From Another Side #2

From Another Side #2

• Won't Wear It For Long - Karen Marks
  The Bombs Dropped on Xmas - The Reels
  Ohira Tour - The Reels
  For All We Know - The Reels
  Babys In The Know - The Reels
  Casa - Karen Ansell
  Gee Lately - Ya Ya Choral
  Big Go Go - INXS
  Say Goodbye ( Australian 12" )- Hunters & Collectors
  Say Goodbye ( US 12" ) - Hunters & Collectors
  Silent Night - Four Corners
  Jack Robinson - The Someloves
  Everything - Shrinking Violets
  Days Of Our Lives - Howard I Know
  Failure - Howard I Know
  It's Just That I Miss You - Flaming Hands
  Seek & Find - Flaming Hands
  The Stranger - Flaming Hands
  New Day ( Live JJJ vers ) - Flaming Hands
  Shout ( Live JJJ vers ) - Deckchairs Overboard
  Carried Away - Deckchairs Overboard
  Smacks Of Love ( Version ) - Crib Sex
  The Most Innocent Person I Know - Crib Sex

From Another Side #2 - hear it

Because we've had a bit of The Reels lately on the Singles blog I picked out early Reels, and especially as we had Karen Ansell and I mentioned she was in The Reels at one point....we also have some other things Karen was involved in ( eg backing vocals with INXS ) and projects that other some Reels members were involved in ( eg Ya Ya Choral ). 

Linking on from there to another 'Karen' ( yea yea Karen ) I chose the b-side of Cold Cafe by Karen Marks.

I also picked some other sides to people who all featured recently on the Singles blog - The Someloves, The Shrinking Violets, Howard I Know, Deckchairs Overboard & Crib Sex.

And some Flaming Hands - b-sides and obscurities and also a couple of extended 12" mixes of Say Goodbye as well as another obscure side project of the Hunnas ( Four Corners )

.....so off we go...

"Won't Wear It For Long" is the b-side of Cold Cafe by Karen Marks ( she of Ash Wednesday collaborative fame ), as played on #107 and I really wanted to play it not only is it a great track but because recently I saw this go on eBay for $558 Aussie dollars....strewth...and sheesh. Not sure it's worth that much really...

Just before that popped up on the Bay someone had emailed me and offered me 440 Euros for my copy. If you know anything about me from my blogs you'd probably guess that no way in a trillion years would I be parting with any of my records ( until I'm at least 85 and senile and in an old people's home...even then I'll be trying to play my records to my fellow oldies in the home I bet )

So I also wanted to play it as part of my "music should be heard" policy ( and not cost anyone 558 dollars to hear ).

Plus there was the "Karen" link with Karen Ansell....

As the solo single "Commotion" from Karen Ansell popped up on #116 on top of a lot of Reels singles appearing in the last 12 months or so( #92, #98, #107, #116, #118 ) and Karen being briefly in The Reels we hear "Casa" the b-side of "Commotion" ( btw thi song is co-written by Oleh from Big Pig ) plus a few songs from The Reels from her time in the group. It's a Phd topic to figure out the comings and goings of the various Reels lineups, but as far as I can trace she seemed to be in the band from approx 80-81-82 ish, ie 5 Great Gift Ideas era, through the Quasimodo's Dream album and then roughly as far as the "No.3" single ( for one of the tracks on the b-side as least ).

So, having set that little scene up...we have "The Bomb's Dropped on Xmas" from the "5 Great Gift Ideas" ep, being the only original Reels track on the ep amongst a raft of covers, eg According To My Heart, Band Of Gold, etc. Then "Ohira Tour" which credits Karen Ansell as one of the composers, in this instance from the LP of "Quasimodo's Dream", previously on the b-side of the "After The News" single as one of 3 "Media Themes". Also from the Quasi's album we hear "For All We Know". Then from the first Reels s/titled album ( although Ansell not involved at that stage ) we have "Baby's In The Know". 

After that's it's a few other things that Reels members took part in ........oh and by the way, we'll get to the "next era" Reels ( ie Pitt St Farmers / Beautiful ) a bit later on this blog - sneaking a look in the Singles pile I can see a few 7's from that era on the horizon.

I find there's something both wild and unusual about the pairing of some (ex) Reels and M Squared...I do love it though.

For the 2nd Ya Ya Choral release seems somehow Gibson, Tee & Graham ( as Ya Ya still was at that point ) hooked up with Craig "Polly" Newham & John Bliss for some of the tracks on their 2nd release, the "What's A Quaver" ep. They were ex Reels by that point, possibly also departing around the same time as Karen Ansell, but coming back around 86-87 ( I told you it was complex ). Anyhoooow the boys got down and dirty in Surry Hills with Patrick et al, providing vocals, "arrangement" and "drum programming" - yeah John Bliss got to play with "The International Drum Machine" - I am jealous.

"Gee Lately" is one of those tracks.

And finally in this Reels-Ansell bracket, the INXS connection contained herein today is that Dave Mason and Karen A provided backing vocals on a couple of tracks from the second INXS album "Underneath The Colours" - ie on "Stay Young" ( also a single - see #43 ) and the track "Big Go Go".  

And there we endeth the Reels connections for now....

As we heard the 7" on "Say Goodbye" on #118, I've dug up 2 different extended / 12" mixes...firstly the Australian 12", produced/remixed by Gavin MacKillop then the US 12" version - remixed by Ivan Ivan ( actually from the b-side of a US promo 12" of "Throw Your Arms Around Me" )( this one pressed at very grotty quality 33&1/3 unfortunately ).

Then a side project called Four Corners - featuring Mark Seymour & Jeremy Smith from the Hunnas, Des Heffner who was in The Birthday Party for a while & later The Slaughtermen and my hazy brain ( which could be wrong ) places him in The Marching Girls ( NZ ) at one point. Apologies if I'm wrong there. And the 4th "corner" was a guy called Robert Oertel who is a bit of mysterious figure, first my memory came up with nothin' then "computa says no" when Google came into the equation, only tidbit is a suggestion he "worked at Mushroom"...so not sure how he hooked with Seymour et al other than the fact this ep is on White / Mushroom.

More Hunnas later down the track as I also know some more 7's of their's are coming to the Single blog.

There's nothing out of the ordinary with either the Someloves track ( it's just the b-side of "Melt" from #118 ) or the Shrinking Violets - "Everything" is in fact the A-side of the single, when they popped up on #114 I actually played the b-side "She Said".

Likewise with Howard I Know - two b sides : "Days of Our Lives" the other side of "Orwell Street " ( #118 ) and "Failure" the flip of 'Standby Flight" ( #112 ) 

Then we're onto Flaming Hands, mostly Phantom era, starting with "It's Just That I Miss You", in fact a double-a-side with "Go Or Stay" ( another from #118 ) and "The Stranger" the b-side of their first single " I Belong To Nobody" ( see #14 )



 

"Seek & Find" which was at the time a previously unreleased Flaming Hands track on the Phantom Records comp "Paths Of Pain To Jewels Of Glory"

Then latter day Flaming Hands, again with another M Squared connection - by the then Michael Prowse ( Prod, Scattered Order ) was on drums and also Craig Robertson on bass ( aka Craig Bottle, also ex Prod and Pel Mel ). This particular version of "New Day" was recorded live at 2JJJ as part of their The Nine O'Clock Muse series in 1983.
From that same album, in fact next track is a live version of "Shout" from Deckchairs Overboard.

We had the 7" version of 'Shout" last year on #101, the b-side of which is an extended version, but I thought I'd play this live Nine O'Clock Muse version today. More recently we had "That's The Way" on #116,  the track today called "carried Away" is the other side of that.

And finally two b-sides for the Brisbane band Crib Sex, an extended version of "Smacks of Love", the b-side to that single ( #116 ) and "The Most Innocent Person I Know", their previous single, another double-a-side scenario with "This is My Problem" which featured way way back on #38

From Another Side #1

From Another Side #1

• Day At The Beach - Birds of Tin
  Inside Fire - Tiny Town
  Found A Cause - Tiny Town
  System and Automation ( unreleased ) - Pel Mel
  Daylight - Pel Mel
  Blind Lead The Blind ( 7" ) - Pel Mel
  Pandemonium ( 12" ) "Long Version" - Pel Mel
  Restless - Four Gods
  Under The Wings Of - Frontier Scouts
  Out Of Your Shell - Frontier Scouts
  Careless ( semi official demo ) - The Go-Betweens
  The Children of Sombre Town - Dorian Gray
  Priceless Dream - Dorian Gray
  Some People - Idiom Flesh
  Ritual - Idiom Flesh
  Holiday - Idiom Flesh
  Ecliptic Mirrors - The Young Docteurs
  Running From The Heart - The Young Docteurs
  Mind Your Throats - The Young Docteurs
  Walking - The Cry

From Another Side #1 - hear it

"The Day Of The Docteurs" ???

nah....just wanted to use that bad pun...but seriously here's what went down..

We've had a bit of Tiny Town lately ( on #117, #114 and way way way back on #8 ) so I thought I'd play "Inside Fire" from their ( only ) album "Little Tin God" as well as "Found A Cause" from the "No Place Like Rome" 12" Ep.

Tiny Town were expat Aussies living in the UK, Peter Loveday ( voc & guit ) started life in Brisbane in Birds of Tin, who after a bit of underground buzz - with the usual Brisbane accolade of the time of "being like The Go-Betweens - released a 100 only cassette in 1981 called "Same Both Sides"... as far as I know I don't have that cassette, and I say it like that because the boxes and boxes of cassettes in this house are the last great un-pioneered frontier and who knows what's in there, however a track from this cassette did also come out on the Fast Forward Cassette Magazine ( Issue #11 ) - from whence cometh today's track 'Day At the Beach"

The beautiful creature that is - a Fast Forward Cassette Mag ( this is #11 )

There's a good article here on The Licorice Lounge blog about Birds of Tin.

We've also had some Pel Mel lately on #116 - ie the 7" version of "Pandemonium", so I thought I'd pull out the 12" and play the long version of that and on #114 there playing the song Water, which was in fact the b-side to a 7" of "Blind Lead The Blind",  that song also found on their first album "Out Of Reason" ( which I'll play stuff from another time ). 


We also hear from their 2nd album today "Persuasion" with the song "Daylight". However......we kick off the bracket of four Pel Mel songs with an unreleased song called "System & Automation", courtesy of Phil at No Night Sweats.

Other recent repeat offenders are more Brisbanites - Frontier Scouts & Four Gods ( both bands of Andrew Wilson ), "Out Of Your Shell" the b-side to Frontier Scouts "When Daddy Blew His Top" ( on #108 ), while the other Frontier Scouts track today being from their 12" ep called "Museum Collection". 

Four Gods is Andrew's previous band, and "Restless" is is the other side ( it's double A ) of Enchanted House - as featured on #117...and as mentioned on that post this 7" features musical assistance from Lindy & Grant from The Gobs ( Grant under the alias of 'Candice' )...which leads me directly to -

This album "Very Quick On The Eye = Brisbane 1981" is usually called a "semi official bootleg" ( I guess that means the band were cool with it * ) and is basically studio recordings of demos for the "Send Me A Lullaby" album...which is way cool actually !!...so from that we hear an early / demo version of "Careless"

* update on this - having just read the latest edition of David Nichols' book 'The Go Betweens', it says this album was released by Keith Glass from Missing Link Records, without the bands consent ( and knowledge ), but due to contractual arrangements with Send Me A Lullaby seems it was perfectly legal for him to do so...

Then we are off down south to Melbourne with Dorian Gray and a few extra tracks from them, after their single "The Emperor's New Clothes" popped up on #117. Both songs on today's mix are from Fast Forwards - "The Children of Sombre Town" was a demo that appeared on FF #5 - the spunky beast pictured to the right and "Priceless Dream" comes from our old friend FF #11 ( see adoring photo above ), this particular song an outtake from the same session as The Emperor's New Clothes ( and it's b-side "Bloodlust" )

Back to Old Sydney Town after that with 3 from Idiom Flesh. "Holiday" again another double A, the other side to the 7" is "It" ( which got an airing on #117 ), "Ritual" is a live track recorded at 2JJJ as part of their "Live At The Wireless" series ( and taken from the album comp ) and "Some People" comes from their "Inheritance" 12" ep & sorry about the jumps on this one - tried every trick I know to get it play over the skips to no no avail.

The Young Docteurs, ex Canberra , ie  from "our nations capital", have made a few appearances, most recently with the single "Around" on #113, but also yonks ago on #47. I thought this was a good time to play some songs of theirs from different eras - "Ecliptic Mirrors" from 1979 and the Dull Ep, "Running From The Heart" a Cameron Allen production from 1983 on the semi-indie semi-Festival label Resistance ( and on a 3 track 12" ep ) and finally from 1985 and "Mind Your Throats" one of 2 songs on the other side of the Around 7" ( also on Resistance ).

And finally a good old fashioned b-side, from The Cry, "Walking" being the other side of "Desert Child" - another one from #117

From Another Side

This blog is a companion to the Sideroom 7" Singles blog, featuring b-sides, album / 12" / cassette tracks, alternative versions, etc by the artists played on the Singles blog.

Not sure why I didn't think of this 7 years ago when I started the other blog...but there ya go.....

Mostly to play some b-sides ( or even the a-side in those times that I played the b-side to start with ), also to dig out ( of the collection / "archive" ) some other songs by the artists and actually play them and let people hear them ( these things are meant to be heard after all and no point them just sitting around my house doing nada ).

Lots to catch up on ( ie 117 previous 7" Singles posts thus far ) so as far as choice it might seem somewhat unstructured - though as a starting point I began looking through for extra tracks connected the most recent posts.

As with everything - enjoy it for what it is :)