Category: Live!

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

Flesh Of My Flesh Of My Flesh Of My Flesh

Craig McAllister

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

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

Jesus! Sandals! With Socks!

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

The Music:

Flesh Of My Flesh (album version)

Flesh Of My Flesh (7″ version)

Flesh Of My Flesh (12″ version)

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

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

Cover Versions, Hard-to-find, Live!

Coyne Operated Machine

Craig McAllister

Today’s hot news is tomorrow’s chip paper and all that, and given that the music featured here is all of 5 days old, some of the more turned on and tuned in amongst you will have no doubt heard this already. But a quick scan of the blogosphere leads me to believe I may well be the first to feature this in mp3 form…

It’s only The Flaming Lips doing a 15 minute version of  The Beatles‘ blooze-fest I Want You (She’s So Heavy) as part of their annual New Year’s Eve Freak Out in Oklahoma City. Cosmic, psychedelic and played by a band right at the top of their game, it’s terrific. Listen to the McCartneyisms on the bass. The twin axe attack duelling guitars. Try if you can and ignore the stoned, whooping college jocks in the background, although this in itself lets you know how unexpected and joyfully received it was. You’ll need the full Lips live lazer light show to experience it fully though…

It’s my favourite cover version of the year and we’re only 6 days in…

Cover Versions, Live!

And It Was Only Ever A B-Side

Craig McAllister

Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want is the sound of The Smiths in minature. It‘s got a whole multitude of acoustic & electric guitar tracks, with enough pretty chords and fancy picking to satisfy even the keenest bedroom Johnny Marr guitarist for years to come (believe me). It’s whimsical, melancholic and bathed in pathos. Morrissey’s close-miked vocal is equal parts full of hope and despair and, for me at least, shrouded in ambiguity – is it “Good times, for a change” (eg, normally times are anything but good) or is it “Good times for a change” (eg, these good times we’ve been having will no doubt soon be over). That’s puzzled me for years that has. Sometimes drives me crazy if I’m telling the truth. The lyric is often lazily trotted out by the Philistines as an example of why The Smiths were “depressing etc etc blah, blah, blah“. Remarkably, it’s all over in under 2 minutes. “Where’s the rest of the song?” asked Rough Trade upon their first listen. Of course, it’s perfect as it was. “Like a very brief punch in the face,” to quote Steven Patrick himself. But you knew that already.

Perfect as it was. That hasn’t stopped others from having a go though. Without popping off to the normal places to check I’d wager it’s the most-covered Smiths track….ever!  It’s featured in a handful of movie soundtracks, sometimes as the original, sometimes under the guise of someone else. It’s been played live by any number of sensitive acoustic troubadours and as I type it’s being downloaded into the higher regions of whatever constitutes a Hit Parade these days by a whole generation of cloth-eared numpties who’ve taken to it after hearing Slow Moving Millie’s clunkingly twee aberration of a version that soundtracks the current John Lewis Christmas ad on the TV. (Try saying that after 2 light ales). I don’t like it, no.

In their prime The Smiths could rattle off songs the same way you or I tend to boil the kettle – daily and without really thinking about it. With supreme confidence they stuck Please, Please, Please… onto the b-side of the William, It Was Really Nothing single, alongside How Soon Is Now? The best bands always have their best songs tucked away on b-sides but that’s quite an amazing little single, eh? Johnny tells of writing it in his Earls Court flat in the Summer of 1984, just as The Smiths had joined that train that heaved onto Euston. The inspiration behind it was the little-known Del Shannon track, ‘The Answer To Everything‘, a record constantly playing in his house when he was growing up. “I tried to capture the essence of the Del Shannon tune in terms of its spookiness and sense of yearning.” If you haven’t already done so, now’s a good time to point you in the direction of Johnny Marr’s Dansette Delights, a compilation that features this very track. Anyway, I digress. What of those cover versions?

The first to appear was The Dream Academy‘s version in 1985. An instrumental was recorded for the Ferris Bueller’s Day Off movie, which is where most folk would’ve heard it. The Dream Academy were unfortunately a bit out of step for the mid 80s. Clearly in thrall to the pastoral,  introspective charms of Nick Drake and even Syd Barrett they’d have had a better chance of success in the mid 90s, when anyone who was anyone was citing Drake ‘n Barrett as visionary influences. The Dream Academy’s version (horrible pan-pipey synth strings ‘n all) crashed the charts at number 81, “which is nearly a hit,” mused Morrissey, who would later include it on  his audience warm-up tapes that played before his concerts.

She & Him do a nice 50s-inspired twangin’, end of the prom-type version. Slow and reverby and featuring the vocals of the future Mrs Plain Or Pan, Zooey Deschanel (aaah, Zooey!) it‘s one of the few Please, Please, Please… covers that dares to be just that wee bit different to the original.

On the other hand, Josh Rouse, the poor man’s Ryan Adams (albeit with far better manners) contributes a lazy half, cocked version. I like Josh Rouse, I really do. His 1972 album is worth more than a fleeting Spotify listen if you’re unfamiliar with his stuff, but really, his Please, Please, Please…! He doesn’t even play the proper chords or anything! That’s just not on!

Please, Please, Please… was rarely played live by The Smiths, but here‘s a terrific, and I mean terrific, version of it that opened one legendary LA show in 1986. Famous for a bouncer-inflamed riot at the end, The Smiths actually opened with Please, Please, Please….that night. A lilting, soulful version, bass, drums ‘n all. Now pop off and seek out Thank Your Lucky Stars. You will Thank Your Lucky Stars – the best Smiths bootleg out there, if y’ask me.

From Hair To Eternity

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

Brown Sugar, How Come You Taste So Good?

Craig McAllister

There’s only one thing good about Hallowe’en and that’s tablet. I despise Hallowe’en. Really properly hate it. I think it dates back to the times when I was a wee boy and I was sent out every year as a one-man band – my Dad’s old guitar (it was old then, it’s ancient now), a coathanger fashioned into a half-arsed harmonica harness, two cardboard cymbals between the knees and a massive big bass drum hanging off my skinny shoulders right down to my backside. Oh, and a couple of bells strapped round my ankles for added effect. “Who…what….are you meant to be?” they’d always ask and I’d mumble the answer while stuffing monkey nuts into a poly bag already full of monkey nuts. Then I’d shamble off to the next house sounding like the Eastenders theme falling down the stairs. With bells on.

“Can I not just be a skeleton next year Dad?”

“We’ll see son, we’ll see…”

Not that I’m scarred for life or anything. I’ve just spent the last couple of hours in classic grumpy old man fashion, hanging cheap orange and black Poundland tat from the outside walls of my garage and front door. An inflatable bat here, a plastic pumpkin there. Tat, tat and more tat. At least the kids’ll like it though. Hang some of that junk to your wall and it’s an open invitation to all and sundry. I expect literally hundreds of the wee grubbers round here tomorrow night, with their rubbish jokes and shop-bought costumes (there’ll be no one-man bands, I can guarantee you that), rattling my letterbox just as The One Show kicks off. “Oany tablet mister?”

Heres 2 version of a vaguely Hallowe’en themed double whammy (thanks to Big Stuff for the inspiration).

Spooky was first recorded by Classics IV, a band from Florida featuring a singing drummer and harmonies to rival the Wilson family. They were so laid back and chilled out they make Fleetwood Mac seem like Sonic Youth in comparison. Indeed, they practically invented the whole ‘soft rock’ genre. Gads. Spooky is almost garage band in presentation, but if you listen closely to the clipped guitar and polite vibraphone you just know they were heading in a different direction entirely. Indeed, by the time you’ve picked up on the lack of fuzz bass and the singing drummer’s vocal inflections (groovy, baby), it’s clear they’d bought a one-way ticket to mid-70s elevator muzak central, sax solos ‘n all. And it was only 1968.

Dusty Springfield hid her version away on the b-side of 1970’s How Can I Be Sure. Picked up since by hip samplers and happenin’ film soundtrack compilers, it’s been rightly placed amongst the canon of her best work. Dusty practically breathes the vocal across the top like a butterfly on a breeze as her fingers click in time to the coolest Fender Rhodes this side of Ronnie Scott’s in 1972. Even more cocktail lounge than the Classics IV version, it had, for a brief two and a half groovy minutes there made me forget the reason I was posting it in the first place.

There’s no tablet, by the way. I ate it all. Every last tooth-melting soft ‘n sugary bit of it. Right at this minute I am, as someone once sang, shakin’ all over. What’re ye goin’ as?

Bonus Track of sorts

REM did Spooky now and again in concert. Here they are in Hamburg a couple of years ago:

Live!

Moonlighting

Craig McAllister

Now and again I like to spread my wings and write things for other blogs and websites. I wrote a piece about the Stone Roses reforming and John Robb kindly published it on his constantly updating Louder Than War site. He had the good grace to call it “poignant and beautifully written.” Here’s a wee extract:

The memories are flooding back. Every time I hear Fools Gold I get a Pavlovian rush of the smell of warm chestnuts, cooking on a November London street on the way to the Ally Pally. The old bootlegs come back out and Glasgow Green sounds better than I remember. Their best ever gig, some say. I hated it.

The thumping intro tape, all drum loops and backwards guitar-as-siren had finished and through the blasts of rave whistles and shouts of excitable Scots, nerves taut with anticipation and expectation, the low rumble of I Wanna Be Adored began its fade in. The hi-hat (always the hi-hat) kick started that idiotic shuffle dance that most of us would continue for the next hour and a half. With bass and drums as canvas, a head down John teasingly splashed huge dollops of psychedelic feedback squall on top, reverberating to the back of the tent and returning twice as loud, twice as intense. And then, finally, the riff. Thousands of out of tune voices singing along, lost in our own wee world, lost in the right here and right now, in a tent in the East End of Glasgow, the most important place on Earth. This was brilliant! This was E times ten! This was…….. FUCK YOU! A punch. Right in the face. Right in my face. Right at the top of my nose. Two eyes streaming with tears, dumbstruck and trying to work out what had just happened. One of my extended crowd, a friend of a friend who’d been on the train with 20 of us from Irvine, noticed me holding my face. “Who was it? Who was it? We’ll do him.” As I shrugged in the negative and wiped the gunge from my face I saw the wee bastard slink his way into the crowd. Gone. He sneaked a half glance back, knowing he’d got away. My lot quickly got back to the main event. I couldn’t. This party was over. Here I was being soaked by the sweat of 7000 lunatics as it dripped from the roof of this massive tent, my own snot down the front of my brand new top and a throbbing between my eyes that pulsed in perfect time to every note coming from Mani’s bass. Second Summer of Love? Not for me. Forget Reading in ’96, this was the day the music died. When our band became their band. Band of The People? The wrong sort of people if you ask me. Once, you liked The Stone Roses instead of Bon Jovi or Wet Wet Wet. Now the twonks that liked Bon Jovi and Wet Wet Wet also liked The Stone Roses. Them and the neds. Aye, The Stone Roses were now a ned band. The music snob in me knew this was wrong, wrong, wrong.

Now get yerself over to Louder Than War for the full unedited version.

Includes previously unpublished photos like the one above taken by my pal Gordon at Rooftops in June 1989…..

…and look what I found up my loft – only my crappy old bootleg from Rooftops that I recorded on my Dad’s wee dictaphone. It’s digitising as I type.

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

Well, everybody’s heard about the bird!

Craig McAllister

Bird, bird, bird, b-bird’s the word. Ah well-a bird, bird, bird, b-bird’s the word….

Everybody loves Surfin Bird, right? My 9 year old daughter does. My 4 year old son does. I’d love to tell you that, thanks to their Dad’s rockin’ record collection, they too had developed an ear for the finer things in life and were uber-hip connoisseurs of 60s garage rock. But that would clearly be not true. No, they developed a liking for Surfin Bird’s gibberish nonsense thanks to a game for the Nintendo Wii. I like a game on the old Wii as much as the next person (I have an unhealthy obsession with playing Mario Kart online) and I had no time for those singin’ and dancin’ interactive games that go down well at New Year parties and the likes until Mrs Pan brought home Just Dance, a game (if you don’t know already) where 2 or more people have a dance-off, by following a sequence of steps demonstrated on-screen by a cavorting character in the corner. And there, sitting happily inbetween Who Let The Dogs Out? and Womaniser was The Trashmen’s Surfin Bird replete with dance steps provided by a pork-pie wearing Blues Brothers sillhouette. Mental. It’s probably its inclusion on this game that helped propel Surfin Bird to Number 3 on yer actual Top 40 charts last Christmas, helped on its way by one of those anti-X Factor Facebook campaigns.

Pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa!

Cue Dvorak’s New World Symphony (the Hovis advert music, ya philistine) but when I were a lad I didn’t have X Factor or Facebook or fancy computer games to stimulate my musical tastes. Like most of you on here I had LPs. My going out song of choice was always Surfin Bird. Not The Trashmen‘s original verison (I’d love to tell you differently, but I had no idea who The Trashmen were at this point).  Nah, I loved The Ramones ridiculously thrashed out version on It’s Alive – the first Ramones LP I owned and quite obviously The. Best. Live. Album. Ever. (even if on CD it sounds fragile-flat and as spidery-thin as one of Joey Ramone’s limbs). From that Ramones live version I progressed to their studio version from ’77s undeniably essential Rocket To Russia LP.

From The Ramones, it was but a small crepe-footed step to The Cramps, and their cheesegrater-thin hootin’ and a-hollerin’ gutter-punk version from Off The Bone (where I first read the words ‘Alex Chilton‘). A few years later and I’m watching Full Metal Jacket and up pops Surfin Bird once again, this time in the original (aha! or so I thought!) version by garage-surf punks The Trashmen.  Clearly, I came to Surfin Bird back to front.

A young, pre-1980′ s SAW-era Rick Astley, 2nd right. Who knew?

Pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-
Pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-ooma-mow-mow
Papa-ooma-mow-mow!

Papa-ooma-mow-mow, papa-ooma-mow-mow!
Papa-ooma-mow-mow, papa-ooma-mow-mow!

So it was a bit of a surprise to realise some time later that Surfin Bird as I knew it had actually began life as 2 separate doo-wop tracks, recorded in the early 60s by The Rivingtons, a black r ‘n b quartet who could effortlessly churn out the sort of 4-part harmonies that Brian Wilson was trying to replicate in studio sessions with The Beach Boys. Surfin Bird as I knew it was made by welding together The Bird’s The Word (aye!) and Papa Oom-Mow-Mow (oh aye!), 2 slabs of primo-cool duh-duh-duh-duh………woo-oooh! American doo-wop. Everbody loves a bit of doo-wop, eh? If you only listen to 2 doo-wop tracks this year……etc etc blah bla blah….

*BONUS TRACK!

Possibly in a bid to please those right-on 60s bra-burning feminists, The Rivingtons also recorded Mama Oom-Mow-Mow. It sounds just like you’d expect it to.

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

Manic Depression Triple Whammy (kinda)

Craig McAllister

Maybe it’s the fact they’re a power trio. (Eugh). Maybe it’s the fact a lot of their music is rooted in the blues. Maybe it’s the fact that their records have the whiff of cosmic psychedelicness around them. Maybe it’s just the fact that Jimi Hendrix’s Manic Depression was such a great riff they felt the need to lift it hook, line and sinker, I don’t know but anyway you look at it, Tame Impala have recorded a terrific Rutlesesque pastiche of one of Hendrix’s finest moments. Only they added their own lyrics and called it Island Walking. As if no-one would notice…

It’s all there; the weird time signature, the rolling drum breaks, the measured tone of the wailing guitar solo. Jeez, it even starts with a wee pseudo Hendrix harmonic tune-up. For good measure – get this!!! – they’ve made it sound like Manic Depression as played by a rocking Revolver-era Beatles, trippy Lennon vocals ‘n all. Extra points too for the outro, all Flaming Lips/Pink Floyd flotation tank otherworldness. “Bootiful!” as Bernard Matthews might’ve said. If I was 17 and had never heard the originals, I’d go mad for this band. Hey, I might still go mad for them anyway – talent borrows, genius steals ‘n all that jazz.

Talking of genius…

Jimi Hendrix. But you knew that already. Maybe it’s the fact they were a power trio. (Eugh). Maybe it’s the fact a lot of their music was rooted in the blues. Maybe it’s the fact that their records have the whiff of cosmic psychedelicness around them. Hey, hang on….The Jimi Hendrix Experience loooked and sounded like nothing on Earth. Manic Depression, with it‘s weird time signature, rolling drum breaks and controlled guitar tone was released on Are You Experienced?, the album that made a thousand guitarists simultaneously weep in envy, throw away their tired old Merseybeat jangling guitars and start growing white ‘fro’s in desperation. As if your haircut (or lack of) could make you play da blues like a tripping cosmic space adventurer. Not that it stopped Eric Clapton, mind.

The weirdy, twisted, off-kilter Throwing Muses do a pretty rockin’ version of Manic Depression. Bereft of any squealing Kristen Hersh vocal gymnastics, it’s a no-nonsense heads-down instrumental rock out. Perfect for the encore you might think. Except the weirdy, twisted, off-kilter Throwing Muses used to start gigs with it. Straight out at the end of the intro music, a quick “How are you?” then bam! and into it. S’a cracker, cosmic space traveller guitar solo ‘n all!

demo, Hard-to-find, Live!

Viva Glasvegas

Craig McAllister

Troon on a rainy Wednesday night. Not the sort of place you expect to find bona fide uber-hip, pointy-booted, squeezed head-to-toe into super-skinny black leather ‘n denim pop stars. This sleepy seaside town is more au fait with the golf swing rather than the swing of rock ‘n roll, yet 24 hours ago it was shaken from it’s slumber to the cries of “1! 2! 3! 4!” instead of plain old “fore!”

Georgia took the photo. I stole it.

Glasvegas were in town and, having had the carrot of an AAA Guest Pass dangled before my eyes, I made the short 15 minute trip from North Ayrshire into the beautiful South, with it’s posh wheelie bins and faint reek of the good life. Pass in hand and plonked in the rattle-yer-jewellery good seats of the town’s Concert Hall, we had the perfect view to enable us to take in the new sights ‘n sounds of the ‘vegas. New sights #1? That would be James all in white, not black, no longer playing guitar, “cos you didnae see Sinatra janglin’ away oan wan while he crooned.” New sights #2? That would be recently-recruited Swedish drummer Jonna/Joanna (?), who just like Moe T and Bobby G before her, prefers to stand and bash away at the kit. Actually, that’s a complete disservice to her. She’s far more of a drummer than those other 2 hamfisted clobberers combined. She’s added a fresh new dimension to the band’s wall of sound AND she’s quite capable of adjusting her specs mid-beat as they slide off her beautiful, sweaty Swedish face. A multi-talented, multi-tasking vision in auburn hair. And I’m not the only one who thought that, eh birthday boy?

Georgia took the photo. I stole it. Again.

New sounds? That’ll be the 3 new tracks, being played live for only the 3rd or 4th time ahead of this Spring’s 2nd album. Underneath the gazillion effect pedals turned up to 10 there’s the faint echo of John McGeoch in some of the guitar riffs, post-punk and spidery-thin against the Killing Joke slab of bass. Nothing played tonight hints at the major-to-minor melodrama of the Ronettes-do-Dion dying in a car-crash first album material, but then James says later on that he didn’t think the songs played tonight are representative of it at all.

“What’s it like then, the new album?” Back at the hotel, and the seemingly stuck like Superglue Orbison Raybans have been swapped for an over-sized set of blue-tinted Lennon lenses. Yer man sits down next to us and I start firing questions at him. The first one’s a simple enough question which he’s no doubt been asked a fair few times already this week on a tour of Scottish gig backwaters that has taken them to places more used to ceilidhs and beetle drives. “Eh, ah dunno. It’s kinda hard tae describe. D’you know wance ye’ve shaved an’ ye look at yersel’ in the mirror? How dis it look?”

“Smooth,” I deadpan. “Smooth. So the new album’s like Luther Vandross?” He doesn’t get it, I think, and I’m not sure what to say next. Fear not, though, for James is a non-stop anecdotal motormouth. He’s off and running, waxing lyrical about Alan McGee and his Creation Records film, Bono and Noel Gallagher soundchecks, the merits of Phil Spector’s Christmas Album v’s James Brown’s Funky Christmas, playing festivals in Spain, Freddie Mercury’s shoes; you name it, he’ll have a soundbite prepared. On this week’s gigs, there’s lots of talk about ‘the vibe‘ and ‘the feelin” and ‘y’know?’ He’s a walkin’, talkin’ rock ‘n roll cliche and he’s ridiculously hilarious. He just doesn’t know it yet. Paranoid about having to live up to McGee’s proclamation of him as some sort of genius, yet perfectly willing to accept that he is indeed some sort of genius, James Allan could well be the next Bobby Gillespie. Now there’s a thought.

I also took the chance to chastise him for not playing tonight the best song in the Glasvegas catalogue, the wonderful Prettiest Girl On Saltcoats Beach. I’ve written about it before, here. You can fill yer (pointy) boots here:

The Prettiest Girl On Saltcoats Beach (full length version)

The Prettiest Girl On Saltcoats Beach (demo)

 

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.