From the Vaults

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

14 Apr 2024 | 2 min read

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... > Read more

Texas Jim Robertson: The Last Page of Mein Kampf (1946)

8 Apr 2024 | <1 min read

Texas-born Jim Robertson was one of those who sang about the Second World War and knew what he was talking about. No stay-at-home, when he was rejected by the army he enlisted in the marines and saw action in the Pacific then ended up in Japan after their surrender. At almost two metres tall, he'd been raised on a ranch, learned guitar and banjo from his father, and in the late Thirties... > Read more

Lee Harvey: Crawfish for Elvis (1991)

1 Apr 2024 | <1 min read

Lee Harvey was, if I am not mistaken, Chris McKibbin who was briefly on New Zealand's Flying Nun label. So briefly I believe he only did the one EP entitled Security 198 and I seem to recall he went off to Ireland at some point thereafter. The latter may not be true, but his EP was certainly a very interesting one in that it roved from fairly straight acoustic ballads to experimental... > Read more

Octopus: I Am the Walrus (1971)

25 Mar 2024 | <1 min read

Although they muck up some lyrics, this live version of John Lennon's classic – recorded at the Storthfield Country Club in Derbyshire – isn't a bad stab at a very difficult song. But it's who was in this band which had fallen under the wing of impresario Larry Page that is most interesting. The band was based around brothers Paul (vocals/guitar) and Nigel (bass). The... > Read more

The Wonders: That Thing You Do! (1996/1964)

22 Mar 2024 | 1 min read

In his Grammy-grabbing career -- between Philadelphia, Forrest Gump, Apollo 13 and Saving Private Ryan, You've Got Mail and The Green Mile -- Tom Hanks did a small, cute, mostly inconsequential and slight pop movie, That Thing You Do! Clearly this story of an imaginary one-hit wonder pop group from Pennsylvania in '64 was something close to his heart. He wrote the story and directed the... > Read more

Young Guv: Couldn't Leave U If I Tried (2022)

18 Mar 2024 | <1 min read

A recent disc which came with a copy of a British music magazine alerted us to the power pop charms of Brooklyn-based Young Guv who on this song – which opened his 2022 album Guv III – distills the sound of the Shoes, Searchers, Raspberries and . . . Well, as we've said previously, power pop is a genre which announces and defines itself in the name: pop music gently powered up.... > Read more

Rachel Sweet; Stranger in the House (1978)

11 Mar 2024 | 1 min read

While no one actually used the word "jailbait" at the time, you can bet the idea passed through a few music writers' heads when the photos of Rachel Sweet came across their desks from Stiff Records. Actually, that's not entirely true: Stiff used the word about their young signing. Sweet -- from Akron, Ohio -- was just 16 when she broke through in Britain. But in the States she had... > Read more

Charles Bukowski: I've Always Had Trouble with Money (1970?)

4 Mar 2024 | <1 min read

The notorious barfly-poet Charles Bukowski (1920-1994) lived longer than most of those who have been careful and healthy and, like Keith Richards, used his body as a laboratory (for booze in Bukowski's case). But he was no drop-down drunk (well, he was but . . .) and wrote often funny but moving prose poems and short stories. He inspired generations of followers (some of whom of course... > Read more

Tole Puddle: Frodo (1973)

26 Feb 2024 | 1 min read

From the late Sixties and far too far into the Seventies, the world was awash with bands -- mostly British -- who were immersed in Tolkien lore. Some like Led Zeppelin and T. Rex managed to incorporate it into whatever else they did, others were so drippy hippie that it became a lifestyle where their cosmology was determined by hobbits. There were bands named for characters and animals in... > Read more

Harry Partch: And on the Seventh Day, Petals Fell in Petaluma (excerpt, date unknown, possibly Sixties)

17 Feb 2024 | 1 min read | 1

When Tom Waits swerved left from his barroom piano ballads and into using new or found sounds on his clank'n'grind albums in the mid Eighties, he was hailed as an innovator . . . but conspiciously few followed him down that path. These days albums where musicians use unusual instruments are increasingly common and any number will name-check American composer/instrument builder and musical... > Read more

Agnetha Faltskog: Jag var sa kar (1967)

12 Feb 2024 | <1 min read

Previously at From the Vaults we have pulled a track by Benny Andersson from his pre-Abba band the Hep Stars. That came from an album Before Abba, only available at the Abba Museum in Stockholm. Here as promised then is another from that album, the first major solo hit for Agnetha with a song she wrote herself. It was inspired by the break-up with her boyfriend when she was 17 (the... > Read more

Jacques Dutronc: Le Responsable (1969)

5 Feb 2024 | 2 min read

Because British and American pop and rock dominated the Sixties, very few artists from outside those regions – we make exceptions for Canadians like Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, The Band and Leonard Cohen – made it into the ears of anyone but their own people. Yes, Kyu Sakamoto from Japan had a big hit, as did Los Bravos from Spain (although they weren't all Spanish). But France... > Read more

Pink Martini: Splendor in the Grass (2010)

29 Jan 2024 | <1 min read

Popular culture being what it is, a group that can enchant one week is but a faded memory within months: anyone remember Polyphonic Spree? Pink Martini out of Portland were a bit like that. They were the project of the rather wonderful Thomas Lauderdale who founded the ensemble in the late Nineties to deliver his singular vision of Hollywood orchestral music from the romantic Forties,... > Read more

The Score: Please Please Me (1966)

22 Jan 2024 | 1 min read

Manchester band the Score was short-lived, just one single released at the end of 1966 when the world of pop was moving in a more psychedelic and exploratory direction after the Beatles' Rubber Soul and Revolver, and the Beach Boys' Good Vibrations single and Pet Sounds. So the Score covering what by then was a hoary old Beatles' song which they'd left behind seems like a strange choice.... > Read more

Elvis Costello: You Hung the Moon (2010)

15 Jan 2024 | 1 min read

On his 2010 album National Ransom, Elvis Costello gave dates and places for where his songs were located. In You Hung the Moon (a saying which means you were terrific/great/wonderful) he locates the song in "a drawing room in Pimlico, London, 1919". That date puts it just after the end of World War I (1914-1918). It starts with Costello setting the scene at a... > Read more

Bud Shank: Blue Jay Way (1968)

8 Jan 2024 | 1 min read

The great jazz flute and sax player Bud Shank -- who died in 2009, aged 82 -- had some form in turning his hand to popular songs (that's his flute on the Mamas and the Papas' California Dreaming) but he also worked with the late Ravi Shankar, notably recording the thrilling piece Fire Night for Shankar's 1962 album Improvisations. The Magical Mystery album from which this is lifted -- which... > Read more

Young John Watson: Space Guitar (1954)

1 Jan 2024 | 1 min read

It's become common to hail Fifties out-there guitarists like surf king Dick Dale, Link Wray and others . . . but the man who became the great Johnny "Guitar" Watson has been somewhat sidelined. In the mid-to-late Seventies this journeyman -- who had done the hard roads with Little Richard, the wonderful rock'n'roll/soul shouter Larry Williams, Johnny Otis and many other greats --... > Read more

Jimi Hendrix: Little Drummer Boy/Silent Night/Auld Lang Syne (1969)

25 Dec 2023 | <1 min read | 1

"And so this is Christmas, and what have you done?" Time for reflection amidst (hopefully) enjoying family and friends . . . and we will all do that in our own way. Jimi did it this way. This was part of some long studio jamming, the first two songs here were recorded in December '69 with drummer Buddy Miles and bassist Billy Cox in the Record Plant in New York and... > Read more

The Hollies: If I Needed Someone (1965)

18 Dec 2023 | 1 min read | 1

As we know the Beatles were great borrowers, stealers and adapters. From old rock'n'roll (Run For Your Life, I'm Down) to current Dylan (You've Got to Hide Your Love Away, Norwegian Wood) and Northern soul (Got to Get You Into My Life) they would listen, take an influence and reshape it in their own image. When you listen to the first version of Rain it was a pure slice of Searchers jangle... > Read more

Bob Dylan: The Christmas Blues (2009)

11 Dec 2023 | <1 min read | 1

No one would ask why Bob Dylan does something -- shilling for Victoria's Secret comes to mind -- or can be surprised by whatever it is. That said, the Yuletide album Christmas in the Heart in 2009 did catch everyone by surprise. Dylan croaking through Here Comes Santa Claus, Hark the Herald Angels Sing, Little Drummer Boy, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas and other seasonal delights?... > Read more