Category: Cover Versions

Cover Versions, demo, Hard-to-find, studio outtakes

Run Run Run Run Run Run Run Run Run Run Run Run!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Craig McAllister

Quadruple whammmy of sorts of The Velvet Underground‘s hypnotic and practically one-chord feedback-fest, Run Run Run.

First up, an original rare as could be 1966 acetate version by Warhol’s lapdogs themsleves. Recorded by Norman Dolph at Scepter Studios in NYC this rough demo version (complete with snaps, crackles and all manner of pops) was long-forgotten about until a passerby with a keen nose for musical history sniffed out the one and only acetate of the session (above) on a Chelsea (not London) street vendor’s record stall. The lucky so-and-so paid just 75 cents for it and ended up selling it for $25,000 on eBay. The definitive full account of finding the acetate can be read here. Do yourself a favour and click. It’s well worth taking the time to read. Then start pondering. Why don’t people sell stuff like this on the streets where I live?

Next, a  faithful, fantastically feedback soaked version by Argentine garage band Capsula. Clearly influenced by yer Velvets, Stooges, and all manner of tub-thumping garage rockers, they’ve been staple features of SXSW for the past couple of years. This version is taken from a low-key 2007 Velvet Underground tribute album. Look at the picture above. You know how its going to sound.

You probably have the next version already. Taken from Beck‘s excellent Record Club series where he and some pals play and record a classic album in it’s entirety, this version replaces the original’s guitar maelstrom with analoguey synth bleeps and bloops. A bit like Stereolab. In fact, a big bit like Stereolab. But you knew that already.

Lastly, we have the Strange Boys. This track isn’t actually a cover of Run Run Run, but it might as well be. Wearing their influences proudly on their skinny-fit sleeves, the Texans are unashamedly retro to the core. If you’re a fan of Nuggetsy garage band stuff or Television or The Strokes (and isn’t it all the same thing anyway?), their Strange Boys..and Girls album from a year or so ago is well worth seeking out. Probation Blues, the Run Run Run-alike is taken from the self-same LP. You’d probably like their latest offering, Be Brave, as well.

In ironic fashion I was also going to put up LCD Soundsystem’s ‘Drunk Girls’ . But you know what that sounds like anyway, probably got it too. If so, you’ll be well aware of the debt it owes not to the VU track featured above, but to the Velvet’s White Light, White Heat. I love the track, I really do, but come on man! Blatant rip off. Or just plain theft. Ach! What goes around comes around ‘n all that jazz. And we won’t even mention Jason Pierce or Spiritualised. No. We won’t. But we will direct you to this unbelievable slab of faux-stoned vinyl copyism…

Whisper it – I love this track too. And John Cale got a writing credit anyway. What’s the big deal?

Cover Versions, Dylanish, Hard-to-find, Kraut-y

Tunng In Cheek

Craig McAllister

Here’s a thing. Actually, you might be aware of this already, so if that’s the case bear with me. If not, prepare yourself for some startling music trivia.

I was listening to one of Dylan‘s Bootleg Series CDs while doing stuff around the house. It was the ’64 Philharmonic Hall one, where Joan Baez ruins everything by guesting on 4 or 5 tracks. Normally I tend to skip her. I cannae stand her voice or the way she calls him “Bobby Dylan” or the way she ruins a great song like ‘Mama You Been On My Mind’ with her high pitched harmonies, poor phrasing and wrong words.

I. Just. Cannae. Stand. Her.

And by all accounts, most of the time, Bobby couldn’t either.

dylan baez 1

(Caption Competition: ______________)

Because I was pottering roon the hoose yesterday, she managed to get past my Baez Detector and suddenly came bursting into earshot. And this is what I noticed….

She sang a version of old folk traditional Silver Dagger. No vocals by Dylan, though he plays along with some rudimentary, scrubbed acoustic guitar and wheezy harmonica. Other than that it’s Joan Alone and it stinks. But the melody was familiar. Very familiar. And then it dawned on me.

Saint Etienne have nicked it, note for note for their ‘own’ no. 47 in ’94 smash hit Like A Motorway.

A quick bit of googling proved me correct. The motorik thunk of Like a Motorway is indeed based on the melody of ancient 19th Century traditional song Silver Dagger. Not only that, but on parent album Tiger Bay, Saint Etienne seemingly based many of the songs around old folk melodies, beating forward-thinking modernist laptop folkies such as Tunng and Psapp by a good few years. I suppose that explains Tiger Bay‘s olde worlde ‘Welcome Bonny Boat’-inspired cover. But whodathunkit, eh?

bonny boat

Original

Cover version

Silver Dagger is currently doing the rounds in the form of a version by White Antelope. White Antelope is the side project of Fleet Fox Robin Pecknold. But you knew that already. His version is dynamite. One man, his delicately skipping guitar and a perfectly in tune reverb-soaked vocal.

Unlike Moany Joany, this boy can really sing. If you’re desperate to hear a Baez version you’ll have to look elsewhere I’m afraid. I’m not sullying this fine site with rubbish like that.

*Bonus Track!

Here’s Robin Pecknold/White Antelope giving Dylan’s It Ain’t Me Babe the full-on Fleet Foxes treatment. Stunning.

Robin Pecknold/White Antelope 

 

Cover Versions, Gone but not forgotten

I Am The Cosmos double whammy

Craig McAllister

A couple of weeks ago I was window shopping in Glasgow when I chanced upon a wee stall selling replica football tops and assorted football related t-shirts – Scotland Argentina ’78 -inspired designs and the likes. Unfortunately, the Celtic-inspired tops seemed to be the best – the Ramones logo re-done with the names of the Lisbon Lions, the Dylan ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’ video where Bob discards 3 cards saying “It’s A “, “Grand Old Team“, “To Play For“. Umpteen Larsson tops. That sort of thing. Amongst all the Archie Gemmell and Old Firm crap I found a brilliant New York Cosmos t-shirt. I had to buy it.

I remember the Topical Times ’79 football annual having a big piece about them and I was something of a nine year old trans-Atlantic fan. They attracted all the best players, just as they entered the final stages of their playing career. In some cases, players came out of retirement, lured by the big bucks of the club’s financial backers. Pele, Beckenbaur, Neeskens, to name 3, all played in the team’s colours. The badge was even designed with Pele in mind – incorporating the Brazilian football team colours of yellow, green and blue, the owners believed this would appeal to Pele. And it did, not just to Pele, but also to Carlos Alberto, captain of the famous Brazil ’70 World Cup winning team. This was a masterstroke by the owners – when Pele signed in ’75, average attendances rose from 3500 to over 10,000. Anyway, here’s the music part…

The Cosmos were founded by Atlantic Records’ Ahmet and Nesuhi Ertegun, so in turn they were funded in no small part due to the success of a mid-70s global shagging Led Zeppelin. You could say that for every copy of Led Zep IV sold, some of the profits would go into funding terrible acts like Bad Company and some of the profits would line the pockets of footballers on the wrong side of 35.

Not on Atlantic Records, and therefore nothing to do with any of the above useless trivia was Chris Bell, Alex Chilton’s foil in Big Star. Since Chilton died the other week, it’s been said that one of the reasons he underplayed the recordings he made with Big Star is because he knew how much of the Big Star sound had been created by Chris Bell and not by himself. If you listen to Chris Bell’s solo album I Am The Cosmos (d’you see what I did there?), there may be some clout in this opinion. The title track itself is a fantastic slice of mid 70s rock – easily on a par with The Stones Exile On Main St or much of The Faces back catalogue. It’s loose, it’s sloppy, it’s full of soaring vocals, there’s a fabulous twin guitar break in the middle; all the ingredients required to make the hairs on this particular neck to stand to attention. In fact, while I’ve got your attention, I’d like to offer up the opinion that it’s this record (link updated again!) more than anything from #1 Record or Radio City that gave Teenage Fanclub the blueprint for everything they recorded at the sessions that produced Bandwagonesque. Not a bad point of reference at all.

In total contrast to the original above, there’s another version of I Am The Cosmos currently released and charming the pants off me. Pete Yorn and Scarlett Johansson recorded the songs that would form the ‘Break Up’ album in 2006 but  they only saw the light of day at the end of last year. I’m not normally a fan of actors making records (or vice versa) and this album is just OK. It’s nothing spectacular and had Yorn made it with N. E. Singer, I doubt I’d even have gone out of my way to find it, let alone listen to it. But for Miss Johansson I can make exceptions. Her voice is decent enough and her duet with Yorn on their version (link updated) of I Am The Cosmos is indie/lo-fi at its best. They claim to have been influenced by Serge Gainsbourg’s recordings with Brigitte Bardot, but I can’t really hear it. I could, however, quite happily listen to it/her all day long. Indeed, if she gets in the queue behind Zooey Deschanel and plays her cards right, Scarlett Johansson could yet be the next Mrs Plain Or Pan. Mind you, I’d need to make sure I’m not wearing that new Cosmos t-shirt. I’m not nine years old anymore. I bought a medium, but I really should’ve gone for a large. I knew at the time, but who was I tryin’ to kid?

Cover Versions, Hard-to-find, Sampled

Unashamedly Disco

Craig McAllister

I’m an unashamed fan of disco. Aye, in it’s heyday it might’ve been the shallowest form of music around, the 70s equivalent, yet better-dressed cousin, of contemporary throwaway nonsense like Lady GaGa or Pink. But sneer not. Listen closely to any of those era-defining records and unlike those (coughs smugly) ‘artists‘ of today, you’ll find a real soul at the heart of it all. Real instruments played by real musicians. 4 real (man). Listen to the guitar playing on anything off the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack and tell me that’s not up there with Jeff Beck. Listen to Nile Rodgers’ rinky-dink funk riffs on any Chic record you care to pick at random then listen to the second verse of The Smiths ‘Boy With the Thorn In His Side’ and tell me Johnny Marr doesn’t rate the playing on Chic records. Major copyism going on there! In homage to Chic, Johnny Marr even went so far as naming his son Nile!

So aye. I like disco music. And I’m clearly not alone. Abba (aye, snigger all you want) loved George McCrae’s Rock Your Baby so much they nicked the drum sound from it for Dancing Queen. “So what,” you say? Well, a couple of years later and Elvis Costello was touring somewhere in the American mid-west. He’d been working on a new song but was getting frustrated at the lack of a good melodic hook for the intro. Dancing Queen comes on the radio. He loooks at Steve Nieve and asks him to listen closely to the piano part. Could he replicate it? A wee while later and Oliver’s Army is complete. True story that. What goes around comes around and all that. If you don’t believe me, seek out the 2 tracks in question and play the intros back to back. I’d put them up here, but the internet police would be straight on my back…

A few weeks ago I was at a friend’s house. He hosted a music night where 5 of us took it in turn to play 5 records, each grouped into distinct categories. So far, so Nick Hornby. I can almost hear your muffled laughter from here. The one track that made the biggest impression on me that night was not the long-forgotten Tom Waits album track or the hard-to-find and rare-as… punk 7″ that I’d never heard before or the, well, I’m sure you can imagine exactly the sort of records that were played that night. No. The record that made the biggest impression on me that night was this gem from the early 80s.

DJ Gary Byrd and the GB Experience ‘The Crown’. Over 10 minutes of soul/funk/rap and, most definitely, disco, I hadn’t heard it since it had last troubled the charts (number 6 in July 83, trivia fans). It sounded better than I’d ever remembered. Written by Stevie Wonder to boot. He does a wee rap/verse thing at one point. I’m sure he plays drums on it too (it sure sounds like him), but that might just be me making things up as I can’t find much in the way of info about it online.  It’s a disco classic folks, from the days when D.I.S.C.O. was D.E.A.D. The Fresh Prince was clearly getting jiggy to it as well, but we’ll gloss over that part.

Conversly, in 1974, just before D.I.S.C.O. went B.O.O.M., People’s Choice recorded this, Do It Anyway You Wanna. People’s Choice were from Philly (of course) and had a reasonably successful recording career. Andrew Collins played the original of this on BBC 6 Music the other day and I went and dug out my copy. Sadly, my version is a mildly irritating remixed version featuring snatches of Oops Upside Your Head, Last Night a DJ Saved My Life and stuff like that. Still magic though. And it reminds me of Saddle Up and Ride Your Pony and the Billy Connolly “I’ll walk you home when I empty my underwear‘ sketch that goes with it.

BONUS TRACK!

Happy Mondays do Staying Alive. The producer takes a stanley knife to much of the Pills, Thrills… album, snatches of tracks you know and love weave in and out of the mix, Shaun skanks on top of the unholy soup, Rowetta yodels and wails like a transvestite with his balls caught in a vice. This is the sound of a band on the ropes. The final round with no fight, nothing left to give back. It. Is. A. Mess. Enjoy it! The only good thing is the guitar riff. It sounds like a funky bucket. And I mean that in a good way of course.

Shane MacGowan Shaun Ryder

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

Sum Songs

Craig McAllister

Regular readers here will know that I’m somewhat a fan of Elliott Smith. I’ve posted various bits and pieces of his before. Equal parts downbeat alt. folk mumbler and upbeat Beatles-obsessed melodic genius, I could listen to Elliott all day. Stuck at the end of the Son Of Sam single (November 2000) was this, the what I assumed to be title track but left of the album of the same name Figure 8. It’s spooky as hell. A simple music box piano plays a spidery, child-like melody in the background while Elliott quietly sings these fantastic lyrics:

Figure 8 is double 4
Figure 4 is half of 8
If you skate, you would be great,
if you could make a figure 8,
that’s a circle that turns round upon itself. 

Figure 8 is 2 times 4
4 times 4 is 2 times 8
If you skate upon thin ice,
you’d be wise if you thought twice,
before you made another single move.

Amazingly (to me at least), it turns out that Figure 8 is not an Elliott original. It was written in 1973 by Bob Dorough and recorded by Blossom Dearie. It first came to the public’s attention via US TVs Schoolhouse Rock series of educational programmes – aye, the same series of programmes that brought you Dorough’s own The Magic Number. You know, “3. Is a magic number. Yes it is. It’s a …” Of course you do. Turns out Dorough is a bit of a jazz cat – he worked with Miles Davis and Alan Ginsberg, played ‘tween Lenny Bruce stand-up sets and led the band in boxer Sugar Ray Robinson’s musical revue.  

Elliott Smith stays pretty faithful to the first half of Dorough’s/Dearie’s original. But whereas his stops at downbeat and introspective, Blossom Dearie picks herself up halfway through and starts singing the 8 times table, much in the way Bob Dorough does in The Magic Number. It’s a weird, weird record, and given my love for Bob Dorough’s most famous tune, I can’t believe I haven’t picked up on the rest of his Schoolhouse Rock stuff until now. As I have just found out to my pleasant surprise, the Schoolhouse Rocks records take all the best bits of Peanuts, The Muppets and Sesame Street and those ‘Charlie Says..‘ UK public information films and ends up with something that is both extremely twee and/or child-friendly, depending on which side of the fence you’re sitting. I bet Duglas T Stewart has an original 1970s vinyl copy somewhere.

 

Cover Versions, entire show, Gone but not forgotten, Hard-to-find

Alex Chilton

Craig McAllister

Fuck. Just heard the news. This keyboard is awash with tiny tears as I type. It’s always the way, but why do the good guys go first? I can’t believe I’m writing about Alex Chilton in the past tense. His music, especially with Big Star, means as much to me as Them There Beatles, it really does. Whether he was bedroom balladeering or bar-room bawling and balls-out rocking, his songs hit a nerve that jangled all the way to the auditory part of my brain like one of those fancy pants chords he could tease out of his guitar.

If you’re reading this you probably know all about him. Teenage Box Top. Cult hero in coulda been shoulda been Big Star. Producer of The Cramps. Friend and collaborator with fellow enthusiasts/obsessives Teenage Fanclub. All round nice guy, he wrote and recorded some of the best pop songs you’ll hear. Seek out #1 Record or Radio City or 3rd/Sister Lovers for proof. Sometimes bleak, often uplifting, always soulful. But you knew that already. Given our track record for celebrating the artist in death rather than life, Alex Chilton may yet become somewhat ironically a Big Star.

I’m glad I caught Big Star live. Just the once, when they first played Glasgow as part of their initial reunion tour. I stood on the balcony of the QM Union looking down onto the stage where Chilton led his band through non-hit after non-hit after non-hit. The crowd knew every word. So too did Ken Stringfellow and Jon Auer of The Posies, similarly Teenage Fanclub-like in their obsessiveness about Big Star, and on-stage playing out their own version of Jim’ll Fix It on bass and guitar. Chilton himself played a mean guitar that night. And I mean mean in the economic sense. No frills, no pedals. Just him, a nice warm valve amp and a couple of vintage guitars. What a sound! Often overlooked in the scheme of things, Chilton was a fantastic guitar player – proof? – His version of My Baby Just Cares For Me is still up for grabs via this post.

He could play anything. Anything. Rock. Pop. Stax-inflected southern soul. Doo-wop. Jazz. E-nee-thing. He was a player’s player. A dude. And he once, sorry twice, played the 13th Note in Glasgow with Teenage Fanclub as his backing band. Naturally I found out about this the day after the second show. It was a Tuesday morning and a colleague from work casually mentioned it on the phone. Pre internet days, I’m afraid. Pissed off? You better believe it. Especially as the bootleg sounds amazing. Here‘s the entire show. No artwork. No tracklisting (I’m far too lazy/far too busy to type it out). First track is a rockin’ September Gurls. There’s covers of T-Rex, 60s pop standards and, yep, Stax-inflected southern soul. Get it and remember him this way.

Thanks for the music Alex.

Alex Chilton. December 28th 1950 – March 17th 2010

Cover Versions

I Can’t Stand Up For Falling Down Double Whammy

Craig McAllister

Round about 1990/91, John Peel played a version of I Can’t Stand Up For Falling Down on his late night Radio 1 show. It was loose, sloppy and fairly fantastic and I’m almost positive he said it was by Nirvana. Given the year, this would be the post-Beach/pre-Nevermind globe straddling Nirvana. Peel mentioned something about a Japanese compilation called Teriyaki Asthma, and though I can find these albums online, as far as I can see there’s no mention of …Can’t Stand Up… on any of them. No matter where I search or who I ask, I can’t seem to find a recording of it anywhere. To all intents and purposes, it just doesn’t exist. Or does it? Over to you…

 
For years I was under the impression that I Can’t Stand Up For Falling Down was an Elvis Costello original. It was released on 1980’s ‘Get Happy’ but began life in more dubious circumstances. Following the collapse of Radar (the label Costello recorded for up until this point) and fresh from producing The Specials’ first album, his manager Jake Riviera approached 2 Tone with the idea of releasing the track as a one-off single until a label was found and a deal was struck to release the Get Happy LP. WEA, owners of Radar, were not impressed. Given that they had been distributing his records, they felt that they had a stake in Costello’s success and promptly served a writ on 2 Tone, stopping them releasing the record.
The few thousand 7”s that had been pressed were given away at a Rainbow Theatre gig in London, and Riviera sneakily pressed up some more which were given away at other London and American gigs. Interviewed in Record Collector No 363, Jerry Dammers takes a slightly different view point :
“Jake Riviera cheekily printed up a few thousand Elvis Costello singles on the 2 Tone label, obviously thinking that I would be delighted to have such a major star on the label, but I was having none of it, 2 Tone being strictly ska at that time. So Elvis was forced to give these singles away free at his gigs.”
 
These 2 Tone singles are now ridiculously collectible. If you have one it’s worth checking out what the 2 Tone nuts’ll pay for it. Disappointingly, my version comes from a Best of 2 Tone CD I got about 20 years ago. No cash-in for me.
 
Hipsway. Glasvegas taking notes just out of shot.
For years I was met with blank stares and sneering indifference from trying-too-hard-to-be-cool wankers in West of Scotland record shops whenever I asked for Hipsway (aye, really!) doing It’s A Family Affair, until I found out it was just called Family Affair. I had seen Hipsway play it live and assumed it was an old b-side or something, having never heard Sly Stone at this point in my life. I doubt those wankers behind the counter had heard Sly either cos no-one ever corrected me and pointed out what it was I might be asking for. Even the nice wee old woman who worked behind the counter in RS McColl’s record department (best record shop in the world by the way!) at Irvine Cross couldn’t help me. I got into soul music big time when I worked in record shops myself and had access to all these artists I had heard of but never heard. That was when I discovered that many of the records I liked were cover versions. The Jam doing Stoned Out Of My Mind? That’s a Chi-Lites cover, man! The Black Crowes doing ‘Hard To Handle’? That’s an Otis Redding cover! And it’s not as good as the original (of course). Elvis Costello doing I Can’t Stand Up For Falling Down? That’s an old Sam & Dave song. Is it? Oh, so it is! But whereas the Elvis version is an uptempo new wavey 2 minute wonder, Sam & Dave’s original is a different kettle of crawfish altogether.
Sam & Dave. Or Dave & Sam. I’m no’ sure.
Theirs is an exhausted, knees-to-the-floor, crumpled in a pool of sweat, southern soul tearjerker. Half the speed of Costello’s with twice the soul and despair, it’s a belter. What makes it all the more amazing is when you know the story of Sam & Dave. For most of their time together, they barely spoke to one another. They had separate dressing rooms. They turned up separately to shows. By the 70s, one of them might not even turn up at all. Which made it difficult for the promoter promoting the Sam & Dave Show. Sam had aspirations for going solo. Dave resented this. Sam hated the ‘Sam & Dave Show’ material they were made to perform. On stage, they would constantly try and out-do one another, which made for outrageous dance-offs and a frenzied live performance. Following the 1967 Stax/Volt tour of Europe, Otis Redding refused to go on after them as night after night they brought the house down – Follow that Otis and all that. Aye, Sam & Dave’s version is the real deal. Though not as good as the cover……
 
*Apologies for the layout/font/spacing etc. My computer’s having an off day.
Cover Versions, Hard-to-find

A Kinks Klunker and a Kouple of Klassiks

Craig McAllister

Call it The Establishment, Rock Royalty, whatever you fancy, but every songwriter has plenty skeletons rattling around their songwriting closet. For every Helter Skelter there’s a Frog Chorus. For every Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands there’s a Wiggle Wiggle. For every Heroes there’s a Laughing Gnome. If you dig deep enough you’ll find that no hero-worshipped songwriter is immune from it. They’ve all written rubbish at some point and some of it has even made it to vinyl.

Kinks ’83 model.

I came to The Kinks via 1983’s Come Dancing, but I was in denial about them for a long, long time. “The Kinks? Oh, they’re an old band.” said my mum. “I met Ray Davies in a pub in Arran once. Or was that Jeff Beck?” Like any normal 13 year old, anything my parents liked, I didn’t (or shouldn’t). If they hated Relax by Frankie Goes To Hollywood as much as they said they did, I was only going to buy the 12″ and play it non-stop for half a year. Ditto The Kinks’ Come Dancing. I loved it. I bought it. I played it to death when my mum wasn’t around to hear me playing it. Sometime later I borrowed the LP with Come Dancing on it (State Of Confusion) from the library and was massively underwhelmed. What’s all the fuss about those Kinks? This is pub rock. And not even good pub rock. George Thorogood and the Destroyers. Now there’s some decent pub rock for you. I was a good few years away from setting foot in a pub, but I knew. I did. 

State Of Confusion was so bad I didn’t even tape it. The band themselves seemed to be in some state of confusion. Were they rock? New wave? Acoustic balladeers? Nah, they were the bloody Kinks, mate. Only, they were going downhill fast without the brakes on. A severley diluted, sanitised version of the real Kinks that I had yet to hear. Of course a few years later I discovered the true Kinks and came to love them. Ray Davies doesn’t have to apologise for anything he’s written, recorded or released. You and I both know that. But the iPod threw up this stinker of a tune the other day. I had no idea who it was and was beginning to doubt my own taste in music. Then amongst the strangled power chords and strained vocals something jumped out at me. I recognised a wee bit of the voice. T’was only Ray Davies! On Disc 6 of Kinks box set Picture Book. Aye. Disc 6. The disc no-one will ever play more than once. Not The Kinks’ finest hour, that’s for sure. And lo and behold, the track I was about to skip was State Of Confusion, title track from the aforementioned 1983 elpee. It took me all the way back to when I thought the Kinks were Krap. Yuck! It’s a stone cold sure fire Kinks Klunker and no mistake. You have been warned.

I prefer my Kinks tight of trouser, modish of cloth and shaggy of hair. They were a fantastic garage band, a fact often overlooked in the clamber to place them at the top of the classic songwriting pedestal, but find a space in your heart and a few minutes of your time to appreciate the following tracks….

Here’s Sittin’ On My Sofa, Milk Cow Blues and I Need You. I’ve posted I Need You before (here), but You Need It. You Need All Of Them to be honest. As you listen, spare a thought for how they got that guitar sound. If you’ve read Ray’s X-Ray semi-autobiography, you’ll already know that brother Dave took a knitting needle to his amp one day in a fit of squabling sibling rivalry and burst a hole right throught the speaker cone. Cue much fuzzed-up distortion and the riff for You Really Got Me….

Ray and Dandy Dave

Cover Versions

Kiss My Shades* (slight return)

Craig McAllister

Two people have been in touch over the past week or so and asked if I’d re-post some mp3’s. I don’t usually respond to requests like this because a) I cannae usually find the mp3s in question and b) if I can find them, I usually cannae be arsed with all the bother of uploading them again. Often the reason mp3s disappear suddenly from Plain Or Pan (or indeed any blog you visit)  is because a particular record company has spotted something they own and believe that the blogger making it available for free will stop you from buying it. I tend to post only hard to find/out of print stuff, but this argument doesn’t win with the powers that be and I’ve often received the internet equivalent of a record company knee capping by daring to post some dusty old forgotten slab of vinyl. Anyway Stephen Q and Quiff#1 (really!) this re-post (from November 07) is for you…..

Released in April 1984, this version of ‘Hand In Glove’ was promoted as a Sandie Shaw solo release, although it is essentially The Smiths with Sandie Shaw coming straight off the bench as some kind of super-sub. All those Smiths fans helped the single reach the dizzy heights of number 27. Even the cover art of the single is Smithsy in appearance. I’d imagine all Smiths aficionados would have the 3 Smiths tracks Sandie covered by now, but if not, here you go… 

sandie-sleeve.gif

The 7” featured 2 tracks – the lead track and her version of ‘I Don’t Owe You Anything’. ‘Hand In Glove’ is a reverb-drenched bash-along that Siouxsie Sioux would be proud of. The lead guitar riff sounds like a glockenspiel, and I mean that in a good way. The outro is terrific too. Different to the original. Not better. Not worse. Just different.  

sandie-smiths.jpg

Apart from the unusual introduction, Sandie’s version of ‘I Don’t Owe You Anything’ sounds an awful lot like the Troy Tate produced version that was intended for their first album before The Smiths binned it at the last minute. Maybe, way back in ’84 before Bongo, Sting and all those other worthless eco-warriers, The Smiths were into recycling their old junk, giving it to someone more deserving. It’s got a creepy, churchy-sounding keyboard part playing through the background and tons of jangling, clipped 12 string Rickenbacker. And the final chord is niiiiiiiiice. Sandie’s got a nice warble to her voice too. I like this version a lot. 

 sandie-johnny.jpg

The 12” featured ‘Jeane’ as an extra track. More acoustic than The Smiths, it’s just Johnny n’ Sandie, until some crooner in a big quiff and national health specs starts yodeling towards the end. No heavenly choirs, not for me and not for you, they sing. But I’m not so sure. Sandie Shaw’s 3 Smiths covers are amongst some of my favourite records.    

 sandie-moz-rosary.jpg

Forgive me father, for I have sing-ed

Around the time of the record’s release, Morrissey said, “I met her a few months ago and it seemed perfectly natural for me to seize the opportunity and ask her to work with us and she was incredibly eager and incredibly enthusiastic. She really liked the songs and she was very eager to do it. So, it’s happened and I’m very pleased.“ Four years later, post-Smiths and bored of Smiths-obsessed journalists, he cut short one inquisitive interviewer with, “It was so great for me personally that I don’t actually remember it happening“. 

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Is that real leather she’s wearing?

*   ’Kiss My Shades’ was the wee message scratched into the run-off groove of the 7”, trainspotters.

Cover Versions, Gone but not forgotten, studio outtakes

Ladies and Gentlemen, Elvis has re-entered the building…

Craig McAllister

Last Friday would’ve been Elvis’s 75th birthday. It’s anyone’s guess what he might’ve been doing had he still been alive these days. Maybe the hottest, most over-priced oldie ticket on the circuit. Having finally freed himself from the management clutches of illegal immigrant Colonel Tom Parker he’s a non-stop World Touring machine, kerchinging his way across the planet out-grossing the Rolling Stones, U2 et al along the way. Or maybe the fattest, lardy-assed multi millionaire grossing out anyone he comes into contact with in one of his few forrays into the real world, instead living out his final years in Gracelands surrounded by flunkies and 50 year old former beauty queens who still see Elvis, Shallow Hal style, as that bee-stung lip curled, hip-swinging sexual animal of old. Personally I like to think he’d be somewhere in between. By now, someone would’ve taken him aside, pointed him in the direction of some decent management and he’d have taken to touring when and where he felt like it, BB King style. Maybe an annual show at Prestwick Airport or something like that…

We’ll never know.

Spiritualized’s ‘Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space’ has recently been reissued as a monster 3CD package. Jason Pierce had the opportunity to work on the remaster but somewhat arrogantly (and predictably) claimed that he’d done the best possible job first time round. Eh..not quite, Mr Spaceman. On the original 1997 release, the first track, ‘Ladies and Gentlmen We Are Floating In Space’, was a delicate paen to lost love, Pierce harmonising and singing counter-melodies to himself over the sort of backing track Brian Wilson would be proud of creating. The lyrics hint at snatches of Elvis’s ‘Can’t Help Falling In Love’ in places, but never quite get there – possibly due to copyright problems a la Verve and The Rolling Stones, where Jagger and co got 100%, (that’s 100%!) of the royalties from Bittersweet Symphony. Serves that lanky idiot Ashcroft right, after running away with Jason Pierce’s girlfriend – lyrically, that’s what the whole Ladies and Gentlemen album is about. Anyway, I digress. The new Spiritualized release doesn’t change anything, but adds the fantastic sound of a gospel choir singing ‘Can’t Help Falling In Love‘ throughout it. It. Sounds. Fantastic.

And if you thought that was good…here‘s a seperated track, featuring sparse backing and Pierce doing the whole Elvis bit himself. It’s restrained, heartbreaking and druggy as fuck in equal measures. If you were a writer dealing in puns you might say there’s methodone his madness. Anyway, you’ll also find it on disc 2 of the new release.

Sometimes in my search for interesting music to put on here, I overlook the fact that often, the original un-altered version is usually the best. So here‘s Elvis doing Can’t Help Falling In Love. The same version on every Elvis hits compilation ever released, the same one you’ve heard a gazillion times before. Recorded for the Blue Hawaii soundtrack. But you knew that already.

*Bonus Track!

Here‘s take 4 of Guitar Man. I’ve written about it before, here. (Though the mp3 links have long been deleted by them pesky internet police.)