Craig McAllister

Goode and Bad

July 4, 2016July 5, 2016 Craig McAllister

The blues had a baby and they called it rock ‘n roll. Standing expectantly with the forceps may have been Ike Turner, and on hand with the hot water and towels was Little Richard, but there, straight outta the womb came a duck walkin’, smart talkin’ Chuck Berry, sly grin on the side of his mouth and holding a cherry red Gibson with a hand span as wide as the Mississippi.

He sang of motorvatin’ in shark-finned Cadillacs, of Coolerators and TV dinners, of a life so technicolour and otherworldly and sci-fi that he couldn’t fail to capture the imagination of anyone with half a feel for the beat. It’s no wonder that future legends like Keith Richards and Eric Clapton embraced him so keenly. Young Keith was still playing with rats on Blitzed-out bomb sites in a post-War Britain living in severely austere times, and here was Chuck, singing quite literally about the promised land.

Chuck Berry – Bye Bye Johnny

I’ve always loved Chuck’s Bye Bye Johnny, a follow-up in sorts to Johnny B. Goode, a story song where the protagonist leaves home in search of fame and fortune. First time I heard it though was on Status Quo’s epic triple box set ‘From the Makers Of‘. For years I assumed it was a denim-clad Quo original. With it’s 3 chord chugga-chugga boogie and heads down, no-nonsense approach it could well have been a mid 70’s Quo classic.

Status Quo – Bye Bye Johnny

Back in the early 80s, (September ’83), around the time I’d have been headbanging myself into stupidity with a tennis racquet and Status Quo blaring in the background, Chuck and a pick-up band played my hometown of Irvine. I never went. Why? Because I was a daft wee boy who was in denial about music from the past. If my parents liked it, I didn’t. It was as simple as that.

Found on t’internet

The promoter of the concert, Willie Freckleton, booked all the bands that came through the town, from Chuck and The Clash to Oasis and Bjork. In later years he told me the story of how Chuck wouldn’t play until he’d been given his fee in a brown paper bag stuffed with good ol’ fashioned American dollars. For a man who’d been ripped off from the moment he’d picked up a guitar, this was probably a smart move, albeit a little cold. After the main set, where Chuck had of course wowed the audience with his 3 minute symphonies and wide-legged stage antics, he left to frenzied applause.

“That was great, Chuck!” cheered Willie to his idol from the side of the stage. “Are you going back on? Give the audience a wee bit more, eh?”

“Sho thing, man,” drawled Chuck, hand out-stretched. “Fo’ anotha’ thousan’ dolla’s…”

The Irvine audience never got an encore.

Chuck Berry – Sweet Little Rock ‘n Roller

You can’t write a piece about him without pointing out the fact that Chuck Berry is, by all accounts, an appalling human being.

Not just for the money-in-the-bag story (that’s so routine in Chuck’s world now, it’s almost as much a signature move as the Johnny B. Goode riff) or the dubious lyrics that reference young girls and carnal acts dressed up in all manner of metaphors.

There is the 3 year jail sentence for transporting a 14 year-old across State lines for ‘prostitution’ and immoral purposes’. You can’t dress that up in metaphor, Chuck. Or maybe you did?

More recently, there is the story of him having a hidden camera in the female toilets in his restaurant. Charges were only dropped after he agreed to pay financial compensation to the 200+ victims who came forward.

Flawed genius? Perhaps. Or just not a nice man.

Broadcaster Andy Kershaw does a really terrific stand-up routine, based around his autobiography ‘No Off Switch‘ – it’s a brilliant read, and part of his show is based around his distaste for Berry as a person alongside the unbridled joy of listening to Promised Land.

“If you want to travel across America, don’t do Route 66. That’s the accepted route, but believe me, unless you’re into farming and grain containment, you won’t find a more boring road in the whole of America. If you want to find out about the real America; the grit, the dirt, the soul of the country, take Uncle Chuck’s advice and follow the lyrics of Promised Land.”

Kershaw then impressively reels off the lyrics. Breathless poetry about a land that captured the imaginations of all those post-War wannabe guitar players. It’s a beautiful thing….

Chuck Berry – Promised Land

I’ve always had a soft spot for the late 70’s Elvis version.

Listen closely and you can hear his lard ass a-wobblin’ out the seams of that ridiculous white jump suit as he breathlessly tries to keep up with the rest of the band. Heck, you can practically see the sweat flying over the top of the gold aviators as The King staves off the heart attack for a few more weeks. Essential listening, of course.

Elvis Presley – Promised Land

Alternative Version, Cover Versions, Live!

Alf Ramsey’s Revenge

June 28, 2016 Craig McAllister

‘You Just Haven’t Earned It Yet, Baby’ is the sound of The Smiths at their chiming, ha-ha-ho-ho-hollering, twin guitar attack peak. Written, as the band usually did, quickly and as part of a triptych that also included ‘London’ and ‘Half A Person’, it was considered as the follow-up single to ‘Ask’ before being passed over at the last minute in favour of ‘Shoplifters Of the World Unite’, a move regarded as travesty by many Smiths devotees at the time.

The ‘Shoplifters…’ single included both ‘London’ and ‘Half A Person’, the tracks on the b-side connected through the subject matter of moving to London, with the former a noisy glam racket that sticks two fingers up to those who are too spineless to leave and make something of themselves, and the latter a brilliantly put-together melancholic rumination of how just a move can go so wrong – “I went to London and I booked myself in at the YWCA…” The noisy and the melodic, the tragi-comedy of The Smiths on the same record.

Marr & Morrissey, Rough Trade stockroom, 1983

But the best of the three tracks written in that early October session, ‘You Just Haven’t Earned It Yet, Baby’ was left alone on the shelf marked ‘Great Smiths Tracks That Would’ve Made Great Smiths Singles’. The band had high quality control values – theirs is a perfectly-formed 4 studio album and 17 single discography, untarnished by stop-gap filler material or substandard releases; the perfect group. Not that there’s anything wrong with ‘Shoplifters…’ – I’m particularly partial to Johnny’s open-wah rockist guitar solo – but better single material than ‘You Just Haven’t Earned It Yet, Baby’? Nah. They got that one wrong, I think. Even if, as it turns out, Johnny thinks ‘Shoplifters…’ is the better song.

The Smiths – You Just Haven’t Earned It Yet, Baby (The World Won’t Listen mix)

Keen eagle-eared Smiths enthusiasts at sadly-departed Smiths treasure trove Smiths Recycled spotted that the mix on The World Won’t Listen ran a touch too fast, so with the aid of modern technology and whatnot re-pitched the track at the speed it would’ve been playing at when The Smiths recorded it. clever fellas, those guys. Spot the difference…

The Smiths – You Just Haven’t Earned It Yet, Baby (The World Won’t Listen mix – Repitched Version)

The track eventually saw the light of day on ‘The World Won’t Listen’ compilation, the catch-all, semi follow-up to ‘Hatful Of Hollow’ that gathered together all the odds ‘n sods ‘n ‘As ‘n Bs from the 2nd half of The Smiths career. It also appeared in slightly different form (if you turn up the EQ on your Morrissey-endorsed NHS hearing aid, subtle nuances in the mixing can be heard, if you’re that way inclined) on the American compilation ‘Louder Than Bombs’.

The Smiths – You Just Haven’t Earned It Yet, Baby (Louder Than Bombs mix)

Those same Smiths enthusiasts at Smiths Recycled also corrected the pitch on this too…

The Smiths – You Just Haven’t Earned It Yet, Baby (Louder Than Bombs mix – Repitched Version)

The song itself was borne out of in-band fighting and the politics that would eventually lead to Johnny leaving the band. Booked for 5 days in London’s Mayfair Studios, Morrissey was keen for the band to work with upcoming wunderkid producer Stephen Street. Johnny preferred the tried and tested John Porter and in the end a compromise of sorts was agreed – Street would work the first day and Porter would do the other four. To add complication to the mix, 5th Smith Craig Gannon, who’d accompanied the band on their recent US tour but had never really been fully accepted into the group , was only just hanging on to his status in The Smiths by the finest hair on his bequiffed head. History shows that the Porter sessions would be the last time Gannon would work with the band.

Johnny’s tune is a classic Marr composition, tumbling in on a breath of fresh air, packed full of double and triple-tracked guitars as clear and ringing as Edinburgh Crystal, chiming, capo’d and open-stringed arpeggios and stinging counter-melodies, wrapped up and driven by a trampolining bass line and a stomping, Glitter band thud of drums in the chorus. That Johnny still plays it live in concert to this day, something The Smiths themselves never did, is testament to the longevity and beauty of the song.

The title and lyrical refrain is attributed to Rough Trade supremo Geoff Travis who uttered the words at Morrissey after the singer asked him why he wouldn’t treat The Smiths with the importance that their status deserved. Morrissey had a point – The Smiths almost single-handedly allowed Rough Trade to flourish as a label. All money made from the band went back into other artists, many of whom would never have had a record deal and subsequent success without Rough Trade’s money – the money that came directly from the healthy sales of Smiths’ product. Morrissey was clearly still feeling aggrieved a few months later when he recycled the title as a lyric in ‘Paint A Vulgar Picture’, The Smiths’ scathing deconstruction of the music business. It’s possible that, after hearing ‘You Just Haven’t Earned It Yet, Baby’, and stung by its lyrical content, Travis overruled the band’s decision to release it as a single.

“Obviously Geoff was staunchly against it,” said Morrissey, in highly dramatic fashion when quoted in Simon Goddard’s essential ‘Songs That Saved Your Life’. “Because he thought it was a personal letter addressed to him.“

A couple of years later, Marr would play on Kirtsy MacColl’s faithful remake of ‘You Just Haven’t Earned It Yet, Baby’, the original’s multi-tracked guitars replaced by a choir of Kirsties; airy, whispering, cooing and making it something of her own.

Kirsty MacColl – You Just Haven’t Earned It Yet, Baby

It’s all slightly plodding, truth be told, a stodgy, sticky pudding compared to the floating on air joie de vivre that carries the original. That’s by far the best version, of course.

Cover Versions

Dex ‘n Drugs ‘n Frocks ‘n Rowland

June 22, 2016June 22, 2016 Craig McAllister

A couple of weeks ago I was looking for a favourite hoody that wasn’t in its usual place. Turning my wardrobe inside out I discovered, hidden behind a Paul Smith shirt that I can’t bare to part with, bought long ago BC (‘Before Children’) when disposable income was such a thing, a brand new vinyl copy of ‘Searching For The Young Soul Rebels‘ by Dexys Midnight Runners.

Result!

With Father’s Day looming, I had given a list of LPs to Mrs Pan and the kids (“D’you not need a new pair of slippers?” she’d asked in all seriousness – I do, but still…) in the hope that they’d turn up something from the list. The good news was that they had, and as a bonus they’d got the LP I secretly really wanted – I have (or rather, had) an old C90 somewhere with a home-taped version of the album when I borrowed it from Irvine Library some time in the mid 80’s, but I didn’t have the ‘real’ version. The bad news was that I’d have to wait two weeks until I could play it. And act surprised when the kids gave it to me.

So on Sunday morning, I duly acted surprised (I genuinely was, they’d bought me other stuff as well – that’s the stakes raised for next year’s Mother’s Day) and, when the time came, I listened to Dexys’ debut for the first time in many years.

It all came flooding back. As the LP spun, I was transported back to my teenage bedroom, headphones on, ignoring the shouts from downstairs that my tea was ready. The album’s opening radio static bursts of Smoke On The Water crackled into the Sex Pistols’ Holidays In The Sun which gave way to The Specials’ Rat Race, before Dexys themselves took centre stage with ‘Burn It Down‘, a re-recorded version of ‘Dance Stance‘, their debut 7″. Not that I could’ve told you that back then. What a great start to an album! Here’s a band laying their influences out for all to see before sweeping them aside – “Burn It Down!” with their own pretty unique take on brass-led soul/punk.

Every track burns bright and true, honeyhorn-coated soul anthems wringing in attitude. The elephant stomp of ‘Geno‘ thunks throughout the house, prompting insistent requests to “Turn it down!” Rather than ‘Burn It Down‘, the song as heavy yet hooky as Slade in their heyday. Closing track ‘There, There My Dear’ burns brightest and brassiest, an anthem that puts the boot into the murky mechanics of the music business – at the time of writing the album, the band were being royally ripped-off by their label to the extent that the mastertapes of the album were stolen by the band and held to ransom until better royalty rates were agreed.

The big surprise for me though was ‘Seven Days Too Long‘, opening track on side 2. Now, I must’ve heard this track a gazillion times, but never once have I equated it with the original northern soul version by Chuck Wood. Back in the day, I was an avid reader of sleeve notes and writing credits, so I must’ve spotted that the track wasn’t a Dexy’s original. In the days/weeks/months/years/decades since I last played my old Dexys tape, I’ve accumulated plenty of ‘Bluffers Guides To Northern Soul‘-type compilations, and the Chuck Wood original is a regular, welcome addition to the track list on most of them.

Chuck Wood – Seven Days Too Long

That Dexys do a version makes sense. Formed out of youth culture and tribalism and named after Dexedrine, the ‘speed’ favoured by the dance-floor fillers on the Northern scene who could keep going into the wee small hours, Dexy’s pay a respectful homage to the sax-blasting original.

Dexys Midnight Runners – Seven Days Too Long

Dexys still have it. Their One Day I’m Going To Soar LP from a couple of years ago is a masterclass in how a concept album should sound and still regularly rotates round these parts.

I’ve not heard the new one yet, though. I’ve been put off by the title, ‘Let The Record Show: Dexys Do Irish & Country Soul’, which smells a little too much like Too-Rye-Ay, the fiddly-dee ‘n dungarees package that gave them their best-known hit, and also by the fact esteemed music critic and Dexys’ champion Everett True has suggested it should be considered less a Dexys’ album and more as the follow-up to Kevin Rowland’s poorly-received mid 90s solo LP, you know, the one where he’s unashamedly cross-dressing on the cover. I’ll get around to it eventually. Maybe in 40 years time, as that’s just about how long it’s taken me to accept the true genius of the Searching For The Young Soul Rebels.

New! Now!

THIS Is The One

June 10, 2016 Craig McAllister

Men of a certain age last night/this morning exhaled a collective breath as wide and expansive as a pair of vintage 27″ Joe Bloggs, as the second coming of the third coming of the Stone Roses proved to be ace.

Following the sloppy, ill-advised ‘All For One‘ come-back single a few weeks ago, the new single ‘Beautiful Thing‘ has, mercifully, all the hallmarks of vintage Stone Roses. It grooves in on a Funky Drummer shuffle, a welcome old friend who’s been AWOL for the past two or so decades, coated in backwards vocals and trippy guitar. As the beat kicks in, we’re straight into the vocals; light and airy, Brown riffing about the crucifixion, so-so sooooky vampires and all manner of alliterative mumbo jumbo – “sister musta missed ya, method to my madness, reason to my rhyme…” As it plays, I can see him standing there in the classic apeman pose, shaking a pair of those stick tambourines he’s favoured since the comeback of a couple of years ago. I can also see Reni, head down and bobbing like a nodding dog in the back of a Ford Capri, eyes shut and lips pursed in the knowing pout of someone who knows they’re doing a fine, fine job.

Stone Roses – Beautiful Thing

Squire’s guitar is excellent. The tone, the choice of effects, the sugar coating on top is perfect. A track like this requires dollops of full-fat funk and here he is, splashing shades of wah-wah across the top, breaking it down with wee backwards bits reminiscent of those old, classic b-sides and bringing it, kicking and screaming into the present day with a lightning flash guitar solo. At the breakdown there are even those wee reverby, echoey dang dang dangs that made Fools Gold the futurefunk record that it was. Mani’s bass is still too low in the mix, if y’ask me, but we can’t have it all. Comparing this record to the last one is like comparing a paper aeroplane to a rocket. One flimsy and rubbish, the other up and out there, powerful and rumbly.

The whole thing lollops along for 7 sublime minutes. ‘It’s too orangey for crows‘, I’m thinking. ‘It’s just for me and ma dawg...’ (80s reference there, for those of you of that certain age). When you get to the end, you can’t help thinking “Fools Gold mark II, or at least Breaking Into Heaven without the generous dusting of cocaine,” but it’s ripe, absolutely ripe for segueing into yer actual Fools Gold. The wee drum break at the end is just itching to pick up the pace slightly and get into it. What’s the betting this is what they do at the summer gigs?

I like this current Stone Roses tactic of guerilla gigging and event releases and whatnot. Imagine if they’d shoved Beautiful Thing out unannounced a couple of weeks ago instead of the one that sounds like Shed 7 in a rehearsal room? After its 3rd play at almost 1 o’clock this morning, I’d already played the new one twice as much as that particular clunker. Had I been a couple of shandies to the good, I might even have been tempted to sell my soul for a ticket for one of the enormo-dome shows they’re doing soon. Might have been. At least now I, and many others, have renewed faith that the album will be worth the wait.

Gone but not forgotten, Hard-to-find, Kraut-y

Hook Lines

June 7, 2016 Craig McAllister

Majestic, magnificent, mid-80’s New Order. Is there anything better?

3 ½ of New Order by Kevin Cummins

Long before the running of the Hacienda that seemed to take priority over the music and the inter-band fights that ultimately led to their sorry downfall, the band were imperial. Their 3rd album, 1985’s ‘Low-Life‘, tracing paper sleeve ‘n all, is a high point in a full-fat discography choc-full of high points. It’s the album where post-punk morphed into dance rock – stadium house for floppy fringes and German Army surplus, if you like.

Side 1 closer ‘Sunrise‘ is New Order’s collected output in miniature; the elegant minor key keyboard swells in the intro giving way to one of those Peter Hook basslines that you kinda just always took for granted – fluid and high up the frets, and dripping with liquid quicksilver from the fingers of the Viking alchemist. It’s window cleaner-whistleable and never lets up the entirety of the song.

Hooky by Kevin Cummins. Of course.

New Order – Sunrise

Barney’s guitar is forever on the verge of being out of tune, playing a demented take on a Spaghetti Western twang, fizzing and wheezing its way through the song between vocal lines, crashing to a frantically-strummed crescendo somewhere around the 6 minute mark when the ‘F’-shaped chords rattle out like Nile Rodgers fronting the Buzzcocks. Even his vocals, never his strong point, let’s be honest, hang on in there, straining at the high notes before being drowned out by his furious strumming.

It’s a beauty.

Heads down, no nonsense.

Even more of a beauty is last year’s homage to Anthony Wilson, St Anthony: An Ode To Anthony H Wilson. The brainchild of Manchester poet Mike Garry who’d performed the poem, beat poet-style in Manchester’s hipper venues, it was offered to a local composer who added large elements of New Order’s ‘Your Silent Face‘ to the spoken-word track, creating a gorgeous, lush, string-laden track that runs an alliterative A-Z of all that makes Manchester great.

The Arndale…Acid House…Bez, The Buzzcocks, The Bouncing Bomb, The beautiful Busby Babes…. Curtis, Cancer, Crack…. Dance, Design, Durutti, Devoto… I could list it all, but it’s better to just listen to it and soak it all up for yourself.

St Anthony: An Ode To Anthony H Wilson (Andrew Weatherall mix)

Saint Anthony himself

When it came out last August I was totally obsessed by it. Although the original version is the one I heard first, the Weatherall remix is a 9 minute monster. Motorik, relentless and repetitive, it’s the one you want to hear first.

Treat yourself to the vinyl or CD here. Go on!

New Order – Your Silent Face

*Footnote!

I’m no audiophile, but when the New Order back catalogue was re-released by Warners a few years ago, there was a huge outcry over the shoddy mastering of the music. For a band steeped in technology and futuresound, the music on the discs was tinny, weak and flimsy when compared to the original vinyl. My LP is currently spinning as I type and I can attest to this. Don’t let that put you off though – if you like the 2 New Order tracks featured here and are hearing them for the first time, just imagine how terrific they sound when played on the right format. In fact, you should probably pop down to your local record shop (every town has one nowadays) and buy them.

Double Nugget, Hard-to-find, Sampled

Soul Brothers

June 1, 2016June 1, 2016 Craig McAllister

Siblings in soul is, as Tom Jones might say, not that unusual. The Isley Brothers weren’t so-called for nothing, ditto the Family Stone, with Sly fronting a band including his brother Freddie and sister Rose.

Erma and Aretha Franklin both developed singing careers from a church background. Their father was a travelling preacher, a pop star in his own right who’d go from town to town raising hell with his fire and brimstone sermons before his daughters raised the roof with their pure gospel. Big sister Erma would go on to have a hit with ‘Take A Little Piece Of My Heart‘, but it was Aretha who went on to far greater success. You may have heard of her.

Then you had the Jackson Sisters and, no relations, a whole hairy-headed handful of brothers in the Jackson 5, who had expired long before Michael would climb the charts all over again, duetting with little sister Janet.

There are loads more, of course, but to acknowledge them all would turn this article into a listathon, and who wants that?

One of the more interesting musical family rivalries was that of the Butler brothers. Big brother Jerry was a songwriter chiefly, but a decent crooner in his own right. Like many of his ilk, he found his voice via gospel and actually ended up being the lead vocalist in the Curtis-free first line-up of The Impressions. Mayfield certainly made the bigger, er, impression, as Jerry and his voice were soon dispatched to make way for Curtis and his distinct vocals.

Most of Jerry Butler’s tracks never get out of 2nd gear; shiny-suited and highly pompadoured mid-paced mushy love songs that were expertly delivered, easy on the ear and admired by many. To me, he’s a bit too wallpaper, ie, he’s there, but kinda in the background and unnoticed. This track from 1968’s ‘The Ice Man Cometh‘ LP though is a stone-cold classic.

Jerry Butler– Never Gonna Give You Up

Wee brother Billy on the other hand favoured up-tempo soul stompers. In an act of how-to-piss-off-your-brother-pettiness, his early material was produced by Curtis Mayfield. Loud, in your face, driving brass-led blasters were his speciality.

In the mid 60s, Billy had a hit with ‘The Right Track‘, a dazzling slice of Temptations-inspired northern soul. You can take any meaning you fancy from the lyrics – ‘I’m gonna keep on steppin’, never lookin’ back, I believe I’m on the right track‘ could be the rallying cry of a manifesto-wielding civil rights supporter, but it could also be the rallying cry of the weekend mod and his pals, pilled-up and looking for a good night out. Take yer pick.

‘The Right Track‘ has it all; clipped guitar, blasting horns, a piano riff absolutely ripe for sampling and, with Billy outta the traps like a talcum-covered whippet, all over and done with in under 2 and a half explosive minutes.

Who disnae like this, eh?

Billy Butler – The Right Track

Double Nugget, Gone but not forgotten

Too Much, Too Young

May 25, 2016May 26, 2016 Craig McAllister

2 Tone Records was the brainchild of Jerry Dammers, a reggae and ska fan from Coventry. More a culture mash than a culture clash, the label took the ideology and DIY aesthetics of punk, welded it to the Jamaican dance music that was prevalent in the multi-cultural Midlands and created the most exciting musical sound this writer had ever heard in his 10 short years on the planet.

It was almost too much for someone so young. That it happened to be the edgiest, most fashionable music of the era, with the razor-sharp creases on their Sta-Prest as razor-sharp as the attitudes of the folk wearing them, was neither here nor there. For me, 2 Tone was plain and simply exciting pop music, no different to Dog Eat Dog or Kids In America or Status Quo’s ‘Down Down‘.

2 Tone was initially conceived as a vehicle for Dammers to release his own Special AKA singles, but quickly became a collective that put out some of the most vital, insistent and exciting records of the era.

To keep the costs down, 2 Tone’s first release was a split release – ‘Gangsters‘ by The Special AKA on the one side (catalogue number TT1), with The Selecter’s eponymously-titled instrumental (catalogue number TT2) on the other.

The Special AKA. – Gangsters

The Selecter – The Selecter

The Special AKA’s track was the one favoured by DJs and went Top 10. The ‘flip’, not many realised, was actually a track without a band. John Bradbury, The Specials’ drummer played backing to a couple of local musicians who’d written the lilting instrumental based on the original ska records they heard around the city. When ‘Gangsters‘ became a hit, Dammers realised the need for an actual Selecter and, just as the pop impresarios of the previous decade had done, a Selecter was quickly formed.

With a strong emphasis on black and white, both in clothing and personnel, the bands on 2 Tone were coiled springs of energy, bobbing left, right and centre on their numerous Top of their Pops appearances. Suedeheads, pork pie hats and loafers became desirable items of want.

The suedehead was easy enough (though too severe for my mum’s liking (and mine, if truth be told) – I had a pre-Stone Roses bowl cut instead), Burtons sold tassled loafers and skinny black ties – next to the white shirts and sober suits in the ‘funeral’ section, believe it or not, but where in Irvine could you buy a pork pie hat?

Easier to get a hold of were the most important things – the records. Every Sauturday I’d run down to Walker’s at the Cross with my £1 pocket money and part with 99p of it in exchange for the latest 2 Tone 7″.

The Prince. Tears Of A Clown. Do Nothing. Stereotype. On My Radio. I had them all.

Then I gave them all away to a jumble sale that was raising money for Band Aid.

Regretted it ever since. I spent the early 90s sifting through boxes of singles at record fairs (remember them?) in the hope I’d turn up an old friend. Some I now own once again, but many still elude me, going for daft prices online. You live and learn, eh?

Cover Versions, Gone but not forgotten

Groovin’ Up Slowly

May 18, 2016May 18, 2016 Craig McAllister

I’ve lived with The Beatles‘ Abbey Road for nigh on 30 years. I first heard it as a boggle-eyed (or should that be eared?) teenager via Irvine Library’s record lending service during my ‘sponge years’ when I soaked up everything and anything I thought I might like. Deep Purple? Nah. Cat Stevens? Nah. Pink Floyd? Some of it, not all of it. Status Quo? Aye! Too right! (The early ‘Quo, mind.)

Abbey Road was a whole different level of great though. It wasn’t the first Beatles album I’d heard. Or maybe it was. My dad had a compilation on cassette that played on regular rotation on the kitchen’s cassette player – it might’ve been the ‘Red’ one or the ‘Blue’ one, although I suspect it was probably a made up selection of songs someone had taped for him. Abbey Road, with it’s lack of ‘yeah yeah yeahs’ and guitar solos as long as the Fab Four’s hair seemed almost anti-pop, a grown-up album by grown-up musicians. I loved it.

The whole album didn’t quite fit onto the one side of a D90, but I taped it as far as it would go before the tape ran out. The other side of the tape probably had ‘No Parlez‘ by Paul Young or something equally horrible on it, so frustratingly, sacrilegiously, my version of the album always ran out just as Ringo’s drum solo in ‘The End‘ was reaching fever pitch.

It was only a few years later when I got the CD that I realised there was a hidden track of sorts at the very end. No doubt I’d have heard Her Majesty on the first listen of the knackered library copy I borrowed, but its misplaced positioning evaded my ears until I began buying CDs a few years later.

My CD copy of Abbey Road is as well-worn as a shiny plastic thing can get. These days you can count your plays on iTunes. Had this been the case years ago, I’d be well into triple figures with Abbey Road. I know it inside out and back to front. Or, at least, I thought I did.

Over Christmas I got my old turntable working again. I’ve always had a turntable, but in the year 1997 BC (Before Children, when I was relatively flush with cash) I upgraded to a decent separates system and I stupidly neglected to upgrade the turntable. It was all about CDs by then, y’see. When the well-worn Pioneer finally gave up the ghost, I was turntable-less for the next 15 and a half years.

I liberated the Dual deck from the stock room of the Our Price I worked in on the day I left. Long-since retired, it was an unloved relic of a bygone era, an era when Our Price sold only records, and gimmicky fashion statements such as Tamagochis and mobile phones had yet to be thought of. It was built like a tank though, designed to play records non-stop from 9-5.30, 6 days a week, with 4 extra hours every Sunday. A visit to the loft to retrieve it, followed by a couple of visits to YouTube (for instructions) and eBay (for a belt and stylus) and then followed by a bit of ham-fisted tinkering around with a can of electrical contact cleaner had it working like it was 1991 again. And music has never sounded better.

I recently got around to getting Abbey Road on vinyl. Not an original, it’s one of the remastered stereo versions from a few years ago. It sounds amazing! Bass and drums especially. They’re warm, dynamic and in-the-room there. I’m no audiophile, but from what I can tell, this version of the LP is brilliant. I’m all for listening to music on whatever format is available, be that hissy FM radio or hassle-free mp3, but for all its snap, crackle and pop, I love vinyl. There are few frills with Abbey Road. There’s no gatefold sleeve or fold-out lyric sheet. But the music is all you need. That second side, the medley, sounds incredible. It’s let me hear an album I thought I knew really well in a brand new, beautiful light. I must investiagte this new-fangled vinyl thing further…

Here’s Chuck Berry with You Can’t Catch Me. Lennon borrowed half a line for Come Together and found himself on the wrong end of a law suit a year or so later. But you knew that already.

Chuck Berry – You Can’t Catch Me

The Beatles – Come Together

New! Now!

Is That It? Really?

May 12, 2016May 12, 2016 Craig McAllister

2016 has been a shitty year for musical deaths, but it’s also a year that holds much in the way of stellar resurrection. No pun intended.

Trashcan Sinatras begin a US tour tomorrow with Pledgers keen and eager to hear live versions of the excellent, slight change of direction new album they’ve been living with for a couple of weeks. Non-Pledgers have a few more weeks to bide their time before they can hear what all the fuss is about, but believe me, it’s worth the wait.

The ever-reliable Teenage Fanclub have a new LP due for imminent release. With fingers and toes crossed, I expect no less than three-part harmonies and all manner of chiming, fuzzing, clean-clanging vintage guitars.

Radiohead had the Internet and its granny in a big frothy lather last Sunday with their guerilla tactics when their new LP arrived virtually, welcomed with many open arms and followed by much over the top gushing praise. It’s a cracker of an album, maybe even album of the year. Each listen brings new things to the fore; subtleties, soundscapes rather than songs, much of the background electronica reminiscent of Brian Eno’s ‘Bloom‘ app. Seriously. I could listen to it for the next 4 months and still change my mind over which track is my favourite. Today it’s ‘Ful Stop‘. Tomorrow it’ll probably be ‘The Numbers‘. Or ‘Glass Eyes’. Or….

But The Stone Roses. Dear oh dear. Hopes were high. Not sky high. They’re the masters of the big letdown after all. I remember, pre internet days, turning gangs of lads away from the Our Price counter on Feb 14th 1992, the intended release date for the big ‘Love Spreads‘ comeback. The single (a magical comeback single, it must be said) finally crept out in November 1994.

Stone Roses – All For One

Stone Roses have only just gone and spectacularly pissed all over their legacy, submerged it totally in golden yellow effluence in fact, with a limp-wristed clunky identikit indie single that in the mid 90s would’ve struggled to find its way onto third place on a Seahorses CD single.

It’s rubbish.

Interestingly, it was premiered on also rubbish Radio 1, last relevant when Brown and co were casually throwing out spacedust-sprinkled pop nuggets with giddy abandon. Squire’s guitars do the clunk click every trip pseudo psychedelic riff. Guitar shop heroics that he should be well away from by now. He’s in his 50s, for crying out loud. Brown’s lyrics are laughable. “All for one and one for all. If we all hold hands we’ll make a wall.” Sweet baby Jesus. And Mary, mother of God. This is not the resurrection.

For a band who once glided effortlessly above and beyond pop cool, this is a divebomber of quite catastrophic proportions. Even those folk who’ve been going nuts for it on social media – y’know, the folk who like all kinds of music, ‘Kasabian, Noel G, everything, really,” will surely be feeling a wee bit short changed by now.

Best thing about the comeback? That the band chose to pose for a photo with my car in the background. My old Astra is far more of a banger than the single. It, my friends, is a total car crash. Biggest musical death of 2016? Aye, Bowie and Prince were shockers. But The Stone Roses have just trumped ’em all.

Get This!

Rizzla Kicks

May 9, 2016 Craig McAllister

Or, if you prefer, Crosby’s Still Hash ‘n Guns

If I Could Only Remember My Name is the title of David Crosby‘s first solo LP. I like to think it’s so-titled because Crosby always seemed to be lightly toasted; a joker, smoker and midnight toker who always appeared just on the wrong side of frazzled. With his impish grin and walrus moustache, he’s always been a cartoonish figure, a happy hippy, a furry freak brother for real. His police mugshot from 1980 certainly adds fuel to the fire. This is the man of course who wrote ‘Almost Cut My Hair‘.

Despite – or perhaps as a direct result of this – If I Could Only Remember My Name just so happens to be a spectacular album.

Recorded at the beginning of the 70s, it’s the sound of Laurel Canyon looking inwards for inspiration. The personnel reads like a who’s who of all who were responsible for creating music in cosmic Ca-li-for-ni-aay; Joni and Neil, Jerry Garcia, half of Jefferson Airplane, the odd waif and stray moonlighting from Santana, they all combined talents over the course of the album, creating a super-stoned marker for the future of singer/songwriters everywhere.

The album is full of peaks and troughs, with fragile, Nick Drakeisms one moment making way for soaraway CSNY-ish harmonising vocals the next and delicately plucked acoustics that take a bell-bottomed step aside in favour of tastefully amped-up electrics. Wordless vocal passages, Gregorian Chants as sponsored by Rizzla, weave in and out like lightly-blown butterflies in a summer field. It’s a distilled microcosm of late 60s/early 70s, a fine balance of carefree troubadour tormented by inter-band tension.

With it’s sandpaper-smooth acoustic guitars and a hot-wired electric guitar forever on the point of teetering over the edge, second song in, Cowboy Movie, is the lo-fi scratchy half cousin of Neil Young‘s Down By the River. It’s over 8 minutes long, and not a second of the story, a metaphor for the in-band fighting that was going on at the time, is wasted.

David Crosby – Cowboy Movie

David Crosby – Traction In the Rain

Traction In The Rain rings with brightly strung, wonkily-tuned acoustic guitars, a close-miked, half-asleep vocal and tumbling harps. Very 70s hippy-shit. And very nice, man.

If this has whetted your appetite, the album is well worth buying. I think you’d like it.

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