by Vinyl301 -

Various Artists: Ruby Trax

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New Musical Express 1992. NME40CD

Discogs

A move into rather more mainstream territory than usual for this post.  Ruby Trax was put together in 1992 to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the NME by getting 40 (mostly) indie luminaries of the day to cover No 1 singles.  It’s undoubtedly ambitious, but the overwhelming impression is of artists who really couldn’t be bothered but felt obliged to contribute to keep the music journos happy.  I’ve posted it not because of it’s artistic merit – there’s not much of that on display, but because of it’s long drawn out bizarreness.  Bizarreness is good.

In musical terms it’s worth it for the poignant cover of Suicide Is Painless by the Manics, three years before the disappearance of Richie Edwards, but other than that it’s mostly of interest to music geeks with completeist tendencies like me.  There are simply too many great bands here not to own it, regardless of how good (or not) it is.

If it has any appeal, maybe it’s the prospect of hearing bands you love making colossal errors of judgment (Billy Bragg doing disco anyone?), or just dashing something off without any real thought at all.  The Fall’s cover of Legends Of Xanadu ranks, I think as one of their worst efforts, but it was voted no. 5 in Peels’ festive fifty that year.  Is there something in it that I’ve missed?  Or maybe the bizarreness of it appealed.   The usually reliable Fatima Mansions cover the excerable Everything I Do I Do It For You.  At the time of course I was so heartily sick of the song that even the thought of it induced waves of nausea which maybe is why they chose to do it.  It’s hard to figure out why they slowed it down so much though, but I guess that’s the problem with the whole album, no-one thought much about anything at all.

Some of it is decent enough.  Suede were wonderful in 1992, and their version of Brass In Pocket while lazy works pretty well.  St Etienne’s Stranger In Paradise is hardly world shattering, but is a solid effort.

I think I should single out Ride for particular criticism.  All they manage to show by covering Kraftwerk’s The Model is a startling lack of musical knowledge.  There are certain artists you don’t cover (Al Green and Jeff Buckey for example) because their recordings are so definitive, any attempt to follow them leaves you with a lot of egg on your face.  Kraftwerk fit that category – only the fictional Señor Coconut’s bizarre/hilarious calypso versions really pass muster.  An exception is Big Black’s wonderful cover of The Model on their Songs About Fucking LP, and it’s that track which made Ride’s task impossible.  Ride were a good, maybe even great guitar band, but the song had already been put on the shelf for guitar bands by Steve Albini.  And of course no-one, especially not a guitar band, would try to sound like Kraftwerk….  surely no-one’s that daft….  Well it turns out, Ride were that daft.

As usual I’ve ignored the triple disc format of this and ripped it as one big lump of 40 tracks.  Here’s a tracklisting:

Wonder Stuff, The – Coz I Luv You
Billy Bragg – When Will I See You Again?
Jesus And Mary Chain, The – Little Red Rooster
Mission, The – Atomic
Fatima Mansions, The – (Everything I Do) I Do It For You
St Etienne* – Stranger In Paradise
Wedding Present, The – Cumberland Gap
Aztec Camera / Andy Fairweather-Low – (If Paradise Is) Half As Nice
Dannii Minogue – Show You The Way To Go
Welfare Heroine – Where Do You Go To My Lovely?
Blue Aeroplanes, The – Bad Moon Rising
Senseless Things – Apache
Teenage Fanclub – Mr Tambourine Man
Ruby Trax Part 2
Carter USM* – Another Brick In The Wall
Blur – Maggie May
Tears For Fears – Ashes To Ashes
House Of Love, The – Rock Your Baby
Frank And Walters, The – I’m A Believer
EMF – Shaddap You Face
Suede – Brass In Pocket
Tori Amos – Ring My Bell
Kingmaker – Lady Madonna
Marc Almond – Like A Prayer
Farm, The – Don’t You Want Me?
Ned’s Atomic Dustbin – I’ve Never Been To Me
Boy George – My Sweet Lord
Ruby Trax Part 3
Jesus Jones – Voodoo Chile
Bob Geldof – Sunny Afternoon
Johnny Marr & Billy Duffy – The Good, The Bad And The Ugly
Cud – Down Down
Fall, The – Legend Of Xanadu
Sinead O’Connor* – Secret Love
World Party – World Without Love
Inspiral Carpets – Tainted Love
Elektric Music – Baby Come Back
Ride – The Model
Vic Reeves – Vienna
Tin Machine – Go Now
Curve – I Feel Love
Manic Street Preachers – Suicide Is Painless

 

 

by Vinyl301 -

The Pooh Sticks: Alan McGee

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Fierce Records 1988.  FRIGHT 026

Discogs

Andy left a comment linking to a London gig of a load of 80s Indie bands I used to listen to back in the day.  I can’t go, and I’m not sure I’d want to, but it did remind me of this lot.

The Pooh Sticks were a particularly shambolic Indie band from Swansea who recorded, at least initially for the somewhat subversive Fierce Records.  Their first single On Tape (1988) was a stupidly limited pressing, 100 as I recall, so I never managed to get a copy but I did hear it on Peel and thought it was hilarious.  It takes the piss out of geeky Indie kids of the time – you probably had to be one to get all the in jokes.  They followed it up with an even more limited box of 5 one sided 7″ singles (50 copies I think, also in 1988) which I have.  I guess it must be worth something but I’ve never seen one for sale.  It contained more Indiepop in-jokes – I Know Someone Who Knows Someone Who Knows Alan McGee Quite Well  and Indiepop Ain’t Noise Pollution together with some less memorable ditties.

Actually to call them a band at all, at least in the early days was pushing it a bit.  The whole thing was more an elaborate practical joke – with their bizarre and effectively unobtainable releases, Hugh’s tuneless singing and rock star fantasies, and a lack of musical proficiency which had to be heard to be believed.  The line-up was also fictitious; it was actually just Steve Gregory who owned Fierce Records and Huw Williams the singer.  But to criticise them for those things is to miss the point.  They were about parody, and they achieved that very well and the joke rolled on for a surprisingly long time.  They were properly funny.

This CD, long deleted, gathers together those 6 tracks and a couple of skits recorded in New York, one of which is a spoof of a TV ad that was around at the time.  On one level it is of course dreadful, but On Tape still works I think.

By 1991 they’d changed direction and had a bit of success, but I’d lost interest by then.  I did exchange a few letters with Huw Poohstick (Williams), the lead singer and he even did me a compilation tape.  It was full of frighteningly cool stuff which I was very impressed by at the time, but it turns out his dad was the drummer in Man and Dire Straits and had a cool record collection.  I had to buy my own records….

by Vinyl301 -

The Lilac Time: The Lilac Time (Original Swordfish Version)

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I’ve posted this because of this post on one of my favourite music blogs. That post has the remixed, polished version of this album released by Fontana, whereas what we have here is the original release on Swordfish (2 blokes with a record shop in Brum). It’s less polished than the Fontana version, and in my view all the better for it.

The creative force behind The Lilac Time is Stephen Duffy, whose career is nothing if not improbable. He was a founder member of Duran Duran, but left before their major label deal and subsequent fame. He had a commercially fairly successful phase as Tintin, which I best remember for the song Kiss. I remember the buzz that created – friends who were really not much into music were persuaded to part with vast sums of money for the first and last time in their lives for this single which was initially only available on import. What the fuss was about escaped me. He also co-wrote and produced Robbie Williams’ most successful album, Intensive Care. However most of his recorded output has been with his own band The Lilac Time, which despite periods of inactivity is still around 26 years after the release of this album.

The album itself is mostly whimsical, folkish songs with more than a passing resemblance to Nick Drake. It’s a little bland for my taste, but saved by the strength of the songwriting. It clearly sold poorly in this format – apparently only 1000 Cds were pressed and before long Swordfish were more-or-less giving them away, which is how I came to acquire my copy. Maybe in 1987 the Duran Duran connection stopped Indie kids parting with their cash.

I can’t really recommend any further listening because this is the only Lilac Time I have, but according to their web site they have a new album out shortly. This album is currently available in its remixed Fontana version with an extra disc of radio sessions and the like.

by Vinyl301 -

Kurt Vile: Live At Rough Trade

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I’ve listened to a hell of a lot of guitar based music for a long time, and sometimes I think there’s just nothing new to be said. Often I hear new music, and it sounds just like stuff I was listening to 25 years ago – if I was a teenager it would be exciting, but I’m not and it isn’t. But then something comes along to remind me why I love the genre so much. Enter Kurt Vile.

I was a bit late to the party, Smoke Ring For My Halo was the first I bought, which is a bit embarrassing. The problem is that as I get older, I still like a lot of old stuff, but there’s new stuff arriving and there just isn’t time to engage with all of it. And John Peel’s dead of course.

Vile has great material, a really dirty guitar sound and a cool name – what’s not to like? Like any guitar music these days, there are sometimes obvious references, but he’s taking it somewhere new, so who cares.

This live EP was recorded in 2011, as the title suggests at the Rough Trade record shop in east London and was given away with the first few copies of Smoke Ring they sold.

What should you buy – well Smoke Ring is his best I reckon, but there’s a new album due out in a month or so: Wakin’ On A Pretty Daze which sounds interesting.

by Vinyl301 -

Morrissey and The Durutti Column: I Know Very Well How I Got My Note Wrong

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A very peculiar release, this one.  It came free with the first UK pressing of The Durutti Column’s 1989 album Vini Reilly, both on a 3″ CD and 7″ vinyl.

The Vincent Gerard and Steven Patrick on the cover are of course Vini Reilly and Morrissey, and the single track is an out-take from Morrissey’s first solo album, Viva Hate.  The single track, I Know Very Well How I Got My Note Wrong is a version of the Morrissey track I Know Very Well How I got My Name which appeared not on Viva Hate but on his first single Suedehead.

The track itself is beautiful.  As a song it’s a highlight of Morrissey’s solo career and Vini Reilly’s guitar work is, as always, amazing.   It lasts for around 90 seconds before Reilly hits a bum note and both laugh.  It’s a shame the track was never completed in this form; it works much better than the Suedehead version.

Vini Reilly has fallen on hard times lately.  He’s always suffered from poor health which has deteriorated with age, and he’s fallen victim to the gross injustices of the UK’s disability living allowance system.  It reached a point where he was in danger of losing his home, but fortunately (inaccurate) publicity around his plight prompted fans to step in and donate money to clear his debts.  As The Guardian pointed out at the time, that a musician as important to Britain’s musical heritage as this should be reduced to such a state shows how little art is valued.  More details of this story are on Reilly’s web site.

If you want to listen to more Durutti Column music, and you should, of course Vini Reilly is the obvious companion to this post and is a favourite of mine.  It’s available in an expanded double format (although without the track presented here) from his web site. The usual recommended starting point though for his work is 1982’s LC, and absolute classic which everyone should own. However, like much of Reilly’s sprawling and neglected back catalogue, it’s out of print. It’s not hard to find second hand copies from the usual places.

Morrissey? Well the completed version of I Know Very Well is most easily found on the remarkably cheap triple HMV Singles compilation, and Viva Hate is widely available.  Of course his best work was with The Smiths, whose work is now much more appealing since the Johnny Marr approved re-issues superceded the appalling sounding WEA versions.

 

by Vinyl301 -

Mighty Mighty: At The BBC

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Vinyl Japan 2001. ASKCD 123 (Recorded 1986-7)

Discogs

Back in the 80s I had a phase when I was into jangly indiepop.  There’s a lot to be said for simple music with a decent tune to put a smile on your face, and Mighty Mighty certainly delivered on that score during their short career.  Being a local (to me) band I saw them, maybe 20 or 30 times, so this album brings back good memories of those years.   It’s easy to assume that bands like Mighty Mighty didn’t play particularly well, but by the end they were actually a pretty slick outfit which this album shows.

While they were fairly successful for an indie band of the time, they became disillusioned by a lack of mainstream recognition and split in 1988, just after their only album Sharks was released.

More than 20 years after they split, they’re perhaps best remembered for contributing a track (Law) to the legendary NME C86 compilation cassette, a defining moment for UK indie music.  By the late 90s the Japanese had latched on to Mighty Mighty at a time when they were long forgotten at home which led to a flurry of re-issues from Vinyl Japan.  The band seemed to be more baffled by this than anyone.

Cherry Red have just released a 2 CD retrospective of everything they released in the UK, so I’ve had to rethink my original plan to post their album Sharks here.  Instead, we have the Vinyl Japan BBC Sessions album which is more or less impossible to find now. The performances and sound are less polished than the officially released versions, but it’s still classy indiepop.

The band have also issued their “lost” second album which I haven’t heard, but since it was recorded at a time when they were just getting better and better, I’m sure it’s great.

by Vinyl301 -

Felt: Box1

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There’s been a resurgence of interest in Felt lately, partly because they were brilliant, but also because of the Lawrence biopic Lawrence Of Belgravia.  Lawrence, for the uninitiated was Felt’s brilliantly eccentric frontman, writer, and and svengali-like presence.  The film is well made, but because I never saw Felt live, or Lawrence in any other capacity for that matter, I found the whole experience hard to take.  It’s not just that Felt’s music is beautiful, although it is, it’s that Lawrence’s keen, even overdeveloped sense of aesthetics is stamped all over everything they did, so to see him in the film painfully emaciated, wearing a baseball cap he’s barely taken off for the last decade was difficult to take.  The man himself did a Q&A session afterwards, but his tragic presence and thick Brummy accent meant I could hardly bear to stay in the room, never mind ask him a question.

Cherry Red are doing a belated re-issue of Felt’s back catalogue; particularly welcome is the later Creation stuff which disappeared when Alan McGee closed the label down. I’m not into posting commercially available music at the best of times, much less when the musician in question is more-or-less destitute, so the 10 albums and 10 singles he delivered as promised in 10 years will remain on my hard drive, for my ears only. However Cherry Red haven’t been as thorough as they might have been with Felt – they’ve done the ten albums and a few compilations, but that misses a few bits and pieces which are well worth having. Felt justifies one of those lavish boxed sets people like me tend to buy, but no sign of that yet.

So, in the meantime, here’s a bit of a curio. In 1993 Cherry Red issued a boxed set of all Felt’s albums for the label, imaginatively titled Box. It came with a short bonus disc of non-album tracks. Box was deleted long ago and is now quite rare. As far as I can tell, none of the tracks have been re-issued, so here it is.

The tracks are:
1  Something Sends Me To Sleep (Single: Cherry26 – 3:07)
2  My Face Is On Fire (Single: Cherry45 – 3:05)
3  Sunlight Bathed The Golden Glow (Single Version – 3:13)
4  Sunlight Strings (B-2 of Single – 3:14)
5  Red Indians (Single Version – 1:50)

Further listening: well obviously you should buy everything Cherry Red have re-issued, but if you don’t want that much Felt, Ignite The Seven Cannons is a favourite, and I have a particular soft spot for Poem Of The River which is worth getting just for the wonderfully uplifting Riding On The Equator.  Felt also worked well as a singles band, so any of the compilations are worth a go, especially Stains On A Decade which is the only one covering all the labels they recorded for.