The Poppermost - Hits To Spare

Entertaining and affectionate spoof on the world's favourite beat group.

 

I think it was Samuel Johnson who said it best - “When a man is tired of The Beatles he is tired of life”. OK, he was talking about life itself but you get my drift. The Beatles back catalogue is a nigh-on perfect body of work that will sound fresh forever. I know there are contrarians out there who argue otherwise but they're just trying to get a rise out of decent-minded rational folk.

It's now 60 odd years since the Beatles first entered a recording studio and began that incredible sonic journey. They left us with a back catalogue that continues to amaze and inspire each new generation of musicians, sometimes subtly, sometimes overtly, occasionally in the form of pastiche. Imitation is the highest form of flattery, after all. All good fun, and guaranteed to raise a smile. It's a cold hearted person who doesn't like The Rutles.

Into this arena steps The Poppermost with a brand new album Hits To Spare. Despite the band name it's a one man outfit – Glasgow-based musician Joe Kane plays all the instruments and even more impressively given the Fabs reputation for harmonies, sings all the vocal parts. Clever stuff! Hits To Spare takes inspiration from the Beatles' work in the first half of the 1960s, harking back to an era when musicians were also entertainers.

If you're going to spoof the Beatles you better make sure you have catchy tunes and Kane don't let you down, but it's the attention to detail that's equally impressive – the way he ends album opener 'Egg & Chips' on a sixth chord; the lolloping rhythm and harmonica lines on 'One Of Those Girls'; the way 'Call To Me' mirrors the Beatles' take on early '60 American R&B and girl group sounds complete with “sha la la” backing vocals.

The album's title track 'Hits To Spare', sits bang in the middle of the album. Modelled on 'Hard Day's Night', it's a knowingly cheeky tribute to the Fabs' ability to churn out top-notch chart-toppers and turn them into hard cash. “Let's write a swimming pool” sings Kane. Well you would if you could wouldn't you!

Elsewhere Kane does a pretty accurate McCartney vocal on 'Georgia Peach', a homage to Little Richard and his influence on the young Macca. In the interest of balance the rockin' Lennon snarly vocal on 'Well I Will' is pretty convincing too.

The economy class Beatles, (not my description, none other than Beatle George's), are also well represented – there plenty of Ringo style beats and fills and chiming guitar breaks a-la Harrison.

You'll no doubt have your own favourite track on this album but mine is 'Park And Ride'. Who wouldn't love a humourous reimagining of 'Ticket To Ride' using buses, that most Beatle-esque mode of transport, as it's subject. If you're looking for a musical pick you up, done with affection and attention to detail, these tunes are for you. A splendid time really is guaranteed for all.

 

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Psychedelic Confessions of a Primal Screamer: The Tambourine years 1984-87 (Martin St. John)

(This review first appeared in issue 61 of Shindig! magazine.)

MARTIN ST. JOHN

Psychedelic Confessions of a Primal Screamer: The Tambourine years 1984-87

Self Published

Martin St. John AKA Joogs was the tambourine player in earliest line-up of Primal Scream, shared front of stage with Bobby Gillespie and helped shape the band's early musical and sartorial aesthetic. The mid-'80s Primals were of course a different band to the dance 'n' dub informed outfit they would eventually become. With his obvious fondness for the era, and a keen recall of detail St. John takes us back to the heady garage punk and jangle years. Although not a musician as such, his taste became central to the band's early style when their primary influences were the Velvet Underground and a raft of '60s garage bands, informed in part by the emergence of reissue labels.

The occasional spelling mistake and typo is more than compensated for by St. John's enthusiastic fanzine-style writing and with cameos from The Jesus & Mary Chain, Alan McGee, Julian Cope and The Cramps, it's a real heady blast.

Things began to fragment almost before the ink was dry on the band's first major label deal, and with Machiavellian machinations St. John became sidelined and surplus to requirement, but not before having shared acid trips, van crashes, airport cavity seaches and recording sessions for an aborted version of Sonic Flower Groove.

The Primals would of course go on to bigger things but as everyone who's been in a band knows there's no substitute for those early character-forming years when the camaraderie is high, along with the sense of possibility. Let's hear it for the tamby man!

The Fast Camels – Tales Of The Expected

Third LP from Scotland's premier neo-psych band!

Glasgow may be 5,000 miles from San Francisco, and nowhere near as warm and sunny but maybe it's looking out from a west coast onto a large body of water that induces a psychedelic mindset. Okay maybe not, but there's certainly plenty of that psychedelic mindset on the latest LP from The Fast Camels, one of the best neo-psych outfits in Britain right now. And plenty of the Glasgow-based band's inspiration comes from that other west coast. Check out their debt to Jefferson Airplane's 'White Rabbit' on 'Watchmaker', or the dark acoustic vibes of 'Madame Matron' a track that would fit in easily on Love's Forever Changes.

It's been 2 years since their previous long player, Deadrooms And Butterfly Dreams, and 9 since their debut, The Magic Optician. There's been no major stylistic overhaul, with the band content to mix '60s psych influences with some '90s Britpop swagger. Though the band seem re-energised with a fresh batch of tunes that if anything surpasses their previous output, playing to their strengths in the studio and gelling like only a well-gigged and rehearsed band could.

The primary influences of US psych bands from '66 onwards (A support slot at one of the recent Love Revisited gigs must have been a boost and a validation) is there in the music but lyrically they couldn't be from anywhere else except these isles. The sense of humour found in their Kinksian vignettes is purely British, a tradition that goes right back to the days of music halls. Check out their dig at bar-room bullshitters on the title track opener, or 'Joy Of Roy', a character study that peers beneath the surface of ordinary everyday people to reveal their quirks and foibles. So musically it's a pill-poppin' trip down the rabbit-hole, while lyrically ripping the piss out of their acquaintances like only us Brits know how to do. A true transatlantic trip, and one you need to experience.

The Fast Camels are -

Drew Sturgeon: vocals/guitar

Mark O'Connor: vocals/lead guitar/12 string acoustic

Andy Rene: vocals/bass guitar

Joe Smith: drums/organ/vocals

Craig Jenkins: vocals/percussion

Click here for The Fast Camels' website