Gone but not forgotten, Live!

Everything Was Enhanced By You

Craig McAllister

John Douglas 1963 – 2026

“How’s it gaun? Y’awright?”

These were usually John Douglas’s first words, whether one or two songs into a set with the Trashcan Sinatras, or more recently out front on his own, but also any time you met him. Throwaway (and maybe even insincere when spoken by anyone else), but delivered by John they revealed something of his true character; interested, empathetic, kind. Off-stage, they were usually delivered along with a warm bear hug, something that could melt the hearts of even the most reluctant and Calvinistic of west of Scotland males. We’re not all confident and outgoing huggers in this part of the world, but people like John made the act easier to embrace, pun intended. The outpouring following his death early on Monday morning has been universal in the notion that here was a man who was nothing but genuine, unassuming and decent. ‘Lovely’ seemed to be the adjective of choice and it’d take the hardest of cynics not to agree with that. It’s just a shame John’s not around to read the swell of testimonies since written about him.

I’ve known John for the best part of 40 years, initially as one of the older guys at the back of The Turf and The Crown, a musician I was told, a songwriter with a love of The Clash and Guinness and Benson & Hedges. He and his band The Trash Can Sinatras (3 words back then) had topped the premier league of local bands by earning a record deal with Go! Discs, but hadn’t yet released a record. As fate would have it, a drunken fracas in the toilets of The Attic, Irvine’s premier late night dancing emporium for those wanting to shake their thang to loud, alternative and non-chart music led, in a roundabout way, to a life-long friendship with two of the Trash Cans and, by default, John.

We’d sit around the table in The Crown talking music, film, football, politics, people, Irvine and they’d treat us to stories from the studio; what they were working on, how they’d turned a slow dirge into a fast racket, how they’d turned a fast racket into a slow beauty, how they were making a really great album. Cake, as you know, is a really great album. Not the best Trashcans’ record though.

That might be I’ve Seen Everything, album number two. By now, Sunday Drivers, an Irvine-born group of shouty guitar stranglers and drum bashers I was a proud part of was rehearsing directly below the TCS office at Shabby Road in Kilmarnock. One day, we broke a bass string. No one carries spare bass strings, least of all the ill-prepared bass player, because bass strings never break. But there we were, session abruptly over. Upstairs in the office, Trashcans John and Paul were sitting around smoking and drinking tea and doing whatever else young guys with a record deal do all day instead of work.

‘Eh. You don’t have any spare bass strings, by any chance? We’ve broken one.’

‘You’ve broken a bass string?! No one breaks bass strings!’ (Looking around fruitlessly, behind ashtrays, under CDs, on top of the cat,. ‘Nah. Nothing. Sorry.’

At this point, John leans into Paul and says something quietly before turning to us.

‘Take the Rickenbacker. We don’t really need it.’

The Trashcans had used some of their record company money to buy a beautiful black and white Rickenbacker bass guitar. It might’ve been a 4003 model, but in any case it was a Bruce Foxton, a late-era McCartney, a Colin Moulding, a Lemmy bass guitar. Rule number 1 for any recently-signed band is to buy the same type of classic guitar played by your heroes and influences, and so the Trashcans splurged on a Rickenbacker. Rule number 2 for the recently-signed band is most certainly not to immediately lend said instrument to a bunch of chancing and ham-fisted instrument abusers, but that’s exactly what they did…no questions asked, no ‘we need it back by Friday’ deadline sort of thing. We ended up using it for two years. Indeed, it was lying on my bedroom floor the night my parents’ house was burgled and they made off with the family jewels. Imagine they’d nicked that guitar too? How d’you explain that to the person who was generous enough to trust you with it?

There are loads of stories you can read about John; his Syd Barrett paint collection and the Trashcans’ song it inspired. His song Wild Mountainside, now something of a folk standard, sung by his wife, ‘the missus’, Eddi Reader, at the opening of the Scottish Parliament in 1999. The fact that he was never happier than when on the road with Eddi, travelling to and singing in the farthest-flung corners of this island and beyond. Lots of stuff has been…and will be.. written about this by more prominent writers than myself, so here’s a story with a thirty-years later punchline that you most definitely don’t know.

A few years back I was involved in putting on a Martin McAloon show in Irvine’s Harbour Arts Centre. I interviewed Martin in advance of the show and opened by telling him my pals had supported Prefab Sprout in 1991. “Ah! Lovely John!” he said immediately. “He used to busk ‘We Let The Stars Go‘ – did you know that?” I’d suggested getting John to open the show, but Martin, who’d only played one solo show before Irvine – and John had played one less than that – wanted to ease into his night, maybe play two sets, maybe just the one longer one, maybe we’d judge the room at the time… so the idea of a support act would only complicate the matter and my idea was dropped.

On the night of the show, Martin asked excitedly, “Is John here?” I’d invited John and ‘the missus’, but they hadn’t shown. “Ach. Give him a call, will you? I’d like him to play ‘We Let The Stars Go’ with me.”

I called John just before Martin took to the stage.

“Is that tonight?” he asked sleepily. “Shite. We were gonnae come to that!“

“Come! Martin wants you to sing ‘We Let The Stars Go’. He’s playing two sets. You could be here in an hour and appear for the encore.”

Which is just about what happened. John texted to say he’d arrived at the venue and could I let him in. As luck would have it, he’d turned up just as Martin was finishing the first of his two lengthy sets.

“How’s it gaun? Y’awright?” he asked me, followed by his customary warm bear hug. I took him into Martin’s dressing room.

My Cilla Black moment. “Martin – John. John – Martin.”

“How’s it gaun? Y’awright?” he asked, to Martin this time, and the pair of them hugged and fell into easy conversation, reminiscing about the Prefab Sprout tour, about the Trashcans’ records in the intervening years, how Martin’s brother Paddy was faring.

“Yes, John,” said an impatient Martin. “Paddy is doing well, but what I want to know is…did you bring your guitar?“

John went into the corridor and brought in his guitar case. He snapped it open, strapped it on, hit a chord to check it was in tune…and – doinnngg! – broke the top string. The lack of any spare strings in his case was immediately apparent. Helpful Martin went to his own case. Bits of stuff flew out as he raked his massive hands through the velvety interior for a string. A discarded setlist. A Sharpie. Yellow fluff. A tea towel. A massive and ancient-looking capo. But no strings. Both Martin and John looked helplessly – and sheepishly – at me.

“It’s your lucky day, John!”

Believe it or not, I’d just bought two sets of strings, one for home use and one for a guitar at school. One set was already on the Telecaster at home, but the set for the school guitar was in the boot of my car, to be taken out the next time I was at work. Given that this was the middle of the summer holidays, they were still there. What followed was a real race against the clock for the remainder of Martin’s 15-minute break as, with two professional yet shockingly underprepared singer/songwriters of some repute watching, I replaced the broken string. Roadie Level One completed.

You lend me a Rickenbacker, John, and thirty years later I’ll lend you an E string. Ye can’t say fairer than that.

New string on and guitar now in tune, John played ‘We Let The Stars Go‘ in the dressing room. Problem was, he played it in a key unfamiliar to Martin, and with the clock ticking towards the start of set two, Martin made the executive decision there and then to dispense with John’s guitar entirely. FFS! Martin would play it and John would sing it – they’d busk their way through it like the professional yet underprepared singer/songwriters they were. In the second half, Martin introduced John to rousing applause from a delighted and surprised audience and on he came – “How’s it gaun? Y’awright?” – to sing the Prefabs’ song. A great moment for everyone in the room.

As a postscript to this story, midway through his second set, Martin broke a string too. He looked at me, lurking at the side of the stage, and handed me that beautiful old semi acoustic guitar you can see in the video above. I went back into the dressing room and restrung it. I even tuned it up and placed it back on its stand at the back of the stage. Martin finished the song he’d been playing on his spare guitar, slung on the newly-strung instrument, played a G chord and gave me a thumbs up. Roadie Level Two completed. Piece of piss.

The last time I saw John was on June 18th, again at the Harbour Arts Centre. I’d been asked to secure the venue for a Trashcans video shoot that would perhaps turn into a gig. You can read all about that night here. There was something of a quiet air of finality about that show – ridiculous really, when they’d a brand new album lined up for release, but the carefully selected audience of former band members, family, friends, long-term fans and influential broadcasters and journalists who’d given many a leg-up to a group who fly defiantly in the face of fashion seemed almost serendipitous. The band – 40 years old almost to the date – played one of their first gigs in the HAC and here they were four decades later, closing out their set by playing an unplanned encore of their debut single Obscurity Knocks, played with all the feral raggedness of a teenage garage band. Full circle and fully sensational.

When I was told John was unwell, we texted a couple of times. His last text to me, a week or so ago, was asking after my wife’s health, as he’d heard she’d been at the hospital for a procedure. ‘Sending strength’, he said as he signed off. Interested, empathetic, kind, remember.

John Douglas will be missed by all who knew him, and the many more who had the measure of him through his literate, melody-packed and emotional music. He was, simply, a lovely guy.

Here’s The Hairy Years from I’ve Seen Everything, John’s confessional about stealing a snow globe to take back to his granny as a present from his holiday – ‘all the savings gone on bloody day one,’ – welded to a shouty Frank number, greatly tamed for the recording by the trickery of Paul Livingston and his mercurial way with a fluid guitar riff over a well-chosen chord sequence. It’s a mighty fine John moment in a discography choc full of them. Go and investigate it. Or investigate it further.

The Trashcan Sinatras – The Hairy Years

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The Freewheelin’ Blog Thrillin’

Craig McAllister

The boy always had bikes. From the moment he spied his big sister’s, he wanted one of his own. He had a wee yellow Halfords-made thing, a Stinger, all go-faster stripes and cartoon wasps with helmet to match, and it wasn’t long before he was cycling death-defying circles on the front grass, the stabilisers dispensed with almost as soon as I’d fitted them. D’you remember the rushing sense of freedom that accompanied those first stabiliser-free pedals of your own? Yeah! Great, innit! Once you’ve shaken the rickety wobbles free, you’re truly off and running, one of life’s first lessons in the sheer thrill of singular independence.

He had a blue Cube bike next. High spec and well built. The pair of us, sometimes three if his big sister was feeling adventurous, would cycle from Kilwinning to Irvine to visit my parents, their grandparents, a one-way trip of seven or so miles. He’d have been five or six years old at the time, but he was determined that wherever I cycled, he should cycle too. I’d lead the way on the stretch of National Cycle Network bike path that serves this part of the west of Scotland so well, the boy just behind me, his wee legs going like the clappers while I freewheeled most of the way. I’d ring my bell. He’d answer by ringing his back. I’d do two short pings and one long one and he’d answer in the same way. Daft games to make the journey interesting. I’d have a stash of chocolate in my pocket and if he was flagging, we’d pull to the side and I’d produce the energy-giver at the right moment. By no means was it the fastest way to visit gran and papa, but it was the best. For the return journey, my dad would often put the boy’s bike in the back of the car and run him home, but he was never happy about that. Big sister, generally, was delighted. But if I was cycling home, then so should he, whether he was six years old or home was another seven miles away or whether it was raining or not.

After he’d outgrown the Cube, we got him an orange bike, the make of which escapes me. It had great tyres, if I remember correctly. Solid when pumped. Proper road grippers, but narrow enough for speed. Being bigger and more gallus, he’d think nothing of encouraging me to take him further afield. We’d go all the way through Irvine Beach Park and past the myriad of links golf courses to Barassie, and maybe even Troon if the weather was favourable. We’d cycle into the hilly countryside, wheezing our way up and wheeing our way down north Ayrshire’s undulating landscape, still playing that daft bell game, still stopping for sugar.

In the school holidays, the three of us would cycle to Kilwinning train station, wrestle our bikes onto the train to Largs (no easy task during the Glasgow Fair when all and sundry head doon the watter for the day), hop on the ferry for the short crossing to Millport, then cycle the island’s pancake-flat ten-mile distance, stopping off first at the famous Ritz Cafe and then at Fintry Bay with its crabbit ice cream seller before getting the ferry and then the train back home in time to make tea. Happy days.

The best bike he had was a Bradley Wiggins-branded hybrid bike. Great build. Properly good spec. A high quality bike. Even in the depths of winter, the pair of us would be off and out. Sometimes ‘just’ to Irvine, but these days we’d take the longer and more scenic route, up to and over the standing stones at the top of Eglinton Park, a thigh-burning exercise in positive mental attitude, its long, fast and slightly treacherous snaking downhill the reward for the hard yards on the up-climb. We ferried not just to Millport but to Arran now. He never quite made it round the island’s 56 mile circumference (I thought he was still too young, a concept lost on him, with inevitably stroppy arguments as a consequence) but we conquered many of the Sleeping Warrior’s hills and winding bends like a father/son tag team of red polka dotted Kings of the Mountain. By now, he’d be faster than me much of the time. Bigger, stronger and less apprehensive of the fast and winding downward runs, more gung-ho at tackling the horribly steep climbs. And now, he’d be the one at the top of the hill, pulling chocolate from a hidden pocket, teasing me slowly upwards the way Hanna-Barbera might’ve teased a donkey with a carrot.

Then his football really took over. It was always there, but now he trained twice a week and played at the weekend too. Bike time was no longer part of the agenda. To accommodate his growing stature, the seat on the Wiggins bike had been adjusted as high as it would go. ‘We’re gonnae need another bike,’ I remember thinking. ‘…but he doesn’t cycle any more,’ I answered myself almost straight away.

We sold the Wiggins bike on Facebook marketplace yesterday. A nice guy bought it. His young son will be in Scotland for four weeks during the English school holidays and they hope he’ll want to cycle around Millport on it. The bike’ll be happy to see familiar roads again. It’s gone to a good home.

I went upstairs to tell my wife that the bike had been sold. “It’s gone.” I burst into tears.

That wasn’t expected at all.

Here’s Long Hot Summer. Lazy, languid, meandering and unforgettable, all the while taking its time to get to the end of the road; the perfect metaphor for cycling with your kids, as it turns out.

The Style Council – Long Hot Summer

 

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It Takes A Lot Of Hard Work To Look Like You’re Not Working Hard

Craig McAllister

Odd band, The Strokes. They’ve got – or maybe nowadays since they’ve made some real money – they had something of a classic rock ‘n roll look; battered Levi’s and even more battered leather, tiny t-shirts and tight, tight pants, in their dirty Converse and winkle pickers and moneyed Manhattan sidewalk sneakers an array of de rigeur footgear, not to mention the sixteen different haircuts crowning each angular and chiselled face.

Line them up in a police identity parade though and, on closer inspection, they are indeed an odd bunch.

There’s a singer, all doe eyed boredom with the personality of dry toast who hangs from his mic stand when not having to sing. Which, given The Strokes are all about the guitars (sorry, were all about the guitars) is quite often. There’s a bass player who holds his instrument the way a big game poacher might tote his rifle if he’s on the lookout for a stray elephant. There’s a pair of guitar players, one low slung and coaxing lightning bolts of electric thrills from his six strings, the other playing his white Strat at chest-height, like Dylan in the ’60s, you might note, with the hair to match, but frantically rattling out rapid fire open chords high up the neck, his face a twisted gurn of concentration, his corkscrew curls bouncing in time to the four to the floor beat. Join the two players together and you’ve have pretty much the complete guitarist. The guitar would be at the right height for a start. And, yes, that beat. At the back, the quiet Stroke, the coolest Stroke, a Stroke so handsome he got to step out with Drew Barrymore for years, The Strokes have the greatest New York City drummer since Clem Burke.

And their individual names. Exotic. Storied. A mini cosmosis of the East Village’s multi-cultured diversity. Julian Casablancas. Albert Hammond Jr. Nick Valensi. Nikolai Fraiture. Greek. Italian. Greek-Italian. And, in Fab Moretti, a drummer who sounds like an advertising statement, a nothing more and nothing less, good, honest testament to Italian beer itself.

Is This It? turned 25 yesterday. Or, at least, BBC Radio 6 Music, by pumping out a Strokes-themed playlist across the entire schedule could tell me so. Strokes-themed. That phrase was doing quite a bit of heavy lifting, I tell you. I’ve always had it as a defining memory that I bought Is This It? on its day of release on the Monday of 27th August, 2001. Same day I bought the Zim’s Love And Theft, if I’m not mistaken. Which, Mr BBC, I’m not. I know this because our daughter was born the day before. And I know my dates. The Strokes album and the Bob album are both cultural milestones, maybe, but the birth of your children remains the highest of life’s high points. 29th July, 6 Music? I think you’re about a month too early.

I happened to catch a terrifically insightful interview with the album’s producer Gordon Raphael while out and about in the car late in the afternoon. He emphasised just how much work it took The Strokes to appear nonchalant and cool and raggedly spontaneous. Yeah, they had the look, but the real hours were put in in the rehearsal room. It takes a lot of hard work to look like you’re not working hard. 18 hour days were not uncommon in their search for the rickety rock ‘n roll sound that would come to define them. They played over and over and over, tweaking a riff here, dropping unnecessary flab there. Casablancas at this point wasn’t really their singer. A pal, he hung around in the rehearsal room’s corner until one day he went full-on Noel and pointed out what they needed to do to make the songs better. From then on in he was the band’s vocalist and musical director. Hanging freely from microphone stands during guitar breaks is, apparently, when his best ideas appear.

Listening to The Strokes then and now, it’s clear where the influences lie. A bit Velvet-y here, a bit Iggy there, a whole lotta Television interplay everywhere else. It was interesting then to hear Raphael say how the band brought three records to him in their pursuit of their sound. You could probably name them…except you’d probably be wrong.

The drum sound. It had to have the crisp compression of John Lennon’s Watching The Wheels.

The guitar rhythm. It had to have the unique and clean separateness of The Wailers on Bob Marley’s Uprising album.

The overall feel. It had to have the messy chaos of Guided By Voices’ Game Of Pricks.

That was it.

If you listen to Is This It? you’ll hear all of this. Not hard to explain at all.

The Strokes – Hard To Explain

 

Get This!, Gone but not forgotten, Hard-to-find, Sampled

Shack Up

Craig McAllister

Jimmy Smith is the bridge between jazz and soul, a colossus of his chosen instrument who had one well-tailored foot firmly planted in the camp marked ‘strictly no sell out’ and the other in the camp marked ‘unfortunately I’ve got bills to pay.’ A master of the Hammond B-3 organ, his playing was a deep influence on Deep Purple’s Jon Lord, The Charlatans’ Rob Collins and Mick Talbot in The Style Council (et al), to name but three great players who understood the value of the B3’s flavour to their particular sonic stew.

Sampled by all manner of switched-on creatives from the Beastie Boys to DJ Shadow to The Orb, Smith’s indelible organ grind appears in the least likeliest of places at the most unexpected times. Would the Beasties’ Root Down be quite as funky without that requisite sample? Could Andrew Weatherall have borrowed from anyone other than Smith when twisting The Orb’s Perpetual Dawn inside out and upside down? Ask yr average music fan to compile a list of the ten most influential players in music and it’s unlikely that Jimmy Smith’s name would make that short list, but his influence lives long and large.

A few years ago, in the midst of a particularly heavy jazz phase, I noticed on leaving a Glasgow record shop a Japanese import of Jimmy Smith’s Back At The Chicken Shack album. A Blue Note original. A super duper Japanese pressing. And, given the pressing and its particular desirability, one that was relatively affordable. It was up high, so I couldn’t lift it down to look at it, but I wanted it. Problem was, I was properly spent out, and if I’d asked the guy at the counter to get it down for me, I’d have felt compelled to buy it with money I didn’t have. I hummed. I hawed. I left without it…but ten minutes later I’d done a U-turn down Argyle Street, flames burning from the heels of my desert boots as I hot-footed it back to the shop with the sole intention of bringing that record home with me. Of course, by the time I’d returned, some other unbelievably lucky jazz head had got there before me. We all know what buyer’s remorse is. This was not-buying remorse. Which, as you know full well, is very often worse. It’s undoubtedly good to be impulsive sometimes.

Back At The Chicken Shack is a terrific album, a proper heads-down, chin stroking melding of walking basslines, lazy drum shuffles and Smith’s smoky, croaky Hammond sound.

Jimmy Smith – Back At The Chicken Shack

The title track is a heady amalgamation of early ’60s cool, finger-clickin’ jazz. There are just four musicians on board, and the quartet contributes to a positively swingin’ affair that, if possible, is even greater than the sum of its groovy parts. Chicken Shack is brought in on a ringing, trembling bed of Smith’s organ, but no sooner have you settled in than Blue Note’s tenor sax for hire Stanley Turrentine wafts his signature rasp across the top line. Kenny Burrell’s guitar vamps quietly in the background, biding it’s time, waiting for the opportunity to break free, the swinging cymbal splash of Donald Bailey’s drums keeping everything in place and orientating the listener.

As the track meanders, unwinds and eventually pulls itself back together over the course of eight heady minutes, Smith takes centre stage; he ripples here, hits heavy chords there, goes low and bassy in this part, flies high and reedy in that. He walks his fingers up, off and out into orbit before eventually stepping aside to allow Kenny Burrell the opportunity to showcase his exquisite guitar skills; bends, double stops, soulful scales up, down and (crucially) between the frets, playing on pure instinct with his fingers going to places in the merest of nanoseconds before his brain has thought of doing likewise. Turrentine blows a cool breeze in the catch-a-breath gaps left behind, freeform yet within the structure of the track – playing riffs really, as the rock fraternity would recognise them. There’s nothing too skronky or head-melting here, just good, honest music cooked up by good, honest jazz cats playing for no-one but themselves and anyone else with an ounce of rhythm and blues in their soul.

If it’s single-button, tonic suited mod jazz yr after, look no further than Back At The Chicken Shack, daddy-o.

 

Cover Versions, Gone but not forgotten

Circulatory

Craig McAllister

It’s a well-written fact over the years that Tomorrow Never Knows was the first track The Beatles recorded for Revolver. Barely out of short trousers, The Beatles turned to studio-as-instrument and created a thumping and droning kaleidoscope of looped sound – an aural collage a million miles from, yet merely 33 months since, they’d released She Loves You; inarguably, yeah (yeah, yeah), a fantastical leap of lightyear proportions. Waiting for that great leap forward, Billy Bragg? It had already happened a couple of decades prior.

Tomorrow Never Knows – The Beatles

Tomorrow Never Knows and its ground-breaking, rule-breaking appeal has been utilised well in the intervening years. Without its influential template, Harry ‘friend of Lennon’ Nilsson may have felt the need to employ more than one chord on his rockin’ Jump Into The Fire single. Adam Yauch might not have taken to threading metres of recording tape around his kitchen via nothing more than broom handles and a prayer when experimenting with drum loops before the Beastie Boys’ first album. The Chemical Brothers’ looping, thumping, kaleidoscopic Setting Son possibly/probably/most definitely wouldn’t exist. Paul Weller has used Tomorrow Never Knows as an intro at live shows and it never fails to sharpen the senses, keen the expectation and lift the roof off before he’s even arrived. In 2026 – sixty years down the road, Tomorrow Never Knows still sounds like a dazzling, just around the corner future.

It’s interesting, then, to hear Junior Parker’s 1972 version.

Tomorrow Never Knows – Junior Parker

Parker, one of the original dust bowl blues/harmonica guys, disassembles the original of its thumps and crashes, its fuck-off whooshes and fairground whirrs and recasts it as a tremolo-heavy, late-night torch song. There’s a token heartbeat of muffled percussion and ricky-tick stick action during one of its more urgent moments, but mainly one lone twanging, reverberating guitar measures the music as Parker delivers his solemn vocal. Heavy-eyed and somnolent, Parker comes across like a stoned-immaculate Jim Morrison backed by no-one but Robby Krieger on downers. It’s a fairly essential recording, all things said, and one which the Chemical Brothers (of course!) have used in concert before segueing into their own Setting Son. Now there’s a circulatory thing if there ever was one.

Junior Parker, as you well know, is also the writer of that great standard, Mystery Train.

Mystery Train – Junior Parker

Recorded in Sun Studios in 1953, it was brought to Elvis’s attention in 1955 by Sam Phillips, the studio/label owner/producer who just so happened to have given himself a writing credit for the track. Elvis took Parker’s r’n’b heavy version and hotwired it to an electric shock of helium-high hillbilly country, creating possibly his first essential recording.

Mystery Train – Elvis Presley

It’s the sparsest of recordings – the very antithesis of that Beatles session just a mere decade away – with Scotty Moore on electric guitar, rockabilly pickin’ and riff stealin from another Parker tune (Love My Baby) to great effect. Bill Black playing stand-up bass – the same instrument that would later be owned by Paul McCartney, a birthday gift from Linda – slappin’ and walkin’ his way through the song’s foggy ether. It features a sparse percussion track that makes the action on Junior Parker’s version of Tomorrow Never Knows seem like the pounding work of John Bonham by comparison. And on top of it all, Elvis’s cu-hu-huntry bu-hoy schtick and his own scuffed ‘n scrubbed acoustic guitar. Nothing more, nothing less. And all the more essential for it.

By the way, that Mystery Train riff has been copped a thousand times since, but Scotty Moore’s chicken-picked original remains the standard for all players. Simple yet deceptive, a heady mix of left hand pressure. right hand nimbleness and decades-old hot-wired electricity will get you some of the way there.

There you are. From The Beatles to Elvis via Junior Parker and the Chemical Brothers. Not for nothing does the tagline above read Outdated Music For Outdated People. Read on, oldies.

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Silly Billy

Craig McAllister

Brian Epstein, in possibly one of the first genius music marketing moves, had The Beatles record a couple of vocal tracks in German, the idea being that the fans in the country where the group had served their musical apprenticeship would be rewarded with a Beatles hit or two in their native language. Abba did likewise, but in reverse. They opted to sing in the international pop language of English but re-recorded many of their vocals in Swedish. And Spanish. And German. And French. Ah-ha – la question c-est voulez-vous. Blur? They’ve had a go at French. Blondie? They did a verse of Sunday Girl in French too. Bowie? You’ll find his German version of ‘Heroes’ on these very pages. In more recent times, Charli XCX has seen the commercial value in dropping tracks recorded in Japanese. I’m pretty sure the K-Pop acts will be similarly bi/multi-lingual. It may be slightly novel, but it’s also very much cash-grab savvy.

And then there’s Billy Idol.

Yeah. Billy Idol. Fight me.

Billy Idol – Hot In The City

Billy’s Hot In The City has long-been something of a guilty pleasure to these refined ears. For years I’d assumed it was a cover version; it’s got that three/four chord, major/minor thing going on, it’s got a melody that’s instantly whistleable, it’s got a chorus of Spector-ish, Supreme-ish girls singing and sashaying behind him – it’s simply just a bit of a banger, as they say. And something as timeless and upbeat and catchy couldn’t possibly be an Idol original.

Yet it was, as it turns out, written wholly by Idol. Nice one, Billy!

Producer Keith Forsey, the man with the golden touch when it comes to 1980s FM-friendly unit-shifters, helped realise oor Billy’s grand notions for his song. In comes a see-sawing, woozy and wheezing keyboard riff. a rubber band bass line with a hummable, nagging full stop after the first chorus, jarring and stabbing pianos, LA rock guitars and those fantastic swooning backing vocals. All Billy needs to do, really, is sing it in his tough guy goes transatlantic voice and wait for the money to roll in.

Billy Idol, one of the original Bromley punks, whose pals went on Bill Grundy and famously wound the host up, who found initial fame as the snarly, punked-up retro rocker fronting Generation X, upped and left for California and, ridin’ in on the considerable surf created by MTV, projected himself as a Hollywood version of a punk rocker and ended up selling enough records to keep him in bleach and strong-hold gel forever. Imagine that.

Gone were the scuzzy, scratchy Gen X guitar solos. In were rapid and slick hair-metal lightning blasts of shiny, hedge fund rock. Gone was the London drizzle, the British greyness. In came a perma tan and spanking new rock star teeth. Gone too were the t-shirts and unnecessary top half clothing. New look Bill loved a bare chest and he got it out at every opportunity. Sensibly, Bill kept a hold of the hair. He could’ve chosen to grown it out, rock star long, maybe mullety or even semi-permed. That must’ve been tempting in the days when he was competing with Motley Crue for airtime. But, no. In reverence to those punk roots (and punk, eh, roots) there it still was; platinum white, stiff and spiky, that just out of bed look that now took a team of studio stylists hours to get just-so. Still there too was the studded leather jacket. And the perma-Elvis lip curl. And the chains and rings and crucifixes and things dangling from the ear lobes, shinier and longer and more plentiful than before, a subtle symbol of his new-found status at the forefront of faux dangerous, highly scripted pop rock. There goes Billy Idol – the original punk who’d eventually become as plastic as the work on his face. White Wedding and Rebel Yell were his big two tickets to a house in the Hollywood hills and a decent retirement plan. But Hot In The City was the real ace in his deck.

In a move as calculated as a Beatles/Epstein masterstroke, Hot In The City features a line that was re-recorded for all the major US territories:

I’m a-walkin’ ’til my brain pops
I will move with the beat now
I’m a chain ’round an 8-ball
I’m gonna really fell the heat now…
…Noo York!

(or L.A.!)

(or Bos-ton!)

(or Cleve-land!)

(or Phi-lly!)

(or Sioux Falls!) 

or any other non two syllable Hot 100 town where Billy had a bit of traction:

(Minneapolis!)

(New Haven!)

(Chattanooga!)

DJs in those cities would play the relevant version and the locals would go nuts for it, record stores would be queued out the door as they lined up to buy the thing and the record would chart higher than the Saturday night clientele in the Viper Rooms.

The result? A number, er, 23, ‘smash’. What was wrong with those people?!

I know what was wrong. Hot In The City wasn’t pseudo-metal enough. In an era of long-form videos packed full of long-legged beauties with big hair and bigger bosoms, Hot In The City was just too polite, a Tiffany in a world of Madonnas. Too pop. Not enough metal. And the alternative/John Hughes-y scene of OMD and Flock Of Seagulls and Echo and the Bunnymen and so on was still far too edgy and credible compared to Billy soddin’ Idol. Even the Americans knew he was naff…even if they were deaf when it comes to the undeniability of Hot In The City.

Next week – why Eyes Without A Face is overdue for reappraisal. Don’t fight it, feel it.

 

 

 

Cover Versions, Gone but not forgotten

Has High Blood Pressure Got A Hold On Me?

Craig McAllister

American groups – like any number of those Nuggets bands you can reel off in your sleep – or The Turtles or The Byrds (‘animal’ name, weird spelling – coincidence?!?) grew their mom’s apple pie American boy crewcuts out the moment The Beatles first yelled ‘yeah!‘ They adopted the instruments…the stance…the harmonies…everything they could that might align them with the collarless coattails of the hottest act on the planet. And good on them, for using the Lennon/McCartney approach gave the world more great records.

When John Sebastian sat down with his guitar to write a song for his new band The Lovin’ Spoonful, he looked back a year or so for inspiration, to the pop sounds that were already proven to shake and shimmy American teenagers to their core. He didn’t need to look east, across the Atlantic and towards Liverpool. I mean, he could’ve, for there was plenty there that he might chose to cop. Instead, Sebastian looked north to Detroit, to the sound of the Motor City and the hand-clappin’, finger-snappin’ giddy abandon of Motown.

And so it is that Do You Believe In Magic? wafts in on the same chords as Martha Reeves and The Vandellas‘ (Love Is Like A) Heat Wave.

Martha Reeves and The Vandellas – (Love Is Like A) Heat Wave

Other than the chord sequence at the beginning, the two songs are poles apart, of course. The Lovin’ Spoonful come across like grassed-out, close-miked preppy stoners with the knack of making an unforgettable melody appear as natural as breathing.

Martha and The Vandellas crash in with all the urgency of a group who’ve been told that this might be the only record they make. There’s a rifle shot of snare, a cavalry charge of handclaps, deep sea baritone sax that climbs to the surface and punctuates every second beat, a hundred mile an hour poundin’ pianer, a guitar that hammers on the chords like life itself depends on it and a bass line (James Jamerson?) pinning the whole thing to the floor lest it falls off and causes an imbalance on the Richter Scale. And that’s just the first 30 seconds.

Martha introduces herself by gleefully kicking in the doors of pop. ‘Whenever I’m with him, somethin’ in-si-hide…starts to burnin’ and I’m filled with dee-za-hire…‘

Ah. So it ain’t about the summer weather in Detroit then. No! It is – like a gazillion Motown songs before and since, a heartfelt paean to the joys of young love, when the world’s your oyster and no-one, daddy-o, feels like you do. Holland-Dozier-Holland have captured lighting in a bottle here. Martha is beside herself with excitement and her willing Vandellas are being dragged along in her slipstream. Falsetto ‘Heat Wave!‘ backing vocals ramp it up further. ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!‘ they go in the outro, the piano player’s fingers still locked on the groove, the sax player somehow saving enough breath to see his way to the song’s thumping, tumbling conclusion.

Motown may have billed itself ‘The Sound of Young America’, but (Love Is Like A) Heat Wave could be billed ‘The Sound Of Young Motown’ and few would counter that claim. Give it a good listen again and tell me I’m wrong.

A decade or so later, back over this side of the Atlantic, another young songwriter with a magpie approach to creation was cribbing the chords and calls and response that he could twist into his own shapes. That Paul Weller should dig black American pop music is never in doubt; from the version of Wilson Pickett’s Midnight Hour on The Jam’s second album, via the You Can’t Hurry Love bassline that drives A Town Called Malice to the smattering of choice cuts across his b-sides (Move On Up, Stoned Out Of My Mind), The Jam’s frontman knew a well-crafted pop-soul hit when he heard it.

The Jam cut their version of Heat Wave for their fourth album Setting Sons. Maybe they were low on original material. Maybe they just fancied cutting loose. Either way, their ramalama take on Heat Wave closes the second side of the record in good, old-fashioned killer style. Dig it!

The Jam – Heat Wave

It’s the clang of the Rickenbacker…the call and response of Buckler and Foxton, the Vandellas to Weller’s Martha…the incessant pummelling of the drum kit…the vamping piano player…the subtle introduction of a brass section that would soon be far more prominent in the sound of The Jam…but, for now, the sheer, goddammed urgency of it all. Let’s get this album finished and let’s finish it NOW!

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!

 

* And to answer that titular question: sadly, it has. That’ll be a job in education for ye,

Get This!, Live!

Silent Witness

Craig McAllister

To paraphrase a well-worn old cliché, there are two types of people; those who love the Trashcan Sinatras and those who haven’t yet heard them.

The Trashcans are the epitome of the cult band. Look up the meaning and see for yourself:

A niche appeal that doesn’t conform to mainstream trends. In the late ’80s, their tight, studied Caledonian jangle was at odds with the more loose-limbed approach that seeped its way outwards from Manchester’s Oldham Street like a pair of Joe Bloggs bell bottoms. In the ’90s, their now-considered classic second album I’ve Seen Everything was lost to the blustery winds of grunge. Their third, 1996’s A Happy Pocket – an album packed full of tunes and melody and inventiveness – failed to make an impact in a musical landscape dominated by two mega-selling and zeitgeist-surfing guitar groups. And so it went on.

Longevity and influence, maintaining relevance over decades. The Trashcans have been making records for over 35 years. Rightly so, I’ve Seen Everything regularly crops up in lists of ‘Best Scottish Albums Ever’ – as should their fourth album Weightlifting, if yr askin’. A young Fran Healy popped up as a support act at one point, his demo tape making its way via the supportive headliners to the label which would sign him and the group that eventually became Travis. That’s longevity and influence right there.

A dedicated fanbase, with intensely loyal supporters. Fans of the Trashcans are well used to playing the long game. By the time their magnificent seventh album arrives at the end of July, it’ll be over a decade since their last album, 2016’s Wild Pendulum. A brief reissue period of their Go! Discs albums and a couple of stand alone singles aside, Ever The Optimist is a record that is eagerly anticipated. The group’s intensely loyal support has, for a few years now, subscribed monthly to the group’s Patreon page. Their subscription fees have gone a long way to financing the upcoming record and patrons of the group have been rewarded with a drip-feed of brand new material that suggests the Trashcans have lost none of their way with a melodic twist and a hooky guitar line (they haven’t – I’ve been lucky enough to have been living with the new record since October last year and it is indeed every bit as good as the released tracks suggest it will be.)

I’ve been doing a bit of writing around the new album too. As with previous publications The Perfect Reminder and The Full Pocket, this new book (?) will dig deep to uncover the inspirations and perspiration around the 11 songs that make up the new record. It’s about 80% finished and, even if I do say so myself, it’s a worthy companion to one of the records of the year. So, you can look out for that when it makes it into print.

It was during an interview with Francis around March when it was suggested that the Trashcans might want to film a video for the title track of the new album. Could I find availability in Irvine’s Harbour Arts Centre around the middle of June? The Trashcans had a small window of opportunity – both Francis and Paul would be home to visit relatives around the 18th of the month and if possible, they’d be looking to film the video then. They were keeping their options open though – a Glasgow pub was also pencilled in as a possible location, the pros and cos of both venues a fiercely debated conversation between band and manager and video production team and – batting for the home team – myself. Eventually, Irvine won out; the right decision as everyone agreed.

It was suggested in conversation that perhaps, maybe, possibly, the group might entertain the notion of playing a few songs after they’d filmed the video shoot. “Like a gig.” There. It was out. The five group members hadn’t been in the same room for eight years. A rehearsal would be necessary. Or rehearsals, plural. When would they fit that in? A gig was unlikely then. Or was it? Yes. It was definitely unlikely. Really though…was it?

Somehow, come Thursday there, the group was into both the video shoot and a small, low-key gig on the same night. With the Harbour Arts Centre’s 100 capacity audience, it was immediately clear that demand for such a show would far outstrip supply, and so, in lieu of selling tickets, the group took the decision to invite family as well as close friends and allies to the performance. It would need to be top secret. Silence Is Golden. The Sound Of Silence. Enjoy The Silence. Enjoy the silence?!? It’s agony knowing about something that’s guaranteed to be totally magic, yet being forbidden to mention it. Word gets out about this and Irvine harbourside would be awash with collapsing quiffs and foggy spectacled, ticketless fans. Silence should indeed be golden.

A guest list was drawn up. Whittled down. Re-drawn. Re-whittled. Augmented and amended. Replies were immediate and almost all in the affirmative. ‘Yes! We’ll be there! Yes! We won’t tell a soul!’ And d’you know what? No one told a soul. I was amazed that nothing as much as a squeak got out. If you were on that list, well done you. The gravity of the occasion – the classic line-up of the Trashcan Sinatras, live and in the same room for the first time in eight years – was clearly not lost on any of the invited audience.

Thursday 18th June eventually arrived…and there they were! All five Trashcans, packed onto the small ‘stage’ of the HAC, standing on yr actual Paolo Nutini’s Persian rugs for a mid-afternoon soundcheck doubling as a second rehearsal (they’d rehearsed in Glasgow the day before) where they greased the rusty cogs of guitar-based melodic pop back into action. They sounded brilliant; a bit scuffed at the edges, and with not as much of the polished sheen that helps make the records so timeless and essential, but playing with vigour and a studied dedication to the cause.

They looked great too. A crack New York video team had been flown in especially and the tiny theatre had been transformed into a proper video set. Greens and aquas and scarlets and cyans swept and swooped above…behind…below the group, throwing long shadows on the walls, throwing those in attendance into a bit of a tizz. A pop video! Being made right in front of us! (And this was just the afternoon too; the only folk there were those essential to the running of the show – just wait until later, when 100 eager fans are in attendance.) They run through the video playback five or six times and then, with relevant footage in the can, everyone stops for food and braces themselves for the evening ahead.

There’s a queue longer than Irvine Mall come doors open time and once in, the lucky hundred make straight for a seat. There’s not a bad seat in the house though – indeed, ‘house’ is being generous to this small and intimate room – and once they realise, half the audience makes their way to the merch stand instead. There are bespoke ‘Trashcan Sinatras HAC Irvine’ t-shirts for sale. By the end of the night, none remain. A momentous occasion requires a momentous t-shirt.

The performance? It’s their first hometown show for 39 years – that’s thirty-nine, Archie, and it’s dazzling…melancholic…life-affirming…tear-jerking…unbelievable…funny…pinch me…all of that and more. The Trashcans did two sets of career-spanning fan favourites (Hayfever! Got Carried Away! How Can I Apply?! Easy Read! Orange Fell! Weightlifting!) as well as live debuts of new material (Games For The ZX Spectrum! The Bitter End!), a couple of kinda live, kinda mimed filmed video performances the meat in the musical sandwich. A set that closes with Send For Henny and Earlies would be exquisite in anyone’s repertoire, and in the hands of the Trashcans, the entire room melts just a little. An unplanned encore of Obscurity Knocks was outrageously brilliant, the scrubbed acoustic guitars that little bit faster, the lightning flash of guitar solo that little bit slicker, the ‘turned 21, twist, bust, wrong again‘ line delivered like Johnny Rotten in ’76. Old Irvine punks never die, apparently. Pound for pound, this was breathtaking stuff.

Will the group tour to promote the album? With Francis and Paul both living on the west coast of America, and what with the cost of touring these days, it all makes for a logistical headache. I’m not so sure they will. Will they play bespoke live shows here and there when the stars and travel arrangements align? I certainly hope so. Everyone in Irvine – band, crew and especially audience – were enraptured. If it can’t be bottled and sold along with the t-shirts, it needs to be brought to the people, however that may be.

You can order Ever The Optimist here.

While you’re waiting for the end of July, here’s the visualiser for Games for The ZX Spectrum…or Zee Ex Spectrum, if you happen to find yourself talking about great music when you’re Stateside with the Tartan Army.

 

Live!

Horsin’ Around With Skerryvore

Craig McAllister

I see Del Amitri are in the States. Deacon Blue too. Funny how they’ve both managed to arrange a tour of America’s Eastern seaboard while the national football team is playing three (at least three – let’s be positive) games between Boston and Miami in exactly the same timeframe. Canny, those Scots.

Another canny Scottish group is Skerryvore. Runrig for ravers, Skerryvore have taken their enthusiastic whirlin’ and birlin’ bagpipe schtick to Canada and America and the multitudes of homesick ex-pats who’ve been missing a taste of tartan since first emigrating across the Atlantic. They were the star turn in the Boston fanzones ahead of Scotland’s game against Haiti at the weekend, soundtracking our peaceful kilted warriors as they set about systematically drinking Boston dry. Maybe beer makes them sound better, but with their blaw hard bagpipes and stadium-filling drums, sky-scraping electric guitars and impassioned vocals wrung dry, Skerryvore are – to these ears – every bit as excruciating as that description might suggest.

That said, I’ve appeared on stage with Skerryvore.

Three or so summers ago, my pal Danny was booked to do live sound for Horse at a small music festival. The organisation of the event seemed a bit scant. Danny had been promised a local crew to help do the heavy lifting while he got on with the job of mixing Horse’s live sound, but he wasn’t convinced he’d have any crew when he got there and was concerned about how exactly he’d do the job he’d been paid to do with only his own pair of hands for help. Before I knew what I’d signed up for, he’d coerced me into getting up early the next morning to accompany him plus Horse plus her band in his splitter van to the festival. After dropping the group at their near-site hotel, Danny and myself went on to the festival where we were met with no local crew, no-one checking our credentials and no idea of where to unload.

From a fog of exotic smoke, a pie-eyed stage manager emerged with a couple of laminate passes, instructing us to unload our gear – it was our gear now, not just Danny’s – into a small gazebo. Given music festivals and rain are close bed fellows in the Scottish summertime, this wasn’t such a bad idea. We spent a bit of time lifting all the heavy shit (flight cases and amps and stands and instruments and more flight cases and monitors and stuff of indeterminate use) from the van and into the safe harbour of our gazebo. I quickly learned I wasn’t cut out for life as a member of the road crew. D’you know how heavy a mixing desk is? Especially when it’s packed inside a sturdy flight case? Heavy as fuck is, I think, what they say in the industry.

Unloaded and with hours to spare before Horse was on stage, we took the chance to wheel Danny’s desk from back stage to inside the tent where Horse would later appear. There was a band on stage while we did this, don’t know who; skinny jeans, guitars, unruly hair and mild acne, and we had to navigate between jumping teenagers and unimpressed 30-somethings, wheeling the heavy flightcased mixing desk across the grass to its resting place next to the smaller sound desk currently being employed to make the band on stage sound not quite as bad as they really were. When that was done, we had free time. Danny immediately went to his van to crash out. I bought an overpriced burger and set off to scope the festival.

As it turned out, Horse was second top of the bill to Skerryvore. The tent we’d just placed Danny’s desk in was where the main stage was, so flashing my triple-A pass to no-one at all, I placed myself stage-side and watched the bands from there. They were all local-ish and unsigned and every bit as unappealing as that might suggest. Our stage manager friend sat nearby, puffing his way through an impressive amount of skunk, before grooving off, never to be seen again. Of course, the festival gods were waiting for exactly this moment and caused a power cut. Some loud no-mark band of guitar stranglers were silenced mid-song, to a mix of jeers and cheers, and forced to leave the stage, where they hung about uncertain of what to do. If only there was a stage manager present. Maybe ten minutes later, a PA blasting Tina Turner’s Simply The Best let everyone know that the power was back on – so the band went back on again and picked up where they’d left off. The band after them went on maybe 15 minutes later than billed; not a disaster, but that’s 15 minutes less for Skerryvore, who as it turned out, everyone was there to see.

During the next band’s set, there was another power cut. And later on, yet another. Before Horse was due to go on, there had been three power cuts. No-one in authority (there was no authority) had suggested to the no-mark acts that they cut their sets to accommodate, and with an 11pm curfew looming on the gloomy horizon, the genteel, introspective Horse was going to have to play her set at a Ramones pace if she wanted to fit it all in ahead of our crowd-pleasing headliners.

As Horse and her group began to appear stage-side, I was tasked with wiring her up to one of those radio mics that folk like Taylor Swift and Madonna employ for stadium-filling, dance-routine heavy spectacles. Naturally, I took ages to do so and naturally too, I made a right pig’s ear of it. I was tasked also with laying out setlists for the group. Cool, I thought. I’ve seen roadies do that. I can do that. There were three setlists printed for a six-piece band. One went directly where Horse’s feet would be. One went next to the snare drum. The last one went to Horse’s bass player Lorna, cos she’s dead cool and I bonded immediately with her. The others will find out from their bandmates what songs they’re playing in which order, I thought stupidly. Anyway, by this point, Skerryvore and their road crew had also turned up side-stage. Between band and crew there must’ve been 15 guys, many of them hairy and bikerish and tattooed and well-practised in the art of road-crewing. The largest, hairiest looked at me.

‘Is Horse gonnae cut ‘er set, wee man? We’re running awfy late and everyb’dy’s here tae see Skerryvore.’

Shit…he thinks I know what I’m doing…he thinks I’m Horse’s road crew. Jesus.

‘Well? Is she?‘

‘Eh…ah’ll ask her…’

And just then, Horse and her band start their first song. Or, some of them do. Her guitar player looks at me.

‘Where’s ma setlist, Craig?‘

Jeez.

Her keyboard player looks at me.

‘Where’s ma setlist, Craig?‘

Double Jeez.

Skerryvore’s road crew haven’t had an answer yet. Their head guy looks at me.

‘Is she cuttin’ her set or whit?‘

Triple Jeez.

The atmosphere side stage is positively hostile for a good half an hour until Horse, god bless her, signals me to go up…to go on the actual stage while she’s actually playing to a tent of 1000-odd people. She shouts in my ear above the din.

‘I’m cutting 4 songs. I’ll be off in five minutes.‘

I hot-foot it back off the stage.

‘She’s cutting four songs…she’ll be off in five minutes.‘

This is clearly the answer they were hoping for and begin unpacking amps and a massive Roger Taylor-sized gong. Their impressively scaffolded drumkit is wheeled on on a platform larger than the stage in your favourite local venue. The group starts to assemble, a riot of kilts and bagpipes and hairy guys and a good lookin’ guy wearing an acoustic guitar, who I take to be the singer. And then, to loud cheers and general good vibes, Horse is off.

But before I can get on the stage to unplug amps and pull gear to the side, Skerryvore’s well-drilled machine begins to pack the stage with their gear. This makes it impossible for me – for it is I alone who is Horse’s roadcrew, and Horse and her group are lapping up the attention as they make their way backstage – to deal with the situation I am in. I end up having to take the gear off bit by bit at the opposite side of the stage – unchartered waters as far as this tent goes. Luckily, Danny has by now unplugged his desk and swapped his space with Skerryvore’s live sound engineer, and he’s found me floundering around with Horse’s gear as Skerryvore tune-up, the start of their set imminent. Between the two of us, we wrangle all of Horse’s equipment off stage, just as a huge cheer rises and Skerryvore start their party.

We get everything bit by bit back to the gazebo. It’s started raining by now. In fact, by our third or fourth run, it’s properly chucking it down. I get my electric blue cagoule from Danny’s van and go from stage side to gazebo, the grass below my feet turning to mud. I get slapped on the face by a stray flap of gazebo canvas as I wheel the last of the gear in.

‘Right,’ says Danny. ‘Let’s get the desk.‘

We make our way inside the tent and jostle our way past a thousand leaping, dancing Skerryvore fans. We wheel the desk – heavy as fuck, remember – back towards the gazebo and Danny’s van, the crowd unwilling to part like the Red Sea, Danny and I (and his mixing desk) sinking slowly in the mud. Mercifully, one of Skerryvore’s crew spots us in distress and rustles up a couple of heavies and they push the desk to the gazebo as if it were a curling stone at the Winter Olympics. Heroes! Danny turns to me.

‘I don’t feel well.’

He’s got beads of sweat on top of the beads of rain. He’s milky white. His face is drawn. Shit, I think. He’s having an actual heart attack. I mean, this is a stressful situation we’ve found ourselves in.

‘Danny. Get to your van and sit down. I can take it from here.’

‘Everything needs to go in the van,’ he explains. ‘Doesn’t matter which order. It all goes in somehow. Van Jenga,’ he smiles. And heads, not to his van, but for the sanctuary of a wee backstage area we’ve not been allowed in.

I set about loading the van. It’s heavy, physical, unpleasant work. It’s raining heavily. It’s blowing a gale. I have no idea really what I’m doing. I am, at most, three flight cases from completion when Danny runs into the gazebo, looking flustered with a bottle of beer in hand.

‘We’ve left the bass bin on stage!! That needs to go in the van first!! Then you can pack everything in around it however you can. We’ll – you’ll – need to unpack the van. Sorry!‘

‘….?….!!!…?…’

I do as I’m told.

‘We’ll need to wait for Skerryvore to finish their set, Dan. We can’t pack the van until then.’

‘Nah,’ says the bold Danny. ‘We’ll take it off the stage just now…’ And with that, he’s off backstage and watching Skerryvore as they whip up their polite Highland storm. I watch as he boldly climbs the small set of stairs that leads to the stage. A bagpiper spots him and eyes him up, blowing up his teuchter storm as he does so. Danny stands right at the lip of the stage. The singer is leaning across the photographers’ pit to touch the outstretched arms of his faithful.

‘Hey, hoi-de-diddle!‘ he goes.

‘Hey, hoi-de-diddle!‘ they chant back.

I watch Danny clamber between bass player and bagpiper, who is still eyeing him suspiciously. Danny spots his piece of equipment. He turns and signals to me, waving me up. No fucking way am I going up there, I think. For one, the band is mid-set, clearly playing a crowd favourite. And two, I’m still wearing my stupid electric blue cagoule from earlier. Roadies wear black, right?

Fuck that!

I pretend not to notice Danny’s signal.

This annoys him. Danny gesticulates wildly towards me, which only brings further attention from the bagpiper who, by now is performing some sort of choreographed dance routine with another bagpiper, and a member of the Skerryvore crew who looks like he’s about to lamp Danny for invading his stage. I can see them shouting in one another’s ear as the band on stage whip up a wild dervish of a reel. The roadie though decides to help Danny – he wants him off his stage ASAP – and so he and Danny drag this huge hulk of equipment to the top of the stairs.

Danny signals to me again.

I can’t ignore him this time, so I get to the top of the stairs. God, I think. A full house, all jumping around to your music is a wonderful thing. It all looks quite brilliant from on-stage.

Danny though is blind to the audience, with eyes only for his bass bin. ‘Grab it!’ he shouts above the unholy Scottish din. ‘Like this…and we’ll take it slowly down the stairs.’

I, being neither strong nor a seasoned roadie, fail to comprehend the sheer weight of the thing. I drop my end. It clatters on the metal stairs. Can they hear it above Skerryvore? I think so. Danny lets rip a string of expletives; something about expensive equipment and taking care. Can they hear him above Skerryvore? Yeah, I think so too. I sook my hand where I’ve cut it. Some of the crowd are now watching us instead of their heroes. We are quickly becoming the entertainment on the main stage, a pair of idiots, one a whisker from a heart attack, the other not qualified to be anywhere near a backstage area, as we wrestle the thing finally off the stage and out to the wind and the rain and Danny’s van.

We pack it in first. The rest of the gear goes in. We are done, in every sense of the word.

‘Where did you get that beer, Danny?‘ I ask.

‘Hospitality tent,’ he replies. ‘Follow me!‘

We enter the hospitality tent. There’s not much in it. A battered couch. A couple of packets of cheese ‘n onion crisps. A six pack of Fanta. A fridge! With maybe eight bottles of beer! Result! A wee woman appears.

‘Can I help you?‘

‘I’m just grabbing a quick beer before we’re off,‘ I answer cheerfully.

‘I don’t think so, son. They beers are for Skerryvore and Skerryvore only. Off wi’ ye!‘

After all that, no beer.

‘We’ll get one back at the hotel,’ suggests Danny.

The hotel bar – the entire hotel, in fact – was in darkness by the time we got there.

And that was the time I appeared on stage with Skerryvore.

 

Get This!

Gerry Synonym

Craig McAllister

There’s a La’s story I was party to a few years ago. It concerned the recording of their album – I mean, it would, wouldn’t it? The gist of the story involved a conversation between Lee Mavers and a producer – Mike Hedges, maybe, Steve Lillywhite, perhaps (whichever one they’d been encouraged to work with on this particular session, it doesn’t really matter), with Mavers getting hot under his Evertonian collar at the producer’s inability to capture the sound in his head.

‘But it sounds great, Lee!‘ said the producer, with genuine reason.

‘Nah. It’s shit, mate.’

‘It’s brilliant, Lee. Honestly!‘

Mavers looks him directly in the eye.

‘D’you know when yer mam makes soup and she takes all the ingredients; the lentils and the beans and the pulses and the onions and the stock and she mixes it all together and what it tastes of isn’t only the lentils and the beans and the pulses and the onions and the stock…but she’s somehow created another flavour? That’s what I want from our music. You,’ said Mavers pointing accusingly at his patient producer, ‘are incapable of bringing out that magic flavour.’

Lee Mavers. Souperstar.

It’s more fact than argument these days, but when Gerry Love left Teenage Fanclub, the magic ingredient that elevated that group’s music above and beyond their peers also left with him. A musician with a supreme pop nous derived from the left of centre and the more obscurish corners of music fandom, Love is a master at wringing a melody from simple words and chords. Hindsight shows that, while in Teenage Fanclub, the Love-penned tracks were often the best. Slower to hit the spot in some cases, immediately ace in others, a song written by G. Love comes with an 18 carat gold certificate of excellence.

I sat in on a soundcheck a couple of years ago while the now-solo Gerry and his backing band worked up dazzling versions of Don’t Look Back and Star Sign and Sparky’s Dream and December and Sweet Days Waiting and Thin Air and…(you get my drift, surely)…this – one of his greatest compositions.

Teenage Fanclub – Going Places

Nestling innocuously in the middle of side two of 1995’s Grand Prix – the thinking man’s favourite TFC album (or is that Songs From Northern Britain?) – Going Places show cases not only Gerry’s way with a melodic twist, but also Norman’s divine harmonies and Raymond’s tasteful use of fuzz guitar. It’s Teenage Fanclub in microcosm – a beauty, in other words.

Ringing in on a riff born from Roger McGuinn tackling Maggie May, Going Places is classic mid-paced, mid-era Fanclub. It’s Gerry’s song, so he takes the lead, singing against his trademark frugging bass, his bandmates clearing a space around him. ‘Look at this,’ they go in the playground of pop. ‘Ain’t Gerry’s song sumthin’ special?!‘ The group picks it up for a chorus which arrives on the coat tails of hammered-on and hanging on chords, replete with some sweet, sweet Norman harmonies, Raymond and his fuzz box roughing it up just so. ‘Just kick my feet off the ground, I’ll embrace the sky,’ goes Gerry, Norman joining in on honeyed harmonies as the group behind them aims for the stars and overshoots to the sun.

They know, the Teenage Fanclub, that sometimes less is more, so they immediately pull back. Is that a banjo after the first chorus? I think it is, y’know. A gentle clatter of milk bottle percussion amongst the down-home brouhaha? Sounds like it. There’s some reverberating, vamping organ, some mild tremolo action from Raymond in the second verse, a subtle hint of polite feedback and then the next chorus is upon us, guitars zipping freely as the clouds part, the sun-scorched melody sounding both melancholic and uplifting – a rare trick that not many writers can pull of successfully. The whole thing chimes and clangs and rings and zings in a giddy union of interplay, the McGuinn-does-Maggie-May signature riff echoing forever and we’re – yes! – into another chorus, Gerry kicking his feet off the ground, a falsetto’d Norman momentarily letting himself go and woo-hoo-hooing like Al Jardine in 1966. If y’don’t like this song, the saying goes, you must be deaf or dead, or both.

Gerry Love is, like me, an alumnus of Our Price. While I was manning the counters in Irvine and Kilmarnock, Gerry was doing likewise in Hamilton. Within the identikit shopping centres of Hamilton, Irvine and Kilmarnock you’d find branches of a chain of travel agents called Going Places. I like to think that the shop name stuck somewhere in Love’s head, waiting for the right song to come along. We might not have Our Price and Going Places anymore, but we’ll always have Going Places.