Month: August 2024

Live!

Give Forever

Craig McAllister

Those first few Oasis singles…that debut album…Some Might Say and Acquiesce and two sensational nights on Irvine Beach sandwiched in-between Definitely Maybe and Morning Glory… only a middle-aged internet bore with too much time on his hands (his hands) would deny the draw of the Gallaghers in 2024.

Lest we forget, but Cigarettes And Alcohol (first heard via a free NME tape), Live Forever, Rock ‘N Roll Star, Slide Away and half a dozen other gargantuan tunes came howling through 1994’s ether like the Fab Five Horsemen of the Apocalypse, booting down barriers, barging through doors and boorishly heralding a new movement in music. Loud, insistent and vital, Oasis were the Sex Beatles for a musical youth who had experienced neither first-hand. Within the year, an overspill of a million other identikit guitar bands followed in their bow-legged swagger, the Freddie and the Dreamers to Liam and Noel’s Lennon and McCartney. ‘Any fooker can do this,’ they gobbed off to an inspired youth, and roused by the Gallaghers’ taste in cagoules and cocky northern (southern to us) self-belief, some of them actually did.

If you are a parent, you’ll be well aware that thirty years later they continue to inspire. Oasis, it seems, give forever. The young team around here are mad fer it. There’s not a local band within earshot (both the young and the not-so-young ones who really should know better by now) who hasn’t affected their postured arrogant stance or shorn their hair (“but leave the sides, mate!“) or developed a shallow affection for the Beatles on the back of Liam and Noel’s actions. There are wee guys and girls right now, finding it surprisingly easy to crank out Cigarettes And Alcohol‘s T-Rex boogie on cheap Les Paul copies, or Epiphones if they asked Santa nicely enough. There are young guys this very moment in loose-fitting corduroy and comfy desert boots sidling up to too-high microphones in rehearsal rooms that once rang with a pre-Oasis hair metal racket, their over-elaborate voice and copied attitude a poor substitute for, y’know, actual singing ability. 

Cos unlike the (not so) great pretenders, Liam could sing. He could sing like fuck, as it goes. I’m not so sure he still can. At some point around 2000, when Oasis became a brand and not a band, he became a cartoonish parody of himself, all eeee-lonnggg-gay-teed vowels and gargle, his beak-nosed brother having perfected that open chord with bendy third string solo schtick to the point where he could trade insults with his younger sibling between verses, or sing the next song after Liam had skulked off at something he’d said. It’ll be interesting to see if Liam loses that daft hat he’s been wearing recently. Get The Hair out, Liam, and The Voice will return. It’ll be interesting too to see if Noel’s guitars have any fretboard wear lower than the top three strings.

If it ain’t broke, though, don’t fix it. Apart from the rhythm section, of course. Oasis ’25, it seems, will be just Noel and Liam and some similarly-attired and hair-styled musicians with much better chops than Guigsy, Bonehead et al. I wonder what they were thinking as the news filtered through their Amazon delivery van’s radio at 8 o’clock this morning?

“This is for all the girls,” said Liam in Irvine all those years ago, announcing Slide Away. And, as Noel eked out the opening hammer-on (it’s Don Henley’s Boys Of Summer, by the way), he pointed somewhere towards the middle distance of the audience. “Especially her over there.” Those shows introduced Don’t Look Back In Anger to a live audience for the first time, Noel ringing out those open chords with one of yer actual George Harrison’s plectrums. And both nights kicked off with the roaring Acquiesce, the Gallaghers’ love song to one another and the song which they should see fit to open next summer’s shows with.

Oasis – Acquiesce

“That’s another zero on the value of your record,” withered Alan McGee as he took a Sharpie to the cover of my 1st press (Damont) Definitely Maybe a few years ago.

The reunion thing isn’t really for me. It’ll be dynamically priced to Swift-ish proportions. You’ll be shoulder to shoulder in a field of bucket hats, miles from the stage. There’ll be piss throwing and other antisocial rubbish. You’ll be stuck behind a video screen, halfway between a mega queue for the bar and the bogs. With Kasabian as a support act. But for the young folk who want to see what all the fuss was about first-time around, I’m all for it. Mad for it, even. Had it been the Clash or whoever, I’d have been just as excited. And don’t kid yourself, you would have too.

For those old bores online who are acting as if the world has ended, watch them change their tune when the inevitable Talking Heads reunion is announced. Just wait.

Get This!

Beaucoup Beats

Craig McAllister

If it’s mind-expanding, widescreen electronica yr after, you need look no further than Underworld.

Not necessarily the dark and longform tracks that make up the album and associated singles around Dubnobasswithmyheadman, although everything surrounding that particular release is out of this world. Nor the airbrushed and spacious ambience that wraps itself tightly around that record’s follow-up, Second Toughest In The Infants, even if such a record would see you alright for a good few months of non-stop spinning and reappraising. And not even the fantastic, Donna Summer-filtering King Of Snake; a relentless headbanger in anyone’s urban dictionary, and then some.

In recent weeks I’ve found myself returning to and wearing down the groove on an already-worn b-side, golden plunder plucked from the racks of an Irvine charity shop, a rare feat these days when anything black, round, lacquer-cut and decent – that’s the key – has been snaffled by switched-on staff or overpriced to oblivion and left to grow tatty in the subsequent months.

For exactly £2, I picked up a well-spun copy of Bruce Lee, the fifth and final single released to promote third album (their fifth, really, if you’re being picky) Beaucoup Fish. Releasing a fifth single from an 11-track record seems a wee bit desperate, so it’s not surprising to note that the single – even in its remixed form – didn’t actually chart. How many copies were pressed is anyone’s guess. Not as many as Born Slippy or Rez, that’s for sure, but for anyone who invested at the time, they were rewarded not only with the glitchy, twitchy and in-your-face, filling-loosening Micronauts remix of Bruce Lee, but also, on the record’s b-side, the groovy and propulsive (and bit of a mouthful) Salt City Orchestra remix of album opener Cups.

Underworld – Cups (Salt City Orchestra’s Vertical Bacon Vocal)

Oh man! This is where the record’s real action is. It’s light and airy, audible sunshine compared to the electrical storm brewing on the a-side, properly forward-pushing and jet-streamed pre/post-club music that would sound equally tremendous in an amber-lit West End bar as it would soundtracking an August sunrise in San Antonio.

It’s the bassline that hits first. A walking and pulsing half-cousin of Beat It with better manners. Then it’s the synth washes and faint hit of saxophone that grab you. Or is it a girl’s voice? It’s hard to say, it doesn’t really hang around. And it’s the hi-hat action, spraying away like a can of Ellnette in the seventies, never ending and hypnotic, your head bobbing and limbs loosening in subconscious time to its airy spritz. It’s also the pinging electro squiggles sprinkled on top, a marker of loads of late ’90s electronic music, but far more tastefully administered here. It’s also the way everything drops out towards the end and the potential of a whole other tune appears teasingly before the fade-out. Most of all though, it’s those trademark stream of conscious vocodered vocals, half-whispered lyrics, that, as it turns out, are wholly suggestible and full of eyebrow-raising double-entendres whenever you can make them out. Worth a Google in their own right, if that’s your sorta thing.

Underworld, as they continually prove to be, are somewhat timeless. Expand yr mind.

 

Hard-to-find

Sample Minds

Craig McAllister

Lagging behind the curve again, I’ve only recently read Themes For Great Cities, Graeme Thomson’s exquisitely researched and expertly written account of Simple Minds‘ early years. The book stretches from the band’s formation on Glasgow’s southside through their infatuation with Eastern Europe and closes on Don’t You Forget About Me, the Once Upon A Time album and imminent ubiquity, and, like all the best music books, it has you scurrying back to the music with new perspectives.

It’s those early albums that are most interesting to me and, I’d assume, you too, and Thomson leaves nothing unturned in his quest to unravel the song writing secrets. How exactly does a post-punk act from Glasgow arrive at I Travel? Or the Teutonic goosestep of This Fear Of Gods? Or Sweat In Bullet‘s chrome-coated punk-funk? While their peers constructed traditional verse/chorus/solo songs, Simple Minds preferred instead to coax and tease free-flowing soundscapes from straight out of the ether, seemingly structure-free, but yet not.

Singer and de facto leader Jim Kerr freely admits he can’t play an instrument, so he’d sit in the corner as the band jammed on a riff for hours at a time, a turned-to-the-wall ghetto blaster recording it all. When the band downed tools, his work would truly begin. He’d pore over the tapes, listening out for an interesting section or bass run, guitar riff or drum beat, hone in on it and return the next day with instructions for the band on what to play. While they got on with re-learning the tune, Kerr would sketch out a lyric and the songs would slow-boil their way into being. Painstaking and longform, it’s about as far away as possible from, say, someone like Ian McCulloch turning up to the Bunnymen’s rehearsal rooms with his ego and a near-complete Killing Moon.

Kerr’s jigsawing of parts reaped rewards. Much of New Gold Dream – the thinking man’s favourite Simple Minds album and you know it – was pieced together from snippets of extended jams, not that you could necessarily tell from listening to its sinuous, gossamer textures. Charlie Burchill might be the band’s guitar player, but he barely plays two chords in a row the entire time. Instead, he conjures up a light coating of feedback here, a sequence of sustained notes there, a Chic-inspired half riff or, as on the pop-smart Glittering Prize, a wobbling Jazz Chorus-ed refrain. Like no other guitar player before or since, Charlie leaves whole blank spaces of nothing, the band’s melody carried instead by shimmering synth or inventive drumming, Kerr’s hooks or, especially, Derek Forbes’ formidable, fluid bass. With the focus always on Kerr and Burchill, Forbes was left to quietly get on with his job away from the spotlight and it is he, when placed front and central to the mix, who is Simple Minds’ secret ingredient.

Simple Minds – Promised You A Miracle

On Promised You A Miracle, the band’s specifically written for the Top 20 hit, Charlie dazzles with echoing snatches of guitar in the verse before a sparkling and fizzing (and rare for him) solo, but it’s Forbes’ quivering and magic mushroom-powered playing that provides the song’s bedrock. After every chorus he judders and jolts the verse back into being, the band holding on to his higher than high coattails for dear life, the song’s keyboard motif grounding the listener with its familiar motif. Just how familiar though would depend on how clued up you were on your House music at the time.

Bad Girls – Too Through

In October ’81, Simple Minds found themselves in New York and listening to Kiss FM. Recently-recruited drummer Kenny Hyslop became obsessed with the slap-happy and frequently-aired Too Through, recording it on his Walkman and playing it non-stop on the tour bus. Seeking more jamming inspiration, the band played along to it at their next writing session and, latching on to its keyboard hook while ignoring Jocelyn Brown’s self-assured vocal, constructed Promised You A Miracle around its disciplined yet funky framework.

Although you’ll spot Miracle-ish parts to Too Through (or should that be Too Through-ish parts to Miracle?), the end result is nothing like the inspiration. Proof, should it be needed, that that the very best bands take disparate influences and turn them into something that is uniquely them.

If you too are slow to catch on to the best music books, you’ll probably now want to read Graeme Thomson’s Themes For Great Cities. You can find it in all the usual places, but especially from the link via here.

 

 

Hard-to-find

Art Drop

Craig McAllister

The drop. In dance music it’s the anticipation created by the build up. The speeding rattle of the snare. The increasing intensity of the beat. The frenzied hysteria of the vocal. And then…pause. And whack! If you’ve done yr job right, the track lifts off beyond the stratosphere and out into deep space. Euphoria is fever pitch. Synapses jangle and race like bumper cars around the body. Limbs reach outwards and upwards and we. Have. Lift off. Chemical Brothers. Fat Boy Slim. Faithless. Especially Faithless. All masters of the drop.

It’s a bit different in London’s Tate Modern. Its vast, echoing atmosphere might be exactly the sort of cavernous space where filling-loosening beats and skyscraping vocals wouldn’t be out of place at all, but someone decided three decades ago to fill it with art you look at rather than dance to…and unwittingly created a visual version of the dance drop.

Take the escalator to the second floor (the tension builds), enter Viewing Room 1 (anticipation strains on the invisible leash connected to your brain), browse the rows and rows of exquisite art (the synapses start to jangle) and then…Baaam! There’s the drop.

First, it’s Georges Braques‘ ‘Mandora‘. That’s yr actual cubism, mate, in muted browns and ochres. It’s over 100 years old but still looks like the future. The guitar in the painting rings and sings and vibrates out of its actual canvas, pulling you in for a closer look, holding you there as you inspect its watery brush strokes, the detail in shaping the musician playing it and the sheer volume of sound they’re emiting. How do you go about painting something like that? Where d’you even start? What a skill to have.

Follow your nose and instinct and you’ll soon find something else worthy of special attention. There’s a whole slew of Joel Meyerowitz prints of New York; some atmospheric post-911 shots, some random photographs of brownstones and stoops and interesting people, then…Thwack!! A photograph of a Cape Cod porch at sunset that has all the isolated soul and melancholic tone of a Hopper painting. Really sensational. You’ll need to see that for yourself though. I never photographed it. Live in the moment and all that.

Turn the corner into another open gallery space and there at the back wall is…KAPOW! a Jackson Pollock – Yellow Islands from 1952, as the information card next to it tells me.

We’ve all seen Pollocks, of course. I’ve grown up wiv ’em, mate (sniffs). You can thank the Stone Roses for that. It’s a large, wall-filling painting, Yellow Islands. Possibly not Pollock’s largest, and defintely not his best, but to truly appreciate it you first need to stand back and take it all in; muted browns and ochres (again, funnily enough), but with dark inky blues and deep sea black chucked aggressively across the top of it. Move closer in and you’ll begin to appreciate the dripping white spatters of paint that run in random rivers across it. Closer still and little streaks of red appear, afterthoughts perhaps, or mistakes left in. There are too occasional light-catching sparkles – sand, I really hope. I read years ago that Jackson was fond of topping off his artwork with a sprinking of sand or ground down glass, and sometimes even a light spraying of his own blood. Maybe that’s what the red was. That would be wishful thinking though.

There’s more.

There’s (bam) a Magritte and (baam!) a Matisse and (baaam!!) a Picasso and then, baaaam!!! this absolute cracker, by an artist the luddite in me must admit to never having heard of. It’s called ‘View From The Window, Vienna‘ and was painted 99 years ago by Marie-Louise Von Motesiczky, an Austrian-born British painter.

It’s a beauty, eh? Thick oil applied to canvas, buildings topped in a dusting of snow and ice, an everyday view from a window captured forever.

The drop isn’t ordinarily a thing that guitar bands get their knickers in a twist over, but The Bug Club seem to have it sussed. Great band, The Bug Club. Take the repetitive intensity of the Velvet Underground, add some of Jonathan Richman’s mid-tempo nerdy and spoken-word swagger, add a generous portion of self-deprecating humour and then…pause. And screeee! Stomp on the Big Muff – or, as Sam did when they played Irvine at the start of ’23 – swiftly nudge the overdrive dial on the amp as far as it will go and fry those six strings in needles-in-the-red fuzz. Exactly 1 min 7 seconds for the drop…

The Bug Club – It’s Art

It’s Art is one of many great tracks on Green Dream In F#, the second album proper from one of the most prolific bands around; one-off singles, 12″ ‘singles’ with an album’s worth of unlisted bonus tracks on the flip side, limited live releases, compilation albums of early singles – of which there are many. They’re only four years old, The Bug Club, but already they’re a completist’s nightmare.

Thrillingly, they’ve recently signed to Sub Pop. Their non-stop touring might now be more manageable on a bigger budget. They might find themselves on a decent support slot. They might even crack some sort of chart or other. What’s clear is that they’ll keep writing great wee songs. And great wee short songs. Upwards of two minutes veers into nosebleed territory for the band. No frills, no fat. Guitar, bass and drums played with sonic flair, the see-sawing, call-and-response vocals singling them out as uniquely different from the others.

It’s all art, innit.