(Vinyl Love is a series of posts that quite simply lists, describes, and displays the pieces in my growing vinyl collection. You can bet that each record was given a spin during the drafting of each corresponding post.)
Artist: Billy Bragg Album Title: Life’s a riot with spy vs. spy Year released: 1983 Year reissued: 2013 Details: Black vinyl, 180 gram, 45 rpm, 30th anniversary edition
The skinny: The debut album by England’s Billy Bragg is just over 15 minutes in length but packs a blue collar, folk-punk punch. It fits quite nicely on one side of the LP so he re-recorded the songs live for side two of this 30th anniversary pressing.
From my last Best tunes of 1990 post to this one, it’s like I’m jumping from one dance floor to another. I finished up blathering about The Sisters Of Mercy’s “More” with a memory of dancing to it in my high school auditorium but I never did get to dance to Inspiral Carpets in those days. My friends and I discovered them a tad too late, though we did try. As I recall, my friend Andrew Rodriguez put in a request for “Dragging me down” at one of our final dances and the DJ just shook his head in disbelief. He thought Rodriguez was having him on because he had never heard of ‘Inspirational Carpets’.
However, leap forward two or three or four years and I was dancing to this particular track pretty much every Friday or Saturday night at the Dance Cave in Toronto. Released as a stand-alone single in the UK but released on the US version of “Life”, “Commercial rain” has no depth lyrically. It contains a handful of words, repeated over and over, the only ones of which I even understood before googling them this week were: “Ah, commercial rain.” But the words are of little import here, the song was built for the dance floor.
Inspiral Carpets came out of the same acid house scene as their greater Manchester neighbours, The Happy Mondays and The Stone Roses, though they never did go on to the same modicum of success as those other two. Their sound was well-defined by Craig Gill’s funky drumming, frontman Tom Hingley’s flat but distinctive vocals, and of course, Clint Boon’s whirling organ work. This last is definitely the focal point of “Commercial rain”. It bobs and weaves around the screeching guitars and the upbeat and reverberating rhythms laid down by Gill, all ephemeral, like the sun’s reflection off a watch face or a laser beam refracting off a disco ball. It fills you up with pure joy and begs to be expelled by the burning off of dance floor energy.
Being that this is the second appearance by the Inspiral Carpets on this list and that the words about “This is how it feels” (at #20) were written by my friend, the aforementioned Andrew Rodriguez, I feel it only right to finish off this post with his words here too:
Solid beat? Check. Hypnotising organ work? Check. Mesmerising reverb effects? Definitely a check. Nonsensical but somehow sensible lyrics? Check. 1990’s “Commercial rain” (or “Reign”, depending upon who you talk to) was one of the Inspiral Carpets’ first big songs. While their sound did vary, this one epitomises them at their manic best. As a song, it also encapsulates a time and place tidily – early 90s (Greater) Manchester, at the height of the ‘Madchester’ era. That said, danceability isnt confined by time and space… “Commercial rain” is an infectious groove – and you’ll get down with it wherever and whenever you hear it. As the old Inspirals t-shirt said: “Cool as fuck”.
For the rest of the Best tunes of 1990 list, click here.
Song number seven on my Best tunes of 1990 list marks the third song in a row that was introduced to me, either directly or indirectly, by my good friend Tim. At number nine, we had New Model Army’s “Purity”, “De-Luxe” by Lush at number eight, and now, “More” by The Sisters of Mercy. At first glance, these might seem quite varied musically but the common variable or thread stringing these three songs together is an inherent darkness or romantic notion.
You see, Tim was something of a goth back in our high school days. Not in the classic or even stereotypical sense. No leather or PVC or makeup, though he did wear a lot of dark clothing and his tastes definitely tended to the industrial and goth sub genres of alternative music. Of course, if you asked Tim, he would never say he was a goth. But then again, neither would many of the biggest names of the genre self-identify with the title. Indeed, most, The Sisters of Mercy included, detested the term. It’s like the genre that never was. Until now of course, with these third and fourth wave bands who idolized the original post-punk bands that were into the dark and romantic.
The Sisters of Mercy moniker really represents the musical vehicle for Andrew Eldritch and his drum machine du jour, Doktor Avalanche. He originally formed the outfit with Gary Marx in 1980, taking their name from the early Leonard Cohen song. However, the group has been a revolving door of musicians, that have in the past included Wayne Hussey (The Mission), Patricia Morrison (The Gun Club), and Tony James (Sigue Sigue Sputnik), but the lineup has never been the same on any of their three long players. Only three, you wonder? That’s not very much for a band that has existed for 37 years, its true. The initial reason for this was a dispute with their record label in the early nineties but they still didn’t record anything new after Warner let them out of their contract in 1997, though they’ve toured regularly over the years, often showcasing new material.
“More” was the first single to be released off “Vision thing”, the band’s final album to date. The album version is epic at eight minutes or so. Driving guitars and a threatening piano/keyboard backbone that sounds at times like a looney tunes mad scientist playing the harpsichord surrounded by bats and at others, like a melodramatic melody from a Meatloaf track*. And I’m not even joking. It’s damn serious. Especially when you throw in Andrew Eldritch’s distinctive, growling bass-baritone vocals. It’s a real rocker that screams dry ice and lasers and the blackest of sunglasses.
I have a lot of fond memories of blasting this while night driving down country roads just outside my hometown with the windows wide open. But I also have one vivid one of dancing to the tune at my high school auditorium, during a CFNY video dance party (anyone remember those?), and being one of only 3 or 4 on floor, another being my friend Tim. So this one’s for him.
*I read a piece on the Sisters just this week by Brett Chittenden on Alan Cross’s website that talked about how Jim Steinman (producer of albums by Bonnie Tyler and Meatloaf) had a hand in writing and producing some of Sisters of Mercy’s best work (including “More”) and now I can’t unhear the similarities.
For the rest of the Best tunes of 1990 list, click here.
My (life in) music lists 