~Nippy Sweeties~#2: 'That Creature' by The Sweet Acids

A Trove Of Obscure Sixties Pop, Garage & Psychedelic Wibblery!

Ooohh....Controversial!!

Now here's a rum old hot-potato from 1969....'That Creature' by The Sweet Acids is either inexplicably misogynistic, or it's an unsubtle paean to recondite homosexuality!!
Just have a listen to these woman-baiting lyrics; "Who was that creature loving you?// Was she from the local zoo?// Put her down you silly clown// Before the word gets all around", okay....so far so 'buddy telling is friend that his girlfriend isn't blessed in the looks department', but it goes on, "Can't you see that I'm frantic// Can't you see that I'm mad// Leave that ugly thing from another planet!" .....hmmmm, now why would he be frantic and mad do you reckon? A clue might be found later on as the singer intones almost tenderly, "Let's go back to where we started// Lot's of fun before we parted". Virtually everybody I've ever let hear this song almost immediately asks if this is a gay song? I'm not entirely sure....it could just be a song about how ugly one guy thinks his best friend's partner is, or it could be a pure novelty/comedy song about someone dating then dumping an alien....or maybe it really is a declaration of relief from one man that his male lover has decided to quit 'the woman situation' and return to him.
Personally I think it's the middle theory....given all the weird sci-fi noises that run through the song, I think it's just a novelty piece about a man's love affair with an alien. I certainly don't think that band were trying to put across a woman-hating vibe, and I think it's just some unfortunate rhymes that lead to speculation about homosexuality.


The Sweet Acids hailed from Carrollton, Georgia(and therefore may have been some influence on The B-52s), and the single was released on Unique Records. As is often the case in these situations, this was their only release and it failed to do anything anywhere! However, word of mouth down through the decades has led to the record achieving cult status and a much sought after release. It's certainly well played with lots of acid-y guitar and some nice Farfisa playing in the middle.
They REALLY don't make 'em like this anymore!

No....really....they don't! My Streetlamp cohort Griff recently pointed out that you simply don't get proper novelty/unusual records anymore. It's all too corporate and business driven these days. In the Sixties, characters like Tiny Tim, Mrs Mills, Thunderclap Newman or The Temperance Seven could easily score some chart action with the most uncompromising of songs, and this trickled down into the Seventies and Eighties. One-off 'talents' like Wild Man Fischer could, under Frank Zappa's patronage in the late Sixties nearly bother the charts, which is almost mirrored on Kurt Cobain's enthusiasm for Daniel Johnston who could, in any other decade, have become a bona fide chart act. Yet somehow in these Reality TV/ *cough* Talent Show days when everything is about ratings and chart positions, eccentricity and individuality is snuffed out. Even something as crap as Susan Boyle is given such a vigorous studio/professional polish that it blands itself into vapour.

Annoyingly we seem to reverted back to 1962; uninspiring, dull, faceless tin-cans on a production line; pop-stars as business commodity all over again. And tragically The Beatles won't be coming to save us this time, Kids!!
And for that, we really should clasp records like 'That Creature' to our collective bosom.

Keep Your Mind Open!

~Gordon~

Griff says; It's a Fairytale Beginning

There's no getting away from it, I've been around the block a few times and, I'll admit it, I sometimes feel as though I've pretty much heard everything that indie music has to offer. Even music obsessives like us at 'Streetlamp' occasionaly get jaded with what often feels like the same old formulae. But sometimes, just sometimes, you hear a band for the first time, and you fall in love with music all over again.

Earlier this week I had just such an epiphany. If you're of a certain age you'll remember what it was like to listen to John Peel's radio show late at night in the late 70's and early 80's. While closing-time, adult Scotland drank itself into mawkishness or aggression you'd be curled up in bed, ear close to a tinny, fading radio signal with winter howling outside. John, God bless him, would play a stodgy Led Zeppelin track followed by some interminable reggae number... and then, just as your sleepy wee head was beginning to nod- BANG! Suddenly John was playing 'Dead Pop Stars' by Altered Images for the very first time and within a minute you knew what 7" you were spending your pocket money on in Stirling on Saturday.

The Botched Fairytale album cover

I'm glad to say that I had one of those moments this week. The band is called...well the band doesn't officially have a name, but unofficially people have assumed they're called Botched Fairytale. In actual fact, Botched Fairytale is the forthcoming debut album by Mariel McCormack (vocals, percussion and instrumentation) and Marie O Hara (percussion and instrumentation) from Co Longford, Ireland. Although the band was formed in 2008 the girls haven't yet committed to a band name. Quite right too! While most bands fuss over such minor details this audacious pair just go straight for the musical jugular in spectacular fashion.

So what do they sound like? The girls gave me the following self-description:

We write atypical Irish ballads and Irish folk songs inspired by the album title. The songs are about excess and failure and we like aggressive instrumentation and vocals. At times (for example in The Flats) we play botched traditional Irish music using; whistle, accordian, acoustic guitar and mandolin. Other times we use squealing guitars and percussion; using large metal sheeting, milk cans and piano innards combined with snare and bass drum. We are influenced by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds and The Pogues.

I'm sorry but, while it's no doubt accurate, that description just doesn't do their incredible sound any justice. After I first heard them, I asked the girls if they were influenced by my all-time favourites; avant-garde, girl-punk band The Slits and charmingly they admitted that they had heard of them but weren't familiar with their music. Amazingly, these two precocious young Irish musicians are somehow unconsciously channeling the sound of the truly exceptional, pioneering, post-punk bands like The Slits, The Pop Group and The Raincoats and yet very much making it their own with a sublime traditional music twist. When I first heard them I immediately knew that they were exactly what I'd been waiting to hear for the last ten years. If I hear a better song this year than the duo's The Flats then I'll quite happily lie down and die.

The Flats by Botched Fairytale


Hyperbole? No, I don't think so. I don't want to talk about myself but, briefly, I've spent many years on my own musical projects (see Sighrens for instance) and my holy grail was always to produce something that was influenced by left-field, experimental and indie music but was also unselfconsciously folky. It's maybe a Celtic thing, but in Scotland and Ireland it wouldn't be unusual to have a whistle, harmonica, accordian or mandolin lying around as the main instrument in the house. This sounds awfully odd said out loud, but it's been my goal for a long, long time to hear a young band who sound as though they've picked up those traditional instruments and just made music with them in a totally uncontrived way; not attempting to do 'trad' music but just making their own kind of noise with what's to hand (like Granddad did in the Punk wars). Well, now I've heard it, and boy it's every bloody bit as good as I thought it would be!

Don't believe me? Have a listen to these tracks (below) from the duo's Soundcloud page and then go and download them and tell everyone, absolutely everyone, you know about Marie and Mariel.

All Cylinders by Botched Fairytale

Steelcapped Toes by Botched Fairytale

Chasers by Botched Fairytale


All of the music is written, performed, mixed and mastered by the duo . The album will be available soon. Keep an eye on 'Streetlamp' for the details. You can also go visit the myspace and last.fm pages and leave a nice comment.

Griff
xx

~Nippy Sweeties~#1: The Choir/ The Journey Men

A Trove Of Obscure Sixties Pop, Garage & Psychedelic Wibblery!

One of the best things about the 'Pebbles' series of Sixties compilations is that they are so slapdash and chaotically thrown together that they sound, at times, like mix-tapes. Levels are all over the place, tracks have been mastered complete with the clicks, pops and static from the original vinyl releases. And, like the very best mix-tapes, they sometimes throw up nice little segues, neat little one-twos where two songs, sweetly juxtaposed create a wondrous musical sucker-punch that leaves you reeling and buzzing like an infant full of sherbet.
Thus, take Pebbles Vol 2, NOT the original release but the version that comes in The Pebbles Box, one of the greatest box-sets of all time, Side 2 Tracks 3 and 4; 'It's Cold Outside' by The Choir and 'She's Sorry' by The Journey Men....pure POP Heaven, both songs mixing the thrilling with the poignant. As you'll find in a lot of these Blog-posts on obscure 60s tracks, it's baffling that neither of these songs troubled the charts on either side of the Atlantic, given that they're both better than some of the stuff that clogged up the charts then....what were the parents of our generation thinking?

Let's start with The Choir.
'It's Cold Outside' is one of my favourite 60s songs of all time. Based around a pounding drum pattern, we're suddenly swept away on blanket of shimmering Rickenbacker guitars, before a melancholy voice intones some fairly maudlin lyrics; "Well my world used to be sunny// And jokes used to be funny// But now you're gone// And everything's turned all around// Well my world used to be warm// And there never was a storm// But now you're gone// And everything's turned upside down"....the strange blend of vibrant music and downbeat lyrics makes for curious listening, and then it explodes into the chorus; "And now it's cold outside// And the rain is pouring down// And the leaves are turning brown// Can't you see?"....it really is an amazing sound, like early Beatles crossed with an American Smiths if you will. And there's a moment about three quarters of the way through when the song changes key that makes me want to punch the air with joy!!
The Choir were from Mentor in Cleveland, Ohio and started life as The Mods, dressing in Merseybeat gear and filling their sets with covers of British Invasion tracks. 'It's Cold Outside' was released in 1967 by which time they were called The Choir and had progressed to writing their own material. After they split up they joined forces with Eric Carmen to create Power-Pop legends The Raspberries. Carmen would of course go on to score with perennial mawkish guilty-pleasure 'All By Myself'. The song was released on Roulette Records in the Spring of 1967.
I once won a fairly minor quiz/competition on a 60s Garage Online Radio Station and my prize was to choose the Garage song of my choice from their vast archive to be played on the next show....I chose 'It's Cold Outside'....THAT is how much I love this song.


And no sooner than it ends, we're off with a squiggly little guitar intro and straight into the galloping Farfisa romp that is 'She's Sorry' by The Journey Men. Like The Beatles 'She Loves You' this is a conversation song in which the protagonist informs his friend that he shouldn't be so down as he's just met his estranged girlfriend and she admits she was wrong to leave him. It rattles along at a fair old whack and the vocals have just the right amount of reverb to give the song a slightly sinister edge(you could imagine The Damned covering this), and the keyboard playing is simply inspired.
I like to think of this song as a response to the previous track. The protagonist of 'It's Cold Outside' mourns the loss of his girlfriend only to have the principal figure of 'She's Sorry' reveal that everything is going to be alright and that he wasn't to blame.

Here's what we know about The Journey Men; they came from Tampa, Florida, this was their only release, on Boss Records in 1965....and that's it!! That is ALL we know. Now, the Internet, being so full of erroneous information, would have us believe that The Journey Men were a folk-trio that featured John Phillips of The Mamas And The Papas, and Scott McKenzie of 'San Francisco(Be Sure To Wear Some Flowers In Your Hair)' fame who released three albums, but this is incorrect. They were called The Journeymen and sounded nothing like this.

Put simply then, these are two of the greatest songs in musical history and to fully appreciate them you have to hear them back-to-back and in this order.

All human life is here.

You KNOW it!!

Keep Your Mind Open!

~Gordon~

~This Elegant Chaos~#5 Hearts!Attack

'If You Were Dead' three track EP by Hearts!Attack



This is pretty much a home made affair, housed in a personally designed sleeve created with acrylic paints and boasting the legend; "This record was made from two bedrooms, in two continents, by three people", already what's not to love? The three people are Darren, Alexis and Sam, with help from Tabby from Tabbyondrums....erm, on drums!

Hearts!Attack are purveyors of a raw blend of raucous bedroom lo-fi, and title track 'If You Were Dead' sets out their agenda beautifully....think of The Raincoats, or early unpolished Sonic Youth and you're starting to get somewhere. Now imagine Bis clashing with cacophonous early grunge-punks Distorted Pony and mashing up their joint boy/girl call-and-response vocals and the picture starts becoming clearer. I often get anxious when I praise a band for their un-embellished lo-fi production, often worrying that I may be insulting them somewhat, but given that I consider 'Green Fuz' by Randy Alvey & The Green Fuz, a record that sounds like it was recorded in a bucket of sludge with a broken mic, as one of the greatest records of all time, and that I can think of nothing worse than listening to polished over-produced music like Rush, Yes or Supertramp, then I'm hoping any references to lo-fi distortion aren't seen as a negative. It's the raw, abrasiveness of Hearts!Attack's music that draws me in, but beneath the rough edges lies the true beauty....listen to that melodious keyboard pattern, or the way the girl vocals sweeten the anger of the boy vocals, and the moment at around 2mins 40 when the song slows down and an air of poignancy drapes itself over the track. It's quite wonderful.

"I heard it on the TV// You've been cheating on me" is the opening line of second track 'Mariana' where there are so many different vocal structures that it can't fail to burrow into your brain to seduce and slap you at the same time, which, like the band's name, seems to sum up their double-edged nature....the 'heart' alluding to the sweetness of love; the 'attack' to the gutpunch when it all breaks down.


And final track 'Dead Snails' captures this beautifully....like honey wrapped in nettles.



A while back I had felt I had become a little jaded with music and felt that nothing was doing it for me any more, but listening to Hearts!Attack reminds why I fell in love with music in the first place. In a world where Oasis are seen as (cough!) relevant, where Nickelback sell out stadiums , and where (groan!)The Killers and (ggrrooaann!!)Kings Of Leon are seen as the future of rock, I know what I like and I DO know about art!!
Already a contender for my favourite release of the year; if you like The Slits, Swell Maps, The Subway Sect or The Shaggs then this comes highly recommended. I personally cannot wait for further releases.

The band have a Myspace page which can be found here
as well as a page at Bandcamp which is here.

~Gordon~