From the Vaults

The Rolling Stones: I'd Much Rather Be With The Boys (1965)

9 Sep 2024 | 1 min read

Right at the end of the Rolling Stones doco Charlie is My Darling -- which captures extraordinary footage of a brief tour in Ireland in '65 with a stage invasion and general mayhem -- we see the Stones goofing off and playing a song that was a rarity. This one. And its rarity value is two-fold. First it was credited to Keith Richards and their manager Andrew Loog Oldham, and second that... > Read more

Rodrigo Amarante: Tuyo (2015)

2 Sep 2024 | 2 min read

For a Netflix series awash with drugs, guns, bloodshed, serial smoking, violence, impossibly large amounts of money and hedonism, the theme song to Narcos by the Brazilian singer-songwriter Rodrigo Amarante is ineffably sad. The narcocorrido ballad – a style of music from the borderlands of Mexico and the US which alludes to drug smuggling – was written by Amarante (who had been... > Read more

The Cure: A Forest (1980)

26 Aug 2024 | <1 min read

Because it is so familiar – the band play it at almost every show and it is the go-to song for archetypal Cure – it is hard to remember how innovative and different it seemed at the time. Melodically and in its tone, it wasn't too far removed from their debut single, the often misunderstood and Camus-inspired Killing An Arab. But the swathes of keyboards and prominent bass... > Read more

Half Man Half Biscuit: Time Flies By (When You're the Driver of a Train) (1985)

19 Aug 2024 | 1 min read | 2

Never let it be said Elsewhere doesn't listen to its constituency. When the cry went up more than a decade ago, "Why no Half man Half Biscuit at From the Vaults?" the solution was obvious. (The answer however is, because they're pretty awful -- but that's neither here nor there) For those who have lived happy and fulfilled lives in the absence of any knowledge of this often... > Read more

Status Quo: When My Mind is Not Live (1968)

12 Aug 2024 | <1 min read

For the past 50+ years, Status Quo have been a heads-down boogie band in denims and "rockin' all over the world". So it's hardly surprising people would know them for nothing more than that enjoyably reductive style. However . . . For a few years in the late Sixties the original band (with the inevitable line-up changes) flirted with trippy hippie rock of the psychedelic... > Read more

Paul McCartney: Twenty Flight Rock (1974)

5 Aug 2024 | 1 min read

In the large and detailed book which came with the recent reissue/remixes of John Lennon's Mind Games, there is an interview with Lennon and Yoko Ono at the time. In it Lennon says what he misses in his solo career was just sitting down and playing with the group. And, as seen in the Let It Be/Get Back movies, when they got together their default position would always be just to jam on the... > Read more

Ernest Tubb: It's America, Love It or Leave It (1965)

29 Jul 2024 | 1 min read

The great patriot Ernest Tubb has appeared at From the Vaults before with his mind-numbingly awful It's For God and Country and You, Mom written by Dave McEnery. Ernest clearly like to keep things simple and in the same year he recorded this little pearler by Jimmy Helms. It became adopted as a satirical statement by those hippie draft-card burners who objected to America'... > Read more

The Fall: Fiery Jack (1980)

22 Jul 2024 | <1 min read

This character-driven rant-cum-diatribe came to attention again recently on the massive post-punk Moving Away From the Pulsebeat compilation. Singer/declaimer Mark E Smith sounds a bit young to be delivering this piece from the viewpoint of a damaged, angry 45-year old who rails against the world while fighting his corner as someone under the bottle, living off lousy food but with a... > Read more

Surf Mesa: ily/I Love You Baby. (2019)

14 Jul 2024 | 1 min read

One of the reasons for joining a gym is to listen to the relentless beat-driven, repetitive banger pop they play by people you've never heard of. The musical standard is so low that anything you choose to play at home, no matter how appalling your taste, will be far superior. Most of what I hear at the gym is music where the singer finally gets the pleading faux-sensitive line right (helped... > Read more

The Beatnix: Woman (1994)

8 Jul 2024 | 1 min read

As they like to say, “there's a lot to unpack here”. At the height of Beatlemania, Lennon and McCartney were knocking off songs for others to cover – notably McCartney although Lennon is credited with saying “Let's write a swimming pool” because he saw there was money in it. McCartney was prolific and offering exceptional songs like Step Inside Love to... > Read more

Ken Nordine: Roger (1957)

1 Jul 2024 | <1 min read

Ken Nordine looked like an ad executive in the Fifties: buttoned down, horn-rimmed glasses and hair neatly bushed and oiled. Sounded like one too with a confident and stentorian baritone which was often used in radio advertisements. But something very strange ticked inside him, a weird intellect capable of surreal juxtapositions of ideas and imagery. He invented “word jazz”... > Read more

The Beatles: Can't Buy Me Love (1964)

24 Jun 2024 | 1 min read

Sixty years ago this week the Beatles were in New Zealand for their only tour. Beatlemania ensued. The story of how they came to be here and the details of that Australasian tour are told in When We Was Fab, a new and thorough book by Andy Neill and Greg Armstrong. It is more than just an eye-witness account from scores of sources but a well-illustrated social history which also goes... > Read more

Tom Waits: Mr Henry (1980)

17 Jun 2024 | <1 min read | 1

Here's a beautiful old rare one -- with surface noise included -- taken from that period when Waits was writing barfly short stories in song. This outtake from the Heartattack and Vine album of 1980 only ever appeared on an Asylum compilation Bounced Checks ('81) and that record hasn't been released on CD. This isn't on any streaming services that I can see either. So here is... > Read more

LaVern Baker: Voodoo Voodoo (1961)

10 Jun 2024 | 1 min read

The sudden revival of Wanda Jackson's career - courtesy of Jack White and the album The Party Ain't Over in early 2011 -- has singled her out as a great female rock'n'roller at a time (the late Fifties) when she was out there on her own amongst all the boys. Not exactly true. There was also -- albeit briefly -- Janis Martin (whose hit My Boy Elvis she co-wrote with Aaron Schroeder... > Read more

Eartha Kitt: The Heel (1955)

3 Jun 2024 | <1 min read

She might not have been the best Catwoman* because she was a little past her best, but the great Eartha Kitt straddled sultry pop, blues-noir and cabaret. She was also in a Faust film by Orson Welles (playing Helen of Troy), her suggestive Santa Baby became a classic (and was covered by Madonna) and in this dramatic track she imagines white powder in his drink as she, a jealous woman,... > Read more

Chris Knox: Baby You're a Rich Man (1987)

1 Jun 2024 | <1 min read

It has been 15 years since Chris Knox had that debilitating stroke, and by coincidence it is almost 60 years since one of his favourite bands toured in New Zealand. This month, this astonishing portrait of him by Dita Angeles is on display at the National Portrait Gallery in Wellington. It captures the sadness and resilience of a remarkable man. As a small tribute we got this song... > Read more

Brix E. Smith and Nigel Kennedy: Hurdy Gurdy Man (1991)

27 May 2024 | 1 min read | 2

Tribute albums can be dodgy: some are fun, and the more obscure the artists the better they get. But you are wise to avoid the Joy Division tribute A Means to an End which features those household names Honeymoon Stitch, Girls Against Boys, Starchildren and godheadSILO. Or any of those to Tom Waits. But how can you resist an album of Donovan songs sung by the likes of bands with names... > Read more

Sunidhi Chauhan and Vishal: Naa Puchho (2007)

20 May 2024 | <1 min read

More scenes from the global village? While walking through Kuala Lumpur's Little India I heard this track rocking out of the speakers in a small record shop. I was transfixed: urban, English language in place, Hindi in others, samples from car horns, block rockin' beats, ellectric guitars, hip-hop in the house . . . As it turned out this was from the soundtrack to a Bollywood... > Read more

The Beatles: It Won't Be Long (1963)

12 May 2024 | 1 min read

The album With the Beatles captured the essence of Beatlemania of the period. In the US some of the tracks, along with I Want to Hold Your Hand and songs from their Please Please Me debut album in Britain, were repackaged into Meet the Beatles. And that was what Americans heard. Then there was the US Beatles' Second Album which was very rock'n'roll and a pretty good as a compilation.... > Read more

Yes: Every Little Thing (1969)

6 May 2024 | 1 min read

Recently when the Beatles' 1964 Beatles For Sale album came off the shelf for reconsideration we noted that McCartney's songs seemed lighter in the comparison with Lennon's darker songs like No Reply, Baby's in Black and I Don't Want to Spoil the Party. Among McCartney's songs was Every Little Thing (predominantly sung by Lennon however) and, of all people, the emerging prog-rock band Yes... > Read more