A curious little rocker, Old Siam Sir by Macca
I was never a huge Paul McCartney fan outside of his work with The Beatles, but I did dabble in some of his post-Fab Four offerings of the 70's. While I enjoyed some of the Wings music he produced, I never invested in any of those albums. I did, strangely, pick up the single Old Siam Sir, from the critically lambasted Wings album Back to the Egg of '79. A friend of mine played the album for me so I got a taste of its uneven music. The song Getting Closer was one of the few decent ones, I believe.
My first solo McCartney purchase was the Coming Up single of 1980. That 7" record also included a live Wings version of the song, plus an oddity called Lunch Box/Odd Sox. The quality of the dance-y pop tune Coming Up prompted me to pick up the 1980 LP McCartney II.
The Coming Up single, plus a live version & some other weird tune
McCartney II was entirely self-produced, cobbled together in the ex-Beatle's home studio. Paul fiddled with electronic gizmos as he pounded out a set of very experimental music, quite unexpected for someone as mainstream as this fellow. Wife Linda did some backing vocals, but that was it for outside interference. Paul did everything else on the album.
I wasn't crazy about the album, but it was intriguing and challenging. And I just now learned that the Wings live version of Coming Up, a bonus 7" vinyl single included with the LP, was in fact a bit of a rarity, only available with some copies of the album in North America. The album charted high in the U.S. and UK but it was greeted with mixed critical reviews across the board. Coming Up, on the other hand, received high praise and hit number one on both U.S. and Canadian music charts. Yay!
The one-sided live Coming Up single, a bonus from the
McCartney II LP - a collectible? Well, mine is in pristine condition....
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