Digging For Fire Vol. 70: Pussy Galore – Exile on Main St.
In honor of The Stone’s remastered re-release of a deluxe edition of Exile on Main St. I thought I’d do a Digging For Fire tribute for the album featuring another artist currently getting some much deserved love with re-releases, Jon Spencer. Arguably the greatest Pigfuck band of all time covers arguably the greatest Stones album of all time in it’s entirety…a pretty awesome concept when you think about it.
Originally released in 1986 as a cassette edition of 550, this album cover was actually Pussy Galore’s first full length to the world and their first since settling in New York City from Washington DC. Why the hell did Pussy Galore decide to cover Exile on Main St.? I honestly have no clue… but the Stones are an obvious influence on Jon Spencer and it just fit the band’s whole trashy, confrontational, roots rock aesthetic. Plus it made for a pretty awesome novelty and befitting Pussy Galore’s reputation, this was a pretty controversial and bold move. I suppose some lowly, trashy noise band covering one of rock’s canonical releases will get people riled up… be it punks or rock purists.
As with all Pussy Galore releases, the tape was recorded like absolute shit! I wouldn’t be shocked if the whole thing wasn’t done live in studio with a tape-recorder at one end of the room. But if you’ve ever heard a single Pussy Galore song or album, you know that’s exactly the way it should be.
I used to make myself crazy trying to hunt down a copy of this when I was younger… well this and actually every single Pussy Galore release, and never managed to find a copy of Exile on Main St. (either on tape or some of the vinyl and CD pressings Shove eventually did for it) until the digital music age. Being that this is a song for song cover of one of the most well known albums, from one of the hugest bands of all time, I doubt we’ll ever see an official re-release it.
So rather than celebrating this classic with some newly unreleased (and recently re-recorded) tracks by Jagger and Richards, why not let some other legends like Jon Spencer, Neil Hagerty, Christina Martinez, Julia Cafritz and Bob Bert give you there take on it? I actually forgot how many legends were in Pussy Galore, until I wrote that…wow.
- My Pal the Crook
May 24th, 2010 at 11:57 pm
Why cover “Exile”?
you probably dont care but here’s my dissertation.
the answer (or clues) lies with Neil Hagerty, not Jon Spencer. As a fellow fan of everything PG and its offspring, i too was initially drawn to Jon Spencer (the Jagger figure of PG). It wasn’t until i got the untitled (third) LP by Royal Trux that i fell in love with Hagerty’s work (the Richards figure of PG). Neil kinda has a Richards Exile-era look to him (the straight, long hair – the laid-back, tall, slender guitartist – the notorious heroin addiction).
Just as Exile is considered to be Keith’s album so to Neil was the force behind PG’s recording.
From the Corpse Love comp linear notes:
“Exile” was done as a sort of gag response to Sonic Youth’s often-stated intent to cover the Beatles’ White Album. Neil knew the Stones’ “Exile” well and was given the task of interpreting the record and teaching it to the rest of us. Neil would present a song to the band, we would play it a few times, then lay it down. In this manner the entire album was recorded in sequence. By side three everyone had gotten into the swing of it and we were not yet sick of the process.”
There a few parrallel levels that this EOMS cover works:
the Beatles & Stones early recordings were often cover of American songs and here you have early american band covering an entire revered yet only partially mainstream album of British songs (made in France and England over a 3-year period) whereas PG supposedly spent 3 days to record.
As for as the recording goes, of course, there was no studio. Handwritten notes on the cass cover reads “Recorded with the Pussy Galore Mobile Unit Aug 24-26 1986″
The PG Mobile Unit was a borrowed cassette 4-Track in their NYC practice space and was later “mixed by Jon Spencer/Neil Hagerty/Rick Hall” Hall also did the cover work.
You can further contrast the sound recording of PG basement practice space with the non-studio recordings at Richards’ rented luxury villa’s basement, Nellcôte, in Villefranche-sur-Mer where the Stones decided they would record using the band’s remote recording truck brought in from England because they couldn’t find a suitabe studio in France.
here you have an emerging PG vs SY friendly rivalry just as then “The Beatles vs The Stones” carried out their friendly rivalry. Instead of a Brit Rock rivalry, it’s a New York noise punk (or noise-core or trash rock) sound – which is funny for PG to stake a claim to as they JUST moved to NYC in 1986 and JUST added SY ex-drummer Bob Bert. Which is even funnier/ballsier to take a quick dig at SY (a local favorite) considering they had just left DC after “publicly venting their hatred for Dischord Records boss Ian MacKaye” making “themselves even more unpopular amongst DC’s hardcore punk scene”. i guess some people just love to be hated!
May 25th, 2010 at 3:06 pm
Rob, do you want to just write these?