Weatherall Remix Friday Five

1990's Andrew Weatherall output is pretty definitively Weatherall- Loaded, Come Together, Soon, Come Home, Only Love Can Break Your Heart, Hallelujah, Bomba- technicolour, widescreen, everything thrown in, acid house/ indie- dance madness, era- defining stuff. There are a few outliers from 1990 though, remixes that don't quite fit into the ecstatic nature of the list above, like this remix of Meat Beat Manifesto, with The Orb's Thrash assisting on studio technical duties...

Psyche Out (Sex Skank Strip Down)

Bass heavy skanking with dub- techno rhythms, a scratchy vibe with a fragment of female vocal, a moan. It's got an underground, afterhours, everything gone south feel that prefigures the Sabres sound by a few years and some of his DJ sets of the mid 90s that had a hip hop groove. There's some of the Two Lone Swordsmen Virus With Shoes minimalism in there too. 

Meat Beat Manifesto's industrial hip hop was trip hop before it was a thing, before it had a name, massively influential. Main Meat Beat man Jack Danger's released Radio Babylon in the same year, a destroyer of a record, with a huge rapid fire breakbeat, the chant of 'Babylon' and fuzzed up bassline capable of causing mayhem. Combining samples of Cheryl Lynn, Boney M, The Troggs and Mikey Dread on one record is genius enough in itself. 

Radio Babylon

Forty Five Minutes Of Sandinista!

I think I've said before that while Sandinista! may not be the greatest Clash album, it is their most adventurous, their most inventive and where the spirit of the band truly lies. Once they realised that they couldn't play 1977 and Garageland forever, they had to move on and that led them backwards into their record collections (rockabilly, blues, reggae, ska, dub) and forwards into the future (rap, hip hop, funk). They went from White Riot to Death Is A Star in six years, exploring everything they could along the way. Joe said in Westway To The World, that they went out to engage with the world in all its infinite variety (or something similar). They were never going to be stuck playing Borstal Breakout for the rest of their lives.

London Calling was the purest distillation of this, nineteen perfectly pitched slices of Clash. Sandinista! was The Clash doing whatever they wanted across the course of a year- 1980- starting with the recording of Bankrobber in Pluto Studio, Manchester and leading them back to London, to Jamaica and to New York. The idea that Sandinista! could have been a superb single disc album or double vinyl opus or a killer EP misses the point. Sandinista! is complete Clash. The roots of all of Joe's solo career, from his soundtracks to Earthquake Weather to the three albums with The Mescaleros are in Sandinista! as are the origins of Big Audio Dynamite. Fast forward to the 21st century and Mick and Paul turn up in Damon Albarn's touring version of Gorillaz, a band playing a hybrid, pick 'n' mix version of dub, pop, hip hop, funk, and whatever else- that's Sandinista! 

Forty Five Minutes Of Sandinista!

This is not an attempt to produce a perfect version of the album, a reduced version or a best of. It's some of Sandinista! mixed together, some of the lesser known songs and the ones where the spirit of Joe Strummer, Mick Jones, Paul Simonon, Topper Headon and the rest of the cast that contributed to the sessions can be found, a cast that takes in Mickey Gallagher and Norman Watt- Roy (The Blockheads), Tymon Dogg, Mikey Dread, Ellen Foley, Don Hegarty (Darts), Gary Barnacle, Ivan Julian (Voidoids), Style Scott, Pennie Smith and cartoonist Steve Bell. There's something about the songs too which lend themselves to being sequenced together, seguing from one to another.

• Mensforth Hill
• The Crooked Beat
• Broadway
• Rebel Waltz
• One More Time
• One More Dub
• The Street Parade
• Something About England
• Up In Heaven (Not Only Here)
• If Music Could Talk
• Washington Bullets

Mensforth Hill is Something About England played backwards, the tapes reversed and with bits of Joe's studio chatter from New York's Electric Ladyland dropped in, the whooshing and rushing effects fading in and out. On the album it sits between Charlie Don't Surf and Junkie Slip. Here it is a slow, experimental entry to forty five minutes of deep Clash.

The Crooked Beat is Paul Simonon's tribute to South London blues parties with a lovely wandering dub bassline. Recorded in September 1980 it was one of the last songs recorded for the album, produced by Mikey Dread who drops in some additional vocals at the end. 

Broadway is a Strummer masterpiece, a mellow, late night, jazz inflected song for the bars of NYC. Joe's lyrics concern a meeting with a homeless man and former boxer in New York, Joe riffing on the sights and sounds of the city at night, a Scorcese film set to music. 

Rebel Waltz is a true hidden gem in the group's back catalogue and the album's tracklist. The lyrics are pure Strummer, a dream of armies and the losses of war. The music is Mick experimenting with playing a waltz crossed with dub, recorded at Wessex in London. The Clash as a folk band, in the truest sense of the word.

One More Time and One More Dub have to be taken together, the superb Clash- reggae of the first half dubbed out by Mikey Dread for the second. Joe sings of the poverty of the ghettoes, the civil rights movement and the Watts riots of 1965.

The Street Parade is another lesser known gem, hidden away at the end of side five on vinyl. On release some listeners may have taken ages to get to side five. The Street Parade is about losing oneself in the crowd, Strummer disappearing into the mass. The music is gorgeous, Topper and Mick showing by this point they could turn their hand to anything and do it well, with horns and marimbas carrying a Latin feel.

Something About England is a key Strummer- Jones song, marrying English music hall with lyrics spanning the 20th century, the wars, the Depression, the rebuilding of the cities and the British class system, Joe and Mick trading verses in character. 'They say the immigrants steal the hubcaps/ Of respected gentlemen/ They say it would be wine and roses/ If England were for Englishmen again', Mick sings at the start, the racism of Farage and Braverman rooted in the late 70s. 

Up In Heaven (Not Only Here) is one of Sandinista!'s few out and out rock songs, a Mick Jones guitar song with ringing lead lines and crunching riffs. Mick sings of the tower blocks he grew up in and the lives of the people that live in them. 'The wives hate their husbands/ The husbands don't care'.

If Music Could Talk is a New York song that began in Manchester, jazz blues of late night bars and not one but two Joe vocals. The backing track was recorded at Pluto with Mikey Dread and then added to later, sax wailing and floating on top. Joe's words take in Bo Diddley, Errol Flynn, Isaac Newton and Samson. 

Washington Bullets seemed the perfect place to close (though I was tempted to put one of side six's dubs last) if only because it finishes with Joe singing the album's title over the organ as it fades out. Lyrically Joe casts his eye over the USA's foreign policy in the 20th century, Chile, Cuba and Nicaragua (and the USSR's too in Afghanistan and Tibet) with a mention for Victor Jara, the Chilean singer, poet, writer and activist murdered by the CIA backed coup in 1973. Musically it started as many songs did, Topper arriving in the studio first and messing around while engineer Bill Price pressed the record button. The others would turn up one by one and start overdubbing and soon, as Bill Price says, 'we had thirty- five songs'. 

Taking Cover In The Bunker Tonight

I've said it before here and I'll probably end up saying it again, Sandinista! may not be the best Clash album but it could well be their greatest achievement- thirty six tracks over six sides of vinyl, covering every conceivable style of music they could think of, self produced at various locations from Pluto Studio in Manchester to The Power Station in New York and Channel One in Kingston, Jamaica, with a range of guests and extra players (including but not only Ellen Foley, Norman Watt Roy, Mickey Gallagher, Tymon Dogg, Mikey Dread, Ivan Julian, Den Hegarty, Gary Barnacle, Lew Lewis and Style Scott) and the band believing they were getting one over on CBS by putting out six sides of vinyl at a pay no more than £5.99 price. 

Every side (well, almost every side, side six is admittedly an opinion splitter) has stone cold classic or genuine lost/ hidden gems and even a conservative estimate would say the following songs were essential Clash- The Magnificent Seven, Something About England, Rebel Waltz, The Crooked Beat, Somebody Got Murdered, One More Time and One More Dub, Up In Heaven (Not Only Here), Police On My Back, The Call Up, Washington Bullets, Broadway, Charlie Don't Surf, Kingston Advice and The Street Parade. Tucked away on side five is possible the most Sandinista!- esque of all the songs on Sandinista!

If Music Could Talk

The music is from recoding session done with Mikey Dread at Pluto in February 1980, an instrumental backing track called Shepherd's Delight (which re- appears in dub form at the very end of side six), clearly derived from juices flowing while they recorded Bankrobber in Manchester in the snow. Now moved to New York and inspired by the city, it's nightlife and the people that live there, Joe Strummer lays down an astonishing stream of consciousness talking blues, reeling in a cast including Bo Diddley, Errol Flynn, Joe Ely, Sir Isaac Newton, the sale of London Bridge to a town in Arizona, Buddy Holly and Elvis, a voodoo shaman and Samson, Fender guitars and Mexican suits, the drummer man, wall Street and Electric Ladyland. 'Let's hear what the drunk man's got to say', he exclaims at one point. Later on, Strummer ad libs into a conversation with a girl he bumps into in a bar and asks if she needs 'a cowboy in bus depot jeans'. 

Strummer, Jones and engineer Bill price split the vocals into the left and right channel, two Strummers at once. Sax comes from Clash friend Gary Barnacle, overdubbed in Wessex back in London later on and as the horn wails away and the dub backing thunders on, Joe's voice comes in from left and right, the sound of New York at night captured and of music talking. 

More Mores

Three more mores. The High came out of Manchester in 1990, four men with their backgrounds in various previous groups (not least drummer Chris Goodwin who was in an early version of Inspiral Carpets and guitarist Andy Couzens who left The Stone Roses when manager Gareth Evans convinced Squire and Brown that the song writing should be credited to them alone). The High's debut album Somewhere Soon and the singles that surrounded it were all fine fare, Byrdsian guitars, swirling 1990 rhythms and the clear voice of singer John Matthews. A year later they released More..., the lead song from a four track EP that should have taken them to the next level, it's chiming guitars and sweet singing were ready made for the charts and some music press front covers in 1991 but it all fell apart. 

More...

From a decade earlier, The Clash and the unmistakeable voice and influence of Mikey Dread on Sandinista! One More Dub is the second half of the righteous rock- reggae song One More Time with the rhythm section of Simonon and Headon proving they've mastered the dub swing. One More Dub closed side two of the six sides of Sandinista!, a perfectly paced, pitched and sequenced side of vinyl- Rebel Waltz is one of the group's lesser known gems. Look Here is a bizarro world cover of Mose Allison' modern jazz. Then comes Paul Simonon's The Crooked Beat, his writing contribution to the album, a superb bassline and spoken/ sung vocals about South London blues parties. After that we're into the screeching tyres and sweeping, breathless, sleek rock of Somebody Got Murdered and then the One More Time/ One More Dub double bill. 

One More Dub

On their 1994 single Sour Times, one of the stand outs from their debut album Dummy, Portishead presented three new versions of the song. Lot More opens with some scratching and a vocal sample, one phrase borrowed from a Black Sheep record, before the bassline from Lalo Schifrin's Danube Incident kicks in and Beth Gibbons pours her heart out. There was a point in 1994 when everyone was listening to Portishead. 

Lot More

Isolation Mix Six

I got this dramatic shot of the sky over the Mersey on Thursday night. One habit I hope I manage to maintain once this is all over, whenever that is, is taking regular walks. You miss so much sitting inside and even the most familiar and mundane places can look different when caught at a particular time. This week's Isolation Mix is a dubwise and post punk excursion from The Clash, some dubbed out Joy Division covers, Bauhaus, The Slits, Killing Joke remixed by Thrash, a bunch of Andrew Weatherall dub versions and some On U Sound from Dub Syndicate.



The Clash: The Crooked Beat

Steve Mason: Boys Outside (Andrew Weatherall Dub 2)

Jah Division: Dub Will Tear Us Apart

Jah Division: Dub Disorder

Bauhaus: Bela Lugosi’s Dead

The Slits: I Heard It Through The Grapevine

Dub Syndicate: Ravi Shankar Part.1

Sabres Of Paradise: Ysaebud

New Order: Regret (Sabres Slow ‘n’ Lo)

Lark: Can I Colour In Your Hair (Andrew Weatherall Version)

Killing Joke: Requiem (A Floating Leaf Always Reaches The Sea Dub Mix)

Stop Wasting Time

Sunday night ended up with a bit of an impromptu gathering in our garden due to it being a bank holiday Monday the following day and very warm and sunny. The drinking started at about 5pm and carried on through til late. The neighbours were all given the benefit of various albums and compilations playing from inside the house out into the garden, starting off with the Mastercuts Classic House comp (vinyl, sounding a bit crackly and worn in places), then the first four sides of Sandinista!, with the switch from Voodoo Ray to The Magnificent 7 working very well indeed. Sandinista! works really well on cd, and Mick Jones' remastering on the Sound System edition is spectacular, revealing new delights with almost every listen.

Side 2 of Sandinista! is essentially a Clash mixtape, opening with Rebel Waltz, a much overlooked moment of brilliance, a Mose Allison cover, some sweltering Simonon dub (The Crooked Beat), a blinding rock song (Somebody Got Murdered) and then The Clash and Mikey Dread kicking it out in a proper reggae style with One More Time and it's dub sister. One More Time is Strummer's depiction of ghetto poverty and the civil rights movement of the 60s, with the band on fire in the Electric Ladyland studio. It is followed by Mikey Dread's heavier dubbed out version.

One More Time
One More Dub

Strummercamp

We're away this weekend, camping up in the Lake District. If we weren't I'd be going along to Strummercamp, the annual Joe Strummer bank holiday festival held at Manchester Rugby Club in Cheadle. This year's line up features Spear Of Destiny, The Membranes, TV Smith and Department X, and good vibes with good people. If you're nearby and at a loose end, day tickets and weekend tickets are still available. Say hi to DJ Gadge if you see him.

Clash time. This is a ten minute unofficial mix of Bankrobber plus it's versions Robber Dub and Rockers Galore (with Mikey Dread on the mic), flowing into one another. Turn up the bass.

Bankrobber/Robber Dub/Rockers Galore

I'm not back until Monday so no posts til Tuesday I expect. Enjoy your weekend.

Clash Dub (Reprise)

Sorry if you're getting bored of The Clash but....

I've been enjoying The Clash's dub tracks a lot recently. By 1979 they had got the hang of playing something pretty close to 'proper dub'. Not just the punky reggae of Police And Thieves or Pressure Drop but a real appreciation of the space and technique required. Paul had mastered the basslines and the feel, Topper could play anything asked of him and when they hooked up with Mikey Dread they got some authentic Jamaican input. Mikey Dread performed live with the band on many occasions and did his dubwise versions on several single releases as well on Sandinista (most of side 6). The single Hitsville UK, Mick's tribute to the UK's independent record labels, was backed by six and half minutes of lovely dubbed out playing with Mikey toasting...

Radio One

And there's a bonus offcut too- not sure this appears on any official releases (mine's off the This Is Dub Clash bootleg).

Radio One (Reprise)

You can't beat a duffle coat either.

The Great Sandinista Parlour Game

While driving to the campsite during half term I made my family listen to Sandinista. All six sides, one hundred and forty four minutes, over two cds. No-one really objected. Mrs Swiss hummed along to the songs she knew. I continued to find songs I didn't know. While settling down outside our tent I did think about instigating the Great Sandinista Parlour Game but thought it might be pushing it.

The Great Sandinista Parlour Game- in other words, can the six sides and thirty six songs of The Clash's fourth album be trimmed and condensed into one twelve track killer album? Joe Strummer thought not- in Westway To The World he said some people thought it would've made a better double album or single album or e.p. but he rated it as ''a magnificent achievement'' and loved it ''warts and all''. Topper reckons it could be a lot shorter, as does Paul. Mick thinks it's perfect for people living on oil rigs or who are away from home a lot. In typical Clash style they thought that by insisting on a triple album, following London Calling (a double), selling at 'no more than £5.99' they'd be sticking it to CBS. CBS agreed on the proviso that they waived all royalties on UK sales until it sold 300,000 copies. To date it still hasn't. They also became obsessed in the studio with it having six songs per side, thirty six in total, which probably explains the inclusion of some songs. Anyway, here we go...

The Magnificent Seven- Invents rockers do rap, with Mickey Gallagher & Norman Watt Roy. In.

Hitsville UK- Mick's lightweight, poppy tribute to UK indie scene, sung by Ellen Foley. Out.

Junco Partner- bluesy/reggae cover of New Orleans song. Good. Maybe.

Ivan Meets G.I. Joe- Cold War disco face off, sung by Topper. Out.

The Leader- rattling two minute rockabilly version of Profumo affair. Maybe.

Something About England- lost masterpiece, tale of the 20th Century, sung by Mick & Joe. In.

Rebel Waltz. A waltz. Out.

Look Here. Jazzy stomp. Fun but inessential. Out.

The Crooked Beat- Paul's tribute to reggae and south London. Great bassline. Maybe.

Somebody Got Murdered- sublime guitar rock with great Mick vocal. In.

One More Time- Heavy reggae ghetto rocker. In.

One More Dub- Dub version of above. Out but only because of duplication.

Lightning Strikes (Not Once But Twice)- funk rock, Blockheads again. Out I think.

Up In Heaven (Not Only Here)- Mick's attack on poverty. Post-punky. Out.

Corner Soul- militant reggae rock (again). Good but... Out.

Let's Go Crazy- Clash samba. Who else did this kind of thing? Still, out.

If Music Could Talk- Mad talking blues, with squawky saxophone. Joe's favourite, so...In.

The Sound Of Sinners- So they did a gospel song. Because they felt like it. Out.

Police On My Back- blistering cover of Equals song. Clash albums need great cover versions. In.

Midnight Log- cool dubby rockabilly. Maybe.

The Equaliser- dub but not about Edward Woodward. Maybe.

The Call Up- disliked by some, but a dead groovy anti-war song. In.

Washington Bullets- laid back history of Latin America. Name of album comes from this. In.

Broadway. 2am in a bar in New York song . Great Joe vocal. In.

Lose This Skin- Tymon Dogg's fiddle song due to chance meeting in NY. Diverting but...Out.

Charlie Don't Surf- Apocalypse Now inspired fluid funk-rock. Maybe.

Mensforth Hill- Something About England played backwards. Listening Squire & Brown? Out.

Junkie Slip- skiffle anti-drug song. Out.

Kingston Advice- sparkling Clash reggae. Yes.

The Street Parade- superb, dreamy, melancholic, steel band, ode to being lost in the crowd. In.

Version City- dub. Out.

Living In Fame- more dub, with Mikey Dread. Out. Probably.

Silicone On Sapphire- sci-fi, fx, dubish. Out.

Version Partner- dub version of Junco Partner. Out. It's not that I don't like the dubs but...

Career Opportunities- Mickey Gallagher's kids sing old Clash song. Fun but... Out.

Shepherd's Delight- weird, acoustic/found sound/tape manipulation track. Far out but Out.

Which gives us...

Side 1 The Magnificent Seven, Junco Partner or The Leader (New Orleans blues or rockabilly? I can't choose between them, help), Something About England, The Crooked Beat, Somebody Got Murdered, One More Time, If Music Could Talk.

That's seven songs on side 1, one must go- sorry Paul, it's The Crooked Beat I think.

Side 2

Police On My Back, The Call Up, Washington Bullets, Broadway, Kingston Advice, The Street Parade.

Which makes a damn good Clash album. With a dub version as a limited edition follow-up. But without the anything goes, try everything spirit which makes Sandinista so bewildering and unwieldy but so good and so interesting. It's been said before but if anyone tried this today they'd have critics and the Mercury prize falling over themselves to praise it. As it is, it was slammed at the time and still has a mixed reputation today. Maybe the Sandinista Parlour Game is futile, maybe Mick and Joe's opinion is the right one. And, as for this post, in the words of Joe halfway through the first track, 'fucking long this innit?'

The Street Parade