Month: January 2022

It is always nice to come across a gem of a film that I knew nothing about beforehand. One of those which I saw over the Christmas period was Boss Level. It doesn’t have the most original of premise in that the hero of the film must relive the same day over and over again until he figures out what he needs to do to end this event from repeating itself. However, the action, acting and kick arse soundtrack made this 100 minutes of my time that I did not feel was wasted. Time being the operative word here because the majority of the songs on this soundtrack are concerned with it. 

Even though a soundtrack album was released for the music, this was the incidental music by Clinton Shorter. There wasn’t one for the songs that were used throughout the movie so I thought I would put one together. This includes nineteen of the twenty songs included in the film. The only one missing is ‘Sixties Airport Lounge’ by John Plowright which does not seem to be available anywhere. There were enough songs for a short double album so so here it is, the soundtrack to Boss Level.

Side 1

1. Working For MCA – Lynyrd Skynyrd
2. Alcohol Part 1 – Robert Jay
3. Mean Little Mama – Roy Orbison
4. Time Has Come Today – The Chambers Brothers
5. Baby I Don’t Care – Carl Mann

Side B

1. Burn Rubber On Me (Why You Wanna Hurt Me) – The Gap Band
2. Got My Mojo Workin’ – Billy Adams
3. Slow Down – Jack Earls
4. Foreplay/Longtime – Boston

Side C

1. Fine Time – Genie Brooks
2. Fix Me – Black Flag
3. Destroy Everything – The Helltones 
4. That’s Why I Love To Call His Name – Village Singers
5. Picking Tea Leaves & Catching Butterflies – Lily Chao
6. South American Getaway – Burt Bacharach

Side D

1. Turn Back The Hands Of Time – Tyronne Davies
2. I Want To Love You Baby – Peggy Scott & Jo Jo Benson
3. Victim Of Circumstance – Mike & The Censations
4. Day After Day – Badfinger
5. How Much Can A Man Take? – Big John Hamilton
6. Only Time Will Tell – Clarence Ashe

The artwork is taken from an image used to publish the film with some background added. 

On 15th January 1994, Harry Nilsson passed away. With this in mind, I had a think about about how I could celebrate the life of the great man, especially as I have already posted a good deal of Nilsson related material of late. Well, this is what I came up with.

Nilsson wasn’t just a great singer, he was also an innovative songwriter who could work in many genres. Nilsson was also that prolific with only the ‘Skidoo’ Soundtrack, ‘The Point’, ‘Duit On Mon Dei’ and ‘Knnillssonn’ albums having no cover versions on them. It could be argued that the songs Nilsson is best known for were both covers; ‘Without You’ and ‘Everybody’s Talkin’. He even produced an album that was a show case for another songwriter in the then up and coming Randy Newman. I therefore thought that it would be an interesting exercise to put together a What-If release containing all of the covers that Nilsson recorded whilst on the RCA label.

I decided not to include any songs from ‘Nilsson Sings Newman’, as this was designed to be an album completely made up of covers. The same with ‘A Little Touch Of Schmilsson In The Night’. This was a standards album and therefore designed to be made up of from the Great American Songbook, none of which Nilsson wrote. I also did not include covers from his pre-RCA days (as these have already been covered in previous posts), nor from ‘Flash Harry’. Including songs from those albums would have made this project too big and unwieldy. As it turns out, it is quite big enough as it is as it would have to be a three LP set and ‘Flash Harry’ was on a different label to everything else on this collection so we will go for the fact that a rights issues meant they weren’t included. 

On the version I made for myself, I included a couple of edits. There is a spoken outdo to ‘River Deep – Mountain High’ which has nothing to do with the song, but everything to do with how the parent album ‘Pandemonium Shadow Show’ starts. I also edited out the fluffed take of ‘Sweet Lorraine’ but kept in the second half of the song as it meant that the sides of that disc matched up more closely. ON Spotify though. these edits could not be made. Nilsson also covered ‘Ballin’ The Jack’ in 1970 and 1976, but I decided to include both as they are significantly different to each other. For the completist, I included an alternative version of ‘Everybody’s Talkin’ that was the closing track on the original soundtrack album of ‘Midnight Cowboy’.  The songs included from 1967 and 1968 were the mono version, as these would not have been as well known as their stereo equivalents. The Italian song ‘Leggenda’ is repeated here from the previous post, but it is a cover version so it needed to be included. 

Side A

1. She Sings Hymns Out Of Tune (Mono)
2. You Can’t Do That (Mono)
3. She’s Leaving Home (Mono)
4. There Will Never Be (Mono)
5. Freckles (Mono)
6. River Deep – Mountain High (Mono)
7. As I Wander Lonely (Mono)
8. Leggenda (Mono)
9. She’s Just Laughing At Me (Mono)

Side B

1. Everybody’s Talking (Mono)
2. Searchin’ 
3. Fairfax Rag
4. Mother Nature’s Son
5. Mr Bojangles
6. Simon Smith & The Amazing Dancing Bear
7. Ballin’ The Jack (1970 Version)
8. Blackbird
9. Lucille

Side C

1. Early In the Morning 
2. Let The Good Times Roll
3. Isolation
4. Without You
5. Walk Right Back
6. At My Front Door
7. Campo De Enchino

Side D

1. Save The Last Dance For Me
2. Many Rivers To Cross
3. Subterranean Homesick Blues
4. Loop De Loop
5. Rock Around The Clock
6. I’ll Take A Tango

Side E

1. Just One Look/Baby I’m Yours
2. That Is All
3. I Need You
4. Sail Away
5. Shuffle Off To Buffalo
6. Zombie Jamboree (Back To Back)
7. That Is All (Reprise)

Side F

1. Ballin’ The Jack (1976 Version)
2. A Thousand Miles Away
3. She Sits Down On Me
4. Sweet Lorraine
5. Ain’t It Kinda Wonderful
6. Everybody’s Talkin’ (Soundtrack Version)

The sleeve is adapted from Belle Ghoul’s release called ‘Songs By Other People’. The title was perfect. If only my computer skills were as good. 

I do like a good what if album and this month, we have two for the price of one. Recently, I gave a couple of Crowded House albums a spin. They were ‘Woodface’ and ‘Afterglow’. I had always read that ‘Woodface’ was a amalgam of Crowded House tracks and songs that main House songwriter, Neil Finn had written with his brother Tim for an album project of their own. The story goes that Tim and Neil Finn were looking to record an album as the Finn Brothers and had written an albums worth of material when Neil said could he use some of the songs for the next Crowded House Record. With Tim saying yes and joining the band, what we got was a great album that had been made out of the ashes of two. So, what if Capitol had not rejected the original version of Woodface and the Finn Brothers had recorded their first collaborative effort as planned? Well, with the wonders of the internet and the bands reissue programmes, we can do just that.  

Crowded House – Woodface (Original Version)

With Woodface, we get an album that does not sound too dissimilar to Temple Of Low Men. I only allowed songs on here that were either written by Paul Hester, the bands drummer or Neil Finn. None of the co-write between Tim and Neil would be allowed. That does mean that most of the singles that were released from ‘Woodface’ would no longer be on here, with only ‘Fall At Your Feet’ left. The album is solid, if not spectacular. It does lack some of the sparkle that came when the tracks form the abandoned ‘Finn’ project were added, but I believe it would have stood up against the other records the band had released up to this point. 

Side A

1. Anyone Can Tell
2. Left Hand
3. Fields Are Full Of Your Kind
4. As Sure As I Am
5. Sacred Cow
6. She Goes On
7. Italian Plastic

Side B

1. Fall At Your Feet
2. Dr. Livingston
3. Fame Is
4. I Love You Dawn
5. Whispers & Moans
6. My Telly’s Gone Bung
7. My Legs Are Gone

The cover for this collection is based upon a band T-Shirt that came out at the time. 

The Finn Brothers – Self Titled

On the other hand, we have the Finn Brothers record. What we get are all of the songs that were recorded for Woodface, plus some of the others that had been written for ‘Finn Brothers’ record but not used at the time. That would mean that four out of the five singles from Woodface would be included here, potentially making this a more commercial record. Out of the songs demoed by the Finn’s, two would end up on Tim Finn’s first solo record after leaving Crowded House which was called ‘Before & After’. These would be ‘In Love With It All’ and ‘Strangeness & Calm’. Two more, ‘Prodigal Son’ and ‘Catherine Wheels’ would be released via Neil Finn’s website. Catherine Wheels (which had supposedly been gestating since the late 70s) would be finished and released on the Together Alone album. For the purposes of this what if record, I have gone with the Finn Brothers demo. One more song was demoed by the Finn’s and this was called ‘Cemetery In The Rain’. This last song has not been released anywhere as far as I know, but 12 tracks is enough to come up with an alternative history Finn Brothers album. 

Side A

1. Chocolate Cake
2. It’s Only Natural
3. Tall Trees
4. Catherine Wheels
5. There Goes God
6. Four Season in one Day

Side B

1. Strangeness & Calm
2. Weather With You
3. Prodigal Son
4. All I Ask
5. In Love With It All
6. How Will You Go

It was quite difficult to find a picture of the Finn Brothers for an album cover, but they did appear facing each other whilst playing their guitars from the ‘It’s Only Natural’ video. Adopting the minimal approach of the era remembering that complicated albums sleeve didn’t work in the cassette era, we have a sleeve not too different from Talk Talk’s ‘Spirit Of Eden’. 

A playlist for The Finn Brothers LP could not be complied due to one or more songs not being available on Spotify. 

So what do we get when listening to these. Well, we get two albums, but take off the best songs from each and you get one excellent album. Now, if only the brothers had decided to have started ‘Woodface’ with something other than Chocolate Cake, it would have made for an even better record. 

I have not included ‘I’m Still Here’ as it always sounded out of place to my ears and did nothing to add to the experience of listening to ‘Woodface’. 

I cannot believe that this album is nearly 30 years old. Where has the time gone?

Happy New Year everyone. Between 2018 (when they released their fist disc) and 2020, Blood Records put out 29 records. In 2021, the released 33 showing that this particular label went into overdrive over the past twelve months. It also meant that this years sampler would be a much larger affair than the previous efforts. I was still keen for at least one song from each release and at one point, it looked as though there would be enough to have two double albums. As it is, the second double ended up being the third disc on what would be a triple LP as there just wasn’t enough material for a second disc at a length I felt would have been acceptable (I know its a fantasy release). 

With supply chain issues and released being pushed back because of it did mean that there were a number of records that did not drop through the door at Squire Towers before the end of the year. There are already fourteen discs that Blood Records have advertised in 2021 that will hopefully be handed over via my Post in the next few months. 

One disc is missing form this list Halloweens ‘Morning Kiss at the Acropolis’ is not included as this was a straight reissue (albeit on a different coloured vinyl) for the version released last year. 

The sleeve is one of the Blood Records logos taken from their Facebook page. 

Side A

1. Keeper – Lonely The Brave
2. Lights On Baby – Halloweens
3. A Better Life – Stanleys
4. Too Good – Arlo Parks
5. Who Am I? – Pale Waves

Side B

1. Let The Music – Okie
2. I Like The Way You Die – Black Honey
3. All My Friends – The Obgms
4. Shipbuilding – Mystery Jets
5. Delicious Things – Wolf Alice

Side C

1. Gold Teeth – Warmduscher
2. Hey There – King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard
3. Momentary – Low Island
4. Feelings I’m Supposed To Feel – Maximo Park

Side D

1. Trouble’s Coming – Royal Blood
2. Soul Singer – Thom Southern
3. Monty Python – Connie Constance
4. Land Of The Lost – The Coral
5. Time – Only Sun

Side E

1. It Won’t Always Be Like This – Inhaler
2. That Night – Stanleys
3. Clique – Yonaka (feat. Over 333)
4. Oh My Love – The Lathums
5. Undertaker (Fever 333 Remix) – Nova Twins
6. Melon & The Coconut – Glass Animals
7. Start Again – Rianne Downey

Side F

1. The Sum Of Our Fears – The Howlers
2. Stuck In Your Heard – Vistas
3. Bloodsports – Strange Bones
4. Jump Off The Top – The Vaccines
5. Nothing Is Gonna Change – Dead Nature
6. Something To Leave The House For – The Lottery Winners
7. I Never Get Lonesome – Courtney Barnett