Gone but not forgotten, Hard-to-find, studio outtakes

Take your knickers off and let’s go!

Craig McAllister

Hmmmmm…it appears that the internet police have been at it again. Both versions of Revolution take 20 have been were mysteriously deleted from my file sharing account. If you’ve visited specifically for them, read on…

It’s amazing to think that, 41 years after initially being recorded, a new mix of The Beatles ‘Revolution‘ has made it’s way out of the box marked ‘Masters’ and onto the internet. Not just any old new mix, oh no! The mix getting every Beatles bore’s knickers in a twist is the fabled Revolution Take 20, all uninterrupted 10min 46 seconds of it. Shooby-doo-wop, ah-wow!

beatles-68

The history books point to this take being recorded on the 4th June 1968 and apparently had John Lennon singing the whole of the backing vocals whilst lying on his back. The Master Tape box was labelled ‘Revolution – Mama Papa’. Sadly (for me) it doesn’t feature Michelle Phillips on guest vocals, or even Papa John banging away on a tambourine somewhere in the background. The ‘Mama Papa’ refers to the backing vocals Lennon sings in the second half of the song (starting around the 5min 40s mark). Listen out, too, for the amusing studio chatter at the start and a wee bit of Yoko Ono at the end.

lewisohn2

Lennon recording his vocals. Taken from the excellent Mark Lewisohn Beatles Sessions trainspotters delight book.

Sonically, Take 20 lies somewhere between the laid-back Beach Boys-y acoustic version of Revolution 1 on side 3 of the White Album and Revolution 9’s looped tapes and weird noises. There’s some harmonica buried deep in the mix, some nonsensical Lennon mumbles, what sounds like George Harrison’s guitar doing an impression of an air raid siren and all manner of weird things going on. It goes without saying, of course, but any discerning fan of The Beatles needs this take. I’m certain it’s spreading across the interent like a happy virus even as I type, but you can get it here (high quality mp3 file) or here (higher quality flac file). Whatchawaitin’ for?

beatles-white1

 Bonus Track! At the start of September ’68, Paul McCartney got pissed off with Pete Townshend for suggesting that The Who were the only band still capable of rocking out any more. By the 13th of September The Beatles had recorded this, the 21st take of Helter Skelter. Blisters on their fingers indeed!

Gone but not forgotten, Hard-to-find

Try Listening To The 12″

Craig McAllister

Watching the predicto-fest that was the Brits the other night, my mind started wandering half-way through the Pet Shop Boys Lifetime Achievement Award set. Even in all their badly-mimed, poorly edited megamix glory, I have to say that I like the Pet Shop Boys, but I couldn’t help thinking that, had they not been so contrary, difficult (and split up), New Order would’ve been up there getting their backs well and truly slapped by all manner of minor celebrity instead.

new-order-at-club

Here are the young men

Of course, being contrary and difficult is exactly what maketh the band. Famous for leaving the big hits off the albums (in a give-the-fans-value-for-money kinda way) they never fail to irritate, infuriate and infatuate me in equal measure. My formative years as a beer drinker in training were soundtracked by 3 12″ records – Talking Heads ‘Slippery People’, Simple Minds‘ ‘I Travel’ and New Order‘s ‘Blue Monday’ (naturelement). To this day I can still tap out Blue Monday‘s opening bars with 2 Bic pens on an empty can of Tennents. When I hear it, I still get flashbacks to being 15 and drunk in a pal’s house (or even worse, a pal’s loft. Try getting out of one of them after 2 cans and a packet of dry roasted peanuts!)

I’ve mentioned this previously, but if you’re new here you won’t know, so I’ll mention this again. I was too young to fully appreciate the full majesty of a prime New Order. I got into Blue Monday and worked my way backwards. Then I discovered Joy Division (via Paul Young, ouch). But I digress. RS McColl’s in Irvine had the best record department I’ve ever seen. Essentially a paper shop that sold sweeties, you could travel backwards in time if you went into the back shop. Rows upon rows of vinyl. Crammed into whatever space was available. Apparently the shop never returned anything to the record companies. You could buy anything there. The wee woman who worked in it knew the stock like the back of her hand and she could tell you exactly where something was in the racks too. There was a loose consession to alphabetical order but you’d never find anything by that method. The best records were found by accident, possibly because someone had found it before you and stashed it somewhere until they had enough money to buy it. The wee woman was also very generous. Once I realised they sold New Order 7″s and 12″s, I was never out of the place. I quickly realised that if you wanted more than one thing, she’d knock 50p or £1 off the total price now and again. I eventually bought the entire New Order section from there and I think it cost me about £8.30 in total. A slight exaggeration, but you get the idea. I used to have to sneak the records home in my school bag cos my mum would go mad if she caught me “wasting” money on records. Subsequently, most of my New Order records have buckles and bends in the corners of the sleeves. Silly me.

Don’t worry, the music’s coming

Last year, New Order were the latest act to get involved in that great fan-fleecing racket, the Deluxe Edition. I can’t help but think that this would never have happened under Tony Wilson or Factory Records patronage, but major labels like the smell of cash and they know how trainspottery fans can be. New Order’s back catalogue from ‘Movement‘ up to ‘Technique‘ was re-released with all manner of b-sides, remixes, alt. versions and associated album release singles included on the second disc of each album. Movement included an alt version of ‘Ceremony‘ from 1981. I’m not 100% sure about this, but I think this slightly out-of-tune version was re-recorded after Gillian Gilbert joined the group. I’m sure New Order scholars will keep me right on that one.

temptation-fac63

This disc also featured 2 versions of ‘Temptation‘ (not the shiny, better-known version from Substance and Trainspotting, but the original cold, clattering Manchester funk version.) The 7″ version has an abrupt start (if that makes sense) and fades out rather quickly as well. The wee message scratched into the run-out groove on the 7″ read, “Try listening to the 12″“. So I did. I liked it better. But it also started and ended kinda funny. The 12” run-out read, “What do you think?” At the time of release, rumour had it that you were supposed to splice the 7″ version to the 12″ version for one long continuous mix. Almost impossible to do with a BSR Music Centre in the mid-80s, but these days with free, easy to use software like Audacity, this could be quite easily tested. Anyone fancy trying it?

One minor trivial, trainspottery fact. That scream you hear after 52 seconds of the 12″ version is the sound of Peter Hook and Rob Gretton running into the vocal booth to stick snowballs down the back of Barney’s neck just as he’s about to start singing. S’true!

blue-monday

The biggest selling 12″ record in history

Power, Corruption and Lies is enhanced with the addition of such behemoth non-album tracks as Blue Monday, Confusion and Thieves Like Us. What an album that would’ve made! My 12″ of Blue Monday has the unusual quirk of being labelled incorrectly. The side that says ‘Blue Monday’ actually plays the b-side, ‘The Beach’, and vice-versa. Now, that used to really confuse me at the afore-mentioned parties when I’d play ‘The Beach’ instead of the a-side. It seemed I was the only one who owned a wrongly-labelled record. Anyway, I’ve now heard The Beach a million times more than anyone else and I love the phased, processed drums, synthetic Kraftwerk-aping vocals (listen to ‘Uranium’ from 1975’s ‘Radioactivity’) and elastic band bassline as much as I love the a-side. Have a listen.

true-faith-remix

‘True Faith’ remains my favourite New Order track. Like many of it’s preceding singles, it has also played a part in soundtracking my formative years. I bought the 12″ remix version (above) on the Isle Of Man the day after a particularly memorable and highly personal experience on a park bench in the Douglas Gardens with a girl from Liverpool. Yep! The original version is by far the best, but the 9 min + Shep Pettibone remix is worth a listen, if only for realising just how much those Lifetime Achieving Pet Shop Boys lifted every bang, crash and production technique from it. Nice rinky-dink Chic-esque guitar riffs in it now and again though.

On initial copies of the 4CD ‘Retro‘ box set that came out 4 or 5 years ago, you got a 5th CD of bonus remixes etc. Included on this disc was the mega-rare Pink Noise Morel edit of ‘True Faith’. It sounds very much like the last track of a remix single (ie, no’ that good) but I’ve included it here for curio value.

run2

‘Run 2’ (a re-recording of the track ‘Run‘ from ‘Technique‘) got the band into a bit of bother with American country-folky John Denver. He claimed they stole his melody from ‘Leaving On A Jet Plane’ and the band ended up withdrawing the single. 20,000 were pressed up and distributed. Today selling half that amount would keep you at number 1 for a month or so, but in 1989 record sales were far healthier and New Order’s chart positions not as lofty as they might’ve been. ‘Run 2’ captures New Order at that thing they do best – uplifting yet melancholic music with a great hook. Maybe John Denver had a point…

Another thing. The last time I saw New Order (Glasgow Barrowlands, 2002) I had a tap on the shoulder during ‘Run’. “Sorry pal, but I cannae see for you.”

Pat Nevin! (Google him if you’re none the wiser)

And now the ironic part…

After being released last year, people started complaining about the sound quality of these Deluxe Editions. There were accusations that some of the tracks were mastered onto CD from the vinyl originals instead of the master tapes. Nothing new in this of course. My original CD copy of ‘Kind Of Blue’ has a comforting fluffy sound between blasts of Miles Davis’ trumpet. I like it like that. It takes me back to an era I wasn’t old enough to experience first time round. Even those lovers of lo-fi The La’s have fallen victim of this. Last years ‘Deluxe Edition’ of their debut album (I live in hope) featured tracks that were copied from an old C90 tape that someone at the record company had found behind the sofa, even though the master tapes were made available to them for remastering purposes! It seems the cheaper option was to dub from the old TDK. And there’s the rub. Fleece the fans by getting them to shell out for hard-to-find material but do it as cheaply as possible. New Order quickly withdrew all the re-released albums, making them something of a collector’s edition (if not Deluxe Edition) and until they are re-re-re-released (gently down the stream) some time later this year, the above tracks’ll have to do. Or you could try eBay of course. It doesn’t bother me. I think they sound magic just the way they are.

 

Hard-to-find

Frying Tonight

Craig McAllister

Currently receiving no end of constant rotation in the car at the moment is the snappily-titled compilation ‘A Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble Exploding In Your Mind Volume 1 – Cosmic Space Music’. Curated by The Future Sound Of London’s alter-egos Amorphous Androgynous, it does exactly what it says on the tin. No less a musical visionary than Noel Gallagher mentioned it in his end of year best of list and regardless of what you think of his own particular brand of retro rock, this compilation is the real deal. I’m quite excited by the prospect of another Oasis album, cos if the monobrowed dwarf’s magpie tendencies are anything to go by, it promises to be an absolute cracker. Fingers crossed.

Here’s three taster tracks from Disc 1. I could’ve picked anything to give you a flavour of the album but, really, if you ain’t got this album yet, well, blah blah blah, etc etc, slevver….

pop-levi

No. It’s not Kasabian. Keep reading.

First up, a track by Pop Levi called ‘Blue Honey’. This track sounds like a strange long-lost cousin of Stevie Wonder’s ‘Keep On Runnin”, but with Robert Plant on vocals. It’s extremely heavy on the hammond (maaan) and sounds like it was recorded round about 1972. Imagine my surprise then when after a bit of GoogleWiki-ing, I discovered that Pop Levi is a Liverpudlian who only started making records 5 years ago. Lauren Laverne (mmmmm) tipped him for big things in 2007, but so far the world and all it’s riches still awaits him. Shame, as if Blue Honey is anything to go by, his work has been seriously overlooked. I’m off to play.com as soon as I finish typing this.

betty-davis1

Uh huh!

As something of a musical historian, I am more aware of Betty Davis. Soul siren from the sixties and seventies, she was known as Betty Mabry until marrying Miles Davis. Clearly, Miles’ own brand of don’t-give-a-fuck freakydom rubbed off on his wife. The fact that she ‘knew‘ (cough, allegedly) Sly Stone and Jimi Hendrix only enhances her reputation to this writer. She is one little minx! ‘If I’m Lucky I Might Get Picked Up‘ is a raw throated paen to the joys of one night stands. “Raunchy dancin’…I’m shakin’ my fanny!” In the West of Scotland that means a whole different thing, but we know what she means, eh boys?

mountain-machine

The Betty Davis track segues into a track called ‘Mountain Machine’ by a band called Mountain Machine. Rather embarrassingly, my ignorance of the underground knows no limits. This lot are currently on the go, with an album out and a MySpace page and everything. Acoustic guitars fight for equal billing with some Moog-y sounding effects, backwards guitars and a fuzz toned riff that could be Black Sabbath in their hey day. This track is an instrumental, with the focus firnly on the mental part. Download it, turn it up and fry your ears. Then get on down to play.com where you have at least 3 new purchases to make. See you there!

Cover Versions, entire show, Hard-to-find

The Queen Is Dead….Long Live The Queen

Craig McAllister

My wee girl likes Hannah Montana, High School Musicals 1, 2 and 3 and all that sort of pre-teen garbage. A particular favourite of hers at the moment is Camp Rock, the story of a poor girl who finds herself at a summer school full of rich, beautiful and talented teenagers all intent on making their mark in the business of show. But you don’t need to know that. However. ‘Camp Rock’! I always have a wee snigger at that title. In my head I can picture Freddie Mercury in a puff-sleeve blouse singing “Scaramouch scaramouch do the fandango.” Camp rock. Hee hee. But from today that’s all changed.

morrissey1

Ooh! You are awful!

Morrissey played an intimate show for Radio 2 a couple of nights ago. I missed it at the time but caught it on the iPlayer last night. Initial reactions were….well…..I dunno. His new stuff sounds OK. Just OK. Not the triumphant return to form that you either a) secretly hope for or b) that the arse-licky journalists are required to write in order to have an audience with the grumpy old so-and-so. Highlight for me by a country mile was when he sang ‘This Charming Man’. I don’t have my Smiths history books to hand at the moment, and the old Smiths hardrive I keep somewhere in my brain is playing up, so I can’t tell you exactly when the last time he sang this song, but it was a long, long time ago.

The version he did the other night had me pining for the chiming guitars of Johnny Marr. This version was so LA rock it hurt. Devoid of any subtlety at all, the twin guitars bludgeon the chords to death and it ended up sounding like the bastard offspring of ‘Lust For Life’. If you are in the UK, you can watch it here. See Morrissey in all his barrel-chested, receding hairlined glory. Who ate all the (vegetarian) pies? If you are not in the UK, he looks a bit like Peter Mandelson. Go and google him. As he said himself on Wednesday night, “Life, in all it’s disgusting glory, goes on.” Yeah, so it’s not The Smiths. That’s obvious. But (whisper it)…………I quite like it. Camp rock indeed. I prefer this version though…

At the end of his set he also did a version of old Smiths’ b-side ‘I Keep Mine Hidden’, from the ‘Girlfriend In A Coma’ single if my afore-mentioned hardrive is correct. All tumbling piano riffs and power chords, I also (cough) liked this one (a lot, if truth be told after repeated plays) even if he didn’t do any of the whistling that he does on the original version. If you’re interested in the whole show, it’s here.

So. Not sure what to make of the latest version of Morrissey. I want to like him. I think I like him. But I’m not sure. If he was an artist I didn’t have any history with I’d not even bother with him. But if you are a music lover of a certain vintage (approaching 40 (fuck!)) you have to afford him some of your time. You might not be too keen on Morrissey the musician anymore, but we all still need Morrissey the popstar. “This Charming Man is about being charming, which so few people are these days. I think it’s nice to install these words into people’s brains and who knows, it might rub off on a new generation. We don’t have to be violent, or ugly, or arrogant, just be charming. And what a pleasant world that would be.”

*Bonus track. Stars verion of ‘This Charming Man’. I heard this in Gap a few years ago and spent ages tracking it down. I think you’ll like it.

And another thing. If you’re a fan of all things Morrisseyesque, you could do worse than add The Vinyl Villain to your favourites. Every Friday VV puts up a Friday I’m In Love…With Morrissey post. I’m sure today will be no different.

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

The Making Of A Great Compilation Tape…

Craig McAllister

Stubborn kind of fellow. Marvin Gaye sang a song with the same title but to all intents and purposes he could be talking about himself. Fed up with the non-stop rollercoaster of  Motown promotion and hard-sell and at the same time defying the orders of label boss Berry Gordy (who wanted instant hit after hit), he set up camp for the best part of a year recording what many of us consider to be his masterpiece, ‘What’s Going On’.

I expect most of you here to know about the socio-political overtones in the lyrics, about how at the time (1971) such things were no-go for someone in Gaye’s world of work. You could argue that Marvin pushed open all sorts of doors with ‘What’s Going On’. Certainly, Stevie Wonder’s political work was just around the corner, but Marvin was one of the first mainstream million-selling artists to start writing this sort of stuff. Nowadays anyone from Take That to Leona Lewis can have a political conscience, but Marvin’s work was truly groundbreaking. What makes it all the better was that he cajoled, coerced and conducted the Funk Brothers into playing the grooviest music imaginable. Political music doesn’t have to be flat and one dimensional. Billy Bragg, sit up and listen when I’m talking to you.

marvin-gaye-wgo-sessions

Marvin cajoles, coerces and conducts the Funk Brothers

Listen to this. An instrumental (with the odd leaked Marvin backing vocal thrown in at the end) ‘rhythm ‘n’ strings’ version of the title track of ‘What’s Going On’. Listen to that bassline! Listen to those vibes! The clipped guitar! The finger clicks! The sweeping strings! The bongos, man! THIS IS MUSIC!

Marvin took the same approach to recording a couple of years later when writing ‘Let’s Get It On’. An album dedicated to love, sex and all that sort of stuff, you could be forgiven for thinking that it might sound like a slushy mess if you’ve never heard it. Far from it. Like the album before, Gaye pushes the Funk Brothers to their limits (and they have some seemingly never-ending limits) and makes another belter of an album.

I was always in denial about ‘Let’s Get It On’ as an album. Nothing could ever match up to ‘What’s Going On’ and I thought it was slushy romantic crap the first time I heard it. Played it once then filed it away. Then I heard the title track again, at the end of ‘High Fidelity’ when Jack Black’s band sing it. Instant re-appraisal. Jack Black turned me back on to ‘Let’s Get It On’! S’true!

Listen to the original studio demo of ‘Let’s Get It On’. A bit rougher round the edges than the version Jack Black loves but smooth enough to suggest something might happen upstairs sometime soon. Actually, it’s very smooth. Flutes, piano, backing vocals, wah-wah’d guitar, saxophone. This is one lush demo. I like my demos to feature a wee bit of studio chat and the odd bum note here and there. This one is no different. Except I’ve never heard the Funk Brothers never play a bum note, ever. Even on a demo.

gaye-lgio

Marvin hears that all-too-familiar squeak of the bedsprings from the upstairs neighbours and decides to write ‘Let’s Get It On’.

‘Running From Love’ was an instrumental that never Marvin quite managed to find a complete set of lyrics for, so never made the final cut of the album. Shame, as this version with fuzzed intro makes it sound like some long-lost Blaxploitation theme. The other version is slicker and smoother and would make great incidental music on a chocolate advert. Ideal, indeed, for gettin’ it on. With Valentine’s Day but a few days away, what better present to give your loved one than a CD of these downloaded beauties? And if he/she thinks it’s the worst present in the world…ever, then you’ve got to ask yourself if they’re really worth the effort.

marvin_gaye_in_studio

Double Nugget, Hard-to-find

‘I Need You’ Double Nugget Double Whammy

Craig McAllister

‘I Need You’ first appeared as the b-side of The Kinks‘ 1965 single ‘See My Friends’. A proto-punk garage band belter of a track, it starts of with some nifty Dandy Dave Davis feedback and continues kicking and screaming it’s way through some clattering drum breaks, decent ‘aaah-aaah’ backing vocals and the obligatory screaming guitar solo before ending in exactly the same fashion as ‘All Day And All Of The Night’. These days you can get it as one of the extra tracks on the CD reissue of ‘Kinda Kinks’, or on the first disc of the hit ‘n’ miss 6 CD Kinks box set, ‘Picture Book’. Or you can get it here.

 

kinks-roof

The Kinks. Of Kourse.

The Rationals came from Detroit. Arguably the first in a long line of classic garage blues bands from the area (Amboy Dukes/Iggy & the Stooges/MC5/Mitch Ryder/White Stripes/Soledad Brothers/Dirtbombs/Detroit Cobras/ etc etc etc), like most beat groups of their era they took up arms after being wooed by the sounds of The Who, The Kinks, The Stones and that other lot a-blasting across the Atlantic.

rationals

Guess who?

Using The Kinks version as a blueprint for their brief career, The Rationals’ 1968 version of ‘I Need You’ replicates the original, right down to the gutterpunk feedback at the start. Difference is, their version is about twice as fast and twice as raw. Better screaming guitar solo too.

I went to see John McCusker, Roddy Woomble and Kris Drever play last night. They were fantastic. They were supported by Boo Hewerdine and a girl called Heidi who could really sing. Even the first support act, 2 local teenage lads, one dressed like he was off to see Green Day, the other calling himself Tragic O’Hara were decent. They finger picked their way through a brief set of ‘my women done gone and left me and all I got left is this here empty bottle‘ type stuff. A bit cliched perhaps, but give them time. It was busy too. I’m telling ya, folk is the new indie. Keep it up lads!  

Listening to the ‘hip‘ output on BBC6 Music this week, it’s clear we really need records/artists like these above. If bands like Bloc Party can continually get away with releasing records that sound like a half-finished argument with Pro-Tools and White Lies are ‘the next big thing’, I think I might find myself mining by-gone eras for hidden treasure. Keep visiting to find out!

Cover Versions, Gone but not forgotten, Hard-to-find, Studio master tapes, studio outtakes

Johnny Marr’s Dansette Delights

Craig McAllister

For Johnny Marr, the 7″ is king. The latest edition of Mojo has him picking his 10 essential 7″s (+ 6  8! bonus tracks). He’s even designed a CD cover as well. All you need is the music…..

johnny_marr_3

I’ve lifted the picture above and some of the text below from Mojo’s website. Credit where it’s due and that.
1. Del Shannon
Keep Searchin’ (We’ll Follow The Sun)
(Stateside B-side, 1964)
Johnny Marr: “The influence of [A-side] The Answer To Everything on me when writing Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want is well documented so I picked its sister record, this time. It was the sound of the house when I was little.”
2. The Rolling Stones
Get Off Of My Cloud
(Decca single, 1965)
Johnny Marr: “The main thing I took from Keith Richards was his musical ideology; that there is a nobility in playing rhythm guitar and being the engine room and steering the ship, all these very valorous concepts which he threw in the face of guitar culture in the early ’70s.”
3. T.Rex
Metal Guru
(T-Rex Wax Co. single, 1972)

Johnny Marr: “It’s so beautiful and commercial but slightly weird and I could not believe what I was hearing because it was so all-encompassing. It connected with something beyond my regular senses.”

4. The Isley Brothers
Behind A Painted Smile
(Tamla Motown B-side, 1969)

Johnny Marr: “Motown provided a fantastic alternative to the rock music my mates were getting into. I ventured into this place called Rare Records on John Dalton Street in Manchester, I went into the basement and I remember to this day it was like a sea of future happiness.”

5. Iggy And The Stooges
Gimme Danger
(Raw Power LP track, CBS 1973)

Johnny Marr: “I remember getting on the bus and just staring at the front cover in disbelief all the way home. I wasn’t disappointed when I played it because it sounded like I thought it would. It was mysterious, sexy, druggy, riffy and to-the-point.”

6. The Crystals
There’s No Other Like My Baby
(Philles single, 1961)

Johnny Marr: “There is an unpretentiousness to it, and compared to what was passing itself off as weird in rockland with prog music at the time this just sounded weirder to me, and it seemed to come from an odder dimension.”

7. Blondie
Hanging On The Telephone
(Chrysalis single, 1978 )

Johnny Marr: “It reminds me of going to parties and really complaining that I didn’t want to hear Peaches by The Stranglers for the eleventh time and going through record collections with all that ELO shit in them and pulling out *Parallel Lines and going, ‘Alright then, let’s listen to this very, very loud!’”

8. Bob And Marcia
Young Gifted And Black
(Harry J single, 1970)

Johnny Marr: “It was one of the records that both Morrissey and myself liked in the same way. It reminded us both of being youthful fanatics and being outside of the norm… Then, amazingly, when [New Order’s] Bernard Sumner and I started to get close we both discovered that we liked that record in the same way.”

9. The Equals
Black Skin Blue Eyed Boys
(President single, 1970)

Johnny Marr: “Some records you wear down and you wear out but this one… I remember it from being out from when I was a kid but unlike some of the other tracks I play, I don’t listen to it for that reason, I like it because it reminds me of something shared between me and my mate.”

10. The Cribs
Hey Scenesters
(Wichita single, 2005)

Johnny Marr: “A fantastic working class street rock’n’roll 45 that could only have come from a band in this country. It’s like, Move over, this is the new generation. The Jarmans are as hip as street musicians get from any generation.”

Bonus Tracks:

Paul Davidson – Midnight Rider (Tropical single, 1976)

Johnny Marr: “Aside from Keith Richards’ on Gimme Shelter, Midnight Rider contains my favourite ever guitar solo.”

 

Alternative TV – Action Time Vision (Deptford Fun City single, 1978 )
Built To Spill – In Your Mind (Ancient Melodies Of The Future LP track, WEA, 2001)
The Drifters – I Count The Tears (Atlantic, 1960)
Johnny Marr: “If you were to play this to the other members of The Smiths it would remind them of being in a band with me. I used to sing and play it on the guitar when we weren’t recording and forced everyone to sing along. They learned to love it!”

Hamilton Bohannon – Disco Stomp (Dakar/Brunswick, 1975)
No direct quote from Johnny, but he’s said before that Disco Stomp influenced the swampy rhythm of How Soon Is Now. That record, and undoubtedly a huge side order of Bo Diddley.


TV On The Radio – Wolf Like Me (4AD single, 2006)

!!!Extra Bonus Tracks!!!

Del Shannon – The Answer To Everything

Johnny Marr: “The influence of ‘The Answer to Everything’ on me when writing ‘Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want’ with The Smiths is well documented.” It is? ! ?

Rolling Stones – Gimme Shelter (Guitar track from recording session)

Johnny Marr: “Keith Richards was badass. His solo on ‘Gimme Shelter’ is my favourite ever guitar solo.“

johnny_cd_artwork

 

Download the entire set + artwork here.

I’ve written about Johnny Marr before. Have a read here

***Woops! Numpty Alert!

In my haste to bring you this excellent compilation, I mistakenly put the wrong TV On The Radio track on the album. Playing it in the car today I though, “Hang on! That’s not ‘Wolf Like Me’! Idiot!” But this is. So if you downloaded the .rar file previously, you’ll need it to correct the tracklisting on the compilation You can also download front and back cover artwork here (made by my good self). Ta!

Gone but not forgotten, Hard-to-find

Happy Birthday Rabbie

Craig McAllister

250 years young today. I love Burns. Had him drummed into me at school. In fact, anyone who goes to school in the West of Scotland knows all about him. And as a teacher, I love banging on about him to my class. Here’s a brief history for any uninitiated out there…

robert-burns

Born on the 25th January, 1759 in Alloway (now a posh part of Ayr). Scrawny boy, wasn’t expected to live long. Helped his dad on the farm. Wasn’t cut out for it. His dad, though poor, paid for Robert to go to school. Robert excelled in academia. Began writing poems to go along with the folk songs his mother had sung to him. People liked them. Drifted around Ayrshire. Had a reputation as a ladies man. Loved them and left them. Made plans to go to Jamaica as a slave driver (they don’t tell you that in school). Was just about to go when someone in Kilmarnock published the first edition of his poetry. This edition made it’s way to Edinburgh and Robert followed. The Edinburgh high society loved him. He loved their women. He loved life. Spent the equivalent in today’s terms of £170,000! That’s £170,000 pissed against a wall. Made a hasty retreat, skint, to Dumfries when he was caught having an affair. Married Jean Armour, the love of his life and went back to the farming. Hated it. Became a tax man. Hated that. Died of a heart condition aged on 21st July 1796, aged just 37. At the time of his death he had fathered at least 13 children to various women throughout Ayrshire, Edinburgh and Dumfries. Stick that in yer pointy boots, Russel Brand.

Here‘s The Ramones doing ‘Happy Birthday’ to Mr Burns on The Simspons.

demo, Gone but not forgotten

Michelle, Ma(ma) Belle

Craig McAllister

I love you, I love you, I lo-oooo-ve you! Had I been a teenage boy in the 60s I’d have had posters of Mama Michelle Phillips all over my wall. She was Laurel (Canyon) to Mama Cass’s Oliver Hardy, the skinniest, blondest hippy chick in the whole of sun-kissed California and quite possibly the sexiest girl singer ever, although that last point is clearly open to healthy debate.

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Michelle. On the pool again.

The story of The Mamas and The Papas is best told by listening to their #5 1967 US single ‘Creeque Alley‘, taken from the group’s 3rd LP, ‘Mamas and Papas Deliver’. I remember going to a jumble sale with my Dad sometime in the 70s (long before ‘jumble sales’ became ‘car boot sales’) and my Dad buying ‘Deliver‘ for 10p. Fast forward to the end of the 80s and, armed with an encylopediac knowledge of The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, Love and West Coast music in general I pinched the album from my Dad’s collection. He still doesn’t know.

Anyway. ‘Creeque Alley’ outlines the whole story of The Mamas and The Papas from the pre-fame hungry years to the cusp of the giddy heights of Ed Sullivan and Monterey, taking in all the sights, sounds and sex that the 60s revolution could throw at them. It’s a good read and it’s a good listen.

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Un-used picture from the ‘Deliver’ photo sessions

John and Mitchie were gettin’ kinda itchie
just to leave the folk music behind
Zal and Denny workin’ for a penny
tryin’ to get a fish on the line
In a coffee house Sebastian sat
and after every number they passed the hat
McGuinn and McGuire just are gettin’ higher
in L.A. you know where that’s at
And no one’s getting fat except Mama Cass.

Zallie said ‘Denny, you know there aren’t many
who can sing a song the way that you do’ (Let’s go South)
Denny said ‘Zallie, golly, don’t you think that I wish
I could play guitar like you’
Zal, Denny and Sebastian sat (at the Night Owl)
And after every number they passed the hat
McGuinn and McGuire just are gettin’ higher
in L.A. you know where that’s at
And no one’s getting fat except Mama Cass.


To paraphrase – John and Michelle (already an item) are fed up playing folk music to the finger-in-the-ear brigade who can’t embrace the new sounds of the day. Zal Yanovsky (later of the Lovin’ Spoonful) and future Papa Denny Doherty were playing together in Nova Scotia in The Future III . The band were just about to break up and Zal and Denny would soon find themselves down and out in New York City. Meanwhile, another future Lovin’ Spoonful member John Sebastian was playing Greenwich Village coffee houses such as the Night Owl for pennies (in the same way Dylan had done a few years earlier). Roger McGuinn and Barry ‘Eve Of Destruction’ McGuire were also part of this scene. They were possibly the Furry Freak Brothers of their generation. Long haired, broke and fond of the odd jazz cigarette. No-one had any money for food. Indeed, the only one who was fat was Mama Cass. But she always had been.

When Cass was a Sophomore, planned to go to Swarthmore,
But she changed her mind one day
Standing on the turnpike, thumb out to hitchhike,
Take her to New York right away
When Denny met Cass he gave her love bumps
Call John and Zal, and that was the Mugwumps
McGuinn and McGuire couldn’t get no higher
but that’s what they were aiming at
And no one’s getting fat except Mama Cass.

Mugwumps, hi-jumps, low slumps, big bumps,
don’t you work as hard as you play
Drink-up, break-up, everything is shake-up
Guess it had to be that way
Sebastian and Zal formed the Spoonful
Michelle, John and Denny gettin’ very tuneful
McGuinn and McGuire just are catchin’ fire
in L.A. you know where that’s at
And everybody’s gettin’ fat except Mama Cass.


Cass had bumped into Denny and Zal on the club circuit and suggested they work together. Things were going well, but Cass had won a place at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. However, she let her heart rule her head, falling for Denny and forming The Mugwumps at the same time. You can listen to ‘I Don’t Wanna Know’ here. Proto-Papas for sure. The Mugwumps were a good-time band (“Don’t you work as hard as you play“) and like a gazillion might-have-beens before them, they broke up. Zal and John went off to find fame and fortune in The Lovin’ Spoonful, a band who’s sound owes quite a lot to The Mugwumps. Here‘s ‘Coconut Grove’, a piece of groovy 60s soft rock. D’you know where the band took their name from? Same as 10CC. Google it…

Broke, busted, disgusted, agents can’t be trusted,
and Mitchie wants to go to the sea
Cass can’t make it, she says we’ll have to fake it
We knew she’d come eventually
Greasin’ on American Express card
Tents, low rents, and keepin’ out the heat’s hard
Duffy’s good vibrations, and our imaginations,
can’t go on indefinitely
And California Dreaming is becoming a reality.

 

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Round about now, Barry McGuire’s ‘Eve Of Destruction’ was a Dylan-aping monster hit and The Byrds were in full flight. Things on the scene were looking good. Everyone downed an upper and upped a gear. But poor old Cass was still skint. Not that you’d know by looking at her. Also skint, fed up and freezing cold in New York, John and Michelle headed south to the Caribbean. Cass and Denny followed. They rented a house on the Virgin Isles called Duffy’s (it was near a road called Creeque Alley), started writing and playing as a four-piece vocal harmony group and the rest is wife-swapping intra-band sexual jealousies of a Fleetwood Mac nature history.

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Round round get around, she got around.

Incidentally, ‘Creeque‘ is pronounced ‘creaky‘, as in door, or my knees after a game of football.

Video from Ed Sullivan Show….

And another thing. My computer is playing silly games tonight and won’t lay out the page as I’d like to. I wanted the lyrics in the middle and in a much smaller font than the other words. And I’d like to have made the above video a bit smaller. All these things I should be able to do. I consider myself kinda computer literate (without being too geeky).  Dunno what happened. Bet it was them internet police again.

Cover Versions, Hard-to-find

Round Round Get Around He Gets Around

Craig McAllister

Everyone’s favourite spectacle-sporting singer from The Best Band In The World…Ever (that’ll be the Teenage Fanclub) Norman Blake is no stranger to the odd side project or two. As well as playing in parallel with TFC and BMX Bandits until 1991 when, let’s face it, Teenage Fanclub became really really good and so much better than the Bandits, he’s also added his golden chords and vocals to records by The Pastels, Kevin Ayers, the Trashcan Sinatras and Bill Wells. And he plays tonight in Glasgow alongside Gorky’s Euros Childs. A walking side project for hire, the Bellshill Beach Boy knows them all. This, then, is as good a time as any to point you in the direction of a few Norman Blake curios. Tracks that may have slipped underneath your Teenage Fanclub radar but would undoubtedly have become firm favourites by now, were they to have been presented as Teenage Fanclub records.

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In the mid/late 90s Norman teamed up with future Fannie Francis MacDonald as Frank Blake and in ’96 recorded a one-off limited single for Shoeshine Records. Being a collector of all things Fanclub-related I naturally have a copy. ‘Don’t Let Love Pass You By’ is a slice of classic Blakery – a mid-paced love song with typically tricky jangling chords here and there. It even has the grace to start with the chorus so you know how it goes after the first 20 seconds. ‘Plastic Bag’ is a bit different. It sounds, for want of a better word, ‘light’, as in the total opposite of AC/DC. It passes by pleasantly enough, but those wonky keyboards and acoustic guitars have always been a bit too twee for these ears. Sorry Norman.

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Frank Blake also recorded a version of Frank Zappa’s ‘Anyway The Wind Blows‘. I must confess that until recently I had no idea this was a cover version, so I was all over the internet until I could find a version of Zappa’s original. As it turns out, the cover is a fairly faithful reworking of the original. I have a version somewhere of Alex Chilton backed by the TFC live in Glasgow. They do a  grrrrreat version of it. I’ll have to dig that one out for your appraisal sometime  I took this quote from the Shoeshine Records website…

“I hadn’t heard any Frank Zappa and I was wondering what he sounded like. I thought his most musical thing would be his first thing so I got the first Mothers Of Invention LP. I started playing through it and ‘Anyway The Wind Blows’ was the really obvious pop song. I thought it was really good and would be fun to do. Again, it was all done pretty quickly and just sort of worked out on the spot because that’s the way Frank Blake like to work.”

Lastly, tucked away at the very end of a 2001 Shoeshine Records sampler I have ‘You Don’t Have To Cry’ by Frank ‘Jackson’ Blake. There are no sleevenotes with the sampler and I can find no information about this song/band line-up at all. I can only assume this is Blake, MacDonald and Belle & Sebastian’s Stevie Jackson, but I may be wrong. In any case, this track is a belter. It sounds like something the Everly Brothers would have done some time in 1961. In fact, ‘You Don’t Have To Cry‘ sounds so good it has to be a cover. Right? I think it’s a Gene Clark song. Yeah? It sure sounds like it. Someone help me out here.

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I’ve had this picture for ages and was looking for any excuse to put it up here. Cracker, eh?