Black And Blues

Jim Reid, ex-Mary Chain frontman, has got a new song up on here on Soundcloud called Black And Blues. It's a Jim Reid song, you know what it'll sound like. I like it. Jim's comment about it is 'What I've been wasting my time with lately'.

The Mary Chain's five studio albums are soon to be re-released as triple packs, 2 cds with all the extras you'd expect and a dvd of videos, tv appearances and so on. A couple of these might be tempting if Rhino hadn't put out a box of rarities a couple of years back and double cd best of last year, and the whole set of albums were re-mastered and re-released not too long before that. The Smiths soon to be released boxset features their albums (and singles on the big box set, in both vinyl and cd format) re-mastered (because the originals sounded awful didn't they?), and depending on which format you buy would set you back £50 or £300. It's all a long way from 7" and 12" singles for a quid or two in the mid 1980s and junk shop clothes.

Happy When It Rains

If You Can Play On A Fiddle, How About An British Jig And Reel

Jimdoes, a reader who helpfully tipped me off about Arcade Fire's cover of Guns Of Brixton, also let me have this- Josh Rouse covering Straight To Hell. Josh Rouse is a name I know but I don't think I've heard much, if anything, by him. This is an acoustic guitar and voice cover of Joe's song, the centrepiece to the Combat Rock album. It's great that readers Jimdoes and Dirk have contributed to this series- thanks chaps. We'll have enough Clash covers for a decent homemade cd soon.

Straight To Hell (Josh Rouse)

Darling You've Got To Let Me Know

Same song as last night but a totally different approach. Dirk from Sexy Loser blog (link down on the right) emailed me recently and kindly supplied me with this cover of Should I Stay Or Should I Go?, a new one to me, by Jamaica's The Jolly Boys. It's a ramshackle thing of joy this cover version, guaranteed to put a smile on your face. The Jolly Boys have been going for sixty years and as Dirk says in his email 'that's really something'. They don't look too shabby either.

Should I Stay Or Should I Go? (The Jolly Boys)

The Return Of Friday Night Is Rockabilly Night 27

A rockabilly addition to the recent series of cover versions of Clash songs, with a couple more Clash covers to come over the weekend. This cover of Mick's Should I Stay Or Should I Go? came on a compilation called Psychobilly Box and is by The Tailgators. Is it any good? You'll have to judge for yourselves but I think the couple in the picture above may have deserved a better cover version to accompany their portrait. Enjoy your weekend.

Should I Stay Or Should I Go? (Tailgators)

Back In The Day

I've had an uneasy relationship with Damon Albarn from the off, starting with splashing his desert boots at a trough urinal in Liverpool when Blur toured to support their debut single She's So High. While quite liking some Blur singles I rarely bought them, and Damon seemed a prickly, arrogant, off-putting figure for much of the 90s. I like some of Gorillaz records but got tired of the cartoon characters thing. In fact thinking about it, some Gorillaz songs are top notch and I loved the two recent ones but I only bought the first two albums long after they came out. The Good, The Bad And the Queen appeared to be a different kettle of fish and appealed to me much more. It brought Bagging Area hero Paul Simonon out of musical retirement and to good effect, and Damon seemed a bit humbler and less overbearing. The music, described somewhere as 'Dickensian dub' was more up my alley, and the whole project was both out of step with the times and reflecting the times (references to war, drinking, city life etc). He was criticised for underusing Tony Allen's drumming but it wasn't really an afrobeat album was it? Recently I read a reappraisal of the album so I went back to it and was struck by the number of good tunes on it- the title track, Kingdom Of Doom, Three Changes, Herculean, Green Fields... As someone mentioned on a comment thread, it is a London album but also a great record for listening to driving around English towns late at night. This song was the B-side to the Herculean single.

Back In The Day

A Knife, A Fork, A Bottle, A Cork

Ooh, that Dillinger, what is he like?

Caution- contains drugs subtext.

Cocaine In My Brain

Michael, Mike, Peter and Bill

It's been announced tonight that R.E.M. have split up. Not earth shattering news maybe but still... Their music meant a massive amount to me for a long time, particularly the IRS albums and the first few on Warners, not so much in recent years but still...

This is Pretty Persuasion from the semi-legendary bootleg 'Live at Tyrones' in 1981, when as Peter Buck says on their website they were 'four nineteen year olds trying to change the world'.

Pretty Persuasion (Live at Tyrone's)

Visions Of Scum

S.C.U.M. are a South London bunch- gloomy, gothic, a bit electronic, a bit rock. Kind of like The Horrors (the bassist is brother of a Horror), they sound like they look. They've got a new album out- Again Into Eyes- and this song was their debut single back in 2008 and is very good, if you like that kind of thing.

Visions Arise

Sons Of Stone

Another selection from Andrew Weatherall's record box, via his 6 Mix show last Sunday night. The People's Temple might look like they're from Bolton but Lansing, Michigan not Lancashire is home. They've made a psychedelic garage record that ticks all the right influences (Love, Spacemen 3, the Velvets, 13th Floor Elevators, Link Wray, a thousand Nuggets style bands) but they've also managed to make an album that actually sounds like it was recorded in the mid-to-late 60s. Cool and groovy.

Sons Of Stone

I'll Declare My Intent To Race Again

There are people I know who don't 'get' Richard Hawley- 'country and rockabilly from Sheffield, so what?' they say. One of them got into Coles Corner a few years back, so I lent him the first three albums (the mini album debut, Late Night Final and Lowedges). He didn't like them. Eh? Bagging Area likes Richard Hawley, his sincere devotion to it, his northerness, his dress sense, and especially those first three records; lower budget maybe but the songs are great. Run For Me from Lowedges was a stately guitar led tribute to motorcycle racing, open armed and wide eyed but with a side helping of melancholy. The version of Run For Me here was recorded for a BBC 6 Music show, a re-working of the song- just piano with some pedal steel guitar coming in half way through and Hawley's rich vocals.

Run For Me (Live 6 Mix)

Keep Warm

Mr. Weatherall returned to the controls at BBC 6 Mix last night and played his usual eclectic selection, including a couple of his own forthcoming remixes, one a techno/rockabilly/glam remix for Soft Rocks and another for The Horrors. Amongst it all he played a song by Warm Digits, a duo who've released their debut album Keep Warm With...The Warm Digits on Newcastle's Distraction Records, and very good it is too. The album's over at emusic and other digital outlets or you can order the double vinyl from the band website or Distraction. Piccadilly Records, fine record emporium that it is, made my eyebrows raise slightly wanting £22 for the record. It's less from the band site. Weatherall describes Warm Digits as 'machine funk kraut-a-delia' and I can't come up with a better label, but suffice to say they were very good, a bit like a less head-splitting Fuck Buttons.

Weapons Destruction

All The Cops In The Doughnut Shop

Summer 1986. Mexico World Cup. Long summer holiday. Teenage boy. Bangles video for Walk Like An Egyptian on TV at friend's house. Susanna Hoffs.

Walk Like An Egyptian

Yes Partial

Sifting through my cds the other night I came across this- Rhythm And Sound. I don't know why it caught my attention because the cardboard digi-sleeve is black and grey, with grey text, not remotely eye-catching. I'm glad it did though because I'd forgotten how good it is. Rhythm And Sound is the name of the dub/reggae output of Berlin's Basic Channel, who as Basic Channel defined minimal German dub-techno in the 1990s with a series of 12" records. The Rhythm And Sound reggae and dub oriented stuff was compiled on one cd, released in 2001 with a new track as opener- No Partial. This is high quality modern dub- deep, dark, digital dub, a little unsettling, with plenty of hiss and massive bass. Not much point listening to this on that little cd player or docking bay you keep in the kitchen for doing the washing up to- this needs to be played on the big stereo in the front room, or on headphones where it might keep you awake for a while.

No Partial

We Were Born Within An Hour Of Each Other

I like a bit of Nick Cave every now and then but I sometimes think I'd be happy never to hear one of his piano ballads again. Apart from this one- his cover of Pulp's Disco 2000. Nick Cave takes Jarvis' tale of school day crushes, lost love, growing up and the turn of the millennium, and slows it right down. Yes, there's piano, yes, it's a ballad, but it works a treat. This was released as a B-side to Pulp's Bad Cover Version single, which presumably was someone's idea of a joke.

Disco 2000

No Need For The Black Maria

Guns Of Brixton- three times, as The Fugees didn't say. A reader called jimdoes has been in touch and kindly sent me two more Clash covers, including this version of Paul Simonon's Guns Of Brixton by Arcade Fire. Taken from an appearance on BBC2's The Culture Show it's a brooding, slow building version, but well worth your time. Jimdoes would like me to point you in the direction of his internet radio station

seeksmusic.com

I loved the first Arcade Fire album, it seemed so different and otherwordly. Then they became superstars.

Guns Of Brixton (Arcade Fire Live on The Culture Show)

Stepping Out In Style

I've read a couple of references to this recently and have taken it as a sign it should be posted, and it follows on from the Friday night Mancabilly post. In 1997 Edwyn Collins recorded a super shimmering seventies disco tribute for his album I'm Not Following You and cajoled Mark E Smith into providing vocals. It is quite superb. Even Ctel might agree, despite liking neither disco nor Mark E Smith.

Seventies Night

Friday Night Is Mancabilly Night

A swerve a few miles north of here towards Prestwich for tonight's rockabilly record- The Fall's barnstorming cover of White Lightning, written by The Big Bopper and a 1959 hit for George Jones. It's as rockabilly as creepers, quiffs, snarling and rolled up sleeves. Whatever your tipple is tonight, take care- white lightning'll make your eyes bug out and your face turn blue.

White Lightning

This Is No Game Played By A Man Living In White Houses

We haven't had a great deal from Mr. Weatherall here recently so let's correct that with this post- a Weatherall remix of Radioactive Man's Fed-Ex To Munchen. Radioactive Man is/was Keith Tenniswood, the non-Weatherall half of Two Lone Swordsmen. Keith's second album Booby Trap was a full on electro album released in 2003. Closing track Fed-Ex To Munchen had some lovely throbbing synths and the enigmatic vocals of Lali Puna's Valerie Trebeljahr. For the remix Weatherall kept the vox, removed the synths and added live sounding double bass and one fingered keyboard playing, for a late-night, after hours, jazz club kind of feel. At the time I almost wore out my copy of the vinyl and this remix still sounds really good eight years later.

Fed-Ex To Munchen (Weatherall Remix)

Go Easy, Step Lightly, Stay Free

After drawing a blank with Ctel's suggestion of The Pickets cover of Should I Stay Or Should I Go (I did find a youtube clip, see the comments box for Joy Zipper's Hitsville UK, but no mp3), and deciding against posting The Tailgators psychobilly cover of Mick's most indecisive moment, I've settled for this- Pete Wylie ('part time rock star, full time legend') covering Stay Free live and in concert. Possibly the only time The Clash and Chicory Tip are brought together in the intro to a song. Stay Free is, of course, Mick Jones' love letter to his best mate, his childhood and teenage years, and Sarf London- 'at weekends, dahn Streatham, on a bus'.

Apologies to Mick Jones- I've included a picture of The Clash which he isn't on. He might be used to that by now I suppose.

Stay Free (Pete Wylie)

You See He Feels Like Ivan

Cover version of Guns Of Brixton returns, in fine reggae style. This is very good- Jimmy Cliff with Tim Armstrong from Rancid producing, a taster for a forthcoming album. Jimmy's voice sounds great still, the acoustic guitars swing and there's some lovely trombone.

Guns Of Brixton

Knocked 'Em Dead In Two Minutes Fifty Nine

New York boy-girl wooze merchants Joy Zipper take The Clash's Hitsville UK, Mick Jones' tribute to the nascent UK indie scene, and smother it in many layers of fuzz, over six very narcotic minutes. An odd choice of cover version maybe but they get away with it. I decided Hitsville UK wouldn't survive the cut in my Sandinista Parlour Game post, a decision I took some flak for and might reverse if you asked me now.

A request- if anyone out there has a copy of The Pistoleros rockabilly cover of Bankrobber, I'm just over here.

Hitsville UK

It's The Best Years Of Your Life They Want To Steal

The National, Amerindie darlings, cover one of The Clash's finest moments- Clampdown. Slowed down, half whispered-half sung vocals, acoustic guitars and finger picking. It doesn't really match the subject matter (kicking over the walls, causing governments to fall, you wearing blue and brown and working for the clampdown) but it's a good attempt at doing something different and it works pretty well.

I like The National in small doses but I lose interest over a whole album. Some of their songs, Apartment Story say or Mr November, I've listened to loads but I can't get into the whole thing, and I'm not sure why.

Clampdown

When They Kick Out Your Front Door

Cover versions, it's often been noted, need to do something different with the song. It's interesting that when people have a go at covering The Clash a common approach is to strip back, slow down, get the acoustic guitars out and hold it all in a bit. There's not many wanting to take on the Clash at their own game.

Nouvelle Vague are a French covers outfit who make bossa nova, easy listening and chanson versions of punk and new wave songs. The first time you hear one of them, your ears prick up, and you think 'that's not bad'. After a while though, the novelty wears a bit thin and you can guess exactly what the cover versions sound like just looking at the tracklist. Here they cover Paul Simonon's Guns Of Brixton, stripping all the menace and machismo out of it. Despite missing that bassline and a certain amount of swagger, I quite like it.

Guns Of Brixton

Harmful Elements In The Air

Let's start the week with Siouxsie. 1978's number 7 hit Hong Kong Garden managed to sound icily cool while being about a Chinese takeaway in Chislehurst. Paul Morley wrote 'Its Oriental authenticity, its flickering eroticism, its simple beauty pushed it deep into the charts'. If I ever write anything like that, feel free to tell me to delete the post. In fact, the whole blog. The song survives Morley's description.

Edit. Grammar (possessive apostrophe) corrected. Thanks to DavyH. Apologies to Paul Morley.

Hong Kong Garden

Say Kids!

Say Kids What Time Is It? was Coldcut's first record and more or less invented cut-and-paste, sample based music making. It's still an astonishingly inventive record, filled with the possibilities that new technology and a decent record collection presented them with. After this came Pump Up The Volume and Theme From S'Express. The future is now twenty four years old.

Say Kids What Time Is It?

Sign On You Crazy Diamond

...was a line in a Half Man Half Biscuit song. Not that that's what's here today. I'm not a fan of Pink Floyd. Most of this is irrational (or rational) prejudice formed in the 1980s. I watched The Wall and hated it. The sleeves are pretentious. The music always seemed pretentious too, too 6th form, pseudo profound. Their fans are... well, Pink Floyd fans. Roger Waters seems totally disagreeable. I don't like Dave Gilmore's face. And so on. In the late 80s as a student in Liverpool there was a pub we frequented, The Brookhouse on Smithdown Road, and each night as the bell was rung for last orders someone always (and I mean always) put on Money. It ruined every last pint I had. I still get chills at the sound of those cash registers.

However, as as been noted here several times, I do like The Orb. It's a circle I can't square. This came on a magazine cd recently, The Orb covering Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Part Two). It's The Orb, so y'know, maybe Floyd can't be all bad. Can't believe I just typed that.

Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Part Two) (The Orb)

I'm As Healthy As A Horse

After Iggy Pop's flawless, numbed out Berlin/Bowie 1977 pair of albums he made some shockers. But before the rot really set in 1979's New Values (the first solo album made without Bowie) had some pearls on it- the Kraftwerky The Endless Sea, Five Foot One, I'm Bored ('I'm bored' Iggy sings, 'I'm the chairman of the bored') and the title track. Co-written with ex-Stooge Scott Thruston it's short, sweet, and direct with a staccato guitar riff, clattering drums and some typically self-referencing and funny lyrics- as well as being healthy as a horse Iggy's got a hard ass pair of shoulders and a love you can't imagine. There's some trouble in there as well- both in the lyric ('I'm looking for one new value, but nothing comes my way') and the playing (a guitar solo that really needed trimming) but all in all it's good 'un and no mistake.

New Values

Folk Star

Ex-Replacements frontman Paul Westerberg has had a hit-and-miss solo career with hidden gems surrounded by duff moments, and albums which got rid of large proportions of his fan base followed by albums that hit form but no-one bought. In 2004 he released Folker, then his fifth album in two years. It had it's quota of less than average songs and a few really bright moments. The final song was this one, where Paul rhymes 'folk star' with 'red plastic guitar' and wryly shoots at his public image. Cack-handed guitar playing and rough production complete a minor gem. This song is then followed by several minutes of silence and then, ooh, a secret track, the name of which I don't know. To be honest the hidden track thing always annoyed me, so I don't blame you if you press Next or Fast Forward after the end of Folk Star. I don't know what's going on with that jacket either.

Folk Star

The Return Of Friday Night Is Rockabilly Night 26

I'm not going to make any attempt to describe tonight's rockabilly song- it's enough to say that if you like rockabilly, rock 'n' roll, or just music, then get it here tonight. The Embers' I Walked All Night is brain frazzlingly good.

I Walked All Night

Sail To Me, Let Me Enfold You

Or Song To The Siren Slight Return. A reader, plasticsun, left a comment at the This Mortal Coil post the other day recommending Scottish folkie James Yorkston's cover version of Tim Buckley's song. So here it is. It used to be a free download at Yorkston's website and was also a B-side to a 7" single. It's very folkie, with fiddle and a plaintive vocal, and is really quite affecting.

Song To The Siren (James Yorkston)

Well I've No Use For Riches And I've No Use For Power

It's funny how blogging sends you down a musical byway you weren't expecting to travel down. I posted Ooh La La by Ronnie Lane at the end of August. I hadn't been listening to him at that time particularly, but chanced upon the song while skimming through my music folder. Since then I've been going back to a Ronnie Lane compilation I picked up a few years (How Come, a collection of singles and a pair of live tracks, released to raise funds for MS charities at then end of the 90s) and found a cheap Faces compilation (released by the ever reliable Rhino). I'm not a fan of Rod Stewart, and some of the Faces stuff is not to my taste, but Ronnie Lane's songs sound better and better, especially when they pop up amongst and in between other stuff, the sort of stuff you can find here at Bagging Area.

The Poacher was a single (number 36 in the charts) and released in 1974. Recorded with his first Slim Chance band the song and it's parent album Anymore For Anymore mixed rock with folk and country, to make something very English. Trouble is these labels don't really help; it's just a beautiful song.

The Poacher

All Things Being Equal

Long before he was rocking down Electric Avenue Eddy Grant was in a sixties beat group who released several fine records, none more so than this one- Baby Come Back- from 1966. Bouncy bassline, beat group backing, a smidgen of pop-reggae, great vox. It even survived a mauling by UB40 and Buju Banton in the early 90s.

Baby Come Back

You've Got Your Red Jeans On

My mp3 player spluttered out of digital life on Sunday, leaving me scrabbling around in the car for cassettes on Monday morning. I found one which was labelled June 06, stuck it in the slot and within three songs this came up- Bootprints by King Creosote, from from his 2005 album KC Rules OK. I was smitten again by this gorgeous little song, beautifully sung by Kenny Anderson, a romantic tale of lost youth and drunken love.

Bootprints

Drew Me Loving To Your Isle

Not actually a cover version of Tim Buckley's song, but a dance track that borrows the song's name, here's The Dust (later Chemical) Brothers' Song To The Siren. Released in 1992 it was Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons first release. This is a fairly full on, ten minute plus remix by Andrew Weatherall's Sabres Of Paradise. Good luck finding a vinyl copy if you haven't got one.

Song To The Siren (Full Sabre Mix)

Til Your Singing Eyes And Fingers

But my favourite cover of Song To The Siren is by Half Man Half Biscuit, who treat it like a standard indie guitar song with chords, guitar, drums and bass. Nigel only makes one irreverent suggestion to the lyrics during the 'was I hare, when you were fox?' line. Oh, and there's a fantastic sting in the tail- Vatican Broadside, thirty seconds tacked on the end concerning the Pope and Slipknot, with copious swearing.

Song To The Siren/Vatican Broadside (Peel Session)

I Did All My Best To Smile

The most famous cover version of Tim Buckley's Song To The Siren (and there are many) was by This Mortal Coil, a 4AD band. Described on wiki as a 'gothic dream pop supergroup' This Mortal Coil were label boss Ivo Watts-Russell and John Fryer, with a rotating cast of 4AD musicians including The Cocteau Twins Liz Fraser and Robin Guthrie. Song To the Siren was just Guthrie and Fraser. It was a massive independent hit in 80s Britain and deservedly so. It's a ghostly, spectral, 'gothic dream pop' cover version that surely even people that don't like The Cocteau Twins must be impressed by.

Song To The Siren (This Mortal Coil)

Long Afloat On Shipless Oceans

This is the first post in a mini-series that will last at least four posts. I can see you're excited. Tim Buckley's Song To The Siren is one of those legendary songs that in the pre-internet age you could read references to for years before actually hearing. Once heard you might go.. Uh? It's certainly an acquired taste and there isn't much else in his back catalogue I can listen to in the same way (feel free to make suggestions). Tim yodels. There's no other way to put it. But this song is a beauty- sparse, almost non-existent backing but there's some weird phased, reverb heavy guitar in there too, Tim's voice and a stunning death trip lyric.

Written in 1967 Tim Buckley struggled to record a version he was happy with, with the consequence that Pat Boone released the first version of it. Buckley performed it on The Monkees tv show in a folk style, before releasing it on his 1970 Starsailor lp. It also underwent lyric changes between recorded versions ('I'm as puzzled as the oyster' became 'I'm as puzzled as the new born child'). In the end, it's one of those songs which is impossible to describe satisfactorily, which will always be incomprehensible to some people, and which others will never get tired of hearing or get to the bottom of.

A friend of mine once described buying a Tim Buckley cassette years ago and drifting off to sleep with it on, only to be awakened by what he thought was a man swallowing a mewling kitten.

Song To The Siren

Lion Rocking

I heard this the other day for the first time in years, decades even, and it sounded much better than I remembered- Justin Robertson's 90s club 'band' Lionrock and the self-titled single. Nice dub-house with great synth horns. Very tasty, as is Mr Robertson's dress sense. Nice boots.

Lionrock

The Return Of Friday Night Is Rockabilly Night 25

Tonight's Rockabilly comes from one of the originators- Carl Perkins, who the Japanese couple in Mystery Train argued about for most of the film, may have been better than Elvis. Honey Don't was the B-side to Blue Suede Shoes, released in January 1956 and is just as groundbreaking as Joey Beltram's Energy Flash thirty four years later. But with fewer drug references.

Honey Don't

Ecstacy

Joey Beltram's 1990 track Energy Flash, with it's one word vocal sample, moved acid-tinged techno another step ahead. Beltram says he made the track because he was looking for things like it to use in his own dj sets and couldn't find many, so he went and made his own. Harder, higher, better, banginger.

Energy Flash

The Days Grow Short When You Reach September

Don't they just.

In 1984, with The Bunnymen at the top of their game with Ocean Rain, Ian McCulloch decided to nip off for a solo single, which probably didn't do much for fragile band relationships. Taking Kurt Weill's September Song, a crooner's standard, Ian gave it his best shot. This being the mid 1980s the 12" had a long version to use up those extra five inches. Backcomb what's left of your hair, wrap up in something warm (a raincoat maybe or long black woollen coat), take a stroll around some moody landscape and wallow in Ian's version of September Song, while contemplating the fact that yesterday's Model 500 song was released less than a year later.

September Song (Long Version)