Plain Or Pan

Hello to all you new people who have found Plain Or Pan by googling for Coke advert music. I like to fill my reader’s requests, so here’s a couple of Coke tracks that have been asked for recently.

First up the Bee Gees. Rumour has it that in 1967 when they recorded this jingle, the struggling Bee Gees were happy to receive payment for doing the song not in cash but in gallons and gallons of Coca Cola. A couple of years later, they found themselves bloated (Barry especially) and in drastic need of dental repair work to their teeth – no Diet Coke in those days, more sugar. Two of them were that badly affected by the fizzy black stuff they were never seen again. That’s why the other three’s teeth looked so white, shiny and new round about Saturday Night Fever. They’d just got new ones because all that Coke had melted their real teeth. Years later, the Bee Gees were rumoured to enjoy a different variety of Coke, but the Plain Or Pan lawyers have asked me to stop there.  (Some of this story may not be entirely true, by the way).

Watch out for that sugar, boys

Next up, The Easybeats. Australian garage rockers who featured George Young on guitar. George’s wee brothers Malcolm and Angus would find fame, fortune and no doubt Coke with AC/DC, but that’s another blog posting sometime. The Easybeats were most famous for ‘Friday On My Mind‘, which David Bowie did well and Gary Moore did not so well. Their Coke jingle sounds garagey and punky, like most of their stuff.

“Bowie likes us? Monday I got royalties on my mind.”

Jerry lee Lewis is no stranger to controversey. Guns, under age shenanigans/marriage with his cousin, a whole lot of something goin’ on. His Coke jingle is bloody fantastic. Sounding like it’s straight out of Sun Studios 1956, it rocks, rolls and stops just short of the one minute mark. “The Real Thing! Jerry Lee Lewis for Coca-Cola!” Get it while you can.

Once more, with feeling Jerry.

Lastly, “Hey there Wild Things! Here come The Troggs!” Coming on like the Monkees, The Troggs are quite refined. Not their usual garage driven bluster at all. Kitsch doesn’t half describe this track. Reg Pressley’s spoken ad-libs are magic. It’s the real thing!

For those of you who don’t go through the pages of this blog (why not?), there are more Coke jingles here.

 

Johnny Marr pisses me off. The most gifted guitarist of his generation, The Smiths were over by the time he was the ripe old age of 24. 24! Most musicians would have called it a day after being in one of the most revered bands ever. But at the age of 24 Johnny was probably thinking his career was just beginning. And it was. Not in the same trailblazing way as with The Smiths, but he had the world at his feet and the world came calling.

You’re all intelligent people, so you’ll know a lot of this anyway. Some of those who came calling were Bryan Ferry, Chrissie Hynde, Simple Minds, The The, Billy Bragg, Kirsty MacColl, Karl Bartos, (deep breath in), Beck, Oasis, George Michael, Tom Jones, Jane Birkin, Lisa Germano, the list is practically endless. In the same way that Jimmy Page cornered the 1960s session market, for the past 20 years Johnny has been the guitar player that everyone calls. The Pet Shop Boys needed a guitarist. Neil Tennant was going to learn but couldn’t be arsed, so he called Johnny instead. The Pet Shop Boys were after all “the Smiths you can dance to” and Johnny duly added his distinctive guitar to 2 tracks on their ‘Behaviour’ album. Neil Tennant would later briefly join Electronic, but that’s a whole other blog post somewhere in the future.

Post-Smiths, Johnny really made a name for himself in dance music circles. One of the reasons The Smiths broke up was due to Morrissey’s reluctance to accept new technology (such as samplers and sequencers) into the mix. So Johnny went off and played with those who embraced exactly those things. Banderas (‘Rise’ 1991) and K Klass (‘La Cassa’ 1993) were two acts who benefited. As did Stex.

 

In 1991 they released ‘Still Feel The Rain’. Released on the Some Bizarre label and produced by former Altered Images member (and husband of Clare Grogan) Stephen Lironi and mixed by The Grid,  this nimble Balearic anthem was dressed with a vintage Chic-esque Johnny Marr guitar riff. Not to mention the stacks of drum machines, keyboards, bass sequencers and synthesised horns. That sound you can hear in the background is the sound of a thousand quiffs collapsing in despair in bedrooms up and down the country. I liked it at the time. Nowadays, ‘Still Feel The Rain’ sounds like it was recorded about 16 years ago. Which it was.

More unusual (and a million times more interesting) is Johnny’s collaboration with Alex Paterson (The Orb) and Jimmy Cauty (art terrorist and ex-KLF). Originally called Custerd before settling on the name The Transit Kings, Paterson and Cauty called on Marr to play on their 2006 album ‘Living In A Giant Candle Winking At God’. I don’t think you’ll find it in Asda. In fact, you’ll be hard pushed to find it anywhere, but this track is a lovely piece of ambient house.

 

Taken from their ‘Token EP’ EP, the guitar playing on ‘America Is Unavailable’ is pure Johnny Marr. Every facet of his guitar style is here. A bit of feedback and distortion. A great riff. Some African sounding bits. Weird chords. Some slide playing. What sounds like some backwards stuff in the middle. Some frantic acoustic strumming. It’s all there.

Last year Johnny joined Modest Mouse after they put out the call that they were looking for a “Johnny Marr-esque” guitarist. “Why have Johnny Marr-esque when you can have Johnny Marr?” he asked, and he got the job. The Modest Mouse album ‘We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank’ is up there as one of my favourite albums of the year.

More recently, Johnny has become a lecturer in music at the University Of Salford. He’s only 6 years older than me, he plays guitar like no-one else, he’s done it all and his hair nearly always looks brilliant. Johnny Marr, you piss me off.

A post about Johnny Marr and not one picture of The Smiths.

More Johnny Marr stuff here!

S!TOP PRESS!!!  April 14th 2009!!!   STOP PRESS!!!

Updated Phil Spector stuff here!

Shit, it’s a gun. Phil Spector really is bonkers. And that’s an understatement. One read of Ronnie Spector’s autobiography (Be My Baby) will tell you that. Between locking her in her room, only letting her go out in the car if she took an inflatable version of himself for the passenger seat, to presenting her out of the blue with foster children, Phil had total control over Ronnie. That recent programme on Channel 4 showed him in an increasing number of crazy wigs, making an increasing number of crazy claims. No doubt about it, he killed the actress. We all know that. But……

Despite his obvious freakishness, he couldn’t half create a brilliant record. ‘Pop blues‘ he called them. Layer upon layer of guitar, drums, bass, strings, whatever percussion was lying about. And vocals. Heaps of vocals. Tons of vocals. Tapes upon tapes of takes upon takes of vocals. Ronnie thought they all sounded the same but Phil would always hear something not quite right about it and make her do another take of the same song. I own the best box set ever. I bought ‘Back To Mono’ in Vancouver 10 years ago and played it to death. Once a year I get it out and play it daft for a week. In the car, in the house, on the iPod. I thought music couldn’t sound any better. Then I stumbled acroos a 5CD bootleg of Phil’s studio outtakes. That’s music porn for a trainspotter like me. Listen! There’s extra tambourine on that one! D’you hear that? That’s Glen Campbell playing guitar! Which one? The one soaked in a gallon of reverb of course! Those 5CDs are way too much to sit through in one go. In fact, you’d have to be about as weird as Phil if you wanted too, but dipped into now and again they’re a brilliant snapshot of how he created his 3 minute ‘pocket symphonies for teenagers.’ They remind me a lot of the ‘Pet Sounds sessions’ box set, where Brian Wilson barks orders from the control room. Another mad genius. Another post no doubt. In the meantime, here’s 3 tracks that I think you’ll like.

“This is real music, baby!” Take 2 of ‘The Boy I’m Going To Marry’. Phil gave Ronnie the song. He was still married at the time. She didn’t know. But she did know that she was going to marry Phil so she put her heart and soul into singing this. Then her and Phil nipped out the back somewhere and had sex. Eugh! It’s all in the book. Think about that while you’re listening to it. Or maybe you shouldn’t.

 

Da Doo Ron Ronnie

Takes 1, 2, 3 and 4 of ‘Soldier Baby’. A wee bit hissy, but lots of studio chatter throughout this one. Phil cracks the whip. “One more time, let’s go.” Ronnie sings her heart out like she’s singing it for the first time, every time.  “Ron. C’mon. Let’s go!” “Nah! I have to have a drum. C’mon. Let’s do it in tempo. C’mon c’mon!” “You’re going too slow. That intro’ll be ad-libed. I’ll just direct it. OK. Here we go…I, 2, 3 …” Jeez. No wonder he carried a gun. Shoot or be shot. The Ronettes and assembled musicians carried out like the true pros they were. Here’s Take 6, complete with handclaps and backing vocals to prove it.

Ronnie’s the one in the middle. John Lennon fancied her like mad. George Harrison went out with her sister Estelle (on the left)

I’ve saved the best for last. Two takes of ‘Baby I Love You’. The first is a straight rehearsal run through (Take 12) of Phil’s finest moment. The second version is just about the best thing I’ve ever uploaded. If you only download one thing this week, make it this one. An unknown take of ‘Baby I Love You’, sans music. It’s just a few handclaps, the Ronettes backing vocals and wee Ronnie singing her heart out. It’s bloody magic and could teach any of today’s ‘singers’ a thing or two. Woah oh, woah oh oh oh!

Poor Phil. I love Phil Spector. Rather, I love his music. You can’t deny he’s made many a fine finger-poppin’ track, even if the only hits he’s known for nowadays are not of the musical kind. To think that this blog was nearly named after him. I’m glad it’s not. I can’t imagine ojsimpson.blog.com gets that much traffic these days. But you never know.

Professor plumb, lead pipe, billiard room