Category: Kraut-y

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

Ferry Similar

Craig McAllister

“Didn’t this used to be a rock song?” Out in the car yesterday and Miss Plain Or Pan had pricked up her ears, for once, at what was shuffling on the iPod. Normally she can’t stand my music (see Rod Stewart post below). When she’s out with me in the car, she usually asks for West FM or Clyde 1 or any of those terrible, repetitive chart-orientated stations playing the the usual conveyor belt of pop-dance fodder introduced by thick 20-somethings with mid-Atlantic twangs belying their West Coast roots. She is 10, after all. That’s why her statement caught me off guard.  “That‘s Mother Of Pearl by Roxy Music,” I reply. She’d been jokingly head banging to the first couple of minutes, where Phil Manzanera’s electric guitar gamely leads an Eno-free Roxy through a series of mumbled, muttering voices, “Woo-hoos” and “Yaaawees” before giving way to Bryan Ferry’s louch, laconic, lounge lizard drawl. “It’s kinda like Bohemian Rhaposdy in reverse, with the rock bit at the start and the piano bit at the end, isn’t it?” she reasoned. I couldn’t have put it better myself. Except that Mother Of Pearl isn’t the overplayed piece of ham that the Queen classic has since become.

Very much under the influence of the Eno-era Roxy Music were World Of Twist. Their star briefly shone at the tail end of whatever constituted ‘baggy’ and they very nearly threatened the charts on a couple of occasions, once with a cover of the Rolling Stones ‘She’s A Rainbow‘ and once with Sons Of The Stage. Sons Of The Stage is a monster of a record. Full of whooshing, bubbling synths and squealing guitars, it‘s almost Krautrock in delivery – motorik, repetitive and reasonably long. It was the second track on the bands ‘Quality Street‘ LP, long-since deleted but worth 5 minutes of anyone’s time tracking down an illegal copy online. Or a real one on eBay, I might add.

The more fashion-conscious of the monobrowed Mancs along with his band of Beady Eyed magpies recently covered Sons Of The Stage with all the craft and soul of a plank of wood. I won’t sully the blog by featuring it, but I’m sure you know where to look, etc etc, blah blah blah.

Cover Versions, Get This!, Gone but not forgotten, Hard-to-find, Kraut-y, Sampled, studio outtakes

Spacemen mp3

Craig McAllister

If Pete Frame were to do one of his Rock Family Trees on fuzzed-up druggy drone rock he’d inevitably land up (*by way of Spiritualized, Spectrum and even (The) Verve)) at Spacemen 3. Long before Bobby Gillespie had grown tired of his Byrds LPs, Spacemen 3 were the ultimate ‘record collection’ band. Spouting a seemingly never-ending list of achingly cool records by artists I had barely heard of, let alone heard in their music press interviews (Stooges!? Sun Ra!? Electric Prunes!? Silver Apples!?) they totally blew me away with their track Revolution. Being an impressionable 19 year old at the time, into guitars in a big way and with an obsession for cheap fuzz boxes,  Revolution hit me between the eyes with all the subtleness of a Sonny Liston left hook.

Revolution was recorded on some rare vintage Vox guitar or other, replete with switches that fuzzed the guitar at source without the need for effects pedals. No doubt though Spacemen 3 further fuzzed the sound of the Vox by adding fuzz pedals to the guitar’s signal as it made it’s way to the amp. It was overloaded and it was incessant; Repetitive. Relentless. Remarkable! Riff upon riff after riff upon riff – the sort of simple stuff I could play on that plank of wood I called a guitar when I plugged it into my Rocktek distortion pedal – buzzed away in the foreground while a studiously bored-sounding Sonic Boom (Peter to his Mum) with an impossible-to-place accent (Rugby, middle England! Really?) ranted and raved on top, trying to sound as cool as the heroes he name-checked in those interviews I had been reading. I got the feeling copious amounts of drugs were involved and, later on when I was a bit more wordly-wise and able to decode their interviews, I realised there certainly had been.

Later on I also realised that Revolution was perhaps not as original as I had first believed. The riff could’ve come from any old garage rock nugget, but that’s not the problem. Every band does that when they’re new (and not so new) to the game. I brazenly stole the Revolution riff for one of my band’s greatest hits, if truth be told. But that’s another story for another time. And there’s plenty of tracks out there with the word ‘Revolution‘ in the title. But only one seemed to steal and appropriate bits of the lyrics from Iggy Pop’s I’m Bored (shitty mp3 here);

“I’m bored. I’m the chairman of the bored………..I’m sick. I’m sick of all my kicks,” drawls the Ig. “I’m sick, I’m sooooo sick………and I’m tired, I’m sooooo tired”, parrots Sonic Boom.

And only one Revolution seemed to borrow large chunks of John Sinclair’s rabble-rousing and indeed revolutionary rhetoric at the start of the MC5’s Kick Out The Jams;

“Brothers and sisters! I wanna see a sea of hands out there…let me see a sea of hands…I want everybody to kick up some noise…I wanna hear some revolution out there brothers…I wanna hear a little revolution…Brothers and sisters…the time has come for each and every one of you to decide, whether you are going to be the problem or whether you are going to be the solution…You must choose brothers…you must choose…It takes five seconds . . . five seconds of decision . . . five seconds to realise your purpose here on the planet…it takes five seconds to realise that it’s time to move, it’s time to get down with it…brothers, it’s time to testify and I want to know…are you ready to testify?…Are you ready? I give you a testimonial – the MC5!”

“I’m having that!” thought a sticky-fingered Sonic, and putting pen to paper came up with the following –  “And I suggest to you that it takes just five seconds…just five seconds of decision…to realise…that the time is right… to start thinkin’ about a little…Revolution!”

I suggest to you, Sonic, that it took just five seconds….just five seconds to rip that off. OK, so it’s hardly Visions of Johanna and, aye, most of the lyrics are lifted from other records, but 24 or so years later (ooft!) Revolution still does it for me. It’s been playing on repeat as I’ve typed this up and it still sounds as angry as a jar of wasps on a windowsill in July.

For added listening pleasure, here‘s Mudhoney‘s straight-up cover (with added swearing and methadone-referencing lyrics). And, here‘s that 10 mins + outake?/outfake? of The Beatles‘ Revolution that surfaced a few years ago and forced Plain Or Pan into temporary meltdown for a coupla days. Go, go, go, tout de suite, before The Man notices…

*When Spacemen 3 disbanded in the usual drug-fuelled ego-fest fashion, Jason Pierce formed Spiritualized and Sonic Boom formed Spectrum. Jason’s girlfriend and sometime band mate Kate left him for lanky, manky old Richard Ashcroft and his Hush Puppies and went to live in a house, a very big house in the country.

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

Vorsprung Durch Technik

Craig McAllister

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

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

Das Modell

Autobahn

Die Roboter

Computer Liebe

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

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

Tschüs!

*Useless Trivia…

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

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

I Got 5 Years Stuck On My Eyes

Craig McAllister

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

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

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John Barry – Midnight Cowboy

King Creosote – Home In A Sentence

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

Gruff Rhys – Shark Ridden Waters, which samples….

The Cyrkle – It Doesn’t Matter Anymore

Midlake – Branches

Elliott Smith – Alameda

Peter Salett – Sunshine

Mott The Hoople – Walking With A Mountain

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

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

Ride – Like A Daydream

The Wildebeests – That Man (Small Faces cover)

Dion – The Dolphins (Tim Buckley cover)

Darondo – Didn’t I

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

Shellac – My Black Ass

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

The Survivors – Pamela Jean (Brian Wilson recording)

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

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

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

The Girlfriends – My One And Only Jimmy Boy

The Whyte Boots – Nightmare

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

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

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

Suede – The Wild Ones (unedited version)

Lee Dorsey – Holy Cow

Fern Kinney – Groove Me

Aretha Franklin – Rock Steady (alt mix)

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

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

Dusty Springfield – Spooky

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

John Barry – The Girl With The Sun In Her Hair

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

Missed any of these legendary compilations?

Here‘s the first 2 years, 2007 & 2008

Here‘s 2009’s

Here‘s 2010’s

Download ’til yer heart’s content!

Hard-to-find, Kraut-y

Wake Me Up Before You

Craig McAllister

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllanty

siliogogogoch.

The ever-modest me gives this Headline Of The Year, even if there are too many characters to fit in and it somewhat loses the impact.

Everyone’s favourite Welsh psychedelicists Super Furry Animals‘ first release in 1995 was the tongue-twistingly titled Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyndrobwllantysiliogogogochynygofod (in space) EP. It was released just as the band were on the cusp of signing to Creation Records. To possibly mis-quote the main protagonists: McGee – “I told them, ‘Sing in English and you’ve got yourselves a record deal’. Gruff Rhys – “We were singing in English!”, it ended up being reissued a couple of years later on the back of the Super Furries subsequent success. Along with the band’s Moog Droog EP, it’s just about the most sought-after record in the Super Furry Animals brilliantly eclectic and mind-blowing back catalogue. If you have a spare copy, name yer price and give me an early Christmas present. If you don’t have a copy (and why should you?) make do with the 4 tracks below. All future classic SFA-isms are already in place – Twin fuzz guitar Status Quo axe attack boogie played in tandem with bleepy, blippy, wonky keyboards, Beach Boys harmonies and Hawkwind space rock whooshes. In Welsh. I think.

These tracks would eventually find their way onto b-sides and the like, but here they are, as the band first intended them to be heard:

Organ Yn Dy Geg

Fix Idris

Crys Ti

Blerwytirhwng

Handy zip file here.

Gruff Rhys ‘Atheist Xmas‘ out now – Buy it here!

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

Denise, Denise! I Gotta Crush on You!

Craig McAllister

Has it really been 20 years since Screamadelica was released? Well, no actually. Primal Scream‘s meisterwork first saw the light of day at the end of September 1991, but we’ll not split hairs over a few short months.  Bobby Gillespie certainly isn’t – the album has just been reissued in all sorts of sexy and expensive packaging and the Scream Team juggernaut is currently zig-zagging its way across the country to any number of  unfeasibly impersonal auditoriums near you as I type. It was in Glasgow the other night, in the luscious surroundings of the big red shed inside the SECC.

I didnae go. I prefer to remember the heady days of Screamadelica first-time around, crammed into the Barrowlands, Kriss Needs on the pre-gig decks mixing Prince into the Stones into Bo Diddley into Sly Stone and into my narrow-minded musical mind. Everything, from the warm-up DJ to the visuals to the energy of the band on-stage was truly spectacular and I doubt that anything like that could be created on this current tour, where a gang of outrageously pretentious  musical outlaws has been replaced by a gang of outrageously pretentious musical outlaws with big bank balances and designer suits. And there’s the difference. Also, Denise Johnson isn’t doing the backing vocals and as anyone with half a brain knows, she was clearly the secret ingredient in the original make-up of the band. My pal Wullie was so taken by Denise he sent her a letter proclaiming his love for her and she actually wrote back with a letter scented in her perfume. In this day and age of 24hr accessibility to your favourite stars via Facebook, Twitter and whatever, that’s something that’ll unlilkely happen again.

However, the main reason I didn’t go is this – I’ve heard some of the recent concerts. The playing’s fine, great actually, but the singing! Man, the singing! Bobby was never a singer, but he was always true to his Glasgow roots. These days, he sounds far more Miami Florida than Mount Florida. It’s embarrassing and it’s laughable. Listen below to the intro before Slip Inside This House from London at the end of last year…

“C’mon, lets have uh pahrty! What the fuckhr ya heer fuhr? C’mon!” OMFG, as you youngsters might say. I know what you’re here for though….

The Music

  • Moving On Up as done by Edwin Starr. Good God! Taken from a lo-fi source, sadly.
  • Moving On Up (live in London 26.11.10)
  • Slip Inside This House (live in London 26.11.10)
  • Come Together (live in London. 26.11.10. The full 14 minute Elvis-in-Memphis Suspicious Minds guitar version that morphs into the Weatherall groove ‘n gospel choir. C’est magnifique.
  • Screamadelica (the track of the same name that didn’t make the album. One of the first things I blogged. It’s essential, so it is. But you knew that already)
  • Can – You Doo Right (it’s 20 minutes long…..(yawn)…..but listen to the words. Then go and listen again to Moving On Up. Oh! Was it an influence on Bobby, or was he just under the influence when he nicked it?)

BONUS!

You can see a documentary about the making of Screamadelica here. Amongst other things you’ll find out it was Robert Young and not Bobby that sang almost all of the vocal on Slip Inside This House. Who knew, eh? Worth half an hour of your time any day of the week.

HELP!

Does anyone have a copy of Don’t Fight It, Feel It from a Select magazine tape from around 1992? It was taken from a Japanese concert I think and the band played Hey Bulldog half-way through the track. It was quite fantastic if I remember and I’d love a copy of it again.

Thanks to Scott over at Spools Paradise -that live-in-Japan version of Don’t Fight It, Feel It I was after is here.

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?

demo, Hard-to-find, Kraut-y, Sampled, studio outtakes

Meaty, Beaty, Big & Bouncy

Craig McAllister

Here’s a thing. Ask people to describe the music of the Stone Roses and most will wax lyrical about melody, tunes, 60s influenced pop and all that. Maybe they’ll drop in a hip reference to The Theme from Shaft by way of Electric Ladyland, or if they’re super-hip they’ll point out just how similar Fools Gold is to Can‘s I’m So Green – all skittering drums, whispered vocals and taught elastic bassline over a one-chord groove. Listen for yourself here.

But anyway, that’s not why I’m here. Today, I want you to reappraise what, to me, is the jewel in the Stone Roses particularly shiny crown. It’s not the saccahrine rush of She Bangs The Drums or the euphoric highs of Made Of Stone or the total groove lockdown of Fools Gold. Nope. The Stone Roses record that does it for me everytime is Something’s Burning, little-played and little-loved b-side of One Love.

Ever since the album and accompanying b-sides were re-released last year, this track has taken on a new lease of life for me. If the original album was the sound of a band gliding effortlessly over and beyond all musical competition, the remastered album was the sound of a jet plane landing in your back garden – terrifyingly loud and absolutely thrilling. Weedy, thin-sounding tracks suddenly came alive. Full of depth, muscle and bite, Something’s Burning now had a jungle pulse bassline that sounded as if it came from the heart of Africa itself. This track isn’t an ‘instant’ track. On first listen 20 years ago it sounded rather one dimensional and uninspiring, but I’m glad I’ve rediscovered it.

Unlike the instant hit you get with all other Stone Roses material, repeated plays of Something’s Burning reveal new things. Amongst the skittering drums, whispered vocals and taught elastic bassline over a one-chord groove…HEY! hang on a minute!….listen closely and you’ll hear some jazzy vibraphone, bongos and some fine understated John Squire guitar riffing. The track ebbs and flows, rises and falls, and on my original vinyl copy the dynamics of this are lost somewhat amongst the snaps and crackles in the grooves. Not so the new-improved version.  

*Bonus Tracks

Something’s Burning demo – Well dontchaknowit – it begins with the same looped and sampled Funky Drummer break that accompanied Fools Gold!

Something’s Burning (jam and chat)  – hidden track (yeah!) on Disc 2 of the Stone Roses remastered album. 

And just so you know….

But you knew that already.

Cover Versions, Dylanish, Hard-to-find, Kraut-y

Tunng In Cheek

Craig McAllister

Here’s a thing. Actually, you might be aware of this already, so if that’s the case bear with me. If not, prepare yourself for some startling music trivia.

I was listening to one of Dylan‘s Bootleg Series CDs while doing stuff around the house. It was the ’64 Philharmonic Hall one, where Joan Baez ruins everything by guesting on 4 or 5 tracks. Normally I tend to skip her. I cannae stand her voice or the way she calls him “Bobby Dylan” or the way she ruins a great song like ‘Mama You Been On My Mind’ with her high pitched harmonies, poor phrasing and wrong words.

I. Just. Cannae. Stand. Her.

And by all accounts, most of the time, Bobby couldn’t either.

dylan baez 1

(Caption Competition: ______________)

Because I was pottering roon the hoose yesterday, she managed to get past my Baez Detector and suddenly came bursting into earshot. And this is what I noticed….

She sang a version of old folk traditional Silver Dagger. No vocals by Dylan, though he plays along with some rudimentary, scrubbed acoustic guitar and wheezy harmonica. Other than that it’s Joan Alone and it stinks. But the melody was familiar. Very familiar. And then it dawned on me.

Saint Etienne have nicked it, note for note for their ‘own’ no. 47 in ’94 smash hit Like A Motorway.

A quick bit of googling proved me correct. The motorik thunk of Like a Motorway is indeed based on the melody of ancient 19th Century traditional song Silver Dagger. Not only that, but on parent album Tiger Bay, Saint Etienne seemingly based many of the songs around old folk melodies, beating forward-thinking modernist laptop folkies such as Tunng and Psapp by a good few years. I suppose that explains Tiger Bay‘s olde worlde ‘Welcome Bonny Boat’-inspired cover. But whodathunkit, eh?

bonny boat

Original

Cover version

Silver Dagger is currently doing the rounds in the form of a version by White Antelope. White Antelope is the side project of Fleet Fox Robin Pecknold. But you knew that already. His version is dynamite. One man, his delicately skipping guitar and a perfectly in tune reverb-soaked vocal.

Unlike Moany Joany, this boy can really sing. If you’re desperate to hear a Baez version you’ll have to look elsewhere I’m afraid. I’m not sullying this fine site with rubbish like that.

*Bonus Track!

Here’s Robin Pecknold/White Antelope giving Dylan’s It Ain’t Me Babe the full-on Fleet Foxes treatment. Stunning.

Robin Pecknold/White Antelope 

 

Blur Fanclub Singles, Cover Versions, demo, Dylanish, Gone but not forgotten, Hard-to-find, Kraut-y, Live!, Most downloaded tracks, Studio master tapes

Three! Free! Fae Me!

Craig McAllister

Plain Or Pan is 3 years old and what better way to celebrate than with a compilation CD…..

Add your own Ronco/K-Tel voiceover:

Featuring the most popular downloads from last year’s blog, this compilation is the ideal taster for what Plain Or Pan is about. Covers, curios and the odd hard-to-find classic, this fantastic double CD is not available in the shops or from any good online retailers. Get it only at myTunes! Free! Today! Now!

Aye. It’s the ideal companion to last year’s double CD (still available here). Kicking off with the notorious Beatles Revolution take 20  outtake/outfake? that nearly melted Plain Or Pan for good in January last year, I’ve included some odd ball covers (Eli ‘Paperboy’ Reed, the Dead Weather track), Fleet Foxes spin-offs (White Antelope), one of Johnny Marr’s favourite records (The Equals), rare fanclub-only releases (Blur), hardly-heard studio gems (The Temptations), demos (Marvin Gaye, The Pretenders), rarities (The La’s white label version of Timeless Melody – only 500 exist) and a whole lot more over 2 CDs. I’m rather proud of this wee compilation. It includes some nifty home-made artwork too! Right click on CD1 and CD2 below to download each CD in one go.

 

CD1                                                 CD2

 

Complete tracklisting:

Disc 1

The Beatles – Revolution (take 20)

The Kinks – I Need You

Pop Levi – Blue Honey

The Temptations – Ball Of Confusion (unreleased version)

Booker T & the MGs – Sing A Simple Song

Ike & Tina Turner – Bold Soul Sister

Eli ‘Paperboy’ Reed & the Trueloves – Ace Of Spades

Marvin Gaye – Let’s Get It On (demo)

Arctic Monkeys – Baby I’m Yours

Afghan Whigs – Band Of Gold

Nirvana – Smells Like Teen Spirit (live)

The Soup Greens – Like A Rolling Stone

The La’s – Timeless Melody (GOLAS3 version)

Trash Can Sinatras – Snow

Super Furry Animals – Citizens Band

The Sundays – Wild Horses

Sparkelhorse/Danger Mouse feat Nina Persson – Daddy’s Gone

 

Disc 2

Glasvegas – The Prettiest Girl On Saltcoats Beach (full length version)

The Pretenders – Brass In Pocket (demo)

The Byrds – Mr Tambourine Man (vocal track)

Frank Blake – You Don’t Have To Cry

The Equals – Black Skin Blue Eyed Boys

The Fall – Lost In Music

Dead Weather – Are Friends Electric?

John Kongos – He’s Gonna Step On You Again

Grace Jones – Pull Up To The Bumper (12” mix)

Blur – Sing (To Me) (demo)

Inspiral Carpets – 96 Tears

Beck – Sunday Morning

White Antelope – It Ain’t Me Babe

Eddi Reader – Blues Run The Game

Stone Roses – Love Spreads (Guitar Track)

Neu! – Hallogallo