This is the last blog before we are enveloped in the silly season, so grab the opportunity to dive into this Mariah Carey-free zone while you can. Enjoy!

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How Long Will I Love You – The Waterboys (1990)

At the end of last week, I attended the Vinyl Sessions evening that is run in one of my local pubs. I went without any records, just to listen. After young Dylan regaled us with an impressive collection of Jamaican reggae 45s, one of the regulars, Liz, got up to play an eclectic six song set ranging from The Prodigy to Gretchen Peters. She also dropped the needle on this track by Mike Scott which featured on The Waterboy’s 1990 album Room To Roam. I hadn’t heard it for a long time and enjoyed it – so into the blog it goes! The LP was the follow up to their hostage to fortune Fisherman’s Blues album which was a major commercial success. However, it split the critics between those who loved their new Irish folk direction and those who missed the ‘big music’ rock sound of their earlier records. Room To Roam continued the folk-rock direction (although fiddle player and Irish influencer Steve Whickham left before it was released) and the album met with the same mixed reaction from the critics. But this time it didn’t sell as well. The gentle melodic How Long Will I Love You is certainly one of the LP highlights and benefits from a nice bit of sax by Anthony Thistlewaite towards the end. Only released in Ireland as a single, it lacks any overt Irish references until it fades into a very short hidden track, an extract from a short jig called She’s All That I Need. Since playlisting the track, I’ve discovered that UK pop singer Ellie Goulding recorded a cover version in 2013, slowing the song down to a piano and strings ballad. It must have earned Scott some royalties as her version got to No3 in the singles chart and was both adopted as that year’s Children In Need song and appeared on the soundtrack to a sentimental Richard Curtis movie called About Time. No, me neither.

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New Town Velocity – Johnny Marr (2013)

At the end of last week, the city of Manchester was in the news as it hosted a catwalk fashion show for iconic French brand Chanel on the streets of its trendy Northern Quarter. It was a finale to a year that has seen the city’s cultural profile rise by the opening of its Factory International complex on the site of the old Granada studios. Designed by celebrated Dutch architects OMA to morph from small-scale venue to vast exhibition hall and host the city’s international festival, the £211m building opened in October with Danny Boyle and Blue Boy’s Free Your Mind show which riffed on the 1999 film, The Matrix. Somewhat sadly, the historical reference to Tony Wilson’s Factory Records has been dropped for sponsorship reasons and last Friday the… erm… Aviva Studios hosted it’s inaugural large music event, A Night With The Johnny Marr Orchestra. The legendary Mancunian musician seemed the right choice to kick it off and he expanded his touring band with the 30 piece orchestra for the show. Given his time with The Smiths came to an acrimonious end in 1987, it seems incredible that the gig was only marking Marr’s ten years as a solo artist. Not that he’s been idle. Since the late 80s, Marr has been a member of The Pretenders, The The, Electronic, The Cribs and Modest Mouse. He also became the session guitarist of choice, working with everyone from the Pet Shop Boys to Talking Heads, and even Oasis. But he finally stepped out frontstage with the release of his first solo album The Messenger in 2013 which has been followed by four others. I’ve playlisted the excellent New Town Velocity, a single from that first LP and which was apparently a highlight of last Friday’s show. I found this great archive clip of him taken at a sound check with his trusty Fender Jaguar on his knee, picking out his guitar part which highlights the intricacy of this tune. Classy.

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Try A Little Tenderness – Otis Redding (1966)

Otis Redding was just 26 years old when he died in a plane crash in the icy waters of Lake Monona on 10 December 1967, along with most of the members of his backing band the Bar-Kays. The story of his death is one of the cornerstones of Stuart Cosgrove’s brilliant 60s soul trilogy, framing the opening of the second book Memphis 68 The Tragedy Of Southern Soul with Redding on the cover. He was seen as one of the brightest stars in soul music on a seemingly unstoppable route to global fame. Having toured Europe in the spring of 67 in a Stax review with Sam& Dave, Eddie Floyd and others, he went on to his legendary Saturday headline performance at the Monterey Pop Festival that summer. Playing with Booker T And The MGs, his electric stage presence engaged a mostly white rock audience with the Stones’ Brian Jones among those captivated by his show. Redding had recorded Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay just three days before he got on that plane but it is the brilliant Try A Little Tenderness that really is his signature song. It was first recorded in 1932 by the Ray Noble Orchestra and subsequently was covered by Bing Crosby and appeared on Frank Sinatra’s debut LP. Redding’s very different soulful interpretation was cut in 1966, using an arrangement by Stax producer Isaac Hayes. It features The MGs and builds from a slow start with a piano lead and horn and organ fills – drummer Al Jackson recalled for once he had to “play soft”. Redding’s vocal plays with the melody and phrasing as the instrumentation slowly builds in intensity with a guitar part arriving after around two minutes. Thirty seconds later, Jackson opens up on his kit, the horns fill out and, by three minutes in, Redding’s uninhibited vocal takes over. The studio cut is faded too early for my liking as he always stretched the outro section when playing live with several false endings as he left the stage to be called back again – listen to this incredible 7 minute version from his London show in spring 1967.

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Love Story – Taylor Swift (2008)

I’m always very nervous when I start to write something about Taylor Alison Swift as she is probably the most written about person on the planet. But she was 34 years old on Wednesday and I felt the need to mark her birthday with her third tune on the blog. Thinking I might do this, my daughter sent me the link to the Time Magazine interview with her which was published last week when they awarded her their Person of the Year 2023 accolade. It’s a long but really fascinating read where the journalist suggests this was the year “the world let her work soundtrack their lives”. It was particularly eye catching that, in the year of the mind-boggling Eras tour and movie, the “Taylor effect” was cited by the Federal Reserve as one of the reasons that the US economy grew! Aside from the folklore/evermore indie-Americana period, I must admit I am more taken by the pop-country ingenue stage of her career than the global all-conquering behemoth she has become now. So I considered going all the way back to her self-titled debut country album recorded at the age of 16 for a track to playlist. But I decided to jump forward to her first steps away from country in her follow-up, Fearless where I just can’t see past Love Story, the lead single.  Neither the first, nor will she be the last to reference Romeo and Juliet in a love song, it is said she wrote it on her bedroom floor in about twenty minutes. It’s not a complex chord sequence but it’s the arrangement that makes it such a brilliant record. It commences with acoustic country instruments and the twang in her young voice but as the song builds into the second half, with the harmonies arriving, everything is mixed to be overdriven into a ‘wall of sound’. Then comes the meandering bridge, then the drop back into the chorus melody before the glorious release of the key change on the “Marry me, Juliet” line takes us rushing towards the non-Shakespearian happy ending. Simple but so effective. I miss the over-drive and her youthful twang on her re-recorded Taylor’s Version, so Swifties will not like that I’ve playlisted the original.

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Witchcraft – Frank Sinatra (1957)

Our second birthday of the week is provided by Frances Albert Sinatra who was born to Italian immigrants in New Jersey one hundred and eight years ago on 12 December 1915. It is always impossible to compare over long timescales, but in terms of popular entertainment, Sinatra was potentially the Taylor Swift of his day. In those days, Time magazine’s Person Of The Year was reserved for Presidents, Popes or Prime Ministers but he did appear on the magazine’s list of the 20th century’s 100 most influential people. His popularity certainly gave him the ear of Presidents most notably the pre-elected JFK, although Sinatra’s alleged mafia links meant Kennedy distanced himself once he got into the White House. Sinatra’s immigrant background made him outspoken against racism from a young age, particularly toward black people and Italians. In his career, Sinatra would record over 1,500 different songs with that incredible voice and choosing something from that lot for the playlist is no mean feat. I think he did his best work when paired with arranger Nelson Riddle and I could have gone for something from 1954’s Songs For Young Lovers or Songs For Swinging Lovers from 1956. But I’ve plumped for his version of Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh’s brilliant Witchcraft, which was a single on Capital Records in 1957. Its a great lyric with a killer melody and his voice is on top form, rising beautifully to deliver the “strictly taboo” line. And then comes “When you arouse the need in me/My heart says yes indeed in me/Proceed with what you’re leading me to”. The arrangement shines as well – those tumbling strings at the start counterpointing the underlying horn riff and the muted trumpet fills on the end of the lines of the verses. My favourite part is at 1:33, when Riddle slips off the safety catch and the drums and horns come thumping out in a classic syncopated break. Timeless. 

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Rip Her To Shreds – Blondie (1976)

December 1976 saw the release of the self-titled debut album by an outfit from New York City put together by Chris Stein and Debbie Harry. They had played a couple of gigs as Angel And The Snake but in October 1974 renamed themselves Blondie. By the summer of 1975 they were getting gigs at hip NYC venues Max’s Kansas City and CBGBs and had a settled line up of Stein, Harry, Gary Valentine on bass and the brilliant Clem Burke on drums. They added Jimmy Destri on keyboards to fill out their sound and they released two singles in the US on the Private Stock label, X-Offender and In the Flesh. These two tracks were on the album when it appeared at the end of the year but Private Stock didn’t promote it and it didn’t sell. However, it reached the ears of David Bowie and Iggy Pop who were working on the latter’s album The Idiot and they invited the band to open for them when they toured together in early 1977. UK label Chrysalis then snapped the band up and re-released the album along with Rip Her To Shreds which became the band’s first UK single. Packaged with the earlier singles as a 3 track 12″ with a sleeve that seems to me to have been chosen to match the provocative titles of the songs, the band began to get noticed in a country which was awash with punk rock at the time. Listening to the tracks some 47 years later, although they have a ‘new wave’ vibe, they are full of the pop sensibility that would see the band become uber-famous in the years ahead. Harry has said Rip Her To Shreds deals with media intrusions and what gossip columns do to the women they cover, particularly those in the music scene like herself. ”Oh, you know her, ‘Miss Groupie Supreme’/Yeah, you know her, ‘Vera Vogue’ on parade/Red eye shadow! Green mascara!/Yuck! She’s too much”. I love the way Harry vamps up the vocal against the cheesy 60s organ and Burke’s powerful drumming. See them play it raw and live in CBGBs here!   

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Last Word

No whale sightings for me this week but we are about to lurch into what the Americans call “The Holidays”. In keeping with this, next week’s blog will feature some great seasonal tunes which you won’t hear on every radio station for the next two weeks. The following week, I’ll post some 2023 tunes I’ve enjoyed listening to this year, ready for us all to tumble into 2024.  

This week sees the master playlist pass the 250 song barrier in some style. Almost 18 hours of music is sat there waiting to be shuffled and enjoyed.

WeekInSoundMaster

AR