From the Vaults

Elvis Presley: Always on My Mind (1972)

18 Sep 2012 | 1 min read | 2

Unlike the Beatles -- especially John Lennon and often George Harrison -- we rarely think of the Rolling Stones writing autobiographical songs, or lyrics which have come from some deep emotional place in their lives. And even less so with Elvis Presley who, after all, didn't write and would pick up anything from a Christmas carol to a raw blues and turn it into gold, or a very passable... > Read more

Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee: Screamin' and Cryin' Blues (1964)

17 Sep 2012 | 1 min read

Although this song didn't appear in wide circulation until the Terry/McGhee 1964 compilation Pawnshop Blues, it seems to date back to the Thirties. Blind Boy Fuller recorded a version late in that decade (very similar, perhaps more considered) and as always with the blues, songs pass from hand to hand and down the decades. It seems likely however that blind harmonica player Terry picked... > Read more

Crowded House and Roger McGuinn: Eight Miles High (1989)

14 Sep 2012 | <1 min read

Recorded live at the Pantages Theatre in Los Angeles when Crowded House met up with former Byrd Roger McGuinn, this song -- and their versions of Mr Tambourine Man and So You Want to be a Rock'n'Roll Star -- appeared on a '91 version of the CD single for Weather With You (other versions had live Crowdies tracks from the period). Not the most psychedelic guitar solo (Neil Finn could pull out... > Read more

Johnny Ace: Pledging My Love (1954)

12 Sep 2012 | 1 min read

And further to the now familiar story that death is good for a career . . . Johnny Ace had been enjoying a very good run of hits throughout the early Fifties, so much so that maybe he thought he was bulletproof. Literally. His story is well known, how on Christmas night in 1954, while at a gig in Houston he was fooling around with a gun (legend has a Russian roulette game but that has been... > Read more

The Beatles: Old Brown Shoe (1969)

10 Sep 2012 | 1 min read

Although there's probably no such thing as an obscure Beatles' song, this one by George Harrison comes pretty close. It was the b-side to Lennon's Ballad of John and Yoko, and made it onto the second Past Masters compilation. But when the catalogue was remastered and reissued, it was pushed off the mono Past Masters in favour of another Harrison song, Ii's All Too Much (from Yellow... > Read more

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

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

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