Berry pickin' (Chuck Berry) (LP 481)

Chuck Berry After School Session  (CD, Chess, 1957) ***** 

Genre: Rock'n'Roll 

Places I remember: Fives (Leigh on sea)

Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: Wee Wee Hours (Chuck gets the blues)

Gear costume: No Money Down (car songs - this is one of Chuck's best, therefore one of the best of all time); School Days

Active compensatory factors: This was Chuck's debut album (and Chess Records' second) released in the year of my birth, which makes it 63 years old!

My CD edition is a 50th anniversary edition with three killer bonus tracks attached.

At the time Chess collected all the singles Chuck Berry ('our rock-a-billy troubadour') had released, adding two more tracks from the sessions that produced the singles and - there you have it - the first Chuck Berry album dressed in a suitably period cover shot of a hunched and pigeon toed Berry.

Given the liner notes seek to present the versatility of the star on show, there is a variety of approach on display but the whole package holds together remarkably well.

Where do they all belong? Still sounds like it was recorded yesterday! Timeless brilliance.

Jukebox blowin' a fuse (ELO) #109

Electric Light Orchestra Roll Over Beethoven/ Manhattan Rumble (49th Street Massacre) (Harvest, HAR 5063, 1972)

I admit it - ELO were a guilty pleasure that I denied for a while but eventually I capitulated and outed myself.

Early ELO has a different feel to the more commercial version that would have all the great hits, which I also love. For one reason, Jeff Lynne plays some hot guitar on those early tracks such as this standout guitar wig out (and others on ELO 2 which featured an 8 plus minute version of Roll Over Beethoven).

The song itself is, of course, a remodeling of the Chuck Berry original with a great great intro (the fragment of Beethoven's fifth symphony gives way to that awesome guitar riff).

Hidden Gem: The B side is a weird off kilter instrumental work out for the band. All disjointed and jagged strings and piano. It's probably quite clever and makes allusions to all sorts of classical or musical stuff that I've heard of before. I don't like it much.

Let me be your little dog 'til your big dog comes (Carl Perkins) #21 - 25 of 300 singles

Welcome to The Beatles alternate universe. It's a world of bootlegs, alternate B sides and different A sides, weird labels, and more.

The Beatles Twist and Shout/ Falling In Love Again  (Lingasong NB 1, 1977)

The Beatles Love Me Do/ I Saw Her Standing There   (Parlophone NZP 3158, ?)

The Beatles All My Loving/ Roll Over Beethoven   (Parlophone NZP 3158, ?)

The Beatles Slow Down/ Matchbox   (Apple 5255, ?)

The Beatles And I Love Her/ I Should Have Known Better   (Parlophone NZP, ?)

Toldja. Weird stuff. Apple? Lingasong? New Zealand red Parlophone singles with different songs and B sides? Yep - that's right.

The Lingasong single accompanied the Live! At The Star Club, Hamburg Germany 1962 double LP. It's raw and shoddy but of historic interest (only). Both songs are on the album so no hidden gems - just a bizarre choice for a B side.

The Apple one was part of an American reissue campaign and I have a complete set of the NZ red Parlophone singles which have came from swaps over the years with collectors (including Mr G Knowles) and other sources like radio NZ.  

Hidden gems: I Saw Her Standing There is a natural for a single and way better than the fairly lame Love Me Do but didn't ever appear on a UK single; Ringo is in top form as he tears into the Carl Perkins Matchbox; and George's cover of Chuck's Beethoven is also a superb side bar part of The Fabs' career.

What a band = four superb musicians, four fantastic singers with their own styles, and three world class writers (sorry Ritchie). Will we ever see there like again? Will we heck as like.