Reupload - Yellow Dog - Little Gods/ Fat Johnny

Label: Virgin

Year of Release: 1978

Of all the songwriters I've bothered to feature on L&TTB, Kenny Young is probably one of the most criminally under-referenced despite his success rate.  Most readers will be only too aware of his back catalogue when the names of his tracks are tripped off the tongue - among his successes are the evergreen classic "Under the Boardwalk", and besides that there's "Captain of Your Ship", "Ai No Corrida", and the rather ignored (by the standards of most top ten hits) "Just One More Night" by Yellow Dog.  Lovers of popsike will also know him as the man responsible for Blue Yoghurt's "Lydia", or perhaps San Francisco Earthquake's "Fairy Tales Can Come True" which I featured on "Pictures of Marshmallow Men".  He's surely due some sort of career round-up compilation, but nobody seems to be particularly embracing that idea with any enthusiasm.

If we're talking about longevity which crosses several decades, what's noticeable about most sixties songwriters and session men is that diversity of approach was often their only means of survival.  Whilst the bands of that era may have huffed and puffed and refused to dilute their "sound, man", songwriters relying on hits to pay the mortgage (and without a troupe of fans to keep them clothed) mixed and matched styles to suit the times.  So it proved with Kenny Young, who by the late seventies was incredibly quick off the bat with a distinctly New Wave sound for his project Yellow Dog, ostensibly a studio-bound concoction of session men with him on lead vocals.

Nobody was fooled, of course - do you really think those beards would have been accepted by the punks of the time? - but one hit was enjoyed by the makeshift band before diminishing returns set in.  Follow-up single "Wait Until Midnight" only got to number 54, and "Little Gods" failed to chart at all.  That's a pity, since for my money this is the most interesting record of the lot, perhaps capturing the jerky quirkiness of New Wave rather too well for its own good, sounding marginally more like an early XTC B-side or an unheard track by The Vapors than a potential smash hit.  Many music industry types and bands were quick to write off the punk movement as a pathetic fad, but I can sense a certain degree of affection for the New Wave genre seeping out of these grooves, and if forced to do a blind guess, you'd never realise a seasoned Brill Building songwriter was behind it.

You can read an interview with Kenny Young here, which really hammers home the sheer quantity of recordings he's been behind.  That said, I'd quite like to forget I ever heard the B-side to this particular single "Fat Johnny", which is yet another aggravating example of a songwriter filling up the flip by attempting to be some sort of parodying stand-up comedian.  Save the jokes and the humour for the ladies at the bar, please.

And yes, the record really does glow in the dark, too.  Once when my bedside lamp was broken, I placed it near the door in my bedroom so I could find the exit easily in the dark if I wanted to go to the toilet at some unexpected hour.  It worked, I tell you, and perhaps even prevented a drunken urine-stained pyjama type incident.

The Pacesetters - Cool Coffee/ The Israelites

Label: Saga Big Chief

Year of Release: 1970

Saga was one of the earliest budget record labels to be launched in the UK, beginning in the late fifties as an outlet for cut-price classical music albums. The success of that venture caused Saga to dip its toes into other waters, sometimes with results that caused them to scurry back to the shore in a gibbering panic (the relative failure of Joe Meek's Triumph label, a subsidiary of Saga, is the stuff of collector's legends) and on other occasions with modest success. Perhaps the label's management also took their cues from Meek when they began shoving promising young bands in the unlikely environment of a North London infant school hall at night to cheaply record the results as rush-released bargain basement LPs. Do check out The Magic Mixture's "This Is The Magic Mixture" if you get the chance - despite the lo fidelity nature of the work, it contains some fine work, not least the haunting, empty school assembly hall echo of "Moonbeams".

The "Big Chief" offshoot appears to have been the label's experimental foray into the territory of reggae, and lasted for a handful of releases before disappearing. The instrumental "Cool Coffee" is sharp enough that it's still talked about fondly by collectors and DJs now - it's roughly recorded and sounds a couple of years older than its release date, but contains an insistent, nagging keyboard line and throbbing bassline.

The B-side is a quickie cover of "The Israelites" featuring Al Barnett on lead vocals. This copy is horribly scuffed and scratched, I'm sorry to say, but I doubt that anyone will think it's an essential addition to their mp3 folder.

As for Saga's excursions into reggae, they continued again in 1975 when they successfully took over the Trojan group of labels, getting seriously involved in the business of marketing the genre as opposed to attempting low-budget cash-ins.

Graffiti - Come Together/ Dear Prudence

Label: Beeb

Year of Release: 1976

I'm enough of a Beatles bore to continue to find the cornucopia of cover versions of their work fascinating. True, most are flawed and a horrible waste of vinyl, but once every so often I stumble on a relatively obscure cut which is actually worthwhile. 

This version of "Come Together", for instance, sounds like The Beatles in a parallel seventies universe. The original was reasonably raw and rugged, but there's a smooth and slithering creepiness here which highlights a sinister side I never sensed in the "Abbey Road" cut. The piano chimes, the guitar wails a new riff which wouldn't sound out of place in an early evening crime drama, and the backing rhythm cooks a tauter, meaner groove. Perhaps more crucially, the changes to the template are subtle rather than dominating, meaning you're nudged closer to what "Come Together" might have become as opposed to listening to a complete reinvention. 

The B-side "Dear Prudence" is less successful, but attempts to psychedelicise the original, adding rumbling analogue synths and vocal effects into the mix. For all its efforts, you can't help but be reminded that Siouxsie and the Banshees did the same to far greater effect in 1983. Still, you can't win them all. 

I'm a bit confused about who Graffiti were. There is still an Iron Mountain, Michigan based covers band operating on the gig circuit going under that name, who boast that they can copy the styles and sounds of any number of popular bands, The Beatles included. It would seem that they are one and the same, but how they came to record a version for "Come Together" for the BBC, who then issued it on their subsidiary label Beeb, is a mystery at the moment. A few enquiries online lead me to believe that an entire album of Beatles covers by the band was planned and then dumped, but all this is lacking what Wikipedia would naggingly refer to as "citation". If anyone has any further clues or even hard facts, I'd love to hear from them.

The Londonairs - Dearest Emma/ Bugles a Go-Go

Label: Decca

Year of Release: 1966

From the fifties right through until the nineties, highly popular television shows tended to begat novelty singles dedicated to them, some official, many unofficial. In most cases, it's the unofficial ones that tend to be the most peculiar and therefore entertaining, albeit for all the wrong reasons. Tim Worthington has done a fine job of championing The Go Go's "I'm Gonna Spend My Christmas With A Dalek" for years now, a sixties cut whose idea of a dalek voice sounds more like Sir Patrick Moore doing an impersonation of a robot. Supremely ridiculous stuff.

"Dearest Emma" by The Londonairs isn't quite in that camp, but as a tribute to Emma Peel of "The Avengers" it is slightly and knowingly silly. "We love all your kinky clothes/ you dress fit to kill/ we'd fight for the right to be the guy with the bill" they chirp rather sinisterly. "We go pale at the things you do to red blooded men/ now that just ain't right to us/ But do it again-". Right. Basically, this is the sound of two session men singing about how they're tempted to have a fiddle around inside their trousers whenever "The Avengers" comes on the telly. Cut through to its core, and that's all this record is saying, complete with a Carnaby Street swing of a backing. If nothing else, you can surely admire its honesty. In the days before Twitter, some comfort could be drawn from the fact that at least you could get your messages of appreciation across to actresses you fancied via the recording studio.

Sadly, "Dearest Emma" didn't get much of a chance to be heard by Diana Rigg aka Emma Peel. The use of the fanfare from the "The Avengers" theme at the start of the single was unauthorised, and no sooner had Decca managed to get a batch of copies to the shops than they had to be withdrawn. This is a rather scarce record as a result, and indeed my copy is not the officially released version but a pre-release promo which was apparently originally sent to the staff at "Juke Box Jury". I have no idea whether it made it on to the show or not.

"The Avengers" following was mighty enough that the 1964 novelty single "Kinky Boots" by stars Patrick MacNee and Honor Blackman charted at number 5 in the UK in 1990 following support from the then Radio One DJ Simon Mayo. Nobody thought to give "Dearest Emma" a proper outing around the same time, and it remained rotting in the vaults. Such is life.

The Crying Shames - Over My Head/ Autumn In The City

Label: Logo

Year of Release: 1980

A total mystery, this one - a record which, according to most vinyl cataloguing sites online, doesn't even exist. Naturally, scarcity is no guarantee of value and I managed to pick it up for less than the price of a glossy magazine. 

As you might suspect, "Over My Head" is a cover of the Fleetwood Mac track, only given a particularly sultry Marshall Hain treatment. Electronic keyboards coo underneath a shuffling rhythm and a male and female duet, and it sounds slightly more date-stamped than the original. This kind of hushed, silky smooth, slightly dancefloor orientated MOR was all over the late-night FM airwaves during the late seventies and very early eighties, and brings to mind the sleeve (and occasionally music) of the K-Tel compilation "Night Moves". That it's stylistically firmly locked in that era doesn't render it irrelevant, however - I've a sneaking appreciation for this single, and if I'd ever been sleazy enough to have a bedroom seduction tape, I'm sure it might have made its way on. And I'm sure it would have improved my prospects with the opposite sex little.

The Crying Shames are also a mystery, and for reasons more intriguing than usual. They appear to have only had one other single out on Logo (although as this one was largely unaccounted for by the Internet, there may be others hidden away). Entitled "That's Rock 'n' Roll", it was credited as featuring Andy Taylor, who online auctioneers and record dealers alike have always assumed was occasional "Left and to the Back" reader Andy Taylor out of Duran Duran. However, he has consistently denied any involvement. As the single also pre-dates the release of their debut single "Planet Earth" by six months, it's also unlikely that a credit for his work would have given the record any particular advantages even if he had worked his way on to the track then subsequently forgotten the entire session.

Anyway, if you know more, drop me a comment. And Happy New Year! There are lots of interesting records coming up over the next few weeks, so please stick with us.