Cover Versions, Gone but not forgotten, studio outtakes

Redding Festival

Craig McAllister

Fate works in mysterious ways. Firstly, two items all typed up and ready for publication when Mediafire stop me uploading mp3s for your aural pleasure. Then, problem fixed (2 weeks later) and the two items I wrote have somehow disappeared silently into the ether, apparently gone forever. This post, therefore, is a test of sorts…

Today is Roger Waters’ birthday. It’s also Dave Stewart’s. It would’ve been Otis Redding’s 70th birthday today too, but he never made it past the age of 26. Aye, fate works in mysterious ways indeed. Otis, as you well know, was the soul singer’s soul singer. Pure. Raw. Heart bleedin’, soul sweatin’, down-on-his-knees soul. Following his performance at 1967’s Monterey Festival, he was one of the first black artists to cross over to a white audience. Keef prefers his version of Satisfaction to the Stones’ original. Modern day wannabe Stones The Black Crowes did a pretty rockin’ verison of Hard To Handle. Well, they were “modern” 20 years ago at any rate. Not many people even knew it was a cover. But you did, eh? Course you did. Unfortunately Otis was also partly responsible for The Commitments and therefore pub bands up and down the country doing buttock-clenchingly awful versions of Respect and Mustang Sally (I know, I know, it’s a Wilson Pickett track), but he was a long time dead by then, so he thankfully never heard any of them.

The music….

Take 1 of Try a Little Tenderness. Otis with Booker T & MGs feeling the song out for the first time. Isaac Hayes arranged the brass section, fact fans.

I’ve Been Loving You Too Long. The heart-wrenchin’, knee-droppin’ Otis at his finest.

*Bonus Track!

Tindersticks version of I’ve Been Loving You Too Long. Almost but not quite white man gospel. It’s downbeat, churchlike (funereal, even) and fairly terrific. If you are unfamiliar with the work of Tindersticks,  you might suggest Stuart Staples sings a wee bit like Vic Reeves’ Pub Singer on it. But don’t let that put you off.

Otis Deading

Cover Versions, Hard-to-find, Peel Sessions

Notebooks Out, Plagiarists!

Craig McAllister

The Wisdom of MES #1:

He told me I didn’t understand, that we were from the bleak industrial wastes of North England, or something, and that we didn’t understand the Internet. I told him Fall fans invented the Internet. They were on there in 1982.

The Fall. Two short words. One long career. They’re a bit like whisky. You’ve been told it’s good and you want to like it, but on the first coupla tries it doesn’t go down well, sticks in the throat, comes back on you with a vengeance. Then, a wee bit older, more wordly-wise and mature and you realise, hey! This stuff’s great! It’s for every occasion, much better after dark, much better alone than shared. Ease your way into it gently then go for it. If you’re new to it, there’s a lot of catching up to be done. It’s been 35 years and 28 LPs or something like that. 28 LPs! And that’s not counting the multitude of ex label cash ins, compilations and crappy semi official bootlegs. Those 28 studio LPs, they can’t all be good though, eh? Yeah, some of them are better than that. Excellent you might even say. This Nation’s Saving Grace. Live At The Witch Trials. Hex Induction Hour. I could go on, but you know them all and you’ll all have your own personal favourites. (Extricate, since you’re askin’). Band members play on a seemingly shoogly, constantly moving conveyor belt. In The Fall, yer number can be up at any moment. Mark E Smith changes rhythm sections the way most of us change our socks. Play Dead Beat Descendent the wrong way and it’s curtains-ah! Play Dead Beat Descendent the right way and it’s curtains-ah! But you knew that already.

The Wisdom of MES #2:

If it’s me and your granny on bongos, it’s The Fall.

Check the record, check the record, check the guy’s track record!

I’ve always liked The Fall for having the gumption to tackle other folks material, regardless of how hip or otherwise it may appear to those watching from the outside. A quick poke about the internet will reward you with an excellent compilation of assorted cover versions that they’ve tackled in their own rattlin’, shoutin’ way. Lee Perry. The Kinks. Sister Sledge. The Searchers. Any number of garage band and rockabilly ramalamas. It doesn’t matter who’s being covered, they all end up sounding like The Fall. Which got me thinking. Can anyone ‘do’ The Fall? The Fall do loads of other bands, but have any bands done The Fall. Well…………Apparently not. There are precious few attempts at covering Fall songs. However….

Sonic Youth, pre-conceived too-cool-for-school detuned pretentious art-rockers that they are did a whole Peel Session of Fall tracks in 1988, and their version of Rowche Rumble is bloody marvellous. A right wiry tub-thumper, it keeps those ‘Ksch Ksch‘ vocals in and dresses the whole thing up in a wall of  skronking Jazzmaster guitar. (Adopts noo yoik accent) It’s like art, but it’s like, rock at the same time.

The Wisdom of MES #3:

When they start saying they like the Fall, it’s usually that they’ve run out of ideas. You remember Wet Wet Wet saying that, you know, ‘we wanna concentrate on doing our own stuff, a bit like The Fall’. It’s like, ‘shut the fuck up!’, you know.

Enter Pavement. They based most of their career sounding like The Fall, at least they did for those first coupla albums. Total rip off? Cute fanboy homage? It’s hard to tell. Anyway you look at it, they even had the nerve to do The Fall in a Peel Session, tackling The Classical with reserved jangle and polite (polite!) Hey There Fuckface vocals ‘n all. Sadly, nothing much like the pummeling, frantic original at all.

The Wisdom of MES #4:

Listening to Pavement, it’s just The Fall in 1985, isn’t it? They haven’t got an original idea in their heads.

*Bonus Tracks!

Contrast and compare with the original and best:

The Fall – Rowche Rumble

The Fall – The Classical

It’s really Roche Rumble. But you knew that already.

Cover Versions, Hard-to-find, studio outtakes

Les Coups Différents Pour Les Gens Différents

Craig McAllister

Ahem. Excusé moi…….

C’est Sly! Le Chat de Hep d’années soixante-dix mettre au point d’âme de banlieue son produit dans le studio tout comme la Famille Pierre partait. Vous reconnaîtrez que quatre au battement de tambour de plancher, la basse de duvet de frugtastic et ces super-glissant psychédélique remplissent sur la guitare. Vous pouvez reconnaître même l’air. Ce n’est que la Danse A La Musique, mes frères et mes soeurs ! En français ! La Famille « dum-duh, dum-dum-duh duh » les choeurs sont juste aussi indignes que la coiffure afro sur la tête de la Soeur Rose, l’air tout comme l’anneau-un-ding sauvage comme les 22″ fonds de cloche sur les jambes de Freddie. Enregistré comme French Fries au lieu de Sly et la Famille Pierre, il pose dans les coffre-forts pour les âges, non aimés, non découverts et incroyablement branchés. La face b est appelée Small Fries, le genre de r › la frousse-âme avec ces tromperie de studio de fausset fausse vocale qui a fait Prince s’assied sur et écoute quand il enregistrait If I Was Your Girlfriend.Vous creuse ?

La Musique:

Danse A La Musique

Small Fries

La traduction ici. Les excuses énormes à tous mes amis français pour tenter d’écrire dans français d’écolier! Il n’arrivera jamais encore!

Fin

 

 

Cover Versions, Hard-to-find, studio outtakes

People Do Rock Steady

Craig McAllister

Rocksteady is a style of music that originated in Jamaica around the end of the 60s. Slower than ska, faster than reggae, you’ll recognise rocksteady by its beat – 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and so on and so on. Alton Ellis. Toots and The Maytals. Hopeton Lewis. The Cables. Names you may not be familiar with (though Toots, surely?), but all are purveyors of the finest rocksteady available. You should seek them out, you’d like them.

Rock Steady is a 1971 single by Aretha Franklin, appearing on her Young, Gifted and Black LP. It‘s a classic piece of call and response Atlantic soul, all hi-hat, one chord chicken-scratch guitar and outrageously funky organ fills. The bit when everything drops out save Aretha’s “Rock!…….Steady!……Rock!…….Steady!” vocals is hairs-on-the-neck material. But you knew that already. That wee section alone has been sampled by every hip-hop act you care to mention, from Afrika Bambaataa to Young Bleed. Public Enemy have sampled the exact same part 3 times! I’ve often thought that Talking Heads based their white boy funk of  Burning Down The House on Aretha’s Rock Steady groove, whether consciously or not. EPMD certainly did. Their 1988 single I’m Housin’ is built around the track. Still stands up today, for what it’s worth. You should play it in the car, bass boomin’ as you’re gangster leanin’ out the window. And if you can carry that move off in this particular part of the world, I’ll buy you a pint.

Jamaican artists were heavily influenced by the sounds they could pick up on the airwaves. Being an island, few if any travelling musicians toured there, so Jamaicans were left to come up with their own music. As the sounds of soul drifted across the Caribbean, the musicians would take what they liked and add their own laid back twist to it. Many early ska and rocksteady records are covers of soul tracks. When an artist wrote his own song, it was often in essence a barely disguised soul record with new lyrics on top. The Brentford All-Stars Greedy G is basically a James Brown record with extra keyboard stabs and some dubby drums. Nothing wrong with that, eh? The Marvels heard Aretha’s Rock Steady and as quick as that light bulb could ping in their collective minds they’d re-jigged it into a rocksteady groove, chicken-scratch guitar, ourageously funky organ fills and all. Just a bit slower than the original, but then, the original was made in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. The Marvels cooked up their version in the burning hot temperatures of Jamaica. Sound Dimension were also taken by Rock Steady. Their instrumental Granny Scratch Scratch is clearly based on the Aretha record. Pure rocksteady (count the beat as you listen), it‘s a terrific head-nodder of a track.

*Bonus Tracks!

Here‘s an alternate mix of Aretha Franklin‘s version. It’s looser and longer than the version you’re familiar with.

Here‘s The Jackson Sisters frantic funk version.

Here‘s Rocksteady by Byron Lee & The Dragonaires. It has nothing to do with any of the above records.

Here‘s People Do Rocksteady by The Bodysnatchers. Again, nthing to do with any of the above records.

Now treat yourself and go and buy the Soul Jazz ‘Dynamite‘ series. 100% Dynamite is the best place to start. At the last count, six volumes to collect. All killer no filler ‘n that.

Effortlessly cool, even with the wee vocal slip at 2.28.

Hard-to-find

Double Barrelled Objects Of Desire

Craig McAllister

Pop music, especially the early stuff when the concept of the teenager had just been invented has always been awash with songs sung by hormonally imbalanced adolescent boys about seemingly unattainable girls. The helium high of The Hollies Hey! Carrie Anne (what’s your game and can anybody play?), Buddy Holly‘s uh pretty-pretty-pretty-pretty Peggy Sue, the Beach Boys‘ mock party jam version of ah-ba ba ba ba Barbara Ann (ah-ba ba ba ba Barbara Ann, ta-ake my ha-a-and). I bet you’re singing Al Jardine’s ridiculous falsetto right now. Every one of them a gazillion plays radio standard. Every one of them a teenage ode to an unattainable double barrelled object of desire.

I bet you couldn’t sing this though: Pamela Jean by The Survivors.

Pamela Jean is a terrific slice of early 60s Dionesque doo-wop pop, all hand claps, honkin’ sax and Spectorish tumbling drum rolls. It also happens to feature the unmistakable vocals of Brian Wilson. The vocal arrangement of Pamela Jean is totally Brian. From the bottom end bass to the harmonies and the high-high-highs,  Pamela Jean is the sound of Sta-Press ‘n Pendletones ‘n Brylcreem flicks – the Beach Boys Sound of Endless Summer.

Pamela Jean isn’t actually a Beach Boys record but if you didn’t read the small print you’d never know. It could easily slot right there inbetween Little Deuce Coupe and Don’t Worry Baby; 50% pop and 50% pathos. Only thing is, other than Brian, no Beach Boys appeared on it. The Survivors were Brian and three friends, Bob Norberg, Dave Nowlen and Rich Alarian. Alarian had helped Brian write some of the early Beach Boys songs, but rather than Brian give his pal a writing credit, they agreed that Brian would produce a record for him. Pamela Jean was the result. Tremendous as it clearly is, the record failed to even scrape the outer edges of the chart. Perhaps poor old Rich would’ve been better off insisting on those writing credits after all.

*Trainspotter Fact #1

Any Beach Boys obsessive worth his salt (note his, not their – the tendency to focus on the minutae and detail is surely a male thing, aye?) would recognise that the melody for Pamela Jean was taken wholly from Car Crazy Cutie, from the Beach Boys Little Deuce Coupe LP. Pamela Jean just sounds better though, eh? And I bet you can sing it now too.

“Brian Wilson is not a good looking human being, yet his music is beautiful. Look at Nat King Cole–he looked like a real piece of shit but he had a beautiful voice. Look at Aretha Franklin–she would scare me in a dark room, yet her voice is fantastic. Roy Orbison too. The thing I listen too is the music.”
-Dennis Wilson, 1976

demo, studio outtakes

Swayed? Swoyed? Swede?

Craig McAllister

Oh no! It was always said swed. To rhyme with head. The posh folk rhymed it with played. “Swayed.” Showing off their general sophistication or something. London-centric media types such as yer Lamacqs rhymed it with played as well, but spoken like a yoof TV presenter it always came out as swoyed, innit? I am of course referring to Brett ‘n Bernard ‘n co’s Suede, hip young gunslingers (1992) who, with slinky, snake-thin Ziggy guitars and target-market grabbing daft quotes about being bisexuals who’ve never had homosexual experiences, were all the rage in those early 90s.

You’ll know the story. Justine from Elastica. Damon from Blur. Lovebites on the arse. In the olden days, middle class twats would have a duel, a stand-off with pistols at dawn. May the best man win and all that. Brett and Damon swung punches via well-chosen quotes in the NME and Melody Maker. Tough as nails I don’t think. A heavy air of pretentiousness hung over Suede with everything they did. Bernard seemed alright. So did the drummer. But that big, lanky, girly-looking dude, preening himself on the bass got me all annoyed just looking at him. And Brett thought he was intellectual. Cultured. Arty. Russian literature and Haydn concertos. Above you and me. Punchable is the word I’m looking for. Brendan from Teenage Fanclub used to call him Bert.

Despite the high level of wankiness in half the band, there weren’t half some decent tunes there. Metal Mickey. The Drowners. So Young. Animal Nitrate. All singles from the first album. The accompanying gigs (especially at King Tuts) were a right froth of excitement too. Indie rock classics for those in the know, fireworks on the fretboards, Bernard’s the new Johnny ‘n all that. But it’s the second album I like best. Dog Man Star is (aye) arty, pretentious and preposterously overblown. Recorded while the singer spent most of his time fried on acid, it’s the album where Bernard realised he couldn’t work with the rest of the band and chose to leave them half way through recording. Butler favoured a loose, experimental approach to his songwriting. 10 minute guitar solos. Tracks that could ebb and flow for 15 minutes. The rest of the band baulked at this idea. They saw themselves as a classic rock group, 3 minute singles ‘n all that.  Butler would eventually be replaced in classic Jim’ll Fix It style by a 17 year old fanboy who could play all his parts note for note.  But despite all the background chaos, Dog Man Star is very much the band’s meisterwerk.

Why? It’s got the fuggy, druggy thunk of Introducing The Band on it. It’s got The Asphalt World. All 9+ minutes of it, ridiculous ‘ecstasy and arse-felt world‘ lyrics ‘n all. It’s got the glam-stomp ‘n whammy-barred pomp of This Hollywood Life on it. It’s got We Are The Pigs, the closest cousin to any of those fizzing singles from the first LP. It’s also got The Wild Ones, the best Suede tune bar none. Even Bert would agree with me on that one. It’s a classic mix of Butlerisms on the guitar – simple pull-on, pull-of chords joined together by as many notes as can be fitted in the space allowed and Anderson’s understated, almost crooned baritone. It starts simple enough then rises and rises to epic proportions, finishing in a fade out of despair (and judging by the demo, it was always meant to be. It arrived fully formed and everything). It’s soul music, Jim, but not as we know it. It doesn’t matter what you think of Suede as people, if you don’t like The Wild Ones there’s simply no hope for you. Away and listen to Pearl Jam instead.

Have a listen:

The Wild Ones (album version)

Ken (The Wild Ones four track demo)

The Wild Ones (unedited version)

*Bonus Track!

Standalone widescreen epic Stay Together was released betwixt and between those first 2 albums. The band instantly hated it. For what it’s worth, I’ve always liked the ridiculous grandeur of it all, as did apparently many others who helped make Stay Together Suede’s highest ever chart placing (number 3, pop pickers).

Back together, it seems.

Cover Versions, Gone but not forgotten

Puir Amy

Craig McAllister

She had it all, she threw it away. Like one of those comets that comes blazing across the Earth every coupla hundred years, its tail fizzing slowly to a burnt out nothing. Then gone. Her ‘advisors’ no doubt loved it as the car crash unfolded around her. Was it Malcolm McLaren that coined the phrase Cash From Chaos? The skunk, the skank, the short short skirts, she wisnae the new Billie or Nina or Etta. She was the first Amy, all back-combed beehive and body art. Unreliable yet unconditional. Unable yet unbelievable.

Russell Brand has said it best so far. Read his words then listen to her duet with Paul Weller on Don’t Go To Strangers, a brilliant piece of Stax-inspired southern soul that Russell refers to in his eulogy.

Small in frame, massive in voice. Amy Winehouse, you’ll be missed.

Six Of The Best

Six Of The Best – Alan McGee

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 7 in a series:



Most readers on here need no introduction to Alan McGee. A genuine indie rock svengali, a cross between Andy Oldham (the schemes), Andy Warhol (the dreams) and Andy Cameron (the fitba team), I’d wager that most visitors here own records made possible mainly by him and put out on his Creation Records imprint. Originally more excess than success, it’s amazing that Creation achieved anything at all, but they did, with a style and a swagger to boot -“Bobby the anchor….the star who attracted people there, Liam and Noel the goal scorers.” 

August 1983 saw the release of CRE001, ’73 in ’83 by The Legend! Assorted singles by The Jasmine Minks, The Pastels, The Loft and The Jesus & Mary Chain followed, but it wasn’t until the cash registers started ringing to the sounds of the debut album by The House Of Love that the label started to take itself seriously. When they weren’t releasing landmark LPs like Screamadelica and Definitely Maybe, they were championing the experimentalism of Giant Steps by the Boo Radleys and the pervy dance-pop of Momus, all the while nurturing a whole host of white hot guitar bands. It’s easy to reel off long lists of the bands that have blazed a trail in retro-inspired guitar-based rock, but you know all the important ones anyway. You’ll also know that a huge number of them released records on Creation, not bad considering “half these bands were found in pursuit of female“. Throughout the 90s especially, Creation Records was the hippest, most influential label in UK music. When they weren’t down with the kids they were down in Downing Street, SWAT teams and all, unwitting leading lights of the horribly-monickered champagne ‘n charlie Brit Pop era. Apparently McGee spent most of the night keeping an eye on Mick Hucknall because “he was chasing everything that was blonde in the room.”

Where’s Mick?

When I was about 15 I had a copy of Psychocandy that I’d taped after borrowing the LP from Irvine Library. It was played to death, so much so that the tape eventually loosened and stretched and made the guitars sound even more out there and other-worldly. Guitars that had once sounded like glass smashing now sounded like my gran’s ancient Hoover. The Wall Of Sound-on-cheap-speed thunk of Bobby Gillespie’s drums began to sound as if Phil Spector himself had recorded them through one giant phaser in qaudrophonic sound. I eventually bought the LP. And the CD later on. I’ll also be buying the Deluxe Edition when it gets released in September this year. And they said home taping was killing music….

When My Bloody Valentine released Loveless in 1991 I started to wonder if that same TDK hadn’t somehow fallen into the hands of Kevin Shields, given that much of the guitar sound on Loveless sounded exactly like the wonky version of The Hardest Walk that was on my Jesus & Mary Chain tape.  Quite ridiculous all things considered, given that some estimates suggest Kevin Shields spent a quarter of a million pounds almost bankrupting Creation whilst trying to perfect the sounds in his head. “Son, I think your tape player’s broken,” laughed an old lady at the bottom of the shop as I stood playing it on the counter one day in Our Price. “Where’s your Daniel O’Donnell?”

Thankfully, there’s no Daniel O’Donnell in Alan’s Six Of the Best….

Sex Pistols – God Save The Queen

It speaks for itself.

 

Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith/Sonic’s Rendezvous Band – City Slang

Best ever punk rock single.

 

The Clash – Complete Control
Their best-ever single.

 

Primal Scream – Loaded

It changed Creation and it changed our lives.

 

The Rolling Stones – Sympathy For The Devil

It defines rock ‘n roll.

 

The Beatles –Hey Jude

Beyond criticism.

Every Six Of the Best compilation comes in a handy RAR download file. Get Alan McGee’s here.

Save for being something of a mentor to Glasvegas (read here) and DJ-ing now and again in his local pub, McGee has given up on music, moved out of London and into the Welsh countryside and spends his days listening to The Beatles. For a while he wrote a McGee on Music column for The Guardian and he ran the Death Disco club nights, but it looks like he’s stopped them too. Content to watch from afar as his most important bands become something of a tribute act (come on down, Primal Scream. And bring that tour with you), his whole hedonistic trip is chronicled in recent Creation Records film Upside Down. Seek it out. You’d like it. But you knew that already.

*Bonus Tracks!

Creation Records took their name from 60s garage band The Creation, who released Biff! Bang! Pow!, a terrific Who-esque mod-stomper of a record. Alan McGee formed a band called Biff, Bang, Pow! who released There Must Be A Better Life (on Creation Records), a slice of none-more-mid 80s indie with elastic band bass and far too much reverb on the snare drum. And talking of none-more-mid 80s indie, The Pooh Sticks recorded I Know Someone Who Knows Someone Who Knows Alan McGee Quite Well. But you’ll have to track down that particular novelty ditty for yourself.

One whole bit about Creation Records and no mention of The Greatest Creation Band In The World….Ever? That would be Teenage Fanclub if you don’t know already.

Creation was here

(Photo nicked from McMark, cheers!)

Coming next in this series –

Six Of the Best from Gruff Rhys (eh, hopefully….)

Cover Versions, Hard-to-find, Peel Sessions

Hope I Die Before I Get Old

Craig McAllister

(and I’m talkin’ about my g-g-g-generation)

It’s 1989 and I’m sitting in my bedroom, pleased as punch that I’ve managed to de-press ‘pause‘ on the tape deck of my music centre at the exact moment The Wedding Present launch into their final song in yet another brilliant Peel Session. It’s a rattlin’, clatterin’ version of Altered Images’ perennial classic Happy Birthday (hear it here), and during a breakdown in the middle section David Gedge gleefully shouts, “Status Quo, 25 years in the biz-ness!” and the band “Yay!” back at him with hardly disguised irony. Old farts still churning out the same 3 chord nonsense to the same set of hairier, older fans. Roll over lay down grandad and let the young team through.

It’s 2011 and I’m sitting at my computer, pleased as punch that I’ve managed to get this blog somewhat back on track after a couple of months of having more important stuff to do. I’m researching some things for possible inclusion when I stumble upon the fact that 25 years ago this month (July 1986), the New Musical Express released C86, the now seminal cassette that featured a compilation of tracks by 22 staunchly independent bands du jour. Released being the key word here – despite 3 weekly music papers, no-one felt the need to give anything away for free. C86 could only be bought by mail order, whic thousands of alternative music fans did. Although I didn’t. I paid 50p for mine at a record fair in Kilmarnock a few years later. I still have the tape somewhere and after a bit of poking around I turn it up.

And whadayaknow? Track 1, side1? It’s only Primal Scream, still going strong after all these years. Last track, side 2? Why, it’s only little David Gedge with his Wedding Present, also still going strong after all these years – Yay! Twenty five years in the biz-ness indeed.  Aye, so Primal Scream have seamlessly tripped their way through just about every sub-genre known to even the most trainspottery of musicologists, but there is still a band called Primal Scream who release records today, much like the Primal Scream who recorded Velocity Girl all those years ago (did the Stone Roses really rip it off for Made Of Stone? You decide). And The Wedding Present nowadays is a very different proposition to the band of George Best and all that jazz. Indeed, with the exception of the boy Gedge, the current line-up look like they’d have been playing pin the tail on the donkey at a jelly and ice-cream birthday party around the time C86 was made, but nonetheless The Wedding Present are still going strong. They even recently toured the Bizarro album again. What was that about old farts still churning out the same 3 chord nonsense to the same set of hairier, older fans? I love them, though. But you knew that already.

Most of the bands on C86 didn’t last a quarter of a century. Half Man Half Biscuit are still around – Yay! and Stephen Pastel can often be spotted still sporting the same dufflecoat, no matter the weather,  in whatever part of Glasgow is deemed to be hippest that week. Thankfully the others could spot a shelf life when they saw one –  in perhaps the same way that Spitfire and Shed 7 would be considered ‘important’ to musical heritage a decade later (ie, not at all important), Stump and Bogshed were maybe just about alright for the times and didn’t hang around too long afterwards. C86 became a lazy adjective for Steve Lamacq to use when describing under-achieving bands with bowl cuts, beads and a Byrdsian bent to their guitars. Which is more than a bit unfair, as to these ears, C86 had no actual defining sound. D’you know that smell you get when you walk past a group of 18/19 year old boys, all done up in their smart/casual gear and off to the local nitespot? A heady mix of Diesel, Dior and Davidoff that smells nothing like the sum of its parts? C86 is a bit like that. Aye, there’s floppy fringes and feyness ahoy, but there’s also experimentalism, big beats and the sort of music that was impossible to pigeonhole in 1986. The aesthetic of C86 was very much “we do this for ourselves and if anyone else likes it it’s a bonus“.

It was a movement, perhaps the twee-est, tamest of all youth movements, that was more about acne than anarchy, eczema than ecstasy, but it was a generation’s calling card, played out in the wastelands betwixt and between punk and house music, filling the void until the next proper movement arrived. We could do with that now. A proper musical movement to tease us, please us, invigorate and inspire.  Or maybe we have.  Is it Mumford & Sons & assorted pals pseudo folkest posho raggle taggle? Is it the skinny-jeaned and pointy-boots brigade from East London? Is it ‘mon the Biffy? I dunno. Maybe I’m one of the old farts. Actually, I know I am. Roll over lay down and all that, the young team are coming through….

In the meantime, dig out yer pipe and slippers, settle down in the rocking chair and crank up the old music centre. Here‘s C86 in all it’s itchy ‘n scratchy, low-fi, badly produced glory:

Side one

  1. Primal Scream – “Velocity Girl”
  2. The Mighty Lemon Drops – “Happy Head”
  3. The Soup Dragons – “Pleasantly Surprised”
  4. The Wolfhounds – “Feeling So Strange Again”
  5. The Bodines – “Therese”
  6. Mighty Mighty – “Law”
  7. Stump – “Buffalo”
  8. Bogshed – “Run to the Temple”
  9. A Witness – “Sharpened Sticks”
  10. The Pastels – “Breaking Lines”
  11. Age of Chance – “From Now On, This Will Be Your God”

Side two

  1. The Shop Assistants – “It’s Up to You”
  2. Close Lobsters – “Firestation Towers”
  3. Miaow – “Sport Most Royal”
  4. Half Man Half Biscuit – “I Hate Nerys Hughes (From The Heart)”
  5. The Servants – “Transparent”
  6. The Mackenzies – “Big Jim (There’s no pubs in Heaven)”
  7. Big Flame – “New Way (Quick Wash And Brush Up With Liberation Theology)”
  8. Fuzzbox – “Console Me”
  9. McCarthy – “Celestial City”
  10. The Shrubs – “Bullfighter’s Bones”
  11. The Wedding Present – “This Boy Can Wait”

*Bonus Tracks!

Musical karma chameleons Primal Scream have been through more changes than a (insert your own metaphor here).

Here‘s their stompin’ version of the Small Faces’ Understanding, featuring yer actual PP Arnold on vocals. And here‘s the Weatherall remix of Uptown, all 9 and a half minutes of struttin’ 70s dub disco and Chicago house – Hey, there’s about 3 movements right there in the one record! Beat that, kids.

*Extra Reading!

There was a good article here in The Quietus from a few months ago about the genesis of C86. Worth 5 minute of anyone’s time.

Hard-to-find, New! Now!, Sampled

Cult Heroes

Craig McAllister

It’s midway through the year and round about now the movers, shakers and self-appointed hipsters in the music press like to sort out the wheat from the chaff in an early attempt to predict what will become the all important ‘Album of the Year‘, just so they can say “told you so!” in December. It’s ridiculous to even try and suggest such a  thing – one man’s meat is another’s poison and all that, and who really cares anyway?, but for what it’s worth,  if you were to ask me, an early contender for such a title would surely go to solo Super Furry Gruff Rhys for his Hotel Shampoo LP.

Had it been released under the Super Furry Animals banner it would have been frothed over by superlative-filled foaming-mouthed sychophants falling over themselves in praise of yet another Super Furry masterpiece, but I can’t help thinking that it somewhat crept under the radar. Investigate it now – here‘s the opening track Shark Ridden Waters. Seagull noises and bursts of foreign TV shows doused with a liberal sprinkling of Gruff Rhys melody, all underpinned by the most fruggable bassline since Peter, Bjorn & John’s Young Folks.  Good, eh? And that wee fade out at the end, the ‘there’s no use cryin’, no use tellin’ me how much you’ve changed‘  part gets me every time. Sounds like it’s been sampled from something too, but I can’t place it. Any ideas? Oh, and talking of samples…….

Super Furry Animals’ The Man Don’t Give A Fuck takes the sweary part from Steely Dan‘s Showbiz Kids, loops it over 50 times and creates a fantastic record full of fuzz guitars, sleigh bells, Beach Boys-style doo-wop backing vocals and Glitter Band stomping drums that builds and builds and builds until it falls spectacularly in on itself. But you knew that already. You may also know that it was recorded at the same sessions that produced the bulk of debut LP Fuzzy Logic and was earmarked as a b-side (only a b-side!!) to If You Don’t Want Me To Destroy You. Failing to get sample clearance in time put the kybosh on that idea, however, but thankfully the SFA persevered until Steely Dan gave them the OK to release it as a standalone single – in return for 95% of the track’s royalties, an arrangement Gruff Rhys was more than happy with, given that a record featuring such nonchalant use of the ‘f-word would hardly trouble the playlists of the nation’s radio stations. And just in case it did somehow set the charts alight, the band deleted the single one week after its release, making it instantly collectable to those (like me) who care about such trivialities.

The sleeve of The Man Don’t Give A Fuck featured a picture of Cardiff City’s Robin Friday flicking the V’s to the Luton Town goalie of the day (see full picture below). Friday seems to have been cut from the same cloth as George Best – at his peak in the mid ’70s Friday was a free-scoring player both on and off the pitch, and was just as famous for his smoking, drinking and drugging exploits as he was for his womanising. A bit like any number of modern day players really, but without the kiss-and-tells in the News Of The World. Or, in Rio Ferdinand’s case, the free-scoring on the pitch part. Allegedly.

As Paolo Hewitt and Guigsy (from Oasis) wrote in the single’s  sleevenotes…

Robin Friday was a nonconformist and lived every second of his life with an intensity that burned for all to see. Friday not only flicked V signs at goalies who stood no chance against his prowess but he flicked V signs at anyone who tried to tame him. He was the superstar of the suburbs, the one who made George Best look like a lightweight.

Indeed. He once kicked Mark Lawrenson in the face, something that many of you here would no doubt jump at the chance of doing too. Perhaps that’s why Lawrenson now speaks in that ridiculous singsong school girly voice? Who knows, but surely after reading the sleevenotes above, the question on everyone’s minds is now, “How much of that did Guigsy write?”

*Bonus Track!

No bonus tracks as such. The 2 additional remixes on the MDGAF single were rather lacklustre beats ‘n bangs ‘n clatters mixes that just about survived one whole play before being filed away for 15 years. I’ve just played them for the 2nd time ever whilst writing this and honestly, you never need to hear them. But I’ve featured loads of Super Furry Animals before –  I’m particularly proud of the hidden tracks article I wrote a couple of years ago. For anything else, use the ‘Search‘ facility!