Plain Or Pan?
I don’t think I wanna dance just now.
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Welcome to request corner! His name is Prince and he is funky. What follows are 3 decidedly unfunky covers of Prince tracks. If you were being cruel you might say they’re workmanlike in their approach. Sloppy, too slow (hello My Morning Jacket) and devoid of any soul at all. If you were being a bit more generous, you’d say they were trying to do the tracks in their own style (howdy Foo Fighters). If you were a bit less cynical, you might even say The Jesus And Mary Chain’s version of ‘Alphabet Street’ was pretty good. Cos it is. Thanks to Gerald for the suggestion.
My JAMC version of ‘Alphabet Street’ comes from one of the CD single versions of ‘Come On’ (it’s also got a Pogues and a Cramps cover on it), but it’s available from round about now on the sexy looking box set above. What I like about this version is that the JAMC have gone out of their way to make it as easy as possible to play. Stripped it back to 3 simple chords, added some fuzz bass, some doo-wop vocals, some feedback (naturally) and made it sound like any other of their records. Prince’s Alphabet Street sounds like the kind of place where supermodels are handing out free E’s and sex on tap, but The JAMC make Alphabet Street sound like the kind of place where even Lou Reed would be scared of going to score. I think Glasvegas could do a really good version of The JAMC covering Prince. Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!
The Foo Fighters track comes from the B-Side of their ‘Have It All’ single, and in the best traditions of the radio, many DJs started playing the ‘Darling Nikki’ cover instead of the rather obvious and plodding A-Side. The Foo Fighters version reached number 15 in the American charts, much to Prince’s disgust. He wouldn’t let them release it as a single, they stuck it on the b-side instead, and voila, the rest is filthy-lyriced history.
First things first now. I like My Morning Jacket. As far as blue-collar rocking guitar bands go I think they’re possibly my favourite. I prefer them to the Hold Steady, if that means anything. I really liked the ‘Z’ album. I’m sure they’re a decent live proposition. They’re famed for long and loud live sets, and they often do covers during encores, which is where their version of ‘I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man’ comes from. I found this version whilst poking about the blogosphere, but I can’t find any info on where it was recorded. It’s live and sounds like it’s from the mixing desk but other than that I can’t tell you much else about it. Except that it must’ve been one hell of a long show that night, cos MMJ have stripped all the bounce, all the fun and all the soul out of a great wee song. Compare and contrast with this Prince ‘Sign O’ The Times’ tour soundcheck rehearsal. Even allowing for a cheesy brass section near the end, the funk is back. Listen to Prince’s guitar playing during the solo! Jeez-oh! I think I wanna dance now!
*More Prince ‘SOTT‘ soundcheck stuff is available here. And Prince doing Radiohead’s ‘Creep‘ is still available via this link!
I’d imagined, like, a string quartet after the second verse y’know.
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If only I’d had these tracks in 1989! Round about then I taped Paul McCartney’s MTV Unplugged off the telly and must have watched it about a million times. Well, at least 30. The bit I kept going back to was where he played ‘Blackbird’‘ (or ‘Blackboard‘ as he referred to it on the programme. Ho ho.). I slowly but surely worked out how he played it by freeze-framing the trickier parts, playing the mirror image of what south paw McCartney was playing and rewinding it as soon as the song had finished. I’d then play along to it with my vinyl copy of The White Album on my stereo.
The cover of my White Album technically isn’t white. The bottom left-hand corner and the inner gatefold has a distinct beige look about it. Probably because I pissed on it during the night after my 18th birthday. But that’s another story. Anyway. Freeze-framing and rewinding videos followed by carefully dropping and lifting record player needles at the right points on a record made learning this song a labour of love for me. Kids nowadays have it easy. Whomp ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ onto the iPod docking station, fire up UltimateGuitar.com and there it is, 300+ tabs of the same song, all slightly different, mostly all good. In my day you had to earn your guitar stripes. Tsk.
“Tsk!”
When they first started playing guitar, McCartney and George Harrison both learnt to play Bach’s Bouree in E minor so that they could show off at parties. Looking for some post-Pepper inspiration, McCartney was staying at his farm on the Mull of Kintyre and wrote ‘Blackbird‘ after playing about with Bach’s tune. According to Philip Norman’s book ‘Shout!‘, later that same day he played it to the fans who were waiting outside the gates of his house.
“A few of us were there. We had the feeling something was going to happen. Paul didn’t take the Mini inside the way he usually did – he parked it on the road and he and Linda walked right past us. They went inside and we stood there, watching different lights in the house go on and off.
In the end, the light went on in the Mad Room, at the top of the house, where he kept all his music stuff and his toys. Paul opened the window and called out to us, ‘Are you still down there?’ ‘Yes,’ we said. He must have been really happy that night. He sat on the window sill with his acoustic guitar and sang Blackbird to us as we stood down there in the dark.” Fan Margo Stevens, quoted by Philip Norman in ‘Shout!’
It’s been said that the lyrics are about the civil rights movement in America and the struggle for equality. Or it might just be about a wee bird that McCartney saw in his garden one summer’s morning in 1968. Without wanting to sound too glib about it, as a guitar player it was always the finger picking and overall sound of the record that grabbed me.
McCartney and his Martin D28, Abbey Road June 11th 1968
These days, Blackbird has become my Bach and it can now be yours. What you have is a hassle-free way of learning ’Blackbird”. The tab taken from The Beatles Complete Scores is here, in word document form. And below you have 10 or so in-the-studio crystal clear versions of ‘Blackbird’. Some fast, some slow, some with fluffed lines, some that stop short. There’s some rudimentary piano clanging on one take. There’s also the odd bit of studio chatter between Paul and George Martin. Occasionaly there’s a third voice. That’s a slightly fed-up John Lennon, taking a break from putting together ‘Revolution 9′ in the studio next door.
All tracks are taken from a Beatles bootleg called ‘Gone Tomorrow, Here Today‘ and were recorded at Abbey Road Studio 2 on June 11th and July 29th 1968, and at Trident Studios on August 28th and 29th 1968. None of the tracks on my bootleg sleeve are marked as being a particular take, so I can’t be any more precise about their origin than that. But this is a good way to learn the song – it’s essentially a work-in-progress session. McCartney repeats the trickier parts and plays it again and again and again, honing it to perfection. Anyway. Take the tab, download the tracks and play along. You’ll have it mastered in no time. You’ll need to add your own foot taps and bird noises. Party piece ahoy!
Piss stain not in shot
If you see Syd, tell him.
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If he’s not too busy in the middle of a cosmic reunion jam with Rick Wright you could do worse than let Syd Barrett know there’s a fantastic new single coming out very soon in his honour. Sonically, it’s nothing like his blend of off-kilter psychedelia, but the Trashcan Sinatras have created a luscious and bluesy 6 and a half minutes plus track that’s a worthy contendor for Single of the Year.
If you’re in any way a fan of Syd you’ll be able to spot a few knowing nods in his direction – mentions of ‘Emily’, ‘bicycles’, ‘English skies’, and the fact that it’s called ‘Oranges & Apples’. It was written after his possessions were sold off when he died, so you also get mentions to ‘green wheelbarrows’, ‘drawers’ and references to the colours he used in his painting. It’s the perfect soundtrack for the Indian summer that’s supposed to be coming our way in October, which is when it’s released. You can hear some of the track here, and also get details of how to download it.
Back in the days when high streets still had record shops, I used to work in one. I learned quickly that there are 2 types of Pink Floyd. There’s The Pink Floyd, late 60s psychedelic pioneers and creators of arguably the best album of 1967, ‘A Saucerful Of Secrets’ (move over Sgt Pepper). This is the Syd-era Pink Floyd that yer serious music fan enjoys. Then there’s The Floyd Man, as in “you goat oany Floyd, man?” This group was the Syd-less creators of such rock behemoths as ‘Dark Side of the Moon’, ‘The Wall’ and all that jazz, and the reason John Lydon wore an ‘I Hate Pink Floyd’ t-shirt. This is the Pink Floyd that weekend stoners, neds and shoplifters would be looking for. None of the Pink Floyd albums could be displayed with their covers in them cos they all got nicked. What’s so interesting about the covers for ‘Meddle‘ or ‘Animals‘ or ‘A Momentary Lapse of Reason‘ is anyone’s guess, but they could never be displayed. Same thing with The Doors back catalogue. And Metallica. Even The Eagles back catalogue cover art was pillaged in my shop. Nae taste, they neds.
In the meantime, here’s a few Syd Barrett outtakes, all from the ‘Crazy Diamond’ Box Set. I think the tracks also appear on the Japanese issues of his solo albums, but you’ll find some choice cuts below.
Octopus (Takes 1 & 2)
Golden Hair (Take 5)
Baby Lemonade (Take 1)
It Is Obvious (Take 2)
Gigolo Aunt (Take 9)
Clowns & Jugglers (Take 1)
Effervescing Elephant (Take 2)
a nice wee Syd outtakes compilation!
Interestingly, ‘Golden Hair (Take 5)’ is credited as being produced by Pete Jenner. He later went on to manage the Trashcans for a wee while. Now, get over to The City Wakes website and order ‘Oranges & Apples’. Woah! Wait! It’s not out til the 13th of October. Do it then! Make sure you do!
*Bonus track. The Pink Floyd’s 1967 single ‘Apples & Oranges’
Sampling The Beatles and the Kopyright Liberation Front…
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…or the KLF to yer average music fan. Or the Justified Ancients of Mu-Mu. Or The JAMS. Or King Boy D and Rockman Rock. Or just plain old Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty to their mums. We’ll stick to the KLF for now. It’s no coincidence that their full unabbreviated moniker advocated freedom for all. Their debut album, ‘1987 (What The Fuck Is Going On?)’ was a fantastic exercise in cheeky and downright blatant plagiarism from a wide range of unlikely sources.
They may be hip these days (or are they not again, I don’t know), but in 1987 Abba were far, far, far from hip. So the KLF took a large slice of ‘Dancing Queen’, added some scratching, some rapping and what sounds like a demented duck on lead vocals, looped it about a bit and named it ‘The Queen and I’. Nowadays it sounds about as revolutionary as PJ & Duncan, but at the time the music press loved it. “Have you ever met Abba?” one of them asks near the end. And with a knowing wink the other replies, “I’d love to meet Abba. They’re one of my favourite groups.” As rave reviews for the LP filtered across the North Sea to Sweden, Abba and their lawyers got hold of the track and were a wee bit upset. “Cease and desist!” they said. “And while you’re at it, destroy all remaining copies of the album.” Bill and Jimmy set off an a Scandinavian voyage in the hope of meeting one of their favourite groups. They dumped some of the unsold albums overboard. To this day they’re at the bottom of the North Sea. Mint copies fetch £500+ on eBay, but I’m not sure how much you’d get if you went diving for one of these sunken treasures. According to Wiki, some other copies of the album were given to a prostitute who looked a wee bit like Agnetha. Of the copies that remained, the band took them to Abba’s management in the hope that they could get them to change their mind. They didn’t, and the album has been a thing of file-sharing mystery ever since.
One track, ‘All You Need Is Love’ was released as a one-sided 12″ single and sampled The Beatles, Sam Fox and some kids singing Ring A Ring A Roses. Bill and Jimmy rapped like a very Scottish ‘Licensed To Ill’-era Beastie Boys. It sounds weird and a wee bit dated. The album version was even weirder, featuring a random Top Of The Pops rundown of the charts. What the fuck was going on indeed.
Talking of the Beastie Boys…..no strangers to sampling themselves, they took huge chunks out of The Beatles back catalogue for the track, ‘The Sounds Of Science’ on ‘Pauls Boutique’. Thankfully, this was released in the days before sample clearance, cos nowadays it would never be allowed. They also nicked bits of ‘I’m Down’, and right up until the last second their own track of the same name was due to appear on ‘Licensed To Ill’, their sneery, snotty Led Zeppelin-pillaging debut. You can get it on the ‘Original Ill’ bootleg or you can get it here.
More recently (and more famously) Danger Mouse took his copy of ‘The White Album’ and Jay Z’s ‘The Black Album’, got some sellotape, added some big beats and created ‘The Grey Album’. EMI ceased and desisted it quicker than you could say “Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except For Me And My Monkey” (aye, it took them a while) and like the KLF before them the album filtered onto file sharing immortality. To be honest, I don’t like it all that much. But then, I don’t really like Jay Z. Some of it sounds a bit contrived to these ears. But I do like this track. Jay Z’s ‘99 Problems’ and The Beatles ‘Helter Skelter’ battle it out for supremacy. Being as he is laid up in bed with a couple of broken ribs, Noel Gallagher is unavailable for comment, but I think it’s a cracker. No pun intended.
*Footnote. Does anyone know the name of the Cypress Hill track that samples Paul McCartney’s “Wooo-ooo’s” from the opening bars of ‘Your Mother Should Know’? I know it’s out there somewhere, but I cannae find it. Help!
Jack, you don’t have a more substantial tambourine out there, do ya?
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So says Phil Spector to (presumably) Jack Nitzsche during take 5 of Ike & Tina Turner’s ‘River Deep, Mountain High’. In this post you’ll find more studio gold than you can shake a tail feather at. Sadly no master tapes, but nonetheless a nice couple of Phil Spector studio outtakes.
“Check out the wig!” “Laugh all you want Turner, but you ain’t gettin’ anywhere near an instrument!”
Known for his painstaking attention to detail (listen to him drive Ronnie and the Ronettes into sonic overdrive here) Spector had at least 18 goes of producing ‘River Deep, Mountain High’. I have 11 of them and to be honest, it’s nigh impossible to spot any sonic differences from one to the next. Take 14’s a wee bit fast. Or was that take 15? Or was that the take where Tina’s phrasing is slightly different? After a while, it’s all a bit of a blur. Of course, they’re essential to any discerning collector. That almost goes without saying. The two takes I’m posting here are:
Take 18, where the focus is on the hysterical, Wagnerian backing vocals
Take 19, where Tina joins the newly whipped-into-shape backing singers for what turned out to be the perfect dress rehearsal before putting the song on vinyl.
Interestingly, Ike Turner (himself no slouch when it came to control freakery) wasn’t allowed anywhere near the studio. Although credited to Ike & Tina Turner, only Tina’s vocals are on the track. Ike didn’t even get to shake a maraca in the fade-out. Spector loved ‘River Deep, Mountain High’. In fact, he even went so far as to say this single was his best work, and, given the canon of his output, that’s no mean claim. So he probably felt vindicated when the single peaked at Number 3 in the UK. In the States, where everything has to be compartmentalised, it was considered too black for white radio and too white for black radio and subsequently hit the dizzy heights of number 88. Shame on you, America! Oh, and close your eyes everyone……….did you know that Sting lost his virginity to the song? Gads!
Sting, you don’t have a more substantial tambourine out there, do ya?
