B-side’s not half bad either

A chap I work with shares with me an enduring affection for a classic Aussie track released in 1971, by the classic Aussie band, Healing Force.

Who, we figure, could listen to “Golden Miles” and not be moved in the pit of their stomach? Indeed, who could hear the track and not feel a yearning to their very bowels?

It’s timeless, cross-generational appeal is evinced by the fact that Mic (yes, Mic, for there’s no ‘K’ in Michael) is a decade or so my junior, so would have been only 4 or 5 when it came out.

Last week as Mic and I were discussing said shared enduring affection, which we’re prone to do at least every few years or so, our attention turned to the fact that the single release of “Golden Miles” had a B-side, listed simply as “The Gully.”

What wonders, we wondered, could be lost to the music-buying public in that lost opus?

Well... after a bit of ferreting around the interwebs, it turns out it’s not lost at all.

For one thing, a copy of the original 7” single release is presently listed on eBay for a mere AU$67.89.

For another, it turns out that Healing Force is one of the few Aussie bands of that era whose entire recorded oeuvre is available on the iTunes music store.

Yep, that’s right... all 3 tracks!!

Healing Force were basically a one-hit-wonder who never actually recorded an LP album.

There’s “Golden Miles”/“The Gully,” plus an instrumental jam recorded live at Sunbury ’73, curiously titled “Erection.”

All good stuff, and at $1.69 per track you can ‘own’ the entire recorded works of Healing Force for around . . . umm . . . 5 bucks.

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Freddie puts Simon Ferocious back in his box

A program screened recently on the rock group Queen relates an anecdote about an encounter the band had with Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols.

Scene: Wessex Studios, London, 1977, where Queen were recording their News of the World album, while the Sex Pistols were recording Never Mind the Bollocks.

Vocalist and rock god Freddie Mercury, drummer Roger Taylor and roadie Peter ‘Ratty’ Hince  recall the encounter.

PH:	One day we were in the control room and Fred was sat at the desk. And suddenly we heard this voice and it was Sid Vicious who had come in. And he was clearly the worse for wear.
RT:	Sid came in. Sid was a moron. You know, he was an idiot.
PH:	And he called in to the room, “Have you succeeded in bringing ballet to the masses yet?”
FM:	I called him Simon Ferocious or something, and he didn’t like it at all. I said, “What are you going to do about it?”
PH:	Fred went and took him by the lapels and pushed him out the door.
FM:	He hated the fact that I could even speak like that... I think we survived that test.

Cue Freddie and the band’s anthem...

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Serious Lawyer Shit IV: My Sweet Law Suit

One of the most well-known music copyright infringement cases was that of George Harrison lifting the tune for his 1971 hit ‘My Sweet Lord’ from a 1962 hit song called ‘He’s So Fine’ by the Chiffons.

Whatever one might subjectively judge the relative merits of each song to be, Harrison’s plagiarism — ruled by the court as “unconscious plagiarism” — was about as clear cut as these things can be, as can be appreciated from this youtube video.

Beyond his replacement of the ‘Doo Lang’ mantra with some perhaps more edifying ones, I personally prefer what Harrison did with the tune. He always maintained that ‘My Sweet Lord’ was inspired not by the Chiffons’ song, but by the Edwin Hawkins Singers 1969 gospel hit ‘Oh Happy Day.’

I’ve thrown together a mix that may give an idea of how Harrison may have conceived his version of the song.

The most remarkable aspect of the whole affair was the startling fact that none of the stellar crew who contributed to Harrison’s recording — not Eric Clapton, nor Billy Preston, Ringo Starr, Klaus Voorman, not even King-of-Pop Phil Spector who produced the record — not one of them did Harrison the service of tapping him on the shoulder and saying, “Hellooooo, George, isn’t this a bit of a rip-off of the Chiffons?”

Another interesting bit of trivia is that ‘He’s So Fine’ ended up being Harrison’s song after all, when he later bought the rights to it.

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Serious Lawyer Shit III: Hey Jude, isn’t it a pity?

The Beatles released Paul McCartney’s composition ‘Hey Jude’ as a single at the end of August 1968, upon which it became, as the story goes, the biggest selling single in the history of the known universe, etc.

After the Beatles went their separate ways, George Harrison in May 1970 released his debut solo album, which included a song called ‘Isn’t It a Pity’ (faithfully performed in the video above by Eric Clapton, Billy Preston, et al, at the Concert for George, November 2002).

Upon detailed comparison, there are some marked similarities between the two songs:

• Both have very similar structure, rhythm and meter.
• Both fade out on an extended na-na-na-naah chorus.
• Both songs, as originally recorded, were of almost exactly the same length, ~7’10”.

I don’t say that Harrison’s ‘Isn’t It a Pity’ significantly plagiarised McCartney’s ‘Hey Jude’.

But I do say that the similarities between these recordings could have been the basis for some serious lawyer shit to go down between the two former Beatles.

Then again, it’s said that Harrison’s song first appeared during rehearsals for the Beatles’ White Album, but in the end was not included in that opus.

And as it happens, ‘Hey Jude’ was recorded during the course of the White Album recording sessions.

I don’t say that McCartney’s ‘Hey Jude’ significantly plagiarised Harrison’s ‘Isn’t It a Pity’.

But I do say the whole thing represented a lost opportunity for a large-ish firm of lawyers to make their careers out of it. The proceedings conceivably might have continued to this day without resolution.

It’s perhaps a testament to the good sense and taste of both Messrs Harrison and McCartney that they didn’t embark upon such a ruinous course.

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Serious Lawyer Shit II: Tin Soldier Samplethon.

For the life of me I fail to see how the Stones (or their lawyers) got their case up against the Verve. Ever since John Waite sang Isn't it Time for the Babys in the seventies I've wondered why the Faces never lifted a gilded lawyer finger.

The Faces...



The Babys...

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musical interlude

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Bitter sweet sample-athon

The following video features a mix I threw together of the Verve’s ‘Bitter Sweet Symphony’ laced with the guitar riff ‘sampled’ from The Rolling Stones’ classic 1965 recording of ‘The Last Time’.

I reckon The Verve should consider releasing this commercially, since one way or another they’re paying for it by way of the peculiar judicially-imposed royalties arrangement explained elsewhere.

The video shows footage of the guitar riff being played by Brian Jones — described by one-time bandmate Keith Richards as “a cold-blooded, vicious motherfucker, only short and blond with it” — who drowned in his swimming pool on the day I turned 12 years old.

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Serious lawyer shit

Having at last finished my holiday reading of Keith Richards’ memoir, I have to report being somewhat disappointed that Keef had nuffink to say about the expropriation, by his and the Rolling Stones’ business machine, of royalties from Richard Ashcroft and The Verve’s “Bitter Sweet Symphony”.

Readers will recall how The Verve in 1997 had negotiated a license to use a ‘sample’ from Andrew Oldham’s orchestral version of the Stones’ 1965 song “The Last Time” in the production of their “Bitter Sweet Symphony” opus.

The — as it turned out — runaway success of “Bitter Sweet Symphony” prompted the late Allen Klein to sue Ashcroft and The Verve, on behalf of his and the Stones’ interests. It was successfully argued that The Verve had used “too much” of the Oldham ‘sample’, and the court ruled that copyright of The Verve’s song would revert to Keef and his long-time songwriting partner, Mick Jagger. So, now anyone who buys The Verve’s Urban Hymns CD album will find Jagger and Richards as the sole songwriting credit for the track.

Yes, Ashcroft and The Verve used the licensed ‘sample’ quite exhaustively in producing “Bitter Sweet Symphony” (indeed, the sample fairly rings through the entire production).

And yes, even the song’s melody in large part borrowed rather heavily from the original Jagger-Richards composition.

But Ashcroft and The Verve had in fact produced a synthesis of those parts with a ‘value-added’ dimension that was incalculably sublime.

And yet, the court ruled that the songwriting royalties should flow exclusively to Keef and Mick.

Worse yet, Klein had rubbed salt in the wound by doing commercial deals to use The Verve’s sublime work to sell Nike tennis shoes and Vauxhall cars. (For their part, The Verve gave the royalties from their performance rights to charity.)

All this warrants not a single mention in Keef’s memoirs. The great man has simply acquiesced in his business machine’s plundering of the work of a then-vulnerable, young, indie band.

To my knowledge, all Keef has had to say on the subject was in a 1999 interview in which he opined:

“I’m out of whack here, this is serious lawyer shit. If The Verve can write a better song, they can keep the money.”

Yeah Keef, how cool to just be part of a big biz machine.

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Keef’s showbiz tips

Business associate owes you money and refuses to pay? Here’s how it’s done, as explained by Keef...

One big setback we had was not being paid by Robert Stigwood for a tour we did with one of his acts... This was his modus operandi — late paying turned into not paying at all... One night at a club called the Scotch of St James he made the terrible mistake of coming down the stairs as Andrew [Oldham] and I were going up. We blocked off the staircase so I could extract payment. You can’t use a boot on a winding staircase

(please note this well)

so he got the knee, one for every grand he owed us — sixteen of them. Even then he never apologized. Maybe I didn’t kick him hard enough.

• Keith Richards, Life, Chapter 5

Fortunately for Stigwood, this was in the days before Allen Klein looked after the Stones.

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Debate rages over little-known factoid

In his recent memoir, Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones makes the following observation, in relation to blues legend Jimmy Reed’s 1956 opus ‘My First Plea’:

One of Jimmy’s lines was

“Don’t pull no subway, I rather see you pull a train.”

Which actually means: don’t go on the dope, don’t go underground, I’d rather see you either drunk or on cocaine.

Took me years and years to decipher this.

• Keith Richards, Life, Chapter 4.

Ta Keef, works for me... but then the same line has also been ‘deciphered’ by various sources as:

“don't leave me, I'd rather see you gangbanged”

I have to admit I’m torn.

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Penal innovations of the 1970s

(That’s penal, not penile.)

1974 — Supertramp Crime of the Century sleeve art

1978 — Superman: The Movie still image

 
By the 1990s, we have...

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Bob Brown’s greatest hit

One evening in 1983, Shane Howard and his Goanna Band did a one-night-only gig with other Australian pop-music luminaries to form Gordon Franklin and the Wilderness Ensemble.

The Ensemble released a single of their resulting protest anthem ‘Let The Franklin Flow’.

The B-side of the Ensemble’s single release was a spoken-word offering by The Australian newspaper’s 1982 Australian of the Year — who was then the director (and a founding member) of The Wilderness Society, and who is now Senator Bob Brown in the Australian Parliament.

Bob’s foray into pop greatness consisted in a rambling dissertation on Man-and-Science versus Arcadian Nature. (Bob seemed quite sanguine with then-prime minister Bob Hawke sending space-age F111 military aircraft over the Gordon-Franklin wilderness to spy on the Tasmanian state government’s nature-wrecking activities.)

My short video presented here is an excerpt from Bob’s Save-the-Franklin spiel, illustrated with images ranging from tranquil nature shots to vintage Goanna album artwork.

Bob’s spiel was bracketed with a mournfully untuneful kid belting out the chorus of ‘Let The Franklin Flow’, so in the video I’ve mercifully faded-in the Ensemble’s more melodious finale.

view at youtube

By the way, tech-savvy nostalgia buffs may find this link of interest.

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Metamorphosis achieved

A one-time heavyweight of the Australian rock scene looks to have achieved his lifelong ambition to throw off the yoke of his glitzy past.

Shane Howard — who in the early ’80s rocketed to success with his Goanna Band — appeared on ABC1’s 7.30 Report on Wednesday night as a “local resident” of regional south-west Victoria, campaigning to save a local historic church from being sold off to developers.

The segment makes no reference to Howard’s Goanna heyday, referring to him merely as the “musician partner” of the lady who leads the grassroots campaign to save Saint Brigid’s, near Killarney; while in the transcript, he appears as “Shane Howard, Local Resident.”

Many viewers may have been too young to recall Howard’s rock-anthem ‘Solid Rock,’ which starkly depicted the dispossession and genocide of Aboriginal Australia by White Australia. Although Howard and his band shouted the ‘G’ word into the mainstream Australian consciousness, perhaps too many will remember ‘Solid Rock’ merely as a roolly great rock song, ma-a-ate!

The pressures of commercial success sat uneasily on Howard. After the release of the second Goanna album, things fell apart until the band’s guiding force suffered a breakdown, finally departing the commercial rock scene to lose himself in the Big Heart of the Country. But he eventually came out the other side to reclaim his life as a family man and carve himself a niche as a respected Australian songsmith.

view at youtube

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non hit wonders

credits
harmonica: jacob
guitar: pete
accompaniment: yamaha automaton
images: jacob (mostly), nick, ann

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case study

Syd Barrett (an artist)  —  image source

Illustrating the principle that most days it’s not worth not getting out of bed of a morning, artist Duggie Fields recounts the disintegration of his former flatmate Syd Barrett, who was a co-founding member of ‘legendary’ rock band Pink Floyd:

I think he spent quite a while lying in bed. I used to be in the next room and I’d be painting... And I knew he was lying in bed sort of thinking — my [speculative] interpretation was that he was thinking — that, while he lay there, he had the possibility of doing anything in the world that he chose. But the minute he made a choice, he was limiting his possibilities. So he lay there as long as he could — so he had this unlimited future! But, of course, that’s a very limited present, when you do that, and a very depressing one ultimately.

• interviewed for the film The Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett Story (Otmoor Productions Limited, 2003)

Still, surely that kind of thing can’t hurt in moderation. So maybe next time you have a lie-in and arrive late for work, tell your employer it was imperative for you to maximise your possibilities. If you have a heartless philistine of a boss who just doesn’t get it, maybe it’s time to move on...?

Duggie Fields (an artist)  —  screencap by jarcob

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Thursday blast from the past

view at youtube

Margret Roadknight
“Girls In Our Town”
(a.k.a. The Other Newcastle Song)
1973

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Boltbrechtsen ‘fisks’ the Cat

By Piers Boltbrechtsen

Applied Hermeneutics’ token right-wing commentator, Piers Boltbrechtsen, takes Cat Stevens to task on the seam of crypto-fascism underlying a hitherto much-loved song.

Cat Stevens: Well I think it’s fine, building jumbo planes.

Or so he says... But I detect a definite trace of irony in his tone, betraying an attitude to building jumbo planes which is ambivalent at best.

Stevens will undoubtedly seek cover behind the sanctity of artistic creativity or his flaky search for ‘deeper truth’, but I’ve become convinced his words are evidence of something darker, indeed uglier.

Yes, get what you want to if you want, ’cause you can get anything.

More irony, obviously. So, just exactly what is wrong with “getting what you want”, huh? The unprecedented abundance of affordable consumer goods is one of the triumphs of the world market economy.

It’s so typical of the nouveau-mega-riche such as Stevens to want to deny the rest of us those very basics he’s able to buy for himself with the loose change in his pockets. While pretending to champion the poor, it seems he couldn’t care less — if he doesn’t actually hate them.

Well you roll on roads over fresh green grass.

A hatred of development and economic progress also seems a recurring theme in much of Stevens’ work. This kind of thing is so typical of leftist romantic hankering for ‘nature’ in some kind of pristine, Arcadian state, which has never existed and will never exist.

And anyway, for heavens sake, development is not a zero sum game.

But they just go on and on, and it seems that you can’t get off.

Roads go on for precisely as long as they need to, no more, no less. If his chauffeur can’t read a map, then Stevens probably ought to review his HR training requirements. But all this empty carping against healthy progress is just beyond silly, moving into paranoid territory.

But will you keep on building higher ’til there’s no more room up there?

Of course, I knew it — another Club of Rome ‘Limits to Growth’ henny-penny doomsayer.

Stevens hates growth, hates development, and hates the poor plebs who enrich him and feather his nest buying his intellectually and morally bankrupt recordings. I’m willing to bet he also hates the very idea of the poorer people of emerging economies achieving the development and growth they need and deserve.

But tell me, where do the children play?

Helloooo — earth calling Stevens!

There are, and will continue to be, ample designated children’s play areas wherever and for as long as they are viable. These will be determined by the market, which is the best mechanism yet known for the guidance and management of human affairs. The market, indeed, is a far superior alternative to the fatally flawed, utterly discredited, dead hand of human moral agency, for which Stevens seems so nostalgic.

The typical modern designated children’s play area is better, safer, brighter and more cognitively stimulating than any children’s play area previously known in human history. These will improve continuously for the long-term foreseeable future, if not in perpetuity.

The better-balanced and better-informed children who’ll reap the benefit of all this progress and prosperity will not be gulled by whining haters such as Stevens, who’ll ultimately stand condemned for opposing the unerring march of the market towards prosperity for all.

I hope he’s ashamed of himself, but sadly I doubt it. Oh, and by the way, the tune stinks too.

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Thursday Tom Lehrer

Another favourite from the Tom Lehrer songbook

watch at youtube

Tom Lehrer — “Werner Von Braun”

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The Vatican Rag

For the Pilgrims...

Tom Lehrer - “The Vatican Rag”

view at youtube

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Names and shades

Whilst sorting through a pile of old VHS tapes, I came across a rockumentary called The Story of Rock and Roll, produced by the Nine Network and screened in November 1995.

The opening credits announced the appearance of a Pete Towshend...

Among the luminaries interviewed for the production was a certain Al Kopper...

Mr Kopper bore a striking resemblance to a later interviewee, Al Kooper...

Kooper was one of several rock-legends who evidently require dark glasses when being interviewed indoors, including Eric Burdon...

... and Eddie Van Halen...

... and Barnsey...

Bono, in contrast to his more recent custom, was interviewed sans shades — perhaps because he was outdoors in broad daylight...

A more recent indoors pic shows how Bono has matured as a human being ...

On Andrew Denton’s Enough Rope in 2006, Bono explained his dark-glasses fetish thus:

BONO: I mean, I’ve got a — there’s many reasons for the glasses — posing, I’m sure, right up there, privacy, and I do like having one step of a remove, actually. I don’t think I have — I don’t think when I’m singing I hold anything back and I don’t think when I’m writing I hold anything back. But I think I’m allowed to hold something back in this kind of a set-up, and, as honest a man that you are and as honest as I’m trying to be, there is a natural insincerity in the kind of — in the set-up, and I’m trying to be much better at it, but I just need one step removed.

ANDREW DENTON: That’s a good answer...

Good as any.

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