Go Easy Step Lightly

The big stack of CDs that came free with magazines that I wrote about a few weeks ago continues to give up the goods as I work my way through it. It seems that people at Uncut and Mojo were well connected to Pete Wylie- Pete and Mighty Wah! songs have turned up on several CDs. 

In 2011 Mojo came accompanied by a CD called Panic- 15 Tracks Of Riotous '80s Indie Insurrection!, a fifteen track compilation that opened with Madness and included Billy Bragg, The Three Johns, Robert Wyatt, Half Man Half Biscuit, Orange Juice, Redskins, and Felt among the line up. Halfway through was this...

The Day Margaret Thatcher Died (A Party Song)

At the point this CD was given away (and until this year with the release of Teach Yrself Wah!) Panic was the only physical release this song got. In the song Pete imagines the celebrations that would ensue with the news that Thatcher had died. He wasn't wrong either- when she died in April 2013 there were indeed places that celebrated. There has been some revisionism in political and popular culture over the years, Thatcher portrayed in some televisual accounts of the 1980s as a slightly eccentric but loveable Prime Minister with big blow dried hair, a handbag and blouses with big bows who did the UK a lot of good. This rose tinted view of Thatcherism, her governments, their policies and the 1980s is also propagated by various right wing rags and is one of the few things the factions in the current Tory Party agree on. But let's not kid ourselves- the Thatcher governments were hard right wing, authoritarian and deeply unpleasant, pushing a set of policies that among other things demonised huge sectors of the British working class, talked about the 'managed decline' of a city (Liverpool), gave their friends huge tax cuts (paid for by North Sea gas and selling off nationalised industries), ran down entire industries in the name of 'the market', creating the subsequent social problems which the people living in those communities were then blamed for. Trickle down economics- wealth doesn't and hasn't trickled down, it's flowed up. On top of that she deployed police as the military wing of the Conservative government and was very friendly with all sorts of unpleasant and murderous dictators and regimes (Pinochet, apartheid South Africa). Also, Clause 28. So, no thank you to the revisionist view of Thatcher. 

The song is great with Pete in fine form- crunching guitars, rousing vocals, and a chant, 'build a bonfire/ paint the sky/ come on down/ I'll tell you why/ She's gone/ and nobody cried'. Celebrating anyone's death may seem needlessly callous but for many people who lived through the 80s, Thatcher is an exception. 

In April 2000 Uncut magazine gave away Unconditionally Guaranteed 2000.4, sixteen songs for the fourth month of the new millennium, opening with Chappaquiddick Skyline and ending with Mercury Rev. Five songs in was Pete Wylie and The Mighty Wah!'s Disneyland Forever. 

Disneyland Forever

This is Pete at his biggest and grandest, a huge sounding song with widescreen production, massive chiming guitars, pounding drums and Pete's soaring vocal. The song originally came out on Wah!'s 2000 album Songs Of Strength And Heartbreak. Pete tells the story of the inspiration for this song when he plays it live. He met Gerry Conlon backstage at GMex, a Stop Sellafield show set up by Greenpeace with a line up including Big Audio Dynamite, Public Enemy, Kraftwerk and U2. Gerry Conlon had spent fifteen years in prison as one of the Guildford Four, wrongly convicted of being an IRA bomber. Gerry and the other three of the Guildford Four were released on appeal in October 1989- much to the chagrin of the Thatcher government. The Birmingham Six, similarly locked up on invented charges and police incompetence/ corruption, were freed not long after in 1991. Pete spoke to Gerry backstage, a man who had spent a decade and a half in prison for something he didn't do, wrongfully convicted by the British justice system. Gerry struggled with life after being released, suffering from mental health issues, drugs and alcohol dependency, and a suicide attempt. When they spoke backstage at GMex they talked about life inside and injustice and Pete asked Gerry what he was going to do. As Pete tells it, Gerry said, 'I don't know for sure but whatever happens its going to be Disneyland forever'. Pete found this inspiring, a man who could be consumed by hate and bitterness seeing the world and the rest of his life in that way. Gerry died of cancer in 2014 aged sixty having recovered from some of his issues and becoming a campaigner for those who have suffered miscarriages of justice. The song is Pete's attempt to do justice to the man- and justice he does. 

The third Wylie/ Wah! song from my pile of freebie magazine CDs was from 2003, a CD titled White Riot Vol Two (A Tribute To The Clash), sixteen Clash covers and a Joe Strummer song. The covers include Jesse Malin, The National, Joy Zipper (posted a few weeks ago), Sparks, Billy Bragg, Stiff Little Fingers, and Nouvelle Vague. It also had Pete Wylie captured live at The Railway, Haddington Festival in 2002, covering Mick Jones' Stay Free, just Pete, his acoustic guitar and more passion than can be measured.

Stay Free (Live)

Pete Wylie And Wah! Live At The Deaf Institute And A Forty Minute Mix

Pete Wylie is touring again, playing the hits and the misses of his and Wah!'s back catalogue with a full band, promoting along overdue Best Of album, Teach Yourself Wah! Pete may not have the biggest back catalogue and has had a few bumps in the road over the last four and half decades of making music, but his best songs are as good as anyone's and there are several which I hold very dearly. We arrived at The Deaf Institute last night before 8.30 to find Pete and the band on stage, Pete mid- anecdote (Pete Wylie is perpetually mid- anecdote, his stand up/ stories/ tales are as much part of the Wah! live experience as the songs and he is sharp, funny and candid). It was a bit frustrating to arrive late and it became clear we'd already missed Come Back (a favourite of mine and I was gutted not to hear it) and the room was packed, so we ended up crammed in by the door, unable to move much or get to the bar and constantly bumped into as people came and went including a bouncer who caught me off balance and sent me careering into the couple standing next to me. 

The first song Pete played after we arrived was the 1983 single Hope (I Wish You'd Believe Me), Pete in fringed cowboy shirt, leather kecks, top hat and green Telecaster, and in good voice. The songs are legendary, one after another, Pete prefacing each with the comment, 'the record company thought this would be a big hit... it wasn't' followed by laughter. There is much laughter at Wylie gigs, he's a natural raconteur and story teller- sometime sits difficult to tell if its songs separated by talk or talk separated by songs. The songs are full of love and heart, Pete mentioning friends who have gone before many of them- an emotive FourElevenFortyFour is dedicated to Josie Jones. The first song of the encore, Seven Minutes To Midnight is dedicated to John Peel and he speaks warmly and movingly about his friend Janice Long before singing for her. He tells a long and very funny story about Tony Wilson's funeral and the enormous bouquet that arrived with the message With Love From Liverpool accidentally ordered in two foot high letters, dominating every other floral tribute at the funeral, Peter Hook approaching him with the words, 'you wanker'. Disneyland Forever is done solo on acoustic guitar, a song written after meeting Gerry Conlan, one of the Guildford Four, backstage at a gig GMex in the early 90s. Gerry told Pete how much John Peel's radio show meant to them when they were in prison and how Pete's songs were part of that. When Pete asked Gerry what he was going to do after being unjustly imprisoned for sixteen years, Gerry replied he didn't know but it would be Disneyland forever. 

Pete launches into The Day Margaret Thatcher Died, the Prime Minister who was on record as saying she wanted the 'managed decline' of Liverpool, with as much venom as ever, ending it with Michael Gove, Jacob Rees Mogg and Esther McVey inserted into the song. Mid- set they play Sinful, my favourite Wylie song, guaranteed Bagging Area catnip, and trailed with the remark, 'the record company thought this would be a big hit... and it was!' Arms aloft, everyone cheers and amusingly they then mess the opening up, have to stop and start again. Behind him there are projections and loops of videos and clips from TV, young and beautiful Pete Wylie and Josie Jones from the 80s looped as 2024 Pete sings and plays. They play is hometown epic Heart As Big As Liverpool, a song that a room full of Mancunians (and a good number of scousers) respond to enthusiastically. 'It's a song about community and belonging', Pete says, 'and optimism and we need that today'. Free; Falling In Love With You from 2017's Pete Sounds is Pete and Wah! channeling Neil Young and Crazy Horse. Wah! do the encore without leaving the stage, Pete saying the steps to the backstage are too much for his knees. Seven Minutes To Midnight is electrifying, urgent, clanging 1980 Cold War dread repositioned for 2024 and we finish, with the curfew approaching, with The Story Of The Blues, Pete's biggest hit and the song he'll always be known for. If it was the only song he'd ever written it would be enough.

Today's Sunday mix was a fairly obvious choice. Pete solo, in various Wah! incarnations and with friends, songs of strength and heartbreak as one of his albums had it. 

Forty Minutes Of Pete Wylie And Wah!

• Imperfect List (Version 1)
• Hope (I Wish You'd Believe Me)
• Don't Lose Your Dreams (Excerpt From A Teenage Opera Part 154)
• Sinful (Tribal Mix)
• Come Back
• FourElevenFortyFour
• Make Your Mind Up (Time For Love Today)
• Talking Blue (The Story Of The Blues Part Two)

Imperfect List, a 1990 single, was a Wylie record done with Cocteau Twin Robin Guthrie and Josie Jones as Big Hard Excellent Fish. For the 12" it was remixed by Andy Weatherall , four mixes under the title Rimming Elvis The Andy Weatherall Way. Josie recites a list of hates, some universal, some very 1990, some very specifically Liverpudlian, all very relatable. Pete's story about Morrissey's usage of it as walk on music and his associated anecdotes about the singer are very funny and on point. 

Hope (I Wish You'd Believe Me) was a 1983 single, backed with a cover of Johnny Thunders' You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory. Wah! do pop soul.

Don't Lose Your Dreams was under the name Pete Wylie and Wah! The Mongrel, a 1991 single and hasn't made either the tracklist for the Best Of or the setlist for the gigs. Which is a shame as I love it, massive early 90s guitars and synths, Pete at his optimistic best, 'Don't you ever lose your dreams/ No matter how far you may tumble/ When people criticise your schemes/ Your wild extremes/ Don't ever lose your dreams'. Another Wylie song that mentions Jack Kerouac. Should have been a massive hit. 

Sinful was a 1986 single and a big hit. Pete promoted it on Top Of The Pops and on Wogan, memorably aided by Josie on Paul Weller's pop art guitar and three dancing nuns, the Sisters Of The Anfield Road. The Tribal Mix is even better, seven minutes of dancefloor gold, a thumping proto acid house drum track and Pete's vocal. The Tribal Mix was remixed by Zeus B. Held. 

Come Back is a magnificent and stirring love song to his city and a plea to those who have left to look for work elsewhere in the unemployment ravaged early 1980s, a 1984 single and the emotional centrepiece to the Word To The Wiseguy album from the same year. A massive if Springsteen was scouse sound and a hugely, defiantly northern record. 

FourElevenFortyFour was on the 1987 album Sinful, an overlooked album. This song has some very 80s production but gets away with it, a love song with a title and chorus that references the enigmatic 4- 11- 44 number. 

Make Your Mind Up (Time For Love Today) is the opening song on 2017's Pete Sounds, an album partly crowdfunded by fans- I was one of them- and recorded at Pete's Liverpool studio Disgracelands. A friend tells me Pete has a piece of carpet from the actual Gracelands. 

Talking Blues (The Story Of The Blues Part Two) is the second half of the 1983 smash hit The Story of The Blues, Pete talking over the looped Phil Spector sound, talking about people being thrown away, about those with power, about hope and pocketbook psychologists, class struggle, love and everyday life and 'something Sal Paradise said'. That's the story of the blues. 

Big Weekend Incoming

It's a big weekend of music related activity coming up, starting tonight and running though until Sunday evening by which point I will be in need of a lie down. We'll go in reverse order. As the flyer above shows on Sunday The Flightpath Estate DJs (on this occasion Martin, Dan and me) are returning to Blossom Street Social in Ancoats for our third mission there, playing records from 3pm until 8pm. We are joined by guest Rob Fletcher, the man responsible for legendary 90s Manchester techno and electronic music club night Herbal Tea Party. The four of us will be playing back to back, three tracks each and then switching and it will be a seamless showcase of our track selection and turntable skills. Obviously. 

If you're in Manchester on Sunday afternoon, please come down and say hello. Dan has a test pressing of our forthcoming double vinyl album Songs From The Flightpath Estate Volume 1, the album we're putting out with The Golden Lion featuring Two Lone Swordsmen, Justin Robertson, Andy Bell, The Light Brigade, Justin Robertson, Sons Of Slough, 10: 40, Richard Sen, Rude Audio and Hardway Bros, so some of those tracks, if not all, will get their first airing in public. 

On Saturday night I'm at Manchester's Albert Hall to see Echo And The Bunnymen who are touring to celebrate 1985's Songs To Learn And Sing, Mac, Will and the rest of the current line up playing two sets with a short gap in between. I've seen them a few times in the last ten years and when they're good, they're very good. 'Lay down thy raincoat and groove', was the advice of the Bunnymen back in 1983 on the release of Never Stop- decent advice still. 

Never Stop (Discotheque)

The night before the Bunnymen (tonight in other words) we're at Manchester's Deaf Institute to see a second member of The Crucial Three, Pete Wylie, on tour with a full band promoting Teach Yourself Wah!, a Pete Wylie and The Mighty Wah! best of. A small venue, Wylie's between song storytelling and patter, some of the best songs of the 1980s, good reviews coming in from other gigs on the tour.. . I'm really looking forward to it. 

Seven Minutes To Midnight

Seven Minutes To Midnight came out in 1980, the second/ final single of Wah! Heat, a clanging, clamorous post- punk single written in the aftermath of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the subsequent moving of the hands of the doomsday clock to 11.53. In the intervening forty three years the clock's hands have moved back and forth a little and were altered most recently in January 2023, now set at ninety seconds to midnight. That apocalypse just creeps closer. 

Tramps Like Us

More mid- 80s Liverpool following yesterday's Pink Industry song- today Frankie Goes To Hollywood's over the top, everything turned up to the max cover of Bruce Springsteen's Born To Run. When Trevor Horn and Frankie recorded 1984's double album Welcome To The Pleasure Dome the massive hit singles Relax and Two Tribes had already dominated the airwaves. The Power Of Love and 1985 title track single were further smashes. This left the rest of the album being a bit of a ragtag bunch of skits and covers with a few originals. 

Springsteen's anthem with its dreams of flight and escape from dull lives and dead end jobs- 'this town's a death trap, a suicide rap'- was possibly felt very keenly in mid- 80s Liverpool, a city abandoned by the government into 'managed decline' with high unemployment, derelict buildings and a falling population. For Springsteen the highway offers freedom, even if it's 'jammed with broken heroes... everybody on the run tonight/ But there's no place left to hide'. Holly Johnson gives it his all vocally, a screaming, high octane performance as the drums, bass and guitars pound and squeal, 'tramps like us/ baby we were born to run'. 

On the album and sadly missing from the mp3 below there's a brief bit of dialogue to plant Frankie's cover firmly in Liverpool rather than New Jersey, a man signing on at the dole office and getting short shrift from a DHSS employee who threatens to put him on daily sign on. The humour of that brief exchange places the song and Springsteen's outsider road anthem in a slightly different light. You can get in the car, hit the M62 but they'll stop your giro and you'll be skint very quickly. 

Born To Run

The population flight from Liverpool was something Pete Wylie noted in Wah!'s epic single, also released in 1984, Come Back, a home made epic on a Springsteen scale and a plea to his fellow scousers not to go elsewhere but to stay, stand your ground and fight. 'Come back/ I'm making my stand/ Come back'.

Come Back (The Return Of The Randy Scouse Git)

Blue Velvet Shoes, Jack Kerouac And Roman Candles

Of all of Pete Wylie and his different versions of Wah!'s lost singles, this one from 1991 is perhaps the most lost. In 1991 Wah! had become Pete Wylie And Wah! The Mongrel. This single, Don't Lose Your Dreams, spearheaded the album Infamy! Or How I Didn't Get Where I Am Today. It's a beauty, jam packed with classic Wylie trademarks and touches not least a ridiculously long title... 

Don't Lose Your Dreams (Excerpt From A Teenage Opera Part 154) Seamless... bursts in with synths and sitar, followed by crunchy Wah! guitar, some big '91 drums and multi- tracked vocals, a Wah-ll of sound. The song has everything- those massive, ringing Wah! guitar chords, layers of female backing vocals and Pete belting the verses out, including memorably this one- 'Blue velvet shoes/ You'll never lose/ Blue velvet shoes /Cos every time you lose, you learn/ Go tell them Jack Kerouac just said/ The Roman candle burns'. The chorus is a big singalong of Wylie wisdom, 'Don't lose your dreams/ No matter how far your tumble/ When people criticise your schemes/ Your wild extremes/ Don't you ever lose your dreams'. In lesser hands this could sound corny or overblown. In Pete's it sounds huge and beautiful. It fades out with echoes of The Who, Baba O'Reilly style. Thirty two years later, it sounds like the song 1991 forgot about. 

Don't Lose Your Dreams (Excerpt From A Teenage Opera Part 154) Seamless...

The CD single has two B-sides, Imperfect and Don't Lose Your Drums. Imperfect is an alternate version of Big Hard Excellent Fish's Imperfect List from the previous year, a beatific, loved up version of that track with a completely different vocal courtesy of Domino. 

Imperfect 

The third track is an instrumental remix of the original, a very nice, blissed out version. 

Don't Lose Your Drums (Excerpt From A New Age Opera Part 2001) 

There were several versions across the vinyl and CD formats. The 12" had a pair of excellent Cabaret Voltaire techno remixes and a 10" presented two very 1991, Danny Rampling acid house remixes. All seem to be out of print and unavailable digitally. Second hand copies of all are cheap and easy to find online. Someone needs to tidy up Pete/ Wah!'s back catalogue, re- issue the albums and do a career round up/ Best Of/ B-sides package. 

It's All Up To You

Pete Wylie and the latest version of The Mighty Wah! played at Night And Day in Manchester on Sunday night, a sold out gig at a small, capacity 250. Taking the stage in a red, white and blue Sex Pistols shirt and black hat he sees as pleased to see us as we are to see him. The stage at Night And Day is tucked into the corner at the back, really intimate as gig spaces go with the audience gathering round the front and the side as Wylie laughs off some technical issues, a repeating loop of feedback clearly audible which they can't get rid of and are just going to play over the top of. Pete starts singing the Johnny Thunders song You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory, and that's the cue for both me and Lou to start welling up. Then the band launch into Come Back and we're off into Wylie- land. He promised 'all the hits' and that's exactly what we get, an hour and a half of Wylie back catalogue interspersed with plenty of talk, Pete talking, telling stories, explaining the background to songs and cracking jokes- he says he's writing his memoir (his Mem- Wah) and if all he did was transcribe his between song chatter he'd have the first draft already done. The tales come thick and fast, and among others I can't recall now include the story of why The Story Of The Blues missed out on reaching number one, a misadventure involving backing tapes, the Musician's Union and Duran Duran, and a very funny anecdote where Wylie, Ian McCulloch, Julian Cope and Pete Burns all go to the same dole office to sign on in the late 70s. All four are asked what job they want. Burns, 'in full regalia', replies to the DHSS officer, 'shepherd'. 

There is a long explanation of the CIA and their attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro which inspired the song Better Scream, a 1980 single, and a blistering version of the song. The Day Margaret Thatcher Dies gets a big response (Pete says he was writing a song about Liz Truss but she'd resigned before he finished it). Free; Falling (In Love With You) from 2017's Pete Sounds has echoes of Neil Young and Crazy Horse. Sinful, prefaced as an 'all purpose protest song', is a massive sounding outsider anthem which segues into Bowie's Heroes halfway through and then back into Sinful. He talks movingly about Janice Long, a friend and a champion of Wah!, who died last year, and of Josie Jones and Andrew Weatherall, dedicating an emotive Four Eleven Forty Four to them, with Pete's daughter Mersey's backing vocals present virtually. Heart As Big As Liverpool, not necessarily a song you'd expect to get a rousing reception in Manchester, is played and sung along to, Pete saying it's about a feeling not a place (even though we know it's about a place too). Then we get a magnificent romp through The Story of The Blues, a roomful of middle aged men and women singing every word back to the band. The encore takes place immediately, the band staying on stage, as Pete says, because 'they can't arsed going down those little stairs and then back up again'. Seven Minutes To Midnight, all loud, ringing guitars and Cold War fear, fills the room.

Come Back (The Return Of The Randy Scouse Git)

Pete Wylie may not have a massive back catalogue but the songs he has written and that get played tonight cut through, striking chords and hitting home, emotive songs about life, love and social injustice. More power to him. Pete, Wah! and his songs should be much better known than they are. 

Live music has a huge effect on me at the moment- I've said before at various points this year how often I've cried in response to songs at gigs in the aftermath of Isaac's death. Live music transports me too, lifting me out of it everything. In a small room, with enthusiastic crowds and songs that mean something, drums and guitars and vocals filling the space up, somehow for a short period I'm somewhere else. Several times tonight Pete Wylie's songs trigger tears, making me well up and wipe my eyes. They're those sort of songs and we're in that sort of place. Today is Lou's birthday, tickets to the gig were part of the celebrations. We've had a rough few days and today will bring its own difficulties- it's her first birthday since Isaac died, and his birthday and the anniversary of his death are fast approaching. But we're trying to celebrate too and as Pete sings in Come Back, 'Well did you ever hear of hope?/ A small belief can mean/ You never walk alone/ And did you ever hear of faith? It's all up to you/ Yes, it's all up to you'. 

Happy birthday Lou. 

Isolation Mix Four

A bit of a change again for this week's hour long isolation mix, this time a trip into more psychedelic and psyche areas, some guitars, a couple of cover versions, some remixes and a re-edit of an 80s alt- classic with an eye, a third eye maybe, on the cosmic and the blissed out. One of the segues is a little bit clumsy but I can live with it. I've had to move the host over to Mixcloud as I'd used up all my available space at Soundcloud without going to the paid for service.



Tracklist-
The Durutti Column: Otis

Wixel: Expressway To Yr Skull (Long Champs Bonus Beats)

Moon Duo: Stars Are The Light

Curses: This Is The Day

Le Volume Courbe: Rusty

Sonic Boom/ Spectrum: True Love Will Find You In The End

Mogwai: Party In The Dark

The Liminanas: The Gift (Anton Mix)

Goldfrapp v Spiritualized: Monster Love

Julian Cope: Heed Of Penetration and the City Dweller Head Remix by Hugo Nicholson

Edit Service 8 by It’s A Fine Line: The Story Of The Blues (Talkin’ Blues)

The Early Years: Complicity

Say It Loud 'No!'

I woke up recently with Pete Wylie's single Sinful running through my head. Sinful came out in 1987, a hit that saw him return to Top Of The Pops with Josie Jones and three backing dancers dressed as nuns.






Ace isn't it? The song, the Zeus B. Held production, what looks like Paul Weller's pop art Rickenbacker, the performance, the presenters (John Peel and Janice Long), the sheer Wylie spirit. I've posted the Top Of The Pops clip before but shockingly, and in a clear breech of the bloggers convention that all music blogs must post Wylie or Wah! at least once in any given calendar year, there hasn't been any Wylie or Wah! to date in 2019.

Sinful

Here the same line up perform/mime on Wogan. Magic.



I've got an uneasy feeling that we're all going to wake up on Friday morning in a very unpleasant state. There isn't anything I've seen over the last few weeks that makes me feel optimistic about the result of the election and I think we going to be saddled with five years of Tory rule with a lying, racist, homophobic and vacuous Prime Minister.

In 1982 Pete Wylie, then operating under the name Wah!, wrote a song called The Story Of The Blues. It was partly in response to the then Conservative government and the portrayal of life and unemployment under that government in Alan Bleasdale's series The Boys From The Blackstuff. The Blues of the title can be interpreted as the Tories. The first part of Wylie's song is an exhortation to people who are about to give up, who have been kicked and kicked again, to be positive and strong, to organise and resist.

'First they take your pride
Turn it all inside
And then you realise
You've got nothing left to lose

So you try to stop
Try to get back up
And then you realise
You're telling the story of the blues'

Wylie was also expressing his frustration with his record company and the way they were trying to market Wah! and reduce the multi-faceted, rough edged group down into a single, shiny marketable product. Everyone hated their record labels in the 1980s didn't they? It was par for the course for those inspired by punk to sign to a major for the advance and the distribution and then face battles in everything they did.

Wylie and Wah! recorded an extended version which took the pop single, full of female backing vocals and violins, further with a long spoken word section- The Story Of The Blues (Talkin' Blues) and they run as one song on the 12". In this section Wylie blasts the news media for selling Thatcher's economic policies and for criticising people, young people especially, for being unemployed, as if being in the dole made you less of a person. These were all big issues in the early 80s- unemployment, the right to work, the destruction of manufacturing industry and the jobs that went with them, the throwing of people onto the scrapheap.

'...well that's my story and I'm sticking to that. So let's have another drink and let's talk about the blues. Blues is about dignity, it's about self-respect, and no matter what they take away from you - that's yours for keeps. I remember how it was, how every medium - T.V. and papers and radio and all those people were saying: 'you're on the scrap-heap, you're useless', and I remember how easy it was to start believing that. I remember how you'd hear people take it for granted that it was true - just 'cause someone with an ounce of power said so. And that's a problem now, too many oddballs, too many pocketbook psychologists and would-be philosophers with an axe to grind. But there's a solution, it's not easy, but it's a matter of coming to terms in your heart with situation you're in, a matter of choosing how things go for you and not having things forced upon you. There are plenty of forces against you, forcing you against your will, your ideals - you've got to hope for the best, and that's the best you can hope for - you've got to hope against hope... I remember something Sal Paradise said, he said: 'the city intellectuals of the world are debauched from the full body blood-of-the-land and are just rootless fools'. So listen, when the smile, the condescending pat-on-the-back comes and says: 'we're sorry, but you're nothing, you've got nothing for us and we've got nothing for you', you say: 'No', and say it loud: "NO!", and remember, people who talk about revolution and a class-struggle without referring explicitly to everyday life, without understanding what is subversive about love, and what is positive in the refusal and constraint...since people have a corpse in their mouth..."

In 2013 the I'm A Cliche Edit Service website presented an unoffical re-edit of The Story Of The Blues, credited to It's A Fine Line (Tim Paris and Ivan Smagghe). This is a killer re-working of Wah!'s original with a long looped opening section, the backing vocals fading in behind the violins and then Wylie's words. The last few minutes are quite heady and when you get to the end it's very easy to just click replay and listen to it all over again. Several times. Even better, it's still available to download for free. 



I was going to go full Pete Wylie and post Come Back and Imperfect List as well but maybe we should come back to them another day. Come Back is a political love song, an anthem and call to arms and Imperfect List a purging, a shitlist of all the things Wylie and Jones hated (two versions, one in 1990 and one in 2013). But I think I'll come back to them another day. 

Down The Docks The Talking Turned...

...'As some are striving to survive, the others thrive'

I posted this song last year and once before that as well but sitting watching one of the Top Of The Pops reruns last week I was struck  (again) by the brilliance and magic, the faith and devotion of Pete Wylie's Mighty Wah! in the mid 80s. Come Back sounds like a love song but the verses read as a clarion call, a stand against Thatcher and forces of greed, a call for community and to stand together, a shout to those forced out by economic forces beyond their control to return to the city and to their roots. That reads as much for 2017 as it did for 1984. Pete said on Twitter recently that he wrote and played every instrument of Come Back except for the backing vocal by partner Josie Jones. In the TOTP clip Josie looks amazing, hands on hips, alongside Pete in his leather trousers and blow dried hairdo.

Sadly Josie, a big figure on the Liverpool art and music scene, died in 2015. She had also been the voice of Big hard Excellent Fish's Imperfect List, which I've also posted before here and in its updated form here.

Come Back (The Return Of The Randy Scouse Git)

How good is that? How could you ever get tired of hearing that? 'It's all up to you, yes it's all up to you!'

Come Back

Pete Wylie has a version of The Mighty Wah! back out on the road with a handful of gigs this month and bunch more in November. It is a blogging requirement by constitution and tradition that The Story Of The Blues is posted by music blogs at least once annually. I've posted it before and a very smart re-edit version which some of you enjoyed a lot. In a break with expectation instead I'm posting another 12" Wylie epic from 1984.

Come Back (The Story Of The Reds) and The Devil In Miss Jones (Combined and Extended)

No! Say It Loud, No!

Today, Pete Wylie. Yesterday The Vinyl Villain published a post on the third member of The Crucial Three- Pete Wylie and his Mighty Wah! a blogpost so comprehensive and with comments so good I rewrote my planned post for today. So instead of what I had partly written I'm revisiting a version of a Mighty Wah! song I have posted before, a brilliantly executed re-edit of The Mighty Wah's The Story Of The Blues (Part 2) from the Edit Service people. A long electronic drum intro, the female backing vox and then Pete Wylie's spoken part, including that quote from Jack Kerouac- 'I remember something Sal Paradise said 'the city intellectuals of the world were divorced from the folkbody of the land and were just rootless fools'' and Wylie's message, 'you've got to hope for the best and that's the best you can hope for' and ultimately say 'No!'. If you love the original, you'll love this too. Promise.



By the way, I apologise for the appearance of the letter U and the number 2 in close proximity in the picture accompanying this post.

That's My Story And I'm Sticking To It

I just found this and thought some of you might like it- a re-edit of The Mighty Wah's mighty The Story Of The Blues single, lovingly unwrapped over eight and half minutes, for a true Balearic end of night escapade where you want just one last song to send you on your way before you spill out into the streets to see the dawn. May or may not be the work of Ivan Smagghe.  At Soundcloud here and available for download.

You're my best mate you are.

Wah Wah

This is one of those records that often seems to populate the 7" box in charity shops, all dog eared sleeves and scratched disc. I've written before of my buying multiple copies of records in Oxfam and suchlike over the years, just because I can't leave them in the shop, decaying and unloved, surely eventually ending up as landfill. However I could not house the numbers of copies of this single I've seen. Why is it so often abandoned?

Our local Oxfam occasionally turns up trumps- one time it was full of the entire Siouxsie And The Banshees back catalogue and most of Wah!s output. I was trying to work out what sort of person would have such musical taste, to collect the full works of both the ice queen of goth and Liverpool's 'part time rock star, full time legend'. But then again maybe it was two different people, coincidentally getting rid of vinyl at the same time. Or even better, maybe it was a couple, each one dumping it's youthful record collection to make space in a new place they've just got together, one a Banshees fan, the other a Wylie lover - that's an idea I like. But I'm sure I would've spotted a Siouxsie lookalike and a Wylie wannabee wandering around Sale by now.

Enough blathering. From 1984, The Mighty Wah!'s mighty Come Back. It's not as good maybe as The Story Of The Blues or Sinful, but it's still worth a few minutes of your time.

Come Back.mp3

The Mighty Wah! 'Talkin’ Blues' (The Story Of The Blues Pt. 2)

I was never into The Mighty Wah!, Wah!, Wah! Heat, or any of the other names for Pete Wylie's ego during the 1980s and into the 90s, but shifted recently. I played records at a wedding (friends of friends, not doing that again, stress and hassle), and the groom insisted I played The Story Of The Blues. Once it was on I realised it was better than I thought. A few weeks back I found a stash of Wah! 7" singles in Oxfam in Altrincham and enjoyed most of them.

This is off the album A Word To The Wiseguy, much of which is Pete Wylie's heart-felt response to the effects of Thatcherism on Liverpool. It's a sprawling album, with some dated production, but some of it stands up today. This version of The Story Of The Blues comes up near the end, the horns from the single version looped while Wylie does some talking over the top, including quoting Sal Paradise from Kerouac's On The Road, and maybe it shouldn't work, but Wylie gets away with it.



4shared.com - online file sharing and storage - download The Mighty Wah!_15_Talkin’ Blues (The Story Of The Blues Pt. 2).mp3