Uptown

It takes a special kind of genius to cover a song and completely reinterpret it and produce a version that is the equal of the original. In 1998 Luke Haines' post- Auteurs group Black Box Recorder achieved this with their cover of Althea and Donna's 1978 classic Uptown Top Ranking. Haines along with former Mary Chain and Expressway man John Moore and singer Sarah Nixey approached Uptown Top Ranking on their album England Made Me, the usual Haines mix of sardonic songs, shocking/ funny lines/ song titles and a take on modern life inspired by the 1970s. Songs on the album included Girl Singing In The Wreckage and Kidnapping An Heiress, typically Luke Haines song titles. Uptown Top Ranking was one of those one off hits of the 70s, a massive playground song as well as being genuine roots reggae from two Jamaican teenagers and a legendary producer (Joe Gibbs). Slipping a cover of it onto an album called England Made Me is as Luke Haines as it gets.

Haines and Moore created a mechanical, strictly non- reggae backing track, stripped of feeling and off beat rhythms, led by a horn blast and an occasional piano melody line. Over this they got Sarah Nixey to recite the words. According to Luke she didn't know the song and they wrote the words out in Jamaican patois, phonetically. To add to the performance Nixey had a hangover. The vocals are so detached and devoid of life, so completely glassy eyed that they almost become meaningless, the absolute opposite the total celebration of youth and being young in the original. But Sarah's deadpan delivery of the lines works, lines such as 'see me in me heels an' ting', 'see me in me 'alter back', 'love is all I bring in me khaki suit an' ting' and 'gimme little bass make me wine up me waist' transformed by a haughty English accent looking down her nose at you as she sings them. 

Uptown Top Ranking

The original version with Joe Gibbs at the controls had Althea and Donna, seventeen and eighteen years old, ad- libbing Trinity's Three Piece Suit over a 1967 Alton Ellis song, I'm Still In Love. Although Gibbs saw it as a bit of a joke, there's no doubting the authenticity Althea and Donna bring to their vocals and performance. 'Nah pop no style, we strictly roots'.

Uptown Top Ranking

Post Everything

I've just finished reading the second volume of (former Auteur, former Black Box Recorder man) Luke Haines' memoirs. At the start of Post Everything Haines claims that since his first book Bad Vibes, set in the mid 90s against the backdrop of Britpop, he's calmed down a bit, mellowed out, and is not going round creating feuds with all and sundry. The 239 pages of Post Everything then detail mainly what he hates about the early 2000s- the music industry, his record companies, his record company bosses, one of his record company's boss's dog, Primal Scream (Must not end up like Bobby Gillespie he notes), The Verve, Richard Ashcroft, the mythologisation of The Clash, the mythologisation of the MC5, his own bands and the albums they make, band reunions, the New York Dolls reunion, the relationship between his bandmates (John Moore and Sarah Nixey), New Labour, Noel Gallagher and Alan McGee hobnobbing with New Labour, Glen Hoddle, Camden, Paul Morley, The Osbornes, digital recording, gigs, tours, Bono ('Two words... Massive twat'), several men called Graham at the National Theatre, Banksy ('the 21st century's worst man'), The Cellist.... the list goes on.


Things Luke Haines likes/tolerates- the National Pop Strike (his idea). New York Dolls (before they reformed). Mott The Hoople. Laudanum. His musical about Nicholas van Hoogstraten.


Things Luke Haines loves- his wife, who he woos when she is already courting the editor of a major music magazine, which ensures zero positive press from that magazine thereafter.


It's a festering, scabrous, entertaining read, shot through with brains and outsider wit, is utterly misanthropic, and very funny. 

Going Off My Rocker At The Art School Bop

Select Shun Two

Another track from a series of free cds that came with Select magazine ten-plus years ago. This is Black Box Recorder, a band formed by former Auteur Luke Haines, John Moore (previously in The Jesus and Mary Chain and John Moore's Expressway) and singer Sarah Nixey. They made some interesting records, a bit like a sarcastic and caustic St Etienne. This song, The Facts Of Life, is remixed by The Chocolate Layers, a psuedonym for Jarvis Cocker and Steve Mackey (both from Pulp, obviously). For the record this cd was Revolutions 01, and also featured Stereophonics (urgh), Queens Of the Stone Age's Feel Good Hit Of The Summer (yes!), Alpinestars (Manc electronica), The Go-Betweens (I really should feature something by them), Tailgunner featuring Noel Gallagher (nein danke), The Automator and Kool Keith (turn of the millenium hiphop), The Delgados (never really checked them out but believe they're very good), Brothers In Sound, My Vitriol, King Adora (ha, remember them), Underworld (Pearl's Girl live) and Grandaddy. Mixed bag then really.

04 The Facts Of Life.wma#1#1