Plain Or Pan

Spooktime

July 14, 2014 Craig McAllister

“What’s the first song you’re gonna do for us?”

“It’s The Mekons….It’s called Ghosts Of American Astronauts…”

Trash Can Sinatras – Ghosts Of American Astronauts (Radio Session)

And off they go, the Trash Can Sinatras jangling away with an easy fluidity that comes from years of playing together. I don’t like that word ‘jangling‘. It conjours up images of spotty boys with greasy fringes singing about the unattainability of girls called Emily or whoever. But this track is the essence of jangling. It’s a beauty.

When I first heard the Trashcans doing it, taped in the moment from (I think) a Johnny Walker BBC Radio 2 session, I thought it was the best thing they’d ever done. And it wasn’t even their song. I’d heard of The Mekons. A country-ish, new wave-ish band from somewhere in the north of England, but I’d never actually heard them. Country-ish didn’t register with me then, and to be honest, it still doesn’t register with me now. There are exceptions of course, but overall? Nah.

I played the TCS version endlessly. This was the Trashcans at their peak. Ghosts Of American Astronauts sounded great – the band perfectly captured forever. I could actually see the band in my head as it played, Paul, head bowed in his suit jacket, firing of the wee electric guitar riff. Stephen, bendy of neck and floppy of limbs, recreating the original’s tumbling drum rolls. Frank, voice coated in layers of echo, standing off-mike and taking a step forward every now and again to get the dynamics in his voice. John would be somewhere stage right, glancing now and again at Davy as they kept the rhythm rattling forwards.

Recorded around the time of A Happy Pocket (great songs written under greatly difficult circumstances), everything the Trashcans recorded at this point in time was solid gold. Every b-side that accompanied the Happy Pocket singles could’ve been an a-side in their own right. That they were displaced as b-sides is testimony to the band’s quiet belief that they were expert songwriters. A loudmouth like Noel Gallagher would’ve casually said “there’s plenty more where that came from“, but the Trashcans are not the sort of band that blow their own trumpet. At this point in time they were riding the crest of a wave. A wave that would test them somewhat for the next few years, but there and then the Trashcans were superior to anyone else putting out records. You knew that already, though.

Fast forward to 2004, and the band, label-less and a some-time 4 piece found themselves in New York recording what would become the follow-up to Weightlifting (the band’s high water mark) and supplementing the cost of living by playing the odd acoustic show. The ‘Fez‘ album, available here is an excellent document of the time. Recorded at one of the Fez shows (but not released) was another version of Ghosts Of American Astronauts.

Trash Can Sinatras – Ghosts Of American Astronauts (Live at Fez, New York December 2004)

You can tell a lot about a band from their choice of covers. The Trashcans have tackled a fair few in their time and they always like to add their own unique stamp to it. Imagine my surprise then, when years later I discovered The Mekons’ original version via the world wide web. The Trashcan’s version is something of a carbon copy. Why would you want to mess with anything as good as this though?

The Mekons – Ghosts Of American Astronauts

Cover Versions, Get This!, Gone but not forgotten, Hard-to-find

Be Fancy Free To Call The Tune You Sing

June 30, 2014 Craig McAllister

That’s Moondog, the blind composer, poet and inventor of all sorts of weird ‘n wacky instruments. For twenty or so years he lived on the streets of New York, sometimes dressed head to toe in full-on Viking garb, earning himself the title ‘The Viking of 6th Avenue‘. Moondog always composed his musique concrète from the street sounds of daily Big Apple life, turning honking traffic horns and street corner spats into snaking, rhythmic pieces of music. The most cult of cult figures, he makes Yoko Ono come across like Will.I.Am by comparison.

Moondog Do Your Thing:

1978’s H’art Songs featured Do Your Thing, a childish, reedy-vocalled, piano-led baroquish, sunshine piece of pop that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on The Kinks’ We Are The Village Green Preservation Society LP.

As a one-off curio, it’s a nice wee song. And while I can’t vouch for the rest of Moondog’s output, I suspect it’s perhaps not as accessible as Do Your Thing. One person who might know is Gerry Love, who’s Lightships project first brought Do Your Thing to my attention.

Lightships Do Your Thing:

Lightships‘ version comes vibrating out of the haze towards you, shimmering softly in the July heat like a frisbee forever floating, edges morphing out of shape under the glare of the midday sun with three chords, double-tracked whispered vocals and a tinkling glockenspiel with its arm wrapped around a twanging guitar for comfort. It calls to mind the hissing of summer lawns, the far-off laughs of children and melted tarmac on the pavement. Your hayfevered eyes and nose might be flowing uncontrollably like a mountain stream but this record will surely cure you. I could listen to it forever.

One of the high points of a ridiculously brilliant project, Gerry Love’s transcendent cover of Do Your Thing first appeared a couple of years ago on the b-side (the b-side!!) of the Sweetness In Her Spark single, tucked away for the ears of only trainspotters and completists. The true sound of summer, now is the time to liberate it.

Cover Versions, Hard-to-find

Spy Stone

June 22, 2014 Craig McAllister

See this World Cup? It’s fairly playing havoc with my writing schedule. Anyway, watchin’ that Fellaini fella play for Belgium earlier on had me reaching for my Sly Stone *LPs.

Sly Stone‘s 4th album with the Family Stone was Stand!, an LP choc-full of call-and-response male/female vocals, fuzz bass, horn blasts and a swaggering pop funk that’s untouchable. When highlighting the genius of Sly, the critics will always go for the moody, lo-fi introspective paranoia of There’s A Riot Goin’ On, but if you want an album to soundtrack your summer, you need only reach for Stand!

As well as the title track, the LP hurtles along on a wave of prime-time Sly – Sing A Simple Song, Everyday People, Don’t Call Me Nigger Whitey, I Want To Take You Higher. All tracks I’m sure you’re familiar with. Tucked away in the middle of the first side is the album’s hidden masterpiece – Somebody’s Watching You.

Always missing from the various Sly ‘Best Ofs’ that clutter up the virtual racks of hyperspace, Somebody’s Watching You deserves your attention. It’s Sly in miniature – songbird-sweet female vocals filling the gaps between Sly’s bottom-of-a-well baritone, a horn section that parps away in happiness exelsius, a choppy, descending guitar riff, with a tasteful electric piano and organ fleshing the whole thing out. The fact that Sly had the genius to add the poetically rhythmic Shady As A Lady In A Moustache line makes it even better.

Sly & The Family Stone – Somebody’s Watching You

Those songbird-sweet vocals were provided by Sly’s little sister Vaetta and her 2 gospel-loving pals Mary and Elva. They were collectively known as Little Sister and provided backing vocals on much of the Family Stone’s output from Stand! onwards.

With a bit of commercial success under his belt, Sly brokered a deal with Atlantic Records that would allow him to write and produce (and occasionally feature on) tracks by other artists.

Between the release of 1969’s Stand! and it’s 1970/71 follow-up There’s A Riot Goin’ On, he recorded and released 2 Little Sister singles. The first, You’re The One, was Sly-lite r’nb funk by numbers, all popping bass and groovy bass runs.

The second was an astonishing version of Somebody’s Watching You. Often credited as being the first track to feature the rudimentary beat of the nascent drum machine, Little Sister’s Somebody’s Watching You is darker and moodier than the original but no less than 100% Sly. Sparse and skeletal, there’s nothing much to it at all. It starts as if half-way through, with the girls’ whispered vocals and murky instrumentation drawing you in. A guitar wah-wahs until then end of never and the Fender bass is set to ‘groovy’ once more. The whole thing is over and done with in less than 3 minutes. Hardly the perfect pop song, but highly influential – the girls’ falsettos coupled with the funk instrumentation and gentle pitter-patter of the drum machine could almost be a blueprint for Prince – you can practically hear him writing The Ballad Of Dorothy Parker as this record spins.

Little Sister – Somebody’s Watching You

Click here to read more about the recording of Sly’s There’s A Riot Going On. It’ll help you make sense of the advert below…

*Aye, OK. I stuck them on the trusty old iPod while I painted my knackered and faded garden furniture. Looks great now. If anyone would like to give me some Sly Stone vinyl, feel free to get on touch.

Cover Versions, Gone but not forgotten, Hard-to-find

“I Suffer From Asthma. The Only Drugs I Have Are For That.”

June 10, 2014June 10, 2014 Craig McAllister

What a wheeze, Brian Jones.

1967 was The Summer Of Love, although for the Rolling Stones it was anything but. By now, Brian was an extreme liability. Totally lost to drugs, puffy-eyed footage of the time shows him incapable of doing practically anything. His knack of being able to get a tune out of any exotic instrument hadn’t quite deserted him yet. Otherwise, he’d have been kicked out of his own band earlier than he eventually was. A trip to Tangier with doppelganger girlfriend Anita Pallenberg ended with Anita returning to Britain in the arms of Keith, who’d circled the troubled couple like a shark sniffing blood. Band dynamics, unsurprisingly, were irreparably damaged forever.

Amidst the chaos, the Stones found time to travel far and wide, not in the sense of a touring pop group, but as well-moneyed young tourists. Marrakesh became a favourite haunt. There, they’d met a dealer who introduced them to hashish, importing the drug back into Britain in the soles of custom-made shoes. At a party at Redlands, Keith’s very big house in the country, the Stones plus their girlfriends were subjected to a raid by police acting on a tip-off. The tabloids of the day set right into the Stones, with outlandish stories of a drug-taking, naked orgy. ‘Nude Girl At Stones’ Drugs Party‘ , ‘Why Girl Was Wearing Only Rug‘, ‘”Merry Nude” In Slipping Rug‘. Nothing much has changed, eh?

During the ensuing trial, prosecutors claimed that the only woman in the house, Marianne Faithful, was dressed in nothing but a fur rug that she let slip occasionally. They claimed that her lack of inhibition was a clear sign she was under the influence of drugs, specifically cannabis. Let’s face it, she probably was. By the end of the trial, the Stones were made examples of. Mick and Keith were subsequently sentenced to jail, Mick for 3 months for possession of amphetamines and Keith for 12, for allowing cannabis to be smoked in his home. Immediately they appealed against their sentence.

Pop fans and friends in high places voiced their opinions. Keith Moon and girlfriend Kim Kerrigan joined in the protests. William-Rees Mogg, the editor of The Times famously wrote an editorial that argued the Stones’ case, saying that if Mick and Keith were jailed they’d be seen as martyrs to a cause, and that would not help the anti-drugs movement in any way, shape or form. The Stones continued to craft out half-hearted tracks for their forthcoming Satanic Majesties Request LP, the shadow of the gaoler hanging grimly upon their shoulder. It wouldn’t be until the end of July that their appeal would be upheld.

Free men by August, Mick, Keith and the rest of the Stones gathered to create one of their most astonishing pieces of music.

Rolling Stones – We Love You

We Love You was recorded as a ‘thank you‘ to the fans who’d stood by them. Beginning with the clattering of a jail door and a nagging, repetitively hypnotic Nicky Hopkins piano line, it‘s a droning, paranoid anthem of defiance, a two-fingered salute to the establishment who’d tried and failed to squash them.

A barely functioning Brian hammers out a wonky mellotron riff that parps throughout like the wasted half-cousin of The Beatles’ All You Need Is Love and the backing vocals (featuring an uncredited Lennon and McCartney ‘conducted’ by a visiting Allen Ginsberg) slur and slide into oblivion.

“They looked like little angels,” Ginsberg wrote later of the Stones and Beatles, “like Botticelli Graces singing together for the first time.”

Bill Wyman’s bassline that plays just behind the piano riff is in equal parts terrifying and extraordinary, creating a level of helpless claustrophobia that’s not been matched since. Keys jangle menacingly, gaolers’ footsteps echo throughout and the whole thing swirls down the plughole with a Made In Marrakesh fuzz guitar overload.

The band even went so far as to make a promotional video to accompany it. Aping their recent trials and tribulations, no-one at the BBC dared show it. The least poppiest of Stones singles to date (their 13th), it peaked at a disappointing number 8 in the UK.

* Bonus Track!

For a brief moment in time between ’89 and ’90, my friends and I deserted the favoured local indie disco for the far more exotic charms of the Metro in Saltcoats, a sticky-carpeted former old cinema where I’d seen Star Wars in the first week of release. The Metro was packed full of brickies, bastards and jail bait but had an anything goes policy to what was loosely termed ‘dance music’. Two years later and it’d be a hell hole, but for a brief moment in time it shone as brightly as the summer sun. The Strangler’s Peaches bassline played out behind some generic four-to-the-floor dance beat one memorable night. One other time they played this…

4 For Money – It’s A Moment In Time

Sampling a sped-up We Love You piano riff and adding a gospelly male shouter on top was hardly groundbreaking (and these days it sounds fairly rubbish) but when first heard this track was everything we wanted. A dance beat. And the Stones. And we were sure that no-one else inside the Metro knew it was a Stones’ track. The snobs that we were.

Alternative Version, demo, Gone but not forgotten, Hard-to-find, studio outtakes

It Was Plenty Years Ago Today

June 2, 2014June 3, 2014 Craig McAllister

A few years ago I had the notion that I’d start a semi-regular feature punningly titled ‘It Was Plenty Years Ago Today’. It would focus on Beatles‘ recordings from that day in Beatles’ history, in particular the individual takes that never made it beyond Abbey Road’s cutting room floor. Books such as Ian MacDonald’s Revolution In The Head are excellent chronicles of what happened when in Beatleland and I had every intention of building up a right good wee series on the back of it. However, lack of time and lazyitis (coupled with the fact that most of the time I just fancy writing about something else) combined to ensure this series would never quite get off the ground, but here, today, I bring you another one in this very sporadic series.

Druggy, fuggy, and slightly Eastern-sounding, It’s All Too Much was born in the summer of 1967, just as an unprepared world was anticipating the release of the Sgt Peppers album. Pencilled in for inclusion on the Beatles’ next project (Magical Mystery Tour) it didn’t see the light of day until the Yellow Submarine soundtrack was released in January 1969. In Beatles terms, that’s an awful long time from written-to-released. Why? The answer is simple – it wasn’t written by Lennon or McCartney. George always had to play second fiddle to his two elder bandmates. He’d had his own Blue Jay Way appear on Magical Mystery Tour, and one George song per album was the norm.

It’s All Too Much

One of George’s best compositions, composed whilst in the midst of a heavy LSD trip (and it sounds it), It’s All Too Much is a microcosm of all that’s best in Beatles psychedelia, grooving along on a one chord bed of feedback, clattering drums, stabbing keyboard and wonky sounding backwards guitars. The production is, I think, intentionally cluttered – It’s All Too Much after all – but that’s why it’s stood the test of time. Each repeated listen brings new things. Hidden depths of sound float to the surface; A full-fat fuzz bass pops itself in and out of the mix. Slightly out of time handclaps catch up with George singing bits of The Mersey’s Sorrow. Trumpets apeing Jeremiah Clarke’s Prince Of Denmark March (you’ll recognise it if you’ve ever seen the pomp and ceremony of a Royal wedding) fanfare your arrival into a higher state of consiousness. Almost half a century later, it sounds new! and fresh! and now! The Flaming Lips would give everything to sound like this.

It’s All too Much is one of the few Beatles tracks not to have been recorded at Abbey Road. Why it was recorded instead at Soho’s De Lane Lea Studios is unclear, but that’s where it was hatched. And plenty years ago today on the 2nd June 1967, those trumpet overdubs were completed. At 8 minutes long the track fell foul of the Beatles editing process. One and a half mind-expanding minutes were chopped out of the mix, leaving the released version a shorter 6 and half minutes long. Still a trip, just not as long a trip as George would’ve liked you to have.

The full length version has been bootlegged countless times…

It’s All Too Much ( ‘Much Too Much‘ unreleased version)

Teenage Fanclub‘s Gerry Love is a big fan of It’s All Too Much. He even went so far as to include it in his very own Six Of The Best mix for Plain Or Pan, saying “The Beatles had more than their fair share of groundbreaking productions, but this is by far my favourite.” Me too Gerry!

Live!

Who Says A Funk Band Can’t Play Rock Music?

May 27, 2014May 27, 2014 Craig McAllister

So. Prince at the Hydro. I’ve seen Prince before, but never in a venue that looks exactly from the outside like the newly-grown 70’s ‘fro on his funky little head. Being my first visit to the Hydro, I was largely impressed; decent leg room and comfy chairs with a terrific view and a beer for £4, although I felt slightly detached from the whole thing. The standing area was clearly the place to be and from our not-so-lofty postion in Level 2, you had the feeling of watching people at a gig, rather then being the people at the gig, if that makes sense.

Musically, Prince is on a whole other level to any other act on the planet. He and his band 3rdeyegirl have the knack of firing off riff-heavy rock tunes, tear-soaked soul ballads and elastic band-bass funk monsters, often within the space of the same song. And if all that has you breaking out in a rash of Red Hot Chili Pepper proportions, fear not. He has one of the greatest back catalogues in popular music (“D’you have any idea just how many hits I got? We could be here all night!”) and over the next 2 and a half hours much of it gets a good airing.

Beginning with the double wham-bam slam of a slowed down and sludgy, Stooges-heavy Let’s Go Crazy and a bright ‘n breezy Take Me With U, Prince sets his stall out from the off. Tonight is going to be very heavy on the hits and even heavier on the guitars. Raspberry Beret, U Got The Look and Kiss all fly by in an anabolic rush of thundering drums and Hendrix guitars. Now and again he’ll shout for “Donna!”, 3rdeyegirl’s axe wielder, all outgrown Phil Oakey 80’s haircut and sprayed-on lycra to take the lead, and she’ll oblige with a screaming tantrum of a solo. The crowd (and Prince) lap it up, but part of me grimaces. “Eurovision power ballad,” I say at one point to Mrs Pan, and for once she agrees. But that’s a minor complaint as the hits keep a-comin’…..

Little Red Corvette, a sublime full band version of Nothing Compares To U, 1999 (Mommee! Why does everybody have a bomb?” (He did that bit!)). Mid way through, the band exit, Prince takes to stage right, “House lights down, please!”, fires up a primitive drum machine and blasts out shards of white-hot skeletal funk into the darkness – Sign ‘O’ The Times, Hot Thing, I Would Die For You. The whole thing is fast becoming one of my top 3 gigs ever when he stops to talk to the audience. “30 years ago, this was the sound of the summer…” and right on cue the shredding electric guitar intro to When Doves Cry rips the roof off. I have an immediate Pavlovian rush of listening to a warped and stretched old C90 playing the same track on my Grundig music centre through my headphones when I was supposed to be sleeping. Jesus! He even hits the falsettos like it’s 1984 again. Prince is on fire. His voice sounds strong and exactly like the records. Better, even. He’s clearly enjoying himself throughout, dropping to his knees, James Brown style at the slow parts, dancing the mashed potato during the more groove-based musical interludes or walking out to one of his two podiums to rattle off another effortlessly flash solo at lightning speed. For me, the whole gig hung on a terrifically inspired cover of Tommy James and the Shondells‘ old bubblegum hit Crimson And Clover. Prince dragged it out, adding psychedelic flourishes at the slow bits and Hendrixifying it here and there with the odd Wild Thing riff. “I think I love you….but I wanna know for sure…” Unexpected and totally magic.

Tommy James & the Shondells – Crimson And Clover

Before the gig there were heavy handed notices and announcements warning you not to use cameras of any sort (clearly flouted by a few – all the pictures here were taken from the audience) so when, during a souped-up Controversy, Prince shouts “cellphones out!” the whole place lights up like a Christmas tree. Cheesy? Yes! Just like one of those lighters aloft 70s stadium shows, but my goodness it’s great to be a part of it. I even sneaked a wee clip of 1999 on my phone, but if I want this blog to remain in hyperspace forever, I’ll resist the urge to post it here.

The piano interlude towards the end had him (a wee bit frustratingly) play snippets of some of his hits – Diamonds & Pearls, The Beautiful Ones, Alphabet Street, before Prince settled on Sometimes It Snows In April. Yes! Whodathunkit? Beautiful! He closed the show with it in Leeds the next night, so clearly, it’s a song he holds dear. Almost inevitably, the main set closes with the opening chords to Purple Rain.

The band walked back on at the appropriate moment and for the next 10 minutes the whole room is awash with confetti from hidden cannons and filled with the sound of the greatest power ballad ever. Did I really just type that?

Encores? Of course. Housequake. Housequake! Wow! Who expected that? More covers- a snippet of Sly’s Dance To the Music with dirty fuzz bass and Wild Cherry’s Play That Funky Music before coming to a sweaty end with the Isley’s Live It Up, the stage full of gyrating hand-picked audience members of various Glaswegian shapes and sizes. The big girl at the front was clearly having the time of her life. The two guys at the edge looked like they’d rather be anywhere in the world at that particular time. “If you were asked up, how would you dance?” asked the missus. “Like the rhythmically challenged white man from Ayrshire that I am,” I replied. Cos that’s what I’d been doing all night anyway.

Here‘s a Funkadelic track that kinda sums up Prince and his band at the moment. Catch them if you can. Worth every penny. (And they cost a lot of pennies).

Funkadelic – Who Says A Funk Band Can’t Play Rock

*IMPORTANT!

I’d like to credit the photographs used – if any of these are your photos please get in touch and I’ll add your name below. Or remove them if you’d rather. Thanks!

Cover Versions, Gone but not forgotten

Wee, Sleekit, Cow’rin, Tim’rous Beasties

May 16, 2014 Craig McAllister

She’s On It was the Beastie Boys’ third single. A big, dumb, frat-boy rock/rap crossover, it provided the Beastie Boys with an instantly identifiable sound.

Prior to She’s On It, the Beasties had played tinny, rattly 150mph thrash punk with all the melodic appeal of Courtney Love’s fingers being scraped down a blackboard. She’s On It transformed their outlook towards music and was essentially the blueprint for the Beastie’s early career from thereon in, setting the stall out for what would follow until the end of the 80s – a trio of shouty/whiny/immature white boys’ voices hot-wired to a primitive beat box with a lowest common denominator rock riff welded underneath. Utterly fantastic, of course.

With all the unspoken telepathy of a bickering old married couple finishing one another’s sentences, from She’s On It in ’85 all the way to the band’s 40th and final single, 2011′s Don’t Play No Games, what I really like about the Beastie Boys is that almost every couplet they ever wrote is SHOUTED! for added emphasis;

There’s no conFUSION in her conCLUSION!

She wants to waste my TIME and that’s no deLUSION!

Get on it!

She’s On It has the mercurial hand of Rick Rubin all over it. The guitar riff that underpins the whole thing, something I’d always thought to have been an unlicensed sample from some straight up 70s rock anthem or other, appears to have been written and played by Rubin himself. I’m happy to be corrected, but if you ch-ch-check the credits on the record, that’s what it looks like.

By the time the solo has kicked in, you could be forgiven for thinking you’re actually listening to Fight For Your Right. All that’s missing is a sticky-fingered Volkswagen badge around your neck and the ‘KIIIIIICCCCKKKKK IIIIITTT!’ at the start. Considered too low-brow even for the Licensed To Ill LP, She’s On It was only ever released as a stand-alone single, although it appeared on the soundtrack to pseudo Def Jam biography Krush Groove and subsequent Beastie’s Best Ofs. But if you want the real Best Of the Beastie Boys, you need to buy Check Your Head. The critics might say Paul’s Boutique, but the smarter among us know differently. Don’t we?

Around 1993 I saw the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion open for the Beastie Boys at the Barrowlands. I can’t say I remember too much about their show except that Spencer kept hollerin’ “Bloooze Explozhun!” through one of those distorting 1950s bullet mics like a hooch-soaked preacher from the deep south. That and the fact I ordered then waited about 2 months for the band’s Afro 7″, which, at that point in time was just about the most exciting thing I’d ever heard.

By some strange quirk of coincidence, the JSBX recorded a version of She’s On It for this year’s Record Shop Day.

A group playing sans bass can go one way or t’other, but the Blues Explosion nail She’s On It to the floor, staple it to r’n’b standard Jack the Ripper and give it a good Chelsea-booted, skinny-legged kicking, Big Muffs on overdrive, bullet mics in the red. All that’s missing is that “Bloooze Explozhun!” shout repeated more than once.

By another strange quirk of coincidence when I first heard this, I thought it was just about the most exciting thing I’d heard this year. Not now though. That honour goes to Frank Ocean’s Hero track. Hip hop doo wop with half the Clash on backing instrumentation. You should seek it out.

Alternative Version, Get This!, Gone but not forgotten, Live!, Peel Sessions

The Stuff I Got Gonna Bust Your Brains Out

May 5, 2014 Craig McAllister

That’s the haunted figure of Robert Johnson, womanisin’, gamblin’, soul-sellin’ deep South bluesman with a hell hound on his tail. Robert had the uncanny knack of channeling all sorts of bad voodoo via his unnaturally long fingers into his music and into the ether forever. To this day, the dusty grooves on his old 1930’s 78s spark with the crackle and pop of a life gone wrong.

Robert Johnson – Stop Breaking Down:

His songs, all rudimentary strumming and picking, have been picked up and picked apart by all manner of blues-influenced groups, not least the Rolling Stones.

No strangers to a stolen blues riff and a Robert Johnson tune (their version of Love In Vain is the definitive country/blues weeper), the Stones really out-did themselves when they came to tackle Stop Breaking Down. It’s a completely different song to the original.

Rolling Stones – Stop Breaking Down:

A total groove with Charlie playing just behind the beat, it’s a beautiful soup of chugging, riffing rhythm guitar and an asthmatic wheezing lead hanging on for dear life like the ash at the end of Keith’s ubiquitous cigarette. Between Jagger’s verses, the band swagger in that tight but loose way that no band has ever since equalled. Listening to it you can almost see Jagger prancing around some massive American stage or other, wiggling his 26″ snakehips to those lucky enough to be able to see them from the back of whatever enormodome they happen to have found themselves in.

Totally telepathically in synch with one another, the Stones in ’72 would be my time machine moment. Actually, they wouldn’t. Given the chance I’d be going back to 1965 to watch my team win the Scottish league for the last time, hang around a year and catch Dylan go electric then hope for some malfunction or other that would allow me to wait around for 6 years until it was fixed. To be Keith for a day while recording Exile On Main Street. What a time of it. Great hair. Great clothes. Great guitars. Great women. And everything else that goes with it. Like your own plane…

…or drinks cabinet on stage…

The Rolling Stones version of Stop Breaking Down comes towards the end of Side 4 on Exile On Main Street, the loosest, funkiest, grooviest Stones LP of the lot. But you knew that already. That they chose to sequence it where they did (although sandwiched between the blues rock of All Down The Line and southern soul gospel of Shine A Light makes for a strong ending) suggests the Stones had no particular fondness for it, that they considered it an album track at best, perhaps even (gasp) album filler. It certainly never gets a mention in the same breath as the big tracks from the LP (Tumbling Dice, Happy, Rocks Off, Loving Cup…I could go on and on) but to me, as something of a hidden Stones gem, that’s kinda what makes Stop Breaking Down so special.

Evoking the spirit of the early, earthy Stones with a punk/blues ferocity not heard since, ooh I dunno, Pussy Galore or someone were whipping up a frenzy at the end of the 80s, the White Stripes version of Stop Breaking Down appeared on their first, self-titled LP. If you’ve not heard it before, it’s just as you might imagine it to sound.

White Stripes – Stop Breaking Down;

Thump. Crash. Thump. Crash. Thump. Crash. “Whooo!”. Screeee. Thump. Thump. “Whoooo!”. Screeeeeeeeeeee!

Two folk standing in a room with a handful of basic instruments between them has never sounded so feral and primal. Nowadays, it’s all the rage. Isn’t it, Black Keys? I know Jack White splits opinion, but for what it’s worth I love the White Stripes.

Later on, they tackled the same track for a BBC session, extending it to twice its length and playing it as a walkin’, talkin’ slow blues.

Thump. Crash. Thump. Crash. Thump. Crash. “Whooo!”. Screeee. Thump. Thump. “Whoooo!”. Screeeeeeeeeeee! At half the speed.

White Stripes – Stop Breaking Down (BBC Session);

*Bonus Track!

Whatever happened to The Bees? I had them pegged as the equal of the Beta Band. Terrific players with a slightly psychedelic take on things. Not so much under the radar as off it completely, they deserved better. Their take on Stop Breaking Down is clearly modelled on the Stones’ version, but with a dual vocal and a nice, understated Hammond holding the whole thing together.

Get This!, New! Now!

Medals

April 29, 2014 Craig McAllister

In his unwavering pursuit of great music John Peel famously listened to every demo tape/self-financed flexi-disc/debut single/8 track cartridge and Wham recording that ever came his way. Peel was terrified he’d be letting down the artist who’d spent time and money ensuring a copy of their music found its way to his ears and that by not playing it he’d miss something of huge cultural importance, and so what began as a simple mission quietly and not-so-quietly (did you listen to Peel?) took over his whole existence.

I get sent lots of music. Tons of the stuff. I could easily fill the pages of Plain Or Pan with Scandinavian death/grime/sludge/hardcore, rootsy Irish Coldplay soundalikes, a gazillion quirky identikit indie bands based anywhere between Inverness and Idaho and enough wishy washy ‘soulful’ singer/songwriters to break you out in an irritating rash of Adele proportions. Amongst the stuff that finds its way here there is no doubt the odd gem, but I am not John Peel and nor do I have his patience, listening dexterity or desire to unearth the next Velvet Underground. Have you read this blog? I’m still trying to unearth the first Velvet Underground. Plain Or Pan is first and foremost a retro-looking music blog, celebrating the records of the past for anyone who still cares enough about them. ‘Outdated Music for Outdated People‘ as the tagline says.

Today Plain Or Pan makes an exception.

Never judge a book by its cover…

Medals are a thrilling new act. Initially a studio-based project from Ayrshire’s JP Reid, they come with terrific pedigree. JP’s first band Sucioperro (Spanish for ‘dirty dog‘, if my pidgin Spanish hasn’t deserted me) are 4 albums and several T in the Park appearances to the good. Not content with that, along with Biffy Clyro‘s Simon Neil, JP is half of Marmaduke Duke, 6 Music favourites and purveyors of wonky, skewed alt-rock. To say he’s been on the fringes would be something of an understatement. To say ‘Next Big Thing‘ might sound arsey if it wasn’t likely true.

Medals emerged towards the end of last year with a 6 month studio tan and an album (‘Disguises‘) that veers between Biffy-inspired riffage, weirdy/beardy bits and JP’s love of hip-hop and modern shiny pop. The whole thing has been put together solely by JP, who brought in other players and producers as and when he needed them. Think Prince, Beck, Peter Gabriel or David Byrne. Auteurs who have a vision, know what they want and how to get it. It sounds faintly ridiculous talking about a wild ‘n wooly Ayrshireman in the same terms, but that’s essentially what we have here.

That rinky dink white man-plays-Nile Rogers guitar coupled with the full-on phat fuzz bass and pitter-pattering percussion is total Prince. Not in sound, y’understand, but in vision, aye? There’s a lot going on in this record. Played once, it sounds very now. A shiny production that could quite happily find itself on the playlists of Radios 1 and 6, all synthesised beats and a rhythm track that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Foals or Vampire Weekend record. Play it a few dozen times and you’ll start noticing the subtle little things that colour the whole thing in, which all helps make Used To Be A Dancer one of the tracks of the year so far.

Down In The Well is one of a handful of big, anthemic Medals rockers, all punchy beats and razor-sharp riffs. The album might be full of little weird bits, multi-tracked vocals, unusual parts and clever use of percussion, but opening track Down In The Well leaves all that aside, kicks the front door in and goes for the jugular before leaving as quickly and unannounced as it had arrived, with dirty great footprints left behind in your cream carpet.

Hey! Is that a Trashcan Sinatras’ vocal sample in there? The girly backing vocals in The Therapist? It sounds awfy like it! Maybe not. Either way, Sit Back Down, Judas is perfect for radio, the ‘joyous pop rock‘ that JP was aiming at in the studio. Catchier than the cold in a classroom full of coughing kids, I’d love to hear it live while watching the lighting guy make the big white spots sweep up and over the audience as the chorus kicks in. Plinky-plonk glockenspiels vye for space with perfectly produced guitars and a boy/girl vocal. This is the track that all the girls’ll love as the sun sets on Glastonbury next year, I tell you.

As I type this, ears will be ringing in King Tuts as Medals make their live debut supporting Biffy Clyro. Next Friday (9th May) Medals play their first headline gig at Irvine’s Harbour Arts Centre. The wheels are turning on the Medals machine. Studio tans have faded and the band has been drilled and rehearsed as thoroughly as James Brown’s Famous Flames. Look out for them. JP has put together a proper band (not studio musos), but a band of friends who play together for the joy of it all. “Getting lost in music,” as JP says. “There are far too many ‘careerist’ bands. We’re playing for art’s sake first and not necessarily commercial success.”

There’s a real buzz about Medals. I don’t normally fall for this ‘next big thing’ nonsense, but in this case I think it’s a distinct possibility. They might be playing for art’s sake, but I don’t think it’s long until the commercial success comes their way. Medals, boys and girls. You heard about them here first.

You can find out more about Medals in all the usual places, including;

Bandcamp, where you can listen to and buy the album.

Soundcloud where cheapskates can listen to the album.

Facebook, where their upcoming set of gigs will be announced.

Twitter where the band are particularly active.

Get This!, Hard-to-find

It’s Shop, Not Store. Right?

April 21, 2014April 22, 2014 Craig McAllister

Paul Weller‘s dropped the sturm und drang sonic assault of his more recent work and is clearly back listening to his Kinks EPs again. Brand New Toy, his super-limited 7″ (750 copies) for this years Record Shop Day (I refuse to say ‘Store‘, OK?) is a right royal mockney knees-up around the old joanna, complete with a name-check for ‘Raymond’, descending ‘aaah-ing’ and ‘ooo-ing’ backing vocals and a very brief whistling section. Chas and Ray Davies, if you will. The solo, which comes on the back of a lovely little Style Council major 7th chord is short, sharp, ‘clean’ and full of backwards-ish sounding bends, somehow conjuring up that least-likely of Weller influences, the clog-wearing Brian May. Brand New Toy is a somewhat bizarre record but I like it immensely.

Compare that to last year’s RSD offering, Flame-Out.

A clanging, droning, Eastern-tinged post punk racket of a record, it”s a cracker. Listening to it, you can practically see the veins bulging on Weller’s neck as he spits/sings it with total conviction. He means it, maaan. Sonically it’s the sound of Weller in the 21st century, all heavily effected guitars played by a band as tight and sharply creased as the lead singer’s trousers. The odd spoken word breakdown brings to mind Scary Monsters-era Bowie, though I’m sure Weller wouldn’t thank me for saying that. I think it’s right up there with his best work of the past few years, and the fact that PW chose to leave Flame-Out off any of his albums of the past couple of years only adds to the essentiality of this record.

I see that there’s a Modern Classics Vol. 2 in the offing. Initially I thought what?!? He can’t be due another greatest hits set. Then I saw the tracklisting – both tracks above feature, incidentally – and it clicked… Paul Weller really has been responsible for some of the best music of the past couple of decades. But you knew that already.

See me walkin’ around, I’m the blob about town that you’ve heard of

And another thing….

I like the idea of Record Shop Day. Who doesn’t? Anything that highlights the cultural value of record shops must be applauded. But I hate Record Shop Day. Those two records above were on eBay even before RSD 13 and 14, with bids upwards of £50 being encouraged. I mean, come on! I like the idea that your favourite bands make one-off special releases specifically for the event, but I hate that they are so limited and scarce that the only apparent way to secure a copy is to start queuing round about the January sales. But that’s another argument for another day.

Slight Update 22.4.14

Here’s Paul Weller’s take on Record Shop/Store Day…

This is a message to all the fans who couldn’t get the new vinyl single on Record Store Day and/or paid a lot of money for a copy on eBay.

I agree with all of you who have sent messages expressing your anger and disappointment at the exploitation of these “limited editions” by touts.

Apart from making the record, the rest has very little to do with me but I am disheartened by the whole thing and unfortunately I won’t be taking part in Record Store Day again.

It’s such a shame because as you know I am a big supporter of independent record stores but the greedy touts making a fast buck off genuine fans is disgusting and goes against the whole philosophy of RSD.

There were copies of my single on eBay the day before Record Store Day and I’ve heard stories of people queuing outside their local record shop only to be told there were none left at opening time!

It only takes a few to spoil a wonderful concept for everyone else. Shame on those touts.

Don’t support their trade and don’t let them use Record Store Day to ruin the very thing it’s designed to support.

Onwards. PW

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