Get This!, Hard-to-find

Stoned Love. On and on and on and on.

Craig McAllister

Sometimes it’s not about the hard-to-find, the rare, the obscure, the long-forgotten must-have on that uber-hip label. Nope. Sometimes it’s the simple things. The sun comes out, a smile breaks out and you need to state the bloody obvious – She Bangs The Drums by The Stone Roses is magic. And so were the b-sides.

The Stone Roses were the soundtrack to my summer of 1989, but if you’ve been here before you’ll know that already. She Bangs The Drums was released right at the height of the baking hot summer (if memory serves me correctly) and in discography terms is the middle cog in a great run of 1! 2! 3! singles, sandwiched between the band’s first great single, Made Of Stone and the band’s last great single, Fools Gold. She Bangs The Drums is unashamed pure pop, guitar-driven and saccharine sweet with a great pay -off line in the vocals.

“Kiss me where the sun don’t shine. The past is yours but the future’s mine…you’re all out of time.”

Aye, The Stone Roses came from Manchester, but they despised the city’s musical legacy. They hated The Smiths and they would never have dreamed of signing for Factory. So what if their youthful arrogant streak wore off on certain other monobrowed bands of the locality, at that moment in time The Stone Roses were the greatest thing on the planet. They were my Beatles and my Stones and by the time of Fools Gold they were my Family Stone too.

 

 

She Bangs The Drums was released at a time when vinyl was king (“I can feel the earth begin to move, I feel my needle hit the groove” and all that), when bands thought carefully about what to put on the b-sides and is a perfect summation of all The Stone Roses stood for at that time. Guitar riffs, fantastic drumming, those whispered vocals (thankfully not as out of tune as they usually were in the live setting). The other tracks are just as good.

Mersey Paradise with its see-sawing 12 string chiming guitars, tambourines on hi-hats and a terrific “oh yeah..!” whispered vocal break in the last chorus would’ve made a great single in itself, but clearly the self-belief in the band at this time was such that they could stick a song like Mersey Paradise on a b-side. Plus, they were working up to Fools Gold which is much better.

Standing Here took up all of the second side of the 12″. It was pure proto-Hendrix, all squealing guitars, feedback and riffs! riffs! riffs! before falling apart into a coda that ebbed and flowed like the California surf itself. For a while it was my party piece. My crappy electric guitar would feedback brilliantly whenever I held a particular note on the 13th fret and I could replicate the intro pretty faithfully. I never did master the wee incidental riffs behind the vocals though.

Simone was the extra track on the CD single. It’s one of those backwards sound collage thingys that John Squire was fond of putting together, where he takes a standard Stone Roses track, plays it backwards through the mixing desk and adds all manner of stuff on top. Simone takes the backing track for the relatively obscure Where Angels Play (released on the Australian version of the I Wanna Be Adored single) and builds it into something of an ambient oddity. The pinnacle of this aproach is, of course, Don’t Stop, the backwards version of Waterfall that’s on the debut album. All the rage for listening to whilst on whatever you were on in the second summer of love.

Bonus track!

Something I’ve meant to do for ages! I took Simone, reversed it using Audacity, et voila! The instrumental version of Where Angels Play, with added whoosing noises and general pseudo-psychedelic tomfoolery. Who needs John Leckie?

Cover Versions, Gone but not forgotten, studio outtakes

Hey Hey Hey Hey Double Whammy

Craig McAllister

Three weeks. Three weeks since I’ve put electric pen to electric paper on Plain Or Pan. In fact, you could make that three weeks and counting, as I don’t know when I’ll be able to dedicate the necessary time required to liven things up round here. Six of the Best with Alan McGee? It’s a work in progress – honest! Real work and all that that entails has kept me ridiculously busy recently and will do for the next couple of weeks at least. But while I’ve some breathing space I thought I should blow away some of the dusty cobwebs that are starting to gather in the deepest corners of the blog.

Hey Hey Hey Hey was originally on the b-side of Little Richard‘s Good Golly Miss Molly, way back in Nineteen Hundred and Fifty Eight. It comes at you like a runaway train, all pounding piano and breathless high-camp vocal hysterics from The Queen of Rock ‘n Roll (Elvis was The King – you gotta have a Queen, right?) It’s ridiculous, overblown and absolutely fantastic. Here‘s one take with a false start. And here‘s the master take. Good, eh?

The Jim Jones Revue are the MC5 in collapsed quiffs. They sound like a mixture of greasy spoon cafes and sweat, and their take on Hey Hey Hey Hey is a right royal ramalama of screamin’ and a-hollerin’ and needles-in-the-red distortion. I think you’ll like it. They also did an outrageous version of Good Golly Miss Molly. Here it is. I think you’re more than familiar with the original though…

Back soon!

 

Six Of The Best

Six Of The Best – Kris Needs

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 6 in a series:

Sole Brother!

Kris Needs is, amongst many other things, a jammy b’stard. He seemed to fall feet first into the first chaotic strains of punk rock filtering from across the Atlantic, rode the crest of the wave and survived with a headful of stories that would sound so far fetched if you didnt know he had actually been there, seen it and done it all. Twice. He’s also a fantastic music writer. Being one of the first UK writers on the scene, he found himself in the company of yer actual Ramones, Talking Heads and, perhaps most heart-stoppingly of all (for me at least), Blondie. In true Jim’ll Fix It style, if he wasn’t in the dressing room arranging set-lists for Blondie shows, he was being caught in compromising situations with la Harry herself.

He regularly dispatched writings from the trenches of the punk wars in the pages of Zig-Zag magazine, Pete Frame’s (he of Rocks Family Trees fame) slightly proggy publication that Needs transformed into the punk bible when he took charge of it in Year Zero itself (1977, if you need to ask). Writing about the music and the people who made it wasn’t enough for Kris though, and he went all out to live the same life as some of his famous subjects; dancing, dabbling and dicing with death like the best of them. If you can track it down (it’s currently out of print, I think) you can read all about the up(per)s ‘n down(er)s  in Kris’s life in his  excellent book Needs Must.

These days, Kris is perhaps best known as a DJ. He often warmed the crowd up before Primal Scream shows. In fact, it seemed that every time I saw Primal Scream between 191 and 1995, Kris was on the decks.  I was one of many in a boggle-eyed crowd who had my ears and mind blown open by a suitably terrific playlist one memorable Barrowlands gig,  when he mixed Prince (Gett Off! 23 positions in a one night stand!“) into George Clinton’s Atomic Dog (“Hey – that’s the Snoop track!”) into the Stones. And none o’ yer 60s too cool for school Stones or yer Suckin’ in the Seventies Stones at that. No! It was the none-more-80s Undercover Of The Night uber-disco Stones, with the phased ‘n flanged  Keith klang giving us the perfect accompaniment to our night out. I went back home that night and nicked my Dad’s LP, carefully slotting it into the vinyl collection like it had always been there (“….yeah, I’ve always liked Undercover, actually…“)

Kris is very much still DJing. Along with his wife he hosts a weekly show on online radio station Fnoob. Judging by last week’s playlist, he’s still every bit as eclectic too. He also compiles an assortment of achingly cool compilations, including 2 volumes of Dirty Water – The Birth of Punk Attitude – a good beginners guide to essential US garage rock. You’ll pay around £10 each for Volume 1 and Volume 2 from Amazon. Even more impressively, Kris is responsible for a compiling a historical six volumes of the New York music scene. Volume 1 of Watch The Closing Doors: A History of New York’s Musical Melting Pot is released in about a month’s time. As Kris says,

“I first became fascinated with New York City in the 60s through Dylan’s early albums and Phil Spector’s girl group sound spearheaded by the Ronettes, further stoked by anarcho-poets the Fugs and wild side narratives of the Velvet Underground. The 70s saw Latin hot sauce, before the whole CBGBs-fostered punk invasion and the parallel disco explosion plus, it has to be said, gritty TV programmes like Kojak adding fuel to a burning desire to experience New York’s evident buzz for myself. The early 80s erupted in a post-disco boogie wonderland, which couldn’t help spilling into post-punk’s wildly-disparate innovations and the hiphop explosion.”


Now that reads a wee bit like a manifesto for Plain Or Pan if you ask me! You can read more about it here. And I’m sure Kris would love it if you followed that same link and placed a pre-release order for it too. Whatchawaitinfor? Go! Go! Go! While you’re waiting for it to drop through your letterbox, why not indulge yourself with a small selection of Kris’s favourite tracks.

Here’s Kris’s Six Of The Best:

Velvet Underground – Sister Ray
Ultimate speed-thrash gonzo noise-fest.

Jimi Hendrix – Machine Gun
Still jawdroppingly untouchable; his greatest guitar solo.

Rolling Stones – Midnight Rambler
The live version – Jagger at his most satanic, Keith on fire.

The Clash – Train In Vain
Watched Mick sing this and London Calling was finished.

Primal Scream – Jailbird
Reminds me of the most uproariously brilliant year of my life.

Suicide – Dream Baby Dream
Possibly the most gorgeous love song of all time.

Every Six Of the Best compilation comes in a handy RAR download file. Get Kris Needs’ here.

Bonus Tracks!

Talking of Primal Scream….and DJing….and Jailbird……here‘s Kris‘s own 10 and a half minute (!) Toxic Trio Stay Free mix of Jailbird. It sounds just like you’d expect it to.

Recorded at the Moonlight Club on April 2nd 1980, here‘s Joy Division doing their assault ‘n battery take on Sister Ray, at 7 and a half minutes it’s a mighty 10 minutes shorter than the Velvets’ original.

Coming next in this series –

Six Of the Best from Alan McGee.


Six Of The Best

Six Of The Best – Gideon Coe

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 5 in a series:

Gideon Coe is a triple Sony Award-winning DJ who currently spins the wheels of steel from Monday till Thursday on BBC 6 Music between 9.00 and midnight. He’s also (cough) what could loosely be termed as a celebrity Trashcan Sinatras’ fan. But you knew that already. You will also probably know that Gideon’s show is quite excellent. Much like a metaphor for BBC 6 Music itself, there’s a very high quality control mechanism in place and any time I switch on Gideon’s show I know that I’m going to like (and quite possibly own) whatever record Gideon’s playing, or at the very least, the next one that comes along. Gideon’s show sounds a bit like my iPod on shuffle – there’s a heady mix of the old and the new – it’s the kind of place where you’re as likely to find Beach House as the Beach Boys and the latest hip new thing sandwiched betwixt and between the broadcast of a listener-recommended vintage Peel Session and a Live In Concert special straight out of 1972. On any given night I’ll re-discover some long-forgotten indie guitar track from the days when I had a 28″ waist or I’ll hear something by a new band that makes me think, “Oh! Not all new music sounds like everything I’ve heard already,” or he’ll play a stone-cold accepted classic that reminds me exactly why that tune has come to be accepted as a stone-cold classic. If this brief introduction has whetted yer whistle, you can listen to the latest shows here.

Gideon’s Six Of The Best list could well be a mini tracklisting from any one of his shows. Over to the man himself…….

Off the top of my head:

Aretha Franklin – It’s faultless. It’s Perfect. (It’s ‘Say A Little Prayer‘, even though Gideon forgot to mention that bit!) And the final refrain where the “For Ever”s build is my favourite bit on any record ever.

The Clash – ‘If Music Could Talk’. ‘Sandinista’ is the best Clash album by some distance. And the rest are pretty good too. Much like the rest of the record it’s meandering and delightful.

Go Betweens – ‘Cattle and Cain’. Whatever the time-sig is on this, it works. Grant McLennan and Robert Forster are two of the best songwriters of the last 30 years.

The Blue Nile – ‘Easter Parade’. It’s raining and I’m 17 years old and I know this record will haunt me forever.

Midlake – ‘Branches’. ‘The Trials of Van Occupanther’ is my favourite record of the past 10 years and this slightly odd song has the most beautiful of all choruses.

Bob Dylan/Johnny Cash – Girl From the North Country. My first introduction to both of them. The greatest ramshackle duet ever recorded.

A mighty fine list I’m sure you’ll agree. Want more? Course you do! Gideon talks about more of his favourite records and gigs here.

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

*Bonus Track!

Here‘s another version of the greatest ramshackle duet ever recorded. Even looser, rougher and ragged than the officially released version, it finds Bob ‘n Johnny vocally jousting with one another, seemingly finding it difficult to sing the same lyric and fumbling for a place where the harmonies fit. It’s taken from the Dylan/Cash Sessions bootleg that’s easily findable in all the right corners of the internet and was recorded at CBS Studios in Nashville, February 1969 as part of Dylan’s Nashville Skyline album sessions. It’s only a short while since a pill-popping, motorcycle crashin’ Dylan had taken himself (quite literally) off the road, burnt out and spent, yet here he was recording sweet songs of love about long lost sweethearts and pie (yeah!). Dylan himself has attributed his unusual nasal whine on the album to the fact that he’d just given up smoking. And probably heroin. But that was kinda hushed up at the time. Anyway you look (or listen) to it, Girl From the North Country is one of Bob’s best. Good call Gideon.

I’m now off to re-acquaint myself with Sandinista! I can usually never get past Super Black Market Clash when I need a Strummer fix.

Coming next in this series –

Six Of the Best from Kris Needs.

Get This!, Sampled

Heavy Soul

Craig McAllister

Just the one track for now, but it’s a belter. I first heard How You Like Me Now? by The Heavy on Craig Charles Funk & Soul Show one Saturday night a while back on BBC 6 Music. I’ve mentioned this show before. Charles plays a heady mixture of bona fide stone cold soul classics and wilfully obscurist talc-dusted rattlin’ northern soul groovers, with the odd disco-tinged track flung in for good measure. It’s terrific!

When I first heard How You Like Me Now? I assumed The Heavy were one of those long-forgotten bands who last played together in 1975. How You Like Me Now? sounds like Led Zeppelin gettin’ it on with Stevie Wonder. The st-st-st-staccato James Brown guitar riff. The low-end horns. The rubber band Bootsy bass. The drum groove that kicks the whole thing up a gear just after the first line is sung. The white man sings the blues vocals. The wee pause just after he sings “remember the time” at the start of the second verse. The piano and guitar break down half way through before the inevitable groove kicks in again. I could go on and on. Suffice to say, never have a band been more aptly named.

You can imagine my surprise then when I discovered that The Heavy were actually a real-live modern day group, recording, gigging and releasing records in the here and now. Not only that, but the vocalist is actually a black man who really can sing the blues. I think they’re from the Birmingham area. I’m sure many of you are more familiar with them than I am. I mean, they’ve played on the David Letterman Show and everything. I might just possibly be the last one to this particularly funky party. Do yourself a favour and download How You Like Me Now? Then head out and buy yourself a copy of Great Vengeance and Furious Fire  or The House That Dirt Built. That’s clearly what Letterman did, judging by his reaction after they appeared on his show in January last year.

ng News! Update! Breaking News! Update! Breaking News! Update!

OK, maybe not as groundbreaking a story as the Bin Laden’s Bin Killed news that’s currently got everyone in a frenzy, but breaking news nonetheless. As pointed out by sharp-eared reader Clawthing in the Comments section below, the horns and guitar riff in The Heavy track are lifted lock, stock and groovy barrel from Dyke & the Blazers Let A Woman Be A Woman And A Man Be A Man. This is a record I’ve been totally unaware of until now, but it somewhat justifies my belief that The Heavy’s record had a great deal of 70s whiffiness around it. I did know though (and no doubt you’ll also probably be aware) that Prince borrowed the Let A Woman Be A Woman And a Man Be A Man line for his Gett Off single. That’s what I love about this internet thing – you learn something new every day. Well spotted Clawthing. Your prize is in the post.


Get This!, Hard-to-find

Come In, Come Out Triple-Whammy

Craig McAllister

Come in, Come Out originally appeared on the b-side of The La’s There She Goes 12“. It’s the slinkier, groovier progeny of Captain Beefheart playing Ian Dury’s Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll and personifies that La’s Rattle ‘n Roll tag that they were fond of banding about around 1988.

Come In, Come Out is one of only 20 songs officially released by The La’s – (count ’em!) – 12 on the album plus 8 assorted b-sides, but thanks to a combination of fans with magpie-like tendencies, generous studio engineers and the Go! Discs not-quite warts ‘n all box set from last year, there are numerous versions available to even yer casual La’s enthusiast. Of course, yer casual La’s enthusiast might struggle to hear the difference between any of the versions, but yer proper fully signed-up card carrying Dole Pay Me So Far La We Go La’s enthusiasts like myself can spot every little minutae of detail between the riffs. Slow versions. Fast versions. Frantically scrubbed skiffly acoustic versions.  Who-rockin’ electric versions. Live versions. Abandoned studio versions……..

Of course, The La’s abandoned just about everything they ever put to tape. But you knew that already. It’s good to know though, that even the stuff they considered below par is still a whole lot better than many of their contemporaries’ output. Hey, it’s better than many bands’ output, full stop. Just be thankful those fans with the magpie-like tendencies and the studio engineers with the pile of C90s at the ready were around at the time. Here’s three versions. All different. All slinky. All groovy. All good in their own way.

Come In, Come Out Mick Moss acoustic version, recorded April 1987. An early take. This‘ll be one of those the frantically scrubbed skiffly versions – it’s less than a minute and a half long. No Ian Dury riff yet, but it’s ace!

Come In, Come Out John Leckie mix. Fast, frantic and full of r’nb riffing and skittery Keith Moon-esque drums, this is a right proper knee-trembler behind the bike sheds, the sound of The Marquee in 1964. The percussion sounds like it was played on a selection of kitchen pots and pans. Listen out for Mavers’ skirling percussive guitar trills, frills and fills towards the end. What a rhythm player!

Come In, Come Out Steve Lillywhite mix. Slow, bluesy, druggy and fuggy. Or just plain half-arsed. You decide. Any musos out there are sure to appreciate the nice percussive ‘clunk‘ on the off-beat. Rather uniquely for a Lillywhite recording, this doesn’t feature any backing vocals from his his estranged wife Kirsty MacColl.

…….I don’t need any encouragement……

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

Ladies Ga Ga

Craig McAllister

I curse the day I named this website philspector.com instead of plainorpan.com, but there’s nothing much I can do about that now. I kinda like the fact that the odd misguided soul wanders over here expecting to find Phil’s latest gossip from behind whichever bars he’s behind. I’m sure if they looked around before they left they’d find an interesting article and some decent music to content themselves with. I’ve long been a fan of Phil Spector and his terrifically over the top Wall Of Sound productions on records by The Ronettes, The Crystals, Darlene Love, etc etc…..I could go on, but you know them all yourself.

Phil ‘n Ronnie Spector. Clearly, Phil suffered from ‘wee man’ syndrome.

Phil Spector’s music gets played fairly regularly round here. Two and a half minute pocket symphonies of teenage angst, unrequited love, cheating and heartbreak that rush past in a crack of a castanet and a tumble of toms, soaked in enough reverb to drown in. Phil Spector knew what he was doing right enough. Thinking outside the box, he was a true production maverick, double and triple-tracking everything, re-taking and re-doing seemingly perfect takes, pushing the artists to their very outer limits – read/hear here if you haven’t already. And the instrumentation! Wow! Big on rhythm, big on beat, he used everything but the kitchen sink on these records (although they say if you listen closely to River Deep, Mountain High, the sound you hear in the background of the chorus actually is the studio’s kitchen sink being employed as some rudimentary rhythm machine or other.)

Hey Spector! You shoulda listened to these dating tips from the Shangri-La’s!

Or perhaps not. But you get the idea. Anyway, Phil Spector spawned a whole host of copycats and wannabe soundalikes and I’ve built up quite a collection of them. You’ll be well aware of The Shangri-La’s, who, for me at least, ARE teenage angst personified.  They weren’t averse to the odd Spectoresque sweeping string and clattering castanet – have a listen to The Dum Dum Ditty. See? Then I Kissed Him by any other name, no? But what about The Girlfriends? The Bees and The Honey? Pussycats? The Whyte Boots? The Geminis? The Bitter Sweets? Each and every one are just as thrilling and just as vital as their more well-known rivals.  Much like the music Lenny Kaye compiled for his Nuggets series, these bands and singers were less the one hit wonder and more the no-hit wonder and in common with Nuggets groups, many of the vocalists would achieve success later on in different groups.

The Girlfriends featured the young Darlene Wright. By the time she was married she was known as Darlene Love and sang on many of Spector’s records. She is responsible for the vocals on He’s A Rebel,  Christmas (Baby Please Come Home), Today I Met The Boy I’m Gonna Marry and a whole lot of other (often uncredited) stuff that’s seeped from the airwaves, out into the ether and quietly planted it’s melodic seed in your head. I bet right now you’re singing that Christmas song to yourself. I am. Before working with Spector, Darlene and her vocal group The Girlfriends  recorded My One And Only Jimmy Boy, a total rush of Da Doo Ron Ron handclaps, sleigh bells and tumbling toms.

“He’s my pri-ide! He’s my jo-oy! He’s my one and only Jimmy Boy!”

Darlene had a varied career and went on to work with the hip – John Phillips’ John, Wolfking of LA album and the happening – Elvis – you can see her in the background of the ‘That’s The Way It Is‘ 70s tour film. She also played Danny Glover’s wife in the Lethal Weapons films. But you knew that already.

The Honey and The Bees are a strange proposition. Seemingly sometimes referred to as  Honey and the Bees, sometimes referred to as The Honeybees, it’s easier to find the recipe for Coca Cola online than it is to find any meaningful information about them. I have been able to glean that they were essentially The Cookies under a different name – they also recorded as The Cinderellas and The Palisades – and were essentially one band masquerading as four! Lead vocals on this, a cover of Dusty Springfield’s Some of Your Lovin‘ are by Barbara Alston, who later found fame as vocalist in Spector’s The Crystals. Y’see, in the same way that Wigan Athletic plucked Kilmarnock FC’s goal machine Conor Sammon from the relative obscurity of the SPL to the dizzy heights of, er, the bottom of the English Premier League (“The best league in the world!”  – (C) the English media), Phil looked on these unknown groups as the fertile breeding ground for his Wall Of Sound productions, enticing the best players with hollow promises of fame, fame, fatal fame and a shot at the big time. Nothing much changes really.

The Whyte Boots are proof of that. Lori Burton and Pam Sawyer were two Brill Building staff writers who came up with the idea of creating a fictional group to front the street-tough, attitude-heavy songs they were writing. Cue The Whyte Boots. Their 1967 record Nightmare, all doom-goth descending piano and heartbeat drums, caused a bit of a furore at the time.

“No boy’s worth the trouble I’m in!” they heavy breath at the start and you know you’re in for the melodramatic ride of your life…..

“You can beat her, you can win!Get her, get her, push her to the ground!” it goes, until it’s obvious this is one catfight that’s got out of hand. The screams! The “What should I do? “Run! Run!” call and response vocals!  The screaming police sirens!  The way the song drops at the end when you realise the girl’s dead! Wow! Not even the Shangri-la’s went that far.

Mecury Records liked Lori Burton so much they let her record a whole album’s worth of this stuff. It’s called Breakout and has been described as “a classic New York pop-soul stomper of an album.” It is, it is.

I could write about this stuff all day…here’s a few other records that are low on information but high on  melodrama and angst.

The Bitter Sweets – What A Lonely Way To Start The Summertime

The Geminis – A Friend Of Mine

Pussycats– Dressed In Black

The Cookies – Only To Other People

Cults. Freewheelin’………

……and keeping the lipstick lacquered and the heartbreaks a-happenin’ today we have Cults, a terrific Brooklyn-based (of course) band who with You Know What I Mean have released what will absolutely, hands down, be my favourite single of 2011. I don’t tend to feature new music on here much, as things tend to be removed tout de suite by the DMCA (I know Drew at Acrosss The Kitchen Table had You Know What I Mean removed  last week), so I’ll point you in the direction of their You Know What I Mean Soundcloud. You can’t download it, but you will want to buy it after listening. Believe me. I’m now off out in the hope I’ll pick up one of the ltd edition 7″s they’re releasing as part of Record Store Day. Form an orderly queue, please.

Get This!, Gone but not forgotten

The Flaming Hips

Craig McAllister

James Brown. Mr Dynamite. The Godfather of Soul. Funk Brother #1. The Hardest Working Man in Show Business.

In the 1950s, long before he had earned any of these tags,  he was a Little Richard-worshipin’ R’nB performer, playing drums and dragging his band of black musicians around the safety of the chitlin’ circuit in the southern states of America. The influence of Little Richard on the young James Brown cannot be underplayed. James idolised Little Richard. He copied his shiny black, oil slick-pompadoured quiff, perched atop his head like a Mr Whippy ice cream. When Little Richard gave up Good Golly Miss Molly for the Good of our Great God Almighty, James inherited some of his backing musicians, transforming his own group into a crack blues/soul/r’nb/gospel-tinged outfit that had an unmistakable groove beating at it’s heart. Shows were now billed as James Brown and the Famous Flames, the Famous Flames being the smooth-voiced backing singers who provided the foil for James’ more impassioned drop-to-the-knees moments. They also provided an understated dance routine that would allow the super-flash Camel-Walkin’, Mashed Potato jivin’ Brown to show off in his own unique hip-swivellin’ style. He might not’ve been the Godfather yet, but he was certainly the Boss at this point. It was said that Brown carried around an old napkin on which the words ‘Please Please Please‘ had been scrawled by Little Richard and that the young James was determined to turn those 3 words into a song….

….which he certainly succeeded at. In 1956, Please Please Please was James Brown’s first ever recording and went on to sell over one million copies, although interestingly it didn’t even make the Billboard Hot 100, stalling at #105. The pop audiences didn’t yet know about James Brown. In fact, they wouldn’t ‘get’ him until much later, although James has the distinction of having the most-ever hits on the Billboard Hot 100 without ever hitting number 1. *Pop quiz time – who holds that unique record for the UK charts?

Brown acknowledged the importance that Please Please Please held in his grand scheme of things and peformed it throughout his career. It was usually during this song that he would do his famous ‘cape routine‘, where he would fake to collapse, emotions exhausted, and his manager would come on from the side of the stage and usher him off, soaked in sweat, seemingly spent and severly in need of resuscitation. Pure vaudeville for sure, but I for one lapped it up on the only occassion I saw him live, inbetween the costume changes and the magician who sawed someone in half. But if you’ve been reading Plain Or Pan for a while, you’ll know all that already.

Those early James Brown records are electric. Full of rolling guitar riffs and call and response Famous Flames vocals, brass stabs act as musical full stops that allow James to simply breath, or drop to his knees and holler, yelp or let out one of those involuntary phlegmy grunts that Lenny Henry thinks he’s good at doing. He’s still finding his musical feet here but I bet this is when he had the idea for fining his musicians who missed a beat or played a bum note. His band on those early records are water-tight and pompadour-slick, playing yakkety-yak sax and the one-chord groove unperpinned by a solidly swinging backbeat. Hip huggin’, finger clickin’ soul, they’re the sort of mod-sharp records that would have me reaching for a 3 button mohair suit, if only the girth that has crept up on me over the past few years wasn’t there. If all you know of James Brown is Sex Machine, Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag and I Feel Good, dig deeper brothers and sisters, dig deeper. The tracks below are all from his first three albums and are a very good place to start. No fake emotions here, just pure, raw uncomplicated soul. You dig?

Please Please Please

Try Me

There Must Be A Reason

Why Do You Do Me

I’ll Go Crazy

This Old Heart

Bewildered

*Pop Quiz Time

I think this honour goes to Depeche Mode, who, according to Wiki at any rate, have had 49 of their 56 singles released to date make the UK Top 75 wthout once having had a Number One single. I’m sure if I’m wrong though, someone out there will correct me.

Six Of The Best

Six Of The Best – Trashcan Sinatras’ John Douglas

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 4 in a series:

Snug as a thug in a mugshot pose

That’s him there, second on the left, John Douglas, guitarist, songwriter and one of the original Trashcan Sinatras. It’s difficult for me to be entirely subjective about the Trashcans. I spent all of my late teens playing in a great wee band in the great wee town of Irvine. To be fair, there were loads of great wee bands vying for some attention and a gig in the few pubs and community centres that would put us on. Believe it or not, Irvine  in the mid-late 80s was a right hotbed of prodigous talent. Thanks to local government funding we had our own rudimentary rehearsal/’recording’ facility (in the loosest possible terms) and our own mini scene, all under the lofty pretentions of the Irvine Music Club. I had a  wee laugh to myself a few years ago when I saw a picture of Frank Reader wearing a T-Shirt that proclaimed ‘I’m in a promising local band‘. Back at the tail end of the 80s, the Trashcans were that promising local band. So promising in fact that out of all the bands around Irvine at the time, they were the ones that got the golden fleece….the recording contract (although it’s well documented what happened next).

I am particularly friendly with Paul and before he moved to Hollywood he often popped a demo of some new track or other in my direction when we met. I’ve been lucky to have heard their sound develop from demo to mastered album track. I’ve even been present in the studio when they were recording the second album – on the day I was there John was making tea while Ray Shulman was trying to magnetise the sound of Stephen’s drum kit as he played not in the recording studio, but halfway down the hall, between the band’s office and their own rehearsal room. When our bass guitar broke, it was the Trashcans who came to our rescue, lending us their own (expensive) Rickenbacker 4003 bass. They didn’t seem to mind that we had it for about 2 years. In later years, John and Frank recorded some demos for us and took payment not in cold hard cash but in whisky and other such fuggy substances (perhaps that’s why Shabby Road closed…) So I don’t look at the Trashcans the way I look at other bands. Other bands have a mystery about them. I buy their albums without knowing a single song on them. I’ve been spoiled with the Trashcans  – I know the songs and the people and it’s great.

If you’re a newcomer to the Trashcan Sinatras, it’s never too late to get on board. The Trashcans could easily be as widely loved and critically revered as a band like Elbow. They have that same uplifting melancholy and gift for melody for starters, but sadly they appear to be one of music’s best kept secrets. Those in the know are used to waiting patiently for any new album or song or chorus or chord or anything. Luckily though, the band are on a bit of a touring renaissance. The past couple of years have found the Trashcans hard at work on the road.  With half the band now living in the States you could be forgiven for thinking this might be a stumbling block. Not so. They have just finished another acoustic tour around the backwater’s of mid-America and beyond – John in his lucky striped t-shirt (see above), driving several thousands of miles in the process – see the tour poster below.

I emailed John to ask him about his ‘Six of the Best‘ and had originally planned to put this piece out mid-way through the tour, but real life and all that jazz conspired to get in the way – sorry John! Eagle-eyed internet researchers like myself will tell you that the tour has had good reviews. If you don’t believe me you should check out any one of the  Tour Films which John compiles and broadcasts on YouTube. John’s choices were mildly surprising. Since the first time I met him I knew he was a massive Scott Walker fan. I first saw Lester Bang‘s name on John’s bookshelf and he himself has said that the Trashcans approach everything with a punk attitude (although I can’t find the direct quote, so I’m paraphrasing…) I don’t know what I was expecting, but it’s nice to be presented with something unexpected. John is also a regular on the stage at Celtic Connections and it’s fair to say some of his choices reflect this. Over to you John…

Here is my 6 o’ the best:

‘Eileen Aroon‘ by The Unwanted (sung by Cathy Jordan) from the album Songs from the Atlantic Fringe. Ancient Irish air with a beautiful lyric performed acapella style by the Galway trio. I heard this masterpiece last year and it still haunts me.

(Note: This track has proven practically impossible to find, so I’ve made available an mp3 recording that’s been converted from a YouTube clip of Cathy Jordan singing with the Celtic Tenors. It sounds a bit otherwordly and spooky, the kind of thing John Peel might’ve played had it been on an old 78. It also sounds a bit like John’s significant other.)

UPDATE!

I woke up this morning to an email from John….”I need to send you the MP3 of Eileen Aroon… the version with the tenors is pish…” ………………………and finally………………………………..here it is.

‘It’s Sunday‘ by Frank Sinatra. One of his last studio recordings and the only song recorded by Frank where he is accompanied only by solo guitar. A song of old, contented love.

‘Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts‘ by Bob Dylan. Hilarious, cinematic and rockin’.

‘Marrying The Sea‘ by Declan O Rourke. Another, more modern, Irish acapella gem. Storyteller Declan’s rich baritone gets all poetic and hypnotising.

‘Holy Cow‘ by Lee Dorsey… my favourite groove.

‘Good & Gone‘ by the Screaming Blue Messiahs…… 5 star rock and roll petrol.

Every Six Of the Best compilation comes in a handy RAR download file. Get John Douglas’ here.

I also asked John about ‘One of his Best‘ – the song he’s most proud of having written:

At the moment, I’m most proud of having written a new song called ‘Howling‘. We are playing it at the soundchecks on tour and Frank is singing it beautifully… It’s inspired by a story I read about a saxophonist who was out in the wilds of America playing to the night sky when wolverines would howl when he played in a certain key. He experimented more with other animals and even broadcast his playing underwater and whales began singing. The song just flew out of me after reading the tale….

…a great idea for a song that Trashcans obsessives like me cannae wait to hear.

*Bonus Tracks!

Here‘s the John-penned Hammertime, previously only available as a digital download with the All The Dark Horses single and long-since unavailable.

Here‘s Duty Free, a Trashcans curio choc-full of their uniquely uplifting melancholy recorded during the dark years and given away on the highly collectible Sound Of Purple compilation CD.

And here‘s an mp3 of  I See The Moon – a brand new Trashcan’s song they’ve been playing on the recent tour. This is an mp3 converted from a YouTube clip. I may have to withdraw it quickly, so get to it…

Footnote:

No article on the Trashcan Sinatras could ever be complete without a mention for Five Hungry Joes, Colin’s excellently detailed and obsessive website of Trashcans articles, adverts and absolutely everything. Check it out!


Cover Versions, demo, Get This!, Gone but not forgotten, Hard-to-find, Most downloaded tracks, Studio master tapes, studio outtakes

Olaf, You’re Playing Catch-Up!

Craig McAllister

Going For Gold was a quiz show that ran for about 10 years between the mid 80s and mid 90s, broadcast usually after the lunchtime episode of Neighbours. Contestants came from all corners of the European Community to be asked general knowledge questions (in English) by genial Irishman Henry Kelly – “Who am I? I am an inventor. I was born in Scotland in 1869.” etc etc. What always amazed me about the show was that all contestants could understand and answer the questions in English. Indeed, Olaf from Finland and Gretchen from Germany always, always had a better grasp of the English language than Sue from Sussex and Karen from Coatbridge. In the final round, one contestant had control of the board and Kelly would always say to their opponent, “You’re playing catch-up!”

Once a year I like to round up some of the best music on Plain Or Pan and put it centre-stage for a second time. I like to think all the music I put on here is fantastic in it’s own way, but there are some things that are downloaded/searched for/requested far more regularly than others. The search facility about half-way down on the right there works fairly well (try it!), but I appreciate that sometimes it’s nice to have things put on a plate for you. If you’re a relative newcomer to this blog and you’re not sure what you may have missed out on, this post is for people like you. As Henry Kelly would say, “Olaf, you’re playing catch-up…”

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Who am I? I am a singer-songwriter. I started out my career singing doo-wop with a vocal group known as The Moonglows. When they broke up I began playing as a session drummer at Motown Records before stepping out from behind the kit and standing in front of the microphone. In my time at Motown I added an ‘e‘ to the end of my name, recorded many memorable solo tracks and duets, changed the way the record company viewed the merits of albums and married and divorced the boss’s daughter, resulting in one of the bitterest break-up albums of all time. Who am I? I am Marvin Gaye. And these are the unedited studio master tracks for I Heard it Through The Grapevine. Original article here.

How about some more Motown vocal-only tracks? Get them via here. Want more of this sort of stuff? Search ‘studio master tapes‘ in the ‘whityeherefur?‘ box over there on the right…

What am I? I am another studio outtake. I am a famous song by a famous band, some say that band’s best track (although you could easily argue the case for many of their other records.) Rolling Stone magazine (there’s a clue right there) put me at #38 in their list of Greatest Songs Ever in 2004, which makes me just better than Buddy Holly’s That’ll Be The Day but not quite as good as No Woman, No Cry by Bob Marley. My lyrics predict rape and murder and are a fitting epitaph on the death of the 60s which is just a shot away.  What am I? I am Gimme  Shelter by The  Rolling Stones. Here is the astonishing Mick ‘n Merry vocal-only track. And here is Keith’s rather groovy lead guitar track. Original article here. Sit down before listening, you may just be blown away.

There’s some terrific Curtis Mayfield stuff via here and here. And there’s some excellent Sly Stone stuff here and here. There’s a whole lotta soul on Plain Or Pan. Whiteyeherefur? Use it!

It’s well documented that Led Zeppelin didn’t so much re-write the blues as nick it riff by riff. Rape and murder, indeed. Compare Jimmy Page’s Dazed and Confused to the relatively-unknown Jake Holmes’ version here. I often contrast and compare the merits of originals v covers v blatantly plagiarised words and music. Type ‘double whammy’ or ‘triple whammy‘ into ‘Whiteyeherefur?‘ and see what you can find…

I could go on and on. Or you could use the ‘Whityeherefur?’ facility. Or you could just go through month-by-month, year-by-year. It’ll take you a while. But then, it’s taken me a while too. Last year’s round-up of all things good about Plain Or Pan can be found here, including links to Johnny Marr’s Dansette Delights, The Ronettes vocal-only version of Be My Baby and the now-legendary Plain Or Pan Compilation CDs. So much to choose from, so much to grab. Go! Go! Go!