Soundtrack Saturday

In 1986 Julian Temple directed the film version of Absolute Beginners. The book, a 1959 Colin McInnes novel about life in London, race, class, sexuality, fashion, teenagers and jazz, is a post- war British classic, part of a trilogy McInnes wrote about life in London and youth culture. The film is maybe less a classic, more a brave/ doomed attempt. 

It has its charms- at the time of its release I was sixteen and quite taken with Patsy Kensit- and an all star cast- James Fox, Edward Tudor Pole, Sade, Ray Davies, Steven Berkoff and David Bowie- but it was panned on release, seemed more of a marketing exercise than a film and couldn't quite work out what it was trying to do. The two leads, Patsy Kensit and Eddie O'Connell were unknowns and apparently didn't get on. The production company, Goldcrest, had two other major films on at the same time (The Mission starring Robert De Niro and Jeremy Irons and Revolution starring Al Pacino) and Absolute Beginners didn't get the same financial support. Goldcrest went bust not long after. 

The soundtrack however, is a different cup of tea entirely. There's plenty of jazz - Gil Evans, Slim Gaillard, Charles Mingus- along with some 80s London names- Clive Langer, Nick Lowe, Jerry Dammers, Ray Davies- as well as Sade and Smiley Culture. There's also Bowie's stone cold classic single title track, maybe his last truly great single...

Absolute Beginners

Glossy 80s production, sweeping chord changes, the ba- ba- ba- oom backing vocals, and Bowie's lead vocal, a glorious, crooning, soaring thing, ever going upwards, the sound of young love. 

The soundtrack is also home to one of Paul Weller's best Style Council songs. A film about 50s mod made in the 80s was always gong to have Paul turn up somewhere and The Style Council pulled out all their bossanova/ modern jazz/ pop chops for the song.

Have You Ever Had It Blue? (Soundtrack Version)

Brothers, Sisters...

Every Wednesday for the last five weeks my friend Stevie at the Charity Chic blog has posted songs under the title Brothers, Sisters... and every Wednesday morning when I open up the internet and see his posts I hear this running through my head...

'Brothers, sisters, one day we will be free/ From fighting, violence, people crying in the streets...'

The warm pulse of bass and 125bpm drum track follow, running through my mind, the tom tom fill at the end of the 8th bar crash in, the synth strings start to play, the Roland handclaps and cowbells dink in and I'm swept away by Joe Smooth's 1987 single. Promised Land was/ is the song that, as much as any, suggested house music was an open invitation to all, that the dancefloor was a place of inclusivity and openness, where colour, sexuality and differences were swept away by the power of dance music. 

Promised Land

In 1987 Joe Smooth was on tour in Europe with Farley 'Jackmaster' Funk and was blown away by the way European audiences had taken to house music. He wrote the song inspired by this and wanting to capture something of the spirit of Motown's classic singles, music as a call for unity and brotherhood/ sisterhood. 

'As we walk hand in hand/ Sisters, brothers, we'll make it to the promised land...'

The song was re- released in 1988 and 1989 and as the tide of history turned in Eastern Europe and then South Africa, Promised Land seemed to offer a soundtrack to those events. Lyrically it can't help but reflect Martin Luther King's famous I Have Reached The Promised Land speech too, the one he gave in Memphis the day before he was assassinated. The utopian dream of early house music. 

As a song it's a tempting one to cover, dance floor friendly, with two rousing chords, a pumping bassline capable of moving feet and vocals that provide a warm, misty eyed glow. Paul Weller caught the house music bug at the tail end of The Style Council and recorded a cover in 1989. The Style Council's cover is exactly the sort of thing mods in the late 80s should be doing, Paul and Mick on twin pianos, all slicked back hair and loafers while Dee C Lee stomps and dances centre stage. It was their final single- the house inspired album Paul presented to Polydor was the end of the road for them. 

In 2006 Findlay Brown covered Promised Land. Findlay's laid back, dreamily nostalgic and melancholic music was based in folk, ambient and pop- his cover of Promised Land was released as a single with a variety of mixes, versions and edits in 2010 including this one by French producer/ DJ Pilooski. 

Promised Land (Pilooski Edit)

Half An Hour Of Weller Remixed And Live At The Apollo

Paul Weller played The Apollo on Friday night, I was there courtesy of a ticket from a friend (who also took the photo in the middle, capturing the curving sweep of the Apollo's balcony rather beautifully). Weller and his band took the stage at eight thirty and played a two hour set, long standing guitarist Steve Craddock present and at the front and two drummers. The first few songs were largely drawn from recent albums, White Sky and Long Time from Saturn's Pattern from 2015, Cosmic Fringes from last year's Fat Pop, sounding tough and very Seventies, lots of guitar and rhythms. From The Floorboards Up, with its Wilco Johnson inspired riff, kept the tempo up. From there Weller dipped in and out of his back catalogue: a slightly ragged Headstart For Happiness; a lovely, low key Have You Ever Had It Blue?; the 90s single Hung Up; recent songs like Fat Pop and Village set against older solo ones like Stanley Road; a dip into the later period Style Council with It's A Very Deep Sea, a song which has aged unexpectedly well. The crowd, many of whom seem to have been out all day in the warmth of some Good Friday sunshine seem a little subdued at times- maybe some are just waiting for the hits or maybe too many beers have sapped the energy (not the two blokes near us who were ejected by the bouncers following a couple of scuffles with people around them).  

The run in towards the end of the set- a trippy version of Above The Clouds, the circling psychedelia of Into Tomorrow, a raspy Shout To The Top, the quickfire blast of Start! followed by full on guitar heroics of Peacock Suit and Brushed- demonstrate the riches in his cupboards, songs from different decades and different parts of his life all sounding like the work of one person, a lineage despite the stylistic differences each one had when first released. When they band return to the stage for the first encore Paul sits at the piano, the fluid, rolling Broken Stones followed by You Do Something To Me (not a favourite of mine I should add), a crowd pleasing That's Entertainment (a definite favourite of mine I should add) and then the slowed down, folk tinged shuffle of Wild Wood. The second encore is the two song punch of The Changing Man and A Town Called Malice, the Apollo's crowd now dancing and singing along in full voice. Weller's reputation as a prickly character and as a traditionalist (the Dadrock tag of the 90s sticks to him) is undeserved- his albums over the last ten years have been full of detours into krautrock, psychedelia, drones and noise and whatever The Style Council were, the weren't unadventurous. His band tonight are young (mainly) and give the songs a thumping (two drummers should do that) but they're delicate when required too. Paul Weller himself doesn't seem to have any less desire in his sixties than he had in his twenties, a man who just wants to get the songs out, get them written, recorded and played. 

For today's thirty minute mix I've pulled together some of the remixes of Weller's songs, drawn from the range of his solo career and taking in trip hop of Portishead, the crashing noise and thumping beats of Richard Hawley's take on Andromeda, some lovely widescreen Balearica courtesy of Leo Zero and Drop Out Orchestra (on Weller's own mid 2010's Balearic groove Starlite), some psychedelic adventures with Amorphous Androgynous and Brendan Lynch's still stunning psyched out/ dubbed out version of Kosmos from 1993 (a record Weatherall used to play as a set closer to fried minds at Sabresonic). 

Thirty Minute Paul Weller Remix Mix

• Wildwood (Portishead Remix)
• Andromeda (Richard Hawley Remix)
• No Tears To Cry (Leo Zero Remix)
• Aim High (The Higher Aim) (Amorphous Androgynous Remix)
• Starlite (Drop Out Orchestra Remix)
• Kosmos (Lynch Mob Bonus Beats)

This blistering Two Lone Swordsmen remix from 2000 didn't seem to fit in the mix, Weller sent to some place where Killing Joke and krauty- techno co- exist, but I though I should share it again anyway. It's never had an official digital release and when it came out in 2000 it was a white label 12" limited to just 75 copies worldwide. One of which sits is downstairs from where I type this. 

Heliocentric (Swordsmen 4UR Mix)

I Know As Much As The Day I Was Born

This song has been posted at various blogs recently, many of them friends of this blog, but it seems tailor made for Bagging Area in many ways and it's a feelgood, upbeat dance song for Friday- and we could all do with a bit of feelgood and upbeat for Friday. 

Hifi Sean (Sean Dickson) got hold of the master tapes of Fire Island's 1998 cover version of Shout To The Top. Finding the original vocal part, sung by legend Loleatta Holloway, Sean re-wrote the track from the bottom up, in the end providing three different mixes- house, soul/ disco and orchestral horses for courses. Bassline, four on the floor, lovely late 80s pianos, strings, gospel backing vox and then Loleatta. Hands in the air. Hugging strangers. Lights come up. End of the night. Crowd spills out into the night. Here. 

Hifi Sean was in a former musical life the frontman of The Soup Dragons, the original indie dance crossover band. His journey from there to here shouldn't be too surprising given how enthusiastic he was about dance music back in 1989. The 1998 version of Shout To The Top isn't too shabby either, the work of Fire Island aka Terry Farley and Pete Heller (both men the subject of various posts here in the last eleven years, Boy's Own being one of the cornerstones of my record collection). Fire Island's cover has a more NYC, Salsoul flavour. 

Shout To The Top (Fire Island Radio Edit)

Back in 1984 Shout To The Top was the seventh single released by The Style Council. By this point Paul Weller had put significant distance between his then current band and his previous one. Shout To The Top is a classic Style Council single, the equal of most things The Jam released- those staccato strings, the thumping pace, Weller's vocal, the surge into the chorus. Shout To The Top, then and now, is hugely uplifting dance pop, a message of solidarity and determination and a refusal to beaten down in times of economic and political uncertainty- with a smile on its face. 

Shout To The Top

Unionize

One of my regular evening walks takes me past the park not far from us and the view across it to the line of trees on the far side with a row of houses behind it. The sun setting and the fade of the blue in the sky differs from one night to the next. I probably wouldn't have noticed this pre- Covid, I certainly wouldn't have walked past it frequently enough to see it and photograph it. 

Here is some political punk/ soul from The Redskins. Punchy agit- prop from the skinhead three piece who wanted to marry Motown and The Clash... and largely succeeded. Unionize was the B-side to their 1983 single Lean On Me, a plea to the workers to organise themselves set to an irresistible, fast as fuck rhythms and scratchy guitars. 

Unionize 

The Power Is Yours was the first song on their 1986 album Neither Washington Nor Moscow and while the tempo is slower, the message is just as powerful. 

The Power Is Yours

And that leads me to The Style Council and their 1985 single Walls Come Tumbling Down. 'You don't have to take this crap/ you don't have to sit back and relax/ you can actually try changing things... governments crack and systems fall/ 'cos unity is powerful/ lights go out/ walls come tumbling down'

I Know As Much As The Day I Was Born

In the 1980s Paul Weller's decision to keep moving and jump several steps ahead of where his audience were (and his band) led to The Style Council. Out went parkas, targets and guitar- drums- bass post- punk/mod rock, in came jazz and soul and funk, Dee C Lee and Mick Talbot. Looking back at Weller's writing in The Style Council a lot of the lyrics that shows the same concerns- The Style Council's love songs are more lovey (Headstart For Happiness and Long Hot Summer for instance) and debut single Speak Like A Child was brilliant soul pop in a way that The Jam could never have been. Weller never avoided politics in his Style Council songs, if anything he was more overtly political than he had been in The Jam. Second single Money Go Round is as powerful as The Eton Rifles but its sung over 70s wah wah funk instead of driving post punk. And as relevant today as it was in 1983.

'Too much money in too few places
Only puts a smile on particular faces
Said too much power in not enough hands
Makes me think "get rich quick; take all I can"
They're too busy spending on the means of destruction
To ever spend a penny on some real construction'

Or how about this one, The Internationalists, from 1985's Our Favourite Shop?

'If you believe you have an equal share
In the whole wide world and all it bears
And that your share is no less or more than

Your fellow sisters and brother man

Then take this knowledge and with it insist
Declare yourself, an internationalist

If your eyes see deeper than the colour of skin
Then you must also see we are the same within
And the rights you expect are the rights of all

Now it's up to you to lead the call
That liberty must come at the top of the list
Stand proud as an internationalist'

Walls Come Tumbling Down- governments crack and systems fall/Cause unity is powerful- goes without saying. If anything, these songs go further than Weller ever did with The Jam, overtly socialist and calling for change.

On Saturday night a friend had a spare for a gig by The Style Councillors at Gorilla, a nine piece band playing the songs of Weller's second band. I never saw The Style Council back in the day so was hearing many of these songs live for the first time, loud and up close in front of an enthusiastic audience. The political songs mentioned above were all played, the words cutting through from the mid- 80s to 2019 and a world where Johnson, Rees Mogg, Farage et al are all at a top people's health farm and pulling the wool over people's eyes. This one, a 1986 single, Weller's own brand of self- realisation and positive thinking...

Shout To The Top

Have You Ever Had It Blue? was a single in 1986 but first appeared on the soundtrack to the film Absolute Beginners, Julian Temple's much maligned attempt at Colin MacInnes' 1950 novel. The soundtrack version of the song has an extended jazz intro before Weller comes in. 

Have You Ever Had It Blue? (Soundtrack Version)

Kosmos

Back in November as part of the Monday Long Song thing he kicked off earlier this year Drew posted the nine minute version of Morning Wonder by The Earlies, a wonderful piece of music, sort of psychedelic folk with krauty rhythms. You can find it here with the download link still intact. In places it reminds me of this still amazing sounding Brendan Lynch remix of Paul Weller from 1993, Weller sent twisting around the kosmos by producer Brendan Lynch, on a dub- jazz- electronic mayhem trip.

Kosmos (Lynch Mob Bonus Beats)


Only a few years earlier The Style Council had their last hit single and Top Of The Pops appearance with their cover of Joe Smooth's house classic Promised Land. Everything about this clip is great- Weller and Mick Talbot on twin pianos, Dee's performance at the front, Mick's beard, the fun they all seem to be having.

Unity Is Powerful

Who could be fail to be moved by a call to arms set against some very funky mid-80s pop, railing against reactionary regimes and economic policies that keep people poor (with a slightly po-faced pop at Frankie Goes To Hollywood)? Who? Boris Johnson maybe. David Davis? Theresa May. The complete disintegration of the Conservative Party over Europe is a lovely idea. Long may it continue.

The Style Council's 1985 single Walls Come Tumbling Down is ace and their appearance on Top Of The Pops to promote it is proper time capsule stuff, Weller centre stage looking sharp with wedge haircut, blue shirt, white jeans and Rickenbacker bass. But, let's be honest, Dee C Lee upstages him, in black top and jeans with yellow cardigan combo, dancing non-stop, hotter than hot.



Headstart For Happiness is another Style Council gem, but personal rather than political and proof Weller could do wide eyed optimism when he wanted to. This is the version that closed Cafe Bleu, a delicious guitar riff and vocals shared between Mick, Dee and Paul, a song about being in love with being in love.

Headstart For Happiness

For DVD (Tony)

Heck, I don't know if a fucking blogpost is the appropriate thing to do really, but this one is for DVD (Tony).  With much love and sympathy.

A Solid Bond In Your Heart

When You Call Me

This post should provide some balance to this post. Paul Weller gets it wrong from time to time, heads off down the wrong roads- that's the common consensus. Popular theory also has it that he never got it wronger than during the 80s when he formed The Style Council with former Merton Parka Mick Talbot. I love several Style Council records, including this fine 1985 stab at synth-soul.

(When You) Call Me

Song Of The Summer. Maybe.

I've missed this song during the last two weeks. It came up on Soundcloud just before going to France, and I don't have a download of it to listen to in the car (cos, like, that's illegal), and I tried to completely ignore the internet while away (fairly easy actually, personally and connection-wise) but I'd been listening to it a lot before going away. Our aging mod hero, grumpy fella, clothes horse and newly found musical chameleon Paul Weller revisits the least popular sound of his career (late period Style Council), marries it with some blissed out Balearic vibes, and comes up with a standalone single, Starlite, released on 12" vinyl later on this month (I think it's already out on iTunes). It's more summery than owt and totally wonderful. Give it a listen-

http://soundcloud.com/islandrecordsuk/paul-weller-starlite

And if you're up for that then get over here too-

http://soundcloud.com/islandrecordsuk/paul-weller-starlite-drop-out

...where you can download a cracking remix of Starlite by Drop Out Orchestra. Weller at the disco. I'll type that again. Weller at the disco. There's also a remix you can download by Deadboy on Soundcloud. I'm sure you can find that yourselves. Style Council, Balearica, remixes, disco- I remember when it were all dadrock round here...

The Style Council 'Headstart For Happiness'

I find it really hard to pass a charity shop without going and having a rummage through their used vinyl. Sometimes there's nothing, sometimes you find some real surprises and sometimes they turn up trumps. With the success of ebay, everyone who had the time and the patience realised they could sell their old vinyl, even if it was just for pennies. The charity shops, especially Oxfam, wised up and set up specialist branches selling books and records, at second hand record shop prices, with hand-written labels saying why it was good/rare. The stock and supply of vinyl in the ordinary, suburban charity shops seems to be dwindling as a result. I suppose also there's a limited ammount of old records to go around. That Barry Gibb and Barbara Streisand album's always there, you can rely on finding Terence Trent Darby's first album gathering dust and sleeve damage, and Phil Collins is an ever-present.

Recently I realised that I've been buying vinyl in the charity shops that either I don't really want or have already got. I bought a stack of Wah! 7" singles a couple of months ago, who I was never really into, although they've grown on me. The buying duplicates thing has led me to having, off the top of my head, three copies of Rip It Up by Orange Juice (all in picture bags), two extra copies of Blue Monday (sadly not with the die-cut sleeve), 7" and 12"versions of Love Missile F1-11 by Sigue Sigue Sputnik, two 12" Beatmasters singles (the one with Betty Boo), S'Express's Theme several times, and two copies of Cafe Blue by The Style Council (who are charity shop repeat offenders). I'm sure there are others but I can't be bothered going to check. I hate the thought of these little nuggets of pop culture going unsold, unloved, scratched, sleeves knackered and ending up in landfill. I suppose I'm denying someone else the chance of owning Rip It Up but I can't take the chance, so home it comes, causing storage and space problems, but safe and loved.

Anyway, back to The Style Council, who's records frequently crop up in the charity shops. They must have been produced in their millions, and dumped in similar quantities, and I've said it before but early Style Council is as good as anything else Mr Weller has done (some examples-Speak Like A Child, Solid Bond In Your Heart, Shout To The Top, Walls Come Tumbling Down), including this one. This is off Cafe Blue, and is a cracking little upbeat pop song, wearing it's Motown and Northern Soul influences proudly, and featuring great twin vocals from Paul Weller and Dee C. Lee. Get down your local high street and see if you can find a copy.

Headstart For Happiness.mp3