Clap your hands say yeah

A few weeks ago I was searching through the stalls at my favourite junk market. It's all packed into a fairly large building that I imagine was once a factory or mill of some kind. I always try to give myself at least three hours or so - the amount of stuff in there is slightly mindblowing - it's like this is where they've stashed the twentieth century: Pickelhauben, sheet music, lawnmowers, so many books it makes my head spin. I've picked up a few things other than books or albums there but I confess it's the very cheap second hand vinyl that is the main draw for me.

On this occasion I had at last chased down "Tusk" and picked up "Skullfuck" by the Walkingseeds into the bargain (another of Julian Cope's hot tips, will I never learn?). As I stood in the exceptionally long queue waiting to pay a tune drifted down from an invisible tannoy. It was naggingly familiar and yet so good that had I heard it before I would have made a point of acquiring it. Anyway, it contained a pretty bold phrase so I knew it'd be no trouble to track as soon as I got to the internet. And so it proved. This is the track:

Tommy James and the Shondells: Crimson and Clover


When I looked it up the familiarity was explained - it's the same riff as "Sweet Jane". I'm hopeless at things like that, I could never hear the "Sympathy for the Devil" bassline in "Loaded" for instance. As well as this fascinating nugget I also found out Tommy and the Shondells were responsible for "Mony Mony". I was of course aware of this song through the Billy Idol version and I've even got the Celia and the Mutations version somewhere. I'd always assumed the original was an old Motown number.

Anyway I found this and was so struck by it I decided that it was going to be the first embedded thingy to grace the blog. I like Billy Idol as much as the next man, but the raucous funkiness of the original leaves him sounding very plastic in comparison. And check out Tommy's jacket - you've got to admire the man for carrying that off so well with the beads. And I love his jerky little dance - he's helped out slightly I think by some editing - like everybody looks like a good dancer under strobe lights. He comes over very Ian Svenonius, which is to say very cool indeed.

The new originals

Years ago I heard Chicken Shack’s version of “I’d Rather Go Blind” on a tape given away with NME or Melody Maker. I’d never heard of them and thought they had a terrible name but I sure loved that track. So I was a bit bummed when I lost the tape. For years afterward I’d go on forlorn rummages in the attic at my parents but it never turned up, (currently doing the same for a Rolling Stones book - it's a really big book, I just don't understand where it's got to). Anyway, I found out it had been released as a single way back and so I ordered it from the back pages of Record Collector. Only it wasn’t the same version as the tape. Some time after this I remembered that it was a tape of Peel Session versions and got it from the Strange Fruit website. It had been a long wait and in the meantime, jonesing for the tune, I’d gone to the more widely available source: Etta James. I thought that she'd mop the floor with the weedy Chicken Shack but I was surprised to discover that I far preferred the Chicken Shack version. I thought it was a bloke singing and I like it when singers just sing the lyrics in songs like this without swapping the genders around. Maybe because it suggests that they're playing it on the spur of the moment and for sheer love of the song. Also, I find the Etta version overly mannered. Something that turns me off is too much "technique", the Chicken Shack version seems to come more directly from the heart, a more honest reading of the song.

Over the years I’ve noticed that the version of a song I hear first will tend to be my favourite, regardless of the relative standing of the artists involved. And in most cases I seem to go for the version with the simpler arrangement.

Chicken Shack: I'd Rather Go Blind


Etta James: I'd Rather Go Blind