Another Summertime Special

Side 2 of a cassette compilation of The Undertones, recorded sometime in 1989.

I posted Side 1 on Saturday 25th June 2022, roughly 544,920 minutes ago. Fortunately, The Undertones were a little more prompt. Even as you were listening to the greatest song you'd ever heard, you knew that the new greatest song you'd ever heard would be a couple of minutes away.

I wrote about my reintroduction to The Undertones in the late 1980s, thanks to my brother's copies of the debut album and All Wrapped Up compilation, plus the rather excellent jukebox at The Bell in Stokes Croft, Bristol, our go-to for pre- or post-excessive partying.

Prior to that, The Undertones seemed to be on BBC TV all the time, whether Top Of The Pops, The Old Grey Whistle Test and at least a couple of appearances on Cheggers Plays Pop. As a kid, I liked The Undertones, I loved their manic energy and the fact that the lead singer seemed to be wearing the same hand me downs and secondhand clothes that I had. I was the only boy round our way with a pair of brown Doc Martens. They were a bit too big for me but they'd had a reasonably careful previous owner. 

I know this compilation so well that listening to the debut album still feels a bit odd and out of sequence, so ingrained is this tracklisting in my mind. Side 2 exceeds Side 1's tally of 18 songs by squeezing in another 3 songs, a couple coming in at under one minute, but keeping it all to a pacy 45 minutes.

 

True Confessions appears twice on this mixtape, the album version here sounding like the band had been listening to Donna Summer's I Feel Love and Magic Fly by Space before heading into the studio. It's a very different take and I love it.

The collection wraps up with the B-side of Here Comes The Summer. One Way Love is two minutes and sixteen seconds of lyrical and musical brilliance in it's simplicity, fading out but leaving the feeling that the music will never stop. It certainly won't this weekend: The Undertones will be on a loop. And loud. 

1) Told You So (1980)

2) Family Entertainment (Album Version) (1979)

3) Window Shopping For New Clothes (1983)

4) Casbah Rock (1979)

5) Mars Bars (1979)

6) Smarter Than U (1978)

7) I Don't Wanna See You Again (1980)

8) Wrong Way (1979)

9) Julie Ocean (Single Version) (1981)

10) Turning Blue (1983)

11) Got To Have You Back (Cover of The Isley Brothers) (1983)

12) Jump Boys (1979)

13) She Can Only Say No (Single/Live Version) (1979)

14) Here Comes The Summer (Single Version) (1979)

15) Really Really (1979)

16) Beautiful Friend (Single Version) (1981)

17) Get Over You (Single Version) (1979)

18) Listening In (Album Version) (1979)

19) True Confessions (Album Version) (1979)

20) Jimmy Jimmy (1979)

21) One Way Love (1979)

1978: Teenage Kicks EP: 6

1979: Get Over You EP: 13, 15, 17

1979: Here Comes The Summer EP: 14, 21

1979: Jimmy Jimmy EP: 5

1979: The Undertones: 2, 4, 8, 12, 18, 19, 20

1980: My Perfect Cousin EP: 7

1980: Wednesday Week EP: 1

1981: Beautiful Friend EP: 16

1981: Julie Ocean EP: 9

1983: Chain Of Love EP: 3

1983: Got To Have You Back EP: 10

1983: The Sin Of Pride: 11Beautiful Friend EP

Side Two (45:07) (KF) (Mega)

Side One here

It's All Happening Here

Rounding off a spectacular week, I belatedly realised that I'd scheduled today's post for 7.30pm rather than 7.30am. Good grief.

Anyway, much later than intended but not too late to soundtrack the end of the weekend, here's a 45-minute selection of tunes that I've enjoyed so far this year. Not quite chilled out, the tempo is still relatively low, with a few dub inflections here and there and vocals dropping in and out.

Fitzroy Avenue by Warriors Of The Dystotheque comes with a slew of excellent remixes, which I've cruelly ignored here. Instead, I've laid Joe Duggan's isolated performance (a bonus track on the digital EP) over the opening minutes of Richard Norris' Spring - Alban Eilir 2 which, in it's original form, runs for a satisfying twenty minutes.

 

Andy Bell aka GLOK recently released a trio of remixes from his superb Pattern Recognition album. All three are very, very good as demonstrated by Sean Johnston and Duncan Gray's dubby rework of That Time Of Night. 

 

Next up is DjClick (born in France, based in Spain) and Masha Natanson (Poland), remixed by Transglobal Underground (based in London but without borders). DjClick's album Violins Against Bombs was released in 2022 and a remix companion came out at the beginning of April, available as a free download via Bandcamp.

 

I've recently enthused about Björk's remix of Shygirl and Más o Menos by Damian O'Neill, so they were a shoo in for this selection. I've gone for Kevin Sharkey's remix of the latter, which ups the Ennio Morricone vibe and mixes in a bit of a Mo' Wax vibe.

 

Emily Breeze is another favourite here. Confessions Of An Ageing Party Girl is a highlight of her current album Rapture. Bristol legends Grant Marshall and Stew Jackson - better known as Daddy G and Robot Club respectively - transform the song whilst losing none of it's narrative thrust.

 

Things come to an end as they must with the aptly titled At The Turning Of The Tide, from another Dubhed regular, 10:40 aka Jesse Fahnestock. 10:40's album Transition Theory has been on regular rotation and I feel just as strongly now as I did when it came out in February. If you haven't bought this album already, then you really should. Right now.

 

As it's another day at the grindstone tomorrow, normal service (and scheduling) will resume.

 

1) Spring - Alban Eilir 2 (Edit): Richard Norris

1.1) Fitzroy Avenue (No Effects Vox): Warriors Of The Dystotheque ft. Joe Duggan 

2) That Time Of Night (Hardway Bros Meet Monkton Uptown Dub): GLOK ft. Shiarra

3) Rusalkas (Transglobal Underground RMX): DjClick & Masha Natanson

4) Woe (I See It From Your Side) (Björk Remix): Shygirl

5) Más o Menos (Kevin Sharkey Remix): Damian O'Neill

6) Confessions Of An Ageing Party Girl (Daddy G vs Robot Club Remix By Grant Marshall & Stew Jackson): Emily Breeze

7) At The Turning Of The Tide: 10:40 ft. Emilia Harmony & Matt Gunn) 

 

It's All Happening Here (44:51) (Box) (Mega)

More Or Less...? Definitely More

más o menos, the opening song from Damian O'Neill's current album, an crann ("the tree"), was released as a single last week and included in my Bandcamp Friday haul.

Perhaps best known for being in The Undertones and That Petrol Emotion, Damian O'Neill has also released three solo albums, the latest containing (in his own words) "instrumental pieces that are emotional, evocative and personal and offer to the listener textures and layers of music that can be melodic, childlike and even melancholic at times."

 

Perfect soundtrack music in other words and más o menos ("more or less") is a great example and strong opener.

The three-track EP contains the five-minute album version plus a pair of remixes by Lionel from The Limiñanas and Kevin Sharkey* Before you ask, the latter is not former bandmate Feargal's "perfect cousin", but wouldn't that have been something?

 

The Limiñanas remix is a minute shorter but, if you hadn't heard the original, would sound very much like one of their own songs, not just in the musical treatment but with added vocals. Still perfect for a film soundtrack, but this would be a much different movie, an independent, art-house road movie where the two escapees are unlikely to make it at the end. If forced to choose, this is currently my pick of the three.

 

Kevin Sharkey's remix starts off with the sound of chatter, before drums, then bass, then further layers of sound start dropping in. An admittedly half-arsed search of t'internet has revealed little about Mr. Sharkey, other than he has deputised for drummer Billy Doherty in The Undertones for live gigs. 

 

There are elements of Andrew Weatherall's late period stripped back, percussive remixes, 1990s Mo' Wax and Barry Adamson's imaginary film score pieces without ever sounding like a pastiche or parody. This extended work is nearly as long as the first two tracks combined, yet still leaves you wishing it was longer.

 

  

The más o menos EP is currently available exclusively on Bandcamp but gets a wider digital release on 24th March. 

* I couldn't find a bio for Kevin Sharkey but he is name checked in an interview with Damian O'Neill about an crann by writer Malcolm Wyatt, which is well worth a read.

Summertime Special

It's Saturday. it's summer, it's (hopefully) a special day, so it's time at long last for The Undertones.

Side 1 of a mixtape, compiled some time in 1989 and one of my most treasured DIY cassettes, having been with me on many travels to different parts of the globe.

 

Hopping back a few years prior to this, my reawakened love for The Undertones was purely and simply the fault of my school friend Stuart. No, not the Stuart that I've mentioned here before, but another Stuart at another school (I moved house and schools a bit as a kid). Both Stuarts have ginger hair and that is pretty much where the similarity started and ended. 

 

One school coach trip, circa 1986, Stuart and I were sat together and talking about music. In all likelihood, I had hogged the coach's tape deck as I was usually the only one with the presence of mind to bring along some homemade cassette compilations. In fact our music conversation may well have kicked off with Stuart telling me what crap taste I had, as I remember that this led to him extolling the virtues of Feargal Sharkey and co, having recently bought the compilation Cher O'Bowlies: The Pick Of The Undertones.

 

It felt like everyone loved The Undertones, growing up. They seemed to always be on kids TV (Cheggers Plays Pop especially) and Top Of The Pops, their singles were extremely catchy and although Feargal Sharkey looked a bit naff in his jumpers and bad haircut, The Undertones were uniformly brilliant. However, by 1986, the band were already a distant memory and although Feargal Sharkey looked even more naff in his snappy suits and even worse haircut, the record buying public seemed to love him even more.

So, it's fair to say that The Undertones weren't foremost on my mind at the time of that conversation. Stuart didn't have Cher O'Bowlies with him on that school trip and I never got to borrow it from him. 

 

Around 1987/1988, my older brother was living in a bedsit on Jamaica Street in the Stokes Croft area of Bristol, then - as now - brilliantly placed off the city centre and in the heart of a vibrant community of pubs, clubs and creativity. A regular haunt, as it was just across the road from the bedsit and especially invaluable for the Sunday stumble in for a hair of the dog, was The Bell. Apart from it's convenient location and focal point, The Bell also boasted a truly brilliant jukebox, chock full of vinyl 7" treasures, including The Undertones' You've Got My Number (Why Don't You Use It!). I would play this every visit.

My brother also had two albums by The Undertones: the self-titled debut from 1979 and their record label's definitive closing statement from 1983, the singles compilation All Wrapped Up, A-sides on one disc, B-sides on the other, and sporting a striking if somewhat unrepresentative cover photo, as seen above.

I loved these albums and ended up 'borrowing' them when my brother went on the mandatory pre-University InterRail trip with a girlfriend, moving his stuff temporarily back home. Don't worry, unlike some of my record collection, which mysteriously went AWOL with near-identical copies turning up wherever my brother happened to be living at the time, I did the decent thing by returning his records and getting my own copies later on. 

By the time I recorded this mixtape, these two records by The Undertones were all I had and, to be honest, all I thought I needed. I've revised my opinion since I bought the rest of The Undertones' albums, although I still have absolutely nothing by the 21st century Feargal-free incarnation of the band.

Summertime Special (yes, intentionally named after the crap early 80s BBC TV variety show) is a beast of a compilation: 18 songs in a little over three quarters of an hour, a mix of hits, B-sides and album tracks; the common thread is that they are all brilliant. 

Girls Don't Like It is the second song on their first album, following Family Entertainment, but it was always going to be the opener on my planned mixtape, followed by the swift 1-2 of Teenage Kicks and True Confessions from the debut EP. No spoilers in saying that all four songs from the EP made it onto the cassette, Emergency Cases later on Side 1, Smarter Than U on Side 2.

 

As the 1980s arrived, The Undertones took a different musical turn, with a poppier, more soulful sound. Wednesday Week and Julie Ocean are wonderful songs but I can see that the band's appeal was (to quote from Spinal Tap) becoming more selective at this point and, until the All Wrapped Up compilation, I had no particular recollection of their later singles. 

 

I wrote last year about The Undertones' final single Chain Of Love's harmonica line and it's striking similarity to Culture Club's Karma Chameleon, released a few months later in 1983. I rate all of the later singles, particularly The Love Parade. The version on All Wrapped Up appears to be exclusive to the compilation, an edit of the 12" removing the keyboard intro with an early fade at the end, but retaining the middle instrumental section that was unsatisfactorily cut from fourth album The Sin Of Pride.

I don't think I quite managed to get the whole of The Undertones' debut and All Wrapped Up onto two sides of a C90 cassette, but I came pretty close. Rest assured that any favourites missing from Side 1 will almost certainly be on Side 2 when it eventually makes an appearance here.

In the meantime, put on your Doc Martens, turn up your jeans, zip up your Parka despite the summer heat, crank up the volume, press play and just let it all go. You can rest tomorrow.

 

1) Girls Don't Like It (1979)

2) Teenage Kicks (1978)

3) True Confessions (Single Version) (1978)

4) Life's Too Easy (Single Version) (1982)

5) Let's Talk About Girls (Cover of The Chocolate Watchband) (1979)

6) Billy's Third (Album Version) (1979)

7) It's Going To Happen! (Album Version) (1981)

8) Chain Of Love (Album Version) (1983)

9) Fairly In The Money Now (1981)

10) Wednesday Week (1980)

11) Emergency Cases (1978)

12) I Gotta Getta (1979)

13) My Perfect Cousin (1980)

14) Top Twenty (Single Version) (1979)

15) Male Model (Album Version) (1979)

16) I Know A Girl (1979)

17) The Love Parade ('All Wrapped Up' 12" Edit) (1983)

18) You've Got My Number (Why Don't You Use It!) (1979)

1978: Teenage Kicks EP: 2, 3, 11

1979: Here Comes The Summer EP: 14

1979: The Undertones: 1, 6, 12, 15, 16

1979: You've Got My Number (Why Don't You Use It!) EP: 5, 18 

1980: Hypnotised: 10, 13

1981: It's Going To Happen! EP: 9

1981: Positive Touch: 7

1982: Beautiful Friend EP: 4

1983: The Sin Of Pride: 8

1983: All Wrapped Up: 17

 

Side One (46:10) (Box) (Mega)