Just a quick note to say that t’internet polis are on my back again. A few mp3’s I’ve posted recently (and not so recently) have suddenly become unavailable. You’ll know which ones they are if you click a link and it says ‘file deleted‘ or ‘file invalid’ or whatever. Not nearly as bad as having the entire blog deleted as has been happening to many bloggers worldwide, but a major P in the A nonetheless. I don’t want to draw unnecessary attention to myself by re-posting the mp3’s that have been taken down. I’m sure you’ll understand. Just try and catch ’em while you can. Ta!
Category: Hard-to-find
You Need A Mess Of Help To Stand Alone
Poor Brian Wilson. Deaf in his right ear after his dad Murry had uncharitably clouted him, he suffered more than his siblings at the hands of this hard-to-please man. A somewhat failed song writer (doo-wop songs his ‘speciality’) Murry Wilson was the Beach Boys manager/co-producer/arranger in those heady surf-filled, drag-racing days.
Much like those dads of today who coach frantically from the side of the pitch while their 13 year old chases a ball around, he lived the dream through his sons. He constantly obsessed over every facet of the Beach Boys, from their appearance and stage presentation to the lyrics and songs themselves. A traditionalist, he undoubtedly gave Brian an ear (only one, mind) for a melody, by playing him Gershwin non-stop from an early age. He had him take accordion lessons. He forced him to sing solo in the church. He certainly pushed him in the right direction, as Brian became as obsessive about the power of music as Murry.
Brian was prodigious. He studied vocal group The Four Freshmen, replicated their individual vocal parts on the piano and worked out how to make a group of voices sing in 4 part harmony. From this, The Beach Boys were born and the rest, as you already know, is history. Have a listen to this, but be prepared to sit down and listen closely. You won’t regret it. It’s a complete reel (40 mins) of The Beach Boys recording Help Me, Rhonda. Hot on the heels of I Get Around it would go on to become the group’s second US Number 1, but not before three painstaking recording sessions. The Help Me, Rhonda session available here was recorded probably on the 8th or 19th January 1965, depending on the sources you read, and is famous in Beach Boys circles because the session is constantly interrupted by a menacing Murry, breaking in on the studio microphone and berating the individual members of the group for their sub-standard performances. For the most part he’s right too!
“Brian. Fellas. I have 3000 words to say. Quit screamin’, start singin’ from your hearts, huh? You’re doing fine now, watch your ‘ooohs’, come in on the low notes Mike. Carl -‘oooh’ – you’re ‘eugh!’ Come on! Dennis – you’re flatting. OK Mike. You’re flatting on your high notes. Let’s go. Let’s roll. So you’re big stars. Let’s fight, huh? Let’s fight for success. OK. Let’s go. Now loosen up. Be happy. Forget the people in here……..turn the lights out in this room. Turn the lights out in this room… they see so many people…OK fellas. You got any guts? Let’s hear ’em!”
Brian (from across the room) “Dad. only 82 words.”
Murry “I said 3000. Come on Brian. Knock it off! You guys think you’re good? Let’s go! Let’s go! Fellas. As a team we’re unbeatable. You’re doing wonderful Al. I’ll leave, Brian, if you’re gonna give me a bad time…..”
Brian “I got one ear left and your big mouthed voice is killin’ me!”
Murry “I’m sorry I’m yelling. Loosen up Al, watch your flatting…….”
And on and on and on it goes, between a zillion perfect and not-so perfect short burts of Help Me, Rhonda. Mike is flatting those high notes. Al is flatting those low notes.
“Al. Al! Come in to it. About an inch and three quarters. Or two inches closer. Either sing out louder or come in closer. And e-nun-ci-ate! When you sing ‘Rhonda’ make it sexy and soft. “Rhonda you look so fiiiine!” OK?” At this point you hear an unconvinced “hmmmm” from someone at the microphone.
And still it goes on.
“Brian. Your voice is shrilling through everybody. Carl. We can’t hear Carl. We can hear Dennis but we can’t hear Mike. And we can hardly hear Al.”
At one point Murry points out that “I’m a genius too, Brian!” Incredible! This is history in the making and we’re party to it. Incredible! Something recorded 45 years ago exists in the quality it does. What strikes me most about listening to the tape is that although Murry clearly likes the sound of his own voice and isn’t shy of pointing out the group’s failures, the group themselves know when a take has been a bad take. They don’t need Murry to tell them. You can hear them berate one another for being flat, quiet, missing their intro, whatever.
Brian actually appears in control of everything, despite his Dad’s close attentions. The session ends with Brian and Murry having a quiet arguement, Brian asking for an atmosphere of calmness, “are you going now?”, Murry commenting that “just because you’ve had a big hit…”. Brian puts up with his dad pretty well. This time. But no wonder it was only a few short months until he’d be watching TV and playing piano in a sandpit in his living room……..
Murry died in 1973. They say the devil has all the best tunes. I believe Murry is rearranging them as you read this.
TRIVIA FACT
Glen Campbell plays on this session. You’ll hear a wee bit of noodling and strumming throughout. That’s him!
Unashamedly Disco
I’m an unashamed fan of disco. Aye, in it’s heyday it might’ve been the shallowest form of music around, the 70s equivalent, yet better-dressed cousin, of contemporary throwaway nonsense like Lady GaGa or Pink. But sneer not. Listen closely to any of those era-defining records and unlike those (coughs smugly) ‘artists‘ of today, you’ll find a real soul at the heart of it all. Real instruments played by real musicians. 4 real (man). Listen to the guitar playing on anything off the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack and tell me that’s not up there with Jeff Beck. Listen to Nile Rodgers’ rinky-dink funk riffs on any Chic record you care to pick at random then listen to the second verse of The Smiths ‘Boy With the Thorn In His Side’ and tell me Johnny Marr doesn’t rate the playing on Chic records. Major copyism going on there! In homage to Chic, Johnny Marr even went so far as naming his son Nile!
So aye. I like disco music. And I’m clearly not alone. Abba (aye, snigger all you want) loved George McCrae’s Rock Your Baby so much they nicked the drum sound from it for Dancing Queen. “So what,” you say? Well, a couple of years later and Elvis Costello was touring somewhere in the American mid-west. He’d been working on a new song but was getting frustrated at the lack of a good melodic hook for the intro. Dancing Queen comes on the radio. He loooks at Steve Nieve and asks him to listen closely to the piano part. Could he replicate it? A wee while later and Oliver’s Army is complete. True story that. What goes around comes around and all that. If you don’t believe me, seek out the 2 tracks in question and play the intros back to back. I’d put them up here, but the internet police would be straight on my back…
A few weeks ago I was at a friend’s house. He hosted a music night where 5 of us took it in turn to play 5 records, each grouped into distinct categories. So far, so Nick Hornby. I can almost hear your muffled laughter from here. The one track that made the biggest impression on me that night was not the long-forgotten Tom Waits album track or the hard-to-find and rare-as… punk 7″ that I’d never heard before or the, well, I’m sure you can imagine exactly the sort of records that were played that night. No. The record that made the biggest impression on me that night was this gem from the early 80s.
DJ Gary Byrd and the GB Experience ‘The Crown’. Over 10 minutes of soul/funk/rap and, most definitely, disco, I hadn’t heard it since it had last troubled the charts (number 6 in July 83, trivia fans). It sounded better than I’d ever remembered. Written by Stevie Wonder to boot. He does a wee rap/verse thing at one point. I’m sure he plays drums on it too (it sure sounds like him), but that might just be me making things up as I can’t find much in the way of info about it online. It’s a disco classic folks, from the days when D.I.S.C.O. was D.E.A.D. The Fresh Prince was clearly getting jiggy to it as well, but we’ll gloss over that part.
Conversly, in 1974, just before D.I.S.C.O. went B.O.O.M., People’s Choice recorded this, Do It Anyway You Wanna. People’s Choice were from Philly (of course) and had a reasonably successful recording career. Andrew Collins played the original of this on BBC 6 Music the other day and I went and dug out my copy. Sadly, my version is a mildly irritating remixed version featuring snatches of Oops Upside Your Head, Last Night a DJ Saved My Life and stuff like that. Still magic though. And it reminds me of Saddle Up and Ride Your Pony and the Billy Connolly “I’ll walk you home when I empty my underwear‘ sketch that goes with it.
BONUS TRACK!
Happy Mondays do Staying Alive. The producer takes a stanley knife to much of the Pills, Thrills… album, snatches of tracks you know and love weave in and out of the mix, Shaun skanks on top of the unholy soup, Rowetta yodels and wails like a transvestite with his balls caught in a vice. This is the sound of a band on the ropes. The final round with no fight, nothing left to give back. It. Is. A. Mess. Enjoy it! The only good thing is the guitar riff. It sounds like a funky bucket. And I mean that in a good way of course.
Shane MacGowan Shaun Ryder
Sum Songs
Regular readers here will know that I’m somewhat a fan of Elliott Smith. I’ve posted various bits and pieces of his before. Equal parts downbeat alt. folk mumbler and upbeat Beatles-obsessed melodic genius, I could listen to Elliott all day. Stuck at the end of the Son Of Sam single (November 2000) was this, the what I assumed to be title track but left of the album of the same name Figure 8. It’s spooky as hell. A simple music box piano plays a spidery, child-like melody in the background while Elliott quietly sings these fantastic lyrics:
Figure 8 is double 4
Figure 4 is half of 8
If you skate, you would be great,
if you could make a figure 8,
that’s a circle that turns round upon itself.
Figure 8 is 2 times 4
4 times 4 is 2 times 8
If you skate upon thin ice,
you’d be wise if you thought twice,
before you made another single move.
Amazingly (to me at least), it turns out that Figure 8 is not an Elliott original. It was written in 1973 by Bob Dorough and recorded by Blossom Dearie. It first came to the public’s attention via US TVs Schoolhouse Rock series of educational programmes – aye, the same series of programmes that brought you Dorough’s own The Magic Number. You know, “3. Is a magic number. Yes it is. It’s a …” Of course you do. Turns out Dorough is a bit of a jazz cat – he worked with Miles Davis and Alan Ginsberg, played ‘tween Lenny Bruce stand-up sets and led the band in boxer Sugar Ray Robinson’s musical revue.
Elliott Smith stays pretty faithful to the first half of Dorough’s/Dearie’s original. But whereas his stops at downbeat and introspective, Blossom Dearie picks herself up halfway through and starts singing the 8 times table, much in the way Bob Dorough does in The Magic Number. It’s a weird, weird record, and given my love for Bob Dorough’s most famous tune, I can’t believe I haven’t picked up on the rest of his Schoolhouse Rock stuff until now. As I have just found out to my pleasant surprise, the Schoolhouse Rocks records take all the best bits of Peanuts, The Muppets and Sesame Street and those ‘Charlie Says..‘ UK public information films and ends up with something that is both extremely twee and/or child-friendly, depending on which side of the fence you’re sitting. I bet Duglas T Stewart has an original 1970s vinyl copy somewhere.
Play That Funky Music White Boy
We’ll get the confessions, the truth and the cold hard facts out of the way first. I’m too young to appreciate the beauty that was Postcard Records. Way too young. I’m not exactly sure when I first chanced upon the label, but it was certainly long after the last of those few, fey and feisty 7″s had made their way out of Alan Horne’s bedroom and into the world. While it was all going on I was too caught up in the chart music du jour – Madness, Adam & the Ants, Swords Of A Thousand Men, Spurs Are On Their Way To Wembley. Proper stuff like that. Had I actually heard Blue Boy or Just Like Gold I doubt I’d have liked them. And if you’re being honest with yourself as you read this, when you were 11 you wouldnae have liked them either.
Meet The Beatles? Velvet Underground? Byrds?
It was probably an article in the short lived Scottish music publication CUT that first brought Postcard Records to my attention. Being a heady 13 years old, by now I knew my Robert Lloyds from my Lloyd Coles and had an appetite for discovering new things. I knew of Orange Juice of course. Rip It Up had been all over the airwaves, the words ‘One Hit Wonder’ running through it’s jangly core like a stick of sugary sweet confectionary. And I must’ve been aware of Aztec Camera by this point too. Over the years I’ve come to realise that year zero for many of these bands I grew to love began at Postcard. Edwyn and Orange Juice. Roddy and Aztec Camera. The Go Betweens. All began their shiny black plastic lives on the Postcard label. Josef K too, but, eh, we’ll scratch that last lot out. I never gave them a chance/listen until Franz Ferdinand waxed lyrical about them a few years ago. Like I said earlier, we’ll get the confessions, the truth and the cold hard facts outta the way first. I like them now though.
Anyway. The reason for this article is three-fold.
- I’ve been meaning to do a bit about Postcard for a while now.
- It’s just over 30 years since the first Postcard 7″, Orange Juice’s Falling And Laughing, was released – there’s a good wee write up about Orange Juice and the pre-OJ Nu-Sonics here.
- Over at the Vinyl Villain, on 6th April they’re celebrating Paul Haig day. Paul Haig was lead singer with Josef K (below). But you knew that already.
So with regards to the above, I’ve compiled The Best Postcard Records Album In The World…Ever. Every a-side and b-side ever released on the label, from Orange Juice’s rare as funk debut (even Edwyn Collins doesn’t have a copy) to Aztec Camera’s non-album Mattress Of Wire. And everything in between, from Antipodean brothers in arms the Go Betweens to Edinburgh’s answer to the Glasgow Glamsters, Josef K. Every track wrapped in eczema-like scratchy guitars, elastic band basslines and vocals just on the wrong side of tuneful. Well. Almost every track. Roddy Frame uses, gasp! – acoustic guitars! He sings in tune! He’s a precocious 16 year old genius. The fucker! It’s the Sound Of Young Scotland y’know!
Here’s what you get:
Orange Juice
Falling And Laughing / Moscow / Moscow Olympics
Orange Juice
Blue Boy / Love Sick
Josef K
Radio Drill Time / Crazy To Exist
Go Betweens
I Need Two Heads / Stop Before You Say It
Josef K
It’s Kinda Funny / Final Request
Orange Juice
Simply Thrilled Honey / Breakfast Time
Orange Juice
Poor Old Soul / Poor Old Soul (pt2)
Aztec Camera
Just Like Gold / We Could Send Letters
Josef K
Sorry For Laughing / Revelation
Josef K
Chance Meeting / Pictures
Orange Juice
Wan Light (unreleased)/ You Old Eccentric (not on compilation)
Aztec Camera
Mattress Of Wire / Lost Outside The Tunnel
Why the small writing? Pain in the arse, man.
Download includes exclusive Plain Or Pan artwork.
Alex Chilton
Fuck. Just heard the news. This keyboard is awash with tiny tears as I type. It’s always the way, but why do the good guys go first? I can’t believe I’m writing about Alex Chilton in the past tense. His music, especially with Big Star, means as much to me as Them There Beatles, it really does. Whether he was bedroom balladeering or bar-room bawling and balls-out rocking, his songs hit a nerve that jangled all the way to the auditory part of my brain like one of those fancy pants chords he could tease out of his guitar.
If you’re reading this you probably know all about him. Teenage Box Top. Cult hero in coulda been shoulda been Big Star. Producer of The Cramps. Friend and collaborator with fellow enthusiasts/obsessives Teenage Fanclub. All round nice guy, he wrote and recorded some of the best pop songs you’ll hear. Seek out #1 Record or Radio City or 3rd/Sister Lovers for proof. Sometimes bleak, often uplifting, always soulful. But you knew that already. Given our track record for celebrating the artist in death rather than life, Alex Chilton may yet become somewhat ironically a Big Star.
I’m glad I caught Big Star live. Just the once, when they first played Glasgow as part of their initial reunion tour. I stood on the balcony of the QM Union looking down onto the stage where Chilton led his band through non-hit after non-hit after non-hit. The crowd knew every word. So too did Ken Stringfellow and Jon Auer of The Posies, similarly Teenage Fanclub-like in their obsessiveness about Big Star, and on-stage playing out their own version of Jim’ll Fix It on bass and guitar. Chilton himself played a mean guitar that night. And I mean mean in the economic sense. No frills, no pedals. Just him, a nice warm valve amp and a couple of vintage guitars. What a sound! Often overlooked in the scheme of things, Chilton was a fantastic guitar player – proof? – His version of My Baby Just Cares For Me is still up for grabs via this post.
He could play anything. Anything. Rock. Pop. Stax-inflected southern soul. Doo-wop. Jazz. E-nee-thing. He was a player’s player. A dude. And he once, sorry twice, played the 13th Note in Glasgow with Teenage Fanclub as his backing band. Naturally I found out about this the day after the second show. It was a Tuesday morning and a colleague from work casually mentioned it on the phone. Pre internet days, I’m afraid. Pissed off? You better believe it. Especially as the bootleg sounds amazing. Here‘s the entire show. No artwork. No tracklisting (I’m far too lazy/far too busy to type it out). First track is a rockin’ September Gurls. There’s covers of T-Rex, 60s pop standards and, yep, Stax-inflected southern soul. Get it and remember him this way.
Thanks for the music Alex.
Alex Chilton. December 28th 1950 – March 17th 2010
Thumbs aloft!
How much???!!!!???? for a Paul McCartney ticket?
Update
How much? How much? About a month’s worth of Tesco shopping for 3 tickets, that’s how much. Gulped then clicked ‘return’.
Of course.
They’re the best possible seats, but whathaveidone?
A Kinks Klunker and a Kouple of Klassiks
Call it The Establishment, Rock Royalty, whatever you fancy, but every songwriter has plenty skeletons rattling around their songwriting closet. For every Helter Skelter there’s a Frog Chorus. For every Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands there’s a Wiggle Wiggle. For every Heroes there’s a Laughing Gnome. If you dig deep enough you’ll find that no hero-worshipped songwriter is immune from it. They’ve all written rubbish at some point and some of it has even made it to vinyl.
Kinks ’83 model.
I came to The Kinks via 1983’s Come Dancing, but I was in denial about them for a long, long time. “The Kinks? Oh, they’re an old band.” said my mum. “I met Ray Davies in a pub in Arran once. Or was that Jeff Beck?” Like any normal 13 year old, anything my parents liked, I didn’t (or shouldn’t). If they hated Relax by Frankie Goes To Hollywood as much as they said they did, I was only going to buy the 12″ and play it non-stop for half a year. Ditto The Kinks’ Come Dancing. I loved it. I bought it. I played it to death when my mum wasn’t around to hear me playing it. Sometime later I borrowed the LP with Come Dancing on it (State Of Confusion) from the library and was massively underwhelmed. What’s all the fuss about those Kinks? This is pub rock. And not even good pub rock. George Thorogood and the Destroyers. Now there’s some decent pub rock for you. I was a good few years away from setting foot in a pub, but I knew. I did.
State Of Confusion was so bad I didn’t even tape it. The band themselves seemed to be in some state of confusion. Were they rock? New wave? Acoustic balladeers? Nah, they were the bloody Kinks, mate. Only, they were going downhill fast without the brakes on. A severley diluted, sanitised version of the real Kinks that I had yet to hear. Of course a few years later I discovered the true Kinks and came to love them. Ray Davies doesn’t have to apologise for anything he’s written, recorded or released. You and I both know that. But the iPod threw up this stinker of a tune the other day. I had no idea who it was and was beginning to doubt my own taste in music. Then amongst the strangled power chords and strained vocals something jumped out at me. I recognised a wee bit of the voice. T’was only Ray Davies! On Disc 6 of Kinks box set Picture Book. Aye. Disc 6. The disc no-one will ever play more than once. Not The Kinks’ finest hour, that’s for sure. And lo and behold, the track I was about to skip was State Of Confusion, title track from the aforementioned 1983 elpee. It took me all the way back to when I thought the Kinks were Krap. Yuck! It’s a stone cold sure fire Kinks Klunker and no mistake. You have been warned.
I prefer my Kinks tight of trouser, modish of cloth and shaggy of hair. They were a fantastic garage band, a fact often overlooked in the clamber to place them at the top of the classic songwriting pedestal, but find a space in your heart and a few minutes of your time to appreciate the following tracks….
Here’s Sittin’ On My Sofa, Milk Cow Blues and I Need You. I’ve posted I Need You before (here), but You Need It. You Need All Of Them to be honest. As you listen, spare a thought for how they got that guitar sound. If you’ve read Ray’s X-Ray semi-autobiography, you’ll already know that brother Dave took a knitting needle to his amp one day in a fit of squabling sibling rivalry and burst a hole right throught the speaker cone. Cue much fuzzed-up distortion and the riff for You Really Got Me….
Ray and Dandy Dave
Superbe? Non, Sublime! (see video for details)
Confession time. Leaving aside the ubiquitous and brilliant Je t’aime (moi non plus), until last weekend I had never heard a single Serge Gainsbourg record. I had been reading an article about his daughter Charlotte and how she had been working with Beck. The article mentioned that Beck’s Sea Change album (a favourite of mine) was heavily influenced by Histoire de Melody Nelson, Gainsbourg’s accepted masterpiece. Knowing that other favourites of mine like Jarvis Cocker, St Etienne and Stereolab were fans, it seemed obvious and (long overdue) that I should pay a visit a la maison de Serge and I duly got myself a copy of Histoire de Melody Nelson. I’m glad I did.
Where has this music been all my life?! I had expected Gainsbourg to come across like some Gallic garlic-breathed, Gitanes rasping Tom Waits on heat. Which, when I think about it, sounds pretty brilliant actually. But no! Sure, with his droopy eyes and beaky nose he might look like a particularly pervy old turtle (what did the ladies see in him?), but close your eyes and he sounds fantastic. Histoire de Melody Nelson is all street walking, hip thrusting bass and funk guitar. The vocals are practically spoken and drip with what I assume to be lust – my French isn’t as good as it used to be but given Serge’s track record I must assume that this is the case. After all, the guy has history….
Hee hee! The album is (whisper it again – see Sopht Rock post below) a concept album. A Rolls Royce driving Serge knocks a pretty young girl off her bike. As he runs to her aid his thoughts turn not to how badly injured she is, but how beautiful she looks. Naturellement. Sleazy? You bet. Think Marvin Gaye dressed not in a modish mohair suit but in a dirty raincoat. How come he got away with stuff like this and R Kelly ended up in the jail? Well, to answer my own question, R Kelly’s music is clearly criminal enough…
Histoire de Melody Nelson is equal part Funkadelic and equal part Jacques Brel. Given the combination of music and subject matter, Prince must surely be a fan. The playing on it is outstanding. Not surprising given the calibre of the musicians. No household names, but the individuals involved have impressive form.
On guitars, Big Jim Sullivan and Vic Flick. Big Jim was an in demand sessioneer in the 60s (He was ‘Big’ Jim so as not to confuse him with Little Jim(my) Page), he played with Tom Jones in his 70s Vegas Golden Era, befriending Elvis in the process, and appears, allegedly and un-credited, on almost 1000 hit singles. Vic Flick was part of the John Barry Seven. You’ve heard his guitar playing a million times before – it’s his distinctive twang that plays the James Bond Theme. As well as playing in assorted musical line ups in the 70s, keyboardist Alan Hawkshaw wrote much music for adverts, composed a ton of BBC library music and came up with Chicken Man, better known to most of you here as the Grange Hill theme. Most impressively of all, he wrote the music you hear on Countdown as the clock ticks down to zero. Bassman Herbie Flowers has many strings to his bass/bow. He is known to many as bassist in 70s classic/prog/rock fusion ensemble Sky and he is known to 80s kids as the writer of novelty pop hit Grandad, but he is perhaps best known for playing that bassline on Lou Reed’s Walk On The Wild Side. But, hey boy, you knew that already, didn’t you?
Serge et Jane B. Lucky B.
Histoire de Melody Nelson is a short album, less than half an hour long, and sounds like one continuous piece of music. This is the best way to listen to it. I’ve posted a track below (listen out for the way he croons “merde”), but really, to get the full experience, you should allow yourself half an hour to enjoy the album as a whole. While you do, have a perv at the cover. That’s Jane Birkin on the front. And I don’t think she’s wearing much more than that pair of jeans…..
Serge Gainsbourg Melody
Following on from this week’s epiphany, my search for Serge has led me to a wonderful album called Les Annees Psychedelique. It contains every bit of French freak-out funk and jazz you could ever possibly need. One track stood out above all. Requiem Pour Un Con reminded me of an old track by The Folk Implosion. Playing the 2 tracks back to back I realised that The Folk Implosion had sampled and looped the opening drum track and fashioned it into a fantastic instrumental tribute to Gainsbourg named ‘Serge‘.
Also on Les Annees Psychedelique is Bonnie & Clyde, Serge’s 1968 duet with Brigitte Bardot. Not as famous as Je t’aime, but equally as good. I’m now off to find Serge’s original version of said track, featuring Bardot instead of Birkin on vocals. À beintôt!
Bof!
Who Loves Ya Baby?
Aye, it may be Valentine’s day and Cupid may well have shot his arrow haphazardly in my direction, but there’s no room for slushy sentimental syrup here. Only the finest in 1970s funk (of course).
A track popped up on the iPod the other day and I was convinced I was listening to a rare outtake of The Temptations Papa Was A Rollin’ Stone. It had that same stop/start bass riff, sweeping cinematic strings and double-time handclaps, and it was only the absence of vocals that had me reaching for the ‘now playing’ menu to see what I was really listening to.
It was this, an obscure funk/soul track by Brinkley & Parker. Released in 1974, Don’t Get Fooled By The Pander Man could well be the theme for a long-forgotten down market cop show. Clipped wockawockawocka guitar, brass ‘n strings and a fantastic hi-hat and handclaps rhythm which kicks in around the 1 min 30 mark, Don’t Get Fooled By The Pander Man is the sound of beige leather jackets with over-sized floppy collars, 27″ bell bottoms and stacked cuban heels. With added car chases and Chinese food in cardboard boxes. As the man himself once said, Can You Dig It?
Ah, what the heck?!
I recently put up a rare version of Ball Of Confusion which is still available here. As another bonus, here‘s the full 11 minutes + version of Papa Was A Rollin’ Stone. Like that? You’ll like this – The Temptations Psychedelic Shack. A wee bit Sly, a wee bit Hendrix, a whole lotta groove.
Sometimes, the shortest posts are the best. I know you all just scroll through the crap that drips from my typing fingers til you find the mp3 links anyway. Bastards.
Anyway, thanks (as always) for visiting. I love ya, baby! Au revoir, a bientot!
Plain Or Pan 
