From the Vaults

The Flame: See the Light (1970)

26 Aug 2011 | 2 min read

Even during their lifespan there were always records which were attributed to the Beatles. The suggestion was that they might put out a single anonymously just to see if it would chart -- or there were the famous bootlegs of "the Beatles with Bob Dylan". After they broke up in 1970 there were any number of rumours that they had reformed under an assumed name. The most famous was... > Read more

Jerry Butler: Mr Dee Jay, I Got A Heartache (1968)

25 Aug 2011 | 1 min read

Jerry Butler, one of the greatest soul singers to emerge out of Chicago, came up through the usual route: gospel in church, inspired by Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers, formed a group (the Impressions) and recorded for Vee-Jay down on what was known as Record Row. "Record Row was the scene," he said. "It went from just south of the Loop all the way down to 23rd St where Chess... > Read more

Shoes: Tomorrow Night (1978)

23 Aug 2011 | 2 min read

In that great alphabet of power pop kicked off by the Beatles and which includes Badfinger, Big Star, Cheap Trick and so on, the Shoes out of Zion, Illinois are perhaps the least known today. That doesn't mean they are forgotten or won't be rediscovered however: the Elektra bio which came with their major label debut Present Tense noted that when their earlier, independently produced debut... > Read more

Joe Jones: You Talk Too Much (1960)

22 Aug 2011 | 1 min read

Sometimes there is an eloquence and directness in simplicity: "Wild thing, you make my heart sing . . ." Hard to improve on that. Or this blunt sentiment by Joe Jones, a rhythm and blues singer from New Orleans who once had the gall to claim he wrote the classic Iko Iko for the Dixie Cups whom he managed. Wasn't the first time Joe had been dragged into court for claiming he'd... > Read more

Green Jelly: Three Little Pigs (1993)

19 Aug 2011 | 1 min read

There just aren't enough fairy tales at From the Vaults. Only the clip of Sam the Sham and the Pharoah's Little Red Riding Hood as far as I can recall. Time then to resurrect this from the grunge era, the delightful Green Jelly (an umlat over the Y meant it was pronounced "Green Jello") with their update of the old story of the pigs and the big bad wolf. Green Jelly played... > Read more

The Supremes: Floy Joy (1972)

17 Aug 2011 | <1 min read

In the mid Sixties when people were earnestly looking to Bob Dylan for answers, someone asked him who his favourite poet was. "Smokey Robinson," he replied. Fair call. Smokey's songs like Got a Job had wit and Tracks of My Tears had heart. You can't add or subtract a word from My Guy or You Really Got a Hold On Me. But even poets have their off days and you'd have to think... > Read more

The Funky Kings: Singing in the Streets (1976)

15 Aug 2011 | 1 min read

So just how pervasive was Bruce Springsteen's influence? One listen to this track by the short-lived Funky Kings from LA would suggest that even by his second album he'd managed to infiltrate the consciousness of these guys. Well, maybe. But the Funky Kings, who only lasted one album, were a supergroup in reverse. Just about all of them went on to other things, or had come from some... > Read more

Chubby Checker: Mexican Hat Twist (1962)

12 Aug 2011 | 1 min read

It's entirely possible Chubby Checker knew his time was up when Parkway released his album Twist with Chubby Checker. On the back cover he looks alarmed. Maybe he'd seen the inner sleeve where five other of his Twist albums were advertised -- Your Twist Party with the King of Twist Chubby Checker, Don't Knock the Twist, Let's Twist Again, For Teen Twisters Only ("Adults Twist at Your... > Read more

Lenny and Squiggy: Foreign Legion of Love (1979)

8 Aug 2011 | 1 min read

You don't dig into From the Vaults looking for good taste or class, but you do find oddities like this which resonates on many levels throughout rock culture. Lenny and Squiggy were the dumbcluck characters in the television show Laverne and Shirley and had very little to recommend them as on-screen characters. They were hammy klutzes who were given terrible lines to deliver. So far, so... > Read more

Waylon Jennings: Are You Sure Hank Done it This Way (1975)

5 Aug 2011 | 1 min read

Just from the repeated electric strum here, Waylon Jennings was announcing a different kind of country music: and its minimal sound threw even greater attention on his lyrics which questioned the whole country music establishment as epitomised by the smooth Nashville Sound, the Grand Ole Opry and the Music Row writers cranking out generic songs. Long hairs and post-hippies had started to... > Read more

Robert Plant: If It's Really Got to be This Way (1994)

4 Aug 2011 | 1 min read

When the unexpected, Grammy-grabbing album Raising Sand by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss arrived, it reminded many of what a great interpretive singer Plant could be outside of his throat-abusing belting in Led Zeppelin. Even within the mighty Zepp however he offered some exceptional interpretations (Gallows Pole stands out). Well before Raising Sand however, he appeared on a tribute to... > Read more

The Royal Punkharmonic Orchestra: Germ Free Adolescents (1995)

2 Aug 2011 | 1 min read

The recent death of Poly Styrene threw attention back onto her short career in the often interesting band X-Ray Specs where she was more adept at social comment than many of her phlegmatic punk peers. That was a trait she explored on her final if somewhat indifferent album also, Generation Indigo. One of X-Ray Specs' most memorable songs was the monotone Germ Free Adolescents and it is... > Read more

Jimmy Patton: Okies in the Pokey (1959)

1 Aug 2011 | <1 min read

Jimmy Patton (1931-89) was never really a rockabilly singer although this, his biggest hit, was certainly a rave-up in that style. But Patton's heart had always been in hillbilly country, right up until Elvis came along. Like so many others he grabbed a backbeat and made the shift sideways into rock'n'roll, and specifically the rockabilly end of it. For Okies in the Pokey he had help... > Read more

Riot 111: 1981! (1981)

26 Jul 2011 | 1 min read | 1

New Zealand has no great popular history of topical, political songs -- and the few that there are tend toward the humorous (My Old Man's An All Black with its reference to no Maori being allowed into South Africa in our representative rugby team during the apartheid era, or Click Go The Toll Gates about tolls on the newly constructed Auckland Harbour Bridge). Perhaps it is because folk... > Read more

Cilla McQueen: Crikey (2006)

22 Jul 2011 | <1 min read

Today -- Friday July 22, 2011 -- being New Zeaand National Poetry Day it seems only right we should acknowledge it. It would be easy to go to the collection Contemporary New Zealand Poets in Performance for some Very Serious Poetics or link back to our particular favourite Selina Tusitala Marsh, but this being Elsewhere -- the place where music is important -- this one by Cilla McQueen... > Read more

Stan Freberg: Rock Island Line (1956)

19 Jul 2011 | <1 min read

Because a parody only works if you know the original it might be useful to check out the video clip here (kinda cute in its own way) before playing American comedian Freberg's poke at it. The original of Rock Island Line was by Leadbelly in the Thirties but Donegan's version of 1955 was emblematic of the skiffle era in Britain where young white guys with acoustic guitars, home made... > Read more

Bob Dylan: Dirge (1974)

18 Jul 2011 | 1 min read | 2

While flicking the pages of a rock magazine the other day I came on an interview with a young musician who cited among his current favourite listening Bob Dylan's Planet Waves. When that album was released it was met with polite but hardly laudatory reviews, and even the enormously successful and highly profitable tour with the Band (Dylan's first since '66 during which many of the... > Read more

Clem Tholet: Rhodesians Never Die (1973)

14 Jul 2011 | 1 min read

Aside from songs about dance crazes, the most immediately redundant songs in popular music are those which attach themselves to a political cause. Times change quickly and today's patriotic or revolutionary song can just sound plain quaint if not simplistic within a year or two. And because political songs can't deal in nuance or contradiction, they tend to be little more than slogans . . .... > Read more

Mr and Mrs Mattis: I'll Never Move Again (date unknown, 1970s?)

13 Jul 2011 | <1 min read

Here is a real mystery single: on the Narrow Way Gospel "label" out of Jamaica (crudely hand-printed, with a quote from Isaiah) comes this oddity which is clearly Jamaican singers but has a peculiar Pacific feel to it in the guitars. Another one-off bought in Brixton just simply because it sounds so good -- but whoever Mr and Mrs Mattis are might remain unknown . . . unless you... > Read more

The Pictones: Hashish (1962)

11 Jul 2011 | <1 min read

Not a lot was known about New Zealand's Pictones out of Levin, an instrumental group who delivered a nice line in country'n'western rock'n'roll on their 1961 single Pistol Packin' Mama which opened with galloping hooves, a whip cracking and a whinny. (The flipside of which was My Bonnie, recorded around the same time as the Beatles did it in Hamburg.) Unusually however, they named this... > Read more