From the Vaults

Jack Nitzsche with Merry Clayton: Poor White Hound Dog (1970)

13 Oct 2014 | 1 min read

There's quite an implosion of Stones' references which come with this track by the great producer, arranger, composer and Phil Spector protege Jack Nitzsche. He was commissioned to write the music for the film Performance which starred Mick Jagger and Keith Richards' girlfriend Anita Pallenberg. Nitzsche knew the Stones from when they visited the States in '64 and he was also music director... > Read more

CC Adcock: Castin' My Spell (1999)

30 Sep 2014 | 1 min read

One of the greatest producers, arrangers and composers was the late Jack Nitzsche who was -- among many other things -- Phil Spector's offsider and orchestrated River Deep Mountain High. You might also know him for the soundtrack to One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, for having writen Needles and Pins with Sonny Bono for the great Jackie DeShannon, playing keyboards on some of the early... > Read more

The Beatles: Carnival of Light, perhaps (1967)

18 Aug 2014 | 1 min read

Even more than the 10 minute version of Revolution (below), the most sought-after and obscure Beatles track is the so-far unreleased Carnival of Light, a free-form instrumental which was recorded for a psychedelic event at London's Roundhouse to take place in late January '67. McCartney said he'd give the organisers a sound effects tape to play and on January 5 the Beatles hunkered down --... > Read more

Simon and Garfunkel: A Simple Desultory Philippic (1966)

11 Aug 2014 | 1 min read

When Simon and Garfunkel released their Bridge Over Troubled Waters album in 1970, many critics read the song The Boxer as an oblique attack on Bob Dylan whose career at the time was in limbo and he seemed to be abdicating music's frontline. The verse which was telling was: "In the clearing stands a boxer and a fighter by his trade, and he carries a reminder of every glove that laid... > Read more

Dinah Lee: He Can't Do the Blue Beat (1965)

4 Aug 2014 | 1 min read

Answer songs or cash-ins were very common in the late Fifties and early Sixties (after success of The Twist it was time for Let's Twist Again etc) and the great and gutsy New Zealand singer Dinah Lee recorded this song -- penned and arranged by Mike Perjanick -- to keep the momentum going after her huge success with the single Do The Blue Beat in '64. That song had followed her... > Read more

Desire: Broken Heart (1985)

30 Jul 2014 | 1 min read | 1

You probably didn't need me to add the date for this one pulled From the Vaults. The hair says it all. Hers too. Desire were singer/keyboard player Suzie Divine and guitarist/keyboard player Gary Havoc, the latter being somewhat of a fixture on the New Zealand music scene at the time. He'd been in a few bands if I recall, certainly Gary Havoc and the Hurricanes during the late Seventies... > Read more

The Beatles: Across the Universe rehearsals (1969)

28 Jul 2014 | <1 min read

The Beatles' Across the Universe had a slightly chequered history: the Lennon song first emerged in early '68 as a result of their time in meditation in India when Lennon felt relaxed and poetic. The verses contain some of his most evocative imagery and the chorus of "Jai Guru Deva" added a veneer of spiritualism to it. But despite its origins, recording it seemed to take... > Read more

Freda Payne: Bring the Boys Home (1971)

17 Jul 2014 | 1 min read

Freda Payne is best known for her hit Band of Gold of 1970, but here during the Vietnam war era she's speaking for all those with loved ones abroad. This was a very direct message at a time when the boys were coming home in body bags, and a disporoprtionately high number were black soldiers. People got the message and this went to number 12 on the Billboard charts. Freda later... > Read more

Jethro Tull: The Story of the Hare Who Lost His Spectacles (1973)

14 Jul 2014 | 3 min read | 1

No one -- not even the members of Jethro Tull it seems -- can fully explain why this oddball spoken-word piece should have appeared in the middle of the album A Passion Play. The best Tull mainman Ian Anderson can come up with is because the rest of the album was so lyrically, emotionally and musically dense -- something about someone dying and going through stages in the afterlife -- is that... > Read more

Skip James: I'm So Glad (1931)

11 Jul 2014 | <1 min read

Previously we posted Otis Rush's original of All Your Love which became one of Eric Clapton's defining versions in '65 (the kind of piece that got the "Clapton is God" graffiti writers going). So here now is Skip James with I'm So Glad which became simply an improv vehicle for Clapton in Cream just a few years later. James -- from Mississippi -- was one of the many bluesmen who... > Read more

White Town: Your Woman (1997)

10 Jul 2014 | 1 min read | 1

Long before there were overnight internet stars, there were -- and still are -- those who simply sat at home and made their songs on rudimentary equipment -- and then tried to sell them into the world. That is difficult, especially if you were Jyoti Mishra who is White Town. "I'm not exactly the easiest package to sell: some fat Asian bloke who does his own recordings? It's not going... > Read more

PJ Proby: Lonely Weekends (1965)

9 Jul 2014 | 2 min read | 1

One of the most pressing problems facing big voiced balladeers of the mid and late Sixties -- PJ Proby, Tom Jones, Solomon King, Engelbert Humperdinck and John Rowles among them -- was a lack of decent material. When the Beatles arrived writing and singing their own material (then the Stones and others) the whole landscape of popular music changed. Although a few songwriters had previously... > Read more

Max Romeo: Wet Dream (1969)

8 Jul 2014 | <1 min read | 1

The great Max Romeo has his War Ina Babylon (produced by Lee Scratch Perry) as an Essential Elsewhere album for its street politics and memorable songs, but this was the thing which got him a lot of attention. Produced by Bunny Lee at Studio One, understandably banned by the BBC ("lie down gal let me push it up, push it up"), not released in Jamaica, reaching number two on the... > Read more

Otis Rush: All Your Love (1958)

7 Jul 2014 | <1 min read

One of Eric Clapton's most definitive and distinctive early statements was his cover of this song by the great Otis Rush, which appeared on the John Mayall Blues Breakers album of '65. You can hear his version at that link. What is interesting is just what a precision player Clapton was. He hears every nuance of Rush's version, but delivers a steely, crisp but deeply felt rendition... > Read more

Ivor Cutler: Life in a Scotch Sitting Room and Go And Sit Upon the Grass (1975)

27 Jun 2014 | 1 min read

The Scottish poet and comedian Ivor Cutler (1923 - 2006) barely scraped the surface of wide public acclaim outside of the UK, and even there he was a minority figure. But he did appear in the Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour in '67 after Paul McCartney spotted the eccentric, quietly spoken Cutler on a late night television show. In that Beatles film he played Buster Bloodvessel, the driver of... > Read more

Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young: Change Partners (1974)

6 Jun 2014 | 1 min read

Here's an early exclusive for you. In a month an album drawn from '74 concerts by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young will be released for the first time. It comes as a single disc (for the track listing see here), but also in a three CD and DVD format, and for the full track listing of that see here. (It's got Young's Revolution Blues on it, can't wait to hear that!) The release of this... > Read more

Tall Dwarfs: Ride a White Swan (1998)

4 Jun 2014 | <1 min read

In the course of researching the folksy-hippie sound of Tyrannosaurus Rex of the late Sixties, before they morphed into the brilliant pixiefied glam rock of T. Rex, I was turning up some interesting oddities in their catalogue. But when I got to their pivotal song Ride a White Swan with which Marc Bolan announced a whole new Rex -- electric, poppy, teen-directed -- I stumbled on this... > Read more

Gurus: Shelley in Camp (1968)

28 May 2014 | <1 min read

The '68 film Wild in the Streets had a helluva cast: mad Shelley Winters as a hippie convert then chewing up the scenery, Hal Holbrook as a shrewd politico seething as only Hal could do; Richard Pryor, Ed Begley . . . Crazy story too: through the machinations of political manipulators a nation turns itself on its head and vote in a president who is a young rock singer who then legislates to... > Read more

The Queen Annes: You Got Me Running (1985)

26 May 2014 | 1 min read

Amazing, isn't it, how far a sound can travel? Like the sound of Mod England as epitmised by the Who reaching right into the heartland of Washington state in the US where, in the early Eighties, this band took it (belatedly) to heart. It would be an exaggeration to say the Queen Annes were one of the great undiscovered pre-grunge bands from Seattle, but on the evidence of a recent... > Read more

Solomon King: Happy Again (1968)

22 May 2014 | 1 min read

Solomon King -- not to be confused with the equally enormous late Solomon Burke -- was something of a one-hit wonder when his big voiced ballad She Wears My Ring went racing up the charts in the UK in '68. Like Engelbert Humperdink, King's style seemed to belong to an earlier era . . . and the album which accompanied the hit confirmed it: he covered the gorgeous Stranger in Paradise... > Read more