Second Hand Record Dip Part 42 - The Metropolitan Police Band - Dull it Isn't!

Who: The Metropolitan Police Band

What: Dull it Isn't!

Where: Wood Street Market, Walthamstow

When: 1974

Label: Decca

Cost: 25p

Oh, just look at me.  I hit the bell with this one.  25p for an entire album recorded by the Metropolitan Police!  Readers expecting karaoke turns from the city's finest constables (with a cheeky wink for all the honest English gentlemen in their audience) will be sorely disappointed to learn that this is just the force's brass band, a regular crime fighting and trumpet tooting force whose presence is well-known at Arsenal football matches.  

For all their history - the Metropolitan Police parpers go back the twenties, making them one of the longest serving acts on this blog - one can only assume that the release of this album was supposed to appeal to Arsenal fans who listened to them every season, since the market for this otherwise would have been extremely narrow.  That said, Decca didn't appear to be giving much thought to the concept of a "market" for anything by the seventies, adopting a "throw mud at the wall and see what sticks" sales strategy, so perhaps they thought the novelty of a police brass band would have a wider audience.  

The title "Dull it Isn't!" is a sorry case of a record label protesting too much, since it has to be said that most of the content of this album is actually tremendously predictable fare, more mundane even than the sleeve shots of the police force attending to troubled children, riding horses and playing with dogs.  It seems to be performed well, but you would probably have more fun imagining the content of the grooves entitled "Traffic Patrol", "Passing of the Regiments" and "Trafalgar March" than you would actually listening to them.  Therefore, to give you a flavour of the album I've offered up two mp3s for download here.  The first is the Met's charming little cover of "Eye Level", which has a certain strident oomph that the original lacked, and the slightly swinging "Piping Hot", which you can march around to when you're next cooking a casserole for your dinner party guests.

To any Met Officers who may be reading, please remember that the purpose of this blog is to enrich people's knowledge about the world of obscure sounds.  I would therefore ask you to ignore my obvious copyright infringement, for without breaking the law a little I wouldn't have introduced a new audience to your truncheon-tapping sounds.  Please don't whack me around the head until I need stitches like you did to a friend of mine at an environmental protest this year - that wouldn't be in the spirit of the proceedings here at Left and to the Back at all.  Besides which, your transport officers did let me off my rail fare this morning when the ticket barriers weren't working, and that cost considerably more than 25p.  Think on.

Download it Here

One Hit Wonders #4 - Warm Sounds - Birds and Bees

Label: Deram

Year of Release: 1967

Warm Sounds were essentially the duo Denver Gerrard and Barry Younghusband who worked primarily as Andrew Oldham's right hand muso men for the Immediate label.  If a band required a stray song they might have (such as "Black Sheep RIP", for example, which was theirs) or needed some competent vocal harmonies or smart instrumentation, Denver and Barry were beckoned.  

Their own particular waxings under the name of Warm Sounds were, perhaps unsurprisingly, generally gentle and wistful affairs, like West Coast pop with soft English vowels thrown into the mix. "Birds and Bees" is all lazy vocalised noises which would be described as scat if they were energetic enough ("Ooh bap bap, ah bap bap" is the closest I can get to transcribing them)  pinging glockenspiels and idle basslines.  Some people would probably refer to this as "popsike".  

Whilst "Birds and Bees" did well enough aboard the good ship Radio London to climb to to pole position in that station's chart, it only got to number 27 in the official charts used by the music industry, supposedly the lowest position a Radio London number one has ever occupied in the real world.  We shouldn't pay too much heed to this fact, since their chart was largely based on airplay, guesswork and whoever the station owed a favour to at any given point, but its safe to say that there were probably many disappointed faces at the Deram offices as a result.

It was also the duo's only hit.  Follow up singles "Sticks and Stones" (on Immediate this time) and the rather berserk "Nite is A Comin'" (back on Deram again) were ignored by the public despite picking up further radio play, and the concept of Warm Sounds was subsequently put into the chest freezer.  Younghusband later worked with Donovan in his Open Road band, whereas Denver Gerrard released a solo album "Sinister Morning" which wasn't greeted with much more enthusiasm than the later Warm Sounds releases.

Download it Here

Medicine Head - How Does It Feel

Label: Dandelion

Year of Release: 1972

Well, here we go again... and it's like I said before... and I'm sure I will say many times again... second hand vinyl doesn't turn up in neat batches for any particular artist.  You're not likely to see the complete works of a certain artist just sitting neatly in the racks unless a disgruntled fan has a serious clear-out (it's long rumoured, for example, that one second hand store suddenly had tons of Julian Cope rarities in stock after a fan had a disappointing argument with him).

I'm well aware we've covered Medicine Head here before, and this leaves me with very little to add.  You'll know the drill already - the band were a perverse, two man blues outfit with a deliberately stripped down sound who nonetheless created some great pieces of lo-fi wonder for John Peel's Dandelion label.  Peel had one of their singles in his box of favourite seven inch singles when he died, and whilst they're certainly an acquired taste, a great deal of their output is simplistic, hypnotic and even exciting if you can get into their particular zone.

"How Does It Feel" features a twanging Jew's Harp, the usual basic stomping rhythms, and an approach so facile it borders on childish, but it's an appealing and cheering little single I'm happy to own.  The other blog entry of the band covers the full story of their evolution, and isn't particularly worth repeating again here.  Go back and read it for yourselves, you lazy sods.

Download the single here

One Hit Wonder #3 -No Way Sis - I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing

Label: EMI

Year of Release: 1996

Suffice to say that this wasn't really very high on my list of potential blog uploads, and has been sitting waiting in those mythical mp3 wings for some time already... but when the news that Noel Gallagher was quitting Oasis broke, I couldn't resist a rare dip into relative topicality.  Let's face it, we couldn't have got less topical than "Loadsamoney (Doin' Up The House)" a few days ago, so a chance to be in synch with current events feels like a rare treat.

Before we focus on this single, I may as well say that I feel (at best) indifferent to Oasis' split.  Yes, I was a fan once, and still rate "Whatever" as being one of the more exciting Christmas releases ever - I can remember playing it non-stop all evening when I first got hold of a copy, thrilled by its energy and optimism.  By the time of "Be Here Now", however, the plot appeared to have been lost, nobody either within the band or outside of it appeared to have the knack of using a nice sharp pair of editing scissors on their material, and eventually they became reduced to the level of an occasionally good singles band whose albums were immensely patchy.  It wasn't supposed to happen that way, but anyone who wishes to argue with my perspective is wasting their time - I've heard it all before (both the arguments and the less-than-supersonic albums) and nowhere sums up the failings of "Be Here Now" better than the Sweeping the Nation blogsite here, which gives a blow-by-blow assessment of the album's content.  Nope, save your comments.  Honestly.  If you're hearing something I'm not, I'm thrilled for you, but no amount of  superlatives are likely to make me change my mind at this late stage.  Few British bands have had more written about them in the last fifteen years than Oasis, after all, and I've had plenty of time to change my mind.

Back in December 1996, however, I would happily argue the band's merits to anyone wishing to dismiss them as "plagiarists" or "thugs", and it was back then this bizarre little single was issued by none other than their tribute band.  This wasn't the first occasion a tribute band has sneaked into the charts, the Abba tribute act Bjorn Again managing much the same thing with the "Erasure-ish" EP in the early nineties - but suffice to say, it's not exactly a common occurrence.  ABCD, Alike Cooper and The Bootleg Beatles have yet to gain entries in the Guinness Book of British Hit Singles.

The story behind the track is perhaps more unlikely still.  The Coca Cola Company allegedly refused to allow Oasis to use the line "I'd like to buy the world a Coke" in their "I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing"-apeing "Shakermaker" single.  The fear at the corporation's head office was that the Mancs would cause the public to associate the soft drink with cocaine, which would never do.  Cocaine hadn't been part of the recipe for some time, after all.  When No Way Sis decided to cover the track directly, however, the corporation decided to give the whole arrangement the green light.  Presumably as Oasis' tribute act, the cocaine which they may or may not have been alluding to would simply be pretend cocaine, and therefore would not ruin the brand's image.  This, at least, is the only explanation that's ever made remote sense to me.

To give credit to No Way Sis, this single nails their sound particularly well, parodying some of the Oasis riffs and cliches which were already becoming familiar and apparent, and it's not half-bad - but it really wasn't good enough to be a Christmas number one as some had rather optimistically hoped.  In the end, it had to settle for a number 27 position before waving goodbye to the charts in early 1997, and EMI rather ungraciously tore up the band's contract to record an album not long after (although why anybody thought there was a need for an Oasis tribute band to record an entire long-player is a moot point, and one which probably doesn't need much more emphasis).

Whilst having your own tribute act on Top of the Pops might seem like a major achievement for any band, 1996 was really the last window of opportunity anyone would have to cash in on Oasis' success.  Unlike The Beatles, who saw endless cover versions and novelty singles parodying or covering them charting throughout the sixties, the mania surrounding Oasis wouldn't weather the disappointment of "Be Here Now" in '97.  No Way Sis' release, then, was the last nod to the phenomenon of the Gallagher brothers, following Mike Flowers' effort the previous year, and festive follies around their catalogue would not make annual chart appearances.  A shame, as I wouldn't have minded hearing The Bootleg Beatles taking on "She's Electric" in 1997, but you can't have everything you asked for on your Christmas wishlist, can you?

Full tracklisting:

1. I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing

2. The Quick Sand Song

3. Good Times

4. I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing (Instrumental)

Download it here

Second Hand Record Dip Part 41 - Harry Enfield - Loadsamoney (Doin' Up The House)

Who: Harry Enfield
What: Loadsamoney (Doin' Up The House) (B/w "The B side")
When: 1988
Label: Phonogram
Where: Music and Video Exchange, Camden High Street
Cost: 50p

This single came out with a flurry of press hype at the time. Harry Enfield's comedy career had just taken off in Britain, aided chiefly by his Loadsamoney character, a brash, arrogant, boastful plasterer whose primary hobby appeared to be bragging about his wage packet and mocking the poor. It was, in fact, a pretty well observed satire of southern working class treachery. All around London and the Home Counties during the eighties, young men and women on the make were heard to sneer at their less fortunate unemployed peers. "I've done it, why can't they?" appeared to be the mantra of the times, even though the disparity of job availability between the south and the north of the country clearly helped matters none.

Sociological and political lessons aside, Enfield's character rapidly became popular with the very characters it was supposed to be mocking, and far from being wounded by Loadsamoney, they ended up shouting the slogan at people themselves. It was at this point, probably at the peak of the character's popularity, that this record was conceived. Produced by Beth Orton's boyfriend and (perhaps more notably) studio mainstay of many a Madonna record, William Orbit, the press were quick to have high hopes. "It's a comedy record that will actually be good!" many predicted, ignoring the fact that there have been plenty of good comedy records, it's just they either don't register with the mainstream (most of the Bonzo Dog Band's output) or if they do, they become over-exposed and the jokes wear thin and become irritating (Spitting Image's "The Chicken Song").

What did we get out of the collaboration, then? Not a lot, if the truth be known. Orbit contributes a basic repetitive riff he clearly found down the back of his keyboard, whilst Enfield shouts various things obnoxiously over the top for four minutes. The closest thing on the entire single there is to actual humour is the line "All this scratching's making me rich!" Even that isn't particularly great.

You've got to wonder what both parties make of the collaboration now - it certainly doesn't seem to get mentioned much by anybody anymore - and whether it was regarded as a giant mistake. The popularity of the character ensured that the single became a hit, but although I'm usually reluctant to use the phrase "it's dated badly", the fact the central riff sounds suspiciously like a Garageband loop now means that by 21st century standards, you're left to marvel at the fact that you could probably just as easily have created a similar track yourself within an hour.

The B-side is a dialogue between Enfield and Paul Whitehouse as his "Lance" character, who would later re-emerge in his TV series. This is interesting for comedy fans who can hear the beginnings of one of his characters emerging, but again, the jokes are few and far between. Fortunately, Enfield would continue his comedy to the present day with much better ideas, and wouldn't bother a recording studio again. William Orbit would be forgiven and would continue to have a fine career, the track didn't get played so frequently that it became too much of an irritant, and all was generally well with the world.

Now, if only I could find Mark Williams' "I Wanna Be Together" ecstasy comedown single... which does exist, by the way. I saw a copy of it once in a secondhand store, but by the time I'd returned with enough money, the bloody thing had been bought...