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 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.
……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.
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?
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 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!
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…”
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
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!
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 3 in a series:
Ge-ree! Ge-ree! Ge-ree! Ge-ree!
Gerry Love is the bass player in Teenage Fanclub, easily one of my favourite bands ever. When the name ‘Teenage Fanclub‘ is mentioned, I always make a point of saying to no-one in particular that I’ve seen them live at least once a year since 1990. This year will be my 22nd year of Teenage Fanclub gig-going and at a conservative guess, I must’ve seen them close to 50 times by now. I never tire of them. Sometimes they’re hot (Motherwell in 2009, picture below) and sometimes they’re hotter (the Grand Ole Opry, 1994 (?) and the Monday night of those ‘3 nights at Oran Mor‘ a couple of years ago spring to mind). I’ve seen then play live dressed as Elvis, I’ve seen them play the cold, vast enormostages supporting Neil Young and Pixies. I’ve seen them in long hair. I’ve seen them in short hair. I’ve seen them in grey hair and, no doubt, I’ll still be going to see them when they’ve nae hair. I should’ve seen them playing Orange Juice’s Greatest Hits with Edwyn Collins and I never saw them back Alex Chilton at the 13th Note, but I’ve just about got over those misdemenours. The only place I’ve still to see Teenage Fanclub play live is in my living room. Which they’ll be doing next week (once I’ve cashed in that EuroMillions cheque).
Wide-screenage Fanclub
Gruff Rhys once said that he never ever needed to listen to the Velvet Underground again because he had listened to them that much their music was now embedded firmly in his brain. My brain is similarly soaked with the sparkling sounds of the Teenage Fanclub. Being one of the chief songwriters in the band, Gerry has written his fair share of those sparkling sounds. Indeed you could easily make up a Best of Teenage Fanclub compilation that featured only his songs – Sparky’s Dream, Radio, Going Places, Don’t Look Back, Sometimes I Don’t Need To Believe In Anything, Shock and Awe, Starsign, Fallen Leaves, Near You, Time Stops. I could go on, but Ain’t That Enough? Ouch! (I think that one was a Norman one in any case). You could call it Love Songs if you wanted to. Ouch again.
Not Gerry. But he does share a likeness with potty-mouthed Christian Dailly.
Gerry very kindly emailed me his thoughts on 6 of his favourite tracks. Some were new to me (the Dion and Darondo tracks ), others I hadn’t heard in a long time. Rather impressively he included You Tube links as well, although some of the videos won’t play here, you’ll have to view them on You Tube itself. I also asked him to tell me one of his best – the song he was most proud of having written. His words follow at the bottom of his chosen tracks, which you could argue mirror perfectly the music of Teenage Fanclub – coated in wistful melody, warm harmonies, weird fancy-pants chords and the sound of sunshine itself. Over to you Gerry…..
Here is a list of 6 songs that I currently like. It would change every day, but these 6 are songs I go back to time and time again.
1. It’s All Too Much – The Beatles
The Beatles had more than their fair share of groundbreaking productions, but this is by far my favourite. Possibly George Harrison’s finest Beatles moment. Love the bass clarinet, and Ringo’s drum fills are outstanding.
Trainspotters ahoy! I’ve included the mono version of It’s All Too Much in the download below.
2. The Dolphins – Dion
Beautifully orchestrated crystal clear production of the Fred Neil classic. There are simply not enough harps and celestas on records these days. Dion’s voice is so effortless and amazing.
Heads up! – I wrote a whole post on the brilliance of The Dolphins last year – catch up here.
3. Something On Your Mind – Karen Dalton
The first time I heard this it reminded me a little of of Bill Callahan. Such a great song and a great understated arrangement, and Karen Dalton’s voice just melts your heart.
4. Didn’t I – Darondo
Loose, fragile, sweet soul from the Bay Area.
5. Aguas de Marco – Elis and Tom
The definitive version of the song once named as the “all-time best Brazilian song”, featuring Elis Regina and bossa nova genius Tom Jobim. Don’t know if it’s my favourite Brazilian song, but I love it.
6. I’ll Keep It With Mine – Fairport Convention
The thing I love about this, apart from Sandy Denny’s vocal, is that it seems to start from nothing, like it almost didn’t happen; as if someone just picked up the guitar for a little strum, and might have put it down again had the others not tentatively joined in. In the course of the next five minutes it builds and builds to become, in my opinion, one of the most life-affirming performances committed to vinyl. An amazing group.
Thanks,
Gerry
Every Six Of the Best compilation comes in a handy RAR download file. Get Gerry Love’s here.
*BONUS TRACKS!
Gerry Love – One Of His Best:
The song of mine I’m most satisfied with is “Don’t Look Back” from the Grand Prix LP. I really couldn’t explain why, but I’m always quite happy to play that one. I guess it was the first “proper song” I felt I had written; everything before felt like some type of experiment. I like the intro, Raymond plays some really nice stuff and Paul’s drum part was really good.
I still find it easy to sing and when we play it live, it always seems to get a good reception – maybe that’s why I like it.
I came up with the original spark in Hawaii, of all places. Sounds quite ridiculous now; that I was ever in Hawaii, but I think I have photographs to prove it! We were only there for a few days, stopping off, on tour, between Australia and the USA. Although the idea originated in Hawaii, the song was mostly written in Lanarkshire.
Hawaii, eh! Who knew?
Here‘s Don’t Look Back from Grand Prix. And here‘s the stripped down Don’t Look Back from the Teenage Fanclub Have Lost It ep
A couple of years ago, Teenage Fanclub stuck a couple of podcasts on their website, one compiled by Norman and one compiled by Gerry. Both podcasts featured an assortment of curious and obscurities and disappeared faster than the sad cases who arrive at Plain Or Pan after googling ‘Teenage Fanny‘ and don’t find exactly what they were looking for, so if you missed out, here‘s Gerry’s for the moment.
‘I’ll Keep It With Mine‘ is a Bob Dylan song. He wrote it for Nico, who he was more than slightly infatuated with. But you knew that already. Here‘s one of Bob’s studio run-throughs, understated, under-rehearsed and full of that Thin Wild Mercury sound he was after in the mid 60s. And here‘s Nico’s version from her 1967 Chelsea Girl album.
Coming next in this series –
Six Of the Best from Trashcan Sinatras’ John Douglas.
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 2 in a series:
Ladies and Gentlemen, respected writer and raconteur, the Sony award-winning David Quantick.
As Kirsty Wark observes in the clip at the very bottom, David has been writing about the music he loves and hates for the past 30 years. As well as being something of an authority on the mechanisms of the music industry, he has a terrific gift for observational comedy – see/hear for yourself in this clip. Not only that, but David also cooks a mean Tex-Mex steak. Youll know this if you’ve ever seen the episode of Celebrity Come Dine With Me where he takes part in a cookathon alongside Helen Lederer, Ben de Lisi, Ulrika-ka-ka-ka Jonsson and eventual winner Mica-ca-ca-ca Paris. David also writes a tasty joke or two, as you’ll know if you’ve ever watched the Quantick-penned Harry Hill’s TV Burp, and his laconic West Country-by-way-of-Yorkshire drawl can be heard over the comings and goings of the day trippers on Channel 4’s Coach Trip. Ubiquitous? Oh aye!, but in a bid to further increase his stellar profile, David agreed to take some time out of his busy schedule to tell Plain Or Pan six of his favourite tracks…….
FAST CARS – BUZZCOCKS
If you could encapsulate everything good about my teenage years into a couple of minutes, this would be it (especially if you included the instrumental revamp of Buzzcocks’ Boredom that leads into this song). The shiny, silver sound of my favourite punk band with a Pete Shelley vocal and a Howard Devoto lyric, opening one of my favourite albums and managing to be both ecologically sound and sneery at the same time. I could and will and do listen to it all day.
SOUND AND VISION – DAVID BOWIE
I am slightly rooted in the late 70s. I love all David Bowie, but this bizarre song, self-obsessed and croony, which only becomes a song halfway through, is a swinging classic. Mary Hopkin on backing vocals! These things matter.
GO WEST – PET SHOP BOYS
Music journalists (the good ones anyway) love songs that are made of ideas. This one is an idea that makes you cry. The original by Village People is an OK disco song about moving to San Francisco in the 1970s to live the gay dream. The Pet Shop Boys turned it into a requiem for the people who did that just in time to meet the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s. It’s the saddest song ever to become a terrace anthem, and proof – again – that pop is the best vehicle for intelligence and emotion in music.
FORGOT ABOUT DRE – EMINEM
Eminem’s combination of all kinds of loathing – but most of all self-loathing – makes him more of an existentialist hero than most rappers, which makes this brilliant single even sweeter, as it’s a message of love to Dr Dre, the producer who recognized Eminem’s talents and made them both international stars. I could listen to Dre and Eminem all day and this song makes that easy to do.
REVOLUTION 9 – THE BEATLES
I wrote a book about the Beatles’ White Album, which was reviewed by Ian MacDonald, the author of Revolution In The Head, the definitively definitive Beatle book. It was the equivalent of being in Mumford and Sons and having Bob Dylan, Ewan MacColl and Fairport Convention come and see you. Ian MacDonald called my book “inessential at best”, which was a bit painful, but when trying to find something positive to say, he did at least say I’d made a case for this track, the epic sound collage that most Beatles fans try and skip. And I do genuinely love Revolution 9. My friends would quote bits of it, and even now Yoko whispering, “You become naked…” or Lennon listing various dances in a comic Northern accent or the EMI engineer chanting, “Number 9…. Number 9…” is as much part of my catchphrase vocabulary as anything else. It’s not a song, but a forest to lose yourself in.
BAT OUT OF HELL – MEAT LOAF
Another one from the late 70s, but you are now what you heard when you were then. And while there are millions of songs I love, I played this last night again so it’s in my head. I’ve owned the album this is on about five times. I used to sell it every so often because it was so uncool. But now I just acknowledge my love for it. Meat Loaf is part Rocky Horror, part Bruce Springsteen, part teen romance and all sturm und drang. Todd Rundgren makes motorbike noises on a guitar. Meat Loaf sings like a teenage demon. Jim Steinman writes the best rock lyrics, in that they can be dirty and silly and innocent and knowing all at once. But when Meat sings, “Baby, you’re the only thing in this whole that’s pure and good and right,” I become emotional in at least six ways.
David Quantick
Every Six Of the Best compilation comes in a handy RAR download file. Get David Quantick’s here.
Coming next in this series – Six Of the Best from Teenage Fanclub’s Gerry Love.
Has it really been 20 years since Screamadelica was released? Well, no actually. Primal Scream‘s meisterwork first saw the light of day at the end of September 1991, but we’ll not split hairs over a few short months. Bobby Gillespie certainly isn’t – the album has just been reissued in all sorts of sexy and expensive packaging and the Scream Team juggernaut is currently zig-zagging its way across the country to any number of unfeasibly impersonal auditoriums near you as I type. It was in Glasgow the other night, in the luscious surroundings of the big red shed inside the SECC.
I didnae go. I prefer to remember the heady days of Screamadelica first-time around, crammed into the Barrowlands, Kriss Needs on the pre-gig decks mixing Prince into the Stones into Bo Diddley into Sly Stone and into my narrow-minded musical mind. Everything, from the warm-up DJ to the visuals to the energy of the band on-stage was truly spectacular and I doubt that anything like that could be created on this current tour, where a gang of outrageously pretentious musical outlaws has been replaced by a gang of outrageously pretentious musical outlaws with big bank balances and designer suits. And there’s the difference. Also, Denise Johnson isn’t doing the backing vocals and as anyone with half a brain knows, she was clearly the secret ingredient in the original make-up of the band. My pal Wullie was so taken by Denise he sent her a letter proclaiming his love for her and she actually wrote back with a letter scented in her perfume. In this day and age of 24hr accessibility to your favourite stars via Facebook, Twitter and whatever, that’s something that’ll unlilkely happen again.
However, the main reason I didn’t go is this – I’ve heard some of the recent concerts. The playing’s fine, great actually, but the singing! Man, the singing! Bobby was never a singer, but he was always true to his Glasgow roots. These days, he sounds far more Miami Florida than Mount Florida. It’s embarrassing and it’s laughable. Listen below to the intro before Slip Inside This House from London at the end of last year…
“C’mon, lets have uh pahrty! What the fuckhr ya heer fuhr? C’mon!” OMFG, as you youngsters might say. I know what you’re here for though….
The Music
Moving On Up as done by Edwin Starr. Good God! Taken from a lo-fi source, sadly.
Come Together (live in London. 26.11.10. The full 14 minute Elvis-in-Memphis Suspicious Minds guitar version that morphs into the Weatherall groove ‘n gospel choir. C’est magnifique.
Screamadelica (the track of the same name that didn’t make the album. One of the first things I blogged. It’s essential, so it is. But you knew that already)
Can – You Doo Right (it’s 20 minutes long…..(yawn)…..but listen to the words. Then go and listen again to Moving On Up. Oh! Was it an influence on Bobby, or was he just under the influence when he nicked it?)
BONUS!
You can see a documentary about the making of Screamadelicahere. Amongst other things you’ll find out it was Robert Young and not Bobby that sang almost all of the vocal on Slip Inside This House. Who knew, eh? Worth half an hour of your time any day of the week.
HELP!
Does anyone have a copy of Don’t Fight It, Feel It from a Select magazine tape from around 1992? It was taken from a Japanese concert I think and the band played Hey Bulldog half-way through the track. It was quite fantastic if I remember and I’d love a copy of it again.
Thanks to Scott over at Spools Paradise -that live-in-Japan version of Don’t Fight It, Feel It I was after is here.
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…
Who better to begin with than someone who fills every above criteria of bands, bards and barometers. Most people here will be familiar with the name of John Robb. Favourite bands? That’ll be The Membranes. The Three Johns. Goldblade. Bard? That’ll be his bylines in a variety of broadsheets and music publications as well as his definitive account of The Stone Roses and the Resurrection of British Pop. Buy it here. (Better late than never, eh?) Barometer of hip opinion? The one thing you can guarantee when you read anything written by John is that it will be passionate, opinionated, heartfelt and thrilling – in short, he means it, maaaaaaan. John has the words DIY PUNK ROCK written through his bones like a stick of Blackpool rock and this is reflected in both the subject matter and take-no-prisoners approach of his writing. Take this piece he’s recently written about Flats for example (more on them in a bit). In fact, take the time to visit his website Louder Than War. It’s choc-full of rants, raves and right-on the money reviews. I drop by from time to time. It’s a right good read and I think you’d like it too.
I got in touch with John and asked if he’d like to contribute to this feature. Quicker than you can say “A-Wop-bop-a-loo-bop a-wop-bam-boo“, he’d sent this briliant reply………
I listen to so much music that I find 6 tracks hard to pin down but here goes.
The Stranglers ‘Down in the Sewer’ Funny, dark, sardonic and plain weird…the zig zag Beefheart bass riff in the midddle, the Ventures on acid guitar break and Hugh Cornwall at his oily best, that ass sound and those keyboards at the end- magical. Punk was everything to me, saved my life and even if The Stranglers were not conventional punk their lack of convention made them even more fascinating- from here we discovered Killing Joke,The Fall, Joy Division- the world!
The Beatles ‘Strawberry Fields’ Yearning, nostalgic and disturbing, like the darkest Lewis Carroll story. Tripped-out but also very northern, with the dank, musty air of fifties post war Liverpool of childhood memory warped through LSD and the super hip summer of love – how could that be a pop single?
Crass ‘Shaved Women’ Incessant drums, mangled rhythms and a powerful message from one of the most imaginative British groups of all time- whose music was far ahead of its time and is sat there waiting for a new generation to explore and get inspiration from- and we haven’t even touched the politics yet.
Shellac ‘My Black Ass’ The best recorded rock record of all time. The perfect sound. This is what we were aiming at in The Membranes in the early eighties but just didn’t have the know how. Somehow Albini took that noise and made it into a science and on this track utterly perfected it. When the bass hits it sounds like an avalanche of raw power.
Hariprasad Chaurasia Indian flute player…Spotify his name – so many great tunes- the Indian flute is so atmospheric it floats me away. I’ve been to India lots of times and its a full-on overload of good and bad coming at you fast. It’s an amazing place and will be the superpower of the 21st century- it has an amazing tradition and a whole rush of stunning music like this that evokes moods and atmospheres that you didn’t know existed- I also love Kirtan- the Indian harmonium religious music.
Included on the compilation is Manzh Khamaz Teental
Flats ‘Let It Slide’* Pure noise. Indie kids who discovered Crass, Discharge and Rudimentary Peni and made it there own. Seen them live- brilliant- they haven’t connected to their audience yet but they will do- they do this stuff really, really well and when they twist it with their love of Wu Tang Clan and slow dirge noise they could make something totally genius. They are also an example of the endless rush of great young bands out there of differing styles…here’s a few more: Deadbeat Echoes, The Temps, Rats On Rafts, Obsessive Compulsive, Young Fathers, Folks, Charli xvx …
*Sadly I’ve been unable to locate ‘Let It Slide‘ for John’s compilation. Instead I’ve included Flats Waltz, the lead track from their debut EP from August 2010.
Every Six Of the Best compilation will come in a handy RAR download file. Get John Robb’s here.
*Bonus Track!
Here‘s One of the Best from John – Goldblade‘s Hairstyle. All tch-tch-tch hairspray hi-hats, Blaxploitation brass and Superstition-esque clavinet runs. With a great ‘nah-nah-nah-nah-nah‘ refrain in the middle. Punk/funk? Funk/punk? Who cares!
Coming next in this series – Six Of the Best from David Quantick.
Bird, bird, bird, b-bird’s the word. Ah well-a bird, bird, bird, b-bird’s the word….
Everybody loves Surfin Bird, right? My 9 year old daughter does. My 4 year old son does. I’d love to tell you that, thanks to their Dad’s rockin’ record collection, they too had developed an ear for the finer things in life and were uber-hip connoisseurs of 60s garage rock. But that would clearly be not true. No, they developed a liking for Surfin Bird’s gibberish nonsense thanks to a game for the Nintendo Wii. I like a game on the old Wii as much as the next person (I have an unhealthy obsession with playing Mario Kart online) and I had no time for those singin’ and dancin’ interactive games that go down well at New Year parties and the likes until Mrs Pan brought home Just Dance, a game (if you don’t know already) where 2 or more people have a dance-off, by following a sequence of steps demonstrated on-screen by a cavorting character in the corner. And there, sitting happily inbetween Who Let The Dogs Out? and Womaniser was The Trashmen’s Surfin Bird replete with dance steps provided by a pork-pie wearing Blues Brothers sillhouette. Mental. It’s probably its inclusion on this game that helped propel Surfin Bird to Number 3 on yer actual Top 40 charts last Christmas, helped on its way by one of those anti-X Factor Facebook campaigns.
Cue Dvorak’s New World Symphony (the Hovis advert music, ya philistine) but when I were a lad I didn’t have X Factor or Facebook or fancy computer games to stimulate my musical tastes. Like most of you on here I had LPs. My going out song of choice was always Surfin Bird. Not The Trashmen‘s original verison (I’d love to tell you differently, but I had no idea who The Trashmen were at this point). Nah, I loved The Ramones ridiculously thrashed out version on It’s Alive – the first Ramones LP I owned and quite obviously The. Best. Live. Album. Ever. (even if on CD it sounds fragile-flat and as spidery-thin as one of Joey Ramone’s limbs). From that Ramones live version I progressed to their studio version from ’77s undeniably essential Rocket To Russia LP.
From The Ramones, it was but a small crepe-footed step to The Cramps, and their cheesegrater-thin hootin’ and a-hollerin’ gutter-punk version from Off The Bone (where I first read the words ‘Alex Chilton‘). A few years later and I’m watching Full Metal Jacket and up pops Surfin Bird once again, this time in the original (aha! or so I thought!) version by garage-surf punks The Trashmen. Clearly, I came to Surfin Bird back to front.
A young, pre-1980′ s SAW-era Rick Astley, 2nd right. Who knew?
So it was a bit of a surprise to realise some time later that Surfin Bird as I knew it had actually began life as 2 separate doo-wop tracks, recorded in the early 60s by The Rivingtons, a black r ‘n b quartet who could effortlessly churn out the sort of 4-part harmonies that Brian Wilson was trying to replicate in studio sessions with The Beach Boys. Surfin Bird as I knew it was made by welding together The Bird’s The Word (aye!) and Papa Oom-Mow-Mow (oh aye!), 2 slabs of primo-cool duh-duh-duh-duh………woo-oooh! American doo-wop. Everbody loves a bit of doo-wop, eh? If you only listen to 2 doo-wop tracks this year……etc etc blah bla blah….
*BONUS TRACK!
Possibly in a bid to please those right-on 60s bra-burning feminists, The Rivingtons also recorded Mama Oom-Mow-Mow. It sounds just like you’d expect it to.
Plain Or Pan 
