Of all of Pete Wylie and his different versions of Wah!'s lost singles, this one from 1991 is perhaps the most lost. In 1991 Wah! had become Pete Wylie And Wah! The Mongrel. This single, Don't Lose Your Dreams, spearheaded the album Infamy! Or How I Didn't Get Where I Am Today. It's a beauty, jam packed with classic Wylie trademarks and touches not least a ridiculously long title...
Don't Lose Your Dreams (Excerpt From A Teenage Opera Part 154) Seamless... bursts in with synths and sitar, followed by crunchy Wah! guitar, some big '91 drums and multi- tracked vocals, a Wah-ll of sound. The song has everything- those massive, ringing Wah! guitar chords, layers of female backing vocals and Pete belting the verses out, including memorably this one- 'Blue velvet shoes/ You'll never lose/ Blue velvet shoes /Cos every time you lose, you learn/ Go tell them Jack Kerouac just said/ The Roman candle burns'. The chorus is a big singalong of Wylie wisdom, 'Don't lose your dreams/ No matter how far your tumble/ When people criticise your schemes/ Your wild extremes/ Don't you ever lose your dreams'. In lesser hands this could sound corny or overblown. In Pete's it sounds huge and beautiful. It fades out with echoes of The Who, Baba O'Reilly style. Thirty two years later, it sounds like the song 1991 forgot about.
Don't Lose Your Dreams (Excerpt From A Teenage Opera Part 154) Seamless...
The CD single has two B-sides, Imperfect and Don't Lose Your Drums. Imperfect is an alternate version of Big Hard Excellent Fish's Imperfect List from the previous year, a beatific, loved up version of that track with a completely different vocal courtesy of Domino.
The third track is an instrumental remix of the original, a very nice, blissed out version.
Don't Lose Your Drums (Excerpt From A New Age Opera Part 2001)
There were several versions across the vinyl and CD formats. The 12" had a pair of excellent Cabaret Voltaire techno remixes and a 10" presented two very 1991, Danny Rampling acid house remixes. All seem to be out of print and unavailable digitally. Second hand copies of all are cheap and easy to find online. Someone needs to tidy up Pete/ Wah!'s back catalogue, re- issue the albums and do a career round up/ Best Of/ B-sides package.
6 comments:
TOPTASTIC tune Adam, I don't think I've heard that for 30 years
That's great.
I don't think I'm the only one who is persistently if mildly ashamed that I like just about everything I've heard by the Farm / Wah! / Wylie. That's surely to his enormous credit. Consistently making music that people like *in spite of themselves* is actually a pretty incredible achievement.
Glad this has been so well received
Agree with the back catalogue comment. He's more than worthy of a boxset spanning the entire career.
Mind you, this is a decent collection.
https://www.discogs.com/release/1417214-Wah-The-Handy-Wah-Whole-Songs-From-The-Repertwah-The-Maverick-Years-2000
It is JC but scarce, out of print and pricy. Dunno why I never bought it when it came out. CDs were expensive back then I guess.
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