As
mentioned, The Sound of the Sand, though
credited to The Pedestrians, also features three other ‘bands’ – The Golden
Palominos, The Eggs and The Trees. ‘Sloop John B’ is by The Eggs: Thomas, Chris
Cutler, Thornton and Ravenstine. Interestingly (or not) this band is also
credited in the sleevenotes with playing on ‘I Didn’t Have A Very Good Time’, a
song that actually does not appear on the record, but which was released as a
(transparent, silk-screened) one-sided single at the same time (I have seen
suggestion elsewhere that this single came free with Winter Comes Home). Whether the song was considered a downer (not
impossible) or there was no room on the 45 rpm 12” album, is… just is….
It
was probably an appropriate move to lose ‘I Didn’t Have a Very Good Time’ from
the album, as it is not actually a great song (and also – here once again we
run into problems – ends with Thomas singing a snatch of ‘Moon River’, which
might perhaps have required a royalty payment or at very least, copyright
clearance. That Cutler then opted to release it on a very limited edition
one-sided single on his Re: label indicates though does not prove recognition
of this as an issue).
More
internet reading has suggested to me, firstly, that Thomas’ ‘Sloop John B’ is a
Beach Boys cover. It isn’t; it’s a traditional West Indian song the Beach Boys
also covered. Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sloop_John_B) tells me
that The Beach Boys’ version was the first to use the line ‘this is the worst
trip I’ve ever been on’ in place of ‘…since I’ve been born’, and Thomas sings
that, but generally speaking this rendition is close to irreconcileable with
the Beach Boys’ one as possible. He makes deliberate deviations from the Beach
Boys’ version, too: ‘I feel so broke up’, for instance, becomes ‘I feel so
broke down’. Also, for reasons unfathomable, Brian Wilson took the line in
earlier versions about the ‘people’s trunk’ and turned it into the ‘captain’s
trunk’; Thomas makes this into ‘the captain’s bunk’.
I
have read, too, that this is the same version of ‘Sloop John B’ that was found
on the b-side of the aforementioned David Thomas 12” single Vocal Performances (thanks for that
description!), recorded a capella on cassette in a London hotel room; but with
additional overdubs. I don’t have a copy of this release to hand, but my memory
tells me of some differences* – for instance, the Sound of the Sand version includes some distorted, slowed down (or
backwards?) tape manipulation towards the end, perhaps little more than tacit
acknowledgement of the band’s genius in fitting their playing to a pre-existing
and very individual vocal. Since I am talking about Thomas as a featured, solo
singer, here seems as good a place as any to note the fairly pedestrian (ahem)
cover art, by Martyn Lambert, to the album – a microphone, on a stand, on the
beach, some people playing in the distance. Why?! As with the (presumably)
last-minute removal of ‘I Didn’t Have a Very Good Time’, there seems to have
been some ad hoc surgery done on this cover, too – there is a photo credit, but
no photo.
The
Beach Boys’ ‘Sloop John B’ is an unreasonably uptempo song, given the trauma
and misery it details. Thomas’ version is sea-sick and feels far more true. Chris
Cutler, in particular – making his debut as a Thomas collaborator, a
partnership that would last for the rest of the decade including the recasting
of the Wooden Birds as the late-80s Pere Ubu – demonstrates his expressive
talent herein.
Pere
Ubu had already recorded original songs under titles of famous ‘standards’ –
‘Sentimental Journey’, for instance, and ‘Drinking Wine (Spodyody)’. The group
did covers – their version of the Seeds’ ‘Pushing Too Hard’ is justifiably
legendary – but their records had only contained originals (unless you want to
push the definition and describe ‘Life Stinks’ as a Peter Laughner cover; but
Laughner had once been a member of the band, of course). This is, in a manner
of speaking, the ‘real’ song. Thomas has fairly recently suggested that his
work with Pere Ubu ‘exists within the world of pop music,’ thus:
Cutler, easily one of the best
drummers of his generation and one of the most dazzlingly experimental of any
generation, is a star of this ‘Sloop John B’. The other is Eddie Thornton, who
creates (?) (or at least conveys) a lively nautical trumpet figure which takes
the track out. It’s a whole retake of the song, and Thornton’s own Jamaican
roots perhaps give him the clearest right of all participants to pull this
track – a Caribbean ballad – back away from the Beach Boys. The effortless way
in which he achieves this tends to make one wonder why he is not noted,
himself, as a songwriter but rather as a versatile accompanist (not that that’s
not a wonderful thing to be). The one interview I have managed to locate online
with Thornton doesn’t mention the Sound
of the Sand at all, but it does confirm that Thornton is a committed
Christian, which may have given him some added connection with Thomas at this
time, though that’s just extrapolating.
I will write about this further in a
few weeks, but I note also that the Variations
on a Theme album also features the same riff in one song… as does the song
which follows ‘Sloop John B’ on this album, ‘Man’s Best Friend’. Perhaps even at this early stage, Thomas was
already stealing from himself.
*Update 21 September 2014, I had a chance to compare the two versions, and I have to say that the Vocal Performances version sounds substantially different, to the degree that it's almost certainly a different performance altogether. It also has background noise and perhaps even tape edits; why would Thomas insist a band record to his cassette-recorded vocal which would in any case have to be edited and reworked to fit the new song? That said, the back sleeve of Vocal Performances most decisively claims that 'A copy of that performance was overdubbed with drums and trumpet and appears on the album, "The Sound of the Sand & Other Songs of the Pedestrian" by David Thomas and the Pedestrians." The copy released here is a direct reproduction of the original acapella [sic] performance but edited.' So who am I to disagree.
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