Category: Sampled

demo, Hard-to-find, Sampled

And I got more hits than Sadaharu Oh.

Craig McAllister

Yes! My hits per day has taken a sharp increase recently. Don’t know why, as I’m blogging far less than I used to, but thanks a million to you. And you. And you. And you. And… 

sadahura oh

Sadaharu Oh was a baseball player for the Yomiuri Giants in the Nippon Professional  Baseball League in Japan. He hit a world record 868 home runs in his career.  “And I got more hits than Sadaharu Oh” is a line from ‘Hey Ladies’ from the Beastie Boys ‘Pauls Boutique’ album.

Following the success of their globe straddling Licensed To Ill album with its Rick Rubin-produced juvenile rhymes on top of sample after sample of Jimmy Page and John Bonham, the Beastie Boys took themselves to LA and began working in self-imposed exile. With fresh money on their pocket, New York was too full of temptations. They relocated with the Dust Brothers in tow and worked on the demos that would become Paul’s Boutique. Given that it was a commercial disaster, the album was considered something of a failure and EMI quickly stopped promoting it. Yet, the album’s popularity grew and grew quietly. Music fans like me who wouldn’t consider listening to rap suddenly latched onto the facts that the album was constructed from a vast range of rock samples and references. Nowadays, Paul’s Boutique is considered the hippest thing in the Beastie Boys canon of work. Although I prefer Check Your Head.

pauls boutique

With 105 wholly uncredited samples, Paul’s Boutique is on a par with De La Soul’s 3 Feet High and Rising for imagination, inventiveness and downright blatant stealing (I’ve already mentioned De La Soul’s Magnum Opus here) Familiar bits of records jump out at you. James Brown yelps and huhs all over it, hard-to-place bits of Pink Floyd fade in and out, Sly Stone bass lines and drum parts feature regularly, Johnny Cash sings about killing a man in Reno just to watch him die (though not on the demo, as you’ll hear); the album is a trainspotters delight, choc-full of musical refernce points. Even those sacred cows The Beatles get the Beasties treatment. Their late-period catalogue is ransacked and reassembled as ‘The Sounds of Science’. The Back In The USSR jet sound, the crowd noise from the start of the Sgt Peppers album, the Sgt Peppers drums, the oboe and bassline from the start of When I’m 64, the drum track from Abbey Road‘s ‘The End’, the orchestra tuning up at the start of Sgt Peppers, it goes on and on and on and on, all the while the 3 Beastie Boys rapping about Isaac Newton, Galilleo, Muhammed Ali’s ‘Rope A Dope’ boxing technique (which consisted of giving your opponent the opposite of what you lead him to believe he is about to receive) and anything else that comes into their way-too-clever brains….

Now here we go dropping science dropping it all over
Like bumping around the town like when you’re driving a Range Rover
Expanding the horizons and expanding the parameters
Expanding the rhymes of sucker M.C. amateurs
Naugels, Isaac Newton Scientific E.Z.
Ben Franklin with the kite getting over with the key
Rock shocking the mic as many times times the times tables
Rock well to tell dispel all of the old fables
I’ve been dropping the new science and kicking the new knowledge
An M.C. to a degree that you can’t get in college
The dregs of the earth and the eggs that I eat
I’ve got pegs through my hands and one through my feet
Shea Stadium the radium E M D squared
Got kicked out of the Palladium you think that I cared
It’s the sound of science
Public service announcement time and money for girls covered with honey
You lie and aspire to be as cunning
Reeling and rockin’ and rollin’ B size D cup
Order the quarter deluxe why don’t you wake up
My mind is kinda flowin like an oil projector
Had to get up to get the Jimmy protector
Went berserk and worked and exploded
She woke up in the morning and her face was coated
Buddy you study the man on the mic
D. do what you like
Drunk a skunk am I from the celebration
To peep that freak unique penetration
I figured out who makes the crack
It’s the suckers with the badges and the blue jackets
A professor of science cause I keep droppin’ it
I smell weed ’cause ya’ll keep packin’ it
People always asking what’s the phenomenon
Yo what’s up know what’s going on
No one really knows what I’m talking about
Yeah that’s right my name’s Yauch
Ponce De Leon constantly on
The fountain of youth not Robotron
Peace is a word I’ve heard before
So move and move and move upon the dance floor
I’m gonna die gonna die one day
Cause I’m goin and goin and goin this way
Not like a roach or a piece of toast
I’m going out first class not going out coach
Rock my Adidas never rock Fila
*I do not sniff the coke I only smoke sinsemilla*
With my nose I knows and with my scopes I scope
What I live I write and that is strictly rope
I’ve got science for any occasion
Postulating theorems formulating equations
Cheech wizard in a snow blizzard
Eating chicken gizzards with a girl named Lizzy
Dropping science like when Galileo dropped his orange

Clever stuff, huh, although a bit of googling won’t go amiss while you read the above. Here‘s the original LA demo of The Sounds Of Science’.

beastie boys

Here’s some more demos..

Johnny Ryall demo #2 Samples Pink Floyd, Paul McCartney drums, Jean Knight’s Mr Big Stuff and a whole host of stuff I can’t quite place. Elvis, Bob Dylan and Donald Trump are all mentioned in the lyrics.

Looking Down The Barrel Of A Gun demo Samples the big piano chord from Pink Floyd’s ‘Time‘, nicks the drums from Ocean’s ‘Put Your Hand In The Hand‘ and some Incredible Bongo Band bongos. The lyrics feature references to Bruce Willis, A Clockwork Orange and Son Of Sam.

Shake Your Rump demo Samples (if you listen carefully and quickly) Led Zeppelin’s Good Times Bad Times drums, lots of Rose Royce’s Carwash (the looped wah wah guitar), some Bob Marley’s ‘Could You Be Loved’ and a million other unheard-by-these-ears 70s funk nuggets. The lyrics make reference to Kangol hats, Fred Flintstone and Pigpen from The Grateful Dead. Nothing if not eclectic.

Egg Man demo liberally steals from Curtis Mayfield’s ‘Superfly‘. Lyrics make reference to Dr Seuss, Cheech and Chong, Cadbury’s Cream Eggs and Public Enemy’s You’re Gonna Get Yours.

Paul’s Boutique has undergone something of a critical reappraisal since it’s initial release. This year saw the release of the 20th Anniversary Edition. Sadly EMI chose not to feature any of the demos that are widely available on t’internet. More fool them. Until they do, enjoy the demos you’ve found here.

BONUS FEATURE!!

paul audio

There’s a fantastic series of books, the 33 1/3 series, where classic albums are untangled and dissected and their mysteries revealed. Paul’s Boutique has been given this treatment not once, but twice –  as a standard book and as an audio book. You can download the audio book free (and legally) here. Whatchawaitinfor?

Cover Versions, Hard-to-find, Sampled

Yeeeaaaeeeh! This Deck(s) is on Fire!

Craig McAllister

I heard Suggs on Radio 2 this morning, waxing lyrical about Unfinished Sympathy by Massive Attack. Without a doubt one of the greatest singles of the last 20 years, it was probably the first record of it’s genre to turn me onto music that wasn’t guitar-based and played by skinny, spotty wee boys from the Home Counties. Hearing it again had me scrambling around my record collection to find all the other mixes of the track that I have. The best ones are available below…

massive attack unfinished

The track originally appeared on Blue Lines, which you knew anyway, and is an album you’ve probably heard/got already. If not, it’s never too late. Go seek it out. The single was released around the time of the Gulf War starting in 1991 and as a result Massive Attack were forced to shorten their name to Massive. A wise move, as Unfinished Sympathy was all over the airwaves. Every time I saw MTV at my girlfriend’s house, the video was on. Pre-dating Richard Ashcroft’s cocky gangling swagger in the video for Bittersweet Symphony (coincidence?) by a good few years, it showed guest vocalist Shara Nelson walking through the steets of LA’s West Pico Boulevard seemingly unaware of the chaos around her. Apparently it was shot in one take. If I could, I’d include the video below, but YouTube being what it is these days doesn’t have the original promo on it anymore. I’ll have to make do with this still instead.

shara1

As you will be aware, the track is a cracker. However, you may not be aware that it starts with a percussion sample from Bob James’ version of Paul Simon’s ‘Take Me To The Mardi Gras’. Bob James’ whole track is a wee bit elevator muzak for my liking, but if you listen carefully you’ll hear that distinctive banging on pots’n’pans and tapping on glasses filled with water percussion break. Massive Attack speeded it up a wee bit and built their track around it. There you go.

The track is mostly revered for its string part. The story goes that the band had used synthetic strings in the studio but knew that the track really need the full orchestral swoop that their keyboards just couldn’t replicate. But that cost money. Lots of money. And the band were skint. So they hatched a plan. Tossing a coin, the loser (don’t know who it was) was forced to sell his BMW in order to pay for the string section. Luckily for all involved, every one of them would soon be able to have any BMW they desired, but who knew that at the time?

massive attack shara

Hear No Evil. See No Evil. Speak No Evil. Make brilliant record.

I have 5 versions of the track. There may be more, I don’t know. To be truthful, the mixes I have all sound quite samey to these ears. But as it’s such a  brilliant track, who’s complaining? The Paul Oakenfold Perfecto mix is a good remix, building on the percussive base of the original and taking it into slightly Stone Roses territory. Or at least, I thought so 18 years ago. Nelle Hooper’s mix is fairly straightforward, adding some choral backing vocals and pushing the bass a wee bit more to the fore (I’ve included the 12″ mix, but not the 7″), but for me, the original is still the best. Contrast and compare below.

Original mix

Nellee Hooper 12″

Perfecto Mix

Instrumental

Naturally, the success of the track spawned a thousand imitations. Bjork’s ‘Play Dead’ being one of them. (But that’s a great record too). Less successful were the cover versions. I know you’re sitting there thinking, “Who’d even attempt to cover Unfinished Sympathy?” Well. Tina Turner. That’s who.  What d’you make of this? Yep.  Takes me right back to my days on the shop floor in Our Price. A right stinker, just as I’d remembered. Overblown, windswept and bloated. With a hilarious spoken outro. Gads! We don’t need another hero, Tina. Stick to singing Mark Knopfler throwaways. She used to be great in the 60s too. What happened?  

Oh, and another thing.  When I eventually get round to learning the piano, the piano part from Unfinished Sympathy is the one thing I’ll aim to master. Those big bassy minor chords and the tinkly melodic bit. Hey, hey hey-a hey!

MassiveAttack decks

Most downloaded tracks, Sampled

Full Of Eastern Promise

Craig McAllister

A month or so ago I told you I’d been listening non-stop to the Amorphous Androgynous compiled ‘A Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble Exploding In Your Mind Volume 1 – Cosmic Space Music’. You can listen to some tracks and read about it here. Mind duly exploded, I went online and like thousands of you do, I bought some music from iTunes. I’ve always had my own unwritten rule that if the music was physically available, I’d always buy it. Who wants a digital file? Not me, I thought, until Oasis (yes, you read correctly) decided to release the 22 and a half minute Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble mix of current single ‘Falling Down‘ . I had to hear it ASAP and coupled with the only physically-available commercial release being on 2 sides of solid 33rpm 12″ vinyl and a severe lack of decent record shops anywhere near where I live, I opted for the easy option.


falling-down


I once had a letter published in Uncut, where I put the boot into Oasis calling them a ‘brand, not  a band’. I was quite pleased with myself when I wrote that line and even more pleased when they published the letter in the December issue of that year under the headline ‘The Last Noel’. I can’t remember when Oasis were last any good, but never has a band fallen so spectacularly from grace and ended up sounding like a dog’s dinner. They used to be terrific. There. Said it. No shame in that. I saw them live a couple of times between the first and second albums and they were sen-say-sheee-on-alllll. Suddenly, between second and third albums, they stopped being good, and at an alarming rate, their musical quality continues to drop.  ‘Falling Down’ is no different. It’s another Noel-led clunker with lots of fannying about with capos on the second fret, minor chords and open strings…

Em                         G6
the summer sun that blows my mind
Cmaj7                Asus2
Is falling down on all that I’ve ever known
Em             G6
Time to kiss the world goodbye
Cmaj7              Asus2
Falling down on all that I’ve ever known
Cmaj7   Dsus2
Is all that I’ve ever known. etc etc etc….

Yep, just like Wonderwall. But not as good. (No Liam on lead vocals, that’s why). It goes nowhere fast. Actually, not that fast. It takes about 10 minutes to go nowhere. Tedious on a grand scale. I don’t even think Liam and his Sex Beatles sneer could save it. Thankfully, Amorphous Androgynous have.


psychedelic-falling-down


It’s got sitars, flutes, mellotrons and the whole psychedlic shebang going on. Noel’s vocals are looped, sampled and buried deep beneath a drumbeat that sounds like ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ clattering down four flights of stairs. There’s a fuzz bass solo that John Entwistle would’ve been suing over were he still alive. There’s a female backing singer that comes in sounding like Natasha Atlas being stung by a wasp. Or is that the fuzz bass again?  At one point a child speaks the lyrics as the whole thing blisses out like some sort of post-hallicinogenic comedown. Strangely, Chris Martin seems to be playing some sort of half-arsed piano at the same time and the track goes off into a whole new territory. I’d imagine this would be side 2 of the vinyl. The whole thing now sounds like The Orb or an Andrew Weatherall remix of some early ’90s guitar band. Yes. It’s that good. You don’t even mind the violin solo, cos those whoosing effects in the background remind you of the intro music the Stone Roses used at Glasgow Green. Natasha Atlas makes a re-appearance and her and Noel duet for a bit. The whole thing begins to pick up again. By the time the electric guitars and drums have crashed back into it and the whole track has lifted off into outer space you realise 15 or so minutes have passed, and there’s still another 7 to go! I won’t spoil it anymore, but do yourself a favour and download this now!


noel-gallagher


Noel Gallagher falling down.


Songwriters get their inspiration in the strangest of places.

Hard-to-find, Sampled

Collective Collected

Craig McAllister

I’m not a fan of posting new releases. There’s a million other blogs that do just that, and do it far better than I can. I actually don’t know enough useless information about new artists to make anything I write about them remotely interesting, so tonight I feel like I’m swimming a wee bit out of my depth. However, once in a blue moon a new track comes along that blows me away. Tonight that blue moon is shining once again.

animal-collective

I’ve been aware of Animal Collective ever since my pal Quinny mentioned them a couple of years ago. I’ve even got myself a real bought and paid for ginuwine CD copy of their latest album, ‘Merriweather Post Pavilion‘. More shame me, but I never paid much attention to Quinny’s goings on about them, or even the new album. I wish I had. Their new single, ‘My Girls’ has been getting tons of airplay on BBC6 Music. Why didn’t I notice that track that one time I played the album, I thought.  It’s like the Flaming Lips trying to play New Order, I thought. It’s got handclaps and bleepy noises and everything on it, I thought. It’s one thumping bassline away from You Got The Look by The Source featuring Candi Staton, I thought. It’s ripe for remixing, I thought. Pity then, I thought, that the Animal Collective are generally not for the remix game. Strange, given that their sound relies heavily on old keyboards, samples, loops and found sounds. Thank goodness for t’internet.

animalcollectivemygirls

From seemingly out of nowhere I found about half a dozen remixes of ‘My Girls.’ I’m not sure how official they are. It could be that some wee guy made them all up in his bedroom with his laptop. Bits of some them sound as if they were. Others sound fantastic. See what you think…

The original version is here.

The Hatchmatik Disco Bootleg is here.

The Gigamesh Proper House Remix is here.

The Mexicans With Guns Remix is here.

The Dave Wrangler Remix is here.

The Swine Forkbeard Remix is here.

The Skinny Friedman DJ Edit is here.

Phew. I’m off to reacquaint myself with the album. It looks like this…

animalcollective

I’ll tell you what it sounds like later.

Maybe I didn’t waste that tenner after all.

Cover Versions, Gone but not forgotten, Hard-to-find, Sampled, studio outtakes

Ingredients in a recipe for soul

Craig McAllister

Who says we don’t do requests? Regular reader Big Stuff emailed to ask for some Bobby Womack and such stuff in a soulful vain. So for him and every other soul brother or sister out there, read on.

Firstly, not Bobby Womack, but The Temptations. ‘Ball Of Confusion’ is a stone cold funk/soul classic, in any of it’s various forms. Five-part harmonies backed by the Funk Brothers is always going to be a winning combination in anyone’s book. Released on the ‘Psychedelic Shack’ album in1970 it took the sound of The Temptations onto a whole other level. Here‘s an unreleased alternative mix of the version you know and love.

temptations

If that version is on a whole other level then this version takes the original 4 and a half minutes of funk and propels it into the stratosphere. At 10 minutes + (!), the 1971 Undisputed Truth version is the one that does it for me every time. Every time. The Undisputed Truth was essentially a nom de plume for in-house Motown producer Norman Whitfield. He was getting tired of the Motown sound he had helped make so ubiquitous, and with a love for Sly Stone, Parliament, Jimi Hendrix, Funkadelic and so on, decided he was going to create a similar sound for himself. He took The Temptations basic backing tracks, got in a couple of singers and got to work.

ball-of-confusion-lyrics

His take on ‘Ball Of Confusion’ features phased, fried and wah-wah-ed guitars, “Right on…take me higher” vocals, the greatest 3 note bassline ever and quite possibly the goddam kitchen sink. Basically, Whitfield took The Temptations out of Detroit and put them on a Greyhound bus with a one-way ticket to flare city. Listen to it with loud with the lights out and prepare to fry yer mind.

undisputed-truth

The Undisputed Truth

You might be surprised to learn this, but Bobby Womack was the writer of the Rolling Stones 1964 hit ‘It’s All Over Now’. Or maybe you knew that already. You probably do know that his track ‘Across 110th Street’ was used in Tarantino’s blaxploitation homage ‘Jackie Brown’. And you’re probably also aware that it was also used in the 1972 film of the same name. (110th Street, not Jackie Brown)The soundtrack for the film features 3 versions of the same track. The first one is the one you know and love. The other 2 are more interesting. Firstly, there’s an instrumental version that sounds like the incidental music in a long-forgotten episode of Starsky & Hutch. It also sounds like the funkiest elevator muzak you could ever wish for. It’d sound great on Celebrity Come Dancing. Honestly.

bobby-womack-110street

There’s also Across 110th Street (Part II). Featuring minimum vocals and maximum brass stabs and wah-wah, it should get those ants in yer pants a-dancin’. Get on the good foot!

bobby-womack-1972

D’you want to hear my Louis Walsh impression? Read this with an Irish accent….

“Y’know what? You’ve got a lotta soul in your voice, a lot of soul.” Sheeesh. The word ‘soul‘ is bandied about these days in front of anyone who can hold a note for 2 seconds. Louis Walsh wouldnae know soul even if a huge afro continually kicked his arse shouting “I feel good!” at the same time. Those X-Faxtor contestants are really quite sadly deluded and buffoons like wee Walshy don’t help matters.

aretha-67

Real soul, real soul is all about feeling. And no-one felt it better than Aretha. With 2 kids to her name by the time she was 16, she’s lived it more than most of us will ever know. Her 1967 version of ‘Chain of Fools’ is a belter. Even better is the rare version featuring Joe South’s extended tremolo’d twanging guitar. Man, you should hear it! Here it is. Dig it brothers and sisters!

 

Cover Versions, Sampled

Hey Joe! Where you goin’ with that gun in your hand?

Craig McAllister

Don’t point it at wee Chris Martin. He didnae mean it! I see gazillion-selling guitar virtuoso and purveyor of a thousand beedly-beedly-beedlies Joe Satriani is wanting to take Coldplay to court. He thinks that their track ‘Viva La Vida’ has “copied and incorporated substantial original portions” from his track ‘If I Could Fly’, released in 2004. Satriani’s lawsuit demands damages and “any and all profits” related to the alleged copyright infringement. Of course. You be judge and jury. Take a listen…..

Joe. Coldplay. See? A wee bit samey. In much the same way that the Red Hot Chili Peppers “borrowed” some of Tom Petty’s ‘Mary Jane’s Last Dance’ for their own ‘Dani California’. “Borrowed” mmm hmmm, or indeed “totally ripped-off“. To these ears, the sock-jocks had much more of a case to answer than Coldplay, but old hippy-spirited Tom Petty let them off, saying that this kind of thing happens all the time. Of course it does. Led Zeppelin were absolute masters at it. Like the Viking warriors they holler about with great bluster on ‘Immigrant Song‘, they raped, pillaged and plundered the whole of the Mississippi Delta for much of their output. And they even had the cheek to put ‘Page and Plant’ in the brackets after the song. I’ve written about this a couple of times before, if you’re really interested. There’s tons of cases of musical plagiarism. There are probably whole blogs dedicated to this subject. At the very least, Wikipedia is a good first stop.

Interestingly, Joe Satriani used to be a poodle-haired rock God. Now he looks a bit like an extra from The Matrix.

joe-satriani-hairjoe-satriani1

And only a couple of years ago, Chris Martin was a poodle-haired rock God who’d even managed to snare his own Hollywood wife. In more recent snaps, it looks like he’s heading down the same extra-from-The-Matrix road as Satriani.

chris_martinchris-martin-guitar

Joe. Coldplay. See? A wee bit samey. Round our way, Satriani is rhyming slang. In much the same way as Shereen Nanjiani, Giorgio Armani or chicken biryani. I think you know what I mean.

Bonus track. Here‘s the bleepy, slightly ambient wahp remix of ‘Viva La Vida’. It’s no’ very good. Nothing like chicken biryani at all.

Hard-to-find, Sampled

Woah-woa! Mercy, Mercy Me!

Craig McAllister

In football parlance, it’s getting to the business end of the year. The time of year when the winners are seperated from the losers, the wheat loosened from the chaff, the right decent records recategorised as ‘classics’ while the clunkers vanish into obscurity. It’s a couple of weeks too early for any definitive list/rundown, but 2 or 3 singles are easily near the top of my ‘right decent records’ list. The Maccabees ‘Toothpaste Kisses’ is one of them. I said when it came out that it would be one of my favourite singles of the year and time has not changed my opionion. ‘Standing Next To Me’ by the Last Shadow Puppets. Paul Weller‘s ‘Echoes Round The Sun’, ‘Oranges & Apples’ by the Trashcan Sinatras. All great records. Given time I could give you 20 more. MGMT‘s ‘Time To Pretend’ is also up there, and I intend to post a fair few MGMT remixes in the coming weeks. However, whilst those records (or downloads-only) above have grabbed me for whatever reasons, my number 1 favourite single of the year without a shadow of a doubt is ‘Mercy‘ by Duffy.

duffy

I can be quite snobbish about my music, especially when records like ‘Mercy‘ become all-conquering chart monsters and everyone from Primary 1 girls to 50+ year old secretaries can sing them. And that’s just my place of work. The elitist in me sometimes likes ‘my’ music to remain ‘mine’. But that’s my problem, not yours. Surely, only the sniffiest of music snobs could seriously ignore ‘Mercy‘ Some might say that Duffy being a bit of a looker doesn’t do any harm, but ‘Mercy‘ is a fantastic track, from the wonky ripped-off ‘Stand By Me’ bassline intro to the Sly Stone double-time handclaps at the outro, via the vocals themselves. It’s northern soul fruggery of the highest order, and as a dance track it’s right up there with ‘Superstition‘ in the ‘Songs That Make Me Dance Like The Rhythmically-Challenged White West of Scotland Male That I Am‘ list. But you probably knew that already.

duffy-bw1

To these ears, the original version is still the definitive version, but there are a number of official and unofficial remixes and live tracks out there in internetland that are worth investigating. Some don’t sound too different. Others have some interesting samples – is that Sly Stone’s bassline on the ?uestlove mix? Nah. Maybe it’s on one of those Dunproofin mixes. Anyway, here’s what I’ve found (For review purposes only of course. Buy what you can folks):

Mercy (Dunproofin’s Thankful Mix)

Mercy (Dunproofin’s Thankful Mix 2)

Mercy (Rwemix)

Mercy (Remix feat. The Game)

Mercy (?uestlove Remix) (mp4 only)

Mercy (Morsy Mix)

Mercy (Mathematikals Unmerciful Edit)

Mercy (Radio 1’s Live Lounge)

Mercy (Live on Jools Holland)

Quite a list. Every one of them worth a listen. Go on!

duffymercy

For review purposes only, of course.

Download. Burn. Use image above as cover. Voila!

Sampled

Whoa! Hold on a moment!

Craig McAllister

Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated. Reading the comments below (a million thanks) you’d think Plain Or Pan? was about to disappear into hyperspace forever. NOT SO! Just to clear things up – the only thing that’ll disappear are the links to the various mp3s I’ve uploaded over the past couple of years. It’s my file hosting account that’s been cancelled, not my web account. I’ll still be blogging as usual. But any new files* I share will not be via box.net (which was an excellent host, even if they buckled under pressure from the interweb police). I just need to find a new file host from where you can download to your hearts’ content.

johnny-finger

As The Isley Brothers and Public Enemy both said, ‘Fight The Power Brothers and Sisters, Fight The Power!”

Let me know what you think of file den. Easy to use? Too many adverts? Pop-up hell?  I won’t use it if it’s crap.

*For the benefit of any shady looking men in grey suits who are spying on me, the term ‘New Files’ generally means deleted/hard-to-find tracks, mainly from my own music collection. Often, these have been painstakingly converted from old cassettes and vinyl by myself into mp3 format. ‘New Files’ does not mean the latest Guns ‘n Roses album or anything that you can buy easily enough from a supermarket, a specialist record shop (remember them) or an online retailer. With peace and love etc etc.

Hard-to-find, Sampled

Sampling The Beatles and the Kopyright Liberation Front…

Craig McAllister

…or the KLF to yer average music fan. Or the Justified Ancients of Mu-Mu. Or The JAMS. Or King Boy D and Rockman Rock. Or just plain old Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty to their mums. We’ll stick to the KLF for now. It’s no coincidence that their full unabbreviated moniker advocated freedom for all. Their debut album, ‘1987 (What The Fuck Is Going On?)’ was a fantastic exercise in cheeky and downright blatant plagiarism from a wide range of unlikely sources.

They may be hip these days (or are they not again, I don’t know), but in 1987 Abba were far, far, far from hip. So the KLF took a large slice of ‘Dancing Queen’, added some scratching, some rapping and what sounds like a demented duck on lead vocals, looped it about a bit and named it ‘The Queen and I’.  Nowadays it sounds about as revolutionary as PJ & Duncan, but at the time the music press loved it. “Have you ever met Abba?” one of them asks near the end. And with a knowing wink the other replies, “I’d love to meet Abba. They’re one of my favourite groups.” As rave reviews for the LP filtered across the North Sea to Sweden, Abba and their lawyers got hold of the track and were a wee bit upset. “Cease and desist!” they said. “And while you’re at it, destroy all remaining copies of the album.” Bill and Jimmy set off an a Scandinavian voyage in the hope of meeting one of their favourite groups. They dumped some of the unsold albums overboard. To this day they’re at the bottom of the North Sea. Mint copies fetch £500+ on eBay, but I’m not sure how much you’d get if you went diving for one of these sunken treasures. According to Wiki, some other copies of the album were given to a prostitute who looked a wee bit like Agnetha. Of the copies that remained, the band took them to Abba’s management in the hope that they could get them to change their mind. They didn’t, and the album has been a thing of file-sharing mystery ever since.

One track, ‘All You Need Is Love’ was released as a one-sided 12″ single and sampled The Beatles, Sam Fox and some kids singing Ring A Ring A Roses. Bill and Jimmy rapped like a very Scottish ‘Licensed To Ill’-era Beastie Boys. It sounds weird and a wee bit dated. The album version was even weirder, featuring a random Top Of The Pops rundown of the charts. What the fuck was going on indeed.

Talking of the Beastie Boys…..no strangers to sampling themselves, they took huge chunks out of The Beatles back catalogue for the track, ‘The Sounds Of Science’ on ‘Pauls Boutique’. Thankfully, this was released in the days before sample clearance, cos nowadays it would never be allowed. They also nicked bits of ‘I’m Down’, and right up until the last second their own track of the same name was due to appear on ‘Licensed To Ill’, their sneery, snotty Led Zeppelin-pillaging debut. You can get it on the ‘Original Ill’ bootleg or you can get it here.

More recently (and more famously) Danger Mouse took his copy of ‘The White Album’ and Jay Z‘s ‘The Black Album’, got some sellotape, added some big beats and created ‘The Grey Album’. EMI ceased and desisted it quicker than you could say “Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except For Me And My Monkey” (aye, it took them a while) and like the KLF before them the album filtered onto file sharing immortality. To be honest, I don’t like it all that much. But then, I don’t really like Jay Z. Some of it sounds a bit contrived to these ears. But I do like this track. Jay Z‘s ’99 Problems’ and The Beatles ‘Helter Skelter’ battle it out for supremacy. Being as he is laid up in bed with a couple of broken ribs, Noel Gallagher is unavailable for comment, but I think it’s a cracker. No pun intended.

*Footnote. Does anyone know the name of the Cypress Hill track that samples Paul McCartney’s “Wooo-ooo’s” from the opening bars of ‘Your Mother Should Know’? I know it’s out there somewhere, but I cannae find it. Help!

Hard-to-find, Sampled

Get Filthy with Sarah Cracknell

Craig McAllister

Wouldn’t you love to? The ironic thing is, the track in question doesn’t even feature Sarah Cracknell on vocals, but it is one of the best Saint Etienne tracks you’re ever likely to hear. This is not a media hype…

‘Filthy’ began life in 1991 on the b-side of ‘Only Love Can Break Your Heart’ and features the enigmatic (and 15 year old) Q-Tee on vocals. It’s dubby and spacey. There’s a bit of wah-wah which may well have been sampled from an obscure 70s soul record, a looped drum break that could’ve come from the same record, a cracking (sampled? probably) bassline that’s been looped to infinity and even a glockenspiel solo at one point. I used to get quite annoyed that my copy on 12″ sounded like someone was frying bacon on top of it. Years later I got ‘Filthy’ on CD and I realised the vinyl crackles and pops had been added for effect. Actually, maybe they haven’t. They might be crackles from the original vinyl that had been sampled when jigsawing the track together. I hadn’t thought of that until now! 

Q-Tee

On top of the fantastic music and the snaps! crackles! and pops! you get Q-Tee’s vocals. Starting out like a sexy version of PIL’s ‘Public Image’, “Hello? Hello? Hahahaha!”, they are husky, half-rapped, half-spoken and half-sung (can you have 3 halves?) and they make the track what it is –  a b-side that should’ve been an a-side. I think Saint Etienne themselves recognised Q-Tee’s contribution to the track, because they got her back to rap on ‘Calico‘, when they recorded the ‘So Tough’ LP. They also appear to have realised how good a track ‘Filthy ‘was, because it’s been available in at least 2 other versions since 1991.

In 1995, Saint Etienne teamed up with French chanteuse Etienne Daho, to form St Etienne Daho. They released a 5 track ep, half in French, half in English. (Halves again!) On it you’ll find a re-working of ‘He’s On The Phone’ called ‘Accident (Week-End à Rome)’ that’s pretty good, but the ep is worth getting just for the track ‘Jungle Pulse‘, which is ‘Filthy‘ sung in French. Etienne Daho sounds like MC Solaar rapping on the top. Sarah adds a whispered French thingy in the background and the whole track rolls along nicely. C’est magnifique.

In February this year, Saint Etienne released ‘Boxette‘, which compiles all their hard-to-get and highly collecatble fan club only ep’s and albums. A collector’s wet dream, it has all the Saint Etienne you’ll ever need spread over 4 CDs. It was only available through their fan club and sold for £25. It now goes for around £100 on eBay, so start saving or look below…..The first disc is brilliant. There’s not one bit of filler on it. ‘Filthy‘ makes an appearance, this time under the guise of ‘Studio Kinda Filthy’.  A bit less dubby but a bit more echoey and a whole lot more spy film, it’s equally worth having. Extra points too for the old-school sampled BBC announcer at the start.  

Do di do di do, do, di, do di do, do di do di do di do di, do di do di do!

Elsewhere on ‘Boxette‘ you’ll find their version of David Bowie’s ‘Absolute Beginners’ (Not very good to be honest. Neither was it when I saw them play it live in 1991). Anyway. I don’t normally post whole albums of stuff that are available and/or new, but as ‘Boxette‘ was limited to 3000 copies and has long since sold out and been deleted, in these credit crunch times save your eBay pennies and click on these links:

CD1               CD2               CDs 3 & 4

Poke about and you’ll find all the artwork you need and you can fashion your own Blue Peter-style Saint Etienne ‘Boxette‘ box set. I did and it looks great!