V04-T07 I Want Candy

.....Sandwiched between two covers I placed the original version of a song better known as a cover.

Volume 4: "THE LITTLE BROWN ONES ARE THORAZINE, GEORGE", track 7

• 02:36 "I WANT CANDY" (Bob Feldman, Jerry Goldstein, Richard Gottehrer, Bert Berns)
• performed by The Strangeloves
• original source: A-side 7" BANG!Records B-501(US) 1965
• and my source: the same

.....I don't know if my copy is a first pressing but I don't think it would matter if it was. Unfortunately from a collector's standpoint it is a deleted sleeveless stock copy in rough condition and bought for chump change out of a bargain box somewhere. Still plays though. The reason that a first pressing would be a better conversation piece is that this is a little bit of rock history-- the first(?) official release from BANG! Records.

.....Atlantic Records was formed by Ahmet and Neshui Ertegun in the 1940's to indulge their love of American jazz and blues. By the 1960's they had diversified somewhat, as most successful labels will. In the course of their expansion they had enlisted a number of talented producers. In 1964 two of them, Bert Berns and Jerry Wexler, convinced them to launch a competing label as committed to purely commercial, hit-making producer's projects as Atlantic had been committed to capturing artists authentically. They called it "BANG!", named for Bert, Ahmet, Neshui and Gerald. Initially they recorded content for other labels, producing finished recordings instead of demos and shopping them around to other small labels in need of a chart hit. One such song was "LOVE LOVE(THAT'S ALL I WANT FROM YOU)" on the Swan label by three producers masquerading as a group called The Strangeloves. Feldman, Goldstein and Gottehrer could play instruments, but generally left the heavy lifting to session men. One day they laid down the instrumental backing for a cover of "BO DIDDLEY" that turned out so well, Berns suggested they make it the basis for a new song instead of squandering it on a B-side. The result was "I WANT CANDY".

.....Seeing that this single was catalog number B-501 with matrix numbers W-1003 and W-1004 (A and B, respectively), it occurred to me that the previous single would have been B-500 with matrices W-1001 and W-1002. Not only could I not find any release like that for any of the artists I knew to be on their roster, I found out that W-1001 is in the trail-off groove of a Neil Diamond album they released two years later.

.....When the single became a hit, Feldman, Goldstein and Gottehrer took four of the musicians from the session on the road with them to play concerts. They were Jack Raczka (guitar), John Shine (bass, vocals), Richie Lauro (sax, vocals) and Tom Kobus (drums). The line-ups were perpetually changing later, but this would have been representative of the studio band on the single. The three 'real' Strangeloves continued writing and producing with and without the pseudonym. In fact, Gottehrer was producing the Go-Go's when they recorded that B-side I used a few posts ago. The song's been pretty durable, too, covered by the Count Bishops (in the 70's) and perhaps most famously by Bow Wow Wow in 1982, changing the 'girl' in the song to a 'guy'.

.....Next up, a cover more appropriate than it immediately appears.

V04-T06 Academy Fight Song

.....You may have noticed that since this volume began that even those songs recorded in the 70's and 80's were from sources released within a couple years of 1990. This track is no different. A big part of the reason is that I was making last minute substitutions, as I've mentioned here before. I think that subconsciously I was also wary of being perceived as someone living in the past. It's just that if any ongoing collection is to be genuinely well-rounded then whatever in it is contemporary, regardless of when 'contemporary' happens to fall, is always going to be a small part of the whole. And of course, even that will soon be part of the past. Since I had already attempted to play around with the dates by playing older recordings I decided to indulge myself with a contemporary cover of an older song before fishing around for older sources. I felt I had been behaving myself were the covers were concerned and this one isn't archly deconstructionist or remotely campy.

Volume 4: "THE LITTLE BROWN ONES ARE THORAZINE, GEORGE", track 6

• 03:42 "ACADEMY FIGHT SONG" (Chris Conley)
• performed by R.E.M.
• original source: A-side 7" BOB32(UK)1992
• [free with magazine Bucketful of Brains issue #39/40(Mar-Apr/92)]
• and my source: the same

.....I'm going to reproduce my original liner notes again, with the exception that a specific institution's name will be redacted not merely for legal reasons but because it may no longer be an accurate reflection of campus life today. Also, Conley attended University of Rochester, NY and not the school discussed.

"Many British fanzines give flexi-discs (or used to, in the age of turntables). Few give hard-vinyl singles in picture sleeves. This live track opens with the announcement, "Mission Of Burma", the name of the band who recorded this song originally on their debut single [in 1980]. R.E.M., who are even better as a out-of-left-field-cover band than as radio hounds, do a pretty faithful job.

"I'm pretty sure that the song is about [a certain institution]-- the arrogance, cliques and hypocrisy. The 'fight' is against the academy, not for it. It was about this point in the tape that I realized how many overtures of rebellion I have been working into this thing. What distinguishes [this institution's] cliques (according to my personal experiences meeting people and the testimony of friends who were either students or professors) is an unavoidable sense of shallowness that comes from defining themselves in terms of others-- specifically what they choose not to like or else denigrate. It's not unheard of for a [~] student to confront someone with a laundry list of real or imagined personal faults the student feels that person should correct, and to react with shock and defensiveness if that person should have the nerve to tell them to fuck off.

"The song is sung from the perspective of someone wrestling against peer pressure to do exactly that; hence the line, 'I'm not judging you, I'm judging me'. The flip-side of the single, by the way, is a song by The Coal Porters."

That covers it. And for anyone reading who isn't from the northeast but knows that Mission Of Burma began their career in Boston, I should point out that the redacted school is not Harvard. Regardless of what national television may repeatedly tell you, Harvard is not in Boston, it's in Cambridge. On the other side of the Charles River. In another county. End of sermon.