Do You Know What I'm Saying?

[Neil.]

Stumbled across this the other day - just remembered what a fab song this! The producer fluffs the impact of the chorus, which soars in Elvis's demo, but you can't have everything. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-jk94Fb ... re=related - some crazy lyrics "she's speaking what's left of her mind as the audience rebels..."

".....She entered on roller-skates fetchingly tousled
She danced like an ambulance
Talked like a cartoon mouse
She took off her clothes and it brought down the house
Do you know what I'm saying? "

I then watched a couple of the other Wendy James Elvis vids - London's Brilliant is such a fun, throwaway tribute to The Clash and West London. Haven't heard it for years. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCNtWX6ceh4. Elvis is hilariously playful in the lyrics - "mine eyes have seen the gory faces.." etc

And the Nameless One, which I didn't really like at the time, I really quite enjoyed! It sounds like something Sugababes or Girls Aloud might do when they're feeling tough and defiant: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6TSgg-D ... re=related.

Anyway, I've finally ordered the CD off the back of this - for some reason I didn't bother with it at the time!

[Top balcony]

Neil

Thanks for reminding me of these. I bought the cassette first time round and always felt Elvis was being disingenuous by mouthing off about her recordings,

Still think he should release the WJ Tapes,although I'm not holding my breath...

Colin Top Balcony

[Lester Burnham]

I bought Now Ain't The Time For Your Tears a few years ago, and was really quite disappointed. Not necessarily in EC's songs, but the production and the arrangements were overblown, and Wendy James wasn't really my kind of singer. Then I came across the Gwendolyn Letters, and all hope was restored. After the kitchen sink approach of Spike and Mighty Like A Rose, the simplicity of these demos was really refreshing: just Pete on drums and EC on guitar, piano, and bass. I think my favorite song of them all is 'I Want To Stand Forever', which is a beautiful album closer, yet when James recorded it, it had this awful, weird orchestral outro that just wandered and went nowhere, so I was really glad to hear that Elvis went with the "less is more" approach on the demos. I can understand his criticisms of James' album, really.

I know he deliberately didn't record the songs as a potential album, but can you imagine if he had saved these songs for himself? Might've even been a perfect Attractions album.

[johnfoyle]

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

[WindUpWorld]

I've always thought these songs were a mini rock opera, echoing and mocking the song cycle form that Ziggy Stardust exemplifies - whilst also being very sincere and revealing in their own right. EC did say he was giving Wendy James an acting job with these songs tracing the Rise and Fall of a Pop Princess. I'd wager there's some equivalence between these and the classic Bowie template, e.g.

London's Brilliant - Star / Hang On To Yourself

Do You Know What I'm Saying - Ziggy Stardust

Rock'n'Roll Suicide - I'm Gonna Stand Forever

I've no idea how much input Cait had in the whole thing but she is co credited throughout I think. Elvis always downplays this as a dashed off piece of work that he let go of afterwards. If so it was consequently written very unguardedly and, with a lot of venom, often about the music biz itself. He's never really let rip at his own industry so directly in song - the journalists (We Despise You), the exploitative managers and such like (Fill In The Blanks and Puppet Girl), the hubris (Do You Know What I'm Saying and I Want To Stand Forever again). For me these songs also contain some of his nastiest along with some of his funniest lines.

One gets the feeling he could let all this out in song when it wasn't for himself, when his own hand wasn't watching so to speak.

[cwr]

It seems like Cait's direct involvement in these songs is a big reason why they've kind of gotten "lost" by now, right? I feel like the decision was made that they wouldn't be on the BY Rhino reissue (plenty of other demos and alternate takes to fill up that bonus disc) and by the time Rhino got to the Juliet Letters reissue, he and Cait were split up (plenty of live Brodsky tracks and other classy stuff to fill up that bonus disc) and maybe there was less incentive to put out some kind of Rhino Handmade limited release of a bunch of songs written with his ex?

Or maybe he just likes the idea of having a lost album, and also realizes that even if he DID put it out, its appeal would be mostly to the same handful of people who already sought it out via the underground. It always feels to me like a weird gap amongst all the stuff he's released, that there's this album's worth of demos that never really got a fair hearing despite being a pretty strong batch of pop songs from a period where he was writing and releasing an already impressive amount of new material.

I kind of wish he would just leak "This Is A Test" so that we could all finally hear his version of it. Or put them all out via iTunes or something without even announcing it just to see what happens.

[johnfoyle]

Just got the cassette of this , completing a collection of all formats. The cover photo, by David Bailey , is the same for all , except, of course, the rectangular aspect of the tape box means it wasn't as cropped as it was for the square presentations. The 12" vinyl sleeve also seems to have a kind of sepia tint, unlike the greyer finish on the other two frontages. My cassette player is in the attic so I cannot, alas, check if the recordings are anymore listenable on that format.