Audiomania is a quirky shop located in a run-down, semi-industrial area. It only opens two days a week (Thursdays and Saturdays), and then for only four hours at a time. One side of the premises contains blue crates full of good quality vinyl (pop, rock, and blues, as well as lots of jazz and reggae). On the other side they sell used hi-fi, restored motor cycles….and artworks made out of old motorcycle and hi fi parts.
Like we said, it’s an unusual place:
After a thorough trawl here last Saturday we ended up with two items.
The first find was a nice clean German pressing of Ringo Starr’s 1970 solo release Beaucoups of Blues. This one is on the Hörzu/Apple label, making it quite interesting:
Starting in the 1960s Hörzu (principally a radio and TV listing magazine) began producing and releasing records as a subsidiary of the Electrola company. Electrola had the rights to release EMI product (including the Beatles) in Germany.
Like we said in the previous post, we seem to moving from not having much Ringo as a solo artist on vinyl to now having quite a few of his releases.
Vinyl is the specialty of Audiomania, but while at the store we found a couple of small crates with some CDs. In there we turned up an original 1986 UK copy of Paul McCartney’sPress to Play:
This is the disc without the bonus tracks (which were added for the 1993 re-issues called The Paul McCartney Collection). The lovely lady who runs the store gave this one to us for free!
This is a UK demonstration/promo 45 of their debut single ‘Love Me Do’/’Please Please Me’.
According to the listing, just 250 copies were pressed for distribution to radio DJs & reviewers prior to its October, 1962 release. Only a handful survive today.
The thing which distinguishes it is the white label with the large red ‘A’ on the ‘Love Me Do’ side. Both labels also have the ‘DEMONSTRATION RECORD – NOT FOR SALE’ wording, and ‘The Parlophone Co. Ltd..’ around the rims. Paul McCartney’s songwriting credit on both sides is misspelt as ‘McArtney’.
Listed by a Greek eBayer, the record sold for a sensational US$12,100.00 (A$14,699).
We just received an email from paulmccartney.com letting us know that the extended EP of Paul McCartney’s ‘Hope for the Future‘ is now available for download from iTunes.
There will also be a physical release in the form of a 12″ vinyl single. No track listings for that are available as yet, but it will come out on January 12 in the UK, and January 13 in the US.
Spincds.com in the UK and the Amazon US store have place-holders for the vinyl release and it can be pre-ordered now.
And there’s an official video to accompany the song where a holographic Paul McCartney sings the song in the world of Destiny:
paulmccartney.com has confirmed a December 8 global release for Paul McCartney’s song ‘Hope for the Future’.
It will be a digital download only, and the original version of the track (which is taken from the best-selling ‘Destiny’ video game credits) will be made available alongside four other special mixes of the song:
1) ‘Hope For The Future’ (Main)
2) ‘Hope For The Future’ (Thrash)
3) ‘Hope For The Future’ (Beatsession Mix)
4) ‘Hope For The Future’ (Jaded Mix)
5) ‘Hope For The Future’ (Mirwais Mix)
Don’t know if there’s anything particularly new here – but Paul McCartney is in good form, open and relaxed in a video uploaded this week to YouTube. (It has subsequently been taken down).
McCartney was appearing at a small gathering in London, answering questions and being interviewed by British model, actor and activist Lily Cole for a global campaign called impossible.
paulmaccartney.com called for musicians to submit their wishes to Cole’s impossible website in order to win seats to the strictly limited-entry event. There are photos and info here. Their conversation event centred around Cole asking Sir Paul about his song ‘Hope For the Future’, part of the soundtrack to the new video game Destiny. You can read a transcript of what they talked about here.
What is impossible? It’s described as a global community who help each other out. People share their time, skills and objects. Everything is always given or loaned for free.
There was a big car boot sale just around the corner from us this last weekend, and we were able to find quite a few nice additions to the collection. One vendor just had boxes and boxes of CD’s, 7″ vinyl 45’s and 12″ LP’s on their stall – and so quite a bit of our Saturday morning was spent trawling….
It was time well spent though as it turned up a few gems.
First up was a Australian vinyl single taken from the John Lennon and Yoko Ono album Double Fantasy. ‘Watching the Wheels’ was the third single from this LP (the first two were ‘(Just Like) Starting Over’ and ‘Woman’). We didn’t have a copy of ‘Watching the Wheels” so this was a good find.
Next was another 7″ single we didn’t have – Badfinger’s ‘Come and Get It’ on the Apple label. It dates from 1969 and is a Paul McCartney composition written for the band, and it makes an appearance on the soundtrack for the film The Magic Christian, starring Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr. This is an Australian pressing. There’s a lot of writing on the label – but still…..
Further hunting through the boxes revealed another Apple single – this time from George Harrison. It’s an Australian copy of ‘My Sweet Lord’ b/w ‘Isn’t It A Pity’. In Australia this was a double A side as both titles have green Apple labels:
Our good luck continued in the multiple boxes at this car boot sale. Next out were two singles – a US copy of McCartney’s ‘Coming Up’, and ‘Say Say Say’ with Michael Jackson – both on the Columbia label, then a division of CBS. In the late 70’s/early 80’s McCartney was briefly (six years) on the Columbia label for his releases in America. He’d temporarily turned his back on Capitol Records, enticed by one of the most lucrative recording contracts around at the time, a deal which included as a sweetener the ownership of Frank Music, a CBS owned publishing company consisting (amongst other things) of Frank Loesser’s songs (think of the Broadway musical Guys and Dolls, etc.). Frank Music is now of course folded into McCartney’s highly successful MPL Music Publishing business.
The two singles we found came out on the Parlophone label in Australia, so it’s good to have these US versions:
The final 45 we discovered was Billy J. Kramer’s ‘From a Window’ – which sadly is kind of beat up, but worth having because it is a song from 1964 written specifically for Kramer (and his band the Dakotas) by John Lennon and Paul McCartney:
The last purchase of the day was a bit of a find. It’s Jools Holland’s 2001 CD Small World Big Band, which is an important one to have in the collection because it contains George Harrison singing and playing on his last ever recording. George passed away just two months after this recording. He does a song called ‘Horse to the Water’, co-composed with his son Dhani.
Holland’s CD is sub-titled “….his Rhythm and Blues Orchestra and friends”, that’s because for each track he invites various stars to join him for a track each. These include the likes of Sting; Paul Weller; Dr John; Mark Knopfler; Van Morrison; Steve Winwood; and Eric Clapton, amongst many others. To quote two of the poignant reviewers on Amazon:
“For me, the big reason to buy this CD was the George Harrison contribution, ‘Horse to the Water’. It is a GREAT song, and a brilliant Harrison song at that. George sounds weak, and I am not sure if Clapton has stepped in on some of the guitar parts, but what a brilliant and fun piece of music, worthy to be held in the highest esteem among its author’s ouvre. IT is reason enough to buy the CD.”
And this one:
“I purchased this CD for one reason. I had seen the DVD Concert for George and loved it. Among the best offerings on the DVD was the Sam Brown/Jools Holland rendition of ‘Horse to the Water’ by George. Except for the words, I would never have guessed that it was a Harrison song. It was too R&B. So I was curious to see how he handled it. Well, he does not have the powerhouse voice of Sam Brown, but I was in fact really surprised at how well he did, helped greatly by the superb backup band. I would not have recognised his voice. I am sure his throat cancer was behind that.”
At paulmccartney.com there’s a further free, previously unreleased track which has been made available for download. That makes three so far….we’re heading towards the makings of an EP.
In November 1974 Paul and Wings were in the process of recording the album that came to be known as Venus and Mars. As with all recording sessions there are songs and different versions of tracks that don’t make the final release.
The exclusive Venus and Mars outtake track now available is a previously unreleased and unheard version of the song ‘Rock Show’. Listen to it below:
I think you can hear why this version was passed over in favour of the one that eventually made it to the LP, but it’s still great to hear how the song went through the process of being more finely crafted.
As part of the continuing publicity push for the Archive Series re-issues this week of Venus and Mars and Wings At The Speed of Sound, Paul McCartney has made available another exclusive bonus track.
It’s a Wings track called ‘Love My Baby’ and is taken from the One Hand Clapping film:
Like the extended and remastered version of the song ‘Letting Go’ (released last week), ‘Love My Baby’ is not on the forthcoming re-issues of Venus and Mars or At the Speed of Sound, but is only being made available as a free download from paulmccartney.com
It’s short and cute. Sounds like Paul is playing a toy piano – long before that became fashionable!
One Hand Clapping was filmed in Studio 2 at Abbey Road in late summer of 1974. The documentary captures Paul playing numbers from Band on the Run with Wings.
He’s said of the film: “It’s nice to see that one re-surfacing. It was made by a friend of mine, David Litchfield; he produced a little magazine that was funky (Ritz, co-edited with David Bailey). We decided that he would shoot a very simple piece, on video. We would just go into Abbey Road and play basically what we had rehearsed. So we went in there and it was very simply filmed, absolute basic stuff, and I think its charm now is that there’s no pretence. It is what it is. We just called it One Hand Clapping, for absolutely no reason.”
Paul McCartney has today made available an exclusive, extended and remastered version of the song ‘Letting Go’. The song won’t be on the forthcoming re-issue of Venus and Mars (out next week), but is only available as a free download from paulmccartney.com
Venus and Mars and Wings at the Speed of Sound are the latest additions to the Paul McCartney Archive Collection. Both albums will be reissued on CD, vinyl and digital, including previously unreleased material, on November 3 (UK), and November 4 (US).
Another trip to the NSW Central Coast, and some time available to check out a couple of the local opportunity shops (or “op shops”) there – like The Salvation Army and the St Vincent de Paul (or “Vinnies” as this chain is more commonly known in Australia – they are similar to Goodwill in the US).
It’s usually a long-shot to look for Beatle items in these places as they tend to be pretty well picked over already. But you never know…..
This time around we did come away with two small finds. First, at the Salvation Army store, was a cassette of A Collection of Beatles Oldies but Goldies:
This one is on Axis, which was EMI’s budget label in Australia. We don’t even have a cassette player anymore – but for just 50c how could we leave this little gem from the past just sitting on the shelf?
Then, from the same store, a 3-track CD single of ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ by Band Aid 20. This was released in 2004 and is the twentieth anniversary fundraising re-make of the 1984 song which kicked off the whole Live Aid charity phenomenon. The CD features Paul McCartney on bass:
As you can see in the official video from the time, Sir Paul is obviously having a good time providing the bass line for this remake of the famous song.
BTW, Paul McCartney, U2’s Bono, Bob Geldof, Midge Ure, and Sarah Dallin and Keren Woodward (from Bananarama) are the only artists to have appeared on both the 1984 recording and on this one from 2004.
The CD single features the 2004 recording, the original from 1984, and a version taken from the Live Aid concert at Wembley Stadium on July 13, 1985.
Beatles Blog 