Nico- The Immediate Label (1965) Part 1

(l to r: Tony Calder, Nico and Andrew Loog Oldham; taken from the booklet with 6CD box "The Immediate Story")

Nico was one of the many artists I included in a long list that I felt had been unfairly excluded from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame while others with little connection to the music (and likely no desire to be associated with it) were inducted over the objections of confused fans. Most of the posts for this blog in the second half of 2011 were devoted to the Checklist of Shame (click on the "Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame" label on the right side of the screen), but I've excerpted her entry below:

1. NICO- Nobody's idea of a role model, certainly not going to win any 'mother of the year' awards, but definitely deserving of a permanent place in the rock pantheon. The minimalism of Talking Heads or Flying Lizards almost certainly can be traced directly to her post-CHELSEA GIRL solo albums, rather than Alban Berg or Erik Satie. Much of her personal history, marred by drug addiction and pathological lying, is a Gordian Knot of misinformation and contradictory accounts; I won't even attempt to address it here. For the curious, the only-- and I mean only-- trustworthy sources are the book "Nico: The Life & Lies Of An Icon" and the documentary film "Nico/Icon" it inspired. For supplemental reading, ex-band member James Young wrote a book that's been repackaged under a variety of titles by a variety of publishers and is filled with could-have-happened anecdotes from the early 1980's.

Rather than spend time on a disambiguation of her multiple biographies, I'll refer readers to the sources in the above paragraph and dive right into the music. After appearing in a number of films and television commercials in Europe, Nico turned up in England, dating Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones. Their manager, Andrew "Loog" Oldham, was using his experience as a publicist for Brian Epstein's artists, to launch his own record label while the Stones were still signed to Decca. His partner in that venture, Tony Calder, had been a publicist for Decca and both had their reasons to believe they had learned from what they considered the mistakes of such major labels.

The first three releases from the label were scheduled to be released by Friday, August 20th, 1965. This was the same day as the Rolling Stones' new single on Decca, "Satisfaction". Oldham was no doubt hoping for some synergistic publicity.

The first catalogue number was assigned to The McCoys for a single ("Hang On Sloopy") that was actually licensed from the Bang Records label, located in the U.S. That label (formed by Bert Berns, Ahmet and Neshui Ertegun and Jerry-- or, for the purposes of his first initial, Gerald-- Wexler) was only a few months old itself and formed by producers and executives at Atlantic Records. Berns also had business in England producing the band Them and writing their hit "Here Comes the Night". He would later bring Van Morrison to Bang as a solo artist. The Immediate label would continue to license recordings from Bang, including by artists like the Strangeloves.

The other two singles featured original recordings. IM002 was the only release by The Fifth Avenue, arranged and produced by Jimmy Page. Page was a prolific studio musician before becoming the fourth lead guitarist in the Yardbirds (he was approached for the job when Eric Clapton quit and recommended Jeff Beck; he later played with them alongside Beck and stayed after Beck left). The two members of The Fifth Avenue were Denny Gerrard and Kenny Rowe. After this, Gerrard formed another duo at Immediate (Warm Sounds) which signed to Decca subsidiary Deram. Rowe met Brian Epstein client Tony Rivers and his band The Castaways when they recorded a one-off single for Immediate shortly before they left EMI/Columbia. After Epstein died in 1967, the Beatles formed the Apple organization, eventually leading to the Apple label in 1968. Three members of the Castaways were recruited by the head of the publishing division to form a band for an artist with a publishing contract. As Grapefruit (named after the Yoko Ono book) they were one of the first bands signed to Apple but their recordings were licensed to other labels before Apple started manufacturing their own records. For perspective, remember that the Beatles themselves continued to release records through Parlophone until August 1968. Rowe joined Tony Rivers to form a new version of the Castaways. After one single on Polydor, they refashioned themselves as Harmony Grass and signed to RCA.

The A-side of the Fifth Avenue single was a pretty faithful cover of the Byrds' arrangement of "The Bells Of Rhymney". It appeared on their first album, which had only been out in the U.S. for two months and would be released in the U.K. in August, close to the Fifth Avenue single. The Byrds never released it as a single in the U.S., although it made it to the Greatest Hits album in 1967. It the U.K. it was included on an EP in February 1966.
The B-side was a Jimmy Page original, "Just Like Anyone Would Do". Musically, it sounds like the hooks from four different songs patched together. Any one of them is hummable, but it makes the full song difficult to remember. And being difficult to remember could be fatal given the competition these initial three singles were wading into. The third single was, of course, Nico's debut. The next post will look at the A-side. In the meantime, below is a list of the top 50 singles in the August 19th, 1965 Record Retailer. Instead of listing them as they appeared in the chart, in order of their rank that week, I've listed them in the order that they were released to give a sense of how long they had been in the British consciousness at the time. I then note how long they eventually lasted with their last chart date and total number of weeks. After the artist and song title I give their peak rank (not necessarily their rank on August 19) and their label.

V05-T01 Rock 'N' Roll Radio

.....I've just reread the notes for this track that I wrote in 1994 and, while I am going to reproduce them here, I've just got to say that the events that have transpired since writing them are considerably more notorious than is the case for most of these old notes. For one thing, three of the original four band members have passed away. The other thing you might have heard about. The album was produced by Phil Spector. The old notes follow the listing below.

Volume 5: DON'T TOUCH THAT DIAL (YOU DON'T KNOW WHERE IT'S BEEN), track 1

• 03:51 "ROCK 'N' ROLL RADIO" (The Ramones)
• performed by The Ramones
• original source: LP END OF THE CENTURY Sire/Warner Bros. SRK6077 (US) 01/80 [also an A-side in May]
• and my source: CD END OF THE CENTURY Sire/Warner Bros. 6077-2 (US) [no date; 1986?]
• currently available on CD END OF THE CENTURY Rhino R2 78155 (US) 08/20/02 [including both this version and a demo of the song as a bonus track]

.....Every self-important critic's nightmare come true. Imagine, those overgrown teenagers who wear non-designer jeans (with holes worn in the knees!) and told an interviewer that they were glad that they missed out on Woodstock (sacrilege!) because you'd have to be an idiot to sit in the mud a thousand feet from the speakers and get rained on just to pretend you were hearing the music. Imagine them exhuming that old "wall-of-sound" fossil who had most of his hits in mono (when everyone knows that quadrophonics is the wave of the future-- or will be once people wise up and grow a third and fourth ear to satisfy the needs of the technology). Who gave them permission to play fun music? Why can't they be more like Moon Martin or Christopher Cross? Now, those two have bright futures ahead of them...

.....Well, maybe not every critic was that out of it, but most were. It always astounds me, the number of people in the non-creative end of the business who thought Lester Bangs was crazy while they blathered like idiots about how Gordon Lightfoot was America's greatest popular composer (I'm not being sarcastic anymore-- I really read that one in Stereo Review) or voting Christopher Cross a Best New Artist Grammy (look it up), etc.

....."Do you remember Jerry Lee? John Lennon, T. Rex and Ol' Moulty?"

.....Well, do you remember Ol' Moulty? Not likely.

.....Victor Moulton was the drummer for The Barbarians, a Massachusetts-based garage band in the 1960's that got some national airplay (you'll likely find them on Nuggets-style compilations). The band was capable but would have been unremarkable except for Moulty. He had a hook.

.....Now, when I say 'hook', I'm not using a musical term for a catchy simple line of riffs that grabs people's attentions. I'm talking about a crude, metal prosthetic hand. I can't even guess at how uncomfortable it must be to play drums with a hook. That's the kind of dedication and spirit The Ramones associate with rock and roll. About a month after I put the tape together, Goldmine newspaper's 20th Anniversary issue came out and among the people they contacted to recall 1974 was Moulty. He runs a cleaning service now and plays nostalgia shows once in a while.

.....1974 was about the time Phil Spector dropped from sight. (For more on Spector's life, read "He's A Rebel".) Many assumed it was because his style was 'old-fashioned'. The real reason was that his deteriorating mental state (so common in perfectionists; see "Wilson, Brian") made it difficult to maintain associations with the high profile artists he insisted on working with. The Ramones soon learned this when he held them hostage at gunpoint. It was, however, an extremely cool record.

V04-T15 Seven Deadly Finns

.....In the previous post I said something along the lines that I never met a pun I didn't like.

Eno - Seven Deadly Finns - album cover">

Volume 4: "THE LITTLE BROWN ONES ARE THORAZINE, GEORGE", track 15

• 03:11 "SEVEN DEADLY FINNS" (Brian Eno)
• performed by Brian Eno
• original source: A-side 7" Island WIP 6178 (UK) 03/74
• and my source: 3CD BRIAN ENO II: VOCAL Virgin ENOBX 2 (72438 39114 2 4) (UK) 11/93

.....[NOTE: Virgin is one of many labels that gives individual product codes to each disc in its multi-disc sets. The code above that follows the 3CD box catalog number identifies the set. The song is from the first disc, 72438 39115 2 3.]

.....From my notes in 1994: "Of course, the song is a joke about Finnish sailors so promiscuous that they'd contracted countless venereal diseases and become 'deadly'. Today the song wouldn't be a joke-- promiscuity is no longer necessary. Thus, this little non-album track has become a quaint reminder of a (relatively) more innocent past in spite of itself."

....."For a recording that's made the rounds as often as this one, it's damned difficult to come by. Released as a single in England on Island (not a conglomerate, but they carried Roxy Music, Bob Marley, Traffic and other big sellers in England), but not in the US." In 1982, "JEM distributors issued an E'G artists compilation, including Eno, King Crimson and various ambient or art rock performers. 'SEVEN DEADLY FINNS' was used, but... it was a radio-promo only album to acquaint out-of-it radio programmers in the US with material that JEM was reissuing (in some cases the albums were US debuts). I was lucky enough to find a used copy and and enjoyed it for a few years. It was not, however the source for this compilation." Later, "in 1984, it was reissued on an EP of rarities. Unfortunately the EP was only available in a boxed set with ten albums entitled WORKING BACKWARDS 1983-1973." That was also not the source I used. "That would be the fourth configuration, but the first on CD. The minute I saw it (marked down on sale!) I had to have it: ENO II: VOCAL, a three-CD import box. Much of the material I already had, on inferior sounding JEM CD's mostly. I had been reading about the box (and its counterpart, a three-CD box of instrumental and ambient music) for months, annoying salespeople with questions about it (do you have an arrival date? what will it cost?) for weeks until it showed up. The actual item turned out to be uninspired programming in a disarmingly beautiful package. The package you'd have to see (and feel) for yourself. To illustrate what I mean about the programming: the entire second CD is drawn from two albums already available on disc; the songs appear in their original track order, remastered but not remixed, with only a few songs missing, among them one of my personal favorites. My question is this: why reproduce so much of any album and fall short of reproducing the entire album for the sake of two or three songs? Keep in mind that these albums, good as they are, were drawn from to the neglect of some sources and the omission of others. That would be acceptable in a budget compilation, but not in a career retrospective. I could do a better job. And I'm going to (maybe in 1995). So in the meantime, enjoy this deadly seven-incher."

.....I never made that Eno retrospective. In 1995 I moved and then moved again a year later. It was a situation that split large chunks of my collection. At any given time it was in at least three different cities. For an artist like Eno, who does so much in collaboration, a serious career retrospective would include a ton of material released by other artists and I never had it all in one place at one time. For more on him, check out the enoweb link on the right, which didn't exist back then.

.....You may also have noticed that the second paragraph of quoted material is fragmented. That's largely due to an error in the original that I didn't want to perpetuate. The reference to the "radio-only promo" is more complicated. What I have is LP FIRST EDITION Editions E'G EGED 15 (US) 1982, and I have a promo-only copy. A similar album was released commercially in England. It had the same title and jacket art but three songs were different and it didn't include "SEVEN DEADLY FINNS". There are further details on that version on the blog Version Crazy. I think the page is:

http://www.versioncrazy.com/2008/01/31/compilation-lp-first-edition-eg-records-1982/

.....I was led to believe that the US edition followed WORKING BACKWARDS 1983-1973 but I can't remember why. The editing I did above amounts to changing the order of the quotes and the corresponding syntax. Otherwise it's my thoughts at the time. I hope to post again Friday.

Hüsker Dü "...Means 'Do You Remember?'"

.....Happy Record Store Day! Vinyl has been making a bit of a comeback in recent years and no one has been more surprised than the retailers who sell it. In retrospect it makes a perverse kind of sense that a generation who grew up downloading music for free would be mystified that there is a format out there that isn't even capable of supporting anti-copying encryption. Not only that, but there's tons-- literally tons-- of back catalog being sold by the pound in thrift stores and yard sales all over the world. It hardly matters that it can't be transported if you can transfer it to an iPod or other device. In fact, if you're accustomed to listening to the AM radio-like flatness of an MP3 signal, then the old bugaboo of surface noise is probably a non-issue as well.

.....This blog started about a month after last year's Record Store Day, so I never really referenced it. I didn't want to just pass it by, even though the blog is about a series of cassettes that weren't compiled for retail purposes. The fact is, many of the songs I've blogged about (and will continue to, trust me) made their way onto the tapes because I could only find them on vinyl (or flexis) and wanted to make them more portable and accessible. Record stores, including those that sold used (well, especially those that sold used), were an irreplaceable source for those. Finding new music you might like is infinitely easier if you can spot a familiar name in the liner notes or jacket credits while browsing in a store. Electronic sources often don't include liner notes and those that do only reveal them after loading times which, no matter how powerful your computer is, can't compare to the ease of holding something and flipping it over.

.....So, how to celebrate records with just one day's blog? Well, I could always renew my call to reissue the Giorno Poetry Systems catalog on CD. There's fewer than 100 vinyl titles total, maybe no more than 60 or 70, yet less than a dozen have made it to CD. Because their excellent anthologies always contained otherwise unavailable recordings by both famous and obscure artists, I routinely consulted my sparse collection of GPS titles when planning a career retrospective tape or looking for some kind of change of pace track for a 'various artists' tape. If reconfigured, the entire label might fit on 40 CD's, and many of them could be devoted to single artists. There are some musicians who have larger catalogs than that just by themselves (Zappa and Bowie come to mind). Many more artists only appeared sparingly. Some had recording commitments elsewhere, some generally worked in other media. One of the many bigger names to make a rare visit was Hüsker Dü.

.....Warner Brothers is issuing a special "Side By Side" vinyl single for Record Store Day that will pair Green Day's last-decade cover of "DON'T WANT TO KNOW IF YOU ARE LONELY" with the Hüsker Dü original on it's silver anniversary. My hair turned a little more silver when I heard that one. Since Green Day probably has fans who weren't born when that song came out, maybe I should share a crash course on Hüsker Dü in the form of a compilation program. It could be timely; Bob Mould just appeared in a Foo Fighters documentary in which he's seen contributing vocals to the recording of their recently released album. They've been hitting the talk show circuit pretty aggressively, so it's not impossible that Bob's name and his old band might pop up. Weirdly, the FF's appeared on the Daily Show without dropping his name (Mould wrote and performed the familiar Daily Show theme music). I'm not certain when I put this compilation together, but I can confirm that it was after the last of the "So, What Kind..." cassettes. (For what it's worth, the previously posted Cramps compilation was probably put together at the time I was finishing the tape with Volumes 3 and 4.) I'll put it at ten years ago. So, gather all the spiky-haired grandkids around, here we go...

.....For the uninitiated, Hüsker Dü was three people:

• [M]= Bob Mould: Guitar and vocals
• [N]= Greg Norton: Bass and vocals
• [H]= Grant Hart: Drums and vocals

.....I'll use those initials for songwriting credits. Anyone unfamiliar with my format notation will find a helpful key at the bottom of the page. My apologies to anyone using automated translating software to read this, since my use of abbreviations might confuse the software. I can only suggest first reading this verbiage in your own language, then reverting the page to English so that the notation will remain unaltered. The compilation was made with two 90-minute cassettes. I'm going to precede each track with an alpha-numeric. If this compilation had ever been pressed on vinyl, the letter would represent the 'side' and the number would represent the track. Every two vinyl 'sides' complete one side of the cassettes. After listing the programs, I'll suggest configurations for CD formats.

....."Everyone Is An Authority"

• [A01] 01:57 DO YOU REMEMBER? (M)
• .....demo recorded live by Bill Bruce in a St. Paul Basement, 1980
• [A02] 04:54 AMUSEMENT (M)
• .....B-side 7" Reflex [no#] Recorded live by Terry Katzman at Duffy's, Minneapolis, October 1980
• [A03] 04:33 STATUES (H)
• .....A-side 7" Reflex [no#] Recorded at Blackberry Way, Minneapolis, 1980
• [A04] 01:53 LET'S GO DIE (N)
• .....outtake from "Statues" sessions
• [A05] 02:02 ALL TENSED UP (M/N/H)
• [A06] 00:54 GUNS AT MY SCHOOL (M/N/H)
• [A07] 01:50 DO THE BEE (M/N/H)
• .....from mini-LP "Land Speed Record" New Alliance Records NAR007 (US?) 1981
• [A08] 02:52 IN A FREE LAND (M)
• [A09] 01:15 WHAT DO I WANT? (H)
• [A10] 01:11 M.I.C. (M)
• .....7" New Alliance Records NAR010 (US) 05/82
• [B01] 01:40 FROM THE GUT (M/N)
• [B02] 02:14 EVERYTHING FALLS APART (M)
• [B03] 01:42 TARGET (M)
• [B04] 00:30 PUNCH DRUNK (M)
• [B05] 01:24 AFRAID OF BEING WRONG (M)
• .....from mini-LP "Everything Falls Apart" Reflex [no#] (US) 01/83
• [B06] 02:25 REAL WORLD (M)
• [B07] 04:40 DIANE (H)
• .....from EP "Metal Circus" SST Records SST020 (US) 12/83
• [B08] 01:59 WON'T CHANGE (?)
• .....an outtake from the "Metal Circus" sessions, recorded 01/83
• .....from VALP "A Diamond Hidden In The Mouth Of A Corpse" Giorno Poetry Systems GPS035 (US/C) 1985
• [B09] 03:56 EIGHT MILES HIGH (Gene Clark, Roger McGuinn, David Crosby)
• [B10] 02:54 MASOCHISM WORLD (H/M)
• .....7" SST Records SST025 (US) 04/84

....."All The Ways Of Communicating"

• [C01] 00:47 ONE STEP AT A TIME (M/H)
• [C02] 03:58 WHATEVER (M)
• [C03] 04:27 WHAT'S GOING ON? (H)
• .....demos recorded Summer 1983
• [C04] 01:24 GRANTED (?)
• [C05] 02:08 SOME KIND OF FUN (?)
• [C06] 03:12 DOZEN BEATS ELEVEN (?)
• .....outtakes prior to "Zen Arcade" Sessions, recorded Fall 1983
• [C07] 01:41 NEVER TALKING TO YOU AGAIN (H)
• [C08] 02:03 THE BIGGEST LIE (M)
• [C09] 02:32 SOMEWHERE (M/H)
• [D01] 00:54 MONDAY WILL NEVER BE THE SAME (M)
• [D02] 02:43 PINK TURNS TO BLUE (H)
• [D03] 04:28 TURN ON THE NEWS (H)
• .....from 2LP "Zen Arcade" SST Records SST027 (US) 07/84
• [D04] 04:03 CELEBRATED SUMMER (M)
• [D05] 03:05 THE GIRL WHO LIVES ON HEAVEN HILL (H)
• [D06] 02:48 BOOKS ABOUT UFO'S (H)
• [D07] 02:08 IF I TOLD YOU (H/M)
• [D08] 02:34 NEW DAY RISING (M/Hüsker Dü)
• .....from LP "New Day Rising" SST Records SST031 (US) 01/85
• [D09] 01:40 ERASE TODAY (?)
• .....outtake from the "New Day Rising" sessions, recorded 07/84
• .....from VALP "The Blasting Concept Vol. II" SST Records SST043 (US) 1986

....."All This We've Done For You"

• [E01] 05:06 HELTER SKELTER (John Lennon/Paul McCartney)
• .....recorded live at 1st Ave., Minneapolis on 01/30/85
• .....B-side 12" Warner Bros. 9 20446-0 A (US) 02/86
• [E02] 02:42 MAKES NO SENSE AT ALL (M)
• [E03] 01:46 LOVE IS ALL AROUND (Sonny Curtis)
• .....7" SST Records SST051 (US) 08/86
• [E04] 03:03 FLEXIBLE FLYER (H)
• [E05] 02:46 HATE PAPER DOLL (M)
• [E06] 02:36 FLIP YOUR WIG (M)
• .....from LP "Flip Your Wig" SST Records SST055 (US) 09/85
• [E07] 02:43 TICKET TO RIDE (John Lennon/Paul McCartney)
• .....recorded live at 1st Ave., Minneapolis on 01/30/85
• .....from VA7"EP "NME's Big Four" NME GIV3 (UK) 02/86
• [E08] 03:29 DON'T WANT TO KNOW IF YOU ARE LONELY (H)
• .....A-side 12" Warner Bros. 9 20446-0 A (US) 02/86
• [F01] 08:24 ALL WORK AND NO PLAY (M)
• .....B-side 12" Warner Bros. 9 20446-0 A (US) 02/86
• [F02] 06:07 HARDLY GETTING OVER IT (M)
• .....from LP "Candy Apple Grey" Warner Bros. 9 25385-1 (US) 03/86
• [F03] 04:27 SORRY SOMEHOW (H)
• [F04] 03:09 ALL THIS I'VE DONE FOR YOU (M)
• .....7" Warner Bros. W8612 (UK) 09/86

....."Coming Back For The Sake Of Retrieving"

• [G01] 02:39 COULD YOU BE THE ONE? (M)
• .....A-side 12" Warner Bros. W8456T (UK) 01/87
• [G02] 01:28 [track A2, introduces members and double LP]
• .....from 2LP "The Warehouse Interview" Warner Bros. Music Show WBMS145 (US) 1987
• [G03] 02:47 EVERYTIME (N)
• [G04] 03:13 CHARITY, CHASTITY, PRUDENCE & HOPE (H)
• .....B-side 12" Warner Bros. W8456T (UK) 01/87
• [G05] 03:20 FRIEND, YOU'VE GOT TO FALL (M)
• [G06] 03:33 SHE FLOATED AWAY (H)
• .....from 2LP "Warehouse: Songs And Stories" Warner Bros. 9 25544-1 (US) 01/87
• [G07] 01:25 [track D5, losing your mind on tour]
• .....from 2LP "The Warehouse Interview" Warner Bros. Music Show WBMS145 (US) 1987
• [G08] 04:22 ICE COLD ICE (M)
• .....A-side 7" Warner Bros. W8276 (UK) 06/87
• [H01] 02:34 [track B1, regarding printed lyrics]
• .....from 2LP "The Warehouse Interview" Warner Bros. Music Show WBMS145 (US) 1987
• [H02] 08:51 HARE KRSNA (H/M/N)
• .....from promo-only compilation CD "Do You Remember?" Warner Bros. PRO-CD 6853 (US) 1994
• [H03] 02:47 AIN'T NO WATER IN THE WELL (M)
• [H04] 02:11 IT'S NOT FUNNY ANYMORE (H)
• [H05] 03:22 NOW THAT YOU KNOW ME (H)
• [H06] 02:25 BACK FROM SOMEWHERE (H)
• .....from CD "The Living End" Warner Bros. 9 45582-2 (US) 04/94
• [H07] 01:30 [track C2, assessing your own work]
• .....from 2LP "The Warehouse Interview" Warner Bros. Music Show WBMS145 (US) 1987

.....There are no songwriting credits for the interview segments, obviously. For more information on the band, I recommend the link on the right side of the screen. Now, that's a proper discography.

.....Earlier I promised recommended CD configurations for those of you playing at home. Here they are:

1. CD1: Use tracks A(all), B(all) and C01-C06
2. CD2: Use tracks C07-C09, D(all), E(all) and F01
3. CD3: Use tracks F02-F04, G(all) and H(all)

.....Most of the singles can be found on the albums. There should have been a comprehensive boxed set for the group years ago, but due to their catalog being almost evenly split between SST and Warner Bros., that's not likely to happen in my lifetime. What should be made available is a CD collecting all the Warner Bros. non-album tracks. I think some of those songs have never been released in their native U.S., let alone on disc. 90% of what's here should be readily available with a little hunting, though.

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.

V04-T02 64 Ford

.....I was able to get in at least one good car song before changing plans on the fly.

Volume 4: "THE LITTLE BROWN ONES ARE THORAZINE, GEORGE", track 2

• 03:37 "64 FORD" (Phranc)
• performed by Phranc
• original source: LP "POSITIVELY PHRANC" Island 422-848-282(US)1991
• and my source: CD5 64 FORD c/w SURFER GIRL Island PRCD 6675-2(US)1991 [promo only]

.....I'm going to recall my original notes and update/correct them afterwards:

"Billed as the All-American Jewish Lesbian Folksinger, Phranc paradoxically expands her identity in the studio even while she narrows it in her press releases. She is one of a number of women who snuck into public view as part of a rediscovery of folk (Suzanne Vega, Michelle Schocked, Tracy Chapman) and surprised everyone by demonstrating a versatility of styles and command of technical abilities, neither of which are traditionally held in great regard in folk circles.

"This definitely falls under 'surf music' and will never be confused with 'I DREAMED I SAW JOE HILL LAST NIGHT'. My source for this was a promotional CD that also included an alternate mix of her remake of 'SURFER GIRL', which doesn't too much stray from the tone of the Beach Boys' original version."

.....Shortly after I wrote that, the remark about her press identity narrowing became obsolete. Phranc started showing up in wire news reports as a high-achieving Tupperware sales representative. She also did some one-woman Neil Diamond tribute shows. At the time I put the cassette together she had managed to turn the phrase "All-American Jewish Lesbian Folksinger" into something close to a trademark. And while that never ceased to be an accurate description, she managed to avoid it becoming a limitation without abandoning it. Bravo.

.....Next, not being able to follow a lyrical theme as I had planned, I follow a musical one instead. From turf to surf then.

V03-T15 Totally Wired

.....Winding down side 3, I opted to kick up the energy level a little.

Volume 3: A KINDER, GENTLER ZERO TOLERANCE, track 15

• 03:28 "TOTALLY WIRED" (lyrics: Mark E. Smith; music: Craig Scanlon, Marc Riley, Mark E. Smith, Stephen Hanley, Paul Hanley)
• performed by The Fall
• original source: A-side 7" Rough Trade RT056 (UK) 9/80
• and my source: CD THE FALL IN: PALACE OF SWORDS REVERSED Cog Sinister/Rough Trade ROUGH US 32CD (US)1987?

.....As a college DJ I was on the air when someone called in with a request for this. I played it and fell in love with it. At the time the first, fourth, eighth, ninth and tenth albums had been released in this country but little else. PALACE... was one of two US compilations apparently meant to compensate for that.

V03-T13 My Mother Is A Space Cadet

.....While riffing on a theme of 'little things' I remembered that I had a viable selection by a bona fide child.

Volume 3: A KINDER, GENTLER ZERO TOLERANCE, track 13

• 02:37 "MY MOTHER IS A SPACE CADET" (words: Dweezil Zappa, Moon Zappa, Steve Vai; lyrics: Dweezil Zappa, Steve Vai)
• performed by Dweezil [Zappa]
• original source: A-side 7" Barking Pumpkin WS4 03366(US) 1982
• and my source: the same

.....Let me just quote from my original notes and chime in again later:

"This came with a picture sleeve that made it a must for me. It shows a pubescent Dweezil before his eyebrows met. He and his 12-year-old friends are all trying to look like brooding bad-asses and it comes across as a parody of album covers like MEET THE BEATLES and especially ENGLAND'S NEWEST HIT-MAKERS (the first US Rolling Stones LP). I guess if they wanted to distinguish themselves from those other hairless wonders over in Tiger Beat, then scowling at the camera is the way to do it. Of course, having the sound to back it up is that much easier when dad's hired help is Steve Vai.

"I am actually curious as to why Vai really did this. It's easy to assume that Frank told him to, but the Zappas don't strike me as those kind of people and his kids certainly wouldn't have developed the ambitions to launch as many projects as they have if they were in the habit of being spoiled and having things arranged for them (outside of having them released on the family label, I mean). He may have done it because he teaches guitar and Dweezil was a student; he may have done it out of a sense of mischief; he may have been bored. He may also have done it because projects that are spontaneous and not tailored for commercial consumption are rarely brought to completion in the California entertainment industry. That would be reason enough."

.....Well, since writing that I haven't managed to confirm any of my speculations about Vai's motives behind this, although I have since learned that despite his writing credit the guitar parts (except for the intro and a massive slide towards the end) may have indeed been handled by the then 12-year-old Dweezil. The intro and slide were likely by Eddie Van Halen, who, along with an engineer make up the pseudonymous Vards credited with producing. Although Vai's website doesn't mention the single, Dweezil's goes into some length about the guitar used, for all you gear-heads out there:

http://www.dweezilzappaworld.com/articles/17-seuss-flying-v

.....and site member Ambassador-at-large contributed the following:

http://www.dweezilzappaworld.com/search?q=greg+kurstin

.....What's been most odd about looking around for scraps of information on this single is the large number of sites, commercial and otherwise, which discuss it, even reproduce the sleeve photo art, but mention even less about it than I have above. I expect that from the mp3 piracy websites, but nearly empty pages on Wikipedia and even the single's very own Facebook page(?!) feel discouraging. They don't even mention that Greg Kurstin, who co-wrote the B-side, "CRUNCHY WATER", is half of The Bird And The Bee (I'm guessing he's the bee).

V03-T04 They Don't Know

.....I first knew this song from a Tracey Ullman video, made before she had an American television series. It was when the 'M' in 'MTV' stood for 'Music' instead of 'Misanthropy'. Finding this original version on a compilation by accident was a sweet surprise.

Volume 3: A KINDER, GENTLER ZERO TOLERANCE, track 4

• 03:01 "THEY DON'T KNOW" (Kirsty MacColl)
• performed by Kirsty MacColl
• original source: A-side, 7"Stiff BUY47 (UK) June, 1979
• and my source: VA4CD THE STIFF RECORDS BOX SET Demon/Rhino R2 71062 (US?) August, 1992

.....This is MacColl's debut single, not counting an EP she appeared on as a member of Drug Addix the previous year. None of the songs on that were credited to her and I'm guessing she's just fine with that. This, on the other hand, is pop music gold. My original notes from 1994 haven't really changed, so I'll just quote them below, followed by the current availability of this recording.

.....[from 1994:]Most Americans who know this song know it from the Tracey Ullman version recorded just a few years later [in 1983] (and, I believe, also for Stiff [it was]). That was before Ullman had her American television show on Fox (in fact, before there was a Fox). The video for the remake recast the meaning of the song: in it, Ullman plays a teenager with an enormous crush on Paul McCartney. Obviously nothing ever comes of it, but she grows up to be a bored housewife in a loveless marriage who still daydreams that McCartney will sweep her off her feet. (He does, sort of, when the real McCartney appears briefly at the end.)

.....The original MacColl version is more in the spirit of the mid-1960's British female 'mod' singers (Sandie Shaw, Cilla Black, Petula Clark, Lulu, etc.) who were in turn inspired by Motown and Phil Spector-produced girl groups. It sounds like one of many songs about a girl in a bad relationship, but sung from the girl's perspective so that it seems as though the rest of the world has gone crazy and turned against her. The lyrics to "THEY DON'T KNOW" are sufficiently vague and general that the song could just as easily be about any of the following:

• a) a paranoid schizophrenic speaking to one of their other personalities
• b) a gay rights anthem
• c) a Romeo-and-Juliet/West Side Story couple caught in an ethnic conflict
• d) an addict singing to their drug
• e) an acolyte singing to a cult leader
• f) a prostitute seducing a client
• g) an agent signing a band (see f)

.....[back to 2010:] There was no contemporary album to this single, so it doesn't appear on any reissue even as a bonus track. The year after the Stiff Box came out there was an unimaginative package of MacColl's Stiff material called THE ESSENTIAL COLLECTION (1993), but the year after I put together this mix MacColl supervised a replacement, GALORE-THE BEST OF KIRSTY MACCOLL (1995). Both contain "THEY DON'T KNOW".

.....On Monday, we take a break from the A-sides.

V03-T03 The Man Who Invented Himself

.....Many of the recordings I used for this series of compilation tapes were rare at the time that I used them. Of course, since all of these recordings, including the ones created for broadcast or promotional purposes, were mass produced, 'rare' is a relative term. If you manufacture a David Bowie title in quantities less than 50,000 that item would be considered somewhat rare because his international sales are typically in the millions. That same number would make an appropriate first pressing for a band on a small, privately owned label. Of the recordings used here that I would think were hard to come by, many have since been reissued (or issued) on CD. While their original format issue is still technically rare the newly pressed sources often ship in even larger quantities than the originals. By contrast, the recording used below may have actually become more rare since I compiled the tape due to very unusual circumstances.

Volume 3: A KINDER, GENTLER ZERO TOLERANCE, track 3

• 02:59 "THE MAN WHO INVENTED HIMSELF" (Robyn Hitchcock)
• performed by Robyn Hitchcock
• original source: LP BLACK SNAKE DIAMOND ROLE Armageddon ARM 4 (UK) May, 1981
• and my source: CD BLACK SNAKE DIAMOND ROLE Aftermath AFT CD 1 (UK) 1987

.....In March 1980 The Soft Boys finished the recording sessions that would be pieced together to form their last original studio album, UNDERWATER MOONLIGHT. That spring, a Virgin Records employee named Richard Bishop set out to launch his own label, Armageddon, and The Soft Boys would put any future releases on it. As it turned out, their recordings from that point on fell into four categories: songs released as Soft Boys singles; songs packaged with earlier outtakes to fill out a Soft Boys posthumous album; songs retroactively credited to guitarist Kimberley Rew for singles; and songs retroactively credited to Hitchcock for much of his first solo album and parts of a later compilation, INVISIBLE HITCHCOCK. These were mostly released over the course of the next year and a half, after Rew had tracked down a pre-Soft Boys bandmate from his old band The Waves. In his absence they had become a rock-and-country cover band called "Mama's Cooking" with an American female guitarist. They needed Rew's writing skills, so he agreed to join on condition that he play guitar and the American woman sings his songs instead of him. And "Katrina And The Waves" was a much better name.

.....In January 1995, the year after this tape was assembled, Rhino Records put out the first US release (on CD; keep reading) of BLACK SNAKE DIAMOND ROLE, the first Hitchcock solo album. The liner notes by Grant Alden answer some questions and raise others. On page 2 he states "Sessions began simply, just Robyn and Morris [Windsor] on drums"... and quotes Hitchcock:"So 'THE MAN WHO INVENTED HIMSELF' and 'ACID BIRD' were just Morris and me. I think the first thing we did was 'ACID BIRD' on a four-track machine that Pat Collier had." Then on page 3 Alden mentions,"Additional sessions took place on a barge, where Richard Branson [founder and head of Virgin Records] had installed a 16-track studio." Hitchcock: "Morris and I did 'THE MAN WHO INVENTED HIMSELF' in the middle of the night, on the barge... Howie, our roadie, came along, and there was about an 18-inch gap between the barge and the quay just out by the bow... Howie managed to fall in... so he took his trousers off and dried them over the piano." These two unrelated statements place the song both when "sessions began" and also "additional sessions". The Barge also turns up in the liner notes for INVISIBLE HITCHCOCK as the source of the songs "GIVE ME A SPANNER, RALPH" and "MY FAVORITE BUILDINGS" in June, 1980.

.....Songs that eventually made it onto BSDR included some that had been part of the Soft Boys' live set in the fall of 1980. It isn't so surprising then that each of the other band members show up in some capacity on the solo album. To this day they appear on each other's recordings, and their split early in 1981 was far from acrimonious. It was more due to exasperation with the music press in England, who at some point decided that The Soft Boys weren't wearing the right brand of shoes and shouldn't eat lunch at the cool kids' table. After they broke up their records caught on in the US, especially among upcoming musicians who routinely name-checked them and covered their songs. Unable to foresee that in their future, they had their post-band projects already prepared when their split was announced. In April 1981, the 7" Armageddon AS008 (UK) single for "THE MAN WHO INVENTED HIMSELF" was released followed in May by the BSDR album. (Although the title song doesn't appear on the album, it does exist; a live recording by The Soft Boys surfaced in October on a posthumous album.) The album version of "THE MAN WHO..." features a saxophone part by prolific session man Gary Barnacle and muted piano. However, during the long gestation period for the album it went by several working titles before release, the last of which was ZINC PEAR, for which there was a test pressing with a slightly different track selection and a different mix for "THE MAN WHO...", one without the saxophone overdubbing and the piano clear as a bell. Being a test pressing it wasn't available commercially but wasn't a secret either. When the album was reissued on the Aftermath label (on vinyl in 1985 in Germany and on CD in 1987-- which says 'Made In England' but may also have been made in Europe for UK distribution), it still carried the saxophone mix. The 1995 US Rhino CD I mentioned earlier replaced that track with the original mix from ZINC PEAR. [NOTE: When that Rhino CD initially shipped, it came with a circular blurb sticker that announced "U.S. Debut!" While the album had never before been released here in the CD format, it was briefly available on vinyl from Relativity in 1986. Having never heard a copy of that particular pressing, I can't say which mix was used. I'm also not certain that it was made in the US and not Canada, which would absolve the blurb sticker.]

.....Subsequent reissues of the album on Sequel and Yep Roc, as well as the appearance of the song on compilations, have all utilized the ZINC PEAR piano version, making the saxophone mix relatively rarer with every new release because it makes up a smaller percentage of the total versions available to an increasing audience. Of course, I learned all of this only after I made the compilation tape. I only knew that the CD was more difficult to find than later solo albums. I could have used any other song on the album, I just liked the breezy feel of this one. I've also yet to find why the sax overdub was used in the first place. Was it dubbed over the Barge recording because a wet pair of pants muted the piano? Was it even the same take as the ZINC PEAR mix? Chime in on the comments if you have any insights on this.

V03-T02 Sally Go Round The Roses

.....While discussing a Jim Carroll song on Volume 2 I mentioned that by the late 1960's Andy Warhol was forced to change his policy allowing many different strangers from different backgrounds to hang out at The Factory, his studio and headquarters of an art collective he sponsored. For a while the variety of people fueled the creativity of the artists working there, but after an attempt on his life he could no longer be certain of their safety or even his own. We would have to be content with what preceded that incident. In addition to the art, one unintentional side effect of having so many different people passing through an area is that you can get corroborations on some pretty far-fetched stories...

Volume 3: A KINDER, GENTLER ZERO TOLERANCE, track 2

• 03:01 "SALLY GO ROUND THE ROSES" (Zelma Sanders, Lona Stevens)
• performed by The Jaynetts
• original source: A-side, 7"Tuff 369 (US) 1963
• and my source: CD GOLDEN GIRL GROUPS K-Tel CD 341-2 (US) Nov., 1989

.....As far back as when I made this mix tape (early 1994?) I was aware that Andy Warhol played this record in the Factory while working (except for the films, obviously). I've since seen that fact repeated by Lou Reed, Mary Woronov, Gerard Malanga and a few others who were there at the time. Reed in particular noted that Warhol didn't seem to own many records in all, but played this one repeatedly. It's hard to know exactly what he liked about it, but an educated guess would be the hypnotic, mantra effect it has since successive plays would emphasize that. Although supposedly written as an original it certainly sounds as though it was derived from a nursery rhyme or a rope-jumping chant.

.....The Jaynetts themselves are a bit of a mystery. Sanders' account is that she created the group as the head of J&S Records as a way to keep singers productive while they were between vocal groups. However, even if it were possible to pinpoint who was in the group at the time of the recording, it was made with multiple overdubs of whatever vocalists were on hand during an extended weekend. I can't find anyone involved with the recording who can claim to have reliable studio logs that detail the personnel. A Wikipedia entry names ten women known to have been working under Sanders' supervision at the time and engineer Artie Butler's website http://www.artiebutler.com/ describes, in his own words, overdubbing the vocals onto a finished instrumental track: "Each time when I added another element I added a different type of reverb." This approach to recording makes it a practical impossibility to even count distinct voices, let alone distinguish one from another.

.....Tomorrow, a different kind of dubbing mix-up.

V03-T01a Sound effect of jail doors

.....Today begins the second cassette. As it happens, we open with a closing. Slam, slam, go the jail guitar doors, alright, but this isn't a Clash song.

Volume 3: A KINDER, GENTLER ZERO TOLERANCE, track 1a

• 00:09 [excerpt from "WE LOVE YOU" (Mick Jagger, Keith Richards)]
• performed by The Rolling Stones
• original source: A-side, 7" Decca F12654 (UK) 08/18/67
• and my source: 3CD THE ROLLING STONES SINGLES COLLECTION* THE LONDON YEARS Abkco 1218-2 (US) 08/15/89

.....On February 12th, 1967, Chief Inspector Gordon Dinely led a raid on Keith Richards' country home while numerous guests were there. An American from the West Coast was allowed to leave carrying a suitcase filled to the gills with LSD and a bit of everything else. He was apparently a wannabe dealer planted there by a Murdoch-style scandal paper that was being sued by the Stones for libel and likely to lose the case. They alerted the police that there would be a drug fueled party at the address, and had a man on the inside to make sure that there was. Unfortunately for them he disappeared with most of it. All that was found was a small amount of heroin on an art gallery owner and a few amphetamine pills for which Jagger may or may not have had a prescription. When the Stones failed to drop the libel suit, another well-publicized raid occurred at Brian Jones' house (this time with no set up necessary) in May. (Jones readily admitted to having a small amount of hash, but not the panoply of addictive substances the police seemed to expect would be there.) In June, when Jagger and Richards were sentenced, Richards was given a year in prison simply for owning that house the police chose to target. The sentences were overturned after review (with the reasoning that, if you're going to put someone in jail for a crime, it would be nice to produce tangible evidence), but only after widespread public outcry, including an editorial from the staunchly conservative London Times. Editor William Rees-Mogg was appalled that police powers and resources were so blatantly abused and that Judge Block (who handed out the original sentences) would use his position to indulge his cultural bigotries.

.....In June the Stones recorded this single at Olympic Studios with Lennon and McCartney providing backing vocals for release in August. In the meantime, the Who rush released a cover single ("Under My Thumb" b/w "The Last Time") in July as a show of support. But it was the slamming of the doors that opens the song (excerpted here) more than the sarcastic chorus that set the tone for rebellion and outsider culture that permeates much of side three.

V02-T12 Up Against The Wall

.....[From Jon Savage's "England's Dreaming" St. Martin's Press (NYC, first US edition, January 1992) pages 392-396]

.....On August 23, 1977, The National Front (a notorious neo-Nazi group) caused a riot by making a well-publicized march through Lewisham, a predominantly black working-class borough of South London. They were confronted by Socialist Workers Party and Rock Against Racism protesters. British press and television deliberately edited footage and wrote copy to portray the protesters as antagonists and the National Front as innocents under an unprovoked attack.

....."The same week that the music press carried their reports on Lewisham, they announced the signing of the Tom Robinson Band to EMI Records for nearly 100,000 pounds. The TRB-- who were affiliated to RAR, Spare Rib, the National Abortion Campaign and Gay Switchboard-- offered the perfect chance for EMI Record Division, still bruised by the events of December, to claw back some radical chic."

.....The "events of December" Savage was referring to were EMI's collective behavior towards the Sex Pistols in the wake of the Bill Grundy incident (Google it) resulting in EMI cancelling their contract in January 1977.

Volume 2: "WE'RE ALL GOING TO JAIL FOR THIS, AREN'T WE?", track 12

• 03:35 "UP AGAINST THE WALL" (Tom Robinson, Roy Butterfield)
• performed by The Tom Robinson Band
• original source: A-side, 7" EMI 2787 (UK) May 1978
• and my source: CD POWER IN THE DARKNESS Razor and Tie RE2018 (US) 1993

.....Robinson was in a genteel, too-clever band called Cafe Society when he got his first serious opportunity to record. They were one of the first acts signed to Konk, a new label created and owned by The Kinks. Unfortunately, the sessions were nearly finished before Robinson figured out that the direction his band's album should take was just one more bone of contention between the Davies brothers, one more excuse for them to fight with each other. The album came out, and it was OK, especially for a freshman effort, but Robinson couldn't help but think something was missing. He found out what that was the first time he saw The Sex Pistols perform. He would form a punk band.

.....Roy Butterfield was also known as 'Anton Mauve', the first TRB guitarist when they formed in late 1976. Less than a month later not one original member (besides Tom) was still in the line-up. The line-up they did have remained stable until shortly before this single. After a more than a year of touring, a debut single that reached number 5 in the UK charts ("2-4-6-8-MOTORWAY") and a live EP in the top 20 ("RISING FREE") they finished recording this single and the album POWER IN THE DARKNESS when it was becoming increasingly difficult to ignore the toll it was taking on their 17-year-old keyboard player, Mark Ambler (he was 16 when he was hired). Many rock musicians are stultifying cases of arrested adolescence under the best of circumstances. Being in a politically radical rock band that also has national 'hit' status (and the attention and media coverage that comes with it), led by a very vocal gay activist playing punk venues and targeted by violent terrorist hate groups requires a maturity most high schoolers don't have. For his own sake, Robinson fired him. Eventually he would play in a band with ex-Sex Pistol Glen Matlock, who got fired from that band for being too mature. If it was any consolation to Ambler, after he was fired he got to see the sessions he played on yield this single (which went top 40) and the album within a week or two (which went top 5).

V02-T11 England Rocks

.....Yes, you've probably heard it before and no, you probably haven't. This is going to take a bit of explaining.

Volume 2: "WE'RE ALL GOING TO JAIL FOR THIS, AREN'T WE?", track 11

• 02:51 "ENGLAND ROCKS" (Ian Hunter)
• performed by Ian Hunter
• original source: A-side, 7" CBS 5497 (UK) July, 1977
• and my source: 2LP SHADES OF IAN HUNTER Columbia C2 36251 (US) 1979

.....After I put this compilation tape together in 1993, this track was released as a bonus track for the CD of the album OVERNIGHT ANGELS Columbia/Sony Rewind 506063 2 (E) January 28th, 2002. There was an earlier CD pressing of the album (without the bonus track) for the European market in 1994 and a later one in Japan in 2006. We finally got a sort-of domestic release when it was combined with ALL-AMERICAN ALIEN BOY for American Beat Records, including "ENGLAND ROCKS" as a bonus track.

.....According to Ian Hunter's own liner notes from the 2CD compilation ONCE BITTEN TWICE SHY, this song was first written as "CLEVELAND ROCKS". I'm not sure when it was written exactly, but Hunter rarely wrote about America or American music for Mott The Hoople, but frequently did as a solo artist. And while there's been a handful of outtakes from each of his first two solo LP's (IAN HUNTER and ALL-AMERICAN ALIEN BOY) surfacing as bonus tracks and compilation tracks in the past two decades, "CLEVELAND ROCKS" hasn't been one of them. What he did bring with him from those sessions to the third album was a long-standing connection to the band Queen. Early in their career Queen opened for Mott and were shocked at how good their live shows were, given the commercial underperformance of their Island albums. While Ian was recording ALL-AMERICAN ALIEN BOY in New York, his wife Trudi bumped into Queen on a trans-Atlantic flight, mentioned his sessions at Electric Lady and after landing, the band waited around for an hour at the studio hoping to contribute something. While their own "BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY" single and A NIGHT AT THE OPERA album were both number one in England and top ten in the US, all they wanted at that moment was to be on Hunter's record. They provided the overwhelming backing vocals to "YOU NEARLY DID ME IN", bumping it up to A-side status (it was still buried in the charts by their own "YOU'RE MY BEST FRIEND", ironically). The Queen connection continued after they completed their next album, A DAY AT THE RACES, and their producer Roy Thomas Baker signed on to produce Hunter's next, OVERNIGHT ANGELS, and help him get a harder rock sound than he had producing himself.

.....To this day, Hunter reportedly does not perform songs from this album live. His memories of the project, aside from the actual recording, are pretty bad. During the production period, Hunter had secured a house for the band and crew to crash in (for comfort, camaraderie and minimizing lost time). While they were sleeping, the house caught fire and it was only through sheer dumb luck that nobody died. When the jackets for the album were printed, the photo of studio drummer Dennis Elliott (properly credited in small print) was replaced with a photo of touring drummer Curly Smith. Elliott had been on Hunter's first solo album and then joined Foreigner, whose first album and single had only just come out in the US and was due out imminently in England when the jacket proofs appeared. Hunter had been hoping to persuade Elliott to come back full time, but the jacket switch hurt his case long enough for Foreigner's 7" and LP to go top 5 in the US, killing it completely. This and a number of other things led Hunter to fire his manager, and... well, I should just let Ian explain this one:

"OVERNIGHT ANGELS was not released in the US because I fired my manager, Fred Heller, during the English promotional tour-- just before it was to be released in America. Columbia said they didn't want to release it until I had new management and that dragged on until it became too late." [from Ian Hunter's website, maintained by his wife, Trudi; under the heading 'The Horse's Mouth #6 August 7th, 2000']

.....The label CBS also reportedly nixed using the song "CLEVELAND ROCKS", claiming it was too regional in scope to be widely popular. That didn't seem to hurt "NUTBUSH CITY LIMITS", "BRISTOL STOMP", "MEMPHIS", "JACKSON" or dozens of songs about Chicago and New York. We could probably put this down to executives feeling pressured to appear to have some kind of magical insight into the idiosyncrasies of their business but zero incentive or reward for being right and zero punishment for being wrong. (Sidebar: 1977 was the same year that the comic book character The Incredible Hulk-- then 15 years old-- was turned into a television series. The executives at CBS-TV insisted the character's name, Bruce Banner, be changed to David because they were certain that the public would find the name Bruce too effeminate. Keep in mind that Bruce Jenner took home a chestful of gold medals for being the world's greatest athlete the previous summer and was still on boxes of Wheaties. I'm just saying...) Producing a new session himself, Hunter finally recorded the song as "ENGLAND ROCKS" and it was released with "WILD 'N' FREE" from the OA album on the back.

.....After waiting out Mick Ronson's contractual obligations, Hunter and Ronson were working together again in 1978 on a succession of low-profile and mostly fruitless studio sessions with Corky Laing and Felix Pappalardi (of Mountain) and John Cale, but it was an offer to produce an album for punk group Generation X (with Billy Idol) that led to him signing with their label, Chrysalis. He and Ronson produced his next album, YOU'RE NEVER ALONE WITH A SCHIZOPHRENIC in 1979 and included "SHIPS", covered mere months later by Barry Manilow(?) and becoming Manilow's only top ten single from the ONE VOICE album. In England Hunter had released singles for "WHEN THE DAYLIGHT COMES" and his own "SHIPS" when he got his first US chart action for a single with "JUST ANOTHER NIGHT", backed with the new "CLEVELAND ROCKS". That led to "CLEVELAND ROCKS" getting an A-side release in England and Columbia rethinking matters. Early in 1980, about two months before Chrysalis would release a live double-LP of Hunter and Ronson, Columbia released a double-LP compilation: SHADES OF IAN HUNTER-- THE BALLAD OF IAN HUNTER AND MOTT THE HOOPLE. US copies are actually marked '1979' for copyright purposes. It included one LP of Mott (but only 1972-1974) and one LP of Hunter solo. The first three sides were good mixtures of hits and rarities (given the limited space and the fact that Columbia/CBS already had a hits compilation for Mott in print), but side four was made of "ENGLAND ROCKS", "WILD'N'FREE" and three other songs from OVERNIGHT ANGELS.

.....I wanted to see that compilation make it to CD, but in 1988 Chrysalis used the name SHADES OF IAN HUNTER for a CD-only compilation of 1979-1982 material. Believing that the two labels would dispute claim to the title endlessly, I gave up waiting and added this to my tape as a legitimate rarity. By the end of 1993, too late for me, the Columbia compilation came out on CD in Germany. Then, as I mentioned in the first paragraph, OA got a European CD in 1994, etc. In 1997, The Drew Carey Show (on US television) changed it's opening theme song to a cover of "CLEVELAND ROCKS" by American band Presidents Of The United States. Since then it's been kicking around more broadly than before in the general pop-consciousness, but for many out there the "ENGLAND ROCKS" recording is still an unusual twist on things.

.....Tomorrow, more England, more rock.

V02-T08 The Day The World Turned Day-Glo

.....For any readers who have not lived in England and who are not certain what a "Wimpy Bar" is, the photo on the right is an example of one. It's a fast food restaurant chain, probably the first in England and inspired by the character Wimpy ("I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today...") from the Popeye cartoons/comic strip. Now, before I inadvertently contribute to the mountain of online misinformation out there, I should point out two things: (1) the owners of the Wimpy restaurants don't license or use the cartoon character and (2) they're not affiliated with the Popeye's Fried Chicken restaurants.

.....Oh, and if anybody asks, the photo (assuming it reproduces properly) was uploaded to Flickr by somebody named 'Sumit'. They either are meticulous at cropping digital photos or have a wonderful sense of composition when snapping shots of discount diners.

Volume 2: "WE'RE ALL GOING TO JAIL FOR THIS, AREN'T WE?", track 8

• 02:50 "THE DAY THE WORLD TURNED DAY-GLO" (Poly Styrene)
• performed by X-Ray Specs
• original source: A-side, 7" EMI INT553 (UK) April, 1978
• and my source: CD GERM-FREE ADOLESCENTS Caroline CAROL 1813-2 (US) 1991

.....Poly Styrene was actually Marion Elliott, whose half-English, half-Somali heritage made her stand out when punk swept London in 1977. She definitely belonged in a key spot in punk as a cultural movement; this song was not her only one that showed a keen eye for society's acquiescence and capitulation to the artificial. But in punk as a scene that became increasingly filled with Northern skins and pale, disaffected Mancunians, being afro'd, Arabic, teenage and female was a combination that made her a demographic of one. At the beginning of the year merely being in a punk band gave you an extended family of sorts, but by the end of 1977 there were so many people identifying as punks that the scene was factionalizing under its own weight.

.....This song really dates from at least as far back as the summer of 1977. A studio demo from that time nearly reproduces the live set they performed at the Roxy in April, adding "OBSESSED WITH YOU" and "THE DAY THE WORLD TURNED DAY-GLO". It's worth seeking out that version because it includes original saxophonist Lora Logic, who only appeared on the first of their studio singles, "OH BONDAGE, UP YOURS!" for Virgin that October, before quitting the band to complete high school. (Let me repeat that: she didn't quit high school to join a band in the hopes of becoming famous; she was in a band that was already famous and quit to go to high school. She later formed the band Essential Logic.) Poly Styrene and the rest carried on with Rudi Thomas (Steve Thompson) on sax. They signed to EMI right after New Year's and demo'd all new material plus new takes of "OBSESSED..." and "THE DAY...", which became their label debut in April.

.....Marion dissolved X-ray Specs (who all went on to other bands) and experienced a deeply felt religious conversion. She didn't give up music categorically but only performed or recorded when she could write or find material consistent with her faith. She had one solo album and reconvened X-Ray Specs in the 1990's for the album "CONSCIOUS CONSUMER".

.....I probably picked this song to follow "BATMAN" because there had been an issue of the comic book Doom Patrol named after "THE DAY THE WORLD TURNED DAY-GLO". The writer Grant Morrison was like many other Brits writing American comics in that he incorporated song titles into character names and story titles. Anyway, I'm getting tired and I'm going to need to rest. Tomorrow I exchange social commentary for something more philosophical.