Cover Versions – Page 13

Six Of The Best is a semi-regular feature that pokes, prods and persuades your favourite bands, bards and barometers of hip opinion to tell us six of the best tracks they’ve ever heard. The tracks could be mainstream million-sellers or they could be obfuscatingly obscure, it doesn’t matter. The only criteria set is that, aye, they must be Six of the Best. Think of it like a mini, groovier version of Desert Island Discs…

Number 18 in a series:

Paul Donoghue is the Clash-obsessed bass player with Glasvegas. No stranger to a large tub of Brylcreem and seemingly always dressed from slicked-back bequiffed head to pointy-booted toe in none-more-black, he looks like a big drip of a Simonon-silhouetted oil slick, all monochrome mood and menace. Don’t be deceived by the image though. Get talking to him and you’ll quickly discover an eloquent speaker, one who loves music just as much as you or I.

I’ve liked Glasvegas since the first LP. The raybans, the hair, the pillaging of rock ‘n roll sound and vision. ‘My name is Geraldine and I’m your social worker’, ‘Your da’, he’s gone’, ‘No sweeping exits, no Hollywood endings’. It’s modern folk music for retro-looking music fans.

Of course, Glasvegas kinda divide many people. “Derivative,” they say. “Nothing original“. It’s easy to play ‘name that tune’ with some of their records, their influences are wide and fairly obvious, but I think that familiarity is what makes them an enjoyable listen. The many people who like them might never have consciously listened to a Ronettes track or any random album from Creation Records back catalogue. Equally, the many people who like them could just as well own every album on the Creation label and the Phil Spector Back To Mono box set. There’s nothing wrong with familiarity in music. Throbbing Gristle are unlistenable. With Glasvegas, the listener doesn’t have to try too hard. You know when the solo is going to come in on early rock ‘n roll records. You know when that third chord is going to appear on a Ramones track. You know when Iggy will grunt ‘n growl between Stooges lines. Likewise, you know exactly when James Allan will ad lib ‘yea-ah, yeah!’ between Glasvegas lines. You know that their records will sound like a big bucket of Phil Spector has been flung over them. It’s familiar and it’s good. And who can argue with three albums and umpteen pan-global tours sharing stages with some of the biggest bands on the planet?

A tremendous raconteur, Paul has a wealth of totally unpublishable tales featuring Noel ‘n Liam ‘n Ian McCulloch. You’d like him. Just back from a successful tour of America’s far-flung places and looking ahead to the summer festivals, Paul took time out to tell Plain Or Pan six of his favourite tracks. They might not be obvious influences, but all make sense if you are familiar with the music Paul plays. The first track, for instance, has a bass line that Paul could have written. Maybe he nicked it…

Pink Glove by Pulp.

This is probably my favourite song, and has been for a while. I have loved Pulp for a long time. When I first started listening to music it was 1994 and Britpop was in full swing. Oasis were the best band in the world to me, as I’ll mention later, but Pulp were a band I liked, but didn’t listen to a lot. Looking back now, I think that Pulp have by far the best songs of that time. They tell stories of a side of Britain that not a lot of people talk about. A seedier, almost macabre side that lies beneath the stiff upper lip and suburban doors. This song is a great example of this, the lyrics telling a story of dressing up and the pitfalls that brings. At least, that’s what it says to me. Maybe that’s more a vision into my psyche than a view of the song!

Supersonic by Oasis.

This was the first song I ever learned to play on the bass. It’s a very simple bass line, but when I learned it, it made me realise that I could be a musician, that it wasn’t out of reach and for people who were maestros. I think Oasis did this for a lot of people who joined bands or picked up a guitar. When they first came out, they forced their way into almost everyone’s attention. I have friends who don’t listen to much music just now, but will always listen to Definitely Maybe and What’s The Story. This is a great testament to what this band meant to people.

Chelsea Hotel #2 by Leonard Cohen.

I never listened to Leonard Cohen until about a year ago, but since then he has become one of my favourite artists. The poetry in his lyrics is amazing, and the variation of the different styles he has made songs in is astounding. Listening to songs like “Hallelujah” and “First, We Take Manhattan” are like listening to two different artists. This is one of the very few songs that have almost made me cry. Especially the line “we are ugly but we have the music”. Another great love song.

I’m Going Slightly Mad by Queen.

Another band that I love. I remember watching live at Wembley and being blown away by how much energy they put into their live show. For the first twenty minutes they didn’t stop, and worked the audience up into a frenzied state. This song is a departure from that. The lyrics are perfect for the song too, they are out there enough to make you believe this is madness. I love the line “the kettle is boiling over ; I think I’m a banana tree”. Genius.

Perfect Day by Lou Reed.

This is a song that makes me very emotional every time I listen to it. Even before the great man died, every time I listened to it, it made me feel sad and happy at the same time. I also really connected to the lyric, “I thought I was someone else, someone good”, for reasons I won’t go into here. I think most people can relate that to their own life at some point. It’s such a simple song too, but to do that it takes true genius, like Lou Reed had in abundance.

Absolute Beginners by David Bowie.

When my wife and I decided to get married, one of the easiest things to organise was our first dance. We chose this song because it is one of the greatest love songs ever written. Bowie always impresses me with his lyrics, both the abstract and the objective. It tells you that if you love someone, then it makes the hard times that much easier.

BONUS TRACKS!

Here‘s Glasvegas (or rather, just James, an end-of-the-prom twangy guitar and minimal keyboard washes) doing Queen’s I’m Going Slightly Mad, from a 2011 session on Minnesota Public Radio.

Just an observation, but the vocal ad libs at the end recall Lee Mavers’ ad libs as The La’s Looking Glass collapses in on itself and swirls frantically down the plughole.

No mention of Glasvegas is possible without referring to their best track, I’ve written about The Prettiest Girl On Saltcoats Beach before. Here’s a snippet:

It begins with gentle waves crashing on the shore. Clearly a sample from some long-forgotten sound effects album, cos if you’ve ever been on Saltcoats beach you’ll know that the waves don’t break gently on the sand.

There are 2 kinds of waves in Saltcoats: 1. The big ones you get when it’s the middle of winter, blowing a gale, snowing and freezing and the TV cameras are there. And 2. The splashback from the Arran ferry as it comes into dock in Ardrossan, just up the beach.

So, sound effect waves.

The band provide the drama as the track unfolds in melancholy fashion, all vibraphone, reverb, shimmer and twang. It reminds me a lot of those early Trashcan Sinatras b-sides (like ‘Skindiving‘ – go seek it out). It ebbs and flows like the tide on the Firth of Clyde, crashing to a fade once again with those lapping waves on the Saltcoats shore. ‘The Prettiest Girl On Saltcoats Beach’ is truly bathed in melodrama and pathos.

It makes Saltcoats sound like the most (cough) romantic place on Earth.

Clearly it isn’t.

If you’ve ever been to Saltcoats during the Glasgow Fair Fortnight you’ll know what I’m talking about. Dressed head to toe in Rangers or Celtic regalia, they come down to our bit of the world armed with crappy-ringtoned mobiles and plastic footballs, to eat our ice cream and litter the beach with empty bottles of Buckfast. And that’s just the women. To be called the prettiest girl on Saltcoats beach is a bit of hollow praise. But Glasvegas must’ve been down on a good day.

‘The Prettiest Girl On Saltcoats Beach’ does for Glasvegas what ‘The Boys Of Summer’ does for Don Henley. It’s a Scottish love song of the highest order. Burns would’ve been proud. In fact, I’d say it’s right up there on a par with Morrissey’s best work. He’d do a great version of it. And that would be something, wouldn’t it?

And after that build up…if you’ve never heard it, here it is…

Cover Versions, Get This!

You Can Call Me Al

February 27, 2014 Craig McAllister

Green and Brown. My colour blindness wasn’t apparent until Primary 7 when, as you do in Ayrshire schools, the class created a Robert Burns Tam O’ Shanter frieze. My job was to do the tree next to the bridge where poor Tam’s horse has her tail yanked off by the pursuing witch. My tree had, yes, brown leaves and a green trunk and I had no idea why I was the laughing stock of the school for the next few weeks. An official colour blindness test proved this a few months later. Now I know.

Here I Am (Come And Take Me) was a top ten hit for Al Green in 1973. A brilliant piece of tight ‘n taut southern soul, producer Willie Mitchell has the uncanny knack of making it sound as if the drums are playing right there in the room with you. A warm Hammond vamps throughout, mixed in just behind the brass section while the Reverend’s vocals flit across the top, emotion squeezed out of his voice the way you or I might wring the last remaining drops of juice from a real lemon when following a Jamie Oliver pasta recipe to it’s fat-tongued conclusion. Got. To. Get. Every. Last. Drop. Out. Of. It. Cost. Me. Forty. Nine. Pee.

Green

Al Green’s track is terrific. Of course.

Here I Am Baby was a superb rocksteady version of Green’s track by his skankin’ namesake Al Brown. My version comes from one of those excellent Soul Jazz Records Dynamite compilations (300% Dynamite, I think) that really ought to be in everyone’s record collection. Many of the tracks featured are rubadub reggae versions of popular soul hits – the Jamaican musicians tuning into US radio would hear the originals, get the band together, roll a fat one, play it at half speed and claim it as their own. Al Brown was no different. Dubby bass, chukka-chukka backbeat and a Casio keyboard player with his (or her) own idea of what constitutes a meandering solo, it’s a rather spliffing made-in-the-shade perfect partner;

Brown

Ironically, Al Brown would go on to make a name for himself in The Paragons, whose The Tide Is High would somehow filter its way back across the airwaves to New York where Blondie were fortuitously tuning in. And that folks is how the music world goes around.

Cover Versions, demo, Stinky

Weller Weller Weller oops

February 9, 2014February 9, 2014 Craig McAllister

10538 Overture was the debut single by the Electric Light Orchestra. It was written by Jeff Lynne and produced by Roy Wood when he was still in The Move, pretentiously given the ‘Overture‘ title and prompted the split of the band. Released in 1972, it was the love child of I Am The Walrus and The Who’s more bombastic moments; a Heinz 57 variety pack of swooshing synths, see-sawing cellos, minor key breakdowns, ELO’s trademark multi-tracked vocals….and a terrifically cod-psychedelic, eastern-tinged descending guitar riff.

10538 Overture

10538 Overture would eventually appear on ELO’s self -titled debut LP, with it’s big, ambitious sound a portent of things to come. In America, the same album was released as ‘No Answer‘, after the man from the US record company phoned the band to get the name of the LP. No one picked up, the under-assistant west coast promo man wrote ‘no answer‘ on his paper, left his desk, and someone picked up his note and ran off to the printers where the sleeve was being assembled. True story, that.

Perhaps drawn in by the backwards Beatlish bits and the windmilling Townshend chords and Moonisms on the drums as 10538 Overture drags itself to a bloated end, Paul Weller‘s magpie-like antennae pricked up. “That descending guitar riff,” he thought. “I’m having that.”…..

Weller demo:

A shame-faced Paul hides his head

Welding it on to a mid-life crisis of a lyric, Weller gave birth to The Changingman, lead single from the epoch-defining Stanley Road LP. Named after a picture his son had drawn – “Who’s that?” “It’s the changingman, daddy,” the single reached number 7 in the charts, at the time a career best for the solo Paul.

This is where it gets a wee bit muddled. On the LP, the track is credited solely to Weller, but if you consult that last bastion of credibility Wikipedia, you’ll see that Weller shares the writing credits with 3 others – Brendan Lynch, his producer of choice at the time who added the ambient textures and wonky noises (his remixes from this time are terrific) that lift the track above bog standard r’nb fare, a certain R. Wood who we now know all about, and, most interestingly of all, forgotten cult hero and Syd Barrett for the Brit-Pop genearation, Lee Mavers.

The Changingman LP/Single version:

Quite what Mavers’ involvement in the writing of the song was is unclear (if any), although around that time he was in a bit of a sorry state through drugs. It’s been suggested that Paul Weller took one of Lee’s unreleased tunes and built Changingman on top of it. Some of the lyrics (‘the more I see the more I know, the more I know the less I understand‘) are kinda La’s-ish as well. Weller, on Go! Discs, as was Mavers at the time (or was he still, in 1995?), also had Lee open a few shows for him. Maybe he was just trying to help him out, a support slot here, a writing credit there, but as you’ll know already, Mavers is pretty comfortably well-off thanks to the regular royalties he receives for There She Goes (between £5000-£10000 a month, depending on where you read). Maybe Bo Diddley nut Lee contributed the percussive backbeat that gives the track it’s mid 60s swagger towards the end. Who knows? I need to investigate further…

The Changingman Radio1 Evening Session 8th May, 1995 (Exactly one week before the album release);

Rod Weller

Around the same time as Weller was releasing Stanley Road, an ill-advised Rod Stewart was assembling a catalogue of contemporary tracks of the day that would make up a covers LP. When I first heard about this album, I immediately thought of it as similar in spirit to Bowie’s Pin Ups LP. Primal Scream’s Rocks. Cigarettes And Alcohol. Skunk Anansie’s Weak. All would be filtered through the Rod voice and into the Mondeos and family saloons of 40-something Britain. There was even space for a (terrific) track by Scottish underachievers Superstar that would make writer Joe McAlinden very wealthy. At the sessions, Rod tackled The Changingman with all the gusto of a prime time Faces, although the finished version comes across as a highly polished piece of session musician rawk and nothing like the raggedy arsed Faces it could’ve been. Consequently, it never made the final cut.

The Changingman Rod Stewart version;

Never has a singer betrayed his talent quite like Rod.

But that’s for another day.

Cover Versions, demo, Gone but not forgotten, Hard-to-find, Sampled

Massive Attack

January 31, 2014 Craig McAllister

Baby Huey is one of the forgotten stars of 70’s soul, mainly because he died in October 1970 and it wasn’t until much later on, when his music was discovered by the hip-hop community that he gained any sort of acknowledgment.

Named after a 1950s cartoon duck, the ironically-monikered Huey was massive in every way – he was massively overweight (between 25 and 28 stones (or 350-400 lbs if you’re that way inclined), he wore his hair in a massive afro, he had a massive voice and used it to create massive tunes. He was a massive drinker. He even had a massive heroin addiction to go with it all.

He came to the attention of Curtis Mayfield and signed to his Curtom label. Mayfield became something of a mentor to him and gave him the songs that would make up the A and B sides of his first single. Mayfield also suggested he get rid of his band The Babysitters, forever stuck in a mid 60s Motown rut. Curtis wanted Huey to expand (no pun intended) his sound towards the more politicised, psychedelicised sound of the times, which, sacked band or otherwise, he achieved. Huey’s tunes are packed full of riffs, refrains and drum breaks galore. Huey liked his music to ebb and flow, bringing the band down so he could throw in a social commentary or two, before letting the band soar in a riot of bass and brass. His songs regularly stretch out beyond the 6 minute mark and (I’d wager) are a sampler’s delight.

First single Mighty Mighty Children is a one-chord groover, held together by stabbing Blaxploitation brass, wah-wah ripples and pseudo live vocals. Mighty indeed.

Mighty Mighty Children (Part 1)

Here’s Listen To Me, Baby Huey’s 2nd (and final) single release. A stone cold lost classic, it‘s terrific! Beginning with a taught guitar riff and Huey’s big voice careering between balls-out soul belter and Is It Real Or Is It Memorex glass-shattering falsetto, it fairly gets carried along on a tidal wave of trumpets and electric keys, clattering cowbell and ‘Have Mercy Brother!’ soulful paraphrasing. I think you’ll like it;

Listen To Me

On the other hand, Huey’s version of Sam Cooke’s A Change Is Gonna Come is downbeat, treacle-thick and just shy of 10 long minutes. By the end you’ll be praying that a change is indeed gonna come. His wee spoken word part reminds me of James Brown or Isaac Hayes – all social conscience dressed up in occasionally trippy echoed sound effects. Settle in for the ride…

A Change Is Gonna Come

Most of these recording didn’t come out until after Huey was dead. An album, The Baby Huey Story was released to general indifference in 1971 and quickly forgotten about. My tracks come from the 1999 CD reissue that’s probably since been quickly forgotten about. You could do worse than track it down.

Cover Versions, demo, Get This!, Hard-to-find

Vive le phonq

January 17, 2014 Craig McAllister

Imagine the pop landscape in 1967. It wasn’t just the trousers that were starting to get expansive. Everything’s got that slightly psychedelicised and trippy, frazzled edge to it. Itchycoo Park. Heroes and Villains. Penny Lane. Purple Haze. See Emily Play. Even The Temptations and other wide-lapel wearers on the Motown roster were abandoning their sure-fire recipes for success. Psychedelic Shack anyone? A future post for sure. Records became longer, more free-form and stretched out. Less structured, with not so much emphasis on the tried ‘n tested verse/chorus formula. But still pop. That bit’s important. The time was ripe for Sly and the Family Stone.

In 1967, Sly Stone didn’t like his record company. In fact, he didn’t trust them one iota. Sly had a bit of leeway though. He’d just had a top ten smash hit both sides of the Atlantic with Dance To the Music, a tune that did exactly what it says on the tin. So when Clive Davis at CBS asked Sly to follow it up with more of the same, the ever-willful and awkward Sly did just that.

Sly decided to follow up Dance To The Music with a garage punk/funk version of the exact same track, stripped of all vocals save a tiny spoken word part and the chorus…..which this time was to be be sung entirely in French.

Naturally, he chose to call it Danse à La Musique. Released under the nom de plume of French Fries, it was terrific. The same du-du-du-dumb four-to-the-floor caveman stomping beat and growling fuzz bass drives it along. Street corner jazz scat vocals ping-pong back and forth, trying to be heard above the din of a joyfully fuzzed up, wasp-stuck-inside-your-car guitar track, clearly being played by a guitarist who’s just wired up a fuzzbox for the very first time. There’s precious little brass, replaced instead by a primitive keyboard that plays random Eastern-tinged phrases like a snake charmer on acid. The champion of a tambourine player never once stops throughout. His/her arm must’ve ached like a teenage boy’s with a Meaty, Beaty, Big ‘n Bouncy bargain Box Set for company. The whole thing is over and done with in three freaked-out flare-flapping minutes. I think you’ll like it.

BONUS TRACK!

Here‘s a demo of Sly and co turning The Kinks‘ You Really Got Me into a piece of proto Acid Jazz. Not sure if I like this or not, but it’s a curio right up Plain Or Pan’s street. And yours…

Cover Versions, demo, Gone but not forgotten, New! Now!

No Phils

January 10, 2014January 10, 2014 Craig McAllister

John Peel went through a phase of playing really old 78s from yesteryear. Ancient ghostly blues by unheard of singers long-since departed, popping and crackling away like one of my Gran’s heart attack-rich fry-ups. From out of nowhere they crept up on you, weird, wonderful and wonky. It might’ve taken you a couple of minutes to realise that there was any music playing at all, such was the understated beauty of it all. But before you knew it, there it was, under your skin and ingrained forever.

As if beamed in from another time and place, the music below has just slipped out into the ether…

Eddi Reader and wee brother Frank side by side at the piano singing the Everly‘s Let It Be Me with all the fragility of Bambi with a broken leg. It’s as fresh as the new year, yet sounds as if it was committed to shellac a century ago. Just like one of those old Peel 78s. It’s a heartfelt spontaneous tribute to Phil, recorded on iPhone and let loose on the breeze for anyone who happens upon it. I think it’s terrific.

Here’s another version…

The same song sung at the same session, this time the recording is taken from Frank’s iPhone. More Frank than Eddi on this version. And there’s nothing wrong with that. A bedroom Spector somewhere could probably jigsaw the 2 tracks into one. Over to you..

Here‘s the Everly Brothers’ original:

Dig out a dram, play all the tracks above back to back with The Smiths’ Asleep and there’s your Friday night in right there.

Cover Versions, Hard-to-find

Slithery People

January 5, 2014 Craig McAllister

In 1963, civil rights activist and singing jazzman Oscar Brown Jr wrote and recorded The Snake, a finger clickin’, stand-up bass poppin’ bossa nova, free from unnecessary jazz frill but full of electric piano stabs and fluid electric guitar riffs. It‘s a cracker.

Borrowing heavily from one of Aesops’ fables, Brown’s track was a metaphorical parable about trust – a woman is conned by a seemingly in need of help half-frozen snake who by the end of the song has bitten her with poisoned tongue.

“Oh shut up silly woman!” said the reptile with a grin. “You knew darn well I was a snake before you took me in!”

You might know The Snake better as a northern soul belter. Half a decade after the original, Al Wilson took the tune by the scruff of the neck and turned it into something that, by 1975 (No. 41 on the UK charts), would be a talcum-dusted Mecca floor-filling monster.

Propelled by a properly frugging four-to-the-floor soul bassline, brass stabs build and build with each increasingly frenetic key-changing verse, Hal Blaine’s drum fills tumble like acrobats atop oil cans and the kitschest of hissing female vocals (Yesssssss! Come on in!) carry the chorus.

Without a doubt it‘s guaranteed to get me dancing like the rhythmically-challenged Ayrshireman I am.

You might be surprised to learn that neither Al Wilson’s version nor the more unknown original were the first versions of The Snake I heard. Nope, it was second division indie also-rans Dodgy who first brought The Snake to my attention in 1994, including it on the b-side of their “double E-sided” Melod-EP.

Sticking with Al Wilson’s as their blueprint, the Dodgy version is a rush. It’s faster, fatter and has added mariachi trumpets in the tripping-over-itself finale. I love it. They’re still going, you know….

Alternative Version, Cover Versions, demo, Dylanish, Get This!, Gone but not forgotten, Hard-to-find, Kraut-y, Most downloaded tracks, Six Of The Best, studio outtakes

Lucky Seven

January 2, 2014 Craig McAllister

Plain Or Pan began back in January 2007. December 2013 saw the 7th full year of the blog. The end of the year makes me come across all misty eyed and giddy at the thought of this blog being not only still in existence but in rather rude health. At some point recently, the one-and-a-half millionth visitor crossed the threshold to read all about James Brown or Lou Reed or some forgotten Teenage Fanclub b-side. Facebook followers are in abundance, Twitter sends its fair share of readers in this direction and if you read that wee panel on the right, you’ll notice visitors from as far afield as Buenos Aires, Berlin and Ayr. Thank you one and all!

What better way to celebrate 7 years of typos, titbits and factual inaccuracies than with the annual Plain Or Pan Best of the Year CD*.

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*I’ll provide the tunes. You make the CD.

Our team of stat monkeys works double shifts over the festive period before presenting me with documented proof of the most listened to and downloaded tracks from Plain Or Pan throughout the year and I compile them into a handy CD-length album, complete with artwork, that can be added straight to your iTunes or wherever and onto your iPod to listen to during that new-fangled jogging craze you’ll ditch by February. Alternatively, it could be burnt off to listen to, old-skool style, on a couple of shiny discs in the car.

Tracks included:

Pixies – River Euphrates (Gigantic ep version)

Victoria Wood – 14 Again

The Smiths – Rusholme Ruffians (demo)

James Brown – (Hot) I Need To Be Loved

Supergrass – Caught By The Fuzz (acoustic)

The Cramps – I Wanna Get In Your Pants

The House of Love – Destroy The Heart (demo)

Neil Young – Birds (Mono single version)

Elizabeth Archer & the Equators – Feel Like Makin’ Dub

Beak> – Mono

Dave Edmunds – Born To Be With You

The Clique – Superman

Ike Turner – Bold Soul Sister

Can – I’m So Green

Wilco – Impossible Germany

The Mamas and Papas – Somebody Groovy

Santo & Johnny –Sleepwalk

Dee Clark – Baby What You Want Me To Do

The Specials – Too Much Too Young (LP version)

Barry Adamson – Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Pelvis

Neu – Hallogallo

Mogwai – The Sun Smells Too Loud

Trash Can Sinatras – Little Things That Keep Us Together

Roxy Music – Virginia Plain (Peel Session)

*** a cracker! ***

Get it here.

Normal service resumed next week. Lookin’ forward to it!

Cover Versions, Gone but not forgotten, Kraut-y

Meddling Kids

December 3, 2013 Craig McAllister

Plain Or Pan Health Warning:

Two words. Prog Rock.

Pink Floyd’s Meddle LP was released in 1971, sandwiched between 70’s experimentally textured Atom Heart Mother and 72’s omnipresent, global-shagging Dark Side of the Moon. Sitting between these two LPs, Meddle is more experimental and free-flowing than its conventionally-structured follow-up; There are whoosing wind effects galore, barking dogs (the eponymously titled Seamus, named after recording Steve Marriott’s hound – it’s a howler in every meaning of the word) and one entire side is given over to a self-indulgent ambient collage that, some claim, can be synced in perfect harmony with Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (side 2’s Echoes). If techno-hippies The Orb had played guitars instead of sequencers they might’ve come up with an album like Meddle.

It’s not an album I listen to very often – maybe once in the last 10 years, but I do like track 3 – Fearless. An eastern-tinged, six minute-plus electric skiffle blues played in the sort of open tuning that Jimmy Page might have employed during the writing of Led Zeppelin III, it meanders like the Ganges on a hot day.

It starts terrifically, the recurring, nagging riff underpinned by a sample of the Anfield Kop singing You’ll Never Walk Alone, Gilmour in full-on Home Counties posh boy whisper mode. Throughout, strings bend like bluesy elastic bands, electric guitars intermittently chime, harmonics ping, a piano tinkles, Fab Four backing vocals weave in and out of the rich tapestry of sound….but everything always comes back to The Riff. You should listen to it, you’d like it.

The Charlatans certainly did.

Musicians stealing other musicians’ tunes is nothing new. Pick a month at random from the sidebar on the right there and you’ll find umpteen examples without looking too hard. Right now, you’ll have your own examples bouncing around your head. So we shouldn’t single The Charlatans out for individual attention.

“Here comes a soul saver on your record player…”

Their track Here Comes A Soul Saver has Fearless written all over it. Or rather, it has Fearless written through it like the words on a stick of Blackpool rock, the Pink Floyd track the scaffolding upon which The Charlatans build their magpied groove.

They’ve done a good job of it too – all 1970s Ian McLagan keys and inspired chord changes, but The Riff continues brazenly throughout. “No-one’ll notice,” they probably thought in 1995, “it’s from the Pink Floyd LP that no-one listens to.”

And they would’ve gotten away with it too, if it wasn’t for this Meddling kid.

Cover Versions, Get This!, Hard-to-find, studio outtakes

Quiff Richard

November 26, 2013 Craig McAllister

Elvis may have been the King, but Little Richard was certainly the Queen. He’s terrific, isn’t he? The high priest of camp; his pompadoured hair like a Texan oil slick, sticky and stationary above those mad, popping eyes and perfectly plucked brows, the occasional dog-bothering ‘whoooo!’ while his hands pound away on the pianer with all the frenzied dexterity of a teenage boy with unlimited broadband and a lock on his bedroom door. Tee-riffic.

Slippin’ And Slidin’. Tutti Frutti. Lucille. Good Golly Miss Molly. Rip It Up. Long Tall Sally. Every one a throat-ripping, stone cold classic……..the building blocks of rock and roll and all that was to follow. But you knew that already.

‘Before Elvis, there was nothing‘, said John Lennon, but The Beatles owed Richard Penniman a huge debt or two. McCartney for one modelled his whole voice on Richard’s every single time his group broke free from the shackles of balladry and ruffled their rugs to the delight of the watching world – from the backing vocals on The Beatles’ own version of I Wanna Be Your Man right through to the White Album’s Why Don’t We Do It In The Road, the spirit of Little Richard was never far away.

Here’s one you might not’ve heard before:

The Most I Can Offer (Just My Heart) is superb. Released on his 3rd album The Fabulous Little Richard by a slightly twitchy record company after he’d indicated a preference for thumping the bible rather than the thumping boogie woogie of yore, The Most I Can Offer is a mid-paced soul-shaking break-up ballad (of course!), all rasping tenor sax and ding-ding-ding minor 7ths on the keys. It throws me every time. Why? Because it sounds like a duet between a high, quavering falsetto’d voice and a southern souler. Imagine if William Bell had sung with the black cleaner lady who appears from the waist down in every Tom And Jerry cartoon. Except The Most I Can Offer seems to be Richard and Richard alone, his voice alternating between broken-hearted blues mama and a down-on-his-knees tear-soaked gospel bawler. The version I’ve given you is Take 4. Which sounds exactly like takes 1, 2 and 3 and no doubt the master version too. If you have but an ounce of soul you’ll want to play this again and again and again.

And here’s another:

Hey Hey Hey Hey, as reprised on the Beatles For Sale LP by those self-same Little Richard fans mentioned earlier. An out-and-out rocker, this features Richard at his most extreme, extravagant and extraordinary, pompadour bouncing while the piano pumps out primal jive ‘n wail. You can almost see the whites of his eyes on this recording.

And if you think the original’s good, you should have a listen to the Jim Jones Revue‘s outstanding needles-in-the-red version;

Proof, if any were needed, that Little Richard is as relevant today for any musician seeking the mother lode of rock ‘n roll.

Category: Cover Versions

Six Of The Best – Paul Donoghue (Glasvegas)

You Can Call Me Al

Weller Weller Weller oops

Massive Attack

Vive le phonq

No Phils

Slithery People

Lucky Seven

Meddling Kids

Quiff Richard

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