Author: Craig McAllister

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Hard-to-find

Hope Springs Eternal

Craig McAllister

Glasgow 3-piece Dead Hope is something of an enigma. A proper underground band, you can Google them all you want but you’ll find little in the way of a band promo shot, official video, logo or any of the regular stuff that, for almost all other bands, is as much a part of the machine as the music itself. Google them though and you will find a link to their Bandcamp page where you can listen to/download/buy their debut album Songs From the Second Floor. It’s a terrific album packed full of short, sharp and angry blasts, Husker Du by way of Sonic Youth over 10 songs in just over half an hour. If you’re a regular here you may remember I’ve written about it before. Googling Dead Hope will also throw up a handful of links to reviews of their live shows. The piece that follows will hopefully be another for the Google analytics bots to link to.

Scott McLuskey of Dead Hope (c) Kerrin Carr

Dead Hope played the tiny Harbour Arts Centre in Irvine on Friday night. It’s a seated venue, with seats on three sides of a floor space where the band plays. There’s not a stage in sight. The only people standing are the musicians. As a venue it’s perfect for acoustic nights and travelling theatre groups. It’s not a room normally conducive to hosting noisy post-punk acts, yet Dead Hope made it their own.

As befits a band with little in the way of self-promotion, they requested no lights other than the down lighters behind the drums. Previous gigs in the venue (I’m part of the team that puts them on) have seen any number of acts demand all manner of spotlights here, uplighters there, blue washes in the third number etc etc. Not Dead Hope. “No lights, please.” As the last notes of the support act had faded to a feedbacking hiss, Dead Hope vocalist Scott McLuskey quietly draped the amps, the drumkit, the mic stand, effect pedals and the floor with ropes of twinkling fairy lights. “The Devil is in the detail,” as they sing on album opener Pigs.

Picture of stage set ‘borrowed’ from Scott McKluskey’s Twitter feed

It was ethereal. Womb-like, even. Certainly, when the band took to the ‘stage’, you felt as if you were inside their wee world, audience and band as one. It was a perfect set-up. When they started playing, it was even better.

Dead Hope at the HAC, Irvine 6.4.18 (c) Paul Camlin

Dead Hope sound like a Panzer attack coming over the hill. Brutal, relentless and unforgiving, they make an almighty noise for a trio. The signs are there on the album of course, but played live, the songs leap off the fretboards like sparks from a welder’s blowtorch. Driven by Keith Martin’s machine-like drumming (think Stephen Morris at the wheel of Joy Division) and Andy Crone’s bulldog chewing a wasp bass, it’s up to Scott McLuskey to provide the vocals, the melody and the colour. It’s his guitar that sets Dead Hope apart from all others. Dead Hope love reverb. They love distortion. They love whacked-out echoes and dubby codas. McLuskey’s guitar (a vintage ’62 Fender Jag, I believe) provides these glorious textures.

Scott McLuskey of Dead Hope (c) Paul Camlin

Like all the best bands, and by this I mean the truly great bands who really matter (yer Clash and yer Joy Division and yer ‘Du and the likes), Dead Hope’s tracks blend seamlessly into one another. The album material  – Pigs, Swordz, Thieves & Vultures and Landslide being the pick of the bunch – plus the one or two new tracks they played stretches the set to around 45 minutes, but it’s a breathless rush, over and out in what seems like 5 minutes. As you watch McLuskey hunched and leaning as he screams into the mic, cardigan and stripey t-shirt hanging loosely behind his battered Jag, you can picture Kurt Cobain. Andy Crone, standing stock still ‘stage’ left, staring into the middle distance with his legs shoulder width apart (“I couldn’t see what I was doing!” he explains later) and the metronomic Martin behind his kit provide the solid balance.

Scott McLuskey of Dead Hope (c) Paul Camlin

As I type, one prominent indie label has expressed an interest in re-releasing Songs From The Second Floor and giving it the platform it deserves. In a world of poseurs and pretenders, it’s the least anyone could do. There’s no pretence with Dead Hope. They’ll place substance over style every time. Dead Hope don’t play live that often, so it’s all the more important that you go and see them when they do. They play every show with a ferocity and honesty that suggests it might be the last show they ever play. Don’t miss out.

Dead Hope – Landslide

Dead Hope plus road crew photographed superbly by this author. Borrowed from Scott McLuskey’s Twitter feed.

Find Dead Hope and follow them on social media.

Hard-to-find

Hit Record

Craig McAllister

Little Eva, she of The Locomotion and other bubblegum pop hits used to babysit for master songwriters Gerry Goffin and Carole King. One night she turned up covered in brusies and disclosed that she received regular beatings from her boyfriend. When Goffin and King asked why on earth she stayed with him, Eva told them in total sincerity that her boyfriend’s beatings were done out of *love for her. Shocked, they sat down and penned an uncomfortable classic.

He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss) was like nothing else the songwriting team had written. Goffin and King’s subject matter tended to focus on the highs and lows of teenage relationships; make-up songs (The Best Part Of Breaking Up Is When We’re Making Up), break-up songs (Take Good Care Of My Baby) and ‘what if’ songs (Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?) but never the delicate matter of domestic abuse. To take that subject and stick it in a pop song for Phil Spector to throw the kitchen sink at was very….well, what, exactly?

Can you imagine 80s hit makers Stock, Aitken and Waterman following up Kylie’s version of The Locomotion with a production line hit record cataloguing domestic abuse? Or one of Simon Cowell’s pop charges power ballading their way through similar themes, key changes, sweeping strings ‘n all? It’s unthinkable, but that’s the modern day equivalent, which is why Goffin & King’s decision to write the song and Phil Spector’s decision to record the song was nothing short of revolutionary. And a little bit stupid.

He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss) was given to The Crystals to record. Presumably, Phil felt he couldn’t give it to The Ronettes or he’d have had all sorts of accusatory fingers pointing at him. Quite ironic really, given how he treated Ronnie (or where he currently resides).

The Crystals – He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss)

Spector treated this song with (for him) a rare understatement. There are still reverberating walls of shimmering strings (when they see-saw their way in at the start of the second verse it’s unnervingly fantastic) and there’s multitracked female choirs in the background every other line, but (only after Spector had her do take after take to get the requisite downtrodden vocal) Barbara Alston’s main vocal line is stark and nervy. The creeping bassline only adds to the sense of unease. By the time the key change has arrived most listeners are well aware they’re listening to something that shouldn’t really be in a pop song, least of all a Spector production, which was until this point the audible equivalent of the American Dream in under 3 minutes.

Almost immediately Spector’s Wall Of Sound was met with a wall of outrage and the record was banned. Radio stations refused to play it, the record was quickly withdrawn and the only way to hear it, if you were brave enough, was on The Crystals’ He’s A Rebel LP.

Time hasn’t been kind to the song. The golden oldies stations that pump out wall-to-wall 60s hits will never play it, yet it’s there like the bad apple that can’t be thrown away. It’s an undeniable part of Spector’s terrific back catalogue but doesn’t appear on (m)any of the hit compilations, although it does find its chronological way onto the Back To Mono box set, the black yin to the sun-kissed golden yang of Spector’s output.

In 2012 Carole King expressed her regret at having a part in it. “I wrote the music to He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss). Obviously, I’m complicit in having written that song. I kind of wish I hadn’t written any part of that song, but Gerry wrote that lyric. … And I think in some ways – I’m only speculating – that for some women that may be the only manifestation of what they perceive as love. And that’s certainly true for the woman in that song. And you know, that’s all wrong. So, again, that’s one song I kind of wish I hadn’t had any part of writing.”

The song hasn’t quite been swept under the carpet though. Courtney Love and Hole did a particularly caustic version at many live shows for a while, Love ironically introducing it as a feminist anthem. Amy Winehouse, no stranger to disfunction and domestic abuse has often cited He Hit Me… as her favourite-ever song. And Spiritualized, never ones to miss a 60’s-influenced druggy reference point recorded She Kissed Me (It Felt Like A Hit) on their 2003 album Amazing Grace. It’s far more Iggy than Phil though, but you probably knew that already.

Spiritualized – She Kissed Me (It Felt Like A Hit)

*As an aside, Little Eva married that same boyfriend.

Hard-to-find

Lane Changer

Craig McAllister

Debris by The Faces is the band at their loosest yet least louche. It was written by Ronnie Lane, Faces’ bass player and, as would become apparent, the one Face capable of writing a song that didn’t celebrate their shallow, rock starry approach to life. Stay With Me,Cindy Incidentally et al are magic tracks, ideal for getting dressed to go out on a Saturday night or for a drive on the motorway if you’re feeling the need to creep beyond the speed limit, but Debris will bring you right back down to earth with a swell in your heart and a tear in your eye. A real Lane changer in every sense.

It’s the saddest song in the Faces’ livin’ and lovin’ back catalogue.

The following input us from the ever-reliable Marc Wishart.

Sorry, Craig, he says, but you’ve totally misread the song….

Written by Ronnie for his much-loved Dad, Stan, it’s a song about gaining a different perspective on life as you grow older. The titular Debris was the name of the local rag market.

(Thanks to Marc Wishart for the factual input.)

But I left you on the debris
Now we both know you got no money
And I wonder what you would have done
Without me hanging around

The Faces – Debris

Longer than the combined lengths of Ronnie Wood’s and Rod Stewart’s not insignificant hooters, it meanders beautifully on a bed of open-tuned, loosely-scrubbed acoustic guitar that allows Wood’s electric lead to wander all over the top at will. It’s this guitar playing that would see Ronnie confirm his transfer to the Stones where he still plays the perfect foil for Keith Richard’s five-string riffing. Indeed, with it’s early 70s, live in the studio, one-take feel, Debris could easily be a long-lost Stones classic.

It just about hangs together thanks to the glue created by Ronnie Lane and Rod Stewart’s terrifically layered twin vocal; Lane’s on lamenting lead, all effortless introspection, with Rod jumping in and out on the chorus with his perfectly-pitched gravelly harmonies. You might go so far as to say that Rod gives one of his best-ever vocal performances. The addition of his voice lifts an already-great track into a whole other level of brilliance. Of course, a decade later he’d be prancing around in leopard skin lycra and a yellow sun visor, putting ill-advised fashion and production before The Song, so you’d be best to appreciate Rod this way. If ever a vocalist betrayed his God-given talent, it’s good old Rod. I suspect you knew that already though.

Hard-to-find

Soul Stealers

Craig McAllister

Regi-regi. It’s a Jamaican phrase used to describe someone’s ragged clothes. By the end of the 1960s, when ska and bluebeat were in full flow, the phrase had morphed in to the singular reggae, used to describe the ragged, rough ‘round the edges music that was being created hourly in the studios around Kingston before blasting from all corners of Orange Street the same day. It might have been a wee bit rough around the edges, but there’s little in the way of pretence in reggae. It’s straightforward, honest and soulful, politically-charged dance music.

Unlike other musical genres, reggae in all its guises is a relatively young form of music. There were recording studios in Jamaica as far back as the 1950s, recording the local folk and calypso groups, but the ska and bluebeat sounds that would come to define the island’s musical heritage were still a decade or so away. When New Orleans jazz started to filter south to Jamaica, the locals began playing their own version, taking their cue from the freeform trumpet lines and sliding trombones of their North American counterparts. A new sound – ska –was created. The word ‘ska’ was taken from the sound the hi-hat made as it was played with frantic abandon on the off-beat – ‘ska-ska-ska-ska’. Seemingly overnight, Jamaicans had their own form of music.

It wasn’t until the locals started picking up American radio stations that things began to get a bit more interesting. The mid 60s soul scene transferred particularly well to the islands and, like a million other songwriters before and since, the local musicians were dab (or should that be ‘dub’?) hands at appropriating the best parts of the records they liked before turning them into tunes of their own. I’ve written before about this on Plain Or Pan, but to keep things on the one page, contrast and compare Aretha Franklin‘s loose ‘n funky Rocksteady with The Marvels track of the same name. Then listen to Sound Dimension‘s lightly toasted, fully roasted Granny Scratch Scratch. Talent borrows, genius steals, as I’m sure Noel Gallagher has said.

Aretha Franklin – Rocksteady

The Marvels – Rocksteady

Sound Dimension – Granny Scratch Scratch

Bucking the trend somewhat were the Staple Singers. They looked across the Caribbean at what was happening and decided to steal a riff for their own good.

Harry J Allstars – Liquidator

Nowadays, Liquidator is ubiquitous at football stadiums the length and breadth of the UK as a run-out tune for winners and losers from every division. Back at the end of the 60s, it was a quirky instrumental track, recorded by local producer Harry Johnson at his studio and played by the assorted musicians who happened to be around at the moment. Little did they know that back then, they’d be creating the sound of sunshine itself. It’s lilting melancholy never sounds anything less than fresh.

Over in the States, in a rare example of gamekeeper turned poacher, the Staple Singers lifted Liquidator‘s opening bass line and blast of brass wholesale before extending it into one of their most endearing tracks.

Eschewing the classic shimmer ‘n twang of Pop Staples’ heavily-reverend Fender Jazzmaster, they turned in a gospel-rich pop/soul classic. I suspect you know this already though.

Hard-to-find

Baby, You’re A Fool To Buy

Craig McAllister

So the Stones are Rolling out another world tour, a global corporation charging eye watering prices for the privilege of seeing them up close and personal.

The more affluent of ticket buyers, lucky them, might have the honour of watching the band from the same postcode as the stage.

The really affluent will populate some sort of Golden Circle where, for the price of a scabby semi in Saltcoats they’ll get to press the wrinkled flesh of some of our greatest rock stars after they’ve wheezed themselves off the stage.

The rest of the ticket-buying public will need to watch from afar, rockin’ their socks in the knowledge that they’ve ‘seen’ the Stones, albeit from one of the massive Jumbotrons that’ll be scattered a couple of kilometres either side of the stage. I Can’t Get No Satisfaction indeed.

This picture was doing the rounds amongst friends on social media over the weekend.

That’s just ridiculous. Look at the booking fee alone. It’s obscene. For that kinda money I’d be expecting a shot of Keith’s guitar. Maybe even an invitation to pop up on stage and crank out the riff to Start Me Up on his trusty old 5-string Tele. Perhaps even get to count jumpin’ Jagger in for the opening line. But to stand in the middle (if you’re lucky) of a rugby stadium with thousands of other light of pocket Stones fans, that’s just not on. It’s a real-life beggar’s banquet. Baby, you’re a fool to buy. Don’t do it, you’ll only encourage them.

It’s a tricky one though, isn’t it? The Stones are a proper, genuine heritage act, one of those bucket list acts that you need to tick off before it’s too late. We’ve lost Bowie and Prince in recent years, yet Keef, the riff that keeps on riffin’, keeps keepin’ on.

In 1990, my pal and I went to see them on the Urban Jungle tour at Hampden, “before (ho ho) it’s too late“. They were great ‘n all, romping their way through a set kissed with the greatest of Rolled Gold; Start Me Up, Satisfaction, Gimme Shelter, Tumbling Dice, Sympathy For The Devil. Everything you wanted to hear, in other words. If you’d told me though that the band would still have been a going concern 28 years later, I’d have laughed in your face.

I’d have given anything to have seen the Stones in their swaggering, shaggering prime. But on the Stones timeline of greatness I was barely out of nappies when they were in their pomp and at their peak. The first chance I had to see the Stones was in 1990. In 1990, 1972 and Exile On Main Street was less than 20 years prior. Yet at the time it was a whole other lifetime ago. “Oh, it must’ve been great to have seen the Stones 20 years ago“, we slevvered obliviously. I remember at the Stone Roses Alexandra Palace show in 1989, dancing giddily before the band came on to Sympathy For The Devil, the whole place doing the ‘whoo-whoos’ in some mass communion. “The old songs are the best!” we agreed, the way a late teen might rave these days about Loaded or Cigarettes & Alcohol. In comparison, I think I really did see the Stones in (almost) their first flush of youth.

When did gig tickets become so expensive? The Stones’ 1990 Hampden show was £20 (including vat, as you can see). My ticket was bought in person from the old Virgin Megastore on Union Street, and I’m pretty sure I wasn’t conned into paying any sort of booking/admin/licence-to-print-free-money fee. By comparison, that Stone Roses show at Alexandra Palace was just £8.50. U2 on the Joshua Tree tour a couple of years before was a part-time job killing £10. So £20 would’ve been a dear ticket in 1990, but in the scheme of things, not that expensive.

The argument’s there about touring being the only reliable source of income for bands these days but the Stones are taking the piss. Or are they? If the shows sell out, which they probably already are, are they pricing based on supply and demand? Or are they being greedy?

At some point down the line the No Filter tour will be celebrated as the highest grossing tour ever, outdoing yer U2s and yer Police and yer last Rolling Stones tour….It doesn’t make it right though.

Here’s Mick and co asking you the only question they need to know the answer to…

The Rolling Stones – You Got The Silver

Hard-to-find

Snow Can Do

Craig McAllister

The Beast From The East. Sounds like an Iron Maiden, Live In Japan album. It’s not the sort of name you would ordinarily give to a snowstorm, albeit one that has caused the fluid infrastructure of our country to career to a wobbly halt like a teenage band trying to end a song at their first rehearsal. Scenes of chaos unfold on the telly; cars in ditches, greyed-out motorways at a standstill, an AA man telling you not to travel. A vox pop-stopped random Glasgow bam on Buchanan Street informs us that “Canada can cope with far worse so why are my weans being sent home from school?” – all the usual stuff, really.

There’s a sound to snow falling; eerie and wooly yet comforting and cocooning. If it’s snowed through the night, you’ll know it even before you’ve pulled the curtain aside to confirm it. There might be a bright, white glare reflecting from the ground, creeping through the gap in the curtains giving the most fleeting of false impressions that you’ve awakened to a bright and sunny summer’s day. But you know. Call it a sixth sense, but you can feel it. And when you check, sure enough. There’s a fat, car-shaped snowy mould in place of the actual car you parked last night. The grass has been replaced by a blanket of rich, thick white. And the path! A footstep-free path is a beautiful thing. You don’t want to see it spoiled, but you’re sure as hell going to be the first to do just that.

The best records about snow sound like their subject matter.

Like Trashcan Sinatras‘ take on Randy Newman’s Snow. It has that eerie and wooly, comforting and cocooning sound. Listening to it, you’re taken to the safe haven of somewhere indoors, watching from a window while a leaden sky dumps its silent, heavy load on all below. Time takes on a whole new metre. You’re living inside a slow motion replay as softly descending basslines and gently beaten floor toms smother you, electric piano and a slide-into-the-ether wah-wah’d guitar giving you the wings that carry you up, up and away from suffocation. If Fleetwood Mac’s Albatross is the beating heart of summer, the Trashcans’ Snow is the womb of winter.

Trashcan Sinatras – Snow

I have a super-rare Japanese 7″ of this, an artefact that’s just about as beautuful as the sound that lies in the grooves therein. Just about.

On equal par with the Trashcans is The Leisure Society‘s The Last Of The Melting Snow. By happy coincidence it soundtracked the slow, determined commute to work this morning when it popped up quite unexpectedly on 6 Music. It’s a piano and string-led ode to leaving someone/somewhere for something new. Or, to be more to the point, it’s an ode about being dumped. That’s an unintentional snow reference right there. The Leisure Society’s Nick Hemming wrote the song after meeting up at Christmas with his long-term girlfriend whom he’d recently split from.

“I came back to Burton-on-Trent to see her, thinking we’d get back together, but she was getting ready to tell me she had a new boyfriend. I went back to London to find everyone had gone away for Christmas. So I spent New Year’s Eve sitting on the floor with a bottle of vodka, writing ‘The Last of the Melting Snow.’

And the days fade away. In no doubt, as I leave this town, I will not return.

The Leisure Society – The Last Of The Melting Snow

Jeez! It’s a heartbreaker alright. And with it’s waltz-time piano and plaintive voice, it even shares loose DNA with Neil Young’s Only Love Can Break Your Heart. Somewhat brilliantly, the song won Hemming an Ivor Novello nomination. The band and Hemming didn’t even have a record deal at the time, making Hemming the first unsigned nominee at the Novellos. Just for the record, he lost out to Elbow’s One Day Like This. For what it’s worth, I think the judges just about got that one wrong.

The Beast From The East. It’s a stupid name for a snowstorm really. Unlike Thundersnow. You know what you’re getting with that. Even if Thundersnow sounds like the title of a long-forgotten early 80’s live Ozzy Osbourne album.

Hard-to-find

Hooklines And Thinkers

Craig McAllister

In the first wave of punk’s angry snarl, I can only imagine Buzzcocks were a breath of fresh air. Not for them the stare-down-the-lens-of-the-camera Lydon sneer or the guttural, phlegmy Strummer howl. Instead, Pete Shelley stuck to his Mancunian roots and inflected/infected his vocal with a camp twist, one eyebrow permanently arched while stealing side-long glances at the camera like a not-that-hard-to-get Saturday night tease down the Wheeltappers And Shunters.

If The Undertones were The Ramones on happy pills, Buzzcocks were the punk Beatles. Most punk acts played a ham-fisted, snot-encrusted take on Chuck Berry’s 12 bar blues. ‘This is a chord. This is another. Now form a band‘, to paraphrase the famous slogan. With a Buzzcocks’ record though, you’re never far away from a weird and wonky chord or an unusual time signature or a proggy sound effect. Buzzcocks mattered.

Overarchingly, Buzzcocks were all about the three minute thrill of the pop rush. I challenge you to pick a Buzzcocks’ track that’s not a few seconds away from a brilliant hookline, be it a singable guitar riff, a perfectly-placed drum fill or a wobbly backing vocal. Buzzcocks really knew the value of a melody. It might’ve been hidden behind a same-sex symphony and the happy clatter of twin guitars, but it was always there.

“These Promises (ah-ah)…”

“Reality’s a dream (ooh, ooh, ooh)…”

“I just want a lover like any other, What Do I Get? (clang clang)…”

Buzzcocks – What Do I Get?

 

The whole of What Do I Get is basically Punk Go The Beatles, from the fade in and giddy rush of the verses via the triple vocals in the chorus and middle 8 down to the “tricky guitar solo!” in the middle. By the breakdown at the end, the whole band have come in on flat backing vocals, Shelley’s off and ad-libbing his “at all at all at all at all” vocals and the whole 2 minutes and 57 seconds comes to a perfect end with a none-more-Beatles “you-ooo!” and major 7th chord. It don’t get much better than that, if y’ask me.

Buzzcocks – Noise Annoys

Buzzcocks ability to make melody matter (even on the baiting Noise Annoys) is why Singles Going Steady still sounds fantastic 40 years later. It’s basically The Beatles in flares and M&S v-necks.

In the serious world of discussing records, it’s not really the done thing to champion a Greatest Hits compilation, but drop the pretence for a minute. Singles Going Steady should be in every record collection. As, for that matter, should Complete Madness, Snap! By The Jam, Blondie’s Greatest Hits and maybe even The Best Of The Beatles (copyright Alan Partridge). But you knew that already, eh?

 

(C) Kevin Cummins

(C) Kevin Cummins

Hard-to-find

Rain Mates Forever

Craig McAllister

The Blue Nile‘s A Walk Across The Rooftops is, as you know already, a landmark album. Made possible by the boundary-free, anything-goes attitude of post-punk, it eschewed the era’s preference for jagged, scratchy guitars and political posturing and took the unfashionable route of grown-up, adult-orientated sophisto pop, where sleeves were rolled up to just below the elbows and bass guitars were worn just that little bit too high. No style then, but all substance.

Equally influenced by and an influence on other single-minded furrow ploughers such as Kate Bush, Talk Talk and Peter Gabriel, A Walk Across The Rooftops is literate, arty and perfectly self-indulgent. 35 years later, it still sounds timeless; not of today’s musical landscape, bereft of fad or fashion, forever out of step with the rest of music.


The Blue Nile had recorded one self-financed single which brought them to the attention of Linn, the high-end hi-fi manufacturer who were (and still are, I think) based on an area of prime green belt on the outskirts of Glasgow, close enough to the city should they need to be, yet far enough away from any noise pollution that might prevent their audio technicians from creating the superior equipment they’ve built their reputation on.

Linn set up a record label purely for the basis of showcasing their turntables, amplifiers and new-fangled CD players and asked The Blue Nile to record an album that would suitably bring to life the sonic qualities of the Linn palette. Over the course of 7 tracks, the band managed all this and more. Their combination of standard band instruments with the cutting edge Linn synth drum and electronic keyboards (similar in set-up to New Order, but a million miles from execution) created the ideal audio spectrum for which to hear Linn products in all their high-end glory.

If all this sounds a little too clinical, a little too contrived and corporate, a million miles away from the attitude afforded by post-punk, well, maybe that’s just what The Blue Nile were/are. In the early 80s, Glasgow was a grubby, scabby-kneed runt of a place, still desperately shaking off the ‘No Mean City’ image of the 60s and 70s and looking towards its eventual European City of Culture status in 1990. The Blue Nile looked beyond the horizon and recorded a cultured, European record long-before any fancy-pants titles landed at the City Chambers. Nowadays, Glasgow is a metropolitan tourist destination, a city of West End delis and pavement cafe culture, with an arms-open-wide embracing attitude. For The Blue Nile, it always has been.


It’s an album full of great, meandering songs, all ebb and flow rather than 3 minute bluster. Signature track Tinseltown In the Rain is the big one. It’s a strange song in a way. Lacking in ‘standard’ structure, there’s no verse/chorus/middle 8/ solo but, like all the best songs; Bowie’s Where Are We Now? perhaps, or Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands, it burrows deep within, implants itself and slowly unravels.

The Blue Nile – Tinseltown In The Rain

Guitar strings ring as tight and taut as a spinster’s bed springs. The backing, all free-flowing bending bass and gated snare is retro-futuristic. Real strings fight for ear space with synthetic keyboard washes. It runs and runs and never ever outstays its welcome. At one point the band drop out and leave a squeaky Chic-y guitar, itchy and scratchy Glasgow grit before being swallowed whole by the swell of the strings. Paul Buchanan’s voice, forever on the edge of stifling a yawn, is Scottish Sinatra, baring his soul on an eyes half-shut, half-crooned love song to someone or some place. Perhaps even Glasgow itself. Tinseltown In The Rain. Even the title conjures up poetic images in the mind’s eye, as anyone who’s ever walked the city in the middle of a drizzle will tell you.

 

 

* That terrific landscape picture at the top was taken by Stuart Brown. You can visit his stall in the Merchant City Square every weekend. His pictures are really brilliant.

* the one above of Donald Dewar contemplating Buchanan Street in yer actual Tinseltown in the rain was stolen from online. I’m happy to remove if it’s your shot, although it does complement the text perfectly. Please get in touch.

Hard-to-find

Telephone Thing

Craig McAllister

Did he really sack a sound engineer for ordering a salad? Did he really read out the football results live on the telly? Did he really leave a hapless member of the band in the middle of Sweden? Or, on the way to spending an unplanned night in the cells, have a full-on fisticuffs punch-up on stage in New York with one of his more loyal and long-standing Fall members?

Yes. Yes he did. He was Mark E Smith. One of our greatest cult figures. It was his business to be as caustic and obtuse as possible, the abrasive scraping fingers down the chalkboard of contemporary music. His was real working man music, approached in the same way you or I might approach our own 40 hours a week job. It wasn’t for everyone though. He couldn’t stand poseurs or pretence, cared not a jot about chart positions. He changed the players in his group as regularly as the England team manager freshening up his options in attack.

“There’s a two/three year cycle. Sooner or later you’re going to need a new centre forward.”

I never met Mark E Smith. I never even saw The Fall live. I know….I know…. Every time I’ve ever driven over the border from England back into Scotland, though, just as we’ve passed the blue ‘Welcome To Scotland’ sign, I’ve broken into a spontaneous 5 second burst of The Fall’s Hit The North. Der-Der-Der-Der-Der-Der-Duh-Der HIT THE NORTH!! No one else in the car has any idea of what’s happening, but it’s over as quickly as it started. In the words of the man himself, he is not appreciated, in my car at least.

The Fall played in my hometown a few years ago, supported by no less than John Cooper Clarke. Did I go? Did I heck. I think it was around the time our eldest was born, so I’ve a reasonable excuse, but it’s no excuse really. I’ve form for this sort of thing, as you might know if you’re a regular on here, but missing The Fall when they roll quite unexpectedly into your hometown, even with little in the way of fanfare or basic promotion? It’s just not the done thing to do. And I done went and did it.

Over the next few days, many better words by better and more qualified writers will be written about Mark E Smith and the uniqueness of The Fall. I’m not going to try. Here’s a true story instead.

No, I’ve never met him. No, I’ve never been in the same room as him. But I’ve spoken to him. Or, to be exact, he’s spoken to me. Around 1990 we had a rehearsal room in Kilmarnock’s Shabby Road, home to the Trashcan Sinatras – The Next Big Thing – and a ragbag collection of sundry acts who thought they were already the next big thing. I class my own band in this category, of course. The Trashcans were on Go! Discs, so all manner of folk would be around the place. Half Man Half Biscuit came and recorded some stuff and played football on the waste bit of ground/(cough) ‘garden’ at the side. The Stairs borrowed a guitar string from me. Chas Smash was ‘avin’ a fag and a cuppa tea in the kitchen one time. And John Leckie, fresh from sprinkling his magic atop the Stone Roses’ debut, was in for a few days to work on some songs with the Trashcans. They’d end up on their 3rd single, Circling The Circumference, which itself was enhanced by one of Leckie’s trademark Stone Roses’ whooshes midway through. You should seek it out if you’re unfamiliar with it.

At one point, Leckie left his notebook/Filofax unattended, and this is where the real fun began.

I took a Shabby Road business card from a table and quickly copied out some telephone numbers; Steve Mack (‘Petrols‘), Phil Saxe, Happy Mondays’ contact at the time, Steve Lillywhite, Lee Mavers and at the bottom, the Hip Priest himself, Mark Smith (‘Prestwich‘). It was funny, because we were sitting just up the road from Prestwick. We’d never heard of Prestwich until then. Anyway, fast forward a couple of hours….

….back in home territory, The Crown, and fuelled by Dutch courage, we fired a few pieces of loose change into the public phone at the end of the bar and picked a number. Lee Mavers was first. We dialled. It rang. “‘Allo?” a voice answered. Unmistakably Scouse. Shit! I passed the phone to Rab. Pause. Five of us stifling sniggers, daring not to breathe. There’s a muffled voice on the other side. “Aye,” says Rab. “Aye. Is Lee in?” Pause. Shit! Rab hangs up. Cue lots of nervous laughing and “I can’t believe we did that!” mutterings.

Buoyed by youthful bravado, I gulped the dregs of my pint and dialled Mark Smith. Three rings at most and then it was answered. On the other end of the phone was the unmistakable voice of Mark E Smith. Not Mark Smith of Prestwich, contact in someone’s phone book, but Mark E Smith, the pop star who was soundtracking my life presently with the Extricate album and the Telephone Thing single. “Yeah?” he drawled, totally Mark. Pause. “Yeah?” Louder this time. “Who’s this?” I panicked. I hung up. Of course. I Iike to think he looked at the silent receiver, irritated, before dropping it into the cradle and muttering how dare you assume I want to parlez-vous with you. He definitely didn’t though.

In hindsight, I wish I’d told him how fantastic these two tracks are, but then, he knew that already.

The Fall – Spoilt Victorian Child

 

The Fall – US 80’s – 90’s

 

If you’ve yet to acquaint yourself with his work, it’s never too late. But much like the musicians on those Fall records, it’s not for everyone.

 

Hard-to-find

Cheque One Two

Craig McAllister

Late 1970’s Britain was grimy and unpleasant, the era of strikes, dead bodies unburied, rat-infested rubbish collections and mass unemployment. Not for me though. I was happily oblivious in the suburbs of Ayrshire, whizzing everywhere on my bike, cardboard clattering the back spokes, playing in fields where houses and hotels now stand. But when you see footage of the era on the telly, it’s as if everything’s in black and white, a monochrome world where everything and everyone was kept in their place by Margaret Thatcher.

Driven by righteous fury and social discontent, the 2 Tone movement blew in like some sort of multicultural whirlwind, an era-defining mash of black and white houndstooth, Weejun loafers, button-down collars, Harringtons and Crombies. The label dropped off a perfect discography of 7″ singles and just as suddenly disappeared again.

At the label’s peak, between ’79 and ’81, just 17 singles were released. They went on releasing right up until 1985 with diminishing returns (The Specials finished what they’d started with Sock It To ‘Em, JB , the 32nd and final release) but it’s those 17 tracks released during 2 Tone’s golden spell that really endure. Many of those tracks are indelibly inked on the brain; Gangsters, The Prince, Do Nothing, Tears Of A Clown, Too Much Too Young, On My Radio, Nelson Mandela, Ghost Town….. classics one and all.

I had loads of them. Now and again on a Saturday morning I was given £1 and it always went on a 99p single. A few years later I gave them all away to a ‘Feed The World’ jumble sale, regretting it even as I handed them over. Geldof might never have said, “Give us yer fuckin’ money,” but I’m pretty sure he did say, “Give us yer fuckin’ Specials’ singles!” A selfless act but stupid too. I still rake around in the darker corners of record shops, hoping I’ll discover one of my old records, identifiable by my initials on the inside of the cover. I’d seen my dad do this with his records, so I just thought that’s what you did. Anyway, I’ve yet to turn up a Baggy Trousers or Stand & Deliver that has my pre-teen scrawl on it, but one day I might.

I do have a wee collection of 2 Tone singles though, bought for not much more than I’d originally paid for them, waaaay back when records were far from the trend they currently are. They’re great. Identifiable by the generic Walt Jabsco sleeve, they’re a portal to something special (no pun intended). Owning them, you’re part of a club, a tribe. Play them and you’re transported back to the time, the grimness of the era swatted away in 2 and a half minutes of punkish, skankalong ska. Flip them over to the b-side and you’ll often find a gem the equal (or even greater than) the better-known a-side.

Stereotype was The Specials‘ 5th single. By now dabbling in exotica and playing the sort of instruments you might find employed on an Andy Williams record, Stereotype mixed skirling bullfighter trumpets with flamenco guitars and some rudimentary primitive drum machine. The reverb-heavy backing vocals were the blueprint for what would appear on their Ghost Town single, Hammer House of Horror by way of Coventry.

The Specials – International Jet Set

Stick on the other side though and you’ll find International Jet Set, a fantastic slice of wonky ska, descending basslines, eerie vocals and Rico and Dammers playing what sounds like an extremely drunk call and response of The Sun Has Got His Hat On on slide trombone and keys. Rico aside, the band were all in their early/mid 20s at the time, which, given the fact that they conceived this tune out of mid air is, to coin a phrase, really sayin’ something, bop bop shoobedoo-wop. It’s extremely well-produced, and, I say this knowing full well how wanky this will appear, it sounds really terrrific on vinyl.

The Selecter – The Selecter

The first 2 Tone release was The Specials‘ Gangster on one side with The Selecter‘s self-titled instrumental on the other. With more time spent on the a-side than anticipated, the b-side was flung together when John Bradbury, The Specials’ drummer suggested an old instrumental that he used to jam with an old band. Hastily reworked, more slipping and sliding trombone is offset by the offbeat rhythm guitar and filling-loosening bass. There’s spaghetti western guitar, sk-sk-sk hi-hat action and enough groove to fool you into thinking this was a tune played by a band who’d been playing it for years. Indeed, The Selecter appeared really before the band of the same name. As would appear to be the norm with 2 Tone, this is another rich production. When it plays, you feel as if you’re right in the room with the band. The mark of a great record.

Those 2 Tone sleeves were designed by Jerry Dammers after seeing a picture of Peter Tosh (above, right) on the cover of The Wailers ‘Wailing Wailers‘ LP. Liking his ‘defiant and Jamaican and hard‘ image, Dammers created the ubiquitous Walt Jabsco. But you knew that already. Pop art for disenfranchised youth. And wee boys like me who rode the Sillar’s Meadow speedway with all the fearlesness of Evil Knievel.