Most downloaded tracks

Plain Or Panache

Craig McAllister

This blog has something. The words? The music? I dunno, but it has something. Why? Because hits to the site are at an all-time high. It would appear that Plain Or Pan has become something of a phenomenon. Daily figures are rising. Incoming links are being pinged from all manner of websites. Heavy traffic (man) is visiting from places as far-flung as Sao Paolo, Aukland and Moscow.  As the wee sidebar on the side says, truly Plain Or Pan-Global. What’s weird though is that the rise in popularity here is relative to the lack of new stuff I post. In other words, the less I write, the more hits I seem to get. Long may it continue…

This post is for all you new comers/late comers/returners. Take a look again at the wee sidebar on the left. Just below it you’ll notice the search facility. Use it! I get all sorts of emails from people everywhere requesting stuff that’s still available. If you go to the search bar and type in the artist or the song or any sort of key word relating to whatever it is you’re looking for, it’ll take you to it in a nano second. But you knew that already. Try it!

Every post since January 2007 has been preserved here. Sadly, some of the music has been deleted. Not by me – try typing  ‘fascist internet police bastards who hack your account without your permission’ or something similar into ‘search‘ and you’ll find out why). But much of the music remains. Stuff that many of you may not know is there. So what follows are a few links to some of the better/more obscure/popular/whatever I fancy right now music I’ve put up over the years. Think of it a bit like one of those supermarket sweep trolley grabs, because once some of the tracks below get pinged around the world I expect those pesky internet police to come a-knockin’ on my virtual door once more. They may not be here for long folks. Go get ’em!

Johnny Marr‘s Dansette Delights. Johnny compiled a CD for Mojo magazine. Words here. Music here.

Elliott Smith‘s rare as you-know-what version of The Beatles ‘I’ll Be Back’. Music here.

Those Blur fanclub singles. I did a few posts in a series. Some, but not all, of the mp3s were removed. I try and put them back up when I notice they’ve gone. You can get the Sing (To Me) (demo) here. Words and other links here. Remember to use ‘search‘ or the Blur Fanclub Singles tag on the sidebar!

The Ronettes vocal track of ‘Be My Baby’. One of the most downloaded tracks….. ever! in the history of the internet. Possibly. Words here and here. Music here. (nb. Sadly, some of the other links in these posts have been deleted.)

Those 4 Beatles mastertapes that melted Plain Or Pan for a week in March 2008 are still up for grab! Words here. Music here – Sgt Pepper. With A Little Help from My Friends. A Day In The Life. She’s Leaving Home.

Talking of mastertapes…many of the original ones I put up (The Stones Gimme Shelter, Stevie Wonder’s Superstition, Marvin Gaye’s Grapevine) were removed. Some of the tracks however are still available on these excellent Best Of Plain Or Pan compilations. Here y’are….

Plain Or Pan (The First 2 Years In A Nutshell) Words and tracklistings here. Music here. And here.

Plain Or Pan (3rd Birthday) Words and tracklistings here. Music here. And here.

I could go on all night. Hopefully some of this stuff is new to you. If so, happy downloading. If not, try using ‘search‘. You never know what else lurks within….

Ciao!

Cover Versions, Dylanish, Hard-to-find, Kraut-y

Tunng In Cheek

Craig McAllister

Here’s a thing. Actually, you might be aware of this already, so if that’s the case bear with me. If not, prepare yourself for some startling music trivia.

I was listening to one of Dylan‘s Bootleg Series CDs while doing stuff around the house. It was the ’64 Philharmonic Hall one, where Joan Baez ruins everything by guesting on 4 or 5 tracks. Normally I tend to skip her. I cannae stand her voice or the way she calls him “Bobby Dylan” or the way she ruins a great song like ‘Mama You Been On My Mind’ with her high pitched harmonies, poor phrasing and wrong words.

I. Just. Cannae. Stand. Her.

And by all accounts, most of the time, Bobby couldn’t either.

dylan baez 1

(Caption Competition: ______________)

Because I was pottering roon the hoose yesterday, she managed to get past my Baez Detector and suddenly came bursting into earshot. And this is what I noticed….

She sang a version of old folk traditional Silver Dagger. No vocals by Dylan, though he plays along with some rudimentary, scrubbed acoustic guitar and wheezy harmonica. Other than that it’s Joan Alone and it stinks. But the melody was familiar. Very familiar. And then it dawned on me.

Saint Etienne have nicked it, note for note for their ‘own’ no. 47 in ’94 smash hit Like A Motorway.

A quick bit of googling proved me correct. The motorik thunk of Like a Motorway is indeed based on the melody of ancient 19th Century traditional song Silver Dagger. Not only that, but on parent album Tiger Bay, Saint Etienne seemingly based many of the songs around old folk melodies, beating forward-thinking modernist laptop folkies such as Tunng and Psapp by a good few years. I suppose that explains Tiger Bay‘s olde worlde ‘Welcome Bonny Boat’-inspired cover. But whodathunkit, eh?

bonny boat

Original

Cover version

Silver Dagger is currently doing the rounds in the form of a version by White Antelope. White Antelope is the side project of Fleet Fox Robin Pecknold. But you knew that already. His version is dynamite. One man, his delicately skipping guitar and a perfectly in tune reverb-soaked vocal.

Unlike Moany Joany, this boy can really sing. If you’re desperate to hear a Baez version you’ll have to look elsewhere I’m afraid. I’m not sullying this fine site with rubbish like that.

*Bonus Track!

Here’s Robin Pecknold/White Antelope giving Dylan’s It Ain’t Me Babe the full-on Fleet Foxes treatment. Stunning.

Robin Pecknold/White Antelope 

 

New! Now!

Weller Weller Weller Oooh!

Craig McAllister

This is a first for me. Anytime I’ve reviewed an album here it’s been retrospectively. Invariably, the album I’ve reviewed has been one I like – one packed full of tunes that have soaked their way under my skin and into my heart and became embedded in the human iPod that is my brain. I don’t need to listen to Abbey Road again in order to tell you how good it is. I could write you a thousand words on the beauty of Bandwagonesque without reaching for its cheapo dayglo sleeve. I could (and quite often do) wax lyrical about Elliott Smith’s XO album. But today is a first. What follows (for what it’s worth) is a review of the new Paul Weller LP Wake Up The Nation. Heard for the first time this week and yet to worm its way into my head like those above, I know it’ll get there and still be there in 2, 5, 10 years time. Wake Up The Nation really is that good. It pisses all over joyless rubbish like As Is Now or Heliocentric or Illumination. While those albums undoubtedly have their brief flashes of goodness, the new album is jam packed full of them. No pun intended.

Tell me more, tell me more, like does he play guitar? Aye, does he! Like a 16 year old me discovering the joys of a crappy distortion pedal, PW is playing some of the best guitar of his life. His guitar sounds amazing – clanging, ringing, waking up the nation indeed. And Weller’s an artist don’t you know. Not content with just making exciting sounding records again, he’s been pretentiously banging on in interviews recently about searching for a “tough, urban, metallic sound“. Hmm. Thin Wild Mercury Sound anyone? Producer and co-writer Simon Dine has helped him achieve this.

Best track by a country mile has to be No Tears To Cry, a pop soul nugget that it’s writer freely admits is a nod to Scott Walker and all those mid 60s sweeping Spectoresque symphonies. Right now it’s up there with Hung Up as my all-time favourite Paul Weller song. In fact, it deserves to have it’s own special one-off release on the famous old blue Philips label. If only Dusty Springfield was still around to record a version of it…

Elsewhere, short, sharp twisted blasts of strangled rock music fly in and out. Tracks are kept refreshingly short. Abrupt endings. All too soon fade outs. The whole album is less than 40 minutes long. The way albums should be. Indeed, the longest track, Trees, is practically a 4 minute 19 epic by comparison. PW probably really rates this track, although it can’t make up its mind if it’s pastoral whimsy, slash ‘n burn Who mod pop or Thames Delta blues. It’s actually a bit of everything. If you could condense last album 22 Dreams into a can of Heinz 57 varieties odd-Mod flavoured soup it would sound a bit like this. Of the shorter tracks, Andromeda (also available as a Richard Hawley remix) and 7 & 3 Is The Strikers Name (brilliant and bizarro collaboration with decidedly non-mod noise maker Kevin Shields) stand out as early favourites.

Find The Torch/Burn The Plans is notable for a couple of things – 1. the vocals are so fackin’ cockernee it should be dressed as a Pearly Queen and have Ray Winstone munching on jellied eels in the background a la McCartney on Vegetables (Google it if you’re none the wiser). And 2 – On this track Wee Fanny Cradock from Ocean Colour Scene removes his tongue from the Boss’s arse just long enough to cook up the best guitar riff on the album – a cute steal from the paino riff in Marvin Gaye’s Pretty Little Baby. Nice one! And I bet you he thought no-one would notice too!

With an artist so reassuringly retro as Weller, I cannae help but play ‘spot the reference’. Wake Up The Nation has plenty to offer yer music fan with a half-decent knowledge of 60s & 70s pop, soul and psych. Hey! What’s that? Working In A Coalmine of course! Listen out for the Blockheads Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick by way of Issac Hayes film score (Aim High) and the guitar clang of Low-period Bowie (Up The Dosage). I thought he was supposed to hate Bowie… Talent borrows, genius steals n all that.

Donald. If you’re reading this you’d have ruined this album for me by Monday lunchtime. For everyone else reading, do yourself a favour and pick up the first essential album of the decade.

PW sits back to enjoy a good ego stroking

Hard-to-find

Nee Naw Nee Naw

Craig McAllister

Just a quick note to say that t’internet polis are on my back again. A few mp3’s I’ve posted recently (and not so recently) have suddenly become unavailable. You’ll know which ones they are if you click a link and it says ‘file deleted‘ or ‘file invalid’ or whatever. Not nearly as bad as having the entire blog deleted as has been happening to many bloggers worldwide, but a major P in the A nonetheless. I don’t want to draw unnecessary attention to myself by re-posting the mp3’s that have been taken down. I’m sure you’ll understand. Just try and catch ’em while you can. Ta!

Cover Versions, Gone but not forgotten

I Am The Cosmos double whammy

Craig McAllister

A couple of weeks ago I was window shopping in Glasgow when I chanced upon a wee stall selling replica football tops and assorted football related t-shirts – Scotland Argentina ’78 -inspired designs and the likes. Unfortunately, the Celtic-inspired tops seemed to be the best – the Ramones logo re-done with the names of the Lisbon Lions, the Dylan ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’ video where Bob discards 3 cards saying “It’s A “, “Grand Old Team“, “To Play For“. Umpteen Larsson tops. That sort of thing. Amongst all the Archie Gemmell and Old Firm crap I found a brilliant New York Cosmos t-shirt. I had to buy it.

I remember the Topical Times ’79 football annual having a big piece about them and I was something of a nine year old trans-Atlantic fan. They attracted all the best players, just as they entered the final stages of their playing career. In some cases, players came out of retirement, lured by the big bucks of the club’s financial backers. Pele, Beckenbaur, Neeskens, to name 3, all played in the team’s colours. The badge was even designed with Pele in mind – incorporating the Brazilian football team colours of yellow, green and blue, the owners believed this would appeal to Pele. And it did, not just to Pele, but also to Carlos Alberto, captain of the famous Brazil ’70 World Cup winning team. This was a masterstroke by the owners – when Pele signed in ’75, average attendances rose from 3500 to over 10,000. Anyway, here’s the music part…

The Cosmos were founded by Atlantic Records’ Ahmet and Nesuhi Ertegun, so in turn they were funded in no small part due to the success of a mid-70s global shagging Led Zeppelin. You could say that for every copy of Led Zep IV sold, some of the profits would go into funding terrible acts like Bad Company and some of the profits would line the pockets of footballers on the wrong side of 35.

Not on Atlantic Records, and therefore nothing to do with any of the above useless trivia was Chris Bell, Alex Chilton’s foil in Big Star. Since Chilton died the other week, it’s been said that one of the reasons he underplayed the recordings he made with Big Star is because he knew how much of the Big Star sound had been created by Chris Bell and not by himself. If you listen to Chris Bell’s solo album I Am The Cosmos (d’you see what I did there?), there may be some clout in this opinion. The title track itself is a fantastic slice of mid 70s rock – easily on a par with The Stones Exile On Main St or much of The Faces back catalogue. It’s loose, it’s sloppy, it’s full of soaring vocals, there’s a fabulous twin guitar break in the middle; all the ingredients required to make the hairs on this particular neck to stand to attention. In fact, while I’ve got your attention, I’d like to offer up the opinion that it’s this record (link updated again!) more than anything from #1 Record or Radio City that gave Teenage Fanclub the blueprint for everything they recorded at the sessions that produced Bandwagonesque. Not a bad point of reference at all.

In total contrast to the original above, there’s another version of I Am The Cosmos currently released and charming the pants off me. Pete Yorn and Scarlett Johansson recorded the songs that would form the ‘Break Up’ album in 2006 but  they only saw the light of day at the end of last year. I’m not normally a fan of actors making records (or vice versa) and this album is just OK. It’s nothing spectacular and had Yorn made it with N. E. Singer, I doubt I’d even have gone out of my way to find it, let alone listen to it. But for Miss Johansson I can make exceptions. Her voice is decent enough and her duet with Yorn on their version (link updated) of I Am The Cosmos is indie/lo-fi at its best. They claim to have been influenced by Serge Gainsbourg’s recordings with Brigitte Bardot, but I can’t really hear it. I could, however, quite happily listen to it/her all day long. Indeed, if she gets in the queue behind Zooey Deschanel and plays her cards right, Scarlett Johansson could yet be the next Mrs Plain Or Pan. Mind you, I’d need to make sure I’m not wearing that new Cosmos t-shirt. I’m not nine years old anymore. I bought a medium, but I really should’ve gone for a large. I knew at the time, but who was I tryin’ to kid?

demo, entire show, Gone but not forgotten, Hard-to-find, studio outtakes

You Need A Mess Of Help To Stand Alone

Craig McAllister

Poor Brian Wilson. Deaf in his right ear after his dad Murry had uncharitably clouted him, he suffered more than his siblings at the hands of this hard-to-please man. A somewhat failed song writer (doo-wop songs his ‘speciality’) Murry Wilson was the Beach Boys manager/co-producer/arranger in those heady surf-filled, drag-racing days.

Much like those dads of today who coach frantically from the side of the pitch while their 13 year old chases a ball around, he lived the dream through his sons. He constantly obsessed over every facet of the Beach Boys, from their appearance and stage presentation to the lyrics and songs themselves. A traditionalist, he undoubtedly gave Brian an ear (only one, mind) for a melody, by playing him Gershwin non-stop from an early age. He had him take accordion lessons. He forced him to sing solo in the church. He certainly pushed him in the right direction, as Brian became as obsessive about the power of music as Murry.

Brian was prodigious. He studied vocal group The Four Freshmen, replicated their individual vocal parts on the piano and worked out how to make a group of voices sing in 4 part harmony. From this, The Beach Boys were born and the rest, as you already know, is history. Have a listen to this, but be prepared to sit down and listen closely. You won’t regret it. It’s a complete reel (40 mins) of The Beach Boys recording Help Me, Rhonda. Hot on the heels of I Get Around it would go on to become the group’s second US Number 1, but not before three painstaking recording sessions. The Help Me, Rhonda session available here was recorded probably on the 8th or 19th January 1965, depending on the sources you read, and is famous in Beach Boys circles because the session is constantly interrupted by a menacing Murry, breaking in on the studio microphone and berating the individual members of the group for their sub-standard performances. For the most part he’s right too!

“Brian. Fellas. I have 3000 words to say. Quit screamin’, start singin’ from your hearts, huh? You’re doing fine now, watch your ‘ooohs’, come in on the low notes Mike. Carl -‘oooh’ – you’re ‘eugh!’ Come on! Dennis – you’re flatting. OK Mike. You’re flatting on your high notes. Let’s go. Let’s roll. So you’re big stars. Let’s fight, huh? Let’s fight for success. OK. Let’s go. Now loosen up. Be happy. Forget the people in here……..turn the lights out in this room. Turn the lights out in this room… they see so many people…OK fellas. You got any guts? Let’s hear ’em!”

Brian (from across the room) “Dad. only 82 words.”

Murry “I said 3000. Come on Brian. Knock it off! You guys think you’re good? Let’s go! Let’s go! Fellas. As a team we’re unbeatable. You’re doing wonderful Al. I’ll leave, Brian, if you’re gonna give me a bad time…..”

Brian “I got one ear left and your big mouthed voice is killin’ me!”

Murry “I’m sorry I’m yelling. Loosen up Al, watch your flatting…….”

And on and on and on it goes, between a zillion perfect and not-so perfect short burts of Help Me, Rhonda. Mike is flatting those high notes. Al is flatting those low notes.

“Al. Al! Come in to it. About an inch and three quarters. Or two inches closer. Either sing out louder or come in closer. And e-nun-ci-ate! When you sing ‘Rhonda’ make it sexy and soft. “Rhonda you look so fiiiine!” OK?” At this point you hear an unconvinced  “hmmmm” from someone at the microphone.

And still it goes on.

“Brian. Your voice is shrilling through everybody. Carl. We can’t hear Carl. We can hear Dennis but we can’t hear Mike. And we can hardly hear Al.”

At one point Murry points out that “I’m a genius too, Brian!” Incredible! This is history in the making and we’re party to it. Incredible! Something recorded 45 years ago exists in the quality it does. What strikes me most about listening to the tape is that although Murry clearly likes the sound of his own voice and isn’t shy of pointing out the group’s failures, the group themselves know when a take has been a bad take. They don’t need Murry to tell them. You can hear them berate one another for being flat, quiet, missing their intro, whatever.

Brian actually appears in control of everything, despite his Dad’s close attentions. The session ends with Brian and Murry having a quiet arguement, Brian asking for an atmosphere of calmness, “are you going now?”, Murry commenting that “just because you’ve had a big hit…”. Brian puts up with his dad pretty well. This time. But no wonder it was only a few short months until he’d be watching TV and playing piano in a sandpit in his living room……..

Murry died in 1973. They say the devil has all the best tunes. I believe Murry is rearranging them as you read this.

TRIVIA FACT

Glen Campbell plays on this session. You’ll hear a wee bit of noodling and strumming throughout. That’s him!

Cover Versions, Hard-to-find, Sampled

Unashamedly Disco

Craig McAllister

I’m an unashamed fan of disco. Aye, in it’s heyday it might’ve been the shallowest form of music around, the 70s equivalent, yet better-dressed cousin, of contemporary throwaway nonsense like Lady GaGa or Pink. But sneer not. Listen closely to any of those era-defining records and unlike those (coughs smugly) ‘artists‘ of today, you’ll find a real soul at the heart of it all. Real instruments played by real musicians. 4 real (man). Listen to the guitar playing on anything off the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack and tell me that’s not up there with Jeff Beck. Listen to Nile Rodgers’ rinky-dink funk riffs on any Chic record you care to pick at random then listen to the second verse of The Smiths ‘Boy With the Thorn In His Side’ and tell me Johnny Marr doesn’t rate the playing on Chic records. Major copyism going on there! In homage to Chic, Johnny Marr even went so far as naming his son Nile!

So aye. I like disco music. And I’m clearly not alone. Abba (aye, snigger all you want) loved George McCrae’s Rock Your Baby so much they nicked the drum sound from it for Dancing Queen. “So what,” you say? Well, a couple of years later and Elvis Costello was touring somewhere in the American mid-west. He’d been working on a new song but was getting frustrated at the lack of a good melodic hook for the intro. Dancing Queen comes on the radio. He loooks at Steve Nieve and asks him to listen closely to the piano part. Could he replicate it? A wee while later and Oliver’s Army is complete. True story that. What goes around comes around and all that. If you don’t believe me, seek out the 2 tracks in question and play the intros back to back. I’d put them up here, but the internet police would be straight on my back…

A few weeks ago I was at a friend’s house. He hosted a music night where 5 of us took it in turn to play 5 records, each grouped into distinct categories. So far, so Nick Hornby. I can almost hear your muffled laughter from here. The one track that made the biggest impression on me that night was not the long-forgotten Tom Waits album track or the hard-to-find and rare-as… punk 7″ that I’d never heard before or the, well, I’m sure you can imagine exactly the sort of records that were played that night. No. The record that made the biggest impression on me that night was this gem from the early 80s.

DJ Gary Byrd and the GB Experience ‘The Crown’. Over 10 minutes of soul/funk/rap and, most definitely, disco, I hadn’t heard it since it had last troubled the charts (number 6 in July 83, trivia fans). It sounded better than I’d ever remembered. Written by Stevie Wonder to boot. He does a wee rap/verse thing at one point. I’m sure he plays drums on it too (it sure sounds like him), but that might just be me making things up as I can’t find much in the way of info about it online.  It’s a disco classic folks, from the days when D.I.S.C.O. was D.E.A.D. The Fresh Prince was clearly getting jiggy to it as well, but we’ll gloss over that part.

Conversly, in 1974, just before D.I.S.C.O. went B.O.O.M., People’s Choice recorded this, Do It Anyway You Wanna. People’s Choice were from Philly (of course) and had a reasonably successful recording career. Andrew Collins played the original of this on BBC 6 Music the other day and I went and dug out my copy. Sadly, my version is a mildly irritating remixed version featuring snatches of Oops Upside Your Head, Last Night a DJ Saved My Life and stuff like that. Still magic though. And it reminds me of Saddle Up and Ride Your Pony and the Billy Connolly “I’ll walk you home when I empty my underwear‘ sketch that goes with it.

BONUS TRACK!

Happy Mondays do Staying Alive. The producer takes a stanley knife to much of the Pills, Thrills… album, snatches of tracks you know and love weave in and out of the mix, Shaun skanks on top of the unholy soup, Rowetta yodels and wails like a transvestite with his balls caught in a vice. This is the sound of a band on the ropes. The final round with no fight, nothing left to give back. It. Is. A. Mess. Enjoy it! The only good thing is the guitar riff. It sounds like a funky bucket. And I mean that in a good way of course.

Shane MacGowan Shaun Ryder

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

Sum Songs

Craig McAllister

Regular readers here will know that I’m somewhat a fan of Elliott Smith. I’ve posted various bits and pieces of his before. Equal parts downbeat alt. folk mumbler and upbeat Beatles-obsessed melodic genius, I could listen to Elliott all day. Stuck at the end of the Son Of Sam single (November 2000) was this, the what I assumed to be title track but left of the album of the same name Figure 8. It’s spooky as hell. A simple music box piano plays a spidery, child-like melody in the background while Elliott quietly sings these fantastic lyrics:

Figure 8 is double 4
Figure 4 is half of 8
If you skate, you would be great,
if you could make a figure 8,
that’s a circle that turns round upon itself. 

Figure 8 is 2 times 4
4 times 4 is 2 times 8
If you skate upon thin ice,
you’d be wise if you thought twice,
before you made another single move.

Amazingly (to me at least), it turns out that Figure 8 is not an Elliott original. It was written in 1973 by Bob Dorough and recorded by Blossom Dearie. It first came to the public’s attention via US TVs Schoolhouse Rock series of educational programmes – aye, the same series of programmes that brought you Dorough’s own The Magic Number. You know, “3. Is a magic number. Yes it is. It’s a …” Of course you do. Turns out Dorough is a bit of a jazz cat – he worked with Miles Davis and Alan Ginsberg, played ‘tween Lenny Bruce stand-up sets and led the band in boxer Sugar Ray Robinson’s musical revue.  

Elliott Smith stays pretty faithful to the first half of Dorough’s/Dearie’s original. But whereas his stops at downbeat and introspective, Blossom Dearie picks herself up halfway through and starts singing the 8 times table, much in the way Bob Dorough does in The Magic Number. It’s a weird, weird record, and given my love for Bob Dorough’s most famous tune, I can’t believe I haven’t picked up on the rest of his Schoolhouse Rock stuff until now. As I have just found out to my pleasant surprise, the Schoolhouse Rocks records take all the best bits of Peanuts, The Muppets and Sesame Street and those ‘Charlie Says..‘ UK public information films and ends up with something that is both extremely twee and/or child-friendly, depending on which side of the fence you’re sitting. I bet Duglas T Stewart has an original 1970s vinyl copy somewhere.

 

Hard-to-find

Play That Funky Music White Boy

Craig McAllister

We’ll get the confessions, the truth and the cold hard facts out of the way first. I’m too young to appreciate the beauty that was Postcard Records. Way too young. I’m not exactly sure when I first chanced upon the label, but it was certainly long after the last of those few, fey and feisty 7″s had made their way out of Alan Horne’s bedroom and into the world. While it was all going on I was too caught up in the chart music du jour – Madness, Adam & the Ants, Swords Of A Thousand Men, Spurs Are On Their Way To Wembley. Proper stuff like that. Had I actually heard Blue Boy or Just Like Gold I doubt I’d have liked them. And if you’re being honest with yourself as you read this, when you were 11 you wouldnae have liked them either.

Meet The Beatles? Velvet Underground? Byrds?

It was probably an article in the short lived Scottish music publication CUT that first brought Postcard Records to my attention. Being a heady 13 years old, by now I knew my Robert Lloyds from my Lloyd Coles and had an appetite for discovering new things. I knew of Orange Juice of course. Rip It Up had been all over the airwaves, the words ‘One Hit Wonder’ running through it’s jangly core like a stick of sugary sweet confectionary. And I must’ve been aware of Aztec Camera by this point too. Over the years I’ve come to realise that year zero for many of these bands I grew to love began at Postcard. Edwyn and Orange Juice. Roddy and Aztec Camera. The Go Betweens. All began their shiny black plastic lives on the Postcard label. Josef K too, but, eh, we’ll scratch that last lot out. I never gave them a chance/listen until Franz Ferdinand waxed lyrical about them a few years ago. Like I said earlier, we’ll get the confessions, the truth and the cold hard facts outta the way first. I like them now though.

Anyway. The reason for this article is three-fold.

  1. I’ve been meaning to do a bit about Postcard for a while now.
  2. It’s just over 30 years since the first Postcard 7″,  Orange Juice’s Falling And Laughing, was released – there’s a good wee write up about Orange Juice and the pre-OJ Nu-Sonics here.
  3. Over at the Vinyl Villain, on 6th April they’re celebrating Paul Haig day. Paul Haig was lead singer with Josef K (below). But you knew that already.

So with regards to the above, I’ve compiled The Best Postcard Records Album In The World…Ever. Every a-side and b-side ever released on the label, from Orange Juice’s rare as funk debut (even Edwyn Collins doesn’t have a copy) to Aztec Camera’s non-album Mattress Of Wire. And everything in between, from Antipodean brothers in arms the Go Betweens to Edinburgh’s answer to the Glasgow Glamsters, Josef K.  Every track wrapped in eczema-like scratchy guitars, elastic band basslines and vocals just on the wrong side of tuneful. Well. Almost every track. Roddy Frame uses, gasp! – acoustic guitars! He sings in tune! He’s a precocious 16 year old genius. The fucker! It’s the Sound Of Young Scotland y’know!

  

Here’s what you get:

 Orange Juice
Falling And Laughing　/　Moscow / Moscow Olympics　
 Orange Juice
 Blue Boy　/　Love Sick　
 Josef K
 Radio Drill Time　/　Crazy To Exist　
 Go Betweens
 I Need Two Heads　/　Stop Before You Say It　
 Josef K
 It’s Kinda Funny　/　Final Request　
 Orange Juice
 Simply Thrilled Honey　/　Breakfast Time　
 Orange Juice
 Poor Old Soul　/　Poor Old Soul (pt2)　
 Aztec Camera
 Just Like Gold　/　We Could Send Letters　
 Josef K
 Sorry For Laughing　/　Revelation　
 Josef K
 Chance Meeting　/　Pictures　
 Orange Juice
 Wan Light　(unreleased)/　You Old Eccentric　(not on compilation)
Aztec Camera
Mattress Of Wire　/　Lost Outside The Tunnel

 Why the small writing? Pain in the arse, man.

Download includes exclusive Plain Or Pan artwork.

 

 

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

Alex Chilton

Craig McAllister

Fuck. Just heard the news. This keyboard is awash with tiny tears as I type. It’s always the way, but why do the good guys go first? I can’t believe I’m writing about Alex Chilton in the past tense. His music, especially with Big Star, means as much to me as Them There Beatles, it really does. Whether he was bedroom balladeering or bar-room bawling and balls-out rocking, his songs hit a nerve that jangled all the way to the auditory part of my brain like one of those fancy pants chords he could tease out of his guitar.

If you’re reading this you probably know all about him. Teenage Box Top. Cult hero in coulda been shoulda been Big Star. Producer of The Cramps. Friend and collaborator with fellow enthusiasts/obsessives Teenage Fanclub. All round nice guy, he wrote and recorded some of the best pop songs you’ll hear. Seek out #1 Record or Radio City or 3rd/Sister Lovers for proof. Sometimes bleak, often uplifting, always soulful. But you knew that already. Given our track record for celebrating the artist in death rather than life, Alex Chilton may yet become somewhat ironically a Big Star.

I’m glad I caught Big Star live. Just the once, when they first played Glasgow as part of their initial reunion tour. I stood on the balcony of the QM Union looking down onto the stage where Chilton led his band through non-hit after non-hit after non-hit. The crowd knew every word. So too did Ken Stringfellow and Jon Auer of The Posies, similarly Teenage Fanclub-like in their obsessiveness about Big Star, and on-stage playing out their own version of Jim’ll Fix It on bass and guitar. Chilton himself played a mean guitar that night. And I mean mean in the economic sense. No frills, no pedals. Just him, a nice warm valve amp and a couple of vintage guitars. What a sound! Often overlooked in the scheme of things, Chilton was a fantastic guitar player – proof? – His version of My Baby Just Cares For Me is still up for grabs via this post.

He could play anything. Anything. Rock. Pop. Stax-inflected southern soul. Doo-wop. Jazz. E-nee-thing. He was a player’s player. A dude. And he once, sorry twice, played the 13th Note in Glasgow with Teenage Fanclub as his backing band. Naturally I found out about this the day after the second show. It was a Tuesday morning and a colleague from work casually mentioned it on the phone. Pre internet days, I’m afraid. Pissed off? You better believe it. Especially as the bootleg sounds amazing. Here‘s the entire show. No artwork. No tracklisting (I’m far too lazy/far too busy to type it out). First track is a rockin’ September Gurls. There’s covers of T-Rex, 60s pop standards and, yep, Stax-inflected southern soul. Get it and remember him this way.

Thanks for the music Alex.

Alex Chilton. December 28th 1950 – March 17th 2010