I am going to write this in two parts as part two is the reason for part one and the whole thing in general, confused? You will be, but hopefully a little less confused by the end!
Let’s get started on part 1, in my naivety I have to confess I never heard of Rickie Lee Jones until I started thinking about writing something about Dr Alex Paterson, so I guess I have thrown “me” “us” straight into the sampling melting pot of ambient music.
I didn’t want to start with the obvious but I feel there is no getting away from “Little Fluffy Clouds” that vocal sample is so powerful and so much depth to it, it was almost inevitable. The opening track from The Orb’s debut album “Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld” a mind-bending ambient space odyssey built on samples for the chillout rooms of clubs across Europe and beyond in 1991.
Rickie Lee Jones is an American singer songwriter; I could probably press full stop right there but feel I would do her an injustice somewhat. I say that as looking at her back catalogue it means absolutely nothing to me and I consider myself in at my ripe young age of 50 someone who knows how to navigate the vast musical landscape, but this particular horizon holds no fluffy thought-provoking clouds.
Technology and You Tube is wonderful thing; just ask my 79-year-old Dad he spends most of his retired mornings drinking fresh coffee surfing You Tube listening to music and Spanish language videos as he prepares himself for what delights the new day ahead brings. I managed quite easily to find where the Little Fluffy Clouds vocal sample of Rickie’s had come from it was taken from “A Conversation with Rickie Lee Jones” which starts with the opening question “What were the skies like when you were young?” her answer is truly wonderful, the rasp in her voice and the nasal tone was said at the time to be due to her use of drugs but was later confirmed by her that she just had a heavy cold when the interview was recorded. What I am struggling with is to find any context around the said interview, I did however discover her singing “Chuck E’s in Love” with her wearing a very fine red beret. I almost feel ashamed now for my previous comments regarding the full stop!
Dr Alex is I will call him for ease of reference was later asked by Rickie for just £5000 for the use of the sample for Little Fluffy Clouds. Other samples in the same track are not quite so obvious, but brought me so much joy when discovering them! Back to the burning financial questions which reveal the next definitely more subtle of samples. When Steve Reich finally made contact with Dr Alex, he told he thought Little Fluffy Clouds was amazing and asked for 20% of sales from that point on. The Steve Reich sample is “Electric Counterpart – Fast Movement 3”, I have been fascinated by Steve Reich since I first heard his track “Come Out” from 1966, totally mind blowing that in the 1960’s Reich was putting together tracks using samples and looping those samples. That same year The Beatles released Revolver just to throw some enormity around what Reich was doing at that time. Don’t get me wrong Revolver is a fantastic record and was pushing the boundaries itself with “Tomorrow Never Knows” albeit in a psychedelic direction.
Steve Reich was asked to edit some tape footage for a benefit for the Harlem Six, the Harlem Six were six black youths arrested for the murder of a Hungarian Refugee following the Little Fruit Riots in 1964. Following that a Civil Rights activist asked Reich to compose a separate piece to this “Come Out” was the result of what came out of those 70 hours of tape. The voice used in that track is Daniel Hamm who was involved in the riots but not the murder. The track starts with him “I had to, like, open the bruise up, and let some of the bruise blood come out to the show them” this quote was proof he had been beaten when held in custody by the police. On Reich’s recording this line is repeated three times then “Come out to show them” is played together on 2 channels and looped continuously for 13.00 minutes, a ground breaking piece of music.
We are now going to literally Jump into the Fire!! Harry Nilsson style, I was first introduced to the music of Harry Nilsson via the Quentin Tarantino movie Reservoir Dogs where he used the track “Coconut” and Martin Scorsese’s masterpiece Goodfella’s the scene when Henry Hill gets arrested. It’s the later track “Jump into the fire” taken from Nilsson’s 1972 album Nilsson Schmilsson that is also sampled in “Little Fluffy Clouds” and years later Dr Alex also revealed he sampled Lee Scratch Perry on the track, nod to Dub music.
The Orb’s first album came out and “Little Fluffy Clouds” was heard in all the clubs and the soundtrack to all the sunsets and sunrises in Ibiza. Alex and The Orb could do no wrong with credits on the album from the late great Andrew Weatherall, Youth, Oakenfold and 808 State among a whole list of others that actually take up a full column of the album sleeve impressive stuff.
When their second album came out in 1992 “U.F ORB” they were invited to perform on Top of the Pops, known for its terrible mimed performances (remember when Liam and Noel swapped roles on Roll With it to take the piss) The Orb decided to play their track “Blue Room” in all its 17.34 minutes for their piss take they decided to play chess throughout the performance.
You have to give Dr Alex credit for capturing the moment, he doesn’t care about “format” its much more about the content and find that snippet of a sample and how it can lift a piece of music to a completely different place. Images of him mixing old KISS FM cassettes he used to get sent to him from the USA, we aren’t talking about the London KISS FM by the way! Mixing them together using pencil of all things, can only assume it would be to position the tape reels in the correct place. Experimental genius on a similar scale as when the also late great Adam Yauch looped Led Zeppelin’s “When the Levee Breaks” drum intro, how that intro was recorded has been the subject of Rock n Roll rumour for many a decade, from Bonham and his drum kit being suspended from the ceiling in Alister Crowley’s mansion, or something along those lines! The truth from the mouth of Jimmy Page it was in fact recorded at Headley Grange they just set up the drums in the tall grand hallway which had great acoustics and gave them that incredible echo effect.
Let’s get back to Adam Yauch AKA MCA, during the recording of License to Ill album in 1986 he invited AD Rock and Mike D round to his flat to show them his “tape” deck which turned out to be a full size reel to reel tape deck which he had set up on the kitchen table a strange sight to see in itself but Yauch had the tape from one reel stretched around a mic stand next to the table going to another mic stand at the other side of the table, round a chair then into the other reel. It looked like one of those crazy science experiments from the car adds. What he was doing was looping the drum intro from “The Levee Breaks” throw in some scratching and another sample from Black Sabbath’s “Sweet Leaf” from 1971 and you have the opening track from the Beastie Boys debut album “Rhymin’ and Stealin’”. I almost forgot a sample from The Clash “I fought the Law” blink and you might miss it.
The musical landscape suddenly becomes blurred, more of an art form creating soundscapes and collages to create layered tracks.
When I was 16 me and my cousin (RIP Brother) were dropping samples into his mixes, one that stands out and has stood the test of time was a sound bite we stole from JFK’s speech from 12th September 1962 I think I recorded it from a news programme “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard”. The speech was about Apollo 11’s Moon landing which the America president gave at Rice University, space the new frontier. I still have that cassette with that mix and sample on and recently been able to transfer it to digital format audio file on my laptop for safe keeping, thanks to my wonderful partner Jackie.
Leeds Rhino’s had just lost 20-22 to Warrington, Jackie phoned me to say she was stuck in the said “Rhino” traffic, Leeds United lost 3-0 away to Everton and the rain poured down on the Industrial Mill Town of Halifax.
The date was Saturday 12th February 2022, the venue Loafers coffee and record shop at Piece Hall, the event an evening with Dr Alex Paterson and Youth aka Martin Glover the music producer for The Verve- Urban Hymns, Blue Pearl- Naked in the Rain, Paul McCartney, Shed Seven, U2, Zoe- Sunshine on a Rainy Day to name but a few, Zoe was Youth’s girlfriend at that time. He was also one of the Killing Joke’s founder members and Dr Alex started out as their roadie.
Now the scene is set part 1 should now have some context as we begin part 2, feel free to go back and reread part 1 if I lost some of you along the way!
As we walk down the hill to Piece Hall the wind is howling and the rain is well and truly lashing down, having no hair does sometime have its advantages, but being a speccy doesn’t, as I enter Loafers the sudden change in climate immediately makes my glasses steam up. Senses somewhat depleted I can hear what can only be described as a wall of sound playing, as the mist starts to clear I can see the legendary music producer Youth on the decks at the back of the coffee shop. The event was ticket only and was a great turn out on wet Winters Saturday evening, all credit to Mark the owner of Loafers for organising the event.
We get a drink and say hi to Mark who is busy serving a queue of thirsty customers. We make our way over to the DJ desk which looks a complex technical beast (a nob twiddlers dream) I am assuming the DJ set up at Brix Smith’s wedding 22 years ago in Italy when Liam Gallagher and Alan Magee DJ’d didn’t look as confusing as this.
Youth looks comfortable and completely at home surrounded by the highly technical set up, less can said about his choice of clothing. White sun visor with a palm tree on it, tan cord blazer, blue vest with white stars on it, cargo trousers with a crotch button fashionably undone and a pair of Asics runners. Always ever to hand his trusty black leather 1970’s style flight bag, containing the very important special “stuff”, seriously no f**ks given!
Dr Alex appears behind the decks from the side door which is fast becoming the “stars” exit of choice for odd roll up or 20!! Dr Alex looking dashing in his pink joggers with matching grey and pink lace less Onitsuka Tigers and his sherpa style hat, I think that’s what they are called.
Dr Alex takes over from where Youth has left off as they play suspect roll ups tag team, Alex is mixing some late 1970’s Jamaican Reggae Althea and Donna’s 1977 classic “Uptown Top Ranking” which went to number 1 in the UK in 1978, the track transports you back to the ethnically diverse streets of London around that time. From out of nowhere the haunting echo and Bobby Gillespie’s ambient dreamy vocal on Primal Scream’s track “Higher Than the Sun” subtly get mixed in. The original track was mixed by Dr Alex and produced by The Orb for the Screamadelica album in 1991. The track was later voted by the NME readers as single of the decade, some accolade that! The late great Andrew Weatherall also mixed and produced the majority of the Screamadelica album I mention that as Weatherall lived in the flat above Dr Alex in the early Acid House days, some serious talent within those walls.
Within these walls at Loafers the red wine is going down very nicely, Mark advises it’s from a can, a great can of Merlot! It’s always good to catch up with Mark chat about records, music and up and coming gigs at Piece Hall.
Unfortunately, we have to leave a little earlier than planned so we say our goodbyes and I pick up my copy of the new Andy Bell album Flicker which is amazing.
I never got to hear Dr Alex play “Little Fluffy Clouds” or get the chance to ask him about the Nilsson Schmillsson album but I did get a photo with Youth outside Loafers.
Michael Conboy 08/03/2022
meansmagazine.com 