Bernard Edwards R.I.P.

It’s fifteen years ago today since Bard of the Bass and all-round rapper’s delight, Bernard Edwards, died of pneumonia following a gig with Chic in Tokyo. He had reportedly mentioned to bandmate Nile Rodgers that he was feeling unwell, but couldn't be persuaded to cancel the concert. Nile found him dead in his hotel room only hours later.

There are a great many ‘Nard moments to rave on about, but I will always be particularly transported by his solo in ‘Le Freak’ (the extended mix). This is ‘Nard centre-stage, nailing it down with minimum sweat and maximum poise. Who else could play the same riff for over a minute and make it sound so spellbinding? I love those dizzying, ever-ascending strings that swirl around him like a blizzard, and also the layered handclaps that appear just as you're about to burst with anticipation for the chorus. When he drops that little slide in at 3.47, it’s almost like an exclamation mark (fuck!) and a quick gasp of breath before his outro lick and then we’re back in. Sexual.

Apparently, when he was starting out, ‘Nard used to drop his plectrum all the time, so he developed a technique (nicknamed ‘chucking’) that involved using his fingernail as though it were a pick. This meant, unusually, that ‘Nard’s downstrokes had the brightness and attack of a picked note, whilst his upstrokes had the warmth of a thumbed note. This unique hard/soft combination is perhaps best illustrated on the jaw-dropping intro to ‘Everybody Dance’.

Why not give it a whirl at home?

I'm Going Slightly Mad

Want.

Oh! Darling

"Believe me when I tell you

I'll never do you no harm..."

Over the years I have met many boring people in pubs who have opined, after their third pint of Too Familiar, that Paul McCartney's songs are 'less emotional' than John Lennon's due to Paul's supposed love of musical pastiche and the occasional Vaudevillian curlicue.

I usually greet these claims with a massive yawn.

'Oh! Darling' is about as raw (roar?) as it gets for me. I don't think there are many singers who could divide just one word - 'died' at 1.37 - into two such distinct halves: the first a Little Richard-esque squall, the second a wounded, boyish plea.

Paul experimented with a lot of vocal takes for this track over a number of weeks. Apparently, he would try it only once a day, believing the final version should be a first take. The unused Take 26 didn't make it onto the anthologies, but has been knocking around for years and gives us access to a very different performance - all soft and tremulous (or shot, maybe) on the second chorus. Fucking phwooargh.

Anuses like me may have noticed a slight bass fluff or edit on the finished version at 0.52, which you can hear clearly by panning the balance on your amp hard right. This will also expose George Harrison's sneering chorus lead in all its glory. I love that riff - so dry, stark as fuck, satisfyingly nasty, almost like the Telecaster equivalent of Herrmann's 'Psycho' stabs.

One thing that will always grieve me; however, is that 'Oh! Darling' is followed by 'Octopus's Garden'. Surely the sequencing equivalent of a whoopee cushion at a funeral.

John Lennon said:

"'Oh! Darling' was a great one of Paul's that he didn't sing too well. I always thought I could have done it better—it was more my style than his. "

Wanker.

Does Your Mother Know That You're Out?

"I'm the cruiser

You're the loser

Me and you sir?

Homosapien too..."

"Well I can dance with you honey

If you think it's funny

But does your mother know that you're out?"

We don't have a high tolerance for mash-ups here at Pop Heights, but try sitting through this one with a po-face.

Thanks, Tony.

Living In Another World

"Did I see tenderness where you saw hell?”

I can remember the first time I heard ‘The Colour of Spring’. It’s just one of those albums. The sun was streaming through the windows of the record shop I worked in, revealing dust motes in the air and grime everywhere. I fell pretty hard for the whole LP, but ‘Living In Another World’ took a while to grow. Maybe it’s my favourite now.

It’s a fascinatingly structured track. I love the way the chorus suddenly jumps out, unannounced – a kind of ambush. Then we get Mark Feltham’s searing post-chorus harmonica riff. Fresh momentum is achieved in the second verse via the introduction of an ace one-note anchoring bassline. By this point, Mark Hollis is sounding increasingly desperate. When he delivers the pay-off line, “God only knows what kind of tale you’d tell!”, I have visions of him in the vocal booth ripping fistfuls of hair out. His post-break-up lyric seems to deal not with the sadness of heartbreak, but with the rage and mystification of it.

At 3.37 a petulantly mis-hit piano chord announces a fifteen second percussive break. I always find myself waiting tensely for those four snare cracks that signal the song’s resumption. Great fill.

Driving the track along throughout is a feverish Hammond part by Steve Winwood. Legend has it the starstruck Talk Talk boys were so thrilled to be working with Winwood they decided furtively to note down the settings of his organ drawbars for future use in the studio. They were amused to discover he had literally pulled out all the stops…to the max. Voila: The Winwood Sound.

The extended twelve inch of ‘Living in Another World’ lacks the jolting urgency of the album version, but is a brilliant arrangement in its own right.

Thank you to my friend James for making me listen to Talk Talk, despite my hatred of their artwork.

Song 4 Mutya

"I'm driving fast, I feel so fine

I've got Prince singing 'Hot Thing' to me

I know every line

So I pull up to the red light

Sitting there in my car

I look up to my right

And there you are

Sat there with some new girl - what is this?

That's who has replaced me - what a diss!"

Normally, the music of Groove Armada makes me shiver with a nameless dread, but I went a bundle on this collaboration with ex-Sugababe Mutya Buena in 2007.

There's something about the way she narrates those opening lines that tickles and terrifies me in equal measure. Maybe it's because she looks a lot like a girl I went to school with who gave me a deserved whalloping once for "using big words". I definitely wouldn't fuck with Mutya. I bet what she has done to toilet attendants in clubs over the years would send Cheryl Cole running for her mummy.

The groove of 'Song 4 Mutya' is a replayed version of the fantastic 'Let's Be Adult' by Ambitious Lovers, Arto Lindsay's skewed pop project with keyboardist Peter Scherer. Lindsay was also in no-wavers DNA, The Golden Palominos and John Zorn's Locus Solus ensemble.

But back to Mutya. A quick scan of Wikipedia reveals that she is now training to be a child psychologist and paid £5,000 for bum implants in 2009, a procedure I doubt Arto Lindsay has ever considered.

The much-venerated Pitchfork Media described 'Song 4 Mutya' as 'inspired' and 'glorious'.

Get Well Soon

Don't stop the dance, Fez. You big Tory bastard.

Madonna (by Sparks)

(Russell, as he may have looked when he caught Madonna's eye)

"I walked out on the street

While the big city lights

Tried to sell me on a way of life

I was already living..."

#2 in my featured 'talking' songs (also from 1988, coincidentally), 'Madonna' is the story of a one night stand that doesn't end well. It's far from being a classic Sparks record, and yet I've always found myself captivated by the idea of Ms. Ciccone slowing down in her "limousine longer than the Golden Gate Bridge" to pick up the narrow-hipped and handsomely maned Mr. Mael (Junior) off the streets of San Francisco.

This track was introduced to me by my friend David, a fellow Sparks fan, many moons ago. I had always avoided the 'Interior Design' album it comes from because of the woefully thin, tin-pot synth-pop production (the Mael brothers' first attempt to self-produce after working with a string of big names like Mack and Moroder), but I have since come to treasure 'Madonna' more as a series of images than anything else. ("She turned on a classical station, but the reception was poor".)

I've also long harboured a desire to cover the track, to recite the lyrics (which I know by heart) in a whacked-out, slutty drawl (à la Kim Gordon doing 'Tunic') over some fathoms-deep cosmic throb. But I don't suppose a Lancashire accent would really cut it...

Somewhere Down The Crazy River

"She said, you like it now

But you'll learn to love it later..."

A little while ago a pub conversation got me thinking about my favourite 'talking' records - tracks that feature a characterful, filmic narrative where a vocal melody would usually sit. I've compiled quite a list of them since and will be blogging on this theme when the fancy takes me.

First up is Robbie Robertson's 'Somewhere Down The Crazy River'. It came out in 1988 when I was ten - a year of total pop immersion for me. A time of obsessive chart taping, Casio keyboard programming and live 'broadcasting' direct to an endless supply of TDK C90s using my Dad's slimline AKAI pencil microphone.

I remember listening to Robbie's honeyed burr over and over again and feeling deeply absorbed by the mystery of it all. I didn't really know what he was on about, but I sensed the voodoo, the headiness, in my own way. Hilariously (looking back), I remember linking the track, mentally, to Um Bongo - of 'consumed in the Congo' fame. I felt certain that exotic liquid must spring from a similar kind of 'crazy river'.

These days, when I put my seven inch on, I am struck instantly by two things: the sheer atmosphere and potency of the lyric, and the stunning Manu Katché groove. I could disappear for days at a time down the cracks in that spacious groove. I've even managed to find some footage on YouTube of other drummers deconstructing it.

And last, but not least, of course, I must mention the great Daniel Lanois - I can almost smell Lanois all over this record...Eau De Lanois.

Gorgeous...

Just Be Good To Me

"I don't care about the other girls

Just be good to me..."

Such a heavy record.

The intro is so melancholy and grandiose I feel I have to get to my feet to listen to it like some knackered veteran hauling themselves up for The Star-Spangled Banner.

The lyric observes the time-honoured female-vocal tradition of 'shit on me, it's fine, just get on with it' best exemplified by 'Stand By Your Man', 'Don't Explain' (it's the Nina version for me) or Bobbie Gentry's 'I Wouldn't Be Surprised'.

A Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis production, it is perhaps second only to 'Sexual Healing', in the 'famous use of an 808' stakes.

Norman Cook's cover, 'Dub Be Good To Me', lent heavily on The Clash's 'Guns of Brixton' and sampled the harmonica from Morricone's 'Once Upon A Time in the West'. The opening and closing line, 'tank fly boss walk jam nitty gritty/you're listening to the boy from the big bad city, this is jam hot, this is jam hot', was from Johnny Dynell's 1983 hit 'Jam Hot', which was recently reswizzled by Tensnake.

Distressingly, 'Dub Be Good to Me' was covered in 2002 by Faithless and Dido for a Warchild charity album. Surely one of the most sinister pop collaborations of all time.