Indie Train

Third in the Bagging Area train series. Last week I picked up a Smiths 12" single, a German import with Yootha Joyce on the cover. The A-side was Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others- who thought in 1986, 'what the German indie market is crying out for is Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others as a single, that's the cross-over song'?. Seems a slightly strange choice. The two songs on the B-side were Frankly, Mr Shankly and The Draize Train. It's a lovely pressing, great clear sound. Yes, I've got the songs already. I don't know if it's worth anything, but it only cost me a couple of quid. This record buying lark is an affliction isn't it?

The Draize Train is one of only three Smiths instrumentals. For whatever reason, Morrissey couldn't, wouldn't or wasn't allowed to provide vocals to for it, and it's a bit difficult to imagine how he could've. The Draize Train is a funky little number, with some Johnny Marr rock guitars, a shuffling groove, quite un-Smithsy really. It also sounds a little dated which is unusual for a Smiths song but there you go. All aboard.

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An Accident With A Three Bar Fire

Sweet And Tender Hooligan, a 12" B-side from 1986, sees The Smiths go into attack mode- blistering guitar introduction and whipcrack pace throughout, with an early showing for Morrissey's fascination with gangsters, thugs and smugglers. If memory serves this was recorded for a Peel Session. A good session's work I'd say. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera...

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I Left My Bag In Newport Pagnell

The Freemans Catalogue in the mid-80s featured a little known indie boys section. Our models-Craig, Johnny, Andy, Steve and Mike- show off the summer range. Shoes and sunglasses models own.

This version of Is It Really So Strange came to light on the Unreleased Demos album, recently leaked on the net. It's not so much a demo, more a full but unreleased version. Recorded during the 1986 sessions for the Ask single, it was shelved and when the band needed a B-side for Sheila Takes A Bow they used the Peel Session version of this song instead. The guitar playing on this track shimmers and shines, truly brilliant, and Morrissey delivers his lines about the north, the south, lost luggage and killing a horse. Then you think, 'they rejected this, it wasn't good enough'.

10 Is It Really So Strange_ [Demo].mp3

The Queen Is Deader

Stumbling around the internet a week or so ago I came across an album of demos and unreleased instrumentals by The Smiths. In the past I've listened to The Smiths so much that I can't really hear them anymore so I was intrigued by this album. It contains demo versions (presumably early takes) of various songs- Is it Really So Strange?, Death Of A Disco Dancer, Sheila Take A Bow, Girlfriend In A Coma, Frankly, Mr. Shankly, and There is A Light That Never Goes Out among them- that sound like what they are, which is demos. The arrangements are slightly different, they lack the finished gloss of the album track, different vocal melody, slight lyrical change, and so on. Interesting enough but still, unreleased demos are unreleased for a reason usually. Hearing Frankly, Mr. Shankly with a trumpet part makes you realise they were right to take the trumpet off. There are two unfinished instrumentals, Johnny Marr and the rhythm section trying out tunes that for whatever reason didn't become Smiths songs. Again, interesting enough . A seven minute rough version of Rusholme Ruffians, an instrumental Shoplifters, a few other things that I can't remember right now.

The one that got me hooked though was this one, The Queen Is Dead- monarchy baiting, cheerless marshes, heads in slings, bad piano playing, sponges and rusty spanners, rain and hair, apron strings, castration, drugs, the church, the pub and the band's awe inducing guitar, drums and bass attack. The Queen Is Dead may well be their finest moment- Johnny, Andy Rourke and Mike Joyce's swaggering, feedback-ridden music and Morrissey's funniest and most scything lyrics. This version is The Queen Is Dead before they decided it needed to be shorter, so you get everything you'd normally get but Marr, Rourke and Joyce playing out of their skins for an extra two minutes. If that doesn't get you excited I don't know what will. Or you don't like The Smiths, in which case, fair enough. Always a personal favourite in the Bagging Area bunker, ever since I read years ago that they thought it 'went on a bit' I've wondered what the full version sounded like. Now I know.

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I'd Rather Watch Drying Paint

Yesterday's duo (Pet Shop Boys) meet another duo (Electronic) and record a stand out track from the first Electronic album, Patience Of A Saint. Neil Tennant had already worked with Bernard Sumner and Johnny Marr on the debut Electronic single, 1989's gorgeous Getting Away With It, and on this song Chris Lowe joined in on keys as well. Seeing as Marr had more or less refused to play the guitar on the album there must have been a lot of people standing around prodding drum machines, synths and samplers during the recording of this song. It's a fantastic track nonetheless, with Neil Tennant in withering sarcasm mode (the line that gave this post it's title for example and 'If I drove a faster car, I'd drive it bloody well').

The picture shows the foursome backstage at the Cities In The Park festival held in Heaton Park in the summer of 1991. Held in honour of Martin Hannett who'd died the previous April the Sunday was mainly Factory acts plus some other Manchester bands, and was a good line-up- New FADS, 808 State (very good), Durutti Column, A Certain Ratio, Revenge (they were pretty awful), De La Soul (lots of shouting. Live hip hop and festivals during daylight not mixing very well), Electronic and headlined by Happy Mondays. Security was fairly lax- fences going down left, right and centre followed by hordes pouring in, people working on the gates offering wristbands for a fiver- normal Factory/Hacienda sort of thing really. Electronic went on before the Mondays and at one point you stood looking at the stage with members of New Order, The Smiths and The Pet Shop Boys playing together and thought 'this is some kind of future we're looking at here'.

Factory was declared bankrupt just over a year later.

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Johnny Marr News And Stuff

Local hero, Bagging Area role model (haircuts, dress sense, beautifully inventive guitar playing- OK maybe not the guitar playing. Don't manage the haircuts that well either) and all round good guy Johnny Marr has contributed a track to a download only compilation for the homeless charity Centrepoint. If you head on over to centrepoint.org.uk you can find his cover of the 1969 Rabbit Mackay song Tendency To Be Free, and download it for 99 pence. All the tracks on the album are from 1969, the year the charity was founded. I'd never heard of Rabbit Mackay before, and while the original is on youtube I've not been able to find an mp3 of it to post, which was my intention and I'm not posting Johnny's cover, cos it's for charity innit. Johnny applies some blistering guitar, a cool bassline and some good vox, ending up with a stomping, abrasive song which is well worth just under a quid of your money.

Johnny Marr's charitable work has directly impacted on my family. My son I.T., who has various needs (severe learning difficulties, severe deafness, skeletal problems, various other things, is currently going through puberty- we have some interesting times at the moment!) used to attend Pictor School, a special needs primary school in Timperley. It goes without saying it's a fantastic school, and when I.T. left to go on to secondary this year tears were shed all round. Johnny Marr's nephew attends the school, and a few years back Johnny and the U.S. trainer firm PF Fliers put out a limited edition signature pump, sold on ebay with proceeds split between Pictor School and an Autism charity. That's a picture of one of them up at the top. Obviously I bought a pair. It was funny how someone whose records I'd bought since the mid 80s and followed avidly had this link to my life and our son. Johnny popped in at the school at least once, and promised to come back and play guitar with the kids- I'd love to have seen I.T. playing guitar with one of my heroes, and questioning him relentlessly about what day his binmen come, which supermarket he shops at and whether he uses the bus or the tram (all I.T. obsessions).

So, without rambling on too much more, I'm not posting the Rabbit Mackay cover but you can have this instead, Johnny Marr covering Bob Dylan's Don't Think Twice It's Alright. This was given away with an issue of Uncut magazine back in 2005. A decent acoustic cover version with some good harmonica- and it's not often I get to type that.


Johnny Marr - Don't Think Twice, It's Alright.mp3#1#1

Please Try Again Later

Transit Kings are Dr. Alex Paterson, Jimmy Cauty and Guy Pratt of respectively The Orb, The KLF and bass sessionista/late era Pink Floyd, so you can probably imagine what this sounds like but don't let that put you off. This is upbeat, nicely laid back electronic music with twinkly piano and guest guitar by Johnny Marr. He's been popping up all over the place round here recently. Very pleasant, not as muso-ey as it could, and good for diverting your attention away from whatever's sucking your soul out on Saturday night TV. Yeah, I know you don't watch X Factor, it was your husband/wife/significant other who had it on...

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Full Time

So, farewell then Wayne.

This is not intended to be the outporings of a bitter Man United fan, and it's not like it's a sudden realisation either, but the current furore about Waybe Rooney's decision to leave United kind of sums up what's happened to football since the mid 1990s. Rooney has released a statement today following Sir Alex Ferguson's press conference yesterday, explaining that the reason he wants to quit the club is due the lack of assurances he got from the manager in August about United signing the top players. Wayne wants to win more trophies, he says, and moving to a richer club who can afford to buy the best players in thre world is the way to do that. United fans (and I've been attending matches at Old Trafford since United v Brighton in 1982) can't be too upset though can they? He's only doing to us what he did to his boyhood team Everton six years ago.

Obviously for United fans this is a bit of a shock. Some might say that's pretty rich, and some might say it's well deserved, it couldn't happen to a nicer club etc etc, and there's no doubt that United have done well out of all the money that's been sloshing around football over the last fifteen years. United expanded the ground due to winning trophies in the 90s, benefitted from huge TV money income and selling shirts to muppets home and abroad. On the other hand it takes a bit of getting used to- although we've spent massive amounts of money on players (Ferdinand and Berbatov to name but two) we've also had more than our fair share of successes in bringing players through from youth level, and for a while a good few local lads. The fact that three of them are still turning out regularly over fifteen years later, one-club men, is the exception rather than the rule- but it still made some United fans think there was a little bit more to the club than just the nine year old boy/top trump/tabloid newspaper/Sky TV/transfer market/fantasy football model which is what the whole thing has turned into. I'm not going to sit here and say that Chelsea or City are to blame either. They're just symptoms of the way the game has changed. In a world where there are no rules, no regulations, how a club gets it's money doesn't really matter does it? If football was any other industry, almost every club in the country would be bankrupt and forced to cease trading.

Sky and the Premeir League together with almighty The Champions League, have created this beast, and players' agents now spend their entire time whispering in their clients' ears about the money they can make by moving. So we've got Super Sunday and Judgement Day every weekend and the same clubs playing each other in mid-week European matches every season, and the same clubs winning every trophy at home. Maybe City will break it up. Maybe Liverpool's foreign owners have stuffed them. Maybe the Glazers will stuff United. I'm not sure I care too much anymore.

Equally I know that clubs have always bought and sold players, but there seemed to be less of it, no 24 hour rolling news with rumours to fill it with, fewer agents and hangers-on, the players weren't multi-millionaires at the age of 22, and the transfer fees were far, far smaller. It seemed a little less obscene. More players made it from local youth teams, more time was spent building a side, and the whole thing seemed less mercenary. Maybe that's just naivete on my part though.

As I said I don't intend this as a bitter Red rant, (I'm not bitter, honest) and I don't want to come out with a load of the internet comment board style rubbish I've seen over the last two days, but modern football has precious little that feeds the soul in any way, and this episode is just another nail in the coffin.

Song choice- The Smiths' Money Changes Everything, featuring the wonderful guitar work of Johnny Marr (who's a City fan in case you're wondering. Nice touch eh?).

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This Was A Pizza Hut, Now It's All Covered With Daisies

Another installment in the continuing adventures of Johnny Marr after he left The Smiths.

Talking Heads recorded four (count 'em) groundbreaking albums between 1977 and 1981, reinvented the concert film and the pop video, went from four, to four plus Brian Eno, to four plus any number of ex-P-Funk players, then stripped it all back and fell out. They reconvened for 1988's Naked, which still sounds like a weird add on to their back catalogue, but has some good songs on it.

Not least this one, Nothing But Flowers, featuring David Byrne's lyric about nature taking over and reclaiming the shopping malls, car parks and fast food eateries, and some impossibly funky, African highlife style guitar, from Mr Marr.

Talking Heads - Nothing But Flowers.mp3

Smile

The Isley Brothers' Behind A Painted Smile- joyous, guitar led soul with wonderful vocals from 1968. It does that 60s happy/sad thing as well as any other northern soul record from that time. In an interview last year Johnny Marr said this was a huge influence on him and Morrissey when The Smiths started. That Isley guitar line could easily fit on This Charming Man.

Behind A Painted Smile.mp3

Friday Night Is Rockabilly Night 29

Johnny Marr kicks off Friday night's rockabilly rave-up this week. His rockabilly influences were worn on his sleeve from early on The Smiths, with Rusholme Ruffians on Meat Is Murder, and some later songs as well (Strangeways' Death At Ones Elbow for one). He also sported a mighty fine quiff. His various projects and guest appearances since havn't been too heavy on rockabilly but his mid-00s band The Healers album saw a brief revival. This is Need It, loaded with rockabilly rhythm and spirit. It's possibly the only track on the album I could still listen to - it was heavily Oasis-ised, and as various people pointed out at The Vinyl Villain this week, not very popular. Actuually looking at the track listing, Down On The Corner's pretty good too. But enough Marr conjecture, on with the Diddley shuffle...

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The Rolling Stones 'Hitch Hike'

This 1965 Rolling Stones song, a cover of a Marvin Gaye hit from three years earlier, shows a couple of things. Firstly, that the Stones could be a decent little r'n'b/garage/covers band, and secondly that the opening riff has inspired some of our favourite indie guitar heroes, both at the time and later. The Velvet Underground used it to kick off There She Goes Again in 1967, and almost twenty years later Johnny Marr re-used it to open The Smiths' There Is A Light That Never Goes Out.

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Go Home Productions The Smiths v Destiny's Child 'How Soon Is Independence'

I love these little internet coincidences. Earlier today I posted Can's I Want More, mentioning it's influence on Johnny Marr writing How Soon Is Now. Idly surfing a while ago I came across this, Go Home Productions mash up of The Smiths' masterpiece How Soon Is Now and Destiny's Child's Independent Woman. These two songs go together far better than you'd expect, in fact the fit is hand in glove. Ha. Incidentally get over to gohomeproductions.co.uk for a whole load of other mash up fun. Mark Vidler, GHP, has been at this for years, most famously producing The Doors v Blondie Rapture Riders and the ace Sex Pistols v Madonna Ray Of Gob (which I can't find my mp3 of, can't believe I deleted it). This one may be his best yet though, a beauty.

how soon is independence.mp3

Can 'I Want More'

Can made many wonderful records in the 1970s, but none of them other than this one got them on Top Of The Pops, in 1976, when it reached number 26. Strange days. The guitar riff is also one of the inspirations for The Smiths How Soon Is Now, as Johnny Marr revealed on a documentary last year, which I guess shows how wide his tastes were, not neccessarily obvious at the time. There was an excellent krautrock documentary on BBC4 last year as well, where the West German music scene came across as the most fertile and exciting place to be . It had the two blokes out of Faust taping themselves playing bits of metal with wide eyed joy, surely the most bohemian pair still living out their 60s/70s idealism.

In a World Cup related link, one of the best (unintentional?) bits of commentary on a football match occured at a tournament in the 90s/early 2000s, I forget which, featuring the German midfielder Stefan Kuntz. The Germans pick the ball up and come out of defence- 'Here come the Germans...Kuntz'. Not an opinion I share, but very funny nonetheless.

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