Get This!, Hard-to-find

Excess All Areas

Craig McAllister

Fritter about on the margins of success. Get signed. Release a hit single. Release a hit album. Tour bigger venues. Release a small run of future classic singles with killer b-sides. Release further singles and albums with ever-decreasing returns. Implode around 5th/6th LP when key member leaves or dies. A year or so down the line, entice same member back (unless dead) for one last hurrah and pay-day, but by then the magic is gone. All this is of course played out to a backdrop of drink and drugs and guns and girls and boys and Bentleys and bad and/or bent management. The trick for all bands is to make the upward trajectory as quick as possible, plateau for as long as everyone can stand you then make the downward trajectory as smooth and pain-free (and lucrative) as you can. (cf. most of your favourite bands, even that Stone Roses lot,  – they all fit the model to some degree or other, but you knew that already).

Happy Mondays were well into the downward trajectory of their life when they decamped, in part to escape the Manchester drug scene, to Barbados to record …Yes Please!, the album that proved to be their last. Unable to secure the services of Paul Oakenfold, the uber producer who’d sprinkled their previous work with hit-making fairy dust, the band instead chose to work with Talking Heads’ rhythm section, Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth. On paper this sounds great – a decade earlier, Weymouth’s Tom Tom Club had taken the Talking Heads scratchy funk/punk blueprint and created proper full-on dance records, of their time, yet simultaneously ahead of the game, and Happy Mondays, via Oakenfold’s magic touch, had taken their clattering industrial funk and  propelled it into the charts, the mainstream and the collective minds of most of the under 25s in the UK. In practice, however, things were not so great. Never has an album been more aptly named. Paul Ryder and his brother Shaun (suffering heroin withdrawal when he left Manchester), a pair of walking, talking Scarface caricatures who at the best of times could make any substance shoved under their noses disappear in Dyson-quick doubletime, arrived in a Barbados that was buckling under the weight of a crack epidemic. Want some? Yes, please. The cost of funding this adventure eventually broke Factory Records and Shaun spent so much time building crack dens out of sun loungers beside the studio pool, that he forgot to write a single lyric for the album, a fact only discovered back in the UK when Tony Wilson was forced to pay £50 ransom to Ryder for the return of the studio mastertapes.

When it eventually materialised, …Yes Please! took a bit of a kicking. Melody Maker posted a lazy, half-arsed review that simply said, “No thanks.” Nirvana and their ilk were in full flow and for the first time ever, Happy Mondays seemed antiquated and irrelevant. It’s right there on the shelf behind me, but I can’t even remember buying it. Like many bands once they reach a certain point in their life, I bought it out of blind loyalty rather than musical merit. However….

…listening to it again recently had me doing some sort of mini re-appraisal. First single Stinkin ‘Thinkin’, with its ringing guitars and stoned, whispered vocal still stands up to repeated listens. The very antithesis of twistin melons, callin’ the cops and all that jazz, it’s downbeat, reflective and unlike anything Happy Mondays had done before or since. Drug confessional Angel is another that still cuts the mustard. “When did the Simpsons begin?” slurs Shaun, eyelids heavy with the fug of the night before. Although spoiled somewhat by foghorn-voiced Rowetta, the big haired, big mouthed wannabe rock chick the ill-advised Mondays brought into the fold for their later stuff, it‘s still a cracker. Currently appearing in pantomime at a medium-sized arena somewhere near you, Happy Mondays seem certain to eke out a living, Drifters style, from now on in. Stinkin’, yes. But not really thinkin’. Stop! Now!

Anyway, whether he’d ever acknowledge it or not, those two Happy Mondays tracks above were a definite influence on Damon Albarn when he wrote the tracks for Blur‘s final LP, Think Tank. I’ve been playing Think Tank a lot lately, what with the Blur reunion (of sorts) and the excellent No Distance Left To Run documentary on the TV the other night. The dark horse in the Blur catalogue, Think Tank is famous for being an almost Coxon-free zone, the guitarist contributing to the woozy, wobbly Battery In Your Leg before having left after being increasingly frustrated at the (sigh) direction the band’s music was going in. Recorded in Morocco, there’s a noticeable space between the grooves that allows the album to pop open the top button of its trousers and, like, breathe. (Sadly) it’s not tied up in any of those jerky, spasticated 2 minute shouty freakouts that Coxon does so well. (Thankfully) there’s none of those terrible bleep/bang/bleep/scree tune-free bits or free-form atonal rackets best saved for b-sides or solo LPs. Think Tank as a whole is dubby, spacey and tinged with African bangs ‘n beats. Now that I think about it, it’s basically a precursor to Gorillaz, without the big-name special guests. Best track by a country mile is Brothers And Sisters, a track so clearly in debt to those two Happy Mondays tracks that Shaun Ryder would indeed call the cops if he was ever sober enough to listen to it properly. Built on a bed of elastic band bass, Albarn’s loose, stoned, vocals practically stage whisper, “Tonight Matthew, I’m going to be Shaun Ryder!” Caffeine. Codeine. Cocaine. White doves. He reels off a tick-list Paul and Shaun would’ve had no bother putting away before breakfast.

Think Tank is also notable for featuring Me, White Noise, a hidden track you can find by rewinding from the start of the first track. With a backing track sounding like a fly trapped in a bass bin, Phil Daniels mutters and mumbles and shouts and swears his way through almost 7 minutes of thrilling stuff. “Fack orff!” he snarls. “I’ve got a gun, y’know…and I’d use it!” Thanks to this and Brothers And Sisters fore-mentioned prescription list, Think Tank got one of those stupid Parental Advisory stickers.

My parental advice? Split up when you’re at your peak. Leave them wanting more. Don’t reform. Ever. You’ll come back looking like this:

You might even become a respectable, bespectacled married member of society…

Holy fuck

*Bonus Tracks!

Although a Coxon-free zone by the end of the LP, Blur as a 4-piece recorded tracks during the Think Tank sessions that were never quite finished due to the guitarist walking out. Here’s a couple of Coxon-enhanced crackers that turned up on future b-sides.

Money Makes Me Crazy

Morricone

This half-considered Damon nicking off the Happy Mondays theory of mine may have legs. On the b-side of Happy Monday’s 24 Hour Party People single, you’ll find a track called Wah-Wah (Think Tank) Call The Cops!

Punch. Repeat. Punch. Repeat. Punch. Repeat.

Why could he not have walked out instead?

 

Cover Versions, Gone but not forgotten, Studio master tapes

Phew, What A Scorcher ‘n All That…

Craig McAllister

*Disclaimer 1

I wrote this on Saturday, telling myself I’d finish it later and went out to enjoy the weather. It’s now Tuesday and the storm clouds are gathering.

Y’know, I make a point of digging deep to turn up the rarest of the rare when sometimes it’s the obvious ones that are the best. With the school holidays nearly over, the weather has (naturally) taken a turn for the better and we’re currently basking in what the tabloids of yore might refer to as a heatwave. Phew, what a scorcher and all that. There’s no denying. I’m in shorts. I’ve cut the grass. The smells of barbecuing meats are wafting from somewhere across my back door. The shrieks and high pitched laughter from wee ones in paddling pools is competing for ear space with the football on the radio and I’m contemplating painting my fence, safe in the knowledge that the job’ll be done before the rain comes on. Because at the moment it looks like we’ve as much chance of rain as the Costa del Sol. Great, eh!

Heat Wave was a 1963 hit single for Martha Reeves & the Vandellas. From the collective pen of Holland-Dozier-Holland, the oft-forgotten about songwriting team who are up there with your Lennons & McCartneys and Jaggers & Richards in the Sixties Premier League of hit songwriting teams, it’s sometimes referred to as (Love Is Like A) Heat Wave. Straight off the Motown production line, it’s a Funk Brothers piano-led, hand-clapping, gospel-tinged, giddy call-and-response shout-out to the joys of being in love, ell you vee love and all that, and it gave the Vandellas their first big hit single, reaching number 4 on the Billboard charts. Since then, it’s been covered by all manner of artists, from label mates The Supremes (a facsimile of the original), via celebrity coat ‘n hat checker Cilla Black (Surprise, Surprise, it’s very good!) to Linda Ronstadt’s mid 70s FM-friendly AOR version, replete with subtle bongos and meanderingly polite soft rock guitar solo, the sort of thing you might expect a half-arsed covers band to be playing at a Holiday Inn in the background of a TV movie. The most effervescent covers tend to have been by the boys. Both The Who and The Jam channeled their inner mod and bashed out R ‘n B tinged faithful reworkings. The Who’s version is fast. The Jam’s is faster.

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(Love Is Like A) Heat Wave:

Martha & the Vandellas‘ original

Diana Ross & The Supremes‘ version

Cilla Black‘s version

The Who‘s version

Linda Ronstadt‘s version

The Jam‘s version

Martha & the Vandellas‘ vocal-only studio outtake. These vocals gained the group a Grammy Nomination. And rightly so. They’re terrific!

*Bonus Track!

Martha & the Vandellas‘ vocal-only take of Jimmy Mack.

That fence painting job? I’m just contemplating, though. Not doing. This weather doesn’t happen too often. I think I’m going to get some sounds on and sit in the sun and enjoy it. I might even pour myself a drink. Costa del Sol, or Costa del Peroni, it won’t matter.

*Disclaimer 2

I’ve since painted the fence. It looks fine.

Get This!, New! Now!

Lightning Bolts ‘n Jessicarennis ‘n Andy Murray wins at Tennis

Craig McAllister

I’ll admit it. The Olympics have got me hook, line and sinker. From the opening ceremony onwards, via Wiggins’ magical time trial ride and the Scottish fella Jamieson who very nearly gubbed them all in the 200m breast stroke, until this weekend when Team GB have been picking up gold medals with all the carefree ease of Gladys and Agnes on a Tuesday morning at the pick ‘m mix in Woolies, I’ve sat, shouting sweary words of encouragement from the comfort of my sofa to people I had no idea existed a week ago. I was as cynical as many up here. Greatest Show On Earth? I don’t think so, pal. The Greatest Show On Earth is the World Cup. Everyone knows that. In no small part, my cynicism was due to Stuart Pearce’s (cough) Team GB football squad selection. A squad made up of numerous young Englishmen and a smattering of token Welshmen, with nary a Scot or Northern Irishman in sight. But more about them later. Yesterday was the opening game of the season for my team, Kilmarnock. It was a decent enough game, end-to-end, even, even if the BBC reported otherwise (their usual reporters have probably been deployed around the East End of London, I’d wager, and they’d been using some junior hack or other, not yet acquainted with the football normally played in the top league) yet I found my mind drifting back to events down south and couldn’t wait until half time in order to check the @TeamGB Twitter feed to see what I’d been missing. Good! My girl Jessicarennis was still burning the competition in the Women’s heptathlon.

It wasn’t long until I was home and catching up properly. Saturday night’s telly was sensational. But you knew that already. If you were watching ITV, silly you. If you were out, silly you. If, like me you whooped, hollered and punched the couch and the air and your wife with joyful abandon, you’ll know just how thrilling it was. When Jessicarennis lead from the front and came back strong and determined around that final bend; When the far-too-full-of-himself long jumper who’s name I’ve forgotten already messed up his last jump and bowed theatrically to the stadium; When Mo Farah, looking like someone Bob Geldof might be inclined to start an appeal for kicked his heels and dug out the strength to carry himself to victory; It was clear – that most dreaded of things, a feel good factor was suddenly everywhere. A ginger, a Muslim and a women of mixed race go into a pub. Everyone buys them a drink. I stole that from Richard Bacon. It’s a good one, eh?

Here in Scotland, following the manner in which oor ain Andy Murray casually disposed of Roger ‘The Greatest Ever‘ Federer, that feel good factor was multiplied ten-fold. Down south, people had a problem with Andy. He didn’t smile. He was dour in interviews. He battered his racquet around the court when things weren’t going his way. Good old stiff upper lip Tiger Tim Henman would never have displayed such vulgarities. Then, a month ago, the boy Murray blubbered like a big baby on the Centre Court and, well, some kind of thaw took place. It seems the public at large took him to heart. Today, when he climbed down from the Players’ Guests box and onto the scoreboard that declared his greatest ever victory, the wee boy who pushed his way to the front and shouted Andy back for a hug showed just how that feel good factor affects us all. That hug, as well as physical, was a metaphorical hug from all of Britain (but especially Scotland) to our own man.

 

The coverage on the BBC has been exceptional. This is what you pay your licence fee for. Handball over breakfast? Don’t mind if I do! Beach Volley ball at 10 in the morning? Oh aye! Easy on the eye! Beach Volleyball at 10 in the evening? Oh aye! Easy on the…but..hang on…they’re all wrapped up in, like, long lycra and jumpers and stuff. Damn that cold wind and British ‘summer’. Every sport is catered for and it’s all wrapped up and repeated if you happen to miss it first time round. One wee gripe? The commentators. Excellent and knowledgeable they undoubtedly are, they can also display an ignorance that cuts deep. It was that jumped up kids presenter Jake Humphries who did it first, during Team GB’s first women’s football match. “England this…England that….England the next thing“, and that’s a team that did have players from nations other than England in the starting 11. He said it about a dozen times. Then the normally reliable, likeable Lineker last night, “Well. So often before. And we’ve done it again. Out on penalties.” We, Gary? We? This is the first time we’ve ever entered a Team GB into any competition. We? You couldn’t possibly be referring to England, could we? The England who’s bottle crashes spectacularly at the merest whiff of a penalty shoot out? Did you not notice token Welshman and over-age player Ryan Giggs scoring there? Tut tut tut.  I’ll admit it, that’s why I took a tiny wee bit of satisfaction in seeing (cough) Team GB crash out of the football.

Anyway. This is supposed to be a music blog. The aptly-named Usain Bolt was pretty terrific in the 100m semi-final. The fastest man on Earth practically jogged over the line once he knew he’d qualified. Then the BBC ramped it up somewhat, with clocks counting down until the final itself. Re-runs of races from all angles. Slo-mo shots of Bolt goofing off to camera. And a 2 minute mini movie of the Best of Bolt for the majority of viewers who somehow knew that Bolt was The Man, yet were oblivious to his achievements to date. All sound-tracked by this. Lightning Bolt by Jake Bugg. One of my favourite singles of the year, it sounds like Bringing It All Back Home-era Dylan rattling his way through Bad Moon Rising, all nasal vocals and cow punk skiffle guitar. Like Bolt in the 100m final, it’s supremely self-assured, a blur, over before it’s begun, leaving the rest in its wake. Get it quick – I’ve a feeling the internet police won’t like it. But you will.

Beach bum.

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

Who’s Nicked

Craig McAllister

A few years back, as a mature student in desperate need of income, I ran a wee guitar group. Obviously, far better than working a shift in B&Q, I was my own boss and set my own rules. 30 folk of all ages and abilities formed 3 groups of 10 who came to the local community centre to learn the difference between a b-minor and a blues lick and play along to a wide selection of recognised classics, with the odd personal favourite thrown in. Not only that, but along the way these eager students were educated in the ways of guitarists and guitar playing. Steve Cropper was more important than Slash, I’d tell them. Johnny Marr was better than Eric Clapton. Jimi Hendrix played guitar behind his back with his teeth. Try it! First person to play an E minor gets a mini Mars Bar. The beginners loved shaking their hair to The Ramones Surfin Bird, even if they had difficulty changing from an A to a D and back again at the same speed as Johnny and Dee Dee. Over time though, they managed to do a spot-on version of These Boots Are Made For Walking, complete with their own wee choreographed foot dance when Nancy asks, “Are you ready boots? Start walkin'”. The best players in the ‘top group’ could replicate Stairway To Heaven note for note. Well, almost. But my greatest achievement was with the ‘middle group’. Accomplished enough that they could play blues licks in b minor, but not yet fluid enough to think they were Slash, I taught them to windmill like Pete Townshend through the opening bars of The Who‘s Baba O’ Riley. It was a magic sight. 10 arms windmilling round in perfect time. Wind Out -mill! here Wind in -mill! the Wind fields -mill! Some nights we played it 3 or 4 times, such was their joy at playing it. What’s that Roger? Teenage wasteland? Not in here! Happy days!

Anyway, after what I’ve just said, you may be surprised to learn that I never totally got The Who. I thought Keith Moon was pretty special, although who doesn’t? Always entertaining to watch. But the others? The Ox, in his later days wore a red leather blouson jacket that was about as close to ‘mod’ as  Alex Turner’s Olympics haircut. And he played his bass at throat height, which, no matter what you’re playing on it, is never a good look. Roger Daltrey always seems like a wee guy trying too hard to be macho. Always taking his top off and baring his chest. And he had a haircut like Barbra Streisand for about 20 years during the 70s and 80s. Which, again, is about as close to ‘mod’ as Alex Turner’s Olympics haircut. Pete Townshend? Great windmills (yeah!), great Clockwork Orange boiler suits ‘n Docs combo on the stage ‘n all that, but those child porn allegations from a few years back have tainted him forever for me. I dunno. I like the big singles that everyone likes. But as an album band, their first album excepted, they never really did it for me.  I suppose for a live album, ‘Live At Leeds‘ makes all the right noises, and The Who ‘Sell Out’ has some pretty good tracks on it, Armenia City In The Sky, to name one, and I like the pirate radio concept but really, that’s about it. The problem I have is that everything they’ve done seems to have been, aye, a ‘concept’ album. Not just ‘Sell Out’.  Quadrophenia is a concept album. Tommy is a concept album. Pete Townshend’s doomed Lighthouse Lifehouse project was another concept. A Quick One was a rock opera fergawdsakes! Everything seems just a bit too calculated and pre-conceived. I like my rock bands to be unpredictable and raggy round the edges. Which is why the only Who album I truly like from start to finish is their first.

What I like even better than The Who’s first album is the few tracks they recorded as The High Numbers. They’re nothing extraordinary, really just rehashed 12 bar blues-based R’nB tunes so beloved of the early 60s mods. But the sound they made! Big, booming, compressed-sounding mono tracks that jump out the speakers. The bass sounds like it’s playing under the floorboards next door. Ironically, given the advances in technology, it’s a sound that modern studios just can’t seem to replicate. Just ask Jack White (although he’s made a good fist of it) or long-lost La Lee Mavers, if you can find him.

I’m The Face was the B-Side of The High Numbers first single, Zoot Suit. Designed, at the insistence of  manager Peter Meaden, to appeal to the local pilled-up mods who got their kicks from American R’nB, I’m The Face was practically a cover of Slim Harpo‘s I Got Love If You Want It. Actually, practically a cover is being kind. This is daylight robbery long before Jimmy Page got his first copy of Down At The Crossroads with Robert Johnson and Some Other Blues Guys No-One’s Heard Of Yet. Slim’s tune stayed the same, although the band played it with a feral garage band intensity lacking in the original’s nasal reediness. On The High Numbers’ version, the harmonica wails just that bit more out of tune. Keith Moon’s drums clatter in time to Townshend’s reverberated chords and perfectly executed solo (did the afore-mentioned Page play this part? After all, he played everyone else’s around this time) and the Entwhistle bass runs divebomb to the very centre of your purple-hearted heart.  In keeping with the A-Side (I’m the snappiest dresser right down to my inch-wide tie) manager Meaden changed the lyrics to be more mod-friendly, I’m the face baby is that clear? and referencing Ivy League jackets and wild buckskin shoes along the way.

With all this studied contriving going on you could be forgiven for thinking Zoot Suit/I’m The Face was some sort of UK smash. It wasn’t. Like a gazillion other life-affirming effervescent pieces of 7 inch 60s plastic, it flopped. A disheartened High Numbers went back to the drawing board, changed their name to The Who and tried again. This time, things seemed to work out a wee bit better. Proof? Here‘s the st-st-st-st-stuttering m-m-m-m-mono version of My Generation. Sounds like a tank. (Winks). Some of you will get that reference, some of you might not.

*Bonus Tracks!

Taken from an Abbey Road session, October 1964, here’s The High Numbers doing their re-hashed r’nb 12 bar blues again:

Smokestack Lightning  Instrumental pop-art crashing proto-Who.

Memphis Tennessee  Instrumental. Big. Booming. Bass from under the floorboards.

Six Of The Best

Six Of The Best – Cian Ciaran

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 11 in a series:

2012 looks like it’s the year of the side project. Just as Gerry Love‘s excellent Lightships LP has raised his status from bass playing, songwriting member of Teenage Fanclub into bona fide artist in his own right, so to will Outside In by Cian Ciaran.

Cian is the keyboard player with the Super Furry Animals. He’s the man who put the tech in their technicolour surround sound and is the Super Furries’ secret weapon, the main reason they remain a massive cut above yer average indie rock band. With Cian at the helm, the Super Furry sound can go from Beach Boys balladery to bangin’ nosebleed techno to 12-bar boogie and back again, often before the first chorus. Sure, it’s Gruff out front and it’s Gruff who appears most active when the SFA are in downtime, so who knew that the wee guy at the back who sings occasional harmonies was such an integral part of the band’s sound?

Well, wait till you hear Outside In.  Drawing another parallel with Gerry Love’s Lightships, it’s nothing really like the music of Cian’s day job, it’s not what you might expect to hear, yet it’s somehow exactly right. Cian’s record is all about the arrangements. And I’m talkin’ a Surfs Up level of sophistication here, a level of greatness few would’ve presumed a keyboard boffin with a side project releasing anonymous techno records was ever capable of (sorry, Cian). Written entirely on keyboard, though played on a smörgåsbord of Super Furry-friendly instruments, Outside In is bathed in pathos, with melancholy dripping from every minor key and sustained harmony. As I previously wrote about lead track You & Me:

Lennonesque is the word that straightaway springs to mind. The double-tracked vocals, the Double Fantasy piano part, the double dose of sweary words. There’s even a George Harrison slide section playing just behind the best 3-part woo-woo-wooing harmonies the Wilson brothers never recorded.

That should give you some idea of where the album’s heading. Second track ‘Till I Die is a real heart-breaker.  Tinkling grand pianos accompany Cian as he pours his heart and soul into it. Woman. What have you done to me? Why leave me? My life began the day that I found you. Jesus. By the time the string section swells into the middle eight there’s not a dry eye in the house. This is immense. Proper grown-up adult music, whatever that is. Elsewhere on Outside In you’ll find the Super Furry bossa nova of Martina Franca, the falsetto a-capella of 1st Time and the sunny doo-wop of What Will Be. There’s enough wonky waltzes and trippy time signatures, fuzzy psychedelia and unconventional weirdness to satisfy your inner Wilson fetish. Indeed, every track sounds like it’s been poked, prodded and tweaked by ol’ hang dog Brian himself whilst lounging in his L.A. sandpit. Which, if you need to ask, is no bad thing at all.

Cian’s choices (and accompanying You Tube links) for Six of the Best are perhaps the most eclectic and interesting we’ve had yet, a perfect reflection of someone who often turned up at festivals blaring ear-splitting techno from a customised army tank and, who, in his day job plays in one of the most eclectic, interesting and unconventional bands on (?) the planet, unrestricted by fad, fashion or expectation. From crescendo-peaking opera and string-swelling soundtrack via wigged-out indie rock and under-appreciated songwriters living in the enormous shadow of their brothers to 20 minute long squelchy 303 acid house, Cian’s picks truly are Six of the Best…

In no particular order…….. it’s like choosing between ones children…..

Ennio Moriconne – Once Upon A Time In The West

I only chose this particular track because I had to choose one. But it did bring a tear to my eye  when I heard it live. Anything by him has been eye-opening for me and something to aspire to. I’ve seen him 4 times in various locations, the best was in Rome where he played less of the hits. I love the power of a live orchestra. Awe inspiring.

Stone Roses – I Am The Resurrection

The band that made me want to be in a band. Before I heard the Stone Roses, the only gtr music I really knew was the Beatles and Stones. They made music contemporary for me. At the time I picked up a pair of drumstix and practised and realised soon enough that I had a long way to go, and still do. I went to see them last month and it was a trip down memory lane. I used to listen to the album on my Walkman every night in bed and sang every word, guitar part, solo, every drum beat and bass line – fuck me, it was my musical education that I still cherish to this day.

Bizet – The Pearl Fishers

I first heard this when I was 4 apparently, so says my mum when I walked into the kitchen having played it and then reported back to her saying “It’s a special piece , isn’t it Mam?”

Stakker- Humanoid (Snowman mix) 

I think this was the first record I knowingly bought, after Ghostbusters from WHSmiths on Bangor High Street.  Acid House was my first love and this track is one of my all time greats. There are so many versions but this one, along with the original is my favourite. It was my first step into what would shape my musical exploits through my teens. I don’t know where I’d be now without acid and techno. Long may it continue and develop. Electronic music always pushes barriers for me and shapes things to come, musically and in production, ever since synths and technology found their way into popular music. I fuckin’ loves it!

System7 – Alpha Wave (Plastikman rmx) –

A classic, I never get tired of this one. I played it in Liquid Rooms, Tokyo back in the day. There’s an almighty drop down, and a build up that lasts forever. It’s one of the best (along with Hardfloor’s monster builds, that would be another choice, Hardtrance Acperience, here), in which the crowd proceeded to do the Ayatollah to the record as conducted by Guto and Bunf. It still works on the dancefloor to this day.

Dennis Wilson – Lady (Fallin’ In Love)

Again, I could’ve chosen anything by the Beach Boys but plumped for this solo effort to represent them. A beautiful song, what more can I say?

As Cian perfectly summarised in Rocksucker recently:

I don’t want to be held down to one style of music because I like listening to all sorts, and I like writing in all styles as well. I don’t think you should be pigeon-holed into one style because you can learn from other styles and incorporate what you learn in other stuff, weave it in however you want. It’s like an artist – why should an artist stick to his paintbrush when he can do pottery or film or photography? I just look at it like that.

Every Six Of the Best compilation comes in a handy RAR download file. Get Cian Ciaran’s here. New link HERE! (Thanks, Andy!) Now get yourself over pronto to your favourite record shop, if you’re lucky enough to have one you can frequent, or your usual online retailer and pick up a copy of Cian Ciaran‘s Outside In. Or, in keeping with the Super Furry mood, why not buy it here, via Spillers in Cardiff, The Oldest Record Shop In The World. Go! Go! Go

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

Kings, Queens & Other Chess Pieces

Craig McAllister

I meant to mark this occasion and put something up last week, but the RJ Ellory post (below) took over slightly. A week later, it would be churlish of me not to give a nod and a wink to that creaky old juggernaut that keeps limping on, like your smelly old dog with 3 good legs that’s deaf in one ear and blind in the only eye it has left. Aye,The Rolling Stones as a rock and roll group have now been in the game for no less than 50 years. That surely makes them one of the oldest musical acts still going strong. The Four Tops still do the odd show here and there (mainly ‘there’, in Vegas), and from 1953 until the death of Lawrence Payton in 1997 managed to keep the original line-up intact. The Drifters started in the 50s, but most (or all?) of the originals have, cough, drifted off. They probably played 5 shows last night anywhere between Blackpool Butlins and the Bermuda Triangle, so you can’t really count them. The Stones survive with 3 original members (Mick, Keith and Charlie, who actually joined after their first gig, see image at the bottom) and with Ronnie Wood having been in the band longer than The Fall have been a going concern. And how many members have they gone through in that time, eh? (Answer: about 66, at the last count).

Nowadays, they’re a bit more creased around the edges and a bit more expensive of cloth (though evidently, unlike most men of their age (and 10, 20, 30 years younger), no more expansive of waist). Sure, they’re a whole lot less vital than they once were, their live shows still trade on their Golden Era (early 60s – mid 70s, if you need to ask) and nowadays they’re a brand not a band – you can buy their merchandise in Primark if you fancy! But, as you already know, the Stones were totally, absolutely, dynamite in their heyday.

Chess Studios, 1964.

There’s a famous story (not an urban myth, as Keith goes at great lengths to point out in his autobiography) that when they turned up midway through their first US tour to record at the famous old Chess Studios, band hero Muddy Waters (he wrote I’m A Rollin’ Stone) was painting the outside of the building, whitewash streaming down his face, only stopping to help Bill Wyman in with his amplifier from car to studio. It didn’t matter that Muddy was a legend to the Stones and all those other Thames Delta blues bands, in his homeland he had yet to make that leap from unfashionable unknown to undeniable blues great. As Keith astutely notes, “If you want to stay on the payroll, get to work.”

Chess Studios, 1964

The stuff that the band recorded at Chess in 1964 was brilliant – Keith says 14 tracks in 2 days, my bootleg has 27, including their version of Bobby Womack’s It’s All Over Now that gave them their first number 1. Organic and rootsy, deep-rooted in the blues, the music has a big, booming, beefy sound, all reverb and twang and feral snap. Most of the recordings they made there for a potential album remain unreleased to this day (Google 2120 Michigan Avenue. Go on!) and it knocks spots off of anything that their sha-la-la, she-loves-me-and-I-love-her contemporaries were tossing off into the Hit Parade. But you knew that already…

The Tunes:

The Rolling Stones – It’s All Over Now

The Rolling Stones – 2120 South Michigan Avenue

The Rolling Stones – Time Is On My Side (version 2)

The Rolling Stones – Don’t You Lie To Me

The Rolling Stones – Stewed & Keefed

The Rolling Stones – The Under-Assistant West Coast Promotion Man

The Originals:

Bobby Womack – It’s All Over Now

Irma Thomas – Time Is On My Side

Six Of The Best

Six Of The Best – R.J. Ellory

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 10 in a series:

By now, 10 novels in, Roger Jon Ellory should be a household name in the same way Stephen King or Dean Koontz or Ian Rankin are household names. A multi-award winner (Steel Dagger, CWA Dagger, a Barry Award, Crime Novel of the Year, to name just some), he writes crime thrillers like no-one else at the moment, and in a just world Roger’s books would be making the jackpot-winning leap from print to celluloid. His stories can be brutal, violent, uncomfortable and unsettling, but turn the page and it’s just as likely you’ll be reading some life-affirming, uplifting, faith-in-humankind passage – the welcome daylight to the novel’s relentless darkness. Always gripping, Roger’s books are simply unputdownable and feature more twists than a copy of Chubby Checker’s Greatest Hits. Just when you think you have a handle on the story and how it’s panning out, he has the knack of hitting you between the eyes with an unforeseen left turn. Page turners. That’s what they call them.

I chanced upon Roger’s novels after a trip to New York. With Big Apple dirt still under my fingernails and the smell of stale pretzels lingering in my hair, I went to Kilwinning library looking for something to read that might help me cope with the unwelcome NYC withdrawal symptoms I couldn’t shake. From the row of anonymous books on the ‘E’ shelf, Saints Of New York made its way into my line of vision, its title dancing seductively before my eyes (think Tales of the Unexpected), and after flicking randomly through a couple of pages I knew this was the one for me. I read it in 2 days flat, visualising the landmarks and streets that had been my home a few days previously, adding my own imagined soundtrack of honking taxis, skronking Central Park saxophones and loud-mouthed street vendors. “Hat cwoffee! Hat cwoffee!” With the last paragraph still ringing in my ears I hot-footed it back to the library, making a bee-line for the ‘E’ section. Loads of Ellorys! Ghostheart. City Of Lies. A Simple Act Of Violence.  A Quiet Belief In Angels (set not in NYC, but even more gripping (if that was possible) than what I’d read so far). In The Anniversary Man, the story even climaxed on a bench in Union Square, the same bench, I convinced myself, where I had eaten my lunch on the day I left.

Roger really captures the feel of the places he writes about. You can tell every word, every measured nuance has been carefully considered, agonised over even, before being committed to print. His chosen prose transports you slap bang in the middle of the time and place in which the story’s set. You can smell the deep south of New Orleans in A Quiet Vendetta. You can hear the open roads and taste the Texas dustbowls of Bad Signs. It was most surprising, then, to find out that Roger lived not in New York or in New Orleans but in Birmingham. And not Birmingham, Alabama, but Birmingham, UK. How can he write so knowingly, so honestly about places half-way across the world? Research, yes. An awful lot of research, I’d imagine. And no doubt the odd field trip or two, but clearly, RJ Ellory has a gift for story writing. My favourite? That’s hard (I’m half way through A Dark And Broken Heart, his latest), but for the moment it would have to be A Quiet Belief In Angels. You should read it, you’d like it a lot. Surely it’s only a matter of time before some enterprising movie maker or other adapts it for the silver screen? Tarantino at the helm. William H Macy as Sheriff Dearing. Scarlett Johansson as Miss Webber. That would be great…

Fresh from publishing his Chicagoland eBook trilogy (above, 99p a book!), playing and singing in his own band, The Whiskey Poets and hanging backstage with Bruce Springsteen in Paris, Roger somehow found the time to contribute his ‘Six Of The Best‘ to Plain Or Pan…

I have to say that being asked to write something about six songs is outrageously unfair!  How can you choose six songs?  I have hundreds of LPs, thousands of tapes and CDs, and I have just started loading this library of music onto an iPod.  I have crossed the 10,000 tracks mark, and I have a long, long, long way to go yet.  The only way I could do this was to choose six tracks that I have listened to in the last couple of days that stood out for me.  I have excluded Tom Waits, The Thirteenth Floor Elevators, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Paul Butterfield Blues Band (with Mike Bloomfield, one of my true guitar idols), and so, so, so many other wonderful artistes.

Anyway, here are six songs, though tomorrow there would be another six, and the day after another six again…

Johnny Cash

If You Could Read My Mind

I only recently discovered this song on Cash’s last album.  I love the original by Gordon Lightfoot, and have listened to it for years, but there is something so desperately emotive about this version.  Cash is tired.  You can just feel it in every line, every breath.  He knows he’s reaching the end of his life, and he has taken a number of classic songs and covered them.  I listen to this and it breaks my heart.  It is not just the words, it’s the arrangement, the fact that the key has been dropped into Cash’s vocal range…just everything about it.  I was playing the CD in the car, and this track came on and I just had to pull over to the side of the road and wait for it to finish.  Once it was done, I played it again.

Antony & The Johnsons

Hope There’s Someone

I saw this performed on a television show, and it stopped me dead in my tracks.  He’s an Englishman, from Kent I believe, and he wound up in New York where he was supported and patronised by Lou Reed.  Oddly enough, I saw him in a cameo role in a recent film called ‘Animal Factory’ with Willem Defoe, where he played an inmate singing on a talent show evening.  There is something so utterly arresting about his voice, his delivery, his presence.  This song is truly sad.  This song is all about loneliness, that desperate feeling of hope that your life will have meant something, and that there will be someone to take care of you when you die.  I think this says a lot about what Anthony suffered – for his sexuality, his appearance, the personal crosses he has had to bear.  I listen to this and I shudder…

Derek Trucks Band

Sahib Teri Band/Maki Madni

I have put this on the list for two reasons – first and foremost, it’s a wonderful track, and secondly, because of the Allman Brothers connection.  Derek’s father was Butch Trucks, drummer for the Allmans, and Derek stands head and shoulders above the vast majority of contemporary blues players.  He does something fresh, new and interesting with every album.  He collaborates with a huge gang of great players, and with his wife, Susan Tedeschi, he has formed the Tedeschi/Trucks Band.  I am a little exhausted with the endless wave of SRV-wannabe blues guitarists, and though I can appreciate great technique in a player, I am not a fan of rendition as an ‘art’ for its own sake.  Art is communication.  Great art is not judged by the artist, but by the public and history.  Fretboard pyrotechnics appeal to guitarists, not girls!  Enough said!  I am all about the emotion in music, and the way in which the sound and the rhythm get under your skin and change the way you feel.  Trucks is a master, and I love what he’s doing.

Dr. John

I Walk on Gilded Splinters

What can I say about Dr. John?  This album – of which I have a vinyl first pressing – is a stand-out, timeless, monster classic.  Breathtaking, scary, unsettling, uncomfortable, familiar even on the first listen…and it appeals to so many aspects of my musical and other interests – jazz, blues, African rhythms, voodoo enchantments, curses, hexes, gris-gris gumbo ya-ya, and the rest.  The hiss as the needle goes down, that first intonation of sound, and you are gone – lost in the deep, dark, dreadful swamps of Louisiana, surrounded by shrunken heads, ouanga charms, Papa Legba, mandragore and grimoires.  Just the most wonderful concoction of sounds and emotions and rhythms.  As an additional aside, there’s a great live version of this from Humble Pie, and there we have a way of getting Steve Marriott into the mix, one of the finest singers Britain has ever produced!  Marriott, another tragic loss to the world of great music, lived too few years and recorded too few songs.

The Gun Club

Eternally Is Here

For me, Kurt Cobain holds a place that should have been reserved for Jeffrey Lee Pierce.  Pierce was a phenomenon, a wizard, a genius.  Pierce was a paradox, a contradiction, a genius, a drunk, a guitar master, a songwriting legend.  I love the first albums – ‘Fire of Love’, ‘Miami’…in fact, I love them all, but there is something about the raw power of some of the tracks on ‘The Las Vegas Story’ that just blows me away.  I think JLP was more familiar with the technical aspects of studio recording.  I think he’d worked with these musicians for a while and felt comfortable with them, and he produced an album that possessed as much ‘thump’ and energy as anything I have ever listened to.  This song really hits me in the chest and the heart.  Maybe there is a rawness missing from this album that was there in spades in the early work, but I don’t care.  The songs are wonderful.  I saw The Gun Club only once, back in 1982 at The Hacienda in Manchester.  Eight or ten of us hired a van and drove from Birmingham to see them.  I was so very drunk, so completely drunk, but from the moment he appeared on stage it was as if I had suddenly received three pints of intravenous espresso.  He just blew me away.  I will never forget that gig.  A life-changing experience, literally.

Fleetwood Mac

Need Your Love So Bad

Peter Green.  What can I say?  BB King says that Green was the only guitarist who made him sweat.  Sure, he’s a brilliant guitarist, no question about it, but he’s an extraordinary singer, songwriter, arranger, recording artiste, and it saddens me no end when I think about what was done to him.  That aside, I saw him recently, here in my home city.  He was supporting BB King, ironically.  The lights were out, you couldn’t see a thing, and he hit one note.  Instantly, you knew it was Green, and he wasn’t even playing a Les Paul!  The name ‘Fleetwood Mac’ should have been retired when the original line-up with Jeremy Spencer was terminated.  Now you say ‘Fleetwood Mac’ and people think of Stevie Nicks, ‘Rumours’, and all manner of hideously safe middle-of-the-road AOR nonsense.  Fleetwood Mac was a kick-ass blues band, a real British R&B band that took the world by storm.  They sold more records than the Stones and The Beatles combined at one point.  Albatross, Oh Well, Green Manalishi, Man of the World…the list goes on.  I have a great photo of the young Green in my study, along with photos of Roy Buchanan, Mike Bloomfield, Muddy Waters, Kelly Joe Phelps, Alvin Youngblood Hart and a host of others.  See what I did there?  Still trying to get a whole lot more than six tracks mentioned here!

Steven Van Zandt – Silvio from The Sopranos and Fender-totin’ Springsteen foil. He has good tatse in music too – click on the Little Steven’s Underground Garage link, over there on the ‘Blogroll’ on the right.

A great selection….and I’m quite surprised. I kinda thought, given the nature of his books, that Roger would pick wall-to-wall Americana. Nothing wrong with that of course, but to read him wax lyrical about The Gun Club, Johnny Cash and Dr John while bigging up Mike Bloomfield and Steve Marriott, and bemoan the fact that he hasn’t any space left for Tom Waits or The Thirteenth Floor Elevators, well, this is music right up Plain Or Pan’s metaphorical street.

Every Six Of the Best compilation comes in a handy RAR download file. Get R.J. Ellory’s here.

Now! Get yourself over to your local library or even your favourite local bookshop, if you’re lucky enough to live in a town where such things still exist. Or, if it’s raining, just pop on Roger’s Six Of the Best while you get yourself over to your favourite online book retailer. Try here. Or here. Pick an Ellory. You could start at the beginning with Candlemoth, or you could go straight to A Dark And Broken Heart and work your way backwards. It doesn’t matter. Just read one. Then another. And another. And tell a pal. Tell two pals. Tell everyone. Go on! Whatchawaitin’ for?

RJ Ellory online

RJ Ellory on Facebook

RJ Ellory on Twitter

You can listen to The Whiskey Poets here, with Roger on guitar and vocals.

Cover Versions, demo, Gone but not forgotten, Kraut-y

Riff Trade #2

Craig McAllister

Or, There’s Always Been A Dance Element To Our Music. Post Stone Roses, everyone in 1990 had sacked their rock drummer, got themselves a loose-limbed octopus who could replicate Clyde Stubblefield‘s funkier moments from James Brown’s Greatest Hits and began making records that folk in outdated quiffs could sorta shuffle around to in a faux-druggy state. I know, because I was one of those shuffling folk with outdated quiff. Two months later and it had been fashioned into a Paul McCartney ’65 classic, but when the first strains of the Paris Angels or Northside or Flowered Up began to appear in the gaps between The Cramps and Smiths records at The Attic in Irvine, it was quiffs everywhere for as far as the eye could see. You’ll know this already, but Northside et al weren’t the first bands to shout accusingly at the drummer, “Less thunk, more funk!” There are plenty of examples of when ‘rock’ bands go ‘dance’.

Back when Joy Division were unsigned and known as Warsaw, RCA gave them some money to record a demo. Celebrated local Northern Soul DJ Richard Searling convinced the band they should record a version of Nolan Porter‘s Keep On Keepin’ On. Porter’s record was a staple of the northern soul scene, a gigantic record with a jagged, juddering riff that could’ve come straight off The Stooges first LP. It still sounds urgent, fresh and NOW!, even more so today. Jessie J and David Guetta at T In The Park?!? Fuck right off! Sorry. I digress. Warsaw, keen to impress RCA and gain a record deal went so far as to record a version of Keep On Keepin’ On, but as Bernard Sumner ruefully reflected, “they tried to make Ian Curtis sound like James Brown.” Given that this wasn’t quite the sound these intense young men were looking for, their recording was aborted, never to see the light of day. However…

Click the image for full effect!

Sumner turned the riff inside out, played it 10 times faster than Nolan Porter and presented his band with a new tune. Using the RCA money, they cut Interzone. Listen to both tunes then spot the similarities. They’re all there. Warsaw’s take on the gigantic, jagged, juddering riff is even more Stooges-like, the perfect foil for the Ian Curtis body pop. Nothing at all like the Nolan Porter record, it was unsurprising that RCA didn’t like it. Which as it turned out, was good news for Tony Wilson, Factory Records and for all of us.

*Bonus Tracks!

Joy Divison – Interzone (Unknown Pleasures LP version)

David Bowie – Warszawa (the glacial track that in 1977 christened Ian Curtis’ band with no name)

Cover Versions, Gone but not forgotten, Hard-to-find, Studio master tapes

Riff Trade

Craig McAllister

Di’-di’-di’-di’    (pause)      duh-di’-di’-di’   (half pause)    di’-di’

“I’ll name that tune in 4, Lionel!”

“Go on then, Name That Tune!”

“Obviously, it’s Hitch-Hike, the number 30 in ’63 hit for Marvin Gaye, released on the Tamla Motown label…”

Indeed it is. (Show off). Hitch-Hike was one of Marvin’s early hits and, in best Motown tradition was a family affair, featuring the singing secretaries, Martha Reeves and her Vandellas, on backing vocals. A practically perfect 2 minutes-odd ode to finding his runaway girlfriend, it‘s signature stuttering guitar riff briefly lead to a short-lived but groovy (baby) Hitch-Hike dance craze, where participants looked like demented second prize winners in a Paul McCartney impressions contest….

I like the fact that the girl at the end is dancing in her pants on live telly. Nowadays she’d probably just whip them off for shock value and hardly anyone would bat an eyelid.

A couple of short years later, The Rolling Stones put out their version of Hitch-Hike on Out Of Our Heads.  The current issue of Mojo magazine has a good feature on early Stones and listening to it made a good accompaniment to reading the article. Out Of Our Heads is the Stones as garage band; rough, feral, fast and frantic. The guitar interplay between Keith and Brian is brilliant. Who plays what at any given time is hard to work out. Riffs, power chords and super-distorted slashing freak-out leads are all in the mix. Never heard it? It’s never too late…

High on industrial strength drugs (possibly) in his Chelsea loft appartment (maybe) and with a mono copy of Out Of Our Heads spinning on the old Dansette (very likely), Lou Reed suddenly had a thought. An inspiration. A bloody cheek. “A-ha!” he shouted, Archimedes-like, and right there and then pinched the Hitch-Hike riff lock, stock and barrel for his and the Velvet Underground‘s own There She Goes Again.

Di’-di’-di’-di’    (pause)      duh-di’-di’-di’   (half pause)    di’-di’

Can you tell what it is yet?

Fast forward 18 years and we find Johnny Marr in his Kensington flat (probably), mono copy of Out Of Our Heads spinning on the old Dansette (certainly). The Hitch-Hike riff kicks in and Johnny, never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, takes the feel of it and applies it to the set of chords he’s been fiddling around with. A bit more subtle than Lou Reed, but listen to the start of There Is A Light That Never Goes Out. Ah! D’you see what he did there? Johnny was hoping he could fool the know-it-all journalists who’d no doubt point out that he nicked the riff from The Velvet Underground, the band that anyone who was anyone in a mid 80s guitar band could pilfer and steal their image or an idea or two from. That’ll be you I’m looking at, William and Jim Reid. And Ian McCulloch. And the rest of you. You know who you are.

As Johnny himself said in 1993, “There’s a little in-joke in there just to illustrate how intellectual I was getting. At the time everyone was into the Velvet Underground and they stole the intro to ‘There She Goes Again’ – da da da-da, da da-da-da, Dah Dah! – from the Rolling Stones version of ‘Hitch-Hike,’ the Marvin Gaye song. I just wanted to put that in to see whether the press would say, Oh it’s the Velvet Underground! Cos I knew that I was smarter than that. I was listening to what The Velvet Underground was listening to.”

“If we needed some songs fast, then Morrissey would come round to my place and I’d sit there with an acoustic guitar and a cassette recorder. ‘There Is A Light That Never Goes Out’ was done that way.”

“Morrissey was sat on a coffee table, perched on the edge. I was sat with my guitar on a chair directly in front of him. He had A Sony Walkman recording, waiting to hear what I was gonna pull out. So I said, ‘Well, I’ve got this one’ and I started playing these chords. He just looked at me as I was playing. It was as if he daren’t speak, in case the spell was broke.”

“We recorded ‘There Is A Light That Never Goes Out’ in 10 minutes. I went on to add some flute overdub and strings and a couple of extra guitars, but really, the essence and the spirit of it was captured straight away, and that normally means that something’s gone really, really right. I have a version (get it! get it!) of that take with just the three instruments and the voice on it – it absolutely holds up as a beautiful moment in time. The Smiths were all in love with the sound that we were making. We loved it as much as everyone else, but we were lucky enough to be the ones playing it.”

“I didn’t realise that ‘There Is A Light’ was going to be an anthem but when we first played it I thought it was the best song I’d ever heard.”

Andy Rourke also loved There Is A Light That Never Goes Out. He calls it the indie Candle In The Wind. Make of that what you will.

Johnny Marr onstage with The Smiths when they played The Magnum Leisure Centre in my hometown of Irvine, September 1985. It still kills me that I never went. Stupid boy.

*Bonus Track!

Get this – one of those studio outtake thingies that caused Plain Or Pan to go into meltdown a couple of years ago. It’s the vocal-only version of Marvin Gaye‘s Hitch-Hike, every broken high note, breathless fade-out, ‘hmm‘ and ‘yeah‘. Pure soul, man. Pure soul!

Get This!, New! Now!

Blur(t) It Out

Craig McAllister

New track from Blur STOP Wonky guitars STOP

Catchy la-la-la chorus STOP

A bit of a grower STOP

(Crappy radio rip STOP Zane Lowe nearly makes an appearance on it STOP But will do until proper release, eh? STOP)

Breaking News! STOP Breaking News! STOP Breaking News! STOP

Under The Westway & The Puritan now available on iTunes for £1.49

(Crappy mp3s STOP Will do until promo CD makes appearance online STOP