Tag Archives: Beatles

Radio City #2 – Brian Matthew
2
Feb

Radio Two, as you would expect, has three regular weekly decade-based oldies shows every weekend, each highlighting one of the three decades during which the R2 core audience turned eighteen.

The excellent Johnnie Walker presents Sounds Of the 70s on a Sunday afternoon, which unfortunately mixes dull feature interviews with interminable West Coast rock, while Sarah Cox’s Sounds Of The 80s is a similar waste of a great presenter – a request-heavy trawl through the decade in the Saturday evening graveyard slot.

Sounds Of The Sixties, though, is an absolute bloody miracle of a show.

-Brianb+w

Presented by 87-year-old veteran broadcaster Brian Matthew, who was there pretty much at the start of rock’n’roll / pop music radio in the UK, hosting “Saturday Club” from 1957 and “Easy Beat “from 1960. He added TV to his CV from 1961, presenting “Thank Your Lucky Stars” for five years.

His clipped received pronounciation was very much BBC standard of the time, but the man’s enthusiasm for the music shone through, so he never really appeared “above” the bands he interviewed – you can hear plenty of examples of his rapport with The Beatles on the various sessions they recorded for the BBC between 1962 and 1965.

He continued on various shows on BBC Radios One and Two through the seventies and eighties -“My Top Twelve” was a particular highlight, his relaxed interviewing style allowing him to get quite a lot out of the likes of Rod Stewart, Rick Wakeman and (just twelve days before her tragic death) Mama Cass Elliot.

The uninitiated might expect Sounds Of The 60s to be simply a selection of chart hits such as you might hear on Gold or Absolute 60s – and I’m not knocking those fine stations, by the way, sometimes you just need something nice and familiar, which is the way 80% of all commercial radio works.

But Sounds Of The 60s is something different. Sure, there are hits, but these are interspersed with B-Sides, rare tracks from well-known artists and downright obscure sounds from bands nobody has ever heard of apart from a tiny number of aficionados.

The Sixties were such a time of musical change that it is relatively straightforward to build a playlist that covers tracks from the early 60s (1960-1962, pre-Beatles), the mid-Sixties (1963-1966,the Beat boom,Beatles,Motown,etc) and the psychedelic late 60s (1967-1969).

Beatles-with-Brian-Matthew

Each of these three eras is covered in each show, which means that any given “avid” will almost certainly not like all every song played but that’s fine, because the songs from “your” mini-era will inevitably be excellent.

An example playlist from 30/01/2016 contained The Rolling Stones, Roy Orbison, Curtis Mayfield & The Impressions, The Ribbons, The Four Seasons, Elmer Gantry’s Velvet Opera (below), Bobby Vee, Sanford Clark,Kathy Kirby,Jet Harris & Tony Meehan, The Drifters,Gene Pitney, The Ugly Ducklings and The Honeycombs …
… and that’s just the first half of the show (“Side One”).

There are requests, but the show has been going for so long now (since 1990 with Brian at the helm, before that introduced by Keith Fordyce) that all us loyal regular listeners (“avids” – yes, the show has its own slang, and even John Peel never managed that!) both want and expect something different.

There are special features – a strangely arbitrary one where Side One Track One and Side Two Track Two of an album is played and the Loose Connection where a listener selects three songs linked as tortuously as possible by a common theme. I have yet to get one right.

If I have one slight complaint I’d like to hear more black music but that’s just a personal preference. The show does exactly what it is supposed to do, which is why it has lasted so long (and with the same presenter for the past 26 years)

Sounds Of The 60s group on Facebook

There’s an excellent Sounds Of The Sixties Facebook Group which I’d recommend to anybody who likes the show, especially when the show is actually on air.

Despite the saying, if you remember the sixties, that doesn’t mean you weren’t there, but it does mean that you’re an invaluable resource for fielding questions about the era if you don’t remember it yourself (which I don’t, not really, as I was just too young)

One of the topics exercising the fans just now is the vexed question of who will take over when Brian finally calls it a day? It’s hard to see Tony Blackburn or Johnnie Walker (the only survivors from that era) doing as good a job – both their talents lie in other directions. My vote would go to Craig Charles or a similar enthusiast – let’s hope a replacement is not required for a few more years yet.

Sounds of the 60s bingo on Twitter

Every week you choose five artists, use the hashtag #sotsbingo and if Brian plays an artist you’ve chosen you get a point. It’s fiendishly hard. The average score is zero, and I’ve only managed more than 1 point on one occasion. It’s also great fun. I think Brian would approve.

See you round the radio on Saturday morning, avids. Leaving you with this obscure tune from 1961 featuring a man who decided (wisely or not, who can say?) to stick to playing other people’s records rather than making his own.

FESTIVE FIFTY OF 1965 – Further Listening – Nos 10-1
5
Jan

Final blog instalment of the Festive Fifty of 1965.

You can download the two-part podcast absolutely FREE here:

10. THE NOVAS “The Crusher”

Minnesota-based (where else?!) garage band The Novas, wrote this song dedicated to wrestler Crusher Lisowski.

The song has been covered by the Cramps and the Ramones.

The Novas were more usually known as an instrumental band and the B-side of the record “Take Seven” is a decent beefed-up slab of psyche-surf.

9. THE EMERALDS “King Lonely The Blue”

Formed in Farnborough in Hampshire in 1963, the Emeralds got to make three singles, none of which got anywhere chart-wise.

After such a great track as “King Lonely The Blue” had flopped in late 1965 the band changed their name to “Wishful Thinking” and gained a fair amount of success in Denmark, but not in their home country. Check the Beatley end to this.

8. THE BEATLES “Think For Yourself”

george 1965 close

George Harrison’s “Think For Yourself”, lyrically cynical and wielding an odd sequence of chords, which, written down, look like somebody’s programmed a computer to write a song and “be a bit experimental”, somehow works wonderfully well. Paul McCartney’s double-tracked bass guitar makes it sound like something nasty lurking in the vaults, perfectly matching George’s bitter lyric.

I suppose you could definitely say it doesn’t rip anybody off though.

7. MARTHA REEVES & THE VANDELLAS “Nowhere To Run”

When the matter of Martha Reeves & The Vandellas’ finest single comes up, the debate is usually between “Dancing In The Street” and “Heatwave” but the correct answer is of course “Nowhere To Run”.

Incidentally I’d put “Jimmy Mack” at number two, an underrated track – not least by Motown who shelved it for two and a half years after it was recorded in 1964, finally becoming a hit in 1967.

6. THE FOUR TOPS “The Same Old Song”

The highest-placed Motown tune in the Festive Fifty of 1965. The Four Tops released two stone cold classics that year and to be honest if it wasn’t for the “one song per artist” rule “I Can’t Help Myself” would also have got in.

5. SIR DOUGLAS QUINTET “She’s About A Mover”

First release and the only hit for Texas band Sir Douglas Quintet whose combination of a British name and – initially – look attempted to cash in on the just-about-current British Beat Boom that still had currency for another year or so. Sonologically though, the band their Tex-Mexc origins with a garage-based 12-bar blues sound.

This was their first single and their only hit – perhaps they were seen, unfairly from the evidence of their 1969 song “Mendacino” and others, as a novelty band. Founder and mainman Doug Sahm knows how to squeeze every last drop out of two chords – TWO! – and a Farfisa organ hook.

4. THEM “Mystic Eyes”

And while we’re on the subject of two-chord songs, this has rarely been bettered.

The track drops straight in with a full head of steam.

In a song lasting two minutes and 47 seconds, the vocals don’t come in until 1:14. The first minute is played on one chord – one note in the case of the organist – under a crazed, rocking harmonica solo and only then do we drop down to the second chord. We then get a minute’s worth of vocal imagery – a signpost towards Van Morrison’s more stream-of-consciousness lyrics later in the decade – and a long fade on the same chord, leaving you feeling like someone’s kicked you up the arse then run away.

Kicking Bishop Brennan Up The Arse

3. GEORGIE FAME & THE BLUE FLAMES “Yeh Yeh”

Possibly the last ever jazz record to get to Number 1 in the UK, unless you count “Deeply Dippy” by Right Said Fred, which I am inclined not to.

Georgie Fame was so cool he could sing a ska/bluebeat version of a nursery rhyme in a cod-West Indian accent and it would STILL sound great.

Don’t believe me? Check this out.

2. BOB DYLAN “Like A Rolling Stone”

There’s been so much written about this song that I don’t really know where to begin.

Greatest Dylan song? Best Number One song ever? Perfectly defines the moment when pop became rock? Marks Dylan’s transition lyrically from clear protest anthems to more opaque, more personal yet more widely applicable songs? All of the above?

I still can’t think of any other songs regarded as important enough to have a whole book written about them – and Griel Marcus’s impassioned 200-page tome is pretty readable.

1. THE SONICS “Psycho”

From the New Yorker on the occasion of The Sonics’ 2015 comeback album “This Is The Sonics”:

Garage rock doesn’t exactly demand innovation. Songs should be crunchy and upbeat, and if they focus on girls, or cars, or girls in cars, they’ll pretty much do the trick.

Early on, the Sonics intuitively understood this—but they also played harder, faster, and with more grim aggression than anyone in Tacoma, Washington, had ever thought to play.

Morbid hits—now cult favorites—like “Psycho” and “The Witch” sounded angrier and more abrasive than any form of rock and roll that had come before.

Check out “Strychnine,”

At the time, Tacoma was the working-class Liverpool to Seattle’s swingin’ London. “My dad ran a crane on the waterfront,” the saxophonist Rob Lind said recently. “There were great musicians in Seattle, but the music was jazzy and swingy. We were blue-collar guys—we wanted to rock.”

Their formula—straight, pounding beats, bellowing or screeched vocals, pre-stomp-box distortion achieved by maxing out their amps’ volume—presaged the volatile energy of punk rock. It also built them a fan base in the Northwest “teen club” scene, where bored youth drank in the parking lots of halls with names like the Red Carpet and the Lake Hills roller rink.

But a lack of national distribution prevented them from reaching a wider audience. The Sonics never toured extensively, and hit their peak opening for groups like the Beach Boys, Jan and Dean, and the Kinks in Seattle.

But they made a lasting impression. “Strychnine” was covered magnificently by both The Fall and The Cramps. In 1994, Kurt Cobain said that Bob Bennett’s machine-gun drumming was “the most amazing drum sound I’ve ever heard.” Their songs have also been recorded by Bruce Springsteen, the Flaming Lips, and the Ramones; and the White Stripes have cited them as an influence.

During the garage-rock revival of the early noughties, the Sonics were rediscovered by a new group of listeners, and they reunited in 2007.

This week, the band releases “This Is the Sonics,” its first album of new material in nearly half a century, one of the longest intervals between recordings in rock history. The new work has the same primal intensity of its previous records, thanks in no small part to the producer Jim Diamond, who has worked with the White Stripes, the Mooney Suzuki, and a slew of other contemporary acts who owe a debt to the Sonics. Diamond recorded the band in mono, to capture the spirit of the sixties output.

Lind quit his day job, and he and the Sonics have embarked on a tour of the U.S., with a stop at Irving Plaza on April 8. With the band members in their seventies, will the live show still pack a punch? Lind chuckled. “It’s the most fun I can have without getting in trouble with the cops.”

Hope you’ve enjoyed reading these notes.

During 2016 we’ll be releasing a Retro Beat Sixty-Six podcast every week on podomatic (see the links at the top of this blog piece) together with notes similar to this, covering the sounds of fifty years ago this week – and not the standard hits you can hear elsewhere, either.

Stay tuned, hep cats!

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Arthur Rigby And The Baskervylles
3
Aug

Arthur Rigby And The Baskervylles – Half Moon, Putney 30/07/13

Brass players are starting to disappear unexpectedly from up-and-coming bands on the London gig circuit.

If you go on their website (below) Arthur Rigby And The Baskervylles are billed as an 8-piece band to include a 3-piece horn section, and there’s no saxaphone player. Tankus The Henge, a band of whom I am more than fond, were reduced to a single horn player (from a full complement of two) the last time I saw them.

It’ll be like the disappearing bees. Not The Bees as in the band “The Bees”, although come to think of it, what DID happen to them?. I mean  the insects.

You’ll all notice it in about three years time and then it’ll be like “oh no, why didn’t we listen to Tony”.

The name of the band, according to the violinist, derives from references to singer Ben Hatfield’s heroes and influences. His grandfather was called Arthur, and Baskervylle Road in Heswall, Merseyside is where Paul McCartney bought a house for his father Jim. And the “Rigby” bit …

It’s fair to say Macca will nod approvingly on hearing these guys.

I’d heard their sound described as “chamber pop” and they do have certain similarities to the excellent Paris Motel (who should make another original album soon btw!)

If you want comparisons they have more in common with the Divine Comedy and Dexys – and the quality of the songs is more than a match for Hannon or Rowland.

They released an EP last year called Tales From Pegasus Wood, five superbly crafted songs arranged beautifully, the best being “Follow”.

Live, however, they pack far more of a punch – without ever doing anything so crass as “rocking out”. Many more successful bands could take a lesson here as to how to translate your music from the studio to the live setting. It’s not a matter of turning it up and playing louder and faster, so you lose the subtleties. Sounds obvious but it’s often ignored.

Arthur Rigby and the Baskervylles give the impression of a band who really get off on what they do, a proper team effort with seemingly no egos pushing their way to the front of the sound.

The sound helps – I hope they never play anywhere with dodgy sound as this would detract from the magic they create. The Half Moon’s sound people always do a good job in my experience, and tonight they excel themselves. It’s loud, but you can hear every instrument clearly.

There’s a minimum of chat as the first few numbers are played with nary a pause, which is most welcome. Most of the songs are new to me, but have that quality that makes you think they’re standards.

As I walk to the station my lasting memory of the gig is of the trumpet player singing along to the song during a bit where he hasn’t got anything to play.

When the band are as into the material as that, you know you’ve got a good thing going.

The Great Lost Beatles Album of 1971
1
Mar

There are many, many “what if”s to ponder in Beatles history.

What if they hadn’t sacked Pete Best in favour of Ringo?

What if Brian Epstein had been straight and therefore less able to see the potential to create the world’s first boy band?

And what if John had never met Yoko? Well, for one thing, they would never have split up when they did.

In 1970 the four Beatles were far from creatively spent. Looking back at the early 70s it seems that for the first few years after the breakup , all four members were furiously engaged in trying to out-do each other as to who could put out the best songs and sell the most records.

I’ve never subscribed to the theory that “they never reached the heights they reached together”.

It is more accurate to say “they never reached the sustained heights” – and it is my contention that the only reason for this was that they were no longer working together.

Paul would have vetoed John’s more indulgent experiments, and John would have continued to rein in the more overt examples of Paul’s whimsy. And both would have encouraged George to new heights.

Simple mathematics tells us that if the same creative team makes four albums separately, these are, on average going to be only 25% as good.

Weight the average in favour of John and Paul and against Ringo and you’d probably expect a Lennon or a McCartney album to contain 40% Fabs-quality material, George’s album would have a one in five hit-rate and anything Ringo could come up with would be a bonus.

So, suppose the Beatles had taken a year off after the release of Let It Be, gone their separate ways, but then reconvened at Studio Two, Abbey Road around mid-1971.

The resulting album could have been their best yet. They would have argued about the tracks and the order, with John finally winning the battle to finish on a political, rather than a feel-good song.

The Great Lost Beatles Album Of 1971

Side One

What Is Life (George)
Back Off Boogaloo (Ringo)
Another Day (Paul)
Wah Wah (George)
Maybe I’m Amazed (Paul)
Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey (Paul)
Instant Karma (John)

Side Two

Imagine (John)
The Back Seat Of My Car(Paul)
Give Peace A Chance (John)
It Don’t Come Easy (Ringo)
C Moon (Paul)
My Sweet Lord (George)
Working Class Hero (John)

FESTIVE FIFTY YEARS AGO – 1962 Part five
2
Jan

December 31st 2012

Final instalment of my imaginary Festive Fifty from 1962. This is my idea of what might have been included in a listeners’ Festive Fifty chart if John Peel, or similar, had been working for the BBC in 1962.

Hope you’ve enjoyed it – you may or may not agree with the selections, which is perfectly fine by me. Happy to chat about any glaring omissions / ridiculous inclusions.

Here’s the Top Ten, followed by a full rundown of the entire Festive Fifty.

10. ROY ORBISON – Dream Baby

An example of how the right singer can transform a song.

Writer Cindy Walker, a prolific sountry singer in her own right, was not happy with this song until she heard the The Big O’s take on it, which transforms it from a fairly standard yearning ballad into a sleazy bar-room wail.

9. THE CRYSTALS – He Hit Me And It Felt Like A Kiss http://bit.ly/Vc1QMj

One of the most controversial songs of the year, this was written by Gerry Goffin and Carole King after hearing that singer Little Eva (“The Locomotion”) was being regularly beaten by her boyfriend. When asked why, Eva replied that his actions came out of love for her.

The song comes across as a simple slice of life story, told without judgment.

It’s pretty shocking and it’s hard to find any hint of irony in it.

I reckon John Peel would have played it in the face of criticism from his employers, and his listeners would have picked up on it and voted it in here as a rebellious action.

But feminism and equal rights for women were a very long way away in 1962, and it is perhaps fanciful to imagine him, or any other male DJ (and I’m not sure there was any other kind of DJ then) playing it as a political statement.

8. THE CONTOURS – Do You Love Me

Written by Berry Gordy (well, that’s what it says on the label but there’s a whol can of worms there, perhaps a topic for another day) for the Temptations, who, like the Contours at the time, had no hits to their name, but, incredible as it sounds, the Temps were unaware that Gordy had a song for them to record and had disappeared to undertake another paid engagement.

So the Contours gratefully recorded it and it became a huge hit for them – indeed, their only hit.

It’s a great record, but something of a one-off novelty without a great deal of depth to it, so it may well be that the Temptations had a lucky escape. Who knows, if they hadn’t found a gospel music showcase gig when Gordy was looking for them, it could have been them who were introduced to the world with this dance cash-in rather than the sensitive, meaningful “My Girl”. On such events do our lives change.

7. DION – The Wanderer

Another record from the simple era that was the early sixties.

Sung completely without irony it is basically a celebration of shagging around that is difficult to resist.

Always wondered what precisely he meant by the “two fists of iron” line though, in the context of a song about a womaniser. Or maybe I’m reading too much into it?

6. TONY SHERIDAN AND THE BEAT BROTHERS – My Bonnie

The first big hit, at least locally on Merseyside, for the Beatles (credited here as the Beat Brothers and backing club singer Tony Sheridan.

Legend has it that this is the song that alerted future manager Brian Epstein to the band’s existence when a teenage boy came into his record shop and asked for it.

Epstein had never heard of the record or the band. Intrigued, he began to investigate the band and ended up managing them.

This record had come out the previous year but, in this alternative Peel history, would have achieved a huge head of steam during 1962, and would have gained plenty of votes from those in the know.

5) DICK DALE – Misirlou

The origins of this tune are unclear, but it was written in the late twenties by an unknown Greek writer.

It became popular throughout the Middle East in various tempos, styles and even lyrics being added.

In 1962, Dick Dale was challenged by a fan to play a song on one string of his guitar. Dale’s family was a Lebanese-American musician, and he remembered seeing one of his uncles play “Misirlou” on one string of the oud.

Speeding up the song to a rock and roll tempo and adding the crashing drums, cinematic strings and the crazed closing piano figure, the record became a massive hit, and would be covered by pretty much all the surf bands of the era.

4) DEL SHANNON – So Long Baby

This could well have struck a chord with the listeners.

Possibly the greatest “We’re through and I’ve moved on” song ever recorded, the protagonist begins by putting a brave face on it but it soon becomes clear that he is on no way over the relationship.

The minor key and oddly plaintive horn solo bring this out further.

And all this is done in just a shade over two minutes.

3) HOWIE CASEY & THE SENIORS – The Fly

1962 was undoubtedly the Seniors’ year.

Slightly ahead of the other Mersey groups in terms of making records and tightening up their live sound, this dancefloor classic captures the feel of Merseybeat 1962 in two and a half minutes.

Things would change once the Beatles started hitting their stride though.

2) BOOKER T & THE MGs – Green Onions

Organist Booker T Jones and his band were the house band for Stax Records during the sixties.

This simple 12-bar blues tune with a soulful Hammond organ lead line that pretty much defined the sound of sixties R and B.

1) THE TORNADOS – Telstar

Named after the Telstar communications satellite, which was launched into orbit in July 1962, this was written and produced by the legendary British produced Joe Meek.

It still sounds like an alien thing today, so God only knows what effect it had in 1962.

It was a ground-breaking record in many ways. Firstly, the futuristic lead line played on the clavioline, an early electronic keyboard. Secondly, it was the first record by a British band to reach Number One in the USA, very much the shape of things to come over the next couple of years during the British Invasion.

Most of all, though, all the futuristic-sounding effects were created in Meek’s recording studio, which was a flat above a shop in North London.

I’ve really enjoyed putting this imaginary Festive Fifty together and I hope you’ve enjoyed it too.

I’ll most likely do one for 1963 next Christmas. There would be a good argument for including about 20 Beatles tracks but we’ll see …

Meantime, here’s the full rundown.

FESTIVE FIFTY OF 1962

1. THE TORNADOS – Telstar
2. BOOKER T & THE MGs – Green Onions
3. HOWIE CASEY & THE SENIORS – The Fly
4. DEL SHANNON – So Long Baby
5. DICK DALE – Misirlou
6. TONY SHERIDAN & THE BEAT BROTHERS – My Bonnie
7. DION – The Wanderer
8. THE CONTOURS – Do You Love Me?
9. THE CRYSTALS – He Hit Me (And If Felt Like A Kiss)
10. ROY ORBISON – Dream Baby
11. DUANE EDDY – The Avenger
12. HOWIE CASEY & THE SENIORS – I Ain’t Mad At You
13. ISLEY BROTHERS – Twist And Shout
14. MARVIN GAYE – Hitch-Hike
15. MARY WELLS – Operator
16. DUANE EDDY – The Ballad Of Paladin
17. BOB DYLAN – Song To Woody
18. THE RIVINGTONS – Papa Oom Mow Mow
19. THE SHADOWS – Wonderful Land
20. THE TOKENS – The Lion Sleeps Tonight
21. BOBBY “BORIS” PICKETT AND THE CRYPT-KICKERS – The Monster Mash
22. THE BEACH BOYS – 409
23. DEL SHANNON – Cry Myself To Sleep
24. DUANE EDDY – Dance With The Guitar Man
25. BOB DYLAN – You’re No Good
26. ELVIS PRESLEY – Good Luck Charm
27. EVERLY BROTHERS – I’m Here To Get My Baby Out Of Jail
28. HOWIE CASEY & THE SENIORS – Twist At The Top
29. MARY WELLS – I’m Gonna Stay
30. MARVIN GAYE – That Stubborn Kind Of Fella
31. LITTLE OTIS HAYES – I Out-Duked The Duke
32. BOB DYLAN – Talking New York
33. ELVIS PRESLEY – Return To Sender
34. GENE CHANDLER – Duke Of Earl
35. RAY CHARLES – Half As Much
36. THE VENTURES – My Bonnie Lies
37. EVERLY BROTHERS – I’m Not Angry
38. GINO PARKS – Fire
39. JET HARRIS – The Man With The Golden Arm
40. LORD BLAKIE – Maria
41. THE BEATLES – Love Me Do
42. RAY CHARLES – It Makes No Difference Now
43. THE TORNADOS – Jungle Fever
44. BOB DYLAN – Fixin’ To Die
45. BYRON LEE – River Bank Jump Up
46. DAPHNE ORAM – Four Aspects
47. EVERLY BROTHERS – How Can I Meet Her
48. GINO PARKS – For This I Thank You
49. LITTLE STEVIE WONDER – Wondering
50. SAM COOKE – Bring It On Home To Me