Monday's Long Songs

Over at Ban ban Ton Ton last week Dr. Rob wrote a post about various Sabres Of Paradise remixes, Selected Sabre Cuts. One of his selected cuts was the Sabres remix of Primal Scream's Jailbird, part of a 12" single released in June 1994. 

Jailbird was the second single from the album Give Out But Don't Give Up, an album released in March 1994 that was it's fair to say, a tad divisive. In 1991 Primal Scream with some production and remix assistance from Andrew Weatherall and Hugo Nicolson as well contributions from The Orb and Jah Wobble released Screamadelica, an album that saw Primal Scream go day- glo acid house, long haired converts to the new sound (although the album contained some more trad Scream rock music too in the shape of the Jimmy miller produced Moving On Up and the strung out ballad Damaged). They followed it with the Screamadelica 12", Moving On Up plus the album's title track, a huge piece of symphonic wide screen acid house and a beautifully downbeat cover of Dennis Wilson's Carry Me Home. When the band returned in 1994 they had gone full on Rolling Stones, first with Rocks and then Jailbird (which opens Give Out...). The album came with a Confederate flag on the cover (a William Eggleston photo) and got the band the tag 'Dance Traitors'. Having rewritten what an indie guitar band could do on Screamadelica they went into reverse and indulged their Rolling Stone fantasies. At this point some of the Scream were living like Keith Richards and if you live like Keef long enough, you'll start writing like Keef. 

I didn't take to Give Out But Don't Give Up when it came out. I was in the Dance Traitors camp although I liked Rocks just because it was so brazen. In 1994 I wasn't too fussed about bands who wanted to be in 1973. If I wanted to listen to Sticky Fingers I'd put Sticky Fingers on. Some years later I found it to be a better album than I did at the time but in 1994 it was too retro, too backwards looking. 

The remixes on the other hand were where the action might be- after all Mr Weatherall had played such a key role on Screamdelica that surely the Weatherall remixes of any of the Give Out... tracks would be what we wanted. The Jailbird 12" was highly anticipated in this household and when I got it home and put it on, there was again, a sense of 'this is not what I expected..' about the pair of Sabres Of Paradise remixes clad in a bright red sleeve shot of Throb live on stage, guitar and crotch plus amp and Confederate flag. The first of the two Sabres remixes was this one...

Jailbird (Sweeney 2 Mix)

The songs drumbeat looped up and running for thirty seconds, then a squiggly distorted noise, presumably Throb or Innes' guitar amp. Huge single descending piano notes, slowed right down and then some organ doing the same. An oscillating synth line kicks in, similar to the theme tune from The Sweeney (presumably where the remix title came from). This is Jailbird gone slow mo, out of it, no longer higher than the sun but very much damaged. We were indeed a long way from home.

The second remix (and the one Rob chose for his post last week) was a big one, nearly thirteen minutes long and where Andrew, Jagz and Gary went fully in with the dub... 

Jailbird (Dub Chapter 3 Mix)

The Dub Chapter 3 remix took some getting my head around too. Now, thirty- one years later, it's an example of Andrew's genius, his way of taking a song and deconstructing it completely, taking one or two elements from the original and constructing something entirely new from it (something he'd done on Screamadelica with Loaded and Come Together). 

Dub Chapter 3 is long, dubbed out and full of production tricks that the three Sabres had been honing during '93/ 94. Echo, FX, rattling drum machine loops, a three note synth part, acres of time and space, whole galaxies of time and space, and eventually, half way through something from the original song turns up, not one of Throb's guitars but a snatch of Bobby's vocal used as a sound rather than a voice. It's an epic Sabres Of Paradise remix, with King Tubby and Lee Perry was the inspiration, a million miles from Screamdelica and a million miles from Jailbird too. 

Further remixes were on the 12", one from Kris Needs and one by The Dust Brothers (later Chemical Brothers) and (I'm Gonna) Cry Myself Blind single had remixes from Portishead and Kris Needs again, but none of them go anywhere near what Sabres did with Dub Chapter 3. Stick it on a playlist/ CD/ mixtape along with the Sabres Gaelic dub remix of Peace Together's Be Still and the Squire Black Dove Rides Out version of One Dove's Breakdown, both ten minutes long and both from '93, and Sabres own productions Edge 6, Return Of Carter, Ysaebud and RSD, and you've got Sabres In Dub, a Sabres Of Paradise album that never was.