From the Vaults

The Blue Stars: Social End Product (1966)

17 Feb 2025 | <1 min read

This country may not have a great tradition of protest songs but there have always been songs of dissent, anger and, from the late Fifties onward, teenage rebellion. One of the first – a punk single 10 years before punk -- was this by Auckland's Blue Stars. The angry young man who won't fit in with society's plan. These days one line needs some explanation: “I don't... > Read more

Paul McCartney: My Valentine (2012)

14 Feb 2025 | <1 min read

For the past many years on this day (February 14), it has been Elsewhere's habit to post the lovely Valentine by Nils Lofgren (with help from Bruce Springsteen) but this time . . . Paul McCartney's 2012 album Kisses on the Bottom was a classy, beautifully produced album of (mostly) covers from the Great American Songbook and beyond. Yes, it was slightly patchy . . . but for songs like... > Read more

Anna Russell: Folk Songs (1952)

10 Feb 2025 | <1 min read

With her beautifully modulated tones and remarkable voice -- which went from a soprano squeal to a screech quite effortlessly -- Anna Russell was an enormously popular comedy-cum-classical act in the Fifties. She would poke fun at Wagner and contemporary classical music equally: of the latter she said it was music for the singer who was tone deaf, because in a contemporary song it's very... > Read more

Sister Lottie Peavey: When I Move to the Sky (1945)

27 Jan 2025 | 1 min read

It's always remarkable what you can discover on a cheap album. I bought this Lu Watters/Bunk Johnson record from Rough Trade in Bristol for ₤3 (about $6.50) and what bargain it proved to be. Unbeknownst to me at the time these recordings by cornet player Lu Watters and his band (on one side) and trumpeter Bunk Johnson and his band (on the other) were a goldmine of great playing... > Read more

Bugotak: Kon Togethy (2006)

20 Jan 2025 | 1 min read | 1

We could fill the bottomless black hole that is From the Vaults with just oddball versions of Beatles songs. (So far we have been restrained, just Laibach, cartoon character Elmer Fudd and the Beatles Barkers *). But this track is irresistible. Bugotak is a Russian group which plays Siberian instruments, guitars, Chinese flutes and fiddles, and has George "Father Gorry"... > Read more

Dread Zeppelin: All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth (1990)

23 Dec 2024 | <1 min read

Christmas is upon us. And in the spirit of the day here is one of the funniest bands ever. Whoever thought pulling together reggae rhythms and Led Zeppelin riffery was an odd fish . . . but then they went one step beyond and fronted the band with an Elvis impersonator. This was classic rock-comedy . . . and their shows were hilarious. For this B-side however they went even... > Read more

Bob Dylan: The Christmas Blues (2009)

20 Dec 2024 | <1 min read | 1

No one would ask why Bob Dylan does something -- shilling for Victoria's Secret comes to mind -- or can be surprised by whatever it is. That said, the Yuletide album Christmas in the Heart in 2009 did catch everyone by surprise. Dylan croaking through Here Comes Santa Claus, Hark the Herald Angels Sing, Little Drummer Boy, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas and other seasonal delights?... > Read more

Ernest Tubb: It's For God And Country and You, Mom (1965)

2 Dec 2024 | 1 min read

War always produces songs from all sides of the trenches and Vietnam was no different: a slew of patriotic and tally-ho songs in the early days then more cynical, anti-war sentiments coming through as the body count rises. Here Ernest Tubb and His Texas Troubadours deliver one from those early days of US military involvement when some saw the issue very simply: there was a line drawn to... > Read more

Steeleye Span: Cam Ye Oer Frae France (1973)

25 Nov 2024 | 1 min read | 1

As with Fairport Convention (which included Richard Thompson), Steeleye Span were in the vanguard of the British folk-rock movement of the late Sixties. Unlike Fairport however, Steeleye Span didn't move as often and as far from the roots of folk and frequently drew on Francis Child's text The English and Scottish Ballads for inspiration and source material -- a book which has more recently... > Read more

Chris Clark: I Want To Go Back There Again (1967)

18 Nov 2024 | 2 min read | 1

Of the few white acts on Berry Gordy's Motown label, Chris Clark -- with platinum blonde hair, pale skin and a kind of Marilyn Munroe appeal -- was undoubtedly the whitest. "Getting my singles played on radio was difficult," she said later. "Once [DJs] found out I was white they thought Motown had tried to trick them. "I always hesitate to say any of that, or that... > Read more

Geeshie Wiley: Skinny Leg Blues (1930)

11 Nov 2024 | <1 min read

Blues singer Geeshie Wiley -- probably not her real name, more likely a nickname because she was of the Gullah people of South Carolina and Georgia -- recorded even fewer songs than Robert Johnson. Just six known recordings and no photograph of her exists either. She may have been with a traveling medicine show in the Twenties but, other than her recordings in an 18 month period, not... > Read more

The Nu Page: When the Brothers Come Marching Home (1973)

4 Nov 2024 | 1 min read

The Nu Page were a one-single group signed to the Motown subsidiary label MoWest which released songs by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, Thelma Houston and Tom Clay (whose version of Abraham Martin and John/What the World Needs Now is Love gave them a top 10 hit). Of Nu Page very little is known but this song -- celebrating the closing overs of American involvement in Vietnam -- had... > Read more

The King: Come As You Are (1998)

28 Oct 2024 | 1 min read

Although there aren't Elvis sighting in gas stations and supermarkets any more, there is still no shortage of lookalikes and impersonators around. While there seems no great call for Kurt Cobain and Mama Cass impersonators, those who swish their hair back and sneer a little seem to be always out there. One week I interviewed two of them and within days I had forgotten which was which,... > Read more

Leonard Cohen: Because of (2004)

21 Oct 2024 | <1 min read | 1

The equation seems simple: Leonard Cohen (the self-described "ladies man") + women + bed = But of course nothing was ever quite that straightforward with a Jewish Zen Buddhist poet-cum-singer and unlikely sex symbol even his mid 70s. Here with amusing self-effacement he confronts aging, his reputation, plays with images of "naked" women bending over the bed . .... > Read more

Bruce Woolley and the Camera Club: Video Killed the Radio Star (1979)

14 Oct 2024 | 1 min read

Whenever the story of the Buggles' hit Video Killed the Radio Star is told, two things are invariably mentioned: the clip of it was the first song to be played on MTV in 1981 and that the Buggles -- real one hit wonders and merely a studio band -- never played live. However there is more to the story and it is told by chief Buggle/songwriter and famous producer Trevor Horn in his modest,... > Read more

Bob Dylan: You Belong To Me (1994)

7 Oct 2024 | 1 min read | 2

The idea of "possessing" your lover isn't a pleasant thought these days: the subtext is spousal abuse, just plain creepy stuff and not a few killings you read about on page five. But there are a few songs where that idea of possessive passion has a wistful, oddly lost and sympathetic quality on the part of the singer. At one end it is someone asking Ruby not to take her love to... > Read more

The Rainmakers: Let My People Go-Go (1986)

30 Sep 2024 | 1 min read

Bob Walkenhorst of Kansas City's Rainmakers had a good line about his fellow Americans' willingness to get out of it. "The generation that would change the world is still looking for its car keys." The smart line came from the song Drinkin' on the Job off the band's self-titled, major label album in '86 ("Everybody's drunk, everybody's wasted, everybody's stoned and... > Read more

Norman McLaren: Synchromy (1971)

23 Sep 2024 | 1 min read

Personal story here. In the mid-Eighties I started a brief correspondence with the Canada-based animator Norman McLaren, then very advanced in years. I wanted to tell him the pleasure his short animated films gave me and my senior school students studying film. I think my first letter was sent to the National Film Board of Canada where he had worked and was forwarded to him because he'd... > Read more

Eddie Quinteros: School Blues (1958?)

16 Sep 2024 | <1 min read

One of the pleasures of diving into the vaults is you come across songs you'd forgotten but seem to say so much about an era. At the same time as Chuck Berry was writing his songs celebrating teenagers, the hop, cars and rock'n'roll itself, this Mexican-American from Daly City near southern San Francisco was exactly the right age to be singing about school blues. Eddie Quinteros was 13... > Read more

The Rolling Stones: I'd Much Rather Be With The Boys (1965)

9 Sep 2024 | 1 min read

Right at the end of the Rolling Stones doco Charlie is My Darling -- which captures extraordinary footage of a brief tour in Ireland in '65 with a stage invasion and general mayhem -- we see the Stones goofing off and playing a song that was a rarity. This one. And its rarity value is two-fold. First it was credited to Keith Richards and their manager Andrew Loog Oldham, and second that... > Read more