The Slits (Rat's Palace San Francisco 25th November 1980) and Marvin Gaye (Market Square Arena Indianapolis 9th June 1983) Got It Covered #6

 

Here's another one for all of the detractors of punk as a valid musical genre. As with the previously shared 'Walk On By' post, The Slits' treatment of 'I Heard It Through The Grapevine' is yet more evidence that punk bands dared to cover songs that even back in the late '70s were considered to be classics. The status of such songs, particularly if the work of such influential labels such as Motown, effectively rendered them uncoverable. Record at your peril!

Such dogmatic thinking did not sit well with the original Riot Grrrl band, The Slits, who recorded and released 'I Heard It Through The Grapevine' as the B-side of their debut single 'Typical Girls'. Needless to say version by The Slits is very different from any of the versions that emerged from the Motown stable. This bass driven slice of British post-punk has become something of a classic in its own right. Yet another example of a band reshaping someone else's song to such a radical extent that they can rightly claim a degree of ownership of it.

FLAC: https://we.tl/t-Gb4CJ1SLr4nOwxCn

Artwork: https://we.tl/t-qBDQdsDrDj065DBK

As for the original version, well that is a little complicated, a case of who did what first. Motown had a number of writers who wrote the arrangements and lyrics to songs that were then provided to the label, at which point it was decided who or which group among the label's talented roster would record a given song. 

The song is a Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong composition that they presented the Motown label with in 1966. The Miracles were the first act to record the song in the same year in which it was written but their version did not see the light of day until August 1968 when it was released on their second album, 'Special Occasion'. In the meantime, Gladys Knight and The Pips recorded the song in September 1967. Knight's version was released and reached number 2 in the Billboard chart, making it Motown's biggest selling single at that point. Marvin Gaye's version of the song was the second to be recorded in early 1967, but it became the third version to be released appearing as it did on Gaye's 'In the Groove' album of August 1968. Although the last version to see release, Marvin Gaye's version became the most successful, overtaking the Gladys Knight version to become Motown's biggest selling single at that time.

Marvin Gaye's 'I Heard It Through The Grapevine' is now the definitive version of a song that has become one of the best known songs ever written. The song (and specifically the Marvin Gaye version) was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame as a work having "historical, artistic and significant" value. In 2008, the song was ranked at No. 65 in a chart marking the 50th anniversary of the Billboards Hot 100.

The version presented here is not a patch on the 1968 'original'. This 1983 version had none of the subtle arrangements sitting behind it. It is rather brash and lacks the charm of the original. Recorded in the summer of 1983, in just nine months time Marvin Gaye would be dead having been shot by his father on 1st April 1984 - apparently someone once wrote a song about it!

FLAC: https://we.tl/t-P8sNJ18Zx1BXdM6i

Artwork: https://we.tl/t-JOGgzbBEOwVrFLyj

Siouxsie Sioux Royal Festival Hall London 15th June 2013 (With Viv Albertine)

 

Here's an upload of a significant event in Siouxsie's long career and it seems apposite to post it today on the lady's 69th birthday. For some time now a cultural festival has been hosted the South Bank Centre in London. Each year a prominent figure from the arts world is invited to curate the festival comprising a programme of events and performers having a particular resonance with the host. In 2013 the task fell to Yoko Ono, who invited Siouxsie to play at the event.

On the night in June, the former Banshee shared the stage with another giant of the UK punk scene of '76/'77, Viv Albertine, formerly of The Slits. Siouxsie and Viv are among a handful of female musicians that turned a staid music business on its head in the mid to late seventies and in doing so changed the perception of women in popular music for ever.

FLAC (Siouxsie and Viv Albertine): https://we.tl/t-nN0ibFbpMFfPgADi

Artwork (Siouxsie): https://we.tl/t-tGV7HxHAR5SVM25S

Artwork (Viv Albertine): https://we.tl/t-qmpH1JSA3JSgS3ny

Thanks to the original poster (Phil). A link to his blog appears in the download info file, but it would appear to have been doemant for some years now.

The Slits Music Machine London 8th August 1978 (TFTLTYTD #4)

 

I cannot and do not profess to be an authority on The Slits. What I do know however that it is an opinion universally held that they, as much as any other band associated with the early London punk scene, embodied the true spirit of punk. Nobody looked like The Slits, nobody sounded like The Slits. Ari Up and Co were as brash and as shocking as the Pistols, perhaps more so in conservative 1977 since they were WOMEN! In terms of where women stand in music and beyond that band's contribution to the breaking down of gender barriers is immeasurable, they were game changers.

I never got to see The band when they reformed (along with Hollie Cook, Paul Cook's daughter) but a recording of that bad can be found here.

Also a recording of the BBC Radio 4 documentary 'Reunion' on the women of punk in which Tessa Pollitt and others discuss the influence of The Slits and others is here.

Ari died of breast cancer in October 2010 at the age of just 48. She and her fellow musicians in The Slits were pioneers who changed many people's lives.

Here are The Slits performing at London's Music Machine in Camden on a night when they shared the stage with the inimitable Johnny Moped. Thanks to Dimer Grner1 for the original upload.

FLAC: https://we.tl/t-ErtSmkTuhX

Artwork: https://we.tl/t-xNxH5sLgxD

Women of Punk BBC Radio 4 Reunion Programme 16th April 2017

Presenter Sue MacGregor interviews Gina Birch (The Raincoats), Toyah Willcox (Toyah), Gaye Black (The Adverts), Tessa Pollitt (The Slits) and Vivien Goldman (The Flying Lizards) about their lives in punk and the impact they had as leading female lights within a changing music industy.

MP3: https://we.tl/nnesNRCOfB

The Slits Talking Heads, Southampton, 15th October 2009

Still on the subject of The Slits, here's a later incarnation of the band recorded in 2009 in Southampton (many thanks to the original uploader).

FLAC: http://we.tl/KqsEwEGxsN

Artwork: http://we.tl/pJSXfYRE8Y

01. Shoplifting
02. FM
03. New Town
04. Reject
05. Fadeaway
06. Crew War
07. Love und Romance
08. Man Next Door
09. World Of Grownups
10. Cry Baby
11. Typical Girls
12. Vindictive
13. Heard It Through the Grapevine
14. Animal Space
15. Partner From Hell

Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys - Viv Albertine

I never really knew a great deal about The Slits other than they were a band equivalent of a hand grenade that exploded in the first wave of punk and that they were a band that people were genuinely scared of!. I must be one of the few people with an interest in the '77 punk scene who does not own a copy of 'Cut'. But in terms of guitarist Viv Albertine's book that doesn't matter, What 'Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys' offers is a very open and candid view into the inner circle of the London punk scene. Key personalities within punk are seen from a perspective that is very different from their stage personas (especially Mick Jones and Sid Vicious). The ever present threat of violence faced by 'punks' on the streets is vividly described as are the internal pressures of being in a band such as The Slits.

The Slits for the first time played music in an all female band that did not attempt to copy how men played in a band and for that any woman playing in a band is indebted to this band.

Clothes, Clothes, Clothes, Music, Music, Music, Boys, Boys, Boys