Named after the debut single by Teenage Fanclub.
This blog is all about being a music lover in Glasgow; reviews, interviews, memories, old faves, new discoveries (past and present), playlists and more. Thanks for visiting - I hope you discover something amazing you have never heard before, or that you rediscover an old favourite.
Regular features/playlists; Never Ending Mixtape / Cover Version of the Month/ Trust Me.
Insta - @everythingflowsglasgow
In memory of Charlie Watts, this months Anything Goes & Everything Flows DJ mix kicks off with the outstanding Happy from The Stones epic Exile On Main Street album. Blasting out one of my favourite Stones songs led me to creating a rock n roll style mix, the kind of tunes that would blast out in McChuills on High Street. A lot of the artists that feature in this mix have record sleeves adorning the walls in my favourite pub.
This mix would soundtrack a great night! Raw guitars, dirty grooves, cool hooks, vocals, soul and attitude dripping out of each and every song.
Enjoy. You can find this mix on Spotify by searching for Everything Flows DJ mix 4
Those drums, they really kick, the horns jab hard, again and again, the vocals are so clear, raw, clear and if you don't get tingles down your spine when they rise ....
I'll be with you when the stars start falling
And listen to the way the bass becomes more important through the song as it progresses. Spanky Wilson's cover of Cream's Sunshine Of Your Love is seriously soulful, funky and jazzy. She lets rip and her vocals are jaw droppingly, spine tinglingly good. She is totally 100 percent on it!
Sunshine Of Your Love was originally written and recorded by Cream in 1967, the summer of love. It's slower, heavier and although it is still extremely powerful, for me Spanky Wilson's version blows it out of the water, I could listen to her version 10 times in a row.
I was fortunate to catch her live at The Arches back in the day when she was promoting an album she had recorded with Quantic Soul Orchestra - what a voice. Spanky Wilson's song You is outrageous, I discovered it on a Living In The Streets compilation - wah wah jazz, funky soul and other dirty grooves, I would highly recommend buying a copy.
I think I first came across the song in a Jimi Hendrix documentary when it cuts to him playing Hey Joe on the BBC programme A Happening For Lulu, halfway through he announces he is going to stop playing this rubbish and dedicate a song to the Cream, regardless of what kind of group they may be in, I dedicate this to Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce.
Hendrix and his band then lock into the groove and play an instrumental over the closing credits, with Hendrix at one stage shouting 'they're trying to throw us off the air' or words to that effect. Try as I might, I can't locate this on YouTube. It is thrilling television, the best I can find is a mini documentary on it, unfortunately not letting the clip run from start to finish.
Again for me this version is much more thrilling than he original. Hendrix is playing for fun and lets his passion and imagination run wild.
It's not that the original is bad (see further down), it's just that, for me anyway, Wilson and Hendrix take the song to higher places.
Read on for links to all previous cover versions of the month.
I love YouTube. I come from an era where I recorded music videos and performances from The Word, Top of the Pops, the White Room, Later with Jools and BBC coverage of festivals like Glastonbury and T in the Park on to VHS cassettes!
And there was a market for this. Some enterprising individuals would mass produce their homemade bootlegs and sell them at record fairs. So I forked out £15/£20 for everything I could find on the Stone Roses, Oasis and The Charlatans!
Of course nowadays any TV show a band has ever done is online, as is their promo videos, interviews, official live footage and plenty of bootleg footage - some good, others shoddy.
I love when people I follow online post good stuff to watch, so I thought I would introduce what will hopefully become a regular feature - Everything Flows TV.
Episode 1 features brilliant stuff from The Beastie Boys, Nirvana, AC/DC and Jimi Hendrix.
The Beastie Boys fly through Sabotage live on the Letterman show. Check the ferocious energy and fun they are having. Superb!
The Word, broadcast late on a Friday night on Channel 4, was essential trash TV for a young teenager. There was some truly awful stuff broadcast, but some incredible live performances. Check Kurt's intro to Smells Like Teen Spirit, Captain America (to become Eugenius) t-shirt and the brilliant performance - Nirvana were such a tight live band but they could just go crazy - and they do....live on TV.
There used to be so much music on TV. This was extremely memorable! Nirvana were booked to play their current single Lithium on Jonathan Ross' show and were introduced to that effect. Broadcast live, they decided to tear through Territorial Pissings instead! They blitz through it with exceptional punk rock energy and intensity, leaving Jonathan Ross a little shocked but he makes the most of it with a little joke.
Speaking of energy - a few people recently posted this brilliant video of AC/DC performing It's A Long Way To The Top If You Wanna Rock n Roll. Rocking out in the street (complete with bagpipes!) the band look like they are having the time of their lives - something that they always transferred to their fans.
In 1967 it must have seemed like anything could happen - and it often did. 2-days after the release of The Beatles seminal Sgt Pepper's, Jimi Hendrix and the Experience opened with it .... in front of The Beatles (Paul and George).
It would be one of his first gigs in London. Jimi was a sweetie, a very nice guy. I remember him opening at the Saville on a Sunday night, 4 June 1967. Brian Epstein used to rent it when it was usually dark on the Sunday. Jimi opened, the curtains flew back and he came walking forward, playing 'Sgt. Pepper', and it had only been released on the Thursday so that was like the ultimate compliment. It's still obviously a shining memory for me, because I admired him so much anyway, he was so accomplished. To think that that album had meant so much to him as to actually do it by the Sunday night, three days after the release. He must have been so into it, because normally it might take a day for rehearsal and then you might wonder whether you'd put it in, but he just opened with it. It's a pretty major compliment in anyone's book. I put that down as one of the great honours of my career. I mean, I'm sure he wouldn't have thought of it as an honour, I'm sure he thought it was the other way round, but to me that was like a great boost. - Paul McCartney, Many Years From Now
Most, if not all, of my blogs on cover versions to date talk about artists transforming a song - Jimi Hendrix takes on Dylan's All Along The Watchtower and takes it to another planet. Hendrix guitar playing is trailblazing. Mitch Mitchell more than matches Hendrix' guitar with his ferocious drumming. Noel Redding usually underpinned everything, but Hendrix plays bass on this recording. Online info seems to indicate Redding walked out of the recording as it was all done rather spontaneously with Hendrix shouting chord changes. Brian Jones from the Stones plays percussion.
Dylan's version came out in 1967 with Hendrix following swiftly a mere 6-months later. Hendrix peppered his career with covers; Hey Joe being the obvious one, but he also covered The Beatles Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band on the day the album was released, shredded Wild Thing and famously interrupted a live TV performance of Hey Joe by saying 'We'd like to stop playing this rubbish and dedicate a song to Cream....' and taking off on an instrumental tribute of Sunshine Of Your Love to the band who were breaking up.
Hendrix is on fire, the breakdown at 2-minutes in and subsequent guitar solo with Hendrix yelping 'hey' goes on for a spellbinding 50-seconds before Hendrix brings it all back in.
Dylan has said of Hendrix' version: 'It overwhelmed me, really. He has such a talent, he could find things inside a song and vigorously develop them. He found things that other people wouldn't think of finding in there. He probably improved upon it by the spaces he was using.'
Hendrix's version remains pretty true to the vocal melody (although he gives it more urgency and just sounds typically Hendrix cool) and acoustic rhythm, but his electric guitar just takes it to another dimension. The needle practically leaps of the record, it sounds vital, there is so much going on, yet like Dylan says in his quote above, Hendrix finds space and he also finds a real groove.
