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:

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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

Hard-to-find

For Every Bragg There’s A Bono

Craig McAllister

Mixing Pop and Politics He Asks Me What The Use Is. That’s a Billy Bragg line. From ‘Waiting For The Great Leap Forward‘. But you knew that already.

Mixing pop and politics always sits slightly uneasily with me. A bit rich coming from someone who loves the early work of Bob Dylan I know, not to mention the socio-soul of Curtis ‘n Marvin ‘n Stevie, The Specials and all of 2 Tone, the angry young Mr Weller (when I think about it, I could go on and on and on), but you’ve got to agree with me that while there are the earnest few who do so for the correct, compassionate reasons there are those who do it more for the ker-ching and the career. Aye Geldof. Perhaps even you. Pause.

End pause.

Phew. I half thought a bolt of lightning would flash outta the sky and knock me outta my new suede slippers there. Anyway, what was I saying? Oh aye, that’s right; for every Bragg there’s a Bono, for every Stevie a Sting.

Housemartins Mk1. Where’s FatBoy Slim?

I like the sound of records. Often I don’t actually listen to what the singer’s singing about. A bit rich coming from someone who loves the early work of etc etc blah blah blah, yes, but this would explain my love of the Cocteau Twins. When I was at school and Happy Hour came out I thought The Housemartins were just a slightly wacky guitar band with a clever grasp of melody and terrible taste in knitwear, no more and no less. Later in life I appreciated Paul Heaton’s biting sattire on some of The Beautiful South’s material (even the band’s name had political undertones, I got that), but I never really had his first band down as being overtly political. All that changed (I’m embarrassed to admit) only 2 months ago. Flag Day, from The Housemartin’s London 0, Hull 4 LP popped up whilst the iPod was on shuffle and oh! The penny dropped. Flag Day in 1986 was far too slow for this 16 year old. It was nothing like Happy Hour or Anxious or We’re Not Deep or any other of those 4 chord toe tappers. It broke the flow of what was a jaunty wee album up until that point and although I’d never get up and move the needle onto the next track, I doubt I actually properly listened to it more than once. Fast forward 25 or so years and it’s quite clear; The Housemartins were a slightly wacky guitar band with a clever grasp of melody, terrible taste in knitwear and a terrific way with words.

Too many Florence Nightingales
Not enough Robin Hoods
Too many halos not enough heroes
Coming up with the goods
So you though you’d like to change the world
Decided to stage a jumble sale
For the poor, for the poor

It’s a waste of time if you know what they mean
Try shaking a box in front of the Queen
’cause her purse is fat and bursting at the seams
It’s a waste of time if you know what they mean

Too many hands in too many pockets
Not enough hands on hearts
Too many ready to call it a day
Before the day starts
So you thought you’d like to see them healed
Got Blue Peter to stage an appeal
For the poor, for the poor

It’s a waste of time if you know what they mean
Try shaking a box in front of the Queen
’cause her purse is fat and bursting at the seams
It’s a waste of time if you know what they mean

Flag day, flag day, flag day.

How good is that? Paul Heaton isn’t that much older than me and here he was writing acidic commentaries on modern society. It could’ve been written yesterday, it’s that relevant today. Flag Day is lo-fi gospel, all chunky piano chords and sincere white boy vocals. Nothing much like the rest of the debut album and perhaps then a bizzare choice for a first single. It barely scraped the top 150. Later on, The Housemartins would do garage gospel again and take it all the way to the top. Christian Socialists at the Christmas number 1, if memory serves me correctly. Or did Reet Petite beat it? It seems a long way away these days.

The Music:

Flag Day (original single mix)

Flag Day (LP version)

Tune in next week as I discover the real meaning behind the tracks on This Is The Story by everyone’s favourite Caledonian Calvinists, The Proclaimers.

Housemartins Mk2. There’s the FatBoy! And the axe wielding maniac.

Cover Versions, Live!

And It Was Only Ever A B-Side

Craig McAllister

Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want is the sound of The Smiths in minature. It‘s got a whole multitude of acoustic & electric guitar tracks, with enough pretty chords and fancy picking to satisfy even the keenest bedroom Johnny Marr guitarist for years to come (believe me). It’s whimsical, melancholic and bathed in pathos. Morrissey’s close-miked vocal is equal parts full of hope and despair and, for me at least, shrouded in ambiguity – is it “Good times, for a change” (eg, normally times are anything but good) or is it “Good times for a change” (eg, these good times we’ve been having will no doubt soon be over). That’s puzzled me for years that has. Sometimes drives me crazy if I’m telling the truth. The lyric is often lazily trotted out by the Philistines as an example of why The Smiths were “depressing etc etc blah, blah, blah“. Remarkably, it’s all over in under 2 minutes. “Where’s the rest of the song?” asked Rough Trade upon their first listen. Of course, it’s perfect as it was. “Like a very brief punch in the face,” to quote Steven Patrick himself. But you knew that already.

Perfect as it was. That hasn’t stopped others from having a go though. Without popping off to the normal places to check I’d wager it’s the most-covered Smiths track….ever!  It’s featured in a handful of movie soundtracks, sometimes as the original, sometimes under the guise of someone else. It’s been played live by any number of sensitive acoustic troubadours and as I type it’s being downloaded into the higher regions of whatever constitutes a Hit Parade these days by a whole generation of cloth-eared numpties who’ve taken to it after hearing Slow Moving Millie’s clunkingly twee aberration of a version that soundtracks the current John Lewis Christmas ad on the TV. (Try saying that after 2 light ales). I don’t like it, no.

In their prime The Smiths could rattle off songs the same way you or I tend to boil the kettle – daily and without really thinking about it. With supreme confidence they stuck Please, Please, Please… onto the b-side of the William, It Was Really Nothing single, alongside How Soon Is Now? The best bands always have their best songs tucked away on b-sides but that’s quite an amazing little single, eh? Johnny tells of writing it in his Earls Court flat in the Summer of 1984, just as The Smiths had joined that train that heaved onto Euston. The inspiration behind it was the little-known Del Shannon track, ‘The Answer To Everything‘, a record constantly playing in his house when he was growing up. “I tried to capture the essence of the Del Shannon tune in terms of its spookiness and sense of yearning.” If you haven’t already done so, now’s a good time to point you in the direction of Johnny Marr’s Dansette Delights, a compilation that features this very track. Anyway, I digress. What of those cover versions?

The first to appear was The Dream Academy‘s version in 1985. An instrumental was recorded for the Ferris Bueller’s Day Off movie, which is where most folk would’ve heard it. The Dream Academy were unfortunately a bit out of step for the mid 80s. Clearly in thrall to the pastoral,  introspective charms of Nick Drake and even Syd Barrett they’d have had a better chance of success in the mid 90s, when anyone who was anyone was citing Drake ‘n Barrett as visionary influences. The Dream Academy’s version (horrible pan-pipey synth strings ‘n all) crashed the charts at number 81, “which is nearly a hit,” mused Morrissey, who would later include it on  his audience warm-up tapes that played before his concerts.

She & Him do a nice 50s-inspired twangin’, end of the prom-type version. Slow and reverby and featuring the vocals of the future Mrs Plain Or Pan, Zooey Deschanel (aaah, Zooey!) it‘s one of the few Please, Please, Please… covers that dares to be just that wee bit different to the original.

On the other hand, Josh Rouse, the poor man’s Ryan Adams (albeit with far better manners) contributes a lazy half, cocked version. I like Josh Rouse, I really do. His 1972 album is worth more than a fleeting Spotify listen if you’re unfamiliar with his stuff, but really, his Please, Please, Please…! He doesn’t even play the proper chords or anything! That’s just not on!

Please, Please, Please… was rarely played live by The Smiths, but here‘s a terrific, and I mean terrific, version of it that opened one legendary LA show in 1986. Famous for a bouncer-inflamed riot at the end, The Smiths actually opened with Please, Please, Please….that night. A lilting, soulful version, bass, drums ‘n all. Now pop off and seek out Thank Your Lucky Stars. You will Thank Your Lucky Stars – the best Smiths bootleg out there, if y’ask me.

From Hair To Eternity

Cover Versions, Double Nugget, Gone but not forgotten, Hard-to-find, Live!

Brown Sugar, How Come You Taste So Good?

Craig McAllister

There’s only one thing good about Hallowe’en and that’s tablet. I despise Hallowe’en. Really properly hate it. I think it dates back to the times when I was a wee boy and I was sent out every year as a one-man band – my Dad’s old guitar (it was old then, it’s ancient now), a coathanger fashioned into a half-arsed harmonica harness, two cardboard cymbals between the knees and a massive big bass drum hanging off my skinny shoulders right down to my backside. Oh, and a couple of bells strapped round my ankles for added effect. “Who…what….are you meant to be?” they’d always ask and I’d mumble the answer while stuffing monkey nuts into a poly bag already full of monkey nuts. Then I’d shamble off to the next house sounding like the Eastenders theme falling down the stairs. With bells on.

“Can I not just be a skeleton next year Dad?”

“We’ll see son, we’ll see…”

Not that I’m scarred for life or anything. I’ve just spent the last couple of hours in classic grumpy old man fashion, hanging cheap orange and black Poundland tat from the outside walls of my garage and front door. An inflatable bat here, a plastic pumpkin there. Tat, tat and more tat. At least the kids’ll like it though. Hang some of that junk to your wall and it’s an open invitation to all and sundry. I expect literally hundreds of the wee grubbers round here tomorrow night, with their rubbish jokes and shop-bought costumes (there’ll be no one-man bands, I can guarantee you that), rattling my letterbox just as The One Show kicks off. “Oany tablet mister?”

Heres 2 version of a vaguely Hallowe’en themed double whammy (thanks to Big Stuff for the inspiration).

Spooky was first recorded by Classics IV, a band from Florida featuring a singing drummer and harmonies to rival the Wilson family. They were so laid back and chilled out they make Fleetwood Mac seem like Sonic Youth in comparison. Indeed, they practically invented the whole ‘soft rock’ genre. Gads. Spooky is almost garage band in presentation, but if you listen closely to the clipped guitar and polite vibraphone you just know they were heading in a different direction entirely. Indeed, by the time you’ve picked up on the lack of fuzz bass and the singing drummer’s vocal inflections (groovy, baby), it’s clear they’d bought a one-way ticket to mid-70s elevator muzak central, sax solos ‘n all. And it was only 1968.

Dusty Springfield hid her version away on the b-side of 1970’s How Can I Be Sure. Picked up since by hip samplers and happenin’ film soundtrack compilers, it’s been rightly placed amongst the canon of her best work. Dusty practically breathes the vocal across the top like a butterfly on a breeze as her fingers click in time to the coolest Fender Rhodes this side of Ronnie Scott’s in 1972. Even more cocktail lounge than the Classics IV version, it had, for a brief two and a half groovy minutes there made me forget the reason I was posting it in the first place.

There’s no tablet, by the way. I ate it all. Every last tooth-melting soft ‘n sugary bit of it. Right at this minute I am, as someone once sang, shakin’ all over. What’re ye goin’ as?

Bonus Track of sorts

REM did Spooky now and again in concert. Here they are in Hamburg a couple of years ago: