From the Vaults

The Score: Please Please Me (1966)

22 Jan 2024 | 1 min read

Manchester band the Score was short-lived, just one single released at the end of 1966 when the world of pop was moving in a more psychedelic and exploratory direction after the Beatles' Rubber Soul and Revolver, and the Beach Boys' Good Vibrations single and Pet Sounds. So the Score covering what by then was a hoary old Beatles' song which they'd left behind seems like a strange choice.... > Read more

Elvis Costello: You Hung the Moon (2010)

15 Jan 2024 | 1 min read

On his 2010 album National Ransom, Elvis Costello gave dates and places for where his songs were located. In You Hung the Moon (a saying which means you were terrific/great/wonderful) he locates the song in "a drawing room in Pimlico, London, 1919". That date puts it just after the end of World War I (1914-1918). It starts with Costello setting the scene at a... > Read more

Bud Shank: Blue Jay Way (1968)

8 Jan 2024 | 1 min read

The great jazz flute and sax player Bud Shank -- who died in 2009, aged 82 -- had some form in turning his hand to popular songs (that's his flute on the Mamas and the Papas' California Dreaming) but he also worked with the late Ravi Shankar, notably recording the thrilling piece Fire Night for Shankar's 1962 album Improvisations. The Magical Mystery album from which this is lifted -- which... > Read more

Young John Watson: Space Guitar (1954)

1 Jan 2024 | 1 min read

It's become common to hail Fifties out-there guitarists like surf king Dick Dale, Link Wray and others . . . but the man who became the great Johnny "Guitar" Watson has been somewhat sidelined. In the mid-to-late Seventies this journeyman -- who had done the hard roads with Little Richard, the wonderful rock'n'roll/soul shouter Larry Williams, Johnny Otis and many other greats --... > Read more

Jimi Hendrix: Little Drummer Boy/Silent Night/Auld Lang Syne (1969)

25 Dec 2023 | <1 min read | 1

"And so this is Christmas, and what have you done?" Time for reflection amidst (hopefully) enjoying family and friends . . . and we will all do that in our own way. Jimi did it this way. This was part of some long studio jamming, the first two songs here were recorded in December '69 with drummer Buddy Miles and bassist Billy Cox in the Record Plant in New York and... > Read more

The Hollies: If I Needed Someone (1965)

18 Dec 2023 | 1 min read | 1

As we know the Beatles were great borrowers, stealers and adapters. From old rock'n'roll (Run For Your Life, I'm Down) to current Dylan (You've Got to Hide Your Love Away, Norwegian Wood) and Northern soul (Got to Get You Into My Life) they would listen, take an influence and reshape it in their own image. When you listen to the first version of Rain it was a pure slice of Searchers jangle... > Read more

Geeshie Wylie and Elvie Thomas: Last Kind Word Blues (1930)

4 Dec 2023 | 1 min read | 1

The mysterious Geeshie Wylie has appeared previously pulled From the Vaults with Skinny Leg Blues, the B-side of Last Kind Word Blues. As we mentioned then she recorded just six songs (that we know of) and there are few confirmed photographs of her. Seemingly just two at best. It's believed that she was of the Gullah people in Georgia and South Carolina and it's fairly certain Geeshie... > Read more

GHP: Rapture Riders (2004)

27 Nov 2023 | <1 min read

One of the most famous tracks by GHP (British DJ/producer and remixer Mark Vidler), this breakthrough in mash-ups was so good it was approved by both Blondie and the Doors (whose Rapture and Riders on the Storm it pulled together). It was even included on Blondie's 2005 Greatest Hits collection. GHP (Go Home Productions) has created more than 200 mash-ups using everyone from Abba,... > Read more

The Beatnix: Stairway to Heaven (date unknown)

20 Nov 2023 | <1 min read

There are any number of bands who can convincingly replicate the look, sound and songs of Beatles (our money always goes to excellent Bootleg Beatles). But Australia's Beatnix took a different path on their It's Four You album, a compilation which came out through Glenn A Baker's Raven reissue label in 2017. They covered very early songs that Lennon and McCartney wrote but never... > Read more

Ram John Holder: Pub Crawling Blues (1969)

6 Nov 2023 | 1 min read

To be honest Ram John Holder's name and music hadn't crossed our path since the very early Seventies when my younger sister somehow ended up with an album. Ram John was obscure even then and more so these days, despite him receiving a CBE in the Queen's Birthday honours in 2021 for services to drama and music. It was the first part of that award he was being acknowledged for because he... > Read more

Jah Wobble, The Edge, Holger Czukay: Snake Charmer, reprise (1983)

28 Oct 2023 | 1 min read

Yes, it was the Eighties as you can hear from the first stuttering synths on this overwrought supersession. Bassist Jah Wobble was post-Public Image Limited, The Edge from U2 clearly at a loose end (although a decade away from letting go on Achtung Baby) and multi-instrumentlist Czukay from Can probably quite liked the idea of getting into a studio for a series of free-flowing sessions.... > Read more

Neil Colquhoun: Talking Swag (1972)

15 Oct 2023 | 1 min read

For many years in the late Seventies/early Eighties, when working at Glenfield College in Auckland, I had no idea that the slight, quietly spoken music teacher Neil Colquhoun was the same person who had compiled an important collection of New Zealand folk songs for the book Song of a Young Country, and had subsequently produced a double album of the same name for Kiwi Pacific. On that album... > Read more

Sarah Vaughan: I Want You (1981)

11 Oct 2023 | 1 min read | 2

Because we so often think of music as existing in distinct and different periods -- the Swing Era, Fifties rock'n'roll, the Beatles period etc -- we tend to forget just how much overlap there was. Punk, disco and Gary Glitter all co-existed . . . and people like Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby were around long enough to sing songs by the Beatles. And so was Sarah Vaughan who, in 1977,... > Read more

I Want You

Missing Persons: Words (1983)

9 Oct 2023 | 1 min read | 1

Anyone who stumbled onto this LA New Wave band on You Tube a decade or so ago couldn't help note what others were saying: Lady Gaga had ripped off the style (and some of the sound) of frontwoman Dale Bozzio's sense of big-hair and glammed-up look. Perhaps more corrrectly Lady Gaga had simply taken it as a starting point, just as scantily-clad former Playboy bunny Bozzio took a little... > Read more

Elvis Presley: Do the Vega (1968)

1 Oct 2023 | 1 min read | 1

Elvis Presley's catalogue of songs in the Sixties is pretty scattershot. Sessions would often be very productive (the material was hardly demanding) and so the songs would be drip-fed over a period of years with no real sense of chronology. But this was a strange one. Originally recorded for the film Viva Las Vegas, the song wasn't included on the tie-in EP (which incidentally didn't... > Read more

The Archies: Sugar Sugar (1969)

24 Sep 2023 | 2 min read | 2

Okay, it's irritating rot-your-teeth bubblegum . . . but wait, there is more to this than you might think -- and remember it came out in the year of Altamont, Hendrix, the Manson murders and so on. The Archies weren't a proper group of course, they were actually singer Ron Dante, session musicians and the great Toni Wine (more of her shortly). At the time this song was selling millions,... > Read more

Pavlov's Dog: Julia (1975)

18 Sep 2023 | 1 min read | 2

Sometimes there is just That Voice . . . a vocal delivery which is arresting, sublime, idiotic and otherworldly all that same time. And so it was with the vocals of David Surkamp, the singer with the prog-rock band Pavlov's Dog out of St Louis, who seemed to possess in equal parts the sound of Robert Plant's high drama, Leo Sayer on steroids and someone grabbing his balls in vice.... > Read more

Joe Boot and the Fabulous Winds: Rock and Roll Radio (1958)

11 Sep 2023 | <1 min read

From The Ventures (Walk Don't Run) and the Kingsmen (the garageband classic Louie Louie of '63) through Jimi Hendrix, the grunge bands (Nirvana, Mudhoney, Pearl Jam etc) to the Posies, Sleater-Kinney and Modest Mouse, the Pacific Northwest has been a breeding ground for rock'n'roll. Identifying the first rock'n'roll record to come out of the region however has been rather more difficult --... > Read more

Steve Allen and Shona Laing: Brother and Sister (1974?)

21 Aug 2023 | 2 min read

Steve Allen (Alan Stephenson) is best – and perhaps only – known for his hit Join Together which was chosen as the anthem for the Commonwealth Games held in Christchurch in 1974. There's no denying its uplifting and affirming quality and it was re-recorded in an international version editing out the specific reference to Christchurch. It was a big hit but also something of a... > Read more

Prince: Soul Psychodelicide (1986)

14 Aug 2023 | <1 min read | 1

This previously unreleased track came to light on the massive Super Deluxe edition of Sign O' The Times and is interesting for a number of reasons, not the least being what he shouts out: "Ice cream". According to Lisa Coleman -- of Wendy and Lisa, and one of the expanded Revolution band here -- when Prince was "in a good mood or we were having a good show, he would sometimes... > Read more