Category: Live!

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.

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