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This week I have a hot tip for you: the first-ever vinyl reissue of the Only Ones’ second album, Even Serpents Shine, is in stock now. I’m a big fan of this album, and since it’s the first time it’s been available on vinyl since its original release, I thought I’d tell you about my connection to it.
The Only Ones are most famous as the band behind the all-time classic track “Another Girl, Another Planet.” As far as I can remember, I first heard “Another Girl, Another Planet” on this Rhino CD box set called No Thanks that was formative in the growth of my love for 70s punk. The box set is packed with hits, but I always particularly loved the latter two discs, which offer a hit-parade overview of the early punk diaspora, with massive pop tunes like the Real Kids’ “Ghosts of Princes in Towers,” the Members’ “Sound of the Suburbs,” and “Another Girl, Another Planet.” Even among such a strong track list, the Only Ones’ contribution stood out, as I’m sure the song does to so many people whenever and however they hear it. It’s just an all-time classic tune.
At some point I picked up Special View, the bowdlerized American version of the Only Ones’ first album, to see if the Only Ones were one-hit wonders. Special View was a US-only release that combined tracks from the first two Only Ones albums with a few non-album cuts for the US market. It’s in that tradition of US versions of 60s UK albums where record companies took the UK version, swapped out a bunch of the album tracks, and replaced them with singles, b-sides, and other bits and bobs. This practice had mostly gone out of favor by the early 80s (it was doomed once people began thinking of albums as coherent artistic statements), but it notoriously happened to the first Clash album. Truthfully, I don’t remember much about my initial impressions of Special View... it certainly didn’t turn me into an Only Ones fanatic, and I’ve barely touched the record to this day, though I still have it.
The next step on my Only Ones journey was the single for “You’ve Got to Pay.” Thankfully my copy still has the price tag, which jogs my memory as to where and when I got it. I was visiting my brother in St. Louis for a few days, and at some point I went out on my own to the local record shops. When I stopped at Euclid Records, they had this massive file cabinet for 7"s... it was kind of awkward and a pain to go through, but once I started flipping, I found all these relatively cheap punk-era UK singles you never see in the US. They were cheap enough that I made a few blind buys, of which I remember the Mutants’ “Boss Man” (a great, amped-up pub rock single) was the best. When I got home and listened to the stack I bought, “You’ve Got to Pay” was an immediate standout. Part of that is the loud-ass mastering job on the single. I’m not sure if they were trying to make the song stand out on radio or what, but the version of “You’ve Got to Pay” on the single sounds monstrous, its simple guitar hook stabbing you in the gut like a rusty shiv. As a song, “You’ve Got to Pay” is built on the same skeleton as “Another Girl, Another Planet,” i.e. big guitar hook at the beginning, massive chorus, and lyrics that are ostensibly about love but work just as well if the object of that love is drugs rather than a person.
Once “You’ve Got to Pay” hit me so hard, I knew I had to get Even Serpents Shine, the album it originally appeared on. It took some patience to find a copy here in the US since it was never pressed here and has never been repressed at all since it’s original release, but once I got my hands on it, it cracked open my brain and dominated my listening for months. Like “You’ve Got to Pay,” Even Serpents Shine has a great sound. It sounds like a major label production from the late 70s, crisp and clear in the manner of so much classic rock, and while the fact that it’s not crowded with overdubs makes it sound elegantly minimal, there are flashes of lushness when production touches like backing vocals and guitar overdubs come in. The songs are great too, like “Out There in the Night,” an upbeat pop tune that coulda been a hit. The b-side opener “Curtains for You” is one of the band’s best moments too, a slow-burner that has all the high drama of London Calling, but with a mature, world-weary sophistication. Honestly, though, I could write about every track. This album just rules.
A quick aside on our Only Ones journey. Ever notice the one guy in the band who looks visibly older than the rest of them? (I feel for him. When Scarecrow is traveling, I often get asked if I’m with the rock stars.) Turns out the Only Ones drummer is an old-timer who previously played in the band Spooky Tooth. This would hardly be worth mentioning, but one day Dominic handed me a Spooky Tooth album and told me to check it out. It’s called Ceremony and ostensibly it’s a collaboration between Spooky Tooth and the French avant-garde composer Pierre Henry. However, what actually happened was that Pierre Henry was handed a master tape of six Spooky Tooth tracks (which were written as a set to be a “rock mass”), and without ever meeting the band or discussing it with them, added his own strange musique concrete sounds and completely remade the album in his own image. Spooky Tooth was none too pleased, but the result is a delightfully weird classic rock / modern classical hybrid that fans of groups like Univers Zero will dig. Dominic assures me that no other Spooky Tooth records are worth my time.
Back to the Only Ones. Eventually, and again after much searching since it never came out in the US, I found a copy of the original UK version of the Only Ones’ debut. I was hoping the original UK version would hit me just as hard as Even Serpents Shine, but thus far it hasn’t. I can’t figure out why, as so many of the things I love about the second record are present on the debut. Peter Perrett’s lyrics are great, the lead guitar lines are hooky as hell... but aside from “Another Girl, Another Planet,” much of the record skulks along at these sludgy tempos that keep the energy level low. I could see these songs really connecting if I were in the right mood (maybe if I was on heroin?), but I’ve yet to have that moment when I really and truly fall in love with the first album. MOV has also reissued the debut alongside Even Serpents Shine, though, so pick up your own copy and decide for yourself.
And while I’m mentioning other releases that came in at the same time as Even Serpents Shine, MOV has also reissued the third Saints album, Prehistoric Sounds, which (like the Only Ones records) never got a domestic US pressing and hasn’t been pressed at all since 1987. This is another record I had to search high and low to find a nice original copy of, and like Even Serpents Shine, it was well worth the wait. Maybe it’s more “mature” than Eternally Yours, but I think it’s nearly as good, and many people out there prefer it to the first two Saints albums. So scoop that too if you need it.
By the way, this trip through the Only Ones discography (with a few other stops along the way) reminds me of my patented multi-record picks, as seen on the YouTube series What Are You Listening To?. Jeff and I, along with our buddy Dave Brown from Sewercide Records and host Mike Foster, will share some of our recent listens on WAYLT? this Friday evening, July 12, at 10PM Eastern US time. It’s way more fun to watch live and post in the comments while it’s livestreaming, so join us at this link if you can!