Year: 2010

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

Gone but not forgotten, Hard-to-find, Sampled

Superbe? Non, Sublime! (see video for details)

Craig McAllister

Confession time. Leaving aside the ubiquitous and brilliant Je t’aime (moi non plus), until last weekend I had never heard a single Serge Gainsbourg record. I had been reading an article about his daughter Charlotte and how she had been working with Beck. The article mentioned that Beck’s Sea Change album (a favourite of mine) was heavily influenced by Histoire de Melody Nelson, Gainsbourg’s accepted masterpiece. Knowing that other favourites of mine like Jarvis Cocker, St Etienne and Stereolab were fans, it seemed obvious and (long overdue) that I should pay a visit a la maison de Serge and I duly got myself a copy of Histoire de Melody Nelson. I’m glad I did.

 

Where has this music been all my life?! I had expected Gainsbourg to come across like some Gallic garlic-breathed, Gitanes rasping Tom Waits on heat. Which, when I think about it, sounds pretty brilliant actually. But no! Sure, with his droopy eyes and beaky nose he might look like a particularly pervy old turtle (what did the ladies see in him?), but close your eyes and he sounds fantastic. Histoire de Melody Nelson is all street walking, hip thrusting bass and funk guitar. The vocals are practically spoken and drip with what I assume to be lust – my French isn’t as good as it used to be but given Serge’s track record I must assume that this is the case. After all, the guy has history….

Hee hee! The album is (whisper it again – see Sopht Rock post below) a concept album. A Rolls Royce driving Serge knocks a pretty young girl off her bike. As he runs to her aid his thoughts turn not to how badly injured she is, but how beautiful she looks. Naturellement. Sleazy? You bet. Think Marvin Gaye dressed not in a modish mohair suit but in a dirty raincoat. How come he got away with stuff like this and R Kelly ended up in the jail? Well, to answer my own question, R Kelly’s music is clearly criminal enough…
 
Histoire de Melody Nelson is equal part Funkadelic and equal part Jacques Brel. Given the combination of music and subject matter, Prince must surely be a fan. The playing on it is outstanding. Not surprising given the calibre of the musicians. No household names, but the individuals involved have impressive form.

On guitars, Big Jim Sullivan and Vic Flick. Big Jim was an in demand sessioneer in the 60s (He was ‘Big’ Jim so as not to confuse him with Little Jim(my) Page), he played with Tom Jones in his 70s Vegas Golden Era, befriending Elvis in the process, and appears, allegedly and un-credited, on almost 1000 hit singles. Vic Flick was part of the John Barry Seven. You’ve heard his guitar playing a million times before – it’s his distinctive twang that plays the James Bond Theme. As well as playing in assorted musical line ups in the 70s, keyboardist Alan Hawkshaw wrote much music for adverts, composed a ton of BBC library music and came up with Chicken Man, better known to most of you here as the Grange Hill theme. Most impressively of all, he wrote the music you hear on Countdown as the clock ticks down to zero. Bassman Herbie Flowers has many strings to his bass/bow. He is known to many as bassist in 70s classic/prog/rock fusion ensemble Sky and he is known to 80s kids as the writer of novelty pop hit Grandad, but he is perhaps best known for playing that bassline on Lou Reed’s Walk On The Wild Side. But, hey boy, you knew that already, didn’t you?

Serge et Jane B. Lucky B.

Histoire de Melody Nelson is a short album, less than half an hour long, and sounds like one continuous piece of music. This is the best way to listen to it. I’ve posted a track below (listen out for the way he croons “merde”), but really, to get the full experience, you should allow yourself half an hour to enjoy the album as a whole. While you do, have a perv at the cover. That’s Jane Birkin on the front. And I don’t think she’s wearing much more than that pair of jeans…..

Serge Gainsbourg Melody

Following on from this week’s epiphany, my search for Serge has led me to a wonderful album called Les Annees Psychedelique. It contains every bit of French freak-out funk and jazz you could ever possibly need. One track stood out above all. Requiem Pour Un Con reminded me of an old track by The Folk Implosion. Playing the 2 tracks back to back I realised that The Folk Implosion had sampled and looped the opening drum track and fashioned it into a fantastic instrumental tribute to Gainsbourg named ‘Serge‘.

Also on Les Annees Psychedelique is Bonnie & Clyde, Serge’s 1968 duet with Brigitte Bardot. Not as famous as Je t’aime, but equally as good. I’m now off to find Serge’s original version of said track, featuring Bardot instead of Birkin on vocals. À beintôt! 

Bof!

Live!, Most downloaded tracks

Sopht Rock

Craig McAllister

When Revolver came out, or Dark Side Of The Moon, or Never Mind The Bollocks, or Appetite for Destruction, or Nevermind or (add yer own here _____(mine would be XO by Elliott Smith)), did the public immediately sit up and shout “Classic Album!!” with much gusto and emphasis on the 2 exclamation marks, or did they let the music fester inside their collective brains for a few months before decrying it worthy of such lofty status?

The mists of time have blurred perception of such trivial matters, and I suppose we’ll never know how it felt for the record buying public as a whole to hear these albums for the first time, but for what it’s worth I think most of these albums were growers first and classics later; albums full of songs, sounds and symphonies that lodged themselves into the brain after many needle drops and repeated listens and gradually became so important to the listener that over time they knew and loved every little detail about them. But what stands the above records apart from the XOs of the world is that those tiny little details were so important to thousands, even millions of people.

Alongside Elliott Smith’s finest hour stands The Sophtware Slump by Grandaddy. I’ve loved it and played it to death since it was released in 2000. Maybe not every day, or every week or even once a month, but at least a couple of times a year I’ll reach for it (I don’t need to dig it out, I know exactly where it is) and listen to it. And I mean listen to it. Not as background music while the TV flickers silently in the corner with subtitles on. Not as background music while I fry something to death on the gas hob. No. I sit there in my favourite chair and listen to it from start to finish. Uninterrupted. Which is hard in a house with 2 young children and a wife with a ‘to do’ list longer than a giraffe’s neck, but I manage it somehow.

As a band, Grandaddy mostly passed me by, but I was working in a record shop (remember them?) when The Sophtware Slump came out and I played it to death one afternoon, bought it that night, went home and played it to death again, went to work the next day, played it to death again….you get the idea. Sandwiched somewhere between ZZ Top and those Fleet Foxes, most of Grandaddy had the finest beards in music. And like those two hirsute bands above, they had the tunes to match. Taking elements of 70s Pink Floyd (none of yer trendy Syd-era Floyd here), the album is mainly a (whisper it) concept album about science v’s nature/man v’s robots – a full 2 years before fellow cosmic travellers the Flaming Lips had thought up the ‘original’ concept about Yoshimi and his pink robots. Opening track He’s Simple, He’s Dumb, He’s the Pilot begins with some chirpping birds and creaking front porch banjo before blooming into this magical 8 minute opus on 21st Century living. Coincidentally, when the band supported Elliott Smith, Elliott was fond of joining Grandaddy on stage to sing along (crappy old mp3 of it here) The album meanders melancholically through ruminations on androids who drink themselves to death and the problems of and with technology before arriving at this – Miner at The Dial-A-View, a weird and wonderfully melodic tale about ‘dreaming of going home’ – back to pre-CCTV times.

Tracks ebb and flow from one to another, an acoustic guitar here, a spacey keyboard there, all sewn together by a high pitched reedy voice much like Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips or Mercury Rev’s Jonathan Donahue. If Neil Young had lost the Les Paul and kicked out the (Pearl) Jams (Motherfucker!) he might’ve been making records as essential as this.

For my money, The Sophtware Slump is as essential as OK Computer. It really is. You’ve heard a coupla tracks. Now do the decent thing and go and buy it. Whatchawaitin’ for?

Gone but not forgotten, Hard-to-find, Sampled

Who Loves Ya Baby?

Craig McAllister

Aye, it may be Valentine’s day and Cupid may well have shot his arrow haphazardly in my direction, but there’s no room for slushy sentimental syrup here. Only the finest in 1970s funk (of course).

A track popped up on the iPod the other day and I was convinced I was listening to a rare outtake of The Temptations Papa Was A Rollin’ Stone. It had that same stop/start bass riff, sweeping cinematic strings and double-time handclaps, and it was only the absence of vocals that had me reaching for the ‘now playing’ menu to see what I was really listening to.

It was this, an obscure funk/soul track by Brinkley & Parker. Released in 1974, Don’t Get Fooled By The Pander Man could well be the theme for a long-forgotten down market cop show. Clipped wockawockawocka guitar, brass ‘n strings and a fantastic hi-hat and handclaps rhythm which kicks in around the 1 min 30 mark, Don’t Get Fooled By The Pander Man is the sound of beige leather jackets with over-sized floppy collars, 27″ bell bottoms and stacked cuban heels. With added car chases and Chinese food in cardboard boxes. As the man himself once said, Can You Dig It?

Ah, what the heck?!

I recently put up a rare version of Ball Of Confusion which is still available here. As another bonus, here‘s the full 11 minutes + version of Papa Was A Rollin’ Stone. Like that? You’ll like this – The Temptations Psychedelic Shack. A wee bit Sly, a wee bit Hendrix, a whole lotta groove.

Sometimes, the shortest posts are the best. I know you all just scroll through the crap that drips from my typing fingers til you find the mp3 links anyway. Bastards.

Anyway, thanks (as always) for visiting. I love ya, baby! Au revoir, a bientot!

Double Nugget, Gone but not forgotten

Go Compare.com

Craig McAllister

Here’s some proof, if any was really needed, that everything in music has been done before and will be done again to the nth degree. A regular visitor to these pages once pointed out to me how similar The Libertines ‘Last Post on the Bugle’ sounded to Australian psych-heads The Masters Apprentices 1967 track ‘War Or Hands Of Time’. Making a mental note I promised to myself I’d listen to both records back to back before writing a bit about them.

The Masters Apprentices

I’d forgotten all about this shallow promise until the other day when The Masters Apprentices track shuffled up on my iPod. And I didn’t recognise it at first. “I don’t remember putting those Libertines demos on here,” I thought. Then it clicked. It wasn’t the Libertines. It was ‘War Or Hands Of Time’. And it sounded an awful lot like ‘Last Post On The Bugle‘. It really does. 

Johnny Thunders Pete Doherty

A check on the sleevenotes of the self-titled Libertines second album reveals a wee clue – Last Post On The Bugle is jointly published by EMI and MCA/Universal Music Publishing. A further bit of internet digging reveals that the track is written by Doherty/Barat/Bower. Doherty and Barat you’ll know…..but you may not know that Bower is (presumably) Michael Bower, guitarist with The Masters Apprentices. Voila! Not quite an admission of theft from Pete ‘n Carl (there’s no writing credit on the album sleeve), but nonetheless, they’ve given half the publishing over to a long forgotten hippy living on the other side of the world.

War Or Hands Of Time

When I turn cold, I will be thinking of you
When I’m far away, try to remember what I said
The day I live, I’ll still be dreaming of your love
Wait for the clouds to pass your way
Wait for me I’ll be back some day

Whereas the original track was written about a soldier embracing his sweetheart before heading off to war, Doherty keeps the melody and rewrites the song’s original lyrics to address the break up of his friendship with Carl Barat and The Libertines.

Last Post On The Bugle

If I have to go
I will be thinking of your love
Oh somehow you’ll know
You will know
Thinking of your love
Slyly they whispered away
As I played the last post on the bugle

Go Compare! As I said, proof that everything in music has been done before. Proof, also, that junkies will steal just about anything. Even the melody from an old long-forgotten slice of Antipodean psychedelic rock.

It’s a fair cop, guv etc etc

 

Cover Versions

Kiss My Shades* (slight return)

Craig McAllister

Two people have been in touch over the past week or so and asked if I’d re-post some mp3’s. I don’t usually respond to requests like this because a) I cannae usually find the mp3s in question and b) if I can find them, I usually cannae be arsed with all the bother of uploading them again. Often the reason mp3s disappear suddenly from Plain Or Pan (or indeed any blog you visit)  is because a particular record company has spotted something they own and believe that the blogger making it available for free will stop you from buying it. I tend to post only hard to find/out of print stuff, but this argument doesn’t win with the powers that be and I’ve often received the internet equivalent of a record company knee capping by daring to post some dusty old forgotten slab of vinyl. Anyway Stephen Q and Quiff#1 (really!) this re-post (from November 07) is for you…..

Released in April 1984, this version of ‘Hand In Glove’ was promoted as a Sandie Shaw solo release, although it is essentially The Smiths with Sandie Shaw coming straight off the bench as some kind of super-sub. All those Smiths fans helped the single reach the dizzy heights of number 27. Even the cover art of the single is Smithsy in appearance. I’d imagine all Smiths aficionados would have the 3 Smiths tracks Sandie covered by now, but if not, here you go… 

sandie-sleeve.gif

The 7” featured 2 tracks – the lead track and her version of ‘I Don’t Owe You Anything’. ‘Hand In Glove’ is a reverb-drenched bash-along that Siouxsie Sioux would be proud of. The lead guitar riff sounds like a glockenspiel, and I mean that in a good way. The outro is terrific too. Different to the original. Not better. Not worse. Just different.  

sandie-smiths.jpg

Apart from the unusual introduction, Sandie’s version of ‘I Don’t Owe You Anything’ sounds an awful lot like the Troy Tate produced version that was intended for their first album before The Smiths binned it at the last minute. Maybe, way back in ’84 before Bongo, Sting and all those other worthless eco-warriers, The Smiths were into recycling their old junk, giving it to someone more deserving. It’s got a creepy, churchy-sounding keyboard part playing through the background and tons of jangling, clipped 12 string Rickenbacker. And the final chord is niiiiiiiiice. Sandie’s got a nice warble to her voice too. I like this version a lot. 

 sandie-johnny.jpg

The 12” featured ‘Jeane’ as an extra track. More acoustic than The Smiths, it’s just Johnny n’ Sandie, until some crooner in a big quiff and national health specs starts yodeling towards the end. No heavenly choirs, not for me and not for you, they sing. But I’m not so sure. Sandie Shaw’s 3 Smiths covers are amongst some of my favourite records.    

 sandie-moz-rosary.jpg

Forgive me father, for I have sing-ed

Around the time of the record’s release, Morrissey said, “I met her a few months ago and it seemed perfectly natural for me to seize the opportunity and ask her to work with us and she was incredibly eager and incredibly enthusiastic. She really liked the songs and she was very eager to do it. So, it’s happened and I’m very pleased.“ Four years later, post-Smiths and bored of Smiths-obsessed journalists, he cut short one inquisitive interviewer with, “It was so great for me personally that I don’t actually remember it happening“. 

sandie-leather-jacket.jpg

Is that real leather she’s wearing?

*   ’Kiss My Shades’ was the wee message scratched into the run-off groove of the 7”, trainspotters.

Gone but not forgotten, Hard-to-find, Sampled

The Godfather 3

Craig McAllister

I feel good! And so does my PC. Following a series of bangs, crashes, lost passwords and mis-firing emails, my old 20th century steam powered computer is back in the land of the living. So whilst the Antiques Roadshow were valuing it as a contemporary classic I’ve been busying myself listening to James Brown, the really early doo-wop influenced James Brown. Lo and behold, I get myself back online and discover that one of my pals has posted this on his Facebook page:

Mr Big Stuff, it’s surely a divine sign! I love the way he lets out one of those involuntary phlegmy ‘Huh!s’ towards the end. That’s why James Brown will never be bettered, if you ask me. Sadly, the self-styled Soul Brother #1 would never have done the Mashed Potato or the Tap Dancer to ‘Try Me’ or ‘Please Please Please’. Those dances were reserved for the BAM! 2,! 3! 4! BAM! 2,! 3! 4! funk-soul nuggets that earned him all those superlative-filled outrageous nick names. Tunes like ‘Cold Sweat’ or ‘There Was A Time’ or ‘Say It Loud (I’m Black & I’m Proud)’ sound great, but they look fantastic when The Entertainer breaks out one of his dance routines mid-song (Go to YouTube. Do not pass Go. Do not collect £200. Just Go! Now!)

The James Brown Revue began touring in 1960. Brown hired a tight, tight band who played for their lives with one eye on the crowd and both eyes on their leader. He’d point to the horn player at any given moment and expect him to blast out a note-perfect solo. He’d jab a finger at the drummer and expect him to ‘get wicked’ just like that. His band quickly learned to do just that because he’d fine them if they missed the first bar in any one of those jerky four-to-the-floor masterpieces. If they couldn’t take it to the bridge, it was the end of the road for them as musicians. But you knew all that already. In his Revue he’d always have some female company who would do a set at the start. Many of these women learned to give it up or turn it loose, so to speak, and they became on-the-road girlfriends of James Brown.

‘Marvellous’ Marva Whitney was one such lady. James Brown chose her set, sang duets on stage with her before his performance and generally did with her what he’d do with his other female singers. After a bit, Marva got fed up of Brown choosing her material and after trying but failing to become Mrs James Brown she left in a bit of a huff, though not before she’d recorded half a dozen or so funktastic solo tracks and the odd duet with James. She swapped one religious experience for another by becoming a God-fearin’, soul-stirrin’ minister in Kansas City. Here’s 3 of the most soulful and funkiest (and longest titled) she recorded with JB’s backing band.

Unwind Yourself

You Got To Have A Job (If You Don’t Work You Don’t Eat)

It’s My Thing (You Can’t Tell Me Who To Sock It To) Parts 1 &2

You’ll probably recognise riffs, melodies and tunes from elsewhere, not least other James Brown records.

I got to see James Brown live just the once. It was kinda tragic. Half way throught his set, Soul Brother #1 left for a quick costume change and while he did so, a magician came out and sawed a woman in half to the sound of Brown’s band playing furious funk. No kiddin’! It wasn’t that great really. The time I saw Prince, he was far better. Irony, huh?

Double Nugget, Hard-to-find

Denny Laine is in my ears and in my eyes

Craig McAllister

S’another couple of tracks in my fairly infrequent Double Nuggets series, where I take a couple of rarely heard gems from the 60s and thrust them centre-stage and under the spotlight and give them their 15 minutes of fame.

First up, Say You Don’t Mind by Denny Laine’s Electric String Band. Recorded and released in Year Zero for psych-heads (1967) betwixt and between Laine’s stints in the Moody Blues and Wings, this track is pastoral English baroque-pop personified. Deram had high hopes for the single, but it wasn’t until 1972 that former Zombie Colin Blunstone helped it into the charts with his own version. Ironic, really, as Say You Don’t Mind would give anything from the Zombies Odessey & Oracle album a good run for it’s money. A glass-half-full optimistic strumalong full of upbeat joy (you get the idea), if you like yer Paul Weller pastoralised (is that even a word?) or yer Foxes Fleet of foot, this track’s for you.

Next, a band who came straight outta Mod Central. Sounding naffink like the track above, Brighton-based Penny Peeps were named (my grandfather tells me) after those saucy seaside gizmos you could put a penny in and see a girl undressing. Cheeky scamps. This is a band who, had they been invented way back then, would’ve had The Who’s first album on constant repeat on the old iPod. The guitars ring like Townshend’s and the backing vocals ‘ooh‘ and ‘ahh‘ like a lost demo of Substitute (listen out too for the “I can sit for hours and hours and hours and hours” line just after the minute mark – pure ‘oo!) Aye. A harmony-heavy hammond-enhanced mod stomping 2 minutes 54 seconds, these kids are alright. Here you go.

Cover Versions, Gone but not forgotten, studio outtakes

Ladies and Gentlemen, Elvis has re-entered the building…

Craig McAllister

Last Friday would’ve been Elvis’s 75th birthday. It’s anyone’s guess what he might’ve been doing had he still been alive these days. Maybe the hottest, most over-priced oldie ticket on the circuit. Having finally freed himself from the management clutches of illegal immigrant Colonel Tom Parker he’s a non-stop World Touring machine, kerchinging his way across the planet out-grossing the Rolling Stones, U2 et al along the way. Or maybe the fattest, lardy-assed multi millionaire grossing out anyone he comes into contact with in one of his few forrays into the real world, instead living out his final years in Gracelands surrounded by flunkies and 50 year old former beauty queens who still see Elvis, Shallow Hal style, as that bee-stung lip curled, hip-swinging sexual animal of old. Personally I like to think he’d be somewhere in between. By now, someone would’ve taken him aside, pointed him in the direction of some decent management and he’d have taken to touring when and where he felt like it, BB King style. Maybe an annual show at Prestwick Airport or something like that…

We’ll never know.

Spiritualized’s ‘Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space’ has recently been reissued as a monster 3CD package. Jason Pierce had the opportunity to work on the remaster but somewhat arrogantly (and predictably) claimed that he’d done the best possible job first time round. Eh..not quite, Mr Spaceman. On the original 1997 release, the first track, ‘Ladies and Gentlmen We Are Floating In Space’, was a delicate paen to lost love, Pierce harmonising and singing counter-melodies to himself over the sort of backing track Brian Wilson would be proud of creating. The lyrics hint at snatches of Elvis’s ‘Can’t Help Falling In Love’ in places, but never quite get there – possibly due to copyright problems a la Verve and The Rolling Stones, where Jagger and co got 100%, (that’s 100%!) of the royalties from Bittersweet Symphony. Serves that lanky idiot Ashcroft right, after running away with Jason Pierce’s girlfriend – lyrically, that’s what the whole Ladies and Gentlemen album is about. Anyway, I digress. The new Spiritualized release doesn’t change anything, but adds the fantastic sound of a gospel choir singing ‘Can’t Help Falling In Love‘ throughout it. It. Sounds. Fantastic.

And if you thought that was good…here‘s a seperated track, featuring sparse backing and Pierce doing the whole Elvis bit himself. It’s restrained, heartbreaking and druggy as fuck in equal measures. If you were a writer dealing in puns you might say there’s methodone his madness. Anyway, you’ll also find it on disc 2 of the new release.

Sometimes in my search for interesting music to put on here, I overlook the fact that often, the original un-altered version is usually the best. So here‘s Elvis doing Can’t Help Falling In Love. The same version on every Elvis hits compilation ever released, the same one you’ve heard a gazillion times before. Recorded for the Blue Hawaii soundtrack. But you knew that already.

*Bonus Track!

Here‘s take 4 of Guitar Man. I’ve written about it before, here. (Though the mp3 links have long been deleted by them pesky internet police.)

Cover Versions

We’re Lost In Muzak

Craig McAllister

Hard to believe it’s now almost 25 years ago, but tons of bands in the mid 80s were awash with floral patterns and full of cutesy-pie hair slide-wearing, pasty-faced sensitive souls. And that was just the boys (drumroll and cymbal crash, please). Declaring their love in song for Rachel and Emily and Charlotte, they sang with such effeteness that these days, Belle and Sebastian sound like Motorhead in comparison.

It’s all Orange Juice and Postcard Records’ fault of course, but you knew that already. Taking it many, many steps too far, one of the chief perpetrators was Sarah Records, a Bristol-based label who grew out of the underground flexi-disc scene. They even released a record called ‘I’m In Love With A Girl Who Doesn’t Know I Exist’ (by Another Sunny Day). Oh happy happy joy joy. One of Sarah Records more successful acts was The Field Mice.

Wet. Wet. Wet.

Look at them. They could’ve done with a good slap and a good shag, in any order you like. Wee, sleekit, cowrin’, timrous beasties indeed. A brief Wiki of their discography turns up these predictable song titles – Emma’s House, Sensitive, I Can See Myself Alone Forever……Thank God I was immersed in New Order and Love-era The Cult while all this was going on. They did however, turn up trumps on this. Let’s Kiss And Make Up (pur-lease!) is a six minute ode to holding hands again after falling out over who gets to read the copy of Boy Meets Girl fanzine first. Or something like that. But it’s a cracker. Aye, really! I appreciate I’ve given them as good a literary kicking as I can, but LKAMU is brilliant. Jangling (of course), swirly (of course), fey (of course), Home Counties accented singer (of course), it ticks all the correct indie pop boxes, with spots on.

It was so good Saint Etienne picked up on it and released their own version as a pre-Foxbase Alpha single. With vocals (Donna Savage, not Sarah Cracknell) that are gossamer-thin and just on the right side of tuneful, Saint Etienne’s version is aimed slightly more at the dancefloor. All beats ‘n bongos and some none-more late 80s Italo-house piano and stabbing synths, it’s dubby, clubby and a wee bit spacey.

Pete ‘n Bob, always on the ball

One of those bands who undoubtedly have The Best Record Collection In The World…Ever!, Saint Etienne continually irritate me. I love them, I really do. I have almost their entire back catalogue, but Saint Etienne annoy the hell out of me. Sometimes they make terrific music, sometimes they make terrifying muzak (sometimes even in the same record). Too indie to be all out-and-out pop, too pop to be all out-and-out indie, every record they release comes with the slightly smug arched eyebrow and knowing wink of someone who’s a bit too clever and knows it. Listen to this! It’s a Neil Young cover! Listen to this! It’s krautrock for the 90s! Listen to this! It’s post-ironic rave! Listen to this! It’s us recording under a different name. Listen to this! It’s the theme tune to a TV show. Which we recorded/sampled/ironically aped in our video. Having soaked in a good bubblebathful of pop history, they even had their own Brian Wilson moment when Pete Wiggs decided he didn’t want to tour anymore. Saint Etienne, I love you, I really do, but just Who Do You Think You Are?

Any excuse to show la Cracknell

*Bonus Track!!!

Saint Etienne would no doubt love this. An irony-free pop take on their own Nothing Can Stop Us. By Kylie Minogue, released a few years before she was able to trade sans surname. I never thought I’d be posting mp3s of Kylie Minogue on here, but there you go. It’s no’ bad, actually, but not as good as the FHM (I think) inspired photoshoot below.’70s tennis girl for the Lad Mag generation. Thank you God.

Ace! Smashing! Cheeky! etc etc