Saturday Live

Back in January I started this series of posts featuring live gigs and sessions with a 1992 performance by Verve at Camden Town Hall, a band who conjured up an expansive psychedelic guitar experiment- four young, thin men from the wilds of Wigan with suede jackets, scuffed boots and long straggly hair, playing in the outer reaches. This is in the pre- The Verve days, just Verve. There's another long form clip on Youtube of the band a year later at London Astoria, recorded for late night music TV programme The Beat on a Monday night in October 1993. There are fours songs played from what was clearly a longer, full length gig- Star Sail, Slide Away, Virtual World and Blue. 

It is, and this isn't a word I like to use often, epic stuff, from the time of their first album, the psyche/ shoegaze/ indie masterpiece A Storm In Heaven. In the twenty minutes shown here the four men play from within a bubble of noise crated by Nick McCabe's guitar and pedals, an atmospheric and engulfing stormcloud of feedback, notes, distortion and melody. The drums, bass and Richard's vocals all come from within that, the four elements in some kind of perfect balance. 

After I posted Verve at Camden Town Hall I was gifted a bundle of early demos and recordings which included these two versions of Slide Away. The first was I think recorded in Wigan in 1990, very lo fi and with a peeling wail of feedback running through it as Simon Jones' bass rumbles away with that familiar undertow groove. 

Slide Away Demo #1

Slide Away Demo #2

The song eventually came out in September 1993, on 7" and 12" and CD single. The video has our intrepid starsailors lost in the wilderness a long way from home. 

Saturday Live

I thought this might be a good idea for a Saturday series, so I'll kick it off today and see how far it runs before I/ we all get bored of it. A month ago I posted a song by Verve, the early pre- The, Verve, four skinny wastrels from Winstanley college, Wigan who formed to playa  friend's house party and quickly became psychedelic adventures, built around a pummelling rhythm section, a rake thin, long haired, wide eyed, charismatic frontman and the skyscraping, shoegaze x Hendrix guitar playing of Nick McCabe. I posted the song Gravity Grave, an eight minute northern epic and a link to Jesse Fahnestock's 10:40s edit of the early B- side One Way To Go. In the comments Jesse recommended that for the full early Verve experience we should watch the fifty minute film of their gig at Camden Town Hall in October 1992 (actually it was 23rd October 1992, for those of you who are twenty three fans). 

It's professionally filmed, presumably for a regional music programme, nine songs long, starting with Slide Away and ending with Gravity Grave. The first few minutes alone are worth the price of entry, McCabe's silvery, distorted guitar lines cutting through the darkness and blue light. Ashcroft sings in that wasted, psychonaut way he had when they started, swimming like a mermaid when the band are playing the instrumental breaks (they're not really breaks, they're integral to the songs). The group ebb and flow, a slow burning energy, totally controlled but loose as you like, and then there's an explosion of guitar at five minute forty that could skin a cat. 

All In The Mind, their first single, follows, a song about getting in a car with an older woman who tells him, 'You were born to fly my son/ I say 'hey I already know'/ Because it's all inside'. Around Richard's words McCabe blows up buildings and sucks planets into black holes. To jump to the end, Verve are joined by a white shirted flautist and some stage divers. The flautist is as cool dancing, her hair flying around, as she is adding some atonal flute to Gravity Grave's sonics. Richard bounces, arms outstretched. Nick plays guitar like the Silver Surfer might sound, arriving ahead of Galactus in a blur of noise, feedback and chaos. I'm not sure they ever quite captured this on record but bless 'em, they tried. 

Slide Away

Monday's Long Songs

Back in the early 90s Verve appeared out of the wilds of Wigan, four skinny pale boys with straggly hair, suede jackets and desert boots, looking like the existed on a diet of cigarettes and LSD with the occasional bag of chips for nourishment. They were a swirling psychedelic monster, space rock that soared and swooped. Guitarist Nick McCabe didn't appear to be much interested in chord progressions and verse- chorus dynamics but in texture and tone, FX and reverb, runs of notes that were like pinpricks of light against the inky black heavens. The rhythm section thundered away, a bedrock that elevated the group's noise away from the shoegaze bands and towards the skies. As a calling card and statement of intent their debut single, 1991's All In The Mind and its B-sides One Way To Go and A Man Called Sun, is a hard to beat. This incarnation of the group got lost after the release of A Storm In Heaven in 1993 (although A Northern Soul has its moments too). They were forced to add The to their name. Inter- band relations and constant touring took their toll. Singer Richard Ashcroft, 'Mad Richard' in the press in the early 90s, began to be more interested in mid- paced, universal balladeering than stratospheric dream psyche. These things happen. 

Gravity Grave, released in October 1992 is eight minutes of the above, a delay affected bassline, big drums and a squeal of guitar, then more guitar and FX and Richard singing into the wind, 'My life is a boat/ Being blown by you/ With nothing ahead/ Just the deepest blue'. The song shifts a few times, breaking down into bass and drums, some harmonica and then builds again, Nick McCabe playing like a Winstanley version of Hendrix but mainly it's all about the moment, being alive inside the song as the groove goes on. 

Gravity Grave

In case you haven't noticed, over in Stockholm Jesse Fahnestock has been running an advent calendar of musical delights, his 10:40 recordings re- presented, clearing the decks ahead of a new album next year. On 3rd December, behind door number three, was a 10:40 edit of One Way To Go, that 1991 B-side dubbed out and extended, Richard's vocal going backwards and forwards, eventually meeting itself in the middle of the seven minute trip. You can get it here for free. 

The entire 10:40 advent calendar of releases is free, a festival of music with releases- edits, original tracks and remixes spanning dubbed out rock, laser beam festival electronics, wonky hip hop, chuggy Balearica and Tom Waits boneshaker blues. It is going on every day until the big day comes this weekend. Dig in and feed your head here.