I Am Without Shoes

This is a follow up to my post last week about the various backwards B-sides released by The Stone Roses in 1988-89. The version of Full Fathom Five I posted- Elephant Stone backwards if you recall- is the CD single version, with extra guitars added to the ghostly swirl. The original version, found on the 12″ single, is different (fewer if any additional guitar parts). But what can also be discovered from the Elephant Stone 12″ single is that if you reverse the version of Full Fathom Five you get the Peter Hook produced cut of Elephant Stone single i.e. before John Leckie mixed it. Hook’s version is sparser and less produced, a truer version possibly, opening with a blare of Squire’s wah-wah pedal. So what I’m getting from all of this is that the 12″ version of Full Fathom Five is the Hook version of Elephant Stone played backwards and the CD single (and what Silvertone have served up in re-issues and re-releases ever since) is the Leckie version of Elephant Stone played backwards with extras.

There is also this which I had forgotten about until reminded by reader Michael- I Am Without Shoes…

I Am Without Shoes is She Bangs The Drums backwards with additional forwards words and is the equal of any of the other backwards B-sides. The fade in of backwards guitars and vocals at the start is a sort of slow-rush and the whole thing shimmers and burns.

The Youtube poster above has gone a step further, reversing the backwards version at 1.26 and adding it to the original backwards one, resulting in Ian’s forwards vocals from She Bangs The Drums returning at the end. According to Google the additional forwards lyrics are…

‘I’m serious
I want her
I have to be sure
I admit that I’d hate to die
Please help me
I am without shoes
I wouldn’t be selfish
I cursed myself and they laughed
Please
I am Without Shoes

Yeah
I don’t think I need to stare
Please help me
I am without shoes
I wouldn’t be selfish
I cursed myself and they laughed
Please
I am Without Shoes

Yeah
I don’t think I need to stare
Please’

These new forwards lyrics are fairly untypical Roses fare, possibly the result of Squire’s backwards lyric writing method of writing down what the backwards vocals suggested once the tapes were switched around. The title went on to inspire a Charlatans song too, from 1997’s Tellin’ Stories.

I Am Without Shoes was sometimes used as their intro music when they took the stage during the long tour they did to promote the release of their album through the spring of 1989, the tour that broke them nationally, with increasingly positive and breathless press reporting building through to a gig at the ICA where Bob Stanley said he’d seen the light and finished his review with ‘Sweet Jesus, The Stone Roses have arrived!’. On other occasions they entered to the trippy, rolling drums and bass and screeching sounds of this piece of music, built around a drum break from Small Time Hustler by Dismasters…

The Stone Roses Intro Music 

Next job is to put all these together- the intro tape, the two versions of Full Fathom Five, I Am Without Shoes, Guernica, Simone and Don’t Stop.

And May You Always Have No Shoes

With No Shoes, the opening song from the Charlatans 1997 album Tellin’ Stories, has been buzzing around my head recently. It’s a song that is blatantly in thrall to mid 90s rock ‘n’ roll, a post-Britpop shuffle and with Gallagher-esque vocal tics. It opens with some harmonica and a burst of wah-wah guitar and then drum loops supplied by a Chemical Brother (Tom Rowlands I think). Stoned and groovey. The album was released following the death of Rob Collins but he played on much of it.

With No Shoes

I’m sure I read somewhere that Tim’s lyrics were inspired by The Stone Roses legendary 1989 intro tape, a trippy and slightly menacing piece of music- a rolling bassline, lolloping drum loop and screeching sound (all sampled from a 1987 hip hop record, Small Time Hustler by Dismasters). It apparently also contains a voice whispering ‘with no shoes’. It is a valuable addition to your ever-growing mp3 collection.

The Stone Roses 1989 Intro Track

Small Time Hustler

Which also gives me an excuse to post this picture of Ian, Mani and Reni on that tour of 1989, when they were capable of blowing ecstatic heads wide open and also of turning up to play to audiences of a couple of dozen.

Small Time Hustler Two

In an online version of Noel Edmunds’ cosmic ordering, ask and the internet provides- Colin from Glasgow emailed a day or two ago with a vinyl rip of Dismasters’ 1987 single Small Time Hustler, which I wrote about on Sunday (scroll down). Cheers Col.

Small Time Hustler

Another 1920s/30s aviator picture for you to enjoy. I said to Mrs Swiss the other night ‘I’m quite into 1920s aviation, y’know, the sense of adventure, the newness of flight, the leather jackets’.

Small Time Hustler

Sorry to be getting repetitive in recent posts, what with four Weatherall posts this week and several Stone Roses related posts, but sometimes that’s the way it goes round here. This is another Stone Roses related post.

This youtube clip shows the intro track that the band used to take to the stage to back on the tour they did in 1989. Rolling bass and drums, looped screeching noises, very late 80s and very cool.

Turns out that this is looped version of a 1987 hip-hop track called Small Time Hustler from New York’s Dismasters, and a classic piece of mid 80s hip hop it is too.

I don’t own Small Time Hustler in any format as far as I know and haven’t been able to find an mp3 to date either. Obviously there are ways to rip youtube audio but the quality’s never brilliant so if anyone’s got one I’d be very grateful. Small Time Hustler was itself based on a sample from the song Lightnin’ Rod by Kool And The Gang, and since ’87 both Gang Starr and Nas have used the same sample for their own ends.

At the Warrington gig three weeks ago and the pair of gigs in Barcelona last week The Roses entered to the incomparable Stoned Love by The Supremes, which I thought I had on my hard-drive. But I don’t, so here’s a video of a studio performance of Stoned Love.

Now that the internet/Twitter storm about Reni ‘storming off stage’ and Ian calling him in front of an Amsterdam audience expecting an encore has died down, the opening boom of drum and Diana Ross should be the signal at Heaton Park in just under two weeks time that it’s showtime, followed by those opening bass notes of I Wanna Be Adored. It would be nice to hear the ’89 intro track though.