Friday 30 August 2013

It's Friday . . . Let's Dance



Today's track sample's one of my favourite Nancy Sinatra tracks and was actually a top 5 hit in the UK, not something that can be said for many of the tracks featured in this Friday spot. The track was released in 2005.

And that's about all I've got to say.

Have a good weekend people

Audio Bullys feat Nancy Sinatra - Shot You Down




Thursday 29 August 2013

Let Freedom Ring



At the weekend I had decided that I would post this on Wednesday, then completely forgot until I watched the excellent documentary on BBC Two last night.

So, better late than never.

It must have been something to have been part of that march.

Moodswings - Spiritual High

Wednesday 28 August 2013

Lay Your Head Down



I posted this song way back in the early days of the blog and thought that it deserved another airing. I read once, somewhere that the album that Lay Your Head Down came from and the song in particular was described by one critic as music to kid on you are making sophisticated casual sex to. I have no idea what sophisticated casual sex is but I suppose that with some soft lighting and the appropriate amount of alcohol the album could be conducive to getting it on to, not that I have ever put it to the test. I just think that it is a rather lovely album. This song is particularly gorgeous and has the ghost of the Velvet Underground all over it.

Keren Ann - Lay Your Head Down

Tuesday 27 August 2013

Just Because



It reminds me of thoughts of lust, thoughts of power, thoughts of love and the thoughts of Chairman Mao

Billy Bragg - The Warmest Room

Monday 26 August 2013

The Chokin' Kind



A week or so ago I mentioned Z.Z.  Hill's version of the Harlan Howard song The Chokin' Kind  that Joe Simon had a hit with in 1969 and I can't think of anything better to post on this Bank Holiday, not one which I would normally have taken but now that my holidays have been anglicised I have no no option.

Have a good day no matter what you are doing.

Z.Z. Hill - The Chokin' Kind

Sunday 25 August 2013

Covers Week Part 7



Yesterday Swiss Adam over at the Bagging Area mentioned the new Clash box set of cds, dvds. posters badges etc that comes in a ghetto blaster shaped box which  will set more than a few men of a certain age's  pulses racing especially at the very reasonable price,  but it's cds. The release that has made me review my lack of finances again and search, to see if there is any spare cash floating about is the vinyl remastered box set of all the studio albums with the exception of Cut The Crap. I have to admit that this has got me salivating, as my copies of both London Calling and Sandinista are a bit worse for wear, whether this justifies the investment in the box set is another story and trying to convince L of the validity of my argument may be a step too far but it would be good to listen to Sandinista without all the background noise there is due to my poor care of the vinyl. In my defence,  the vinyl is not in great shape due to my drunken attempts to try and convert anybody and everybody to the brilliance of said album, mostly to no avail.

On Monday I stated that I didn't rate that many cover versions of Clash tracks but that the Clash had  done some excellent covers in the past. It was not my intention to finish off this week's posts with something by the band as, well that would be a bit obvious and also, surely everybody who visits this blog already owns copies of everything the band has ever done. But things changed last night.

But first the back story.

A few weeks ago Max declared that he wanted to be a punk, we are still not sure where this came from but stupidly we decided to humour him and on our return from France my copy of Never Mind The Bollocks and more disturbingly Public Image, Metal Box and Album were liberated from the cd shelves. The next thing I knew I was roaring at him, much as my father had done to me,  to turn down Bodies and explaining to him that DMs were too expensive for school shoes, he's bloody nine, ffs! He is especially taken by John Lydon and has been watching interviews on YouTube and the Winterland concert, especially No Fun over and over. Last week he watched Punk Britannia, I expected him to fall asleep during the first episode but he was still awake when episode three started, I know bad parenting but I thought, it's better for him than the bloody X-factor.

Getting to the point of the post, last night he was watching Winterland again and I said, "do you want to see the most exciting piece of live punk footage?" well it is for me anyway, and he said sure, so I typed the clash and I fought the law into YouTube and as if by magic the promo was there.

As I said above, I did not intend to post the Clash doing a cover but sometimes it is worth posting the obvious, 'cause we tend to forget how brilliant this band were and when you see a kid some thirty four years after the recording, watch with a big smile on his face and at the end video can only say "wow" you know that he knows that he is experienced something a bit special.

Strummer once said "Any pimple-encrusted kid can jump up and become king of the rock'n'roll world" but what he failed to say was that very few over thirty years later can make another kid nearly say to his father "fucking hell!"









Saturday 24 August 2013

Covers Week Part 6




Six fecking nothing! Jesus that was a mauling.

It is time to take solace in the healing and redemptive powers of soul music and no, that doesn't mean Tina Turner's horrible Simply The Best for all the musically challenged Huns out there.

In keeping with the theme of the week, here is Otis Redding absolutely slaying the Sam Cooke penned Shake live in London.

Otis Redding - Shake

Friday 23 August 2013

It's Friday . . . Let's Dance



Finding a dance track that I have that fitted in with the covers theme and that I had not posted before proved to be a bit of a problem last night. Could I think of any? No I'm sure that I have more than the Ballistic Brothers interpretation of  A Love Supreme, Secret Life's version of As Always and Fire Island and Loleatta Holloway doing the Style Council but for the life of me last night I couldn't think of any. Every time I thought of something and pulled it out it turned out to be just a track based around a sample, like the Audio Bullys liberal sampling of one of my favourite Nancy Sinatra songs or that thing on FFRR which used loads of Blue Monday but called it How Does It Feel.

Eventually I stumbled upon Jon Carter's version of a Creedence Clearwater Revival track, not sure that this constitutes a dance record but Monkey Mafia did produce dance tunes, the 12" is filed in with the dance and I couldn't be arsed searching anymore, so it will have to do. So you have to just shuffle along to it or even just do the head nodding muso thing.

Have a good weekend people.

Tonight I'm off to see my team getting humped by the Huns for what won't be the last time this season, so the weekend can only get better. Still I will get to see the Excelsior full for the first time and the club will get some cash out of it.

Monkey Mafia - As Long As I Can See The Light

Thursday 22 August 2013

Covers Week Part 4




During the mid and late 80s quite a few tracks came out that went on to become favourites of mine that due to my ignorance I was not aware were covers, no world wide wide to consult back then and for some of these tracks it took the coming of the internet if not to find out that the tracks were covers but to hear them for the first time. As I type this I can only think of one other example apart from the track being posted but there were quite a few others and when I remember what they are I will update this post.

As mentioned above today's track is one of those tracks, more than that it was a track that I heard frequently at Scooter Club dances during the late 80s and subsequently forgot all about until Dirk over at Sexy Loser posted today's track in May last year. Since then it has been nagging away in the back of my head until a couple of months ago I decided that I had to buy the 12" single that it was included on.

I'm In Pittsburgh (and It's Raining) was first recorded by The Outcasts,  an American garage band in 1966.  It was covered by The Vibes and released on their "The Inner Wardrobes Of Your Mind" 12 inch single nineteen years later,  was a favourite with the bequiffed,  bowling shirt and creeper attired brigade within the scootering fraternity and probably caused much carnage on the dancefloor.

Itis a belter of a song, the original is good but this is so much better.

The Vibes - I'm In Pittsburgh (And it's Raining)

Wednesday 21 August 2013

Covers Week Part 3



I'm not really that fond of covers of New Order tunes, at the moment I can only think of another one that I like other than the song I am going to post and it is of the same song.

Jeremy Warmsley's version of Temptation was released as a double a-side with The Boat Song on Transgressive Records in 2008. I don't really know that much about Warmsley but I do love this version of New Order's forth single. Again like yesterday it is not radically different to the original, a bit of a faster tempo but I love the sound of the piano and it sounds as if Warmsley is really enjoying performing the song.

Jeremy Warmsley - Temptation

Tuesday 20 August 2013

Covers Week Part 2



On the back of John Wilson's interview with the three surviving members of the Clash and archives of Joe Strummer on Front Row a couple of Friday's ago. I sat down the following day and listened to London Calling in it's entirety for the first time in ages, only getting up out of my chair to flip over and then change the vinyl. The album is still brilliant and still contains no filler. Last Tuesday I repeated the pleasure and have listened to it through several more times on the mp3 player and computer since then and have come to the conclusion that this is my favourite album.

Which brings me to today's track, there aren't many good covers of Clash songs, check out the Manics version of Train In Vain as evidence. There are plenty of good Clash covers, with the exception of Every Little Bit Hurts from The Clash On Broadway album which I have never been able to warm to but I digress. The version of Lost In The Supermarket by The Afghan Whigs is one cover which I think is pretty good, not radically different or anything, I like Dulli's and the backing singers vocals. It comes from a tribute covers album called Burning London which has the likes of No Doubt, Moby and The Indigo Girls covering some of Stummer and Jones' tunes none of which I can remember being any good apart from Dulli's effort.

The Afghan Whigs - Lost In The Supermarket

Monday 19 August 2013

Covers Week Part 1



I love a cover version I do, so I thought that maybe I could do a week of posts of some of my favourite reinterpretations, I suspect that I could do a month of posts no problem as I used to have a playlist of the covers I liked best  that had more than forty songs before the last Itunes upgrade which wiped all my playlists.

When it comes to cover versions soul music is a tricky category to get involved in,  as over the years there have been tracks that I have thought for were the original versions but have turned out to be covers and not just the first group to have thought "that's a good tune, were having that" and on a couple of occasions the reverse has been true.

So, as far as today's track is concerned I think that it was first recorded in 1968 by the O'Jays as a b-side to Look Over Your Shoulder and has since been covered by quite a few acts, I have three different interpretations but I think that the version posted by Linda Jones and the Whatnauts is the definitive one. It has just the most amazing vocal performance by one of the best soul singers ever. This was a track that was championed by Ian Levine at the Blackpool Mecca and I believe was released posthumously as Jones died on 14th March 1972, between matinee and evening shows at the Apollo in Harlem, at the age of 27.

If this was the only song that she left, it would be enough, however although not commercially successful, she did leave a pretty impressive back catalogue of songs which you should check out.

Linda Jones & The Whatnauts - I'm So Glad I Found You


Sunday 18 August 2013

What's In Yir Box? Y



Well this is it the last letter in the series and up until a couple of weeks ago there wouldn't have been anything in the box under Y, Nobody's Diary by Yazoo is in another box but not good enough to warrant entry into this box.

I'm not sure why I didn't buy Maps at the time as I had bought previous singles and eps but I had been oblivious of this release until it was too late, it was still available on cd single but the 7" single was already going for double figures and although I liked it I didn't feel it was worth the inflated price it was going for, so settled for having various versions of the song on mp3. Butt I have always been on the look out for a reasonably priced copy on Vinyl. So when I saw a copy on ebay at an acceptable starting price I put in my bid and waited expecting to be outbid but nobody did and so ten years after it's release I now own a mint copy of Maps.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Maps

I have really enjoyed listening to all of the singles for each letter on the Saturday night prior to doing the post over the past six months and have no idea what I will do instead, I will probably have to be more sociable on a Saturday evening now, not having the excuse "I've no time to watch  **** (insert crappy Saturday evening telly show here), I've got to listen to these singles for tomorrow's post".

Here is the list of selected tunes in full.

AC/DC - You Shook Me All Night Long
Blancmange - The Day Before You Came
The Crimea - Lottery Winners On Acid
Dashboard Confessional - Hands Down
Frightened Rabbit - Heads Roll Off
Guillemots - Trains To Brazil
Horrors - Who Can Say
Inspiral Carpets ft MES - I Want You
Jumbonics - Last Nite
Kid Canaveral - Smash Hits
Lucky Soul - Lips Are Unhappy
Modern Lovers - Roadrunner (twice)
N.W.A. - Express Yourself
Orange Juice - Blue Boy
Pretenders - Stop Your Sobbing
Paul Quinn and the Independent Group - Stupid Thing
Razorlight - Rock n Roll Lies (In The City)
Squeeze - Up The Junction
Big Mama Thornton - Hound Dog
Vaccines - Post Break Up Sex
Jackie Wilson - Because Of You
The xx - Do You Mind (Tour ep)
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Maps

Friday 16 August 2013

It's Friday . . . Let's Dance



Today's post is in honour of and inspired by my nephew. I used to despair about  the boy's taste in music it was all that Euro trance shit and gangster rap, the only redeeming fact was that he disliked Mumford and fucking Sons nearly as much as I did.

L like so many other teenagers  in this neck of the woods could not wait to attend the rite of passage that is T in The Park. I was a little concerned about this as the boy is quite vague at the best of times and wondered how he would get on in amongst all the chancers and wideoes but he survived to tell the tale.

I saw him a couple of weeks ago and I asked him how he had got on at T and was informed "It was the best time in my life, absolutely amazing"

So I enquired about who he saw and his favourite act and his answer stunned me, he said that he had been blown away by Ritchie Hawtin and also the Slam boys had been brilliant and so had Green Velvet. He had seen quite a few bands but the Slam tent was by far the best part of the festival.

So in honour of L surviving his rite of passage and his new found love of minimal techno and wobbly acid lines I will post my favourite remix by the Canadian producer and exceptional DJ.

Have a good weekend people, safe in the knowledge that some of the younger generation are acquiring a decent taste in dance music.

System 7 - Alpha Wave (Plastikman Acid House Mix)

Thursday 15 August 2013

Wow!


I was listening to Z.Z. Hill's version of the Chokin' Kind the other day and decided to dig out Joss Stone's cover from her first album which was released when she was fifteen or something.  I couldn't find it in my itunes, so searched through the cds but to no avail, must have got bored with it and given it to someone before I even uploaded it.

Anyhow, I still wanted to listen to it as I remember being pretty impressed with it at the time so went on to YouTube where I found the video below which just about blew me away. If only the girl had continued with the soul and not been manoeuvred down the road to copying American R&B, as her voice knocks Adele's into touch and is right up there with Amy Winehouse's.

Wednesday 14 August 2013

Into The Unknown



It's first day back at school in west central Scotland today and Leo's first day, I'm sure he will be fine but for the first day in four and a bit years Leo is going it alone, Rover is staying at home! I'm sure the boy will be fine.



Max asked me if I remembered my first day at school and I had to admit that I have no recollection and a very vague one of starting High School.

Clem Snide - I Love The Unknown

Tuesday 13 August 2013

Buzz Buzz Buzz



It's a while since we had anything from the Cramps here.

On this track Ivy, Lux, Nick and Bryan build an "original" song around an obscure instrumental track from the late 50's called The Green Mosquito which was produced by Alex Chilton from Big Star and was released as the band's second single in 1978.

The Cramps - Human Fly


Monday 12 August 2013

The Best Two Minutes This Monday



This is the best two minutes of music that you will hear today, guaranteed. What a vocal!

This is the b-side of Sit Down and Cry from 1968 and a vastly superior song to the plug side.

Jean Wells - Can't You Feel it


Sunday 11 August 2013

What's In Yir Box? X



A couple of weeks I said that the posting for W was the penultimate post in this series, at the time it was but now this is the second last post as in the last two weeks I was successful in finding a reasonably priced copy of a single that has to go straight into box but more of that next week.

As far as the Xs are concerned there is only one group that I have in this category and this time last year all of their singles were in the box but just before the start of this feature I decided to limit them to two singles in the box.

I came quite late to the xx as the hype from the NME in particular but basically everywhere put me off and I didn't even listen to them. They seemed to me to be the latest band of LDN hipsters and therefore their music would be of about as much relevance to me as any of the other bands the NME had hyped up to astronomical proportions over the previous few years. That was until I heard the forth single, or more accurately clicked on a link on someone's blog to the video for VCR. I did not expect what I heard, there was something in the sparseness of the song that really caught my attention, it reminded me of Your Silent Face, not that it sounded anything like the New Order classic but something in the coldness but not uncomfortable coldness of the track which is similar. Anyway, enough with the analysis shit, I realised that this was a group that I had misjudged and it was time to go back and listen to their previous releases and I have subsequently become a bit obsessed with The xx and an avid collector of their too limited, over priced remix 12" singles.

The other single by the band that has remained in the box with VCR is the Tour ep which consists of the band's interpretation of Hot Like Fire by Aaliyah, Do You Mind by Paleface ft Kyla, Teardrops by Womack & Womack and Blood Red Moon, apparently by Sandra D but I have never heard it. I am a sucker for cover versions and absolutely love all the tracks on this even the one I didn't know before hand.

So that was the Xs.

The xx - VCR
The xx - Tour ep

The xx - Do You Mind

Saturday 10 August 2013

Things I've Seen



My collection is littered by random singles by random acts that I have never followed up especially from the late 90s early 2000s  and most on cd single, a format I only purchased if I really had to. I think that these singles are in my collection mainly due to the fact that Woollies in Lanark had a pretty good bargain bin and as soon as a single went out of top forty then they would be marked down to 99p and chucked in the bargain bin.

The 2000 release Things I've Seen I think is an example of this, not a bad tune, a bit too much like the Fugees but still quite good but I can't imagine I payed full whack for it. As I said above I very rarely paid full price for any cd singles.

Anyway, not a bad song for a Saturday, not a great one but still they can't all be belters.

Spooks - Things I've Seen 

Friday 9 August 2013

It's Friday . . . Let's Dance



Right., I'm back from less than the most relaxing week in Machrihanish that I've ever had but for now I'm not going to go into details, suffice to say I am not "chilled".

Unlike France I have been able to connect to the rest of the world so that may have something to do with my less than zen like state. I have dipped in and out of Twitter,  read the blogs and kept up to date with JC's holidays, talk about kicking the fucking arse out of a birthday, I thought some of my mates had gone over the top when they were forty but the Vinyl Villain has made them look like rank amateurs and fair play to the man, as Mr H said to me a while ago in a comment "we pass this way but once, so rip the pish out of it if you can". The last bit I added myself but I'm sure that is what he meant.

One thing on Twitter began to bug me this week, it appeared a while ago but I ignored it thinking that it would go away but it hasn't and 6 fucking Music are giving it the air of publicity and therefore legitimising it at the same time which is not on and that is Cassette Shop Day!

There never was a fucking shop that just sold cassettes!

This day has been made up by guys in there twenties, in skinny jeans that barely cover their arses, sporting facial fucking hair and wearing plaid shirts, who have never had to deal with a fucking C120 that has decided to break in their home or personal stereo and has then had to spend the next fucking six hours trying to get the remains of the tape of off the rollers inside the machine while electrocuting yourself ever so slightly as the only way of doing so is to cut the tape with those very small scissors that females seem to have or tweezers that also have to be purloined from your girlfriend or mother while the play button has been deployed. They just think that they are being ironic. 

Well you can just fuck off,  as some of us remember just how pish cassettes were, still have them as part of our collections and certainly don't want any more, so that they can squeak and rumble when we are trying to listen to the music and yes,  I will put up with pops and crackles of vinyl but the sound of a dog's plastic toy or the rumble of T20 tanks, distant it may be but a rumble it still is, are not conducive to a pleasurable listening experience, I exaggerate only ever so slightly.

Nobody ever bought a cassette because the quality was better than vinyl. Pre-recorded cassettes were bought for two fucking reasons.

Firstly, you bought it because you did not have a record player

or

because you wanted to play the music in your car, on your walkman, ghetto blaster or all such devices and then if you had any sense, you bought the vinyl and had a stock of TDK 90's to tape the album on.

Nobody walked into a record shop, yes that is what they were called, and decided I'll have the tape because it is so much better than having vinyl!

In this day and age there is no fucking need for this second rate medium for listening to music, mp3 fill this catagory. I can be as nostalgic as the next person for a compilation tape, (not a mixtape as that term did not enter common parlance until people started recording dj sets in the late 80s/early 90s,  which are mixtapes), as the next person but give me a break as far as pre-recorded tapes go, they were shit and they still are.

I must confess that in 1992 I bought the cassette single of the Blue Room by the Orb. I bought it for one reason. I was hitching down the road from Aberdeen after spending 4 weeks unsuccessfully trying to find some work and sponging of a lovely girl who deserved better and hadn't heard the track yet so bought it on cassette to listen to on my personal stereo on the way down the road, as I didn't have a portable record player but the following week when I cashed my giro I went and bought the 12" single.

Sorry about that but I needed to get that off my chest.

I was going to post the Blue Room but it ain't a very dancey tune, is it. So here is a track by Fatboy Slim that never came out on cassette.

Have a good weekend people

Fatboy Slim - Wonderful Night

Friday 2 August 2013

It's Friday . . . Let's Dance



I don't know what the fuck is going on with Blogger, last week they sort of forced me into signing up for a Google + account which I instantly disliked as I was no longer billisdead but was me. I tried to get back to my old account but couldn't.

Last night I tried to log into my Blog but my account had been suspended I feared the worst and the blog had been pulled but apparently my name is not a real name. Fortunately I was able to retrieve my old Blogger account and I am now me again.

Anyway back to the music. I can't believe that this track is over thirty years old it still sounds as fresh as fuck to these ears.

ESG ( Emerald, Saphire and Gold) was a band formed in the South Bronx by the four Scroggins sisters and their first couple of singles were produced by Martin Hannett, the second of which You're No Good was actually released on Factory Records.

Today's track Dance was originally released as the a-side of the group's third single, ESG Says Dance To The Beat of Moody released in 1982 but re-released in 2004 on a white label 12" and again on 7" in 2010.

There will be nothing to see here until next Friday as we are off for rain, tears and tantrums to Machrihanish today for a week.

Have a good weekend people.

ESG - Dance

Thursday 1 August 2013

I'll Wear It Proudly



I've grown up with the music of Elvis Costello in the background as he was a staple in the Wilson house along with the Undertones and Skids and if a new album came out the first time I would have heard it was blasting out of Bat and Stiff's bedroom. For years I believed that Elvis Costello had released something on Motown as this was a joke between Willie and John which took on mythical proportions and which they perpetuated for years.

Only every so often did I take the time to actually listen to the man's music and lyrics which was almost always a rewarding experience and I must confess that it is a long time since I listened to a whole album, these days it is mostly single tracks that pop into my head and more likely than not they are tracks that have been included in the many Greatest Hits/Best Of Packages that are available.

The other day I'll Wear It Proudly from the 1986 Costello Show album King Of America, sprung to mind after reading DVDs comment about the Ws in the box. This song is one of my favourites of Costello's and right up there with Alison as one of his two finest love songs.

Many moons ago when I was trying to impress a girl that I had yet to get it together with I made her up a not so subtle compilation tape which was supposed to convey how I felt about her. It was full of things like Honey At The Core, Perfect Skin, you know the sort of stuff but the final song on the TDK D90, as they were always TDK D90s was I'll Wear It Proudly, surely she would get the message from that song?

A few days later I met her and after about twenty minutes I plucked up the courage to ask her what she thought of the tape, at this point I could feel me taking a beamer and something in my stomach was doing cartwheels. I waited for what seemed like ages and then she said "It was alright, I liked most of it but that Elvis Costello song at the end is rubbish, I really can't stand him".

I was stunned and didn't really say anything.

I would like to tell you that my infatuation with her ended right there and then but it didn't and I pursued her for a few more weeks before she got the message. We went out for a few months but in the end we realised that we weren't really suited and we parted due to musical differences as you do.

Mr Costello's work appears to pique the interest of the DMCA, so.

Pertinent track

Relevance of the picture? None really just another female I was infatuated with around this time.