One-off songs or artists with an interesting backstory.

Screaming Lord Sutch: Til the Following Night (1961)

In later years Screaming Lord Sutch was better known for being the founder of the Official Monster Raving Looney Party in Britain and standing in various electorates (from '63) in weird outfits. He's in the opening scenes of The New Statesman standing against Alan B'stard (Rik Mayall). In the Stones' Get Off Of My Cloud, Sutch was the "guy all dressed up like Union Jack". But back... more >>

Added: 28 Oct 2011 1 Comment

Glen Campbell, Freddy Fender, Michelle Shocked: Witchita Lineman (1997)

With the release of his excellent, dignified final album Ghost on the Canvas, there has been attention understandably turned to his great period as a hit-maker with Jimmy Webb songs in the late Sixties. But here's a rare one, Campbell re-doing the Webb classic Witchita Lineman with Michelle Shocked on backing vocals and Freddy Fender sharing the lead. The band, the Texas Tornados,... more >>

Added: 27 Oct 2011

Tom Waits: Young At Heart (2006)

According to Tom Waits, "My wife just thinks it's hilarious," he said of this cover of Frank Sinatra's popular song. "She says, 'You sound so goddamned depressed singing it . . . I don't believe that bullshit for a minute. Young at heart, my ass!' " When Waits did cover this lovely if sentimental song -- which was a hit in 1953, so big that the 1954 Sinatra/Doris Day... more >>

Added: 26 Oct 2011

Koko Taylor: Wang Dang Doodle (1960)

Although you never need an excuse to play this strutting Willie Dixon-penned classic from Chess Records' studio with the great Koko Taylor growling her way through it, it does seem timely on this very day as Tom Waits' new album Bad As Me has a terrific track inspired in part by its raw spirit. Waits' Satisfied might nod to the Rolling Stones' Satisfaction in its lyrics when it names... more >>

Added: 25 Oct 2011

Bessie Banks: Go Now (1964)

Before they found fame in 1967 with their orchestrated pop on the album Days of Future Passed (and the hit single Nights in White Satin), the Moody Blues out of Birmingham, England were just another pleasant and servicable pop band of the Beatles era. On their debut album The Magnificent Moodies of '65 they had a stab at James Brown's I'll Go Crazy, the Berry-Greenwich tune I've Got A... more >>

Added: 24 Oct 2011

Professor Longhair: Her Mind is Gone (1980)

There are dozens of places you can start on a discovery of the genius of New Orleans' legendary pianist/arranger and songwriter Professor Longhair, the man Allen Toussaint called "the Bach of Rock". Dr John said Longhair "put the funk into music, he's the father of the stuff" and producer Jerry Wexler acclaimed him as "a seminal force, a guru, the original creator of... more >>

Added: 21 Oct 2011

Johnny Devlin: Matador Baby (1958)

It's widely known that Johnny Devlin was New Zealand's own Elvis Presley -- but unlike Elvis, Devlin wrote his own material. Certainly he covered the hits of the day -- Hand Jive, Wild One, Bony Maronie and so on. But he also wrote some creditable originals like Hard to Get, High Heeled Shoes, Nervous Wreck and so on -- which all were firmly within the genre of Fifties rock'n'roll as we... more >>

Added: 20 Oct 2011

Tommy Steele: What a Mouth (1960)

What You Tube allows us to see is how the Beatles in 1963 and early '64 -- as they were proving themselves and didn't quite have full career control -- were going down the same route as most British acts, that of being the "all round family entertainer". By appearing on populist television shows (Morecambe and Wise etc) and doing panto-like things (mock Shakespeare, see clip... more >>

Added: 19 Oct 2011

The Goldebriars: Sing Out Terry O'Day (1964)

One of the pleasures of digging around through old vinyl for Elsewhere's pages From the Vaults is in discovering the occasional overlooked classic, the rare or the just plain peculiar. Rummaging through discount bins takes time but there are often cheap rewards, in this case very cheap. What attracted me to this $3 album wasn't just the fact the two women were wearing kimonos and had... more >>

Added: 18 Oct 2011

The Contours: First I Look at the Purse (1965)

One of the first groups signed to Berry Gordy's Motown label, the Contours had a huge hit with the much-covered Do You Love Me ("now that I can dance") which was in the set of Beatles-era bands like the Dave Clark Five, the Hollies and the Tremeloes. After their next couple of songs failed to ignite it seems they were relegated behind the more successful Temptations, Smokey... more >>

Added: 17 Oct 2011 1 Comment

Green Pajamas: Just a Breath Away (2000)

Although many tried -- especially in the Britpop era -- to bottle the essence of the Beatles' music at the cusp of marijuana and LSD (Rubber Soul and Revolver), few managed it with as much maturity, sensibility and persuasive power of the song as Green Pajamas out of Seattle, and they frequently did it at the time when grunge affection was sweeping the planet. The Pajamas' mainman Jeff... more >>

Added: 12 Oct 2011

Ian and Sylvia: You Were On My Mind (1964)

When the British singer Crispian St Peters died in June 2010, many were shocked at his age. He was 71, and yet back when he was spinning hits like You Were on My Mind and Pied Piper in the mid Sixties he seemed so much younger than his Lennon and McCartney peers. His career was a short one, not helped by him publically denouncing the Beatles as "past it" (if memory serves... more >>

Added: 11 Oct 2011

Bob Dylan: Positively 4th Street (1965)

When you have guitar, a voice, a studio and an expectant audience -- and some degree of vitriol to be delivered -- why would you not fire off this bitter salvo at former friends you might feel (rightly or wrongly of course) who have betrayed you? Not many songs begin with such an arrestingly confrontational lines as, "You got a lot a lotta nerve to say you are my friend, when I was... more >>

Added: 10 Oct 2011 1 Comment

Genya Ravan: Junkman (1979

By the time New York singer Ravan got to her album And I Mean It, from which this track is taken, she'd already had a few careers: she'd been the singer in the Escorts in the early Sixties (the line-up included soon-to-be-producer Richard Perry); she was Goldie of Goldie and The Gingerbreads who scored a top 10 UK single with Can't You Hear My Heartbeat (produced by Alan Price of the Animals)... more >>

Added: 7 Oct 2011

Tupac Shakur: Picture Me Rollin' (1996)

Is there a more sad song in the retrospect than this, after Tupac (assailants "unknown") was gunned down? The great poet of rap gets into a beautiful low, confidently cruising but melancholy groove while giving himself some big-ups because, after all, those punk police have passed on and now we need to picture him at the top of his game . . . Yeah. Rolling . .... more >>

Added: 6 Oct 2011

Tony Bennett and Amy Winehouse: Body and Soul (2011)

Yes, March this year doesn't seem to be digging too far back in the vaults . . . and maybe even that notion of "vaults" might seem a little distasteful to some given Amy Winehouse dying so recently. But here is a measure of the high regard in which she was held by someone who knows his way around a standard, 85-year old Tony Bennett, who paid the warmest and most intelligent... more >>

Added: 5 Oct 2011

Tom Waits and the Kronos Quartet: Diamond in Your Mind (2007)

With a new Tom Waits album Bad As Me due in late October (his first studio album in seven years), it is timely to prime the pump with a little known item From the Vaults. In 2007 at a concert in New York's Avery Fisher Hal in the Lincoln Centre, Waits and the Kronos Quartet joined a line-up which included Anoushka Shankar, the Gyoto Tantric Choir, Native American flute player R. Carlos Nakai... more >>

Added: 3 Oct 2011 1 Comment

Roger Waters: Money, demo (1972)

One of the most interesting aspects of popular music reissues is when an expanded edition of a classic album or artist offers their working drawings of songs which became -- usually much embellished or in some later form -- massive hits. Back in the Eighties Pete Townshend of the Who began offering his double-vinyl home demo albums under the banner Scoop, the Beatles' Anthology had some... more >>

Added: 27 Sep 2011

Jessi Colter: Diamond in the Rough (1976)

The sassy Jessi Colter was married to the late Waylon Jennings and was something of a rarity in the Seventies, she was a woman (and a confident, songwriting woman at that) and part of the almost exclusively male "Outlaw Movement" out of Austin. She had equal billing on that cornerstone Wanted! The Outlaws album in '76, appeared on the controversial White Mansions country-concept... more >>

Added: 26 Sep 2011

t.A.T.u.: All the Things She Said (2002)

This Russian duo of Lena Katina and Yulia Volkova might have been created and marketed by Moscow producer Ivan Shapovalov with all the ruthless and media-savvy smarts of Malcolm McLaren, but at least they were interesting. Photoshoots, handholding and interviews suggested the two young girls -- both in their early teens -- might have been lesbians . . . but they played it up with such... more >>