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.

V01-T08a "...My card, pretty lady..."

.....As a change of pace, the next interstitial required background research with IMDb, which for those of you who have never needed to use it is the Internet Movie Database, not Music.

Volume 1: THE PITCHFORK APPROACH, track 8a

• 00:36 [archetypal scene of The Devil bartering for a soul] (screenplay by Ken Sobol; music by Bauhaus)
• performed by Chris Wiggins (Devil), Annabel Kershaw (ingenue/Jan), Martin Lavut (flunky/Wheez), Laurel Runn (Jan's singing voice); music by Bauhaus
• original source: (dialogue) television feature "THE DEVIL AND DANIEL MOUSE" Nelvana (Canada) Oct/78
• original source: (music) radio broadcast of The John Peel Show, BBC Radio 1(England) April 12, 1982 (recorded March 13, 1982) as "PARTY OF THE FIRST PART"
• original source: (commercial release) from Bauhaus, A-side, track 2 of 12"EP [unprinted title:"Covers"] Beggars' Banquet BEG 83T (England) Oct/82
• and my source: CD SWING THE HEARTACHE Beggars' Banquet/RCA 9804-2-H (US) Aug/89

.....I know, that's an awful lot of disambiguation for a half-minute snippet, but it doesn't stop there. The dialogue from the 1978 animated cartoon was sampled and edited for use in the sound collage broadcast on the radio in the spring of 1982 and titled "PARTY OF THE FIRST PART". In the summer of 1982, Bauhaus recorded the Bowie song "ZIGGY STARDUST" and the Eno song "THIRD UNCLE" and released them as a 7" single in October. Weeks(?) later the 12" version of that single was released during a UK tour by following "ZIGGY..." with "PARTY..." on side A and "THIRD UNCLE" with a live performance of the band with Nico (doing "WAITING FOR THE MAN" recorded a year earlier) on side B.

.....While the domestic American pressings of Bauhaus' last two original albums (on A&M) were in print, their British counterparts were difficult to import (for reasons too complicated to go into here), which is a shame because the UK discs had four bonus tracks apiece and the US discs had none. Those bonuses included "PARTY..." on the 1988 UK pressing of "The Sky's Gone Out" album, meaning that we had to wait a year in this country to get the original radio session on "Swing The Heartache".

.....In 2005 there was a 2DVD release of Nelvana's 1983 theatrical feature "ROCK & RULE" with the entire "THE DEVIL AND DANIEL MOUSE" special as a bonus feature on the second disc. The main feature (which hardly touched the theaters) is a must for fans of the "Heavy Metal" animated movie and Ralph Bakshi's 70's-80's output.

.....Tomorrow I'll shed light on the song this interstitial introduces.

V01-T04b Jamaican In New York

.....The preceding interstitial with New York DJ's speaking with some kind of Caribbean accents seemed the perfect lead-in to this next song:

Volume 1: THE PITCHFORK APPROACH, track 4b

• 04:19 JAMAICAN IN NEW YORK (Urban Radio Mix) (Sting[Gordon Sumner], with additional lyrics by E.C. Aiken, Jr.)
• performed by Shinehead
• original source: promo-only CD5 Elektra/African Love PRCD-8716 (US)1993
• and my source: the same

.....Press releases at the time suggested that Shinehead's childhood was spent being sent back back and forth between family members in Jamaica and New York. He was never really abandoned, per se. He was always with people who cared about him. But there was almost inevitably the paradox of feeling both at home and alien in both environments; of simultaneously belonging and not belonging. This enabled him to turn a sharp wit to things that he knew and bring them to life with the clear eye of an outside observer.

.....With that in mind, the liner notes that I wrote for my compilation tape in 1993 still hold up well enough: The original mix is on Shinehead's "Sidewalk University" album. I haven't heard it yet, but I do recommend his second album, "Unity", very highly. Shinehead has a history of stealing from thieves.On "Unity" he lifts from the Beatles' "Come Together", which in turn robs from Chuck Berry's "You Can't Catch Me". This song, more obviously from Sting's "Englishman In New York", which in turn borrows heavily from Quentin Crisp's memoirs and spoken word performances. (I even think he shows up in the video.)

.....All I can add to that is that the video I was referring to was Sting's and that it's possible that I've picked up "Sidewalk University" since writing this. I know I've got "The Real Rock" album and some other singles. I haven't seen much more from him but I don't know if that's because of the vagaries of the market or because it's that much easier to make witty observations when you're younger and everything is still new and grabbing your attention. It's common for artists to become less prolific with age, even when what they do produce is still of good quality. The reasons for that could be anything from physically tiring to becoming a harsher self-critic during the editing process.

.....Next up is another song about transplanting from a sunny, open setting to an urban landscape.