"The First Worldwide Big Beat Newspaper"

 No, not a shortlived end o' 90s publication devoted to all things Skinty and Wall of Soundy...  at home with Monkey Mafia profiles... Portrait of the Propellerheads as Consumers.... an advice column from Lindy of Hardknox

No, we are talking much, much earlier than that... 

Based out of San Francisco 

World Countdown was the creation of a fellow called Charles Royal  - and his brother Mark.

"Big Beat" being a phrase, a concept, a vibe, that harked back to the 1960s 

As was the term "beat group", meaning an imposing drum beat rather than "beat" as in poet or beatnik.

The magazine dropped the "big beat" bit from its frontal boasts, perhaps reflecting the shift from beat-y energy to a more "heads" oriented sound, especially in San Francisco, which I would never have thought of as a hotspot for big beats in the Dave Clark Five sense. 

It ran for 29 issues and at the end was simply billing itself as This Earth's Leading Music Newspaper.

Before that it claimed, absurdly, to be the World's First Music Newspaper

It was only 40 years behind Melody Maker, which I doubt was the first weekly periodical about music anyway. 

"The Voice of Music" my English arse

Yes, there was a certain grandiosity to the World Countdown operation, as with the incorporation of the surname Royal in the title  on the front cover - Royal's World Countdown. 

If your surname is Royal, does that mean you end up with a "King of All I Survey" complex?

Also - what is with this repeated sales pitch of it being a "souvenir" issue? 

Or "collectors edition"

"You will cherish our magazine forever!"

Now I have been obsessively following music for decades, with a particular interest in the history of music magazines, the underground press, and especially the early days of rock criticism - and I'd never heard of this publication until a few days ago. 

It's been pulled together as a compendium. 

Back to the other Big Beat... I am surprised in that late '90s Boom for Dance, when publications were springing up all over the shop, there wasn't a Big Beat dedicated magazine. Perhaps there didn't need to be since it was well covered in the big three dance monthlies, Mixmag, Muzik and DJ. 

I seem to remember that at the absolute peak glut of dance and dance mags, someone tried to launch a dance-dedicated weekly music paper. But then the bubble burst... 

Happiness is Just Driving Me Around the Bend

So there was I thinking that Cuba Gooding was the source for "there's something's going round inside my head" +  "it's something I feel" + "it's something unreal" +  "my vision is clear" - all those repurposed-for-E samples most famously deployed in nuum-cornerstone "Aftermath" by Nightmares on Wax and appearing innumerable times subsequently....  

But then I learn that the original was written and first recorded by Brian Auger!  In 1973.

Brian Auger's Oblivion Express to give the full name (an oddly rave-attuned sort of name, you could imagine a house alias being Oblivion Express, or maybe it could be the title of a slightly cheesy German trance track).

I rather like the original, in its Georgie Fame-ish nifty groover way. 

Then there was a successful - and wonderful  - interpretation by The Main Ingredient in 1974.

And then we get Cuba Gooding's fab 1983 take, which seems molded on The Main Ingredient's version rather than the Auger original.  (Update 2/14" As Anonymous points out in comments, it's actually Cuba Gooding singing on The Main Ingredient's version, which helps to explain the resemblance!). This solo version, which came with an a cappella version on the 12-inch for ease of isolating the vocal bits as samples,  is the source for all the soundbites that nuumheads know so well..

 

Here's a playlist I made that traces the journey of "Happiness Is Just Around the Bend" from Auger, through The Main Ingredient and  the various Gooding mixes, onto the many different tracks in which all those lovely samples got embedded. 

"Started again" is another lyric-lick that got a fair bit of use 

 

Check out the lyric to "Happiness Is Just Around the Bend" and spot just how many lyric-phrases got repurposed. 

The 'Selena' is a mistranscription - it's clearly "something" that is going round inside his head. But apparently the song was inspired by falling in love with a woman. (Which sort of makes the "highly unreal" line a bit jarring).

Selena is going round inside my head

I think it's somethin' I feel

That's highly unreal

So I see my world is upside down

But there is nothing to fear

My vision is clear

All my roads lead nowhere

What lies at the end

Reach your destination

What you find, is your love bird

It's your birth

Started again

So get up

Get it on

Try it again now

Get up

Happiness, is just around the bend now

Selena is going round inside my head

I think it's somethin' I feel

That's highly unreal

So I see my world is upside down

But there is nothing to fear

My vision is clear

All my roads lead nowhere

What lies at the end

Reach your destination

What you find is your love bird

It's your birth

Started again

So get up

Get it on

Try it again now

Get up

Happiness, is just around the bend now

Brian Auger - his other great moment is this cover of "This Wheel's On Fire" with Julie Driscoll. 

Some good bits with Brian grimacing as he fondles his organ in this one 

The "It Girl" of late-psych, was Jools 

I really enjoy the name of this album Brian & Julie did together with the Trinity - Streetnoise -  but have not been able to bring myself to listen to it - I fear it might be turgid with organ swells and have that sort of oaken, brownish sound-palette that quite a bit of Brit stuff, as '68 heads into '69, tended to have. 

Then Julie marries Keith Tippett and becomes Julie Tippetts, avant-jazz vocalist, collaborator with the likes of Robert Wyatt, etc 

But back-tracking to the Auger-Driscoll days... here's another connection to UK '90s dance

Brian, Julie and the Trinity did this song "Indian Rope Man" (original by Richie P. Havens) (their version has exactly that oaken, brown-ish sound I was talking about) 

And then there was an act on Skint Records called Indian Rope Man, who also covered "Indian Rope Man" 

At least I think it's a cover - can't seem to find it on the YouTube. At one point, in a phase of Skintmania that now seems faintly inexplicable to me, I scooped that and a whole bunch of other Skint 12's up, but can remember absolutely nothing of IRM's "I R M".

They - or rather he, one Sanjiv Sen - also did this Cream / "Sunshine of Your Love" cover so it's almost certainly going to be a cover of the Havens / Auger-Driscoll tune

Quite a lot of Big Beat had that flashback to the sound of Brit beat boom groups with thick, brownish-swirl keybs kinda sound.  Distorted Hammond etc organs. 

Like this one by Indian Ropeman 

It also comes in a Pub Rok mix... 

Moog-slurry-swirl as mulligatawny jacuzzi

Truly around-the-bend tripped-out reinvention of "Aftermath" by Villalobos + Loderbauer with faintest trace glimmers of Cuba Gooding / Brian Auger