MUSIC PREVIEW
V LISTEN!
I IT’S Fill business once again down Leith way. Those ever-diverting. ever-innovative, self- efficient music moguls — that’s Fini Tribe to you. pal — are back. and they've got two naggingly familiar brothers in tow. The pencil-thin moustache? The slicked back hair? The jerky new wave electro pop? It was imperative that that clock was 'beat'? Can you see what it is yet? ‘They never actually split up.’ says the Finis’ Davey Miller about Sparks (for ’tis they). Despite disappearing from view over here after being dropped by Virgin a few years back, Ron and Russell Mael have not
. idled. Film soundtracks. hits in France in Japan. new material. And now: ‘Our publisher in American used to manage them. We were gonna do a . cover of ‘When I'm With You’, but we didn't get round to doing it. Then they sent us new stuff so we decided to work on that.‘ Cue the release at the end of October of Sparks’ ‘National Crime Awareness Week'. produced by the Finis and released on their Finiflex label. As for the Edinburghersthemselves, ? talks continue apace with i London, RCA and l east/west, the trio having finally managed to
extricate themselves from their soured relationship
with One Little lndian. Expect a deal to be
finalised this fortnight, a single in February and an ‘ album in spring. Finiflex will continue to release the boys’ various side projects. . I saldilorence and Epic 1 records have gone their separate ways after only | one single. Their album. Million Trillion, has been completed and the band
are currently attempting to ’ gain the rights to the masters.
I The Proclaimers begin work on their third album today (23 September). They return to Chipping Norton studios in Oxfordshire with Sunshine 0n Leith producer Pete Wingiield.
Double tribute
Joe Temperley will make good an earlier cancelled engagement when he opens the new season oi concerts at the Tron Jazz Cellar in Edinburgh. The real purpose at this latest visit irom the llew York-based baritone saxophonist, however, is to record a large-scale work written especially ior him by Dundonlan trumpeter, composer and arranger Jimmy Deuchan
Sadly, though, the session has now become a memorial to Deuchar, who
3 died in hospital in Dundee on 9
September, as well as a tribute to Temperley. Jimmy was to have conducted the ten-piece Scottish band
; in his iive-movement ‘concerto ior ‘ Joe’, but saxophonist Bobby Wisharl,
the director at the Strathclyde Youth
Jazz Orchestra, will now take on that
task. Deuchar and Temperley, who hails irom Lochgelly in Elie, are both east
coast Scots, and worked together as
tar back as the Jack Parnell big band in tendon in the early 50s. While
' entirely at home in small groups, both
are primarily associated with big band music, and Alastair Robertson came
up with the idea at having Jimmy
create a larger work ior the
saxophonist as a iollow-up to Joe’s
‘llightingale’ quartet disc ior Alastair’s HEP Records label in Edinburgh.
‘We applied to the Scottish Arts
MARC MARNIE
Councillor a recording grant, but they came up with only £750, so I have ilnanced the rest oi the costs myself. Joe is very pleased with the piece, but he was obviously heartbroken to hear the news. I would now like to see some kind oi memorial concert next year, perhaps combining the new work with some oi Jimmy’s other arrangements, like the Gershwin material he prepared ior Spike Robinson. lie was the greatest arranger we have ever produced, and I hope one oi the main jazz iestivals will recognise that iact.’ (Kenny Mathleson)
Joe Temperley and the Jack Finlay Trio I play at the Tron Jazz Cellar on Sun 26.
f'l'oupe or not taupe?
Memphis is like a ghost town after six o’clock. You can cruise the city
introspection through the record. Dulli regards the album as a song cycle. Downbeat song cycles are not normally associated with bands irom the States with hair and guitars who (used to) record ior Sub Pop, but as was generally recognised when The Whigs covered The Supremes’ “My World Is Empty Without You’ and iollowed it up with the ‘llptown Avondale’ EP oi soul covers, this is not a typical hair/guitars band. ‘We didn’t want to be another skull on the skullpile,’ reckons Dulll.
Anyway, we were talking about song cycles. ‘l was really inspired by “Astral Weeks”,’ reveals Dulll. ‘That was the touchstone that I used to uniold a drama with thematic consistency. it works as a whole because it describes a person who has
Drugstore
cowboys
‘There’s no real formula
for songs,’ The Boo I Radleys’ Sice tells Craig McLean. Having heard the seventeen-track , psychedelic jamboree that l is their latest album, he I
no doubt all revved up by the news that ‘l’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)’ is now steaming up the charts in Costa Rica, Venezuela. Malaysia, Slovakia and sundry other countries ending in ‘a’. Despite the lengthy hiatus since
come to the end oi a relationship and is having a hard time. it’s basically about two people who stayed together too long with various other characters that visit throughout. I’m making it sound like a concept album which it’s not. I really started writing the songs when l was dealing with two iriends oi
streets and see no sign oi Ilie. You can ieel completely isolated, like the last creature leit after everyone else has lumped ship. lot that I’ve been there or anything, but Greg Dulli oi Aighan Whigs paints a vivid picture oi his experiences there while recording their new album ‘Gentlemen’ at the
1988's Sunshine 0n Leith. feted Argent Studios. With the mine - a guy and a girl who had been the brothers Reid are n9 instrumental tracks laid down, be together ior a really long time and . studio slouches- A" being 5 packed the rest oi the band oii to started to come apart.’ believes him.
well, recording should be finished by the end of October, mixing shortly
their native Cincinatti, went back into the studio with an engineer to record
‘Sentlemen’ is less concept, more case study oi the art oi ialllng apart.
’You can always tell a good record by
thereafter. with a single 1 his vocals, allowed the atmosphere oi (Fiona Shepherd) listening to it when yew“: on acid. released in January. D-day ; “'9 Place ‘0 39°F ""0"!" "'0 90093: “9M” Whigs Play "'9 VON”, says the singer. But even he hasn't
for the album is 28 and metaphorically get naked. Edinburgh on Wed 6 and The Oathouse, attempted to listen to his own record Februanj- 0r thereabouts- There’s a thread of downbeat I Glasgow on Than 7. while in a chemically-debased state of
30 The List 24 September-7 October 1993