Still Praying To The Skies...!

Side 2 of a mixtape, originally recorded 20th July 1992.

 

When I previously posted Side 1 in July last year, it was with no commentary or fanfare. It was a couple of months into challenging myself to post every day, maybe I was tired, maybe I was late for work and didn't have the time to wax lyrical. Either way, I did a disservice as I really, really love this mixtape.

It's a snapshot in time: after a year travelling, I was a year into my second attempt at A-Levels and college, having dropped out six months into my previous attempt; I was also back home living with my parents "out in the sticks" (boo! hiss!) but I was in love with a beautiful woman (back off, Dr. Hook!). More importantly, I had my own set of wheels. Whilst I could barely afford to keep the car on the road, any money left over from my part-time job went on music and recreation.

I'd hear very little of the "club music" selected here when I was out and about, but it was the sound track to my excursions to and from college and occasional nights out in Bristol and Bath, when taxi fares were prohibitive and city centre bedsit flops were limited. I think I had less success in converting my girlfriend and other college compadres - The Levellers, Ned's Atomic Dustbin, Ozric Tentacles, Nirvana were more popular choices - but there was little denying the get-up-and-dance joy of, say, Opus III.

This isn't the first appearance of the 12" Mix of It's A Fine Day, written by Edward Barton and originally performed as a straight a cappella by Jane Lancaster in 1983. Opus III gave the song a trance overhaul, but it's Kirsty Hawkshaw's vocals that define this song. 

 

Side 1 contained several heavy hitters, starting off with In Yer Face by 808 State and taking in the mighty Hypnotone Mix of Cascades by Sheer Taft and Andrew Weatherall's unbeatable mix of Don't Fight It, Feel It by Primal Scream. The rest of the side saw several 1970s and 1980s artists rejuvenated by the exploding electronica and dance scene - Cabaret Voltaire, The Cure and Steve Hillage and Miquette Giraudy as System 7. Even the fey indie popsters were declaring there had always been a dance element to their music, in this case, Frazier Chorus to surprisingly good effect.

Side 2 similarly starts with 808 State, this time with indie darling Björk, and the start of what was the end of one partnership (with The Sugarcubes) and the beginning of another (with Graham Massey and other like-minded dance producers). There's less of Björk on this mix, but it's brilliant all the same.

 

Rainbow was the first Sly & Lovechild I heard, courtesy of a great remix by Mark Moore. It was a few years before I was able to track down the debut 12" and Andrew Weatherall remix, but Rainbow was an equally great single. A shame that chart success eluded the duo.

 

The Deee-Lite remix was taken from my girlfriend's copy of the Groove Is In The Heart 12" single, which was already popping and crackling like a breakfast cereal a year on. Likewise, my brother had the original Deconstruction 12" of Temple Head, which introduced me to an enduring love of Transglobal Underground and consequently, Nation Records.

 

I'd heard of The Sensational Alex Harvey Band, but I don't think I was particularly aware of Faith Healer at the time I bought this. My motivation was probably that Recoil was the solo project of Alan Wilder, formerly of Depeche Mode. Here, he's joined by Nitzer Ebb's Douglas McCarthy on vocals, with a ton of remixes on the 12" and CD singles. This one by Moby in his Barracuda guise, is the standout.

 

The selection closes with Treaty by Australian collective Yothu Yindi. I was in Australia when this song exploded. Aside from the fact that it was the first song by a predominantly Aboriginal band to chart in Australia and features significant portions sung in Gumatj, it was a perfectly timed song, protesting the lack of progress on the treaty between Aboriginal peoples and the Australian federal government, promised to be in place by 1990. Treaty initially didn't make the desired impact, but the subsequent remix by Filthy Lucre took it to the clubs and the singles chart. The song also had a global impact and the UK release sported remixes by William Orbit and K-Klass. The Filthy Lucre remixes remain the essential purchases. 

 

The inclusion of The Jesus & Mary Chain's Jim Reid as the mixtape cover star is slightly harder to explain. I can only assume that this was the only available clipping from my copies of NME or Melody Maker of someone looking up to, and thereby potentially praying to the skies. Sometimes, I was just that literal.

1) Ooops (Mellow Birds Remix): 808 State ft. Björk (1991)

2) Rainbow (Green Mix By Phil Nicholas & Doug Martin): Sly & Lovechild (1991)

3) What Is Love? (Holographic Goatee Mix By Satoshi Tomiie): Deee-Lite (1990)

4) Faith Healer (Barracuda Mix By Moby) (Cover of The Sensational Alex Harvey Band): Recoil ft. Douglas McCarthy (1992)

5) Temple Head (Zenana Mix By Aki Nawaz & Paul Tipler): Transglobal Underground (1991)

6) It's A Fine Day (12" Mix) (Cover of Jane): Opus III (1991)

7) Open Up Your Head (Vocalfield Mix By Leftfield): If? (1991)

8) Treaty (Filthy Lucre Remix By Gavin Campbell, Paul Main & Robert Goodge): Yothu Yindi (1991)

Side Two (46:18)

Side One here

Catching Sparks

Remembering that time I saw The Jesus & Mary Chain at The Studio in Bristol. 

It was 14th November 1989, a Tuesday night, and at that point I was a college drop out, working for a bank in a suburban high street. These were the days when the manager would smoke in his office; there was probably a bottle of the good stuff under lock and key, for the special customers.

Me, I spent days either in the back office, or on the counter, which was considered a 'step up', or clearing out the sodden, stinking confidential waste from the leaky metal shed in the back yard, the squatting rats and I trying to give each other a wide berth. Clearly, I was working there for the money, not the glamour.

A mid-week gig in the city centre therefore was a relatively rare thing, with an 8.30am start the following day and all hellfire unleashed if you were a minute late for work (although, perversely, a more liberal attitude to the traditional 'lunchtime drink').

Anyway, I must have raced from work to get there, picking up my friend Stuart on the way, as we were parked, up the external flights of stairs past the cinema to get to the Studio and get a decent spot in time for the start of the support act.

I knew nothing about The Perfect Disaster at the time and they were good as I (vaguely) recall, though my abiding recollection is that the lead singer was trying a little too hard to be Mick Jagger. It was the bass player, Josephine Wiggs, that lingers the most in the memory though, for joining The Breeders the following year.

As for the headline act, I was a fan, but not a massive fan, of The Jesus & Mary Chain. I had a clutch of singles and not a single one of their albums. However, Stuart had bought the current album, Automatic, and B-sides compilation, Barbed Wire Kisses, which I thought were great. 

My reservation was that I'd read in the music papers that J&MC gigs were at best chaotic, and that even headline shows clocked in at barely half an hour. What the hell would tonight be like?

It was all of the above and a lot more, to be honest. Jim and William and the rest of the band came on stage and launched into a couple of Darklands B-sides. Rider was noisy, scuzzy and scrappy, though nothing compared to Everything's Alright When You're Down. I had this on the 10" vinyl of Happy When It Rains and were it not for the F-bomb, could have been a single in it's own right.

It was four songs in before Automatic got an airing, and then four in a row, including exuberant single Head On. I knew these songs better than their predecessors from Psychocandy and Darklands, though any of the studio gloss that had been applied was stripped away, boiling the raw songs in a sea of noise.

I don't remember any between song banter or even a Ramones-style 1-2-3-4, one song seemed to go into the next in a relentless sonic assault. I recognised Nine Million Rainy Days from the live version on my double pack 7" single of April Skies, and when the title track was played, there was a near riot.

How do you top that? With Some Candy Talking and 1988's sizzling standalone Sidewalking, one more Automatic track (Gimme Hell) and one more April Skies B-side, the bloody brilliant Kill Surf City.

Then it was all over, the brothers Reid pissed off and didn't come back. I looked at my watch and they'd more or less played for an hour. What an hour, though!

Ears still ringing the following day, as I ran a seemingly endless success of cheques through the encoder, hoping to god that everything balanced so that we could get of work on time, I dreamt of greater things.

Three and a half decades later, I've a much greater appreciation of what an amazing pair of albums Psychocandy and Darklands were. Barbed Wire Kisses remains one of the greatest compilations by any artist ever and whilst Automatic is generally one of the less loved entries in The Jesus & Mary Chain catalogue, it holds a special place for me, as a record of those times, Stuart's mixtapes and especially that night in 1989 at the Studio.

I get to live it all again early next year, as The Jesus & Mary Chain are co-headlining with The Psychedelic Furs, including a date at the Beacon in Bristol. I've enjoyed their newer material too, so I'm really looking forward to see them (both) again.

In the meantime, here's the customary Dubhed recreation of that night. Setlist doesn't have details of the Bristol gig but as previous nights have an identical 17-song set, I'm pretty confident that it was the same. 

Catching Sparks is lifted from the lyrics to Head On and is a pretty succinct summation of this 55-minute mixtape. 

1) Rider (Single Version) (1987)

2) Everything's Alright When You're Down (Single Version) (1987)

3) The Hardest Walk (Album Version) (1985)

4) Coast To Coast (Alternate Take / William Vocal) (1989)

5) Halfway To Crazy (Album Version) (1989)

6) Head On (Album Version) (1989)

7) Her Way Of Praying (Album Version) (1989)

8) Taste The Floor (Album Version) (1985)

9) Nine Million Rainy Days (Album Version) (1987)

10) The Living End (John Peel Session) (1985)

11) Who Do You Love (Cover of Bo Diddley) (1987)

12) Take It (John Peel Session) (1988)

13) April Skies (Single Version) (1987)

14) Some Candy Talking (NME version) (1986)

15) Sidewalking (Single Version) (1988)

16) Gimme Hell (Album Version) (1989)

17) Kill Surf City (Single Version) (1987)

1985: Psychocandy: 3, 8

1986: NME's Big Four EP (NME promo 7"): 14

1987: April Skies EP: 11, 13, 17

1987: Darklands: 9

1987: Darklands EP: 1

1987: Happy When It Rains EP: 2

1988: Sidewalking EP: 15

1989: Automatic: 5, 6, 7, 16

2000: The Complete John Peel Sessions: 10, 12

2011: Automatic (Expanded Edition): 4

Catching Sparks (55:14) (GD) (M)

Praying To The Skies...!

Side 1 of a mixtape, originally recorded 20th July 1992. 
 

1) In Yer Face (In Yer Face Mix): 808 State (1991) 

2) Don't Walk Away (Remixed By Cabaret Voltaire & Parrot): Cabaret Voltaire (1991)

3) Cascades (Hypnotone Mix By Tony Martin) (Edit): Sheer Taft ft. Ingrid Kudos (1990)

4) Nothing (Has Been Proved Mix By Chad Jackson): Frazier Chorus (1990)

5) Don't Fight It, Feel It (Scat Mix By Andrew Weatherall & Hugo Nicolson): Primal Scream ft. Denise Johnson (1991)

6) Let's Go To Bed (Milk Mix By Mark Saunders): The Cure (1990)

7) Freedom Fighters (Praying By The Sea Mix): System 7 ft. Aniff Cousins, Monday Michiru & Zoë (1991)

Side One (45:03)