Peel Sessions – Page 5

Cover Versions, Football, Hard-to-find, Peel Sessions

It’s great being Scottish

October 13, 2007May 25, 2012 Craig McAllister

We’re top of our group, we’ve dumped the French twice and today we beat the Ukrainians 3-1. We are Scotland. We are magic. We are going to Euro 2008.

Get your flat caps and clumpy shoes on and celebrate by dancing along to The Ukrainians folk-punk-polka versions of 4 Smiths tunes. The Ukrainians (the group not the football team) were formed as a side project to the Wedding Present. Guitarist Pete Solowka was of Ukrainian descent and when John Peel asked the Wedding Present if they’d like to do a session, the band recorded some traditional Eastern European folk music at the expense of their usual 100 mile an hour D-G-A strumalong. Truth be told, were it not for the Wedding Present connection, few people would have been all that interested. But thanks to this interest, Peel played the session over and over and the Ukranians went on tour. I saw them in Edinburgh (April 16th 1991) where the real Wedding Present played support and did an hours worth of brand new material. Then the Ukrainians came on and did their shouty punk-polka stuff.

In 1993 the band released the Pizni ep, which featured 4 Smiths covers. They’re probably not everyone’s cup of tea, but if you like unusual cover versions or are one of those mental Smiths completists, these are for you. I like how the melodies still come through, even though I have no idea what they’re singing. Except I do really, cos I know every Smiths song back to front. And now I know how to say “when her Walkman started to melt” in Polish. Useful that.

Batyar (Bigmouth Strikes Again)

Koroleva Ne Polerma (The Queen Is Dead)

M’yaso-Ubivstvo (Meat Is Murder)

Spivaye Solovey (What Difference Does It Make)

Roll on Wednesday night and another 3 points. Surely every Scottish football fan has Georgia On My Mind. The Band‘s version is fucking sublime. A bit like oor fitba’ team.

Hard-to-find, Peel Sessions

Dry run-through

October 11, 2007October 27, 2007 Craig McAllister

For whatever reason, most of the casual hits on this site come from people Googling for PJ Harvey. So this post is for all of you. I could have posted the new album. But that’s not what this blog was intended for. I could post the complete Peel Sessions, not just the ones you can buy. But they’re fairly easy to find elsewhere. Instead I’m putting up a few tracks from the first PJ Harvey album, ‘Dry‘, in demo form.

‘Dry’ is by far my favourite PJ album. It sounds garagey, bluesy and down right dirty. Plus it’s got great cello all over it. And ‘Sheela-Na-Gig’ is kinda saucy and has a John Cale-esque violin (or is it viola?) scraping away over the top of it. I wore the 12″ out playing it to death. Polly was only 22. She sounded great and looked even better. I always had a feeling that one day she’d go out with me, till she met that bastard Nick Cave. Oh well, her loss.

Anyway. The music. When Dry was released way back in 1991, initial copies came with a free CD, ‘Dry Demonstration’, which had the album in demo form. Here are 3 demos from that disc.

‘O Stella’ sounds a wee bit less intense than the album version. More acousticy but no less frantic. She hits all the high notes, plays all the bent string blues notes and the whole thing sounds majestic. And the way she says, “Stella Marie you’re my star” in her West Country accent at the start is quite amusing. ‘Dress’ was one of the singles from the album. On ‘Dry’ it was a cello led rant against leering boys who stare at girls in tight dresses. This version’s got some cello on it too, but not that high in the mix. An electric guitar is double tracked with an acoustic. By the end, the cello’s all over it, the backing vocals have kicked in, the blues riffs have taken over and it sounds like something Kurt Cobain might have demoed for Nevermind. Seriously. The demo version of ‘Sheela-Na-Gig’ is a straight run through of the single version that I wore out. Acoustic guitar (again), the high notes (again), the mangled blues riff (again), the “you exhibitionist!” vocal, the whole shebang. In lo-fi.

Extra! Extra! Recorded 29th September 1991, ‘Sheela-Na-Gig’ Peel Session version here. By the way, if you don’t know what a Sheela-Na-Gig is, try here.

Tonight Matthew I’m going to be Joan Baez.

Cover Versions, Hard-to-find, Peel Sessions

Whole Lotta Love

October 7, 2007October 27, 2007 Craig McAllister

Gerry Love that is. Eight tracks to be exact. As promised to all you good people on the Teenage Fanclub forums, here are the two Teenage Fanclub Peel Sessions. The first was recorded almost exactly 17 (!!!) years ago, on the 28th August and was first broadcast on the 30th September. The 4 tracks feature the classic TFC line-up of Norman, Raymond, Gerry and Brendan.

As with many Peel Sessions, the band used it to try out some new stuff. As well as a run through of their second single ‘God Knows It’s True’ and a couple of b-sides, they play an early version of ‘Alcoholiday’. This song eventually appeared on Bandwagonesque, with added swearing and turned up to 10 Dinosaur Jr guitars, but the Peel version has a work-in-progress quality that I quite like. And the drums sound great.

God Knows It’s True

So Far Gone

Alcoholiday

Long Hair

The second Peel session was recorded with Frank Black. It doesn’t sound so much like TFC, more like the Pixies. But that’s no bad thing. First track ‘Handyman’ is a cover of an Otis Blackwell track. Every time I hear it I want to sing ‘Karma Karma Karma Karma Chameleon!’ (spot the themed picture above.) Listen first and you will too. The last track, ‘Sister Isabel’ is a Del Shannon song. The other two tracks are Frank Black originals. This session was recorded on the 14th May 1994 and broadcast soon after. As Frank Black says, “In the spring of 1994 I was in England and once again John Peel was kind enough to offer me a session. I was alone with the acoustic guitar, and so I called my old friend Chas Banks, who manages Teenage Fanclub, to see if they would record a session with me. The Fanclubs and I had previously only socialized backstage at some lovely gin mill or sitting around in an exhaust-filled tour bus, so to actually “cram jam” (rehearse very quickly) for a Peel Session seemed a step up.” And what a step up….

Handyman

The Man Who Was Too Loud

The Jacques Tati

Sister Isabel

2 Bonus tracks added……..copy and compare!

Del Shannon’s versions of ‘Handyman‘ and ‘Sister Isabel’. I can’t find Otis Blackwell’s ‘Handyman’ anywhere, but Del Shannon’s is pretty good for now.

If you only know Del Shannon for ‘Runaway’, you should really investigate more. An alcoholic with serious mental health problems, he worked on many well known tracks in the 60s – ‘Baby It’s You’ (The Shirelles) for example. He was being lined up as a replacement for Roy Orbison in the Travelling Wilburys when he committed suicide in 1990. There’s probably a great book on him somewhere. Let me know if you’ve read it.

Cover Versions, Peel Sessions

Love Will Tear Us Apart again and again and again, plus more…

July 27, 2007October 27, 2007 Craig McAllister

I came to Joy Divison in a roundabout way. When ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ was released, in fact when any of Joy Division’s stuff was being released, I was totally unaware that it/they existed. In my defence I was a bit young (about 10) and too young to be a post-punk. I was more into Adam and the Ants, Madness and The Specials, and I spent 99p of my £1 pocket money every Saturday morning in John Menzies on whatever had taken my fancy from Thursday night’s Top Of The Pops. I remember running, sprinting up the road with my 7″ of ‘Stand and Deliver’ and playing it to death for the next week.

I didn’t know about Joy Division until 1985 and I discovered the Smiths, Echo & the Bunnymen et al for myself. I never had a cooler big brother or sister or cousin or uncle. I didn’t know anyone that was cool. At school everyone was into Duran Duran, Kajagoogoo and all that crap. The big album round about Christmas 1983 was Paul Young’s ‘No Parlez’. You can get it these days in any charity shop that still sells vinyl. That and Michael Bolton’s back catalogue. Paul Young had hair like a bog brush, wore suits that looked like they were made out of blue tinfoil and he had thought he sung like Otis Redding when I now know he sounded more like Noel Redding than any black man I’ve ever heard sing. I taped ‘No Parlez’ from someone, and that’s where I first heard ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’. I thought Paul Young wrote it. It sounded like one of his songs. Slow. Dead slow. Took ages to finish. Was full of keyboards and wanky fretless bass. It wasn’t very good. Fast forward a couple of years. In 1985 I was an album-buying geek. I read sleevenotes. I knew who produced albums, where they were recorded, who wrote what. I was at my pal’s one night and we were going through his old albums and laughing (Lionel Richie ‘All Night Long’, Go West ‘Live’!!!) and I found his copy of ‘No Parlez’. Reading the sleevenotes was when I found out that that ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ was a Joy Division song. I went out and found the 7″ in a second-hand stall. It sounded fantastic and I played it to death. Even more than ‘Stand and Deliver’. I bought everything I could find that said ‘Joy Divison’ on it. Then I found out that Joy Division had become New Order. I was off and running again. Spending money I didn’t have on singles and albums I had to have. You just don’t get that rush from downloading.

Here’s some rare Joy Divison for you:

‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ February ’79 Peel Session

‘Transmission‘ Martin Rushent demo, Eden Studios London

‘Chance‘ (early demo of ‘Atmosphere’) Pennine Sound Studios Oldham

and here’s a couple of ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ cover versions:

French disco outfit Nouvelle Vague‘s jazzy, almost bossa nova, female-sung version with added wave effects. Squarepusher‘s faithful version from their ‘Do You Know Squarepusher?’ (answer: Radiohead certainly do. The wee thieves) that sounds like it’s sung by David Gedge of the Wedding Present.

Hard-to-find, Peel Sessions

Oranj Peel

July 11, 2007October 27, 2007 Craig McAllister

So, T in the Park came and went, and going by what I watched on telly it was just like Glastonbury with kilts on. The same acts, the same sets, the same presenters, the same mud, the same audience. The same pish if you ask me. Wean’s World.

It’s hard to come up with any highlights from T, but if there was one it would be the faux pas the singer from Arcade Fire (Wim Butler) made. Telling the crowd that the band had stayed in Glasgow the night before their slot he went on to say, “What the fuck was that parade all about? It was awesome. You guys really know how to play a snare drum.” Cue much booing and many “Get tae’s!” from the soggy masses. It turns out Mr Butler and co had just witnessed their first orange walk. What a walk to witness as well. Given the date at the weekend, it would have been the big one.

The phenomenon of the orange walk may be unfamiliar to some of you so I shall try and briefly explain. In Ireland and in the West of Scotland there is a strong anti-Catholic organisation called the Orange Order. Yes, it’s not just Muslims that get it from us. Anyway, this lot like to remember the Battle of the Boyne which took place over 300 years ago(!) in July 1690, when King William of Orange (King Billy) defeated King James’ and his attempts to regain the thrones in Scotland and England as well as Ireland. Do some googling and you can find out all you need to know. These days, the Orange Order and their associated walks on and around the 12th of July are used by Rangers FC shirt wearing thickos to shout, swear and sing obscenities about Roman Catholics and should really have no place in 21st Century society. That’s why the Arcade Fire were booed. Nice to see the kids of today rubbishing the orange walk. With any luck, these parades will eventually die out, just like my failed attempts here at a bit of political writing.

And now for the music bit. Here’s 4 tenuously-linked tracks related to the 12th of july and it’s associated rubbish…..

Kicking things off, two Libertines tracks. First, from their much bootlegged Legs 11 demo sessions, ‘Hooray For The 21st Century‘. Secondly, ‘Boys In The Band‘ from an XFM session 2002 (exact date unknown).

Next. The Arctic Monkeys got famous on myspace etc and everyone knew the words to all their songs before they were even released. File sharing? Great, eh? Hooray for the 21st century! Here’s their first demo of ‘Scummy Man‘.

Finally, the fantastic Fall. Taken from the Complete Peel Sessions Box Set, which you really should own by now, is their ‘Kurious Oranj‘ from the 31st of October, Nineteen Eighty-eight-ah. Trumpets, giant hamburgers and ballet dancing. No-one does it or says it like Mark E Smith.

Pained and intense, man
They were inquiring.
They were Kurious Oranj…
They rode over peasants like you, they rode over peasants like you,
And their horses loved them too, and their horses loved them too.
They Were Kurious Oranj. They Were Kurious Oranj.
They built the world as we know it, all the systems you traverse.
Rode slipshod over all dumbshits.
They were Kurious Oranj…

Tell yer pals:

Tell yer pals:

Tell yer pals:

Tell yer pals:

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