Plain Or Pan

Cover Versions, demo, Hard-to-find, studio outtakes

Three Little Birds

February 17, 2013 Craig McAllister

I’m just about finished Neil Young‘s autobiography, Waging Heavy Peace. It’s an annoying read, but now I’ve come this far, I need to finish it. I love old whiny Neil, I really do, but his book goes about dispelling the myth behind the man faster than the man himself was able to hoover up the white stuff backstage during The Last Waltz. The chapters jump from one time and place to another time and place and back again with random abandon (which I don’t mind) but the content therein just bores me. There’s just not enough background information on the kind of stuff I’d expect most Neil Young fans to be interested in.

For every “The day I wrote Cinnamon Girl…” you get half a dozen finger-pointing one-sided arguments on the benefits of the electric car Neil’s been designing for the past 390 or so years. For every “We had a lotta fun, I got another STD” tale of woe you get a step-by-step account of his shopping trip to Costco. Really! For every “Oh man! Let me tell ya about this one time in the Springfield…” you get seventeen lectures on the rubbishness of mp3s. Indeed, ol’ Neil’s got a big shout for himself. He’s offered to help Apple improve the sound quality of their music files and much of his book reads like a particularly crass advertorial. He takes folk out to his car (always a ’51 this or ’67 that, never a B-reg Cortina) and plays them music through his self-designed PureTone/Pono audio system that he hopes will become the leading portable audio player on the market. Whatever, Neil. Just tell us more about the Ditch Trilogy and your guitar sound on Weld, and much, much less about the movies for Human Highway and Prairie Wind.

Much like his music, where great album is followed by mediocre shelf clutter (for every pearl, there’s a Pearl Jam, perhaps?), so too his story alternates between revelation and exasperation. He does admit that he shelved too many good albums in the 70s at the expense of at-best average ones. Maybe he should’ve got himself an editor who could’ve told him likewise about the output of his writing.

Young wearing yer actual After The Gold Rush jeans.

Press ‘Play’ to hear groovy 60s Reprise Records radio promo ad.

At the end of the 60s, Neil Young found himself living in Topanga Canyon, overlooking the Pacific Palisades in the Santa Monica Mountains. A liberal, boho-rich 60s community of artists, actors and assorted creative types, it lent itself perfectly to Young’s own creative, carefree spirit. Here, he would pen many of the songs that would later become staples of his catalogue and live set. Sugar Mountain. I’ve Been Waiting For You. Helpless. Tell Me Why. Only Love Can Break Your Heart. All materialised in some form or other in this period. Not bad going for a 24 year old song writer. Amongst his ouvre during this time was Birds.

Birds (Neil Young early version from Topanga Canyon)

Birds is not that well regarded in what is undoubtedly a gold-standard catalogue, but it should be. Eventually appearing on his 3rd solo outing, 1970’s After The Gold Rush, Birds found itself sequenced mid-way through side 2, sandwiched between acoustic Neil nugget Don’t Let It Bring You Down and the electric Neil ‘n Nils Lofgren guitar duellin’ When You Dance You Can Really Love. Birds is a great wee song; downbeat, introspective and yearning with a terrific backing vocal from the assembled Danny Whitten (who’d be dead from heroin in 2 short years), Crazy Horse’s Ralph Molina, old partner in rhyme Steven Stills and the afore-mentioned 18 year old wunderkid Nils Lofgren.

Birds (After The Gold Rush album version)

Hands down even better is the mono single released to promote the Gold Rush album. A markedly different version from the piano-led album version, the single places greater emphasis on shimmering electric guitars and richly plucked acoustics without losing the soaring, whisky-soaked, weed-smoked 4-part harmonies in the chorus. And it’s all over in barely more than one and a half extraordinary minutes. Most folk know Birds from the album, but the mono single is where its at…

Birds (mono single version)

A few weeks ago, when the news of HMV’s decline was made public, I found myself shamelessly plundering their website for keenly priced booty. Top of my wish list was Neil Young’s Archives Project, the catch-all, multi-disc labour of love that had been assembled by Young himself after trawling years of tapes from his own archives. At £200+ a pop it was one box set I could never justify purchasing. I’d already acquired it via other means (I’m sure you know what I mean) but the real deal offers updates via the web and enough interactive material to satisfy even the keenest of Rusties. Sadly, HMV had none to sell, so the mp3s above are taken from my own slightly more dodgy archives. Be careful not to play them too loud, though, or old Neil will be round in his car, the ’62 Chevy perhaps, or the ’78 Jensen, to make you listen to how they should sound on his latest hi-spec audio player. And he’ll probably charge you $250 for the meet-and-greet privilege. Hippies, eh?

*Bonus Track!

From the throwaway and listened-to-less-than-once-before-being-filed-away-waste-of-his-time-and-my-money Studio 150 covers LP (phew!), here’s Paul Weller, in full-on white man sings Otis guise doing a fine version of Birds. Perhaps a reappraisal of Studio 150 is required.

Six Of The Best

Six Of The Best – Daniel Wylie

February 12, 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 13 in a series:

Daniel Wylie is a solo artist best-known as the honey-toned vocalist in Glasgow’s Cosmic Rough Riders, a jinglin’, janglin’ bona fide turn of the century Top 40 chart group, with Top Of The Pops appearances and support slots to some of the biggest acts in the World under their belt. If Cosmic Rough Riders and their influences were a question on Pointless, high scores would be awarded all round for references to the 4 Bs – Beatles, Byrds, Beach Boys and Big Star – the mother lode of West of Scotland guitar bands. The smart answers would be on the less obvious; 70s lovers’ rock reggae. Jazz-influenced AOR artists. Contemporary bands. All perhaps obvious once heard, but not the first artists that spring to mind whenever you choose to give essential CRR compilation Enjoy The Melodic Sunshine a wee spin.

Being like a potted history of all their best bits, smash hit Revolution (In The Summertime) (#35 with a bullet) is as good a place to start as any if you’re unfamiliar with their work, where every song appears to have been written, recorded and placed on a timeline anytime between July and August. Daniel and his band’s inter-woven 3 part harmonies and chiming guitars created the unmistakable sound of summer. Nothing new, of course. Plenty of bands, especially in this part of Scotland, seem particularly au fait with this concept, but the Cosmic Rough Riders were one of the finest.

What’s perhaps most surprising about Cosmic Rough Riders is that the ‘band’ was essentially Daniel and some hired help. Think Roddy Frame/Aztec Camera. Or Matt Johnson/The The. Nothing new, really. Even The Smiths on paper were really only Morrissey and Marr. And those ‘inter-woven 3 part harmonies’? Live, Daniel would sing along to his pre-recorded harmonies whilst his band of hired help mimed in best ‘Live On Top Of The Pops’ fashion. Aye! Why? Well, after Alan McGee showed interest in signing him, Daniel hastily put together a band that would enable him to play his songs live. Duly signed there and then, as a band rather than solo artist, Daniel found himself in a situation of Spinal Tap proportions when his new bandmates began demanding royalties for records they hadn’t initially played on. Daniel quickly and quietly left, leaving Cosmic Rough Riders to eek it out, with ever-decreasing returns.

In the intervening years, Daniel has done what he does best. He writes and records regularly and has amassed loads of material. “Enough good stuff for twenty more albums without dropping quality“. His 6th solo outing, Fake Your Own Death is ready to go, and will be released as soon as the right deal comes along. In the meantime, you can listen to assorted tracks via YouTube. One of the best, Everything I Give You, wears its influences proudly on its plaid-shirted sleeve (music by REM, harmonies by CSNY). It’s terrific. I think you’ll like it :

Daniel has picked 6 great tunes as his Six Of The Best:

Elizabeth Archer & The Equators – Feel Like Makin’ Love (Dub Version)

I’m a massive fan of 60’s and 70’s pop reggae. I heard this on John Peel’s show one night and had to order it from Bruces Records in Glasgow. He told me 16 people had ordered this hard to find single. Some years later, I heard Edwyn Collins mention it among his favourite records and how, after hearing it on John Peel’s show, he ordered it from Bruces Records. I met Edwyn a couple of years ago and we spoke about how he was one of the 16 and how great this single is.

R.E.M. – Perfect Circle

Not only my favourite R.E.M. song but also Michael Stipe’s favourite. Like on Nightswimming, the beautiful piano motif was written by ex drummer Bill Berry. What a loss he was to the band. When he left, he left a massive void that no one managed to fill.

Band Of Horses – Detlef Schrempf
I love Neil Young and lots of Band Of Horses songs remind me of classic 70’s Neil Young. This is a beautiful melancholic tune that compares favourably with another great Neil Young influenced band, My Morning Jacket’s best work.

Steely Dan – Only A Fool Would Say That

Acerbic and sometimes sarcastic lyrics, were Steely Dan trademarks. They managed to dress them up in amazing tunes and great arrangements, making the perfect package for intellectual music fans around the world…or you might just like the tune.

John Martyn – Fine Lines

John Martyn is an English songwriter who was schooled and brought up in Glasgow by his Gran. He went to Shawlands Acadamy and learned his trade in the folk clubs of Glasgow where he was taught to play guitar by among others, folk legend, Hamish Imlach. Whilst he started out as a folkie, he followed in the footsteps of Joni Mitchell by embracing a more Jazz oriented style. “Fine Lines”, is a transitional song from his mostly experimental album “Inside Out.” A song on which he manages to “touch your soul.”

Todd Rundgren – I Saw The Light

Todd Rundgren, is revered by musicians in the same way that Brian Wilson, is. His skills as a songwriter, producer, musician and singer, are up there with the very best. It was a difficult choice between this song and “Hello It’s Me”, but I heard this on the radio when I was around 14 years old and at 54 years old, I’m still listening to it and loving it just as much as when I first heard it all those years ago.

Every Six Of the Best compilation comes in a handy RAR download file. Get Daniel Wylie’s here. Or here.

Listen to tracks and keep up to date with all things Daniel-related via his My Space page. (Shhh! It’s not that up to date).

Or listen to a selection of his songs via Daniel Wylie Radio.

Or buy his music via iTunes. Go! Now!

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

Born To Be With You Triple Whammy

February 6, 2013 Craig McAllister

Born To Be With You was an American top 5 single for The Chordettes in 1956. A largely forgotten piece of bobbysox balladeering, it’s a proto doo wop, proto girl group paen to a just-out-of-reach romance, all minor key melodrama and vocal harmonies. It was quite clearly an influence on the young Phil Spector a few years later. A few short calendar years maybe, but it might as well have been several lightyears, given what happened in the intervening years betwixt and between The Chordettes and the golden touch of Phil Spector. 1956 was Year Zero for rock ‘n roll. The year that Elvis and his gyrating pelvis appeared on television screens with the dual effect of horrifying the moral majority of Americans whilst galvanising youths everywhere into action.

“Before Elvis there was nothing.”

John Lennon said that. And after Elvis there was everything. I’ll say that. Firstly, Tin Pan Alley songwriters and their ‘moon in June‘ blandfest of lyrics were given a huge boot up the arse and out the door. As they were leaving, in came bands who played their own instruments, wrote their own songs, presented themselves as a gang and dressed accordingly. In a few short years, the thrill of rock ‘n roll and all its attendant detritus was well in motion. But you knew that already.

Phil Spector was a bit of a throwback to that pre-Elvis era. The auteur of teen angst, he used assorted songwriters to pen the hits, before introducing the song to the musicians who would bend and shape it into Spector’s vision of a 3 minute symphony, before finally introducing the singers to the song and pushing them to the very edge of their limits in order to create pop perfection. Goffin & King. Ellie Greenwich. Jeff Barry. Writing for The Ronettes. The Crystals. Darlene Love. I’m sure you know them all. Phil even got himself a writing credit for coming up with the “woah-woah-woah” part at the end of Mann & Weill’s ‘You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling‘. Clever man, that Phil Spector. Well, he was at one time…

Spector’s influence reached far and wide, as far even as that hotbed of rock action, south Wales. In 1973, following the huge success of I Hear You Knocking (a favourite of John Lennon, coincidentally), and after a part in David Essex’s Stardust, Dave Edmunds combined his love of early 50s rock ‘n roll with the technique of Phil Spector and produced his own version of The Chordettes’ Born To Be With You. It’s terrific! A wall of 12 string guitars, stratosphere-scraping vocals and galloping, clattering rat-ticky-tat percussion. It’s measured. Precise. Perfect. By the time the brass ‘n slide guitar part comes soaring in, you’ll already have convinced yourself this is the best record you’ve heard all year. Someone like Glasvegas could waltz in and do it in the same style and make it sound even huger. “Coz ah wiz borrrrn…tae be wi’ yooo!” But for the moment, content yourself with Dave Edmund’s 40-year old version. I think you’ll like it a lot.

Pop Quiz Interlude

Q. Aside from The Beatles, name the only other rock/pop artists on the cover of the Sgt Peppers LP.

A. Bob Dylan (top right, back row) and Dion (7th from left, 2nd back row. Just next to Tony Curtis and behind a wee bit from Oscar Wilde).

Dylan you’ve probably heard of. Dion too, for that matter. Dion was a duh-duh-duh-d’-duh-duh duh dude. His rasping, doo-wopping Noo Yoik Bronx vocal created monster hits. The Wanderer. Runaround Sue. A Teenager In Love. I’m sure you’re singing them now, ingrained as they are in the very fabric of rock ‘n roll. Dion was also the Marti Pellow of his day – pop idol on the outside whilst rattling to the bones with heroin on the inside. When the hits dried up, Dion found himself label-less, friendless and definitely down and out in New York City. Following a religious epiphany (c’mon! what did you expect?!?) and subsequently ditching the drugs, 1975 found Dion working with Phil Spector on his own version of Born To Be With You.

Ironically, it’s less Spectorish than Edmunds’ rollin’ and tumblin’ version. Dion’s is downbeat, introspective and melancholy, sounding exactly like the kind of record an artist makes when they know they’re in the last chance saloon; measured (again) and majestic. At just short of 7 minutes, it’s something of an epic. Jason Pierce of Spiritualized is said to be a huge fan of this record, which makes perfect sense. It’s almost Spiritualized in template, with it’s steady, pulsing riff and inter-woven sax breaks. And the background drugs story was no doubt the icing on the cake for our Jason.

Good records. That’s what they are. Play them. Enjoy them. Pass it on.

Cover Versions, Gone but not forgotten

Transvestite Twiggy Pop

January 30, 2013 Craig McAllister

My Dad’s a banjo player. And that’s not a strange euphemism for any dodgy Deliverance-influenced way of life. He’s a straight-up, proper bluegrass bashin’, six-fingered pickin’ ‘n strummin’ banjo player. And quite good too. Plays in a band and everything. Which is more than I do these days. Maybe once I retire…..

As a teenager when I was learning to play the cheap plank of wood and rubber band combo that passed as my first electric guitar, he’d show me how to play the chords to any number of Buddy Holly songs, when all I really wanted to do was play the She Sells Sanctuary riff in front of the mirror. He couldn’t show me, thankfully (how uncool would that have been?), but it didn’t stop him listening to my records from afar and watching any videos I was in the process of freeze-framing in order to establish what chords, strings and frets my latest idol was playing. Now and again he’d point out a D chord or a hammer-on at the 7th fret, but that was as far as he got. I got quite good at learning by ear/watching telly. I still play Blackbird the same way after watching Paul McCartney’s MTV Unplugged. And I finally worked out She Sells Sanctuary (dead easy, but you knew that already).

One night I was watching for the umpteenth time a video of The Cramps, taped from arts show Later, long before it morphed into the Jools Holland-endorsed franchise of modern times. This was late-era, almost-classic line-up Cramps, on telly to promote the Stay Sick album. On hearing another unfamiliar racket starting up, my Dad poked his head around the living room door and feigned interest. “Who’s this? This looks interesting.” He didn’t say anything else. He didn’t have to. The camera panned up and down Lux in his Fonz-in-high heels ‘n PVC get-up, then panned up and down Poison Ivy wearing a mini skirt and a Gretsch and not much else, then panned up and down straight-backed drummer Nick Knox before settling on bubblegum-blowing bass player Candy del Mar in her tiny black bikini top. “Look at the size of her fingers,” he said without a trace of irony. Thanks to the wonders of the internet, it’s not hard to track down that very show. I urge you to watch it:

Conclusive proof, if it were needed, that The Cramps were the last truly great rock and roll band.

I came to The Cramps quite late and only saw them live once, at the Barrowlands. Promoting that same Stay Sick album, as it happens. At the back of the Barrowlands, where the sound desk and special seated guests area is, there’s a wee 6 inch high ledge, ideal for short arses like myself to stand on and get a better view of the stage. Just before The Cramps came on, we were looking for a good viewing place and were headed in that direction. Perched on the end of the ledge with a girl on either side (combined age 32, and I’m being kind) was Primal Scream’s Bobby Gillespie. My pal Rab, suitably refreshed despite the warm beer in the plastic glass, and dismayed at the direction the Scream had taken with their new material, decided to have a wee word with the man – “That Loaded‘s shite, Bobby. You should’ve stuck to Ivy Ivy Ivy.“

Gillespie looked up. He was in full faux rockstar casualty mode at the time, lank hair ‘n leathers ‘n all. Flashing a Lennon peace sign, from beneath the fringe came the immortal words, spoken in that strange accent that’s more yer actual Florida than Mount Florida. “Ecstasy, motherfucker.” And almost to the beat of his poetry, The Cramps walked on and started. “Good mawnin’ Captain! Good mawnin’ to yoo! Ah-ha-ha, ah, ha, ha!!!” And away they went. Lux hanging off the mic stand like a transvestite Twiggy Pop, to-ing and fro-ing his vocals between hiccuping hillbilly and graverobber growl, Ivy playing like a hot-wired Scotty Moore. They were absolutely dynamite. Gillespie would kill to have an ounce of their effortless cool, that much is obvious. Anyway, anytime I listen to The Cramps, I think of that story. That and, “Look at the size of her fingers.”

Here’s some late-era Cramps;

Shortnin’ Bread

Muleskinner Blues

I Wanna Get in Your Pants

Two cover versions (the first 2) and an outrageously good self-penned rip-off of Hang On Sloopy that does exactly what it says on the tin. The twang’s the thang, baby!

There’s a Cramps tribute on in McChuills, Glasgow this Saturday night, with The Primevals amongst others taking part. Just a wee heads up if you’re at a loose end. Click on the link. You might say it Lux interestin’…….(Scottish pun).

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

Happy Birthday Rabbie

January 25, 2013 Craig McAllister

Some of you may have read this before (2009 and 2011, to be exact).

254 years young today. I love Burns. Had him drummed into me at school. In fact, anyone who goes to school in the West of Scotland knows all about him. And as a teacher, I love banging on about him to my class. Here’s a brief potted history for any uninitiated out there…

robert-burns

Born on the 25th January, 1759 in Alloway (now a posh part of Ayr). Scrawny boy, wasn’t expected to live long. Helped his dad on the farm. Wasn’t cut out for it. His dad, though poor, paid for Robert to go to school. Robert excelled in academia. Began writing poems to go along with the folk songs his mother had sung to him. People liked them. Drifted around Ayrshire. Had a reputation as a ladies man. Loved them and left them. Made plans to go to Jamaica as a slave driver (they don’t tell you that in school). Was just about to go when someone in Kilmarnock published the first edition of his poetry. This edition made it’s way to Edinburgh and Robert followed. The Edinburgh high society loved him. He loved Edinburgh life. He loved Edinburgh women. He loved entertaining Edinburgh women. In less than a year he spent the equivalent in today’s terms of £170,000! That’s £170,000 pissed against a wall. Made a hasty retreat, skint, to Dumfries when he was caught having an affair. Married Jean Armour, the love of his life they say and went back to the farming. Hated it. Became a tax man. Hated that. Died of a heart condition, possibly brought on by syphilis, on 21st July 1796, aged just 37. At the time of his death he had fathered at least 13 children to various women throughout Ayrshire, Edinburgh and Dumfries. Stick that in yer pointy boots, Russell Brand.

‘Happy Birthday, Mr Burns‘, by The Ramones on The Simpsons.

Ane, twa, chree, fower!

That reminds me. Prince Charles was on a visit to Crosshouse Hospital, just outside Kilmarnock a couple of years ago. One of the Hospital big wigs was accompanying him round the wards, steering old Charlie clear of the wasters, winos and swine flu sufferers that were using up valuable bed space. Walking into one ward, The Prince stopped at one of the first beds and asked the young man how he was feeling. The bedridden patient replied;

“Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim’rous beastie,
O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty
Wi bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an’ chase thee,
Wi’ murdering pattle.”

Charles mumbled something under his breath, smiled at the distressed patient and walked on. He stopped at another bed and asked the next patient how he too was fareing. The patient looked up and shouted out,

“My curse upon your venom’d stang,
That shoots my tortur’d gooms alang,
An’ thro’ my lug gies monie a twang
Wh’ gnawing vengeance,
Tearing my nerves wi’ bitter pang,
Like racking engines!”

Somewhat shaken, Charles walked on. Stopping at the last bed he looked at the patient. Being the future King and all, it was only polite of him to ask this patient how he too was progressing. With a froth of the mouth patient number three barked out,

“When Chapman billies leave the street,
And drouthy neebors neebors meet,
As market-days are wearing late,
An’ folk begin to tak the gate;
While we sit bousing at the nappy,
An’ getting fou and unco happy,
We think na on the lang Scots miles,
The mosses, waters, slaps and styles,
That lie between us and our hame,
Whare sits our sulky, sullen dame,
Gathering her brows like a gathering storm,
Nursing her wrath to keep it warm.

This truth fand honest Tam O Shanter,
As he frae Ayr ae nicht did canter:
(Auld Ayr, wham ne’er a town surpasses,
For honest men and bonie lasses.)”

A visibly bemused and perturbed Charles turned to his guide and inquired, “Where are we man? Is this some sort of mental ward?”

“No Sir,” came the reply. “This is the severe Burns Unit.”

You can have that one for free….

Here’s lo-fi acoustic folk Scottish supergroup-of-sorts The Burns Unit doing a brand new song called Tupperware Pieces for last week’s Marc Riley show on BBC 6 Music. S’a cracker. (I stole the mp3 from Peenko – ta!)

And here’s the Trashcan Sinatras‘ ode tae Rabbie, I Hung My Harp Upon The Willows. It tells the story of Rabbie’s time in Irvine. Aye, Alloway made the man, but Irvine made the poet. As an Irvine boy, I make sure I tell them that in school. It gets right up the snooty noses of those South Ayrshirites, so it does.

Get This!, Gone but not forgotten

Hot Fuzz

January 19, 2013 Craig McAllister

Back in 1970s Scotland there was a drink called Creamola Foam. You might remember it. It came in orange and raspberry flavours and was aimed solely at children, who up until then got their fizzy fix from stealing their dad’s mixers when he wasn’t paying attention, before adding that same mixer to a big cup of additive-heavy, wheeze-inducing orange juice. Teeth-meltingly magic and free of faff, the instructions on the Creamola Foam tin told you simply to add one level teaspoon to a cup of water, stir and drink.

Everyone ignored the instructions. Two, three, four heaped spoonfuls of the stuff went into the beaker and whoosh! A volcanic eruption of legal amphetamine right before your very eyes. It’s no coincidence that the introduction of Creamola Foam correlated with the trend for driving BMWs and Audis amongst the dental profession up and down the land. Until 1978, Mr Devine my dentist drove a beige Vauxhall Viva.

Born at the arse-end of the Creamola Foam boom, it’s unlikely that Supergrass ever found themselves hairy-face to face with a cup of the stuff (they kept their teeth nice and clean, after all), but their early recordings sound like they were bathed in gallons of it, such is the youthful effervescence of it all. You’ll know this already, but they came to mainstream attention in 1995 thanks to the Alright single and its accompanying video featuring the group Monkeeing around on a trio of Choppers, Gaz sporting a set of Victorian gentleman’s sideburns that even Neil Young might be inclined to shave off for being on the wrong side of hippy. Alright crossed the Atlantic and brought Supergrass to the attention of America, although the band had trouble explaining the “smoke a fag” line, which was somewhat lost in translation.

Those with an ear to the ground were familiar with Supergrass long before Alright began bothering the charts. Preceding single Mansize Rooster was a giddy rush of Madness barrelhouse piano, Chas Smash shouting (Roooostah!) and Nutty Boy stomp (my ability to identify it helped me win Danny Baker’s quiz on the radio one Saturday morning), and the debut album I Should Coco was a riot of 3 minute riffage from start to finish. Lenny. Lose It. Sitting Up Straight. She’s So Loose. The sweary Strange Ones. The one chord groove of Time. The astonishing punk/prog of Sofa (Of My Lethargy). All rush by with the carefree abandon you’d expect from a group with a collective age roughly an eighth of Mick Jagger, who, if I remember correctly, was about 93 at the time. If you’ve never heard the album, do yourself a favour, eh? If you have the album, do yourself a favour and stick it on again. It’s playing as I type and it still stands up.

Debut single Caught By The Fuzz was my favourite. “It’s nothing you’ve never heard before,” quoted one cynical regular in the record shop where I worked. He was right. Caught By The Fuzz is punk-pop by numbers; a Buzzcockian breakneck rush of chugging guitars, Moon-esque tumbling drums and woo-aaa-wooo! backing vocals hanging on to the coat tails of a true story confessional concerning jazz cigarettes and the over-officious Oxfordshire police.

In The Observer last year, Gaz explained that his 15 year old self was a passenger in an old Ford Fiesta with a broken headlight when he and his pals got pulled over. “I stuck the hash down my pants but I had it in a little metal tin. I was standing on the pavement, and the tin just went all the way down my trousers and landed on the pavement with a ting. The copper went, ‘What’s that, son?'” Uh-oh. A song was born. “Locked in the cell, feeling unwell…..I talked to a man, he said “It’s better to tell”…Who sold you the blow?” “Well, it was no-one I know!” Here comes my mum, she knows what I’ve done….you’ve blackened our name, you should be ashamed.”

It’s magic, in case you need to ask. It was magic then and it’s still magic now, the best part of (gulp) 20 years later.

Don’t even think about downloading it!

Caught By The Fuzz comes here in a couple of versions:

The single/album version

The acoustic version

Fuzz Fact #1

Supergrass are everyone’s second-favourite band

Fuzz Fact #2

The original Backbeat Records version is slightly different to the single/album version above and is rarer than a frown at a Supergrass gig. Sadly, it’s always been just out of reach. If you have a spare copy….

Fuzz Fact #3

I Should Coco was the biggest selling debut on Parlophone since The Beatles’ Please Please Me in 1963.

Fuzz Fact #4

Rather predictably, Hugh Grant wouldn’t give the band his permission to feature his mug shot on the sleeve of the single (he had been arrested around this time for picking up that very manly hooker in LA), but bass player Mick managed to appear on Top Of The Pops with the same image cheekily printed on his t-shirt.

Cover Versions, Gone but not forgotten, Sampled

James Brown Samples

January 13, 2013January 13, 2013 Craig McAllister

So, the most surprising, genuinely uplifting and fist-pumping pop moment of this week was, of course, the sneaking-out of the new David Bowie single with all the silence and stealth of a top-secret Radiohead campaign. And with an album to follow too! I like Where Are We Now?, it kinda reminds me of Wild Is The Wind or Loving The Alien or Always Crashing In The Same Car or any other of those other slow-burning beauties of his that appear fully-formed and worm their way into your head forever.

By sheer coincidence, about 10 minutes after hearing the Bowie single on 6 Music, the iPod threw up an old James Brown tune as I drove grudgingly to face the day. Not a tune that I had played very often (never?), I had to check as I drove what it was actually called. Turns out it was called Hot (I Need To Be Loved, Loved, Loved) and by the sounds of it was a classic example of mid 70s funk-period Brown. Y’know, not the pop-soul James Brown of Sex Machine or Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag, rather the big girl’s blousey James Brown of velvet flared suits and Rumble In The Jungle moustache. Less than a minute into it and I was asking myself where I’d heard it before. A classic stabbing Blaxploitation brass intro replete with Brown grunts before breaking down into the instantly recognisable groove – all super-slinky rinky-dink riffing and fluid, four-to-the-floor bass, conga breakdown and electric piano. Had I been trying to sleep, this would have caused me a sleepless night. Where had I heard it before? Where?

It came to me in the middle of the afternoon. Bowie! Fame! Fay-yame! Fay-yame, makes a man think things over. Fame fame fame fame fame fame fame fame fame! Bully for me! Bowie had nicked the riff to Hot (I Need To Be Loved, Loved, Loved), added some bitchy lyrics with the help of John Lennon (who sang the backing vocals and may or may not have played additional guitar, depending on what and where you read), changed the melody and passed it off as one of his own. Even the wee high chord that punctuated the verses was there. Bowie, in his mid 70s plastic soulboy incarnation had appropriated every tiny bit of it from James Brown! He even had the nerve to go on Soul Train and sell coals back to Newcastle.

Or so I thought…..

Checking the credits later on that night, I notice that Bowie’s Fame is credited to Bowie, Alomar and Lennon, and following some detective work on that last outpost in truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, Wikipedia, I discovered the track was built around a Carlos Alomar riff. Aye right, I thought. James Brown is the most sampled man in music. You’ve just gone one further, Bowie and ripped the whole thing off. Then I dug deeper. Turns out Carlos Alomar was in James Brown’s band for a bit in the mid 60s. Not only that, but that last outpost in truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth claims that James Brown based Hot (I Need To Be Loved, Loved, Loved) on David Bowie’s Fame. He ripped off Bowie! There’s no mention of a Bowie credit on the James Brown version (not on my Star Time, Disc 4 info at any rate), so if Wiki is to be believed, James Brown turned from funky gamekeeper to funkier poacher. And got away with it.

Both tracks, it turns out, were recorded sometime in 1975 at Electric Lady Studios in New York, Bowie’s in January and Brown’s later on in the year. Carlos Alomar, having played with many of the band still backing James Brown at this time was, by all accounts, absolutely livid by the steal. Bowie was a bit cooler, agreeing to sue if the track became a hit, which it never did. It’s interesting to note that in the fully comprehensive booklet that accompanies the James Brown Star Time Box set, where recording personnel are meticulously listed, under Hot (I Need To Be Loved, Loved, Loved) it just says ‘backing by unknown personnel’, which, for me, is just about as good an admittance you’ll get that James Brown took the original Bowie track, dubbed out his voice and sang his own melody across the top. Just my theory, at any rate.

Contrast and compare:

David Bowie Fame

James Brown Hot (I Need To Be Loved, Loved, Loved)

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Cover Versions, demo, Get This!, Hard-to-find, Peel Sessions, Sampled

Victoria Wood. Morrissey Did.

January 6, 2013January 6, 2013 Craig McAllister

Rusholme Ruffians is The Smiths at their sticky-fingered peak. From the alliteratively-alluring Ealing comedyesque title down, it’s a masterclass in Morrissey’s stolen kitchen sink observations backed by a Johnny Marr riff flat-out filched from Scotty Moore via Elvis Presley’s (Marie’s The Name) His Latest Flame 1961 single.

By the time they came to record Rusholme Ruffians for second album Meat Is Murder, The Smiths were at the top of their game. As was usually the way, Johnny would present the band with a cassette demo. The musicians would go off and shape Marr’s ideas into a band performance while Morrissey would twist and turn what lyrics he had into the new tune, writing and re-writing as he went along until, between band and bard, they had the genesis of a song. “Let’s do a song about the fair,” suggested Morrissey. “For some reason my association was to pull out that Elvis riff,” explained Marr.

His appropriation of the riff as a frantically scrubbed rockabilly knee-trembler alongside Mike Joyce’s rattlin’ and rollin’ percussion is in stark contrast to Andy Rourke’s slap happy elastic band of a bassline. Played at half the speed, it wouldn’t have sounded out of place on any mid-period Sly and the Family Stone record. Played as it was, it gives the tune that certain je ne sais quoi; the essential ingredient that turned an average Elvis pastiche into an undeniable Smiths’ tune. To use what is surely by now a cliche, Andy Rourke really was the unsung musical hero in The Smiths. And by the time the vocal went on top, well, an undeniable Smiths’ tune had become an undeniable Smiths’ classic.

“As a child I was literally educated at fairgrounds. It was a place of tremendous violence and hate and stress and high romance and all the true vital things in life. It was really the patch of ground where you learned about everything simultaneously whether you wanted to or not.”

The lyrics that poured out of Morrissey for Rusholme Ruffians are pure 24 carat gold. Every line features classic Morrisseyism after classic Morrisseyism; perfectly executed observations on what happens when the fair comes to town;

The last night of the fair, by the big wheel generator…a boy is stabbed and his money is grabbed and the air hangs heavy like a dulling wine…she is famous, she is funny…..an engagement ring doesn’t mean a thing to a mind consumed by brass (money)….and though I walk home alone…..I might walk home alone ….but my faith in love is still devout…..From a seat on a whirling waltzer …her skirt ascends for a watching eye …it’s a hideous trait on her mother’s side…someone falls in love, someone’s beaten up…..the grease in the hair of the speedway operator is all a tremulous heart requires…how quickly would I die if I jumped from the top of the parachutes….scratch my name on your arm with a fountain pen, this means you really love me….

Classic Morrisseyism after classic Morrisseyism.

Or are they?

Morrissey was, and remains, a fan of slightly posh, slightly batty northern comedienne Victoria Wood. Her dry ruminations and reflections clearly struck a chord with him, mirroring as they did his own skewed and melodramatic views on life and living. Sonically, she’s about as far removed from The Smiths as Take That are from the MC5, but her skits and sketches have proven a rich seam for mining lyrics and snippets that pop up across many Smiths recordings – ‘ten ton truck‘, ‘singing to the mentally ill‘, ‘not natural, normal or kind‘, the list goes on….

Wood’s 1983 concert album Lucky Bag was a big favourite of Morrissey’s. On the LP was a track called Fourteen Again. A track featuring a spoken-word intro, including a line proclaiming “they didn’t even know what drugs were” that the eagle-eared amongst you will recognise from the title track of The Queen Is Dead, Fourteen Again includes such lyrics as;

I want to be fourteen again, tattoo my self with a fountain pen….free rides on the waltzer off the fairground men for a promise of a snog….. the last night of the fair…..French kissing as the kiosks shut…..behind the generators with your coconut…..the coloured lights reflected in the Brylcream on his hair…..when I was funny, I was famous…

OK, so he didn’t steal them all, and he came up with some genuine crackers of his own – tremulous hearts and minds consumed by brass (money) and jumping from the tops of parachutes (the ‘skirt ascends‘ line is my favourite) but old Morrissey certainly utilised his love of Victoria Wood to full extent, that much is clear. And just in case you still aren’t convinced, the ‘my faith in love is still devout‘ line was taken from another Wood song, Funny How Things Turn Out, where she proclaims ‘my faith in myself is still devout’.

Hear for yourself:

Elvis Presley – (Marie’s The Name) His Latest Flame

Victoria Wood – Fourteen Again

Victoria Wood – Funny How Things Turn Out

The Smiths – Rusholme Ruffians (demo, first take recorded with John Porter July 1984)

The Smiths – Rusholme Ruffians (Peel Session 9th August, 1984)

The Smiths – Rusholme Ruffians (Meat Is Murder LP version, February 1985)

…and, acknowledging their debt to The King….The Smiths – His Latest Flame/Rusholme Ruffians (Rank LP version, recorded October 1986)

Like This? Try these…

The Smiths How Soon Is Now explained

The Smiths A Rush And a Push explained

The Smiths There Is A Light That Never Goes Out explained

Johnny Marr’s Dansette Delights

Hard-to-find

River Euphrates Double Whammy

January 3, 2013 Craig McAllister

Every school had their own Billy Bullshit and Alan Harper* was ours. Harper was quite a quiet guy, but when he talked, he talked about 3 things – fishing, going fishing with his uncle, and just how great his uncle was at fishing and other pursuits. “My uncle caught a salmon that was bigger than my gran’s Collie but he had to throw it back in the river cos he said we wouldn’t be able to eat it all in one go and the rest of it wouldn’t have fitted in my auntie’s freezer.” Aye?!

“My uncle scored a one-four-seven against Hurricane Higgins in a challenge match at the snooker last year and Steve Davis refused to play him after that so he got a bye into the final against Ray Reardon but Ray Reardon beat him.” Oh aye?!

“My uncle used to play for Irvine Meadow and Rangers wanted to sign him as a winger but he wouldn’t sign for them unless they played him instead of Derek Johnstone at centre forward so they signed Davie Cooper instead.” Aye?! Really?!

“Phil Lynott asked my uncle to play lead guitar in Thin Lizzy after they played at the Magnum but my uncle was playing bass in a wedding band at the time and didn’t want to let them down.” Aye?! Right! You know the sort of talk…equal parts riveting and ridiculous.

Alan Harper was also quite a sturdy guy. We used to laugh at the outlandishness of it all behind his back, but one day, just before physics, Harper caught me laughing at his latest claim and BANG!, he thumped me clean on the nose. There were tears and blood and I never again laughed at the utter pish he spoke.

*name changed to protect the innocent (me).

River Euphrates was the first track I ever heard by the Pixies. It arrived like that Harper left hook; from outta nowhere, brutal and like a no-nonsense hard smack to the coupon. It was shouty and guitary and, by now, being fed up with my Wedding Present LPs, immediately became my new favourite record. I went Pixies daft, buying Surfer Rosa and Come On Pilgrim on vinyl in one fell swoop, played them to death and waited patiently for about a year until Doolittle and all the other subsequent albums/singles/eps came along. Surfer Rosa, with it’s hubba-hubba sexy cover and more-tunes-to-the-groove ratio than their other LPs remains my favourite. And River Euphrates still remains my favourite Pixies track.

Not your normal guitar band, Pixies wrote songs differently. Their whole quiet/loud/quiet/loud schtick was adopted to great effect by Nirvana (you knew that already), but a quick flick through their back catalogue will reveal a whole host of very sweary and disturbing songs about slicing up eyeballs, broken faces (Harper again), tattooed tits and sending bloodied dresses to boyfriends in prison – subject matter that contemporaries then and now were not tackling. God only knows what they were singing about when they burst into Spanish. For the record, River Euphrates is a song about sailing down the actual River Euphrates on a giant tyre after running out of petrol somewhere on the Gaza Strip between Egypt and Israel. Nothing more, nothing less. River Euphrates is practically a quiet/loud/quiet Pixies template-by-numbers, with a breathy Kim Deal vocal struggling for space behind a loop of 3 barrre chords that musicians (pah!) like Roddy Frame would never consider putting together, and a larynx-loosening Frank Black vocal almost as big and ugly as his girth. He whispers one minute and barks like a dog the next and I love it. I used to try and play the siren-like riff by bending two strings together until my fingers bled (to paraphrase Bryan Adams) but it was only about a month ago that I discovered why my version sounded nothing like the original.

On Pixies’ Facebook page, guitarist Joey Santiago posted a picture of a beautiful Gretsch guitar (above), all silver sparkles and chrome. It belonged to Cocteau Twins’ Robin Guthrie and it was this guitar, said Joey, that he played when the band recorded River Euphrates. The distinctive siren sound was created by manipulating the guitar’s Bigsby whammy bar though a torrent of feedback from a Marshall stack, two key ingredients that I don’t have. That’ll be why my version sounded like Lonnie Donegan jamming with Lee Mavers, I reasoned. It’ll also be why, I reasoned again, Pixies rarely played River Euphrates live. Look through any Pixies bootleg list and, while it makes an appearance here and there, River Euphrates was never really a staple of the Pixies live set. Later on on Facebook, someone pointed out that the guitar Joey had pictured didn’t actually have an on-board Bigsby, which kinda spoiled the story a wee bit for me, so we’ll just have to take his word for it.

Pixies recorded two studio versions of River Euphrates. The first appeared on the b-side of their Gigantic EP. The second, shorter version was recorded by Steve Albini and appeared on Surfer Rosa. Both, like, rock.

River Euphrates (Gigantic ep version)

River Euphrates (Surfer Rosa version)

Bonus Track!

Arch satirist Chris Morris did a Pixies parody called Motherbanger for Select magazine a few years ago. Spot on, as you’ll hear…..

Chris Morris – Motherbanger

Get This!, Most downloaded tracks

Hit For Six

December 30, 2012December 30, 2012 Craig McAllister

The end of the year. In blogging terms, I like the end of the year. It gives me an excuse to reflect on the year here in blogging, re-read some of the stuff I’ve written, and glow red with shame at some of the drivel that bypassed my editorial control first time around whilst simultaneously basking in the glow of a well-turned phrase or two that helped shape one post or other from good to really good, or sometimes elevate it to really great, even if I say so myself.

What I can’t stand about the year end is the continual palaver of pollsters pontificating on the best/worst/most/least so and so and such and such of the year. It’s a load of rubbish really, one man’s meat being another man’s poison and all that. Sometimes a list might point you in the direction of a gem of a record that escaped your attention first-time round, but most of the time the lists are full of stuff that seem to be a marketing man’s idea of hip eclecticism. Like a more extreme, international version of the Mercury Music Prize nominees, you’ll find a motley crew of apparently “essential listening” – A posh-boy grime artist here. Some skinny-jeaned soul-baring twonk in daft hair there. A facially-fuzzy bunch of weedy Brooklyn vegans in brogues that were the main topic of conversation round Kate Moss’s dinner table three weeks ago. If you read Plain Or Pan you’ll know what my best/worst/most/least so and sos are for the year, so I’m not about to foist another self-important list of uber-hip nonsense in your direction. Besides, Plain Or Pan has never been about the hip stuff. Here, we only deal in the good stuff. Outdated music for outdated people, as the strap-line goes. David Quantick loved that, so he did.

Outdated music for outdated people since 2007, to be more precise. Aye, the end of 2012 means that Plain Or Pan is now 6 years old. And as is customary, the backroom team take time away from their families at Christmas to break out the spreadsheets, dust down the bar graphs and pin up the pie charts to work out what the biggest-hitting downloads have been for the year. This has been made doubly difficult this year due to the sudden deletion of various Plain Or Pan file sharing accounts by The Man, swooping undercover with his big, fat virtual Staedtler eraser and hitting me for six when I’m not paying attention. They’re ruthless, they really are.

I’m thinking in the New Year that I’ll be going more for an inbuilt media player layout, with a monthly compilation of the most-played tracks, but I’m still weighing up the options. Certainly, any blogger’ll tell you how regularly they have their accounts tampered with, and there’s nothing we can do about it. It’s almost enough to have you give up blogging at times, it really is. Anyway, I like to tell myself that most folk come here first for the writing, with the mp3 being an added bonus (a bit like those Mojo magazine CDs – mainly crap and unlistenable, but now and again a good one comes along. You read the magazine regardless though. My backroom team have worked out that each visitor here reads on average 2.3 posts, which I like to think means they find what they came for first, liked what they read, then had a wee scroll through some of the other high quality stuff with a pleasantly surprised look on their face).

Ach, who am I kidding?! Most folk come here via Google and scroll straight to the links, tut that it’s been deleted or tap their fingers impatiently if the file still exists and is downloadable, then disappear with their newly-acquired crappy mp3 of whatever and stick it on their iPod to never play it again. But thanks! I mean it, I really do! And by way of saying thanks, here’s 37 covers, curios and hard-to-find classics that, due to those aforementioned undercover men with big fat virtual Staedtler erasers meant you probably missed first-time around;

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Disc 1

World Of Twist – Sons of the Stage (12″ version)

The Third Degree – Mercy

The Roots – The Seed

Ronnie Hudson – West Coast Poplock

Stevie Wonder – You Haven’t Done Nothin‘

The Flirtations – Nothing But A Heartache

Donna Summer – Love To Love You Baby (Long Version (16+mins))

Bobby Womack – If You Want My Love Put Something Down On It

Jerry Lee Lewis – Over The Rainbow

Tony Allen & Damon Albarn – Every Season

The Raconteurs – Steady, As She Goes (BBC Session, 25.3.06)

The Artwoods – Goodbye Sisters

The Daily Flash – Jack Of Diamonds

Spacemen 3 – Revolution

Led Zeppelin – Thank You

Disc 2

Ennio Morricone – Once Upon A Time In The West

The Durutti Column – Sketch For Summer

Noonday Underground – Barcelona

The Beach Boys – Only With You

Lightships – Do Your Thing

Carly Simon – Why? (12″ Mix)

Serge Gainsbourg – Bonnie & Clyde

Blur – Money Makes Me Crazy (Marrakesh Mix)

Inspiral Carpets – Greek Wedding Song

The Honeycombs – Have I The Right

Little Willie John – I’m Shakin’

The High Numbers – I’m The Face

William Bell – My Whole World Is Falling Down

Irma Thomas – Time Is On My Side

The Supremes – Coca-Cola ad

Tom Jones – Coca-Cola ad

Nyah Fearties – Red Kola

Diana Ross – Upside Down (Original Chic mix)

The Beastie Boys – Shambala

The Tornadoes – Telstar

Neu! – Hallogallo

Get them quick, before they disappear like snaw aff a dyke, as they say round here.

CD1 can be found here, or here, or here.

CD2 can be found here, or here, or here.

Artwork included.

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