Month: September 2009

Cover Versions, Hard-to-find

I Wouldn’t Normally Do This Kind Of Thing…

Craig McAllister

…said Neil Tennant a few years back. I don’t normally post new stuff very often (if at all – I can’t actually think of any track that’s made it onto this site that’s been less than a year old*) but I’m making a couple of exceptions tonight.

Flaming Lips

I feel the need to share two hot-off-the-press brand new tracks that have been tickling my fancy the past couple of days. First up, the Flaming Lips. The mid-west psychedelic pioneers have an album out on 13th October and this track has been promoed to radio. Silver Trembling Hands sounds as good as it sounds. Wonky, weird and wonderful. And the best use of computerised falsetto since Prince was last any good.

Feeling_Pulled_Apart_by_Horses_-_The_Hollow_Earth[1]

Next, old twitchy eye himself Thom Yorke. He’s just put out Feeling Pulled Apart By Horses and it too sounds as good as it sounds. Out on 12″ only, you can buy it via Radiohead’s W.A.S.T.E. website. Or (wink wink) you can get it here. A quick word before we talk about the music. See that sleeve? If you squint, I swear it looks like the cover to Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures. If Carlsberg did remixes of album covers…

 In Rainbow‘s Reckoner was apparently constructed from the best bits of the track. The cynical Radiohead-hating numbskulls among you might be thinking that there are no best bits on a low-key Thom Yorke release, but that’s where you’d be wrong. It sounds exactly the same as the cut ‘n paste nerdy laptop techno that has watermarked most of Radiohead’s releases this decade. It bangs and crashes in all the right places, Thom spits cryptical nonsense over the top (“insect bites, machine gun cameras“) and the bassline is funkier than Bootsy Collins’ platform boots. If its verse/chorus/verse/chorus/bridge/chorus/end you’re looking for, you’ll not find it here. If it’s brainiac ambient soundscapes that penetrate your brain while you spreadsheet, jog or wash the dishes, step right in….

Bonus track!

Wouldn’t it be great if the Flaming Lips covered Radiohead? Oh look – they already have! Here‘s their version of Knives Out. Warning –  all trace of the original’s quasi Queen Is Dead-era chiming electric guitar has vanished and been replaced instead with a Flaming Lip who hammers away at a piano with all the finesse of a one-armed arthritic Neil Young on jellies. S’good!

*oh aye. I did put an MGMT track up once. Before it had even been released. On. The. Ball.

Hard-to-find, Live!

What the fuckdiddlyuck has happened to Colonel Gaddafi’s face?

Craig McAllister

It looks like melted plastic, like someone sat Mickey Rourke too close to the barbecue. It’s the sort of look Michael Jackson might once’ve been proud of. Anyway my highly valued and respected readers, I need your help. In just over 2 weeks time I shall be making my first ever visit to New York City. I am super stoked, as you Americans are fond of saying, and I’m looking for advice.

apple

I know many many Americans visit Plain Or Pan regularly. Some of you are probably native New Yorkers. Many more of you will no doubt have spent time in the city. So. What should I do, where should I go? I plan to visit the Empire State Building, Central Park, Staten Island, Ground Zero etc etc , blah blah blah, all the usual stuff. I’ll do the hop on/hop off bus thing. I’ve applied for tickets to both the Letterman Show and the Daily Show, found out that the diner on the cover of Tom Waits Asylum Years album is an art deco masterpiece called the Empire Diner and is a ‘must visit’ and I plan on sneaking in a wee visit to Bleeker Bob’s Record Shop in Greenwich Village. I also want to see some of the less-well known sites. Off the beaten track New York, you might say. Although I don’t fancy actually being off the beaten track. Nor do I fancy being beaten off the track by some crack-ravaged mugger. Anywhere in safe central Manhattan is fine by me. I am there for 3 nights/4 days. I don’t have tons of money, but I don’t plan on scrimping when I get there either. I’d like three decent meals in reasonably priced eateries (Italian, Chinese, whatever) and I’d like to drink in a bar that’s not too trendy (ie expensive), but I don’t want to end up perched on a stool next to Charles Bukowski in Barfly either.

Over to you my American friends (and any others who’ve visited). Where should I go? Use the comments section under the date on the right hand side to enlighten me. Apparently the tramps, sorry, bums, are fat. Is that right? If so, there’s another couple of fat bums joining them very soon…

ryan adams

Here’s some, like, major tuneage from that talented little fucker (copyright Elton John) Mr Ryan Adams. He really is little – look at the size of him compared to that amp.

New York New York Jam Version (9 min + – fantastic!)

New York New York with The Cardinals

New York New York Enmore Theatre, January this year

All tracks very different and recorded live straight from the soundboard. Top quality ‘n that.

Cover Versions, demo, Gone but not forgotten, Hard-to-find, studio outtakes

Wild Wild Horses

Craig McAllister

Well. There goes another of my favourite tracks that I can never listen to again in the same way. Hot on the heels of one reality TV star’s murdering of ‘Hallelujah‘ comes the news that oor ain wee Susan Boyle, SuBo to the rest of the world, will be releasing her own version of The Rolling Stones‘ ‘Wild Horses’. It’s leaked online and it’s eh, no’ as bad as you might think. Aye! A sweeping-stringed, soulful and passionate, inner-demon bearing affair, on first listen it actually brought a tear to my eye.

rolling stones wild horses

Who am I kidding? It’s shite. Aye, it brings a tear to my eye, but for all the wrong reasons. But you knew that already. The original version of Wild Horses is a stone cold rolled gold classic. It’s always been my favourite Stones track, from the Nashville ‘n’ open G tuning twin guitar arrangement via the fragile melody right through to Jagger’s incredibly adult lyrics. Whilst hardly a teenager, it’s hard to believe he was only 26 when he penned it. 26! Sure, in rock n roll terms thats practically pensionable, but given that yer Stones are still a going concern (albeit a limping and wheezing pastiche of their former self) for Mick to have written such a serious, grown up lyric like that the age of 26 amazes me. The Stones will always be known for the down and dirty rock n roll stuff, but songs like this are often by-passed in favour of blustery rammalamma like Satisfaction and Street Fighting Man and (insert yer own Stones title here) I don’t think even Paul McCartney was writing songs as mature as this at the age of 26, and he was always 20 going on 40 at the height of Beatlemania. There’s certainly no way any of today’s young turks could go balls out rock one minute then pen as tender a lyric in the next. Certainly not The Cribs. Or Biffy fucking Clyro. I’m as fond of a Gabba Gabba Hey as much as the bext man, but I wish I’d have been able to write a Wild Horses in my mid 20s.

rolling stones studio

Yer actual Mick n Keef, 1969 Muscle Shoals Sessions

In 1969, Keith Richards wrote the music and the “wild horses couldn’t drag me away” lyric as a lament to his young son Marlon who he frequently had to leave as he embarked on tour after tour. Jagger re-interpreted the lyric as a paeon to lost love. Marianne Faithful later claimed the first words Jagger said to her after an operdose were “wild horses couldn’t drag me away“. So. Lots of interpretations. You can make of it what you will. What is fact is that regular Stones keyboardist Ian Stewart didn’t actually play on the Stones version. He refused to play on the session because he hated playing minor chords on the piano! Numpty. Famous sessioneer Jim Dickinson (Aretha, Big Star, Rod Stewart to name but a few) played on the track instead.

What is also fact is that Keith gave the track to Gram Parsons and the first commercially available version of Wild Horses was by the Flying Burrito Brothers.  Since then, there’s been a zillion different cover versions. Here’s a few of the better, more interesting ones.

The Sundays Wild Horses (superb soul baring bedroom indie version)

LaBelle Wild Horses (smooth discosoultastic version from 1971)

Leon Russell Wild Horses (former Spector sessioneer’s southern fried piano-led version)

*Bonus tracks

Rolling Stones Wild Horses acoustic version. Taken from the Muscle Shoals ‘Sticky Fingers’ sessions bootleg.

Rolling Stones Wild Horses alternate version. Reverb-heavy outtake featured by mistake on some Dutch Rolling Stones compilation album before bveing hastily withdrawn. This version sounds wonky – the tape is running at the wrong speed for half of it.

rolling stones wild horses 2

demo, Hard-to-find, Most downloaded tracks, Studio master tapes, studio outtakes

It Was Plenty Years Ago Today

Craig McAllister

A year or so ago I had the idea to run a series of pun-tastic posts called ‘It was plenty years ago today‘. Based on the success of those Beatles mastertapes that I had posted (when Plain Or Pan melted immediately and the internet police first cottoned on to this site) I would combine my expert textpert knowledge of The Beatles with some of their better bootlegs in my collection and post rare outtakes and the like on the anniversary of the track being recorded. For one reason or other, I never quite got round to doing it, until today.

beatles walrus group

Given that this weekend is Beatles Weekend on BBC2 and given that the remastered albums are out in the middle of the week (now there’s a novel way of promoting a computer game – cannae wait to play it by the way), this is as good a time as any to get things going. Plenty years ago today (42 41  (oops!) to be precise), a week or so after Brian Epstein’s death, The Beatles reconvened (at Paul McCartney’s insistence – the others, especially Lennon, had no motivation to continue) on the 5th September to start work on the Magical Mystery Tour project.

beatles walrus

First up saw them tackle I Am The Walrus. Between the 5th and 6th and 27th, 28th and 29th September, The Beatles twisted and turned John Lennon’s gobbledigook nonsense tune into the psychedelic masterpiece you are no doubt familiar with. The tune itself began life in Lennon’s Weybridge house. Absent mindedly tickling the ivories one morning, Lennon heard the sound of a police car outside, noting how the ‘notes’ of the siren changed as the car got further away. He began replicating this sound on the piano, and this became the chord progression for I Am The Walrus. It should be noted here that JWL was heavily into LSD by this point in his life. Taking drugs to make music to take drugs to, as Spacemen 3 once said. Ian Macdonald’s excellent Revolution In The Head book dissects Lennon’s acid-soaked Walrus lyrics to the nth degree way better than I ever could. It’s a fantastic book. The last time I was in Fopp I think it was on sale for about £4! But I digress. Back to the music…

Over the course of the 5 sessions, the tune would go from instrumental (here‘s take 7) to incomplete vocal versions (here‘s take 16, minus the drunk-sounding strings at the start. Listen out for Lennon fluffing the ‘yellow matter custard’ line.), to alternate mixes (here‘s one) to the finished item complete with a King Lear radio play and various bits ‘n bobs woven into the mix by George Martin. Achtung! Here‘s the German mono mix.

capa

The tracks above come from a 15 track bootleg called Walrus, Eggman and Pinguins. It varies in quality and, to be honest, many of the tracks sound identical, but it nonetheless charts the studio progress of one of The Beatles more interesting moments. You can download the whole shebang here. Goo Goo G’joob!

Also available for download, reissues (!) of those Beatles 4 track mastertapes that caused all the fuss way back when.

Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

A Day In The Life

She’s Leaving Home

With A Little Help From My Friends

And also still available (in high quality flac form only – the internet police jump straight on board with their handcuffs and truncheons whenever the mp3 of this becomes available) is the previously unheard 10min + mix of Revolution. Possibly an outfake, possibly the real deal, I wrote about it a wee while ago here. It’s a good read, even if I do say so myself. On the other hand, if you’re only here circling overhead like a vulture awaiting your next musical feast, you can cut out all the crap and download it here.

*Bonus Beatle fact #1!!!

I Am The Walrus is in Gary Numan’s list of Top 20 songs ever.

*Bonus Beatle fact #2!!!

As well as recording I Am The Walrus on the 6th September, The Beatles also had a go at George Harrison’s under-rated masterpiece Blue Jay Way. Sadly I have no outtakes of this. If anyone does have, you know how to contact me…

*Bonus Beatle fact #3!!!

Did you know that at the end of I Feel Fine the studio microphones unwittingly picked up the sounds of some dogs barking outside Abbey Road?  Hear it here! Right after the last “ooh!” backing vocal. Now dig it out your own copy, listen to it, turn it up for the last 10 seconds and you’ll hear them. I wonder if the dogs’ll still be on the up and coming remasters?

 

demo, Hard-to-find, Studio master tapes

Spread ’em!

Craig McAllister

I’ve been meaning to mention that Stone Roses reissue from a few weeks back. Whatever you think of them, I have to tell you that the remastered album sounds absolutely magic. It’s night and day compared to the weak, tinny excuse of a CD that didn’t even come out when the album was initially released. The new version sounds like a jet plane taking off in your living room. I can only guess what it must sound like through a decent pair of Senheissers after a jazz cigarette. If I had the money I’d have sprung for the complete nuts ‘n bolts b-sides ‘n all release in the John Squire artwork adorned canvas 12″ box. If everything sounds as good as the mastering on the album it’ll be well worth it, and the rest. Until I have the money, bittorrent will be my best friend…

stone roses bw

I’ve written about Love Spreads before (here – you’ll find the demo and the guitar tab) but I feel compelled to write about it again given that mp3s of yer actual studio mastertapes fell into my exciteable wee hands only a couple of hours ago. Aye, that’s right! The studio mastertapes for Love Spreads! Sort of…

Lead guitar

Mani Bassline

Reni drum track

vocals + guitar + piano

I’m sure they’re taken from one of those Guitar Hero-type video games (maybe Rock Band?) but I have 3 seperate tracks and one amalgamated track featuring vocals, guitar and piano (with a bit of bass bleeding through now and again). They sound fantastic. The bassline alone is crying out for some bedroom nerd to remix it into oblivion. In fact, if you had the time to combine the bass parts with the drum track, you’d have yourself the perfect backing track if you fancy a spot of bedroom hip hop.

Squire’s isolated guitar part sounds fairly easy to play, although the ‘track’ I have sounds like 2 guitar tracks added together – one fat sounding dropped D Les Paul doing all the slide parts and a thinner sounding guitar playing all the clipped chords and those top-of-the-scale notes. Find my tab from the other post and jam along. That’s what I’ve been doing this morning instead of the ironing! 

stone roses love spreads vid

Remember to get Audacity for the full Phil Spector four track bedroom production effect! And try not to make a mess in yer Calvins, McMark.

Bonus Track!!!

The long-forgotten live-in-the-studio version of Love Spreads that made it’s only appearance on the original 1995 Help album. No one ever mentions it but this version is immense. Features a nice piano ‘n drums break down not on the single version. Get it!

Cover Versions, demo

Brass In Pocket double whammy

Craig McAllister

With a mountain of ironing to do and house-husband status unwillingly thrust upon me, I’ve been watching a lot of crap telly recently, all the while putting more creases into my shirts than what were there to begin with. The thought of another David Dickinson repeat was an orange glowed step too far yesterday afternoon, so I found myself watching Lost In Translation for the umpteenth time. There’s a bit in it where Scarlett Johansson sings a wee bit of Brass In Pocket to Bill Murray and this had me thinking back to the days when buying a 7″ single was a big deal. I remember standing for ages in John Menzies deciding between Brass In Pocket and The Police’s Walking On The Moon, not quite with brass in pocket, but with a pound note burning a hole in my 11 year old hands. The Pretenders won out because Brass In Pocket was a newer single and my purchase helped take it all the way to the toppermost of the poppermost for 2 weeks.

pretenders brass sleeve

Brass in Pocket would be The Pretenders only number 1 single. In true artist fashion, Chrissie Hynde didnae like it. “Listen to that woman’s voice,” she told NME.  “I hate it.” You can decide for yourself – here‘s the demo version. A bit slower than you’ll be familiar with, but nonetheless not a million miles away from the polished Telecaster-and-chorus pedal sheen of the smash hit.

pretenders stage

As a young vinyl freak, I often wondered what Chrissie Hynde meant when she sang about ‘Detroit Leaning’. Thanks to the wonders of the internet I have discovered that the Detroit Lean is a style of driving where the slouched driver has one hand on the wheel and the other hand over the window sill and onto the door. Being America, the right hand would be steering and the left arm would be leaning. The driver may also use the left hand to tap the bodywork gently in time to whatever music happens to be coming over the FM airwaves. Think Snoop Dogg in his pimp mobile, although I’m sure you were thinking that already. If you’ve ever watched the wee boys race their souped up Corsas and Clios up and down Ayr shore front you’ll know what I mean. Although they listen to shitty, bass-heavy happy hardcore CDs. And drive Corsas and Clios. Although I’m sure you were thinking that already too.

Someone who is probably fonder of his own voice than Chrissie Hynde is Brett Anderson (or Bert from Suede, as I recall Norman Blake saying in one the music papers back at the start of the 90s). Suede had a go at covering Brass In Pocket for Ruby Trax, an NME compiled triple CD released to celebrate 40 years of the charts where the artists du jour covered some of their favourite tracks of the past 4 decades. Warning! The Suede version is very quiet and even slower than The Pretenders demo but, (whisper it), I quite like it. Even if Bert does take himself a wee bit too seriously. Just listen to the way he sings the “I’m special, so special” line.

brett

A portrait of the artist as the young man.