Originally released in 2013 for the 40th anniversary of the cult 70’s
horror film, only 500 copies of The Wicker Man 40th Anniversary Edition
were pressed on black vinyl which have become highly sought after. The
40th Anniversary Edition has a different track listing to the preceding
OST double album, selecting only the songs to make a single LP. Silva
Screen commissioned artist Richey Beckett to come up with artwork for a
poster and sleeve and the original 2013 pressing contained a certificate
from the artist. This repress on white vinyl contrasts beautifully with
the artwork, which is printed on reverse board. It does not contain the
certificate but does have the stunning original printed inner sleeve.
-Silva Screen Records
I had my eye on this lovely thing in March when it was on pre-order with Norman Records (my favourite online indie record retailer) but decided I would hold fire a while as my wantlist is never ending and prioritising is a troublesome affair some times.
With the recent death of the very excellent Christopher Lee, who stared in the original cinematic masterpiece, I thought I would check back and see if Norman had seen a surge in sales on this special edition of the soundtrack and lo, they had just one copy left. (EDIT: 06/07/2015 - They now have more in stock!)
I hit the order button with some violence and received my copy a few days later. The artwork is beautiful, no doubt, and certainly captures something of the spirit of the film. The opening track, Corn Riggs, which also plays over the opening credits of the original film is hauntingly lovely but you really know this record is something a bit special when you hear The Landlord's Daughter without the raucous pub noise. There are some lush instrumentals and a trance inducing bassline provided by the drum, which is Paul Giovanni's signature throughout the LP.
You get to travel through the film song by song, transported to this scene and that. You could literally be stood in the summer breeze next to the maypole, soaking up the weird Summer Isle atmosphere when Maypole plays. The recording is so multidimensional and the soprano is frankly heavenly. So Da iawn to the sound engineers and masterers who worked on this, they did a beautiful job.
I liked the ringing Scottish accents in Flame Leap and it is so nice to hear Christopher Lee himself on The Tinker of Rye.
Willow's Song is transformed when listened to out of the context of the film and the lyrics and music actually tell a story full of love as well as lust, though Britt Eckland's Scottish accent is still dodgy... sorry love! It does make me wonder how I would feel about this album if I had never seen the film - they are not traditional folk songs, nor was Paul Giovanni a folk musician (he was an actor, playwright and director as well as a singer and composer). Even the 'folk band' who recorded the music was formed especially for the purpose and yet there is no doubt in my mind that the music born of this union was a major influence in the following few phases of folk music history.
Towards the end of the LP, you get the sense of excitement, and a little dread, of the carnival starting. The final bit of dialogue at the end is a really nice touch, I don't know if the standard edition of the soundtrack has it, but it contributes to making this an emotional album!
There are still some copies available out there from other online retailers, would I recommend you get one? Oh yes. Do I desperately want a copy of the 1st press of this on black vinyl? Oh yes indeedy.
I'm broker than the last time I posted. My last post was about being broke. Epic timing for me to finally receive an invitation to join acclaimed vinyl subscription club Vinyl Me, Please.
I mosied on over to their blog and listened to some of the tracks hoping to dislike enough of them to be dissuaded from the idea of a subscription.
Weeeeeell, that didn't happen, it turned out to be a fatal move, I could feel myself getting gripped by each new track. The blog plays a bit like a good BBC 6Music show.
Besides, money is a very vulgar and distasteful thing and I feel that it is wrong to allow it to influence too many decisions in life.
I'm sure you will have worked out by now that I just became a fully paid up member of the Vinyl Me, Please club. I have a feeling it will be the best 28 quid debt I ever got in to.
Also I did it for you, dear reader - to give us something to talk about. And for my music loving, ladies night attendees who will enjoy trying out the included cocktail recipe, designed to compliment each record.
Due to tight financial circumstances etc etc, I have been unable to feed my addiction for a few weeks. Then like a gift from the gods my friends dad passed all his doublers on to me.
Live music makes the
world go round, and while you can't beat being there, there are
number of reasons why sometimes you can't make it, in the case of
this show by The Ike and Tina Turner Revue, I wasn't born so I think
I can be forgiven.
The Spectacular Performances series will look
at some of the highlights from all those shows that leave me a little
bit spellbound when I watch the footage.
I'm blessed to have
music lovin' friends and sometimes we have been known to have a
little boozy evening playing 'Youtube DJ'. Basically the wireless
keyboard gets passed around in a circle and we all select a track,
and then congratulate each other on our choices by shouting a round
of approving 'Chune....yeah man, total chune'.
That's how I first
discovered this performance of Proud Mary by The Ike and Tina Turner
Revue in Holland 1971, and it has since become my favourite
performance of the song, by anyone, ever.
These lovely friends of
mine, they know I like to dance. I mean all the ladies like to dance
but I LOVE to dance and have been known to exhaust two or three dance
partners over the course of a night. Proud Mary by The Ike and Tina
Turner Revue gets everyone up without fail, even the most rigid of
the fellas stands up and does a terrible dad-dance impression of an
Ikette. But who cares? As long as everyone is having fun.
This performance is
wild, energetic and fun. Just like us. Just like us after a few
jars anyway.
I just want to state here that I am a huge Creedence Clearwater fan. The
Dude in Big Lebowski has nothing on me, I can't overstate this and I
love the original version. You can see Creedence do it live a few
years earlier, in 1969, here. Lets face it these guys are rock gods,
their rythm is impeccable, John Fogerty's voice is effortless and I
love that cheeky grin he sports all the way through.
I've tried over the
years to pick a favourite, the original or this cover. I can't - so
don't ask! Let's just say I do believe that the Ike and Tina Turner
Revue nailed Proud Mary, never more so than at their 1971 show in Holland:
Tina starts with the
now well known and loved 'nice and easy, nice and rough' speech, she
is playing with the audience and what's more is she's enjoying it.
She opens like she is going to tell you a story, looking out at the
audience and enticing them, bidding them 'Listen....'.
Ike's deep as the ocean
vocals are in the back there reminding you that this is a song and
not Tina breaking into a storytelling session. This is actually not
how the song was intended, Ike insists that on the original recording
he is just singing as a prompt to Tina but that the producer of the
song didn't edit his voice out and it became part of the show.
Cue soulful serenade
that carries you through the first, or 'nice and easy' part of the
song. Tina's charisma and huge personality make sure you feel every
word.
Then Ike counts the
ladies in...2,3,4 and bam - in kicks the gravel and crazy energy.
Tina and the Ikettes start to spin. Tina's purple tassled dress
showing those world famous legs to their fullest potential, anyone
who knows about dancing will know that tassles and dangly bits add to
a sense of movement, as if Tina needed assistance!
Tina and The Ikettes doing their thang
The horns are crooning
at you, the bass is taking over your heartbeat, the guitars are
screaming out 'get up and dance' or clap, or stomp your feet but for
Christs sake move about people. The Kings of Rhythm and their
instruments are whipping up a fit of frenzy and commanding you to
take part.
About six minutes in
you think they've finished. The audience are satisfied but then they
slam straight back into it. The changes in pace are so theatrical
and contribute to making this show a true spectacle, keeping your
eyes glued on Tina and the girls.
And the Ikettes,
swinging in pink, they deserve serious props, they are beautiful and
strong. Even though he steps into the background as a performer,
most sources back up the fact that Ike was the auteur of anything you
ever see from the Ike and Tina Turner Revue. Ike later said that he
believed that the Ikettes were the inspiration for the earliest Go Go
dancers. As musical director of the Revue, Ike controlled the
wardrobe, every note and every step of dancing and says that the
moves which look so wild and rough are strictly choreographed. They
finish like fucking superman, one arm shooting up in the air and I am
almost as breathless as them by this point.
The idea of rigid
choreographing on this performance has troubled me, I find it hard to
reconcile my perception of the show being so raw feeling and yet
being rehearsed in minutiae. Ike has claimed that Tina's persona in
the band was modelled on a female Tarzan type figure from a movie
he'd seen as a boy, and that the Ikettes were 'trained' to be wild on
stage. There is a similar contrast in the persona of Tina herself,
she is deemed to be one of the most sexual performers of the day, yet
both Ike and Tina have later explained that Tina isn't like that at
all, she's actually not a seductress in the least.
The performance, for
me, is an exemplar of how this song should be done, everything about
it is engaging. Maybe this can be attributed to the fact that the
band had always been better received in Europe than the USA, with
both Ike and Tina giving a lot of lip service to their European fans
and stating that they feel very at home on the continent.
The Revue had been
performing Proud Mary for a couple of years by this set in Holland
1971 and it's true that by watching other videos of the band
performing the song you will come across an almost identical set of
moves and rhythm changes. Tina seems almost lost in the
performance on times, in a Stevie Nicks-esque kind of way. How on
earth can something feel so spontaneous and free when in reality it
is not? They must have been really enjoying themselves, right?
Well not exactly, this
show took place in 1971, five years before Tina left Ike after years
of alleged violence, some of which resulted in Tina doing shows in a
pretty beat up state. The same year, 1971, the newly fledged Rolling Stone magazine had run a feature on the Revue which hinted that
Tina's life was perhaps not a bed of roses. Ike admits to being
'domineering' and 'a disciplinarian' though he has always disputed
the claims that he was abusive.
The Kings of Rythm
I can tell you one
thing about myself and that is I am not qualified to be judge and
jury over anyone else - but there are other factors concerning Tina's
physical state that make the performance even more remarkable. At
some point after The Ike and Tina Turner Revue supported the Rolling
Stones on tour in 1969 and before this European tour, Tina had
contracted TB, pneumonia and had undergone an operation to remove
lymph nodes from her neck. The 'hardest working young lady in show
business' had apparently become the most run down young lady in show
business.
The European tour was
almost cancelled as Tina could not sing in her characteristically
belting out fashion without the wounds from the operation reopening.
But luckily for us the tour and this amazing show did take place.
“So we did the
European tour after all. Tina had a cut several inches long in her
neck and when she sang it opened up. She went on stage for everyone
of those twenty five days with that cut in her neck. Tina is a
strong woman.” Ike Turner, Taking Back My Name.
Note Tina's dress in
this video has a really high neckline, I strongly suspect that Tina
was still suffering at the time and yet she is every inch the
superstar, if you read the reviews for this Holland show they are all
Tina, Tina, Tina. Janis Joplin said of Tina in 1969:
So despite the
difficulties the Revue (Ike and many of the Kings of Rhythm were also
in the depth of a monumental cocaine bender) and Tina in particular
were experiencing, this period was a time of ever increasing success
for the band. Their cover of Proud Mary represents a definite
turning point for The Ike and Tina Turner Revue. While they had
always had a reputation as a dynamic live act, their record sales had
never really matched the popularity of their shows. Proud Mary
became their most successful single, bringing them their highest ever
chart position and attracting a number of prestigious awards.
Even though they didn't
record it in a studio until the end of 1970, they were performing
Proud Mary at shows a fair bit earlier and it can be found on their
earlier live album What You Hear is What you Get from the Carnagie
Hall. Tina has claimed that covering the Creedence Clearwater hit
was her idea and that it coincided with her musical awakening.
While Ike is sometimes
credited as the father of rock n roll music, Tina was discovering
more rock rock music, which had emerged as a natural progression
from rock n roll. She cites Come Together by the Beatles and Honky
Tonk Woman by The Stones as influential songs in this transformation
and went on to cover both. Tina claims that getting Ike to agree
to covering Proud Mary was no mean feat, saying that he 'hated' the
Creedence Clearwater version, it took the Checkmates cover version
with its gospel overtones and horn instruments to persuade him.
The whole show at
Holland is worth watching, less than an hour of talent and effort
which packs the punch of a whole tour with inferior bands. Proud
Mary is the climax, pushing the bewitching combination of soul and
rock right into your being. The Kings of Rhythm are some seriously
funky musicians, The Ikettes in this line up are singers and dancers
of a calibre whereby they could probably carry a solo show, Ike is
flawless as a musical director and the springboard from which Tina
leaps to deliver this exceptional performance.
It's one thing to bring
great music to people's ears, but to bring it to their eyes is
something else all together.
A couple of treats from my recent flea market adventure.
I went to my first record fair, and after spending around thrice my original budget there, found a flea market around the corner with so many irresistible goodies. I decided to venture further down the bootleg rabbit hole and while stocking up on some nice rarities to sell to my lovely customers on Discogs, I naturally selected a couple for my own collection!
Pearl Jam - Eddie Sings The Blues, side-A sees Eddie perform 3 tracks with the Doors, the grit and gravel in his voice giving the songs a whole new aura. Side-B has a particularly cool rendition of The Who's My Generation performed right here in the UK.
Numero Dos, The White Stripes - BBC sessions. It would appear that the tracks are taken from two John Peel Sessions in 2001 and this makes the record very special to me, as I know that John Peel was very fond of The White Stripes, and that The White Stripes were very fond of John Peel. And well I'm very fond of them all. I notice there's not a great deal of information about which tracks come from which session out there on the world wide web so I've tried to unpick it for you below.
Full track listing Eddie Sings The Blues:
A1
Roadhouse Blues (Eddie Vedder and the Doors, Century Plaza Hotel, LA, 1993)
A2
Break On Through(Eddie Vedder and the Doors, Century Plaza Hotel, LA, 1993)
A3
Light My Fire(Eddie Vedder and the Doors, Century Plaza Hotel, LA, 1993)
A4
Catholic Boy (Basketball Diaries OST)
B1
Hunger Strike (Riverside Club: UK Tour 1992)
B2
My Generation(Riverside Club: UK Tour 1992)
B3
I've Got A Feeling(Riverside Club: UK Tour 1992)
B4
Keep On Rocking' In The Free World (MTV Music Awards, with Neil Young, 1993)
Full track listing BBC Sessions:
A1
Lord Send Me An Angel (Peel Acres, November 2001)
A2
Dead Leaves And The Dirty Ground (Peel Acres, November 2001)
A3
Little Room And The Union For Ever (Peel Acres, November 2001)
A4
The Same Boy You've Always Known (Peel Acres, November 2001)
A5
I'm Finding It Harder To Be A Gentleman (Maida Vale, July 2001)
B1
Screwdriver(Maida Vale, July 2001)
B2
St James Infirmary Blues(Peel Acres, November 2001)
I discovered Shazam in Croatia. Let me set the scene, we had just arrived in Split from Bosnia, where the music had been a line up of the worst pop offenders of the UK at the time. This was around spring 2014, so Sam Smith's Money On My Mind was everywhere. I had a colleague who liked to sing that song incessantly about an octave and a half higher than Sam's version, so my little backpacking trip was to be a holiday from that if nothing else.
Wrong. That song was everywhere in Bosnia!
Arriving at our apartment in Split there was a little ghetto blaster on the bedside table (note: I use the term ghettoblaster as a catch all term for any portable music player bigger than a walkman, this thing would not have carried much streetcred.) It was pre-tuned into a world music station and this is where I discovered the captivating sound of Nuru Kane.
It was more like this...
...than this
I whipped out my trusty notebook to try and unpick the artists name from the Croatian language DJ's lightening quick wrap up at the end of the song.
My travelling companion trumped me on both fronts, she said "It's Nuru Kane, and you need 'Shazam'"
"Nah" I said "I'll be fine once I've had a shower" thinking she was referring to the slight lack lustre that can set in after a couple of long bus and train journeys.
Since then I've been obsessed, on my endless quest for new music, Shazam has become part of my armoury.
The app lives on your phone and when you hear a song that tickles your fancy, you open it up and touch the logo in the middle of the screen, Shazam will listen to the song and save it to your 'tags'.
From here you can download the track directly from iTunes with just a few clicks. But if, like me, you are not a fan of bastard IT corporations like Apple, you can also just use your 'tags' as a list to refer to when you are downloading music from your preferred source.
It's also useful for songs you know and love but which have somehow failed to find their way into your music collection. Not to mention that just saying the word 'Shazam' often prompts me into singing the chorus of We Go Together from Grease.
At first it seemed pretty comprehensive but I have managed to stump it a few times, whereby it returns a 'no match found' message. This is really gutting as by the time Shazam informs you that it's been beat, it's usually too late to get the notebook out.
I listen to a lot of music in the car and temptation has overcome me - I'll confess I have Shazamed whilst driving. It's not big, it's not clever and I will stop doing it. But the fact that I'm the most likely of anyone I know to die due to Shazamming while driving goes to show what an important little part of my life this app has become.
And from a Luddite like me that really is quite a compliment.
Charity shops can be hit or miss for records, amongst the endless boxes of Val Doonican and Vera Lynn I come accross the odd album that could find a home in my record collection.
It's not all fun and games, I once unearthed a cover for a rare Hawkwind album with nothing inside. I checked every other record cover there in case it was in the wrong sleeve. I turned the shop damn near inside out looking for it, I then returned a few weeks later and went through the whole process again. I never did find that record.
I did get a copy of Blondie's Parallel Lines, which is a great album by the way, for just 99p in the local Barnados though. There is a cool documentary called Blondie's New York... and the Making of Parallel Lines, explaining how this LP captured a little bit of Zeitgeist of New York, carving new territory in the punk and disco worlds which had little respect for each other.
My copy came with it's own little bit of history. Inside the sleeve I found several sheets of lined A4 - some darling from a bygone decade had written the lyrics for each track out carefully and placed them inside. With the album released in 1978, the creater of my home made lyric sheet was not doing anything that I had not done myself 20 years later in the 90s.
I got a sudden flood of memories, from stopping Eternal's Just a Step from Heaven at the end of every line to write down the lyrics, to listening to the Top 40 on Atlantic 252 with my left and right index fingers carefully poised over the 'record' and 'play' buttons on the tape deck to try and get the songs whilst editing out the DJs voice.
I guess listening to music in your bedroom, feeling like the lyrics could have been written exclusively to suit your particular adolescent gripe at that time, is a quintessential teenage experience.
After breaking up with a childhood sweetheart, a friend of mine bought me Cher's Believe from Woolworths, because quite naturally my world had ended. I played it over and over and over, then a week later with my world miraculously reformed, I got a new boyfriend and played Bon Jovi's Bed of Roses incessantly, much to the annoyance of everyone else in the house.
Check out the below inner sleeve from my copy of Deep Purple's 24 Carat Purple, where another youngster has graffitti'd the names of his favourite bands. I particularly like that Led Zeppelin has fallen out of favour at some point and been crossed out with the word 'pants' scrawled underneath - ah the fickleness of youth!
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