Get This! – Page 25 – Plain Or Pan

Cover Versions, Get This!, Gone but not forgotten, Hard-to-find

Under The Influence

January 4, 2015January 4, 2015 Craig McAllister

It’s 1987 in San Francisco. Or maybe L.A. Bono, atop a building, perhaps a hotel, it doesn’t really matter, his arms outstretched in messianic fashion, has just informed the crowd of unwitting gatherers below that “Rock ‘n roll stops the traffic!” If I was on my morning commute, I’d be mightily pissed off at this uncalled-for inconvenience. The traffic is indeed stopped. Lights change from red to green and back again, but the procession of buses, cabs and sedans is gridlocked. A huge crowd swells, folk in suits and ties, briefcase-carrying urban professionals, crane their necks and squint in the morning sunshine at the spectacle above them. “OK Hedge, play the blues!”

The Hedge, so-named because of that thick thatch of collar-baiting pony-tailed hair, thinning rapidly on top but hidden underneath a carefully perched cowboy hat rattles off one of his trademark ticka-ticka-ticka-ticka guitar riffs, and the most unbluesy guitar solo ever echoes out across California. “All you need is three chords and the truth!” spouts Bono, who by this time is halfway up a water tower and totally unaware of the long arm of the mirror-shaded law lurking behind Larry Mullen Jnr’s drum kit. It’s U2’s Saville Row moment, just one more example of them (literally) elevating themselves into rock’s lofty position as premier league players. The nitwits that they had just become.

I don’t know about the truth, but all you need is indeed just three chords. You don’t need me to tell you that. The foundations of rock ‘n roll were formed on such base ideals. Silly old Bono dressed the fact up in grandiose, wankery fashion. Punk bible, Sniffin’ Glue said it best;

Many a band was formed with the guitarist having an arsenal of two chords, with that tricky third still in production.

King of the Swingers

Eddie Cochran was there at rock ‘n roll’s birth. If Ike Turner was pushing and grunting for all he was worth, Eddie was there at the end of the bed, holding the towels and hot water. Or more likely, he was fighting off Little Richard for mirror space as he greased his hair into that spectacular D.A. of his.

Eddie only knew three chords. “There are three steps to heaven,” he sang.

Step 1, you play a C. Step 2, you play that tricky F. Step 3, you play a G. And that sure sounds like heaven to me.

Eddie Cochran – Three Steps To Heaven

Actually, Eddie knew far more than just three chords. A quick listen to a couple of his records will tell you that. But he was an economical guitar player, never frilly, never flashy. He played what his songs demanded. A minor chord here perhaps, a 7th there, all rhythmically skirling toe-tappers. And his songs sound more honest, more soulful than the entire output of Bono and his rooftop singers.

When David Bowie ditched the theatrics, the miming and the long, long hair on the road to Ziggy‘s straight-ahead guitar boogie, the spirit of Eddie Cochran loomed large.

David Bowie – Queen Bitch

Queen Bitch from Hunky Dory is Three Steps To Heaven in a funky jump suit with added sneer and a good dollop of Les Paul courtesy of Mick Ronson. Listen carefully. The moaning and groaning you hear in the background is the sound of Ziggy being conceived.

“We’ve played some right toilets in our time…”

New (wave) kids on the block Broncho know a thing or two about the simplicity of the three chord song. Their own What sounds like a glammed-up mix of Queen Bitch and Lou Reed’s Vicious, as sung by Marc Bolan. And there ain’t nothin’ wrong with that;

Broncho – What

Taken from their Just Enough Hip To Be A Woman LP, it’s an album that escaped my attention earlier last year, but one that could do with further investigation.

Rock ‘n roll – it’s dead easy, isn’t it?

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

P.O.P. B.O. ’14

December 31, 2014 Craig McAllister

Somehow, this is the end of the 8th year of this blog. 8 years! I never for a minute thought I’d be down this road for so long, but here I am, slowing down slightly, but still writing whenever the muse takes me. In the past, I used to write loads over the Christmas period and store it all up like a squirrel hiding nuts in trees, so that when I was busy with my real work I could drip-feed my wee articles online at regular intervals when time was of the essence. These days, holidays mean holidays. For the past week or so I’ve done sweet F.A. apart from sit around in my underwear eating cheese until 3 in the afternoon. Occasionally I’ve tidied up a bit, but that’s only after the Applewood smoked or Wensleydale and cranberry has run out.

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It’ll be good to get back to the old routine in January and, along with work, get back to writing about music on a (hopefully) more regular basis. Until then, here’s the annual end of December post.

Around this time of year I employ a team of stat monkeys to sift through everything published on Plain Or Pan over the last 12 months. Numbers are fed into a specially-constructed silver machine, crunched and spat back out. Amongst the stainless steel saliva lie the 25 most listened to and/or downloaded tracks of the year.

Below is that list, a CD-length collection of covers, curios and hard-to-find classics. Download the rar file, sequence as you please and burn away.

Baby Huey – Listen To Me

The Lovin’ Spoonful – Do You Believe In Magic?

French Fries – Danse a la Musique

Oscar Brown – The Snake

Al Brown – Here I Am Baby

Radiohead – These Are My Twisted Words

Bob Dylan – Boots Of Spanish Leather

Ian Dury & the Blockheads – Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick

Michael Marra – Hamish

Paul Weller – Flame-Out

Bo Diddley – She’s Fine, She’s Mine

Barbara & the Browns – You Don’t Love Me

Tommy James & the Shondells – Crimson & Clover

Lightships – Do Your Thing

The Beatles – It’s All Too Much (Much Too Much bootleg version)

Les Negresses Vertes – Zobi la Mouche

Trash Can Sinatras – Ghosts Of American Astronauts (Live at Fez, NYC 2004)

Eddie Floyd – I’ve Never Found A Girl

The Smiths – There Is A Light That Never Goes Out (demo)

Curtis Liggins Indications – What It Is

Them – I Can Only Give You Everything

Kim Fowley – Bubblegum

A Camp – Boys Keep Swinging

The Slits – I Heard It Through The Grapevine (demo)

Madness – Un Paso Adelante

And here’s to health, wealth and happiness to you all for 2015. All the best!

Double Nugget, Get This!, Hard-to-find

High Kimpact

November 18, 2014November 18, 2014 Craig McAllister

Kim Fowley is a throwback to the record industry of old. A wheeler, a dealer, a mover and a shaker, he’s had his fingers in as many musical pies as he could manage at the one time. He’s done it all; manager, writer, producer, artist, promoter, you name it – a great example of a jack of all trades yet master of none.

From the late 1950s onwards he seemed determined to involve himself in as many projects as possible, in the hope that one of them might stick long enough to guarantee himself a financially secure future and his place alongside Andrew Loog Oldham, Phil Spector and Brian Epstein on the Mount Rushmore of pop.

Fowley might not be as well known or commercially successful as the names above and although he always seemed to be a half-step out of time with the trends of the day, his influence went far and wide.

As The Beatles were clanging their first augmented 7ths off the Cavern Club’s walls, Kim was plying his trade as a West Coast Tin Pan Alley-style in-house writer. His daft novelty pop records credited to fictitious groups like The Hollywood Argyles sold by the bucket-load, even if you’d have trouble whistling them today (Alley Oop and Like, Long Hair, anyone?) His ear for A&R led to The Rivingtons having a hit with Papa Oom Mow Mow, a slice of duh-duh-duh-duh-duh doo-wop so blinkin’ catchy it spawned Surfin’ Bird, a tune that was the catalyst for bringing the brothers Ramone into the same rehearsal room. So, (at a creative stretch) no Kim Fowley, no Ramones.

By the mid 60s, Kim was recording and releasing his own little blasts of garage punk strangeness. Selling less than zero, they quietly found their way back to obscurity before being picked up years later. Fowley’s original material has been oft-bootlegged and deserves to be heard. You’d like it.

Animal Man

1968’s Animal Man is the jewel in an off-kilter crown. A Hendrixian squall of strangulated Strats, it riffs along like the snotty-nosed big brother of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, a bass-less, thrilling ramalama. Kim comes across like a proto Iggy, yelping and yowling, barking and burping his way through a list of sexual desires – “I’m a pig! Oink Oink!”, getting pervier and pervier by the second until it fades out in more of that ear-splitting lead guitar.

Bubblegum

Another from 1968, Bubblegum grooves along on organ, restrained percussion and more of that wild guitar. Very of its time. But in a good way. Given that it comes out of the speakers sounding like a tank going into no man’s land, I think this version is the full-fat mono recording.

Underground Lady

66’s Underground Lady is a one chord blues stomp, the kind you’ve heard a million times before, Kim sneering like a young Van Morrison fronting Them, Cuban heels stomping out the beat on the floor below. Young bands like The Strypes would kill for this sound.

The Trip

The Trip famously appeared on the original Nuggets LP. It‘s the claustrophobic, street walkin’, jive talkin’ oral equivalent of being 3 acid tabs to the wind. Itchy, scratchy and faintly unpleasant. It’s an essential listen, obviously.

Following his failed assault on the pop charts, Kim moved into writing and producing, then management. In the 70s he wrote for artists as varied as Alice Cooper, Leon Russell, Kiss and Kriss Kristofferson. He also produced material for Jonathan Richman, although it failed to make the band’s debut LP.

He then recruited 5 disparate female musicians, dressed them head to toe in figure-hugging denim, lycra and the occasional basque, called them The Runaways and set the pulse of every 15 year old mid-Western male racing. The Runaways paved the way for future all-girl acts such as The Bangles, The Go-Gos and Girlschool, proving that for once in his musical life, Kim was a step ahead of the curve.

He’s still going strong, is Kim Fowley. In 2012 he published the first part of his autobiography and just a couple of months ago, at the age of 75, he married his long-term girlfriend. The second part of his story will be written on his death bed and published posthumously. Not your average Joe at all.

Kim Fact #1.

When a nervous John Lennon and Yoko Ono appeared at the last minute as special guests at 1969’s Toronto Rock & Roll Revival show, it was Kim’s idea for the audience to greet them by holding aloft their lighters and matches. Thus began a 70’s cliche…

Kim Fact #2

He looks a wee bit like Lou Reed, aye?

Get This!, Hard-to-find, Kraut-y

(Senti)Mental Machine Music.

October 5, 2014 Craig McAllister

Although it was actually released at the end of January, 1994, this week sees the 20th (20th!!) anniversary reissue of Underworld‘s ‘dubnobasswithmyheadman‘ LP. Given the kind of music Plain Or Pan normally features, you might be surprised to learn that I’m really looking forward to this. Indeed, my excitement might only be surpassed if The Queen Is Dead or Blonde On Blonde were to be suddenly released as 5 CD super-deluxe box sets featuring scores of previously unheard session outtakes and retailing for a tenner. Along with those two releases, dubnobasswithmyheadman holds a place in the higher echelons of my favourite albums of all-time list.

It’s dance music, Jim, but not as we know it.

For starters, dubnobasswithmyheadman dispenses with the notion that dance music is all about the ‘now’ – it may well be the first dance album with genuine longevity. In that respect, it opened doors for Leftfield and the Chemical Brothers. But to these ears, both those act’s various LPs now seem a tad dated. Twenty years on, dubnobasswithmyheadman still thrills.

Opening track Dark & Long is exactly that:

What is ‘Dance music’ anyway? Dark & Long could almost be Joy Division.

dubnobasswithmyheadman sounds nothing like its ‘contemporaries’. There’s none of that generic hysteric female vocal that was prevalent on every release at the time. And sure, it has it’s four-to-the-floor moments, but nothing as crass as the handbag house hits of the day that cluttered up a gazillion Ministry Of Sound compilations and their ilk. There’s not a James Brown sample or a “Baby! Baby! Baby!” anywhere near it.

At times the album sounds as if it’s running on the same sort of energy that pulses through I Feel Love. Elsewhere it sounds as if someone’s turned every knob on every keyboard all the way round as far as they’ll go, drowning the listener in a bath-full of acid squelches and road drill beats.

Occasionally it sounds stoned and other-wordly. River Of Bass could almost be Can, with its repetitive guitar riff and whispered vocals.

dubnobasswithmyheadman is a true one-off – it’s percussive, it’s relentless and it ebbs and flows like all good albums do. It’s got guitars on it! Lovely chiming, echoing, layered guitars that fade in and out when the mood arises. The vocals are a one-off; half-spoken snippets of overheard conversations and cut ‘n paste phrases, mirroring the cut-up, random cover art.

“I see Elvis!”

“‘I’m just a waitress’, she said.’”

“Don’t put your hand where you wouldn’t put your face.”

Cowgirl is perhaps the most instantly-accessible track.

Nagging and creeping, like a virus worming its way under your skin it’s a full-on four-to-the-floor smash, glo-stick techno at its longest, loudest and best, a precursor for sure to the band’s big Lager! Lager!Lager! breakthrough hit a couple of years later.

You can take each track in isolation and get something from them, but the best way to listen to dubnobasswithmyheadman is to bunker down and swallow the whole in one go. In amongst the rollin’ and tumblin’ sequencers and rat-a-tat percussion there’s a fluidity to it and because of that it’s been a recurring soundtrack to my cycling, speeding me up hills that I have no inclination to go up, whisking me back home when I’d rather take the last few miles a bit easier. Now and again I’ll hear the sound of the chain snake its way through the sprocket bleeding into the mix and this just adds to it.

When it comes out this week with all manner of weird and wonderful remixes, lost tracks and souped-up remastering, it’ll help me get many extra miles in on my bike.

Get This!, Gone but not forgotten, Hard-to-find

Wackawackawackawackawacka

September 29, 2014 Craig McAllister

The Curtis Liggins Indications were from Kansas and only ever released one single…..but what a single!

A game of two halves on 7″ vinyl, one side drips in pseudo-Stax sweat while the other skips along like Curtis Mayfield on a summer’s day. Is it funk? Is it soul? Is it northern/funk? Who knows? Who cares?

A Side Funky Monkey Right On is a magic piece of late 60s funk. Beginning with a rickity-tickity Theme from Shaft hi-hat pattern and ‘Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!‘ crie du guerre, it quickly morphs into a soup of clattering funk.

Underneath the slightly generic vocal, there’s a great band at work. The massive bass line sounds as if it was recorded in a cave. The drummer rattles and rolls his way through a couple of key changes with all the loose-limbed dexterity of a seasoned jazz player, never once stopping to catch breath. The incessant twin guitar riff could be Happy Mondays at their most industrial. Sean Ryder and co. should’ve done a version of this back in 1990. Slowed down to half the pace and Joe Blogged to within an inch of its life. “Is your monkee foonkee? Foonkee Moonkey Riiight On!”

The B Side is even better.

Like its partner, What It Is sounds as if it was recorded live in one take. What It Is leaves behind the frantic funk of the a side and instead grabs a hold of Curtis Mayfield’s coat tails as he heads further towards socio-politico soul. The falsetto vocal flits and floats across a bed of woo-oo-ooh backing vocals, lightly toasted bongos and the sort of chords Marvin Gaye employed on What’s Going On, all major and minor 7s (I think), stopping now and again to allow the guitar player to play a familiar, ripe-for-sampling three note riff, bum notes ‘n all. “Right on! I heard someone yell.” Does it matter that none of the band sound as if they’re playing in time with one another? It matters not a jot.

What It Is is truly life-affirming and beautiful, the sort of record I could play over and over. Which I have been doing as I write this. Not the actual record, sadly. Given away by the band at their shows at the end of ’69, start of ’70, only 50 copies are thought to be in existence. Not long after cutting it, Curtis and the Indications died in a tour bus crash. If you’re lucky enough to unearth one of these singles, you won’t get much change out of £250.

Someone who probably has a copy of this record is Paul Weller. He MUST have a copy of it. To these ears, he modelled much of the musical manifesto of the Style Council on it. Close your eyes while you listen and you can ‘see’ for yourself. Just imagine a guitar-free Weller backed by his pop-soul playing multicultural band, cricket jumper thrown over his shoulder as he forces his white-man-sings-Otis vocals into one of those none-more-80s skinny microphones. Good for you if you can listen to this record without hearing this. And sorry if I’ve now spoiled it by saying so.

Cover Versions, Get This!, Gone but not forgotten, Hard-to-find, Live!

Stax O’ Soul

August 18, 2014 Craig McAllister

Eddie Floyd was the big haired, big voiced vocalist of such soul nuggets as Knock On Wood, I’ve Got To Have Your Love and Big Bird. An ode to flight, Big Bird was reputedly written by Floyd in Heathrow Airport as he waited to board a plane to Memphis for Otis Redding’s funeral. That’s how the legend goes at any rate.

Floyd was also a staff writer at Stax, and co-penned all manner of lesser known gems recorded by the likes of William Bell, the Staples Singers and Carla Thomas. You could do worse than spend an evening digging deep to uncover his work. It’s all terrific stuff, but one Eddie Floyd song stands afro’d head and shoulders above all others.

Eddie’s masterpiece is 1968’s I’ve Never Found A Girl (To Love Me Like You Do).

A great little slice of call and response Southern soul, it see-saws between major and minor chords, swept along by brass and strings and carried from middle to end by the stolen melody of Percy Faith‘s Theme From A Summer Place;

Played by Floyd with the help of in-house Stax guns for hire Booker T. Jones (who played bass, guitar and keys (!)) and Al Bell, and produced by the MGs Steve Cropper, the song would eventually peak at #2 on the US R&B charts.

As a wee aside, you could do worse than spend another evening comparing Booker T’s guitar solo on this track with much of Edwyn Collin’s Memphis chording on some of those mid period Orange Juice records – the intro to I Can’t Help Myself for example.

Cult hero to the stars Alex Chilton has recorded a couple of versions of I’ve Never Found A Girl, most thrillingly in Glasgow backed by a Teenage Fanclub who gamely hold steady the backbeat and offer enthusiastic backing vocals whilst he chops out gritty little riffs of electrified southern soul atop it.

Recorded at the 13th Note in 1996, in this pre (for me) internet era, I walked into work the morning after the show to hear all about it for the first time. Nowadays of course, you’d never get a ticket for this kind of thing for sticky fingered touts. But back in the day it was good old fashioned lack of information that meant only the hippest of the hip, with a finger to the pulse and an ear to the ground, got to such events. The bastards.

Alex Chilton & Teenage Fanclub – I’ve Never Found a Girl (To Love Me Like You Do);

*Bonus Track!

Here’s Al Green‘s version, rather tame by comparison, but nonetheless a worthy inclusion to this post.

Get This!, Gone but not forgotten, Hard-to-find

I Found The Piano Player Very Crosseyed But Extremely Solid

August 12, 2014 Craig McAllister

Few bands have gone through the mill quite like The Charlatans; Jail. Rip-offs. Death. And few bands have managed to subtly change their sound from album to album, forging new ground while sounding instantly familiar and recognisable.

If 1995’s eponymously-titled LP was the band’s stab at swaggering Sympathy-era Stones grooves, all shaky shaky maracas and rollin’ and tumblin’ bar-room piano fills, 1999’s major label debut was The Charlatans’ nudge nudge wink wink love letter to Bob Dylan.

It’s not obvious to many except the obsessive Zim-head, but its all there. The warning signs were already in place with 1997’s Tellin’ Stories LP, an album that featured the soon-to-be single and Dylanishly-titled North Country Boy.

Another track, One To Another, went on to become one of their biggest selling singles, replete with the very Bob ‘Can you please crawl out your window‘ line towards the end.

One To Another:

Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window? was a little-known Bob Dylan single from 1965, recorded with The Hawks as backing band during Dylan’s quest for the ‘thin wild mercury sound‘ that he arrived at on Blonde On Blonde. Little more than a footnote in Bob’s history, it remains groovy proof that the Rayban’d Dylan could do beat music as well as anyone. As Tim Burgess and co. knew fine well.

Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?:

1990’s Us And Us Only LP is, for me, The Charlatans’ absolute peak. Weird, wonky but still packed full of hummable tunes, it makes a good Anglophile companion to Mercury Rev’s Deserter’s Songs LP. But I digress.

The key to the weirdness lies in the album’s submergence in mellotron. Where previously the full fat riffs of the Hammond had directed the band’s sound, Us And Us Only is carried along by the gossamer-thin weirdness of the most unlikely of lead instruments. Not on every track, but you don’t have to listen too hard to hear it weave its magical spell throughout. Isolated out of context though, the more straight-forward tunes are secretly in debt to Dylan.

There are three in a row on the first side alone;

Impossible:

That ham-fisted bashed acoustic guitar combined with wheezing harmonica and held together by a nasal vocal singing unnecessarily elongated words – pure Dylan!

Even the lyrics could’ve come from the hand of Bob himself; “I can help you, will you only ask me kindly“, “my freedom is a vision you seek“, “this song kind lady is my only hope“, “Y’know he looks like a plastic surgeon“, “Your new friend he seems to love you, I hope he cries himself to sleep“. It’s all very Bob. I can actually hear him sing it every time it plays. In fact, Impossible might well be the best Dylan track he never wrote. It is a cracker.

Following Impossible you get the waltzing light and heavy shades of The Blonde Waltz.

The Blonde Waltz:

The Blond Waltz (no ‘e‘ in Dylan’s version – see above) was taken from the name of a passage (or chapter? who knows) in Dylan’s answer to the jabberwocky and stoned ramblings of Lewis Carroll. You could call it experimental prose poetry. Or cut ‘n paste stream of consciousness. Either way it’s a frustrating read – if you persevere long enough, brilliant little moments of clarity peek out from behind an amphetamine fug. The Charlatans have read it though.

Tim doesn’t quite sing A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall‘s “where have you been my darling young one” at the start, but you know he wants to. There’s a good chance some of the album’s lyrics came from Tarantula. Pure speculation on my part of course….

A House Is Not A Home takes its cue from ’66 Dylan. Heavy of Hammond and rich of riff, the tune is a clever appropriation of the version of I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met) that a hot-wired Bob and the Band played to a few appalled folkies and a thousand grinning Cheshire Bob cats up and down the UK in the spring of that year. It’s electric in every sense of the word. Judas my arse.

Contrast and compare:

A House Is Not A Home:

I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met):

The track that follows is called Senses. Stealing its musical cue from the mellotron madness of the Stones in all Their Satanic Majesties Request pomp, it goes on to liberally lift lyrics from Jagger and co’s Sweet Black Angel. Elsewhere, you’ll hear a straight-forward photocopy of Only Love Can Break Your Heart in the intro to I Don’t Care Where You Live and the beating pulse of Another Brick In The Wall in My Beautiful Friend . But those are other stories for other days.

Post Script

You should dig out your copy of Us And Us Only forthwith. It’s a truly terrific album, one that still stands up to repeated plays today. It plays best when listened to as a whole. Aye, you can pick holes in the individual tracks all day long, but the album doesn’t deserve that.

If you don’t have it, on account of thinking The Charlatans were nothing but bowl-headed baggy chancers, now is the time to find out there’s more to them than that.

Post Script 2

Of course, The Charlatans have form for this kind of thing. Talent borrows, genius steals ‘n all that. Step forward Pink Floyd…

Get This!, Gone but not forgotten

Cycle Killers. Qu-est-ce que c’est?

July 20, 2014July 21, 2014 Craig McAllister

I’ve been racking the miles up recently, pedalling up and down the West Coast of Ayrshire and beyond. When it’s wet and grey and miserable, whch is about 11/12ths of the year, it’s easy to forget that I live in a beautiful part of the world. When the sun sets over Arran and you’re on the inward trip of a 30 miler, there’s no greater view or feeling on the Earth.

I have cycling playlists set up for different journeys, mostly beat-driven pre-millenium tunes by the likes of Underworld, Daft Punk, Future Sound Of London, the odd bit of Neu and Can, you know the sort of stuff….the music that gets your cadence pushing along at the same revolutions as the music. But I was getting fed up of it all.

Much of my cycling this summer has been soundtracked by an old Balearic Beats compilation, downloaded from some forgotten corner of the internet and hidden in the depths of my iPod. Two tracks in particular have helped make the uphills and last miles home far more bearable.

It’s Immaterial – Driving Away From Home

Back in 1988 myself and a couple of pals went to Ibiza. This was pre-super club days, when old guys with 3 teeth and wearing bootleg ‘I Ran The World‘ t-shirts would give you free admission tickets in the street. Consequently, I have found myself in Pascha, Amnesia, Es Paradis and probably others. One memorable club had topless podium dancers gyrating on a plinth as the sun rose. But we weren’t there for the topless dancers……it was all about the music (man).

I always liked how the Balearic DJs took music from every genre and with a twist of magic could make it fit seamlessly into their set. The wee nightclub close to our hotel has probably never found itself on any list of Ibiza’s Best Clubs, but we spent half our holiday in it (which probably says more about the hipness or otherwise of me and my pals). No bigger than your average footballer’s living room, what it lacked in designer chic it more than made up for in the music played. Everything and anything was clearly a policy the DJ lived by. Here you could hear The Woodentops seamlessly followed by Chic followed by some African jit jive followed by Chris Rea followed by some anonymous Euro pop followed by Talk Talk’s Life’s What You Make It followed by Pavarotti mixed into Prince. The last record played was always The Waterboys’ Whole Of The Moon. Most forward-thinking music fans would never, ever listen to some of the rubbish played as standalone records, but as part of a whole it was somehow sensational.

It’s Immaterial

Driving Away From Home appears on loads of Ibiza compilations, though I can’t actually recall ever hearing it in Ibiza at the time. It is the perfect Ibizan record – subtley beat driven, lightly scrubbed acoustic guitars, whispered, half-spoken mellow vocals and, between the keyboard melody, the harmonica refrain and the lines sung, incessantly repetitive.

It’s also the perfect cycling record. It’s about driving away from home, but it could easily be about cycling;

When I was young we were gonna move out this way, for the clean air, healthy, y’know…

Away from the factories and the smoke…

Moving away from home, without a care…

Why don’t we cross the city limit….?

Your pedalling cadence naturally hits the same rhythm as the record, not too fast, but not snail slug slow either. Some of the lyrics take on new meaning. Glasgow is mentioned, and the wee Rawhide steal (‘Move ’em on, move ’em out, move ’em up!’) always makes me subconsciously increase my speed. ‘All you gotta do is put your foot down to the floor‘ they intone. I’m doin’ it, I’m doin’ it! And without a care in the world.

Driving Away From Home has been tweaked, twisted and turned inside-out by all manner of aspiring Balearic beatmasters. Here’s a couple of rarer mixes found online….

It’s Only a Dead Man’s Curve mix, vinyl crackles ‘n all;

Discomendments Edit

Joe Malenda Balearic Dub mix

Les Negresses Vertes were a multi-cultural Parissien folk/punk mish mash. Coming across like Joe Strummer fronting the Pogues or a more refined Nyah Fearties perhaps, they were all flea market fire ‘n phlegm, their scratchy tunes enhanced by trombone, accordion and any other instrument that happened to be lying around as ‘record‘ was about to be pressed.

Zobi La Mouche (Zobi the fly, if my schoolboy French is correct) rattles along beautifully and, as with It’s Immaterial before it, helps boost you along those last few miles home.

Zobi La Mouche – Les Negresses Vertes

Zobi La Mouche is a different kettle of fish, but still cut from the same Ibizan cloth – super-rhythmic, repetitive, chanting vocals and frantically scrubbed acoustic guitars. Like the It’s Immaterial track, I don’t remember it being played anytime on Ibiza either…

Longer version

Cover Versions, Get This!, Gone but not forgotten, Hard-to-find

Be Fancy Free To Call The Tune You Sing

June 30, 2014 Craig McAllister

That’s Moondog, the blind composer, poet and inventor of all sorts of weird ‘n wacky instruments. For twenty or so years he lived on the streets of New York, sometimes dressed head to toe in full-on Viking garb, earning himself the title ‘The Viking of 6th Avenue‘. Moondog always composed his musique concrète from the street sounds of daily Big Apple life, turning honking traffic horns and street corner spats into snaking, rhythmic pieces of music. The most cult of cult figures, he makes Yoko Ono come across like Will.I.Am by comparison.

Moondog Do Your Thing:

1978’s H’art Songs featured Do Your Thing, a childish, reedy-vocalled, piano-led baroquish, sunshine piece of pop that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on The Kinks’ We Are The Village Green Preservation Society LP.

As a one-off curio, it’s a nice wee song. And while I can’t vouch for the rest of Moondog’s output, I suspect it’s perhaps not as accessible as Do Your Thing. One person who might know is Gerry Love, who’s Lightships project first brought Do Your Thing to my attention.

Lightships Do Your Thing:

Lightships‘ version comes vibrating out of the haze towards you, shimmering softly in the July heat like a frisbee forever floating, edges morphing out of shape under the glare of the midday sun with three chords, double-tracked whispered vocals and a tinkling glockenspiel with its arm wrapped around a twanging guitar for comfort. It calls to mind the hissing of summer lawns, the far-off laughs of children and melted tarmac on the pavement. Your hayfevered eyes and nose might be flowing uncontrollably like a mountain stream but this record will surely cure you. I could listen to it forever.

One of the high points of a ridiculously brilliant project, Gerry Love’s transcendent cover of Do Your Thing first appeared a couple of years ago on the b-side (the b-side!!) of the Sweetness In Her Spark single, tucked away for the ears of only trainspotters and completists. The true sound of summer, now is the time to liberate it.

Alternative Version, Get This!, Gone but not forgotten, Live!, Peel Sessions

The Stuff I Got Gonna Bust Your Brains Out

May 5, 2014 Craig McAllister

That’s the haunted figure of Robert Johnson, womanisin’, gamblin’, soul-sellin’ deep South bluesman with a hell hound on his tail. Robert had the uncanny knack of channeling all sorts of bad voodoo via his unnaturally long fingers into his music and into the ether forever. To this day, the dusty grooves on his old 1930’s 78s spark with the crackle and pop of a life gone wrong.

Robert Johnson – Stop Breaking Down:

His songs, all rudimentary strumming and picking, have been picked up and picked apart by all manner of blues-influenced groups, not least the Rolling Stones.

No strangers to a stolen blues riff and a Robert Johnson tune (their version of Love In Vain is the definitive country/blues weeper), the Stones really out-did themselves when they came to tackle Stop Breaking Down. It’s a completely different song to the original.

Rolling Stones – Stop Breaking Down:

A total groove with Charlie playing just behind the beat, it’s a beautiful soup of chugging, riffing rhythm guitar and an asthmatic wheezing lead hanging on for dear life like the ash at the end of Keith’s ubiquitous cigarette. Between Jagger’s verses, the band swagger in that tight but loose way that no band has ever since equalled. Listening to it you can almost see Jagger prancing around some massive American stage or other, wiggling his 26″ snakehips to those lucky enough to be able to see them from the back of whatever enormodome they happen to have found themselves in.

Totally telepathically in synch with one another, the Stones in ’72 would be my time machine moment. Actually, they wouldn’t. Given the chance I’d be going back to 1965 to watch my team win the Scottish league for the last time, hang around a year and catch Dylan go electric then hope for some malfunction or other that would allow me to wait around for 6 years until it was fixed. To be Keith for a day while recording Exile On Main Street. What a time of it. Great hair. Great clothes. Great guitars. Great women. And everything else that goes with it. Like your own plane…

…or drinks cabinet on stage…

The Rolling Stones version of Stop Breaking Down comes towards the end of Side 4 on Exile On Main Street, the loosest, funkiest, grooviest Stones LP of the lot. But you knew that already. That they chose to sequence it where they did (although sandwiched between the blues rock of All Down The Line and southern soul gospel of Shine A Light makes for a strong ending) suggests the Stones had no particular fondness for it, that they considered it an album track at best, perhaps even (gasp) album filler. It certainly never gets a mention in the same breath as the big tracks from the LP (Tumbling Dice, Happy, Rocks Off, Loving Cup…I could go on and on) but to me, as something of a hidden Stones gem, that’s kinda what makes Stop Breaking Down so special.

Evoking the spirit of the early, earthy Stones with a punk/blues ferocity not heard since, ooh I dunno, Pussy Galore or someone were whipping up a frenzy at the end of the 80s, the White Stripes version of Stop Breaking Down appeared on their first, self-titled LP. If you’ve not heard it before, it’s just as you might imagine it to sound.

White Stripes – Stop Breaking Down;

Thump. Crash. Thump. Crash. Thump. Crash. “Whooo!”. Screeee. Thump. Thump. “Whoooo!”. Screeeeeeeeeeee!

Two folk standing in a room with a handful of basic instruments between them has never sounded so feral and primal. Nowadays, it’s all the rage. Isn’t it, Black Keys? I know Jack White splits opinion, but for what it’s worth I love the White Stripes.

Later on, they tackled the same track for a BBC session, extending it to twice its length and playing it as a walkin’, talkin’ slow blues.

Thump. Crash. Thump. Crash. Thump. Crash. “Whooo!”. Screeee. Thump. Thump. “Whoooo!”. Screeeeeeeeeeee! At half the speed.

White Stripes – Stop Breaking Down (BBC Session);

*Bonus Track!

Whatever happened to The Bees? I had them pegged as the equal of the Beta Band. Terrific players with a slightly psychedelic take on things. Not so much under the radar as off it completely, they deserved better. Their take on Stop Breaking Down is clearly modelled on the Stones’ version, but with a dual vocal and a nice, understated Hammond holding the whole thing together.

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