TMOQ UUP 115
Nine tracks of prime New York raunch, recorded at the legendary Mercer Arts Centre on January 16th 1973, second set. The label TMOQ (remember them?) claim that the source of the tape is Paul Nelson, die-hard Dolls champion who persuaded Mercury to sign the band whilst he was A&R manager there.
Colour sleeve with some cool, mostly unseen photos and a slightly fuzzy fold out colour poster that would look best Blu-tacked to a teenage bedroom wall. An amazingly thick vinyl pressing – thicker even than the discs on my original Exile On Main St. No titles on the LP label, bootleg style.
The sound quality sounds like someone with a portable cassette recorder made a decent recording from the PA which has subsequently been cleaned up digitally. David Johansen’s vocals are not high in the mix but clearly audible. Johnny Thunders and Sylvain Sylvian’s guitar parts are distinct. Jerry Nolan’s driving beat is omnipresent, in one of his first gigs after taking over from the late Billy Murcia. Only Arthur Kane’s bass gets a bit lost in the mix.
Any reservations I have about the sound are overcome by the performance. It is simply the best live recording of the Dolls I have ever heard – so much better than Red Patent Leather, the Paris live LP and the other flotsam and jetsam that has been released since the bands demise. The performances are playful with a light touch that was absent by 1974. It’s great to have a band recording of Give Her A Great Big Kiss, and the other eight tracks are just as good. Johansen’s introductions are witty and give a sense of a band crammed into a small club in their prime. The nearest comparison is The Faces at their most ebullient.
But don’t just take my word for it – here’s Nick Kent’s verdict of a very similar gig at Kenny’s Castaways:
“The music is raw and alive, played with reckless abandon until it becomes a joyous celebration of the whole ‘be young, be foolish, be happy’ school of thought. Believe me the records don’t even begin to capture the special magic of the Dolls playing in a pissy little club to their elite little crowd of mascara-daubed misfits and vagrant vamps.”
Good luck in finding a copy – mine came via Discogs and was posted from Sweden. Worth making the effort!
In Conversation with Gary Lachman, Nina Antonia and Travis Elborough
The Century Club, Shaftesbury Avenue, London
July 4th 2023
Torrential rain was not the best backdrop to trying to find an anonymous Soho doorway but once inside the fourth floor of London’s Century Club turned out to be an excellent space in which to eavesdrop on a three-way conversion between Nina, Travis and Gary – who you might know better as Gary Valentine, bass player with Blondie up until 1977. Now based in London, these days Gary is a writer specialising in consciousness, the esoteric and the occult. Nina shares many of these interests but the discussion tonight was about music – specifically about the New York scene in the mid-1970s. Gary lived there as a budding musician, whilst Nina chronicled the rise and fall of the New York Dolls and their guitarist Johnny Thunders, the subject of her most recent book, In Cold Blood. Travis did well to keep the conversation flowing and we got some excellent anecdotes – who knew that Kung-Fu Girls on the first Blondie LP was written for Thunders? Nina hung around after the event to sign copies of her book (Gary had been too modest to bring his book New York Rocker) and I learnt that guitarist Neal Whitmore and ex-Thunders drummer Chris Musto will be setting some of Nina’s poems to music. A very rewarding couple of hours.
Thank you Lenny for this! From Issue #140 – Teardrop Explodes on the cover
Nina Antonia
Jawbone Press (2023)
ISBN 978-1-911036-11-1
When Nina Antonia published the first edition of In Cold Blood in 1987 books about musicians who were not commercially successful were rare. Nina was perceptive enough to realise that whilst Thunders would never be commercially significant, in artistic terms he was already very influential. And so it has proved with the best of Thunders music still revered today, whilst his image has launched a thousand “dangerous “rock bands.
A second edition of In Cold Blood followed in 2000. The later part of Thunders career had not lived up to his early promise. All you really need to hear are his two albums with The New York Dolls, the Heartbreakers sole studio album LAMF and his glorious first solo LP So Alone: the recording of this crucial music is well documented here. Thunders carried on recording and touring until his death in 1991 but never again achieved the same high levels of quality in his studio recordings or in his live shows.
The reason for this? Drugs. Nina rightfully calls out the unhealthy dynamic of an audience coming to latter day Thunders gigs to see what state he’d be in, a ritual that Thunders was not beyond playing up to. Unfortunately the day-to-day demands of a major heroin habit caused Thunders to make poor artistic and commercial decisions which sapped his creativity and gave him a reputation for unreliability.
An antidote to such concerns is to crank up the stereo and put on Thunders in his prime. Listening to Jet Boy, Subway Train, Pirate Love, You Can’t Put Your Arms Around A Memory and so many more tracks recorded from 1973 to 1978 is to be immersed in how rock’n’roll should sound. The combination of an increasingly battered Les Paul Junior and Johnny’s nasal but impassioned vocals cuts through all the bullshit.
This third and final edition of In Cold Blood is the best looking yet. Mike Scott provides a pithy introduction whilst Chrissie Hynde and Bobbie Gillespie eulogise on the back cover. In a newly written final chapter Nina ruminates that “Johnny – like myself – was of a generation that believed in music as if it were a religion, with drugs as it’s unholy sacraments.” Nina became very close to Thunders whilst writing In Cold Blood and whilst that gave her great access it has also resulted in the occasional loss of objectivity.
Thunders’ traumatic early family issues as depicted here were undoubtedly a factor in his reckless behaviour and extensive self-medication. Early intervention and mental-health support of the type that is common today might have made Thunders a less unhappy human being. Would he still have created the vibrant, dangerous musical legacy that Nina celebrates? An uncomfortable question to ask and to answer. In Cold Blood explains how it all happened and successfully makes the case for Thunders continued relevance.
Available now from http://www.1960s.london
Tracklisting
Side One
- Girl Don’t Come (Andrews)
- You Can’t Blame Him (Andrews)
- I’ll Stop At Nothing (Andrews)
- I’ve Heard About Him (Andrews)
- Long Live Love (Andrews)
- You Can’t Blame Him (Andrews)
- Love Letters (Heyman, Young)
- Long Live Love (Andrews)
- Coconut Grove (Sebastian, Yanovsky)
- I’d Be Far Better Off Without You (Andrews)
Side Two
- Yesterday Man (Andrews)
- (There’s) Always Something There To Remind Me (Bacharach, David)
- (Get Your Kicks On) Route 66 (Troup)
- Do You Know The Way To San Jose (Bacharach, David)
- Homeward Bound (Simon)
- Girl Don’t Come (Andrews)
- Get Away (Powell)
- Trains And Boats And Planes (Bacharach, David)
- Day Tripper (Lennon, McCartney)
- Ticket To Ride (Lennon, McCartney)
Recording Details
Side One
Tracks 1-8 recorded for BBC Radio in 1965
Tracks 1 – 3 Top Gear February 5th
Tracks 4 -6 Saturday Club May 3rd
Tracks 7-8 Top Gear May 10th
Track 9 recorded for BBC Radio DLT February 5th 1970
Track 10 recorded for US TV Shindig! April 28th 1965
Side Two
Track 1 broadcast from The Bratislava Festival Of Pop Music, June 14th 1967
Track 2 recorded for US TV Shindig! January 6th 1965
Tracks 3 – 10 recorded for BBC TV The Sandie Shaw Supplement, September 17th 1968
Sound Quality
Excellent, apart from from Side Two tracks 1 & 2 which are Very Good
Sleevenotes
Together with Ready Steady Go! presenter Cathy McGowan, Sandie epitomised Swinging London. Her distinctive looks were emulated by many teen girls and she performed bare foot, a habit she attributed to her bunions. This record collects many of the live vocal recordings she made for radio and TV in high recording quality throughout.
In 1964 teenager Sandra Ann Goodrich was working at the Ford factory in Dagenham, Essex whilst doing some part-time modelling. She was a big fan of Adam Faith and the Roulettes. and after managing to get backstage at one of their gigs she sang for him and his manager Eve Taylor. Taylor immediately signed her to Pye Records and changed her stage name to Sandie Shaw. Writing for Faith was an anglo-German songwriter called Chris Andrews. When he started writing for Sandie they had a string of massive pop hits throughout 1964 and 1965.
Opener Girl Don’t Come reached number 3 in 1964 and showcased Shaw’s breathy vocals. The song had started life as the B-side to I’d Be Far Better Off Without You, but it was switched to the A side in response to DJ demand. In 1979 Girl Don’t Come would be a highlight of early Pretenders early live shows, starting a life-long friendship with singer Chrissie Hynde. You Can’t Blame Him is a bouncy piano, driven number with call and response vocals. It was the B side of I’ll Stop At Nothing, where Sandie’s vocals are cleverly supported by the backing vocalists. Lyrically I’ve Heard About Him takes Sandie into Shangri-La’s territory and is another ace B-side, this time to Long Live Love.Released in 1965Long Live Love was Sandie’s second UK number one single and features a more upbeat arrangement. The arrangement of Love Letters faithfully follows Ketty Lester’s original right down to the distinctive piano part. Although Sandie was not writing her own material at this stage she had a keen ear for a good tune, as shown by her version of The Lovin Spoonful’s Coconut Grove, performed here in an understated arrangement featuring acoustic guitar, organ and flute. I’d Be Far Better Off Without You was another Chris Andrews song, sung demurely on US TV show Shindig! in an unsuccessful attempt to break into the American market without actually touring there.
Eve Taylor was keen for Sandie to record Andrews’ Yesterday Man but she disliked the melody and refused. Chris Andrews released his own version in September 1965 and it reached number 3 in the UK charts. This rare Sandie vocal comes from an international song festival held in Slovakia in 1967. Robert Wyatt would record a reggae-tinged version in 1974 as his follow-up to I’m A Believer. (There’s) Always Something There To Remind Me was another chart-topper in the UK andis the first of three songs on this LP written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David: this version was recorded for Shindig!. The final eight songs come from The Sandie Shaw Supplement, a twenty-five minute programme broadcast weekly on BBC TV throughout September and October 1968. “Quicksand” was the second episode, directed by Mel Cornish with the theme of travelling. “Sandie Shaw with the music of speed and travel. From here to there with Sandie, travelling lady. Down Route 66 to San Jose in a Tijuana Taxi, she’s a Homeward Bound Day Tripper with a Ticket To Ride on Trains And Boats And Planes. And if the Girl Don’t Come – she’ll have made her Getaway. Or hit a quicksand.” We learn that even when Sandie is driving her GT40 – number plate SANDIE – she does so barefoot, in massive sunglasses and whilst smoking a cigarette. Homeward Bound has a delicate folk-rock arrangement and is sung as duet with John Walker from The Walker Brothers. Get Away had been a hit in July 1966 for Georgie Fame after originally being written as a jingle for National Petrol. A Beatles medley includes Day Tripper with Lennon’s guitar riff played by a brass section and a Ticket To Ride which features some bare-footed grooving from Sandie.
“I only ever spoke to Sandie Shaw twice. First time out, I asked her questions and she, just having had her first hit, didn’t answer much. “Dunno” she kept saying. The second time, some eighteen months later, I asked her more questions and she still didn’t answer much but she had changed, she belonged to new worlds. “Ca va” she kept saying “comme ci, comme ca”. Nik Cohn, AwopBopaLooBopLopBamBoom (1970)
Sleevenotes: Mr DuPont
First out of the blocks is a typically thoughtful piece by Ged Babey of Louder Than War, read it here
Also Gerry Ransom gives us a plug on the Vive Le Rock website
Thank you both!
Positive reviews from Andrew Perry at Mojo….
…and from Nick West at Bucketfull of Brains
Thanks to you both!
Bin Liner Records Brings More TRASH!
RELEASED: FRIDAY 12th MAY 2023 (Pre Orders Welcome)
Place your order here
“Bashing Out The Chords” is the first ever vinyl LP from Trash. It contains all seven of the studio tracks recorded from 1977 – 1979, complemented by a further seven cover versions from a 1976 rehearsal. Pete Townshend thought the band were “bloody great” but no LP was issued during their lifetime.
Detour Records are delighted to put this right with a definitive release complete with rare photos, comprehensive sleeve notes, full recording details and a discography.
Trash were formed in Autumn 1976 in distinctly un-punk Weybridge by Mick Brophy (guitar, harmonica), Keith Steptoe (bass), Steve Pearce (drums) and co-lead singers Simon Wright and Jane Wimble. Jane bailed out in early 1977 and Steve was replaced by Brian Devoil. A recording contract with Polydor resulted in first single Priorities / Look in November 1977. Brian left to go prog with Twelfth Night, to be replaced by Simon Butler-Smith. In February 1978 the band entered Roundhouse Studios with the legendary Shel Talmy producing. The resulting Polydor single N-N-E-R-V-O-U-S / Page 3 vanished without trace on its release in June 1978. The final recording session was in March 1979 at Surrey Sound Studios with Nigel Gray. Mick was by now living in Manchester where he had formed a new band called The Cheaters, featuring lead guitarist Neil Cossar. Neil temporarily expanded Trash to a five-piece to record In On All The Secrets and What Do You Think About That?
Trash were very anti 1976-as-year-zero and this is reflected in the choice of cover versions included here: Editions Of You (Roxy Music), Pills (Bo Diddley via the New York Dolls), I’m Waiting For The Man (Velvets) and Let’s Spend The Night Together (Stones). Hippy Hippy Shake had been a hit for the Swinging Blue Jeans, but Mick brought it up to date with a Wilko Johnson one-note guitar solo. Louie Louie featured an intro borrowed from the Stooges. 96 Tears was a thank-you to Eddie And The Hot Rods.
Trash were single-minded, young, energetic and unsophisticated and were savvy enough to transform these limitations into virtues. This LP shows that for Trash “bashing out the chords is the name of the game”!
Tracklisting
In On All The Secrets
What Do You Think About That?
N-N-E-R-V-O-U-S
Page Three (Dumb Blondes)
Priorities
Look
Mixed Up
96 Tears
Editions Of You
Pills
I’m Waiting For The Man
Hippy Hippy Shake
Louie Louie
Let’s Spend The Night Together
£18.99
Plus delivery
Thank you to everyone who came out last night and to Heloise at RTW for the photos.
Peter Perrett sadly did not make it due to ill health and then at 530 I got the news that John Perry was stranded outside Reading due to a car break down.
So then there was one…Alan Mair played a blinder, answering fans questions candidly and at length. We then both signed lots of books before repairing to the Duke Of Wellington across the road for a couple of hours.
If you were there I hope you had a good time. I really enjoyed meeting so many fans as well as those folks who have contributed to the book, my thanks to everyone.
If you had pre-paid for last night’s event but then but could not make it then there is a signed copy of “It’s The Truth” waiting for you at Rough Trade West. Either you can pick it up from the shop or ask them to send it to you.
Alan did mention that in addition to the previously-announced gig at Blackpool on August 5th there will be a warm-up gig at Hebden Bridge Trades Club so that is something to look out for.
Any comments, feedback or book reviews send them to simon@onlyrockandroll.london
Have a good Easter everybody
My thanks to Ged and Melanie for a great review on Louder Than War (even Trash get a plug)
Only Rock 'n' Roll 