Month: June 2023

Get This!, Live!

Monkey Business

Craig McAllister

Imagine the music. Skittering, pistol shot Axelrod drum breaks. Staccato Fender bass. Thelonious Monk piano trills. Elegant woodwind and sweeping strings that swoop to an unresolved Bacharach chord and hang motionless in expectant dead air.

Now picture a scene sound-tracked by the music above. A private jet at high altitude. Only two passengers and a pilot. One of the passengers is greying at the temples. His sandpaper stubble is silvery against his Mediterranean complexion. He has a laptop open and is logged in to an official-looking government intranet. His much younger companion leans in to take a closer look at the data on the screen, perhaps even to afford him a peck on the cheek. In one swift move – and as the music moves up a subtle gear – she injects him with a poison, sees that he’s immediately dead and copies the laptop’s information onto a memory stick. Before the pilot knows what’s happened, she’s kicked open the jet’s emergency exit and – as that Bacharach chord hovers around the emptiness – jumped, her parachute billowing out high above a sparkling ocean and a waiting yacht far below. As a pair of tripleted musical stabs jar the senses, the camera cuts back to the inside of the jet, first to the passenger, a trickle of blood coursing thinly from his mouth and around a dimple on his square jaw, then to the pilot caught in the terror of knowing he has a dead VIP and no door on the side of his jet.

The music levels out and the singing begins.

“Don’t get emotional, that ain’t like you…”

The camera is back on the female assassin, now on board the yacht, shaking her hair free and embracing another man – similar age, similar ethnic origin to the man she’s just murdered – as the jet lazily spirals out of the background sky and straight into the ocean, a discarded silken parachute the only sign that anything might be amiss.

Back in the mid ’90s, at the height of the easy listening fad, any group who could name you two Andy Williams’ numbers was busy lobbying the Bond franchise in the hope that they’d be asked to provide the next Bond theme. Pulp, St Etienne and Blur were just three of the acts of the time who embraced strings, clever arrangements and space for the brass to breathe and recorded Bond-esque songs, clearly with an eye on the prize. The tracks though would ultimately end up on b-sides, the none-less-Bondish Sheryl Crow coming up on the outside as the rank outsider to take the spoils. Now, I don’t know if someone has tipped Arctic Monkeys the nod that the Bond people might be looking for submissions, but you’ve got to think that Alex Turner and co had Bond (and Bowie – a lot of Bowie) on their collective minds when Arctic Monkeys recorded There’d Better Be A Mirrorball and released it as the, eh, trailer for their current album The Car.

Here, listen again…

Arctic Monkeys – There’d Better Be A Mirrorball

“You’re getting cynical and that won’t do…”

Arctic Monkeys took a whole load of flack over the weekend for having the nerve to fill most of their Glastonbury headline set with music from their two most recent records, records oozing with melodies that spool slowly outwards from the backing music as freely as the loose threads on the designer suits they’ve taken to wearing nowadays. Records jam-packed with AOR sophistication and adult arrangements, nuance and nods to grown-up influence: Bowie’s Station To Station, Serge Gainsbourg, Scott Walker, the aforementioned David Axelrod. Records that will still provide fresh listening experience a year, three years, ten years from now. But records nonetheless that have outgrown the thrashed out rock riffs and knee-trembling rhythms married to rapid-fire observational lyrics of the band of yore.

Brilliant as those records and that band was, Arctic Monkeys have gone and grown up, and many of their fans – the casual fans, you’d have to say, the ones who like the debut album and a couple of singles and were looking forward to seeing them for the first time – just didn’t get it. And nor did some of the ‘real music fans’ online who only the day previously had been applauding brave Peter Gabriel for filling half of his current live set with brand new material. You can debate the ‘correct’ way to headline Glastonbury but I for one am delighted that Arctic Monkeys have chosen to self-indulgently plough their own rich furrow with nary a thought for their doubters. Where to next?

Get This!, Kraut-y

Dancing With Myself

Craig McAllister

The watusi was a brief dance craze of the early ’60s, popularised through surfing music. To dance the watusi, you didn’t need a partner. You planted your feet firmly on the ground as if standing carefully yet confidently on your surfboard and then, with arms outstretched and palms facing down, flailed those upper limbs as if drowning in time to the beat of the music. The more carefree watusi dancer might also bob their head or even shake their hair as the beat continues. If you’re hearing “Wwwwwwipe-out!!!” and picturing half a dozen enthusiastic teenagers windmilling wildly on a palm-tree lined beach, you’ve got the idea.

Watussi (with 2 Ss) is also the name of the opening track on Harmonia‘s Musik Von Harmonia. Quite how you’d dance to it though is anyone’s guess.

Harmonia – Watussi

Like most experimental German music of the era (1974), Watussi ploughs a distinctly non-conformist six minute ambient path. It fades in on a looping soundbed of early pioneering synths and fuzz-heavy electric guitar, its ping-ponging melodies and skeletal processed drum beat making for a longform, hypnotic and repetitive track. In Krautrocksampler, his bible of the times, Julian Cope highlights the track’s flat-footed drum machine and otherworldly qualities as markers of true progressive spirit and derring-do.

Watussi is a track you can easily get lost in, a definite marker of what is to follow on the rest of the record,  Disciplined to the max, the three musicians responsible for its woozy and otherworldly soundscape play only for one another, intuitively locked in to its steady, broken pulse. Not bad at all for a collective whom Neu’s Michael Rother pulled together with a view purely to flesh out the live sound of his band. One session in and Rother realised he had created something unique and worth pursuing.

Listen once and you may be confused. Underwhelmed even. Listen more than once and Watussi begins to make sense. You might find yourself immersed in its bubbling, propulsive bass for a bit, or the 5 note motif that loops continually while the soundbed shapeshifts disorientatingly below, or its occasional long-noted electric guitar that fades in and out between the huge washes of fuzz synth that envelope everything in a white noise fug.

In 1974’s musical landscape of Wings, Wombles and Candle In The Wind, Harmonia‘s Watussi floats alone and dances with itself; out-there rock for out-there people. A clear influence on groups such as Boards Of Canada and Stereolab, My Bloody Valentine and GLOK, it’s a near-50 year old track that sounds even now like it may have been beamed in from a far more cerebral and kosmische future. Dive in!

 

Get This!

Hi, My Name Is Stereo Mike

Craig McAllister

Vancouver, September 1997. We’re there on honeymoon, living in a downtown hotel with a revolving restaurant at the top, our midpoint between 5 days in Toronto and 3 nights at a log cabin/hotel combo in the up and coming resort of Whistler. Not quite yet the destination for rich spring breakers or the Winter Olympics committee, our cabin is right on the side of Blackcomb Mountain, exactly where the Olympic downhill skiing will be a few years later. Everything is untouched, pristine and brand new. Everything is shrinkwrapped – the sheets, the board games, the kettle, even the ‘Bears Roam In This Area‘ sign. The only things not clinging in film are the chipmunks who dart around looking for crumbs as soon as the doors are open (briefly – the bears!) to air the place. I’d like to go back again someday.

Anyway, back to Vancouver. We frequent this small deli every morning for bagels and coffee. Vancouver FM or whatever plays continually in the background, and each day when we’re there I hear a familiar song, a current and local ‘hot hit’. I’d heard it plenty of times that year, but something about the balmy late summer/early autumn weather and the fresh coffee and the cool, rounded Vancouverite accent of the hip waitress shines new light on a track that I always thought was good…good, but not great. Or maybe kinda great, but not grrrreat.

By the time we’re home from Canada, though, I think Bran Van 3000‘s Drinking In L.A. is just about the grrreatest track that year. 1997, remember, was the year of Bittersweet Symphony and Never Ever, of Lovefool and Mmm Bop, so it’s not to be taken lightly. You’re all scholars of pop, so you don’t need me to point out that Drinking In L.A. – like at least one of those tracks mentioned above – is one of the greatest little one hit wonders around.

Bran Van 3000 – Drinking In L.A.

Give us a ring-a-ding-ding, it’s a beautiful day…

It’s four minutes of jam-packed freshness with an awful lot going on, a magpied gathering of multiple mid ’90s genres, fed into the machine and recreated as quirky and hummable pop music. The crackling backbeat and distorted mic of the male vocal is pure slacker hip hop, Beck’s Loser replayed in the blazing sunshine of Venice Beach. The Snoop Dogg-borrowing lines – “Laaaid back! With ma mind on ma money and ma money on maaa mind! Blarin’ out the G-Funk, sippin’ on gin and juice!” – serve only to enhance this. But there’s also fuzz guitar. And fake radio phone ins. And gorgeously woozy woo-ah-ooh vocals. A lot, repeat, A LOT! going on.

Behind the female vocal – a vocal that might’ve fallen straight offa non more a ’90s signifier than Jagged Little Pill – there are subtle exotica tinges and catcall and response lines. We did nuthin’, absolutely buttkiss that day, “Get your ass out of bed!” he said I’ll explain it on the way, You could catch ’em all bitchin’ at the bar, I got the fever for the nectar know the payback will be later…

There’s a proper tale of looming existential angst unfolding somewhere between the punny lyrics – Hell-A, Hell-Hell-A and the the on-trend beats and on-the-one bass. Then there’s the song’s hooky chorus? Bridge? Resolution? What the hell am I doin’ drinkin’ in L.A. at 26? Who knows what you call it, but I bet you’re singing it right now.

Gone but not forgotten, Live!

Fab Fortress

Craig McAllister

This photo of George Harrison appeared last week, initiating from Paul McCartney’s private collection and whizzed onto the internet, never to be private again.

It comes from an unseen collection of Beatles photographs, lost and found and gathered together in a new book – and later in the year, to be an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery – all taken by McCartney over a 3 month period as Beatlemania took hold in Liverpool, London, Paris and during their life-changing US tour in ‘64; the limousine chases, the Ed Sullivan Show, the girls outside the hotels, all of that.

McCartney calls it a Beatles’-eye view of the world and it certainly places the viewer in the epicentre of what must’ve been a fucking great time for four virile and desired young men with the entire planet orbiting around them.

The picture of George was taken in the Miami sunshine. The use of colour film is no mistake, McCartney wanting to impress just how welcome the Florida sun was on the back of the harsh and monochrome New York winter. The composition too is deliberate, George’s female companion framed from the neck down, perhaps to protect her identity, but more to shine the spotlight on George.

Even in his shades and bare chest and surrounded by palm trees, George is still very much a Beatle. He might’ve shorn the Douglas Milling Beatle suit but the hair and enigmatic expression remains. Being a Beatle is a full time job, it says, even when mysterious young bikini-wearing women are bringing you generous measures of scotch and cola as you smoke yourself silly.

Is it any surprise that Paul would later write about flying in from Miami Beach, BOAC and not getting to bed last night? In Paul’s photo, George has a slightly self-aware ‘I can’t believe I’m getting away with this’ look on his young face. I bet he quickly got used to it.

The shot of the cameramen in Central Park is interesting, McCartney the hunted turning hunter to capture two of the press guys who’ve chased him and his three pals around New York City non-stop since they landed.

I love poring over period-defining photos of New York. Since being there last October, I’ve had a bit of a thing for bleached out and grainy Polaroids of Greenwich and Brooklyn in the ‘70s and ‘80s. From the buildings in the background, I can tell that the photo of the press above is taken next to the Central Park pond at the East 59th Street entrance. It’s a famous photo shoot stop-off location. Both Dylan and Mick Jagger have had their pictures taken here. Coincidentally too, it’s not far from the Dakota Building where Lennon would live out his final years.

I’ve found myself somewhat obsessed over the photo taken out of the back window of The Beatles’ limousine, a photo snapped from literally inside the Eye of the Storm, as the book is called. It shows the Beatles chased by a handful of determined fans as they speed away from the Plaza Hotel on New York’s Fifty-Eight Street, cutting across 6th Avenue, just a stone’s throw from that Central Park photo shoot.

Chased by winter coat-wearing youngsters, all mile-wide smiles and mad intent, The Beatles zip away, up a slight incline and never to be glimpsed in the flesh by these admirers again. Looking back over his shoulder at the scene The Beatles have somehow found themselves involved in, McCartney clicks the shutter on his camera. A great photo. The wide-grilled and chromed cars are a portal to a time gone by, the purpose of the buildings they drive past now different – trust me, I’ve checked. ‘I’ve been there!’ I think, and straight away I’m Google-mapping the exact location. ‘I wonder if I’ve stepped on the exact spot where that Beatles car was?’ Anything to align you in anyway at all with the Fabs, y’know? Turns out I haven’t. Next time I’m in New York I must try and remedy that.

The Beatles – All My Loving (Ed Sullivan Show, 9th Feb 1964)

Ringo sets up on the Ed Sullivan show, Feb 9th 1964. Photo by Paul.

McCartney counts us in with a “One, Two, Three, Four, Five!” and off we go, 73 million Americans hearing – seeing! – The Beatles for the first time. Despite the hysterical screams anytime the three front Beatles step up to sing in close harmony, there’s a spectacular melding of voices around the 1.16 mark, just after rockin’ George’s twanging guitar break. Two voices (Paul and George), one golden moment, the protagonists not distracted in the slightest by the madness unfolding around them.

Buy the book, support the artist.

Cover Versions, demo, Hard-to-find

How Come I Love Them More?

Craig McAllister

Some songs are just there, like staircases and steering wheels and stainless steel sinks, as much a part of the fabric of life as to be ubiquitous and ever-present, unnoticed or unthought of and maybe even taken for granted. Blue Monday might be one. Come On Eileen certainly is. To this list I’d add The Bluebells’ Young At Heart.

The Bluebells  – Young At Heart

You’ve heard Young At Heart, what, a hundred and seventeen times? A thousand and twenty four times? Seventeen million times in your life already? It’s just always been there, playing on an endless 40 year loop across the airwaves, a ‘hits station’ producer’s golden gift from the musical gods. Show in a slump and needing a toe-tapping lift? Reach for Young At Heart and its melancholic countrified hoedown will retain the listenership and have them baking tin bashing or dashboard beating all the way to the news and travel.

Young At Heart might seem overplayed to you. Or even stale. And you, yeah you, ya cloth-eared weirdo, you might never have liked it in the first place. You might never want to hear it ever again. But trust me though. You do.

I’ve been floating since Sunday night when, at St Luke’s in Glasgow, The Bluebells encored their album launch show with it. Well, of course they did. We may all have been there to hear the bulk of The Bluebells In The 21st Century played out live, with an extended Bluebells featuring the cream of Scottish musicianship – Mick Slaven! Douglas McIntyre! Campbell Owens! John McCusker! – but there was no way Bobby or the McLuskey brothers were going to deny their audience an airing of Young At Heart. Or I’m Falling. Or Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool. Or a soul-stirring Cath. That ‘Cath/You led me up the garden path‘ line has thrilled me since it first leapt from the grooves of the well-thumbed copy of Sisters I borrowed from Irvine library sometime in the mid ’80s and I was waiting expectantly for it to be delivered on Sunday night. It didn’t disappoint.

Young At Heart though. Ken, David and Bobby acknowledge its place in their history. With the band’s name spoken on the airwaves with every passing play and still in the collective conscience of an increasingly attention-span ravaged nation, it’s perhaps the reason The Bluebells are even still making records.

Young At Heart is a song that’s been very kind to its writers. Maybe not ‘Sting owns a vineyard in Italy’-levels of kindness, but I’d wager that Bobby Bluebell and Bananarama’s Siobhan Fahey, London Records’ golden couple at the time of its writing (and latterly Bobby Valentino, the player who provides the song’s signature violin motif and whose session fee was substantially upgraded years later to a writing credit) have done fairly well from it’s continual presence.

Bananarama  – Young At Heart

Bananarama’s version was the first to be released, a deep cut in the parlance of nowadays, and one that you’ll find on their debut album Deep Sea Skiving. It follows the blueprint of the original Bluebells’ demo; slightly reserved chorus, one dimensional verse, a bit flatly produced even, but whereas Bananarama half-heartedly do their best Supremes’ impression and don’t really know where to go with it, The Bluebells original version is a totally realised slice of pop/soul – and, as it turns out, a bit of an undiscovered beauty.

The Bluebells  – Young At Heart (demo)

It’s got that talc-dusted northern backbeat. Soaking wet slapback funk guitars. There are squelches of Rip It Up electro-synth woven between the words. Live, it was sometimes performed (like many bands of the time) with a stabbing brassy rash of Jam Trans Global Express horns. The whole thing is speed-freak Dexys hacked into the Wigan Casino’s electrical circuit and spat out in Glasgow’s West End. Essential listening, it goes without saying, and almost as thrilling as the masterpiece they eventually released.

Imagine writing a song that still resonates with anyone who hears it over 40 years later. Imagine! There’s not a songwriter on the planet who wouldn’t kill for a song like Young At Heart. Cherish it.