The M M & M 1000 – part 63

Here’s the penultimate batch of Music Musings and Miscellany’s unapologetically subjective selection of the twentieth century’s best 1000 singles.

COASTERS – Yakety Yak / Zing Went the Strings of My Heart (Atco 1958)
Teenage rebellion and the generation gap were big themes in the fifties. Sure, the young had always rebelled – the jazz age flappers, the bright young things, the zoot suiters and the like. But this was the first generation where there was a clear divide between the young and their parents across the whole class and race spectrum. Lieber and Stoller, as usual, took a humorous look at the issue with the put upon teen getting the usual grief that anyone who’s been fifteen can identify with. King Curtis’s saxophone work is a sublime mix of comedy and jazz-chops.

MARVIN GAYE – You / Change What You Can (Tamla 1968)
STEVIE WONDER – You Are The Sunshine of My Life / Tuesday Heartbreak (Tamla 1973)
MARY WELLS – You Beat Me to the Punch / Old Love (Motown 1962)
SUPREMES – You Keep Me Hanging On / Remove This Doubt (Motown 1966)
A quartet of classic Motown. You sees Marvin Gaye in rare uptempo mode with a pleading vocal performance that has echoes of Levi Stubbs. Back in the early seventies when Stevie Wonder was at his creative zenith, he could pitch warm, celebratory love songs without coming over all sentimental and cloying. Mary Wells, Motown’s first superstar, is seemingly only remembered in the mainstream for My Guy, but there was so much more to her than that. You Beat Me to the Punch is one of those lyrically clever Smokey Robinson compositions that you just know was built from title downwards. My favourite of the four, You Keep Me Hanging On has a brilliant morse code single chord that almost physically holds the song up before the rush to the chorus, adding real drama to the piece. I could have opted for Vanilla Fudge’s sublime cover, too. It’s a sludge tempoed prog beast that builds the song up to some kind of sub-apocalyptic epic.

ARTHUR ALEXANDER – You Better Move On / A Shot of Rhythm & Blues (Dot 1962)
WILLIAM BELL – You Don’t Miss Your Water / Formula of Love (Stax 1962)
It could be argued (too mealy mouthed? – OK, I would argue) that 1962 was a pivotal year for soul music, when it fully emerged from its rhythm and blues roots as a new and completely separate genre. These two songs have become soul staples over the years. Arthur Alexander is a neglected figure these days, best known for two songs, Anna (covered by the Beatles) and this one (covered by the Stones), that epitomised the way that the new generation of British groups were drawing not just from the blues, but from a new generation of African American music. William Bell’s You Don’t Miss Your Water is the foundation stone of country soul, with Booker T Jones’ churchy organ underpinning a ballad full of regret.

THE SOURCE FEATURING CANDI STATON – You Got the Love / mixes (Truelove 1991)
You can judge the impact of a dance track by the number of times it’s been reissued and remixed. This has been out in various forms any number of times in the last twenty years. The recipe is simplicity itself. Take an acapella version of an eighties Gospel tune sung by the inimitable Candi Staton. Take an instrumental mix of a Jamie Principle / Frankie Knuckles house tune (Your Love). Mix thoroughly and allow to settle. The result is a timeless upbeat anthem that has survived countless remixes and remakes (Joss Stone anyone? Thought not).

MY BLOODY VALENTINE – You Made Me Realise / Slow (Creation 1988)
More infamous now for the mid section full on noise burst (known as the holocaust in MBV circles) than for the song itself which has become merely a vehicle for the centrepiece. Without it, though, it would still stand up as a rare uptempo tune by the band that still has the melody and muffled mystery intact.

NANCY SINATRA – You Only Live Twice / Jackson (Reprise 1967)
If Robbie Williams deserves our hatred for just one thing, it’s his lifting of the classic string intro of You Only Live Twice and basing his own pisspoor song around it, leaving it the only memorable bit. Nancy S had a decent song to go with it, and a great, dramatic one too.

KINKS – You Really Got Me / It’s Alright (Pye 1964)
Punk rock year zero? Maybe. Heavy metal year zero? Maybe? One of the most exciting and influential tunes of the twentieth century? Without a doubt. Everything about is perfect. The riff, Dave Davies’s ripped speaker cone fuzztone, brother Ray’s snotty vocal delivery and the boldly basic tune.

SAM COOKE – You Send Me / Summertime (Keen 1957)
Cooke’s first hit, post Soul Stirrers, and a song that effortlessly fused rock, doowop and R&B styles into something smooth and new. Listen to this and then listen to the Miracles and the Impressions to see how influential it was.

JESUS & MARY CHAIN – You Trip Me Up / Just Out of Reach (Blanco Y Negro 1985)
OK, here’s something to ponder. Who in rock music history has produced the best treble of opening singles?. Elvis? That’s Alright and Mystery Train are a given but the third one – I couldn’t say what it was without looking it up. Chuck Berry? Again, brilliant first two (Maybellene and Thirty Days) but a relatively anonymous third. The Pistols? Definitely up there, as are the Clash (but only if you discount CBS’s bizarre and disowned decision to release Remote Control as a 45). The Smiths and Frankie Goes to Hollywood – definite contenders. For me, though, Upside Down, Never Understand and You Trip Me Up are the unbeatable trio. Raw energy, screeching feedback and underplayed but memorable melodies are the cornerstones of all three. As a unit – immense.

The M M & M 1000 – part 58

Here’s the latest batch of Music Musings and Miscellany’s unapologetically subjective selection of the twentieth century’s best 1000 singles. All the Us and Vs.

PHOTEK – UFO / Rings Around Saturn (Photek 1995)
ORIGIN UNKNOWN – Valley of the Shadows / The Touch (RAM 1993)
There was a time around fifteen years ago when I listened to little else but drum & bass, the only time in my life when my listening’s been so focused on a particular genre. The best tunes of the period sounded like a clattering, swirling rush into a nightmarish urban future. And you know what – fifteen years on, they still do. UFO on Photek’s own label had that X-Files thing going on, only the samples were genuine. They were taken from an investigation into mysterious lights that appeared near a US airbase in East Anglia some time in the eighties. Tension rips through the track, as it does in the bass vortex of Origin Unknown’s Valley of the Shadows (aka 31 Seconds). The vocal sample was taken from a BBC program about near death experiences, and the whole track has a feel of being sucked spinning into darkness.

THE THE – Uncertain Smile / Three Orange Kisses From Kazan (Epic 1982)
One of the few moments in music history where the ivory tinkling of the perma-grinning Jools Holland actually enhances a track. Like most of Matt Johnson’s early work, Uncertain Smile seems to concern depression, angst and low self-esteem. And yet there is something almost sunnily optimistic about it.

MASSIVE ATTACK – Unfinished Sympathy / mixes (Wild Bunch 1991)
Very possibly the best record of the century’s final decade. Everything about Unfinished Sympathy is perfect. The beats, the strings, Shara Nelson’s pleading vocals and the unforgettable video featuring a single five minute tracking shot of Nelson walking through an urban mainstreet in the orange glow of dusk (with 3D, G and Mushroom skulking in the background).

DOORS – The Unknown Soldier / We Could Be So Good Together (Elektra 1968)
I’ve always found Jim Morrison a boor and a bore, whose self-mythologising is hard to stomach. The Doors have also been responsible for some pretty dire records. At their best, though, they had an instinct for (melo)drama that was gripping. The Unknown Soldier is like a mini play about the execution of an army deserter. A bold choice for a single, especially in 1968. It works brilliantly, partly because, for once, Morrison immerses himself in a role rather than trying to be some hedonistic mystic.

DRIFTERS – Up on the Roof / Another Night With the Boys (Atlantic 1962)
“At night the stars put on a show for free / And, darling, you can share it all with me“. By the end of the decade (actually just six years later), the Temptations were finding escape from urban pressure through thinly disguised narcotics in Cloud Nine (although they’ve always refuted that interpretation), but in 1962 a tenement roof was all the Drifters needed. Certainly a more romantic notion than just getting out of your box.

JESUS & MARY CHAIN – Upside Down / Vegetable Man (Creation 1984)
Skkkrrreeeeeeeeeeeee!!!! Perfect – like surfing through a sheet metal works; like lathes through steel plate while some Brill Building popsters attempt to do a Beach Boys cover. Yeah, noise records had been done before, but no one had been so impudent as to make pop records the same way before the Mary Chain. And Vegetable Man is madder than a box of Barretts.

STEVIE WONDER – Uptight / Purple Raindrops (Tamla 1965)
By 1965 the former twelve year old genius was now a fifteen year old with a remarkable vocal maturity. This is one of those tunes that the Motown hit factory through the works at, leaving three minutes of stomping, unfettered joy.

MONKEES – Valleri / Tapioca Tundra (Colgems 1968)
At the time it mattered that the Monkees were a ‘manufactured’ pop group. But then so were the Sex Pistols. Who actually cares? In Boyce and Hart they had a couple of grade A songwriters, and the efforts of Nesmith, Tork and even Dolenz weren’t too shabby either. If singles as good as Valleri had been released by a group of pimply teens from Nowheresville Iowa, they would have been the Holy Grail for fans of sixties garage pop.

PIXIES – Velouria / I’ve Been Waiting For You (4AD 1990)
These days the band is just a money-grabbing cabaret act whoreing out their back catalogue. Back then, they were refreshing and exciting. And that’s how I’d like to remember them.

BJÖRK – Venus as a Boy / There’s More to Life Than This (One Little Indian 1993)
There is something both pure and whimsical about Venus as a Boy. I’ve always like Björk’s music best when it exudes a kind of child-like wonder, combined with a magic realism. She’s terrific at conveying intangibles such as beauty and wonder in slightly off-kilter ways. It’s a quality that much of her more recent work lacks.

FATAL MICROBES – Violence Grows / Beautiful Pictures (Small Wonder 1978)
It gets on my fucking nerves, you know, all this ‘Broken Britain’ crap, like we’ve descended into some hellish time compared to the ‘good old days’. What? Like the seventies, you mean? Like football violence, razor gangs, kids getting their heads kicked in because they like the Clash, NF skins, the SUS laws, three channels of shit council telly, cheap skag etc etc. A golden era, to be sure. Violence Grows is one of those records that is indelibly linked to its era. It’s not so much angry at all the daily shit, as resigned to it. Like you could possibly expect any better? Chilling.

ROXY MUSIC – Virginia Plain / The Numberer (Island 1972)
Of course, this is the seventies people prefer to remember (although I was only a small boy at the time). The glamour, the sheen, the space age hardware. Of course, it was all artifice. Roxy, like Bowie, peddled artifice in a knowing way that both celebrated and satirised it at the same time. And they made great tunes to boot (before turning into the epitome of eighties dinner party blandness).

JEFFERSON AIRPLANE – Volunteers / We Can Be Together (RCA 1969)
I”m in unstoppable rant mode now, but there’s no better example of how the sixties’ ideals were shredded than the dual personalities of Jefferson Airplane / Starship – counter-culture revolutionaries to paragons of empty AOR bombast. This is where they should have stopped – a two minute call to arms that gave a militancy and urgency to the hippie ideal that had long lost its veneer of innocence. It sounds like its meant, and I’m sure it was, but it was only a fleeting moment. Drugs, money and personal bickering always seemed to have the final say.

JIMI HENDRIX – Voodoo Chile / Hey Joe / All Along the Watchtower (Track 1970)
Better you die before you soil your reputation? Of course not, that’s just romantic rock & roll bullshit. Voodoo Chile was a two year old track rushed out by the record company before the corpse was even cold. And their tawdry efforts were rewarded with a number one single. It’s in this list because it’s an awesome piece of music, and not for any other reason.

A GUY CALLED GERALD – Voodoo Ray / Escape (Rham 1988)
Nothing encapsulates that Hacienda summer better than this. Magnificent. Of its time, of course, but it still has that swirly head-rushiness about it that gets the endorphins going better than any chemical ever could.

More soon

The M M & M 1000 – part 53

Here’s the latest batch of Music Musings and Miscellany’s unapologetically subjective selection of the twentieth century’s best 1000 singles. Wrapping up the Ss.

VELVET UNDERGROUND – Sunday Morning / Femme Fatale (Verve 1966)
A deceptively bucolic way to begin The Velvet Underground and Nico. Anyone who bought the album back in ’67 simply on the back of this calm and optimistic little number must have got the shock of their lives by the time “Black Angel Death Song” and “European Son” came around!

DWIGHT PULLEN – Sunglasses After Dark / Teen Age Bug (Carlton 1958)
Classic bad boy rock & roll from Dwight Pullen that was never a hit in its day, but was immortalised years later by the Cramps. Sadly, Pullen never lived to see that, dying of prostate cancer in 1961.

CREAM – Sunshine of Your Love / SWLABR (Reaction 1968)
One of those immortal guitar riffs. For me, Hendrix totally owned it when he played it on the Lulu Show.

GANJA KRU – Super Sharp Shooter / Revolution (Parousia 1996)
BEASTIE BOYS – Sure Shot / Mullet Head (Capitol 1994)
Ganja Kru were a collective of three renowned drum & bass producers – Hype, Zinc and Pascal. “Super Sharp Shooter” was Zinc’s baby, a kind of gangsta jungle using samples of LL Cool J and Method Man. Still rolls like a bastard. “Timing Like A Clock When I Rock The Hip Hop / Top Notch Is My Stock On The Soap Box” says Ad Rock and who could disagree? What a banging tune “Sure Shot” is, with the trio at the top of their game.

CURTIS MAYFIELD – Superfly / Underground (Curtom 1972)
Along with Isaac Hayes’s Shaft, Superfly represents the cream of the early seventies blaxploitation soundtracks. While the movie portrayed the titular drug dealer as some kind of urban hero, the morally centred Mayfield provided a contrasting soundtrack that focused on the victims, and portrayed Superfly himself as an arrogant, urban menace.

CARPENTERS – Superstar / Bless the Beasts and Children (A&M 1971)
Sonic Youth teased a hidden darkness out of this song with Thurston Moore’s sinister half-whispered vocal. But that was perhaps coloured by the tragedy of Karen Carpenter’s death. Her own version is rich and honeyed, although not without a little melodrama.

STEVIE WONDER – Superstition / You’ve Got It Bad Girl (Tamla 1972)
One of the great intros, a bubbling funky keyboard pattern that gets the body moving even before the drums come in. The brass adds even more spice to the brew, and Stevie gives a wonderfully loose vocal performance. One of the best things from the beginning of his five year creative zenith.

BEACH BOYS – Surfer Girl / Little Deuce Coupe (Capitol 1963)
BEACH BOYS – Surf’s Up / Don’t Go Near the Water (Brother 1971)
Just the way they fell, but if I were to choose two songs to bookend the Beach Boys and Brian Wilson’s journey from youth to nostalgic adulthood it would be these. “Surfer Girl” may be a ballad, but it’s a joyful paean to first love that is as much a tribute to the great doowop groups of the fifties as it is to the Californian surfing scene. While the lyrics of “Surf’s Up” may border on the incomprehensible (“Columnated ruins domino” anyone?), there’s definitely a poetry about them, and an atmosphere of dusty nostalgia with some heart-wrenching moments. “The laughs come hard in Auld Lang Syne” is a particularly perceptive line that covers the march of time and loss of youth, and brings a sad resonance to a song that is always sung in a joyful spirit. The multiple melodies and the arrangement of the piece are both near perfect. A song to wallow in.

STIFF LITTLE FINGERS – Suspect Device / Wasted Life (Rigid Digits 1978)
While the English punks whined about being bored (get a hobby) or being on the dole (no, I’m not going to say it – I’m not Norman Tebbitt), across the water in Belfast, the kids had something to be genuinely angry about – especially those who hadn’t been brainwashed into sectarian hatred by those twin bastions of liberalism the puritanical, pope-bashing protestants and the guilt as control freakery of the Vatican. “Suspect Device” explodes with anger at the petty bigotry of the province. It’s an important record in that it gave people on the mainland a real glimpse that Northern Ireland wasn’t just a swirling sea of sectarian hatred, but that there were people as pissed off with the whole situation as anybody, but whose voices were seldom heard above all the posturing and the constant stream of atrocities.

ELVIS PRESLEY – Suspicious Minds / You’ll Think of Me (RCA 1969)
From his brief late sixties renaissance when the music began to matter again. A gloriously huge-sounding soup of paranoia, jealousy, suspicion and despair sung like it’s really meant.

CHAMELEONS – Swamp Thing / John I’m Only Dancing (Geffen 1986)
The endless intro probably didn’t endear this to commercial radio, but it’s integral to the song, a cavestomp that’s nothing to do with fifties sci-fi, but everything to do with disengagement from a world that would sell you your own blood if it could.

CHIFFONS – Sweet Talkin’ Guy / Did You Ever Go Steady (Laurie 1966)
By 1966, the girl meets boy froth of the early sixties had become an anachronism. Emotions ran deeper in popular song, reflecting a change in American teen-hood from the prom and soda fountain world to garage bands, drugs and an increased political awareness. “Sweet Talkin’ Guy” is one of the last classic songs from an age of innocence that had already passed.

LUSH – Sweetness and Light / Breeze (4AD 1990)
I might be wrong, but wasn’t the term shoegazers originally coined in a review of a Lush gig? It was unfair, if true, because the band always had a breeziness and lightness of touch absent from the plodding likes of Chapterhouse. The heavy handed, muffled production of their debut album Spooky by Robin Guthrie is one of the worst cases of production vandalism I’ve heard to be filed along side Spector’s desecration of Leonard Cohen’s Death of Ladies Man. Predating this, “Sweetness and Light” is airy and dreamy, particularly in its full incarnation on the twelve inch.

More soon

The M M & M 1000 – part 49

Here’s the latest batch of Music Musings and Miscellany’s unapologetically subjective selection of the twentieth century’s best 1000 singles.

FAIRPORT CONVENTION – Si Tu Dois Partir / Genesis Hall (Island 6064 1969)
In the period between the end of the sixties and punk, for the serious prog-rock, metal and folk-rock fan, the 45rpm seven inch single became a bit of a joke. Some bands (Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd) didn’t bother with them at all. For others, a hit single and a Top of the Pops appearance was a bit of a lark, not to be taken too seriously. Fairport’s cover of a Dylan song, in French, with chairback and milk bottle percussion (with an accident when one fell off the table and smashed left in the final mix) was a surprise hit. It’s not a comedy record, just light-hearted and gleeful.

LEE MORGAN – The Sidewinder / Part 2 (Blue Note 1911 1964)
Jazz artists, too, weren’t generally interested in singles. Most that were released were edits of album tracks aimed squarely at jukeboxes. The ten minute “The Sidewinder” by jazz trumpeter Lee Morgan has become one of the best known post-bop standards, with its funky rhythm and catchilly repetitive central riff. In some ways, it’s one of the foundation stones of jazz-funk, acid jazz, fusion and the rest.

PRINCE – Sign ө the Times / La La La La He He He He (Paisley Park 28399 1987)
Stepping back from his tales of sex and Corvettes, Prince unleashed this unassuming little song that dug into the underbelly of the brash and flash eighties for which he himself was part of a symbolic triumvirate of pop stars, along with Jacko and Madonna, who came to represent the ‘me’ decade. The flipside – AIDS, poverty, the still real threat of nuclear catastrophe (remember Ronnie “let’s bomb Russia” Reagan was still president) were marked out, almost without comment. It’s still his most forceful and thoughtful song.

STEVIE WONDER – Signed, Sealed, Delivered I’m Yours / I’m More Than Happy (Tamla 54196 1970)
“Signed, Sealed, Delivered” represents the end of phase one of Stevie Wonder’s career when he was still just a cog (albeit a vital one) in the Motown hit factory. As his 21st birthday loomed, he held out for a new contract that would give him unprecedented artistic control – something almost unheard of at Motown – and would pave way for his classic period when he would fuse soul, pop, gospel, electronic music and funk into his own unique and brilliant vision.

TORI AMOS – Silent All These Years / Me and a Gun (East West YZ618 1991)
Out of the flood of singer-songwriters who’ve emerged over the last two decades, Tori Amos remains a singular talent, and the two sides of this single go a long way to explaining why. The first, a lush, beautifully orchestrated, literate piano ballad. The second, a chilling a capella recounting a harrowing rape experience.

CARTER FAMILY – Single Girl, Married Girl / Storms are on the Ocean (Victor 20937 1927)
This proto-feminist tune comparing the lots of the wed and unwed woman has become one of the best-loved, and oft-covered Carter Family tunes. With good reason.

NIRVANA – Sliver / Dive (Sub Pop 72 1990)
NIRVANA – Smells Like Teen Spirit / Even In His Youth (Geffen 19050)
Only a year separates these singles. The first a dipped toe into melodic pop rock, albeit with a lyric recalling a pre-school Kurt being shipped off to his grandparents’, and despite TV and ice cream, just wanting to be in his own home. The second a Pixies parody, and last minute addition to Nevermind, that made him a reluctant global icon.

BEACH BOYS – Sloop John B / You’re So Good To Me (Capitol 5602 1966)
Added to Pet Sounds at Capitol’s insistence, “Sloop John B” doesn’t really fit with the rest of the album, but as a single works just fine. A strange choice of song for a 45, it’s actually a Bahamian song about a wild party that took place on the Nassau waterfront the night that the John B was sunk and was originally entitled “The Wreck of the John B”

ULTRAVOX! – Slow Motion / Dislocation (Island 6454 1978)
Another classic from the Foxx era, and an inspiration from everyone from Gary Numan to Duran Duran. Don’t let that put you off, though.

THE UNDISPUTED TRUTH – Smiling Faces Sometimes / You Got the Love I Need (Gordy 7108 1971)
Less a band, more Norman Whitfield’s own experimental lab rats. The man was even more of a control freak than his boss Berry Gordy, and wanting a group a little less combative and more malleable than the Temptations he ended up with the Undisputed Truth. Many songs would be road tested by the Truth before being handed to the Tempts, but they did at least have one major hit they could truly call their own – this dark, paranoid masterpiece.

PLATTERS – Smoke Gets In Your Eyes / No Matter What You Are (Mercury 71383 1958)
SABRES OF PARADISE – Smokebelch II (entry) / Smokebelch II (exit) (Sabres of Paradise 9 1993)
HOWLIN’ WOLF – Smokestack Lightning / You Can’t Be Beat (Chess 1618 1956)
ROBINS – Smokey Joe’s Café / Just Like a Fool (Spark 122 1955)
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the smoking section. The first a 1933 show tune by Jerome Kern and Otto Harbach about blind love, turned into an unparalleled piece of weepy melodrama by the rich tenor of the Platters’ Tony Williams. The Sabres of Paradise’s classic come-down instrumental has graced a million TV soundtracks, but still sounds fresh and sober. Wolf growls and howls his way through a typically apocalyptic blues, whilst the Robins encounter a problem when trying to hit on the girlfriend of a large and borderline psychotic café owner.

More soon

The M M & M 1000 – part 35

Here’s the latest batch of Music Musings and Miscellany’s unapologetically subjective selection of the twentieth century’s best 1000 singles. The last Load of Ms.

BIRTHDAY PARTY – Mr Clarinet / Happy Birthday (Missing Link 18 1980)
And indeed it is a link. Taking the quirky pop of the Boys Next Door and guiding it towards the einstürzende swamp-rock of the band’s 4AD period, “Mr Clarinet” has a squawky charm of its own. It may seem quite restrained compared to what was to come, but there’s menace ‘neath the surface.

LAST PARTY – Mr Hurst / Hubby’s Hobby (Harvey 2 1987)
I wrote about this forgotten gem here.

4 HERO – Mr Kirk’s Nightmare / Move Wid the House Groove / Combat Dance (Reinforced 1203 1990)
One of the defining tracks that bridged hardcore techno with what was to develop as jungle. As the BPMs turned up, the E-bliss began to turn into paranoia, and “Mr Kirk’s Nightmare” feeds on this and spits it right back out. The sampled voice dispassionately forming Mr Kirk that “your son is dead – he died of an overdose” being pumped out to bodies stretched to the edge on E, K and coke was fairly explicit in its message.

FALL – Mr Pharmacist / Lucifer Over Lancashire (Beggars Banquet 168 1986)
The last forty years have consistently seen waves of hopeful garage bands cranking out two and a half minute tunes, all the while wishing they were in Nowheresville, Oregon in 1965. The Fall have always had a garage sensibility in that polish is strictly for shoes and dinner tables. But they capture the spirit without ever sounding like imitators. Even when they’ve covered garage classics like “Mr Pharmacist”, originally done by a band called the Other Half, they’ve always made them sound like Fall songs, and the originals sound like weak imitations.

CHORDETTES – Mr Sandman / I Don’t Want to See You Cryin’ (Cadence 1247 1954)
There’s something deeply spooky about this song. The squeaky clean harmonies and lack of any sex or sensuality whatsoever, make it seem like the perfect soundtrack to that Stepford world of 1950s suburban America. Mr Sandman is, of course, a character of children’s nightmares, and there’s something really creepy about the unthreatening blandness about the Chordettes, three perfectly lovely white, Christian, Republican girls. It cropped up in Gary Ross’ 1998 film Pleasantville, and immediately evoked an environment of conformity and repression.

BYRDS – Mr Tambourine Man / I Knew I’d Want You (Columbia 43271 1965)
BYRDS – My Back Pages / Renaissance Fair (Columbia 44054 1967)
I was at a funeral recently, and the deceased’s choice of tune to send the congregation out was Dylan’s original of “Mr Tambourine Man”. An off the wall choice, but obviously a deeply personal one. The Byrds’ excised large chunks of the song for their version. What makes it is that jangly guitar riff, an intro as recognisable as any in pop. Rickenbacker sunshine. “My Back Pages” follows the same formula of adapting a wordy Dylan song into a snappy piece full of glistening harmony.

WILSON PICKETT – Mustang Sally / Three Time Loser (Atlantic 2365 1966)
This is one of those car/girl metaphorical songs that were a staple in soul and r&b from the forties to the sixties. It allows for plenty of innuendo (“ride Sally ride” etc) lashed with southern grit.

ANGELS – My Boyfriend’s Back / (Love Me) Now (Smash 1834 1963)
It’s ironic that the girl groups of the sixties were all about boyfriend-worship, and yet they came across as sassy and in control. Modern girl groups often sing about control and dissing any unfortunate males who get in the way, and yet they sound like production line Barbie dolls. Of course that’s a ludicrous generalisation. There were sixties songs like Lesley Gore’s horribly twee “It’s My Party” that were just wet. The Angels certainly didn’t sound like they were the sort to burst into tears at the drop of a hat.

STEVIE WONDER – My Cherie Amour / Don’t Know Why I Love You (Tamla 54180 1969)
“My Cherie Amour” sounds a lot more sensual than ‘my dear love’, which sounds like the sort of thing that a particular camp actor would come out with.. By 1969 Stevie Wonder was leaving the Little Stevie schtick, and the bouncy Motown floorfillers behind, and moving into a more sophisticated type of soul music that he would nail in five stupendous albums recorded between 1972 and 1976.

WEDDING PRESENT – My Favourite Dress / Every Mother’s Son / Never Said (Reception 5 1987)
My favourite Gedge song. The first two Wedding Present albums seemed to be mostly mined from the same failing relationship. But “My Favourite Dress” is the one that really expresses the hurt with its long, almost spoken, second section: “Uneaten meals, a lonely star / A welcome ride in a neighbour’s car / A long walk home in the pouring rain / I fell asleep when you never came / Some rare delight in Manchester town / It took six hours before you let me down / To see it all in a drunken kiss / A stranger’s hand on my favourite dress / That was my favourite dress you know / That was my favourite dress“. That focus on something so banal as an item of clothing is so true to life. The big picture is often hard to take in, and it’s the little things that are often so upsetting. All the while, the song has an almost bouncy arrangement that’s underpinned by an underlying sadness. Still sounds magnificent.

WHO – My Generation / Shout and Shimmy (Brunswick 5944 1965)
When you cut through all the layers of irony, it’s still a great song. Back then (and indeed for MY generation which was the next lot along), the generation gap was real and cavernous. I’m not so sure such a thing exists at all any more.

TEMPTATIONS – My Girl / Nobody But My Baby (Gordy 7038 1964)
MARY WELLS – My Guy / Oh Little Boy (Motown 1056 1964)
Two Motown songs that everybody knows, probably to the point that they’ve become banal background noise piped out of nostalgia radio stations, supermarkets and every other damn public space. They’re so familiar that nobody ever really listens to them any more, which is such a shame. I could wax lyrical about the commodification of pop, but now is not the time to come over like a poor man’s Paul Morley.

LOVE – My Little Red Book / Message to Pretty (Elektra 45603 1966)
The first missive from the sixties most ironically named band was a piece of Bacharach and David cheese, punked up. Although it has the sort of lyric that Smokey Robinson would reject as being too twee, Arthur Lee actually makes it sound like an angry and bitter thing, full of pent-up resentment.

SIMON & GARFUNKEL – My Little Town / Rag Doll (Columbia 10230 1975)
The product of a very short reunion, “My Little Town” carries on from where the likes of “The Boxer” left off. Full of nostalgia, wall of sound production and fantastic harmonies.

10,000 MANIACS – My Mother, the War / Planned Obsolescence / National Education Week (Reflex 1 1984)
Natalie Merchant seems to get many people’s backs up. They see her as some kind of bossy school ma’am. Perhaps it’s because she never tried to hide her intelligence, or conform to the stereotype of sexy front for her band. The titles from 10,000 Maniacs’ first EP tell it all. She wasn’t going to sing about staple pop fare. What may shock anyone whose never heard these early tracks is how sonically adventurous they are. “My Mother, the War” sounds like a cross between the Young Marble Giants and the Jesus & Mary Chain at their noisiest. Natalie imparts a tale of an everywoman figure whose brood is out fighting, possibly never to return. She touches on both the mundane and the macabre – of gossiping neighbours, shiny parades, anxiety and bloodied carrion while surrounded by a maelstrom of feedback and quick-step drums.

DAVID RUFFIN – My Whole World Ended / I’ve Got to Find Myself a New Baby (Motown 1140 1969)
SUPREMES – My World is Empty Without You / Everything Is Good About You (Motown 1089 1965)
Two more Motown classics, and two that haven’t been jaded by over-exposure. Motown’s writers were never ones for understating an emotion. The boy meets girl songs are usually accompanied by over the top declarations of how damn wonderful he/she is. The boy loses girl (or vice versa) are usually apocalyptic catastrophes. Credit to the singers that they always made you believe. David Ruffin and Diana Ross were both lead singers of their respective groups, and both got a bit big for their boots, leaving the group format behind for a solo career. There the similarity ends. David Ruffin’s post-Temptations career started well enough, but as the group got bigger, he got left behind and ended up dead too young. Lady Di, of course, became showbiz royalty.

ELVIS PRESLEY – Mystery Train / I Forgot to Remember to Forget (Sun 223 1955)
Forget Graceland, rhinestones, cheeseburgers, leather jumpsuits, terrible films, “Do the Clam” and all the other monstrosities. This is why he mattered.

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The M M & M 1000 – part 31

Here’s the latest batch of Music Musings and Miscellany’s unapologetically subjective selection of the twentieth century’s best 1000 singles. Some more Ls.

LFO – LFO (Leeds Warehouse Mix) / Track 4 (Warp WAP5 1990)
Inspired by Warp’s early bleep techno releases, Gez Varley and Mark Bell put their signature track together for a pittance. It immediately caused an earthquake in dance music, not least because of the ultra-low frequency bass that aimed at the body rather than the ears. But they were smart enough to give it an effective, if simple, melodic structure and the speak-and-spell vocal gimmick that makes it instantly recognisable. Its success bemused mainstream DJs, some of whom seemed to view it as a personal affront. Nearly twenty years on it’s as vital and fresh-sounding as it was the day Varley and Bell handed the tape over to Warp at a Leeds Warehouse rave (hence the title of the mix).

DAVID BOWIE – Life on Mars? / The Man Who Sold the World (RCA 2316 1973)
With Bowie suddenly a megastar, RCA dug out a couple of old tracks from 1971 and 1970 and issued them as a stopgap single. Unlike most stopgap singles, “Life on Mars?” went on to become one of the most enduring tunes of his Ziggy period. It even served as shorthand for the whole decade as the title for the BBC’s celebrated coma timeswitch cop show. And we’re close to answering the question too – maybe not, but there probably used to be.

WALKABOUTS – The Light Will Stay On / Devil’s Road (Dindisc 152 1996)
I’ve cursed the band’s lack of recognition (at least in the English speaking world) before on these pages. In their long career they’ve moved from grunge fellow travellers to America’s Tindersticks and all points in between, covered Nina Simone and Neu! and crafted dozens of brilliant songs. “The Light Will Stay On”, sung with a yearning resignation by Carla Torgerson, is one of their best and best known songs. It’s both heartache and catharsis rolled into one magnificent ballad.

MADONNA – Like a Prayer / Act of Contrition (Sire 27539 1989)
MADONNA – Live to Tell / instrumental (Sire 28717 1986)
Madonna’s swung back and forth from cultural icon to laughing stock over her 25 year career. At the moment she seems to be everyone’s favourite celebrity to take a pop at. She’s not entirely blameless for the situation, but at the end of the day, she’s got a back catalogue to be proud of (and admittedly a lot that would be better be forgotten). “Like a Prayer” courted controversy, and got it, with its ‘black Christ’ video, but the song’s joyous message of faith and love gets through even to a die-hard heathen like me. “Live to Tell” is an eighties record. The fact that it’s swirled with plastic synths and ridiculously ott snare drums is a bit of a give away. Epic pop ballads don’t come much better, though.

BOB DYLAN – Like a Rolling Stone / Gates of Eden (Columbia 43346 1965)
O’JAYS – Lipstick Traces / Think It Over, Baby (Imperial 66102 1965)
Greil Marcus wrote a book about it, so there’s hardly any point in trying to say something original about “Like a Rolling Stone”. He also wrote a book that took its title from the O’Jays song. I read it many years ago, but have completely forgotten it. So much for an iconic piece of music criticism. The song I couldn’t forget. It has a mellow warmth that seems quite out of time with the soul music of its day.

MIGHTY LEMONDROPS – Like an Angel / Something Happens (Dreamworld 5 1985)
The ‘firework act’ is not a new phenomenon, despite what many commentators would have you believe. For those unfamiliar with the term, it describes the career path of an indie band who have a highly praised and successful debut album, a less successful follow-up and then get dropped before their third, spending the rest of the time as the subject of occasional whatever-happened-to pub conversations. The Lemondrops had a brilliant first single on an independent label, signed to a major, released a debut album that cruelly exposed them as having a single idea, and then hurtled quickly to oblivion. Still, “Like an Angel” is like the Bunnymen meets Sonic Youth and is a more than acceptable legacy.

SANDY DENNY – Listen, Listen / Tomorrow is a Long Time (Island 6142 1972)
Time stops when Sandy sings. Smoky, sensual and sad, her voice always seems to be yearning for something lost, something missing. “Listen, Listen” is lustrous and full, but seems to have an aching hole at its heart.

NIGHTCRAWLERS – Little Black Egg / You’re Running Wild (Kapp 709 1965)
The garage band explosion tat followed the British Invasion in the US, largely fell into two groups. First, the testosterone-fueled, snotty teens whose legacy went back beyond their obvious idols, the Stones, to the likes of the Kingsmen, the Wailers, Link Wray, Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis. Then there were the mumsy Beatle wannabes. It makes the legendary Nuggets box a collection of Dennis the Menaces and Softie Walters. The Nightcrawlers don’t fit into either category. “Little Black Egg” is a charming, but somehow sad ditty with a Byrdsian feel. In the great garage scrap, they were the shy misfits.

TELEVISION – Little Johnny Jewel / part 2 (Ork 81975 1975)
Television were jazz-heads more than rock fans. Verlaine and Lloyd swapped solos like Coltrane and Miles, with no sense of the look-at-me egotism of your average rock guitar solo. Recorded two years before their masterpiece Marquee Moon, “Little Johnny Jewel” shows a band with everything in place, patiently waiting for an opportunity to show the world what they could do. It has the riff a recurring theme, Verlaine’s quirky startled-poet vocals, and solos that complement rather than compete or draw attention to themselves. The recording’s a bit rough and ready, but that’s not a problem.

PRINCE – Little Red Corvette / All the Critics Luv U in New York (Warners 29746 1983)
It may be a cliché, but the idea of cars as manhood substitutes is grounded in reality. I’m only five foot nothing in my socks, but look at my flashy Chevy! Still, he makes the car as sex symbol pretty plausible in this song. He’s bonkers, but you gotta luv him.

ORIGINAL DIXIELAND JAZZ BAND – Livery Stable Blues / Dixieland Jass Band One Step (Victor 18255 1917)
Bandleader Nick La Rocca may have been a racist, an egomaniac, a tireless self-publicist and an all-round knobhead, but you can’t disguise the fact that this was the first genuine jazz record. It opened the doors to a cultural revolution. They weren’t the first New Orleans jazz band, and they sure weren’t the best (although clarinetist Larry Shields was a widely acknowledged master of his instrument), but compared to the other records of the day, this was a blast of pure energy. It predates electrical recording, so the music does sound compressed and fuzzy, but it still sounds good, even now.

STEVIE WONDER – Living for the City / Visions (Tamla 54242 1973)
Stevie Wonder has always had two sides to his music – the personal and the socio-political. Both have a deep vein of spirituality running through them, that can sometimes be uplifting, and sometimes corny as hell. For the most part, though, when he tackled political and social themes, he did so with a measured, optimistic voice. It wasn’t often that he let the anger through. He did on “Living for the City”, a scathing attack on the cycle of poverty, racism and injustice encountered by working class African-Americans throughout the nation’s inner cities.

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