Welcome back my friends to the blog that never ends – well not so far anyway. Another mix of six great tunes for you inspired by the week gone by. Enjoy!

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Box Full Of Letters – Wilco (1995)

I can almost hear the collective groan as I playlist another Wilco track having included one about a month ago. My excuse (if I needed one) is that my favourite band rolled into Edinburgh last Saturday as part of short UK tour and once again blew my socks off with a brilliant two hour career-spanning set. Having returned to their roots with a gentle alt-country album last year, a less rock focussed gig might have been expected. But not a bit of it. Although four tracks from 2022’s Cruel Country were in the set, there were four songs from each of their experimental alt-rock highs of the early 2000s, A Ghost Is Born and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. So there were plenty of guitar wig-outs with squalling walls of feedback on show. Even last year’s Bird Without A Tail was given a fantastic extended guitar break with their avant-garde guitarist Nels Cline being matched every step of the way by multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone. But having had your ears assaulted last month by the guitar noise of Handshake Drugs (performed on Saturday night in all its glory), I have chosen the track they played from their debut record AM back in 1995. At this point their sound was fairly straight alt-country rock and only guitarist and songwriter Jeff Tweedy and bass player John Stirrat remain from this period. Essentially a break-up song, Box Full Of Letters thumps along wonderfully – the link here is some fan footage from this year’s US tour with a great intro. The lyric “I’ve got a lot of your records/In a separate stack/Some things that I might like to hear/But I guess I’ll give ’em back” is era defining and perfectly captures the risks of sharing music in a relationship in those pre-digital days. A dilemma indeed.

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Back In The USSR – The Beatles (1968)

This week I read a wee story about Ringo Starr that I’d never heard before. The Beatles spent the summer of 1968 locked away getting on each others nerves recording the sprawling and unfocussed White Album, their only double album. It covers a diverse range of styles which reflected the slow ongoing fragmentation in the group as they moved towards their break-up. The three main songwriters were pulling in different directions and were working on their own tunes independently. The resulting sessions at Abbey Road and Trident were challenging with George Martin’s influence waning and engineer Geoff Emerick quitting due to the negative atmosphere. Only 16 of the 30 tracks feature all four band members performing with overdubs on most instruments performed by the composer of the song. As a (very) occasional songwriter but the provider of the rhythm which held everything together, Starr felt the brunt of all this tension. On 22 August, the band were working on McCartney’s Back In The USSR with the bad tempered writer constantly critical of his bandmate’s drumming as they were rehearsing the song. Starr got up and walked out saying he was quitting. When he didn’t return over the next few days, the others realised he was serious and all of them pleaded with him to return. When he eventually gave in and returned to the studio on 5 September (55 years ago this week), he found Harrison had covered his drum kit with flowers as a welcome back gesture. So here is McCartney’s quasi-subversive parody of Chuck Berry’s Back in the U.S.A and the Beach Boys’ California Girls. Since Starr was nowhere to be seen or heard, the drums on the recorded version were initially played by McCartney with overdubs by both Harrison and Lennon. It certainly doesn’t sound like Ringo…

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The Thrill Is Gone – BB King (1969)

This week saw the anniversary of BB King being recognised with a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame in September 1990. A pretty thin excuse but I thought it was a great chance to get a BB King tune on the blog. I dallied with some of his earlier recordings but I’ve gone for his biggest hit from 1969 which was written and originally recorded by the blues musician Roy Hawkins in 1951. A tune about moving on from a relationship that has gone bad, King had played Hawkins’ original on the air when he was a Memphis radio DJ in the 50s. He decided to record it for his 1969 LP Completely Well and, working with producer Bill Szymczyk, they took the original song and slowed it down into a sleek controlled arrangement which gave Hawkins’ wronged man narrative a slightly malevolent feel. They recorded several takes, none of which King was happy with and the story goes that Szymczyk called King at 4am one night suggesting adding strings to the track. King later said that he’d agree to just about anything at that time of the night, but the the strings worked. Recorded and mixed with restraint, they add further drama to the arrangement and allow King’s gloriously precise guitar work to stand out. Released on Bluesway as a single, it became one of his trademark songs and he would go on to record it with many partners in the future – everyone from Tracy Chapman to Luciano Pavarotti. It never sounded as good as his original version but I do love this film of him performing it in front of a live audience for a radio broadcast in New York back in 1971. With a horn section instead of strings, an extended outro and a great vocal matched by some great playing on his beloved ‘Lucille’.

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Dr Mabuse (The 13th Life of…) – Propaganda (1984)

Among a host of well known music birthdays this week, the lesser known name of Susanne Freytag jumped out at me. Freytag was a founding member of the great 80s German synth pop band Propaganda, who were part of the first wave of artists signed by ZTT Records. Abbreviated from the poem Zang Tumb Tuum (the sound of a machine gun, apparently), the highly successful label was founded by record producer Trevor Horn, business woman Jill Sinclair and NME journalist and author Paul Morley. While huge selling first signing Frankie Goes To Hollywood brought the label fame and infamy in equal measure, acts like Propaganda and Art of Noise brought it added critical acclaim. Formed in Dusseldorf by singer Freytag, artist Andreas Thein and experimental industrial musician Ralf Dorper, they recruited classically trained composer Michael Mertens and singer Claudia Brucken when they signed for ZTT. In 1984 I bought their amazing first single (The Nine Lives Of) Dr Mabuse which in typical ZTT style was released in two different 7″ and 12″ sleeves designed by Morley which all came with multiple versions, all produced by Horn. I had the second of the 12″ releases in the cover above. Referencing a character who appeared in three Fritz Lang films, it is a typical Horn sonic production with his trademark booming drums and high drama layered synthesisers. The single snuck into the UK top thirty as did follow up Duel, while their debut LP A Secret Wish made the top twenty before their third single struggled and their career faded. The tartan twist is that their live band during 1985 peak featured Derek Forbes and Brian McGee, who had just left Simple Minds.

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No Confusion (feat Kojey Radical) – Ezra Collective (2023)

As usual, the Mercury Prize (not so) Shortlist contained a wide range of music, nearly all of which I was unfamiliar with as I am now quite far from the target audience for this award. But I owed it to the blog to cock an ear to the ‘official’ Mercury 2023 playlist which presented 2 tracks from each of the 12 albums. A sunny afternoon cutting the hedge with it on a loop on the headphones told me that, while there was lots I wasn’t that interested in, nearly everything sounded really well made inside it’s genre. I discussed The Car by the Arctic Monkeys in WIS 30Jun23 and Body Paint still sounds fabulous but they were never going to win. I was really quite taken by the Afro jazz polyrhythms of the Ezra Collective and could hear merit in the retro-soul and retro-pop feel of Olivia Dean and Jessie Ware respectively. However, checking the odds on Tuesday evening I saw they were all outside bets – that told me something! Lankum’s ‘Irish drone-folk’ vibe was intriguing but I found the out and out favourite Loyle Carner was not really my thing at all. The only one in the bookies’ top three that I related to was the somewhat crassly named electro-duo Jockstrap – their Concrete Over Water track was strangely compelling. However, come Thursday, the odds were upset by Ezra Collective becoming the first ‘jazz’ band to win the prize. Their youth club to fame through hard work and solid support was a great story and makes them worthy winners. I’ve playlisted No Confusion which opens with the voice of late Nigerian drummer Tony Allen appropriately intoning “I’m playing jazz my way” and has a vocal by Kojey Radical set against an infectious horn driven beat. For those that like their jazz without the rapping (hello big John!), try the reggae jump of Ego Killah or the latin sway of Victory Dance, performed brilliantly at the awards in the link. Refreshing stuff!

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Carmelita – Warren Zevon (1978)

On 7 September 2003, the great Warren Zevon died of cancer aged only 56. I must admit to coming to appreciate his music very late, through a compilation album released about a year before his death. His most famous song is the jokey Werewolves Of London but this hides a songwriter of real skill, known for his dry wit and acerbic lyrics. Having worked in the industry for a while in supporting roles, he struggled to break through as a solo artist until Linda Ronstadt started to record his songs. The title track of her 1976 album Hasten Down The Wind was written by Zevon and she went on to cover others. He was held in high esteem by other musicians and his list of recording credits on his work is like a gallery of stars – Neil Young, Graham Nash, Bruce Springsteen, Ry Cooder, Tom Petty, Emmylou Harris, Jim Keltner, Benmont Tench, T-Bone Burnett etc etc. He was also the singer for a REM side-project covers band called Hindu Love Gods with Buck, Mills and Berry – their version of Raspberry Beret is great fun. I’ve chosen to mark the 20th anniversary of his death from inoperable pleural mesothelioma by playlisting a track from his 1976 self-titled second LP produced by Jackson Browne, whose support got him the record deal. It features Glenn Frey on guitar and the memorable harmony vocal and, despite its subject matter, Carmelita is one of his loveliest songs. It’s wearied cantina delivery catches perfectly the wistful malaise of a wayward junkie writer, shivering in LA’s Echo Park and dreaming of good times in Ensenada with the woman of the title. Against the romantic melody, the jaundiced words describe him sinking to the bottom, pawning his typewriter to get another score.  The plaintive self-aware line “I’m all strung out on heroin on the outskirts of town” is the killer.  

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Last Word

The Last Word shout out this week goes to Davie and his son Dylan from Vinyl Sessions who run an event every first Thursday evening in the month in my local pub, The Foresters Arms in Aberdour. It’s simple but beautiful concept is that they provide top quality Technics decks and a mixer and you bring your own vinyl to play a few tunes. Inspired by the Propaganda track above, I headed down with a box of 12″ singles last night and it was heaving! Following a young guy who mixed John Coltrane with Devo and then what I think was his mother(?) playing her choices including Johnny Cash and the Byrds, I stepped up to the wheels of steel to spin some records live for the first time in a very long time. My selection of 80s indie dance …erm… bangers was then followed by a young guy who opened with Bowie’s Queen Bitch and then the MC5’s Kick Out The Jams! Like this blog, it’s a broad church, brothers and sisters…

As WeekInSound is off on its travels around the UK for some of the next two weeks, there will be a couple of short but sweet specials based on a theme. Given the great time I had last night, next week I plan to playlist my DJ set to let you hear what you missed!

All aboard for the master playlist below….

WeekInSoundMaster

AR