As we plough on into January with our heads down and our coats buttoned right up, WIS selects another six great tunes to warm the very cockles of your heart. Enjoy!
Do You Love Me? – The Contours (1962)
The marvel that is Motown Records was 65 years old on Sunday and I enjoyed the RadMac show on BBC 6Music which celebrated the anniversary of the label with a selection of tunes. They played tracks from all eras, the well-known and a few less well known. They included this wee belter by the Contours, released on Motown’s Gordy imprint in 1962 and a No3 US chart hit. Written and produced by label boss Berry Gordy, The Contours performance of Do You Love Me? is a perfect example of the label motto: “It’s what’s in the grooves that counts”. Gordy had intended that the tune be recorded by The Temptations but apparently, they were at church when he took it into Hitsville Studio A one Sunday morning. The Contours were in the building trying to get a break after their first two singles had flopped, so Gordy asked them to try his tune out. The Funk Brothers grabbed the sheet music and, after a few takes in front of the studio mics, Berry saw that The Contours had the voices to make this a hit. In particular, Billy Gordon’s incredible lead vocal stands out as it threatens to break into a full-blown scream each time he asks the “Do You Love Me?” question. As an early track, it is far from the soul sound that the label would become best known for. Gordy is quoted in 1963 as saying “It was recorded rhythm and blues but by the time it reached the half-million mark in sales, it was considered pop. And if we hadn’t recorded it with a Negro artist, it would have been considered rock and roll.” It didn’t chart in the UK but the song was given a (rather soulless) Merseybeat overhaul by The Tremeloes in 1963 and went to No1. The Dave Clark Five also stuck out a less successful version in the UK that year that mixed the drums up and dropped the intro. In my view, neither hold a candle to the swing of the original, false ending and all. Watch The Contours dance it here.
Where Are We Now? – David Bowie (2013)
Bowie’s birthday on 8 January has been widely marked in the corners of the internet where I lurk and so it felt appropriate to pick a song for the occasion to go on the blog. There were a few record releases on his birthday over the years but none more welcome than his unheralded return from the wilderness with the release of Where Are We Now? in 2013. Recorded in secret between September and October 2011 in New York, it was Bowie’s idea to drop it on to streaming platforms on his 66th birthday with no press releases or media hype whatsoever. His surprise return was widely welcomed across the music world and the record went to No 6 in the UK singles chart, his biggest hit single since Absolute Beginners in 1986. It turned out to be the lead single for a whole LP of new material – The Next Day was released two months later, complete with its modified Heroes cover art by graphic designer Jonathan Barnbrook. The single sleeve has an inverted image of Bowie performing in New York in 1974, but it’s a reflective piece on Berlin, looking back to his time recording Heroes there in 1977 with Tony Visconti, who also produced The Next Day. The opening lines “Had to get the train/From Potsdamer Platz” set to minor flat chords give an immediate nostalgic, melancholy tone, with his voice adding an oddly fragile feel to the whole tune, particularly on the chorus. The fall of the Wall is referenced in the “Twenty thousand people/Cross Bose Brucke” section and other old Berlin locations get an outing. The arty promo video adds to the sense of nostalgia with monochrome shots of the city in the 70s playing as the two puppets with video faces sit on a battered old suitcase. And the final, wistful “As long as there’s me/As long as there’s you” is as beautiful as anything Bowie wrote or performed.
Soul Mokassa – Manu Diabango (1972)
I recently stumbled across the BBC documentary called Disco: Soundtrack of a Revolution which I think is still on iPlayer. Made jointly with PBS from the States, it was a fascinating watch, full of great visuals and anecdotes from some of the aged DJ talking heads who had been in on the groove from the start. The documentary proposes that Disco was a social movement, one where marginalised black, hispanic and gay communities all came together to dance to the same beat, without fear of prejudice. It started far away from glitter balls and sequins, with underground parties in abandoned New York warehouses and restaurants rented out to dancers due to the great beef shortage of 1973 – I kid you not. Earl Young’s legendary ‘four to the floor’ disco drumbeat (heard first on soul classic The Love I Lost) is demonstrated during the programme and hugely influential but obscure records such as Eddie Kendricks’ Girl You Need A Change Of Mind and Manu Dibango’s Soul Makossa are discussed. I have selected Dibango’s play on Cameroonian urban music as it is just such a great tune. It was recorded by the saxophonist in 1972 as the b-side for a football single as his country hosted the Africa Cup of Nations. Later that year it was found at the back of a crate in an import record shop in Brooklyn by DJ David Mancuso, who played it regularly at his underground parties at The Loft in Greenwich Village. It took off from there getting heavy rotation on NY black radio stations. The track got a full US release and made the Billboard top forty – it remains to this day the most sampled African record ever. The distinctive vocal refrain will be familiar to everyone reading this as it was adapted for the coda to Michael Jackson’s global hit Wanna Be Startin’ Something. Altogether now, “mama say mama sa maka makossa”….
Personality Crisis – New York Dolls (1973)
I guess that sampler albums are another thing that the digital world has pretty much consigned to history. But, in the 70s and 80s, they were a great way to get access to a range of music, usually for a discounted price. One of my favourite samplers was a collection with the ubiquitous title of New Wave which was released by Vertigo records in late 1977 with a sticker on the front stating “…only £2.45 R.R.P”. Given LPs would be retailing at around four quid at that time, it was a good price for a collection with 16 tracks on it. As you can see from the sleeve, it was packaged using images of UK punks to appeal to the oeuvre of the day. But a glance at the artists on the track listing (playlisted here!) shows the only UK band on it was The Damned. Apart from a few others, it was all American artists, most of whom recorded for Sire Records. Some of the tracks were current but several were from the influential 1973-75 period. As it was David Johansen’s 74th birthday this week, I’ve playlisted the glorious racket that is Personality Crisis by the New York Dolls. I wrote about my youthful consternation with the Dolls and their image in WIS 6Oct23 – it was this sampler that put two songs from their 1973 debut record into my collection. After a wonderful piano gliss opening with a Johansen screech, we get the band-naming “Yeah Yeah Yeah” followed by a “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no” and we’re off into this glam punk anthem. Everything thumps along with style and Johnny Thunders’ lead guitar lines come howling out the mix, assaulting your ears. Two minutes in, there is a brilliant engineered pause, before Johansen’s slides back with the couplet: “And you’re a prima ballerina on a spring afternoon/Change on into the wolfman howlin’ at the moon” with added whistles and howls. While recording the song, Johansen asked producer Todd Rundgren if his vocals sounded “ludicrous enough” – they sure do, David, they sure do.
Winter – Tori Amos (1992)
It seems appropriate to dip into my reservoir of Winter songs – naturally, I have a playlist – and include a track this week just to recognise that January is all over us like a rash at the moment. Yeah, we have passed the shortest day and every minute of additional daylight means we are moving towards Spring, but it’s a slow, and predominantly cold, process. Looking down the list of 50 songs, this beautiful tune by Tori Amos jumped out at me, so into the blog it goes. I was amazed to see she turned 60 this week but given this track is taken from her debut solo record Little Earthquakes in 1992 maybe I shouldn’t be. Born in America, she seems to live between homes in the wildly different locations of Cornwall and Florida, which seems as fitting for an artist with such an eclectic style in her writing and performing. Little Earthquakes came after more than a decade of writing, recording and performing with others and it was a period punctuated with personal struggles. Along with a difficult upbringing, she channelled all these experiences into the songs for her first record and was rewarded with significant critical acclaim for the album, particularly in the UK. Winter was the fourth single from the album and was her first to chart, reaching No25 in the UK. It is a perfect example of her piano led “art-folk”, which resulted in comparisons with Kate Bush. A limited-edition version of the single showed these to be somewhat lazy comments as it came with her covers of Angie by the Rolling Stones, Thank You by Led Zeppelin and Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit. If not musically similar, her work does have echoes of Cobain’s raw self-examination. Winter is a gorgeous song but it is a disturbing tale of issues with self-esteem and her strained relationship with her father as she grows older.
Pinball Wizard – Elton John (1975)
This week, I caught up with an old work colleague of mine for a few drinks and our conversation inevitably turned to music. I got him to re-tell a tale I already knew part of, which was about him being an extra in the movie Tommy, based on the 1969 record by The Who. Directed by the notorious Ken Russell, the movie was filmed in and around Portsmouth in 1974 when Dave was a student at the Polytechnic. Russell devised the famous Pinball Wizard scene to feature Elton John and The Who performing in front of a large, enthusiastic audience. It was shot in the Kings Theatre in Southsea and the audience seems to be made up of every student in Portsmouth, including Dave. Neither of the artists were keen on Russell’s ideas for the scene and John says he was eventually swayed by getting to keep the gigantic Doc Marten boots which he tottered about the stage in. Dave got a position down the front and got involved in the scene where the defeated Pinball Wizard falls off the stage. Directed in what to do by Ken Russell himself, Dave is apparently one of the fans carrying Elton John (actually just his huge DMs!) out through the audience at the end. With a story like that, Pinball Wizard had to be the final track on the blog this week! It is probably the only song on the decidedly dubious soundtrack album that matches up to the original recording made by The Who. John actually recorded it away from the movie with his own band and musical director Pete Townsend found he had very little to do with it as he thought they had recorded it so well. My mate Dave has a very young grandchild now but I’m sure he’s looking forward to him being old enough to sit him on his knee and say “Did I ever tell you about the time when I was in a satirical, surrealist, fantasy drama film written and directed by Ken Russell?”
Last Word
Another week in the can. By the time next week’s edition is published on Friday evening, I will have had a minor operation on my right hand earlier that day to correct some issues I have with what is called Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. I plan to have prepared a themed edition for the following week in advance to allow my hand to recover. It might be mercifully shorter than usual…
I forgot to add last week’s tracks to the master playlist but was nudged by an eagle eyed reader that they were missing. Done it this week, Fraser!
AR
Week In Sound 
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