Forty Five Minutes Of Cover Versions Part Three

A third Sunday covers mix for October this time with an 80s indie edge and some repeat offenders from the last two weeks present and correct. Starts out all small hours and hushed, goes noisier, comes down again and finishes where it started with The Velvets, one of the most covered bands. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Cover Versions Part Three

• Cowboy Junkies: Sweet Jane
• Sonic Youth: Superstar
• Primal Scream: Carry Me Home
• The House Of Love: Who By Fire
• Ciccone Youth: Into The Groovey
• World Of Twist: This Too Shall Pass Away
• Red Snapper: Sound And Vision
• R.E.M.: Indian Summer
• Minutemen: Have You Ever Seen The Rain?
• Calexico: Corona
• Paul Quinn & Edwyn Collins: Pale Blue Eyes (Western)

Cowboy Junkies covered Sweet Jane on their magical 1988 album The Trinity Session. The album was famously recorded in Toronto's Church of The Holy Trinity. Their cover was based on the version the Velvets played on their 1969 Live album rather than the one on Loaded. Lou Reed said the Cowboy Junkies take on the song was his favourite, the way the song was meant to be done. 

Sonic Youth featured twice last week and do this week too- their version of Superstar came out on a 1994 tribute to The Carpenters. Richard Carpenter didn't like it at all. Sonic Youth take a blow torch to the song, a huge amount of reverb, one massive piano note, some wobbly guitar sounds and surely nail something true about the song. The Carpenters released it in 1971 with LA session musicians The Wrecking Crew and a toned down, less suggestive lyric ('I can't wait to sleep with you again' was changed to 'be with you again'). The song was written by Bonnie Bramlett and Leon Russell and recorded first by Delaney and Bonnie in 1969, a song about the relationships between rock stars and groupies in the 60s.

Carry Me Home was on Primal Scream's Dixie- Narco EP, a bleak Dennis Wilson song made bleaker still by Primal Scream and Andrew Weatherall while recording at Ardent in Memphis in 1991. Weatherall's production and arrangement is superb, an extension of the Screamadelica sound into darker places. Dennis' song is sung from the point of view of a dying soldier in Vietnam.

Who By Fire is a Leonard Cohen song covered by The House Of Love on a 1991 tribute album, I'm Your Fan- there are loads of 80s/ 90s alt/ indie stars on the album including R.E.M., Pixies, The Lilac Time, Ian McCulloch, Lloyd Cole, Robert Forster, Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, James and John Cale. I'm not sure any of them really improve on the original songs. 

Ciccone Youth were a Madonna inspired Sonic Youth side project with Minuteman Mike Watt on bass. Watt was in a bad way after D. Boon's death and what became The White Album was a way to get him playing again. Into The Groovey is a cover of Madonna (obvs) and samples her too. SY loved Madonna in the 80s, they loved Into The Groove. They also covered Robert Palmer's Addicted To Love. 

World Of Twist did a few covers- Kick Out The Jams, She's A Rainbow, Life And Death- and this one, This Too Shall Pass Away, which sits in the middle of side one on their sole album, 1991's Quality Street. Quality Street is a heady stew of psychedelic pop, Northern Soul and late 80s Mancunian indie. The original version of This Too... is a 1964 single by the Honeycombs.

Red Snapper's cover of Bowie's Sound And Vision is on Ban- Di- To, out earlier this year and thoroughly recommended. Red Snapper are a formidable live band and Sound And Vision is a live favourite- I saw them do it at The Golden Lion in 2023.

Indian Summer is a semi- legendary song by Beat Happening, lo fi indie pioneers from Olympia, Washington. The song is a slow burning tale of youth and lust, originally released in 1988. R.E.M.'s cover is from a 2008 single, Hollow Man. I have versions by Spectrum (Sonic Boom), Luna and The Jazz Butcher as well as this one. In fact Spectrum's may be the best version and should probably have been included here- R.E.M. find some late period magic and intensity here though.

Minutemen covered Have You Ever Seen The Rain? on their fourth and final album, 1985's Three Way Tie For Last, a cover of Watt and Boon's teenage heroes Creedence Clearwater Revival. AT two minute thirty seconds long it's an epic by Minutemen standards. D Boon died shortly after the album's release.

Calexico's cover of Minutemen's Corona was on their 2003 masterpiece Feast Of Wire. The original is from 1984's Double Nickels On the Dime, one of D Boon's best songs, a heartfelt protest song for the downtrodden people of mid- 80s Mexico. Calexico played it live and then covered it, adding mariachi horns. Let's forget the fact it became the theme tune to Jackass. 

Back to The Velvets. Paul Quinn and Edwyn Collins covered Lou Reed's Pale Blue Eyes for a one off single in 1984, done for the soundtrack of Alan Horne's Punk Rock Hotel. It's a much loved cover, Edwyn and Paul both sounding as good as they ever did. 

Monday's Long Songs

Over at Ban Ban Ton Ton last week Dr. Rob wrote a post about various Sabres Of Paradise remixes, Selected Sabre Cuts. One of his selected cuts was the Sabres remix of Primal Scream's Jailbird, part of a 12" single released in June 1994. 

Jailbird was the second single from the album Give Out But Don't Give Up, an album released in March 1994 that was it's fair to say, a tad divisive. In 1991 Primal Scream with some production and remix assistance from Andrew Weatherall and Hugo Nicolson as well contributions from The Orb and Jah Wobble released Screamadelica, an album that saw Primal Scream go day- glo acid house, long haired converts to the new sound (although the album contained some more trad Scream rock music too in the shape of the Jimmy miller produced Moving On Up and the strung out ballad Damaged). They followed it with the Screamadelica 12", Moving On Up plus the album's title track, a huge piece of symphonic wide screen acid house and a beautifully downbeat cover of Dennis Wilson's Carry Me Home. When the band returned in 1994 they had gone full on Rolling Stones, first with Rocks and then Jailbird (which opens Give Out...). The album came with a Confederate flag on the cover (a William Eggleston photo) and got the band the tag 'Dance Traitors'. Having rewritten what an indie guitar band could do on Screamadelica they went into reverse and indulged their Rolling Stone fantasies. At this point some of the Scream were living like Keith Richards and if you live like Keef long enough, you'll start writing like Keef. 

I didn't take to Give Out But Don't Give Up when it came out. I was in the Dance Traitors camp although I liked Rocks just because it was so brazen. In 1994 I wasn't too fussed about bands who wanted to be in 1973. If I wanted to listen to Sticky Fingers I'd put Sticky Fingers on. Some years later I found it to be a better album than I did at the time but in 1994 it was too retro, too backwards looking. 

The remixes on the other hand were where the action might be- after all Mr Weatherall had played such a key role on Screamdelica that surely the Weatherall remixes of any of the Give Out... tracks would be what we wanted. The Jailbird 12" was highly anticipated in this household and when I got it home and put it on, there was again, a sense of 'this is not what I expected..' about the pair of Sabres Of Paradise remixes clad in a bright red sleeve shot of Throb live on stage, guitar and crotch plus amp and Confederate flag. The first of the two Sabres remixes was this one...

Jailbird (Sweeney 2 Mix)

The songs drumbeat looped up and running for thirty seconds, then a squiggly distorted noise, presumably Throb or Innes' guitar amp. Huge single descending piano notes, slowed right down and then some organ doing the same. An oscillating synth line kicks in, similar to the theme tune from The Sweeney (presumably where the remix title came from). This is Jailbird gone slow mo, out of it, no longer higher than the sun but very much damaged. We were indeed a long way from home.

The second remix (and the one Rob chose for his post last week) was a big one, nearly thirteen minutes long and where Andrew, Jagz and Gary went fully in with the dub... 

Jailbird (Dub Chapter 3 Mix)

The Dub Chapter 3 remix took some getting my head around too. Now, thirty- one years later, it's an example of Andrew's genius, his way of taking a song and deconstructing it completely, taking one or two elements from the original and constructing something entirely new from it (something he'd done on Screamadelica with Loaded and Come Together). 

Dub Chapter 3 is long, dubbed out and full of production tricks that the three Sabres had been honing during '93/ 94. Echo, FX, rattling drum machine loops, a three note synth part, acres of time and space, whole galaxies of time and space, and eventually, half way through something from the original song turns up, not one of Throb's guitars but a snatch of Bobby's vocal used as a sound rather than a voice. It's an epic Sabres Of Paradise remix, with King Tubby and Lee Perry was the inspiration, a million miles from Screamdelica and a million miles from Jailbird too. 

Further remixes were on the 12", one from Kris Needs and one by The Dust Brothers (later Chemical Brothers) and (I'm Gonna) Cry Myself Blind single had remixes from Portishead and Kris Needs again, but none of them go anywhere near what Sabres did with Dub Chapter 3. Stick it on a playlist/ CD/ mixtape along with the Sabres Gaelic dub remix of Peace Together's Be Still and the Squire Black Dove Rides Out version of One Dove's Breakdown, both ten minutes long and both from '93, and Sabres own productions Edge 6, Return Of Carter, Ysaebud and RSD, and you've got Sabres In Dub, a Sabres Of Paradise album that never was. 

Soundtrack Saturday

Iggy Pop plays at Manchester's Victoria Warehouse tonight and I'm going to be there. Iggy feels like the last man standing in a way. He hasn't played in Manchester for years and at 78 years old I can't imagine there'll be too many opportunities to see him on home turf again. Although it wouldn't surprise me if Iggy lived to be 100 and carried on performing with his shirt off for another two decades. 

Two weeks ago the Soundtrack Saturday featured Iggy's title song to the 1984 Alex Cox film Repo Man. Iggy got a massive boost in the 90s when his songs were included on the soundtrack to Danny Boyle's Trainspotting. Included seems a bit reductionist- it's fair to say that the film, its publicity and its opening scene would be nowhere near as memorable as they were without this song bursting out of the cinema speakers as a shoplifting Ewan McGregor attempt to outrun security guards and ends up almost splayed across the bonnet of a car, laughing at the poor driver...

Lust For Life

Lust For Life was the title song from Iggy's 1977 second solo album, recorded at Hansa in West Berlin with David Bowie in the producer's seat. The band were Iggy's touring line up- Ricky Gardiner on guitar and Tony and Hunt Sales on bass and drums. Ricky Gardiner came up the famous guitar riff, based on the Morse code  opening to the US Armed Forces Network news programme and written on a ukulele. The guitars are great but its the drums which are first out of the traps, the loudest, most perfectly recorded drums. But there's no escaping the riff, everything just has to fall into line and follow. 

On top of this, essentially punk crossed with a sped up Motown backbeat, Iggy songs and sneers, at the top of his game, lines about Johnny Yen, liqour and rugs, hypnotising chickens, flesh machines and GTOs fired off, always coming back to the hilariously brilliant, 'well I'm just a modern guy... I got a lust for life'. Jon Savage (I think) once wrote that in just four years, from Raw Power to Lust For Life, Iggy went from Death Trip to Lust For Life and what a strange trip it was. 

Trainspotting also featured Iggy's song Nightclubbing, a genuine solo Iggy Pop classic, from Iggy's solo debut The Idiot (also recorded with Bowie but at Chateau d'Herouville, France). Bowie and Iggy had both left the USA to kick addictions and ended up in Europe making records that soaked up the new sounds of West German rock and electronics. Nightclubbing has Bowie on keys and a very mechanistic drum machine, a weird, dislocated electronic pulse, cocaine numbness and Iggy intoning his lyric about what it was like hanging out with Bowie every night, seeing people, 'brand new people', and doing 'brand new dances like the nuclear bomb'. Bowie wanted to replace the drum machine with 'proper' drums but Iggy stuck his ground, correctly, seeing that the drum machine gives the song its blank, lurching edge.

Nightclubbing

Iggy wrote the words in ten minutes in the studio and later said Nightclubbing was about "about the incredible coldness and deathly feeling you have after you've done something like that and how much you enjoy it. It could be Los Angeles or Paris or New York or anywhere, really." In Trainspotting the song soundtracks a scene involving shooting up in a desolate Edinburgh apartment and ends with the death of a baby. 

The Trainspotting soundtrack is a superb 90s soundtrack. It turned Born Slippy into a massive hit and rebirthed Lou Reed's Perfect Day. It included Brian Eno's Deep Blue Day and Pulp's Mile End and a ten minute Weatherall produced Primal Scream title track, a slow, snakey instrumental with the street sounds from an all day session outside a pub in Soho, the assembled Scream party people shouting to friends and associates from the street to a first or second floor room. 

Trainspotting

Forty Five Minutes Of Jah Wobble

Like much of the rest of the country I was outside on Thursday night taking in the spectacle of the northern lights. To the naked eye not much more than a faint flicker but when seen through a camera on night setting giving us a dazzling display of the aurora borealis. This photo was taken from our loft window by my daughter Eliza and is better than any of the ones I took. 

Today's mix has a similar cosmic vibe, seven songs from the bass playing legend Jah Wobble. His back catalogue is so wide and deep that it would take several mixes to pay justice to Wobble's music so this is just a selection of post- PiL Jah Wobble tunes with an emphasis, as always in Wobble land, on the dubbier end of things. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Jah Wobble

• Angels
• King Of The Faeries (Avengers Outer Space Chug Dub)
• Visions Of You (Pick 'n' Mix 1)
• Higher Than The Sun (A Dub Symphony In Two Parts)
• Post Lockdown Dub
• Inspector Out Of Space
• Everyman's An Island

Angles is from Jah Wobble's Invaders Of The Heart 1994 album Take Me To God, an album with twelve different vocalists, the voice on Angels belonging to the Senegalese singer Baaba Maal, the song underpinned by one of those lovely fat dub basslines that only Wobble can conjure. 

King Of The Faeries is by Dub Trees, a Martin Glover/ Youth project with Wobble and Daniel Romar in 2016 with some loop and beats consultancy by Andrew Weatherall and Nina Walsh. The Dub Trees album is an excellent collision of dub and folk with a pagan angle. 

Andrew Weatherall is also present on the 1992 remix of Visions Of You, a single from 1991's Invaders Of The Heart Rising Above Bedlam album. Visions Of You was the first time Andrew worked with Jagz Kooner and Gary Burns, a partnership which would lead to Sabres Of Paradise. On the 12" there are three AW remixes of Visions Of You, Pick 'n' Mix 1 and 2 and then The Secret Love Child Of Hank And Johnny, twenty five minutes of dubbed out excellence with the beautiful voice of Sinead O'Connor. Everyman's An Island is also from Rising Above Bedlam. 

More Weatherall! This time from Primal Scream's Screamadelica. In an interview for the Classic Albums series Andrew describes sitting in the producer's chair and realising what this version of Higher Than The Sun needed, reaching for the phone with the words, 'Get me Jah Wobble'.

During lockdown Jah released a series of tracks onto Bandcamp, recorded at his home in Stockport (I know! How did Jah Wobble end up in Stockport right?!). Post Lockdown Dub is self explanatory. 

In May 2020 Youth and Jah Wobble released an album called Acid Punk Dub Apocalypse, a selection of dub songs with various singers- Hollie Cook, Rhiannon, Aurora Dawn, Durga McBroom- plus appearances from Richard Dudanski, Roger Eno, Nik Turner and some of the beats and programming courtesy of Mr Weatherall and Nina Walsh. 

V.A. Saturday

In 1986 NME issued a cassette compilation that spawned an entire scene, a twenty two track tape called C86. It invented indie pop, a subculture that was DIY, inwards looking, amateurish and underground and lo fi, it celebrated underachievement and became eventually a millstone around the necks of some of the bands involved. The indie scene that grew from it was all 60s anoraks, scruffy black 501s, lovebeads and bowl cuts, buzzsaw guitars, sing song vocals, gig posters and fanzines with photos torn from magazines and text done by Letraset, badly photocopied by whoever had access to a work photocopier- 60s guitar pop crossed with early 80s post- punk, defining itself partly by what it was against as much as anything else. It was anti- Phil Collins, anti- stadium rock, anti- Elton John and Queen, anti- big 80s gated snares, anti- rock star, anti- Thatcher and anti- heavy metal. All of these are good things to be anti. 

Funnily, given that the indie scene that burst out of it became quite homogenous, the original line up of bands on C86 is by no means all classic C86 indie pop. Standard bearers Primal Scream are present (in their pre- rawk indie phase) hit the payload with the thrilling rush of their early B-side Velocity Girl (for some fans, still the best Primal Scream song). The Shop Assistants, The Wedding Present, The Bodines and The Soup Dragons are all classic C86 indie pop. But some of the bands are outliers in sound or outlook, unrepresentative of the jangle pop sound that came from the tape- Stump, Bogshed, bIG fLAME, A Witness, The Shrubs and The McKenzies are all more abrasive and less indie pop. 

In some ways it's a great document and it has a real cultural significance in the history of British independent music, both as the springboard for a scene and then later as something to react against. It split the NME writers at the time, many of whom were pushing the paper towards covering hip hop and then house. The indie pop/ jangle pop scene was the starting point for several bands who'd go on to bigger things and was a scene in which women were heavily involved- as singers, musicians, fanzine writers, promoters and at labels. 

The Soup Dragons would leave the indie ghetto, the new dance music sounds of the late 80s hitting the band hard. It's a continuing annoyance for the band, singer Sean Dickson especially, that they were branded dance music bandwagon jumpers when they were eighteen months ahead of Primal Scream's conversion to acid house. On Pleasantly Surprised they sound like the next step on from Buzzcocks.

Pleasantly Surprised 

The Bodines were from Glossop, a town nestled into the Pennines east of Manchester. Therese is indie pop gold, a breathless, trebly guitar pop swoon, by four young men with Doctor Martens shoes, flat tops and fringes, denim jackets and 501s with turn ups of exactly the right size. 

Therese

C86 ended with This Boy Can Wait by The Wedding Present, breakneck guitars and Gedge's gruff vocal delivery and a classic indie pop boy- girl song. 

This Boy Can Wait

bIG fLAME were a post- punk/ indie pop three piece from Manchester, a band who would take the phrase 'viciously trebly' as a starting point. The speed, velocity and attack have more in common with Minutemen and Husker Du than the shambling groups in some ways, and their angular, slashing chords more like Gang Of Four and a hundred post- punk singles. The song on C86 was New Way (A Quick Wash And Brush Up With Liberation Theology) but I don't have that on my hard drive at the moment so this one will do instead (and is from a 2006 expanded version of C86 called CD86 The Birth Of Indie Pop)

Why Popstars Can't Dance

The Close Lobsters, Mighty Mighty, The Mighty Lemon Drops, Half Man Half Biscuit, Miaow, The Pastels, We've Got A Fuzzbox And We're Gonna Use It, McCarthy, The Wolfhounds, The Servants and Age Of Chance all appeared on C86 too and there's no doubt it was instrumental in influencing various people who emerged from the indie scene in the early 90s- Bob Stanley of Saint Etienne, Manic Street Preachers and Heavenly Records all have origins that can be traced back to C86 in some way. The intense weekly pressure of four music papers competing against each other, jockeying to find bands, is one of the reasons C86 existed in the first place, NME placing a flag in the ground with the release of this cassette. Most of the bands, despite some negativity towards the album and the indie scene that grew out of it after 1986, have made peace with it now. In 2019 Primal Scream, who had long ignored their pre- Loaded records when playing live and when compiling Best Ofs, re- released Velocity Girl for Record Shop Day, a ninety second song that started life as the B-side to Creation Records release Crystal Crescent and has proved to have a very long tail.

Velocity Girl

V.A. Saturday

This Saturday series is jumping around all over the place, a celebration of the various artists compilation album, something that when done well is as good as any 'proper' album. Recently I've posted Lenny' Kaye's mid- 60s garage and psyche rock extravaganza Nuggets, a pair of Andrew Weatherall collated compilations (9 O'Clock Drop and Force Tracks), the Detroit techno classic Retro Techno/ Emotions Electric and Colleen 'Cosmo's Murphy's Balearic Breakfasts. Today I offer you a Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs modern classic, their 2022 compilation Fell From The Sun, an album that is very specific in its parameters spanning a period lasting two years (1990- 1991) and solely tracks that are at 98 beats per minute. 

The lost in ecstasy face on the front cover, snapped at legendary London club Shoom, gives more than a hint at what's inside, fourteen slices of blissed out, shuffling, slightly woozy, indie- dance crossover/ straight dance music from the early 90s, a period where there seemed to be exciting, genre busting, record deck hogging 12" singles released weekly but also a time when tempos were suddenly cut, where the paced slowed and people took a breather before heading back to the floor. Bob and Pete were part of the scene, Saint Etienne releasing their own contribution to the scene in the form of their cover of Neil Young's Only Can Break Your Heart. Fell From The Sun opens with Primal Scream's Higher Than The Sun (Higher Than The Orb), a record that redefined Primal Scream as a band (something that Andrew Weatherall had already done not once but twice wit their previous two singles, Loaded and Come Together). If they'd stopped after Higher Than The Sun, it would have been enough, a sun dappled, sky scraping ode to becoming unlocked and going with the flow, of losing oneself in the moment. Bobby Gillespie isn't always the man I'd go to for lyrics but Higher Than The Sun is close to perfection, 'My brightest star's my inner light/ Let it guide me/ Experience and innocence bleed inside me/ Hallucinogens can open me or untie me/ I drift in inner space free of time/ I find a higher state of grace deep inside'. 

Higher Than The Sun (Higher Than The Orb Extended Mix)

Spaced out sounds and whispers swirl around, a faint pulse bumps in, and a rising synth line appears and then the rhythm gently kicks in, as Bobby coos 'I believe you get what you give', and then organ and drums and woooo sounds. Saxophone. Eight minutes of bliss. 

After that Bob and Pete guide us through a version of 1990- 91 at 98bp, stopping off for the mighty Cascades by Sheer Taft, The Grid's Floatation, Saint Etienne's glorious B-side Speedwell, One Dove, Transglobal Underground, BBGs Snappiness and The Aloof and finding room for a few lesser known gems- Elis Curry's U Make Me Feel, Massonix's Just A Little Bit More, History and Q- Tee's Afrika. 

The track titles alone conjure up the look of 1990- white Levi's, Travel Fox and Converse, long sleeved t-shirts, boys with centre partings and shoulder length hair, girls with short hair, dungarees, football shirts, Happy Mondays t- shirts, Spike Island and Kate Moss on the cover of The Face. 

Towards the end of the album are this pair of tracks. Firstly, I Don't Even Know If I Should Call You Baby by Soul Family Sensation, a British trio switched on by Chicago house in 1989. They split in 1992. Johnny Male went on to Republica. Guy Batson worked with Saint Etienne. Singer Jhelisa Anderson sang with The Shamen on LSI. None of them ever sounded better than on this song. 

I Don't Even Know If I Should Call You Baby

Fell From The Sun closes with Moodswings' Spiritual High, a cover of Donna Summer's State Of Independence, with a typically 1990 drum pattern, Chrissie Hynde, loved up synths and keys, bouncing bass, rattling rim shots, a wheezy organ, a choir, tumbling piano chords, and eventually, finally, Martin Luther King-  Grant Showbiz (a former Smiths and Billy Bragg roadie) and drummer James Hood creating a sound that is the very essence of that period between early spring 1990 and autumn 1991.

Spiritual High (The Moodfood Megamix)

V.A. Saturday

One of the features of the 1988- 1992 period was the indie- dance Various Artists album, often a cheaply packaged affair rounding up the big hitters and also rans, compilations called things like Happy Daze, sleeves adorned with daisy age, day glo rave graphics. These compilations were often TV advertised, aimed at the mass market and casual buyer, the people that hadn't bought all the 12" singles. 

Today's VA is from 1991, a double disc set simply titled Rave 1, and was put together for the German market, young indie- dance kids in Cologne and Berlin, all loved up in the newly re- united Germany. Across two discs you get exactly what you'd expect from a 1991 indie- dance compilation- Happy Mondays and Kinky Afro, The Soup Dragons and I'm Free, The Farm and All Together Now, EMF's Unbelievable and I Believe, James and Lose Control, Northside's My Rising Star, Primal Scream's Come Together, Jesus Jones and Right Here Right Now, The Shamen with Make It Mine and Inspiral Carpets with She Comes In The Fall are all present and correct. What makes Rave 1 a little different is that these are all represented by the 12" versions, extended mixes and different takes, and in some cases mixes and versions that weren't widely available. There is also a very under the radar and very of its time cover of Come Together (Beatles not Primal Scream) by Howie J And Co. 

Exhibit A: The Charlatans.Then was a fantastic early Charlatans single, easily the equal of The Only One I Know, powered by a  Martin Blunt Motown bassline and some Rob Collins organ, Tim cooing on top. The Alternate Take is slower, looser and more groovy, less a pop song, more a 60s/ 90s psyche groove. It was on the Then 12" and CD single, released in September 1990. 

Then (Alternate Take)

Exhibit B: My Jealous God were signed to Rough Trade and released Pray as a 12" in 1990, led by singer Jim Melly who developed a bit of a motormouth reputation. My Jealous God got a fair bit of press from NME and Melody Maker although I think the backlash hit them too, accusations of bandwagon jumping. The band were from South London and had a follow up on Rough Trade and then a single in 1992 on Fontana but their album was shelved. Pray is wah wah driven indie- dance. 

Pray (12" Mix)

Exhibit C: Flowered Up and Phobia, a November 1990 single from the London band, a five piece led by Liam Maher who made some real period piece records. The Paranoid mix is from the 12" single and was remixed by Marc Angelo who is the brother of glamour model Linda Lusardi and who cut his production teeth on the UK reggae and dub scene working with Dennis Bovell, Prince Far I and Creation Rebel. Phobia was Flowered Up's second single, following on the heels of It's On. Their debut album has recently been re- issued for the first time by Heavenly. The Paranoid mix shuffles along nicely, the funky bassline to the fore, percussion and drums giving this version a proper indie- dance groove. 

Phobia (Paranoid Mix)

Exhibit D: Primal Scream. The Hypnotone remix is the lesser known remix of Come Together, fading into the background a little compared to Terry Farley's Suspicious Minds version and Andrew Weatherall's genuine ten minutes of genius version. The HypnotoneBrainMachineRemix is a superb version in its own right though, Tony Martin's raved up take chopping the band up, looping vocals, horns blaring out, synths to the fore, bubbling bassline and drum machines, everything louder than everything else, breaking down for the shout, 'This is a heist!' (or 'This is the hype!'), more looped shouts, this time of 'Bass! Bass!', and some tumbling drums. This is a remix that sounds like a Primal Scream record being played at the same time as a Public Enemy record and an Altern- 8 record. Yes, that good. 

Come Together (HypnotoneBrainMachineMix)

Forty Minutes Of Adrian Sherwood

Adrian Sherwood's career in music dates back more than four decades. You can dip into it at point since he started producing, mixing and making records in the early 80s and not be disappointed- there is no weak spot, no off period, no loss of quality; everything he touches is worth hearing and much of it is music of the very highest calibre. Various people have spoken about watching him in the studio, using the mixing desk as an instrument, throwing sound around the channels, pushing faders up and down, his use of echo and space and reverb creating music from somewhere else, inspired by Jamaican dub but identifiably British too. Through his label On U Sound he has released hundreds of records, Sherwood's golden touch for sound, space and rhythm all over many of them, a man with a sound that is always moving forward, always modern. As with The Fall a few Sundays ago, I could sit down a do another two or three Sherwood mixes without any bother at all- what is in this mix is just a selection of Sherwood recordings, productions and remixes. 

Forty Minutes Of Adrian Sherwood

• Whirlpool Dub
• Nocturne (Adrian Sherwood Remix)
• Acid Tabla (Adrian Sherwood Remix)
• I'm A Winner
• Dub For The Spirits
• Haunting Ground Dub
• Ju- 87
• Long As I Can See The Light (Adrian Sherwood's Dub Lightning)
• Bless Those
• The Way Of The World

Whirlpool Dub is from this year's Reset In Dub, Adrian's reworking in dub style of the entire Reset album, released by Sonic Boom and Panda Bear in 2021. It is one of this year's best albums. The vinyl arrived this week, a December dub treat. 

Mark Lanegan has never sounded darker or more doomy than in Adrian's hands (and that's saying something. Mark made a career out of dark and doomy). This remix came out in 2017 on a Mark Lanegan mini album, Still Life With Roses (Gargoyles Remixes) along with remixes of Beehive by Andrew Weatherall. 

Suns Of Arqa's Acid Tabla EP came out in 2016, produced by Sherwood and Wadada with the late Style Scott on drums (of Dub Syndicate). The bassline, tabla and rocking rhythms are all spot on. The original version of Acid Tabla was on Suns Of Arqa's 1980 album Revenge Of The Mozambites, Adrian credited as Adran Riddims.  

I'm A Winner is one of the standouts on this year's Africa Head Charge album A Trip To Bolgatanga, an album where Adrian and Bonjo shift the African Head Charge sound yet again. When they set out with AHC back in 1980 the idea was create 'a vision of a psychedelic Africa'. They made several definitive albums between 1980 and 1990, dub, sound FX, samples and African drums fused in a mystical sound. In 1990 they released their pinnacle, the mighty Songs Of Praise. In 2020 an album of extras including unreleased tracks from Songs Of Praise came out including Dub For The Spirits.

Bim Sherman became one of the key figures of the On U Sound collective, a man with a golden voice. Haunting Ground was on 1986's album of the same name, an album which featured Dub Syndicate and Roots Radics. The dub mix coming out on one of the pair of CD compilations titled Sherwood At The Controls. Bim died of cancer in 2000. His 1996 album Miracle is one of the lost gems of the 90s, songs from his back catalogue given a Bollywood makeover, re- recorded with Indian strings and Talvin Singh's percussion. 

Adrian dubbed out Primal Scream's entire Vanishing Point album, released as Echo Dek on Creation in 1997. Ju- 87 is a dub version of Stuka, a fairly uncompromising track in its original form. Adrian adds doorbells, and pulls rattling echo, deep bass, ricocheting bleeps and a scuzzy, screwed up dub to the fore. 

Long As I Can See The Light was a 1998 single by Monkey Mafia, released on Heavenly, a cover of a 1970 Creedence Clearwater Revival song. Monkey Mafia's cover is a lovely late night, downtempo cover. Adrian bends it into a new space. 

Bless Those is from Pay It All Back Vol. 4, released in 1993. Pay It All Back is a long running series of compilations/ samplers dating back to 1985. Little Annie has been part of the On U family since the early 90s, with David Harrow, Doug Wimbish and Skip McDonald all contributing music to Annie's vocals. A dense sound, distorted horns and dub FX.  

The Way Of The World is by LSK and Sherwood, a track on Pay It All Back Vol. 7 from 2019. LSK is British singer/MC Leigh Stephen Kenny, born in Kent and now in Leeds. This track is a suitably dubbed out way to close this mix, two and a half minutes of digital dub, noise and samples, unease and LSK's honeyed vocal.  

Forty Minutes Of Hypnotone

Last week Khayem at Dubhed posted a recreated 1997 mixtape which included a Hypnotone remix of The Lilac Time's Dreaming, a remix that did not go down well with Stephen Duffy at the time but as Khayem points out is 'pretty close' to 'Hypnotone's high water mark remix of Sheer Taft's Cascades (that remix of Cascades is a desert island disc for me). The post sent me into the Hypnotone's back catalogue and today's mix is the result, forty minutes of Hypnotone remixes and their own material to light up Sunday. 

Hypnotone were Tony Martin, a Manchester producer with Martin Mittler (bassist from Intastella and Laugh) and later Cordelia Ruddock (who Tony discovered at a fashion show). Hypnotone signed to Creation which led to work with Primal Scream and The Lilac Time, both Creation acts at the time. Their self- titled mini album from 1990 is a lost gem, an early 90s time capsule. 

Forty Minutes Of Hypnotone

• Dream Beam (Ben Chapman Remix)
• Hypnotonic
• Atlantis (Hypnotone Edit)
• Dreaming (Hypnowah Remix)
• Dreaming (Wave Station Remix)
• Cascades (Hypnotone Mix)
• Come Together (HypnotoneBrainMachineMix)
• Electraphonic

Dream Beam was the debut release, a 1990 12" on Creation from that point where Alan McGee wanted Creation to be a dance label and briefly did it very well indeed. The much missed Denise Johnson is on vocals, 'feel so high', sung over chilled dance bleepy house. I saw Hypnotone play live at Sefton Park in Liverpool in the summer of 1990, this track floating over the lake in the summer darkness, everyone very chilled as Denise's voice rang out. It was remixed twice, once by Danny Rampling and once by Ben Chapman, the latter being the pick of the pair for me, perfect 1991 dance music. The robotic voice repeating 'hypnotise us... hypnotise us...' is very hypnotic and as the track comes to a close the collapse into the final vocal message, 'I don't know if I'll ever see you again...' is a blast.

Hypnotonic, all piano house, rattling 808s and a very early 90s rap courtesy of Carlos (2 Supreme), was a 1991 single was recorded at Out Of The Blue in Manchester, a studio in the then semi- derelict Ancoats area, now part of the ever growing regeneration of central Manchester.  

Atlantis was a 1991 12" single by Sheer Taft, remixed by Tony. The Hypnotone remix of Cascades, also from 1991, is a genuine classic of the era, a record that was big everywhere from Ibiza to Manchester and in between. It appeared on the Creation dance compilation Keeping The Faith which is a definitive document of a time. 

Dreaming was a 1991 single by The Lilac Time, a pair of remixes that sound great today, dubby Balearic house- why Stephen Tin Tin Duffy didn't like it is a mystery. 

Come Together, Primal Scream's second Screamadelica- era single, is better known in its Weatherall and Farley remix forms but the Hypnotone remix is a belter too, harder and faster, distorted voices, thumping 808 kick drums, horns, bubbling bass, everything piling up in an ecstatic rush. It was on Keeping The Faith and released as a white label 12" along with the fourth and largely missed BBG remix of Come Together. Tony co- produced the cover of Slip Inside This House that appears on Scremadelica too. 

Electraphonic was on the second Hypnotone album, Ai, released in November 1991. 

An Hour Of Weatherall Covers

We all love a good cover version don't we? The reconstructing of a familiar song in a new form, the buzz of hearing someone do a song differently, irreverently or lovingly, and the nodding of the head to influences and inspirations. At times cover versions can also seem a bit lazy, a way out of writer's block or something thrown together for B-side at a late hour and under pressure, but when done well and with the right intent, they're a joy. 

In two weeks time it would have been Andrew Weatherall's 60th birthday had he lived. There are a series of events taking place nationally throughout April to celebrate this- a full on night at Fabric in London with a huge line up of DJ talent together with nights in Glasgow, Belfast and Todmorden, all places with strong Weatherall connections and crowds. I'll come back to the Todmorden one nearer the time (29th April) with more details but it does include a second ride out for The Flightpath Estate DJ team (which includes yours truly). I expect to run several Weatherall posts over the next few weeks- that's probably not much different to usual round here, he does tend to feature fairly often- and thought I'd kick off with this one, a mix for Sunday of cover versions Andrew either recorded as an artist himself or other other artists he remixed. It is not surprisingly a fairly eclectic bunch of songs and artists. It now occurs to me that I should have put the originals together as a mix too so maybe that will follow at some point a companion piece.

Fifty Five Minutes Of Andrew Weatherall Cover Versions

• Carry Me Home
• Only Love Can Break Your Heart (A Mix Of Two Halves)
• Witchi Tai To (2 Lone Swordsmen Remix)
• The Drum (Andrew Weatherall Remix)
• A Love From Outer Space (Version 2)
• Sex Beat
• Slip Inside This House
• Goodbye Johnny (Andrew Weatherall's Nyabinghi Noir Mix)
• Faux/ Whole Wide World

Carry Me Home is a cover of a Dennis Wilson song from 1973, a wracked funereal blues for a dying soldier in Vietnam that was written for the 1973 album Holland but was left off. 'Life is meant to live/ I'm afraid to die', he sings. Primal Scream's version which Andrew produced is from the Dixie- Narco EP, a very downbeat and beautiful way to pay homage. Andrew and Hugo Nicolson's mix of instruments and production is stunning, Duffy's electric piano at the start and the acoustic guitar and cello in the end section especially so. 

Only Love Can Break Your Heart is a Saint Etienne cover of a Neil Young song. I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that. Andrew's remix sent the song into a dubbed out bliss, Augustus Pablo- esque melodica in the first half (played by Pete Astor of The Weather Prophets), the Jean Binta Breeze dub poetry sample in the middle cutting the track in half, and then the song appearing in the second (along with the Jean 'cool and deadly' sample). 

Witchi Tai To was a 2007 single by X- Press 2, the Two Lone Swordsmen remix adding the live drums of their sound from that period and matching the Wrong Meeting albums of the same year. The original was a a 1971 single by Jim Pepper, a Native American singer and saxophonist who took a peyote chant his grandfather taught him and turned it into a hybrid jazz/ Native American song. X- Press 2's cover was sung by Tim de Laughter of The Polyphonic Spree. 

The Drum was a single for The Impossibles, an Edinburgh duo who made early 90s jangly indie- pop. The original is a Slapp Happy song from 1974. Weatherall's remix, from 1991, is a lesser known one from his early 90s hot streak, a tour de force of throwing whatever is at hand in the studio/ imagination at a remix and it working. Andrew was ably assisted by Hugo Nicolson on this one too. 

A Love From Outer Space was the calling card from the 2013 album by The Asphodells, the outfit he formed with Timothy J. Fairplay after they had bene working together on remixes and their own material and realised they had enough for an album. Andrew's vocals were a big feature of The Asphodells (following on from the Two Lone Swordsmen records of the previous few years where he stepped up to the mic for the first time since the early 80s). A Love From Outer Space also became the name of his traveling club night, with compadre Sean Johnstone, a night never knowingly exceeding 122 bpm. The original song is by late 80s one offs A.R. Kane, a duo of dreads who made spaced out dub/ dreampop. 

Sex Beat was a Two Lone Swordsmen single in 2004 and on the From The Double Gone Chapel album of the same year, a radical shift in sound and style after the pure electro of 2000's Tiny Reminders. Andrew and Keith Tenniswood becoming a garage band with Nick Burton on drums and Chris Mackin on guitar. Sex Beat was such a blast when it came out in 2004, an energetic swerve in the road to somewhere new. Sex Beat was on The Gun Club's 1981 debut Fire Of Love, a blues/ rockabilly/ Southern Gothic classic. Leader, singer and writer Jeffrey Lee Pierce pops up again in this mix in the form of Goodbye Johnny.

Slip Inside This House is a cover of The 3th Floor Elevators song from their 1967 album Easter Everywhere, the second song on Primal Scream's 1991 opus Screamadelica, a juddering statement of acid house intent after the rock n' roll opening of Moving On Up. Hypnotone's Tony Martin was involved in the production of this track too. It was sung by Throb. Bobby Gillespie is said to have bene suffering from 'acid house flu'.

Goodbye Johnny was on Primal Scream's 2013 album More Light. It came from a covers project that paid tribute to Jeffrey Lee Pierce. Weatherall's spaced out remix tips its hat to the Nyabinghi sound of African Head Charge, a big influence on Andrew. 

Faux/ Whole Wide World comes from a Radio One session from 2004. Faux was the first single ahead of From The Double Gone Chapel, a scuzzed up slice of electro- rockabilly, combining rapid programmed drums and fuzz guitars with Weatherall vocals and lyrics about the love of his life, Elizabeth Walker. As a touring band Two Lone Swordsmen had a habit of working Faux into Wreckless Eric's Whole Wide World, a peerless 1977 single. At the time Andrew was recommending the new album then just released by Eric, Bungalow Hi, a record Andrew described as 'like Duane Eddy meets Aphex Twin'. The recording here is ripped from a radio session, never officially released. There was a version on the Rotters Golf Club website for a while too, part of a three song session they recorded playing at the Bloc Weekender. Of all the lyrics that swirl around Andrew's world and outlook, 'I don't do faux', is as good as any. 

Martin Duffy

Coming quickly after the news of Terry Hall's death came the news that Martin Duffy had died aged fifty five following an accident at his home. Martin was the keyboard player in Primal Scream from 1989 onwards and before that was in Felt. He played Knebworth in 1996 with The Charlatans when they were reeling from the death of their organ/ keyboard player Rob Collins, an act Tim Burgess has said meant the band was actually able to go on. Martin recorded a solo album a few years ago released on Tim's O Genesis label and made a superb EP with Steve Mason as Alien Stadium in 2017. More than that, Martin has been described all over the various obituaries and tributes as a sweet, lovely, quiet and unassuming man who, when on tour, loved to take in museums and neolithic standing stones- he seems like a man after my own heart. 

I've seen Primal Scream in venues large and tiny since 1989, from the cellar club that was Planet X in Liverpool when they toured Ivy Ivy Ivy to Castlefield Bowl in Manchester this summer and almost all points in between and it's impossible to imagine them without Martin's keys and organ. When they emerged from the various issues that derailed them in the mid- 90s and came back with first Vanishing Point and then XTRMNTR, the bedrock of the sound was Martin's keys and organ, his Hammond especially, as much as the twin guitars of Throb and Innes. He was able to play whatever the songs required and on Vanishing Point especially it feels like the band were grouped around him, playing off whatever he played. 

Given that this Sunday is Christmas Day I probably won't do anything for my half hour Sunday mix series so thought I'd put those energies into today's mix, a thirty minute tribute to Martin Duffy. 

Duffy Mix

• Primal Scream: Get Duffy
• Primal Scream: Duffed Up
• Primal Scream: The Revenge Of The Hammond Connection
• Primal Scream: If They Move, Kill 'Em
• Alien Stadium: Titanic Dance (Lynch Mob Mix)
• Felt: Primitive Painters
• Primal Scream: Space Blues #2

Get Duffy is the second song on Vanishing Point, a Hammond organ instrumental sandwiched between the speed freak mod- rock of Burning Wheel and the gonzo Mani powered scuzz of the title track. If They Move, Kill 'Em is the centrepiece of the album, a track inspired by and sampling Sam Peckinpah's Western The Wild Bunch. 

Duffed Up is Adrian Sherwood's dub version of the Get Duffy, from Echo Dek, released in 1997 a little while after the parent album.

The Revenge Of The Hammond Connection was a B-side from Kill All Hippies, a further take on the original Hammond Connection instrumental which was the B- side to Burning Wheel. 60s spy film soundtrack vibes. 

Titanic Dance is from the four track EP Martin made with Steve Mason which is laugh out loud funny in places, two men enjoying themselves. The track here, produced and mixed by Brendan Lynch, breaks down after seven minutes into some Planet Of The Apes tomfoolery. 

Primitive Painters was a 1985 Felt single, maybe their best release, a song pushed along by Martin's wheezing organ playing and adorned with Liz Fraser's backing vocals. This single is one of 80s indie's greatest moments. 

Space Blues #2 closed 2002's Evil Heat, the third of the three albums they made around the millennium that feel like a trilogy of sorts. Evil Heat doesn't quite hit the same heights as the previous two but its pair of Weatherall produced songs (Autobahn 66 and A Scanner Darkly) are superb, Deep Hit Of Morning Sun is a opening statement of intent and Detroit and Rise both rock. Kate Moss sings on Some Velvet Morning and on Space Blues #2 Martin not Bobby takes lead vocal, singing softly-  'On the judgement day/ When your name is called...'- as the Hammond shifts notes behind him.

R.I.P. Martin Duffy

Slip Inside

I went to see Primal Scream on Saturday night playing outdoors at Manchester's Castlefield Bowl, the last night of a week of gigs from bands including James, Pixies, Crowded House and a Hacienda Classical night. Primal Scream have been touring to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Screamadelica, playing Glastonbury, rapturously received two nights in Glasgow, Halifax's Piece Hall and moving onto London this week. I've seen them a number of times over the years and always enjoyed it, from a gig in a basement in Planet X in Liverpool in August 1989 when they played Ivy Ivy Ivy and songs from their leather trouser/ long hair period to an audience of about twenty people, to the original Screamdelica tour in the early 90s, to the XTRMTR tour where three guitarists- Andrew Innes, Throb and Kevin Shields plus Mani on bass- made a racket unlike anything else. In 2013 they toured More Light (the last good album they made I think), two hours of sinuous psyche, krauty grooves and trippy songs. I saw them do the Screamadelica 21st anniversary shows back in 2012, Screamadelica at full pelt with Weatherall as support. Saturday night for me didn't quite match up. On the tram home- fuelled by some lager I should say- I opined that it was poor stuff, heritage/ festival rock and 'boring shite'. 

Castlefield was rammed, the sun shining and people had been out all day. It was very much a party mood. On the way to meet my brother in the pub before the gig I passed three hen parties. In the pub we saw Mani, who'd taken the stage with his former bandmates in Glasgow a few days earlier for the encore. He looked like he might have a date with a bassline later. The crowd was bouncing from start to finish and reactions on social media have been really positive, Primal Scream at their best. I wasn't so sure on Saturday night and I'm still not sure now. They play Screamadelica, more or less in order, starting with Movin' On Up, a slow intro before Innes cranks out the riff. In the past they've had two, sometimes three guitarists. Now it's just Innes and I don't think it works as well, they need a fuller sound. The twin pairing of Slip Inside This House and Don't Fight It, Feel It were both good and felt right, samples and keyboards filling it out, loose but the early 90s rhythms on point.

Slip Inside This House

A five piece gospel choir are on stage all night which really adds to the vocals. They're the best thing about Come Together. They play both versions, the Farley and Weatherall mixes jammed together, but it doesn't really take off- it did at the Apollo in 2012, it really flew, but it doesn't make it here for me, a big disappointment. Inner Light, the gorgeous Beach Boys- esque instrumental is lovely, Bobby slipping off stage for a few minutes. Then they play the title track that didn't appear on the album, Screamadelica, Weatherall and Nicolson's ten minute masterpiece from the Dixie Narco EP. It should sound huge and effortless, gliding and gleaming- it doesn't, it feels lumpy and sketchy, like they've not worked out to play it best. By now I'm feeling a bit like we're into end of the pier mode, Screamadelica as cabaret. The two ballads, I'm Coming Down and Damaged, are played as the sun sets and then Simone Marie plays the bassline to Higher Than The Sun. Bobby gives a nod to Denise Johnson at one point between songs, acknowledging her- she's as much the voice of the album as he is in many ways. During set closer Shine Like Stars the backdrop projections are images of Andrew Weatherall, the man who produced the album and brought it all together for them, the rock and the dance, samples and guitars. Where we're standing, sideways on to the left, we can't really see the projections and I think people in the centre have got a much better experience.

The record that kicked it off (the group's longevity and Weatherall's career as a remixer) Loaded, is played as the first song of the encore. Swastika Eyes follows, an electrifying, pumped up version (based on the Chemical Brothers remix from XTRMNTR) and then we get the standard Primal Scream encore. Just as in the early 90s they turned away from the dance floor and embraced their inner Rolling Stones, they do the same here, three festival rockers- Jailbird (Stonesy rock), Country Girl (always a very silly song, almost a pastiche) and Rocks (ditto). Mani joins them on second bass for the last two, beefing the sound up further. I came away feeling that they've become festival rock, endlessly repeating themselves, not fully able to do Screamadelica justice, a guitarist short and whacking out faux Stones songs for encores. So, in summary, I may have been a bit over the top in describing it as 'boring shite' but with a few days to think about it, I'm not sure it was that good either- but let's face it, it could be me, because almost everyone else seemed to have a great time, and I'm a bit out of sorts at the moment anyway (to put it mildly). 

Shine Like Stars

A Heavenly Guest Post

Heavenly Recordings have released a compilation celebrating the long standing and extremely productive relationship that existed between the label and its boss Jeff Barratt and Andrew Weatherall. It's available as either two double vinyl albums (yes, that's eight sides of vinyl) or one double CD and is a treasure trove of remixes of Heavenly acts by Andrew starting with the very first record Heavenly released, The World According To... by Sly And Lovechild, an electrifying moody progressive house remix sampling the Reverend Jasper Williams. The sixteen remixes across the package then zig- zag across decades and genres: Weatherall remixing Doves into a mutant punk- funk; Flowered Up are taken on a seventeen minute, time- shifting hedonistic joyride; Saint Etienne sent into dub heaven in 1990 and then sent on a urban late night cab ride in 2000; Confidence Man get blasted into the ecstatic joys of coming home at dawn with a late period anthem; Toy pitched into a slowed down, woozy groove as if they were in West Germany in 1972; Espiritu are given the Sabres Of Paradise treatment; Gwenno, LCMDF, Mark Lanegan, audiobooks, The Orielles, Unloved.... The discs are not chronological and they work better for it, the remixes bouncing from the early 90s to the 2010s and all points in between. They show the breadth of talent signed by Jeff Barratt and range of skills of Weatherall as a remixer who brings something new to every artist- a looped vocal here, a stretched out section there, a new rhythm track, a twisting keyboard melody unearthed from within the original mix and put at the fore, a wheezing drum machine or rattling snare. Given that Andrew wasn't a musician as such, his remixes are so musical too, never just a case of sticking a 4/4 rhythm underneath and lettig the song play on top. The remix of Mark Lanegan's Beehive is a case in point. Weatherall isolates a line from Lanegan's vocal- 'lightning coming out of the speakers/ wanna hear that sound some more'- and constructs a new track around it, whirring sounds and echoes, a thumping kick drum, a spooked melody line, rattling drums, acres of reverb and a stop- start propulsion. There's nothing new on the compilations, all of it has been released before (although two tracks have never come out on vinyl before), but it's a stunning set of tracks and a tribute to the man and his work. The 60s Op- Art inspired sleeves are very nice too. 

This being Heavenly, there had to be a party. The launch event was last Saturday at The Social in London with Erol Alkan and David Holmes DJing. You might remember that for several years now I've bene the co- admin of a Facebook group called The Flightpath Estate that came together as a place for Andrew Weatherall fans to share news, music and compare lists. The group grew into a small but committed and friendly community and suddenly expanded when Andrew died in February 2020. Some of the Flightpath Estate's central members, including Martin Brannagan (who first approached me about being co- admin way back in 2014), were making the trip to London to attend the night. Due to my personal circumstances this wasn't going to be a trip I could make- we were taking Eliza back to university last weekend and at the moment, following Isaac's death, family definitely comes first. This poster greets people who arrive at the The Social, an advert for the forthcoming new single from David Holmes, a superb new song called It's Over If We Run Out Of Love. 

Martin along with fellow Flightpath Estaters Dan, Mark and Baz all went to the Social. On Sunday they were agog with tales from the night before. Two things then happened. First someone got hold of the CDs that David Holmes had been DJing from, his own source recordings of songs for the night. The evening finished with a packed room and David playing a thirty minute mix combining three different versions of Sabres Of Paradise's Smokeblech and Primal Scream's Come Together. Second, I convinced Martin to write an account of the evening for this blog, so here we have an exclusive guest blog by Martin...

The Heavenly Remixes Party 

The last two years have been such a headfuck that February 2020 seems so recent and distant at the same time. When Andrew Weatherall passed away the instant outpouring of love was hugely evident on this site and so many blogs, forums, social media outlets across the internet. Then Covid struck plunging the country into in-and-out lockdowns and restrictions followed so quickly that other than a few informal events and Sean Johnston bravely following up with the pre-booked A Love From Outer Space at Phonox just days after Andrew's death there has never felt like a time where we've been able to truly gather and celebrate, commemorate and remember Andrew's life and works. Andrew's curated festival in France, Convenanza, has been scheduled and rescheduled repeatedly, rumours of official memorial concerts have never materialised and with so many people being more at home and internet facing, the internet has naturally been the place to come together. As has been said on this blog before our Facebook group, The Flightpath Estate, originally set up in February 2014 for the few hundred hardcore geeks to discuss, dissect, share Andrew's musical output, quickly became a focal point. Now on its way to 2000 members Andrew's closest friends, family and collaborators came onto the group over the past two years to lovingly share photos, stories and memories, to engage, interact and support everyone including 'the fans' in a way I would never have envisaged possible. We maintain a sense of balance, decorum, respect and support that is so often lacking in the online world that everyone seems to find it a safe space, something I am truly grateful for and proud of. And so it is with restrictions lifting (again) and to celebrate the release on Heavenly Records of two compilations of Andrew's finest remixes for the label a night was put on in the 250 capacity Social in Little Portland Street, London. Upstairs DJs from Heavenly and Stranger Than Paradise playing to the bar, downstairs Heavenly head Jeff Barrett along with Erol Alkan and David Holmes playing from 7-1. The buzz leading up to the event suggested this was going to be special and so it proved to be, a true gathering of the clans. The night seemed to be awash with people rekindling old friendships, establishing new ones, or, specific to what we've found ourselves going through, making physical contact with previous strongly built virtual friendships. The Flightpath Estate was in strong presence, from the admins, with one huge missed noticeable absence in the form of Adam 'Bagging Area', to the hardcore long time members, through to the people who discovered it in the last couple of years. Also strongly present were some of the capital's great and good and also many musical and business collaborators and conspirators of Andrew, quite a few in assorted states of elevation - Bobby Gillespie, Noel Gallagher, Andy Bell, Iraina Mancini, Heidi Lawdon, Jagz Kooner, Andrew Curley, Chris Mackin, Lee Brackstone, Richard Fearless and IWDG (Ian Weatherall and Duncan Gray) were all spotted, amongst many others no doubt, the majority of whom were more than happy to greet the people they've been exchanging Facebook, WhatsApp or Twitter messages with over the last couple of years. The packed out Social was the focal point of everything we've all been through. Andrew's music played an obvious through line, obviously some Heavenly remixes got an airing, but also Erol Alkan picked out Andrew's remix of Cloud Cover by Glok (Andy Bell) and finished his set with the epic remix of Soon by My Bloody Valentine. David Holmes came with nearly 9 hours of source material for his 3 hour set obviously planning to judge the mood and ambience of the night and ended up taking us on a propulsive journey in only the way him and possibly one other sorely missed DJ could, with Andrew's remix of Bubblegum by Confidence Man culminating in a pre-edit megamix of Smokebelch by The Sabres Of Paradise. This last track took us on a 20+ minute journey from the Beatless mix through into the album version into David's own legendary remix and just as it peaked the opening tones of Andrew's version of Come Together by Primal Scream, the ultimate shout for the best track ever, promised to close the night in a crescendo of celebration the licensing laws kicked in, plunging us into silence and artificial light and confusion. As for the rest of the night itself, I've not gone into many details as it was a uniquely personal experience - for some they were enveloped by the compact throbbing throng of the dancefloor for the evening, for some they were enveloped by intoxicants of legal and illegal persuasions, for some they were enveloped by conversation and meeting with friends and family, new, old, physical, virtual. But for everyone in that room we were enveloped by a single focussed love, loss, celebration and appreciation of Andrew. A unique and long awaited experience that will stay in memory for a long long time. David Holmes has lovingly and kindly agreed to share his 27 minute Holmer Megamix of Smokebelch/Come Together which you can download and listen to here....

Smokebelch/ Come Together Mix

Thanks to Martin for this account and for allowing me to live the evening vicariously through his and the rest's updates and his writing above. Thanks to David for the CDs. It seems we missed quite the party. 

Shine Like Stars

Last month Primal Scream announced the a thirtieth anniversary edition box set of Screamadelica, a box that will contain all the 12" singles from that album re- issued on vinyl (nine 12" singles) with a new and previously unreleased mix of Shine Like Stars as the tenth disc. The box retails at £120.99 and I'll just leave that figure hanging there. 

The new version of Shine Like Stars was played on BBC 6 on Friday and then was put online. It seems that they will be releasing this version separately from the box, probably for next year's Record Shop Day just in case you didn't feel that the box set was exclusive enough. Late stage capitalism/ the music industry is such a joy sometimes.

Shine Like Stars closes Screamadelica, an album that Primal Scream made with Andrew Weatherall producing and Hugo Nicolson close at hand. Initially Weatherall, a relative unknown as a remixer and producer but flushed with the summer of love, a great record collection and the enthusiasm and confidence of youth, remixed I'm Losing More Than I'll Ever Have into Loaded and then Come Together. Higher Than The Sun and Don't Fight It, Feel It followed and Alan McGee told Primal Scream they needed to turn this run of ground-breaking, hip shaking, boundary breaking singles into an album. Weatherall got the job in the big chair and the album followed. Shine Like Stars presented some problems for them, not quite falling into place and the sequencing of the album and how to finish it wasn't quite there either until Weatherall cracked Shine Like Stars. 

Shine Like Stars

It's a space- age lullaby, a twinkling musical box melody and a drone, some synths and a lazy pace. Bobby sings softly about someone sleeping. After the Stones- isms, acid house highs, crunching club beats, country ballads and blissed out dub trips of the previous eleven songs Shine Like Stars is a beautiful way to trail off, the accordion and waves lapping against the beach for the final seconds of the song and the album. 

The new/ previously unreleased mix is here. 

It's titled Andrew Weatherall Remix but to me sounds more like an earlier mix, the song in a development form before it was completed. There's some very 1991 piano and a different drum track and then a huge synth bassline, not a million miles from the one on Safe From Harm by Massive Attack (out the same year). The backing vocals at two minutes fifty are nice, an interesting part of the song that didn't make the final cut, and then Throb's guitar comes in, a grungy 70s Les Paul solo, that bassline and the twinkling melody playing off against each other. The final minute and a half has all these eventually unused elements piling up, the ooh oohs, the jagged bassline, Throb's guitar, Gillespie singing low in the mix. It's good to hear it, an interesting version of the song and an alternative take, definitely some distance from the cosmic dreaminess of the final mix. What Mr Weatherall would have said about it, we'll never know. Whether it's worth the £120.99 to have it as part of the box set along with the nine other singles, all previously released and owned by many of us, is a decision others will have to make according to their bank balance. I'm glad it's out there. 

Quarterfinals

It's Friday and it's July. There are Euro 20 quarterfinals on over the weekend, including England Marxists taking on Ukraine tomorrow night, and the Tour de France is well under way. The sun has been shining and the summer holidays are within touching distance. 

Here's some music for tonight's Italy versus Belgium clash, a real heavyweight quarterfinal between a Belgium side packed with talent and well placed to win their first international trophy against a young, revitalised Italian team. In the Belgian end there's Rheinzand, Ghent's top of the table Balearic/ house/ disco outfit and a slice from their recently released remix album which features versions from the likes of Superpitcher, Skylab, In Flagranti and Chris Coco and this funky delight, a remix of Queen Of Dawn by Pete Herbert.

In the the curva sud for Italy we have Pop Will Eat Itself, the Black Country's grebo sampling kings who made the still fantastic sounding piano house tribute to Italia 90 and porn star turned politician Cicciolina. New Order get all the plaudits for making a credible/ good football record in the summer of 1990 and there's no doubt that World In Motion was a sign that things were changing, but Touched By The Hand Of Cicciolina is that summer's secret weapon, the supersub who scores the winner in injury time. 

Touched By The Hand Of Cicciolina (Extra Time Mix)

And for further extra time/ Friday fun Lorde's new single, Solar Power, has been spliced together with Loaded to make Lorded. It's the from Joe Muggs and it works. You can find it here . The original's no slouch either. 

When All This Is Over

A new Bagging Area mix for Sunday, an optimistic sounding one now that the days are getting longer and the summer seems to be just round the corner. A lot of these songs have been posted here recently individually but they sounded good together. I'm not sure there's a huge amount of cause for optimism with the continuing, ceaseless flow of bad news, bad government and virus rates increasing but maybe it's best to turn the news channel off for a while and unplug. It's at Mixcloud, it won't embed but you can find it here. 

As the voice says in the opening Coyote song, 'when all this is over.... I plan to go north...' 

• Coyote: Café Con Leche
• Private Agenda: Malanai Ascending (Seahawks Remix)
• Chris Coco: Rainy Season
• Reinhard Vanbergen and Charlotte Carulaerts: Julien
• Primal Scream: Inner Flight
• Justin Deighton and Leo Zero: I Feel Edit
• Cantoma: The Mountain (Lexx Remix)
• HiFi Sean Ft. Yoko Ono: In Love With Life
• A Certain Ratio: Berlin (album version)
• Coyote: Feedback Valley
• Future Beat Alliance: Birth (Claude Young Remix)

Inner Flight

When Alan McGee told Primal Scream to turn their run of singles in 1990- 1991 into an album the end result was Screamadelica. The singles that led to it were era- defining and a total change of course for a band who were first 60s indie janglers and then Stooges style rockers. Taken together the singles- Loaded (I'm Losing More Than I'll Ever Have remixed/ demolished by Andrew Weatherall), Come Together (an epochal Weatherall mix and a summer sun kissing, Elvis referencing Terry Farley version), Higher Than The Sun (various Weatherall mixes and an eight minute Orb mix) and Don't Fight It, Feel It (Weatherall and Hugo Nicolson again at the helm, no guitars, no Bobby, Denise Johnson singing)- are a compilation released together. Add Movin' On Up, a Jimmy Miller Rolling Stones/ gospel fantasy made real, and you still have a series of singles. Slip Inside This House almost sounds like another single, a tripped out acid house cover of The 13th Floor Elevators with Throb singing. It's the rest of songs that turn Screamadelica from an all- the- hits 1991 compilation to an album, sequenced to work from start to finish, a trip/ journey unfolding over four sides of vinyl. I'm Coming Down and Damaged are a pair of ballads, one a Pharaoh Saunders influenced hit of  comedown and the other a country blues, a pair of album tracks that give the album a different pace and vibe. The glue that holds it all together are the other two Weatherall / Nicolson songs, Inner Flight and Shine Like Stars. I'll come back to Shine Like Stars, the perfect closer for Screamadelica another time- instead here is Inner Flight.

Inner Flight

Hugo Nicolson provided the studio nous and production skills for Weatherall to translate the spirit of the times and his encyclopaedic record collection into recordings. Inner Flight is a trippy, Pet Sounds on ecstasy instrumental, floating in and floating on, a circling melody line and some stellar, wordless ooh ooh ahhh backing vocals drifting in (sampled partly from C.B. Cook along with some drums from Dr. John's Gris Gris). If you listen to the last forty seconds of this 1974 song from Brian Eno you'll spot where Andrew pilfered the sound effect from for Inner Flight's intro as well. 

Monday's Long Song

How about an unofficial dub version of Loaded to start the week? Peter Fonda starting us off with his speech sampled from The Wild Angels, 'We want to be free... we wanna get loaded, we wanna have a good time', but then he gets slowed dooooown to a halt. A melodica floats in and the skank takes over. There are some 'na na nas' towards the end. No idea who is responsible for this but I'm glad they did it. 

Loaded Chalice

Edit: Jake (and Discogs) agree that the artist behind this is Nuffwish. 

Gonna Get High 'Til The Day I Die

 

Primal Scream's Don't Fight It, Feel It was one of the songs on Screamdelica that felt truly revolutionary for a group who started as Byrds/ Buffalo Springfield imitators, evolved into a c86 indie band and then reincarnated themselves as leather trousered Stooges rockers. On Don't Fight It, Feel It Andrew Weatherall and Hugo Nicolson made an acid house song and left all traces of the guitar band off it entirely- no guitars, no Throb, not even any of Bobby's singing. Instead Denise Johnson's voice boomed out of the speakers. Weatherall took it all even further on the Scat Mix. Lesser known and heard is the Graham Massey Remix, also from 1991, a juddering Mancunian remix which takes the song into new territory once again, Denise front and centre. 

Don't Fight It, Feel It (Graham Massey Remix)

808 State and Massey were on fire around this time. Their 1990 album 90 is one of the best releases from any of the Manchester groups around that time and sounds surprisingly fresh listened to in 2020. Album opener Magical Dream is a real Bagging Area favourite. In June 1990 me, my then girlfriend and my friend Al had my cassette of 90 on all the way from Liverpool to Glastonbury in Al's car. When we pulled into the field to unload our camping kit, it was Magical Dream spooling on the car's stereo. As we got out of the car and opened the boot a mud- encrusted hippy appeared out of a nearby hedge and asked us if we needed any drugs. 

Magical Dream

Denise Johnson

It was genuinely shocking and so sad to read yesterday afternoon of the sudden death of Denise Johnson. Denise was a feature of the Manchester music scene for the last three decades and her voice is scattered through my record collection, from Hypnotone's Dream Beam in 1990 to singing on Primal Scream's Screamadelica album, especially Don't Fight It, Feel It single, the wondrous Screamadelica song from the 1992 e.p. and the Give Out But Don't Give Up lp (and the recently released original version The Memphis Recordings where her voice really shines), Electronic's 1991 single Get The Message and then the many years she spent singing as a member of A Certain Ratio. Her voice is all over the ACR: MCR album and the Won't Stop Loving You single and it's remixes, all personal favourites. She sings on Ian Brown's Unfinished Monkey Business (the first and best Ian Brown solo album). In 1994 she released a solo single Rays Of The Rising Sun, a song with Johnny Marr on guitars and with an epic thirteen minute remix by The Joy.

Rays Of The Rising Sun (The Joy Remix)

In the last few years I've seen Denise sing with ACR on several occasions, at Gorilla (above), in Blackburn, at the university and The Ritz (below). She was always an engaging stage presence, smiling and waving at people in the front row. What's particularly cruel about her passing now is that ACR have a new album ready for release in the autumn and she had very recently announced the imminent release of her debut solo album, a collection of cover versions of songs, just her voice and acoustic guitar.

Her singing with Primal Scream, especially on this song, was a breakthrough for the group. No Bobby Gillespie, no guitars, just Denise's voice and Andrew Weatherall and Hugo Nicolson's production- that juddering rhythm, house pianos and those spacey noises and Denise singing 'rama lama lama fa fa fi/ I'm gonna get high 'til the day I die'. The remix for the 12" was even better and further out than the single mix, her voice chopped up, rejigged and sprinkled throughout the song.

Don't Fight It, Feel It (Scat Mix)

At all their recent gigs A Certain Ratio have finished their set with Shack Up, their cover of Banbarra's funk song, remade in early 80s Manchester as scratchy, punk- funk song. THis clip shows them back in 1990 on MTV, Denise centre stage...



Denise used to live round the corner from us and we were on smiling and saying hello terms but not much more than that. At ACR's gig at The Band On The Wall in 2002 launching their Soul Jazz compilation, the moment when they really began to get recognition for their role and music, she clocked us from the stage and winked and smiled. She was an active and lovely presence on Twitter, always positive and giving her views on politics, football and music. She came across as a genuine, friendly and lovely person. Social media was awash with tributes to Denise yesterday and reactions to the awful news and from people who were close to her and who worked with her. She was spoken of with real warmth and it was clear what she meant to people. She will be hugely missed. I'm sure everyone will join in sending their condolences to her family, friends and bandmates. What a shitty year 2020 has been.

RIP Denise.