After last week’s covers special, this week the blog catches up, picking a diverse range of tunes inspired by events from the last fortnight or so. Enjoy!
State Of Art – Friends Again (1984)
I’m starting this catch up week with a track and a story that I’ve already posted on social media but make no apologies for including it again here for you blog readers as it was such a musical highlight for me and many others. Two weeks ago, I attended the 60th birthday party of a friend of mine, John. He has had a couple of mentions on the blog before as he is a great man for his music. So much so that when he and his wife Lis bought the Woodside Hotel in Aberdour, he used it as a boutique (ie small and off the beaten track) venue for gigs. I’ve been lucky enough to see some great shows there over the years including artists as diverse as Glen Tilbrook, Rab Noakes and China Crisis. One of John’s favourite artists, James Grant, has played a number of excellent gigs and John named the main venue room after him – the Grant Room. John is also a big fan of The Bathers and hosted one of their online lockdown gigs in the hotel and became friends with Chris Thomson from the band. Those who know their 80s Glasgow indie bands will be starting to guess where this story is going. Anyway, Chris was among a number of John’s friends who gathered in the Grant Room to celebrate John’s birthday where Lis had arranged for Springsteen tribute band The Rising to play what was a hugely enjoyable, raucous set later in the evening – let’s just say, a drink or two had been taken! Anyway, back at the start of the night, John’s mate Kenny welcomed everyone to the party and announced his gift to John by saying “Everyone put your hands together for…. James Grant!” Completely unknown to John, James walks in with his guitar, sets up on stage and says, “OK John, what songs do you want to hear”. After Whisky Dream and a gorgeous Walk The Last Mile, James invites his former Friends Again bandmate Chris to join him on stage for an impromptu performance of the band’s wonderful 1983 single State Of Art. It was a magic moment, even if the start was slightly hesitant as Chris only found out this was going to happen when he turned up at the event. As Chris returned to his place in the crowd, James stated his huge admiration for Chris’s writing of this brilliant song forty years ago and noting that he includes it in every set he performs to this day. I’m not a fan of filming at gigs, but I made an exception in this case and you can see it being performed here. What might be interesting is to compare the two guys in the video with their fresh faced former selves in the booklet that accompanied the Friends Again EP gatefold double pack 7″ single back in 1984. James kindly signed my copy at a previous gig – next time, Chris!
Paid In Full [7 Minutes Of Madness Coldcut Remix] – Eric B & Rakim (1987)
According to many observers who know better than I do, Hip Hop was fifty years old on 11 August as this was the date of a party held in Sedgwick Ave in the Bronx in 1973, hosted by 18 year old Clive Campbell who went under the likely name of DJ Kool Herc. Quite what went on that night I’m not sure but legend has it that it the global music phenomenon grew from there. There clearly were other contributions – for example, Gill Scott-Heron’s debut LP containing The Revolution Will Not Be Televised was released in 1971. But let’s not split hairs and accept the 50th anniversary of what author Nels Abbey considers as “one of the most influential catalysts for cultural change (which has) powered empathy, boundary-pushing storytelling and a cascade of postcolonial and anticolonial messages” for black and other minority groups. While I can see this, I can still struggle with the bling, the bragging, the violent imagery and the misogyny that the music can often feature. Like others in the UK, I first became aware of it through Sylvia Robinson’s Sugar Hill Records, in particular the ground breaking Rappers Delight by the Sugarhill Gang in 1979. But it was buying the 1981 12 inch single The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel that got me really listening. Recorded live using three turntables, it is a tour de force of Flash’s virtuoso Bronx DJ skills in scratching and sampling in the “breaks”. Throughout the 80s I bought a number of records by artists like Eric B & Rakim and A Tribe Called Quest and the fun-filled genius of De La Soul’s 3ft High & Rising became one of my favourite albums. However, by the end of the decade, the gangstas and the guns moved in and the fun moved out and my interest in this genre waned significantly. I still have a dance mix tape I made (on a TDK AR90!) where the ‘Letraset’ title on the box is Geeza Break, Big Man – A Hippity Hoppity Housey Housey Compilation. Well, it amused me at the time. So I’ve chosen an Eric B & Rakim track from that tape to celebrate the early years of Hip Hop. Queen’s DJ Eric Barrier and Long Island MC Rakim Allah were seen as the pre-eminent DJ/MC partnership at the time and Paid In Full is packed with inventive loops and samples and a witty lyric. The version included here is the remix by London electronic dance duo Coldcut which layered on multiple further samples, including the phrases “Pump up the volume” and “Def with the record” which were used on many other records at the time. They are actually sampled from the lyrics of a track called I Know You Got Soul by Eric B and Rakim themselves!
The Weight – The Band [featuring The Staple Singers] (1976)
The passing of Robbie Robertson last week was marked by much reflection on his long career and the cross-generational influence of his music particularly in the 60s, firstly with the newly electric Bob Dylan and then with The Band. Their 1968 debut record Music From Big Pink and the self-titled 1969 follow up took the developing contemporary rock sound and processed it through folk, country, soul and R’n’B giving some credence to an argument that makes them the fathers of what is now widely referred to as Americana. Their sound had three singers sharing vocals and harmonising, all backed by fine musicianship including Robertson’s economic but superlative guitar playing. By 1970, they were on the cover of Time magazine but increasing tension between Robertson and the others led them to splitting by the mid 70s. While he went on to make several solo records and write movie soundtracks, Robertson is probably best remembered for The Band’s 1976 farewell concert which was filmed by Martin Scorsese and released two years later as The Last Waltz. They were joined on stage in San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom by a galaxy of stars including Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Muddy Waters, Van Morrison and Neil Young. I have chosen to include one of Robertson’s most memorable songs on the playlist. The Weight tells the story of a guy who visits Nazareth but feels loaded down by the number of people his friend Fanny asks him to check up on for her. Full of biblical imagery, Robertson has noted it is about “impossible sainthood” but admitted he located the song in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, where his Martin D-28 guitar was made. [Bizarrely, Dunfermline’s finest rock band Nazareth took their name from the opening line of this song.] The version of The Weight featured in the movie is not as it was performed on the night of the concert with lead vocals shared between Levon Helm and Rick Danko – that can be heard here. Scorsese uses a more soulful version recorded separately with The Band joined by the Staple Singers where Mavis and Pops also take a verse each and fill out the harmonies in style. I urge you to click on this link to the movie clip and watch these artists at work – it is, as Mavis whispers into her mic at the end, “beautiful”!
She Comes From The Rain – The Weather Prophets (1987)
If we class the Friends Again track as a great lost song of the 80s, then this would be the second of these in this week’s blog. The title suggests it’s going to be another post about the poor summer weather with related wider comment on climate change but it is something more simple than that. Last Sunday was the birthday of a guy called Pete Astor who was the writer and leader of two 80s indie bands, The Loft and The Weather Prophets. The Loft were one of the first bands to sign for Alan McGee’s Creation label and released two well-received singles Up The Hill And Down Again (which topped the UK Indie Chart in 1985) and Why Does The Rain. The band then had one of those acrimonious musical differences splits in 1986 and Astor formed The Weather Prophets with drummer Dave Morgan. Initially they continued with Creation and their great debut single Almost Prayed sounded remarkably like The Loft and was again lauded by the critics. A move to WEA subsidiary Elevation Records in 1987 was seen as their career stepping up and Lenny Kaye of the Patti Smith Group was hired to produce their first album. They appeared on the cover of the NME in March 1987 to support the release of the album Mayflower and this lead single She Comes From The Rain. With major record company heft, both charted in the lower reaches of the UK record charts, with the single reaching giddy heights of No 62. Sadly, this was to prove their “up the hill” moment and, as predicted on Astor’s debut single, they ended up “down again”. As you can hear on this track, Kaye’s production beefed up their original indie sound, bringing the drums and bass forward into the mix and adding depth to the vocals. But somehow this meant they fell between the hipsters and mainstreamers. Sales did not increase and WEA dropped them. After a short return to Creation for a second album and a couple of singles, the band folded. Astor began a long solo career which continues to this day combined with lecturing/writing about music at the University of Westminster. My love of this tune is more than just the Roger McGuinn style guitar lick and the great harmony vocal in the rolling chorus, although that has a lot to do with it. It just that everytime I hear it, it takes me back to a flat in East Claremont St in Edinburgh in the late spring of 1987 when I met Lynn for the first time. “I’ve got a friend, she’s in my dreams/She comes from the rain and the rain makes green”.
Little Sister – Elvis Presley (1973)
Wednesday 16 August was the anniversary of the death of Elvis Presley from a prescription drug overdose at Gracelands in 1977 aged just 42. Having very much enjoyed the Baz Luhrmann bio-pic Elvis last year, I must admit to being more impacted by this now than I was at the time of his death. Back then, I was 17 years old and rather blindly engaged in the ‘Year Zero’ re-set approach being adopted in the punk movement. The b-side to White Riot, the first Clash single released in March 1977, was a song called 1977 which had the chorus “No Elvis, Beatles or the Rolling Stones in 1977!”. By the time this prophecy about the first of these three came true, I was already in thrawl to another Elvis, whose debut record My Aim Is True had arrived on the wave of new music coming out of punk in July 1977. Declan Patrick Aloysius McManus had been trading as DP Costello but when signing for Stiff Records he was persuaded to adopt the Elvis name by his management just to attract attention – which worked! It quickly became clear that Costello was no punk but a musical polymath and, equally quickly, the daft Year Zero thinking was abandoned by anyone with a brain. However, in comparison to the Beatles and the Stones, I still saw Presley as some sort of bloated old cabaret star adored by people’s parents. But a Radio 1 Live In Concert broadcast home taped by me in 1980 caused me to re-think. Costello and The Attractions had been recorded in the sweaty basement of the Hope & Anchor pub in Islington in May 1980, playing a gig where keyboard player Steve Nieve was ill and he was replaced on the night by Martin Belmont, guitarist with Graham Parker & The Rumour. The set had been hastily revamped to include some covers including Help Me by Sonny Boy Williamson, One More Heartache by Marvin Gaye and Don’t Look Back by The Temptations. At one point Costello announces that the next song was by an “unknown singer from Tupelo, Mississippi” and the band swung into Little Sister. I was vaguely aware of the song but not aware it was made popular by Presley. Some checking up left me thinking. So, Elvis plays Elvis – wow?! Presley recorded the song in Nashville in 1961 so it doesn’t hail from his Sun Studio heyday but it is still a mighty tune reaching No 1 in the UK as a double A-side with His Latest Flame. Scotty Moore plays that great guitar riff on the original recording but when Presley recorded Little Sister again as part of his live shows in Vegas in 1970, he was backed the TCB band featuring bass player Jerry Scheff and guitarist James Burton. There’s a great rehearsal clip of them here. Sixteen years later, when Costello put the Attractions on hold to make his brilliant King of America album in 1986, he was backed by a group of American musicians he called The Confederates. And of course, the bass player and guitarist in The Confederates were none other than Jerry Scheff and James Burton.
Emmylou – First Aid Kit (2012)
The blog began with a track which I had heard played live and it’s finishing with another one. On Wednesday, we went to see First Aid Kit in Edinburgh on their sold-out UK tour in support of their recent ‘deluxe’ edition of their Nov 2022 album Palomino. If you haven’t listened to First Aid Kit, I suggest that you put that right straight away. Comprising sisters Klara and Johanna Kloderberg and hailing from just outside Stockholm, they began performing their own harmony-drenched country-folk songs in their mid teens and uploaded them to MySpace – remember that?! A cover of a Fleet Foxes track they put on YouTube got promoted by the song’s writer Robin Pecknold and that led to record deal for their first album in 2008. Their career took off from there with endorsements by Conor Oberst, recordings with Jack White and award ceremony performances in Stockholm for Polar Award winners Patti Smith (Dancing Barefoot, 2011) and Paul Simon (America, 2012). On Wednesday it felt like we had caught them at the top of their game, performing with the confidence of being five albums and 15 years into their career. While still young, they are consummate stage musicians with Karla on guitar generally singing the melody and Johanna plays bass while singing those amazing harmony lines, which is no mean feat. They performed with understated but excellent backing from a guitarist, keyboard player and drummer and all of them looked like they were having the time of their lives. The set was well paced, boldly opening with recent single and all-out pop banger Angel which, if we lived in a sensible world, would have been a huge hit record, heard blaring from radios everywhere. Like all the tracks on it’s parent album, it takes their folk and country roots and turbo-charges them, at times giving an Abba-esque sheen which is fully embraced in the video link above. Those folk and country roots were on show as they proceeded to take a tour through their back catalogue, at one point gathering round a single mic to duet on the gorgeous Ghost Town from their debut LP and the singalong Hem Of Her Dress. But the highlight for me was Emmylou, their timeless homage to two of their favorite country-rock songwriting partnerships (and mine!) – Emmylou Harris & Gram Parsons and Johnny Cash & June Carter. This video link is them performing it in front of Emmylou and reducing her to tears as she received the Polar Prize in 2015. This baldy old bloke generally goes to gigs full of the same type people but the audience demographic on Wednesday covered all ages and was heavily weighted towards females. Many of them sang along to every word including Dancing Queen which the sisters had the chutzpah to have playing over the PA as they left the stage!
Last Word
As you can see if you’ve got this far, I struggled to avoid the rabbit holes this week as there were just so many of them to disappear down. But I got things over the line for the Friday deadline – just! It’s pleasing to see the number of views to the site slowly but steadily increasing. Thanks for taking the time out to drop in.
The master playlist has been updated with these tracks taking it to 10 hours and 30 minutes of great tunes. Enough for anybody, I feel. Don’t you?
AR
Week In Sound 
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