Forty Minutes Of That Drum Break

Back in December I posted I'm Not The Man I Used To Be by Fine Young Cannibals and then more recently Madonna's Justify My Love, both songs driven by a very famous drum break- the Funky Drummer, a drum solo played by the legendary Clyde Stubblefield on James Brown's 1970 single Funky Drummer (actually from the B-side Funky Drummer Part 2). Digging into My Bloody Valentine's back catalogue over the last two weeks brought me back to a B-side from 1988 titled Instrumental No. 2, the flipside to a 7" single given away free with the first 5000 copies of Isn't Anything. 

My Bloody Valentine and Madonna (with co- writers Lenny Kravitz and Ingrid Chavez) both built their songs around a short interlude track by Public Enemy from 1988's It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back. PE's Hank Shocklee denies that the drum break on Security Of The First World is a sample from Funky Drummer but both My Bloody Valentine and Madonna sampled Public Enemy- Kravitz denied it saying it was a drum break that was 'just lying around the studio'. Kevin Shields was getting into acid house in 1988 as well as developing MBV's guitar noise and there's a good argument that Instrumental No. 2 is the first indie- dance track, ahead of The Soup Dragons, ahead of The Stone Roses and ahead of Primal Scream. Admittedly Happy Mondays might want a word.

Anyway, the whats and wheres and who's firsts aren't what I'm here for today. I started piecing these tracks together and thought I'd try to get them and a handful of others to work together in a mix. Forty minutes seemed enough- there are literally thousands of songs that have sampled the Funky Drummer and hundreds of hip hop records including Boogie Down Productions,  LL Cool J, Eric B and Rakim, Run DMC, Beastie Boys and NWA. In fact I might come back and do a hip hop Funky Drummer Sunday mix. But in the meantime, this one is those records above and a couple of others. 

For a while Shadrach by The Beastie Boys were in the mix but it's a different drum break, more likely from Hot & Nasty by Black Oak Arkansas and I dropped Fool's Gold in too but it's not the same break either- it's a funky drummer but not the Funky Drummer. DNA and Suzanne Vega did make the cut but I don't think it's actually the Funky Drummer, it's more likely sampled from Soul II Soul, but it felt like it fitted. 

It's probably worth remembering that Clyde Stubblefield, the man whose drumming is the Funky Drummer, got nothing more than the session fee as the drummer in James Brown's band. 

Forty Minutes Of The Funky Drummer

• Public Enemy: Security Of The First World
• My Bloody Valentine: Instrumental No. 2
• Madonna: Justify My Love
• Sinead O'Connor: I'm Stretched On Your Grave
• Fine Young Cannibals: I'm Not The Man I Used To Be
• DNA and Suzanne Vega: Tom's Diner (DNA Remix)
• Radio Slave: Amnesia (Instrumental)
• James Brown: Funky Drummer (Album Version)

Security Of The First World is from side two of It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back, the greatest hip hop album ever made, Chuck D, Flavor Flav and The Bomb Squad writing the book on how to splice noise, funk and rap, politics, race and music. Security Of The First World is a one minute twenty loop, the Funky Drummer, a pulverising bassline and some bleeps, that changed music. 

Kevin Shields sampled Public Enemy for Instrumental No. 2. The pitch drops a little and it sounds scratchier- maybe they sampled it from vinyl. Over the top Kevin plays ghostly guitar chords and layers of wordless vocals to create something that would inform later MBV tracks- Soon is surely born here. 

Madonna's Justify My Love was a 1990 single, banned by MTV due to the S&M, voyeurism and bisexuality on display in the video. I wrote about it earlier this month here. Madonna and Lenny Kravitz wrote and recorded it in a day according to Lenny, very quick and in his words 'authentic'.

Also from 1990 is Sinead O'Connor's I Am Stretched On Your Grave. Sinead was a huge Public Enemy fan. The lyrics are from a 17th century poem, Taim Sinte Ar Do Thuama, translated into English by Irish poet Frank O'Connor and set to music in 1979 by Irish artist Philip King. Sinead's vocal is stunning, alone over Clyde's drumming. Some bass bubbles in, there are some drum crashes and at the end there's a dramatic fiddle part by Waterboy Steve Wickham. 

In 1989 Fine Young Cannibals released I'm Not The Man I Used To Be as a single (the fourth from their album The Raw And The Cooked). They sped the Funky Drummer up and there's some house music in the chords and production. A song that bears repeat plays. Roland Gift was a star who reused to play the game. 

DNA sampled Suzanne Vega's a capella version of Tom's Diner (from here 1987 album Solitude Standing though it dates from earlier, it's on a 1984 Fast Folk Music Magazine album). DNA played it over the drum break from a Soul II Soul record. DNA pressed it up and released it without permission and it took off. Suzanne's label A&M decided to release it officially rather than sue (Suzanne liked the version) and it became a massive hit. It's not the Funky Drummer but it felt like it fitted with Sinead and Madonna and the whole 1990 drum break sampling vibe. 

Just to show that you can't keep a good drum break down, Amnesia is from 2023, a track by Berlin DJ and producer Radio Slave and a tribute to the Ibiza club Amnesia and partying under the stars in the mid- to- late 80s, something Radio Slave admits is a romanticised notion. 

I was in two minds about including the source material. Funky Drummer was released as a single by James Brown in 1970, split over both sides of the 7" with Part 2 being the source of the drum break. This is a nine minute studio version, released on a 1986 album In the Jungle Groove- surely the source for many of the hundreds of artists who followed Public Enemy's lead after 1988 who sampled it. 

Poor Is The Man Whose Pleasures Depend On The Permission Of Another

Back to 1990 today  and a Madonna single that still packs a punch all these years later- thirty six years later. 

Justify My Love was released to promote Madonna's first compilation, The Immaculate Collection. Co- written by Madonna with Lenny Kravitz and Ingrid Chavez, with Kravitz producing and contributing, it was slightly overshadowed by the video which has implied S&M, flashes of nipples (female), same- sex scenes (male and female), females in charge of and in control of sexuality, bedroom stuff- MTV predictably banned it. It was issued as a commercially available video single which added to its transgressive appeal, too steamy to be shown on the TV- buy it and watch it yourself at home. It's ahead of its time in what it portrays, certainly in terms of mainstream pop (I guess Frankie Goes To Hollywood and some others had been there before but Madonna was global in 1990) and much of what is portrayed in the video is commonplace now in pop music and popular culture. As a promotional tool, a music video and a slice of 1990, it's very, very cool indeed. 

The song is a banger, riding in on the drumbeat that defined 1990 (on this occasion a Public Enemy sample rather than the actual Funky Drummer, the drums from 1988 track Security Of The First World, sped up slightly to 132 bpm. Public Enemy threatened to sue due to its unauthorised use. Kravitz denied taking it from PE, saying it was one of those beats that was just lying around. Public Enemy took it from somewhere etc etc). The rhythm is everything, it drives it. It's joined by a deep and burbling bassline, synth chords/ drones and Kravitz on backing vocals. Madonna takes the lead, speaking breathily, unleashing her 'inner freak'...

'I wanna kiss you in Paris/ I wanna hold your hand in Rome/ I wanna run naked in a rainstorm/ Make love in a train... cross country'

She's clearly never travelled cross country in the UK. No matter how much inner freak you'd unleashed you'd think twice, thrice, before shagging in the grim, rarely cleaned toilets on the trans- Pennine service (though I do not doubt that it has happened). 

Justify My Love

It's about dominance and pleasure, sexual fantasy and pleasure in connection to permission. It sounds fantastic, the production and drums are superb- its the best thing Lenny Kravitz has been connected to, it's Madonna in absolute control, of her music, her image, her sound, her music. It could still cause a storm on a dancefloor. It's a jam. 

There were remixes including one, The Beast Within Mix, which saw Madonna accused of anti- Semitism. 'It's ridiculous', she replied, 'People can say I'm an exhibitionist but no- one can ever accuse me of being a racist'. Of the remixes the one that we'll go with is William Orbit's...

Justify My Love (Orbit 12" Mix)

Seven minutes, drawn out intro, different drumbeat, a new shuffly rhythm, typically swirly, trippy Orbit production, an organ stab and bursts of guitar. Lovely stuff that would eventually lead to William Orbit working with Madonna more closely and what would become 1998's Ray Of Light album. 

Monday's Long Songs

William Orbit released a new album at the tail end of last week, a fifteen track compilation of previously unreleased music called WFO (William Fucking Orbit) that seems to take the entire cosmos as its canvas, with ambient sounds, stargazing sci fi, beats, guitars, synths, space age house music, cinematic soundtrack moments and everything/ anything else that was close to hand when he recorded it (at variously Guerrilla Studios in London, Rodondo in California, a studio in Venice and another in Jamaica). 

There's a lot to get to grips with but it works as a full piece, from the opener G1550 to a closing pair of tracks that come in at a combined length of eighteen minutes. The penultimate track is Adapted From Symphony, eight and a half minutes of music that lands somewhere between dub, ambient house and the soundtrack to a trip to Mars. Strings, percussion, squally bursts of guitar and a second half that brings in a string section, echoing his late 90s version of Adagio For Strings. 

Adapted From Strings is followed by the ten minute trip of Gleam Of The Deep. There are echoes and pieces from his earlier works littered throughout WFO, including the ambient sheen and slightly weird edge he brought to Madonna in the 90s (both Royal Flush and A Bigger Splash are built around elements from the Ray Of Light album). On Gleam Of The Deep an FXed guitar riff from Swim, the second song on Ray Of Light, forms the starting point for a long ambient soundscape that becomes a warm bath in cosmic rays- a track with a deep blue backdrop and repetitive but ever changing guitar riff that you'll wish could go on forever. WFO is at Bandcamp. 

In 1997 Madonna sought out William Orbit as the man to push her sound forward again, the man to lift her out of a slight mid- 90s slump. Orbit was an inspired choice and on Ray Of Light they made one of the best singles of the 90s. On the 12"/ CD single the Liquid Mix allowed Orbit to stretch the pop song out into a late 90s ambient house/ synth pop tour de force, the burbling synth backdrop and funked up bassline providing Madonna with a blissed out, warm and sumptuous, expansive psychedelia. 

Ray Of Light (Liquid Mix)

Burning Groove

Everyone loves a cover version, don't they? In 1987 Mike Watt, suffering from depression in the aftermath of fellow Minuteman D. Boon's death, pitched up in New York and stayed with Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore for a while, playing bass on some of the sessions that would become the EVOL album. In an effort to get Watt active and enthusiastic about music again they hatched a plan that become Sonic Youth offshoot Ciccone Youth. Watt covered Madonna's Burning Up (as Burnin' Up) playing all the instruments (except for a Gregg Ginn guitar solo). Watt's cover is rough and ready, fuzzy and lo fi, a thing of beauty in many ways. 

Madonna's original dates from 1983, early 80s New York dance pop that has buckets of charm and some key Madonna tropes already well in place.

Burning Up

The sessions Watt played with Sonic Youth resulted in this cover of Madonna's 1985 smash Into The Groove.

Into The Groove(Y)

Like Watt's cover it's lo fi and sounds made for ghetto blasters and C90 cassettes, with grungy bass, a hissing drum machine and handclaps and Thurston's ultra- drawled vocal. When playing in the studio Sonic Youth would play the original version through one of the channels and fade it into and out of their own version. Yes, I'd love to hear a recording of that too. In the meantime here's Madonna's Desperately Seeking Susan associated single. if you get both playing at the same time on your computer you might be able to recreate Sonic Youth's experiment. 

Into The Groove

When Ciccone Youth's album The Whitey Album came out in 1988, a few months after their landmark Daydream Nation, many people assumed they were taking the piss or covering Madonna ironically. Thurston says this was most definitely not the case, that they loved the song, danced to it in NY clubs and were paying tribute to the woman who'd played in two No Wave bands, including one (spinal Root Gang) that eventually transformed into Swans. Sonic Youth loved that someone from their downtown scene had broken out and become huge. 

The Whitey Album probably overdoes it, fifty minutes when it could have been a really good twenty minute EP but Sonic/ Ciccone Youth were into sprawling records in 1988. The album includes the track Two Cool Rock Chicks Listening to Neu, a track with J Mascis on guitar and the first time I was aware of Neu's existence and Ciccone's cover of Robert Palmer's Addicted To Love, a cover with a vocal recorded by Kim in a karaoke booth and the video filmed with her lip syncing, looking cool as fuck in cut off jeans, while footage of the Vietnam War is projected behind her. 

Bizarrely, Robert Palmer had already crossed over into the US 80s indie- punk scene with his cover version of Husker Du's New Day Rising, played live at San Diego University Amphitheatre in 1987.  

Songs For Isaac 5

Sifter's Records on Fog Lane in Burnage is a second hand record shop immortalised in the Oasis single Shakermaker ('Mr Sifter sold me songs/ When I was just sixteen/ Now he stops at traffic lights/ But only when they're green'). It is about half a mile from where I grew up in Withington and a regular haunt for me until recent years. Sometime back when Isaac and Eliza were both pretty young, around 2008, I hit upon the brilliant plan that if I took them into Sifter's and gave them a fiver each, they could choose a record each while I browsed the racks. The plan only had two flaws: 1) it was high risk. I could easily end up walking out with a copy of Tango In The Night and a 12" of Whitney's I Wanna Dance With Somebody and 2) my attempt to get them crate digging didn't occupy them for very long at all, they both committed to records quickly and then got bored and wanted to leave. 

On the other hand, they both randomly came up with the goods. Eliza, round about five years old, chose a copy of Into The Groove on 12", Madonna's 1985 Desperately Seeking Susan smash hit. Nothing wrong with a bit of Madge, classic 80s dance pop (and covered by Ciccone Youth but that's for another day). I suspect the mid- 80s Madonna and Rosanna Arquette on the sleeve, all hair and bangles, may have influenced her choice. 

Into The Groove

Isaac's eyes and hands had picked out a 12" single too, There's A Ghost In My House by The Fall. 

There's A Ghost In My House

The Vinyl Villain recently wrote about this 12" as part of his weekly ramble through The Fall's singles and you can find his post and the singles B- sides here. What drew Isaac to it I don't know- the sleeve isn't exactly child friendly but it's another piece of 80s dance music, The Fall approaching accessibility with Brix in the group and a cover of one of my wife Lou's favourite Northern Soul hits (R. Dean Taylor's original came out on Motown in 1967). As for the song's title taking on new meaning now,  well, I don't know about ghosts but Isaac's presence is all over our house from his coat and bobble hat still hanging up in the hall as you come in through the front door to the hundreds of cards we've received since he died last Tuesday. Thanks again to all of you who have left comments here or elsewhere. It means a lot. 

Kissing The Cotton Clouds

Shari Denson, friend of mine I've never met but know on Facebook, is a photographer and has taken loads of great pictures of bands playing in and around Manchester. Last year she put on a one- off exhibition in a slate park under the Mancunian Way which I missed but looked really good. A week ago on Facebook she posted this picture, a shot taken at Cotton Clouds festival a couple of years ago. Shari asked 'does anyone recognise either of these gorgeous folk?'

It is a stunning photograph, a moment in time caught. I don't know which band the couple are watching, it looks like daytime so presumably a band lower down the bill. They're a good looking couple, photogenic and sexy and they embody that freedom you have when you're young. He is caught up in the performance happening to the left of the picture, she has noticed the camera and glanced at the shutter, looking straight at us. Both are in the moment, together but with a different focus. Some of Shari's friends said the woman looks a bit like Madonna and the man like Jeff Buckley. Another suggested it could be from an 80s film, this one maybe...

Shari said that if she were her, she'd want the picture printed and on the wall, ready to show her grand-kids in several decades time. This generation have so many photographs of themselves, they document themselves and their lives constantly almost without thinking about it. I've got very few photos from my teens or twenties. We only really started taking photographs regularly when we had children. Selfies weren't really a thing until phones and cameras became brought together in one object.

Since the original thread a week ago I think the man has been identified but on the night she posted it another friend Karen said that in some ways she hoped they wouldn't be found, that she liked their anonymity, she didn't want to know who they were- 'Mystery is everything sometimes, right?' In some ways I agree- without names they are a kind of every couple, young and unfettered.

Karen said that when the couple who were in the famous photo in Times Square at the end of World War II were named and their stories known it ruined the photo for her. Both lived into their nineties. The woman, Greta Friedman, said that the sailor, George Mendonsa, didn't ask to kiss her, he just grabbed her. According to Greta it wasn't romantic, more a drunken celebration, and today that strikes a very different tone.

More happily, the couple from the sleeve of the Woodstock album were found forty years later and happily were still together.

It also made me think of this photo taken in New York in the mid- 1940s,a snapshot of Hal Chase, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs near Columbia University. One of the books I've read about the Beats, it might have been Carolyn Cassady's autobiography, wrote about this picture and said that the only person who is in the moment is Jack, meeting the gaze of the lens. Hal is looking at Allen, Allen has his eyes closed, frozen slightly, Burroughs too. Jack is there, alive and looking back at us, tuned it. Shari's photo is similar- a better photo too- him intensely looking elsewhere and her looking down the camera at us.

Cotton Clouds takes place, or took place, at Saddleworth near Oldham and has been played by The Coral, Sugarhill Gang and Nick Heywood in 2017, Sister Sledge, Starsailor and The Orielles the following year and Peter Hook, Alabama 3, The Wailers and Tim Burgess last August. I think the promoters have since gone into administration and it probably wouldn't have happened this year anyway.

I'm assuming that Cotton Clouds was named after the line in Elephant Stone, a song that is one of The Stone Roses finest moments. I'd take Elephant Stone over the entire Second Coming album, it's unaffected, weightless and heady-

'Burst into heaven
Kissing the cotton clouds
Arctic sheets and fields of wheat
I can't stop coming down'

Elepahnt Stone is a technicolour burst of northern psychedelic, the words and guitars in a rush to unfold and Reni's drums driving everything on, the sound surfacing only for a breather with the 'seems like there's a hole/in my dreams' before diving back in again.

Elephant Stone 12" Mix

Madge

Madonna turns 60 today so here's happy birthday to her. I've written before about Madonna, about the turn of the 90s Madonna where she took on board house music and sampling and bestrode the planet like a Galtier bra wearing colossus singing Justify My Love and Vogue, and also about the later 90s Madonna working with William Orbit making the superb Ray Of Light album, and before that about Into The Groove and Sonic Youth's Ciccone Youth, and before that about her appearing on The Tube at The Hacienda and a story about Peter Hook (allegedly) or Rob Gretton (possibly) offering her £50 to dance for him and being told to fuck off.

Madonna's songs from the 1980s, the pop stuff, sound better and better the further away from then we get- whenever I hear them on the radio or the TV I'm always struck by their dance-pop nous and the exuberance she put into them. La Isla Bonita, Live To Tell, Borderline, Like A Prayer, Live To Tell and a load of others too- top stuff. Here are two of them to remind you...

Borderline was her first US top ten hit and reached number 2 in the UK. Produced and then remixed by Jellybean Benitez, her boyfriend at the time, it is one of the building blocks of her career, four minutes of perfectly pitched pop music.

Borderline

Like A Prayer, from 1989, signals the end of her pure-pop phase and the start of the next part, but is really just pop. It is a blast, mixing sex and Catholicism, and guaranteed to cause controversy. The video where Madonna witnesses a murder by the Ku Klux Klan, takes refuge in a church and then dreams about kissing a black Jesus, was banned by The Vatican and led to an outcry by various 'family and religious groups' who also boycotted Pepsi who then dropped her and the song from an advert. A lot of fuss over a pop song- who'd have thought the religious right wing were so touchy?

Like A Prayer

She's Got Herself A Universe

Madonna's Ray Of Light single and album are 20 years old. The album is a modern pop showpiece, borrowing from all over the place, mainly but not only dance music and dance music production, to make something new and up-to-date. The single was a blast, a riot of acid-tinged electronics merged with a soaring chorus and a feeling of freedom, flying, re-birth. Madonna had been through several life changing experiences in the previous couple of years, not least the birth of her daughter, and a desire to capture this newness, 'wonderment' she called it, was uppermost in her mind. The person chosen to bring it to life was William Orbit and he brings the sound, the electronic and dance influences and the production techniques. Ray Of Light, the single, still sounds fresh today. Orbit deliberately pushed her vocals as far as he could, making her sing just beyond the top of her range, a semitone above where she'd usually peak, to get that reaching and slightly straining effect. I was deep into stuff in 1998 that was often quite a long way from Madonna but I loved this single- and still do.  The video was also bang up to date...



The 12" and cd single came with a range of remixes. William Orbit's own 8 minute Liquid version of Ray Of Light was well worth the cost of a cd single (£3.99 probably), a stretched out, less hyper take on the pop version, with looped electric guitar parts for the intro and then burbling synths and bass, the vocal covered in reverb.

Ray Of Light (William Orbit Liquid Mix)

I may come back to the Ray Of Light album at a later date- I haven't listened to it for a long time but it's got a lot of songs worth re-investigating. While putting this post together I cam across this semi-ambient, floaty remix of Drowned World with a great backwards guitar part, again by Orbit himself- Drowned World- A Reverie Remix. Rather beautiful.



Punk bonus- Mark Vidler, as Go Home Productions, was a master of the 00s mash-up/bootleg scene. He spliced Ray Of Light with Pretty Vacant, added the filth and fury of the Pistols on Bill Grundy and some gig chatter of Lydon complaining about being spat upon.

Ray Of Gob

American Girl

The news, big and small, is just a mess at the moment, one crushing item after another- Catalonia, Las Vegas, the Tories in Manchester and the whole Boris Johnson circus, the continued existence of Donald Trump, Morrissey's dullard pronouncements about Ukip- that's just scratching the surface.  Yesterday brought news of the death of Tom Petty at the age of 66. I can't claim to be a massive fan but I'm aware of his role and status. I'm fond of Free Fallin' which struck me as a good tune back in 1989 (and still does) and this is a fucking monster of a song/riff/chorus/sentiment.

American Girl

Julian Casablancas might have been listening to this one in the early 2000s. At the weekend I happened upon the picture of Madonna (at Keith Haring's birthday party in 1984) and it seemed too good not to use for a post about an American girl.

Beauty's Where You Find It

There are plenty of Madonna singles I'll make a case for, from Into The Groove to Ray Of Light and several in between. I even like American Pie. In 1990 she released two singles that are as good as anything she did, splicing pop with house to stay a step ahead of the rest, and pushing pop music into new places. Vogue is a smart pop song, a dance, a homage to 1920s and 1930s style and Hollywood legend, a light shining on the gay club scene, and a celebration of the dancefloor. The rap section is totally memorable and the rhythm can only have come from producer Shep Pettibone's exposure to house music in Europe.

Vogue



Justify My Love was a step further, calculated to cause offence and controversy. Co-written by Lenny Kravitz, drums borrowed from Public Enemy (and Clyde Stubblefield originally), it sets off like a train and Madonna's breathy vocals make it clear there's only one thing on her mind. The video features the full range of button pushers for the TV censors- scenes of a sexual nature, cross-dressing, BDSM and nudity, all par for the course for Madonna in 1990. The Sex book (with Vanilla Ice of all people) was just around the corner. Justify My Love is a great single in its own right though, a chuggy dance pop monster. The video was banned by MTV (obvs) and to watch it you'd have to buy it on VHS. Until Youtube was invented.

Justify My Love

Ciccone

In 1988 Sonic Youth put out The Whitey Album, not very well disguised as Ciccone Youth and in tribute to Madonna Louise Ciccone. Most of the attention was on the record's cover versions. These had been put out as a single on New Alliance in 1986 and were expanded out for the album. Coming at a time when Sonic Youth were being praised to the heavens for Daydream Nation this was possibly an effective way of defusing some of the hype- some noise, contributions from Mike Watt, jokey covers plus a hip reference to krautrock with the song Two Cool Rock Chicks Listening To Neu! The cover of the album was a photocopied close up of Madonna's face. Madonna apparently gave her blessing to it, remembering the band from her clubbing and Danceteria days. Ciccone Youth did their Madonna thing on Into The Groove(y) and Burnin' Up. Someone on Youtube has done the decent thing and set the music to clips of Desperately Seeking Susan (the only Madonna film that is actually watchable).



Better still though was their version of Robert Palmer's Addicted To Love. The video and vocal were recorded in a karaoke booth for $25- D.I.Y. punk rock in attitude, style and cost. It was also a very effective way of sending up Palmer's video with Kim Gordon singing the song deadpan and dancing with images from the Vietnam War flashing over the top.



This is the standard setter and last word in ironic cover versions. And still sounds great.

Chapter And Verse

I got Bernard Sumner's autobiography (Chapter And Verse) for Christmas. I haven't read it yet but have spent some time flicking through it. Bits of it sent me off towards the record collection and to Youtube. Which is where I found this piece of footage from thirty years ago.

January 1984 and The Tube is filmed live from the Hacienda. Onstage are The Factory All Stars who play four songs- 52nd Street's Cool As Ice, ACR's Shack Up and New Order's Confusion (all three together as a medley). Then Joy Division's Love Will Tear Us Apart (sung by Caesar from The Wake). There are way too many people on stage, several singers and a multitude of musicians (including members of The Wake, Quando Quango, ACR, 52nd Street, Bernard from New Order and Marcel King). They all seem to be having a good time and yes, it is a bit shonky but it is very good fun too.



Later on the same evening and also on The Tube a young lady called Madonna will make her first British TV appearance, miming and dancing. There is a story that Peter Hook offered her some cash to dance in the dressing room but I'm sure that's not true.

Like A Vir...shhh

This Madonna song caused a bit of a stir in the school yards of the mid-80s when it was released- use of the word 'virgin' (snigger snigger). Teenage Fanclub covered it in 1991, quite fantastically, smothered in acres of beautiful distortion with sleepy vocals. When JC posted it a good while back at The Vinyl Villain it gained a takedown notice from the DMCA. When he re-posted it much later, he would not even name the song for fear of attracting the attention of the internet police. Sneaky, unnamed and hush hush. You ain't seen me right.

Like A Secret

Sifting

This is Sifters record shop, in Burnage, south Manchester, known far and wide due to Noel Gallagher immortalising Mr Sifter in Oasis's early single Shakermaker. I grew up not far from here and have been visiting Sifters on and off since early 80s. It's the kind of place you can rummage for an hour and come out with seven records having spent less than twenty quid. A fair few years ago, six or seven maybe, I took the kids to Fog Lane Park  (another of my childhood/teenage haunts). I then took them over the road to Sifters and to pacify them while I had at least ten minutes sifting I put them in front of the 12" rack and told them to choose one each. Whether through luck or judgement both chose acceptably- I.T. settled on The Fall's cover of R Dean Taylor's There's A Ghost In My House- must have been the sleeve- and daughter E.T., only two-ish, wanted Madonna's Into The Groove. Neither cost more than £1.95. Amongst other things, I bought this damn fine piece of twenty-first century pop...

Crazy In Love

I haven't been to Sifters for years, choosing King Bee in Chorlton for my out of town second hand record shopping these days. It's closer (and, whisper it, better). But I miss my trips to Sifters. Is it still there, anyone know? May have to take a drive that way soon.