Rocks In The Attic #104: Nirvana - ‘MTV Unplugged In New York’ (1994)

Released following Cobain’s suicide, I guess this is the first example of Geffen Records cashing in on his death. None of the other contemporary bands that recorded an Unplugged performance on MTV went on to release them on record (except for Alice In Chains and Alanis Morrissette) - the tracks usually found their way onto singles as B-sides (or existed in full only on bootlegs). An Unplugged album was more of a classic rock thing to do - hence the releases by Clapton, Dylan, Bryan Adams and the Page & Plant reunion.

I wasn’t a fan of Nirvana at the time this was released - mostly because I didn’t like that he wasn’t particularly a good guitarist. Learning the guitar will give you crazy notions and put you off bands like that. I later realised that it’s far more important to be a good songwriter than it is to be a good guitarist; a guitar solo is never going to change anybody’s life.

Trying not to like them, and failing miserably as this performance was getting a lot of airplay on MTV, the songs started seeping in and I started to become a Nirvana fan, purely by osmosis.

You know those famous questions - ‘Where were you when Kennedy was assassinated?’ or ‘Where were you when the Berlin Wall fell?’ - the first such question I can remember in my lifetime was ‘Where were you when Kurt Cobain shot himself?’ The answer: travelling home in a taxi, on a Friday night, leaving Middleton and just reaching Chadderton. We asked the taxi driver to turn the radio up, and still shocked, had to explain to the taxi driver who had died.

Hit: Come As You Are

Hidden Gem: Oh Me

Rocks In The Attic #60: Super Furry Animals - ‘Mwng’ (2000)

I was so happy when I bought this album - on white vinyl - that I played songs from it when I was DJing that evening. Local boy done good and ex-Inspiral Carpet Clint Boon was doing a homecoming show at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in Oldham, and I was asked to DJ. Hardly anybody turned up but I do remember that I played a few songs off this album. I was even approached by one of members of the support bands playing that night (somebody fairly minor, but a known act all the same), when I was playing Ysbeidiau Heulog, and asked who this was.

Apparently this is the best-selling Welsh-language album of all time. I couldn’t care less that it’s sung in a different language. In fact, I think it gives it charm. I hardly listen to lyrics anyway, so it doesn’t mean a thing to me. The music and the melody is where I’m at.

Hit: Ysbeidiau Heulog

Hidden Gem: Ymaelodi Â'r Ymylon

Rocks In The Attic #30: The Beatles - ‘Yellow Submarine Songtrack’ (1999)

It’s odd that they released this, as though admitting that the original Yellow Submarine soundtrack released in 1968 was a bit of a mistake. That album has four previously unreleased songs of varying quality on one side, bookended by the title song and All You Need Is Love; with the flipside covering George Martin’s orchestral score for the film. Of the studio albums in their official cannon, this has to be the weakest as half of it isn’t them playing, and the rest is half-hearted, at best.

Released in 1999 to promote the re-release of the animated film, the Yellow Submarine Songtrack tries to wrong those rights by removing the George Martin tracks and filling the album out with the other Beatles songs that appear in the movie.

Hey Bulldog takes pride of place as the first song on the album (after the title song), and this was released as the only single from the album. Of those 4 previously unreleased songs that appeared on the original soundtrack, it’s clearly the best one - a nice little riff-driven rocker by Lennon that wouldn’t have been out of place as a B-side around the time of The White Album when it was recorded.

This is a nice addition to my Beatles collection - the tracks are fully remixed from the original multitrack tapes (something that they didn’t even do for the 2009 remasters), making it a pretty unique release. And of course it’s on yellow vinyl, and who doesn’t like coloured vinyl?

Hit: Yellow Submarine

Hidden Gem: Hey Bulldog