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phclemenza-blog · 8 years ago

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Track 1: Any Trouble – Where Are All the Nice Girls? (1980)

A simple life is all I need

Two shots of fantasy and one of make-believe

I never tried too hard to make this succeed

You're the only one I need

— Second Choice written by Clive Gregson

This quote could be the unofficial motto of a diffident and rather understated 80s pub band called Any Trouble. They grew out of the “angry young man” singer-songwriter movement led by Elvis Costello, Joe Jackson, and Graham Parker, but Any Trouble, led by singer/songwriter/rhythm guitarist Clive Gregson, always seemed to have some tenderness under that angry façade. Any Trouble is also a band that had such bad luck that I will be using Spinal Tap references to demarcate the sections.

Merely a two-word review, just said, “Sh*t Sandwich…”

I first ran across the band Any Trouble in my high school days in the early 80s, and thought they were slight but passably enjoyable but not much more. However, my esteem for them has grown to the point where I wanted to start this blog to sing, as it were, their praises. So why the sea change in opinion?

In the states in the early 80s, there were three ways to encounter aspiring British bands at least in the Northeast: the then still nascent MTV, 92.7 FM WLIR from Long Island (usually via tapes from friends), and underground radio shows like London Underground. At the time, Any Trouble had already been dropped by Stiff Records and had reinvented themselves as a keyboard-heavy, pastel-coloured 80s New Wave band in the A-ha and Spandau mold. I found this music on early MTV (even though to this day I do enjoy their 1983 eponymous album which I purchased on vinyl back in the day, featuring some fine pop songs buried under layers of keyboard, especially “I’ll Be Your Man” and “Touch and Go”). Gregson explained it in the liner notes from their Complete Stiff Recordings compilation, “The result was my least favorite AT album…featuring some of the best songs! For the first time we tried to chase fashion…and failed miserably. The keyboard and synth heavy sound was a million miles from the guitar jangle we’d previously made…and nobody seemed to much care for the new approach.”1

Years later when I rediscovered the band researching on the extremely helpful and useful AllMusic site, I was surprised that they were a pub band originally. Their driving, heartfelt, singer/songwriter style of pub fare was so much up my alley that I was shocked to find I was unfamiliar with it (although I did faintly remember the video for “Second Choice” on MTV’s very early days, probably before Stiff stiffed them).

If it was in dubly…

The problems for Any Trouble started with the comparisons to the other angry young men, especially Elvis Costello. They had a bespectacled, unconventional-looking lead singer who also wrote the songs and played guitar, and they played jangly, R&B-based pop rock. Some even called their first hit, Second Choice, “stunningly derivative…a retread of ‘Less than Zero’” and Gregson’s voice a “nasal” version of Costello’s distinctive baritone full of “overall nice-guy swellness.”2Gregson even acknowledged the similarities: “Nobody could deny that our first album owed a sonic and arrangement debt to EC’s first LP. Both records are primarily guitar based and focused on mostly short-ish, uptempo, R’n’B based pop rock songs…It was all too easy a comparison to make because EC was there first and had already achieved a great deal of commercial success, we rather come off as a poor runner up.”1

Also reviews at the time were less than forgiving with Any Trouble’s pub band style, something that had, in the cognoscenti’s opinion, run its course 5 years prior with bands like Brinsley Schwartz and a hundred others who never cracked the billboards charts let alone the public’s perception but who inspired Rockpile, Elvis Costello, and a host of punk bands who were pub rocks followers. It is difficult to imagine a band being chastised today for their style being a few years out of date given all of the retro styles being plumbed for inspiration but the seventies were a decade that started with the end of the Beatles and witnessed pub rock, punk rock, disco, and the start of new wave to name a few. Times were a-changing quickly then.

Though Any Trouble espoused the angry young men’s attitude their soft hearts belied their message and in an age of punk, it was inexcusable. Any Trouble’s “nice girls” seemed like Graham Parker’s “local girls” but Clive Gregson still wanted to “kiss her feet and shake her hand”. The band’s name was derived from a misremembered line in the great film Blazing Saddles when Cleavon Little holds himself hostage oddly to save his own life. At least the Shoes correctly cited John Lennon in naming themselves. Talk about an unpretentious, even self-marginalized band.

Their self-effacing approach helps explain their rather diminished legacy, though luck and other factors played a role. This is a band that was happy just to be on the Stiff Records roster though that also ended being to their detriment. But for that we have to review their full history.

We traveled the world and elsewhere…

Any Trouble was formed in 1975 in Crewe, England while Gregson was attending teacher training college. They started as an acoustic trio covering artists like the Who, the Band, the Beatles, and Bruce Springsteen. Their name stuck quickly but “[i]t seemed to conjure up a vision of something approaching an Oi! Band to certain punters who were never slow to let us know they were very disappointed by our brand of melodic (albeit pretty rapid!) pop-rock.” They were even billed as “Andy Trouble” once.1

In a couple of years punk was sweeping the UK, but Any Trouble was more influenced by the singer-songwriter artists like Costello, Parker, and Rockpile, who had “a clearer connection to the American stuff [they] were already playing”. The band moved to Manchester in 1978 and set their lineup: Gregson (vocals, guitar, and keyboards), founding member & lead guitarist Chris Parks, drummer Mel Harley, and bassist and backing vocalist Phil Barnes. Gregson had started to write songs in his “hyperactive new wave style.” 1

By mid-1979, they were ready for a demo tape. The group borrowed money from Phil Barnes’s dad, and on August 17 recorded four songs in eleven hours at Pennine Studios. After 5 more hours of mixing, Any Trouble were ready to release an indie double-A-side single of “Yesterday’s Love” and “Nice Girls”. 500 copies were pressed, some of which the band sold at gigs, but Barnes and Parks, who worked at an HMV record store, would give a copy to each label sales rep. They eventually gave a copy to the legendary John Peel, who was on a road show at Manchester University but “he dropped it into a big black bin bag that was already full of records and demo tapes: every band in the north west had apparently had the same idea!” 1 A few weeks later Peel played “Yesterday’s Love”, and soon the song was making the rounds at the various BBC radio shows. “So in essence we had a single that nobody could really buy, recorded by a band with no professional management or structure, getting what amounted to A-list airplay at the BBC…Pretty amazing!” 1

The band found a professional manager and started fielding offers from major labels like EMI, WEA, Rak, Chrysalis, and Stiff. The studio reps visited their shows and tried the band out in the studio. Once the band heard that Stiff wanted them, the competition was over. “[W]e were already fans of the label, their artists, their style – so we duly signed to Stiff in early 1980.” 1 “We went with Stiff because they were our kind of people working with acts that we actually liked!”4

Any Trouble returned to Pennine Studios with former Squeeze producer John Wood, and made a record in a couple of weeks. “When we made our first album that was our live sound. Just like the Beatles - that first album was our stage show. We made the whole record in less than three weeks - and we should have done it in less than a day really (laughs).” 3

Expectations were high for the release. Gregson: “Half of me was absolutely thrilled that Allan [music journalist Allan Jones of “Melody Maker”] and various other media folk were waxing so lyrical about the album and the band…and half of me couldn’t really understand what they were getting so excited about! I liked the record but I mostly thought of it as a starting point and far from the finished article.” 1 “But Allan was really taken with it and stuck us on the front cover of Melody Maker saying this is the greatest thing since sliced bread and we patently weren't.”3 Talk about modest!

Artie Fufkin, Polymer Records…

The marriage to Stiff was clearly a huge mistake. “In terms of chart success, fame, and fortune, Stiff and Any Trouble patently didn’t work! We were spectacularly unsuccessful…we actually weren’t anything like a ‘typical’ Stiff band…We simply didn’t have the strong visual image that Ian Dury, Madness et al had in spades. Check out our Stiff videos…talk about a band in search of a look!” 1

The album also faltered overseas as the fledgling Stiff America label was out of its depth. “The label was becoming rather more mainstream in many ways... and I think they felt that what Any Trouble was all about was right for the new times. They were hopeful that we could also spearhead breaking the label in the USA.”4 “When we arrived in the States in December 1980 as part of the Son of Stiff tour, we had the most added airplay record nationwide but no albums in stores and no effective distribution or marketing programme…a glorious missed opportunity.” 1

Like Artie Fufkin, apparently, the Stiff America reps had no timing. A Stiff rep also reportedly encouraged Gregson to go solo (as “Buddy” Gregson to compound a bad idea). Stiff did think highly enough of Any Trouble as a live band to put out an “official bootleg” live album but the disc never did get a proper release outside of Germany (in 1989) and as a radio promotion until “The Complete Stiff Recordings 1980-1981” compilation came out in 2013.

“But by the time we had improved and got better the fuss had all gone. You only really get one shot in the big nasty world of the music business and it went disastrously wrong because we weren't really ready for it.”3

Puppet Show and Spinal Tap…

The band followed up Where Are All the Nice Girls? with Wheels in Motion but with a new drummer, new producer, and a relocation to London. The record company started getting nervous about the lack of commercial success. Searching for scapegoats, Wood was removed as producer and replaced by Mike Howlett but the excecs had a falling out with him as well, over the mixes and tended to replace rougher but visceral mixes with the more polished final mixes. The band toured the US to support the album but after about a month were summarily dropped by Stiff. Their manager tried to keep the tour going by booking them to open for Molly Hatchett (Any Trouble Mach 2?). However, the band instead returned to The Stiff office in New York to get tickets back to England but instead had their van robbed. They did return home but did so with their tails between their legs. Of the relationship, Gregson said, “I’ve often thought that being able to say ‘I was in a band signed to Stiff Records’ is not a million miles away from being able to say ‘I was in a Merseybeat band in the 60s’”. 1

How much more black could this be? The answer is none, none more black…

The band then went their separate ways—“we had no manager, no label, no money, and no real prospects.” 1 But Gregson conjured up the version of Any Trouble that I originally encountered in 1983 and signed a deal with EMI America. However, the band never would tour the US to support the album even though they were signed to an American label. They did return to England and Europe.

Any Trouble was so surprised that EMI America picked up the option on a second album that they reunited with producer John Wood and produced a double album with each a different approach for each of the four album sides with guest musicians on side one, horns and string on side 2, moody ballads on side 3, and an odds’n’sods side 4. Gregson calls this the best album of their original run. EMI did not release the double album in the states, replacing it with a single disc version, again did not support a US tour, and finally dropped the band from the label.

Any Trouble played one last gig at Dingwalls in London and would not reunite for another 23 years. “I always say that getting away from EMI in 1985 was the end of my involvement in the music business and the start of my involvement in the Clive Gregson business!”4 The reunited band now has now produced 2 albums: Life in Reverse (2007 on Stiff Records and again produced by John Wood) and Present Tense (2015 on Cherry Red). Clive Gregson has put out 15 solo albums since 1985 when EMI liberated him, including five from his pairing as a folk duo with Christine Collister.5

The Tracks

A note on the track listings – They are listed by the original UK 1980 LP order by side and track for the original 10 songs (e.g., A1 means the song appeared on side A and was track 1 of that side). The original running time was 34:31. In the US three songs were added, two covers—Springsteen’s “Growing Up” and ABBA’s “Name Of The Game”—and the B-side “No Idea” and one song (“Honolulu”) was omitted.6 I, however, first become acquainted with the album via the 1997 Compass release, the first on CD, which included 3 extra tracks to the original ten (run time 43:07). When the band reorganized and resigned with Stiff in 2007, a reissue of the CD with the same track listing as the 1997 disc was released with one addition, the original 1979 single version of “New Girl”. The 2013 Complete Stiff Recordings CD1 of a 3-disc set covers the album and adds the original 1979 single version of “Nice Girls”, a remix of “Turning Up the Heat”, and a demo of “The Hurt” to the 1997 CD version.

As with a lot of forgotten discs, it has evolved over the years. I list all of the songs below.

A1 Second Choice

(Also released as a single with B-side of “The Name of the Game” & “Bible Belt” (live))

Written-By – Clive Gregson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sryujH_qX-4

I never felt the need to cry or rejoice.

I never felt the need to raise my voice.

I only wanted to be one of the boys.

Now, you’ve made me second choice.

The first cut on the album was the single, as was typical in those days, and it also served as a good introduction to Any Trouble’s frenetic music style and its world view. The song opens with Parks and Gregson doubling each other with Byrds-like jangly guitar work and the rhythm section embracing a ska beat. After the opening lines from Gregson, the chorus settles into a more standard pop fare with more of a walking bass line (with two notes per beat) and fewer fills on the drums. The style is Any Trouble at its best: a simple pop song a bit sped up.

As to whether Any Trouble was power pop, it seemed Gregson himself was not sure though he leaned against it, “I was never that sure that we really were a ‘power pop’ band... I always felt that we were rather more of a simple pop/rock band with a bit of an r 'n' b sensibility. I also had roots in contemporary folk music and was never averse to bringing some of that influence to the table. Most acts who were tagged with the ‘power pop’ label had a much tougher, edgy guitar sound than us... we specialised in a particularly scratchy Fender jangle through tinny amps sound! Chris was also very country influenced as a guitarist... Our songs tended to be short-ish with a proper melody, hook lines and plenty of relationship angst themes! Nowadays it all seems to have a rather naïve charm and not much actual ‘power’ at all...”4

As regards Gregson’s message, it takes the rebuffed lover and delves into his psyche from “the nursery school floor” to what he wants today, which in Gregson’s world is merely the girl, the simple life, and the requisite imagination to think this is success.

A2 Playing Bogart

Written-By – Nick Simpson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LB-N46M-CaM

Give me something for the man

Who doesn't have to try too hard

Spent a little time rehearsing my tom petty leer

Well I dressed up for my conquest

Come out fighting no holds barred

And I pray for courage and some halfway decent beer

“Playing Bogart” was the only cover on the original album. It was written by Nick Simpson, the lead singer of a band called 23 Jewels out of Manchester.7 The single came out a year earlier and the band would only generate two singles and an EP before fading into the ether in 1981.8 The 23 Jewsels version of the song can be heard here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WP1QqAARG8U.

The song fits into Any Trouble’s ethos of the nerdy everyman trying to live up to ideal male hero like Humphrey Bogart who always got the girl and looked cool smoking and drinking something neat. The hero waits for his chance at a party to meet a girl, tries to live up to his ideal, but is scared off by her other suiters and ends up sitting on his bed smoking a single cigarette in the dark (there might be a metaphor there). Even though he has that “7:30 Friday night feeling” in his bones, he is defeated before he even starts knowing that he cannot carry off the image he has set for himself with his weariness with the same conversations, his eyes red from smoke and his legs going lame—it’s no wonder with the pathos the hero feels: “all martyrs suffer as I walk back slowly through the bar.” He consoles himself that he is better off by himself if he loses “playing Bogart” unlike those “good-time people [making] excuses on their telephones.”

The hero girding himself for the conquest is also belied by the tense and nervous musical style of the song. If he presents himself as cool and calm like Bogart, that certainly isn’t how he is feeling under it all from the start of the song if one listens to its kinetic style. Any Trouble takes the already fast but sloppy 23 Jewels version and quickens the pace while making the song a tight, neurotic anthem in the Any Trouble vein.

A3 Foolish Pride

Written-By – Clive Gregson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmrIo5iL6vk

She’s so high class, you’re gonna have to let her pass and swallow your foolish pride.

“Foolish Pride” is the first ballad-y, slower song on the album, but as Gregson said, “[W]e played pretty much everything at a furious tempo. Even the ‘slow’ songs…”9 It might be the prettiest and most idealistic song on the album. The guitars soar—and is that a pedal guitar added in as well?—as he sees the girl with “angel eyes” and the song follows a typical boy-meets-girl love song until the hero realizes that she is not the one for him and the guitars crash back to earth. They scratch out a nervous tempo while the hero realizes that he has to swallow his foolish pride and let her go because he is not man enough.

A4 Nice Girls

(Also, 1979 original version released as a B-side to “Yesterday’s Love”; re-released 1980)

Written-By – Clive Gregson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itYqWUSAqRQ&index=4&list=PLJbEfr2GyzFsFPD5eBY_-69ZCw_BWmIOA

Oh, where are all the real girls?

They act the way they feel girls?

I may love Where Are All the Nice Girls? since it follows Rob Gordon’s compilation tape rules from the John Cusack film High Fidelity. It starts off “with a killer to grab attention” and then takes it up a notch. Then it “cools it off a notch” with “Foolish Pride”, but probably the best song on the album and the one that give it its title comes.

“Nice Girls” starts with a simple, plaintive guitar riff and then Gregson sings his most mournful. A second guitar followed by a Procol Harum organ, a “perfect drunkenly sad-organ” 10, then takes up the cause. Finally, drums and bass take it to the next level. A jumpy chorus breaks up the mournful strains, but the song continues to build until it finally fades away.

[Re. the 1979 B-side: The original “Nice Girls” B-side recording is a bit looser (9 seconds longer) than the 1980 LP version. The lonely organ is missing but the result might sound a bit closer to the Any Trouble live sound when they are playing a slow song towards the end of the night to the hoots of the crowd to keep their anticipation up for the kicker at the end. There is also no fadeout like on the album—maybe the old studio did not have that functionality yet.]

A5 Turning Up The Heat

(Also, a remix version was added to the 2013 Complete Stiff Recordings CD1)

Written-By – Clive Gregson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKgx4Y0j5SY&index=6&list=PLJbEfr2GyzFsFPD5eBY_-69ZCw_BWmIOA

Look around you baby and you see them all havin’ fun.

Hey, now, why are you the lonely one?

Again Rob Gordon would be happy: “Heat” builds on the power of “Nice Girls”. A chorus with female backing singers is added for the first time on the album which creates a new wrinkle. Gregson actually sounds like early “I’m the Man”-era Joe Jackson. I am not sure what the lyrics are all about—landing at an airport and there are crowds and then there is a girl who’s lonely and that turns up the heat?—but it is a great pop song.

[Re. the Remix: The remix version has a bit more treble and sounds a bit faster clocking in at 2:54 as opposed to 3:00 for the original. Maybe it sounded a bit more New Wave in the high, fast version like a Vapers tune.]

B1 Romance

Written-By – Clive Gregson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEJ-SMjEvkg&index=10&list=PLJbEfr2GyzFsFPD5eBY_-69ZCw_BWmIOA

They say love’s a mystery.

All seems so clear to me:

Love’s another promise I could never keep.

Side A set up the formula for Where Are All the Nice Girls?, but Side B blows the doors off. The album starts going in all sorts of directions and each is better than the last. “Romance” gets the heart pumping right away with a double beat followed by guitars, bass, and drums frantically racing each other up and down the melody. The last thing it seems is romantic—“sweating in the shade.” Quite the contrary, the words talk about love being a Kafkaesque mystery. Gregson starts out talking to “you”, his alter ego he is advising, then about “they”, i.e., society telling him how he should act and feel, and finally “I”, where he finally owns his failure in romance as “another promise I could never keep.” The song then rushes to an abrupt finish.

B2 The Hurt

(Also, a demo version appears on The Complete Stiff Recordings, CD1)

Written-By – Clive Gregson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pG5fuMfYmbs

Loving you is like playing with fire.

I tried it once and it burned my desire.

“The Hurt” barely misses a beat with Gregson again shout-singing his heart out in Joe Jackson style all the while being chased by racing guitars. At least he is actually trying love this time, but now he is afraid of “the hurt”. Neurotically, he is sure it is rushing towards him. At least he is now being honest with himself as the music echoes his inner turmoil unlike in “Romance”.

[Re. the Demo: It sounds a bit looser and slower (15 seconds longer than the LP version). It sounds a bit like a Greg Kihn cover of the song.]

B3 Girls Are Always Right

(Also released as a single with B-side “No Idea”)

Written-By – Clive Gregson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8cz7Tusig0

The way that girls act is a problem for me.

Everything they do is complete mystery.

They stand around being so outspoken.

They’re just waiting for their hearts to be broken.

“Girls Are Always Right” takes a moment to cool the heat from the first two songs on side B at least initially. Then Gregson sings his heart out in a song that seems to mirror Joe Jackson’s classic “Is She Really Going Out With Him?” As the lovelorn singer wallows in self-pity apparently finally having “the hurt” catch up with him and his only solace is the sarcasm in saying that the girls are always right. The song takes the intensity building in the last two songs and, though it is slower, keeps it building. The female backing singers return like a Greek chorus and with snarling guitars prod and harass the hero. The song is “four minutes of evocative yet tender, poppy angst.” 10 “Girls Are Always Right” is Any Trouble at their gut-wrenching best.

The song builds slowly and progressively. It starts with a shimmery guitar twang and then twinkling cymbals, laconic piano, an occasional bass beat, and a second complementary guitar join in. Then Gregson voice floats in. Finally, drums and a proper bass line join to a crescendo about a minute in. The guitars shimmer and entwine like cooing doves or a couple in love. Then the piano returns with the cymbals momentarily until a second crescendo about two minutes into the song with backing singers now joining in. The piano and guitar (no cymbals this time) return one last time as the song again builds to one last crescendo about 3.5 minutes in. The song soars and builds throughout.

B4 Honolulu

(Note: Dropped from 1980 US version of the LP)

Written-By – Clive Gregson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZE-1O2v_Sbc&index=12&list=PLJbEfr2GyzFsFPD5eBY_-69ZCw_BWmIOA

I don’t care if I never say a word.

This kind of a love should be seen and not heard.

“Honolulu” feels like a fresh break from the romantic cycle of the previous three songs, both musically and lyrically. The song starts with Gregson soto voce and upbeat about meeting a girl while a guitar strums. He is just voicing his desires, living in the moment about love being “seen and not heard”.

The music amps up to Any Trouble’s typical frenetic pace but now it sounds like excitement, not neuroses, even if it is all just a dream. The female backup singers appear one last time, doubling Gregson’s wishes as if the girl is into it for once. But it is short-lived…

B5 (Get You Off) The Hook

Written-By – Clive Gregson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GWiYPryuG4&list=PLJbEfr2GyzFsFPD5eBY_-69ZCw_BWmIOA&index=13

Because you're closed in the pages of a hist'ry book And the last one says that you've run out of luck But you can't sew, and you can't cook So the time has come to GET YOU OFF THE HOOK...

The album ends with Gregson again heartbroken and in pain on “The hook”. However, this time he tells himself (addressed again as “you”) that it will be all right—he’ll save himself. The song starts in a mournful shuffle like a lonely man walking the streets and hesitates as he recounts all of the problems he now faces, but it races as he declares that he will get himself of the hook. Now, the song is upbeat with a playful organ riff—a la Steve Nieve on Elvis Costello’s “You Belong to Me” or “Senior Service”—rising over the guitars, and it ends the album in a series of false starts as the hero again has some trepidation but the happy organ keeps breaking through.

Yesterday's Love

(1979 single with B-side “Nice Girls”, re-released 1980 & Track 1 on the 1997 CD release)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYVm73yMAdg

I don’t want to be your lover

I just want to hold you for the rest of the night.

“Yesterday's Love” roars off at the start of Who Are All the Nice Girls? as it was first released on CD (in 1997). That was the version that I was first introduced to and fell in love with. However, I now acknowledge that the original LP version is the best one given the cogent, economic, and effective artistic message it presents. Being the completist that I am, I still prefer the more bloated 13-song CD version though a good compromise would just be to prepend “Yesterday's Love” at the beginning of the LP.

It is a shame that this emphatic song did not make the final album cut since it is Rob Gordon’s perfect kickoff to the album. Initially, it is just Gregson singing in your right ear (love the low tech mixing) like an angel (or devil) on your shoulder. The lines above burst through to open up “Yesterday's Love”, which is a strong Any Trouble version of power pop. The closest comparison in feel is Elvis Costello’s “The Beat” from This Year’s Model, which came out the year before the single was recorded. The song may have been cut just for its blasé approach to love not fitting the album ethic. “Yesterday's Love” is terrific, it must be said, and it is not a surprise it made them a mini-sensation prior to producing their first album.

No Idea

(Side A Track 3 on the 1980 US release & Track 6 on the 1997 CD release; Also released as the B-side to “Girls Are Always Right” single)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGn07K9VqcQ&index=7&list=PLJbEfr2GyzFsFPD5eBY_-69ZCw_BWmIOA

And the only love I know is like a light out in the dark

Shining! Shining! Everywhere.

“No Idea” is maybe the most positive song on the extended album, which may have been why it ended up on the cutting room floor. It is another great power-pop tune about love, loneliness, and loss. The lines above just shimmer--great song but it would get lost in the mix. It does show why Where Are All the Nice Girls? is a lost classic: even a rejected track could have been a standout on an average album. Here it seems repetitive and almost forgettable.

Growing Up

(Side B Track 1 on the 1980 US release & Track 11 on the 1997 CD release)

Written-By – Bruce Springsteen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdeszR8o90g&index=9&list=PLJbEfr2GyzFsFPD5eBY_-69ZCw_BWmIOA

I took month-long vacations in the stratosphere, and you know it's really hard to hold your breath

I swear I lost everything I ever loved or feared, I was the cosmic kid in full costume dress

“Growing Up” was an addition to the US edition of the 1980 LP to appeal to the American crowd. Thematically, it fits in with the idea of emotional growth and Any Trouble rips through it joyfully earning their pub band stripes. It was also a great cover at a time when Springsteen had not yet broken as big as he soon would. However, the Springsteen anthem is at odds with the romantic hero Gregson espouses in detail in the rest of the album The Boss had other ambitions.

The music is typical Any Trouble at a hyperkinetic pace. Their version is about half a minute quicker than the Boss’s. They forego the piano intro for a nervous guitar but add a rousing organ solo by producer Bob Sargeant.

Also, one of the features of the original song is ending each chorus with a rhyming progression from “they said, ‘Sit down,” I stood up” to “they said, ‘Come down,’ I threw up” to “they said, ‘Pull down,’ I pulled up.” Gregson in his hurried style blows right by that progression repeating three times some garbled variation of the last line (“I stood in the mortar and up the driveway, when they said, ‘Pull down,’ I pulled up.” Maybe?). Apparently, the band did not find this out until they played in New York: “I vividly remember playing our version of Springsteen’s ‘Growing Up’ in the Boss’s own backyard only for some guy in the crowd to bellow, “You got the words wrong!’ at the end...and he was right!”1

That was not the only thing the band got wrong with the song. Springsteen’s title was “Growin’ Up”, not “Growing Up”.

Name Of The Game

(Side B Track 6 on the 1980 US release; Also released as the B-side to “Second Choice” single)

Written-By – Benny Goran Bror Andersson, Bjoern K. Ulvaeus, Stig Erik Leopold Anderson (ABBA cover)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ee4xHnWvvYk&list=PLZBgEVaTJlNOM5vwPuHU_XsCzKDDjqZwP&index=20

What's the name of the game? Does it mean anything to you?

What's the name of the game? Can you feel it the way I do?

Tell me please, 'cause I have to know

I'm a bashful child, beginning to grow

Another addition to the 1980 US LP was “Name of the Game”. I guess since Americans love ABBA (and yet “Honolulu”, which is in America after all, was taken off the album). It is a nice cover with a disco beat is a pub rock setting. Again it is a nice fir thematically for the band: uncertainty, love, etc.

But it is the least essential song on the list. It was left off the CD reissues of the album until the comprehensive three-disc Complete Stiff Recordings and then as part of the live set At the Venue (disc 3), not Where Are All the Nice Girls?

Ours go to eleven…

They had the dodgiest band name I can ever remember and their stage clothes were laughable, but the songs were world class and on-stage they played with the energy and enthusiasm of four escaped convicts let loose in a bar full or women.

I loved ’em but always stood back from the stage—Clive sang with such passion that he kept spitting over the front row and insisted on playing the ugliest Telecaster I’ve ever seen! Nearly twenty years later I can still sing the words to every song on this album and wish I could see them play the Venue just one more time before I die. (Nigel Dick, former Stiff Records press officer) 11

I loved the whole album…amazed at how much great lyric and melody Clive Gregson could squeeze into tracks that were moving at 90 m.p.h.!!! (Dennis Locorriere, Dr. Hook) 11

I was far away from Manchester, England when I first discovered an album with four curious looking guys staring up at me. It was as if they were they were saying, “Hey, aren’t you going to listen to us?” I was a DJ in Santa Barbara, California, at a little progressive radio station called KTYD. The DJ’s had a lot of freedom to pick their own music and often initialed the cuts they liked. I turned it over an d every song had someone’s initials on it. My curiosity heightened and I placed it on the turntable. Being female, I put the needle down on “Girls Are Always Right”. It was love at first listen. I decided to segue it into “It’s Different for Girls” by Joe Jackson. Beautiful. (Erin Riley) 11

Where Are All the Nice Girls? is an album that not only does not have a weak track, you could take any of these tracks and they would be a standout on another album. There is an urgency that is tangible.

The perfect storm of a finely honed pub band with many influences coming together at the right time musically created this lost classic: “I think you’d get four completely different answers if you asked the band what influenced our sound! I’ve always been obsessed with The Beatles, Chris’s guitar hero was Tim Renwick (Sutherland Brothers and Quiver), Phil wanted to be Kenny Gradney (Little Feat) and Mel was very into Genesis. And of course we didn’t sound remotely like any of those bands at all! We were essentially a fairly basic two guitar/bass/drums band who somehow got spannered into New Wave…”9

Reviewing the tracks on this album in its various incarnations helped me rediscover what it is that I truly enjoy about it. Of course, there is the nerdy romantic hero with whom identify, but there is also the nervous, energetic, driving music that may or may not be Power Pop.

The one thing that I came away with in re-reviewing the album was how good side B of the original album was. It may not be the side B of Abbey Road but the way the songs build and musically and lyrically is pretty impressive. It is also something that is lost when listening to the album in the CD version with bonus tracks added.

Unfortunately, Gregson does not seem to think much of his first record, “I listen back to that first record now and I don't much like it - I don't think we were very good at all. It's very derivative and we didn't play very well and it was just a good honest attempt at what we were doing at that time. A lot of smarter people saw through it and saw it for what it was - just a naive little pop record.”3 But I think there is a timelessness that is based more on feeling that may be lost even on the artist that recorded it. Maybe a naïve little pop record that is made extremely well can transcend such inherent limitations.

There definitely is a style that is embodied by Any Trouble. As Clive Gregson said of the 2007 reconstructed version of the band, “[S]o off we went, having not played together at all in the interim! We recorded the first song for that album…and it sounded exactly like Any Trouble! That either means that we’ve not learned a thing on the intervening 33 years…or that we’d got it dead right first time round...I’ll let the listener make their own mind up on that…”9

Credits 1

Clive Gregson : Lead Vocals, Guitars, Keyboards

Phil Barnes: Bass & Vocals

Chris Parks: Guitars

Mel Harley: Drums

Alison Tulloch & Diane Robinson: Backing Vocals (“Turning Up the Heat”, “Girls Are Always Right”, “Honolulu”)

Bob Sargeant: Organ (“Growing Up”)

Engineer – Paul Adshead

Producer – John Wood (except “No Idea” & “Growing Up”: Bob Sargeant; “Yesterday’s Love”, “Nice Girls (single version), and “The Hurt” (demo): Any Trouble)

Recorded at Perrine Sound Studios, Oldham & Mixed at Sound Techniques, Chelsea (except “No Idea” & “Growing Up”: recorded & mixed at Roundhouse Studios, London; “Yesterday’s Love”, “Nice Girls (single version), and “The Hurt” (demo): recorded & mixed at Perrine Sound Studios)

References

1 Interview with Clive Gregson from Any Trouble: The Complete Stiff Recordings 1980-1981 booklet

2 Trouser Press (http://www.trouserpress.com/entry.php?a=any_trouble)

3 "Clive Gregson - The Triste Interview". Triste Magazine. October 1999. (http://www.triste.co.uk/gregson.htm)

4 Goggins, Patrick. "Interview with Clive Gregson (September 2014)". Dispatches from Coconut Grove blog (http://dispatchesfromcoconutgrove.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/interview-with-clive-gregson.html).

5 AllMusic.com’s Clive Gregson page: http://www.allmusic.com/artist/clive-gregson-mn0000788222/discography

6 Discogs “Where Are All the Nice Girls?” page (https://www.discogs.com/master/view/39536)

7 Dicsogs Nick Simpson page (https://www.discogs.com/artist/676115-Nick-Simpson-2)

8 Discogs 23 Jewels page (https://www.discogs.com/artist/913634-23-Jewels)

9 "An Interview with Clive Gregson of Any Trouble (18th November 2014)". Band on the Wall. (https://bandonthewall.org/2014/11/an-interview-with-clive-gregson-of-any-trouble/)

10 “Underrated Classics: Any Trouble” (June 5th, 2012) on Heave Media (http://www.heavemedia.com/2012/06/05/underrated-classics-any-trouble/)

11 Any Trouble: Where Are the Nice Girls? 1997 Compass Records CD booklet