The new single by King Creosote (aka Kenny Anderson, Fence Records supremo and brother of Gordon Anderson) has been given a helping hand by members of the Beta Band. John Maclean directed the video which you can watch below via Youtube, and Steve Mason lent his production duties:

King Creosote – Coast On By
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vex-5ozOnYg

On 27th April 2009, Domino will release Coast on By, the first single taken from King Creosotes new album, Flick The Vs (released on 20th April 2009).

King Creosote explains here how the song came about:

“It’s all well and good when a pal offers to work on and record one of your songs, but when that pal is Steve Mason (Beta Band, King Biscuit Time, Black Affair) then up goes the ante. With album Flick the Vs well under way, and with no sign yet of a contender for the 3 minute pop hit thereon, I arrived chez Mason clutching a string of uneven verses each spitting out some facet of the tour-tired “leave me alone to my small village” blues. There followed 3 happy accidents:

- During the run thru’ Steve muttered “is that it?” in such a tone of voice that, in fear of ridicule, I ad-libbed a positive sounding one line mantra to the end of take one.

- Whilst I made the tea, Steve “lost” my original guitar take and mistook my ad-libbed mantra for “the hook”.

- A bungled cut n paste somehow morphed a duff bridge into a blinding chorus – three times?!

And that’s it – the precise art of song craft lies in the choice of “Coast On By” over the more accurate title “two grumpy old men realise that, together, they’ve created the very monster both have spent entire careers baiting, only for it to sneak up and bite them in unbridled joy”.

Directed by John Maclean

www.kingcreosote.com
www.myspace.com/kingcreosote

Just spotted a copy of The Beta Band’s debut 12" vinyl EP Champion Versions for sale on eBay.co.uk

The current bidding at time of writing is £30 with 6 bids. The eBay auction ends on Sunday 24th August at 13:45pm

Click here to view the auction on eBay.co.uk

Update: the winning bid on the auction was £59.00

Thanks to stontt on The Aliens board for finding this Youtube gem…

Thom Yorke covered the The Beta Band tune ‘Dr Baker’ during the intro to ‘Everything in its Right Place’ at a recent Radiohead show in Indianapolis, Indiana (at the Verizion Wireless Music Center on 3rd Aug 2008).

Check it out below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0idxJSS_1A

http://www.rock-city.co.uk/content/EEklZpukpAfnJyCYfP.shtml

http://www.xfm.co.uk/Article.asp?id=123002
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,14932-1803697,00.html

http://nme.com/reviews/beta-band/7797

Article exploring why the finest band of our generation (and Simian) never made it commercially.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/collective/A5953331

http://pitchforkmedia.com/record-reviews/b/beta-band/best-of.shtml
http://www.stylusmagazine.com/review.php?ID=3418

Mark Riley (formerly Lard of Mark & Lard) and guest reviewer Iain Banks discussed the Beta Band’s compilation CD on Mark’s 6 Music show. It sounds like the pair of them were fans of the band, and it sounds like they’re still disappointed about the split…

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/mainframe.shtml?http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/6music_aod.shtml?6music/6m_riley

Listen again and fast forward to about 1:45 in to hear the review.

Amazon.co.uk have the cover artwork for the forthcoming Best Of The Beta Band DVD (which is released on 3rd October here in the UK)

As you can see from this image it features the landscape artwork from The Beta Band album, the Tiger, Firework and Star from The Three EPs, the text/logo from Heroes To Zeroes and the fireball from Hot Shots II. Some text in the middle of the fireball also reads ‘FILM’. Apparently on the CD release, the artwork has ‘MUSIC’ written in the middle (although Amazon.co.uk don’t have the image for this yet)

Update:
Amazon.co.uk might not have the image for the Best Of CD yet, but Amazon.com do…. here it is: