back of the room burst open and this mass of crow-black hair runs the length of the room, leaps onto stage, jumps on Rod’s back…and it’s Ronnie Wood! Fashionably late as ever. He starts to join in, so pecking order dictates I hand him my white Telecaster and he begins to play along. Problem is, Rod sings Ooh La La in the key of B, but Ronnie assumes it’s being played in the usual key of D…and my guitar is blaring, right…and Ronnie is shouting above the din, “Wot fackin’ key is this in?!?” He keeps playing…and because my Tele is the lead instrument, it’s full on red hot, right, so no-one can hear Ronnie, but he keeps on shouting, “The key! Wot fackin’ key are we playing in?!?” What a mess! I’ve got a video of it and it’s very funny. Eventually, I step back onto the stage and casually press my tuner pedal while Ronnie is distracted, and I mute my – his – guitar – and Ronnie. He doesn’t seem to notice though, he’s pulling shapes and jumping around and having the time of his life playing this song silently in the wrong key. Wee Gordon Strachan is still banging away on the tambourine, oblivious to it all. And I think to myself. as David Byrne might say, how did I get here?”
Joe Gallagher is one of our best-kept musical secrets, but chances are you’ve unwittingly seen or heard him at work. He’s worked with The Magic Numbers and Deacon Blue, been a guitar roadie for the Grim Northern Social and the Go! Team, supported The Proclaimers on an arena tour, supported and written with Turin Brakes and Martha Wainwright – “people like that” he says, inferring there are plenty others – and has been a reliable guitar slinger for hire in any number of ‘solo’ acts’ live shows (see above for proof). He’s played gigs and recorded music under a handful of names, notably Toy Tin Soldier, where his album ‘Yield‘ nestled inside the iTunes Top 10. Currently, in the post-lockdown musical sphere, he goes by the pseudonym of Concrete Kid, a project put together by Joe with help from Turn Brakes’ Olly Knights.
Concrete Kid, HAC IrvineIn Concrete Kid, Joe has created a one-man stage act that recalls Beck at his least hip hop and most melancholy. Think Sea Change for reference. His bassy and richly-ringing acoustic guitars interplay with processed beats and electronic flourishes. Joe’s voice is killer; whispered and close-miked, crystal-clear but with a wee bit of grit at the back, coming across like a cleaned-up Mark Lanegan or a Lanarkshire Lee Hazlewood. Not for nothing does he brand himself The Psychedelic Cowboy.
Concrete Kid – The Colour Green
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2023/02/the-colour-green-stem_mix2-ssl_eq.02_03-01-24_44-mstrd___.wavConcrete Kid, HAC Irvine by Kerrin Carr PhotographyMost importantly, he has the songs. Only a handful at present, but great tunes that can stand with the best of them. Whether in full-on studio production or played as stripped-back acoustic torch songs, they have the melodies, the craft and the strength to take Joe places in his own right.
Forthcoming single Summer Pearl should hopefully find its way onto the playlists of the more discerning radio shows – yr Gideon Coes and Billy Sloans and Jim Gellatlys and what have you.
Concrete Kid – Summer Pearl
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2023/02/summer-pearl-stem_mix1-ssl_eq_01-01-24_44-mstrd_rev2.wavConcrete Kid, HAC Irvine by Kerrin Carr PhotographyI’ve seen Joe/Concrete Kid live a couple of times in the past year and already he has a handful of serious ear worms in his set. There’s a song called Sail Away, all strummed melancholy and skyscraping chorus, that would sound perfect wafting across the fields as the Glastonbury afternoon fizzles its way towards twilight.
I like the way Joe eases into his songs; there’s no knock-kneed rush to get through the chord changes or speed through the chorus. He relaxes both you and he into his world. His phrasing is cool and easy to the point of languid, curling its way around the chord changes like blue tendrils of Gitanes knitting their way through Simone Signoret’s fingers. Joe is in music for the long run, an ethos reflected in the time it takes for his songs to unravel before finally hitting you,
A portent of things to come, the so-far under wraps Colour Green EP, with its dynamic mix of music and melody suggests that Concrete Kid is a name worth looking out for in the coming months. You can thank me come the end of the year when, by then, he may well be your new favourite artist.
You’ll find Concrete Kid on Soundcloud and Spotify and all the usual places that cloth-eared muppets like Chris Moyles never think to visit to go…
https://www.deezer.com/album/369791987https://itunes.apple.com/album/id/1651490700https://open.spotify.com/album/43Q5BBXhyMDEEbKO8hNSwcKeep an eye out on who the support act is at the next gig you go to. If it’s Concrete Kid, get there in time to catch him.
…at the speed of love.
That’s the stall-setting opening gambit on Fallin’, the unlikely yet inspired collaboration between De La Soul and Teenage Fanclub, a marriage made in heaven that was strictly at odds with the hell of the rap/rock crossover that soundtracked 1993’s Judgement Night movie. Amidst a hotchpotch of hideousness – Helmet & House Of Pain, Biohazard & Onyx, Slayer & Ice T – and the odd briefly inspired moment – Dinosaur Jnr & Del The Funky Homosapien’s choppy and groovy Missing Link, Sonic Youth & Cypress Hill’s dark and, er, dope hymn to smoking (I Love You Mary Jane), De La Soul’s daisy age hip hop beats melded with TFC’s Bellshill beat and created the album’s best track that, 30 years later (!!!) sounds fresher than ever.
With De La Soul being in the news this week on the back of the death of Dave Jolicoeur (Trugoy the Dove), I’ve taken to playing many of the group’s early sample-savvy singles and debut album at a decent volume. The track I keep returning to though is Fallin’. It’s been played at every available opportunity; in the car, doing the dishes, sorting the washing, brushing my teeth, boiling the kettle, texting my pals… it’s a real beauty of a track. Stick a microphone in front of me and I reckon I could bust out a pretty faithful recreation of the opening verse’s rap. But don’t. I’m a white guy from the west of Scotland and we’re not known for our flowability skills on the mic.
Teenage Fanclub & De La Soul – Fallin’
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2023/02/01-fallin-faded-album-version.mp3Teenage Fanclub are, as you are well aware, four white guys from the west of Scotland too and, while they wisely left the rapping to the masters of the art, they do contribute some soulful ‘doo-doo-do-do‘ adlibs in the background – possibly aping, or just plain stolen from Biz Markie, as you might spot later.
The track is built around a sample of Tom Petty’s Free Fallin’, a widescreen open road of a record, as American as truckstops and Telecasters, with references to Elvis, Jesus, Ventura Boulevard, Mulholland Drive and endless freeways, sung in Fanclubesque multi-harmony atop a bed of rich acoustic and clean chimin’ electric guitars. There’s a rumour, unsubstantiated, that it plays at maximum volume whenever white American men of a certain age cash in their one-way ticket for that final trip along life’s highway and park the Cadillac outside the pearly gates. I guess I’ll never know.
It’s something of a surprise, then, to find out that the idea for building the track came, not from the four guitar-crazy Scottish musos who may well have played along to a Tom Petty record or two in their time, but from the magpie mind of De La Soul’s Posdnuos. More of that in a bit though. Firstly, how on earth did this heaven-sent collaboration come to be?
Gerry Love, bass player with Teenage Fanclub at the time, alongside Brendan O’Hare, former TFC drummer and inspired catchphrase merchant very kindly offered to cast their surprisingly clear minds back three decades and reminisce exclusively for Plain Or Pan.
Gerry: De La Soul came over to Cheadle Hulme, Cheshire – we were mixing Thirteen at Revolution Studios in the town. Originally we were approached via our American label DGC (Geffen) to ask if we fancied collaborating with PM Dawn. As we were weighing up the offer we were updated with the news than PM Dawn couldn’t make it after all and would we like to work with De La Soul? It took us less than a second to say yes. Like most people of our generation we were big fans of their work. Three Feet High and Rising was a massively important record.
Brendan: De La Soul (and their weed…and their preconceived ideas of us) came over to the studio. I think they thought we were Tom Petty, which we weren’t. They were hilarious once they realised we were equally hilarious.
Speaking to LA Weekly in 2009, De La Soul’s Posdnuos explained further.
Posdnuos: They (the Judgement Night people) started pairing up different artists. We could’ve been paired up with familiar names, but we didn’t know who Teenage Fanclub were at the time, so we picked them.
Brendan: The track sorta happened when they muscled a drumbeat out of our Alesis SR16.
Gerry: I remember the session started with a drum beat programmed by Maseo. I put down a bass line, Raymond put down a guitar line and then Posdnous and Trugoy started working on the lyric while at the same time going through a box of records they had brought looking for something to sample. It was really impressive to see how they worked. In a matter of hours they had recorded the vocal. We all put down some harmony vocals.
Posdnuos: We were taking a break from brainstorming ideas. We happened to be sitting in a little reception area outside the studio, and Tom Petty’s Free Fallin’ video came on. I’ve always been the person in the group, who when he hears certain words, I take them and apply them to a certain thing. It started as a joke – ‘Hey, let’s make a song based off a Tom Petty video!’ Then Dave (Trugoy The Dove) said, ‘let’s spin it about us falling off as a rappers.’ So we went to the store, bought the Tom Petty CD, and based it around the song.
Then we got a bassline from (Biz Markie’s) Nobody Beats The Biz, the Steve Miller sample (listen carefully and you might spot a morsel of more ‘doo-doo-do-dos’ from Fly Like An Eagle), and a snippet of Petty’s voice and it came together pretty fast.”
Gerry: At the end they added the Tom Petty sample and that was it – all done and dusted in a few days.
Spot the samples…
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers – Free Fallin’
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2023/02/tom-petty-free-fallin-320-kbps.mp3Biz Markie – Nobody Beats The Biz
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2023/02/nobody-beats-the-biz-best-of-320-kbps.mp3Steve Miller Band – Fly Like An Eagle
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2023/02/steve-miller-band-fly-like-an-eagle-320-kbps.mp3What began as something of a throwaway track to fill space on a compilation album ended up a fully fledged De La Soul track, so much so that Tommy Boy, De La Soul’s label, wanted to include it on Buhloone Mindstate. The band nixed that idea though, and so the group’s third album’s loss was most definitely Judgement Night‘s gain.
Gerry; A few months later we flew out to Chicago to make a promo video with them.
Brendan: The recording of the video is one of my favourite memories.
The video is great, both groups coming together to goof around in an American high school classroom. De La Soul are the academics, TFC the class goons. Gerry spends his time sleeping in the back row alongside a bored Brendan, with an equally bored-looking Norman in front of him. Swotty goody two shoes Raymond sits up straight at the front with Maseo and Posdnuos the ‘teacher’.
When the video cuts to a school drama production, we see the two acts sharing the stage, De La Soul rapping in triplicate as a clearly tickled Teenage Fanclub play out the tune, a collection of acting kids weaving in and out of the happy stew.
Gerry: De La Soul were just really friendly guys. The whole thing was one of the most unexpected things that ever happened in my time in Teenage Fanclub and one of the most rewarding. As a track, I think it still sounds pretty good.
Brendan: It was sad news about Trugoy. He was lovely and keen on yoghurt.
There was a brief period at the tail end of the ’80s when two music cultures collided to create an exciting new sub-genre. Partly brought on by Happy Mondays’ in-print enthusing of Detroit techno and partly by the Stone Roses’ approach of playing dance music before they took to the stage, a movement of youth who’d lapped up their own Stones and Beatles dared to cross the divide between guitars and grooves and, arms aloft and flying high, wholeheartedly embraced the best of both scenes. In Irvine’s Attic, you could dance yourself dizzy to Pacific State and State Of The Nation in the same thrilling ten minute sequenced spell, our own Saturday night fever soundtrack that was absolutely replicated in provincial towns up and down the country.
The bands that sprung up around this ideal took the cross-pollination of clashing cultures and ran with it, for as long as the record companies were happy to throw their money northwards in the vain hope they’d land themselves another Mondays or Roses. Some of the acts – The Charlatans, obviously, broke out in their own right. Some of the others had one or two good songs, one great song, even – The High’s Box Set Go, Mock Turtles’ Can You Dig It – and some of the acts might even have managed to squeeze out a decent album – World Of Twist’s kaleidoscopic and swirling Quality Street springs to mind, but many of them burned briefly then fizzled out, shrinking back to the suburbs as the dirty exhaust fumes of American grunge spewed forth in Nirvana’s Converse-trod trail. ‘Baggy’ or ‘Madchester’ (eugh) or ‘Indie Dance’ was, then, a placeholder in time…but those great songs live on.
The best of all is arguably Paris Angels‘ All On You (perfume). A track, I think, rather than a song, it magpies the best of everything into one era-defining single that still thrills over 30 years later. Take a monochromed Curtis-ish vocal and team it with the sort of girlish adlib that’s floated straight off an anonymous house stomper. Stick them atop some chiming, Marr-esque guitars. Throw some sequenced acidy squelches across it and then polish the whole thing to a see-your-face-in-it brilliance; All On You (perfume) is a proper rush.
Paris Angels – All On You (perfume) – with added John Peel at the end.
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2023/02/tomp3.cc-played-by-john-peel-paris-angels-perfume-loved-up_320kbps.mp3Quite how they managed to sow the shiny seeds of All On You from the unholy clatter that represented the band’s sound at the time must be down to the producer, so kudos to Michael Johnson (engineer on no less than Blue Monday) for coaxing such an airbrushed sound from the band’s grizzled indie.
The band’s roots are easy to identify from the swirling slab of industrial Mancunian twist and shout below. Very of its time, it rattles and ricochets like a stretching out ACR or Happy Mondays at their esoteric best. Dark, dense and serious, with the tentacles of the baggy beat and a wandering electric guitar – all bent 3rd strings and chorus pedal – creeping through its cracks, it’s a signpost of where they’d come from and where they’d briefly be going…
Paris Angels – Stay (Peel Session)
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2023/02/tomp3.cc-paris-angels-john-peel-session-1990_320kbps.mp3Should such things matter to you (and of course they do), it’ll have you double-checking the label on the record for a Factory logo or catalogue number that isn’t there. Yes, despite all necessary Factory ingredients being present; a clattering, enthusiastic rhythm, hot-wired chicken scratch guitar, a shouty Mancunian frontman oozing oodles of effort over ability – all housed in a subtle and arty sleeve, considered typeface ‘n all – Perfume was released on the perfectly-named Sheer Joy label. All bands have one great song to their name. Perfume (All On You) was Paris Angels’.
At the start of the ‘90s, Postcard Records put out The Heather’s On Fire, an essential collection of early Orange Juice material, much of which was presented in a form far more ragged than the better-known versions. Two words on the rear of the sleeve are key markers.
‘Buffalo Underground’ they say, stamped unobtrusively in the corner, but a pair of words, a phrase, which will have even the most amateur of sleuths making sense of the reference.
Those post-punk bands of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s – the Postcard, Pop Aural and Fast Product groups particularly, hopped up on pure self belief following the barrier-breaking Clash shows at the Glasgow Apollo and Edinburgh Playhouse – looked far beyond the obvious draw of mop-topped Liverpool and drew their entire influence (style and song) from America. No Elvis, Beatles or the Rolling Stones in 1977, remember?
Buffalo Springfield encouraged, demanded even, ringing guitar lines played on fat, semi acoustic guitars, held chest high by musicians in checked shirts, fringed suede and worn-in denim, boot-lace ties ‘n all. The young Roddy Frame took keen notes.
The Velvet Underground offered up chic style, unrivalled attitude and an innocence masked as aloofness. Take three chords, fall in together and keep going without stopping until the song is over. Look like you mean it and folk’ll believe you. There’s the ethos of Postcard in a nutshell. No pun intended.
The entirety of the Scottish post-punk music scene was in thrall to the Velvet Underground especially, and most of the acts – Orange Juice and Aztec Camera, obviously (“it’s ob-vious”), but also Scars, The Fire Engines, Josef K, James King and The Lone Wolves, even Bourgie Bourgie and Jazzateers, achieved just about their 15 mins of fame. This became totally apparent at Saturday night’s Hungry Beat event at the CCA in Glasgow, a mammoth 5 hour-long music ‘n chat extravaganza, put together by the people responsible for the era-defining book of the same name.
The main driver is Douglas MacIntyre, guitar totin’ scenester, label boss (Creeping Bent) and owner of the hippest address book in the land. Draw one of those Pete Frame family trees with his name at the centre and you’ll finish with a messy and jigsawed who’s who of 20th Century Scot-pop.
James T Kirk. Malcom Ross. Davy Henderson. Campbell Owens. Bobby Bluebell. Mick Slaven. Ken McCluskey. Tam Dean Burn. James King. Monica Queen. Norman Blake. Grahame Skinner. Katy Lironi and others all branch out in interconnected ways. Some of the musicians shared groups or rehearsal rooms or labels or bills, and all of them did exactly this at the weekend when they joined forces for two 70+ minute sets that played out like one gigantic, rolling encore, The Last Waltz for the children of the Velvets, each section registering one notch higher on the thrill-o-meter than the previous. In the future, suggested Warhol, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes. For the bands and songs who have stayed under the radar all these years, Saturday night was their night.
Click to view slideshow.Douglas, playing mainly cool, clean 12 string jangle on a vintage Burns (of course) guitar led a band made up of Mick Slaven and/or Malcolm Ross on sparkling, searing lead, Campbell Owens on bass and Stuart Kerr on drums. With each guest vocalist or guitarist (or both), the big hitters and back catalogues of all those wonky, individual and inventive groups of yore were played out to a wholly appreciative (and minor celeb-studded) crowd.
Was that Eddi Reader pogoing down the front as the assembled group jerked their way through a rubberised take on Gang Of Four’s Damaged Goods? Yes. Yes, it was. As backing vocalist on Gang Of Four’s live shows, perhaps she should’ve been up there with them. Not that there was much space for pogoing on the CCA’s busy stage. “There wisane enough women up there,” she complained later.
Monica Queen is a highlight, stomping and prowling as she takes control of Altered Images’ Dead Popstars. A lilting, countryish run through of Strawberry Switchblade’s Trees And Flowers segues without ceremony into a rich ‘n twanging version of, yes!, the aforementioned Velvet Underground’s Sunday Morning. It’s a beauty.
Ken McCluskey and Bobby Bluebell play their own Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool, the song they created after Alan Horne at Postcard challenged them to write a song as good as The Monkees’ Last Train To Clarksville.
Fay Fife owns the stage for two sharp blasts of Rezillos, with the frantic, hundred mile an hour racket of Can’t Stand My Baby just pipping Top Of The Pops to the post.
James King pulls low a pair of VU Ray-Bans and delivers a marvellous, Byrdsy Fly Away. High on jangle, reverb and twang, it’s one of the era’s great forgotten singles. Sensational stuff.
Norman Blake joins on guitar as the forever hangdog Stephen Pastel turns back the years with a couple of Pastels songs, a chugging, disciplined, and Krauty Baby Honey raising an already high bar. “Alan Horne suggested we be a synth pop group,” says a smiling Pastel to a tickled crowd.
Norman will be back later, unusually guitarless, to take vocals on two deep and emotional Josef K tracks. Downbeat but intense, Norman provides a real show stealer.
But back to the big hitters. Roddy’s Oblivious flies past in a blur of Malcom Ross fretboard wizardry, the lightning quick runs of the original flying tightly from his frets. Orange Juice’s Felicity rattles past in a giddy rush of whoa-whoas and well-rehearsed endings. Rip It Up, played by both Malcolm Ross and James T Kirk is slinky and chrome, its Chic-isms causing heads to bob and hips to sway.
Fire Engines’ Candyskin produces more shambling Velvetisms before Davy Henderson himself joins proceedings for a giddy You’ve Got The Power and a superstar karaoke blast of Iggy/Bowie’s Success. “Here comes success!” the group shout/sing in unison, a marker for how the evening has gone.
The ‘encore’ – no one has left the stage but we’re well over time and many an anxious ticket holder has begun the quick march for the last train home – is, as Bobby Bluebell describes by way of introduction, ‘the best single ever written and recorded in Scotland.’
Orange Juice – Blue Boy
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2023/02/1-05-blue-boy.mp3A rattling, galloping run through of Blue Boy follows. Orange Juice’s original perfectly straddles that sound of the ‘Buffalo Underground’- clean and jangling and melodic, with a needles-in-the-red, cheese-grater guitar solo to sharpen the senses. Yer actual James T Kirk is on hand to kick out the jams, coaxing the ear-piercing main offender from his fingers – the kind of solo that electrifies the fillings in your teeth and leaves you wanting more, more, more.
*My photos were rubbish, so most photos here are ‘borrowed’ from the social media feeds of Lauren Bacall, Iain Wilson, Andrew Thomas, Trevor Pake and Vivienne Wilson. I hope you don’t mind, and thanks in advance
We get fairly drawn into those BBC4 Top of the Pops repeats every Friday night. Proustian rushes flood back with every hammered hook-line and high falsetto harmony; a gym hall full of pre-teen boys, drainpipes and white socks, comparing tasseled loafers as The Beat’s Tears Of A Clown rattles its hundred mile an hour skank to its brassy end. Bananarama’s Cruel Summer reimagined by three breathy and off-key girls at the back of Geography, Impulse deodorant cans redeployed as skinny microphones. A trio of girls (again!) ‘woah-ah-woah-ing‘ their way through Baltimora’s Tarzan Boy as they cut across me, arms interlinked, side pony tails a-swishing, to get to Mr ‘Shaky’ Stevens’ second year chemistry class. A trio of Bs, coincidentally, that teleport straight back to a place and time. I’m sure you’ll have your own examples.
Baltimora, but. Neil Tennant enjoyed a good hook as much as the next pop scholar and saw the value in the one hit wonder’s ‘woah-ah-woah-ing‘ choral refrain. Not content with pilfering the Supremes-ish ‘ooh-ooh-ee-ooh‘ hook to the Human League’s Mirror Man for his own Love Comes Quickly, Tennant took inspiration from the singability of Tarzan Boy when writing Pet Shop Boys‘ Paninaro.
‘Paninaro-oh-oh-oh!‘
See?
Paninaro is prime Pet Shop Boys. Moody European orchestral synth dressed up as sophisto pop, cerebral, arch and knowing. Jammed full of era-defining Fairlight crashes and Juno modulations, its glacial synth lines glide through the verses as slowly as tectonic plates. the stately yin to the repetitive pulsing yang of its sequenced bassline.
Pet Shop Boys – Paninaro
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2023/01/04-paninaro.mp3Its name has given rise to a small faction of my team’s supporters. This group of Killie fans, in their Stone Island and box-fresh trainers and labelled and logoed expenso-wear named themselves Paninaro as a tenuous way of aligning themselves to their ’80s Milanese counterparts’ high sense of style and fashion.
But whereas those Italians had the scooters and haircuts and effortless chic mod-ability, these Ayrshire equivalents don’t. The youth of Milan hung out in coffee bars and sandwich shops – Paninaro comes from the word panini, meaning sandwich – and the Killie lot hang around The Coffee Club and Greggs the bakers, a tribute act a best.
The song though. Pet Shop Boys have always had their finger on the pulse of the zeitgeist and Paninaro is a great example of marrying youth culture to dance music. PSB revelled in the notion that the Milanese youth lived for Wham and Spandau and the non-stop flood of music from the UK while their elders sniffed their noses at what they considered a movement as shallow, vacuous and as temporary as the fashionable clothes the teenagers coveted. Fast fashion and fast food – that’s basically the mission statement of the Paninaro.
Neil Tennant appears only on the titular refrain, the bulk of the vocals delivered deadpan by Chris Lowe who, for once, has stepped out of the shadows to take centre stage.
“Passion…Love….Sex…Money…Violence….Religion…Injustice…Death…”
The words are thrown out, as soulless as Teletext vidiprinter text, as arty and sloganeering as a Bartle Bogle Hegarty advertising campaign from the same era.
The spoken-word section in the middle is taken from a recording of an interview of Lowe in a 1986 US TV interview, perfectly bleak and perfect for the Pet Shop Boys’ art and ethos.
I don’t like country and western
I don’t like rock music
I don’t like rockabilly or rock ‘n’ roll particularly
Don’t like much really, do I?
But what I do like I love passionately…
It’s a great tune, one that is nearly always overlooked in favour of all those other great Pet Shop Boys tracks. Like all the best bands, Paninaro first appeared as a b-side (to Suburbia) but has since become a track the equal of any of their a-sides. I suspect you know-oh-oh that already.
On my trip to New York last year, I was dead set on returning with a specific record. A modern repress was no good – you can get them anywhere after all – it had to be an original ‘70s pressing of an album recorded in the city, by a group from the city, with the grime and grind of lower Manhattan embedded deep within its grooves for added, authentic punkish effect. A ‘pre-loved’ and battered sleeve could only add to the funk of it all and I wouldn’t rest until I had tracked one down.
D’you know how hard it turned out to be, to find a decent record shop in Manhattan, let alone find one that had that one copy of Television’s Marquee Moon sitting idly and unloved at the back of its racks, waiting for the day when I’d show up with twenty bucks to rescue it from forgotten-ness for ever?
Dead hard to impossible, that’s how hard.
At the bottom of the High Line near the entrance to Chelsea Food Market was a wee artisan boutique where various local artists sold their wares. And right in the corner was an old disinterested guy selling records. They were packed in torn and ripped cardboard boxes, handwritten labels denoting the music genres within. Damn! Two guys were digging deep in the ‘Punk/Noo Wave’ box. And they weren’t moving anytime soon. I ignored the ‘Rawk/Hard Rawk’ selection, found the ‘Funk/Soul/Disco/‘70s Shit’ box and, with one eye on the two guys who, I was convinced, would unearth a Rocket To Russia or Plastic Letters or, no!, a Marquee Moon any second now, began rifling through a box of records that had seen better days.
I pulled loose a copy of Isaac Hayes’ Hot Buttered Soul, horrified first at the price – $50 – and then at the state of the thing. A well-worn sleeve suggests a life well-lived, the untold stories of get downs and skin-ups that were soundtracked by the record within. I don’t mind a tatty sleeve at all – you should see the state of the mouse-nibbled copy of Sandinista! I found in Liverpool a few years ago – but this record…all these records here…were wrecked to the point of uselessness. If I’d found this copy for £1 in the British Heart Foundation shop at Irvine Cross, I’d have swithered over the pros and cons of parting with my money. Fifty bucks?! Get real! Those two guys making their way through the box I really wanted to explore weren’t going anywhere fast, and by now the family had caught up with me, eager to move on. I’ll never know what was in that box, or what New York prices were being asked…but it still eats away at me that I’ll never find out.
We weren’t in New York, Craig, to spend hours looking for and then browsing through record shops, but I managed to syphon off some me time to spend scouring the Rough Trade that’s next to Radio City. Right at the back was a second-hand section. No Marquee Moon here either, but in amongst the overpriced jazz reissues and (bizarrely) Gerry Rafferty’s back catalogue, I fell upon an original ‘76 press of Dylan’s Desire, replete with its original 1970s price sticker, for a mere $8. Re-sult, as the crate diggers say.
On the way to the counter was a display of ‘Classic NYC Albums’ – I’ll let you work out which records were displayed – and, in an impulsive move, emboldened by the original Dylan and happy that I’d finally found a New York-ish record that met my stringent criteria, I picked up a minty fresh and shrink wrapped copy of Marquee Moon to complete my purchase.
“Cool rekkid,” said the counter girl through her dyed black fringe and piercings. “Great guitar playin’ awl ovah it.”
“I know,” I smiled. “When in New York…”
“You gotta,” she finished for me, giving nary an acknowledgment to the Bob record she was ringing up. “Have a great day!”
I was delighted. Not particularly with the Marquee Moon which I’d had forever anyway – it was one of the first CDs I bought, but with the Dylan record which, after a quick Google while sitting on the wall opposite Rough Trade, I discovered was originally sold in Jordan Marsh, an NYC chainstore with its own record department. Not the New York record I had my heart set on, but a New York record all the same.
Unfortunately then, my vinyl copy of Marquee Moon comes not with the essence of the Bowery engrained in it, nor the mucky fingerprints of some speed-damaged old punk rocker across it, but still with the greatest free-form guitar playing that sets it out as the most individualised trailblazing record in an era chock-full of individualised trailblazers.
The band Television first entered my teenage orbit on the back of The Family Cat’s forever support-band sounding ‘Tom Verlaine’. Who was the titular Tom that had this loud and caterwauling indie rock track named after him? I soon found out.
The sound Television made was, especially when you consider the mid ‘70s, the sound of the future. Think how many of your favourite bands have replicated Tom Verlaine’s guitar playing since; spidery thin then creamy thick, loose and ragged then fat-free but flashy all at once. Will Sergeant… John McGeoch… the entire alumni of Scots’ post-punk six string alchemists… you can perhaps trace a direct line from the hot wired fretboard of Verlaine’s Fender Jaguar or Jazzmaster to any number of single coiled, solid bodied fetishists the world over, but you won’t find any other examples of the guitarist’s initials mirroring the band in which he plays. A happy accident, for TV and Television for sure.
Television – Friction
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/03-friction.mp3I’ve always loved Tom Verlaine’s playing on Television’s Friction; the jerky riffing, the unexpected notes in the solos that are always strictly non-blues, but especially the little electrified sound effects he coaxes from the wound strings as the, ‘my eyes are like telescopes’ line creeps out. You can ‘see’ those eyes, pirouetting out on little stalks as the music matches the vocal.
‘EFF, ARR, EYE, SEE, T-I-O-ENN!’ it goes, wired and paranoid, a thousand bedroom guitar players tuning in intently. Not all guitar players would match Verlaine – few ever will – but that free-flowing metallic sound will ring forever, whether it’s from an old and battered copy of Marquee Moon or a bog standard original that’s straight from an Eastern European pressing plant. Great rekkid, with great guitar playin’ awl ovah it. Shine on, Tom Verlaine.
As far as new(ish) guitar bands with hot potential go, you could do worse than look towards The Bug Club as saviours of all things rough, ready and rabble-ish. With songs – short, in length, deep in content – pouring effortlessly from the trio as freely as the spring water in the Monmouthshire valleys from whence they come, and further vindication, should it be required, from the hip oracle of foresight that is Marc Riley, their time really is NOW!
Those constant rotations on Marc Riley’s nighttime show on BBC 6 Music became daytime earworms throughout last year and were eventually the catalyst for Freckfest, the wee music promotions team I’m involved with, to book them to play the Harbour Arts Centre in Irvine. Last night, then, was The Bug Club’s opening night of a short tour of Scotland and the south, a tour they started in Irvine…and started in style.
Having more songs than they know what to do with, the band hit upon the idea of supporting themselves as an outlet for airing a whole set of new material that’ll form the basis of their next album. Much like The Wedding Present, who did a similar thing at the tail end of the ’80s when they’d turn up unnanounced and run-through their not-yet-released Bizarro album (watching as the pre-social media audience grew to capacity after half a dozen or so songs), The Bug Club absolutely wanted to keep it low-key and under wraps. Their soundman pressed play on a pre-recorded intro message on one of those old, flat tape recorders and, to a room of no more than 20 people, Mr Anyway’s Holey Spirits sauntered onto the ‘stage’, ‘disguised’ in masks, plastic crowns and cheap silky capes and proceeded to blow the walls in.
Man! What a sound! They’ve two styles of songs, The Bug Club. One is Modern Lovers/Velvet Underground-rich; repetitive, clean and scraping guitars, the occasional Jonathan sunshine melody or Lou mumble on vocals, a slinky bassline, steady Tucker-ish drumming…you know how it goes. Being Welsh, they’ve even nailed the John Cale spoken-word sections with nary an effort. I’m jumping the gun here, but the last song they played in this set was a 10 minute headspin of male/female spoken word vocals and pulsing Velvets groove that possibly won’t be bettered in the whole of 2023. Totally great.
Their other style is tight ‘n raucous Nuggets-y garage punk, whippet thin blasts of hairdryer blooze with short, sharp interjections of Yardbirds-rich guitar licks, the spectral fingers of Page ‘n Beck slippin’ and slidin’ up the frets and back again, a lightning fast blur of high frettery that leads to a bottom end sludge fest.
The Bug Club – Checkmate
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2023/01/bug-club-checkmate.mp3It never quite gets full on Zep, mind you. And just as well. The Bug Club know exactly when to pull back and fall back into that Velvety grind. And talking of Jeff Beck, Sam Willmett, The Bug Club’s guitar-playing singer also eschews all form of effect pedal. He’s old school, and in a world populated by musicians who mask and disguise their limited playing with spaceship-sized chrome and steel stomp boxes, it’s totally refreshing. If I was a guitar player, I’d have thrown away all of that excess flab this morning and rethought the entire process. Or perhaps given up. With just an old Telecaster and a curly lead – there’s yr secret weapon right there – Sam coaxes all manner of tone and control from his six strings with nothing more than a snappily toggled pick-up switch or a pinky-flicked volume knob on his vintage amp for colour. I watched closely, less than two metres away from him at the side of the stage and I’m not quite sure what form of wizardry I paid witness to.
Of course, with the walls vibrating to the thrilling noise of just three people, ticket holders still in the bar begin picking up on the muffled thunk permeating their chat – “I think that’s them on!” – and gradually the room fills. By the time they’ve ended their near-hour warm-up set with that aforementioned 10 minute epic by unplugging, wandering off and singing the vocal refrain in the dressing room behind the stage, they’ve an entire audience on their feet in giddy appreciation. Not bad for a ‘support act’.
Soundcheck shotA quick interlude – Ivor Cutler, Gorky’s, Them – again, the best points of reference – and The Bug Club proper are back. The capes, masks and crowns may be gone but the relentless tuneage continues. Did they just play three songs in a row there without breaking for breath? I dunno, but it’s a thrill. Tilly on bass, nice, mild-mannered Tilly, is transformed into Suzi Quatro doing Angus Young at Hallowe’en. She struts, she stomps, she pulls excellent bass face. She is a total thrill to watch. Sam, meek and humble, squeezes out an apologietic thanks with a nod of the head before letting loose welders’ sparks of metallic chaos from the Telecaster. At the back, tubthumping Dan keeps it all together, fringe whipping his face as he sings along, mic’less but still there, the third spoke in an almighty wheel.
The Bug Club – It’s Art
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2023/01/bug-club-its-art.mp3Never anything less than can’t-take-your-eyes-off-them exhilarating, they must’ve played 40 songs over two one hour sets. Fast songs. Faster songs. Rockin’. Rowdy’. Quirky. Quaint. You can find them all at the band’s Bandcamp page. If you can, you should make a point of going to see them if they’re anywhere near you, anytime soon.
Yard Act and Wet Leg were the breakthrough bands of last year. This year belongs to The Bug Club. Hopefully we’ll get them back to Irvine before the rest of the world catches on. You, though. You should catch up. And catch up fast.
This is brand new for 2023 and absolutely magic. It’s lovely, so off-kilter and out of step with the fads ‘n fashions of the day, a bloody-minded and non-conformist ideal that will see it marginalised indefinitely yet should, were the ears of the world more open, see it canonised forever.
The Lemon Twigs – Corner Of My Eye
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2023/01/the-lemon-twigs-corner-of-my-eye-official-video.mp3If you’re looking for pigeonholes and labels you could probably file it under ‘sunshine pop’ or ‘soft rock’ or even ‘easy listening’, but really, it’s all of those things and none. It’s Wrecking Crew-good, just so expertly thought-out, played and put together. The production is the pure ’70s California of analogue desks, coke on the faders and Persian rugs for your bare feet to rest upon, the presentation that of grass-toking multi-instrumentalists with a thing for luscious hair and the Age of Aquarius. And who wouldn’t get behind that?
It’s the voices. Up front, choirboy clear and unashamed. A high falsetto makes itself known immediately and when the counter harmony breezes in, its a pure mesh of soft-focus, golden era Simon and Garfunkel, effortless and highly tuneful. If you’re going to sing it, sing it clear and pure. There’s high art in Lemon Twigs’ craft.
Nylon stringed guitars deliver tumbling and cascading pastoral backing, gently picked, in-the-wee-small-hours quiet, intricate melodies atop a myriad of chords – listen out for the descending, sliding barre chords that carry the song to its ending, just one of the signifiers that this wee tune hasn’t been flung together with nary a thought for the arrangement. The stand up bass that wanders its way through the rich tapestry of melody while the Village Vanguard-evoking brushed drums ease the whole thing to its softly sighing close only reinforces the notion of careful curation. Corner Of My Eye has been slow-marinaded and allowed to gestate before being eased out into the world.
“We recorded this track in the winter of 2021 in our old rehearsal studio in Midtown, NYC. We laid down the vocals late that night once the traffic outside had died down. We’ve had the song for a while now, so we’re excited to share it with fans who may have heard it live over the years.”
The Lemon Twigs, as you may well be aware, have form for this. No strangers to a double tracked guitar solo or a Randy Newmanistic trill on the piano, a Beach Boys-influenced McCartney Rickenbackered bassline or an octave-defying, multivocal harmony, they’ve taken the best parts of all the bands they love and distilled it into their own sound. Less Hanna Barbera than, say, Jellyfish, there’s nothing contrived in their schtick. They play well-crafted and joyous songs really well – just the two of them, mainly, musical brothers and so young with it – wearing their multiple influences on their tank-top sleeves and running with them, the talented bastards.
The teetering pile of books on the bedside table has been slowly reducing since it first took on Jenga-like proportions around my birthday in the middle of November before growing a couple more spines in height at Christmas. Amongst others, the much-maligned Philosophy of Modern Song, Bob Dylan‘s multi-genre critique of music through the ages has been dipped in and out of and, despite the rising consensus that it’s misogynistic, plagiarised and not worth the lovely, thick recycled paper (mmm, the smell of it!) that it’s printed on, I really like it, even if I can’t be certain I’m reading Bob’s own words or not. It does read like a printed version of his scripted Theme Time Radio Hour shows, and perhaps the credited thanks to ‘fishing buddy’ Eddie Gorodetsky – coincidentally the producer of those radio shows – tells you all you need to know with regards to just how much input Bob may or may not have had. The scamp. Thankfully, no one shelled out on a ‘signed’ copy for me. That’s a whole other can o’ worms. But you knew that already.
Nige Tassell‘s Whatever Happened To The C86 Kids? will have to wait a wee bit longer, as I’m about to dive deep into Douglas MacIntyre‘s Hungry Beat, a tome that celebrates an era – The Scottish Independent Pop Underground Movement (1977 – 1984) – that I was born just too late to appreciate first time around, but a book that will no doubt have me scrambling and scratching around for the appropriate soundtrack as I read. So, expect a raft of niche Scots’ post-punk to start drip-feeding on these pages once I’ve properly digested Douglas’s book, probably sometime around the start of March.
I’ve a whole stash of Stephen King on my Kindle, and I periodically select one I haven’t read. I ploughed my way through 11/22/63, wanting to give up at times but making myself finish it. It wasn’t a bad story – the concept is great; man discovers portal, goes back in time to stop Lee Harvey Oswald killing JFK and suffers the consequences of changing history, but man, it was just so damn long. The love scenes (of which there were more than enough) were toe-curlingly excrutiating too.
The other book I’ve recently read where history is intertwined with fiction was so much better…
I’ve just finished David Ross‘s multi-faceted Dashboard Elvis Is Dead, a proper page turner that I read over four nights last week. A quick disclaimer: David is a friend and very kindly gave me a copy in return for a review, so it was a relief to reach the final line, brain a-whirring, and not feel worried about having to contrive a few paragraphs of praise.
Dashboard Elvis Is Dead is a right good read, a Forrest Gumpish run through the people and events of the ’80s to the 2000s – the Scottish Independence referendum, 9/11, high school shootings – intertwined with fictional characters including a mixed-race American photojournalist eager to find comfort in her murky roots and a Scots indie band (The Hyptones) who self-implode almost as soon as their one great song starts making ripples on the music scene. The song, or rather, its origins, are the cause of much soul-seeking and anguish to the band’s guitar player, as you discover as the story unravels. And what a story it is.
There are two seemingly separate threads running through the book – one featuring Jude the photographer, the other following Jamie, The Hyptones’ hot-shot guitarist, but of course, they are interlinked. For a while, the novel’s early themes (love and belonging, travel, violence) run in parallel; at one point Jude finds herself embroiled in a ripe-for-Tarantino road trip and the star-crossed lovers she falls in with drag her life in a new direction while, travelling the same roads, The Hyptones zig-zag across the States in a converted van, the drummer lamping the singer who thumps the guitar player while the bass player sleeps through it all, before the crowd of rednecks and punks who mix like oil and water at the band’s showcase gig cause it to end in predictably time-honoured Longhorn Ballroom fashion…
Dashboard Elvis Is Dead reads like the wordy equivalent of a well-considered album; fast paced and attention-grabbing at the start, the serious stuff in the middle, the reflective and philosophical stuff towards the end before the big closer at the finish. A four-parter that can, and should, be read in four sittings.
Indeed, if this was a record, the pages where the two characters come face to face would be the big, noisy, side-closer; London’s Burning, perhaps, or Problems, more likely… something to draw a line under what you’ve just listened to (read) before you flip over and dive back in again.
The nightspots of New York City give way to Glasgow’s Red Row flats. Arty advertising agencies are succeeded by Glasgow School of Art. The movers and shakers of NYC’s cultural scene – Seymour Stein, Madonna – are replaced by the movers and shakers of Scottish politics and the Glasgow underworld. Characters that you meet in one section invariably pop up in key roles in another. The trick, which Ross does well, is in getting from one to the other without contrivance or over-reaching.
Bonus points too, Mr Ross, for naming the bass player ‘McAllister’. I’m sure it’s entirely coincidental, but that earns you a Plain Or Pan rating of nine and a half out of ten. (A half point off for not calling her ‘Craig’).
You can get Dashboard Elvis Is Dead in all good book retailers, digital as well as print. You should seek it out. I think you’d like it.
This record will be 50 years old this year…half a century young and still sounding like nothing that’s been before or since. Well, to a point…
Lee Perry‘s Jungle Lion is vintage Perry, from the stoned, lion roaring madman-isms at the beginning to the sun-baked skank as the record’s groove kicks in, to the echoing brass refrain that lifts the recording up and out to the moon and back, the hook that keeps the whole acid-fried masterpiece from falling apart.
Lee Perry – Jungle Lion (7″ mix)
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2023/01/tomp3.cc-lee-perry-and-the-upsetters-jungle-lion.mp3The production on Jungle Lion is insane. The band is locked in and tight, bass and drums laying the groundwork, that wet slap of chicka-chicka guitar adding the scratchy colour like a toddler with a crayon dragged across a piece of paper; messy, unique and creative. Perry toasts over the top in his own freeform fashion, the needles of the mixing desk accelerating far to the right and stuck in the red as he ‘Ughs’ and ‘Aows’ and ‘ch-ch-chs’ his way across the top. ‘Dan-dee-layon! Jung-gal layon! Fay-ah!‘ It’s funk, Jah, but not as we know it.
That brass refrain. The hook. You’ll definitely have heard that elsewhere. The keener scholars around these parts will point to Al Green‘s Love And Happiness and take the bonus round for 15 points, please, Jeremy.
Al Green – Love And Happiness
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2023/01/al_green_-_love_and_happiness.mp3Now, I don’t know quite what wizardry The Upsetter was capable of manifesting inside Black Ark, but it seems to me – and I may be well off the mark here – that Perry sampled, yet didn’t sample, the horn refrain from Al Green. What I mean is, the refrain on Perry’s track is the same music, not merely a version played by Perry’s horn section, but sampling wasn’t a thing in 1973…or was it? Exactly what technology was available to maverick studio heads with no boundaries and serious creativity overload?
My thinking is that Perry simply played Al Green’s track and, using a studio microphone set up next to the speaker where Love And Happiness blasted forth, recorded what came out. Remember how, back in the days before ghetto blasters with in-built radios, you used to tape the charts? Yeah, exactly like that.
So Perry takes Green’s track – the delicious guitar riff in the intro as well as the horn refrain – and builds his own warped and inventive take on a soul classic. Nothing new in this of course – most reggae tracks began life as sun-baked covers of the soul music that crackled and crept across the US services airwaves and onto the Caribbean – but Lee Perry’s masterstroke is in the direct lifting rather than the direct copying that his peers would do.
Al Green’s original is such a great track. Stately yet understated, quietly assured and coasting on a slow fever bed of warm hammond and honeyed brass, the perfect foil for the Reverend’s measured, restrained vocal.
He always surrounded himself with great musicians, did Al, from the Rhodes sisters on backing vocals, to the slow ‘n steady Al Jackson Jnr on drums and Leroy Hodges on bass, to his guitar player and sometime-co-writer (and brother of Leroy) Teenie Hodges. I’ve written about Teenie before, a relative unknown in the guitar world but, for me, a guitarist whio appeals to me far more than some of the usual names who appear on those ‘Best Guitarists Ever’ lists. He’s such a fluid player, Hodges, clean and clear, with the most delicate of touches. Those fingers can hover an inch above the frets and his guitar will sing, clean and chiming, bluesy and soulful. No wonder Lee Perry was keen to employ him in whichever manner he could get away with.
One great horn refrain, two outstanding records.
Let’s call it here and now: Meat Is Murder is The Smiths best album.
It’s certainly not the debut, the band’s unsatisfactory attempt to chase a sound worthy of the songs. Compared to the Brasso-bright, spit ‘n polish, ring-a-ding-ding of those early Peel versions, the debut album weighs heavy; lumpen, and one-dimensional. The drums sound leaden and lifeless. The guitars – it’s always about the guitars with The Smiths – sound as if someone has taken a fat thumb to their edges and rubbed the sparkle clean off. Flat and uninspiring, the production doesn’t do those fabulous riffs any justice at all. Unique, extraordinary songs, but assembled badly.
Don’t even consider The Queen Is Dead. Those songs…man, great, great songs…but whoever signed off the running order needs their head examined. The title track aside, every other song is misplaced. Side one collapses from the music hall titter of Frankly, Mr Shankly into the death doublet of I Know It’s Over/Never Had No One Ever – undeniably serious mood music pieces, yes, but totally misplaced. Stick I Know It’s Over at the end of side 1 instead and you’ve got a great closing track. Never Had No One Ever? That’s totally ripe for the graveyard slot of second last track on side 2. Pick any ten records from your collection and look at the running order and then tell me that the second-to-last track isn’t the weakest on the album. It’s certainly not where There Is A Light That Never Goes Out should be hiding. That should be sitting up front with Bigmouth… and the big boys, or maybe even afforded the honour of being the big statement closing track. Good as Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others is – and it’s one of their very best – go out on a romantic, swaying high, Smiths. Don’t relegate your best songs to the twilight zone.
Yeah, and the smart money (even Johnny’s, they say) might be on Strangeways Here We Come, but for every crashing gothic masterpiece (Last Night I Dreamt...) there’s The Smiths-by-numbers (Stop Me If You Think…), for every barely-disguised love letter from singer to guitarist (I Won’t Share You) there’s the instantly skippable Death At One’s Elbow. It’s a good album, Strangeways, probably even great, but it isn’t their greatest. That honour goes to Meat Is Murder. Here are half a dozen reasons why.
Reason 1. Little elfin Johnny, in his blown-up Keith Richards hair-do and diamante clutter, is on fire across every bit of Meat Is Murder. He runs the whole gamut of his nimble-fingered arsenal; alternative tuning on the title track…alternative tuning and Nashville tuning on the cosmic and zinging Headmaster Ritual…that fine, layered coating of acoustic liquid mercury across Well I Wonder…the Stooges Metallic KO of What She Said, the rockabilly knee-tremble of Rusholme Ruffians…the proud Chic-isms that give way to those great, ringing discordant jazz chords near the end of Barbarism Begins At Home…the clattering chatter he conjures up across Nowhere Fast‘s multiple overlapping tracks and kaleidoscope of chords…
Johnny came up with them all. On Meat Is Murder he is barely 22 and he’s not yet reached a peak that his peers, never mind his guitar-strangling lessers in bedrooms up and down the country, can only dream of.
Reason 2. Morrissey. Separating the art of the 26 year-old singer from the 63 year-old artist is necessary here. Look, not at what he’s become, but at what he was once capable of. With every lyric on the album, he’s extremely funny and articulate and political and opinionated and principled and, above all else, loveable. ‘I’d like to drop my trousers to the Queen,’ ‘heifer whines could be human cries,’ ‘belligerent ghouls run Manchester schools, spineless bastards all,’ ‘What she read, all heady books, she’d sit and prophesise, it took a tattooed boy from Birkenhead to really, really open her eyes.’
Even if he pinched large chunks of Rusholme Ruffians from Victoria Wood, no one was crowbarring lyrics like this into pop songs in 1985. Arguably, no one has crowbarred stuff as unique and searing and insightful and right-on since.
Reason 3. That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore is one of The Smiths’ finest torch songs. From its bright-as-brass-buttons opening to its layered and textured false ending, it’s a beauty. It’s the perfect marriage of Morrissey’s moping introspection and Marr’s guitarchestra, the singer identifying with those who are kicked when they are down, the guitarist going to town with studio effects and multi-layered riffs.
The Smiths – That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2023/01/05-that-joke-isnt-funny-anymore.mp3Those little echoing triplets that fall from his fingers to create rippling pools on still pond water still tingle the back of my neck when they come in (around the minute mark at first, then forever after) – an ear-opening epiphany in 1985 when I realised that guitar players enhanced their electric sound with gizmos and wizardry to create the sounds they imagined in their heads. The haunting (and haunted) backwards effects he weaves through the ‘happening in mine‘ section before the fade out are ace.
Johnny has since said (OK, he told me, right?) that The Smiths never quite managed to do it justice live, but with the technology available today, That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore would have undoubtedly been the centrepeice of The Smiths live experience. We’ll never know.
Reason 4. The Smiths changed lives. Saved lives, even. Like, literally. The title track is responsible for a whole swathe of impressionable teenagers – and at least two Smiths besides Morrissey – to forego eating meat and adopt vegatariansim as a way of life.
“As soon as we had recorded this song, I became a vegetarian,” Mike Joyce told me in 2017. “Morrissey’s argument was rock solid. I couldn’t even be that bullish to say, ‘…but I like meat.’ The cruelty involved is reason enough. You wouldn’t eat your cat or your dog, so why eat a sheep or a pig? Whatever Morrissey argued, you could only reply with, “You’re right, you’re right.” There was no counteract to it. It should be illegal, there’s just no argument for it. ‘Meat Is Murder’ is a sheer political statement. It shaped my life and my kids’ too, who’ve all been brought up vegetarian.
Accompanying the lyric, all sorts of magic is going on. Suitably doomy and disconcerting for the words being sung, Johnny plays around on an open D riff, cyclical and repetitive, hynpotic and ethereal.
The Smiths – Meat Is Murder
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2023/01/09-meat-is-murder-2011-remastered-v.mp3It’s matched by a jangling piano – not noticeable on first listen, buried as it is underneath the abattoir grinding and cattle cries, but it’s there, tinkling along like springtime Manchester rain while studio-treated guitars echo and scrape and scratch their way through the murk, Andy’s bass as elastic and stretchy as tendons.
Reason 5. Ah. Andy’s bass. The unsung hero of the band, the thinking man’s favourite Smith, Andy Rourke can play the fuck out of that thing. While Johnny gets all the spotlight, Andy quietly goes about creating tunes within tunes, fret-surfing melodic runs that could easily stand on their own two feet (or four strings).
The Smiths – Nowhere Fast (Peel Session, 1984)
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2023/01/10-nowhere-fast-aug-09-1984.mp3The trampolining rubber bandisms that carry the aforementioned Rusholme Ruffians…the counterparts he plays to Johnny’s guitar in The Headmaster Ritual…the driving force in Nowhere Fast that allows Johnny to fly off-piste and back again…Andy is a key ingredient here.
The rather-too obvious track to highlight is the extreme funkability of Barbarism Begins At Home, all slap ‘n thunk, an old tune of his and Johnny’s from pre-Smiths days that wouldn’t have worked on that debut album, but here, on Meat Is Murder‘s inclusive, catholic patina, it shines brightly.
Reason 6. The Headmaster Ritual. Rusholme Ruffians. I Want The One I Can’t Have. What She Said. That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore. Nowhere Fast. Well I Wonder. Barbarism Begins At Home. Meat Is Murder.
Perfectly sequenced, perfectly pitched, it is, rare for the era, an album of few single releases; Headmaster and Barbarism in foreign countries only, That Joke in the UK (a chart-busting number 49 with a bullet). The Americans couldn’t handle an album with no hit singles though, so they crassly wedged How Soon Is Now? right before Nowhere Fast at the start of side 2. They have form for spoiling perfectly perfect albums, the Americans – look at what they did to some of The Beatles’ catalogue for proof – and while How Soon Is Now? is an undoubted Smiths classic, it should remain standing alone as the greatest 3-track Smiths single ever. But that’s an argument for another time.
I welcome your misguided outrage in the comments…
Old enough to get married, but not of the age to celebrate with a swift half down The Crown, Plain Or Pan turns 16 today.
I wouldn’t have believed you this day back in 2007 if you’d told me these pages would lead to me getting to interview Sandie Shaw, half The Smiths and a smattering of my favourite musicians, but that’s the truth. I peaked during lockdown when I was tasked with writing a biography – The Perfect Reminder – about the Trashcan Sinatras‘ second album I’ve Seen Everything. The book subsequently found its way to all corners of the UK, the USA, Europe and Japan and eventually peaked at the respected Aye Write book festival in Glasgow, where myself and photographer Stephanie Gibson, alongside John from the TCS, were interviewed on stage by BBC 6 Music’s Gideon Coe. To top off what was Aye Write’s headlining slot (and perhaps the reason why a feart and running Bobby Gillespie postponed his appearance), John, Davy and a visiting Frank Reader appeared as the ThreeCS and played a half hour set of acoustic Trashcans’ numbers. But you knew all that already.
With the Trashcans’ third album – A Happy Pocket – being reissued by Last Night From Glasgow, I was once again called to action. This time round, things have been scaled back a bit. There’s no hard back book, there’s no bespoke photographs and I doubt there’ll be an Aye Write appearace, though you never know. What we do have is something – The Full Pocket – that’s akin to more than a fanzine but not quite a book. It’s A4. It’s set in the same font as the tracklisting on the album. It’s packed full of archival photographs and artefacts. And it features all 5 band members and the occasional outside influence talking about the album and its associated b-sides track by track, story by story. I might compare it to one of those Mojo or Uncut special editions – y’know, those ‘Complete Guide to Bob Dylan’ publications that they occasionally produce?
The Full Pocket is a goldmine of TCS factoids. Funny, informative and, may I say, indisepnsable if you’ve even half a passing interest in one of our greatest under-the-radar bands. Pre-orders went online last night and it was thrilling to see the response. If you’re a fence-sitter, or perhaps an eager pre-orderer and want a sneak peek, I’ve included a short extract below. I’ve intentionally kept it shorter than the same bit in the bookzine – the band quotes are longer and more detailed in there, and I’ve not included any of the photos that will appear either. Some things are worth waiting for.
(Screenshot)The Genius I Was (Excerpt from The Full Pocket)
Trippy, fuggy, druggy, whacked out…The Genius I Was pummels along on a tidal wave of overlapping guitars and a sneaked-in metronomic Run To You riff, coloured by needles-in-the-red zinging interludes and Frank’s buzzing fly-in-a-jar line enderzzz. Davy’s bass, solid, melodic and thumping drives the whole stramash forwards. The guitars – about 8 tracks of them, I’d guess – are phased, flanged, panned left to right and back again. A six string acoustic scrubs out the choppy rhythm as an electric zaps out the hippy, spacey stuff. There’s a lot going on here, and repeated listens reward the keenest of ears.
I must’ve played The Genius I Was about a thousand times since first hearing it and I could happily play it over and over for the next hour and never tire of its proggy, sonic resonance. Until now, have you even noticed John coming in midway through the first verse to duet with Frank from thereon in? And have you ever noticed the heavenly choir near the end as the melodies tumble and the chorus unravels? I’m sure Stephen’s voice is somewhere high within the mix. There’s a lot to unpack in what is a well-constructed track. It may be buried deep within the album, but make no mistake, The Genius I Was is one of the Trashcans’ very best.
Trashcan Sinatras – The Genius I Was
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2018/08/09-the-genius-i-was.m4aPaul: This was one of Frank’s. We worked for a while on it. For a long time, it was faster and louder and a bit queasy with those chords. It happens a lot with Frank’s songs where you’re learning it but you’re thinking, ‘What is this?’ “It’s this chord…and then you go to this chord…and then you go to that chord…”, and you’re like, ‘what the fuck?!’…
Stephen: The verse chords for The Genius I Was were there long before the rest of the song and when rehearsing we used to play them continuously, really loud. I remember the song being a two chord instrumental for some time before this.
Frank: I was sitting around on my guitar, trying to learn something when I stumbled on this nice, slideable chord. I could move it up two frets and back again, which I did for a bit, and then I went to the fourth fret and back down again. Suddenly I had a riff and it sounded weird, kinda backwards, but interesting. I played it over and over, getting into it, dang-dang der-dang-dang, it was fast and driving. And then my hands got stuck in those fret positions. I’m not a good guitar player, and I’m thinking, what can I play to get out of this?
Davy: Frank had a set of weird chords and we could never get them into shape – augmented chords, maybe diminished, I dunno, but it had a good vibe to it and was worth working on. It was very post-punky, ‘Edinburgh’, as Frank would say. The east coast bands were almost always a bit more angular and jagged than their west coast compatriots.
John: This is one that’s made by the playing on it. Davy’s bass playing on it especially is spectacular. The way he plays steady while we’re all changing and he’s just ploughing through, it’s phenomenal. He creates a really good driving sound. It’s a hard one to play live, but it’s a total belter.
Frank: I did a demo of it in the middle of the night at Shabby Road with a really simple bassline, but enough to get it started. I had the melody and everything and when Paul came in from the Hunting Lodge and heard what I’d done, he loved it and really took it on.
Hugh Jones worked on it and helped take the recording up yet another notch in the mix. Dulcimer, again, was added and everything went stratospheric, Stephen and Davy kept a driving rhythm at the core of it, Davy sliding up and down the frets with ease. It sounded fast and zingy, spooky, a bit swingy even.
Stephen: This was a real ‘studio’ production as we pretty much arranged the song as we recorded it. What linked it all together was Davy’s inspired bass playing; it’s almost a lead bass part he’s playing. There’s also some fantastic playing from Paul, especially in the choruses.
Davy: We had the tune complete before we had the title, I think. ‘The Genius I Was’ was the title of a song without a tune that I’d started years before. Frank liked it and used it here.
Frank: Davy had a sheet of words. The title at the top said ‘THE GENIUS I WAS’, all in capital letters, double underlined. The only line I took from Davy’s lyrics was the title line.
John: We should’ve done two or three mixes of it. There’s some intricate acoustic picking which you can barely hear on the finished version.
Davy: Simon Dine (Go! Discs) really liked the finished song and thought it had hit potential.
Frank: We went as far as making a video for it, sent out promos too, but The Genius I Was never got the full single release treatment.
——
The full version of this article can be found in A Full Pocket – The Definitive Story of Trashcan Sinatras’ A Happy Pocket.
Pre-orders are available now via Last Night From Glasgow. Click the link and you’ll have the option to buy The Full Pocket (£8) and also a multibuy deal for The Full Pocket and The Perfect Reminder (£20).
Continual wearer of dapper hats and proud sporter of one of those wonderfully impressive, thick and full moustaches that are usually found on sepia-tinted portraits of First World War soldiers, Billy Childish is a uniquely singular person. As much at home with a paintbrush in his hand as a vintage guitar (or a cigar), he makes music and art and poetry for him and him alone and, as the old cliché goes, if anyone else likes it, it’s a bonus. Nary a week goes by without Billy creating magic out of thin air and the sheer will to do.
Wild Billy Childish, The Buff Medways, Thee Headcoats, Thee Headcoatees, Thee Might Caesars, The Milkshakes, CTMF, The Spartan Dreggs, The Pop Rivets, The Musicians Of The British Empire… just some of the aliases adopted by Steven John Hamper across a musical catalogue that spans over 40 years and 125 or so albums. So, blimey!, where exactly do you start?
I don’t have the definitive answer to that, but you could do worse than start with his recent stroppy and punkish Bob Dylan’s Got A Lot To Answer For.
Wild Billy Childish & CTMF – Bob Dylan’s Got A Lot To Answer For
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2022/12/y2mate.is-bob-dylans-got-a-lot-to-answer-for-wqhnzcxjdro-160k-1657587106653.mp3Bob Dylan introduced The Beatles to marijuana…what’d he go and do that for? They were a lot better before… Bob Dylan’s Got A Lot To Answer For!!
Funny, sharp and articulate, Bob Dylan’s Got A Lot To Answer For bemoans that moment in every musical visionary’s career when they get a bit ‘lah-di-dah-dah‘, as Billy says about Keith in the Stones. It’ll take a couple of listens to fully appreciate Childish’s pissed off and spitting rollcall of all that’s wrong with his heroes, but you’ll want to play it 3, 4, 24 times in a row in any case.
Childish trains his double barrels on Jimi Hendrix and lets fly. The Rolling Stones. Dylan himself, via Allen Ginsberg. The two best-known Morrisons, Van and Jim incur his wrath too. No sacred cows escape the pot shots. It’s very funny, but underneath lies a serious message: your heroes will eventually let you down.
That undeniably superb energy that fizzes from first double snare shot to the last, fading cymbal splash? That’ll be due to Childish’s wilful and bloody-minded approach to prodigious musical talent. Great on the guitar, are you? You take the drums for this one then. Excellent back-beater? Here’s a bass guitar.
Now, I don’t know if the above track was made in this manner, but it certainly keeps the band on their toes and top o’ the morning fresh, that’s for sure. The drummer on this particular track rides the cymbal as if he’ll fall off a cliff the moment he stops, the bass player playing his one-note riff in the spoken sections with all the concentration of a 15-year old learning to play Pixies for the first time.
Bob Dylan’s Got A Lot To Answer For features a superb guitar tone, as well it should. Childish is a sound-obsessive; whether he’s chasing that Beatles in Hamburg sound, or an acoustic skifflish country blues, or All Day And All Of The Night‘s rasping garage fuzz, he’s spent a lifetime nailing it. And welded to that warped and twisted Louie Louie riff that carries through the entirety of Bob Dylan’s Got A Lot To Answer For, it fair packs a muscular, and very probably monophonic, punch.
Dive in.
There’s been a rush of traffic to these pages in the past few days since the airing of Mayflies on the BBC. Keith Martin, the real-life Tully, was a true character of the Irvine music scene and beyond and I watched from the periphery as he and his close-knit gang of pals whipped up a storm of creativity and ideology around them.
John Peel famously played Keith’s band, The Big Gun‘s Heard About Love. “I must say, I like that immoderately,” he said at the time. I bet you read that in Peel’s laconic drawl too…
The Big Gun – Heard About Love
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2018/10/10-the-big-gun-heard-about-love.mp3Photo by Gordon HayHad Irvine been Manchester or even East Kilbride, I daresay we’d have had our very own scene on our hands. Well, we did, but no one knew about it until now. Those times really deserve a dedicated piece of their own, something that I should look at putting right in the new year.
When Keith died back in 2018, I wrote a piece that has been visited many times over, even more so this week. If you missed it, you can find it here.
Other articles worth a second look, or a first look if you are but a casual browser around here, follow below. Call them 2022’s Greatest Hits if you like.
Click to view slideshow.Read about Khruangbin and their whacked-out desert blues here.
If real-life Berlin Wall escapees and Cold War paranoia is your thing, click here.
Akin to Mayflies and the glue of friendship, here‘s the story of mix tapes, dirty magazines and going to see Primal Scream in Ayr.
That time when, along with the Trashcan Sinatras and Gideon Coe, I was the headline act at Aye Write.
Just how great were Buzzcocks?
Busking at the British Open. Guest appearance from Tom Watson. True story here.
The definitive article on The The, here.
Grand plans for Flaming Lips‘ Do You Realize? here.
Some writing about people-watching in New York City, here.
An article on Frankie Knuckles‘ Your Love, the greatest house record ever recorded.
Failing to recreate Bob ‘n Suze ‘n Freewheelin’ by being in the street parallel to where we should’ve been. D’uh.Hopefully you’ll find something new, or rediscover something you read previously and then disappear down a rabbit hole of words and tunes. It’s all about the words and tunes. Always. Thanks for reading.
Back in 2023.
I found myself watching Out Of Sight a couple of weeks ago, the George Clooney/Jennifer Lopez bad guy/tough cop thriller. I hadn’t seen it in about 20 years since the time I rented the video from Azad at Irvine Cross and it was every bit as great as I remembered.
Clooney, playing a cultured career criminal (Jack Foley) intent on breaking out of jail, is in full-on classic Hollywood heartthrob role. When he’s not seen in prison uniform (and even then he wears his denim jacket with all the effortless cool of James Dean in a Harrington), he’s immaculately dressed up in sharp-fitting gabardine suits and impressively dressed down in knitted polos and panel shirts. His hair, superbly coiffed and conditioned – there’s nary a fleck of dandruff to be seen in its lasered parting – falls somewhere between Paul Newman and Paul Simonon. He’s suitably stubbly, deep of dimple and hairy of arm to weaken the knees of even the hardest of alpha males. Yeah, I can see why all the ladies love George.
His counterpart Lopez (Karen Sisco) looks every bit as sensational. Still a couple of hard-chiselled years and a 60-minute makeover away from Jenny From The Block and the diva-ish demands that would make her perhaps dislikeable, she’s heart-stoppingly perfect. Her hair falls just-so across her jawline as she pulls her gun, her tight-fitting knee-length skirt splits up the side showing more than enough caramel thigh than is strictly necessary, but entirely acceptable.
As she holds her gun stance, her lips – no filler, all killer – open and curl slightly, Elvis style, to snarl at her target. “Freeze!” she shouts in cliché, “FBI!“, her soft and smoky Latina vowels wrapping themselves around your ears, her dark eyes pulling you magnetically towards her face. Yeah. (Sigh). Sen-say-shu-nal!
David Holmes – The Trunk Scene
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2022/12/06.-the-trunk-scene.mp3Naturally, Lopez and Clooney smoulder in their shared scenes. The scene at the start where they’re locked in the boot of a car, she determined to uphold the law, he determined to charm his way out, is a slow-burning, simmering pressure cooker of tension and release.
The scene where, hot on his tail with a condescending, mansplaining superior, Sisco spots Foley from the hotel lobby as his elevator door slides open and she raises her walkie-talkie then pauses, just long enough to lock eyes with Foley and warn him of what’s happening, is perfectly cut.
The bar-room scene, when the pair of them play out a first meeting, brush fingers against Cisco’s glass of bourbon and intently study one another is a whole Guy Fawkes’ Parliament of dynamite.
Foley: It’s something that just happens. It’s like seeing a person you never saw before – you could be passing on the street – you look at each other and for a few seconds, there’s a kind of recognition. Like you both know something. But then the next moment the person’s gone, and it’s too late to do anything about it, but you remember it because it was right there and you let it go, and you think, ‘What if I had stopped and said something?’ It might happen only a few times in your life.”
Sisco: “Or once.”
Foley: “Or once.” (long pause) “Why don’t we get out of here.”
The sexual tension remains long after they’ve got out of there, Elmore Leonard’s hard boiled words making the leap from pulp to celluloid and leaving you in no two minds about what’s going to happen next.
David Holmes – No More Time Outs
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2022/12/15.-no-more-time-outs.mp3It’s all perfectly sound-tracked too. Director Stephen Soderbergh gave David Holmes the job of scoring his movie, and Holmes takes the brief and runs riot with it, drawing inspiration from the Tarantino soundtracks of the era by crate digging forgotten soul, jazz and bossanova beauties and sandwiching them between genre-perfect originals. The curling blue Gitanes-ed fingers of trip hop linger around the edges; pistol-cracking snare drums, Fender Rhodes playing off into the sunset, wah-wahs hinting at mischief to come, frantic bass runs and stabbing brass jarring the ears at unpredictable moments.
It’s all essential listening, with our without the beautiful visuals of Clooney and Lopez. If you have the CD, you’ll get all of this overlaid with spoken-word interludes from the movie. It’s a trip, as they used to say. If you watch one old movie this holiday period, make it Out Of Sight. If you can trap and bottle any of that sizzle coming from the screen, you’ll not need to use your boiler for the next fortnight. Try it.
This was timed to go out a couple of days ago, then hastily postponed to make way for the Terry Hall stuff. By comparison it seems trivial now, but I can’t save it for the new year, so on with the show, as they say.
Yule dig this…
Remember Flexipop!? Back at the start of the ’80s, when the freshest of music was borne from a creative and punkish, DIY attitude, a couple of disillusioned Record Mirror writers started Flexipop! magazine. Adopting a maverick approach to publishing that was similar to the bands of the music it would feature, Flexipop! flouted the rules of their game and, in a blaze of cut ‘n paste ‘n Letraset ‘n day-glo fonts gave Smash Hits, Number 1 and even the hallowed trio of inkies a run for their money. Their star would burn briefly – 37 issues (one issue a month for three years) – but brightly.
Their USP? Every issue of Flexipop had a free 7″ flexidisc stuck to the cover. Sometimes single-sided, sometimes double, and sometimes even a 4-track EP, each flexi contained a unique, can’t-be-found anywhere else recording of that issue’s cover star; The Jam‘s Pop Art Poem on see-through yellow plastic, for example, or a luminous, Fanta-orange pressing of The Pretenders Stop Your Sobbin‘ (demo, of course), even a 23 second recording of Altered Images wishing you a happy new year, and this… Blondie and Fab 5 Freddy riffing and rapping, some of it loosely Christmas-related, across the top of the demo to Rapture.
Blondie & Fab 5 Freddy – Yuletide Throwdown
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2022/12/yuletide-throwdown.mp3Ice-cool Debbie: Hey – you don’ look like Santa t’me. I never saw a Santa Claus wearin’ sunglasses!
Freddy: Cool out, without a doubt!
Ice-cool Debbie: Merry Christmas, ho ho ho!
And off they go, Freddy telling the listener where he grew up, Debbie pre-empting Run DMC and the Beastie Boys by double tracking him on the line ends, referencing guns, disco and ‘the nicest snow’ – which is possibly not a reference to the inclement weather.
Debbie Harry, Fab 5 Freddy, Grandmaster Flash, Tracy Wormworth (bass, The Waitresses), Chris SteinChristmas duets come in all shapes and sizes; Bowie ‘n Bing, Shane ‘n Kirsty and now Debbie ‘n Freddy. Lost to the archives, Blondie re-discovered Yuletide Throwdown a year ago while pulling together the material that would make up their catch-all box set.
It’s an interesting peek into their creative process, the version here replete with those descending chimes and rinky-dink funk guitar, the horn motif and Debbie’s ‘Ra-ah-pt-yoor!‘ refrain, yet sluggish and sludgy…and pretty good as a result. I don’t know why they chose to speed it up before release.
“When we first recorded Rapture, it was slower. This was the first version,” Stein said. “We decided to make it faster. The slower tape was just bass, drums and guitar doubling the bass, I don’t think much else. I took the tape to my home studio and added stuff, then Debbie and Fred did their vocals.”
I’m a sucker for a demo or an alt. version, and this version of Rapture certainly falls into that category. Play once, and once only at this time of year, file it in the section of your brain that’ll serve you well come the toughest of music quizzes and then forget all about it until next December.
*Interestingly, the b-side of the Blondie/Fab 5 Freddy single sounds like it might be totally magic. Credited to mystery band The Brattles, it turns out they were a band of pre-pubescent punk rockers aged between 8 and 12: Werner, 12 (Guitar), Dagin, 8 (Drums), Jason, 9 (Vocals), Emerson, 9 (Bass) and Branch, 10 (keyboard). Makes Musical Youth look like the Grateful Dead.
The record shows that The Brattles opened for the Clash twice, shared a rehearsal room with the New York Dolls and we were produced by Chris Stein of Blondie. Ah, so there’s the connection. I suspect Bartholomew Carruthers, if he’s reading, will be able to give me the full rundown. Until then, must investigate…
The Specials were one of the very first groups I truly loved. Later life would open my eyes and ears to their stance, but as a 10 year old I had no idea they were in any way political, or that by even lining up in that defiantly multicultural manner they were flicking a two-fingered salute to the dangerous undercurrent of right-wing extremism that was simmering just below the surface of Thatcher’s Britain. Friendly antagonists, they fought back through well chosen words and haircuts and clothes. Me? I just liked jumping around Mark Richmond’s room to Do The Dog and Rat Race, Nite Klub and his single of Too Much Too Young. “Ain’t you heard of con-tra-cep-shun!” we’d shout, oblivious to what that actually was, our tasselled loafers ripping our heels to bits as we clacked the segs off his mum’s kitchen floor. Far too young for the 2 Tone tour of ’79 when it made its final stop in the rundown seaside town of Ayr, just down the coast from my house, it wouldn’t be until The Specials reformed in the early 2010s that I’d finally catch them in full flight. I’m glad I did. They were dynamite from start to finish.
Terry Hall, Barrowland Ballroom 2013Terry Hall was the unlikeliest of frontmen. Despite being the King of the suedeheads, he never seemed like he was very much into it. He always looked fed up, disinterested at times, perhaps depressed at others. Hangdog and emotionless, he’d hang from his mic stand like Eeyore, down in the mouth, staring at the floor, as his bandmates whipped up a not-so-quiet riot around him. Of course he was into it though. The music would occasionally spark a jolt of electricity through him and he’d pull himself tight, knuckles whitened around the mic, shoulders up and into his ears and he’d fly off in a whirl of suit-jacketed skanking, turning to face Neville or Lynval to lose himself in the punkish ramalama before the brief musical interlude ended and he was pulled magnetically back to his real job as downbeat frontman in one of our greatest and most accurately-named groups.
The news of Terry Hall’s sudden death has hit me far harder than I could have anticipated. I’m working from home just now, putting together stuff that should be turned in before Friday, but I can’t properly concentrate. I’m listening, not to The Specials – they’re night-time music – but to Virgins and Philistines, the album he made with/as The Colourfield in the mid ’80s. It’s rich and inventive and packed full of unravelling melodies, as well as bona fide classics; it opens with Thinking Of You, and its rich mix of Spanish guitars, plucked strings and groovy acoustic bass runs has almost set me off, its upbeat melancholy taking on a whole new meaning. Powerful thing, music. I’m not sure I can handle Forever J just now. I’ll save that particular beauty for tomorrow, maybe.
The Colourfield – Thinking Of You
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2022/12/thinking-of-you.mp3A funny thing happens when popstars die. You don’t know them…and yet, you do. They pop round far more often than yr old Auntie Margaret, for starters. You know them, and they know you far better than anyone else. They get you. They instantly uplift. Immediately heal and soothe. Always in tune with your feelings, they never disappoint (well…Morrissey, but…) Pull them out of that alphabetised collection of yours and they’re right with you in the room, familiar old friends reigniting old memories of the past, shooting to the surface like lava from a volcano and spilling out in unstoppable order.
As my own years roll on, and friends and heroes die, I find myself getting increasingly nostalgic for a past that surely couldn’t have been as idyllic as I remember. One whiff of Gangsters and I’m right back in Mark’s mum’s kitchen, an orange rolling from the top of the fruit bowl and onto the floor as our uncoordinated earth-quaking and enthusiastic skank tips first the fruit and then his mum over the edge. Mark is also no longer with us, so the music of Terry Hall, and especially The Specials, has all sort of meaning suddenly attached to it.
I’m back in the living room of our old house as my mum pulls out the catalogue and asks if I want peg legs or flares for school trousers. Thank you, whoever you might be up there, who prompted me to ask for peg legs just as 2 Tone was filtering its way to Bank Street Primary School. I’m back in the playground, half a dozen of us shooting bright yellow sparks from our segs.
And I’m in the wee shop in Irvine High Street agonising over which of the badges my 15p will go on this time. A Specials badge, the group scowling in miniature? A Madness logo? My original one was lost somewhere in or near the Magnum and I’m still annoyed about that. That spray-painted Jam logo, maybe? Nah. I’ll go for The Police this time. Just, as always, on the wrong side of cool. When you’re that age, music is just music. Leaving aside the Y cardigans and the burgundy Sta-Prest and those painfully cutting loafers, tribal identity wasn’t so important at primary school. So there the badges were; The Beat, The Selecter, Adam and the Ants, The Police. And Status Quo. Fight me.
I read this thing about Elvis a few months ago – around the time of the Baz Luhrmann biopic coming out, as it happened – that suggested that the market for Elvis memorabilia had crashed to the point of irrelevence; the collectors, it pointed out, were all dying off and the younger generations just didn’t identify with Elvis in the same way.
The King of Rock ‘n Roll? From a Gen Zeder’s perspective, that’s a sad (as in embarrassing) label to tag anyone with. Get hip, daddy-o, Elvis is dead, in every sense of the word. He rocks in his box and in his box only. Unlike the timeless appeal of say, The Beatles or Queen – young kids love Queen – or AC/DC or Fleetwood Mac, artists whose music soundtracks films, appears on catch-all streaming playlists, is referenced by the pop stars of today and therefore is still culturally relevant, to young folk, Elvis is just a tragic fat guy in a white suit who died on the toilet. His records, antiquated artefacts of a sepia-tinted bygone world at best, middle of the road karaoke fodder at worst, will never be streamed, let alone spun, by anyone under 40. The King is dead, man. The King is dead…
But, but, but…let me tell you, you in the Balenciaga and you in the Yeezy Boost, Elvis could sing…he could swing…and for a while, he mattered.
The purists might point to the Vegas years; if you can, see past the bloated excess of an Elvis deep in all sorts of personal trouble, you’ll revel in his sensitive treatment of the standards. And there are definitely gems to be found amidst his army ‘n movie years of the ’60s. But to these ears, his ’50s output is easily his most exciting period. If you’re a doubter, a naysayer, a cloth-eared fool, then his version of Santa Claus Is Back In Town won’t go any way to swaying your opinion, but as far as rough ‘n ready Christmas rockers go, it’s right up at the top of the tree.
Elvis Presley – Santa Claus Is Back In Town
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2022/12/3-30-santa-claus-is-back-in-town.mp3Beginning with a mesh of close-harmonied vocals from The Jordanaires – “Christttmass, Christtmas!” – and some searching, tentative piano, the track kicks into gear immediately once Elvis takes an Olympic athlete’s run-up to that first, ‘Weeeeeell‘, his arm windmilling in time to his seesawing pelvis as he uncurls his bee-stung lips and finally lets his vocal go. “Well, it’s Christmas time pwitty bay-bee, and the snow is fallin’ h’on the ground...”
His singing, almost a parody of an actual Elvis impersonator, is full-on fun. He sings from the creped soles of his shoes in the low parts, straight off the toppa the ducktail in the high sections, the voice lightly sandpapered and soulful enough to convince the uninitiated that it belongs to a black bluesman from the Mississippi delta. There are parts where the band drops out and it’s just Elvis and his air of dangerous mystery filling the spaces. He rhymes ‘sack on my back‘ with ‘big black Cadillac‘. He breaks into a guttural laugh in the instrumental breakdown. He sings the title as one word. ‘San’aclawzizbagintaah‘. Elvis’s whole vocal schtick, in fact, can be heard in just this one tune.
There are bits on the record where everyone and the kitchen sink is getting in on the hot seasonal action. The drums, swinging like ol’ Bing Crosby on the 14th tee at Palm Springs, bash and crash like Benny and Choo-Choo’s trash cans tumbling down Top Cat’s alley. The piano plays its own unique, slurred honky tonk, soaked in Christmas spirit and half an egg nog too many. Low rasping sax fleshes out the bottom end as a swing-time jazz double-bass walks its way carefully between the notes, a drunk man on an icy pavement trying to look sober on the return home. The whole thing is over and out in less than two and a half rockin’ (yes!) and rollin’ (yes!!) minutes. It’s a daft record, but totally essentially at this time of year.
You may or may not know that I am involved in promoting gigs. Some pals and I do a job of booking acts to play the Harbour Arts Centre in Irvine, a tiny 100-seater venue that is, humbly, the greatest wee venue in the country. We do this unpaid. We’re volunteers and do it all for the love of bringing music to our town. When we were younger we had the Magnum Leisure Centre. Any band you care to mention played there (Thin Lizzy, The Jam, Chuck Berry, The Smiths, The Clash, Madness….) and we grew up thinking that every teenager in every town had this sort of stuff on their doorstep. For the more clued-in Irvinite, it was quite normal to go to the skating or the swimming and then negotiate the labyrinth of tunnels and squeaky leisure centre corridors within the Magnum in order to sneak into that week’s gig; UB40, perhaps. Or The Human League. Maybe even Spandau Ballet. That smell of Charlie Classique and chlorine – a potent combination.
Magnum gigs eventually spilled outside onto the bit of ‘beach’ next to it. The Radio One Roadshow was a regular attraction. Oasis famously played two spectacular shows one summer weekend in 1995 just as they were about to go stratospheric. The following year saw Bjork, Supergrass, Julian Cope and a raft of others roll into our town and entertain the locals and out of towners who’d packed the trains from Glasgow for the half hour journey to the Ayrshrie coast. Big touring bands turning up in Irvine were as regular as Bruno Brookes’ weekly chart countdown…until Willie Freckleton, the fella who booked all the bands, retired and died and the council left his position unfilled. There’s just no place for culture if there’s a saving to be had.
So we volunteers put on a one-off show. Called Freckfest in Willie’s honour, held in that self-same Magnum and headlined by The Magic Numbers, it led to the council asking if we’d like to programme events once a month in the town’s tiny arts centre. Almost ten years later, here we are, bringing all manner of ‘names’ back to Irvine; Glasvegas… Glenn Tilbrook… Nik Kershaw… BMX Bandits… Alan McGee… all have performed on the wee area we quaintly refer to as ‘the stage’… and all have loved every minute of performing in such a unique space.
Saturday night was a particularly lofty peak in the proceedings. We’d booked Gerry Love, the mild mannered and unassuming ex-bass player with Teenage Fanclub, the best third of a prolific songwriting team, the curator of some of the finest songs written in the last 30 years. Since leaving TFC he’s played at most a handful of shows but, with recording sessions imminent, he was keen to grind the gears into action, and coming through on a promise made to us almost four years ago, he arrived ready for action, a hastily assembled four piece band by his side.
One of the absolute pleasures of putting on gigs is that I am afforded the chance to sit in at soundchecks. Ordinarily pretty dull affairs – ‘Can I have less vocal in my monitor? Can I hear more guitar in mine? A bit more reverb on the snare, thanks...’ – Gerry’s followed a similar pattern, until we got chatting about effects pedals (I know, I know) and he absent-mindedly played the twanging intro to Sparky’s Dream while we talked. As I tried not to make it obvious I was picking my giddy jaw back off the floor, he and his band then fell into a lopsided run through of Bandwagonesque‘s December, its two chord arpeggiated riff triggering 30-year-old Proustian rushes of joy. Slightly under-rehearsed, they debated the length of the ending, flute solos ‘n all, before turning and asking me what I thought. “Stretch it out all the way to January,” I suggested, much to the amusement of the band. My finest moment.
Teenage Fanclub – December
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2022/12/03-december.m4aAnother beezer follows, with Gerry suggesting they try and sort out the arrangement that opens Don’t Look Back, the wistful mid-paced harmony-fest that helps elevate the Grand Prix LP from being merely great to undeniably outstanding. A couple of false starts led to Gerry – Teenage Fanclub’s bass player, lest we forget – playing the opening guitar riff for the others to fall in behind. Now, Don’t Look Back is a song I’ve heard hundreds of times, dozens of those in concert, but apparently nothing had prepared me for the possibility that it might ring out loud and true in the tiny environs of ‘our’ venue while the band soundchecked to an audience of just me. I won’t say I cried, but, damn! From straight out of nowhere I totally welled up. Don’t Look Back has a great melody welded to its fizzing guitars and as it clattered to a ragged end, I was a wee bit overcome.
“Oh man,” I said to Gerry. “I was almost crying there.”
“We weren’t that bad, were we?”
Au contraire.
The actual gig saw more of the same, Gerry and his band alternating the set between one of Gerry’s stellar TFC songs; Star Sign, Ain’t That Enough, Speed Of Light, Thirteen‘s Hang On (replete with its note-perfect T Rex-inspired intro), bloody Going Places! and some of the tracks that made up his Lightships project from a few (make that ten) years ago; Sweetness In Her Spark, Silver And Gold, Girasol… pastoral and autumnal tracks one and all, the seeds of which were first sown through Gerry’s songs on those later TFC albums.
Lightships – Girasol
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2022/12/07-girasol.mp3It was a wonderful show, Gerry’s band understated and nuanced, playing sympathetically and quietly. For all the impressive backline of Vox and Fender and what that suggested, the show was not at all sore on the ears.
“We used to play these radio things in the states, acoustic things they’d be billed,” said Gerry earlier on. “Norman had the full-on beard at the time, so we’d get our mandolins and acoustic gear out and totally look the part, y’know…and all the other bands would turn up with their full electric set-up. No-one could ever hear us. This set-up is electric, but we’re gonna play subtly.” Which, in a ‘Teenage Fanclub Have Lost It‘ kinda way, they more than did.
D’you know those ’70s rock documentaries you see, where hairy guys in bell bottoms are standing behind Marshall stacks, or hanging around the fringes of the stage and you think, ‘Who are these people? Why are they allowed up there?‘ – well, that’s me at HAC gigs, ready to jump in and plug in a pedal or hand someone a misplaced capo, but mainly just standing there with the best view in a house where there isn’t a bad view at all.
I watched intently as Gerry and his band played their quiet storm of chiming electrics and butterflying flutes, Paul Quinn’s tasteful percussion ‘n all, shifting my gaze from band to audience and back again as the dust motes in the HAC air shifted slightly in time to the music. I may also have joined in to enhance proceedings with a Norman-aping vocal harmony or two of my own, much to the displeasure of the guy seated an arm’s length from where I was standing. Ain’t That Enough, he might’ve thought. Glock ‘n roll, I remarked, as the tinkling percussion was lost in the roar of 100 voices showing appreciation for the gig of the year.
It begins churchlike, funereal almost, a lone organ blowing the dust off its keys as a skittering snare rattles the conscience awake and synthetic beats provide the heartbeat for what follows. It’s slow and stately, the ideal bed upon which Thom Yorke can waft his wonky-eyed falsetto. A guitar line snakes in, unusual of time… Continue reading Free Speech
Housed in a sleeve that suggests free movement, fluidity and motion; the gentle, undulating swirls, the band name written on two contrasting axes, Liquid Liquid‘s Optimo EP is a product of New York’s imperial post-punk phase, a fertile, ‘anything goes’ period that encouraged – demanded, even – individualism and originality. For extra homework, you might… Continue reading Cavernous
North of Hadrian’s Wall we’re looking on enviously as another World Cup without Scotland gets underway. It’s a common occurrence these days to find the Scots tiptoed on wooden crates, peering over metaphorical stadium walls and into the machinations of a glamourous tournament that we find ourselves excluded from. Not even the sainted Steve Clarke… Continue reading Outside Looking In
What’s not to like about this! It’s A Certain Ratio, covering Talking Heads, on a track intended for Grace Jones, that features a guide vocal from the band’s Jez Kerr that ended up being on the released version. Mined from the band’s archives a couple of years ago and represented in new light on their… Continue reading Flow Motion
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“…and he was buh-leeding awl ovah the apartment…I dunno, John, it cawsts a lotta dough…Then he jumped on the window display and pretended to be a mannequin! Hur hur hur!!!…I can do dat forya, shoo-wa…It’s like, 40 degrees in they-ur…Whadda fuggin’ joke…Is everyone in the West Village ho-mo-sex-you-al nowadays?!…” You can spend fortunes going up… Continue reading Snippets
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To have been even a peripheral cog in that late ’60s/early ’70s Laurel Canyon songwriting wheel would have been quite something, I’d imagine. In houses tucked deep into the lush Californian flora and fauna, bands shared players and partners – of both the writin’ and romantic kind – and created a stoned immaculate co-operative of… Continue reading Cross Pollination
The old iPod shuffled up this wonderfully anonymous curio tonight. So enamoured with it, I was forced to break into something of a treadmill sprint so that my arms could get close enough to my trusty wee portable friend resting on the machine’s control panel and replay it. This I managed without breaking stride, which… Continue reading Quiff Richard
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Ali Farka Touré was the guitarists’ guitarist, his bony-fingered multi-flowing rhythms sending chattering and cascading African blues out into the dusty ether. His speciality was in finding the sweet spot in which to riff, his band of tribal-robed desert bluesmen laying down and locking in to the steady groove to allow him the freedom of… Continue reading World Touré
Cosmic acid-fried avant gardeists Flaming Lips will always be known for the glitter cannoned, unicorn-topped ode to joy that is Do You Realize?? I don’t know anyone who isn’t continually affected by its crashing, sweeping uplifticisms and a happy/sad lyric delivered somewhere between ’73 Neil Young and a sandpaper-scoured frog. It’s long-been an accepted classic… Continue reading FLip Out
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‘It miek‘ is Jamaican patois for ‘told you so‘ or ‘serves you right‘. You get caught doing something you’ve been told not to do? It miek, man. It miek. Desmond Dekker took the phrase and used it as both title and hook for his summer of ’69 smash hit. A proper slice of lilting rudeboy… Continue reading Double Dekker
Every few years I immerse myself in Soul Mining, the debut album by The The. It’s been with me in various forms over the years – taped from the record borrowed from Irvine library, bought on cassette (since lost) for £1.25 from the back of Boots in Irvine Mall, upgraded to CD in the early… Continue reading Definitive Article
Tonight’s The Night is Neil Young‘s 6th studio album. Counting the live Time Fades Away album it’s the 7th in his discography, recorded in 1973 but shelved until 1975, by which time he’d recorded and released a whole other album in the form of On The Beach. Who says stoners ain’t productive? The period around… Continue reading The State That I Am In
If you’re a regular tuner-inner to night-time BBC 6 Music, you’ll be no stranger to the music of Los Bitchos. Their largely instrumental pot pourri of surf guitar, fuzz bass and Columbian cumbia rhythms is pretty unique and well worth further investigation if the likes of Khruangbin or Cats Eyes or the Allah-Las are on… Continue reading Shaken, Stirred.
I once blew the chance of an interview with Nancy Sinatra after she took exception to the ‘Phil Spector’ handle under which I wrote.at the time. “Why on earth would I want to be interviewed by Phil Spector?” she asked aghast, failing to realise that it wasn’t yr actual wig-headed murderer that was cold calling… Continue reading Melancholic Cowboy Noir
D’you know those stop-frame films you see of flowers coming to bloom; papery petals uncurling delicately, jerking their way outwards and skywards, opening fully at the end to reveal their true beauty? That’s exactly like the understated elegance of a Rufus Wainwright melody. We went to see him for the first time on Saturday night.… Continue reading Punch And Judy
How do you pronouce certain band names? Hingmy Malmsteen? Sun O))) or just Sun? (It’s Sun, believe it or not, despite the ‘O’ and the trio of parenthesese – that’s the sun, innit?) What about !!!? And what of Lynyrd Skynyrd? Is it Suede to rhyme with Fred or Suede to rhyme with frayed? (It’s… Continue reading Sound Waves
In a game of two halves, Trompe le Monde would prove to be Pixies ‘final’ album before their resurrection in more recent times. Frank Black has said that the record was made in fractuous times, the band splintering, Kim being marginalised, with all of Black’s songs making the cut at the expense of everyone else’s.… Continue reading Eye Tunes
I see the golf’s on. The one and only time I’ve had the brass neck enough to go busking was in 1989 when the Open was in Troon, a decent couple of drives (and maybe a sand wedge) from where I’m typing. My folks were on holiday, so naturally my house became the go-to place… Continue reading Spending Warm Summer Days Outdoors
Check…check…check! A-woo-oo! A-woo-oo! A-woo-oo! A-woo-oo! A-woo-oo! A-woo-oo! (Pause) Trrrr-rat-at-a-tat a-tee-tee Trrrr-rat-at-a-tat a-tee-tee Bass. How low can you go? Actually, not that low for now. A tight ‘n taut bass guitar plays high up the frets, its woody thunk foreshadowing what will follow: dur der-der-duh-der dur der-der-duh-der Nagging, inistent. Immediately earwormish. It moves through the gears… Continue reading Twin Reverb
What’s Inside A Girl? by The Cramps is a riot of primitive rock ‘n roll riffage and neanderthal tub thumping hooked to semi-pervy lyrics delivered in reverb-rich vocals; in short, the perfect introduction to one of The Great Bands. If you’ve never heard What’s Inside A Girl? or its parent album, A Date With Elvis,… Continue reading Cramp Yr Style
I’d lost my way with Crowded House sometime ago. That wee imperial run they went on, from Temple Of Low Men via Woodface and Together Alone to their Greatest Hits compilation, would have been enough to sate the keenest of appetites for most things Finn. Add in the eponymously-titled album(s?) released by Neil and Tim… Continue reading Finn de siècle
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This song is a beauty. It begins with a four to the floor bass drum ‘n boot-heeled stomp; urgent and glam, exactly the sort of beat that would reduce lesser frontmen to demand the audience showed him their hands in above-the-head crass communion. Buzzcocks – Fiction Romance Not Pete Shelley though. A guitar line follows,… Continue reading Rock Goes To Collage
I’m involved in the organisation and what-not of a new music festival in my hometown of Irvine this summer. Irvine, a town so often a regular stop-off for the big touring acts of the day – The Jam, Madness, The Clash, The Smiths, Human League, Oasis, Bjork – has been long-starved of big events for… Continue reading Nothing Ever Happens…In Irvine
Betwixt and between the hotchpotch of raggedy-arsed guitar stranglers and expensively-suited slick blues musos, world music groovers and torch song balladeers, you might have spotted Belgian funk/pop act Charlotte Adigéry & Bolis Pupul on Later the other week there. They wouldn’t have been too difficult to spot, dressed as they were from expertly coiffed head… Continue reading Ceci n’est pas un article de blog
Idlewild frontman and focal point Roddy Woomble quite often steps away from the day job to indulge the folkier side of a personality that is perhaps quashed and lost in the blustery storm that his band cooks up whenever they get together. My Secret Is My Silence, released back in 2006 is a good starting… Continue reading Roddy (Claim To) Fame
The crumpled gumshoe Columbo would utter that phrase in the closing scenes of nearly every show, usually when snaring the perpetrator with undeniable evidence, his cleverly chosen way with words that followed, spoken smilingly and friendly, almost incidentally, triggering the draining of the colour from the face of the criminal as the realisation dawns that… Continue reading Just One More Thing, Ma’am
Indulge me. You might remember, back in September – (Hey! Poetry!) – the sound of a trumpet being blown from these pages as long and loud and rasping as Miles Davis in the middle of an asthma attack. The reason was the imminent publication of The Perfect Reminder, a book that I wrote about The… Continue reading Aye, Right!
After two and a half years of postponements, reschedules and juggling dates, Michael Kiwanuka finally kickstarted his long-overdue UK tour in Glasgow last night. And what an opening night! With a crack 6 piece band behind him, he ebbed and flowed through a set borrowed from his three albums to date; songs with the spirituality… Continue reading ‘Wanuka Honey
I interviewed Martyn Ware once. It was 5 days after Paul McCartney’s show at Hampden Park, should you wish to date it, and I was still flying high, buzzing on seeing a two and a half hour benchmark set of hit after hit after hit, faithfully and loudly reproduced to within an inch of the… Continue reading Boiling Point, Top League
To enjoy the feast, you must first experience the famine. That’s me misquoting Chick Young, BBC Sport Scotland’s football reporter, a man much-maligned but one who seemingly has a soft spot for the wee teams and community clubs who win little in the way of silverware and league titles, but who continually go to-to-toe with… Continue reading Grim Fairytale Avoided
Nothing will ever prepare me for the speed of the passing years quite like a memory linked to music. A quick brain-frying calculation tells me that March 1994 was over 28 years ago. Twenty! Eight! Years! That this happened almost three decades ago yet is still fresh and ripe in the memory is testament to… Continue reading Ford Escorts
Feel Like Jumping by Marcia Griffiths is a perfect slab of baked in the sun pop-reggae. In 1968, a few years before she was one of the I Threes, providing backing for Bob Marley and The Wailers during his imperial, ubiquitous phase, she was a young hopeful, given the chance to make her own mark… Continue reading Jumpy Record
If Motown was hit factory-produced street-smart pop and Stax was its rougher round the edges punkish southern soul sister, then Fame was the mongrel hybrid of both. A studio with a hit-making pop sensibility that retained its southern fried Muscle Shoals identity, Fame was responsible for recording some of the greatest under-the-radar soul music in… Continue reading Purified Soul
True story: At the tail end of the ’80s, a musician pal of mine shared not only management but a hotel with Debbie Harry. Different rooms, just to be clear, although I suspect that’s what you were thinking anyway. Weren’t she and Chris Stein an item at that time? I digress… “D’you want to meet… Continue reading Power. Passion.
“We asked 100 people to name a musical duo from Scotland.” With a TV audience of millions watching and a five or six-figure jackpot prize hanging on your answer, the chances of a clued-in contestant offering up Boards Of Canada, let alone finding them in the list of Family Fortunes‘ half a dozen top answers… Continue reading Cullen Card
A work colleague pointed me in the direction of Tunnel 29, Helena Merriman‘s brilliant docu-novel of life in Cold War Berlin as the wall went up and it split into the Americanised west and Soviet-controlled east. The parallels with the war in Ukraine are never far from the mind as you read; the under-the-radar planning and meticulous thinking that kick-started things…the sudden, desperate need to escape the iron fist of Russian rule…the sheer numbers of Soviet troops surrounding the area; heavily armoured, well-drilled, seemingly impervious and always advancing, greedy for land and territory at any cost…with the unholy whiff of war crimes following their every leader-sanctioned move. If you didn’t know, the book might read like a Ukrainian refugee’s diary from this morning.
Merriman’s collected stories refers to a famous picture that I wasn’t aware of until now.
In the picture, taken in 1961, 19 year old Konrad Schumann, a recently-recruited member of the Bereitschaftspolizei (the riot police), is seen leaping the barbed wire fence that separates east Berlin from the west. Konrad is in mid-air, throwing off his gun, literally in the process of defecting from state-controlled aggression to the freedoms of the west; hamburger joints, rock and roll, education, opportunity.
It’s a powerful picture, with the blurry group of gossiping east Berliners looking pensively on and the half-hidden image of a West Berlin TV cameraman capturing it forever on film as young Konrad springs from the barbed wire he had been surreptitiously tramping down in the hours and minutes leading up to his leap to freedom.
The ‘wall’ was only three days old at this point. Put up without warning in the middle of the night, it snaked and scarred its way through Berlin, right down the middle of roads, across gardens, between houses, separating friends and family wherever they happened to be. Men and women who worked in the factories of West Berlin were suddenly cut-off from their terrified and confused families in the east. Men and women who worked in the factories of East Berlin were suddenly cut-off from their terrified and confused families in the west. Neighbours could look out at one another from across the barbed wire, but they were forbidden from talking to one another. They weren’t supposed to wave, acknowledge one another in any way at all. It fell to hastily-recruited border guards like Konrad to put the necessary muscle on them to ensure they complied. People in the east who were caught talking to their loved ones in the west were taken away by the Stasi, the secret police. Tensions were high.
West Berliners contrived to assist their eastern friends to escape. The less-guarded spots on the fence became escape routes, until more guards were added. Under cover of dark, many east Berliners swam the 30-yard wide stretch of River Spree to safety on the west bank. When the authorities found out, they simply dragged barbed wire under the water and blocked any opportunity of escape by river.
The guards on duty were very quickly the focus of abuse. As he paced his patch, Konrad was called a pig, a facist, a concentration camp enabler. The day before the picture was taken, a thousand-strong mob of protestors had been driven back by bayonet-wielding Soviet troops, but Konrad knew they’d be back.
He began to formulate a way of escaping without capture or punishment. One wrong move meant the end of his life. His decision process was sped up on day three with the sudden and unexpected arrival of concrete posts and steel plates. Quite rightly, the Russians had realised that their concertinaed barbed wire was insufficient in keeping easterns inside. Something more discouraging, more permanent was required.
For two hours, whenever no one was watching, Konrad would stamp and tramp the wire down to jumping-over height, building himself up to the state of mind where he’d be ready to leap. A few bystanders on the west picked up on what he was doing. When he was approached by one, Schumann faked a “Get back or I’ll shoot!” cry, before whispering to him that he was going to jump.
News of his planned escape travelled across west Berlin. A newsman appeared. A couple of photographers. A police van. The police in the west were friendly. They would help Konrad, but he needed to act fast. A crowd of westerners over the fence was not unusual, but they were encouraging him rather than decrying him. At some point, Konrad’s superiors would discover what was going on.
At 4pm, he flicked his half-smoked cigarette to the Soviet-controlled pavement, stepped back and faced the wall of barbed wire, took a run up and leapt. In mid air, he discarded his submachine gun, an unintentional but beautifully-timed metaphor. Photographer Peter Leibing, also 19, froze the moment forever. It remains an iconic photograph of late 20th century war.
Taken to safety by the police, Konrad was interrogated until found to be an ally. He was given a plane ticket to Bavaria, where he started a new life as a winery worker.
Konrad Schumann in 1981 However, it didn’t end well for Konrad. He was deeply distressed at what might happen to his family as a result of his defection. He felt shame at abandoning his comrades whilst saving his own life. Having broken the oath he swore upon when joining the police, he lived with the constant fear of death around every corner. He waited for bangs on doors than never came. He lived in anxiety-driven paranoia that he was being followed by Stasi agents wherever he went. He would read stories of eastern defectors who had been captured and tortured and never seen again. Even after 1989 and the fall of the wall, Konrad couldn’t face his family. His former comrades wanted nothing to do with him.
In 1998, suffering severe depression, Konrad hung himself in his Bavarian orchard.
The Sex Pistols proved just as divisive as the wall Johnny Rotten sang off on the jackbooted sturm und drang of Holidays In The Sun. A howl of guitars and relentless razor-sharp attack, it never sounds anything less than insistent, urgent and now.
Sex Pistols – Holidays In the Sun
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2022/03/01-holidays-in-the-sun.mp3
I’m lookin’ over the wall/and they’re lookin’ at me!
I’m gonna go over the Berlin wall
I’m gonna go under the Berlin wall
I don’t understand this thing at all
There’s a whole rabbit hole of stuff waiting for you should you choose to follow Fairport Convention‘s well-trodden path across folk, blues and raga-tinged drones. The ‘f’ word can be off-putting…sweat-inducing, even, conjuring mental images of fisherman-jumpered bawlers, red-cheeked and jowly-faced and singing heartily of measles and maidens and mirth-filled merriment. With a finger in the ear and a slap of a corduroyed thigh, throaty voices conjoin in rousing, rasping harmony as a small army of six string plank spankers in real, tangled, crumb-encrusted beards – none of those uber-oiled hairy beehives that hang silkily from the faces of the tattooed hipsters down your local vegan supermarket – bash their way to a rousing, rabbling conclusion.
Book Song, from Fairport’s second album, 1969’s What We Did On Our Holidays, debunks that stereotypical cliché and then some.
Fairport Convention – Book Song
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2022/02/fairport-convention-the-history-of-fairport-convention-04-book-song.mp3
A lilting waltztime ballad, it’s exactly the sort of track that Teenage Fanclub might’ve chosen to cover – or even craftily rewrite and pass of as one of their own – around that peerless time in the mid ’90s when b-sides were pouring from them as freely as the water from a tap. Imagine it sung by Gerry Love, with Norman coming in on pitch-perfect backing vocals. Not so far out of the question, really, especially as on the back cover, Fairport look exactly like a melding together of Bandwagonesque-era Fanclub and White Album-era George Harrison, all collar-bothering hair and close-fitting denim, archtop semi acoustics and Les Pauls. Cool as folk, as some might say.
Double (triple?) tracked harmonies float across a bedrock of zinging Eastern sitars and hammered acoustic guitars, a heady blend of eyes-closed, close-knit vocals, a gently wandering bassline carrying the tune towards the uhming and ahing adlibs. There’s a short but exquisite electric guitar break, all effect-heavy psychedelics and wide-eyed out-thereness, vying for earspace with weeping pedal steel and a screeched whiff of Romany violin. It’s a blink and you’ll miss it moment, but listen out for it then repeat and you’ll never forget it.
Sandy Denny singing alongside Simon Nicol and/or Richard Thompson is as natural, honest and unpretentious a vocal as you might ever hear. Falling somewhat like Nico jigsawing herself to The Byrds, the vocal is the light dusting of icing on a particularly groovy cake; rich in content, ideal in small pieces, just enough to leave you wanting more.
The entire album is packed full of organic, rootsy, honest (again) music. Wrapped in a sleeve that unveils new things every time you study it – proper pint pots! The Furry Freak Brothers (and Sister) of folk shaking some action! – the music within is as good a microcosm of Fairport’s ouvre as you can get; Meet On The Ledge, Fotheringay, a cover of Joni Mitchell’s Eastern Rain, a handful of traditional reworkings… Worth investigating.
Also there between the Island pink-labelled grooves is Fairport’s terrific version of Dylan’s I’ll Keep It With Mine, a slowly unravelling thing of quiet majesty that was first brought to these ears on the personal recommendation by the afore-mentioned Gerry Love. What more of an endorsement do you need?
Fairport Convention – I’ll Keep It With Mine
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2022/02/06-ill-keep-it-with-mine.m4a
Hitting the shelves this week – ‘dropping‘, to use modern parlance – is the eagerly-awaited follow up to the Texas Sun record that Khruangbin did in collaboration with fellow Texan Leon Bridges. On Texas Sun, dustbowl desert guitars gently twanged with ambient reverb across four tracks of gospel-tinged southern soul and, from what has been heard so far, Texas Moon seems to follow in the same rich vein.
If this happens to be your first introduction to Khruangbin (and Leon Bridges too for that matter – a guitar totin’ troubadour with a proper caramel-coated, take-it-to-church soul voice), you could do worse than dip a toe into a pair of back catalogues awash with rippling guitar and beautifully considered complementary bass lines. Let’s focus for now on Khruangbin.
Khruangbin – So We Won’t Forget
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2022/02/09.-khruangbin-so-we-wont-forget.mp3
So We Won’t Forget wanders in, cocksure and insistent, the result of an unholy alliance between the Bhundu Boys and the near-cousin of Lovely Day‘s bass line ; a groovy, heady mix of chiming, chattering African highline six string and sighing girl group despondancy that carries you away in its cooing breeze for five joyous minutes.
Ideal music for lying underneath an inky black panoramic sky of constellations or for soundtracking the wee small hours as you fight off the urge to fall asleep, So We Won’t Forget is a rare dichotomy of music that sends you to sleep while making you simultaneously want to dance in floaty, unselfconscious abandon.
Khruangbin (it translates as ‘aeroplane‘ in Thai) have undeniable style in clothes as well as music. Focal points Laura Lee and Mark Speer permanently peek from beneath a pair of perfectly-sculpted fringes that even Claudia Winkleman might find irritating.
Their clothes are never less than considered – Laura takes pride in wearing a different outfit for every show Khruangbin plays (600+ at the last count). Mark is the best-dressed drip of water on the planet, poured into rake thin, mile long ’70s lounge suits that might’ve come from the wardrobe department of a Hollywood movie set. The quiet man at the back, DJ Johnson Jnr on drums is more sartorially understated, preferring instead to let his pistol crack snare and rattling hi-hats add the requisite flash.
Khruangbin – Evan Finds the Third Room
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2022/02/07-evan-finds-the-third-room.mp3
You get the impression that the musicians in Khruangbin could outplay just about anyone on the planet; the funk-infatuated drummer, the on-the-one wandering and popping basslines played with great touch and feeling and those free-form bubbling guitar passages, slow bent one moment, rapidly fired the next, that wouldn’t sound out of place on the end credits of an arthouse movie, or perhaps a pivotal slo-mo scene in a Tarantino box-ofice smash.
The trick though, as Khruangbin know fine well, is to consider the notes that aren’t played. Those missing notes are what gives the music of Khruangbin a feel as wide and expansive as the Chihuahuan Desert and a groove that’s positively out-there and gravity-defying.
Three albums in, and U2 were the Bunnymen on steroids. A guitar-heavy irony-free zone, they waved their silly giant flags, planked their pixie boots firmly on their monitors and, with collar-bothering bouffants blowing gently in the stage fan-assisted breeze, set their sights firmly on world domination. Bravely, a change was required. Less bombast, more European was the brief.
Much to the horror of a label getting used to the ever-increasing ker-ching of units being sold, they parted ways with trusted producer Steve Lillywhite. Initially sounding out Conny Plank, mastermind behind much of Can and Kraftwerk’s decidedly unbombastic and very European music, the band, only after much courting, began working with ambient soundscaper Brian Eno instead. It would prove fruitful and important.
Boy 2, with tough, anthemic, post-punk guitars and a wham, bam, slam of tribal drums would not be forthcoming. Instead, between them they produced The Unforgettable Fire, a multi-layered record full of darkness and light, gossamer thin textures side by side with sledgehammer unsubtleties, pinging atmospheric guitars and fluid, flowing basslines. The drums rattled, rolled and occasionally rifled, but Eno smoothed the toughness from them through a combined use of technology, considered microphone placement and a golden touch that had first come to the fore on those early Talking Heads albums.
Take Wire, the third track in. The third track is always the important marker for an album (first track is the statement piece – ‘dig the new sound!’ and the second is usually the familiar first single. Track 3 is the deciding factor; new sound for real, or false dawn?) Wire delivers.
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2022/02/103-u2-wire.www_.lokotorrents.com_.mp3
The Edge plays seven shades of groovy, ratttttling shit from his guitar. He ping-pongs effect-heavy harmonics across the intro, divebombs his way across the verses, pulls interesting textures and notes from the spaces where Bono shuts up for a second and scrubs and scratches his guitar throughout with a metaphorical brillo pad last heard all over Talking Heads’ Fear Of Music. It’s very much in keeping with the breathless, anthemic rush of those first few albums, but placed to break you in gently, wrapped in that woozy Eno blanket of atmospherics that would come to define the record.
If Bono isn’t exactly your thing – and no one’s judging you on that – you might like the calorie-controlled Dub version that was included with a free NME single all those years ago. I must admit to having a real soft spot for this rare-ish track on account of it following a live version of The Smiths’ What She Said on the record. U2 and The Smiths, as you know, were poles apart. You weren’t really supposed to like them both. But when laziness wins out over hipness and you fail to shift yourself from sitting position to turntable commander, you might find yourself falling increasingly for this mainly Bono-free riot of clashing guitars and out-there ’80s production. Rock, yet not rock, I played it far more often than I’d ever have admitted at the time.
U2 – Wire (Dub)
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2022/02/212-u2-wire_celtic_dub_mix.www_.lokotorrents.com_.mp3
Credit must be given to a band keen to break what was fast-becoming a successful mould. Much of The Unforgettable Fire‘s sound is due to where it was recorded. Eschewing any sort of traditional studio, U2 and Eno, along with engineer Daniel Lanois relocated to Slane Castle, an 18th century stately pile in the Irish countryside and set up makeshift recording rooms in the grand ballroom and library. The ballroom provided the natural reverb ideal for the wafty atmospherics and free-flowing arty stuff. The library was the place for closed-miked rock outs. Being both rockin’ and out-there, I’d imagine Wire was recorded somewhere between the two spaces, but I may well be totally wrong on that.
Great art is borne from the most challenging of circumstances, and U2’s fourth record is no exception. The castle’s power supply was driven by a water wheel which, in turn (ha) was powered by the nearby River Boyne. When the river levels dropped in the summer time, so too did the power levels. When the levels dropped sufficiently, recording was halted. As a back-up, ‘king Bono and the band turned to an ancient diesel generator that was temperamental at best. Sometimes it worked, and sometimes when it worked it would burst into flame. An unforgettable fire indeed.
The Smile could be considered something of a vanity project; a sideways step, an away from the day-job shaking loose and letting down of the hair until regrouping and getting down to the business of Radiohead. Just when your Spidey senses suggest the ‘Head might be due a burst of about-time-too activity, along comes Thom and Johnny’s hot new thing; guerilla gigs and sudden releases and everything.
They’ve just announced a hefty European tour that takes in the grander venues in all major cities throughout the summer months. By the time you read this it’s probably sold out and a healthy second market for over-inflated tickets at what were already over-inflated prices will be on the go and causing internet meltdown. Such is the way of life when the word ‘Radiohead’ is attached to the project.
Had the two tracks released in the past couple of weeks been done so under that day-job moniker, they may have kickstarted a media frenzy and signalled an interesting new direction for Radiohead. Instead, despite being fairly low-key releases, they point to a band that may well turn out to be something more than a distraction until the bill-paying job starts up again.
The Smile – You’ll Never Work In Television Again
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2022/02/the-smile-tv.mp3 The first track to emerge from the wintery darkness was the clanging, spitting You Will Never Work In Television Again, Thom Yorke snarling and swearing his way across the top of a band that sounds like The Police going toe-to-toe with Fugazi; chorus-effected guitars battling for earspace with searing feedback and a drummer that sounds like Animal from the Muppets going downhill without the brakes on.
Had this been the ‘Head and not The Smile, there’d have been a clamour of “they’ve got the guitars out again!“-type hyperbole, a feeding frenzy for the six string-starved Radiohead fan who stupidly, ignorantly lost touch round about Hail To The Thief. Here, The Smile – a power trio! – sound more guitary than yer actual Radiohead ever have.
Even better is the totally different The Smoke. Taking its cue from the skittering and skeletal repetitive beats of Jaki Liebezeit and Can, The Smoke is a bass-led noodling groove, a proper head-nodder in the vein of any of In Rainbows‘ more ambient moments.
The Smile – The Smoke
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2022/02/the-smile-the-smoke.mp3 Thom swaps full force for falsetto, easing himself into the track and wafting across it, winding his way in-between and underneath the fug whenever he sees fit. Synths follow his melody, gently arpeggiated guitars ring across the sparse backing, and woozy, womb-like sounds add muted colours to the heady stew as it plays out with understated majesty. A proper grower and no mistake.
There are a handful of clips online from those guerilla gigs and more to suggest that The Smile might be making a proper go of it in the coming months. And although any notion of Radiohead perhaps releasing new music any time soon is somewhat fanciful, I for one am not complaining
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Paul Weller chose to bring the curtain down on The Jam – 6 studio albums and 18 singles in 5 era-defining years – with the anthemic yet wistful Beat Surrender, a piano-driven soul stomper that put a full stop on The Jam’s perfect discography and hinted at an unexpected new direction. It might have been different had their intended final released made it beyond demo form.
The Jam – A Solid Bond In Your Heart (demo 1)
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2022/01/09-a-solid-bond-in-your-heart.mp3
A Solid Bond In Your Heart is the unstoppable yin to Beat Surrender‘s resigned yang. In demo form, it froths and rattles like a speed-driven floorfiller from the Wigan Casino, all floating vibraphone, four-to-the-floor incessant drums and tinny breathlessness, a talc-dusted homage to that most exclusive of subcultures. Employing the brass that served them well on The Gift and associated singles, Solid Bond flips and flaps its way to its giddy ending, Dee C. Lee’s tumbling vocal pushing Weller to the very limits of his white man does soul vocals as Bruce Foxton sprints the length of his fretboard like Duck Dunn on uppers. It’s a rush in every sense of the word.
There’s a second version from The Jam’s vaults that adds a middle eight which would ultimately disappear again by the time the track was ripe for release. Listening to it, you might spot the seeds of the dropdown in Beat Surrender. Weller certainly thought this little vignette was worthy of working on, even if it wasn’t right for Solid Bond. A bit of a rewrite and it would slot right into the epochal final release.
Extra points too go to whoever the assembled hand-clappers were on this version. Their palms would’ve been raw by the last note.
The Jam – A Solid Bond In Your Heart (demo 2)
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2022/01/5-22-a-solid-bond-in-your-heart.mp3
Solid Bond is, though, far too upbeat and happy for such a milestone record. Paul Weller did the right thing by holding it back.
By the time A Solid Bond In Your Heart appeared for real, it would be as The Style Council‘s 4th single. Released in 1983 between the woozy haze of Long Hot Summer and the evergreen You’re The Best Thing, Solid Bond (and its accompanying video) would go some way to cementing The Style Council’s reputation as soul revivalists. In an age of synthetics – instruments… clothes… hair products… – The Style Council’s stance had to be admired, even if it was much maligned (or so they say) at the time.
Without the same attachment to The Jam that those boring older ‘mods’ (by it’s very definition, ‘mod’ should be forward thinking, no?) may have had, I found The Style Council nothing less than fantastic. Arty, pretentious and comical, yes, even to these young teenage eyes and ears, but with a mean streak in writing unforgettable hit singles. If you say you didn’t like them I don’t believe you.
The Style Council – A Solid Bond In Your Heart
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2022/01/1-09-a-solid-bond-in-your-heart.m4a
Funnily enough, it starts in almost the same way as Beat Surrender. Where that track has a tension-building piano flourish before the crash and release, Solid Bond vamps in on a teasing combination of six note piano and saxophone then slides itself into the stratosphere.
“‘Feel’ is a word I can’t explain…” goes Weller from the very top, as the music proceeds to give you all the ‘feels’ you need; a wet slap of funk guitar, a skirl of strings and that same driving beat, muscled up through the addition of a moonlighting Zeke Manyika, no stranger to soul-inflected hit singles himself. The crowning glory is the brilliant duetting vocal that tops it off. All moves from The Big Book of Soul Tricks are duly cribbed; the ‘uh-huhs’, the ‘ooh-yeahs’ and the high high high falsetto; there aren’t enough ‘woo-hoo-hoos’ any more in music. I believe that’s because they were all used up on this record.
Solid Bond is handclappin’, finger-clickin’ ess oh you ell soul – Marvin and Tammi for Thatcher’s children, the joy of life preserved in seven inches of grooved vinyl. If I could do that gliding northern soul move that looks so blinkin’ effortless to those who have clearly kept more faith than myself, I’d be doing it right now while I contemplated getting myself a midlife-crisis inducing ’80s Weller wedge. Push it to the limit, as the man himself sings.
What’s in a name? They may have been The Rolling Stones to plummy BBC announcers and chummy American TV hosts, but by the ’70s, they’d fallen mononymously into just the Stones; a name that suited the music that would come to define them.
The Rolling Stones was all about frantically scrubbed Bo Diddley rhythms and snake-hipped shaken maracas, three minutes of pop r’n’b that when played with a pout made the front row wet their knickers. As the principal players slowed down the gear changes in inverse proportion to the length of their songs and the length of their already-collar bothering hair, they became The Stones; dangerous, devious and undeniably dynamite.
Would you let your daughter marry a Rolling Stone? asked Andrew Loog Oldham in the ’60s? No chance, mister. And there was absolutely no chance you’d want her anywhere near a skinny, sexed-up and strung-out Stone a short handful of years later. No chance at all.
There’s a guitar alchemy in the Stones that you’ll find in no other band since or ever. It’s all over Sticky Fingers and Exile On Main Street like A-class-enhanced quicksilver; a fluid melding together of Mick Taylor’s straightforward yet beautifully executed 6 string bluesisms and the loose riffing of Micawber, Keith Richards’ mangled Telecaster, bastardised to just 5 strings and tuned to open G.
Mick’s guitar sounded like this, Keith’s guitar sounded like that…and when they played together, they created an unattainable third sound; a new, harmonious chord full of air and promise, a new feel, a new something; magical, otherworldly and impossible to replicate. Sure, anyone can have the tools, but only Mick and Keith had the talent, the telepathy and the feel. (Well, later on, Ronnie would come to disprove that theory, but let’s not let that get in the way of things for now). And it’s only Mick and Keef (that’s the other Mick, the more famous Stone) who have the know-how to turn the rough stuff into polished diamonds.
The Stones – Tumbling Dice
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2022/01/05-tumbling-dice.mp3
My favourite Stones track will always be Tumbling Dice. It’s got everything; telepathic guitars, horns, soul, swagger, groove. That slinky, double-stringed opening riff is suitably louche and rakish, a setting out of the stall like no other.
As Keith is wont to do, he had been toying with the riff and feel of the track for a year, leaving it aside, allowing it to stew and marinade in the swill of Stones’ rehearsals, coming back to it time and again until the Stones found themselves avoiding tax in the south of France when, by this point, it was a tune ripe for recording. Initial versions were faster, less-focused and featured a hackneyed Jagger vocal that he’d be quick to abandon.
The Stones – Good Time Woman (Tumbling Dice early version)
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2022/01/09-good-time-woman.mp3
The whole of Exile On Main Street is a masterclass in studied looseness and the session track above plus the finished Tumbling Dice is the epitome of this. It might appear ragged and funky, but that sure takes a lot of practise. And alcohol. And drugs. And beautiful women wherever you turn. To have been a Stone in ’72…
Keith plays it initially with a gentle touch, feeling his way in with the opening riff until his band arrives – a decidely unusual version of the Stones for once. There was no Bill Wyman for starters. He’d gone AWOL somewhere in the south of France, fed up while the others worked all night and slept all day. He’d be back, just not in time to add his signature to what would become the lead single from Exile On Main Street. Bass duties were taken instead by Mick Taylor. To compensate for lack of rhythm guitar, Jagger himself was encouraged to get on board. Once they’re locked in and zoned out, Keith plays harder. Charlie follows, swinging the groove with understated power. And Keith plays harder again. Chugga-chugga-chugga. It’s rock’s most famous (some might say cliched) riff, played exactly the way you’ve been trying to master it since it first kissed your ears. Five strings, open G, remember.
The Stones worked up the slack rhythm track in Nellcôte, their rented French villa, but it wouldn’t be until Jagger had a random conversation with his housekeeper in L.A. about gambling that he’d have a lyric he was happy with. Dropping the ‘good time woman‘ lyric of the initial version, Jagger instead compares the sins of gambling to the sins of cheating and creates a lyric in simpatico to the music.
By the time Exile… was released, the Stones had overdubbed Atlantic soul brass courtesy of honourable Stone, Bobby Keys and piano, courtesy of the ubiquitous Nicky Hopkins. The ace in the pack was the three-girl choir, sashaying in on a riot of “ooooh-yeahs” and harmonised “bay-bees”. They duet with Jagger throughout, he rubbery, with a mouthful of mid Atlantic Cockney vowels – “yeo caaahn be mah paaaa-tnah ein cra-ah-aha-ahm” – and they stately and majestic, just on the right side of controlled.
Factor in the dueling guitars, the breath-gathering drop-out, the slide part that I’m not even sure is there but sounds like it is and you have one of the very best – the very best, if y’ask me – Stones’ tracks. Not Rolling Stones. Stones.
It begins on a static crackle of marching snare drum and tacked-on wack-a-wack DJ scratching and, as the dirty needle scrapes its way across a soundbed of Fender Rhodes and murky jazz, muted trumpets colour the scene as a gently reverberating electric guitar hints at a brewing storm. It’s Spinning The Wheel, the greatest single that neither Portishead nor Massive Attack put their name to.
George Michael – Spinning The Wheel
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2022/01/04-spinning-the-wheel.mp3
Spinning The Wheel was the third single from George Michael’s Older album. Released in 1996, it channels the sounds of the mid ’90s counter culture and offers it up to the mainstream; while the airwaves were clogged to the point of pollution by a Be Here Now-era Oasis and the multitude of bands who swaggered in on the one dimensional jetstream of their success, George was looking to the brooding darkness of trip-hop for inspiration.
Spinning The Wheel is crackly, claustrophobic and tunnel-visioned, a brooding and introspective track that would’ve sounded ~~just~~ almost as great being wrapped in the pained vocals of a Beth Gibbons or a Tracey Thorn as it does in George’s resigned three-in-the-morning delivery. He floats across Spinning The Wheel, cooing with his ‘Baby Love’ backing singers, double-tracking himself to great effect – “Spinning!” – at the end of verses, calling-and-responding in the overdubs, never anything less than pitch perfect and crystal clear throughout. Imagine being in the studio when they had the first playback of this! Aw man!
‘Five o’clock in the morning, you ain’t home… Six o’clock in the morning, you ain’t phoned… It seems that everybody takes their chances these days… ‘
Clandestine, cheating, undercover sex. Spinning The Wheel. ‘You got a thing about danger…aintcha gettin’ what you want from me? You got a thing about strangers…baby, that’s what we used to be.‘ It’s a seemingly autobiographical account of George’s lifestyle at the time; the open relationships and wandering eyes that lead to paranoia and fear – something he was very much happy to discuss in detail upon its release. You’ll find plenty if you Google it.
‘And I will not accept this as a part of my life…I will not live in fear of what may be… I would rather be alone than watch you spinning the wheel...’
George looked great around this time. Close-cropped Roman hair inked to his skull, ever-changing but always immaculately groomed facial hair that, if you waited long enough, would grow and morph in front of your very eyes, and he was too, never anything less than dressed head to toe in perfectly-fitted designer-casual suits. He had style, with the voice to match…as distinct, iconic and unmatched as Frank Sinatra, although what happened in Frank’s wee small hours were, I daresay, markedly different to George’s. Not one flying fuck was given by George over what anyone might’ve thought of his personal life, hence the subject matter of a song that was kept off the top of the charts by another act who really only wanted to zig-a-zig-ah too.
It was playing one time when my dad was round. He was going to help me decorate, so we were measuring the walls to work out how much wallpaper we’d need. As I foutered around the kitchen drawer in search of my tape measure I could hear my dad whistle and doo-de-dooing his way through the tune, probably listening out for a spot where a banjo should be playing. Eventually, his participation tailed off as he started listening to and then making sense of the lyrics.
“Who’s this we’re listening to?” he shouted, wanting to sound casually curious but failing.
“D’you like it?”
“Who is it?”
“It’s George Michael. Good, isn’t it?!”
“…Ehhh…hmm, aye…” he offered by way of agreement. I reckon he was still smarting at my mum making him return Dirk Wears White Sox to Makro many years before. Back then it was mild, punkish swearing that just wouldn’t do at all, and here I was these days listening to clandestine gay confessions set to downtempo jazz. Just a step too far for his generation.
Plain Or Pan turns 15 this week. Since publishing the first post back in January 2007, the (ahem) power of the blog has seen to it that I’ve been commissioned to interview Sandie Shaw, rewrite articles for the national press (by ‘rewrite’ I mean take out the irreverent turns of phrase and my non-fact checked opinion) and write an actual book (The Perfect Reminder) very much in the style of Plain Or Pan. I’ve charmed half of The Smiths, pissed off an angry Boy George and remain on email-friendly terms with a handful of minor movers and shakers in the world of music. My clever and generous sister even compiled a ‘Best Of Plain Or Pan’ into a physical, one-of-a-kind coffee table-sized book for a big birthday a couple of years ago. If I never wrote another word, my legacy, it seems, is long and reaching.
Writing is a funny thing – some people hate the thought of it and would wilt at the thought of putting together 1000 or so well-constructed words on the bands and records that soundtrack their life. Me? I find it relaxing. Some choose yoga. Some go running. I write. I’d write every day if I could find the time. In the old days, I used to try and write at least two articles a week. I’d time their publication for teatime – peak reading time according to Google analytics – and I’d obsess over blog traffic and stats and suchlike. These days, I aim to write one new thing a week. It’s far more manageable and still frequent enough that the blog aggregators and number crunchers know that Plain Or Pan is very much alive, unlike plenty of other blogs who’ve tailed off to the point of extinction. Writing a blog’ll soon be so retro as to be trendsetting once more. And when that happens, POP, along with a handful of those other well-written blogs on the sidebar there, will be right at the forefront.
15 years. Not bad going.
15 Step by Radiohead sounds like an entire ‘50s typing pool simultaneously clattering out the compete works of Shakespeare in a roomful of Royal typewriters. It’s jerky, juddering and in 5/4 time. Imagine a skeletal and arty take down of Dave Brubeck’s Take 5 and, even if you’ve never heard 15 Step before, you’ll know how the rhythm goes.
Radiohead – 15 Step
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2022/01/01-15-step.mp3
Radiohead are possibly the most-discussed band on the internet. Theories abound over 15 Step. It’s so-called, some say, because there are 15 steps from intro to vocal; a Radiohead working title that stuck.
Others maintain it relates to death – throughout the song there are lyrical references to ‘the end’ and dying. Pistol-toting duelists in the Wild West would turn back-to-back then take 15 steps before turning and firing. There are, they say, 15 steps leading to the gallows and the ‘sheer drop’ that follows. I always thought there were 13 steps to the gallows (and 13 loops of the rope on the noose) but don’t let that get in the way of a good theory.
It relates, others say, to the Bjork-starring movie Dancer In The Dark. There’s a train of thought that every track on parent album In Rainbows relates in one way or other to a movie. Google the theories if you must. The only thing so far uncovered is a mind-blowing theory correlating the listening of In Rainbows to the synchronised viewing of The Wizard Of Oz. I dare say someone’s tried it though.
Radiohead – 15 Step (Live from The Basement)
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2022/01/02-15-step.mp3 But back to 15 Step. It may be rhythm-heavy and death-obsessed, but it’s also groovy as fuck, the perfect Radiohead marriage of technology and trad. Guitars play in weird time signatures (that’ll be that 5/4 thing again); all tumbling arpeggios and crunching riffs. Colin Greenwood’s bass line is pure Can; hypnotic, snaking and jazz-inflected. There’s a brilliant wee breakdown midway through that holds it all together as the players around him go off into their own orbits. There are sci-fi whooshes, sampled schoolchildren shouting “Hey!” now and again and enough head-nodding noodling parts to sate even the most chin-stroking of ‘Head fans.
Like all great Radiohead tracks, it’s not an immediate hit. It has become an inescapable ear worm only over time. More than a few plays down the years and it is, like the entire album it is featured on, one of Radiohead’s very best. But you knew that already.
If you happen to find yourself in an isolation situation over the coming days and weeks, you could do worse than while away the time by watching this two, three, four, more times. It’s David Bowie at one of his creative peaks – a 45 minute show from 1979, Musikladen in Bremen, filmed for German TV and up on YouTube (or just below here) for you to gawp and gasp at any time you like.
Beginning with Heroes‘ Sense Of Doubt, all Clockwork Orange menace and icy, crystalline strangeness, it finishes to muted applause – “Where’s the rest of my band?” asks Bowie rhetorically – before they ease their way into a thumping, swirling Beauty and The Beast, the band waking up, falling into step and coming alive.
Where on Heroes the track is the sort of processed art rocker that Bowie would make his own as the ’70s played out, on this live version, the band grind it out with a jarring rhythm uncannily like The Stranglers on Down In The Sewer. Now, I’m not suggesting that Bowie stole from The Stranglers – he didn’t really need to – but Heroes was released six months after Rattus Norvegicus, and it’s possible…just possible…that he’s magpied a riff and feel from the punk scene and reinterpreted it in his own way. That’s a very Bowie move, after all.
Bowie’s band is disparate. It’s a line-up that, when read on paper, really shouldn’t work – a 7-piece gathering of hot shots and big hitters including Moog protege Roger Powell on synth, desperate to coax futuristic sounds from his instrument whenever a space in the music allows and the jazz-trained Sean Hayes on complementary keys.
At the back, there’s Carlos Alomar, his slick rhythm guitar as steady and regular as the Soul Train and just as dependable. There’s an all-in-white ‘n mirrored shades electric violin player (a dead ringer for BA Robertson, but clearly, it’s not) who perfectly plays the arty scratchings of a prime time Velvets’ John Cale with no expression of emotion whatosover. And stage right, hanging there like a long drip of docile, grinning water is Adrian Belew, colouring the fantastic mish-mash of sound with notes as loud and outstanding as the choice of shirt he’s worn for the occasion.
Magicking up whammy bar-driven howls of electrified liquid mercury from a battered old Stratocaster, Belew plays no chords, only unconventional hair-raising solos; long and winding, full of squealing and screeing sussss-ttt-aiaiaiaiai-nnned n-o-o-o-o-t-essss that last entire rhyming couplets and in the case of Heroes, entire verses. At various points, Bowie looks on in quiet admiration. Fuck, he’s thinking, my band is good…and this guitar player is on a whole other level altogether. Before long, Belew would be enhancing Talking Heads’ live sound in similar fashion, but for now he’s Bowie’s.
Bowie’s band are out of this world, totally against the times – it’s 1979, remember, and the musical world is largely constrained to three minutes of jerky riffing and laddish ramalama – and they are flying. Having fun too. As is Bowie himself.
All teeth and cheekbones, and dressed in high-waisted leather trousers and a billowing, massively-collared shirt that my dad might have described as flouncy (a get-up that Spandau Ballet would later sell their plastic souls for), he’s serious, majestic, stately on a brilliant version of Heroes, playful and relaxed on a rollin’ and tumblin’ run through of Jean Genie, and having the time of his life on a rockin’, noo-wavey TVC15, with nothing less than great Bowie hair throughout.
All facets of his personality are duly covered, with the period from Station To Station and the Berlin trilogy captured wonderfully for anyone (like me) who was far too young or unborn to appreciate it at the time. Imagine living in a world where David Bowie never existed. Unthinkable.
Isolation has afforded me to the time to binge not on the latest Netflix must-sees or HBO’s can’t-be-misseds, but on ’70s cop movies. The grittier and grainier the better; exactly the sort of ones that influenced Beastie Boys when they shot their Sabotage video, where maverick cops in outlandish undercover clobber go rogue and off-radar to bring justice, but only after being barked at by bent, bull-nosed Irish-American superiors with names like Frank O’Connor who throw metaphorical rule books at them as liberally as the swearing and testosterone that soaks the concrete and callous locker room culture within.
The Taking Of Pelham 1, 2, 3, Mean Streets, Death Wish (1 and 2), Dog Day Afternoon, Klute… they’ve all re-grabbed the attention, 35 years or so (!) since first seeing most of them. They’re mostly (exclusively?) New York movies, soundtracked by skittering, anxiety-inducing hi-hats and brass stabs, swathes of wah-wah and jarring strings, backdropped by beige, low-rent apartments, adult book stores and litter-blown sidestreets, where cars big as bars (as the song goes) screech round corners populated by scruffy numbers runners, flashy, floppy hat-wearing pimps or down on their luck hookers-with-hearts. Even the Times Square neon and Manhattan glass and steel skyscrapers seem grubby and off-colour, nothing like the uber-polished, high-rolling landscapes that the Kims ‘n Kanyes backdrop their social media feeds with today.
One that really left a big impression was Serpico. It’s based on a true story, Al Pacino playing the titular Frank with full-on method acting. In late ’60s/early’70s New York, Frank Serpico was, as the movie poster tagline and gravelly trailer voiceover confirm, the most dangerous man alive – an honest cop who refused to adapt to the culture of the times; from the free sandwiches at the deli to the never-ending stuffing of fat envelopes full of hundred dollar bills into glove compartments in exchange for a blind eye. “Take it, Frank. You’ve earned it!” his colleagues will drawl through Cheshire Cat grins, as Pacino returns his doe-eyed, stony stare in return.
Hellbent on his mission to call out police corruption from the very top down, Serpico incurs the wrath of every department across the five boroughs to the point where he’s led to a drug dealer’s house and shot, almost fatally. Was it bad luck that he was nearly killed in the line of duty, or are waters a bit murkier? Did, indeed, his fellow officers perhaps set him up? That’s the part of the puzzle that’s kept the actual Serpico living abroad ever since.
As a film spanning 11 years, it serves as a microcosm of the fashions of the time, a Mr Ben, as it happens, of all your favourite musicians and styles. Pacino begins the movie clean-shaven, lean, mean and handsome, with great hair to boot. He looks a wee bit like an Italian-American Johnny Marr, all healthy tan and quiet, cock-sure confidence. As the movie lengthens, so too does Pacino’s hair. A moustache slowly crawls across his top lip before drooping, from Crosby to Zappa in five frames.
The hair on his head; black, glossy, superbly conditioned, billows out into exactly the same hair do as the Get Back era Paul McCartney. Just as you’re noticing this, so too do you notice that the Crosby/Zappa moustache has at some point morphed into the very same McCartney beard as well. But hang on… Just as you’re getting used to that, he adopts a bucket hat, a cheesecloth top and a pair of gently flapping jeans and he’s suddenly transformed into a refugee from Spike Island, maybe even John Squire himself.
Then, the headwear changes, from bucket to beanie and back to bucket again, and he’s first Badly Drawn Boy then Jeff Lynne. At various other points, Pacino is a dead ringer for George Best, half of Dexy’s Midnight Runners and that illustrated guy in the tattered copy of The Joy Of Sex that John Crichton found in that hedge that day round by Berry Drive in 1980.
“Getchahaircut Serpico!” growls his superior in vain, which, ironically is how the movie was shot. Apparently, Pacino began the movie looking like one of the Furry Freak Brothers and everything was shot in reverse, a hairstylist and groomer on hand to shorten the locks and trim the facial hair until young Al was a fresh faced cop school graduate. Clever movie making.
Throughout Serpico, Pacino wears open-necked denim shirts, brilliantly fitted cord jackets, cool, dark aviator shades and never seems to have a problem with the ladies. Who wouldn’t want to be an undercover cop?
The past few days have been full of positive results. Thanks to match abandonment on Saturday due to pea-souping fog, my team managed to avoid defeat for the first time in a few weeks. Result! Then, out of the blue, we sacked the manager! Result! He/we never saw that coming. (Fog joke there). And the boy has done well in his prelims. Result!
Yesterday was Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year, when daylight hours sharpen to a pinpoint before slowly widening again, the time of year when local wags think it amusing to say “the nights are fair stretchin’” every other sentence.
Not that I noticed. I’ve had Covid since testing positive on Sunday. The one positive result no-one wants. Any festive oomph I may have had has since evaporated, drained from my body like the juice in a Duracell battery come Boxing Day. My muscles feel as if they’ve been put through some sort of gym session when, obviously, they haven’t, and my head thumps harder than the hangover after Mark and Amanda’s wedding in 1994. I’m drifting in and out of sleep continually. I’ve had to rewind and rewatch the last couple of episodes of Succession as I missed half of them. Squid Game came and went in a slo-mo ‘what was all that about?‘ fug. The days have been both short – is it 4 o’clock already?! – and long – is it still only Tuesday?! etc. I was most disappointed to find that Marc Riley wouldn’t be doing his usual evening show on 6 Music. The one time I’d get complete, uninterrupted time with him and he’s off. Seems he has Covid too. His replacement, Ezra Furman, has been pretty good, mind you.
I’m blaming my place of work. Covid was rampant in the week leading up to last weekend. Classes were being sent home as both learners and teachers tested positive. One class. Three classes, An entire year group. My job is not wholly classroom-based, but there was a certain inevitability that it would find me and at some point – Thursday, most likely – I caught it.
Not that I knew. I coughed a bit on Friday, but nothing more than normal for an asthmatic who uses his inhaler less than he really should. Despite the fog, I was going to the football on Saturday, so as is usual before going to a game, I took a LFT. Negative result confirmed, I duly went and very likely infected those around me. Or perhaps they infected me. Who knows?
By Saturday night I was shivery and I was beginning to think that I might want to get tested in the morning, just to be safe. We woke up on Sunday morning and stuck on the telly, to be met with Professor Jason Leitch, the most straight-talking expert on the box, explaining that the new variant presented itself with aching limbs, runny nose and sore head. Shit. That was me. The test was booked and taken. Driving there and back was a bit of a chore, if I was to be honest with myself, but still, surely not? I took another LFT that afternoon, ‘just to check’, and promptly forgot about it until an hour or so later when I happened to glance at the wee white plastic tray. Two lines. Two lines. It was heart-sinking and inevitable. The confirmatory results were back by 7 the next morning, Positive.
Normally at this time of year, I’ll cede to the times and offer up a bit of music with a loose connection to Christmas. Being imprisoned away from my music collection for the next week or so means that frustratingly, I can’t upload any music, so I’ve poked around the dustier corners of YouTube to find this diamond in the rough.
Tom Waits finds everlasting beauty in the bums, broads and bourbon bars of backstreet, smallville USA. His songs – Christmas Card From A Hooker In Minneapolis perhaps the nadir of it all – are film noir set to song, the dirty fingernailed and whiskey-soaked flipside of the American Dream. But you knew that already.
Waits bookends his own tale of loss, regret and loneliness with a Christmas song (carol?) as old as time itself and the whole performance, filmed for the Paul Hogan Show would you believe, in 1979 is as unpretentious, honest and artful as you could wish for at this time of year. Waits, eyes closed and lost in song, his long eyelashes and clear skin the envy of everyone, his lupine features, all chiselled chin and high cheekbones, topped of with a sculpted mess of greased curls, is on splendid form.
All Waitsisms are present and correct. His voice, rising from a phlegmy whisper via bluesy rasp to gutteral growl, is sensational. He half talks, half sings, dragging on a blue-curling Marlboro, slipping into full-on ess oh yoo ell blue-eyed soul singer when he namechecks Little Anthony and The Imperials. The story is simple; a hooker is pregnant, hitched to a good man who promises to look after them all ‘even though it’s not his bay-bugh‘. She’s in a good place and she wants ‘Charlie’ to know. As the song continues its scuffed and scrappy barroom blues, you start to pick up on the idea that the hooker really misses Charlie, to the point that by the song’s surprising twist at the end, you might find yourself misty eyed, sentimental and nostalgic. It gets me every time, It’s that time of year after all. From one incarcerated outcast to another…
I was going to call Midlake‘s The Trials of Van Occupanther a modern classic, until it dawned on me that it’s a full fifteen and a half years old. That would have been obvious if I’d stopped to think about it, as the album provided much of the soundtrack while our youngest was bathed, breastfed and brought into this musical household in the autumn of 2006. So classic, yes. Modern, not so much. Sobering as it is, it’s a bit like calling Abbey Road a modern classic in 1985.
You don’t need me to tell you that entire bands come and go in fifteen years. Even Midlake themselves are presently anonymous, on hiatus with the constituent members working on various projects – and nothing disappoints more than bands members ‘working on other projects’ rather than sticking with the band that made so much magic, eh? Never mind, Midlake. We still have The Trials of Van Occupanther. And maybe a new album in ’22 if the rumours are correct?
…Van Occupanther is a phenomenal record, stuffed full of plaintive narratives sung atop rustic, organic instrumentation, the vocal arrangements evoking prime time Laurel Canyon and played by a shit-hot band who’ve clearly spent the months leading up to the record honing and refining every little element of their songs.
It sounds like it could’ve been recorded in the mid 1970s in one of those classic analogue studios, possibly Sound City, possibly Village Recording, with Neil Young next door, Joni Mitchell and Graham Nash smoking pot on the swing on the stoop, The Eagles working out a three-part harmony between punch-ups by the Coke machine, but much of the subject matter suggests the roots of the songs date back to the previous century; to rustic, gold rush America, of bandits and bordellos and when bearded trappers worked the land, when everything was handmade and when life in them thar hills was much harder but oh so much simpler.
Stone cutters made them from stones….mountaineers gathered timber piled high… goes opener Roscoe, all fuzzy warmth and chugging chords, a hint of Christine McVie in the into-the-ether chorus, the spectral, chiffony swirl of Stevie Nicks floating around the edges of the harmonies.
Midlake – Roscoe
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2021/12/01-roscoe.m4a
Nature and hard work, it seems from the off, are the central themes of the record.
While we were out hunting for food they sing between the piano lines and bluesy runs on Bandits, a song about wishing to be robbed of your worldly possessions by bandits so that you can start life over again (with a rabbit and an ox, no less.) Not many bands write such subject matter, and fewer still manage it with melody squeezed richly from every pore, cascading piano and acoustic guitars ringing and sparkling brightly.
Bring me a day full of honest work and a roof that never leaks and I’ll be satisfied they profer on the very Mac-ish Head Home, all throbbing bass, Californian coke haze vocals and a no-note-wasted, tasteful and lightly toasted guitar break before the final chorus – exactly where the Big Book of Classic Rock Guitar Solos suggests you place it. Bonus ’70s points for the weaving Fender-bending interplay in the long drawn-out coda. FM rock reimagined.
Midlake – Head Home
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2021/12/03-head-home.m4a
My young bride, why are your shoulders like that of a tired old woman? With a face made for porridge and stew go the opening and closing lines on Young Bride‘s rootsy minor key hoedown, the bass line revving up and down the fretboard as the Appalachian mountain violin does its best creaky door impression. Trivial fact – both Tim Burgess and Paul Weller love, LOVE!, this song.
I saw she was busy, gathering wood for the fire, they sing on the woozy Americana of Branches before the payoff and clincher; We won’t get married, she won’t have me, she wakes up awfully early these days. By the end of the song, the vocals are tumbling over themselves in an overlapping rush of sepia-tinted melancholy, the piano and woodwind providing the requisite sombre arrangement while the drums batter and clatter to a subtle, banjo-enhanced fade out. The equal of anything by the similarly rustic and on-point Fleet Foxes, it’s fantastic stuff. Fleet(wood) Foxes, anyone?
Midlake – Branches
https://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2021/12/06-branches.m4a
There’s not a note out of place on …Van Occupanther. Delicately plucked Martins ring out, as deftly picked as a McCartney melody then give way to lean, mean, fizzing and spitting guitar solos that are short enough to defy ‘muso’ cries, but are intricate enough that they could sit in the middle of any Abba or Steely Dan or Supertramp up-tempo number from back in the day and not seem at all out of place.
The whole album comes enveloped in an honest, pensive yet placid melancholy, the aural equivalent of one of those Instagram filters that allows you to make a Lana Del Ray video or your phone snap from an Ibizan beach look like a bleached-out Polaroid from half a century ago…exactly the ‘look’ that the band was going for, I’d wager. America was a country forged from hard work, toil, tragedy and overcoming setback. It’s all there in miniature on The Trials of Van Occupanther. A modern classic by anyone’s definition.