Wouldn’t you love to? The ironic thing is, the track in question doesn’t even feature Sarah Cracknell on vocals, but it is one of the best Saint Etienne tracks you’re ever likely to hear. This is not a media hype…
‘Filthy’ began life in 1991 on the b-side of ‘Only Love Can Break Your Heart’ and features the enigmatic (and 15 year old) Q-Tee on vocals. It’s dubby and spacey. There’s a bit of wah-wah which may well have been sampled from an obscure 70s soul record, a looped drum break that could’ve come from the same record, a cracking (sampled? probably) bassline that’s been looped to infinity and even a glockenspiel solo at one point. I used to get quite annoyed that my copy on 12″ sounded like someone was frying bacon on top of it. Years later I got ‘Filthy’ on CD and I realised the vinyl crackles and pops had been added for effect. Actually, maybe they haven’t. They might be crackles from the original vinyl that had been sampled when jigsawing the track together. I hadn’t thought of that until now!
Q-Tee
On top of the fantastic music and the snaps! crackles! and pops! you get Q-Tee’s vocals. Starting out like a sexy version of PIL’s ‘Public Image’, “Hello? Hello? Hahahaha!”, they are husky, half-rapped, half-spoken and half-sung (can you have 3 halves?) and they make the track what it is – a b-side that should’ve been an a-side. I think Saint Etienne themselves recognised Q-Tee’s contribution to the track, because they got her back to rap on ‘Calico‘, when they recorded the ‘So Tough’ LP. They also appear to have realised how good a track ‘Filthy ‘was, because it’s been available in at least 2 other versions since 1991.
In 1995, Saint Etienne teamed up with French chanteuse Etienne Daho, to form St Etienne Daho. They released a 5 track ep, half in French, half in English. (Halves again!) On it you’ll find a re-working of ‘He’s On The Phone’ called ‘Accident (Week-End à Rome)’ that’s pretty good, but the ep is worth getting just for the track ‘Jungle Pulse‘, which is ‘Filthy‘ sung in French. Etienne Daho sounds like MC Solaar rapping on the top. Sarah adds a whispered French thingy in the background and the whole track rolls along nicely. C’est magnifique.
In February this year, Saint Etienne released ‘Boxette‘, which compiles all their hard-to-get and highly collecatble fan club only ep’s and albums. A collector’s wet dream, it has all the Saint Etienne you’ll ever need spread over 4 CDs. It was only available through their fan club and sold for £25. It now goes for around £100 on eBay, so start saving or look below…..The first disc is brilliant. There’s not one bit of filler on it. ‘Filthy‘ makes an appearance, this time under the guise of ‘Studio Kinda Filthy’. A bit less dubby but a bit more echoey and a whole lot more spy film, it’s equally worth having. Extra points too for the old-school sampled BBC announcer at the start.
Do di do di do, do, di, do di do, do di do di do di do di, do di do di do!
Elsewhere on ‘Boxette‘ you’ll find their version of David Bowie’s ‘Absolute Beginners’ (Not very good to be honest. Neither was it when I saw them play it live in 1991). Anyway. I don’t normally post whole albums of stuff that are available and/or new, but as ‘Boxette‘ was limited to 3000 copies and has long since sold out and been deleted, in these credit crunch times save your eBay pennies and click on these links:
Poke about and you’ll find all the artwork you need and you can fashion your own Blue Peter-style Saint Etienne ‘Boxette‘ box set. I did and it looks great!
Plain Or Pan 
