Kirsty MacColl - why never cool?

There did seem to be a time when every mainstream guitar-pop record in the UK had to feature Kirsty on backing vocals. Even those not produced by Steve Lillywhite.

There was "They Don't Know", of course - a bit of a gem, and indirectly responsible for turning Tracey Ullmann into a millionaire. I think Lenny Henry had first refusal...

Still, we've got Cast.

Merry Bloody Xmas.

Nor can I remember the precise course of events re: the album. Did Mavers get to use his prized '60s mixing desk in the end? Hey - studio-as-instrument, Reynolds should've loved them. Without getting into the production minutiae too much, this kinda suggests that they were struggling to get that 'warm' sound on tape/DAT/whatever, and were reduced to playing the old vintage gear game (Lillywhite might well have been gating and filtering like billy-o, but there's no reason why you can't capture the essence of a four-piece guitar band in situ digitally or otherwise; that LP doesn't sound all that airbrushed to me).

Anyway, as a Merseysider, I guess it was the whole Scouse mythos ("All life comes from the 'Pool... Mersey-sippi") that really irked me. The La's were Carla Lane to the Bunnymen's Bleasdale.

I'd also strongly disagree that the digital format is very good to record guitars with. The whole Shinkansen stable on based on this fatal misconception. Of course I'd loved to be proven wrong :-)

As for analogue/digital - surely the only difference in this regard is that analogue tape saturates in a fairly benign and euphonic way if you overload it, and digital clips nastily. Obviously the answer to the latter problem is 'don't overload' (and get the sound you want in the studio monitors, without relying on the recording medium to give it to you), while the former effect might be desirable. As far as I can tell, modern digital recording gear should be more faithful to the mike feed than anything outside 30ips 1/2-inch, as long as you actually *have* a mike feed. A guitar plugged straight into a mixing board and a raft of DSP effects isn't going to sound anything like a guitar played through an amp into a real acoustic space, but that's no indictment of digital per se, just the way folks use it. Not that's there anything 'wrong' with the processed approach either...

Jeez, I didn't mean to turn this into the letters page in "Guitar Technology". I'm patently speaking from near-zero experience, anyhow.

The valve thing is like tape distortion, only more extreme. Overdrive the amp into clipping, and valves sound much richer 'abused' that way than transistorised circuits. The allure of after-the-fact benign distortion is not lost on the tech-savvy - some electronic artists master to 1/4-inch at high levels because they like the effect of mild tape compression, and most VST software offers some kind of virtual tape-compressor option.

Kirsty MacColl used to perform "Transparent Radiation" as an encore on the "Titanic Days" tour.

The only trouble with that track is the way the lead guitars 'clip' in the middle. I reckon some idiot 'overloaded' it.

I haven't even listened too closely to the story being told in that song, but there's something about it, just the little details and the strings and the whole arrangement and the enthusiasm/scorn/catharsis in Kirsty and Shane's voices, that really captures the transcendent highs and lows of Christmastime.

Amateurist is OTM. Kirsty was as good as her material was - but she's still cool as far as I'm concerned.

They Don't Know About Us.

I never realized how shit Kirsty MacColl was for what she did to the La's till I read this thread.

I don't care because Kite is great and "they don't know" is perfect.

Did you read the blogpost on my blog?

http://windyweather-bimble.blogspot.com/2009/01/theres-been-lull-i-know.html

don't make me pull out Kite
oh god

OKAY IT'S NOT ON MY IPOD BUT IT WILL BE SOON

love her, maybe more than she deserves. i got stuck on "he's on the beach" a while ago, played it 5 or 6 times on my ipod. i had no idea the lemonheads covered it .

her version of "perfect day with evan dando is nice too.

wonder wtf their connection was. but i guess, look at the guys she sang with or behind: dando, macgowan, shaun ryder. if she'd lived, she'd probably have a pete doherty duet in there too.

i definitely think "they don't know" is a pop pinnacle. one of my favorite songs of the '80s, or ever.

i'm totally with you tipsy on "they don't know"...I'm now obsessed with obtaining a copy of Galore (and maybe Kite too)

I've always liked "Walking Down Madison," one of the few times that early nineties white girl-with-hip-hop backbeat works -- perhaps because the song is itself about tourism.

i heard the only reason her version of "they don't know" wasn't a hit was bcz there was a distributor's strike right when it had been released and they couldn't get the singles out of the warehouses into the stores...

that strikes me as ineffably...sad...

She was beautiful, and a fantastic songwriter and lyricist.

totally, Mark. I might post Free World on yr thread here in a sec...

(btw the first 12 posts on this thread made me virulently hate ILM for a few minutes...but all that has passed...still, stfu stupid condescending sh*theads...)

Yeah, none of those blokes actually performed with her, so they all suck.

I kinda love "Walking Down Madison" and "He's On The Beach," you know.

I finally 'discovered' her last year despite hearing her all over great records I loved. Her box set is fantastic start to finish.

If my memory is right, Johnny Marr claims he sent her "Walking Down Madison" mostly as an unfinished demo, for feedback, and she responded by finishing it and sending it back as it now is.

Ten years.

Rest well.

aw, man :(

'he's on the beach' is superb

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7ieij6JPiw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Irgsx58SkJI

i forgot she was on Top Of The Pops with this lot until just this week:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKmUIEs10O4

pretty cool as it goes!

tragically there doesn't seem to be a proper version of "Fifteen Minutes" on Youtube.

I've been a loving fan of "Fairytale of New York," "The Passion" and "Greetings to the New Brunette," and Tracy Ullman's "They Don't Know" for years without ever knowing until yesterday that they had this connection.

http://www.kirstymaccoll.com/music/bvox/

Good to see all the threads and fans here, but I feel very silly. I even have the Smiths, Pogues, and Billy Bragg grouped together on the shelf with a gap in the middle, as if waiting to be filled with MacColl's retrospective. Man, the character of her voice is so strong.

Yeah the three disc overview is pretty much urgent and key.

Funny -- I listened to Galore on Sunday morning, when it suited the mood and temperature. I could listen to "A New England," "Innocence," and "Walking Down Madison" every day. I won't do much with the following analogy except to mention it: she's got the same excellent wistfulness and evanescence of good Saint Etienne.

Pete - I had the exact same experience a couple of years ago! Get the "From Cuba To Croydon" box, the BBC sessions disc, "What Pretty Girls Do" and then make a bonus disc with:

1. Turn My Motor On (Stiff Singles)
2. Teenager In Love (Desperate Character)
3. Quietly Alone (Stiff Singles)
4. I'm Going Out With An Eighty Year Old Millionaire (Stiff Singles)
5. Please, Go To Sleep (Stiff Singles)
6. Fifteen Minutes (Kite)
7. You And Me Baby (Kite)
8. Children Of The Revolution (Electric Landlady)
9. Maybe It's Imaginary (Electric Landlady)
10. Big Boy On A Saturday Night (Titanic Days)
11. Touch Me (Titanic Days)
12. Treachery (Tropical Brainstorm)
13. Us Amazonians (Tropical Brainstorm)
14. Shutting The Doors (Jools Holland - Jack O The Green)
15. Sun On The Water (The Best Of)- this is the proper studio version, the one on the box is the demo

Yeah the three disc overview is pretty much urgent and key.

[...] BOOOOO for the DVD now being sold separately!

yay if that Stiff/sessions thing happens I guess

― kit, Saturday, 29 January 2005 03:06 (6 years ago)

^ still have never bought either bcz of this

did buy the Landlady and Kite re-releases though, Tropical re-release didn't come out here

Tropical re-release Titanic

man she is a genius songwriter and singer

never really checked her out before today

i knew "walking down madison" but that was it

man she is a genius songwriter and singer

otm

She's one of a handful of acts I so, so wish were still alive. Miss her.

Her cover of Ray Davies's "Days" is absolutely awesome as well.

Some of the best things in the boxed set are songs like these, from her unreleased "Real" album, which sounds pretty awesome to me right now:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpDFvr4H6VQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVGKvFAZgNw

I've been meaning to check out some of her stuff. I love Lydia Loveless's cover of "They Don't Know".

Wow, a newbie. Kite is an incredible record. As is Electric Landlady. Plus all her early stuff ... Really, it's hard to go wrong.

shee-it! just bumped "us amazonians" off of Tropical Brainstorm…so…

if you ever get tired of Elvis Costello's "look at me, I'm the Yngwie of lyrics" thing, which I have been for about 23 years, then you gotta check out Kirsty. Like, "innocence," the first cut off the first record that the esteemed Herr In Chicago cites, is about as cold a put-down as can be done, and it is perpetrated with astute, clever but not florid language.

New NYT piece (gift link) by Bob Mehr tying in with the box set about out.

"Kirsty MacColl - why never cool?" More like, "Kirsty MacColl - she was cooler than us all."

I had no idea there was a new boxed set, thanks. I'm a little torn about positioning her as "she recorded this famous Christmas duet, but here's what else she did," since I've always thought of MacColl as "she recorded all this great stuff, plus this famous Christmas duet," but hey, whatever it takes to get her body of work more attention.

In strict American terms it's probably the easiest hook for a general reader these days.

The Guardian has a cool piece as well:

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/nov/02/kirsty-maccoll-box-set-steve-lillywhite-mark-nevin-pogues

I had not idea she was just 16 when she wrote 'They Don't Know,' very precocious

I've never listened to Desperate character until now: is it possible that the drummer on "Chip Shop" isn't terry Williams? Wiki sez that Bremner is on the record, but that the sole drummer is Lee Partis, who if so is the greatest Terry Williams-style drummer other than Williams to have ever existed…

From the sharks in the penthouse to the rats in the basement...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERd4KHGj250

Always loved that song. I do prefer the original with the shuffling beat and guitar but that's a nice development of the ambient touches already present.

A friend played me the ambient version the other day. I'd never heard it before. Then he put the original on, which I hadn't heard in over thirty years. Absolute Proustian moment. Great song too - Johnny Marr's guitar and the production overall slays me

I heard it sometime this or last year after a similar gap, maybe not quite as long. This might be bullshit but something about the chords or melody in the chorus seems absolutely engineered to trigger that kind of feeling in me - see also Luka by Suzanna Vega.

And I didn't know it was Marr!

Funny you mention that. I thought I'd have a go at playing it on the guitar and it turns out the chord progressions are pretty interesting. Some nice sixths and minor 7ths in there give it that subtle emotional edge

THIS is the version I prefer, and it's the one my college station played. Marr blares loud and proud.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Irgsx58SkJI

I submitted her as a musician who is lol-level funny and iirc no one agreed w me! (No one disagreed either just ignored) I think she had a fantastic sense of humor.

I would agree with you

Genuinely heartbreaking moment in Morrissey's autobiography when he gets a postcard from Kirsty on holiday. (You can guess why)

She’s very funny! There are the more obviously comedic songs (“In These Shoes,” “There’s a Guy Works Down the Chip Shop,” etc), but also a general wryness to so much of her writing.

This is cool and fun and sweet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ippU2GcbhA

(ignore the first 20 seconds of that video)

Although that bit is good too!

i love that ambient mix of '...madison', was playing it a lot at one point during lockdown times

Now realizing, thanks to setlist.fm, that I saw one of Kirsty’s last US dates, back in March 1995. Wonderful show, very charismatic performer. Just curious, did she just have two kids? I won’t press the matter, just wondering.

Kirsty MacColl always cool

Now that Shane MacGowan has passed, they’re finally duetting on “There’s a Hole in My Bucket, Dear Liza, Dear Liza” as they have been in my head for YEARS.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptGNMtBBvr0