An Alternative Resurrection

A day late for an Easter Sunday resurrection but bank holiday Monday feels more appropriate- you might remember that in January 2024 I wrote a piece about an imagined alternative future for The Stone Roses, one where after the release of One Love in June 1990 they didn't blow it. You can re- read An Alternate History first if you want to. It was a post that seemed to download itself into my mind while out on a bike ride, a fully formed version of the 1990s where Ian, John, Mani and Reni had better advice, clearer heads and didn't get immediately bogged down in a post- Spike Island slump and court case, a world where they moved on, signed to Heavenly and released a series of singles and EPs, side stepping the drama and overbearing weight of delivering a second album. In my alternate history they end up at the millennium, back where they started in Sale, south Manchester, with an album that delivered on the promise the band had in that space between the release of Elephant Stone in October 1988 and then One Love/ Something's Burning in 1990. 

Elephant Stone

One of the spin offs from the post took place in Stockholm, Sweden. Scandinavia is a place rich in Roses lore. The band toured there in 1987, a bonding trip for the group and then they returned in 1990 for some warm up shows before the big definitive, generational statements at Spike Island and Glasgow Green. There was a memorable article in Q Magazine by Adrian Deevoy who took a trip with the band in their 1990 pomp, playing gigs, imbibing substances and dancing like fish (all doubled down on by United winning the European Cup Winner's Cup in Rotterdam as the interview and tour took place). 

The 2024 Stockholm spin off was from Jesse, the man behind 10:40, who read my post and was inspired to write a new/ lost Stone Roses track, titled An Alternative History. He sent it to me in the middle of last year and for a while there was a plan that I might sing on it but that came to naught (due to me it has to be said). Jesse released his three track EP yesterday, an Easter Sunday resurrection and also his birthday, three versions of his Stone Roses alternative history, under the banner 10:40 presents Retro Fit.

The original version is a five minute song that sounds like John Squire's next step in 1989, a song they band never quite finished perhaps- chorus pedal and chiming guitar, Reni's kick drum and snare and a very familiar voice coming through the line, straight outta Chorlton singing 'She's waiting...'. 

The lead version of the song on the EP is An Alternate History (Retro Fit Resurrection), an eight minute dance mix that spirals through time and space, landing back in the heady days of 89/ 90, the permanent summer of our youth- fringes, love beads, flares, long sleeved t- shirts, nights lost at the indie disco, clubbing and guitar bands clashing on the floor under the strobe light, maracas and wide eyed joy, Jesse's chiming guitar lines and 1990 shuffle lighting up the room... Ian's there, sucking in his cheeks and doing that loose limbed dance, 'There's a time and a place for everything/ I've got to get it through'....

Lavender Mist completes the EP, Squire's love of Jackson Pollock at the fore, evident on the sleeves of all those records and the titles of Roses B-sides Full Fathom Five and Guernica.

Lavender Mist is not just the Pollock Roses but the experimental, backwards tapes Roses too, a backwards effects version of An Alternative History to follow Don't Stop, Simone, Guernica and Full Fathom Five; a heavenly, spun out and blissed out version of the song with loops and echoes, Ian's voice spun backwards and the guitars reversed, the rhythms both forwards and backwards, everything a great, trippy whirl. Isn't it funny how you shine?

10:40 presents retro Fit: An Alternative History is here. Go get it, you'll love it. Tell Jesse I said hello. 

xiM sgnoS sdrawkcaB fO setuniM eviF-ytrihT

Thirty- five minutes of backwards songs.

This mix occurred to me a few weeks ago when I posted David Holmes' remix of Andy Bell's The Sky Without You, a remix of the opening song from Andy's 2022 solo album Flicker. Reversing the tapes and playing them backwards is an age old technique- The Beatles used it in 1966 on Rain and then perfected it on Tomorrow Never Knows (although both of those merely contain backwards elements/ instruments- most of what's included below is entirely backwards). They went the full hog on The White Album with Revolution 9. Those backwards noises- the sound of cymbals splashing in reverse, the trippy whirl of guitars backwards, the weird throb of bass- are all very evocative and possibly suggest too long spent in the studio, indulgence maybe, but when done well are superb. I've loved it as a sonic whoosh, an aural WTF?, since my first exposure to The Stone Roses and their B-sides in 1989 and Don't Stop. This mix will I suspect be an opinion splitter- you'll either roll your eyes and quietly close the page and go elsewhere for your Sunday morning music fix or you'll love this. I've played it through several times and each time can convince myself it's the best Sunday mix I've ever done. 

xiM sgnoS sdrawkcaB fO setuniM eviF- ytrihT

• Andy Bell: The Sky Without You
• The Stone Roses: Simone
• The Clash: Mensforth Hill
• The Stone Roses: Previously Unheard Backwards Track 3
• The Stone Roses: Full Fathom Five
• Andy Bell: The Looking Glass
• Andy Bell: The Sky Without You (David Holmes Radical Mycology Remix)
• The Stone Roses: Guernica
• The Stone Roses: Don't Stop

The Sky Without You opens Flicker, Andy Bell's solo album. It was a deliberate nod to The Stone Roses, Andy looking backwards to Don't Stop and the B-sides of Elephant Stone, Made Of Stone, and She Bangs The Drums. Most of the rest of Flicker is fully crafted, 'proper' songs, from the lovely Something Like Love to the wistful Way Of The World. Halfway through, the start of the second disc on the vinyl version, is another backwards track, The Looking Glass, Andy's voice, guitar and what sounds like some organ fed backwards through the looking glass. I'm guessing it's one of the songs from Flicker flipped. 

Simone is Where Angels Play played backwards and for many years was only available as the B-side of a U.S. import version of I Wanna Be Adored, which found its way into U.K. shops in 1989. It was buying this 12" single for this one song, a 12" priced at £5.99 (a huge amount for a 12" single then) that made me realise I was in deep. Where Angels Play was the 'lost' song from the golden period of 1989- 1990, the song that didn't make the album but was often bootlegged live. It was eventually released on a 12" of I Wanna Be Adored, put out by Silvertone as a money spinner when the band and label were in dispute- a dispute that led to a court case that led to the band signing to Geffen and to the end of the group ultimately.  

By the time The Clash had committed themselves to an album which would comprise six sides of vinyl  and to having six songs for each side, they were in very deep indeed. Studio experimentation, Joe's lyric writing bunker, and hours through the night of recording dubs and versions with Mikey Dread were the order of the day. I've said it before and I'll say it again- London Calling may be their 'best' album, punk purists will go for the debut, some of the class of '78 will always argue for Give 'Em Enough Rope, but Sandinista! is where the true, questing spirit of The Clash is to be found. It's a treasure trove and as Joe says in Westway To The World, it's 'a magnificent achievement, warts and all'. Mensforth Hill is Something About England played backwards with studio chatter at both ends. 'Shall we do another one then?' asks Joe at the end. Yes please!

Previously Unheard Backwards Track 3 is She Bangs The Drums played in reverse- it came out as an extra on the 20th anniversary release of The Stone Roses (the one with the lemon shaped USB stick- no, I didn't buy it). 

Full Fathom Five (a nice coincidental link to Duncan Gray's album Five Fathoms Full that came out last week) is Elephant Stone backwards (the Peter Hook produced version of Elephant Stone, so if you can reverse the reversed version, you've got Hooky's mix of the song too). I think this is a little more than just flipping the tape round- Ian's vocals are unclear but recorded and dropped in forwards. Full Fathom Five is the name of a 1947 Jackson Pollock painting, one of his earliest drip paintings, a masterpiece, and a clear influence on John Squire's Roses sleeve art from this period. 

The Sky Without You has already appeared once here. For his Radical Mycology Remix David Holmes took all of Andy's backwards Roses swirl and took it further, adding forwards drums, a blurry sunny day feel and sirens. One of my favourite records of recent years. David's name for the remix came from some mushroom based experimentation he undertook during lockdown, dealing with some growing up in Belfast related PTSD

Guernica is Made Of Stone backwards with Ian singing a new vocal forwards- 'If you wanna hurt me stop the row' (or similar), can be made out fairly clearly. This one feels like a step towards Don't Stop. You can imagine them in the studio with John Leckie working their way through the songs backwards, hitting on certain ones, trying new vocals, flipping parts around and eventually getting it all together when they reversed Waterfall. There was an interview with Ian and John in '88 or '89 where they said they used to drive out the road under the flightpath at Manchester airport (I know exactly which road they mean too), sit on the bonnet of the car and wait for the jumbo jets to take off over head, and then try to replicate the roar of the engines with their reversed tapes. Guernica is a painting by Pablo Picasso, depicting the Spanish town that was obliterated by the Nazi's Condor Legion, Stuka dive bombers deployed to aid the fascists in the Spanish Civil War. 2024; see Gaza.

A Spanish Civil War Sunday mix anyone?

Don't Stop is more and more, as each year passes, the highlight of The Stone Roses debut album- don't laugh- the one where the experimentation, delight in backwards tapes, a modern psychedelic guitar band was fully realised. Reni's drums and Ian's vocals are both forwards, recorded over Waterfall played in reverse. There's more to it than just reversing the tape- the guitars are slowed down, sounding like an actual waterfall, and the fade in has been added from elsewhere. Things are out of sync. The flow of the backwards guitars and bass, bubbling, lightly drilling, is a rush and Reni's cowbell tapping away gives so much. John wrote the lyrics by listening to Ian's vocal for Waterfall played backwards and then transcribed what Ian's blurred voice seemed to be suggesting.Ian then sang them- the lyrics are among the best too- 'hey blues singer/ just the guitar/ from the top/ what can I steal/ what can I feel/ I wake/ ease into my heart/ one of us/ don't stop/ isn't it funny how you shine?'. Andy Bell used this technique on Flicker. Which is where we came in....

Grey Border

Shunt Voltage are a Manchester based electronic outfit who make tough, industrial house music, littered with bits of dub and bobs of acid.

Link Up throbs and grinds, a vocal sample buried beneath layers of sound.



This one, Grey Border, is even better, more acidic with loops, an Eastern sounding noise and lots of synthy bleeps. Capable of turning your head inside out when played at volume.

White Light

Whoosh! and oof! This arrived in my Inbox yesterday and is a tremendous racket, a full throttle explosion with flailing, driving, distorted guitars and pounding drums courtesy of Psychic Lemon (a three piece who rehearse and record in a studio in the back of a small garden in Cambridge apparently). They released an album last year called Live At The Smokehouse, a five track, forty- two minute long recording of a show they played in Ipswich. I think Drew turned me on to it. It's an intense and vivid blast of psyche/kraut/space rock, an instrumental guitar and synth freak out. The song titles alone should give you an idea about what to expect- Interstellar Fuzz Star, Satori Disko, Hey Droog!, Johnny Marvel At The Milky Way and White Light, the song in it's studio version that they now offer as a free download. Their new album Freak Mammal is out in November. Press play. Turn volume up. Cobwebs blown.
  

Simple Lives Yeah

Back in 1988/89 The Stone Roses were a blast of fringes, flares and winter coats coupled with psychedelic, insurrectionist guitar pop and abstract expressionism. They also had a tendency to take the tapes they'd recorded their songs onto and play them backwards. These backwards experiments created four songs, all four of which are headspinning adventures in sound. I remember reading an interview with the band where Ian and John spoke about for fun they used to drive out to the airport, park up near the runway and lie on the bonnet of the car while jumbo jets took off overhead (hallucinogens may have been involved). I seem to recall them saying that the backwards songs were partly an attempt to get that kind of sound on disc.

The first released fruit of these studio experiments was the Elephant Stone 12" single, out in 1988 (Elephant Stone sounds more and more to these ears like one of the shiniest gems in their back catalogue, especially the 12" mix). Full Fathom Five (named after a Jackson Pollock painting) is Elephant Stone backwards, vocals and music, Squire's guitar lines recognisable, the trippy shoom-shoom sound of backwards cymbals a constant with Ian's menacing backwards vocals.

Full Fathom Five

Released the following year (round about now in 1989) the Made Of Stone 12" had two B-sides, the acoustic ode to oral sex that is Going Down and Guernica. Guernica is the music from Made Of Stone backwards (minus the drums) but with new vocals, sung forwards, smothered in reverb to sink them into the track. 'You wanna hurt me stop the row' Ian sings, and 'we're whores, sit down, we're whores, that's us' (and the line at the top of this post). The driving guitars and bass of Made Of Stone sound immense backwards and it sounds like there may be some extra guitars or feedback added by Squire to double up that ghostly, rushing sound. It's not unlike hearing them in a wind tunnel (or underneath the engines of a jet plane taking off). Guernica was produced by The Garage Flowers, an alias they used when producing themselves, and it's no surprise they took the backwards experimentation further. Like Full Fathom Five, Guernica is named after a key 20th century painting.

Guernica

The third backwards B-side was Simone, only available in 1989 on a U.S. import 12" (I Wanna Be Adored). It was this point, standing in HMV in '89 that I realised I was in deep, about to cough up £8.49 for a 12" single with only one song on it I didn't already own. Simone is Where Angels Play reversed, a backwards version of a song that wouldn't be put out by the group until Silvertone released as a B-side in 1991 in an attempt to milk the cow while it tried to sue them. Simone is a trip, shimmering and moody with guitar lines coming out of the inky blackness, no drums, the faintest, echo-laden whispers of vocals and then throbbing rushes of rhythm guitar. A swirling psychedelic stew. Play all three backwards songs back-to-back for full on backwards fun.

Simone

The ultimate backwards song was Don't Stop, a song that graced the debut album, Waterfall backwards with cowbell, new drums and words, perfectly pitched (and perfectly placed, following on from it's forwards version). I wrote about it last year, to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the events of May 1968. It's here. I said then that to write the lyrics for Don't Stop John listened to Waterfall backwards through headphones and wrote down what Ian's backwards vocals seemed to suggest, creating with one of the best set of lyrics on any Stone Roses song. You better stick Don't Stop on after the first three for full effect.

Six

                                                                 Jackson Pollock, number 6

Good morning, happy new year to you all. On January 1st 2010 I published my first post here so today is Bagging Area's sixth birthday. Suddenly that seems like a long time to have been writing this stuff- sometimes I can't see where the next few posts are coming from and sometimes they stack up like a warehouse. I'll suppose I'll just keep going as long as there is something left to witter on about. See you tomorrow for more of the same.

Here are some Sneaker Pimps.

6 Underground (Two Lone Swordsmen Vocal Mix)

Box Energy

                                                               Untitled 1951, Jackson Pollock

Box Energy by DJ Pierre is one of the foundation stone records of acid house- an 808 drumbeat and Roland TB 303 bassline synthesiser set to mindfuck squiggle mode. Strange to think this sound was invented back in 1987, so long ago now. How much sense this track makes on a Tuesday morning in October I don't know. I like to think that acid house, Chicago style, has something in common with Jackson Pollock's abstract expressionism of the late 1940s and early 1950s. Colours and shapes. Movement. Action. Energy. Certainly those lines of colour were the sort of thing I'd see when I closed my eyes when dancing to this kind of record back in the day. But that could have been the strobes.

Box Energy

Result

                                                 Jackson Pollock Number 1 (Lavender Mist) Detail

I've been into work today for the A Level results. To celebrate a great set of results for my A Level History students and our establishment's results generally here's Andrew Weatherall's latest two hour radio show for NTS, broadcast last week. Expect the usual selection of weird and wonderful.

Andrew Weatherall Presents: Music's Not For Everyone - 6th August 2015 by Nts Radio on Mixcloud

That Old Town

While in London we took the students to the O2 arena to see the Museum Of British Pop Culture. As soon as you put rock 'n' roll in a museum it seems to lose some of its charm in some ways but some of the exhibits were good. There were large projections playing in slow-mo (The Smiths, Wham and The Stone Roses on Top Of The Pops in the 80s, The Clash and Sex Pistols from 70s TV), different rooms for different periods, a room full of guitars and drum kits to play on and a rather nifty touch screen virtual record box which tried to tell the story of dance music (a good selection of tracks although I tutted and shook my head at what I thought were a couple of factual errors). In the rooms, as well as some touch screen stuff, there were various pieces behind glass- some Bowie costumes from the early 70s, a Small Faces bass drum, a royal flush of Spice Girls outfits, dresses belonging to Petula Clark and Dusty Springfield, a pair of Rickenbackers- Weller's pop art guitar and Mani's abstract expressionist bass (John Squire's handiwork, along with Mani's paint splattered clothes from that NME cover, visible in the right of the second pic).  Art-rock crossover. I was hoping for a Cubist drum kit but left disappointed.

It transpired that two of my 6th form students' Dads were present at Spike Island along with me, a quarter of a century ago. They say working with kids keeps you young- it can also make you feel very old. I then spent some time racking my brains trying to think of when Weller and Mani might have played together and came up with this 7" single from a few years back, a super sharp slice of Mod pop, recorded with Graham Coxon. 

This Old Town

And here played live on the gogglebox- Weller, Mani, Coxon and Zak Starkey on drums.

They probably played together on a Primal Scream B-side too ('Til The Kingdom Comes, XCLTR era, sounds like The Who) which I have posted before. In fact having just searched the blog, I've posted This Old Town before too. 

All Dead Yet Still Alive

A House's Endless Art was mentioned on Twitter the other day. The Dublin band nearly had a hit with it in 1992, a list of dead artists names and dates set to music. It starts with Oscar Wilde ('All art is quite useless') and goes on with Turner, Toulouse-Lautrec, Warhol, Hemmingway, Hendrix, Yeats, Monet, Beethoven, Vicious, Tennyson, Man Ray, Henry's Moore and Miller, Presley, Miro, Bach, Brahms, Kerouac, Pollock (above), Picasso, Degas, Dali, Ian Curtis and a load more before finishing with Mickey Mouse.

It's a record I really like but I don't need to hear it that often. They got criticised at the time for having a list of endless artists that included no women (the female artists then turned up on the B-side).

Endless Art