Plain Or Pan

Cover Versions, Gone but not forgotten, Hard-to-find, Yesterday's Papers

Revolution 9

April 28, 2013April 28, 2013 Craig McAllister

When I first picked up the plank of wood I had the cheek to call a guitar, I hadn’t yet mastered changing from a D to an A and back again before I realised something was missing. I needed something, anything, to disguise the bum notes from the badly-played chords I was trying to strangle out of my instrument at parent-bothering volume through my wee practice amp. That something was the fuzzbox. What a revelation! I could play along to most of The Buzzcocks‘ What Do I Get and mangle a passable version of Everybody’s Happy Nowadays, fire off Janie Jones from the first Clash LP and play almost all of The Ramones‘ It’s Alive LP, riff for riff and legs akimbo, just like Johnny. Look at me, I can play guitar! 1! 2! 3! 4! Gggzzzzzssss! Hey ho and indeed, let’s go. The intricacies of Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others and Blackbird were a long, painful way off, but that fuzzbox was the thing that spurred me on to those greater things.

Nasty Punks, Funk Off

Eventually tired of the fuzz and with ears open to a wider variety of music, that wee pedal was retired from duty, to be ressurected a couple of years later by better musicians. If you listen very carefully to One At A Time on the Trash Can Sinatras‘ I’ve Seen Everything album, that same £20 fuzzbox gets a good workout from Davy Hughes’ bass guitar. Or so they tell me.

But that’s another story for another day. After mastering the complete works of Johnny Ramone and the odd Beatles tune and sickening myself by tying my fat fingers in knots whilst trying to unsuccessfully learn Johnny Marr’s best riffs, I spent a great many hours poring over the guitar parts on James Brown records.

The guys who played the best of them (Catfish (brother of Bootsy) Collins and Jimmy Nolen) were as yet unknown to me, but they were just as vital and exciting and talented as the three Johns. I could sit for hours and listen to I’ll Go Crazy but I’ve never yet quite mastered the fluidity of the riff. Sex Machine was the big one. The one chord groove was a bee aye tee see aitch to learn in those pre-internet days. Starting with the top string and working backwards to the bass, I held down all sorts of permutations of strings and frets until one day the funk planets aligned and my fingers fell on the strings and frets in the correct position. For any technically-minded musicians amongst you, the chord I was playing was an Eb9 (with a hammer-on on the 8th fret), although I was yet to know that. To me, it was the chord that unlocked the funk.

Using the 9th chord, Jimmy Nolen laid the foundation of funk. Stop/start slides from the 4th to 5th fret, pinky hammer-ons 2 frets above, muting the strings with his right hand to get the distinctive chicken-scratch sound, he’s the guitarist who anyone who’s ever played a note of funk guitar owes a debt to. James Brown changed his guitar players as regularly as you or I change our underwear, but from listening to the records you’d never know. All guitarists after Jimmy Nolen followed his distinctive chordings and ryhthm. Got a guitar to hand? Try it! Slide the same chord shape (above/below) up and down the frets and you’ll find all sorts of James Brown songs – Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag. I Feel Good. Super Bad. Talkin’ Loud & Sayin’ Nothing. Soul Power. Persevere, you’ll find them all.

Get Up (Feel Like Being A Sex Machine)

e|--(start with an upstrum)----6-6----6---8--6----------6-6----6---8--6-----------------|
B|-----------------------------6-6----6-----------------6-6----6------------------------|
G|-----------------------------6-6----6-----------------6-6----6------(and repeat!)-----|
D|-----------------------------5-5----5-----------------5-5----5------------------------|
A|-----------------------------6-6----6-----------------6-6----6------------------------|
E|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|

Stick on the wah-wah pedal and you can riff your way to funky oblivion like an extra in a 1975 episode of Starsky & Hutch. Sly Stone, no stranger himself to a 3-in-a-bed romp with a wah-wah and a 9th chord, got in on the act. His Sing A Simple Song is an absolute monster of E9 riffing (see tab below. S’easy!). Booker T and The MGs did their own Hammond ‘n 9th-heavy version. And Ike Turner quite blatantly/beautifully ripped it off for his ‘own’ Bold Soul Sister, a young Tina coming across like the less-vulgar wee sister of Betty Davis. I think even Led Zeppelin used it on Houses of the Holy‘s The Crunge, such is the chicken-scratching Jimmy Nolen-ness of it all. The 9th. It’s a well travelled chord. Kick out the jams and play it, brothers and sisters. Now that’s an order.

Sing A Simple Song (Play a simple riff…..)

e|-------------------------7-7--6-7-7--6-7-7----------------------------7-7--6-7-7-|
B|-------------------------7-7--6-7-7--6-7-7----------------------------7-7--6-7-7-|
G|-------------------------7-7--6-7-7--6-7-7----------------------------7-7--6-7-7-|
D|----------5--------------6-6--5-6-6--5-6-6--------------5-------------6-6--5-6-6-|
A|--7-5---7---5-7---5/7----7-7--6-7-7--6-7-7------7-5---7---5-7--5/7----7-7--6-7-7-|
E|------7-----------3/5-------------------------------7-----------3/5--------------|

Hard-to-find, Kraut-y, Live!, New! Now!

Can o’ Worms

April 22, 2013May 18, 2016 Craig McAllister

This Record Store Day thing really grates eh? Who’s at fault? The record companies, who see the event as a way to fleece the record buyers out of every last penny they have and set sky-high dealer prices, thus forcing retailers to charge daft prices for (mainly) old records? Or the record buyers themselves, who see the event as a way to fleece less-fortunate record buyers who have neither the means required nor the availability of a local record shop to go to in order to buy what they want and are forced to take to the internet in a desperate attempt to secure the objects of their desire from people who neither know about or care about the records they are punting?

Five minutes after the shops opened and eBay’s suddenly full of the things everyone wants, available from twenty five different private sellers at twenty five times the original prices, and the internet is bulging at the virtual seams with sob stories from seething, seasoned record buyers unable to get their sticky fingers on the records they so desired. They’ve scanned the lists in March and written and re-written their wishlist into 3 columns; ‘Ideally…’, ‘Hopefully…’ and ‘I cannot leave without this…’ but still ended up only with the last sticker from the acoustic act playing in the corner and a crumbly cup cake from the beardy guy behind the counter who’s job it is to say, “Sorry mate, that’s sold out too,” over and over and over and over until the end of the day. They’ve even emptied the kids’ piggy banks and forced them to eat beans on toast for a month, but that counts for nothing. Come April and the Day itself, they got up half an hour after going to bed in an effort to get as close to the front of the snaking line outside Shady Dave’s Second-Hand Sounds as they possibly could, to no avail. It’s a long line, but the ‘good-time vibe’ in the queue (“Aye, I’m after the Elliott Smith 7″ and the Pulp 12″ and the Big Star outtakes LP too, pal…”) is such that standing hunched up in the rain and the cold with Angry Birds and a quickly-decreasing battery charge on the phone for company are just about tolerable, as hopeful prayers of over-priced, limited edition bits of plastic are messaged to the great vinyl god above.

By the time the doors are unlocked by Shady Dave himself (who knows that only today, this one day of the year, is the make-or-break that might allow him to trade until next year’s big day), wads of money are jumping out the pockets of middle aged men and being flung towards the counter in exchange for a one-off Flaming Lips LP or a White Stripes coloured vinyl or an old Paul McCartney track re-pressed in glorious retro fashion. It’s ridiculous. Especially as that guy in the expensive puffa jacket and beige chinos (not yer average Wedding Present fan, you muse), who happened to be at the front of the queue was royally loaded and bought every copy of the German language 10″ And whatever else he thought he could off-load for a profit. “How many Bowie did you get? I’ll take them all.” It’s the new model for the spineless, the shallow and the touts who already rake it in from selling high-demand concert tickets. Have you checked those eBay sellers addresses? Sorry for the sweeping generalisation, but are they all in Merseyside? Call the cops…

Anyway, for what it’s worth, I’d have quite liked the live Stephen Malkmus does Can thingy. And the Elliott Smith 7″ and the Pulp 12″ and the Big Star outtakes LP too, pal, but I was nowhere near a decent record shop and was being Dad for the day while the missus went off for a belated birthday afternoon with her pal. Plus I don’t have the spare £40 or so that would’ve been necessary to procure them, had I been game enough to try and buy them. A quick scroll through eBay tonight and the Elliott Smith 7″ is selling for £15, as is the Pulp 12″ . The Big Star LP? That’s currently around the £40 mark, but given that almost 20 folk are after it, it’ll probably take a bid of around £100 to secure the bloody thing. That Malkmus/Can album has attracted a dozen or so bids and is already pushing £40 itself. The vinyl would be nice, but I’m just as happy for the moment with the illicit mp3s I found whilst poking around the darker corners of the internet. It’s not ‘real’. It’s not holdable. It’s not warm and friendly analogue. But it was cheaper than cheap. I’ve always preferred Can at their grooviest and Malkmus does a good job. Contrast and compare…

Can – I’m So Green

Stephen Malkmus – I’m So Green

Can – Vitamin C

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Stephen Malkmus – Vitamin C

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demo, Hard-to-find

Telly Addict

April 16, 2013 Craig McAllister

The name Television has popped up here a couple of times recently. James Brooks from Land Observations name-checked them in his Six Of The Best article and a couple of weeks ago I was comparing the laconic vocals and snaking guitar sound of Charlie Boyer & the Voyeurs latest single to that of Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd. All this has coincided with the old iPod (well, it’s not that old – 3 and a half years – but I suppose that’s ancient in tech-speak) refusing to sync any new additions to my iTunes library and, worse than that, wiping itself clean of all the 140+GB of crap that was on there originally and deciding it’s just not going to work any more. Even the (cough) ‘Genius’ at the Apple store in Glasgow had to somewhat disappointingly concede defeat. As the iPod goes everywhere with me at all times this has proven nothing short of a disaster. So much so that I’ve gone all end-of-the-millenium retro and started playing CDs again. Real, shop-bought CDs in the car and on the stereo at home (I had to dust it a wee bit first, I’m ashamed to admit). Having exhausted the Can Lost Tapes box set that fell into my hands for less than £18 in a destined-to-die HMV store, the one album I’ve had on constant repeat for a fortnight is Marquee Moon, the debut album by Television.

Terrific photo, aye? More about it here.

It’s now considered something of a (yawn) seminal classic or something, so far out of step/ahead of the pack when first released that it sounds fresh, ageless and timeless when you listen to it now. But you knew that already. In mid 70s America, Television found themselves roped in with the NYC punk lot, seemingly by virtue of having a regular gig at CBGBs. Original bass player Richard Hell, with his penchant for ripped jeans, safety pins and home-made spiky haircut is considered the true originator of the punk style, but by the time of Marquee Moon‘s release, he had long since left the band to form The Voidoids and invent the Stray Cat Strut with their I Belong To The Blank Generation single…

Anyway. Where were we? Oh aye, Television. Where did they fit in? Not for them the 3 chords-in-platform-heel Stonesy glam slam so beloved of the New York Dolls. Not for them the legs akimbo cartoon buzzbomb of the brothers Ramone. Not for them the high-brow beat poetry set to the low-brow beat music of Patti Smith. Television set themselves apart from the off. With an approach to their individual instruments bordering on muso, and a healthy disregard for the two and a half minute pop song, they were so far out of step/ahead of the pack that they still sound fresh, ageless and timeless today. Guitars intertwined like psychic snakes, riffing off one another creating astonishing Fender Jag ‘scuse me while I kiss the sky melodies and counter melodies seemingly at will. Not quite free jazz, but certainly free from the straight-jacketed constraints of their 3 chord loving peers. Learn an F chord, barre it and move it up and down the frets. Play it loud, play it fast, there you go, you’re a band. Television were so far ahead of this, it’s not hard to understand why, 35 years later they were 1) seen as misfits and 2) sound as now as the latest daft haircutted, snake-hipped gang of teenagers straight off the cover of the NME.

First single (not on the album) Little Johnny Jewel was a taste of things to come. 7 minutes of art rock, all cheese-grater strings and rake-thin bass, slightly out of tune chords, random blips and blops and clattering, carefree jazz drumming, with a more spoken-word than singing approach to the vocals, the pre-pubescent seeds for Marquee Moon were sown. After an aborted session with Brian Eno, and balls duly dropped, the band started fashioning the music that would grace the album. Tougher, meatier, more aggressive yet airy, effeminate and even effete when compared to the band’s contemporaries, the alt. mix of the title track is the aural equivalent of watching Picasso sketch Guernica. Or something less pretentious than that. Friction, with its galloping elastic band riff and ‘Eff! Are! Aye! See! Tea-Eye-Oh-Enn!’ refrain is a personal favourite amongst an LP full of personal favourites. If you’ve never heard Television, rectify that now!

Just as The Velvet Underground before them and The Beta Band since (I digress, but believe me, one day The Beta Band will come to be as revered as the truly great originators they were. They will!), Television never really got their dues at the time. But their influence is writ large in any twin guitar band with a penchant for razor-sharp riffs and meandering solos. Scratch just under the surface of all the usual suspects (you know who they are) and you’ll find a well-worn copy of Marquee Moon rotating ad infinitum between the grooves. The coolest part of it all? Well, rumour has it that around the time of recording the Blue Sky Blue album, Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy received the ultimate birthday present from his wife- a guitar lesson from Richard Lloyd. Not the first band that springs to mind at the mention of meandering solos and disregard for a well constructed pop song, Wilco did indeed adopt a more Verlaine/Lloyd approach on some of Sky Blue Sky‘s less structured tracks. Impossible Germany, for example, features a pair of clean, chiming guitars wrapping themselves around one another for 6 shimmering minutes. The solo alone is pure Lloyd. Or Verlaine. I can never tell the difference. If you’ve never heard it, rectify once more.

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

There’s No Money Beyond The 5th Fret

April 10, 2013August 23, 2013 Craig McAllister

Tommy Tedesco said that.

Tommy who?

Last summer I went to the Glasgow screening of the above film about The Wrecking Crew, the crack bunch of LA sessioneers who played anonymously on a whole host of things, from film and TV scores via advertising jingles to some of the biggest-selling and best-loved songs of that golden period in early-mid 60s pop music. Tommy Tedesco was a jazz guitarist, and somehow found himself part of that inner-circle of session men and women. Made by Tommy’s son Denny, the film is a celebration of the life and work of his father and The Wrecking Crew. It’s terrific. Denny has, for the past couple of years, been touring the world showing his movie at Film Festivals and special screenings in a bid to drum up the finance required to support the publishing rights of the film. It’s impossible to make a movie about such great music without actually featuring that same music, and seemingly it costs a whole lot of money to negotiate the publishing minefield that the lawyers and money men have put in front of him. If you ever win the lottery and want to help someone out, I’m sure Denny would be more than happy to take your call. If you ever get a chance to see his film, grab it with both hands. Much of the music featured throughout the years on Plain Or Pan is a product of The Wrecking Crew, so if you’re a regular on here, I’d even go so far as to say it’s right up your street.

The Wrecking Crew were the go-to guys in the LA recording industry. Slicker than the Brycleem covering Bing Crosby’s bald bits and packing more swing than Sinatra with a six iron, they swept aside the old shirt ‘n tied brigade with little regard for history or unwritten rules.

“I coined the name The Wrecking Crew,” explains ace drummer Hal Blaine. “We came into the studio with our Levis and t-shirts, smokin’ cigarettes, and the older guys were sayin’ ‘They’re gonna wreck the music business!'”

Working quickly and cheaply, and with the ability to read charts and scores of music at the drop of a cocked hat (they had backgrounds in jazz and classical) they were able to turn their hand to anything at all. Often, they came up with the licks and riffs that we all still whistle and hum today. Uncredited. The intro to Wichita Lineman? The intro to These Boots Were Made For Walkin‘? Plucked from thin air by The Wrecking Crew. Working on flat union fees rather than the gamble of percentage royalties, each musician knew that if they played more than one session a day, by the end of the week after they’d multiplied up the standard session fee, they’d be rich. They were so much in demand that playing only one session a day was not ever likely. Producers would request The Wrecking Crew, then hold off the recording session until the Crew could fit them in. The Wrecking Crew did them all. In and out the studio in the time it took to learn the part and record it before going off to the next one. And the next. And the next.

Without the benefit of hindsight of course, they had no idea that this music they were playing would shape the sound of popular music forever. The roll call of records and groups bearing The Wrecking Crew’s stamp is a super-long embarrassment of riches. Off the top of my head – all of Phil Spector‘s epoch-defining Wall Of Sound records, many Beach Boys records, including the sessions that would produce Pet Sounds and Smile, the Elvis ’68 Comeback Special for TV, The Byrds first album (only Roger McGuinn was considered good enough to play on it. The other Byrds sang, but the rest of the music was provided by The Wrecking Crew), a ton of Dean Martin stuff, Frank Sinatra‘s Summer Wind, the Pink Panther theme, Aquarius by the 5th Dimension, most of The Monkees records (Mike Nesmith was The Monkees’ version of Roger McGuinn), Somebody Groovy, California Dreamin’, Monday Monday and countless other Mamas And Papas tracks, Harry Nilsson‘s Everybody’s Talkin‘, Sonny & Cher‘s And the Beat Goes On. And on. And on. And on. You get the idea?

The Wrecking Crew were seemingly involved in everything. Hal Blaine alone estimates he’s played on 35,000 sessions. Thirty five! Thousand! Playing 3 sessions a day for 7 days a week, that’d take him about 30 years going by my calculations. At the height of their activity, I reckon The Wrecking Crew must’ve been doing 50 sessions a week, easy. One day alone might produce The More I See You for Chris Montez and Coconut Grove for The Lovin’ Spoonful before lunch, Dizzy with Tommy Roe and It Never Rains In Southern California with Albert Hammond in the afternoon and a longer session with Simon & Garfunkel in the evening – Homeward Bound and off to tuck the kids into bed. (In the chronology of it all, doing these 5 particular records might’ve been impossible, but you know what I mean). Not a bad day’s work, and, it seemed, every day in The Wrecking Crew calender was like that.

Of course, sadly, frustratingly sadly for some, without the benefit of hindsight, who knew that they’d be involved in so many solid-gold standards? Taking the gamble of percentage royalties would clearly have been the smart thing to do. Every member of The Wrecking Crew would still be a millionaire now. Hal Blaine knew the value in working hard and to paraphrase from the film wanted to make the ride to success as quick as possible and the inevitable decline as slow as could be. By the mid 60s, artists would want to play on their own records. Crucially, the record companies would allow them to play on their own records, and the slow demise of The Wrecking Crew was set in motion. But at the time, The Wrecking Crew were coining it in. As super-cool bass player Carol Kaye points out, “I was making more money than the President of the United States!” Hal Blaine was also earning enough to have a huge house and a yacht, but divorce saw to the end of that. When the sessions dried up, he ended up taking a job as a security guard, spending his days listening to the radio blaring out the countless hits he had played on. The irony was not lost on him. Go and see the film when you get the chance, it’s all in there. Check the website for details: http://www.wreckingcrewfilm.com

The Music

You know all the biggies, so here’s a few less well-known selections from the absolute embarrassment of Wrecking Crew riches…

Carol Kaye – Bass Catch.

Ridiculously funky, even for a white man from the West Coast of Scotland. That’s Carol in the picture above.

5th Dimension – Aquarius.

The hippy dream set to the most fruggable bassline since the word ‘frug’ was invented.

The Mamas and The Papas – Somebody Groovy.

The hippy dream sang beautifully. Michelle Philips. Aaaaaaah.

Sonny & Cher – The Beat Goes On.

Written by Sonny Bono, the title is inscribed on his gravestone. Later covered in a big band jazz stylee by Buddy Rich, with his 10 year old daughter doing the Cher parts.

Lee Hazlewood – These Boots Are Made For Walkin’.

Kind of a post-demo, if there is such a thing, Lee’s version takes the same backing track from Nancy Sinatra’s hit single, but he tells the story of how they recorded it. Essential listening!

—————————————————————

The Curios (neither of these were recorded wham! bam! thank you, maam!, that’s for certain)

Brian Wilson haranguing Hal Blaine and co. during the recording of Wouldn’t It Be Nice. Quiet please, genius at work.

Phil Spector haranguing Hal Blaine and co. during the recording of Be My Baby. Wonderful!

Cover Versions, Get This!

I’m Hank Marvin

April 2, 2013April 2, 2013 Craig McAllister

According to some so-far-unconfirmed sources, Richard Hawley, in his National Health milk bottle thick Gregory Pecks and greasy collpased 1950s quiff has Sleepwalk by Brooklyn brothers Santo & Johnny Farina playing on a constant loop inside his head, and, when stuck for inspiration, reaches out and grabs whatever twangy part happens to float past and recycles it under his own name. Cleverly, he also adds his own bottom of the bottle of whisky vocals to it, but disregard them if you can and it all becomes clear.

Nothing evokes that fuzzy, fuggy end of the prom waltz into the wee small hours quite like Sleepwalk. A shuffling, twanging instantly recognisable piece of late 50s melancholia, it’s got the minor key melodrama down to a tee; The slide guitars streeeeeeeeeeetch off out into the ether. The steel guitars weep like jilted boyfriends who’ve just come off second best in the game of love to the star quarterback. There’s a tiny bit of stand-up slapback bass underpinning the soft-shoe shuffle of the brushed drums and really, that’s about it. Two brothers. Two jobbing sessioneers. Four instruments. No overdubs. Recorded at the famous Trinity Sound studios in New York for $35 during Bing Crosby’s lunch break. Quite possibly.

It’s since become something of a graduation piece for budding bedroom guitarists the world over. Master some chords (3 majors and a minor should do) then move onto the tricky pickin’. Sleepwalk is perfect for this, as is borne out by the number of early 60s (and beyond) cover versions by nascent young whippersnappers eager to show off their chops. The Shadows and The Ventures, between them the finest purveyors of the guitar instrumental (with apologies to Dick Dale) both released versions early into their recording careers. Chet Atkins fancy-panted his up somewhat with some jazzy-inflected country licks and none-more-50s rasping saxophone. Jeff Beck’s version is a soulful, we’re-not-worthy bow-down to the original, and even I have been known to dust off the old Telecaster, fire up the Orange amp and crank out my fat-fingered approximation of the tune. King of them all though is Brian Setzer’s respectful yet mental Grammy winning version. A man who out-Hawleys the Hawley and clearly spends even more time than the Sheffield Shinatra dreaming about the good old days of pre-TV households and cars as wide as they were long, his version knocks all others for six. Here’s how to do it:

Bonus Track!

Santo & Johnny Sleepwalk (extended version)

Twangtastic.

Six Of The Best

Six Of The Best – Charlie Boyer

March 25, 2013 Craig McAllister

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…

Number 14 in a series:

Well.

This is something of a first for Plain Or Pan.

Regular readers will be aware that most of the music that appears here is from before, say, 1985. Anything else more up to date than that must past strict and stringent tests to ensure the quality of the fare on offer does not drop too far down on the old Tune-O-Meter. The artist featured here is so achinghly hip and happening and cutting edge and NOW that I fear my keyboard may temporarily freeze over, such is the ice-cold coolness he and his band of East London renegades appear to have.

Charlie Boyer and The Voyeurs have been played a lot on 6 Music. So thanks to the BBC, and Marc Riley in particular, who’s super-enthusiastic about their music and has had them in for sessions, Charlie and his Voyeurs have become my new favourite band.

If I was 18 or 22 or even 25, I’d go so far as to say they’re the best band ever. At that age, you’ve perhaps still to hear the influences that so clearly seep into their music.

But, by my age, you’ve pretty much heard it all. It was the singing that got me first. “That sounds like Television!” The Tom Verlaine-esque lazy drawl. The snaking, intertwined guitar riffage. Pure Television.

Then it was the tunes. “That sounds like something off a Nuggets LP!” Short ‘n sharp ‘n full of Farfisa. If you dug it, it’s a Nugget, as someone once said.

Then it was the sound. “That sounds kinda like Horrors and Toy and all those new-psyche bands. Or like The Strokes back when they were cool and vital and everything.”

The Voyeurs look like them too. Or to be more accurate about it, they look like the Velvet Underground in 1967. Lean, mean and looking pristine, they’re all black leather and skinny jeans and bowl cuts, with pointy boots comin’ at you like the Krays wielding a pair of snooker cues.

If you haven’t yet watched the video, look again at the promo shot at the top, and new single (their 2nd) Things We Be sounds exactly as you’d expect it to. Following on from debut release I Watch You, it’s out this week. You should buy it. A scuzzy, scuffed garage band affair over and out in 3 chords and 3 minutes, it has a real chance of scraping yer actual charts (whatever they are these days) and should see Charlie and his four Voyeurs primed for pole position come summer festivals time. The debut album Clarietta is released at the end of May and it wouldn’t surprise me if that goes Top 10 before June. You heard it here first, boys ‘n girls.

I started writing this piece before Charlie had agreed to contribute to it, so it was pleasantly surprising when a) he agreed to do it, and b) his choices by and large mirrored my ideas of what his band’s influences might be. Amongst the 17+ minutes avant-garde New York cool of the Velvets and Edwyn Collins’ nascent, knee trembling, clattering dub reggae-by-way-of-Bearsden, you’ll find the dumb fun, fun, fun, of early Beach Boys, the effortless, unparalleled BIG sound of the Big O (an influence in the shades dept. at least), The Fall covering a bona fide Nugget and the new-psyche sounds of labelmates Toy.

It’s a great list…..it’s a great listen:

1. The Velvet Underground
Sister Ray
It has excited and amazed me since I was 15. It has 3 chords and is completely magical.

2. Roy Orbison
You Got It
I love his Sun/Nashville period…some of the best songs I’ve ever heard. But for some reason this is the one that gets me at the moment.

3. Orange Juice
Breakfast Time
We recently recorded with Edwyn Collins and this has always been my favourite. It’s the B-side of Simply Thrilled Honey. The structure and the lyrics are really interesting together.

(Plain Or Pan says: I always preferred the version on the Rip It Up LP – full-on dub reggae by way of Bearsden)

4. The Fall
Mr. Pharmacist
Another great Fall song.

(Plain Or Pan says: Younger readers may be interested in the original version by The Other Half. It’s pretty essential.)

5. The Beach Boys
Little Honda
One of their best rock n’ roll songs. Really good naive lyrics. And I think one of Brian’s first productions for the band?

(Plain Or Pan says: Aye – possibly Brian’s first ever production at that.)

6. Toy
My Heart Skips A Beat
Their new single. And my favourite song on their album. The string/synth bit at the end is wonderful. Sounds like something from Lou Reed’s Berlin.

Magic, eh? Every Six Of the Best compilation comes in a handy RAR download file. Get Charlie Boyer‘s here. Or here.

Now go and buy some real records and bask in the I-told-you-so glory when …the Voyeurs sell out at a venue near you later on this year.

Cover Versions, Hard-to-find

Aye, Spy!

March 16, 2013 Craig McAllister

Focus. Surely the reason punk had to happen. They’re not a band I’ve ever mentioned on these pages before. And they’re not a band likely to ever feature on these pages again. Hoary old 70s prog rockers, with their fuzzy faces and parted-curtains hair-dos, Focus might’ve looked like any one of those uber-cool purveyors of the German Kosmische Musik, but they eschewed that minimal motorik groove in favour of an altogether less savoury sound. Technically super-proficient players, Focus had an alarming tendency to fling 94 ultra-slick 2 bar arpeggios in the space where most contemporaries would rattle out a blues riff copied from any old Chuck Berry record. Focus would also regularly yodel like castrated cats on their records, records that careered from a post-blues/pre punk squealing guitar abandon to neo-classical and medieval lampoonery, by way of a side order of jazz fusion. In many ways then, a Dutch Spinal Tap…

The Be-de-le-be-de-le-be-de-le-be-de-le-be-de-le-be-de-le-scree lead guitar in Focus was provided by Jan Akkerman. Jan is something of a hero to 60-year old physics teachers who wear their hair a wee bit too long at the back and still harbour hopes of making it with their band. He tours regularly and mentions of his name in the right circles can elicit the same sort of reaction you’d get when talking about Johnny Marr to half the folk who are reading this now.

He began playing in The Hunters, a beat-boom inspired garage band from the Netherlands who had one minor hit in 1966 with Russian Spy And I. A terrific record, it sounds equal parts Yardbirds, Animals and (really) The Ukrainians, the short-lived world music off-shoot of the Wedding Present. All hand-claps, shouty “oi!s” and chicken dance-inspiring rythym guitar, Russian Spy And I is a record you could happily smash plates to, Greek wedding-style. Listen to it and underneath the frenzied stomp of it all you just might spot Jan Akkerman’s ever-so subtle and understated guitar parts.

The Stares

Russian Spy And I first came to my attention not from The Hunters but via The Stairs and their Woman Gone And Say Goodbye single. A band forever out of sync with the times (too late for the 60s, too early for that mid 90s boom in guitar bands), the Merseyside revivalists did a faithful version of Russian Spy… on the b-side, for extra authenticity recording it in mangled mono glory and unwittingly inventing The Coral in the process, who took The Stairs sound and polished it up until it was shiny and chart friendly. Nothing wrong with that, of course. The Stairs were a magic wee band. They had soul and funk and the riffs and could play like delta bluesmen and swing like Sinatra at the Sands. I’ve written about them and their genius leader, Edgar ‘Jones’ Jones before. Take 5 minutes and reacquaint yourself with them here. And listen to their version of Russian Spy And I while you’re at it. Oi!

I Spy the heir to the Plain Or Pan throne

demo, Gone but not forgotten, Hard-to-find

Hot Rod

March 8, 2013 Craig McAllister

Over Christmas a pal on Facebook posted a video of Boogie Nights by Heatwave. With it’s super-slinky bass sound and below-the-bell-bottoms baritone “got to keep on dancin’, keep on dancin‘” backing vocal, it’s the sort of record that could have me Dad dancing for ages. (*Just to clarify – I’m not a Yorkshire man. I’m from further oop north than that – when I say me Dad dancing, I don’t mean it could get my own father on his feet. Although it probably could. I mean that Boogie Nights makes me dance in my own rhythmically-challenged Ayrshireman fashion. Like I said – just to clarify).

When the Heatwave video appeared I mentioned that the track was written by the same guy who wrote Thriller for Michael Jackson, Rod Temperton. I also rather glibly suggested he was now dead, when in fact it was pointed out that he’s very much alive and kicking and sleeping on a bed of crisp, fresh $100 bills every night in his Bel Air mansion. Probably. There’s nothing that unusual about songwriters who write one or two massive hits, but have a look at the picture below. You shouldn’t judge a book by its cover and all that, but……

Rod Temperton, the man who re-invented slick dance floor disco and wrote just about the most recognisable track of the 80s and beyond is a skinny-arsed, geeky white man with a rubbish pencil moustache and pre-perm footballer’s haircut. All the way from Cleethorpes in the north of England. A town with about as much musical pedigree as a squeaky dog toy. Yet there he is – the not-quite-invisible man to the side, goofing and gurning his way through three minutes of proper 70s American black man funk. And he wrote it. On top of a pile of dirty washing in a tiny flat. No wonder he’s laughing. All the way to the bank, he’s laughing.

Rod’s story is perfect Plain Or Pan fodder. Here follows a brief catch-up if you’re new to his name.

Beginning his musical apprenticeship in the working mens’ clubs around Tyneside and the north east of England, by the early 70s Rod had left the glamour of the frozen food factory where he worked in Grimsby and sought out his chance on the German club circuit. Like most bands who did this tour, he played long-into-the-night sets and his playing improved ten-fold. Rod and his Hammond organ were much in demand. An ad in Melody Maker led to him joining Heatwave and it was from there that Rod’s talents took him to the toppermost of the poppermost. Not quite the token honky (Heatwave’s drummer looked out of place also), Rod was the driving force behind the multi-cultural group’s success – Stateside million sellers, the whole shebang, before his work brought him to the attention of Quincy Jones. He’d go on to write three tracks for Michael Jackson’s debut Off The Wall LP and was retained by Jones and Jackson to work on the difficult-second-album follow-up, Thriller.

‘Originally, when I did my Thriller demo, I called it Starlight. Quincy said to me, ” You managed to come up with a title for the last album, see what you can do for this album”. I said, “Oh great,” so I went to the hotel, wrote two or three hundred titles, and came up with the title Midnight Man. The next morning, I woke up, and I just said this word…Something in my head just said, this is the title. You could visualise it on the top of the Billboard charts. You could see the merchandising for this one word, how it jumped off the page as Thriller.’

Quick! Grab these! They’ll probably be gone faster than you can say Beat It!

Starlight – Michael Jackson‘s demo of Thriller

Vincent Price spoken part for Thriller (first run-through)

Billie Jean – Michael Jackson‘s demo

As well as the title track, Rod wrote Baby Be Mine and The Lady In My Life, both more derivative of the kind of smooth soul tracks that he can seemingly knock out in his spare time. Difficult second album? Thriller has since become The Biggest Selling Album…Ever!, selling in excess of 60 million copies along the way. But you knew that already. Buy maybe you didn’t know that the wee skinny guy from unfashionable Cleethorpes had a huge hand in it. He still makes me laugh whenever I see Boogie Nights on any of those old TOTP repeats:

Cover Versions, Hard-to-find

O Superman

March 3, 2013March 3, 2013 Craig McAllister

Life’s Rich Pageant was the first REM album I heard and, when push comes to shove, it’s still my favourite of theirs. Borrowed from Irvine library and duly taped, it soundtracked much of my late teens. From Begin The Begin‘s acid rock feedback ‘n twang via the alt. American Rickenbacker riffage of These Days and I Believe, to the Beach Boys backing on Fall On Me and Cuyahoga, it’s a terrific LP. All killer, no filler, you might say. It captures the band at the highest critical trajectory in their career – still hip enough to be considered underground, yet big enough to have worldwide sales (and actual big-hitting chart singles just around the corner with their next LP and beyond), being in REM around this time must’ve been great.

Tucked away at the end of Life’s Rich Pageant was Superman. A twin-vocaled throwaway bit of bubblegum pop that showcased the extraordinary backing vocals of Mike Mills, it was the track I played again and again and again and again ad naseum. Which, given it was on cassette, led to some frustrating rewind sessions where I’d zero the wee digital tape counter as Superman started, and try and stop the tape bang on zero zero zero when the song had finished and I’d began to rewind it. There was none of this stop/start/skip/repeat stuff going on back then. But you’ll know that already. Anyway, I did this 1000 times until the tape stretched and eventually, catastrophically snapped, leaving ribbons of TDK wrapped around the tape heads on my none-more-80s music centre. The soft-eject door may have been the most aesthetically-pleasing one in the shop (you tried them all out, didn’t you) but it was impossible to take off to get the chewed bits of tape back out. So that was that. Down to the wee record shop at the back of RS McColl’s at the cross to buy the actual record. Up the road, and reading the sleevenotes it was then that I realised Superman was a cover. With no internet at my fingertips or music-geek big brother to grill, I waited literally years until finding out that the REM track I loved so much was by a band called The Clique.

Pardon the pun here, but there are lots of Cliques in the music business. The Clique that released Superman in 1966 were from Texas. There was also a pilled-up ‘n purple hearted mod band from England called The Clique doing the circuit at the same time. And in the 90s, a band called The Clique (also of modish persuasion) were on the go. A few years back I featured one of their tracks. Very good it was too. But anyway…

The Clique’s version of Superman was a b-side. Given his trainspottery love of obscure and underground music, it was no doubt Peter Buck who brought it to REM’s attention. REM’s version actually turns out to be pretty faithful. The original is indeed a piece of throwaway bubblegum pop, with a high backing vocal and a highly fruggable bassline. Handclaps, little bits of chanting and a weird, trippy vocal, not unlike the effect you get when you hear backwards guitar on one of those 60s records, complete what is an excellent wee record. Although I still prefer REM’s.

Contrast and compare:

Superman – The Clique

Superman – REM

Sadly, perhaps, I don’t have to hand the recording my wee band did at our first ever gig. I did the Mike Mills bits. Badly.

demo, Hard-to-find, Live!, Peel Sessions

Guy Chadwick Once Tried To Kick Me Full In The Face But I Deserved It So I Did.

February 23, 2013 Craig McAllister

I liked tons of other contemporaries, but The House Of Love were, for me, the band that perfectly filled that post-Smiths/pre-Stone Roses void. They were terrific. A classic twin guitar and bass and drums indie rock band, they wore their influences proudly on their leather-jacketed sleeves; the twang and reverb. The stripey jumpers and black jeans. The semi-acoustic Gibsons. The rows and rows of effects pedals. The sheer bloody distorted racket they could morph into at the drop of a well-timed drum stick click before coming back as one to the melody – Guy Chadwick sooo wanted to be the new Lou and his band a Velvet Underground for the late 20th century. At a time in music when many bands were posturing in ponytails on political platforms, The House Of Love were always more Nico than Biko. That they blatantly added a female singer with high cheekbones and a 60s bowl cut who happened to be German only hammered the point home to those less observant than yer average muso geek.

By the time the band had had a modicum of success, Andrea Heukamp, she of the bowl cut and high cheekbones, had gone her own way. With her in their ranks, The House Of Love had cut their original version of Shine On. Not the over-produced, radio-friendly, siren-led version that, backed by their major label Fontana’s money gave the band their highest chart placing (20), but the far superior played-in-a-tunnel original version. This version was all reverb ‘n twang punctuated with a stratospheric guitar interplay provided by Guy Chadwick and Terry Bickers, a bonkers but brilliant guitarist who’s hedonism for the excesses encouraged by the music industry could make Bez and Shaun Ryder seem like Smartie-guzzling Boy Scouts in comparison. (He’s the angelic looking one 2nd from the right). At one stage Bickers’ erratic behaviour-via-drug use got so full-on the band elected to throw him out of their van halfway up some motorway or other between last night’s venue and tonight’s. Bickers left the band around this point, but would return to the fold a few years later. But you probably knew that already.

Shine On was followed up by one more equally sonically-brilliant but anonymous-to-the-public single. Real Animal came and went in a real blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment. Had you heard it, you’d have been telling anyone who’d listen just how good The House Of Love were. I know I did. John Peel had played it on occasion and, as recording it to a C90 had escaped me at the time, I had to wait until a few years later to own it when I picked up a German import compilation of the band’s first few singles.

Having an ear glued to Peel was good news for the House Of Love fan. Peel was a fan as well, which meant they regularly popped up in session (7 in all, between 1988 and 1992) and he always seemed to have first play of the next single. The first single to be released as a four piece, Christine was the one that put the band in the spotlight. All tough as nails guitars and ba-ba-ba-da-ba vocals, Christine once again failed to make the ‘real’ charts, despite being a creatively marketed Creation Records 99p no-risk disc. But the band’s next single (and last for Creation) was their best yet. Fading in on an instantly recognisable guitar riff, Destroy The Heart was a heady mix of shimmering chords and pistol-crack drums, Bickers’ anti-solos confirming him as the next indie rock hero to follow in Johnny Marr’s footsteps, although John Squire was just around the corner, ready to pop up with his band and change the rules and define an entire epoch. As I said earlier, betwixt and between The Smiths and Stone Roses. But you know all that already too.

Destroy The Heart

Demo
Single Version
Peel Session (7.6.88)
Live (Paris la Cigale, 30.10.88)

As you’ll see from the video, The House Of Love were more frantic, more fuzzed, more furious than on vinyl. They played King Tuts three nights running, with a different set each night. Gigs weren’t that expensive back then and I don’t know why we didn’t go to them all, but we chose the Friday night only. Full of spirit (and beer and wine) I managed to squeeze my way to the very front of the stage and, being a little shit, managed to annoy Guy Chadwick at one of the last songs by grabbing the base of his microphone stand and twisting it away from his mouth just as he was about to sing. This forced him to turn his head to the side slightly and remain in an awkward stance until he’d finished the verse or chorus or whatever he was singing, before heading the end of the mic like a crap footballer (“Thuuunk!”) back to his favoured position. As you might imagine, he wasn’t in the least amused by any of this. The second time I did it, he looked down from his lofty King Tuts stage position and scowled witheringly at me. When I did it for a third time, he aimed a well placed Doc Martin at my face which only just missed. Punk’s not dead! I suppose I deserved it. It did give me a bit of a fright, but as they finished, I made sure Guy wasn’t watching and I managed to detach the heavily-gaffer taped setlist from the stage and folded it into my pocket:

Afterwards we went to The Arches. (Bouncer, frisking me. “What’s that?” “It’s my House Of Love setlist.”) Still full of spirit (and more beer and wine), we made idiots of ourselves dancing to the anonymous doof-doof-doof house music of the time before heading home – by taxi? by bus? did we stay on someone’s floor until the first light of morning? – I can’t actually remember. Anyway, guess what? In a bizarre turn of events, look who’s due to play at those very same Arches in April this year. It’s only Guy Chadwick and whoever else constitutes The House Of Love these days. I’ll be there, but taking up my more customary back of the room position that I’ve come to appreciate in my advancing years as a gig goer. If you’re coming, I might need hawners. You up for it big man?

Tell yer pals:

Tell yer pals:

Tell yer pals:

Tell yer pals:

Tell yer pals:

Tell yer pals:

Tell yer pals:

Tell yer pals:

Tell yer pals:

Tell yer pals: