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Certain Songs #1648: The Primitives – “Dizzy Heights”

October 4, 2019 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Pure
Year: 1989

. . .

As the follow-up to an instant indie pop-punk classic, the second Primitives album, Pure, never really stood a chance of being held in the same esteem as their debut, especially as RCA stuck the fine stopgap single, “Way Behind Me,” on both the reissue of Lovely and the initial pressing of Pure.

So kudos to Paul Court and Tracy Tracy for mixing it up, and not even trying to replicate the debut. With producer Paul Sampson filling in for departed bassist Steve Dullaghan, Pure was weirder and more psychedelic, but also featured Court on more lead vocals than was strictly necessary.

Certain Songs #1647: The Primitives – “Ocean Blue”

October 3, 2019 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Lovely
Year: 1987

. . .

On the shortlist of Prettiest Songs Ever Recorded, Indie-Pop Division, “Ocean Blue” in and of itself justified The Primitives calling their debut Lovely. On a record that’s full of short sharp shocks, the lazy hazy vibe of “Ocean Blue” — and the epic length of 3:25! — made it a complete outlier.

And of course, on a record like Lovely, there’s always the danger that the slow epic is going to drag the whole record to a halt, but by making “Ocean Blue” the next to last song, they not only didn’t drag it down, they also pointed the way to their next record, Pure, which would be much slower and weirder.

Certain Songs #1646: The Primitives – “Stop Killing Me”

October 2, 2019 by Jim Connelly

Album: Lovely
Year: 1987

. . .

Of course, The Primitives didn’t form in a vacuum: in the mid-1980s, plenty of bands got their heads rearranged by Psychocandy’s mixture of horrendous noise and gummy pop, and suddenly the English countryside was crawling with bands like the Shop Assistants, Primal Scream, My Bloody Valentine, Darlings Bud, Soup Dragons and so on and so forth.

So this was the world in which The Primitives put out their ferocious third single, “Stop Killing Me,” the one that well and truly made their reputation (the story goes that Morrissey being photographed in a Primitives t-shirt helped them as well, believe it or not), and why not? “Stop Killing Me” is two minutes of glorious melodic noise.

Certain Songs #1645: The Primitives – “Crash”

October 1, 2019 by Jim Connelly

Album: Lovely
Year: 1988

. . .

Disambiguation: This post (and the next few) is about the late 1980s indie-pop group The Primitives. If you wish to read about the band that got Lou Reed and John Cale, please see yesterday’s post.

This, ladies and gentlemens, is the platonic ideal of an indie pop song. Fusing the Cars, the Jesus and Mary Chain and The Shangri-Las, “Crash’ is two-and-a-half minutes of pure pop bliss, and a song that I’ve heard countless countless times, each and every one an absolute pleasure. I was trying to figure out just how to explain that to you — though I doubt very few who are reading this disagree — and I figured I’d do what the journos call a tick-tock on how every single second of “Crash” is pure pop pleasure.

Certain Songs #1644: The Primitives – “The Ostrich”

September 30, 2019 by Jim Connelly

Single, 1964

. . .

Disambiguation: This post is not about the 1980 jangle-pop band known as The Primitives. Please tune in tomorrow for a series of posts about them. No, this post is about something completely different: a fake band that spawned The Velvet Underground.

The year was 1964, and the kids were going crazy for that beat music, and a young songwriter named Lou Reed, who was working for an outfit called Pickwick Records, had an idea for a song. Actually he had three ideas for a song, all of which would serve him well in the future.

Certain Songs #1643: Pretenders – “Legalise Me”

September 29, 2019 by Jim Connelly

Album: Viva El Amor!
Year: 1999

. . .

My favorite song on Viva El Amor! — and one of my favorite Pretenders songs period — was buried on the second half of the album, and featured a ringer on lead guitar.

Kicking off with what sounds like electronic drumbeats before a shouted “1, 2, 3, 4!” brings Martin Chambers in for real, “Legalise Me” (using the British spelling, natch) is pure forward momentum, guitars beeping and buzzing and Chrissie Hynde singing about one of her favorite things, weed.

Certain Songs #1642: Pretenders – “Popstar”

September 27, 2019 by Jim Connelly

Album: Viva El Amor!
Year: 1999

. . .

Finally! After almost 15 years of not quite getting it right, the Pretenders were well and truly a band again — Chrissie Hynde and Martin Chambers now augmented by Adam Seymour on guitar and Andy Hobson on bass — and so they made their best album since Learning to Crawl.

The album, entitled Viva El Amor! after Sire balked at her original title, Biker, featured a number of strong performances, and their cover of the Divinyls “Human” even got some airplay. But by 1999, the guitar rock that Hynde specialized in was beginning to go out of vogue, something she addressed in the scathingly hilarious opening track, “Popstar.”

Certain Songs #1641: Pretenders – “Night in My Veins”

September 26, 2019 by Jim Connelly

Album: Last of the Independents
Year: 1994

. . .

And so it was another decade before Chrissie Hynde released another song I liked as much as her classic early work.

In between, though, was a pretty dour period. Martin Chambers exited before 1986’s Get Close, and I seem to remember sitting on the floor at Cindy’s apartment listening to it and not finding any connection to it whatsoever, though “Don’t Get Me Wrong” was a pretty OK — if overproduced — single.

Certain Songs #1640: Pretenders – “Middle of The Road”

September 25, 2019 by Jim Connelly

Album: Learning to Crawl
Year: 1983

. . .

In the liner notes for his epochal 1977 triple-disc compilation Decade, Neil Young infamously wrote “’Heart of Gold’ put me in the middle of the road. Traveling there soon became a bore so I headed for the ditch. A rougher ride, but I saw more interesting people there.”

This was in reference to what Neil fans have always called the “Ditch Trilogy,” the raggedy, cranky albums that basically killed the commercial momentum he’d built up with Harvest, and as Chrissie Hynde is a long-time Neil Young fan — she was friends with one of the students killed at Kent State, about which he wrote “Ohio” — I can’t help but think that quote was the inspiration for the opening track of 1984’s fine comeback album, Learning to Crawl.

Certain Songs #1639: Pretenders – “Back on the Chain Gang”

September 24, 2019 by Jim Connelly

Album: Learning to Crawl
Year: 1982

SPOILER ALERT: There was no Pretenders III.

And in fact, it’s kind of amazing that there was any new Pretenders music ever again after the events of June, 1982. First, Chrissie Hynde discovered she was pregnant by Ray Davies, then Pete Farndon was kicked out of the band for heroin abuse, and James Honeyman-Scott died of a cocaine overdose. Boom. Boom. Boom.