The Art and Heart of the Compilation
I Helped Edward Ball Escape – A Tribute To The Times & Edward Ball : Various
Best for : Fans of genuine, under appreciated indie music and wonderfully curated compilations
This review is going to be different. I've rarely, if ever, reviewed a various artist compilation. I'm not sure why, because I've loved them since I first fell in love with pop 53 years ago. I'm putting that right with this excellent, comprehensive and vastly entertaining collection released by Wally Salem at The Beautiful Music record label. (https://thebeautifulmusic.com/ )
But I'm also going to explore the art of the compilation in its various forms. Why did I fall in love with it in the first place? What are some of the great compilations? Does it still have a place in today's playlist culture? And finally, I'll let you know why I think you should listen to a copy of 'I Helped Edward Ball Escape – A Tribute To The Times & Edward Ball'.
Here goes:
In The Beginning
It's hard to remember what life was like before I had a record collection. I know that one Sunday afternoon in January 1973 I watched The Sweet perform 'Blockbuster' on TV and it was a jaw dropping moment that had me hooked. Those sirens, that image. Steve Priest looking more female than male. For the first time I saved my pocket money to buy the single. Instinctively I knew that my parents would not share my excitement. It didn't occur to me that they may not let me use their record player. I would still have had to own a copy of my record. I remember being furious that someone called David Bowie stole the riff from them for 'The Jean Genie' not discovering for a few months that 'The Jean Genie' came out first
A single single doesn't amount to a record collection but I had access to the tiniest, tinniest transistor radio and quickly learned that there was a world out there that demanded to be explored. There were acts out there called The Beatles, Slade, T. Rex, Mud, Gary Glitter. (Yes. I know, But I didn't know then.) Top of the Pops, every Thursday evening became a must watch, and a source of stress if my Dad wanted that rubbish turned off. With hindsight I suppose I was building my own world, one that left my parents behind. In a very safe, stay at home way I was becoming independent. I still didn't have a record collection though.
Three months later I turned 12. I had birthday money to burn, nearly £5.00. My Mum and Gran took me to Bournemouth, and left me in an early version of Debenhams to browse their record collection. They had a sale with lots of records by people and bands I had never come across before. Buried amongst them were a K-Tel compilation 'Dynamite' and an EMI collection called 'Solid Gold, Easy Action' Both had 20 tracks. I haven't looked back since.
Compilations
What compilations had in common with daytime radio and Top of the Pops, besides the same source material, was control. I couldn't choose what they played. If I wanted to hear the latest Rubettes song, I had to hear stuff by the New Seekers and Peter Skellern first. That 'Solid Gold, Easy Action' introduced me to Deep Purple and Alice Cooper as well as Cilla Black and White Plains.
Those compilations foregrounded melody which, for me, remains the most important piece of any song. It's not a weak, wish-washy thing. Let's not forget that Oasis' 'Shakermaker' lifted its tune from The New Seekers' 'I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing.'
More importantly though, if you wanted your money's worth from those K-Tel compilations you had to listen to it all. The songs they contained became memories and personal
K-Tel is no more and the closest equivalent is probably the Now compilation series. It's easy to sniff, but remember how groundbreaking 'Now, That's What I Call Music' was on release. For years compilations had slid down a slippery slope, promoting never to be famous artists who were a record company's latest starlet. 'Now' suddenly allowed you to access the biggest songs of the day at a fraction of the price. Still going strong 40 years later they now include deep dive looks at particular periods, and are expanding into collections of album tracks that you may have missed.
Come the advent of Britpop and the go to compilation series was 'Shine'. If Britpop was the trigger, the genre was so broad as to be almost meaningless. Think of it instead as the best indie sounding collection of its time. It came along for me after a lean music period where priorities were diverted to mortgages and a young, growing family. Spare time was for sleeping, and spare money was not for buying new music so it was the Shine series that introduced me to Oasis, Blur, Manic Street Preachers, Teenage Fanclub, James, Pulp and many, many more.
If this all sounding too commercial, step forward Cherry Red. From being a small, northern record label where acts like Everything But The Girl had their big break, they quietly expanded into a long running series of niche multi disc compilations covering everything from bubble gum to experimental prog rock. Their sleeve notes covering the development of the scene and the individual acts and songs featured on the CDs were uniformly excellent. To give you just a flavour of their range, here's an arbitrary selection of six of their finest.
Optimism /Reject, : Punk and Post Punk meets D.I.Y, aesthetic. 105 tracks including The Freshies, The Raincoats, Josef K, Young Marble Giants and so many more.
Revolutionary Spirit. : The Sound of Liverpool 1976-1988. 100 tracks including Original Mirrors, Dalek I, It's Immaterial, The Cherry Boys and The LAs
Electrical Language Independent British Synth Pop 78-84. 80 tracks including The Normal, The Mobiles, Camera Obscura and Paul Haig
Harmony In My Head UK : Power Pop and New Wave 1977-81 76 tracks including Salford Jets, The Photos and The Flies
Bubblerock Is Here Today : The British Pop Explosion 1970- 73 85 tracks including Blue Mink, Mungo Jerry and Kenny
Make More Noise! : Women In Independent UK Music 1977-1987. 90 tracks including MO-Dettes, Girls At Our Best, Marine Girls and Talulah Gosh
Every compilation is a leisurely journey through pop's hidden streets, revealing lost and new treasures at every turn. Their curators put in the graft so that you don't need to. They reveal the secret of an excellent compilation to be the passion and desire to share great, misplaced music.
Let's shout out too, to the much missed annual Rough Trade Counter Culture compilations identifying the best independent music across genres of the previous 12 months. And let's also tip a nod to the Warchild releases including 'Help' and 'Help 2'. Don't assume that because they're for charity they've compromised on quality. Each is a primer to the acts that matter at the time of release, the acts that take risks and deliver under pressure.
Finally, those free CDs you find on the cover of music magazines such as Uncut, Mojo and Electronic Sound. Don't dismiss them. They may be driven by record company sales teams - I don't know - but they're still a valuable sampler of what's new. They show too that the benefits of not having control still hold good. You'll find music you would never have considered without a little nudge. Back in 2004, I bought a copy of The Word magazine and listened to the free CD on the way home. It included a track by the Trashcan Sinatras, a band I vaguely remembered for the song 'Twisted and Bent'.. The featured song 'Weightlifting' is still the answer I give to the question "What's your all time favourite song?"
Mixtapes and Playlists
The advent of digital streaming spelt the end of a compilation culture. On one level it's the ultimate ceding of control to let an algorithm tell you what to listen to. "Wait a minute", I hear someone whisper "Didn't you say earlier that ceding control is a good thing?". I did, but only when it broadens your musical horizons. An algorithm that keeps track of what I play and feeds me more of the same is the exact opposite of what I want.
Spotify has a regular playlist that's updated weekly called Release Radar. It tips me off about new music by bands I like. Great, but what about the new music from bands I've never known? I have a personal playlist on Spotify with around 120 songs that I listen to when I want something familiar that I know I like. Its current iteration includes songs by Gilbert O'Sullivan, Peter Paul and Mary, Super Furry Animals, Daphni, Waz-U , Grinderman and Motorhead. There's no algorithm in the world I can imagine that would collate that mix for me. As a sample in one of Edward Ball's best known songs nearly has it, I'm a name, not a tiny slice of algorithm code.
On the other hand, playlists can be the new mixtape. Go back 50 years to that 12 year old taping the songs he liked on the Top 20 countdown and pressing pause to remove the sound of the DJ. Single handedly killing music, twenty years later he wasn't deterred from creating compilation CDs for friends, sharing music he felt passionate about and just wanted to share. Fast forward to retirement and he loves writing his blog and preparing a Mixcloud Show that very few people listen to. But it only takes one person to find a song they love as a direct result of his show to make it worthwhile.
Playlists are the quickest way of expressing your personality in music. More than that, they give every person with a streaming account, who has no musical ability to participate in a musical world. Through their own eclectic tastes, a musical memory and the time to sequence it in a way that will say something to a listener means that he or she has become a performer. That's special.
The art of the compilation album may have changed but for opening new doors, discovering hidden songs and making them available, it's hard to beat
All of which brings me, at last ,to the subject of this blog.
'I Helped Edward Ball Escape – A Tribute To The Times & Edward Ball'.
Various Artists
Curated by Wally Salem and released by The Beautiful Music record label.
I've corresponded occasionallywith Wally online for a couple of years now. To say he knows his indie music is an understatement,. He is evangelical about sharing songs and he set up a record company, The Beautiful Music to release albums by bands he feels should have a much wider audience. He's a record company man who loves records a lot more than sales.
One of his passions is for the punk and post punk world of the late 70s UK, particularly the band TV Personalities. His label has released four volumes of tributes to the band, so they're nearly half way towards his goal of reaching ten volumes.
This album can be seen as a spin off from that interest, sorry obsession, as Edward Ball was an early member of the band. He also had his own punk band O-Level, cunningly referenced, for good or ill, in TV Personalities own 'Part Time Punks'. He's the man behind The Times who released an excellent cult indie single, 'I Helped Patrick McGoohan Escape' and much more. His other bands include Teenage Filmstars and Conspiracy of Noise as well as an impressive body of solo work under his own name. Let's face it, Ed Ball's whole career has been a compilation album waiting to happen!
His music ranges from raw punk with a sense of humour, through C86 indie, and Creation Records into noisier territory with Conspiracy of Noise. He's been nearly everywhere and done nearly everything but he's still not widely known. It's one of the strengths of this compilation that it could change that.
It's not just Edward Ball who's on display here. This album is also a sampler of nearly 40 bands from the Canadian indie scene and further afield who deserve their moment in the sun. I'd wager that whilst you might have come across a couple of names before, the likes of Rotifer, Terryball, The Broken Head, Woog Riots, The Dupont Circles and Dodgy Accent have not crossed your path. That's the great joy of a collection like this. The songs may be Edward's but the treatments belong to his disciples. Like what you hear and there's a portal to a further body of work to explore.
It's taken 15 years for Wally to compile this collection. It's curated with care, patience and love for the work of Edward Ball and the bands who rallied to his call for support. It achieves everything you could hope for in an indie collection. It belongs equally to Edward Ball, the forty or so bands that have recorded tributes and, most of all to Wally Salem whose vision and commitment made it possible.
The double album is available direct from https://thebeautifulmusic.com/.
Taster Track : All of them. Every single one.