2 Tone Records was the brainchild of Jerry Dammers, a reggae and ska fan from Coventry. More a culture mash than a culture clash, the label took the ideology and DIY aesthetics of punk, welded it to the Jamaican dance music that was prevalent in the multi-cultural Midlands and created the most exciting musical sound this writer had ever heard in his 10 short years on the planet.
It was almost too much for someone so young. That it happened to be the edgiest, most fashionable music of the era, with the razor-sharp creases on their Sta-Prest as razor-sharp as the attitudes of the folk wearing them, was neither here nor there. For me, 2 Tone was plain and simply exciting pop music, no different to Dog Eat Dog or Kids In America or Status Quo’s ‘Down Down‘.
2 Tone was initially conceived as a vehicle for Dammers to release his own Special AKA singles, but quickly became a collective that put out some of the most vital, insistent and exciting records of the era.
To keep the costs down, 2 Tone’s first release was a split release – ‘Gangsters‘ by The Special AKA on the one side (catalogue number TT1), with The Selecter’s eponymously-titled instrumental (catalogue number TT2) on the other.
The Special AKA. – Gangsters
The Selecter – The Selecter
The Special AKA’s track was the one favoured by DJs and went Top 10. The ‘flip’, not many realised, was actually a track without a band. John Bradbury, The Specials’ drummer played backing to a couple of local musicians who’d written the lilting instrumental based on the original ska records they heard around the city. When ‘Gangsters‘ became a hit, Dammers realised the need for an actual Selecter and, just as the pop impresarios of the previous decade had done, a Selecter was quickly formed.
With a strong emphasis on black and white, both in clothing and personnel, the bands on 2 Tone were coiled springs of energy, bobbing left, right and centre on their numerous Top of their Pops appearances. Suedeheads, pork pie hats and loafers became desirable items of want.
The suedehead was easy enough (though too severe for my mum’s liking (and mine, if truth be told) – I had a pre-Stone Roses bowl cut instead), Burtons sold tassled loafers and skinny black ties – next to the white shirts and sober suits in the ‘funeral’ section, believe it or not, but where in Irvine could you buy a pork pie hat?
Easier to get a hold of were the most important things – the records. Every Sauturday I’d run down to Walker’s at the Cross with my £1 pocket money and part with 99p of it in exchange for the latest 2 Tone 7″.
The Prince. Tears Of A Clown. Do Nothing. Stereotype. On My Radio. I had them all.
Then I gave them all away to a jumble sale that was raising money for Band Aid.
Regretted it ever since. I spent the early 90s sifting through boxes of singles at record fairs (remember them?) in the hope I’d turn up an old friend. Some I now own once again, but many still elude me, going for daft prices online. You live and learn, eh?
I’ve lived with The Beatles‘ Abbey Road for nigh on 30 years. I first heard it as a boggle-eyed (or should that be eared?) teenager via Irvine Library’s record lending service during my ‘sponge years’ when I soaked up everything and anything I thought I might like. Deep Purple? Nah. Cat Stevens? Nah. Pink Floyd? Some of it, not all of it. Status Quo? Aye! Too right! (The early ‘Quo, mind.)
Abbey Road was a whole different level of great though. It wasn’t the first Beatles album I’d heard. Or maybe it was. My dad had a compilation on cassette that played on regular rotation on the kitchen’s cassette player – it might’ve been the ‘Red’ one or the ‘Blue’ one, although I suspect it was probably a made up selection of songs someone had taped for him. Abbey Road, with it’s lack of ‘yeah yeah yeahs’ and guitar solos as long as the Fab Four’s hair seemed almost anti-pop, a grown-up album by grown-up musicians. I loved it.
The whole album didn’t quite fit onto the one side of a D90, but I taped it as far as it would go before the tape ran out. The other side of the tape probably had ‘No Parlez‘ by Paul Young or something equally horrible on it, so frustratingly, sacrilegiously, my version of the album always ran out just as Ringo’s drum solo in ‘The End‘ was reaching fever pitch.
It was only a few years later when I got the CD that I realised there was a hidden track of sorts at the very end. No doubt I’d have heard Her Majesty on the first listen of the knackered library copy I borrowed, but its misplaced positioning evaded my ears until I began buying CDs a few years later.
My CD copy of Abbey Road is as well-worn as a shiny plastic thing can get. These days you can count your plays on iTunes. Had this been the case years ago, I’d be well into triple figures with Abbey Road. I know it inside out and back to front. Or, at least, I thought I did.
Over Christmas I got my old turntable working again. I’ve always had a turntable, but in the year 1997 BC (Before Children, when I was relatively flush with cash) I upgraded to a decent separates system and I stupidly neglected to upgrade the turntable. It was all about CDs by then, y’see. When the well-worn Pioneer finally gave up the ghost, I was turntable-less for the next 15 and a half years.
I liberated the Dual deck from the stock room of the Our Price I worked in on the day I left. Long-since retired, it was an unloved relic of a bygone era, an era when Our Price sold only records, and gimmicky fashion statements such as Tamagochis and mobile phones had yet to be thought of. It was built like a tank though, designed to play records non-stop from 9-5.30, 6 days a week, with 4 extra hours every Sunday. A visit to the loft to retrieve it, followed by a couple of visits to YouTube (for instructions) and eBay (for a belt and stylus) and then followed by a bit of ham-fisted tinkering around with a can of electrical contact cleaner had it working like it was 1991 again. And music has never sounded better.
I recently got around to getting Abbey Road on vinyl. Not an original, it’s one of the remastered stereo versions from a few years ago. It sounds amazing! Bass and drums especially. They’re warm, dynamic and in-the-room there. I’m no audiophile, but from what I can tell, this version of the LP is brilliant. I’m all for listening to music on whatever format is available, be that hissy FM radio or hassle-free mp3, but for all its snap, crackle and pop, I love vinyl. There are few frills with Abbey Road. There’s no gatefold sleeve or fold-out lyric sheet. But the music is all you need. That second side, the medley, sounds incredible. It’s let me hear an album I thought I knew really well in a brand new, beautiful light. I must investiagte this new-fangled vinyl thing further…
Here’s Chuck Berry with YouCan’t Catch Me. Lennon borrowed half a line for Come Together and found himself on the wrong end of a law suit a year or so later. But you knew that already.
2016 has been a shitty year for musical deaths, but it’s also a year that holds much in the way of stellar resurrection. No pun intended.
Trashcan Sinatras begin a US tour tomorrow with Pledgers keen and eager to hear live versions of the excellent, slight change of direction new album they’ve been living with for a couple of weeks. Non-Pledgers have a few more weeks to bide their time before they can hear what all the fuss is about, but believe me, it’s worth the wait.
The ever-reliable Teenage Fanclub have a new LP due for imminent release. With fingers and toes crossed, I expect no less than three-part harmonies and all manner of chiming, fuzzing, clean-clanging vintage guitars.
Radiohead had the Internet and its granny in a big frothy lather last Sunday with their guerilla tactics when their new LP arrived virtually, welcomed with many open arms and followed by much over the top gushing praise. It’s a cracker of an album, maybe even album of the year. Each listen brings new things to the fore; subtleties, soundscapes rather than songs, much of the background electronica reminiscent of Brian Eno’s ‘Bloom‘ app. Seriously. I could listen to it for the next 4 months and still change my mind over which track is my favourite. Today it’s ‘Ful Stop‘. Tomorrow it’ll probably be ‘The Numbers‘. Or ‘Glass Eyes’. Or….
But The Stone Roses. Dear oh dear. Hopes were high. Not sky high. They’re the masters of the big letdown after all. I remember, pre internet days, turning gangs of lads away from the Our Price counter on Feb 14th 1992, the intended release date for the big ‘Love Spreads‘ comeback. The single (a magical comeback single, it must be said) finally crept out in November 1994.
Stone Roses – All For One
Stone Roses have only just gone and spectacularly pissed all over their legacy, submerged it totally in golden yellow effluence in fact, with a limp-wristed clunky identikit indie single that in the mid 90s would’ve struggled to find its way onto third place on a Seahorses CD single.
It’s rubbish.
Interestingly, it was premiered on also rubbish Radio 1, last relevant when Brown and co were casually throwing out spacedust-sprinkled pop nuggets with giddy abandon. Squire’s guitars do the clunk click every trip pseudo psychedelic riff. Guitar shop heroics that he should be well away from by now. He’s in his 50s, for crying out loud. Brown’s lyrics are laughable. “All for one and one for all. If we all hold hands we’ll make a wall.” Sweet baby Jesus. And Mary, mother of God. This is not the resurrection.
For a band who once glided effortlessly above and beyond pop cool, this is a divebomber of quite catastrophic proportions. Even those folk who’ve been going nuts for it on social media – y’know, the folk who like all kinds of music, ‘Kasabian, Noel G, everything, really,” will surely be feeling a wee bit short changed by now.
Best thing about the comeback? That the band chose to pose for a photo with my car in the background. My old Astra is far more of a banger than the single. It, my friends, is a total car crash. Biggest musical death of 2016? Aye, Bowie and Prince were shockers. But The Stone Roses have just trumped ’em all.
If I Could Only Remember My Name is the title of David Crosby‘s first solo LP. I like to think it’s so-titled because Crosby always seemed to be lightly toasted; a joker, smoker and midnight toker who always appeared just on the wrong side of frazzled. With his impish grin and walrus moustache, he’s always been a cartoonish figure, a happy hippy, a furry freak brother for real. His police mugshot from 1980 certainly adds fuel to the fire. This is the man of course who wrote ‘Almost Cut My Hair‘.
Despite – or perhaps as a direct result of this – If I Could Only Remember My Name just so happens to be a spectacular album.
Recorded at the beginning of the 70s, it’s the sound of Laurel Canyon looking inwards for inspiration. The personnel reads like a who’s who of all who were responsible for creating music in cosmic Ca-li-for-ni-aay; Joni and Neil, Jerry Garcia, half of Jefferson Airplane, the odd waif and stray moonlighting from Santana, they all combined talents over the course of the album, creating a super-stoned marker for the future of singer/songwriters everywhere.
The album is full of peaks and troughs, with fragile, Nick Drakeisms one moment making way for soaraway CSNY-ish harmonising vocals the next and delicately plucked acoustics that take a bell-bottomed step aside in favour of tastefully amped-up electrics. Wordless vocal passages, Gregorian Chants as sponsored by Rizzla, weave in and out like lightly-blown butterflies in a summer field. It’s a distilled microcosm of late 60s/early 70s, a fine balance of carefree troubadour tormented by inter-band tension.
With it’s sandpaper-smooth acoustic guitars and a hot-wired electric guitar forever on the point of teetering over the edge, second song in, Cowboy Movie, is the lo-fi scratchy half cousin of Neil Young‘s Down By the River. It’s over 8 minutes long, and not a second of the story, a metaphor for the in-band fighting that was going on at the time, is wasted.
David Crosby – Cowboy Movie
David Crosby – Traction In the Rain
Traction In The Rain rings with brightly strung, wonkily-tuned acoustic guitars, a close-miked, half-asleep vocal and tumbling harps. Very 70s hippy-shit. And very nice, man.
If this has whetted your appetite, the album is well worth buying. I think you’d like it.
So, the dust has settled on RSD ’16. That’s ‘S‘ for ‘Shop‘, by the way. ‘Store‘?!? Pfffffttt. Not in my house. I celebrated this year’s event not in the queue at my local record shop (we have a decent one in our town, but I wasn’t planning on getting into a scrum at half 7 in the morning), but rather up Goat Fell on the island of Arran. It’s classed as a large hill, I believe, not even Munro status, but let me tell you – I might’ve scrambled my way up a hill, but I came down a mountain. My legs are still aching as I type. At the top there are sensational views of the west of Scotland and beyond; in one 360° sweep you could see Bute and the mouth of the River Clyde, the two Cumbrae islands, the Mull Of Kintyre (no mist rolling in from the sea on this clear day) and there, on the horizon beyond Ailsa Craig, the east coast of Ireland, faint as a bookies’ pencil line on last week’s National betting slip, but there in front of the naked eye all the same. Arran’s jagged peaks below us made us feel as though we were on top of the world, perhaps the same feeling you might’ve experienced when you landed your grubby mitts on whatever slab of black plastic you were desperate to part upwards of £15 for yesterday. I dunno, but I’m pretty sure my experience just felt a lot more cleaner and honest.
Arran from the ferry home last night.
I’m not really a fan of RSD. I’m all for the promotion of record shops and music and buying records and all that, but I find the whole thing a ridiculous cash-in by everyone involved. Why would you pay silly money for a reissued Associates 7″ when you can pick an original copy up on eBay for 75p? I don’t get it. But I’m a total music snob – I love exclusivity and uniqueness, so I do kinda get it when bands release one-off tracks especially for the day. Last week I picked up Paul Weller‘s Flame-Out (from RSD ’14) for 99p. Couldn’t get it for love nor money two years ago, but there it was, sad and unloved (and still shrink-wrapped), some unscrupulous scalper’s failed pension plan cast adrift on eBay for eagle-eyed digital crate diggers like myself.
Maybe in a couple of years I’ll be able to pick up a mint copy of Primal Scream‘s offering for this year, a surprisingly good take on, of all things, S’Express’s Mantra For A State Of Mind. The original is terrific; end of the century disco music, all rinky dink Italo house piano, sugar coated in bleeps and whooshes and carried along on a wave of hysterical female backing vocals. If you listen very carefully you’ll hear the sound of Bobby G and co taking notes as they prepare to record Don’t Fight it, Feel It. How has no-one noticed this until now?
S’Express – Mantra For A State Of Mind (Elevation Mix, Parts 1 & 2)
Primal Scream slow things down rather a lot. Their version sounds like something they might’ve done 25 years ago and comes across like S’Express on Benylin. It’s got Spiritualized’s Jason Pierce on guitar duties and that very same hysterical lassie that S’Express used to beef up the original version. It‘s bloody magic, truth be told.
Primal Scream – Mantra For A State Of Mind
If you had the chance to talk to Bobby, he’d probably fix you straight in the eye and tell you straight-faced that their version was a punkrockdoowoppsychedelicatrippedoutcidhousepartycomedowngroove or other such bollocks, Little Richard jamming with Sun Ra and produced by Lee Perry, StonesWhoPistolsClash-influenced with, y’know, added bongos. But you know and I know that Bobby is now one big lanky streak of a caricatured stupidity, about as current as that Grand National bookies’ line I was talking about earlier. Primal Scream nowadays are a total irrelevance, with record sales as flimsy as Bobby’s fringe. Apart from Kasabian fans, who still likes them? If they made more records in the vein of Mantra, though, Primal Scream would still be hot property.
Right. I’m off to seek out that Radiohead 12″ from RSD ’12. I hope I get it before you.
Six Of The Best is a semi-regular feature that pokes, prods and persuades your favourite bands, bards and barometers of hip opinion to tell us six of the best tracks they’ve ever heard. The tracks could be mainstream million-sellers or they could be obfuscatingly obscure, it doesn’t matter. The only criteria set is that, aye, they must be Six of the Best. Think of it like a mini, groovier version of Desert Island Discs…
Nile Marr is the guitar player and vocalist in Man Made, one of the UK’s more interesting and most-likely to up-and-coming guitar bands. Arty, skewed and wonky riffs drive insistent, nagging songs about life and living in 2016. Theirs is a considered noise, with a real sense that although the guitars might occasionally veer left of centre, the melody is king. You’re never too far from a ‘woo-oooh‘ or a hookline or a repeating chorus. I think you’d like them.
Man Made – Carsick Cars
Man Made are currently on tour, promoting the imminent release of ‘TV Broke My Brain‘, their eagerly anticipated debut LP.
“The record is like the menu….here’s what we do. But live, that’s where the connection is. These songs have been recorded and re-recorded so many times. Every time we play live, the songs take new twists and turns so we book a studio and go back to re-do them. The album is absolutely us at our best….but come and see us live and you’ll get the real thing.“
The tour takes in many of the unfashionable corners of the UK (folk with a decent knowledge of lower league football will recognise most of the destinations) before it winds up in Irvine’s tiny but perfect Harbour Arts Centre on the last Tuesday of April. The HAC is a terrific place to catch a band. It’s whites-of-the-eyes small, the ‘stage’ is a space on the floor where local am-dram groups usually do their thang and, despite this, has hosted some of the best-known acts in the country. You should probably go…
*A wee aside. When I was younger, I remember my dad getting a pair of Adidas Kick and being really annoyed about it as he made mine instantly unwearable, even though I had to wear them as I had no other option. I spent my teens denying my parents’ record collection and being constantly red faced by the fact they’d been a working, gigging folk duo who had somehow famously shared the stage with Billy Connolly. In later years their Bob Dylan LPs would find their way into my record collection (they found them and took them back), and nowadays I’m quite proud of the Billy Connolly connection, but everybody needs to go through the ’embarrassing parents’ stage first, do they not?
Not Nile though. Nile, as you are no doubt aware, has supreme indie rock genes. He learned to play guitar with the help of his dad Johnny, was constantly exposed to decent music as a child, was encouraged to discuss what was being played and grew up with the total support of his cooler-than-cool parents. He lived first in Manchester then moved to Portland when his dad got the call asking him to work with Modest Mouse.
“Well, I still see him doing uncool stuff now and again, but can you imagine your dad joining your favourite band?!? I loved Modest Mouse. My dad said that he’d been asked to join them but wasn’t too aware of them. I was like, ‘Are you serious? You’ve gotta go!’. Growing up in the Pacific North West, in Portland, was fantastic. I was transplanted to a whole different music scene populated by musical heavyweights.
I call my time in Portland my ‘Sponge Years’ – y’know that stage in your life when you’re trying to work out your identity and who you are, soaking up all those influences and deciding which ones fit you the best? Portland and its music scene really made me who I am today.
I developed my work ethic from bands like Fugazi and Modest Mouse. They were based an entire continent away from the music capitals and spent their whole existence booking their own shows, getting in their van and driving thousands of miles, sleeping on floors, taking things into their own hands. Keeping it D.I.Y. and lo-fi is what Man Made is all about.”
Nile goes about his business in Man Made with admirable stubbornness. They follow the Fugazi touring model. They’re vegan. They don’t drink. Theirs is a totally immersed-in-the-band way of life. “It would be nice now and again to maybe spend a night in a Travelodge or wherever, but doing that probably takes us away from places we’d otherwise play. It’s pretty great being on tour.“
His one concession to glitz is his famous gold jacket. “It belonged to a fashion student friend of mine, and she was going to cut it up. I wore it to the support show I was playing that night, just myself and my acoustic guitar, and every single person that came into the venue noticed me before anything else. People now identify with it. I played a show recently in my ‘civilian clothes’ but it didn’t feel right. I need to dress up for the stage. I always said I’d wear the gold jacket until I’d made my point. I’ve retired it now. I have something else…“
Growing up in such interesting circumstances has certainly helped shape Nile’s musical influences. “I’ve seen photos of myself when I was very young, interacting with vinyl, holding it, looking at the sleeve or whatever, but the 1st record I truly owned was Bob Dylan’s ‘Desire’. I played it constantly. There’s such a richness of story telling there. My dad’s music and the records he played certainly gave me a framework of musical references. But I also like the fact I turn my Dad on to certain things – Modest Mouse, for example – and he’d never played a Fender Mustang guitar until he’d seen mine…. (Johnny playing Nile’s Mustangs led him on to the Jaguar, now of course his guitar of choice.)
Most of my favourite bands are from the USA. It’s a really difficult choice to pick just 6 records, but if forced to, these are the six that I identify with the most…“
As Nile runs through a very considered list, it strikes me that while I’m familiar with all the bands on here, there are only 2 tracks I’ve actually heard. “Well, you’re in for a right treat this afternoon,” he replies. And so are you…
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Modest Mouse – Dramamine
For the first song on your first album, you’re putting yourself out there with a real statement of intent – “This is us and this is where we come from.” I miss being in America; the culture, the people, the scenery when you’re on those long drives. Hearing someone sing about that part of the world makes me feel like I’m there.
Interestingly, the album in question is called ‘This Is A Long Drive For Someone With Nothing To Think About‘. But you probably knew that already.
Broken Social Scene – Anthems For A Seventeen Year Old Girl
Broken Social Scene mean so much to me. Talk about records that change your life?!? Wow! I’d never heard anything like Broken Social Scene. Musically and melodically I’m just trying my best to do what they do. Making art in your head and have it come out the way you intended it to – everything I ever wanted to do melodically is in this song. One day…one day, I’ll write a song as good as this.
Bikini Kill – In Accordance To Natural Law
This song is 30 seconds long but it’s one of the best songs ever. You can say everything you need to say, do everything you need to do in 30 seconds. Anything shorter is just silly. What’s amazing is that this is a fully-formed song. It’s so bad badass – girls are way harder than the boys. They do this stuff waaaaaay better than boys ever could. The first time I heard this song, it made me cry. I just couldn’t believe what I’d heard.
B52s – 52 Girls
This is on their first album, the one with the yellow cover. ’52 Girls’ is punk rock, but weird punk rock. Art rock. That’s what I want to do. I’m not an angry punk. I like weird. As a guitar record, this is fantastic.
Fugazi – Slo Crostic
This is an instrumental. It’s all about the guitars. It came out of a live jam. It says so much musically about where I want to go; the weaving guitars, politically how they conduct themselves, no alcohol. There can be a real pressure to conform to that lad-sh, drinking culture. The band who don’t drink but are better than anyone else who does. Fugazi are the kings!
Yeah Yeah Yeahs – 10 x 10
Nick Zinner is the best example of a modern guitar player. There’s no flash.There are no cliches. No rock poses. He’s the most unrockist guitar player around, yet Yeah Yeah Yeahs totally rock. The whole EP this track is from (Is Is) is so guitar heavy. They’re a real important band.
So there you have it – 6 tracks of modern American punk that shaped Nile Marr into the musician he is today. Listen to Man Made’s album (out at the end of April to avoid the Record Store Day “consumer-fest“around its originally-planned release), and you’ll spot all these references plus, with the occasional chiming guitar and lightly fuzzed two string riff, the odd tip of the hat to the old man.
You can catch Man Made (and check out Nile’s new stage wear) on April 26th when they wind up their tour with the only west of Scotland date at the excellent Harbour Arts Centre in Irvine. Tickets can be purchased here. I’ll see you down the front.
Half a century ago this week, The Beatles were in the studio recording the tracks that would make up their Revolver LP. Amazingly, the first track worked on was Tomorow Never Knows, the cut ‘n paste, experimental, looped track that still sounds futurtistic, frightening and like nothing else in the entire Beatles’ canon. It was only three short and manic years since She Loves You, but it may as well have been three million light years, such is the leap in their vision and outlook. You could be forgiven for assuming that for the session the band reconvened in Abbey Road’s Studio 3 with a handful of solo acoustic tracks just waiting to be Beatlefied. Nothing could be further from the truth.
For Tomorrow Never Knows, the band set up in the studio to jam the main backing track, with Ringo’s compressed and relentless thunk driving the track in tandem with McCartney’s droning bass. Listen with eyes closed and you’ll hear a little organ, a wonky tonk piano in the fade out, a perisitent rattling tambourine and a couple of guitar tracks; the fuzzed out one manipulated to play backwards and the other fed through a Leslie speaker to give it that widescreen swirl that would in time become synonymous with the era.
On top of it all there are sound effects that could well be the calling sound of the Great God Pan himself; Fanfaring trumpet noises. Scraping, sweeping, jarring strings and what sounds like the divebombing seagulls that bother the fish and chip eaters at Largs shorefront. It’s fairly astonishing for 2016. Imagine hearing it for the first time in 1966. Wow!
The Beatles – Tomorrow Never Knows (released mono version)
Making the track involved more than just the four Beatles – George Martin orchestrated the whole affair, ably assisted by Beatles’ engineer Geoff Emerick who’s job involved deadening Ringo’s drum sound by stuffing an old jumper inside the bass drum and shuffling it about until the right sound was achieved. The backing track took just three takes over 2 days to perfect, before Lennon’s vocals were given the requisite attention.
Famously, Lennon’s lyrics came from Timothy Leary’s LSD manifesto, ‘The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based On The Tibetan Book Of The Dead‘ and flowed in a stream of epoch-defining consciousness…
“Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream,
It is not dying, it is not dying.
Lay down all thought, surrender to the void, It is shining, it is shining.
That you may see the meaning of within, It is being, it is being.
That love is all and love is everyone, It is knowing, it is knowing.
That ignorance and hate may mourn the dead, It is believing, it is believing.
But listen to the colour of your dream, It is not living, it is not living.
Or play the game ‘Existence’ to the end,
Of the beginning, of the beginning.”
At the mixing desk, after hearing how the guitar track sounded through the Leslie speaker, Lennon insisted his vocals were given the same treatment. “I want to sound as though I’m the Dalai Lama singing from the highest mountain top. And yet I still want to hear the words I’m singing.”
It’s also been said that John wanted the sound of 4000 monks chanting ad infinitum in the background. I’m not certain he achieved either goal, but what was eventually committed to vinyl was brave, bold and big of beat.
Here’s the druggy, fuggy first take:
The Beatles – Tomorrow Never Knows (Take 1)
Keen-eared Beatles spotters will be aware that the first copies of Revolver were sold with the wrong mix of Tomorrow Never Knows included. These records were quickly withdrawn and recalled, although not before a good many had disappeared into the hands of unsuspecting record buyers. Discovering this a few years ago, with shaky hand I checked the matrix number on the run-out groove of my ‘first’ pressing Revolver, bought for £4 in Irvine Indoor Market in the mid 80s when the Beatles were anything but cool. Pah. One digit out. Meaning it wasn’t technically a first issue, and nor was it worth the £20,000 it might have been. I wouldn’t have sold it anyway*.
Back in Abbey Road’s Studio 3, just after half seven that evening when Tomorrow Never Knows had been expertly finished, the band veered back towards the middle of the road to tackle Got To Get You Into My Life, another drug-inspired song and another story for another day.
Just out of shot, a young Paul Weller, keen to rip off George’s Taxman and apparently, his entire wardrobe.
If you’re a fan of soul music, in particular the sweet, high falsetto’d restrained soul of Curtis Mayfield or Prince when he’s in a wooin’-the-laydeez kinda mood, you could do worse than discover Didn’t I by Darondo.
Darondo – Didn’t I
It‘s quite possibly the finest slice of underground soul that ever was; a sparse minor chord-led groove, all frugging bass, doo-wop intro and call and response vocals, with a gutteral grunt one line followed by that high! high!! high!!! falsetto the next. There’s a subtle string section shimmering its way through the background, the odd flute and oodles of proper soul.
It first came to my attention a few years ago when Teenage Fanclub’s Gerry Love selected it as one of his Six Of The Bestfor this very blog. It was very likely a record that in its own small way influenced Gerry’s only solo LP, the terrific Lightships album. It too has a fair sprinkling of flute and plenty of pastoral strings while spinning at a relaxed pace. Ever since Gerry mentioned it, it’s lain in that dark corner of the blog, discovered only occasionally by a few very specific Googlers or in-depth readers each month. The time is long overdue to give the record its rightful place in the spotlight.
Born William Daron Pulliam jnr, the teenage William ran the streets, where he went by the name of Daron, a name soon augmented to Daron-do on account of him always having a pocketful of dough. Quite where that dough came from is anyone’s guess. There are rumours a-plenty that he was a pimp before he was a musician, and judging by the pictures above and below, you could well believe that. He certainly dressed like one, and the white Rolls Royce Silver Shadow (personal license plate not shown) adds to the notion. He gigged sparingly, was classically ripped off by his label and disappeared almost as quickly as he’d arrived. In-between having a nervous breakdown, travelling the world by cruise ship and being mistaken for Little Richard, he studied and qualified as a physiotherapist, a job he does to this day. In my house, though, he’ll always be known as the one that got away. On the evidence of Didn’t I and Legs, below, he coulda been another Sly.
Dig it, brothers and sisters. I told you you’d like it. Didn’t I?
Telephone Operator by Pete Shelley gallops along like a post-punk, electro mash up of The Osmonds’ Crazy Horses and Take Me I’m Yours by Squeeze. Shelley is in full-on sneering-camp mode and as the record plays, you can just picture him looking side-on to an imaginary camera, left eyebrow slightly raised, arch and knowing.
It’s post punk and therefore post Buzzcocks, but it’s lost none of the key ingredients forever associated with his part in the punk Beatles – a nagging riff (played on synth rather than guitar), a melody with more hooks than a metre of Velcro and a sensational production courtesy of Mancunian marvel Martin Rushent. The track practically bursts out of the speakers with its room-filling throb. I think you’d like it.
Pete Shelley – Telephone Operator
There’s also a Dub Version that can be found in the darkest corners of the ‘net. I’m not certain in what capacity it was released as it doesn’t appear on the b-side of the 7″ I have. It’s hardly essential – lots of echoey guitar riffs, some bloops and bleeps and sweeping synths, but sadly, none of the magic that makes the original version such a brilliant record.
Pete Shelley – Telephone Operator (Dub Version)
Telephone Operator is taken from Shelley’s second solo LP, XL-1, a loose-concept album that originally came with a programme that allowed you to play it via your ZX Spectrum (the iPad of 1983, kids), where lyrics and graphics would appear on-screen in time to the music. Ahead of the game, then, although the record buying public failed to engage with it. Four weeks after release, XL-1 had dropped out the charts, never to be seen again. Telephone Operator was the ‘big’ single from it, crashing in at a lowly 66 before vanishing likewise.
Despite this, Shelley’s post-Buzzcocks output is quite interesting and definitely worth investigating. He knows his way around a pop melody and has a sound that is defiantly his. The Buzzcocks may be the act that keeps him in new shoes, but there’s plenty other interesting stuff with his name attached to it.
*Bonus Track!
Here‘s long-gone nobodies Big Dipper with their take on Homosapien, Shelley’s first solo single and a song that suffered from a BBC ban at the time due to some fruity lyrics and allusions to same-sex sex (‘Homo Superior, In My Interior‘).
Riding a bike at top speed and slightly out of control was the greatest thrill as a youngster, the first truly independent feeling you could experience. In 1977, the Sillars Meadow speedway was where you’d mostly find me, gripping the handlebars of my Puch Mini Sprint with white knuckles, hayfevered eyes focused on the snaking path ahead, tearing into the blind corners with carefree abandon, hoping to avoid Mrs Robertson, her Thatcher do and her yappy dog on the tightest part where the path narrowed into one ‘lane’ – a particularly tricky bit. There was always a bit of a competition to see who could get round the speedway the fastest. Three things helped; Mrs Robertson not being there, having absolutely no fear and sticking half a fag packet into the spokes. Ratta-ratta-ratta! it went, adding at least 0.5 mph to the top speed of your bike. That ratta-ratta-ratta sound was something that would make a continual, welcome and comforting appearance throughout my life.
This June (16th, to be exact) sees the 30th (30th!!!) anniversary of The Queen Is Dead. There will no doubt be many reappraisals and celebrations for TQID nearer the time. I for one will no doubt change my Facebook profile pic to that of the LP cover signed by Johnny Marr. Did I ever tell you I met Johnny? I’m sure I mentioned it in passing somewhere. Hovering over the Salford Lads Club picture with my sharpie he tutted and said, “I never liked myself in that picture…I look better now than I did then…“, flipped the cover shut and signed across the iconic image of the horizontal Alain Delon. It looks as beautiful as the album sounds.
Anyway, on that very same day (16th June 1986) another landmark LP was released. It’s likely little fanfare will be blasted in its honour, but in my house at least, a wee portion of the day will be given over to it.
The Woodentops‘ Giant was, and still is, a terrific-sounding album. Played expertly with loose limbs and rubber wrists, it’s a giddy 100mph rush from start to finish, a downhill-without-the-brakes-on blur of ferociously-scrubbed acoustic guitars, proto dance rhythms and hypnotic, skittering drums. Ratta-ratta-ratta they go. Except for on the really fast ones, when they sound like someone’s dropped a box of steel marbles across a kitchen floor. These days I cycle to the metronomic rhythms of Underworld and their ilk, soundtracking my journeys as I pedal along the highways and byways of the west of Scotland’s cycle paths, but had the technology been available in the 1970’s, I’d have been soundtracking and breaking world records on the Sillars Meadow speedway to the frantic clatter of The Woodentops.
The Woodentops – Get It On
The Woodentops – Shout
The Woodentops – Everything Breaks
Loved by Morrissey, and ergo by the indie crowd, their tunes were later adopted by the Ibiza faithful, where DJs with eclectic taste would seamlessly mix them into their playlists with carefree abandon. A few short years later, every band within half a mile of a wah-wah pedal and a 2nd hand copy of James Brown’s ‘Funky Drummer‘ were claiming they’d always had a dance element to their music, but for The pioneering Woodentops, there was no pretence.
Their music is marvellous stuff and none of it has aged in the slightest. Giant is an album I always come back to. Maybe not that regularly any more, but at least once a year it’ll come out and get stuck on. And while it plays I do that rarest of things. I sit and listen. I don’t get the iron out or watch a soundless telly. I don’t flick through Mojo with half an ear on the music and half an eye on the crossword. I sit in the stripey chair and listen. It’s an extremely hard thing to do. Half All the tracks are super-percussive, highly danceable and totally singalongable. If you’ve never had the pleasure of the album, or any of the rest of the band’s stellar back catalogue, it’s never too late to get on board. You can find most of it in all the usual places, I’m sure.
The Woodentops are playing a few celebratory gigs around the date to mark the occasion. Having never seen the band perform, I’m keen to get to one. If they’re near you, I urge you to go too. You can check here.
Plain Or Pan 