From the Vaults

Bob Dylan: Ballad in Plain D (1964)

7 Sep 2012 | 1 min read | 3

With a few exceptions (the song about John Lennon's murder on his new album Tempest), Bob Dylan's songs have long since ceased to be about anyone in particular. And there's a case to be made that perhaps many of those in the mid Sixties which appeared to have been aimed in particular directions (girlfriends Joan Baez, Edie Sedgwick and Suze Rotolo, running mate and fellow bear-baiter Bob... > Read more

The Beach Boys: In the Back of My Mind (1965)

5 Sep 2012 | 1 min read

In the very interesting DVD doco Brian Wilson; Songwriter 1962 - 1969, Bruce Johnston -- who replaced Brian in the touring line-up of the Beach Boys in the mid Sixties -- identifies this song as anticipating the classic BB album Pet Sounds. It appeared on the album The Beach Boys Today!, a record which largely went past many people who by this time had wearied of the BB's endless... > Read more

Jimmie John: Solid Rock (1959)

31 Aug 2012 | <1 min read

Rockabilly is a genre that seems to enjoy the fact that it doesn't change or grow, develop or move too far from a simple template of a backbeat and the invitation to dance. It is shamelessly self-referential (in truth it just borrows or steals from itself) and back in the early Fifties when it emerged it didn't take it too long to establish some fundamental principles. Then Elvis -- and... > Read more

George Formby: When I'm Cleaning Windows (1936)

29 Aug 2012 | <1 min read

In his later years George Harrison developed an affection for the ukulele, and one of its greatest practitioners, English music hall comedian, singer and actor George Formby. Right at the end of the Free As A Bird single Harrison threw in a nod to Formby, and specifically to this mildly naughty song which had them rolling in the aisles in the Thirties and Forties. Formby -- from... > Read more

Kurtis Blow: The Breaks Part 1 (1980)

27 Aug 2012 | <1 min read

It seems a curious thing that in hip-hop -- which often brags about how much it respects its past -- the briefly famous Kurtis Blow should have disappeared from the landscape. But The Breaks made Kurtis Blow -- born Kurt Walker -- one of the first rap superstars when he was the first of the genre to record for a major label (Mercury) and the 12" version of this sold a whopping half a... > Read more

Brenda Lee, I'm Sorry (1960)

23 Aug 2012 | 1 min read

Little Brenda Lee -- who stood 4'9" -- was never a threat. Not to girls in her audience. "My image wasn't one of a heartbreaker," she once said. "I was the little fat girl your mother didn't mind you playing with." When Lee went to number one with this powerful and aching performance she was one of the few women -- she was 15 -- to crack the charts. Just two years... > Read more

Alfred E Neuman: It's a Gas (1963)

22 Aug 2012 | 1 min read

There's the widely held if rather snooty view that fart noises and belching are only amusing to adolescent boys. This rather ignores the obvious: that there will always be adolescent boys, and even more people who have been adolescent boys. Which perhaps explains the enduring if low appeal of this outing by Mad magazine's Alfred E Neuman. Mad did a number of such spin-off projects (none... > Read more

Hank Ballard: The Twist (1958)

17 Aug 2012 | 3 min read | 2

The Twist wasn't the first dance craze of the pop era but it was certainly the biggest -- and the last. When Chubby Checker demonstrated the dance on American television in mid 1960 -- "Just pretend you're wiping your bottom with a towel as you get out of the shower, and putting out a cigarette with both feet" -- the simple movements went around the globe from the White House to... > Read more

The Twist

Little Willie John: Let Them Talk (1960)

8 Aug 2012 | 1 min read | 2

One of Bob Marley's greatest and most pivotal songs was Soul Rebel, in the earliest version you can hear him moving away from the secular rude boy world into embracing the Rastafarian faith. He announces he is a "soul rebel", and while you can lock a rebellious man away, take his weapons and slander his name, if he is a rebel right from his soul he will never be broken. In... > Read more

The Chicks: The Rebel Kind (1966)

6 Aug 2012 | 1 min read | 2

New Zealand has no great tradition of political pop or rock. All those years of high unemployment during the Flying Nun heyday . . . and who mentioned it? Very few. Even the Springbok tour in '81 barely generated a whisper from musicians. (Riot 111 here being the noble exception.) And during the Vietnam period? Barely a dickey-bird . . . aside from, oddly enough, mainstream pop... > Read more

Peter Sellers; The Trumpet Volunteer (1958)

3 Aug 2012 | <1 min read | 1

There has been a long tradition of mocking the pretentions of rock and pop singers, which isn't that hard. Many of them take themselves very seriously. When National Lampoon for example got stuck into a Pink Floyd-like musician who wanted to create a massive rock opera (on their '75 album Goodbye Pop, helmed by Christopher Guest of Spinal Tap) they were just part of a long lineage of... > Read more

The Trumpet Volunteer

The Electric Prunes: I Had Too Much to Dream Last Night (1966)

2 Aug 2012 | <1 min read

Recorded at the end of 1966 and almost tipping into the US top 10 in January of the following year, this implosion of garageband rock, backwards guitar and tripped out intentions ushered in a year which was going to be full of such stoner delights. But the Prunes -- like New York's Blues Magoos -- had always been more raw rock than some of their colleagues although, as with so many bands at... > Read more

Ma Rainey: Toad Frog Blues (1924)

30 Jul 2012 | 1 min read

Few would have described Ma Rainey (1886 - 1939) as one of God's finest creations. Her pianist Thomas A. Dorsey said charitably "I couldn't say that she was a good looking woman". In Francis Davis' The History of the Blues; the Roots, the Music, the People from Charlie Patton to Robert Cray he writes, "everyone else who knew Ma Rainey described her as pug ugly, a short and... > Read more

Allen Ginsberg: Dope Fiend Blues (1974)

26 Jul 2012 | 1 min read | 1

Jimi Hendrix said he believed he couldn't sing, until he heard the young Bob Dylan and thought, "Well, if he can do that . . ." As a poet drawn to song, Leonard Cohen thought much the same about Allen Ginsberg, a man who sang less like Pavarotti than a first round contestant in American Idol. Ginsberg sing? Not really. But Ginsberg, like Cohen a Jew drawn to Buddhism, knew... > Read more

Elton John: Madman Across the Water (1970)

24 Jul 2012 | <1 min read | 1

During the sessions for his excellent country-rock album Tumbleweed Connection (an Essential Elsewhere album, see here), Elton John recorded this nine minute version of the menacing and moody Madman Across the Water, but wasn't satisfied with it. He subsequently re-recorded it, and it became the title track to his next album. But this version isn't without interest, notably because it... > Read more

Not Sensibles: I'm in Love with Margaret Thatcher (1979)

19 Jul 2012 | <1 min read

In Giles Smith's hilarious book Lost in Music, he tells of forming a band with his brother. His mum suggest they call themselves . . . the Smiths. Cue laughter from the boys, comments like who would name a band that and so on. Not Sensibles out of Burnley, England got their name when guitarist Sage Harley's dad heard about him forming a band and - because none of them could play with any... > Read more

The Savage: Gimme Some Lovin' (1966?)

18 Jul 2012 | <1 min read

No, this is not the Spencer Davis Group sped up but a Japanese group (person?) which appeared on the '91 album Slitherama; Psychedelic Tokyo 1966-1969, the third volume of Japanese garage bands on the Planet X label. And other than my copy came on white vinyl there is nothing more I can tell you about the album or the artists (who also included The Outcast, the Spiders, the Mops, the Jaguars... > Read more

The Church: The Unguarded Moment (2004)

17 Jul 2012 | 1 min read

Just as John Lennon borowed, plagiarised and stole from early black r'n'b artists for riffs and chords on songs like I Feel Fine and Revolution, so too various phases of the Beatles' work has been plundered and remade by everyone from the Merseybeats and ELO through the Jam and on to Oasis ("I'm surprised Paul McCartney hasn't sued me," said Noel Gallagher) and beyond. Some of the... > Read more

Graeme Gash: Watching Television (1981)

16 Jul 2012 | 1 min read | 6

Posting a From the Vaults song off the Waves album of 1975 (here) was almost more trouble than it was worth. There was so much off-line (ie. e-mail) traffic along the lines of, "Loved that album, why isn't it on CD?") that I even formulated a standard reply. It went along the lines of "Thanks for your interest, but I don't know why it isn't. It should be". Someone... > Read more

Mr Lee Grant: Tabatha Twitchit (1968)

11 Jul 2012 | 1 min read

New Zealand's Mr Lee Grant enjoyed a short but high profile career in the late Sixties on the back of his big voice (and distinctive hairstyle which was very Mary Quant). But Grant's voice wasn't big and rounded like his peers Tom Jones, PJ Proby, Englebert Humperdink etc, and nor did he have an emotional range like Scott Walker or Roy Orbison. Because he came up through the television... > Read more