Let’s go round again with six more tunes from a diverse range of genres all linked in my strange head to the week that was this one. Enjoy!

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Do I Love You (Indeed I Do) – Frank Wilson (1965)

There was a lot of media coverage last weekend around the 50th anniversary of the first Northern Soul All-Nighter at Wigan Casino so I thought I would mark this on the blog with a suitable choice of tune. At the heart of the scene was a love of the obscure – something WIS can relate to – with fans seeking out rare and undiscovered soul tracks, usually from the States in the 1960s. Although there have been various attempts over the years to document a definitive list of Northern Soul tracks, its raison d’etre works against any concept of a “best of” compilation. The choice of tunes is very personal and I know if I asked my crate-digging soul mate Dave H for advice on what to playlist, he would come up with ten tracks I’d never heard of. Mind you, he does that with most genres of music! I have already playlisted what is probably my favourite Northern Soul track in WIS 21 Jul 23 which was The Night by Franki Valli & The Four Seasons. So this time I’ve gone for the highly collectable Do I Love You (Indeed I Do) by Frank Wilson. Originally recorded as a demo, only 250 copies were pressed on the Motown subsidiary Soul Records in 1965 but, as Wilson moved into production and label boss Berry Gordy wasn’t keen on the track, the singles were destroyed. Depending on who you believe, between two and five copies survived and apparently an avid collector shelled out £25,000 for one of these in 2009. One copy must have made its way to Wigan in the 1970s and became hugely popular there, so Motown released it officially in the UK in 1979 and again in 2004. Last year Bruce Springsteen included it in his nostalgic but disappointing covers album of soul and R&B favourites from his past, showing the Boss is a soul lover rather than a soul singer. My advice is stick with the sweeping strings, pumping horns and glorious vocal on the original.

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E.S.P. – Buzzcocks (1978)

This week in 1978 saw the release of the second Buzzcocks album Love Bites. It arrived midway through their run of great singles (What Do I Get, I Don’t Mind and the amazing Love You More) and was just preceded by their biggest hit, the grammatically tricky Ever Fallen In Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve). By this point, the major record labels had twigged that there were sales to be had and the album was given a real push. As a big Buzzcocks fan, I recall being excited to see posters promoting its imminent release on hoardings as I was passing through London on my way home from a just-left-school trip bumming around the Greek islands with my mates Mark and Norrie. Despite being skint, I bought it as soon it came out and so have an early pressing with the embossed sleeve where the band’s name is only visible if you tilt it in the light. A bold move for a group whose debut LP had only reached no 15 in the album chart. Although both records were produced by Martin Rushent, the second LP is sonically clearer and allows the instruments to stand out more. Listening to it again, I was really struck by how great John Maher’s drumming is on the tracks – he has a unique style, with long runs on the toms that sound a little out of control but, in my view seem to suit the urgency of the songs. Pete Shelley’s songwriting starts to expand on this record and I’ve chosen to playlist the great E.S.P. The track is built around a hypnotic guitar riff where the same notes loop throughout but the chord sequence played behind it gives the feeling that it is rising all the time and is speeding up when actually neither is happening. The very long fade on the track slowly allows your head to stop swimming and return to normal!

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Goddess On A Hiway – Mercury Rev (1998)

The second half of the nineties is a bit of a musical black hole for me. In fact, it’s a bit of a black hole generally. My daughter was born in Oct 1995 and my son was born in Oct 1997. And since neither of them slept through the night once until they reached the age of two, this resulted in four years of sleep deprivation. At the time I recall understanding why this was a common form of torture employed by oppressive regimes all across the world. We used to have a tag team approach to sleeping at the weekends but weekdays I used to stagger into work every day and make decisions based on four hours interrupted sleep the night before. Life in this zombie state was hard going and my memories of music through this period are significantly scarce. There are a couple of bands from this time that were venerated by the critics but who completely passed me by. One was the Beta Band (formed just up the road from me in St Andrews) whose experimental “folktronica” I only got into retrospectively. The other was the American indie psych-rockers Mercury Rev whose most successful album Deserter’s Songs was released 25 years ago this week. Having had no real success with their first three records, they were on the point of splitting up and recorded this one to please themselves – frontman Jonathan Donahue stating “The world wasn’t exactly waiting for another Mercury Rev record”. The band had collapsed with breakdowns and substance abuse issues and you can hear their fragility in the shimmering music they produced. I have playlisted one of their most popular track Goddess On A Hiway which Donahue had written years before while a member of The Flaming Lips. I’m not at all sure what it’s about but it’s a mesmerising tune with a looping verse and soaring chorus that buries itself into your brain. I’m glad I finally caught up with them.

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If Not For You – Olivia Newton-John (1971)

Tuesday would have been Olivia Newton-John’s 75th birthday had the breast cancer she overcame in the early 90s, and spent the rest of her life as an advocate for research into, not cruelly returned in 2017 and took her life in 2022. Much of the media coverage at the time focussed on her role opposite John Travolta in the 1978 movie Grease which brought her global fame. It’s always struck me that her character Sandra Dee’s somewhat morally dubious transformation, from wholesome high school girl “lousy with virginity” to full scale leather raunch vamp to get her man, had some parallels with her career. Having begun in the early 70s making pop/country records very much in the light entertainment field, she built on her Grease success with a series of 80s pop/rock hits where she played on the more erm… physical aspects of her performing style. I’ve chosen to go back to her slightly curious early 70s career for the playlist as, in my old head, her name will forever be linked with Saturday night TV variety shows. In those far off days of appointment television, where families would gather round the set after their Vesta Chow Mein weekend treat for tea, ONJ was a regular guest on the It’s Cliff Richard show among others. If Not For You was lifted from her 1971 debut record which was an album full of covers of well known songs by the likes of Kris Kristofferson, David Gates and Gordon Lightfoot. Her choice of this Bob Dylan song from his 1970 album New Morning was clearly influenced by the cover recorded in the same year by George Harrison for his first post-Beatles album All Things Must Pass. Initially, ONJ was worried that it was not her type of song. But the arrangement by fellow Ozzie John Farrar and Bruce Welch of the Shadows gave her a big hit, reaching No 7 in the UK singles charts. Here she is in her early 20s performing it on German TV.

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Spellbound – Siouxsie and the Banshees (1981)

This week saw the birthday of Steve Severin who along with Susan Jane Ballion founded Siouxise and the Banshees in 1976. When I playlisted Siouxsie’s side project band The Creatures in WIS 31 Mar 23, I talked about the band’s early history so will not ramble on about it again here. However, following their brilliantly atonal debut LP The Scream in 1978, they became an incredibly influential group in the early 80s and the well-read, arty Severin was at the heart of all they did. In an attempt to keep up with his band mate, Steven Bailey called himself Steve Havoc when they first met, later adopting the Severin from a character named in the Velvet Underground song Venus In Furs. He has retained overall artistic control of the Banshee’s back catalogue, overseeing remastering and re-issues with demos/live tracks. His bass playing is influenced by the likes of Jack Bruce and Holgar Czukay from avant garde krautrock group Can. While researching this piece, I discovered Severin adopted an unusual bass playing style when he learned. He uses a guitar pick and hits the strings using an upstroke not the much more usual down stroke. He seems to think it was natural for him, giving more precision to his playing. I’ve not chosen a particularly bass heavy track to allow you to test this theory with your ears but I have chosen one of their great singles. Spellbound was released in May 1981 and featured their relatively new guitarist John McGeogh who joined from Magazine in late 1980. An absolutely exhilarating listen, the guitars and bass swirl around Sioux’s voice and the pounding of Budgie’s drums after the lines “Take them by the legs/And throw them down the stairs” is just genius. Severin’s upwards bass playing is evident here as they mime to it on TOTP. Every time I see the single sleeve, I recall playing it while DJ-ing at my friend Alison’s 21st birthday party at Bentley’s in Glassford St in Glasgow at the request of her pal, Carmela. Funny how these things stick in your mind…

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September Song – Ian McCulloch (1984)

So in the last week of September with the leaves starting to fall and autumn very much underway, it seems to be the right time to playlist this tune. Composed by Kurt Weill with lyrics by Maxwell Anderson it is an American standard originally performed and recorded by Walter Huston for the 1938 Broadway musical production Knickerbocker Holiday. It has been recorded by numerous artists over the years with everyone from Frank Sinatra to Willie Nelson giving it a go. I only became aware of it through this release by Echo & The Bunnymen singer Ian McCulloch back in late 1984. At the start of that year, the band had released their fourth album Ocean Rain which featured the brilliant UK top ten single The Killing Moon which is regularly cited as their greatest song. So it is unclear what possessed McCulloch to record and then release this stand-alone 7 inch single with, even more bizarrely, his version of Cockles and Mussels on the b-side! Always a contrary individual, he probably did it because he could but I’ve failed to find a backstory on the internet other than there was a windswept promo video made and the record reached No 51 in the UK singles chart in December 1984. I recall hearing it on the radio at the time and my dad telling me it was an old song where a man realises how he wasted time in his youth and that time was more precious now that he was reaching his final years. It struck me that my dad was about the same age as I am now when he told me this story. Hearing it now from the viewpoint of being in my sixties, it is a much more poignant listen.

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Last Word

Over the next couple of weeks, the blog is going to be based around the theme of songs with spoken word intros. I had intended to do one week of these to cover off some time when writing about the week is going to be tricky. But there were so many to choose from, it will take two weeks to cover this theme off properly! Also, there is still one final slot available for doing a guest blog in November – all I need is the songs and some words, I’ll do the rest. Don’t all rush at once!

The master playlist grows and grows, so join all the cool dudes down there and check it out soon!

WeekInSoundMaster

AR