Category: Get This!

Cover Versions, Get This!

Real Moody Blues

Craig McAllister

Or Under The Covers with Mick Jagger. Now there’s a thought ladies. He’d be all hips, lips ‘n finger slips. Gads!

In the mid 70s, the Rolling Stones released Metamorphosis, a long-delayed compilation of demos, outtakes and Decca-era odds ‘n sods. Although subsequent releases would include a few of the tracks, Metamorphosis didn’t stay in print very long, becoming something of a Stones’ collectable (until recently, that is, when it was made available on SACD). It’s rumoured that some of the demo tracks (eg Heart Of Stone and Out Of Time) featured uncredited appearances from seasoned sessioneers Jimmy Page and Big Jim Sullivan and that Mick Jagger was in fact the only actual Rolling Stone on some of these tracks. Included amongst the flotsam and jetsom of discarded Stones nuggets was I Don’t Know Why, a cover of Stevie Wonder’s I Don’t Know Why (I Love You). Recorded the very night that Brian Jones died/drowned/was done in (July 3rd 1969), it finds the Stones in fine form, with the newly recruited Mick Taylor contributing a fine slide guitar solo to the proceedings. Loose and funky, with its Gimme Shelter guitars, brass section and keys courtesy of the ugly Stone, Ian Stewart, it’s the real moody blues, all descending atmospherics and impending sense of doom. Shame on Jimmy Miller who in his wisdom decided to fade it out just as the band were beginning to sizzle and things were getting interesting.

The original Stevie Wonder version was released alongside My Cherie Amour and found its way onto either the a-side or the b-side, depending on which ‘territory’ (to use horrible record company speak) you were in, creating what must surely be the strangest pairing of Stevie tracks on the one slab of vinyl – the sugar coated lovey dovey one side coupled with the fuggy paranoia of the other side. I know which side I prefer.

And talking of saccharine-sweet, even the Jackson 5 got in on the act.  Their version is from their second LP (ABC) released in 1970 and is full of little Michael’s trademark whoops, yelps and heart-stopping helium high vocals. It builds and builds on a crescendo of strings and the pistol-crack of the Motown snare, the Jackson brothers allowing Michael to take centre stage as if his life depended on it (which, of course given the reputation of Father Jackson, it kinda did).  He nails it, of course. It’s pretty bloody fantastic if truth be told.

He ain’t heavy, He’s my brother.

*Bonus Track! Saving the best for last…..

Stevie Wonder is a musical genius, there is no debate over this. Child prodigy, autocratic studio pioneer, groundbreaking, etc etc (you know all this already). By 1974 he was on his 17th album, the unfashionable and often overlooked Fulfillingness First Finale. Coming towards the end of a phenomenal run of albums – 1971’s Music Of My Mind, 1972’s Talking Book, 1973’s Innervisions, 1976’s Songs In The Key Of Life. What was lazy-arsed Stevie up to in 1975, eh? Well, given that Songs In The Key Of Life is a double, you could still argue that he was making an album a year. That’s an album a year, Thom Yorke. And everyone a bona fide stone cold classic. Food for thought, eh? Anyway, Fulfillingness First Finale is equal parts dancefloor Stevie and socio-political pop Stevie. You Haven’t Done Nothin’ is, rather thrillingly, Son of Superstition, right down to the funky clavinet, horn breakdown and hi-hat heavy drums. What’s particularly impressive is that except for the bass guitar part, Stevie plays everything on this record. Everything! He even ropes in our old friends the Jackson 5 to sing the ‘doo doo wop‘ backing vocals. And he took it all the way to Number 1.

If this doesn’t have you doing the white man ain’t got no rhythm but digs it anyway dance, there’s no way back for you. If you only download one thing from Plain Or Pan this year….etc etc….blah blah blah……..

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

Vorsprung Durch Technik

Craig McAllister

Vor 30 Jahren Kraftwerk schafften es auf Platz 1 mit ‘Das Modell’, möglicherweise der unwahrscheinlichste Rekord, solche hohen Status zu erreichen, und eine, die immer dem Aufzeigen würden die vier Düsseldorfians fest in der ‘One Hit Wonder ” listen. Natürlich können Sie und ich wissen es besser.

Elegant gekleidete junge Männer und Pioniere der elektronischen Musik in einer Zeit, die westliche Welt ging ga-ga für lange Haare, Leder und Les Pauls, sie waren für viele der Ying zu den Beatles Yang. Einige können sogar so weit gehen zu sagen, sie waren die einflussreichste Band aller Zeiten. Nicht ich, aber dann habe ich immer eine Strat zu einem Synth bevorzugt. Pionier der Elektro Hip-Hop-Haus (ist, dass selbst ein Genre?) Afrika Bambaataa würde wahrscheinlich mit mir nicht einverstanden. Er wurde sicher von minimalistischen Techno Kraftwerks inflenced, Kneifen große Teile des Trans Europ Express für seine eigene höchst einflussreiche und bahnbrechende Planet Rock. Ohne Bambaataa keine Detroit House-Szene und alles andere, dass inspirierte (Happy Mondays für ein, wenn Du sitzt dort denken: “Ach. Wer über Tanzmusik cares?” Joy Division, mit ihrer eisigen Soul-Rhythmen und weniger repetitive Riffs waren klar große Fans. und ohne Joy Division, New Order und nicht alles, was von ihnen folgten. Bowie war so beeindruckt von Kraftwerk (und die deutsche Szene im Allgemeinen), die er nach Berlin ging und nahm seine berühmte Berlin-Trilogie von LPs als Hommage verliebt. Aber dann, so tat U2. Und armen Mannes U2, (C**dplay), abgetastet großen Teilen der Computer Liebe für diesen “, wenn Sie ein Bild zu machen” Lied von ihnen. also, Kraftwerk. Einflussreiche in allen möglichen Weisen. der Musik toll. Robotic, sich wiederholende und reif für eine Neubewertung …

Das Modell

Autobahn

Die Roboter

Computer Liebe

All above tracks are in German, if you haven’t guessed already. I selfishly included Die Roboter as my kids think it’s great. “We are stinky robots!” they happily sing along. It fits too! Have a listen!

Having trouble reading my attempt at Google Translate-enhanced schoolboy German? Click here and copy ‘n paste the above text.

Tschüs!

*Useless Trivia…

Daniel Miller, head honcho at Mute Records (and therefore someone who owes Kraftwerk a huge debt) owns the vocoder that produced the wonderful vocals on Autobahn, amongst many others in the early career of Kraftwerk. “It’s like owning Hendrix’s guitar,” he mused on BBC4’s ‘Synth Britannia‘ a year or so back.

Get This!, Hard-to-find, Live!

Flesh Of My Flesh Of My Flesh Of My Flesh

Craig McAllister

Not the most well-known Orange Juice track, although it is on the self-same Rip It Up album as The Hit. And was released as the follow-up to that self-same number 8 smash hit, peaking at a slightly less chart-troubling number 41. Fame fame fickle fame, to paraphrase one of our other pop treasures. And not the coolest Orange Juice track either. That would be Blue Boy if you were wondering. And certainly not the best Orange Juice track, although there’s something about Flesh Of My Flesh that brings me back time and time again.

Maybe it’s the acid-tongued Collins’ bittersweet vocal, “Here’s a penny for your thoughts (incidentally you may keep the change)“. It’s a good one, but, nah. Most of the time the lyrics are incidental (there’s that word again). It’s the overall sound that reels me in. Always has been, even with Dylan. Orange Juice knew their onions, as they say, and the reference points, however fashionable or otherwise they may have been in 1982, are there for anyone with even half a scholarly outlook on pop music to spot. Maybe it’s the Chic-esque rinky-dink guitars and I Want Your Love descending chimes. Talent borrows and genius steals, after all. Maybe it’s the wee burst of ba-ba-ba-Bacharaque brass every now and again, recalling Dionne Warwick at her easiest of easy listening. Or maybe it’s just the sting of distorted vintage guitar riffing in and out whenever Edwyn thinks the track veers too close to pipe ‘n slippers pastiche. Maybe even it’s the Philly soul guitar break that pops up here and there on both single versions (it is a belter of a riff, if you want to know). Or maybe (though less likely) it’s the none-more-80s-sounding 12″ version, with it’s extended breaks, congas and bongos, ting-a-ling percussion and of-it’s-time super-slick st-st-st-stoodio production.  Whichever way you look at it, Flesh Of My Flesh by Orange Juice is a perfect wee record.

Jesus! Sandals! With Socks!

I’d love to tell you that after buying this in Rough Trade I ran up the road to play this to death in 1983, but I’m just not that cool. I would’ve been running up the road to play records to death by this point in my life, but in 1983 I was most probably running up the road with Electric Avenue or Down Under (look them up if you need to) swinging in the wind, John Menzies poly bag tearing into my newly teenaged wrists while I sprinted at full lung bursting pelt to get home tout de suite in order to perform the spiritual ritual of placing needle on vinyl. Eddy Grant and Men At Work. That was my 1983. It would be a few more years before Orange Juice made themselves known to me, but I’m glad they eventually found me.

The Music:

Flesh Of My Flesh (album version)

Flesh Of My Flesh (7″ version)

Flesh Of My Flesh (12″ version)

Flesh Of My Flesh (from a bootleg, live in London 83, probably the Lyceum in March)

All tracks are very different. The album version is, for want of a better word, smooth. The two single versions are spikier, more abbrasive, rawer, whatever you want to call them, and are better for it. The 12″ version features all of the production gimmickery mentioned before. Perhaps a slightly dated affair, I love it, for what that’s worth. The live version manages to be both punkish and funkish, with cringe-inducing out of tune keyboards replicating the brass parts. Haircut 100 this is not. Take from that what you will.

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

Third Degree Burnin’

Craig McAllister

Here’s a thing. In the post-Winehouse search for gin-u-wine authentic blue eyed soul, any pretty young thing with a gritty voice and a decent set of breasts found themselves in a dusty, analogue recording studio listening carefully to whatever it was that the svengali their record company had plucked from indieland’s dole queue was telling them to do. Leader of the pack was Duffy; 60’s-steeped, Dusty-voiced (kinda) and produced by former hip young gunslinger Bernard Butler. Mercy, with its snapping snare and northern soul Perry boys in the video was, I’m not ashamed to say, a real favourite of mine way back in ’08.

It isn’t to hard to imagine that the Duffy track, with its wonky Stand By Me bassline and cooi-ing ‘yeah yeah yeah’ backing vocals was actually a cover of an obscure soul nugget from the late 60s. Which is exactly what some enterprising group did. The Third Degree add proper soul boy black vocals, a smokin’ pistol crack of clipped guitar and a horn section from heaven, making Mercy their own, straightouttanineteensixtyeight. Aye, it has the ever-so-slightly desperate whiff of cynical record company product placement and marketing (from the hip in ’93 Acid Jazz label), and was probably produced with the aid of a demographic spreadsheet, but drop yer snobbery for a minute and listen! Craig Charles played this on his show at the weekend and it’s terrific.

This was released in 2009! Why wasn’t I made aware of this until  now, eh? Tsk.

Listening to that cover of Mercy reminds me of The Seed by The Roots. It has a similar live-in-the-studio, retro-coated, vintage production which belies it’s relative modernity. And before you start thinking ‘Lenny Kravitz’, think again. The Seed is ace. A monster hybrid of live drums, clipped funk guitar and a duet of hip-hop stylee “1! 2! 1! 2’s” and properly sung vocals, I think you’ll like it. Released in 2002 (10 years ago! Ouch!) it is that rare thing – a hip-hop record made by a hip-hop group who play their instruments rather than simply sample and loop old Curtis Mayfield b sides. No doubt about it, The Roots can play. If you cannae shake yer bootee to this, there’s nothing I can help you with here. Dig it, soul brothers and sisters.

Useless Fact: Paul Weller loves The Seed.

*Bonus Track!

What’s that y’say? Old tracks re-done in the soul stylee? I’ve blogged this before, but here‘s Eli ‘Paperboy’ Reed & The Trueloves making Ace Of Spades sound like Otis Redding with ants in his pants. Lemmy cannae like this. I think you might.

Cover Versions, demo, Double Nugget, Dylanish, elliott smith, Get This!, Gone but not forgotten, Hard-to-find, Kraut-y, Most downloaded tracks, New! Now!, Peel Sessions, Sampled, Six Of The Best, Studio master tapes, studio outtakes

I Got 5 Years Stuck On My Eyes

Craig McAllister

I got 5 years, what a surprise! ‘Five Years‘, Bowie’s opening track on the Ziggy album ends with that afore-mentioned refrain. But you knew that already. You might also know that Plain Or Pan has now been going for 5 years. Or you might not. Either way, thanks for visiting time and time again. Whether you’re one of the few who choose to ‘follow this blog’ or you’re one of those misguided creeps who ended up here via Google after searching for ‘Teenage Fanny‘ and got the Bellshill Beach Boys instead, those visits (and the numbers they register behind the scenes in the Plain Or Pan office) are what keeps me a-writin’ and researchin’. Not as often as I’d like to, but as someone commented some time ago, “One good post a week is better than 7 posts of shite.” I might be paraphrasing there, but you get the idea.

As is now customary at this time of year, my team of office monkeys gather up all statistical information made available to them and compile a couple of CDs worth of the year’s most popular downloaded tracks and painstakingly create a groovy cover that goes with it. This is not a quick process. Hours are spent refining and re-refining running orders. At least 14 different covers are produced before a carefully-selected random sample of Plain Or Pan’s target audience (that’s you, that is) choose the cover that speaks most to them. This year is slightly different. The office monkeys have gone on strike (they mumbled something about pensions) and time is at a premium (ie, I don’t have any). The tracks, 2 CDs worth are here. The artwork, not your normal CD cover, more of an image that you can use as cover art in iTunes or however you listen to music on your computer, is there, above this paragraph (right click, save as etc etc). The tracklist? I don’t have one. This year you can choose your own running order from the following:

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John Barry – Midnight Cowboy

King Creosote – Home In A Sentence

The Smiths – How Soon Is Now? (Rare Italian pressing)

Gruff Rhys – Shark Ridden Waters, which samples….

The Cyrkle – It Doesn’t Matter Anymore

Midlake – Branches

Elliott Smith – Alameda

Peter Salett – Sunshine

Mott The Hoople – Walking With A Mountain

Primal Scream – Jailbird (Kris Needs’ Toxic Trio Stay free mix)

Primal Scream & PP Arnold – Understanding (Small Faces cover)

Ride – Like A Daydream

The Wildebeests – That Man (Small Faces cover)

Dion – The Dolphins (Tim Buckley cover)

Darondo – Didn’t I

Edwin Starr – Movin’ On Up (Primal Scream cover)

Shellac – My Black Ass

The Rivingtons – Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow (the building blocks of Surfin Bird)

The Survivors – Pamela Jean (Brian Wilson recording)

The Heavy – How You Like Me Now? which heavily ‘borrows’ from…

Dyke & The Blazers – Let A Woman Be A Woman (Let A Man Be A Man)

The La’s – Come In Come Out (John Leckie mix)

The Girlfriends – My One And Only Jimmy Boy

The Whyte Boots – Nightmare

James Brown & the Famous Flames –I’ll Go Crazy

The Jim Jones Revue – Hey Hey Hey Hey, cover of….

Little Richard – Hey Hey Hey Hey (false start take)

Suede – The Wild Ones (unedited version)

Lee Dorsey – Holy Cow

Fern Kinney – Groove Me

Aretha Franklin – Rock Steady (alt mix)

Jackson 5 –  I Want You Back (Michael’s isolated vocal – dynamite!!!)

Reparta & the Delrons – Shoes (the inspiration for The Smiths’ A Rush And A Push…)

Dusty Springfield – Spooky

She & Him – Please Please Please, Let Me Get What I Want (Smiths cover)

John Barry – The Girl With The Sun In Her Hair

A fairly representative selection of what Plain Or Pan is all about, you might agree. In other words, a right rum bag of forgotten classics and demos and cover versions and alternative takes and studio outtakes and the rest of it. Outdated Music For Outdated People right enough.

Missed any of these legendary compilations?

Here‘s the first 2 years, 2007 & 2008

Here‘s 2009’s

Here‘s 2010’s

Download ’til yer heart’s content!

Get This!

He’s released more studio albums than the Rolling Stones, y’know…

Craig McAllister

While we’re on the subject of new releases (see post below) a special mention must be made of Diamond Mine by King Creosote and Jon Hopkins. Released at the end of March, this album has been something of a slow-burner, quietly picking up a Mercury nomination along the way to becoming ‘Best Album of the Year’, in my house at least.

King Kenny Anderson is, in the best tradition of these sorts of things, a songwriters’ songwriter. His laconic Fife drawl and wheezing accordion could easily have him marked down as a folkie, and perhaps in the truest sense of the word that’s what he is, but he shouldn’t be so easily pigeonholed. High Heid Yin of Fence Records (King Creosote, gettit?) he’s a non-stop writin ‘n recordin’ machine, with around 40 homemade and indie-released albums to his name (aye! – don’t believe me? start believin‘!) If you’d never heard it but assumed you knew all there was to know about King Creosote, it could be easy to dismiss Diamond Mine as yet another lo-fi strum through of half-baked ideas. Oh no! Seven years in the making, it’s an album packed full of stunning wee songs bursting with ideas.

This is in no small part down to the production work of Hopkins, an engineer with a set of ears more accustomed to the bleeps and farts of electronica than a b flat minor on electric guitar. He re-works many of King Creosote’s older songs and unfinished chord progressions and enhances them with his own take on ‘found sound‘ and ‘musique concrete‘.

As Hopkins (talking about the track Bats In The Attic) told Drowned In Sound around the time of release,“You can hear the guitar part from his original version at the beginning, but I played it back through a mobile phone speaker simulation to decimate* the quality, so that it retained its rhythm, but none of its notes, giving me freedom to change the chords of the song completely.”

Did you get that?

There’s more (great wee video……)

There’s a real ambience without it being ambient. The whole thing ebbs and flows, joined seamlessly by faded voices, the chinking of greasy spoon tea cups and a warm, wooly thwump…..thwump…..thwump….. that recalls the heady days of listening to LPs on my big old 1970s Grundig music centre. Or John Peel on Medium Wave under the covers at midnight. It’s a slow album, yet barely over 30 minutes long, and when you get to the end you’ll want to play it all over again. How many contemporary albums can you say that about, eh?

The Music:

Normally as an appetiser I’d post a track or two, but seeing as Fence are about as cottage industry as you can get I won’t on this occassion. You can have Home In A Sentence from 2007’s Bombshell LP instead. Uplifting melancholia that would’ve been a global smash hit in a parallel universe.

Now off you go and buy Diamond Mine. Follow the link there on the right hand side.  If you don’t like it I’ll give you yer money back. What’ve you got to lose?

And another thing…….

A sister EP sneaked out under the radar a couple of months ago that plays quite nicely alongside the LP. You can get Honest Words on vinyl and download here.

And another thing……..

* The Roman Army didn’t like to lose a battle. On the rare occasion that they did, the Centurion would ask his Optio (his second-in-command) to select 10 Legionaries at random. Then the other soldiers would be forced to batter them to death. And that’s where the word ‘decimated‘ comes from.

Here endeth this week’s history lesson.

Get This!, Hard-to-find

Stoned Love. On and on and on and on.

Craig McAllister

Sometimes it’s not about the hard-to-find, the rare, the obscure, the long-forgotten must-have on that uber-hip label. Nope. Sometimes it’s the simple things. The sun comes out, a smile breaks out and you need to state the bloody obvious – She Bangs The Drums by The Stone Roses is magic. And so were the b-sides.

The Stone Roses were the soundtrack to my summer of 1989, but if you’ve been here before you’ll know that already. She Bangs The Drums was released right at the height of the baking hot summer (if memory serves me correctly) and in discography terms is the middle cog in a great run of 1! 2! 3! singles, sandwiched between the band’s first great single, Made Of Stone and the band’s last great single, Fools Gold. She Bangs The Drums is unashamed pure pop, guitar-driven and saccharine sweet with a great pay -off line in the vocals.

“Kiss me where the sun don’t shine. The past is yours but the future’s mine…you’re all out of time.”

Aye, The Stone Roses came from Manchester, but they despised the city’s musical legacy. They hated The Smiths and they would never have dreamed of signing for Factory. So what if their youthful arrogant streak wore off on certain other monobrowed bands of the locality, at that moment in time The Stone Roses were the greatest thing on the planet. They were my Beatles and my Stones and by the time of Fools Gold they were my Family Stone too.

 

 

She Bangs The Drums was released at a time when vinyl was king (“I can feel the earth begin to move, I feel my needle hit the groove” and all that), when bands thought carefully about what to put on the b-sides and is a perfect summation of all The Stone Roses stood for at that time. Guitar riffs, fantastic drumming, those whispered vocals (thankfully not as out of tune as they usually were in the live setting). The other tracks are just as good.

Mersey Paradise with its see-sawing 12 string chiming guitars, tambourines on hi-hats and a terrific “oh yeah..!” whispered vocal break in the last chorus would’ve made a great single in itself, but clearly the self-belief in the band at this time was such that they could stick a song like Mersey Paradise on a b-side. Plus, they were working up to Fools Gold which is much better.

Standing Here took up all of the second side of the 12″. It was pure proto-Hendrix, all squealing guitars, feedback and riffs! riffs! riffs! before falling apart into a coda that ebbed and flowed like the California surf itself. For a while it was my party piece. My crappy electric guitar would feedback brilliantly whenever I held a particular note on the 13th fret and I could replicate the intro pretty faithfully. I never did master the wee incidental riffs behind the vocals though.

Simone was the extra track on the CD single. It’s one of those backwards sound collage thingys that John Squire was fond of putting together, where he takes a standard Stone Roses track, plays it backwards through the mixing desk and adds all manner of stuff on top. Simone takes the backing track for the relatively obscure Where Angels Play (released on the Australian version of the I Wanna Be Adored single) and builds it into something of an ambient oddity. The pinnacle of this aproach is, of course, Don’t Stop, the backwards version of Waterfall that’s on the debut album. All the rage for listening to whilst on whatever you were on in the second summer of love.

Bonus track!

Something I’ve meant to do for ages! I took Simone, reversed it using Audacity, et voila! The instrumental version of Where Angels Play, with added whoosing noises and general pseudo-psychedelic tomfoolery. Who needs John Leckie?

Get This!, Sampled

Heavy Soul

Craig McAllister

Just the one track for now, but it’s a belter. I first heard How You Like Me Now? by The Heavy on Craig Charles Funk & Soul Show one Saturday night a while back on BBC 6 Music. I’ve mentioned this show before. Charles plays a heady mixture of bona fide stone cold soul classics and wilfully obscurist talc-dusted rattlin’ northern soul groovers, with the odd disco-tinged track flung in for good measure. It’s terrific!

When I first heard How You Like Me Now? I assumed The Heavy were one of those long-forgotten bands who last played together in 1975. How You Like Me Now? sounds like Led Zeppelin gettin’ it on with Stevie Wonder. The st-st-st-staccato James Brown guitar riff. The low-end horns. The rubber band Bootsy bass. The drum groove that kicks the whole thing up a gear just after the first line is sung. The white man sings the blues vocals. The wee pause just after he sings “remember the time” at the start of the second verse. The piano and guitar break down half way through before the inevitable groove kicks in again. I could go on and on. Suffice to say, never have a band been more aptly named.

You can imagine my surprise then when I discovered that The Heavy were actually a real-live modern day group, recording, gigging and releasing records in the here and now. Not only that, but the vocalist is actually a black man who really can sing the blues. I think they’re from the Birmingham area. I’m sure many of you are more familiar with them than I am. I mean, they’ve played on the David Letterman Show and everything. I might just possibly be the last one to this particularly funky party. Do yourself a favour and download How You Like Me Now? Then head out and buy yourself a copy of Great Vengeance and Furious Fire  or The House That Dirt Built. That’s clearly what Letterman did, judging by his reaction after they appeared on his show in January last year.

ng News! Update! Breaking News! Update! Breaking News! Update!

OK, maybe not as groundbreaking a story as the Bin Laden’s Bin Killed news that’s currently got everyone in a frenzy, but breaking news nonetheless. As pointed out by sharp-eared reader Clawthing in the Comments section below, the horns and guitar riff in The Heavy track are lifted lock, stock and groovy barrel from Dyke & the Blazers Let A Woman Be A Woman And A Man Be A Man. This is a record I’ve been totally unaware of until now, but it somewhat justifies my belief that The Heavy’s record had a great deal of 70s whiffiness around it. I did know though (and no doubt you’ll also probably be aware) that Prince borrowed the Let A Woman Be A Woman And a Man Be A Man line for his Gett Off single. That’s what I love about this internet thing – you learn something new every day. Well spotted Clawthing. Your prize is in the post.


Get This!, Hard-to-find

Come In, Come Out Triple-Whammy

Craig McAllister

Come in, Come Out originally appeared on the b-side of The La’s There She Goes 12“. It’s the slinkier, groovier progeny of Captain Beefheart playing Ian Dury’s Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll and personifies that La’s Rattle ‘n Roll tag that they were fond of banding about around 1988.

Come In, Come Out is one of only 20 songs officially released by The La’s – (count ’em!) – 12 on the album plus 8 assorted b-sides, but thanks to a combination of fans with magpie-like tendencies, generous studio engineers and the Go! Discs not-quite warts ‘n all box set from last year, there are numerous versions available to even yer casual La’s enthusiast. Of course, yer casual La’s enthusiast might struggle to hear the difference between any of the versions, but yer proper fully signed-up card carrying Dole Pay Me So Far La We Go La’s enthusiasts like myself can spot every little minutae of detail between the riffs. Slow versions. Fast versions. Frantically scrubbed skiffly acoustic versions.  Who-rockin’ electric versions. Live versions. Abandoned studio versions……..

Of course, The La’s abandoned just about everything they ever put to tape. But you knew that already. It’s good to know though, that even the stuff they considered below par is still a whole lot better than many of their contemporaries’ output. Hey, it’s better than many bands’ output, full stop. Just be thankful those fans with the magpie-like tendencies and the studio engineers with the pile of C90s at the ready were around at the time. Here’s three versions. All different. All slinky. All groovy. All good in their own way.

Come In, Come Out Mick Moss acoustic version, recorded April 1987. An early take. This‘ll be one of those the frantically scrubbed skiffly versions – it’s less than a minute and a half long. No Ian Dury riff yet, but it’s ace!

Come In, Come Out John Leckie mix. Fast, frantic and full of r’nb riffing and skittery Keith Moon-esque drums, this is a right proper knee-trembler behind the bike sheds, the sound of The Marquee in 1964. The percussion sounds like it was played on a selection of kitchen pots and pans. Listen out for Mavers’ skirling percussive guitar trills, frills and fills towards the end. What a rhythm player!

Come In, Come Out Steve Lillywhite mix. Slow, bluesy, druggy and fuggy. Or just plain half-arsed. You decide. Any musos out there are sure to appreciate the nice percussive ‘clunk‘ on the off-beat. Rather uniquely for a Lillywhite recording, this doesn’t feature any backing vocals from his his estranged wife Kirsty MacColl.

…….I don’t need any encouragement……

Get This!, Gone but not forgotten

The Flaming Hips

Craig McAllister

James Brown. Mr Dynamite. The Godfather of Soul. Funk Brother #1. The Hardest Working Man in Show Business.

In the 1950s, long before he had earned any of these tags,  he was a Little Richard-worshipin’ R’nB performer, playing drums and dragging his band of black musicians around the safety of the chitlin’ circuit in the southern states of America. The influence of Little Richard on the young James Brown cannot be underplayed. James idolised Little Richard. He copied his shiny black, oil slick-pompadoured quiff, perched atop his head like a Mr Whippy ice cream. When Little Richard gave up Good Golly Miss Molly for the Good of our Great God Almighty, James inherited some of his backing musicians, transforming his own group into a crack blues/soul/r’nb/gospel-tinged outfit that had an unmistakable groove beating at it’s heart. Shows were now billed as James Brown and the Famous Flames, the Famous Flames being the smooth-voiced backing singers who provided the foil for James’ more impassioned drop-to-the-knees moments. They also provided an understated dance routine that would allow the super-flash Camel-Walkin’, Mashed Potato jivin’ Brown to show off in his own unique hip-swivellin’ style. He might not’ve been the Godfather yet, but he was certainly the Boss at this point. It was said that Brown carried around an old napkin on which the words ‘Please Please Please‘ had been scrawled by Little Richard and that the young James was determined to turn those 3 words into a song….

….which he certainly succeeded at. In 1956, Please Please Please was James Brown’s first ever recording and went on to sell over one million copies, although interestingly it didn’t even make the Billboard Hot 100, stalling at #105. The pop audiences didn’t yet know about James Brown. In fact, they wouldn’t ‘get’ him until much later, although James has the distinction of having the most-ever hits on the Billboard Hot 100 without ever hitting number 1. *Pop quiz time – who holds that unique record for the UK charts?

Brown acknowledged the importance that Please Please Please held in his grand scheme of things and peformed it throughout his career. It was usually during this song that he would do his famous ‘cape routine‘, where he would fake to collapse, emotions exhausted, and his manager would come on from the side of the stage and usher him off, soaked in sweat, seemingly spent and severly in need of resuscitation. Pure vaudeville for sure, but I for one lapped it up on the only occassion I saw him live, inbetween the costume changes and the magician who sawed someone in half. But if you’ve been reading Plain Or Pan for a while, you’ll know all that already.

Those early James Brown records are electric. Full of rolling guitar riffs and call and response Famous Flames vocals, brass stabs act as musical full stops that allow James to simply breath, or drop to his knees and holler, yelp or let out one of those involuntary phlegmy grunts that Lenny Henry thinks he’s good at doing. He’s still finding his musical feet here but I bet this is when he had the idea for fining his musicians who missed a beat or played a bum note. His band on those early records are water-tight and pompadour-slick, playing yakkety-yak sax and the one-chord groove unperpinned by a solidly swinging backbeat. Hip huggin’, finger clickin’ soul, they’re the sort of mod-sharp records that would have me reaching for a 3 button mohair suit, if only the girth that has crept up on me over the past few years wasn’t there. If all you know of James Brown is Sex Machine, Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag and I Feel Good, dig deeper brothers and sisters, dig deeper. The tracks below are all from his first three albums and are a very good place to start. No fake emotions here, just pure, raw uncomplicated soul. You dig?

Please Please Please

Try Me

There Must Be A Reason

Why Do You Do Me

I’ll Go Crazy

This Old Heart

Bewildered

*Pop Quiz Time

I think this honour goes to Depeche Mode, who, according to Wiki at any rate, have had 49 of their 56 singles released to date make the UK Top 75 wthout once having had a Number One single. I’m sure if I’m wrong though, someone out there will correct me.