Here’s the latest batch of Music Musings and Miscellany’s unapologetically subjective selection of the twentieth century’s best 1000 singles. The penultimate look at the S’s.
RADIOHEAD – Street Spirit (Fade Out) / Bishop’s Robes (Parlophone 1995)
Radiohead could have turned out to be a mere footnote in music history. With one gigantic hit (“Creep”) and a distinctly underwhelming debut album beneath their belt, The Bends had to be a great record, not merely a good one. It delivered, even though it has subsequently been eclipsed by much of what followed. “Street Spirit” is a great example of the kind of restrained, spectral balladry that shone on the album, given added impetus by a technically superb video by Jonathan Glazer that had eyebrows knotted with an expression of “how the hell they do that?”
GO-BETWEENS – Streets of Your Town / Wait Until June (Beggars Banquet 1988)
The late Grant McLennan was the romantic melodist of the duo, whereas Forster was more of a dark poet. But the sweetness and catchiness of his best tunes always carried a few hidden barbs, this song’s jaunty couplet “Watch the butcher shine his knives / And this town is full of battered wives” being a glaring example that things aren’t as sunny as they seem.
THE WHO – Substitute / Waltz for a Pig (Reaction 1966)
It may be an unfashionable view, but for my money the Who seriously lost their way when psychedelia kicked in, chasing up a blind alley of rock operas and the like. Only Live At Leeds, Who’s Next and Quadrophenia stand up to their legacy of classic sixties singles. “Substitute” is just one of these, full of vitriol.
PET SHOP BOYS – Suburbia / Paninaro (Parlophone 1986)
They still have it in them as the Battleship Potemkin soundtrack proved, but they seem content to wallow in ephemeral chart pop these days. Twenty odd years ago they were making chart pop too, but stuff that reflected the zeitgeist, with a satirical and relevant edge to it. Like Kraftwerk, they are a band that were ahead of their time, and when the times caught up, seemed to lose direction.
DEUS – Suds and Soda / Secret Hell (Island 1994)
Released in the middle of the retro-dayglo nightmare that was Britpop, this was a breath of fresh air. Screeching strings and loose production, but catchy as a cold. Deus have never been quite as iconoclastic as they were on their debut album, but they’ve consistently made playable records.
SUENO LATINO – Sueno Latino (DFC 1989)
This is one of those rare things – a dance record that sounds totally contemporary two decades after its release. Essentially, the record is a Latinised house mix by a quartet of Italians of a section from Manuel Göttsching’s magnum opus E2-E4. A simple idea, but one perfectly realised. Derrick May’s 1992 remix of a remix is just as good too.
PAVEMENT – Summer Babe / Mercy Snack / Baptiss Blacktick (Drag City 1991) GRANDADDY – Summer Here Kids / Levitz / My Small Love (Big Cat 1998)
Pavement songs always seem on the brink of collapse, even when they’re as melodic as “Summer Babe”. Like Da Vinci’s sketchbooks, the presentation is shabby, but the content is always supreme. Grandaddy were fairly obviously acolytes and were a bit hit and miss, with their ZZ Top meets the Taliban image threatening to overshadow their music. But “Summer Here Kids” is a diary of a nightmarish camp trip in a paradoxically uplifting setting and remains a favourite.
ISLEY BROTHERS – Summer Breeze / part 2 (T-Neck 1974)
For me, the Isleys produced their best work in a career spanning nearly half a century when they were joined by Isley – The Next Generation of younger brothers and nephews. Working as a self-sufficient musical unit, rather than a vocal group with backing, allowed them to stretch themselves a bit. Their cover of Seals and Croft’s “Summer Breeze” eclipsed the original, and is the aural equivalent of a refreshing zephyr on a sticky summer day.
LOVIN’ SPOONFUL – Summer in the City / Fishing Blues (Kama Sutra 1966)
Essentially a folk blues jug band, “Summer in the City” was a totally uncharacteristic record for the Lovin’ Spoonful. Familiarity may have dulled its impact, but I don’t think any song in the last 40 or so years has bettered it in its portrayal of the contrast between the dirty, uncomfortable, hot tempered days of living through a city heatwave with the hedonistic release that the night brings. And even for someone without a word of English, the key change between the urban rush of the verses, and the partying of the chorus says it all.
BRYAN ADAMS – Summer of 69 / The Best Has Yet to Come (A&M 1985)
Sample conversation as some cheesy Adams dross comes on the radio: Grumpy person: “I fucking hate Bryan Adams”. Me: “Yeah, but “Summer of 69″ was good”. Grumpy person (suddenly looking less grumpy): “Aye, “Summer of 69″ was good”. Ryan Adams used to get pissed off by the wags who shouted for it at his concerts. It was probably because he knew he’d never write anything as good. Mind you, the title of the B side has to be one of the most untrue claims in music history.
DISCO INFERNO – Summer’s Last Sound / Love’s Stepping Out (Cheree 1992)
Have I mentioned before how underrated this band is/was? Only a dozen times? OK, then. The classic DI ingredients are all in this record. Joy Division bassline, über-extended intro, foggy sheets of self-sampled, almost atonal guitar and a half-buried declamatory vocal, on this occasion sung from the point of view of refugees, hunted in their homeland and abused and even killed in their supposed safe haven. The band’s political songs were always emotional and human rather than exercises in ideology. Like nearly all their EPs, the flip is no less a song than the A side.
EDDIE COCHRAN – Summertime Blues / Love Again (Liberty 1958)
A two minute teenage tantrum at the unfairness of authority. At least he didn’t sound like he was going to go into therapy over it unlike the emotionally illiterate emo bands that clog up a section of the teen press these days.
WALKER BROTHERS – The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Any More / After the Lights Go Out (Philips 1965)
A-HA – The Sun Always Shines on TV / Driftwood (Warner Brothers 1985)
BELOVED – The Sun Rising / mixes (East West 1989)
It’s been a summery, sunshiny selection today. Scott confuses his girlfriend walking out on him with a cosmological cataclysm. An easy mistake to make. He always makes misery sound like something almost luxurious to wallow in. Our Norwegian trio gaze wistfully from rain-sodden Scandinavia to Hollywood where the sky always seems as bright as everybody’s teeth. The bottom line of the song is that Morten needs a hug. But what a dramatic, joyous, neo-operatic way of demanding one! Finally, the ultimate post-rave chill-out anthem by reformed indie kids the Beloved.
Belgian label Lamadameaveclechien (The lady with the dog) is new to me, but judging from these two EPs, it has a bright future ahead of it. Rony and Suzy and Einóma come to dubstep from very different directions, and show completely contrasting approaches to the form. What they share is a restless, unsettling quest for creating something new.
Rony and Suzy are brothers Nicolas and Thomas Giets from Belgium. The five tracks on their EP follow a pattern of stuttering beats, deep bass and heavy, claustrophobic dub that lies somewhere between the pummelling body music of Techno Animal and the queasy vertigo of Vex’d. A couple of the tunes are almost straight dub-noir, but the tottering paranoia of “Rouge” is both viscous and vicious. Closing “Noir” is as good, with disembodied voice samples and disembowelled bass hiss.
Einóma are also a duo – Bjarni Þór Gunnarsson and Steindór Grétar Kristinsson from Iceland – and one with a long track record, including two early noughties albums for UK label Vertical Form. Tvenna has just two cuts, but both exceed the ten minute mark. This is a duo whose background is in largely beatless, dark ambient soundscapes, but here the beats are dense and dominant, cutting a bass groove through their cold and stark atmospheres. At times the intensity increases and becomes almost overwhelming, but there is always a release before the darkness consumes itself. It’s kinda like GAS goes dubstep with the beats totally fucked and turned up to 11.
Both these EPs are released as insanely limited twelves with runs of 333 copies each. Hopefully, they’ll be more widely available in some form or another in the future.
Others Are Us
A1 Rouge 3:53
A2 Moqdah 4:20
A3 Wolfsdub 4:20
B1 Tandoori 4:32
B2 Noir 4:23
Since Rachel’s went on hiatus, there has been a huge number of acts treading the line between rock and neo-classical music, often with a side order of electronica. Whilst many are outstanding, what most are best at is that wispy melancholia that strings bring readily. The ‘rock’ part of the equation generally takes a back seat – and for good reason, because strings and drums often clash leaving a sound that’s urgent but tinny, without any real depth to it.
Slow Six’s 2007 album Private Times In Public Places had a fullness of sound to it unlike most of their peers, even if the prevalent mood was downbeat. The tracks’ duration was also of an almost Mahlerian scale, even if the band are essentially a chamber outfit. Tomorrow Becomes You is a shorter work, tighter and more concise. It also boasts a gloriously full sound that mixes any number of influences to create a varied but coherent whole. There are traces of influences as varied as the emotional scrapings of Dirty Three to the intellectual bombast of King Crimson, but nothing is allowed to meander meaninglessly, and neither are there any dreary displays of look-at-me virtuosity for the sake of it.
Essentially, the album consists of five pieces programmed as seven tracks. It’s topped and tailed by two upbeat epics where the strings share the melodic burden equally with the guitars. Full and multi-faceted, both are rich with melody and warmth. There is a symmetry to the record, and “Because Together We Resonate” provides the calm centre. It’s a beatless piece that sounds quite loose as if much of it is improvised. A bed of piano and subtle electronics provide the platform for the dominant violin.
Either side of the centre, there are a couple of two part pieces that fit together in different ways. The violin on the first part of “Cloud Cover” plays short, stacatto phrases that repeat, but change, giving the track a mechanical, serialist feel. Its twin is also its opposite, sweeping and lush like an organic take on ambient electronica. While “Cloud Cover”‘s parts are contrasting, the halves of “Sympathetic Response System” are more complementary. Starting with deep electro-bass pulses, part one is a showcase for some terrifically inventive drumming, that builds from simple rimshots into far more complex rhythms. The guitar provides the primary accompaniment, with the strings appearing as an afterthought towards the end. Part two uses the same melodic themes, but begins like an extended, downtempo coda, before it builds into a more rhythmically simple variation of the main theme.
Tomorrow Becomes You is a superb set that eschews the minimalist fashion followed by most neo-classical groups for something much richer and complex, but never gets bogged down by its own cleverness. It’s an emotional record that is equally at home with a happy face as it is a sad one.
Tracks 1. The Night You Left New York 9:10
2. Cloud Cover (part 1) 5:51
3. Cloud Cover (part 2) 6:21
4. Because Together We Resonate 6:09
5. Sympathetic Response System (part 1) 7:24
6. Sympathetic Response System (part 2) 7:10
7. These Rivers Between Us 9:26
Here’s the latest batch of Music Musings and Miscellany’s unapologetically subjective selection of the twentieth century’s best 1000 singles. Back after the Christmas / New Year hiatus with the first of the final 14 parts.
JOHNNY ‘GUITAR’ WATSON – Space Guitar / Half Pint-a-Whiskey (Federal 1954)
Amazing before-its-time instrumental rock. I wrote about it here
DAVID BOWIE – Space Oddity / Wild Eyed Boy From Freecloud (Philips 1969)
DAVID BOWIE – Starman / Sufragette City (RCA 1972)
In which Major Tom gets his mind blown cosmically by the sight of the blue planet from far above to the consternation of the ground control crew. Filled with Meek-ish guitar effects and spacey mellotron, this was and remains a work of genius. By 1972, Bowie had more or less invented glam rock, but was still indulging in his space opera fantasies. The hero of “Starman”, is an alien who fears that his presence might seriously freak out us feeble-minded earthings. In some ways, that’s more or less the plot for The Man Who Fell to Earth.
BEN E KING – Spanish Harlem / First Taste of Love (Atco 1960)
BEN E KING – Stand By Me / On the Horizon (Atco 1961)
Both King and his former group the Drifters had a top notch team behind them at the turn of the sixties with Ahmet Ertegun, Jerry Wexler, Tom Dowd, Jerry Lieber, Mike Stoller, Gerry Goffin, Carole King and Phil Spector all involved at some point. “Spanish Harlem” is a Latin-tinged vehicle for Ben’s extraordinarily pure tenor. “Stand By Me” can be taken as a simple stand-by-your-man song, or more widely, a civil rights’ call for unity. Both songs are undisputed classics.
ELASTIK BAND – Spazz / Paper Mache (Atco 1967)
Almost certainly the most politically incorrect record on this list. Its lyrics basically consist of playground level bullying taunts: “You wanna sit down when you know some clown’s gonna try and pull away your chair / So you stand and stand, stand and stand till, man, you can’t stand any longer / Hey! You know you shouldn’t have never sat down! / That’s right, Uh huh / I said get off of the floor, Get off of the floor, boy / People gonna think, yes they’re gonna think, People gonna, people gonna think you’re SPAZZ!“. It’s not big or clever or even particularly funny. But musically it’s raw as fuck, and makes the Sex Pistols look like well-mannered mummies’ boys in comparison.
CADILLACS – Speedo / Let Me Explain (Josie 1957)
Lyrically, boastful nonsense. Musically a joyous whip around the world of tailfins, soda fountains and poodle skirts.
LOUIS ARMSTRONG AND HIS HOT FIVE – St. James’ Infirmary / Save It Pretty Mama (Okeh 1928)
A jolly song about finding your girl laid out on a mortuary slab. Armstrong was instrumental in making the song the familiar standard that it is today, and it’s still the definitive version, with the mournful Crescent City brass giving it that distinctly eerie tone. The song’s origins go way back, though, with the title supposedly derived from a 16th century London hospital for lepers.
MISSISSIPPI JOHN HURT – Stack O’Lee Blues / Candy Man (Okeh 1928)
The 1895 murder of labourer Billy Lyons by the pimp Stagger Lee Shelton in St Louis was just another pointless killing that barely achieved much attention at the time. And yet, somehow, this particular murder became the basis of one of the most widely recorded songs of all time, one that exists in almost as many different versions as there are recordings of it. Of all the versions, Hurt’s is probably the best. It has all the basic elements of the story, but doesn’t ham it up, or go into histrionics. It’s more like a straight piece of reportage, with his stunning twelve string playing providing all the backing that’s needed. The flip, “Candy Man”, is probably Hurt’s second most famous song, full of quiet swagger. Not bad for a first record.
SLY & THE FAMILY STONE – Stand / I Want to Take You Higher (Epic 1969)
While the Family Stone were more renowned for mixing psychedelic rock with soul, “Stand” is effectively a simple Gospel-influenced invocation to stand up and be counted.
FOUR TOPS – Standing in the Shadows of Love / Since You’ve Been Gone (Motown 1966)
FOUR TOPS – Still Water (Love) / Still Water (Peace) (Motown 1970)
It was apt that the film about the Motown backing musicians the Funk Brothers was called Standing in the Shadows of Motown. Not only does it perfectly sum up their place as the company’s unsung heroes, but the song it puns on is a fine example of their art. Levi Stubbs had the most amazing vocal ability to express heartbreak in such a dramatic way that it sounded paradoxically uplifting, but without the music providing the perfect foil, it could have either come across as flat or overblown. But they always got it just right. “Still Water” is much more laid back, with guest Marv Tarplin of the Miracles providing a guitar line as distinctive as the vocal hook.
DISCHARGE – State Violence, State Control / Doom’s Day (Clay 1982)
At the time, the 2nd gen punk movement was derided by nearly everyone except its adherents. Crass were accepted, more for their ideology than their music, even though they were much more than just noisy 1234 merchants. Discharge had a huge cult following, but were pretty much ignored outside of it. And yet they are now rightly lauded as one of the most influential British bands of the last thirty years, having a huge impact on the US hardcore movement, and then even more so on the likes of Slayer, Metallica and everyone else that followed. I always liked them – the politics may have been a little simplistic, but were by and large spot on. And the records were just so bloody exciting.
LORRAINE ELLISON – Stay With Me / I Got My Baby Back (Warner Brothers 1966)
Who? You may ask. How that question should ever be asked is a mystery to me – with a voice like hers, Ellison should be a household name. But she’s only really known for this one record. Once heard, though, never forgotten. This is soul music at an almost Wagnerian scale, with Ellison’s gritty soprano running the gamut of emotions from quiet reflection, to screaming despair. If I was forced to choose my favourite single of all time, it would most likely be this.
SPOOKY – Stereo / Can’t Remember / Do Not Adjust Your Set / Mono (Generic 1995)
It’s an EP – I’m cheating again. But sod it, this is wonderful. Link.
BETH ORTON – Stolen Car / I Love How You Love Me / Precious Maybe (Heavenly 1999)
Since her first two albums, Beth’s gone more down the singer-songwriter with acoustic guitar route. I prefer her early post-club epics. “Stolen Car” is kind of halfway between the two. Just a great song that showcases her warm, but slightly rough-edged voice at its best.
SUPREMES – Stoned Love / Shine on Me (Motown 1970)
SUPREMES – Stop in the Name of Love / I’m in Love Again (Motown 1965)
I don’t think there was much dip in quality after Diana Ross left the Supremes, it’s just that times had changed and the era of the all-conquering Motown girl group was drawing to a close by then. “Stop in the Name of Love” has all the classic mid sixties ingredients of a dramatic chorus, infectious backbeat and the rest, but that kind of thing simply wasn’t in vogue in the following decade. “Stoned Love” showed that the formula was still capable of producing brilliant results despite the fact that Mary Wilson was the sole survivor of the classic trio.
BILLIE HOLIDAY – Strange Fruit / Fine and Mellow (Commodore 1939)
Her regular label Columbia wouldn’t touch this with a bargepole, but Billie Holiday was allowed to record this for the tiny Commodore imprint. Written by a Jewish, socialist northerner, the lyrics couldn’t have been more touching even if they came from the pen of a victim’s relative. This is a song about the aftermath of a lynching, and as such it is full of anger and despair. But Holiday gives it a great dignity. This is not unchanneled rage, but a fiercely proud performance. The haunting imagery, once with you, never goes away, though.
The great TP died of colon cancer on January 13th aged just 59. One of my favourite soul singers even if a lot of the eighties stuff was a little too smooth for my taste.
“Love TKO” – my favourite song of his solo stuff. Naff dancers mind.
And here he is with Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes
