Three-Tune Thursday: 44 Years Ago, Yikes!

As usual, I am being a non-conformist and writing this ‘Three-Tune Tuesday’ on a Thursday. If you have bad eyesight and have lost your glasses and squinting does not work so well then, those 'days' may well read a little similar anyway.

I spend far too much time dicking around on YouTube. The amount of information on there is staggering, in the forms of pure music videos, rockumentaries, interviews, histories of feuding bands and then there are those reaction clips, most of which are pure bullshit.

Having been freed from the shackles of ‘Alternative Weekend’, I find myself with a huge library of tunes I have never written about or formed any type of public opinion. These vary enormously in genres, and I find it amusing that I can shock people such as @bozz with my varied and unpredictable taste.

While I don’t always respond to other ‘Three-Tune Tuesday’ posts, I occasionally find something I like, so I would implore people to keep contributing to this theme, it’s a good one.

The Jam – The Bitterest Pill (I Ever Had to Swallow) (Snap – 1982)

While searching for what album this came from, I was surprised it was released purely as a single and didn't appear on The Jam's regular albums until the Greatest Hits compilation, 'Snap' was released a year after the band dissolved.

I was never a great fan of “The Jam”, viewing them as post-punks, turned mods who seemed angry and shouted down their microphones with songs lacking any groove or harmony. Yet they were incredibly popular, especially close to the end of their career scoring several chart toppers.

Then ‘The Bitterest Pill’ entered the scene with its harmonizing strings, and what’s that…, a female backing vocal? Gone was the yelling, and I was listening to a sound resembling 'decent' in my mind.

Little did I know the band would soon be history after ‘A Town Called Malice’ which was more of a throwback to that shouty stuff again but had a seed been sown?

Paul Weller would form, ‘The Style Council’, a band I have mixed feelings about, but this material sounded more like ‘The Bitterest Pill’ and a lot less like ‘Eton Rifles’, with its jazz fusion and a solid female backing singer, this time as a permanent fixture.

Garbage – Trip My Wire (Garbage – 1995)

In my quest to find how Shirley Manson entered the music scene, I have been listening to interviews, watching live shows, and thoroughly wasting my time on YouTube.

Having found the 1996 live show where Shirley performs all the way through braless, I had achieved my goal.

A sad state of affairs you might say, but this live performance was on a bootleg VHS tape I acquired from Affleck’s Palace in Manchester, along with a bootleg CD of the band that was silver in 1996.

… and I thought all bootlegs were gold-coloured disks?

As both of my bootlegs were from 1996, they only feature songs from their debut (and best) album. One such song on both video and CD was ‘Trip My Wire’ which does not appear on the standard ‘Garbage’ CD.

That is unless you buy the special edition, deluxe version, expensive money-making edition, whatever that turned up years later. I homed in on this ‘B-Side’ noting the customary aggressive anger emanating from Ms Manson, the feature that made her stand out and be noticed.

“I’m a bitch, and you’re a liar”, she tells us while strutting around the stage. I was immersed when I saw this performance then, and still am.

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark – Messages (Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark – 1980)

The oldest of today's trio of non-recent songs brings me to this one from the early synthesizer era emerging from the UK and is 44 years old. By the time I had noticed OMD, this song had come and gone without me noticing as it was more of a minor hit for the band.

‘Enola Gay’ got my attention, and I then started looking into their back catalogue of singles, as I wasn’t an album type of bloke then. Working for Kwiksave, those were limited to the great bands in my eyes such as Genesis and whatever I could find in those ‘cheap’ record shops that no longer exist.

The video shows its age with a young Andy McClusky dancing around erratically in a similar fashion to the late Ian Curtis (Joy Division), except Andy is still in our world and touring.

An ex-friend of mine claimed to have been an early founding member of OMD, but having checked up thoroughly I can't see any mention of his name. Must have been an attention-seeking liar is all I can think of.

I haven't seen him in years and it's unlikely we will ever cross tracks again.

That’s it for today, your dose of Three-Tune Thursday songs. Until next week, or when I can be arsed again, adios.

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