Cover Versions, Hard-to-find

Gimme Likkle Bass, Make Me Wine Up Me Waist

Craig McAllister

The sight of stick-thin youths and beer-bellied men stripped to the waist in gay abandon can only mean one thing in this part of the world. Summer. But don’t say “gay abandon” anywhere in their vicinity, or you might well end up with a sare face. Old Firm football top tucked into the back of the jeans? Check! Cheap ethnic tattoos that may well advertise the deep-fried fare on offer at the local Loon Fung? Check! Milky-white flesh turning lobster-red before your very Fabris Lane’d eyes? Check, check and check! I was cycling through Saltcoats yesterday and it was all this and more. Total, total carnage. Everyone’s out for the day, and it won’t be complete without an argument with a local in the chip shop before the last train back to Paisley or Glasgow or wherever they’re from, hoping to spot a cow or a sheep or a horse or some other such exotic animal in an Ayrshire field.

Of course, I’m  a lover, not a fighter and when the temperature gets too much for me, I like to cool off with some heaven-sent Jamaican riddims. This weekend I have been mostly listening to the Jonny Greenwood curated ‘Jonny Greenwood Is The Controller‘ compilation album that came out a couple of years ago. Featuring tons of decent reggae, dub and rocksteady, it’s a bluffer’s delight. It features ‘I’m Still In Love‘ by Marcia Aitken, a skankin’ piece of lovers rock that is itself a re-write of an old Alton Ellis track from 1967. Those of you who grew up thinking Musical Youth were the last word in reggae might recognise the melody, as it later popped up to great effect in Althea & Donna‘s’ Uptown Top Rankin’ from 1977. One hit wonders, both of them, but who needs a second hit when the first one was so good?

You’d like Luke Haines’ books – Bad Vibes, Britpop And My Part In Its Downfall and the follow-up Post Everything: Outsider Rock & Roll. Witty, unforgiving and dripping in hate for the tubes, chancers and charlatans he’s met along the way in his skewed journey through pop (including his own band mates – he continually refers to The Auteurs’ cello player as ‘The Cellist‘), he’ll have you on his side in no time, wondering indeed why Black Box Recorder‘s version of Uptown Top Rankin’ wasn’t the global smash it should’ve been. Dubby, fuggy and just on the right side of Portishead, it’s nothing like the originals. Which is a good thing, aye?

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

Ferry Similar

Craig McAllister

“Didn’t this used to be a rock song?” Out in the car yesterday and Miss Plain Or Pan had pricked up her ears, for once, at what was shuffling on the iPod. Normally she can’t stand my music (see Rod Stewart post below). When she’s out with me in the car, she usually asks for West FM or Clyde 1 or any of those terrible, repetitive chart-orientated stations playing the the usual conveyor belt of pop-dance fodder introduced by thick 20-somethings with mid-Atlantic twangs belying their West Coast roots. She is 10, after all. That’s why her statement caught me off guard.  “That‘s Mother Of Pearl by Roxy Music,” I reply. She’d been jokingly head banging to the first couple of minutes, where Phil Manzanera’s electric guitar gamely leads an Eno-free Roxy through a series of mumbled, muttering voices, “Woo-hoos” and “Yaaawees” before giving way to Bryan Ferry’s louch, laconic, lounge lizard drawl. “It’s kinda like Bohemian Rhaposdy in reverse, with the rock bit at the start and the piano bit at the end, isn’t it?” she reasoned. I couldn’t have put it better myself. Except that Mother Of Pearl isn’t the overplayed piece of ham that the Queen classic has since become.

Very much under the influence of the Eno-era Roxy Music were World Of Twist. Their star briefly shone at the tail end of whatever constituted ‘baggy’ and they very nearly threatened the charts on a couple of occasions, once with a cover of the Rolling Stones ‘She’s A Rainbow‘ and once with Sons Of The Stage. Sons Of The Stage is a monster of a record. Full of whooshing, bubbling synths and squealing guitars, it‘s almost Krautrock in delivery – motorik, repetitive and reasonably long. It was the second track on the bands ‘Quality Street‘ LP, long-since deleted but worth 5 minutes of anyone’s time tracking down an illegal copy online. Or a real one on eBay, I might add.

The more fashion-conscious of the monobrowed Mancs along with his band of Beady Eyed magpies recently covered Sons Of The Stage with all the craft and soul of a plank of wood. I won’t sully the blog by featuring it, but I’m sure you know where to look, etc etc, blah blah blah.

Cover Versions, Dylanish, Sampled

Rods And Mockers

Craig McAllister

Like many people of a certain age (and that includes you, you! and YOU! reading this, judging by the profiles of those of you who so far have ‘liked‘ us on Facebook – thanks!), I grew up with the sound of my Dad’s record collection playing regularly in the background.  With no insider knowledge of what was hip or otherwise, I’d happily hum along to any old rubbish if it had a good tune and a catchy melody. When I started making my own friend-influenced choices about music, my dad’s record collection suddenly became something to be embarrassed about and I’d do my best to steer clear of it with all the gusto normally reserved for a smelly old man approaching with a big shitty stick. More fool me, as that meant an almost teenage-long love affair with Hipsway whilst living in denial of anything Beatles, Stones, and Dylan related. A few years down the line, of course, I nicked all the good bits and they now sit happily on the shelves behind where I’m currently typing. Nowadays, I tend not to play many Beatles, Stones or Dylan LPs. They’re all there (taps head), stored on my own limitless hard-drive and can be accessed wherever and whenever required. Better not being played here than not being played at my Dad’s, I could ration quite easily.

Another of the sounds regularly playing in the background of my formative years was that of Rod Stewart. Cooking, car journeys and Christmas. Rod was always around. When I first heard him, he would’ve been in his ridiculous late 70s disco pomp, a walking fire hazard dressed in skin tight black satin pants and flouncy Bet Lynch blouse, blow wave topped off with enough hair spray to choke a horse and asking if you thought he was sexy. Even at the age of 9 I knew he wasn’t, although my Mum would perhaps have disagreed. Rod was an easy target at the tail-end of the 70s and right through the 80s. A crucial half-step behind the sounds and styles of the day, he was never too far away from a leopard-skin print or a tartan travel rug. He could often be found in day-glo lycra and wearing sun visors and pixie boots.  For uncultured wee boys like myself he was the pink satin tour-jacketed guy with the daft haircut. To the new breed of post-punk musicians, he was the enemy. The champagne swilling playboy, stoating’ out of nightclubs with a wee stoater on each arm. Film stars, models and all manner of  beautiful people dangled off him like the ridiculously sparkly earrings that fell from his lobes.

Winner of The Britt Awards, 1975

But despite the obvious distractions, he made some great records.

As I was getting stuff together for this piece, a thread on the Word magazine blog suggested that had poor old Rod died in 1975, he’d have been held up as one of the greats. A Syd Barrett or a Nick Drake or whoever. As he’s still with us however, he’s just Rod Stewart. Kinda irrelevant in this day and age but more than capable of selling out venues across the planet without any decent new material (but a phenomenal back catalogue) to back him up. Of course, as I know now, early 70s Rod was where it was at. In his prime he was magic. In tandem with The Faces  he made some of the finest records of the time, records that still stand up today. The Faces was all about the feeling, the vibe, the playing, man. I kinda get the feeling that, no matter how much I love those records, The Faces had to be seen live to really be appreciated. And not with Mick Hucknall on vocals either. (C’mon Rod, what’s the problem?) When you listen to solo Rod, it’s all about the writing and the arranging. Rod’s a terrific writer. Ballads, blues or ballsy rockers, he writes them all. He’s also a terrific arranger, a master at taking other people’s songs and turning them into radio-friendly unit shifters. Tom Waits, Crazy Horse’s Danny Whitten, half of Motown and that guy from Scottish also-rans Superstar have all felt the clink of coins in their pocket following a Rod recording session. But you knew all that already.

Easily my favourite Rod arrangements is his take on Bob Dylan‘s Mama You Been On  My Mind. Bob’s original is essentially an unfinished demo, a sketch of an idea of a song written around the time of ‘Another Side of Bob Dylan‘. It coulda been a classic in the Dylan canon, but Dylan in 1964 was spewing out songs of this quality seemingly at will and his own version fell mostly by the wayside. Rod gives it the kiss of life. He takes the demo by the scruff of the neck and reinvents it as a Maggie May-esque 12 string and pedal steel classic. The phrasing! Rod is incredible on this record. It’s available on 1972′s ‘Never A Dull Moment’. My Dad doesn’t know it, cos he only has the Greatest Hits and whatever studio albums Rod was releasing at Christmases 79-85. After that it was a post-Live Aid Queen that rocked his world.  Do yourself a favour and download it here.

*Bonus Track!

See that Da Ya Think I’m Sexy? Have a wee listen to Bobby Womack’s If You Want My Love, Put Something Down On It and see where crafty old Rod got the inspiration for the hook. Got the inspiration? That should read ‘stole‘. And as far as I can tell, nary a writing credit either. Shame on you Rod.

Rod ‘n Elton ‘n Lana Hamilton, Studio 54, 1978

Gone but not forgotten

Do Me A Wee Favour, Eh?

Craig McAllister

If you haven’t done so already, could you take 20 seconds of your time to ‘like’ Plain Or Pan on Facebook? Shallower than the wee end at the Magnum, I know, but it would make me happy. Click the logo or see down at the bottom of the sidebar.

Thank You

If you only know Led Zeppelin for bombast and pomp, listen to this.  (70s Rod Stewart could’ve done a great version of it if someone had pointed him in the right direction at the time.)

Get This!, Hard-to-find

Snap! Crackle! Pop!

Craig McAllister

I look on northern soul the same way I look at the output from all those brilliant Nuggetsy 60s garage bands. While your garage bands were using the hits of The Kinks and The Who and whoever as the blueprint and building blocks for their own skewed short, sharp 2 and a half minute attempts at chart stardom, the acts who would eventually constitute what became know as the northern soul scene were aping the more well-known records coming out on Motown, Stax, Atlantic et al. Not all, to be fair, there are hundreds and thousands of perfectly original northern soul tracks. But with a borrowed riff here and a stolen melody line there, many northern soul tracks are bare facsimiles of the chart hits du jour. A half-decent lawyer could’ve had many labels shut down, but the very fact that these records languished in absolute obscurity meant this was never likely to be the case. Just as well really, for you, me and anyone else who likes their soul with a northern twist. But you knew all that already.

I’ve only once been to a northern soul club. In the wee small hours after last orders in the pub, one of our hipper friends led us through a catacomb of avenues and alleways until we arrived at the ubiquitous door round the back of the basement of some old man’s pub or other. A knock or two later and a panel slid across revealing a pair of questioning eyes that quickly turned to recognition towards the person chapping the door. Inside, £4 lighter and with the back of our hands stamped in green ink, we hit the dancefloor and never stopped. I only knew about 2 of the tracks played all night, but this was a total rush. Music made for below the waist being danced to by spasmodically uncoordinated Ayrshiremen and the odd local who appeared to know what he was doing (see pic above). This all happened in Glasgow, but it may as well have been in Greenland given the likelihood of me ever finding the place again.

I can never claim to be a northern soul aficianado. For starters I have no northern soul on vinyl (a ‘real’ northern soul fan, whatever that is, would never have their music on mp3).  I have a fair selection of shop-bought compilation CDs (from that mecca of Northern Soul retail Our Price – remember them?), and the odd friend-compiled compilation on TDK cassette. To quote that oft cliched line, I don’t know about art, but I know what I like.

I like my northern soul rattlin’ out of the speakers with that tinny nuclear blast and breathless amphetamine rush that’s so synonymous with those type of records. The drum beats recorded so poorly they sound like they’re playing on the moon. The pianos and horn section barely in tune and blasting away with all the might of a baby’s first breath. Plinky-plonk percussion buried so deep in the mix it sounds like next door’s novelty doorbell. The vocals so thin and weedy they sound almost other-worldly, the whole thing sounding likes it’s playing underneath a greasy spoon frying pan sizzling up a truckers breakfast. To have been there when they were recorded of course, these records would’ve sounded gargantuan. Meaty, beaty, big and bouncy, even. But often poor production and even poorer record pressing let the dynamics of it all down. Yes, possibly the reason why none of these records were ever really hits in the crassest sense, yet also the reason why they remain so sought-after and elitist. On some of them you can practically smell the talcum powder.

Here’s 3 of this weekend’s favourites:

The Flirtations – Nothing But A Heartache

Judi & The Affections – Ain’t Gonna Hurt My Pride

The Playthings – Surrounded By A Ray Of Sunshine

In turn, a booming Supremes soundalike, a weedy-sounding knee trembler that pinches the riff from Marvin Gaye’s Can I Get A Witness and an uplifting nuclear blast of northern soul that’ll have you reaching for the ‘repeat’ button before the first verse is over. It’s finger clickin’ good, y’all!

*A genuine question for any real northern soulers reading…

I don’t know if this is an urban myth or not, but I remember reading way back in time that The Land Of Make Believe, as made popular by Bucks Fizz was originally an old northern track. I’d love to think this was true, but I can’t find anything online to suggest it’s anything other than fabrication. Perhaps I’m getting mixed up. Pete Waterman is a well-known northern soul boy. Maybe he was involved in the Bucks Fizz record and that’s where the genesis of my ‘fact’ comes from. I don’t know. Does anyone?

Get This!, Hard-to-find, New! Now!

Super Furry Side Salad

Craig McAllister

Those of us looking for any sort of Super Furry Fix have had slim pickings recently. Gruff Rhys‘ Shark Ridden Waters was out nearly a year ago, and he’s still essentially touring it, if you can call 1 gig in that there London a ‘tour’. Amongst the hullabaloo of Record Store Day the other week, he quietly slipped out a split single with Cate Le Bon. So quiet I didn’t even know about it at the time, but then, I wasn’t looking. Gold Medal Winner is a terrific slice of what some folks might call ’21st century sunshine pop’; all pitter-pattering drum machines, vibes, tinkles and Gruff’s super warm, super furry harmonies. It remains to be seen whether or not any Olympics officials will pick up on its lyrical theme in time for the Summer games, but it hasn’t stopped those enterprising online sharks going for gold and selling highly inflated copies on eBay.

Super Furries’ keyboard player (and, it’s said, doo-wop  nut), Cian Ciaran, very briefly gave away a free download of a track from his forthcoming Outside In LP. Yesterday was International Workers’ Day (nope, me neither) and to celebrate, You & Me was downloadable from Soundcloud, for one day only. Cian’s true to his word too, because it’s no longer downloadable from there. (Try here instead.) He may ‘only’ be the keyboard player in one of the most consistently innovative bands for the last 15 or so years, but on the evidence of You & Me, Cian Ciaran’s LP may just be the surprise album of the year.

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. Who knew the keyboard player was capable?!? It’s melancholic man, and I love it.

Roll on the next Super Furry material.

 

Get This!, Hard-to-find, New! Now!

Shake Appeal

Craig McAllister

Jack White‘s Blunderbuss hit the racks this week and while it’s not much of a departure from the old routine, it’s still a terrific bluesy, funky and at times shouty affair, with plenty o’ whoopin’ and a-hollerin’ and those trademark scorching guitar breaks that we’ve come to expect. Giving him a run for his money in the retro stakes are Alabama Shakes, who, by the time you’ve read this are probably the number 1 selling artist in the country. Or is it still Adele?

Alabama Shakes are fairly talented and very young. Annoyingly so. They have a combined age about half that of Keith Richards and sound as if they’ve eaten the Stones back catalogue for breakfast. They are guaranteed to be the act at all this year’s major festivals and come August I will be sick fed up of them. I first heard them via a free Soundcloud ep, long-since unavailable for download. At the time I found myself Googling images of them as I couldn’t believe it was a girl that sang. But don’t let that put you off, she’s good! They may look like the Magic Numbers (remember them?) but they sound totally different. Rootsy. Organic. Raw. Their first EP was released at the tail end of the summer last year and features 4 tracks that also appear on the album. No doubt the hipper amongst you will already be saying, “Meh. I saw them at SXSW last year, but they totally lost it before the first album, man.” More fool you. By the time of the 2nd album, of course, when they’ve learned to play that wee bit better and the guitarist wants to sneak in the odd solo here and there and the record company have decided that Brittany the singer could go it alone, they will, by then, have lost it. Right now, Alabama Shakes are smokin’ hot. Get on board. Those four tracks from the ep are here:

Aye, every borrowed riff and stolen chord change is predictable and the whole thing has a slight whiff of a record company who believe they may have found the new White Stripes/Kings of Leon/authentic  blues-based female vocalist that, unlike Amy/Adele/Duffy has her own authentic bar-room band. There are enough ‘ooh my souls‘, ‘ sweet baby babies‘ and ‘dontcha worries‘ to keep all you cliche kleptomaniacs happy for a long, long time. Donald, if you’re reading, you would have loved ripping this album to pieces. But then, Alabama Shakes aren’t for you. They are for every 18 year old who missed out first time round on Kings Of Leon. For 28 year olds who missed out first time round on the Black Crowes. For 38 year olds who missed out first time round on Creedence. For 48 year olds and anyone who has never heard The Faces, Exile On Main Street, Otis on Stax or the blues of Etta James, they may well change your life. For the rest of us, they may well just be a bit ho-hum. For what it’s worth, I like them and they do sound brilliant live…..

*Bonus Track!

Here‘s Heavy Chevy, the iTunes ‘exclusive’. The Chuck Berry solos have started creeping in…(maybe they have lost it, man).

Cover Versions, Get This!, Gone but not forgotten, Hard-to-find, Kraut-y, Sampled, studio outtakes

Spacemen mp3

Craig McAllister

If Pete Frame were to do one of his Rock Family Trees on fuzzed-up druggy drone rock he’d inevitably land up (*by way of Spiritualized, Spectrum and even (The) Verve)) at Spacemen 3. Long before Bobby Gillespie had grown tired of his Byrds LPs, Spacemen 3 were the ultimate ‘record collection’ band. Spouting a seemingly never-ending list of achingly cool records by artists I had barely heard of, let alone heard in their music press interviews (Stooges!? Sun Ra!? Electric Prunes!? Silver Apples!?) they totally blew me away with their track Revolution. Being an impressionable 19 year old at the time, into guitars in a big way and with an obsession for cheap fuzz boxes,  Revolution hit me between the eyes with all the subtleness of a Sonny Liston left hook.

Revolution was recorded on some rare vintage Vox guitar or other, replete with switches that fuzzed the guitar at source without the need for effects pedals. No doubt though Spacemen 3 further fuzzed the sound of the Vox by adding fuzz pedals to the guitar’s signal as it made it’s way to the amp. It was overloaded and it was incessant; Repetitive. Relentless. Remarkable! Riff upon riff after riff upon riff – the sort of simple stuff I could play on that plank of wood I called a guitar when I plugged it into my Rocktek distortion pedal – buzzed away in the foreground while a studiously bored-sounding Sonic Boom (Peter to his Mum) with an impossible-to-place accent (Rugby, middle England! Really?) ranted and raved on top, trying to sound as cool as the heroes he name-checked in those interviews I had been reading. I got the feeling copious amounts of drugs were involved and, later on when I was a bit more wordly-wise and able to decode their interviews, I realised there certainly had been.

Later on I also realised that Revolution was perhaps not as original as I had first believed. The riff could’ve come from any old garage rock nugget, but that’s not the problem. Every band does that when they’re new (and not so new) to the game. I brazenly stole the Revolution riff for one of my band’s greatest hits, if truth be told. But that’s another story for another time. And there’s plenty of tracks out there with the word ‘Revolution‘ in the title. But only one seemed to steal and appropriate bits of the lyrics from Iggy Pop’s I’m Bored (shitty mp3 here);

“I’m bored. I’m the chairman of the bored………..I’m sick. I’m sick of all my kicks,” drawls the Ig. “I’m sick, I’m sooooo sick………and I’m tired, I’m sooooo tired”, parrots Sonic Boom.

And only one Revolution seemed to borrow large chunks of John Sinclair’s rabble-rousing and indeed revolutionary rhetoric at the start of the MC5’s Kick Out The Jams;

“Brothers and sisters! I wanna see a sea of hands out there…let me see a sea of hands…I want everybody to kick up some noise…I wanna hear some revolution out there brothers…I wanna hear a little revolution…Brothers and sisters…the time has come for each and every one of you to decide, whether you are going to be the problem or whether you are going to be the solution…You must choose brothers…you must choose…It takes five seconds . . . five seconds of decision . . . five seconds to realise your purpose here on the planet…it takes five seconds to realise that it’s time to move, it’s time to get down with it…brothers, it’s time to testify and I want to know…are you ready to testify?…Are you ready? I give you a testimonial – the MC5!”

“I’m having that!” thought a sticky-fingered Sonic, and putting pen to paper came up with the following –  “And I suggest to you that it takes just five seconds…just five seconds of decision…to realise…that the time is right… to start thinkin’ about a little…Revolution!”

I suggest to you, Sonic, that it took just five seconds….just five seconds to rip that off. OK, so it’s hardly Visions of Johanna and, aye, most of the lyrics are lifted from other records, but 24 or so years later (ooft!) Revolution still does it for me. It’s been playing on repeat as I’ve typed this up and it still sounds as angry as a jar of wasps on a windowsill in July.

For added listening pleasure, here‘s Mudhoney‘s straight-up cover (with added swearing and methadone-referencing lyrics). And, here‘s that 10 mins + outake?/outfake? of The Beatles‘ Revolution that surfaced a few years ago and forced Plain Or Pan into temporary meltdown for a coupla days. Go, go, go, tout de suite, before The Man notices…

*When Spacemen 3 disbanded in the usual drug-fuelled ego-fest fashion, Jason Pierce formed Spiritualized and Sonic Boom formed Spectrum. Jason’s girlfriend and sometime band mate Kate left him for lanky, manky old Richard Ashcroft and his Hush Puppies and went to live in a house, a very big house in the country.

Double Nugget, Gone but not forgotten, Hard-to-find

Keep It In The Family

Craig McAllister

Brother brother brother sang Marvin Gaye on What’s Going On, to all like-minded fellow men and women everywhere. Gathering the clans, uniting everyone, making us (and Marvin) feel part of a bigger thing. Spiritual if not actual family. Family is a big thing in music. Whether it’s monobrowed Mancs or hard-rockin’ hairy Aussies with Scottish roots, there’s plenty of instances where brothers, sisters, cousins, husbands and wives have managed to work harmoniously (or otherwise) in a band. Happy Mondays featured the Ryder brothers. Radiohead the Greenwoods. The Kinks the Davies. The Stooges the Ashetons. Kim and Kelly Deal were half of The Breeders. Karen and Richard Carpenter were able to leave any sibling rivalries at the door and, as The Carpenters create some of the finest easy listening you could ever want to hear.  The Arcade Fire count the matrimonial duo of Win and Regine Butler amongst their ranks. The Beach Boys were a heady mix of brothers, cousins and close friends. The White Stripes? Well, depending on what you read were either some, none or or all of the above. Brother and sister? Husband and wife? 3rd cousins twice removed?  Who knows?

Some bands like to show unity and strength through their familial ties. We are family sang the four sisters in Sister Sledge. Sly & the Family Stone were really Sylvester and the family Stewart. Sly, his brother Freddie, his sister Rose plus assorted cousins…a true family band (with added token honkies, if you hadn’t noticed). Here‘s the little-known Jane Is A Groupee, an (assumingly) biographical tale, given Sly’s penchant for the fairer sex. Sample lyric –

She’s got a thing for guys in the band.

Every musicians’ biggest fan

Claps her hands, but without a doubt, has no idea what the song’s about,

She’s too busy trying to figure out the shortest route to take the drummer home

Fuzz bass, fuzz guitars and drum rolls that sound like they’re playing at the bottom of a deep, deep well, what’s not to like?

Not so prog rockers Family. They were no more related than me to Tina Turner. Spare a thought though for the artists who chose to go it alone in defiant acts of pride/stupidity regardless of the fact that their sibling achieved massive success. Chris Jagger. Mike McCartney. I’m thinking of you. The lesser-known Jagger’s stubbornness to continue his well-worn path of 12 bar blues in ‘intimate’ venues while his more well-known, internationally super-famous brother struts around the larger stadiums of the planet should be commended. The 0ther McCartney is a tad more interesting. Changing his name to Mike McGear and teaming up with poet Roger McGough, (father of Happy Mondays manager Nathan), in 1968 he released a terrific slice of Hendrixian psych rock that (it’s alleged) features Our Paul on production duties and yer actual Jimi on 6 string duties. I’ve blogged So Much In Love before, but have a listen here.

Ronnie Wood’s big brother Arthur formed The Artwoods (gettit?) in the mid 60s and for a few short years carved out a decent career as an in-demand R&B/mod/freakbeat group. Art Wood had that standard gritty white-man-sings-soul voice, and coupled with the much-favoured guitar plus Hammond line-up might have expected his band to have been as popular as The Small Faces in another world. Fate saw that that wouldn’t be the case, which is disappointing as amongst the assortment of standards and expected covers du jour they cut Goodbye Sisters, a terrific piece of mid 60s psych, replete with descending bassline, swirly Hammond and some decent cooing backing vocals. I think you’d like it.

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

Mighty Lemon Drops

Craig McAllister

I expect a bit of a kicking here, or at the very least, a couple of sniggers from some of you lot at the back. But I make no apologies for featuring Over The Rainbow on Plain Or Pan. Why should I? For some it’s perhaps considered sentimental, syrupy, sepia-tinted old tosh, forever associated with a film that seemed to be on eternally every Christmas. For the rest of us it’s rightly been placed as the classic amongst classics. The Recording Industry Association of America have it at Number 1 on their Songs Of The Century list. Granted, this list is compiled from a very parochial view of what is considered ‘classic‘ and anyone of us here could easily go through the list and argue its merits or otherwise (No Elvis! No Beatles! No Dylan!) but that would be churlish. Over The Rainbow is there for a reason, that reason being it is an undeniably brilliant song.

It’s most well-known for having been sung by Judy Garland in The Wizard Of Oz. Famously, it was nearly cut from the film, depriving the audience (and Judy) of a bona fide signature tune. Judy’s version is all little girl lost vocals and sweeping strings, pathos pouring out of it like tears from a glass eye. But you knew all that already. What you might not know is that there are even better versions than Judy Garland’s…

In 1959, Sweet Gene Vincent, when he wasn’t recording rockabilly classics tackled Over The Rainbow with a subtlety and touch you might not’ve expected from a recognised rock ‘n roll bawler. All shoop-shoop-shoop brushed drums and understated end-of-the-prom guitar playing, C’Mon Everybody this is most definitely not. I like Gene’s version for his almost-crooned vocals (“skies are bluu-uue!”), but especially for the tinkling keys that play behind it all. It reminds me of the ice cream van on Saltcoats beach. Which is a good thing, obviously.

My absolute hands down favourite version of Over The Rainbow is by another old rock ‘n roll bawler. You may be surprised to learn that Jerry Lee Lewis cut his version not in the ’50s, or ’60s, or even ’70s. It wasn’t until the ’80s that the old Killer had a go at it and unlike a gazillion other tracks from this era, you can’t tell. It sounds like it was recorded onto 4 tracks in Sun Studios or somewhere similar, there’s not a sniff of a drum machine or synthesizer or digital production to it. Which is also a good thing. Jerry brings to the table a lifetime of guns, gals and no regrets and his clip-clopping version is just about as sublime as it gets. Jerry’s reverb-drenched phrasing (a bit like Bob Dylan’s more recent vocal approach if you’re interested), his loose, funky, bluesy piano playing, replete with those trademark sweeps up and down the ivories, the James Burton-esque guitar riffing, the pseudo-gospel choir, the just-on-the-right-side-of-soppy string arrangement…..I could listen to this version all day long. And I think I just might.

*Bonus Track!

Shhh! The Trashcan Sinatras sneaked their version onto the end of their Zebra Of The Family compilation LP. Fearing heavyweight publishing bills and more visits from wee men seeking money they didn’t have, they thought it best to leave it uncredited and to limit it to no more than 20 seconds long. Terrific, late night/early morning at Shabby Road feel…

(for all you junior Genes ‘n Jerrys)

Next time on Plain Or Pan. Some Stooges. Or Motorhead. Or Husker Du. Or maybe not.