Wah, hey!
The Mighty Wah! — Weekends (How Come We Always End Up Here?)
(Eternal Records 12″, 1984)
In all of its many guises, Wah! was Pete Wylie and heavy friends. (Much like Jim Thirlwell did with Foetus slightly later, Wylie liked to change the name of his band every so often: Wah!, Wah! Heat, Shambeko Say Wah!, JF Wah!, Wah! the Mongrel, and my personal favorite and I believe the longest-lived, the Mighty Wah!) In the late ’70s, Wylie had been one-third of the Crucial Three with Ian McCulloch and Julian Cope, but apparently, a general prickliness of personality and a seeming inability to pick one musical style and stick with it (much less a band name) made it impossible for Wylie to break through to the extent of his former bandmates, even though John Peel and others were big fans.
This 12″ re-recording (of a track that had previously appeared on the A Word to the Wise Guy album) of “Weekends (How Come We Always End Up Here?)” is my favorite Wylie track. It mixes an absolutely killer chorus, enormous dramatic widescreen production (I just love the percussion accents and the Steve Nieve-like piano fanfare) and a really sharp, funny lyric about the divide between big dreams and dreary reality. Anybody who can rhyme “Victor Kiam” (the guy from the old Remington razor commercials) and “Duran Duran” is all right with me.
–Stewart Mason
JubilationTCornpone said,
July 4, 2007 @ 8:08 am
Nothing to do with Wah!, but for July 4, I cobbled together my Top 10 Songs I learned from Little Hits. So this does not include songs I knew prior to LH. I pretty much went by my # of times played on itunes, but made a few adjustments since some songs are more recent, thus have not had as much time to be played a lot. Anyways, thanks for introducing all the great music, fellas! Maybe other people can follow suit in this or future comment sections.
10. Cynthia Loves by The Robbs
9. Forever Steven by The Corn Dollies
8. Here’s to You by Hamilton Camp
7. I Am Nine by Desperate Bicycles
6. You Do My World a World of Good by The Harvest Ministers
5. For Your Information by The Cedars
4. This Perfect Day by The Choo Choo Train
3. Candy by Cole Younger
2. Achin’ by the Plugs
1. Tell Me by Life
Stewart said,
July 4, 2007 @ 11:00 am
Wow! I think I speak for all of us when I say that I’m touched and honored that we’ve been able to introduce you to so much good stuff. Thanks for the list!
Chris said,
July 8, 2007 @ 9:13 am
Pete Wylie’s great, stuff like Story Of The Blues and Heart As Big As Liverpool. Did The Crucial Three actually exist or is it just a myth? Did they actually record anything? I don’t think you could fit their three big heads in the same room!
Stewart said,
July 8, 2007 @ 4:15 pm
As far as I know, Chris, they played a few gigs but never recorded anything. One of the early Bunnymen songs was an Ian/Julian co-write from those days — was it “Read It In Books”? Maybe “The Pictures On My Wall.” One of those, I think.
Peter Collins said,
July 9, 2007 @ 5:11 pm
Nice one. Much overlooked feller and single, though obviously inferior to Come Back and both sides of The Story of the Blues. I think Pete Wylie was badly ill a couple of years back but has come through it. I said I think so… hope I’m not thinking of someone else. I know Marc Almond had a bad bike smash and Edwyn Collins (no relation, I think) wasn’t too well himself a few years ago.
Robin Parmar said,
January 9, 2009 @ 7:15 am
The Crucial Three did exist, as myth. The two are not contradictory. They practiced a bit, sometimes with instruments, but more often by drinking tea, smoking and talking. Yes, “Read it in Books” is the one recorded outcome, performed by both Echo and the Bunnymen and The Teardrop Explodes. Each twice. Symmetry.
Meanwhile, lovers of post-punk should really check out all the early Wah! material, though the discography is confusing. The first album has the worst title imaginable: “Nah=Poo - The Art Of Bluff”. Then followed “A Word To The Wise Guy”, but many of the best versions exist on singles, which are spottily collected by the CD issues.