In order to get this
blog off to a suitable start I am salvaging an old entry off the now defunct
WHC myspace site. To celebrate my 45th
birthday some years ago, I thought I’d have a good rummage through the boxes of
seven inch singles and pick out 45 favourites.
Not my 45 favourite singles of all time or a list that makes any claims
beyond the fact that each of these records was special enough for me to shell
out some hard earned cash - or in the case of some of them, precious pocket
money. The list is therefore decidedly retro. All are tunes that may come out across the
P.A. between bands at a WHC gig.
Obvious omissions in
terms of favourite bands may be because I only have the songs on l.p. - for example I never bought any Stones
singles because I had the albums and a copy of ‘Rolled Gold’. Similarly Blondie’s greatest hits is a party
in and of itself. Did I tell you about when
I met Debbie Harry? I did? Oh well.
They are in no
particular order of preference but each one of them still fires me up.
Feel free to comment
and point us in the way of your favourites.
1/. White
Man in Hammersmith Palais – The Clash.
If push came to shove, I would probably say the Clash made my favourite
run of singles ever, but it wasn’t until I heard this that I became a believer
and realised that a lot of the progressive rock records I’d been listening to beforehand
were, in fact, tosh.
2/. I’m a
Believer - Robert Wyatt. The most
human of singers and from all accounts a wondrous human being covers Neil
Diamond. The only occasion Nick Mason,
Pink Floyd’s drummer, has ever really had to break out beyond a trot.
3/. Because
the Night – Patti Smith. Her
greatest hit. Out-spronged Springsteen
on this co-write. I remember running out
of my maths O level to buy this absolute classic. Live, the band always gives it a thorough
roughing up for some reason. Lenny
always mauls the guitar solo as if embarrassed at how polished the recorded
version is.
4/. Virtual
Landslide – Pete Molinari. Pete is
making quite a name for himself these days, I am proud to say some of you may
have heard him first courtesy of the Wild Hare Club. Quite the finest voice ever heard around our
kitchen table…so far that is.
5/. Reward
– Teardrop Explodes. Peppered by
punchy brass this was a great record and unlike anything else when it came out.
I fear that my terrible dancing may owe a lot to Julian Cope.
6/. Take
the Skinheads Bowling – Camper Van Beethoven. There was a long time when no mix-tape made
by yours truly didn’t include this song.
I have subsequently heard that it was and still remains a favourite of
various of my friends’ young offspring.
7/. Fire –
Crazy world of Arthur Brown. Another
record to make you smile. I wish that I
had witnessed him perform it live, complete with flaming helmet.
8/. Soulful
Dress – Sugar Pie DeSanto. Bridget,
who used to work at Greenpeace, gave me a tape that included this soulful
stomper, a fabulous party song – No messin’.
9/. A New England – Kirsty MacColl. Billy Bragg’s early classic that rings out
with Kirsty’s vocal multi-tracked to fabulously joyful effect. The story of Kirsty’s tragic end is one that
is one that haunts. Remember her for her
wit and extraordinary voice.
10/. Mafia
– Lloyd Parks. I first heard this
tune on a 1975 bootleg of Patti Smith and her band playing live at the Bottom
Line which I bought from a Brixton junk shop.
Lenny Kaye, her guitarist and a real gentleman to boot, told me that they
learned it from a mix tape and they just loved jamming round the chorus. Was chuffed to bits when, not so long ago, I
found this original in a box of reggae 7”s.
11/. Once
in a Lifetime – Talking Heads. This
was the record where they underwent some extraordinary metamorphosis and became
something else. For quite a few years
Talking Heads were the soundtrack to every party I went to, the strangest being
one on a French farm celebrating the end of the vendage. We had drunk a
ludicrous number of bottles of wine and retired to the farmer’s son’s house
where we took a handful of mushrooms each.
I remember being the only one capable of using the record player and
repeatedly playing one Talking Heads song, ‘This Must be the Place’ repeatedly
all night. Everybody else was too shot
to care. I can remember picking up the tone
arm as it came to the end of the track and deliberately putting it back to the
beginning time after time. As it happens,
I have a rather fine single of the man with the horn, Miles Davis, playing the
Cyndi Lauper hit ‘Time after Time’ but that is a digression and I won’t include
it in this list.
12/. Marimba
Jive – The Red Guitars. There are no
actual African records on the list because I don’t have any African singles,
not even the wonderful tune that was used to advertise Pepsodent toothpaste when
I was in Malawi. I remember dancing to that tune when played
by the local Police Band in a town on the shores of Lake
Malawi a million or so years ago.
This record features some African style-guitar and a rambunctious bass-line
in an approximation of township jive by a band that put out a series of rather
fine singles some time in the 1980s.
13/. My
Soul – Clifton
Chenier. A recent acquisition by the
great Cajun accordionist, bluesy and soulful and not an upbeat zydeco number of
the kind he’s famous for.
14/. Anarchy
in the UK
– Sex Pistols. Still sounds
ferocious and I would argue the only Pistols record you really need, though I
do like ‘Pretty Vacant’ and come to think of it, ‘Submission’. My copy is on EMI and it shames me that I
can’t remember the name of the bloke who gave it to me ,but he may be still be
working as an illustrator in the Natural
History Museum.
15/.Waterloo Sunset – The Kinks. My favourite Kinks song. Wonderful. I always thought of them as a
singles band until I recently bought the ‘Village Green Preservation Society’
album and realised they were so much more.
Who hasn’t got wistful walking along the Thames
humming this song. I once heard Robyn
Hitchcock and Kimberley Rew perfom this
perfectly straight up except for the song’s
protagonists got changed to Iggy and Vera which somehow changed the movie playing inside my head to something
vaguely sinister. Talking of which…
16/. I
Wanna Destroy You – The Soft Boys.
The nearest this band ever got to cutting a straightforward pop/rock
record with Robyn snarling the lyrics – ‘a pox upon the media and everything
you read/ they tell you your opinions and they’re very good indeed…’ and many
other fine rhyming couplets over a straight ahead bass-line. The old pervert in me thought of listing ‘Listening
to the Higsons’, a later solo single by R.H. - if only because it is the sole
record in my collection which features the sound of a wok being whacked.
17/. Rip it
up – Orange Juice. I love this song riding along on that spacehopper-round
bass line and well it’s one I love singing along to, though apologies if you
happen to be in the neighbourhood when I’m doing so.
18/. Start
Over Again – Indigo Moss. Everything
about this band and record is just right.
The harmonies, the plucky banjos.
Everything. Having them play the
WHC was a real highlight of 2007. I look
forward to the next record and would love to have them come play again. Trevor
Moss, Sir, is this a possibility?
19/. Running
Water – Martin Stephenson and the Daintees.
A great song from a great album Boat to Bolivia that is full of heart.
20/. Whole
Wide World – Wreckless Eric. Well I
am glad to be able report that our hero has indeed finally found love somewhere
in the vastness of the U.S.A.
in the form of the songstress Amy Rigby.
I heard the two of them play a version of this at the Rhythm Festival in
2006 and they kept it chugging on forever not that anybody minded much.
21/.
Walk on Guilded Splinters – Marsha Hunt.
My sister, Gilly, never owned very many records but the ones she had
were all great. One l.p. she did have
was Dr John’s ‘Gris Gris’ – the best of his night-tripper records and the album
which features his version of this song.
I searched high and low for this version until one day I went into the
Dinosaw market waved my hand over the vast trays of unsorted singles and told
myself that if I dipped in I would pull this record out and of course I
did. Magic? Synchronicity? Voodoo? Who knows, but all the
sweeter because it only cost me 50p.
22/.
Making Plans for Nigel – X.T.C. X.T.C. have recorded many great
tracks over the years but somehow remain under-appreciated, probably because
there has never been anything remotely cool about them. Their early records were jittery and somehow
nagged their way into your consciousness, their later records were much more
melodic and owed a lot to the Beatles. This
one catches them moving from the first phase towards the second phase. The song needled boring Nigels the land over
and had a very distinctive drum sound.
Hugh Padham, the engineer, went on to work with Phil Collins whose
records were loved by boring Nigels the land over throughout the 1980s.
23/.
Maggie May – Rod Stewart. Who
doesn’t love this song and the clip of Rod and the Faces performing this on Top
of the Pops with John Peel looking decidedly uncomfortable miming the mandolin?
Go watch it on Youtube. The great late Ronnie Lane played bass with the Faces
and is featured on this record. He left
to make folky/country records with his own band Slim Chance which for me have
much the same feel and appeal as Fisherman’s Blues era Waterboys. The albums are great and yielded a couple of
great singles in ‘How Come’ and ‘The Poacher’.
I don’t possess either on 45 which is why they’re not on this list.
24/. 96 Tears - ? & the Mysterians. The
garage classic. As Lenny would say -
“It’s a nugget if you dug it…”
25/.
Boys from the County
Hell – The Pogues. The Pogues are a firm family favourite and a band Stas and I saw many
times, the best time ever being a Christmas gig at the Electric Ballroom with
Joe Strummer and Kirsty MacColl guesting.
Stas danced so much she got Bhundu-leg and couldn’t walk properly for a
couple of days afterwards. The term
Bhundu-leg by the way was coined after a celebratory night in Wormelow in the
company of the much loved Bhundu Boys where Gilly danced so hard she was
similarly incapacitated as a result. I
would like to see this term enter the national lexicon. I’ve just mentioned this to Gilly and said
that more recently she had got a severe case of Bikini Beach
knees. Some days round here it’s a bit
like ‘Three Men in a Boat…’
26/.
Eton Rifles – The Jam. So another from the punk era with a great rattling bass line played on a
Rickenbacker. Think the words on this
are great, both sneering at the public schoolboys playing soldiers and
righteously angry that these boys will inevitably have the upper hand – ‘What chance have you got
against a tie and a crest?’ At the boarding school I went to, boys in the
cadet force were known as ‘turdies’.
27/.
Tainted Love – Gloria Jones. The original version of the Soft Cell smash,
which is of course also a marvellous record.
This version is by Gloria Jones whose other half was Marc Bolan. This fact will now have you pondering why
there are no T Rex records on this list.
28/.
Talk of the Town – Pretenders. Chrissie Hynde has one of the best voices ever,
tough and vulnerable at the same time.
That she chose to team up with a bunch of lads from Hereford and make two rocking albums, before
two of the boys fucked up big time is
something we should be grateful for.
Though I have fond memories of working in the Hereford sorting office
one Christmas talking to a sweet girl at the adjoining set of pigeon holes
while ‘Brass in Pocket’ was playing on the radio, ‘Talk of the Town’ is my
absolute favourite of their singles. It’s the chord change between verses, I
think one of the chords is a suspended something -whatever it’s the way it
rings out and stays with you. Not long
ago I had a funny encounter with Martin Chambers, the drummer, in the Cross
Keys but that’s for another day. Would
like to see him at a Wild Hare Club gig one day. Can’t say I’d mind if Chrissie Hynde wandered
in nonchalantly either…
29/. All
the Way from Memphis
– Mott the Hoople. Another group most of the members of which originated
from around these parts. Heard this for
the first time in ages on New Year’s Eve and loved it all over again. It’s a mighty long way down rock’n’roll…a
line quoted in Billy Bragg’s lyrics for ‘Waiting for the Great Leap Forward.’ He knows his onions that Billy Bragg.
30/.
Rhythm Stick – Ian Dury & the Blockheads. Was this a Christmas number one?
I got this in my Christmas stocking together with ‘Making Plans for
Nigel’. Not long after Ian Dury died, Stas
and I went to a memorial gig with the Blockheads joined by various people
taking it in turns to sing or bark Dury’s words. Nobody could ever fill the great man’s
hobnailed boots of course, but nobody in the audience cared because somehow
dredged from memory and unsung for 20 years or so, every member of the audience
bellowed out the scurrilous words in an act of drunken communion. I also want to pay tribute to Davey Payne,
the sax player, whose free jazz squalling on two saxes is just another reason
to love this record.
31/.
Keep on Keepin’ On – NF Porter. As Pete Mustill said to me while I was DJ-ing
at Gilly’s 50th and everybody was shaking their stuff to a succession of great
old soul tracks, “great records but all the same chords….” and then proceeded to explain. It’s not always good to know too much. That said, a lot of northern soul records are
remarkably similar but this one with its insistent guitar riff is a cut above
and well worth searching out.
32/. The
Werewolves of London
– Warren Zevon. Great song, funny words:
Saw a
werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand/Walking through the streets of Soho in
the rain/He was looking for a place called Lee Ho Fook's/Going to get himself a
big dish of beef chow mein/Werewolves of London
Some great whoohooing too although the
greatest whoohooing of all time is of course to be heard on ‘Sympathy for the
Devil’!
The Flamin’ Groovies always knew a good
song when they heard one and covered this, but Zevon’s version is better. However wanted to mention the Groovies so
that I could ignore the self-imposed limit of choosing only 45 45s to write about. So hereby ‘Shake Some Action’ is formally mentioned
in dispatches.
33/.
Ghost Town – The Specials. A bona fide classic that encapsulated the zeitgeist - blimey have I been
reading too much Wild Self? No come to
think of it it’s schadenfreude that
seems to appear in everything he writes…so back to the record being a reflection
the times when it was made. I clearly remember ringing my Mum from a phone box
to tell her the good news that I had found a shared house in Clapham to move
into and the bad news was that, as I was speaking to her, I was busy watching
all the shop owners board up their shop windows because a riot was
brewing. Ah the Brixton riots…..
34/.
Hand in Glove – The Smiths. The first Smiths single. I heard this on John Peel and immediately
thought that here was a band making
records just for me. Extraordinary thing
was that all around the country other gloomy young men were thinking the same
thing, so they became immensely popular much to the chagrin of all their
numerous devotees. I bought all the
Smiths singles as they came out but mainly on 12” because the B-sides were
always so good. One of the good things
about The Smiths is that they didn’t go in for naff extended remixes except for
a useless extended version of their greatest moment ‘This Chariming Man’. And all their songs had proper endings -didn’t
just fade out - I always appreciated that.
35/.
These Boots are Made for Walkin – Nancy Sinatra. I think I can remember this song from the radio when I was pretty young
and I associate it with my elder sister, Ruth.
There is a great photo of her in full ‘60s dolly bird garb including a
pair of white boots. The first lady of
bass, Carol Kaye played on this record, and can be heard no doubt loads of
others in mine and your collection including, apparently, Love’s ‘Andmoreagain’. One photo of the studio bass player shows that
she was also the proud owner of a pair of white boots just like sister Ruth’s. Postscript: one of the more obscures singles
in my collection is a cover of this song by Pure Hell, an all black punk band
from Philly.
36/.
Ever Fallen in Love – The Buzzcocks.
Never would sit down
and listen to an album’s worth of Buzzcocks songs, but listening to Peel’s
radio show their songs always provided a much needed injection of fizz and
showed up the bands featured before and after for the laggards that by
comparison they obviously were. This is
their best moment and, for this listener forever associated with a particular
time, place and person. May I also
recommend Buzzcock, Pete Shelley’s solo
single ‘Homosapien’ that drills itself into your brain and once there is hard to
dislodge.
37/. Don’t Look Back - Peter Tosh feat. Mick
Jagger. Where the former Wailer swaggers with Jagger.
38/. The
Weight – Aretha Franklin. The Queen of Soul covering one of The Band’s finest – impeccable.
39/.
Stand Down Margaret (dub) – The Beat.
One side of a double A
side with ‘Best Friend’ this was the track that always got played. A great groove, some anti-Thatcher toasting,
some dubby, echoing sax, what’s not to like?
40/.Voodoo Rhythm – Key
Largo. Don’t know anything about this record or the
band that cut it back in 1970. I picked
it out of a box of second hand singles in Camden Market on the basis of its
title and the fact that the other singles in the box were all quality
gear. I am a firm believer that any
record with voodoo in the title is likely to both sound good as the creator
will have at least tried to give it some kind of tribal rhythm and will have gone to the effort ad concocted some
quasi mystic lyric. This record is no
exception and I have resisted frying to find anything more about it. ‘Witch Queen of New Orleans’ by Redbone is another favourite
from about the same time. London’s Urban Voodoo
Machine obviously concur with me and have built a following on this premise and
very entertaining they are too.
41/. Le
Coeur Qui Jazze – France
Gall. As
Nick Hornby has chronicled at great length (sour grapes here because I could
have written High Fidelity – that’s not a novel that’s an episode out of my
life - and he had already mopped up with the Arsenal book) the joys of
meandering from record shop to record shop on a Saturday afternoon leafing
through the discs with a sense of purpose, or none at all, is soon to be a
half-remembered pleasure of men across the land who’s girth is ever expanding
and their hairlines ever shrinking.
Still there are a couple of musty smelling record shops that haven’t
changed much in close on 30 years in Hanway Street, a little alley that cuts
the corner between Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road. (Bradley’s Spanish Bar can be found in the
same street. Incidentally Bradley’s
remains a favourite in part because it has a truly fantastic jukebox, but
that’s for another time). Anyhow a visit
to these shops conducted not so long ago and driven in part by nostalgia,
yielded this treasure . BTW this shop is
where I first encountered Shane MacGowan and Cait O’Riordan of the Pogues. Shane was working there and Cait was chatting
to him and they were playing ‘Chinese Rocks’ by Johnny Thunders and the
Heartbreakers. They were both pretty
striking and they were obviously plotting. Me, I was taking notes.
To find out about the song go to http://waxidermy.com/2006/12/11/france-gall-le-coeur-qui-jazze/ It is a record I suspect Ken Easy may covert and
one that I want committed Francophile, Joanna, to hear as I am sure it has the
making of a witty blog on http://www.badaude.typepad.com/
42/. Transmission – Joy Division. If I’d included 12 inch singles on this list, I would have picked ‘Love
Will Tear Us Apart’ or maybe even ‘Atmosphere’, but this is the one in the 7
inch box and their calling card. I’d
read about them in the NME and wanted to check them out. I went to Buzz Music in Hereford where the hippy behind the counter
said he thought they sounded like the Doors.
They didn’t much but I was grabbed by Peter Hook’s bass and Ian Curtis’
voice. Some time later I wanted to see
them at Malvern Winter Gardens but the girl I wanted to take wasn’t
interested. Next time I thought, but there
wasn’t to be another chance. I expect
however that I’ll watch Control when it comes out on DVD.
43/. This Wheel’s On Fire – Julie Driscoll, Brian
Auger and the Trinity. One of the songs originally recorded by Dylan
and the Band while they were holed up in the Big Pink, I think musically this
is one of the most distinctive songs in the buzzard-voiced folkies burgeoning
song book. This version was released in
’68 and still sounds fantastic and drop dead cool. Have to admit to quite liking Siouxie’s
version too.
44/. People Get Ready – The Impressions. Curtis Mayfield and co on this soothing gospel-tinged song and given
that trains are the most musical mode of modern transport, the only train song
on this list.
45/. Redemption
Song – Bob Marley. Is there anyone who doesn’t love Bob
Marley? Sam (younger son) has Marley as
his second name, Willian has Dylan as his – the two Bobs see….Having a few
cassettes featuring Bob and the Wailers was definitely an asset when travelling
in Africa in the 1980s. This just seemed
a good song to end on, a campfire favourite of many a busker including uncle
Joe Strummer, although I would take issue with Bob’s fatalism with regard to
nuclear energy…..
That’s it 45 great
45s, go and listen to the ones you don’t know, every one a blinder.
No comments:
Post a Comment