I took a couple of creative writing classes in college, and more exhilarating and confounding than anything I tried to write was the realization that there are an infinite number of ways to write about any one event. No matter how simple or complex the plot you're trying to convey, there are an infinite number of ways to tell it; first person, third person; present tense, past tense; minimalist, flowery; etc. It simultaneously made me feel like the vastness of the cosmos truly was the limit, and that I couldn't even take the crucial first step. Because once that step was taken - once you decided upon a tense, a point of view, a style - all those other doors slammed shut behind you, and what began as infinite possibilities shrank to a mere one.
Kiss Me on the Bus and History of the World proved that the same goes for rock'n'roll. The official LP versions of both leave me cold; yet, demo, BBC, and live versions of each prove that they're two of the coolest songs each band ever wrote. The immediate question is: how does this happen? Why wasn't it obvious to each band that they wound up ruining some great music they wrote? The bigger-picture question is: could it be that there's no such thing as bad rock'n'roll? Could it be that Peaceful Easy Feeling and Uptown Girl are actually great rock'n'roll, hiding under wrongheaded production and terrible arrangements, waiting to be recorded properly and freed from their cruel purgatory?
THE 'MATS
Truly hardcore Replacements fans will tell you that Let it Be was their Sellout Moment, the album where they cashed out and chased the money all the way to Sire. But for a bunch of teenage boys in Santa Fe NM, Let it Be was a revelation, and considering what brilliance came before it – Sorry Ma, Stink, and Hootenany – our minds boggled; what was next with these fuckin’ geniuses? There was no sophmore slump with these guys, no misstep. Everything they touched was golden. When word came down that Tim was on its way in 1986, we drooled in anticipation. Tommy Erdelyi was producing, and the band absolutely slayed during their January 18, 1986 appearance on Saturday Night Live, blasting through Bastards of Young and Kiss Me on the Bus, two new songs, in typically 'Mats fasion: loud, visceral, provocative, exhilarating. An astonishing reminder of what was possible in life. There was no reason to think another Let it Be-quality album wasn’t on the way.
But, as it happened, another Let it Be-quality album definitely was not in the offing. In a move of biblical wrongheadedness, Erdelyi set the knobs as though members of The Eagles were recording a new album, and Tim arrived sounding slick and syrupy, like this month's AOR hit maker. We were all left scratching our heads: what the hell happened here? How could Bastards and Bus wind up sounding so unforgivably gawdawful? The demo of Bus eventually surfaced (now available on the reissue of Tim) which also rocks about a bazillion times more than the final version. So we’re left with a live version and a demo of Bus – both very different, but both quintessentially ‘Mats – that are infinitely better than what wound up as the final version of the tune. Maybe Tommy was simply trying too hard to make this a Hit Record? Perhaps, but didn’t it ever occur to anyone in the band to put the kibosh on what he was doing?
Regardless, Bus stands as an object lesson in overproduction. It didn't seem possible to de-claw one of the most uncompromsing bands I'd ever heard, but that's what Erdelyi did, somehow turning The Replacements into a radio-friendly band. Tim version of Kiss Me on the Bus: forgettable AOR. SNL version & demo: The ‘Mats once again taking it to a new level.
THE DAMNED
Fan boys hail The Black Album as one of The Damned’s finest moments, but it is, in fact, their most vastly overrated album. It could have been nearly as good as their masterpiece, Machine Gun Etiquette, but instead stands as a monument to what subpar production and garish arrangements do to good songs.
Case in point: History of the World Part I, the first half of a one-two punch (along with 13th Floor Vendetta) on side two that drags that album’s momentum down to a standstill. Overwrought with synthesizers and reverb, History sounds – for The Damned anyway – like an homage to Phil Spector, which as a concept is somewhat incongruous with what that band was all about (and anyway, didn’t we already go through this wrongheaded production shit with Nick Mason and Music For Pleasure?). This was the album’s first single? For years I skipped over its boring 3.52 on my way to Therapy.
That is, until 1996, when Nighttracks released The Damned: The Radio One Sessions, a second set of BBC sessions (Sessions of The Damned being the first) spanning seven years’ worth of line-ups between 1979 and 1985. Nestled in the middle of its 17 tracks were six alternate versions of songs that wound up on The Black Album: Drinking About My Baby, Hit or Miss, Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde, Wait for the Blackout, Lively Arts, and History of the World.
The BBC versions of Blackout, Lively Arts and History were a revelation. Blackout and Lively Arts were certainly already great on The Black Album, but suddenly here were these rawer, faster, louder versions that were way better than their official counterparts. History, however, defied expectations, transmogrifying in the hands of the BBC's Mike Reid from a boring four minutes on Black Album to an upper-tier, exhuberent Damned romp worthy of being any album’s first single . It’s like night and day.
Four things happened here: first, the BBC version is played a half-step higher than the Black Album version, in G-flat (on the album it’s in F), adding a lot more zip to a song desperately in need of it. Second, Dave Vanian’s vocals soar on the BBC version; he sounds way more inspired than on The Black Album, which is interesting, because he’s hitting his notes far more confidently on the version that’s in a higher key. (Vanian has enormous bags under his eyes in photos taken during the recording of Black Album, a good indication that he was not in the best place when it came time to record the record.) Third, instead of an overblown arrangement revolving around echo and Hans Zimmer’s synthesizers – as was the case on Black Album – it’s a straightforward Damned arrangement revolving around bass, guitar, and drums, with an organ and piano for depth. Finally, studio effects are kept to a minimum. Instead of trying to make History sound like an epic answer to Beethoven's 9th, Reid treats it like a basic rock'n'roll song, letting the music speak for itself. No peripherals are necessary.
The band itself acknowledged problems with the final product, writing “over-produced by Hans Zimmer” on the sleeve of the History single in 1980. In 2005, the 25th anniversary of The Black Album, Captain Sensible admitted to MOJO writer Kieron Tyler, “It’s a little over the top in places… maybe (Hans Zimmer) did go too far layering the icing on the top.” Bloody 'ell, blokes. If you knew that, why didn't you fix it?
