Month: May 2017

Alternative Version, Cover Versions, Gone but not forgotten

How Does Bob Marley Like His Doughnuts?

Craig McAllister

Wi’ jam in, obviously.

But everyone knows that.

With an extreme burst of lethargy I managed to stretch for the laptop, determined to commit this week’s musical musings to virtual print, despite my flagging limbs and sweaty heid telling me otherwise. Outside, balls bounce-bounce-bounce to the point of major annoyance. Kids scream with excitement as water is scooshed from someplace unknown. Lawnmowers with engines in various states of poor health noisily scalp my neighbours’ front and back gardens. Not quite what Joni Mitchell had in mind when she was titling one of her albums ‘The Hissing Of Summer Lawns‘ but then, this is (nearly) Irvine, Ayrshire, and not Irvine, California.

This heat! Melting minds, slowing the pace, turning everyone wabbit. Good Scottish word, wabbit. It means extreme tiredness, unable to function, total exhaustion. Everyone though is smiling. Everyone. The good, the bad and the ugly. Out in shirt sleeves and last year’s shorts. Ill-fitting Old Firm tops, freshly inked limbs turning a pinker shade of transparent white in the Ayrshire sun. Taps aff on the building sites and sunburnt shoulders on the hard shoulders on the drive home from work. Big bellies oot and we don’t care. Summers here and the time is right for prancin’ in the street. To quote Van Morrison, wouldn’t it be great if it was like this all the time?

 

Exodus was Bob Marley‘s 9th album. The previous 8 are a fine mixture of occasionally Perry-produced bluebeat ska and herbal-infused political riddims, but album number nine was the big international breakthrough. Recorded in London following an attempt on Marley’s life in Jamaica, it’s the first truly mass-market appeal reggae album. Purists might rightly argue that it’s almost reggae lite, but the tunes therein still pack a filling-loosening bassy punch. The subtle emphasis on the Mayfieldish wah-wah pedal and the decision to push the brass section to the fore lends the album a more soulful feel. The whole thing is very laidback – there’s not a single ‘fast’ track amongst any of the ten – and it makes for a brilliant soundtrack to this heatwave we’re currently experiencing.

Side 2 is where all the big hitters are; Jammin’, Waiting In Vain, Three Little Birds and One Love/People Get Ready were all hit singles on both sides of the Atlantic. The track that gets my vote every time though is Turn Your Lights Down Low, the only track on the second side not to be released as a 45 and along with album opener Natural Mystic, the track most likely to top my non-existent list of favourite Bob Marley tunes.

Bob Marley & The Wailers – Turn Your Lights Down Low

It’s a cracker, isn’t it?

Bob Marley & The Wailers – Natural Mystic

If you listen carefully to this, you might just hear the scrape-scrape-scraping of Sting’s pencil as he writes out his blueprint for The Police. But don’t let that put you off.

Here’s Lauryn Hill doing one of those ghost duets that was all the rage a few years ago. Soulful, respectful and with added hip-hop flavourings. Lauryn would later go on to partner Rohan Marley, one of Bob’s sons. Broke my heart that did. I had high hopes for me ‘n Lauryn.

Bob Marley & The Wailers with Lauryn Hill – Turn Your Lights Down Low

To finish off, d’you know how The Wailers like their doughnuts?

 

I’m not sure, but, aye, I hope they like jam in too.

Jah like it? as Bob often said after one pun too many.

 

Alternative Version, demo, studio outtakes

Sticky Fingers

Craig McAllister

DERRR DAAANG!!!

Woof! Woof! Woof! Woof!

And off we go on the most thrilling song about shoplifting you’re ever going to hear. Stealing to live. Stealing to give. Stealing just because. “I enjoy stealing things, it’s a simple fact.” sings Perry Farrell in that helium nasal whine of his.

Janes Addiction – Been Caught Stealing

Janes Addiction rock. And not in a (gads) Red Hot Chili Peppers way. That word ‘rock’ brings to mind images of middle-aged men in designer ripped jeans. Accountants in band t-shirts and Rocha John Rocha leather jackets. The weekend bikers at Largs seafront. Those kinda guys. Livin’ the dream, safely, soundtracked by Def Leppard, Bon Jovi and all that rubbish.

Janes Addiction were (are?) skinny, itchy, disease-ridden junkies. Lowlife ne’er do wells. Manky jeans. Mankier hair. Battered, slept-in leather jackets. Damaged livers and syphilis givers. With a healthy Led Zep obsession, they re-booted riff rock for the pre-grunge generation. Been Caught Stealing is arguably their masterstroke. Certainly, it’s their best-known track. Anyone who tells you they don’t like Janes Addiction still likes Been Caught Stealing. It’s just a simple fact, to coin a phrase.

The bit in the middle is, crucially, when Janes not only rock, but roll. The drums, fantastic-sounding and grooving, the handclaps on the second beat, the rolling bassline, it’s a head-nodding breakdown that’ll never be bettered. Truly, it swings like Sinatra with a 7 iron.

Here they are on the Late Show, the precursor to the long-past-its-best Later….With Jools Holland.

Perfect! If The Muppet Show had been briefed with creating a gonzoid, disfunctional, rockin’ band with a penchant for PVC ‘n leopard print, they’d have created exactly this. The anti rock star at the front – check those less-than-perfect mercury-filled teeth during the close ups, his voice drenched in echoey delay for added whine….a bass player and guitarist, both lost in their own worlds, all hair ‘n sunglasses ‘n bangles ‘n beads ‘n casually fired-off lightning bolts of alt rock….a bare-chested drummer who out-Animals The Animal….Perfect!

Here’s a terrific studio outtake of the same track, acoustic-ish with added sc-sc-sc-sc-sc-scatting for free.

Janes Addiction – Been Caught Stealing (Studio Out-Take, 1989)

Double Nugget, Gone but not forgotten

In-Between Go-Betweens

Craig McAllister

No writing recently as I’ve spent the past week away on a school residential trip. Well, 4 schools’ trips to be exact. It’s the final hurrah before the P7s leave their lofty position as top dogs of their respective primary schools and enter the local secondary as the smallest fish in a much bigger pond. The trip is organised as a bonding session, as a way of getting to know the chancers and cheek merchants who’ll form your peer group for the next 4 years at least. It was a great trip, all be told, my 6th tour of duty at the same place and, as before, a trip like none of the previous ones. I sat last night like a burst baw, beer in hand and hardly bothering to drink it.

Despite the fact that you’re most definitely very responsible for these children 24 hrs a day, every day for a school week, and you’re in their company from the moment the first early riser surfaces (6.00am was this week’s record, though it was no later than 7 on the others), until the last laugh has echoed down the dormitory corridor at 11.30pm, it is a very enjoyable week. My personal highlight was yesterday morning when we went out as a school group and sped across the Firth Of Clyde on a handful of speedboats. A pod of dolphins had followed our procession and at one point, one of the dolphins swam alongside one of the boats. The kids were able to lean overboard and touch it, much to their delight (and the disappointment of the others who’d found themselves on the ‘wrong’ boat).

The instructor driving the boat asked me if we’d prefer to go and see the seals next or head further round and push the vessel to the limits of its speed. “Can’t we do both?” I was thinking, although I replied, “Whatever you think’ll be best….the kids’ll enjoy either.”

“Easy come, easy go,” came the reply.

And with that, an earworm was born. And it’s been my earworm ever since.

As it turned out, we did do both; we zipped across the top of a blustery channel before thrillingly and somewhat dangerously sharply turning 270 degrees to head for the rocks where the seal colony lived. My knuckles were white but I had GW McLennan’s tune spinning in my head as we headed for the seals. “I see my friends on fire….I might even have struck the match,” And there they were, playing up to the nautical tourists like well-trained zoo animals, the wee ones appearing and disappearing from the water, heads like black Labradors, the big fat one seemingly slobbed on the highest rock until we floated closer and it belly flopped into the oily sea. “You gotta take the moon from the trees, you gotta hide it in your room…”

We then turned again and our skipper edged forward into full throttle. There was an audible gasp for breath as the speedboat hit light speed, children gripping just that wee bit tighter than before. And still that tune played in my head. Weird! “You gotta hold it til it burns, you gotta make it easy come, easy go…” Even a sudden, unexpected mouthful of salt water couldn’t stop it.

When I got home last night, and the children and missus had been kissed and hugged and the dust had settled on the stories to tell and the washing had been put on and the case returned to the loft and the beer was in hand, the next thing I did was reach for Teenage Fanclub’s recent version. It was spun to within an inch of its life for about 40 minutes, one play after another, until my mind was rested. It’s a great version; faithful to the original, delivered by Gerry and wrapped in honeyed harmonies from Norman.

Sadly, no studio version remains available in mp3 format. You’ll need to have a copy of the fairly limited ‘I’m In Love’ 7″ if you want to hear it in all its warmly-produced glory. There is however, a rather good live version doing the rounds, recorded at last December’s Barrowlands show.

Teenage Fanclub – Easy Come, Easy Go (Live at Barrowlands, 3.12.16)

As a studio version, it could sit very easily on any of TFC’s stellar albums, especially last year’s ace ‘Here‘ LP. It could also sit nicely on a Lightships release, should Gerry decide once again to step away from Fanclub duties and go solo for a bit. He’d certainly be made very welcome to do so.

Indeed, Easy Come, Easy Go was the product of a solo record to begin with. Grant McLennan’s first output since the split of The Go Betweens (they’d reform briefly a decade or so later, before McLennan’s untimely death) was the Watershed album. It’s a record I’d never heard until I backtracked from Teenage Fanclub’s b-side and heard the original for the first time. In all honesty, The Go Betweens, as pleasant and melodic and literate as they are, didn’t really do that much for me. I appreciate them ‘n all, I just wasn’t crazy about them. For this, see also Belle & Sebastian. But I digress…. A solo record by someone from a band who I thought were just OK was never going to be high on my list of ‘must hears’. More fool me.

GW McLennan – Easy Come, Easy Go

I dare say it’s a terrific LP, packed full of Antipodean jangling pop, although as I’ve reasoned above, it needs proper investigating before I’m fully qualified to really say so. In its original form, Easy Come, Easy Go sounds exactly like a Teenage Fanclub track even if, when it was written in 1991, the Fannies were still favouring Marshall stacks over Fender Twin Reverbs and were more akin to fuzzy Ravenscraig rockers than the Bellshill Beach Boys they were still to become. Certainly, Watershed as a whole and Easy Come, Easy Go in particular are clear influences on the TFC sound. And for that I really should sit up and take more notice.