Category: Gone but not forgotten

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

Four Play

Craig McAllister

Amazingly or not, ye olde Plain Or Pan is now 4 years young. This year saw the double-whammy milestones of reaching one million visitors and, on a personal level, having my writing recognised to the extent that I was invited to interview Sandie Shaw in advance of her appearing at the summer’s Vintage At Goodwood festival. My interview was subsequently published in the hardback Annual that festival goers could buy at the event. Which was nice.

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As has been something of a tradition at the start of a year, I’ve put together a compilation of the most downloaded tracks over the past year – 2 CDs worth of covers, curios and hard-to-find classics. I like to think of it as a potted representation of what Plain Or Pan is about.

Tracklist Disc 1:

Jackson 5 I Want You Back acapella

Dean Carter Jailhouse Rock

Frankie Valli Queen Jane Approximately

Chris Bell I Am The Cosmos

Pete Yorn & Scarlett Johansson I Am The Cosmos

Scott Walker Black Sheep Boy

Tim Buckley Dolphins

Sandie Shaw I Don’t Owe You Anything

Big Maybelle 96 Tears

Patti Jo Make Me Believe In You

Curtis Mayfield (Don’t Worry) If There’s Hell Below We’re all Gonna Go (takes 1& 2)

Brinkley & Parker.  Don’t Get Fooled By The Pander Man

Sly Stone Time For Livin’ (early version)

Maggie Thrett Soupy

Sheila and B. Devotion Spacer

Happy Mondays Staying Alive

Aretha Franklin / Duane Allman The Weight

Funkadelic Maggot Brain (alt mix)

 

 

Tracklist Disc 2:

Spiritualized Can’t Help Falling In Love

Serge Gainsbourg Melody

Stone Roses Something’s Burning (demo)

Can I’m So Green

Alex Chilton My Baby Just Cares For Me

Elliott Smith I’ll Be Back

The Czars Where the Boys Are

Peter Fonda November Night

Beach Boys Never Learn Not To Love

Charles Manson Cease To Exist

Wedding Present Happy Birthday (Peel Session)

Penny Peeps Model Village

The Stairs Woman Gone And Say Goodbye

Kinks Sittin’ On My Sofa

Ramones Judy Is A Punk (1975 demo)

Capsula Run Run Run

White Stripes Party Of Special Things To Do

13th Floor Elevators Slip Inside This House

Jake Holmes Dazed & Confused

White Antelope Silver Dagger

Arcade Fire Poupee de Cire, Poupee de Son

The Velvelettes Needle In A Haystack acapella

Each disc comes packaged as one big downloadable .rar file, complete with artwork.

If you’re new here, welcome and happy downloading! If you’re a regular here, you may have some or all of these tracks already, so why not download anyway and burn a CD for someone who might appreciate it?

Cover Versions, Dylanish, Gone but not forgotten, Hard-to-find, Studio master tapes

Walk Away Renee Quadruple Whammy

Craig McAllister

Walk Away Renee is unarguably one of those songs that has passed into that category marked ‘timeless‘. It has been recorded by artists as diverse as Linda Ronstadt, T’Pau, David Cassidy, Frankie Valli and even Japanese pop duo Pink Lady (no, me neither), in turn being given the country treatment, the overblown 80s synth rock treatment (gads) and all manner of disco/pop/soul treatments. What I love about Walk Away Renee is that, no matter how many times I’ve heard it, when I hear it again I’m always tricked into thinking I’ve just joined the song half-way through.

And when I see the sign that points one way

The lot we used to pass by every day

Just walk away Renee

You won’t see me follow you back home

Maybe it’s the use of the word ‘And‘ as the very first word, maybe it’s the short short verse, but either way it gets me every time. It’s often assumed that it was written by Motown staff writers for the Four Tops, but that’s not true.

The lyric of Walk Away Renee is the slightly-stalkerish product of a love struck 16 year old (16!!) called Michael Brown, keyboard player in cult 60s sunshine pop group The Left Banke. The Renee in question was Renee Fladen-Kamm, a leggy free-spirited blonde who happened, in proper Spinal Tap tradition, to be the girlfriend of the band’s bass player. So infatuated by her was Brown that when the Left Banke recorded the song, he was unable to play his part of the song as she was watching from the studio’s control room.

“My hands were shaking when I tried to play, because she was right there in the control room,” he says. “There was no way I could do it with her around, so I came back and did it later.”

Wow! When I was 16 I think I was still playing with my Action Man, certainly I wasn’t writing proper adult love songs, let alone recording them in a proper recording studio and having hits with them (#5 on the Billboard Hot 100, July 1966, Pop Pickers). With it‘s chamber orchestra intro, harpsichord backing and flute solo (nicked from California Dreaming), Walk Away Renee is pure baroque ‘n roll, a fantastically perfect arrangement and execution that is hard to match.

Hard to match, yes, but not impossible. The Four Tops‘ 1968 version takes out the Left Banke’s chamber pop elements and replaces them with a huge dollop of soul and those instantly recognisable Motown calling cards of drum beat, sweeping strings and stabbing brass. Produced by Holland-Dozier-Holland, the vocal performance is magnificent –  uplifting yet melancholic, Levi Stubbs giving the equivalent vocal performance to what young Michael was feeling in his poor wee love struck heart the day he wrote it. Fact – Rod Stewart loves this song. Want to hear those vocals in all their isolated glory? Of course you do. I’ve posted them before, but hear ’em here. No stabbing brass, sweeping strings or drum breaks to obscure the most perfect soul vocal you’ll hear this week.

I’ve never been that big a fan of Billy Bragg (I know, I know, shoot me…) but I do love his version of Walk Away Renee from the aptly-named Levi Stubbs’ Tears EP. Less Motown, more a homage to the talking blues of Woody Guthrie or early Bob Dylan, but done in those dulcet Essex tones (Bard of Barking? More like the Bark of Barding ho ho) he tells his own story of unrequited love (“I couldn’t stop thinking about her and every time I switched on the radio there was somebody else singing about the two of us………she began going out with Mr Potato Head…. I went home and thought about the two of them together until the bath water went cold around me….“) whilst Johnny Marr picks out the familiar melody in the background. S’a beautiful version, man!

Postscript

Renee seemingly moved on from the Left Banke’s bass player and onto the drummer before Walking Away for good. It seems that young Michael was never to receive her attentions. Nae luck Michael….

Yer actual Renee Fladen-Kamm. She walked away.

Gone but not forgotten, Hard-to-find

I’m Dreaming Of A Brown Christmas*

Craig McAllister

That’s Brown. James Brown. I think I may just have found a rival to Phil Spector’s Christmas Gift For You in the Best Christmas album In The World….Ever! stakes. James Brown’s Funky Christmas does exactly what it says on the tin and a whole lot more. Whether it’s a-whoopin’ and a-hollerin’ call-and-response gospel frenzy, or down-on-its-knees testifyin’ doo-wop soul, or the sort of on-the-one dance music that led to JB being re-christened Mr Dynamite, James Brown’s Funky Christmas is one hell of a soulful shout-out to Santa Claus; a right proper lookin’ to the skies for forgiveness frenzy of festive funk.

It’s real soul, man, not the sort of artifice with a catchy chorus and a couple of sleigh bells that normally gets chucked about this time of year. Despite titles such as Let’s Unite The Whole World At Christmas and Santa Claus, Santa Claus, I could quite happily listen to this album round the barbeque in July. I couldn’t say the same for Mariah Carey’s (albeit terrific – aye!) Christmas effort.

Get on the good foot and get down(loadin’)

Then go and buy the whole album. You won’t regret it.

Go Power At Christmas Time

Santa Claus Go Straight To The Ghetto

Merry Christmas Baby

Let’s Make Christmas Mean Something This Year

Soulful Christmas


*Token Christmas post. Normal service resumed next week with Plain Or Pan’s annual end-of-year compilation and other such delights. Hope Santa’s good to y’all.

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

The Don Chorus

Craig McAllister

It would appear that ol’ Don Van Vliet, Captain Beefheart himself shuffled off this mortal coil tonight and has gone onto the next life where he will undoubtedly entertain, confound and enlighten those who are willing and able to tune into whatever frequency he broadcasts from beyond the grave.

Uncompromising, difficult and a right proper tuneless racket – that’s how I’d describe much of what I’ve heard of Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band’s work. And anyone who tells you anything else has at least a slight whiff of pretentiousness around him. Not her. Him. Definitely him. Captain Beefheart doesn’t really strike me as ladies music. Sorry, PJ Harvey and anyone else I’ve offended, but it’s true! I don’t claim to be a super-fan by any stretch of the imagination, but I do have a fond place in my record collection for the Clear Spot and Safe As Milk albums – 2 of his more accessible, bluesy and, yes, tuneful albums. As big a music fan as I am it’s almost embarassing of me to admit this, but I’ve never heard Trout Mask Replica, an album that always appears  (and now will always appear) on those 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die publications.  I first heard the Captain on a Melody Maker mail order CD round about 1990 – Beatle Bones & Smokin’ Stones failed at the time to live up to it’s way-out title. These days, with ears opened wider by all sorts of stuff I never knew about 20 years ago, it sounds pretty good, but it wasn’t until the Nuggets compilation and Diddy Wah Diddy that he made any real sense to these narrow-minded ears. Diddy Wah Diddy sounds fantastic – a growling bassline matched only by Beefheart’s growling vocal, carried along by a garage band stomp that David Bowie must’ve, must’ve played ad infinitum while he was writing Jean Genie. I only found out about 2 years ago that the Captain’s version was actually a fairly straight-ahead cover of an old Bo Diddley track, which, given that riff is perfectly obvious when you think about it. Bo Diddley’s version has better maracas on it, mind.


The young Jack White, careful scholar of all things authentic and retro, as well as being something of a thieving magpie of the blues was a keen admirer of Captain Beefheart, so much so that the nascent White Stripes recorded a 3 track ep of Beefheart covers. On Sub Pop, it’s rarer than a White Stripes bass player so if you can find anyone daft enough to want to sell you a copy, you’ll need seriously silly money if you want to get yer sweaty little mitts on it. But fear not. If you don’t have the money honey, that’s OK…

Part Of Special Things To Do

China Pig

Ashtray Heart

…and the mp3s come complete with original vinyl snaps, crackles and pops. Party Of Special Things To Do sounds exactly like the White Stripes doing Diddy Wah Diddy. The rest is lo-fi in the extreme; exactly the sort of retro tub-thumping blues that had John Peel all in a lather over Jack ‘n Meg way back when. Enjoy!

My favourite Captain Beefheart track? That would be Big-Eyed Beans From Venus from side 2 of Clear Spot. Mr Zoothorn Rollo plays a mean slide guitar riff. It used to be the ringtone on my phone dontchaknow. The later Beefheart/Magic Band stuff I’ve tried hard to like. I really have. Grow Fins. Ice Cream For Crow. But I just don’t get it. I always listen with the idea that, much like Tom Waits (‘though I love love love Tom Waits), Captain Beefheart is the aural equivalent of whisky – difficult to swallow, but once you’ve got the taste for it you’re keen to try out new blends. Maybe I need to try again. Perhaps even that unplayed copy of Trout Mask Replica will make it’s debut round here any day now. Better late to the party than never at all, eh?

By The Way..

In recent years, it was painting and not music that occupied all of Captain Beefheart’s time. But you knew that already. Below is the none-more Beefheartian Ten Thousand Pistols, No Bumblebees oil on canvas from 1995.

Slight Update

Captain Beefheart’s 10 Commandments of Guitar Playing are here. Random samples:

4. Walk with the devil
Old Delta blues players referred to guitar amplifiers as the “devil box.” And they were right. You have to be an equal opportunity employer in terms of who you’re bringing over from the other side. Electricity attracts devils and demons. Other instruments attract other spirits. An acoustic guitar attracts Casper. A mandolin attracts Wendy. But an electric guitar attracts Beelzebub.

8. Don’t wipe the sweat off your instrument
You need that stink on there. Then you have to get that stink onto your music.

Well worth 10 minutes of anyone’s time!

Gone but not forgotten, Hard-to-find, Sampled

The Bare-Faced Chic Of It!

Craig McAllister

Ask anyone to name the great double-act song writers and they’ll give you any number of Lennons & McCartneys, Liebers & Stollers, Goffins & Kings, Morrisseys & Marrs, (insert your choice here ______). I’d wager that few amongst you would automatically add the names of Edwards & Rodgers to that esteemed list, yet in my world they’d be one of the first double acts I’d think of.

Edwards & who?,  you might ask. Well, you wouldn’t. You are, after all, men (& women) of wealth and taste. Jagger & Richards, there’s another! But plenty people are familiar with the music of Edwards & Rodgers, yet few would know them by name. They’ve been sampled a gazillion times (Grandmaster Flash‘s Adventures on the Wheels of Steel – but you knew that already), helping give birth to hip-hop. They’ve been ripped off by the obvious (Queen‘s Another One Bites The Dust) and the not-so-obvious (The Smiths – listen to the second verse of The Boy With The Thorn In His Side. Hear that rinky-dink guitar riff in the background? That’s Johnny Marr’s homage to Nile Rodgers so it is. JM is such a fan of the Chic guitarist, he named his son after him). But I bet even the most ardent of music fans you know from work would be hard-pushed to tell you who they were. Go on! Ask someone tomorrow!

Seasoned New York sessioneers-for-hire Bernard Edwards and Nile Rodgers formed Chic in 1976.  Once they’d added vocalist Norma Jean Wright to their studio line-up, Atlantic Records signed them on the strength of their demo tape. That same tape made up the bulk of their first album, Chic, in 1977 and had dance floors from Studio 54 and beyond getting all hot under the collar to their unique blend of bass-heavy/guitar-lite/whispered female vocals. I love ’em. I am after all unashamedly disco, but to me, Chic are more than mere disco. Top players making top records. If they were, like, a proper rock band (ugh!), they’d be revered everywhere from Irvine, California to Irvine,  Ayrshire.

Listen to this. I Want Your Love, from ’78s C’est Chic LP. Following the bass-heavy/guitar-lite/whispered female vocals template, it oozes quality. Remember that this was the era when disco was dead, when technique-based musicianship was sneered at with a curled lip and ball of phlegm. Chic didn’t care. They stuck church bells, church bells! on top, added the grooviest of trumpet ‘n string refrains and played it out for 6 and a half minutes. The bare-faced Chic of it, by not conforming to the norm surely that’s more punk than punk?! Elsewhere, chord progressions may have been getting simpler and ‘proper’ musicians were dumbing down. Like a modernised version of an old Stax or Motown Revue, Chic were a guitar-based rock group playing dance music, for the pure sophisticated thrill of it. I Want Your Love never sounds tired, or dated. C’est Chic indeed.

Like that? Try this. I found it a while back on this magical world wide web we are a-surfin’ together. It’s a fan remix, the Dream Time Mix, not official in any sense of the word, but it is simply sensational – over 13 minutes long and quite superb.

Like that? Now try this. Edwards & Rodgers were accomplished producers. One artist to benefit from their talents was French singer Sheila B. In 1979, under the name Sheila and B. Devotion she had a massive hit with Spacer. The Chic hallmarks are all there – the instantly hummable bass riff, the instantly recognisable clipped guitar, the breathy female vocals. Spacer sounds a bit like Nico in places, more Germanic than French. But I doubt Nico would’ve ever allowed herself to be discofied in quite such a glorious manner.

Useless Spacer fact: Edwyn Collins always has a copy of Spacer on hand whenever he’s booked to DJ somewhere.

Now go and listen to all those brilliant Orange Juice records and ponder – that hummable bassline? Hmmm. That clipped guitar? Uhhh huhhh. Y’see…Edwyn knows the score! Chic-meets-the-Velvets I think was his phrase, wasn’t it?

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

Putting On The Weight

Craig McAllister

Take a load off fanny, take a load for free. Or is it Take a load of fanny, take a load for free? Either way, The Weight by The Band often causes me to let out a wee schoolboy snigger every time I hear it. And in this part of the world I’m quite sure I’m not alone, eh? With typical American insularity (I know! I know! 4 out the 5 were Canadian), his world-weary lyric appears totally unaware of our quirky West of Scotland localisms. Funny that.

Long before Phil Collins and his particularly annoying nasal whine made singing drummers about as cool as cabbage, Levon Helm and his spectacular beard were leading The Band’s mellow blended vocals from behind the drum kit. I’ve always loved their (original) version of The Weight, with its rootsy backing and arm-around-the-shoulder, everything’ll-be-alright-in-the-end lyric. It’s only a few short lumberjack-shirted steps on from the fantastic stuff Dylan had them playing down in the basement of Big Pink and for me, it’s about as good a definition of ‘Americana’ as you could get. So it’s great when someone else can see beyond the boundaries of whatever Americana is and is able to re-interpret the song in their own unique way.

Aretha Franklin hooked up with Duane Allman and recorded this version at Muscle Shoals. Loose, funky and full of those soaraway Aretha vocal moments you know so well, it sounds insistent, urgent and right-on wholly holy gospel. Allman plays bottle guitar throughout like a maniac, while what sounds like the Stax house riff freely on the horns. Nice Chain Of Fools kick drum in the chorus too. Have a listen. Majestic is the word you’re looking for.

Poor Travis. They’ve always been one step out of fashion, betwixt and between the next big thing. Arriving just as the Cava was getting flat at the Britpop party and too soon for an unappreciative public not yet ready for angsty melodic serious indie like Coldplay, who then came along and stole what brief thunder they may have had, they’ve been given a hard time of it. Which is a bit unfair, as they undoubtedly know their onions. The Travis version is straightforward, melodic and clearly heart-felt. No Staxy horns. No slide guitar. But plenty of Scottish soul. Whatever that is.

Talking of soul, and that’s ess oh you ell , brothers and sisters, with a capital ‘S’, The Supremes got together with The Temptations and nailed a version of The Weight for their joint 1969 LP Together that falls somewhere between Aretha ‘n Duane’s free ‘n funky version and the Heavyweight Championship of the World. Two vocal giants of soul slugging it out over 3 minutes of sitar-like guitar riffs, pitch-perfect harmonies (as you might expect) and sock it to ’em male/female call and response vocals. Knockout!

The Weight Trivia

Hairy old 70s rock bores Nazareth took their name from the song’s first line.

The track appears on the movie soundtrack for Easy Rider. In the movie, you hear The Band’s version, but on the soundtrack, due to legal bits ‘n pieces, the version you get is by the band Smith. No, me neither.

The Weight sits at No. 41 in Rolling Stone‘s 500 Greatest Songs Of All Time List.  That makes it better than Waterloo Sunset, but not quite as good as Dancing In the Street.

Bonus Track!

And hot off the press to boot! The Black Crowes played New York a couple of weeks ago and played their version of The Weight then.

demo, Gone but not forgotten, Hard-to-find, Live!

Legs & Co.

Craig McAllister

1! 2! 3! 4! See wee kids in Ramones t-shirts? Or young 20-something lassies wearing them as some sort of hip fashion statement? What’s all that about? I bet it does your head in as well. You knew this already, but looooong before The Ramones were a brand, they were a band. And quite possibly the most spine-tinglingly perfect four piece group there’s ever been. Feral and full-on, they were effortlessly chewin’ out the rhthym on a bubblegum while their contemporaries agonised over such grandiosities as lit-referencing lyrics and guitar solos.

1! 2! 3! 4! Or so we’re led to believe. It wasn’t that effortless, apparently. The stage routine was a strictly choreographed affair more in keeping with a Pans People Top Of The Pops routine. First verse – step forward. Jump. Chorus – head down, guitar up, left leg back. Second verse – walk back towards the drum kit . And so on and so on. Watch them on YouTube if you don’t believe me. And those dumb songs with the dumb chords and the dumb delivery? It’s hard being dumb in music, trust me. If you’ve ever played in bands you’ll know what I mean. Even the crappiest of bands can’t sound dumb. There’s always one flash bastard in the group who wants to be heard that wee bit longer, that wee bit louder than the others – the guitar intro, the guitar solo, the guitar outro. That was me. I couldn’t have played in The Ramones. No-one could. Any guitarist knows their way round a couple of barre chords, but no guitarist is happy churning out barre chords on stage for half an hour. They all want to fling in a teeny tiny wee widdly bit somewhere, even if it’s only them that notices. Or a minor chord. The Ramones were genius. Bass plays this part, guitar plays the same. The exact same. They came at you like a tank. Brutal and unforgiving. For every song. On every album. At every gig.

1! 2! 3! 4! And the lyrics – Who would ever dare write a song where the hook line between the chorus and second verse goes;

“Second verse, same as the first”

That’s genius, that is. In fact, nearly as genius as the next hook;

“Third verse, different from the first”

In any other band, the other members of the group would’ve clobbered the singer if he’d tried to get away with that. In its entire 1 and a half minutes, Judy Is A Punk also references the Berlin Ice Capades and the SLA (70s terrorist organisation dontchaknow), not so much finishing as self-imploding. Live, the songs came at you one after the other after the other after the other, punctuated by the odd “Wunchewfreefo!” and up the road.

1! 2! 3! 4! Oh to have been 17 in 77! I only caught The Ramones live once, at the Barrowlands in either 88 or 89 (I can’t be bothered looking for the ticket to check, but it’s there somewhere). I took my wee brother. It was his first gig and, carried away by the occassion, he managed to crowd surf for about 3 seconds before being manhandled by the bouncers onto (!) the stage, dragged past Joey “Hey! Looks like we got da fanclub in tanight!” and flung down a trapdoor on the stage (!), only to somehow reappear in the bar area downstairs where they sell t-shirts and stuff at gigs. I have a very vivid memory of being as close to the front as possible and looking up at Joey Ramone, a 9 foot high 2-legged giraffe, hanging onto the microphone stand like a hairy angle-poise lamp, legs akimbo and the drummer (Marky? Tommy? Who knows) flailing away in the background, somewhere between Joey’s kneecaps and beneath that ubiquitous Ramones logo. Magic.

1! 2! 3! 4! Da music:

Judy Is A Punk (1975 demo)

Judy Is A Punk (from the first Ramones album)

Judy Is A Punk (from It’s Alive, essential Ramones live anthology)

Pretty cool

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

I Got 96 Tears and 96 Eyes*

Craig McAllister

Right from the off, with its rinky dink 2 note Vox Continental organ riff and garage backbeat, 96 Tears is just about the perfect record. Released in 1966 by ? & the Mysterians, it was one of those songs like Louie Louie or Wild Thing that went on to be recorded by everyone and anyone with a fuzz guitar and a hip ear to the underground. It has in its time gone on to sell over a million copies and had over 3 million airplays.


Not bad for a band of Mex-Americans from Michigan with a love of surf music and a well thought out marketing ploy – have an unusual name and an even more unusual singer. It might’ve helped record sales when their lead singer claimed to be a martian who had lived with dinosaurs in a past life. Yep. Or when he claimed to have visited other planets and periods in time. Uh huh. I once had a drama teacher who would say to the class, “I‘m going to turn my back and when I turn around again, I’ll be in character….(….pause….)…Beowulf!!!” Rudy Martinez must’ve been a bit liked this.  He never went out without his sunglasses and only answered to his chosen moniker ‘?’, rather than his given ‘Rudy’, the name his mother preferred to shout when he was listening to his Van Morrison and Them records too loudly. If you’ve ever heard a ? and the Mysterians album, you’ll know how much a debt they owe to wee Van. If not, the ‘96 Tears‘ or ‘The Action‘ albums are good places to start.

96 Tears features regularly when my iPod is on shuffle. Most days will see an appearance of one version or another pop up. I’ve got what seems like 96 versions of it, most fairly pointless faithful recreations of the garage stomping original (Hello, Stranglers! Hello Music Explosion! I’m looking at you, Inspiral Carpets! You built an entire (early) career out of its Nuggety groove.) There’s one or two that take the original and mess with it so much, it just seems like the’d recorded a few minutes of pointless FM static and looped it ad infinitum (Hey there Primal Scream! Stop hiding at the back Suicide – how apt a name.)  Favourites?  Todd Rundgren‘s lo-fi fuzz-bassed studio demo is right up there, Aretha Franklin‘s soulful and (at first unrecognisable) version from Aretha Arrives is classic Aretha, with an almost Respect-like backing. Big Maybelle‘s a-whoopin’ and a-hollerin’ version, all Stax-inspired southern soul groove, underpinned by clipped guitars and a (bold as) brass section first came to my attention on 6 Music’s excellent Craig Charles’ Funk & Soul Show and has been on constant rotation ever since. Then there’s Gerardo Manuel & El Humo‘s super-heavy epic prog rock take. Think Iron Butterfly on jellies. It’s a grower, trust me!

Go fill yer boots…

96 Tears – ? & the Mysterians

96 Tears – Big Maybelle

96 Tears – Aretha Franklin

96 Tears – Gerardo Manuel & El Humo

96 Tears – Primal Scream

96 Tears – Inspiral Carpets

96 Tears – Music Explosion

96 Tears – Todd Rundgren

*…and I can’t believe I don’t have/can’t find a version by The Cramps, so here‘s Human Fly, featuring the line in the title at the top.

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

David Gedge! 25 Years In the Business! Yay!

Craig McAllister

Keeping It Peel is the brainchild of the good persons over at Football And Music. To honour the memory of the late great John Peel, Football And Music has decreed October the 25th “a sort of John Peel Day, but for bloggers.” Like many of the blogs listed on the Blogroll down there on the right, I’m in. It seems the right thing to do – as a music-obsessed teenager I listened religiously, finger sweating on the ‘pause’ button of my music centre waiting patiently to catch and magnetise some of those brilliantly weird and parent-bothering new sounds floating through the ether and onto my crappy cheap Boots C90s. I quickly developed the skill of being able to depress the ‘pause’ button in that wee space just between JP stopping talking and the record starting. In hindsight, I wish I’d been less skillful, as I’d love to listen back to those old tapes and be able to hear some of what he was saying. I still have some of the tapes up the loft. I should really get them down and have a wade through them sometime. Y’know, without John  Peel etc etc blah blah blah…

So, what to post? Much of the stuff I enjoyed on the Peel Show (roughly about 3 records an hour if I’m being honest) ended up being the stuff recorded by my future favourite bands. You know who they are, they’re the same as yours. I could be wilfully obscure or wilfully elitist, but in keeping with the unpretentious nature of the band I’ve chosen to feature, I won’t. The ubiquitous Fall may be forever linked-uh with John Peel, but to me The Wedding Present are just as big a deal – he gave them plenty of opportunity to record sessions for his show and they seemed to appreciated the platform he afforded them. Peel’s listeners clearly appreciated them too – they had a massive 45 tracks included throughout the years in Peel’s Festive 50s, a feat only bettered by, aye, The Fall.  And besides, David Gedge is the nicest pop star I’ve ever met – you can read all about it here.

Fan snap shot of The Wedding Present, Glasgow Barrowlands

(you can tell by the white tiles on the ceiling) 1988

Their session from the 24th May 1988 is my favourite Wedding Present Peel Session. This is the sound of a band no longe ramshacklingly scrubbing tinny guitars with brillo pads and replaying the reults through cheap amplifiers. This is the sound of a band who’ve managed to recreate their favourite sounds of alt. America in their live set – low rumbling bass that sounds as if it’s balls have dropped, meatier guitars played through proper amplifiers; tight, taut, tense, terrific. They would later go on to replicate this sound on their masterpiece LP, major label debut Bizarro (aye, forget the George Best album. No tears now.)

The 24.5.88 session is almost the perfect session. As was often the norm at these sessions, the band recorded 3 brand spanking new songs and one sparkling cover version. Nowadays, those three spanking new songs would be all over the internet the moment the last screech of feedback had died out and would have been digested, discussed and dissected by chat boards from Bradford to Berlin and beyond before breakfast. In pre-internet days, the C90 and your ‘pause’ button were your only friends. Fearful of taking a toilet break (Misty In Roots was my calling card every time), you captured what you could and replayed it the next day and more until the tape started to sound a bit wonky. Over time of course, this only added to the charm of a clandestinely captured Peel Session. It was often something of a shock to hear the ‘new’ song for the first time on the band’s album and finds that it didn’t slow down and speed up during the last chorus. Kids today with their mp3s, huh? They don’t know what they were missing. The 4 tracks I captured in all their hissy glory?

  1. Why Are You Being So Reasonable Now? (with ‘single‘ written through it like a stick of Blackpool rock, it was released on 7″ 4 months later. It even ended up being recorded and released in French)
  2. Unfaithful (workmanlike strumathon, eventually saw the light of day on the b-side of Kennedy (October 89 – Number 33  in the proper, real Hit Parade, pop pickers!)
  3. Take Me! (introduced by the DJ as Take Me, I’m Yours, released as Take Me! on Bizarro just under a year and a half later, this is a terrific indication of where the post George Best Wedding Present were heading (major labels, Steve Albini, America, Top of the Pops, my fanzine…))
  4. Happy Birthday (Altered Images cover, complete with Marilyn Monroe singing to JFK, “Happy Birthday Mr Pre.Si.Dent“. at the start)

Take Me, I’m Yours was my favourite. Over 8 minutes long, it featured an extended outro complete with Status Quo riffing, not the sort of thing expected from yer Wedding Present at all. The band must’ve been in on some Quo-related in-joke, for on Happy Birthday Gedge gleeefully shouts, “Status Quo, 25 years in the business!” and the band all cheer. It still tickles me today. The session tracks above are taken from my shiny, pristine Wedding Present Peel Sessions Box Set. Free of any FM hiss and missed guitar riffs they (cough…ahem) Present the Weddoes in the best possible way. I’m amazed that the Marilyn Monroe intro to Happy Birthday has been retained. I’d’ve thought that would’ve cost an arm and a leg to get the clearance for, perhaps even more than the expected return after selling however many copies of the box set they expected to sell. This music, after all, was recorded by a band who once sold a t-shirt proudly proclaiming in big black letters, ‘All The Songs Sound The Same‘. Who wants to sit through 12 John Peel Sessions over 6CDs in the one sitting? Only a fool. But a fool with particularly good taste.

The official Wedding Present website seems to be no more is here, and this excellent fan site has all you need and more. The image above, of David Gedge’s handwritten lyrics and guitar chords for Unfaithful and that shot of the band at the Barrowlands were taken from there. Thanks, Something And Nothing website!

*Bonus tracks!

Woah-woaw! Just cos it’s a cracker, here‘s The Wedding Present’s version of Orange Juice’s Felicity (Peel Session #1, 11th February 1986)

I used to have a few complete Peel Shows from the late 60s and early 70s which I’d have loved to make available for download here, but following the disaster that was the Great Hard Drive Crash of 2007, this is no longer possible. Instead, I offer you this – the complete 1971 David Bowie Peel Session. Some of this (crucially, not all of it) made it onto the Bowie At The Beeb CD set a few years back. Plenty of chat from Peel (and Bowie for that matter). Get it while you can.

Gone but not forgotten, Hard-to-find

I’m Immortal

Craig McAllister

Forget your Abbacadabras, your He-Bee Gee-Bees, your Bootleg Beatles even, the real tribute to any act is surely the tribute single – a pastiche-like dedication of another’s love for their favourite artist.

Elvis Herselvis

One of the first must certainly be Janis Martin‘s 1956 hit single ‘My Boy Elvis‘. Janis was only 15 when she recorded this slice of schlockabilly rockabilly – “He’s off like a rocket and there he goes, he rocks from his head down to his toes, My Boy Elvis, Real Rock!” Sounding like it came  from a Sam Phillips session straight outta Sun Studios, Elvis was so impressed he sent her a big bunch of flowers. Not casting aspertions or anything, but Elvis was quite keen on the younger ladies, so there could well have been an ulterior motive in his Southern man’s kindly gesture. As young Janis herself sings,  “All the teeners stop and shout when they open the curtain and he walks out.” Indeed they did.

John Paul George Ringo & Dora

Y’know, in 9 weeks time Old Santa Claus himself will be popping down yer chimney. Given that the odd advert or two has sneaked under the radar and onto the TV, it seems only fitting that Plain Or Pan brings you the first Christmas download of the year. In 1963, cashing in on that new-fangled beat music thing all the youngsters were getting in a froth over, actress Dora Bryan recorded a somewhat novelty record, ‘All I Want For Christmas Is A Beatle‘. Sung in mock-cockney and covered in BBC light entertainment syrupy strings, it‘s not the sort of record you’re likely to play ad nauseum. “Christmas comes but once a year, they’re really all the same. I never know just what I want, it really is a shame. Yesterday I saw something that is my pride and joy. I want it for Christmas….it’s a real live Liverpool boy!” You can probably guess the rest, although she never quite gets anything to rhyme with ‘Ringo’. It’s a curio all right,  best kept in that ‘Christmas Songs’ box you open but once a year if you’re lucky.

Not Dead Pop Stars

Much more up my alley (and yours too, you people of good good taste) is the post-punk pre-pop debut single by Altered Images, 1981’s ‘Dead Pop Stars‘. Atmospheric, spiky and proto-goth (aye!) it’s a mish-mash of all the great post punk bands of the day. 30 years later it sounds to me like the boys are trying hard at being Siouxsie’s Banshees while Clare Grogan spits most of the words like a stroppy Minnie Mouse version of PIL-era John Lydon. Which, it goes without saying, is fantastic. Ironically, the band got their break in 1980 after sending those very Banshees a tape and managed to blag a support slot on their Kaleidoscope UK tour. This video is from that very tour;

Incidentally…

  1. That blurry Polaroid of Altered Images live came from a brilliant fanziney website here. Worth 5 minutes of anyone’s time.
  2. Altered Images bass player Johnny McElhone holds some sort of record, having played in 3 different bands that have had Top 20 hits – Altered Images, Hipsway and Texas.
  3. The drummer in one of the later Altered Images line ups came into the Our Price shop I worked in one day. I didn’t know this until he asked to order an obscure Afrika Bambaataa 12″. “Why d’you want that?” I asked out of genuine interest. “Because he’s nicked my drums for it and hasn’t asked my permission!” “Oh, you’re a drummer…who for? etc etc” Nowadays he’s the guy who announces the passenger safety notice on the Ardrossan-Arran ferry. And that’s a fact!