This week’s selection of tunes is the usual diverse outing but there is a slight jazzy tinge to some of them so look out your berets. Enjoy!
Outdoor Miner – Wire (1979)
Listening to the Mickey Bradley Radio show last week, I heard him play Telegram Sam by T-Rex to mark 180 years since the first message was sent my Morse code. Great tune though it was, I felt that a better choice would have been the third single by legendary art-punk band Wire which was called Dot Dash. It’s a top tune and I thought I would playlist it this week. However, I dug it out the next day only to discover that the song seems to be more about flashing car headlights and avoiding crashing than long distance communications – I’d never really listened to the obtuse lyrics in the verse before. So, by a somewhat tenuous connection, I’m seizing the chance to playlist one of my favourite records which has yet to appear on the blog.
Outdoor Miner was Wire’s fourth single released on EMI Records in January 1979 and was lifted from their acclaimed second LP, Chairs Missing. This LP saw the band developing the minimalist approach of their debut with more developed song structures and instrumentation. Outdoor Miner has a hypnotic looping hook chorus and, having bought the single when it was released, it has been playing in my head on repeat for the last 45 years. In the pre-internet edge, I gave up trying to decipher Graham Lewis’ dense lyric and just sang along blindly to the chorus: “He lies on his side, is he trying to hide?/In fact, it’s the earth which he’s known since birth”. So it was a surprise many years later when I discovered it was all about the life cycle of the Serpentine Leaf Miner insect which Lewis had a fascination for. It’s the very hungry larva of a fly which mines its way into cabbage and broccoli leaves. Who knew?
The album version is only 1:44 long and, smelling a potential hit single, EMI encouraged them to record a longer version for its release as a single, fearing it was too short for radio stations to play. An additional verse and chorus were added, as was the simple but highly effective piano solo with those lush backing vocals. Airplay got it to number 51 in the UK sales chart and they were on stand-by to appear on Top Of The Pops the next week. But someone in the chart compilers BMRB claimed to have uncovered evidence of EMI staff buying multiple copies of the single in one of the ‘secret’ list of shops who submitted sales returns. EMI strenuously denied this but Wire’s weekly sales were not counted and the single dropped out of sight. Their replacements on Top Of The Pops were apparently Donnie and Marie Osmond…
Bacao Rhythm & Steel Band – PIMP (2008)
So having been socialising over the last few weeks, last weekend Lynn and I had a reasonably quiet time of it and we ended up watched a movie last Friday night. With time to concentrate, and despite the two large gins which kicked the evening off, we decided we needed a French family/legal drama – yes, sub-titles and all. Anatomie d’une Chute was directed by Justine Triet from a screenplay she co-wrote with Arthur Harari and it won the 2023 Palme d’Or at Cannes. Among a range of other awards, it won Best Screenplay at both the Oscars and the BAFTAs and rightly so – it was amazing.
Without any spoilers, the story is about a German writer (played brilliantly by Sandra Huller) trying to prove her innocence in her husband’s suspicious death from a fall. The couple have a visually impaired young son acted by excellent newcomer Milo Machado-Graner. His guide dog Snoop (geddit?) is a pretty good actor too – which is just as well as his real name is Messi. While the courtroom scenes have dizzyingly fast and furious narrative (everyone seems to be able to ask questions at any time in French courts), the opening scenes just before the fall happens are dominated by a piece of music. The couple live in a chalet in Grenoble and the husband is upstairs playing a piece of music very loudly on repeat, apparently intent on disrupting an interview with his wife taking place downstairs.
That’s quite enough of the plot – let’s turn to the music. The track being boomed out was a new one on me, both the song and the artist but I am playlisting it here as I really liked it. What I’ve now discovered is that the song is a cover of a 50 Cent gansta rap single which was a huge hit in 2003 and which, unsurprisingly, completely passed me by. P.I.M.P. is the usual self-important bragging nonsense full of references to bitches and hos and designer brands. It made the top 5 in the UK and the US but it leaves me absolutely stone cold. However, before you all skip to the next track, what makes the 50 Cent tune unusual and slightly interesting is that the rhythm track adopted is based on a Caribbean steel band sound, using a reggae shuffle beat.
German funk band Bacao Rhythm & Steel Band came along in 2008 and produced their version of the song, mercifully without all the mysogynistic, violent lyrics. Their single on Mocambo Records has a melody line played with what sounds to these inexperienced ears like a partially muted trumpet which sways along behind the beat completely changing the feeling of the original. It could be an outtake from last year’s Ezra Collective album.
Like A Hurricane – Neil Young (1977)
Ever since Neil Young decided to put his music back on Spotify sometime earlier this year, I’ve been keeping an eye out for an occasion to playlist something from him on the blog. At first, the 47th anniversary this week of the release of American Stars ‘n Bars, considered to be one of the weakest records in his run of 1970s albums, seemed not to be the right moment. Until I remembered that, tucked away among all the pretty average tracks which were pulled together from four separate recording sessions over a 29-month period, lay the undisputed classic that is Like A Hurricane.
It was famously recorded just after Young finished writing it but at a time when he had recently undergone vocal surgery and was unable to record a live vocal. The whistle he deployed for the vocal line had to be overdubbed three months later with his double vocal – he does his own harmony on the chorus. This strange genesis hasn’t stopped the song becoming the mainstay of the ‘electric’ part of his live sets over the last five decades and there are several recorded live versions, including his 1993 MTV Unplugged set where he plays it almost entirely on a wheezy pump organ. A quick check suggests the live versions are at least 5 minutes longer than the 8:21 of the studio take so I’ll stick the latter on the playlist. [Those keen on long guitar aural assaults can hear all fourteen minutes of it on Weld (Live) here!]
The apocryphal story goes that Young wrote the song lyrics on an old newspaper in the back of his friend’s 1950 sedan at Skeggs Point in the mountains west of San Francisco. He was on the way back to his ranch after a night of drinking and drug taking with his band Crazy Horse. He’d just met a girl and was smitten: “Once I thought I saw you in a crowded hazy bar/Dancing on the light from star to star”. That night Young tumbled into the ranch studio and started bashing out the chords on a heavily modified analogue string synth and, although the melody came to him quickly, he was so out of it he sat up most of the night playing it over and over again. He recorded the tune a few days later starting with a run-through to show the band how it went, which they quickly joined in with. I’ve only just found out that the master recording makes use of the tape made of that first run-through hence the odd stumbling start. Apparently Young thought that subsequent rehearsed takes didn’t sound as good as when they played it that first time, so that’s what he went with – bum notes, mistakes and all. I’ve always thought it sounded like it was being played live and now I know why.
The Bottle – Gil Scott-Heron (1966)
And the first anniversary track on this week’s blog is one of the morbid kind as it is 13 years ago this week since revolutionary musician and poet Gil Scott-Heron died. He appeared on the blog last year (WIS 13Oct23) when his magnum opus ‘B’ Movie was one of six songs themed around their distinctive spoken intros. At first I thought I might reach for Scott-Heron’s other major polemic on American politics from 1971 The Revolution Will Not Be Televised but I worried for anyone getting these two raw, down-your-throat tracks coming one after the other when shuffling the Master Playlist!
So as a tribute to the great man, I’ve playlisted one of the tunes he wrote and recorded with keyboardist Brian Jackson for their 1974 collaboration album about inner city life for African Americans, Winter In America. Having been unable to source the studio version of the brilliant title track on Spotify (you’ll find it here on YouTube), I have opted for the cult hit single from the LP, The Bottle. Based around an incredible funky bass-line with Jackson extemporising on jazzy flute fills, it’s a social commentary on alcohol abuse and the lives destroyed among black neighbourhoods. Combining a strong message with pop/dance sensibilities, it garnered airplay on radio and in clubs following its release as a single, allowing Scott-Heron to say of its minor success that “pop music doesn’t necessarily have to be shit”.
The song was covered soon after its release by US funk/soul band Brother To Brother and it reached No 46 in the US chart. Neither the original or this cover did any business in the UK but the song’s cult status has resonated down through the years. In 1993 The Christians released their smoother version of the track towards the end of their career and pushed it into the lower reaches of UK top 40. More successfully, Paul Weller recorded a version of it for his 2004 covers album Studio 150 which featured a myriad of musical styles. The Guv’nor’s blistering version of The Bottle, full of wah-wah guitar and a flute line as a hat-tip to the original, deservedly took Scott-Heron’s writing to No13 in the UK singles chart.
Sparky’s Dream – Teenage Fanclub (1995)
On 29 May 1995, Teenage Fanclub released their fifth album Grand Prix on Creation Records. Although their third record 1991’s Bandwagonesque was where they began to develop their trademark harmonies and guitar-driven indie-pop sound, it was Grand Prix that really made the critics sit up and notice and the public start buying their records – it reached No7 in the album charts in 1995. I have to admit I was behind the 8-ball with The Fannies (as they are affectionately known in Glasgow). Based on their initial 1990 recordings, I had them down as one of several derivative indie guitar bands around at the time and ignored them. It wasn’t until 1997’s terrific Ain’t That Enough single that I woke up to the fullness of their developed sound. I bought the Songs From Northern Britain album and from there went backwards to discover the joys of Grand Prix.
The core of the band are guitarists Norman Blake and Raymond McGinley and bassist Gerard Love, all of whom share lead vocals and songwriting duties. Their songs are usually evenly distributed across their records and Grand Prix is no different. My three favourite tracks on the LP are split evenly too. McGinley is the writer of the understated jangly pop of Verisimilitude (great word for believability!) with its slightly queasy organ part in the chorus lending it great charm. And in the week where I’ve playlisted Like A Hurricane, there is Blake’s wonderful Neil Jung which kinda mimics Young’s lurching guitar style and some critics argue is the centrepiece of the album. It is a great tune but, for the playlist, I can’t see past the glorious power-pop of Gerard Love’s Sparky’s Dream. The guitars flow and Love’s vocal part is spot-on; when the harmonies kick in on the chorus it is just so uplifting, particularly when the backing vocals soar free as the chorus loops to the end: “Need a crystal ball to see her in the morning/And magic eyes to read between the lines”.
I don’t mind a fade on a song but there is a lot to be said for giving your tunes a proper ending – you know where you are with one of those. Nearly all of Teenage Fanclub tunes have a clear ending and for that alone they should be given some sort of award. Listen out for those three descending chords at the end of Sparky’s Dream as you get yourself ready for the next tune.
Lemon Firebrigade – Haircut 100 (1982)
I missed it last week but I see that 20 May was Nick Heyward’s 63rd birthday! It’s really hard to think of Nick Heyward as a 63-year-old given his youthful face is, for better or worse, burned into the memory banks of everyone who listened to pop music in the early 80s. A quick internet search tells me he has grown old more gracefully than most of us, so I’m not losing any sleep over how he’ll cope with old age.
Anyway, now may be the time to confess that back in 1982 I was quite taken with early Haircut 100. Not so much the jumpers over the shoulders, floppy-fringed boy-band look but I really liked the way they presented their singles in those classic pinstriped sleeves, if you recall them. I remember getting a taped copy of their debut LP Pelican West from someone and thinking that it felt a lot of fun musically, with the horns dancing about and those guitars furiously strumming. And lyrically it was all a bit daft too. Their most successful single Love Plus One (No3 in the Fab Forty) had the confounding couplet “where do we go from here?/Is it down to the lake I fear?” while the horn-driven super-funky debut single finished its slightly fey rap section with “Your favourite shirt is on the bed/Do a somersault on your head!”. Quite!
But it was a couple of the non-single tracks on the record that really jumped out at me. Calling Captain Autumn had a nice tight groove and a punchy nonsense chorus – I recall there was a remix of it on the Mighty Real NME tape (NME004) where it was followed, very appropriately, by a great Kid Creole track. But the song that really sticks in my head is the poppy jazz bounce of Lemon Firebrigade, all bossa nova grooves, horn figures and a glorious bassline. The lyric was simply a one line chorus asking: “Why oh why?/Lemon firebrigade?” Why, indeed. Given the vibe of a couple of the other tracks this week I’ve decided to take the plunge and playlist it ahead of the hits.
Last Word
Last week I talked of WIS in June featuring guest blogs and festival coverage but this week Last Word is looking forward to the summer. For pretty much the whole of July and half of August, WIS is packing up its campervan and going on a ‘Tour de France’. The laptop will be stashed on board and it is currently my intention to be a digital nomad and continue with a weekly ‘carte postale’ from our stops as we circumnavigate the land of cheese and wine. Inevitably the posts will be less structured and probably shorter – no bad thing at all! But it is my intention to drop six tunes into your in-boxes every Friday, notwithstanding the (over?)consumption of the aforementioned ‘fromage et vin’.
Remembering to update the Master Playlist may be more challenging than usual but I’m sure Fraser will chin me if it all gets behind. But this week, they are already dropped into place moving it ever closer to the 400-tune mark. Huge!
AR
Week In Sound 
Leave a comment