It's generally agreed that The Beatles' personalities were established in the 60s', with George "The Quiet One", John "The Smart One", Paul "The Cute One", and Ringo... well, he was just Ringo. The Cute One would sing the love songs, and pen the melodic tunes, while Lennon would sing the rockers, and have a more acerbic turn of phrase in his lyrics. And yet if you look at the writing credits of some of their later work, it was McCartney who pretty much invented heavy metal with 'Helter Skelter', as well as providing 'The White Album' with such oddities as 'Why Don't We Do It In The Road', the ragtime throwback 'Wild Honey Pie', and the Dylan-ish 'Rocky Racoon'. He'd also worked with sound collages way before Lennon's 'Revolution 9', with his still unheard 'Carnival Of Light' from January 1967, and if he hadn't shown Lennon how to work the tape machines then his piece probably wouldn't exist. So McCartney was much more experimental than most people thought, even as far back as 1968, but once The Beatles split and he started his solo career then he was free to do whatever weird shit he wanted, and by the early 80's it had started to unashamedly appear on his records, often on the b-sides of more commercial singles, but particularly on his 1980 album 'McCartney II'. The 'Temporary Secretary' single was the biggest commercial success of this new direction, but the 10-minute 'Secret Friend' on the b-side was like nothing he'd done before, and the extended 9-minute take of the 'Waterfalls' b-side 'Check My Machine' was more of the same. 'Ou Est Le Soleil?' from 1989 was a funky attempt at Europop, with its minimal repeated French lyrics, while the 1986 'Press' single was treated to a number of remixes, including a dub version. 'Cactus Club' is a live jam from a 1986 video shoot in Amado, and 'Kreen-Akrore' shows that he was doing this sort of thing as far back as 1970, so here is a collection of McCartney's most out-there compositions, which along with his work with Youth as The Fireman, proves that he was always the most experimental Beatle.
Track listing
01 Secret Friend
02 Press (Dub Mix)
03 Cactus Club
04 Kreen-Akrore
05 Ou Est Le Soliel?
06 Check My Machine
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