Thursday, November 13, 2008

johnny was: 'the butcher boy'



photograph by henning christoph.


ROUGH 1.

Produced by Geoff Travis & Mayo Thompson. Written by Bob Marley.
Or was it the ghost of Jacob ? Rattling chains ?

Released in the bitter cold of February, 1979.

Ali McMordie: bass; Brian Faloon: drums; Jake Burns: guitar, vocals; Henry Cluney: rhythm guitar.


STIFF LITTLE FINGERS: JOHNNY WAS from "Inflammable Material" LP (Rough Trade) 1979 (Northern Ireland)

PURCHASE INFLAMMABLE MATERIAL

PATRICK McCABE: "THE BUTCHER BOY"

6 comments:

Emmett said...

Fantastic Marley tune. Can't listen to this "version" yet b/c I'll get tinnitus if I do.

Once on a mushroom trip I felt I was standing 3 feet away from Bob listening to him sing this tune

ib said...

Ha!

I know what you mean. The first time I heard this SLF version, I had my ear pressed to the mono speaker of big transistor radio. It would have been the John Peel, of course.

No hallucinogens, alas, but it briefly allowed me the impression of 'being there'. I used to foolishly put my head between stereo woofers, too, in lieu of headphones; as a consequence, perhaps, I suffer from very mild permanent tinnitus. It doesn't bother me as much as it used to.

I love those surging currents of raw electricity coming up on mushrooms. Everything standing on end.

This is as close as I will ever get to sitting in a NASA rocket, I can now safely predict.

ib said...

Or was it Dave Fanning on RT Radio 2, where I heard it first, I wonder ?

Nazz Nomad said...

I worship the SLF version of this.
"A single shot rings out, in the Belfast nite and I say Oh Oh Oh, Oh Oh Oh..."

ib said...

And it it's a fine bit of yodelling from Jake, and a fine bit of raw angst.

It's always struck me, Nazz, that the fine Gibson sound of J Mascis and Dinosaur Jr owes a good deal to Irish bands; Thin Lizzy and SLF in particular.

ib said...

I loved this too.