Temporary Secretary

In the last few years, I was working in a soulless corporate record store; it wasn't as bad as the one I was working in before but still, it was quite tight in terms of what we were allowed to do. There was none of the surliness you would expect from people working in record stores, they conducted 'mystery shops' where they would pay people to go into the store and secretly mark the employees performance as a person behind the till out of ten. they would describe the employee thus giving management just enough to hunt them down and fire them.

In a lot of ways it was a lot like East Germany... or even Stalinist Russia: show trials, executions and a faux sense that the needs of the people (or customer) was the managements main focus. (It wasn't; retaining budget and forecast to subsidise the ridiculous over expansion of the company at the hands of an overconfident and under-skilled board of directors was.)

Anyway, I digress, if you wanted to know my life story you would probably have brought my autobiography, which you didn't, you cunts. AND if you wanted an insight into late 90s early noughties music retail, you would probably have brought a book about the rise of Amazon.


BUT I was working in this shop on the day that Paul McCartney reissued several of his albums. Among them, 'II'. Nowhere near as good as Band on the Run, from the mighty Wings, (The band the Beatles could have become) or even anything as good as the Beatles (Paul McCartney's other band), with the exception of everything they did pre 1965 and Let It Be, which even the Beatles completest concedes is utter sentimental shite.

Not like his other stuff then.

Turns out Macca, in his quest to stay current, had started pissing about with synthesisers and not in a 'use them like a keyboard' way; he was really pushing it. He appregiated the fuck out of 'Temporary Secretary'. For a split second, I thought I was in Detroit in 1986 at a Juan Atkins gig... Then he started singing about needing a secretary to help him type things up. Really fucking spoiled it.



Anyways, After going into great detail about Temporary Secretary and even naming the post after the track, I'm going to throw you a bit of a curveball... Macca's most successful foray into dance music wasn't Temporary Secretary, or even 'Twin Freaks' The bizarre remix album of loads of his top songs which he released in an attempt to seem underground in the early Noughties (although Punk Funk enthusiasts might want to attempt a re-edit of his version of 'Baby I'm Amazed') but was actually when Shep Pettibone retouched his minor 80s hit, 'Ou Est Le Soleil'

Of course, Pettibone, veteran of studio 54 and those kind of places was a sucker for a vocal, so he popped a verse of the original in there... now other than this verse, the track is pretty fucking standout even amongst todays house and techno classics, I had no choice, I had to cut it to shreds.

Grandstand

The last 6 months have been pretty busy, I have been imprisoned, murdered, reincarnated and killed again. I suppose that all these things have kickstarted me into writing blogs about my feelings, which I am doing on another BlogSpot page, so in the meantime, I am going to be a little bit more forthcoming in the shit I am listening to, the tracks I am putting together in faux DJ mixes helped by a stupid computer program.

I never really Liked Ben Klock, the awesome resident of Legendary Berlin Superclub, Berghain. Never really knew why. Then I saw this amazing footage from the Boiler Room by him



Then I found out that this was a comedy Parody and that he never really played the Grandstand theme tune and a load of comedy minimal house to a crowd of chipmunks.

Still, I had to delve a little deeper and it turns out he remixed Chicago mainstay Kerri Chandler to great effect. To be fair, I would take it over the Grandstand theme tune in spite of its monster of a guitar solo which never got played on the TV because it always cut to an Oasis track.

Anyways. you can find Kerri Chandler and Klock embedded in this one...

http://www.mixcloud.com/manmachine201/miximatosis-13/

Mr Flagio. Take a Chance (Manmachine201's Death to the Vocoder edit.)

Take a chance by Mr. Flagio is a bit of a classic, not really sure if it needed a re-edit, but I did one anyways. Gave it a bit of reverb, a bit of flange, extended the intro so if there were a DJ brave enough to play it, they would be able to leave it in the mix for 2 minutes. What with Bicep dropping 'Ultimate Warlord' in their sets, I would say Italo is fair game for some of the Ibiza closing parties this summer, not that that would matter to me.






 

Summer Wine.

The musical relationship between Nancy Sinatra and become has become a blueprint for the male and female song, Mark Lanagen and Isobel Campbel have managed to get three albums out of basing their sound on them.



Campbell and Lanegan, enjoying breakfast after stealing Sinatra and Hazelwood's sound.


At their most moderate, Hazelwood and Sinatra cover the classic songs well; Their cover of 'Jackson' manages to walk the line of sounding a bit like the 'Only Fools and Horses' theme tune, while still being good; their version of 'You've Lost That Loving Feeling' is better than any version I've heard. Lee's gravelly world weary defeated yet defiant voice grumbling under Nancy's sweeter bird song voice.

But it is Hazelwood's own songs where they really shine. Hazelwood takes on the guise of the dark stranger attempting to seduce and deflower Sinatra. Some Velvet Morning' is a lolita-esque tale of a man's desire to take the virginity. In the song, Sinatra is called Phaedra, while she unlikely to be the same Phaedra that fell in love with her stepson, merely by invoking her the song places a darker twist on the song. Phaedra is best known in Greek Mythology for falling in love with her chaste stepson Hippolytus, when he rejected her advances she accused him of rape culminating in his death, after being cursed by his father Theseus. Overcome with guilt, Phaedra committed suicide, leaving Theseus without a son or a wife. In this context, the song takes takes on an incestuous undertone, with the generation gap already present in the track with Hazelwood, a slave to his own desire playing off against the innate beauty and innocence of Sinatra.



The relationship between Nancy and Lee was actually a professional one, although Sinatra admitted she was attracted to him; Hazelwood was recently married and had two young children when their relationship began. the sexual tension oozes through the songs they preformed together. Summer Wine is another highlight of the 'Nancy and Lee' album where this time, Nancy does the seducing, sharing her strawberry and cherry wine with a dark stranger before leaving him in the morning craving more of her 'summer wine' I reckon the song is all to do with metaphors, when artists talk about fruit, it's usually got something to do with fertility and sensuality (sweet tastes, ripeness etc)
Whereas Hazelwood is feels that he has found paradise, Sinatra looks at the encounter more casually, asking him to 'help her pass the time.' later in the song it becomes apparent that she saw the whole incident as a transaction, she gave him her 'summer wine' and in exchange she took his 'silver spurs a dollar and a dime.' Summer Wine is a nice twist on Some Velvet Morning.



Kate Moss and Primal Scream covered Some Velvet Morning.

Beyond the sexual tension and interesting juxtaposition between his and her voice, the orchestration is lush, large and effortlessly dances over the borders of easy listening, country and 60s psychedelia. Hazelwood was a disciple of Legendary gun totting porn actress murdering genius/all round good egg Phil Spector, and it shows. The reversed guitar solo on 'Sand' the cut and paste sound on Some Velvet Morning and the general big 'Wall of Sound' that litters the 'Lee and Nancy' album.

Lee died in 2007 but Nancy is still releasing music, although she has spent her career eclipsed by her father, ol' blue eyes. The best thing in my opinion to come from the Sinatra family musically wasn't the poncey skinny italian as well known for his suits and his mafia friends as his penchant for sleepwalking through songs. I would take Nancy and Lee's output over pretty much anything he ever did.




Listen for yourself.