Territorial Listens - The Other History Of Pop

This week in June 1970 "The Long and Winding Road" became The Beatles' final number one in America.

The song, about a road which is long and also has some winds in it, was a top ten hit around the world in countries like Australia, Switzerland, Belgium and of course, the United Kingdo..h wait, no. It says here it didn't actually come out as a single in the UK. Whilst The Fabulous Four Men's previous single "Let It Be" HAD got an official British release, reaching number 2 in March 1970 and kept off the top by Lee bloody Marvin's "Wand'rin' Star" of all things, it wasn't seen as the done thing to keep releasing songs from an already available LP. And even "Let It Be" had been rejiggered for the LP (which McCartney would later unjigger back again for the "...Naked" release decades later.)

Whilst now we're used to the charts as effectively a hollow corpse being violated by streaming services on loop with everything to hand the second its released, I lived through a (very expensive) era where owning music was physical and subject to really strange laws and record company regulations. On top of the multi-part singles that had to be a certain length or face banishment from the chart, your favourite bands would often try break other countries with completely different songs.

Back in 1995 I had only really just became a weekly music buyer and would head down to Our Price every Monday morning for the latest singles before they charted and the price bumped up instantly by two pound as if that was in any way acceptable. My big love was the burgeoning Britpop scene, not quite the sad bloated ham it would become, in an exciting time for a kid to get into alternative music. So imagine my teenaged face when I got to the record shop that September and saw a brand new Oasis single that I didn’t even know was coming out and it was...FIVE QUID? Do I look like I'm made of the cocaines money, Leon Gallaghers?!?

This was my first encounter with an import single. In this instance,"Morning Glory" had been released in Australia and to radio in the US instead of failed Blur-usurper "Roll With It" which as we all know in hindsight is fucking terrible. It even had the same B-sides as that single. The following year MTV (it used to play music videos etc) would constantly air the clips for both that and "Champagne Supernova" - another release for America that didn't come out here - just to taunt the British record purchaser.


Here's some other alternate country releases that tormented fans...

The Jam - "Thats Entertainment" (1980)

The grandaddy of the modern alternative import release. Whilst available on the band's fifth album "Sound Affects", Paul Weller and The Pals Two decided to follow The Beatle model and try not release songs already released on long players. Equally copied off Them Mop Top Types was the riff from "Taxman" which was used throughout the only officially released single "Start!", their second number one. They did however decide to put out "That’s Entertainment" in other places who they quite frankly didn’t give as much of a shit about. Fans were keen though and sent it to number 21 on import sales alone - and thats when people actually bought records! They later beat this with the No.8 placing of the Dutch "Just Who Is The 5 O'Clock Hero?" Although Morrissey didn't specially ruin that one with Vic Reeves on backing vocals, did he?





Pink Floyd -"Flaming" / "The Gnome" (1967)

One of the main tracks that wrong idiots point at when they want to go "ahhh Syd Barrett was RUBBO!" and pretend early Pink Floyd was merely quaint nonsense, as if bellowing about walls is much better, the heavily Tolkien-inspired tale of "a gnome named Grimble Gromble" is actually quite a fun, pleasant listen after nine and a half minutes of everything-and-the-kitchen-sink epic "Interstellar Overdrive" on the second side of the wonderful "Piper At The Gates Of Dawn". As a single it perhaps feels a little exposed as back up to the gorgeous if fairly aimless "Flaming" - a song which pretty much invented the 1990 indie sound two decades early - released only in the US in an alternative mix to that found on the album. Neither that or its UK counterpart "Apples and Oranges" were a hit. Should've done more songs about walls, lads.



Madness – “Mrs Hutchinson” (1982)

As the official band time-line for December 8th 1981 states: “Madness perform Mrs Hutchinson on the Top Pop TV show as for some reason the Dutch record company preferred to release it as a single instead of It Must Be Love.” A baffling decision in light of the Labi Siffre cover becoming synonymous with the group and the new double A-side ultimately peaked at a disappointing 43. The song itself, found on the band's third album "7" and written by keyboardist Mike Barson, is great fun and would have been a great single although the lyrics about a dying old lady being lied to by her doctors may have been a deciding factor after the controversy over that record's "Cardiac Arrest" which recieved a daytime radio ban.

The band also received a similar switcheroo in the UK when Stiff Records boss Dave Robinson replaced “Victoria Gardens” – the original second UK single from 1984’s “Keep Moving” with “One Better Day” despite the fact the former had already been remixed for release. The single was never released, eventually appearing on essential singles box set “The Business” in 1999 and “One Better Day” became the band’s final Stiff single release. Huh huh. I said "Stiff release".



Supergrass - "Cheapskate" (1997)

I recall seeing the video for this on The Chart Show and getting very excited as its possibly my favourite track on Supergrass' second record "In It For The Money", a perfect collection of 60s and 70s influenced pop with this track in particular apparently in homage to Kool and The Gang. This would be the band's only dent in the American singles charts when it reached a whopping 35 on the US Hot Modern Rock Tracks chart.

Prince - "Paisley Park" (1985)

As the follow up to the bajillion-selling "Purple Rain" album, nobody really talks much about Prince (and The Revolution)'s 1985 album "Around The World In A Day" despite it being full of really great sixties-tinged pop songs such as "Pop Life" and "Raspberry Beret". Less played than either of those despite being both great and the highest charting single from that record (No. 18 in May 1985) "Paisley Park" would become better known as the name of Prince's studio and home.

Pulp – “Like A Friend” (1998)

This American promo from early 1998 recorded for Gwyneth Paltrow knocker-squinter “Great Expectations” sadly didn’t do much for Pulp’s US careers, despite receiving a full video. Frustratingly kept off the UK version of “This Is Hardcore” (And yet you had time for "Seductive Barry", Jarvis?) it'd eventually appearing in longer form on the B-side of the band’s “A Little Soul” that June. The band also released that brilliant but unforgiving album's ridiculously non-commercial opening track “The Fear” as an American radio single because death of Britpop and all that shit.

 





Culture Club - "I'll Tumble 4 Ya" (1983)

One of those you'd assume was released due to the ubiquity of the band's début album "Kissing to Be Clever" but only came out "over there", reaching the top ten in America and Canada whilst in Australia it hit number one thanks to being a double A-side with "Karma Chameleon". I reet like the 'orns on it myself.



The Smiths – “The Headmaster Ritual” (1985)

The Smiths never had much luck with UK singles releases. Partly this was down to being on the indie label Rough Trade although it was as much to do with noted pop arsehole Morrissey’s continually fickle nature. All this meant the band amazingly never managed a UK Top 10 single until the re-issue of “This Charming Man” in 1992 (and then that was on Warner who had picked up the back catalogue that year). This odd A-side choice – merely the opening track from “Meat Is Murder” here replaced the admittedly fairly grim “That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore” in the Netherlands and as a radio promo in the US. A 1988 French CD single import in the UK can cost up to £65. Its no "That's Entertainment" though, is it?

Now I'm off to listen to my favourite chart hits - “Glass Wadger”, "I'm In Love With A Matching Tea Towel and Oven Glove Combination", “Stick It In Us Ian”, “La La La La (Grab Knicker Grandma)” – what do you mean you don't remember them? They were all the rage in the Benelux regions...

You Don't Know How Much I Love You: Reclaiming Kenickie's "Get In"

Has there ever been an opening line in a top 40 single as quietly devastating as "I'm in pieces / does no-one see it?"

Outside of their media-friendly former front-woman, Kenickie are probably best, if at all, remembered as air-punching, glam stomping, pint-swigging mouthy teenage BFF girls (Lauren Laverne, Emmy-Kate Montrose and Marie du Santiago or Lauren Gofton, Emma Jackson and Marie Nixon at home) who were hilarious in interviews. Press and TV loved it because they had an instant angle and didn't have to do any real work. The début album went top ten. Bombing down the street, its a laugh. So what happens next?

"Oh great, we're getting a band together...lets get all yer mates. And then you find yer mates cant play..."

The sixties influence running through the album even made it to the artwork, as baffingly generic as it is.

There's a definitive mood that holds together Kenickie's second album "Get In" only hinted at briefly by that confusingly damning sample from BBC2's magnificent video diary "In Bed With Chris Needham" as the opening seconds of "Stay In The Sun" punch through your speakers. Thankfully it isn't quite as relentless as the single mix but has a simple summer-friendly chorus that should have seen its sunny - even funky - indie dance beats push further up the chart than its profoundly disappointing No.43 peak in August 1998.



Despite this, "Stay In The Sun" is a defiantly arms-aloft POP! record that sounded magnificent the few days it was played on daytime radio. There seems to be no reason for its lack of Radio 1 support, it just was the right song for the wrong summer. These were strange times for indie bands though with many who had thrived just a year earlier (The Supernaturals, Ash, Babybird and Symposium to name a few) now struggling to get anywhere near to the lofty positions they'd previously reached.  July and August 1998's top ten is the playground of SERIOUS boy bands (Boyzone, Savage Garden, Another Level) and ridiculous novelties (Ace of Base, Aqua, Alda) plus a lot of dance music as befits a summer chart, the best of the bunch undoubtedly being Stardust's "Music Sounds Better With You".

Besides, Kenickie might have sounded like they wanted to have fun in the sun and yet to avid fans of their earlier music, something felt a little hollow in their insistence. The giddy passion of "Punka" and "Stay Out 2Nite" replaced by hearts and keyboards. And did Lauren really just sing "I'm so weakened / We feel bloated / I feel sick"? Is...is everything okay?

Several months later, we learned the answer. Kenickie were to split. Second album syndrome, some said. With a chart peak of 32 after the top ten highs of the first LP you could well believe it. But had Kenickie really fallen into such an obvious trap? Had they shed too many fans of their original rambunctious punk pop sound with a new pop image? Or was it the public that got it wrong, giving up on a band just as it was becoming something much more interesting?

Track two on "Get In", "Lunch At Lassiters" gives little time to assess, coming on like the title sequence to perhaps not a Bond film but one of those shit-in-a-field knock-offs that were prevalent in the 1960s. Its a decade that looms large over this record, despite the group's youth, with the hippy themes of romance and having fun, joined by a N‭ixon (Richard, not Marie) era paranoia and fear. The production is much smarter than to just attempt a sixties love in with a lightness of touch and almost hip-hop take on percussion from main producer and drummer Johnny X (Pete Gofton). This runs right through the record and is perhaps most successful on magnificent first single, "I Would Fix You", home to the line at the start of this article, which takes a John Barry-style orchestral approach to a gorgeous, shimmering but desperately fragile record that has encapsulates the feel of the whole record much more succinctly than "Stay In The Sun". Its a punch-drunk boxer standing up in the third round despite all that’s been thrown at them. A sunflower fighting through the concrete. Something has gone very wrong indeed.

[CHARMING SIDE NOTE: "I Would Fix You" was one of the songs pastiched by Smack The Pony in its exceptionally funny first series (March/April 1999), along with The Corrs, Republica, Steps, All Saints, B*Witched and weirdly, Velocette. Becoming "Colours" by "Kinkee", the track is not especially funny lyrically, with the comedy coming from the cast being annoyed by butterflies and fannying about on wires, but absolutely dead on in both music and visuals as a parody with lead vocals from the always superb Doon Mackichan. Quite how many people got the reference at the time is hard to say but it was very much appreciated by me regardless.]



This thinly-veiled anger and sadness continues with "60s Bitch" clinging hopelessly to a relationship already over, whilst getting its claws into high street shops diving on the easy listening revival too late. ("You don't want her / She's got a waistcoat / She shops in Mark One / She's not strong enough / She's known in New Look / She's got a card there...") There's been drugs. There's been a lot of alcohol. But is there a way through it all? No answers are forthcoming in the much more lively "Run Me Over", which would fit comfortably on "At The Club", although barely hidden under the surface is the lyric "I hate it when you talk about me" suggesting somebody (Lauren Laverne? the band?) is approaching a limit.

This feeling of emptiness continues on track six "And That's Why", an achingly fragile piece that removes the regular band in favour of strings and minimal brass with Lauren seemingly looking down from above on a person nobody wants and wondering why. Of course, you don’t have to be Ian Q. Psychologies to work out that its the narrator who is truly hurting, a theme that continues on album stand-out, the initially sparse and dramatic "Weeknights" in which Laverne tackles the increase in drinking she seems to be doing as "a broken mind breaks out of me". The resigned sound of someone proudly marching over the cliff.

Between those tracks however comes something of a mood change as the keyboard-drenched dance number "Magnatron" featuring Marie on vocals and writing duty finds a bouncing disco beat reminding us that drinking and going out can still be the vicarious pleasure it seemed on the first album - the song even starts with someone pouring out a drink. But look deeper and there's talk of vomiting, sleeping it off and the slightly chilling "she'll be alright / but it's a long way down". On another planet this was a top five hit, here its just a slightly ill-fitting mid album track.

From a purely musical level, "Psychic Defence" is probably the album's catchiest track with a full chorus of harmonic "do do do"s (and occasional "ba ba ba"s) accompanying a simple glockenspiel melody which again leads into some beautifully arranged strings. With lines like the acidic "here's a reason for all the heavy hearts to stay / your mates don't really like you / and neither do I" throughout though, the happiness may all be as surface as the sounds. Marie's second vocal (and one of two songs solely written by her, with two other co-writes) comes on "5AM", a Kenix take on the pop RnB ballad doing big business for the likes of All Saints and Honeyz at the time that doesn't really divert, although the lyric "So much hard to go home / came in someone else's car / shiver in your night time clothes / you don't know where you are" seems to deliberately try and cast the darker side of earlier singles "In Your Car" and "Nightlife".

Marie and Lauren. They were really exceptionally good, you know...

"411 (La La La)" is perhaps, outside of "I Would Fix You", the most positive song Laverne contributes to the album. The words of loneliness and feeling lost are still there but joined with an optimistic belief that things could actually change. "Come to me / let me be kind", sings Lauren and you hope more than anything that this time she really was singing to herself.

After all the sadness and self-searching throughout the previous forty two minutes, you could easily be mistaken for seeing the final track's title - "Something's Got To Give" - and thinking this is the knife against skin moment, the pressure point released and yet what follows is a charming, played straight big band showstopper with Marie again on lyrics and lead vocals. Its fun, simple and a much needed reminder of Kenickie's scampish playful side which despite the overall themes, still twinkles throughout the album.

A flop on release, it feels like "Get In"'s only real crime was being so different from the easier pleasures of their début, trapped between pop megastardom and underground cliché. And while the band members have gone on to much happier futures, the music remains and it is always good to know someone, at some point, was out there feeling as lost as you. Repay the favour and lose yourself in "Get In" today.

 

Spice Up Your Girls!

Today is a proud day in British history.

Many achievements have been fought for and won throughout the centuries but the world never looked at us with such respect and admiration as this very date twenty years ago when the following epoch shattering moment occurred...

I can still remember where I was, although for decency I'll spare you what I was doing. Being a indie kid I should've loathed the Spices and all the gooey, hugging pure pop they stood for and yet, despite fancying them rotten, I couldn't help but be swept away by the sheer joy of the singles which would only get better and better throughout the next 18 months. When contrasted to the dreary post-Britpop indie fallout of the time, its easy to see why the nation embraced them with such love and inappropriate touching.

But it wasn't all Spice Spice Spice in the 90s, no ma'am, as some of the greatest pop of the decade had been performed by girl groups. Along with a load of old forgotten shite like Girl Thing, Girls@Play and Girly Girl Girlingtons Group (although I may have just made that one up). I wont have a bad word said about 21st Century Girls, mind who were bloody great fun.




Now I know what, you're all thinking, "Wot? No Buffalo G?" to which I say YES BUFFALO G!

 

We shall never see their like again...

Happy St Patricks Day!

More St Patrick's Day shillelagh-anigans with some more live clips, this time from 2015's "Salute To Irish Ireland", starting with one of the Irish musical big guns, The Irish Rover. Or at least the lyrics are. But as for the five artists and songs they're being performed in the style of, that's anybody's guess...



A regular appearance at our quiz nights is the singing superstar Steven Patrick Overcoat Morrissey who provides Smiths-esque medleys of various acts or styles. Being the most Irish man of all time (as evidenced by his 2004 hit "Irish Blood, English Bum") it was inevitable he would turn up to do a megamix of Irish hits both Eire and Northern based. See how many you can pick out.


Bizarrely that Morrissey round was featured on the front page of Audioboom once and got us a thousand plays in a day. Wonder how many of the buggers bought a book....

Final round for now (you can see the full quiz in said just mentioned book) and its time for a jolly sing-a-long with that other staple of pissed toothless arseholes sloshing Guinness around everywhere The Wild Rover. And he sure has roved - all over the world! So much so he's picked up five different languages for the choruses. Can you work out which?
 

That's all the dubious stereotyping for this Paddy's Day! Have a safe one! Don't drink too many lovely pints! 

THE IRISH ROVER: 1. Zombie – The Cranberries, 2. Parklife – Blur, 3. Rockin' In the Free World – Neil Young, 4. I Bet That You Look Good On The Dancefloor – Arctic Monkeys, 5. Come Together – The Beatles / MORRISSEY DOES IRELAND: Dirty Old Town (Various), Whiskey In The Jar (Various), Jailbreak (Thin Lizzy), My Perfect Cousin (Undertones), I Don't Like Mondays (Boomtown Rats), Orinoco Flow (Enya), Nothing Compares 2 U (Sinead O'Connor), Screamager (Therapy?), Them Girls Them Girls (Zig and Zag), Chasing Cars (Snow Patrol), What Can I Do? (The Corrs), Lipstick (Jedward), My Lovely Horse (The Divine Comedy)/ THE WILD ROVER: 1. French, 2. German, 3. Dutch, 4. Russian, 5. Chinese