Plain Or Pan?
Now, Nancy Sinatra with a word to the wise.
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Due to a combination of work commitments, family stuff, illness and far-out holidays in New York I’ve not been doing much blogging recently. Now that things have settled down a bit, I’m back.
Way back when Plain Or Pan first started (nearly 3 years ago) I posted a few Coca-Cola jingles. Visitors to the blog loved them – they were the most downloaded tracks for most of that year, so..when the inspiration just isn’t there to write anything new….this post is a bit of a repeat. I’ve taken the words from a March 07 bit I wrote and the tunes from my Coca Cola folder, although apart from the Nancy Sinatra jingle (which is kitsch, camp and quite ridiculous) I don’t think I’ve made them available on here before.
Hey! Get down! Dig it with the Vanilla Fudge and Coca Cola! My mum tells me that in the swinging 60s, most provincial teenagers never had access to, never mind actually try, the mind-bending drugs that were so obviously shaping music, fashion and the consciousness of society. Instead, the hip, with-it teenagers in my wee corner of the west of Scotland would pop a couple of aspirins into their Coca Cola and swing the night away in a tripped-out approximation of sixties bliss.
Coca Cola were well aware that things indeed go better with a Coca Cola, and their 60’s marketing team were so on the ball that they got the groups du jour to record Coke jingles for local radio and the likes. Most of these jingles are bloody magic. They are quite blatant pastiches of those artists’ current hit singles and fall into 3 distinct categories:
1. The soul/r’n’b artist – Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell, Carla Thomas, The Supremes, Otis Redding, Ray Charles etc etc
2. The fuzzed-out, beat-driven, blues-influenced garage bands – The Who, Vanilla Fudge, Troggs, Box Tops, Dave Dee Dozy Beaky Mick & Titch (so that stretches it a bit, but you get the point)
3. The pop stars/crooners – Bee Gees, Lulu, Roy Orbison, Petula Clark, Nancy Sinatra, etc.
Here’s your starter for 10
Nancy Sinatra’s jingle
Aretha Franklin’s jingle
The Supremes jingle #1
The Supremes jingle #2
The Supremes jingle #3
Aretha Franklin & Ray Charles‘ jingle
Lulu’s jingle
Roy Orbison’s jingle
Vanilla Fudge’s jingle
The Troggs‘ jingle
More to follow in future posts….
Tags: coca cola jingles, coke adverts
It Was Plenty Years Ago Today
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A year or so ago I had the idea to run a series of pun-tastic posts called ‘It was plenty years ago today‘. Based on the success of those Beatles mastertapes that I had posted (when Plain Or Pan melted immediately and the internet police first cottoned on to this site) I would combine my expert textpert knowledge of The Beatles with some of their better bootlegs in my collection and post rare outtakes and the like on the anniversary of the track being recorded. For one reason or other, I never quite got round to doing it, until today.
Given that this weekend is Beatles Weekend on BBC2 and given that the remastered albums are out in the middle of the week (now there’s a novel way of promoting a computer game – cannae wait to play it by the way), this is as good a time as any to get things going. Plenty years ago today (42 41 (oops!) to be precise), a week or so after Brian Epstein’s death, The Beatles reconvened (at Paul McCartney’s insistence – the others, especially Lennon, had no motivation to continue) on the 5th September to start work on the Magical Mystery Tour project.
First up saw them tackle I Am The Walrus. Between the 5th and 6th and 27th, 28th and 29th September, The Beatles twisted and turned John Lennon’s gobbledigook nonsense tune into the psychedelic masterpiece you are no doubt familiar with. The tune itself began life in Lennon’s Weybridge house. Absent mindedly tickling the ivories one morning, Lennon heard the sound of a police car outside, noting how the ‘notes’ of the siren changed as the car got further away. He began replicating this sound on the piano, and this became the chord progression for I Am The Walrus. It should be noted here that JWL was heavily into LSD by this point in his life. Taking drugs to make music to take drugs to, as Spacemen 3 once said. Ian Macdonald’s excellent Revolution In The Head book dissects Lennon’s acid-soaked Walrus lyrics to the nth degree way better than I ever could. It’s a fantastic book. The last time I was in Fopp I think it was on sale for about £4! But I digress. Back to the music…
Over the course of the 5 sessions, the tune would go from instrumental (here’s take 7) to incomplete vocal versions (here’s take 16, minus the drunk-sounding strings at the start. Listen out for Lennon fluffing the ‘yellow matter custard’ line.), to alternate mixes (here’s one) to the finished item complete with a King Lear radio play and various bits ‘n bobs woven into the mix by George Martin. Achtung! Here’s the German mono mix.
The tracks above come from a 15 track bootleg called Walrus, Eggman and Pinguins. It varies in quality and, to be honest, many of the tracks sound identical, but it nonetheless charts the studio progress of one of The Beatles more interesting moments. You can download the whole shebang here. Goo Goo G’joob!
Also available for download, reissues (!) of those Beatles 4 track mastertapes that caused all the fuss way back when.
Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
With A Little Help From My Friends
And also still available (in high quality flac form only – the internet police jump straight on board with their handcuffs and truncheons whenever the mp3 of this becomes available) is the previously unheard 10min + mix of Revolution. Possibly an outfake, possibly the real deal, I wrote about it a wee while ago here. It’s a good read, even if I do say so myself. On the other hand, if you’re only here circling overhead like a vulture awaiting your next musical feast, you can cut out all the crap and download it here.
*Bonus Beatle fact #1!!!
I Am The Walrus is in Gary Numan’s list of Top 20 songs ever.
*Bonus Beatle fact #2!!!
As well as recording I Am The Walrus on the 6th September, The Beatles also had a go at George Harrison’s under-rated masterpiece Blue Jay Way. Sadly I have no outtakes of this. If anyone does have, you know how to contact me…
*Bonus Beatle fact #3!!!
Did you know that at the end of I Feel Fine the studio microphones unwittingly picked up the sounds of some dogs barking outside Abbey Road? Hear it here! Right after the last “ooh!” backing vocal. Now dig it out your own copy, listen to it, turn it up for the last 10 seconds and you’ll hear them. I wonder if the dogs’ll still be on the up and coming remasters?
Radioheadline News
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As usual, limping just one half-step behind the rest of the world when it comes to exciting new stuff, Plain Or Pan brings you the not entirely exclusive revelation that Radiohead have once again gone under the radar to release some new material. No trumpets. No fanfares. No ads in the press. No emails to those on the geeklist. Perhaps not quite on the grand scale of things when In Rainbows came from nowhere and had most of us all in a lather and foaming at the mouth, the weekend nonetheless saw a new Radiohead track leak online. I wouldn’t be surprised if the band had leaked it themselves. Aye. It’s easy to give away yer music when you happen to be that rarest of things – a commercially successful worldwide band/brand and critically acclaimed, but still, kudos where it’s due. By today (Monday), the track’s not so much leaked online as totally drowned the world wide web’s file sharing communities in a tsunami-like tidal wave of expectant saliva.
It’s rumoured that These Are My Twisted Words is from a new 4 track ep called Wall Of Ice. The supposed tracklisting varies depending where you google and visits to radiohead.com and wallofice.com reveal nothing, but you knew that already. The track itself is pretty decent. Taking off where In Rainbows left us, it starts with some wonky guitar, some pattering computerised beats and a bit of atmospheric bass. Decent singing too. Not in any way forced like last week’s Harry Patch single. It’s playing as I type, and it sounds fantastic. But you knew that already too. For those of you even slower than me on the uptake, here it is.
Now keep your eyes peeled for the real thing. And let me know about it when you find anything out. Ta!
*Cheers to Paul in the comments section. Since posting the track, it’s been made available at Radiohead’s official site, here. Possibly due to it being everywhere by now, it’s free! It’s probably also slightly higher quality. It comes with a wee note from the band. It also comes with artwork (see above) which you can customise. Generous stuff!
*Postscript. This website has a really good article about Radiohead and These Are My Twisted Words.
Bin there, done that
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Bonjour tout le monde. My muse has deserted me recently, leading to a slowing down of me posting new stuff. I cannae even be arsed writing a proper review of last night’s Bob Dylan show in the big red shed at the SECC. But it was a belter. Visions of Johanna and everything. Way better than the last time I saw him (2 years ago) when his band pulled out 4 and a half minute guitar solos every chance they got. My review of that show even caused a minor stir in the Dylan community at the time. How dare you slag off Bob, and all that. It’s here if you have a spare couple of minutes.
I’d like to welcome anyone who’s visiting for the first time after reading the bit I did for the Vinyl Villain. I’d also like to take this opportunity to encourage any regulars on here to pay a visit to the Vinyl Villain. His blog is regularly updated and consistently excellent, which is something I can’t really say for Plain Or Pan these days.
Special band, Special Needs.
I wrote a piece on the Trashcan Sinatras for the Vinyl Villain. He’s off on holiday and asked for some ‘guest’ contributors for the whole of May. My piece was posted yesterday and the traffic I’ve received due to it is very welcome. As a thank you, here’s another hard-to-find Trashcan’s obscurity – the download-only studio version of Hammertime. Originally released electronically via the band’s very short-lived Picnic Records website a couple of years ago, it is now unavailable. Unless you shell out £40+ for the All The Dark Horses limited edition 10″. Or unless you click the link above, of course. Given the right setting (an official album of rarities or the b-side of a hit record) Hammertime would shine. However it has been relegated to a footnote in the Trashcan’s wonderful discography. It deserves a second chance. Go on. Give it a listen.
New visitors to Plain Or Pan may be interested to learn that in November and December last year I was raided by the internet police. All music files dating from Nov 08 right back to Jan 07 were deleted. So the only music you can download from here is essentially anything since the start of 2009. Here’s some stuff you may have missed…
The first Plain Or Pan compilation album, compiling all the best bits of the now- deleted stuff. CD1 and CD2. Comes with artwork.
Over 20 versions of The La’s ‘There She Goes’. It’ll give you a sore head after a while, but, reallly, you need this.
The La’s legendary Kitchen Session. Listen to it here. Read about it elsewhere on Plain Or Pan. Take the time to find it and read about it, will you? Cheers!
The Beatles ‘Sgt Peppers..’ Master tape. Audio gold. A music fan’s wet dream. Call it what you will, but if you’re new to this, then prepare yourself!
The Beatles newly unearthed Revolution Take 20. Fake? Genuine? You decide!
Mojo magazine’s Johnny Marr compiled (by me) CD. With artwork. Here.
A rare mix of Marvin Gaye’s ‘What’s Going On’.
The Arctic Monkeys do Van McCoy’s ‘Baby I’m Yours’. It’s a belter!
There’s tons of stuff on Plain Or Pan. I take time to ensure only the choicest, juciest most hard-to-come-by tracks are included. I’d be grateful if you could take the time to unearth some of it. A good compilation CD awaits those with patience and a good download speed.
Well, flip your wig!
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So Phil Spector is finally found guilty. Six years to reach the only obvious conclusion, although, most music fans could tell you he’d committed murder as soon as he got his tiny little hands on the master tapes to ‘Let It Be’. But it’s official – it’s moiduh and Phil Spector will probably spend the rest of his life in a cushy corner of some state penitentiary or other, bald and friendless.
Murder 1
Of course, as you know, the music he worked on is mostly sublime. Timeless, not set by generation. You could be 5 or 95. There’s something there for all of us. Some of those tracks are practically folk songs. I’m going to remember him this way. And you should too. Listen to The Ronettes in the studio doing ‘My One And Only Baby’ as it was called before becoming ‘Be My Baby’. Here’s an amalgamation of takes 21-25, mostly instrumental, with the odd backing vocal and studio chatter flung in for good measure. A Wall of Sound production in production.
Murder 2
Here’s an unrecorded take of the same track, complete with lead and backing vocals and that ricketty-ticketty percussion at the end of every line. The wee tape rewind at the beginning makes me think this is Spector’s first play back of the completed track, but that’s only my thoughts. I guess we’ll never know now.
Finally, here’s that Ronettes ‘Baby I Love You’ isolated vocal track that everybody still emails me about. *Note. I incorrectly labelled this as Be My Baby Vocals. But before you get yer knickers in a twist I just checked, and it’s definitely the vocal track of Baby I love You. OK!
Last time I posted tracks of this ilk, they were removed tout de suite by the DMCA. Make like Phil with a .45 and act fast!
Later everyone, gotta shoot…….!
Murder 3
Full Of Eastern Promise
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A month or so ago I told you I’d been listening non-stop to the Amorphous Androgynous compiled ‘A Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble Exploding In Your Mind Volume 1 – Cosmic Space Music’. You can listen to some tracks and read about it here. Mind duly exploded, I went online and like thousands of you do, I bought some music from iTunes. I’ve always had my own unwritten rule that if the music was physically available, I’d always buy it. Who wants a digital file? Not me, I thought, until Oasis (yes, you read correctly) decided to release the 22 and a half minute Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble mix of current single ‘Falling Down‘ . I had to hear it ASAP and coupled with the only physically-available commercial release being on 2 sides of solid 33rpm 12″ vinyl and a severe lack of decent record shops anywhere near where I live, I opted for the easy option.
I once had a letter published in Uncut, where I put the boot into Oasis calling them a ‘brand, not a band’. I was quite pleased with myself when I wrote that line and even more pleased when they published the letter in the December issue of that year under the headline ‘The Last Noel’. I can’t remember when Oasis were last any good, but never has a band fallen so spectacularly from grace and ended up sounding like a dog’s dinner. They used to be terrific. There. Said it. No shame in that. I saw them live a couple of times between the first and second albums and they were sen-say-sheee-on-alllll. Suddenly, between second and third albums, they stopped being good, and at an alarming rate, their musical quality continues to drop. ‘Falling Down’ is no different. It’s another Noel-led clunker with lots of fannying about with capos on the second fret, minor chords and open strings…
Em G6the summer sun that blows my mindCmaj7 Asus2Is falling down on all that I’ve ever knownEm G6Time to kiss the world goodbyeCmaj7 Asus2Falling down on all that I’ve ever knownCmaj7 Dsus2Is all that I’ve ever known. etc etc etc….Yep, just like Wonderwall. But not as good. (No Liam on lead vocals, that’s why). It goes nowhere fast. Actually, not that fast. It takes about 10 minutes to go nowhere. Tedious on a grand scale. I don’t even think Liam and his Sex Beatles sneer could save it. Thankfully, Amorphous Androgynous have.
It’s got sitars, flutes, mellotrons and the whole psychedlic shebang going on. Noel’s vocals are looped, sampled and buried deep beneath a drumbeat that sounds like ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ clattering down four flights of stairs. There’s a fuzz bass solo that John Entwistle would’ve been suing over were he still alive. There’s a female backing singer that comes in sounding like Natasha Atlas being stung by a wasp. Or is that the fuzz bass again? At one point a child speaks the lyrics as the whole thing blisses out like some sort of post-hallicinogenic comedown. Strangely, Chris Martin seems to be playing some sort of half-arsed piano at the same time and the track goes off into a whole new territory. I’d imagine this would be side 2 of the vinyl. The whole thing now sounds like The Orb or an Andrew Weatherall remix of some early ’90s guitar band. Yes. It’s that good. You don’t even mind the violin solo, cos those whoosing effects in the background remind you of the intro music the Stone Roses used at Glasgow Green. Natasha Atlas makes a re-appearance and her and Noel duet for a bit. The whole thing begins to pick up again. By the time the electric guitars and drums have crashed back into it and the whole track has lifted off into outer space you realise 15 or so minutes have passed, and there’s still another 7 to go! I won’t spoil it anymore, but do yourself a favour and download this now!
Noel Gallagher falling down.
Songwriters get their inspiration in the strangest of places.
Aye! Tunes! iCompiled for you
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‘Don’t Look Back’ sang Bob Dylan. And indeed Teenage Fanclub. But sometimes you’ve got to look back before you can move forwards again. 2009 starts with a bang! Plain Or Pan? is almost 2 years old and to celebrate I’ve compiled a selection of the most-loved and downloaded tracks from the blog. This is your very last chance to grab some of those nuggets of pop goodness that you may have missed first time around.
Tracklisting:
Disc 1
1. Sgt Peppers’ vocal track - The Beatles
2. Coca Cola - Jerry Lee Lewis
3. Son Of Sam acoustic – Elliott Smith
4. There She Goes promo – The La’s
5. All The Way Down beat version - The Primitives
6. Boots - Lee Hazelwood
7. Just Dropped In - The Dap Kings
8. Baby I Love You vocal track - Ronettes
9. Hey Hey What Can I Do - Led Zeppelin
10. You Really Got A Hold On Me - Small Faces
11. Your Time Is Gonna Come - Sandie Shaw
12. Mama You Been On My Mind - Rod Stewart
13. In The Heat Of The Morning - Last Shadow Puppets
14. The Loner - Supergrass
15. Down By The River - Joey Gregorash
16. Southern Man - Sylvester and the Hot Band
17. Freaky Dancin’ - Happy Mondays
18. Filthy - St Etienne
19. Gimme Shelter vocal track - Rolling Stones
20. Flume live MOKB/WEEM - Bon Iver
21. Grace - King Creosote
22. Just Like a Woman live in the studio- Jeff Buckley
Disc 2
1. Monkey Gone To Heaven vocal track - The Pixies
2. Handy Man Peel Session - Frank Black & Teenage Fanclub
3. About A Girl BBC session - Teenage Fanclub
4. Dead Leaves And Tne Dirty Ground - Nina Persson
5. Hanging On The Telephone - The Nerves
6. Down On The Street take 2 - The Stooges
7. Tradewinds – Super Furry Animals
8. Riders On The Storm outtake – The Doors
9. I Heard It Through The Grapevine vocal track - Marvin Gaye
10. Coca Cola - Ray Charles & Aretha Franklin
11. Homework – John Lee Hooker
12. Stickman version 1 - Elliott Smith
13. Snow – Trashcan Sinatras
14. Moon River full-length version - Morrissey
15. Autumn Almanac BBC session - The Kinks
16. Everybody Drop It Like It’s Hot - DJ Prince
17. 99 Problems - Jay Z/The Beatles
18. Over live in a stable- The La’s
19. Music When The Lights Go Out Legs 11 demo - The Libertines
You’ll find CD1 here, CD2 here and you’ll find the artwork here. Easy-peasy!
Nit-picking internet fascists
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Looks like someone’s out to get me. The internet police are spying on me and coming over all Big Brother again. Received this email…
“Thanks for using DivShare. Unfortunately, our staff has had to remove one or more of your files for violation of our content standards.
This action is usually taken because a file contains adult content or copyrighted material, such as music, movies or software. We apologize for the incovenience, and ask that you not upload any similar files in the future.”
It was the Ronnie Spector vocal track. Sorry folks. Grab the rest while you can. Again. Grrr.
Click here for Rockwell ‘Somebody’s Watching Me’
Click here for U2 ‘Don’t Let The Bastards Grind You Down’ (demo)
Click here for Trashcan Sinatras ‘Leave Me Alone’
Only joking. Hee hee.
Reduce Reuse Recycle
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No Halloween post this year. But last year’s was a belter….
In the best Ringo traditions, “With peace and love, NO MORE HALLOWEEN GUISERS. Please. I hate you all. Peace and love.“
Pass me the Haribo!
Plain Or Pan-Global
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A wise old man once sang “Reissue, revalue, repackage, reassess the song,” and that’s what this post aims to do. The number of people clicking on this site on a daily basis is quite astounding. In the past week alone I’ve had vistors from Brazil, China, Germany, Japan, Finland and New Zealand. I think all corners of the globe have found me. I never expected Plain Or Pan? to be as popular or as relevant as it is. I never thought people would bookmark it or that the casual browser could find it via a click or two on Google, and then want to come back again and again. Never in my mind did I imagine getting mentioned in proper music publications (see above left). In all honesty, I didn’t expect to still be here a year and a half down the line. But I am. Thanks to you. And you. And you. And you. And you. Yes, even you. And you. And…
I know when I visit a blog I don’t read every page. I read a wee bit (or more, maybe even all of it, if it’s interesting) then scroll through to see what the downloads are. I don’t have time to read every page of every blog. No doubt I’ve missed some good stuff. And that got me thinking. If I don’t read every bit of every blog, then why should I expect anyone to read every bit of this one. Of course they don’t. So it’s logical to think that a lot of people visiting this site will have missed some of the more interesting posts. Not the ones that show up on a google click, but the ones that are buried deep inside the vaults of Plain Or Pan? Buried deep inside until now. Reissue, revalue, repackage? I’d say it’s more like recycling. Here’s some of what you may have missed (all links to the music are in the posts)…..
1. The Coca Cola advert music. Here , here and here. And here’s an mp3 of The Carpenters 1971 easy listening Coke jingle.
2. Morrissey doing ‘Moon River’. It’s magic.
3. ‘You Really Got A Hold On Me’ by The Jackson 5 and The Zombies. Oh, and look what I’ve found. It’s only The Small Faces doing the same track. Here. Equal measures distortion + soulful vocals = a belter.
4. Norman Blake from Teenage Fanclub does Dennis Wilson from the Beach Boys ‘Only with You’. Right here. There’s tons of Teenage Fanclub stuff scattered throughout Plain Or Pan? Go and find it, lazy bones!
5. The Raconteurs BBC Sessions. Here.
6. Lee Hazlewood’s demo of ‘These Boots Are Made For Walking‘ here. Along with some kitsch Nancy Sinatra stuff.
6. Some Super Furry Animals hard-to-find stuff. Here.
7. What goes around comes around. Elliott Smith rips off Bob Dylan, who had previoulsy ripped off someone himself. Here. There’s a similar Led Zeppelin post here. And if you don’t know any Elliott Smith, shame on you! You could do worse than click here. Demos, acoustic, rare! Wooo!
8. A potted history of The Primitives. Fantastic guitar pop from a band named after Lou Reed’s first band. Everything you need to know (and 3 of their best records) here.
9. Ronnie Spector and The Ronettes singing accapella in the studio. This is astonishing.
10. Even more astonishing, Sandie Shaw’s breasts. And some great cover versions too. Here.
Finally, you can never have enough Trashcan Sinatras in your life. it’s a crying shame that not enough people know about them. Here’s their version of Randy Newman’s ‘Snow‘. Released only in Japan, it’s a hard-to-find gem.
All links should be working. Don’t hesitate to let me know if anything’s broken. Cheers.
