» Listings for 2024

1. 2023/4 Albums Thing 255 - Billy Nicholls “Would You Believe”

   Posted on 9:50am Wednesday 17th Jan 2024

   For any serious record collectors that may be reading this, you can stop having hot flushes now, my copy of this is a re-issue. For those wondering what I’m talking about, the story goes like this.

   In the late ’60’s Billy Nicholls was a budding songwriter who was hired as a staff writer for Immediate Records by its owner Andrew Loog Oldham. Oldham was obsessed by the Beach Boys album “Pet Sounds” and tasked Billy with writing and recording a British response to it. That turned out to be “Would You Believe”. He used the musicians that were available to him at Immediate to make the record so this album features all of the Small Faces (Steve Marriott can be heard very prominently on the title track despite Oldham’s attempts to have him drowned out by an orchestra in the mix), legendary session guitarist Big Jim Sullivan (who played on 54 UK #1 singles), bass on some tracks by John Paul Jones (later to join Led Zeppelin), Drums by Jerry Shirley who was then in Immediate band the Apostolic Intervention but went on to join Marriott in Humble Pie, keyboards by Nicky Hopkins and who DIDN’T he play with (The Sones, The Kinks, The Beatles, The Who, and on and on and on)? That’s some lineup.

   And the music ? Well, add that band to the fact this was made in 1968 and you have yourself a mighty fine slab of prime breezy, British Psych-pop. You get blissed-out ballads (“Come Again”, “Feeling Easy”), Baroque pop (the title track and “Life Is Short”), straight ahead pop tunes (“Daytime Girl”), barely disguised drug references (“London Social Degree” one for the acronym spotters…it was the times) all with backing vocals that, in places, sound bizarrely like the Swingle Singers (if anyone remembers them).

   My personal favourite is “Girl From New York” a psyched-out paean to the girl who “came from New York in the summer”. It has proper nonsense lyrics about a day out at the zoo, how good their view was (!) and a fantastic Fuzz guitar (which may very well be played by Steve Marriott). It was the first song I heard by Billy Nicholls, on the expansive “Acid Drops, Spacedust & Flying Saucers” compilation, and it’s always been a big favourite with me.

   Due to Immediate’s financial difficulties “Would You Believe” was only ever pressed as a quantity of 100 promotional copies, it didn’t get a full release at the time. That and the musicians on it are why it is so sought after and why, in 2017, a Near Mint example of one of those 100 promotional copies sold for a shade over £8000. My copy is a 1998 re-issue, which still cost me 3 figures in trades to secure it. 

   Although this album was commissioned by Loog Oldham as a “British Pet Sounds”, rather controversially in most peoples view I’d guess, I’ll take this over “Pet Sounds” every time. After reading about it in numerous “Best Albums Ever…” lists I bought “Pet Sounds”, listened to it once and gave it to my Dad. As Loog Oldham said about it “It enhanced the drugs I was taking and made life eloquent and bearable” and as I don’t use drugs or need to alter my state to make life more bearable it’s hardly a surprise I didn’t get it. Billy’s record is so much more to my liking.

   Billy Nicholls went on to write many hits and, as a close friend of Pete Townshend, toured for a long time as The Who’s musical director and backing vocalist. Some of you reading this might be fans of his son Morgan, bass player with the Senseless Things and Vent 414. It’s a small world ay it ?

   Girl From New York - https://youtu.be/rX4rWl5bAN8?si=wE9t-N2sul2vh6h2

2. 2023/4 Albums Thing 254 - New Order “Substance”

   Posted on 9:35am Tuesday 16th Jan 2024

   Now then, I understand that New Order have fans as rabid in some ways as some other Mancunian bands I could mention and that this statement may set a few of them off but…I think all you really need by New Order is this compilation and maybe a copy of “Love Vigilantes”. There, I’ve said it.

   My preferred New Order period is the early days when they sounded like a better recorded Joy Division with a worse singer. On this album that would be side 1,  “Ceremony”(which does appear on Joy Division’s “Still” performed at their final gig in Birmingham), “Everything’s Gone Green” and “Temptation” which are quite superb. 

   Side 2 begins with what is, I suppose, New Order’s signature tune, the one everybody knows, “Blue Monday”. I like it if I hear it, it’s not something I’d reach for very often if at all.  In 1986 the band I worked for (you know who, right ?) we’re invited to open for New Order in Birmingham as their manager knew New Order’s notorious manager Rob Gretton (Happy Mondays were also on the bill, first time I came across them). As we walked into the venue through the foyer we could hear “Blue Monday” being “played” but not sung. When we got into the venue it was still booming out but…there was absolutely nobody on the stage. That kinda put me off them, knowing that so much of what they did wasn’t “played”.

   Later on this comp there is “True Faith” which I like and I’ve already expressed my liking for “Love Vigilantes”. Over the years I’ve met and really enjoyed being around Peter Hook. A few years ago we went to see him and his band The Light play a gargantuan Joy Division/New Order set in Wolverhampton. I gotta admit for the majority of the New Order part of the set I went into the bar in the next room. Which is why I offered at the start there that all you really need by New Order is this compilation and maybe a copy of “Love Vigilantes”. 

   So why do I even own it I can hear some of you ask ? Well a copy like this one, a UK 1st issue with the embossed sleeve, is quite the valuable item these days. This one came to me via the shop and has been, shall we say, partied. So I took it home for a good clean and some TLC and couldn’t bring myself to sell it for the pittance I’d get for it, so it stayed here with a few others at Russ’s benevolent home for misused LP’s, I get ‘em out and give ‘em a spin every now and again and we’re all very happy with the arrangement.

   Everything’s Gone Green - https://youtu.be/Aaf-eqg8dvo?si=56WtwdOuUrsu0dXZ

3. 2023/4 Albums Thing 253 - NEU! “NEU!”

   Posted on 9:55am Saturday 13th Jan 2024

   If you’ve ever wondered what it is, this, dear reader, is Krautrock. It was a label jokingly given to German underground music of the early 70’s by the Melody Maker, and it stuck. To the point where leading German band Faust recorded a track titled “Krautrock” (https://youtu.be/m5-_c2VFxhQ?si=Z4WchY3OmVU3N0Zj).

   After the Second World War Germany was split in two with the East overseen by Russia and the Allies of the USA and the UK overseeing the West. American music arrived with the GI’s stationed in West Germany. By the time we get to the late 60’s the American music the German “heads” had picked up on was that of the Velvet Underground, Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa, the weirder more experimental end of things. Ally that to the experimental, electronic “classical” music being made by Karlheinz Stockhausen in Cologne and you have an altogether different set of influences being applied to Germany’s underground and progressive musicians than on those elsewhere in the west.

   The result was the bands to whom Melody Maker applied the somewhat disparaging sobriquet “Krautrock”,  including (but not limited to) Faust, Amon Düul, Ash Ra Tempel, Cluster, Popol Vuh, Harmonia, Can, Kraftwerk and, of course, NEU!

   NEU!, as far as this album is concerned, were a duo from Düsseldorf consisting of guitarist Michael Rother and drummer Klaus Dinger both of them recently departed from Kraftwerk. Producer Conny Plank (who would go on to produce records by Ultravox and Eurhythmics because of his work with Krautrock) was also instrumental in the construction of NEU!’s first 3 albums (“NEU!”, “NEU!2” and “NEU! 75”).

   NEU!’s sound was built around Rother’s pulsing, rhythmic, effects laden guitar playing and Dinger’s minimal drumming. Dinger’s style, a simplistic 4/4 pattern, heavy on the kick drum and with few fills, that never lets up, has become so influential it earned its own name, “the Motorik”. If you can’t imagine what it sounds like have a listen below or think of anything by Stereolab who have fashioned n entire career out of it ! The music is largely instrumental (there is a vocal on final track “Lieber Honig” (“Dear Honey”) but it’s more of an effect than actual singing), rhythmic and features sound effects, there is a somewhat startling pneumatic drill at one point and the sound of a boat rowing on water elsewhere. Rother’s guitar playing does get beautifully melodic in places, have a listen to “Weissensee” (“White Lake”).

   The key track on “NEU!” is the first one, “Hallogallo”, a 10-ish minute groove-fest of pulsing, hypnotic guitar riffs and that relentless Motorik beat pushing everything along. Have a listen below, it really does tell you everything about NEU!

   NEU!’s first 3 albums are rightly regarded as landmarks in German music and their influence is widespread. It’s rumoured Bowie originally wanted Michael Rother to play guitar on “Heroes” but some crossed wires meant he never received the request. I spent years avoiding any contact with  Krautrock, seeing it merely as a branch of the dreaded Prog, which I was very wrong about,l. Music like this had a huge influence on Punk and Post Punk. But thanx to the persistence of my dear friend Phil Barlow and Julian Cope’s seminal tome on the subject, “Krautrocksampler”, mine ears were opened and NEU! were a real gateway for me.

   Hallogallo - https://youtu.be/zndpi8tNZyQ?si=BcCBm5m22u9ZE1Jd