33.31 - Wild At Heart(s)

Ginger Rogers in Professional Sweetheart, released 1933.
The effort I still put in to these things...

I've never much cared for calling a band or artist under rated. It quite often comes attached to a rather snobby tone, along the lines of "oh, this band are wonderful, people just don't get it, but I do" with an implied bit of  "look how underground and brilliant I am". Some bands just aren't widely known, for whatever reason, the fact they aren't famous doesn't reflect on how well they are rated. None of which has any real bearing on today's post, I'm mainly waffling. I do however think that today's featured artist is and are (it'll get complicated in a minute) arguably under appreciated.

Ginger is pretty much one of my favourite songwriters ever. He's also one of the most prolific I can think of, whether with The Wildhearts, one of his many side projects, or as a solo artist, the number of songs in his back catalogue is frankly ridiculous. Even more so when there's nothing amongst hundreds of songs he's written that I can think of as a bad one.

Breathe easy, I'm not going to do a full album by album run down this time. I'd have to have started writing that last June to have any hope of getting it finished in time. Consider this instead an edited highlights package instead.

We'll start with The Wildhearts. Seven studio albums of all new material, one more of cover version. Two b-sides compilations containing almost all new songs too, with a couple of cover versions on there. You can see why I'm staying the Hell away from trying to cover every album here, and we've not even gotten to the solo and side projects yet.

The odd thing is that I didn't even care for The Wildhearts much for quite some time. I picked up a couple of singles and enjoyed them fine, bought P.H.U.Q. when it came out and enjoyed it, but still wasn't really a big fan. A couple of friends were much bigger fans than I was, and got me to go to see them a couple of times, gigs I mainly went to because I liked the support band. Eventually, something clicked in my head, along the lines of "you like the songs, you enjoy going to see them, why on Earth do you still consider them a band you don't like?". For once my brain presented me with a not unreasonable question, and I changed my ways. Since then I've eagerly awaited new releases, went back and caught old ones I'd passed over and if there was a Glasgow gig to go to, I've been at it. I do find the later albums a bit more interesting than the earlier ones though...

Let's have a couple of Wildhearts songs then, shall we?
The Wildhearts - 29x The Pain (Suckerpunch B-Side)
The Wildhearts - Sky Chaser High (Sick of Drugs B-Side)
The Wildhearts - Slaughtered Authors (from The Wildhearts)
The Wildhearts - You Took the Sunshine from New York (from ¡Chutzpah!)

Over the years The Wildhearts have gone on hiatus a fair few times, and are on another indefinite one again at the moment. This gives Ginger plenty of time to play around with other things, and his solo stuff, or stuff with other band members, is usually very interesting, and varies a lot in style.
Including Silver Ginger 5, because leaving them out would just be daft, over the years Ginger has clocked up four solo albums, one of those a double one. Add in a couple of live albums, a singles compilation, and the country and western alter-ego album, plus contributions to Clam Abuse and Super$hit 666, and we're into a very large number of songs penned by Ginger.
Most recently, with The Wildhearts being on hiatus Ginger has taken on the Ginger Wildheart name, playing gigs with friends that mix Wildhearts songs with ones from other projects.
Also, he used Pledge Music to fund a new Ginger Wildheart album, with pledgers getting a 30 song triple album, which has been trimmed down to a single for general release. The triple album is named 555%, the number that his pledge campaign was halted at, raising a quarter of a million dollars. Of the 30 songs on 555% not one sounds like filler.
100% is out soon, and I'm going to steer clear of posting any songs from that or 555%.

Silver Ginger 5 - Walk Like a Mother Fucker (from Black Leather Mojo)
Ginger - Not Bitter, Just a Little Disappointed (from A Break In The Weather)
Ginger - The Drunken Lord of Everything (from Valor Del Corazon)
Ginger - Jake (from Yoni)
Ginger - You and Me (That's What I Want) (from Market Harbour)
Howling Willie Cunt - Caffeine Bomb (from World of Filth)

Keep up on all things Wildhearts at the website, and Ginger at his website.

33.30 - She Wears Denim Wherever She Goes

I told/warned you I'd get back round to Teenage Fanclub before this was all done.

Formed at the tail end of the 80s and hailing from Bellshill, Teenage Fanclub are one of my favourite bands. The core of Norman Blake, Raymond McGinley and Gerard Love have been backed on drums over the years by Francis MacDonald, Brendan O’Hare, Paul Quinn and currently Francis MacDonald again on drums. I'm mostly going to be talking about one particular album here, but with a little bit about the rest.

The finest moment on Teenage Fanclub's debut album, A Catholic Education, is magnificent Everything Flows, but there's a version of that song that appeared a few years later that I prefer, so we'll get back to that. A Catholic Education is a more abrasive affair than you'd expect if you're only familiar with later Teenage Fanclub songs. The harmonies and melodies that I instantly associate with The Fannies are in there, but generally surrounded by a harsher, grungier sound than we'd get on later releases.
Teenage Fanclub - Critical Mass

Follow up album The King was recorded after their first album, but released before it. Shambolic, messy and rough sounding, the band put this down to the influence of producer Don Fleming, who would encourage improvisation. The King is pretty much miles away from every other Teenage Fanclub album, but a lot of fun, especially the pair of cover versions it contains.
Teenage Fanclub - Mudhoney

Bandwagonesque tends to be the most critically aclaimed of the Teenage Fanclub albums, and is where the trademark melodies and harmonies really come to the front. Dialing back, but not losing entirely - Satan is far from a chirpy pop song, the grunge sound for something more akin to The Byrds and, particularly, Big Star, Bandwagonesque is pretty excellent, but it's not my favourite.
Teenage Fanclub - The Concept

Thirteen shares it's name with a Big Star song, and the Alex Chilton influence shows throughout. A fine album, but still not my favourite.
Teenage Fanclub - 120 Minutes

Remember that time Teenage Fanclub collaborated with De La Soul for a song on a film soundtrack? This question is usually answered in one of two ways, either with "of course, it's brilliant" or with a wary look and "are you quite sure you didn't just dream that up?". I did not dream it up, and it is brilliant. Fallin' comes from the soundtrack to Judgment Night.
Teenage Fanclub & De La Soul - Fallin'

Grand Prix was released in 1995, which was a good time for me. As I've mentioned before, it was around that time that I was really developing my own tastes in music (which admittedly wasn't always great), albeit still holding onto the best of the influences passed on to me by my older siblings.
Being the youngest of six children has definite advantages if they have good taste - my oldest two brothers were at the right age to be into punk back in the late 70's, the next eldest brother was a student for Madchester and so on. Of course along the way you subconsciously learn to ignore one of the brother's liking Genesis, or your oldest sister just having no taste, that kind of thing. Generally it was a good base to work from though. Those same influences meant that when Grand Prix was released I was no stranger to Teenage Fanclub, but was too young up till then to have paid a lot of attention. The first time hearing Mellow Doubt was enough to revive pleasant memories of past albums, then along came Sparky's Dream which sealed the deal, cementing a life long love of the Boys From Bellshill. Grand Prix then was the first Teenage Fanclub album I bought for myself, but far from the last. There is a multitude of fantastic pop songs on Grand Prix. It was also a breath of fresh air at the time, miles away from the rest of Creation's output, where every other band were Oasis, wanted to be Oasis or were, well, The Jesus & Mary Chain...
If you hadn't twigged yet, Grand Prix is my favourite Teenage Fanclub album, to the point where I'm struggling to pick just one song from the album to post. Instead, singles. It was common practice through the late 90s and 2000s to release two CD singles, with different b-sides. Often these would end up padded out with lousy remixes, but not with Teenage Fanclub, where you'd always get unreleased material, new songs or covers. For the singles from Grand Prix there was even a different version of the A-side on the second single, so it's these alternate versions I'm going with.
Teenage Fanclub - Mellow Doubt (Alternative Version)
Teenage Fanclub - Sparky's Dream (Alternative Version)
Teenage Fanclub - Neil Jung (Alternative Version)

Not long after Grand Prix and the singles from the album came a little curiosity, a four track EP called Teenage Fanclub Have Lost It. Containing a new acoustic version of a song from A Catholic Education, Bandwagonesque, Thirteen and Grand Prix, recorded in a living room. It's a crying shame that this EP is long out of print, if I had my way copies of it would be issued in schools. Anyway, that version of Everything Flows that I prefer to the album version I mentioned earlier? It comes from Teenage Fanclub Have Lost It.
Teenage Fanclub - Everything Flows

Since I've mentioned Alex Chilton a couple of times as an influence on the band this seems as good a place as any to drop this in. In 1996 The Fannies played as Chilton's backing band for a couple of gigs in Glasgow. Cue taped-off-the-radio bootleg!
Alex Chilton with Teenage Fanclub - Dark End of the Street

The opening four songs of Songs from Northern Britain are excellent. The rest isn't half bad either. By now you know what to expect, you get it, and you are happy.
Teenage Fanclub - Your Love is the Place Where I Come From

I really don't have a lot to say about 2000's Howdy!, 2005's Man Made or the most recent album, 2010's Shadows other than that they are still consistently really good. Rather than me awkwardly trying to find new ways to say "yup, still good" we'll leave it there then, shall we?

If, after all that, you still can't work out a good place to start with Teenage Fanclub, you can't really go wrong with the collection Four Thousand Seven Hundred And Sixty-Six Seconds - A Short Cut To Teenage Fanclub, but if you skip over to Amazon you can get Grand Prix & Songs from Northern Britain in a nice wee cheap bundle here.

I'll sign off with a trio of b-sides. The first is a Teenage Fanclub original from the B-side of Mellow Doubt, the second a cover from the Ain't That Enough of, who else? Big Star, then finally, a cover of the Pixies from the I Need Direction single.
Teenage Fanclub - Some People Try To Fuck With You
Teenage Fanclub - Jesus Christ
Teenage Fanclub - Here Comes Your Man

Keep up with Teenage Fanclub over on their website.

33.29 - Search With Care

You are getting a very generic header image because earlier today, clearly not having thought things through very well, I typed the name of today's band into Google image search. I need new eyes now. With that in mind, and since it is getting late in the day with no blog post published, I'm going to rattle through this quickly.

Prolapse came from Leicester, but had a member named "Scottish" Mick, along with "Geordie" Mick on bass. Unlike Tiny Tim, or anyone who as ever called themselves "mad", this wasn't an ironic nickname. The second "Scottish" Mick Derrick opens his mouth it is obvious the name isn't a joke.

I'd rather forgotten about Prolapse for a while, mainly due to having lost all the albums of theirs that I had years ago. Round about the end of last year a song on a compilation popped up on shuffle and jogged my memory.

Prolapse - Move To Limit Slabs (Demo Version)

Handily at the time I had some eMusic credits that had to be used up led to me buying debut album Pointless Walks To Dismal Places again to see if I still liked it. I did, a shopping spree followed, and a bit of a period of obsession has continued since.

The contrast between Mick's gruff tones and Prolapse's other vocalist Linda Steelyard's icy delivery is different and infectious. Sometimes it sounds like a mismatched couple arguing up the back of the bus, but much less uncomfortable. On Tina This is Matthew Stone that's pretty much exactly how the song turns out, to a point where it reaches quite an uncomfortable ending.

Prolapse - Tina This is Matthew Stone

I haven't replaced my copy of second album backsaturday. Note to self, buy a copy of backsaturday.

Did you know I dislike bagpipes? There's only a handful of songs I can think of that have bagpipes on that don't mostly make me want to stab the piper. Shoutalong single Deanshanger from third album The Italian Flag if one of the ones that doesn't make me want to hurt a piper.

Prolapse - Deanshanger

Oddly enough Deanshanger's lyrics rip into the 1980s, mentioning a Royal Wedding and a papal visit. Everything comes around again soon enough, eh?

A mixture of shoegaze, punk and Krautrock, there's a fair chance you'll find Prolapse either brilliant or as unpleasant as, well, your anus falling out. I'm in the former camp, obviously.

33.28 - Going Solo

Near the start of this self indulgent ramblefest that has been 33 I wrote about the Aye Tunes Vs Pennko gigs. Returning to that self indulgent theme, today I'm going to write a wee bit about the gigs I've put on by myself, which have imaginatively been titled Aye Tunes Presents. I'd have shortened that to ATP, but I'm pretty sure there'd be objections to that.

#1 - 21st January 2011, Stereo
Goodness, that feels so long again. I suppose it is quite a while ago, nearly a year and a half in fact. I'm good at sums, me. For my first solo attempt I decided to pick some of my favourite animal named bands to play. Packets of Animal biscuits were given away on the door to anyone who wanted them, along with some home made compilation CDs I put together. Take up on the biscuits was surprisingly low, and I ended up eating many bags of them over the following weeks. We even raised a few quid for charity with an impromptu door collection.
Boygirlanimalcolour - Batman Forever
Trapped Mice - Waving and Pointing
Kochka - Boooones
Trapped Mice have some gigs coming up, and a really good debut album in the can, awaiting release. Kochka made one of my favourite albums of last year, and continue to scare me a bit with their new video.

#2 - The Aye Tunes Birthday Bash, 17th June 2011, The Flying Duck
A great idea in my head, a terrible idea in practice, particularly as the gig ended up being put together at quite short notice. Don't put on a gig for your birthday kids, it's stressful and expensive, at least it is if you are me. The bands were loads of fun though, and some people bought me beer, so it wasn't all bad.
The Big Nowhere - I'm In Love With a Girl
Verse Metrics - Modern Sleep
Black International - Destruct_o_
The hangover I had from this was hilarious, but I learned not to do any more birthday gigs. I didn't learn not to do short notice gigs though, as we'll see soon.

#3 - The Springwell EP Launch, 1st July 2011, Stereo
I'd sounded out The Last Battle a bit before this about doing a gig, but couldn't quite get anything worked out. When it came time to launch their latest EP I jumped at the chance to have them on, and managed to lure Loch Awe with them, giving them their first gig in Glasgow and me my first chance to see them. The always entertaining Second Hand Marching Band rounded out the line up, making sure that at least there were plenty of people there by virtue of their vast number of band members alone.
Loch Awe - I Will Drift Into 10,000 Streams (Demo)
Second Hand Marching Band - Love Is a Fragile Thing (Sleazy Version)
The Last Battle - Viv Nicholson (Acoustic)
Loch Awe have a few gigs coming up. They play Stereo in Glasgow this Saturday as part of the Chem19 showcase night, then next Saturday they play with The Bad Books, The Spook School and The New Fabian Society at Edinburgh's Wee Red Bar for some blogger's gig. Can't recall who, I'm a bit Indifferent.
The Second Hand Marching Band claim they'll be releasing three new albums towards the end of the year, a sad one, a pop one, and an Icelandic one.
The Last Battle released a new single just this week. Hope Is Gold is available from Bandcamp, and there's a launch gig on June 22nd at Pilrig St Pauls Church in Leith.

#4 - 28th September 2011, The Captains Rest
Arrange and promote a gig in roughly two weeks? Only a fool would agree to such a thing. This fool. So it was that the following line-up was rather hastily assembled, with no real concession for genre and styles. Given how quickly I put it together and with the bare minimum of promotion I was able to give it in that time, I'm happier with the way this turned out now than I was when I looked in my wallet at the end of the night. First Glasgow gig for The Spook School too. I've got a habit of putting on Edinburgh bands I want to see in Glasgow rather than, probably more sensibly, just going to Edinburgh to see them.
Kevin P. Gilday - Dear Green Place
Shambles Miller - Rapture
The Spook School - History
The Sea Kings - The Nitrate In My Blood
Shambles Miller has a new single, Confessions, out soon. I'll try and get back to that in time, but in case I forget to mention it later, there's a launch gig for the single at Vespbar in Glasgow on July 6th.
The Spook School play this Sunday at The Captains as part of the first Scottish Fiction gig, and in Edinburgh next at the Tidal Wave of Indifference gig mentioned above.
The Sea Kings play King Tuts in July as part of Summer Nights.

#5 - 3rd May 2011, Stairway
I had no real intention of putting on another gig any time soon until Exit_International got in touch with me. The chance to put on a band I really like, and to do something a bit different by putting on a band from outside the central Scotland bubble was too tempting to resist. What followed were many headaches, a catalogue of errors, from venue problems to a collosal screw up with posters, which all added up to making this a bit of a stressful affair, and the end product wasn't as good as it should have been. I'm still a bit disappointed about the way this one came out and wish it could have been better, but it's a bit late to dwell on that now. The bands were ace though.
Supermarionation - Choosing My Religion
Wrongnote - Heart of a Rat
Exit_International - Glory Horn
The Supermarionation song above is hot off the press, having just been released for free download at lunchtime today. Refreshingly Supermarionation released it without seven announcements of announcements of announcements in the run up, just slapped it on Bandcamp and told us it was there. Download the single & b-side for free here.
Exit_International will be spending my birthday in Japan, on a mini tour with Ginger Wildheart. No, no, of course I'm not jealous.

I had rather hoped to close this post with details of the next Aye Tunes gig, because I never learn my lesson and manage to stop putting them on, but the details aren't quite sorted yet, so I'll need to tell you later. It's a wee bit of a fight getting it organised at the moment, but it's a fight I'll win soon.

A Quick Interruption.

Gather round everyone, I've just been told something brilliant.

Remember that time in 1999 that Sebadoh were on Top of the Pops? Unless you happened to see it at the time you almost certainly don't. You might even think I've made it up and it never happened. Up until just now there has been no proof, other than eye witness accounts. But now, now someone has uploaded the show to YouTube.

I have literally waited years for this moment. I never thought it would actually happen, but it has.
It was loud, if was chaotic, it was glorious, and now it's online for everyone to see.
Skip to 7 minutes 36 seconds if you want to avoid Terrorvision and The All Seeing I.






Thanks go to Sweeping the Nation for the tip off that this is online, they've been as eager to see it all these years as I have.

33.27 - Then I Disappear

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33.26 - We Dance For Thrills

No, not Skrillex. Never Skrillex.

We're into the last week of this drivel. Praise the Lord. That does mean that I'm not allowed to put of stuff that'll require a bit of effort from me now though, since I'm running out of later to save things for. Hence, this week might have a lot more words than you expect from me, or might end up just being rubbish. Not that the two things are mutually exclusive, of course.

Kenickie were three girls and a boy. While they weren't always the strongest performers they had bags of charm and charisma, along with some killer tunes. They come from the mid 90s, obviously.

Lead vocalist, guitarist and lyricist Lauren Laverne has long since stopped the singing, but can now be found on the telly regularly, and pushing new music as a 6 Music DJ. She's lovely, and I like to pretend 10 O'Clock Live doesn't exist.

With just two albums to their name this won't take too long to get through, so on with the music.

The Skillex EP was the first thing I heard from Kenickie, with Come Out Tonight grabbing me by the collar and slapping me around the face. We'll get back to that particular song in a minute though, first of all here's another track from the EP, showing off the band's sensitive side.
Kenickie - Acetone

Debut album At the Club wasn't perfect. There's a few misfires on there, but when it hits, it hits.
Obvious song choices are obvious here, but Punka remains a hoot, and Come Out 2Nite is a two minutes ball of fun and energy, which also contains some mighty fine handclap action.
Kenickie - Punka
Kenickie - Come Out 2Nite

Second album Get In pretty much dumped the guitars and shouting, adopting a mixture of Sixties girl band sounding pop and more electronic elements. Get In isn't without it's charms, but it's nearly as fun as At The Club was.
Kenickie - Stay in the Sun

And that was pretty much that. Kenickie chucked it in late 1998.
Lauren would pop up in 2000 singing on a Mint Royale song. This doesn't really fit our narrative, but it's a sweet wee song, so I'll throw it in anyway. Allegedly there's a bit of backstory to the lyrics too
Mint Royale - Don't Falter

Rounding things off, here's one from one of the John Peel sessions the band did.
Kenickie - Can I Take You To the Cinema?

33.25 - Agnes, Agatha, Germaine and Jacq

I can't remember if I've used this one already.

Another day, another hastily assembled post, with a heartbreaking tale of love and loss. Kind of.

Back to the hip-hop well today. Sing along if you know the words. If you don't know the words, learn them.

Biz Markie - Just A Friend