[This digest is the copyright of the Move "Useless Information" Mailing List. Re-publication or re-distribution of "Useless Information" content, in any form whatsoever, is expressly prohibited without prior written consent.] USELESS INFORMATION The Move Mailing List Digest Issue #333 March 8, 2002 In this issue: * Song Of The Week (week of 3/4): "Turkish Tram Conductor Blues" * Nuggets II on CNN * Topic Of The Week: "I was there..." (cont.) * Changes to 'On The Road Again' * "Brum Notes" on Radio 2 Saturday 9th March * Goldmine interview with Roy Wood (Part 5) ============================================================== To POST TO THE LIST: Send an e-mail to: move-list@eskimo.com Useful Web addresses: TheMoveOnline: http://www.themoveonline.com Official Roy Wood site: http://www.roywood.co.uk Face The Music Online: http://www.ftmusic.com Join the ELO List: http://www.eskimo.com/~noanswer/showdown.html Move List Info & Archives: http://www.eskimo.com/~noanswer/movelist.html TO UNSUBSCRIBE: Send an e-mail to move-digest-request@eskimo.com with the word "unsubscribe" (no quotes) in the subject line ============================================================== Subject: Song Of The Week: "Turkish Tram Conductor Blues" Date: Tue, 5 Mar 2002 18:30:20 -0800 From: Lynn Hoskins Song Of The Week - March 4, 2002 "Turkish Tram Conductor Blues" from the album "Looking On" Ideas for discussion: Songwriting Lyrics (huh??) Vocals Arrangement & instrumentation Overall production Strengths/weaknesses What was the rhino doing in the kitchen? *********************** "Turkish Tram Conductor Blues" (R. Wood) Hey Mr. Judge, your trams are coming down the line The cargo ain't too much if you can chase some friends of mine I heard they smuggle immigrants Along the Western Midland line One summertime there came a gypsy caravan Being so inclined, ran over the inspector man Discovered they were yellow Finally threw them in the dam CHORUS: Turn over, turn over Turn over, turn over Turn over, turn over I'd hate to throw you back again Oh yes Turn the volume up until you blow the speaker cone Hey Mr. Judge, you have to give your dog a bone There's a rhino in the kitchen Send him on a tram back home (Repeat first verse) CHORUS (repeat) ********** Subject: Re: Song Of The Week: "Turkish Tram Conductor Blues" Date: Tue, 5 Mar 2002 23:00:58 -0800 From: FifthFlRec (Ray) Classic Roy Wood vocals and guitar. Classic Bev drums. Lyrics.....ahem. One of the best of its time. Production was typical Move.....GRINDING ROCK AND ROLL. ********** Subject: Re: Song Of The Week: "Turkish Tram Conductor Blues" Date: Wed, 6 Mar 2002 20:22:45 -0800 From: "Tyler C.Sherman" I always thought it was "There's a line-up in the kitchen". Makes a bit more sense since there is a Judge involved. And I thought the last line in the chorus was "Hate to blow your mind again". The lyrics are sort of mind-blowing. One of my all-time favorite Move tracks. First ever use of oboes in a rock & roll song. I just love Roy's slide guitar on this track. And the fat, crunchy guitar sound is nothing less than amazing. The chromatic chord run E, Eb, D, C#, C, then C, C#, D, Eb, E, back down and ending on B) on the "Turn over turn over" section is brilliant. I never tire of hearing this one because there is so much going on in it. The only thing I would have wanted in the arrangement is some vocal harmony on the chorus but that's a minor gripe. Recently, while driving my daughter and her boyfriend back to college, we got into a discussion about the use of guitar distortion, as he played me some demos his cousin's band had done. I said, "That's nothing, listen to these guys, they DEFINED guitar distortion" and played him this track. He was appropriately amazed. I've always wondered about the songwriting credit on this song. It's so obviously Roy but is attributed to Bev Bevan. Can anyone on the list clear this up? Wizzards, Tyler ********** Subject: Re: Song Of The Week: "Turkish Tram Conductor Blues" Date: Wed, 6 Mar 2002 20:23:19 -0800 From: Shawn Rush Heavy, Heavy, Heavy, number. Almost gets my adrenaline flowing like the way 'Buffalo Station' does. ********** Subject: Re: Song Of The Week: "Turkish Tram Conductor Blues" Date: Thu, 7 Mar 2002 01:08:45 -0800 From: Beth Gatlin "Discovered they were yellow Finally threw them in the dam" I always heard this as "Discovered they were yellow, Prob'ly threw them in the can." Yeah, this song has VERY strange lyrics! ********** Subject: Re: Song Of The Week: "Turkish Tram Conductor Blues" Date: Fri, 8 Mar 2002 11:26:02 -0800 From: Edward Morris I don't see what's so odd about the lyrics to this song - makes more sense than many of the other tracks on Looking On. It seems to be a fairly straight forward tale about turning over illegal immigrants - that is until you get to the bit about the rhino in the kitchen. Maybe it's the yellow fellow's pet rhino, which would seem to be a good excuse to send anyone back home. BTW - I always thought it is was "send him on a JIVE back home". Maybe would've made a better follow-up single to "Brontosaurus" than did "Alice"; less weird, but perhaps too similar to "B"? ********** Subject: Re: Song Of The Week: "Turkish Tram Conductor Blues" Date: Fri, 8 Mar 2002 11:26:40 -0800 From: "Doyle, Joe" Unfortunately I'm too busy in work to do justice to this song, but what a gem!! A great rocking song, that foretells of many things to come with ELO and Wizzard. Some great guitar work, with simple motif's layered over the top of each other and I particularly love the "steel acoustic" (?) guitar break and Roy's first real attempt at honking his sax! I also like the lyrics - the y have an Edward Lear quality to them - nonsense that appears to make sense!! As Jeff or Bev says mid song - "Good shit man!". ********** Subject: Re: Song Of The Week: "Turkish Tram Conductor Blues" Date: Fri, 08 Mar 2002 12:07:02 -0800 From: John DeSilva This song is one of the hardest rocking tunes the Move ever performed - the guitar/bass/saxophone combination is absolutely devastating! This is one of those songs where I misheard certain lyrics when I first heard it, and I still can't get the right lyric into my head. I've always heard it as "they smuggle in the grits along with Western mail and wine" ... Makes a lot of sense, doesn't it? Musically I hear Roy's huge influence on Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick in this song - Auf Wiedersen on Heaven Tonight uses those little half step changes that makes TTCB more than just a standard 12 bar blues. Roy's (and probably Jeff's) electric guitar leads slash and thrash - but he also uses acoustic, electric slide, oboe, and probably whatever was laying around the studio at the time! By the way, at the end of the oboe solo, does anyone else hear somebody yell "Good s**t, man!"? Bev's drumming is awesome - even if he didn't really write the song, he definitely adds immeasurably with his "bashing about". What do the lyrics mean? Who cares?!?! (well, at least I don't). Although I've always had one question - who's Turkish, the conductor or the tram? JD San Jose, CA 14 days until Roy and the Army in NYC!!!!!! ********** Subject: Re: Song Of The Week: "Turkish Tram Conductor Blues" Date: Fri, 8 Mar 2002 23:39:41 +0100 From: Mikael Werkelin Yes! And CT uses the TTCB intro as the outro to California Man on the same album! ********** Subject: Nuggets II on CNN Date: Fri, 8 Mar 2002 11:26:27 -0800 From: cathy uselton Hey - check it out! CNN's running an article on "Nuggets II", which has some Move tracks. http://www.cnn.com/2002/SHOWBIZ/Music/03/06/nuggets.ii/index.html thanks! cu tornado alley, ok ********** Subject: Re: Topic Of The Week: "I was there..." Date: Fri, 8 Mar 2002 11:26:13 -0800 From: "Bill Krouwel" Saw the Move twice - in 1966, pre "Night of Fear" and a little later during "Night of Fear"'s reign in the charts. The venue was a hideous concrete monstrosity known as the New Bristol Centre, which attempted to be the "hip" palace to be whilst also offering bingo etc. to the older generation. They did have a cool booking policy though, and I saw Hendrix, The Yardbirds, The Action and Creation there.....as well as more punter-friendly acts such as the Hollies and Geno Washington and one-hit no-hopers such as Pinkerton's Assorted Colours...... Of the above, the Move seemed closest to the Action - same late-mod mid parted medium-long hair, pretend silk shirts with frills and big collars, double-breasted suits, then-trendy flared trousers and all. Similar music too, to my then-untutored ears. From memory they played pretty much the same set at both gigs - cooler covers than the local bands - sort of Motown-esque stuff rather than beat standards, plus the single. Carl was definitely the front man both times - it almost seemed like "Carl Wayne and the Move" to me, and on both occasions they sang and played really well - again a cut above local fare.Roy, I remember, was playing some kind of Gibson - not a Les Paul - and stood at the back, very much the self-effacing powerhouse, letting Carl bask in the glory of it all. I say glory.......Bristol audiences were notoriously hard to impress if you hadn't had a hit, preferring just to dance, so the first gig (in the atmosphere-free concrete cavern of the ballroom) went down like a lead balloon - Carl's chirpy chappie routines met a wall of indifference from the assembled shop assistants and insurance clerks. The rest of the band just played. The second gig was different. Same band. Same gear. Same routine. But now the Move had a HIT and had migrated from being known to Melody Maker reading proto-musos like me to being the toast of Fabulous 208, 19 and all the other fan-glossies. They were known. They were someone. So instead of dancing, the audience crowded round the stage - a revolving affair from which the DJ/Compere would announce the band prior to rotating out of sight as the band rolled around......The Move did it slightly differently, milking the situation by first revolving the stage round to the sound of "Night of Fear" but - hey! - no band!!! To increased hysteria the stage continued to revolve, stopped, started again and out came the band. Carl lapped up the adulation, the band were more alive, Roy still stood at the back, but now quietly smiling to himself. I totally failed to get off with a nice looking girl in a floral dress. Carl may have, for all I know....not a bad night out though, even if not quite in the Hendrix guitar-trashing heaaavy league..... Happy days, eh! Didn't see Roy again until the late eighties at an NEC charity show. He'd certainly learned how to work an audience in the intervening years - truly great! Bill Krouwel ********** Subject: Changes to 'On The Road Again' Date: Fri, 8 Mar 2002 11:27:47 -0800 From: "chris roberts" Here's one that caught my eye when reading over some old stuff 'saved' a while back from a previous list contributor (sorry I forgot to note who it was). The following seems to be lifted from an interview and I was drawn to the bit about changed tracks on the 'On The Road Again' album. Does anyone know to which 3 songs Roy is referring or maybe we could speculate some?....... :O) And I suppose we should wonder which of the finally used songs were not to be included originally. (Please read on - the interesting bit is in point 5): 4. RW: "(After Wizzo,) I then switched to Automatic Records. I'd met Nick Mobbs when I was with Harvest. He seemed to know what he was doing and Warners wasn't particularly interested; my contract was with Warners America, so English Warners shed their responsibility. Since Nick was going through Warners with Automatic, I could stay with them and yet be on Nick's label..." (TP, 1981) 5. RW: "We took the finished album (OTRA) to Nick Mobbs, who'd become the business man now he'd got his own company. Since my contract was with Warners, he didn't always have full say. Rather than getting the album out and working on it, he became too critical. He played the album to himself every day in his office and to his friends; it got to the point where he thought it was wrong, and that made me question myself. I got really keyed up over it. Mobbs said they'd release the album if I changed three tracks that he didn't like. Two of them were jazzy things I'd written with the Wizzo band, one of which I particularly wanted to do. Still, we changed the tracks and he still didn't release the album. The only way we got it released was when Richard Battle and I went to the States for a bit of a holiday and went up to Warners. They decided to release it but it never came out in England." (TP, 1981) Anyone know the answers? Regards Chris (Cardiff, Wales, UK - Hey I'm going to the Bilston gig next week, which means I get to go 'home' to ENGLAND... Ahhh-hummmmm :o) ) ********** Subject: Re: Changes to 'On The Road Again' Date: Fri, 8 Mar 2002 23:05:03 -0000 From: Rob Caiger > that he didn't like. Two of them were jazzy things I'd written with the > Wizzo band, one of which I particularly wanted to do. Still, we changed the > tracks and he still didn't release the album. I've just found two tracks from the sessions for On The Road Again, so they certainly exist. More details very soon. Best - Rob Face The Music Online - www.ftmusic.com The official information service for ELO & all related artists ********** Subject: "Brum Notes" on Radio 2 Saturday 9th March Date: Sat, 9 Mar 2002 00:48:33 -0800 From: Lynn Hoskins "Brum Notes" BBC Radio 2 - Stuart Maconie's Critical List A collection of classics from the second city, with music from Black Sabbath, The Move, Dexys and more. http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/shows/critical_list/ Sat 9 Mar 9-10 pm (UK time) Listen live on Web: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/ ********** Subject: Goldmine interview with Roy Wood (Part 5) Date: Wed, 6 Mar 2002 20:23:31 -0800 From: Lynn Hoskins Roy Wood: The Wizzard of Rock Goldmine September 30, 1994 by Ken Sharp PART 5 Goldmine: "Blackberry Way" is one of your best Move songs. Roy Wood: I think Carl left just after that. He got to a point where he was a bit annoyed about not getting songwriting credits and money and stuff. He wanted some of the publishing money and all that so there's a guy named Dave Morgan who later went on to join ELO years after. He wrote songs and Carl used to get him to write songs and put them on the B-sides so he could get some money out of it. I played Carl "Blackberry Way" and he refused to sing it. I did "Fire Brigade" anyway. The management didn't mind who sang on it, to be totally honest. Goldmine: Didn't you do a demo of the song at Jeff Lynne's house? Roy Wood: Yeah. The reason I did that is 'cause Jeff was the only person that I knew that had a mellotron in his front room and it was the only way in those days we could get string sounds and it was great. It was quite late at night. Jeff and I had been 'round the pub. I played him this idea I've got for a song and he says, "Oh, why don't we put it down?" He's got a sound-on-sound tape machine made by B&O, Bang and Olufsen. We were working on it for a while and then decided to put this vocal on. And of course, Jeff's parents were sleeping in the room above the room that we were using. In order not to keep them awake I did the lead vocals kneeling on the floor with the microphone and Jeff and a couple of other guys had a pillow 'round my face so that they couldn't hear it upstairs. It was quite funny. And I was sort of laughing all the way through it. Goldmine: Were you shocked when it hit number one? Roy Wood: Yeah (laughs), you always are, if you get to number one. In those days, I mean, it was a shock, it was brilliant. Goldmine: Does the song still stand up for you? Roy Wood: Yeah, I like it now. To me, "Blackberry Way" stands up as a song that could be sung in any era, really. We do it with the new doing all sort of fanfare things in it and it works really well. It goes down great with audiences. Goldmine: "Curly" was another great single with an infectious melody. Did you like the track? Roy Wood: No, not really. I thought it was really corny. There were other songs that I would have preferred that they release as a single. Probably the way it was produced as well I wasn't very keen on. I think at that time the one that I did want to release was a song that I wrote that we put on the Shazam album called "Beautiful Daughter." I thought that was a much better song. The song just sort of happened. I think I based it around the chord sequences on that. I based the whole song around the chords. I did a lot of open string work on that and it worked quite well. Goldmine: Who did the artwork for the Shazam album cover? Roy Wood: It was a guy called Mike Sheridan, who was in the band that I played with called Mike Sheridan and the Nightriders. He was a bit of an artist too and he asked if he could do the cover and it worked out really well. Goldmine: Shazam is kind of a schizophrenic album, with one side originals and one side covers. Roy Wood: Really, the management then asked me to take over producing the band. But then myself and Carl had our differences and everybody wanted a piece of the cake. So we just put it down to a band production because Carl was involved in the production; he wanted a say in what songs were on the album as well. He chose a lot of the cover versions. Goldmine: Does the album hold up for you? Roy Wood: I wouldn't play it now. There was just something missing. I can't really put my finger on what it was. I think it was probably down to the fact that we weren't together personally as a band. We weren't pulling in the same direction. I always feel if you're having a good time in the studio it actually comes across on the tape and that was a bit of a miserable album for us. Goldmine: To me, the Shazam album was a change from being a pop group to being more of an underground band. Roy Wood: Yeah, I think so. That's more of the direction we wanted to go in for a long time. I think that short spell of that cabaretism spoiled all that, really. It ruined the direction of the band. Goldmine: What was it like for Carl to be the lead singer and then being relegated to singing stuff like "ooh" on "Fire Brigade"? Roy Wood: To look at it from his point of view I think that was probably a bit frustrating as well. I think that's probably why he left in the end. Goldmine: You are a very underrated guitar player. From your work on "Wild Tiger Woman" to, most recently, your playing on 1985's Starting Up album, your guitar playing is tremendous. How do you rate yourself as a player? Roy Wood: That's weird, really. I know in my own heart that I could be a really good guitarist but due to the fact that I never practice, which is my own fault, I'm not as good as I can be. I'm an average guitarist but I think I've got it there to be good. If I sit there and practice licks I can do them. There's no problem with it but unfortunately when you get onstage and you've also got the responsibility of fronting a big band and being the lead singer and all that, the main thing you want to do is get the show on the road and get it good. The actual guitar playing goes down the tubes a bit. Goldmine: Do you play more with the new band? Roy Wood: I will do as time goes on. What we've done up till now is purely get a show together, mainly of the old hits, and we've interspersed a lot of new stuff in between that. I still haven't used the new band to their full potential because there's a lot of talent in the band. the two girls, the twins, they sing really well and I'd like to get them to the front of the stage to strut their stuff and do a song on their own. Then I could step back and play guitar. It's an 11-piece band with seven girls. Goldmine: You were reduced to a trio for the "Brontosaurus" session with Jeff Lynne helping out. Was that more in the direction that you wanted the band to follow? Roy Wood: Yeah, definitely. I can't remember much about the actual recording session except it was the first song Jeff Lynne played on with us. I remember that. We did a BBC television thing which was the predecessor to a program called The Old Grey Whistle Test. We had to go on and do "Brontosaurus" and we had a rehearsal and we were all in the dressing room and I had this long sort of coat which was made of black and white triangles of material. I was a bit nervous. It was the first time I'd ever been the lead singer on TV properly. I was thinking that it was time for a new image. The guys went to the bar and I put this jacket on and it looked like there was something missing that should have went with the jacket. So I got my comb and I combed my hair out so it looked really wild. I went down to the makeup department and borrowed some black and white makeup and I made my face up to match the coat with triangles around the eyes and I put a star in the middle of my forehead and this was the creation of the Wizzard image really but I did it then. When we did the program I started rolling around the floor and biting the neck off my guitar and all that as you do. (laughs) To begin with I didn't feel comfortable doing it but I had a few large vodkas before I went on so I was all right. We had a great reaction from that. Up until the breakup of the Move that was the image that we portrayed. (To be continued...) ----- Coming up in Part 6: Gene Simmons makes a confession, how ELO got started, Roy's instrument collection, the female singers on "Feel So Good," bald heads, Jeff Lynne in the Move, what Roy thinks of "Message From The Country" and the singles that followed, Cheap Trick's covers, and early ELO gigs. End of Useless Information #333 ******************************* [This digest is the copyright of the Move "Useless Information" Mailing List. Re-publication or re-distribution of "Useless Information" content, in any form whatsoever, is expressly prohibited without prior written consent.]