Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Rock, pop, soul, funk, jazz and reggae: a curated musical journey like no other, reminding you of some forgotten favourites and introducing a few undiscovered gems... Simon Tesler is the former publisher and editor of 1980s music, media and pop culture magazine BLITZ.
Hello, this is Simon Tesler with another selection of great Sounds from the music archive. This week, our theme is CRIME. We've got 14 murderously great tracks coming up from Prince, Supergrass, Elvis Presley, Roger Daltrey and much more. But first... well you already know what this one is.
So yes this week's theme is Crime, or rather Crime & Punishment. We kicked off, of course, with Sophie Ellis-Bextor's 'Murder On The Dance Floor', which probably now takes its place among the classic anthems of the past quarter century, a massive hit on two occasions -- once when it was released in 2001 and again last year thanks to Barry Keoghan's butt-naked dance moves in Saltburn. After that the fabulous 'Thieves In The Temple' from Prince, the best track by far -- in fact arguably the only track worth hearing -- on his 1990 album Graffiti Bridge.
*** SIDEBAR on Sophie Ellis-Bextor from blitzmagazineuk on Instagram ***
BLITZ never managed to catch up with Sophie - she was only 12 when the last issue was published in 1991! - but she would have made a great cover star for us. The gorgeous image on her debut album Read My Lips was photographed by top creative duo Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott.
'Murder On The Dance Floor' has a good back story all of its own. It was originally written in 1994 by American rock musician Gregg Alexander, conceived in a moment of frustration when his car wouldn't start just as he was about to go out clubbing. "It wasn't anything deep from my subconscious," he told Alex Petridis of The Guardian. "It was just a dummy lyric that was kind of sung for fun, but then I couldn’t better it.”
A couple of years later, he formed alt-rock group New Radicals, and 'Murder' was one of the songs he considered for their debut album. In the end it didn't make the cut and the band had a huge international hit with 'You Get What You Give' instead.
"I almost flipped a coin between the two songs," he said "The record company wanted something urgently and I didn’t have the time or the budget to finish both. I felt like 'Murder' was a monster but 'You Get What You Give' was a masterpiece. It was everything I’d always wanted to say inside five minutes.”
Despite the success of 'You Get...' life as a touring musician was already losing its appeal and Alexander broke up the band and moved to London to focus instead on writing and producing. Fast-forward a year or two and he met the 21-year-old Sophie Ellis-Bextor, who was then looking for songs to record for her debut album. They worked together to finish and adapt the song to her style. (Ellis-Bextor and Alexander also co-wrote 'Mixed Up World' and 'I Won't Change You' on her follow-up album Shoot From The Hip.)
Murder was a massive international success for Ellis-Bextor, overshadowing everything she has recorded over the years that followed. Fast-forward more than two decades, and writer-director Emerald Fennell was looking for a song to soundtrack the climax of Saltburn, her pitch-black tale of murder and social climbing, in which her anti-hero Oliver played by Barry Keoghan celebrates the success of his brutal plot to seize ownership of the Saltburn country estate by dancing naked through the house.
"It had to be a moment of utter jubilant triumph," Emerald told Entertainment.ie. "It had to be a moment that made us, the audience, completely complicit in all manner of terrible things. It had to have kind of post-coital joy and also a sort of little camp streak that I think this film also doesn't shy away from. So it could never be anything but 'Murder on the Dancefloor.' It's too good to be true!"
*** END OF SIDEBAR ***
A trio of British bands now, with three tales of murder, arrest and imprisonment. In a few minutes Supergrass with 'Caught By The Fuzz': lead singer Gaz Coombes' song about the time he was nicked for possession of cannabis at the age of 15. After that the Hershey Boys Sham 69 make their debut on Sounds with the raucous 'Borstal Breakout'. But first, one of the second rank of British punk bands from the late 1970s, 999, with 'Homicide'.
Let's turn back the clock now to a slightly more innocent time -- the 1950s -- for two songs by one of the most celebrated of all writing teams Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. This was of course a time when virtually all pop music artists had their songs written for them by someone else, usually by a team working in one of the so-called song factories like New York's Brill Building. Leiber and Stoller's hit songs of the 50s included 'Hound Dog', made famous by Elvis Presley, though actually written for Big Mama Thornton, 'King Creole' also for Elvis, 'Poison Ivy' and 'Yakety Yak' -- "Don't Talk Back" -- for The Coasters.
In a couple of minutes I'm going to play another song they wrote for Presley, the theme song for his third movie, 'Jailhouse Rock'. I said before these were more innocent times. How else could you get away with a song about hardened male prisoners dancing with each other.
'Number 47 said to number three / "You're the cutest jailbird I ever did see / I sure would be delighted with your company / Come on and do the Jailhouse Rock with me"'
Before that, the first hit they wrote for The Coasters - then known as The Robins. It was inspired, Leiber said, by one of the radio police dramas he used to listen to as a kid in the 1930s. In their autobiography Leiber said, "Gang Busters had a dynamite opening -- a siren followed by a burst of gunfire, and the announcer hyping this week's episode. I was in love with Gang Busters as a ten-year-old back in Baltimore, but now I was twenty. I couldn't remember any of the stories, but the sounds were still in my mind." This is 'Riot In Cell Block #9'.
Fast forward now to the early 1970s, by way of the 16th century or possibly even earlier... Let me explain: The Gallows Tree is an ancient folk story that has existed in several different versions for hundreds of years. It even inspired a play by William Shakespeare, Measure For Measure. In short it tells the story of a man -- or sometimes a woman -- who is condemned to death but attempts to gain his -- or her -- freedom by bribing the executioner with money or sex. In 1970, as Led Zeppelin began to record their third album, which was strongly influenced by folk legend and music, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant resurrected the tale for the song 'Gallows Pole'.
After that, another song that exists in several different versions. It has was later covered by scores of artists including Eric Clapton, the British funk band Light Of The World, UB40, Screamin' Jay Hawkins and many many others. But 'I Shot The Sheriff' was first written and recorded by Bob Marley for the 1973 Wailers album Burnin'. That's in a few minutes, but first, Led Zeppelin's 'Gallows Pole'.
*** SIDEBAR: BOB MARLEY from blitzmagazineuk on Instagram ***
The timeless 'I Shot The Sheriff' from The Wailers' final album Burnin' released at the end of 1973. Shortly afterwards, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer - who had founded the group ten years earlier with Bob Marley - quit the band as a result of various disagreements with Chris Blackwell, owner of their label Island Records. Chief amongst these was the feeling that Blackwell favoured frontman Marley over his two partners. As a result of their departure, Marley now took top billing, and the next album Natty Dread was credited for the first time to Bob Marley & The Wailers.
There are various stories about the supposed meaning behind 'I Shot The Sheriff'. Marley himself claimed it was about police corruption and oppression in Jamaica. "I want to say 'I shot the police' but the government would have made a fuss so I said 'I shot the sheriff' instead... but it's the same idea: justice." The subtext of the song, though, is that it was the sheriff himself who shot the deputy and then blamed the killing on the singer. However, after Marley's death, his former girlfriend Esther Anderson claimed that there were other elements at play. She said that the lyrics "Sheriff John Brown always hated me / For what, I don't know / Every time I plant a seed / He said, "Kill it before it grows" referred to Marley's disapproval of her use of the contraceptive pill.
The Wailers' 'I Shot The Sheriff' did well in the UK and a few European markets where The Wailers were already known, but it was when Eric Clapton covered the song a year later on his album 461 Ocean Boulevard that it became an international hit. Released as a single, it gave Clapton his first No 1 chart hit in the US, and also helped to open up the American market for Marley himself as the originator of the song.
A minor footnote: you might find yourself slightly surprised by the chorus of the original Wailers version. It has a slightly different chord sequence on the line 'I Shot The Sheriff', with the stress on the first part of the word 'Sheriff'. Clapton's version put the stress on the second half of the word, and rather than stick to the original, Marley followed suit and adopted the same phrasing for his subsequent performances of the song.
*** END OF SIDEBAR ***
Two more American bands now. Huey Morgan is a BBC radio presenter and media personality who now lives down here in Bath in Somerset, but in a previous life back in the 1990s he was one of the founder members of the New York rock and rap group The Fun Lovin' Criminals. They scored a huge hit with the song 'Scooby Snacks' back in 1996 but I'm going to play their theme song: 'The Fun Lovin Criminal'. After that -- well you know it doesn't take much to get me to play a track by Iggy Pop -- so after that an unusually mellow track from his post-Stooges album with musical partner James Williamson. It was recorded in 1975, with Iggy laying down the vocal tracks each weekend while he was on day-release from the psychiatric hospital where he was receiving treatment for heroin addiction. That's 'No Sense Of Crime'. But first, 'The Fun Lovin' Criminal'.
Time for just two more. Rock stars have always had a bit of a crush on criminals. Among the more memorable examples are Bruce Springsteen's guitarist Steve Van Zandt as mobster Silvio Dante in The Sopranos and Spandau Ballet's Gary Kemp and Martin Kemp as the Kray twins. But one of the first was Roger Daltrey, who played former armed robber John McVicar in the 1980 thriller McVicar. I'm going to play the title song. And then to close the show, the final track from Eddie & The Hot Rods debut album, 'On The Run'. But first Roger Daltrey and 'Free Me'.