Outdated Music For Outdated People since 2007
Following on from the post below, here‘s the complete show as requested by one or two of you more sociable vistors. The file’s quite big and has been compressed as a winrar file, which works the same as a zip file. Download, unrar and enjoy.
Plain Or Pan? – We do requests!
Any problems with winrar, visit this site.
Apart from not going to see The Smiths play my hometown during their 1985 tour of off-the-beaten-track backwaters and one horse towns, my main musical regret is not going to see Jeff Buckley when I had 2 chances. In February 1995 he played the Garage in Glasgow. Two of my pals went. I played football instead. Then on the 20th of June he played Edinburgh Queens Hall. I was working in Edinburgh that whole week. Somehow I only found out about the concert the next day….
D’oh. And d’oh. Four days after the Queens Hall show Jeff Buckley played Glastonbury. Sandwiched somewhere between Sleeper, Heavy Stereo and a million other Adidas-clad no-marks he put on a performance of such magnitude that ‘Glastonbury Live’ would have made a great official live Jeff Buckley long player. Especially as the BBC were recording it. The tracks below are taken straight from a BBC transcription disc. That means crystal clear sound, about as far removed from that 5th generation D90 recorded outside the venue sound that you often associate with bootlegs. Unfortunately, history shows that Jeff’s performance was somewhat overshadowed that weekend by 2 monobrowed brothers from Burnage. Yep. 1995 was the year of Oasis and the record buying public in the UK didn’t have time for fookin’ sensitive singer-songwriters who were the missing link between the Smiths and Led Zeppelin. Indeed, many people had yet to actually hear Jeff Buckley. ‘Grace’ is now regarded as a stone cold classic album, but you need to bear in mind that it sold slowly while Jeff was alive. It’s hard to explain to any Buckley haters just why he’s so brilliant, especially as he’s partly responsible for awful bands like Starsailor, Scott Matthews or even Muse, but if like me you are a fan, the tracks below from the Glastonbury show are absolutely essential.
Starting with a fantastic 9 minutes + version of ‘Dream Brother’ before going into ‘Lover, You Should’ve Come Over’, Jeff and his band are on sizzling form. In amongst a mixture of released and unreleased songs they do theee heaviest version of ‘Eternal Life‘ you might ever hear. These 3 tracks are all here in crystal clear straight-off-the-mixing-desk quality. If you like them, any requests for the full show in the comments section will be dealt with ASAP. In the meantime, if you’re new to Plain Or Pan? you may not have discovered the other Jeff Buckley downloads here and here.
front cover artwork for the complete show
……..Teenage Fanclub are back in town. And to celebrate my first gig of 2008 this Saturday in Glasgow, or for those of you who’ll see them before me in London (that’s just the warm-up by the way. Glasgow’s always Miles Better), here‘s a fantastic radio session they did for Mark Radcliffe’s Radio 1 show.
Broadcast on 1st June 1995 it was aired probably to promote the ‘Grand Prix’ album, although in Teenage Fanclub land I doubt if anything is so slickly planned. Still, if the session didn’t help the band shift an extra million or so copies of what was their finest album to date (and may still be?) then there really is no hope for any of us. The session’s a belter. It is choc full of funny anecdotes, bum notes and a general bonhomie between Mark Radcliffe and the band. I considered posting it as mp3’s. Due to boring reasons posting mp3’s as oppossed to larger files somehow brings more people to this site (something to do with search engines) and then I thought, well, you need to hear all of this session. The music is almost secondary to the inbetween bits. Full tracklisting is:
1. The OMD Drum Machine
2. Verisimilitude
3. Move Over Rick Wakeman
4. Songwriting Duties
5. Going Places
6. Norman’s Beard Permutations
7. Feel A Whole Lot Better
8. Why didn’t Gerry Sing It?
9. China Girl
10. Norman’s Maraca Frenzy
11. Starsign
12. Finding out everyone’s starsign
Happy downloading.
Please feel free to leave comments in the box. Cheers.
Mark Radcliffe in a pub. I’d buy him a pint.
Radiohead‘s webcast for ‘In Rainbows’ aired on New Year’s Eve and it was bloody magic. Believe it or not, I actually have some sort of social life so I didn’t watch it as it happened. Last night was spent poking about the ‘net to find a video download that I could watch. You can get it here if you want.
This morning was spent extracting the audio part of the video so that I could make a CD for the car. This caused me no amount of pain and a lot of trial and error. Don’t ask me how I did it cos even I don’t really know, but here’s the audio only broadcast. It sounds excellent. Of course. With the exception of ‘Faust Arp’ which was recorded outside somewhere, and ‘Nude’ (which they didn’t play) the band recorded the entire album (in a slightly different running order to the album) in a basement studio somewhere. It’s a fly-on-the-wall look/listen at how Radiohead do their thang. If you have a spare hour sometime you really should click on the link at the top of this post and watch it. Otherwise, get yourself the music-only soundtrack. It sounds great through headphones. What are you waiting for?
It appears that the link below wasn’t working properly. If you’ve tried and failed to download the whole show, please try again using the link in the sentence below. Thanks!
To celebrate the dawning of 2008, here’s a fantastic sounding White Stripes New Year’s Eve show. Recorded on the 31st December 2000 at the Magic Stick in Detroit, it features Jack ‘n’ Meg in fine, if slightly drunken form. “Hello everybody,” slurs Jack. “Is it the New Year yet? I guess it’s not the best idea that we go on last. Everybody gives you a drink every 5 minutes…..”
Straight off the soundboard you get electric versions of AC/DCs ‘Let There Be Rock’ and ‘Dog Eat Dog’ and Iggy Pop’s ‘I’m Bored’! In between the best stuff from the White Stripes first 3 albums and a marriage propoasal from the stage, you get the usual cover of ‘Jolene’ before the set finishes with Meg doing a well out of tune rendition of the Velvet Underground’s ‘After Hours’, which is really saying something if you consider just how out of tune Mo Tucker sings the original. There’s also a mystery bass player for the first two numbers. He/she may well be from one of the support groups (Detroit Cobras, Von Bondies, Soledad Brothers, The Come Ons – what a line up) but no amount of googling sheds light on why the White Stripes chose this night to fleetingly feature a bass player. Maybe you know?
Apparently this show was to be released as a live album, but was pulled when it was pointed out how drunk the band were at the time. The thing is you don’t really notice, and a sloppy sounding White Stripes still sounds fantastic to these ears.
The show’s setlist was:
Let There Be Rock
Dog Eat Dog
You’re Pretty Good Looking
Hello Operator
Death Letter
Little Bird
Lord, Send Me an Angel
Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground
Apple Blossom
Broken Bricks
Cannon
Truth Doesn’t Make a Noise
Jolene
I’m Bored
Let’s Build a Home > Goin’ Back to Memphis
Suzy Lee
After Hours
It’s a belter folks (sorry, no cover art this time)
Happy New Year! See you in 2008
So sayeth John Lennon. I can’t believe I haven’t posted anything Beatles-related at all until now. This post more than makes up for it. The music contained herein is cracking. What makes it all the more amazing is that this recording is of a radio show and is over 40 years old. It’s amazing to think these recordings exist, let alone in good quality. God knows who originally recorded it, or how they recorded it, but somehow they did, and thanks to the wonders of the internet, it’s all here. First though, the history part.
In 1963, as a live phenomenon, The Beatles were at the top of their game. Their years of playing extended sets in Hamburg had taught them how to handle a crowd. Their own fantastic songwriting talent was emerging and many of these songs were yet to be committed to vinyl. In a couple of years time they would be a spent force on the live stage. Limitations in their equipment couldn’t match the increasingly bigger venues the band were playing. This show was recorded for Swedish Radio at Karplan Studios in Stockholm on October 24th 1963. It captures the Beatles playing their early 60s set, drawing on a mixture of originals and covers. From Paul’s “2, 3, 4″ count-in onwards, this set sounds like proto-punk. The playing is spot-on. The vocal harmonies are tight and Ringo’s backeat holds it all together. There’s a John one (From Me To You), a Paul one (I Saw Her Standing There), a George one (Roll Over Beethoven), a fast one (Money), a slow one (You Really Got A Hold On Me) and all the big hits (She Loves You, Twist & Shout). And it’s all in crystal clear high fidelity mp3 (!)
Hans Westman was the studio engineer for Swedish radio. “The worst recordings I’ve ever made,” he said. “Totally chaotic. No time for rehearsals.” The studio wasn’t best equipped for recording a ‘beat group’ and there were problems overcoming the UK plugs on the Vox amps. But once sorted, The Beatles simply plugged in and played. Westman couldn’t apologise enough for his poor sound, but Lennon loved this recording. “We love distortion!“ Not long before he died in1980 he said that these were the best live recordings The Beatles ever made. And who can argue?
1. Introduction
2. I Saw Her Standing There
3. From Me To You
4. Money
5. Roll Over Beethoven
6. You Really Got A Hold On Me
7. She Loves You
8. Twist And Shout
You need this. It’s brilliant. The entire show is available here as a zip file., from me to you (arf).
(Above) back cover art (right-click and save)
(Below)Hans Westman’s original tape reel, signed by the fab four.
Teenage Fanclub live on the radio, Wednesday August 3rd 2005, at KEXP in Seattle to promote the release of ‘Man-Made’. What can you say about Teenage Fanclub that’s not been said already? Not a lot, which is why I’ll let the music do the talking this time. This session is an all-acoustic affair, although ‘Born Under a Good Sign’ benefits from some subtle fuzzed-up lead guitar, and sounds like a lost outtake from Forever Changes, or maybe even LA Woman-era Doors. Yep. It’s that good. This session is worth getting just for this track alone. In the interviews, Norman does most of the talking, which veers from golf, to “plodding along” as Teenage Fanclub, to playing dice with the Posies, to not listening to his own records. Not all that exciting, but as far as Teenage Fanclub material goes, you need it to fill the gaps in your collection, at least until their next album or single or song or verse or new chord or something comes out. Haste ye back Fannies, we’re missing you.
All tracks have been seperated, but if you burn them ‘gapless’ in Nero or whatever, you’ll get that full seemless radio listening experience.
Insert your own Teenage Fanclub ‘Radio’ joke here:
Plain Or Pan 