My First Gig

My first ever gig has been on my mind this week, it’s probably as good a time as any to drop it here. Not the first gig I played at. That was Padiham Town Hall, I’ll come back to that some other time. I mean the first I attended, as an audience member. Remember when people did those things on Facebook where they’d write down their first ever gig, best gig, worst gig, last gig they saw, etc. etc. etc… I looked at them all with smug satisfaction because the first gig I can remember being taken to properly was better than everybody else’s. Okay, I saw my Dad do a gig in Germany with the remnants of Heritage and possibly another one with his country band. Country band you ask? Okay, okay, you’re making me digress here but go on then. In that mythical 12 year period where Joe Madden stuck his bass under the bed it did come out occasionally. He played with a group of fellow country and western enthusiasts from Burnley’s Michelin tyre factory. They were called The Macintyres. That’s pretty fucking witty, especially in a Lancashire accent.

You went and threw me off there. My first proper gig was in 1991, it was at Colne Municipal Hall and we watched Ronnie Spector. Beat that. You can’t, so stop trying.

It came at the perfect moment in my life, when I was starting to listen to soul music, the Beatles, the Beach Boys and all the other threads that would tangle together and make me over the coming years. I was also starting to become “a problem teenager” so my Mum saw it as an ideal way to keep me off the streets of Burnley centre for an evening. Nicky came too, imagine that! He must’ve been 10 or 11, even more impressionable. The one thing that Nicky and me can remember is that the hall was two thirds full at best and she performed like it was the greatest honour of her life to be in Colne that night. We both felt like she was looking directly at us and singing to us personally. Maybe she was, who knows? Maybe she looked out and thought, “Oh how lovely, some children came!” Maybe she thought that about Nicky anyway, I think I was already past six foot and my days of being “cute” were a distant memory, even for my Mum.

It was my first time watching a soul singer, my first time watching a 60s legend, my first time watching a true professional working with dignity in circumstances that must’ve stunk for her. It tied all that grand, American teenager music together for me, elevated it to a religious experience and I loved it. I still do. Kate does as well, we have a Ronettes poster in the kitchen. Beat that.

You can’t, so stop trying.

Anyway, she was on my mind this week as I listened to a lot of early Beach Boys music again. It’s well documented that Brian was obsessed with Phil Spector, Brian surpassed Phil for me but Phil was a genius too. His legacy became truly toxic the day he murdered a woman but I don’t think any of us were caught off guard. When we heard a dead woman had been found at Phil’s nobody thought “I wonder how that happened?” You just thought, “that’s the last we’ll see of Phil Spector, they’re finally going to lock him up.” Brian thought Phil Spector was after him in the late 60s. When he went into full blown drug paranoia he thought Phil had his place bugged. He made fellow Beach Boys and associates come for meetings in the pool where Phil’s bugging devices couldn’t hear. He was obsessed by this dangerous guy, had borrowed heavily from his style and his pool of musicians. Maybe worrying about repercussions from Phil Spector wasn’t Brian’s most paranoid moment come to think of it.

Ronnie isn’t Phil though, she’s wonderful. I stumbled on these two videos during the week, the first is of Brian finding out that Ronnie covered Don’t Worry Baby on a radio show. The second is of Ronnie visiting Brian before one of his 2002 shows, presumably when he was touring Pet Sounds with his new band of Wondermints. His reaction in both is of such wonderful, innocent joy that it would melt any heart. Except Phil Spector’s obviously.

A World Without Sly

Obviously as well as a world without Brian, this week we’ve been forced to contemplate a world without Sly. I’ve really been contemplating it though, thinking about how without him there’d be no Funkadelic, Parliament or Bootsy not to mention Jungle Brothers or De La Soul. And so much, much more. But this is me and I’m not all that cool so I was thinking a lot about jazz fusion. Sly was totally responsible for fusion, you might not like that but I do. Sly was so cool that Miles Davis was utterly obsessed with him, leading to the likes of Bitches Brew and eventually On the Corner. Apparently jazz fans were upset by the latter, thinking he’d abandoned jazz for good when they heard it. Bizarrely I’ve had a vinyl copy of it for about 20 years, I picked it up in a pile at an auction and I’ve never listened to it. Some fusion fan I am. I gave it a go this week to rectify that. Here’s my late review- it isn’t as good as Bitches Brew but it’s still great. Oh and if you don’t like fusion you’ll hate it. Maybe start on the second tune Black Satin. It’s a bit more of a manageable starter portion.

It probably pissed Miles off when his former protege Herbie Hancock did a better job of assimilating Sly’s funk influences on Headhunters. It just works, even though it’s another four track fusion album it seems economical and streamlined by comparison. It’s even got a tune called Sly on it. I wonder if news got through the guarded doors of the crack den to let Sly know there was a tune on Headhunters named after him. I hope so.

Herbie and Chick

I’ve always known about Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea’s duelling pianos tour, it’s been lurking in my thoughts since the 90s. I never bothered with it, thinking of it as probably being a bit gimmicky, but then this morning I watched this version of Maiden Voyage. I’ll probably have to watch every video I can find now as this is truly breathtaking. You’re always told that music is a language but you will rarely see two masters in flowing conversation like this, enjoying seemingly telepathic exchange of ideas. Watch it and then watch it again, they never interrupt or trip over each other, they never flounder or lose their idea. They swap constantly between lead and accompanying each other, switch ranges and textures seamlessly. It’s like the whole thing is meticulously planned and rehearsed. But it isn’t. This mind was blown.

Would You Believe

I often think about how we all believed if we ever got signed to a record label we’d have finally “made it.” Little did we know it just meant you’d entered into the first stage of a filtering process that almost nobody comes through to the other side of, you’ll probably just be another forgotten band who’ve made a largely forgotten record. Billy Nicholls must’ve thought it was game on when as a 16 year old he got signed to Immediate and released an album of swinging 60s psychedelia intended as Andrew Loog Oldham’s answer to Pet Sounds. It was arranged by John Paul Jones and produced by Ronnie Lane with all of the Small Face lending a hand here and there. It didn’t really happen for Billy at the time although he has had a decent career as a writer and sideman since. When we toured with the Who a couple of years ago he was onstage as a backing vocalist and percussionist, he seemed a very likeable and enthusiastic sort. I was happy to see his teenage debut getting a repress on Bandcamp this week, it’s of its time but full of charm.

And By The Way…

Speaking of re-presses me and Billy listened to a new pressing of These Were the Earlies this week. It’s fucking gorgeous. I don’t know about you but I’m going to buy it again.