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Baby What You Want Me To Do Quintruple Whammy

May 24, 2013

Baby What You Want Me To Do was written at the tail end of the 50s by blues guitarist Jimmy Reed.

Not that he’d have known at the time, but Reed penned something of a blues standard. In its 50+ years amongst the canon of popular song, Baby What You Want Me To Do  has been recorded in a whole range of styles by a whole range of artists. Here are some of the better ones.

elvis 68 comeback 2

Ol’ Elvis Himselvis was Jimmy Reed daft, and by the time of the ’68 Comeback Special, after he’d strapped on a guitar for the first time in ages, was intent on sneaking the Jimmy Reed riff into as many parts of the set as his band would allow. Every time rehearsals stopped, The King would find his sweaty fingers forming around the swampy tune. With quiff collapsed and lip curled high, he’d be off and running, his band of A-list sessioneers falling in behind him with a forced goofiness and much hootin’ and hollerin’.  “We’re goin’ up, we’re goin’ down…” and off they’d go once again….

 Rehearsal:


The Live Show:


elvis 68 comeback 1

Elvis, dressed head to toe in Wild Ones leather and looking like a Texas oil slick played his guitar with a twanging punk ferocity not heard since Gene Vincent Raced With The Devil almost a decade earlier. That he and his band were playing inside a boxing ring rather than a stage only added to the pugilistic undertones eminating from the Presley 6 string. Terrific. There are a couple of ’68 Comeback albums worth looking out for – the edited essentials Tiger Man and the warts ‘n all Memories; The ’68 Comeback Special album, which features more versions of Baby What You Want Me To Do than you could possibly ever need. Or perhaps not. If you buy one record this month…etc etc…

dee clark

Delectus ‘Dee‘ Clark was a ten-a-penny soul/RnB singer. Most famous for having fronted Little Richard’s band after the real Richard had his calling from the Lord, Dee Clark would’ve romped the 1958 series of Stars In Their Eyes, such are the carbon-copy facsimiles of Little Richard in his earlier records.

But Dee could turn his vocals to many styles, and inbetween the high camp quiff Richardisms and duh-duh-duh-duh doo-wop stylings, he found time to cut a version (above) of Baby What You Want Me To Do that instantly conjures up lazy images of the deep south and makes me want to pour a decent measure of sour mash, fire up a crawfish gumbo and let the good times roll. Terrific too.

everly brothers

Everyone should clear 5 minutes a week to hear an Everly Brothers record – you’ll feel better for it. Battlin’ brothers Don and Phil cut a version that is classic Everlys – a polite country-ish rockin’ guitar, some barrelhouse piano and enough good time vibes that belies the fact that they hated one another with a passion. You can imagine them in the studio sharing the mike, just as Lennon & McCartney would do a few years later, their close-knit harmonies fusing together like honeyed glue, all the while angling for greater personal share of the spoils, Don doing the low parts, Phil the outrageous highs.

Likewise Dion. Not Celine, just Dion. Clear 5 minutes a week etc. No stranger to Plain Or Pan, Dion’s take comes from the suitably named Bronx In Blue LP, a somewhat laid-back affair, all twangin’ acoustics and groin-botherin’ bass. It was nominated for a Grammy, dontchaknow? Unusually for a Dion record, his version was cut in the mid 2000s, when he wasn’t smacked off his face on Class A’s, and he doesn’t quite break into that doo-wop falsetto of his, but don’t let that put you off.

dion dimucci

 

 

Posted in Cover Versions, Gone but not forgotten, Hard-to-find, Live! | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

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Slanging Match

May 17, 2013

So the new Primal Scream album’s here and before a note had been heard, the knives in this house were already being sharpened. From the rubbish cover that looks as if the work experience boy was given a generic shot of Bobby and 10 minutes with a laptop, to the list of cliches masquerading as song titles on the back – River Of Pain, Culturecide, Tenement Kid, Invisible City, Goodbye Johnny, Elimination Blues – I had this album down as a stinker, another one of those disappointing albums the Scream have been turning out with increasingly diminishing returns since the high watermark of the double decade-old Screamadelica.

ps 2013

But y’know what……..?

It’s not all bad. In fact, some of it’s pretty good. And bits of it are really very good indeed. Opener (and lead single) 2013 seems to have split opinion amongst the critics, and at 9 minutes long, it’s not perfect radio fodder, but I like it. Bobby’s clearly determined to write an era-defining chronological anthem (think Stooges 1969, or Stooges 1970 come to that, or 1977 by The Clash). It reminds me of golden-age Psychedelic Furs, if they ever actually had a golden age, replete with a rasping saxophone line not heard since The Waterboys‘ A Girl Called Johnny. Very similar, Bobby. Very similar indeed. Elsewhere, vocals are whispered where previously they were mangled into that accent that was more yer actual Florida then Mount Florida. Acoustic guitars flutter against a backdrop of We Love You-era Stones psychedelia. Keyboard swells and electro bloopery compete with Zeppelin drums and turned-up-to-11 Les Pauls through Marshall stacks. Textured. That’s the word I’m looking for. More Light is a textured album. A textured album that’s about 4 tracks too long, but never mind. Is it obtuse of me to say that, for me, the best tracks are the bonus tracks? They’re certainly the most interesting by far.

Nothing Is Real/Nothing Is Unreal (above) is terrific – a proper motorik, Krauty groover that really benefits from David Holmes’ polished sheen. If the whole album was like this, we may be saying it’s the best Primal Scream album since Screamadelica. Actually, the publicity surrounding the album would have you believe that, but this track is truly wonderful.

For Record Shop/Store Day this year, Primal Scream brought out a 12″ of them doing Sonic’s Rendezvous Band‘s City Slang. Sonic’s Rendezvous Band was a mid 70s alt-supergroup, formed by Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith of the MC5 and featuring Scott ‘Stooges’ Asheton amongst other garage band no-hit wonders. City Slang is a pretty intense piece of proto-punk, full of elastic band bass, cheesegrater-thin guitar solos and a stu-stu-stuttering chorus, a testifyin’ punk rock call to arms. Heard once, never forgotten. Heard for the first time, it’s one you’ll want to play again and again. Just as well the original 7″ has the same song on both sides – wear out one set of grooves and you’ve still got another to batter the hell out of. That SRB had only one track was neither here nor there, City Slang remains something of a masterpiece. It also happens to be one of Alan McGee’s favourite records, as he told Plain Or Pan a year or so ago.

Best ever punk rock single, as he so succinctly put it. You can read more about Alan McGee’s favourite records (something of a Plain Or Pan scoop at the time, though you wouldn’t know from reading it) here.

sonicrendezvous_city_front

Anyway, Primal Scream’s version  is a faithful-to-the-original, full-on heads down punk rocker. For men pushing 50 and more, this is either admirable or rather sad. I’ll let you be the judge on that one.

Contrast And Compare:

City Slang – Primal Scream

City Slang – Sonic’s Rendezvous Band

Posted in Cover Versions, Hard-to-find, Kraut-y, New! Now! | Tagged , | 2 Comments »

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Skin Tight

May 11, 2013

The Great Pyramid of Giza. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon. The Statue of Zeus at Olympia. The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus. The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. The Colossus of Rhodes. The Lighthouse of Alexandria. The Seven Wonders of the World. You’d think that by now, the 21st Century, someone somewhere might fancy updating that list. I think I missed the appeal when they were asking folk to write in with their suggestions for the 8th wonder, but if it’s not too late, I’m putting forward the Glasgow Barrowlands for inclusion.

Barrowlands

To be more specific, I’m putting forward the Barrowlands when it’s packed-to-the-gunnels full and the band on stage is on fire. I’ve been to the Barras plenty of times. It’s always good. Often, it’s great. Other times, it’s really great. Last night, the second night of The Specials double header, it was electric; right there and then the best place to be on the entire planet. It was packed-to-the-gunnels full. The band was on fire. You didn’t want it to end. A greatest hits and more was played out to a mongrel swill of a crowd; from old suedeheads in too-tight Fred Perrys and braces, spit-shiny Docs and straining-at-the-waist Levis, to ageing mohican’d punks and punkettes, to 40-something numpties in pork pie hats, the weekend rude boys who really should know better, the same guys who take their tops off and still chant “We are the mods!” at Who gigs, to the young team in misguided Liam Gallagher feathercuts and Superdry mod parkas. Punks, teds, natty dreads, mods, rockers, hippies and skinheads, as Do The Dog says, all united on the famous sprung dancefloor that, to paraphrase that Scandinavian football commentator from way back when The Specials first mattered, took one hell of  a beating.

specials 2Grainy Terry

It’s life-affirming when you realise at the age of 43 you still want to get involved at a gig, that you’re not content standing at the side debating the merits of the setlist with yourself, but you’d rather go for it, jump right in and get into it. I lost a stone and a half in the first 20 minutes alone. My polo shirt stank of other people’s beer on the way home. As I type, I’m looking at my battered desert boots, who look like they’ve been in the trenches at the Somme. The opening four numbers came at you like a breathless, skanking Ramones – Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!  I can’t be certain what was played, or in what order (it might’ve been Do The Dog and Concrete Jungle and Rat Race and Gangsters). One into another, a storm of ricocheting pistol cracks from the snare and Roddy Radiation’s spaghetti western twang, glued together by the Hall hangdog vocal. Then the brass section came on. Then the strings. And the band cherry-picked their way through a back catalogue rich in dubby textures and exotica flourishes. Pinch yourself for a minute. That’s The Specials! Playing International Jet Set! I took a particular shine to the three pouting string players, bobbing their heads from side to side in perfect unison whenever the dub swelled and the need for strings reduced.

specials 3

Picture courtesy of Cameron Mackenzie. Cheers!

This clearly isn’t some half-arsed in-it-for-the-money Stones tour. This is a band playing better than ever to an audience somewhat largely made up of people too young to have seen them first time around (I was 10 when I bought Do Nothing for 99p with my £1 pocket money). The Specials are on fire right now and demand your attention. We were lucky enough to get an extra, unplanned encore, a Terry-free Guns Of Navarone, played by a band who’d wandered on after the outro music had begun and some of the audience had filtered off towards the exits and Central Station. Nae luck, non-believers.

There’s no youth culture anymore. Cast your eye over the appearance of any youngster and you wouldn’t know if they were into Pink or Pink Floyd. Last night showed why tribal music matters. If you do one thing this year, go and see The Specials.

The Music

The Trojan-loving DJ at the start’ll play The Skatalite‘s Guns Of Navarone:


You might be lucky and hear the band do their own version in the encore: 


You’ll certainly get Too Much Too Young. Here‘s the slower, dubbier album version, not the more widely-known knee-trembler from The Specials Live EP.


And here‘s Lloyd Charmers‘ Birth Control, the main influence on Too Much Too Young. It’s all in the riddim (method).


specials 1Blur? Nope, The Specials.

Posted in Cover Versions, Gone but not forgotten, Live! | Tagged , , , , | Leave a Comment »

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Is This It?

May 5, 2013

(Subtitled What Is This Shit?)

It was those opening words of his review that got Greil Marcus fired from Rolling Stone magazine in 1970 following his slaying of Bob Dylan’s Self Portrait. A hotchpotch of bewildering cover versions, syrupy reworkings of his own back catalogue and bizarre odds ‘n sodds so far removed from the Bob of 2/3/4 years earlier as to place the 1970s Bob firmly in the ‘has-been’ category, we can, with the benefit of hindsight apprecaite Marcus’ review for what it really was – a passionate attack on an act once so revered and vital but now finding themselves in the midst of creative meltdown. If you’ve ever experienced the disappointment of your favourite band so spectacularly failing to deliver, you should take the time to read it.

the strokes

And so to The Strokes. Is This It came out 11 and a half years ago (the day of the 9/11 bombings, same day as the Zim’s Love And Theft, if I remember correctly) and was a perfect summation of everything The Strokes had worked to by that point. NYC rich kids, a contradiction of expensive continental schooling and extensive dress-down grooming, they took the blueprint of all that was great with mid 70s Noo Yoik noo wave and ran with it in a scramble of battered Converse and 28″ waists. A garage band, a proper we-can-play-our-chops garage band, they burned their way through a handful of lean, mean, rattlin’ and rollin’ tracks, every one more vital than the previous one. Their look, their sound was nothing new. It was nothing clever. But it was terrific. Last Nite was my favourite.

Last Nite (from debut The Modern Age ep):


Last Nite came complete with the sound a million bands who’ve ever played live in front of a ghetto blaster set to ‘record’ will recognise – that of the sound of the snare drum rattling from the vibrations from the ambience in the room. It takes me right back to ear-splitting band rehearsals at Shabby Road even as I type. With doe-eyed Julian and his Benylin-through-a-bullhorn vocal and fab drummer Fab Moretti about to embark on a relationship with A-lister Drew Barrymore, they fairly set the loins alight of many an impressionable female. They had the licks. They had the looks. They had it all and the world was their oyster.

strokes

Fast forward to 2013. The Strokes’ 5th album, Comedown Machine, has just been released. I’ve lived with it since the end of March and, well, Letdown Machine would perhaps have been a more appropriate title. It’s not exactly a surprise – the last couple of albums have been nothing but weak filler propped up by the occasional FM-shiny belter, but Comedown Machine has no redeemable features. None at all. Leaving behind the myriad of 70s influences that made The Strokes what they are, they seem to have discovered the 80s. And not an 80s where demi Gods such as John McGeoch and Julian Cope and Ian Curtis and (insert your own idol here) provided a real alternative to the rubbish filling the airwaves, but an 80s of Gloria Estefan and Miami Sound Machine and Linn drums and Rubik’s Cubes and shitty day-glo socks. It wasn’t very good then and it isn’t very good now.  In short, it’s a horrible car crash of electro bleeps and synthesized drums (synthesized drums! Poor Fab – whatever happened to the Clem Burkeisms he was so good at?)

the strokes 2013

Looking at this, whatever you’re thinking, I’m thinking it too.

Before any singing starts, the opening track sounds like a demo of Beyonce’s Bootylicious, all pitter pattering drum machines, jerky Super Mario melodies and FX heavy guitars. On paper, that might sound interesting. Good, even. It’s not. Lead single One Way Trigger shamelessly appropriates the hook from A-Ha’s Take On Me and petres out in a cascade of falsetto singing and electro handclaps. Gads. Throughout, you’ll hear the sound of a band as bloated and insignificant as Duran Duran, playing Strokes by numbers with diminishing returns. I’ve tried hard to like it, I really have. But, nah, The Strokes have lost it. The most interesting track 50/50, with its backwards effects and repetitive computerised guitar parts sounds an awful lot like Penguin Cafe Orchestra’s Music For A Found Harmonium. Penguin! Cafe! Orchestra! Now there’s something you never thought you’d read. What is this shit indeed.

Contrast & Compare:

Music For  A Found Harmonium:


50/50:


 

Posted in Cover Versions, New! Now! | Tagged , , | 4 Comments »

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Revolution 9

April 28, 2013

When I first picked up the plank of wood I had the cheek to call a guitar, I hadn’t yet mastered changing from a D to an A and back again before I realised something was missing. I needed something, anything, to disguise the bum notes from the badly-played chords I was trying to strangle out of my instrument at parent-bothering volume through my wee practice amp. That something was the fuzzbox. What a revelation! I could play along to most of The Buzzcocks‘ What Do I Get and mangle a passable version of Everybody’s Happy Nowadays, fire off Janie Jones from the first Clash LP and play almost all of The Ramones‘ It’s Alive LP, riff for riff and legs akimbo, just like Johnny. Look at me, I can play guitar! 1! 2! 3! 4! Gggzzzzzssss! Hey ho and indeed, let’s go. The intricacies of Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others and Blackbird were a long, painful way off, but that fuzzbox was the thing that spurred me on to those greater things.

johnny_ramone

Nasty Punks, Funk Off

Eventually tired of the fuzz and with ears open to a wider variety of music, that wee pedal was retired from duty, to be ressurected a couple of years later by better musicians. If you listen very carefully to One At A Time on the Trash Can Sinatras‘ I’ve Seen Everything album, that same £20 fuzzbox gets a good workout from Davy Hughes’ bass guitar. Or so they tell me.

But that’s another story for another day. After mastering the complete works of Johnny Ramone and the odd Beatles tune and sickening myself by tying my fat fingers in knots whilst trying to unsuccessfully learn Johnny Marr’s best riffs, I spent a great many hours poring over the guitar parts on James Brown records.

brown nolen

The guys who played the best of them (Catfish (brother of Bootsy) Collins and Jimmy Nolen) were as yet unknown to me, but they were just as vital and exciting and talented as the three Johns. I could sit for hours and listen to I’ll Go Crazy but I’ve never yet quite mastered the fluidity of the riff. Sex Machine was the big one. The one chord groove was a bee aye tee see aitch to learn in those pre-internet days. Starting with the top string and working backwards to the bass, I held down all sorts of permutations of strings and frets until one day the funk planets aligned and my fingers fell on the strings and frets in the correct position. For any technically-minded musicians amongst you, the chord I was playing was an Eb9 (with a hammer-on on the 8th fret), although I was yet to know that. To me, it was the chord that unlocked the funk.

eflat9

Using the 9th chord, Jimmy Nolen laid the foundation of funk. Stop/start slides from the 4th to 5th fret, pinky hammer-ons 2 frets above, muting the strings with his right hand to get the distinctive chicken-scratch sound, he’s the guitarist who anyone who’s ever played a note of funk guitar owes a debt to. James Brown changed his guitar players as regularly as you or I change our underwear, but from listening to the records you’d never know. All guitarists after Jimmy Nolen followed his distinctive chordings and ryhthm. Got a guitar to hand? Try it! Slide the same chord shape (above/below) up and down the frets and you’ll find all sorts of James Brown songs -  Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag. I Feel Good. Super Bad. Talkin’ Loud & Sayin’ Nothing. Soul Power. Persevere, you’ll find them all.

Get Up (Feel Like Being A Sex Machine)

e|--(start with an upstrum)----6-6----6---8--6----------6-6----6---8--6-----------------|
B|-----------------------------6-6----6-----------------6-6----6------------------------|
G|-----------------------------6-6----6-----------------6-6----6------(and repeat!)-----|
D|-----------------------------5-5----5-----------------5-5----5------------------------|
A|-----------------------------6-6----6-----------------6-6----6------------------------|
E|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|

Stick on the wah-wah pedal and you can riff your way to funky oblivion like an extra in a 1975 episode of Starsky & Hutch. Sly Stone, no stranger himself to a 3-in-a-bed romp with a wah-wah and a 9th chord, got in on the act. His Sing A Simple Song is an absolute monster of E9 riffing (see tab below. S’easy!). Booker T and The MGs did their own Hammond ‘n 9th-heavy version. And Ike Turner quite blatantly/beautifully ripped it off for his ‘own’ Bold Soul Sister, a young Tina coming across like the less-vulgar wee sister of Betty Davis. I think even Led Zeppelin used it on Houses of the Holy‘s The Crunge, such is the chicken-scratching Jimmy Nolen-ness of it all. The 9th. It’s a well travelled chord. Kick out the jams and play it, brothers and sisters. Now that’s an order.

Sing A Simple Song (Play a simple riff…..)

e|-------------------------7-7--6-7-7--6-7-7----------------------------7-7--6-7-7-|
B|-------------------------7-7--6-7-7--6-7-7----------------------------7-7--6-7-7-|
G|-------------------------7-7--6-7-7--6-7-7----------------------------7-7--6-7-7-|
D|----------5--------------6-6--5-6-6--5-6-6--------------5-------------6-6--5-6-6-|
A|--7-5---7---5-7---5/7----7-7--6-7-7--6-7-7------7-5---7---5-7--5/7----7-7--6-7-7-|
E|------7-----------3/5-------------------------------7-----------3/5--------------|

Posted in Cover Versions, Gone but not forgotten, Hard-to-find, Yesterday's Papers | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment »

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Can o’ Worms

April 22, 2013

This Record Store Day thing really grates eh? Who’s at fault? The record companies, who see the event as a way to fleece the record buyers out of every last penny they have and set sky-high dealer prices, thus forcing retailers to charge daft prices for (mainly) old records? Or the record buyers themselves, who see the event as a way to fleece less-fortunate record buyers who have neither the means required nor the availability of a local record shop to go to in order to buy what they want and are forced to take to the internet in a desperate attempt to secure the objects of their desire from people who neither know about or care about the records they are punting?

rsd13

Five minutes after the shops opened and eBay’s suddenly full of the things everyone wants, available from twenty five different private sellers at twenty five times the original prices, and the internet is bulging at the virtual seams with sob stories from seething, seasoned record buyers unable to get their sticky fingers on the records they so desired.  They’ve scanned the lists in March and written and re-written their wishlist into 3 columns; ‘Ideally…’, ‘Hopefully…’ and ‘I cannot leave without this…’ but still ended up only with the last sticker from the acoustic act playing in the corner and a crumbly cup cake from the beardy guy behind the counter who’s job it is to say, “Sorry mate, that’s sold out too,” over and over and over and over until the end of the day. They’ve even emptied the kids’ piggy banks and forced them to eat beans on toast for a month, but that counts for nothing. Come April and the Day itself, they got up half an hour after going to bed in an effort to get as close to the front of the snaking line outside Shady Dave’s Second-Hand Sounds as they possibly could, to no avail. It’s a long line, but the ‘good-time vibe’ in the queue (“Aye, I’m after the Elliott Smith 7″ and the Pulp 12″ and the Big Star outtakes LP too, pal…”) is such that standing hunched up in the rain and the cold with Angry Birds and a quickly-decreasing battery charge on the phone for company are just about tolerable, as hopeful prayers of over-priced, limited edition bits of plastic are messaged to the great vinyl god above.

By the time the doors are unlocked by Shady Dave himself (who knows that only today, this one day of the year, is the make-or-break that might allow him to trade until next year’s big day), wads of money are jumping out the pockets of middle aged men and being flung towards the counter in exchange for a one-off Flaming Lips LP or a White Stripes coloured vinyl or an old Paul McCartney track re-pressed in glorious retro fashion. It’s ridiculous. Especially as that guy in the expensive puffa jacket and beige chinos (not yer average Wedding Present fan, you muse), who happened to be at the front of the queue was royally loaded and bought every copy of the German language 10″ And whatever else he thought he could off-load for a profit. “How many Bowie did you get? I’ll take them all.” It’s the new model for the spineless, the shallow and the touts who already rake it in from selling high-demand concert tickets. Have you checked those eBay sellers addresses? Sorry for the sweeping generalisation, but are they all in Merseyside? Call the cops…

can malkmus

Anyway, for what it’s worth, I’d have quite liked the live Stephen Malkmus does Can thingy. And the Elliott Smith 7″ and the Pulp 12″ and the Big Star outtakes LP too, pal, but I was nowhere near a decent record shop and was being Dad for the day while the missus went off for a belated birthday afternoon with her pal. Plus I don’t have the spare £40 or so that would’ve been necessary to procure them, had I been game enough to try and buy them. A quick scroll through eBay tonight and the Elliott Smith 7″ is selling for £15, as is the Pulp 12″ . The Big Star LP? That’s currently around the  £40 mark, but given that almost 20 folk are after it, it’ll probably take a bid of around £100 to secure the bloody thing. That Malkmus/Can album has attracted a dozen or so bids and is already pushing £40 itself. The vinyl would be nice, but I’m just as happy for the moment with the illicit mp3s I found whilst poking around the darker corners of the internet. It’s not ‘real’. It’s not holdable. It’s not warm and friendly analogue. But it was cheaper than cheap. I’ve always preferred Can at their grooviest and Malkmus does a good job. Contrast and compare…

Can  – I’m So Green

Stephen Malkmus – I’m So Green


Can – Vitamin C


Stephen Malkmus – Vitamin C

Posted in Hard-to-find, Kraut-y, Live!, New! Now! | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments »

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Telly Addict

April 16, 2013

The name Television has popped up here a couple of times recently. James Brooks from Land Observations name-checked them in his Six Of The Best article and a couple of weeks ago I was comparing the laconic vocals and snaking guitar sound of Charlie Boyer & the Voyeurs latest single to that of Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd. All this has coincided with the old iPod (well, it’s not that old – 3 and a half years – but I suppose that’s ancient in tech-speak) refusing to sync any new additions to my iTunes library and, worse than that, wiping itself clean of all the 140+GB of crap that was on there originally and deciding it’s just not going to work any more. Even the (cough) ‘Genius’ at the Apple store in Glasgow had to somewhat disappointingly concede defeat. As the iPod goes everywhere with me at all times this has proven nothing short of a disaster. So much so that I’ve gone all end-of-the-millenium retro and started playing CDs again. Real, shop-bought CDs in the car and on the stereo at home (I had to dust it  a wee bit first, I’m ashamed to admit). Having exhausted the Can Lost Tapes box set that fell into my hands for less than £18 in a destined-to-die HMV store, the one album I’ve had on constant repeat for a fortnight is Marquee Moon, the debut album by Television.

Television, First Avenue NYC 1977

Terrific photo, aye? More about it here.

It’s now considered something of a (yawn) seminal classic or something, so far out of step/ahead of the pack when first released that it sounds fresh, ageless and timeless when you listen to it now. But you knew that already. In mid 70s America, Television found themselves roped in with the NYC punk lot, seemingly by virtue of having a regular gig at CBGBs. Original bass player Richard Hell, with his penchant for ripped jeans, safety pins and  home-made spiky haircut is considered the true originator of the punk style, but by the time of Marquee Moon‘s release, he had long since left the band to form The Voidoids and invent the Stray Cat Strut with their I Belong To The Blank Generation single…

Anyway. Where were we? Oh aye, Television. Where did they fit in? Not for them the 3 chords-in-platform-heel Stonesy glam slam so beloved of the New York Dolls. Not for them the legs akimbo cartoon buzzbomb of the brothers Ramone. Not for them the high-brow beat poetry set to the low-brow beat music of Patti Smith. Television set themselves apart from the off. With an approach to their individual instruments bordering on muso, and a healthy disregard for the two and a half minute pop song, they were so far out of step/ahead of the pack that they still sound fresh, ageless and timeless today. Guitars intertwined like psychic snakes, riffing off one another creating astonishing Fender Jag ‘scuse me while I kiss the sky melodies and counter melodies seemingly at will. Not quite free jazz, but certainly free from the straight-jacketed constraints of their 3 chord loving peers. Learn an F chord, barre it and move it up and down the frets. Play it loud, play it fast, there you go, you’re a band.  Television were so far ahead of this, it’s not hard to understand why, 35 years later they were 1) seen as misfits and 2) sound as now as the latest daft haircutted, snake-hipped gang of teenagers straight off the cover of the NME.

First single (not on the album) Little Johnny Jewel was a taste of things to come. 7 minutes of art rock, all cheese-grater strings and rake-thin bass, slightly out of tune chords, random blips and blops and clattering, carefree jazz drumming, with a more spoken-word than singing approach to the vocals, the pre-pubescent seeds for Marquee Moon were sown. After an aborted session with Brian Eno, and balls duly dropped, the band started fashioning the music that would grace the album. Tougher, meatier, more aggressive yet airy, effeminate and even effete when compared to the band’s contemporaries, the alt. mix of the title track is the aural equivalent of watching Picasso sketch Guernica. Or something less pretentious than that. Friction, with its galloping elastic band riff and  ‘Eff! Are! Aye! See! Tea-Eye-Oh-Enn!’ refrain is a personal favourite amongst an LP full of personal favourites. If you’ve never heard Television, rectify that now!

television

Just as The Velvet Underground before them and The Beta Band since (I digress, but believe me, one day The Beta Band will come to be as revered as the truly great originators they were. They will!), Television never really got their dues at the time. But their influence is writ large in any twin guitar band with a penchant for razor-sharp riffs and meandering solos. Scratch just under the surface of all the usual suspects (you know who they are) and you’ll find a well-worn copy of Marquee Moon rotating ad infinitum between the grooves. The coolest part of it all? Well, rumour has it that around the time of recording the Blue Sky Blue album, Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy received the ultimate birthday present from his wife- a guitar lesson from Richard Lloyd. Not the first band that springs to mind at the mention of meandering solos and disregard for a well constructed pop song, Wilco did indeed adopt a more Verlaine/Lloyd approach on some of Sky Blue Sky‘s less structured tracks. Impossible Germany, for example, features a pair of clean, chiming guitars wrapping themselves around one another for 6 shimmering minutes. The solo alone is pure Lloyd. Or Verlaine. I can never tell the difference. If you’ve never heard it, rectify once more.

Posted in demo, Hard-to-find | Tagged , , | 2 Comments »

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