An Hour Of Weatherall Covers

We all love a good cover version don't we? The reconstructing of a familiar song in a new form, the buzz of hearing someone do a song differently, irreverently or lovingly, and the nodding of the head to influences and inspirations. At times cover versions can also seem a bit lazy, a way out of writer's block or something thrown together for B-side at a late hour and under pressure, but when done well and with the right intent, they're a joy. 

In two weeks time it would have been Andrew Weatherall's 60th birthday had he lived. There are a series of events taking place nationally throughout April to celebrate this- a full on night at Fabric in London with a huge line up of DJ talent together with nights in Glasgow, Belfast and Todmorden, all places with strong Weatherall connections and crowds. I'll come back to the Todmorden one nearer the time (29th April) with more details but it does include a second ride out for The Flightpath Estate DJ team (which includes yours truly). I expect to run several Weatherall posts over the next few weeks- that's probably not much different to usual round here, he does tend to feature fairly often- and thought I'd kick off with this one, a mix for Sunday of cover versions Andrew either recorded as an artist himself or other other artists he remixed. It is not surprisingly a fairly eclectic bunch of songs and artists. It now occurs to me that I should have put the originals together as a mix too so maybe that will follow at some point a companion piece.

Fifty Five Minutes Of Andrew Weatherall Cover Versions

• Carry Me Home
• Only Love Can Break Your Heart (A Mix Of Two Halves)
• Witchi Tai To (2 Lone Swordsmen Remix)
• The Drum (Andrew Weatherall Remix)
• A Love From Outer Space (Version 2)
• Sex Beat
• Slip Inside This House
• Goodbye Johnny (Andrew Weatherall's Nyabinghi Noir Mix)
• Faux/ Whole Wide World

Carry Me Home is a cover of a Dennis Wilson song from 1973, a wracked funereal blues for a dying soldier in Vietnam that was written for the 1973 album Holland but was left off. 'Life is meant to live/ I'm afraid to die', he sings. Primal Scream's version which Andrew produced is from the Dixie- Narco EP, a very downbeat and beautiful way to pay homage. Andrew and Hugo Nicolson's mix of instruments and production is stunning, Duffy's electric piano at the start and the acoustic guitar and cello in the end section especially so. 

Only Love Can Break Your Heart is a Saint Etienne cover of a Neil Young song. I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that. Andrew's remix sent the song into a dubbed out bliss, Augustus Pablo- esque melodica in the first half (played by Pete Astor of The Weather Prophets), the Jean Binta Breeze dub poetry sample in the middle cutting the track in half, and then the song appearing in the second (along with the Jean 'cool and deadly' sample). 

Witchi Tai To was a 2007 single by X- Press 2, the Two Lone Swordsmen remix adding the live drums of their sound from that period and matching the Wrong Meeting albums of the same year. The original was a a 1971 single by Jim Pepper, a Native American singer and saxophonist who took a peyote chant his grandfather taught him and turned it into a hybrid jazz/ Native American song. X- Press 2's cover was sung by Tim de Laughter of The Polyphonic Spree. 

The Drum was a single for The Impossibles, an Edinburgh duo who made early 90s jangly indie- pop. The original is a Slapp Happy song from 1974. Weatherall's remix, from 1991, is a lesser known one from his early 90s hot streak, a tour de force of throwing whatever is at hand in the studio/ imagination at a remix and it working. Andrew was ably assisted by Hugo Nicolson on this one too. 

A Love From Outer Space was the calling card from the 2013 album by The Asphodells, the outfit he formed with Timothy J. Fairplay after they had bene working together on remixes and their own material and realised they had enough for an album. Andrew's vocals were a big feature of The Asphodells (following on from the Two Lone Swordsmen records of the previous few years where he stepped up to the mic for the first time since the early 80s). A Love From Outer Space also became the name of his traveling club night, with compadre Sean Johnstone, a night never knowingly exceeding 122 bpm. The original song is by late 80s one offs A.R. Kane, a duo of dreads who made spaced out dub/ dreampop. 

Sex Beat was a Two Lone Swordsmen single in 2004 and on the From The Double Gone Chapel album of the same year, a radical shift in sound and style after the pure electro of 2000's Tiny Reminders. Andrew and Keith Tenniswood becoming a garage band with Nick Burton on drums and Chris Mackin on guitar. Sex Beat was such a blast when it came out in 2004, an energetic swerve in the road to somewhere new. Sex Beat was on The Gun Club's 1981 debut Fire Of Love, a blues/ rockabilly/ Southern Gothic classic. Leader, singer and writer Jeffrey Lee Pierce pops up again in this mix in the form of Goodbye Johnny.

Slip Inside This House is a cover of The 3th Floor Elevators song from their 1967 album Easter Everywhere, the second song on Primal Scream's 1991 opus Screamadelica, a juddering statement of acid house intent after the rock n' roll opening of Moving On Up. Hypnotone's Tony Martin was involved in the production of this track too. It was sung by Throb. Bobby Gillespie is said to have bene suffering from 'acid house flu'.

Goodbye Johnny was on Primal Scream's 2013 album More Light. It came from a covers project that paid tribute to Jeffrey Lee Pierce. Weatherall's spaced out remix tips its hat to the Nyabinghi sound of African Head Charge, a big influence on Andrew. 

Faux/ Whole Wide World comes from a Radio One session from 2004. Faux was the first single ahead of From The Double Gone Chapel, a scuzzed up slice of electro- rockabilly, combining rapid programmed drums and fuzz guitars with Weatherall vocals and lyrics about the love of his life, Elizabeth Walker. As a touring band Two Lone Swordsmen had a habit of working Faux into Wreckless Eric's Whole Wide World, a peerless 1977 single. At the time Andrew was recommending the new album then just released by Eric, Bungalow Hi, a record Andrew described as 'like Duane Eddy meets Aphex Twin'. The recording here is ripped from a radio session, never officially released. There was a version on the Rotters Golf Club website for a while too, part of a three song session they recorded playing at the Bloc Weekender. Of all the lyrics that swirl around Andrew's world and outlook, 'I don't do faux', is as good as any. 

I Cry Glory And Wave My Flag

Back at the start of the year it was announced that Andrew Weatherall and Nina Walsh's Woodleigh Research Facility would be releasing a year long series of three track digital only EPs, one a month. The first one at the end of January was an EP called Into The Cosmic Hole. When it came out it was a fascinating piece of work, three sonic messages from Facility 2- the weird, shamanic title track, the robotic machine science fiction- electro of Phonox Special No 1 (Outer Space) and the homage to Stockholm Monsters and Martin Hannett of Birthday Three. Eleven more of these would be a superb way to mark the passing of the year, a year long advent calendar of the weird, the wired and the wonderful. Sadly, by the time the second release came out at the end of February he was gone. 

2020 has been coloured by Andrew's passing for me, even with everything else that has happened. It's a strange thing to be moved by the death of a person you don't know and it's not anything compared to what his family and close friends felt and are feeling still. His sudden death on February 17th brought a stream of loss and grief across social media. My Facebook and Twitter timelines were almost nothing but Andrew Weatherall for days. The broadsheet newspapers and the BBC news covered his life and career (he always baulked at that word when interviewed). Then the world then shut down. Events to celebrate Andrew's life were shelved. The Flightpath Estate (a Facebook group I co- moderate with another fan, Martin Brannagan) began to grow, from three hundred fans to well over a thousand. People from Andrew's real life began to join the group, the boundaries between fans and family and friends dissolving. Part of the increasing membership came from some press interest in the Weatherdrive, an online resource of Weatherall DJ mixes spanning the period from 1990 to 2020, from the heyday of acid house to ALFOS. Mixmag picked up on it and asked The Flightpath Estate if we'd like to write an article about the 10 best of Andrew's DJ sets on the Weatherdrive. 

The Woodleigh Research Facility release campaign continued, updates from Andrew's studio life, a monthly reminder that he was gone but still there. The recordings present a vast range of sounds but are clearly the work of the same people, Andrew's intuitive nature and vision along with Nina's creativity and studio production skills. As the months have ticked by I've played these EPs, some more than others admittedly, and noticed how the W.R.F. releases seem to echo music he made in the previous three decades, reverberations from the past into the present. The lengthy running times, like the remixes of the early 90s where the music has space and time to unfold at its own pace. David Harrow said that when they were in the studio making music as Blood Sugar listening to what they'd done, he'd often be ready to change the drum pattern or bring a new element in, and Andrew would say, 'let it go round again', and the track would be extended out for another pattern/ 12 bars. The trademark hissing drum machines and mechanical rhythms point back to the music he released on his three Emissions labels in the 1990s and the stranger, more abstract, one off recordings he made, such as the Glowing Trees 12" he put out as Meek. The topline melodies point to the sound of Sabres of Paradise, especially the Haunted Dancehall album, and the bass- heavy mutant electro of Two Lone Swordsmen records. The metallic hi- hats and rattling snares sound like the ones on the TLS remixes of twenty years ago. The dub influence resonates through the Woodleigh EPs and through so much of his previous work (and DJ sets). The esoteric song titles could come from any point in his back catalogue. 

The monthly EPs will have given us thirty six tracks by the end of the year, a huge amount of music from someone whose creative flow was clearly in full swing. Looking back, even if you pick four songs from completely different parts of his back pages, there's clearly a line running through everything. He reinvented his sound and moved from one identity to another, zigging when others zagged, from the remixes accompanied by Hugo Nicolson to Sabres of Paradise to Two Lone Swordsmen to The Asphodells to his solo records to WRF, but it's all part of a body of work with common themes and a unifying vision. Even the stuff that is outlying and on the fringes- the secret side projects, the machine funk aliases like Rude Solo and Frisch und Munter, the panel beating techno of Lords Of Afford, the odd folk music of his Moine Dubh label, the shadowy collective Fort Beulah N.U. who made five one sided white label 12" singles- fits into the world he created. He'd often play it down, be self- deprecating and modest, saying he was just a grand amateur, but the music is endlessly inventive. Even when he seemed to have driven himself down a one way road he'd manage to pull off a deft three point turn and come back with something else, something new. 

Jockey Slut, started in Manchester as a dance music fanzine and then became something much bigger, and interviewed the man many times. In the summer they announced they were going to publish a special edition book, Andrew's interviews for the magazine compiled along with some new material (including an oral history of the acid house and Sabres years and a Richard Norris article). The book began to drop through letterboxes last week. Towards the back there is a double page spread about The Flightpath Estate and the Weatherdrive and its thousand hours of DJ mixes spanning Weatherall's career, based around an interview with Martin. Towards the bottom of the page, and this was a surprise to me as I leafed through it for the first time, is my name and this blog's name. 

Which, as that man on The Fast Show used to say, was nice. 

It was more than nice, it was incredible. A few people have since commented on social media that they were drawn back into the orbit of Andrew's music because of this blog, which is amazing and lovely to hear. It's what music blogging is for, to share the music and the world it's created in with other people. In a way music blogs are just an updated version of the fanzines of the 1980s, but with far less photocopying and Letraset. That this blog has become a minor footnote in the story is crazy, humbling and when I think about it, a bit mind-blowing too. 

In an attempt to close the year in which he left I started to put together a mix of some of Andrew's music. I wondered if I could somehow manage to summarise his vast and varied back catalogue into one handy hour long compilation but I realised almost immediately this would be an impossible task. In the end I chose a couple of  Two Lone Swordsmen tracks as a starting point and then went where it took me, throwing in quite a few of the ones he sings on, some remixes, some tracks that only came out on compilations and often just went with whatever the previous track seemed to suggest as a follow up. It ended up being a little over ninety minutes long and you can find it at Mixcloud. 

Audrey Witherspoon’s Blues

• Two Lone Swordsmen: Constant Reminder
• Two Lone Swordsmen: Light The Last Flare
• X- Press 2: Witchi Tai To (Two Lone Swordsmen Remix)
• Two Lone Swordsmen: Patient Saints
• Andrew Weatherall: The Confidence Man
• Woodleigh Research Facility: Birthday Three
• The Asphodells: One Minute’s Silence (Wooden Shjips Remix)
• Andrew Weatherall: Kaif
• Michael Smith and Andrew Weatherall: Water Music
• Radioactive Man: Fed- Ex To Munchen (Andrew Weatherall Remix)
• Andrew Weatherall: Youth Ozone Machine
• Andrew Weatherall: Cosmonautrix
• Andrew Weatherall: Saturday International
• Two Lone Swordsmen: Tiny Reminder No 3 (Calexico Remix)
• Two Lone Swordsmen: Sex Beat
• Andrew Weatherall: Privately Electrified
• Two Lone Swordsmen: Get Out Of My Kingdom

I Guess I Must Be Having Fun

David Byrne played at The Apollo on Monday night and it was quite a night. Byrne had promised in advance that this tour was ambitious and it definitely did things differently in terms of staging and presentation. The stage was completely bare of any of the standard rock 'n' roll equipment- no amps, no drum riser or drum kit. As we took our seats all that was on the stage was a metal legged table and a chair under a single spotlight. At 8.45 he appeared, singing Here to a rubber brain. Dressed in a grey suit and shirt and barefoot, grown out white hair, he looks every inch the intellectual and artist. But things heat up very quickly after this arty intro. My friend, DJ, who got me the ticket, saw the show in Birmingham the night before and said that the crowd remained mostly seated throughout until the encore. From the moment the band hit the opening notes of the second song, his 2002 hit with X-Press 2 Lazy, the Manchester crowd is on its feet and dances until the end.

The band are all, in Byrne's words, 'untethered'. All dressed identically, grey suits and shirts and barefoot, the eleven players are free to move around. The guitar and bass have no leads, the keyboard player has his keys in front of him on a harness, again no leads, there are two hardworking backing vocalists/dancers and anywhere up to six drummers, standing up samba-style playing a variety of drums and percussion instruments. The show is highly choreographed. No backdrop or projections except for a silver metallic curtain and at one point a light as a TV set but the lights change the shape of the stage. Lit from low down hge shadows engulf the back wall during one song, genuinely exciting to look at. At times the eleven band members stand in a line, at times they move in circles or file in and out, some walking forwards as others move back. Lots of this seems to be a visual nod to Stop Making Sense. At the close of one song the lights go out and when they come up again the band are all lying down. On another they all stand on the right hand side and then stagger to the left, as if at sea in rough weather. All of this is very clever and very stylised and could run the risk of being too theatrical were it not for the playing and the songs. At no point do I wish they'd drop the artifice and just play the songs. The songs, the dancing, the show- all add up to something hugely imaginative. 

Lazy is bright and breezy, full of bounce, and followed by I, Zimbra, monumentally funky and African influenced. They follow that with Slippery People. At this point I'm pretty much in David Byrne gig heaven- his voice is strong, his dancing energetic (and at times wonderfully in sync with his backing dancers) and the band are playing fully realised versions of the Talking Heads songs you want played at a gig. He throws in songs from other projects he's had along the way, one from the album he did with St. Vincent and one from his record with Fatboy Slim and a few from solo records (Like Humans Do). The songs from the current album American Utopia slip in seamlessly, less arch in concert than on disc. Anyone else who had written something as influential and massive as Once In A Lifetime would play it as an encore. David Byrne plays it at about the half way point, a single spotlight following his jerky dancing along the lip of the stage. It's all astonishing stuff- loud, clear, full of energy and the band and David are clearly enjoying the songs as much as we are. The set closes with two Talking Heads songs, first a blistering version of 1988's Blind, a song I hadn't expected and have loved since the day it came out, and then a red hot dance through Burning Down The House, the stage drenched in red light. To top this the first encore gives up The Great Curve (to join Remain In Light's Born Under Punches, played earlier), groundbreaking funk in 1981 and still ahead of the curve now. The group then stand in a line and play a cover of Janelle Monae's Hell You Talmbout, minimal drumbeat and chanting voices- essentially a list of black men killed by white Americans. The tour is sold out. David is bringing the show back in December, to arenas. My advice, if you want to see someone doing something other people don't or can't and doing it as well as you can imagine, is to get a ticket. The heat goes on, as he reminds us forcefully in Born Under Punches, the heat goes on. 

Lazy (Full Version) 

Boy's Own Stuff

Compilation albums are ace- I don't mean a single band's Greatest Hits or Best Of (although they can be ace too) but compilations of a theme, time period, genre or record label- and cd suits this type of compilation perfectly. You get one disc of 80 minutes worth of music pulling together a range of releases that together make some kind of thematic sense and that soundtrack a time, place, mood, whatever.  Recently I've been listening to the pair of Junior Boy's Own Collection comps- the first one mainly, the one with the mock cigarette cards cover, the second one less so (the one done to look like The Eagle comic). I've had the first one on vinyl for years but found both on cd in a charity shop last week for a pound each and couldn't help myself. The first one has eleven early 90s dance tracks all of which have merit. Some are bona fide classics- Lemon Interrupt's harmonica-house epic Bigmouth, X Press 2 (appearing twice), Underworld's definitive pairing of Dirty Guitar and Rez (their best song? I think so), The Dust Brothers' Song To The Siren. The others have aged well, much better than I'd expected- Farley and Heller's Fire Island project (two songs including Paradise Factory anthem There But For The Grace Of God), Roach Motel's Movin' On, 3rd Eye and Outrage. This JBO compilation is a document of a time and place, or several places, and of ephemeral music, made quickly to be played in clubs to make people dance, but has actually stood the test of time. So, picking one at random, let's have X-Press 2 (Rocky, Diesel and Ashley Beedle) with some four to the floor action.

London X-Press

More Audrey

This came out a couple of months before the pair of Two Lone Swordmen Wrong Meeting albums in 2007. It was a pretty big signpost for where Weatherall and Tenniswood were heading. They took a house track by X-Press 2 and replaced the housey stuff with guitars and live drums. This song soundtracked a drive to mid-Wales and short holiday in a log cabin near Aberystwyth, along with Sister Vanilla (on the cd I mean, not sharing the cabin with us). I thought Weatherall going scuzzy garage rock was a cool move. I still do. His Pox On The Pioneers lp from last year was on heavy rotation round these parts.

Witchi Tai To was originally a hit for a Native American jazz musician, Jim Pepper, back in the 70s. He based it on a Native American chant he'd learnt as a child. X-Press 2 (Junior Boys Own, hit single Lazy with David Byrne) got the bloke out of Polyphonic Spree to sing on their version. Weatherall duffed it up. Result- a totally unexpected TLS remix.

Witchi_Tai_To_(Two_Lone_Swordsmen_Remix).mp3