October 2014 – Plain Or Pan

Alternative Version, Gone but not forgotten, Hard-to-find, Peel Sessions

Keeping It Peel 2014

October 25, 2014 Craig McAllister

Keeping It Peel is the brainchild of Webbie, who writes the excellent and informative Football And Music blog. An annual celebration of all things Peel (this year’s event is especially poignant, given that it’s 10 years since John died), it’s purpose is to remind everyone just how crucial John Peel was to enlightening and expanding listening tastes up and down the country; to ‘Educate and Inform‘, as was the motto of his employer. Be it demo, flexi, 7″, 10″, 12″, EP, LP, 8 track cartridge, wax cylinder or reel to reel field recording, the great man famously listened to everything ever sent his way, and if it was in anyway decent he played it on his show. Sometimes, he played the more obscure records at the correct speed. Sometimes he didn’t. And sometimes, no-one noticed. John Peel is the reason my musical tastes expanded beyond the left-field avant-garde edginess of Hipsway and Love And Money and the reason why my mum stopped singing her own version of whatever it was I was playing (“Take a ri-ide on the Suga Trayne!”) and started asking me to “turn that racket down” whenever she passed my teenage bedroom door. Thank you, John.

This year’s Peel Session selection features Pixies from October 18th 1988.

The thin ‘n hairy years

Pixies in 1988 were betwixt and between releases. Surfer Rosa (their best album, and don’t let anyone persuade you otherwise) was 7 months old and still stuck to the turntables, and Doolittle was but a sparkle in Black Francis’ eye. They were a PHENOMENAL live act around this time; full-on and feral and could do no wrong.

Their session for Peel in October was a cracker. Half of the songs were barely a minute and a half long, little blitzkrieg blasts of wonky time signatures, heavy breathing, strange chord structures and larynx-loosening primal screams from Black Francis – “Uriah hit the crapper! The crapper! Uriah hit the crapper….DEAD!” – what the devil was he on about? Who knows, but who cares? This was a thrilling taster of the new stuff still to come. Tame, Dead and There Goes My Gun would all end up on the Doolittle LP the following year. Dancing The Manta Ray would eventually see the light of day as the b-side to that LPs big single, Monkey Gone To Heaven.

I thought I still had the old TDK of this session with Peel’s introductions, but I fear it’s lost and gone forever. It’s certainly not in the first (and only) place I looked. For authenticity’s sake I was going to post those versions, but instead Tame comes from the Rough Diamonds bootleg and the other three come from the official BBC Sessions CD.

Tracks in order of broadcast;

Dead

Tame

Dancing The Manta Ray

There Goes My Gun

These tracks and a gazillion more are released shortly on the 3CD Doolittle 25 release, available at the recession-friendly price of £12. A bargain for sure. Available via Pixies’ online shop here.

Alternative Version, Cover Versions, demo, Gone but not forgotten

Ari Styles

October 21, 2014 Craig McAllister

I Heard It Through The Grapevine was first committed to vinyl by Gladys Knight & The Pips, although it’d be Marvin Gaye who would have the first hit with the song. But you know all that already. If not, I’ve written about it before. For me, the most interesting (but not necessarily the best) version of …Grapevine comes from The Slits.

In ye olden days of punk rock, Slits stood out. A female 4-piece, their lead singer was a 15 year-old German girl whose mother would later marry John Lydon. Guitarist Viv Albertine lived in a squat and was Mick Jones’ girlfriend. Drummer Palmolive was born in Spain and lived for 2 years with Joe Strummer. Not at all like the ‘typical girls’ they sang of on their debut single.

They under-rehearsed, they dithered over releases and they supported The Clash on a couple of tours (To quote Joe Strummer – “They need to do thirty gigs in thirty days and they would be a different group. Then they’d be great.”)

Formed in 1976 at the birth of punk, it took The Slits 3 years to release their debut LP. In those three short years, music progressed by several light years but Slits stuck at it, honing their talents in a couple of John Peel sessions. It’s been said that Slits couldn’t play their instruments, but that’s clearly punk talk from the blinkered few who wanted to keep them authentically ‘4 Real’.

The Slits could play! They eschewed all forms of rock music (a dirty word in Slits’ world) preferring instead to form a unique sound built from reggae and the more interesting musical corners of the world. Itchy, scratchy, claustrophobic and defiantly dubby new wave pop music. Nowadays, lazy writers would call it ‘angular’, a term thrown at everyone from Franz Ferdinand to the Kaiser Chiefs. But at the tail-end of the 70s, no-one sounded like The Slits.

Their demo version of I Heard It Through The Grapevine is terrific – in equal parts quirky, jerky, punky and funky.

The Slits – I Heard It Through The Grapevine (demo)

Like an aural sharp elbow to the gut, it’s designed to irritate, grate and annoy. It’s very uncomfortable – twitching away like Thom Yorke’s gammy eye in the midday sun. The scratchy guitar and dubby bass, coupled with the rat-a-tat percussion is as far removed from ‘punk rock’ as you’d care to imagine, making it a west London cousin to Talking Heads, its catholic musical policy a precursor to that band’s Tom Tom Club alter ego.

By the time Island Records had enlisted Dennis Bovell to produce the album, the band’s sound had rounded out slightly. He took the blueprint of the demos and added a cavernous, bottom-of-the-well booming reverb to it all, enhancing bits here and there with wonky, skanking keyboards and banshee wailing backing vocals. I Heard It Through The Grapevine comes out of all the whole process sounding mightily fine. Indeed, if you pay close attention, that sound you can hear in the background is the sound of a thousand soul boys wailing in despair at what The Slits have done to the Marvin version.

The Slits – I Heard It Through The Grapevine (LP version)

The album and associated singles still stand up to repeated listens today, a bona fide alternative classic in a Mojo-endorsed world of Dylans ‘n Beatles ‘n Zeppelins ‘n Stones. You should investigate further….

Slits play the Electric Circus, Manchester, in 1977.

Alternative Version, Cover Versions, demo, Hard-to-find

The Hardest Working Band In Slow Business

October 15, 2014 Craig McAllister

A couple of weeks ago, the NME published a list of ‘50 Unfashionable But Brilliant 80s Bands That Time Forget‘. Considering the bulk of the 50 bands listed were still gigging going concerns that made, y’know, actual records and that, it was a bit shoddy. Perhaps the list would have been better titled ‘50 Brilliant Beard-Free And Therefore Not Trendy Bands.’ Sitting snuggly between The Replacements in 3rd place and the James Taylor Quartet in 5th (both still going strong) were the Trashcan Sinatras.

Yep, they’re still around too. Aye, they take their time to release their music, but it’s always worth the wait. Many bands have had entire careers between Trashcans LPs. But that’s OK. TCS fans are famous for their patience. As I’ve said before – fads ‘n fashions will come and go, but there will always be a Trashcan Sinatras. Split between America and Scotland, the band are even less productive than they once were. But no less brilliant as a result. MP3s regularly zip between laptops in Pasadena and Glasgow, each time embelished and enhanced before being returned. This is 21st century songwriting, grandpa, and it works just fine.

And now, yes!, the fruits of their labour are about to be realised. On Friday, 10th October, I returned from work to discover that the band had released details of their 6th album. It’s written, but it’s not been recorded yet. The recording part is where the band need your help.

Free from the madness that seems to follow them whenever they sign a recording contract, the band have opted to go it alone. They’ve set up stall on Pledge Music, where fans pay in advance for a product yet to be made. You can contribute any amount. The more you contribute, the more you’ll benefit. $10 gets you a download of the album. $24 gets you a download plus a CD. An extra $5 will get you a signed CD, and so on. Those with fatter wallets may choose to pledge $250, where Paul from the band will pop round for a guitar lesson and teach you any Trashcans’ song you care to fancy.

Amazingly, the most expensive item ($2509), the ‘Executive Producer’ package, has sold out. But there are a multitude of fan-grabbing items. You can do your bit for the band by visiting here. Many of you already have – as I type, the band have reached 77% of their intended target. If you haven’t so far, you probably should get across and do your bit. There are still some handwritten lyrics sheets, coloured vinyl, signed birthday cards… all manner of Trashcans’ memorabilia just waiting for you.

Way back in the good old/bad old days, the Trashcans were regular visitors to Japan. The Japanese really embraced the band and they have fond memories of their times there. Stephen who plays drums told me once how weird it was playing in venues that were inside 24hr shopping malls, where the audience would sit in total silence until the very last of the cymbal crashes or feedback had faded to nothing before politely clapping a round of applause then quickly settling back down before the next song started.

During their time in Japan, the band recorded a couple of tracks. One of them, ‘Snow‘ was a cover of the Randy Newman track. Very good it is too, and although it’s quite rare, it pops up on eBay from time to time. If you’re a copmpletist (and most Trashcans fans are), it goes without saying you need it. Snow was one of the very first things I blogged about, way back in the good old/bad old days.

More interesting to Trashcans fans is the band’s Town Foxes ep.

Made especially for their Japanese tour in March 2010, only 500 copies were pressed. It could well the be Holy Grail of Trashcans collectables. The a-side (if a CD single can have an ‘a’ and a ‘b’ side) was the band’s own version, more of a demo than a finished article, of a song dating back to I’ve Seen Everything days. Town Foxes grooves along on some slightly wah-wah’d guitar playing atop some of those signature Trashcans major 7ths. To these ears it sounds like it owes a wee debt to Odyssey’s Native New Yorker, which is in no way at all a criticism of it. It’s not the best TCS song you’ll ever hear (probably why it’s never really seen the proper light of day) but it’s a great wee song.

The b-side features the vocal talents of Sokabe, singer with Japanese touring partners Sunny Day Service. Long-time friends and admirers, Sokabe from SDS is given the Jim’ll Fix It treatment (can you still say that?) by taking over Frank Reader’s lead vocal, making him briefly (for 3min, 30seconds) the singer in the Trashcan Sinatras. It’s in Japanese, obviously, which goes some way to explaining the collectability of the Town Foxes ep.

It was a nice surprise, then, when around the time of that Japanese tour a jiffy bag dropped through my door. Two copies of the Town Foxes CD, both cases smashed to bits through mishandling across the continents, but both covers and discs thankfully blemish-free, accompanied by a short note;

“AWRIGHT CRAIG! I hope ye like it. It’s only a 4 track demo – no’ as guid as we played it in Japan.”

There you have it, straight from the horse’s mouth. The other CD was for Colin who does the excellent Five Hungry Joes site. Don’t go thinking I cashed in on an excellent freebie.

It’s almost impossible to buy Town Foxes. But you can do your bit for The Hardest Working Band In Slow Business by pledging to the new LP. You really should…

http://www.pledgemusic.com/projects/trashcansinatras

Get This!, Hard-to-find, Kraut-y

(Senti)Mental Machine Music.

October 5, 2014 Craig McAllister

Although it was actually released at the end of January, 1994, this week sees the 20th (20th!!) anniversary reissue of Underworld‘s ‘dubnobasswithmyheadman‘ LP. Given the kind of music Plain Or Pan normally features, you might be surprised to learn that I’m really looking forward to this. Indeed, my excitement might only be surpassed if The Queen Is Dead or Blonde On Blonde were to be suddenly released as 5 CD super-deluxe box sets featuring scores of previously unheard session outtakes and retailing for a tenner. Along with those two releases, dubnobasswithmyheadman holds a place in the higher echelons of my favourite albums of all-time list.

It’s dance music, Jim, but not as we know it.

For starters, dubnobasswithmyheadman dispenses with the notion that dance music is all about the ‘now’ – it may well be the first dance album with genuine longevity. In that respect, it opened doors for Leftfield and the Chemical Brothers. But to these ears, both those act’s various LPs now seem a tad dated. Twenty years on, dubnobasswithmyheadman still thrills.

Opening track Dark & Long is exactly that:

What is ‘Dance music’ anyway? Dark & Long could almost be Joy Division.

dubnobasswithmyheadman sounds nothing like its ‘contemporaries’. There’s none of that generic hysteric female vocal that was prevalent on every release at the time. And sure, it has it’s four-to-the-floor moments, but nothing as crass as the handbag house hits of the day that cluttered up a gazillion Ministry Of Sound compilations and their ilk. There’s not a James Brown sample or a “Baby! Baby! Baby!” anywhere near it.

At times the album sounds as if it’s running on the same sort of energy that pulses through I Feel Love. Elsewhere it sounds as if someone’s turned every knob on every keyboard all the way round as far as they’ll go, drowning the listener in a bath-full of acid squelches and road drill beats.

Occasionally it sounds stoned and other-wordly. River Of Bass could almost be Can, with its repetitive guitar riff and whispered vocals.

dubnobasswithmyheadman is a true one-off – it’s percussive, it’s relentless and it ebbs and flows like all good albums do. It’s got guitars on it! Lovely chiming, echoing, layered guitars that fade in and out when the mood arises. The vocals are a one-off; half-spoken snippets of overheard conversations and cut ‘n paste phrases, mirroring the cut-up, random cover art.

“I see Elvis!”

“‘I’m just a waitress’, she said.’”

“Don’t put your hand where you wouldn’t put your face.”

Cowgirl is perhaps the most instantly-accessible track.

Nagging and creeping, like a virus worming its way under your skin it’s a full-on four-to-the-floor smash, glo-stick techno at its longest, loudest and best, a precursor for sure to the band’s big Lager! Lager!Lager! breakthrough hit a couple of years later.

You can take each track in isolation and get something from them, but the best way to listen to dubnobasswithmyheadman is to bunker down and swallow the whole in one go. In amongst the rollin’ and tumblin’ sequencers and rat-a-tat percussion there’s a fluidity to it and because of that it’s been a recurring soundtrack to my cycling, speeding me up hills that I have no inclination to go up, whisking me back home when I’d rather take the last few miles a bit easier. Now and again I’ll hear the sound of the chain snake its way through the sprocket bleeding into the mix and this just adds to it.

When it comes out this week with all manner of weird and wonderful remixes, lost tracks and souped-up remastering, it’ll help me get many extra miles in on my bike.

Tell yer pals:

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