Double Nugget, Hard-to-find

‘I Need You’ Double Nugget Double Whammy

‘I Need You’ first appeared as the b-side of The Kinks‘ 1965 single ‘See My Friends’. A proto-punk garage band belter of a track, it starts of with some nifty Dandy Dave Davis feedback and continues kicking and screaming it’s way through some clattering drum breaks, decent ‘aaah-aaah’ backing vocals and the obligatory screaming guitar solo before ending in exactly the same fashion as ‘All Day And All Of The Night’. These days you can get it as one of the extra tracks on the CD reissue of ‘Kinda Kinks’, or on the first disc of the hit ‘n’ miss 6 CD Kinks box set, ‘Picture Book’. Or you can get it here.

 

kinks-roof

The Kinks. Of Kourse.

The Rationals came from Detroit. Arguably the first in a long line of classic garage blues bands from the area (Amboy Dukes/Iggy & the Stooges/MC5/Mitch Ryder/White Stripes/Soledad Brothers/Dirtbombs/Detroit Cobras/ etc etc etc), like most beat groups of their era they took up arms after being wooed by the sounds of The Who, The Kinks, The Stones and that other lot a-blasting across the Atlantic.

rationals

Guess who?

Using The Kinks version as a blueprint for their brief career, The Rationals’ 1968 version of ‘I Need You’ replicates the original, right down to the gutterpunk feedback at the start. Difference is, their version is about twice as fast and twice as raw. Better screaming guitar solo too.

I went to see John McCusker, Roddy Woomble and Kris Drever play last night. They were fantastic. They were supported by Boo Hewerdine and a girl called Heidi who could really sing. Even the first support act, 2 local teenage lads, one dressed like he was off to see Green Day, the other calling himself Tragic O’Hara were decent. They finger picked their way through a brief set of ‘my women done gone and left me and all I got left is this here empty bottle‘ type stuff. A bit cliched perhaps, but give them time. It was busy too. I’m telling ya, folk is the new indie. Keep it up lads!  

Listening to the ‘hip‘ output on BBC6 Music this week, it’s clear we really need records/artists like these above. If bands like Bloc Party can continually get away with releasing records that sound like a half-finished argument with Pro-Tools and White Lies are ‘the next big thing’, I think I might find myself mining by-gone eras for hidden treasure. Keep visiting to find out!

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

Johnny Marr’s Dansette Delights

For Johnny Marr, the 7″ is king. The latest edition of Mojo has him picking his 10 essential 7″s (+ 6  8! bonus tracks). He’s even designed a CD cover as well. All you need is the music…..

johnny_marr_3

I’ve lifted the picture above and some of the text below from Mojo’s website. Credit where it’s due and that.
1. Del Shannon
Keep Searchin’ (We’ll Follow The Sun)
(Stateside B-side, 1964)
Johnny Marr: “The influence of [A-side] The Answer To Everything on me when writing Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want is well documented so I picked its sister record, this time. It was the sound of the house when I was little.”
2. The Rolling Stones
Get Off Of My Cloud
(Decca single, 1965)
Johnny Marr: “The main thing I took from Keith Richards was his musical ideology; that there is a nobility in playing rhythm guitar and being the engine room and steering the ship, all these very valorous concepts which he threw in the face of guitar culture in the early ’70s.”
3. T.Rex
Metal Guru
(T-Rex Wax Co. single, 1972)

Johnny Marr: “It’s so beautiful and commercial but slightly weird and I could not believe what I was hearing because it was so all-encompassing. It connected with something beyond my regular senses.”

4. The Isley Brothers
Behind A Painted Smile
(Tamla Motown B-side, 1969)

Johnny Marr: “Motown provided a fantastic alternative to the rock music my mates were getting into. I ventured into this place called Rare Records on John Dalton Street in Manchester, I went into the basement and I remember to this day it was like a sea of future happiness.”

5. Iggy And The Stooges
Gimme Danger
(Raw Power LP track, CBS 1973)

Johnny Marr: “I remember getting on the bus and just staring at the front cover in disbelief all the way home. I wasn’t disappointed when I played it because it sounded like I thought it would. It was mysterious, sexy, druggy, riffy and to-the-point.”

6. The Crystals
There’s No Other Like My Baby
(Philles single, 1961)

Johnny Marr: “There is an unpretentiousness to it, and compared to what was passing itself off as weird in rockland with prog music at the time this just sounded weirder to me, and it seemed to come from an odder dimension.”

7. Blondie
Hanging On The Telephone
(Chrysalis single, 1978 )

Johnny Marr: “It reminds me of going to parties and really complaining that I didn’t want to hear Peaches by The Stranglers for the eleventh time and going through record collections with all that ELO shit in them and pulling out *Parallel Lines and going, ‘Alright then, let’s listen to this very, very loud!’”

8. Bob And Marcia
Young Gifted And Black
(Harry J single, 1970)

Johnny Marr: “It was one of the records that both Morrissey and myself liked in the same way. It reminded us both of being youthful fanatics and being outside of the norm… Then, amazingly, when [New Order’s] Bernard Sumner and I started to get close we both discovered that we liked that record in the same way.”

9. The Equals
Black Skin Blue Eyed Boys
(President single, 1970)

Johnny Marr: “Some records you wear down and you wear out but this one… I remember it from being out from when I was a kid but unlike some of the other tracks I play, I don’t listen to it for that reason, I like it because it reminds me of something shared between me and my mate.”

10. The Cribs
Hey Scenesters
(Wichita single, 2005)

Johnny Marr: “A fantastic working class street rock’n’roll 45 that could only have come from a band in this country. It’s like, Move over, this is the new generation. The Jarmans are as hip as street musicians get from any generation.”

Bonus Tracks:

Paul DavidsonMidnight Rider (Tropical single, 1976)

Johnny Marr: “Aside from Keith Richards’ on Gimme Shelter, Midnight Rider contains my favourite ever guitar solo.”

 

Alternative TVAction Time Vision (Deptford Fun City single, 1978 )
Built To SpillIn Your Mind (Ancient Melodies Of The Future LP track, WEA, 2001)
The DriftersI Count The Tears (Atlantic, 1960)
Johnny Marr: “If you were to play this to the other members of The Smiths it would remind them of being in a band with me. I used to sing and play it on the guitar when we weren’t recording and forced everyone to sing along. They learned to love it!”

Hamilton BohannonDisco Stomp (Dakar/Brunswick, 1975)
No direct quote from Johnny, but he’s said before that Disco Stomp influenced the swampy rhythm of How Soon Is Now. That record, and undoubtedly a huge side order of Bo Diddley.


TV On The RadioWolf Like Me (4AD single, 2006)

!!!Extra Bonus Tracks!!!

Del ShannonThe Answer To Everything

Johnny Marr: “The influence of ‘The Answer to Everything’ on me when writing ‘Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want’ with The Smiths is well documented.” It is? ! ?

Rolling Stones – Gimme Shelter (Guitar track from recording session)

Johnny Marr: “Keith Richards was badass. His solo on ‘Gimme Shelter’ is my favourite ever guitar solo.

johnny_cd_artwork

 

Download the entire set + artwork here.

I’ve written about Johnny Marr before. Have a read here

***Woops! Numpty Alert!

In my haste to bring you this excellent compilation, I mistakenly put the wrong TV On The Radio track on the album. Playing it in the car today I though, “Hang on! That’s not ‘Wolf Like Me’! Idiot!” But this is. So if you downloaded the .rar file previously, you’ll need it to correct the tracklisting on the compilation You can also download front and back cover artwork here (made by my good self). Ta!

Gone but not forgotten, Hard-to-find

Happy Birthday Rabbie

250 years young today. I love Burns. Had him drummed into me at school. In fact, anyone who goes to school in the West of Scotland knows all about him. And as a teacher, I love banging on about him to my class. Here’s a brief history for any uninitiated out there…

robert-burns

Born on the 25th January, 1759 in Alloway (now a posh part of Ayr). Scrawny boy, wasn’t expected to live long. Helped his dad on the farm. Wasn’t cut out for it. His dad, though poor, paid for Robert to go to school. Robert excelled in academia. Began writing poems to go along with the folk songs his mother had sung to him. People liked them. Drifted around Ayrshire. Had a reputation as a ladies man. Loved them and left them. Made plans to go to Jamaica as a slave driver (they don’t tell you that in school). Was just about to go when someone in Kilmarnock published the first edition of his poetry. This edition made it’s way to Edinburgh and Robert followed. The Edinburgh high society loved him. He loved their women. He loved life. Spent the equivalent in today’s terms of £170,000! That’s £170,000 pissed against a wall. Made a hasty retreat, skint, to Dumfries when he was caught having an affair. Married Jean Armour, the love of his life and went back to the farming. Hated it. Became a tax man. Hated that. Died of a heart condition aged on 21st July 1796, aged just 37. At the time of his death he had fathered at least 13 children to various women throughout Ayrshire, Edinburgh and Dumfries. Stick that in yer pointy boots, Russel Brand.

Here‘s The Ramones doing ‘Happy Birthday’ to Mr Burns on The Simspons.

Cover Versions, Hard-to-find

Round Round Get Around He Gets Around

Everyone’s favourite spectacle-sporting singer from The Best Band In The World…Ever (that’ll be the Teenage Fanclub) Norman Blake is no stranger to the odd side project or two. As well as playing in parallel with TFC and BMX Bandits until 1991 when, let’s face it, Teenage Fanclub became really really good and so much better than the Bandits, he’s also added his golden chords and vocals to records by The Pastels, Kevin Ayers, the Trashcan Sinatras and Bill Wells. And he plays tonight in Glasgow alongside Gorky’s Euros Childs. A walking side project for hire, the Bellshill Beach Boy knows them all. This, then, is as good a time as any to point you in the direction of a few Norman Blake curios. Tracks that may have slipped underneath your Teenage Fanclub radar but would undoubtedly have become firm favourites by now, were they to have been presented as Teenage Fanclub records.

shoe004

In the mid/late 90s Norman teamed up with future Fannie Francis MacDonald as Frank Blake and in ’96 recorded a one-off limited single for Shoeshine Records. Being a collector of all things Fanclub-related I naturally have a copy. ‘Don’t Let Love Pass You By’ is a slice of classic Blakery – a mid-paced love song with typically tricky jangling chords here and there. It even has the grace to start with the chorus so you know how it goes after the first 20 seconds. ‘Plastic Bag’ is a bit different. It sounds, for want of a better word, ‘light’, as in the total opposite of AC/DC. It passes by pleasantly enough, but those wonky keyboards and acoustic guitars have always been a bit too twee for these ears. Sorry Norman.

norman-dj

Frank Blake also recorded a version of Frank Zappa’s ‘Anyway The Wind Blows‘. I must confess that until recently I had no idea this was a cover version, so I was all over the internet until I could find a version of Zappa’s original. As it turns out, the cover is a fairly faithful reworking of the original. I have a version somewhere of Alex Chilton backed by the TFC live in Glasgow. They do a  grrrrreat version of it. I’ll have to dig that one out for your appraisal sometime  I took this quote from the Shoeshine Records website…

“I hadn’t heard any Frank Zappa and I was wondering what he sounded like. I thought his most musical thing would be his first thing so I got the first Mothers Of Invention LP. I started playing through it and ‘Anyway The Wind Blows’ was the really obvious pop song. I thought it was really good and would be fun to do. Again, it was all done pretty quickly and just sort of worked out on the spot because that’s the way Frank Blake like to work.”

Lastly, tucked away at the very end of a 2001 Shoeshine Records sampler I have ‘You Don’t Have To Cry’ by Frank ‘Jackson’ Blake. There are no sleevenotes with the sampler and I can find no information about this song/band line-up at all. I can only assume this is Blake, MacDonald and Belle & Sebastian’s Stevie Jackson, but I may be wrong. In any case, this track is a belter. It sounds like something the Everly Brothers would have done some time in 1961. In fact, ‘You Don’t Have To Cry‘ sounds so good it has to be a cover. Right? I think it’s a Gene Clark song. Yeah? It sure sounds like it. Someone help me out here.

teenagefanclubflyer

I’ve had this picture for ages and was looking for any excuse to put it up here. Cracker, eh?

Hard-to-find

Fuck this

for a game of soldiers. The internet police have gone and deleted all my music files. Again. I’m so angry and pissed off. I think this is where Plain Or Pan? ends. Thanks everyone.

Update!!!!!

Woah. Not so hasty. All files back up and running. Stick it to the man. Thanks for the kind comments and all that.

johnny-finger

Here’s those 4 Beatles Master Tapes I uploaded a while back…

Sgt Pepper

With A Little Help From My Friends

A Day In The Life

She’s Leaving Home

Hard-to-find

A Minefield Full Of Dynamite

I like northern soul, but beyond the obvious tracks and 3 or 4 ropey compilations in my collection, I find it a bit of a minefield. I’m certainly no expert on the subject – I’ll make that clear right now. I don’t know about art, but I know what I like and all that. I was digging through some of those ropey compilations the other day, looking for ‘new’ stuff to play in the car and I came across these two tracks of dynamite.

northernsoul

First up, Madeline Bell‘s ‘Picture Me Gone’. A quick bit of googlewiki (copyright Plain Or Pan?) tells me that Madeline Bell was born in America but came to the UK in the mid 60’s to make her way in the music business. Singing back-up to Dusty Springfield and, later, on early recordings by Elton John and Donna Summer no doubt paved the way. And meeting and recording a track with a pre-Led Zeppelin  John Paul Jones (1968’s ‘What Am I Supposed To Do?’) wouldn’t have done her any harm. But it’s ‘Picture Me Gone’ that she’s most well known and loved for in northern soul circles.

madelinebell

Picture Me Gone sounds a lot like Dusty in places, which is no bad thing. Plenty of horns, clipped guitar, sweeping strings and the odd key change, it’s northern soul personified for part-time northern soulers like myself.

mary-love

Also northern soul personified is Mary Love‘s ‘Lay This Burden Down’. A soul/gospel Christian evangelist, Mary Love was discovered in the mid 60’s by Sam Cooke’s manager who pointed her in the direction of Modern Records, where she started recording. These records became a big hit on the northern soul scene. I need to investigate them because if they are half as good as this track I’ll be finger-poppin all the way to the Wigan Casino. Is it still open?

(I know it’s closed). As you can see from the poster below, Mary Love still tours to this day. I need to get out more. I think I’m missing out on a whole subculture of music. If any experts out there would like to make me a decent northern soul compilation, feel free to get your CD Writer out and keep on burnin’! (ouch)

mary-love-live 

demo, Hard-to-find

I Do Like To Be b-side The Seaside

I heard this track properly for the first time a couple of days ago and it’s been on constant repeat since. I say properly because I’d heard it before, round about last summer, and it passed me by. But now I’ve come to realise that it may just be the best thing Glasvegas have ever recorded.

glsavegas

The wall of sound

Yeah, Glasvegas. Everyone has their opinion on them. Are they still cool? Were they ever? Who knows? Who cares? For what it’s worth, I like them. Maybe it’s because I’ve been hearing about them for the past couple of years from a friend who has family in the band. Maybe it’s because the best Christmas card I got this year was from the same friend, who sent me a picture of Glasvegas in Raybans and Santa hats. Those quiffs must’ve been a bit of a disaster after that photoshoot. Although they probably used Photoshop. The vain bastards. But I like Glasvegas. A lot. And I really like The Prettiest Thing On Saltcoats Beach. Stuck away on the b-side of the Geraldine single, it had been played once then filed away. Last week I was given a compilation CD from another friend and the last track was this track. For some reason, it stuck out. Maybe cos the other tracks weren’t very good? (not true, McMark)  But I played it again and again and again, and it’s playing right now.

sillhouette

Miss Pan jnr, the prettiest thing on Saltcoats beach, July 08

It begins with gentle waves crashing on the shore. Clearly a sample from some long-forgotten sound effects album, cos if you’ve ever been on Saltcoats beach you’ll know that the waves don’t break gently on the sand. There are 2 kinds of waves in Saltcoats: 1. Those big fuckers you get when it’s the middle of winter, blowing a gale, snowing and freezing and the TV cameras are there. And 2. The splashback from the Arran ferry as it comes into dock in Ardrossan, just up the beach. So, sound effect waves. They provide the drama as the track unfolds in melancholy fashion, all vibraphone, reverb, shimmer and twang. It reminds me a lot of those early Trashcan Sinatras b-sides (like ‘Skindiving‘ – go seek it out). It builds and builds and builds until the singer can’t take any more and it comes crashing down in a wave of white noise. It’s truly bathed in melodrama and pathos.

It makes Saltcoats sound like the most (cough) romantic place on Earth. Clearly it isn’t. If you’ve ever been to Saltcoats during the Glasgow Fair Fortnight you’ll know what I’m talking about. Dressed head to toe in Rangers or Celtic regalia, they come down to our bit of the world armed with crappy-ringtoned mobiles and plastic footballs, to eat our ice cream and litter the beach with empty bottles of Buckfast. And that’s just the women. To be called the prettiest thing on Saltcoats beach is a bit of hollow praise. But Glasvegas must’ve been down on a good day. ‘The Prettiest Thing On Saltcoats Beach’ does for Glasvegas what ‘The Boys Of Summer’ does for Don Henley. It’s a Scottish love song of the highest order. Burns would’ve been proud. In fact, I’d say it’s right up there on a par with Morrissey’s best work. He’d do a great version of it. And that would be something, wouldn’t it?

*Bonus track. 2006 demo recording of above track here.

Cover Versions, Gone but not forgotten, Hard-to-find, Sampled, studio outtakes

Ingredients in a recipe for soul

Who says we don’t do requests? Regular reader Big Stuff emailed to ask for some Bobby Womack and such stuff in a soulful vain. So for him and every other soul brother or sister out there, read on.

Firstly, not Bobby Womack, but The Temptations. ‘Ball Of Confusion’ is a stone cold funk/soul classic, in any of it’s various forms. Five-part harmonies backed by the Funk Brothers is always going to be a winning combination in anyone’s book. Released on the ‘Psychedelic Shack’ album in1970 it took the sound of The Temptations onto a whole other level. Here‘s an unreleased alternative mix of the version you know and love.

temptations

If that version is on a whole other level then this version takes the original 4 and a half minutes of funk and propels it into the stratosphere. At 10 minutes + (!), the 1971 Undisputed Truth version is the one that does it for me every time. Every time. The Undisputed Truth was essentially a nom de plume for in-house Motown producer Norman Whitfield. He was getting tired of the Motown sound he had helped make so ubiquitous, and with a love for Sly Stone, Parliament, Jimi Hendrix, Funkadelic and so on, decided he was going to create a similar sound for himself. He took The Temptations basic backing tracks, got in a couple of singers and got to work.

ball-of-confusion-lyrics

His take on ‘Ball Of Confusion’ features phased, fried and wah-wah-ed guitars, “Right on…take me higher” vocals, the greatest 3 note bassline ever and quite possibly the goddam kitchen sink. Basically, Whitfield took The Temptations out of Detroit and put them on a Greyhound bus with a one-way ticket to flare city. Listen to it with loud with the lights out and prepare to fry yer mind.

undisputed-truth

The Undisputed Truth

You might be surprised to learn this, but Bobby Womack was the writer of the Rolling Stones 1964 hit ‘It’s All Over Now’. Or maybe you knew that already. You probably do know that his track ‘Across 110th Street’ was used in Tarantino’s blaxploitation homage ‘Jackie Brown’. And you’re probably also aware that it was also used in the 1972 film of the same name. (110th Street, not Jackie Brown)The soundtrack for the film features 3 versions of the same track. The first one is the one you know and love. The other 2 are more interesting. Firstly, there’s an instrumental version that sounds like the incidental music in a long-forgotten episode of Starsky & Hutch. It also sounds like the funkiest elevator muzak you could ever wish for. It’d sound great on Celebrity Come Dancing. Honestly.

bobby-womack-110street

There’s also Across 110th Street (Part II). Featuring minimum vocals and maximum brass stabs and wah-wah, it should get those ants in yer pants a-dancin’. Get on the good foot!

bobby-womack-1972

D’you want to hear my Louis Walsh impression? Read this with an Irish accent….

“Y’know what? You’ve got a lotta soul in your voice, a lot of soul.” Sheeesh. The word ‘soul‘ is bandied about these days in front of anyone who can hold a note for 2 seconds. Louis Walsh wouldnae know soul even if a huge afro continually kicked his arse shouting “I feel good!” at the same time. Those X-Faxtor contestants are really quite sadly deluded and buffoons like wee Walshy don’t help matters.

aretha-67

Real soul, real soul is all about feeling. And no-one felt it better than Aretha. With 2 kids to her name by the time she was 16, she’s lived it more than most of us will ever know. Her 1967 version of ‘Chain of Fools’ is a belter. Even better is the rare version featuring Joe South’s extended tremolo’d twanging guitar. Man, you should hear it! Here it is. Dig it brothers and sisters!

 

Cover Versions, demo, elliott smith, Gone but not forgotten, Hard-to-find, Most downloaded tracks, Peel Sessions, Studio master tapes, studio outtakes

Aye! Tunes! iCompiled for you

‘Don’t Look Back’ sang Bob Dylan. And indeed Teenage Fanclub. But sometimes you’ve got to look back before you can move forwards again. 2009 starts with a bang! Plain Or Pan? is almost 2 years old and to celebrate I’ve compiled a selection of the most-loved and downloaded tracks from the blog. This is your very last chance to grab some of those nuggets of pop goodness that you may have missed first time around.

plain-or-pan-first-2-years

Tracklisting:

Disc 1

1. Sgt Peppers’ vocal track The Beatles

2. Coca Cola Jerry Lee Lewis

3. Son Of Sam acousticElliott Smith

4. There She Goes promoThe La’s

5. All The Way Down  beat version The Primitives

6. Boots Lee Hazelwood

7. Just Dropped In The Dap Kings

8. Baby I Love You vocal track Ronettes

9. Hey Hey What Can I Do Led Zeppelin

10. You Really Got A Hold On Me Small Faces

11. Your Time Is Gonna Come Sandie Shaw

12. Mama You Been On My Mind Rod Stewart

13. In The Heat Of The Morning Last Shadow Puppets

14. The Loner Supergrass

15. Down By The River Joey Gregorash

16. Southern Man Sylvester and the Hot Band

17. Freaky Dancin’ Happy Mondays

18. Filthy St Etienne

19. Gimme Shelter  vocal track Rolling Stones

20. Flume live MOKB/WEEM Bon Iver

21. Grace King Creosote

22. Just Like a Woman live in the studioJeff Buckley

 

Disc 2

1. Monkey Gone To Heaven vocal track The Pixies

2. Handy Man Peel Session Frank Black & Teenage Fanclub

3. About A Girl BBC session Teenage Fanclub

4. Dead Leaves And Tne Dirty Ground Nina Persson

5. Hanging On The Telephone – The Nerves

6. Down On The Street take 2 The Stooges

7. TradewindsSuper Furry Animals

8. Riders On The Storm outtakeThe Doors

9. I Heard It Through The Grapevine vocal track Marvin Gaye

10. Coca Cola Ray Charles & Aretha Franklin

11. HomeworkJohn Lee Hooker

12. Stickman version 1 Elliott Smith

13. SnowTrashcan Sinatras

14. Moon River full-length version Morrissey

15. Autumn Almanac BBC session The Kinks

16. Everybody Drop It Like It’s Hot DJ Prince

17. 99 Problems Jay Z/The Beatles

18. Over  live in a stableThe La’s

19. Music When The Lights Go Out Legs 11 demo The Libertines

You’ll find CD1 here, CD2 here and you’ll find the artwork here. Easy-peasy!

   

 

 

Hard-to-find

Out with the old, in with the new

Or, out with the old missus, in with the new girlfriend. Paul Weller won’t want you to see this picture of him and his new squeeze lying pissed as the proverbials in some street in Prague last week, but it’s a belter. His trousers still look remarkably pressed and pristine, right enough. Even in a right old state he somehow manages to retain a sense of style. Old mods, eh?

weller-drunk

From the floorboards up he once sang. Here‘s the Lynch Mob remix.

Happy New Year to you all. Come back next year when I plan to be blogging much more frequently than of recent, with tons of interesting stuff. Pour me a Johnnie Walker red and let the countdown to the bells begin. Cheers!

*updated 2nd January. At some point in the near future I’m going to compile all those fantastic Lynch Mob remixes that have been done and put them up here. If you’ve never heard them they’ll blow the cobwebs out your ears. If you have heard them, you’ll realise that they would make an excellent mini album for yer iPod or the car. Until then, here‘s the Tone 396 remix of ‘Come On, Let’s Go’. (Got myself a new file host. Testing the water) “Sing you little fuckers, sing like you have no choice!”