Month: April 2011

Get This!, Hard-to-find

Come In, Come Out Triple-Whammy

Craig McAllister

Come in, Come Out originally appeared on the b-side of The La’s There She Goes 12“. It’s the slinkier, groovier progeny of Captain Beefheart playing Ian Dury’s Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll and personifies that La’s Rattle ‘n Roll tag that they were fond of banding about around 1988.

Come In, Come Out is one of only 20 songs officially released by The La’s – (count ’em!) – 12 on the album plus 8 assorted b-sides, but thanks to a combination of fans with magpie-like tendencies, generous studio engineers and the Go! Discs not-quite warts ‘n all box set from last year, there are numerous versions available to even yer casual La’s enthusiast. Of course, yer casual La’s enthusiast might struggle to hear the difference between any of the versions, but yer proper fully signed-up card carrying Dole Pay Me So Far La We Go La’s enthusiasts like myself can spot every little minutae of detail between the riffs. Slow versions. Fast versions. Frantically scrubbed skiffly acoustic versions.  Who-rockin’ electric versions. Live versions. Abandoned studio versions……..

Of course, The La’s abandoned just about everything they ever put to tape. But you knew that already. It’s good to know though, that even the stuff they considered below par is still a whole lot better than many of their contemporaries’ output. Hey, it’s better than many bands’ output, full stop. Just be thankful those fans with the magpie-like tendencies and the studio engineers with the pile of C90s at the ready were around at the time. Here’s three versions. All different. All slinky. All groovy. All good in their own way.

Come In, Come Out Mick Moss acoustic version, recorded April 1987. An early take. This‘ll be one of those the frantically scrubbed skiffly versions – it’s less than a minute and a half long. No Ian Dury riff yet, but it’s ace!

Come In, Come Out John Leckie mix. Fast, frantic and full of r’nb riffing and skittery Keith Moon-esque drums, this is a right proper knee-trembler behind the bike sheds, the sound of The Marquee in 1964. The percussion sounds like it was played on a selection of kitchen pots and pans. Listen out for Mavers’ skirling percussive guitar trills, frills and fills towards the end. What a rhythm player!

Come In, Come Out Steve Lillywhite mix. Slow, bluesy, druggy and fuggy. Or just plain half-arsed. You decide. Any musos out there are sure to appreciate the nice percussive ‘clunk‘ on the off-beat. Rather uniquely for a Lillywhite recording, this doesn’t feature any backing vocals from his his estranged wife Kirsty MacColl.

…….I don’t need any encouragement……

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

Ladies Ga Ga

Craig McAllister

I curse the day I named this website philspector.com instead of plainorpan.com, but there’s nothing much I can do about that now. I kinda like the fact that the odd misguided soul wanders over here expecting to find Phil’s latest gossip from behind whichever bars he’s behind. I’m sure if they looked around before they left they’d find an interesting article and some decent music to content themselves with. I’ve long been a fan of Phil Spector and his terrifically over the top Wall Of Sound productions on records by The Ronettes, The Crystals, Darlene Love, etc etc…..I could go on, but you know them all yourself.

Phil ‘n Ronnie Spector. Clearly, Phil suffered from ‘wee man’ syndrome.

Phil Spector’s music gets played fairly regularly round here. Two and a half minute pocket symphonies of teenage angst, unrequited love, cheating and heartbreak that rush past in a crack of a castanet and a tumble of toms, soaked in enough reverb to drown in. Phil Spector knew what he was doing right enough. Thinking outside the box, he was a true production maverick, double and triple-tracking everything, re-taking and re-doing seemingly perfect takes, pushing the artists to their very outer limits – read/hear here if you haven’t already. And the instrumentation! Wow! Big on rhythm, big on beat, he used everything but the kitchen sink on these records (although they say if you listen closely to River Deep, Mountain High, the sound you hear in the background of the chorus actually is the studio’s kitchen sink being employed as some rudimentary rhythm machine or other.)

Hey Spector! You shoulda listened to these dating tips from the Shangri-La’s!

Or perhaps not. But you get the idea. Anyway, Phil Spector spawned a whole host of copycats and wannabe soundalikes and I’ve built up quite a collection of them. You’ll be well aware of The Shangri-La’s, who, for me at least, ARE teenage angst personified.  They weren’t averse to the odd Spectoresque sweeping string and clattering castanet – have a listen to The Dum Dum Ditty. See? Then I Kissed Him by any other name, no? But what about The Girlfriends? The Bees and The Honey? Pussycats? The Whyte Boots? The Geminis? The Bitter Sweets? Each and every one are just as thrilling and just as vital as their more well-known rivals.  Much like the music Lenny Kaye compiled for his Nuggets series, these bands and singers were less the one hit wonder and more the no-hit wonder and in common with Nuggets groups, many of the vocalists would achieve success later on in different groups.

The Girlfriends featured the young Darlene Wright. By the time she was married she was known as Darlene Love and sang on many of Spector’s records. She is responsible for the vocals on He’s A Rebel,  Christmas (Baby Please Come Home), Today I Met The Boy I’m Gonna Marry and a whole lot of other (often uncredited) stuff that’s seeped from the airwaves, out into the ether and quietly planted it’s melodic seed in your head. I bet right now you’re singing that Christmas song to yourself. I am. Before working with Spector, Darlene and her vocal group The Girlfriends  recorded My One And Only Jimmy Boy, a total rush of Da Doo Ron Ron handclaps, sleigh bells and tumbling toms.

“He’s my pri-ide! He’s my jo-oy! He’s my one and only Jimmy Boy!”

Darlene had a varied career and went on to work with the hip – John Phillips’ John, Wolfking of LA album and the happening – Elvis – you can see her in the background of the ‘That’s The Way It Is‘ 70s tour film. She also played Danny Glover’s wife in the Lethal Weapons films. But you knew that already.

The Honey and The Bees are a strange proposition. Seemingly sometimes referred to as  Honey and the Bees, sometimes referred to as The Honeybees, it’s easier to find the recipe for Coca Cola online than it is to find any meaningful information about them. I have been able to glean that they were essentially The Cookies under a different name – they also recorded as The Cinderellas and The Palisades – and were essentially one band masquerading as four! Lead vocals on this, a cover of Dusty Springfield’s Some of Your Lovin‘ are by Barbara Alston, who later found fame as vocalist in Spector’s The Crystals. Y’see, in the same way that Wigan Athletic plucked Kilmarnock FC’s goal machine Conor Sammon from the relative obscurity of the SPL to the dizzy heights of, er, the bottom of the English Premier League (“The best league in the world!”  – (C) the English media), Phil looked on these unknown groups as the fertile breeding ground for his Wall Of Sound productions, enticing the best players with hollow promises of fame, fame, fatal fame and a shot at the big time. Nothing much changes really.

The Whyte Boots are proof of that. Lori Burton and Pam Sawyer were two Brill Building staff writers who came up with the idea of creating a fictional group to front the street-tough, attitude-heavy songs they were writing. Cue The Whyte Boots. Their 1967 record Nightmare, all doom-goth descending piano and heartbeat drums, caused a bit of a furore at the time.

“No boy’s worth the trouble I’m in!” they heavy breath at the start and you know you’re in for the melodramatic ride of your life…..

“You can beat her, you can win!Get her, get her, push her to the ground!” it goes, until it’s obvious this is one catfight that’s got out of hand. The screams! The “What should I do? “Run! Run!” call and response vocals!  The screaming police sirens!  The way the song drops at the end when you realise the girl’s dead! Wow! Not even the Shangri-la’s went that far.

Mecury Records liked Lori Burton so much they let her record a whole album’s worth of this stuff. It’s called Breakout and has been described as “a classic New York pop-soul stomper of an album.” It is, it is.

I could write about this stuff all day…here’s a few other records that are low on information but high on  melodrama and angst.

The Bitter Sweets – What A Lonely Way To Start The Summertime

The Geminis – A Friend Of Mine

Pussycats– Dressed In Black

The Cookies – Only To Other People

Cults. Freewheelin’………

……and keeping the lipstick lacquered and the heartbreaks a-happenin’ today we have Cults, a terrific Brooklyn-based (of course) band who with You Know What I Mean have released what will absolutely, hands down, be my favourite single of 2011. I don’t tend to feature new music on here much, as things tend to be removed tout de suite by the DMCA (I know Drew at Acrosss The Kitchen Table had You Know What I Mean removed  last week), so I’ll point you in the direction of their You Know What I Mean Soundcloud. You can’t download it, but you will want to buy it after listening. Believe me. I’m now off out in the hope I’ll pick up one of the ltd edition 7″s they’re releasing as part of Record Store Day. Form an orderly queue, please.

Get This!, Gone but not forgotten

The Flaming Hips

Craig McAllister

James Brown. Mr Dynamite. The Godfather of Soul. Funk Brother #1. The Hardest Working Man in Show Business.

In the 1950s, long before he had earned any of these tags,  he was a Little Richard-worshipin’ R’nB performer, playing drums and dragging his band of black musicians around the safety of the chitlin’ circuit in the southern states of America. The influence of Little Richard on the young James Brown cannot be underplayed. James idolised Little Richard. He copied his shiny black, oil slick-pompadoured quiff, perched atop his head like a Mr Whippy ice cream. When Little Richard gave up Good Golly Miss Molly for the Good of our Great God Almighty, James inherited some of his backing musicians, transforming his own group into a crack blues/soul/r’nb/gospel-tinged outfit that had an unmistakable groove beating at it’s heart. Shows were now billed as James Brown and the Famous Flames, the Famous Flames being the smooth-voiced backing singers who provided the foil for James’ more impassioned drop-to-the-knees moments. They also provided an understated dance routine that would allow the super-flash Camel-Walkin’, Mashed Potato jivin’ Brown to show off in his own unique hip-swivellin’ style. He might not’ve been the Godfather yet, but he was certainly the Boss at this point. It was said that Brown carried around an old napkin on which the words ‘Please Please Please‘ had been scrawled by Little Richard and that the young James was determined to turn those 3 words into a song….

….which he certainly succeeded at. In 1956, Please Please Please was James Brown’s first ever recording and went on to sell over one million copies, although interestingly it didn’t even make the Billboard Hot 100, stalling at #105. The pop audiences didn’t yet know about James Brown. In fact, they wouldn’t ‘get’ him until much later, although James has the distinction of having the most-ever hits on the Billboard Hot 100 without ever hitting number 1. *Pop quiz time – who holds that unique record for the UK charts?

Brown acknowledged the importance that Please Please Please held in his grand scheme of things and peformed it throughout his career. It was usually during this song that he would do his famous ‘cape routine‘, where he would fake to collapse, emotions exhausted, and his manager would come on from the side of the stage and usher him off, soaked in sweat, seemingly spent and severly in need of resuscitation. Pure vaudeville for sure, but I for one lapped it up on the only occassion I saw him live, inbetween the costume changes and the magician who sawed someone in half. But if you’ve been reading Plain Or Pan for a while, you’ll know all that already.

Those early James Brown records are electric. Full of rolling guitar riffs and call and response Famous Flames vocals, brass stabs act as musical full stops that allow James to simply breath, or drop to his knees and holler, yelp or let out one of those involuntary phlegmy grunts that Lenny Henry thinks he’s good at doing. He’s still finding his musical feet here but I bet this is when he had the idea for fining his musicians who missed a beat or played a bum note. His band on those early records are water-tight and pompadour-slick, playing yakkety-yak sax and the one-chord groove unperpinned by a solidly swinging backbeat. Hip huggin’, finger clickin’ soul, they’re the sort of mod-sharp records that would have me reaching for a 3 button mohair suit, if only the girth that has crept up on me over the past few years wasn’t there. If all you know of James Brown is Sex Machine, Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag and I Feel Good, dig deeper brothers and sisters, dig deeper. The tracks below are all from his first three albums and are a very good place to start. No fake emotions here, just pure, raw uncomplicated soul. You dig?

Please Please Please

Try Me

There Must Be A Reason

Why Do You Do Me

I’ll Go Crazy

This Old Heart

Bewildered

*Pop Quiz Time

I think this honour goes to Depeche Mode, who, according to Wiki at any rate, have had 49 of their 56 singles released to date make the UK Top 75 wthout once having had a Number One single. I’m sure if I’m wrong though, someone out there will correct me.

Six Of The Best

Six Of The Best – Trashcan Sinatras’ John Douglas

Craig McAllister

Six Of The Best is a semi-regular feature that pokes, prods and persuades your favourite bands, bards and barometers of hip opinion to tell us six of the best tracks they’ve ever heard. The tracks could be mainstream million-sellers or they could be obfuscatingly obscure, it doesn’t matter. The only criteria set is that, aye, they must be Six of the Best. Think of it like a mini, groovier version of Desert Island Discs…

Number 4 in a series:

Snug as a thug in a mugshot pose

That’s him there, second on the left, John Douglas, guitarist, songwriter and one of the original Trashcan Sinatras. It’s difficult for me to be entirely subjective about the Trashcans. I spent all of my late teens playing in a great wee band in the great wee town of Irvine. To be fair, there were loads of great wee bands vying for some attention and a gig in the few pubs and community centres that would put us on. Believe it or not, Irvine  in the mid-late 80s was a right hotbed of prodigous talent. Thanks to local government funding we had our own rudimentary rehearsal/’recording’ facility (in the loosest possible terms) and our own mini scene, all under the lofty pretentions of the Irvine Music Club. I had a  wee laugh to myself a few years ago when I saw a picture of Frank Reader wearing a T-Shirt that proclaimed ‘I’m in a promising local band‘. Back at the tail end of the 80s, the Trashcans were that promising local band. So promising in fact that out of all the bands around Irvine at the time, they were the ones that got the golden fleece….the recording contract (although it’s well documented what happened next).

I am particularly friendly with Paul and before he moved to Hollywood he often popped a demo of some new track or other in my direction when we met. I’ve been lucky to have heard their sound develop from demo to mastered album track. I’ve even been present in the studio when they were recording the second album – on the day I was there John was making tea while Ray Shulman was trying to magnetise the sound of Stephen’s drum kit as he played not in the recording studio, but halfway down the hall, between the band’s office and their own rehearsal room. When our bass guitar broke, it was the Trashcans who came to our rescue, lending us their own (expensive) Rickenbacker 4003 bass. They didn’t seem to mind that we had it for about 2 years. In later years, John and Frank recorded some demos for us and took payment not in cold hard cash but in whisky and other such fuggy substances (perhaps that’s why Shabby Road closed…) So I don’t look at the Trashcans the way I look at other bands. Other bands have a mystery about them. I buy their albums without knowing a single song on them. I’ve been spoiled with the Trashcans  – I know the songs and the people and it’s great.

If you’re a newcomer to the Trashcan Sinatras, it’s never too late to get on board. The Trashcans could easily be as widely loved and critically revered as a band like Elbow. They have that same uplifting melancholy and gift for melody for starters, but sadly they appear to be one of music’s best kept secrets. Those in the know are used to waiting patiently for any new album or song or chorus or chord or anything. Luckily though, the band are on a bit of a touring renaissance. The past couple of years have found the Trashcans hard at work on the road.  With half the band now living in the States you could be forgiven for thinking this might be a stumbling block. Not so. They have just finished another acoustic tour around the backwater’s of mid-America and beyond – John in his lucky striped t-shirt (see above), driving several thousands of miles in the process – see the tour poster below.

I emailed John to ask him about his ‘Six of the Best‘ and had originally planned to put this piece out mid-way through the tour, but real life and all that jazz conspired to get in the way – sorry John! Eagle-eyed internet researchers like myself will tell you that the tour has had good reviews. If you don’t believe me you should check out any one of the  Tour Films which John compiles and broadcasts on YouTube. John’s choices were mildly surprising. Since the first time I met him I knew he was a massive Scott Walker fan. I first saw Lester Bang‘s name on John’s bookshelf and he himself has said that the Trashcans approach everything with a punk attitude (although I can’t find the direct quote, so I’m paraphrasing…) I don’t know what I was expecting, but it’s nice to be presented with something unexpected. John is also a regular on the stage at Celtic Connections and it’s fair to say some of his choices reflect this. Over to you John…

Here is my 6 o’ the best:

‘Eileen Aroon‘ by The Unwanted (sung by Cathy Jordan) from the album Songs from the Atlantic Fringe. Ancient Irish air with a beautiful lyric performed acapella style by the Galway trio. I heard this masterpiece last year and it still haunts me.

(Note: This track has proven practically impossible to find, so I’ve made available an mp3 recording that’s been converted from a YouTube clip of Cathy Jordan singing with the Celtic Tenors. It sounds a bit otherwordly and spooky, the kind of thing John Peel might’ve played had it been on an old 78. It also sounds a bit like John’s significant other.)

UPDATE!

I woke up this morning to an email from John….”I need to send you the MP3 of Eileen Aroon… the version with the tenors is pish…” ………………………and finally………………………………..here it is.

‘It’s Sunday‘ by Frank Sinatra. One of his last studio recordings and the only song recorded by Frank where he is accompanied only by solo guitar. A song of old, contented love.

‘Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts‘ by Bob Dylan. Hilarious, cinematic and rockin’.

‘Marrying The Sea‘ by Declan O Rourke. Another, more modern, Irish acapella gem. Storyteller Declan’s rich baritone gets all poetic and hypnotising.

‘Holy Cow‘ by Lee Dorsey… my favourite groove.

‘Good & Gone‘ by the Screaming Blue Messiahs…… 5 star rock and roll petrol.

Every Six Of the Best compilation comes in a handy RAR download file. Get John Douglas’ here.

I also asked John about ‘One of his Best‘ – the song he’s most proud of having written:

At the moment, I’m most proud of having written a new song called ‘Howling‘. We are playing it at the soundchecks on tour and Frank is singing it beautifully… It’s inspired by a story I read about a saxophonist who was out in the wilds of America playing to the night sky when wolverines would howl when he played in a certain key. He experimented more with other animals and even broadcast his playing underwater and whales began singing. The song just flew out of me after reading the tale….

…a great idea for a song that Trashcans obsessives like me cannae wait to hear.

*Bonus Tracks!

Here‘s the John-penned Hammertime, previously only available as a digital download with the All The Dark Horses single and long-since unavailable.

Here‘s Duty Free, a Trashcans curio choc-full of their uniquely uplifting melancholy recorded during the dark years and given away on the highly collectible Sound Of Purple compilation CD.

And here‘s an mp3 of  I See The Moon – a brand new Trashcan’s song they’ve been playing on the recent tour. This is an mp3 converted from a YouTube clip. I may have to withdraw it quickly, so get to it…

Footnote:

No article on the Trashcan Sinatras could ever be complete without a mention for Five Hungry Joes, Colin’s excellently detailed and obsessive website of Trashcans articles, adverts and absolutely everything. Check it out!


Cover Versions, demo, Get This!, Gone but not forgotten, Hard-to-find, Most downloaded tracks, Studio master tapes, studio outtakes

Olaf, You’re Playing Catch-Up!

Craig McAllister

Going For Gold was a quiz show that ran for about 10 years between the mid 80s and mid 90s, broadcast usually after the lunchtime episode of Neighbours. Contestants came from all corners of the European Community to be asked general knowledge questions (in English) by genial Irishman Henry Kelly – “Who am I? I am an inventor. I was born in Scotland in 1869.” etc etc. What always amazed me about the show was that all contestants could understand and answer the questions in English. Indeed, Olaf from Finland and Gretchen from Germany always, always had a better grasp of the English language than Sue from Sussex and Karen from Coatbridge. In the final round, one contestant had control of the board and Kelly would always say to their opponent, “You’re playing catch-up!”

Once a year I like to round up some of the best music on Plain Or Pan and put it centre-stage for a second time. I like to think all the music I put on here is fantastic in it’s own way, but there are some things that are downloaded/searched for/requested far more regularly than others. The search facility about half-way down on the right there works fairly well (try it!), but I appreciate that sometimes it’s nice to have things put on a plate for you. If you’re a relative newcomer to this blog and you’re not sure what you may have missed out on, this post is for people like you. As Henry Kelly would say, “Olaf, you’re playing catch-up…”

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Who am I? I am a singer-songwriter. I started out my career singing doo-wop with a vocal group known as The Moonglows. When they broke up I began playing as a session drummer at Motown Records before stepping out from behind the kit and standing in front of the microphone. In my time at Motown I added an ‘e‘ to the end of my name, recorded many memorable solo tracks and duets, changed the way the record company viewed the merits of albums and married and divorced the boss’s daughter, resulting in one of the bitterest break-up albums of all time. Who am I? I am Marvin Gaye. And these are the unedited studio master tracks for I Heard it Through The Grapevine. Original article here.

How about some more Motown vocal-only tracks? Get them via here. Want more of this sort of stuff? Search ‘studio master tapes‘ in the ‘whityeherefur?‘ box over there on the right…

What am I? I am another studio outtake. I am a famous song by a famous band, some say that band’s best track (although you could easily argue the case for many of their other records.) Rolling Stone magazine (there’s a clue right there) put me at #38 in their list of Greatest Songs Ever in 2004, which makes me just better than Buddy Holly’s That’ll Be The Day but not quite as good as No Woman, No Cry by Bob Marley. My lyrics predict rape and murder and are a fitting epitaph on the death of the 60s which is just a shot away.  What am I? I am Gimme  Shelter by The  Rolling Stones. Here is the astonishing Mick ‘n Merry vocal-only track. And here is Keith’s rather groovy lead guitar track. Original article here. Sit down before listening, you may just be blown away.

There’s some terrific Curtis Mayfield stuff via here and here. And there’s some excellent Sly Stone stuff here and here. There’s a whole lotta soul on Plain Or Pan. Whiteyeherefur? Use it!

It’s well documented that Led Zeppelin didn’t so much re-write the blues as nick it riff by riff. Rape and murder, indeed. Compare Jimmy Page’s Dazed and Confused to the relatively-unknown Jake Holmes’ version here. I often contrast and compare the merits of originals v covers v blatantly plagiarised words and music. Type ‘double whammy’ or ‘triple whammy‘ into ‘Whiteyeherefur?‘ and see what you can find…

I could go on and on. Or you could use the ‘Whityeherefur?’ facility. Or you could just go through month-by-month, year-by-year. It’ll take you a while. But then, it’s taken me a while too. Last year’s round-up of all things good about Plain Or Pan can be found here, including links to Johnny Marr’s Dansette Delights, The Ronettes vocal-only version of Be My Baby and the now-legendary Plain Or Pan Compilation CDs. So much to choose from, so much to grab. Go! Go! Go!