Cover Versions, Get This!, Hard-to-find

Third Degree Burnin’

Craig McAllister

Here’s a thing. In the post-Winehouse search for gin-u-wine authentic blue eyed soul, any pretty young thing with a gritty voice and a decent set of breasts found themselves in a dusty, analogue recording studio listening carefully to whatever it was that the svengali their record company had plucked from indieland’s dole queue was telling them to do. Leader of the pack was Duffy; 60’s-steeped, Dusty-voiced (kinda) and produced by former hip young gunslinger Bernard Butler. Mercy, with its snapping snare and northern soul Perry boys in the video was, I’m not ashamed to say, a real favourite of mine way back in ’08.

It isn’t to hard to imagine that the Duffy track, with its wonky Stand By Me bassline and cooi-ing ‘yeah yeah yeah’ backing vocals was actually a cover of an obscure soul nugget from the late 60s. Which is exactly what some enterprising group did. The Third Degree add proper soul boy black vocals, a smokin’ pistol crack of clipped guitar and a horn section from heaven, making Mercy their own, straightouttanineteensixtyeight. Aye, it has the ever-so-slightly desperate whiff of cynical record company product placement and marketing (from the hip in ’93 Acid Jazz label), and was probably produced with the aid of a demographic spreadsheet, but drop yer snobbery for a minute and listen! Craig Charles played this on his show at the weekend and it’s terrific.

This was released in 2009! Why wasn’t I made aware of this until  now, eh? Tsk.

Listening to that cover of Mercy reminds me of The Seed by The Roots. It has a similar live-in-the-studio, retro-coated, vintage production which belies it’s relative modernity. And before you start thinking ‘Lenny Kravitz’, think again. The Seed is ace. A monster hybrid of live drums, clipped funk guitar and a duet of hip-hop stylee “1! 2! 1! 2’s” and properly sung vocals, I think you’ll like it. Released in 2002 (10 years ago! Ouch!) it is that rare thing – a hip-hop record made by a hip-hop group who play their instruments rather than simply sample and loop old Curtis Mayfield b sides. No doubt about it, The Roots can play. If you cannae shake yer bootee to this, there’s nothing I can help you with here. Dig it, soul brothers and sisters.

Useless Fact: Paul Weller loves The Seed.

*Bonus Track!

What’s that y’say? Old tracks re-done in the soul stylee? I’ve blogged this before, but here‘s Eli ‘Paperboy’ Reed & The Trueloves making Ace Of Spades sound like Otis Redding with ants in his pants. Lemmy cannae like this. I think you might.

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

What does Snoop Dogg use to dye his hair?

Craig McAllister

Bleeeeeeaaaaaach.

I’m from Ayrshire. I can’t pretend to understand the gangsta leanings of Cribs ‘n Bloods ‘n West Coast v’s East Coast. Not that that stopped every two-bit Burberry ned who ever stole from the music shop I once worked in. The 2 Pac posters were just about the most shoplifted items there. Them and the M People CDs, bizarrely enough. “Goat oaney Floyd, man?” someone would ponder in your general direction. And as you did your best to be civil towards them, his pal would be lining the sleeves of his puffa jacket with select pre-ordered images from the poster stand. Ask Marvin from The Scheme and he’ll confirm it. The hash leaf poster of 2 Pac with his pecs ‘n guns ‘n bling bling chains must’ve been on half the walls of Kilmarnock. The ‘Take Me To Your Dealer‘ one with the day-glo alien was no doubt on the other half. But anyway.

2 Pac. Made one terrific record. California Love. It was his comeback single after being released from jail in 1995, after poppin’ a cap in yo’ ass (or something). Packed full of vocodered vocals, sampled ‘n looped trumpets, 80s analogue synths and thumping bass, it is, in short, Dr Dre’s G Funk personified. As is nearly always the way with such tracks, it arrived fully formed and was jigsawed together by the rather clever Dre from an assortment of obscure and under-appreciated funk and soul gems. By no means an exhaustive list, if you listen to the tracks below, you might get a better idea of how the good Dr mixed the given ingredients into the California Love cake.

Ronnie Hudson‘s West Coast Poplock is old school funk. Vintage 1982 to be exact. So not that old school, really, but it‘s the sort of old school funk that once could make Prince strive to make decent records. I bloody love it. It’s the basis of the lyrical content of 2 Pac’s track and is itself fairly redolent of Booker T and the MGs Boot-Leg.

Joe Cocker‘s Woman To Woman features the rolling, staccato piano riff and horn riff that plays throughout the 2 Pac record. It has, I should point out, also been sampled by Moby and Ultramagnetic MCs amongst others. You’d think there’d be enough sampleable tracks out there without everyone using the same bits, eh?

Zapp and Roger Troutman‘s (also sometimes known as Zapp and Roger, or the Zapp Band or just plain old Zapp) Dance Floor provides the authentic electro backing and Chic-esque rinky-dink guitar riff. And the vocodered vocals. And the groove. Once again, it‘s exactly the sort of record that Prince was carefully taking notes from whilst building his 80s back catalogue.

See? That Dr Dre’s no’ that guid really. A couple of heart-attack inducing bass bins, a decent record collection and a good ear for glueing the right bits together in the right places. Ker-ching. It’s dead easy when you think about it. Now. Where did I put that Fat Larry’s Band 12″?

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

Song To The Siren Triple Whammy

Craig McAllister

Song To The Siren was originally released on Tim Buckley‘s near-mythical Starsailor album. Long-since unavailable on CD, if you don’t have it you can buy it these days on iTunes. I think a re-issued vinyl made a fleeting re-appearance a couple of years ago before burying its head once again in the sands of time. Or you can read to the bottom and see what turns up…

There are two schools of thought surrounding the Starsailor LP. On one hand it’s considered a bit out-there and genius-like. On the other hand, it could just as easily be described as unlistenable, noodling avant-jazz-folk-funk. You’ll have your own thoughts on the matter I’m sure.  Song To The Siren cuts through all of this by virtue of it being an old song by the time Buckley got around to cutting Starsailor. It’s moody and melancholic and features the trampoline-voiced Buckley switching back and forwards from baritone bass to fabulous falsetto, much like Buckley Jr (proving, I suppose, that young Jeff was merely a more angelic chip off the old block). Not avant-anything at all, it’s got some terrific atmospheric guitar going on just below those stellar vocals. If you haven’t heard it you’re in for a treat.

*link removed by The Man

Back in the 80s, standing proudly alone and not at all drowning amongst the flotsam and jetsom of the pop fodder du jour was This Mortal Coil‘s version. Essentially a Cocteau Twins’ track (Liz ‘n Robin ‘n nobody else played on it) their version of Song To The Siren took the Buckley blueprint, added some distinctive Cocteau’s swirling effect-laden guitar and topped it off with the weirdest, wonkiest and most crystal-clear vocals this teenager had ever heard. It took me about 14 years to like it, in all honesty. The cloth-eared fool that I am.

Ivo Watts-Russell, 4AD co-founder and brains behind the This Mortal Coil projects recalled the recording of Song To The Siren in a recent issue of Mojo.

I asked Liz if she’d sing Song To The Siren a cappella. Liz never went anywhere without Robin, so he came along. I couldn’t think what to do between the verses, so Robin, reluctantly, put on his guitar, found a sound, lent against a wall, bored as anything, and played it once. Three hours later, it was finished. I still tried to think of how to remove the guitar, but I couldn’t get away from that swimming atmosphere, which is a tribute to Robin’s genius.

Interestingly, Liz Fraser hated her vocal and Robin Guthrie is mightily peeved that no royalties have ever been forthcoming. In a flash of serendipity, Fraser would later go on to have a relationship with Buckley Jr, but that’s mere tittle-tattle and has no place in a family-friendly blog such as Plain Or Pan…

*link removed by The Man

Before he was releasing critic-unifying Albums of the Year, John Grant was the singer with The Czars. I’ve written about him before, in a told-you-so sort of piece, just before his Queen of Denmark LP stole everyone’s thunder in the music inkies round-up of what was hot and not last year. The Czars released half a dozen LPs to general indifference throughout the mid 90s and early 00s. I was a total fan. Possibly their only one. In another weird twist of serendipity, they were encouraged to magnetise their version of Song To The Siren by their A&R man, former Cocteau Simon Raymonde. Their’s is an almost 8-minute long blissed-out version, understated slide guitar, tinkling piano, gently beaten toms and John ‘s perfect vocals occupying the space left in the sky between Buckley’s soaring mood piece and Fraser’s cooing angel breath. Or something like that. I think you’ll like it…

*link removed by The Man

Tim Buckley‘s fabled Starsailor LP, anyone? Click the cover….

*link removed by The Man

Cover Versions, Hard-to-find, Live!

Coyne Operated Machine

Craig McAllister

Today’s hot news is tomorrow’s chip paper and all that, and given that the music featured here is all of 5 days old, some of the more turned on and tuned in amongst you will have no doubt heard this already. But a quick scan of the blogosphere leads me to believe I may well be the first to feature this in mp3 form…

It’s only The Flaming Lips doing a 15 minute version of  The Beatles‘ blooze-fest I Want You (She’s So Heavy) as part of their annual New Year’s Eve Freak Out in Oklahoma City. Cosmic, psychedelic and played by a band right at the top of their game, it’s terrific. Listen to the McCartneyisms on the bass. The twin axe attack duelling guitars. Try if you can and ignore the stoned, whooping college jocks in the background, although this in itself lets you know how unexpected and joyfully received it was. You’ll need the full Lips live lazer light show to experience it fully though…

It’s my favourite cover version of the year and we’re only 6 days in…

Cover Versions, demo, Double Nugget, Dylanish, elliott smith, Get This!, Gone but not forgotten, Hard-to-find, Kraut-y, Most downloaded tracks, New! Now!, Peel Sessions, Sampled, Six Of The Best, Studio master tapes, studio outtakes

I Got 5 Years Stuck On My Eyes

Craig McAllister

I got 5 years, what a surprise! ‘Five Years‘, Bowie’s opening track on the Ziggy album ends with that afore-mentioned refrain. But you knew that already. You might also know that Plain Or Pan has now been going for 5 years. Or you might not. Either way, thanks for visiting time and time again. Whether you’re one of the few who choose to ‘follow this blog’ or you’re one of those misguided creeps who ended up here via Google after searching for ‘Teenage Fanny‘ and got the Bellshill Beach Boys instead, those visits (and the numbers they register behind the scenes in the Plain Or Pan office) are what keeps me a-writin’ and researchin’. Not as often as I’d like to, but as someone commented some time ago, “One good post a week is better than 7 posts of shite.” I might be paraphrasing there, but you get the idea.

As is now customary at this time of year, my team of office monkeys gather up all statistical information made available to them and compile a couple of CDs worth of the year’s most popular downloaded tracks and painstakingly create a groovy cover that goes with it. This is not a quick process. Hours are spent refining and re-refining running orders. At least 14 different covers are produced before a carefully-selected random sample of Plain Or Pan’s target audience (that’s you, that is) choose the cover that speaks most to them. This year is slightly different. The office monkeys have gone on strike (they mumbled something about pensions) and time is at a premium (ie, I don’t have any). The tracks, 2 CDs worth are here. The artwork, not your normal CD cover, more of an image that you can use as cover art in iTunes or however you listen to music on your computer, is there, above this paragraph (right click, save as etc etc). The tracklist? I don’t have one. This year you can choose your own running order from the following:

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

John Barry – Midnight Cowboy

King Creosote – Home In A Sentence

The Smiths – How Soon Is Now? (Rare Italian pressing)

Gruff Rhys – Shark Ridden Waters, which samples….

The Cyrkle – It Doesn’t Matter Anymore

Midlake – Branches

Elliott Smith – Alameda

Peter Salett – Sunshine

Mott The Hoople – Walking With A Mountain

Primal Scream – Jailbird (Kris Needs’ Toxic Trio Stay free mix)

Primal Scream & PP Arnold – Understanding (Small Faces cover)

Ride – Like A Daydream

The Wildebeests – That Man (Small Faces cover)

Dion – The Dolphins (Tim Buckley cover)

Darondo – Didn’t I

Edwin Starr – Movin’ On Up (Primal Scream cover)

Shellac – My Black Ass

The Rivingtons – Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow (the building blocks of Surfin Bird)

The Survivors – Pamela Jean (Brian Wilson recording)

The Heavy – How You Like Me Now? which heavily ‘borrows’ from…

Dyke & The Blazers – Let A Woman Be A Woman (Let A Man Be A Man)

The La’s – Come In Come Out (John Leckie mix)

The Girlfriends – My One And Only Jimmy Boy

The Whyte Boots – Nightmare

James Brown & the Famous Flames –I’ll Go Crazy

The Jim Jones Revue – Hey Hey Hey Hey, cover of….

Little Richard – Hey Hey Hey Hey (false start take)

Suede – The Wild Ones (unedited version)

Lee Dorsey – Holy Cow

Fern Kinney – Groove Me

Aretha Franklin – Rock Steady (alt mix)

Jackson 5 –  I Want You Back (Michael’s isolated vocal – dynamite!!!)

Reparta & the Delrons – Shoes (the inspiration for The Smiths’ A Rush And A Push…)

Dusty Springfield – Spooky

She & Him – Please Please Please, Let Me Get What I Want (Smiths cover)

John Barry – The Girl With The Sun In Her Hair

A fairly representative selection of what Plain Or Pan is all about, you might agree. In other words, a right rum bag of forgotten classics and demos and cover versions and alternative takes and studio outtakes and the rest of it. Outdated Music For Outdated People right enough.

Missed any of these legendary compilations?

Here‘s the first 2 years, 2007 & 2008

Here‘s 2009’s

Here‘s 2010’s

Download ’til yer heart’s content!

Cover Versions, Dylanish, Gone but not forgotten, Hard-to-find, Peel Sessions

The Ghosts Of Christmas Past

Craig McAllister

Ooh! What’s that bulging in Santa’s sack? Buoyed by the swell of traffic following the Pogues post (a wee bit below), here’s a shortcut to previous Plain Or Pan Christmas stuff:

The James Brown Christmas album . Even better than it sounds. Here.

Dora Bryan‘s 1963 novelty cash-in All I Want For Christmas Is A Beatle. Here.

Julian ‘The Strokes’ Casablancas‘ uber-rare I Wish It Was Christmas Today. Here.

Some Bob Dylan festive fare. Here.

The Fall do Christ-mas-ah! Here.

The Ghost Of Christmas Past? That’ll be Phil’s Spectre.

Plain Or Pan is almost 5 years young. Over the festive period you’ll be able to pick up (download!) the annual Plain Or Pan Best Of The Year CD, featuring the most popular downloaded tracks from throughout the year – the ideal way for newbies to quickly catch up on what they’ve been a-missin’ and regulars to plug the gaps in their collection.

Remember, the ‘Whityeherefur?‘ botton on the left is your friend.

Hard-to-find, Kraut-y

Wake Me Up Before You

Craig McAllister

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllanty

siliogogogoch.

The ever-modest me gives this Headline Of The Year, even if there are too many characters to fit in and it somewhat loses the impact.

Everyone’s favourite Welsh psychedelicists Super Furry Animals‘ first release in 1995 was the tongue-twistingly titled Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyndrobwllantysiliogogogochynygofod (in space) EP. It was released just as the band were on the cusp of signing to Creation Records. To possibly mis-quote the main protagonists: McGee – “I told them, ‘Sing in English and you’ve got yourselves a record deal’. Gruff Rhys – “We were singing in English!”, it ended up being reissued a couple of years later on the back of the Super Furries subsequent success. Along with the band’s Moog Droog EP, it’s just about the most sought-after record in the Super Furry Animals brilliantly eclectic and mind-blowing back catalogue. If you have a spare copy, name yer price and give me an early Christmas present. If you don’t have a copy (and why should you?) make do with the 4 tracks below. All future classic SFA-isms are already in place – Twin fuzz guitar Status Quo axe attack boogie played in tandem with bleepy, blippy, wonky keyboards, Beach Boys harmonies and Hawkwind space rock whooshes. In Welsh. I think.

These tracks would eventually find their way onto b-sides and the like, but here they are, as the band first intended them to be heard:

Organ Yn Dy Geg

Fix Idris

Crys Ti

Blerwytirhwng

Handy zip file here.

Gruff Rhys ‘Atheist Xmas‘ out now – Buy it here!

demo, Hard-to-find, studio outtakes

Bums, Punks and Old Sluts On Junk

Craig McAllister

This time last year I read an article in one of Mrs Plain Or Pan’s magazines about Christmas. The article asked a carefully selected sample of celebrities to describe their perfect Christmas Day. “A long walk in the woods with my fiancé,” cooed Kathryn Jenkins, “before curling up in front of the log fire with a glass of mulled wine.” “We always start the day with a champagne breakfast,” revealed Maureen Lipman. “Traditionally, we open presents after dinner, then the whole family settles down to watch The Snowman.” Christmas Day seems just peachy round at her’s, eh? I don’t know about your house, but mine on Christmas Day is nothing like that at all. “Those carrots are mushy…and the sprouts are still raw! You useless wanker!”(whispered of course,  so the relatives can’t hear us arguing, 3 feet away on the other side of the wall). “You told me when to put them on!” “Could you not tell the carrots were ready? Couldn’t you use your fucking brains for once?” etc etc etc. Like I said, I don’t know about your house, but I’m inclined to think it’ll be more like mine than Kathryn Jenkins’ or Maureen Lipman’s come a week on Sunday.

Still Alive! Todd Marrone did this, the talented so-and-so.

You know this already, but just for the record, Fairytale Of New York is the best Christmas song of all-time. It doesn’t matter what’s gone before (the Phil Spector album, Bowie ‘n Bing’s Little Drummer Boy, the glam slam of Slade and Wizzard) or what came after (East 17? Cliff Richard? Kylie Minogue panting her way through Santa Baby with all the sex appeal of an asthma attack?) Some of these records are better than others, but none of them come close to capturing the essence of Christmas (raw sprouts, useless husbands and all) quite like The Pogues.

A Fairytale Of New York is almost unique amongst Christmas songs in that it tackles the ‘C’ word with none of the blind enthusiasm or misty-eyed schlock normally reserved for such events. Slade set their stall out before a bell has even been clanged in excitement. “It’s Christmaaaaas!!” yells Noddy, and you know from then on in you’re in for a rollicking yuletide ride. Wham drown that thinly-disguised same-sex love song of theirs in a gazillion sleigh bells and suddenly everything in George Michael’s garden is rosy.  “All I Want For Christmas,” enthuses Mariah Carey, “is yooouuuuooooouuu!” Yeah, and an X-Box, an iPod and a flat screen TV, Mariah. We’re all materialistic over here. And while you’re at it, could you get me a job too? And maybe find someone who’ll give us a mortgage? Aye, bah humbug ‘n all that jazz. The Pogues have gone for none of that. Fairytale Of New York is still romantic, but it’s also raw, real and ragged, full of remorse for past misdemeanours while hoping for a better future. Nicely gift wrapped of course in a Pogues-punk waltz-time, with added BBC ban-defying swearing.

It’s a terrific arrangement, put together quite masterfully by Steve Lillywhite. Initially written as a duet between Shane MacGowan and Pogues bass player Cait O’Riordan, then scrapped when she left the band, it was Steve Lillywhite who suggested getting the missus in to duet with MacGowan instead. Listen to the demos below and hear how he transformed The Pogues’ half-finished ideas into the final record, with its peaks and troughs and instrumental breaks. Hear too how he gets the best out of Shane, who at this point in his life was eating tabs of acid the way the Fonz eats gum (all the time, if you didn’t know), whilst washing them down with enough brandy to drown a whale. Lillywhite somehow coaxes him out of the famous fluent Macgowanese mumble and into that raucous final take.

The Music:

  • One of the first takes. Fluffed lines, missed cues….and the band played on.
  • Shane ‘n Cait almost full-length run-through duet with alt. lyrics, missed cues, forgotten words………and the band played on.
  • The ‘blueprint version‘ – Starts with Shane ‘n James Fearnley on accordion. Different lyrics again. Shane struggles with the concept of singing in tune. Band in top form as usual. After listening to this you can begin to appreciate the contribution Kirsty MacColl made to the finished record.

Get This!

He’s released more studio albums than the Rolling Stones, y’know…

Craig McAllister

While we’re on the subject of new releases (see post below) a special mention must be made of Diamond Mine by King Creosote and Jon Hopkins. Released at the end of March, this album has been something of a slow-burner, quietly picking up a Mercury nomination along the way to becoming ‘Best Album of the Year’, in my house at least.

King Kenny Anderson is, in the best tradition of these sorts of things, a songwriters’ songwriter. His laconic Fife drawl and wheezing accordion could easily have him marked down as a folkie, and perhaps in the truest sense of the word that’s what he is, but he shouldn’t be so easily pigeonholed. High Heid Yin of Fence Records (King Creosote, gettit?) he’s a non-stop writin ‘n recordin’ machine, with around 40 homemade and indie-released albums to his name (aye! – don’t believe me? start believin‘!) If you’d never heard it but assumed you knew all there was to know about King Creosote, it could be easy to dismiss Diamond Mine as yet another lo-fi strum through of half-baked ideas. Oh no! Seven years in the making, it’s an album packed full of stunning wee songs bursting with ideas.

This is in no small part down to the production work of Hopkins, an engineer with a set of ears more accustomed to the bleeps and farts of electronica than a b flat minor on electric guitar. He re-works many of King Creosote’s older songs and unfinished chord progressions and enhances them with his own take on ‘found sound‘ and ‘musique concrete‘.

As Hopkins (talking about the track Bats In The Attic) told Drowned In Sound around the time of release,“You can hear the guitar part from his original version at the beginning, but I played it back through a mobile phone speaker simulation to decimate* the quality, so that it retained its rhythm, but none of its notes, giving me freedom to change the chords of the song completely.”

Did you get that?

There’s more (great wee video……)

There’s a real ambience without it being ambient. The whole thing ebbs and flows, joined seamlessly by faded voices, the chinking of greasy spoon tea cups and a warm, wooly thwump…..thwump…..thwump….. that recalls the heady days of listening to LPs on my big old 1970s Grundig music centre. Or John Peel on Medium Wave under the covers at midnight. It’s a slow album, yet barely over 30 minutes long, and when you get to the end you’ll want to play it all over again. How many contemporary albums can you say that about, eh?

The Music:

Normally as an appetiser I’d post a track or two, but seeing as Fence are about as cottage industry as you can get I won’t on this occassion. You can have Home In A Sentence from 2007’s Bombshell LP instead. Uplifting melancholia that would’ve been a global smash hit in a parallel universe.

Now off you go and buy Diamond Mine. Follow the link there on the right hand side.  If you don’t like it I’ll give you yer money back. What’ve you got to lose?

And another thing…….

A sister EP sneaked out under the radar a couple of months ago that plays quite nicely alongside the LP. You can get Honest Words on vinyl and download here.

And another thing……..

* The Roman Army didn’t like to lose a battle. On the rare occasion that they did, the Centurion would ask his Optio (his second-in-command) to select 10 Legionaries at random. Then the other soldiers would be forced to batter them to death. And that’s where the word ‘decimated‘ comes from.

Here endeth this week’s history lesson.

Dylanish, elliott smith, Gone but not forgotten, Hard-to-find, studio outtakes

I’m So Sick Of Snow Patrol-ah!

Craig McAllister

When people discover that I’m into music in a big way they will ask the inevitable question, “What music do you like then?” My standard glib and non-commital reply has always been, “Oh you know, anything released before 1986,” which, on the one hand tells you nothing, but on the other hand tells you everything you need to know. Why get into the present when there’s so much from the past just waiting to be discovered? Of course, just to be contrary, I’m very much into the present. Two albums currently on heavy rotation (do iPods rotate?) are Skying by The Horrors and Ersartz G.B. by The Fall. Both current, both new, yet crucially both steeped in a wide variety of pre-86 reference points. The Horrors album seems to have taken early Psychedelic Furs and the pre-pomp Simple Minds as its year zero. But that description doesn’t do it justice at all. Full-on, relentless and played by musicians at the top of their game, The Horrors would be my band of choice if I was 17 and had the waist size for skinny black jeans and the gall to wear pointy boots in public. Spotify it then buy it. And that’s an order.

The current version of The Fall are brilliant – tight, taut and tense with seemingly their leader’s approval to, like, get down. The album is all Sabbath riffs and rockabilly rhythms, wonky keyboards and slabs of cement basslines. On some tracks, Mark Smith sounds like an angry dog attacking an old slipper (eg the lyric that healines this piece). On the rest he sounds like a demented Dalek on downers. This may just be the best Fall LP since Extricate. It’s that good. In fact, if this album and The Horrors one aren’t in the Top 5 of any of those Best Albums of the Year lists that should be appearing any day now, I’ll turn my copy of Telephone Thing into a trendy ashtray and smoke myself silly.

Photo ‘borrowed’ from Flybutter via Flickr. Ta!

Another current obsession is Elliott Smith. I’ve written much about him in the past (use the ‘search‘ box on the side there). I love Elliott and return to him time and time again. This week I have been mostly obsessing over Alameda, from his Either/Or LP. It’s not just the way he practically whispers the lyric. Or the ghostly harmonising backing vocals. And it’s not just the way he sounds like he plays guitar with 10 fingers. On each hand. Nope. It’s the way (muso alert! muso alert!) the song goes from monochrome misery into a burst of technicolour joy over a pair of E flat and G minor chords. “For your own protection over their affection, nobody broke your heart. You broke your own…” Majestic is the word I’m looking for. My Christmas holiday task is to master this song on the guitar. Easy chords but a difficult picking arrangement. Pop round at New Year to hear me murder it if you fancy.

Here y’are:

Alameda (Either/Or)

Alameda (Alt. Lyrics)

Alameda (Live WMUC circa June/July 1997)

Oh aye. Is it snowing on your desktop too? Nothing to do with me….

UPDATED AUGUST 2012….UPDATED AUGUST 2012….UPDATED AUGUST 2012