We’d heard all the crazy stories about Lee Mavers. Always off his head on something, refusing to record on any equipment made after the end of the Sixties, churning through band members and producers, never being satisfied with any recordings and all this culminating in record label Go! Discs telling (final) producer Steve Lillywhite to piece together an album from whatever recordings he had as they had already spent so much money on it they needed to release something. It was bound to be a mess, right ?

Then sometime in the mid-90’s I picked up a cheap CD of it just to have a listen and…hell’s teeth what a bloody wonderful album this is. Yes it’s hugely influenced by the sound of 60’s Liverpool but it is unmistakably not of the ‘60’s. And oh those songs. I’m pretty sure everybody reading this will be familiar with their single “There She Goes”, and great as it is that’s not even the best thing on here !

“Timeless Melody”, for that is most certainly the greatest thing on here, is a thing of absolute beauty and wonder. I cannot even imagine what it would feel like to sit back after having written something like this but I’d be willing to give up at least one major limb to find out. The melody, the rhythms that are weaving in and around the lyrics, all of it completely transfixes me whenever I hear it. The lyric “The melody chord unwinds me, The rhythm of life unties me, Brushing the hands of time away” sums up perfectly that moment you get completely lost in the music. Ian Prowse is wont to add a little of “Timeless Melody” into the end of “Does This Train Stop On Merseyside ?” when he plays live which floored me the first time I heard it and also reinforces the position the song holds among Liverpool musicians. It is quite simply one of the greatest songs to come out of Liverpool, and it has some competition !

Elsewhere “Son Of A Gun”, “Doledrum” and particularly side 2’s opener “Feelin’” have a sound and quality to them that I’ve mentioned before. They are pieces of music that could only have come from Liverpool. There is a joy and a cockiness and a sense of rhythm about them that shouts “we’re scouse la’ !” at you. The album ends on “Looking Glass”, an almost 8 minute pop-psychedelic mantra which finishes on the lyric “The glass is smashed, The change is cast”…almost prophetic.

It took 3 years to make this record. Producers like John Porter, (Roxy Music, Killing Joke, The Smiths) John Leckie (Magazine, XTC, The Stone Roses), Mike Hedges (Siouxsie & The Banshees, The Cure, Wah!) and finally Steve Lillywhite (U2, Simple Minds, The Pogues, Kirsty MacColl) tried to capture the sound Lee Mavers heard in his head, but failed. As soon as the album was released the band (Mavers ?) disowned it and The La’s never made another record. John Power, the only other permanent member of The La’s, went on to form Cast and is still recording and touring under that name today.

If you have any sort of interest in great songwriting and somewhat 60’s influenced guitar pop and you’ve never heard this record then I’d urge you to remedy that very soon starting with clicking the link below, turning your chosen device up loud and bathing in the glory of “Timeless Melody”. I would never be so bold as to suggest that Lee Mavers was wrong in what he thought of it but, to my ears, “The La’s” is a masterpiece.

Timeless Melody - https://youtu.be/1Cveh8ycOgA?si=3XK6CBZ6ow9gD0AE

John Kongos is a singer and songwriter from South Africa. He had success there and in 1966 moved to England to further his career.  In 1971 he had two hit singles in the UK. These days he’s most famous for his first hit “He’s Gonna Step On You Again” (#4 UK in May 1971) which was covered (adapted ?) by Happy Mondays for their 1990 single “Step On”. I prefer his 2nd hit “Tokoloshe Man” (#4 UK in November 1971), a Tokoloshe being a mythical African beast that’s said to terrorise and eat people at night.

Both of those singles are big beaty, rocked up dance numbers, proto-Glam rockers. I’d been keeping an eye out for both on 7” but although they are cheapies I never turned copies up. And then I came across this album and both songs are on it. “Tokoloshe Man” is that most important of songs, track 1 side 1, and “He’s Gonna Step On You Again” is the final track on the record.

I have listened to the rest of it, once. Dull early seventies soft “rock” with not a hint of “Tokoloshe Man” or “He’s Gonna Step On You Again” and their meaty, beaty rhythms to be found anywhere. Not anything I ever wish to hear again. But for now I have both of those booming singles to hand whenever I need them.

Tokoloshe Man - https://youtu.be/0dzxTcJX6QA?si=OKord-ihZphytvgS

I’ve added a few new items to the collection in the past couple of weeks so before we dive headlong into the T section let’s clear all those up before we get back to the alphabet…

I’d bought a boxful of CD’s for the shop. Not something I do very often as all the local charity shops sell CD’s for 50p or £1 each so unless I can get them dirt cheap there’s no money in them (hey call this lifelong Socialist a capitalist if you like but this is my living). Anyways, these were cheap and as I was putting them in the racks I was having a listen to things that looked interesting and I didn’t know. This was one of those and I was hooked immediately.

I like dance music (by that I mean music you can dance to rather than the shite that is, these days, called “Dance Music”), I like weird 60’s/70’s instrumental music, I’m a fan of great movie themes, Northern Soul, PWEI and, as you may have read on this Blog earlier, Smoove & Turrell. Chuck in some Hip Hop, put all that stuff in a big pot, stir it and simmer it for a long aul time and you’d likely end up up with something that sounded very much like The Go! Team. It began as a solo project by Ian Parton, a film maker from Brighton, but following the success of this album The Go! Team is now a living, breathing, playing gigs band.

Ian Parton recorded this album at his parents house while they were on holiday. He played all the instruments but, crucially, didn’t get clearance for any of the samples he used. He’d figured his little project wouldn’t attract much attention so he wouldn’t need permission. On its release in 2004 “Thunder, Lightning, Strike” attracted a lot of attention (it was nominated for a Mercury award !) and Mr Parton had a problem. He and his co-producer, his brother Gareth, had to go back to the tapes, work around or re-record the samples they were denied clearance for and added two new songs, to create this version of the album I own, released in 2005.

Two tracks that sum up “Thunder, Lightning, Strike” are ”Bottle Rocket" and "Everyone's A V.I.P. To Someone”. ”Bottle Rocket" is a bouncy horn driven dancer with a great rap going on throughout. Then with about a minute to go introduces a big sample from Shirley Ellis Northern Soul classic "Soul Time" (the “two-four-six-eight ten, two-four-six-eight twenty” bit if you know it. Listening closely it’s one of the samples he must have re-recorded). It’s dancefloor dynamite.

If anyone out there is making a modern day western then the Go! Team have already supplied you with a theme tune. “Everyone's a V.I.P. to Someone" is an instrumental based on banjo, harmonica, horns and  strings and contains samples from "Everybody's Talkin'" by Fred Neil and "Stoned Soul Picnic" by Laura Nyro. If you close your eyes you can picture the cowboys lazily moving across the prairie on their horses toward a giant sunset, it’s beautiful.

This is dance music to me. Drop me in a club playing this and The B-52’s all night and I’d be in frugging heaven.

Bottle Rocket - https://youtu.be/irTaVohfa-g?si=GXlZeCmnRoIEmHw0