Parachute Men - If I Could Wear Your Jacket...?

Label: Fire
Year of Release: 1988

I've only recently begun to realise how few female lead singers had success in the eighties and nineties - in the present decade it would be considered extremely unusual if there were a top ten singles chart without a woman to be seen anywhere. A quick bit of research for previous decades shows that this was nothing absurd back then at all.

Perhaps this is why I keep on digging up so many female-fronted bands for consideration on this blog. The Leeds based band The Parachute Men were no exception to the lock-out, and being an indie band in the eighties as well could hardly have set the odds stacked against them higher. This is interesting, as the music they produced was actually thoroughly commercial, utlising chiming guitar lines and infectious vocal melodies. Fire Records obviously thought so - they made an official to complaint to the BBC about their failure to playlist their single "Leeds Station" on Radio One, and took it public in the music press as evidence of Auntie Beeb's bias against independent labels. Whilst the resulting squabble was interesting and fun, it didn't cause the corporation to change their minds about either that single or any of the rest of the band's output.

Somewhat predictably, the band were said to have knocked it on the head when they finally got sick of travelling down to London to play the same old half-filled small venues, and by the time the nineties dawned they were largely forgotten. A deep shame - this single proves they had a sound easily the equal of their more successful peers, and to prove it's no fluke, I've bundled in another A-side "Sometimes In Vain" for your approval. It's a lot moodier than "Jacket", and has a heavy, brooding atmosphere along with its pop hooks.

I've also included the b-side to "Jacket", "Meredith Burgess"... which once again isn't all that much cop. Perhaps I should just forget about uploading flip sides unless they're any good...

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Beyond the Wildwood - A Tribute to Syd Barrett

Label: Imaginary
Year of Release: 1987

This is the second CD I ever bought, fact fans... I was faithful to vinyl for rather a long time.

The Tribute album was a distinctly late eighties/ early nineties phenomenon, but is a concept which still continues to trundle along to a lesser extent to this day. At one point, it was very difficult to look through the CD section of just about any cult artist without seeing a tribute album dedicated to them. The majority of them were completely rush-recorded gash by various unsigned bands you'd never heard of and almost certainly would never hear from again. In their aims to produce tribute albums to artists, some indie labels (because it was almost always indie labels) mistakenly assumed that XTC or REM were going to take time out of their busy schedules to bang out a version of a Captain Beefheart song for their compilation. Usually they were sorely mistaken, and the best they could manage was some band from Ipswich called Oh No She's Got A Zygote! The resulting version of "Electricity" would then sound like a bunch of buskers using Casio presets to recreate the Theremin noises, whilst somebody who had never even sniffed a trumpet in their lives honked on it in the background for the sake of it.

Whilst a lot of tribute albums were therefore a waste of perfectly good beer or grubbage money, you can point the blame for the trend squarely in the direction of this particular CD, which was one of the very first ones out of the traps. And, in truth, it's not half bad. Where most of the artists had the advantage with Syd's output is that - as Mr Smee rightly points out above - the foundations for his solo output were very stark and sparse in the first place. Therefore, if some psychedelic-influenced eighties indie band wanted to flesh out the original vision, they could.

Plenty chose not to, however, and what this CD reveals is something I've been arguing for a long time - that the boundary between twee/ C86 indie-pop and sixties psychedelia is sometimes wafer thin. The Television Personalities were always sixties kids at heart, but nothing quite prepares you for their version of "Apples and Oranges" which is significantly different from (but equally impressive as) the enjoyably messy original. Their cockernee mod take on the track makes it sound like "Parklife" ahead of the time. Then there's Plasticland's rather jaunty (but significantly inferior, I'm sorry to say) version of "Octopus".

Light years ahead of the artists I've just mentioned, though, are The Mock Turtles with their frankly startling version of "No Good Trying", which sounds like something from the early seventies before glam found its feet and the last effects of psychedelia were still lingering. It's a swaggering, camp beast of a track, and one which may surprise many who only know them as the one-hit wonders from the mobile phone advert. Also up there with the best is Paul Roland with his haunting hymnal version of "Matilda Mother" and The Shamen* who take "Long Gone" to new menacing, creepy conclusions.

There's a lot of guff on the CD as well, I'm afraid to say, and The Soup Dragons can hang their heads in shame for pissing on the Syd party - their attempt at "Two of a Kind" adds little to the original Peel Session version, which was never one of Syd's finest moments anyway. In fact, there is still debate about whether he wrote it at all, or if it's the work of another Floyd member. What Noise's version of "Rats" also probably seemed like a very hip and progressive piece of sample city mayhem at the time, but has dated horribly since - full credit to them for trying to do something different with the original material, though, even if the end result does sound like some kind of perverse attempt to create a hip-hop version of a Syd track on a Fostex machine in a damp abandoned warehouse. You've got to give it a go, I suppose...

Syd Barrett albums never go out of print (although there's a lot of material left in the can which really deserves to also see the light of day) but this tribute album did disappear off the shelves a number of years ago. I don't think it's an essential part of your Barrett collection, but it's certainly worth owning for some of the better moments, which may get you wondering what else could be achieved with some of his more threadbare moments, and who else in the present day could put their own skewed interpretations on his work. I can think of plenty of possible contenders.

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(*Hands up who managed to forget that The Shamen launched themselves as a psychedelic revival band before releasing their Ebeneezer Goode assault much later in their careers?)

Tracklisting:
1 The Mock Turtles - No Good Trying
2 Plasticland - Octopus
3 SS-20 - Arnold Layne
4 Paul Roland - Matilda Mother
5 Fit and Limo - Long Cold Look
6 The Shamen - Long Gone
7 Opal - If the Sun Don't Shine (Jugband Blues)
8 The Ashes in the Morning - Baby Lemonade
9 Lobster Quadrille - Wolfpack
10 Paint Set - Golden Hair
11 Tropicana Fishtank - No Man's Land
12 TV Personalities - Apples and Oranges
13 Soup Dragons - Two of a Kind
14 Green Telescope - Scream Thy Last Scream
15 Chemistry Set - See Emily Play
16 What Noise - Rats
17 Death of Samantha - Gigolo Aunt

The Honeycombs - Eyes

Label: Pye
Year of Release: 1964

In terms of Joe Meek productions, there are endless examples one could pluck out of thin air to include on a blog like this one - including works such as "I Hear a New World" which seems to have become more famous and more talked about in the last ten years than in the 35 years following its release. By now, with a stageplay of the producer's life out on the streets and a film starring Rhys Ifans supposedly in the pipeline, an introduction to Meek seems unnecessary. If you've never heard of him, there are shedloads of books and websites out there (and a whole box set) that will tell you about his work, and if you have, me giving you a quick rundown of all the established facts about his methods isn't going to enhance your appreciation one jot. For one thing, it feels like far too complicated a story to effectively condense into one paragraph, and bullet points would be far too insulting.

One argument that Meek obsessives love to throw out to the rest of the world is that he was "ahead of his time", however, and this is one of the tracks which regularly gets pulled before the jury. The Honeycombs' flop third single "Eyes" is, to say the least, extremely melodramatic, unpredictable and peculiar sounding for 1964. The combination of pattering drums, pinging guitars and teeth-clenching vocals sound much more like the kind of ideas late sixties rockers like the Beacon Street Union would have thrown around towards the tail end of the decade, and even they would fail to chart with them.

Lyrically as well, rumours persist that this song is actually about seeking homosexual companions in gay bars. It's not explicit enough in its content to really call a bluff or otherwise on that claim, but if true, it certainly wouldn't be the last time Meek gave the subject matter a spin.

Conversations are also regulary had about whether The Honeycombs are an underappreciated sixties band - in truth, I add them to this blog with a feeling of slight reluctance, since they managed a number one hit with "Have I The Right?" (therefore finishing about 50 places higher than many superior bands in the latter half of the decade) and managed a small string of minor hits afterwards. However, there is something to be said for the fact that "Have I The Right?" is one of the better beat singles of the sixties, certainly more exhilirating than The Beatles earliest output, and tracks like "Eyes" do prove that the band could be tremendously forward-thinking. Lest you scoff and say that it was all down to Meek, it's also worth remembering that the band have frequently insisted that they created most of their arrangements, not him - which makes this quite an interesting piece of work in all, even though their overall back catalogue can be patchy.

Harry Corbett - Like The Big Guys Do

Label: Pye
Year of Release: 1963

I am utterly bewildered by the sheer volume of flop comedy series spin-off singles out there - they are a testament to how often the sixties and seventies music industry thought it was being marketing lead, when in actual fact it was just being downright foolish and issuing unlistenable crap. I could (and perhaps should) compile an entire compilation of them for your pleasure, but trust me, most are awful. The prospect of a waxing by Leonard Rossiter might seem tempting, but in reality most of Leonard Cohen's output is more amusing. There's normally one wry joke per Cohen disc, which is at least one more than Rossiter managed during the woeful "Rising Damp" single.

Once every so often one crops up which is so absurd I feel I have to upload it, however, and this is up there with Bernard Manning's "Everybody's Fool" for lyrical content. "Like The Big Guys Do" is a pained, agonised romp through the dark backwaters of Harold Steptoe's soul, and he goes much further than you'd really like.

"Down on the corner, under the light," he sings, "that's where you'll find me every night/ watching the pretty girls pass my way..." Well, we can be thankful he didn't hide in the shadows waiting for them, I suppose.

"Why do they always pass me by?/ Why won't they stop when I give them the eye?" he continues, at which point you're tempted to interject and ask if he's ever noticed they might be walking that little bit faster.

"I wanna LOVE someone like the big guys do!" he seethes, "I wanna tell them lies, I wanna treat them baaaad!" he squawks. Never has adolescent male bitterness and insecurity ever been expressed so eloquently on vinyl. Now, I wonder why he never had any luck with the ladies...

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Yossarian - Gilbert and George/ They are Naked and They Move

Label: Satellite
Year of Release: 1998

You've got to move fast to catch Gilbert and George, they're fit old geezers...

Somewhat strangely, "Whatever happened to Soho?" is a question I've encountered on the Interweb more times than I ever really expected to. I'm not referring to the region of London, either, but the one hit wonders who sampled the Smiths "How Soon is Now?" on 1990's "Hippychick". It seems to be appreciated much more in retrospect than it was at the time - now the sneers of "cheap cash in!" appear to have given way to an appreciation of the single.

One small part of the puzzle can certainly be solved via this blog entry, because band member Tim London moved on to this particularly bizarre electronic project Yossarian. Unlike Soho, it was an utterly hitless and frankly rather unusual venture which slipped out largely unnoticed ten years ago, and you'd still be hard pressed to find anyone online who cares.

That's not to say that the general public are necessarily always right, of course, for whilst I find "Hippy Chick" to be a faintly irritating piece of fluff, "Gilbert and George" has wit, originality, and sonic scariness to spare. The tribute to the notorious British artists is lyrically a bit baffling, but somehow pleasing all the same with its carefully phrased but randomly tossed around references to "slightly scuffed shoes", men dressed like Mr Chips, and being stalked by the artists in question down London streets (an image which is probably meant to be worrying, but I find quite pleasing for some reason). It is backed up by primitive electronic noises, deep, stomach churning groans and oscillating whoops, and a basic, lo fi backbeat. It screams "home made", but still sounds more adventurous than most big league productions.

It's also a double A side, and the other "A" on offer here, "They Are Naked and They Move", is five minutes of Krautrock rhythms, guitar freakouts and retro space age noises. It's not as good as its partner, but certainly dominates the room impressively as soon as you slip the needle into the grooves.

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And if you're still wondering what happened to Soho after "Hippychick", look here for something I uploaded last year:



They quickly shed members and became Oosh... but please don't ask me what the subsequent records were like, because I've never seen or heard a single one.