Ocean/World's Smartest Man

[glee]

Two new audio files for you. Usual place.

[Gazza]

Got myself quite confused for a moment listening to Ocean Of You, but I think that might be one for the BES box set rather than a LoW reissue.

After digging out Welcome Stranger I'm pretty sure that version would be an alternate from the BES London sessions. If you listen to the accompaniment it's almost identical. The bass has been added, but the acoustic and electric guitar, apart from being used slightly differently in the mix, sound extremely similar. The percussion too. And I'd swear that the horn samples and backing vocals are absolutely identical. Would David have decided to reclaim the song two years later without overhauling it?

Anyway, whatever the story, it's fantastic to hear it. Despite all the similarities it feels quite different – and it's fascinating to hear two such fantastic singers cutting the diamond so differently.

[mark t]

shock and horror

http://www.blackeyedsusans.com.au/latestNews.htm

ha, the site has shat itself - must be all 3 of us trying to access it at the same time

[LAMF]

If my memory serves me I think it is the same basic recording as the Blackeyed Susans' version, but it's using David's original vocal, before Rob recorded his version.

Anyway I'm glad I was finally able to locate the tape and it was intact. DATs are quite fragile, so I wasn't sure if it was still going to be playable after all these years.

I was recently asked about my "collection" of Triffids memorabilia, and I answered that it wasn't so much a collection as an accumulation. To shape it into a collection would require quite a bit of archaeological work and librarianship.

[Kieren]

shock and horror

http://www.blackeyedsusans.com.au/latestNews.htm

ha, the site has shat itself - must be all 3 of us trying to access it at the same time

  indeed - I got that! I am looking forward to this.
K

[Mark_from_Perth]

LAMF, thats an accumulation I'm sure many of us here wish we had access to! You'll be taking good care of that stuff won't you!
cheers Mark

[geoffm]

One of lifes small pleasures...a hitherto unheard David McComb song.Thank you Graham.
Mark-"coming soon"doesn`t yet give me confidence  the project is beyond the "Bleddyn"phase,but I`m probably just overly cynical

[Kieren]

Hi - I'm only getting about 1 minute of Oceans of You - anybody else in this situaton?

[Eke]

I had to try a few times Kieren but it worked OK in the end. Ocean of You is great! Brilliant to hear Dave singing it.Thanks very much Graham.

Haven't listened to WSM yet.

[LAMF]

LAMF, thats an accumulation I'm sure many of us here wish we had access to! You'll be taking good care of that stuff won't you!
cheers Mark

Well I hope I am doing the best thing possible by handing these things over to Graham so that they can appear as part of this reissue program.

Of course in a few years time, it'll be time to do it all again with the BluRay editions, just like Neil Young is finally getting around to doing.

http://music.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,2278585,00.html

[milton]

Thanks LAMF & Graham,

Its great to here Ocean of You sung by David.


Any chance of posting the last track "When You Were Mine" from the 1994 Triple J Session???

Pretty Please!!!

[son of albert]

Can I just say   :-*THANK YOU  to LAMF - for finding the DAT - and Graham - for sticking Ocean of You on the site.  I do love the McComb version it reveals the songs true potential. Peculiarly, it's made me like the BES version more too.

I love this site. 

[vps]

Only just got around to downloading these goodies, thanks so much again Graham! I have to say that as much as I have always liked Ocean of You and Rob Snarki's vocals, this one beats the living daylights out of it...Amazing stuff.

[genkboy]

great stuff !

[Urpal]

Yeah, thanks for these new songs. Both hit tunes in an alternative universe.

It's quite interesting to hear World's Smartest Man as another example of the direction Dave went with Stephen Street. Production wise, it's fairly typical of that Lightning Seeds/New Order era. I'm not sure it was such a good move for Dave, but you can't ignore the market conditions in which you operate completely (OK, Nick Cave did and things came good for him in the end, so maybe that was a mistake*). The song in pop terms still has a lot more invested in it lyrics and melodic nuance-wise than most of that stuff.

It makes me wonder how it would have sounded with a conventional guitar/bass/ drum treatment, but then it sounds like it was created to fit the "effete" soundscape it occupies.

* Ian McCulloch contributes to this age-old dilemma in an online video I was watching last night. It's the second one along here. Mental health warning: avoid watching if you prefer not to see your heroes a little the worse for wear and tear.