Jim Jiminee - Town and Country Blues

Label: Cat & Mouse

Year of Release: 1989

Well, lumme... I uploaded this video to YouTube nearly two years ago, and the intention was always to blog about it at some point or another, but I never quite got around to it, being too excited by other things I found along the way.  

I never saw Jim Jiminee live, but the verdict of everybody who did seems to be that they were an unforgettable proposition, being a sweaty and raucous act who tore plenty of small pubs and clubs to pieces with their enthusiasm.  This single, released shortly before they finally split, epitomises that completely, filled with the melodic suss of Madness and the speed and energy of some demented fifties skiffle group.

The recording career of the band seems to have been disappointingly brief, beginning in 1987 with the "Do It On Thursday (EP)" which made its way on to the Chart Show (click on the link for an appearance four songs in) then ending with this two years later.  Although they were aligned with the tweepop movement by some, it's clear to anyone with a clear pair of ears that they were much tighter than the vast majority of their C86 rivals, and more inspired by the grooves of bygone eras.  They actually sounded tremendously out of place in the late eighties, and had they carried on into the nineties would doubtless have seemed even more quaint.

None of the band went on to much success after the split, and they remain something of an under-referenced act, not really namechecked as an influence by anybody, nor dug out at retro indie discos anywhere.  Still, their solitary album "Welcome to Hawaii" has been reissued, and is actually worth a purchase, consisting of some simple but marvellous pieces of three minute pop.  Click here to download the above mentioned track and also "Do It On Thursday".

Laptop - Whole Wide World/ Solex - You're So Square

Label: Fierce Panda

Year of Release: 1999

Ah, Fierce Panda... somebody really should set up an obscure mp3 blog somewhere devoted entirely to their releases, because whilst as a label they've made some rather famous A&R decisions (Coldplay - yes, they're partly to blame), they've also pissed their scent on some very unusual projects as well.  We can waffle on about Supergrass, The Bluetones, Art Brut, Ash and The Polyphonic Spree, and doubtless bump up our webstats in the process, but what, my dear friend, of Pullover?  Or Coin Op?  Or Tiny Too?  

Going on-topic, as one would expect me to by the second paragraph, this Laptop/ Solex double-header is probably one of my favourite Fierce Panda releases, from a period when the music industry in Britain was completely and utterly confused and throwing all kinds of things which didn't smell too Dadrock at the wall.  Laptop were (and, apparently, still are) essentially the rather retro-styled electronic project of one New Yorker Jesse Hartman, releasing records which sound as if they'd find more favour now than they ever had a hope of achieving in the late nineties.  His version of Wreckless Eric's "Whole Wide World" is, in fact, not dis-similar in approach to Giorgio Moroder's version of "Nights in White Satin" I uploaded some weeks back - all static and sex, and not necessarily better, just fantastically different.

Solex, on the other hand, were a project of Elisabeth Esselink in Holland, whose kitchen sink approach to songwriting and sampling either jars or sounds fantastic according to what mood you're in and also what track you're listening to.  "You're So Square" here sounds like a riot in a record store's remainder bins, which, given that Esselink used samples from records nobody wanted to buy sums the situation up quite well.  If she started a blog, it would probably be better than this one.  

It's frequently tempting to slam Fierce Panda for unleashing a lot of fairly predictable NME-approved nonsense on to the public and then expecting to almost be given medals for it, but we need to take a deep breath, get some perspective, and remember that they do actually have a bit of an eccentric and varied discography.  This single alone proves that.

Download it Here

The Yamasukis - Yamasuki

Label: UK

Year of Release: 1971

In Clive Selwood's bitter-sweet and brilliantly sprawling music industry memoirs "All of the Moves, But None of the Licks", he mentions that this single was the only one John Peel put out on his Dandelion Records label which was "gifted" to them by their chief distributors (in this case, Warner Brothers).  Whilst the idea behind the label was always that Peel would act as a talent scout and help to sign numerous acts, it would seem that in this case something of a compromise was reached - albeit not one which many people noticed, since the disc sank like a stone despite heavy promotion.

It would seem that in the very same year it flopped, it was picked up again, this time by Jonathan King's UK Records, who also had Clive Selwood on their payroll for a time.  Coincidence?  It's doubtful, I'd say, but don't go away to Wikipedia or Chartstats to see how well it sold on its second outing, as it failed to chart again.  It would seem that some things were just never meant to be.  

Despite the fact that this record apparently achieved better sales on the continent, you can only conclude that it really is a bizarre concoction of noises which would be lucky to sell well anywhere.  A Japanese choir sings, whilst a very enthusiastic man barks loudly in Japanese over the top of them, ranting and raving about matters which are obviously indecipherable to me, and the backing music chimes naively and sweetly behind all of them.  It sits in no sensible category, being too odd to be straight pop, too saccharine to be rock, and too simplistic to be progressive or psychedelic.  It would be tempting to blame all the above on the gulf between Japanese and Western music being huge, but that would ignore the fact that the whole project is actually the work of the French production team Jean Kluger and Daniel Vangarde, both attempting a Euro-Japanese crossover record.

It actually gets even odder than that.  The B-side here "AIEAOU" was later re-adapted by Bananarama and put out as their first single, this time under the title of "Aie a Mwana".  It is doubtful those enthusiastic Banana girls knew about the background behind the song, however, as their version appears to be a cover of a cover, taking its cues from another version produced by Black Blood, which was a psuedo-African single in its stylings (If you're not hopelessly and utterly confused by now, you're doing very well, whatever hour of the day it may happen to be).  

Kluger and Vangarde would later go on to greater success producing singles for the Gibson Brothers and Ottawan, making them by far the most populist artists to have ever had a sniff around John Peel's short lived label.   Meanwhile, I am informed that this particular record is apparently now commonly used as a tool to teach European students how to speak Japanese, which I doubt was ever the original intention behind it.

Excuse me, I think I'm going to have to take a bit of a lie down after all that.

(sorry about the awful scan of the label, by the way - the silver font is extremely difficult to capture, and matters haven't been helped by some daft bastard of a second hand record store employee plastering a price label across it).

Download it here 

Second Hand Record Dip Part 40 - Wonderdog - Ruff Mix

Who: Wonderdog

What: Ruff Mix

Label: Flip

When: 1982

Where: Music and Video Exchange, Camden High Street

Cost: 50p

"Bitten by a radioactive flea when but a puppy, Bark Kent, a mild mannered mongrel from Mutropolis became possessed of super canine powers, and thus became Wonder Dog.

Scorning the tediously traditional role of super hero, and sometimes reporter for the Barking Gazette, he embarked on a career as a musical artiste to start with, it was ruff, but with dog-eared perseverance he clawed his way to the top.

Wonder Dog commenced his career doing shows for the terriertorial army, but his first bite at success came supporting Bow Wow Wow and the Korgis with his girlfriend and backing vocalist Lois Dane.  Whilst streaking towards stardom Wonder Dog never forgets his first commitment - truth, justice and the canine way!"

Rrrright....  There's fiction, and then there's the reality, if you'll excuse the slightly obvious pun.  You see, Wonder Dog was obviously the work of some music industry chancer, but precious few people seem to realise that yer man in question happens to be Simon Cowell, and this was his first proper music industry release.  

What you get here is something which made me nearly cry with laughter as a child, but actually bores me terribly as an adult (proving perhaps that Cowell had an early knack of marketing records to children).  It's an entire single of sampled dogs barking to a rather unmemorable disco tune, like the Singing Dogs of the fifties updated for the electronic eighties.  There's really nothing more I can add beyond that - to analyse the musical content of this disc in even the most flippant fashion would be a criminal waste of my evening, and yours too.

"Ruff Mix" just about charted inside the Top 40 and set Cowell's career up as a music industry hustler, leading us towards the path of Zig and Zag, Robson and Jerome, and the entire TV talent show revival.  On top of that, the ridiculous blurb on the back of the single quoted above does make me worried that Wonderdog might have been the inspiration for the Ford Timelord character The KLF cooked up for "Doctorin' The Tardis".  There's enough of a difference for us not to be too concerned, as well as considerably more humour and inventiveness on Bill Drummond's side, but even so...

Download it Here...

Then see the Youtube clip here... and observe how much the dog character even looks like, and has the mannerisms of, his creator...

New Life - Strollin' Sunday Mornin'

Label: Amaret
Year of Release: 1968

Anyone who downloaded volume two of the Garagelands compilation series here could hardly fail to have noticed the New Life track on there, "Ha Lese (Le Di Khanna)". One of the most vicious, hollering and downright addictive garage tracks out there, it's unutterably brilliant - a view shared by several friends of mine and even my mother! That it has been reserved for a few fringe compilations and bootlegs and largely forgotten about seems somewhat sinful on the whole.

You can imagine my excitement when I found this waiting in the sixties singles section of a second hand record store, then, behind the pop hits and Cliff Richard discs. Although the title "Strollin' Sunday Mornin'" didn't suggest more high throttle thrills, the B-side title "Only for Our Minds" sounded promising, and when I delicately put the needle on the record at home I hoped for something even half as good as the one song I'd heard by the act.

So then, revelation time... both sides are perfectly nice, paisley wrapped pieces of Californian guitar pop, but there's nothing to jolt the average listener in any way. "Strollin' Sunday Mornin'" is chipper, summery and brassy, skipping along in a slightly dazy way, and "Only for Our Minds" is more of the same, with a slightly dated beat feel behind the West Coast hairiness. Aficionados of sixties West Coast pop and people who are just curious about what else the band got up to may find these tracks worth a download, but sadly there's a reason why the majority of sixties rarities compilations haven't rushed forward to find them a place on their track listings.

Back when I first became aware of the New Life, I was mislead into believing that they were South American in origin - this is apparently untrue, and they were actually from Minneapolis, relocating to San Francisco to catch the passing wave of the hippy movement there in the late sixties. They were responsible for the soundtrack to the "Sidehackers" biker film (see here), released three singles in total, then vanished without a word of explanation. Other details - such as band personnel, and what they did before or after - remain very sketchy indeed.

As ever, more information would be appreciated, especially if it transpires there are other fantastic psychedelic New Life rockers in "the can" somewhere.