by Vinyl301 -

A Guy Called Gerald: Finlay’s Rainbow (Remixes)

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Juice Box 1994.  JB26

Discogs

This single is taken from Black Secret Technology which I posted a while ago, but it’s such a great track it deserves another outing.  The beautiful vocals are provided by a pre-fame Finley Quaye in quite a jazzy style which works well with the sparse jungle backing from Gerald.  It’s the least experimental track on the album, although of course the remixes here mess with the simplicity, but it really doesn’t need any embellishments – it just works really well as it is.

Gerald Simpson is one of the most important and innovative electronic musicians of the last few decades, and he’s never less than essential listening.  He has a new album out which I’d have bought had he not issued it through the infuriating Bowers & Wilkins.

by Vinyl301 -

Big In Japan: From Y to X And Never Again

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Zoo 1978 (Bootlegged 1989).  Zoo 135

Discogs

Big In Japan are more interesting for the line-up than the music.  Everyone in the band went on to be pretty successful in future ventures, although didn’t show much promise here.  It was like a supergroup in reverse.  So we have Holly Johnson (Frankie Goes To Hollywood), Bill Drummond (KLF), David Balfe (Teardrop Explodes), Ian Broudie (The Lightning Seeds), Budgie (Siouxsie and the Banshees) and others.

The music was conceptual art-punk with little emphasis on proficiency and is really only of interest as a curiosity.  It’s listenable though and worth a download if you’re into any of the bands these guys were later successful with.

My copy is a bootleg, bought in Virgin.  I do find it irritating that the music industry makes such a fuss about piracy, but are more than happy to stock dodgy product if they think they can make a few quid.  This had the tell-tale “Import Licence” which is usually a sign of a bootleg.  As a result the sound quality isn’t great – it sounds like it was ripped (poorly) from an original 7″.

by Vinyl301 -

Butthole Surfers: Hurdy Gurdy Man Remixes

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Rough Trade 1991.  RTT240R

Discogs

This 12″ came free with the first few (UK) copies of the Piouhgd album.  It comes with no information at all, nor can I find anything on the net about it, so all I can tell you is that it contains three remixes of Hurdy Gurdy Man, originally on the album and also a single.  I have no idea what the remixes are called or who did them.  I suspect that it was intended as a separate release, but only a handful of test pressings were made which were given away when the project was abandoned.

The song is a Donovan composition from 1968, and the Butties are surprisingly faithful to the original, especially the extreme vibrato Donovan used.  Donovan used John-Paul Jones (of Led Zep) for the noisy guitars on his version – there are more noisy guitars here.  The result I think is excellent and it suits their style very well.  These remixes mostly obsess over detail – picking a small element of the original which they emphasise and repeat it to make something which is both instantly recognisable as a remix, but also totally new.  The idea of a Butthole Surfers remix 12″ is bizarre, but the quality of these mixes means they pull it off I think.

Piouhgd has been re-issued and you should buy it.  It’s not their best work, but it’s a fine album and includes the Widdowermaker EP, but not these tracks.

by Vinyl301 -

The Times: Beat Torture

Beat+Torture

Creation records 1988.  CRELP038

Discogs

I reckon if this had come out 15 years earlier, and been on, say Elektra it would have been huge.  As it is, it lies forgotten by nearly everyone.

The Times (more accurately Ed Ball who is the band) have always been a bit of a puzzle to me.  He was one of the label’s most prolific artists, and what I’ve heard I like very much.   There never seemed to be any buzz around him, and despite the label, he was never really cool.  I guess this album was a bit too rock n roll for Creation and for 1988.

So what we have here is a series of quite anthemic rock songs, some of which sound as though they ought to be classics, but none of them are.  The material is a bit ambitious for his voice, but the album is so good, he gets away with it anyway.

The cover art is typical of what Creation used to do when they’d run out of money, although my first pressing comes in a custom plastic carrier bag with a picture of Ed Ball with a noose, which must have cost a few quid.

download

by Vinyl301 -

A Witness: One Foot In The Groove

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Ron Johnson 1988.  ZRON 30

Discogs

Another Ron Johnson classic tonight, this time from Manchester’s A Witness.  This is an easier listen than Big Flame, but still has the jagged guitars and the debt to Captain Beefheart.  Add surreal lyrics, great tunes and some fantastic guitar riffs, and the result is irresistible.

A Witness have a connection to various other similar bands of the time, most notably Bogshed, Big Flame, AC Temple and The Membranes, but came to an abrupt end when the guitarist, Rick Aitken was killed in a climbing accident.

More to come from this band…

by Vinyl301 -

Various Artists: A Baker’s Dozen From Vindaloo

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Vindaloo Records 1986.  YUS 8

Discogs

This is a sampler for Vindaloo, the Brum label run by Robert Lloyd.  It’s best known for discovering We’ve Got A Fuzzbox And We’re Gonna Use It, represented here several times.  In their early days they were probably the most incompetent band I’ve ever seen, but they were charming, fun, and wrote some decent material.  I also thought they did a good job during their chart phase, although that was never really my thing.

However, for me Vindaloo’s main achievement was Ted Chippington, the otherworldly non-comedian I first saw supporting The Fall.  You may well hate him – most do, but his belligerant refusal to obey even the most basic rules of comedy made him utterly unique as a performer.  There’s none of his stand-up here, just some musical “numbers”, which are hilarious if you get it; the worst karaoke you’ve ever heard if not.  She Loves You got some daytime radio play (Steve Wright liked it as I recall) and was a minor hit.  Yes, it’s a joke, but I think he performs it with real pathos.

Normally I like the Nightingales, but here they were in a weird Country and Western phase which I thought was terrible.

by Vinyl301 -

Various Artists: The Last Nightingale

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Rē Records 1984.  Rē 1984

Discogs

My mid teens were dominated by a scarcity of music.  I couldn’t afford to buy much and hadn’t discovered Peel, so my subscription to Birmingham Record Library was pretty important.  The trouble was they had a buying policy dominated by snobbery.  There were huge quantities of  dry classical music which didn’t appeal, some jazz which I mostly didn’t understand, vast quantities of what was called “Easy Listening” back then – the likes of Bert Kampfaert.  They thought that the people who liked pop music would damage the records, so there was precious little of that.  The diminutive Rock section though occasionally had some gems.  I hadn’t heard of most of it, so I used to borrow records based mainly on whether I thought the cover looked interesting.  It led to some pretty awful music, but also some discoveries which have stayed with me since.  One day I borrowed a Soft Machine retrospective, Triple Echo and was completely mesmerised by everything on which Robert Wyatt appeared, an obsession which has never left me.  There’s been none of it here so far because most of what he recorded is still available, but this is an exception.

Robert Wyatt has always been profoundly political so it was no surprise to see him on this benefit EP for the Miners’ Strike.  It’s short, but is an absolute gem.  The project was put together by Chris Cutler who wheeled in a bunch of mates, including Wyatt to perform the two jazz based tracks on side 1.  They’re beautiful songs sung wonderfully as alway by Wyatt.  Side 2 includes two spoken word pieces by poet Adrian Mitchell.  I don’t normally go for that sort of thing, but these two work well.  The first is a bit of a rant about how horrible school is, performed as a kind of spoken blues.  The second is a post apocalyptic tale.  Sandwiched between them is a remix of an old track from Henry Cow – a band Wyatt has worked with and who were consistently interesting.

by Vinyl301 -

Ruthless Rap Assassins: And It Wasn’t A Dream

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Syncopate 1990.  SYN38 and 12SYX38

Discogs  Discogs

I love a bit of social commentary in music especially rap, and this single does a particularly good job.  It’s the story of a couple emigrating from the Caribbean in the 1950s with high hopes, quickly dashed by the hostile reception they got from the xenophobic Brits.  One verse is about the woman, the other the man and the whole thing is told from the perspective of their UK born son.   This is a part of UK history everyone who lives here should know about, but it’s not just an earnest history lesson.  The words are beautifully written, and it works just as well musically, with loping backing giving a nice caribbean vibe alongside the well placed Malcolm X samples.  It had rave reviews at the time and Peel played it quite a bit, but it bombed.  The band then took a real dive getting involved with Shaun Ryder and Black Grape.  I guess they had bills to pay.

This is the CD single bundled up with the remix 12″.  Do you need that many versions of it?  I guess not, but it really is a fantastic dose of Brit rap.

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by Vinyl301 -

Big Black: Il Duce

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Homestead Records 1985.  HMS042

Discogs

More from the mighty Steve Albini – a slightly perplexing homage to Benito Mussolini which I assume is tongue-in-cheek.

I’ve always thought this was an odd choice for a single.  It’s better than most bands manage in a career, but it doesn’t really stand out against the other stuff they did that year.

The B side is from the Atomizer LP which I think is their best.  It sounds like the same version to me, but haven’t bothered to check.

I never quite came to terms with the drum machine Big Black use.  Of course it was a big part of the revered Big Black sound, but really I prefer Shellac with their human drummer.  Criticising Big Black for that is unfair though – they produced some of the best guitar based music of the 80s which I played to death.

Apparently Steve Albini had one of his customary hissy fits when Homestead issued this as a 12″ against his wishes.  They left the label as a result.  This however is the common as muck 7″.

I may add to this tomorrow – been to the pub and am struggling to string anything meaningful together.