Month: March 2010

Cover Versions, entire show, Gone but not forgotten, Hard-to-find

Alex Chilton

Craig McAllister

Fuck. Just heard the news. This keyboard is awash with tiny tears as I type. It’s always the way, but why do the good guys go first? I can’t believe I’m writing about Alex Chilton in the past tense. His music, especially with Big Star, means as much to me as Them There Beatles, it really does. Whether he was bedroom balladeering or bar-room bawling and balls-out rocking, his songs hit a nerve that jangled all the way to the auditory part of my brain like one of those fancy pants chords he could tease out of his guitar.

If you’re reading this you probably know all about him. Teenage Box Top. Cult hero in coulda been shoulda been Big Star. Producer of The Cramps. Friend and collaborator with fellow enthusiasts/obsessives Teenage Fanclub. All round nice guy, he wrote and recorded some of the best pop songs you’ll hear. Seek out #1 Record or Radio City or 3rd/Sister Lovers for proof. Sometimes bleak, often uplifting, always soulful. But you knew that already. Given our track record for celebrating the artist in death rather than life, Alex Chilton may yet become somewhat ironically a Big Star.

I’m glad I caught Big Star live. Just the once, when they first played Glasgow as part of their initial reunion tour. I stood on the balcony of the QM Union looking down onto the stage where Chilton led his band through non-hit after non-hit after non-hit. The crowd knew every word. So too did Ken Stringfellow and Jon Auer of The Posies, similarly Teenage Fanclub-like in their obsessiveness about Big Star, and on-stage playing out their own version of Jim’ll Fix It on bass and guitar. Chilton himself played a mean guitar that night. And I mean mean in the economic sense. No frills, no pedals. Just him, a nice warm valve amp and a couple of vintage guitars. What a sound! Often overlooked in the scheme of things, Chilton was a fantastic guitar player – proof? – His version of My Baby Just Cares For Me is still up for grabs via this post.

He could play anything. Anything. Rock. Pop. Stax-inflected southern soul. Doo-wop. Jazz. E-nee-thing. He was a player’s player. A dude. And he once, sorry twice, played the 13th Note in Glasgow with Teenage Fanclub as his backing band. Naturally I found out about this the day after the second show. It was a Tuesday morning and a colleague from work casually mentioned it on the phone. Pre internet days, I’m afraid. Pissed off? You better believe it. Especially as the bootleg sounds amazing. Here‘s the entire show. No artwork. No tracklisting (I’m far too lazy/far too busy to type it out). First track is a rockin’ September Gurls. There’s covers of T-Rex, 60s pop standards and, yep, Stax-inflected southern soul. Get it and remember him this way.

Thanks for the music Alex.

Alex Chilton. December 28th 1950 – March 17th 2010

Cover Versions

I Can’t Stand Up For Falling Down Double Whammy

Craig McAllister

Round about 1990/91, John Peel played a version of I Can’t Stand Up For Falling Down on his late night Radio 1 show. It was loose, sloppy and fairly fantastic and I’m almost positive he said it was by Nirvana. Given the year, this would be the post-Beach/pre-Nevermind globe straddling Nirvana. Peel mentioned something about a Japanese compilation called Teriyaki Asthma, and though I can find these albums online, as far as I can see there’s no mention of …Can’t Stand Up… on any of them. No matter where I search or who I ask, I can’t seem to find a recording of it anywhere. To all intents and purposes, it just doesn’t exist. Or does it? Over to you…

 
For years I was under the impression that I Can’t Stand Up For Falling Down was an Elvis Costello original. It was released on 1980’s ‘Get Happy’ but began life in more dubious circumstances. Following the collapse of Radar (the label Costello recorded for up until this point) and fresh from producing The Specials’ first album, his manager Jake Riviera approached 2 Tone with the idea of releasing the track as a one-off single until a label was found and a deal was struck to release the Get Happy LP. WEA, owners of Radar, were not impressed. Given that they had been distributing his records, they felt that they had a stake in Costello’s success and promptly served a writ on 2 Tone, stopping them releasing the record.
The few thousand 7”s that had been pressed were given away at a Rainbow Theatre gig in London, and Riviera sneakily pressed up some more which were given away at other London and American gigs. Interviewed in Record Collector No 363, Jerry Dammers takes a slightly different view point :
“Jake Riviera cheekily printed up a few thousand Elvis Costello singles on the 2 Tone label, obviously thinking that I would be delighted to have such a major star on the label, but I was having none of it, 2 Tone being strictly ska at that time. So Elvis was forced to give these singles away free at his gigs.”
 
These 2 Tone singles are now ridiculously collectible. If you have one it’s worth checking out what the 2 Tone nuts’ll pay for it. Disappointingly, my version comes from a Best of 2 Tone CD I got about 20 years ago. No cash-in for me.
 
Hipsway. Glasvegas taking notes just out of shot.
For years I was met with blank stares and sneering indifference from trying-too-hard-to-be-cool wankers in West of Scotland record shops whenever I asked for Hipsway (aye, really!) doing It’s A Family Affair, until I found out it was just called Family Affair. I had seen Hipsway play it live and assumed it was an old b-side or something, having never heard Sly Stone at this point in my life. I doubt those wankers behind the counter had heard Sly either cos no-one ever corrected me and pointed out what it was I might be asking for. Even the nice wee old woman who worked behind the counter in RS McColl’s record department (best record shop in the world by the way!) at Irvine Cross couldn’t help me. I got into soul music big time when I worked in record shops myself and had access to all these artists I had heard of but never heard. That was when I discovered that many of the records I liked were cover versions. The Jam doing Stoned Out Of My Mind? That’s a Chi-Lites cover, man! The Black Crowes doing ‘Hard To Handle’? That’s an Otis Redding cover! And it’s not as good as the original (of course). Elvis Costello doing I Can’t Stand Up For Falling Down? That’s an old Sam & Dave song. Is it? Oh, so it is! But whereas the Elvis version is an uptempo new wavey 2 minute wonder, Sam & Dave’s original is a different kettle of crawfish altogether.
Sam & Dave. Or Dave & Sam. I’m no’ sure.
Theirs is an exhausted, knees-to-the-floor, crumpled in a pool of sweat, southern soul tearjerker. Half the speed of Costello’s with twice the soul and despair, it’s a belter. What makes it all the more amazing is when you know the story of Sam & Dave. For most of their time together, they barely spoke to one another. They had separate dressing rooms. They turned up separately to shows. By the 70s, one of them might not even turn up at all. Which made it difficult for the promoter promoting the Sam & Dave Show. Sam had aspirations for going solo. Dave resented this. Sam hated the ‘Sam & Dave Show’ material they were made to perform. On stage, they would constantly try and out-do one another, which made for outrageous dance-offs and a frenzied live performance. Following the 1967 Stax/Volt tour of Europe, Otis Redding refused to go on after them as night after night they brought the house down – Follow that Otis and all that. Aye, Sam & Dave’s version is the real deal. Though not as good as the cover……
 
*Apologies for the layout/font/spacing etc. My computer’s having an off day.
Hard-to-find

Thumbs aloft!

Craig McAllister

How much???!!!!????  for a Paul McCartney ticket?

Update

How much? How much? About a month’s worth of Tesco shopping for 3 tickets, that’s how much. Gulped then clicked ‘return’.

Of course.

They’re the best possible seats, but whathaveidone?

Cover Versions, Hard-to-find

A Kinks Klunker and a Kouple of Klassiks

Craig McAllister

Call it The Establishment, Rock Royalty, whatever you fancy, but every songwriter has plenty skeletons rattling around their songwriting closet. For every Helter Skelter there’s a Frog Chorus. For every Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands there’s a Wiggle Wiggle. For every Heroes there’s a Laughing Gnome. If you dig deep enough you’ll find that no hero-worshipped songwriter is immune from it. They’ve all written rubbish at some point and some of it has even made it to vinyl.

Kinks ’83 model.

I came to The Kinks via 1983’s Come Dancing, but I was in denial about them for a long, long time. “The Kinks? Oh, they’re an old band.” said my mum. “I met Ray Davies in a pub in Arran once. Or was that Jeff Beck?” Like any normal 13 year old, anything my parents liked, I didn’t (or shouldn’t). If they hated Relax by Frankie Goes To Hollywood as much as they said they did, I was only going to buy the 12″ and play it non-stop for half a year. Ditto The Kinks’ Come Dancing. I loved it. I bought it. I played it to death when my mum wasn’t around to hear me playing it. Sometime later I borrowed the LP with Come Dancing on it (State Of Confusion) from the library and was massively underwhelmed. What’s all the fuss about those Kinks? This is pub rock. And not even good pub rock. George Thorogood and the Destroyers. Now there’s some decent pub rock for you. I was a good few years away from setting foot in a pub, but I knew. I did. 

State Of Confusion was so bad I didn’t even tape it. The band themselves seemed to be in some state of confusion. Were they rock? New wave? Acoustic balladeers? Nah, they were the bloody Kinks, mate. Only, they were going downhill fast without the brakes on. A severley diluted, sanitised version of the real Kinks that I had yet to hear. Of course a few years later I discovered the true Kinks and came to love them. Ray Davies doesn’t have to apologise for anything he’s written, recorded or released. You and I both know that. But the iPod threw up this stinker of a tune the other day. I had no idea who it was and was beginning to doubt my own taste in music. Then amongst the strangled power chords and strained vocals something jumped out at me. I recognised a wee bit of the voice. T’was only Ray Davies! On Disc 6 of Kinks box set Picture Book. Aye. Disc 6. The disc no-one will ever play more than once. Not The Kinks’ finest hour, that’s for sure. And lo and behold, the track I was about to skip was State Of Confusion, title track from the aforementioned 1983 elpee. It took me all the way back to when I thought the Kinks were Krap. Yuck! It’s a stone cold sure fire Kinks Klunker and no mistake. You have been warned.

I prefer my Kinks tight of trouser, modish of cloth and shaggy of hair. They were a fantastic garage band, a fact often overlooked in the clamber to place them at the top of the classic songwriting pedestal, but find a space in your heart and a few minutes of your time to appreciate the following tracks….

Here’s Sittin’ On My Sofa, Milk Cow Blues and I Need You. I’ve posted I Need You before (here), but You Need It. You Need All Of Them to be honest. As you listen, spare a thought for how they got that guitar sound. If you’ve read Ray’s X-Ray semi-autobiography, you’ll already know that brother Dave took a knitting needle to his amp one day in a fit of squabling sibling rivalry and burst a hole right throught the speaker cone. Cue much fuzzed-up distortion and the riff for You Really Got Me….

Ray and Dandy Dave