Living To Music September 2012

Join in if you can, alone or with friends, this Sunday at 9pm with Greg Wilson's Living To Music worldwide communal listening experience. This month's selected album is the KLF's Chill Out (1990).

http://www.gregwilson.co.uk/2012/08/living-to-music-the-klf-chill-out/

Heart attack

Sunday's car boot sale was hot, dusty and very busy.  There didn't seem to be much vinyl at all, until I reached a pitch belonging to a guy selling off a small chunk of his 3000+ record collection for £1 a pop.  I left with a pile of LPs, none of which I've had time to listen to, as in my free time I've been immersing myself in two new vinyl releases; Bloc Party's new album "Four" and Yeasayer's latest release "Fragrant World" on double gatefold coloured vinyl - yum!

However, I have got round to playing two more albums from the previous weekend's boot sale -  both cost £3 and both are by US hard-rockers Heart.

"Whooaaaah, Bodyfor-orm!"

Heart were, and still are, fronted by sisters Nancy and Ann Wilson.  My own memories of them are from their hugely successful 80s comeback, with power ballads such as "These Dreams" and the stonking "Alone", whose soaring crescendo I'm convinced was ripped off by ad execs in the early 90s for the Bodyform adverts.




I kind of knew that they were a Big Deal in the US, but their earlier work was unknown to me.  When I saw the albums for sale I was keen to hear them as I'd recently read an article in Classic Rock magazine's 1977 special about the complicated legal dispute surrounding Heart and their music at the time.

Heart - Magazine (1978)

Magazine was originally released in 1977 by Heart's former record company Mushroom Records as a collection of live and demo tracks, as well as a b-side.

This 1978 copy of Magazine is a completely re-vamped version of the album put out by Mushroom.  Songs were subject to re-recording and remixing, and sequenced differently until they resembled Heart's original vision as much as possible.





As Heart technically still owed their former employers an album this seemed the best way to meet their contractual obligations.

It's a polished mix of hard rock and ballads, only marred by the inclusion of a bored-sounding cover of "Without You".  After the way they were treated by Mushroom it's not surprising that they couldn't summon up much enthusiasm at this point, especially with a security guard employed at the studio to make sure they didn't nick the master tapes.

At the time of Mushroom's initial release of Magazine, Heart had just released their second album proper on Portrait Records - Little Queen:

Heart - Little Queen (1977)

Little Queen was finished in record time, with over 40% of the album recorded over the space of a very, very busy weekend before Mushroom could apply for a court order preventing them from doing so.

Like Magazine, it's also an album of tight rockers and romantic slowies, but it also has a mildly medieval minstrel/folk tinge to some of the acoustic ballads, the intention being that tracks like "Dream of the Archer" and "Sylvan Song" be their answer to Led Zep's "Battle of Evermore".

Both albums are a little too well polished for my taste, but I can't deny Heart's talents and ability to rock.  Although Ann takes the lead vocal on the majority of songs, both sisters have incredible voices, giving Heart an unmistakable sound.  On balance I prefer Little Queen to Magazine, but they're both well worth a listen.  Here they are on Spotify:

Warm and fuzzy

I went to two boot sales on Sunday.  The first was absolutely huge - almost twice the size it usually is, even in fantastic weather like yesterday.  Among other things I picked up this record by The Fuzztones for £2, purely on the basis of liking the cover art as I'd not come across them before:

The Fuzztones - Lysergic Emanations (1985)

The Fuzztones were (and still are) a psych/garage/punk band that were part of the 60s garage revival in the eighties.  Originally from New York, they gained a big following in Europe and despite a few temporary break-ups and several line-up changes over the last 30 years still record and tour to this day.

Lysergic Emanations was their debut LP on ABC Records UK, and is a mix of covers and original songs.  Founder Rudi Protrudi named the band after the fuzzbox effects pedal so clearly beloved by its members.  The album is a heady affair, combining grungey guitar, swirling Vox organ and Rudi's "lead snarl".  In thrall to 60s garage-psych, they have a punk edge to add to their Doors-y sound.

This is definitely in my top ten favourite finds this year.  It's one of those hypnotically addictive albums that as soon as it finishes makes you want to turn it over and play it again, which is pretty much what I've been doing since yesterday.  I think I'll go play it again now - bye!  Oh, here's Ward 81.

Living To Music - August 2012

Join in if you can, alone or with friends, this Sunday at 9pm with Greg Wilson's Living To Music worldwide communal listening experience. This month's selected album is Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here.

http://www.gregwilson.co.uk/2012/07/living-to-music-pink-floyd-wish-you-were-here/

Pull Up To The Bumper

I bought a couple of records at yesterday's car boot sale.  The first was a double album called White Boy Blues:

Page/Clapton/Mayall/Beck - White Boy Blues (1985)

Back cover

Inside

It's a collection of collaborations and jams featuring Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, John Mayall and Jeff Beck.  It's story is best explained by the sleevenotes:

"The incestuous musical situation which existed in the UK during the late Sixties has made an indelible stamp on the music of today. Groups would swap members for recordings, the looseness of the day permitted collaboration, and the prevailing atmosphere owed more to the music than to the music business. This was best typified in the recordings issued by Immediate Records, a company led by then Rolling Stones-manager/producer Andrew Oldham. Oldham encouraged his charges to write songs for one another, guest on each others' recordings, and bring their talented friends in to make records.

One of Andrew Oldham's talented proteges was a young session guitarist named Jimmy Page. Page had been guesting on records by The Rolling Stones and The Kinks, and was also playing in The Yardbirds during its latter stages. Page was given the chance to record his friends - most notably Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton - jamming in a no-pressure situation, trading licks with them, and getting co-compositional credit on most of the twelve-bar blues songs they laid down. All of these players were in the top of their form back then, and these one-take tossoffs now stand among the best of their work. 

The personnel on these tracks varies a bit, but for the most part the rhythm section of the Clapton/Page tracks consists of Rolling Stones Bill Wyman (bass), Ian Stewart (piano), Mick Jagger (mouth harp), and Chris Winters (could this be Charlie Watts?) on drums. 

The John Mayall tracks feature Eric Clapton (guitar), John McVie (bass), and Hughie Flint (drums).

The All Stars were originally Cyril Davies' group, and the one track which he is present on is one of the very few ever made, as this British Blues progenitor met an early death. However, his rhythm section of Cliff Barton (bass), Carlo Little (drums), and Nicky Hopkins (piano) was reunited a year and a half after Davies passed away to make these recordings with special guests Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page. Beck and Page were not in the original band, but owed much to Cyril Davies when it came down to the popularization of the genre of British Blues. 

Santa Barbara Machine Head was a short-lived group whose members achieved greater notoriety long after these recordings were issued. Ronnie Wood (guitar) is now in The Rolling Stones, having served time as Rod Stewart's better half in The Faces and The Jeff Beck Group. Jon Lord is currently found in the recently reformed Deep Purple, where his distinctive keyboard approach always had a home. Kim Gardener (bass) played in various ill-fated bands, one of which was the legendary Creation, and drummer Twink made his mark in Tomorrow and the Pretty Things.
Lastly is guitarist Jeremy Spencer, a classic slide guitarist who distinguished himself in Fleetwood Mac, blew everybody's mind, and then retired from the music business.

Long out of print but never out of date, these are the sessions that were. There has never been a white blues explosion to equal this one, and there never will be. Never was so much talent contained in so small a space, but here are the results on two albums." 

(Jon Tiven) 

I also bought the 12" version of Grace Jones' Pull Up To The Bumper, one of my favourite singles.

Grace Jones - Pull Up To The Bumper (1985)

The remix is by Paul "Groucho" Smykle and Side Two contains La Vie En Rose and Living My Life, even though the Side One label appears erroneously on each side of the record.

Here's the video of the radio edit:

Mostly Madge

If you've read this blog in the past you may know that I find it difficult to walk past a Madonna 12 inch single, particularly her 80s ones (her heyday as far as I'm concerned, before she learned to sing).  Yesterday's car boot sale was packed and I came away with four such examples:

Madonna 12" singles.  Clockwise from top left: Into the Groove,
Like a Virgin, La Isla Bonita, Express Yourself.

I also couldn't resist the 12" version of another 80s favourite; Miami Sound Machine's Dr. Beat:

Miami Sound Machine - Dr. Beat (1984)

I've amassed quite a few twelve inch singles from car boot sales and don't listen to them as much as I'd like.  Since our new (old) car has only a cassette player in it, I thought it'd be fun to make a mixtape of a selection of 80s 12"s.  I recently bought a load of new blank cassettes at a boot sale, so yesterday afternoon I re-lived part of my early teens and did just that.  Madonna singles filled all of Side A and spilled over into Side B, which I finished with tracks by Michael Jackson, Pet Shop Boys and Kraftwerk among others.

I'm now thinking of doing something similar with my box of 80s 7" singles, but that may take a bit more effort.  Anyway, in keeping with recent sporting news, here's the Kraftwerk track playing on my vintage Dual HS 34 record player:



Congratulations Bradley and Mark!!

Peep Show

When it comes to electronic pop music, the darker the better I say.  Nothing goes together better with a sparkly synth line and cheerful bleeps than an unhappy protagonist with a tragic love life (see Yazoo, Depeche Mode, Pet Shop Boys).  Soft Cell's Marc Almond and Dave Ball became masters of this art with their debut album Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret, a copy of which I got for £2 at a recent car boot sale:

Soft Cell - Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret (1981)

The songs are firmly set in London's early 80s night scene, with a strong sexual theme taking in clubbing, drugs, seedy porn cinemas, sex shops and all manner of dubious relationships and encounters.  In a nutshell: SLEAZE.

The opening track "Frustration" tells of a character desperate to escape an unfulfilling "ordinary" existence, Marc wailing, "I work for a firm, but I want to burn it down" in the manner of a petulant teen.  From here, each tale (the same protagonist or all different people? - hard to tell) takes place in the seedy, bitchy and loveless world painted by Marc's drama-queen vocals and Dave's suitably cheap and often jarring synth sounds.

Back cover

Their cover of Gloria Jones' Tainted love was of course their biggest hit.  Another single from the album was Bedsitter, which describes the loneliness, friendlesness and ultimate emptiness of a life spent nightclubbing and daysleeping.

This theme of empty encounters continues in "Seedy Films" with it's story of strangers getting to know one another in porn cinemas.  "Entertain Me" rants about an unimpressed and ungrateful audience; "Entertain me, I'm as blank as can be" then segueys beautifully into self-pity anthem "Chips On My Shoulder" which has one of the best bleepy, skittering synth lines ever running through it.

The multitude of (sleazy) sound effects add an extra dimension to the music, sometimes with comic effect (Sex Dwarf).  The climax of the the album comes (steady now) with the gloriously heartbroken "Say Hello, Wave Goodbye", a towering work of bitterness and melodrama in which our cuckolded hero find himself sick of this hedonistic lifestyle and vowing to "find someone....a nice little housewife, who'll give me a steady life, and won't keep going off the rails".  Back to the "ordinary" life at the album's beginning perhaps? Well, why not turn the record over and start again?  It's a fabulous ride.

Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret reached no.5 in the UK, no.22 in the US and no.2 in Canada.