Cassette experiment day 86 - Martin Stephenson and The Daintees 'Boat to Bolivia'

I wonder what kind of music Bruce Springsteen would have made if he’d been born in the USA into a rich family? What kind of records would Elton John have made if he’d grown up playing the guitar instead of the piano? How would Jonathan Richman have sounded if he’d been raised and steeped in the traditions of North East England?

I’ve got no idea about the first two, but for quite a while now I’ve considered Martin Stephenson and The Daintees to be the North East’s very own version of Jonathan and his Modern Lovers. Just like Boston’s own, Martin and the boys are able to flip effortlessly from funny to touching, naïve to knowing in the blink of an eye. And our subject today, their 1986 debut on the legendary Kitchenware Records, ‘Boat to Bolivia’ might just be their best.

I say ‘might’ because it constantly vies with their next two albums, ‘Gladsome, Humour and Blue’ and ‘Salutation Road’ for my musical affections.

‘Formed in Tyneside, Scotland’ according to allmusic.com (I think you’ll find Tyneside isn’t actually in Scotland, allmusic, and many of your other Martin Stephenson facts are also a long way wide of the facts too!), Martin Stephenson and The Daintees became local heroes in North East England during the 1980s busking and play gigs to small but delighted audiences.

‘Boat to Bolivia’, (which initially didn’t actually include the chirpy title track – although it was included on subsequent editions, including my cassette copy) deftly covers subjects as diverse as alcoholism (‘Little red bottle’ which is still a great crowd-pleaser when performed live), bereavement (the brilliant opening track, ‘Crocodile cryer’), the break-up of a lesbian love affair (the wonderful ‘Coleen’) and miscarriage (‘Caroline’, which is almost definitely the only song about miscarriage in my whole collection).*

In anyone else’s hands these subjects would almost certainly make for a downbeat album, but here they’re written and performed with such love and hopefulness that the whole world seems like a brighter place after listening.

There are other great tunes here too, but there’s a danger that I just end up listing all of the tracks. It would be remiss of me not to mention ‘Tribute to the late Reverend Gary Davis’, a lovely guitar instrumental, described by Martin as ‘Ragtime stylee’ in the comprehensive and enlightening insert notes.

This could be the best album you’ve never heard. If, however, you have been lucky enough to hear it then I’m sure you’ll be keen to catch Martin (sometimes with and sometimes without The Daintees) on one of his almost permanent tours.

Label – Kitchenware records

Year – 1986

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* This may not be entirely true as there’s bound to be something on a Tori Amos album

 

Cassette experiment day 85 - B.E.F. 'Music of quality and distinction volume 2'

I’ve always been intrigued by the concept of the ‘Cutting-room casualty’. Actors turn up on set, give the role their best shot, go home to their lovely families and then discover, six months later, that they literally didn’t make the cut.

Kevin Costner thought he was going to get his big break in ‘The Big Chill’, Tobey Maguire must still wonder what happened to his appearances in ‘Life of Pi’ and the under-rated ‘Empire Records’, Robert Pattinson expected to find himself in ‘Vanity Fair’ (but didn’t) and Harvey Keitel, as it turns out, wasn’t in ‘Apocalypse now’.

I often wonder how this must make an actor feel.

Our cassette experiment subject today also has a ‘Cutting-room casualty’ that you’ve probably heard of – John Lydon.

B.E.F.’s ‘Music of quality and distinction volume 2’ is, in name and concept only, a follow up to their ground-breaking set of cover versions released as ‘Volume 1’ in 1982 and featured all that time ago on day 5 of ‘The great cassette experiment’.

A much more soulful album than ‘Volume 1’, ‘Volume 2’ matches top-drawer (and 'Top Draw') vocalists with classic tunes from yesteryear. It’s much more polished and generally ‘classier’ than the first volume, but nowhere near as musically or culturally significant.

In some cases the renditions are tremendous (for example Billy Preston’s ‘Try a little tenderness’ is obviously a ‘slam dunk’) but can be a little bit predictable.

Where the album works best, such as Green’s brilliant interpretation of Stevie Wonder’s ‘I don’t know why I love you’ or the always brilliant Billy Mackenzie’s re-working of Deniece Williams’ ‘Free’, it’s an absolute delight.

Where it doesn’t work so well, such as Terence Trent D’Arby’s frantic rendition of Bob Dylan’s ‘It’s alright Ma, I’m only bleeding’ or Richard Derbyshire’s slightly monotonous take on The Gap Band’s ‘Early in the morning’, it’s nowhere near as engaging.

Most of the tracks lie somewhere in between, with the majority landing slightly closer to the bulls-eye than threatening to inflict harm on bystanders. Ghida de Palma’s ‘Feel like making love’ (never one of my favourites in its original guise) has more than a hint of helium about it. Tina Turner’s understated ‘A change is gonna come’ is an extremely likeable version of Sam Cooke’s classic.

Sadly, neither of the two reggae tracks recorded with John Lydon made the final cut, as they ‘didn’t fit into the eventual album concept’. Shame.

The insert also lists the artists who were approached, but for one reason or another didn’t take part. This list includes David Bowie, Bryan Ferry, Barry White, Kate Bush, Aaron Neville and Dr. John. Now that’s an album I would have loved to hear!

Incidentally, B.E.F. have just released ‘Music of quality and distinction volume 3.

Label – Ten records

Year – 1991

Cassette experiment day 84 - Prefab Sprout 'From Langley Park to Memphis'

I think I’ve mentioned before that while I’m definitely addicted to accumulating music, I wouldn’t class myself as a ‘completist’. There are very few artists where I obsessively seek out everything that they have released.

I do own most of the recordings made by Prefab Sprout however, although I’m happy to tell you that I never ever felt the need to purchase any of the Jimmy Nail stuff that Paddy McAloon had a hand in.

The Prefab Sprout album with which I’m least familiar, understandably, is the only one that I only have on cassette, ‘From Langley Park to Memphis’. All of the others I have on CD or vinyl (or both).

Prefab Sprout have long been thought (possibly incorrectly) to have been named after a misheard lyric in the song ‘Jackson’. I chuckled today when I read a theory on Wikipedia that the group may be so called as a result of there being a large number of pre-fabricated houses in the North East of England (which will be my specialist subject if I’m ever on Mastermind). If the writer of this Wikipedia article visits the North East of England they may be surprised to find that we have other types of houses as well.

The cassette opens with probably Prefab Sprout’s best known song (in fact the only one you’d think they’d recorded if you listen to BBC Radio 2), ‘The King of Rock ‘n’ Roll’ which may or may not include the lyric ‘fine friggin’ candy’. Track 2, the brilliant ‘Cars and Girls’ tries to see life from Bruce Springsteen’s point of view, and largely succeeds, although Paddy’s insistence on calling him Brucie tends to conjure up mental pictures of a doddery tap-dancing octogenarian light entertainer rather than an American rock idol in jeans and T-shirt.

My favourite tune here, nestled halfway through side 2 is the atypical ‘The golden calf’, where the band get nearer to rock music than at any other point in their career – having said that it’s still Prefab Sprout’s version of rock, rather than, say, Deep Purple’s. I also have a soft spot for ‘Nancy (let your hair down for me)’ – I’m a sucker for Paddy’s girls name songs.

Some interesting guest stars turn up too, including Pete Townshend and The Andrae Crouch Singers. And somebody called Stevie Wonder plays harmonica on ‘Nightingales’. In the 1980s you’d only truly arrived if Little Stevie agreed to blow on your album.

All in all, this is a very enjoyable album – oh, and just to mention I’ve been to Langley Park loads of times – they have a very good St Cuthbert’s Hospice charity shop. I’ve never been to Memphis though, although I Imagine the two places are fairly similar.

Label – Kitchenware records

Year – 1988

Cassette experiment day 83 - B.E.F. 'Music for Stowaways'

Between 1978 and 1982 British pop music was awash with groups of pale young men who so dearly wanted to be Kraftwerk. Armed with their basic synthesisers and drum machines they beavered away for hours trying to replicate the sound of the masters.

Some came fairly close to succeeding (failing mainly as a result of the one thing they couldn’t do anything about – they weren’t German), but as time wore on they all developed their own styles and all reached a spot somewhere on a scale between international mega-stars and absolute obscurity.

The ones who did succeed went on to make some of the most memorable music of the 1980s, and, in some cases, far beyond.

One of the groups who came close to emulating Kraftwerk’s superiority were The Human League. Phil Oakey, Martin Ware, Ian Craig Marsh and, later, Philip Adrian Wright, made some of the most ground-breaking electronic music of the late 1970s – at which point they unceremoniously split up. Phil and Philip got custody of the name, recruited some new members and the rest is history.

Martin and Ian recruited Glenn Gregory to become Heaven 17, who, as we know, also achieved quite considerable success.

But, before either of these two groups released their first 'post-split' albums, Ware and Marsh, under the guise of B.E.F. (British Electric Foundation) released our experiment subject of the day, the cassette only ‘Music for Stowaways’. The Stowaway in question being an early name for the personal cassette player, or ‘Walkman’. Absolutely nothing to do with Shirley Temple.

There are eight tracks of largely instrumental, atmospheric electronic music, much closer in style to the early work of The Human League than to the impending Heaven 17 classic ‘Penthouse and Pavement’.

There’s an ‘uptown’ side and a ‘downtown’ side (much more special than simple 1 and 2) and the former opens with what is unfortunately the least engaging track on the album, ‘The optimum chant’. Once that one’s out of the way, however, things start to improve considerably. Best bits are almost certainly ‘Groove Thang’ an earlier, more instrumental version of ‘(We don’t need this) fascist groove thang’ that so brilliantly acts as the opener on ‘Penthouse and Pavement’. On the ‘downtown’ side the tracks to look out for are ‘The old at rest’ and the haunting ‘Decline of the West’

Apparently only 10,000 copies were made (there’s currently one for sale on Amazon for £200 if you fancy!). My copy is not for sale though.

Label – Virgin

Year – 1981

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Cassette experiment day 82 - Todd Rundgren 'The ever popular tortured artist effect'

There are many titles in an artist’s back catalogue that they must dearly wish could be expunged from history.

I’m sure David Bowie would love ‘The laughing gnome’ to be wiped from the face of the earth. I’m not sure Randy Newman goes to bed every night considering ‘Simon Smith and the amazing dancing bear’ to be his own personal musical high point. I’m pretty certain Robbie Williams would love to forget ‘Rudebox’ (I’d quite like all of his other stuff to disappear too if that’s ok with you, but it would seriously deplete the stock of many charity shops if this were to come to pass). And of course, for some inexplicable reason, David Sylvian would be happy if we’d all forget he was ever in Japan (the group, not the country).

Our cassette subject today is one that the artist himself doesn’t consider one of his best. Appropriately titled ‘The ever popular tortured artist effect’, Todd Rundgren recorded this album to fulfil a contractual obligation (how often have we all done that!). Of course, Sod’s Law being what it is, it turned out to be one of his most popular and a pop album in the good old-fashioned mould (ie just over half an hour long and no more than ten tracks)..

It’s a bone-crunchingly good album but at the same time it feels undeniably ‘cobbled together’.

For some reason the two sides of my cassette have been transposed, so what feels like it should be side 1 is actually side 2 and vice versa (obviously!).For that reason I’ve always thought that the most commercial tracks here are the album’s openers when in actual fact they open side 2. You didn’t really need to know that though.

There’s a great version of Small Faces’ classic ‘Tin Soldier’ and one of Todd’s best known songs, the brainless (and I mean that as a compliment) ‘Bang on the drum all day’, a less than subtle hymn to forgetting about spending the day doing what you have to do and instead spending the day doing what you want to do.

There are some brilliant, if slightly ‘slight’ classic power-pop tunes here too and you can feel the influence here that manifested itself on some of XTC’s classic albums. All being considered though, my favourite track is the overblown ‘Emperor of the highway’ – pitched about halfway between Sparks (who Todd produced in an early guise) and Gilbert and Sullivan. That this is my favourite probably tells you more about me than I would care to reveal in learned company. Very strange, very wonderful, very silly, fairly short. The track, not me, although come to think of it!

And doesn’t Todd look just like ‘our Liam’ on the insert/cover?

Label – Lamborghini Records (although I’m not sure why because it should really be on Bearsville)

Year – 1982

Cassette experiment day 81 - De La Soul 'De La Soul is dead'

I don’t like to be wrong, so I try to make sure that I hardly ever am. And when I am I try to make sure that hardly anyone notices (this life coaching thing’s not really all that complicated is it!).

I found out today however that I was wrong on day 56 when I said that the best hip-hop album ever released was De La Soul's first album 'Three feet high and rising'.

Repeated plays recently have shown me that, in fact, the greatest hip-hop album is actually our cassette experiment subject today, 'De La Soul is dead'. Everything that 'Three feet high' has, 'Is dead' has too. But it also has much more. So complex is this album that repeated plays reward the listener with a new experience every time.

From the dying daisies on the cassette insert to the lyrics on many of the tracks it's pretty clear that Maseo, Trugoy and Posdunos (or whatever they’re choosing to call themselves nowadays) were only too keen to leave behind the hippy 'daisy age' reputation perhaps unfairly earned by their first album.

Flowing effortlessly from funny to serious and back again, Kermit, Bob Marley, Stevie Wonder and Serge Gainsbourg are just a handful of the many icons who pop along for the ride.

Fantastic tracks abound and it's almost unfair to single any out - the most immediate are probably ‘Talkin’ bout hey love’ and ‘A roller skating jam named “Saturdays”’, but the major joys here are not in the immediates, but in the growers and the developers.

Special mention though must go to the phenomenal cycle that starts about 1/3 through side 2 and just gets better and greater as the album reaches its brilliant climax.

If I've achieved nothing else with this cassette experiment then my rediscovery of this classic is reward enough! Even the skits are fun, and how often can you say that?

Label – Big Life

Year – 1991

Cassette experiment day 80 - The Human League 'Romantic?'

Here’s an interesting parlour game for you nerdy music types – pick a classic album, choose which three tracks you’d like to drop from it, then choose three tracks from elsewhere in the artist's career that you’d replace them with.

You can play it on your own, or with friends – the latter is much more likely to descend into furious ‘disagreements’ though, so beware.

Go on, give it a shot! Which three tracks would you drop from ‘Abbey Road’? How about three from ‘Hunky Dory’? ‘Born to run’? ‘Sign ‘o’ the times’? ‘Grand Prix’? And which three would you replace them with?

Today I popped The Human League’s 1990 album ‘Romantic?’ into the player and absorbed the first two tracks and thought, uncharitably, ‘there’s not one single track on this album that could hold its head up on ‘Dare’’*. The first track, the clumsily funky ‘Kiss the future’ even chooses, in a low-point in a career capable of veering between the poignant and the clunky to rhyme both ‘uproot ya’ and ‘suit ya’ with the track’s title.

But then, slowly and surely, things improve. Side 1 track 3, ‘Heart like a wheel’ (one of only two produced by Martin Rushent) turns out to be pretty darned good. Side 1 track 4 ‘Men are dreamers’ may very well be one of the group’s best lesser known tunes.

Side 2 track 1, ‘Soundtrack to a generation’, with the infectious ‘Holy Cow, you do it to me now’ chorus is also good, but track 2, ‘Rebound’ is better still and sounds as though it would be much more at home on The League’s before and after cusp albums, ‘Travelogue’ and ‘Dare’.

So all in all a much better album than the first two tracks suggest, and there are three or four here that wouldn’t necessarily be out of place on ‘Dare’.

So, let’s kick off the discussion –

Three tracks to drop from ‘Dare’;

‘Darkness’, ‘Get Carter’, ‘Seconds’

Three tracks to replace them with;

‘Men are dreamers’, ‘Heart like a wheel’, ‘Rebound’

Label – Virgin

Year – 1990

* Is ‘Dare’ the best ever album recorded in Reading?

Cassette experiment day 79 - Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman, Howe 'Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman, Howe'

Like so many people, when Punk and New Wave came knocking on my door, I responded by selling off my LPs by artists like Genesis, Yes and Rush.

Off to the second-hand record shop I skipped, accompanied by ‘Foxtrot’, ‘Going for the one’ and ‘A farewell to kings’, swiftly returning home with my new friends, ‘London calling’, ‘Germ-free adolescents’ and ‘Coming up for air’.

And for a while everything was fine but then, inevitably, I started to miss my old friends.

I’ve been promising/threatening for a few weeks now that I would feature our cassette today, the self-titled ‘debut’ by four former members of the 1970s line-up of Yes, ‘Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman, Howe’ (hereafter referred to as ABWH for brevity).

This really is a Yes album in all but name, but as neither A, B, W or H had the legal rights to use that name at the time, they decided, after considering a number of alternatives, to stick with boys surnames in not quite alphabetical order.

I’ve always considered Yes (or in this case ABWH) albums to be the musical equivalent of mountaineering in the fog. You trudge for ages through impenetrable murk suddenly to encounter something of stunning and fragile beauty. Then after a short while the fog descends again.

On this album the moments of stunning and fragile beauty can be encountered on ‘Brother of mine’ (10 minutes and 18 seconds in three parts), ‘The meeting’, ‘Quartet’ (9 minutes 22 seconds in four parts) and ‘Order of the universe’ (9 minutes 02 seconds in four parts).

‘Birthright’ explores the British Government’s atom bomb testing in Maralinga, Australia and the effect that it had on the aboriginal occupants. I suspect that Jon Anderson had a very big hand in this (the song, not the testing). Beware, there does appear to be the involvement of a didgeridoo on this track, but it sounds synthesised – I suspect no real didgeridoos were harmed in the making of this album.

‘Teakbois’ (pronounced Teak-bwah if you were wondering, and you probably weren’t) is a carnival style song with the intriguing and perhaps prophetic subtitle ‘The life and times of Bobby Dread’. If you have any maracas, then this is the point at which you might wish to get them out and shake them a bit. The album finishes with a pleasant if unremarkable track co-written with Jon’s old friend and musical collaborator, Vangelis.

I saw Jon and Rick together in concert recently and very entertaining it was too. Other than music it largely involved Jon talking about ancient mystics, spirits and Native Americans while Rick pulled faces and rolled his eyes in the direction of the audience. He wasn’t wearing his cape, which was disappointing.

Label – Arista (with specially designed Roger Dean Arista logo)

Year – 1989