This playlist is 78% vinyl friendly. Not bad.
An early 1970s BSR P195, courtesy of Birmingham (UK) Sound Reproducers – with an eye maybe on reel to reel tape machines they would then make a decade later? They were more bullish with their turntables though, having grown the company in the 1960s to employing 2,600(!) and at one point further along they cornered 87% of the market in supplying turntables and autochangers to record player manufacturers worldwide. In my eternal search to identify the first record player I had (it’s extremely dim in the memory) there’s something about the handle and speaker grill on this lad I think I ‘recognise’… but if I ever actually see a version of mine I’m hoping I’ll instantly know.
Any track marked * has been given either a tiny or a slightly larger 41 Rooms tweak/edit/chop and the occasional tune might sound a bit dodgy, quality-wise. On top of that, the switch between different decades and production values never helps in the mix here.
It’s a tie between Lambrini Girls and Marv. Polar opposites in their eras, ages, ‘approach’ etc but their subject matters are connected. Elsewhere and on a less serious note, there’s a nod also to Norman Singh and his track title ‘Rain, it very rarely goes up‘.
(Intro) THE FLAMINGOS – Stars (Edit) – Unreleased demo – 1983. Episode #1 for info.
NEW ORDER – Mission Impossible – Unreleased – 1999
I can take or leave the film franchise but you’d be hard pressed to find anyone of a certain age that doesn’t recognise the brand’s signature tune, and New Order’s stab at it – recorded somewhere in the ’98 The Beach soundtrack and ’99 Get Ready album sessions – is damn fine.
“We had been told Tom Cruise was a huge New Order fan and that supplying the track beforerhand was just a formality. It was fun to record, turning out a lot better than I expected. I was able to really let rip on the bass sound. Unfortunately we lost out to Limp Bizkit, who were huge at the time.” Peter Hook, Substance : Inside New Order.
LAMBRINI GIRLS – Gods Country – Download only – 2024
As this show uploads, this is likely though to make it to vinyl via their record label, Big Scary Monsters sometime soon. Smart words out of Brighton, UK, which sort of brings to mind Marlon Brando’s Johnny Strabler character’s response in The Wild Ones to the question, ‘What are you ranting against’?… ‘Whadda you got?’ I get the feeling there could easily have been another few verses.
THE STRANGLERS – Burning Up Time – No More Heroes, LP – United Artists – 1977
They were no spring chickens when they emerged out of the punk scene but memories of a couple of great nights watching them in this era, in Cambridge and Dunstable, and my mate, Gary F strutting air guitar (in his case, a left-handed bass) and drawling Hugh Cornwell’s words in my bedroom to this album.
PENETRATION – Nostalgia – Moving Targets, LP – Virgin – 1978
Glow in the dark vinyl that I seem to remember being less than impressed with at the time – the glowing that is, not the sounds. I really took to Pauline Murray’s voice early on. Still in my ‘rock’ years I went along June 29, ’77 to London’s Marquee, purely to chat with Ian Gillan who I knew was going to what was a (Mike) Heron headlining gig. I remember being at the bar and hearing this screech of a voice coming from the stage. Enough to get me to go have a look, I found Penetration as support, at their first ever London gig. Murray was maybe trying to grab the attention of what might have been a crowd apathetic to the punk onslaught… and Nostalgia was very likely on their playlist.
SIOUXSIE and THE BANSHEES – Jigsaw Feeling – The Scream, LP – Polydor – 1978
Class punk. Is that some sort of paradox?
NASMAK – Me Rex – 7″ b-side – Aura – 1983
Loping, plodding sounds out of Holland that are definitely in the post punk bag. Maybe even akin to some of the no wave sounds coming out of New York in these early ’80s years?
NORMAN SINGH – Rain, It Very Rarely Goes Up – The Suck & The Blow, self-released cassette – 1985
Norman’s third playlisting at 41 Rooms. In reality, one Martin Shouler, the bass player for early ’80s Bedford band, Actors & Famous People. Seemingly he had too much sonic stuff going on inside to be restrained by the band’s output alone and he produced at least three (I have three, anyway) C60 cassettes worth of outpourings, so tracks from Stop Talking To The Pig (1984, his first) and Some Geese Have All The Luck (1985) could also be coming your way at some point – if only to namecheck the ‘album’ titles again. There’s a lot going on in the recordings but all managed via maybe a Tascam 4-track Portastudio?
THE SHINS – Sealegs – Wincing The Night Away, LP – Sub Pop – 2007
The more melodic side of Sub Pop’s thinking.
VALERIE ETIENNE – Wasteland – For What It Is, CD only – Clean Up – 1999
Or a cassette version… out of Indonesia only! Maybe best known for fronting Galliano or (more for me) Two Banks Of Four, For What It Is has to date been her only solo album release.
INCOGNITO – Keep The Fires Burning – Positivity, LP – Talkin’ Loud – 1993
Looking indeed for some positivity, main man, Jean-Paul ‘Bluey’ Maunick co-writing and producing here with Ray Hayden, another prominent player on the soul, jazz, Straight No Chaser scene of the time and a previous 41 Rooms playlister in his own right.
JAZZ THE GLASS – Welcome Home WJ (Mash Up) – Unreleased – 2020
JEFFERSON AIRPLANE – Comin’ Back To Me – Surrealistic Pillow, LP – RCA – 1967
Maybe better recognised when fronted by the Grace Slick’s vocals but here it’s some Marty Balin introspection and reminiscing.
THE BEAUTY ROOM – Shadows Falling – II, LP – Far Out Recordings – 2012
DJ/Producer, Kirk Degiorgio’s crew, sounding like they lived just down the road from the above West Coasters – when it might have been nearer Ipswich, UK and a few years further down the line.
RAYMOND LEFEVRE – Soul Coaxing (Âme Caline) * – 7″ – Major Minor – 1968
French singer/songwriter, Michel Polnareff’s Âme Caline (Cuddly Soul) turned into an international, instrumental hit by Lefevre – and the way I constantly heard it as a kid, on the BBC airwaves; World Wide Family Favourites (soundtracking the Hickey family Sunday lunch, like so many) and Mum’s fave, Radio 2.
PEGGY MARCH – Losin’ My Touch * – 7″ – RCA – 1965
And on to a lady who coincidentally turned the previous track into a vocal that’s either oddly charming or a slightly awkward mismatch (I’m still not sure which). Here though, she created a cracker and my copy is yet another to go in the extra suitcase returning from the next trip to Los Altos Hills, California. A more wistful, laid back version (but never released at the time?) by Maxine Brown sounds as if it was recorded in the same era.
ELISA – Come Speak To Me – Asile’s World , CD only – Sugar – 2001
Only surfaced as an extra track a year later on the album’s re-promotion but I first heard this song via 4 Hero’s shuffling vocal remix. For me, the vocals sit better on the latter, already 41 Rooms playlisted version but the original still gets a nod here.
HOODLUM PRIEST – Deep Dance – Heart Of Darkness, LP – ZTT – 1990
Industrial rap and hippety, trippety-hop.
AGENT PROVOCATEUR – Kicks (Album version) – Where The Wld Things Are, 2LP – Wall Of Sound/Epic – 1997
I think I may have first heard this via a session the band did for a Robert Elms, BBC London radio show of the time.
TALIZMAN – Only You (Original Mix?) – 12″ – Cowboy – 1993
‘ ‘Only You’ is exceedingly different to all previous quality musical ministrations from our partners down at the ranch. For a start, it’s not a banging’ house track as you may have expected. There’s a lot more to it than that. It’s a ‘real’ song, with verse, chorus and middle eight structure that bounces along with acoustic strumming, gated electric guitars, banjos, violins, shimmering sitars, hoedown pianos and some smashing vocals that lie somewhere between Robert Wyatt and Stone Roses’ Ian Brown for style. As it’s not your regular 125+bpm-er, some may find it hard to programme, but the more innovative DJs will drop it somehow. For those who can’t make the barndance, there’s a rather superb house mix on the flip‘. – Gordon Kaye, Mixmag Update, 11.2.93
‘What a heady hydrid with, in order of appearance: a wonderful spacey guitar riff; big beats as funky as they are chunky; rough and ready synths; a cery catchy anthemic male vocal; a percussion-laden dub section leading into a disco chant; and a totally wild banjo picking funky intro. All in all, this is a balearic beauty that’s more refreshing than a cold Budweiser on a summer’s day in Death Valley‘. – Andy Beevers, Record Mirror (Music Week), 20.2.92
‘Unusual bumpily rumbled jiggling clever pure pop 101.7bpm Original… ‘ – James Hamilton, Record Mirror (Music Week), 3.4.93
A bit Flowered Up, a bit Happy Mondays, a bit Ibiza? a bit oooh and a bit aaahhh? All in all, a bit of carefree, bonkers skanking around a dancefloor! The Cowboy club promo dept rightly flagged up the original mix, albeit with some slight over confidence, as this sounds to me like it was made by chancers who found themselves in a mate’s studio after a night down the pub… and you might not be surprised to learn this was their only release.
THE COACHOUSE RHYTHM SECTION – Nobody’s Got Time – 12″ – Ice Records – 1977
I’m not sure whether it’s the same version split over two sides on the 7″ release or not but it is the work of Eddie ‘Electric Avenue’ Grant – not forgetting his time in The Equals. This punk disco/proto house workout maybe unsurprisingly went down well with New York’s Paradise Garage crowd of the time – courtesy of DJ, Larry Levan – and maybe for that reason alone, in the 2020s 12″ copies sell for anywhere between £25 and £100 plus, depending on nothing obvious, it appears. I’d nearly guarantee that in the hundreds of thousands of 12″s I flicked through in my younger days I’d have been able to pick this up for a fiver or less :), apart from the fact the ICE label was just one of those I took zero notice of and skipped by. With Nobody’s Got Time there are a bunch of sounds I imagine you wouldn’t have heard on any other track of the time that Grant was maybe trying to align it with/feed off at the time… and maybe (in a punk style way) he didn’t care! ‘I need a synth/snare/backing vocal/etc on this‘… It sounds like he just used the first of each he could program or get together.
ARTHUR RUSSELL – See My Brother, He’s Jumping Out (Let’s Go Swimming #2) – Corn, LP compilation – Audika – 2015
Not unlike the above Eddie Grant tune, to my ears this is more off kilter/left field production values but given Russell’s life was cut short at the age of 41 I’d question whether some of the subsequent releases under his name weren’t in fact just demos. Whatever, some of the people he rubbed shoulders with in his musical journey has done his legacy no harm with the later generations.
Faith #3, 2001 article. Words: Chris Menist
THOMAS LEER – Control Yourself (Demo) – 1982, CD only – Klanggalerie – 2018
With the whole of Leer’s (all demos) 1982 album previously available as downloads, this version of Control Yourself seems to differ from that of the already 41 Rooms playlisted b-side take on his 1984 Heartbeat 7″ in one very small but significant way. Come inclusion on the single, Leer must have realised the synth stabs after some of the verses sounded too… ‘limp’, so he switched to a far more uplifting sound. In having heard and loved the 7″ version first, the said synth stabs here – in what is still a great tune – are indeed glaringly ‘drab’. It’s the little things…
A CERTAIN RATIO – Yo Yo Gi – Loco Live at Hope Mill Studios, LP – Mute – 2022
With some of this session’s other tracks catchable on uuutuuube, here the modern ACR hark back to the edgy unease of their early days. And just the 43 years after I tried and failed, props to mate and Bedford Esquires promoter, Kev Bailey for getting the band to my old home town on May 3. I’ll be crossing the sea to see whoever there!
ECHO and THE BUNNYMEN – Villiers Terrace (John Peel session) – cassette – Korova/WEA – 1983
Below I went with the first time their Aug ’79, debut session for Peel got an official release – on a cassette, free with the Cutter 7″, though it did surface on vinyl five years later via the Strange Fruit label.
JOE COCKER – Delta Lady – 7″ – Regal Zonophone – 1969
The ex-Sheffield gasfitter’s flailing arms, Top Of The Pops appearances were a bit eye catching back in the day.
JETHRO TULL – My Sunday Feeling * – Living In The Past, EP – Fontana – 1969
More readily available as the lead off track to the band’s debut album, This Was (and before my ‘JT years’, as such) but as I try to favour 7″ vinyl in these playlists I went for this Portuguese EP, especially as it seems to have been the only territory to house My Sunday Feeling on the single format. Surprisingly, once heard by me on a radio show of Acid Jazz head honcho, Eddie Piller, as it happens… but then, we all have our musical pasts.
LULU – Morning Dew – 7″ – Epic – 1968
The third version of the song to make to 41 Rooms and that’s without the original or the most famous versions. My demo copy of this one is yet another to go in the extra suitcase returning from the next trip to Los Altos Hills, California.
LIME GARDEN – Popstar – One More Thing, LP – So Young Records – 2024
2024 Brighton, UK in the area once again, this time with some indie cheeriness.
PETULA CLARK – You’re The One * – 7″ – Pye – 1965
Helping Petula and the song to soar, the sort of chorus backing vocals that were particular to the ’60s.
And because it’s from my old home town, let’s here it for the girl backstage at Bedford Granada in 1962. Photo credit: Gloria Saunders.
SHAWN PHILLIPS – Lost Horizon – 7″ – A&M – 1973
Sounded to me like a soundtrack tune years before I got the record and realised it was just that! Doh!
ENGLAND DAN and JOHN FORD COLEY – Love Is The Answer – 7″ – Big Tree – 1979
When it came to these two recording Todd Rundgren’s tune, whoever decided to move the title/chorus line more upfront and proud than on the original was definitely looking to the charts. By 1979 my head was generally a world away from these gentle swayers but this did grab me. Love Is The Answer? Workable in small groups but forget it on a global basis. We’re doomed.
MARVIN GAYE – Inner CIty Blues – 7″ – Tamla Motown – 1971
Unintentionally, there was a sort of theme with these last few tracks and the twist the show’s ending took brought Marv in to play well before I realised the 40th anniversary of his passing was just rolling by. Back in the ’70s when I had a bunch of these beautiful green UK Motown demo 7″s if this one had been in there I’d have kept it.
Hopefully May 5, 2024 for show 127.
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