Category: Live!

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

Legs & Co.

Craig McAllister

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

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

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

“Second verse, same as the first”

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

“Third verse, different from the first”

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

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

1! 2! 3! 4! Da music:

Judy Is A Punk (1975 demo)

Judy Is A Punk (from the first Ramones album)

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

Pretty cool

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

Are You Experienced?

Craig McAllister

“We’d like to stop playin’ this uh, rubbish an’ dedicate a song to The, uh, Cream…” My first brush with Jimi Hendrix was at the tail end of the 80s on one of those Sounds Of The 60s shows where they showed a clip of the Jimi Hendrix Experience playing a brief blast of Hey Joe before freeforming into Cream’s Sunshine Of Your Love. On the Lulu show, no less. “That was really nice!” deadpans the still Scottish-accented Lulu through gritted teeth. On first seeing it (the full 9 minute clip is below), 20 years after the actual event, I thought it was fantastic. The string bending! The guitar tone! The way he re-tuned his guitar while he played! The way he sang and played at the same time! The way he sneaked a wee Beatles riff (I Feel Fine) into it! The sheer outrageous flamboyancy of it all – he looked like a pirate and, uh, did he just play that bit with his teeth?!?!?

It would be a few years later until I’d find out what that Plaster Casters slogan on Noel Redding’s tee-shirt was all about (Google it!), though Jimi Hendrix made just as big an impression on me, in much the same way as I’d hope today’s guitar obsessed teenager stumbling across a Sounds Of The 80s show would feel on hearing Freak Scene or Fools Gold (YouTube ’em kids!) for the first time. Man! I. Am. Old. Certainly older than Jimi was when he made his best stuff, that’s for sure.

James Marshall Hendrix.

The only guitarist ever to be named after an amplifier.

Jimi died 40 years ago today, on the 18th September 1970. At the ripe old age of 27 he joined that heavenly choir of fellow 27 year olds who drowned, drank and drugged themselves to death before their time was up. Brian Jones. Janis Joplin. Jim Morrison. Later on Kurt Cobain. And they’re just the well known ones. Daddy of the blues, Robert Johnson danced with the devil and paid the price at the same age. You can add Big Star’s Chris Bell to the list. Echo & the Bunnymen’s Pete de Freitas too. You could even argue a case for missing Manic Richie Edwards. He disappeared aged 27 and has never been seen again. He was officially pronounced dead in 2008. Weird, eh? I thank my lucky stars that at the age of 27 I was still trying to master Wild Thing on the plank of wood I called a guitar. Unlike my 40 year old self, the members of the 27 Club never got stale, bloated, fat and comfortable with it all. Well, apart from Jim Morrison of course. But you knew that already.

I’ve got all the Jimi Hendrix I need – that’s the first three albums done with the Experience and a compilation of his pure blues stuff as well as a couple of studio outtake bootlegs and a sneakily downloaded copy of the Jimi Hendrix Experience 4 CD box set, choc full of alt versions, live stuff, unreleased takes and all manner of the sort of stuff that thrills me to this day. I couldn’t care less if I never hear Purple Haze again, but you can never have enough versions of Third Stone From the Sun, especially 9 minute versions that are more jazz than blues, with Jimi taking on the role of stoned space captain. I don’t really need to hear his version of Hey Joe again, but I never tire of hearing the “Oh Goddam! One more time…make the voices a little lower and the band a little louder” version – replete with great swooning female backing vocals.

On his recent tour, Paul McCartney told the well known story of The Beatles going to see Jimi Hendrix at the Albert Hall and Jimi serenading the 4 moustachioed mop tops in their box with his own version of the freshly-minted Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band. The Sgt Pepper album had only been released a day or two before and Jimi thought he’d play his version for the writers. It sounds thrilling to me. I can only imagine how thrilling it must’ve been for them. Note too, that in those days Jimi didn’t have access to any of the gazillion tab ‘n chord sites that litter the internet with badly tabbed versions of Sweet Child O’ Mine. Get this homeboys ‘n girls –  he learned straight off the record. Just like me. But better – he even replicates the brass parts. Show off.

It’s pretty clear that, post Experience, Jimi had bought himself a one way ticket to Flaresville, Seventies Central. Along with the hemlines and bottoms on his trousers, his music had expanded even further into the cosmicness of free jazz. He was playing with Buddy Miles, his Band of Gypsies even had a bongo player ferchrissakes. This is a much maligned and misunderstood period in the Hendrix canon. Had he stopped after those 3 JHE albums then died, he’d have been immortal. Instead, he’ll be remembered, perhaps unfairly, in the same way as all those other casualties – the promising start before succumbing to ego, drugs and fame and the inevitable  law of diminishing returns. Put yer prejudices aside and listen to this – one of the sweetest tracks Hendrix recorded (in true Plain Or Pan tradition, it’s the demo, not the final mixed version), and only released after his death in 1971. Angel was so good, Rod Stewart recorded a version of it that even them Faces would’ve been proud of. Aye!

*Bonus Track!

In 1968, this track appeared. So Much In Love by McGough & McGear (produced anonymously by one P. McCartney) was never likely to trouble the hit parade, but the guitar playing, the tone, the way those notes are bent……rumours are that’s Jimi at the helm steering the group (including Mitch ‘n Noel of the Experience plus Graham Nash amongst others) straight towards the section marked ‘phazed phreakout psychedelia’. S’acracker!

FYI, McGough was Roger McGough, ex of Scaffold and these days better known as a witty Scouse poet. His son Nathan managed Happy Mondays, if indeed they were at all manageable. McGear is better known as Michael McCartney, brother of Paul. But you knew that already.

Cover Versions, Hard-to-find, Live!

I Love Led Zeppelin But…

Craig McAllister

..they didn’t half present themselves as the Artful Dodgers of rock music throughout their tenure as global-shagging rock gods. With a cheeky grin, a sly wink and mutterings of “public domain“, Jimmy Page was something of a sticky-fingered riff lifter. I’ve written about this before and I’m sure you know anyway, but any old blues tune that happened to catch his ear would be lifted in whole before being coated in volume, augmented by a slick bit of frettery and re-packaged as the big new thing. “I got those West Bromwich blues“, as Robert Plant moaned on one of those fantastic BBC sessions. Not that Robert Plant is entirely innocent in the whole thing either…

Jake Holmes. Not exactly a household name, but in the late 60s he was a regular of the Greenwich Village folk scene. In fact, in 1967  The Yardbirds caught him at the Village Theater where they watched him play the tracks that made up his debut album, ‘The Above Ground Sound Of Jake Holmes’. As Holmes put it in 2001,

“and that was the infamous moment of my life when ‘Dazed & Confused’ fell into the loving arms and hands of Jimmy Page.”

If you were being kind you could say that a keen-eared Page took the paranoid scratchy folk of the original and transformed it into a much bigger, more frightening rock song. If you were being honest though, you’d have to say that Page lifted it all, from those wee pinged harmonics at the start, to the descending riff and the whole sense of impending doom. Even Robert Plant got in on the act. His quietly sung vocals at the start are a carbon copy of the original’s. Did Holmes get credited when the track surfaced on Led Zeppelin I? Nope! Just like Howlin Wolf, Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson, Albert King et al before him, he was conveniently un-acknowledged and forced to watch from the sides as his tune made someone else lots and lots of money.

The one thing Page did add to the original was the bowed guitar section, where he scraped a violin bow across the top of his heavily-echoed strings. But even this trick wasn’t original! Mod pop outfit The Creation had been doing this in their stage show since the mid 60s. Watch 1966’s Painter Man for proof….

This is a hot topic right now. 5 weeks ago, Jake Holmes began legal proceedings against Jimmy Page, claiming original copyright on the song. It’ll be interesting to see how this pans out. Poor Jake certainly neeeds to see things set to right. Sadly for him though, legalities mean that, if successful, he’ll be allowed to claim back just 3 years of royalties. That should be a decent sum, but peanuts compared to what his rightful share should be.  

Go Compare dot com:

Dazed & Confused (Jake Holmes)

Dazed & Confused (Led Zeppelin)

Dazed & Confused (Led Zeppelin, live Paris Theatre, London, April Fool’s day 1971. 18+ minutes. Can you handle it?)

*Footnote

When writing this piece, I was checking my facts and figures online when I stumbled across this fantastic site. All of the above, bar the quote from Jake Holmes is my work, out of my own head and arranged accordingly by me me me, but credit where it’s due and all that. I don’t want Perfect Sound Forever chasing me for royalties in 40 years time.

Rubber Plant

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

The Tie’s The Limit

Craig McAllister

Listening to the radio whilst driving up combinations of the M5, M6 and M74 yesterday on a gruelling 9 hour trip from the sunny South of England I was reminded hourly of the sad death of Alex ‘Hurricane’ Higgins. As I drove home I wrote in my head the words here that fire forth from my fingers.

The Hurricane

Like many people in the 80s, I was gripped by the TV spectacle that was the snooker. Not snooker. That was something else. No, ‘the’ snooker. That’s how we referred to it. A game brought back from the dead-end of the working man’s club and the seedier side of life was arguably as big then as the English Premiership is nowadays. Instead of your Rooneys and John Terrrys, it was your Reardons and Terry Griffiths that were the household names in those days. Alex Higgins was different to his contemporaries in every way. Rough, ready and rakish, he brought punk attitude to the tables. He refused to wear a bow tie (de rigeur in those days) as he claimed it itched his neck. He  head butted a judge when asked to provide a urine sample. He took drugs. He smoked at the side of the tables. He drank like the ubiquitous fish and he played fast. Very fast. Hence the ‘Hurricane’ nickname.

The Hurricane came out the traps like a bolt of electricity. You know those short, short gaps between the songs in a Ramones live set?  He could muster up a double figure break in roughly the same time. Remember too, that this was the era of table bores like Steve Davis. A Rick Wakeman keyboard solo could’ve passed in the time it took Davis to consider all possibilities and all angles before lining up one of his defensive shots. Higgins was all about death or glory. If he was a rock star, he’d have been like Keith Richards or The Clash or Them the New York Dolls or any of those bands who meant it 100%. His life was snooker and snooker was his life. He earned and spent an estimated £4 million in his liftetime. Spent the lot. Drugs, drink, gambling, you name it. This time last week he was living in sheltered housing, penniless, toothless and 6 stones in weight, snooker cue-thin. A tragic waste of a life. Look at the picture above and remember him like that, eh?

The Music Bit

Here‘s Neil Young doing a live verson of Like A Hurricane. Taken from the excellent Rock ‘n Roll Cowboy 4 Cd bootleg, I’m not sure where it was recorded, but it’s a cracker. Neil Young, Crazy Horse and a million amps turned up to 11.

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

Shhh! It’s So Quiet You Could Hear A Name Drop

Craig McAllister

Last week I was contacted out of the blue by an editor asking if I would write him some stuff for the forthcoming Vintage At Goodwood festival – the one where the Faces with Mick Hucknall-as-Rod are playing. To cut a long story short, I interviewed both Martyn Ware (Human Leage/Heaven 17) and Sandie Shaw. Sandie (as I can now call her) phoned me at home and we spoke about her role curating an event at the Vintage Festival.  Amongst the many things we talked about, it transpired that she was unaware that Elvis‘ version of Hound Dog was not the original version, merely a watered-down, revved-up pop version of Big Mama Thornton’s old blues original. 

After Elvis appeared from outta nowhere and hit the music world like a comet from Mars, songwriters from every corner bombarded him with their compositions in the hope that Elvis Himselvis could do what they couldn’t – turn the song into a nationwide hit. This usually came at a price, as Colonel Tom Parker would demand Elvis’ name be added as songwriter and that the song be published by Elvis’ own publishing company. Look in the brackets under the song titles. All those songs – Heartbreak Hotel, Don’t Be Cruel, Love Me Tender, (and there’s more) weren’t actually written or even co-written by Elvis, but that was the pay-off if you wanted him to sing your song. Heavyweights like Leiber and Stoller were established enough not to have to buckle under the force of the Colonel’s muscle, but most others did.

Without insulting your intelligence, you will know that there have been a gazillion versions of Elvis songs over the years.  Off the beaten track and slightly left of centre, here’s another two that you may not be aware of.

Firstly, Dean Carter‘s screamin’ and a hollerin’ garage rockabilly surf version of Jailhouse Rock. Welding together what sounds like primitive morse code, the drums from Wipeout, the piano riff from Let’s Dance (the Hey baby won’t you take a chance version, not the Bowie track of the same name) and the sound of a 7 year old being let loose on an electric guitar with a spanner-as-plectrum, it comes at you at 100 mph breathless, breakneck speed and sounds quite insane. Richard Hawley probably loves this record. You’ll like it too.

Secondly, no less intense is Buddy Love‘s take on Heartbtreak Hotel. More structured perhaps, than Dean Carter’s record above, Love sounds like an amphetamine-crazed matinee idol, barking over the top of skronking sax, freakbeat drum breaks and handclaps. Man! I love handclaps on records! Tarantino could do worse than consider this version for the soundtrack to a pivotal scene in his next movie.   

Bonus Track!

Recorded live a mere 54 years ago at the birth of rock ‘n roll in the New Frontier Hotel, Vegas on May 6th 1956, “He’s a fine young lad and a fine young talent,” it’s young Elvis Himselvis’ version of Heartbreak Hotel.  Of course, Elvis would be back in Vegas 20  years later; bloated, burnt out and bereft of decent ideas, but this is the classic version played by the classic line-up – DJ Fontana on drums, Bill Black on bass and Scotty Moore on guitar. Listen out for the ‘Heartburn Motel’ line he sneaks in near the end.

 

entire show, Live!

Get Back! Get Back! Get Back to where you once belonged!

Craig McAllister

You may have noticed things have been a bit quiet ’round here lately. An extreme bout of lethargy/cannae be arsedness coupled with actual real work being a bit hectic has lead to a slow down in the proceedings. But, for what it’s worth, I can safely say “I’m back“. So too, you probably noticed, is old thumbs aloft himself, the strangely auburn-coiffured Paul McCartney.

 Beatle Bum

I gulped a huge gulp back in March when I hit ‘return‘ and ordered 3x £85 tickets. I nearly refused to pay in private protest at what could only be described as extortion. A superstar going through a high profile divorce meant only one thing – in a round about way I was paying for his youngest daughter’s designer clothing and private schooling. But just as quickly as I thought this, I thought of myself moping around the house on the night of the gig and how I wish I’d just gone. My 15 year old self did this very thing when The Smiths rolled up to my hometown as part of their Meat Is Murder tour. “Oh mama, let me go!“. “OK“. “Really? I thought you’d say no.” So, just to be contrary, I didnae go. 25 years later, it still tortures me. So really, there was no way I’d miss this. And thank fuck (sorry) I didn’t.

After sitting through Sharleen Spiteri’s Asda Price Stax/Volt Revue – group dressed by Top Man, mind stopped from wandering purely by ogling the highly shaggable Spiteri (sorry again – to paraphrase one of our Scottish politicians, it must be this hot weather), McCartney came wandering onstage to huge applause. A brief malfunctioning guitar meant that he started with a hiccup rather than a bang, but once he was off and running……. oh man…..he was really off and running!

Little Beatle Paul in his little Beatle Boots

For as long as I’ve been into music, I’ve obsessed over these songs and here they were being played out right in front of me, 12 rows from the front of the stage, no need at all for that big video screen just there. I’m into double figures for Dylan gigs. Old Bob expects you to sit there and listen in reverential silence as his ever-decreasing-in-talent pub band grind their way through another 12 bar version of Maggies Farm. I’ve seen the Stones, Jagger and Richards playing some pantomime version of the ugly sisters as they karaoke their way through their back catalogue. McCartney knows exactly what his audience are here for and he stands and delivers. From backbeat boot stomping Cavern Classics (All My Loving) to White Album genius (Blackbird, Back In The USSR, Helter!! fucking!! Skelter!! (sorry again) to Wings Greatest Hits, it sounds amazing. The band replicate every last note, every last harmony and even when McCartney hits the bum notes on the piano during Let It Be, or fluffs some finger picking on Blackbird, or goes a bit flat on the harmonies of Paperback Writer (really!), it makes it somehow all the more real. Live. In front of you. It’s like going to see the Bootleg Beatles, except, well, it’s almost yer actual Beatles.

(my own video – link newly uploaded – may take a few minutes before it works)

Highlights were too numerous to list – but the whooshing jet sound at the start of Back In The USSR had the hairs on the back of my neck standing to attention. Live And Let Die‘s firework n flames display almost set fire to the same hairs a few minutes later. Even the toasted cheese on top – a pipe band marching on halfway through Mull Of Kintyre was gobsmackingly magic. The whole thing finished with the Sgt Peppers reprise before segueing into The End, complete with drum solos, rocktastic duelling guitars (no bass, as you’ll see from the video clip below – weirdly I had to upload it to YouTube before I could show it here) and the final harmonies from a croaking Paul McCartney. Really, this show was over the top brilliant. But, if you’ve read this far you knew that already.

 

And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make

Live!, Most downloaded tracks

Sopht Rock

Craig McAllister

When Revolver came out, or Dark Side Of The Moon, or Never Mind The Bollocks, or Appetite for Destruction, or Nevermind or (add yer own here _____(mine would be XO by Elliott Smith)), did the public immediately sit up and shout “Classic Album!!” with much gusto and emphasis on the 2 exclamation marks, or did they let the music fester inside their collective brains for a few months before decrying it worthy of such lofty status?

The mists of time have blurred perception of such trivial matters, and I suppose we’ll never know how it felt for the record buying public as a whole to hear these albums for the first time, but for what it’s worth I think most of these albums were growers first and classics later; albums full of songs, sounds and symphonies that lodged themselves into the brain after many needle drops and repeated listens and gradually became so important to the listener that over time they knew and loved every little detail about them. But what stands the above records apart from the XOs of the world is that those tiny little details were so important to thousands, even millions of people.

Alongside Elliott Smith’s finest hour stands The Sophtware Slump by Grandaddy. I’ve loved it and played it to death since it was released in 2000. Maybe not every day, or every week or even once a month, but at least a couple of times a year I’ll reach for it (I don’t need to dig it out, I know exactly where it is) and listen to it. And I mean listen to it. Not as background music while the TV flickers silently in the corner with subtitles on. Not as background music while I fry something to death on the gas hob. No. I sit there in my favourite chair and listen to it from start to finish. Uninterrupted. Which is hard in a house with 2 young children and a wife with a ‘to do’ list longer than a giraffe’s neck, but I manage it somehow.

As a band, Grandaddy mostly passed me by, but I was working in a record shop (remember them?) when The Sophtware Slump came out and I played it to death one afternoon, bought it that night, went home and played it to death again, went to work the next day, played it to death again….you get the idea. Sandwiched somewhere between ZZ Top and those Fleet Foxes, most of Grandaddy had the finest beards in music. And like those two hirsute bands above, they had the tunes to match. Taking elements of 70s Pink Floyd (none of yer trendy Syd-era Floyd here), the album is mainly a (whisper it) concept album about science v’s nature/man v’s robots – a full 2 years before fellow cosmic travellers the Flaming Lips had thought up the ‘original’ concept about Yoshimi and his pink robots. Opening track He’s Simple, He’s Dumb, He’s the Pilot begins with some chirpping birds and creaking front porch banjo before blooming into this magical 8 minute opus on 21st Century living. Coincidentally, when the band supported Elliott Smith, Elliott was fond of joining Grandaddy on stage to sing along (crappy old mp3 of it here) The album meanders melancholically through ruminations on androids who drink themselves to death and the problems of and with technology before arriving at this – Miner at The Dial-A-View, a weird and wonderfully melodic tale about ‘dreaming of going home’ – back to pre-CCTV times.

Tracks ebb and flow from one to another, an acoustic guitar here, a spacey keyboard there, all sewn together by a high pitched reedy voice much like Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips or Mercury Rev’s Jonathan Donahue. If Neil Young had lost the Les Paul and kicked out the (Pearl) Jams (Motherfucker!) he might’ve been making records as essential as this.

For my money, The Sophtware Slump is as essential as OK Computer. It really is. You’ve heard a coupla tracks. Now do the decent thing and go and buy it. Whatchawaitin’ for?

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

 

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

Free Us From Nancy Spungen-Fixated Heroin A-Holes Who Cling To Our Greatest Groups and Suck Out Their Brains

Craig McAllister

Halloween’s Coming, Halloween’s Coming. Skeletons will be after you. No they won’t, but at least it gives me a half-arsed excuse to post some Nirvana on here for the first time.

I like Nirvana a lot. I’ve been going through something of a reunion with them every day in the car to work this week. They blow the cobwebs off before a hard day at the coal face, that’s for sure. Nevermind still sounds freakin’ A or awesome or whatever superlative those college frat boys would use to describe it back in the day. That the band became globally massive because of it (and ultimately why Kurt Cobain chose to blow his stupid brains out a few years later) is not up for debate. In 1991, music lovers needed something new and, unless you were Luke Haines (see Wikipedia, buy his book) Nevermind arrived at just the right moment in time. In my own wee part of the world Joe Bloggs flares had become recognised as the joke they always were. Morrissey quiffs that had already been outgrown into crappy bowl cuts (mine included) were looking for another new hairstyle to approximate. Reni hats had been put to the back of the drawer and wouldn’t see the light of day until the wattery fart that was The Second Coming.  I’m sure your own wee part of the world was no different. Nirvana’s Nevermind blew all that away. And how. But you knew that already.

nirvana

I worked in Our Price when Nevermind came out. I had been there for 2 weeks. The album sold out the first day (the Our Price buying team at Head Office were notoriously frugal with first day orders – we probably had 5 copies to sell). The distributors couldn’t keep up with demand and it was a full week later before we had any more copies in stock. Round about this time, Nirvana played Glasgow University’s QM Union. An old throwback to the 70s rep visiting the store put the store manager plus 3 on the guest list for the gig. Magic. Except that the store manager didn’t want to go. “Heavy metal shite” was what he said. Seeing as he was the only driver, the fact that it would be a late show and that none of us knew anyone with a floor to go back to in the wee small hours, none of us went. I’m still pissed off about it to this day. Aye, Hollins. I’m talking about you.

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Anyway…..On 31st october 1991, Halloween night itself, Nirvana found themselves playing to a hometown crowd at Seattle’s Paramount Theater. Nevermind was only about 2 months old by this point. Nirvana had just returned from a triumphant British tour (Grrr) and the band were far from the jaded, cynical version that would tour subsequent albums. Their set was captured by the sound desk in all its ragged punk glory. It was such a good set (see below) and recording that it was once mooted as an official live Nirvana release. The version of School from the show made its way onto the b-side of the Come As You Are single. If you have that at home, you’ll know how pristine, exciting and definitive a recording this is, but the rest of the tracks remained in the vaults until some enterprising bootleger liberated it and put it on the internet.

Jesus Doesn’t Want Me For A Sunbeam
Aneurysm
Drain You
School
Floyd The Barber
Smells Like Teen Spirit
About A Girl
Polly
Breed
Sliver
Love Buzz
Lithium
Been A Son
Negative Creep
On A Plain
Blew
Rape Me
Territorial Pissings
Endless, Nameless

Try before you buy – here’s mp3s of Smells Like Teen Spirit and About A Girl. Good, eh? Now get the whole shebang here.

*BONUS TRACK!

A band who’s quiffs defiantly stand proud to this day – Glasvegas do Come As You Are. Downbeat, slow and wee Glasgow ned-like in delivery, it’s something approaching aural methadone (I imagine). S’good! Here ye go.

POST SCRIPT

After Kurt Cobain killed himself, Julian Cope took out full page ads in the UK music press denouncing Courtney Love. The ads were brilliant. I’ve searched in all the darkest corners of the internet, but I can’t find a picture of any of them. I’m sure Cope wrote a whole big long rant, but I can’t find anything other than the quote I used to title this piece:

‘Free Us From Nancy Spungen-Fixated Heroin A-Holes Who Cling To Our Greatest Groups and Suck Out Their Brains.’

But, yeah, you knew that already.

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

Requests, Repeats and a Rockin’ Ringo Starr

Craig McAllister

I’d been meaning to re-post this excellent Beatles show a couple of weeks ago when the world was going Beatles mad and I re-posted the best of the Beatles posts I’d done, but somehow I forgot to upload it at the time and I thought, “Ach, I’ll do it later…” Spurred on by a request from reader FC3 (as well as other requests in the past) I’m re-posting it here, right now, today. The original files were deleted by persons unknown during the great DMCA clampdown of November 08. Don’t be surprised if the new files are also removed by the internet police. Act fast! What follows is the original post from November 2007  along with newly updated download links and an MP3 sample.

“WE LOVE DISTORTION!”

So sayeth John Lennon. I can’t believe I haven’t posted anything Beatles-related at all until now. This post more than makes up for it. The music contained herein is cracking. What makes it all the more amazing is that this recording is of a radio show and is over 40 years old. It’s amazing to think these recordings exist, let alone in good quality. God knows who originally recorded it, or how they recorded it, but somehow they did, and thanks to the wonders of the internet, it’s all here. First though, the history part.

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In 1963, as a live phenomenon, The Beatles were at the top of their game. Their years of playing extended sets in Hamburg had taught them how to handle a crowd. Their own fantastic songwriting talent was emerging and many of these songs were yet to be committed to vinyl. In a couple of years time they would be a spent force on the live stage. Limitations in their equipment couldn’t match the increasingly bigger venues the band were playing. This show was recorded for Swedish Radio at Karplan Studios in Stockholm on October 24th 1963. It captures the Beatles playing their early 60s set, drawing on a mixture of originals and covers. From Paul’s “2, 3, 4″ count-in onwards, this set sounds like proto-punk. The playing is spot-on. The vocal harmonies are tight and Ringo’s backeat holds it all together. There’s a John one (From Me To You), a Paul one (I Saw Her Standing There), a George one (Roll Over Beethoven), a fast one (Money), a slow one (You Really Got A Hold On Me) and all the big hits (She Loves You, Twist & Shout). And it’s all in crystal clear high fidelity mp3 (!)

Hans Westman was the studio engineer for Swedish radio. “The worst recordings I’ve ever made,” he said. “Totally chaotic. No time for rehearsals.” The studio wasn’t best equipped for recording a ‘beat group’ and there were problems overcoming the UK plugs on the Vox amps. But once sorted, The Beatles simply plugged in and played. Westman couldn’t apologise enough for his poor sound, but Lennon loved this recording. “We love distortion!“ Not long before he died in1980 he said that these were the best live recordings The Beatles ever made.  And who can argue?

1. Introduction
2. I Saw Her Standing There
3. From Me To You
4. Money
5. Roll Over Beethoven
6. You Really Got A Hold On Me
7. She Loves You
8. Twist And Shout 

You need this. It’s brilliant. Try before you buy? Here‘s an mp3 of Twist & Shout. The entire show is available here as a rar file., from me to you (arf).

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(Above)  back cover art (right-click and save)

(Below)Hans Westman’s original tape reel, signed by the fab four.

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