Cover Versions, Sampled

Pass It On (part 2)

Craig McAllister

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Simple Kid is a one-man band. All battered acoustics, a bit of banjo and a smattering of electronics and new technology. He’s an Irish Beck. I suppose you could call him Feck. Hee hee. Anyway, his first album ‘Simple Kid 1‘ was pretty good. I have had a copy of it since it was released but I recently picked up the genuine article in Tesco for 97p!

More recently I heard him do a song called ‘Lil King Kong’ which sounded like it sampled/borrowed/stole the riff from Led Zeppelin‘s version of Robert Johnson’s ‘Travelling Riverside Blues’ (get it on the BBC Sessions album). Pretty good I thought. And pretty cheeky. Cos it’s not like Led Zeppelin are going to sue him. After all, they’ve made a career out of ripping off the old blues guys and crediting everything to Page, Plant, Bonham and Jones. Even their version of ‘Travelling Riverside Blues’ is credited to Page, Plant and Johnson. But I’ve never been able to hear where they enhanced the original. Unless you count the drums. But then surely the credit should have Bonham added to it somewhere.

Actually, they probably would sue, being the corporate money grabbers that they are/were, but I digress. These 2 tracks are posted in the spirit of the first ‘Pass It On’ post – that the best songs and tunes of the past usually end up being recycled in some way years down the line. Listen and compare, pop pickers.

 Led Zeppelin ‘Travelling Riverside Blues’               

 Simple Kid ‘Lil King Kong’

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Dylanish

Trashcan Sonatas

Craig McAllister

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This is one of the weirdest bootlegs I own. Dylan fans are guilty of grabbing hold of anything that his name can be linked with and I’m as big a sap as the next collector. No music on this. Just AJ Weberman talking about an interview he did with Bob Dylan in January 1971, followed by 2 telephone conversations between them following the interview.

Weberman is, to quote West of Scotland vernacular, a bit of a roaster. Amongst other things, he was convinced Dylan was a heroin addict, so he tracked down where he lived in New York and started raking through his rubbish to find clues/evidence that could substantiate his claims!  The sleevenotes on the bootleg tell you more:

AJ Weberman, self styled Dylanologist, mega egotist, founder member of the art of Garbology, (the practice of sifting through someone’s garbage to interpret their character) had become notorious by circulating his revelations on Dylan’s persona on the underground press. Probably in an attempt to curb some of Weberman’s wild theorising and to protect his young family from intrusive attentions, Dylan began to actively cultivate Weberman’s interest in him, and around December 1970 and early January 1971 arranged to meet with Weberman at his recording studio in Greenwich Village that he’d recently had converted from a shop. Whatever the understanding between them may have been, Weberman’s motivation for attending these meetings was to consruct an article on Dylan that he could circulate in the underground press. When Dylan became aware of this, two telephone conversations ensued, the first from Dylan to Weberman requesting to see a draft of the article, the second a return call from Weberman to discuss amendments.

There’s books on this! And folk like me read them! Dylan is revealed to be obtuse, awkward and contradictory once he realises Weberman has taped him in conversation. Hardly revelatory stuff then, but you need to hear it. And he swears quite a lot too. It’s in 3 parts:

part 1                    part 2                    part 3

* part 3 will download from megaupload, as it was too big a file for my usual file host

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Dylanish, Hard-to-find

Pass it on….

Craig McAllister

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In the 1930’s, Jimmie Tarlton had a tune he played on his guitar called ‘Mexican Rag’. I have read that it was captured somewhere on a field recording (possibly by Harry Smith or Alan Lomax) but extensive googling and raking arond in the depths of file sharing sites has not helped me find it. Anyway, around 1964 Bob Dylan appropriated/liberated/stole it and was caught on tape doodling around with it in the studio. It has since been named ‘Suze (The Cough Song)’, named after Suze Rotolo (that’s her on the cover of Freewheelin’) and due to the fact that he coughs near the end of it, mid-harmonica solo. I don’t think Dylan intended to do much with it but you never know. It sounds a wee bit like ‘Nashville Skyline Rag’, so maybe he kept it in mind for a few years. Who knows? The version I have is a work in progress but it is one of my favourite Bob-in-the-studio moments. Either way, it is a great wee tune that is good fun to pick along with on the guitar. You can get it on CD2 of the Bootleg Series 1-3, or you can hear it here.  

In the best folk tradition, the tune has been passed on and re-named many times, with words added, changed or dropped altogether. The new Elliott Smith compilation ‘New Moon’ has a track called ‘Whatever (Folk Song in C)’ that sounds very similar to Dylan’s tune above. A bit slower and less excitable, it features a fantastic vocal from Elliott. I bloody love Elliott Smith. I love the way his vocals are nearly always double-tracked (just like John Lennon). I love the effortless way he can pick out a tune on his guitar. I love the weird chords he throws in now and again. I love the absolute melancholy of it all. Almost makes me want to take heroin. Why his music is not held in the same regard as Nick Drake’s or even Kurt Cobain’s escapes me. I wish I had got to see him live. I wish I could sing and play guitar like him. I wish he hadn’t stabbed himself to death. Stupid bastard.  The whole ‘New Moon’ album is fantastic. If you like your music downbeat, melancholic and bathed in pathos you need it. ‘Whatever’ is my current favourite track. Get it here. Then get yourself over to Play or Amazon or wherever and get the album.

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elliott smith 1969-2003

Bonus track added: Plain Or Pan’s version of Elliott’s ‘Miss Misery’, the song that won him an Oscar for the soundtrack of Good Will Hunting. Recorded on 4 track, it’s a bit hissy and crackly and I didn’t get the levels quite right. It has a ‘unique’ sound all of it’s own and might well give bedroom singer songwriters a bad name everywhere.

Cover Versions, Dylanish, Gone but not forgotten, Hard-to-find, Most downloaded tracks

The toppermost of the poppermost

Craig McAllister

Here you go……the Top 10 Plain Or Pan downloads to date.

A cover-heavy Top 10, with a combined total of

4326 downloads!

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My computer is playing funny buggers. Hence the wonky spacing and no numbers 2-10. It’s taken up enough of my time for the night so this is as good as it gets.

You can find out more about these recordings by scrolling through the pages. Or you could just be lazy and download them from here.

Hard-to-find

The Super Furry Animals Are Magic

Craig McAllister

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A couple of years ago, my mate Quinny casually mentioned that he had once been inside a giant squid costume on stage at a Super Furry Animals Barrowlands show. He used to give out fliers and stuff outside gigs and happened to be in the right place at the right time when the band’s management came along looking for 5 willing participants to wear the suits. They were instructed to walk on at the start of the gig and hold their fist aloft in front of the crowd who would be going bonkers at the sight of what they thought were the band in funny costumes. Quinny said he had to do all he could to stop himself from stage diving. As I said, he mentioned all this to me quite casually one day a couple of years ago, when we were talking about music and he said that he didn’t even like the band! A Jim’ll Fix It moment wasted on a non-believer. I told him they were magic and played him these 2 tracks to try and convert him.

Tradewinds and The Roman Road were both released as b-sides on the singles around the release of the ‘Rings Around The World’ album and were then included as the Tradewinds ep as part of ltd edition versions of the album. They are folky, electronic, a wee bit country, a wee bit sweary (Roman Road is anyway) a wee bit prog and a whole big bit magic. In short, a potted version of what’s great about the Super Furry’s. You’ll like them. Even if Quinny still thinks they’re rubbish. 

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Cover Versions, Hard-to-find

My kinda Persson (ouch!)

Craig McAllister

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I’ve been hearing a lot of that New Manic Street Preachers single recently, featuring Nina Persson of the Cardigans. It’s not bad, but I’ve heard it all before, and the Manics to me these days are about as relevant as the NME. To these ears it sounds a bit like ‘Little Baby Nothing’ which the band at the time wanted Kylie Minogue to sing on but had to settle for porn star Traci Lords cos Kylie’s ‘people’ had never heard of them. Actually. D’you know what? The new single is bad. It’s really bad. It’s stinkingly bad. It’s boring and repetitive aural wallpaper. Charlotte Church made it sound even worse when she duetted with the band on her teevee show the other week. I won’t be buying it, and while I’m sure there is still a hardcore of Manics fans somewhere, I can’t think of any 20 year olds who’d buy it instead of the latest Muse or Biffy Clyro offering.

But Nina Persson. Raaaaaarrrr. (That’s a cat noise by the way.) Great voice, great face, great rock/pop star. I loved the Cardigan’s ‘For What it’s Worth’. I thought it was the best single never to make number 1. About a year ago, during a hiatus from the Cardigans she acted in a Swedish black and white movie, ‘Om Gud Vill’. You might just have caught it down at your local Odeon. If you did, you would have heard her singing a fantastic version of the White Stripes ‘Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground’. It’s not much different to the version you are familiar with, but I liked it so much I included it on my Best Of The Year CD that I swap with my friends in our Christmas cards every year. Nerds? Trainspotters? Sad? Yep. Here‘s the cover. And here’s another gratuitous picture of Nina for you.

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Dylanish

Geriatric Lee Lewis

Craig McAllister

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Bob Dylan, Glasgow SECC 11th April 2007. Live Review.

I was at the dentist this morning and I can’t make up my mind which was more painful – being told I need a filling or being forced to listen to the guitarist in Bob Dylan’s band mangle out another elastic band guitar solo.

Dylan last night was on top form. His voice sounded fantastic, his hat/suit combo was inspired and his choice of songs was just about as expected, with the odd curve-ball thrown in. No-one would’ve had their money on hearing ‘John Brown’, and in all my times at Dylan concerts, I think last night was the first time I’d heard him play ‘Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues’. He started great. The first 4 songs he played guitar and I was thinking ‘This is brilliant’. Then the first of many fumbled guitar breaks came in, and it all went a bit pear shaped. Honestly, Denny Freeman is no better a guitarist than me. And that’s not good enough for Bob Dylan. Bob must know this. Perhaps he’s told the rest of them (with the exception of cooler-than-cool Tony Garnier) that they’re all sacked after this tour, cos most of his band plodded through the night with no fire or passion and little musical inventiveness. The ‘Modern Times’ stuff sounded OK. In fact ‘Aint Talkin” was pretty amazing, but when let loose on the 60’s stuff, this band is way out of its depth. No Bob set has room for both ‘Stuck Inside of Mobile…’ and ‘Most Likely You Go Your Way..’, especially with a band as inept as this one. Christ, they even managed to mess up the start of ‘Like A Rolling Stone’. Instead of the pistol crack drum intro, it sort of limped along to the first line. Tony didn’t even have his bass strapped on until Bob began singing. At one point Donald beside me said ‘This band sound like Peter Kay’s in Phoenix Nights’. And he was right.

I also spent most of the night looking at Bob’s arse. I thought I was being smart in advance by ordering tickets that would give me a good view of stage left, where his keyboard has been sat for the past 3 years. But guess what? The wee contrary bastard decided to move the keyboard to centre stage! This at least gave us the chance to see what Bob did when he was really into what was being played. He bopped, he jerked and he looked like he was humping his instrument. Not so much Jerry Lee Lewis as Geriatric Lee Lewis. It was highly amusing. Of course, when he wasn’t into it he still looked like a Thunderbirds puppet going out as a cowboy for Halloween. No review of Bob’s current tour would be complete without a comment or two on Bob’s keyboard sound. A cross between a 60s garage band Farfisa (good) and the ice hockey organ (bad) it was really noticeable for all the wrong reasons during many songs. But hey. It was Bob Dylan. Live. In front of me. For the umpteenth time. In some ways much better than previous times I’ve seen him – the voice, mainly and in other ways much worse than before – his band, mainly. But it was still Bob Dylan and he’s still better than the rest. Just think what he could do with a good band again.

Bob, if you’re reading this (hahahahaha) bring back Larry and Charlie.

Oh, and I’d appreciate a copy of the show if anyone has one. So far it’s not on dimeadozen. Bit disappointing that. Until anything better turns up, there’s some shaky hand-held video from someone’s mobile phone here.

Cover Versions, Gone but not forgotten

Kitsch Korner

Craig McAllister

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I heard Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra’s ‘Summer Wine’ on the radio yesterday and that had me digging through my record collection and a pile of mp3s to bring you these gems.

In his musical lifetime Lee Hazlewood did it all, and is still doing it all to this day (thanks, Jackson!). You can find out loads about him if you fancy going from blog to blog. Suffice to say he must be one of the most blogged of all musicians and his influence reaches far and wide, with artists today from Jarvis Cocker, the Tindersticks, Primal Scream and many more owing him a huge debt. Not only did he invent Duane Eddy’s twangy guitar sound, he had the best baritone voice in the business and was a shit-hot arranger/producer on many recording sessions. He wrote loads of hits for Nancy Sinatra, including her most famous/overplayed song (delete where applicable) ‘These Boots Are Made For Walking’. Here is his demo version. At least, I think it’s a demo. It’s the backing track you are more than familiar with, with added brass/trumpet stabs and him singing/talking over the top in that big voice of his. You put on your boots and I’ll put on mine and we’ll sell a million records any old time! Brilliant.

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Next up, two Nancy tracks. Her version of Day Tripper is just on the right side of camp. All brass stabs and ‘ba-ba-ba’s’ where George Harrison’s guitar riff should be. There’s even a wry nod to ‘These Boots…’ at one point. It is the true sound of swinging London, even if it was recorded in California.

Lastly is Nancy Sinatra’s Coca Cola jingle. Somebody requested this in an email to me. And as promised, here it is, in all it’s kitsch innocence. “Now Nancy Sinatra with a word to the wise”

You’ve been out 6 nights this week and  I don’t know where you go. Tonight you’re staying home with me there’s things that you don’t know. Like groovy things and other things and boy it’s time you knew. We’ll mess around do lots of things and drink a Coke or two.

Cos, things go better with Coca Cola, things go better with Coke. Life is much more fun when you’re refreshed. And Coke refreshes you best!

Cover Versions

Down By The River triple-whammy

Craig McAllister

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On heavy rotation chez moi at the moment is Neil Young’s ‘Live at Massey Hall’ album, the second in his much anticipated (by me at least) Archive Performance series. Roll on the 8CD box set. If you’re a fan of Neil Young you’ve probably got this already but for those in the dark, this release is of a 1971 Toronto show which took place after the release of After The Goldrush and before the release of Harvest. It is generally agreed that it should have been released in its own right at the time, but for whatever reason it is only now seeing the light of day. Highlight for me is the version of ‘Down By The River’. Unlike the many versions of this song Neil Young has done over the years, this one features just Neil, his acoustic guitar and his whiny voice. I love it. Neil can often overdo this song. I have a few 17+ minute versions with Crazy Horse and umpteen squealy guitar solos. I also have a 31 minute version somewhere that you need to hear once before having a long lie down. But it’s still one of my favourite Neil Young songs, and has been covered to great effect by many artists including…

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Buddy Miles. Buddy’s version is more soulful than the original. It features some Isley Brothers-esque guitar (check out that sustain!), some wah-wah and some jazz tastic Fender rhodesy keyboards. At 6.15, you might think it goes on a bit, but not as long as….

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Roy Buchanan‘s version. Just short of 9 minutes it features some trademark 70’s lead guitar, Gimme Shelter-copying female backing singers and a vocal track that sounds like the Eagles on sleeping pills. Oooh sha la la the weather. She can take me over the rainbow, send me away. Like, laid back man! Here it is.

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Joey Gregorash does my favourite version.  It’s faster than the original, features scrubbed acoustic guitars, bongos and an angry wasp in a jar electric guitar sound. Dig it! Here! A fellow Canadian (like Neil Young, also from Winnipeg) Joey covered Down By The River in 1971. It was never intended for release until some sharp-eared record company executive thought the better of it. The radio stations then picked up on it and in classic style decided to play ‘Down By The River’ instead of Joey’s new single. Eventually the record company were forced to rush release an edited version of the album track and Joey’s 15 minutes of fame were complete. Add that to yer Wikipedia and smoke it!