Steve Shark Kisses The Ring Of Th' Godfather O' Go-Go! Dept.

 

Everybody's heard of James Brown [assumes Steve Shark - Ed.] - the Godfather of Soul! Lemme hear you say yeah!

YEAH!

But what if I told you there was another musical Godfather, and that his name was Brown, too? Lemme hear you say yeah!

WHUT?

So, yeah, meet Chuck Brown - the Godfather of Go-Go!

The late Charles Louis Brown was an interesting character who carved out a significant niche for himself in the Washington DC music scene of the late 70s, 80s and 90s - and even onwards into the 21st century. This was all due to a style of music that came to be known as "Go-go". He claimed to have invented it, which is somewhat of a moot point, but he certainly helped come up with the formula, laid down some of its main foundations, and became its most famous proponent.

After a childhood in poverty, Brown was going nowhere, and drifted into crime, ending up in prison for murder. While he was inside, he traded some cigarettes for a guitar and so finally found his metier. On his release, he had to take various menial jobs after finding it impossible to play the clubs, as the terms of his probation stipulated that he couldn't enter any premises with a liquor license. After his probation period ended, however, he got a gig playing guitar for Jerry Butler and eventually joined a big draw in Washington - Los Latinos. The band played all over the city covering top 40 tunes, but with the added novelty of a Latin American percussion section. Although Brown didn't particularly like the covers music he was having to play, he loved the percussion so much that when he eventually formed his own band, the Soul Searchers, in 1966, he started linking the set songs with conga and timbale breaks.

So far, so good, but disco eventually came boogeying along and everybody wanted bands who played DISCO. Brown wasn't keen and found the music limiting, due to his love of jazz and blues, as well as deeply frustrating, because there was no room for his guitar playing.

Then, one day in 1977, Brown heard the Grover Washington Jr tune "Mister Magic" and loved the rhythm so much that he started to slow down the material he was playing and use the song's beat as the basis for his own take on funk. Brown eventually found a drummer who could play the required five over four beat to his satisfaction, and so, according to Brown, Go-go music was born. He made the percussion an integral part of the music, giving it breaks in the songs and keeping it playing between numbers, while conducting call and response chants with the audience.

As Brown himself once put it: "Disco? Well, dis-got-to-go! Talking 'bout disco? OK, dis-go dis way and dis-go dat way. No! We goin' go-go this way! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!"

The Soul Searchers were now ready to take the city by storm, armed with percussion, that Mister Magic beat, lots of banter between Chuck and the audience, and sets that didn't have any breaks between the numbers, so the audience wouldn't drift away.

Brown was an excellent guitarist, well-versed on the instrument in the jazz and blues he loved, and he brought elements of these to the Soul Searchers' repertoire. He never concealed his debt to James Brown, either, although Go-go had a lot more swing than JB's variety of funk. The band had horns - typically sax, trumpet and trombone - keyboards, bass, drums and LA percussion - congas, bongos and timbales. Brown was nearly always the sole guitarist and would take plenty of solos, often scatting along with them. Although the line ups over the years were always tight, the music was never rigid and the players could stretch out. Brown took the vocals, singing in a rich baritone, but then he'd switch to a sort of rap and talk to the audience, encouraging them to answer back.

However, it was Brown's choice of material which was most surprising. As well as original numbers, there were many, many covers which revealed his love of jazz, soul, blues and beyond. Here's just a few of his band's many covers from various live sets over the years.

Saturday Night Fish Fry
A Foggy Day
Stormy Monday Blues
Family Affair
It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)
Red Top
Misty
Boogie on Reggae Woman
Hoochie Coochie Man
Tutu - yes, the Miles tune!
You Can Have Watergate
Harlem Nocturne
Midnight Sun
Moody's Mood For Love
The Woody Woodpecker Theme - really!

All of the above were played to the Go-go rhythm and the crowd just lapped them up.

Although Brown and his band became big in Japan and were also very popular in Europe, they never really made it in the US much outside of Washington DC, where they were probably the city's biggest musical draw. Yes, there were a few hits and their Go-go anthem "Bustin' Loose" made it to the top of the US R&B chart in 1979, but that was about it. Live, however, Chuck and the band were always in demand, although mainly on their home turf, of course. Unfortunately, gang violence reared its ugly head and Brown cut back on club gigs after an audience member was shot in front of the band one night. He even released a jazz vocal album covering standards, in an attempt to broaden his appeal.

Then his music began to be picked up by the younger hip hop crowd, who appreciated how the Go-go beat had influenced what they were doing. So, Brown came to be seen as an essential influence on the music of the city, and was regarded as somewhat of a father figure by his young successors, as well as an occasional collaborator with them.

Interestingly, it would appear that Miles was au fait with Go-go music, and even took Brown's drummer Ricky Wellman into the studio and on tour with him in the late 1980s and the early 90s.

There's honestly been nobody quite like Chuck - there's a touch of James Brown, a smidgen of Louis Jordan, elements of blues and jazz, and a deep appreciation of what's come to be known as "The Great American Songbook" - all driven by an infectious determination to give the audience a good time.

Sure, the music went down well in places like New York and New Orleans, too, when Brown took the band further afield, but it failed to get enough significantly wider national appreciation to take him into the big time - although it certainly deserved to.

As one critic put it, "This man, who invented a musical genre and grooved so hard and for so long, is not yet in the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame. The Dave Clark Five, however, are comfortably settled in the shrine. Argument enough to burn that motherfucker down to the Lake Erie waterline."

For those who want to hear Chuck at his best, there's a classic live album for you, a "Best of", that also includes some of his later crossover work, and also a book about the Go-go scene in general, which is a bit dry, but has some interesting material and some photos.

Note from FT3: I'd like to thank Steve for his enthusiastic, knowledgeable, and invaluable contributions, often, like this one, introducing me to somebody I'd never listened to before. And likewise I'm shewer to the rest of youse bums what have had screed FoamFeatured® antecedently, or left the best comments any blog ever had. It's been a blast. Swing by in a couple of days!

Have Mersey! Nobby's On The Beat Dept.

Full color arrived in the UK in 1967

It's got a beat [claims Nobby - Ed.] and it comes from Liverpool, everybody knows that, it even had a music paper named after it. So it came as a bit of a surprise to me when I discovered the real origin of the name.

Bill Harry, the founder of the Mersey Beat magazine, went to art school in 1958 were he fell in with John Lennon and Stuart Sutcliffe. He had always had an interest in magazines, having started with a science fiction mag when he was 13. As a teenager he had also been penpals with a teenage Michael Moorcock. Whilst at the Art College he produced the in house magazine but always wanted to publish his own music paper, which he did when he left. His original idea was for it to be about jazz but when he realised that there were over 300 rock 'n roll, country and folk groups playing around the Liverpool area he wrote to the London newspapers to try and promote them. When he didn't receive any replies he decided to produce a local listings paper instead.

With the aid of a £50 loan from a friend, together with a photographer and the help of his girlfriend, later wife, Virginia, he rented an office and began production of the fortnightly paper with Bill doing all the writing, layout, design, artwork, selling the advertising and distribution. In search of a name for the publication, he realised that it was not just Liverpool, but the whole of Merseyside that he wanted to cover and thinking this over in the early hours of the morning a picture of a policeman walking his beat around Merseyside came into his head, and the title came from that, rather than from the music.

He printed 5,000 copies of issue 1 dated 6th July 1961 [left - Ed.] and distributed them by hand to the major distributors and local newsagents, clubs and record shops. When he went to the NEMS record shop he saw the manager, Brian Epstein, who agreed to take 12 copies and later that day rang back for more as they had already sold out. Epstein took 144 of the 2nd issue in July 1961, which featured The Beatles on the front cover, with the story of them releasing the My Bonnie record in Germany. Fascinated by what the paper was showing him of the local scene, he asked if he could write record reviews for it. His column "Stop the world I want to get off" appeared from issue 3. In November 1961 he asked Bill to arrange for him to see The Beatles in The Cavern and world domination was just round the corner.

Mersey Beat, the paper, was a phenomenal success and it is claimed that it changed music journalism forever with the writing being about the music rather than the musician's favourite colour or food! Harry also encouraged his photographers to take pictures of the bands playing live or in their locale rather than just using the usual posed publicity shots. Other cities started to produce their own magazines, often travelling to Liverpool to seek advice from Bill, promoting local bands in Birmingham, Manchester, Newcastle etc. Eventually the London press took an interest, and began to cover the regional scene leading to the demise of the local music papers. As a footnote, Stuart Leathart, featured recently by our genial host as singer, guitarist and songwriter with The Kubas was also a talented cartoonist and provided Mersey Beat with many illustrations.

Bill Harry went on to act as a press agent for many bands including The Kinks, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, Beach Boys, David Bowie and Led Zeppelin, and still appears to be on the go at 83, with a recent interview here.

So to some music : Mersey Beat 1962-64

Compiled by Andrew Lauder and issued by United Artists in 1977. On the inside sleeve he credits Lenny Kaye's Nuggets for initial inspiration. To my mind the music is "of it's time", historically important but it always seems to lack a bit of oomph, nevertheless I enjoy listening to it's distinctive sound. The presentation of the double album is very impressive it includes a facsimile Mersey Beat paper specially compiled by Bill Harry with articles, photographs and write ups of the bands. The paper inner sleeves contain adverts for Beatle wigs and the like and the inside sleeve has a collage of some of the source 45s. The download includes them all, and hopefully you should be able to read the magazine, if you squint a bit.

Nobby's proud sponsor for this piece? Step forward, Shed And Outbuilding Monthly magazine!

How Clarence Pune Missed That Lovin' Feelin' Dept.

Clarence Pune wires screed from the horse shop in back of the pool room!

I’d heard of him, of course.

Legendary British blues singer.

Worked with Elton John, the Stones, Rod Stewart.

I’d heard, too, that he had semi-retired to Vancouver. (This was the late 70‘s.)

But it was a surprise to meet him in a neighborhood Kitsilano pub and to start talking. (Not that he was hard to miss at 6‘7“)

He told me he was doing voice acting for animations.

I told him that I wrote and produced commercials.

“Keep me in mind,” he said.

We exchanged phone numbers.

We often met at the same bus stop for the short hop across the bridge to downtown.

A month later I was writing some radio commercials for holidays in Jamaica. I wanted a deep resonant voice. I called him and asked if he could do a Jamaican accent.

“Give me a day or two,” he said, and next day this deep baritone called me back with the full patois.

We recorded together several times.

One day he invited my wife and I to a recording session. He’d found this girl he adored - no, not that way, he was openly gay - for her voice.

He saw a duet for them.

She was an unknown  session singer from Anacortes, just south of the US/Canada border.

For reasons I regret we didn’t get to the recording session.

This is what we missed:

T.V's Sir David Of Attenborough Small Faces Drug Dealer Shock! Dept.

Cover Art © IoF© Art Department Of Art® Dept. All Rights Reserved (and some of the lefts)

You'll know T.V.'s Sir Attenborough from his award-winning kids' puppet shows such as like We Fucked Up Our Beautiful Planet And All The Elephants Are Dying, but did you know he was hemp enthusiasts The Small Faces' go-to guy for recreational pharmacy? That's right, subscribers! Leave us lissen in as Sir Attenborough reveals shocking truth via Foam-O-Fone©!

The Nice, high above the fertile tundra, yestiddy

FMF Sir Attenborough! Looking cool there! Which is where?

SA Here, five thousand feet above the fertile tundra of -

FMF Right, right! So what's with this Small Faces story?

SA Ah! I am honoured to be the inspiration for their chart-topping disc, Here Comes The Nice! Back in Swingin' London, one was very much the globetrotter, bringing back treasures galore from exotic lands, steamer trunks bursting with rare herbal remedies! So of course one shared one's bounty, being a nice chap, and that was how muggins here became known as The Nice!

FMF And you have an album for us?

SA Indeed I do! It's an unissued compilation of their, shall we say, jazz cigarette tunes? Andy [Andrew Loog Oldham - Ed.] put it together before the whole thing went pear-shaped. And a very evocative Gered Mankowitz photograph on the front. Gerry [Gered Mankovitz - Ed.] and I were oft to be seen getting off our heads at the Roundhouse [The Roundhouse - Ed.]! (laughs) He came up with the name for this L.P., incidentally, during one of our "sessions"!

FMF Maryon Park? Any clues?

SA The lads in the group liked elliptical titles, something a little more imaginative, and this is no exception. Perhaps you might quiz th' Four Or Five Guys©? Maybe one of them might come up with an explanation!

FMF Uh ... yeah. Or likely not, probably. I doubt they read this far. Some of 'em can't even. But thanks for sharing this with us, and drop by th' Isle any time! It's a copacetic microcosm of microclimatical nanoculture!

SA (laughs) Shall I bring my - steamer trunk?

FMF (laughs) That would be swell, Sir Nice!

SA (laughs) 

FMF (laughs) 

Oright, oright, you've 'ad your fun, settle down, settle down ...

I *cough* curated this because in their appropriately short lifespan The Small Faces made music that expressed the times better than just about anybody, their super-smashing pop hits as slyly subversive as they were memorable. Steve Marriott is possibly the greatest male vocalist the U.K. ever produced, with a staggering emotional range, and deceptively accomplished technique grounded in his drama studies and acting experience [←original critical aperçu - Ed.]. He's always bang in the middle of the note, and he inhabits the song using phrasing and inflection in a way that seems natural and unthinking but is pure - and brilliant - technique. The Artful Dodger knew what he was doing with every note he sang.

So why this album again? I wanted the definitive, cohesive, pop-psych masterclass minus the overwrought stuff, omitting the knees-up sing-alongs, and without the Hammond-heavy club groovers. Ogden's Nut Gone Flake gets a lot of love, but the Stanley Unwin story-telling gets old very quickly, and side one's a little ragged. Autumn Stone is at once too much and not enough, and sounds like what it is, a bit of a barrel-scrape. So this, then. I've paced the hits so they don't dominate, and maybe they sound fresher in a new context. 

That tracklist in full:

Become Like You/Up The Wooden Hills To Bedfordshire/Here Comes The Nice/Just Passing/Show Me The Way/I'm Only Dreaming/Green Circles/Itchycoo Park/Donkey Rides, A Penny, A Glass/The Universal/Call It Something Nice/The Autumn Stone

Why isn't [YOUR CHOICE HERE] included? Because reasons. Like other similarly humble exercises in improving on artists' original brilliance here on th' IoF©, this is above all a playable album with a flow to it, at listenable length, with more thought behind it than playlists or bonus tracks editions or completist archival sets. You'll dig it on account which it's swell.

This post homologated thru our sponsors: Pearl Necklaces By Dirty Sanchez™, Beverly Hills, L.A.

Nobby Flips Off The Flip Side Dept.

Four Or Five Guy© Nobby files screed from the potting shed at the bottom of his garden.

Mark-Almond, where the hyphen matters! Some weeks ago Steve Shark entertained us all with some three sided albums and we've recently discussed double albums so I now give you a one sided album. Not that it was physically one sided, it's just that I love one side and can't stand the other and yes you're right neither side has Tainted Love on it.

Now, just to get this straight from the start I have always been in awe of anyone who can play a musical instrument, sing or write a song. I can't do any of that and so I don't feel comfortable criticising a piece of music. I know that I couldn't even start to produce a bad bit of music never mind a good bit, but let's just say that I hardly ever turn the record over.

Jon Mark (vocals, guitar) had been a folk singer in the early sixties and then in the mid sixties was guitarist, arranger and sometime songwriter for Marianne Faithfull followed by a spell in the short lived Sweet Thursday, with Nicky Hopkins amongst others. Johnny Almond (sax, flute and backing vocals) came up through Zoot Money's Big Roll Band and The Alan Price Set before forming The Johnny Almond Music Machine.They then met as part of John Mayall's band featured on Turning Point and Empty Rooms both from 1969. Following which they teamed up with Tommy Eyre, Piano and Roger Sutton, Bass to form Mark-Almond.The band have variously been called, jazz, jazz rock, blues, prog rock, jazz pop rock, and so on, take your pick, I'm no expert at pigeonholing.

Their first lp, simply called Mark-Almond, but sometimes called Mark-Almond I to differentiate it from their second, is the one under discussion today. I've been listening to this lp on and off since about 1973. My sister, for some reason had it, not sure why, all her other albums were by Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. She mustn’t have rated it too highly as she didn't seem to notice when it slipped into my prog rock collection. To my mind side one is sublime and side two is not.

Side One starts off with acoustic piano, bluesy vocals and bass with a sort of gospelish chorus with an insistent melody played on the piano. The song builds from a quiet intro going up in volume to the chorus. It then moves into a jazzy instrumental bit with an excellent sax solo over the piano before reverting back to the quiet piano vocal and bass and then the gospel chorus again. The City (or parts 2-4) starts with acoustic guitar and electric piano, vocals going into the chorus before another jazzy instrumental section featuring lots of sax and piano, acoustic guitar, flute, and bass. All in all the whole of side one moves around in pace and volume with lots of nice gentle instrumentally bits, finishing off with Tramp and the Young Girl (or part 5) which is my least favourite part, the lyrics and vocals verging towards the pretentious. Maybe it's just to prepare you for side two.

"The Other Side" starts off pleasantly enough with some almost medieval sounding acoustic guitar and flute noodling. The "funky" bass then comes in and should perhaps be seen as a warning that not all was going to be well. Then at 4 minutes 21 seconds it's all over. The vocals start wailing and I can't take anymore. To me it sounds like a different singer to side one, but the lp credits Jon Mark with lead vocals with the other three as vocal harmonies, so I'm none the wiser.

They went on to make other lps which I've tried to like but sadly had to lump in with side two of the above. Reluctantly I've had to satisfy myself with just half an lp. Jon Mark went on to produce many albums of ambient music after emigrating to New Zealand and Johnny Almond became a session musician and settled in San Francisco touting his saxophone around bars and restaurants.

To give Babs some time off I'm asking for your choice of one-sided LP. If anyone says side two of Mark-Almond then I'll gladly get out my stanley knife and we can split it down the middle.

Older readers will remember Nobby from his Children's Hour radio show, "Uncle Nobby's Nap Time".

The Dickey's Best Band Dept.

Album Art © IoF© Department Of Art© Dept.

Apart from the Allman Brothers, you could argue that the line-up for his 2006 tour was never bettered. Go ahead - find someone else to argue with, I'm agreeing with you. I'm not going to list the musicians - d0ur0w r3srcH ya lazy-ass schnook!

This double live CD is a career high point. Even allmusicdotcom wets its knickers: "His finest moment on tape, period. It also rivals any post-Duane Allman live set by the ABB. For Betts fans, and actually any rock guitar flameout fan, this set is indispensable." He ain't whistlin' Dixie!

So how come you never see this in lists of Best Live Doubles? Here's what did they do to cripple the album's chances:

☠️ "Dickey Betts & Great Southern"? Nobody ever gave a shit about Great Southern, and these guys aren't remotely the same band that cut the disappointing Great Southern albums back in the 'seventies. Did anyone ever say "I gots tix fer Great Southern, man!" Nope. "I gots tix fer Dickey Betts, man!" - if they were being formal.

☠️ An unmemorable mouthful of a title: "The Official Bootleg 2006 North American Tour". Couple this with "Dickey Betts And Great Southern" and you've got enough reading matter to furrow the dainty brows of a (North) American High School class. Also, calling it any sort of bootleg, even an official one (whatever the fuck that is), is strictly low budget.

☠️ A wretched cover [left - Ed.] which would disgrace any bootleg. It's also uncredited. Maybe it just happened while nobody was looking. Fooey.

Does this matter? Of course it matters. But the music is ... fantastic. Mostly consisting of Dickey's greatest Allmans tunes, including a phenomenal half-hour version of Elizabeth Reed and a none-better version of Southbound, it's a total blast.

To round out the loaddown, it's bundled with the great man's finest studio album, Highway Call. No, don't thank me. Just be swell, dude!

Proud sponsors for this post? Step forward, the Corndog Cream Pie Company, CT!

Introduce Yourself! Dept. - Steve Shark Counts Us In

"Say, toots! Ain't you glamordom's Brigid Bardotte?" "Va te faire foutre, connard."

A good intro is vital [posits Steve Shark - Ed.]. If it grabs the listener's attention, then it's worked and you're sufficiently hooked to carry on listening. I've just been listening to a Stones greatest hits album, and it struck me how good some of their intros are: Sympathy for the Devil, Satisfaction, Honky Tonk Women, The Last Time, Gimme Shelter...the list goes on and on.

Intros vary greatly. At one extreme they can simply be a brief indication of what's to come. At the other, a lengthier piece of music that is specially created as a sort of prelude. Sometimes they bear no relation whatsoever to the rest of the track, but whatever form they take, a good one will set the listener up for the rest of the piece.

So, here's an assortment of some of my favourite introductions. Most of them are as they were originally recorded, but a few have been created or evolved over time to become an integral part of a live performance of the piece. I've been fairly flexible here and have included some tracks which segue into another, where they seem to me to be inseparable from the main feature.

Steve Miller Band - Threshold-Jet Airliner  
Steve liked a bit of synth and here he uses it to introduce a shiny piece of pop which borrows a lot from Cream's Crossroads riff, but with no guitar histrionics. "Threshold" has nothing to do with "Airliner" musically, but if I don't hear it before the main track, I always feel that something's missing.

The Hollies - Long Cool Woman (In A Black Dress)
No synths this time! The next intro has some lovely guitar arpeggios punctuated by sparse drums, before getting into a very CCR-influenced groove. Again, with guitars but no wanky solos - they'll be coming along further down this playlist! [artist's impression at left - Ed.]

Elton John - Funeral For A Friend-Love Lies Bleeding
I'm no Elton fan, but I've always loved this brace of tunes. The orchestrated synths sound a bit dated now, but the two pieces have lots of dynamics which hold the listener's interest. Another intros ploy is used in "Funeral" - sound effects, with the wind blowing, wolves howling and a mournful church bell.

Miles Davis - So What  
I sometimes play the intro to this classic track several times as a standalone piece. It still has the "So What" chords, albeit very differently voiced, but it's streets away, in terms of feel, from the rest of the track. It was written by Gil Evans and bassist Paul Chambers. Chambers' last bass figure before he plays the theme is a bit of an enigma. It's hard to hear what he's playing and it ends with a strange oscillating sound. It's a sort of jumble before the order of the main section.

Heatwave - Boogie Nights
Another great example of how an intro can give no indication of what's to come. Harps, a walking bass, brushes on the drums, jazzy octave guitar and ethereal backing vocals just don't prepare you for the disco funk to follow. Another intro I can stand on repeat a few times. Personal trivia note: I used to teach at a school where Rod Temperton's uncle was the caretaker (janitor). Who's Temperton? He was the keyboard player who left Heatwave and wrote Jacko's "Thriller", amongst other fairly popular ditties.

Mountain - Taunta (Sammy's Tune)-Nantucket Sleighride
Although "Nantucket Sleighride" always gets played without "Tuanta" preceding it, there's a segue between the two pieces, with the first track fading as the second one begins. Thematically, the two couldn't be further apart - the first track is dedicated to bassist Felix Papparlardi's cat, and the second is a vague reference to a whaling ship called the "Essex" that was sunk by a sperm whale in 1820. Cannibalism ensued, but that's another story. It's one of my favourite tracks of all time, and again avoids guitar histrionics. Leslie West was more than capable of them, as a 32 minute live version of "Sleighride" clearly shows on Mountain's "Twin Peaks" album.

Western Vacation - Western Vacation
Here's another type of intro - a little bit of theatre, with rufty-tufty cowboys belching and farting around a campfire. It then goes straight into a lengthy bit of poppy fusion with various Zappa alumni taking part - notably Steve Vai on guitar. The rest of the album is rather anonymous, in spite of the Zappa connection and vibe.

The Doors - Spanish Caravan
This opens with Robbie Kreiger showing off his flamenco and classical guitar chops before it all gets a bit bombastic when Jim and the electric section pile in. From "Waiting for the Sun" - an underrated Doors album, in my opinion. This is the track that first got me into the band and made me understand what all the fuss was about. "Wintertime Love" from "Waiting" is the coolest ever waltz to be found in rock.

Steve Hillage - Activation Meditation-Glorious Om Riff
Another synth introduction to an example of those guitar histrionics I've been mentioning. The band plays about with a great riff that's appeared on albums by Gong and Ozric Tentacles - in Gong's case, as a vocal chant. It's also known as "Master Builder". Fortunately, Hillage is a stellar player and although his solo is very trippy, it's interesting enough not to be regarded as mere "noodling". Play this one loud.

Blue Oyster Cult - Joan Crawford
A solo piano intro from the Cult. Musically, again not a lot to do with the rest of the track, but its Gothic vibe sets the mood of the song very appropriately. The "Christina" references are to actor Crawford's [at left - Ed.] adopted daughter who wrote about her experiences in "Mommy Dearest". It wasn't a happy childhood. The Cult were great at all this very "noir" stuff.

Lou Reed - Intro-Sweet Jane
Recorded live at the final gig of Reed's tour to promote his "Berlin" album, this intro was never part of "Sweet Jane" before or since. Arranged by go-to guitarists Steve Hunter and Dick Wagner, it's a stunning example of twin guitar interplay. It's said that Lou wasn't too happy with the heavy rock feel of the band, but I think that "Rock & Roll Animal" is possibly the best live album of all time, along with "Lou Reed Live", which mopped up the rest of the gig's set list. Many live albums get overdubbed afterwards, but I have bootlegs of virtually every show of the tour and I don't think it happened in this case. The band is tighter than a tight thing that's been overtightened in every single show. Lou, of course, was just Lou and rather chemically enhanced at the time, by all accounts. Another one where cranking up the volume is recommended.

Heart - Crazy On You
Now a bloated AOR band trading on past glories, Heart were once great, to which this track from their debut album attests. Again an intro that doesn't really have much to do with the subsequent song, but Anne Wilson's acoustic guitar leads into the galloping rock rhythm very smoothly. The intro could almost be a Bert Jansch or Davy Graham piece, with its subtle nods to "Anji".

Eric Johnson - Cliffs Of Dover
Here's an intro that only appears in live versions of the tune. Very showy guitar, but Johnson has the sensitivity and sensibility to play with feel, along with his dazzling technique. Normally, I don't like what's come to be known as "shred" guitar, but Johnson's almost violin-like tone and sense of melody elevates this above that label. It's very classical feeling at times and in spite of its length it isn't too over-indulgent. I have several live versions and Johnson's intro to "Cliffs" is always different - sometimes radically so.

Pink Fairies - Do It
This has appeared before in one of my screeds, but it's such a great track that I make no apologies for repeating it. The acoustic guitar intro was missed off the single version, but here's the full album track with guitarist Paul Rudolph on top form throughout. Once again, an intro that's in marked contrast to the remainder of the song. Clear Graham and/or Jansch influences in the intro once again, possibly down to the Boho melting pot of the London music scene at that time.

Al Stewart - Prelude-Last Days of the Century
Yet another synth intro, with added Spanish style guitar from Peter White - a longtime sideman and collaborator of Al's. This leads into "Last Days of the Century", the title track of the last really rocky album that Stewart recorded. It's a bit over the top, with a sequenced bass line, wild whammy bar guitar and Al pondering on what the new millennium is going to bring. In many ways, he was milking the last of his rock phase with this album, but this track at least was amongst his best. Of special note is the fretless bass which really comes into its own in the closing couple of minutes.

The Damned - Smash it Up Pts 1&2
An example of the old Part One and Part Two gambit, although the two parts are very different indeed. Part One sees Captain Sensible playing an almost pretty guitar introduction - who says punks couldn't play their instruments? - which, to these ears, sounds almost like something the late Arthur Lee of Love could have come up with. Part Two, in contrast, is a bright bit of punky pop with an occasional folk rock feel. It also seems to borrow a bit from Eddie & the Hotrods' "Do Anything You Wanna Do" at times. Bizarrely, it concludes with a repeated line from "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" - and why the fuck not?

To win this swell compilation, complete with IoF© propelling pencil (no lead included) and a handy FARQ BRAND™ pile ointment dispenser ("none more soothing for your Chalfonts"), just answer this simple but very pertinent question:

What's your favourite introduction to a track?