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Pop Rock Nation

Author: David Middleton

  • FORTY-FIVE REVOLUTIONS PER MINUTE #19: Stand By Your Manboobs

    ELVIS COSTELLO & THE ATTRACTIONS  “You Little Fool” b/w “Big Sister” & “The Stamping Ground” (F-Beat Records UK #XX26, 1982)

    “A pretty prime cut,” it says, etched in some unknown stranger’s messy handwriting on the inner groove of this imported 7-inch.  I’d have to wholeheartedly agree, given the 3 great tracks to which we’re being treated on this week’s edition of 45 RPM.  International raconteur and talk-show host Declan MacManus needs no introduction, so let’s just dive right in, shall we?

    See the video for Elvis Costello\’s \”You Little Fool\” on YouTube

    Early MTVophiles will recall this video, starring The Impostor himself as the dismissive, scowling headmaster.  I nabbed this imported copy of “…Fool” a few weeks before the release of Imperial Bedroom, up to this point the most ambitious of EC & The A’s full-lengths.  Initially, I was stunned and a bit taken aback by the track’s rich, lush production, atypical of Costello’s previous Nick Lowe-helmed output.  Though the 45 artwork was misleading, it proved to be Geoff Emerick, the former Abbey Road engineer made famous by his legendary work with The Beatles, who was responsible for EC’s new and vibrant sound.  A big step in a great new direction, or at least it seemed at the time.  I’d have to wait ’til street date for the hotly-anticipated Bedroom to bring the fruits of this laborious collaboration full-circle.  Meanwhile…

    Side B features two tracks, first of which is “Big Sister,” an outtake from the sessions that became 1981’s Trust LP.  Those familiar with that album know its finale, the spooky and lyrically similar “Big Sister’s Clothes.”  Well, this is apparently an earlier version, produced by Nick Lowe and showcasing that hard-rocking Stax/Volt bar-band side of The Attractions so well-explored on albums like Trust and Get Happy!!  EC himself later referred to the track’s lyrics as an “unsubtle commentary on (Margaret Thatcher)’s enthusiasm for Cold War posturing.”  In-dubitably!

    Play “Big Sister” by Elvis Costello & The Attractions

    Our Liverpudlian friend is no stranger to aliases.  (Hell, he even recorded under the name Napoleon Dynamite nearly 20 years before the famous Jared Hess flick.)  Blithely credited to The Emotional Toothpaste, “The Stamping Ground” gives us 3-plus minutes of tremolo guitars and Everly Brothers-style harmonies in 3/4 time.  In other words, it’s an EC solo demo.  A sad elegy to the tired old singles-bar scene, this warbling, bleary-eyed and beer-soaked track would not have sounded out of place being growled by Shane MacGowan on a mid-period Pogues album.  Some seriously emotional toothpaste, indeed.

    Play “The Stamping Ground” by The Emotional Toothpaste

    To this day, you can always count on Elvis Costello to be up to something.  His most recent full-length, Momofuku (Lost Highway Records), was one of the few albums that blew me away in 2008.  You can keep up with his crafty doings at http://www.elviscostello.com.

    NEXT WEEK: You’ve been told what I’m after.  On see-thru red plastic, no less.

  • FORTY-FIVE REVOLUTIONS PER MINUTE #18: Born Sippy

     

    STEALERS WHEEL “Star” b/w “What More Could You Want” (A&M Records #AM-1483-S, 1973)

    Everybody knows Scottish folk/pop/rock duo Stealers Wheel’s Dylanesque 1973 Top-10 smash, “Stuck In The Middle With You,” a classic oldies-station staple even before that director included it in that movie. (Sense a theme here?  Backtrack to 45 RPM #15.  I assure ya, boys, it’s purely coincidental.)  Fewer people, however, know about “Star,” the Wheel’s follow-up single, much less their brilliant 3-LP output.  I’ll get to that in a moment, but first, a little ancient history.

    Like that famous postage stamp with the upside-down airplane (though worth considerably less money), my copy of  “Star” is misprinted.  The B-side label is pressed onto both sides of the disc, giving the illusion that both sides feature the same track, “What More Could You Want.”  Double-A-side 45s were common in the early ’70’s, usually pressed in limited quantity for in-store or radio play.  If one side became worn out or scratched, you could simply flip the disc and play the clean side without having to pony up the bread for a fresh copy.  Sucker that I was, I bought this fake-double-A-side platter at my neighborhood drug store thinking it was the Stealers’ new single.  For months, I played “What More Could You Want” over and over, thinking, “This song is great!  How come it’s not on the radio?  How come it’s not a smash hit?”  Then one day I accidentally flipped it over, and the opening strums of “Star” emerged from my little stereo.  Oops.

     

    A catchy shuffle of the Lennonesque variety, “Star” is 3 minutes of pure shimmering acoustic-guitar pop loveliness and honey-throated vocal harmonies, punctuated with spikes of harmonica, kazoo, woodblock, and bawdy barrelhouse piano.  It spent 3 weeks on the US singles charts, peaking at #29 in March of ’74.  The duo of Gerry Rafferty and Joe Egan went on to produce one more brilliant (but underrated and underperforming) album for A&M before sadly parting ways in ’75.

     

    And as for that B-side I played to death after mistaking it for an A-side?  Well suffice to say it rocks.  “What More Could You Want” is a ballsy, two-chord stomper, with tricky time-signature changes and stop-start verses, that could fit right between The Sweet and Badfinger on your next Roots Of Brit-Pop mixtape.  Hell, remove the squiggly synths and beef up the guitars a tad and it wouldn’t be out of place on an early KISS album.  And listen up all you overpaid computer geeks at Activision — break that slide rule out of your pocket-protector and put on your horn-rimmed glasses with tape in the middle now!  With lyrics like, “You got a brand new Telecaster / What more could you want,” this track is a must-have for the next edition of Guitar Hero. So get on it, you slack-ass fucks.

    Both Rafferty and Egan pursued solo careers.  Stateside, Rafferty ended up back in the Top 20 in 1978 with “Right Down The Line” and the sax-fueled classic, “Baker Street” from his multi-platinum United Artists LP, City To City.  The 3-LP Stealers Wheel catalog [Stealers Wheel, Ferguslie Park and Right Or Wrong] has been reissued in the UK by Cherry Red Records, and is well worth seeking out.

    NEXT WEEK: It Came (Crawling To The U.S.A.) From Liverpool!

  • FORTY-FIVE REVOLUTIONS PER MINUTE #17: Elephant’s Gerald

    KILKENNY CATS  “Attractive Figure” b/w “Of Talk”  (Coyote Records COY111, 1984)

    Back in 45 RPM #6, I wrote about the magical impact of the 7-inch on ’80’s indie rock.  Well here’s another great artifact from that time period.  Even though I was lucky enough to witness their live set a few times, Athens, GA’s Kilkenny Cats have always held great mystery for me.  Even to this day not much is widely known about them, which makes this single all the more fun and entertaining.  So I won’t bore you with silly details about my underage beer-soaked nights at the 40-Watt Club, I’ll just let these Cats’ sexy vibe speak for itself.

    A VU-influenced ode to the joys of taking speed, side-A’s “Attractive Figure” introduces us early to the KC’s ratatat drumming and steel-rake guitars, then propels us head-first into its stop-start verse and soaring chorus.  Great music for shaking off a hard day’s work, or more likely a long week’s finals.  And when the band stops and singer Tom Cheek does that little thing where he breathes in?  Pure sex.

    The disc’s longer B-side, “Of Talk,” sounds like it could be an outtake from the Steve Wynn/Dream Syndicate 1982 classic Days Of Wine & Roses LP.  Walls of distorted guitars bury Cheek’s low Lou Reed-like mumble, creating a dreamy atmosphere perfect to smoke pot (or shoot heroin) to.  Or just kick back & let the music be your drug, which I think is the idea here.

    Unfortunately my little lo-fi YouTube uploads failed this week.  Probably too many grandmas at once trying to upload shots of cats chasing string.  Anyway, there’s virtually no extensive footage of Kilkenny Cats anywhere on the internet.  A travesty if you ask me, but you can catch a quick blink-and-you’ll-miss-it glimpse of the band in this trailer for the film ATHENS, GA INSIDE-OUT from 1986.  A great film if you can find a copy, AGIO serves not only as a stellar indie-rock time-capsule, but also as a snapshot of how and why so much unusual and influential music could emerge from such a quiet little Southern college town.

    NEXT WEEK:  A double A-side from what I imagine would be Marvin Nash’s least favorite band.