February 2015 – Plain Or Pan

Romantic And Square Is Hip And Aware

February 23, 2015 Craig McAllister

William It Was Really Nothing is the sound of The Smiths in miniature. A breathless rush of brilliantly ringing descending arpeggios, bright as brass buttons, topped off with a vocal that distills everything about Morrissey’s much-loved kitchen sink dramas into a handful of lines worthy of Alan Bennett;

‘The rain falls hard on a humdrum town, this town has dragged you down……Everybody’s got to live their life, and God knows I’ve got to live mine……….How can you stay with a fat girl who says, “Would you like to marry me? And if you like, you can buy the ring”……‘

Johnny’s playing is at its most stellar, riff upon riff upon riff of layered guitars nattering and chattering away like Elsie Tanner spreading ghastly gossip about goodness-knows-who over the garden gate. He was in a rich vein of form when he wrote this, was Johnny. He worked the chords out in the back of The Smiths’ van on the M1 somewhere between Manchester and London. Arriving at his flat in Earls Court, he committed his frantically scrubbed faux flamenco pièce de résistance to tape, where it would sit alongside his other new compositions for that weekend, vying for the attention of producer John Porter come Monday morning. That the other 2 new tracks he’d recorded were How Soon Is Now? and Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want (the tracks that would turn up on the b-side of the single itself) just goes to show how prolific a tunesmith (tune-smith! See what I did there?) the barely 21 year-old Johnny was. Frightening, if you stop to think about it.

William It Was Really Nothing – Peel Session (August 1984)

The Smiths clearly loved William It Was Really Nothing – they played it in concert before recording it (first for Peel, above) and continued to play it throughout the tours of 1984 and 1985. It still had its place in the ’86 setlists when the briefly 5-piece band were at their most rockist and was the second-last song The Smiths ever played live.

When John Porter got ’round to working on it from Johnny’s demo (and who knows how he chose what track to tackle first) he sprinkled a magical dusting of fade-ins and fade-outs, backwards bits and bursts of guitar that are the aural equivalent of one of those time-lapse videos of a flower blooming you see on nature documentaries. It’s just perfect, and even after 30 (gulp!) years, every listen reveals new things.

William It Was Really Nothing – Single Version

William It Was Really Nothing is over and out in little over 2 lean, mean and meat-free minutes, which, if I’ve timed it right, is just about as long as you needed to read this piece. Beat that!

Double Nugget, Get This!

Yé-yé-yé!

February 15, 2015February 16, 2015 Craig McAllister

Sept Heures du Matin is a track originally released in 1967 by French singer Jacqueline Taieb. I’m not too up on how to categorise my French Chanteusses, but I’m pretty certain Sept Heures… is a fine example of what is known as Yé-Yé music, a genre put together by pervy old men looking to exploit the naivety of the young girls in tight-fitting turtlenecks who were singing their double entendre-packed songs. And if all that sounds a bit too Serge Gainsbourg for comfort, well, any experts can correct me if I’m wrong.

Sept Heures… reminds me a lot of a tamer version of Dave Berry‘s Don’t Give Me No Lip Child,

Dave Berry – Don’t Give Me No Lip Child

but where Dave’s track is a stroppy adolescent huff of a record, Sept Heures… is more feminine. It swings as carefreely as the shining bob atop Jacqueline’s head and I wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest if you told me that Bob Stanley owned all the 7″ copies of this in existence. It‘s literally a stompin’, snarlin’, finger snappin’ love letter to pop music, nothing you’ve never heard before; a trashy, garagey, walking backbeat underpinning three chords and a midly freaked-out fuzz guitar, but it’s essential listening.

Jacqueline Taieb – Sept Heures du Matin

Lyrical references to the pill-popping stutter of My G-G-Generation and Elvis’s take on Little Richard’s Tutti Frutti compete with nonsensical lines about looking for her toothbrush and fantasising about Paul McCartney – roughly translated the singer bemoans the fact that it’s 7am, she has an English homework assignment due in that day and (“Mmmmmm! Paul McCartnee! Pour m’aider!“) how she wishes the Beatles bassist were here to help her.

It’s a belter and I’m sure you’ll like it.

à la prochaine….

Football, Gone but not forgotten, Six Of The Best

Six Of The Best – Stuart Cosgrove

February 9, 2015 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 20 in a series:

Stuart Cosgrove is, to most folk in Scotland, the owner of that distinctive voice with the Tayside twang barking and cackling its way out of the tranny each Saturday afternoon between 12 and 2. “Ah yes indeed Tam!” could almost be his catchphrase. As co-presenter of BBC Radio Scotland’s Off The Ball, he’s a bringer of much needed humour and mirth to suffering Scottish football fans up and down the land.

‘The most petty and ill-informed football show on the radio‘ is a must-listen to in my house – it’s the central part of my pre-match warm up before I head off to Rugby Park to watch my team lie down to whoever they’re up against that week. Although primarily a football show, there’s a fair smattering of music references. Sometimes, one of the guests will be of that ilk, other times Tam and Stuart will discuss their musical preferences, with Stuart the black music obsessed yin to Tam Cowan’s cabaret ‘n crooners yang. And there’s always a record to play out with, a thematically-linked song that encapsulates the mood of that week’s big (or petty) talking point. It’s my favourite show on the wireless by some distance.

In the 70s, Stuart was a buttoned-down and baggy-panted Northern Soul fan, a collector of rare 7″s who was fond of hopping on the overnight Perth to London train and disembarking at Wigan just in time for the Casino to open. In the 80s, Stuart indulged his musical passions further by writing for the fanzines before graduating to the NME and The Face. He was an early champion of electronic dance music and his job gained him access to all sorts of musical royalty, from Stevie Wonder and Jimmy Ruffin to Prince and the hallowed halls of Paisley Park. He’s long-since moved onwards and upwards (would you still want to be writing for NME nowadays? What/who could you muster up any enthusiasm to write about?) and is now a high heid yin at Channel 4. Somehow, inbetween the radio work each Saturday, working in London through the week and going to as many St Johnstone games as he can fit in, he’s found the time to write a book.

Here’s the blurb;

Detroit 67, The Year That Changed Soul is the story of the city of Detroit in the most dramatic and creative year in its history. It is the story of Motown, the breakup of The Supremes and the implosion of the most successful African-American record label ever, set against a backdrop of urban riots, escalating war in Vietnam and police corruption. The book weaves through the year as counterculture arrives in Detroit and the city’s other famous group, the proto-punk band MC5 go to war with mainstream America. The year ends in intense legal warfare as the threads that bind Detroit together unravel and leave a chaos that scars the city for decades to come.

It’ll be right up my street, and no doubt many of yours too.

Ahead of its publication at the end of March, Stuart somehow found the time to contribute to Plain Or Pan. Keeping with the Detroit theme, Stuart tells us his six favourite Detroit musicians. In what must surely be a serendipitous moment, most of them have graced this blog countless times already.

Marvin Gaye

The original black crooner who wanted to be the black Sinatra but ended up fronting the greatest album of all time ‘What’s Going On.’

Marvin Gaye – Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)

David Ruffin

The bespectacled lead singer of The Temptations was the most complicated character at Motown and at war with himself. He eventually died of a drug overdose.

The Temptations – Message From A Black Man

Aretha Franklin

The Queen of Soul came from a famous Detroit family whose father was the city’s most flamboyant preacher.

Aretha Franklin – Save Me

Mary Wilson

Often seen as ‘the other Supreme’ caught in a bitter war between Diana Ross and Florence Ballard, but her voice effortlessly floated from jazz, to soul and even opera.

The Supremes – Automatically Sunshine

Ronnie McNeir

An outsider who often won local talent contests in the Motor City but was in his sixties before he joined The Four Tops as a stand in for the legendary Levi Stubbs.

Ronnie McNeir – Lucky Number

Jonnie Mae Matthews

The godmother of Detroit soul and a pioneer who had a voice rougher than sandpaper and smoother than silk.

Jonnie Mae Matthews – The Headshrinker

Stuart Cosgrove is the author of Detroit 67. You can read more about the book and its author on the Detroit 67 Facebook page. Afterwards, you’d best get on the good foot and pre-order your copy from here (or your usual online book retailer.) I’ll see you at the front of the virtual queue.

Alternative Version

It’s Bjerk, To Rhyme With ‘Twerk’, Not ‘Fork’.

February 1, 2015 Craig McAllister

“Huv ye goat that record by thone wee Chinese lassie Byoing, the ‘shh-shh’ song?”

Any guesses?

Music retail could prove to be a real winner some days. The customer was looking for Bjork‘s ‘It’s Oh So Quiet‘, but you knew that already.

Since the last time I looked, Bjork has released about a gazillion albums. Some as apps. Some as super-limited thingies. And some as good old-fashioned, fully-fledged proper physical releases. She’s just rush-released her latest, Vulnicura, after, quelle surprise, it found itself all over the internet ahead of its release date. Something really should be done about that, but stone me if I know the answer.

I kinda lost my way with Bjork a wee bit round about her Vespertine LP in 2001 (gulp!) By then I was immersed in the world of portable digital media (a mini disc player – still brilliant, if y’ask me) and with the immediacy of it all, I suppose my attention span started to wander. No longer could I focus on subtleties and slow-burning things of beauty – I wanted melody and instant catchiness and I wanted it NOW! This is a common theme for the digital generation. Don’t like the song? Skip it. Don’t even download it. Don’t own it. Ever. Can’t play that tricky riff on Sweet Home Alabama? Pop over to ultimateguitar.com or YouTube, where someone better than you will show you how it’s done. Having trouble getting past those pesky guards in the latest Sonic the Hedgehog platform pleaser (they still have Sonic the Hedgehog, aye?) A quick Google will sort you out with a ‘cheat’. That’s why the current vogue for vinyl is pleasing – it might help slow things down a bit. Let folk take time to appreciate what they have, not what they’ve not.

Anyway, where was I?

Oh aye. Bjork. I loved The Sugarcubes. Saw them live a couple of times early on and bought all the records. Life’s Too Good is still an insanely brilliant listen, one that has easily stood the test of time. The Sugarcubes were bonkers, but in a good way. Formed out of an Icelandic arts collective, they were a kinda prog version of punk, too far away from the epicentre of pop culture to be totally influenced by fads or fashions. The band could’ve been any mid-late 80s band. Plenty of chiming guitars, polyrhythmic drums and tasteful keyboards. But there, any similarities ended. On vocals there was Bjork, a one-off singer whose vocals surfed the stratosphere somewhere between Kate Bush and Liz Fraser. On alternative vocals, when he wasn’t blasting his trumpet in any key but the right one, was Einar, a shouty, scary, skinhead of a man.

One time after a Barrowlands show we were all at Level 8, Strathclyde Uni’s indie disco. In walked most of The Sugarcubes. No Bjork though. Fuelled on cheap drink and the daft idea that the band had time for their fans, I went up to Einar and offered him my hand. “Great show!” I said. I meant it too. Einar stared me down for a good, ooh, 15 to 20 awkward seconds, my hand still out to greet him but unshaken. Looking me straight in the eye he sung to me. “We will! We will! ROCK YOU!” Eyes ablaze, he spun round and onto the dancefloor where he pogoed to Rise by PIL before disappearing out a side door, never to be seen again. I remained shaken. And stirred.

That debut album is full of weird ‘n wonky prog/punk. Anytime I found myself with a bass guitar in my hand (not very often, if truth be told), Blue Eyed Pop was my riff of choice. I love the way Bjork soars over the top of the melody towards the end – “Something wonderful’s about to happen,” she sings. Magic.

Sugarcubes – Blue Eyed Pop

Better still was Coldsweat, the band’s second single. ‘Hot! Meat! Metallic! Blood!’ goes Einar. What he meant was anyone’s guess, but enough folk bought it to take it to Number 1 on the indie chart, if such a thing is a barometer of hip opinion.

Bizarrely, the band stuck a twangin’ countryfied version of Coldsweat as the last track on their patchy second LP, Here Today, Tomorrow Next Week! More Rawhide than skewed alt/pop, make of it what you will.

Sugarcubes – Hot Meat

My favourite Bjork solo track? That’s easy. All Is Full Of Love. Slow, sweeping and graceful, as cool as the land from where it was conceived. The track itself suffered from a multitude of twitchy, glitchy, contemporaneous remixes, but the straight-forward album version is the way to go.

I still say Bjork, as in ‘fork’. The same as I still rhyme Brett ‘n Bernard’s old band with ‘bread’ rather than ‘played’. It’s a Scottish thing.

Tell yer pals:

Tell yer pals:

Tell yer pals:

Tell yer pals: