YouTube update

You'll possibly have noticed that I don't tend to bother with YouTube updates anymore. This isn't because they are, as a friend of mine once put it, the most idle form of blog entries which are merely capitalising on somebody else's hard uploading work, but because... well, YouTube's in a bit of a state right now, isn't it? No sooner has somebody uploaded a delicious vid for us all to savour than it's been ripped down by angry legal executives working for a company who have no intention of ever issuing the material on DVD anyway*. In fact, the main reason I haven't uploaded anything there myself in so long is partly because my Panasonic video-DVD convertor broke not too long ago, and by the time I got it fixed there was an almighty purge on the service, and half of what I had already uploaded to view was ripped down in the process. "Best leave it until things settle down a bit," I thought.

For similar reasons, one doesn't want to look like a hopeless tart and post a link to a video on YouTube here for something which disappears two days later, so I hope I don't land anyone in hot water by saying that the user Beyondthebeat has some amazing videos for you all to watch. It's a sixties obscurity lover's haven, featuring videos for singles I would have had no idea had promos in the first place - The Third Rail's "Run Run Run", for example, Scots beatsters The Poets, The Creation, and tons more. There's also a video clip for Pink Floyd's "Paintbox" on there, which may not be strictly relevant to this blog, but I had no awareness it even existed until a couple of days ago. Is there nothing to be said for a legitimate Pink Floyd DVD package compiling these bits together in one place?

Also, a clip of Edwyn Collins' frequently forgotten late night Channel Four sit-com "West Heath Yard" has worked its way on there - although there are plenty of people I know who refuse to believe it ever existed. See below for a glimpse into the recording process of the moving "Lasagne for One".



Now, if only these treats could stay in place for more than five minutes I'd be a very happy man (well I wouldn't, not at the moment anyway, but I'd be considerably closer to content than usual).

(*Yes, I know copyright law is rather more complex than this, and that lawyers aren't all miserable fun-spoilers out to ruin everybody's days - it just feels like that sometimes).

Australian Playboys - Black Sheep RIP (b/w "Sad")

Label: Immediate
Year of Release: 1967

Firstly, it's confession time. No, I don't own this on vinyl - I freely admit that both the A and B side here is presented for your pleasure courtesy of two different compilation appearances, and whilst that means this upload is not especially authentic, it does mean that you get to hear the tunes in tip-top condition.

"Black Sheep R.I.P" is quite simply one of the odder singles of 1967, which is saying something for a year which kindly gave us gnomes named Grimble Grumble and sixteen vestal virgins leaving for the coast, and all number of other bits of psychedelic inspired whimsy. Perhaps taking their cues from the childlike lyricism prevalent throughout this particular era, the Australian act The Playboys (rebranded The Australian Playboys for the British market to avoid confusion with an existing English outfit) launched this particular record as their European trial balloon. To all intents and purposes it's a technicoloured pop freakout version of the children's nursery rhyme, complete with curious but invigorating instrumental passages, nagging vocals ("Do you have, do you have, do you have, do you have, YES I HAVE!" the band trill absurdly) and the surprising thing is it's actually pretty damn good. Naturally, it wasn't a hit in Britain and the band were never given another chance to break these shores, but they deserve top marks for coming up with such a ludicrous idea in the first place and then actually making it work.

The B-side "Sad" is featured on the "Nuggets II" box set and isn't as interesting, but still screams "Summer '67" in your ears, despite its rather downbeat tones. To my mind (and perhaps my mind alone) a less elaborate version of "Sad" could easily have been taken on by The Jesus and Mary Chain in their early days - it has the same doomed but innocent air.

For all the worth of both sides on offer here, the band seemingly knew luck wasn't on their side in the UK, and had pissed off back to Australia by the end of 1967 to form Procession. This leaves them on the very long list of sixties bands who moved to these shores to crack the British market and found themselves ignored - although one can't envy any band the job of rivalling the homegrown acts of this particular era.

Download it here

Second Hand Record Store Dip Part 30 - Mankind - "Doctor Who"

Who: Mankind
What: Doctor Who (b/w "Time Traveller")
Label: Pinnacle
When: 1978
Where: Wood Street Market, Walthamstow
Cost: One pound

...and it's yet another Left and To The Back top thirty chart entry from yore. People shall begin to talk.

"Doctor Who" by session musicians Mankind hovered around the bottom end of the Top Thirty for ages, like gnats cloud around stagnant water. It's an interpretation of the TV theme which seems to have been largely forgotten about now, perhaps because it's yet another disco "rethink" of the original piece. The original BBC Radiophonic Workshop piece still has the ability to send chills down the spine with its whooshing and whirring and demonic oscillations, but it's safe to say that sticking a funky bassline to it does sap away most of its power. In fact, what we're left with is a song that asks us to dance about whilst being forced to think about Tom Baker, which is a tempting offer, but one which I can't bring myself to do at home without getting tremendously confused and unfootsure. One is also unsure what a Tom Baker disco dance would involve, but one suspects the choreography of scarves would play a role.

As a record, it's perhaps more noteable for being one of Pinnacle's earliest hit singles, causing the distribution company to raise its stakes slightly in the game of pop. Whilst the label itself would quickly dissolve, despite having some of the loudest and frankly best designs of the seventies (see here), the distribution arm would eventually become all-powerful, handling the likes of Factory Records and eventually PWL (and therefore Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan). Last year it finally went bankrupt amidst the present music industry turmoil, which is regrettable given its long history - alongside Stock Aitken and Waterman favourites, it actually did release a lot of underground material throughout its existence, and gave plenty of bands breaks they weren't likely to get from the major labels. Rough Trade may have always been more right-on and credible, but Pinnacle's back catalogue is also not entirely to be sniffed at.

So... here's (more or less) where it all started, not with a Joy Division seven inch, or an unexpected punk hit, or even Keith Marshall's "Only Crying" (another hit of theirs) but with a funky sci-fi theme. You've got to wonder.

Download here

It was on Top of the Pops as well, and some kind soul has decided to upload it to YouTube...

Grapefruit - Dear Delilah (b/w "Dead Boot")

Label: RCA
Year of Release: 1968

McCartney-esque cries of "You bounder! You cheat!" are likely to come floating up from the virtual ether about this one, since it was technically a hit, nosing up to number 21 in the British charts. Still, a staple of golden oldie radio it most certainly is not, and I think we can safely give both it and the band an entry on this blog without too many people shouting about their mainstream nature.

Grapefruit are yet another example of the ubiquity of the Young family in rock music, as the lead singer Alexander Young is the sibling of George Young of the Easybeats, and of course also Angus and Malcolm Young of AC/DC. Unlike those particular notables, however, his career appears to have been restricted to a couple of minor hits with this outfit then a tumble into obscurity.

They were certainly given opportunities in spades, being signed to the Beatles' publishing arm of Apple, touted by Lennon and McCartney as a great up-and-coming act (Young can also be heard shouting on "Hey Jude" somewhere deep in the mix), and generally given a lot of preening and attention. Sadly, like a great many Apple acts they didn't register as highly with the public as perhaps the Fab Four anticipated, although the fact they managed minor hits at all still puts them head and shoulders above other colleagues such as Jackie Lomax and Fire, and - erm - The Black Dyke Mills Band.

"Dear Delilah" is their most successful single, and if we wanted to be really critical, we could argue that it's not actually as good as numerous flops which were released by other artists around the same time. For all that, though (and we could carp on about the fairness of the charts forever) it utilises phasing, moody melodies and a chorus that's just about catchy and swirly enough to pass the electric lemonade test. The B-side "Dead Boot" is slight melodically but conceptually strange, appearing to be a mourning ditty written as an ode to a knackered old shoe, which one can only assume came from the John Entwhistle school of lyric writing, involving quite literally writing about "what's around you".

The guitarist John Perry later tasted success again in The Only Ones - the rest seem to have slipped off the radar, with Young working mostly as a session musician in the industry after Grapefruit finally split in 1969.

Download it Here.

Oh look - and somebody's uploaded a French TV appearance of theirs on to YouTube:



One of my personal Grapefruit favourites is "Lullaby For A Lazy Day" which is frequently incorrectly identified as a Beatles out-take - you can hear it for yourself over on YouTube where it's been mislabelled once again.

Idi Amin - Amazin' Man

Label: Transatlantic
Year of Release: 1975

Now, if there's one thing Laibach, Bob Geldof and I seem to agree on - and I'd be willing to wager if you put us all in a room together it would be the only thing we all agree on - it's the fact that a great many dictators behave uncannily like rock stars, using the same art school imagery, symbolism and sweeping universal statements that some of history's biggest murderers have also indulged in. In fact, the one reason rock stars will never seem like anything more than slightly comedic figures is that their use of arthole imagery for populist means, and their stadium rallies, and their fist-punching power gestures don't really amount to much more than a foot-stomping barn-storming session down at the Hammersmith Palais (and perhaps the odd sacked keyboard player here and there). Picture Bono with a machine gun in control of a third world state, though, and suddenly the imagery seems slightly horrific. In fact, one reason why I've never been too convinced that Tony Blair was actually, genuinely Evil is that he looked so damned unconvincing with a guitar. If you'd given Idi Amin an instrument, he'd have looked like he was born with the thing. Tony Blair just looked slightly ashamed and apologetic.

Of course, this isn't genuinely Idi Amin on this single, even though when I first picked up the disc I actually thought for a split second it might be. It is in fact satirist John Bird pretending to be Idi Amin, but still sending the single out under the ruthless dictator's name anyway (Hey, what was he gonna do? Sue for defamation?) Bird cooks up a mean groove as the frontman to this single, explaining his philosophy to win the public over with the power of song, and getting up to all sorts of backing vocalist sacking mayhem on the way. It would spoil the joke if I revealed the outcome of the record at this point.

The B-side, on the other hand, is purely a spoken word side outlining Amin's problems with the ladies. Both form part of the "Broadcasts of Idi Amin" album that Bird put out, after his Private Eye columns and offshoots on the same topic proved so popular that Transatlantic Records clearly thought there was an entire album's worth to be appreciated by the public.

Why Bird or Private Eye or Transatlantic Records stopped there I'll never know. This is surely under-explored territory, and whole albums by Kim Jong-il, for example, would be worthy additions to anyone's collection. You could simply file the vinyl next to Phil Spector's Christmas albums and have done with it. In fact, a cover of "Amazin' Man" by somebody pretending to be Phil Spector would be immensely topical at the moment....

Download it Here