Brilliant debut singles part 4

Welcome to part 4 of my new semi-regular/ongoing feature on brilliant debut singles. When bands/artists appear perfectly formed with a song that is utterly brilliant!

Sometimes, this might be with a song that they didn't write! Is that cheating?! Well, no, not if they transform the song and make it their own. Saint Etienne certainly did that with their sublime cover of Neil Young's Only Love Can Break Your Heart that is included in this blog. 

I'm also pretty sure that I'll be writing about The Byrds Mr Tambourine Man and the likes of Hey Joe by the Jimi Hendrix Experience in future blogs.

Part 4 (below) features Arab Strap, The House of Love, McAlmont &  Butler, The Left Banke and Saint Etienne.

I've started a Spotify playlist HERE

Part 1 featured; The Doors, The Undertones, Pet Shop Boys, Stardust and Tracy Chapman

Part 2 featured; Booker T & The MG's, The Jackson 5, Kate Bush, Radiohead and The Sex Pistols

Part 3 featured; Teenage Fanclub, LCD Soundsystem, Boston, The Box Tops and Depeche Mode.

16. First Big Weekend by Arab Strap

Funny, emotive, original, soulful and beautifully authentic, Arab Strap's First Big Weekend documents a mid-90's weekend absolutely perfectly. It could easily have been written about me and my mates!

Aidan Moffat begins his tale over raw and sparse acoustic guitar. Like many of my own 90's weekends, Aidan's started on a Thursday. Moffat's was with a quiz where he approached an ex-girlfriends new boyfriend to say there is no issue as far as he is concerned ... he shouldn't have bothered.

Then on Friday night we went through to The Arches

A programmed (basic) drum beat kicks in and Malcolm Middleton then finds a guitar riff and some synth sounds fall in behind. Moffat then continues his tale; the travel through, skipping the queue, dancing, the aftermath, trying to keep going, falling asleep, missing the Scotland v England game, going out again, watching The Simpsons, going out to the pub on Sunday night, meeting up again on Monday night ....

Went out for the weekend and it lasted forever

High with our friends it's officially summer

First Big Weekend was like nothing my friends and I had ever heard before. It was (and is) raw, real, exciting and true.

17. Shine On by The House of Love

With shimmering psychedelic guitars and an incredible chorus that is beautifully simple, Shine On is the defining song of The House of Love. 

The piercing guitar riff that introduces the song is infectious, the burst of acoustic rhythm under a short electric guitar at the end of the first verse is glorious. Later on the middle eight leads to a sensational guitar solo by Terry Bickers who was widely considered to be the best guitarist around on the independent scene in the aftermath of The Smiths and pre-Roses.

Originally released back in 1987 on Creation Records, the song failed to reach the top 100.  A new version was released in 1990 and got to number 20 in the charts - the bands biggest hit.

The band, led by Guy Chadwick and with Terry Bickers on guitar, were making a mark. Alan McGee became their manager and was determined to get them a major record deal. This episode is reflected on in glorious detail in the legendary book My Magpie Eyes Are Hungry For The Prize up among the best music books I have ever read.

Chadwick was desperate for a major record deal and a lump sum of money to buy a house, he has lied about his age and is going a little crazy with ecstasy and LSD, while Bickers is having a mental breakdown on tour, while McGee is holed up in plush London hotels conducting interviews with prospective labels. It's a funny yet harrowing read. 

The band definitely had something, but never captured the excitement of early recordings after Fontana (who they signed with) ordered multiple re-recordings and remixes in search of 'a hit'.

Listening back to the song, I've never really focused on the lyrics in the verses before! They are quite abstract, I guess it's always been about the guitars and the chorus for me.  

She, she, she, she, shine on

She, she, she, shine on

She, she, she, shine on

18. Yes by McAlmont & Butler

Bernard Butler went quiet after leaving Suede, following a meteoric 3-years encompassing 4 brilliant singles, a landmark debut album and the stand alone single Stay Together. Perhaps, given the ferocious pace they worked at, it was understandable.

There were rumours abound that Butler was going to join other bands, but he surfaced with Yes and a partnership with singer David McAlmont. The two met in the Jazz Cafe in Camden and Butler was soon playing his new friend his first positive piece of music since leaving Suede.

And oh how positive it is, McAlmont wrote a verse but couldn't come up with a second, so Butler just told him to repeat the first with the duo hoping to commit something that could be held up as a classic single like those they loved from the 60's.McAlmont's lyrics match the positive surge of Butler's music. The strings soar and instantly sound euphoric, Butler's guitar crashes and provides a constant rhythm throughout, while seemingly simultaneously chiming and riffing.

The lyrics could easily be McAlmont's interpretation of whatever Butler told him about leaving Suede. The title, the simple Yes, is pure positivity, Butler has recovered from the dark post Suede months, he does look better and he does feel alright.

David McAlmont's vocal is exceptional and after a quick 1st verse that sounds like McAlmont relaying a conversation they are into the sky scraping chorus. The about me, about me, about me line that McAlmont yelps out is the perfect bridge into the chorus. Then they do it again for good measure, only they take it even higher and it sounds even better.

Exceptional! Check the outrageous live performance on Later with Jools and the way Butler stomps, whirls and attacks his guitar. 

19. Walk Away Renee by The Left Banke

In just 2-minutes and 46 seconds, The Left Banke produce heart aching pop music of the highest, purest quality. Everything tugs on heart strings. At the age of just 18, Steve Martin Caro has no God given right to sound so beautifully heart broken, while the strings, harpsichord and flute are utterly perfect, giving a sense of maturity to this band of teenagers.

The poetic lyrics speak of empty sidewalks, where perhaps lovers once walked, of tears, of pain, rain, names in a heart drawn on the wall, of being haunted and of a realisation that the writer can't follow Renee, it's not to be.

Astounding, outstanding, magical. 

Walk Away Renee by The Left Banke

The Left Banke were teenagers when they wrote the Walk Away Renee by The Left Banke, especially when you consider that the band were teenagers at the time.

Released in July 1966, Walk Away Renee is one of a number of songs Brown wrote about Renee Fladen-Kamm, then the girlfriend of his friend and band mate, Tom Finn. Amazingly, Fladen-Kamm was at the recording of the single, Brown had to wait for her to leave in order to play his parts.

Remarkably, considering the depth and quality of this song, The Left Banke were all teenagers!

20. Only Love Can Break Your Heart by Saint Etienne

Saint Etienne (with Moira Lambert on vocals pre Sarah Cracknell) transform Neil Young's beautiful Only Love Can Break Your Heart - modernising it, taking it into the future, somehow making it even more timeless than the original.

Recorded in just 2-hours in a makeshift bedroom studio - Saint Etienne's version has a beautifully raw, unpolished quality and it remains a true gem that continues to captivate audiences to this day. It still sounds super fresh and exciting. 

 Saint Etienne take Neil Young's genius songwriting to new places - clubs! Ensuring that Only Love Can Break Your Heart fitted seamlessly in with the Acid House and ecstasy scene that was gripping the nation at the time of release in 1990.

I was always thinking of games that I was playing

Trying to make the best of my time

But only love can break your heart

Try to be sure right from the start

Yes only love can break your heart

What if your world should fall apart

A year of Spotify

Around a year ago I joined Spotify!!!!

F**K!

I always said I wouldn't......I held off for so long.......but I joined. Read on as I try to justify it to myself, try to do the sums for the company and for artists and scroll right down to the first playlist I created- almost 7 hours long and featuring 100 songs by Scottish artists!

I can actually remember the day I joined.  I spent a pleasant day off with no kids, anything on my to do list or anything really to do at all. That doesn't happen too often! I spent about 4 hours listening to loads of Scottish music. Some of my faves, songs I haven't heard in ages and bands/songs I have always wanted to check out.

And then on Saturday when the kids went to bed I checked out an album Carole King made with her short-lived band The City. I had read about it in The Times that day and then, just like that, it was at my fingertips.

Fear not artists and record shops. I will always buy records or merch. It is vitally important to support musicians by buying their work...if you enjoy it. They need money to to buy equipment, to rehearse, learn and gel, to get around and ultimately to record. And quite simply, I do love browsing in a record shop! I don't think I have ever been into Monorail without coming away with something!

Spotify - it initially felt like cheating. Even though it is legal.

A year down the line, any thoughts of cheating have long been banished. Spotify is now part of my life on a daily basis, it is the new norm. It is convenient, user friendly and it allows me to explore all kinds of stuff quickly and with ease. I don't think I have used iTunes since I joined Spotify for the pricely sum of £9.99 per month. Jeez, when I think of what I used to spend on a Monday lunchtime in HMV in the mid-90's!

I'm not alone, more and more people are joining the Spotify revolution - Forbes reported that they had hit 50 million paid subscribers back in March 2017. That was less than 6-months after reporting they had hit 40-million. Pretty strong growth!

The amount of money actually paid out to artists is negligible. Something like 0.004p per play/stream. In comparison, 1 play on Radio 1 will earn the songwriter around £50.

So for the likes of Calvin Harris whose This Is What You Came For is approaching an unbelievable 800,000,000 (yeah 800 million) plays - he should be earning around £3.2 million from Spotify just for that one song.

For another Scottish artist Duglas T Stewart has seen his seminal BMX Bandits song Serious Drugs achieve over 55,000 plays. Sounds like a lot, but it only earns the artist (the songwriter) around £220.

Gerry Love from Teenage Fanclub should have earned around £8,800 for the 2.2 million plays of one of his most loved songs - Sparky's Dream.

But do the sums. Lets say they now have 60 million subscribers paying £9.99 per month. So, unless my calculator is mistaken, that is a whopping £599,400,000 per month that Spotify rakes in. I know they have a lot of songs - but how much goes out to artists on a monthly basis?!

All quite interesting. Songs (to an extent) have a shelf life on radio, unless you are talking Christmas hits. Online and on Spotify, they are timeless.

One of the reasons that I used to put off joining Spotify was the fact that I want artists to be rewarded for their efforts. So Spotify do....whether they pay enough or not is another matter entirely.

It doesn't look like Spotify is going anywhere anytime soon and artists are having to adapt to the fact that actual physical sales will never return to way they once were and why download when you can stream?

I regularly blog about my Never Ending Mixtape playlist on Spotify, but here is my first playlist. It has 100 songs and clocks in at almost 7-hours!

Named after a classic Fanclub album the 100 songs fly through Scottish musical history; from The Poets and Lulu in the 60's, early Simple Minds with the glorious Chelsea Girl, The Sensational Alex Harvey Band, The Skids, 80's heavyweights like Deacon Blue, Wet Wet Wet and Texas, loads of indie legends like Orange Juice, Teenage Fanclub, The Vaselines, The Pastels, BMX Bandits and Jesus and Mary Chain, gone but not forgotten acts like AC Acoustics (great to listen to them again), Dogs Die In Hot Cars, the likes of Churches, Catholic Action and loads of DIY bands like Stanley Odd, Colonel Mustard and the Djion 5.

Not to mention Mogwai, Remember Remember, Arab Strap, The Blue Nile.....

Too many to mention, but check the playlist here. Volume 2 might follow soon. Arguably I should have titled the playlist after the first song!

The Most Important Place In The World

The last time Bill Wells and Aidan Moffat recorded an album (Everything's Getting Older, released in 2011) it won the Scottish Album of the Year Award. They have just released a second - The Most Important Place In The World on Chemikal Underground and I fully expect it to be on the shortlist for next years award.

Why?

Well, in short, the album allows two of Scotland's most treasured and talented musical artists to combine to create something genuinely special and unique.

Moffat is fine poetic fettle; flowing with anger on The Unseen Man, full of romance/realisation with Far From You, oozing sleaze and lust on Vanilla and This Dark Desire and in classic form on Any Other Mirror. Always full of sharp, honest and often funny observations.

For me, Moffat is at his best when he goes off on one; flowing with ease to vent his anger, frustration, desires, issues, heartbreak and ache... his lyrics, pace and flow are sublime especially on songs like The Eleven Year Glitch with a sample below.

the problem is that no-one changed, we didn't evolve, we just grew in all the wrong directions

we met too late, we tried too soon, we died so they could live

but don't peek behind the curtain, never scrutinise a mind, 

because you never know the heartbreak and the horror you might find, 

don't think you'll get a answer, don't expect to understand, 

the fragile correspondence between heart and head and hand

you'll never want me back, oh just say you'll never want me back

walk away, but don't you dare come back

just make sure before you pull the trigger

Dark (honest) humour is all over the closing We're Still Here, with Moffat talking about banks, bookies, pharmacies, charity shops, surgeries, letting agents, jewellers and even trainer shops! But Moffat says more about the state of Britain in 2015 in 4-minutes than most artists manage in a career - the fact that things are/can be pretty bleak but in the end we are still here.

Wells provides the perfect backing throughout, this is a real partnership; dreamy, seductive and 60's like on Vanilla, gentle beautiful on On The Motorway and The Tangle Of Us, matching Moffat's lyrics with the perfect mood on This Dark Desire and going bar style jazz and adding backing singers on Street Pastor Colloquy, 3AM.

I only bought the album today, picking up a super ltd edition print in the process from the lovely folk at Monorail and I have already fallen for it's charms. I suspect many more will follow.

Aidan John Moffat - (Oh What A Night ) Before Christmas

Every now and then a tune comes along that makes you smile, laugh a little, dance and sing....even  make you go back to the old days of taping something off the radio and then pressing pause to make sure you can note the lyrics.


Ladies and gents, Aidan John Moffat of Arab Strap fame has come up with the Christmas goodies with the release of his Christmas EP Oh! What A Not So Silent Night Before Christmas.

i was only alerted to this bandcamp release via The Sunday Times Culture magazine - always good for 'hottest downloads.' It is a self release via bandcamp. If only a record label had released this and put some money into a video, it would be amazing.


The lead track is amazing enough, Aidan singing over a sample of the Frankie Valli classic 'Oh What A Night', staple of many a fine wedding. 


To take such a recogniseable piano riff and tune and take it to somewhere completely different...and I mean COMPLETELY different, takes some doing. It is a piece of piss for Moffat though. This guy is prolific, his imagination, lifestyle and way with words lead to a seemingly endless supply of songs.


Listen to this, please. It is total genius as Aidan is woken by a pissed up Santa and 


Some sample lyrics.....


the children pretended to sleep in their beds, 
with visions of consoles and phones in their heads
while Mum was in latex flexing her lip, a little abuse always helps us both kip


his cheeks were quite ruddy, his nose like a cherry
his eyes were all bloodshot and he reeked of cheap sherry


he has a spectacular massive beer belly
like a homeless cartoon of the santa's on the telly


Santa passes out and Aidan has to sort out the presents himself.


Was it all a dream, an alcoholic stupour? Well leave that to your own imagination.


The rest of the EP? 'Santa Clause is Coming to Town' is a throwaway, the cover of 'Last Christmas' by Wham! is much better, Aidan going for it karaoke style and you believe him.


The EP closes with the title track, a spoken word version of track 1.


My Christmas song of the year, if only this got the press thaT Tim Wheeler and Emmy the Great are getting.


















'

John Peel

Today is the anniversary of the death of John Peel, the legendary Radio 1 DJ, a man of the people, a man for the people.

Peel was a voice and an outlet for independent music of all kinds. He embraced bands that went on to be huge; Nirvana (with tracks from their sessions going on to be on Incesticide) and the White Stripes (for example) and he also loved more obscure bands like The Fall and it was through Peel that I got into The Misunderstood. They left their guitars feeding back during a Peel session and went outside for a smoke, picking up their guitars on return!

The Smiths and New Order are two other bands that benefitted from Peel's backing throughout their careers. Looking back through a list of Peel's Festive Fifty listings just makes me want to spend the weekend listening to music. Peel was the first DJ to play Joy Division, Bernard Sumner delivers a heartfelt thanks below.

As a kid I would listen to Peel's show semi-regularly. At times I would turn off, I didn't get some of the music he played. At other times I listened intently for sessions by PJ Harvey or enjoyed some obscure Jamacian dub record.

Peel Sessions were released on a tiny DIY label called Strange Fruit and I have many of them in my record collection. My favourite would be (not surprisingly) the Teenage Fanclub Peel Session. The guitar sounds are better than ever on 'God Knows It's True' and there is a fantastic version of 'Alcoholiday' (see below)

Peel gave independent Scottish music a national platform, one that has deteriorated rapidly since his death. Ally McCrae's weekly show is currently under threat and anyone that tunes into Radio 1 will realise who far downhill in terms of music. Peel could get something on to the A-list. Correct me if I am wrong but I think he was instrumental in Cornershop's 'Brimful of Asha' going to Radio 1's prime daytime playlist.

Ballboy, TFC, The Delgadoes, Mogwai, Arab Strap and Belle and Sebastian are a handful of bands that can thank Peel for a leg up in their careers. Check out some banter with John from his Christmas special with Belle and Sebastian below.

I also miss Peel on the Glastonbury coverage, somehow Fearne and Reggie don't seem to 'get it' in the way that Peel undoubtedly did. The Beeb used to cut to footage of Peel dancing in an obscure field to an obscure band with a smile on his face.

R.I.P John Peel

This was his favourite track, pure punk pop by The Undertones. 

Five for Friday 07/10/11

No time for chat this week as my wife and a bottle of red are waiting on me. Just 5 great tunes. Check the sublime strings on this...